What did England do in the war, anyhow?
Let us have these disregarded facts also. From the shelves of history I
have pulled down and displayed the facts which our school textbooks have
suppressed; I have told the events wherein England has stood our timely
friend throughout a century; events which our implanted prejudice leads
us to ignore, or to forget; events which show that any one who says
England is our hereditary enemy might just about as well say twice two
is five.
What did England do in the war, anyhow?
They go on asking it. The propagandists, the prompted puppets, the paid
parrots of the press, go on saying these eight senseless words because
they are easy to say, since the man who can answer them is generally not
there: to every man who is a responsible master of facts we have--well,
how many?--irresponsible shouters in this country. What is your
experience? How often is it your luck--as it was mine in front of the
bulletin board--to see a fraud or a fool promptly and satisfactorily
put in his place? Make up your mind that wherever you hear any person
whatsoever, male or female, clean or unclean, dressed in jeans, or
dressed in silks and laces, inquire what England “did in the war,
anyhow?” such person either shirks knowledge, or else is a fraud or a
fool. Tell them what the man said in the street about the Kaiser and our
front yard, but don’t stop there. Tell them that in May, 1918, England
was sending men of fifty and boys of eighteen and a half to the front;
that in August, 1918, every third male available between those years
was fighting, that eight and a half million men for army and navy were
raised by the British Empire, of which Ireland’s share was two and three
tenths per cent, Wales three and seven tenths, Scotland’s eight and
three tenths, and England’s more than sixty per cent; and that this,
taken proportionately to our greater population would have amounted
to about thirteen million Americans, When the war started, the British
Empire maintained three soldiers out of every 2600 of the population;
her entire army, regular establishment, reserve and territorial forces,
amounted to seven hundred thousand men. Our casualties were three
hundred and twenty-two thousand, one hundred and eighty-two. The
casualties in the British Army were three million, forty-nine thousand,
nine hundred and seventy-one--a million more than we sent--and of these
six hundred and fifty-eight thousand, seven hundred and four, were
killed. Of her Navy, thirty-three thousand three hundred and sixty-one
were killed, six thousand four hundred and five wounded and missing;
of her merchant marine fourteen thousand six hundred and sixty-one were
killed; a total of forty-eight thousand killed--or ten per cent of all
in active service. Some of those of the merchant marine who escaped
drowning through torpedoes and mines went back to sea after being
torpedoed five, six, and seven times.
What did England do in the war, anyhow?
Through four frightful years she fought with splendor, she suffered with
splendor, she held on with splendor. The second battle of Ypres is but
one drop in the sea of her epic courage; yet it would fill full a canto
of a poem. So spent was Britain’s single line, so worn and thin,
that after all the men available were brought, gaps remained. No more
ammunition was coming to these men, the last rounds had been served.
Wet through, heavy with mud, they were shelled for three days to prevent
sleep. Many came at last to sleep standing; and being jogged awake
when officers of the line passed down the trenches, would salute and
instantly be asleep again. On the fourth day, with the Kaiser come to
watch them crumble, three lines of Huns, wave after wave of Germany’s
picked troops, fell and broke upon this single line of British--and
it held. The Kaiser, had he known of the exhausted ammunition and the
mounded dead, could have walked unarmed to the Channel. But he never
knew.
Surgeons being scantier than men at Ypres, one with a compound fracture
of the thigh had himself propped up, and thus all day worked on the
wounded at the front. He knew it meant death for him. The day over,
he let them carry him to the rear, and there, from blood-poisoning, he
died. Thus through four frightful years, the British met their duty and
their death.
There is the great story of the little penny steamers of the Thames--a
story lost amid the gigantic whole. Who will tell it right? Who will
make this drop of perfect valor shine in prose or verse for future eyes
to see? Imagine a Hoboken ferry boat, because her country needed her,
starting for San Francisco around Cape Horn, and getting there. Some ten
or eleven penny steamers under their own steam started from the Thames
down the Channel, across the Bay of Biscay, past Gibraltar, and through
the submarined Mediterranean for the River Tigris. Boats of shallow
draught were urgently needed on the River Tigris. Four or five reached
their destination. Where are the rest?
