All the French people I met in France seemed to be thinking and talking
about the English. The English bring their own atmosphere with them;
to begin with they are not so talkative, and I did not find among
them anything like the same vigour of examination, the same resolve to
understand the Anglo-French reaction, that I found among the French.
In intellectual processes I will confess that my sympathies are
undisguisedly with the French; the English will never think nor talk
clearly until the get clerical “Greek” and sham “humanities” out of
their public schools and sincere study and genuine humanities in; our
disingenuous Anglican compromise is like a cold in the English head,
and the higher education in England is a training in evasion. This is
an always lamentable state of affairs, but just now it is particularly
lamentable because quite tremendous opportunities for the good of
mankind turn on the possibility of a thorough and entirely frank mutual
understanding between French, Italians, and English. For years there
has been a considerable amount of systematic study in France of English
thought and English developments. Upon almost any question of current
English opinion and upon most current English social questions, the
best studies are in French. But there has been little or no reciprocal
activity. The English in France seem to confine their French studies to
_La Vie Parisienne._ It is what they have been led to expect of French
literature.
There can be no doubt in any reasonable mind that this war is binding
France and England very closely together. They dare not quarrel for the
next fifty years. They are bound to play a central part in the World
League for the Preservation of Peace that must follow this struggle.
There is no question of their practical union. It is a thing that must
be. But it is remarkable that while the French mind is agog to apprehend
every fact and detail it can about the British, to make the wisest
and fullest use of our binding necessities, that strange English
“incuria”--to use the new slang--attains to its most monumental in this
matter.
So there is not much to say about how the British think about the
French. They do not think. They feel. At the outbreak of the war, when
the performance of France seemed doubtful, there was an enormous feeling
for France in Great Britain; it was like the formless feeling one has
for a brother. It was as if Britain had discovered a new instinct. If
France had crumpled up like paper, the English would have fought on
passionately to restore her. That is ancient history now. Now the
English still feel fraternal and fraternally proud; but in a mute way
they are dazzled. Since the German attack on Verdun began, the French
have achieved a crescendo. None of us could have imagined it. It did not
seem possible to very many of us at the end of 1915 that either France
or Germany could hold on for another year. There was much secret
anxiety for France. It has given place now to unstinted confidence and
admiration. In their astonishment the British are apt to forget the
impressive magnitude of their own effort, the millions of soldiers, the
innumerable guns, the endless torrent of supplies that pour into France
to avenge the little army of Mons. It seems natural to us that we should
so exert ourselves under the circumstances. I suppose it is wonderful,
but, as a sample Englishman, I do not feel that it is at all wonderful.
I did not feel it wonderful even when I saw the British aeroplanes
lording it in the air over Martinpuich, and not a German to be seen.
Since Michael would have it so, there, at last, they were.
There was a good deal of doubt in France about the vigour of the British
effort, until the Somme offensive. All that had been dispelled in August
when I reached Paris. There was not the shadow of a doubt remaining
anywhere of the power and loyalty of the British. These preliminary
assurances have to be made, because it is in the nature of the French
mind to criticise, and it must not be supposed that criticisms of detail
and method affect the fraternity and complete mutual confidence which is
the stuff of the Anglo-French relationship.
2
Now first the French have been enormously astonished by the quality of
the ordinary British soldiers in our new armies. One Colonial colonel
said something almost incredible to me--almost incredible as coming
as from a Frenchman; it was a matter to solemn for any compliments or
polite exaggerations; he said in tones of wonder and conviction, “_They
are as good as ours._” It was his acme of all possible praise.
That means any sort of British soldier. Unless he is assisted by a kilt
the ordinary Frenchman is unable to distinguish between one sort of
British soldier and another. He cannot tell--let the ardent nationalist
mark the fact!--a Cockney from an Irishman or the Cardiff from the Essex
note. He finds them all extravagantly and unquenchably cheerful and with
a generosity--“like good children.” There his praise is a little tinged
by doubt. The British are reckless--recklessness in battle a Frenchman
can understand, but they are also reckless about to-morrow's bread and
whether the tent is safe against a hurricane in the night. He is struck
too by the fact that they are much more vocal than the French troops,
and that they seem to have a passion for bad lugubrious songs. There he
smiles and shrugs his shoulders, and indeed what else can any of us
do in the presence of that mystery? At any rate the legend of the
“phlegmatic” Englishman has been scattered to the four winds of heaven
by the guns of the western front. The men are cool in action, it is
true; but for the rest they are, by the French standards, quicksilver.
But I will not expand further upon the general impression made by the
English in France. Philippe Millet's _En Liaison avec les Anglais_ gives
in a series of delightful pictures portraits of British types from the
French angle. There can be little doubt that the British quality, genial
naive, plucky and generous, has won for itself a real affection in
France wherever it has had a chance to display itself....
But when it comes to British methods then the polite Frenchman's
difficulties begin. Translating hints into statements and guessing at
reservations, I would say that the French fall very short of admiration
of the way in which our higher officers set about their work, they
are disagreeably impressed by a general want of sedulousness and close
method in our leading. They think we economise brains and waste
blood. They are shocked at the way in which obviously incompetent or
inefficient men of the old army class are retained in their positions
even after serious failures, and they were profoundly moved by the bad
staff work and needlessly heavy losses of our opening attacks in July.
They were ready to condone the blunderings and flounderings of the 1915
offensive as the necessary penalties of an “amateur” army, they had had
to learn their own lesson in Champagne, but they were surprised to
find how much the British had still to learn in July, 1916. The British
officers excuse themselves because, they plead, they are still
amateurs. “That is no reason,” says the Frenchman, “why they should be
amateurish.”
No Frenchman said as much as this to me, but their meaning was as plain
as daylight. I tackled one of my guides on this matter; I said that it
was the plain duty of the French military people to criticise British
military methods sharply if they thought they were wrong. “It is not
easy,” he said. “Many British officers do not think they have anything
to learn. And English people do not like being told things. What could
we do? We could hardly send a French officer or so to your headquarters
in a tutorial capacity. You have to do things in your own way.” When
I tried to draw General Castelnau into this dangerous question by
suggesting that we might borrow a French general or so, he would say
only, “There is only one way to learn war, and that is to make war.”
When it was too late, in the lift, I thought of the answer to that.
There is only one way to make war, and that is by the sacrifice of
incapables and the rapid promotion of able men. If old and tried types
fail now, new types must be sought. But to do that we want a standard of
efficiency. We want a conception of intellectual quality in performance
that is still lacking....
M. Joseph Reinach, in whose company I visited the French part of the
Somme front, was full of a scheme, which he has since published, for the
breaking up and recomposition of the French and British armies into a
series of composite armies which would blend the magnificent British
manhood and material with French science and military experience. He
pointed out the endless advantages of such an arrangement; the stimulus
of emulation, the promotion of intimate fraternal feeling between the
peoples of the two countries. “At present,” he said, “no Frenchman ever
sees an Englishman except at Amiens or on the Somme. Many of them still
have no idea of what the English are doing....”
“Have I ever told you the story of compulsory Greek at Oxford and
Cambridge?” I asked abruptly.
“What has that to do with it?”
“Or how two undistinguished civil service commissioners can hold up the
scientific education of our entire administrative class?”