French is a penetrating analysist and judicious in his assesments...valuable work... no one with a serious in the subject can afford to miss it.
The Times
This is an excellent volume, thoroughly researched, which sets out in archival detail for the first time the evolution of British strategy during the last two years of the war. This book, together with his earlier volume is now the definitive account of British strategy in the First world war.
Readers will find this book a detailed study of high academic merit, meticulously researched and referenced, but what struck this reviewer from the outset was the extent to which the author has successfully evoked a very real sense of the dilemmas confronting British policy-makers ... this book provides a fascinating study of the problems of coalition warfare.
Ian Gooderson, King's College, London, Strategic Studies, Vol. 19, No. 3, Sept '96
French's latest book is a worthy successor to his fine earlier study, British Strategy and War Aims, 1914-1916 (CH, Mar'87). Together the two volumes go a long way toward providing a more balanced and critically sympathetic account of the British policy-making elite's prosecution of WW I ... lucid and thoroughly researched book ... Readable and more comprehensive than its title implies, this book can be recommended for upper-division undergraduates and above.
F. Coetzee, George Washington University, Choice, March 1996 Vol. 33 No. 7
This volume displays the same rigorous archival research and remorseless revisionism as the previous two. Alone, it is an important contribution to First World War studies. Together with its predecessors, it represents an impressive scholarly achievement. This is history for grown-ups. It will not please everyone. Read it and decide for yourself.
J.M. Bourne, University of Birmingham, The Historical Association 1997