who knew--and her friends throughout the world, hung on the answer.
Meanwhile the German lie, which converted a defeat for Germany into a
"victory," got at least twenty-four hours' start, and the Imperial
Chancellor made quick and sturdy use of it when he extracted a War Loan of
£600,000,000 from a deluded and jubilant Reichstag. Then the news came in
from one quarter after another of the six-mile battle-line, from one unit
after another of the greatest sea-battle Britain had ever fought, and by
the 3rd or 4th of June, England, drawing half-ironic breath over her own
momentary misgiving, had realised the truth--first--that the German Fleet
on the 31st had only escaped total destruction by the narrowest margin,
and by the help of mist and darkness; secondly--that its losses were,
relatively far greater, and in all probability, absolutely, greater than
our own; thirdly--that after the British battle-fleet had severed the
German navy from its base, the latter had been just able, under cover of
darkness, to break round the British ships, and fly hard to shelter,
pursued by our submarines and destroyers through the night, till it
arrived at Wilhelmshaven a battered and broken host, incapable at least
for months to come of any offensive action against Great Britain or her
Allies. Impossible henceforth--for months to come--to send a German
squadron sufficiently strong to harass Russia in the Baltic! Impossible to
interfere successfully with the passage of Britain's new armies across the
seas! Impossible to dream any longer of invading English coasts! The
British Fleet holds the North Sea more strongly than it has ever held it;
and behind the barbed wire defences of Wilhelmshaven or Heligoland the
German Fleet has been nursing its wounds.
Some ten weeks have passed, and as these results have become plain to all
the world, the German lie, or what remained of it, has begun to droop,
even in the country of its birth. "Do not let us suppose," says Captain
Persius--the most honest of German naval critics, in a recent
article--"that we have shaken the sea-power of England. That would be
foolishness." While Mr. Balfour, the most measured, the most veracious of
men, speaking only a few days ago to the representatives of the Dominion
Parliaments, who have been visiting England, says quietly--"the growth of
our Navy, since the outbreak of war, which has gone on, and which at this
moment is still going on, is something of which I do not believe the
general public has the slightest conception."
For the general public has, indeed, but vague ideas of what is happening
day by day and week by week in the great shipyards of the Clyde, the Tyne,
and the Mersey. But there, all the same, the workmen--and workwomen--of
Great Britain--(for women are taking an ever-increasing share in the
lighter tasks of naval engineering)--are adding incessantly to the
sea-power of this country, acquiescing in a Government control, a
loosening of trade custom, a dilution and simplification of skilled
labour, which could not have been dreamt of before the war. At the same
time they are meeting the appeal of Ministers to give up or postpone the
holidays they have so richly earned, for the sake of their sons and
brothers in the trenches, with a dogged "aye, aye!" in which there is a
note of profound understanding, of invincible and personal determination,
but rarely heard in the early days of the war.
III
So much for the Workshops and the Navy. Now before I turn to the New
Armies and the Somme offensive, let us look for a moment at the present
facts of British War Finance. By April last, the date of my sixth Letter,
we had raised 2,380 millions sterling, for the purposes of the war; we had
lent 500 millions to our Allies, and we were spending about 5 millions a
day on the war. According to a statement recently made by the Chancellor
of the Exchequer (August 10), by March next our debt will have risen to
3,440 millions sterling, 1,060 millions more than it stood at in March
last; our advances to our Allies will have increased to 800 millions,
while our daily war expenditure remains about the same.
Mr. McKenna's tone in announcing these figures was extraordinarily
cheerful. "We have every reason," he said, amid the applause of the House
of Commons--"to be proud of the manner in which British credit has stood
the strain." The truth is that by March next, at the present rate of
expenditure, our total indebtedness (deducting the advances to our Allies)
will almost exactly equal "one year's national income," i.e., the
aggregate of the income of every person in the country. But if a man
having an income of £5,000 a year, were to owe a total of £5,000, we
should not consider his position very serious. "We shall collect a
revenue in one year equal to 20 per cent. of the whole debt (i.e., 522
millions sterling), and we shall be able to pay, _out of existing
taxation_, the interest on the debt, and a considerable sinking-fund, and
shall still have left a large margin _for the reduction of
taxation_"--words which left a comfortable echo in the ears of the nation.
