headquarters a youth was running. He was of considerably less than
medium height, and fair-haired and very slender. One would have
described him as a nice-looking boy. He wore a jersey and white
running-shorts which left his knees bare, and he was bareheaded.
Shoulders back and chest well out, he jogged along at the steady
dog-trot adopted by athletes and prize-fighters who are in training.
Now, in ordinary times there is not anything particularly remarkable in
seeing a scantily clad youth dog-trotting along a country road. You
assume that he is training for a cross-country event, or for a seat in a
’varsity shell, or for the feather-weight championship, and you let it
go at that. But these are not ordinary times in France, and ordinary
young men in running-shorts are not permitted to trot along the roads as
they list in the immediate vicinity of British Headquarters. Even if you
travel, as I did, in a large gray car, with an officer of the French
General Staff for companion, you are halted every few minutes by a
sentry who turns the business end of a rifle in your direction and
demands to see your papers. But no one challenged the young man in the
running-shorts or asked to see _his_ papers. Instead, whenever a soldier
caught sight of him that soldier clicked his heels together and stood
rigidly at attention. After you had observed the curious effect which
the appearance of this young man produced on the military of all ranks
it suddenly struck you that his face was strangely familiar. Then you
all at once remembered that you had seen it hundreds of times in the
magazines and the illustrated papers. Under it was the caption, “His
Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.” That young man will some day, if he
lives, sit in an ancient chair in Westminster Abbey, and the Archbishop
of Canterbury will place a crown upon his head, and his picture will
appear on coins and postage-stamps in use over half the globe.
Now, the future King of England—Edward VIII they will doubtless call
him—is not getting up at daybreak and reeling off half a dozen miles or
so because he particularly enjoys it. He is doing it with an end in
view. He is doing it for precisely the same reason that the
prize-fighter does it—he is training for a battle. To me there was
something wonderfully suggestive and characteristic in the sight of that
young man plugging doggedly along the country road. He seemed to
epitomize the spirit which I found to exist along the whole length of
the British battle-line. Every British soldier in France has come to
appreciate that he is engaged in a struggle without parallel in
history—a struggle in which he is confronted by formidable, ferocious,
resourceful, and utterly unscrupulous opponents, and from which he is by
no means certain to emerge a victor—and he is, therefore, methodically
and systematically preparing to win that struggle just as a pugilist
prepares himself for a battle in a prize-ring.
The British soldier has at last come to a realization of the terrible
gravity of the situation which faces him. You don’t hear him singing
“Tipperary” any more or boasting about what he is going to do when he
gets to Berlin. He has come to have a most profound respect for the
fighting qualities of the men in the spiked helmets. He knows that he,
an amateur boxer as it were, is up against the world’s heavyweight
professional champion, and he perfectly appreciates that he has, to use
his own expression, “a hell of a job” in front of him. He has already
found out, to his cost and to his very great disgust, that his opponent
has no intention of being hampered by the rules laid down by the late
Marquis of Queensberry, having missed no opportunity to gouge or kick or
hit below the belt. But the British soldier has now become familiar with
his opponent’s tactics, and one of these days, when he gets quite ready,
he is going to give that opponent the surprise of his life by landing on
him with both feet, spikes on his shoes, and brass knuckles on his
fingers. Meanwhile, like the young Prince in the running-shorts, he has
buckled down with grim determination to the task of getting himself into
condition.
I suppose that if I were really politic and far-sighted I would cuddle
up to the War Office and make myself solid with the General Staff by
confidently asserting that the British Army is the most efficient
killing machine in existence, and that its complete and early triumph is
as certain as that the sparks fly upward; neither of which assertions
would be true. It should be kept in mind, however, that the British did
not begin the building of their war-machine until after the outbreak of
hostilities, while the German organization is the result of upward of
half a century of unceasing thought, experiment, and endeavor. But what
the British have accomplished since the war began is one of the marvels
of military history. Lord Kitchener came to a War Office which had long
been in the hands of lawyers and politicians. Not only was he expected
to remodel an institution which had become a national joke, but at the
same time to raise a huge volunteer army. In order to raise this army he
had to have recourse to American business methods. He employed a clever
advertising specialist to cover the walls and newspapers of the United
Kingdom with all manner of striking advertisements, some pleading, some
bullying, some caustic in tone, by which he has proved that, given
patriotic impulse, advertising for people to go to war is just like
advertising for people to buy automobiles or shaving-soap or
smoking-tobacco. It was not soothing to British pride—but it got the
men. Late in the spring of 1915, after half a year or more of training,
during which they were worked as a negro teamster works a mule, those
men were marched aboard transports and sent across the Channel. So
admirably executed were the plans of the War Office and so complete the
precautions taken by the Admiralty, that this great force was landed on
the Continent without the loss of a single life from German mines or
submarines. That, in itself, is one of the greatest accomplishments of
the war. England now (December, 1915) has in France an army of
approximately a million men. But it is a new army. The bulk of it is
without experience and without experienced regiments to stiffen it and
give it confidence, for the army of British regulars which landed in
France at the outbreak of the war has ceased to exist. The old
regimental names remain, but the officers and men who composed those
regiments are, to-day, in the hospitals or the cemeteries. The losses
suffered by the British Army in Flanders are appalling. The West Kent
Regiment, for example, has been three times wiped out and three times
reconstituted. Of the Black Watch, the Rifle Brigade, the Infantry of
the Household, scarcely a vestige of the original establishments
remains. Hardly less terrible are the losses which have been suffered by
the Canadian Contingent. The Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry
landed in France 1400 strong. To-day only 140 remain. The present
colonel was a private in the ranks when the regiment sailed from Quebec.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by Meurisse._
London buses at the front.
