THE CHIEF
“May the great God Whom I worship grant to my country, and for the
benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious victory; and
may no misconduct in any way tarnish it; and may humanity after
victory be the predominant feature of the British fleet. For myself,
individually, I commit my life to Him Who made me, and may His
blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my country faithfully.
To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to
defend.
“Amen, Amen, Amen.”
(_Nelson’s Prayer. A copy hangs in the workroom of the
Commander-in-Chief at General Headquarters in France._)
You might spend a couple of days in the little town where the
headquarters of our army in the field is established without
becoming aware of the presence of the Commander-in-Chief. The
departmentalization of a modern army is so complete, the duties are so
widely delegated, the responsibilities so extensively divided, that an
officer, even of the higher grades, may serve for months with the army
in the field and never come into personal contact with its supreme head.
This is a state of things which arises directly out of the conditions
of modern war. The direct personal influence of military leaders on
their troops is no longer possible owing to the vast scale on which
modern wars are conducted. In former times the General directed the
battle from a hill-top which afforded him a commanding view of the
operations as they unfolded themselves beneath his eyes. To-day,
the General also looks down on the battle from a height, but only
metaphorically speaking.
Field-Marshal Oyama playing croquet during the Battle of Mukden, the
General in “Ole Luke Oie’s” brilliant sketch who fought and worsted
a trout in a pleasant garden whilst hundreds of men went to their
death--these are but the symbols of a state of mental detachment which
is essential in the modern General called upon to handle vast masses
of troops operating on a gigantic scale. To keep his mind clear and
unembarrassed by a host of details, to retain his mental freshness
against the moment when a supreme decision, or maybe a series of
supreme decisions, has to be taken, the modern Commander-in-Chief must
delegate much more of his powers than formerly, must relinquish a great
measure of his direct personal influence on his men.
The influence of the great modern General will always be indirect
rather than direct. Comparatively few of the German troops fighting on
the Western front had ever set eyes on Field-Marshal von Hindenburg,
save in pictures, yet, when the rumour ran in the spring that he was
coming to assume the supreme command in Flanders, the men in the
trenches set up notices on the parapets announcing to the _Engländer_
that Hindenburg was coming, and that the Germans would be in Calais in
a week.
[Illustration:
_“Daily Mail” phot._
“THE CHIEF.”]
The influence of Sir John French on the British Army in France is
as a strong leaven leavening the whole mass. The conditions of life
of an army in the field, a great host of men working to the same
end, the monotony of existence undisturbed by sex antagonism, united
by the risk of death common to all, make men as sensitive to the
transmission of influences as African tribes are to the transmission
of news. In the field a strong character will make itself felt in
a week. Imperceptibly, the men will begin to lean on qualities of
determination, courage, intuition. All these are attributes of Sir John
French, and they are, I believe, responsible, in quite an astonishing
degree, for the splendid tenacity, the unshakable optimism, of the
British Army in France.
Within his power, Sir John French has always sought to keep in personal
contact with the men in the firing-line. More than once, on the retreat
from Mons, the Commander-in-Chief might have been seen to leave his
car and sit down beside the exhausted troops resting by the roadside,
so tired that they did not care whether the whole German Army was in
the next field. He would remain there on the dusty grass, and tell the
men that it was only so many miles to the next halt for the night, and
spur them on to fresh efforts by his generous praise of the splendid
endurance they had shown up to then. In a little he would have them
on their feet again, foot-sore and weary as they were, ready to face
the world, if needs be, to win a pat on the shoulder, a word of
appreciation, from “Sir John.”
But the British Army in France has grown immeasurably since those
days when four divisions was England’s entire contribution to the war
on land. With the army of Mons, the Commander-in-Chief might yet hope
to be the John French of South Africa, where the cavalry hailed the
trim little man on the white horse as the harbinger of stern, swift
blows against the Boer, as the incorporation of dash, decision, and
resourcefulness. But with the great citizen army of to-day, in which
he counts divisions where before he counted battalions, the British
Generalissimo could not hope to keep in personal touch in the same
degree as was possible with the cavalry in South Africa or with the
little Expeditionary Force of August, 1914.
