It was another commander-in-chief who received us some months after the
battle of Loos, in a chateau near Montreuil, to which G. H. Q. had then
removed. Our only knowledge of Sir Douglas Haig before that day was of
a hostile influence against us in the First Army, which he commanded. He
had drawn a line through his area beyond which we might not pass. He did
not desire our presence among his troops nor in his neighborhood. That
line had been broken by the protests of our commandant, and now as
Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig had realized dimly that he might be
helped by our services.
It was in another French salon that we waited for the man who controlled
the British armies in the field--those armies which we now knew in some
intimacy, whom we had seen in the front-line trenches and rest-camps and
billets, hearing their point of view, knowing their suffering and their
patience, and their impatience--and their deadly hatred of G. H. Q.
He was very handsome as he sat behind a Louis XIV table, with General
Charteris--his Chief of Intelligence, who was our chief, too--behind him
at one side, for prompting and advice. He received us with fine courtesy
and said:
“Pray be seated, gentlemen.”
There had been many troubles over censorship, of which he knew but
vaguely through General Charteris, who looked upon us as his special
“cross.” We had fought hard for liberty in mentioning units, to give
the honor to the troops, and for other concessions which would free our
pens.
The Commander-in-Chief was sympathetic, but his sympathy was expressed
in words which revealed a complete misunderstanding of our purpose and
of our work, and was indeed no less than an insult, unconscious but very
hurtful.
“I think I understand fairly well what you gentlemen want,” he said.
“You want to get hold of little stories of heroism, and so forth, and to
write them up in a bright way to make good reading for Mary Ann in the
kitchen, and the Man in the Street.” The quiet passion with which those
words were resented by us, the quick repudiation of this slur upon our
purpose by a charming man perfectly ignorant at that time of the new
psychology of nations in a war which was no longer a professional
adventure, surprised him. We took occasion to point out to him that the
British Empire, which had sent its men into this war, yearned to know
what they were doing and how they were doing, and that their patience
and loyalty depended upon closer knowledge of what was happening than
was told them in the communiques issued by the Commander-in-Chief
himself. We urged him to let us mention more frequently the names of the
troops engaged--especially English troops--for the sake of the soldiers
themselves, who were discouraged by this lack of recognition, and for
the sake of the people behind them... It was to the pressure of the
war correspondents, very largely, that the troops owed the mention
and world-wide honor which came to them, more generously, in the later
phases of the war.
The Commander-in-Chief made a note of our grievances, turning now and
again to General Charteris, who was extremely nervous at our frankness
of speech, and telling him to relax the rules of censorship as far as
possible. That was done, and in later stages of the war I personally
had no great complaint against the censorship, and wrote all that was
possible to write of the actions day by day, though I had to leave out
something of the underlying horror of them all, in spite of my continual
emphasis, by temperament and by conviction, on the tragedy of all this
sacrifice of youth. The only alternative to what we wrote would have
been a passionate denunciation of all this ghastly slaughter and violent
attacks on British generalship. Even now I do not think that would have
been justified. As Bernard Shaw told me, “while the war lasts one must
put one's own soul under censorship.”
After many bloody battles had been fought we were received again by the
Commander-in-Chief, and this time his cordiality was not marred by any
slighting touch.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “you have played the game like men!”
When victory came at last--at last!--after the years of slaughter, it
was the little band of war correspondents on the British front, our
foreign comrades included, whom the Field-Marshal addressed on his first
visit to the Rhine. We stood on the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne,
watched by groups of Germans peering through the escort of Lancers. It
was a dank and foul day, but to us beautiful, because this was the end
of the long journey--four-and--a-half years long, which had been filled
with slaughter all the way, so that we were tired of its backwash
of agony, which had overwhelmed our souls--mine, certainly. The
Commander-in-Chief read out a speech to us, thanking us for our
services, which, he said, had helped him to victory, because we had
heartened the troops and the people by our work. It was a recognition
by the leader of our armies that, as chroniclers of war, we had been a
spiritual force behind his arms. It was a reward for many mournful days,
for much agony of spirit, for hours of danger--some of us had walked
often in the ways of death--and for exhausting labors which we did
so that the world might know what British soldiers had been doing and
suffering.
X
I came to know General Headquarters more closely when it removed, for
fresher air, to Montreuil, a fine old walled town, once within sight of
the sea, which ebbed over the low-lying ground below its hill, but
now looking across a wide vista of richly cultivated fields where many
hamlets are scattered among clumps of trees. One came to G. H. Q. from
journeys over the wild desert of the battlefields, where men lived in
ditches and “pill-boxes,” muddy, miserable in all things but spirit, as
to a place where the pageantry of war still maintained its old and dead
tradition. It was like one of those pageants which used to be played in
England before the war--picturesque, romantic, utterly unreal. It was as
though men were playing at war here, while others sixty miles away were
fighting and dying, in mud and gas-waves and explosive barrages.
