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Remembered Today:

Haig's Post War 'Rewards' ?


towisuk

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Don't forget that Haig won.

By your works be ye known.

Phil (PJA)

And almost a million service men LOST..!!!!

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As has been asked before, whom would you suggest as being able to do a "better" job? You can't snipe at Haig's achievements (or otherwise) without suggesting an alternative, surely?

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The topic of this discussion was the "rewards" given to Haig..... there are many other topics on the forum that deal with how the war was fought.....

And Haig did not win the war......this nations and its allies won the war......

regards

Tom

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Haig did the job he was required to do. He achieved victory.

He won.

And he knew the price that his men paid ; and he cared about it.....and he cared about them.

He was a first rate coalition warrior, even though he did like to bitch about " foreigners".

He predicted at the end of 1915 that victory might cost a tenth of the nation's manhood. He was right.

It could have been a damned sight worse : he might have lost, just like Petain predicted in March 1918.

Petain cared about his men, too. So much so, that he preferred collaboration in 1940 to the ordeal of resistance.

Cut Haig some slack, please.

Phil (PJA)

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Lloyd George's words in introducing the grants may be of interest:

It is an honoured tradition of this country that it rewards liberally those who have rendered it conspicuous and distinguished services in time of peril, and that, I venture to say, is a sound tradition for a country. Ingratitude chills the ardour of service, and no State has long thriven which does not display its gratitude to those who have served it well in its time of peril. It was really one of the marked features of the distinction between Rome and Carthage, and the lesson is not without its value. I am proud of the fact that the pensions we have voted in this House—the scale of pensions—to the men who have served us well in the field and in the air and on the sea, is incomparably the most generous in Europe. I think the amount aggregates £98,000,000 a year, which is half the whole of the national expenditure before the War. There is no scale in Europe which compares with it, and I am proud of it. But we do wisely, we shall do wisely, if we accept this Motion, in maintaining the tradition that exceptional rewards should be given to those who have borne exceptional responsibilities with exceptional success. That is the proposition which I would invite the Committee to accept.

The Duke of Wellington had voted to him two pensions, in the aggregate £4,000 a year, for three lives, and after the Battle of Waterloo a sum of £500,000 was voted to him. That was for him alone. Lord Wolseley had £25,000 voted to him for the Ashanti campaign, and £30,000 for the Egyptian campaign. Those were moved by Mr. Gladstone, who was, undoubtedly, one of the most rigid and stern of all the great economists. Lord Roberts had £12,500 voted to him for the Afghan campaign and £100.000 for the Boer War. Lord Kitchener had £30,000 voted to him for the Soudan campaign, and £50,000 for the Boer War. Those two were moved by another famous and very rigid economist, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. That was the view taken in the past of the kind of reward that ought to be accorded to men who had rendered services of this kind to the country. In magnitude, in fateful-ness for this country, there is no comparison between those wars and the War which has just come to a conclusion. Therefore, the sums which we are inviting the Committee to agree to err in comparison, not on the side of over liberality, but quite the reverse, and we have come to the conclusion that the precedents of the past should rather be fined down, not because we regard the merits of the men to whom we are going to invite the House to accord the vote as being less in comparison than those whose names I have quoted, but because we had to have regard to the gigantic burdens of the community. I need hardly tell the Committee that our greatest difficulty was in choosing—a very difficult and delicate task. There were so many who have done well, there were so many who have rendered brilliant and even dazzling service, and our difficulty is not in recommending the names which are down in the list, but in confining the appeal to the munificence of Parliament to these names I may say a few words about each of these men. There are so many that I cannot possibly do justice to any of the individuals which are mentioned. Therefore, if I say a few sentences in respect to men of great and outstanding merit it must not be regarded as in the least an indication that I do not consider that a good deal more might be legitimately said to the Committee on the subject.

I, first of all, naturally, choose Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. I have already spoken in this House, and at some length, on his great qualities. His tenacity of purpose, his dauntlessness in the face of what looked like disaster, make him an embodiment of the race which is so proud to claim him amongst its sons. But there is another quality of Sir Douglas Haig, which is known well only to those who know him well, and that is the readiness with which he has always been prepared to subordinate self to the demands of his country. That was never more clearly manifested than in the way in which he accepted the command of Field-Marshal Foch over the British forces which hitherto had been commanded by Sir Douglas Haig. There have been great men in the past who have rendered distinguished service to their country in this and in other lands, and who never hesitated to risk their lives in rendering that service, but who, somehow, failed in loyalty when it was a question of personal pride or professional pride. Sir Douglas Haig has been as ready to sacrifice his own pride of position as he has always been ready to run the risk of his life. For that especially we honour and respect him. After all, modesty adds a cubit to the stature of the tallest man.

