INDISPENSABLE
"With the rearward services rests victory or defeat."
SIR DOUGLAS HAIG.
In the preceding chapter we have been able to digest a few of the more
interesting facts and figures gleaned, in the one case from Sir Douglas
Haig's final dispatch, and having reference to the task performed by
the rearward services of the British Army in France; in the other, from
the two reports issued by Mr. L. W. Horne, and dealing with the working
of the London and North-Western Railway in the interests of the State,
at home.
Most of us will probably retain some recollection of the scriptural
parable of the virgins, five of whom were wise, and five foolish.
Whilst hardly being perhaps quite fair to liken the rearward services
of the Army to the latter five, who, lacking oil in their lamps, begged
the necessary illuminant from the former, the London and North-Western
Railway Company's locomotive department may nevertheless be said to
resemble the wise virgins, in that, figuratively speaking, lamps were
kept trimmed and full of oil, ready for any emergency; not only this,
however, but going one better than the wise virgins, who, seemingly a
trifle selfish and stony-hearted, turned a deaf ear to their foolish
sisters in distress, the London and North-Western Railway locomotive
department never hesitated to extend a helping hand to the rearward
services of the Army, rendering possible in part that "wonderful
development of all methods of transportation," which, as Sir Douglas
Haig avers, "had an important influence upon the course of events."
We have noted the extent of the goods traffic which was dealt with
at home during the fateful years of the world war, and of which the
mileage rose from eighteen and a half millions in 1914 to no less a
figure than twenty and a half millions in 1917, and it was during this
period, when Mr. Bowen-Cooke, in his capacity as chief mechanical
engineer of the premier British railway company, was concentrating
his endeavours on the maintenance of a supply of locomotive power
sufficient to cope with this ever-increasing figure, that he was called
upon to assist in that other and extraneous supply of similar power,
by means of which the rearward services of our overseas forces were
enabled to solve the immense problem of transportation by rail in the
various theatres of war in which we were engaged, a problem which as
we know, ultimately involved on the Western Front in France alone the
running of "a weekly average of 1,800 trains, carrying a weekly average
load of approximately 400,000 tons."
[Illustration: BREAKDOWN CRANE AND LIFTING TACKLE FOR SHIPPING SMALL
GOODS ENGINES.]
[Illustration: AN OVERSEAS LOCOMOTIVE PANEL "SEVERELY WOUNDED." [_To
face p. 178._]
Obviously the only method by which locomotive power could be made
available for the rearward services lay in the transference of engines
overseas, in other words, depletion of available stock at home,
depletion which was effected in compliance with Government demands,
and in spite of the many difficulties which presented themselves and
were contingent upon so unprecedented a situation.
The first batch of recruits to be "called up" at Crewe was selected
from that very stable little group, or "class," known as the "4 feet
3 inch, six wheels coupled coal engine"; these engines were specially
fitted with tenders having a water-tank capacity of 2500 gallons,
and nine were sent originally to serve on the Western Front, further
recruits of this "class," numbering seventy-six altogether, seeing
overseas service in Egypt, Salonica, and Mesopotamia respectively.
These hard-working little engines, which in ordinary practice do not
refuse a load of fifty-five wagons or approximately 600 tons, were
nevertheless deemed incapable of contributing sufficient power in
proportion as the size, or "feeding strength," of our overseas forces
increased; the result being that the "power" limit was raised, and a
sturdier form of recruit, found available in the well-known "G" class,
or "4 feet 3 inch, eight wheels coupled coal engine," was summoned
to the colours. These engines, of which a total of twenty-six found
their way across the water, were fitted with tenders of 3000 gallons
capacity, in addition to having (as was the case with the smaller
engines) a special form of water lifter whereby water could be obtained
from wayside streams or other occasional sources of supply. Capable of
"walking away" with a load of eighty wagons, or approximately 900 tons,
these powerful goods engines proved themselves a valuable asset, and so
a determining factor in influencing the course of events.
Hand in hand with "running" goes the question of maintenance and
repairs, and in this connection installations on a large scale were
set up in France as elsewhere, Audricq, Berguette, and Borre, situated
in the Pas-de-Calais and Nord districts, being the main depôts for
the repair of carriages and wagons, light railway engines, and
locomotives, respectively; and in this connection Crewe once again
was well to the fore in the provision of the requisite machinery and
plant incidental to the fitting out of the modern railway repair shop.
