_March 31st, 1917_.
DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,--My first letter you will perhaps remember took us
to the Visitors' Château of G.H.Q. and left us alighting there, to be
greeted by the same courteous host, Captain----, who presided last year
over another Guest House far away. But we were not to sleep at the
Château, which was already full of guests. Arrangements had been made
for us at a cottage in the village near, belonging to the village
schoolmistress; the motor took us there immediately, and after changing
our travel-stained dresses, we went back to the Château for dinner. Many
guests--all of them of course of the male sex, and much talk! Some of
the guests--members of Parliament, and foreign correspondents--had been
over the Somme battlefield that day, and gave alarmist accounts of the
effects of the thaw upon the roads and the ground generally. Banished
for a time by the frost, the mud had returned; and mud, on the front,
becomes a kind of malignant force which affects the spirits of
the soldiers.
The schoolmistress and her little maid sat up for us, and shepherded us
kindly to bed. Never was there a more strangely built little house! The
ceilings came down on our heads, the stairs were perpendicular. But
there was a stove in each room, and the beds though hard, and the floor
though bare, were scrupulously clean. In the early morning I woke up and
looked out. There had been a white frost, and the sun was just rising in
a clear sky. Its yellow light was shining on the whitewashed wall of the
next cottage, on which a large pear-tree was trained. All round were
frost-whitened plots of garden or meadow--_préaux_--with tall poplars in
the hedges cutting the morning sky. Suddenly, I heard a continuous
murmur in the room beneath me. It was the schoolmistress and her maid at
prayer. And presently the house door opened and shut. It was
Mademoiselle who had gone to early Mass. For the school was an _école
libre_, and the little lady who taught it was a devout Catholic. The
rich yet cold light, the frosty quiet of the village, the thin French
trees against the sky, the ritual murmur in the room below--it was like
a scene from a novel by René Bazin, and breathed the old, the
traditional France.
We were to start early and motor far, but there was time before we
started for a little talk with Mademoiselle. She was full of praise for
our English soldiers, some of whom were billeted in the village. "They
are very kind to our people, they often help the women, and they never
complain." (Has the British Tommy in these parts really forgotten how to
grouse?) "I had some of your men billeted here. I could only give them a
room without beds, just the bare boards. 'You will find it hard,' I
said. 'We will get a little straw,' said the sergeant. 'That will be all
right.' Our men would have grumbled." (But I think this was
Mademoiselle's _politesse_!) "And the children are devoted to your
soldiers. I have a dear little girl in the school, nine years old.
Sometimes from the window she sees a man in the street, a soldier who
lodges with her mother. Then I cannot hold her. She is like a wild thing
to be gone. 'Voilà mon camarade!--voilà mon camarade!' Out she goes, and
is soon walking gravely beside him, hand in hand, looking up at him."
"How do they understand each other?" "I don't know. But they have a
language. Your sergeants often know more French than your officers,
because they have to do the billeting and the talking to our people."
The morning was still bright when the motor arrived, but the frost had
been keen, and the air on the uplands was biting. We speed first across
a famous battlefield, where French and English bones lie mingled below
the quiet grass, and then turn south-east. Nobody on the roads. The
lines of poplar-trees fly past, the magpies flutter from the woods, and
one might almost forget the war. Suddenly, a railway line, a steep
descent and we are full in its midst again. On our left an encampment of
Nissen huts--so called from their inventor, a Canadian officer--those
new and ingenious devices for housing troops, or labour battalions, or
coloured workers, at an astonishing saving both of time and material. In
shape like the old-fashioned beehive, each hut can be put up by four or
six men in a few hours. Everything is, of course, standardised, and the
wood which lines their corrugated iron is put together in the simplest
and quickest ways, ways easily suggested, no doubt, to the Canadian
mind, familiar with "shacks" and lumber camps. We shall come across them
everywhere along the front. But on this first occasion my attention is
soon distracted from them, for as we turn a corner beyond the hut
settlement, which I am told is that of a machine-gun detachment, there
is an exclamation from D----.
_Tanks_! The officer in front points smiling to a field just ahead.
There is one of them--the monster!--taking its morning exercise;
practising up and down the high and almost perpendicular banks by which
another huge field is divided. The motor slackens, and we watch the
creature slowly attack a high bank, land complacently on the top, and
then--an officer walking beside it to direct its movements--balance a
moment on the edge of another bank equally high, a short distance away.
There it is!--down!--not flopping or falling, but all in the way of
business, gliding unperturbed. London is full of tanks, of course--on
the films. But somehow to be watching a real one, under the French sky,
not twenty miles from the line, is a different thing. We fall into an
eager discussion with Captain F. in front, as to the part played by them
in the Somme battle, and as to what the Germans may be preparing in
reply to them. And while we talk, my eye is caught by something on the
sky-line, just above the tank. It is a man and a plough--a plough that
might have come out of the Odyssey--the oldest, simplest type. So are
the ages interwoven; and one may safely guess that the plough--that very
type!--will outlast many generations of tanks. But, for the moment, the
tanks are in the limelight, and it is luck that we should have come upon
them so soon, for one may motor many miles about the front without
meeting with any signs of them.