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The topic of this discussion was the "rewards" given to Haig..... there are many other topics on the forum that deal with how the war was fought.....

And Haig did not win the war......this nations and its allies won the war......

regards

Tom

Tom - Mate! - No one 'wins' in a war, no one gets a 'reward'.

Your trying to quantify something that does not exist.

At the end of it there just happens to be one side that staggers out, punch drunk, and gets to carry on a life style that is a very pale reminder of what was.

Every nation loses profoundly. Its just that one side - at the end - gets to make the decisions afterwards, and that happens to be really really really important.

You still get to go home to broken families and broken loved ones, but my oath.. you thank the good God above that you did not lose - because it would be even worse.

If there is a reward. that's it.

Your trying to qualify this by a $ value....?

Would the reward have been better if the British people lost? would the Tommy soldiers lot have been better off?

No - you only need to look at the German soldiers and Germanys lot after the war to quantify that.

Even in death A British soldier at least got a grave, the Germans soldiers were poured into mass graves.

Haig was a critical cog in the victory - he got some money after the war - whippy do

To say he did not win the war is partly true and mostly wrong.

Like saying Henry Ford did not make the Model T, his factory workers did.

Everyone loses in a war, and whatever 'rewards' there are after is very little recompense.

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That was before the almost endless litany of negative remarks about Haig which litter the index to L-G's War Memoirs of course, but he did have the grace to end the list, 'no conspicuous officer better qualified for highest command than'.

Jack

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Fascinating stuff.

I rather think that the Haig/donkey/butcher received wisdom is slowly slowly ebbing, and that those who espouse that position may be raging against the dying of the light.

For what it is worth, I do heartily recommend reading Sheffield's "The Chief", whether one is a donkey/butcher person, or a St. Douglas person. Both extremes are flawed, as Sheffiekd demonstrates.

The politicians could not come up with a better idea than war, and they could not come up with a replacement GOCinC, and he did the job any war leader is paid and rewarded to do. Hence I am typing this in English, rather than German.

Daher bin ich schreibe dies in Englisch statt Deutsch

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Nice statue outside Victoria Station.

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Where Norman Wisdom used to sleep when he was trying to break into show business. No wonder he was careful with his money ever after.

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I don't know about the French Government (post 36) but the people of Montreuil - sur - Mer, where GHQ was located from March 1916, erected a bronze statue of him on his horse. Donations for this came from all over France. When this was removed in WW2 by the Germans, the local population came and paraded around the empty plinth on 11th November as part of their armistice day commemoration, probably as an act of defiance. The statue was replaced by the French in the early 1950's and a unveiling ceremony was held in the town, after a commemoration cemetery at Etaples CWGC.

I find it odd that the French, who lost roughly twice the men we did, could find time recognise the work that F.M. Haig and his troops did, yet he can still be reviled by some in this country.

TR

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David

Sorry "him" is Haig, I missed the Foch post because I thought the thread was about.... My mistake.

TR

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I find it odd that the French, who lost roughly twice the men we did, could find time recognise the work that F.M. Haig and his troops did, yet he can still be reviled by some in this country.

TR

Well, British soil was never actually violated. Parts of France were under German rule for most of the war. The citizenry had a lot more at stake, and on a very personal level. They had fears for their own safety and that of their families, never experienced by the British. Consequently, I think their view of the war and of Haig and the British army was very different from that of the average British person whose conception in many cases was that their loved ones were killed for "nothing".

Hazel

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Hazel

Thanks for your comment. British soil was violated - by numerous air raids which caused several hundred casualties and great deal of alarm throughout the the war. I appreciate that this did not come near to the same extent as the German occupation of parts of Northern France, and particularly that of the "devastated zone", but it is worth remembering that large parts of France was not occupied by the Germans.

