munitions area, and if this letter were not already too long, I should
like to dwell on much else--the army of maidens, who, as V.A.D.'s (members
of Voluntary Aid Detachments), trained by the Red Cross, have come
trooping from England's most luxurious or comfortable homes, and are
doing invaluable work in hundreds of hospitals; to begin with, the most
menial scrubbing and dish-washing, and by now the more ambitious and
honourable--but not more indispensable--tasks of nursing itself. In this
second year of the war, the first army of V.A.D.'s, now promoted, has
everywhere been succeeded by a fresh levy, aglow with the same eagerness
and the same devotion as the first. Or I could dwell on the women's
hospitals--especially the remarkable hospital in Endell Street, entirely
officered by women; where some hundreds of male patients accept the
surgical and medical care of women doctors, and adapt themselves to the
light and easy discipline maintained by the women of the staff, with
entire confidence and grateful good-will. To see a woman dentist at work
on a soldier's mouth, and a woman quartermaster presiding over her stores,
and managing, besides, everything pertaining to the lighting, heating, and
draining of the hospital, is one more sign of these changed and changing
times. The work done by the Scottish Women's Hospital in Serbia will rank
as one of the noblest among the minor episodes of the war. The magnificent
work of British nurses, everywhere, I have already spoken of. And
everywhere, too, among the camps in England and abroad, behind the
fighting lines, or at the great railway-stations here or in France,
through which the troops pass backwards and forwards, hundreds of women
have been doing ardent yet disciplined service--giving long hours in
crowded canteens or Y.M.C.A. huts to just those small kindly offices,
which bring home to the British soldier, more effectively than many things
more ambitious, what the British nation feels towards him. The war has put
an end, so far as the richer class is concerned, to the busy idleness and
all the costly make-believes of peace. No one gives "dinner-parties" in
the old sense any more; the very word "reception" is dying out. The high
wages that munition-work has brought to the women of the working class,
show themselves, no doubt, in some foolish dressing. "You should see the
hats round here on a Saturday!" said the Manager of a Midland factory. But
I am bound to say he spoke of it proudly. The hats were for him a
testimony to the wages paid by his firm; and he would probably have
argued, on the girls' part, that after the long hours and hard work of the
week, the hats were a perfectly legitimate "fling," and human nature must
out. Certainly the children of the workers are better fed and better
clothed, which speaks so far well for the mothers; and recent Government
inquiries seem to show that in spite of universal employment, and high
wages, the drunkenness of the United Kingdom as a whole is markedly less,
while at the same time--uncomfortable paradox!--the amount of alcohol
consumed is greater. One hears stories of extravagance among those who
have been making "war-profits," but they are less common this year than
last; and as to my own experience, all my friends are wearing their old
clothes, and the West End dressmakers, poor things, in view of a large
section of the public which regards it as a crime "to buy anything new"
are either shutting down till better days, or doing a greatly restricted
business. Taxation has grown much heavier, and will be more and more
severely felt. Yet very few grumble, and there is a general and determined
cutting down of the trappings and appendages of life, which is to the good
of us all.
Undoubtedly, there is a very warm and wide-spread feeling among us that in
this war the women of the nation have done uncommonly well! You will
remember a similar stir of grateful recognition in America after your War
of Secession, connected with the part played in the nursing and sanitation
of the war by the women of the Northern States. The feeling here may well
have an important social and political influence when the war is over;
especially among the middle and upper classes. It may be counter-balanced
to some extent in the industrial class, by the disturbance and anxiety
caused in many trades, but especially in the engineering trades, by that
great invasion of women I have tried to describe. But that the war will
leave _some_ deep mark on that long evolution of the share of women in our
public life, which began in the teeming middle years of the last century,
is, I think, certain.
