Fables in History

COMMONWEALTH (British Commonwealth of Nations)

The Director of Military Operations of the Imperial British General Staff was, from 1915 to 1918, Major General Sir Frederick Barton Maurice, who may certainly be assumed to know as much about the War as any man alive. Recently this great soldier and tactician picked up and read two fat volumes/- about the War from the sale of which Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill is drawing considerable pelf. As he read. Sir Frederick apparently began to experience a sense of scorn. Here were errors of fact, sloppiness, perversions of truth and everywhere the pink and soapy touch of superficiality. What to do?

Sir Frederick Maurice sat down and penned a long, calm, deadly review which was released last week in the July issue of that distinguished U. S. quarterly Foreign Affairs. Excerpts:

"Mr. Churchill's misstatements of fact are so many and so grave that no historian will in future be able to accept any of his assertions about the War without the most careful checking of references. . . ."

"Almost the whole of [an important paragraph in] Mr. Churchill's description of the battle of the Marne ... is pure fable. . . ."

"He supports his statements with a mass of figures and tables admirably calculated to deceive the lay reader."

"He supports his thesis by exaggerating . . . and minimizing. . . ."

"Some of his tables are incomplete, his methods of handling his statistics are incorrect, and ... in almost every case in which exact information is available Mr. Churchill's figures are proved to be erroneous. . . ."

So keen and sweeping seemed General Maurice's analysis, so backed by evidence his charges, that observers expected Mr. Churchill to reply by maintaining the silence of outraged dignity.

/-The World Crisis 1916-1918 -- Winston Spencer Churchill --Scribner's ($10).