What did England do in the war, anyhow?
During 1917-1918 Britain’s armies held the enemy in three continents and
on six fronts, and cooperated with her Allies on two more fronts.
Her dead, those six hundred and fifty-eight thousand dead, lay by the
Tigris, the Zambesi, the AEgean, and across the world to Flanders’
fields. Between March 21st and April 17th, 1918, the Huns in their
drive used 127 divisions, and of these 102 were concentrated against
the British. That was in Flanders. Britain, at the same time she was
fighting in Flanders, had also at various times shared in the fighting
in Russia, Kiaochau, New Guinea, Samoa, Mesopotamia, Palestine,
Egypt, the Sudan, Cameroons, Togoland, East Africa, South West Africa,
Saloniki, Aden, Persia, and the northwest frontier of India. Britain
cleared twelve hundred thousand square miles of the enemy in
German colonies. While fighting in Mesopotamia, her soldiers were
reconstructing at the same time. They reclaimed and cultivated more than
1100 square miles of land there, which produced in consequence enough
food to save two million tons of shipping annually for the Allies. In
Palestine and Mesopotamia alone, British troops in 1917 took 23,590
prisoners. In 1918, in Palestine from September 18th to October 7th,
they took 79,000 prisoners.
What did England do in the war, anyhow?
With “French’s contemptible little army” she saved France at the
start--but I’ll skip that--except to mention that one division lost
10,000 out of 12,000 men, and 350 out of 400 officers. At Zeebrugge and
Ostend--do not forget the Vindictive--she dealt with submarines in April
and May, 1918--but I’ll skip that; I cannot set down all that she did,
either at the start, or nearing the finish, or at any particular moment
during those four years and three months that she was helping to hold
Germany off from the throat of the world; it would make a very thick
book. But I am giving you enough, I think, wherewith to answer the
ignorant, and the frauds, and the fools. Tell them that from 1916 to
1918 Great Britain increased her tillage area by four million acres:
wheat 39 per cent, barley 11, oats 35, potatoes 50--in spite of the
shortage of labor. She used wounded soldiers, college boys and girls,
boy scouts, refugees, and she produced the biggest grain crop in fifty
years. She started fourteen hundred thousand new war gardens; most
of those who worked them had worked already a long day in a munition
factory. These devoted workers increased the potato crop in 1917 by
three million tons--and thus released British provision ships to
carry our soldiers across. In that Boston speech which one of my
correspondents referred to, our Secretary of the Navy did not mention
this. Mention it yourself. And tell them about the boy scouts and the
women. Fifteen thousand of the boy scouts joined the colors, and over
fifty thousand of the younger members served in various ways at home.
Of England’s women seven million were engaged in work on munitions and
other necessaries and apparatus of war. The terrible test of that second
battle of Ypres, to which I have made brief allusion above, wrought
an industrial revolution in the manufacture of shells. The energy
of production rose at a rate which may be indicated by two or three
comparisons: In 1917 as many heavy howitzer shells were turned out in a
single day as in the whole first year of the war, as many medium shells
in five days, and as many field-gun shells in eight days. Or in other
words, 45 times as many field-gun shells, 73 times as many medium, and
365 times as many heavy howitzer shells, were turned out in 1917 as in
the first year of the war. These shells were manufactured in buildings
totaling fifteen miles in length, forty feet in breadth, with more than
ten thousand machine tools driven by seventeen miles of shafting with an
energy of twenty-five thousand horse-power and a weekly output of over
ten thousand tons’ weight of projectiles--all this largely worked by
the women of England. While the fleet had increased its personnel
from 136,000 to about 400,000, and 2,000,000 men by July, 1915, had
voluntarily enlisted in the army before England gave up her birthright
and accepted compulsory service, the women of England left their
ordinary lives to fabricate the necessaries of war. They worked at home
while their husbands, brothers, and sons fought and died on six battle
fronts abroad--six hundred and fifty-eight thousand died, remember;
do you remember the number of Americans killed in action?--less than
thirty-six thousand;--those English women worked on, seven millions of
them at least, on milk carts, motor-busses, elevators, steam engines,
and in making ammunition. Never before had any woman worked on more than
150 of the 500 different processes that go to the making of munitions.