Briefly, a few of the outstanding features of this plant may be said
to have comprised mechanical contrivances such as hydraulic pumps and
accumulators, stationary boilers, electric motors, overhead travelling
cranes, Goliath cranes, an hydraulic wheel-drop, a wheel turntable, a
case-hardening furnace, a boiling bosh, levelling blocks, and a great
variety of machine tools, details of all of which would in themselves
suffice to complete an entire volume.
It was entirely thanks to the provision and installation of this
machinery and plant that during the year 1917, for instance--as we
learn from statistics published in the issue of _Modern Transport_ of
September 20th, 1919--143 heavy and 675 light repairs were carried out
on locomotives; and in the following year, 1918, these figures were
increased to 246 and 809 respectively; while the number of ordinary
shed, or "running," repairs amounted to no less a figure than 5,487.
[Illustration: TYPE OF OVERHEAD TRAVELLING CRANE, BUILT AT CREWE AND
SUPPLIED TO THE OVERSEAS "REARWARD SERVICES." [_To face p. 180._]
The complex and duplex task of maintaining simultaneously both the home
and the overseas rail services was further augmented by the acceptance
within Crewe Works, for general repairs, of numerous engines doing duty
in the various military camps which sprang up in different parts of the
country, namely those situated at Kimmel Park, Oswestry, Prees Heath,
Cannock Chase, Milford and Brocton, etc., etc.
Heavy repairs were also effected in the case of two massive Belgian
engines, which were sent to England, and in addition to this
superabundance of work which was undertaken conjointly with the repair
programme incidental to the London and North-Western Railway Company's
own requirements, there was a continuous demand for the supply of
locomotive spare parts incidental to the working of the overseas
services.
In yet another respect was Crewe in a position to hold out a helping
hand to that friend in need, the overseas rearward services. Enemy
aircraft activity necessitated special precautions being taken to
ensure the maintenance of communications, precautions which involved
the construction of certain "deviation" lines of railway. Further,
additional permanent way was required for sidings, and for double and
quadruple tracking: and during the final Allied offensive many miles
of new line were laid for the purpose of following up the enemy, and
of bringing relief to the civilian populations left destitute in the
districts which the enemy had evacuated.
The London and North-Western Railway Company claims, and is renowned
for, the finest permanent way in the world, and the rails are for the
most part rolled in, and supplied from, Crewe Works.
During the war the customary relaying of track was considerably
curtailed, as may be gathered from the fact that, whereas during
a normal year an average of 32,500 tons of rails are supplied,
approximately half that tonnage only was supplied per annum while the
war lasted. Consequently the average relaying of track during a normal
year was reduced from roughly 140 to about 54 miles per annum. At the
same time, rails sufficient for 56 miles of track were taken from stock
and sent for use overseas.
The rail-mill in Crewe Works was, however, kept busy in other
directions as well, turning out in the four years 1914-1918, partly for
British railway companies, partly for use overseas, 38,844 tons of
rails, equal to a length of 260 miles, besides which were supplied a
considerable number of points and crossings complete.
Certain crises of the war will surely never fade from the memory of
living man or woman, crises during which it may be said that--
"There was silence deep as death,
And the boldest held his breath,
For a time,"
the while the fate of the Empire, of the whole civilised world, hung in
the balance.
Such a crisis, and one that had far-reaching effects upon the
organisation of the rearward services, occurred in the spring of 1918,
consequent upon the collapse of Russia. Dwelling on the issues at
stake, devolving the necessity on the German people to give "all it
had," General Ludendorff claims [cp. "My War Memories," 1914-1918,
page 600, Vol. II.] that their (the German) offensive was a brilliant
feat, and will "ever be so regarded in history." Such it may have been,
"for a time," backed as it was [cp. page 577, Vol. II.] by "twenty to
thirty batteries, about 100 guns, to each kilometre (eleven hundred
yards) of front to be attacked," which were "figures such as no man
had ever credited before." But "the battle was so vast that even
these quantities of steel," which the German guns discharged, "did
not destroy all life" and although the effect on the Borre locomotive
repair Works in the end was crushing to a degree, there as elsewhere,
as Ludendorff finds himself forced to confess, "the infantry always
found far too much to do," the result being that, thanks to the heroic
resistance put up by our own men, and in spite of the fact that the
Boche was within 1,500 yards of the place before the evacuation of
the shops was commenced, nearly the entire plant and machinery were
safely got away, and forthwith installed in some newly erected shops at
Rang-du-Fliers, a tiny hamlet situated on the main Paris-Boulogne line,
a few miles south of Étaples.
