From the very first he took Lord Kitchener’s view of the seriousness and probable length of the war. He was not a war “pessimist.” He would not accept that phrase. “I look at the facts,” he would say, “I merely refuse to live in dreamland.” When people used to come to him in that bouncingly cheerful mood which patriots tried to cultivate in those days, he used to look at them gravely and say, “Have you read all the bulletins?” And then he would go on: “Have you read the bulletins on both sides?” Or to another he would say, “Have you looked at the maps?” For he always saw the war as a whole: he grasped it in the East as well as in the West. It was not that he was particularly disturbed by untoward incidents; he rarely discussed any such incident. It was the proportions of the vast forces at issue which filled his mind and imagination.
There were several consoling theories popular during the first year of the war for which he had little taste. There was the idea, preached in many powerful quarters, that German man-power would soon be exhausted. Mr. Lloyd George was an open sceptic on that point. It was not merely that the Germanic Powers had far more men than most English people realised at that time; it was also his fixed imaginative feeling that the resisting power of a country does not ultimately depend on numbers. It was the spirit of Germany that he feared—ruthless to others, merciless to itself. In a public speech he expressed that once as the “potato-bread” spirit.
Then there was the theory that Germany would soon be starved into submission. There again his imagination came to his help. “How do you know?” he would say. “How can you tell at what point a nation will cry for mercy? That does not depend upon the amount of food; it depends upon the spirit of the nation. History shows that there is little limit to what some nations will endure before they surrender.”
The practical upshot of all this was that he could see no alternative to a clear and clean military victory. The only reason, in fact, why he combated such theories as “attrition” and “hunger-surrender” was that he regarded them as excuses unconsciously put forward to avoid the strain and stress necessary for that achievement. He saw men at that period cultivating optimism as a means of concealing from themselves the stark realities. He saw others preferring short views to long preparations. He perceived that too many were seeking for any or every other means of a softer outlet; and yet, to his mind, the sole chance of obtaining a satisfactory close to the war lay along the iron road of victory. It was in that way that he came to regard the people he met as too sanguine; for that reason he set himself to preach a more sombre view.
So much did this view afterwards prevail that it is difficult to recall now those amazingly cheerful forecasts so popular during the first six months of the war. Public opinion soon recovered from the first shock of the retreat from Mons. There were even a considerable body of people who persuaded themselves to regard that valorous series of rear-guard actions as a crowning victory. When, on September 9th, 1914, the Germans stopped their advance and began to retire to the line of the Marne, there were some who talked as if the war were already ended.
This was not by any means entirely the fault of the public, for a strict censorship had concealed from us in Great Britain that gigantic defeat of the Russians at the end of August known now as the battle of Tannenberg. There the Russian General Samsonoff had been drawn on to the lakes of East Prussia by Hindenburg, and a second Cannæ had been achieved. A vast number of Russians had been killed and captured; 90,000 had been taken prisoners, and no less than 516 guns captured.[[62]]
All these things were known to Mr. Lloyd George; and he did not possess the faculty, somewhat common in high places, of persuading himself that an inconvenient fact must necessarily be untrue. Nor was he so bemused by the censorship as to believe that you could make an unpleasant fact untrue simply by keeping it secret. He knew by the beginning of September that the theory of the Russian “steam-roller” must be set aside. He had realised already that the main effort would now lie with England. That was what gave so much sobriety to his outlook.
As the last months of 1914 passed by, the situation as a whole certainly did not improve. The Russian invasion of Eastern Prussia was definitely stayed. There were indeed certain compensations. In September the Russians seized Eastern Galicia and the Bukovina. In those months the Serbians, with heroic valour, three times drove back the invading Austrians from their little country. But it became obvious that the Russians, however daring in combat, lacked the generalship required for reaping the fruits of their successes. At the beginning of October Germany came to the help of Austria, and there was a great rally of the Austro-German forces. The Russians were driven out of Western Galicia, and in October a large part of Western Poland was seized by the Germans. In November there was another spasmodic recovery of the Russians; but again in later November they were driven back to within forty miles of Warsaw, and the opening of 1915 saw Russia practically on the defensive.
The meaning of all these events to Mr. Lloyd George was, that if we were to achieve victory we must prepare for a very great and prolonged effort; and he determined to set himself to the task of tuning the country up to the pitch of the highest endeavour.
It must be remembered that at this time he was still Chancellor of the Exchequer, and therefore not directly concerned with war matters. All his arguments and interventions both in war policy and foreign policy were liable to be regarded, according to the prevailing traditions of our Cabinet rule, as trespasses from the straight and narrow path of direct responsibility.