Next, a fine main road and an old town, seething with all the stir of
war. We come upon a crowded market-place, and two huge convoys passing
each other in the narrow street beyond--one, an ammunition column, into
which our motor humbly fits itself as best it can, by order of the
officer in charge of the column, and the other, a long string of
magnificent lorries belonging to the Flying Corps, which defiles past us
on the left. The inhabitants of the town, old men, women and children,
stand to watch the hubbub, with amused friendly faces. On we go, for a
time, in the middle of the convoy. The great motor lorries filled with
ammunition hem us in till the town is through, and a long hill is
climbed. At the top of it we are allowed to draw out, and motor slowly
past long lines of troops on the march; first, R.E.'s with their store
waggons, large and small; then a cyclist detachment; a machine-gun
detachment; field kitchens, a white goat lying lazily on the top of one
of them; mules, heavily laden; and Lewis guns in little carts. Then
infantry marching briskly in the keen air, while along other roads,
visible to east and west, we see other columns converging. A division,
apparently, on the march. The physique of the men, their alert and
cheerful looks, strike me particularly. This pitiless war seems to have
revealed to England herself the quality of her race. Though some credit
must be given to the physical instructors of the Army!--who in the last
twelve months especially have done a wonderful work.
At last we turn out of the main road, and the endless columns pass away
into the distance. Again, a railway line in process of doubling; beyond,
a village, which seems to be mainly occupied by an Army Medical
detachment; then two large Casualty Clearing Stations, and a Divisional
Dressing Station. Not many wounded here at present; the section of the
line from which we are only some ten miles distant has been
comparatively quiet of late. But what preparations everywhere! What
signs of the coming storm! Hardly a minute passes as we speed along
without its significant sight; horse-lines, Army Service depots bursting
with stores,--a great dump of sandbags--another of ammunition.
And as I look out at the piles of shells, I think of the most recent
figures furnished me by the Ministry of Munitions. Last year, when the
Somme offensive began, and when I was writing _England's Effort_, the
_weekly_ output of eighteen-pounder shells was 17-1/2 times what it was
during the first year of the war. _It is now_ 28 _times as much_.
Field howitzer ammunition has _almost doubled_ since last July. That of
medium guns and howitzers _has more than doubled_. That of the heaviest
guns of all (over six-inch) _is more than four times_ as great. By the
growth of ammunition we may guess what has been the increase in guns,
especially in those heavy guns we are now pushing forward after the
retreating Germans, as fast as roads and railway lines can be made to
carry them. The German Government, through one of its subordinate
spokesmen, has lately admitted their inferiority in guns; their retreat,
indeed, on the Somme before our pending attack, together with the state
of their old lines, now we are in and over them, show plainly enough
what they had to fear from the British guns and the abundance of British
ammunition.
But what are these strange figures swarming beside the road--black
tousled heads and bronze faces? Kaffir "boys," at work in some quarries,
feeling the cold, no doubt, on this bright bitter day, in spite of their
long coats. They are part of that large body of native labour, Chinese,
Kaffir, Basuto, which is now helping our own men everywhere to push on
and push up, as the new labour forces behind them release more and more
of the fighting men for that dogged pursuit which is going on
_there_--in that blue distance to our right!--where the German line
swings stubbornly back, south-east, from the Vimy Ridge.
The motor stops. This is a Headquarters, and a staff officer comes out
to greet us--a boy in looks, but a D.S.O. all the same! His small car
precedes us as a guide, and we keep up with him as best we may. These
are mining villages we are passing through, and on the horizon are some
of those pyramidal slag-heaps--the Fosses--which have seen some of the
fiercest fighting of the war. But we leave the villages behind, and are
soon climbing into a wooden upland. Suddenly, a halt. A notice-board
forbids the use of a stretch of road before us "from sun-rise to
sunset." Evidently it is under German observation. We try to find
another, parallel. But here, too, the same notice confronts us. We dash
along it, however, and my pulses run a little quicker, as I realise,
from the maps we carry, how near we are to the enemy lines which lie
hidden in the haze, eastward; and from my own eyes, how exposed is the
hillside. But we are safely through, and a little further we come to a
wood--a charming wood, to all seeming, of small trees, which in a week
or two will be full of spring leaf and flower. But we are no sooner in
it, jolting up its main track, than we understand the grimness of what
it holds. Spring and flowers have not much to say to it! For this wood
and its neighbourhood--Ablain St. Nazaire, Carency, Neuville St.
Vaast--have seen war at its cruellest; thousands of brave lives have
been yielded here; some of the dead are still lying unburied in its
furthest thickets, and men will go softly through it in the years to
come. "Stranger, go and tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here,
obedient to their will:"--the immortal words are in my ears. But how
many are the sacred spots in this land for which they speak!
