The first really alarming tidings on this subject that we received

came to hand, oddly enough, from Japan; and it bears testimony to the

efficiency of our Far Eastern Ally's intelligence service that the

Island Empire should have been so intimately acquainted with the

military conditions in a State with which it had been at war only a

very few years before. This information reached us, I think, in

October 1914. But as far as I recollect, that warning, inexorable as

it was, only touched the question of ammunition. We were told plainly

that the Russians were likely to run out of this indispensable at an

early date; but the message did not mention rifles, although these

already began to run short within eight months of the commencement of

the struggle. How it came about [p.283] that there should have been so

deplorable a breakdown in respect to war material can only be a matter

of conjecture; but we may hazard a pretty shrewd guess that the

collapse which was to lead to such deplorable results in the early

summer of 1915, was attributable to graft on a Homeric scale. For the

Russian army budgets had for several years before the war been framed

on lavish lines; that for 1914, for instance, mounted up to

725,000,000 roubles, which represented a higher figure than the

corresponding budgets in either Germany or France. General

Sukhomlinoff, the War Minister on the Neva from 1910 to 1915, was, as

is well known, disgraced in the latter year, and he was tried for his

life after the Revolution.

The Russian victories in Galicia during the winter of 1914-15,

followed as they were by the reduction of the important place of arms,

Przemysl, caused unbounded satisfaction in this country. But those

behind the scenes feared, with only too good reason, that such

triumphs represented no more than a flash in the pan, and that, should

the Germans decide to throw heavy forces into the scale, the Grand

Duke Nicholas would speedily find himself obliged to abandon the

conquests which looked so gratifying on paper. We in the War Office

learnt, indeed, that the Russian generalissimo, who recognized that

the munitions situation did not justify offensive operations on an

ambitious scale, had been indisposed to undertake the capture of

Przemysl, but that political pressure had been brought to bear on him.

Lord Kitchener was constantly watching the Eastern Front with anxiety

during the early months of 1915, fearing that in view of the Russian

weakness some great transfer of enemy forces from East to West might

be instituted. A strategical combination on such lines on the part of

the German Great General Staff would under the existing circumstances

have been a very natural one to adopt. But it is conceivable (if not

very probable) that the higher military authorities in Berlin were

not fully aware of the condition of their antagonists in Poland. The

fact, moreover, remains that in their accounts of the campaign of 1915

the numerous books on the war which have appeared in Germany ignore to

a remarkable extent the munitions difficulties under which the Grand

Duke Nicholas was suffering. That, however, may be attributable to a

disinclination to admit that Hindenburg's successes were due, not to

any outstanding brilliance in the handling of his troops nor to the

gallantry and efficiency of those concerned in the operations under

his orders, but simply to his opponent being almost bereft of

armament. Be that as it may, Russia was in such evil plight for arms

and ammunition from the summer of 1915 on to that of 1916 that she was

wellnigh powerless, except in Armenia. She only became really

formidable again during the period of quiescence that, as usual, set

in during the winter of 1916-17.

Shortly after returning home in May 1916, I took over charge (under

circumstances to be mentioned in the next chapter) of the War Office

branch which dealt with munitions and supplies for Russia, and I am

consequently familiar with this question. To show what strides were

made towards fitting the military forces out for a strenuous campaign

in 1917, some output figures may be given. (I have none for dates

prior to January 1916.) It should be mentioned that the output of

field-artillery ammunition had already, owing to General Polivanoff's

exertions, been greatly expanded during the latter part of 1915, and

there was no very marked increase in this during 1916; the French

supplied large numbers of rounds, and it had been hoped that great

quantities would come to hand from the United States, but the influx

from this latter source hardly materialized before the winter of

1916-17. Seeing how greatly the Russian armies had suffered from lack

of heavy artillery during the first year of the war, the huge increase

in output of howitzer and 6-inch rounds is particularly worth noting.

January 1916. January 1917.

Rifles.... 93,000 129,000

Machine-guns 712 1,200

Small-arms ammunition 96,000,000 rounds 173,000,000 rounds

Field-guns 169 407

Field-howitzers 33 62

Field-howitzer ammunition 72,000 rounds 369,000 rounds

6-inch guns and howitzers 1 17

6-inch gun and howitzer

ammunition 32,000 rounds 230,000 rounds

By the early weeks of 1917 the empire was not dependent upon its own

resources alone. Great contracts for rifles, machine-guns, small-arms

ammunition, and field-gun ammunition had been placed in the United

States under arrangements made by Lord Kitchener in the summer of

1915. The factories on the farther side of the Atlantic only began to

produce during the summer of 1916, and they had not got into full

swing before the latter part of the year; but by March 1917, 412,000

rifles, 12,200 machine-guns, 240,000,000 rounds of small-arms

ammunition, and 4,750,000 rounds of field-gun ammunition had already

been handed over, and great part of this armament had been shipped

(the field-gun ammunition mainly to Vladivostok across the Pacific);

and a great output was still in progress. Over 800 howitzers and heavy

guns, with abundant ammunition for them, had also by that time been

despatched to Russia from the United Kingdom and France, and nearly

6,000,000 rounds of field-gun ammunition from France. Such statistics

could be multiplied. Suffice it to say that there was every reason to

assume that the Emperor Nicholas's legions would be adequately

supplied with most forms of munitions for the 1917 campaign, and that,

thanks to the great increase in the numbers of rifles, machine-guns

and pieces of artillery available, they would take the field in far

stronger force numerically than at any previous period of the war.

From the purely military point of view the position of affairs in the

winter of 1916-17 was, in fact, decidedly promising. A huge force was

under arms and was coming to be well equipped. General Brusiloff's

successes in the summer of 1916, even if they made no appreciable

alteration in the general strategical situation, had afforded most

satisfactory evidence that the stubborn fighting spirit of the Russian

troops had suffered no eclipse consequent upon disasters of the past.

Confidence reigned at the Stavka, and competent leaders had been

forced to the front. But the internal situation, on the other hand,

had become ominous in the extreme.

Some references were made in the last chapter to the discontent that

was manifesting itself throughout the country even early in 1916, and

to the attitude of marked indifference that was being displayed by the

officers in respect to the Sovereign to whom they owed allegiance. But

things had gone rapidly from bad to worse since that date. M.

Sazonoff, the eminent Foreign Minister, to whose efforts before the

war the satisfactory understanding between Great Britain and Russia

was largely due and whose policy was uncompromisingly anti-German, had

been got out of the way by the machinations of the Court clique. (The

Emperor, it may be mentioned, had been almost cringingly apologetic to

our representatives about this step, which he could not but realize

would create a very bad impression in London and Paris.) Successive

substitutions carried out amongst the personnel of the Executive had

all tended towards introducing elements that were reactionary from the

point of view of internal policy and were suspect from the point of

view of the Entente. Dissatisfaction and loss of confidence had been

growing apace amongst the public, and what had been merely

indifference manifested amongst the officers towards the Autocrat at

the head of the State was giving place to openly expressed dislike and

even to contempt for a potentate who, however well-meaning he might

be, was constantly affording evidence that he was in the [p.287] hands of

mischievous counsellors and possessed no will of his own.

A special Mission had come over to England from Russia in August,

including amongst its numerous personnel the Finance Minister and the

Chief of the General Staff at the Ministry of War. This Mission had

obtained from us promises of financial assistance running into scores

of millions sterling, to say nothing of an undertaking to furnish

substantial consignments of war material. But in the understanding

that was then arrived at, I never could detect any trace of conditions

designed to check the dangerous policy which all who were behind the

scenes realized the Emperor to be adopting. Who paid the piper never

called one note of the tune. There was an ingenuousness about the

proceedings on the part of our Government that was startling in its

Micawberism and improvidence.

Now, our Cabinet was extraordinarily fortunate in the British

representatives within the Russian Empire upon whom they depended or

ought to have depended. They were admirably served on the Neva, at the

Stavka and in the field. We had an ambassador who was trusted to an

unprecedented extent by all ranks and classes in the realm which he

was making his temporary home. The Head of our Military Mission,

Hanbury-Williams, was a _persona gratissima_ with the Emperor. Our

Military Attachés--Knox, Blair, and Marsh--were masters of the Russian

language, and, in common with several British officers especially

accredited to the different armies, ever had their fingers on the

pulse of military sentiment on the fighting fronts. How it came about

that our Government--or rather Governments, because Mr. Lloyd George

and his War Cabinet replaced Mr. Asquith and his sanhedrin of

twenty-three just when things were becoming highly critical--shambled

blindly along trusting to luck and did nothing, it is hard to say. But

among them they nearly lost us the war.

Towards the end of the year 1916 the situation was already becoming

almost desperate, even if the putting away of the horrible Rasputin

did seem for a moment to relieve the gloom. Officers high up in the

army were imploring our military representatives for British

intervention with their rulers. Our ambassador appears to have done

everything that man could do, even remonstrating in set terms with the

Emperor; but he would not seem to have been accorded the strenuous

support from home which he had a right to look for, and which would

have given his representations that compelling weight demanded by an

exceedingly precarious situation.

Owing to the nature of my duties in connection with supplies of all

kinds for Russia, following upon visits to that country, I had been

closely in touch with the situation for some months, heard from our

military representatives from time to time, and saw Russians in an

official position in London practically daily. By the end of the year

the position seemed to me so fraught with peril that, on learning of

the contemplated despatch of a special political and military Mission

to Murmansk _en route_ for the interior, I wrote a private letter to

Mr. Lloyd George, and this was duly acknowledged with thanks by his

Private Secretary. This communication warned the Prime Minister that

Russia was on the brink of revolution owing to the reactionary

tendencies of her government; it pointed out that if a revolution were

to break out the consequences must be disastrous to the campaign of

1917 on the Eastern Front, as all arrangements would inevitably be

thrown out of gear; and it proposed that we should play our trump

card, that, backed by the express authority and enforced by the active

intervention of the War Cabinet, we should turn to its fullest account

the influence of our Royal House with the Emperor Nicholas. The remedy

might not have produced the desired effect. The diagnosis at all

events turned out to be correct.

One never anticipated, needless to say, that if the revolution which

seemed to be imminent were actually to take place, the consequences

would be quite so terrible as those which have actually supervened.

One never dreamt of the executive power over great part of the vast

dominions then under the sway of the Romanoff dynasty falling into the

hands of wretches such as Peter the Painter, Trotzky and Lenin. But,

even assuming a more or less stable form of reasonable republican

government to replace the existing autocracy, it could not be other

than obvious to all who were in any way conversant with the social

conditions holding good in this enormous area, peopled as it was by

illiterate and profoundly ignorant peasants, that a revolution was

bound to produce a state of affairs for the time being bordering on

chaos. What ought to prove the decisive year of the war was at hand.

Revolution must be staved off at all costs.

