Over forty-seven million gallons of petrol supplied to the armies.
And besides, twenty-five thousand ships have been examined for
contraband of war, on the high seas, or in harbour, since the war
began.
And at this, one must pause a moment to think--once again--what it
means; to call up the familiar image of Britain's ships, large and
small, scattered over the wide Atlantic and the approaches to the North
Sea, watching there through winter and summer, storm and fair, and so
carrying out, relentlessly, the blockade of Germany, through every
circumstance often of danger and difficulty; with every consideration
for neutral interests that is compatible with this desperate war, in
which the very existence of England is concerned; and without the
sacrifice of a single life, unless it be the lives of British sailors,
often lost in these boardings of passing ships, amid the darkness and
storm of winter seas. There, indeed, in these "wave-beaten" ships, as in
the watching fleets of the English Admirals outside Toulon and Brest,
while Napoleon was marching triumphantly about Europe, lies the root
fact of the war. It is a commonplace, but one that has been "proved upon
our pulses." Who does not remember the shock that went through
England--and the civilised world--when the first partial news of the
Battle of Jutland reached London, and we were told our own losses,
before we knew either the losses of the enemy or the general result of
the battle? It was neither fear, nor panic; but it was as though the
nation, holding its breath, realised for the first time where, for it,
lay the vital elements of being. The depths in us were stirred. We knew
in very deed that we were the children of the sea!
And now again the depths are stirred. The development of the submarine
attack has set us a new and stern task, and we are "straitened till it
be accomplished." The great battle-ships seem almost to have left the
stage. In less than three months, 626,000 tons of British, neutral and
allied shipping have been destroyed. Since the beginning of the war
we--Great Britain--have lost over two million tons of shipping, and our
Allies and the neutrals have lost almost as much. There is a certain
shortage of food in Great Britain, and a shortage of many other things
besides. Writing about the middle of February, an important German
newspaper raised a shout of jubilation. "The whole sea was as if swept
clean at one blow"--by the announcement of the intensified "blockade" of
the first of February. So the German scribe. But again the facts shoot
up, hard and irreducible, through the sea of comment. While the German
newspapers were shouting to each other, the sea was so far from being
"swept clean," that twelve thousand ships had actually passed in and out
of British ports in the first eighteen days of the "blockade." And at
any moment during those days, at least 3,000 ships could have been found
traversing the "danger zone," which the Germans imagined themselves to
have barred. One is reminded of the _Hamburger Nachrichten_ last year,
after the Zeppelin raid in January 1916. "English industry lies in
ruins," said that astonishing print. "The sea has been swept clean,"
says one of its brethren now. Yet all the while, there, in the danger
zone, whenever, by day or night, one turns one's thoughts to it, are the
three thousand ships; and there in the course of a fortnight, are the
twelve thousand ships going and coming.
Yet all the same, as I have said before, there is danger and there is
anxiety. The neutrals--save America--have been intimidated; they are
keeping their ships in harbour; and to do without their tonnage is a
serious matter for us. Meanwhile, the best brains in naval England are
at work, and one can feel the sailors straining at the leash. In the
first eighteen days of February, there were forty fights with
submarines. The Navy talks very little about them, and says nothing of
which it is not certain. But all the scientific resources, all the
fighting brains of naval England are being brought to bear, and we at
home--well, let us keep to our rations, the only thing we can do to help
our men at sea!
How this grey estuary spread before my eyes illustrates and illuminates
the figures I have been quoting! I am on the light cruiser of a famous
Commodore, and I have just been creeping and climbing through a
submarine. The waters round are crowded with those light craft,
destroyers, submarines, mine-sweepers, trawlers, patrol boats, on which
for the moment at any rate the fortunes of the naval war turns. And take
notice that they are all--or almost all--_new_; the very latest products
of British ship-yards. We have plenty of battle-ships, but "we must now
build, as quickly as possible, the smaller craft, and the merchant ships
we want," says Sir Edward Carson. "Not a slip in the country will be
empty during the coming months. Every rivet put into a ship will
contribute to the defeat of Germany. And 47 per cent, of the Merchant
Service have already been armed." The riveters must indeed have been
hard at work! This crowded scene carries me back to the Clyde where I
was last year, to the new factories and workshops, with their
ever-increasing throng of women, and to the marvellous work of the
ship-yards. No talk now of strikes, of a disaffected and revolutionary
minority, on the Clyde, at any rate, as there was twelve months ago.
Broadly speaking, and allowing for a small, stubborn, but insignificant
Pacifist section, the will of the nation, throughout all classes, has
become as steel--to win the war.
