The step towards unity which was the central point of the speech represented his profoundest conviction on the strategy of the war.
Ever since the beginning of the war, indeed, Mr. Lloyd George had been an international as well as a patriot. As in the war itself, so in the Alliances, he was always against half-measures. If we were to be true Allies of France and Russia—or later on of Italy and the United States—then we must always work with them hand in hand, take close counsel with them as friends, act always together, not as separate States but as parts of one common organisation; the real beginning of a new “League of Nations.” From the very outset he had no use for national sectarianism; he could not understand the idea of a tepid alliance, a Laodicean friendship, timorous of mutual help, suspicious of common counsel, feeble in reciprocal aid.
His reading of history had taught him that this kind of suspicion, especially strong in island countries, had been the sleeping sickness, the wasting paralysis, of all former mixed European Alliances. It was just this same aloofness, this same separatist pursuit of national aims, that robbed Marlborough of the fruits of his victories. It was precisely the same want of common planning that melted all Pitt’s alliances like wax before the fire of Napoleon’s energy. In more recent days, it was the similar want of understanding between the British and French Generals that prolonged the Crimean War.
Now he determined to strike while the iron was white hot. The fire burned, and he spake with his tongue. While the events in Italy were still fresh in the memory of Europe he pointed the lesson in vivid and biting language. It was certainly the first time that such a speech had been uttered at such a half-private function—an official luncheon of the Premiers arranged to give him an interval of relaxation in his journey back to England. No wonder the orthodox were alarmed.
Frankly and roughly, like a man in a hurry who has no time for honeyed speech, Mr. Lloyd George gave to the world his own innermost reasons for pressing forward the machinery of central control.
For the Versailles Council was to be a real and not a shadow control. He made it clear that he intended it to possess a genuine authority over the national military staffs. Even so, his proposals did not go so far as America and France desired; for France already wished for a Generalissimo, and the United States, being too far from the war even to aim at exercising control, were frankly willing to delegate the entire military power to the men on the spot.
But, even so, Mr. Lloyd George’s plan contained the heart of the matter. Every one engaged in the controversy was aware that, once the germ of unified control was established, it would grow. No local control could compete with it. On that main principle Mr. Lloyd George was quite clear and definite. He stated outright that he would not stay in office unless his plan was adopted. “Personally,” he said, referring to the Rapallo decision, “I had made up my mind that, unless some change were effected, I could no longer remain responsible for a war direction doomed to disaster for the lack of unity.”
Mr. Lloyd George was far too old a bird to have any doubt as to what troubles this speech would bring on his head. He was speaking, as he himself said, “with perhaps brutal frankness at the risk of misconception here and elsewhere,”—perhaps even, he admitted, at the risk of encouraging the enemy.
He knew all that. But he also knew that there are times when such risks have to be taken. There are moments when an electric shock is necessary if men are to be really aroused to the duty of change. Eyesight, they say, is sometimes restored by a flash of sudden light. The same method may remove blindness of other kinds.
The new Council, he said, had already started work. It must have the support of public opinion if it was to have any genuine power. There must be a new central strength to resist sectional and national influences. What they wanted for victory was not sham unity, but real.[[114]]