The special Mission actually started for Murmansk some two or three

weeks later. Although the list of its personnel made a good enough

show on paper, it lacked the one element that was practically

indispensable if its representations were to save the situation. They

say that Lord Milner, on getting back, gave the War Cabinet to

understand that all was going on fairly well in Russia, and that there

was little or no fear of a _bouleversement_. This would have seemed to

me incredible had I not met several of the members of the Mission when

they turned up again, and had they not, one and all, appeared

perfectly satisfied with the internal situation of the empire on which

they had paid a call. Whom these good people saw out there, where they

went, what steps they took to acquire knowledge in quarters other than

official circles, how it came about that they returned to this country

with no more idea of the state of affairs than a cassowary on the

plains of Timbuctoo, furnishes one of those mysteries which cast such

a recondite glamour over our public life. Why, the Babes in the Wood

were prodigies of analysis and wizards of cunning compared with this

carefully selected civilian and military party, which, it has to be

acknowledged, spent a by no means idle time while sojourning in the

territories of our eastern Ally. For among them they promised away

any amount more munitions and war material of all kinds. They went

into the details of the contemplated deal with meticulous care and

consummate administrative skill. They elaborated a programme which

would undoubtedly have proved in the highest degree advantageous to

Russia, had the conditions not undergone a complete metamorphosis

owing to the outbreak of the Revolution in Petrograd a very few days

after they landed, sanguine and reassuring, in this country on their

return journey.

Had it not been for the _Hampshire_ disaster, had Lord Kitchener

succeeded in carrying out his mission in the summer of 1916, it is

conceivable that, in virtue of that almost uncanny intuition that he

possessed, he would have pieced together the realities of the

situation, and would have managed to teach his colleagues in our

Cabinet to understand them on his return. His personal influence might

have made all the difference in the world in Russia. He would have

gained touch with all sorts and conditions of men while out there, and

would have got to the back of their minds by methods all his own. The

very fact that Russians have so much of the oriental strain in them

would have helped him in this. But it was not to be.

Of what followed after the Revolution much might be said; but, in so

far as the blunders committed by our Government are concerned, it has

to be admitted that the situation was no easy one to grapple with.

When you have been such an ass as to ride your horse into a bog, there

is a good deal of excuse for your botching getting the beast out

again, as that is in the nature of things a difficult job. The

mischief was done when the Revolution was allowed to occur. After that

it became a case of groping with a bewildering, kaleidoscopic,

intangible state of affairs. Mr. Henderson's performances have excited

much ridicule, but against his absurd belief in M. Kerensky must be

set his prompt recognition of his own unfitness for the position of

representative of the British Government on the banks of the Neva. M.

Kerensky, no doubt, may have meant well by the Allies after his own

fashion; but as he can claim so great a share in the work of

destroying the discipline of the Russian army, he proved the kind of

friend who in practice is more pernicious than are open and

undisguised enemies. One of the most singular features, indeed, in the

epoch-making events of 1917 in Eastern Europe was the fact that a

windbag of this sort should ever have gained power, and that, having

gained power, he should have retained it for the space of several

months. Only in Russia could such a thing have happened. It must be

added that the perplexities to which the Entente Governments were a

prey in connection with the Russian problem subsequent to March 1917

were aggravated from the outset--and yet more so after Lenin's gaining

the mastery--by the very divergent views which prevailed amongst them

in connection with most of the awkward questions that arose.

This was illustrated by the strange happenings concerning Siberia and

Vladivostok of the early part of 1918. Gathered together at the

extreme eastern doorway into Russia were enormous accumulations of war

material and of vital commodities of all kinds--most of them, it may

be observed incidentally, being goods which had been procured in the

United States by British credits on behalf of pre-Bolshevist

governments, Imperial and republican. It was imperative that these

should not fall into the hands of Lenin's warrior rabble that was

spreading eastwards from beyond the Ural Mountains, and it was equally

imperative that the progress of these tumultuary Bolshevist levies

into Siberia should be stayed at the earliest possible moment. These

were duties which, owing to the geographical conditions, naturally

devolved upon the United States and Japan, and, seeing that the United

States were hurrying soldiers in hot haste to the European theatre of

war, the duties in reality properly devolved upon Japan. But it was

now no longer a question of reconciling the views merely of London,

Paris, Rome, and Tokio. A disturbing factor had cropped up. President

Wilson had entered the lists.

The fact that no decision as to Siberia and Vladivostok was arrived at

for weeks, and that when it was arrived at it was an unsatisfactory

one, was not the fault of the British, nor of the French, nor of the

Italian, nor yet of the Japanese Government. We have heard a good deal

at times about "wait and see"; but Mr. Asquith is a very Rupert

compared to the Autocrat reigning in the White House in 1918. Had

Japan been given a free hand, with the full moral support of the

Allies, and with some financial support and support in the shape of

certain forms of war material, Bolshevism might have been stamped out

even before the Central Powers were brought to their knees in 1918. It

would surely be to the interest of the United States, as it would

undoubtedly be to the interest of Canada and Australasia, that the

swelling millions peopling eastern Asia should be encouraged to expand

westwards into the rich but sparsely populated regions lying north of

Mongolia, rather than that they should be seeking to expand across the

Pacific Ocean. As it was, Japan received scanty encouragement, and

only received it after procrastination had been developed to the very

utmost.

What occurred in connection with Siberia and Vladivostok on that

occasion provided an unpleasant foretaste of the pathetic performance

which was to go on for months and months in the following year at

Versailles. It moreover foreshadowed and furthered that untoward

extension of Bolshevism far and wide which has since taken place. Some

of us would willingly have made shift to get on without a League of

Nations could we have been saved from the disastrous consequence of

action on the part of civilization in Siberia in 1918 having been so

unjustifiably delayed, and its having taken so perfunctory a form.

CHAPTER XVI

CATERING FOR THE ALLIES

The appointment of Colonel Ellershaw to look after Russian

munition supplies -- His remarkable success -- I take over his

branch after his death -- Gradual alteration of its functions --

The Commission Internationale de Ravitaillement -- Its efficiency

-- The despatch of goods to Russia -- Russian technical abilities

in advance of their organizing power -- The flame projector and

the Stokes mortar -- Drawings and specifications of Tanks -- An

early contretemps in dealing with a Russian military delegate --

Misadventure in connection with a 9.2-inch howitzer --

Difficulties at the northern Russian ports -- The American

contracts -- The Russian Revolution -- This transforms the whole

position as to supplies -- Roumania -- Statesmen in conflict --

Dealings with the Allies' delegates in general -- Occasional

difficulties -- Helpfulness of the United States representatives

-- The Greek muddle -- Getting it disentangled -- Great delays in

this country and in France in fitting out the Greeks, and their

consequences -- Serbian supplies -- The command in Macedonia

ought on administrative grounds to have been in British hands.

One day early in the summer of 1915 Lord Kitchener sent for me to say

that I must find him an artillery officer to take general charge of

the arrangements that he was setting on foot for supplying the

Russians with armament from the United States and elsewhere. I

repaired to Colonel Malcolm Peake, who dealt with all questions of

artillery personnel (he was killed on the Western Front very shortly

after taking up an artillery command there), who asked what

qualifications were needed. It was intimated that the officer must be

something of an Admirable Crichton, must be a thoroughly up-to-date

gunner of sufficient standing to be able to keep his end up when

dealing with superior Russian officials, must be possessed of business

capacity, must be gifted with tact and be a reservoir of energy, and

ought to have a good working knowledge of French.

Peake asked for time, and next day proposed Colonel W. Ellershaw for

the appointment. Ellershaw had just been ordered home from France to

assume charge of an important artillery school on Salisbury Plain, and

he was duly instructed to come and report himself to me. He was by no

means enthusiastic on his being informed of the proposal to divert him

from the work that he had arrived to take over and which particularly

appealed to him, and he displayed a diffidence for which, it speedily

became apparent, there were no grounds whatever, for he proved himself

to be absolutely made for the Russian job. As a result of his

practical knowledge, of his genius for administration, of his driving

power and of his personal charm, he gained the complete confidence of

Lord Kitchener and of all Russians who were brought into contact with

him. I kept him in a manner under my wing till the end of the year,

although his work was not, properly speaking, General Staff work; but

his little branch was transferred to General von Donop's department

when Sir W. Robertson arrived and reorganised the General Staff

arrangements at the War Office.

Ellershaw formed one of the party which accompanied Lord Kitchener on

the ill-fated expedition that terminated off the Orkneys, and he was

drowned with his Chief. His death, like that of Colonel Fitzgerald and

Mr. O'Beirne, was a real loss to his country, and it was greatly

deplored by the many highly placed Russians who had had dealings with

him and who had been enormously impressed by his work on their behalf.

For some weeks after the _Hampshire_ catastrophe his place was not

filled up; but General von Donop eventually asked me to take charge of

his branch, which I agreed to by no means willingly, the work being

entirely out of my line and my technical knowledge being virtually

non-existent. Ellershaw, however, had everything in such good order

and had got together such efficient assistants that the duty of

superintendence did not, as it turned out, prove so difficult as had

seemed likely. General Furse, on succeeding General von Donop some

months later, objected to having under him a branch which was not a

supply branch, but a liaison branch between the Russians on the one

hand and his department and the Munitions Ministry on the other hand,

so it was then settled that we should come directly under the

Under-Secretary of State--a very appropriate arrangement.

As all armament for Roumania had to pass through Russia, it became

convenient that my branch should look after this as well, and we

gradually came to be co-ordinating the supply of armament to all the

Allies. Then, early in 1918, as a consequence mainly of the muddle

that the War Office had got into over the question of supplies for

Greece (of which armament only formed a small proportion), it was

decided, somewhat late in the day, that we should deal with supplies

of all kinds furnished by the War Office to the Allies. But it was

arranged at the same time that my branch, instead of remaining under

the Under-Secretary of State, its proper place, should be included in

the new-fangled civilian department of the Surveyor-General of

Supplies which had nothing to do with armament, a plan that set

fundamental principles of administration at defiance inasmuch as the

branch actually supplied nothing and merely acted as a go-between. It

simultaneously acquired a title that constituted a very miracle of

obscurantism and incongruity, warranted to bewilder everybody. Labours

in connection with Russia and Roumania were by that time, however,

virtually at an end, the importance of the branch had to a great

extent lapsed, and it was afforded a not unedifying experience. For it

became possible to compare the working of the military departments

within the War Office with that of a department set up within that

institution and run on the lines of the Man of Business, just as it

had been possible before to compare the working of those military

departments within the War Office with that of the Ministry of

Munitions. If the military departments of the War Office came out with

flying colours, it must in fairness be allowed that, as they were of

the old-established and not the mushroom type, their competitors were

giving away a lot of weight.

