facing up to her job; now, in as far as it is allowed, I want to give
a sketch of her supreme earnestness as proved by what she has already
achieved in France. The earnestness of her civilians should require
no further proof than the readiness with which they accepted national
conscription within a few hours of entering the war--a revolutionising
departure which it took England two years of fighting even to
contemplate, and which can hardly be said to be in full operation yet,
so long as conscientious objectors are allowed to air their so-called
consciences. In America the conscientious objector is not regarded; he
is listened to as only one of two things--a deserter or a traitor. The
earnestness of America's fighting man requires no proving; his only
grievance is that he is not in the trenches. Yet so long as the weight
of America is not felt to be turning the balance dramatically in our
favour, the earnestness of America will be open to challenge both by
Americans and by the Allies. What I saw in France in the early months
of this year has filled me with unbounded optimism. I feel the elated
certainty, as never before even in the moment of the most successful
attack, that the Hun's fate is sealed. What is more, I have grounds
for believing that he knows it--knows that the collapse of Russia will
profit him nothing because he cannot withstand the avalanche of men
from America. Already he hears them, as I have seen them, training in
their camps from the Pacific to the Atlantic, racing across the
Ocean in their grey transports, marching along the dusty roads of two
continents, a procession locust-like in multitude, stretching half
about the world, marching and singing indomitably, "We've got four
years to do this job." From behind the Rhine he has caught their
singing; it grows ever nearer, stronger. It will take time for that
avalanche to pyramid on the Western Front; but when it has piled up,
it will rush forward, fall on him and crush him. He knows something
else, which fills him with a still more dire sense of calamity--that
because America's honour has been jeopardised, of all the nations
now fighting she will be the last to lay down her arms. She has given
herself four years to do her job; when her job is ended, it will be
with Prussianism as it was with Jezebel, "They that went to bury her
found no more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her
hands. And her carcase was as dung upon the face of the field, so that
men should not say, 'This is Jezebel.'"
As an example of what America is accomplishing, I will take a sample
port in France. It was of tenth-rate importance, little more than
a harbour for coastwise vessels and ocean-going tramps when the
Americans took it over; by the time they have finished, it will be
among the first ports of Europe. It is only one of several that they
are at present enlarging and constructing. The work already completed
has been done in the main under the direction of the engineers who
marched through London in the July of last year. I visited the port in
January, so some idea can be gained of how much has been achieved in a
handful of months.
The original French town still has the aspect of a prosperous
fishing-village. There are two main streets with shops on them; there
is one out-of-date hotel; there are a few modern dwellings facing
the sea. For the rest, the town consists of cottages, alleys and
open spaces where the nets were once spread to dry. To-day in a vast
circle, as far as eye can reach, a city of huts has grown up. In those
huts live men of many nations, Americans, French, German prisoners,
negroes. They are all engaged in the stupendous task of construction.
The capacity of the harbour basin is being multiplied fifty times, the
berthing capacity trebled, the unloading facilities multiplied by ten.
A railroad yard is being laid which will contain 225 miles of track
and 870 switches. An immense locomotive-works is being erected for
the repairing and assembling of rolling-stock from America. It was
originally planned to bring over 960 standard locomotives and 30,000
freight-cars from the States, all equipped with French couplers
and brakes so that they could become a permanent part of the French
railroad system. These figures have since been somewhat reduced by
the purchase of rolling-stock in Europe. Reservoirs are being built at
some distance from the town which will be able to supply six millions
gallons of purified water a day. In order to obtain the necessary
quantity of pipe, piping will be torn up from various of the
water-systems in America and brought across the Atlantic. As the
officer, who was my informant remarked, "Rather than see France go
short, some city in the States will have to haul water in carts."
As proof of the efficiency with which materials from America are being
furnished, when the engineers arrived on the scene with 225 miles of
track to lay, they found 100 miles of rails and spikes already waiting
for them. Of the 870 switches required, 350 were already on hand. Of
the ties required, one-sixth were piled up for them to be going on
with. Not so bad for a nation quite new to the war-game and living
three thousand miles beyond the horizon!
On further enquiry I learnt that six million cubic yards of filling
were necessary to raise the ground of the railroad yard to the proper
level. In order that the work may be hurried, dredges are being
brought across the Atlantic and, if necessary, harbour construction in
the States will be curtailed.
I was interested in the personnel employed in this work. Here, as
elsewhere, I found that the engineering and organising brains of
America are largely in France. One colonel was head of the marble
industry in the States; another had been vice-president of the
Pennsylvania Railroad. Another man, holding a sergeant's rank was
general manager of the biggest fishing company. Another, a private
in the ranks, was chief engineer of the American Aluminum Company. A
major was general manager of The Southern Pacific. Another colonel was
formerly controller of the currency and afterwards president of the
Central Trust Company of Illinois. A captain was chief engineer and
built the aqueducts over the keys of the Florida East Coast Railroad.