It was about this time that the warrior War Lord, flushed with
momentary success, saw fit to dispatch what was probably destined to
be the final of his many "victory" telegrams. "My victorious troops,"
so he wired to the Empress at Berlin (cp. the _Times_, March 26th,
1918), "are pressing forward from Bapaume westwards.... The spirit of
the troops is as fresh as on the first day. Over 45,000 prisoners, over
60 guns, 1000 machine-guns, and enormous quantities of ammunition and
provisions, have been taken. May God be with us!" (signed Wilhelm).
Whether this royal and auspicious message, when published officially,
had the desired effect upon a war-weary and demoralised people, it is
hard to say; but even Wilhelm, the would-be Conqueror, must surely have
begun to realise at long last that even if "you can fool some of the
people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, you
cannot fool all of the people all of the time."
Getting down to solid facts then, the battle, in Ludendorff's opinion,
"was over by April 4th," and although "thereafter there was bitter
fighting ... our (the German) war machine was no longer efficient" [cp.
page 684, Vol. II.].... "The Entente began the great offensive, the
final battle of the world war, and carried it through with increasing
vigour as our decline became more apparent."
It is not uninteresting to note the second-in-command, or, as some
believe him to have been, the actual commander-in-chief, of the
great German fighting machine paying a tribute to the energy of the
foe, the one foe hated and feared of all others by the entire German
people, namely England; and this energy was at the time in question
very properly brought to the notice of a representative gathering of
Colonial, American, and English journalists by Mr. Winston Churchill,
who, speaking on behalf of the Ministry of Munitions (cp. the _Times_,
March 27th, 1918), told these gentlemen of the Press that they must
"recognise that the strength of the British armies rests not only on
the superb courage of the soldiers, but on the gigantic output which
their countrymen at home are contributing from week to week, and from
hour to hour, after all these years of strain, never at such a pitch of
efficiency and energy as at the present time."
Few people there are, probably, who have ever realised what "the years
of strain" have meant to the workers in mine, factory, and shipyard;
it is in fact the exception rather than the rule to find in public
utterances reference to the drudgery, the monotony, involved in the
manufacture, frequently of a repetition nature, hour after hour, week
after week, month after month, of all those countless mechanical
contrivances of which the diverse component parts are essential to the
whole. The tendency has been rather to decry these people as shirkers,
money-grubbers, worthy only to be labelled with epithets unsavoury to
the palate. In every branch of a profession or trade, in every walk
in life, there are of course bound to be exceptions, but in common
fairness to those innumerable and genuine "indispensables" who perforce
remained at home, let us not forget that to the many of these who
would gladly have gone was denied the experience, the excitement, the
novelty, attaching to the open-air life of movement incidental to an
overseas campaign.
Obviously enough, closely allied to, in fact interwoven with,
production is the question of cost, a question which in war as in peace
could not fail to afford a loophole for difficulties and disputes,
either of a minor character, or aggravated perhaps by the continued
years of strain and monotony.
Mr. Churchill, however, was undoubtedly on the right tack when he went
on to insist that we should "not assume that because from time to time
they (the workmen) put forth their sectional aims, these aims were the
only things they care about. They have a sort of feeling," he declared,
"that they have to push forward their class interests, and I am not
blaming them for it, but in the main our strength rests upon their
loyal, resolute support, and we can count on that."
As a single instance of the reliance which could be placed in the
work-people's resolute support, we have only to note the loyal
adherence by the men in Crewe Works, which they maintained to the
bitter end, to a resolution which they passed themselves, to the
effect that "We, the working men of Crewe, will do all that is humanly
possible to increase the output of munitions, and stand by our comrades
in the trenches"; and this resolution was the outcome of a series of
meetings organised and held in the summer of 1915, in the various shops
within the Works, when Mr. Cooke, having emphasised the paramount
importance of keeping up the great railways, "which have to deal with
the transport of soldiers and munitions, that keep together the life of
the country," went on to remind his hearers that "it is to those who
produce the material for the making and repairing of locomotives who
have this all-important matter in their hands."
