The appointment and work of five official war correspondents (of
whom I was one from first to last) caused an extraordinary amount of
perturbation at British General Headquarters. Staff officers of the
old Regular Army were at first exceedingly hostile to the idea, and to
us. They were deeply suspicious that we might be dirty dogs who would
reveal military secrets which would imperil the British front. They
had a conviction that we were “prying around” for no good purpose, and
would probably “give away the whole show.”
Fear, personal and professional, was in the minds of some of the
generals, it is certain. We found that many of the regulations to which
we were subject--until we broke them down--were much more to safeguard
the reputation and cover up the mistakes of the High Command than to
prevent the enemy from having information which might be of use to
him. They were afraid of the British public, of politicians, and of
newspapers, and were profoundly uneasy lest we should dig up scandals,
raise newspaper sensations, and cause infernal trouble generally.
I can quite sympathize with their nervousness, for if newspapers had
adopted ordinary journalistic methods of sensation mongering, the
position of the Army Command would have been intolerable. But this must
be said for the newspaper press in the Great War--whatever its faults,
and they were many--proprietors and editors subordinated everything
to a genuine and patriotic desire to “play the game,” to support the
army, and to avoid any criticism or controversy which might hamper the
military chiefs or demoralize the nation.
As far as the five war correspondents were concerned, we had no other
desire than to record the truth as fully as possible without handing
information to the enemy, and to describe the life and actions of our
fighting men so that the nation and the world should understand their
valor, their suffering, and their achievement. We identified ourselves
absolutely with the armies in the field, and we wiped out of our minds
all thought of personal “scoops,” and all temptation to write one
word which would make the task of officers and men more difficult or
dangerous. There was no need of censorship of our dispatches. We were
our own censors.
That couldn’t be taken for granted, however, by G.H.Q. They were
not sure at first of our mentality or our honor. The old tradition
of distrust between the army and the rest was very strong until the
New Army came into being, with officers who had not passed through
Sandhurst but through the larger world. They were so nervous of us in
those early days that they appointed a staff of censors to live with
us, travel with us, sleep with us, read our dispatches with a mass of
rules for their guidance, and examine our private correspondence to our
wives, if need be with acid tests, to discover any invisible message we
might try to smuggle through.
We had to suffer many humiliations in that way, but fortunately we had
a sense of humor and laughed at most of them. Gradually also--very
quickly indeed--we made friends with many generals and officers
commanding divisions, brigades, and battalions, broke down their
distrust, established confidence. They were surprised to find us decent
fellows, and pleased with what we wrote about the men. They became
keen to see us in their trenches or their headquarters. They wanted to
show us their particular “peepshows,” they invited us to see special
“stunts.” Their first hostility evaporated, and was replaced by cordial
welcome, and they laughed with us, and sometimes cursed with us, at
the continued restrictions of G.H.Q., which forbade the mention of
battalions and brigades (well known to the enemy) whose heroic exploits
we described.
For some time G.H.Q., represented by General Macdonagh, Chief of
Intelligence, under whose orders we were, maintained a narrow view
of our liberties in narration and description. Hardly a week passed
without some vexatious rule to cramp our style by prohibiting the
mention of facts far better known to the Germans than to the British,
whose men were suffering and dying without their own folk knowing the
action in which their sacrifice was consummated.
The heavy hand of the censorship fell with special weight upon us
during the battle of Loos. General Macdonagh himself used the blue
pencil ruthlessly, and I had no less than forty pages of manuscript
deleted by his own hand from my descriptive account. Again it seemed
to us that the guiding idea behind the censorship was, to conceal
the truth not from the enemy, but from the nation, in defense of the
British High Command and its tragic blundering. That was in September
of 1915, and we became aware at that time that the man most hostile
to our work was not Sir John French, the Commander-in-Chief, but Sir
Douglas Haig, at that time in command of the First Corps. He drew a
line around his own zone of operations beyond which we were forbidden
to go, and the message which conveyed his order to us was not couched
in conciliatory language. It was withdrawn under the urgent pressure
of our immediate chiefs, and I was allowed to go to the Loos redoubt
during the progress of the battle, with John Buchan who had come out
temporarily on behalf of _The Times_.
The tragic slaughter at Loos, its reckless and useless waste of life,
its abominable staff work, and certain political intrigues at home, led
to the recall of Sir John French and the succession of Sir Douglas Haig
as Commander-in-Chief.
For a time we believed that our doom was sealed, knowing his strong
prejudice against us, and in the first interview we had with him,
he did not conceal his contempt for our job. But with his new
responsibility he was bound to take notice of the increasing demand
from the British government and people for more detailed accounts of
British actions and of the daily routine of war. It became even an
angry demand, and Sir Douglas Haig yielded to its insistence. From
that time onward we were given full liberty of movement over the whole
front, and full and complete privileges, never before accorded to war
correspondents, to see the army reports during the progress of battle,
and day by day; while Army Corps, Divisions, and Battalion headquarters
were instructed to show us their intelligence and operation reports
and to give us detailed information of any action on their part of the
front.
