our young officers presently greeted us--the General marking our maps to
make clear where he had actually been--the Captain of the battery
springing up to show off his gramophone--while the guns crashed at
intervals close beside us, range-finding, probably, searching out a
portion of the German line, under the direction of some hidden observer
with his telephone. It was over all too quickly. Time was up, and soon
the motor was speeding back towards the Divisional Headquarters. The
General and I talked of war, and what could be done to stop it. A more
practical religion "lifting mankind again"?--a new St. Francis, preaching
the old things in new ways? "But in this war we had and we have no choice.
We are fighting for civilisation and freedom, and we must go on till we
win."
III
It was long before I closed my eyes in the pretty room of the old château,
after an evening spent in talk with some officers of the Headquarters
Staff. When I woke in the dawn I little guessed what the day (March 2nd)
was to bring forth, or what was already happening thirty miles away on the
firing line. Zélie, the _femme de ménage_, brought us our breakfast to our
room, coffee and bread and eggs, and by half-past nine we were
down-stairs, booted and spurred, to find the motor at the door, a simple
lunch being packed up, and gas-helmets got ready! "We have had a very
successful action this morning," said Captain ----, evidently in the best
of spirits. "We have taken back some trenches on the Ypres-Comines Canal
that we lost a little while ago, and captured about 200 prisoners. If we
go off at once, we shall be in time to see the German counter-attack."
It was again fine, though not bright, and the distances far less clear.
This time we struck northeast, passing first the sacred region of G.H.Q.
itself, where we showed our passes. Then after making our way through
roads lined interminably, as on the previous day, with the splendid
motor-lorries laden with food and ammunition, which have made such a new
thing of the transport of this war, interspersed with rows of ambulances
and limbered wagons, with flying-stations and horse lines, we climbed a
hill to one of the finest positions in this northern land; an old town,
where Gaul and Roman, Frank and Fleming, English and French have clashed,
which looks out northward towards the Yser and Dunkirk, and east towards
Ypres. Now, if the mists will only clear, we shall see Ypres! But, alas,
they lie heavy over the plain, and we descend the hill again without that
vision. Now we are bound for Poperinghe, and must go warily, because there
is a lively artillery action going on beyond Poperinghe, and it is
necessary to find out what roads are being shelled.
On the way we stop at an air-station, to watch the aeroplanes rising and
coming down, and at a point near Poperinghe we go over a casualty-clearing
station--a collection of hospital huts, with storehouses and staff
quarters--with the medical officer in charge. Here were women nurses who
are not allowed in the field dressing-stations nearer the line. There were
not many wounded, though they were coming in, and the Doctor was not for
the moment very busy.
We stood on the threshold of a large ward, where we could not, I think, be
seen. At the farther end a serious case was being attended by nurses and
surgeons. Everything was passing in silence; and to me it was as if there
came from the distant group a tragic message of suffering, possibly death.
Then, as we passed lingeringly away, we saw three young officers, all
wounded, _running_ up from the ambulance at the gate, which had just
brought them, and disappearing into one of the wards. The first--a
splendid kilted figure--had his head bound up; the others were apparently
wounded in the arm. But they seemed to walk on air, and to be quite
unconscious that anything was wrong with them. It had been a success, a
great success, and they had been in it!
The ambulances were now arriving fast from the field dressing-stations
close to the line, and we hurried away, and were soon driving through
Poperinghe. Here and there there was a house wrecked with shell-fire. The
little town indeed with its picturesque _place_ is constantly shelled.
But, all the same, life seems to go on as usual. The Poperinghe boy, like
his London brother, hangs on the back of carts; his father and mother
come to their door to watch what is going on, or to ask eagerly for news
of the counter-attack; and his little brothers and sisters go tripping to
school, in short cloaks with the hoods drawn over their heads, as though
no war existed. Here and in the country round, poor robbed Belgium is
still at home on her own soil, and on the best of terms with the English
Army, by which, indeed, this remnant of her prospers greatly. As I have
already insisted, the relations everywhere between the British soldier and
the French and Belgian populations are among the British--or shall I say
the Allied?--triumphs of the war.
