I looked down to see an irregular outline of fresh planking.

"An accident when we did not happen to be out of their reach. We

had the range of them," he added.

"The range of them" is a great phrase. Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee

used it in speaking of the battle of the Falkland Islands. "The range of

them" seems a sure prescription for victory. Nothing in all the history

of the war appeals to me as quite so smooth a bit of tactics as the

Falkland affair. It was so smooth that it was velvety; and it is worth

telling again, as I understand it. Sir Frederick is another young

admiral. Otherwise, how could the British navy have entrusted him

with so important a task? He is a different type from Beatty, who in an

army one judges might have been in the cavalry. Along with the

peculiar charm and alertness which we associate with sailors--they

imbibe it from the salt air and from meeting all kinds of weather and

all kinds of men, I think--he has the quality of the scholar, with a

suspicion of merriness in his eye.

He was Chief of the War Staff at the Admiralty in the early stages of

the war, which means, I take it, that he assisted in planning the

moves on the chessboard. It fell to him to act; to apply the strategy

and tactics which he planned for others at sea while he sat at a desk.

It was his wit against von Spee's, who was not deficient in this

respect. If he had been he might not have steamed into the trap. The

trouble was that von Spee had some wit, but not enough. It would

have been better for him if he had been as guileless as a parson.

Sir Frederick is so gentle-mannered that one would never suspect

him of a "double bluff," which was what he played on von Spee. After

von Spee's victory over Cradock, Sturdee slipped across to the South

Atlantic, without anyone knowing that he had gone, with a squadron

strong enough to do unto von Spee what von Spee had done unto

Cradock.

But before you wing your bird you must flush him. The thing was to

find von Spee and force him to give battle; for the South Atlantic is

broad and von Spee, it is supposed, was in an Emden mood and

bent on reaching harbour in German South-West Africa, whence he

could sally out to destroy British shipping on the Cape route. When

he intercepted a British wireless message--Sturdee had left off the

sender's name and location--telling the plodding old Canopus seeking

home or assistance before von Spee overtook her, that she would be

perfectly safe in the harbour at Port William, as guns had been

erected for her protection, von Spee guessed that this was a bluff,

and rightly. But it was only Bluff Number One. He steamed to the

Falklands with a view to finishing off the old Canopus on the way

across to Africa. There he fell foul of Bluff Number Two. Sturdee did

not have to seek him; he came to Sturdee.

There was no convenient Dogger Bank fog in that latitude to cover

his flight. Sturdee had the speed of von Spee and he had to fight. It

was the one bit of strategy of the war which is like that of the story

books and worked out as strategy always does in proper story books.

Practically the twelve-inch guns of the Inflexible and the Invincible

had only to keep their distance and hang on to the Scharnhorst and

the Gneisenau in order to do the trick. Light-weights or middle-

weights have no business trafficking with heavy-weights in naval

warfare.

"Von Spee made a brave fight," said Sir Frederick, "but we kept him

at a distance that suited us, without letting him get out of range."

He had had the fortune to prove an established principle in action. It

was all in the course of duty, which is the way that all the officers and

all the men look at their work. Only a few ships have had a chance to

fight, and these are emblazoned on the public memory. But they did

no better and no worse, probably, than the others would have done. If

the public singles out ships, the navy does not. Whatever is done and

whoever does it, why, it is to the credit of the family, according to the

spirit of service that promotes uniformity of efficiency. Leaders and

ships which have won renown are resolved into the whole in that

harbour where the fleet is the thing; and the good opinion they most

desire is that of their fellows. If they have that they will earn the

public's when the test comes.

Belonging to the class of the first of battle-cruisers is the Inflexible,

which received a few taps in the Falklands and a blow that was nearly

the death of her in the Dardanelles. Tribute enough for its courage--

the tribute of a chivalrous enemy--von Spee's squadron receives

from the officers and men of the Inflexible, who saw them go down

into the sea tinged with sunset red with their colours still flying. Then

in the sunset red the British saved as many of those afloat as they

could.

Those dripping German officers who had seen one of their battered

turrets carried away bodily into the sea by a British twelve-inch shell,

who had endured a fury of concussions and destruction, with steel

missiles cracking steel structures into fragments, came on board the

Inflexible looking for signs of some blows delivered in return for the

crushing blows that had beaten their ships into the sea and saw none

until they were invited into the wardroom, which was in chaos--and

then they smiled.

At least, they had sent one shell home. The sight was sweet to them,

so sweet that, in respect to the feeling of the vanquished, the victors

held silence with a knightly consideration. But where had the shell

entered? There was no sign of any hole. Then they learned that the

fire of the guns of the starboard turret midships over the wardroom,

which was on the port side, had deposited a great many things on the

floor which did not belong there; and their expression changed. Even

this comfort was taken from them.

"We had the range of you!" the British explained. The chaplain of the

Inflexible was bound to have an anecdote. I don't know why, except

that a chaplain's is not a fighting part and he may look on. His place

was down behind the armour with the doctor, waiting for wounded. He

stood in his particular steel cave listening to the tremendous blasts of

her guns which shook the Inflexible's frame, and still no wounded

arrived. Then he ran up a ladder to the deck and had a look around

and saw the little points of the German ships with the shells sweeping

toward them and the smoke of explosions which burst on board them.

It was not the British who needed his prayers that day, but the

Germans. Personally, I think the Germans are more in need of

prayers at all times because of the damnable way they act.

Perhaps the spirit of the Inflexible's story was best given by a

midshipman with the down still on his cheek. Considering how young

the British take their officer-beginners to sea, the admirals are not

young, at least, in point of sea service. He got more out of the action

than his elders; his impressions of the long cruises and the actions

had the vividness of boyhood. Down in one of the caves, doing his

part as the shells were sent up to feed the thundering guns above,

the whispered news of the progress of battle was passed on at

intervals till, finally, the guns were silent. Then he hurried on deck in

the elation of victory, succeeded by the desire to save those whom

they had fought. It had all been so simple; so like drill. You had only to

go on shooting--that was all.

Yes, he had been lucky. From the Falklands to the Dardanelles,

which was a more picturesque business than the battle. Any minute

off the Straits you did not know but a submarine would have a try at

you or you might bump into a mine. And the Inflexible did bump into

one. She had two thousand tons of water on board. It was fast work

to keep the remainder of the sea from coming in, too, and the same

kind of dramatic experience as the Lion's in reaching port. Yes, he

had been very lucky. It was all a lark to that boy.

"It never occurs to midshipmen to be afraid of anything," said one of

the officers. "The more danger, the better they like it."

In the wardroom was a piece of the mine or the torpedo, whichever it

was, that struck the Inflexible; a strange, twisted, annealed bit of

metal. Every ship which had been in action had some souvenir which

the enemy had sent on board in anger and which was preserved with

a collector's enthusiasm.

The Inflexible seemed as good as ever she was. Such is the way of

naval warfare. Either it is to the bottom of the sea or to dry docks and

repairs. There is nothing half-way. So it is well to take care that you

have "the range of them."

XXX

On The Fleet Flagship

Thus far we have skirted around the heart of things, which in a fleet is

always the Commander-in-Chief's flagship. Our handy, agile

destroyer ran alongside a battleship with as much nonchalance as

she would go alongside a pier. I should not have been surprised to

see her pirouette over the hills or take to flying.

There was a time when those majestic and pampered ladies, the

battleships--particularly if there were a sea running as in this harbour

at the time--having in mind the pride of paint, begged all destroyers to

keep off with the superciliousness of grandes dames holding their

skirts aloof from contact with nimble, audacious street gamins, who

dodged in and out of the traffic of muddy streets. But destroyers have

learned better manners, perhaps, and battleships have been

democratized. It is the day of Russian dancers and when aeroplanes

loop the loop, and we have grown used to all kinds of marvels.

But the sea has refused to be trained. It is the same old sea that it

was in Columbus' time, without any loss of trickiness in bumping

small craft against towering sides. The way that this destroyer slid up

to the flagship without any fuss and the way her bluejackets held her

off from the paint, as she rose on the crests and slipped back into the

trough, did not tell the whole story. A part of it was how, at the right

interval, they assisted the landlubber to step from gunwale to

gangway, making him feel perfectly safe when he would have been

perfectly helpless but for them.

I had often watched our own bluejackets at the same thing. They did

not grin--not when you were looking at them. Nor did the British.

Bluejackets are noted for their official politeness. I should like to have

heard their remarks--they have a gift for remarks--about those

invaders of their uniformed world in Scottish caps and other kinds of

caps and the different kinds of clothes which tailors make for civilians.

Without any intention of eavesdropping, I did overhear one asking

another whence came these strange birds.

