Did they really have to fight to the finish?

From 1914, powerful voices called for the First World War to end in a negotiated compromise. Why were they ignored?

- HOLGER AFFLERBACH

On 28 September 1916 David Lloyd George, then Britain's minister of war, gave an interview to the American news agency United Press that became instantly famous. Asked how long the conflict in which his nation was currently embroiled would last, and how it may end, he said: "The fight must be to the finish to a knockout.

"The inhumanity, the pitilessness of the fighting that must come before a lasting peace is possible, is not comparable with the cruelty that would be involved in stopping the war while there remains a possibility of civilisation again being menaced from the same quarter," Lloyd George opined. "Peace now, or at any time before the final complete elimination of this menace, is unthinkable."

In short, Lloyd George believed it was necessary for Britain to wage war until it had achieved absolute victory. And he did so for two principal reasons. First, he blamed his counterparts in the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary for the outbreak of the First World War, and for cruelties and barbarism committed during the course of the conflict. This, in itself, made the idea of negotiating utterly repulsive. Second, the enormity of human sacrifices rendered the proposal to end the war by compromise completely unattractive. Leaders on all sides were keenly aware that something positive had to come out of the war and only military victory could provide it.