Meanwhile British trade--based on British sea-power--has shown
extraordinary buoyancy, the exports steadily increasing; so that the
nation, in the final words of the Chancellor, feels "no doubt whatever
that we shall be able to maintain our credit to the end of the war, _no
matter how long it may last_."
But do not let it be supposed that this huge revenue is being raised
without sacrifice, _without effort_. It means--for the present--as I have
already pointed out, the absorption by the State of five shillings in the
pound from the income of every citizen, above a moderate minimum, and of a
lesser but still heavy tax from those below that minimum; it means new
and increased taxation in many directions; and, as a consequence, heavy
increases in the cost of living; it means sharply diminished spending for
large sections of our population, and serious pinching for our
professional and middle classes.
But the nation, as a whole, makes no lament. We look our taxes in the
face, and we are beginning to learn how to save. We have our hearts fixed
on the future; and we have counted the cost.
The money then is no difficulty. Our resisting power, our prosperity even,
under the blows of war, have been unexpectedly great.
But what are we getting for our money?
In the case of the Navy, the whole later course of the war, no less than
the Battle of Jutland, has shown what the British Navy means to the cause
of the Allies. It is as I have said, the root fact in the war; and in the
end, it will be the determining fact; although, of itself, it cannot
defeat Germany _as we must defeat her_; at any rate in any reasonable
time.
Then as to the Army. Take first of all the administrative side. To
what--in the last four months--has come that wonderful system of
organisation and supply I tried to sketch in my fourth Letter, largely in
the words of some of the chief actors in it?
Within the last fortnight, a skilled observer has been reporting to the
British public his impressions of the "Army behind the Lines" in France,
as I saw a portion of it last February, in the great British supply bases
and hospital camps, on the lines of communication, and throughout the
immense and varied activities covered by the British motor transport.
"The Germans," says this recent eye-witness, "have persisted that, even if
we could find the men, we could not make the machine, which they have been
perfecting for forty years and more. But _it is here!_--operating with
perfect smoothness; a machine, which in its mere mass and intricacy,
almost staggers the imagination. One cannot speak of the details of the
system for fear of saying something which should not be told; but it is
stupendous in its proportion, dealing as it does with the methodical
handling of the men in their hundreds of thousands, of all their equipment
and supplies, food, miscellaneous baggage and ammunition, and with the
endless trains of guns--guns--guns, and shells, by millions upon millions,
all brought from England, and all here in their place, or moved from place
to place with the rhythm of clock-work. One cannot convey any idea of it,
nor grasp it in its entirety; but day by day the immensity of it grows on
one, and one realises how trivial beside it has been anything that British
military organisation has had to do in the past. That is the real miracle;
not the mere millions of men, nor even their bravery, but this huge
frictionless machine of which they are a part--this thing which Great
Britain has put together here in the last twenty months."
IV
But just as in March my thoughts pressed eagerly forward, from the sight
allowed me of the machine, to its uses on the battle-front, to that line
of living and fighting men for which it exists--so now.
Only, since I stood upon the hill near Poperinghe on March 2nd, that line
of men has been indefinitely strengthened; and the main scene of battle is
no longer the Ypres salient. Looking southward from the old windmill,
whose supports sheltered us on that cold spring afternoon, I knew that,
past Bailleul, and past Neuve Chapelle, I was looking straight toward
Albert and the Somme, and I knew too that it was there that the British
were taking over a new portion of the line,--so that we might be of _some_
increased support--all that was then allowed us by the Allied Command!--to
that incredible defence of Verdun, which was in all our minds and hearts.