“Far as the eye can see stretch long lines of London motor-buses in
war coats of elephant gray, crowded with sun-tanned men in khaki
hurrying toward the trenches.”
]
The machine that the British have knocked together, though still a
trifle wabbly and somewhat creaky in its joints, is, I am convinced,
eventually going to do the business. But you cannot appreciate what it
is like or what it is accomplishing by reading about it; you have to see
it for yourself as I did. That corner of France lying between the fifty
miles of British front and the sea is, to-day, I suppose, the busiest
region in the world. It reminded me of the Canal Zone during the rush
period of the Canal’s construction. It is as busy as the lot where the
Greatest Show on Earth is getting ready for the afternoon performance.
Down the roads, far as the eye can see, stretch long lines of London
motor-buses, sombre war coats of elephant gray replacing the staring
advertisements of teas, tobaccos, whiskeys, and theatrical attractions,
crowded no longer with pale-faced clerks hurrying toward the city, but
with sun-tanned men in khaki hurrying toward the trenches. Interminable
processions of motor-lorries go lumbering past, piled high with the
supplies required to feed and clothe the army, practically all of which
are moved from the coast to the front by road, the railways being
reserved for the transport of men and ammunition; and the ambulances,
hundreds and hundreds of them, hurrying their blood-soaked cargoes to
the hospitals so that they may go back to the front for more. So crowded
are the highways behind the British front that at the cross-roads in the
country and at the street crossings in the towns are posted military
policemen with little scarlet flags who control the traffic just as do
the policemen on Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The roads are never
permitted to fall into disrepair, for on their condition depends the
rapidity with which the army can be supplied with food and ammunition.
Hence road gangs and steam-rollers and sprinkling-carts are at work
constantly. When the war is over, France will have better roads and more
of them than she ever had before. There are speed-limit signs
everywhere—heretofore practically unknown in France, where any one who
was careless enough to get run over was liable to arrest for obstructing
the traffic. At frequent intervals along the roads are blacksmith shops
and motor-car repair stations, to say nothing of the repair cars,
veritable garages on wheels, which, when news of an accident or
breakdown is received, go tearing toward the scene of trouble as a
fire-engine responds to an alarm of fire. At night all cars must run
without lights, as a result of which many camions and motor-buses have
met with disaster by running off the roads in the darkness and tipping
over in the deep ditches. To provide for this particular form of mishap
the Army Service Corps has designed a most ingenious contrivance which
yanks the huge machines out of the ditch and sets them on the road again
as easily as though they were stubborn mules. Upon the door of every
house we passed, whether château or cottage, was marked the number of
men who could be billeted upon it. There are signs indicating where
water can be obtained and fodder and pasturage and petrol. In every town
and village are to be found military interpreters, known by a
distinctive cap and _brassard_, who are always ready to straighten out a
misunderstanding between a Highlander from the north of the Tweed and a
_tirailleur_ from Tunisia, who will assist a Ghurka from the Indian hill
country in bargaining for poultry with a Flemish-speaking peasant, or
instruct a lost Senegalese how to get back to his command. An officers’
training-school has been established at St.-Omer, which is the British
Headquarters, where those men in the ranks who possess the necessary
education are fitted to receive commissions. After this war is over the
British Army will no longer be officered by the British aristocracy. The
wholesale promotions of enlisted men made necessary by the appalling
losses among the officers will result in completely changing the
complexion of the British military establishment. Provided he has the
necessary educational qualifications, the son of a day-laborer will
hereafter stand as much chance as the son of a duke. Did you know, by
the way, that the present Chief of the Imperial General Staff began life
as a footman and entered the army as a private in the ranks?
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by Meurisse._
British field-kitchens on the march in Flanders.
“Napoleon said: ‘An army marches on its belly,’ and the Army Service
Corps is seeing to it that the belly of the British soldier is never
empty.”
