In 1935 the historian G. M. Trevelyan called Edmonds a historian .sx Edmonds took umbrage at that description .sx He insisted that he was " but a G.S.O. writing a military account of a modern campaign with the assistance of friends " .sx The friends he referred to were the thousands of correspondents , all former participants in the events he was trying to describe , upon whose co-operation he depended to supplement the official written records .sx Edmonds produced several drafts of each book before he dispatched the final typescript to the publisher .sx He began by reading through all the pertinent documentary evidence , war diaries , surviving operational orders , and any private papers which participants in the events he was analysing had made available to him , he made notes on them , and then produced a first draft .sx He then checked through his notes once again to ensure that he had omitted nothing of importance .sx But he was far too good a historian to believe that all the evidence could be found in the documents or for that matter that the documents were necessarily accurate .sx War Diaries were often written up well after the events they purported to describe and by officers who were not present at the time .sx " Reports of operations written immediately after an action " , he wrote in 1931 , " are of little value except as a general guide " .sx There were also occasions when he discovered that deliberate attempts had been made to tamper with or suppress evidence .sx During his period as Sir John French's Chief of Staff in 1914 , Sir Archibald Murray sometimes falsified the times and dates of orders .sx But Edmonds was able to detect this because of the date and time stamp which his confidential clerk had placed on the documents in question .sx One of Edmonds's assistants discovered that Sir Henry Wilson removed copies of operations orders from the GHQ files for August 1914 because they reflected badly on the shaken state of mind of the headquarters staff .sx In June 1917 Sir Henry Rawlinson's Chief of Staff , Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd , destroyed 4 Army's War Diary for the opening weeks of the Battle of the Somme , probably in the hope of concealing the fact that Rawlinson had been reluctant to follow Haig's order and to seek a quick breakthrough on 1 July .sx He substituted for it his own narrative of events .sx But Edmonds detected this fraud by checking the narrative against the evidence presented in the war diaries of subordinate formations .sx Efforts were also made to omit evidence which might reflect badly on the commanders in question .sx Thus the 3 Army war diary contained no mention of a warning that the army had received about an imminent German counter-attack at Cambrai on 30 November 1917 .sx Edmonds also had access to typescript copies of Haig's personal diary and noted that not every entry had been written at the time it purported to have been and that some passages had been inserted later .sx The oral and written reminiscences of survivors were vital because they enabled Edmonds to amplify and cross-check the written record .sx He therefore had copies of his first draft made and circulated them to as many participants as possible .sx Drafts of the Loos volume were sent to about 700 officers , more than half of whom made suggestions which Edmonds thought it worth while to consider .sx Drafts of the volume which examined the opening of the German March offensive in 1918 , an action which was pre-eminently a soldier's battle , seem to have been sent to just about every commander down to battalion and battery level .sx Edmonds himself questioned surviving senior officers over lunch .sx Some followed Haig's example and lent him copies of their diaries or other private records .sx But Edmonds did not treat the mass of information he gathered in this way uncritically .sx He understood that memories were apt to lapse after the passage of years and that his respondents might try to put the best possible gloss on their actions .sx " It is the duty of the historian to make head against these difficulties with the aid of the documents and the evidence of other witnesses .sx " Edmonds did any necessary rewriting and produced a second draft incorporating any relevant French , German , or Italian material .sx That was then sent to the Dominion general staffs and to the Australian official historian , C. E. W. Bean , for their comments .sx Only then did he prepare a final draft .sx The danger of Edmonds's determination to tap every available source of information was that it did lay him open to pressure to doctor his conclusions to suit the wishes of his informants .sx If he did not do so they might simply refuse further co-operation and the geese which lay the golden eggs might drop dead .sx Many of his informants were ambivalent about helping him .sx " Yes :sx we all want to know the TRUTH , as you say " , Sir Ivor Maxse , a former divisional and corps commander , wrote to him in 1927 , " But who knows where to discover it ?sx and , if discovered , how to reproduce it ?sx or whether it should be told ?sx " Some witnesses were undoubtedly concerned about their personal reputations .sx In lending Edmonds some of his private papers Lawrence asked in return that " if you are using anything which might be controversial I should like to know what it is " .sx Others were less concerned about their personal reputations and were more concerned about the effect criticisms of the high command might have upon the willingness of the next generations to submit to military discipline .sx For example , one former divisional commander , Major-General A. Solly Flood , sent Edmonds a press cutting critical of Haig together with a note saying :sx But setting aside all questions of loyalty to our revered chief , articles couched in these terms cause one much anxiety on account of the effect they must have on the minds of the uninformed public and of posterity , which may be called upon in their turn to undertake service on behalf of their King and