TY - JOUR
AU - Monger, David
AB - Abstract This article illuminates the little-known high-command experiences of Henry Horne. Drawing predominantly upon his (largely unused) papers, it identifies three major preoccupations – ambition, optimism and religiously-based moral outrage – behind his mentality, and contends that these concerns contributed significantly to his daily exercise of command. While addressing current debates about command, the article also discusses Horne's reactions to perceived German atrocities – an issue generally overlooked in other studies – and suggests that, rather than pursuing a ‘depersonalised’ approach to the investigation of First World War generalship, more attention must be given both to this subject and to the complex mentalities behind command decisions. Ever since an obituarist unkindly labelled him ‘The Silent Commander of a Stationary Army’,1 there has been little written about Sir Henry Horne. Until a recent article by Simon Robbins,2 he had been overlooked (apart from two articles by former colleagues, written shortly after his death), and recently lamented as ‘seemingly unknowable’.3 He wrote no memoirs, refusing Captain Basil Liddell Hart accelerated promotion because ‘writing “on military subjects does not justify [it]”’.4 Further, no private papers were thought to exist.5 In fact, nearly 900 First World War letters to his wife survive which, despite substantial gaps, provide valuable insights on the daily ruminations of a successful British general.6 This article argues that the exercise of command is inextricably linked with the mentality of the commander and, in examining Horne's letters, suggests that a more careful analysis of the thought processes of British commanders in the war could significantly enhance historical understanding of their command decisions. The various operations in which Horne took part are discussed in relation to the article's three main themes rather than in their entirety. A summary of his First World War career is therefore included for reference. Horne began the war as brigadier-general royal artillery (B.-G.R.A.) of Sir Douglas Haig's I Corps. He garnered praise from Haig and the commander-in-chief (C.-in-C.) of the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.), Sir John French, for skilfully commanding Haig's rearguard during the retreat from Mons in August 1914, and was promoted major-general in October, assuming command of 2nd Division in January 1915. Thereafter, he took part in major operations at Givenchy in March, Festubert in May and Loos in September. Lord Kitchener, secretary of state for war, took him as military adviser on a tour of the Dardanelles and Salonika (‘a dirty town of the oriental class’),7 before installing him as temporary lieutenant-general commanding XV Corps in defence of the Suez Canal in January 1916. In April, Horne returned to France, where XV Corps reassembled in Sir Henry Rawlinson's Fourth Army for the summer offensive on the Somme. At the beginning of operations, XV Corps, together with XIII Corps (Lieutenant-General Walter Congreve), were the most successful British units, Horne's troops taking Mametz on 1 July and Fricourt on 2 July. Haig – now C.-in-C., in succession to French – subsequently focused much attention on this southern sector. In August, Horne became the new commander of First Army but remained with XV Corps until September's operations ended, capturing Flers on 15 September. During September he was knighted and, on 30 September, promoted to the temporary rank of general and command of First Army, he became the only artilleryman to command an army of the B.E.F. In April 1917, First Army captured the formidable Vimy Ridge during the Arras operations, and for most of the year attacked around Lens, preparing to capture it. However, the temporary removal of Horne's Canadian Corps to Ypres necessitated the postponement of large-scale operations against Lens. During the German offensive of 1918, Horne was the only army commander not to withdraw his headquarters, despite Portuguese troops collapsing on his flank. Later, First Army pierced the Hindenburg Line in the Drocourt-Quéant sector, and forced a passage across the Canal du Nord. In October, they captured Lens and Douai, then Valenciennes at the beginning of November, and occupied Mons on Armistice Day. Command in the First World War remains a much-debated subject. This article addresses some of these debates, focusing particularly on the work of Tim Travers and Simon Robbins.8 Travers argues that the British officer corps was a deferential, patronage-ridden organization with a hierarchical, top-down command system controlled by an aloof, uncommunicative and intimidating C.-in-C. This system made subordinate commanders afraid to question orders, or to appear other than optimistic, for fear of dismissal, the result being a serious lack of innovation and the costly attritional strategy which led to the battles of the Somme and Third Ypres. By contrast, Robbins argues from the more forgiving, ‘learning-curve’ perspective that the B.E.F. gradually improved throughout the war from a small army with insufficiently experienced officers and men to a technically proficient fighting force.9 Although he agrees that patronage, ‘careerism’ and over-optimism occurred, he sees such things in a positive light as part of the development of the B.E.F., criticizing the errors of the evolutionary process rather than dogmatically-maintained pre-war practices. The 897 surviving letters from Horne to his wife, written during the war, suggest that his command decisions were governed by a mentality composed of three inter-connected elements – ambition, optimism and religiously-based moral outrage – each of which is the subject of a section of this article. The first section discusses his ambition and opinion of colleagues, and addresses issues such as careerism and patronage, positing that, although he was aggressively ambitious, his willingness to contradict superiors militates against his classification as a ‘careerist’ (that is, one who ‘cold-bloodedly regarded the war as a professional opportunity’,10 rather than acting in the best interests of those he commanded). The second section examines the confidence and optimism with which he expressed himself, arguing that this optimism, although not divorced from an understanding of general headquarters' (G.H.Q.) expectations, had much to do with the pre-war environment in which Horne's mentality developed. These sections address elements of debates on command to which Travers and Robbins have contributed. Beyond such debates, the third section considers Horne's religious faith, and more importantly his moral outrage at the behaviour of the Germans, an issue rarely discussed in studies of First World War generalship. It contends that his abhorrence of German behaviour contributed significantly to the conduct of his command. Horne's command decisions reflected his mentality, a combination of these three equally potent concerns. This article suggests that the study of British generalship in the First World War requires a more thoroughgoing examination of the mentalities of commanders in order to understand their decisions. Henry Horne is credited with a ‘lack of personal ambition’. His obituary asserted that ‘he could never be reproached with having striven for high advancement’.11 However, his letters present a different picture. Throughout the war, Horne avariciously sought promotion and honours, reacting bitterly when overlooked. Whether this behaviour, the patronage that he received (especially Haig's) and his treatment of subordinates constituted ‘careerism’ is discussed in this section. Horne's frequent references to promotions and honours suggest that he felt the ‘strong desire … to take advantage of a small window of opportunity in wartime to enhance … careers’, which Robbins identifies as creating ‘careerism’. His friend, Herbert Uniacke, asserted that the war ‘gave him his opportunity and he seized it with both hands’.12 Horne soon had personal advancement in mind, noting with satisfaction that his rearguard action in the retreat from Mons was ‘mentioned in despatches’. Shortly afterwards, he described his likely promotion as ‘delightful[,] because it is special selection’, later adding ‘I want my stars very much’.13 Such ambition and pleasure in reward is understandable. Less reasonable are his reactions to disappointments. On 24 June 1915, he wrote: Last night … brought the … list of names ‘Mentioned in dispatches’ of Sir John [French]'s April dispatch. All my staff, my brigadiers and others are mentioned and I am not! It has been a very bitter blow, not only to my own personal ambition … [A]ll my friends will be concluding that I am a failure … To read all the names there, many of whom have done but little, and compare their services with mine! It is eno. [sic] to make any man give in! His name was omitted because it had previously been mentioned, and French wished to rotate praise, but this only slightly mollified Horne.14 Similarly, when the New Year's honours list reached Horne in Egypt in January 1916, he fell into a paroxysm of bitterness, complaining: Nothing for me I see and I am very sorry … [T]wo generals – Barter and Wilson have been given K.C.B. [Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath] who really do not deserve it, in fact it is a laughing stock! Barter … does nothing and Wilson is the man who made such an awful mess of the [Suez]Canal defence when the Turks attacked last year! It is an extraordinary thing. Everyone