to their admiring pupils, but the lesson has been learned. It was
not show troops, General, who, with two corps, held five of your
best day after day from Mons to Compiègne. It is no reproach to
your valour: but you were up against men who were equally brave and
knew a great deal more of the game. This must begin to break upon
you, and will surely grow clearer as the days go by. We shall often
in the future take the knock as well as give it, but you will not
say that we have a show army if you live to chronicle this war, nor
will your Imperial master be proud of the adjective which he has
demeaned himself in using before his troops had learned their
lesson.
The fact is that the German army, with all its great traditions, has
been petrifying for many years back. They never learned the lesson
of South Africa. It was not for want of having it expounded to them,
for their military attaché--"'im with the spatchcock on 'is
'elmet," as I heard him described by a British orderly--missed
nothing of what occurred, as is evident from their official history
of the war. And yet they missed it, and with it all those ideas of
individual efficiency and elastic independent formations, which are
the essence of modern soldiering. Their own more liberal thinkers
were aware of it. Here are the words which were put into the mouth
of Güntz, the representative of the younger school, in Beyerlein's
famous novel:
"The organisation of the German army rested upon foundations which
had been laid a hundred years ago. Since the great war they had
never seriously been put to the proof, and during the last three
decades they had only been altered in the most trifling details. In
three long decades! And in one of those decades the world at large
had advanced as much as in the previous century.
"Instead of turning this highly developed intelligence to good
account, they bound it hand and foot on the rack of an everlasting
drill which could not have been more soullessly mechanical in the
days of Frederick. It held them together as an iron hoop holds
together a cask the dry staves of which would fall asunder at the
first kick."
Lord Roberts has said that if ten points represent the complete
soldier, eight should stand for his efficiency as a shot. The German
maxim has rather been that eight should stand for his efficiency as
a drilled marionette. It has been reckoned that about 200 books a
year appear in Germany upon military affairs, against about 20 in
Britain. And yet after all this expert debate the essential point of
all seems to have been missed--that in the end everything depends
upon the man behind the gun, upon his hitting his opponent and upon
his taking cover so as to avoid being hit himself.
After all the efforts of the General Staff the result when shown
upon the field of battle has filled our men with a mixture of
admiration and contempt--contempt for the absurd tactics, admiration
for the poor devils who struggle on in spite of them. Listen to the
voices of the men who are the real experts. Says a Lincolnshire
sergeant, "They were in solid square blocks, and we couldn't help
hitting them." Says Private Tait (2nd Essex), "Their rifle shooting
is rotten. I don't believe they could hit a haystack at 100 yards."
"They are rotten shots with their rifles," says an Oldham private.
"They advance in close column, and you simply can't help hitting
them," writes a Gordon Highlander. "You would have thought it was a
big crowd streaming out from a Cup-tie," says Private Whitaker of
the Guards. "It was like a farmer's machine cutting grass," so it
seemed to Private Hawkins of the Coldstreams. "No damned good as
riflemen," says a Connemara boy. "You couldn't help hitting them.
As to their rifle fire, it was useless." "They shoot from the hip,
and don't seem to aim at anything in particular."
These are the opinions of the practical men upon the field of
battle. Surely a poor result from the 200 volumes a year, and all
the weighty labours of the General Staff! "Artillery nearly as good
as our own, rifle fire beneath contempt," that is the verdict. How
will the well-taught _Paradeschritt_ avail them when it comes to a
stricken field?
But let it not seem as if this were meant for disparagement. We
should be sinking to the Kaiser's level if we answered his
"contemptible little army" by pretending that his own troops are
anything but a very formidable and big army. They are formidable in
numbers, formidable, too, in their patriotic devotion, in their
native courage, and in the possession of such material, such great
cannon, aircraft, machine guns, and armoured cars, as none of the
Allies can match. They have every advantage which a nation would be
expected to have when it has known that war was a certainty, while
others have only treated it as a possibility. There is a minuteness
and earnestness of preparation which are only possible for an
assured event. But the fact remains, and it will only be brought out
more clearly by the Emperor's unchivalrous phrase, that in every arm
the British have already shown themselves to be the better troops.
