We dined in old castles, lunched with Scottish regiments, saw the
old-time splendor of Holyrood at night, with old coaches filled with
the beauty of Scottish ladies passing down the High Street where once,
in these old wynds and courtyards, the nobility of Scotland lived
and quarreled and fought, and where now barefoot bairns and ragged
women dwell in paneled rooms in direst poverty. Again and again they
sang old Jacobite songs as the King passed, forgetting his Hanoverian
ancestry, and one sweet song to Bonnie Charlie--“Will ye no come back
again?”--haunts me now, as I write.
With the King, we saw the great shipbuilding works on the Clyde, where
thousands of riveters gathered round the King, cheering like demons,
and looking rather like demons with their black faces and working
overalls. The King was admirable in his manner to all of them, and,
though his fatigue must have been great, his good nature enabled him to
hide it. His laughter rang out loudest when he passed under the hulk of
a ship on the stocks and saw scrawled hugely in chalk upon its plates:
“Good old George! We want more Beer!”
Another great scene of which I was an eyewitness was the King’s
Coronation Review of the British fleet at Spithead. It was a marvelous
pageant of the grim and silent power of the British navy as the royal
yacht passed down the long avenues of battleships and cruisers,
in perfect line, enormous above the water line, terrible in the
potentiality of their great guns. Every navy in the world had sent a
battleship to salute the King-Admiral of the British navy. The Stars
and Stripes, the Rising Sun of Japan, the long coils of the Chinese
Dragon, the tricolor of France, the imperial colors of Germany, were
among the flags, which included those of little nations, with a few
destroyers and light cruisers as their naval strength.
All the ships were “dressed” and “manned,” with sailors standing on
the yard arms and along the decks, and as the King’s yacht passed each
ship, the royal salute was fired, and the crew cheered lustily in the
echo of the guns. All but one ship, which was the _Von der Thann_ of
Germany. No sound of cheering came from that battleship, but the German
crew maintained absolute silence. Few noticed it at the time, but I
remarked it with uneasy foreboding.
I also contrasted it later with the greeting given to the Kaiser by
a group of English people at Hamburg, not a year before the war, in
which England and Germany devoted all their strength to each other’s
destruction. I was on a voyage in one of the Castle Line boats, and
we put off at Hamburg to be entertained by the Mayor in his palace of
the Town Hall. The Kaiser was expected, and we lined up to await his
arrival. It was heralded by the three familiar notes of his motor
horn, and when he appeared there was a loud “Hip, hip, horrah!” from
the English party. The Emperor acknowledged the greeting with a grim
salute. He had no love for England then in his heart, and believed, I
think, in that “_unvermeidlicher Krieg_”--that “unavoidable war”--which
was already the text of German newspapers, though in England the
warnings of a few men like Lord Roberts seemed to be the foolishness of
old age, and popular imagination refused to believe in a world gone mad
and tearing itself in pieces for no apparent cause.
When that war happened, I caught a glimpse, now and again, in lulls
between its monstrous battles, of the man I had seen when he went
weeping from the bedside of King Edward; whom I had seen bowing his
head under the burden of the crown which came to him; whom I had
followed in triumphant processions through his peaceful kingdom--peace
seemed so lasting and secure, then--and who had come to visit his youth
of the Empire, dying in heaps in defense of their race and power and
tradition, as they truly believed, and as, indeed, was so, whatever
the wickedness and folly that led to that massacre, on the part of
statesmen of all countries who did not foresee and prevent the world
conflict.
On his first visit the King was not allowed to get anywhere near
the firing line, but was restricted to base areas and hospitals and
convalescent camps, and distant views of the battlefields. On his
second visit, he insisted upon going far forward, and would not be
deterred by the generals, who, naturally, were intensely anxious for
his safety.