Farther on the road a company from a famous regiment, picked men all of
them, comes swinging along, fresh from their baths!--life and force in
every movement--young Harrys with their beavers on. Then, a house where
men have their gas-helmets tested--a very strict and necessary business;
and another, where an ex-Balliol tutor and Army Chaplain keeps open doors
for the soldier in his hours of rest or amusement. But we go in search of
a safe road to a neighbouring village, where some fresh passes have to be
got. Each foot now of the way is crowded with the incidents and
appurtenances of war, and war close at hand. An Australian transport base
is pointed out, with a wholly Australian staff. "Some of the men," says
our guide, "are millionaires." Close by is an aeroplane descending
unexpectedly in a field, and a crowd of men rushing to help; and we turn
away relieved to see the two aviators walking off unhurt. Meanwhile, I
notice a regular game of football going on at a distance, and some
carefully written names of bypaths--"Hyde Park Corner," "Piccadilly,"
"Queen Mary's Road," and the like. The animation, the life of the scene
are indescribable.
At the next village the road was crowded both with natives and soldiers to
see the German prisoners brought in. Alack! we did not see them.
Ambulances were passing and re-passing, the slightly wounded men in cars
open at the back, the more serious cases in closed cars, and everywhere
the same _va et vient_ of lorries and wagons, of staff-cars and
motor-cyclists. It was not right for us to add to the congestion in the
road. Moreover, the hours were drawing on, and the great sight was still
to come. But to have watched those prisoners come in would have somehow
rounded off the day!
IV
Our new passes took us to the top of a hill well known to the few
onlookers of which this war admits. The motor stopped at a point on the
road where a picket was stationed, who examined our papers. Then came a
stiff and muddy climb, past a dugout for protection in case of shelling,
Captain ---- carrying the three gas-helmets. At the top was a flat green
space--three or four soldiers playing football on it!--and an old
windmill, and farm-buildings.
We sheltered behind the great beams supporting the windmill, and looked
out through them, north and east, over a wide landscape; a plain bordered
eastward by low hills, every mile of it, almost, watered by British blood,
and consecrate to British dead. As we reached the windmill, as though in
sombre greeting, the floating mists on the near horizon seemed to part,
and there rose from them a dark, jagged tower, one side of it torn away.
It was the tower of Ypres--mute victim!--mute witness to a crime, that,
beyond the reparations of our own day, history will avenge through years
to come.
A flash!--another!--from what appear to be the ruins at its base. 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
the shells burst. There they are, the German lines--along the Messines
ridge. We make them out quite clearly, thanks to a glass and Captain
----'s guidance. Their guns, too, are at work, and a couple of their
shells are bursting on our trenches somewhere between Vlamertinghe and
Dickebusche. Then the rattle of our machine-guns--as it seems from
somewhere close below us, and again the boom of the artillery.
The counter-action is in progress, and we watch what can be seen or
guessed of it, in fascination. We are too far off to see what is actually
happening between the opposing trenches, but one of the chief fields of
past and present battle, scenes which our children and our children's
children will go to visit, lie spread out before us. Half the famous sites
of the earlier war can be dimly made out between us and Ypres. In front of
us is the gleam of the Zillebeke Lake, beyond it Hooge. Hill 60 is in that
band of shadow; a little farther east the point where the Prussian Guard
was mown down at the close of the first Battle of Ypres; farther south the
fields and woods made for ever famous by the charge of the Household
Cavalry, by the deeds of the Worcesters, and the London Scottish, by all
the splendid valour of that "thin red line," French and English, cavalry
and infantry, which in the first Battle of Ypres withstood an enemy four
times as strong, saved France, and thereby England, and thereby Europe. In
that tract of ground over which we are looking lie more than 100,000
graves, English and French; and to it the hearts of two great nations will
turn for all time. Then if you try to pierce the northern haze, beyond
that ruined tower, you may follow in imagination the course of the Yser
westward to that Belgian coast where Admiral Hood's guns broke down and
scattered the German march upon Dunkirk and Calais; or if you turn south
you are looking over the Belfry of Bailleul, towards Neuve Chapelle, and
Festubert, and all the fierce fighting-ground round Souchez and the
Labyrinth. Once English and French stood linked here in a common heroic
defence. Now the English hold all this line firmly from the sea to the
Somme; while the French, with the eyes of the world upon them, are making
history, hour by hour, at Verdun.