Had he the Froissart spirit within him he would rather have said:
"You have to-day a task which is worthy of you. You are faced by an
army which has a high repute and a great history. There is real
glory to be won to-day." Had he said this, then, win or lose, he
would not have needed to be ashamed of his own words--the words of
an ungenerous spirit.
It is a very strange thing how German critics have taken for granted
that the British Army had deteriorated, while the opinion of all
those who were in close touch with it was that it was never so good.
Even some of the French experts made the same mistake, and General
Bonnat counselled his countrymen not to rely upon it, since "it
would take refuge amid its islands at the first reverse." One would
think that the causes which make for its predominance were obvious.
Apart from any question of national spirit or energy, there is the
all-important fact that the men are there of their own free will, an
advantage which I trust that we shall never be compelled to
surrender. Again, the men are of longer service in every arm, and
they have far more opportunities of actual fighting than come to any
other force. Finally, they are divided into regiments, with
centuries of military glory streaming from their banners, which
carry on a mighty tradition. The very words the Guards, the Rifles,
the Connaught Rangers, the Buffs, the Scots Greys, the Gordons,
sound like bugle-calls. How could an army be anything but dangerous
which had such units in its line of battle?
And yet there remains the fact that both enemies and friends are
surprised at our efficiency. This is no new phenomenon. Again and
again in the course of history the British Armies have had to win
once more the reputation which had been forgotten. Continentals have
always begun by refusing to take them seriously. Napoleon, who had
never met them in battle, imagined that their unbroken success was
due to some weakness in his marshals rather than to any excellence
of the troops. "At last I have them, these English," he exclaimed,
as he gazed at the thin red line at Waterloo. "At last they have me,
these English," may have been his thought that evening as he spurred
his horse out of the debacle. Foy warned him of the truth. "The
British infantry is the devil," said he. "You think so because you
were beaten by them," cried Napoleon. Like von Kluck or von Kluck's
master, he had something to learn.
Why this continual depreciation? It may be that the world pays so
much attention to our excellent right arm that it cannot give us
credit for having a very serviceable left as well. Or it may be that
they take seriously those jeremiads over our decay which are
characteristic of our people, and very especially of many of our
military thinkers. I have never been able to understand why they
should be of so pessimistic a turn of mind, unless it be a sort of
exaltation of that grumbling which has always been the privilege of
the old soldier. Croker narrates how he met Wellington in his
latter years, and how the Iron Duke told him that he was glad that
he was so old, as he would not live to see the dreadful military
misfortunes which were about to come to his country. Looking back we
can see no reasons for such pessimism as this. Above all, the old
soldier can never make any allowance for the latent powers which lie
in civilian patriotism and valour. Only a year ago I had a long
conversation with a well-known British General, in which he asserted
with great warmth that in case of an Anglo-German war with France
involved the British public would never allow a trained soldier to
leave these islands. He is at the front himself and doing such good
work that he has little time for reminiscence, but when he has he
must admit that he underrated the nerve of his countrymen.
And yet under the pessimism of such men as he there is a curious
contradictory assurance that there are no troops like our own. The
late Lord Goschen used to tell a story of a letter that he had from
a captain in the Navy at the time when he was First Lord. This
captain's ship was lying alongside a foreign cruiser in some port,
and he compared in his report the powers of the two vessels. Lord
Goschen said that his heart sank as he read the long catalogue of
points in which the British ship was inferior--guns, armour,
speed--until he came to the postscript, which was: "I think I could
take her in twenty minutes."
With all the grumbling of our old soldiers there is always some
reservation of the sort at the end of it. Of course those who are
familiar with our ways of getting things done would understand that
a good deal of the croaking is a means of getting our little army
increased, or at least preventing its being diminished. But whatever
the cause, the result has been the impression abroad of a
"contemptible little army." Whatever surprise in the shape of
17-inch howitzers or 900-foot Zeppelins the Kaiser may have for us,
it is a safe prophecy that it will be a small matter compared to
that which Sir John French and his men will be to him.
