THE WAR, 1914-1917--MRS. WARD'S FIRST TWO JOURNEYS TO FRANCE
Mrs. Ward's feeling about the Germans, before the thunderbolt of 1914,
had been one of sincere respect and admiration for a nation of patient
brain-workers who, she believed, were honest with the truth, and had
delved farther into certain obscure fields of history in which she
herself was deeply interested than any of their contemporaries. But her
acquaintance with Germany was a book-acquaintance only. She had indeed
paid one or two visits to the Rhine and to South Germany during her
married life, and had been astonished to mark, in 1900, the growth of
wealth and prosperity in the Rhine towns, due, she was told, to
scientific protection and to the skilful use of the French indemnity.
But she had no personal friendships with Germans, and her knowledge of
their state of mind was derived only from books and newspapers and the
reports of others. Still, these had become disquieting enough, as all
the world remembers, between 1911 and 1914, but Mrs. Ward clung to the
optimistic view that the hatred and envy of England, so apparent in
German newspaper writing, was but the creed of a clique, and that the
heart of the laborious and thrifty German people was still sound. In
April, 1913, a delegation of German Professors came over to London to
take part in a historical congress; Mrs. Ward willingly assisted in
entertaining them, giving a large evening party in their honour at
Grosvenor Place. Perhaps the atmosphere was already a little strained,
but we mustered our forgotten German as best we might, and flattered
ourselves at the end that things had not gone badly. Little more than a
year afterwards the names of nearly all our guests were to be found in
the manifesto of the ninety-three German Professors--the pronouncement
which above all others in those grim days stirred Mrs. Ward's
indignation. She expressed her sense of the "bitter personal
disillusionment which I, and so many Englishmen and Englishwomen, have
suffered since this war began," in a Preface which she wrote, in 1916,
to the German edition of _England's Effort_--an edition which was
intended for circulation in German Switzerland, but found its way also,
as we afterwards heard, to a good many centres within Germany itself:
"We were lifelong lovers and admirers of a Germany which, it seems
now, never really existed except in our dreams. In the article 'A
New Reformation,' which I published in the _Nineteenth Century_ in
1889, in answer to Mr. Gladstone's critique of _Robert Elsmere_,
and in many later utterances, I have rendered whole-hearted homage
to that critical and philosophical Germany which I took to be the
real Germany, and hailed as the home of liberal and humane ideas.
And now! In that amazing manifesto of the German Professors at the
opening of the War, there were names of men--that of Adolf Harnack,
for instance--which had never been mentioned in English scholarly
circles before August, 1914, except with sympathy and admiration,
even by those who sharply differed from the views they represented.
We held them to be servants of truth, incapable therefore of
acquiescence in a tyrannous lie. We held them also to be scholars,
incapable therefore of falsifying facts and ignoring documents in
their own interest. But in that astonishing manifesto, not only was
the cry of Belgium wholly repulsed, but those very men who had
taught Europe to respect evidence and to deal scrupulously with
documents, when it was a question of Classical antiquity, or early
Christianity, now, when it was a question of justifying the crime
of their country, of defending the Government of which they were
the salaried officials, threw evidence and documents to the winds.
How many of those who signed the professorial manifesto had ever
read the British White Paper, and the French Yellow Book, or, if
they had read them, had ever given to those damning records of
Germany's attack on Europe, and of the vain efforts of the Allies
to hold her back, one fraction of that honest and impartial study
of which a newly discovered Greek inscription, or a fragment of a
lost Gospel, would have been certain at their hands?"
It was this feeling of the betrayal of high standards and ideals which
had meant much to her in earlier life, coupled with the emergence of a
native ferocity unguessed before (for _we_ had not lived through 1870),
that went so deep with Mrs. Ward. But there were at least no personal
friendships to break. With France, on the other hand, her ties had, as
we know, been close and intimate from the beginning, so that her heart
went out to the trials and agonies of her French friends with a peculiar
poignancy. M. Chevrillon, her principal correspondent, gave her in a
series of letters, from November, 1914, onwards, a wonderful picture of
the sufferings, the heroisms and the moods of France; she replied--to
this lover of Meredith!--with her reading of the English scene:
"STOCKS,
"_November 23, 1914_.
"We are indeed no less absorbed in the War than you. And yet,
perhaps, there is not that _unrelenting_ pressure on nerve and
recollection in this country, 'set in the silver sea' and so far
inviolate, which there must be for you, who have this cruel and
powerful enemy at your gates and in your midst, and can never
forget the fact for a moment. That, of course, is the explanation
of the recent slackening of recruiting here. The classes to whom
education and social life have taught imagination are miserable and
shamed before these great football gatherings, which bring no
recruits--'but my people do not understand, and Israel doth not
consider. They have eyes and see not; ears have they but they hear
not.' One little raid on the East Coast--a village burnt, a few
hundred men killed on English soil--then indeed we should see an
England in arms. Meanwhile, compared with any England we have ever
seen, it _is_ an England in arms. Every town of any size has its
camp, the roads are full of soldiers, and they are billeted in our
houses. No such sight, of course, has ever been seen in our day.
And yet how quickly one accustoms oneself to it, and to all the
other accompaniments of war! The new recruits are mostly excellent
material. Dorothy and I motored over early one morning last week to
Aston Clinton Park to see the King inspect a large gathering of
recruits. It was a beautiful morning, with the misty Chilterns
looking down upon the wide stretches of the park, and the bodies of
drilling men. The King must have been up early, for he had
inspected the camp at ten (thirty-five miles from London) and was
in the park by eleven. There was no ceremony whatever, and only a
few neighbours and children looking on. It had been elaborately
announced that he would inspect troops that day in Norfolk! The men
were only in the early stages, but they were mostly of fine
physique--miners from Northumberland a great many of them. The
difficulty is officers. They have to accept them now, either so
young, or so elderly! And these well-to-do workmen of twenty-five
or thirty don't like being ordered about by lads of nineteen. But
the lads of nineteen are shaping, too, very fast.
