Before the War | Page 9

A conversation
with the then Chief of the German General Staff, General von Moltke,
the nephew of the great man of that name, satisfied me that he did not
really look with any pleasurable military expectation to the results of a
war with the United Kingdom alone. It would, he observed to me, be in
his opinion a long and possibly indecisive war, and must result in much
of the overseas trade of both countries passing to a tertius gaudens, by
which he meant the United States.
I had little doubt that what he said to me on this occasion represented
his real opinion. But I had in my mind the apprehension of an
emergency of a different nature. Germany was more likely to attack
France than ourselves. The German Emperor had told me that, altho he

was trying to develop good relations with France, he was finding it
difficult. This seemed to me ominous. The paradox presented itself that
a war with Germany in which we were alone would be easier to meet
than a war in which France was attacked along with us; for if Germany
succeeded in over-running France she might establish naval bases on
the northern Channel ports of that country, quite close to our shores,
and so, with the possible aid of the submarines, long-range guns and
air-machines of the future, interfere materially with our naval position
in the Channel and our fleet defenses against invasion.
I knew, too, that the French Government was apprehensive. In the
historical speech which Sir Edward Grey made on August 3, 1914, the
day before the British Government directed Sir Edward Goschen, our
Ambassador in Berlin, to ask for his passports, he informed the House
of Commons that so early as January, 1906, the French Government,
after the Morocco difficulty, had drawn his attention to the
international situation. It had informed him that it considered the
danger of an attack on France by Germany to be a real one, and had
inquired whether, in the event of an unprovoked attack, Great Britain
would think that she had so much at stake as to make her willing to join
in resisting it. If this were to be even a possible attitude for Great
Britain, the French Government had intimated to him that it was in its
opinion desirable that conversation should take place between the
General Staff of France and the newly created General Staff of Great
Britain, as to the form which military co-operation in resisting invasion
of the northern portions of France might best assume. We had a great
Navy, and the French had a great Army. But our Navy could not
operate on land, and the French Army, altho large, was not so large as
that which Germany, with her superior resources in population,
commanded. Could we, then, reconsider our military organization, so
that we might be able rapidly to dispatch, if we ever thought it
necessary in our own interests, say, 100,000 men in a well-formed
army, not to invade Belgium, which no one thought of doing, but to
guard the French frontier of Belgium in case the German Army should
seek to enter France in that way. If the German attack were made
farther south, where the French chain of modern fortresses had
rendered their defensive positions strong, the French Army would then

be able, set free from the difficulty of mustering in full strength
opposite the Belgian boundary, to guard the southern frontier.
Sir Edward Grey consulted the Prime Minister, Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Asquith,
and myself as War Minister, and I was instructed, in January, 1906, a
month after assuming office, to take the examination of the question in
hand. This occurred in the middle of the General Election which was
then in progress. I went at once to London and summoned the heads of
the British General Staff and saw the French military attaché, Colonel
Huguet, a man of sense and ability. I became aware at once that there
was a new army problem. It was, how to mobilize and concentrate at a
place of assembly to be opposite the Belgian frontier, a force calculated
as adequate (with the assistance of Russian pressure in the East) to
make up for the inadequacy of the French armies for their great task of
defending the entire French frontier from Dunkirk down to Belfort, or
even farther south, if Italy should join the Triple Alliance in an attack.
But an investigation of a searching character presently revealed great
deficiencies in the British military organization of these days. We had
never contemplated the preparation of armies for warfare of the
Continental type. The older generals had not been trained for this
problem. We had, it was true, excellent troops in India and elsewhere.