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diff --git a/old/13827.txt b/old/13827.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d347d45 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/13827.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6004 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fields of Victory, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Fields of Victory + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Release Date: October 22, 2004 [EBook #13827] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIELDS OF VICTORY *** + + + + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + +FIELDS OF VICTORY + +By + +Mrs. Humphry Ward + + + +With Illustrations, Colored Map +and Folding Statistical Chart + + + +1919, +by Charles Scribner's Sons +New York + +Published September, 1919 + +1919, +by The Evening Mail Syndicate + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + +A WORD OF INTRODUCTION vii + + I. FRANCE UNDER THE ARMISTICE 3 + + II. THE DEFENSIVE BATTLE OF LAST SPRING 27 + + III. TANKS AND THE HINDENBURG LINE 57 + + IV. GENERAL GOURAUD AT STRASBOURG 92 + + V. ALSACE-LORRAINE--THE GLORY OF VERDUN 111 + + VI. AMERICA IN FRANCE 134 + + VII. AMERICA IN FRANCE (_continued_) 166 + +VIII. "FEATURES OF THE WAR" 184 + + IX. TANKS AND AEROPLANES--THE STAFF WORK OF THE WAR 213 + + EPILOGUE 258 + + APPENDIX--EXPLANATION OF CHART 269 + + + + +A WORD OF INTRODUCTION + + +_May 26th._ + +It is a bold thing, I fear, to offer the public yet more letters based +on a journey through the battle-fields of France--especially at a +moment when impressions are changing so fast, when the old forms of +writing about the war seem naturally out of date, or even distasteful, +and the new are not yet born. Yet perhaps in this intermediate period, +the impressions of one who made two journeys over some of the same +ground in 1916 and 1917, while the great struggle was at its height, +and on this third occasion found herself on the Western front just two +months after the Armistice, may not be unwelcome to those who, like +myself, feel the need of detaching as soon as possible some general +and consistent ideas from the infinite complexity, the tragic and +bewildering detail, of the past four years. The motive which sent me +to France three months ago was the wish to make clear to myself if I +could, and thereby to others, the true measure of the part played by +the British Empire and the British Armies in the concluding campaigns +of the war. I knew that if it could be done at all at the present +moment--and by myself--it could only be done in a very broad and +summary way; and also that its only claim to value would lie in its +being a faithful report, within the limits I had set myself, of the +opinions of those who were actually at the heart of things, _i.e._, of +the British Higher Command, and of individual officers who had taken +an active part in the war. For the view taken in these pages of last +year's campaigns, I have had, of course, the three great despatches of +the British Commander-in-Chief on which to base the general sketch I +had in mind; but in addition I have had much kind help from the +British Headquarters in France, where officers of the General Staff +were still working when I paid a wintry visit to the famous Ecole +Militaire at the end of January; supplemented since my return to +London by assistance from other distinguished soldiers now at the War +Office, who have taken trouble to help me, for which I can never thank +them enough.[1] It was, naturally, the aim of the little book which +won it sympathy; the fact that it was an attempt to carry to its +natural end, in brief compass, the story which, at Mr. Roosevelt's +suggestion, I first tried to tell in _England's Effort_, published in +1916. _England's Effort_ was a bird's-eye view of the first two years +of the war, of the gathering of the new Armies, of the passing into +law, and the results--up to the Battle of the Somme--of the Munitions +Act of 1915. In this book, which I have again thrown into the form of +letters--(it was, in fact, written week by week for transmission to +America after my return home from France)--I have confined myself to +the events of last year, and with the special object of determining +what ultimate effect upon the war was produced by that vast military +development of Great Britain and the Empire, in which Lord Kitchener +took the first memorable steps. It seemed to me, at the end of last +year, as to many others, that owing, perhaps, to the prominence of +certain startling or picturesque episodes in the history of 1918, the +overwhelming and decisive influence of the British Armies on the last +stage of the struggle had been to some extent obscured and +misunderstood even amongst ourselves--still more, and very naturally, +amongst our Allies. Not, of course, by any of those in close contact +with the actual march of the war, and its directing forces; but rather +by that floating public opinion, now more intelligent, now more +ignorant, which plays so largely on us all, whether through +conversation or the press. + + [1] My thanks are especially due to Lieut.-Colonel Boraston, of the + General Staff, and also to my friend Colonel John Buchan, whose + wonderful knowledge of the war, as shown in his History, has done + so much during the last four years to keep the public at home in + touch with all the forces of the Allies, but especially with the + British Armies and the British Navy, throughout the whole course of + the struggle. + +My object, then, was to bring out as clearly as I could the part that +the British Armies in France, including, of course, the great Dominion +contingents, played in the fighting of last year. To do so, it was +necessary also to try and form some opinion as to the respective +shares in the final result of the three great Armies at work in France +in 1918; to put the effort of Great Britain, that is, in its due +relation to the whole concluding act of the war. In making such an +attempt I am very conscious of its audacity; and I need not say that +it would be a cause of sharp regret to me should the estimate here +given--which is, of course, the estimate of an Englishwoman--offend +any French or American friend of mine. The justice and generosity of +the best French opinion on the war has been conspicuously shown on +many recent occasions; while the speech in Paris the other day of the +If Dean of Harvard as to the relative parts in the war--on French +soil--of the Big Three--and the reception given to it by an audience +of American officers have, I venture to think, stirred and deepened +affection for America in the heart of those English persons who read +the report of a remarkable meeting. But there is still much ignorance +both here at home and among our Allies, on both sides of the sea, of +the full part played by the forces of the British Empire in last +year's drama. So it seemed to me, at least, when I was travelling, a +few months ago, over some of the battle-fields of 1918; and I came +home with a full heart, determined to tell the story--the last chapter +in _England's Effort_--broadly and sincerely, as I best could; It was +my firm confidence throughout the writing of these letters that the +friendship between Britain, France, and America--a friendship on +which, in my belief, rests the future happiness and peace of the +world--can only gain from free speech and from the free comparison of +opinion. And in the brilliant final despatch of Sir Douglas Haig which +appeared on April 12th, after six letters had been written and sent to +America, will be found, I venture to suggest, the full and +authoritative exposition of some at least of the main lines of thought +I have so imperfectly summarised in this little book. + +The ten letters were written at intervals between February and May. It +seemed better, in republishing them, not to attempt much recasting. +They represent, mainly, the impressions of a journey, and of the +conversations and reading to which it led. I have left them very much, +therefore, in their original form, hoping that at least the freshness +of "things seen" may atone somewhat for their many faults. + + + + +FIELDS OF VICTORY + + + + +CHAPTER I + +FRANCE UNDER THE ARMISTICE + + +London, _February, 1919._ + +A bewildering three weeks spent in a perpetually changing +scene--changing, and yet, outside Paris, in its essential elements +terribly the same--that is how my third journey to France, since the +war began, appears to me as I look back upon it. My dear +daughter-secretary and I have motored during January some nine hundred +miles through the length and breadth of France, some of it in severe +weather. We have spent some seven days on the British front, about the +same on the French front, with a couple of nights at Metz, and a +similar time at Strasburg, and rather more than a week in Paris. +Little enough! But what a time of crowding and indelible impressions! +Now, sitting in this quiet London house, I seem to be still bending +forward in the motor-car, which became a sort of home to us, looking +out, so intently that one's eyes suffered, at the unrolling scene. I +still see the grim desolation of the Ypres salient; the heaps of ugly +wreck that men call Lens and Lieviny and Souchez; and that long line +of Notre Dame de Lorette, with the Bois de Bouvigny to the west of +it--where I stood among Canadian batteries just six weeks before the +battle of Arras in 1917. The lamentable ruin of once beautiful Arras, +the desolation of Douai, and the villages between it and Valenciennes, +the wanton destruction of what was once the heart of Cambrai, and that +grim scene of the broken bridge on the Cambrai--Bapaume road, over the +Canal du Nord, where we got out on a sombre afternoon, to look and +look again at a landscape that will be famous through the world for +generations: they rise again, with the sharpness of no ordinary +recollection, on the inward vision. So too Bourlon Wood, high and dark +against the evening sky; the unspeakable desolation and ruin of the +road thence to Bapaume; Bapaume itself, under the moon, its poor +huddled heaps lit only, as we walked about it, by that strange, +tranquil light from overhead, and the lamps of our standing motor-car; +some dim shapes and sights emerging on the long and thrice-famous road +from Bapaume to Albert, first, the dark mound of the Butte de +Warlencourt, with three white crosses on its top, and once a +mysterious light in a fragment of a ruined house, the only light I saw +on the whole long downward stretch from Bapaume to Albert. Then the +church of Albert, where the hanging Virgin used to be in 1917, +hovering above a town that for all the damage done to it was then +still a town of living men, and is now a place so desolate that one +shrinks from one's own voice in the solitude, and so wrecked that only +the traffic directions here and there, writ large, seem to guide us +through the shapeless heaps that once were streets. And, finally, the +scanty lights of Amiens, marking the end of the first part of our +journey. + +These were the sights of the first half of our journey. And as they +recur to me, I understand so well the anxious and embittered mood of +France, which was so evident a month ago;[2] though now, I hope, +substantially changed by the conditions of the renewed Armistice. No +one who has not seen with his or her own eyes the situation in +Northern France can, it seems to me, realise its effects on the +national feeling of the country. And in this third journey of mine, I +have seen much more than Northern France. In a motor drive of some +hundreds of miles, from Metz to Strasburg, through Nancy, Toul, St. +Mihiel, Verdun, Chalons, over the ghastly battle-fields of Champagne, +through Rheims, Chateau-Thierry, Vaux, to Paris, I have always had the +same spectacle under my eyes, the same passion in my heart. If one +tried to catch and summarise the sort of suppressed debate that was +going on round one, a few weeks ago, between Allied opinion that was +trying to reassure France, and the bitter feeling of France herself, +it seemed to fall into something like the following dialogue: + + [2] These pages were written in the first week of February. + +"All is well. The Peace Conference is sitting in Paris." + +"Yes--_but what about France_?" + +"President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George have gradually brought the +recalcitrant elements into line. The League of Nations is a reality." + +"_Yes--but what about France?_ Has the President been to see these +scores of ruined towns, these hundreds of wiped-out villages, these +fantastic wrecks of mines and factories, these leagues on leagues of +fruitful land given back to waste, these shell-blasted forests, these +broken ghosts of France's noblest churches?" + +"The President has made a Sunday excursion from Paris to Rheims. He +saw as much as a winter day of snow and fog would allow him to see. +France must be patient. Everything takes time." + +"Yes!--so long as we can be sure that the true position is not only +understood, but felt. But our old, rich, and beautiful country, with +all the accumulations on its soil of the labour, the art, the thought +of uncounted generations, has been in this war the buffer between +German savagery and the rest of Europe. Just as our armies bore the +first brunt and held the pass, till civilisation could rally to its +own defence, so our old towns and villages have died, that our +neighbours might live secure. We have suffered most in war--we claim +the first thought in peace. We live in the heart and on the brink of +danger. Our American Allies have a No Man's Land of the Atlantic +between them and the formidable and cruel race which has wreaked this +ruin, and is already beginning to show a Hydra-like power of +recuperation, after its defeat; we have only a river, and not always +that. We have the right to claim that our safety and restoration, the +safety of the country which has suffered most, should at this moment +be the first thought of Europe. You speak to us of the League of +Nations?--By all means. Readjustments in the Balkans and the East?--As +much as you please. But here stands the Chief Victim of the war--and +to the Chief Victim belongs of right the chief and first place in +men's thoughts, and in the settlement. Do not allow us even to _begin_ +to ask ourselves whether, after all, we have not paid too much for the +alliance we gloried in?" + +Some such temper as this has been showing itself since the New Year, +in the discontent of the French Press, in the irritation of French +talk and correspondence. And, of course, behind the bewildered and +almost helpless consciousness of such a loss in accumulated wealth as +no other European country has ever known before, there is the +ever-burning sense of the human loss which so heavily deepens and +complicates the material loss. One of the French Ministers has lately +said that France has lost three millions of population, men, women, +and children, through the war. The fighting operations alone have cost +her over a million and a half, at least, of the best manhood of France +and her Colonies. _One million and a half!_ That figure had become a +familiar bit of statistics to me; but it was not till I stood the +other day in that vast military cemetery of Chalons, to which General +Gouraud had sent me, that, to use a phrase of Keats, it was "proved" +upon "one's own pulses." Seven thousand men lie buried there, their +wreathed crosses standing shoulder to shoulder, all fronting one way, +like a division on parade, while the simple monument that faces them +utters its perpetual order of the day: "Death is nothing, so long as +the Country lives. _En Avant!_" + +And with that recollection goes also another, which I owe to the same +General--one of the idols of the French Army!--of a little graveyard +far up in the wilds of the Champagne battle-field--the "Cimetiere de +Mont Muret," whence the eye takes in for miles and miles nothing but +the trench-seamed hillsides and the bristling fields of wire. Here on +every grave, most of them of nameless dead, collected after many +months from the vast battle-field, lie heaped the last possessions of +the soldier who sleeps beneath--his helmet, his haversack, his +water-bottle, his _spade_. These rusty spades were to me a tragic +symbol, not only of the endless, heart-wearing labour which had +produced those trenched hillsides, but also of that irony of things, +by which that very labour which protected the mysterious and spiritual +thing which the Frenchman calls _patrie_, was at the same time ruining +and sterilising the material base from which it springs--the _soil_, +which the Frenchman loves with an understanding tenacity, such as +perhaps inspires no other countryman in the world. In Artois and +Picardy our own British graves lie thickly scattered over the murdered +earth; and those of America's young and heroic dead, in the +battle-fields of Soissons, the Marne, and the Argonne, have given it, +this last year, a new consecration. But here in England our land is +fruitful and productive, owing to the pressure of the submarine +campaign, as it never was before; British farming and the American +fields have cause to bless rather than to curse the war. Only in +France has the tormented and poisoned earth itself been blasted by the +war, and only in France, even where there are no trenches, have whole +countrysides gone out of cultivation, so that in the course of a long +motor drive, the sight of a solitary plough at work, or merely a strip +of newly ploughed land amid the rank and endless waste, makes one's +heart leap. + +No!