Coming back to the main thrust of your post that "their view of the war and of Haig and the British army was very different from that of the average British person whose conception in many cases was that their loved ones were killed for "nothing" where is the evidence evidence to prove this? I have no doubt that there were those who did wonder whether the war was worth the loss of life, but that is not the same as saying Haig was to blame for this. Some twenty years before some tens of thousands of men volunteered to fight in South Africa, a war that was responsible for the deaths of many men fighting there, but F.M. Roberts was treated as a national hero, not a pariah. I have seen no evidence to suppose that a majority of the British public saw Haig as blameworthy for all the British deaths in WW1.

I would just add one more point. Haig has a memorial in Whitehall, a bronze statue showing him mounted on his charger, not too dissimilar to that of the one in Montreuil - sur - Mer, other than this it seems a bit more heroic. I have not found any substantive adverse reaction to that in the inter-war years or even later from the average British person.

TR

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I think the scenes after the death of FM Haig demonstrated how he was respected by the men he had led.

Keith

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Hi Terry,

I'm afraid that I can't come up with much that you are likely to consider "evidence". To be honest, my comments were largely based on conversations i had with numerous people during my recent sojourn in the north of Scotland. What surprised me , was that none of the people whom I met had a good word to say for Haig. Most of them were reasonably well educated but had no interest in the war, and had therefor not been exposed to the dispelling of the "donkeys" myth. Those of my mother's generation with whom i spoke were quite outspoken in the condemnation of Haig and that sentiment was passed on to their children. I suspect that this was a feeling that prevailed post war among people who never bothered to look deeper than the media. In any case, much of the information was not available to them at that time. I don't honestly know if this was an opinion exclusive to the North. As mentioned in another thread, i was struck on this visit by the level of animosity still prevailing in Cromarty which was a close knit fishing town prior to the war. Many of the men, like those of the western isles mentioned in the other thread, had joined the merchant navy and received no recognition. Nor are they mentioned on memorials.

While obviously i would concur that the British were bombed during the war, I think it only fair to point out that they were only attacked once they declared war. The French, on the other hand were invaded without provocation, and having the Germans parked on their territory and VERY close to taking over the whole place, (spring 1918) must have been unsettling to say the least. That experience was very different from that of the vast majority of British.

The African wars had nothing like the effect on Britain that the Great War had. Communications weren't great and in any case I would doubt that most people cared what went on with recognition of men about whom they neither knew nor cared. WW1, on the other hand, touched practically everyone, and afterwards there was so much hardship that one can see how resentment might build.

Regardless of the revisionists, I still believe that the average man in the street hasn't a clue because he isn't interested. I don't think that anything has changed in that respect. You might be happy to know that I left a couple of books on the subject for those i considered might read them!

For what it is worth!

Hazel

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Hazel

I think that you will find that there was plenty of interest and, at times, shocked sentiment in Scotland at the time over the 'African wars'. Whatever we might think about the poetry of Wm McGonagall today, his work reflected popular sentiment then. Check out, for example, (for content, not quality verse) The Battle of El Teb; General Gordon, the Hero of Khartoum; The Horrors of Majuba and The Relief of Mafeking.

Jack

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Hi Jack,

While there may have been some interest, I don't think it affected EVERYONE in the way WW1 did. Nor did it generate the same deep seated emotions prevalent during and after WW1. i did have a great uncle in the South African wars and General Gordon had close ties to Cromarty, so I grew up on stories, but the sentiment was quite different from that expressed about 1914 - 1918.

The poetry is intriguing though. I'll have a look!

Hazel

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A note on differences between then and now.

Recently at work we had a health and safety circular congratulating us on however many days accident free. It contained an example of a calendar kept by a local council in 1906/07 showing the number of deaths at work over the year. It probably averaged about two deaths a day for a whole year with some days having as many as five.

The soldiers rewards may be considered paltry by our standards but the chances are none of those families had any compensation. By the standard of the day is all we can judge them by.

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Welcome to the GWF. Actually there was a scheme of pensions for both war disabled and the dependants of casualties. Information can often be found in surviving soldiers records and in officers files at the National Archives, and recently the Western Fronty Association has taken ownership of the pension Re3cord cards for millions of men. (Details on the WFA website). The payments were not massive by modern standards, but they were there, and the value of course has to be multiplied many times to calculate a modern equivcalent.

Keith

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