[Illustration: "WE, THE WORKING MEN OF CREWE, WILL DO ALL THAT IS
HUMANLY POSSIBLE TO INCREASE THE OUTPUT OF MUNITIONS, AND STAND BY OUR
COMRADES IN THE TRENCHES." [_To face p. 186._]
Appropriately enough, Mr. Craig, M.P. for the constituency, having
already wired the terms of the resolution to Mr. Lloyd George, was able
on behalf of the latter to "thank you, the men of Crewe Works, for the
splendid efforts you have put forward in the past;" adding, that he had
peculiar satisfaction in so doing, for "never either in the House of
Commons or out of it have I heard a word of reproach levelled against
the men of Crewe. Their patriotism has never been impeached."
That this outspoken tribute contained nothing from which could possibly
be construed anything in the nature of what is commonly known as
"gush" is easily apparent from the fact that Mr. Craig had only just
previously appealed to the men to "allow nothing to interfere with
the production of munitions of war. You are asked," he said to them
point-blank, "to relax for the time being all trades union rules and
regulations, and to compete with one another in order to produce the
largest possible amount of munitions."
With the exception, then, of an insignificantly small minority of
juvenile and inexperienced would-be firebrands, who in nine cases out
of ten could not boast of ever having ventured beyond their native
shores, if indeed beyond reach of their mothers' apron-strings, the
attitude of the men of Crewe was, throughout the protracted struggle,
loyal to the core, and that this was so must ever redound to their
undying credit.
Let us compare for a moment the condition of things prevailing at the
time in Germany, for although "other countries possessed an army, in
Prussia," as we know, "the army possessed the country," and probably
because of this inflexible régime, possibly in spite of it, everything
was not exactly "couleur de rose." In order to sustain the rearward
services of this ruthless "juggernaut," Ludendorff "went nap" for
universal conscription, industrial as well as military, for all persons
between the ages of fifteen and sixty. Another point he was always
striving to enforce was the raising of the pay of the fighting man, and
a corresponding reduction in the pay of the workman. "The enthusiasm
of the moment passes," so Ludendorff argues (cp. page 331, Vol. I.),
"it must be replaced by discipline and understanding." But the law
which the German Government resolved to introduce in November, 1916,
for conscripting auxiliary labour was in his opinion, (cp. pages 332,
333, Vol. I.) "neither fish nor fowl. We wanted something wholesale.
The bill departed, too, from the principle of universal liability to
service, and gave no security that the labour power obtained would
be so employed as to produce the maximum results. It was not merely
insufficient, but positively harmful in operation. It had a bad effect
on the soldiers;" for "troops withdrawn from the heavy fighting at
the Front saw auxiliary workers and women workers working in peace
and safety for wages far higher than their own pay. This was bound
to embitter the men who had to risk their lives day by day, and to
endure the greatest hardships, and of necessity increased their
dissatisfaction with their pay." In the circumstances, can anyone
marvel that:--
"Reason frowns on war's unequal game,
Where thousands fall to raise a single name"?
The war-profiteer, too, was "a repulsive phenomenon," who (cp. page
342, Vol. I.) with the "corruption of his influence has done us
incalculable harm."
That our own Government of the day adopted and pursued a policy, if
not exactly of killing, at least of spoiling, the goose that laid
the golden egg--a policy, moreover, which could not fail, here as
in Germany, to have the effect of discrediting the fighting man in
the eyes of his mate privileged to remain at home--was certainly no
fault of the railway companies or of their own employés; in fact one
branch at least of the railway service, the staff of which had no
particular reason to bless the Government, or indeed the war at all,
was the locomotive accountants' department at Crewe; for those who were
employed in this particular department, that is to say those of them
who were left at home--and the fact should never be overlooked that the
percentage of clerks who joined the Forces was not surpassed by that
of any other grade of employés on the railways--were involved in the
few years of the war in hard work, changes, and readjustments of one
kind and another, such as ordinarily would not have been their lot to
experience, in the whole course of a lifetime.