You knew the flagship by the admirals' barges astern, as you know

the location of an army headquarters by its motor-cars. It seemed in

the centre of the fleet at anchor, if that is a nautical expression.

Where its place would be in action is one of those secrets as

important to the enemy as the location of a general's shell-proof

shelter in Flanders. Perhaps Sir John Jellicoe may be on some other

ship in battle. If there is any one foolish question which you should not

ask it is this.

As you mounted the gangway of this mighty super-Dreadnought you

were bound to think--at least, an American was--of another flagship in

Portsmouth harbour, Nelson's Victory. Probably an Englishman would

not indulge in such a commonplace. I would like to know how many

Englishmen had ever seen the old Victory. But then, how many

Americans have been to Mount Vernon and Gettysburg?

It was a hundred years, one repeats, since the British had fought a

first-class naval war. Nelson did his part so well that he did not leave

any fighting to be done by his successors. Maintaining herself as

mistress of the seas by the threat of superior strength--except in the

late 'fifties, when the French innovation of iron ships gave France a

temporary lead on paper--ship after ship, through all the grades of

progress in naval construction, has gone to the scrap heap without

firing a shot in anger. The Victory was one landmark, or seamark, if

you please, and this flagship was another. Between the two were

generations of officers and men, working through the change from

stagecoach to motors and aeroplanes and seaplanes, who had kept

up to a standard of efficiency in view of a test that never came. A year

of war and still the test had not come, for the old reason that England

had superior strength. Her outnumbering guns which had kept the

peace of the seas still kept it. All second nature to the Englishman

this, as the defence of the immense distances of the steppes to the

Russian or the Rocky Mountain wall and the Mississippi's flow to the

man in Kansas. But the American kept thinking about it; and he

wanted the Kansans to think about it, too. When he was about to

meet Sir John Jellicoe he envisaged the tall column in Trafalgar

Square, surmounted by the one-armed figure turned toward the

wireless skein on top of the Admiralty building.

I first heard of Jellicoe fifteen years ago when he was Chief of Staff to

Sir Edward Seymour, then Commander-in-Chief of the Asiatic

Squadron. Indeed, you were always hearing about Jellicoe in those

days on the China coast. He was the kind of man whom people talk

about after they have met him, which means personality. It was in

China seas, you may remember, that when a few British seamen

were hard pressed in a fight that was not ours the phrase, "Blood is

thicker than water," sprang from the lips of an American commander,

who waited not on international etiquette but went to the assistance of

the British.

Nor will anyone who was present in the summer of '98 forget how Sir

Edward Chichester stood loyally by Admiral George Dewey, when the

German squadron was empire-fishing in the waters of Manila Bay,

until our Atlantic fleet had won the battle of Santiago and Admiral

Dewey had received reinforcements and, east and west, we were

able to look after the Germans. The British bluejackets said that the

rations of frozen mutton from Australia which we sent alongside were

excellent; but the Germans were in no position to judge, doubtless

through an oversight in the detail of hospitality by one of Admiral

Dewey's staff. Let us be officially correct and say there was no mutton

to spare after the British had been supplied.

In the gallant effort of the Allied force of sailors to relieve the

legations against some hundreds of thousands of Boxers, Captain

Bowman McCalla and his Americans worked with Admiral Seymour

and his Britons in the most trying and picturesque adventure of its

kind in modern history. McCalla, too, was always talking of Jellicoe,

who was wounded on the expedition; and Sir John's face lighted at

mention of McCalla's name. He recalled how McCalla had painted

on the superstructure of the little Newark that saying of Farragut's,

"The best protection against an enemy's fire is a well-directed fire

of your own"; which has been said in other ways and cannot be

said too often.

"We called McCalla Mr. Lead," said Sir John; "he had been wounded

so many times and yet was able to hobble along and keep on

fighting. We corresponded regularly until his death."

Beatty, too, was on that expedition; and he, too, was another

personality one kept hearing about. It seemed odd that two men who

had played a part in work which was a soldier's far from home should

have become so conspicuous in the Great War. If on that day when,

with ammunition exhausted, all members of the expedition had given

up hope of ever returning alive, they had not accidentally come upon

the Shi-kou arsenal, one would not be commanding the Grand Fleet

and the other its battle-cruiser squadron.

Before the war, I am told, when Admiralty Lords and others who had

the decision to make were discussing who should command in case

of war, opinion ran something like this: "Jellicoe! He has the brains."

"Jellicoe! He has the health to endure the strain, with years enough

and not too many." "Jellicoe! He has the confidence of the service."

The choice literally made itself. When anyone is undertaking the

gravest responsibility which has been an Englishman's for a hundred

years, this kind of a recommendation helps. He had the guns; he had

supreme command; he must deliver victory--such was England's

message to him.

When I mentioned in a dispatch that all that differentiated him from

the officers around him was the broader band of gold lace on his arm,

an English naval critic wanted to know if I expected to find him in cloth

of gold. No; nor in full dress with all his medals on, as I saw him

appear on the screen at a theatre in London.

Any general of high command must be surrounded by more pomp

than an admiral in time of action. A headquarters cannot have the

simplicity of the quarter-deck. The force which the general commands

is not in sight; the admiral's is. You saw the commander and you saw

what it was that he commanded. Within the sweep of vision from the

quarter-deck was the terrific power which the man with the broad gold

band on his arm directed. At a signal from him it would move or it

would stand still. That command of Joshua's if given by Sir John one

thought might have been obeyed.

One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred twelve-inch

guns and larger, which could carry two hundred tons of metal in a

single broadside for a distance of eighteen thousand yards! But do

not forget the little guns, bristling under the big guns like needles from

a cushion, which would keep off the torpedo assassins; or the light

cruisers, or the colliers, or the destroyers, or the 2,300 trawlers and

mine-layers, and what not, all under his direction. He had

submarines, too, double the number of the German. But with all the

German men-of-war in harbour, they had no targets. Where were

they? You did not ask questions which would not be answered. The

whole British fleet was waiting for the Germans to show their heads,

while cruisers were abroad scouting in the North Sea.

At the outset of the war the German fleet might have had one chance

in ten of getting a turn of fortune in its favour by an unexpected stroke

of strategy. This was the danger against which Jellicoe had to guard.

For in one sense, the Germans had the tactical offensive by sea as

well as by land; theirs the outward thrust from the centre. They could

choose when to come out of their harbour; when to strike. The British

had to keep watch all the time and be ready whenever the enemy

should come.

Thus, the British Grand Fleet was at sea in the early part of the war,

cruising here and there, begging for battle. Then it was that it learned

how to avoid submarines and mine-fields. Submarines had played a

greater part than expected, because Germany had chosen a guerrilla

naval warfare: to harass, to wound, to wear down. Doubtless she

hoped to reduce the number of British fighting units by attrition.

Weak England might be in plants for making arms for an army, but

not in ship-building. Here was her true genius. She was a maritime

power; Germany a land power. Her part as an ally of France and

Russia being to command the sea, all demands of the Admiralty for

material must take precedence over demands of the War Office. At

the end of the first year she had increased her fighting power by sea

to a still higher ratio of preponderance over the Germans; in another

year she would increase it further.

Admiral von Tirpitz wanted nothing so much as to draw the British

fleet under the guns of Heligoland or into a mine-field and submarine

trap. But Sir John Jellicoe refused the bait. When he had completed

his precautions and his organization to meet new conditions, his fleet

need not go into the open. His Dreadnoughts could rest at anchor at

a base, while his scouts kept in touch with all that was passing, and

his auxiliaries and destroyers fought the submarines. Without a British

Dreadnought having fired a shot at a German Dreadnought, nowhere

on the face of the seas might a single vessel show the German flag

except by thrusting it above the water for a few minutes.

If von Tirpitz sent his fleet out he, too, might find himself in a trap of

mines and submarines. He was losing submarines and England was

building more. His naval force rather than Sir John's was suffering

from attrition. The blockade was complete from Iceland to the North

Sea. While the world knew of the work of the armies, the care that

this task required, the hardships endured, the enormous expenditure

of energy, were all hidden behind that veil of secrecy which obviously

must be more closely drawn over naval than over army operations.

From the flagship the campaign was directed. One would think that

many offices and many clerks would be required. But the offices and

the clerks were at the Admiralty. Here was the execution. In a room

perhaps four feet by six was the wireless focus which received all

reports and sent all orders, with trim bluejackets at the keys. "Go!"

and "Come!" the messages were saying; they wasted no words.

Officers of the staff did their work in narrow space, yet seemed to

have plenty of room. Red tape is inflammable. There is no more place

for it on board a flagship prepared for action than for unnecessary

woodwork.