We leave the motor and walk on through the wood to the bare upland
beyond. The wood is still a wood of death, actual or potential. Our own
batteries are all about us; so too are the remains of French batteries,
from the days when the French still held this portion of the line. We
watch the gunners among the trees and presently pass an encampment of
their huts. Beyond, a high and grassy plateau--fringes of wood on either
hand. But we must not go to the edge on our right so as to look down
into the valley below. Through the thin leafless trees, however, we see
plainly the ridges that stretch eastward, one behind the other,
"suffused in sunny air." There are the towers of Mont St. Eloy--ours;
the Bertonval Wood--ours; and the famous Vimy Ridge, blue in the middle
distance, of which half is ours and half German. We are very near the
line. Notre Dame de Lorette is not very far away, though too far for us
to reach the actual spot, the famous bluff, round which the battle raged
in 1915. And now the guns begin!--the first we have heard since we
arrived. From our left--as it seemed--some distance away, came the short
sharp reports of the trench mortars, but presently, as we walked on,
guns just behind us and below us, began to boom over our heads, and we
heard again the long-drawn scream or swish of the shells, rushing on
their deadly path to search out the back of the enemy's lines in the
haze yonder, and flinging confusion on his lines of communication, his
supplies and reserves. He does not reply. He has indeed been strangely
meek of late. The reason here cannot be that he is slipping away from
our attack, as is the case farther south. The Vimy Ridge is firmly held;
it is indeed the pivot of the retreat. Perhaps to-day he is economising.
But, of course, at any moment he might reply. After a certain amount of
hammering he _must_ reply! And there are some quite fresh shell-holes
along our path, some of them not many hours old. Altogether, it is with
relief that as the firing grows hotter we turn back and pick up the
motor in the wood again.
And yet one is loath to go! Never again shall I stand in such a
scene--never again behold those haunted ridges, and this wood of death
with the guns that hide in it! To have shared ever so little in such a
bit of human experience is for a woman a thing of awe, if one has time
to think of it. Not even groups of artillery men, chatting or completing
their morning's toilet, amid the thin trees, can dull that sense in me.
_They_ are only "strafing" Fritz or making ready to "strafe" him; they
have had an excellent midday meal in the huts yonder, and they whistle
and sing as they go about their work, disappearing sometimes into
mysterious regions out of sight. That is all there is in it for them.
They are "doing their job," like the airmen, and if a German shell finds
them in the wood, why, the German will have done _his_ job, and they
will bear no grudge. It is simple as that--for them. But to the
onlooker, they are all figures in a great design--woven into the
terrible tapestry of war, and charged with a meaning that we of this
actual generation shall never more than dimly see or understand.
Again we rush along the exposed road and back into the mining region,
taking a westward turn. A stately chateau, and near it a smaller house,
where a General greets us. Lunch is over, for we are late, but it is
hospitably brought back for us, and the General and I plunge into talk
of the retreat, of what it means for the Germans, and what it will mean
for us. After luncheon, we go into the next room to look at the
General's big maps which show clearly how the salients run, the smaller
and the larger, from which the Germans are falling back, followed
closely by the troops of General Gough. News of the condition of the
enemy's abandoned lines is coming in fast. "Let no one make any mistake.
They have gone because they _must_--because of the power of our
artillery, which never stops hammering them, whether on the line or
behind the line, which interferes with all their communications and
supplies, and makes life intolerable. At the same time, the retreat is
being skilfully done, and will of course delay us. That was why they did
it. We shall have to push up roads, railways, supplies; the bringing up
of the heavy guns will take time, but less time than they think! Our men
are in the pink of condition!"
On which again follows very high praise of the quality of the men now
coming out under the Military Service Act. "Yet they are conscripts,"
says one of us, in some surprise, "and the rest were volunteers." "No
doubt. But these are the men--many of them--who had to balance
duties--who had wives and children to leave, and businesses which
depended on them personally. Compulsion has cut the knot and eased their
consciences. They'll make fine soldiers! But we want more--_more!_" And
then follows talk on the wonderful developments of training--even since
last year; and some amusing reminiscences of the early days of England's
astounding effort, by which vast mobs of eager recruits without guns,
uniforms, or teachers, have been turned into the magnificent armies now
fighting in France.
The War Office has lately issued privately some extremely interesting
notes on the growth and training of the New Armies, of which it is only
now possible to make public use. From these it is clear that in the
Great Experiment of the first two years of war all phases of intellect
and capacity have played their part. The widely trained mind, taking
large views as to the responsibility of the Army towards the nation
delivered into its hands, so that not only should it be disciplined for
war but made fitter for peace; and the practical inventive gifts of
individuals who, in seeking to meet a special need, stumble on something
universal, both forces have been constantly at work. Discipline and
initiative have been the twin conquerors, and the ablest men in the
Army, to use a homely phrase, have been out for both. Many a fresh, and
valuable bit of training has been due to some individual officer struck
with a new idea, and patiently working it out. The special "schools,"
which are now daily increasing the efficiency of the Army, if you ask
how they arose, you will generally be able to trace them back to some
eager young man starting a modest experiment in his spare time for the
teaching of himself and some of his friends, and so developing it that
the thing is finally recognised, enlarged, and made the parent of
similar efforts elsewhere.
Let me describe one such "school"--to me a thrilling one, as I saw it on
a clear March afternoon. A year ago no such thing existed. Now each of
our Armies possesses one.
But this letter is already too long!