Nevertheless, Sir John French has never failed in this war to visit
formations that have distinguished themselves, and to express to them
personally his appreciation of their good work. I remember, after the
second battle of Ypres, receiving word that the Commander-in-Chief
would inspect some brigades of cavalry that had held our line round
Ypres on May 13, when the Germans made their last and most violent
attempt to burst through to the sea. It was a fine, warm morning in
June, a regular Aldershot review day, though, Heaven knows! there was
little enough of the red and gold of Cæsar’s Camp or Laffan’s Plain
about the squadrons in their war-worn khaki drawn up in a square in a
meadow by a country road. The Commander of the Cavalry Corps was there,
and the Divisional General and the Brigadiers, and just in front,
beside a fine, broad Union Jack fluttering from a flagstaff planted
on a farm-cart, Sir John French, exquisitely neat, as usual, in his
trim khaki, with four rows of medal-ribbons, and immaculate brown
field-boots, and a cane that he swung as he talked.
The men stood easy, Lifeguards and Hussars and Dragoons, dismounted as
they had been at Ypres, their eyes on the soldierly figure before them,
their thoughts, I wager, away among the poppies and the cornflowers
of the salient where in their graves dead comrades smiled in their
last sleep at the recollection of the good fight well fought. The
Commander-in-Chief indulged in no rhetorics. He, like the plain man he
is, likes plain speaking. So he stood up there against the farm-cart,
and talked to the men in a clear, soldierly voice, and as he spoke, lo!
it was not the Commander-in-Chief addressing his troops, but just John
French of the 19th talking to his cavalry, that cavalry he loved and
made his life-work. There were no tears, no elegiacs, but heartening
words of praise for good service stoutly rendered. There was, indeed,
such perfect frankness in much of what the Field-Marshal said that I
remember the blue pencil of the Censor cut furrows in the report of it
I sent to my newspaper in London.
As soon as a new body of troops arrives in France, whether Territorials
or Colonials or New Army, you may be sure that, before very long, the
Rolls Royce, flying the Union Jack from the roof--the only car that
may fly the old flag in France--will appear outside their billets,
and the Commander-in-Chief will descend to see for himself what the
new material is like. One has only to glance at his despatches to see
that he never fails to pay a tribute to good qualities in new troops
out from home. Real soldier that he is, he always has a keen eye to
the general appearance of the men, knowing that the best soldiers are
the men who, even in the rigour of winter in the trenches, managed to
preserve a cleanly appearance, and who, right up in the firing-line,
are as punctilious about saluting as they would be in barracks at home.
The Brigade of Guards, who always pride themselves upon their personal
neatness, set a fine example to the army in this respect, and earned
the approval of every good soldier.
Sir John French has had many residences since he came to France in
August. Châteaux, farms, colleges, or other public buildings, and the
villas or town-houses of such local notabilities as the Mayor, the
lawyer, or the doctor, have afforded him hospitality from the battle
of Mons and the subsequent retreat down to the stalemate of the war of
positions which brought our General Headquarters to anchor for a spell.
But no matter where the Commander-in-Chief has lived, though his house
were French, its atmosphere has always been wholly and essentially
English. Thus, at G.H.Q. in the little town of which I wrote in my
last chapter, though the large and stately rooms and rather florid
furniture, the pictures and statuary of the house in which he lives are
_bourgeois_ of the _bourgeois_, they are powerless to dissipate the
pleasant family air of the place, the atmosphere of an English country
seat in the shires.
It is a restful place. Though it shelters the brain of the army, there
is no rush or flurry, even when heavy fighting is toward. Deep thinking
and hard work are going on day and night between the four walls of
this plain, unpretentious house; but, save for the whirr of a telephone
now and then, or the arrival of a Staff car or a cyclist, only the
sentries at the gateway betoken the presence of the Commander-in-Chief.