--France is quite right. Her suffering, her restoration, her future +safety, as against Germany, these should be, must be, the first +thought of the Allies in making peace. And it is difficult for those +of us who have not seen, _to feel_, as it is politically necessary, it +seems to me, we should feel. + +Since I was in France, however, a fortnight ago, the proceedings in +connection with the extension of the Armistice, and the new +restrictions and obligations laid on Germany, have profoundly affected +the situation in the direction that France desires. And when the +President returns from the United States, whither he is now bound, he +will surely go--and not for a mere day or two!--to see for himself on +the spot what France has suffered. If so, some deep, popular instincts +in France will be at once appeased and softened, and Franco-American +relations, I believe, greatly improved. + +No doubt, if the President made a mistake in not going at once to the +wrecked districts before the Peace Conference opened--and no one has +insisted on this more strongly than American correspondents--it is +clear that it was an idealist's mistake. Ruins, the President seems to +have said to himself, can wait; what is essential is that the League +of Nations idea, on which not Governments only, but _peoples_ are +hanging, should be rapidly "clothed upon" by some practical shape; +otherwise the war is morally and spiritually lost. + +Certainly the whole grandiose conception of the League, so vague and +nebulous when the President arrived in Europe, has been marvellously +brought out of the mists into some sort of solidity, during these +January weeks. Not, I imagine, for some of the reasons that have been +given. An able American journalist, for instance, writing to the +_Times_, ascribes the advance of the League of Nations project +entirely to the close support given to the President by Mr. Lloyd +George and the British Government; and he explains this support as due +to the British conviction "that the war has changed the whole position +of Great Britain in the world. The costs of the struggle in men, in +money, in _prestige_ (the italics are mine), have cut very deeply; the +moral effect of the submarine warfare in its later phase, and of last +year's desperate campaign, have left their marks upon the Englishman, +and find expression in his conduct.... British comment frankly +recognises that it will never again be within the power of Great +Britain, even if there were the desire, to challenge America in war or +in peace." + +In other words, the support given by Great Britain to President +Wilson's ideas means that British statesmen are conscious of a loss of +national power and prestige, and of a weakened Empire behind them. + +Hasty words, I think!--and, in my belief, very wide of the mark. At +any rate I may plead that during my own month in France I have been in +contact with many leading men in many camps, English, French, and +American, and both military and diplomatic, especially with the +British Army and its chiefs; and so far from perceiving in the +frankest and most critical talk of our own people--and how critical we +are of our own doings those know who know us best--any sense of lost +prestige or weakened power, my personal impression is overwhelmingly +the other way. We are indeed anxious and willing to share +responsibilities, say in Africa, and the Middle East, with America as +with France. Why not? The mighty elder power is eager to see America +realise her own world position, and come forward to take her share in +a world-ordering, which has lain too heavy until now on England's sole +shoulders. She is glad and thankful--the "weary Titan"--to hand over +some of her responsibilities to America, and to share many of the +rest. She wants nothing more for herself--the Great Mother of +Nations--why should she? She has so much. But loss of prestige? The +feeling in those with whom I have talked, is rather the feeling of +Kipling's _Recessional_--a profound and wondering recognition that the +Imperial bond has indeed stood so magnificently the test of these four +years, just as Joseph Chamberlain, the Empire-builder, believed and +hoped it would stand, when the day of testing came; a pride in what +the Empire has done too deep for many words; coupled with the stubborn +resolution, which says little and means everything--that the future +shall be worthy of the past. + +And as to the feeling of the Army--it is expressed, and, as far as I +have been able to judge from much talk with those under his command, +most truly expressed, in Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig's December +despatch--which came out, as it happens, the very day I had the honour +of standing at his side in the Commander-in-Chief's room, at G.H.Q., +and looking with him at the last maps of the final campaign. "The +effect of the great assaults," says the Field-Marshal, "in which, +during nine days of battle (September 26th--October 5th), the First, +Third, and Fourth Armies stormed the line of the Canal du Nord, and +broke through the Hindenburg line, upon the subsequent course of the +campaign, was decisive.... Great as were the material losses the enemy +had suffered, the effect of so overwhelming a defeat upon a _morale_ +already deteriorated, was of even larger importance." Again: "By the +end of October, the rapid succession of heavy blows dealt by the +British forces had had a cumulative effect, both moral and material, +upon the German Armies. The British Armies were now in a position to +force an immediate conclusion." That conclusion was forced in the +battle of the Sambre (1st to 11th November). By that "great victory," +says Sir Douglas Haig, "the enemy's resistance was definitely broken;" +and thus "in three months of epic fighting the British Armies in +France had brought to a sudden and dramatic end the great wearing-out +battle of the past four years." + +[Illustration: British Battles During 1918 (8th Aug. to 11th Nov., +1918).] + +Do these sentences--the utterances of a man conspicuously modest and +reticent in statement, indicate any consciousness of "lost prestige" +in "a last desperate campaign"? + +The fact is--or so it seemed to me--that while the British Army +salutes with all its heart, the glorious record of that veteran Army +of France which bore the brunt of the first years of war, which held +the gate at Verdun at whatever cost in heroic lives, and inscribed +upon its shield last year the counter-attacks in the Marne salient, +and the superb stand of General Gouraud in Champagne; and while, at +the same time, it realises and acknowledges to the full the enormous +moral and military effect of the warm American tide, as it came +rushing over France through the early summer of last year, and the +gallantry of those splendid American lads, who, making mock of death, +held the crossing of the Marne, took Bouresches and Belleau Wood, +fought their hardest under General Mangin in the Soissons +counter-attack of July 18th, and gallantly pushed their way, in spite +of heavy losses, through the Argonne to the Meuse at the end of the +campaign--there is yet no doubt in any British military mind that it +was the British Army which brought the war to its victorious end. The +British Army had grown, after the great defensive battle of the +spring, by a kind of national rebound, of which there have been many +instances in our history, to a wonderful military strength and +efficiency, and to it fell, not by any choice of its own, so to speak, +but by the will of the gods, and the natural disposition of events, +the final and decisive strokes of the war. The French had already +"saved Europe by their example," through three bloody and heroic +years, and they were bound, in 1918, to economise, where possible, +their remaining men; while, if the war had lasted another six months, +_or_ if America had come in a year earlier, the decisive battles might +well have fallen to the American Army and General Pershing. But, as it +happened, the British Army was at its zenith of power, numbers, and +efficiency, when the last hammer-blows of the war had to be given--and +our Army gave them. I do not believe there is a single instructed +American or French officer who would deny this. But, if so, it is a +fact which will and must make itself permanently felt in the +consciousness of the Empire. + +In one of the bare rooms of that Ecole Militaire, at Montreuil, where +the British General Staff has worked since 1916, I saw on a snowy day +at the end of January a chart covering an entire wall, which held me +riveted. It was the war at a glance--so far as the British Army is +concerned--from January, 1916, to the end. The rising or falling of +our bayonet strength, the length of line held, casualties, +prisoners--everything was there--and when finally the Hindenburg line +is broken, after the great nine days of late September and early +October, the prisoners' line leaps suddenly to such a height that a +new piece has to be added perpendicularly to the chart, and the wall +can hardly take it in. What does that leaping line mean? _Simply the +collapse of the German morale_--the final and utter defeat of the +German Army as a fighting force. I hope with all my heart that the +General Staff will allow that chart to be published before the fickle +popular memory has forgotten too much of the war.[3] + + [3] By the kindness of General Sir Herbert Lawrence, Chief of the + General Staff, I am able to give a small reproduction of this chart, + which will be found at the end of the book, with an explanation + written by Captain W.O. Barton. + +Let me then say, in recapitulation, and as presenting the main thesis +of these papers, that to the British mind, at any rate, so +inarticulate often, yet so tenacious, the Western campaign of last +year presents itself as having been fought by three national Armies: + +(1) The veteran and glorious French Army, which, while providing in +Marshal Foch the master-spirit of the last unified effort, was yet, +after its huge sacrifices at Verdun, in Champagne, and many another +stricken field, inevitably husbanding its resources in men, and +yielding to the Armies of its Allies the hottest work in the final +struggle; + +(2) The British Army, which, after its victorious reaction from its +March defensive, was at the very height of its four years' development +in men, training, and _morale_, and had already shown by the stand of +the Third Army at Arras, at the very fiercest moment of the German +onslaught, that although Germany might still attack, it was now +certain that, so long as the British Army was in the field, she could +not win the war: and finally; + +(3) The young and growing American Army, which had only been some six +months in the fighting line, and was still rather a huge _promise_, +though of capital importance, both politically and militarily, than a +performance. It was brave and ardent, like a young eaglet, "with eyes +intentive to bedare the sun;" but it had its traditions to lay down, +its experience to buy, and large sections of its military lesson still +to learn. It could not, as a fighting force, have determined the war +last year; and the war was finally won, under the supreme command of a +great Frenchman, by the British Army, acting in concert with the +French and American armies--and supported by the British naval +blockade, and the British, French, and Serbian military successes in +the East. + +In such a summary I am, naturally, merely a _porte-voix_, trying to +reproduce the thoughts of many minds, as I came across them in France. +But if this is the general upshot of the situation, and the general +settled conviction of the instructed British mind, as I believe it to +be, our alliance with France and our friendship with America, so +passionately upheld by all that is best in our respective nations, +have both of them nothing to lose from its temperate statement. Great +Britain, in spite of our national habit of running ourselves down, is +not, indeed, supporting the League of Nations from any sense at all of +lost prestige or weakened power, but from an idealism no less hopeful +and insistent than that of America, coupled with a loathing of war no +less strong. + +_The League of Nations!_--A year ago how many of us had given any +serious thought to what was then a phrase, a dream, on which in the +dark days of last spring it seemed a mere waste of time to dwell? And +yet, week by week, since the New Year began, the dream has been slowly +taking to itself body and form. + +On the very day (January 25th) when the League of Nations resolution +was passed at the Paris Conference, I happened to spend an interesting +hour in President Wilson's company, at the Villa Murat. Mrs. Wilson, +whose gentle kindness and courtesy were very widely appreciated in +Paris, had asked me to come in at six o'clock, and await the +President's return from the Conference. I found her with five or six +visitors round her, members of the Murat family, come to pay a visit +to the illustrious guest to whom they had lent their house--the +Princesse Murat, talking fluent English, her son in uniform, her +widowed daughter and two delicious little children. In little more +than five minutes, the President came in, and the beautiful room made +a rich setting for an interesting scene. He entered, radiant, and with +his first words, standing in our midst, told us that the Conference +had just passed the League of Nations resolution. The two tiny +children approached him, the little girl curtseyed to him, the little +boy kissed his hand; and then they vanished, to remember, perhaps, +fifty years hence, the dim figure of a tall and smiling man, whom they +saw on a day marked in history. + +The President took his seat as the centre of our small circle. I am +not going to betray the confidence of what was a private visit, but +general impressions are not, I think, forbidden. I still seem to see +the Princesse Murat opposite me, in black, her fingers playing with +her pearls as she talked; the French officer with folded arms beside +her; next to him the young widowed lady, whose name I did not catch, +then Mrs. Wilson, with the intelligent face of her secretary, Miss +Benham, in the background, and between myself and Princesse Murat, the +easy, attractive presence of the man whom this old Europe, with one +accord, is now discussing, criticising, blaming or applauding. The +President talked with perfect simplicity and great apparent frankness. +There is a curious mingling in his face, it seemed to me, of something +formidable, at times almost threatening, with charm and sweetness. You +are in the presence of something held in leash; that something is +clearly a will of remarkable quality and power. You are also in the +presence of something else, not less strongly controlled, a +consciousness of success, which is in itself a promise of further +success. The manner has in it nothing of the dictator, and nothing of +the pedant; but in the President's instinctive and accomplished choice +of words and phrases, something reminded me of the talk of George +Eliot as I heard it fifty years ago; of the account also given me +quite recently by an old friend and classmate of the President, +describing the remarkable pains taken with him as a boy, by his +father, to give him an unfailing command of correct and musical +English. + +The extraordinary effectiveness lent by this ease and variety of +diction to a man who possesses not only words but ideas, is strongly +realised in Paris, where an ideal interpreter, M. Paul Mantoux, is +always at hand to put whatever the President says into perfect French. +M. Jusserand had given me an enthusiastic account, a few days before +this little gathering at the Villa Murat, of an impromptu speech at a +luncheon given to the President by the Senate, and in listening to the +President's conversation, I understood what M. Jusserand had felt, and +what a weapon at need--(how rare also among public men!)--is this +skilled excellence in expression, which the President commands, and +commands above all, so some of his shrewdest observers tell me, when +he is thrown suddenly on his own resources, has no scrap of paper to +help him, and must speak as Nature and the Fates bid him. It is said +that the irreverent American Army, made a little restive during the +last months of the year by the number of Presidential utterances it +was expected to read, and impatient to get to the Rhine, was settling +down in the weeks before the Armistice, with a half-sulky resignation +to "another literary winter." One laughs, but never were the art and +practice of literature more signally justified as a power among men +than by this former Professor and Head of a college, who is now among +the leading political forces of the world. + +Well, we talked of many things--of the future local habitation of the +League of Nations, of the Russian _impasse_, and the prospects of +Prinkipo, of Mr. Lloyd George's speech that day at the Conference, of +Siberia and Japan, of Ireland even! There was no difficulty anywhere; +no apparent concealment of views and opinions. But there was also no +carelessness and no indiscretion. I came away feeling that I had seen +a remarkable man, on one of the red-letter days of his life; +revolving, too, an old Greek tag which had become familiar to me: + +"Mortal men grow wise by seeing. But without seeing, how can any man +foretell the future--how he may fare?" + +In other words, call no work happy till it is accomplished. Yes!