So to this point we have followed one branch--the greatest--of England's
effort; and the mind, when eyes fail, pursues it afresh from its
beginnings when we first stood to arms in August, 1914, through what Mr.
Buchan has finely called the "rally of the Empire," through the early rush
and the rapid growth of the new armies, through the strengthening of
Egypt, the disaster of Gallipoli, the seizure of the German Colonies;
through all that vast upheaval at home which we have seen in the munition
areas; through that steady, and ever-growing organisation on the friendly
French soil we have watched in the supply bases. Yet here, for us, it
culminates; and here and in the North Sea, we can hardly doubt--whatever
may be the diversions in other fields--will be fought, for Great Britain,
the decisive battles of the war. As I turn to those dim lines on the
Messines ridge, I have come at last to sight of whither it all moves.
There, in those trenches is _The Aggressor_--the enemy who has wantonly
broken the peace of Europe, who has befouled civilisation with deeds of
lust and blood, between whom and the Allies there can be no peace till the
Allies' right arm dictates it. Every week, every day, the British Armies
grow, the British troops pour steadily across the Channel, and to the
effort of England and her Allies there will be no truce till the righteous
end is won.
But the shadows are coming down on the great scene, and with the sound of
the guns still in our ears we speed back through the crowded roads to
G.H.Q., and these wonderful days are over. Now, all that remains for me is
to take you, far away from the armies, into the English homes whence the
men fighting here are drawn, and to show you, if I can, very shortly, by a
few instances, what rich and poor are doing as individuals to feed the
effort of England in this war. What of the _young_, of all classes and
opportunities, who have laid down their lives in this war? What of the
mothers who reared them, the schools and universities which sent them
forth?--the comrades who are making ready to carry on their work? You ask
me as to the _spirit_ of the nation--the foundation of all else. Let us
look into a few lives, a few typical lives and families, and see.
VI
_April 22nd_.
Dear H.
As I begin upon this final letter to you comes the news that the
threatened split in the British Cabinet owing to the proposed introduction
of general military service has been averted, and that at a Secret Session
to be held next Tuesday, April 25th, Ministers will, for the first time,
lay before both Houses of Parliament full and complete information--much
more full and complete at any rate, than has yet been given--of the
"effort" of Great Britain in this world war, what this country is doing in
sea-power, in the provision of Armies, in the lending of money to our
Allies, in our own shipping service to them, and in our supply to them of
munitions, coal, and other war material--including boots and clothing. If,
then, our own British Parliament will be for the first time fully apprised
next Tuesday of what the nation has been doing, it is, perhaps, small
wonder that you on your side of the Atlantic have not rightly understood
the performance of a nation which has, collectively, the same love of
"grousing" as the individual British soldier shows in the trenches.
Let me, however, go back and recapitulate a little.