"We are so sorry for your poor niece, and for all the other
sufferers you tell us of. I have five nephews fighting, and of
course innumerable friends. Arnold is in Egypt with his Yeomanry.
One dreads to open _The Times_, day after day. The most tragic loss
I know so far is that of the Edward Cecils' only boy--grandson of
the late Lord Salisbury, and Admiral Maxse, the Beauchamp of
_Beauchamp's Career_. I saw him last as a delightful chattering boy
of eleven--so clever, so handsome, just what Beauchamp might have
been at his age! He was missing on September 2, and was only
announced as killed two days ago."
The first year and a half of the War was a time of great anxiety and
strain for Mrs. Ward, both in the literary and the practical fields.
Besides her unremitting literary work she pushed through, by means of
the "Joint Advisory Committee," an exhaustive inquiry into the working
of the existing system of soldiers' pensions and pressed certain
recommendations, as a result, upon the War Office; she was confronted by
a partial falling-off in the subscriptions to her Play Centres, and was
obliged to introduce economies and curtailments which cost her much
anxious thought; she converted the Settlement into a temporary hostel
for Belgian Refugees; and, above all, she carried through, between
October, 1914, and the summer of 1915, a complete reorganization of the
Passmore Edwards Settlement, converting it from a men's into a women's
settlement. There were many reasons, even apart from the growing
pressure on men of military age to enlist in the New Armies, which had
for some time made such a change desirable in the eyes of Mrs. Ward and
of a majority of the Council; chief among these being the need for a
body of trained voluntary workers to carry out, for St. Pancras, the
mass of social legislation that had been passed since the foundation of
the Settlement, and to take their part in the work of School Care
Committees, Schools for Mothers and so forth. Male Residents, being
occupied with their own work during the day, were not available for such
things; but amongst women it was believed that a body possessing
sufficient leisure and enthusiasm for social service to make a real mark
in the life of the neighbourhood, would not be difficult to find. The
change was not accomplished without strenuous opposition from the
existing Warden and some of the Residents, but Mrs. Ward went
methodically to work, getting the Council to appoint a Committee with
powers to inquire and report. She found also that her old friend and
supporter, the Duke of Bedford, was strongly in favour of the change,
and would be ready to provide, for three years, about two-thirds of the
annual sum required for the maintenance of a Women's Settlement. This
argument was decisive, and the Council finally adopted the Report of the
Special Committee in May, 1915. Mrs. Ward had the happiness of seeing,
during the remaining years of the War, her hopes for the usefulness of
the new venture very largely fulfilled, under the able guidance of Miss
Hilda Oakeley, who was appointed Warden of the Settlement in August,
1915.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Ward felt herself in danger of seeing her usual means of
livelihood cut from beneath her feet during this first period of the
War. For one result of the vast upheaval in our social conditions was
that the circulation of all novels went down with a run, and it was not
until the War had made a certain dismal routine of its own, in the needs
of hospitals, munition-centres, soldiers' and officers' clubs and the
like, that the national taste for the reading of fiction reasserted
itself. Till then Mrs. Ward relied mainly on her American public, which
was still untouched; but the pressure of work was never for an instant
relaxed, and fortunately she still found her greatest solace and relief
from present cares in the writing of books. "I never felt more inclined
to spin tales, which is a great comfort," she wrote in January, 1915,
but as yet she could not face the thought of weaving the War into their
fabric, and took refuge instead in the summer of that year in the making
of a story of Oxford life, as she had known it in her youth--an
occupation that gave her a quiet joy, providing a "wind-warm space" into
which she could retreat from the horrors of the outer world. The
compulsory retrenchments of the War years came also to her aid, in
reducing the _personnel_ employed at Stocks, while Stocks itself was
usually let in the summer and Grosvenor Place in the winter; but still
the struggle was an arduous one, leaving its mark upon her in the
growing whiteness of her hair, the growing fragility and pallor of her
look. Sleeplessness became an ever greater difficulty in these years,
but on the other hand her old complaint in the right side had grown less
troublesome, so that standing and walking were more possible than of
old. Had it not been for this improvement she would have been physically
incapable of carrying out the task laid upon her, swiftly and
unexpectedly, in January, 1916, when Theodore Roosevelt wrote to her
from Oyster Bay to beg her to tell America what England was doing in the
War.
_December 27, 1915._
MY DEAR MRS. WARD,--
The War has been, on the whole, well presented in America from the
French side. We do not think justice has been done to the English
side. I attribute this in part to the rather odd working of the
censorship in hands not accustomed to the censorship. I wish that
some writer like yourself could, in a series of articles, put
vividly before our people what the English people are doing, what
the actual life of the men in the trenches is, what is actually
being done by the straight and decent capitalist, who is not
concerned with making a profit, but with serving his country, and
by the straight and decent labouring man, who is not thinking of
striking for higher wages, but is trying to help his comrades in
the trenches. What I would like our people to visualize is the
effort, the resolution and the self-sacrifice of the English men
and women who are determined to see this war through. Just at
present England is in much the same strait that we were in in our
Civil War toward the end of 1862, and during the opening months of
1863. That was the time when we needed to have our case put before
the people of England--when men as diverse as Gladstone, Carlyle
and the after-time Marquis of Salisbury were all strongly against
us. There is not a human being more fitted to present this matter
as it should be presented than you are. I do hope you will
undertake the task.