As with us, you found men of the highest social and professional grade
serving in every rank of the American Army; one, a society man and
banker, was running a gang of negroes whose job it was to shovel sand
into cars. In peace times thirty thousand pounds a year could not
have bought him. What impressed me even more than the line of
communications itself was the quality of the men engaged on its
construction. As one of them said to me, "Any job that they give us
engineers to do over here is likely to be small in comparison with
the ones we've had to tackle in America." The man who said this had
previously done his share in the building of the Panama Canal. There
were others I met, men who had spanned rivers in Alaska, flung
rails across the Rockies, built dams in the arid regions, performed
engineering feats in China, Africa, Russia--in all parts of the world.
They were trained to be undaunted by the hugeness of any task; they'd
always beaten Nature in the long run. Their cheerful certainty that
America in France was more than up to her job maintained a constant
wave of enthusiasm.
It may be asked why it is necessary in an old-established country
like France, to waste time in enlarging harbours before you can make
effective war. The answer is simple: France has not enough ports of
sufficient size to handle the tonnage that is necessary to support
the Allied armies within her borders. America's greatest problem is
tonnage. She has the men and the materials in prodigal quantities, but
they are all three thousand miles away. Before the men can be
brought over, she has to establish her means of transport and line
of communications, so as to make certain that she can feed and clothe
them when once she has got them into the front-line. There are two
ways of economising on tonnage. One is to purchase in Europe. In this
way, up to February, The Purchasing Board of the Americans had saved
ninety days of transatlantic traffic. The other way is to have modern
docks, well railroaded, so that vessels can be unloaded in the least
possible space of time and sent back for other cargoes. Hence it has
been sane economy on the part of America to put much of her early
energy into construction rather than into fighting. Nevertheless, it
has made her an easy butt for criticism both in the States and abroad,
since the only proof to the newspaper-reader that America is at war is
the amount of front-line that she is actually defending.
I had heard much of what was going on at a certain place which was to
be the intermediate point in the American line of communications. I
had studied a blue-print map and had been amazed at its proportions.
I was told, and can well believe, that when completed it was to be the
biggest undertaking of its kind in the world. It was to be six and
a half miles long by about one mile broad. It was to have four and
a half million feet of covered storage and ten million feet of open
storage. It was to contain over two hundred miles of track in its
railroad yard and to house enough of the materials of war to keep a
million men fully equipped for thirty days. In addition to this it was
to have a plant, not for the repairing, but merely for the assembling
of aeroplanes, which would employ twenty thousand men.
I arrived there at night. There was no town. One stepped from the
train into the open country. Far away in the distance there was a
glimmering of fires and the scarlet of sparks shooting up between
bare tree-tops. My first impression was of the fragrance of pines and,
after that, as I approached the huts, of a memory more definite and
elusively familiar. The swinging of lanterns helped to bring it back:
I was remembering lumber-camps in the Rocky Mountains. The box-stove
in the shack in which I slept that night and the roughly timbered
walls served to heighten the illusion that I was in America. Next
morning the illusion was completed. Here were men with mackinaws and
green elk boots; here were cook-houses in which the only difference
was that a soldier did the cooking instead of a Chinaman; and above
all, here were fir and pines growing out of a golden soil, with a
soft wind blowing overhead. And here, in an extraordinary way, the
democracy of a lumber-camp had been reproduced: every one from
the Colonel down was a worker; it was difficult, apart from their
efficiency, to tell their rank.
Early in the morning I started out on a gasolene-speeder to make the
tour. At an astonishing rate, for the work had only been in hand three
months, the vast acreage was being tracked and covered with the sheds.
The sheds were not the kind I had been used to on my own front; they
were built out of anything that came handy, commenced with one sort of
material and finished with another. Sometimes the cross-pieces in the
roofs were still sweating, proving that it was only yesterday they
had been cut down in the nearby wood. There was no look of permanence
about anything. As the officer who conducted me said, "It's all run
up--a race against time." And then he added with a twinkle in his eye,
"But it's good enough to last four years."