In the first of these letters, I tried, by a rapid "vision" of the Fleet,
as I personally saw an important section of it amid the snows of February,
to point to the indispensable condition of this "effort," without which it
could never have been made, without which it could not be maintained for a
day, at the present moment. Since that visit of mine, the power of the
Fleet and the effect of the Fleet have strengthened week by week. The
blockade of Germany is far more effective than it was three months ago;
the evidence of its growing stringency accumulates steadily, and at the
same time the British Foreign Office has been anxiously trying, and
evidently with much success, to minimise for neutrals its inevitable
difficulties and inconveniences. Meanwhile, as Mr. Asquith will explain
next Tuesday, the expenditure on the war, not only on our own needs but on
those of our Allies is colossal--terrifying. The most astonishing Budget
of English History, demanding a fourth of his income from every well-to-do
citizen, has been brought in since I began to write these letters, and
quietly accepted. Five hundred millions sterling ($2,500,000,000) have
been already lent to our Allies. We are spending at the yearly rate of
600,000,000 sterling ($3,000,000,000) on the Army; 200,000,000 on the Navy
as compared with 40,000,000 in 1913; while the Munitions Department is
costing about two-thirds as much (400,000,000 sterling) as the rest of the
Army, and is employing close upon 2,000,000 workers, one-tenth of them
women. The export trade of the country, in spite of submarines and lack of
tonnage, is at the moment greater than it was in the corresponding months
of 1913.
As to what we have got for our money, Parliament has authorised an Army
of 4,000,000 men, and it is on the question of the last half million that
England's Effort now turns. Mr. Asquith will explain everything that has
been done, and everything that still remains to do, _in camera_ to
Parliament next Tuesday. But do not, my dear friend, make any mistake
_England will get the men she wants_; and Labour will be in the end just
as determined to get them as any other section of the Community.
Meanwhile, abroad, while we seem, for the moment, in France to be
inactive, we are in reality giving the French at Verdun just that support
which they and General Joffre desire, and--it can scarcely be
doubted--preparing great things on our own account. In spite of our
failure in Gallipoli, and the anxious position of General Townshend's
force, Egypt is no longer in danger of attack, if it ever has been; our
sea-power has brought a Russian force safely to Marseilles; and the
possibilities of British and Russian Collaboration in the East are
rapidly opening out. As to the great and complex war-machine we have been
steadily building up on French soil, as I tried to show in my fourth
letter, whether in the supply bases, or in the war organisation along the
ninety miles of front now held by the British Armies, it would indeed
astonish those dead heroes of the Retreat from Mons--could they comes back
to see it! We are not satisfied with it yet--hence the unrest in
Parliament and the Press--we shall never be satisfied--till Germany has
accepted the terms of the Allies. But those who know England best have no
doubt whatever as to the temper of the nation which has so far "improvised
the impossible," in the setting up of this machine, and means, in the end,
_to get out of it what it wants_.
The temper of the nation? In this last letter let me take some samples of
it. First--what have the rich been doing? As to money, the figures of the
income-tax, the death-duties, and the various war loans are there to show
what they have contributed to the State. The Joint War Committee of the
Red Cross and the St. John's Ambulance Association have collected--though
not, of course, from the rich only--close on 4,000,000 sterling (between
$18,000,000 and $19,000,000), and the Prince of Wales Fund nearly
6,000,000 ($30,000,000). The lavishness of English giving, indeed, in all
directions during the last two years, could hardly I think have been
outdone. A few weeks ago I walked with the Duke of Bedford through the
training and reinforcement camp, about fifteen miles from my own home in
the country, which he himself commands and which, at the outbreak of war,
he himself built without waiting for public money or War Office
contractors, to house and train recruits for the various Bedfordshire
regiments. The camp holds 1,200 men, and is ranged in a park where the
oaks--still standing--were considered too old by Oliver Cromwell's
Commissioners to furnish timber for the English Navy. Besides ample
barrack accommodation in comfortable huts, planned so as to satisfy every
demand whether of health or convenience, all the opportunities that
Aldershot offers, on a large scale, are here provided in miniature. The
model trenches with the latest improvements in plan, revetting,
gun-emplacements, sally-ports, and the rest, spread through the sandy
soil; the musketry ranges, bombing and bayonet schools are of the most
recent and efficient type. And the Duke takes a keen personal interest in
every man in training, follows his progress in camp, sees him off to the
front, and very often receives him, when wounded, in the perfectly
equipped hospital which the Duchess has established in Woburn Abbey
itself. Here the old riding-school, tennis-court, and museum, which form a
large building fronting the abbey, have been turned into wards as
attractive as bright and simple colour, space, flowers, and exquisite
cleanliness can make them. The Duchess is herself the Matron in charge,
under the War Office, keeps all the records, is up at half past five in
the morning, and spends her day in the endless doing, thinking, and
contriving that such a hospital needs. Not very far away stands another
beautiful country house, rented by Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw Reid when they
were in England. It also is a hospital, but its owner, Lord Lucas, not a
rich man, has now given it irrevocably to the nation for the use of
disabled soldiers, together with as much land as may suffice a farm colony
chosen from among them. The beautiful hospital of 250 beds at Paignton, in
North Devon, run entirely by women of American birth now resident in Great
Britain, without any financial aid from the British Government, was
another large country house given to the service of the wounded by Mr.