Faithfully yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
The letter reached Mrs. Ward at Stocks on Monday, January 10, 1916, by
the evening post. She felt at once that she must respond to such a call,
though the manner of doing so was still dim to her. But she consulted
her friends, C. F. G. Masterman and Sir Gilbert Parker, at "Wellington
House" (at that time the Government Propaganda Department), and found
that they took Mr. Roosevelt's letter quite as seriously as she did
herself. They showed her specimens of what the American papers were
saying about England, her blunders, her slackers and her shirkers, till
Mrs. Ward thrilled to the task and felt a longing to be up and at it.
The next step was to see Sir Edward Grey (then Foreign Minister), to
whom she had also sent a copy of the letter. He asked her to come to his
house in Eccleston Square, whither accordingly she went early on January
20.
"They showed me into the dining-room," she wrote to J. P. T., "and
he came down to say that he had asked Lord Robert Cecil and Sir
Arthur Nicolson to come too, and that they were upstairs. So then
we went into his library sitting-room, a charming room full of
books, and there were the other two. They all took Roosevelt's
letter very seriously, and there is no question but that I must do
my best to carry it out. I simply felt after Edward Grey had spoken
his mind that, money or no money, strength or fatigue, I was under
orders and must just go on. I said that I should like to go to
France, just for the sake of giving some life and colour to the
articles--and that a novelist could not work from films, however
good. They agreed.
"'And would you like to have a look at the Fleet?' said Lord
Robert.
"I said that I had not ventured to suggest it, but that of course
anything that gave picturesqueness and novelty--i.e. a woman being
allowed to visit the Fleet--would help the articles.
"I gave a little outline of what I proposed, beginning with the
unpreparedness of England. On that Edward Grey spoke at some
length--the utter absence of any wish for war in this country, or
thought of war. Even those centres that had suffered most from
German competition had never thought of war. No one wished for it.
I thought of his long, long struggle for peace. It was pathetic to
hear him talking so simply--with such complete conviction.
"I was rather more than half an hour with them. Sir Edward took me
downstairs, said it was 'good of me' to be willing to undertake it,
and I went off feeling the die was cast."
A luncheon with Mr. Lloyd George--then Minister of Munitions--who gladly
offered her every possible facility for seeing the great
munition-centres that had by that time altered the face of England, and
the plan for carrying out her task began to shape itself in her mind. A
tour of ten days or so through the principal munition-works, ranging
from Birmingham to the Clyde, then a dash to the Fleet, lying in the
Firth of Cromarty, then south once more and across the Straits to see
the "back of the Army" in France. It may be imagined what busy
co-ordination of arrangements was necessary between the Ministry of
Munitions, the Admiralty and the War Office, before all the details of
the tour were settled, but by the aid of "Wellington House" all was
hustled through in a short time, so that Mrs. Ward was off on her round
of the great towns by January 31. To her, of course, the human interest
of the scene was the all-important thing--the spectacle of the mixture
of classes in the vast factories, the high-school mistresses, the
parsons, the tailors' and drapers' assistants handling their machines
as lovingly as the born engineers--the enormous sheds-full of women and
girls of many diverse types working together with one common impulse,
and protesting against the cutting down of their twelve hours' day! She
was taken everywhere and shown everything (accompanied this time by Miss
Churcher), seeing in the space of ten days the munition-works at
Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Darlington, Middlesbrough, Newcastle and
the Clyde. Then she returned home for a few days, to fix her impressions
in an ordered mass of notes, before leaving again on February 15 for the
far north, armed with an Admiralty permit and an invitation from Sir
John Jellicoe to spend a couple of nights in his house at Invergordon.
It was, of course, an unheard-of thing for a woman to visit the Fleet in
war-time, but, once the barriers passed, the sailors were so glad to see
her! Withdrawn from the common life in their iron, sleepless world, they
welcomed this break in their routine as much as she did the chance it
gave her of a wholly unique experience. She told the tale of her
adventures both in a letter to Mr. Ward and in notes written down at the
time:
"_February 16, 1916._
"Such a journey! Heavy snow-storm in the night, and we were held up
for three hours on the highest part of the line between Kingussie
and Aviemore. But at Invergordon a group of naval officers
appeared. A great swell [Sir Thomas Jerram] detached himself and
came up to me. 'Mrs. Ward? Sir John has asked me to look after
you.' We twinkled at each other, both seeing the comedy of the
situation. 'Now then, what can I do for you? Will you be at
Invergordon pier to-morrow at eleven? and come and lunch with me on
the Flagship? Then afterwards you shall see the destroyers come in
and anything else we can show you. Will that suit you?' So he
disappears and I journey on to Kildary, five miles, with a jolly
young sailor just returned from catching contraband in the North
Sea, and going up to Thurso in charge of the mail."
She spent a quiet evening at Sir John Jellicoe's house (the Admiral
himself being away). Her notes continue the story:
"Looked out into the snowy moonlight--the Frith steely grey--the
hills opposite black and white--a pale sky--black shapes on the
water--no lights except from a ship on the inlet (the hospital
ship).
"Next day--an open car--bitterly cold--through the snow and wind.
At the pier--a young officer, Admiral Jerram's Flag Lieutenant.
'The Admiral wished to know if you would like him to take you round
the Fleet. If so, we will pick him up at the Flagship.' The
barge--very comfortable--with a cabin--and an outer seat--sped
through the water. We stopped at the Flagship and the Admiral
stepped in. We sped on past the _Erin_--one of the Turkish cruisers
impounded at the beginning of the war--the _Iron Duke_, the
_Centurion_, _Monarch_, _Thunderer_--to the hospital ship _China_.
