CHAPTER XVIII

SOME CRITICISMS, SUGGESTIONS, AND GENERALITIES.......... 328

Post-war extravagance -- The Office of Works lavish all through

-- The Treasury -- Its unpopularity in the spending departments

-- The Finance Branch of the War Office -- Suggestions -- The

change with regard to saluting -- Red tabs and red cap-bands -- A

Staff dandy in the West -- The age of general-officers --

Position of the General Staff in the War Office -- The project of

a Defence Ministry -- No excuse for it except with regard to the

air services, and that not a sufficient excuse -- Confusion

between the question of a Defence Ministry and that of the

Imperial General Staff -- The time which must elapse before newly

constituted units can be fully depended upon, one of the most

important lessons for the public to realize -- This proved to be

the case in almost every theatre and in the military forces of

almost every belligerent -- Misapprehensions about South Africa

-- Improvised units could not have done what the "Old

Contemptibles" did -- Conclusion.

CHAPTER I

THE OUTBREAK OF WAR

Unfair disparagement of the War Office during the war --

Difficulties under which it suffered owing to pre-war misconduct

of the Government -- The army prepared, the Government and the

country unprepared -- My visit to German districts on the Belgian

and Luxemburg frontiers in June 1914 -- The German railway

preparations -- The plan of the Great General Staff indicated by

these -- The Aldershot Command at exercise -- I am summoned to

London by General H. Wilson -- Informed of contemplated

appointment to be D.M.O. -- The unsatisfactory organization of

the Military Operations Directorate -- An illustration of this

from pre-war days -- G.H.Q. rather a nuisance until they

proceeded to France -- The scare about a hostile maritime descent

-- Conference at the Admiralty -- The depletion of my Directorate

to build up G.H.Q. -- Inconvenience of this in the case of the

section dealing with special Intelligence services -- An example

of the trouble that arose at the very start -- This points to a

misunderstanding of the relative importance of the War Office and

of G.H.Q. -- Sir J. French's responsibility for this, Sir C.

Douglas not really responsible -- Colonel Dallas enumerates the

great numerical resources of Germany -- Lord Kitchener's

immediate recognition of the realities of the situation -- Sir J.

French's suggestion that Lord Kitchener should be

Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force indicated

misconception of the position of affairs.

In a record of experiences during the Great War that were for the most

part undergone within the War Office itself, it is impossible to

overcome the temptation to draw attention at the start to the

unreasonably disparaging attitude towards that institution which has

been adopted so generally throughout the country. Nobody will contend

that hideous blunders were not committed by some departments of the

central administration of the Army in Whitehall during the progress of

the struggle. It has to be admitted that considerable sums of money

were from time to time wasted--it could hardly be otherwise in such

strenuous times. A regrettable lack of foresight was undoubtedly

displayed in some particulars. But tremendous difficulties,

difficulties for the existence of which the military authorities were

nowise to blame, had on the other hand to be overcome--and they were

overcome. Nor can the War Office be robbed of its claim to have borne

the chief share in performing what was the greatest miracle of all the

miracles performed during the course of the contest. Within the space

of less than two years the United Kingdom was, mainly by the exertions

of the War Office, transformed into a Great Military Power. That

achievement covers up many transgressions.

It has to be remembered that in this matter the detractors had it all

their own way during the struggle. Anybody harbouring a grievance,

real or imaginary, was at liberty to air his wrongs, whereas the

mouths of soldiers in a position to reply had perforce to remain

closed and have to a great extent still to remain closed. The

disgruntled had the field pretty well to themselves. Ridiculous

stories for which there was not one atom of foundation have gained

currency, either because those who knew the truth were precluded by

their official status from revealing the facts or because no one took

the trouble to contradict the absurdities. Some of these yarns saw the

light in the newspapers, and the credulity of the public in accepting

everything that happens to appear in the Press is one of the

curiosities of the age. Not, however, that many of the criticisms of

which the War Office was the subject during the protracted broil were

not fully warranted. Some of them were indeed most helpful. But others

were based on a positively grovelling ignorance of the circumstances

governing the subject at issue. Surely it is an odd thing that,

whereas your layman will shy at committing himself in regard to legal

problems, will not dream of debating medical questions, will shrink

from expressing opinions on matters involving acquaintance with

technical science, will even be somewhat guarded in his utterances

concerning the organization and handling of fleets, everybody is eager

to lay the law down respecting the conduct of war on land.

A reference has been made above to the extraordinary difficulties

under which the War Office laboured during the war. The greatest of

these, at all events during the early days, was the total

misconception of the international situation of which H.M. Government

had been guilty--or had apparently been guilty--during the years

immediately preceding the outbreak of hostilities. No intelligible and

satisfactory explanation of this has ever been put forward. Their

conduct in this connection had been the conduct of fools, or of

knaves, or of liars. They had been acting as fools if they had failed

to interpret auguries which presented no difficulty whatever to people

of ordinary intelligence who took the trouble to watch events. They

had been acting as knaves if they had been drawing their salaries and

had not earned them by making themselves acquainted with facts which

it was their bounden duty to know. They had been acting as liars if,

when fully aware of the German preparations for aggressive war and of

what these portended, they had deliberately deceived and hoodwinked

the countrymen who trusted them. (Personally, I should be disposed to

acquit them of having been fools or knaves--but I may be wrong.)

Several Ministers had indeed deliberately stated in their places in

Parliament that the nation's military arrangements were not framed to

meet anything beyond the despatch to an oversea theatre of war of four

out of the six divisions of our Expeditionary Force! One of the gang

had even been unable "to conceive circumstances in which continental

operations by our troops would not be a crime against the people of

this country."

Much has been said and written since 1914 concerning the unpreparedness

of the army for war. But the truth is that the army was not

unprepared for that limited-liability, pill-to-stop-an-earthquake

theory of making war which represented the programme of Mr. Asquith

and his colleagues before the blow fell. Take it all round, the

Expeditionary Force was as efficient as any allied or hostile army

which took the field. It was almost as well prepared for the supreme

test in respect to equipment as it was in respect to leadership and

training. The country and the Government, not the army, were

unprepared. There was little wrong with the military forces except

that they represented merely a drop in the ocean, that they

constituted no more than an advanced guard to legions which did not

exist. Still one must acknowledge that (as will be pointed out further

on) even some of our highest military authorities did not realize what

an insignificant asset our splendid little Expeditionary Force would

stand for in a great European war, nor to have grasped when the crash

came that the matter of paramount importance in connection with the

conduct of the struggle on land was the creation of a host of fighting

men reaching such dimensions as to render it competent to play a

really vital rôle in achieving victory for the Entente.

As it happened, I had proceeded as a private individual in the month

of June 1914 to inspect the German railway developments directed

towards the frontiers of Belgium and of Luxemburg. This was an

illuminating, indeed an ominous, experience. Entering the Kaiser's

dominions by the route from the town of Luxemburg to Trèves, one came

of a sudden upon a colossal detraining station that was not quite

completed, fulfilling no conceivable peaceful object and dumped down

on the very frontier--anything more barefaced it would be difficult to

conceive. Trèves itself, three or four miles on, constituted a vast

railway centre, and three miles or so yet farther along there was its

counterpart in another great railway centre where there was no town at

all. You got Euston, Liverpool Street, and Waterloo--only the lines

and sidings, of course--grown up like mushrooms in a non-populous and

non-industrial region, and at the very gates of a little State of

which Germany had guaranteed the neutrality.

Traversing the region to the north of the Moselle along the western

German border-line, this proved to be a somewhat barren, partly

woodland, partly moorland, tract, sparsely inhabited as Radnor and

Strathspey; and yet this unproductive district had become a network of

railway communications. Elaborate detraining stations were passed

every few miles. One constantly came upon those costly overhead

cross-over places, where one set of lines is carried right over the

top of another set at a junction, so that continuous traffic going one

way shall not be checked by traffic coming in from the side and

proceeding in the opposite direction--a plan seldom adopted at our

most important railway centres. On one stretch of perhaps half-a-dozen

miles connecting two insignificant townships were to be seen eight

lines running parallel to each other. Twopenny-halfpenny little trains

doddered along, occasionally taking up or putting down a single

passenger at some halting-place that was large enough to serve a

Coventry or a Croydon. The slopes of the cuttings and sidings were

destitute of herbage; the bricks of the culverts and bridges showed

them by the colour to be brand-new; all this construction had taken

place within the previous half-dozen years. Everything seemed to be

absolutely ready except that one place on the Luxemburg frontier

mentioned above, and that obviously could be completed in a few hours

of smart work, if required.

One had heard a good deal about the Belgians having filled in a gap on

their side of the frontier so as to join up Malmedy with their internal

railway system, and thus to establish a fresh through-connection

between the Rhineland and the Meuse, so I travelled along this on my

way back. But it was unimpressive. The drop from the rolling uplands

about the camp of Elsenborn down to Malmedy gave rise to very steep

gradients on the German side, and the single line of rail was so

dilapidated and was so badly laid that, as we ran down with steam off,

it hardly seemed safe for a short train of about half-a-dozen coaches.

That the Great General Staff had no intention of making this a main

line of advance appeared to be pretty clear. They meant the hosts that

they would dispose of when the moment came, to sweep round by

communications lying farther to the north, starting from about

Aix-la-Chapelle and heading for the gap south of the Dutch enclave

about Maestricht. The impression acquired during this flying visit was

that for all practical purposes the Germans had everything ready for

an immediate invasion of Belgium and Luxemburg when the crisis

arrived, that they were simply awaiting the fall of the flag, that

when war came they meant to make their main advance through Belgium,

going wide, and that _pickelhaubes_ would be as the sands of the sea

for number well beyond Liège within a very few days of the outbreak of

hostilities. On getting home I compared notes with the Intelligence

Section of the General Staff which was especially interested in these

territories, but found little to tell them that they did not know

already except with regard to a few very recently completed railway

constructions. The General Staff hugged no illusions. They were not so

silly as to suppose that the Teuton proposed to respect treaties in

the event of the upheaval that was sure to come ere long.

Having a house at Fleet that summer, I cycled over to beyond Camberley

one day, just at the stage when coming events were beginning to cast

their shadows before after the Serajevo assassinations, to watch the

Aldershot Command at work, and talked long with many members of the

Command and with some of the Staff College personnel who had turned

out to see the show. Some of them--_e.g._ Lieut.-Colonels W. Thwaites

and J. T. Burnett-Stuart and Major (or was it Captain?) W. E.

Ironside--were to go far within the next five years. But there were

also others whom I met that day for the last time--Brigadier-General

Neil Findlay, commanding the artillery, who had been in the same room

with me at the "Shop," and Lieut.-Colonel Adrian Grant-Duff of the

Black Watch, excusing his presence in the firing-line on the plea that

he "really _must_ see how his lads worked through the woodlands"; both

had made the supreme sacrifice in France before the leaves were off

the trees. How many are alive and unmaimed to-day of those fighting

men of all ranks who buzzed about so cheerily amid the heather and the

pine trees that afternoon, and who melted away so silently out of

Aldershot a very few days later?