You enter from the street under one of those arched entries, known as a
_porte cochère_, found in all French towns. A small door, with panels
of frosted glass on the left of the entrance, gives access to the hall,
where the first thing to meet the eye is a pyramid of parcels, gifts
from home for the Field-Marshal and his troops, mostly from unknown
admirers. By every post these presents pour in, vivid testimony of the
loving solicitude wherewith the folks at home hang on the life of the
army in the field. Every imaginable kind of gift is there--Bibles,
Books of Common Prayer, blessed medals and rosaries, charms of all
sorts, “woollies” galore, socks and waistcoats and comforters and mitts.
One day even Russia sent her tribute of admiration in the shape of a
little ikon of the far-famed Madonna of Kazan, before whose bejewelled
image in the Kazan Cathedral at Petrograd thousands of suppliants kneel
daily in silent prayer for the safe return of their loved ones from the
war. Truly there is a great sameness about certain aspects of the war
on both sides. I remember reading an amusing appeal by Field-Marshal
von Hindenburg to the correspondent of the _Neue Freie Presse_, my old
friend, Dr. Paul Goldmann, begging him to tell people he did not want
any more mitts or remedies against rheumatism and chilblains.
A small room to the right of the hall is the A.D.C.’s (Aide-de-Camp’s)
room, where one of the four A.D.C.’s to the Commander-in-Chief is
always present. He is known as the A.D.C. on duty. He remains in this
room all day in attendance on the Commander-in-Chief, receiving and
transmitting messages, answering the telephone on the desk at his
elbow, dealing with applications for interviews with “The Chief,” as he
is called by his Staff, and receiving visitors. A huge map of the whole
zone of the British Army in France hangs on the wall, and portraits of
Sir John French and some of his Generals, cut from French and English
illustrated papers, have been nailed up.
In the corner is a white door marked “PRIVATE”. When a bell whirrs the
A.D.C. disappears through this door. It leads to the workroom of the
Commander-in-Chief.
A perfectly plain room, spacious and lofty, with large windows, from
its white walls and massive marble mantelpiece and large mirror
obviously the drawing-room of the house in other days, the big maps
hung all round the walls and spread over the very large plain deal
table, lend it an essentially business-like air. On the mantelpiece a
handsome Empire clock and some candelabra are the sole ornaments in the
room.
There is also a little illuminated card, headed “Nelson’s Prayer,”
that finely inspired supplication for victory which they found in the
great Admiral’s cabin on board his famous flagship after he received
his mortal wound. I have placed this beautiful prayer at the head of
this chapter, because its plain, direct appeal, its confidence, and its
dignity seem to me to be characteristic of the man on whom once again
the hopes of the whole British race are fixed. That little English
prayer is the only visible link between Sir John French and home in his
workroom in France.
The Commander-in-Chief spends the greater part of the day in this
room. It is a place of hard work, of deep concentration, of lightning
decisions on which hang the lives of thousands of men. You will find
him there at all hours, dapper, fresh, as young as the youngest of
his Staff, eternally giving the lie to his white hair and moustache.
It is in this room that most of his despatches are written, those
models of precise English that, without rhodomontade, false pathos, or
exaggeration, set forth their plain tale of glory to make the Empire
ring.
Sir John French always writes his own despatches. His warm words of
praise, his frank words of criticism, are absolutely the expression of
his own thoughts. When he has a despatch to write he will shut himself
up in this reposeful room for hours at a time, neglecting his meals,
working far into the night, until the last word is written and his name
affixed:
“Your Lordship’s most obedient servant,
“J. D. P. FRENCH,
“_Field Marshal, Commanding-in-Chief,
British Army in the Field._”
In an army of hard workers, in the centre of the hive of industry
that is G.H.Q., no man works harder than “The Chief.” Breakfast at
the Commander-in-Chief’s is from 7.45 to 8.30, but long before that
time Sir John French is at his table studying the reports which have
arrived from the different armies during the night, and are awaiting
his perusal when he comes down in the morning. Half-past eight finds
Sir John at his place at the head of the breakfast-table, with a cheery
greeting for everyone there.
At a fixed hour there takes place the daily conference between the
Commander-in-Chief and the different heads of the services at G.H.Q.