At every turn compression and concentration of power were like the

guns and the decks, cleared for action, significant in directness of

purpose. The system was planetary in its impressive simplicity, the

more striking as nothing that man has ever made is more

complicated or includes more kinds of machinery than a battleship.

One battleship was one unit, one chessman on the naval board.

Not all famous leaders are likeable, as every world traveller knows.

They all have the magnetism of force, which is quite another thing

from the magnetism of charm. What the public demands is that they

shall win victories, whether personally likeable or not. But if they are

likeable and simple and human and a sailor besides--well, we know

what that means.

Perhaps Sir John Jellicoe is not a great man. It is not for a civilian

even to presume to judge. We have the word of those who ought to

know, however, that he is. I hope that he is, because I like to think

that great commanders need not necessarily appear formidable.

Nelson refused to be cast for the heavy part, and so did Farragut. It

may be a sailor characteristic. I predict that after this war is over,

whatever honours or titles they may bestow upon him, the English are

going to like Sir John Jellicoe not alone for his service to the nation,

but for himself.

Admiral Jellicoe is one with Captain Jellicoe, whose cheeriness even

when wounded kept up the spirits of the others on the relief

expedition of Boxer days. "He could do it, too!" one thought, having in

mind Sir David Beatty's leap to the deck of a destroyer. Spare, of

medium height, ruddy, and fifty-seven--so much for the health

qualification which the Admiralty Lords dwelt upon as important. After

he had been at sea for a year he seemed a human machine, much of

the type of the destroyer as a steel machine--a thirty-knot human

machine, capable of three hundred or five hundred revolutions,

engines running smoothly, with no waste energy, slipping over the

waves and cutting through them; a quick man, quick of movement,

quick of comprehension and observation, of speech and of thought,

with a delightful self-possession--for there are many kinds--which is

instantly responsive with decision.

A telescope under his arm, too, as he received his guests. You liked

that. He keeps watch over the fleet himself when he is on the quarter-

deck. You had a feeling that nothing could happen in all his range of

vision, stretching down the "avenues of Dreadnoughts" to the light-

cruiser squadron, and escape his attention. It hardly seems possible

that he was ever bored. Everything around interests him. Energy he

has, electric energy in this electric age, this man chosen to command

the greatest war product of modern energy.

Fastened to the superstructure near the ladder to his quarters was a

new broom which South Africa had sent him. He was highly pleased

with the present; only the broom was Tromp's emblem, while Blake's

had been the whip. Possibly the South African Dutchmen, now

fighting on England's side, knew that he already had the whip and

they wanted him to have the Dutch broom, too.

He had been using both, and many other devices in his campaign

against von Tirpitz's "unter See" boats, as was illustrated by one of

the maps hung in his cabin. Quite different this from maps in a

general's headquarters, with the front trenches and support and

reserve trenches and the gun-positions marked in vari-coloured

pencillings. Instantly a submarine was sighted anywhere, Sir John

had word of it, and a dot went down on the spot where it had been

seen. In places the sea looked like a pepper-box cover. Dots were

plentiful outside the harbour where we were; but well outside, like flies

around sugar which they could not reach.

Seeing Sir John among his admirals and guests one had a glimpse of

the life of a sort of mysterious, busy brotherhood. I was still searching

for an admiral with white hair. If there were none among these

seniors, then all must be on shore. Spirit, I think, that is the word; the

spirit of youth, of corps, of service, of the sea, of a ready, buoyant

definiteness--yes, spirit was the word to characterize these leaders.

Sir John moved from one to another in his quick way, asking a

question, listening, giving a direction, his face smiling and expressive

with a sort of infectious confidence.

"He is the man!" said an admiral. I mean, several admirals and

captains said so. They seemed to like to say it. Whenever he

approached one noted an eagerness, a tightening of nerves. Natural

leadership expresses itself in many ways; Sir John gave it a sailor's

attractiveness. But I learned that there was steel under his happy

smile; and they liked him for that, too. Watch out when he is not

smiling, and sometimes when he is smiling, they say.

For failure is never excused in the fleet, as more than one

commander knows. It is a luxury of consideration which the British

nation cannot afford by sea in time of war. The scene which one

witnessed in the cabin of the Dreadnought flagship could not have

been unlike that of Nelson and his young captains on the Victory, in

the animation of youth governed with one thought under the one rule

that you must make good.

Splendid as the sight of the power which Sir John directed from his

quarter-deck while the ships lay still in their plotted moorings, it paled

beside that when the anchor chains began to rumble and, column by

column, they took on life slowly and, majestically gaining speed, one

after another turned toward the harbour's entrance.

XXXI

Simply Hard Work

Besides the simple word spirit, there is the simple word work. Take

the two together, mixing with them the proper quantity of intelligence,

and you have something finer than Dreadnoughts; for it builds

Dreadnoughts, or tunnels mountains, or wins victories.

In no organization would it be so easy as in the navy to become

slack. If the public sees a naval review it knows that its ships can

steam and keep their formations; if it goes on board it knows that the

ships are clean--at least, the limited part of them which it sees; and it

knows that there are turrets and guns.

But how does it know that the armour of the turrets is good, or that

the guns will fire accurately? Indeed, all that it sees is the shell. The

rest must be taken on trust. A navy may look all right and be quite

bad. The nation gives a certain amount of money to build ships which

are taken in charge by officers and men who, shut off from public

observation, may do about as they please. The result rests with their

industry and responsibility. If they are true to the character of the

nation by and large that is all the nation may expect; if they are better,

then the nation has reason to be grateful. Englishmen take more

interest in their navy than Americans in theirs. They give it the best

that is in them and they expect the best from it in return. Every

youngster who hopes to be an officer knows that the navy is no place

for idling; every man who enlists knows that he is in for no junket on a

pleasure yacht. The British navy, I judged, had a relatively large

percentage of the brains and application of England.

"It is not so different from what it was for ten years preceding the

war," said one of the officers. "We did all the work we could stand

then; and whether cruising or lying in harbour, life is almost normal for

us to-day."

The British fleet was always on a war footing. It must be. Lack

of naval preparedness is more dangerous than lack of land

preparedness. It is fatal. I know of officers who had had only a week's

leave in a year in time of peace; their pay is less than our officers'.

Patriotism kept them up to the mark.

And another thing: once a sailor, always a sailor, is an old saying; but

it has a new application in modern navies. They become fascinated

with the very drudgery of ship existence. They like their world, which

is their house and their shop. It has the attraction of a world of

priestcraft, with them alone understanding the ritual. Their drill at the

guns becomes the preparation for the great sport of target practice,

which beats any big-game shooting when guns compete with guns,

with battle practice greater sport than target practice. Bringing a ship

into harbour well, holding her to her place in the formation, roaming

over the seas in a destroyer--all means eternal effort at the mastery

of material, with the results positively demonstrated.

On one of the Dreadnoughts I saw a gun's crew drilling with a dummy

six-inch; weight, one hundred pounds.

"Isn't that boy pretty young to handle that big shell?" an admiral asked

a junior officer.

"He doesn't think so," the officer replied. "We haven't anyone who

could handle it better. It would break his heart if we changed his

position."

Not one of fifty German prisoners whom I had seen filing by over in

France was as sturdy as this youngster. In the ranks of an infantry

company of any army he would have been above the average of

physique; but among the rest of the gun's crew he did appear slight.

Need more be said about the physical standard of the crews of the

fighting ships of the Grand Fleet?

You had an eye to more than guns and machinery and to more than

the character of the officers. You wanted to get better acquainted with

the personnel of the men behind the guns. They formed patches of

blue on the decks, as one looked around the fleet, against the

background of the dull, painted bulwarks of steel--the human element

whose skill gave the ships life--deep-chested, vigorous men in their

prime, who had the air of men grounded in their work by long

experience. I noted when an order was given that it was obeyed

quickly by one who knew what he had to do because he had done it

thousands of times.

There are all kinds of bluejackets, as there are all kinds of other men.

Before the war some took more than was good for them when on

shore; some took nothing stronger than tea; some enjoyed the

sailor's privilege of growling; some had to be kept up to the mark

sharply; an occasional one might get rebellious against the merciless

repetition of drills.

The war imparted eagerness to all, the officers said. Infractions of

discipline ceased. Days pass without anyone of the crew of a

Dreadnought having to be called up as a defaulter, I am told. And

their health? At first thought, one would say that life in the steel caves

of a Dreadnought would mean pasty complexions and flabby

muscles. For a year the crews had been prisoners of that readiness

which must not lose a minute in putting to sea if von Tirpitz should

ever try the desperate gamble of battle.