here thought he would have been sent home! … I have been made a tempy Lt[sic] General and now a Corps Commander, so people could say I had a good share, but I cannot help feeling very sorry …15 Recalled to France in April, Horne feared that his time in Egypt would affect his chances of obtaining a K.C.B. His anxiety confirmed, he grumbled that members of Haig's staff received decorations as their work, though ‘very hard, very important and not exciting’, was done ‘in comfort and without the fighting risks’.16 He consoled himself that ‘many people wonder that I was not given the K.C.B…. as it shows that they think I have deserved it … we must work away and do our best, whether we get rewards or not!’17 Upon receiving a Russian award in September, Horne felt ‘sure … it will not be the last’, although he branded it ‘a miserable little decoration for a General’.18 However, his promotion to command of First Army and knighthood at the end of September rendered him quieter on the subject until the last months of the war, when he complained, ‘I think I ought to have been promoted “General” but apparently the Army Council does not think so – altho. I have commanded an army in active service for nearly two years … Plenty of honours etc for civilians, I see’. Such disgruntlement was exacerbated later by Sir Henry Wilson's promotion to general: ‘The general consensus is, I think, that it is very bad to have put him up over my head. He has not been a commander, and I have commanded an army for two years!’19 After the war, Horne remained dissatisfied with his lot. Wilson, as chief of the imperial general staff (C.I.G.S.), noted, ‘I am sorry that Horne was angry at not getting Southern Command but I have little patience with those gentlemen who pick and choose their jobs’.20 Clearly, Horne was extremely ambitious, even if disappointments were aired privately to his wife. Others behaved differently. Hubert Gough, often labelled a ‘thruster’, was ‘furious’ at having to attend G.H.Q. for decoration, because he ‘had no interest in decorations, honours or rewards … [except] for his fighting troops’. Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien complained about ‘being the only General to have gone through the whole campaign and got nothing’, but this was a genuine grievance against mistreatment by French.21 Such intense ambition led to scathing assessments of rivals. In Egypt, Horne wrote that General Stuart-Wortley ‘does not approve of my having a Corps, thinks he ought to have one, but he is not fit for it’. Stuart-Wortley was, in fact, removed from divisional command after the first day of the Somme with a reputation as a poor commander, ‘never visiting the front, and … incapable of raising enthusiasm’, although Travers suggests that he was unfairly made a scapegoat by his corps commander.22 Shortly after criticizing Stuart-Wortley, Horne heard ‘it rumoured that Haking has not been a success. I never thought he would be … He is, however, a Hat catcher, can write a very specious report etc.’ Haking's receipt of a K.C.B. may have provoked Horne's declaration that ‘we do not all get what we deserve!’23 Haig did not share such disdain for Haking, his former staff college classmate.24 His choice of Haking as First Army commander was vetoed, after poor performance on the Somme, before Horne was selected.25 However, Horne also benefited from Haig's patronage. He was staff officer for artillery during Haig's pre-war command at Aldershot, where Haig ‘made a point of getting to know personally as many officers as possible under his command’ through weekly dinner parties.26 On the outbreak of war, Horne became B.-G.R.A. of Haig's I Corps, where Haig recommended him as a ‘most capable commander … thoroughly versed in all artillery matters … [who] inspires such confidence in me’.27 Haig looked favourably upon Horne throughout the war, telling the prime minister, Herbert Asquith, in July 1915 that ‘Morland, Horne, Gough and Haking … should eventually be given command of armies’.28 Undoubtedly, Horne took advantage of such favour, working assiduously to improve his professional prospects, and encouraging his wife to approach influential people at home. In February 1916, he was: very pleased that you invited Creedy [Kitchener's secretary] to lunch. He is a useful person to know … You might explain to him that after command of a division for a year many people thought I had earned [a K.C.B.]. There is no harm in saying that to anyone, it often gets back to the ear of the authorities and makes them think.29 Having written directly to Haig, requesting a recall to France, Horne told his wife to ‘tell all the wives – such as Lady Haig, Robertson [wife of the C.I.G.S.] etc – that I am keen to get back’.30 While holidaying in Scotland, she sent fish she had caught to Robertson, and unsuccessfully tried to send one to Haig, leading to a remarkable letter on the eve of the Somme, relating (at length) that: Haig … told me he had heard that you were sending him a salmon and he seem [sic] very pleased and asked me to thank you very much … He was vexed the War Office had been so stupid. He said that of course they ought to have sent it on to him by the King's Messenger. That is quite the recognised thing. He seemed very pleased that you had tried to send it!31 Friends in high places evidently helped. Horne was convinced that Robertson had ‘arranged that the King should knight me’.32 He actively sought to ensure advancement by cultivating patrons. Other officers were similarly manipulative, like Edward Beddington, of Gough's staff, reputed to be ‘over ambitious and inclined to “butter up” senior officers to serve his career’.33 Whether this patronage constituted a problem for the B.E.F. is debatable. Travers argues that, before the war ‘senior protectors who would push the career of a protegé’ caused ‘struggles for promotion through personal influence rather than any disinterested or neutral evaluation’. After 1914, many ‘incompetent officers were sent home, and GHQ began to exercise very considerable leverage over the attitudes of senior commanders through GHQ's ability to promote or send home officers’, while French and Haig continued making ‘personal appointments’. Travers believes that this G.H.Q. manipulation made commanders afraid to contradict orders.34 Robbins agrees that ‘the “hire and fire” syndrome … had an adverse effect on both the troops and subordinate commanders’ since officers fearing for their jobs ‘were unlikely to … experiment or innovate for fear of being removed if anything went wrong’.35 However, unlike Travers, who suggests that Horne should have been ‘sack[ed] … for inefficiency’, Robbins places him among a ‘cadre of competent leaders … slowly built up during the war [so that] … by 1917–18 the leadership required to win victory [emerged]’,36 considering the (flawed) system of patronage necessary and acceptable, bringing through talented, younger officers to replace those unfit for command.37 One problem with this argument is that such patronage also benefited men with poor records, like Haking. Regardless, Horne definitely did not owe ‘his rise entirely to agreeing with G.H.Q. every time’, as Liddell Hart, perhaps in bitterness, later suggested.38 Horne thought Haig ‘much the best of all the Commanders out here’, arguing in 1918 that ‘his decisions are vindicated by success’.39 He customarily behaved in the optimistic manner favoured by G.H.Q.,40 as will be discussed later. However, when necessary, Horne disagreed with Haig. The best example is the planning for the major attack on the Somme, on 14 July 1916. Horne was instrumental in convincing Haig to accept Rawlinson's plan: The C.-in-C…. wished it to be clearly understood that he could not approve of a night operation … as proposed … as the chance of failure and the loss of the divisions engaged would be too great … … [Later, Rawlinson reported his discussion, with Horne and Congreve, of Haig's plans.] He found that they were both strongly in favour of the original plan, and … was himself in agreement with them … Corps and Divisional Commanders were quite confident that the original plan could be [successfully] carried out … very careful arrangements having been made … [Horne] said that the enemy had a … supporting line … hidden … and that he could not depend on successfully cutting the wire in front of this … He did not consider the evening [Haig's preference] … a good time to carry out such an attack … … [Later, Rawlinson reported that] General Horne, after making enquiries, had come to the conclusion that it would be impossible to attack before the morning of the 14th owing to the fact that the wire would not be sufficiently cut … Haig subsequently accepted Rawlinson's scheme, and the attack obtained considerable, but insufficiently developed, success.41 Accordingly, Liddell Hart labelled Horne a ‘tactical genius’, while John Buchan later called him ‘a wonderfully scientific soldier’ to whom the invention of ‘the creeping barrage was chiefly due’.42 This may give him too much credit. He used a form of creeping barrage (‘a barrier of fire … [rolling] forward less than a hundred yards in front of the infantry as they advanced through the enemy defences’)43 on 1 July 1916.44 However, Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson point to his later comments in September, focusing on his assertion that he ‘could never follow what is the value of the creeping barrage’, and assert that he preferred ‘the type of plan which had failed so disastrously in the north on 1 July’. Horne's statement is certainly ‘extraordinary’,45 but their judgement seems harsh. What he apparently suggested was that, instead of a creeping barrage with gaps for the (new) tanks to travel through and attack strongpoints, as Rawlinson proposed – and owing to the lack of possible observation from Delville Wood, hindering an effective creeping barrage – there should be a standing barrage which would (as Rawlinson interpreted) ‘remain on the first objective until the arrival of the tanks and infantry there’, with (in Horne's words) ‘the tanks arriving slowly ahead of the infantry just as the barrage lifts’.46 This equates to the rudimentary creeping barrage which served Horne well on 1 July,47 albeit with a bizarre statement preceding it. Horne's ideas do not seem quite so ‘Luddite’ as they first appear and Prior's and Wilson's critique of his ‘breathtaking obtuseness’ ignores his beneficial influence on planning in mid July, and his corps' generally impressive record throughout the operations.48 This again shows Horne's willingness to contradict a superior. In a third such example, Horne asked Haig's chief of staff, Launcelot Kiggell, to withdraw Portuguese troops from the line as ‘they would prove unable to withstand a German attack’. Owing to the shortage of manpower, this move was not undertaken, and, in April 1918, when the German offensive struck First Army, the ‘Portuguese of course went back’, the situation only being saved with stout defence by a neighbouring division.49 While Horne disagreed with superiors, he expected different behaviour from his own subordinates. During the days following 1 July 1916, he removed two divisional commanders. His divisions were ordered to capture positions which Haig demanded despite Rawlinson's opinion that a major attack could proceed without their possession.50 Horne understood the significance and doubtless felt ‘pressure from Army level, and passed this pressure on to [his] subordinates’.51 On 8 July, Rawlinson told Horne: ‘I had hoped that by this time we might have established ourselves in [Mametz] Wood’ and that future operations would ‘largely depend upon what progress the XV Corps make’.52 The next day, Horne removed Generals Philipps (38th Division – responsible for Mametz Wood) and Pilcher (17th Division, which failed to take another area). He informed his superiors that 38th Division had either not, or else half-heartedly, delivered four separate attacks.53 Once Horne ‘got [his] old hands [the experienced Herbert Watts] back to it’,54 the wood was almost completely captured the next day. Philipps went quietly, but Pilcher wrote a ‘Narrative’ in defence of his actions, arguing that the quadrangle support trench was an unnecessary objective which ‘would fall of itself’ once III Corps took Contalmaison. Having nevertheless been instructed to attack, Pilcher ‘carefully thought out’ and made ‘five frontal attacks’ costing almost 2,000 men, and resented Horne's characterization of him as lacking ‘initiative, drive and readiness of resource’– in contrast, he found that Horne would ‘not consent to be cross-questioned, and that his opinion was also that of others’. Pilcher also argued that, since Horne had been his commander for only nine days, he ‘had not sufficient opportunity of judging me’ to justify his dismissal.55 However, Horne's critique of Pilcher chimes with standard report language. Ivor Maxse, for instance, described subordinates thus: ‘one cannot help wishing he possessed more decision of character’; ‘he lacks capacity to get things done [during] active operations’.56 Furthermore, Pilcher was apparently neither a successful nor a popular commander.57 Judgement of Horne's conduct must correspond to one's opinion of the conduct of the war. He can be censured for removing officers who ‘declined to press the attack when success was likely to be very costly’,58 but the nature of the war unfortunately meant that, to make progress, such costs had to be incurred. The speed with which Horne reached his decision reflected the urgency of the situation, and the ruthless nature required of successful commanders.59 Further, pace Travers's views on removals ‘to encourage the offensive spirit’, Horne was equally censorious of weak ‘defensive spirit’, as in 1918, when he criticized Maxse's failure to employ ‘defence-in-depth’ tactics.60 However, while Horne's behaviour towards superiors counteracts Travers's description of an aloof, top-down, little-discussion chain of command,61 his treatment of some subordinates seems to bolster it. When an artilleryman complained to Horne, in tones reminiscent of his own, that ‘No consideration is made for us old soldiers … at all. There is nothing but to feel intense bitterness for unfair play’, Horne replied with no discernible irony: ‘It has been my experience … that however difficile a man may be in peace, his best qualities come out in war and it is in nine cases out of ten the fault of the individual himself if he does not get on.’62 In the main, it would seem that Horne's decisions to seek replacements for subordinates had much to do with his perception of their talent. While he decided that Pilcher's and Philipps's removal was necessary, his fraught relationship with the talented Sir Arthur Currie, commander of the Canadian Corps and ‘perhaps the most brilliant corps commander of the war’ in one historian's opinion, demonstrates that sufficiently skilful soldiers could continue to serve under him without toadying.63 Although Horne went so far as to complain to Haig that Currie was ‘suffering from a swollen head’ when he insisted on the Canadian Corps fighting as one unit,64 and disagreed more than once with him about the appropriate plan of action, he was also generous in his praise of Currie's achievements when proved wrong, and declared himself ‘simply delighted’ that the Canadian Corps recaptured Mons before the armistice, congratulating Currie ‘and your fine troops with all my heart’.65 Horne's regard for Currie, despite their disagreements, was confirmed by his letter of support for Currie's libel case, against criticisms of his command, in 1928.66 It seems clear from this example that Horne's decision to request the removal of an officer had more to do with a perception of failure or a lack of talent than with mere disagreement. Despite Horne's intense ambition and manipulation of patrons, his refusal to acquiesce with inappropriate orders suggests that he was neither a ‘careerist’, by Robbins's classification, nor a craven, obedient, Travers-type commander. Moreover, while authoritarian towards some subordinates, whose failings he considered were hampering the successful prosecution of the war, others, who exhibited the sorts of traits that Horne valued, received very different treatment. Throughout the war, a virtue cherished by the British high command, and by Henry Horne, was a confident and optimistic spirit. This was ‘necessary to carry through such a war’ and became a ‘party line’, with the attendant problem that officers often told ‘their superiors what they wanted to hear’.67 Horne's positive reactions towards subordinates invariably concerned their character, particularly their fitness and ‘cheeriness’. While related to the ‘party line’, this preoccupation, and the optimistic mien demonstrated in his letters, apparently reflected attitudes that he formed in peacetime. Horne effusively praised subordinates and colleagues possessing certain valued characteristics. In February 1915 he wrote, ‘Onslow [a member of his staff] works very hard and does me well, I find him very useful and painstaking and he is always energetic and cheery, wh. is a great thing’; while Watts was ‘The best general I have and the most successful … He is very fit and well, always cheery and confident, and a very nice man indeed’.68 Preoccupation with ‘cheeriness’ was undoubtedly present elsewhere. Smith-Dorrien told his wife, when still on good terms with French, that the ‘H.Q. staff people say whenever Sir J.F[rench] is anxious and things are looking bad they always like to come to see me for they always find me cheery and optimistic’, while Haig recommended General Byng for decoration, arguing ‘his merry wit and cheerful bearing … encouraged … all with whom he came in contact’.69 Horne also had a high opinion of Byng, his subordinate as commander of the Canadian Corps, which was reciprocated. He approved Byng's plans for the Vimy operations of April 1917, making only some adjustments to the artillery plan, and Byng later noted that ‘Horne has been more than helpful and backed me up in everything’.70 Horne recorded that he was ‘very glad’ at Byng's promotion to general on account of his ‘splendid work throughout the war’, while reassuring his wife that it ‘does not mean he has gone over my head as he is senior to me as Lt. General’ (thus tempering his pleasure for an esteemed colleague with a concern for his own ambitions).71 His continuing trust in, and friendly relationship with, Byng as a fellow army commander was reflected by Horne's appeal to him for help in trying to dissuade his successor at Canadian Corps, Currie, from a plan that Horne considered ill-judged.72 Those subordinates whom Horne favoured received strong support. When one was sent home ‘to make room for younger men’, Horne wrote ‘Do not let people think he is “degomme”[that is, removed for incompetence]– it is simply a question of age. He has done good service throughout the whole war and does not deserve to be belittled’.73 One subordinate whom Horne favoured especially was General Earl Cavan, a brigadier under Horne in 1915 and later a