before the eyes of the war-workers, of the enormous amount of munitions
now forthcoming. What I am anxious to impress upon them is the enormous
amount the Front wants and needs if it is to get a fair show. I have
no wish to belittle--even if it were possible--the war-workers’
efforts, but I do want them to understand that they cannot afford to
slacken that effort for a single day if an adequate, a really adequate
supply is to be maintained at the Front. A new National Factory and
its workers may be justly proud of their output of 5,000 shells a
week, and think they are doing enormously well if by the spring they
are trebling that output. But let them remember this--one single
insignificant battery of Field Artillery can fire away that present
week’s output in one day, a Brigade of Field Artillery can use that
week’s trebled output of 15,000 shells in the day again. The workers
may fairly argue that their factory is only one, that dozens, scores
of other factories are each turning out as many or more shells. But so
at the Front are there many guns and many batteries. Has the average
worker any idea how many Field Batteries there are in the Army to-day?
I may not say, but it is common knowledge that the batteries run into
very large numbers, and are going to take many shells to feed, are
going to keep the war-workers sweating again to keep the guns going.
In the battle-lines of the Western Front--I should say battle-line,
because, even if a thrust is being made on any one part of a few
miles, it means that an attack must be made strongly along the whole
line to prevent the enemy knowing where the main attempt is being
made--there are a prodigious number of guns employed. At a distance
behind the infantry trenches the ground is simply packed with guns and
batteries. Hitherto we have hardly had the guns going full pelt for
more than a day or two at a time. We have no wish to anticipate any
such spasmodic and unsustained efforts again. On the Western Front, or
the Balkan Front, or any other front, when the real Big Push comes we
must look to see a battle fought fiercely and desperately week after
week without a pause. We want to see the Germans hammered out of one
position, pressed hard and close and hurled out of the next, driven
hard again, battered and pushed in and battered and thrust out again
and again, treated, in fact, in just the sort of fashion they used
against the Russians in the Eastern drive. We can only do that as
the Germans did it--by the use of overwhelming torrents of artillery,
rifle, and machine-gun fire, grenades and bombs. Be very sure that
if and when we commence an offensive on those lines, the Germans are
going to reply in like fashion, are going to go all out to beat down
our heaviest fire with their still heavier one. The workers at home
know the enormous amount of munitions preparing here, but the Front
knows and feels the equally great effort of the German workshops. In
old days we have known it too often by having to sit and suffer under
it while our own reply was hopelessly inadequate; now our great hope is
that at last we are going to be on something better than level terms.
But to put us on such terms the war-workers have still to strain every
nerve and muscle, put out every ounce they possibly can. The whole
thing rests on them. They have been given the material, the shops, the
machines; they have got the finest brains of the Empire guiding their
efforts and ensuring that the greatest possible result is obtained from
their work. So it is up to them, and to them only.
I don’t think there is the slightest fear that on the whole the
war-workers are going to fail us, but it is impossible to avoid seeing
that enormous damage and desperate delay may occur through the slacking
or indifference or discontent of any one section of the workers. In
this great business of munition-making it is inevitable that all the
parts should dovetail, and that the output should advance in one
long even wave. It is no use having a million shells if, because the
fuse-makers have failed, there are not a million fuses to fit them; it
is just as useless having a million shells and fuses if the million
cartridge-cases are not ready, and a million charges of cordite made,
and the guns to fire them completed, and the gun-carriages built, and
the telescopic or prismatic sights made, and the gunners’ maps printed,
and the boots and clothes and equipments provided for the gunners.
And even if every last possible arm and ammunition and equipment is
completed in the artillery, the battle-line must halt, or, still worse,
must be beaten back and brutally punished, if there is a shortage of
machine-guns or cartridges or bombs or grenades. In a great battle
every branch of the Army must move and work together and keep the pace
as one great and unbroken whole, and it is equally vital that the
battle of the war-workers must run in exactly the same fashion. The
men making one of many fuse-parts may lose us a battle if they hang
up their work and prevent the fuses being finished and so leave the
guns short of shells, the Front without artillery support. The whole
business of munition-making must be hung up if the coal-miners, the
transport workers, the engineers, the explosive makers, almost any
one section of the war-workers, fail us. Such a complete hold-up may
be unthinkable, but there is another danger which is more possible
and almost equally lamentable. There are still some war-workers who
appear to consider the War as merely grinding out a grist of profit
and good wages to them; another lot who are still more concerned
over their hours and pay and conditions of labour, over labour rules
and laws, written and unwritten, over the profits the employers are
making or supposed to be making, over their position and status when
the war is finished, than ever they are over the winning of the war.
I know one works where there are two departments engaged on making
six-inch and eight-inch shells. In some way, which for the moment
is of no matter, the six-inch workers are paid at a lower rate than
the eight-inch workers. The wages of the six-inch workers cannot
be raised because that would raise the cost of the shells above
the contract price; the wages of the eight-inch workers may not be
lowered to level them with the six-inchers. The result is that the
higher-paid men deliberately restrict their output, make fewer shells
per week than they could do, so that they will only draw a weekly sum
about equal to the less well-paid workers. And they do this out of
a so-called sense of fairness, a supposed “loyalty to their mates.”