The Admiral pointed out the three cruisers near the entrance to the
harbour--under Sir Robert Arbuthnot--also the hull of the poor
_Natal_--with buoys at either end--two men walking on her.
"At luncheon--Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Jerram on my left, Sir Robert
Arbuthnot, commanding the cruiser squadron, on my right. Captain
Field and Mrs. Field. Commander Goldie--Flag Lieutenant Boissier,
and a couple of other officers and their wives.
"In the barge I had shown the Admiral Roosevelt's letter. Sir
Robert Arbuthnot spoke to me about it at luncheon, and very kindly.
They all seemed to feel that it was a tough task, not of my
seeking, and showed wonderful sympathy and understanding. After
lunch Captain Field was told off to show me the ship. Thrilling to
see a ship in war-time, that might be in action any moment. The
loading of the guns--the wireless rooms--the look down to the
engine deck--the anchor held by the three great chains--the
middies' quarters--the officers' ward-room. The brains of the
ship--men trained to transmit signals from the fire-control above
to all parts of the ship, directing the guns. The middies'
chests--great black and grey boxes--holding all a middy's worldly
goods. He opens one--shows the photos inside.--The senior middy, a
fair-haired boy, like Humphry Sandwith--the others younger. Their
pleasant room, with its pictures, magazines and books. Spaces where
the wounded can be temporarily placed during action.
"The chart of the North Sea, and the ship-stations. Lines radiating
out in all directions--every dot on them a ship.
"After going through the ship we went to look at the destroyer
which the Admiral had ordered alongside. Commanded by Mr.
Leveson-Gower, son of the Lord Granville who was Foreign Secretary,
and nephew of 'Freddy.' The two torpedo tubes on the destroyer are
moved to the side, so that we see how it discharges them. The guns
very small--the whole ship, which carries 100 men, seems almost on
the water-line--is constantly a-wash except for the cabin and the
bridge. But on a dark night in the high seas, 'we are always so
glad to see them!--they are the guards of the big ships--or we are
the hens, and they are the chickens.'
"Naval character--the close relations between officers and men
necessitated by the ship's life. 'The men are splendid.' How good
they are to the officers--'have a cup of coffee, sir, and lie down
a bit.'--Splendidly healthy--in spite of the habitually broken
sleep. Thursday afternoons (making and mending)--practically the
naval half-holiday.
"Talk at tea with Captain and Mrs. Field and Boissier and Commander
Goldie. They praise the book, _Naval Occasions_. No sentiment
possible in the Navy--_in speech_. The life could not be endured
often, unless it were _jested through_. Men meet and part with a
laugh--absurdity of sentimental accounts. Life on a
destroyer--these young fellows absolute masters--their talk when
they come in--'By Jove, I nearly lost the ship last night--awful
sea--I was right on the rocks.'--Their life is always in their
hands."
Writing a week later to "Aunt Fan," she added one further remark about
the Captain of the ship--"so quietly full of care for his men--and so
certain, one could see, that Germany would never actually give in
without trying something desperate against our fleet." Little more than
three months later, Germany tried her desperate stroke, tried it and
lost, but at what a cost to English sailormen! The noble officer who had
sat next to Mrs. Ward at luncheon in the Admiral's flagship, Sir Robert
Arbuthnot, went down with his battle-cruiser, while on either side of
him occurred the losses which shook, for one terrible day, England's
faith in her fleet. Mrs. Ward wrote on June 6 to Katharine Lyttelton:
"Yes, indeed, Sir Robert Arbuthnot's cruiser squadron was at
Cromarty when I was there, and he sat next me at luncheon on the
Flagship. I _particularly_ liked him--one of those modest,
efficient naval men whose absolute courage and nerve, no less than
their absolute humanity, one would trust in any emergency. I
remember Sir Thomas Jerram, on my other side, saying in my
ear--'The man to your right is one of the most rising men in the
Navy.' And the line of cruisers in front of the Dreadnoughts, as I
saw them in the February dawn, stretching towards the harbour
entrance, will always remain with me."
Meanwhile the preparations for her journey to France had been pushed
forward by "Wellington House," so that only four days after her return
from Invergordon all was ready for her departure for Le Havre. She went
(this time with Dorothy) as the guest of the Foreign Office, recommended
by them to the good offices of the Army. She was first to be given some
idea of the vast organization of the Base at Le Havre, and then sent on
by motor to Rouen, Abbeville, Étaples and Boulogne. A programme
representing almost every branch of the unending activities of the "Back
of the Army" had been worked out for her, but she was warned that she
could not be allowed to enter the "War Zone." Once in France, however,
it was not long before this prohibition broke down, though not through
any importunity of hers.
The marvellous spectacle unrolled itself before her, quietly and
methodically, while her guides expounded to her the meaning of what she
saw and the bearing of every movement at the Base upon the lives of the
men in the front line. General Asser himself, commanding at Le Havre,
devoted a whole afternoon to taking her through the docks and
store-sheds of the port, "so that one had a dim idea," as she wrote to
her husband, "of the amazing organization that has sprung up here. It
explains a good deal, too, of the five millions a day!" But as a matter
of fact, the thing which impressed her most at Le Havre was the
'make-over department,' where all the rubbish brought down from the
Front, from bully-beef tins to broken boots, was collected together and
boiled down (metaphorically speaking) into something useful, so that
many thousands a week were thus saved to the taxpayer at home. "All the
creation of Colonel Davies, who has saved the Government thousands and
thousands of pounds. Such a thing has never been done before!"