It is true that at the commencement of the war efforts were undoubtedly
made to curtail office work as far as possible, the Board of Trade
assisting in this direction by suspending Statistical Return 12 of the
Railway Companies' Accounts and Returns Act. Statistics, too, relating
to shunting, extraction of mileage in districts for rating purposes,
and certain sub-divisions of mileage, were discontinued.
Then again, the Government having guaranteed the nett receipts of the
railways, although charges affecting capital and stock still operated,
the Railway Executive Committee decided to put in abeyance the practice
of rendering accounts as between one railway company and another, for
work or services rendered on revenue account, whether on personal
account or at joint stations, junctions, etc.
As against all this, however, obligations commenced, increased, and
multiplied in other and different directions. At the very outset of the
war, for example, in order to separate the Government control period
from the pre-control period, extensive stock-taking was necessary, as
well as a complete making-up of accounts as from midnight August 4th,
1914.
Then, as can easily be imagined, no sooner did the Government issue
their appeal to the railway companies for assistance in the manufacture
of munitions of war, than an immense amount of clerical work followed
suit, the clerks responsible having immediately to conform with
Government requirements. Again, owing to scarcity of raw materials,
which were placed under Government control, numerous statistics had
to be prepared in regard to actual requirements; reports, too, had
to be sent in periodically as to scrap metal, especially copper, and
particulars furnished in regard to the output of iron and steel.
On the top of all this came the introduction of the war-wage with its
periodical increase to meet the increasing cost of living; and the
subsequent inauguration of the District rate of wages, accompanied
as it was by the regrading, according to their duties, of every
single workman, skilled or semi-skilled, entailed an enormous amount
of clerical work; the timekeepers were almost incessantly occupied
in dealing with arrears of payment under the National awards, this
necessitating many hours of overtime, Saturdays and Sundays not
excepted. In fact, so great did the pressure of work become throughout
the department that, in order to counterbalance the depletion of staff
occasioned by so many clerks joining the colours, recourse was had
to the employment of females, who, to the number of 162, assisted
materially in easing the burden which devolved upon that section of
the permanent male staff who remained in harness and without whose
expert knowledge and experience an interregnum of complete chaos must
inevitably have supervened.
Sir Douglas Haig in his final dispatch does not neglect to extend his
thanks, which were "especially due," to those "responsible for the
efficient work of the various rearward services, and administrative
services and departments" of the British Army in France, amongst whom
may be noted "my Financial Adviser," and "my Pay master-in-Chief";
and in direct proportion as the nation at large owes a debt of
gratitude to those prominent personalities, incidentally, too, to the
members of their subordinate, but none the less loyal and devoted,
staffs who gave their services, and in some instances their lives
for their King and Country--so, too, must the public in general ever
remain indebted to the heads of the administrative departments of
the great British railway companies--the Financial Advisers, the
Paymasters-in-Chief--amongst whom may be cited the Chief of the
Accountants' department of the London and North-Western Railway
Company's locomotive department, Mr. T. Ormand, together with the
members of his subordinate, but none the less indefatigable, staff at
Crewe.
The studied opinion of Sir Douglas Haig, when he comes to summarise his
views in general, certainly compels our attention. "It is hardly too
much to assert," so he writes, "that, however, seemingly extravagant in
men and money, no system of supply except the most perfect should ever
be contemplated."
Perfection, it may reasonably be argued however, need not necessarily
entail extravagance; and certainly the system of supply in operation at
Crewe, efficient as it undoubtedly was, was productive of saving rather
than of waste. The fact that the cost of labour, on the cessation of
hostilities, showed an increase of 135 per cent. over and above that
which was prevalent at the commencement of the war, cannot by any
manner of means be laid at the door of the railway directorates, who,
in regard to questions of wages and discipline, were controlled by the
national agreements which from time to time came into being. Neither
could the railway companies be classified even in a minimum degree
amongst those "repulsive phenomena," the war-profiteers; for, the
railways having become, as it were, part and parcel of the Government,
it resulted as a natural corollary that work carried out in railway
workshops whether for railway or munitions-of-war purposes became _ipso
facto_ Government work, and the bill for all such work when presented
was made up simply and solely of the actual cost of materials, wages,
and workshop expenses, plus 12-1/2 per cent. for supervision and
establishment charges. The only profit with which the coffers of
the railway companies were replenished in return for their war-time
energies was in respect of munitions manufactured for private firms,
and even then the profit never exceeded 10 per cent. over and above the
actual cost of production.