--but +men and women are no mere idle spectators of a destiny imposed on +them, as the Greeks sometimes, but only sometimes, believed. They +themselves _make_ the future. If Europe wants the League of Nations, +and the end of war, each one of us must turn to, _and work_, each in +our own way. Since the day of the first Conference resolution, the +great scheme, like some veiled Alcestis, has come a good deal further +down the stage of the world. There it stands while we debate; as +Thanatos and Heracles fought over the veiled queen. But in truth it +rests with us, the audience, and not with any of the leading +characters in the drama, to bring that still veiled figure into life +and light, and to give it a lasting place in the world's household. + +Meanwhile the idea is born; but into a Europe still ringing with the +discords of war, and in a France still doubtful and full of fears. +There is a brooding and threatening presence beyond the Rhine. And +among the soldiers going and coming between the Rhine bridge-heads and +Paris, there is a corresponding and anxious sense of the fierce +vitality of Germany, and of the absence of any real change of heart +among her people. Meanwhile the relations between Great Britain and +America were never closer, and the determination of the leading men in +both countries to forge a bond beyond breaking between us was never so +clear. There are problems and difficulties ahead in this friendship, +as in all friendships, whether national or individual. But a common +good-will will solve them, a common resolve to look the facts of the +moment and the hopes of the future steadily in the face. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE DEFENSIVE BATTLE OF LAST SPRING + +I. + + +_March, 1919._ + +Among the impressions and experiences of my month in France there are +naturally some that stand out in particularly high relief. I have just +described one of them. But I look back to others not less vivid--an +evening, for instance, with General Horne and his staff; a walk along +the Hindenburg line and the Canal du Nord, north and south of the +Arras-Bapaume road; dinner with General Gouraud in the great building +at Strasbourg, which was formerly the headquarters of the German Army +Corps holding Alsace, and is now the French Prefecture; the eastern +battle-field at Verdun, and that small famous room under the citadel, +through which all the leaders of the war have passed; Rheims Cathedral +emerging ghostly from the fog, with, in front of it, a group of +motor-cars and two men shaking hands, the British Premier and the +Cardinal-Archbishop; that desolate heart of the Champagne +battle-field, where General Gouraud, with the American Army on his +right, made his September push towards Vouziers and Mezieres; General +Pershing in his office, and General Pershing _en petit comite_ in a +friend's drawing-room, in both settings the same attractive figure, +with the same sudden half-mischievous smile and the same observant +eyes; and, finally, that rabbit-warren of small, barely furnished +rooms in the old Ecole Militaire at Montreuil, where the British +General Staff worked during the war, when it was not moving in its +staff train up and down behind the front. + +But I do not intend to make these letters a mere _omnium gatherum_ of +recollections. All through, my object has been to lay hold of the main +outline of what has happened on the Western front during the past +eleven months, and if I could, to make them clear to other civilians, +men and women, as clearly and rapidly as possible, in this interval +between the regime of _communiques_ and war-correspondence under which +we have lived so long, and those detailed and scientific histories +which every Army, and probably every corps and division, is now either +writing, or preparing to write, about its own doings in the war. +Meanwhile the official reports drawn up by each Army under the British +Command are "secret documents." The artillery dispositions of the +great battles which brought the war to an end cannot yet be disclosed. +There can, therefore, be no proper maps of these battles for some time +to come, while some of the latest developments in offensive warfare +which were to have been launched upon the enemy had the war continued, +are naturally not for the public for a good while ahead. And +considering that, year by year, we are still discussing and +investigating the battles of a hundred years ago--(look for instance +at the lists of recent books on the Napoleonic campaigns in the +Cambridge Moddern History!)--we may guess at the time mankind will +take hereafter in writing about and elucidating a war, where in many +of the great actions, as a Staff Officer remarked to me, a Waterloo +might have been lost without being missed, or won without being more +than a favourable incident in an otherwise perhaps unfavourable whole. + +At the same time, this generation has got somehow--as an ingredient in +its daily life--to form as clear a mental picture as it can of the war +as a whole, and especially just now of its closing months in France. For +the history of those last months is at the present moment an _active +agent in the European situation_. What one may call the war-consciousness +of France, with the first battle of the Marne, glorious Verdun, the +Champagne battle-field, the victorious leadership of Marshal Foch, on +the one hand--her hideous losses in men, her incalculable loss in +material and stored-up wealth, and her stern claim for adequate +protection in future, on the other, as its main elements; the +war-consciousness of Great Britain and the Empire, turning essentially +on the immortal defence of the Ypres salient and the Channel ports, +the huge sacrifices of the Somme, the successes and disappointments of +1917, the great defensive battle of last March, and the immediate and +brilliant reaction, leading in less than five months to the beginning +of that series of great actions on the British front which finished +the war--all interpenetrated with the sense of perpetual growth in +efficiency and power; and finally, the American war-consciousness, as +it emerged from the war, with its crusading impulse intact, its sense +of boundless resources, and its ever-fresh astonishment at the +irrevocable part America was now called on to play in European +affairs:--amid these three great and sometimes clashing currents, the +visitor to France lived and moved in the early weeks of the year. And +then, of course, there was the Belgian war-consciousness--a new thing +for Belgium and for Europe. But with that I was not concerned. + +Let me try to show by an illustration or two drawn from my own recent +experience what the British war-consciousness means. + +It was a beautiful January day when we started from the little inn at +Cassel for Ypres, Menin, Lille, Lens, and Vimy. From the wonderful +window at the back of the inn, high perched as Cassel is above a wide +plain, one looked back upon the roads to St. Omer and the south, and +thought of the days last April, when squadron after squadron of French +cavalry came riding hot and fast along them to the relief of our +hard-pressed troops, after the break of the Portuguese sector of the +line at Richebourg St. Vaast. But our way lay north, not south, +through a district that seemed strangely familiar to me, though in +fact I had only passed forty-eight hours in it, in 1916. Forty-eight +hours, however, in the war-zone, at a time of active fighting, and +that long before any other person of my sex had been allowed to +approach the actual firing-line on the British front, were not like +other hours; and, perhaps, from much thinking of them, the Salient and +the approaches to it, as I saw them in 1916 from the Scherpenberg +hill, had become a constant image in the mind. Only, instead of seeing +Ypres from the shelter of the Scherpenberg Windmill, as a distant +phantom in the horizon mists, beyond the shell-bursts in the +battle-field below us, we were now to go through Ypres itself, then +wholly forbidden ground, and out beyond it into some of the +ever-famous battle-fields that lie north and south of the Ypres-Menin +road. + +One hears much talk in Paris of the multitudes who will come to see +the great scenes of the war, as soon as peace is signed, when the +railways are in a better state, and the food problems less, if not +solved. The multitudes indeed have every right to come, for it is +nations, not standing armies, that have won this war. But, personally, +one may be glad to have seen these sacred places again, during this +intermediate period of utter solitude and desolation, when their very +loneliness "makes deep silence in the heart--for thought to do its +part." The roads in January were clear, and the Army gone. The only +visitors were a few military cars, and men of the salvage corps, +directing German prisoners in the gathering up of live shells and +hand-grenades, of tons of barbed wire and trip wire, and all the other +_debris_ of battle that still lie thick upon the ground. In a few +months perhaps there will be official guides conducting parties +through the ruins, and in a year or two, the ruins of Ypres themselves +may have given place to the rising streets of a new city. As they now +are, a strange and sinister majesty surrounds them. At the entrance to +the town there still hangs the notice: "Troops are not to enter Ypres +except on special duty"; and the grass-grown heaps of masonry are +labelled: "It is dangerous to dig among these ruins." But there was no +one digging when we were there--no one moving, except ourselves. Ypres +seemed to me beyond recovery as a town, just as Lens is; but whereas +Lens is just a shapeless ugliness which men will clear away rejoicing +as soon as their energies are free for rebuilding, Ypres in ruin has +still beauty enough and dignity enough to serve--with the citadel at +Verdun--as the twin symbol of the war. There was a cloud of jackdaws +circling round the great gashed tower where the inner handiwork of the +fifteenth-century builders lay open to sky and sun. I watched them +against the blue, gathering in, also, the few details of lovely work +that still remain here and there on the face of what was once the +splendid Cloth Hall, the glory of these border lands. And one tried to +imagine how men and women would stand there a hundred years hence, +amid what developments of this strange new world that the war has +brought upon us, and with what thoughts. + +Beyond, we were in the wide, shell-pocked waste of the huge +battle-field, with many signs on its scarred face of the latest +fighting of all, the flooding back of the German tide in last April +over these places which it had cost us our best lives to gain, and of +the final victorious advance of King Albert and the British Second +Army which sent the Germans flying back through Limburg to their own +land. Beside us, the innumerable, water-logged shell-holes, in which, +at one time or another in the swaying forward and backward of the +fight, the lives of brave men have been so piteously lost, strangled +in mud and ooze; here a mere sign-post which tells you where Hooge +stood; there the stumps that mark Sanctuary Wood and Polygon Wood, and +another sign-post which bears the ever-famous name of Gheluvelt. In +the south-eastern distance rises the spire of Menin church. And this +is _the Menin Road_. How it haunted the war news for months and years, +like a blood-stained presence! While to the south-east, I make out +Kemmel, Scherpenberg, and the Mont des Cats and in the far north-west +a faint line with a few trees on it--_Passchendaele_! + +Passchendaele!--name of sorrow and of glory. What were the British +losses, in that three months' fighting from June to November, 1917, +which has been called the "Third Battle of Ypres," which began with +the victory of the Messines ridge and culminated in the Canadian +capture of Passchendaele?[4] Outside the inner circle of those who +know, there are many figures given. They are alike only in this that +they seem to grow perpetually. Heroic, heart-breaking wrestle with the +old hostile forces of earth and water--black earth and creeping water +and strangling mud! We won the ridge and we held it till the German +advance in April last forced our temporary withdrawal; we had pushed +the Germans off the high ground into the marsh lands beyond; but we +failed, as everyone knows, in the real strategic objects of the +attack, and the losses in the autumn advance on Passchendaele were an +important and untoward factor in the spring fighting of 1918. + + [4] Mr. Bonar Law has stated in the House of Commons since these + lines were written that the losses in the third battle of Ypres, + from Messines to Passchendaele, July--October, 1917, were 228,000. + +How deeply this Ypres salient enters into the war-consciousness of +Britain and the Empire! As I stand looking over the black stretches of +riddled earth, at the half-demolished pill-boxes in front, at the +muddy pools in the shell-holes under a now darkening sky; at the flat +stretches between us and Kemmel where lie Zillebeke and St. Eloi, and +a score of other names which will be in the mouth of history hundreds +of years hence, no less certainly than the names of those little +villages north and south of Thermopylae, which saw the advance of the +Persians and the vigil of the Greeks--a confusion of things read and +heard, rush through one's mind, taking new form and vividness from +this actual scene in which they happened. There, at those cross roads, +broke the charge of the Worcesters, on that most critical day of all +in the First Battle of Ypres, when the fate of the Allies hung on a +thread, and this "homely English regiment," with its famous record in +the Peninsula and elsewhere, drove back the German advance and saved +the line. I turn a little to the south and I am looking towards Klein +Zillebeke where the Household Cavalry charged, and Major Hugh Dawnay +at their head "saved the British position," and lost his own gallant +life. Straight ahead of us, down the Menin road towards Gheluvelt, +came the Prussian Guards, the Emperor's own troops with their master's +eye on them, on November 11th, when the First Division in General +Haig's First Corps, checked them, enfiladed them, mowed them down, +till the flower of the Imperial troops fell back in defeat, never +knowing by how small a fraction they had missed victory, how thin a +line had held them, how little stood between them and the ports that +fed the British Army. Here on these flats to my right were Lord +Cavan's Guards, and on either side of him General Allenby's cavalry, +and General Byng's; while, if one turns to the north towards the +distance which hides Sonnebeke and Bixschoote, one is looking over the +ground so magnificently held on our extreme left by General Dubois and +his 9th French Corps. + +Guards, Yorkshires, Lancashires, London Scottish, Worcesters, Royal +Scots Fusiliers, Highlanders, Gordons, Leicesters--all the familiar +names of the old Army are likend with this great story. It was an +English and Scotch victory, the victory of these Islands, won before +the "rally of the Empire" had time to develop, before a single +Canadian or Australian soldier had landed in France. + +But that is only the first, though in some ways the greatest, chapter +in this bloodstained book. Memory runs on nearly six months, and we +come to that awful April afternoon, when the French line broke under +the first German gas attack, and the Canadians on their right held on +through two days and nights, gassed and shelled, suffering frightful +casualties, but never yielding, till the line was safe, and fresh +troops had come up. It was not six weeks since at Neuve Chapelle the +Canadians had for the first time, while not called on to take much +active part themselves, seen the realities of European battle; and the +cheers of the British troops at Ypres as the exhausted Dominion troops +came back from the trenches will live in history. + +Messines, and the victory of June, 1917--Passchendaele, and the losses +of that grim winter--all the points indeed of this dim horizon from +north-west to south-east have their imperishable meaning for Great +Britain and the Dominions. For quite apart from the main actions which +stand out, fighting and death never ceased in the Ypres salient. + +Then, as the great Army of the gallant dead seemed to gather round one +on this famous road, and over these shell-torn flats, a sudden +recollection of a letter which I received in August, 1918, brought a +tightening of the throat. A Canadian lady, writing from an American +camp in the east of France, appealed to myself and other writers to do +something to bring home to the popular mind of America a truer +knowledge of what the British Armies had done in the war. "I see +here," says the writer, "hundreds of the finest remaining white men on +earth every week. They are wonderful military material, and very +attractive and lovable boys. But it discourages all one's hope for the +future unity and friendship between us all to realise as I have done +the last few months that the majority of these men are entering the +fight, firmly believing that 'England has not done her share--that +France had done it all--the Colonials have done all the hard fighting, +etc.'" And she proceeds to attribute the state of things to the +"belittling reports" of England's share in the war given in the +newspapers which reach these "splendid men" from home. + +A similar statement has come to me within the last few days, in +another letter from an English lady in an American camp near Verdun, +who speaks of the tragic ignorance--for tragic it is when one thinks +of all that depends on Anglo-American understanding in the +future!