They now handled T. N. T., and fulminate of mercury, more deadly still;
helped build guns, gun carriages, and three-and-a-half ton army cannons;
worked overhead traveling cranes for moving the boilers of battleships:
turned lathes, made every part of an aeroplane. And who were these
seven million women? The eldest daughter of a duke and the daughter of a
general won distinction in advanced munition work. The only daughter of
an old Army family broke down after a year’s work in a base hospital
in France, was ordered six months’ rest at home, but after two months
entered a munition factory as an ordinary employee and after nine
months’ work had lost but five minutes working time. The mother of
seven enlisted sons went into munitions not to be behind them in serving
England, and one of them wrote her she was probably killing more Germans
than any of the family. The stewardess of a torpedoed passenger ship
was among the few survivors. Reaching land, she got a job at a capstan
lathe. Those were the seven million women of England--daughters of
dukes, torpedoed stewardesses, and everything between.
Seven hundred thousand of these were engaged on munition work proper.
They did from 60 to 70 per cent of all the machine work on shells,
fuses, and trench warfare supplies, and 1450 of them were trained
mechanics to the Royal Flying Corps. They were employed upon practically
every operation in factory, in foundry, in laboratory, and chemical
works, of which they were physically capable; in making of gauges,
forging billets, making fuses, cartridges, bullets--“look what they can
do,” said a foreman, “ladies from homes where they sat about and were
waited upon.” They also made optical glass; drilled and tapped in
the shipyards; renewed electric wires and fittings, wound armatures;
lacquered guards for lamps and radiator fronts; repaired junction and
section boxes, fire control instruments, automatic searchlights. “We can
hardly believe our eyes,” said another foreman, “when we see the heavy
stuff brought to and from the shops in motor lorries driven by girls.
Before the war it was all carted by horses and men. The girls do the job
all right, though, and the only thing they ever complain about is that
their toes get cold.” They worked without hesitation from twelve to
fourteen hours a day, or a night, for seven days a week, and with the
voluntary sacrifice of public holidays.
That is not all, or nearly all, that the women of England did--I skip
their welfare work, recreation work, nursing--but it is enough wherewith
to answer the ignorant, or the fraud, or the fool.
What did England do in the war, anyhow?
On August 8, 1914, Lord Kitchener asked for 100,000 volunteers. He had
them within fourteen days. In the first week of September 170,000 men
enrolled, 30,000 in a single day. Eleven months later, two million had
enlisted. Ten months later, five million and forty-one thousand had
voluntarily enrolled in the Army and Navy.
In 1914 Britain had in her Royal Naval Air Service 64 aeroplanes and 800
airmen. In 1917 she had many thousand aeroplanes and 42,000 airmen. In
her Royal Flying Corps she had in 1914, 66 planes and 100 men; in 1917,
several thousand planes and men by tens of thousands. In the first nine
months of 1917 British airmen brought down 876 enemy machines and drove
down 759 out of control. From July, 1917, to June, 1918, 4102 enemy
machines were destroyed or brought down with a loss of 1213 machines.
Besides financing her own war costs she had by October, 1917, loaned
eight hundred million dollars to the Dominions and five billion five
hundred million to the Allies. She raised five billion in thirty days.
In the first eight months of 1918 she contributed to the various forms
of war loan at the average rate of one hundred and twenty-four million,
eight hundred thousand a week.
Is that enough? Enough to show what England did in the War? No, it is
not enough for such people as continue to ask what she did. Nothing
would suffice these persons. During the earlier stages of the War it
was possible that the question could be asked honestly--though never
intelligently--because the facts and figures were not at that time
always accessible. They were still piling up, they were scattered about,
mention of them was incidental and fugitive, they could be missed by
anybody who was not diligently alert to find them. To-day it is quite
otherwise. The facts and figures have been compiled, arranged, published
in accessible and convenient form; therefore to-day, the man or woman
who persists in asking what England did in the war is not honest but
dishonest or mentally spotted, and does not want to be answered. They
don’t want to know. The question is merely a camouflage of their spite,
and were every item given of the gigantic and magnificent contribution
that England made to the defeat of the Kaiser and all his works, it
would not stop their evil mouths. Not for them am I here setting forth
a part of what England did; it is for the convenience of the honest
American, who does want to know, that my collection of facts is made
from the various sources which he may not have the time or the means to
look up for himself. For his benefit I add some particulars concerning
the British Navy which kept the Kaiser out of our front yard.