Throughout England, as in these naval officers beside me, there is the
same tense yet disciplined expectancy. As we lunch and talk, on this
cruiser at rest, messages come in perpetually; the cruiser itself is
ready for the open sea, at an hour and a half's notice; the seaplanes
pass out and come in over the mouth of the harbour on their voyages of
discovery and report, and these destroyers and mine-sweepers that he so
quietly near us will be out again to-night in the North Sea, grappling
with every difficulty and facing every danger, in the true spirit of a
wonderful service, while we land-folk sleep and eat in peace;--grumbling
no doubt, with our morning newspaper and coffee, when any of the German
destroyers who come out from Zeebrugge are allowed to get home with a
whole skin. "What on earth is the Navy about?" Well, the Navy knows.
Germany is doing her very worst, and will go on doing it--for a time.
The line of defensive watch in the North Sea is long; the North Sea is a
big place; the Germans often have the luck of the street-boy who rings a
bell and runs away, before the policeman comes up. But the Navy has no
doubts. The situation, says one of my cheerful hosts, is "quite healthy"
and we shall see "great things in the coming months." We had better
leave it at that!
Now let us look at these destroyers in another scene. It is the last day
of February, and I find myself on a military steamer, bound for a French
Port, and on my way to the British Headquarters in France. With me is
the same dear daughter who accompanied me last year as "dame secrétaire"
on my first errand. The boat is crowded with soldiers, and before we
reach the French shore we have listened to almost every song--old and
new--in Tommy's repertory. There is even "Tipperary," a snatch, a ghost
of "Tipperary," intermingled with many others, rising and falling, no
one knows why, started now here, now there, and dying away again after a
line or two. It is a draft going out to France for the first time, north
countrymen, by their accent; and life-belts and submarines seem to amuse
them hugely, to judge by the running fire of chaff that goes on. But,
after a while, I cease to listen. I am thinking first of what awaits us
on the further shore, on which the lights are coming out, and of those
interesting passes inviting us to G.H.Q. as "Government Guests," which
lie safe in our handbags. And then, my thoughts slip back to a
conversation of the day before, with Dr. Addison, the new Minister of
Munitions.
A man in the prime of life, with whitening hair--prematurely white, for
the face and figure are quite young still--and stamped, so far as
expression and aspect are concerned, by those social and humane
interests which first carried him into Parliament. I have been long
concerned with Evening Play Centres for school-children in Hoxton, one
of the most congested quarters of our East End. And seven years ago I
began to hear of the young and public-spirited doctor and man of
science, who had made himself a name and place in Hoxton, who had won
the confidence of the people crowded in its unlovely streets, had worked
for the poor, and the sick, and the children, and had now beaten the
Tory member, and was Hoxton's Liberal representative in the new
Parliament elected in January 1910, to deal with the Lords, after the
throwing out of Lloyd George's famous Budget. Once or twice since, I had
come across him in matters concerned with education--cripple schools and
the like--when he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education,
immediately before the war. And now here was the doctor, the Hunterian
Professor, the social worker, the friend of schools and school-children,
transformed into the fighting Minister of a great fighting Department,
itself the creation of the war, only second--if second--in its
importance for the war, to the Admiralty and the War Office.
I was myself, for a fortnight of last year, the guest of the Ministry of
Munitions, while Mr. Lloyd George was still its head, in some of the
most important Munition areas; and I was then able to feel the current
of hot energy, started by the first Minister, running--not of course
without local obstacles and animosities--through an electrified England.
That was in February 1916. Then, in August, came the astonishing speech
of Mr. Montagu, on the development of the Munitions supply in one short
year, as illustrated by the happenings of the Somme battlefield. And
now, as successor to Mr. Montagu and Mr. Lloyd George, Dr. Addison sat
in the Minister's chair, continuing the story.
What a story it is! Starting from the manufacture of guns, ammunition
and explosives, and after pushing that to incredible figures, the
necessities of its great task has led the Ministry to one forward step
after another. Seeing that the supply of munitions depends on the supply
of raw material, it is now regulating the whole mineral supply of this
country, and much of that of the Allies; it is about to work qualities
of iron ore that have never been worked before; it is deciding, over the
length and breadth of the country, how much aluminium should be allowed
to one firm, how much copper to another; it is producing steel for our
Allies as well as for ourselves; it has taken over with time the whole
Motor Transport of the war, and is now adding to it the Railway
Transport of munitions here and abroad, and is dictating meanwhile to
every engineering firm in the country which of its orders should come
first, and which last. It is managing a whole gigantic industry with
employes running into millions, half a million of them women, and
managing it under wholly new conditions of humanity and forethought; it
is housing and feeding and caring for innumerable thousands;
transforming from day to day, as by a kind of by-work, the industrial
mind and training of multitudes, and laying the foundations of a new,
and surely happier England, after the War. And, finally, it is
adjusting, with, on the whole, great success, the rival claims of the
factories and the trenches, sending more and more men from the workshops
to the fighting line, in proportion as the unskilled labour of the
country--men and women, but especially women--is drawn, more and more
widely, into the service of a dwindling amount of skilled labour, more
and more "diluted."