After a turn in the trenches the soldiers can at least stretch their legs

in billets. A certain number of a ship's company now and then get a

tramp on shore; not real leave, but a personally conducted outing not

far from the boats which will hurry them back to their stations on

signal. However, all that one needs to keep well is fresh air and

exercise. The blowers carry fresh air to every part of the ship; the

breezes which sweep the deck from the North Sea are fresh enough

in summer and a little too fresh in winter. There is exercise in the

regular drills, supplemented by setting-up exercises. The food is good

and no man drinks or eats what he ought not to, as he may on shore.

So there is the fact and the reason for the fact: the health of the men,

as well as their conduct, had never been so good.

"Perhaps we are not quite so clean as we were before the war," said

an officer. "We wash decks only twice a week instead of every day.

This means that quarters are not so moist, and the men have more

freedom of movement. We want them to have as much freedom as

possible."

Waiting, waiting, in such confinement for thirteen months; waiting for

battle! Think of the strain of it! The British temperament is well

fitted to undergo such a test, and particularly well fitted are these

sturdy seamen of mature years. An enemy may imagine them

wearing down their efficiency on the leash. They want a fight; naturally,

they want nothing quite so much. But they have the seaman's

philosophy. Old von Tirpitz may come out and he may not. It is for

him to do the worrying. They sit tight. The men's ardour is not imposed

upon. Care is taken that they should not be worked stale; for the

marksman who puts a dozen shots through the bull's-eye had better

not keep on firing, lest he begin rimming it and get into bad habits.

Where an army officer has a change when he leaves the trench for

his billet, there is none for the naval officer, who, unlike the army

officer, is Spartan-bred to confinement. The army pays its daily toll of

casualties; it lies cramped in dug-outs, not knowing what minute

extinction may come. The Grand Fleet has its usual comforts; it is

safe from submarines in a quiet harbour. Many naval officers spoke

of this contrast with deep feeling, as if fate were playing favourites,

though I have never heard an army officer mention it.

The army can give each day fresh proof of its courage in face of the

enemy. Courage! It takes on a new meaning with the Grand Fleet.

The individual element of gallantry merges into gallantry of the whole.

You have the very communism of courage. The thought is to keep a

cool head and do your part as a cog in the vast machine. Courage is

as much taken for granted as the breath of life. Thus, Cradock's men

fought till they went down. It was according to the programme laid out

for each turret and each gun in a turret.

Smith, of the army, leads a bomb-throwing party from traverse to

traverse; Smith, of the navy, turns one lever at the right second. Army

gunners are improving their practice day by day against the enemy;

all the improving by navy gunners must be done before the battle. No

sieges in trenches; no attacks and counter-attacks: a decision within

a few hours--perhaps within an hour.

This partially explains the love of the navy for its work; its cheerful

repetition of the drills which seem such a wearisome business to the

civilian. The men know the reason of their drudgery. It is an all-

convincing bull's-eye reason. Ping-ping! One heard the familiar sound

of sub-calibre practice, which seems as out of proportion in a fifteen-

inch gun as a mouse-squeak from an elephant whom you expect to

trumpet. As the result appears in sub-calibre practice, so it is

practically bound to appear in target practice; as it appears in target

practice, so it is bound to appear in battle practice. It was on the

flagship that I saw a device which Sir John referred to as the next

best thing to having the Germans come out. He took as much delight

in it as the gun-layers, who were firing at German Dreadnoughts of

the first line, as large as your thumb, which were in front of a sort of

hooded arrangement with the guns of a British Dreadnought inside--

the rest I censor myself before the regular censor sees it.

When we heard a report like that of a small target rifle inside the

arrangement a small red or a small white splash rose from the

metallic platter of a sea. Thus the whole German navy has been

pounded to pieces again and again. It is a great game. The gun-

layers never tire of it and they think they know the reason as well as

anybody why von Tirpitz keeps his Dreadnoughts at home.

But elsewhere I saw some real firing; for ships must have their regular

target practice, war or no war. If those cruisers steaming across the

range had been sending six or eight-inch shrapnel, we should have

preferred not to be so near that towed square of canvas. Flashes

from turrets indistinguishable at a distance from the neutral-toned

bodies of the vessels and the shells struck, making great splashes

just beyond the target, which was where they ought to go.

A familiar scene, but with a new meaning when the time is one of war.

So far as my observation is worth anything, it was very good

shooting, indeed. One broadside would have put a destroyer out of

business as easily as a "Jack Johnson" does for a dug-out; and it

would have made a cruiser of the same class as the one firing pretty

groggy--this not from any experience of being on a light cruiser or any

desire to be on one when it receives such a salute. But it seems to be

waiting for the Germans any time that they want it.

Oh, that towed square of canvas! It is the symbol of the object of all

building of guns, armour, and ships, all the nursing in dry dock, all the

admiral's plans, all the parliamentary appropriations, all the striving on

board ship in man's competition with man, crew with crew, gun with

gun, and ship with ship. One had in mind some vast factory plant

where every unit was efficiently organized; but that comparison would

not do. None will. The Grand Fleet is the Grand Fleet. Ability gets its

reward, as in the competition of civil life. There is no linear promotion

indulgent to mediocrity and inferiority which are satisfied to keep step

and harassing to those whom nature and application meant to lead.

Armchairs and retirement for those whose inclinations run that way;

the captain's bridge for those who are fit to command. Officers'

records are the criterion when superiors come to making promotions.

But does not outside influence play a part? you ask. If professional

conscience is not enough to prevent this, another thing appears to

be: that the British nation lives or dies with its navy. Besides, the

British public has said to all and sundry outsiders: "Hands off the

navy!" All honour to the British public, much criticized and often most

displeased with its servants and itself, for keeping its eye on that

canvas square of cloth! The language on board was the same as on

our ships; the technical phraseology practically the same; we had

inherited British traditions. But a man from Kansas and a man from

Dorset live far apart. If they have a good deal in common they rarely

meet to learn that they have. Our seamen do meet British seamen

and share a fraternity which is more than that of the sea. Close one's

eyes to the difference in uniform, discount the difference in accent,

and one imagined that he might be with our North Atlantic fleet.

The same sort of shop talk and banter in the wardroom, which trims

and polishes human edges; the same fellowship of a world apart.

Securely ready the British fleet waits. Enough drill and not too much;

occasional visits between ships; books and newspapers and a

lighthearted relaxation of scattered conversation in the mess. One

wardroom had a thirty-five-second record for getting past all the

pitfalls in the popular "Silver Bullet" game, if I remember correctly.

XXXII

Hunting The Submarine

Seaplanes cut practice circles over the fleet and then flew away on

their errands, to be lost in the sky beyond the harbour entrance. With

their floats, they were like ducks when they came to rest on the water,

sturdy and a little clumsy looking compared to those hawks the army

planes, soaring to higher altitudes.

The hawk had a broad, level field for its roost; the duck, bobbing with

the waves after it came down, had its wings folded as became a bird

at rest, after its engines stopped, and, a dead thing, was lifted on

board its floating home with a crane, as cargo is swung into the hold.

On shipboard there must be shipshapeness; and that capacious,

one-time popular Atlantic liner had undergone changes to prepare it

for its mothering part, with platforms in place of the promenades

where people had lounged during the voyage and bombs in place of

deck-quoits and dining-saloons turned into workshops. Of course,

one was shown the different sizes and types of bombs. Aviators

exhibit them with the pride of a collector showing his porcelains.

Every time they seem to me to have grown larger and more

diabolical. Where will aerial progress end? Will the next war be fought

by forces that dive and fly like fishes and birds?

"I'd like to drop that hundred-pounder on to a Zeppelin!" said one of

the aviators. All the population of London would like to see him do it.

And Fritz, the submarine, does not like to see the shadow of man's

wings above the water.

Seaplanes and destroyers carry the imagination away from the fleet

to another sphere of activity, which I had not the fortune to see. An

aviator can see Fritz below a smooth surface; for he cannot travel

much deeper than thirty or forty feet. He leaves a characteristic ripple

and tell-tale bubbles of air and streaks of oil. When the planes have

located him they tell the hunters where to go. Sometimes it is known

that a submarine is in a certain region; he is lost sight of and seen

again; a squall may cover his track a second time, and the hunters,

keeping touch with the planes by signals, course here and there on

the look out for another glimpse. Perhaps he escapes altogether. It is

a tireless game of hide and seek, like gunnery at the front. Naval

ingenuity has invented no end of methods, and no end of

experiments have been tried. Strictest kept of naval secrets, these.

Fritz is not to be told what to avoid and what not to avoid.

Very thin is the skin of a submarine; very fragile and complicated its

machinery. It does not take much of a shock to put it out of order or a

large charge of explosives to dent the skin beyond repair. It being in

the nature of submarines to sink, how does the hunter know when he

has struck a mortal blow? If oil and bubbles come up for some time in

one place, or if they come up with a rush, that is suggestive. Then, it

does not require a nautical mind to realize that by casting about on

the bottom with a grapnel you will learn if an object with the bulk and

size of a submarine is there. The Admiralty accept no guesswork

from the hunters about their exploits; they must bring the brush to

prove the kill.