Similarly, at Rouen (whither she drove on February 26--fifty
miles--through blinding snow) she was fascinated by the motor-transport
department--"the biggest thing of its kind in France--the creation of
one man, Colonel Barnes, who started with 'two balls of string and a
packet of nails,' and is now dealing with 40,000 vehicles."
Another snowy and Arctic drive from Rouen to Dieppe, and on to
Abbeville, where a wonderful piece of news awaited them.
_To T. H. W._
"_February 29, 1916._
..."After lunch Colonel Schofield [their guide] went out to find
the British Headquarters and report. Dorothy and I went up to the
cathedral, and on emerging from it met the Colonel with another
officer, who introduced himself as Colonel Dalrymple White, M.P. 'I
have news for you, Mrs. Ward, which I think will change your
plans!' I looked at him rather aghast, wondering if I was to be
suddenly sent home! 'There is an invitation for you from G.H.Q.,
and we have been telephoning about, trying to find you. Great luck
that Colonel Schofield looked in just now.' Whereupon it appeared
that 'by the wish of the Foreign Office,' G.H.Q. had invited me for
two days, and that an officer would call for me at Boulogne on
Wednesday morning, and take me to the place which no one here
mentions but with bated breath, and which I will not write! [St.
Omer.] I was naturally thrilled, but I confess I am in terror of
being in their way, and also of not being able to write anything
the least adequate to such an opportunity. However it could not of
course be refused."
A long day at Étaples intervened between this little scene and the
arrival at G.H.Q.--a day devoted not only to an inspection of some of
the great hospitals, but also to a more unusual experience. Étaples was
the scene of a huge training-camp where troops from England received
their final "polish" before going up to the Front; amongst other
things, they were taught how to throw bombs, and Mrs. Ward was taken to
see them do it. "We climb to the very top of the slope," she wrote in
her journal at the time, "and over its crest to see some live
bomb-practice. A hollow in the sand, three dummy figures twenty yards
away--a parapet and a young soldier with three different bombs, that
explode by a time-fuse. He throws--we crouch low behind the parapet of
sand-bags--a few seconds, then a fierce report. We rise. One of the
dummy figures is half wrecked, only a few fragments of the bomb
surviving. One thinks of it descending in a group of men, and one
remembers the huge hospitals behind us. War begins to seem to me more
and more horrible and intolerable."
The next day, March 1, they were taken in charge at Boulogne by Captain
H. C. Roberts, sent thither by G.H.Q. to fetch them, and motored through
a more spring-like land to St. Omer, where they took up their quarters
for two nights in the "Visitors' Château" (the Château de la Tour
Blanche). Captain Roberts said that his orders were to take them as near
to the battle-line as he safely could, and accordingly they started out
early in the afternoon in the direction of Richebourg St. Vaast, calling
on the way at Merville, the headquarters of General Pinney and the 35th
Division. The General came out to see his visitors and said that, having
an hour to spare, he would take them to the Line himself. He and Mrs.
Ward went ahead in the General's car, Dorothy and Captain Roberts
following behind. At Richebourg St. Vaast the road became so much broken
by shell-holes that they got out and walked, and General Pinney informed
Mrs. Ward calmly that she was now "actually in the battle," for the
British guns were bellowing from behind them. Early the next morning she
wrote down the following notes of what ensued:
"Richebourg St. Vaast--a ruined village, the church in fragments--a
few walls and arches standing. The crucifix on a bit of wall
untouched. Just beyond, General Pinney captured a gunner and heard
that a battery was close by to our right. We were led there through
seas of mud. Two bright-faced young officers. One gives me a hand
through the mud, and down into the dug-out of the gun. There it
is--its muzzle just showing in the dark, nine or ten shells lying
in front of it. One is put in. We stand back and put our fingers in
our ears. An old artillery-man says 'Look straight at the gun,
ma'am.' It fires--the cartridge-case drops out. The shock not so
great as I had imagined. Has the shell fallen on a German trench,
and with what result! They give us the cartridge-case to take home.
"After firing the gun we walked on along the road. General Pinney
talks of taking us to the entrance of the communication-trench. But
Captain Roberts is obviously nervous. The battery we have just left
crashes away behind us, and the firing generally seems to grow
hotter. I suggest turning back, and Captain Roberts approves. 'You
have been nearer the actual fighting than any woman has been in
this war--not even a nurse has been so close,' says the General.
Neuve Chapelle a mile and a half away to the north behind some tall
poplars. In front within a mile, first some ruined
buildings--immediately beyond them our trenches--then the Germans,
within a hundred yards of each other.
"As we were going up, we had seen parties of men sitting along the
edge of the fields, with their rifles and field kit beside them,
waiting for sunset. Now, as we return, and the sun is sinking fast
to the horizon, we pass them--platoon after platoon--at
intervals--going up towards the trenches. The spacing of these
groups along the road, and the timing of them, is a difficult piece
of staff-work. The faces of the men quiet and cheerful, a little
subdued whistling here and there--but generally serious. And how
young! 'War,' says the General beside me, 'is crass folly! _crass_
folly! nothing else. We want new forms of religion--the old seem to
have failed us. Miracle and dogma are no use. We want a new
prophet, a new Messiah!'"
Mrs. Ward left her new friend with a feeling of astonishment at having
found so kindred a spirit in so strange a scene.
