THE PRINCE OF WALES
One evening, a few years ago, I stood on the platform of the _Gare du
Nord_, and saw the arrival of the London train that was bringing the
young Prince of Wales to Paris for a stay of a few months before going
to Magdalen College, Oxford. The arrival was quite informal. There
was no red carpet, no guard of honour, only a few old friends of King
Edward, like the Marquis de Breteuil, with whom the Prince was going to
live, and M. Louis Lépine, most Parisian of police prefects. “_Comme
tout ça fait penser à son grand-père!_” one of those present said to me
as the train steamed in. “_Il aimait Paris, celui-là!_”
Because of his grandfather, Paris from the first opened her heart wide
to the young Prince, a fair-haired slip of a boy, as I saw him that day
at the _Gare du Nord_, acknowledging with just a trace of embarrassment
the cordial welcome of the friends of that other “Prince de Galles.”
The newspapers very chivalrously acceded to his wish that his movements
should be ignored, and for a few brief months the Prince of Wales
enjoyed that magic experience which everyone would give the best years
of his life to be able to taste again, the first acquaintanceship with
Paris. From the windows of the Breteuil mansion in the Avenue du Bois
he saw spring creeping into the trees of the Bois de Boulogne, while in
London winter still drearily held sway. Many a time I met him swinging
along the paths of the Bois with his tutor, the tall Mr. Hansell, or
caught a glimpse of him driving out with one of the young Breteuils.
During his stay in Paris the young Prince went to the theatre, and
visited the museums, and played tennis at the courts of the Bois
de Boulogne or the Ile de Puteaux. M. Georges Cain, Curator of the
Carnavalet Museum, and the greatest living authority on antiquarian
Paris, led him into all the historic nooks and corners; M. Lépine
took him round the Halles and the queer cabarets and lodging-houses
surrounding the markets; while with Mr. Hansell he made excursions into
the wider France--to Reims, and Amiens, and Tours, of cathedral fame;
to the château country of the Loire; to Avignon and the Palace of the
Popes; to Brest and Toulon, where M. Delcassé, another faithful friend
of _Edouard Sept_, showed him the French Navy at work.
In the months he spent amongst the French I know the Prince learnt
to love and admire France--eternal France, in President Poincaré’s
noble phrase. In a conversation which I was privileged to have with
the Prince in London before he went out to the front, he spoke with
affectionate remembrance of his days in Paris, with indignation at
the German air-raids on the city. Now, by a strange dispensation of
Providence, the Prince of Wales is in France again, but the France he
finds to-day is not the France he left a year or two ago.
He finds Paris tranquil, but sobered--_digne_, in the phrase of a
Parisian. He finds France vibrating with a passion she has not known
since the cry, “_La Patrie en danger!_” brought the tatterdemalions of
the Revolution flocking in their thousands to take service under the
_Tricouleur_. He finds in France England’s stanch and helpful Ally,
finds the _entente cordiale_ which his grandfather built up with such
infinite tact and inexhaustible patience welded into a firm alliance by
the blood of Frenchman and Briton spilled in defence of a common ideal
of liberty. When, in the fulness of time, Edward, Prince of Wales,
shall succeed, by the grace of God, to the throne of his fathers,
History shall count it a wise and far-seeing decision that sent the
Heir-Apparent into the field to play his part in those great events
which shall throw their shadow over his reign and the reign of his sons
and grandsons.
Directly the war broke out the Prince of Wales, like every other
Englishman of spirit, was burning to play his part; but the sending
of the Prince to the front was undoubtedly something in the nature of
an experiment. History and precedent were against such a course--an
argument often adduced by authorities when there is a question of
checking the ardour of youth.
Yet if there were those who doubted the wisdom of exposing the Prince
of Wales to the perils and hardships of campaigning, there was one
person thoroughly and completely convinced as to the propriety of
his going to the front. That person was the Prince himself; and to
objectors his rejoinder, eminently practical and modest, was something
to the effect that he had brothers at home if anything happened to him.
It speaks volumes for the energy of the young Prince that, although he
only joined the Grenadier Guards at the beginning of the war, he should
have rapidly passed through the necessary preliminary training, and
then have succeeded in overcoming any opposition to his dearest wish.
In the earliest days of the war the Prince was seen taking his turn on
the guard at St. James’s, and performing the ordinary routine duty of a
Guards Subaltern.
This, however, was not to last long, and soon the happy day came when
the _London Gazette_ announced the appointment of Lieutenant the Prince
of Wales, K.G., Grenadier Guards, to be A.D.C. to Field-Marshal Sir
John French, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in the Field; and
the Prince left for General Headquarters.
