THE PRICE OF VICTORY AND THE PASSING OF A HERO.
In the old days a battle lasted a day or two at most; victory frequently
came within a few hours, and couriers were speeding away with the news
of victory or defeat before night had shrouded the stark bodies of the
slain. But in this war battles have continued for weeks; one contest has
merged into another, so that it is hard to say where one ends and
another begins. The great series of fights which we call the Battle of
Ypres began on 19th October, and did not end until 17th November; it
lasted for thirty days!
The First Battle of Ypres was not only remarkable for its long duration,
but also for the mighty armies that were arrayed against each other.
Never before in the history of the world have such huge forces struggled
for victory. During the battles of the Seven Years' War the combatants
on both sides did not exceed 120,000, and in the Napoleonic wars the
opposing armies at no time reached a total of 450,000. At Waterloo there
were but 170,000 engaged, and at Inkerman, in the Crimean War, there
were not 90,000. Some 320,000 men fought at Gravelotte[98] during the
Franco-German War of 1870-71, and at Mukden, in the Russo-Japanese War
of 1904-5, the forces engaged totalled about 510,000. These numbers sink
into insignificance compared with the multitudes who fought in Artois
and West Flanders during the thirty days of the Ypres battle. Germany
alone had not less than a million men.
* * * * *
Great was the price of victory. Britain lost at least 40,000 men, the
French and Belgians 70,000, and the Germans probably 250,000--that is,
360,000 in all--a number far exceeding the total of the whole armies
engaged in any single battle of modern history down to the close of the
nineteenth century. Whole battalions of the British army
disappeared--the 1st Coldstreams, the 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers, the 2nd
Wiltshires, and the 1st Camerons were practically wiped out. One
regiment went into the campaign 1,100 strong, and came out with only 73.
Another took 1,350 to Flanders, and had but 300 when the Battle of Ypres
was won.
[Illustration: The Defeat of the Prussian Guard near Ypres on November
11, 1914. (See page 143.)]
(_By permission of The Sphere._)]
You have already heard how the 7th Division was reduced to a shadow of
its former strength. Sir Henry Rawlinson tells us that when the division
was withdrawn to England to refit it was found that out of 400 officers
who set out from England there were only 44 left, and out of 12,000 men
only 2,336. One general, two brigadiers, nearly a dozen staff officers
had fallen, and eighteen regiments and battalions had lost their
colonels. Junior lieutenants frequently found themselves in command of a
battalion, while a brigadier was left with one or two companies. History
records no such tale of slaughter. More men fell in the Battle of Ypres
than the North lost in the whole of the American Civil War.[99]
Two striking features of this long series of contests must detain us for
a moment. The first is the extraordinary valour of the boys and elderly
men who formed a large part of the German levies. They charged in mass
again and again, and went to death in droves. The second is the even
more extraordinary defence which the British--never more than 150,000 in
number--made against overwhelming odds. There have been instances of
armies holding forces which outnumbered them four or five times for a
single day; but the British resisted for weeks against forces five times
as great. Around Ypres during the worst part of the fighting we had but
three divisions and some cavalry to meet five army corps, three of them
belonging to Germany's first line. For the best part of two days the 7th
Division of 12,000 men held a front of eight miles against 120,000! In
all the long fighting annals of Britain no such feat had ever been
performed before.
The Allies merely held their lines, yet really they won a great victory,
because they had achieved their object. They had defeated a turning
movement and a piercing movement, and had blocked the German advance to
the sea. Thereafter in the west the enemy was not free to move, save at
the will of the Allies; he was besieged from the Vosges to the North
Sea.
The British played the lion's part in the great struggle; but without
the splendid support of the French and the Belgians they could have
achieved nothing. The regular regiments of the line proved themselves to
be composed of the finest fighting material in the world; the cavalry,
playing the part of infantry, on foot and in the trenches, were no less
wonderful; and the gunners, though outmatched in numbers and weight of
artillery, showed marvellous skill and tenacity; while the citizen
soldiers, called from their peaceful pursuits to the unfamiliar work of
war, displayed the spirit of veteran troops. The great struggle round
Ypres was a soldiers' victory. There was little room for generalship;
nevertheless Sir John French, by his coolness and doggedness, by the
confidence with which he animated his men, and by the cheery good will
with which he encouraged them, must be regarded as the real inspirer of
victory.