But what I could not know was that in that misty distance was
hidden--four months away--a future movement, at which no one then guessed,
outside the higher brains of the Army. The days went on. The tide of
battle ebbed and flowed round Verdun. The Crown Prince hewed and hacked
his way, with enormous loss to Germany, to points within three and four
miles of the coveted town--fortress no longer. But there France stopped
him--like the beast of prey that has caught its claws in the iron network
it is trying to batter down, and cannot release them; and there he is
still. Meanwhile, in June, seven to eight weeks before the expected
moment, Brusiloff's attack broke loose, and the Austrian front began to
crumble; just in time to bring the Italians welcome aid in the Trentino.
And still from the Somme to the Yser, the Anglo-French forces waited; and
still across the Channel poured British soldiers and British guns. In
industrial England, the Whitsuntide holidays had been given up; and there
were at any rate some people who knew that there would be no August
holidays either. Leave and letters had been stopped. But there had been
apparent signs, wrongly interpreted, before. The great Allied attack on
the West--was it ready, _at last_?
Then--with the 27th of June, along the whole British battle-front of 90
miles, there sprang up a violent and continuous bombardment varied by
incessant raids on the enemy lines. Those who witnessed that bombardment
can hardly find words in which to describe it. "It was an extraordinary
and a terrible spectacle," says a correspondent. "Within the dreadful zone
the woods are leafless, château and farm and village, alike, mere heaps of
ruins." Ah! _ce beau pays de France_--with all its rich and ancient
civilisation--it is not French hearts alone that bleed for you! But it was
the voice of deliverance, of vengeance, that was speaking in the guns
which crashed incessantly day and night, while shells of all calibres
rained--so many to the second--from every yard of the British front, on
the German lines. The correspondents with the British Headquarters could
only speculate with held breath, as to what was happening under that
ghastly veil of smoke and fire on the horizon, and what our infantry would
find when the artillery work was done, and the attack was launched.
The 1st of July dawned, a beautiful summer morning, with light mists
dispersing under the sun. Precisely to the moment, at 7.30 A.M., the
Allied artillery lifted their guns, creating a dense _barrage_ of fire
between the German front and its support trenches, while the British and
French infantry sprang over their parapets and rushed to the attack of the
German first line; the British on a front of some twenty-five miles, the
French, on about ten miles, on both sides of the Somme. The English
journalists, who, watch in hand, saw our men go, "knowing what it was they
were going to, marvelled for the fiftieth time at the way in which British
manhood has proved itself, in this most terrible of all wars."
But though it was a grand, it was an anxious moment for those who had
trained and shaped the New Armies of Britain. How would they bear
themselves, these hundreds of thousands of British and Imperial
volunteers, men, some of them, with the shortest possible training
compatible with efficiency--against the famous troops of Germany--beside
the veteran, the illustrious army of France?
Four hours after the fighting began, Sir Douglas Haig telegraphed: "Attack
launched north of River Somme this morning at 7.30 A.M. In conjunction
with French, British troops have broken into German forward system of
defences, on front of sixteen miles. Fighting is continuing. French attack
on our immediate right proceeding equally satisfactorily." Twelve hours
later, on the same day, when the summer night had fallen on the terrible
battle-field, the British Commander-in-Chief added:--"Heavy fighting has
continued all day between the rivers Somme and Ancre. On the right of our
attack we have captured the German labyrinth of trenches on a front of
seven miles to a depth of 1,000 yards, and have stormed and occupied the
strongly fortified villages of Montauban and Mametz. In the centre on a
front of four miles we have gained many strong points. North of the Ancre
Valley the battle has been equally violent, and in this area we have been
unable to retain portions of the ground gained in our first attacks, while
other portions remain in our possession.... Up to date, 2,000 German
prisoners have passed through our collecting stations. The large number of
the enemy dead on the battle-field indicate that the German losses have
been very severe."
So much for the first day's news. On the following day Fricourt was
captured; and the prisoners went up to 3,500, together with a quantity of
war material. Meanwhile the French on the right had done brilliantly,
capturing five villages, and 6,000 prisoners. The attack was well begun.