divisional and corps commander. Travers's arguments on top-down generalship suggest that Horne should have disapproved of this ‘mutin[eer]’,74 but he had nothing but praise for Cavan, writing, on the occasion of his promotion, that ‘no man has deserved it better[,] he has done splendid work, but I lose a very brilliant Brigadier and a personal friend’.75 Horne's low opinion of Haking was augmented by learning that ‘Cavan could not get on with him … [which] speaks badly for Haking because there is no more loyal as well as competent a commander than Cavan’.76 Another reason for the high regard in which Horne held Cavan, alongside Cavan's reputation as an outstanding soldier, might have been his role as ‘Master of the Hertfordshire Hounds’,77 for Horne valued fitness as well as ‘cheeriness’, possessing ‘the outlook of the open air man, his body and mind trained by long years of field sports’. No-one could ‘doubt the value of his interest in hunting, polo, pigsticking, and sport, in the formation of his character as a soldier’, according to Anderson.78 An injured colleague was tellingly described as having ‘wonderful pluck. A great heart in a weak body!’79 Horne had close associations with the Pytchley and Duhallow Hunts, almost leaving the army to become master of the latter, and, a ‘model of conscientiousness[,] … was quick to detect all kinds of humbug and could not endure the scrimshanker, the schemer, or anyone who did not “play the game”’.80 This suggests that Horne's character evolved from the public school environment he experienced in the mid eighteen-seventies; that is, his ideas about correct behaviour developed during the ‘reign of athleticism’,81 his school, Harrow, being at the forefront of this movement.82 In the Victorian period, games became ‘the major constituent of public school life’, possessing ‘ethical value … as the source of good sense, noble traits, manly feelings, generous dispositions, gentlemanly deportment, comradely loyalty’.83 Horne's rapacity for decorations perhaps reflected a fascination with ‘the dazzling symbolic trappings of both fealty and dominance’ that successful school athletes wore.84 In August 1914, he wrote: ‘the Germans are playing the game very lowdown’, echoing ‘a refrain taken up again and again’ in public school literature.85 When discussing the army's ethos, the values of athleticism should be considered. If some, like Haig or Gough, eschewed ‘games’, they nevertheless embraced the outdoor, sporting lifestyle, and its values, through equine sports.86 Horne's personal embracement of the values of ‘athleticism’, and preoccupation with the ‘character’ of colleagues, suggests that his Harrow experience, an association extended post-war as a governor,87 contributed to his positive outlook on the war.88 However, Horne's habit of writing at length about domestic issues suggests that his optimism exceeded ‘hearty stoicism’ or ‘“good form”’.89 Unlike Gough, whose letters were often solely ‘a reflection of his thoughts on the war’,90 Horne spent as much time discussing the doings of his wife and daughter, and village gossip, as he did ruminating on the war. Horne took censorship seriously, which may explain lengthy missives on car maintenance, village fêtes and the like, as may politeness in reacting to news of his wife's patriotic activities and many holidays. Such discussion was also, probably, cathartic for Horne, the brief period each day when his mind was not wholly occupied with war. In April 1918, at the height of the German offensive, he wrote ‘I quite long for a quiet time. I shall be very content I think to cut trees, keep chickens and work in the garden when the war ends!’91 Very occasionally, doubts emerged. In May 1915, before the Festubert operations, he disclosed ‘I … am arranging an attack for this afternoon. The position is very strong, and between ourselves I am not too hopeful’, although he tempered this uncertainty by praising the ‘keenness and spirit’ of his men.92 Usually, Horne drew positives from situations, writing during the German offensive: ‘The spirits of the troops are really wonderful, they feel their superiority to the Boche and they know they are inflicting very heavy losses on him. I am filled with admiration of the British soldier's fighting qualities’.93 This reflects a key preoccupation on which Horne based his optimism – German losses. Throughout the conflict, Horne pointed to heavy German losses as proof that the war was going well, and justification for his actions. In October 1914, he told his wife: ‘We think we disposed of 1000 Germans killed in front of a position of our line when the fighting was hardest last night and today and that must mean many many more wounded.’94 Thereafter, he regularly reported on the casualties that he believed he had inflicted.95 In March 1916, Horne told his wife ‘I really think that the war will come to an end this autumn’.96 During the early days of the Somme offensive, optimism undiminished (aided by being in the least costly and most successful British sector), he noted the numerous prisoners his men took as proof of success.97 September saw him still satisfied with operations, because the Germans ‘do not fight so well now as they did. They are more disheartened’, which suggests that Horne endorsed Haig's idea of offensive attrition, even if he did not refer to it explicitly, and shortly afterwards he wrote that he was ‘pushing hard, as the Germans must be in rather a hard way’.98 Interestingly, while prepared to order multiple attacks to gain ground, often with the object of ‘pushing’ or ‘pressing’ the Germans, Horne never made the connection to his own casualties that he did of the Germans', when he wrote that their ‘counter-attacks cost the Germans men, which is the great thing’. For instance, when, in May 1917, the Germans recaptured Fresnoy from Horne's troops, he decided ‘I must have a try to get it back again’. This effort having failed, Horne concluded that the ‘Germans brought up fresh troops and had a bit of luck … My troops are a bit tired with all the fighting we have done’. Nevertheless, he resolved to ‘take it back again before long’.99 This reflected the ‘fetish’ for retaining ground, a feature of the prevalent attritional strategy, which both Robbins and Travers, from different angles, consider a major preoccupation of commanders.100 Further, despite Robbins's assertion that experienced commanders later objected to narrow attacks in order marginally to improve a line, Horne remained committed to ‘pressing’ the Germans by small-scale operations. In June 1917, while major operations took place around Ypres, Horne was ‘doing a little attack this evening, nothing important, just to gain a little ground S.W. of Lens and to inflict loss on the Bosche [sic]’.101 Other experienced officers also continued such practices.102 In August, Horne was determined ‘to keep on the pressure here as hard as I can’, apparently applying no comparative reasoning to his recent exultation that ‘the Germans have lost very heavily indeed as they counter-attacked hard’.103 While anxious about the German offensive in 1918, he remained positive, concluding that ‘the German losses must have been very heavy’. As the Allies switched from the defensive to the offensive, Horne maintained his standard language, pointing out in August that the ‘Boche … must be having a bad time’ dealing with the broad-fronted offensive, while German counter-attacks round Cambrai in October meant ‘he [the Boche] must have suffered great losses’.104 Two inferences can be drawn from these examples. First, the great frequency with which Horne used the term ‘must be/have’– although possibly a reflection of contemporary linguistic tastes – suggests that he may have been convincing himself of the validity of his operational methods and the generally positive situation (possibly, he also assumed German losses equalled his own). Second, the language used, and his preoccupations with casualties and ‘pressing’, seem redolent of official terminology employed, for instance, during the Somme operations. For example, a report of a conference on 2 July 1916 between Haig and Rawlinson asserted: The results must have an appreciable effect at VERDUN, a main object in the operations … The enemy has undoubtedly been severely shaken and he has few reserves in hand. Our correct course, therefore is to continue to press him hard with the least possible delay.105 Similarly, Kiggell reported ‘We have inflicted heavy loss on [the enemy]’.106 One of Horne's own reports, written during the difficult Mametz Wood operations, maintained ‘no advance has been made. It is, however, certain that very considerable losses had been inflicted on the enemy by our artillery fire’.107 While these reports all asserted heavy German losses, G.H.Q. apparently mirrored Horne's absence of comparative reasoning, a letter from Kiggell affirming that ‘the casualties incurred by us last month are being grossly exaggerated’, but not considering that estimates of German casualties might similarly be overstated.108 This fits the general view of G.H.Q., in which Haig was ‘[b]linded by optimism’, exacerbated by the behaviour of his head of intelligence, John Charteris, who ‘sought out information which would reassure Haig about the validity of his operational inclinations’.109 Horne's constant references to heavy losses as a source of optimism, features of both personal letters and official reports, suggest he understood that ‘officers who did not follow the “party line” found their career jeopardised’, prompting many ‘to tell their