I went into a little office, half undressed, and pulled out of my
belt a pile of French gold pieces. By the time they had been counted
and a receipt given--no more than three minutes--there was a train
with an engine and three carriages, a driver and a guard, ready for
me on the line to Dover. My small boy (as he was then) gazed in awe
and admiration at the magic trick. I waved to him as the train went
off with me. I was signaled all down the line, and in the stations we
passed porters and officials stared and saluted as the train flashed
by. Doubtless they thought I was a great general going to win the war!
At Dover I was only one minute behind the express I had lost. Massey
and Tomlinson were pacing the platform disconsolately at the loss of
their comrade. They could not believe their eyes when I walked up and
said “Hello!” So we went back to a new series of adventures.
I used with success, three times running, another method of getting my
“dispatches” to Fleet Street. After the third time some intuition told
me to change the plan. At that time, as all through the war, a number
of King’s messengers--mostly men of high rank and reputation--traveled
continually between British G.H.Q. and the War Office, with private
documents from the Commander-in-Chief. Three times did I accost one of
these officers--a different man each time--in an easy and confidential
manner.
“Are you going back to Whitehall, Sir?”
“Yes. What can I do for you?”
“I shall be much obliged if you will put this letter in your bag, and
deliver it at the War Office.”
“Certainly, my dear fellow!”
My letter was addressed to _The Daily Chronicle_, care of the War
Office, and, much to the surprise of my editor, was punctually
delivered, by a War-Office messenger. But my intuition was right. After
the third time the editor of _The Daily Chronicle_ received word from
the War Office that if Gibbs sent any more of his articles by King’s
messenger, they would be destroyed.
The method of delivery became easier afterward, because the newspapers
organized a series of their own couriers between England and France,
and that system served until the whole courier service was rounded up
and forbidden to set foot in France again.
It was amazing that my articles, and those of my fellow correspondents,
were allowed to appear in the newspapers, in spite of military
prohibition. But the press censorship, which had been set up by the
government under the control of F. E. Smith, now Lord Birkenhead,
was not under direct military authority, and was much more tolerant
of correspondents who evaded military regulations. I wrote scores of
columns during the first few months of the war, mostly of a descriptive
character, and very few lines were blacked out by the censors. So far
from being in the black books of the press censorship as established
at that time, I was sent for by F. E. Smith, who thanked me for my
narratives and promised to give personal attention to any future
dispatches I might send. This was at the very time when Kitchener
himself gave orders for my arrest, after reading a long article of mine
from the Belgian front.
I was also received several times by Sir William Tyrrell, Secretary
to the Foreign Office, who questioned me about my knowledge of the
situation and begged me to call on him whenever I came back, although
he knew that orders had been given to cancel my passport and that I
was in the black book, for immediate arrest, at any port. It was Sir
William Tyrrell, indeed, who, with great kindness provided me with a
new passport after I had fallen into very hot water indeed.
It was F. E. Smith who read, approved, and even strengthened by a
phrase or two, a sensational dispatch written by my friend Hamilton
Fyfe and a colleague named Moore, which revealed for the first time
to the British nation the terrible ordeal and sacrifice of the little
Regular Army in the retreat from Mons. It was too sensational, perhaps,
in its account of “broken divisions,” and “remnants of battalions”; and
its tone was too tragic and despairing, so that there was one black
Sunday in England which will never be forgotten by those who lived
through it, because there seemed no hope for the British Army, or for
France.
As it happened, Massey, Tomlinson, and I had covered the same ground
as Fyfe and his companion, had seen the same things, and had agonized
with the same apprehension. But owing largely, as I must honestly and
heartily say, to the cool judgment and fine faith of Tomlinson, our
deduction from those facts and the spirit of what we wrote was far
more optimistic--and future history proved us to be right--so that
they helped to restore confidence in England and Scotland, when they
appeared on Monday morning, following Fyfe’s terrible dispatch.