And the New Armies?--"Kitchener's Men"? "Whatever we have imagined of our
New Armies," says an eye-witness of the first day's battle, "they are
better than we can have ever dared to hope. Nothing has in any case
stopped them, except being killed." And a neutral who saw the attack on
Mametz told the same eye-witness that he had seen most of the fighting in
the world in recent years, and that he "did not believe a more gallant
feat was ever performed in war." The story of the British advance was
written "in the dead upon the ground, and in the positions as they stand."
"Nothing which the Japanese did in the Russian War" was more entirely
heroic.
But let me carry on the story.
On Tuesday, July 11th, Sir Douglas Haig reported: "After ten days and
nights of continuous fighting our troops have completed the methodical
capture of the whole of the enemy's first system of defence on a front of
14,000 yards.
"This system of defence consisted of numerous and continuous lines of
foretrenches, support trenches and reserve trenches, extending to various
depths of from 2,000 to 4,000 yards, and included five strongly fortified
villages, numerous heavily wired and intrenched woods, and a large number
of immensely strong redoubts."
The villages captured were Fricourt, Mametz, Montauban, La Boiselle, and
Contalmaison--the latter captured on July 10th, after particularly fierce
fighting. Every observer dwells on "the immense strength of the German
defences." "All the little villages and woods, each eminence and hollow,
have been converted into a fortress as formidable as the character of the
ground makes possible." The German has omitted nothing "that could protect
him against such a day as this."
Yet steadily, methodically, with many a pause for consolidation of the
ground gained, and for the bringing up of the heavy guns, the British
advance goes forward--toward Bapaume and Lille; while the French press
brilliantly on toward Péronne--both movements aimed at the vital German
communications through France and Belgium. Every step of ground, as the
Allies gain it, "is wrecked with mines, torn with shell, and watered with
the blood of brave men." The wood-fighting, amid the stripped and gaunt
trunks rising from labyrinths of wire, is specially terrible; and below
the ground everywhere are the deep pits and dugouts, which have not only
sheltered the enemy from our fire, but concealed the machine-guns, which
often when our men have passed over, emerge and take them in the rear. The
German machine-guns seem to be endless; they are skilfully concealed, and
worked with the utmost ability and courage.
But nothing daunts the troops attacking day and night, in the name of
patriotism, of liberty, of civilisation. Men from Yorkshire and
Lancashire, from Northumberland, Westmoreland and Cumberland, the heart of
England's sturdy north; men from Sussex and Kent, from Somerset and Devon;
the Scotch regiments; the Ulster Division, once the Ulster Volunteers;
the men of Munster and Connaught; the town-lads of Manchester; the youths
of Cockney London:--all their names are in the great story. "There were no
stragglers--none!" says an officer, describing in a kind of wonder one of
the fierce wood-attacks. And these are not the seasoned troops of a
Continental Army. They belong to regiments and corps which did not exist,
except in name, eighteen months ago; they are units from the four-million
army that Great Britain raised for this struggle, before she passed her
Military Service Law. The "Old Army," the Expeditionary Force, which the
nation owed to the organising genius of Lord Haldane and his General
Staff, has passed away, passed into history, with the retreat from Mons,
the first victory of Ypres, the saving of the Channel ports; but its
spirit remains, and its traditions are firmly planted in the new
attackers. I think of the men I saw in March, during that long and weary
wait; of the desire--and the patience--in their eyes.
And of patience they and the nations behind them will still have ample
need. Since surprise on the Somme front was no longer possible, the great
advance has gone surely indeed, but more slowly. On _July 14_, after delay
caused by extraordinarily heavy rains, _the German second line was
breached_, and their trenches carried, on a front of four miles and held
against counter attacks. Longueval, the wood of Bazentin-le-Grand, and the
village, Bazentin-le-Petit, were attacked and captured with an _élan_ that
nothing could resist. "The enemy losses in guns," said the British
Headquarters, "are now over 100. We have not lost one." On _July 17_,
Ovillers was cleared, Waterlot Farm taken, and 1,500 more yards of the
German line. The British had by now taken 11,000 prisoners, to a somewhat
larger number taken by the French, 17 heavy guns, 37 field-guns, 30 trench
howitzers, and 66 machine-guns. On Saturday night, _July 22-23_, the
greater part of Pozières, on the high ground toward Bapaume, was taken.