With Admiral Crawford I went to see the submarine defences of the

harbour. It reminded one of the days of the drawbridge to a castle,

when a friend rode freely in and an enemy might try to swim the moat

and scale the walls if he pleased.

"Take care! There is a tide here!" the coxswain was warned, lest the

barge should get into some of the troubles meant for Fritz. "A cunning

fellow, Fritz. We must give him no openings."

The openings appear long enough to permit British craft, whether

trawlers, or flotillas, or cruiser squadrons, to go and come. Lying as

close together as fish in a basket, I saw at one place a number of

torpedo boats home from a week at sea.

"Here to-day and gone to-morrow," said an officer. "What a time they

had last winter! You know how cold the North Sea is--no, you cannot,

unless you have been out in a torpedo boat dancing the tango in the

teeth of that bitter wind, with the spray whipping up to the tops of the

smoke-stacks. In the dead of night they would come into this pitch-

dark harbour. How they found their way is past me. It's a trick of those

young fellows, who command."

Stationary they seemed now as the quay itself; but let a signal speak,

an alarm come, and they would soon be as alive as leaping

porpoises. The sport is to those who scout and hunt. But do not

forget those who watch, those who keep the blockade, from the

Channel to Iceland, and the trawlers that plod over plotted sea-

squares with the regularity of mowing-machines cutting a harvest, on

their way back and forth sweeping up mines. They were fishermen

before the war and are fishermen still. Night and day they keep at it.

They come into the harbours stiff with cold, thaw out, and return to

hardships which would make many a man prefer the trenches.

Tributes to their patient courage, which came from the heart, were

heard on board the battleships.

"It is when we think of them," said an officer, "that we are most eager

to have the German fleet come out, so that we can do our part."

XXXIII

The Fleet Puts To Sea

There is another test besides that of gun-drills and target practice

which reflects the efficiency of individual ships, and the larger the

number of ships the more important it is. For the business of a fleet is

to go to sea. At anchor, it is in garrison rather than on campaign, an

assembly of floating forts. Navies one has seen which seemed

excellent when in harbour, but when they started to get under way the

result was hardly reassuring. Some erring sister fouled her anchor

chain; another had engine-room trouble; another lagged for some

other reason; there was fidgeting on the bridges. Then one asked,

What if a summons to battle had come? Our own officers were

authority enough that the British had no superiors in any of the tests.

But strange reports dodged in and out of the alleys of pessimism in

the company of German insistence that the Tiger and other ships

which one saw afloat had been sunk. Was the fleet really held

prisoner by fear of submarines? If it could go and come freely when it

chose, the harbour was the place for it while it waited. If not, then,

indeed, the submarine had revolutionized naval warfare. Admiral

Jellicoe might lose some of his battleships before he could get into

action against the Germans.

"Oh, to hear the hoarse rattle of the anchor chains!" I kept thinking

while I was with the fleet. "Oh, to see all these monsters on the

move!"

A vain wish it seemed, but it came true. A message from the

Admiralty arrived while we were on the flagship. Admiral Jellicoe

called his Flag Lieutenant and spoke a word to him, which was

passed in a twinkling from flagship to squadron and division and ship.

He made it as simple as ordering his barge alongside, this sending of

the Grand Fleet to sea.

From the bridge of a destroyer beyond the harbour entrance we saw

it go. I shall not attempt to describe the spectacle, which convinced

me that language is the vehicle for making small things seem great

and great things seem small. If you wish words invite splendid and

magnificent and overwhelming and all the reliable old friends to come

forth in glad apparel from the dictionary. Personally, I was inarticulate

at sight of that sea-march of dull-toned, unadorned power.

First came the outriders of majesty, the destroyers; then the graceful

light cruisers. How many destroyers has the British navy? I am only

certain that it has not as many as it seems to have, which would

mean thousands. Trying to count them is like trying to count the bees

in the garden. You cannot keep your eye on the individual bees. You

are bound to count some twice, so busy are their manœuvres.

"Don't you worry, great ladies!" you imagined the destroyers were

saying to the battleships. "We will clear the road. We will keep watch

against snipers and assassins."

"And if any knocks are coming, we will take them for you, great

ladies!" said the cruisers. "If one of us went down, the loss would not

be great. Keep your big guns safe to beat other battleships into

scrap."

For you may be sure that Fritz was on the watch in the open. He

always is, like the highwayman hiding behind a hedge and envying

people who have comfortable beds. Probably from a distance he had

a peep through his periscope at the Grand Fleet before the approach

of the policeman destroyers made him duck beneath the water; and

probably he tried to count the number of ships and identify their

classes in order to take the information home to Kiel. Besides, he

always has his fingers crossed. He hopes that some day he may get

a shot at something more warlike than a merchant steamer or an

auxiliary; only that prospect becomes poorer as life for him grows

harder. Except a miracle happened, the steaming fleet, with its

cordons of destroyers, is as safe from him as from any other kind of

fish.

The harbour which is the fleet's home is landlocked by low hills. There

is an eclipse of the sun by the smoke from the ships getting under

way; streaming, soaring columns of smoke on the move rise above

the skyline from the funnels of the battleships before they appear

around a bend. Indefinite masses as yet they are, under their night-

black plumes. Each ship seems too immense to respond to any will

except its own. But there is something automatic in the regularity with

which, one after another, they take the bend, as if a stop watch had

been held on twenty thousand tons of steel for a second's variation.

As they approach they become more distinct and, showing less

smoke, there seems less effort. Their motive-power seems inherent,

perpetual.

There is some sea running outside the entrance, enough to make a

destroyer roll. But the battleships disdain any notice of its existence. It

is no more to them than a ripple of dust to a motor truck. They plough

through it.

Though you were within twenty yards of them you would feel quite

safe. An express train was in no more danger of jumping the track.

Mast in line with mast, they held the course with a majestic

steadiness. Now the leading ship makes a turn of a few points. At the

same spot, as if it were marked by the grooves of tyres in a road, the

others make it. Any variation of speed between them would have

been instantly noticeable, as one forged ahead or lagged; but the

distance between bows and sterns did not change. A line of one

length would do for each interval so far as one could discern.

It was difficult to think that they were not attached to some taut,

moving cable under water. How could such apparently unwieldy

monsters, in such a slippery element as the sea, be made to obey

their masters with such fine precision?

The answer again is sheer hard work! Drills as arduous in the engine-

room as at the guns; machinery kept in tune; traditions in

manoeuvring in all weathers, which is kept up with tireless practice.

Though all seemed perfection to the lay eye, let it be repeated that

this was not so to the eyes of admirals. It never can be. Perfection is

the thing striven for. Officers dwell on faults; all are critics. Thus you

have the healthiest kind of spirit, which means that there will be no

cessation in the striving.

"Look at that!" exclaimed an officer on the destroyer. "They ought to

try another painting on her and see if they can't do better."

Ever changing that northern light. For an instant the sun's rays,

strained by a patch of peculiar cloud, playing on a Dreadnought's

side, made her colour appear molten, exaggerating her size till she

seemed as colossal to the eye as to the thought.

"But look, now!" said another officer. She was out of the patch and

seemed miles farther away to the vision, a dim shape in the sea-

haze.

"You can't have it right for every atmospheric mood of the North Sea,

I suppose!" muttered the critic. Still, it hurt his professional pride

that a battleship should show up as such a glaring target even

for a moment.

The power of the fleet was more patent in movement than at rest; for

the sea-lion was out of his lair on the hunt. Fluttering with flags at a

review at Spithead, the battleships seemed out of their element;

giants trying for a fairy's part. Display is not for them. It ill becomes

them, as does a pink ribbon on a bulldog.

Irresistibly ploughing their way they presented a picture of resolute

utility--guns and turrets and speed. No spot of bright colour was

visible on board. The crew was at the guns, I took it. Turn the turrets,

give the range, lay the sights on the enemy's ships, and the battle

was on.

"There is the old Dreadnought," said an officer. The old Dreadnought

--all of ten years of age, the senile old thing! What a mystery she was

when she was building! The mystery accentuated her celebrity--and

almost forgotten now, while the Queen Elizabeth and the Warspite,

and others of their class with their fifteen-inch guns, would be in the

public eye as the latest type till a new type came. A parade of naval

types was passing. One seemed to shade into the other in

harmonious effect. But here was an outsider, whom one noted

instantly as he studied those rugged silhouettes of steel. She had

twelve twelve-inch guns, with turret piled on turret in an exotic

fashion--one of the two Turkish battleships building in England at the

time of the war and taken over by the British.

