Unfavourable comparisons with the French

THE NOVELTIES OF war had long been exhausted. All members of the fighting forces, save perhaps the most impressionable ingenu, had absorbed the brutal truths of war. The cold awakening was something which had also disseminated itself widely among civilians.

Self-inflicted

TOO MUCH BAD news had accumulated. This was the week in which Britain’s political leaders and military top brass attempted a cool appraisal.

This painful self-examination involved some recrimination and bitterness, especially among the Generals. The failure of the recent…

If we had to die twice

THERE WAS A ROMANCE to war from which few were wholly immune. Typically, it afflicted most acutely those as yet unacquainted with its dangers and duresses.

On 18 November, Winston Churchill left for Boulogne to join his regiment, the Oxfordshire Hussars. He was…

The petulance of Sir John

IT IS NOT ONLY a modern phenomenon — the sense that, within a society in crisis, a gilded and irresponsible elite still lived by their own rules, blithely unaware of the concerns and privations of others.

Spreading the load

THIS WEEK- AT LAST — saw the start of a serious effort to coordinate allied strategy.

Coordination seems a rather generous description of lumbering steps towards something which might, also over-politely, be called strategy. Its absence hitherto may seem perplexing, and…