The new Chief of Intelligence, General Charteris, who succeeded
General Macdonagh, devoted a considerable amount of time to our little
unit, and in many ways, with occasional tightening of the reins, was
broad-minded in his interpretation of the censorship regulations. It
may be truly said that never before in history was a great war, or any
war, so accurately and fully reported day by day for at least three
years, subject to certain reservations which were abominably vexatious
and tended to depress the spirit of the troops and to arouse the
suspicion of the nation.
The chief reservations were the ungenerous and unfair way in which
the names of particular battalions were not allowed to be mentioned,
and the suppression of the immense losses incurred by the troops.
The last restriction was necessary. It would be disastrous in the
course of a battle to give information to the enemy (who read all our
newspapers) of the exact damage he had done at a particular part of
the line. Nothing would be more valuable to an attacking army than
that knowledge. In due course the losses became known to the nation by
the publication of the casualty lists, so that it was only a temporary
concealment.
With regard to the mention of battalions, I am still convinced that
there was needless secrecy in that respect, as nine times out of ten
the German Intelligence was aware of what troops were in front of them,
along all sectors. Scores of times, also, mention was made of the
Canadians and Australians, where no reference was permitted to English,
Scottish, Irish, or Welsh battalions, so that the English especially,
who from first to last formed sixty-eight per cent of the total
fighting strength, and did most fighting and most dying, in all the
great battles, were ignored in favor of their comrades from overseas.
To this day many people in Canada and the United States believe that
the Canadians bore the brunt of all the fighting, while Tommy Atkins
looked on at a safe distance. The Australians have the same simple
faith about their own crowd. But splendid beyond words as these men
were, it is poor old Tommy Atkins of the English counties, and Jock,
his Scottish cousin, who held the main length of the line, took most of
the hard knocks, and fought most actions, big and little. Anybody who
denies that is a liar.
Our victory over the censorship, and over the narrow and unimaginative
prejudice of elderly staff officers, was due in no small measure
to--the censors. That may sound like a paradox, but it is the simple
truth. I have already said that each correspondent had a censor
attached to him, a kind of jailer and spy, eating, sleeping, walking,
and driving. Blue pencil in hand, they read our dispatches, slip by
slip, as they were written, and our letters to our wives, our aunts,
or our grandmothers. But these men happened to be gentlemen, and
broad-minded men of the world, and they very quickly became our most
loyal friends and active allies.
They saw the absurdity of many of the regulations laid down for
their guidance in censoring our accounts, and they did their best
to interpret them in a free and easy way, or to have them repealed,
if there was no loophole of escape. Always they turned a blind eye,
whenever possible, to a vexatious and niggling rule, and several of
them risked their jobs, and lost them, in putting up a stiff resistance
to some new and ridiculous order from G.H.Q. They went with us to the
front, and shared our fatigues and our risks, and smoothed the way for
us everywhere by tact and diplomacy and personal guarantees of our good
sense and honor.
The first group of censors who were attached to our little organization
were as good as we could have wished if we had had a free choice of the
whole British Army.
Our immediate chief was a very noble and charming man. That was Colonel
Stuart, a regular soldier of the old school, simple-hearted, brave
as a lion, courteous and kind. He led us into many dirty places and
tested our courage in front-line trenches, mine shafts, and bombarded
villages, with a smiling unconcern which at least taught us to hide any
fear that lurked in our hearts, as I freely confess it very often did
in mine. He was killed one day by a sniper’s bullet, and we mourned the
loss of a very gallant gentleman.
Attached to us, under his command, was an extraordinary fellow, and
splendid type, famous in the two worlds of sport and letters by name of
Hesketh Prichard. Many readers will know his name as the author of _The
Adventures of Don Q._, _Where Black Rules White_, and other books. He
was a big game hunter, a great cricketer, and an all-round sportsman,
and he stood six foot four in his stockings, a long lean Irishman, with
a powerful, deeply lined face, an immense nose, a whimsical mouth, and
moody, restless, humorous, tragic eyes. He hated the war with a deadly
loathing, because of its unceasing slaughter of that youth which he
loved, his old comrades in the playing fields and his comrades’ sons.
Often he would come down in the morning, when the casualty lists were
long, with eyes red after secret weeping. He had a morbid desire to go
to dangerous places and to get under fire, because he could not bear
the thought of remaining alive and whole while his pals were dying.