* * * * *
In the centre of Calcutta is the famous Maidan,[100] or Esplanade, a
great space of turf and trees and gardens, which is the special glory of
the city. Here you will find monuments to the great soldiers and
statesmen who have won and kept for us "the brightest jewel in the
British crown." Perhaps the noblest of all these monuments is that which
commemorates the martial fame of Lord Roberts of Kandahar.[101]
Frederick Sleigh Roberts was born at Cawnpore[102] five years before
Queen Victoria came to the throne. He was educated in England, but when
his school days were over he returned to the land of his birth, and
became an officer in the Indian army.
Hardly had he returned when that terrible uprising of the native
soldiers which we call the Indian Mutiny began, and the first warfare
which young Roberts knew was against the well-armed and well-trained
sepoys[103] who had broken their oath of loyalty to the Queen, and were
striving to drive the British out of the peninsula.
Some years ago, when I visited India, I went, as in duty bound, to
Delhi,[104] the present capital, and the great storm centre of fighting
during the Mutiny. Memorials of that terrible time abound in Delhi.
About a mile to the north of the city is the "Ridge," a low, narrow hill
on which a band of Britons, the mere skeleton of an army, hungry,
fever-stricken, "stormed at with shot and shell," held its own against
an army of sepoys during the awful heat of an Indian summer.
From the Flagstaff Tower in which the women and children took refuge
during that dread time a road runs directly to the city, and on the
right of it is a little garden in which stands a bronze statue to John
Nicholson,[105] the hero of the siege. Close by the Nicholson statue is
the Kashmir Gate, preserved in its ruinous condition to recall the
marvellous daring of the six Britons who blew it up, and thus opened a
way for the British troops to enter the city. Roberts, as a young
subaltern of twenty-five, saw Nicholson lying wounded and dying by the
side of the road not far from this gate. Nicholson was the most
distinguished of that group of young men who by almost superhuman
devotion saved India for the Empire during the Mutiny. It was under the
influence of such men as Nicholson--men of lofty ideals of duty, of iron
resolution and unfaltering courage--and amidst scenes of the most
glorious heroism, that Roberts began his military career. Nicholson was
his type and model. When the Mutiny was at an end Roberts was a veteran
of ability and experience, and he wore the Victoria Cross on his breast.
For forty-one years he served India, taking part in all the important
campaigns, and gradually rising in the service until, in 1885, he
became Commander-in-Chief. He won great fame in the Afghanistan
campaigns, and became the idol of the Indian army, to whom he was known
as "Bobs." No Indian commander-in-chief has ever been so admired and
loved by the troops under his command. He never strove for popularity,
but he could not escape it. His men assayed him, and found him pure gold
throughout.
[Illustration: Earl Roberts of Kandahar.]
By no means was his life-work done when he left India. When disaster
succeeded disaster during the early months of the Boer War, the nation
looked to him as the one man who could pluck victory out of defeat. With
his appearance on the veldt came the turn of the tide, and after his
great march to Pretoria[106] the issue of the contest was no longer in
doubt. Full of years and honours, he might have retired from public
life, conscious that he had served his country greatly, and that his
fame was secure. But he ever "scorned delights and lived laborious
days," and when he had long passed the allotted span he devoted himself
to the task of trying to bring home to the British people the danger of
allowing their young men to grow up unprepared for that great European
war which he was convinced would come within a few short years. Alas! we
did not heed him, and when the day of battle arrived it found us
unprepared, and forced to improvise armies while strife was raging and
the fate of the Empire was hanging in the balance.
Soon after the beginning of the great war which he had foreseen, Lord
Roberts addressed the following message to the children of the Empire:--
"CHILDREN OF THE EMPIRE:
"You have all heard of the war; you have all heard of the
fighting forces sent from every part of the Empire to help the
Mother Country. Why are we fighting? Because the British Empire
does not break its promises, nor will it allow small nations to
be bullied.
"Now, the British Government promised, with all the Great Powers
of Europe, including Germany, that no army should set foot on
the territory of the little nation of Belgium without her leave;
in other words, she 'guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium.'
"Germany, however, was bent on war, and on dominating other
nations. Britain did her best to keep the peace, but Germany
(breaking her word) marched her armies into Belgium to try and
conquer France.
"Children of the Empire, this is why we are at war--to hold our
promise, to help our friends, and to keep the Flag of Liberty
flying, not only over our own Empire, but over the whole world.
"God save our King and Empire."
When Indian soldiers were summoned to help the Mother Country in her
hour of need, Lord Roberts felt a great desire to go over to France in
order to meet them face to face once more, to greet them in their own
languages, and to inspire them with some of his own dauntless courage.
