‘So you see,’ said the officers in conclusion, ‘you mustn’t be surprised
that our men wouldn’t tell you much.’
‘I begin to see,’ I said. ‘How many of you are coal and how many
cotton?’
‘Two-thirds coal and one-third cotton, roughly. It keeps the men deadly
keen. An operative isn’t going to give up while a pitman goes on; and
very much _vice versâ_.’
‘That’s class-prejudice,’ said I.
‘It’s most useful,’ said they. The officers themselves seemed to be
interested in coal or cotton, and had known their men intimately on the
civil side. If your orderly-room sergeant, or your quarter-master has
been your trusted head clerk or foreman for ten or twelve years, and if
eight out of a dozen sergeants have controlled pitmen and machinists,
above and below ground, and eighty per cent of these pitmen and
machinists are privates in the companies, your regiment works with
something of the precision of a big business.
It was all new talk to me, for I had not yet met a Northern Territorial
battalion with the strong pride of its strong town behind it. Where were
they when the war came? How had they equipped themselves? I wanted to
hear the tale. It was worth listening to as told with North-Country joy
of life and the doing of things in that soft down-country house of the
untroubled centuries. Like every one else, they were expecting anything
but war. ‘Hadn’t even begun their annual camp. Then the thing came, and
Bolton rose as one man and woman to fit out its battalion. There was a
lady who wanted a fairly large sum of money for the men’s extra
footgear. She set aside a morning to collect it, and inside the hour
came home with nearly twice her needs, and spent the rest of the time
trying to make people take back fivers, at least, out of tenners. And
the big hauling firms flung horses and transport at them and at the
Government, often refusing any price, or, when it was paid, turning it
into the war funds. What the battalion wanted it had but to ask for.
Once it was short of, say, towels. An officer approached the head of a
big firm, with no particular idea he would get more than a few dozen
from that quarter.
‘And how many towels d’you want?’ said the head of the firm. The officer
suggested a globular thousand.
‘I think you’ll do better with twelve hundred,’ was the curt answer.
‘They’re ready out yonder. Get ‘em.’
And in this style Bolton turned out her battalion. Then the authorities
took it and strung it by threes and fives along several score miles of
railway track: and it had only just been reassembled, and it had been
inoculated for typhoid. Consequently, they said (but all officers are
like mothers and motor-car owners), it wasn’t up to what it would be in
a little time. In spite of the cyclist, I had had a good look at the
deep-chested battalion in the park, and after getting their musketry
figures,[1] it seemed to me that very soon it might be worth looking at
by more prejudiced persons than myself.
Footnote 1:
Thanks to the miniature rifle clubs fostered by Lord Roberts a certain
number of recruits in all the armies come to their regiments with a
certain knowledge of sighting, rifle-handling, and the general details
of good shooting, especially at snap and disappearing work.
The next day I read that this battalion’s regular battalion in the field
had distinguished itself by a piece of work which, in other wars, would
have been judged heroic. Bolton will read it, not without remarks, and
other towns who love Bolton, more or less, will say that if all the
truth could come out their regiments had done as well. Anyway, the
result will be more men—pitmen, mill-hands, clerks, checkers, weighers,
winders, and hundreds of those sleek, well-groomed business-chaps whom
one used to meet in the big Midland hotels, protesting that war was out
of date. These latter develop surprisingly in the camp atmosphere. I
recall one raging in his army shirt-sleeves at a comrade who had derided
his principles. ‘I _am_ a blanky pacificist,’ he hissed, ‘and I’m proud
of it, and—and I’m going to make _you_ one before I’ve finished with
you!’