Shortly after Robertson's removal, the German Spring Offensive of 21 March 1918 came close to inflicting catastrophic defeat on Hubert Gough's Fifth Army. With the British forces still hard-pressed in April, the causes of the near debacle became a matter of political controversy. Lloyd George felt that Field Marshal Haig had squandered British manpower to little useful effect in his offensives of 1916–17, whilst the British military and their political and press allies felt, not without reason, that the Government had left the BEF starved of men (John Grigg argues that he had been justified in doing so, as Haig had been intending to resume the offensive at the start of 1918). Lloyd George quoted official War Office figures in a speech in the House of Commons on 9 April 1918, stating that the BEF had been stronger on 1 January 1918 than a year previously (the eve of the German offensive in March might have been a better comparison than January, in John Grigg's view). Lloyd George also said that there had been only one "white" division in Mesopotamia and three in Egypt and Palestine, the rest of the divisions in those theatres being Indian divisions containing only a small proportion of British troops.