The next day they were up betimes and on their way to Cassel and
Westoutre, there to obtain permits, at the Canadian headquarters, for
the ascent of the Scherpenberg Hill, in order that Mrs. Ward might
behold Ypres and the Salient. There had been a British attack, that
morning, in the region of the Ypres-Comines Canal; it had succeeded,
and there was a sense of elation in the air. But, by an ironic chance,
Mrs. Ward had heard by the mail that reached the Château a far different
piece of news, and as she drove through the ruined Belgian
villages--through Poperinghe and Locre--dodging and turning so as to
avoid roads recently shelled, her mind was filled with one overmastering
thought--the death of Henry James, her countryman.[34]
But now they are at the foot of the Scherpenberg Hill. Her journal
continues:
"A picket of soldiers belonging to the Canadian Division stops us,
and we show our passes. Then we begin to mount the hill (about as
steep as that above Stocks Cottage), but Captain Roberts pulls me
up, and with various halts at last we are on the top, passing a
dug-out for shelter in case of shells on the way. At the top a
windmill--some Tommies playing football. Two stout lasses driving a
rustic cart with two horses. We go to the windmill and, sheltering
behind its supports (for nobody must be seen on the sky-line), look
out north-east and east. Far away on the horizon the mists lift for
a moment, and a great ghost looks out--the ruined tower of Ypres.
You see that half its top is torn away. A flash! from what seem to
be the ruins at its base. Another! It is the English guns speaking
from the lines between us and Ypres--and as we watch, we see the
columns of white smoke rising from the German lines as they burst.
Then it is the German turn, and we see a couple of their shells
bursting on our lines, between Vlamertinghe and Dickebusch.
Hark--the rattle of the machine-guns from, as it were, a point just
below us to the left, and again the roar of the howitzers. There,
on the horizon, is the ridge of Messines, Wytschœte, and near by
the hill and village of Kemmel, which has been shelled to bits.
Along that distant ridge run the German trenches, line upon line.
One can see them plainly without a glass. At last we are within
actual sight of the _Great Aggression_--the nation and the army
which have defied the laws of God and man, and left their fresh and
damning mark to all time on the history of Europe and on this old,
old land on which we are looking. In front of us the Zillebeke
Lake, beyond it Hooge--Hill 60 lost in the shadows, and that famous
spot where, on the afternoon of November 11, the 'thin red line'
withstood the onset of the Prussian Guard. The Salient lies there
before us, and one's heart trembles thinking of all the gallant
life laid down there, and all the issues that have hung upon the
fight for it."
So, with gas-helmets in hand, they retraced their steps down the hill,
finding at the bottom that the kind Canadian sentries had cut steps for
Mrs. Ward down the steep, slippery bank, and on to see General Plumer at
Cassel. With him and with Lord Cavan--the future heroes of the Italian
War--Mrs. Ward had half an hour's memorable talk, returning afterwards
to the Visitors' Château in time to pack and depart that same evening
for Boulogne. Next day they sailed in the "Leave boat"--"all swathed in
life-belts, and the good boat escorted (so wrote D. M. W.) by a
destroyer and a torpedo-boat, and ringed round with mine-sweepers!" In
such pomp of modern war did Mrs. Ward return.
It now remained for her to put into shape the impressions gathered in
these five breathless weeks, and this she did during some forty-five
days of work at very high pressure, putting what she had to say into the
form of "Letters to an American Friend." The Letters were sent hot to
the Press on the American side as quickly as Mrs. Ward could mail them,
appearing in a number of newspapers controlled by one of the great
"Syndicates"; then Scribner's published them in book form at the end of
May, with a preface by Mr. Choate. Here, with a little more leisure for
revision, the little book, under the title of _England's Effort_, came
out on June 8, incidentally giving to Mrs. Ward the pleasant opportunity
of a renewal of her old acquaintance with Lord Rosebery, whom she had
invited to write a preface to it. She went over, full of doubt, to
Mentmore one May afternoon, having heard that he was there, "quite
alone" (as she wrote to M. Chevrillon), "driving about in a high
mid-Victorian phaeton, with a postilion!" Knowing that he was never
strong, she fully expected a refusal, but found instead that he had
already done what she asked, being deeply moved by the proofs that she
had sent him. She was much touched, and the friendship was cemented, a
few days later, by a return visit that he paid to Stocks, all in its May
green, when he could not contain himself on the beauty of the place, or
the incomparable advantages it possessed over "such a British Museum as
Mentmore!"
_England's Effort_ reached a dejected world in the nick of time. Our
national habit of "grousing" in public, and of hanging our dirty linen
on every possible clothes-line, had naturally disposed both ourselves
and the outer world to under-estimate our vast achievements. This little
book set us right both with the home front and with our foreign critics.
It penetrated into every corner of the world and was translated into
every civilized language, while Mrs. Ward constantly received letters
about it, not only from friends, but from total strangers--from dwellers
in Mexico, South America, Japan, Australia and India, not to mention
France and Italy, thanking her for her immense service, and expressing
astonishment at the facts that she had brought to light. The
_Preussische Jahrbücher_ reviewed it with great respect; the Japanese
Ambassador, Viscount Chinda, was urgently recommended by King George to
read it, and afterwards contributed a preface to the Japanese edition.
And, as Principal Heberden of Brasenose reported to her, the burden of
comment among his friends always ended with the feeling that "the most
remarkable fact about the book is Mrs. Humphry Ward's own astonishing
effort. Certainly the nation owes her much, for no other author could
have attracted so much attention in America." A year later, it was
asserted by many Americans, with every accent of conviction, that but
for _England's Effort_ and the public opinion that it stirred, President
Wilson might have delayed still longer than he did in bringing America
in.