As a matter of fact, the branch had never in principle been supposed

to deal direct with the representatives of the Allies, although in

practice we were in close and constant touch with them. Official

business transactions with them were carried out, accounts kept, and

so forth, by the "Commission Internationale de Ravitaillement," and,

until we became entangled with the Surveyor-General of Supplies people

and were obliged to shift quarters, we were accommodated in the

building occupied by the "Commission," which constituted a very

important department, nominally under the Board of Trade but for all

practical purposes independent. This C.I.R.--departments and branches

are always described by their initials in official life; the day would

not be long enough nor would available stationery suffice to give them

their full titles--was an admirably managed institution. It enjoyed

the good fortune of being under charge of an experienced Civil

Servant, Sir E. Wyldbore Smith, who had one or two of the same sort to

help him, although the bulk of the staff were of the provisional type;

and, as the various foreign delegations dealing with supplies were

housed under the same roof, this was manifestly the proper place for

us to be. We were in close touch with the people we actually had to

deal with. The foreign delegates could always look in on us and could

discuss points of detail with us on the spot, thereby avoiding

misunderstandings and friction. Consisting, as they did, for the most

part of officers, they liked to have officers to deal with. A foreign

officer of junior rank will take "no" for an answer from a general and

be perfectly happy, whereas he may jib at receiving the same answer

from a civilian or from an officer of his own standing. Points of that

kind are apt to be overlooked in a non-military country like ours.

My branch had an extremely busy time in connection with the supply of

the munitions which were promised to the Russians on the occasion of

that mission of theirs which was sent to England just at the time that

I took over charge, and which is mentioned on p. 287 in the last

chapter. These munitions included war material of all kinds, but

particularly field-howitzers and heavy artillery. The Russian

delegation were quite ready to leave all the arrangements for getting

the goods to Archangel from wherever they were turned out in this

country, to the C.I.R. and us, working in conjunction with the Naval

Transport Department of the Admiralty at first and afterwards with the

Ministry of Shipping. They recognized their own administrative

shortcomings and wisely left such matters under British control. Some

difficulty did, however, arise in respect to the apportionment of

tonnage space, as between the armament supplied by the War Office and

commodities of other kinds which the delegates procured more or less

direct from the trade through the C.I.R. Some regrettable delay

occurred in the winter of 1916-17 in getting armament shipped which

had been hurried from the factories to Liverpool, owing to its being

shut out by goods of much less importance. It was imperative to get

heavy artillery out as soon as possible in view of the coming

campaign, and it was exasperating to have valuable howitzers idle at

the docks which our own army in France would have welcomed. One had to

take a high hand; but the Russians were easy to manipulate in such

matters, and they never resented virtual dictation in the least so

long as the iron hand remained concealed within the velvet glove.

Relations were, indeed, always particularly pleasant.

Although the average standard of education was probably lower in

Russia than in any other State which could be called civilized, the

country has produced many scientists of the very foremost rank, and

the Russian artillery included many highly scientific--almost too

scientific--officers. It used to be a little trying to find them,

after they had received a consignment of our own pattern armament

(which the French or the Italians or the Belgians would have jumped

at), picking it to pieces, so to speak, criticising the details of

high-explosive shell or of fuses from every point of view, and showing

greater disposition to worry over such points than to get the stuff

into the field and to kill Germans with it. The technicalist, indeed,

almost seemed to rule the roost, although this unfortunately did not

lead to even reasonably good care being taken of war material that

arrived in the country. The Russians had done wonders in respect to

developing the port of Archangel; they had performed the miracle

actually during the war. But if they had achieved a veritable

administrative triumph in this matter, their methods were terribly at

fault in assembling goods as they arrived and in getting the goods

through to their destination in good order. If they undoubtedly were

strong on the scientific side, they were correspondingly weak on the

practical side, as is illustrated by the following experience.

I was taken down one afternoon to Hatfield Park to see a demonstration

of a certain flame-producing arrangement, of which they had ordered

large numbers. This was a pleasant outing, and the demonstration was

interesting enough in itself; but the elaborate contrivance seemed to

me totally unsuited to the conditions on the Russian front, because

the flame was only projected eighty yards--one was quite comfortable a

hundred and fifty yards straight in front of the projector--and the

device was only adapted to conditions such as had existed in the

Gallipoli Peninsula and as held good at a very few points on the

Western Front, where the opposing trenches happened to be quite close

together. As a matter of fact, the contrivance had been found of very

little use when tried by us in the field. Strong recommendations came

to hand shortly afterwards from some of our officers accredited to the

Russian armies that a goodly supply of trench mortars should be sent

out, and particularly of the invaluable Stokes mortars; it was

foreseen by the applicants that, once the pattern was available, these

could easily be constructed locally in Russia. But one encountered the

greatest difficulty in inducing the delegation in this country to have

anything to say to the Stokes mortar, because of its comparatively

short range. And yet the range of the very oldest pattern of Stokes

mortar was five times that of the flame projector, upon which material

and time and labour and tonnage were being wasted.

Then, again, there arose the question of tanks. Now a tank could not

possibly at that time have been got along the Murmansk railway without

squashing the whole track down for good and all into the marshes

across which the permanent way was conveyed by precarious and

provisional processes. Needless to say, we had no tanks to spare to be

kept reposing idle for months at ports and congested junctions,

awaiting transport to Vilna or Podolia. But as they could not get

tanks, nor transport them if they were to secure some in this country,

the Russians were anxious to procure drawings and specifications of

these new-fangled engines of war. There was no reasonable likelihood

of such a contraption ever being turned out in Russia owing to lack of

raw material and to manufacturing difficulties, even supposing

drawings and all the rest of it to be available. There were secrets in

connection with the internals of a tank which must be zealously

guarded. Under the circumstances, I suggested to the General Staff,

when putting forward a request on behalf of the Commission for the

paper stuff, that faked drawings and details should be furnished to

keep the Russians quiet. This was done; but what was furnished would

not have bluffed a novice in a select seminary for young ladies of

weak intellect. So I sent the rubbish off to General Poole (who was

representing this country out there in connection with the munitions

that were arriving), telling him the facts of the case and leaving him

to do as he thought fit. I was thus able to say, when pressed by the

Commission, that this valuable documentary material had already been

sent straight to Poole. No doubt he put it all in the wastepaper-basket.

Sir A. Stern mentions in his book that he deemed it expedient to hand

over a "child's drawing and incorrect details." It is satisfactory to

find that he thought of adopting the exact course which I had proposed

when originally putting forward the request on behalf of the Russians.

That reminds me of a droll incident that occurred in connection with a

Russian delegate quite early in the war. We had no clear understanding

with our Allies at that date with regard to the allocation of material

between us, nor as to the imperative necessity of preventing anything

in the shape of competition in the British markets amongst us

partners. The War Office had a certain article in mind that was being

produced somewhere up north--at Manchester, I think, but anyway we

will call it Manchester. The Russians happened to be after the same

thing, and, without our knowing it, one of their officers who was in

this country was about to enter into negotiations with the people up

north with a view to securing it, and in due course he proceeded to

Manchester with the purchase in view. But he was of an inquisitive

disposition; he managed to get into some place or other to which he

did not possess the entrée. So, being a foreigner, he was promptly run

in, and he spent about twenty-four hours incarcerated in some lock-up

before he could establish his credentials. During that very

twenty-four hours a representative of the War Office appeared in

Manchester and snapped up what the captive was after.

The Russian Military Attaché came to the War Office to enter a strong

protest at the outrage of which his brother officer had been the

victim. He evidently meant to kick up no end of a row, and he had just

got into his stride and was going strong and well, when he suddenly

went off into a tempest of giggles. He saw the humour of the

situation. He was fully persuaded that we had deliberately arrested

his friend so as to get him out of the way while we managed to push

the deal through ourselves, and he evidently gave us gratifying credit

for being so wide-awake. It was not the slightest use our explaining

that this was one of those coincidences in real life which are

stranger than fiction, that we had been wholly unaware that the

Russian officer was even thinking about the article that we had

secured, that we knew nothing whatever about him or his adventures.

The Military Attaché was politeness itself; but he evidently did not

believe a word we said--who, under the circumstances, would? Still, we

had come out top-dog in the business, so we left it at that.

It must not be supposed that things never went wrong in spite of the

elaborate system that we were adopting for transferring war material

to Archangel under our control. Late in the autumn of 1916 I extracted

out of von Donop a 9.2-inch howitzer and mounting all complete--he did

not part readily with his goods--so as to send them on ahead and to

afford the Russians an opportunity of learning the points of this

ordnance, in anticipation of the arrival of a regular consignment of

the weapons which had been promised for a later date. But part of the

concern somehow found its way into one ship and the rest of it into

another ship, and one of the ships managed to get rid of her propeller

in the North Sea, drifted aimlessly for a whole month, was believed to

have foundered, and was eventually discovered and towed ignominiously

back to one of our northern ports. She was lucky not to meet with a

U-boat during her wanderings. The result was that the Russians

received either a howitzer and no mounting or a mounting and no

howitzer, I forget which, and the whole bag of tricks was not

assembled at its destination until after part of the regular

consignment of 9.2-inch howitzers had arrived in Petrograd about

April.

In connection with this business of shipping goods to our eastern

Ally, it should be mentioned that the sealing up of the port of

Archangel and of the White Sea in general from about mid-November

until well on in May--the exact period varied in different seasons,

and depended to some extent upon the direction of the wind--complicated

the problem. Some forty of our ships had been embedded in ice for

months in these waters in the winter of 1915-16, and the Admiralty

were taking no risks this time. It was not a question merely of

getting a vessel to its destination, but also a question of getting

her discharged and out of the trap before it snapped-to. That a

railway had not been constructed to Murmansk years before, illustrates

the torpor and lack of enterprise of the ruling classes in Russia.

Although Archangel is icebound somewhat longer, the Gulfs of Finland

and Bothnia likewise become impassable for navigation during the

winter; so that for some months of the year maritime communication

between northern portions of the empire and the outer world was almost

necessarily to a great extent cut off. And yet all the time there

existed a fine natural harbour of great extent on the Arctic coast

which was never frozen over, simply asking to be made use of. Not

until a state of affairs, which ought to have been foreseen, arose in

actual war--the Baltic and exit from the Black Sea barred by hostile

belligerents--was anything done. A British company was trying hard to

obtain powers to construct a railway to Murmansk at the time of the

outbreak of hostilities; but a line was not completed till more than

two years had elapsed and was then of the most ramshackle character.

It was not only from the United Kingdom and from France that war

material and other goods were being conveyed by sea to Russia, but

also from America; and it was infinitely preferable for these latter

to take the easterly route to the northern ports of the empire, than

for them to take the westerly route across the Pacific to Vladivostok,

involving a subsequent journey of thousands of miles along a railway

that was very deficient in rolling stock. Matters in connection with

Lord Kitchener's contracts in the United States were in the hands of

Messrs. Morgan on the farther side of the Atlantic, with a

Russo-British Commission on the spot watching developments.