This was America in France in every sense of the word. One felt the
atmosphere of rush. In the buildings, which should have been left when
materials failed, but which had been carried to completion by pioneer
methods, one recognised the resourcefulness of the lumberman of the
West. Then came a touch of Eastern America, to me almost more replete
with memory and excitement. In a flash I was transferred from a camp
in France to the rock-hewn highway of Fifth Avenue, running through
groves of sky-scrapers, garnished with sunshine and echoing with
tripping footsteps. I could smell the asphalt soaked with gasolene
and the flowers worn by the passing girls. The whole movement and
quickness of the life I had lost flooded back on me. The sound I heard
was the fate _motif_ of the frantic opera of American endeavour. The
truly wonderful thing was that I should hear it here, in a woodland in
France--the rapid tapping of a steel-riveter at work.
I learnt afterwards that I was not the only one to be carried away by
that music, as of a monstrous wood-pecker in an iron forest. The first
day the riveter was employed, the whole camp made excuses to come
and listen to it. They stood round it in groups, deafened and
thrilled--and a little homesick. What the bag-pipe is to the
Scotchman, the steel-riveter is to the American--the instrument which
best expresses his soul to a world which is different.
I found that the riveter was being employed in the erection of an
immense steel and concrete refrigerating plant, which was to
have machinery for the production of its own ice and sufficient
meat-storage capacity to provide a million men for thirty days. The
water for the ice was being obtained from wells which had been already
sunk. There was only surface water there when the Americans first
struck camp.
As another clear-cut example of what America is accomplishing in
France, I will take an aviation-camp. This camp is one of several, yet
it alone will be turning out from 350 to 400 airmen a month. The area
which it covers runs into miles. The Americans have their own ideas
of aerial fighting tactics, which they will teach here on an intensive
course and try out on the Hun from time to time. Some of their experts
have had the advantage of familiarising themselves with Hun aerial
equipment and strategy; they were on his side of the line at the start
of the war as neutral military observers. I liked the officer at
the head of this camp; I was particularly pleased with some of his
phrases. He was one of the first experts to fly with a Liberty engine.
Without giving any details away, he assured me impressively that it
was "an honest-to-God engine" and that his planes were equipped with
"an honest-to-God machine-gun," and that he looked forward with cheery
anticipation to the first encounter his chaps would have with "the
festive Hun." He was one of the few Americans I had met who spoke with
something of our scornful affection for the enemy. It indicated to me
his absolute certainty that he could beat him at the flying game. On
his lips the Hun was never the German or the Boche, but always "the
festive Hun." You can afford to speak kindly, almost pityingly of some
one you are going to vanquish. Hatred often indicates fear. Jocularity
is a victorious sign.
When I was in America last October a great effort was being made to
produce an overwhelming quantity of aeroplanes. Factories, both large
and small, in every State were specializing on manufacturing certain
parts, the idea being that so time would be saved and efficiency
gained. These separate parts were to be collected and assembled at
various big government plants. The aim was to turn out planes as
rapidly as Ford Cars and to swamp the Hun with numbers. America is
unusually rich in the human as well as the mechanical material for
crushing the enemy in the air. In this service, as in all the others,
the only difficulty that prevents her from making her fighting
strength immediately felt is the difficulty of transportation. The
road of ships across the Atlantic has to be widened; the road of steel
from the French ports to the Front has to be tracked and multiplied in
its carrying capacity. These difficulties on land and water are
being rapidly overcome: by adding to the means of transportation;
by increasing the efficiency of the transport facilities already
existing; by lightening the tonnage to be shipped from the States by
buying everything that is procurable in Europe. In the early months
much of the available Atlantic tonnage was occupied with carrying the
materials of construction: rails, engines, concrete, lumber, and all
the thousand and one things that go to the housing of armies. This
accounts for America's delay in starting fighting. For three years
Europe had been ransacked; very much of what America would require had
to be brought. Such work does not make a dramatic impression on
other nations, especially when they are impatient. Its value as a
contribution towards defeating the Hun is all in the future. Only
victories win applause in these days. Nevertheless, such work had to
be done. To do it thoroughly, on a sufficiently large scale, in the
face of the certain criticism which the delay for thoroughness would
occasion, demanded bravery and patriotism on the part of those
in charge of affairs. By the time this book is published their
high-mindedness will have begun to be appreciated, for the results of
it will have begun to tell. The results will tell increasingly as the
war progresses. America is determined to have no Crimea scandals. The
contentment and good condition of her troops in France will be
largely owing to the organisation and care with which her line of
communications has been constructed.
The purely business side of war is very dimly comprehended either by
the civilian or the combatant. The combatant, since he does whatever
dying is to be done, naturally looks down on the business man in
khaki. The civilian is inclined to think of war in terms of the mobile
warfare of other days, when armies were rarely more than some odd
thousands strong and were usually no more than expeditionary forces.
