The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-05-01


 captain Wright was assistant secre- tary and interpreter to the supreme war council in the critical days of the spring ot 1918 and has just published At the Supreme War Council" His book spells disillusion and has reused Britain as much as Keynes book on the peace con- ference. Hardly a popular hero is left without showing his feet of clay.
 Captain Wright not only appears to know what he is talking about, but substantiates his statements by careful recommendations It was not superior numbers, he says, not ill fortune but sheer incompetence which brought the allies so near to annihilation in the March disaster of 1918, which would have been complete but for the alert genius of Foch and the grim tenacity of the British troops.
 AS TO HAIG
 Lord Haig, says Captain Wright
 was a knightly figure, with all the bearing and temper of a leader, but on a very low plane of human intelligence as elderly cavalrymen sometimes are" No one can deny that Captain Wright knows his men and his facts. He was in close association with the people whom he fails, and had access to documents, which he quotes to prove his asser- lions of fact. The facts leave Britain breathless, but thankful. Breathless through simple fright over what might have happened; thankful that the war is over.
 The presiding genius of the British part was. of course. MT. Lloyd George, who commands Captain Wright's admi- ration as a leader. but whose habit and practice is not left without criticism, for Mir. Lloyd George is condemned for Ia 9.. -Ix1 .l. .l.. his inveterato taste for low and unscru- pulous mem his superficial slipshod and nasty mind.
 Captain Wright is a soldier, and has a soldiers opinion of politicians Clemen- ceau, the Tiger is simply the most anliable of old men, and, if tiger, only a stuffed tiger, more endearing than for midable." MT. Asquith under pom derous manner and portentious phrase ology concealed a capricious petulance.
 AND THE POLITICIANS
 The politicians matter little What Captain Wright is after is the really big game of the campaign, the idols of the general staff, with their godlike state bright pomp of swarming obse- quious staff officers, millionaire A. D. C.s and attendant major generals. mo- tors and mounted orderlies, secretaries and cooks with the fountains of official eulogy playing on them in ceaseless glittering streams"
 Their reputatons. he asserts, are press made artificial, created by the subject press bureau and the tame herds of special correspondents or special press agents" not to be accepted, save as a fiendish comedy, by those who worked with them and knew them sufficiently to measure their real stature in all its I,o lxaI nd aeyin ma u their slow, confused and narrow minds" in contact with problems toe deep for their comprehension.
 "These incapables and intriguers, thus decorated and exalted, disposed haphaz- ard of all those brilliant young genera ] tions that were being moved in swaths by the German scythe."
 THE BIGGEST DEFEAT 1 Lord Haig, principally, is the subject 1 of the attack, an attack supported by evidence. facts and documents. that will reed to be denied and refuted if the | commander -in-chief is to retain any reputation in face of this onslaught. IL is more than Captain Wright's assertion that Haig possessed a mind that was "both obtuse and extraordinarily slow. He charges him and General Potain with having deliberately sabotaged the plans for the unification of command made at the beginning of 1916. Accord l ing to his account, these two comman- ders rejected Fochs plan for meeting lLudendorffs March offensive, they tricked Foch and they rcked eacn other, and finally fought on plan whicl, 1 led certainly and inevitably to disastrous defeat.
 St. Quentin was the biggest defeat in British history; a defeat, says Captain Wright (equipped with documents ana staggerings facts), due to faulty general ship. It was "a flawless jewel of n- competence, surpassing masterpieces ol the same kind, like Cambrai.
 Defeat and disaster were covered py dispatches written with deceptive ana olavarpaqc uIlita different