Then for a long time we heard no more of the Prince of Wales. Now and
again a soldier’s letter from the front contained a brief mention of
his doings--that the Prince had been in the trenches or had visited a
hospital--and an occasional paragraph in the French newspapers revealed
the fact that he had been in the French or Belgian lines. But it was
the Commander-in-Chief himself who first broke the silence anent the
Prince’s doings. In his despatch dealing with the battle of Neuve
Chapelle he mentioned that the Prince of Wales had acted as _liaison_
officer with the First Army during that engagement, and paid a tribute
to the zeal and quickness with which the Prince had discharged his
duties, and the deep interest he took in the comfort and general
welfare of the men. It was the Prince of Wales himself who brought that
despatch to London, and Londoners were able to see for themselves how
he had filled out and hardened during the months he had spent with the
army in the field. His eyes shone with the light of health, his face
was tanned with exposure to the rain and wind of winter and the pale
sunshine of spring in Flanders, and his whole being exuded that bodily
fitness and mental vigour which are the symptoms of a man whose heart
is in his work.
This was my impression of the Prince when I saw him in the field myself
one wet afternoon in March. It was when the Second Army, with whom
I was on that particular occasion, was carrying out a local attack
against the Germans in the northern part of our line. The valley was
heavy with mist, and reverberating with the sound of our guns carrying
out the artillery preparation, our shrapnel bursting with a gleam of
orange-coloured fire against the white haze enveloping the ridge we
were going to attack.
As I stood and watched the fascinating spectacle--I find there is
no sight which holds the attention more than the play of bursting
shells--I noticed two young officers ascending the road leading to
the point where a group of Generals and Staff Officers was posted.
The new-comers stalked up the steep path at a good pace, and as they
passed I saw that the one who was leading was the Prince of Wales. He
was in field kit, with long trousers and putties, after the manner of
the Guards, and was wearing his accoutrements strapped on over his
“British warm.” He appeared to be soaked through, and his walk through
the steamy air had made him very hot. He saluted punctiliously as
he passed the group of Generals, then took up his position with his
companion and, unstrapping his glasses, began to survey the scene that
unfolded itself in the valley.
As darkness was falling I saw him again, walking along a road where
soldiers were standing to, preparatory to marching away to take their
turn in the trenches. As the men came running out of the roadside
hovels where they had been billeted, hoisting their packs on their
backs or tugging at their strappings, they recognized the Prince, who
acknowledged their salutes with a smile. He stopped for a minute and
talked to one or two of the men, then walked on through the gathering
shadows to a neat little racing-car standing by the roadside, in which
he was going to drive himself and his companion back to G.H.Q.
For many months the Prince lived at G.H.Q. He shared quarters with
Lieutenant-Colonel S. L. Barry and Lord Claud Hamilton, and was a
member of the Commander-in-Chief’s mess. Colonel Barry, a distinguished
cavalry officer and a delightful companion, arranges the details of
the Prince’s plans at the front, and his visits to different parts of
our lines and to the French and Belgian Armies; while in Lord Claud
Hamilton, the youngest brother of the Duke of Abercorn, who won the
D.S.O. for gallantry while serving with his regiment, the Grenadier
Guards, in the trenches, the Prince has a comrade of his own age.
With that gift of easy self-effacement which our Public Schools and
’Varsity inculcate, the Prince slipped without any apparent difficulty
into his place in Sir John French’s small and intimate household at
G.H.Q. All ceremonial was waived as far as the Prince was concerned,
to his own great relief, and he was treated like any other officer of
the personal Staff. Perfectly natural as he is, the Prince has small
liking for the elaborations of Court etiquette in private life. He has
shown that, at State functions, he can acquit himself with dignity, but
excessive demonstrations of respect in private life embarrass him, for,
first and last, he is English, as English in mind and manner as he is
in appearance.
The Prince is English in his love of fresh air and hard exercise and
bodily fitness. Anything gross and unwieldy and fat and slothful is
repugnant to him. He takes a tremendous amount of exercise at the
front. He is always in training. He eats and drinks very little. He
thinks nothing of going for a run before breakfast, riding until
luncheon, then walking ten miles or so, with a three-mile run home to
finish up with. No doubt his intense mental alertness and energy, a
positively Celtic quickness of temperament, have something to do with
this love of physical exercise; but I believe it mainly springs from
pride of body, the clean and sane and English desire to be perfectly
healthy.