But above all I look forward to the development of our mounted
riflemen. This I say in no disparagement of our cavalry, who have
done so magnificently. But the mounted rifleman is a peculiarly
British product--British and American--with a fresh edge upon it
from South Africa. I am most curious to see what a division of these
fellows will make of the Uhlans. It is good to see that already the
old banners are in the wind--Lovat's Horse, Scottish Horse, King
Edward's Horse, and the rest. All that cavalry can do will surely be
done by our cavalry. But I have always held, and I still very
strongly hold, that the mounted rifleman has it in him to alter our
whole conception of warfare, as the mounted archer did in his day;
and now in this very war will be his first great chance upon a large
scale. Ten thousand well-mounted, well-trained riflemen, young
officers to lead them, all broad Germany with its towns, its
railways, and its magazines before them--there lies one more
surprise for the doctrinaires of Berlin.
* * * * *
VI
A POLICY OF MURDER
When one writes with a hot heart upon events which are still recent
one is apt to lose one's sense of proportion. At every step one
should check oneself by the reflection as to how this may appear ten
years hence, and how far events which seem shocking and abnormal may
prove themselves to be a necessary accompaniment of every condition
of war. But a time has now come when in cold blood, with every
possible restraint, one is justified in saying that since the most
barbarous campaigns of Alva in the Lowlands, or the excesses of the
Thirty Years' War, there has been no such deliberate policy of
murder as has been adopted in this struggle by the German forces.
This is the more terrible since these forces are not, like those of
Alva, Parma, or Tilly, bands of turbulent and mercenary soldiers,
but they are the nation itself, and their deeds are condoned or even
applauded by the entire national Press. It is not on the chiefs of
the army that the whole guilt of this terrible crime must rest, but
it is upon the whole German nation, which for generations to come
must stand condemned before the civilised world for this reversion
to those barbarous practices from which Christianity, civilisation,
and chivalry had gradually rescued the human race. They may, and do,
plead the excuse that they are "earnest" in war, but all nations are
earnest in war, which is the most desperately earnest thing of which
we have any knowledge. How earnest we are will be shown when the
question of endurance begins to tell. But no earnestness can condone
the crime of the nation which deliberately breaks those laws which
have been endorsed by the common consent of humanity.
War may have a beautiful as well as a terrible side, and be full of
touches of human sympathy and restraint which mitigate its
unavoidable horror. Such have been the characteristics always of the
secular wars between the British and the French. From the old
glittering days of knighthood, with their high and gallant courtesy,
through the eighteenth-century campaigns where the debonair guards
of France and England exchanged salutations before their volleys,
down to the last great Napoleonic struggle, the tradition of
chivalry has always survived. We read how in the Peninsula the
pickets of the two armies, each of them as earnest as any Germans,
would exchange courtesies, how they would shout warnings to each
other to fall back when an advance in force was taking place, and
how, to prevent the destruction of an ancient bridge, the British
promised not to use it on condition that the French would forgo its
destruction--an agreement faithfully kept upon either side. Could
one imagine Germans making war in such a spirit as this? Think of
that old French bridge, and then think of the University of Louvain
and the Cathedral of Rheims. What a gap between them--the gap that
separates civilisation from the savage!
Let us take a few of the points which, when focussed together, show
how the Germans have degraded warfare--a degradation which affects
not only the Allies at present, but the whole future of the world,
since if such examples were followed the entire human race would,
each in turn, become the sufferers. Take the very first incident of
the war, the mine-laying by the _Königin Luise_. Here was a
vessel, which was obviously made ready with freshly charged mines
some time before there was any question of a general European war,
which was sent forth in time of peace, and which, on receipt of a
wireless message, began to spawn its hellish cargo across the North
Sea at points 50 miles from land in the track of all neutral
merchant shipping. There was the keynote of German tactics struck at
the first possible instant. So promiscuous was the effect that it
was a mere chance which prevented the vessel which bore the German
Ambassador from being destroyed by a German mine. From first to last
some hundreds of people have lost their lives on this tract of sea,
some of them harmless British trawlers, but the greater number
sailors of Danish and Dutch vessels pursuing their commerce as they
had every right to do. It was the first move in a consistent policy
of murder.