The clouds thereafter gathered thicker from day to day, and on Friday

morning, the 31st of July, I received a letter from General Henry

Wilson, sent on from my town address, asking me to come and breakfast

with him on the following day. I was going down to Winchester to see

the Home Counties (Territorial) Division complete a long march from

the east on their way to Salisbury Plain, and it happened to be

inconvenient to go up to town that night, so I wired to Wilson to say

I would call at his house on the Sunday. On getting back, late, to

Fleet I however found a peremptory summons from him saying I must come

and see him next day, and I went up in the morning. One could not

foresee that that breakfast in Draycott Place to which I had been

bidden was to take rank as a historic meal. Mr. Maxse has told the

story of it in the pages of the _National Review_, and of how the

movement was there started by which the Unionist leaders were got

together from various quarters to bring pressure on the Government not

to leave France in the lurch, a movement which culminated in Mr. Bonar

Law's famous letter to Mr. Asquith.

On meeting General Wilson at the War Office about noon he told me that

I was to take his place as Director of Military Operations in case of

mobilization, and he asked me to join as soon as possible. He further

made me acquainted with the political situation, with the very

unsatisfactory attitude which a proportion of the Cabinet were

disposed to take up, and with the steps which Messrs. George Lloyd,

Amery, Maxse, and others were taking to mobilize the Opposition

leaders and to compel the Government to play the game. In the last

conversation that I ever had with Lord Roberts, two or three days

before the great Field-Marshal paid the visit to the Front which was

so tragically cut short, he spoke enthusiastically of the services of

Lloyd (now Sir George) on this occasion. In consequence of what I had

learnt I joined at the War Office for duty on the Monday, although the

arrangement was irregular and purely provisional for the moment,

seeing that it had not yet been decided whether mobilization was to be

ordained or not. But I found Wilson in much more buoyant mood after

the week-end of anxiety, for he believed that Mr. Bonar Law's letter

had proved the decisive factor. By this time we moreover knew that

Germany had already violated the neutrality of Luxemburg and was

threatening Belgium openly.

I ought to mention here that this appointment to the post of Director

of Military Operations came as a complete surprise--my not having been

warned well in advance had been due to an oversight; up to within a

few months earlier, when I had ceased to belong to the Reserve of

Officers, having passed the age-limit for colonels, my fate in the

event of general mobilization was to have been something high up on

the staff of the Home Defence Army. One could entertain no illusions.

Heavy responsibilities were involved in taking up such an appointment

on the eve of war. After five years of civil life it was a large order

to find myself suddenly thrust into such a job and to be called upon

to take up charge of a War Office Directorate which I knew was

overloaded. Ever since 1904, ever since the date when this Directorate

had been set up by the Esher Committee as one item in the

reconstitution of the office as a whole and when my section of the old

Intelligence Division had been absorbed into it, I had insisted that

this composite branch was an overburdened and improperly constituted

one.

For the Esher triumvirate had amalgamated "operations" and

"intelligence," while they had deposited "home defence" in the

Military Training Directorate. It was an absurd arrangement in

peace-time, and one that was wholly unadapted to the conditions of a

great war. Lord Esher and his colleagues would seem, however, to have

been actuated by a fear lest the importance of home defence should

overshadow that of preparation for oversea warfare if the two sets of

duties were in one hand, and, inasmuch as they were making a start

with the General Staff at Headquarters and bearing in mind former

tendencies, they may have been right. They, moreover, hardly realized

perhaps that intelligence must always be the handmaid of operations,

and that it is in the interest of both that they should be kept quite

distinct. It was natural that the first Chief of the General Staff to

be appointed, Sir N. Lyttelton, should have hesitated to overset an

organization which had been so recently laid down and which had been

accepted by the Government as it stood, even if he recognized its

unsuitability; but I have never been able to understand how his

successors, Sir W. Nicholson and Sir J. French, failed to effect the

rearrangement of duties which a sound system of administration

imperatively called for. That my predecessors, Generals "Jimmy"

Grierson, Spencer Ewart, and Henry Wilson, made no move in the matter

is rendered the more intelligible to me by the fact that I took no

steps in the matter myself, even when the need for a reorganization

was driven home by the conditions brought about in the War Office

during the early months of the Great War. Somehow one feels no

irresistible impulse to abridge one's functions and to depreciate

one's importance by one's own act, to lop off one's own members, so to

speak. But when Sir W. Robertson turned up at the end of 1915 to

become C.I.G.S. he straightway split my Directorate in two, and he

thus put things at last on a proper footing.

The incongruity of the Esher organization had, it may be mentioned,

been well illustrated by an episode that occurred very shortly after

the reconstitution of the War Office had been carried into effect in

the spring of 1904. Under the distribution of duties then laid down,

my section of the Operations Directorate dealt _inter alia_, with

questions of coast defence in connection with our stations abroad,

while a section of the Military Training Directorate dealt _inter

alia_ with questions of coast defence in connection with our stations

at home. It came about that the two sections issued instructions

simultaneously about the same thing, and the instructions issued by

the two sections were absolutely antagonistic. The consequence was

that coast defence people at Malta came to be doing the thing one way,

while those at Portsmouth came to be doing it exactly the opposite

way, and that the War Office managed to give itself away and to expose

itself to troublesome questionings. The blunder no doubt could be put

down to lack of co-ordination; but the primary cause was the existence

of a faulty organization under which two different branches at

Headquarters were dealing with the one subject.

The earliest experiences in the War Office in August 1914 amounted, it

must be confessed, almost to a nightmare. There were huge maps working

on rollers in my spacious office, and in particular there was one of

vast dimensions portraying what even then was coming to be called the

Western Front. During the week or so that elapsed before G.H.Q. of the

Expeditionary Force proceeded to the theatre of war, its cream thought

fit to spend the hours of suspense in creeping on tiptoe in and out of

my apartment, clambering on and off a table which fronted this

portentous map, discussing strategical problems in blood-curdling

whispers, and every now and then expressing an earnest hope that this

sort of thing was not a nuisance. It was a most intolerable nuisance,

but they were persons of light and leading who could not be addressed

in appropriate terms. As hour to hour passed, and H.M. Government

could not make up its mind to give the word "go" to the Expeditionary

Force, G.H.Q.'s language grew stronger and stronger until the walls

resounded with expletives. It was not easy to concentrate one's

attention upon questions arising in the performance of novel duties in

a time of grave emergency under such conditions, and it was a genuine

relief when the party took itself off to France.

One was too busy to keep notes of what went on in those days and I am

not sure of exact dates, but I think that it was on the 6th of August

that a wire, which seemed on the face of it to be trustworthy, came to

hand from a German port, to the effect that transports and troops were

being collected there to convey a military force somewhither. This

message caused the Government considerable concern and very nearly

delayed the despatch of the Expeditionary Force across the Channel.

One was too new to the business to take the proper steps to trace the

source of that message, which, as far as I remember, purported to

emanate from one of our consuls; but I have a strong suspicion that

the message was faked--was really sent off by the Germans. Lord

Kitchener had taken up the appointment of Secretary of State that

morning, and in the afternoon he walked across Whitehall, accompanied

by my immediate chief, Sir C. Douglas the C.I.G.S., General Kiggell,

and myself, to discuss the position with Mr. Churchill and the chiefs

of the Admiralty in the First Lord's room. Whitehall was rendered

almost impassable by a mass of excited citizens, and Lord Kitchener on

being recognized was wildly cheered. Nothing could have been clearer

and more reassuring than Mr. Churchill's exposition of the naval

arrangements to meet any attempt at a landing on our shores, and any

one of the War Office quartette who may have been troubled with

qualms--I had felt none myself--must have had his anxiety allayed.

It will not be out of place to refer here to one aspect of the virtual

emasculation of the General Staff at the War Office on mobilization

that has not perhaps quite received the attention that it deserves.

That, in spite of his being Director of Military Operations in

Whitehall, General Wilson very properly accompanied the Expeditionary

Force will hardly be disputed. He had established close and cordial

relations with the French higher military authorities, he could talk

French like a Parisian, he had worked out the details of the

concentration of our troops on the farther side of the Channel months

before, and he probably knew more about the theatre where our

contingent was expected to operate than any man in the army. But he

was not the only member of the Military Operations Directorate staff

who disappeared; he took his right-hand man and his left-hand man in

respect to actual operations with him. Nevertheless, as I was pretty

familiar with the working of the War Office, and as the planting down

of the Expeditionary Force beyond Le Cateau was effected, practically

automatically, by the Movements branch under the Quartermaster-General,

operations question in respect to the war in the West gave no great

trouble until my Directorate had had time to settle down after a

fashion in its new conditions.

But the Intelligence side of General Wilson's Directorate included a

branch which dealt with a number of matters with which no Director

brought in from outside was likely to be well acquainted, and about

which I knew nothing at all. Very few officers in the regular army are

conversant with international law. Nor used they, in the days before

1914, to interest themselves in the status of aliens when the country

is engaged in hostilities, nor with problems of censorship of the post

and telegraph services, nor with the relations between the military

and the Press, nor yet with the organization, the maintenance, and the

duties of a secret service. Before mobilization, all this was in the

hands of a section under the D.M.O. which was in charge of Colonel

(now Lieut.-General Sir G.) Macdonogh, who had made a special study

of these matters, and who had devised a machinery for performing a

number of duties in this country which on the outbreak of war

necessarily assumed a cardinal importance and called for efficient

administration at the hands of a large personnel, only to be got

together when the emergency arose. But Colonel Macdonogh on

mobilization took up an important appointment with the Expeditionary

Force, and went off to France, carrying off his assistants with him.

As far as personnel was concerned, this cupboard was left as bare as a

fashionable lady's back when _en grande tenue_ in "Victory Year."

Charge of it was assumed by an extremely capable and energetic

substitute brought in from outside (Colonel D. L. MacEwen), who,

however, suffered under the disability of knowing practically nothing

about the peculiar class of work which he was suddenly called upon to

take up.

As an example of the extreme inconvenience which this caused, the

following somewhat comical incident may be related. Three or four days

after the declaration of war a brace of very distinguished civil

servants, one representing the Foreign Office and the other the Home

Office, came across Whitehall by appointment and with long faces, and

the four of us sat solemnly round a table--they, Colonel MacEwen, and

I. It appeared that we had been guilty of terrifying violations of

international law. We had seized numbers of German reservists and

German males of military age on board ships in British ports, and had

consigned some of them to quarters designed for the accommodation of

malefactors. This sort of thing would never do. Such steps had not

been taken by belligerents in 1870, nor at the time of the American

War of Secession, and I am not sure that Messrs. Mason and Slidell

were not trotted out. The Foreign and Home Secretaries, the very

distinguished civil servants declared, would not unlikely be agitated

when they heard of the shocking affair. Soldiers, no doubt, were by

nature abrupt and unconventional in their actions, and the Foreign and

Home Offices would make every allowance, realizing that we had acted

in good faith. But, hang it all--and they gazed at us in compassionate

displeasure.

Will it be believed? My assistant and I knew so little about our

business that we did not fall upon that pair of pantaloons and rend

them. We took them and their protestation quite seriously. We accepted

their courteous, but uncompromising, rebuke like small boys caught

stealing apples, whose better feelings have been appealed to. For the

space of two or three hours, and until we had pulled ourselves

together, we remained content, on the strength of doctrines enunciated

by a couple of officials fossilized by having dwelt in a groove for

years, to accept it as a principle that this tremendous conflict into

which the Empire had been plunged at a moment's notice was to be a

kid-glove transaction. Within three weeks the Foreign Office and the

Home Office were, however, praying us in the War Office for goodness'

sake to take all questions in connection with the internment and so

forth of aliens entirely off their hands because they could make

nothing of the business.

