ABSTRACT
Few speak well of the generals in the First World War: popularly seen as spectators rather than fighters, well-fed and luxuriously housed, they demanded the impossible and seemed ready to accept massive losses for minor gain. It is little wonder that such epithets as ‘blimps’ and ‘donkeys’ have been levelled at them. In his classic study of the subject Norman Dixon states:
Only the most blinkered could deny that the First World War exemplified every aspect of high-level military incompetence. For sheer lack of imaginative leadership, inept decisions, ignoring of military intelligence, underestimation of the enemy, delusional optimism and monumental wastage of human resources it has surely never had its equal.1