Responsibilities in connection with the transactions in this country

had come under charge of the Ministry of Munitions. My branch noted

progress, kept the General Staff informed, and represented the War

Office in connection with the subject when questions arose. Experience

of these huge American contracts fully bore out what had occurred at

home in connection with the expansion of munitions production on the

part of the War Office after the outbreak of war--only in a somewhat

exaggerated form. Whereas in this country output began to intensify

rapidly within twelve months and the credit was appropriated by Mr.

Lloyd George, owing to intensification for which the War Office was

solely responsible taking place after the setting up of the Munitions

Ministry, output only began really to sprout in the United States

about sixteen months after the start. All, however (as already

mentioned in the last chapter), was full of promise when the crash of

the Revolution came to nullify what had been achieved.

Up to the date of that disastrous event, and even for a few weeks

subsequently, one did one's best to accelerate the supply and the

despatch of war material from this country to Archangel and, after the

closing of that great port by ice, Murmansk, which was just beginning

to serve as an avenue into the country owing to the completion--after

a fashion--of its unstable railway. The Milner Mission had been as

profuse in its pledges as it had been erratic in its anticipations,

and had committed itself to somewhat comprehensive engagements in

connection with the furnishing of further war material. So that,

almost synchronizing with the downfall of the Romanoff dynasty and the

setting up of a new regime, this country found itself let in for

diverting munitions of all sorts, in addition to what had already been

promised, to an Ally in whom trust could no longer be placed. On one

occasion in the course of the winter I had defeated the combined

forces of Sir W. Robertson and the Master-General of the Ordnance

before the War Cabinet over the question of deflecting a few howitzers

to Russia. But one's point of view underwent a transformation

subsequent to the dire events of March in Petrograd. So far from

pushing the claims of the revolutionary government for war material,

it then seemed expedient to act as a drag on the wheel, and to take

the side of the C.I.G.S. and General Furse when Lord Milner from time

to time pressed the question of sending out armament. The War Office

deprecated depriving our own troops of munitions for the sake of

trying to bolster up armies that were disintegrating apace owing to

the action of Kerensky and his like. It was very disappointing--apart

from the threatening political situation, prospects had seemed so good

in Russia. But all the endeavours that had been made to assist during

the previous few months were evidently going to be to no purpose. Just

when the despatch of what our Ally required had been got on a

thoroughly sound footing, the organization was to prove of no avail.

Still, there was always Roumania to be thought of, even if the problem

of getting goods through to that country in face of the chaos which

was rapidly making way in Russia was almost becoming insoluble. The

French, like ourselves, were most anxious to afford succour to that

stricken kingdom. Amongst other things, they requested us to send off

to Moldavia a certain consignment (thirty, I think it was) of 6-inch

howitzers, which M. Thomas declared Mr. Lloyd George had promised him

for the French army. But the worst of it was, there was a difference

of opinion in regard to this reputed undertaking. The stories of these

two eminent public servants clashed in a very important particular,

for our man strenuously denied ever having committed himself to the

alleged engagement. On only one point, indeed, were the pair in full

agreement, and this was that the discussion in connection with the

matter had taken place after luncheon.

Bearing in mind Mr. Lloyd George's irrepressible passion for pleasing,

and taking the fact into account that generosity with what belongs to

somebody else is in the United Kingdom recognized as the masterstroke

of Radical statesmanship, there did seem to be just a last possibility

of M. Thomas having right on his side. Still, expansiveness, fantasy

and oblivion serve for epilogue to a grateful midday meal, and, when

all is said and done, possession is nine points of the law--we had the

howitzers, so it was for the other party to get them out of us. But we

should, no doubt, have sent them out to our Roumanian friends in due

course had it not become virtually impracticable to get such goods

through from the North Russian ports by the date that the subject came

up for final decision.

It has to be confessed that all of our Continental Allies were not

quite so well disciplined in the matter of procuring goods in this

country as were the Russians. As time went on and raw material and

manufactured commodities began to run short in the United Kingdom,

_tracasseries_ would from time to time arise in connection with

certain rules which had been laid down in the interests of us all. The

delegations manifested a highly inconvenient bent for purchasing in

the open market, which did not by any means suit our book, as such

procedure tended to run up prices and to disturb equilibrium. The

trade, moreover, was ready enough to meet them, and occasionally to

let them have goods more quickly and even cheaper than they could be

procured through the authorized channels. A firm attitude had to be

taken up in regard to this, even if it led to some misunderstandings.

In the case of one of our pals (who shall be nameless) it was like

fly-fishing for oysters on the Horse Guards Parade to try to extract

receipts for goods received; an embargo had, indeed, to be placed on

further issues until overdue receipts were handed in.

But the United States representatives were always particularly

considerate and helpful. When they came to be dealing with us on at

least as great a scale as any other Ally, their delegates appreciated

the position that this country was in, and they took full cognizance

of the risks that we were incurring of running out of vital

commodities altogether unless disposal of these was kept under rigid

control. They always fell in readily with our requirements,

inconvenient as some of these may have proved. Still, all our friends

were alike in one respect--they were all of them intent upon getting

their full money's worth. As a pillar of literary culture in khaki,

indeed, remarked to me in this connection; "They must, like Fagin in

the 'Merchant of Venice,' have their pound of flesh." Such

difficulties as arose could generally be smoothed over by personal

intercourse, and the head of the Commission Internationale de

Ravitaillement could charm the most unruly member of his flock to eat

out of his hand by dint of tact and kindness.

It was just at the time when I was acting as D.C.I.G.S. in the summer

of 1917 that the French suddenly wired over to the War Office to

request us to send representatives to Paris to discuss with them what

we were prepared to let Greece have, now that the Hellenes had come

down off the fence and were going to afford active assistance to the

Allies in the Balkans, but stood in need of equipment and of supplies

of all kinds. Had I been free at the time, I should have proposed to

go even though our new friends wanted clothing, personal equipment,

transport, animals and food--goods with which my branch had nothing to

do--rather than munitions. As it was, a couple of senior officers went

over who had no proper authority to act, and who hardly knew the

ropes. The Commission Internationale de Ravitaillement was forgotten

altogether, and as for the poor dear old Treasury, not only was that

Department of State treated with scorn, but the Lords Commissioners

were not even informed, when our delegates were retrieved from the Gay

City, that a casual sort of agreement, which _inter alia_ involved

appreciable financial obligations, had been entered into with our

friends on the other side of the Channel. No determinate Convention

of any kind or sort was drawn up or signed, what had been

provisionally promised remained for a long time in a condition of

ambiguity, and the transaction as a whole cannot be claimed as one of

the cardinal achievements of the War Office during the course of the

four years' conflict.

The French undertook to find almost all the requisite armament; that

we did not mean to find any was about the only point that was clearly

laid down during the Paris negotiations, although this was altered

later. My branch was therefore little concerned in the business until,

as has been mentioned on p. 216, the dilemma that various departments

were in over the affair was thrust before the War Cabinet, and steps

were taken to get something done. Even then, it took some weeks before

we arrived at a clear understanding with the French and the Greeks as

to what exactly we were going to provide, and before a proper

Convention was tabled. Much time was therefore wasted, and time must

not be wasted in time of war.

Then, when it had at last been established what goods this country was

to provide, there was fresh and almost unaccountable dilatoriness in

certain quarters in furnishing important commodities, although the

military departments of the War Office grappled with their side of the

problem and overcame serious difficulties with commendable despatch.

General R. Reade had been sent out to Athens to look after things at

that end, and he with his assistants kept us fully informed of

requirements and of progress; but he had to put up with a

procrastination at this end which was unquestionably preventible. One

has to face uphill jobs from time to time in the army; but in

thirty-six years of active service I never wrestled with so uphill a

job as that of trying, in the year of grace 1918, to get our share of

the fitting out of the Hellenic forces fulfilled. The only thing to be

said is that the French, who had easier problems to contend with and

less to do than we had, were almost equally behindhand. But the

result of it all was that, of the 200,000 troops whom, entirely apart

from reserves, the Greek Government were prepared to mass on the

fighting front if only they could be fitted out, barely half were

actually in the field when (fortunately for those who were responsible

for mismanaging the despatch of the requisite supplies from this

country and from France) the Bulgarians realized that the game of the

Central Powers was up, and they virtually threw up the sponge.

In so far as Serbia was concerned, a detailed Convention had been

drawn up with the French in 1916, clearly indicating what the two

respective Governments were to furnish for the service of Prince

Alexander's war-worn troops. Under the terms of this agreement, we

were concerned chiefly with the question of food and forage; but we

also, needless to say, provided the bulk of the shipping on which the

Serbian contingents depended for their existence. They, as it

happened, came to be none too well equipped, and it was a pity perhaps

that we had not undertaken somewhat heavier obligations in connection

with these sorely tried Allies of ours and thereby ensured their being

properly clothed. A fresh Convention was drawn up in London in

September 1918, under which we accepted somewhat increased

responsibilities, and Brigadier-General the Hon. C. G. Fortescue was

sent out to look after matters in Macedonia in the Serbian interest.

The end came, however, before the arrangements made could exercise any

appreciable effect during the actual fighting; but I believe that good

work has been done since that date.

Considering the exceedingly burdensome character of our liabilities in

connection with maintaining the associated forces of the Entente in

Macedonia for the space of three years--for practical purposes we had

to find pretty well all the food, and we had, moreover, to get the

food (and almost everything else) to Salonika in our ships, which paid

heavy toll to enemy submarines during the process--it was a faulty

arrangement that the chief command out there was not reposed in

British hands. To press for it would have been awkward, seeing that

the chief command in the Dardanelles operations that had proved so

abortive had rested with us; and it was, moreover, perfectly well

known in Paris that the military authorities in this country looked

askance at the whole business and that our Government entertained

doubts on the subject. Had the operations been conducted by a British

commander-in-chief they might not have been attended by greater

success than they actually were, but, considering the strength of the

mixed forces which remained locked up so long in this barren field of

endeavour, they could hardly have proved less effective than they

actually were for nearly three years.

CHAPTER XVII

THE PRESS

The constant newspaper attacks upon the War Office -- Often arise

from misunderstandings or sheer ignorance -- The mistake made

with regard to war correspondents at the start -- The pre-war

intentions of the General Staff -- How they were set on one side

-- Inconvenience of this from the War Office point of view -- A

breach of faith -- The mischievous optimism of newspapers in the

early days -- Tendency of the military authorities to conceal bad

news -- Experts at fault in the Press -- Tendency to take the

Press too seriously in this country -- Some of its blunders

during the war -- A proposal to put German officer prisoners on

board transports as a protection -- A silly mistake over the

promotion of general-officers -- Why were tanks not adopted

before the war! -- A paean about Sukhomlinoff -- A gross

misstatement -- Temporary officers and high positions in the

field -- A suggestion that the Press should censor itself in time

of war -- Its absurdity -- The Press Bureau -- Some of its

mistakes -- Information allowed to appear which should have been

censored -- Difficulties of the censors -- The case of the shell

shortage -- Difficulty of laying down rules for the guidance of

the censors -- The Press and the air-raids -- A newspaper

proprietor placed at the head of the Air Service -- The result --

The question of announcing names of units that have distinguished

themselves -- Conclusion.