]
The wonderful thoroughness of the British is exemplified by the
bulletins which are issued every morning by the Intelligence Department
for the information of the brigade and regimental commanders. They
resemble ordinary hand-bills and contain a summary of all the
information which the Intelligence Department has been able to collect
during the preceding twenty-four hours as to what is going on behind the
German lines—movements of troops, construction of new trenches, changes
in the location of batteries, shortage of ammunition, condition of the
roads; everything, in short, which might be of any conceivable value to
the British to know. For example, the report might contain a sentence
something like this: “At five o’clock to-morrow morning the Prussian
Guard, which has been holding position No. —, to the south of Ypres,
will be relieved by the 47th Bavarian Landsturm”—which, by the way,
would probably result in the British attacking the position mentioned.
The information contained in these bulletins comes from many
sources—from spies in the pay of the Intelligence Department, from
aviators who make reconnoissance flights over the German lines, and
particularly from the inhabitants of the invaded regions, who, by
various ingenious expedients, succeed in communicating to the Allies
much important information—often at the cost of their lives.
The great base camps which the British have established at Calais and
Havre and Boulogne and Rouen are marvels of organization, efficiency,
and cleanliness. Cities whose macadamized streets are lined with
portable houses of wood or metal which have been brought to the
Continent in sections, and which have sewers and telephone systems and
electric lights, and accommodations for a hundred thousand men apiece,
have sprung up on the sand-dunes of the French coast as though by the
wave of a magician’s wand. Here, where the fresh, healing wind blows in
from the sea, have been established hospitals, each with a thousand
beds. Huge warehouses have been built of concrete to hold the vast
quantity of stores which are being rushed across the Channel by an
endless procession of transports and cargo steamers. So efficient is the
British field-post system, which is operated by the Army Post-Office
Division of the Royal Engineers, that within forty-eight hours after a
wife or mother or sweetheart drops a letter into a post-box in England
that letter has been delivered in the trenches to the man to whom it was
addressed.
In order to prevent military information leaking out through the letters
which are written by the soldiers to the folks at home, one in every
five is opened by the regimental censor, it being obviously out of the
question to peruse them all. If, however, the writer is able to get hold
of one of the precious green envelopes, whose color is a guarantee of
private and family matters only, he is reasonably certain that his
letter will not be read by other eyes than those for which it is
intended. Nor does the field-post confine itself to the transmission of
letters, but transmits delicacies and comforts of every sort to the boys
in the trenches, and the boys in the trenches use the same medium to
send shell fragments, German helmets, and other souvenirs to their
friends at home. I know a lady who sent her son in Flanders a box of
fresh asparagus from their Devonshire garden on a Friday, and he had it
for his Sunday dinner. And this reminds me of an interesting little
incident which is worth the telling and might as well be told here as
elsewhere. A well-known American business man, the president of one of
New York’s street-railway systems, has a son who is a second lieutenant
in the Royal Artillery. The father was called back to America at a time
when his son’s battery was stationed in a particularly hot corner to the
south of Ypres. The father was desperately anxious to see his son before
he sailed, but he knew that the chances of his being permitted to do so
were almost infinitesimal. Nevertheless, he wrote a note to Lord
Kitchener explaining the circumstances and adding that he realized that
it was probably quite impossible to grant such a request. He left the
note himself at York House. Before he had been back in his hotel an hour
he was called to the telephone. “This is the secretary of Lord Kitchener
speaking,” said a voice. “He desires me to say that you shall certainly
see your son before returning to America, and that you are to hold
yourself in readiness to go to the Continent at a moment’s notice.” A
few days later he received another message from the War Office: “Take
to-morrow morning’s boat from Folkestone to Boulogne. Your son will be
waiting for you on the quay.” The long arm of the great War Minister had
reached out across the English Channel and had picked that obscure
second lieutenant out from that little Flemish village, and had brought
him by motor-car to the coast, with a twenty-four hours’ leave of
absence in his pocket, that he might say good-by to his father.
The maxim that “an army marches on its belly” is as true to-day as when
Napoleon uttered it, and the Army Service Corps is seeing to it that the
belly of the British soldier is never empty. Of all the fighting men in
the field, the British soldier is far and away the best fed. He is,
indeed, almost overfed, particularly as regards jams, marmalades,
puddings, and other articles containing large quantities of sugar,
which, so the army surgeons assert, is the greatest restorer of the
muscular tissues. Though the sale of spirits is strictly prohibited in
the military zone, a ration of rum is served out at daybreak each
morning to the men in the trenches.