Admiral Mahan said in his book--and he was an American of whose
knowledge and wisdom Congress seems to have known nothing and
cared less--“Why do English innate political conceptions of popular
representative government, of the balance of law and liberty, prevail
in North America from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific? Because the command of the sea at the decisive
era belonged to Great Britain.” We have seen that the decisive era was
when Napoleon’s mouth watered for Louisiana, and when England took her
stand behind the Monroe Doctrine.
Admiral Sims said in the second installment of his narrative The Victory
at Sea, published in The World’s Work for October, 1919, at page 619:
“... Let us suppose for a moment that an earthquake, or some other great
natural disturbance, had engulfed the British fleet at Scapa Flow. The
world would then have been at Germany’s mercy and all the destroyers the
Allies could have put upon the sea would have availed them nothing,
for the German battleships and battle cruisers could have sunk them or
driven them into their ports. Then Allied commerce would have been the
prey, not only of the submarines, which could have operated with the
utmost freedom, but of the German surface craft as well. In a few weeks
the British food supplies would have been exhausted. There would have
been an early end to the soldiers and munitions which Britain was
constantly sending to France. The United States could have sent
no forces to the Western front, and the result would have been the
surrender which the Allies themselves, in the spring of 1917, regarded
as a not remote possibility. America would then have been compelled to
face the German power alone, and to face it long before we had had an
opportunity to assemble our resources and equip our armies. The world
was preserved from all these calamities because the destroyer and the
convoy solved the problem of the submarines, and because back of these
agencies of victory lay Admiral Beatty’s squadrons, holding at arm’s
length the German surface ships while these comparatively fragile craft
were saving the liberties of the world.”
Yes. The High Seas Fleet of Germany, costing her one billion five
hundred million dollars, was bottled up. Five million five hundred
thousand tons of German shipping and one million tons of Austrian
shipping were driven off the seas or captured; oversea trade and oversea
colonies were cut off. Two million oversea Huns of fighting age were
hindered from joining the enemy. Ocean commerce and communication were
stopped for the Huns and secured to the Allies. In 1916, 2100 mines were
swept up and 89 mine sweepers lost. These mine sweepers and patrol boats
numbered 12 in 1914, and 3300 by 1918. To patrol the seas British ships
had to steam eight million miles in a single month. During the four
years of the war they transported oversea more than thirteen million
men (losing but 2700 through enemy action) as well as transporting two
million horses and mules, five hundred thousand vehicles, twenty-five
million tons of explosives, fifty-one million tons of oil and fuel, one
hundred and thirty million tons of food and other materials for the use
of the Allies. In one month three hundred and fifty-five thousand men
were carried from England to France.
It was after our present Secretary of the Navy, in his speech in Boston
to which allusion has been made, had given our navy all and the British
navy none of the credit of conveying our soldiers overseas, that Admiral
Sims repaired the singular oblivion of the Secretary. We Americans
should know the truth, he said. We had not been too accurately informed.
We did not seem to have been told by anybody, for instance, that of
the five thousand anti-submarine craft operating day and night in the
infested waters, we had 160, or 3 per cent; that of the million and a
half troops which had gone over from here in a few months, Great Britain
brought over two thirds and escorted half.
“I would like American papers to pay particular attention to the fact
that there are about 5000 anti-submarine craft in the ocean to-day,
cutting out mines, escorting troop ships, and making it possible for us
to go ahead and win this war. They can do this because the British Grand
Fleet is so powerful that the German High Seas Fleet has to stay at
home. The British Grand Fleet is the foundation stone of the cause of
the whole of the Allies.”
Thus Admiral Sims.
That is part of what England did in the war.
Note.--The author expresses thanks and acknowledgment to Pearson’s
Magazine for permission to use the passages quoted from the articles by
Admiral Sims.