The above reference to my having been virtually left in the lurch with

regard to these, to me, occult matters is not made by way of

complaint. It is made because it illustrates with signal force how

completely the relative importance of the Expeditionary Force as

compared to the task which the War Office had to face had been

misunderstood when framing plans in advance for the anticipated

emergency. Colonel Macdonogh became head of Sir J. French's

Intelligence Department in the field. That was a very important

appointment and one for which he was admirably fitted, but it was one

which many other experienced officers in the army could have

effectually filled. The appointment at the War Office which he gave up

was one which no officer in the army was so well qualified--nor nearly

so well qualified--to hold as he was, and it was at the outbreak of

war incomparably the more important appointment of the two. The

arrangement arrived at in respect to this matter indicated, in fact, a

strange lack of sense of proportion. It argued a fundamental

misconception of the military problem with which the country was

confronted.

In his book, "_1914_," in which he finds so much to say in

disparagement of Lord Kitchener, Lord French has very frankly admitted

his inability to foresee certain tactical developments in connection

with heavy artillery and so forth, which actual experience in the

field brought home to him within a few weeks of the opening of

hostilities. Most of the superior French and German military

authorities who held sway in the early days of the struggle would

probably similarly plead guilty, for nobody in high places anticipated

these developments. The Field-Marshal, on the other hand, makes no

reference to any failure on his part to realize in advance the

relatively insignificant part which our original Expeditionary Force

would be able to play in the great contest. He makes no admission as

to a misconception with regard to the paramount problem which faced

the British military authorities as a whole after mobilization was

decreed. He would not seem to have been aware, when a conflict of

first-rate magnitude came upon us, that the creation of a great

national army was of far greater consequence than the operations of

the small body of troops which he took with him into the field. The

action taken in connection with the personnel of the General Staff in

Whitehall is significant evidence of the extent to which the whole

situation had been misinterpreted.

It may be urged that Sir J. French (as he then was) was not

responsible. He had--under circumstances which will not have been

forgotten--ceased to be Chief of the Imperial General Staff some four

months before war broke out. But Sir Charles Douglas, who had then

taken his place, although a resolute, experienced soldier, equipped

with an almost unique knowledge of the army, was a deliberate,

cautious Scot; he was the very last man to shirk responsibility and to

shelter himself behind somebody else, but, on the other hand, he was

not an impatient thruster who would be panting to be--in gunner's

parlance--"re-teaming the battery before the old major was out of the

gate." He accepted, and he was indeed bound to accept, the ideas of a

predecessor of the highest standing in the Service, who had made a

special study of campaigning possibilities under the conditions which

actually arose in August 1914, and under whose aegis definite plans

and administrative arrangements to meet the case had been elaborated

beforehand with meticulous care. Enjoying all the advantages arising

from having made a close study of the subject and from having an

Intelligence Department brimming over with detailed information at his

beck and call, Sir J. French entirely failed to grasp the extent and

nature of the war in its early days. Lord Kitchener did. Suddenly

summoned to take supreme military charge, a stranger to the War Office

and enjoying none of Sir J. French's advantages, the new Secretary of

State mastered the realities of the position at once by some sort of

instinct, perceived what a stupendous effort would have to be made,

took the long view from the start, and foretold that the struggle

would last some years.

It must have been about the 11th of August, three days before G.H.Q.

crossed the Channel, that I went in with Sir John to see Colonel

Dallas, the head of my Intelligence section dealing with Germany. One

had been too busy during the previous few days to bother much about

the German army, and at the time I knew little more about that

formidable fighting machine than what was told in books of reference

like the _Statesman's Year-book_, which gave full particulars about

First Line Troops, but said uncommonly little about Reserve

Formations. Information with regard to these could only be obtained

from secret sources. What we were told by Dallas was a revelation to

me. There seemed to be no end to the enemy's fighting resources. He

kept on producing fresh batches of Reserve Divisions and Extra-Reserve

Divisions, like a conjurer who produces huge glass bowls full of

goldfish out of his waistcoat pocket. He seemed to be doing it on

purpose--one felt quite angry with the man. But it was made plain to

me that we were up against a tougher proposition than I had imagined.

The Field-Marshal must have been, or at all events ought to have been,

perfectly well aware of all this, seeing that he had been C.I.G.S. up

till very recently, and had devoted special attention to the problems

involved in a war with Germany.

In a foot-note near the end of "_1914_," Lord French mentions having,

on some occasion during the few days when war was still trembling in

the balance, suggested to Lord Kitchener that they should repair

together to the Prime Minister and propose that Lord Kitchener should

be commander-in-chief of the field army, with him (French) as Chief of

Staff. That was a self-sacrificing suggestion; but it surely indicates

an absence of what Lord Haldane calls "clear thinking." Sir J. French

had been organizing and training the Expeditionary Force for some

years previously, knew all about it, was acquainted with its generals

and staffs, was up-to-date in connection with progress in tactical

details, and had studied the strategical situation in Belgium and

France. Lord Kitchener had, on the other hand, been in civil

employment and out of touch with most military questions for some

considerable time previously. Lord Kitchener would have been thrown

away commanding the Expeditionary Force. He was needed for the much

more important position which he actually took up.

CHAPTER II

EARLY DAYS AT THE WAR OFFICE

Plan of issuing _communiqués_ given up owing to the disposition

to conceal reverses that manifested itself -- Direct telephonic

communication with the battlefield in Belgium -- A strange

attempt to withhold news as to the fall of Brussels -- Anxiety

during the retreat from Mons -- The work of the Topographical

Section at that time -- Arrival of refugee officers and other

ranks at the War Office -- One of the Royal Irish affords

valuable information -- Candidates for the appointment of

"Intelligence Officer" -- How one dealt with recommendations in

regard to jobs -- Linguists -- The discoverer of interpreters,

fifty produced as if by magic -- The Boy Scouts in the War Office

-- An Admirable Crichton -- The scouts' effective method of

handling troublesome visitors -- Army chaplains in embryo -- A

famous cricketer doing his bit -- A beauty competition outside my

door -- The Eminent K.C. -- An impressive personality -- How he

benefits the community -- The Self-Appointed Spy-Catcher -- Gun

platforms concealed everywhere -- The hidden dangers in disused

coal mines in Kent -- Procuring officers for the New Armies --

"Bill" Elliot's unorthodox methods -- The Military Secretary's

branch meets with a set-back -- Visits from Lord Roberts -- His

suggestion as to the commander-in-chiefship in China -- His last

visit -- The Antwerp business -- The strategical situation with

regard to the Belgian field army -- The project of our Government

-- The despatch of the Seventh Division and the Third Cavalry

Division to Belgian Flanders -- Organization of base and line of

communications overlooked -- A couple of transports "on their

own" come to a halt on the Goodwins -- Difficulty of the

strategical situation -- Death of Sir C. Douglas.

It will be remembered that although our troops were not engaged during

the first fortnight of the war, and were indeed never likely to be

engaged so early, events moved quickly on the Western Front, and that

the set-back encountered by the Germans when they tried to smother

Liège without bringing up heavy artillery aroused a certain enthusiasm

in this country. On taking stock of my duties, it had appeared to me

that one of these would be the issue of reasoned _communiqués_ to the

Press from time to time, and I actually drafted one, designed to

convey a warning as to excessive jubilation over incidents such as the

momentary success of the defending side in the struggle for the

stronghold on the Meuse, which appeared in all the newspapers. The

following passage occurred in it: "The exaggeration into important

triumphs of minor episodes in which the Allies are alleged to have

gained the upper hand is misleading." But it speedily became apparent

that the powers that be did not mean to be expansive in connection

with incidents where our side was getting the worst of it, so the plan

of issuing _communiqués_ was abandoned almost at once.

One soon learnt that Belgian resistance was being brushed aside by the

enemy with comparative ease, and that such delay as the invaders had

suffered before Liège did not very appreciably interfere with the

plans of the German Great General Staff. Going one afternoon into the

room occupied by the head of my Intelligence section which was charged

with French and Belgian affairs, I found him on his telephone and

holding up his hand to enjoin silence. He was speaking with the late

General "Sandy" Du Cane, our representative with King Albert's forces

in the field, who was at the moment actually on the battlefield and

under fire. While I was in the room, Du Cane wound up the conversation

with; "They're giving way all along the line. I'm off." A day or two

after this the Boches were in Brussels, and one realized that our

Expeditionary Force must very soon be in the thick of it.

For some reason or other those in the highest places at the War Office

hesitated to allow the news that Brussels had fallen to leak out to

the public--an attitude at which the newspaper editors were not

unnaturally incensed--and Mr. F. E. Smith, now Lord Birkenhead, who

was head of the Press Bureau, came to see me that evening, and was

outspoken as to the absurdity of this sort of thing. The matter did

not, however, rest in my hands. The secretiveness in connection with

reverses and contretemps which prevailed at that time, and which

continued to prevail during the first year and a half of the

war--during the very period when I had certain responsibilities in

connection with such matters myself--seemed to me then, and seems to

me now, to have been a mistake. It did our cause considerable harm, it

delayed the putting forth of the full fighting strength of the British

nation, it created irritation in the country when it came to be

detected, and it even at times caused official reports which were

perfectly in accordance with the facts to be regarded with suspicion.

The point will be touched upon again in later chapters.

Then came those grey days when we knew that the Entente plan of

campaign had broken down, that the forces on our side were not

satisfactorily disposed for staying the hostile rush, that the French

were unable to hold their ground, and that our little army were sore

beset and in full retreat before superior hosts. King's Messengers,

the Duke of Marlborough and Major Hankey, came to see me, and told me

of the atmosphere of grave anxiety prevalent at G.H.Q. A message from

General Henry Wilson, written in pencil late at night on a leaf of a

notebook, reached me, of so ominous a character (seeing that he

assuredly was not one to quail) that I never showed it to anybody--not

even to my chief, Sir C. Douglas. And yet, one felt somehow that we

should pull through in spite of all, and even though the demands

coming to hand for maps of regions in the very heart of France

certainly conveyed no encouragement. One regretted that the country

was being kept so much in the dark--the best is never got out of the

Anglo-Saxon race until it is in a tight place. A special edition of

the _Times_, issued on Sunday morning the 30th of August, which

contained a somewhat lurid account of the retreat by some hysterical

journalist, and which, it turned out, had been doctored by the head of

the Press Bureau, caused great anger in some quarters. But for my

part I rather welcomed it. Anything that would help to bring home to

the public what they were up against was to the good. Whoever first

made use of that pestilent phrase "business as usual," whether it was

a Cabinet Minister, or a Fleet Street scribe, or some gag-merchant on

the music-hall stage, had much to answer for.