Often he would unwind his long legs, spring out of his chair, and say,
“Gibbs, old boy, for God’s sake let’s go and have a prowl round Ypres,
or see what’s doing Dickebush way.” There was always something doing in
the way of high explosive shells, and once, when my friend Tomlinson
and I were with Prichard in the ruin of the Grand Place in Ypres, a
German aëroplane skimmed low above our heads and thought it worth
while to bomb our little lonely group. Perhaps it was Hesketh’s G.H.Q.
arm-band which caught the eye of the German aviator. We sprawled under
the cover of ruined masonry, and lay “doggo” until the bird had gone.
But there was always the chance of death in every square yard of Ypres,
because it was shelled ceaselessly, and that was why Hesketh went there
with any companion who would join him--and his choice fell mostly on me.
He left us before the battles of the Somme, to become chief sniper of
the British army. With telescopic sights, and many tricks of Red Indian
warfare, he lay in front-line trenches or camouflaged trees, and waited
patiently, as in the old days he had lain waiting for wild beasts,
until a German sniper showed his head to take a shot at one of our
men. He never showed his head twice when Hesketh Prichard was within
a thousand yards. Then Prichard organized sniping schools all along
the front, until we beat the Germans at their own game in that way of
warfare.
He survived the war, but not with his strength and activity. Some “bug”
in the trenches had poisoned his blood, and when I saw him last he
lay, a gaunt wreck, in the garden of his home near St. Albans, where
his father-in-law was Earl of Verulam--Francis Bacon’s old title. In a
letter he had written to me was the tragic phrase, “_Quantum mutatus
ab illo_”--How changed from what once he was!--and as I looked at him,
I was shocked at that change. The shadow of death was on him, though
his beautiful wife tried to hide it from him, and from herself, by
a splendid laughing courage that masked her pity and fear. He was a
victim of the war, though he lived until the peace.
Another man who was attached to the war correspondent’s unit in that
early part of the war was Colonel Faunthorpe, famous in India as a
hunter of tigers--he had shot sixty-two in the jungle--and as a cavalry
officer, pigsticker, judge, and poet. When, after the war, Faunthorpe
went for a time to the British Embassy in Washington (making frequent
visits to New York), American society welcomed him as the Englishman
whom they had been taught to expect and had never yet seen. Here he
was at last, as he is known in romance and legend--tall, handsome,
inscrutable, with a monocle, a marvelous gift of silence, a quiet,
deep, hardly revealed sense of humor, and a fine gallantry of manner to
pretty women and ugly ones. He left a trail of tender recollection and
humorous remembrance from New York to San Francisco.
Faunthorpe, behind his mask of the typical cavalry officer, had (and
has), as I quickly perceived, a subtle mind, a lively sense of irony,
and a most liberal outlook on life. He had a quiet contempt (not always
sufficiently disguised) for the limited intelligence of G.H.Q. (or of
some high officers therein), he was open in his ridicule of journalists
in general and some war correspondents in particular, and he regarded
his own job in the war, as censor and controller of photographs, as
one of the inexplicable jests of fate. But he stood by us manfully
in a time of crisis when, at the beginning of a series of battles, a
venerable old gentleman, an “ancient” of prehistoric mind, was suddenly
produced from some lair in G.H.Q., and given supreme authority over
military censorship, which he instantly used by canceling all the
privileges we had won by so much work and struggle.
With the Colonel’s full consent, we went “on strike” and said the war
could go on without us, as we would not write a single word about
the impending battles until all the new restrictions were removed.
This ultimatum shocked G.H.Q. to its foundations--or at least the
Intelligence side of it. After twenty-four hours of obstinate
command, the ancient one was sent back to his lair, our privileges
were restored, but Colonel Faunthorpe was made the scapegoat of our
rebellion, and deposed from his position as our chief.
We deplored his departure, for he had been great and good to us. One
quality of his was a check to our restlessness, nervousness, and
irritability in the wear and tear of this strange life. He had an
infinite reserve of patience. When there was “nothing doing” he slept,
believing, as he said, in the “conservation of energy.” He slept
always in the long motor drives which we made in our daily routine
of inquiry and observation. He slept like a babe under shell fire,
unless activity of command were required, and once awakened to find
high explosive shells bursting around his closed car, which he had
parked in the middle of a battlefield, while his driver was painfully
endeavoring to hide his body behind a mud bank.... Colonel Faunthorpe
is now “misgoverning the unfortunate Indians”--it is his own phrase--as
Commissioner at Lucknow, with command of life and death over millions
of natives whom he understands as few men now alive.
India was well represented in the group of censors attached to our
organization, for we had two other Indian officials with us--Captains
Reynolds and Coldstream, both men of high education, great charm of
character, and unfailing sense of humor. For Reynolds I had a personal
affection as a wise, friendly, and humorous soul, with whom I tramped
in many strange places where death went ravaging, always encouraged by
his cool disregard of danger, his smiling contempt for any show of fear.