It is inevitable, perhaps, that a rather time-honoured War Office

hand--thirteen years of it, covering different periods between 1887

and 1918--should entertain somewhat mixed feelings with regard to the

Press. As long as I can remember, practically, the War Office has

provided a sort of Aunt Sally for the young men of Fleet Street to

take cock-shies at when they can think of nothing else to edify their

readers with, and uncommonly bad shots a good many of them have made.

Assessment at the hands of the newspaper world confronts every public

department. Nor can this in principle be objected to; healthy,

well-informed criticism is both helpful and stimulating. But although

many of the attacks delivered upon the War Office by the Fourth

Estate, in the course of that perpetual guerilla warfare which is

carried on by journalism in general against the central administration

of the army, have been fully warranted, the fact remains that no small

proportion of them has been based upon misapprehension, and that a

good many of them can be put down to pure ignorance. Never has this

been more apparent than during the progress of the Great War. But a

reason for this suggests itself at once; many newspapers, no doubt,

for the time being lost the services of members of their staff who

possessed some qualification for expatiating upon military questions.

It has to be acknowledged that the Press was badly treated by the War

Office and G.H.Q. at the outset. This circumstance may have

contributed towards setting up relations during the contest between us

in Whitehall and the world of journalism which were not always too

cordial. The question of correspondents in the war zone naturally

cropped up at a very early stage, and the decision arrived at, for

better or for worse, was that none of them were to go. The wisdom of

the attitude taken up by the military authorities in this matter is a

question of opinion; but my view was, and still is, that the

newspapers were treated injudiciously and that the decision was wrong.

I was, indeed, placed in the uncomfortable position of administering a

policy which I disliked, and which I believed to be entirely mistaken.

It, moreover, practically amounted to a breach of faith.

The General Staff had for some years prior to 1914 always intended

that a reasonable number of correspondents should proceed to the front

under official aegis on the outbreak of a European war. A regular

organization for the purpose actually took shape automatically within

the War Office, in concert with the Press, on mobilization. A small

staff, under charge of a staff-officer who had been especially

designated for the job two or three years before, with clerks, cars,

and so on, came into being _pari passu_ with G.H.Q. of the

Expeditionary Force on the historic 5th of August. The officer, Major

A. G. Stuart, a man of attractive personality and forceful character,

master of his profession and an ideal holder of the post, had been in

control of the Press representatives at Army Manoeuvres in 1912 and

1913, and he was therefore personally acquainted with the gentlemen

chosen to take the field. (He was unfortunately killed while serving

on the staff in France, in the winter of 1915-16.) The General Staff

had, moreover, gone out of their way to impress upon correspondents at

manoeuvres that they ought to regard the operations in the light of

instruction for themselves in duties which they would be performing in

the event of actual hostilities. They were given confidential

information with regard to the programme on the understanding that

they would keep it to themselves, and they always played the game.

But when war came, all this went by the board. Leave for

correspondents to go to the front, whether under official auspices or

any other way, was refused, and the staff and the clerks and the cars

abode idle in London under my wing. The Press world accepted this

development philosophically for the opening two or three weeks,

realizing that the moment when the Expeditionary Force was being

spirited over to France was no time for visitors in the war zone. But

after that the Fourth Estate became decidedly restive. Enterprising

reporters proceeded to the theatre of war without permission, while

experienced journalists, deluded by past promises, remained patiently

behind hoping for the best. The old hounds, in fact, were kept in the

kennel, while the young entry ran riot with no hunt servants to rate

them. Some unauthorized representatives of the British Press were, it

is true, arrested by the French, and had the French dealt with them in

vertebrate fashion--decapitated them or sent them to the Devil's

Island--we should have known where we were. But as the culprits were

simply dismissed with a caution the situation became ridiculous,

because no newspaper man bothers about marching to a dungeon with

gyves upon his wrists and tarrying there for some hours without

sustenance. It is part of the game. So the military authorities were

openly flouted.

One result of the abrupt change of policy also was that, instead of

the supervision of messages emanating from the front falling upon

officers at G.H.Q. who were in a position to wrestle with them to good

purpose, this task devolved upon the Press Bureau in London, which

naturally could not perform the office nearly so well and which was,

moreover, smothered under folios of journalistic matter originating in

quarters other than the theatre of war. Furthermore, editors and

managers and proprietors of our more prominent organs considered that

we had broken our engagements--as, indeed, we had. At the very fall of

the flag, the Press of the country was in my opinion gratuitously

fitted out with a legitimate grievance. This could not but react

hurtfully from that time forward upon the relations between the

military authorities and British journalism as a whole.

There was one direction in which the Fourth Estate did serious

mischief in the early days of the war. As being behind the scenes

during those strenuous, apprehensive months, when the process of

transforming the United Kingdom into a great military nation at the

very time when the enemy was in the gate was making none too rapid

progress, I have no hesitation in asserting that one of the principal

obstacles in the way was the excessive optimism of our Press. Every

trifling success won by, or credited to, the Allies was hailed as a

transcendent triumph and was placarded on misleading posters. When

mishaps occurred--as they too often did--their seriousness was

whittled down or ignored. The public took their cue only too readily

from the newspapers, and the consequence was that a check was placed

alike on recruiting and on the production of the war material which

was urgently required for such troops as we could place in the field.

And yet, journalists could plead in excuse that they were in some

measure following a lead set by the authorities. It has already been

admitted in Chapter II. that a system of official secretiveness in

connection with reverses was adopted, and that it did no good. This

took the form of concealing, or at any rate minimizing, sets-back when

these occurred--an entirely new attitude for soldiers in this country

to take up, and one which was to be deprecated. We should never have

gathered together those swarms of volunteers in South Africa in 1900,

volunteers drawn from the United Kingdom and from the Dominions and

from the Colonies, had Stormberg and Magersfontein and Colenso been

artistically camouflaged. The facts were blurted out. The Empire rose

to the occasion. Hiding the truth in 1914-15 was a blunder from every

point of view, because there never was the slightest fear of the

people of this country losing heart. No doubt the incorporation of

ordinances directed against the propagation of alarmist reports

calculated to cause despondency, as part of the Defence of the Realm

Act, was necessary. But one at times positively welcomed the

appearance of well-informed jeremiads in the newspapers, as an

antidote to the exultant cackle which was hindering a genuine,

comprehensive, universal mobilization of our national resources in men

and material.

This excessive optimism which did so much harm was, it should be

observed, to some extent the handiwork of "experts" whose names

carried a certain amount of weight, who turned out several columns of

comment weekly, and whose opinions would have been well enough worth

having had they been better acquainted with the actual facts. For one

thing, they did not realize that the augmentation of our military

forces was hampered by the virtual impossibility of synchronizing

development in output of equipment and munitions with the expansion

of numbers in the ranks. They were, moreover, entirely unaware of the

unfortunate condition of the Russian armies in respect to war

material; they imagined that those hosts were far larger numerically

than the insufficiency of armament permitted, and they consequently

greatly overrated the potentialities of our eastern Ally in the

conflict. To such an extent, indeed, was one of them unintentionally

deceiving his readers as to the position of affairs in that quarter

that I wrote to him privately giving him an inkling of the situation;

he gave that side of Europe a wide berth for a long time afterwards.

The mischief done in this matter rather influenced one against the

Press, and perhaps made one all the more ready to take cognizance of

its blunders and to accept its criticisms (when these were

ill-informed) in bad part. Are we not, however, in any case rather

disposed to take our journals too seriously, and is not one result of

this that we have the Press that we deserve? Public men have to treat

the journalistic world with respect, or it will undo them; but that

does not apply to mere ordinary people. Yet we all bow the knee before

it, submissively accept it at its own valuation, and consequently it

fools us to the top of our bent. We believe what we see stated in our

paper as a matter of course, unless we happen by some accident to know

that the statement is totally contrary to the actual fact. The Fourth

Estate is exalted into an acknowledged autocrat because it is allowed

to have things all its own way; and your autocrat, whether he be a

trade union official or he be a sceptred potentate or he be the

President of a republic saddled with a paradoxical constitution, is an

anachronism in principle and is apt to be a curse in practice.

Autocracy is particularly to be deprecated in the case of the Press,

seeing that here we have what is in reality the most widespread trade

union in the country. Journalism harbours its internal squabbles and

jealousies, no doubt, just as is the case with most great

associations; but, assail it from without, and it closes up its ranks

as a nation rent with faction will on threat from some foreign foe.

It is generally acknowledged that in political life a formidable

opposition in the legislature renders the government of the day all

the more efficient. But the Press, in what may be called its corporate

capacity, is not disciplined nor stimulated by any organized

opposition at all, and the consequence is that it has perhaps got just

a little too big for its boots. Judged by results in respect to its

handling of military questions during the Great War, the Fourth Estate

has not (taken as a whole, and lumping together journals of the meaner

class with the representative organs which have great financial

resources to refresh them) proved itself quite so efficient an

institution as its protagonists claim it to be.

Before the war, one was disposed to accept as gospel the pontifical

utterances of newspapers concerning matters with which one was

unacquainted--the law, say, or economics, or art. But never again!

Journalists on occasion gave themselves away too badly during those

years over warlike operations, army organization, and so forth, for

one to let oneself be bluffed in future. Given the leisure, the

inclination, and the necessary access to a large number of the organs

of the Press, a libraryful of scrap-books could have been got

together, replete with gaffes and absurdities seriously and solemnly

set out in print. One or two examples of such blunders may be given

for purposes of illustration.

After a shameful U-boat outrage committed on a hospital ship, a London

morning paper actually urged, in its first leader, that half a dozen

German officers should be "sent to sea in every hospital ship _and in

every transport_" (the italics are mine). Here was a case of an editor

(surely editors read through the leaders which are supposed to give

the considered opinion of the journal of which they are in charge)

deliberately proposing that this country should play as dirty a trick

as any Boche was ever guilty of. A belligerent has a perfect right to

sink a transport in time of war, just as he has a perfect right to

bomb a train full of enemy troops. The Japanese sank a Chinese

transport at the outbreak of the war of 1894 in the Far East, causing

serious loss of life; the vessel was conveying troops from Wei-hai-wei

to the Korean coast. According to this newspaper, a hostile attack

upon the flotilla of vessels of various sorts and kinds which conveyed

our Expeditionary Force to France would have been as much an act of

treachery and a breach of the customs of war, as would an attack upon

the vessels covered by the Red Cross which brought the wounded back.