superiors what they wanted to hear’.110 His desire to ‘press’ the Germans undoubtedly corresponded with a realization that his career benefited from a confident, aggressive and optimistic demeanour. However, his optimism should not be dismissed as mere ‘careerism’. Subordinates wrote of the great confidence and happiness that he created in his commands.111 Such optimism was seemingly ingrained in Horne at public school, and his great concern with character suggests that the pre-war ‘code of behaviour’ of the British officer corps remained influential after 1914.112 Furthermore, this experience, along with his religious faith, meant his revulsion at German behaviour during the war acted as another, less career-minded, motivation to ‘press’ the enemy. Thus far, it has been argued that Horne's mentality was comprised of two major elements – an intense ambition and determination to succeed, and an ingrained sense of optimism linked to a concern for fitness, of both body and character. One further element, however, completed the mentality which controlled his command decisions. Horne, as has recently been stressed,113 was devoted to religion, and this combined with his concern for ‘playing the game’ to provide a moral imperative to respond to the German ‘barbarians’.114 According to Michael Snape, ‘Christianity was inextricably linked to a code of behaviour and morality whose terms condemned the aggression and atrocities of imperial Germany while vindicating the reasons for British intervention in the war’.115 Horne's concerns about German atrocities apparently influenced his command decisions. Such opinions, therefore, deserve a larger place in discussion of British command in the war. Every Sunday, Horne endeavoured to attend, ‘except when prevented by the exigencies of war’, two services. He ‘had clear convictions as to religion and its bearing on life’.116 He relied on religion for daily comfort, writing in November 1914 that ‘I do not think that I [feel the strain] as much as one might expect, I get used to the anxiety and have perfect confidence in God’.117 Horne agreed with Haig that religion was important in reinforcing the justice of Britain's cause, writing in December 1916 that ‘If there was more praying done by the Church at home the war would get on better’, while collaborating with his assistant chaplain-general, Harry Blackburne, in trying to ‘get the officers to take a more active part in pushing on religious enthusiasm amongst the troops’.118 At an inter-denominational conference at First Army headquarters in September 1917, Horne ‘said just the right things … Morale & religious emotions … are very closely bound up, & while we were out to beat the Germans, we must be in all earnest to seek to qualify ourselves to best them. Every blow at the Germans is a blow for the Kingdom of Christ’.119 Horne, apparently a ‘militant Christian’, believed religious morality to be inseparable from the conduct of the war, writing that it was necessary ‘to make all ranks feel we are fighting a just and a sacred cause in defeating German methods of cruelty and immorality. No men fight better than those who fight for their religion’.120 Public schools inculcated Horne's generation with the values of athleticism and manliness, which ‘embraced antithetical virtues – success, aggression and ruthlessness, yet victory within the rules, courtesy in triumph, compassion for the defeated’, while a ‘chivalrous gentleman’ was ‘ready to take issue with anyone he saw mistreating a woman a child or an animal … He was an honourable opponent’.121 The combination of these notions meant that Horne reacted vehemently to German misbehaviour. German atrocities have long been an important feature of social and cultural studies of the First World War, particularly of the ‘home front’ and propaganda.122 Some consideration has also been given to the effect of German atrocities on the mentality of French soldiers.123 However, little attention has been given to this subject in studies of British generalship, either because of the disinclination of historians, or perhaps because other generals reacted less strongly. A chaplain with 4th Cavalry Division, Colonel Henry Gibbon, whose belief in the immorality of the Germans led him to undertake a role conducting tours of the front, and later to lecture for the National War Aims Committee, for domestic propaganda purposes, picked Horne out especially as one of a select few to whom he could talk about such matters.124 In Horne's case, the behaviour that he observed personally, and heard about (through newspapers, official reports and gossip from other officers and his wife), evidently affected him profoundly. As the war continued, his attitude towards German transgressions grew increasingly severe, and it may reasonably be suggested that the daily exercise of his command was influenced by this hardening attitude. Early on, Horne wrote: ‘The Germans are playing the game very lowdown … The country people, poor things, are simply terrified of them, they treat them so shamefully.’125 At first, Horne expressed surprise at the stories of German misdemeanours, suggesting that he did not enter the war with a preconception of German wickedness.126 By December, he no longer seemed surprised, but remained outraged, particularly when: ‘A German aviator … desecrated the Sabbath by dropping bombs near the railway station [causing] … a certain amount of damage, killing and wounding several men, some civilians and some children! It is a mean method of waging war as it kills the innocent noncombatants.’127 Unlike elsewhere, I Corps' front did not experience fraternization on Christmas Day 1914, ‘as [the Germans] have played low tricks with us so often that we do not … feel inclined to be friendly’.128 In February 1915, Horne wrote: ‘The Brutes are firing bullets with the noses flattened off … This is a most brutal thing to do and … makes a horrible wound’. He added in his diary that, as a result, his troops ‘are savage with them and do not treat them kindly’,129 suggesting both that Horne's outrage was no affectation for his wife's benefit, and that the troops under his command also felt strongly about German behaviour. Richard Holmes asserts that ordinary soldiers ‘generally had a high regard’ for the Germans and ‘rarely felt a high degree of personal hostility to them’, although he adds that German atrocities led to temporarily vengeful troops.130 Horne's papers suggest a different picture. His August and Christmas 1914 letters, and his 7 February diary, suggest that his troops held strong views of German ‘frightfulness’. In May, Horne believed that they ‘fought really hard as they have been longing to get at the Germans to pay off old scores and the [sinking of the] Lusitania was the finishing touch’, while in August 1917 he averred, ‘the Germans surrender to [the French] much more easily than to our men. Our men fight harder and are much more savage on account of the German barbarities’.131 These statements suggest that Holmes is too dismissive of anti-German sentiment among soldiers. Like Horne, French recorded in May 1915 that ‘our men have got “blood lust” heavily upon them! … The outrages committed by the Germans have stirred them very deeply’,132 while Gibbon affirmed in 1917 that, as a result of the Germans' behaviour in retreat, if the men of his division could ‘kill the Germans they will. It is the first time I have ever seen a British soldier savage’.133 However, considering the 1914 Christmas Truce, and the evidence Holmes cites with his arguments, it is possible that Horne placed his own interpretation on events, and assumed that his men reacted similarly. If so, it demonstrates the deep impact of German behaviour on Horne's mentality. Horne's opinion of the Germans certainly became increasingly vitriolic. Their use of poisonous gas prompted Horne to label them ‘extraordinary inhuman brutes’, and in February 1916 he declared that there would ‘be a heavy account to settle with Germany, and I do not think that any decent Briton should ever speak to a German again if he can help it’.134 When they withdrew to the Hindenburg Line in 1917, the Germans' scorched-earth policy led Horne to condemn ‘the brutes’ for ‘wanton destruction’, while he advocated (repeatedly) reciprocal bombing raids against German towns: ‘to bomb ordinary towns from high altitudes where it is impossible to see what you are hitting … is a cruel and barbarous practice, and therefore much enjoyed by the Boche! … unless we retaliate in like manner the Boche will go on from bad to worse.’135 German atrocities had two related effects on Horne. First, they provided a real moral imperative for the war, since ‘our cause is just … the Germans brought this war about for their own purposes, with the desire for gain, and have conducted it in defiance of all principles of honour and humanity’.136 The Germans stood against his way of life to the extent that he became, in Snape's view, the exemplar of the ‘neo-crusading views’ of the officer class.137 Contingently, German behaviour was a motivation to ‘press’. German air-raids on London made his ‘blood boil’, and made him ‘keener if possible to do all I can to inflict loss upon them’.138 If this letter is taken at face value, his wish to ‘press’ the Germans not only amounted to a desire to be optimistic, and to advance his career, but also to punish German misdeeds. As the war drew to a close, Horne continued to write vituperatively about the Germans, damning them for burning Douai and flooding the surrounding plains.139 At the end of October 1918, clearly