An “open sesame,” by means of a special pass, was needed to enter this
City of Beautiful Nonsense. Below the gateway, up the steep hillside,
sentries stood at a white post across the road, which lifted up on
pulleys when the pass had been examined by a military policeman in a
red cap. Then the sentries slapped their hands on their rifles to the
occupants of any motor-car, sure that more staff-officers were going
in to perform those duties which no private soldier could attempt to
understand, believing they belonged to such mysteries as those of God.
Through the narrow streets walked elderly generals, middle-aged colonels
and majors, youthful subalterns all wearing red hat-bands, red tabs,
and the blue-and-red armlet of G. H. Q., so that color went with them on
their way.
Often one saw the Commander-in-Chief starting for an afternoon ride,
a fine figure, nobly mounted, with two A. D. C.'s and an escort of
Lancers. A pretty sight, with fluttering pennons on all their lances,
and horses groomed to the last hair. It was prettier than the real thing
up in the salient or beyond the Somme, where dead bodies lay in upheaved
earth among ruins and slaughtered trees. War at Montreuil was quite a
pleasant occupation for elderly generals who liked their little stroll
after lunch, and for young Regular officers, released from the painful
necessity of dying for their country, who were glad to get a game of
tennis, down below the walls there, after strenuous office-work in which
they had written “Passed to you” on many “minutes,” or had drawn the
most comical caricatures of their immediate chief, and of his immediate
chief, on blotting-pads and writing-blocks.
It seemed, at a mere glance, that all these military inhabitants of G.
H. Q. were great and glorious soldiers. Some of the youngest of them had
a row of decorations from Montenegro, Serbia, Italy, Rumania, and other
states, as recognition of gallant service in translating German letters
(found in dugouts by the fighting-men), or arranging for visits
of political personages to the back areas of war, or initialing
requisitions for pink, blue, green, and yellow forms, which in due
course would find their way to battalion adjutants for immediate
filling-up in the middle of an action. The oldest of them, those
white-haired, bronze-faced, gray-eyed generals in the administrative
side of war, had started their third row of ribbons well before the end
of the Somme battles, and had flower-borders on their breasts by the
time the massacres had been accomplished in the fields of Flanders. I
know an officer who was awarded the D. S. O. because he had hindered the
work of war correspondents with the zeal of a hedge-sparrow in search of
worms, and another who was the best-decorated man in the army because he
had presided over a visitors' chateau and entertained Royalties,
Members of Parliament, Mrs. Humphry Ward, miners, Japanese, Russian
revolutionaries, Portuguese ministers, Harry Lauder, Swedes, Danes,
Norwegians, clergymen, Montenegrins, and the Editor of John Bull, at the
government's expense--and I am bound to say he deserved them all, being
a man of infinite tact, many languages, and a devastating sense of
humor. There was always a Charlie Chaplin film between moving pictures
of the battles of the Somme. He brought the actualities of war to the
visitors' chateau by sentry-boxes outside the door, a toy “tank” in the
front garden, and a collection of war trophies in the hall. He spoke to
High Personages with less deference than he showed to miners from Durham
and Wales, and was master of them always, ordering them sternly to bed
at ten o'clock (when he sat down to bridge with his junior officers),
and with strict military discipline insisting upon their inspection of
the bakeries at Boulogne, and boot-mending factories at Calais, as part
of the glory of war which they had come out for to see.
So it was that there were brilliant colors in the streets of Montreuil,
and at every doorway a sentry slapped his hand to his rifle, with smart
and untiring iteration, as the “brains” of the army, under “brass hats”
and red bands, went hither and thither in the town, looking stern, as
soldiers of grave responsibility, answering salutes absent--mindedly,
staring haughtily at young battalion officers who passed through
Montreuil and looked meekly for a chance of a lorry-ride to Boulogne, on
seven days' leave from the lines.
The smart society of G. H. Q. was best seen at the Officers' Club in
Montreuil, at dinner-time. It was as much like musical comedy as any
stage setting of war at the Gaiety. A band played ragtime and light
music while the warriors fed, and all these generals and staff officers,
with their decorations and arm-bands and polished buttons and crossed
swords, were waited upon by little W. A. A. C.'s with the G. H. Q.
colors tied up in bows on their hair, and khaki stockings under
their short skirts and fancy aprons. Such a chatter! Such bursts of
light-hearted laughter! Such whisperings of secrets and intrigues and
scandals in high places! Such careless--hearted courage when British
soldiers were being blown to bits, gassed, blinded, maimed, and
shell-shocked in places that were far--so very far--from G. H. Q.!