An Army Order in April 1918, again, laid down that promotion to the

rank of general would in future be by selection, not by seniority. A

number of newspapers of quite good standing thereupon promptly tumbled

head over heels into a pitfall entirely of their own creation. They

started an attack upon the War Office for not having recognized the

principle of advancement in the higher grades of the army by merit

sooner, having failed to notice that the Army Order concerned the

question of promotion to the rank of full general. Of their own

accord, and quite gratuitously, they exposed their ignorance of the

fact that promotions to the ranks of brigadier-general, major-general

and lieutenant-general had been effected by selection for several

years previously; and they also exposed their ignorance of the fact

that, up till the time of the Great War, there had never been any

special importance attached to the rank of full general. In the South

African War, when we had a far larger military force on active service

than ever previously in our history, only three general officers of

higher rank than lieutenant-general were employed--Lord Roberts, Sir

R. Buller, and Lord Kitchener--and, although all three were in the

field together, Lord Roberts was a field-marshal; when, later, Lord

Kitchener was in supreme command he had no full general under him.

The Great War produced an entirely new condition of things, because we

then came to have operating in the field, not merely one army but

several armies, each consisting of several army corps, and each of

those army corps commanded by a lieutenant-general. It was therefore

convenient that the armies should be commanded by full generals, and

the rank of full general suddenly assumed a real instead of merely a

nominal importance. It thus became necessary to effect promotion to

full general by selection instead of by seniority. Nobody expects

editors to know details of this kind; but it surely is their duty to

investigate before starting on a crusade. In the case of people who

knew the facts, this particular blunder merely made the newspapers

that committed it look ridiculous; but the majority of those who read

the drivel in all probability had no idea of the facts, and were led

to imagine that promotions to the various ranks of general officer had

hitherto all been a matter of seniority. It is an example of the way

in which the public have been misled about the War Office by the Press

for years past.

A year or so after the Armistice, one of the London evening papers,

when criticizing the disinclination of the War Office to adopt new

ideas in respect to devices for use in the field (a fair enough

subject of discussion in itself), gave itself away by complaining that

"tanks were not adopted before the war"! In that case the absurdity

was so obvious that its effect upon most readers of the article

probably was to make them regard the whole of it as rubbish, which was

not correct. One wonders whether the following passage, which appeared

in the very early days of the war in one of our foremost newspapers,

may not have had something to do with that entirely unwarranted

confidence in the "steam-roller" on the Eastern Front which prevailed

in England between August 1914 and May 1915: "I refer to General

Sukhomlinoff, the Russian Kitchener, who is reorganizing the Russian

armies. Thanks to him, the Tsar's armies are irreproachably equipped."

Compare p. 283.

An article appeared in a leading Sunday newspaper in the spring of

1919, signalized by this amazing travesty of the actual facts. In a

reference to our land forces of the early days of the struggle, the

writer spoke of "armies sent to war lacking almost every modern

requisite." Now, the Press generally manages to avoid grossly false

statements of that kind when referring to individuals; if it does fall

into such an error, the sequel is either an abject apology or else an

uphill fight in the law courts followed by the payment of heavy

damages. It is quite conceivable that the author of this unpardonable

misrepresentation imagined himself to be telling the truth and that he

erred out of sheer ignorance; but, if so, that merely serves to

indicate how badly informed journalists often are of the matters which

they are dealing with, when the question at issue happens to concern

military subjects.

The expediency of affording greater opportunities to that great body

of temporary officers who had joined up (many of them men of marked

ability and advanced education), for occupying superior positions on

the staff or for holding high command, was taken up warmly by a number

of newspapers at the beginning of 1918. It is not proposed to discuss

the theme on its merits--there was a good deal to be said for the

contention. The matter is merely referred to because of the manner in

which it was handled by the organs that were pressing it upon the

notice of the public. Reference was very properly made to brains. But

not one word was said about knowledge. Now, brains without knowledge

may make an efficient Pressman--one is sometimes tempted to assume

that the battalions of journalism are to some extent recruited from

this source of supply. But brains without knowledge will no more make

a superior staff officer who can be trusted, nor a commander of troops

of all arms who will be able to make the most of them in face of the

enemy, than will they make a successful physician or a proficient

electrical engineer. It was also completely overlooked by the

propagandists of this particular stunt that the experience which on

every front, other than the Mesopotamian, temporary officers had been

gaining was for practical purposes confined to trench warfare, and

that, if a decision was ever going to be reached at all, it would be

brought about under profoundly different tactical conditions from

those which had been prevailing. The whole question hinged upon

whether the requisite knowledge could be acquired, and upon what steps

would be necessary to bring that desirable result about. The writers

who dealt with the point perhaps recognized that brains were merely a

means to the end, and not the end. But if they did, why did they fail

ever even to mention the pinion upon which the whole question in

reality hinged?

Journalists, when complaining of the censorship, have put forward the

suggestion that this sort of thing ought to be left to the patriotism

and honour of newspapers, that, if such a plan were adopted, the Press

would of its own accord refrain from publishing any information that

might be of value to the enemy in time of war, and that there would

then be no need for any special official department dealing with this

matter. That sounds plausible, but it will not stand examination for a

moment. Granted that the great majority of editors and their staffs

would never dream of wittingly disclosing information injurious to

their country during hostilities, the fact remains that a chain is no

stronger than its weakest link. If one journal, in its eagerness to

attract, prints what ought to have been kept secret, the reticence of

the remainder is of no avail. Nor is this merely a question of honour

and patriotism. It is also a question of competence. Censorship

responsibilities demand knowledge and call for certain qualifications

which the personnel of the Press in general does not possess. A few

editors, no doubt, could be trusted to do the work efficiently; but

that claim to omniscience which is unobtrusively, but none the less

insistently, put forward by the Fourth Estate has no solid foundation.

One of the lessons of the Great War has been that censorship is an

extremely difficult operation to carry out even when in the hands of

individuals well versed in the conditions that arise in times of

national emergency. The idea that the Press could censor itself is

ridiculous. That such a theory should ever have been put forward

argues a strange inability to understand the essentials of the

subject, and sets up a doctrine of infallibility in the world of

journalism for which there is no justification.

The Press Bureau which was established at the commencement of the war

was a civil department, entirely independent of the Admiralty and the

War Office although it was in close touch with those institutions, as

also with the Foreign Office, the Board of Trade and other branches of

the Government. In so far as the War Office was concerned, the Bureau

dealt with the Operations Directorate, which was responsible for

watching the censorship of newspapers in general, just as it was

responsible for actually controlling the censorship of cables and

foreign correspondence. As the primary _raison d'être_ of newspapers

is to provide their readers with news, it was inevitable that

restrictions placed upon publication of information, however necessary

they might be in the interest of the State, would hamper the

activities of those in charge and be regarded as a nuisance. It was

natural that the Press should chafe at the restraint and should be

disposed to exaggerate the inconvenience to which it was put. But the

public, it must be remembered, have heard only one side of the story.

The country has derived its information concerning the Press

censorship from the Press itself--in other words, from what is to all

intents and purposes a tainted source. The nation has had to decide on

a subject of general interest on one-sided evidence.

In so far as the military share of the Press censorship was concerned,

some of the groans of its victims were, no doubt, well justified.

Delays were inevitable. But cases of unnecessary delay no doubt

occurred. Instances could be mentioned of one censor sanctioning the

publication of a given item of news while another forbade mention

thereof. It is human to err, and individual censors were guilty of

errors of judgment on occasion. Examples of information, which might

have been given to the world with perfect propriety, being withheld,

could easily be brought to light. How the humorists of the Fourth

Estate did gloat over "the Captains and the Kings"! There was at least

one instance early in the conflict of an official _communiqué_ that

had been issued by the French military authorities in Paris being

bowdlerized before publication on this side of the Channel.

Few of the detractors of the military Press Censorship, on the other

hand, gave evidence of possessing more than a shadowy conception of

the difficult and delicate nature of the duties which that institution

was called upon to carry out. There is little evidence to indicate

that the critics had the slightest idea of the value of the services

which it performed. Nor would they appear to be aware that the

blunders committed by the censors, such as they were, were by no means

confined to malapert blue-pencilling of items of information that

might have appeared without disclosing anything whatever to the enemy.

As a matter of fact, cases occurred of intelligence slipping through

the meshes which ought not on any account to have been made public

property.

When, for example, one particular London newspaper twice over during

the very critical opening weeks of the struggle divulged movements of

troops in France, the peccant passage was, on each occasion, found on

investigation to have been acquiesced in by a censor--lapses on the

part of overworked and weary men poring over sheaves of proof-slips

late at night. Nearly all our newspapers published a Reuter's message

which stated the exact strength of the Third Belgian Division when it

got back by sea to Ostend--not a very important piece of information,

but one that obviously ought not to have been allowed to appear. At a

somewhat later date, a journal, in reporting His Majesty's farewell

visit to the troops, contrived to acquaint all whom it might concern

that the Twenty-eighth Division, made up of regular battalions brought

from overseas, was about to cross the Channel.

It will readily be understood that incidents of this kind--those

quoted are merely samples--worried the officials charged with

supervision, and tended to make them almost over-fastidious. Soldiers

of experience, as the censors were, remembered Nelson's complaint that

his plans were disclosed by a Gibraltar print, Wellington's

remonstrances during the Peninsular War, the details as to the

siege-works before Sebastopol that were given away to the enemy by

_The Times_, and the information conveyed to the Germans by a Paris

newspaper of MacMahon's movement on Sedan. They were, moreover, aware

that indignant representations with reference to the untoward

communicativeness of certain of our prominent journals were being made

by the French and Belgians. So the Press Bureau took to sending

doubtful passages across for our decision--a procedure which

necessarily created delay and caused inconvenience to editors.

Publication, it may be mentioned, was approved in quite four cases out

of five when such references were made. One rather wondered at times,

indeed, where the difficulty came in.

But a verdict was called for in one case which imposed an

uncomfortable responsibility upon me. This was when a telegram from

the Military Correspondent of _The Times_ from the front, revealing

the shell shortage from which our troops were suffering, was submitted

from Printing House Square to the Press Bureau in the middle of May

1915, and was transmitted by the Press Bureau to us for adjudication.

It was about three weeks after Mr. Asquith's unfortunate reference to

this subject in his Newcastle speech. Publication of the message could

at the worst only be confirmatory to the enemy of information already

fully known, and national interests did seem to demand that the people

of the country should be made aware how this particular matter stood,

seeing that the labour world had not yet fully risen to its

responsibilities in connection with the prosecution of the war which

depended to so great an extent upon our factories. Choice of three

alternatives presented itself to me--leave might be refused, higher

authority might be referred to, publication might be sanctioned then

and there. The third alternative was adopted, although one or two

minor details in regard to particular types of ordnance were excised.

It seems to be generally acknowledged that publication of the truth

about the shell shortage was of service to the cause; but for some of

the attacks upon the War Office to which the publication of the truth

gave rise there was no justification whatever. The attacks, indeed,

took the form of a conspiracy, which has only been exposed since

mouths that had to remain closed during the war have been opened.