_May 2nd._--So I come to the end of the task you set me!--with what gaps
and omissions to look back upon, no one knows so well as myself. This
letter starts on its way to you at a critical moment for your great
country, when the issue between the United States and Germany is still
unsettled. What will happen? Will Germany give way? If not, what sort of
relations will shape themselves, and how quickly, between the Central
Empires and America? To express myself on this great matter is no part of
my task; although no English man or woman but will watch its development
with a deep and passionate interest. What may be best for you, we cannot
tell; the military and political bearings of a breach between the United
States and Germany on our own fortunes are by no means clear to us. But
what we _do_ want, in any case, is the sympathy, the moral support and
co-operation of your people. We have to thank you for a thousand
generosities to our wounded; we bless you--as comrades with you in that
old Christendom which even this war shall not destroy--for what you have
done in Belgium--but we want you to understand the heart of England in
this war, and not to be led away by the superficial difficulties and
disputes that no great and free nation escapes in time of crisis. Sympathy
with France--France, the invaded, the heroic--is easy for America--for us
all. She is the great tragic figure of the war--the whole world does her
homage. We are not invaded--and so less tragic, less appealing. But we are
fighting the fight which is the fight of all freemen everywhere--against
the wantonness of military power, against the spirit that tears up
treaties and makes peaceful agreement between nations impossible--against
a cruelty and barbarism in war which brings our civilisation to shame. We
have a right to your sympathy--you who are the heirs of Washington and
Lincoln, the trustees of liberty in the New World as we, with France, are
in the Old. You are concerned--you must be concerned--in the triumph of
the ideals of ordered freedom and humane justice over the ideals of
unbridled force and ruthless cruelty, as they have been revealed in this
war, to the horror of mankind. The nation that can never, to all time,
wash from its hands the guilt of the Belgium crime, the blood of the
_Lusitania_ victims, of the massacres of Louvain and Dinant, of Aerschot
and Termonde, may some day deserve our pity. To-day it has to be met and
conquered by a will stronger than its own, in the interests of
civilisation itself.
This last week, at the close of which I am despatching this final letter,
has been a sombre week for England. It has seen the squalid Irish rising,
with its seven days' orgy of fire and bloodshed in Dublin; it has seen the
surrender at Kut of General Townshend and his starving men; it has seen
also a strong demonstration in Parliament of discontent with certain
phases of the conduct of the war. And yet, how shall I convey to you the
paradox that we in England--our soldiers at the front, and instructed
opinion at home--have never been so certain of ultimate victory as we now
are? It is the big facts that matter: the steady growth of British
resources, in men and munitions, toward a maximum which we--and
Russia--are only approaching, while that of the Central Empires is past;
the deepening unity of an Empire which is being forged anew by danger and
trial, and by the spirit of its sons all over the world--a unity against
which the Irish outrage, paid for by German money, disavowed by all that
is truly Ireland, Unionist or Nationalist, and instantly effaced, as a
mere demonstration, by the gallantry at the same moment of Irish soldiers
in the battle-line--lifts its treacherous hand in vain; the increasing and
terrible pressure of the British blockade of Germany, equivalent, as some
one has lately said, every twenty-four hours that it is maintained, to a
successful action in the field; the magnificent resistance of an
indomitable France; the mounting strength of a reorganised Russia. This
island-state--let me repeat it with emphasis--was not prepared for, and
had no expectation of a Continental war, such as we are now fighting. The
fact cries aloud from the records of the struggle; it will command the ear
of history; and it acquits us for ever from the guilt of the vast
catastrophe. But Great Britain has no choice now but to fight to the
end--and win. She knows it, and those who disparage her are living in a
blind world. As to the difficulty of the task--as to our own failures and
mistakes in learning how to achieve it--we have probably fewer illusions
than those who criticise us. _But we shall do it--or perish_.
* * * * *
_May 5th._--Since the preceding lines were written, the "Military Service
Bill" bringing to the Colours "every British male subject" between the
ages of 18 and 41, except when legally exempted, has passed the House of
Commons by an overwhelming majority, and will be law immediately. And the
Prime Minister informed Parliament three days ago, that "the total naval
and military effort of the Empire since the beginning of the war exceeds
five million men."
With these two facts, these Letters may fitly close. Those who know
England best, her history, and the temperament of her people, will best
appreciate what they mean.
