Supreme War Council's powers extended

A British chronology of the war records under 3 February 1918 that the British government announced the extension of the powers of the Supreme War Council at Versailles. This referred to the decisions of its third session, which met at the Trianon Palace Hotel from 30 January to 2 February, two months after the first meeting. Great Britain was represented by the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, and Lord Alfred Milner; France by the Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, and the Foreign Minister, Stéphen Pichon; Italy by the Prime Minister, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, and the Foreign Minister, Sidney Sonnino; and the United States by the first secretary of the embassy in Paris, Arthur Frazier. Alongside the permanent military representatives sat the commanders-in-chief, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, General Philippe Pétain and, from the second meeting, General John Pershing, as well as the chiefs of staff, General Ferdinand Foch and General William Robertson.

The plan for 1918

The council began with the permanent representatives’ Joint Note No. 12 on the plan of campaign for 1918. It recommended a coordinated defence from the North Sea to the Adriatic and a decisive offensive against Turkey, provided that the Western Front was not weakened. Haig and Pétain warned that shortages of replacements would force them to break up many divisions during the year and that they would not have the men for great offensives. Clemenceau wanted to hold out through 1918 on the Western Front and wait for the Americans. Lloyd George defended the eastern plan, and on 1 February the council adopted the note with the proviso that the British would not take a single soldier away from the Western Front. Robertson then declared at the meeting that the destruction of the Turkish armies was not a practical plan and would be dangerous. According to the diary of General Henry Wilson, the Prime Minister was angry with him for opposing his view in front of the Allies.

The general reserve

The most important matter came back on the afternoon of 1 February. Everyone agreed that, in the face of the great German offensive that was looming, the Allies needed a common reserve that could be thrown in on a threatened sector of the front. The dispute was over who should control it. Robertson wanted the reserve directed by the chiefs of staff, that is, Foch and himself, while the American General Tasker Bliss proposed a committee of the chiefs of staff of all the armies. Wilson prepared notes for Lloyd George pointing out that a chief of staff from London, Rome or Washington could not sit permanently at Versailles. On the morning of 2 February the Cabinet Secretary, Maurice Hankey, turned Wilson’s proposals into a draft resolution, which the council adopted in the afternoon.

The resolution created a general reserve for the armies on the Western, Italian and Balkan fronts. It was to be controlled by an executive committee made up of the permanent representatives of Great Britain, Italy and the United States, that is, Wilson, General Luigi Cadorna and Bliss, together with Foch in place of the French representative, General Maxime Weygand. The committee, in consultation with the commanders-in-chief, was to fix the size of the reserve and each army’s contribution, designate its stations, organise its transport and decide when and where the reserve would be used. Once they set off, units passed under the orders of the commander-in-chief they were going to help. The council chose Foch as the committee’s chairman. A separate resolution authorised the committee’s members to transmit the council’s orders to the armies of their own countries. The Chief of the British General Staff had no seat on the committee. “The long duel between Robertson and me has ended in his complete defeat,” noted Wilson, who wondered whether Robertson would resign.

The declaration and the first meeting

At the close of the session the prime ministers agreed a declaration which, according to a dispatch from the United States ambassador in Paris, was to be published simultaneously in Paris, London and Rome on Monday 4 February. In it the council stated that in the recent speeches of Chancellor Hertling and Count Czernin it had found no approach to the moderate terms of the Allies, and that the only task now was to prosecute the war with the utmost vigour. It added that the powers of the council itself had been extended and that the principle of unity of policy and action, begun at Rapallo, had been given further practical expression. No details of the reserve were given.

The executive committee met for the first time the very day after the session, 3 February, and almost at once renamed itself the Executive War Board. At its next meetings on 5 and 6 February it determined that the reserve should number 30 British, French and Italian divisions, including some of the divisions sent to Italy in the autumn. Foch tried in the process to impose his view by a casting vote, which Wilson firmly rejected. On 4 February the Versailles resolutions were approved by the British War Cabinet, but the Army Council protested that a committee at Versailles, not answerable to Parliament, was being given authority over British troops. The dispute over who should sit on the committee ended within two weeks with a change in the post of Chief of the Imperial General Staff. The general reserve itself was never created, mainly because the commanders-in-chief were unwilling to give it divisions.