The Generals arrive singly or in pairs from their offices, a portfolio
under their arm--the Adjutant-General, the Quartermaster-General, the
Chief of the General Staff, the Chief of Intelligence. For an hour or
more they are closeted singly or together with “The Chief.” Operations
past or future are discussed, the whole situation along our front
reviewed, guns, men, supplies, the enemy’s situation, and his probable
plans.
The distribution of the rest of the day depends largely on the
situation at the front. Once a movement has started and is progressing
favourably, a Commander-in-Chief’s work is done for the time. Broadly
speaking, it is the Commander-in-Chief who conceives the strategy of an
operation, it is the Chief of the General Staff who works it out, while
its tactical execution lies in the hands of the General commanding the
army to which the operation is confided. He in turn leaves the carrying
out of more detailed operations to the Corps Commander, who delegates
part of the yet more detailed execution to the Divisional General, and
he in his turn relinquishes the details of the work of the battalions
on the ground to the brigade and battalion commanders.
Visits to the different army commanders in the field, the inspection
of troops who have come out of action, of reinforcements, of new guns
or appliances in the war of the trenches, interviews with visitors at
G.H.Q., French Generals, British _liaison_ officers with the French
Army, or distinguished visitors from England, fill in the remainder
of Sir John French’s day. The arrival in the afternoon of the King’s
Messenger from London with despatches from the War Office and the
morning newspapers absorbs the rest of the time until dinner, and often
makes the Commander-in-Chief late for this meal, which, by his express
orders, is never delayed for him.
Sir John French presides over his small household at G.H.Q. in a
benevolent and paternal manner. All the members of his Personal Staff
are old friends of his, and were with the Field-Marshal in South
Africa. He calls them all by their Christian names, and each vies with
the other in his devoted loyalty to “The Chief.”
The genial, courtly presence of the man pervades his whole environment.
Is the situation ever so desperate, the fighting never so severe, there
is no fuss or flurry at the Commander-in-Chief’s. Even during the
retreat from Mons, when Headquarters was frequently moved, when for
days at a time neither the Commander-in-Chief nor his Staff got even a
few hours of unbroken rest, Sir John diffused about him the same calm
atmosphere. He would not allow the overwhelming responsibility resting
on his shoulders to overcloud the existence of the others. At meals
he was cheery and debonair as usual, guiding the conversation into
pleasant English channels, and illuminating it with many anecdotes and
witty sayings which his great and retentive memory has stored up from
an exceptionally busy life and wide and varied reading.
More than once he astonished his Staff, at a critical moment, by
announcing that he would go for a walk. Picking up his old riding-crop,
he would stroll forth with one of the A.D.C.’s and walk for an hour
through the country lanes, stopping to admire the view, or to criticize
a horse, or to look at the crops. But on his return he would go
straight to his maps again, and then like a flash he would announce
his decision. “I will do this and that!” And they would realize that
whilst he had strolled and chatted his mind had been wrestling with the
military problem that had obsessed them all.
Dinner is a pleasant meal at the Commander-in-Chief’s. Often there is a
distinguished visitor from London present, a member of the Cabinet who
has come out to get a glimpse for himself of conditions at the front,
a leading scientific authority despatched on some mission or other,
distinguished ecclesiastics like the Bishop of London or the Archbishop
of Westminster. For many months the Prince of Wales, as A.D.C. to the
Commander-in-Chief, dined nightly at Sir John’s table, a very charming,
extremely natural young officer, who was simply addressed as “Prince,”
and who was best pleased when no notice whatsoever was taken of his
exalted rank. There is never any formality about precedence at the
Commander-in-Chief’s, save that the guest of the evening sits on the
right of the Field-Marshal.
[Illustration: UNDER THE EYE OF “THE CHIEF.” TROOPS MARCHING PAST SIR
JOHN FRENCH AT THE FRONT.]
Sir John French presides at his dinner-table with delightful urbanity.
Books and battlefields have been the study of his life. He has, I
believe, read all the histories of the campaigns of the world’s great
Generals, from Julius Cæsar’s _Commentaries_ down to Ropes’s _History
of the American Civil War_, and the text-books on the Franco-Prussian
War, especially the German. But he does not believe in reading alone.