deeply disturbed (and, given the use of ‘we’, apparently not uniquely), he described the areas that his men captured: the Germans have much to account for. Nothing can ever be bad enough for them. No money can ever repay the misery and suffering they have caused … it is hard to find words to express the suffering that they have deliberately caused … We see it and begin to realize it as we regain the country. The stories we hear are terrible of the barbarity and inhumanity of the Germans. The appearance of the people bears it out. They are white and emaciated, half starved and have been treated without any consideration and in many cases with brutality … At St Amand [north-west of Valenciennes] … many old people and children were laid up with [influenza]. The Germans had arranged a sort of hospital but when they left they took away all the able bodied and left these poor old things and children to look after themselves, and a few hours after leaving, when they must have known that the sick could not possibly have been removed they shelled and gassed the place. There could have been no great [sic] or more wanton cruelty … they are brutes by nature and brutes they remain and I hope we will treat them as such.140 When, almost two weeks later, the armistice was imminent, Horne felt his moral commitment to the cause vindicated, rejoicing: One cannot help feeling that there is a God, more mighty than man – who manages our affairs – we have all been made to suffer in order that we may improve ourselves, but the German nation, whose code of morality is so low and where conceit was so great has been humbled to the dust!141 Given Horne's intense moral involvement with the war, it is instructive to consider his experiences during the Boer War, about which he compiled a short book based upon his letters and diaries. Here, once again, he developed a violent revulsion to enemy behaviour. He related that soldiers were shot at from a house bearing a white flag, vengefully adding that ‘General Tucker … did not do so … but I think shooting from under a white flag as the man did, that the place should have been burned’.142 In August 1900, his men were fired on from another farm. He noted: Burnt the farm that they had been seen to fire from. The farm was full of women and children, which makes it sad, but we left them a building in which to take shelter, and allowed them to move most of their effects into it. It is necessary to retaliate by burning farms from which Boers attack us; it is the only way we can do them any damage … it is the men's own fault, as farms which do not give us trouble are left alone.143 Despite the slight unease of this passage, Horne seemingly avoided the crisis of conscience which many officers felt at burning the property of a ‘civilized’ race,144 by demonizing the Boers, like the Germans, as ‘brutes’ who shot at doctors and ambulancemen, and whose word could not be trusted.145 It is interesting that Horne willingly advocated, and carried out, farm-burning in South Africa, but later expressed unrestrained outrage at sometimes similar German behaviour. His stories of Boer misdeeds, furthermore, apparently foreshadow the German excuse of pointing to French and Belgian civilians (franc-tireurs) fighting against the rules of war. Having been fired on from a house in a Belgian village, a German soldier wrote that the artillery destroyed the village and that it was hard ‘to go through the burning village and simply shoot down everyone. But the people have only themselves to blame’.146 Similarly a German general wrote that Aarschot ‘has been half burned down and terribly treated … [as punishment]. Many poor innocents have also had to suffer! This kind of warfare, forced upon us by criminal fools, is horrifying. If only they saw reason’.147 Horne justifiably condemned the Germans, who not only burnt people's homes, but then arbitrarily executed them as well. However, while Horne and the British did not kill Boer families outright, they sent them to concentration camps, a ‘cruel system which falls with … crushing effect upon the old, the weak, and the children’.148 Despite Horne's apparent hypocrisy, what is important is that he was clearly extremely disturbed by the ‘barbarous’ German behaviour, throughout the war and afterwards, noting approvingly that Germans withdrawing after the armistice were in ‘considerable danger of being killed by the civilian populace’ in reprisal for their occupation, before concluding, ‘The inhumanity and brutality of the Boche is unspeakable’.149 He was quoted in The Times as branding the Germans ‘steeped in inhumanity’, and almost a year later warned against reducing the army since ‘the German character and mentality’ made it dangerous.150 His outrage was not a wartime convenience. Horne's reactions to German behaviour are interesting because they demonstrate the human side of his character. He was genuinely, albeit hypocritically, shocked by what he saw and heard. Furthermore, this horror made him ‘keener’ to ‘inflict loss’ on the Germans, who, like the Boers, he demonized as ‘brutes’. This suggests, significantly, that his moral outrage at German behaviour influenced his command decisions. It seems unlikely that he could be so continually aghast at the ‘inhuman brutes’ he was fighting, without allowing this outrage to sway him. With this in mind, it is remarkable that so little reference has been made to such reactions in other studies of British First World War generalship. Henry Horne has remained a ‘silent commander’ far too long. His letters and actions reveal a more complex mentality of command than is often described. He was, contrary to what has usually been asserted, intensely ambitious. He actively pursued advancement, encouraging his wife to influence people at home and profiting from Haig's patronage. However, he was not a ‘careerist’. He spoke up when he thought things ill-advised. His dismissal of officers reflected a desire to succeed as quickly as possible rather than fear for his own position. Horne's First World War career was successful. He may have been hypocritical in striving for advancement but castigating others for doing so, condoning farm-burning but condemning Germany's scorched-earth policy, but he also rose from B.-G.R.A. to command the only British Army not forced to withdraw its headquarters during the German 1918 offensive. Despite Prior's and Wilson's recent criticism, which appears somewhat unbalanced, he was no ‘donkey’, while even Travers has acknowledged Horne's outspokenness against Haig over tanks and machine-guns in 1918.151 He seems a good example of a general taking the ‘learning curve’. It is disconcerting, therefore, to find him arguing in 1922 to ‘go back to the principles of 1914’– use science and technology, but keep the focus on ‘the man’.152 Perhaps for some the learning curve did not extend beyond November 1918. Horne demonstrably endorsed the argument that ‘Victory is not won through half-hearted performances’.153 He was usually confident and optimistic, and determined to ‘press’ the Germans whenever possible to achieve victory, but this was not motivated solely by desire for promotion and decoration. His methods of command were governed by his mentality, of which ambition was only one strand. His optimism probably owed much to the athleticist values of his youth, while his religious morality led to outrage at German behaviour, motivating him to act aggressively and regularly. Snape has recently suggested an even closer link between ambition and religion, arguing that the officer corps ‘were tempted to see their own careers … in providential terms’, a contention to which the evidence of Horne's papers would have lent some weight, although he was far from taking the ‘fatalistic’ line Snape implies.154 This article suggests that Horne's case bears out certain arguments of historians such as Travers and Robbins, but raises serious questions about other aspects. Horne benefited from patronage, but was not beholden to Haig, nor silent if he disagreed. However, subordinates like Pilcher were apparently subjected to the top-down treatment that Travers highlights. While Horne followed the ‘party line’ of optimism, this seems to be more a genuine characteristic than a careerist device. Further, both Travers's and Robbins's works suffer from overlooking moral outrage. This outrage is perhaps the most important element of this article, since it has so rarely been considered (even by Snape, at any length). If, as seems apparent in Horne's case, such moral concerns motivated him to ‘press’ the Germans, it is essential that this be considered in studies of British generalship. If no moral or emotional element is apparent this should, at least, be mentioned. It is not enough to look at generals as cold-blooded, calculating machines who either acted entirely in their own best interests, or as merely ‘the product of a particular system’,155 which gradually improved during the war. While useful, the ‘depersonalized’ approach risks dehumanizing the command process. In order more fully to explain the command decisions taken in the war, it is imperative that historians should seek to understand all the discernible elements which combined to form the mentality of command. Generals were humans too, and made decisions based on emotion as well as calculation. Footnotes * The author would like to thank Dr. Paul Readman and Dr. William Philpott for reading and commenting upon innumerable drafts at various stages, and for their continuing assistance in the process of transferring his M.A. thesis into an article. For permission to quote from material for which they hold the copyright, he would also like gratefully to acknowledge The National Archives of the U.K.; the Parliamentary Archives; the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, and the copyright-holders of the Robertson papers held there; and the copyright-holders of the Horne, Maxse and Smith-Dorrien papers held at the Imperial War Museum. 