"Shortly after midnight," wrote the official correspondent at
Headquarters with the Australian Imperial Forces in France, "on the 23rd,
by a splendid night attack, the Australians took the greater portion of
Pozières." The previous bombardment had been magnificent. "I had never
before seen such a spectacle. A large sector of the horizon was lit up not
by single flashes, but by a continuous band of quivering light." And under
the protection of the guns, the Anzacs swept forward, passing over
trenches, so entirely obliterated by shell-fire that they were often not
recognised as trenches at all, till they were in the heart of the village.
Then for two days they fought from house to house, and trench to trench;
till on July 27th came the news--"The whole of the village of Pozières is
now in our hands." And the _Times_ correspondent writes "our establishment
at Pozières will probably be regarded historically as closing the second
phase of the battle of the Somme."
Since then (I write on August 16) three weeks have passed. The German
Third Line has been entered at the Bois de Foureaux, the whole of Delville
Wood has been carried; and in the combined advance of July 30th, the
French swept on to Maurepas on the north of the Somme, and are closely
threatening both Combles and Péronne, while we are attacking Thiepval on
the left of our line and Guillemont on the right, and pushing forward,
north of Pozières, toward Bapaume. The whole of the great advance has been
_a thrust up-hill_ from the valley floors of the Ancre and the Somme
toward a low ridge running roughly east and west and commanding an
important stretch of country and vital communications beyond. "It has in
just four weeks of effort," writes Mr. Belloc--"accounted for some thirty
thousand unwounded or slightly wounded prisoners; for much more than 100
guns; for a belt of territory over five miles in its extreme breadth,
and--what is much more important than any of these numerical and local
calculations--it has proved itself capable of _continuous effort against
all the concentration which the enemy has been able to bring against it._"
But it has done yet more than this. It has welded the French and English
Alliance--the wills and minds of the two nations--more closely than ever
before; and it has tested the British war-machine--the new Armies and the
new arms--as they have never yet been tested in this war. The result has
set the heart of England aflame; even while we ponder those long, long
casualty lists which represent the bitter price that British fathers and
mothers, British wives and daughters have paid, and must still pay, for
the only victory which will set up once again the reign of law and
humanity in Europe. What the future has in store we cannot see yet in
detail; but the inevitable end is clear at last. The man-power of Germany
is failing, and with it the insolent confidence of her military caste; the
man-power of the Allies, and the gun-power of the Allies, are rising
steadily. Russia is well launched on her return way to Warsaw, to Cracow,
to East Prussia. Italy, after the fall of Gorizia, is on the march for
Trieste. The Turks are fleeing across the desert of Sinai; and the Allies
at Salonika are taking the first steps toward Sofia.
But it is in the "holy spirit of man" itself that the secret of the future
lies. On the Somme battle-fields, thousands and thousands of young lives
have been again laid down, that England--that France--may live. Here is a
letter, written the day before his death in action, on July 1st, the
opening day of the offensive, by a young English Officer.[C] One must read
it, if one can, dry-eyed. Not tears, but a steeled will, a purer heart,
are what it asks of those for whom the writer died:--
"I am writing this letter to you just before going into
action to-morrow morning about dawn.
"I am about to take part in the biggest battle that has yet
been fought in France, and one which ought to help to end
the war very quickly.
"I never felt more confident or cheerful in my life before,
and would not miss the attack for anything on earth. The men
are in splendid form, and every officer and man is more
happy and cheerful than I have ever seen them.
"I have just been playing a rag game of football in which
the umpire had a revolver and a whistle.
"My idea in writing this letter is in case I am one of the
'costs,' and get killed. I do not expect to be; but such
things have happened, and are always possible.
"It is impossible to fear death out here, when one is no
longer an individual, but a member of a regiment and of an
army. To be killed means nothing to me, and it is only you
who suffer for it; you really pay the cost.