Permanent military representatives of the Supreme War Council

The British chronology of the war records under 27 November 1917 the appointment of the members of the Supreme War Council: General Henry Wilson, General Ferdinand Foch, General Luigi Cadorna and General Tasker Bliss. These were the permanent military representatives provided for in the agreement concluded three weeks earlier at Rapallo. The council itself consisted of prime ministers and ministers, and each power was to have on it a general whose sole task was to advise the politicians. The representatives were to follow the forces and resources of the Allied and enemy armies on a continuous basis and to receive from their governments all documents relating to the conduct of the war. On the same 27 November David Lloyd George left London for Paris for the first meeting of the council, and Wilson went with him.

The British representative was Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Wilson, for years a friend of Foch and an advocate of close cooperation with France, chosen by Lloyd George even before Rapallo. The Prime Minister hoped that Wilson would advise him independently of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, William Robertson, with whom he was at odds. After Rapallo Wilson stayed in Italy for more than a week, arrived in Paris on 19 November, and then in London fought the Secretary of State for War, Lord Derby, for officers for his staff. His closest collaborator was General Charles Sackville-West, and the politician Leo Amery joined the team. The British were the first to set up offices, in the Trianon Palace hotel at Versailles.

Italy was represented by Cadorna, who on 8 November had lost his post as commander-in-chief, and who received the Versailles post as a kind of consolation. The American representative was the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, General Bliss, who a few weeks earlier had received four stars. According to American records he was designated on 17 November, and he crossed to Europe with the mission of Colonel Edward House, President Wilson’s adviser. The British Wilson noted on 30 November, however, that Bliss knew nothing about his future and had no plans at all regarding Versailles. At Rapallo it was not yet known whether the Americans would take part in the council’s work at all.

The most changes came on the French side. At Rapallo Foch had been named as France’s representative, but Lloyd George argued that the chief of the general staff of the French army could not at the same time be an independent adviser to the council. The new Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, who took over the government on 16 November, at first took little interest in the council at all. As late as 28 November he had appointed no one to Versailles. According to Wilson’s diary, by 30 November the decision had been made: Foch remained chief of staff in Paris, and his long-time chief of staff, General Maxime Weygand, went to Versailles. Wilson thought Weygand would be merely Foch’s mouthpiece.

The first meeting of the Supreme War Council took place at Versailles on 1 December under Clemenceau’s chairmanship. The permanent representatives began issuing joint notes with recommendations to the governments. Peter Wright, one of the council’s secretaries, later observed that Bliss and Cadorna were not on the same footing as the rest, because “Bliss had not yet got his army, and Cadorna had lost his”. In February 1918 Wilson replaced Robertson as Chief of the Imperial General Staff in London, and his place at Versailles was taken by General Henry Rawlinson.