But Fyfe did a great service to the nation and the Allies, by the truth
he told, somewhat overcolored as it was. It awakened Great Britain from
its false complacency. It revealed to the nation, for the first time,
the awful truth that our little Regular Army, magnificent as it was,
could not withstand the tremendous weight of the German advance on the
left flank of the French, was not sufficient to turn the scales of
victory in favor of France, and was in desperate need of reinforcements
from the untrained manhood at home. It shook the spirit of England
like an earthquake, and brought it face to face with the menace of its
life and liberties. For if France went down, we should follow.... The
recruiting booths were stormed by the young manhood of England and
Scotland, who had not joined up because they had believed that myth:
“The war will be over in three months.”
There was tremendous anger in the War Office at the publication of that
article by Fyfe and Moore, and F. E. Smith, as the press censor, was
severely compromised.
The truth was that the military mind was obsessed with the necessity of
fighting this war--“our war” as the regulars called it--in the dark,
while the nonmilitary mind knew that such a policy was impossible, and
might be disastrous, in a war costing such a frightful sum of life, and
putting such a strain upon the nation’s heart and spirit.
Looking back on my experiences as an unauthorized correspondent in
that early part of the war, I must confess now that I was hardly
justified in evading military law, and that I might have been found
guilty, justly, of a serious crime against the Allied cause. By some
frightful indiscretion (which I did not commit) I or any other of those
correspondents might have endangered the position of our troops, or the
French army, by giving information useful to the enemy.
The main fault, however, lay with the War Office, and especially with
Lord Kitchener, whose imagination did not realize that this war could
not be fought in the dark, as some little affair with Indian hillmen
on the northwest frontier. The immense anxiety of the nation, with its
army fighting behind the veil while the fate of civilization hung in
the balance, could not and would not be satisfied with the few lines of
official _communiqués_ which told nothing and hid the truth....
Gradually the net was drawn tighter, until, in the first months of
1915, it was impossible for any correspondent to travel in the war zone
without arrest. I had come home to get a change of kit, as my clothes
were caked with blood and mud, after supporting wounded men in Belgium.
It was then that I heard of Kitchener’s orders for my arrest and was
greeted with surprise and apprehension by Robert Donald and the staff
of _The Daily Chronicle_, who had sent over two messengers (who had
never reached me) to warn me of my peril.
Next time I went to France I was provided with wonderful credentials
as a special commissioner of the British Red Cross, with instructions
to report on the hospital and medical needs of the army in the field.
These documents were signed by illustrious names, and covered with
red seals. I was satisfied they would pass me to any part of the
front.... I was arrested before I left the boat at Havre and taken by
two detectives to General Williams, the camp commander. He raged at me
with an extreme violence of language, took possession of my passport
and credentials, and put me under open arrest at the Hotel Tortoni,
in charge of six detectives. Here I remained for ten days or so,
unable to communicate my ignominious situation to the authorities of
the Red Cross, upon whose authority I had come. Fortunately I became
good friends with the detectives, who were excellent fellows, and with
whom I used to have my meals. It was by the kindness of one of them
that I was able to send through a message to the editor of _The Daily
Chronicle_, and shortly afterward General Williams graciously permitted
me to return to England.
It looked as though my career as a war correspondent had definitely
closed. I had violated every regulation. I had personally angered Lord
Kitchener. I was on the black books of the detectives at every port,
and General Williams solemnly warned me that if I returned to France, I
would be put up against a white wall, with unpleasant consequences.
Strange as it appears, the military authorities blotted out my sins
when at last they appointed five official war correspondents with a
recognized status in the British armies on the Western Front. No longer
did I have to dodge staff officers, and disguise myself as a refugee.
In khaki, with a green armlet denoting my service, I could face
generals, and even the Commander-in-Chief himself, without a quiver,
and with my four comrades was recognized as an officer and a gentleman,
with some reservations.