Review – The General by C.S. Forester

The General by C.S. Forester. Kindle Edition, 321 pages, Published September 14th 2017 by William Collins (first published 1936)

I picked up The General after reading several mentions that Gen (Ret) John Kelly rereads it every year to remind himself of the pitfalls of hubris and intellectual stagnation. While Gen. Kelly’s performance in civilian life has been distressing, his descriptions of the book were intriguing. It did not disappoint.

Lieutenant General Sir Herbert Curzon is the very model of a modern British Lt. Gen., at least as seen from the interwar vantage point of 1936. Curzon is courageous to a fault, ambitious, loyal, innately suspicious of education, novelty, and dissent, disdainful of the lower classes, and utterly free of self-awareness, Through stupid luck he becomes a minor hero as a subaltern in South Africa and is perfectly positioned in 1914 to rise rapidly thanks to the opportunities born of death and the search for scapegoats. A fortunate marriage, good timing, and an unshakeable belief that his duty lies in supporting his superiors in all matters and at all times results in his rapid advancement from major to lieutenant general. His willingness to blindly expend the lives of working class British men in order to uphold the honor of the empire and maintain his own reputation ensures that he advances when others are sacked.

Curzon is an amalgam of the British regulars who led a generation to their miserable deaths on the Somme and at Passchendaele, and he embodies nearly all the stereotypes that the embittered survivors harbored. It is to Forester’s credit, then, that he occasionally acknowledges both the value of men like Curzon and the lack of reasonable alternatives. Like Colonel Tall in The Thin Red Line, Curzon’s less attractive qualities are also seen as necessary. War is a hideous business, and few wars have been as hideous as the western front. Curzon’s boundless energy results in a highly trained division that is able to ship to France in time for First Ypres. His pig-headed refusal to give an inch of ground or consider the lives of his soldiers makes it possible to hold the German advance and prevent an even greater disaster. The only alternative is defeat, and Curzon mitigates his lack of humanity by invariably sharing the dangers of combat with his men. The officers whom he finds wanting are indeed more intelligent and more willing to face the reality of the war than he is, but their greater intelligence does not provide them with any better solutions to the fundamental problem.

Later, when Curzon is behind the lines commanding by telephone, his reactionary stubbornness becomes more dangerous and less defensible. The true tragedy comes when he repeatedly convinces his superiors and his father-in-law (a government minister) that the war can be one with the same techniques if only they will throw in more men, more guns, more munitions. The horror of the truth caused the generals of the Western Front to grasp instead at the illusion that victory was possible if they just did more. At one point, as civilian leaders are losing trust in the generals, Curzon stages a demonstration for visiting officials to convince them that soldier morale remains high, and then gloats without any sense of shame or discomfort that the army has put one over on the civilians. Finally at Saint Quentin, the reality hits home. Despite his best efforts, the line breaks and it seems clear that Britain will go down to defeat. In despair, he buckles on his sword and rides to the front for a heroic death only to be hit by a shell en route and badly wounded. Despite the inglorious conclusion, he retires to acclaim and comfort as a hero.

The General is a harsh indictment of the officer corps produced by the pre-war British army, and it is worth considering whether any institutional army, blessed with a long period of general peace can do better. The British generals of 1914-1918 were no more benighted than the American generals who opened the Civil War. It is possible that they were no more benighted than the 17 commanders who have led U.S. forces in Afghanistan since 2001. An officer who rises through the institutional army is unlikely, in the face of an unexpected circumstance, to acknowledge that his talents and training are insufficient to the task. To do so is an indictment of the institution that put him in a position of power and in which he has been marinating for decades. Before we condemn the Herbert Curzon’s, we would do well to ask what choice they had and whether we would do any better.