--shown by the young Americans in the camp where she is at +work, of the share of Great Britain in the war. + +Alack! How can we bring our two nations closer together in this vital +matter? Of course there is no belittlement of the British part in the +war among those Americans who have been brought into any close contact +with it. And in my small efforts to meet the state of things described +in the letters I have quoted, some of the warmest and most practical +sympathy shown has come from Americans. But in the vast population of +the United States with its mixed elements, some of them inevitably +hostile to this country, how easy for the currents of information and +opinion to go astray over large tracts of country at any rate, and at +the suggestion of an anti-British press! + +The only effective remedy, it seems to me, would be the remedy of eyes +and ears! Would it not be well, before the whole of the great American +Army goes home, that as many as possible of those still in +France--groups, say, of non-commissioned officers from various +American divisions, representing both the older and the newer levies, +and drawn from different local areas--should be given the opportunity +of seeing and studying the older scenes of the war on the British +front?--and that our own men, also, should be able to see for +themselves, not only the scenes of the American fighting of last year, +but the vast preparations of all kinds that America was building up in +France for the further war that might have been; preparations which, +as no one doubts, changed the whole atmosphere of the struggle? + +"_England has not done her share!_" + +How many thousands of British dead--men from every county in England +and Scotland, from loyal Ireland, from every British dominion and +colony--lie within the circuit of these blood-stained hills of Ypres? +How many more in the Somme graveyards?--round Lens and Arras and +Vimy?--about Bourlon Wood and Cambrai?--or in the final track of our +victorious Armies breaking through the Hindenburg line on their way to +Mons? Gloriously indeed have the Dominions played their part in this +war; but of all the casualties suffered by the Armies of the Empire, +80 _per cent_ of them fell on the population of these islands. America +was in the great struggle for a year and a half, and in the real +fightingline for about six months. She has lost some 54,000 of her +gallant sons; and we sorrow for them with her. + +But through four long years scarcely a family in Great Britain and the +Dominions that possessed men on the fighting fronts--and none were +finally exempt except on medical or industrial grounds--but was either +in mourning for, or in constant fear of death for one or more of its +male members, whether by bullet, shell-fire or bomb, or must witness +the return to them of husbands, brothers, and sons, more or less +injured for life. The total American casualties are 264,000. The total +British casualties--among them from 700,000 to 800,000 dead--are +2,228,000 out of a total white population for the Empire of not much +more than two-thirds of the population of the United States. There is +small room for "belittling" here. A silent clasp of the hands between +our two nations would seem to be the natural gesture in face of such +facts as these. + + + + +II. + + +Such thoughts, however, belong to the emotional or tragic elements in +the British war-consciousness. Let me turn to others of a different +kind--the intellectual and reflective elements--and the changing +estimates which they bring about. + +Take for instance what we have been accustomed to call the "March +retreat" of last year. The dispatch of Sir Douglas Haig describing the +actions of March and April last year was so headed in the _Times_, +though nothing of the kind appears in the official publication. And we +can all remember in England the gnawing anxiety of every day and every +hour from March 21st up to the end of April, when the German offensive +had beaten itself out, on the British front at least, and the rushing +over of the British reinforcements, together with the rapid incoming +of the Americans, had given the British Army the breathing space of +which three months later it made the use we know. + +"But why," asks one of the men best qualified to speak in our +Army--"why use the words 'retreat' and 'disaster' at all?" They were +indeed commonly used at the time both in England and abroad, and have +been often used since about the fighting of the British Army last +March and April. Strictly speaking, my interlocutor suggests, neither +word is applicable. The British Army indeed fell back some thirty-five +miles on its southern front, till the German attack was finally stayed +before Amiens. The British centre stood firm from Arras to Bethune. +But in the north we had to yield almost all the ground gained in the +Salient the year before, and some that had never yet been in German +hands. We lost heavily in men and guns, and a shudder of alarm ran +through all the Allied countries. + +Nevertheless what Europe was then witnessing--I am of course quoting +not any opinion of my own, to which I have no right, but what I have +gathered from those responsible men who were in the forefront of the +fighting--was in truth _a great defensive battle_, long and anxiously +foreseen, in which the German forces were double the British forces +opposed to them (64 to 32 divisions--73 to 32--and so on), while none +the less all that was vitally necessary to the Allied cause was +finally achieved by the British Army, against these huge odds. +Germany, in fact, made her last desperate effort a year ago to break +through the beleaguering British, forces, and failed. On our side +there was no real surprise, though our withdrawal was deeper and our +losses greater than had been foreseen. The troops themselves may have +been confident; it is the habit of gallant men. But the British +command knew well what it had to face, and had considered carefully +weeks beforehand where ground could be given--as in all probability it +would have to be given--with the least disadvantage. Some accidents, +if one may call them so, indeed there were--the thick white fog, for +instance, which "on the morning of March 21st enveloped our outpost +line, and made it impossible to see more than fifty yards in any +direction, so that the machine guns and forward field-guns which had +been disposed so as to cover this zone with their fire were robbed +almost entirely of their effect--and the masses of German infantry +advanced comparatively unharassed, so closely supporting each other +that loss of direction was impossible." Hence the rapidity of the +German advance through the front lines on March 21st, and the alarming +break-through south of St. Quentin, where our recently extended line +was weakest and newest. A second accident was the drying up of the +Oise Marshes at a time when in a normal year they might have been +reckoned on to stop the enemy's advance. A third piece of ill-luck was +the fact that in the newest section of the British line, where the +enemy attack broke at its hottest, there had been no time, since it +had been given over to us by the French--who had held it lightly, as a +quiet sector, during the winter--to strengthen its defences, and to do +the endless digging, the railway construction, and the repair of +roads, which might have made a very great difference. And, finally, +there was the most dangerous accident of all--the break through of +the Portuguese line at Richebourg St. Vaast, just as the tired +division holding it was about to be relieved. Of that accident, as we +all remember, the enemy, hungry for the Channel ports, made his very +worst and most; till the French and British fought him to a final +stand before Hazebrouck and Ypres. + +[Illustration: _British Official Photograph_ +The St. Quentin Canal which was crossed by the 46th in life-belts.] + +Meanwhile, the strategic insight of Marshal Foch, who assumed complete +control of the Allied Armies in France and Belgium on March 26th, +combined with the experienced and cool-headed leadership of the +British Commander-in-Chief, refused to dissipate the French reserves, +so important to the future course of the war, in any small or +piecemeal reinforcement of the British lines. The risks of the great +moment had to be taken, and both the French and British Commanders had +complete faith in the capacity of the British Army to meet them. And +when all is said, when our grave losses in casualties, prisoners, and +guns are fully admitted, what was the general result? The Germans had +failed to gain either of their real objectives:--either the Channel +ports, or the division of the British Armies from the French. They +wore themselves out against a line which recoiled indeed but never +broke, and was all the time filling up and strengthening from behind. +The losses inflicted on their immense reserves reacted on all the +subsequent fighting of the year, both on the Aisne and the Marne. And +when the British Armies had brought the huge attack to a +standstill--which for the centre and south of our line had been +already attained ten days after the storm broke--and knew the worst +that had happened or could happen to them; when the Australians had +recaptured Villers-Bretonneux; when the weeks passed and the offensive +ceased; when all gaps in our ranks were filled by the rush of +reinforcements from home, and the American Army poured steadily across +the Atlantic, the tension and peril of the spring passed steadily into +the confident strength and--expectation of the summer. The British +Army had held against an attack which could never be repeated, and the +future was with the Allies. + +Let us remember that at no time in our fighting withdrawal, either on +the Somme or on the Lys, was there "anything approaching a break-down +of command, or a failure in morale." So the Field Marshal. On the +other hand, all over the vast battle-field--in every part of the hard +"waiting game" which for a time the British Armies were called to +play, men did the most impossible and heroic things. Gun detachments +held their posts till every man was killed or wounded; infantry who +had neither rest nor sleep for days together, fought "back to back in +the trenches, shooting both to front and rear." Occasional confusion, +even local panic, occasional loss of communication and misunderstanding +of orders, occasional incompetence and stupidity there must be in such +a vast backward sweep of battle, but skill, purpose, superb bravery +were never lacking in any portion of the field; and the German +_communiques_ exultantly announcing the "total defeat of the British +Armies" may be compared, _mutatis mutandis_, with the reports from +German Headquarters just before the first battle of the Marne. + +"The defeat of the English is complete," said the German High Command +in the latter days of August, 1914. "The English Army is retreating in +the most complete disorder.... The British have been completely +defeated to the north of St. Quentin"--and so on. And yet a week +later, as General Maurice, with much fresh evidence, has lately shown, +the Army thus disposed of on paper had rejoicingly turned upon von +Kluck, and was playing a vital part in the great victory of the Marne. +So last spring, the losses and withdrawals of a vaster defensive +action, coupled with the stubborn and tenacious hold of the British +Army, last March and April, were the inevitable and heroic prelude to +the victorious recoil of August, and the final battles of the war. +Inevitable, because no forethought or exertion on the British side +could have averted the German onslaught, determined as it was by the +breakdown of the whole Eastern front of the war, and the letting loose +upon the Western front of immense forces previously held by the +Russian armies. These forces, after the Russian _debacle_, were +released against us, week by week, till in March the balance of +numbers, which was almost even in January, had risen on the German +side to a superiority of 150,000 bayonets! The dispatch of divisions +to Italy; the recall of men to the shipyards and the mines to meet the +submarine danger; the heavy fighting in the Salient and at Cambrai in +the latter half of 1917; the lack of time for training new levies, +owing to our depleted line and reserves:--all these causes contributed +to sharpen the peril in which England stood.[5] But it is in such +straits as these that our race shows its quality. + + [5] See the Chart at end of Book. + +And in this fighting, for the first time in British history, and in +the history of Europe, Americans stood side by side in battle with +British and French. "In the battle of March and April," says Sir +Douglas Haig, "American and British troops have fought shoulder to +shoulder in the same trenches, and have shared together in the +satisfaction of beating off German attacks. All ranks of the British +Army look forward to the day when the rapidly growing strength of the +American Army will allow American and British soldiers _to co-operate +in offensive action_." + +That day came without much delay. It carried the British Army to Mons, +and the young American Army to Sedan. + + * * * * * + +Looking out from the Vimy Ridge six weeks ago, and driving thence +through Arras across the Drocourt-Queant line to Douai and +Valenciennes, I was in the very heart of that triumphant stand of the +Third and First Armies round Arras which really determined the fate of +the German attack. + +The Vimy Ridge from the west is a stiffish climb. On the east also it +drops steeply above Petit Vimy and Vimy, while on the south and +south-east it rises so imperceptibly from the Arras road that the +legend which describes the Commander-in-Chief, approaching it from +that side, as asking of the officers assembled to meet him after the +victory--"And where is this ridge that you say you have taken?" seems +almost a reasonable tale. But to east and west there is no doubt about +it. One climbs up the side overlooking Ablain St. Nazaire through +shell-holes and blurred trenches, over snags of wire, and round the +edges of craters, till on the top one takes breath on the wide plateau +where stands the Canadian monument to those who fell in the glorious +fight of April 9th, 1917, and whence the eye sweeps that wide northern +and eastern plain, towards Lille on the one side and Douai on the +other, which to our war-beaten and weary soldiers, looking out upon it +when the ridge at last was theirs, was almost as new and strange a +world as the Pacific was to its first European beholders. + +Westwards across the valley whence our troops stormed the hill, rises +the Bouvigny Wood, and the long, blood-stained ridge of Notre Dame de +Lorette, where I stood just before the battle, in 1917. To the north +we are looking through the horizon shadows to La Bassee, Bailleul, and +the Salient. Immediately below the hill, in the same direction, lie +the ruin heaps of Lens, and of the mining towns surrounding it; while +behind us the ground slopes south and south-east to Arras and the +Scarpe. + +It is a tremendous position. That even the merest outsider can see. In +old days the hill must have been a pleasant rambling ground for the +tired workers of the coal-mining districts. Then the war-blast at its +fiercest passed over it. To-day in its renewed solitude, its sacred +peace, it represents one of the master points of the war, bought and +held by a sacrifice of life and youth, the thought of which holds one's +heart in grip, as one stands there, trying to gather in the meaning of +the scene. Not one short year ago it was in the very centre of the +struggle. If Arras and Vimy had not held, things would have been grave +indeed. Had they been captured, says the official report of the Third +Army, "our main lateral communications--Amiens--Doullens--St. Pol--St. +Omer--would have been seriously threatened if not cut." The Germans +were determined to have them, and they fought for them with a +desperate courage. Three assault divisions were to have carried the +Vimy Ridge, while other divisions were to have captured Arras and the +line of the Scarpe. The attack was carried out with the greatest +fierceness, men marching shoulder to shoulder into the furnace of +battle. But this time there was no fog to shield them, or to blind the +British guns. The enemy losses were appalling, and after one day's +fighting, in spite of the more northerly attacks on our line still to +come, the German hopes of _victory_ were in the dust, and--as we now +know--for ever. + +That is what Vimy means--what Arras means--in the fighting of last +year. We ponder it as we drive through the wrecked beauty of Arras and +out on to the Douai road on our way to Valenciennes. We passed slowly +along the road to the east of Arras, honeycombed still with dug-outs, +and gun emplacements, and past trenches and wire fields, till suddenly +a mere sign-board, nothing more--"Gavrelle!"--shows us that we are +approaching the famous Drocourt-Queant switch of the Hindenburg line, +which the Canadians and the 17th British Corps, under Sir Henry Horne, +stormed and took in September of last year. Presently, on either side +of the road as we drive slowly eastward, a wilderness of trenches runs +north and south. With what confident hope the Germans dug and +fortified and elaborated them years ago!