The Topographical Section under Colonel Hedley did fine work during

those troubled days before the Battle of the Marne. It was in the

highest degree gratifying to find a branch, for which one found

oneself suddenly after a fashion responsible, to be capable of so

promptly and effectually meeting emergencies. The Expeditionary Force

had taken with it generous supplies of maps portraying the regions

adjacent to the Franco-Belgian frontier, where it proposed to operate;

a somewhat hasty retreat to a point right away back, south-east of

Paris, had formed no part of its programme. A day or two after the

first clash of arms near Mons, a wire arrived demanding the instant

despatch of maps of the country as far to the rear as the Seine and

the Marne. Now, as all units had to be supplied on a liberal scale,

this meant hundreds of copies of each of a considerable number of

different large-scale sheets, besides hundreds of copies of two or

three more general small-scale sheets; nevertheless, the consignment

was on its way before midnight. A day or two later G.H.Q. wired for

maps as far back as Orleans, a day or two later, again, for maps as

far as the mouth of the Loire, and yet a day or two later, for maps

down to Bordeaux--this last request representing thousands of sheets.

But on each occasion the demand was met within a few hours and without

the slightest hitch. It was a remarkable achievement--an achievement

attributable in part to military foresight dating back to the days

when Messrs. Asquith, Lloyd George, Churchill and Co., either

deliberately or else as a result of sheer ignorance and ineptitude,

were deceiving their countrymen as to the gravity of the German

menace, an achievement attributable also in part to military

administrative efficiency of a high order in a time of crisis. The

Topographical Section, it should be added, was able to afford highly

appreciated assistance to our French and Belgian allies in the matter

of supplying them with maps of their own countries.

During the first two or three weeks after fighting started, waifs and

strays who had been run over by the Boches, but who had picked

themselves up somehow and had fetched up at the coast, used to turn up

at the War Office and to find their way to my department. For some

reason or other they always presented themselves after dinner--like

the coffee. The first arrival was a young cavalry officer, knocked

off his horse in the preliminary encounters by what had evidently

been the detonation of a well-pitched-up high-explosive, and who was

still suffering from a touch of what we now know as shell-shock. He

proved to be the very embodiment of effective military training,

because, although he was to the last degree vague as to how he had got

back across the Channel and only seemed to know that he had had a bath

at the Cavalry Club, he was able to give most useful and detailed

information as to what he had noted after recovering consciousness

while making his way athwart the German trains and troops in reserve

as they poured along behind Von Kluck's troops in front line. One

observed the same thing in the case of another cavalry officer who

arrived some days later, after a prolonged succession of tramps by

night from the Sambre to Ostend. "You'll sleep well to-night," I

remarked when thanking him for the valuable information that he had

been able to impart--and of a sudden he looked ten years older. "I

couldn't sleep a wink last night at Ostend," he muttered in a

bewildered sort of way, "and I don't feel as if I'd ever sleep again."

We did not wear uniform in the War Office for the first month or so,

and one night about this time, on meeting a disreputable and

suspicious-looking character on the stairs, garbed in the vesture

affected by the foreign mechanic, I was debating whether to demand of

the interloper what he was doing within the sacred precincts, when he

abruptly accosted me with: "I say, d'you happen to know where in this

infernal rabbit-warren a blighter called the Something of Military

Operations hangs out?" His address indicated him to be a refugee

officer looking for my department.

These prodigals had such interesting experiences to recount that, in a

weak moment, I gave instructions for them to be brought direct to me,

and about 10 P.M. one night, when there happened to be a lot of

unfinished stuff to be disposed of before repairing homewards, a

tarnished-looking but otherwise smart and well-set-up private soldier

was let loose on me. A colloquy somewhat as follows ensued:

"What regiment?"

"The Rile Irish, sorr." (He said this as if there was no other

regiment--they always do.)

"Ah! Well, and how have you got along back here?"

"Sorr, it's the truth I'm tellin' ye, sorra ilse. Sure wasn't I

marchin' and fightin' and hidin' and craalin' for wakes and wakes"

(the Royal Irish could only have detrained at Le Cateau about ten days

before) "before I gits to that place as they calls Boulong--a gran'

place, sorr, wid quays and thruck like it was the North Waal--an' a

fellah takes me to the Commandant, sorr, where I seen a major-man wid

red tabs an' an eye like Polly-famous. 'Sorr,' sez I to him, sez I;

sez I, 'it's gittin' back to the rigimint I'd be afther,' sez I.

'Ye'll not,' sez he, 'divil a stir,' sez he; 'ye'll go to Lunnon,' sez

he. 'Will I?' sez I. 'Ye will,' sez he; 'take him down to the boat at

wanst, sergeant,' sez he, and the sergeant right turns me and marches

me out. 'Sergeant dear,' sez I, 'sure why can't I be gittin' back to

the rigimint?' sez I. 'Agh, t'hell out o' that,' sez he; 'sure didn't

ye hear what the major bin and said?' sez he, an' he gin me over to a

carpral--one on thim ogly Jocks, sorr--an' down we goes by the quays

to the boat--a gran' boat, sorr, wid ladies an' childer an' Frinch an'

Bilgians, an' all sorts, as minded me on the ould _Innisfallen_. D'y'

iver know the ould _Innisfallen_, sorr, as sails from Carrk to some

place as I misremember the name on, sorr?"

"Crossed over on her once from Cork to Milford."

"Ye did, yer honour--sorr, I mane? Glory be to God--to think o' that!

Well, sorr, I'd a sup of tay at one on thim shtahls, sorr, an' the

Jock gives me me papers an' puts me aboard, sorr. It's mostly onaisy

in me inside I am, sorr, on the say, but it was beautiful calm

an'----"

"Yes, yes; but look here--Where was it you left your regiment?"

"Is it me, sorr? Me lave me rigimint, sorr? Me wid three years' sarvis

an' sorra intry in my shate at all, only two, wan time I was dthronk

wid a cowld in me nose, sorr. Me lave me rigimint? It was the rigimint

lift me, sorr. As I tell ye just now, we'd bin marchin' an' fightin'

for wakes and wakes, an' it was tired I was, sorr, bate I was, an' we

was havin' a halt, sorr; an' I sez to Mick Shehan from Mallow, as is

in my platoon, 'Mick,' sez I. 'Tim,' sez he, wid his mouth full of

shkoff. 'Mick,' sez I, 'it's gwan to have a shlape, I am,' sez I, 'an'

ye'll wake me, Mick darlint, when the fall-in goes.' 'Begob an' why

wouldn't I, Tim,' sez he, 'so I ain't shlapin' mysilf?' sez he. 'Ye'll

no forgit, Mick,' sez I. 'Agh, shut yer mouth, why would I be the wan

to forgit?' sez he. But whin I wuk up, the divil a rigimint was there

at all, at all, only me, sorr; an' there was a lot of quare-lookin'

chaps as I sinsed by the look on thim was Jarmins. I was concealed by

a ditch,[1] an' settin' down by a bit o' whin, I was, sorr, or they

seen me for sure. 'Phwat'll I do at all?' sez I to mysilf, sez I,

an'--"

[Footnote 1: _Anglice_, bank.]

"Just stop a minute; where was all this?"

"Where was it? Why, in Fraance, sorr, where ilse would it be? Well,

sorr, as I was just startin' to tell ye, there was a lot of

quare-lookin' chaps as I sinsed by the look of thim was Jarmins,

an'----"

"Yes, but good Lord, man, what was the name of the place in France

where all this happened?"

"Place is it, sorr? Sure it wasn't any place at all, but one of thim

kind of places as the name on has shlipped me mimry, a bog,

sorr--leastways it wasn't a bog as ye'd rightly call a bog in

Oireland, sorr--no turf nor there wasn't no wather. I mind now, sorr!

It was what the chaps at the 'Shott calls a 'hathe,' sorr. There was

trees contagious, an' whins; sure wasn't I tellin' ye just now as I

was settin' down by a bit of whin, sorr----"

But it had been borne in on me that this had become a young man's job,

so I succeeded, not without some difficulty, in consigning the gallant

Royal Irishman--still pouring forth priceless intelligence

material--into the hands of a messenger to be taken to the officer on

duty. Manuals of instruction that deal with the subject of eliciting

military information in time of war impress upon you that the Oriental

always wants to tell you what he thinks you want him to tell you. But

the Irishman tells you what he wants to tell you himself, and it isn't

the least use trying to stop him.

The Intelligence Department being--directly at home and indirectly

abroad--under my control, I was much sought after in the early days,

was almost snowed under, indeed, with applications and recommendations

for the post of "Intelligence Officer." Bigwigs within the War Office

itself, when they were bothered on paper about people, simply passed

the note along as it stood with "D.M.O., can you do anything for this

creature?" or something of that sort, scribbled in blue pencil at the

top. One was treated as if one was a sort of unemployment bureau.

Qualifications for this particular class of post turned out to be of

the most varied kind. One young gentleman, who was declared to be a

veritable jewel, was described as a pianist, fitted out with

"technique almost equal to a professional." The leading characteristic

of another candidate appeared to be his liability to fits. Algy, "a

dear boy and _so_ good-looking," had spent a couple of months in Paris

after leaving Eton a year or two back. This sounds terribly like

petticoat influence; but resisting petticoat influence is, I can assure

you, child's play compared to resisting Parliamentary influence. For

good, straightforward, unblushing, shan't-take-no-for-an-answer

jobbery, give me the M.P. They are sublime in their hardihood.

My experience in these Whitehall purlieus during the war perhaps

provides some explanation of the theory, so sedulously hugged by the

community, that interest and influence are all-powerful inside the War

Office portals. To be invited to take a hand in obtaining jobs for

people about whom one knew nothing and cared less, in services with

which one had no connection, was a daily event. The procedure that was

followed in such cases was automatic and appropriate. A reply would be

dictated intimating that one would do what one could--a mere form of

words, needless to say, as one had not the slightest intention of

doing anything. And yet, as often as not, there would be a

disconcerting sequel. Profuse outpourings of gratitude in letter form

would come to hand, two or three weeks later: Jimmy had got his job,

entirely owing to one's efforts in his behalf: the memory of one's

services in this sacred cause would be carried to the grave: might

Jimmy call and express his feeling of obligation in person? One had

not the faintest recollection of what all the bother was about; but it

was easy to dictate another letter expressing one's gratification at

the recognition of Jimmy's merits and one's heartfelt regret that

owing to stress of work one would be unable to grant him an audience.

To hint that the appointment had presumably been made by the

responsible official, on the strength of an application received from

Jimmy in proper form, that there had been no wheels within wheels, and

that backstairs had never got beyond the first landing, would have

been disobliging.

Some applicants for "intelligence work" possessed, or gave out that

they possessed, the gift of tongues, and the provision of interpreters

was one of the many duties which had to be performed by the huge

agglomeration of branches over which I exercised--or was supposed to

exercise--sway. The subordinate charged with the provision had been

retrieved from the Reserve of Officers and business pursuits, but

retained the instincts of the soldier--a man with all his wits about

him, but who sometimes positively frightened one by his unconventional

procedure. One hardly likes to say such a thing of a man behind his

back, but I really would not have been surprised to hear that, because

he had been unable to concur in the views set out on it by other

branches, he had put one of those bloated War Office files, on which

one more or less automatically expresses dissent with the last minute

without reading the remainder, into the fire. He made up his mind in a

moment, which was irregular; and he generally made it up right, which

was unprecedented. Experts in many outlandish vernaculars had to be

found from the start, and he always managed to produce the article

required at the shortest notice. As a matter of fact, he had laid

hands upon a tame professor, whom he kept immured in a fastness

somewhere in the attics, and who was always prepared to vouch for the

proficiency of anybody in any language when required to do so.