VII
AN EPILOGUE
_August 16, 1916._
I
It is now three months since I finished the six preceding Letters, written
in response to an urgent call from America; nor did I then anticipate any
renewal of my work. But while a French translation of the six Letters has
been passing through the Press, an appeal has been made to me from France
to add an Epilogue, or supplementary Letter, briefly recapitulating the
outstanding facts or events which in those three months have marked the
British share in the war, and played their part in the immense
transformation of the general outlook which has taken place during those
months. Not an easy task! One thinks first of one's own inadequacy; and
then remembers, as before, that one is a unit in a nation under orders. I
must therefore do what I can. And perhaps other readers, also, of this
little book, in America and England, as they look back over the
ever-changing scene of the war, will not find this renewed attempt to
summarise Britain's part in it as it has developed up to the present date
(August 16, 1916) unwelcome. The outstanding facts of the last three
months, as I see them, are, for Great Britain:--
1. The immense increase in the output of British Munitions of War;
2. The Naval Battle of Jutland;
3. The Allied offensive on the Somme.
The first and third of these events are, of course, so far as the latter
concerns Great Britain, the natural and logical outcome of that "England's
Effort" of which I tried--how imperfectly!--to give a connected account
three months ago.
At that time the ever-mounting British effort, though it had reached
colossal dimensions, though everybody aware of it was full of a steadily
growing confidence as to its final result, had still to be tested by those
greater actions to which it was meant to lead. After the local failures at
the Dardanelles, and in Mesopotamia, Great Britain was again, for a time,
everywhere on the defensive, though it was a very vigorous and active
defensive; and the magnificent stand made by the French at Verdun was not
only covering France herself with glory, and kindling the hearts of all
who love her throughout the world, but under its shield the new armies of
Great Britain were still being steadily perfected, and wonderfully armed;
time was being given to Russia for reorganisation and re-equipment, and
time was all she wanted; while Germany, vainly dashing her strength in men
and guns against the heights of Verdun, in the hope of provoking her
enemies on the Western front to a premature offensive, doomed to
exhaustion before it had achieved its end, was met by the iron resolve of
both the French and British Governments, advised by the French and British
Commanders in the field, to begin that offensive only at their own time
and place, when the initiative was theirs, and everything was ready.
But the scene has greatly altered. Let me take Munitions first. In
February, it will be remembered by those who have read the preceding
Letters, I was a visitor, by the kindness of the Ministry of Munitions,
then in Mr. Lloyd George's hands, to a portion of the munitions field--in
the Midlands, on the Tyne, and on the Clyde. At that moment, Great
Britain, as far as armament was concerned, was in the mid-stream of a
gigantic movement which had begun in the summer of 1915, set going by the
kindling energy of Mr. Lloyd George, and seconded by the roused strength
of a nation which was not the industrial pioneer of the whole modern world
for nothing, however keenly others, during the last half-century, have
pressed upon--or in some regions passed--her. Everywhere I found new
workshops already filled with workers, a large proportion of them women,
already turning out a mass of shell which would have seemed incredible to
soldiers and civilians alike during the first months of the war; while the
tale of howitzers, trench-mortars, machine-guns, and the rest, was running
up week by week, in the vast extensions already added to the other works.
But everywhere, too, I saw huge, empty workshops, waiting for their
machines, or just setting them up; and everywhere the air was full of
rumours of the new industrial forces--above all, of the armies of
women--that were to be brought to bear. New towns were being built for
them; their workplaces and their tools were being got ready for them, as
in that vast filling factory--or rather town--on the Clyde which I
described in my third Letter. But in many quarters they were not yet
there; only one heard, as it were, the tramp of their advancing feet.
But to-day! Those great empty workshops that I saw in February, in the
making, or the furnishing, are now full of workers and machines; and
thousands like them all over the country. Last night (Aug. 15), the new
Minister of Munitions, Mr. Montagu, who, a few weeks ago, succeeded Mr.
Lloyd George, now Minister for War, rendered an account of his department
up to date, which amazed even the House of Commons, and will surely stir
the minds of men throughout the British Empire with a just and reasonable
pride. The "effete" and "degenerate" nation has roused herself indeed!
Here is the bare résumé of the Minister's statement:--
_Ammunition._--The British output of ammunition at the
beginning of the war was intended for an army of 200,000
men.
Naturally, the output rose steadily throughout the first
year of war.
_But_--the same output which in 1914-15 took 12 months to
produce could now be produced--
As to 18-pounder ammunition, in 3 weeks
" Field howitzer " in 2 weeks
" Medium gun and howitzer ammunition, in 11 days
" Heavy shell, in 4 days
We are sending over to France _every week as_ much as the
whole pre-war stock of land service ammunition in the
country.