For the General Staff at the War Office to have formulated apposite,

hard-and-fast regulations for the guidance of the Press Bureau

covering all questions likely to arise, would, it may be observed,

have been virtually impracticable, or at all events would not have

really solved the problem. Sir S. Buckmaster, when in charge of the

Bureau, pressed me as regards this subject more than once, but there

were serious objections to hard-and-fast rules. Everything must

necessarily depend upon the interpretation placed on such ordinances

by the individuals who were to be guided by them. Thus a rigorous

enactment governing any particular type of subject, if strictly

interpreted by harassed censors, would prevent any tidings as to that

subject leaking out at all; while an indulgent enactment, if loosely

interpreted by the staff of the Bureau, might well lead to most

undesirable disclosures being made in the columns of the Press.

Censors planted down in London could not, furthermore, be kept fully

acquainted with the position of affairs at the front--a factor which

greatly aggravated the perplexities of their task. We of the General

Staff in Whitehall were in this respect very differently situated

from G.H.Q. Over on the other side, where the situation of our own

troops and of the French and the Belgians was known from hour to hour,

newspaper representatives could always have been instructed by the

bear-leaders in charge of them as to exactly what they might, and what

they might not, touch upon in reference to any operations in progress.

Matters in connection with the air service and the anti-aircraft

service--the two things to a great extent go together--are primarily

problems for experts; but it seemed to me, as an outsider, that

certain powerful organs of the Press made themselves so great a

nuisance over the subject of air-raids at one time that they

constituted an actual danger. Ridicule was poured upon the plan of

darkening the streets of the metropolis until an attack took place;

the first Zeppelin visit put an end to that. Then, when the threat of

raids became a serious reality, the demand for retaliation was loudest

from a combination of journals which happens to be extremely well

informed, although it was almost a matter of common knowledge that

anything of the kind was impracticable at the time because we had not

got the requisite long-distance machines. It was even contended that

the physical difficulties to be overcome in an attack upon the

Westphalian cities were far less than those which an enemy faced when

flying to London from the Belgian coast, although the distance to be

traversed over territory in the antagonist's hands was three or four

times as great in the former case as in the latter. (Not one reader in

fifty will look at the atlas in a case like this and learn, at a

glance, that he is being made a fool of.) This Press campaign did

grave mischief. Dwellers in the East End, who were suffering seriously

from the raids and were almost in a condition of panic, were induced

to believe that pro-German influence in high places was at the bottom

of our failure to resort to retaliatory counter-measures.

When the Prime Minister placed a newspaper proprietor in charge of

the Air Service, he made in some respects a clever move. Press

criticism practically ceased, and what there was of it mainly took the

form of demands for a separate Ministry of Air. It would have been far

better, however, if no decision had been arrived at on this subject

until after the war was over, when the question could have been gone

into carefully, and when a newspaper man would not have been actually

in charge.

It may be remarked in conclusion that, had procedure within the War

Office subsequent to mobilization more nearly followed the lines

contemplated before the war, and which were only resumed some months

later, there would probably have been less friction with the Press.

The question of the war correspondents which has been mentioned above

is a case in point. Then, again, a branch like mine which possessed an

adequate staff, had it been given a freer hand, had it been allowed

the requisite responsibility, and had it been kept better informed of

what was actually going on in respect to operations, could have

furnished newspapers with useful hints on many subjects. Take, for

instance, that incessant outcry during the first two years or so of

the war over the services of individual corps in action not being made

known. As far as I am aware, journalists were never informed that the

chief grounds for reticence in this matter arose from a simple sense

of fairness. Everybody who has had to deal with history of military

operations knows how hard it is to discover the actual facts in

connection with any tactical event, and what careful weighing of

different reports is necessary before the truth can be established. In

these days of electric communications, official reports are sent off

at very short notice and before details can possibly be known. If some

unit is especially singled out for praise, injustice is likely to have

been done; some other unit, or units, may in reality have done better

without the full story having come to hand when the report was

despatched.

In matters of this kind, the Press might advantageously have received

greater assistance from the War Office. At all events that was so

during the earlier portion of the time when the branch, which in

pre-war days had been supposed to control such subjects, was under me,

but only held restricted powers. The foregoing paragraphs have not

been intended for one moment to suggest that British journalism did

not, take it all round, behave admirably during the war. Newspapers

almost always fell in readily with the wishes of the military

authorities. On many occasions they were of the utmost assistance in

making things known which it was desirable from the military point of

view should be known. But there is no such thing as perfection in this

world, and, even supposing the Press to be conscious of certain

foibles of which it has been guilty, it can hardly be expected to

advertise them itself. So an attempt has been made in this chapter to

indicate certain directions in which it was occasionally at fault. The

most important point of all, however, is that, when journalism and

officialism happen to come into collision, the public in practice only

hears the Fourth Estate's side of the story.

CHAPTER XVIII

SOME CRITICISMS, SUGGESTIONS, AND GENERALITIES

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 made 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 of the war 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.

My period of service on the active list closed a very few days before

the Armistice of the 11th of November, so that no claim can be put

forward to have formed one of that band of dug-outs who became

dug-ins, and who continued to serve their country for extended periods

with self-sacrificing devotion although the enemy was no longer in the

gate. But even in the disguises of private life a craftsman, fully

initiated into the mysteries by long practice, could appraise the

proceedings of the central administration of the Army from the

standpoint of inner knowledge, could watch its post-war proceedings

with detachment, and could note that amongst the numberless Government

institutions which took "it's never too late to spend" for their motto

after the conclusion of hostilities, the War Office was not absolutely

the most backward. Only by such formidable competitors as the

Munitions Ministry, the Air Ministry, and, last but not least, the

Office of Works did it apparently allow itself to be outpaced.

For relative prodigality during the course of the great emergency and

after it was over, the Office of Works perhaps, upon the whole, took

precedence over all rivals. Its prodigality was, to do it justice,

tempered by extortion. Did the system of commandeering hotels and

mammoth blocks of offices create new Departments of State? Or did the

creation of new Departments of State precede the commandeering of the

hotels and blocks of offices? Were the owners and occupiers of the

blocks of offices paid for them, or were they bilked like the hotel

proprietors? We know that householders were not only paid, but that

they were in many cases preposterously overpaid. And the worst of it

was that the Office of Works was not one of those _parvenu_

institutions, set on foot by Men of Business, which welled up so

irrepressibly on all sides. It was not one of those _macédoines_ of

friends of Men of Business, and of fish-out-of-water swashbucklers in

khaki, and of comatose messengers, and of incompletely dressed

representatives of the fair sex perpetually engaged in absorbing

sweets. It was an old-established portion of the structure of State. A

nomad offshoot of the War Office, such as that I was in charge of for

the last two years of the war, which after quitting the parent

building shifted its home three times within the space of twelve

months, enjoyed somewhat unusual opportunities for sizing up the

Office of Works.

In the matter of numerical establishment of its personnel, one

Department of State with which I was brought a good deal into contact

during the war, the Treasury, almost seemed to go into the opposite

extreme from that which found favour in most limbs of the public

service. If the guardians of the nation's purse-strings practically

let the strings go during the early months of the contest, this may

have been due to the effervescent personality of the then Chancellor

of the Exchequer. But they took an uncommonly long time to recover

possession of the strings. Was this in any way attributable to

insufficiency of staff in times of great pressure? There was none of

that cheery bustle within the portals of Treasury Buildings such as

prevailed in the caravanseries of Northumberland Avenue after the

Munitions Ministry had seized them; typewriters were not to be heard

clicking frantically, no bewitching flappers flitted about, the place

always seemed as uninhabited as a railway terminus when the N.U.R.

takes a holiday.

The Treasury has ever, rightly or wrongly, been anathema to the

professional side of the War Office. The same sentiments would appear

to prevail amongst the sea-dogs who lurk in the Admiralty; for after

my having a slight difference of opinion with the Treasury

representative at a meeting of the War Cabinet one day, an Admiral who

happened to be present came up to me full of congratulations as we

withdrew from the battlefield. "I don't know from Adam what it was all

about," he declared, "but I longed to torpedo the blighter under the

table." But when one had direct dealings with the Treasury its

officials always were quite ready to see both sides of any question,

to take a common-sense view, and to give way if a good case could be

put to them; moreover, when they stuck their toes in and got their

ears back, they generally had some right on their side. Such feeling

of hostility as exists in the case of the War Office towards the

controllers of national expenditure housed on the farther side of

Whitehall is perhaps to some extent a result of unsatisfactory

internal administration on its own side of the street.

It is the manifest duty of the Finance Branch of the War Office to

keep down expenditure where possible, to examine any new proposal

involving outlay with meticulous care and critically, and to intimate

what the effect will be in terms of pounds, shillings and pence

supposing that some new policy which is under consideration should

come to be adopted. But, once a point has been decided by the Army

Council (the Finance Branch having had its say), that branch should

fight the War Office corner "all out," and should regard itself as the

champion, not of the Treasury but of the Department of State of which

it itself forms a part. The Treasury, it should be mentioned, is

treated entirely differently as a matter of routine from other outside

institutions. Letters to it have to emanate from the Finance Branch,

while letters to other Departments of State--the Colonial Office, say,

or the Board of Trade--can be drafted and, after signature by the

Secretary, despatched by any branch of the War Office concerned. This

rule might perhaps be modified. A regulation should also exist that

the Finance Branch must not despatch a letter to the Treasury

concerning some matter in which another branch is interested, without

that branch having been given an opportunity of concurring in the

terms of the draft.

But no officials in any State Department probably were set a harder

and a more thankless task during the war than were the staff of the

Finance Branch of the War Office, and in spite of this its members

were always approachable and ready to meet one half-way in an amicable

discussion. They are also entitled to sympathy, in that the close of

hostilities in their case has probably brought them little or no

relief in respect to length of office hours and to weight of work. To

revert to normal conditions in their case will probably take years.

The grievance of the military side is that under existing conditions

the financial experts are too much in the position of autocrats, when

they happen to be recalcitrant on any point.

Who can that caitiff have been who abolished the plan of the soldier

saluting with the hand away from the individual saluted? Travelling on

the Continent before the war one was struck with one point in which

our methods were superior to those abroad--in many foreign countries

private soldiers had to salute non-commissioned officers in the

streets, which must have been an intolerable nuisance to all

concerned, and in all of them the soldier always saluted with the

right hand instead of adopting the obvious and convenient procedure of

saluting with the outer hand. There at least we showed common sense.