The first Divisions of the "Old Contemptibles" to proceed to the

Continent were fitted out with interpreters by the French. But, for

some reason or other, a Division going out to the front some few weeks

later had not been prepared for, and so we suddenly found that we had

to furnish it with its linguists at this end. But the chief of the

subsection responsible for finding them proved fully equal to the

occasion. "How many d'you want, sir?" he demanded. I intimated that

the authorized establishment was about seventy, but that if we could

find fifty under the circumstances we should have done very well.

"I'll have them ready early to-morrow, sir," he remarked, as if it

was the most ordinary thing in the world--and he did. For, next

morning the passages in the immediate vicinity of the room which he

graced with his presence were congested with swarms of individuals,

arrayed in the newest of new uniforms and resplendent in the lightest

of light brown belts and gaiters, who were bundled off unceremoniously

to regiments and batteries and staffs on the eve of departure for the

seat of war. It is quite true that some generals and colonels in this

Division wrote from France to complain that their interpreters did not

know French, or if they did know French, did not know English. Still,

nobody takes that sort of croaking seriously. In a grumbling match the

British officer can keep his end up against the British soldier any

day.

An excellent innovation at the War Office synchronizing with

mobilization was the introduction of a large number of boy scouts

within its gates. They proved most reliable and useful, and did the

utmost credit to the fine institution for which we have to thank Sir

Robert Baden-Powell. A day or two after joining I wanted to make the

acquaintance of a colonel, who I found was under me in charge of a

branch--a new hand like myself, but whose apartment nobody in the

place could indicate. A War Office messenger despatched to find him

came back empty-handed. Another War Office messenger sent on the same

errand on the morrow proved no more successful. On the third day I

summoned a boy scout into my presence--a very small one--and commanded

him to find that colonel and not to come back without him. In about

ten minutes' time the door of my room was flung open, and in walked

the scout, followed by one of the biggest sort of colonels. "I did not

know what I had done or where I was being taken," remarked the

colonel, "but the boy made it quite clear that he wasn't going to have

any nonsense; so I thought it best to come quietly."

At a much later stage, one of these youngsters was especially told off

to a branch which I then controlled--an extraordinary boy, who

impressed one all the more owing to his looking considerably younger

than he really was. I seldom found anything that he did not know, and

never found anything that he could not do. This Admirable Crichton was

spangled all over well-earned badges, indicating his accomplishments.

We really might have gone off, the whole lot of us, masterful staff

officer, dainty registration clerks, highly efficient stenographer,

etc., and had a good time; he would have run the show perfectly well

without us--a Hirst, a Jimmy Wilde, a "Tetrarch," as he was amongst

scouts.

The plan that the lads adopted for making things uncomfortable for

troublesome people paid eloquent testimony to that fertility of

resource which it is one of the objects of the scout movement to

develop in its members. One of the greatest worries to which War

Office officials were exposed during these anxious times was a bent on

the part of individuals, whom they had not the slightest wish to see,

for demanding--and obtaining--interviews. The scouts tumbled to this

(if one may use so vulgar an expression) almost from the first day,

and they acted with rare judgement and determination. They chose

_lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate_ for their motto, and adopted

the method of herding the intruders into an unattractive apartment on

the ground floor, as tube attendants herd subterranean travellers into

the lifts, and of keeping the intruders there until they verged on a

condition of mutiny. They then enlarged them in big parties, each of

which was taken control of by a scout, who led his charges round and

round and in and out along the corridors, and up and down between

floors, carefully avoiding the elevators, until the victims were in a

state of physical and mental collapse. If one of the party quitted the

ranks while on the trek, to read the name marked up on some door that

he was passing, the scout called a halt and withered the culprit with

a scowl--it would never have done to permit that sort of thing,

because the visitor might conceivably have noticed the name of the

very official whom he had come to see. Anybody who came again after

undergoing this experience once, probably had just cause for demanding

an interview; but one bout of it satisfied most people. It may be

suggested that the scouts were acting under instructions from Sir

Reginald Brade, Secretary and Grand Master of the Ceremonies, in this

matter. But, if asked, he will own up and admit that in the pressure

of his duties he overlooked the point, and that the entire credit

belongs to the boys.

Still, perambulation of those furlongs of corridor in the big building

in Whitehall might have offered points of interest to a visitor not

too exhausted to take notice. By one window was usually to be seen a

posse of parsons, of furtive aspect, each nervously twiddling a lissom

hat, a love-your-neighbour-as-yourself look frozen on their

countenances, and not by any means conveying for the time being an

impression of the church militant: they were candidates for the post

of army chaplain, and were about to be inspected by the genial prelate

who presided over the department responsible for the spiritual welfare

of the troops. A day or two later might be seen in the same place some

of these very candidates, decked out in khaki raiment, hung about with

contrivances into which combatant comrades introduce implements for

slaying their fellow-men, erect, martial, terrifying, the very

embodiment of the church triumphant, having been accepted for the job

and awaiting orders--and no men have done finer service in the Great

Adventure.

At another point one encountered a very well-known cricketer, who was

doling out commissions. How he did it one had no time to ask. But one

strongly suspected that, if one of the young gentlemen whom he took in

hand had been in a school eleven or even house eleven (or said he

had), crooked ways somehow became straight.

Just outside my own door an attractive-looking civilian had devised a

sort of wigwam within which he took cover--one of those arrangements

with screens which second lieutenants prepare when there is a

regimental dance, and which they designate, until called to order, as

"hugging booths." There he was to be seen at any hour of the day in

close communion with a fascinating lady, heads close together,

murmuring confidences, an idyll in a vestibule--or rather a succession

of idylls, because there was a succession of ladies, all of them

different except in that all of them were charming. After two or three

months he disappeared, and only then did it occur to me to ask what

these intimate transactions were on which he had been engaged. It

transpired that he was acting vicariously on my behalf, that he was

selecting a staff for censorship duties or some such dull occupation,

in my place. If good looks were a qualification for such employment,

that civilian must have been troubled with an _embarras de richesses_.

Amongst the many privileges and responsibilities which my position in

the early months of the war thrust upon me was that of finding myself

in more or less official relations with the Eminent K.C. and with the

Self-Appointed Spy-Catcher. One may have had the good fortune in

pre-war times to meet the former, when disguised as a mere human

being--on the links, say, or at the dinner table. The latter, one came

into contact with for the first time.

The average soldier seldom finds himself associated with the Eminent

K.C. on parade, so to speak, in the piping times of peace. When

performing, and on the war-path as you might say, this successful limb

of the law is a portentous personage. Persuasive, masterful,

clean-shaven, he fixes you with his eye as the boa-constrictor

fascinates the rabbit. Pontifically, compassionately, almost

affectionately indeed, he makes it plain to you what an ass you in

reality are, and he looks so wise the while that you are hardly able

to bear it. He handles his arguments with such petrifying precision,

he marshals his facts so mercilessly, he becomes so elusive when you

approach the real point, and he grows so bewildering if he detects the

slightest symptoms of your having discovered what he is driving at,

that he will transform an elementary military question, which you in

your folly have presumed to think that you understand, into a problem

which a very Moltke would ignominiously fail to elucidate.

Contact with the Eminent K.C. under such conditions makes you realize

to the full what an inestimable boon lawyers confer upon their

fellow-citizens when they sink all personal ambition and flock into

the House of Commons for their country's good. It makes you rejoice in

that time-honoured arrangement under which the Lord Chancellorship is

the reward and recognition, not of mastery of the principles and

practice of jurisprudence, but of parliamentary services to a

political faction. It convinces you that the importance of judges and

barristers having holidays of a length to make the public-school-boy's

mouth water, immeasurably exceeds the importance of litigation being

conducted with reasonable despatch. It accounts for the dexterity

invariably displayed by Parliament when new enactments are placed on

the Statute-Book, for the simplicity of the language in which they are

couched, and for that minimum of employment to the legal profession to

which these specimens of masterly legislation subsequently give rise.

The Eminent K.C. is, by the way, reputed to be a somewhat expensive

luxury when you avail yourself of his services in your civil capacity,

but he must be well worth it. A man who can be so mystifying when he

proposes to be lucid must prove a priceless asset to his client when

he undertakes the task of bamboozling a dozen unhappy countrymen

penned in a box. It is hard to picture to yourself this impressive

figure giggling sycophantically at the pleasantries of a humorous

judge. But he must have conformed to convention in this matter in the

past, for how otherwise could he now be an Eminent K.C.?

During many months of acute national emergency, while the war was

settling into its groove, there was no more zealous, no more

persevering, and no more ineffectual subject of the King than the

Self-Appointed Spy-Catcher. You never know what ferocity means until

you have been approached by a titled lady who has persuaded herself

that she is on the track of a German spy. We Britons are given to

boasting of our grit in adversity and of our inability to realize when

we are beaten. In no class of the community were these national traits

more conspicuous in the early days of the war than in the ranks of the

amateur spy-catching fraternity and sisterhood--for the amateur

spy-catcher never caught a spy. Only after months of disappointment

and failure did these self-appointed protectors of their country begin

to abandon a task which they had taken up with enthusiastic fervour,

and which they had prosecuted with unfaltering resolution. Although it

was at the hands of the despised professional that enemy agents were

again and again brought to face the firing party in the Tower ditch,

the amateurs entertained, and perhaps still entertain, a profound

contempt for the official method. One fair member of the body, indeed,

so far forgot herself as to write in a fit of exasperation to say that

we must--the whole boiling of us--be in league with the enemy, and

that we ought to be "intered."

They were in their element when, after the fall of Maubeuge, it

transpired that the Germans had gun-platforms in certain factories

situated within range of the forts, that they had established ready

prepared for action should they be required. Anybody with an asphalt

lawn-tennis court then became suspect. A very bad case was reported

from the Chilterns, just the very sort of locality where Boches

contemplating invasion of the United Kingdom would naturally propose

to set up guns of big calibre. A building with a concrete base--many

buildings do have concrete bases nowadays--near Hampstead was the

cause of much excitement. When the unemotional official, sent to view

the place, suggested that the extremely solid structure overhead would

be rather in the way supposing that one proposed to emplace a gun, or

guns, on the concrete base, it was urged that there was a flat roof

and that ordnance mounted on it would dominate the metropolis. There

was a flat roof all right, but it turned out to be of glass.

A number of most worthy people were much concerned over the subject of

certain disused coal-mines in Kent, where, they had persuaded

themselves, the enemy had stored quantities of war material. What

precisely was the nature of the war material they did not

know--aircraft as like as not, the aviator finds the bottom of a

mine-shaft an ideal place to keep his machine. These catacombs were

duly inspected by an expert, but he could find nothing. The worthy

people thereupon declared that the penetralia had not been properly

examined and desired permission to carry out a searching inspection

themselves. They were, if I remember aright, told they might go down

the mines or might go to the devil (or words to that effect) for all

we cared. Had one not been so busy one could have got a good deal of

fun out of the Self-Appointed Spy-Catcher.