Leaving the sea, let us turn to the air. Can any possible term save
a policy of murder be applied to the use of aircraft by the Germans?
It has always been a principle of warfare that unfortified towns
should not be bombarded. So closely has it been followed by the
British that one of our aviators, flying over Cologne in search of a
Zeppelin shed, refrained from dropping a bomb in an uncertain light,
even though Cologne is a fortress, lest the innocent should suffer.
What is to be said, then, for the continual use of bombs by the
Germans, which have usually been wasted in the destruction of cats
or dogs, but which have occasionally torn to pieces some woman or
child? If bombs were dropped on the forts of Paris as part of a
scheme for reducing the place, then nothing could be said in
objection, but how are we to describe the action of men who fly over
a crowded city dropping bombs promiscuously which can have no
military effect whatever, and are entirely aimed at the destruction
of innocent civilians? These men have been obliging enough to drop
their cards as well as their bombs on several occasions. I see no
reason why these should not be used in evidence against them, or why
they should not be hanged as murderers when they fall into the hands
of the Allies. The policy is idiotic from a military point of view;
one could conceive nothing which would stimulate and harden national
resistance more surely than such petty irritations. But it is a
murderous innovation in the laws of war, and unless it is sternly
repressed it will establish a most sinister precedent for the
future.
As to the treatment of Belgium, what has it been but murder, murder
all the way? From the first days at Visé, when it was officially
stated that an example of "frightfulness" was desired, until the
present moment, when the terrified population has rushed from the
country and thrown itself upon the charity and protection of its
neighbours, there has been no break in the record. Compare the story
with that of the occupation of the South of France by Wellington in
1813, when no one was injured, nothing was taken without full
payment, and the villagers fraternised with the troops. What a
relapse of civilisation is here! From Visé to Louvain, Louvain to
Aerschott, Aerschott to Malines and Termonde, the policy of murder
never fails.
It is said that more civilians than soldiers have fallen in Belgium.
Peruse the horrible accounts taken by the Belgian Commission, who
took evidence in the most careful and conscientious fashion. Study
the accounts of that dreadful night in Louvain which can only be
equalled by the Spanish Fury of Antwerp. Read the account of the
wife of the burgomaster of Aerschott, with its heart-rending
description of how her lame son, aged sixteen, was kicked along to
his death by an aide-de-camp. It is all so vile, so brutally
murderous that one can hardly realise that one is reading the
incidents of a modern campaign conducted by one of the leading
nations in Europe.
Do you imagine that the thing has been exaggerated? Far from it--the
volume of crime has not yet been appreciated. Have not many Germans
unwittingly testified to what they have seen and done? Only last
week we had the journal of one of them, an officer whose service had
been almost entirely in France and removed from the crime centres of
Belgium. Yet were ever such entries in the diary of a civilised
soldier? "Our men behaved like regular Vandals." "We shot the whole
lot" (these were villagers). "They were drawn up in three ranks. The
same shot did for three at a time." "In the evening we set fire to
the village. The priest and some of the inhabitants were shot." "The
villages all round were burning." "The villages were burned and the
inhabitants shot." "At Leppe apparently two hundred men were shot.
There must have been some innocent men among them." "In the future
we shall have to hold an inquiry into their guilt instead of merely
shooting them." "The Vandals themselves could not have done more
damage. The place is a disgrace to our army." So the journal runs on
with its tale of infamy. It is an infamy so shameless that even in
the German record the story is perpetuated of how a French lad was
murdered because he refused to answer certain questions. To such a
depth of degradation has Prussia brought the standard of warfare.