"I must go and see the Indian soldiers," he said. "It is the most useful
thing I can do at this moment." He arrived in France on Wednesday, 11th
November, and next day he saw the men to whom he was bound by such
strong ties. Everywhere they greeted him with admiration and affection.
On Friday evening he was found to be suffering from chill; disease of
the lungs set in, and the old warrior, now in his eighty-second year,
had no strength to resist the attack. He gradually sank, and at 8 p.m.
on Saturday, 14th November 1914, within sound of the guns thundering
around Ypres, he died.
Lord Roberts was a man of war from his youth up, and it was fitting that
he should pass away on a battlefield, amidst the soldiers who adored
him. Officers from every corps in the British and Indian armies, and
representatives of the French army, escorted the coffin to the hall at
St. Omer where the body was laid in state, and a simple but affecting
funeral service was held. The Prince of Wales[107] was there, as well
as Prince Alexander of Teck, and all the chiefs of the army who could be
spared from their duties. By the head of the coffin stood Prince Pertab
Singh,[108] taking a last farewell of the warrior who was his old friend
and ideal.[109] The hymns, "Now the labourer's task is o'er," and "O
God, our help," were sung, and it seemed quite natural that Christian,
Hindu, and Mohammedan should all join in the service.
[Illustration: Funeral of Field-Marshal Lord Roberts: the Procession in
the Rain, on the way to St. Paul's Cathedral, London.
(_By permission of The Sphere._)]
"It was a gloomy day," says one who was present, "with frequent cold
showers; but as they took the coffin out the sun shone forth
brilliantly, drawing across a dark bank of cloud opposite a vivid and
most perfect rainbow. An aeroplane was flying out of the cloud into the
sunshine, and the trumpets of the French cavalry rang out triumphantly.
Then the minute guns started booming; the coffin, draped in the Union
Jack, was placed in a Red Cross car; and so the gallant little hero went
home from the war.
"I thought during the service of Lord Roberts, almost a boy, attending
John Nicholson's funeral at Delhi, and of all the span of life between,
and the link of simple courage and devotion to duty binding all the
varied incidents of it together, and was glad of the privilege of having
known him."
Last scene of all to end this strange, eventful history. Beneath the
dome of St. Paul's, the resting-place of Nelson and Wellington, amidst a
vast throng of the great and good of our nation, and with a sorrowing
people outside, the last words of prayer and hope were said; and when
all was over, thousands of citizens passed reverently by his grave.
"It is the most useful thing I can do at this moment:" this was the
keynote of Lord Roberts's life--to be of use to his country. There is a
lesson in these simple words for you and me. Lord Roberts was happy in
his life; he would be happier still in his death were all his
fellow-countrymen to ask with heart and voice, "What is the most useful
thing I can do for my country now and hereafter?"
[Footnote 98: See Vol. 1., pp. 102, 104, 105, 107.]
[Footnote 99: Fought between the Northern and Southern States of what is
now the United States of America, mainly on the question of slavery in
the Southern States, during 1861-65.]
[Footnote 100: _My´dan._]
[Footnote 101: Important city of South Afghanistan. In 1880 British
troops in Kandahar were besieged, but Roberts made a great march from
Kabul and relieved them.]
[Footnote 102: City of North India, on the Ganges; the scene of two
tragedies during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.]
[Footnote 103: Native infantry soldiers of the Indian army. The native
cavalry soldier is a "sowar."]
[Footnote 104: On the right bank of the Jumna. It was created capital of
India in place of Calcutta in 1911.]
[Footnote 105: British general, of great physical strength and lofty,
winning character. Born 1821, killed at Delhi 1857.]
[Footnote 106: Capital of the Transvaal. Entered by Roberts on June 5,
1900.]
[Footnote 107: The Prince of Wales went to the front as a member of Sir
John French's Staff in the middle of November 1914.]
[Footnote 108: Ruler of Jodhpur, the largest state of Rajputana, India.
He was born in 1844.]
[Footnote 109: In his book _Forty-one Years in India_, Lord Roberts
gives us a story showing the valour of this most famous of Indian
soldiers. Roberts had wounded a boar, which attacked Pertab Singh, whose
horse had fallen with him. The prince held the boar with his bare hands
until Lord Roberts was able to come up and dispatch it. The boar's head
was presented by the prince to Lord Roberts, and became one of his
cherished possessions at his country house of Englemere, Ascot.]