The Army Council were, no doubt, responsible in their corporate

capacity for abolishing the left-hand salute, but there must have been

some busybody who put them up to it. Whoever he was, I wish that he

had had to walk daily along the Strand for months (as I had)

constantly expecting to be hit in the face or to have his cap knocked

off by some well-intentioned N.C.O. or private trying to salute with

the hand next to him in a crowd. Their contortions were painful to

see. Had the War Office been guilty of such _bêtises_ when dealing

with the things that really mattered during the struggle, they would

have lost us the war. The reform was so inconvenient to all concerned

that it may have helped to produce those untoward post-war conditions

under which the men, if not belonging to the Guards, virtually

abandoned the practice of saluting officers altogether in the streets

of London.

Then, how about those red tabs? The expression "red tabs" is, however,

employed rather as a shibboleth; staff-officers must be distinguished

somehow when they are not wearing armlets, and were the tabs less

conspicuous there would be no special harm in them. It is the red band

round the cap that is so utterly inappropriate when imposed upon

service dress. It ought to have been abolished within six months of

the beginning of the war. General-officers and staff-officers who came

under fire had to adopt a khaki valance to conceal their cap-band;

they were to be seen going about in this get-up in the Metropolis when

over on duty or on leave, and yet no steps were taken officially to

assimilate their headgear to that of the ordinary officer. But for the

red band and its distinctive effect, it is open to question whether

officers performing every kind of special duty would have been so

perpetually clamouring to be allowed to wear the red tabs. The

practice of glorifying the staff-officer in his dress as compared

with regimental officers is to be deprecated, although his turn-out

should of course be, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion--to which I

remember an exception when making first acquaintance with a staff I

had come to join.

On reporting myself at headquarters at Devonport in the morning after

arriving to take up an appointment a good many years ago, I learnt

that there was to be no end of a pageant that afternoon. The British

Association, or some such body, had descended upon Plymouth for a

palaver. There was to be a review in Saltram Park on the farther side

of the Three Towns so as to make sport for the visitors. The general

was very keen on mustering as many cocked hats around him for the

performance as could be got together, and he pressed me to borrow a

horse somehow and to put in an appearance, proposing that I should

ride out with him and the A.D.C. as, being a stranger, I would not

know the way. So a crock was procured, saddlery was fished out of its

case and polished up in frantic haste, and in due course we jogged out

to the venue. On arriving in the park we found the garrison,

reinforced by a substantial Naval Brigade which had been extracted

from H.M. ships in harbour, drawn up and looking very imposing, while

people from round about had gathered in swarms and their best clothes

to witness the spectacle. As we rode on to the ground the

Assistant-Adjutant-General came cantering up. "The parade's all ready

for you, sir," he reported, "and everything's all correct--except the

Assistant-Quartermaster-General. He, sir, is _in rags_." He was.

There was one broad principle, the truth of which was brought out very

clearly during the course of our British campaigns between 1914 and

1919--the principle that commanders of brigades and divisions require

to be young and active men. There were exceptions, no doubt; but the

exceptions only proved what came to be a generally accepted rule. The

old methods of promotion in the Army, methods which hinged partly on

the purchase system and partly on the prizes of the service going by

interest and by favour, were highly objectionable; but those methods

did have the advantage that commanders in the field, whether they

turned out to be efficient or to be inefficient, were at least fairly

young in years as a rule. Wellington himself, and all his principal

subordinates other than Graham and Picton, were well under fifty years

of age at the end of the Peninsular War; Wellington was forty-five,

Beresford was forty-six, Hill was forty-two, Lowry Cole was forty-two.

Wolfe, again, and Clive, Amherst and Granby, the most distinguished

British commanders of the eighteenth century except Marlborough, were

all comparatively young men at the time when they made their mark. It

was only in the course of the long peace that followed Waterloo that

our general-officers as a body came to be well on in life--Lord Raglan

at the beginning of the Crimean War was sixty-six, Brown was

sixty-four, Cathcart was sixty--even if at a somewhat later date a

prolonged course of small wars did produce a sufficiency of young

commanders to go round for minor campaigns. It would seem advisable to

reduce the limit of age for promotion to the grade of major-general

from fifty-seven to fifty, and that for the grade of lieutenant-general

from sixty-two to fifty-seven. The great obstacle in the way of a

reform of this kind, as a rule, arises from the fact that the decision

rests to a large extent in the hands of comparatively old officers,

who do not always quite realize that they are past the age for work in

the field. That is not so much the case now, so that it seems to be

the right time to act.

The position of the General Staff within the War Office appears to be

pretty well assured now. But it also appeared to be pretty well

assured before the war; and yet there were those incidents of the

non-existence of the high-explosive shell for our field artillery

which nearly all foreign field artilleries possessed, and of Colonel

Swinton's Tank projects being dealt with by a technical branch and the

General Staff never hearing of it, which have been mentioned in this

volume. The military technicalist, be he an expert in ballistics or in

explosives or in metallurgy or in electrical communications or in any

other form of scientific knowledge, is a very valuable member of the

martial community. But he is a little inclined to get into a groove.

He stood in some need of being stirred up from outside during the

Great War, and he must learn that he is subordinate to the General

Staff.

The old project of instituting a Ministry of Defence has cropped up

again, very largely owing to the importance that aeronautics have

assumed in war and to the anomalous position of affairs which the

creation of an Air Ministry has brought about. Could aviation in its

various forms be left entirely out of consideration in connection with

defence problems, no case whatever could be put forward for setting up

such a central Department of State. The relations between the sea

service and the land service are on a totally different basis now from

what they were when Lord Randolph Churchill, thirty years ago,

proposed the establishment of a Ministry which would link together the

Admiralty and the War Office, each of which was under his plan to be

controlled by a professional head. It was in many respects an

attractive scheme in those days. The departments that were

respectively administering the Royal Navy and the Army were not then

in close touch, as they are now; they badly required association in

some form or other. But it has been found possible to secure the

needed collaboration and concert between them without resorting to

heroic measures such as Lord Randolph contemplated. The sea service

and the land service generally worked in perfect harmony during the

Great War--except in the one matter of their respective air

departments. There was a certain amount of unwholesome competition

between them over aeronautical material up to the time when one single

air department was established late in 1917.

Aeronautics do unquestionably constitute a difficulty, and a

difficulty which did not make itself apparent during the late

conflict in quite the same form as it might in future wars. The Navy

and the Army must both have air services absolutely under their

control in peace and in war; but there is also, no doubt, immense

scope for independent aeronautical establishments, kept separate from

the righting forces on the sea and on land. Three more or less

distinct air services, in fact, seem to be needed, and the question of

equitable distribution of material between them at once crops up.

Supposing all three to be administered, from the supply point of view,

by an Air Ministry, this institution may show itself disposed to look

better after its own child, the independent air service, than after

its stepchildren, the naval and military air services. Were a Minister

of Defence to be set up as overlord, he could act as impartial

referee. But this one phase of our defence problems as a whole can

surely be dealt with effectively without creating an entirely new

Ministry, for the establishment of which no other good excuse can be

put forward. The problem of preventing competition and rivalry in

respect to material between the three branches of combatant

aeronautics ought not to be an insuperable one, if firmly handled.

In this connection it may be observed that a certain confusion of

ideas appears to exist in some quarters between a Defence Ministry

co-ordinating naval, military and aeronautical questions, and an

Imperial General Staff concerning itself with the sea, the land and

the air. The two things are, and must always be, totally distinct. A

Defence Ministry would in the nature of things be an executive

institution. In the Empire as it is now constituted, an Imperial

General Staff can only be a consultative institution. A General Staff

in the ordinary meaning of the term is executive as well as

consultative; it issues orders with regard to certain matters, and it

administers certain military departments and branches. But so long as

the Empire comprises a number of self-governing Dominions and has no

common budget for defence purposes, the Imperial General Staff can

only make recommendations and tender advice; it can order nothing.

Amongst the innumerable professional lessons taught by the experiences

of the Great War, there is one which professional soldiers had learnt

before it began, but which the public require to learn. This is that

newly organized troops or troops of the militia type such as our

Territorials of pre-war days, who necessarily have undergone little

training previous to the outbreak of hostilities, do not make really

effective instruments in the hands of a commander for a considerable

period after embodiment. The course of events proved, it is true, that

the individual soldier and officer can be adequately prepared for the

ordeal in a shorter space of time than had generally been believed

necessary by military men, and that they can be incorporated in drafts

for the front within a very few months of their joining the colours.

But that does not hold good with individual units. Still less does it

hold good with collections of individual units such as brigades and

divisions.

The records of the New Army, of the Territorials, of the improvised

formations sent to fight by the great Dominions oversea, all go to

show that such troops need to be broken in gradually after they take

the field before they can safely be regarded as fully equal to serious

operations. Our Allies' and our enemies' experiences were similar. We

know from enemy works that, although the German "Reserve Corps" fought

gallantly during the early months, they achieved less and suffered

more heavily in casualties than would have been the case had Regular

Corps been given corresponding tasks to carry out. It was the same

with the French Territorial Divisions. The American troops proved fine

fighters from the outset, but owing to lack of experience and of

cohesion they took a considerable time before they pulled their

weight; moreover, the larger the bodies in which they fought

independently of French and British command, the more noticeable this

was.

Certain regiments hastily got together on the spot from men who could

shoot and ride and who knew the Boers and their ways, performed most

distinguished service during the South African War, so much so,

indeed, that an idea got abroad amongst civilians at that time that

the need for the elaborate and prolonged training, which professional

soldiers always insisted upon, was merely a question of prejudice.

Happily those who were responsible for our Army organization and for

its preparation for war knew better, and August 1914 proved that they

were right. It was not merely due to the stubborn grit of their

personnel that the "Old Contemptibles" carried out their retreat from

Mons in face of greatly superior hostile forces with what was in

reality comparatively small loss, and that they were ready to advance

and fight again as soon as they got the word. It was also due to rank

and file and regimental officers and staff knowing their business

thoroughly. Had those five divisions been, say, New Army divisions

just arrived at the front, or divisions such as landed under General

Birdwood's orders at Anzac on the 25th of April, they would have been

swept back in hopeless confusion. They would not have known enough

about the niceties of the game to play it successfully under such

adverse conditions. The framework would not have stood the strain.

The sedentary type of operations which for three years played so big a

part in most theatres was, it must be remembered, particularly

favourable to newly created formations. Mobile warfare imposes a much

more violent test. When really active work is being carried on in the

field by partially trained troops, the platoon may do capitally, the

company fairly well, the battalion not altogether badly; but the

brigade will be all over the place, and the division will be in a

state of chaos. Whatever conditions future campaigns may bring forth,

trench warfare is unlikely to supervene immediately, nor to be brought

about until something fairly important has happened; and it will not

continue to the end unless the result of the conflict is to be

indecisive. In 1918 there was nothing to choose between British

divisions which had had no existence in August 1914 and those which

had fought as the point of England's lance at Le Cateau, on the Marne

and on the Aisne. But wars will not always last four years. Nor will

the belligerent who has to create entirely new armies to carry on the

struggle always prove victorious in the end.

THE END

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