country .sx .sx A third category were worried lest criticisms of the army's conduct might harm Britain's international prestige .sx In 1929 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle raised the issue of Edmonds's description of the precipitous retreat of 21 Division at Loos in September 1915 :sx " Very frankly .sx Could it be toned down into more general terms ?sx " he asked , " You have to remember that there are fellows of the baser sort in America & elsewhere who will leave out all your compensating paragraphs and simply quote the passages which describe the panic .sx Then there may be a row .sx " Similarly , Sir George Macdonogh warned him that it might be unwise to include criticisms of General P e tain's conduct in 1918 .sx " It has got to be remembered that not merely is he still alive but he is also at present the French Minister of War .sx " Edmonds generally met his critics at least half-way .sx He dealt with pressures like these in one of two ways .sx He confined the text to a bald narrative of events and omitted criticisms or he placed awkward evidence in footnotes or appendices , perhaps on the assumption that only those already in the know would bother to read them .sx In the volume published in 1927 examining the second Battle of Ypres in 1915 he agreed to Sir Arthur Currie's request that he should suppress the fact that three times during the battle he had ordered his Canadians to retreat .sx When he exposed one of Murray's attempts to change the date and time of a GHQ operations order in August 1914 he did so in a footnote to an appendix .sx Similarly , when Montgomery-Massingberd complained that the first draft of the volume on the battle of the Somme had been written in a " captious spirit " he agreed to revise it and tone down the criticisms .sx Only by turning to the volume of appendices could a reader discover that during the planning stage of the Somme Haig and Rawlinson had disagreed fundamentally about whether 4 Army should attempt to break clean through the German defences on the first day of the battle .sx In 1937 he informed Liddell Hart that " In my first draft [of OH , ii .sx ( 1918)] I took the same view as you do to the 'backs to the wall' order ( ?sx where was the wall ) , but found that hundreds of my correspondents in the fighting units were against me and I felt bound to alter it .sx " .sx Just occasionally he let himself go when his targets could not retaliate or when the need to stay silent had passed .sx In the first edition of the volume examining the retreat from Mons , published in 1922 , he made no mention of the panic which for a time seems to have gripped the headquarters of Haig's 1 Corps and led to it diverging from Smith-Dorrien's 2 Corps .sx But in 1933 , five years after Haig's death , he published a revised edition in which he described this incident and added that " Haig momentarily lost his head - a remarkable lapse for so stout hearted a fighter .sx " There was , as he laconically noted " a gap in the records " about this incident .sx Similarly , by 1947 enough had happened to remove any inhibitions he might have felt about criticizing P e tain .sx In the 'Retrospect' to the final volume in the series he felt free to write that " After General P e tain was given command of the French Armies on 15th .sx May 1917 , our Allies did very little " , and that his refusal to reinforce Gough's 5 Army in March 1918 " very nearly brought about a disaster " .sx Edmonds's work received a mixed reception both from participants and from later historians .sx Some readers liked what he had written .sx Haig read and commented upon all the volumes up to and including Loos before he died .sx " They are all excellent " he wrote of some draft chapters on Neuve Chapelle , " and I congratulate you on the way in which you have told the story so accurately , and yet without attaching blame to anyone .sx .. " .sx More surprisingly this camp also included Field Marshal Lord Wavell , who reviewed several volumes in the Times Literary Supplement .sx In 1949 he described the series as " the best official military history yet written " possibly because he shared Edmonds's view that many British generals in France and Flanders had believed that they were engaged in " Open Warfare at the Halt " but in reality " warfare on the Western Front after 1914 was Siege Warfare and should have been treated as such " .sx However , some readers thought that he had gone too far to meet the wishes of his informants and that his books were anodyne .sx Sir William Robertson read one draft and wrote that " It leaves the same taste behind it as when one drinks skimmed milk .sx I suppose he wished to avoid having trouble with anyone as to what he says , and therefore leaves out most of what is worth saying .sx " And thirdly , there were those like Liddell Hart , whose view of the high command's respect for the truth was very largely soured by the fact that Edmonds often told him what he really believed in private but would not say the same thing in print .sx Liddell Hart believed that Edmonds's practice of covering up the deficiencies of the high command meant that he was only storing up trouble for the future .sx " Any writer of history " he informed Edmonds in June 1934 , " who helps to flatter the 'brasshat's' self-delusion as to the respect in which he is held , is preparing the country for a greater disaster " .sx His books were a qualified success when measured against the self - imposed task of instructing young officers but concealing the worst mistakes of their seniors .sx Some of the evidence which Edmonds had concealed remained hidden for a long time .sx As late as 1952 the publication of Robert Blake's The Private Papers of Douglas Haig could still evoke a sense of shock amongst those not already privy to what one reader of them called " the petty jealousies that pervaded high places " .sx In 1932 Lord Gort told Edmonds that if only the next generation of officers read his books they would avoid some of the worst mistakes of their predecessors .sx