One division, two divisions, four ships, eight Dreadnoughts--even a

squadron coming out of a harbour numbs the faculties with a sense

of its might. Sixteen--twenty--twenty-four--it was the unending

numbers of this procession of sea-power which was most impressive.

An hour passed and all were not by. One sat down for a few minutes

behind the wind-screen of the destroyer's bridge, only to look back

and see more Dreadnoughts going by. A spectator had not realized

that there were so many in the harbour. He had a suspicion that

Admiral Jellicoe was a conjuror who could take Dreadnoughts out of

a hat.

The first was lost in the gathering darkness far out in the North Sea,

and still the cloud of smoke over the anchorage was as thick as ever;

still the black plumes kept appearing around the bend. The King

Edward VII. class with their four twelve-inch guns and other ancients

of the pre-Dreadnought era, which are still powerful antagonists, were

yet to come. One's eyes ached. Those who saw a German corps

march through Brussels said that it seemed irresistible. What if they

had seen the whole German army? Here was the counterpart of the

whole German army in sea-power and in land-power, too.

The destroyer commander looked at his watch.

"Time!" he said. "I'll put you on shore."

He must take his place in the fleet at a given moment. A word to the

engine-room and the next thing we knew we were off at thirty knots

an hour, cutting straight across the bows of a Dreadnought steaming

at twenty knots, towering over us threateningly, with a bone in her

teeth.

Imagination sped across seas where a man had cruised into

harbours that he knew and across continents that he knew. He was

trying to visualize the whole globe--all of it except the Baltic seas and

a thumb-mark in the centre of Europe. Hong-Kong, Melbourne,

Sydney, Halifax, Cape Town, Bombay--yes, and Rio and Valparaiso,

Shanghai, San Francisco, New York, Boston, these and the lands

back of them, where countless millions dwell, were all safe behind the

barrier of that fleet.

Then back through the land where Shakespeare wrote to London,

with its glare of recruiting posters and the throbbing of that individual

freedom which is on trial in battle with the Prussian system--and as

one is going to bed the sound of guns in the heart of the city! From

the window one looked upward to see, under a searchlight's play, the

silken sheen of a cigar-shaped sort of aerial phantom which was

dropping bombs on women and children, while never a shot is fired at

those sturdy men behind armour.

When you have travelled far; when you think of Botha and his Boers

fighting for England; when you have found justice and fair play and

open markets under the British flag; when you compare the

vociferations of von Tirpitz, glorying in the torpedoing of a Lusitania,

with the quiet manner of Sir John Jellicoe, you need only a little spark

of conscience to prefer the way that the British have used their sea-

power to the way that the men who send out Zeppelins to war on

women and children would use that power if they had it.

XXXIV

British Problems

Throughout the summer of 1915 the world was asking, What about

the new British army? Why was it not attacking at the opportune

moment when Germany was throwing her weight against Russia? A

facile answer is easy; indeed, facile answers are always easy.

Unhappily, they are rarely correct. None that was given in this

instance was, to my mind. They sought to put a finger on one definite

cause; again, on an individual or a set of individuals.

The reasons were manifold; as old as Waterloo, as fresh as the last

speech in Parliament. They were inherent in the Anglo-Saxon race.

Whoever raised a voice and said, This, or that, or you, are

responsible! should first have looked into his own mind and into the

history of his race and then into a mirror. Least of all should any

American have been puzzled by the delay.

"Oh, we should have done better than that--we are Americans!" I

hear my countrymen say. Perhaps we should. I hope so; I believe so.

The British public thought that they were going to do better; military

men were surprised that they did as well.

Along with laws and language we have inherited our military ideas

from England. In many qualities we are different--a distinct type; but in

nothing are we more like the British than in our attitude toward the

soldier and toward war. The character of any army reflects the

character of its people. An army is the fist; but the muscle, the

strength, of the physical organism behind the blow in the long run

belong to the people. What they have prepared for in peace they

receive in war, which decides whether they have been living in the

paradise of a fool or of a wise man.

As a boy I was brought up to believe, as an inheritance of the

American Revolution, that one American could whip two Englishmen

and five or six of any other nationality, which made the feathers of the

eagle perched on the national escutcheon look glossy. It was a

satisfying sort of faith. Americans had never tried five or six of any

first-class fighting race; but that was not a thought which occurred to

me. As we had won victories over the English and the English had

whipped the French at Waterloo, the conclusion seemed obvious.

English boys, I understand, also had been brought up to believe that

one Englishman could whip five or six men of any other nationality,

but, I take it for granted, only two Americans. This clothed the British

lion with majesty, while the lower ratio of superiority over Americans

returned the compliment in kind from the sons of the lion to the sons

of the eagle.

After I began to read history for myself and to think as I read, I found

that when British and Americans had met, the generals on either side

were solicitous about having superior forces, and in case of odds of

two to one they made a "strategic retreat." When either side was

beaten, the other always explained that he was overcome by superior

numbers, though perhaps the adversary had not more than ten or

fifteen per cent, advantage. Then I learned that the British had not

whipped five or six times their number on the continent of Europe.

The British Expeditionary Force made as fine an effort to do so at

Mons as was ever attempted in history, but they did not succeed.

It was a regular army that fought at Mons. The only two first-class

nations which depend upon regulars to do their fighting are the British

and the American. This is the vital point of similarity which is the

practical manifestation of our military ideas. We have been the earth's

spoiled children, thanks to the salt seas between us and other

powerful military nations. Before any other Power could reach the

United States it must overwhelm the British navy, and then it must

overwhelm ours and bring its forces in transports. Sea-power, you

say. That is the facile word, so ready to the lips that we do not realize

the wonder of it any more than of the sun rising and setting.

When we want soldiers our plan still is to advertise for them. The

ways of our ancestors remain ours. We think that the volunteer must

necessarily make the best soldier because he offers his services;

while the conscript--rather a term of opprobrium to us--must be

lukewarm. It hardly occurs to us that some forms of persuasion may

amount to conscription, or that the volunteer, won by oratorical

appeal to his emotions or by social pressure, may suffer a reaction

after enlistment which will make him lukewarm also, particularly as he

sees others, also young and fit, hanging back. Nor does it occur to us

that there may be virtue in that fervour of national patriotism aroused

by the command that all must serve, which, on the continent in this

war, has meant universal exaltation to sacrifice. The life of Jones

means as much to him as the life of Smith does to him; and when the

whole nation is called to arms there ought to be no favourites in life-

giving.

For the last hundred years, if we except the American Civil War, ours

have been comparatively little wars. The British regular army has

policed an empire and sent punitive expeditions against rebellious

tribes with paucity of numbers, in a work which the British so well

understand. Our little regular army took care of the Red Indians as

our frontier advanced from the Alleghenies to the Pacific. To put it

bluntly, we have hired someone to do our fighting for us.

Without ever seriously studying the business of soldiering, the

average Anglo-Saxon thought of himself as a potential soldier, taking

his sense of martial superiority largely from the work of the long-

service, severely drilled regular. Also, we used our fists rather than

daggers or duelling swords in personal encounters and, man to man,

unequipped with fire-arms or blades, the quality which is responsible

for our sturdy pioneering individualism gave us confidence in our

physical prowess.

Alas! modern wars are not fought with fists. A knock-kneed man who

knows how to use a machine-gun and has one to use--which is also

quite important--could mow down all the leading heavy-weights of the

United States and England, with the latest champion leading the

charge.

Now, this regular who won our little wars was not representative of

the people as a whole. He was the man "down on his luck," who went

to the recruiting depot. Soldiering became his profession. He was in a

class, like priests and vagabonds. When you passed him in the street

you thought of him as a strange being, but one of the necessities of

national existence. It did not interest you to be a soldier; but as there

must be soldiers, you were glad that men who would be soldiers were

forthcoming.

When trouble broke, how you needed him! When the wires brought

news of his gallantry you accepted the deeds of this man whom you

had paid as the reflection of national courage, which thrilled you with

a sense of national superiority. To him, it was in the course of duty;

what he had been paid to do. He did not care about being called a

hero; but it pleased the public to make him one--this professional who

fights for a shilling a day in England and $17.50 a month in the United

States.

Though when the campaign went well the public was ready to take

the credit as a personal tribute, when the campaign went badly they

sought a scapegoat, and the general who might have been a hero

was sent to the wilderness perhaps because those busy men in

Congress or Parliament thought that the army could do without that

little appropriation which was needed for some other purpose. The

army had failed to deliver the goods which it was paid to produce.

The army was to blame, when, of course, under free institutions the

public was to blame, as the public is master of the army and not the

army of the public.

A first impression of the British army is always that of the regiment.