He is fond of quoting a saying of Lord Wolseley’s: “A soldier ought to
read little and think much.” In accordance with this maxim, Sir John
French has not only read but assimilated, and he has done a great deal
of both.
But the military authors have not alone engaged his attention. He is a
profound admirer of Dickens, and he can find suitable quotations and
similes from Dickens for the most varied situations of life. He is not
a great talker. He only speaks when he has something to say. But that
is always to the point, and often refreshingly original.
The Commander-in-Chief is a profound student of humanity. That is why
he admires Dickens. That is why he loves the British soldier, with his
whimsicalities and his contradictory ways. He knows the British soldier
as well as Lord Roberts knew him, and that is saying a great deal. He
understands the British soldier’s pride in his work, and therefore he
always gives credit where credit is due. When the Suffolks under his
command in South Africa walked into a hornets’ nest at Grassy Hill, Sir
John French took the first opportunity that presented itself--it was
not until several months later that he met them again--to tell them
they were not to blame for what happened.
“It has come to my knowledge,” he said to them, “that there has been
spread about an idea that that event cast discredit of some sort upon
this gallant regiment. I want you to banish any such thoughts from
your mind as utterly untrue.... You must remember that, if we always
waited for an opportunity of certain success, we should do nothing at
all, and in war, fighting a brave enemy, it is absolutely impossible
to be sure of success. All we can do is to try our very best to
secure success--and that you did on the occasion I am speaking of.”
When the 2nd Worcesters saved the day at the first battle of Ypres by
recapturing Gheluvelt at the bayonet-point, the Commander-in-Chief made
every possible inquiry to find out the name of the officer who had
ordered the charge. The name of the officer remained for a long time
a regimental secret, but Sir John French gave the gallant Worcesters
a very fine “mention” all to themselves in his despatch on the Ypres
fighting. It was not until months later that it was definitely
established that the author of the celebrated order was that most
gallant soldier the late Brigadier-General C. Fitzclarence, V.C., who
was afterwards killed in action.
Thus, though Sir John French must fain deprive himself of the privilege
he would be the first to want to enjoy, of seeing his troops actually
at grips with the Germans, he is not simply a distant name, a figure
on an Olympic height, to the men in the trenches. He is a pillar of
strength, a man that soldiers trust, who voices to the great public
beyond this little zone of war the deeds that have won a soldier’s
approbation, or who gives vent in carefully chosen words to the
soldier’s execration of the cynical treachery of the enemy. The bond
uniting the Commander-in-Chief with the men in the field is not to be
analyzed, for it is intangible. But it is nevertheless a very real tie
of mutual esteem, trust, and affection.
Yet the army which in the fulness of time Sir John French has been
called upon to command is no longer the army of South Africa, a
small, highly trained band of professional soldiers whom the Germans,
on first meeting with them at Mons, dubbed in despair “an army of
non-commissioned officers.” Since the days of the Civil War it is the
first national army that England has ever had, and the England that has
put it in the field is the greater England of the twentieth century,
the British Empire, whose pioneers sprang from that selfsame doughty
stock that did not fear to lay hands on the Lord’s Anointed if thereby
liberty might live.
The army has flung wide its portals to the civilian. All barriers of
caste or wealth are broken down. The officer is no longer a member of
a small military oligarchy, nor the soldier the tough old professional
fighter of whom Kipling delighted to write. Mulvaney, Learoyd, and
Ortheris have not vanished from the army. But they have vanished as
average types. If they had escaped the destiny of so many of the
magnificent fighters of our original Expeditionary Force, which was the
quintessence of our standing army--six feet of earth in Flanders or a
long visit to Germany--the three friends of Kipling’s tales would have
passed out of their former sphere of action. The incorrigible Mulvaney,
maybe, might yet be a sergeant, the backbone of his platoon, putting
the new-comers, officers and men alike, up to all the dodges of the
trenches. But the other two would surely be officers, with suspiciously
new Sam Browne belts, a little uncertain of their social position, but
treated with all the more deference for that by their fellow-officers.
