Confidential & strictly personal

I had a most interesting 48 hours with Haig, Rawlinson and others at the front and was very much impressed with the total lack of unwarranted optimism. They were all very happy and pleased at the way things were going but none of them talked in the way that they did a year ago and recognised they have got many more difficulties to overcome. Still at the same time their tails are well up and anticipate further successes. There is no doubt the Germans are rattled. They are throwing in Division after Division haphazard and get their Divisions broken in retreat which is what we did in the retreat on the 21st March. There is very bitter feeling against Pershing and the Americans as they feel that if only the Divisions we had, had been left there we should have been able, with the aid of these Divisions, to follow up and completely break the German resistance and even have got a decisive decision this year. Our men however are very tired and therefore the pushing back cannot be done as far as might have been done with fresh troops.

Reading arrived here in the evening. I have only had a short talk with him but even that short talk has told me something which has considerably disturbed me. I do not wish to make a querulous complaint but I think that I am justified in laying my opinion before you. I was under the impression that Reading was coming out here to discuss American matters and especially transport of Americans and their supplies. That was perfectly all right but I now discover that he is also to deal direct with Clemenceau on the subject of our own Man Power at home and this seems to put me in an absolutely false position which I am not prepared to occupy. It is not a subject in any way connected with America and although Lloyd George I believe says it is, nobody could justify such an assertion. It is a matter which might be discussed in one of two ways. Either by the Prime Minister or Milner direct with Clemenceau, or else through me, but to send our American Ambassador as a special envoy to discuss this subject with the French Government is to make my position an intolerable one.