Coldstream was a little Pucklike man, neat as a new pin, damnably
ironical of war and war correspondents, whimsical, courteous, sulky
at times, like a spoiled boy, and lovable. He is back in India, like
Reynolds and Faunthorpe, helping to govern our Empire, and doing it
well.
Our commanding officers and censors changed from time to time. It was
a difficult and dangerous position to be O. C. war correspondents, for
such a man was between two fires--our own resentment (sometimes very
passionate) of regulations hampering to our work, and the fright and
anger of G.H.Q. if anything slipped through likely to create public
criticism or to encourage the enemy, or to depress the spirit of the
British people.
Colonel Hutton Wilson, who was our immediate chief for a time, was a
debonair little staff officer with the narrow traditions of the Staff
College and an almost childlike ignorance of the press, the public, and
human life outside the boundaries of his professional experience, which
was not wide. He was amiable, but irritating to most of my colleagues,
with little vexatious ways. Personally I liked him, and I think he
liked me, but he had a fixed idea that I was a rebel, and almost a
Bolshevik.
Later in the war he was succeeded by Colonel the Honorable Neville
Lytton, the grandson of Bulwer Lytton, the great novelist, and the
brother of the present Lord Lytton. Neville Lytton was, and is, a
man of great and varied talent, as painter, musician, and diplomat.
In appearance as well as in character he belongs to the eighteenth
century, with a humorous, whimsical face, touched by side whiskers,
and a most elegant way with him. He is a gentleman of the old school
(with a strain of the gypsy in his blood), who believes in “form” above
all things, and the _beau geste_ in all situations of life or in the
presence of death. When I walked with him one day up the old duckboards
under shell fire, he swung his trench stick with careless grace, made
comical grimaces of contempt at the bursting shells, and said, “Gibbs,
if we have to die, let’s do it like gentlemen! If we’re afraid (as we
are!) let’s look extremely brave. A good pose is essential in life and
war.”
At the soul of him he was a Bohemian and artist. His room, wherever we
were, was littered with sketches, sheets of music, poems in manuscript,
photographs of his portraits of beautiful ladies. Whatever the agony
of the war around us, he loved to steal away alone or with one of
his assistant officers, my humorous friend Theodore Holland (“little
Theo” and “Theo the Flower,” as he called himself), well known as a
composer, and play delightful little melodies from Bach and Gluck on an
eighteenth-century flute.
In the early part of the war Lytton had served as a battalion officer
in the trenches, with gallantry and distinction, and then was put in
charge of a little group of French correspondents, whom he controlled
with wonderful tact and good humor. He spoke French with the _argot_
of Paris, and understood the French temperament and humor so perfectly
that it was difficult to believe that he was not a Frenchman, when he
was in the midst of his little crowd of excitable fellows who regarded
him as a “_bon garçon_” and “_un original_” with such real affection
that they were enraged when he was transferred to our command.
Another distinguished and unusual type of man--one of the greatest
“intellectuals” of England, though unknown to the general
public--joined us as assistant censor, halfway through the war. This
was C. E. Montague, editor of _The Manchester Guardian_. At the
outbreak of war he dyed his white hair black, enlisted as a “Tommy,”
served in the trenches, reached the rank of sergeant, and finally was
blown up in a dugout. When he joined us he had taken the dye out of his
hair again and it was snow-white, though he was not more than fifty
years of age.
It was absurd for Montague to be censoring our dispatches, ordering
our cars, looking after our mess, soothing our way with headquarter
staffs, accompanying us as a silent observer to battlefields and
trenches and “pill-boxes” and dugouts. He could have written any man of
us “off our heads.” He would have been the greatest war correspondent
in the world. He writes such perfect prose that every sentence should
be carved in marble or engraved on bronze. He had the eye of a hawk
for small detail, and a most sensitive perception of truth and beauty
lying deep below the surface of our human scene. Compared with Montague
our censor--hating his job, deeply contemptuous of our work, loathing
the futility of all but the fighting men, with a secret revolt in his
soul against the whole bloody business of war, yet with a cold white
passion of patriotism (though Irish)--we were pigmies, vulgarians, and
shameless souls. His bitterness has been revealed in a book called
_Disenchantment_--very cruel to us, rather unfair to me, as he admits
in a letter I have, but wonderful in its truth.
There was one other man who joined our organization as one of the
censors, to whom I must pay a tribute of affection and esteem. This
was a young fellow named Cadge, unknown to fame, always silent and
sulky in his manner, but with a level head, a genius for doing exactly
the right thing at the right time, and a secret sweetness and nobility
of soul which kept our little “show” running on greased wheels and made
him my good comrade in many adventures. Scores of time he and I went
together into the dirty places, into the midst of the muck and ruin of
war, across the fields where shells came whining, along the trenches
where masses of men lived in the mud, under the menace of death.
A strange life--like a distant dream now!--but made tolerable at
times, because of these men whose portraits I have sketched, and whose
friendship was good to have.