Those were indeed "the times that try men's souls," and it was the
Government policy throughout--a policy which, as happened to be the
case in Germany, was "neither fish nor fowl," in that whilst inflicting
untold hardship, loss, and suffering on some, it relieved others,
saddling them with a minimum of inconvenience, and removing from
them all "conception of the duty of universal service"--to which was
attributable that extravagance "in men and money" referred to by Sir
Douglas Haig.
On the occasion of the introduction of the first post-war Budget, when
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Chamberlain, suggested (cp. the
_Times_, May 1st, 1919) that it would be of "interest to divide the
year into the period before the armistice and the period since the
armistice was signed, and to see what the average daily expenditure was
in each of those two periods," Mr. Adamson (Fife W. Lab.) expressed
a desire to temper his criticism with sincere commiseration for the
Chancellor, whose task was to find the first instalment of the terrific
obligations imposed upon the country by the extravagance, and in some
respects the incredible folly, of spending departments during the war
period, which had resulted in a daily average expenditure during the
earlier of the two periods mentioned by Mr. Chamberlain, namely from
April 1st to November 9th, 1918, of £7,443,000; in the later period,
namely from November 10th, 1918 to March 31st, 1919, of £6,476,000.
It is doubtful whether the explanation adduced by the Chancellor, in
regard to this extravagance, this incredible folly, afforded any real
degree of solace to Mr. Adamson or to any other honourable members, who
inclined to view the financial outlook with such marked concern.
"The National Debt proper, exclusive of what we call other capital
liabilities, was," as Mr. Chamberlain pointed out, "on March 31st this
year (1919), 7,435 millions," or 6,790 millions more than it was at
the outbreak of the war; and "of the actual debt incurred, internal
debt accounts for, approximately, 6,085 millions, and the external
debt, approximately, 1,350 millions." There were, it is true, "certain
assets, such as obligations of our Allies and Dominions, votes of
credit no longer required, and payments in respect of indemnities
from our enemies." But when all was said and done, "when every proper
allowance is made for these assets--the amount and value of which as
well as the date at which we may expect to receive payment for them
is necessarily uncertain--the burden of debt left to us is still very
formidable."
The tone predominant throughout this outline, indicative of the manner
in which the taxpayers' millions were being used or misused for their
especial benefit, was undeniably pessimistic. On the other hand, every
cloud has its silver lining, and the occasional gleams, which illumined
the lowering trend of Mr. Chamberlain's forebodings, become intensified
a thousandfold when we reflect upon the horrors which we, in our
insular position of security, escaped, and when we ponder over the fate
that would most assuredly have been ours had the Warrior Warlord won
the day.
Writing to the _New York World_ in April, 1915, Mr. Gustav Roeder
throws some light upon the state of mind of the German women alone.
"Talk about your so-called atrocities which our men are said to have
committed in Belgium," they said to me, "it would be nothing in
comparison with what our men would do in England, and we women want to
be there too."
As a sample of the treatment accorded to the unfortunate inhabitants of
those portions of the fair land of France which the invader succeeded
in over-running, we may take this deposition of the _Times'_ special
correspondent with the French Army as being sufficiently convincing.
Writing under the date of March 21st, 1917, he says, "when the
Germans left Noyon on Sunday, they took with them fifty young French
girls, who, they said, were to act as officers' servants. When he (a
distinguished French officer) was on a part of the Somme front now
taken over by the British, he saw with his own eyes photographs, taken
from German prisoners, of German officers sitting at dinner and being
waited upon at table by naked women."
Even during the earliest days of the war, evidence was not wanting in
proof of the fact that German Imperialist greed was in no way to be
denied. "Heavy ransoms on French towns" was the heading to a paragraph
in the _Times_ of September 7th, 1914, and edifying to a degree was the
subjoined list of towns from whose impotent inhabitants the jubilant
Hun was setting to work to exact sums of money varying in proportion to
their size and population.