Singer. Lady Sheffield's hospital for 25 beds at Alderley Park is an
example of how part of a country house with all its green and restful
surroundings may be used for those who have suffered in the war, and it
has many fellows in all parts of England. Altogether about 700 country
houses, large and small, have been offered to the War Office.
But money and houses are the very least part of what the old families,
the rich manufacturers, or the educated class generally have offered to
their country in this war. Democracy has gone far with us, but it may
still be said that the young heir to a great name, to estates with which
his family has been connected for generations, and to the accumulated
"consideration" to use a French word in a French sense, which such a
position almost always carries with it--has a golden time in English
life. Difficulties that check others fall away from him; he is smiled
upon for his kindred's sake before he makes friends for his own; the
world is overkind to his virtues and blind to his faults; he enters
manhood indeed as "one of our conquerors"; and it will cost him some
trouble to throw away his advantages. Before the war such a youth was
the common butt of the Socialist orator. He was the typical "shirker"
and "loafer," while other men worked; the parasite bred from the sweat
of the poor; the soft, effeminate creature who had never faced the facts
of life and never would. As to his soldiering--the common profession of
so many of his kind--that was only another offence in the eyes of
politicians like Mr. Keir Hardie. When the class war came, he would
naturally he found shooting down the workmen; but for any other war, an
ignorant popinjay!--incompetent even at his own trade, and no match
whatever for the scientific soldier of the Continent.
Those who knew anything of the Army were well aware long before 1914 that
this type of officer--if he still existed, as no doubt he had once
existed--had become extraordinarily rare; that since the Boer War, the
level of education in the Army, the standard of work demanded, the quality
of the relations between officers and men had all steadily advanced. And
with regard to the young men of the "classes" in general, those who had to
do with them, at school and college, while fully alive to their
weaknesses, yet cherished convictions which were more instinct than
anything else, as to what stuff these easy-going, sport-loving fellows
might prove to be made of in case of emergency.
Well, the emergency came. These youths of the classes, heirs to titles and
estates, or just younger sons of the old squirearchy of England, so far as
it still survives, went out in their hundreds, with the old and famous
regiments of the British line in the Expeditionary Force, and perished in
their hundreds. Forty-seven eldest sons, heirs to English peerages had
fallen within a year of the outbreak of war--among them the heirs to such
famous houses as Longleat, Petworth, and Castle Ashby--and the names of
Grenfell, Hood, Stuart, Bruce, Lister, Douglas Pennant, Worsley, Hay, St.
Aubyn, Carington, Annesley, Hicks Beach--together with men whose fathers
have played prominent parts in the politics or finance of the last half
century. And the first ranks have been followed by what one might almost
call a _levée en masse_ of those that remained. Their blood has been spilt
like water at Ypres and La Bassée, at Suvla and Helles. Whatever may be
said henceforward of these "golden lads" of ours, "shirker" and "loafer"
they can never he called again. They have died too lavishly, their men
have loved and trusted them too well for that--and some of the
working-class leaders, with the natural generosity of English hearts, have
confessed it abundantly.