The Military Operations Directorate had nothing to do with the

formation and organization of the New Armies, but one heard a good

deal about their birth and infancy. Apart from the question of their

personal equipment, in regard to which the Quartermaster-General's

Department (with Lord Kitchener at its back and urging it forward)

performed such wonders, the most troublesome question in connection

with their creation in the early stages was the provision of officers;

the men were procured almost too fast. This became the business of the

Military Secretary's Department. The M.S. Department holds tenaciously

to the dogma that maladministration is the child of precipitancy and

that deliberation stamps official procedure with the hall-mark of

respectability. In later stages of the war one never was gazetted to

an appointment until after one had passed on to the next one. But a

gunner "dug-out," Colonel "Bill" Elliot, had been roped into the

Department on mobilization, having been similarly roped in during the

South African War, and by good luck the question of officers for the

New Armies was turned over to him.

A believer in the theory that the King's service has to be carried on

even in spite of regulations, he worked on lines of his own, and he

altered those lines when the occasion called for it. He was a

"mandarin," of course--everybody in a Government office is. He was to

some extent enmeshed in "red tape"--every step taken in a Government

office, from sending a note in acknowledgement of a written

communication, to losing a State paper at a moment when the safety of

the country depends upon its being available for reference, comes

within the category of "red tape." But he did get things done somehow,

thanks to some extent to his pronounced and never-failing sense of

humour. When one felt worried, weary, worn out, one only had to sit

opposite to him at lunch at the club and to listen to some of his

tales of manufacturing New Army officers, to be oneself again; it was

like a trip to Margate. Fortunately he either was given, or gave

himself, a free hand, and his quota was not the least considerable of

the many quotas from various quarters that contributed towards winning

the war.

As keeper of the Secretary of State's conscience when he has one, the

Military Secretary is bound to take himself very seriously indeed.

There is always something dignified and impressive about slow motion,

and his branch during the Great War was compelled to take up a firm

attitude in exacting the respect that was its due; "Bill," with his

eminently successful, but none the less abnormal and even lawless,

methods at times hardly seemed in the picture. It may be mentioned

that in spite of precautions the branch on at least one occasion met

with a deplorable affront. An officer, who had been secured by

tumultuary process during the early efforts to expand the land forces,

proved to be a disappointment and had to be invited to convert his

sword into a ploughshare. His reply is understood to have read

somewhat as follows:

Sir--I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of ----

directing me to resign my commission. I will see you damned

first.--Yours,

----.

New Army officers were so unconventional.

Lord Roberts often came to see me in those anxious early days at the

War Office, ever sympathetic, ever encouraging, ever confident. It had

not been my privilege while on the active list to be brought into

contact with him, except once, many years ago, when a young subaltern

at Kabul. But one day, it must have been in 1911, he sent me a message

asking me to call and see him at the Athenaeum. On my presenting

myself, and on our repairing to the little room by the door where

members of that exclusive establishment interviewed outsiders, he made

a somewhat unexpected proposal. A gentleman of progressive views

hailing from the Far East, called Sun Yat-sen,--one had seen his name

in the newspapers and had got the impression that he was a

revolutionary, out for trouble--was in England in search of arms, and

he required a commander-in-chief for the forces which he proposed to

raise for the purpose of bringing the Celestial Empire up to date.[2]

The Field-Marshal wanted me to take on the job. But the project

somehow did not appeal to me--people do say that the Chinese have

old-fashioned ways when they come to deal with persons whose conduct

they are unable to approve--and I no doubt cut but a poor figure when

manifesting no disposition to jump at the chance. "If I were only

forty years younger," exclaimed Lord Roberts, "I would go myself! Why,

you might be Emperor of China before you knew where you were!" But

even the prospect of a seat on the Peacock Throne failed to charm,

although I had an interview with Sun Yat-sen (who looked as if butter

would not melt in his mouth) at the Savoy Hotel; benefactors of the

human race coming from foreign parts always put up at that hostelry,

comfortable quarters are understood to be procurable. One could not,

however, but be impressed with the amazing vitality of the aged

Field-Marshal then, as also a year or two later when he used to come

to make enquiries concerning the progress of events in France.

[Footnote 2: He brought his revolution off all

right and was for a time President of the Southern

China Republic.]

He followed the movements of the contending armies closely, and he

always carried the details of the map and of the British order of

battle in his head, just as if he were a smart young staff-captain. At

critical junctures he used to call me up, between 9 P.M. and 10 P.M.,

from his house at Ascot on the telephone, eager for news. The last

time that I saw him was when he came to ask me to tell off some one

from my staff to accompany him to the front on the occasion of the

visit which in some respects ended so tragically, but which enabled

the great soldier to go to his rest within sound of the guns and

surrounded by the troops whom he had loved so well.

It was mentioned in the preceding chapter that the Military Operations

Directorate found little to do in connection with "operations"

question concerning the Western Front just at first, because the

concentration of the Expeditionary Force in the war zone was carried

out automatically and in accordance with plans worked out in advance.

Indeed almost the first time that such a question arose in at all

aggravated form was when the Antwerp affair got going. That was a

queer business altogether, and it seems necessary briefly to deal with

what most military men regard as an unfortunate transaction.

In so far as the Belgian forces as part of the Entente hosts in this

theatre of war were concerned, the strategical situation after the

great retreat appeared to demand imperatively that these must above

all things avoid, firstly, any risk of becoming cut off from their

French and British allies, and, secondly, the danger of finding

themselves trapped in the entrenched camp of Antwerp or of being

hustled up against the Dutch frontier on their way out of the

entrenched camp. The Belgian military authorities, as far as one could

make out at the time, appreciated the situation quite correctly--they

wished to abandon Antwerp, at all events with their field troops.

Problems such as those responsible on the Entente side were at this

time faced with, undoubtedly admit of difference of opinion; but most

soldiers will surely agree that the Belgian leaders deserve great

credit for not allowing themselves to be hypnotized by that huge place

of arms which General Brialmont had designed some forty years before,

and upon which vast sums of money had been laid out then and since. It

has to be remembered in this connection that the famous engineer had

always contemplated the retirement of his country's armies into the

stronghold, more or less as a matter of course, in case of invasion,

and that this had virtually been the military policy of Belgium up

till quite recently. Lord French has referred in "_1914_" to the

"terrible temptation" which Maubeuge offered to him at the time of the

retreat from Mons. If Maubeuge suggested itself as an asylum for the

hard-pressed Expeditionary Force, Antwerp would assuredly suggest

itself still more strongly as an asylum for King Albert's field army,

confronted as it was by an overwhelming hostile array and not in

direct contact with the troops under Joffre and Sir J. French.

It was then that those who were directing the British operations as a

whole suddenly intervened and induced the Belgians to alter their

plan. The very recently improvised Naval Division was set in motion

for Antwerp. Mr. Churchill, a bolt from the blue, appeared in the

city. And, instead of King Albert's forces getting clear in good time

and moving off, practically unmolested, to join the Anglo-French host

in Western Flanders, they only escaped by the skin of their teeth

after being roughly handled, and the all-important junction was

delayed so long that a most critical situation arose. Moreover, the

Seventh Division and a Cavalry Division were packed off in a hurry

from this country to help the Belgians out of a mess which they would

not have got into had they been left alone, instead of being sent to

join the Expeditionary Force where they were badly wanted. That is how

I read the proceedings at the time, and how I read them still.

War Office procedure did not at that stage conform to the methods

which had held good previous to mobilization, and which had been

devised to hold good in time of war; something further will be said on

the subject in a later chapter. The Director of Military Operations

did not on this particular occasion hear about the Seventh Division

and the cavalry being diverted to the Belgian coast until after

instructions for the move had been issued and the troops were

preparing to proceed to the port of embarkation. How far my chief, Sir

C. Douglas, concurred in this disposition of our limited available

fighting forces, how far he was consulted and what part he performed

in giving the orders, I do not know. I have no recollection of ever

discussing the matter with him. But there was a circumstance in

connection with the transaction which does suggest that the C.I.G.S.

did not play a very prominent rôle in the business.

Some time after I had learnt what was going forward--it was next day,

I think--the idea occurred to me to find out what steps had been, or

were being, taken to provide the necessary organization for a base and

line of communications for this force which was about to be projected

suddenly across the narrow seas. Enquiries elicited the startling

information that nothing whatever had been done in the matter; some of

those most concerned in such questions in Whitehall had not even heard

that the force was preparing to start. The problem, such as it was,

was promptly solved as soon as it was grappled with. The Directors

dealing with such subjects met in my room, and in a few minutes the

requisite staff had been selected, arrangements had been decided upon,

and orders had been despatched--it was as easy as falling downstairs

once machinery had been set in motion. But how came it that this had

not been thought of before? Now, I can quite understand Sir C. Douglas

holding that this particular phase of the Antwerp project, sending

Generals Capper and Byng with their divisions to sustain the Belgians

and the Naval Division by a landing at Zeebrugge, was a sound one from

the strategical point of view--such questions are necessarily

questions of opinion. But I cannot understand a master of military

administration such as he was, a soldier equipped with exceptional

knowledge of organization and with wide experience of the requirements

of a British army in the field, sending a considerable body of troops

off oversea to a theatre of operations, where fighting might be

expected almost as soon as they landed, without making provision for

their base and communications.

Actually, what turned out to be a tragic episode was not without some

little comic relief. There was consternation in Whitehall one evening,

just before the dinner-hour, when tidings arrived that a couple of the

transports conveying this force to its destination had passed the

rendezvous where the convoy was mustering, and were at large, heading

without escort or orders for a water-area known to be mined by both

sides, and where enemy destroyers and similar pests were apt to make

their appearance unexpectedly. Fortunately the panic was of short

duration. On returning to the office after dinner one learnt that the

straying vessels had both fetched up on the Goodwins--luckily about

low water--and were under control again.

In any criticism of H.M. Government's action in connection with the

Antwerp affair (as regards the prosecution of the war in the field,

H.M. Government for all practical purposes then meant Mr. Asquith,

Lord Kitchener, and Mr. Churchill) it must be allowed that the

situation at the time was a most complicated and perplexing one. Lord

French in his book makes it clear that, while he objected strongly to

the Seventh Division and the Third Cavalry Division being sent to the

Belgian coast under the independent command of Sir H. Rawlinson

instead of their being sent to Boulogne and placed under his own

orders, he did not wish Antwerp to be abandoned. Lord Kitchener had,

as a matter of fact, seized upon Antwerp as a means of inducing

reluctant colleagues to assent to the United Kingdom being denuded of

these regular troops and their being hurried to the theatre of war.

Knowing what we know now, it seems almost certain that, no matter

where the fresh troops from England turned up or whose orders they

were under, the Belgian army and the Naval Division would have been

lost for good and all had they not cleared out of the fortress when

they did. The verdict of history will probably be that both H.M.

Government and the commander of the British Expeditionary Force

misread the situation, that H.M. Government's misreading was very much

the graver of the two, that there was excuse for such misreadings when

the inevitable fog of war is taken into consideration, and that the

Germans threw away their chances and bungled the business worst of

all.