As to _guns_, I would ask my readers to turn back to the second and third
chapters in this little book, which show something of the human side and
the daily detail of this great business, and then to look at this
summary:--
_Every month, now_, we are turning out nearly twice as many
big guns as were in existence for land service--i.e., not
naval guns--when the Ministry of Munitions came into being
(June, 1915).
Between June, 1915, and June, 1916, the monthly output of
_heavy guns_ has increased _6-fold_--and the present output
will soon be doubled.
For every 100 _eighteen-pounders_ turned out in the first 10
months of the war, we are now turning out 500.
We are producing 18 times as many _machine-guns_.
Of _rifles_--the most difficult of all war material to
produce quickly in large quantities--our weekly home
production is now 3 times as great as it was a year ago. We
are supplying our Army overseas with rifles and machine-guns
entirely from home sources.
Of _small-arms ammunition_ our output is 3 times as great as
a year ago.
We are producing 66 times as much _high explosive_ as at the
beginning of 1915; and our output of _bombs_ is 33 times as
great as it was last year.
At the same time, what is Great Britain doing _for her Allies_?
The loss of her Northern Provinces, absorbed by the German
invasion, has deprived France of three-quarters of her
steel. We are now sending to France _one-third of the whole
British production of shell-steel_.
We are also supplying the Allies with the _constituents of
high explosive_ in very large quantities, prepared by our
National factories.
We are sending to the Allies _millions of tons of coal and
coke every month_, large quantities of machinery, and 20 per
cent. of our whole production of machine tools
(indispensable to shell manufacture).
We are supplying Russia with millions of pairs of Army
boots.
And in the matter of ammunition, we have not only enormously increased the
quantity produced--we have greatly improved its quality. The testimony of
the French experts--themselves masters in these arts of death--as conveyed
through M. Thomas, is emphatic. The new British heavy guns are "admirably
made"--"most accurate"--"most efficient."
Meanwhile a whole series of chemical problems with regard to high
explosives have been undertaken and solved by Lord Moulton's department.
If it was ever true that science was neglected by the War Office, it is
certainly true no longer; and the soldiers at the front, who have to make
practical use of what our scientific chemists and our explosive factories
at home are producing, are entirely satisfied.
For that, as Mr. Montagu points out, is the sole and supreme test. How has
the vast activity of the new Ministry of Munitions--an activity which the
nation owes--let me repeat it--to the initiative, the compelling energy,
of Mr. Lloyd George--affected our armies in the field?
The final answer to that question is not yet. The Somme offensive is still
hammering at the German gates; I shall presently give an outline of its
course from its opening on July 1st down to the present. But meanwhile
what can be said is this.
The expenditure of ammunition which enabled us to sweep through the German
first lines, in the opening days of this July, almost with ease, was
colossal beyond all precedent. The total amount of heavy guns and
ammunition manufactured by Great Britain in the first ten months of the
war, from August, 1914, to June 1, 1915, would not have kept the British
bombardment on the Somme going _for a single day_. That gives some idea of
it.
Can we keep it up? The German papers have been consoling themselves with
the reflection that so huge an effort must have exhausted our supplies. On
the contrary, says Mr. Montagu. _The output of the factories, week by
week, now covers the expenditure in the field_. No fear now, that as at
Loos, as at Neuve Chapelle, and as on a thousand other smaller occasions,
British success in the field should be crippled and stopped by shortage of
gun and shell!
By whom has this result been brought about? By that army of British
workmen--and workwomen--which Mr. Lloyd George in little more than one
short year has mobilised throughout the country. The Ministry of Munitions
is now employing _three millions and a half of workers_--(a year ago it
was not much more than a million and a half)--of whom 400,000 _are
women_; and the staff of the Ministry has grown from 3,000--the figure
given in my earlier letters--to 5,000, just as that army of women, which
has sprung as it were out of the earth at the call of the nation, has
almost doubled since I wrote in April last. Well may the new Minister say
that our toilers in factory and forge have had some share in the glorious
recent victories of Russia, Italy, and France! Our men and our women have
contributed to the re-equipment of those gallant armies of Russia, which,
a month or six weeks earlier than they were expected to move, have broken
up the Austrian front, and will soon be once more in Western Poland,
perhaps in East Prussia! The Italian Army has drawn from our workshops and
learnt from our experiments. The Serbian Army has been re-formed and
re-fitted.