But the Prince of Wales is nothing of a prig or a faddist. He has
arranged his life in this healthful way of his own initiative entirely,
with a quiet decision that is rather surprising in a young man who
has the world at his feet. But then the Prince of Wales knows his
own mind, and acts, as far as he can, according to his own ideas. His
manners are charming, he is quite unaffected and absolutely unspoilt,
and he talks freely in a manner that betrays a strongly marked sense of
humour.
Of fear, I think, he knows nothing. If he had had his way, he would
be permanently in the firing-line. He has been with his Grenadiers in
the trenches. He has been under shell-fire. But the experience did not
suffice him. He wants to savour in person the perils and hardships
which so many of his friends in the army (whom he regards with
unconcealed and frankly expressed envy) are experiencing day after day.
“I want to see a shell burst really close,” he said on one occasion.
“I want to see what it is like.” Someone pointed out that a shell had
burst over the headquarters in which he had been lunching that day. “I
know,” he exclaimed quite wrathfully, “but I didn’t see it!”
When an engagement is on, as he cannot obviously be allowed to go
to the firing-line (in the Flanders flats there is no chance of a
close view of a battle with even a reasonable chance of safety from
shell-fire), he sometimes visits a casualty clearing-station, where the
wounded are being brought in. He goes round the stretchers while the
doctors are examining the wounds, and talks freely with the men about
their experiences. Many a wounded man sent down from the front has been
taken to hospital in the Prince’s own car, with the Prince himself at
the steering-wheel. Infinitely good-natured as he is, he is always
doing good turns like this to casual people he meets on the road as he
motors about between the armies in the execution of his duties.
The Prince is no shirker. Nor is he content with being given merely
nominal tasks which he could scramble through anyhow if he pleased.
Everything he does he does with all his heart, for he wants to play
his part in this war, not from ostentation or personal ambition, but
a sheer sense of duty. He follows the operations of the armies, both
the French and the British, and makes his own maps. He keeps a diary
of all he sees. If he cannot be present in person with the men in
the front line, he is with them in spirit night and day, and follows
their movements, their successes, and their mishaps, as closely as any
officer of the General Staff.
His thoughts are often with the Fleet, in which he began his career. I
believe the Prince had once hoped that he might have put to sea with
Sir John Jellicoe, as his younger brother was privileged to do. His
friends in the navy send him long letters full of the most amusing
gossip about the “shows” they have been in, about their life at sea,
about the adventures of old shipmates of the Prince. The Prince, who,
like all real naval men, will talk naval “shop” for hours without ever
being bored, devours these letters, and sometimes reads out extracts to
his friends at G.H.Q.
When he was at G.H.Q. the Prince of Wales learnt all there was to
know about the organization of the army. He visited in person all the
different services at G.H.Q., the bathing-stations behind the front,
the railheads, the ammunition-parks, the R.E. stores. He went down
the lines of communication, and saw for himself the unloading and
distribution of supplies. He inspected the hospitals at the base. He
has been to see the French Army at work. He has paid many visits to
the Belgian lines. In everything he has seen he has displayed the same
intense interest, the same absorbing thirst for information.
He has done service with his own regiment, the Grenadier Guards,
has lived with them in the trenches and in billets. If there is an
officer with the British in the field to-day who knows what the army
has accomplished, not only in the way of organized efficiency, but of
uncomplaining endurance of hardships and danger, it is the Prince of
Wales.
In the summer the Prince of Wales left G.H.Q., and was attached to the
First Army, with which he went through a regular course of training as
a Staff Officer. For some time he was on the Intelligence. Here his
work was to read through the German newspapers, and the letters and
documents taken from prisoners or the dead, and translate any passages
that appeared to furnish useful information. When I was going down
to visit a portion of our line towards the south in June, it was the
Prince of Wales, who was then serving in the Q.M.G. branch of the First
Army, who handed over our passes.
It is the fate of all writers who would describe the lives of Princes
to be exposed to the charge of sycophancy. Yet there is no life for a
plant of this growth in the perfectly natural and wholesome atmosphere
surrounding the Prince of Wales at the front. He is not playing at
soldiering. His periods of leave are few and far between. His life
must often be very monotonous by reason of the restrictions which
considerations of State must necessarily place upon his young and
ardent temperament. Nevertheless, he sticks to his work, because he
feels that his place is with our army in France. In after years, when
the land over which the young Prince will one day rule is reaping the
harvest of that peace for which our men in Flanders endured and died,
the months which Edward, Prince of Wales, spent, of his own wish, with
the army in the field will surely form another and a closer tie between
him and the Empire.