A few days after Antwerp had fallen, and a week or so before that

tremendous conflict which has come to be known as the First Battle of

Ypres was fairly launched, Sir C. Douglas, who for a long time past

had not been in the best of health and upon whom the strain had been

telling severely during the previous two and a half months, did not

make his appearance at the office one morning. He had struggled on

with splendid grit and determination almost to the very end, for he

died within a few days, a victim of devotion to duty and of overwork.

His place was taken by Sir J. Wolfe-Murray.

CHAPTER III

LORD KITCHENER'S START

A first meeting with Lord Kitchener -- Sent up to see him in

Pretoria by his brother under unpromising conditions -- The

interview -- The Chief's pleasant reception -- A story of Lord K.

from the Sudan -- An unpleasant interview with him in August 1914

-- Rare meetings with him during the first two or three months --

His ignorance of War Office organization -- His lack of

acquaintance with many matters in connection with the existing

organization of the army -- His indisposition to listen to advice

on such subjects -- Lord K. shy of strangers -- His treatment of

the Territorial Forces -- Their weak point at the outset of

hostilities, not having the necessary strength to mobilize at war

establishment -- Effect of this on the general plans -- The way

the Territorials dwindled after taking the field -- Lord K.

inclined at first to pile up divisions without providing them

with the requisite reservoirs of reserves -- His feat in

organizing four regular divisions in addition to those in the

Expeditionary Force -- His immediate recognition of the magnitude

of the contest -- He makes things hum in the War Office -- His

differences of opinion with G.H.Q. -- The inability of G.H.Q. to

realize that a vast expansion of the military forces was the

matter of primary importance -- Lord K.'s relations with Sir J.

French -- The despatch of Sir H. Smith-Dorrien to command the

Second Corps -- Sir J. French not well treated at the time of the

Antwerp affair -- The relegation of the General Staff at the War

Office to the background in the early days -- Question whether

this was entirely due to its having suffered in efficiency by the

withdrawals which took place on mobilization -- The General Staff

only eliminated in respect to operations.

My first meeting with Lord Kitchener had taken place under conditions

that augured no agreeable experience. It was in March or April 1901.

At that time I had charge of a heterogeneous collection of guns in a

body of troops operating in the Eastern Transvaal and commanded by

General Walter Kitchener, the Chief's brother, and was also used by

him as a sort of second-in-command to take charge of portions of the

force when detached from time to time. Our commando had trekked out

from Belfast and had camped in a likely spot, and on the morrow he

took out part of the force in one direction and sent me off with part

of the force in another direction, while the remainder stayed in camp

guarding the impedimenta. I tumbled across a few snipers, and we

enjoyed a harmless scrap; but Walter butted into a whole lot of

truculent burghers. These were being reinforced and were full of

fight, so he decided to retire, and also to retire the camp; but the

message directing me to conform unfortunately went astray. The result

was that before long I found myself covering the retirement of the

whole gang, and being rather harried to boot--one of those _reculer

pour mieux sauter_ sort of movements where it is all _reculer_ and no

_sauter_. The casualties were, however, small, and we lost nothing

worth bothering about; but Walter took his big brother very seriously

indeed, was much concerned as to how the Chief might regard an

operation which we could not possibly represent as a success, and,

after much cogitation, packed me off to Pretoria to report in person.

He gave me elaborate directions as to how best to approach the subject

when in the presence. "No, don't put it that way, tell it him like

this"--"He'll damn me and you, but whatever you do, don't make

excuses," and so forth. One had read Steevens' appreciation of the

then Sirdar in his _With Kitchener to Khartum_, and had gathered from

newspapers (the worst possible source of information about the

character and the idiosyncrasies of persons of note) that this

commander-in-chief of ours was a cold, exacting, unsympathetic figure,

much more given to jumping down your throat than to patting you on the

back. The consequence was that when, having fetched up in Pretoria

after some adventures, I was wending my way to Lord K.'s headquarters

I felt very much as one does when repairing to the dentist. It was

worse, indeed, than going to the dentist, because when I got there

Colonel Hubert Hamilton, the Military Secretary (who was killed when

in command of the Third Division soon after it reached the Lys from

the Aisne in October 1914), greeted me with "Very sorry, but the

Chief's awfully busy to-day. Roll up about this time to-morrow, will

you, like a good chap?" It was the same story again on the next

day--the Chief up to the neck in correspondence. But on presenting

myself on the third day, Hamilton promptly ushered me into the great

man's study, where he was sitting at his desk.

"What d'you want?" demanded Lord K. I began explaining about our

little affair near Belfast; but he cut me short with "Oh, I don't want

to hear about all that. Had any trouble getting here?" Yes, the train

in front of mine had been blown up, and----"They'll bag you on the way

back," interrupted the Chief cheerily, "so I'd better get what I can

out of you now; my brother writes that you've been about a good deal

on the east side, and I'm going to take that in hand very shortly.

Come along over here." We went across to where there was a huge great

map of the Eastern Transvaal, with the positions of the posts and

columns, etc., marked on it, and for twenty minutes or so I found

myself enjoying the pleasantest interview with a much senior officer

than I had ever had in my life. He listened to my exposition of how it

seemed best to round up the enemy commandos, where sedentary forces

ought to be dumped down to act as stops, and what lines the mobile

columns ought to operate along. Lord K. occasionally interjected a

question or criticism as to some particular point, but seemed not in

the least displeased when I stuck to my own view. When he dismissed me

he spoke in a particularly friendly way, and my experience of him on

this occasion was nothing short of a revelation.

"Had a satisfactory talk?" asked Hamilton when I came out, and, on my

saying how nice the Chief had been, he remarked, "He's in one of his

good moods to-day, but you mightn't always find him quite so tame.

He's been down to the Old Colony and back these last two days, and

found things moving--that's why he could not see you before. But he

always keeps his movements very close, so you mustn't let it go any

further."

Walter Kitchener, not unnaturally, entertained unbounded admiration

for, and belief in, his brother, and he often told me tales from

Egyptian days of things that the Sirdar then did and of the resource

he would display in unexpected emergencies. One of these yarns about

the great War Minister at a stage of his career when he was still

mounting the ladder of success deserves to be repeated here.[3] It

happened one day, during the operations for the recovery of the Sudan

from the Mahdi-ists, that "K." was riding forward with his staff,

there being no troops nor transport actually on the move, he mounted

on his camel, the rest on horses and ponies. By the wayside they came

upon a heap of rolls of telegraph-wire lying near the track, which

some unit had apparently abandoned as lumber or else had been unable

to carry. "We can't leave that stuff behind," said the Sirdar to the

staff; "bring it along." Two or three of them dismounted to see what

could be done, but there was no gear available for lashing and the

rolls were heavy. A little party of the small donkeys of the country

was, however, being driven along by a native lad and came on the scene

just at this juncture. "Hurry up. Put the wire on those donkeys. I

don't want to sit here all day," commanded the Sirdar impatiently. The

donkeys had no saddles nor equipment of any kind except rope halters

of sorts, and the officers sampled various devices, without success,

for placing the goods on the donkeys' backs and keeping them there.

They experimented with balancing a roll on the back of one, but it

promptly fell off again. They tied two rolls together and slung them

across the back of another, pannier fashion; but the little beast gave

a kick and a wriggle and deposited the load on the ground. Various

dodges were tried, perspiration poured off the faces of the officers,

they were covered with dust, their language grew stronger and

stronger, and at last, feeling themselves entirely nonplussed, one of

them, looking up at their chief as he sat on his camel with a sardonic

smile on his face, observed deprecatingly, "I'm afraid we really can't

manage it, sir."

[Footnote 3: While this volume has been in the

press Sir G. Arthur's _Life of Lord Kitchener_ has

appeared, giving a different version of this story

and probably the correct one. Walter Kitchener was

speaking, I think, from hearsay.]

"Can't manage it, can't you!" ejaculated the Sirdar; "here, let me

come." He made his camel kneel, and dismounted, stalked over to one of

the donkeys, gripped the animal by the nose, backed it till its hind

feet were inside one of the rolls, turned the roll up over the

donkey's back from behind, gave the beast a smack on the rump, and

after one or two wriggles and kicks, the creature was trotting along,

adorned with a loosely fitting girdle of telegraph-wire round its

waist which it could not get rid of. The same plan was promptly

adopted with the other donkeys. And in a few minutes the party were

riding along again, with the donkeys, carrying the whole of the

abandoned wire, in close attendance.

That Lord Kitchener would cut up rough at times when things went

wrong, as Hubert Hamilton had hinted at Pretoria, was brought home to

me convincingly on the occasion of my first interview with him at the

War Office after that visit to the Admiralty which is mentioned in

Chapter I. General Hanbury Williams had been earmarked in advance for

British Military Commissioner at Russian Headquarters, and he dashed

off in a great hurry to take up the appointment on mobilization. I

believe that he looked in to see me before starting, but I was not in

my room at the moment; I am not sure, indeed, that I knew that he was

going until after he had started. A few days later the Chief, when

wanting to wire to his representative with the Tsar's armies,

discovered that he had gone off without a cipher. It was possible, of

course, to communicate through the Foreign Office and our embassy at

St. Petersburg (as the capital was still called); but Lord K.

naturally desired means of direct communication. He was extremely

angry about it, and he gave me a most disagreeable five minutes.

Although all this cipher business was under charge of one of my

branches, the contretemps was due to no neglect on my own part. Nor

was it the fault of the subordinate who actually handled the ciphers,

because he did not even know that Hanbury Williams had gone until the

row occurred. The mishap had resulted from our Military Commissioner

making his exit at the very moment when new hands were taking up their

duties and had not yet got the hang of these. But one guessed that

explanations would not be received sympathetically by the Secretary of

State, and that it would be wisest to take the rebuke "lying down"; he

expected things to be done right, and that was all about it. Still, it

was not an altogether encouraging start. Indeed I scarcely ever saw

Lord K. during the first two or three months, and when I did, it was

generally because some little matter had gone wrong in connection with

the Secret Service or the Press, or owing to one of the Amateur

Spy-Catchers starting some preposterous hare, or because he needed

information as to some point of little importance. The fact is

that--to put the matter quite bluntly--when he took up his burden the

Chief did not know what the duties of his subordinates were supposed

to be, and he took little trouble to find out. One day he sent for me

and directed me to carry out a certain measure in connection with a

subject that was not my business at all, and I was so ill-advised as

to say, "It's a matter for the Adjutant-General's Department, sir, but

I'll let them know about it." "I told you to do it yourself," snapped

the Chief in a very peremptory tone. Under the circumstances, one

could only go to the man concerned in the A.G. Department, explain

matters, and beg him for goodness sake to wrestle with the problem and

carry out what was wanted.

What, however, was still more unfortunate than Lord K.'s lack of

acquaintance with the distribution of work within the Office was that

he was by no means familiar with many very essential details of our

existing military organization. That is not an unusual state of

affairs when a new Secretary of State is let loose in the War Office.

But a new Secretary of State as a rule has the time, and is willing,

to study questions of organization and policy closely before embarking

on fresh projects. Lord Kitchener, however, arrived with certain

preconceived ideas and cramped by defective knowledge of the army

system. He had scarcely served at home since he had left Chatham as a

young subaltern of the Royal Engineers. In Egypt, in India, even to a

great extent in South Africa, the troops coming from the United

Kingdom with which he had been brought into contact had been regulars.