To Miss Jane Addams has been attributed the following assertion: “We
heard in all countries similar statements in regard to the necessity for
the use of stimulants before men would engage in bayonet charges, that
they have a regular formula in Germany, that they give them rum in
England and absinthe in France; that they all have to give them the
‘dope’ before the bayonet charge is possible.” Now, Miss Addams has
never, so far as I am aware, been in the trenches. Of the conditions
which exist there she knows only by hearsay. Miss Addams says that rum
is given to the British soldier. That is perfectly true. In pursuance of
orders issued by the Army Medical Corps, every man who has spent the
night in the trenches is given a ration (about a gill) of rum at
daybreak, not to render him reckless, as Miss Addams would have us
believe, but to counteract the effects of the mud and water in which he
has been standing for many hours. But when Miss Addams asserts that the
French soldiers are given absinthe she makes an assertion that is
without foundation of fact. Not only have I never seen a glass of
absinthe served in France since the law was passed which made its sale
illegal, but I have never seen spirits of any kind in use in the zone of
operations. More than once, coming back, chilled and weary, from the
trenches, I have attempted to obtain either whiskey or brandy only to be
told that its sale is rigidly prohibited in the zone of the armies. The
regular ration of the French soldier includes now, just as in time of
peace, a pint of _vin ordinaire_—the cheap wine of the country—this
being, I might add, considerably less than the man would drink with his
meals were he in civil life. As regards the conditions which exist in
the German armies I cannot speak with the same assurance, because I have
not been with them since the autumn of 1914. During the march across
Belgium there was, I am perfectly willing to admit, considerable
drunkenness among the German soldiers, but this was due to the men
looting the wine-cellars in the towns through which they passed and not,
as Miss Addams would have us believe, to their officers having
systematically “doped” them. I have heard it stated, on various
occasions, that German troops are given a mixture of rum and ether
before going into action. Whether this is true I cannot say. Personally,
I doubt it. If a man’s life ever depends upon a clear brain and a cool
head it is when he is going into battle. Everything considered,
therefore, I am convinced that intemperance virtually does not exist
among the armies in the field. I feel that Miss Addams has done a grave
injustice to brave and sober men and that she owes them an apology.
The British troops are not permitted to drink unboiled or unfiltered
water, each regiment having two steel water-carts fitted with
Birkenfeldt filters from which the men fill their water-bottles. As a
result of this precaution, dysentery and diarrhœa, the curse of armies
in previous wars, have practically disappeared, while, thanks to
compulsory inoculation, typhoid is unknown. Perhaps the most important
of all the sanitary devices which have been brought into existence by
this war, and without which it would not be possible for the men to
remain in the trenches at all, is the great force-pump that is operated
at night and which throws lime and carbolic acid on the unburied dead.
It is, indeed, impossible to overpraise the work being done by the Royal
Army Medical Corps, which has, among its many other activities, so
improved and speeded up the system of getting the wounded from the
firing-line to the hospitals that, as one Tommy remarked, “You ’ears a
’ell of a noise, and then the nurse says: ‘Sit hup and tike this
broth.’”
Though in this war the work of the cavalry is almost negligible; though
cartridges and marmalade are hurried to the front on motor-trucks and
the wounded are hurried from the front back to the hospital in
motor-ambulances; though despatch riders bestride panting motor-cycles
instead of panting steeds; though scouting is done by airmen instead of
horsemen, the day of the horse in warfare has by no means passed.
Without the horse, indeed, the guns could not go into action, for no
form of tractor has yet been devised for hauling batteries over broken
country. In fact, all of the belligerent nations are experiencing great
difficulty in providing a sufficient supply of horses, for the average
life of a war-horse is very short—ten days, assert some authorities;
sixteen, say others. For the first time in the history of warfare,
therefore, the horse is treated as a creature which must be cared for
when sick or wounded as well as when in health, and this not merely from
motives of sentiment or humanity but as a detail of military efficiency.
“For want of a nail,” runs the old ditty, “the shoe was lost; for want
of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost;
for want of a rider the battle was lost”—and the Royal Army Veterinary
Corps is seeing to it that no battles are lost for lack of either horses
or horseshoes. The Army Veterinary Corps now has on the British sector
700 officers and 8,000 men, whose business it is to conserve the lives
of the horses. The last report that I have seen places the total number
of horses treated in the various hospital units (each of which
accommodates 1,000 animals) as approximately 81,000, of which some
47,000 had been returned to the Remount Department as again fit for
active service; 30,000 were still under treatment; the balance having
died, been destroyed, or sold.
The horses in use by the British Army in France are the very pick of
England, the Colonies, and foreign countries; thoroughbred and
three-quarter bred hunters from the hunting counties and from Ireland;
hackneys, draft, and farm animals; Walers from Australia; wire-jumpers
from New Zealand; hardy stock from Alberta and Saskatchewan; sturdy
ponies from the hill country of India; thousands upon thousands of
animals from the American Southwest, and from the Argentine; to say
nothing of the great sixteen-hand mules from Missouri and Spain.