That is the sort of pettiness or indifference that staggers anyone who
has been in the carnage and destruction and misery of the Front, who
has endured the punishment resulting from a shell shortage. “Sense
of fairness”--“loyalty to their mates”! What about fairness to the
Front, loyalty to their mates and sons and brothers in the trenches?
How I wish I could make these men understand what it means to see a
line of infantry hung up by barbed wire, hacking desperately at it,
running up and down its face in frantic groups searching for a gap and
a clear path for their bayonets, to see these stout hearts falling
in hundreds under a hail of lead, the blast of machine-gun and rifle
fire and bursting bombs, to watch the line dwindle and wither and melt
away to heaps and clumps of dead lying still in the mud or squirming
in the clutch of the wire entanglements, to scattered figures crawling
and rolling and dragging their broken limbs and shattered bodies back
across the shell- and bullet-swept ground in a last struggle to reach
shelter. If only the most discontented workers could see such a sight,
would realise that it was due to nothing but the wire entanglements
not being completely swept away because sufficient shells could not
be spared to make a clean job of it, I wonder if they would ever again
talk of “loyalty to their mates,” would ever again waste a day off or
an hour off, would ever again be satisfied to do anything less than
their highest, biggest, and best possible output of work. There was
talk the other day of the engineers wanting an all-round 15 per cent.
rise in wages. No doubt they think themselves fairly entitled to this
because the cost of living has risen. But that sort of thinking simply
paralyses again the men at the Front. Suppose cost of living has risen,
suppose it has risen 50 instead of 15 per cent. Does that mean that
the engineers are going hungry or thirsty, doing without a bed to rest
on or a roof to keep them dry? Their mates at the Front often do all
this, and surely the war-workers might carry some slight share of the
hardships without grumbling, and not, because butter is too dear and
they must eat margarine, want an immediate rise to allow them to eat
butter again.
It is instances of this sort that make one realise the ugly “if.” The
real gravity of the position, the issue hanging upon them, cannot
possibly be fairly understood by any war-workers who slack, or restrict
output, or seriously concern themselves over such points as are
constantly being raised about pay, hours, and status.
It seems so impossible that the critical nature of the war should
not by now be understood, but I am sure that some of the war-workers
do not even yet fully understand, and they may easily be misled into
thinking munitions so plentiful and future supplies so promising that
all danger of a shortage is over. Let them remember that our Army that
was short of munitions was a very small affair compared with the Army
of to-day. That production which left, say, 200,000 men woefully short
a year ago may be multiplied exactly twenty times and still leave an
Army of four millions just as exactly and woefully short as ever. And
it is going to take many multiplications by twenty to raise us from
the hopeless shortage that kept us standing still last year, spending
flesh and blood in a desperate endeavour to make up for the lacking
steel and iron, and holding our bare own, to raise us from that to
being an irresistible force capable of advancing and breaking through
miles of trenched and barbed-wired and fortified positions, through
hordes of well-armed, unbeaten men, through a flaming barrier of shells
and bombs, through liquid fire and gas and machine-gun and rifle
bullets. The war-workers have to keep going more than the one front of
a year ago. There is now the Western Front, the Balkans, East Africa,
Mesopotamia, to say nothing of Egypt or any other battle-fronts
that may develop. Our war-workers are doing wonders, are turning out
mountains of munitions--but so, you may be very sure, are the enemy
war-workers. They had a very long start of us, had munition factories
and machines built and running, and they have been increasing these
while we have been improvising and starting ours. We cannot doubt but
that the German and Austrian shops are also running night and day, that
the need for an enormously increased output has long since been seen
and provided for, that their workers are going all out to give their
armies a preponderating supply so that they may meet and beat the best
our fighting and our working men can do.
The Front has no shadow of doubt about being able to beat the Germans,
if our workers can beat the enemy workers. “Give us the stuff we need,”
says the Front, “and we’ll give you victory.” The German armies are
probably saying the same to their workshops, and the matter boils
down to a battle of the workshops--ours and theirs. The British Army
doesn’t want anything more than a fair show, and only the British
workers can give it them. The Army is quite and cheerfully ready
and willing to hunger and thirst, to perish from cold and bitter
soaking wet, to wallow in the mud and misery of the trenches, to
endure bodily discomfort and aching fatigue, long marches and longer
outpost watchings, and lack of sleep and rest, to suffer frost-bite
and disease, loss of limbs and sight, dreadful wounds and death, so
that we may win the War. They can and will win, if the war-workers
will back them up, will throw in the last ounce of energy and
determination they possess, will fling aside the last atom of slackness
or self-indulgence or bickering or selfishness. The fighting men are
considering nothing--no question of short pay or long hours, or “what
will happen when the war’s over,” or what individuals may profit by
their sacrifice, or their own sacrifices and suffering--nothing but
the winning of the War. And the War is as good as won, though the full
price is yet to pay, if, and only if, the war-workers will think and
act the same as the fighting men. Will they? The answer is with them,
and with them only.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BRUNSWICK
ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
The illustration at the beginning of the book is the front cover.