With another war correspondent--Percival Phillips, I think--I went with
the King over the Vimy Ridge where there was always, at that time, the
chance of meeting a German shell, and to the top of “Whitesheet Hill,”
which was a very warm place indeed a few days after the battle which
captured it. The Prince of Wales was with his father, and by that time
well hardened to the noise of guns and shell bursts. To the King it was
all new, but he was perfectly at ease and lingered, far too long, as
the generals thought, among the ruins of a convent, reduced to the size
of a slag-heap, on the top of the hill looking over the German lines.
As though they were aware of his visit, the Germans put down a very
stiff dose of five-point-nines on the very spot where the King had been
standing, but a few minutes too late, because he had just descended the
slope of the hill and was examining one of the monster mine craters
which we had blown at the beginning of the battle. He was there for ten
minutes or so, and had hardly moved away before the Germans lengthened
their range and laid down harassing fire around the crater. The King
adjusted his steel hat, and laughed, while the Prince of Wales strolled
about, looking rather bored.
The Prince did a real job out there, and though, as an officer on the
“Q” side of the Guards, he was not supposed to go into the danger zone,
he was constantly in forward places which were not what the Tommies
called “health resorts.” I met him one day going into Vermelles, which
was a very ugly place indeed, with death on the prowl amid its ruins.
He and a Divisional General left their car on the edge of the ruins
while they walked forward, and, on their return, found that their poor
chauffeur had had his head blown off.
Another time when the King saw a little of the “real thing” was when
he visited the Guards in their camp behind the lines near Pilkem.
Their headquarters were in an old monastery, and the King and the
officers took tea in the garden, while the band of the Grenadiers
played selections from Gilbert and Sullivan. I remember it was when
they were playing “Dear Little Buttercup” that three German aëroplanes
came overhead, flying very low. To our imagination they seemed to
be searching for the King, and we expected at any moment they would
unload their bombs upon his tea table and his body. Our anti-aircraft
guns immediately opened fire, and there was a shrieking of three-inch
shells until the blue sky was all dappled with the white puffs of
the “Archies.” The enemy planes circled round, had a good look, and
then flew away without dropping a bomb, much to our relief, for one
good-sized bomb would have made a horrible mess in the Guards’ camp,
and might have killed the King.
That afternoon I was trapped into a little conspiracy against the King
by the old abbot of the monastery. He was immensely anxious for the
King to sign the visitors’ book, but the officers put the old man off
by various excuses. Feeling sorry for his disappointment, I promised to
say a word to the King’s aide-de-camp, and advised the old gentleman
to intercept the King down the only path he could use on his way out,
carrying the great leather book, and a pen and ink, so that there would
be no escape. This little plot succeeded, to the huge delight of the
abbot, and the monks who afterward gave me their united blessings.
On the King’s first visit to the army in France, a most unfortunate
accident happened to him, which was very painful and serious. He was
reviewing part of the Air Force on a road out of Béthune, mounted on a
horse which ought to have been proof against all the noise of military
maneuvers. But it was too much for the animal’s nerves when, at the
conclusion of the review, the silent lines of men suddenly broke into
deafening cheers. The horse reared three times, and the King kept his
seat perfectly. But the third time, owing to the greasy mud, the horse
slipped and fell sideways, rolling over the King. Generals dismounted,
and ran to where he lay motionless and a little stunned. They picked
him up and put him into his motor car, where he sat back feebly,
and with a look of great pain. I happened to be standing on a bank
immediately opposite, and one of the King’s A.D.C.’s, greatly excited,
ran up to me and said: “Tell the men not to cheer!” It was impossible
for me, as a war correspondent, to give any such order, and, indeed, it
was too late, for when the King’s car moved down the road, the other
men, who had not seen the accident, cheered with immense volleys of
enthusiastic noise.
The King tried to raise his hand to the salute, but had not the
strength. He had been badly strained, suffered acute pain, and that
night was in a high fever. On the following day I saw him taken away
in an ambulance, like an ordinary casualty, and no soldiers in the
little old town of Béthune knew that it was the King of England who was
passing by.
Before the end of his second visit, the King received the five war
correspondents who had followed the fortunes of the British Armies in
France through all their great battles, and he spoke kind words to us
which we were glad to hear.