In all the business arrangements made for the "little book" in America,
Mrs. Ward had had the constant help and support of her beloved cousin,
Fred Whitridge, while in England not only the publication, but the
voluminous arrangements for translation, were in the hands of Reginald
Smith. By a cruel stroke of fate, both these devoted friends were taken
from her in the same week--the last week of December, 1916--and Mrs.
Ward was left to carry on as best she might, without "the tender humour
and the fire of sense" in the "good eyes" of the one, or the wisdom,
strength and kindness that had always been her portion in so rich a
measure from the other. To Mrs. Smith (herself the daughter of George
Murray Smith), she wrote after the funeral of "Mr. Reginald":
"I watched in Oxford Street, till the car had passed northwards out
of sight, and said good-bye with tears to that good man and
faithful friend it bore away.... Your husband has been to me
shelter and comfort, advice and help, through many years. I feel as
if a great tree had fallen under whose boughs I had sheltered...."
Never was the writing of books the same joy to Mrs. Ward after this.
Other publishers arose with whom she established, as was her wont, good
and friendly relations, but with the death of Reginald Smith it was as
if a veil had descended between her and this chief solace of her
declining years.
* * * * *
Already, in the autumn of 1916, Mrs. Ward was thinking--in consultation
with Wellington House--of a possible return to France, mainly in order,
this time, to visit some of the regions behind the French front which
had suffered most cruelly in 1914. She wished to bring home to the
English-speaking world, which was apt to forget such things, some of the
undying wrongs of France. M. Chevrillon obtained for her the ear of the
French War Office, and meanwhile Mrs. Ward applied once more to Sir
Edward Grey and to General Charteris, head of the British Intelligence
Department in France (with whom she had made friends on her first
journey) for permission to spend another two or three days behind the
British front. Here, however, the difficulty arose that since Mrs.
Ward's first visit, some other ladies, reading _England's Effort_, had
been clamorous for the same privileges, so that the much-tried War
Office had been obliged to lay down a rigid rule against the admission
of "any more ladies," as Sir Edward Grey wrote, "within the military
zone of the British Armies." Sir Edward did not think that any exception
could be made, but not so General Charteris. On November 9, Lord Onslow,
then serving in the War Office, wrote to Mrs. Ward that:
"General Charteris fully recognizes the valuable effect which your
first book produced upon the public, and would consequently expect
similar results from a further work of yours. He is, therefore,
disposed to do everything in his power to assist you, and he thinks
it possible that perhaps an exception to the general rule might be
made on public grounds. But it would have to be clearly understood
that in the event of your being allowed to go, it would not
constitute a precedent as regards any other ladies."
Permits, in the form of "Adjutant-General's Passes," were therefore
issued to Mrs. Ward and her daughter for a visit to the British Military
Zone from February 28 to March 4, 1917. They crossed direct to Boulogne,
and were the guests of General Headquarters from the moment that they
set foot in France.
Since their last visit, the Battle of the Somme had come and gone, and
the German Army was in the act of retreating across that tortured belt
of territory to the safe shelter of the Hindenburg Line, there to resist
our pressure for another year. But, in these weeks of early spring, the
elation of movement had gripped our Army; the Boche was in retreat; this
must, this _should_ be the deciding year! Mrs. Ward's letters from the
war zone are full of this spirit of hopefulness; not yet had Russia
crumbled in pieces, not yet had the strength of the shortened German
line revealed itself. Once more she was sent on two memorable days, from
the Visitors' Château at Agincourt, to points of vital interest on our
line, first through St. Pol, Divion and Ranchicourt, to the wooded slope
of the Bois de Bouvigny, whence she could gaze across at the Vimy Ridge,
not yet stormed by the Canadians; then, on the second day, to the very
centre of the Somme battlefield, where she stood in the midst of the
world's uttermost scene of desolation. Of the Bois de Bouvigny,
Dorothy's narrative, written down the same night, gives the following
picture:
"The car bumped slowly along a very rough track into the heart of
the wood, and stopped when it could go no farther. We got out and
walked on till soon we came to an open piece of grass-land, a
rectangular wedge, as it were, driven from the eastern edge of the
hill into the heart of the wood. We walked across it, facing east,
and saw it was pitted with shell-holes, mostly old--but not all.
In particular, one very large one had fresh moist earth cast up all
round it. Captain Fowler [their guide] asked Captain Bell a
question about it, lightly, yet with a significant _appui_ in his
tone--but the young man laughed off the question and implied that
the Boches had grown tired of troubling that particular place.
Meanwhile, the firing of our own guns behind and to the side of us
was becoming more frequent, the noise greater. Just ahead, and to
the right, the ground sloped to a valley, which we could not see,
and where we were told lay Ablain St. Nazaire and Carençy. From
this direction came the short, abrupt, but quite formidable reports
of trench-mortars. Over against us, and slightly to the right,
three or four ridges and folds of hill lay clearly
distinguishable--of which the middle back was the famous _Vimy
Ridge_, partly held to this day by the Germans. Captain Bell,
however, would not let us advance quite to the edge of the plateau,
so that we never saw exactly how the ground dropped to the lower
ground, neither did we see the crucifix of Notre Dame de Lorette at
the end of the spur. All this bit had been the scene of terrific
fighting in 1915, when it still formed part of the French line; it
had been a fight at close quarters in the beautiful wood that
closed in the open ground on which we stood, and we were told that
many bodies of poor French soldiers still lay unburied in the wood.
We turned soon to recross the bare space again, and as we did so,
fresh guns of our own opened fire, and once more I heard that
long-drawn scream of the shells over our heads that I got to know
last year."