1 ‘Lord Horne, a shrewd artillery commander’, The Times, 15 Aug. 1929, p. 12. The title quotation is Sir Hastings Anderson's refutation of this label, employed first in ‘Lord Horne’, The Times, 29 Aug. 1929, p. 14, and then in his article ‘Lord Horne as an army commander’, Jour. Royal Artillery, lvi (1930), 407–18, at p. 414. 2 S. Robbins, ‘Henry Horne: First Army, 1916–18’, in Haig's Generals, ed. I. F. W. Beckett and S. J. Corvi (Barnsley, 2006), pp. 97–121. The book appeared after the submission of the original draft of this article. 3 Anderson, ‘Horne as an army commander’; H. C. C. Uniacke, ‘General the Lord Horne of Stirkoke’ (1929) (publication details are unclear: the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography incorrectly places it in the Army Quarterly, xix (1929) (F. B. Maurice, ‘Horne, Henry Sinclair, Baron Horne (1861–1929)’, rev. J. M. Bourne, O.D.N.B. (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33990> [accessed 24 Nov. 2006]); Anderson says that it ‘accompanied the October number of the “Journal of the Royal Artillery”’, but it is not officially in that journal either); J. Bourne, ‘Haig and the historians’, in Haig: a Reappraisal 70 Years On, ed. B. Bond and N. Cave (Barnsley, 1999), p. 3. 4 B. Liddell Hart, The Memoirs of Captain Liddell Hart, i (1965), p. 58. 5 R. Neillands, The Great War Generals on the Western Front, 1914–18 (2nd edn., 2004), p. 327. By then, John Bourne had mentioned the papers at the Imperial War Museum and Peter Simkins had quoted from them (see Bourne, ‘Haig and the historians’, p. 10 n. 11; and P. Simkins, ‘Haig and the army commanders’, in Bond and Cave, pp. 91, 105 n. 78). 6 Thirteen gaps of between three weeks and four months occur, including some of the more tumultuous periods of Horne's command, such as the last four months of 1915, when he took part in the Loos operations and Sir John French was replaced; a month during the 1916 Somme operations; three weeks during which Horne's army captured Vimy Ridge in Apr. 1917; and the beginning of the German offensive in 1918. 7 Imperial War Museum (hereafter I.W.M.), Horne Papers, 62/54/10, Diary, 1915 (Bk. 2), 18 Nov. 1915. 8 T. Travers, The Killing Ground: the British Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare (2nd edn., Barnsley, 2003); S. Robbins, British Generalship on the Western Front, 1914–18: Defeat into Victory (2005). 9 On the learning curve, see, e.g., G. Sheffield, Forgotten Victory. The First World War: Myths and Realities (2002). 10 C. J. L. Allanson, cited in Robbins, British Generalship, p. 8. 11 J. M. Bourne, ‘British generals in the First World War’, in Leadership and Command: the Anglo-American Military Experience since 1861, ed. G. D. Sheffield (1997), pp. 93–116, at p. 109; ‘Lord Horne’, The Times, 15 Aug. 1929, p. 12. 12 Robbins, British Generalship, p. 8; Uniacke, p. 5. 13 I.W.M., Horne Papers, Con Shelf, Gen. Lord Horne, letters to his wife (hereafter H.L.), vol. i, 21 Oct. 1914, 27 Oct. 1914, 3 Nov. 1914. In all quotations from the Horne Papers underlined words are given as italics, and the contractions + and +c have been expanded. 14 I.W.M., H.L., vol. iii, 24 June 1915, 27 June 1915. 15 I.W.M., H.L., vol. iv, 24 Jan. 1916. 16 I.W.M., H.L., vol. iv, 30 May 1916, 4 June 1916. 17 I.W.M., H.L., vol. iv, 13 June 1916. 18 I.W.M., H.L., vol. v, 15 Sept. 1916, 21 Dec. 1916. Horne's many domestic and foreign awards are listed in Uniacke, pp. 8–9. 19 I.W.M., H.L., vol. viii, 3 June 1918; vol. ix, 7 Sept. 1918. 20 Wilson to Harrington, 8 Apr. 1919 (Publications of the Army Records Society, i: the Military Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, 1918–22, ed. K. Jeffery (1985), p. 97). 21 Sir Edward Beddington, cited in A. Farrar-Hockley, Goughie: the Life of General Sir Hubert Gough (1975), p. 191; I.W.M., Smith-Dorrien Papers, 87/47/5, Smith-Dorrien to Lady Smith-Dorrien, 20 Feb. 1915. 22 I.W.M., H.L., vol. iv, 30 Jan. 1916; Travers, Killing Ground, pp. 156–7. Cf. R. Holmes, Tommy: the British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914–18 (2004), p. 231. 23 I.W.M., H.L., vol. iv, 5 Feb. 1916. 24 Gen. Sir J. Marshall-Cornwall, Haig as Military Commander (1973), p. 9. 25 Travers, Killing Ground, pp. 12–13; Douglas Haig: War Diaries and Letters, 1914–18, ed. G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (2005) (hereafter Haig Diaries), p. 218. 26 Brig.-Gen. J. Charteris, Field-Marshal Earl Haig (1929), p. 63; Marshall-Cornwall, p. 82. 27 I.W.M., H.L., vol. i, no. 302. The recommendation is separate from the letter of 21 Oct. 1914 which accompanied it. 28 Haig, cited in Robbins, British Generalship, pp. 56–7. 29 I.W.M., H.L., vol. iv, 27 Feb. 1916. 30 I.W.M., H.L., vol. iv, 28 Feb. 1916, 5 March 1916. 31 I.W.M., H.L., vol. iv, 30 June 1916. 32 I.W.M., H.L., vol. v, 21 Oct. 1916. 33 Farrar-Hockley, p. 76. 34 Travers, Killing Ground, pp. 6–7, 11–12, 20–3. 35 Robbins, British Generalship, p. 61. 36 Travers, Killing Ground, p. 13; see also C. Hughes, Mametz – Lloyd George's ‘Welsh Army’ at the Battle of the Somme (2nd edn., Norwich, 1990), pp. 133–48. Robbins, British Generalship, p. 66. 37 Robbins, British Generalship, pp. 54–60. 38 Liddell Hart, cited in H. Fairlie Wood, Vimy! (1967), p. 65. 39 I.W.M., H.L., vol. i, 30 Dec. 1914; vol. ix, 12 Nov. 1918. 40 See Robbins, British Generalship, pp. 68–82. 41 The National Archives of the U.K.: Public Record Office, WO 158/234, no. 123, ‘OAD 60, “Notes of discussion as to attack on Longueval plateau and the C.-in-C.'s decision thereon”, 11 June 1916’. R. Prior and T. Wilson, Command on the Western Front: the Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1914–18 (2nd edn., Barnsley, 2004), pp. 193–202. 42 King's College, London, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (hereafter L.H.C.M.A.), Liddell Hart Papers, LH 7/1916/15a, Liddell Hart to parents, 15 July 1916; LH 7/1916/36a–b, ‘Summary of a talk with John Buchan, who is on Sir Douglas Haig's personal staff, and is the writer of all the official dispatches and communiqués, as well as being in charge of the preparation of the records of the official history of the war’, Dec. 1916. 43 S. Bidwell and D. Graham, Fire-Power: British Army Weapons and Theories of War, 1904–45 (1982), p. 84. 44 R. Prior and T. Wilson, The Somme (2005), p. 102. 45 Prior and Wilson, Somme, p. 224. 46 I.W.M., Fourth Army Papers, vol. 6, nos. 76–102, ‘Notes of conference held at HEILLY, 10 Sept. 1916’. 47 See Prior and Wilson, Somme, p. 102. 48 Prior and Wilson, Somme, p. 304. 49 T.N.A.: P.R.O., WO 158/190, no. 6, Horne to Kiggell, 27 Dec. 1917, Kiggell to Horne, 29 Dec. 1917; I.W.M., H.L., vol. viii, 9 Apr. 1918. 50 Hughes, pp. 73–6. 51 Travers, Killing Ground, p. 169. 52 I.W.M., Fourth Army Papers, vol. 6, nos. 45–55, ‘Notes of a conference held at Fourth Army Headqrs. 8 July 1916’. 53 T.N.A.: P.R.O., WO 158/234, no. 135, 32/10(G), report by Horne on 38th Division, 13 July 1916. 54 I.W.M., H.L., vol. v, 12 July 1916. 55 T.N.A.: P.R.O., WO 138/36, Pilcher Papers, ‘Narrative by Major General T. D. Pilcher Commanding 17th Division, of incidents on the front of 17th Division, 15th Corps, @4Army [sic] from July 1st to July 11th, culminating in his being badly reported on by Lieut. Gen. Horne, Com. 15 Corps’. Cf. Charles Fergusson's report to Horne on Maj.-Gen. Reed, on similar lines (I.W.M., Horne Papers, 73/60/2, Fergusson to Horne, 10 Oct. 1918). 56 I.W.M., Maxse Papers, PP/MCR/C42, Reel 10, File 41, pp. 3, 17. 57 Holmes, pp. 229–30. 58 Travers, Killing Ground, p. 21. 59 Robbins, British Generalship, p. 60. 60 Travers, Killing Ground, p. 20; I.W.M., Horne Papers, 73/60/2, Maxse to Horne, 8 May 1918, Horne to Maxse, 9 May 1918; I.W.M., Maxse Papers, PP/MCR/C42, Reel 11, File 43, pp. 31–45; Haig Diaries, pp. 412–13; J. Baynes, Far from a Donkey: the Life of General Sir Ivor Maxse, K.C.B., C.V.O., D.S.O. (1995), p. 209. 61 Travers, Killing Ground, pp. 101–23; and see also A. Simpson, ‘British Corps Command on the Western Front, 1914–18’, in Command and Control on the Western Front: the British Army's Experience, 1914–18, ed. G. Sheffield and D. Todman (Staplehurst, 2004), pp. 97–118. 62 I.W.M., Horne Papers, 73/60/2, Cooke to Horne, 8 Nov. 1918; Horne to Cooke, 28 Nov. 1918. 63 C. Pugsley, The ANZAC Experience: New Zealand, Australia and Empire in the First World War (Auckland, 2004), p. 165. On Horne's relationship with Currie, see, e.g., Robbins, ‘Henry Horne’, pp. 104–5, 108, 111–12, 116–17; D. G. Dancocks, Sir Arthur Currie: a Biography (Toronto, 1985), pp. 110–11, 138, 164–5, 171. 64 Haig Diaries, 18 Apr. 1918, p. 405; see also A. M. J. Hyatt, General Sir Arthur Currie: a Military Biography (Toronto, 1987), pp. 104–5. 65 D. G. Dancocks, Spearhead to Victory: Canada and the Great War (Edmonton, 1987), p. 208; and see also p. 147. 66 Dancocks, Currie, p. 238; Robbins, ‘Horne’, p. 112. 67 Robbins, British Generalship, pp. 88, 91. 68 I.W.M., H.L., vol. ii, 21 Feb. 1915; vol. v, 12 July 1916. 69 Haig, cited in J. Williams, Byng of Vimy: General and Governor General (1983), p. 84; I.W.M., Smith-Dorrien Papers, 87/47/5, Smith-Dorrien to Lady Smith-Dorrien, 14 Sept. 1914. 