The Selected Papers of Arthur Currie: Diaries, Letters, and Report to the Ministry, 1917–1933 (review)

Few Canadians have experienced the highs and lows of Sir Arthur Currie. Hailed for his military prowess, which brought Canadian victories at Hill 70, Passchendaele, and other battles during the last hundred days of the Great War, he was also blamed for unnecessary loss of Canadian lives and for financial misjudgement.

While military historians and Currie’s three biographers have had access to most of the documents included in this first-rate collection, this is the first publication to bring together Currie’s letters, diaries, and military reports, as well as letters written to Currie. For scholars and the informed general reader, the book is a treasure trove that proves Humphries’ claim that ‘the real Sir Arthur Currie was a man of great depth and of enormous contradictions.’

The editor has chosen to organize the documents into three parts. The first includes diaries and correspondence for the years 1917 to 1919. For the Battle of Hill 70, Currie’s diary entries provide close-up views of preparations: ‘I ask to take Hill 70’ (10 July 1917). And ‘Go to army to discuss large raid on Hill 70. Agree to reduce it’ (3 August 1917). In the midst of the preparations, ‘My wife’s birthday’ (11 August 1917), and ‘Anniversary of my wedding’ (14 August). He sent his wife a telegram. Humphries keeps the readers apprised of context. Soon after the above entries, the editor adds, ‘Sir Arthur was not happy with the British plan. Although he had been in command barely a month, Currie boldly submitted a new operational outline.’ Not all historians will agree with Humphries’ contention that ‘Currie was right on all accounts.’ In Shock Troops, Tim Cook contends that Currie’s decision to spend lives in an attempt to capture Lens may have been motivated not by sound planning but by excessive self-confidence.

In diaries and letters one glimpses the seeds of Currie’s later problems. On 30 November 1917, he lamented to Lieutenant Colonel John J. Creelman that it was too bad that ‘the public men of Canada cannot refer to their opponents in even courteous terms.’ Currie supported Prime Minister Robert Borden on conscription and therefore drew the ire of Liberals such as Frank Oliver, owner and editor of the Edmonton Journal, who claimed that Currie’s decorations and promotions were due to his support of Borden. Conservatives such as the discredited Sir Sam Hughes were also among Currie’s critics.

Part 2, Currie’s ‘Interim Report on the Operations of the Canadian Corps during the Year 1918,’ might have benefited from a short editorial explanation. To find out when Currie wrote these informative reports, which provide myriad details on the Canadian battles in 1918, the reader must return to the introduction in which Humphries explains that the report was submitted in 1919 to the minister of the overseas military forces of Canada. Was it based on notes? War diaries? Journals? In any case, this is the first reprinting of the report since 1919. As Humphries points out, the report shows Currie’s naïveté. He believed that, once informed of the great accomplishments of the Canadian Corps, Canadians would overlook financial imbroglios and honour Currie for his military accomplishments. He was to be disappointed.

The third part of the book includes correspondence and personal papers from 1919 to 1933, in which Currie reflects on the war and deals with questions such as monuments and cemeteries. ‘If they place the large memorial at Vimy,’ he wrote to Major General A.C. Macdonell on 19 April 1922, ‘it will confirm for all time the impression which exists in the mind of the majority of the people of Canada that Vimy was the greatest battle fought by the Canadians in France. In my mind that is very far from being a fact.’ He cited as more important ‘the three great battles of...