--with what contempt of death +and danger our men carried them not six months since! And now not a +sign of life anywhere--nothing but groups of white crosses here and +there, emerging from the falling dusk, and the _debris_ of battle +along the road. + +A weary way to Douai, over the worst road we have struck yet, and a +weary way beyond it to Denain and Valenciennes. Darkness falls and +hides the monotonous scene of ruin, which indeed begins to change as +we approach Valenciennes, the Headquarters of the First Army. And at +last, a bright fire in an old room piled with books and papers, a kind +welcoming from the officer reigning over it, and the pleasant careworn +face of an elderly lady with whom we are billeted. + +Best of all, a message from the Army Commander, Sir Henry Horne, with +whom we had made friends in 1917, just before the capture of the Vimy +Ridge, in which the First Army played so brilliant a part. + +We hastily change our travel gear, a car comes for us, and soon we +find ourselves at the General's table in the midst of an easy flow of +pleasant talk. + +What is it that makes the special charm of the distinguished soldier, +as compared with other distinguished men? + +Simplicity, I suppose, and truth. The realities of war leave small +room for any kind of pose. A high degree, also, of personal stoicism +easily felt but not obtruded; and towards weak and small things--women +and children--a natural softness and tenderness of feeling, as though +a man who has upon him such stern responsibilities of life and death +must needs grasp at their opposites, when and how he can; keen +intelligence, _bien entendu_, modesty, courtesy; a habit of brevity; a +boy's love of fun: with some such list of characteristics I find +myself trying to answer my own question. They are at least conspicuous +in many leaders of the Allied Armies. + +"Why don't you _boom_ your Generals?" said an American diplomatist to +me some eight months ago. "Your public at home knows far too little +about them individually. But the personal popularity of the military +leader in such a national war as this is a military asset." + +I believe I entirely agree with the speaker! But it is not the British +military way, and the unwritten laws of the Service stand firm. So let +me only remind you that General Horne led the artillery at Mons; that +he has commanded the First Army since September, 1916; that, in +conjunction with Sir Julian Byng, he carried the Vimy Ridge in 1917, +and held the left at Arras in 1918; and, finally, that he was the +northernmost of the three Army Commanders who stormed the Hindenburg +line last September. + +It was in his study and listening to the explanations he gave me, so +clearly and kindly, of the Staff maps that lay before us, that I first +realised with anything like sufficient sharpness the meaning of those +words we have all repeated so often without understanding them--"_the +capture of the Hindenburg line_." + +What was the Hindenburg line? + + + + +CHAPTER III + +TANKS AND THE HINDENBURG LINE + + +We left Valenciennes on the morning of January 12th. By great luck, an +officer from the First Army, who knew every inch of the ground to be +traversed, was with us, in addition to the officer from G.H.Q., who, +as is always the case with Army visitors, accompanied us most +courteously and efficiently throughout. Captain X took us by a by-road +through the district south of Valenciennes, where in October last year +our troops were fighting a war of movement, in open country, on two +fronts--to the north and to the east. There were no trenches in the +desolate fields we passed through, but many shell-holes, and the banks +of every road were honeycombed with shelters, dug-outs and +gun-emplacements, rough defences that as the German Army retreated our +men had taken over and altered to their own needs; while to the west +lay the valley of the Sensee with its marshes, the scene of some of +the most critical fighting of the war. + +From the wrecked centre of Cambrai a short run over field roads takes +you to the high ground north-west of the city which witnessed some of +the fiercest fighting of last autumn. I still see the jagged ruins of +the little village of Abancourt--totally destroyed in two days' +bombardment--standing sharp against the sky, on a ridge which looks +over the Sensee valley; the shell-broken road in which the car--most +complaisant of cars and most skilful of drivers!--finally stuck; and +those hastily dug shelters on the road-side in one of which I suddenly +noticed a soldier's coat and water-bottle lying just as they had been +left two months before. There were no terrible sights now in these +lonely fields as there were then, but occasionally, as with this coat, +the refuse of battle took one back to the living presences that once +filled these roads--the _men_, to whom Marshal Haig expresses the +gratitude of a great Commander in many a simple yet moving passage of +his last dispatch. + +And every step beyond Cambrai, desolate as it is, is thronged with +these invisible legions. There to our right rises the long line of +Bourlon Wood--here are the sand-pits at its foot--and there are the +ruined fragments of Fontaine-notre-Dame. There rushes over one again +the exultation and the bitter recoil of those London days in November, +1917, when the news of the Cambrai battle came in; the glorious +surprise of the tanks; the triumphant progress of Sir Julian Byng; the +evening papers with their telegrams, and those tragic joy-bells that +began to ring; and then the flowing back of the German wave; the +British withdrawal from that high wood yonder which had cost so much +to win, and from much else; the bewilderment and disappointment at +home. A tired Army, and an attack pushed too far?--is that the summing +up of the first battle of Cambrai? A sudden gleam had shone on that +dark autumn which had seen the bitter victory and the appalling losses +of Passchendaele, and then the gleam vanished, and the winter closed +in, and there was nothing for the British Army but to turn its steady +mind to the Russian break-down and to the ever-growing certainty of a +German attack, fiercer and more formidable than had ever yet broken on +the Allies. + +Bourlon Wood--famous name!--fades behind us. A few rubbish heaps +beside the road tell of former farms and factories. The car descends a +long slope, and then, suddenly, before us runs the great dry trough of +the Canal du Nord; in front, a ruined bridge, with a temporary one +beside it, a ruined lock on the left, and rising ground beyond. We +cross the bridge, mount a short way on the western slope, then in the +darkening afternoon we walk along the front trench of the Hindenburg +line, north and south of the road--a superb trench, the finest I have +yet seen, dug right down into the rock, with concrete headquarters, +dressing and signal stations, machine-gun emplacements and observation +posts; and, in front of it, great fields of wire, through which wide +lanes have been flattened down. Now we have turned eastward, and we +stand and gaze towards Cambrai, over the road we have come. The huge +trench is before us, the waterless canal with its steep banks lies +beyond, and on the further hill-side, trench beyond trench, as far as +the eye can see, the lines still fairly clear, though in some places +broken up and confused by bombardment. The officer beside me draws my +attention to some marks on the ground near me--the track marks of two +tanks as plain almost as when they were made. One of them, after +flattening a wide passage through the wire fields for the advance of +the infantry, had clambered across the trench. At our feet were the +grooved marks of the descent, and we could follow them through the +incredible rise on the further side; after which the protected +monster--of much lighter build, however, than his predecessors on the +Somme--seemed to have run north and south along the trench, silencing +the deadly patter of the machine guns; while its fellow on the west +side, according to its tracks at least, had also turned south, for the +same purpose. + +The Hindenburg line!--and the two tanks! The combination, indeed, +suggests the whole story of that final campaign in which the British +Army, as the leading unit in a combination of armies brilliantly led +by a French Generalissimo whom all trusted, brought down the military +power of Germany. There were some six weeks of fighting after the +capture of the Hindenburg line; but it was that capture--"the essential +part" of the whole campaign, to use Marshal Haig's words--to which +everything else was subordinate, which, in truth, decided the struggle. +And the tanks are the symbol at once of the general strategy and the +new tactics, by which Marshal Foch and Sir Douglas Haig, working +together as only great men can, brought about this result, bettered all +that they had learned from Germany, and proved themselves the master +minds of the war. For the tanks mean _surprise_--_mobility_--the power +to break off any action when it has done its part, and rapidly to +transfer the attack somewhere else. Behind them, indeed, stood all the +immense resources of the British artillery--guns of all calibres, so +numerous that in many a great attack they stood wheel to wheel in a +continuous arc of fire. But it was the tanks which cleared the way, +which flattened the wire, and beat down the skill and courage of the +German machine gunners, who have taken such deadly toll of British life +during the war. And behind the tanks, protected also by that creeping +barrage of the great guns, which was the actual invention of that +famous Army Commander with whom I had spent an evening at Valenciennes, +came the infantry lines, those now seasoned and victorious troops, for +whose "stubborn greatness in defence," no less than their "persistent +vigour" and "relentless determination" in attack, General Haig finds +words that every now and then, though very rarely, betray the emotion +of the great leader who knows that he has been well and loyally served. +There is even a certain jealousy of the tanks, I notice, among the men +who form the High Command of the Army, lest they should in any way +detract from the credit of the men. "Oh, the tanks--yes--very useful, +of course--but the _men_!--it was the quality of the infantry did it." + +All the same, the tanks--or rather these tell-tale marks beside this +front trench of the Hindenburg line, together with that labyrinth of +trenches, cut by the Canal du Nord, which fills the whole eastern +scene to the horizon--remain in my mind as somehow representative of +the two main facts which, according to all one can read and all one +can gather from the living voices of those who know, dominated the +last stage of the war. + +For what are those facts? + +First, the combination in battle after battle, on the British front, +of the strategical genius, at once subtle and simple, of Marshal Foch, +with the supreme tactical skill of the British Commander-in-Chief. + +Secondly, the decisive importance to the ultimate issue, of this great +fortified zone of country lying before my eyes in the winter twilight; +which stretches, as my map tells me, right across Northern France, +from the Ypres salient, in front of Lille and Douai, through this +point south-west of Cambrai where I am standing, and again over those +distant slopes to the south-west over which the shades are gathering, +to St. Quentin and St. Gobain. These miles of half-effaced and +abandoned trenches, with all those scores of other miles to the +north-west and the south-east which the horizon covers, represent, as +I have said, the culminating effort of the war; the last effective +stand of the German brought to bay; the last moment when Ares, +according to Greek imagination, "the money changer of war," who weighs +in his vast balance the lives of men, still held the balance of this +mighty struggle in some degree uncertain. But the fortress fell; the +balance came down on the side of the Allies, and from that moment, +though there was much fighting still to do, the war was won. + +As to the actual meaning in detail of the "Hindenburg" or "Siegfried" +line, let me, for the benefit of those who have never seen even a yard +of it, come back to the subject presently, helped by a captured German +document, and by a particularly graphic description of it, written by +an officer of the First Army. + +But first, with the scene still before me--the broken bridge, the +ruined lock, the splendid trench at my feet, and those innumerable +white lines on the far hill-side--let me recall the great story of the +six months which preeceded the attack of Sir Julian Byng's Third Army +on this bank of the Canal du Nord. + +It was on Monday, March 25th, that at Doullens, a small manufacturing +town, lying in a wooded and stream-fed hollow not far from Amiens, +there took place the historic meeting of the leading politicians and +generals of the war, which ended in the appointment of Marshal Foch to +the supreme military command of the Allied forces in France. I +remember passing Doullens in 1917, dipping down into the hollow, +climbing out of it again on to the wide upland leading to Amiens, and +idly noticing the picturesqueness of the place. But there must be a +house and a room in Doullens, which ought already to be marked as +national property, and will certainly be an object of travel in years +to come for both English and French; no less than that factory to the +west of Verdun where Castelnau and Petain conferred at the sharpest +crisis of the immortal siege. For there--so it is generally +believed--the practical sense and generous temper of the British +Commander brought about that change in the whole condition of the war +which we know as the "unity of command." Sunday, March 24th, had been +a particularly bad day in that vast defensive battle which, in General +Haig's phrase, "strained the resources of the Allies to the +uttermost." There had been difficulties and misunderstandings +also--perfectly natural in the circumstances--with the French Army on +the right of the British line. Yet never was a perfect co-ordination +of the whole Allied effort in face of the German attack so absolutely +essential. + +Sir Douglas Haig took the lead. A year before this date he had refused +in other circumstances, as one supremely responsible for the British +Army, to agree to a unified command under a French general, and the +events had justified him. But now the hour had arrived, and the man. +The proposal that General Foch should take the supreme control of the +four Allied armies now fighting or gathering in France was made and +pressed by Sir Douglas Haig. There was anxious debate, some opposition +in unexpected quarters, and finally a unanimous decision. General +Foch, waiting in an adjoining room, was called in and accepted the +task with the simplicity of the great soldier who is also a man of +religious faith. For Foch, the devout Catholic and pupil of the +Jesuits, and Haig the Presbyterian, are alike in this: there rules in +both of them the conviction that this world is not an aimless scene of +chance, and that man has an Unseen Helper. + +Such, at least, is the story as it runs; and, at any rate, from that +meeting at Doullens dates the transformation of the war. For five +weeks afterwards the German attack beat against the British front, +bending and denting but never breaking it. Then at the end of April the +attack died down, brought up against the British and French reserves +which Ludendorff had immensely underrated, and--strategically--it had +failed. + +A month later came the "violent surprise attack" on the Aisne, which, +as we all know, carried the enemy to the Marne and across it, and on +the 7th of June the French were again attacked between Noyon and +Montdidier. The strain was great. But Foch was making his plans; the +British Army was being steadily reorganised; the drafts from England +were being absorbed and trained under a Commander-in-Chief who, by the +consent of all his subordinates, is a supreme manipulator and trainer +of fighting men, while never forgetting the human reality which is the +foundation of it all. Soon the number of effective infantry divisions +on the British front had risen from forty-five to fifty-two. And +meanwhile American energy was pouring men across the Atlantic, and +everywhere along the Allied front and in the Allied countries, but +especially in ravaged, war-weary France, the news of the weekly +arrivals, 80,000, 100,000, 70,000 men, was exactly the stimulus that +the older armies needed. + +It was a race between the German Army and the growing strength of the +Allies--and it was presently a duel between Ludendorff and Foch. +"Attack! attack!" was the German military cry, "or it will be too +late!" And on July 15th Ludendorff struck again to the east and +south-west of Rheims. General Gouraud, who was in command of the +Fourth French Army to the east of Rheims, told me at Strasbourg the +dramatic story of that attack and of its brilliant and overwhelming +repulse. I will return to it in a later letter. Meanwhile the German +Command in the Marne salient plunged blindly on, deepening the pocket +in which his forces were engaged--striking for Montmirail, Meaux, and +Paris. + +But Foch's hour had come, and on July 18th he launched that +ever-famous counter-offensive on the Soissons-Chateau-Thierry front, +which, in Sir Douglas Haig's quiet words, "effected a complete change +in the whole military situation." + +After a moment of bewilderment, attacked on both flanks by +irresistible forces of French, British, and Americans, von Boehm +turned to escape from the hounds on his track. He fought, as we all +know, a skilful retreat to the Vesle, leaving prisoners and guns all +the way, and on the Vesle he stood. But the last German offensive was +done, and Foch was already thinking of other prey. + +On the 23rd of July there was another conference of the military +leaders, held under other omens, and in a different atmosphere from +that of March 25th. At that conference Foch disclosed his plans and +gave each army its