* * * * *
But the light is failing and the shore is nearing. Life-belts are taken
off, the destroyers have disappeared. We are on the quay, kindly
welcomed by an officer from G.H.Q. who passes our bags rapidly through
the Custom House, and carries us off to a neighbouring hotel for the
night, it being too late for the long drive to G.H.Q. We are in France
again!--and the great presence of the army is all about us. The quay
crowded with soldiers, the port alive with ships, the grey-blue uniforms
mingling with the khaki--after a year I see it again, and one's pulses
quicken. The vast "effort of England" which last year had already
reached so great a height, and has now, as all accounts testify, been so
incredibly developed, is here once more in visible action, before me.
Next day, the motor arrives early, and with our courteous officer who
has charge of us, in front, we are off, first, for one of the great
camps I saw last year, and then for G.H.Q. itself. On the way, as we
speed over the rolling down country beyond the town, my eyes are keen to
catch some of the new signs of the time. Here is the first--a railway
line in process of doubling--and large numbers of men, some of them
German prisoners, working at it; typical both of the immense railway
development all over the military zone, since last year, and of the
extensive use now being made of prisoners' labour, in regions well
behind the firing line. They lift their heads, as we pass, looking with
curiosity at the two ladies in the military car. Their flat round caps
give them an odd similarity. It is as if one saw scores of the same
face, differentiated here and there by a beard. A docile hard-working
crew, by all accounts, who give no trouble, and are managed largely by
their N.C.O.'s. Are there some among them who saw the massacre at
Dinant, the terrible things in Lorraine? Their placid, expressionless
faces tell no tale.
But the miles have flown, and here already are the long lines of the
camp. How pleasant to be greeted by some of the same officers! We go
into the Headquarters Office, for a talk. "Grown? I should think we
have!" says Colonel----. And, rapidly, he and one of his colleagues run
through some of the additions and expansions. The Training Camp has been
practically doubled, or, rather, another training camp has been added to
the one that existed last year, and both are equipped with an increased
number of special schools--an Artillery Training School, an Engineer
Training School, a Lewis Gun School, a Gas School, with an actual gas
chamber for the training of men in the use of their gas helmets,--and
others, of which it is not possible to speak. "We have put through half
a million of reinforcements since you were here last." And close upon
two million rations were issued last month! The veterinary accommodation
has been much enlarged, and two Convalescent Horse Depots have been
added--(it is good indeed to see with what kindness and thought the Army
treats its horses!). But the most novel addition to the camp has been a
Fat Factory for the production of fat,--from which comes the glycerine
used in explosives--out of all the food refuse of the camp. The fat
produced by the system, here and in England, has already provided
glycerine _far millions of eighteen-pounder shells_; the problem of camp
refuse, always a desperate one, has been solved; and as a commercial
venture the factory makes 250 per cent. profit.
Undeterred by what we hear of the smells! we go off to see it, and the
enthusiastic manager explains the unsavoury processes by which the bones
and refuse of all the vast camp are boiled down into a white fat, that
looks _almost_ eatable, but is meant, as a matter of fact, to feed not
men but shells. Nor is that the only contribution to the fighting line
which the factory makes. All the cotton waste of the hospitals, with
their twenty thousand beds--the old dressings and bandages--come here,
and after sterilisation and disinfection go to England for gun-cotton.
Was there ever a grimmer cycle than this, by which that which feeds, and
that which heals, becomes in the end that which kills! But let me try to
forget that side of it, and remember, rather, as we leave the smells
behind, that the calcined bones become artificial manure, and go back
again into the tortured fields of France, while other bye-products of
the factory help the peasants near to feed their pigs. And anything,
however small, that helps the peasants of France in this war, comforts
one's heart.
We climb up to the high ground of the camp for a general view before we
go on to G.H.Q. and I see it, as I saw it last year, spread under the
March sunshine, among the sand and the pines--a wonderful sight.
"Everything has grown, you see, except the staff!" says the Colonel,
smiling, as we shake hands. "But we rub along!"