Socially it is a topsy-turvy army. Learoyd is brigade machine-gun
officer with the Military Cross, and has already learned the proper
degree of nonchalance in returning the salutes of men who, in civilian
life, maybe, themselves were wont to command, who perhaps even shared
in that incomprehensible English prejudice against the military which
refused the red-coat a seat in the stalls of a London theatre or a
drink in the saloon bar of a public-house. “When I went to see the
old people in Yorkshire in my uniform for the first time,” a fine
old soldier of my acquaintance, a sergeant of the Coldstreams with
twenty-two years’ service, told me once, “my father said: ‘I never
thought boy of mine would disgrace the family by going for a soldier.
Get out of here, and never darken my doors again until you have taken
that red coat off!’”
_Nous avons changé tout ça!_ The last shall be first and the first last
in this citizen army of ours. I know of a peer of the realm, an Earl
who is the head of one of the oldest families in the British Isles, who
is serving as orderly in a clearing hospital at the front. When last
seen he was whitewashing and whistling a little tune as he worked,
the bearer of one of our greatest names at the beck and call of the
humblest medical student with a commission in the R.A.M.C., but, like
the latter, filling his niche in the service of the State.
Could one imagine a more difficult task, amongst all the manifold
problems which have confronted us in this war, than the expansion
of the framework of our little Expeditionary Force to embrace these
hundreds of thousands of men, from England, Scotland, Wales, and
Ireland, from India and Canada, from South Africa and Australia, from
Fiji and the West Indies, with their varying ideas of personal liberty
and discipline? That this task has been successfully accomplished
is due, for one thing, to the fact that every man in our army is an
apostle, bearing within him a message of liberty to the world, ready to
subordinate every personal feeling to the end of victory; for another,
to the astonishing adaptability of our race, which has enabled Lord
Kitchener to stamp an army from the earth, and Sir John French and his
Generals to breathe into it the spirit of our great military past.
If you took a small haberdasher in a London suburb and suddenly
increased his modest establishment until it reached the dimensions of
William Whiteley’s or of Harrod’s, would you blame the man if, even
with unlimited resources, he showed himself incapable of achieving
the same relative measure of success as he had attained with his
little shop? You know that you would not. You would rather blame the
lack of organization that had suddenly thrust enormously increased
responsibilities on a man who, had the process been gradual, might have
adapted himself to the growing dimensions of his business. Yet this is
what the country has thrust upon Sir John French. He, a General, like
all save the Balkan and Turkish Generals, without any experience of
modern European war, has been called upon to meet in unequal combat the
finest military brains that the application of forty years can produce,
with a sword that has constantly changed its weight and balance and
length and sharpness.
He has sustained the ordeal. His adaptability of temperament and
breadth of outlook, for which all Britons may thank God, has enabled
him to cope with an army ten times the size of the little force which
he originally led out to France, and to surround himself with Generals
who have shown themselves able to handle divisions where before they
were dealing with battalions. Not only have the numbers of our army
increased; the quality of our men has changed. The sturdy fighters
of Mons and the Marne have been reinforced by Territorials who are,
generally speaking, of a higher stamp of intelligence, and accordingly
endowed with the good and bad fighting qualities which the more trained
intellect bestows, and the men of the New Army, in which all types
and classes of Briton are found side by side in the ranks. Not only
has the question of the right leading of these new formations proved
all-important, the problem of their assimilation into the existing
organization was one requiring tact and a fine appreciation of the
_Imponderabilia_ of the situation. That it has been successfully solved
History, when it comes to review the world-shaking events of our days,
beside which man seems but the puniest of pygmies, cannot fail to
count to the merit of Sir John French.
To our citizen army, then, Sir John French is more than a
Commander-in-Chief. He is a national leader, the man to whom it is
given to direct that fount of ardent patriotism which has inspired
Britons, wherever the Union Jack flies, to lay down their work and
follow the drum. No man is more conscious of the responsibility resting
on his shoulders than Sir John French. No man is more profoundly
convinced of the justice of our cause. No man could appreciate more
gratefully the immense confidence which the nation has reposed in him
by entrusting to his care the greatest army that the British Empire has
ever put in the field.