And now, as the appetite for blood grows ever stronger--and nothing
waxes more fast--we have stories of the treatment of prisoners. Here
is a point where our attention should be most concentrated and our
action most prompt. It is the just duty which we owe to our own
brave soldiers. At present the instances are isolated, and we will
hope that they do not represent any general condition. But the
stories come from sure sources. There is the account of the
brutality which culminated in the death of the gallant motor-cyclist
Pearson, the son of Lord Cowdray. There is the horrible story in a
responsible Dutch paper, told by an eye-witness, of the torture of
three British wounded prisoners in Landen Station on October 9.
The story carries conviction by its detail. Finally, there are the
disquieting remarks of German soldiers, repeated by this same
witness, as to the British prisoners whom they had shot. The whole
lesson of history is that when troops are allowed to start murder
one can never say how or when it will stop. It may no longer be part
of a deliberate, calculated policy of murder by the German
Government. But it has undoubtedly been so in the past, and we
cannot say when it will end. Such incidents will, I fear, make peace
an impossibility in our generation, for whatever statesmen may write
upon paper can never affect the deep and bitter resentment which a
war so conducted must leave behind it.
Other German characteristics we can ignore. The consistent,
systematic lying of the German Press, or the grotesque blasphemies
of the Kaiser, can be met by us with contemptuous tolerance. After
all, what is is, and neither falsehood nor bombast will alter it.
But this policy of murder deeply affects not only ourselves but the
whole framework of civilisation so slowly and painfully built
upwards by the human race.
* * * * *
VII
MADNESS
We have all, I suppose, read and marvelled at the wonderful German
"song of hate." This has been so much admired over the water that
Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria (who had just stated his bitter hatred of
us in a prose army order) distributed copies of the verses to his
Bavarians as a stimulant in their long, unsuccessful tussle with our
troops at Ypres. In case the reader has forgotten its flavour, I
append a typical verse:
"We will never forgo our hate.
We have all but a single hate.
We love as one, we hate as one,
We have one foe and one alone--
ENGLAND."
This sort of thing is, it must be admitted, very painful and odious.
It fills us with a mixture of pity and disgust, and we feel as if,
instead of a man, we were really fighting with a furious, screaming
woman. Germany used to be a very great nation, mentally and morally
as well as in material ways, and many of us, even while we fight
her, are honestly pained by the depths of degradation into which she
has fallen. This shrill scream of hate and constant frenzied ranting
against Great Britain may reach its highest note in this poem, but
we know that it pervades the whole Press and every class of national
thought. It is deliberately fed by lying journals, which publish
bogus letters describing the imaginary sufferings of German
prisoners, and also by the Government itself, which upon receiving a
Socialist report partly favourable to Britain, excised those
passages and circulated the rest as a complete document, so as to
give the idea that it was wholly condemnatory. Wherever we touch
Germany in its present phase, whether it be the Overlord himself
with his megalomaniac messages, the princes with their looting of
châteaux, the Foreign Office with its trick of stealing American
passports for the use of German spies, the army with its absolute
brutality, the navy with its tactics of mine-laying in neutral
waters, the Press with its grotesque concoctions, the artists with
their pictures, which are so base that the decent Germans have
themselves at last rebelled against them, or the business men with
their assertion that there is less economic disturbance in Germany
than in Great Britain--wherever, I say, you touch them you come
always upon what is odious and deceitful. A long century will have
passed before Germany can wash her hands clean from murder, or purge
from her spirit the shadow of this evil time.
If the words of one humble individual could reach across the seas,
there are two things upon which I should wish to speak earnestly to
a German: the one, our own character, the other, the future which he
is deliberately preparing for the Fatherland which he loves. Our
papers do get over there, even as theirs come over here, so one may
hope it is not impossible that some German may give a thought to
what I say, if he is not so bemused by the atmosphere of lies in
which his Press has enveloped him that he cannot recognise cold
truth when he sees it.