Thus we learn that having imprisoned the Préfet du Nord, the Germans
demanded from the town of Lille "a ransom of 7,000,000f (£280,000). At
Armentières they were content with a ransom of 500,000f. (£20,000). At
Amiens they have demanded 1,000,000f. (£40,000) and 100,000 cigars.
Lens has been ransomed for 700,000f. (£28,000)." On yet a previous
occasion (cp. the _Times_, August 22nd, 1914), the Press Bureau having
obligingly announced that out of £15,000,000 of Treasury bills, for
which the Treasury had invited tenders to be sent in, £10,000,000 was
required for a loan from the British Government to Belgium, the Germans
promptly decided that this good British gold might be turned to far
more profitable account by themselves than by the Belgians for whom
it was ostensibly intended, and proceeded forthwith to impose upon
the city of Brussels a war contribution of eight million sterling.
The All-Highest is credited with having expressed himself as being
convinced that "the German people had in the Lord of Creation above
an unconditional ally on whom it could absolutely rely." He must have
felt, too, that his faithful subjects had in the British Government
below a purblind benefactor whom they could regard as an unfailing
source of revenue.
Some idea as to the aspirations and intentions which the Germans were
keeping up their sleeves as concerning ourselves may be gathered from
certain observations which were drawn up by the Allied Ministers at
Jassy, with regard to the conditions imposed upon Rumania by the
Central Powers, and which in their own words "demonstrate in the
best possible manner the insatiable greed and hypocrisy of German
Imperialism."
The actual terms of the treaty (of Bukarest) required, _inter alia_
(cp. the _Times_, August 10th, 1918), "the entire male population of
the occupied territories, that is to say of two-thirds of Rumania,
between the ages of fourteen and sixty, to carry out such work as may
be assigned to them. The penalties for disobedience include deportation
and imprisonment, and in some cases, which are not expressly defined,
even that of death. This treaty," as the Allied Ministers observed,
"is a fair example of a German peace. We should consider it all the
more closely inasmuch as the German delegates informed the Rumanian
delegates, who were appalled at being required to accept such
conditions, that they would appreciate their moderation when they knew
those which would be imposed on the Western Powers after the victory of
the Central Empires."
For the fact that "this England never did," and for the determination
that she "never shall, lie at the proud foot of a conqueror," we owe
it entirely to the grit of succeeding generations of British fighting
men. "Wars may be won or lost," in the opinion of Sir Douglas Haig, "by
the standard of health and moral of the opposing forces"; and because
"the feeding and health of the fighting forces are dependent upon the
rearward services, so it may be argued that with the rearward services
rests victory or defeat."
In the same way, since, as we have already seen, the rearward services
of the overseas forces depend for their sustenance upon the continued
and successful operation of the home services of supply and transport,
so it may be argued that upon the feeding and health of these latter
services does the final issue hang.
Realising then, from the very outset, the import of the task devolving
upon the great railways, appreciating, too, the truism that you cannot
maintain an A1 engineering community any less than an "A1 Empire with
a C3 population," Mr. Cooke determined on the course of inaugurating,
in the immediate vicinity of Crewe Works, a canteen, which, rivalling
similar establishments set up in well-nigh every Government-owned, or
controlled, munition factory throughout the length and breadth of the
land, was built and equipped with the most up-to-date cooking apparatus
and utensils, at a cost of £3800, and this thanks entirely to the
spontaneous generosity of the directors of the company, who further
expressed their readiness to bear the cost of all maintenance charges,
such as heating, lighting, and salaries of the kitchen staff. As a
result, the men were enabled to purchase all commodities at actual
cost price, at the same time finding that the meals provided were of
that excellence which inclines one to "forgive anybody, even one's own
relations."
There is not a shadow of doubt but that, as regards the rearward
services both home and overseas, "our supply system has been developed
into one of the most perfect in the world," and after being so largely
instrumental in frustrating the aims of the common enemy, the only
danger against which we had to guard was lest "the Ministers of the
Allied Powers should lose by their pen what the Army had gained by the
sword"; in which case the peace we had striven to secure--to quote the
words of that great littérateur and statesman of a former generation,
to wit George Canning--"would be the mere name of peace; not a
wholesome or refreshing repose, but a feverish and troubled slumber."