On both these days, the "things seen," unforgettable as they were, were
filled out by most interesting conversations with two of our Army
Commanders--first with General Horne and then with Sir Henry Rawlinson,
who entertained Mrs. Ward and her daughter with a kindness that had in
it an element of pathos. Not often, in those stern days, did anyone of
the gentler sex make and pour out their tea! And in the Chauffeurs'
Mess, the Scotch chauffeur, Sloan, who for the second time was in charge
of Mrs. Ward, found himself the object of universal curiosity. "He told
Captain Fowler," wrote Mrs. Ward to her husband, "that they asked him
innumerable questions about the two ladies--no one having ever seen
such a phenomenon in these parts before. 'They were varra puzzled,' said
Sloan, 'they couldna mak' it out. But I didna tell them. I left them
thinkin'!'"
Mrs. Ward left the British zone for Paris on March 4, and after three
days of comparative rest there--renewing old acquaintance under strange
new conditions--she put herself under the charge of a kind and energetic
official of the "Maison de la Presse," M. Ponsot, for her long-planned
visit to the devastated regions of the Centre and East. Soissons, Reims
and Verdun were pronounced too dangerous for her, but she went north to
the ruins of Senlis, and heard from the lips of the old curé the
horrible tale of the German panic there, in the early days of September,
1914, the burning of the town, the murder of the Maire and the other
hostages, and of the frantic, insane excitement under which many of the
German officers seemed to be labouring. Then it was the battlefield of
the Ourcq, the scene of Maunoury's fateful flank attack, which forced
Von Kluck to halt and give battle at the Marne; a string of famous
villages--Marcilly, Barcy, Etrépilly, Vareddes--seen, alas, under a
blinding snow-storm, and at length the vision of the Marne itself,
"winding, steely-grey, through the white landscape." Mrs. Ward has
described it all, in inimitable fashion, in the seventh and eighth
Letters of _Towards the Goal_, and has there told also the ghastly tale
of the Hostages of Vareddes, which burnt itself upon her mind with the
sharpness that only the sight of the actual scene could give. Then,
leaving Paris by train for Nancy, she spent two days--seeing much of the
stout-hearted Préfet, M. Mirman--in visiting the regions overwhelmed by
the German invasion between August 20 and September 10, 1914--a period
and a theatre of the War of which we English usually have but the
dimmest idea. From the ruined farm of Léaumont she was shown, by a
French staff officer, the whole scene of these operations, spread like a
map before her, and became absorbed in the thrilling tale of the driving
back of the Bavarians by General Castelnau and the First French Army.
Then southward through the region from which the German wave had
receded, but which still bore indelible marks of the invaders' savage
fear and hatred. In _Towards the Goal_ Mrs. Ward has told the tale of
Gerbévillers and of the heroic Sœur Julie, who saved her "gros
blessés" in the teeth of some demoralized German officers, who forced
their way into the hospital. Here we can but give her general
impressions of the scene, as she recorded them in a letter to Miss
Arnold, written from Paris immediately afterwards:
"Lorraine was in some ways a spectacle to wring one's heart, the
ruined villages, the _réfugiés_ everywhere, and the faces of men
and women who had lost their all and seen the worst horrors of
human nature face to face. But there were many beautiful and
consoling things. The marvellous view from a point near Lunéville
of the eastern frontier, the French lines and the German, near the
Forêt de Paroy--a group of some hundreds of French soldiers, near
another point of the frontier, who, finding out that we were two
English ladies, cheered us vigorously as we passed through
them--the already famous Sœur Julie, of Gerbévillers, who had
been a witness of all the German crimes there, and told the story
inimitably, with native wit and Christian feeling--the beautiful
return from Nancy on a spring day across France, from East to West,
passing the great rivers, Meurthe, Meuse, Moselle, Marne--the warm
welcome of the Lorrainers--these things we shall never forget."
A rapid return to England and then, in order that her impressions of the
Fleet might not be behindhand, she was sent by special arrangement to
see Commodore Tyrwhitt, at Harwich, there to realize the immense
development of the smaller craft of the Navy, and to go "creeping and
climbing," as she describes it in _Towards the Goal_, about a submarine.
Returning to Stocks to write her second series of "Letters"--now
addressed without disguise to Mr. Roosevelt--it was not long before the
news of America's Declaration of War came in to cheer her, with an eager
telephone-message from a daughter, left in London, that "Old Glory" was
to be seen waving side by side with the Union Jack from the tower of the
House of Lords. Now surely, the happy prophecies of her soldier-friends
in France would be fulfilled: this _must_ be the deciding year! But the
months passed on; Vimy and Messines were ours, yet nothing followed, and
in August, September, October, the agonizing struggle in the mud of
Passchendæle sapped the endurance of the watchers at home more
miserably than any other three months of the War. And there, on October
11, perished a lad of twenty, bearing a name that was heart of her heart
to Mrs. Ward, Tom Arnold, the elder son of her brother, Dr. F. S.
Arnold. He had lain wounded all night in a shell-hole, and when at
length they bore him back to the Casualty Clearing-station, the little
flame of life, though it flickered and shot upwards in hope, sank again
into darkness. Tom was a lad to whose gentle soul all war was utterly
abhorrent, yet he had "joined up" without question on the earliest
possible day. Already Christopher and Arthur Selwyn, the splendid twins,
were gone, and the sons of so many friends and neighbours, gentle and
simple! About this time General Horne had invited her to come once more
to France. "But it is not at all likely I shall go (she wrote)--though,
perhaps, in the spring it might be, if the War goes on. Horrible,
horrible thought! I am more and more conscious of its horror and
hideousness every day. And yet after so much--after all these lives laid
down--not to achieve the end, and a real 'peace upon Israel'--would not
that be worst of all?"