70 Williams, Byng of Vimy, pp. 150, 165. 71 I.W.M., H.L., vol. vii, 24 Nov. 1917. 72 See Robbins, ‘Horne’, p. 111; Dancocks, Currie, pp. 2–3, 164; and Dancocks, Spearhead to Victory, pp. 132–3. 73 I.W.M., H.L., vol. viii, 1 Apr. 1918. 74 Travers, Killing Ground, p. 186. 75 I.W.M., H.L., vol. iii, 28 June 1915. On Cavan's virtues, see also I.W.M., H.L., vol. ii, 11 Jan. 1915, 12 Feb. 1915; vol. iii, 21 June 1915. 76 I.W.M., H.L., vol. iv, 5 Feb. 1916. 77 I.W.M., H.L., vol. ii, 11 Jan. 1915. 78 Anderson, ‘Horne as army commander’, pp. 417, 408. 79 I.W.M., H.L., vol. vi, 12 June 1917. 80 Uniacke, pp. 2–5. 81 J. A. Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School: the Emergence and Consolidation of an Educational Ideology (Cambridge, 1981), p. 106. See also The Victorian Public School: Studies in the Development of an Educational Institution, ed. B. Simon and I. Bradley (Dublin, 1975); W. J. Reader, ‘At Duty's Call’: a Study in Obsolete Patriotism (Manchester, 1988), pp. 84–100. 82 See Mangan, Table 1, p. 71; C. Tyerman, A History of Harrow School, 1324–1991 (Oxford, 2000), p. 338; N. Vance, ‘The ideal of manliness’, in Simon and Bradley, pp. 115–28, at p. 122. 83 Mangan, pp. 119, 132. 84 Mangan, p. 161. 85 I.W.M., H.L., vol. i, 29 Aug. 1914 (author's emphasis); Mangan, p. 200. See also Horne, post-war, cited in G. Best, ‘Militarism and the Victorian public school’, in Simon and Bradley, pp. 129–46, at p. 143. 86 G. J. De Groot, Douglas Haig, 1861–1928 (1988), pp. 16–17, 22; Farrar-Hockley, pp. 11, 16, 19. 87 Tyerman, p. 424. 88 See also A. Fletcher, ‘Patriotism, identity and commemoration: new light on the Great War from the papers of Major Reggie Chenevix Trench’ , History , xc ( 2005 ), 532 – 49 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , at pp. 533–4. 89 Reader, pp. 91, 100. 90 Farrar-Hockley, p. 149. 91 I.W.M., H.L., vol. viii, 26 Apr. 1918. 92 I.W.M., H.L., vol. ii, 11 May 1915, 14 May 1915. 93 I.W.M., H.L., vol. viii, 16 Apr. 1918. 94 I.W.M., H.L., vol. i, 23 Oct. 1914. 95 See, e.g., I.W.M., H.L., vol. i, 10 Dec. 1914; vol. ii, 25 Jan. 1915, 26 Jan. 1915, 7 Feb. 1915; vol. iii, 3 June 1915, 1 Aug. 1915. 96 I.W.M., H.L., vol. iv, 13 March 1916. 97 I.W.M., H.L., vol. v, 2 July 1916; Horne's diary in Aug. recorded that XV Corps had captured more than a third of all prisoners taken by the B.E.F. since 1 July (I.W.M., Horne Papers, 62/54/10, Diary, 1916 (Bk. 1), 28 Aug. 1916). 98 I.W.M., H.L., vol. v, 2 Sept. 1916, 5 Sept. 1916. See also Brig.-Gen. John Charteris, At G.H.Q. (1931), p. 171. 99 I.W.M., H.L., vol. vi, 8 May 1917, 9 May 1917. 100 Robbins, British Generalship, pp. 26–30; Travers, Killing Ground, pp. 54–5. 101 Robbins, British Generalship, p. 27; I.W.M., H.L., vol. vi, 8 June 1917. See also I.W.M., Horne Papers, 62/54/10, Diary, 1918 (Sloane Diary), 23 Apr. 1918. 102 See, e.g., L.H.C.M.A., Robertson Papers, ROBERTSON 8/5/26, De Lisle to Robertson, 28 Jan. 1917. 103 I.W.M., H.L., vol. vi, 22 Aug. 1917, 16 Aug. 1917. 104 I.W.M., H.L., vol. viii, 24 Apr. 1918, 26 Apr. 1918, 28 Aug. 1918; vol. ix, 1 Oct. 1918. 105 T.N.A.: P.R.O., WO 158/234, no. 93, ‘OAD 36: “Note of interview at Fourth Army Headquarters, QUERRIEU, at mid-day, 2 July, 1916”’ (author's emphasis). 106 T.N.A.: P.R.O., WO 158/234, no. 122, ‘OAD 58: Kiggell to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Armies, 12 July 1916’ (author's emphasis). 107 I.W.M., Fourth Army Papers, vol. i, nos. 224–5, ‘Summary of operations, 7 July 1916 [XV Corps report]’ (author's emphasis). 108 L.H.C.M.A., Kiggell Papers, KIGGELL 4/32, Kiggell to Army Commanders, 6 Aug. 1916. 109 Robbins, British Generalship, p. 73; D. Todman, ‘The Grand Lamasery revisited: general headquarters on the Western Front, 1914–18’, in Sheffield and Todman, pp. 39–70, at p. 58. 110 Robbins, British Generalship, p. 69. 111 See I.W.M., H.L., vol. ii, John Don to Mrs. Horne, 5 May 1915 (nos. 635–6); I.W.M., Horne Papers, 73/60/2, Holland to Horne, 12 Oct. 1918. 112 Robbins, British Generalship, pp. 4–5. 113 See M. Snape, God and the British Soldier: Religion and the British Army in the First and Second World Wars (2005), pp. 67–9. 114 I.W.M., H.L., vol. vi, 21 March 1917. 115 Snape, p. 96. 116 Harry W. Blackburne, ‘Lord Horne’, letter to The Times, 22 Aug. 1929, p. 13; N. Cave, ‘Haig and religion’, in Bond and Cave, pp. 240–60, at p. 248. See also Archibald Fleming, ‘Lord Horne: beliefs of the High Command’, letter to The Times, 17 Aug. 1929, p. 6. 117 I.W.M., H.L., vol. i, 14 Nov. 1914. 118 I.W.M., H.L., vol. v, 28 Dec. 1916, 25 Dec. 1916. On the fostering of soldiers' religious sentiment by slightly lower-ranking commanders, see Snape, pp. 147–51. 119 George Duncan, cited in ‘The Reverend George S. Duncan at GHQ, 1916–18’, ed. G. J. DeGroot, in Military Miscellany i: Manuscripts from the Seven Years War, the First and Second Sikh Wars and the First World War, ed. A. J. Guy, R. N. W. Thomas and G. J. DeGroot (Publications of the Army Records Soc., xii, Stroud, 1996), pp. 266–436, at p. 392. 120 I.W.M., H.L., vol. v, 25 Dec. 1916. Cf. quotation in O. Anderson, ‘The growth of Christian militarism in mid-Victorian Britain’ , Eng. Hist. Rev. , lxxxvi ( 1971 ), 46 – 72 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , at p. 52. 121 Mangan, p. 135; M. Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (1981), p. 260. 122 E.g., C. Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning: Propaganda in the First World War (1977); A. J. Hoover, God, Germany, and Britain in the Great War: a Study in Clerical Nationalism (New York, 1989); N. F. Gullace, ‘The Blood of our Sons’: Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship during the Great War (Basingstoke, 2002). 123 A. Becker, War and Faith: the Religious Imagination in France, 1914–30, trans. H. McPhail (Oxford, 1998), pp. 11–18. 124 London, Parliamentary Archives (hereafter P.A.), Lloyd George Papers, LG/F/79/32/22, Henry Gibbon to W. G. S. Adams, 24 Sept. 1917. The other men to whom Gibbon felt able to talk were Adams (Lloyd George's private secretary), A. L. Smith (his former master at Balliol College, Oxford) and the physician Sir Bertrand Dawson. On Gibbon's role in domestic propaganda work generally, see LG/F/79/32–3. 125 I.W.M., H.L., vol. i, 29 Aug. 1914. 126 I.W.M., H.L., vol. i, 29 Aug. 1914, 18 Sept. 1914, 19 Oct. 1914. See also A. Corbett-Smith, The Retreat from Mons, by One who Shared in it (1917), pp. 52–5, which suggests that some lower-ranking soldiers felt equally outraged. 127 I.W.M., H.L., vol. i, 6 Dec. 1914. On the lack of surprise, see also Charteris, At G.H.Q., pp. 102–3. 128 I.W.M., H.L., vol. i, 25 Dec. 1914. M. Brown and S. Seaton, Christmas Truce: the Western Front, December 1914 (3rd edn., 2004), app. B, pp. 229–30 shows no examples of fraternization by I Corps. 129 I.W.M., H.L., vol. ii, 7 Feb. 1915; I.W.M., Horne Papers, 62/54/10, Diary, 1915 (Bk. 1), 7 Feb. 1915. 130 Holmes, pp. 536, 550–1. 131 I.W.M., H.L., vol. ii, 19 May 1915; vol. vi, 20 Aug. 1917. 132 French cited in Major the Hon. Gerald French, D.S.O., The Life of Field-Marshal Sir John French, First Earl of Ypres, K.P., G.C.B., O.M., G.C.V.O., K.C.M.G. (1931), p. 304. 133 P.A., LG/F/79/32/1, ‘Conversation between Colonel Gibbons [sic] and Mr Adams – 16.8.17’. 134 I.W.M., H.L., vol. ii, 29 Apr. 1915; vol. iv, 20 Feb. 1916. 135 I.W.M., H.L., vol. vi, 29 March 1917, 30 May 1917, and see also 15 June 1917, 16 June 1917; vol. vii, 1 Oct. 1917, 18 Oct. 1917. 136 I.W.M., H.L., vol. vi, 22 June 1917. 137 Snape, p. 182. 138 I.W.M., H.L., vol. viii, 2 Feb. 1918. 139 See I.W.M., H.L., vol. ix, 5–12 Oct. 1918. 140 I.W.M., H.L., vol. ix, 29 Oct. 1918. 141 I.W.M., H.L., vol. ix, 10 Nov. 1918. See similar expressions in Becker, pp. 28–9; on the belief in divine providence, see Snape, pp. 66–7, 82. 142 Major H. S. Horne, Reminiscences of the South African War (n.p., 1900), p. 16. 143 Horne, p. 46. 144 See K. Surridge, ‘“All you soldiers are what we call pro-Boer”: the military critique of the South African War, 1899–1902’ , History , lxxxii ( 1997 ), 528 – 600 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , at pp. 591–3. 145 Horne, pp. 47, 50. 146 Cited in J. Horne and A. Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: a History of Denial (2001), p. 113. 147 Gen. Beseler, cited in Horne and Kramer, pp. 117–18. 148 Emily Hobhouse, cited from The Speaker, 22 June 1901, in The Pro-Boers: the Anatomy of an Antiwar Movement, ed. S. Koss (1973), p. 205. Cf. n. 132, above. 149 I.W.M., H.L., vol. ix, 17 Nov. 1918. 150 ‘General Horne on the Germans’, The Times, 12 Dec. 1918, p. 10; ‘German ill will to Britain: General Horne's warning’, The Times, 27 Sept. 1919, p. 3. 151 T. Travers, How the War was Won: Factors that Led to Victory in World War One (2nd edn., Barnsley, 2005), pp. 45–7. 152 ‘For Small Wars Only: Lord Horne on the Purpose of the British Army’, The Times, 26 Jan. 1922, p. 7. 153 T.N.A.: P.R.O., WO 158/234, no. 113, ‘OAD 53’, Kiggell to Rawlinson, 9 July 1916. 154 Snape, p. 82, pp. 59–72. 155 Robbins, British Generalship, p. 132. © Institute of Historical Research 2007 This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © Institute of Historical Research 2007
TI - ‘No mere silent commander’? Sir Henry Horne and the mentality of command during the First World War
JF - Historical Research
DO - 10.1111/j.1468-2281.2007.00434.x
DA - 2009-05-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/no-mere-silent-commander-sir-henry-horne-and-the-mentality-of-command-J0pbISGFd2
SP - 340
EP - 359
VL - 82
IS - 216
DP - DeepDyve
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