task. The French and American Armies--the American +Army now in all men's mouths because of its gallant and distinguished +share in the June and July fighting on the Marne--were to attack +towards Mezieres and Metz, while the British Armies struck towards St. +Quentin and Cambrai--in other words, looked onward to the final +grapple with the "great fortified zone known as the Hindenburg line." +So long as Germany held that she was undefeated. With that gone she +was at the mercy of the Allies. + +But much had to be done before the Hindenburg line could be attacked. +Foch and Haig, with Debeney, Mangin, Gouraud, and Pershing in support, +played a great _arpeggio_--it is Mr. Buchan's word, and a most graphic +one--on the linked line of the Allies. On the British front four great +battles, involving the capture of more than 100,000 prisoners and +hundreds of guns, had to be fought before the Hindenburg line was +reached. They followed each other in quick succession, brilliantly +intercalated or supported by advances on the French and American +fronts, Mangin on the Aisne, Gouraud in Champagne, Pershing at St. +Mihiel. + +_The Battle of Amiens_ (August 8th-13th), fought by the Fourth British +Army under General Rawlinson, and the First French Army under General +Debeney, who had been placed by Marshal Foch under the British +command, carried the line of the Allies twelve miles forward in a +vital sector, liberated Amiens and the Paris-Amiens railway, and +resulted in the capture of 22,000 prisoners and 400 guns, together +with the hurried retreat of the enemy from wide districts to the +south, where the French were on his heels. These were great days for +the Canadian and Australian troops. Four Canadian divisions under Sir +Arthur Currie, on the right of an eleven-mile front, four Australian +divisions under Sir John Monash in the centre, with the Third British +Corps under General Butler on the left, led the splendid advance. The +Field Marshal in his dispatch speaks of the "brilliant and +predominating part" played by the two Dominion Corps--the "skill and +determination of the infantry," the "fine performance" of the cavalry. +By this victory the British Army recovered the initiative it had +temporarily lost. All was changed. And even more striking than the +actual gains in ground, prisoners, and guns, was the effect upon the +_morale_ of both German and British troops. The Germans could hardly +believe their defeat; the British exultantly knew that their hour had +come. + +In _the Battle of Bapaume_ (August 21st-September 1st) the Third and +Fourth British Armies, twenty-three divisions against thirty-five +German divisions, drove the enemy from one side of the old Somme +battle-field to the other, recovered all the ground lost in the +spring, and took 34,000 prisoners and 270 guns. The enemy's _morale_ +was now failing; surrenders became frequent, and there were many signs +of the exhaustion of the German reserves. And again, by the turning of +his line, large tracts of territory were recovered almost without +fighting. By September 6th, five months after we had stood "with our +backs to the wall" in defence of the Channel ports, the Lys salient +had disappeared, and the old Ypres line was almost restored. + +In _the Battle of the Scarpe_ (August 26th-September 3rd) General +Horne's First Army, with the Canadian Corps and the Highlanders in its +ranks, drove eastwards, north and south of the Scarpe, till they had +come within striking distance of the Drocourt-Queant line. In twelve +hours, on the 2nd of September, the Canadian Corps, with forty tanks, +Canadian cavalry and armoured cars, had captured "the whole of the +elaborate system of wire, trenches, and strong points," which runs +north-west from the Hindenburg line proper to the Lens defences at +Drocourt; while the 17th Corps attacked the triangle of fortifications +marking the junction of the Drocourt-Queant line with the Hindenburg +line proper, and cleared it magnificently, the 52nd (Lowland) Division +especially distinguishing itself. There was "stern fighting" further +south that day, right down to the neighbourhood of Peronne; but during +the night the enemy "struck his tents," and began a hasty retreat to +the line of the Canal du Nord. Sixteen thousand prisoners and 200 guns +had been the spoil of the battle. + +_The Battle of Havrincourt_ (September 12th-18th) was a struggle for +the outer defences of the Hindenburg line, which had to be carried +before the line itself could be dealt with. Six days secured the +positions wanted for the final attack, and in those six days fifteen +British divisions had defeated twenty German divisions, and captured +nearly 12,000 prisoners and 100 guns. + +That rapid summary has brought me back to the point from which I +started. In three months and a half the "mighty conflict," in which, +on the British side, something short of 700,000 bayonets were engaged, +had rushed on from victory to victory; Foch and Haig working together +in an ideal marriage of minds and resources; the attack retaining +everywhere by the help of the tanks--of which, in the Battle of +Amiens, General Rawlinson had 400 under his command--the elements of +surprise and mobility. The harassed enemy would find himself hard +pressed in a particular section, driven to retreat, with heavy losses +in ground, guns and prisoners; and then, as soon as he had discovered +a line on which to stand and had thrown in his reserves, the attack +would be broken off, only to begin again elsewhere, and with the same +energy, unexpectedness, and success. British Staff work and British +tactics were at their highest point of excellence, and the spirit of +the men, fanned by that breeze which Victory and Hope bring with them, +were, in the Commander-in-Chief's word, "magnificent." + +And so we come to the evening of the 26th of September. Along these +hill-sides, where we stand, on the west side of the Canal du Nord, lay +Sir Julian Byng and the Third Army. To his right, on the south-east, +was General Rawlinson, facing the strongest portion of the Hindenburg +line, with two American divisions, led by Major-General Read, under +his command; while on his left, and to the north, the First Army, +under General Home, held the line along the Canal du Nord, and the +marshes of the Sensee. + +The most critical moment in the campaign had arrived. For in the +assault on the Hindenburg line heavy risks had to be run. It is clear, +I think, from the wording of Marshal Haig's dispatch, that in respect +to the attack he took a special responsibility, which was abundantly +vindicated by the event. The British War Cabinet was extremely +anxious; the French Generalissimo was content to leave it to the +British Commander-in-Chief; and Sir Douglas Haig, confident "that the +British attack was the essential part of the general scheme, and that +the moment was favourable," had the decision to make, and made it as +we know. It is evident also from the dispatch that Sir Douglas was +quite aware, not only of the military, but of the political risk. "The +political effects of an unsuccessful attack upon a position so well +known as the Hindenburg line would be large, and would go far to +revive the declining _morale_, not only of the German Army, but of the +German people." This aspect of the matter must, of course, have been +terribly present to the mind of the British War Cabinet. + +Moreover, the British Armies had been fighting continuously for nearly +two months, and their losses, though small in proportion to what had +been gained and to the prisoners taken, were still considerable. + +Nevertheless, with all these considerations in mind, "_I decided_," +says General Haig, "_to proceed with the attack_."[6] + + [6] The italics are mine. + +There lie before me a Memorandum, by an officer of the General Staff, +on the Hindenburg line, drawn up about a month after the capture of +the main section of it, and also a German report, made by a German +officer in the spring of 1917. The great fortified system, as it +subsequently became, was then incomplete. It was begun late in 1916, +when, after the battle of the Somme, the German High Command had +determined on the retreat which was carried out in February and March +of the following year. It was dug by Russian prisoners, and the forced +labour of French and Belgian peasants. The best engineering and +tactical brains of the German Army went to its planning; and both +officers and men believed it to be impregnable. The whole vast system +was from four miles to seven miles deep, one interlocked and +inter-communicating system of trenches, gun emplacements, machine-gun +positions, fortified villages, and the rest, running from north-west +to south-east across France, behind the German lines. In front of the +British forces, writes an officer of the First Army, before the +capture of the Drocourt-Queant portion of the line, ran "line upon +line, mile upon mile, of defences such as had never before been +imagined; system after complicated system of trenches, protected with +machine-gun positions, with trench mortars, manned by a highly-trained +infantry, and by machine-gunners unsurpassed for skill and courage. +The whole was supported by artillery of all calibres. The defences +were the result of long-trained thought and of huge work. They had +been there unbroken for years; and they had been constantly improved +and further organised." And the great canals--the Canal du Nord and +the Scheldt Canal, but especially the latter, were worked into the +system with great skill, and strongly fortified. It is evident indeed +that the mere existence of this fortified line gave a certain high +confidence to the German Army, and that when it was captured, that +confidence, already severely shaken, finally crumbled and broke. +Indeed, by the time the British Armies had captured the covering +portions of the line, and stood in front of the line itself, the +_morale_ of the German Army as a whole was no longer equal to holding +it. For our casualties in taking it, though severe, were far less than +we had suffered in the battle of the Scarpe; and one detects in some +of our reports, when the victory was won, a certain amazement that we +had been let off--comparatively--so lightly. Nevertheless, if there +had been any failure in attack, or preparation, or leadership, we +should have paid dearly for it; and a rally on the Hindenburg line, +had we allowed the enemy any chance of it, might have prolonged the +war for months. But there was no failure, and there was no rally. +Never had our tried Army leaders, General Horne, General Byng, and +General Rawlinson carried out more brilliantly the general scheme of +the two supreme Commanders; never was the Staff work better; never +were the subordinate services more faultlessly efficient. An American +officer who had served with distinction in the British Army before the +entry of his own country into the war, spoke to me in Paris with +enthusiasm of the British Staff work during this three months' +advance. "It was simply _marvellous!_--People don't understand." +"Everything was ready," writes an eye-witness of the First Army.[7] +The rapidity of our advance completely surprised the enemy, some of +whose batteries were captured as they were coming into action. Pontoon +and trestle bridges were laid across the canal with lightning speed. +The engineers, coming close behind the firing line, brought up the +railways, light and heavy, as though by magic--built bridges, repaired +roads. The Intelligence Staff, in the midst of all this rapid movement +"gathered and forwarded information of the enemy's forces in front, +his divisions, his reserves, his intentions." Telephones and +telegraphs were following fast on the advance, connecting every +department, whether stationary or still on the move. News was coming +in at every moment--of advances, captures, possibilities in new +country, casualties, needs. All these were being considered and +collated by the Staff, decisions taken and orders sent out. + + [7] The following paragraphs are based on the deeply interesting + account of the First Army operations of last year, written by + Captain W. Inge, Intelligence and Publicity Officer on Sir Henry + Home's Staff. + +Meanwhile divisions were being relieved, billets arranged for, +transport organised along the few practicable roads. Ambulances were +coming and going. Petrol must be accessible everywhere; breakdown +gangs and repair lorries must be ready always to clear roads, and mend +bridges. And the men doing these jobs must be handled, fed, and +directed, as well as the fighting line. + +Letters came and went. The men were paid. Records of every kind were +kept. New maps were made, printed, and sent round--and quickly, since +food and supplies depended on them. "One breakdown on a narrow road, +one failure of an important message over a telephone wire--and how +much may depend on it!" + +"Yet thanks to intelligent and devoted work, to experience and +resource, how little in these later stages of the war has gone wrong!" + +The fighting men, the Staff work, the auxiliary services of the +British Army--the long welding of war had indeed brought them by last +autumn to a wonderful efficiency. And that efficiency was never so +sharply tested as by the exchange of a stationary war for a war of +movement. The Army swept on "over new but largely devastated country," +into unknown land, where all the problems, as compared with the long +years of trench war, were new. Yet nothing failed--"except the +astounded enemy's power of resistance." + +So much from a first-hand record of the First Army's advance. It +carries me back as I summarise it to my too brief stay at +Valenciennes, and the conversations of the evening with the Army +Commander and several members of his Staff. The talk turned largely on +this point of training, Staff work, and general efficiency. There was +no boasting whatever; but one read the pride of gallant and devoted +men in the forces they had commanded. "Then we have not muddled +through?" I said, laughing, to the Army Commander. Sir Henry smiled. +"No, indeed, we have _not_ muddled through!" + +And the results of this efficiency were soon seen. Take first the +attack of the First and Third Armies on this section. North of +Moeuvres the Canadians, under General Home, crossing the Canal in the +early morning of September 27th, on a narrow front, and spreading out +behind the German troops holding the Canal, by a fan-shaped manoeuvre, +brilliantly executed, which won reluctant praise from captured German +officers, pushed on for Bourlon and Cambrai. The 11th Division, +following close behind, turned northward, with our barrage from the +heavy guns, far to the west, protecting their left flank, towards the +enemy line along the Sensee, taking ground and villages as they went. +Meanwhile the front German line, pinned between our barrage behind +them and the Canal, taken in front and rear, and attacked by the 56th +Division, had nothing to do but surrender. + +"The day's results," says my informant of the First Army, "were the +great Hindenburg system (in this northern section) finally broken, the +height before Cambrai captured, thousands of prisoners and great +quantities of guns taken, and our line at its furthest point 7,000 +yards nearer Germany. A great triumph!" + +Meanwhile in the centre--just where I have asked the reader of this +paper to stand with me in imagination on the hill-side overlooking the +Canal du Nord--General Byng's Third Army, including the Guards' +Division, forced the Canal crossings in face of heavy fire, and moving +forward towards Cambrai in the half light of dawn, took trenches and +villages from the fighting and retreating enemy. After the forward +troops were over, the engineers rushed on, bridging the Canal, under +the fire of the German guns, rapidly clearing a way for infantry and +supplies. A map issued by the Tank Corps shows that close to this +point on the Cambrai-Bapaume road six tanks were operating--among them +no doubt that agile fellow, whose tracks still show on the +hillside!--while on the whole front of the Third and First Armies +sixty-five tanks were in action. By the end of that long day 10,000 +prisoners had been taken, and 200 guns, an earnest of what was to +follow. + +It was on the front of the Fourth Army, however, in the section from +St. Quentin to Gouzeaucourt, that the heaviest blow was planned by the +Commander-in-Chief. Here the "exceptional strength of the enemy's +position made a prolonged bombardment necessary." So while the First +and Third Armies were advancing, on the north, with a view to +lightening the task of the Fourth Army, for forty-eight hours General +Rawlinson maintained a terrible bombardment, which drove the defenders +of the famous line underground, and cut them off from food and +supplies. And on the morning of the 29th the Fourth Army attacked. + +But I have no intention of repeating in any detail the story of that +memorable day. The exploit of the 46th Division under General Boyd, in +swimming and capturing the southern section of the Canal below +Bellenglise, will long rank as one of the most amazing stories of the +war. Down the steep banks clambered the men, flung themselves into the +water, and with life-belts, and any other aid that came handy, crossed +the Canal under fire, and clambered up the opposite bank. And the +achievement is all the more welcome to British pride in British pluck, +when it is remembered that, according to the German document I have +already quoted, it was an impossible one. "The deep canal cutting from +the southern end of the canal tunnel ... with its high steep banks +constitutes a strong obstacle. _The enemy will hardly attack here._" +So writes the German officer describing the line. + +But it was precisely here that "the enemy" did attack!