ABSTRACT
Lloyd George's wartime premiership was a unique exercise in instant leadership, which worked in all dimensions save one. Despite eventually ridding himself of his military chief – Field Marshal William Robertson and replacing him with the more pliant Henry Wilson, Lloyd George failed to overturn Haig's and Robertson's conception of the strategy-policy relationship. Lloyd George explaining his failure to halt the wasteful Western Front attacks to the Dominion premiers (August 1918) told them that had the government had the moral courage to do so: “The Military Authorities would have insisted that they had been on the point of breaking through, that the enemy was demoralized, and at the last moment they had been stopped by civilian politicians.” True perhaps, but also a tacit admission of weakness. Stopping Haig in his tracks, which would probably have meant firing him, would have required a measure of undisputed authority that Lloyd George never had, and would have used up much and perhaps all the political capital he possessed.
