The Cabinet must regard themselves as trustees for the fine fellows that constitute our army.

They are willing to face any dangers and they do so without complaint, but they trust to the leaders of the nation to see that their lives are not needlessly thrown away,

that they are not sacrificed on mere gambols, which are resorted to

merely because those who are directing the war, can think of nothing better to do with the men

under their command. It is therefore imperative that before we embark on a gigantic attack,

which must necessarily entail the loss of scores of thousands of valuable lives,

and produce that sense of discouragement which might very well rush nations into premature peace,

that we should feel a fair confidence that such an attack has a reasonable chance of succeeding.

A mere gamble would be both a folly and a crime.

David Lloyd George, war memoirs.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Thank you. The

The Episode 149, Passiondale

By mid-1917, the situation across Europe was dire.

The central powers were starving, but so was Russia.

Strikes and anti-war protests called into question Italy's commitment to the war, and the

exhausted and mutinous French army was crouched into a defensive stance for the foreseeable future.

Germany could be beaten, but only if the allies could keep up the pressure. But at just this moment, it isn't clear that they

can. The Great War may simply sputter into a stalemate of exhaustion unless one of the

Allied powers steps up. And the only allied nation with the will and the resources is Britain.

Or so it seemed to the commander of the British expeditionary force, the now field marshal, Sir Douglas Haig. But after last year's

Battle of the Psalm, the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, had lost faith in

...