--capturing +prisoners (4,000 of them by the end of the day, with 70 guns) and +German batteries in action, before the German Command had had time to +realise the direction of the attack. + +It was not, however, at this point that the severest fighting of the +battle occurred. Across the great tunnel to the north of Bellicourt, +where the Canal passes for nearly two miles underground, ran the main +Hindenburg system, carrying it eastwards over the Canal itself, and it +was here that the fiercest resistance was put up. The two American +divisions had the post of honour and led the advance. It was a heavy +task, largely owing to the fact that it had not been possible to +master the German outpost line completely before the advance started, +and numerous small bodies of the enemy, left behind in machine-gun +posts, tunnels, and dug-outs, were able to harass it seriously for a +time. But the "Americans fought like lions"--how often I heard that +phrase from our own men in France! The American losses were no doubt +higher than would have been the case with more experienced troops, +seasoned by long fighting,--so I have understood from officers present +at the battle. It was perhaps partly because of "their eagerness to +push on" without sufficiently clearing up the ground behind them that +they lost so heavily, and that advanced elements of the two divisions +were for a time cut off. But nothing daunted these fresh and gallant +men. Their sacrifices, as Marshal Haig has recently said, addressing +General O'Ryan, who commanded the 27th Division in this fight, were +"made with a courage and devotion unsurpassed in all the dread story +of this war. The memory of our great attack on the Hindenburg line on +September 29th, 1918, in which the 27th American division, with troops +from all parts of the British Empire, took so gallant and glorious a +part, will never die, and the service then rendered by American troops +will be remembered with gratitude and admiration throughout the +British Empire." + +That misty September day marks indeed a culminating moment in the +history of the Empire and the war. It took six more days of sharp +fighting to capture the last remnants of the Hindenburg line, and six +more weeks before Germany, beaten and demoralised by sea and land, +accepted the Armistice terms imposed by the Allies. But on September +29th, the war was for all practical purposes won. General Gouraud at +the time was making his brilliant advance in Champagne. The Americans +were pushing forward in the Argonne. Both movements were +indispensable; but it was the capture of this great fortified system +which really decided the war. "No attack in the history of the world, +was ever better carried out," said Marshal Foch to Mr. Ward Price, in +Paris, on April 16th last--"than the one made on the Hindenburg line +near St. Quentin and Cambrai, by the Fourth, Third and First British +Armies, on September 27th-29th. The enemy positions were most +formidable. Nothing could stop the British. They swept right over +them. It was a glorious day for British arms." It was also the climax +of two months' fighting in which French, British, and Americans had +all played to the full the part laid down for them by the history of +the preceding years, and in which it fell to the British Army to give +the final and victorious blow. + + _Non nobis, Domine!--non nobis!_ + +It will, I think, be of use to the non-military reader if I append to +the sketch I have just given of the last phase of the British effort, +the following paragraphs written last January by an officer of the +General Staff, in response to the question indicated in the opening +sentence. + +"I have been asked to say what in my opinion were the most critical +and anxious stages of the series of great successful battles opened on +the 8th August, 1918. The question is not easy, for the whole period +was one of high tension, calling for continuous and unsparing effort. + +"From one point of view, the opening battle east of Amiens was +decisive, for it marked the turning point of the campaign on the +British front. Its moral effects, both on our own troops and on the +enemy, were far-reaching and give the key to the whole of the +succeeding struggle. Nothing less than a sweeping success, such as +that actually achieved, could have produced this result. The days +preceding the attack, therefore, constituted a most anxious period. On +the other hand, from the purely military point of view, our chances of +success were exceedingly good. The attack was to be delivered by fresh +troops, second to none in the world in fighting qualities, assisted by +an unprecedented concentration of mechanical aids to victory. +Preparations had been long and careful, every contingency had been +thought out, and there was every reason to expect that our attack +would be a complete surprise. + +"Militarily, the more critical period was that which immediately +followed the battle when, having reached the line of the old Somme +defences of 1916, it was decided to switch the point of attack to the +area north of the Somme. On the success of this manoeuvre depended +whether the attack of the 8th August was to be a single isolated +victory comparable to the battle of Messines in June, 1917, or whether +it was to develop into something very much greater. The decision was a +grave one, and was in some sense a departure from previous practice. +The enemy was now on the alert, the troops to be employed had already +been severely tried in the earlier fighting of the year, and failure +would have called down severe criticism upon the wisdom of abandoning +so quickly the scene of our first great success. + +"It was only after the first days of heavy fighting (in the battle of +Bapaume), during which progress was comparatively slow and the +situation full of anxiety, that the event proved that the step had +been wisely taken. + +"Then, when the success of this bold manoeuvre had declared itself, +and the enemy had begun the first stages of his great retreat, the +next critical period arrived on the 2nd September, when the powerful +defences of the Drocourt-Queant line were attacked and broken. The +effect of this success was to render the whole of the enemy's +positions to the south untenable and to throw him back definitely upon +the Hindenburg line. + +"Undoubtedly the most critical and anxious period of the whole advance +arrived at the end of September. The culminating attacks of the 27th +and 29th of that month on the Canal du Nord and Hindenburg line +defences shattered the most formidable series of field defences that +military science has yet devised and drove the enemy into open +country. These attacks, indeed, accomplished far more than this. They +definitely broke the power of resistance of the German Armies in the +field. In the battles which followed, our troops were able to take +greater and greater risks, and on every occasion with complete +success. + +"Yet again, the risk was great. If the enemy had succeeded in holding +the Hindenburg position, he would have been little, if anything, worse +off, territorially at any rate, than he had been before he began his +great adventure of the spring. It was clearly a time for him to pull +himself together and hold on at all costs. + +"On the other hand and with all its difficulties, so favourable an +opportunity of securing immediate and decisive victory, by pressing +our advantage, could scarcely be expected to present itself again. The +decision was therefore taken and was justified by success. + +"After this battle, our chief anxieties lay rather in the ability of +our supply system to keep pace with our Armies than in any resistance +that the enemy could offer. In the succeeding battles our troops +accomplished with comparative ease feats which earlier in the struggle +it would have been madness to attempt; and in the final battle of the +war, begun on the 4th November, the crossing of the Sambre and the +clearing of the great Mormal Forest furnished a wonderful tribute to +the complete ascendency which their earlier victories had enabled our +troops to establish over the enemy." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +GENERAL GOURAUD AT STRASBOURG + + +The Maine--Verdun--Champagne--it is in connection with these three names +that the French war consciousness shows itself most sensitive and most +profound, just as the war consciousness of Great Britain vibrates most +deeply when you test it with those other names--Ypres--Arras--the +Somme--Cambrai. As is the name of Ypres to the Englishman, so is that +of Verdun to the Frenchman, invested even with a more poignant +significance, since the countryside where so many sons of France laid +down their lives was their own adored mother-land, indivisibly part of +themselves, as those grim, water-logged flats north and south of the +Menin road could never be to a Lancashire or London boy. And no other +French battle-field wears for a Frenchman quite the same aureole that +shines for ever on those dark, riven hills of Verdun. But it seemed to +me that in the feeling of France, Champagne came next--Champagne, +associated first of all with Castelnau's victory in the autumn of 1915, +then with General Nivelle's tragic check in 1917, with the serious +crisis in the French Army in May and June of that year; and finally +with General Gouraud's brilliant successes in the summer and autumn of +1918. + +Six weeks ago I found myself in Strasbourg, where General Gouraud is +in command of the Fourth Army, now stationed in Alsace. Through a long +and beautiful day we had driven south from Metz, across the great +fortified zone to the south of that town; with its endless trenches +and wire-fields, its camouflaged roads, its railway stations packed +with guns, its ammunition dumps and battery-emplacements, which +Germany had prepared at the outset of the war, and which still awaited +the Americans last November, had the Allies' campaign not ended when +it did. There was a bright sun on all the wide and lovely landscape, +on the shining rivers, the flooded spaces and the old towns, and +magnificent clouds lay piled above the purple Vosges, to the south +and east. We caught up a French division on the march, with long lines +of lorries, artillery wagons, guns and field-kitchens, and as our car +got tangled up with it in passing through the small towns and +villages, we had ample time to notice the behaviour of the +country-folk, and the reception given to the troops. Nothing, it +seemed to me, could have been warmer and more spontaneous, especially +as soon as we crossed the boundary of Alsace. The women came running +out to their door-steps, the children formed a tumultuous escort, men +and women peered smiling out of the covered country carts, and +tradesmen left their counters to see the show. + +[Illustration: _British Official Photograph_ +The wonderful exploit of one Brigade of the 46th Division, consisting +of the South Staffords and North Staffords Regts., who crossed the St. +Quentin Canal, which is part of the Hindenburg Line, by swimming in +life-belts. They gained their objectives and also captured two bridges +which allowed the guns to be taken across. The Brigade is seen on the +steep slope of the Canal.] + +At Metz I was conscious of a hostile and bitter element in the town, +not to be wondered at when one remembers that Metz has a population of +25,000 immigrant Germans out of a population of less than 70,000. But +in the country towns of Alsace and in Strasbourg itself, my own +impression, for what it is worth, was everywhere an impression of +solid and natural rejoicing in the new order of things. That there are +a large number of Germans in Strasbourg and Alsace generally is, of +course, true. There were some 450,000 before the war, out of a +population of rather more than two millions, and there are now at a +rough estimate about 300,000, of whom nearly 100,000 are to be found +in Metz and Strasbourg. The whole administration of the two provinces, +with very few exceptions, was a German administration, imported from +Germany, and up to the outbreak of war, the universities and the +schools--_i.e._, the whole teaching profession--were German, and many +of the higher clergy. The leading finance of the provinces was German. +And so on. But I cannot see any reason to doubt that the real feeling +of the native population in the two provinces, whether in town or +country, has remained throughout these forty-eight years strongly and +passionately French. "Since when did you expect the French to come +back?" asked M. Mirman, the present Commissioner of the French +Republic at Metz, of an old peasant whom he came across not long ago +on an official inspection. The old man's eyes kindled--"_Depuis +toujours!_" he said--"I knew it would come, but I was afraid it +mightn't come till I was dead, so I used to say to my son: 'If I am +dead, and the French come back, you will go to the cemetery, you will +knock three times on my grave--I shall hear!' And my son promised." + +My present concern, however, is not with the Alsace-Lorraine question, +but with the brilliant Army Commander who now occupies what used to be +the Headquarters of the German Army Corps which held Alsace. My +acquaintance with him was due to a piece of audacity on my part. The +record of General Gouraud in Champagne, and at the Dardanelles, was +well known to me, and I had heard much of his attractive and romantic +personality. So, on arriving at our hotel after a long day's motoring, +and after consulting with the kind French Lieutenant who was our +escort, I ventured a little note to the famous General. I said I had +been the guest of the British Army for six days on our front, and was +now the guest of the French Army, for a week, and to pass through +Strasbourg without seeing the victor of the "front de Champagne" would +be tantalising indeed. Would he spare an Englishwoman, whose love for +the French nation had grown with her growth and strengthened with her +years, twenty minutes of his time? + +The note was sent and I waited, looking out the while on the gay and +animated crowd that filled the Platz Gutenberg in front of the hotel, +and listening to the bands of children, shouting the "Marseillaise," +and following every French officer as he appeared. Was there ever a +more lovely winter evening? A rosy sunset seemed to have descended +into the very streets and squares of the beautiful old town. Wisps of +pink cloud were tangled in the narrow streets, against a background of +intensely blue sky. The high-roofed burgher houses, with their +decorated fronts, had an "unsubstantial faery" look, under the strange +rich light; and the front of the Cathedral, with its single delicate +spire, soared, one suffusion of rose, to an incredible height above +the narrow street below. + +"_Allons, enfants de la patri-e!_" But a motor-car is scattering the +children, and an _ordonnance_ descends. A note, written by the +General's own left hand--he lost his right arm in consequence of a +wound at the Dardanelles--invites us to dinner with him and his staff +forthwith--the motor will return for us. So, joyously, we made what +simple change we could, and in another hour or so we were waiting in +the General's study for the great man to appear. He came at once, and +I look back upon the evening that followed as one of the most +interesting that Fate has yet sent my way. + +As he entered I saw a man of slight, erect figure, lame, indeed, and +with that sad, empty sleeve, but conveying an immediate and startling +impression as of some fiery, embodied force, dominating the slender +frame. He had a short beard, brown and silky, dark hair, and a pair of +clear blue eyes, shrewd, indeed, and penetrating, but singularly +winning. A soldier, a most modern soldier, yet with an infusion of +something romantic, a touch of thoughtful or melancholy charm that +recalled old France. He was dressed in a dark blue mess coat, red +breeches, and top boots, with three or four orders sparkling on his +breast. His manners were those of an old-fashioned and charming +courtesy. + +As is well known, like Marshal Foch and General Castelnau, General +Gouraud is a Catholic. And like General Mangin, the great Joffre +himself, Gallieni, Franchet d'Esperey, d'Humbert, and other +distinguished leaders of the French Army, he made his reputation in +the French Colonial service. In Morocco, and the neighbouring lands, +where he spent some twenty-two years, from 1892 to 1914, he was the +right-hand of General Lyautey, and conspicuous no less for his +humanity, his peace-making, and administrative genius than for his +brilliant services in the field. When the war broke out General +Lyautey indeed tried for a time to keep him at his side. But the +impulse of the younger soldier was too strong; and his chief at last +let him go. Gouraud arrived in France just after the Marne victory, +and was at once given the command of a division in the Argonne. He +spent the first winter of the war in that minute study of the ground, +and that friendly and inspiring intercourse with his soldiers, which +have been two of the marked traits of his career, and when early in +1915 he was transferred to Champagne, as Commander of a Corps d'Armee, +he had time, before he was called away, to make a survey of the +battle-field east of Rheims, which was of great value to him later +when he came to command the Fourth French Army in the same district. +But meanwhile came the summons to the Dardanelles, where, as we all +remember, he served with the utmost loyalty and