He had never had anything to say to the provision of British military

personnel at its source. For the three years previous to the outbreak

of the Great War he had been holding a civil appointment afar off, and

had necessarily been out of touch with contemporary military thought.

There must have been many matters in connection with the organization

of His Majesty's land forces, thoroughly known to pretty well every

staff-officer in the War Office, of which the incoming Secretary of

State was entirely unaware. The British division of all arms of 1914

represented a far larger force than the British divisions of all arms

had represented with which he had had to do in the days of Paardeberg

and Diamond Hill. The expressions "Special Reserve" and "Territorial

Forces" did not, I believe, when he arrived, convey any very clear

meaning to him. He was not, in fact, in all respects fully equipped

for his task.

With many, indeed with most, men similarly placed this might not have

greatly mattered. There were plenty of officers of wide experience in

Whitehall who could have posted him up fully in regard to points not

within his knowledge. But Lord Kitchener had for many years previously

always been absolute master in his own house, with neither the need

nor the desire to lean upon others. Like many men of strong will and

commanding ability, he was a centralizer by instinct and in practice.

He took over the position of War Minister with very clearly defined

conceptions of what must be done to expand the exiguous fighting

forces of his country in face of the tremendous emergency with which

it stood suddenly confronted. He was little disposed to modify the

plans which he had formed for compassing that end, when subordinates

pointed out that these clashed with arrangements that were already in

full working order, or that they ignored the existence of formations

which only stood in need of nursing and of consolidation to render

them really valuable assets within a short space of time for the

purpose of prosecuting war. The masterful personality and

self-confidence to which the phenomenal success that attended his

creation of the wonderful New Armies was so largely due, was in some

respects a handicap to him in the early days of his stewardship.

My impression of him--an impression unduly influenced perhaps by

personal experiences--was that he was shy of strangers or comparative

strangers. He did not give his confidence readily to subordinates with

whom he found himself associated for the first time. He would not

brook remonstrance, still less contradiction, from a man whom he did

not know. It was largely due to this, as it seemed to me, that he was

rather out of hand, so to speak, during the critical opening months.

It was during those opening months that he performed the greatest

services to the people of this land, that he introduced the measures

which won us the war. But it was also during those opening months,

when he was disinclined to listen to advice, that he made his worst

mistakes.

I do not believe that there was one single military authority of any

standing within the War Office, except himself, who would not have

preferred that the cream of the personnel, men who had served in the

regulars, who flocked into the ranks in response to his trumpet call

to the nation, should have been devoted in the first instance to

filling the yawning gaps that existed in the Territorial Forces, and

to providing those forces with trained reservists to fill war wastage.

Such a disposition of this very valuable material seemed preferable to

absorbing it at the outset in brand-new formations, which in any case

would be unable to take the field for many months to come. Parliament

would have readily consented to any alteration in the statutes

governing the Territorial Forces which might have been necessary. Lord

K.'s actions in this question to some extent antagonized the military

side of the War Office just at first: we were thinking of the early

future: he, as was his wont, was looking far ahead. My work was nowise

concerned with the provision of troops in any form, and in later days,

when I was often with the Chief, I never remember discussing the

Territorials with him. But it is conceivable that he became somewhat

prejudiced against this category of the land forces at the start on

finding that they were unable to perform the very duty for which they

were supposed to exist--that of home defence. Something may,

therefore, perhaps be said here on this point.

Mobilization means producing the force concerned, at its full war

establishment and composed of officers and men who at least have some

pretence to military training. It is, moreover, supposed to be

completed at very short notice. Owing to their being territorial and

to officers and other ranks living in their territorial districts, the

Territorial Forces ought to have been mobilized more rapidly by some

hours than the Expeditionary Force, and I believe that, in so far as

collecting what personnel there was available is concerned, the

Territorial Forces beat the Expeditionary Force. But the ranks of the

Territorials had never filled in pre-war days, and there were

practically no organized reserves. The war establishment was roughly

315,000 of all ranks; but at the beginning of August the strength was

only about 270,000, and this, be it remembered, included a proportion

of totally untrained individuals, as well as sick, absentees, and so

forth. To have mobilized these troops properly, the number of officers

and men on the books at the start and before the order came ought to

have amounted to at least 350,000.

The consequence of this shortage was that, at the very moment when the

Government and the country were on the first occasion for a century

confronted by a really grave and complex military situation, at the

very moment when there was a scare as to German projects of an

immediate invasion, that category of our land forces which was

especially earmarked for the defence of the British Isles was not in a

position to perform its functions. The Sixth Division, properly

forming part of the Expeditionary Force, had to be fetched over from

Ireland to East Anglia to bolster up the Territorials, and Sir J.

French was deprived of its use for six weeks at a very critical time.

The ranks of the Territorial Forces filled up very rapidly _after_

mobilization, but from the home defence point of view that was too

late. We required our home defence army to be ready at once, so that

the overseas army could be despatched complete to the Continent

without _arrière pensée_. Its failure at the critical moment may have

somewhat influenced Lord Kitchener in the estimates that he formed of

it thenceforward. Instead of framing his plans with a view to

reinforcing the Expeditionary Force as soon as possible with the

existing fourteen Territorial divisions which were in some measure

going concerns, by affording these special support, he preferred

simply to expand the Territorial Forces as a whole. Four divisions

were sent out of the country on garrison duty before the end of 1914,

but although a number of individual battalions had preceded it, the

first division to be sent to the front (the North Midland) did not

sail from the United Kingdom till the end of February, more than six

months after the outbreak of hostilities, while the two last to take

the field did not leave till early in 1916. The policy may in the long

run have proved the right one; but at the time it did seem a pity not

to have accelerated the preparation of these existing troops for the

ordeal of the field. None of us in Whitehall, however, wished the New

Armies to be set up under the auspices of the Territorial

Associations; that was a different question altogether.

Moreover, whatever was the cause of it, the Territorial divisions

after they took the field seemed to be treated as veritable

Cinderellas for a long time. They generally set out short of

establishment, and they were apt to dwindle away painfully for want of

reserves after they had spent a few weeks on the war-path. The Returns

show this to have been the case. More than one of the divisional

Generals concerned spoke to me, or wrote to me, on the subject in the

later months of 1915. This discouraging shrinkage was not manifesting

itself to at all the same extent at that stage in such New Army

divisions as were at the front.

A good many of us at the War Office also did not, I think, see quite

eye to eye with Lord K. in connection with his piling up of New Army

divisions without providing them with reserves. The tremendous drain

which modern war creates in respect to personnel came as a surprise to

all the belligerents; but the surprise came fairly early in the

proceedings, and the Adjutant-General's department had fully grasped

what this meant, and had realized the scale of the provision necessary

to meet it, by the end of 1914. If I remember aright, one whole "New

Army" (the Fourth, I think it was) had to be broken up in the summer

of 1915, and transformed into a reservoir of reserves, because the

First, Second, and Third New Armies practically had none. It had been

manifest long before these armies were gradually drawn into the fight

that they would suffer heavy wastage, and that they would speedily

become mere skeletons unless they had ample backing from home. Had the

branches of the War Office which were supposed to deal with these

questions been allowed their own way in regard to them, I imagine

that greater foresight would have been displayed and that some

confusion might have been avoided.

The preceding paragraphs read perhaps rather like a deliberate attempt

to belittle the achievements of the greatest of our War Ministers. But

they only touch upon one side, the dark side so to speak, of Lord

Kitchener's work as an organizer and administrator during the Great

War. Little has been said hitherto as to the other and much more

important side, the bright side, of that work.

The marvels that he accomplished in respect to multiplying the land

forces of the nation by creating improvised armies as it were by

magic, have put in the shade a feat for which Lord Kitchener has never

been given sufficient credit. Prior to August 1914, no organization

existed for placing any portions of our regular army in the field in a

Continental theatre of war, other than the Expeditionary Force and one

additional division. The additional division was to be constituted if

possible on the outbreak of war out of infantry to be withdrawn from

certain foreign garrisons, and spare artillery, engineer and

departmental units that existed in the United Kingdom. That additional

division, the Seventh, was despatched to the Western Front within two

months of mobilization. But Lord Kitchener also organized four further

regular divisions, the Eighth, Twenty-seventh, Twenty-eighth and

Twenty-ninth, of which the first three were in the field within five

months of mobilization, joining Sir J. French respectively in

November, December and January, and the remaining one was nearly ready

to take the field by the end of the six months. The Secretary of State

prepared for this immediately on taking up office, by recalling

practically the whole of the regulars on foreign service, with the

exception of the British troops included in four mixed Indian

divisions. Would any War Minister other than Lord Kitchener have had

the courage to denude India of British regular troops, artillery as

well as infantry, to the extent that he did? Supposing any other War

Minister to have proposed such a thing, would the Government have

backed him up? It was the handiwork of a very big man.

Still, this was after all a quite minor detail in the constructive

labours undertaken by one of the most illustrious public servants of

our time. His paramount claim to the gratitude of his countrymen rests

upon his nimble perception of the nature of the task which he had been

suddenly called upon to perform, and upon the speed with which he set

every channel in motion to accomplish his purpose. He realized, as it

seemed by instinct, that this contest was going to be a very big

business indeed, an incomparably bigger business than these topmost

military authorities who had been in the confidence of the Government

before the blow fell had any idea of. It is no exaggeration to say

that in this matter he was a giant amongst the pigmies. He grasped the

truth at once that this world war was to be a protracted struggle, a

struggle in which the Entente would not gain the upper hand unless a

tremendous effort was to be put forward by the British Empire. He saw

almost at a glance that our military system such as it was, and as

previously devised with a view to war conditions, provided what

represented numerically no more than an insignificant fraction of the

host which would ultimately be needed to give us victory. He

furthermore--and it is well to insist upon this thus early, in view of

fabrications which have been put about on the subject of

munitions--clearly discerned the need for a huge expansion in the

country's powers of output in respect to war material; so that under

his impulse existing factories and establishments were developed on

generous lines, and arrangements were instantly set on foot for

creating entirely new factories and establishments. The result was

that, after a lean and discouraging period for the troops in the

field, the needs of an army which was ten times as strong as the army

which soldiers of light and leading had been contemplating before war

broke out, were being adequately met within fifteen months of the

British ultimatum to Germany.

Within the War Office itself he certainly made things hum. In pre-war,

plain-clothes days, those messengers of distinguished presence--dignity

personified in their faultlessly-fitting official frock-coats and red

waistcoats--had lent a tone of respectability to the precincts,

compensating for the unfortunate impression conveyed by

Adjutant-Generals and such like who perambulated the corridors in

grimy, abandoned-looking "office jackets." (No scarecrow on duty

afield in the remotest of rural districts would have been seen in the

garment which my predecessor, now F.M., Bart., and G.C.B., left

hanging up as a legacy in the apartment which he vacated in my

favour.) But--although old hands will hardly credit it and may think I

am romancing--I have seen those messengers tearing along the passages

with coat-tails flying as though mad monkeys were at their heels, when

Lord K. wanted somebody in his sanctum and had invited one of them to

take the requisite steps. If the Chief happened to desire the presence

of oneself, one did not run. Appearances had to be preserved. But one

walked rather fast.