Pride of regiment sometimes appears almost more deep-seated than

army pride to the outsider. It has been so long a part of British martial

inheritance that it is bred in the blood. In the old days of small armies

and in the later days of small wars, while Europe was making every

man a soldier by conscription, regiment vying with regiment won the

battles of empire. The memory of the part each regiment played is the

inspiration of its present; its existence is inseparable from the

traditions of its long list of battle honours.

The British public loves to read of its Guards' regiment and to watch

them in their brilliant uniforms at review. When a cadet comes out of

Sandhurst he names the regiment which he wishes to join, instead of

being ordered to a certain regiment, as at West Point. It rests with the

regimental commander whether or not he is accepted. Frequently the

young man of wealth or family serves in the Guards or another crack

regiment for awhile and resigns, usually to enjoy the semi-leisurely life

which is the fortune of his inheritance.

Then there are the county line regiments, such as the Yorkshires, the

Kents, and the Durhams. In this war each county wanted to read

about its own regiments at the same time as about the Guards, just

as Kansans at home would want to read about the Kansas regiment

and Georgians about the Georgia regiment. The most trying feature

of the censorship to the British public was its refusal to allow the

exploitation of regiments. The staff was adamant on this point; for the

staff was thinking for the whole and of the interests of the whole. In

the French and the German armies, as in our regular army, regiments

are known by numbers.

The young man who lives in the big house on the hill, the son of the

man of wealth and power in the community, as a rule does not go to

West Point. None of the youth of our self-called aristocracy which

came up the golden road in a generation past those in modest

circumstances who have generations of another sort back of them,

think of going into the First Cavalry or the First Infantry for a few years

as a part of the career of their class. A few rich men's sons enter our

army, but only enough to prove the rule by the exception. They do not

regard the army as "the thing." It does not occur to them that they

ought to do something for their country. Rather, their country ought to

do something for them.

But sink the plummet a little deeper and these are not our aristocracy

nor our ruling class, which is too numerous and too sound of thought

and principle for them to feel at home in that company. Any boy,

however humble his origin, may go to West Point if he can pass the

competitive examination. Europe, particularly Germany, would not

approve of this; but we think it the best way. The average graduate of

the Point, whether the son of a doctor, a lawyer, or a farmer, sticks to

the army as his profession. We maintain the Academy for the strict

business purpose of teaching young men how to train our army in

time of peace and to lead and direct it in time of action.

Our future officers enter West Point when they are two years younger

than is the average at Sandhurst; the course is four years compared

with two at Sandhurst. I should venture to say that West Point is the

harder grind; that the graduate of the Point has a more specifically

academic military training than the graduate of Sandhurst. This is not

saying that he may be any better in the performance of the simple

duties of a company officer. It is not a new criticism that we train

everybody at West Point to be a general, when many of the students

may never rise above the command of a battalion. However, it is a

significant fact that at the close of the Civil War every army

commander was a West Point man and so were most of the corps

commanders.

The doors are open in the British army for a man to rise from the

ranks; not as wide as in our army, but open. The Chief of Staff of the

British Expeditionary Force, Sir William Robertson, was in the ranks

for ten years. No man not a West Pointer had a position equivalent in

importance to his at the close of the Civil War. His rise would have

been possible in no other European army.

But West Point sets the stamp on the American army, and Sandhurst

and Woolwich, the engineering and artillery school, on the British

army. At the end of the four years at West Point the men who survive

the hard course may be tried by courtmartial not for conduct

unbecoming an officer, but an officer and a gentleman. They are

supposed, whatever their origin, to have absorbed certain qualities, if

they were not inborn, which are not easily described but which we all

recognize in any man. If they are absent it is not the fault of West

Point; and if a man cannot acquire them there, then nature never

meant them for him. From the time he entered the school the

government has paid his way; and he is cared for until he dies, if he

keeps step and avoids courtmartials.

His position in life is secure. His pay, counting everything, is better

than that of the average graduate of a university or a first-class

professional school who practises a profession. Yet only three boys, I

remember, wanted to go to West Point from our congressional district

in my youth. Nothing could better illustrate the fact that we are not a

military people. From West Point they go out to the little army which is

to fight our wars; to the posts and the Philippines, and become a

world in themselves; an isolated caste in spite of themselves. I am

not at all certain that either the British or the American officer works

as hard as the German in time of peace. Neither has the practical

incentive nor the determined driver behind him.

For it takes a soldier Secretary of War to drive a soldier; for example,

Lord Kitchener. Those British officers who applied themselves in

peace to the mastery of their profession and were not content with

the day's routine requirements, had to play chess without chessmen;

practise manœuvres on a board rather than with brigades, divisions,

corps, and armies. They became the rallying points in the concourse

of untrained recruits.

German and French officers had the incentive and the chessmen.

The Great War could not take them by surprise. They took the road

with a machine whose parts had been long assembled. They had

been trained for big war; their ambition and intelligence were under

the whip of a definite anticipation.

A factor overlooked, but even more significant than training or staff

work, was that what might be called martial team-play had become

an instinct with the continental peoples through the necessity of their

situation. This the Japanese also possess. It is the right material

ready to hand for the builder. Not that it is the kind of material one

admires; but it is the right material for making a war-machine. One

had only to read the expert military criticism in the British and the

American Press at the outset of the war to realize how vague was the

truth of the continental situation to the average Englishman or

American--but not to the trained British Staff.

So that little British Expeditionary Force, in ratio of number one to

twenty or thirty of the French army, crossed the Channel to help save

Belgium. Gallantry it had worthy of the brightest chapter in the

immortal history of its regiments from Quebec to Kandahar, from

Agincourt, Blenheim and Waterloo to South Africa, Guards and

Hussars, Highlanders and Lowlanders, kilts and breeks, Connaught

Rangers and Royal Fusiliers, Duke of Wellington's and Prince of

Wales' Own, come again to Flanders. The best blood of England was

leading Tommy Atkins. Whatever British aristocracy is or is not, it

never forgets its duty to the England of its fathers. It is never ingrate

to its fortune. The time had come to go out and die for England, if

need be, and these officers went as their ancestors had gone before

them, as they would go to lectures at Oxford, to the cricket field and

the polo field, in outward phlegm, but with a mighty passion in their

hearts.

The Germans affected to despise this little army. It had not been

trained in the mass tactics which hurl columns of flesh forward to gain

tactical points that have been mauled by artillery fire. You do not use

mass tactics against Boers, nor against Afridis, nor Filipinos. It is

difficult to combine the two kinds of efficiency. Those who were on the

march to the relief of the Peking Legations recall how the Germans

were as ill at ease in that kind of work as the Americans and British

were at home. It made us misjudge the Germans and the Germans

misjudge us when they thought of us as trying to make war on the

continent of Europe. A small, mobile, regular army, formed to go

overseas and march long distances, was to fight in a war where

millions were engaged and a day's march would cover an immense

stretch of territory in international calculations of gain and loss.

For its own purposes, the British Expeditionary Force was well-nigh a

perfect instrument. As quantity of ammunition was an important factor

in transport in the kind of campaign which it was prepared for, its

guns were the most accurate on a given point and its system of fire

adapted to that end; but the French system of fire, with plentiful

ammunition from near bases over fine roads, was better adapted for

a continental campaign. To the last button that little army was

prepared. Man for man and regiment for regiment, I should say it was

the best force that ever fired a shot in Europe; this without regard to

national character. As England must make every regular soldier

count, and as she depended upon the efficiency of the few rather

than on numbers, she had trained her men in musketry. No

continental army could afford to allow its soldiers to expend the

amount of ammunition on the target range that the British had

expended. Only by practice can you learn how to shoot. This gives

the soldier confidence. He stays in his trench and keeps on shooting

because he knows that he can hit those advancing figures and that

this is his best protection. The more I learn, the more I am convinced

that the Germans ought to have got the British Expeditionary Force;

and the Germans were very surprised that they did not get it. With

their surprise developed a respect for British arms, reported by all

visitors to Germany.

Mr. Thomas Atkins, none other, is the hero of that retreat from Mons.

The first statue raised in London after the war ought to be of him. If

there had been five hundred thousand of him in Belgium at the end of

the second week in August, Brussels would now be under the Belgian

flag. Like many other good things in this world, including the French

army, there were not enough of him. Many a company on that retreat

simply got tired of retreating, though orders were to fall back. It dug a

trench and lay down and kept on firing--accurately, in the regular,

businesslike way, reinforced by the "stick it" British character--until

killed or engulfed. This held back the flood long enough for the

remainder of the army to retire.