Such armies by reason of their rapid movements and the comparative
fewness of their numbers, were able to live on the countries through
which they marched. But our fighting forces of to-day are the manhood
of nations. The fronts which they occupy can scarcely boast a blade of
grass. The towns which lie behind them have been picked clean to the
very marrow. France herself, into which a military population of many
millions has been poured, was never at the best of times entirely
self-supporting. Whatever surplus of commodities the Allies possessed,
they had already shared long before the spring of 1917. When America
landed into the war, she found herself in the position of one who
arrives at an overcrowded inn late at night. Whatever of food or
accommodation the inn could afford had been already apportioned;
consequently, before America could put her first million men into the
trenches, she had to graft on to France a piece of the living tissue
of her own industrial system--whole cities of repair-shops, hospitals,
dwellings, store-houses, ice-plants, etc., together with the purely
business personnel that go with them. These cities, though initially
planned to maintain and furnish a minimum number of fighting men,
had to be capable of expansion so that they could ultimately support
millions.
Here are some facts and statistics which illustrate the big business
of war as Americans have undertaken it. They have had to erect
cold storage-plants, with mechanical means for ice-manufacture, of
sufficient capacity to hold twenty-five million pounds of beef always
in readiness.
They are at present constructing two salvage depots which, when
completed, will be the largest in the world. Here they will repair
and make fit for service again, shoes, harness, clothing, webbing,
tentage, rubber-boots, etc. Attached to these buildings there are
to be immense laundries which will undertake the washing for all
the American forces. In connection with the depots, there will be a
Salvage Corps, whose work is largely at the Front. The materials which
they collect will be sent back to the depots for sorting. Under the
American system every soldier, on coming out of the trenches, will
receive a complete new outfit, from the soles of his feet to the crown
of his head. "This," the General who informed me said tersely, "is our
way of solving the lice-problem."
The Motor Transport also has its salvage depot. Knock-down buildings
and machinery have been brought over from the States, and upwards of
4,000 trained mechanics for a start. This depot is also responsible
for the repairs of all horse-drawn transport, except the artillery.
The Quartermaster General's Department alone will have 35,000 motor
propelled vehicles and a personnel of 160,000 men.
Every effort is being made to employ labour-saving devices to
the fullest extent. The Supply Department expects to cut down its
personnel by two-thirds through the efficient use of machinery and
derricks. The order compelling all packages to be standardized in
different graded sizes, so that they can be forwarded directly to
the Front before being broken, has already done much to expedite
transportation. The dimensions of the luggage of a modern army can
be dimly realized when it is stated that the American armies will
initially require twenty-four million square feet of covered and
forty-one million of unroofed storage--not to mention the barrack
space.
Within the next few months they will require bakeries capable of
feeding one million and a quarter men. These bakeries are divided
into: the field bakeries, which are portable, and the mechanical
bakeries which are stationary and on the line of communications. One
of the latter had just been acquired and was described to me when I
was in the American area. It was planned throughout with a view to
labour-saving. It was so constructed that it could take the flour off
the cars and, with practically no handling, convert it into bread
at the rate of 750,000 lbs. a day. This struck me as a peculiarly
American contribution to big business methods; but on expressing this
opinion I was immediately corrected. This form of bakery was a British
invention, which has been in use for some time on our lines. The
Americans owed their possession of the bakery to the courtesy of the
British Government, who had postponed their own order and allowed the
Americans to fill theirs four months ahead of their contract.
This is a sample of the kind of discovery that I was perpetually
making. Two out of three times when I thought I had run across a
characteristically American expression of efficiency, I was told that
it had been copied from the British. I learnt more about my own army's
business efficiency in studying it secondhand with the Americans,
than I had ever guessed existed in all the time that I had been an
inhabitant of the British Front. It is characteristic of us as a
people that we like to pretend that we muddle our way into success.
We advertise our mistakes and camouflage our virtues. We are almost
ashamed of gaining credit for anything that we have done well. There
is a fine dishonesty about this self-belittlement; but it is not
always wise. During these first few months of their being at war
the Americans have discovered England in almost as novel a sense as
Columbus did America. It was a joy to be with them and to watch their
surprise. The odd thing was that they had had to go to France to
find us out. Here they were, the picked business men of the world's
greatest industrial nation, frankly and admiringly hats off to British
"muddle-headed" methods. Not only were they hats off to the methods,
many of which they were copying, but they were also hats off to the
generous helpfulness of our Government and Military authorities in the
matter of advice, co-operation and supplies. From the private in the
ranks, who had been trained by British N.C.O.'s and Officers, to
the Generals at the head of departments, there was only one feeling
expressed for Great Britain--that of a new sincerity of friendship and
admiration. "John Bull and his brother Jonathan" had become more than
an empty phrase; it expressed a true and living relation.