henryp - go back and READ my post of 17 Nov 14 - 05:47 AM - the bits in Italics are quotes. I draw your attention to:

henryp: "The book's title was drawn from the expression "Lions led by donkeys" which has been widely used to compare British soldiers with their commanders."

So widely used in fact that nobody, not even Alan Clark himself, or his Tutor at Oxford the History professor Hugh Trevor Roper could provide any provenance for the quote. Previous examples and origins are attributed to variations of an old Arabian proverb which refers to "Lions led by sheep", which became "Lions commanded by Asses" during the Crimean War (1854) supposedly stated by a Russian Officer although there is no actual proof or verification of this, then the Franco-Prussian War by "The Times" in 1871 where it became "Lions led by donkeys (or jackasses)" describing not British but French Troops (This at least exists in print - The Times archives and in chapter three of the Book "Paris During the Siege" by Francisque Darcey). Now move on to 1901 where the the "Lions led by Asses" was attributed to a Colonel Grierson using it to describe Russian soldiers and their commanders during the Boxer Rebellion in 1901. By all means trot out the 1918 hearsay recollections of Evelyn, Princess Blücher, but Clark investigated this and could find no corroboration of it or any clue as who the supposed spokesman at German Headquarters was - certainly NOT Ludendorff who would be highly unlikely to describe his foes in such terms in April 1918 as recalled by Princess Blücher (Logically for a man in Ludendorff's position to do so would make himself out to be a complete and utter idiot to criticise in these terms the commanders of an enemy Army who, at the time the comment was supposed to have been made - 9th April, 1918, had successfully defeated your last ditch, all out offensive which Ludendorff had terminated four days earlier). Then there is the 1927 version and title of the book by Captain Thompson but as the subtitle of the book was - "Showing how victory in the Great War was achieved by those who made the fewest mistakes." - and as we won the Great War then again logically donkeys do not win victories over armies commanded by superior leaders.

Teribus direct quote from Wiki:

"Alan Clark based the title of his book "The Donkeys" (1961) on the phrase. Prior to publication in a letter to Hugh Trevor Roper, he asked "English soldiers, lions led by donkeys etc - can you remember who said that?" Liddell Hart, although he did not dispute the veracity of the quote, had asked Clark for its origins.[7] Whatever Trevor Roper's reply, Clark eventually used the phrase as an epigraph to The Donkeys and attributed it to a conversation between German generals Erich Ludendorff and Max Hoffmann:

Ludendorff: The English soldiers fight like lions.
Hoffmann: True. But don't we know that they are lions led by donkeys."[1][2]

The conversation was supposedly published in the memoirs of General Erich von Falkenhayn, the German chief of staff between 1914 and 1916 but the exchange and the memoirs remain UNTRACED.[1] Clark was equivocal about the source for the dialogue for many years, although in 2007 a friend Euan Graham, recalled a conversation in the mid-sixties, when Clark on being challenged as to the dialogue's provenance, looked sheepish and said "WELL I INVENTED IT"."

Take a look at those dates and study the career progression of Falkenhayn and you see he was nowhere near German Headquarters in Berlin in April 1918. So we have a rumoured, unsubstantiated remark made about an Army and its Commanders who at the time were performing remarkably well against the best the Germans could throw at them - doesn't make much sense does it? Especially when in less than 4 months German soldiers were surrendering in droves to the commanders and men of that self same army and Ludendorff was muttering (Both verified and substantiated) about "The Black Day of the German Army".