Not all the generalship emanated from generals. I like best that story

of the cross-roads where, with Germans pressing hard on all sides,

two columns in retreat fell in together, uncertain which way to go. With

confusion developing for want of instructions, a lone, exhausted staff

officer who happened along took charge, and standing at the junction

in the midst of shell-fire told every doubting unit what to do, with a

one-two-three alacrity of decision. His work finished, he and his red

cap disappeared, and I never could find anyone who knew who he

was.

After the retreat and after the victory of the Marne, what was

England's position? The average Englishman had thought that

England's part in the alliance was to send a small army to France and

to take care of the German fleet. England's fleet was her first

consideration; that must be served. France's demand for rifles and

supplies must be attended to before the British demand. Serbia

needed supplies; Russia needed supplies; a rebellion threatened in

South Africa; the Turks threatened the invasion of Egypt. England

had to spread her energy out over a vast empire with an army that

had barely escaped annihilation. Every soldier who fought must be

supplied overseas. German officers put a man on a railroad train and

he detrained near the front. Every British soldier had to go on board a

train and then a ship and then disembark from the ship and go on

board another train. Every article of ordnance, engineering, medical

supply, food supply, must be handled four times, while in Germany

they need be handled but twice. Any railway traffic manager will

understand what this means. Both the British supply system and the

medical corps were marvels.

Germany was stronger than the British public thought. Germany and

Austria could put at the front in the first six months of the war

practically double the number which the Allies could maintain. Russia

had multitudes to draw from in reserve, but the need was multitudes

at the front. There she was only as strong as the number she could

feed and equip. In the first year of the war England suffered 380,000

casualties on land, more than three times the number of men that

she had at Mons. This wastage must be met before she could begin

to increase her forces. The length of line on the western front that she

was holding was not the criterion of her effort. The French who

shared with the British that terrible Ypres salient realized this.

Apart from the regulars she had the Territorials, who are much the

same as our National Guard and vary in quality in the same way.

Native Indian troops were brought to France to face the diabolical

shell-fire of modern guns, and Territorials went out to India to take the

place of the British regulars who were withdrawn for France. Every

rifle that England could bring to the assistance of the French in their

heroic stand was a rifle to the good.

Meanwhile, she was making her new army. For the first time since

Cromwell's day, all classes in England were going to war. Making an

army out of the raw is like building a factory to be manned by expert

labour which you have to train. Let us even suppose that the factory

is ready and that the proprietor must mobilize his managers,

overseers, foremen, and labour from far and near--a force individually

competent, but which had never before worked together. It would

require some time to organize team-play, wouldn't it? Particularly it

would if you were short of managers, overseers, and foremen. To

express my meaning from another angle, in talking once with an

English pottery manufacturer he said:

"We do not train our labour in the pottery district. We breed it from

generation to generation."

In Germany they have not only been training soldiers, but breeding

them from generation to generation. You may think that system is

wrong. It may be contrary to our ideals. But in fighting against that

system for your ideals when war is violence and killing, you must

have weapons as effective as the enemy's. You express only a part

of Germany's preparedness by saying that the men who left the

plough and the shop, the factory and the office, became trained

soldiers at the command of the staff as soon as they were in uniform

and had rifles. These men had the instinct of military co-ordination

bred in them, and so had their officers, while England had to take

men from the plough and the shop, the factory and the office, and

equip them and teach them the rudiments of soldiering before she

could consider making them into an army.

It was one thing for the spirit of British manhood to rise to the

emergency. Another and even more important requisite went with it. If

my country ever faces such a crisis I hope that we also may have the

courage of wisdom which leaves an expert's work to an expert.

England had Lord Kitchener, who could hold the imagination and the

confidence of the nation through the long months of preparation,

when there was little to show except repetition of drills here and there

on gloomy winter days. It required a man with a big conception and

patience and authority to carry it through, and recruits with an

unflinching sense of duty. The immensity of the task of transforming a

non-military people into a great fighting force grew on one in all its

humdrum and vital details as he watched the new army forming. "Are

you learning to think in big numbers?" was Lord Kitchener's question

to his generals.

Half of the regular officers were killed or wounded.

Where the leaders? Where the drillmasters for the new army? Old

officers came out of retirement, where they had become used to an

easy life as a rule, to twelve hours a day of hard application. "Dug-

outs" they were called. Veteran non-commissioned officers had to drill

new ones. It was demonstrated that a good infantry soldier can be

made in six months; perhaps in three. But it takes seven months to

build a rifle-plant; many more months to make guns--and the navy

must never be stinted. Probably the English are slow; slow and

thoroughgoing. They are good at the finish, but not quick at the start.

They are used to winning the last battle, which they say is the one

that counts. The complacency of empire with a century's power was a

handicap, no doubt. We are inclined to lean forward on our oars, they

to lean back--which does not mean that they cannot lean forward in

an emergency or that they lack reserve strength. It may lead us to

misjudge them.

Public impatience was inevitable. It could not be kept silent; that is the

English of it--the American, too. It demands to know what is being

done. It was not silent in the Civil War. From the time McClellan

started forming his new army until the Peninsular campaign was six

months, if I remember rightly. Von Moltke, who built the German staff

system, said that the Civil War was a strife between two armed mobs;

though I think if he had brought his Prussians to Virginia a year later,

in '63, which would have ended the Civil War there and then, he

would have had an interesting time before he returned to Berlin.

The British new army was not to face another new army, but the most

thoroughly organized military machine that the world has ever known.

Not only this, but the Germans, with a good start and their system

established, were not standing still and waiting for the British to catch

up, so that the two could begin again even, but were adapting

themselves to the new features of the war. They had been the world's

arms-makers. With vast munition plants ready, their feudal socialistic

organization could make the most of their resources in men and

material.

More than two million Englishmen went to the recruiting depots,

though no invader had set foot on their soil, and offered to serve in

France or wherever they were needed overseas. If no magic could

put rifles in their hands or summon batteries of guns to follow them on

the march, the fact of their volunteering, when they knew by watching

from day to day the drudgery that it meant and what trench warfare

was, shows at least that the race is not yet decadent. Perhaps we

should have done better. No one can know until we try it. If liberal

treatment by the government and the course set by Secretary Root

means anything, our staff ought to be better equipped for such a task

than the English were; this, too, only war can decide.

Whatsoever of pessimism appeared in the British Press was

telegraphed to America. Pessimism was not permitted in the German

Press. Imagine Germany holding control of the cable and allowing

press dispatches from Germany to pass over it with the freedom that

England allowed. Imagine Germany having waited as long as

England before making cotton contraband. The British Press

demanded information from the government which the German Press

would never have dared to ask. I have known an American

correspondent, fed out of hand in Germany and thankful for anything

that the fearful German war-machine might vouchsafe, turning a

belligerent when he was in London for privileges which he would

never have thought of demanding in Berlin.

If an English ship were reported sunk, he believed it must be, despite

the government's denial. Did he go to the Germans and demand that

he might publish the rumours of what had happened to the Moltke in

the Gulf of Riga, or how many submarines Germany had really lost?

Indeed, he was unconsciously paying a compliment to British free

institutions. He expected more in England; it seemed a right to him,

as it would at home. Englishmen talked frankly to him about mistakes;

he heard all the gossip; and sometimes he concluded that England

was in a bad way. In Germany such talk was not allowed. Every

German said that the government was absolutely truthful; every

German believed all of its reports. But ask this critical American how

he would like to live under German rule, and then you found how anti-

German he was at heart. Nothing succeeds like success, and

Germany was winning and telling no one if she had any setbacks.

If there were a strike, the British Press made the most of it, for it was

big news. Pessimism is the Englishman's natural way of arousing

himself to fresh energy. It is also against habit to be demonstrative in

his effort; so it is not easy to understand how much he is doing. Then,

pessimism brought recruits; it made the Englishman say, "I've got to

put my back into it!" Muddling there was and mistakes, such as that

of the method of attack at Gallipoli; but in the midst of all this

dispiriting pessimism, no Englishman thought of anything but of

putting his back into it more and more. Lord Kitchener had said that it

was to be a long war and evidently it must be. Of course, England's

misfortune was in having the war catch her in the transition from an

old order of things to social reforms.

But if the war shows anything it is that basically English character has

not changed. She still has unconquerable, dogged persistence, and

her defects for this kind of war are not among the least admirable of

her traits to those who desire to live their own lives in their own way,

as the English-speaking people have done for five hundred years,

without having a verboten sign on every street corner.

It is still the law that when a company of infantry marches through

London it must be escorted by a policeman. This means a good deal:

that civil power is superior to military power. It is a symbol of what

Englishmen have fought for with spades and pitchforks, and what we

have fought Englishmen for. My own idea is that England is fighting

for it in this struggle; and starting unready against a foe which was

ready, as the free peoples always have done, she was fighting for

time and experience before she could strike her sturdiest blows.