Then we are in the motor again, and at last the new G.H.Q.--how
different from that I saw last year!--rises before us. We make our way
into the town, and presently the car stops for a minute before a
building, and while our officer goes within, we retreat into a side
street to wait. But my thoughts are busy. For that building, of which
the side-front is still visible, is the brain of the British Army in
France, and on the men who work there depend the fortunes of that
distant line where our brothers and sons are meeting face to face the
horrors and foulnesses of war. How many women whose hearts hang on the
war, whose all is there, in daily and nightly jeopardy, read the words
"British Headquarters" with an involuntary lift of soul, an invocation
without words! Yet scarcely half a dozen Englishwomen in this war will
ever see the actual spot. And here it is, under my eyes, the cold March
sun shining fitfully on it, the sentry at the door, the khaki figures
passing in and out. I picture to myself the rooms within, and the news
arriving of General Gough's advance on the Ancre, of that German retreat
as to which all Europe is speculating.
But we move on--to a quiet country house in a town garden--the
Headquarters Mess of the Intelligence Department. Here I find, among our
kind hosts, men already known to me from my visit of the year before,
men whose primary business it is to watch the enemy, who know where
every German regiment and German Commander are, who through the aerial
photography of our airmen are now acquainted with every step of the
German retreat, and have already the photographs of his second line. All
the information gathered from prisoners, and from innumerable other
sources, comes here; and the department has its eye besides on
everything that happens within the zone of our Armies in France. For a
woman to be received here is an exception--perhaps I may say an
honour--of which I am rather tremulously aware. Can I make it worth
while? But a little conversation with these earnest and able men shows
plainly that they have considered the matter like any other incident in
the day's work. _England's Effort_ has been useful; therefore I am to be
allowed again to see and write for myself; and therefore, what
information can be given me as to the growth of our military power in
France since last year will be given. It is not, of course, a question
of war correspondence, which is not within a woman's powers. But it is a
question of as much "seeing" as can be arranged for, combined with as
much first-hand information as time and the censor allow. I begin to
see my way.
The conversation at luncheon--the simplest of meals--and during a stroll
afterwards, is thrilling indeed to us newcomers. "The coming summer's
campaign _must_ decide the issue of the war--though it may not see the
end of it." "The issue of the war"--and the fate of Europe! "An
inconclusive peace would be a victory for Germany." There is no doubt
here as to the final issue; but there is a resolute refusal to fix
dates, or prophesy details. "Man for man we are now the better army. Our
strength is increasing month by month, while that of Germany is failing.
Men and officers, who a year ago were still insufficiently trained, are
now seasoned troops with nothing to learn from the Germans; and the
troops recruited under the Military Service Act, now beginning to come
out, are of surprisingly good quality." On such lines the talk runs, and
it is over all too soon.
Then we are in the motor again, bound for an aerodrome forty or fifty
miles away. We are late, and the last twenty-seven kilometres fly by in
thirty-two minutes! It is a rolling country, and there are steep
descents and sharp climbs, through the thickly-scattered and
characteristic villages and small old towns of the Nord, villages
crowded all of them with our men. Presently, with a start, we find
ourselves on a road which saw us last spring--a year ago, to the day.
The same blue distances, the same glimpses of old towns in the hollows,
the same touches of snow on the heights. At last, in the cold sunset
light, we draw up at our destination. The wide aerodrome stretches
before us--great hangars coloured so as to escape the notice of a Boche
overhead--with machines of all sizes, rising and landing--coming out of
the hangars, or returning to them for the night. Two of the officers in
charge meet us, and I walk round with them, looking at the various
types--some for fighting, some for observation; and understanding--what
I can! But the spirit of the men--that one can understand. "We are
accumulating, concentrating now, for the summer offensive. Of course the
Germans have been working hard too. They have lots of new and improved
machines. But when the test comes we are confident that we shall down
them again, as we did on the Somme. For us, the all-important thing is
the fighting behind the enemy lines. Our object is to prevent the German
machines from rising at all, to keep them down, while our airmen are
reconnoitering along the fighting line. Awfully dangerous work! Lots
don't come back. But what then? They will have done their job!"
The words were spoken so carelessly that for a few seconds I did not
realise their meaning. But there was that in the expression of the man
who spoke them which showed there was no lack of realisation there. How
often I have recalled them, with a sore heart, in these recent weeks of
heavy losses in the air-service--losses due, I have no doubt, to the
special claims upon it of the German retreat.
The conversation dropped a little, till one of my companions, with a
smile, pointed overhead. Three splendid biplanes were sailing above us,
at a great height, bound south-wards. "Back from the line!" said the
officer beside me, and we watched them till they dipped and disappeared
in the sunset clouds. Then tea and pleasant talk. The young men insist
that D. shall make tea. This visit of two ladies is a unique event. For
the moment, as she makes tea in their sitting-room, which is now full of
men, there is an illusion of home.
Then we are off, for another fifty miles. Darkness comes on, the roads
are unfamiliar. At last an avenue and bright lights. We have reached the
Visitors' Château, under the wing of G.H.Q.