1 Actually, Sir Douglas didn't fare all that well in contemporary opinion - especially amongst those he sent 'over the top'!

2 I read a couple of quotes from Sir Douglas that, if reproduced among the ranks, would have tended to produce a negative impression. It may be all very well and true that, "The nation must be prepared to see heavy casualty lists", but I doubt neither the man in the trenches in 1917 nor the civilians seeing Somme-style casualties need to hear that. I've got exactly one book on World War I, "The Defeat of Imperial Germany 1917-1918" by Colonel Rod Paschall, U.S. Army, and it goes over Sir Douglas quite a bit. The thrust of the book is dealing with the campaigns of January 1917 until November 1918 on the Western Front, in somewhat broad detail. The interesting thing that came out of the book was that there weren't any villains in stars on either side in terms of professional military competence, but rather an intractable problem (i.e. a stalemate of the highest order) with three possible solutions, with only the worst one being taken. In no particular order: 1. A political settlement. Colonel Paschall doesn't task Sir Douglas et al for failing to get this; they weren't the men who could deliver this and in any event, the colonel thinks it wasn't possible due to the previous three years' propaganda of both sides being engaged in a battle for national survival and fighting the very Devil of Hell (bloody-handed Huns, murderers of children and Edith Cavell, don't you know; we'll not parlay with them). 2. A new tactical or technological innovation that could change the nature of the war. Paschall argues that no new fronts could be profitably opened, and there really wasn't a way for a new "bold move" to shake things up. He thought that perhaps, in the abstract, an amphibious landing using the unchallenged might of the Royal Navy for support would be useful, but he also notes that it was impossible given the rain-sodden areas that they'd have to fight in and through. Ideally, I suppose skipping a generation of weapons (like going from the Springfield Model 1861 to the M16A2) would have been the best bet, but that was probably impossible under the circumstances. 3. Attrition. Paschall notes with some sadness that this was the option chosen. It's a good book overall, I think. It was supposed to be part of a series edited by John S.D. Eisenhower, but apparently the following volumes (by a variety of authors) did not see print. If you ever see a copy of it, you might want to pick it up.