Let us sum up. The Germans, with years of preparation behind them, made
this war a war of machines. England, in that as in other matters, was
taken by surprise. But our old and proud nation, which for generations
led the machine industry of the world, as soon as it realised the
challenge--and we were slow to realise it!--met it with an impatient and a
fierce energy which is every month attaining a greater momentum and a more
wonderful result. The apparently endless supply of munitions which now
feeds the British front, and the _comparative_ lightness of the human cost
at which the incredibly strong network of the German trenches on their
whole first line system was battered into ruin, during the last days of
June and the first days of July, 1916:--it is to effects like these that
all that vast industrial effort throughout Great Britain, of which I saw
and described a fragment three months ago, has now steadily and
irresistibly brought us.
II
This then is perhaps the first point to notice in the landscape of the
war, as we look back on the last three months. For on it everything else,
Naval and Military, depends:--on the incredibly heightened output of
British workshops, in all branches of war material, which has been
attained since the summer of last year. In it, as I have just said, we see
an _effect_ of a great cause--i.e., of the "effort" made by Great
Britain, since the war broke out, to bring her military strength in men
and munitions to a point, sufficient, in combination with the strength of
her Allies, for victory over the Central Powers, who after long and
deliberate preparation had wantonly broken the European peace. The
"effort" was for us a new one, provoked by Germany, and it will have
far-reaching civil consequences when the war is over.
In the great Naval victory now known as the Battle of Jutland, on the
other hand, we have a fresh demonstration on a greater scale than ever
before, of that old, that root fact, without which indeed the success of
the Allied effort in other directions would be impossible--i.e., _the
overwhelming strength of the British Navy_, and its mastery of the Sea.
In a few earlier pages of this book, I have described a visit which the
British Admiralty allowed me to make in February last to a portion of the
Fleet, then resting in a northern harbour. On that occasion, at the
Vice-Admiral's luncheon-table, there sat beside me on my right, a tall
spare man with the intent face of one to whom life has been a great arid
strenuous adventure, accepted in no boyish mood, but rather in the spirit
of the scientific explorer, pushing endlessly from one problem to the
next, and passionate for all experience that either unveils the world, or
tests himself. We talked of the war, and my projected journey. "I envy
you!" he said, his face lighting up. "I would give anything to see our
Army in the field." My neighbour was Rear-Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot,
commanding the First Cruiser Squadron, who went down with his flagship
_H.M.S. Defence_, in the Battle of Jutland, on the 31st of May last, while
passing between the British and German fleets, under a very heavy fire.
"It is probable," said Admiral Jellicoe's despatch, "that Sir Robert
Arbuthnot, during his engagement with the enemy's light cruisers, and in
his desire to complete their destruction, was not aware of the approach of
the enemy's heavy ships, owing to the mist, until he found himself in
close proximity to the main fleet, and before he could withdraw his ships,
they were caught under a heavy fire and disabled." So, between the fleets
of Germany and England, amid the mists of the May evening, and the storm
and smoke of battle, my courteous neighbour of three months before found,
with all his shipmates, that grave in the "unharvested sea" which England
never forgets to honour, and from which no sailor shrinks. At the same
luncheon-table were two other Admirals and many junior Officers, who took
part in the same great action; and looking back upon it, and upon the
notes which I embodied in my first Letter, I see more vividly than ever
how every act and thought of those brave and practised men, among whom I
passed those few--to me--memorable hours, were conditioned by an intense
_expectation_, that trained prevision of what must come, which, in a
special degree, both stirs and steadies the mind of the modern sailor.
But one thing perhaps they had not foreseen--that by a combination of
mishaps in the first reporting of the battle, the great action, which has
really demonstrated, once and for all, the invincible supremacy of Great
Britain at sea, which has reduced the German Fleet to months of impotence,
put the invasion of these islands finally out of the question, and enabled
the British blockade to be drawn round Germany with a yet closer and
sterner hand, was made to appear, in the first announcements of it, almost
a defeat. The news of our losses--our heavy losses--came first--came
almost alone. The Admiralty, with the stern conscience of the British
official mind, announced them as they came in--bluntly--with little or no
qualification. A shock of alarm went through England! For what had we paid
so sore a price? Was the return adequate, and not only to our safety, but
to our prestige?