good will under +General Sir Ian Hamilton. He replaced General d'Amade on the 10th of +May, led a brilliant and successful attack on the 4th of June, and +was, alas! terribly wounded before the end of the month. He was +entering a dressing-station close to his headquarters to which some +wounded French soldiers had just been brought when a shell exploded +beside him. His aide-de-camp was knocked over, and when he picked +himself up, stunned and bewildered, he saw his General lying a few +yards away, with both legs and an arm broken. Gouraud, during these +few weeks, had already made his mark, and universal sympathy from +French and English followed him home. His right arm was amputated on +the way to Toulon; the left leg, though broken below the knee, was not +seriously injured, but the fracture of the right involved injury to +the hip, and led to permanent lameness. + +Who would have imagined that a man so badly hurt could yet have +afterwards become one of the most brilliant and successful generals in +the French Army? The story of his recovery must rank with the most +amazing instances of the power of the human will, and there are +various touches connected with it in current talk which show the +temper of the man, and the love which has been always felt for him. +One of his old masters of the College Stanislas who went to meet him +at the station on his arrival at Paris, and had been till then unaware +of the extent of the General's wounds, could not conceal his emotion +at seeing him. "_Eh, c'est le sort des batailles_," said Gouraud +gaily, to his pale and stumbling friend. "One would have said he was +two men in one," said another old comrade--"one was betrayed to me by +his works; the other spoke to me in his words." The legends of him in +hospital are many. He was determined to walk again--and quickly. "One +has to teach these legs," he said impatiently, "to walk naturally, not +like machines." Hence the steeple-chases over all kinds of +obstacles--stools, cushions, chairs--that his nurses must needs +arrange for him in the hospital passages; and later on his determined +climbing of any hill that presented itself--at first leaning on his +mother (General Gouraud has never married), then independently. + +He was wounded at the end of June, 1915. At the beginning of November +he was sent at the head of a French Military Mission to Italy, and on +his return in December was given the command of the Fourth French +Army, the Army of Champagne. There on that famous sector of the French +line, where Castelnau and Langle de Cary in the autumn of the same +year had all but broken through, he remained through the whole of +1916. That was the year of Verdun and the Somme. Neither the Allies +nor the enemy had men or energy to spare for important action in +Champagne that year; but Gouraud's watch was never surprised, and +again he was able to acquaint himself with every military feature, and +every local peculiarity of the desolate chalk-hills where France has +buried so many thousands of her sons. At the end of 1916, his old +chief, General Lyautey, now French Minister for War, insisted on his +going back to Morocco as Governor; but happily for the Army of +Champagne, the interlude was short, and by the month of May, Lyautey +was once more in Morocco and Gouraud in Champagne--to remain there in +command of his beloved Fourth Army till the end of the war. + + * * * * * + +Such then, in brief outline, was the story of the great man whose +guests we were proud to be on that January evening. Dinner was very +animated and gay. The rooms of the huge building was singularly bare, +having been stripped by the Germans before their departure of +everything portable. But _en revanche_ the entering French, finding +nothing left in the fine old house, even of the _mobilier_ which had +been left there in 1871, discovered a _chateau_ belonging to the Kaiser +close by, and requisitioned from it some of the necessaries of life. +Bordeaux drunk out of a glass marked with the Kaiser's monogram had a +taste of its own. In the same way, when on the British front we drew +up one afternoon, north of St. Omer, at a level crossing to let a +goods train go by, I watched the interminable string of German trucks, +labelled Magdeburg, Essen, Duesseldorf, and saw in them, with a bitter +satisfaction, the first visible signs of the Reparation and +Restitution to be. + +The relations between the General and his Staff were very pleasant to +watch; and after dinner there was some interesting talk of the war. I +asked the General what had seemed to him the most critical moment of +the struggle. He and his Chief of the Staff looked at each other +gravely an instant and then the General said: "I have no doubt about +it at all. Not May 27th (the break through on the Aisne)--not March +21st (the break through at St. Quentin)--but May and June, 1917--'_les +mutineries dans l'armee_,' _i.e._, that bitter time of '_depression +morale_,' as another French military critic calls it, affecting the +glorious French Army, which followed on General Nivelle's campaign on +the Aisne--March and April, 1917--with its high hopes of victory, its +initial success, its appalling losses, and its ultimate check. Many +causes combined, however--among them the leave-system in the French +Army, and many grievances as to food, billeting, and the like: and the +discontent was alarming and widespread. But," said General Gouraud, +"Petain stepped in and saved the situation." "How?" one asked. "_Il +s'occupa du soldat_--(he gave his mind to the soldier)--that was all." +The whole leave-system was transformed, the food supply and the +organisation of the Army canteens were immensely improved--pay was +raised--and everything was done that could be done, while treating +actual mutiny with a stern hand, to meet the soldiers' demands. "In +our army," said General Gouraud, "a system of discipline like that of +the German Army is impossible. We are a democracy. We must have the +consent of the governed. In the last resort the soldier must be able +to say: '_J'obeis d'amitie._'" + +That great result, according to General Gouraud, was finally achieved +by General Petain's reforms. He gave as a proof of it that on the +night of the Armistice, he and his Staff, at Chalons, unable to sit +still indoors, went out and mingled with the crowd in the streets of +that great military centre, apparently to the astonishment and +pleasure of the multitude. "Everywhere along the line," said the +General, "the soldiers were cheering Petain! '_Vive Petain! Vive +Petain!_'" Petain was miles away; but it was the spontaneous +recognition of him as the soldiers' champion and friend. + +Gouraud did not say, what was no doubt the truth, that the army at +Chalons were cheering Gouraud no less than Petain. For one can rarely +talk with French officers about General Gouraud without coming across +the statement: "He is beloved by his army. He has done so much for the +soldiers." But not a word of his own share appeared in his +conversation with me. + +The talk passed on to the German attack on the French front in +Champagne on July 15th, that perfectly-planned defence in which, to +quote General Gouraud's own stirring words to his soldiers: "You +broke the strength and the hopes of the enemy. That day Victory +changed her camp. She has been faithful to us ever since." It makes +one of the most picturesque stories of the war. The German offensive +which broke out, as we know, along the whole of their new Marne front +on July 15th, had been exactly anticipated for days before it began +by General Gouraud and his Staff. The Fourth French Army, which +Gouraud commanded, was lying to the north-east of Rheims, and the +German attack on the Monts de Champagne, already the scene in 1916 +and 1917 of so much desperate fighting, was meant to carry the German +line down to the Marne that same day. Gouraud was amply informed by +his intelligence staff, and his air service, of the enemy preparations, +and had made all his own. The only question was as to the exact day +and hour of the attack. Then by a stroke of good fortune, at eight +o'clock on the very evening preceding the attack, twenty-seven prisoners +were brought in--of whom some are said to have been Alsatian--and +closely questioned by the Staff. "They told us," said Gouraud, "that +the artillery attack would begin at ten minutes past midnight, and the +infantry attack between three and four o'clock that very night. I +thereupon gave the order for our bombardment to begin at 11.30 p.m. in +order to catch the assembling German troops. I had 200 _batteries +secretes_ ready--of which the enemy had no idea--which had given +beforehand no sign of their existence. Then we sat with our watches in +our hands. Was it true--or not true? 12.5--12.6--12.8--12.9.--Probably +it was a mare's nest. 12.10--_Crac!_--the bombardment had begun. We +sprang to our telephones!" And presently, as the captured German +officers began to come in, their French captors were listening to +their bewildered astonishment "at the number of our batteries they had +never discovered, which were on none of their maps, and only revealed +themselves at the very moment of their own attack." + +Meanwhile, the first French position was not intended to be held. The +advance posts were told to delay and break up the enemy as much as +possible, but the famous Monts were to be abandoned and the real +resistance was to be offered on a position intermediate between the +first and second position, and so densely held that no infiltration of +the enemy was to be possible. Everything happened, for once, really +"according to plan." The advance posts, whose order was "to sacrifice +themselves," and each member of which knew perfectly well the duty +laid upon him, held out--some of them--all day, and eventually fought +their way back to the French lines. But on the prepared line of +resistance the German attack was hopelessly broken, and men and +reserves coming on fast from behind, ignorant of what had happened to +the attacking troops, were mown down by the French artillery. "By +midday," says the typed _compte-rendu_ of operations, which, signed by +General Gouraud's own left hand, lies before me--"the enemy appeared +entirely blocked in all directions--and the battle-position fixed by +the General Commanding the Army was intact." + +Gouraud's army had, in fact, according to the proclamation of its +General, broken the attack of fifteen German divisions, supported by +ten others. The success, moreover, was of the greatest strategical +importance. Thus secured on his right, Foch at once transferred troops +from the Fourth Army, in support of General Mangin's counter-attack of +the 18th, to the other side of the Marne salient, and Gouraud remained +firmly on the watch in the position he had so victoriously held, till +the moment came for his own advance in September. + +I seem still to see him insisting--in spite of his lameness--on +bringing the Staff maps himself from his study, marking on them the +points where the fighting in the September advance was most critical, +and dictating to one of his Staff the itinerary it would be best for +us to take if we wished to see part, at least, of the battle-field. +"And you won't forget," he said, looking up suddenly, "to go and see +two things--the great cemetery at Chalons, and the little 'Cimetiere +du Mont Muret.'" He described to me the latter, lying up in what was +the main fighting line, and how they had gathered there many of the +"unidentifiables"--the nameless, shattered heroes of a terrible +battle-field, so that they rest in the very ground where they gave +their lives. He might have told me,--but there was never a word of it, +and I only knew it later--that it was in that very scene of +desolation, from May, 1917, to March, 1918, that he lived among his +men, building up the spirit of troops that had suffered much, +physically and morally, caring for everything that concerned them, +restoring a shaken discipline and forging the army which a year later +was to fight with an iron steadiness under its brilliant chief. + +To fight both in defence and attack. From July 15th to September 26th +Gouraud remained passive in Champagne. Then on September 26th, the day +before the British attack at Cambrai, he moved, with the First +American Army on his right, against the strong German positions to the +east of Rheims, which since the beginning of the war had barred the +French way. In a battle of sixteen days, the French captured the whole +of the fortified zone on this portion of the front, took 21,000 +prisoners, 600 cannon and 3,500 machine guns. At the very same moment +Sir Douglas Haig was driving through the Hindenburg line, and up to +the west bank of the Selle, taking 48,000 prisoners and 600 guns; +while the Americans were pushing through the difficult forest country +of the Argonne, and along both sides of the Meuse. + +The German strength was indeed weakening fast. Between July 16th and +the Armistice, the British took 188,700 prisoners, the French 137,000, +and the Americans 43,000. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +ALSACE-LORRAINE + +THE GLORY OF VERDUN + + +Before we left Strasbourg on our way to the "front de Champagne," +armed with General Gouraud's maps and directions, an hour or two of +most interesting conversation threw great light for me on that other +"field of victory"--Alsace-Lorraine. + +We brought an introduction to Dr. Pierre Bucher, a gentleman in whom +Alsatian patriotism, both before the war and since the Armistice, has +found one of its most effective and eloquent representatives. A man of +a singularly winning and magnetic presence,--with dark, melancholy +eyes, and the look of one in whom the flame of life has burnt in the +past with a bitter intensity, fanned by winds of revolt and suffering. +Before the war Dr. Bucher was a well-known and popular doctor in +Strasbourg, recognised by Alsatian and German alike as a champion of +the French spirit and French traditions in the lost provinces. He +belonged to that _jeunesse_ of the nineties, which, in the absence of +any reasonable grounds for expecting a reversal of the events of 1871, +came to the conclusion that autonomous liberties would be at any rate +preferable to the naked repression, at the hands of Bismarck and +Manteuffel, of the eighties and early nineties. The young men of his +date decided that the whole government of the province could not any +longer be left to the German bureaucrat, and a certain small number of +them entered the German administration, which was imposed on the +province after 1871 and had been boycotted thence-forward up to nearly +the end of the century by all true Alsatians. But this line of action, +where it was adopted, was taken entirely without prejudice to the +national demand, which remained as firm as ever, supposing +circumstances should ever admit of reunion with France. + +Two causes in particular contributed to the irreconcilable attitude of +the provinces:--first, the liberal tendencies of the population, the +general sympathy, especially in Alsace, with the revolutionary and +Napoleonic doctrines of Liberal France from 1789 onward; and secondly, +the amazing lack of political intelligence shown by their new masters. +"Even if you could ever have annexed us with success"--said Dr. Bucher +long before the war, to a German publicist with whom he was on +friendly terms--"you came, as it was, a hundred years too late. We had +taken our stand with France at the Revolution. Her spirit and her +traditions were ours. We were not affected by her passing fits of +reaction, which never really interfered with us or our local life. +Substantially the revolutionary and Napoleonic era laid the +foundations of modern France, and on them we stand. They have little +or nothing in common with an aristocratic and militarist Germany. Our +sympathies, our traditions, our political tendencies are all +French--you cannot alter them." + +"But, finally--what do you expect or wish for?" said the German man of +letters, after he and Dr. Bucher had talked through a great part of +the night, and the German had listened to the Alsatian with an evident +wish to understand Alsatian grievances. + +Dr. Bucher's answer was prompt and apparently unexpected. + +"Reunion with France," he said quietly--"no true Alsatian wishes +anything else." + +The German first stared and then threw himself back with a +good-natured laugh. + +"Then indeed there's nothing to be done." (_Dann ist ja freilich gar +nichts zu machen!_) + +The tone was that of a strong man's patience with a dreamer; so +confident did the Germans feel in their possession of the +"Reichsland." + +But whatever chance the Germany of Bismarck and William II. might have +had of winning over Alsace-Lorriane--and it could never have been a +good one--was ruined by the daily and tyrannous blundering of the +German Government. The prohibition of the teaching of French in the +primary schools, the immediate imposition of German military service +on the newly-annexed territories, the constant espionage on all those +known to hold strong sympathies with France, or views antagonistic to +the German administration, the infamous passport regulations, and a +hundred other grievances, deepened year by year the regret for France, +and the dislike for Germany. After the first period of "protestation," +marked by the constant election of "protesting" deputies to the +Reichstag, came the period of repression--the "graveyard peace" of the +late eighties and early nineties--followed by an apparent acquiescence +of the native population. "Our young people in those years no longer +sang the 'Marseillaise,'" said Dr. Bucher. Politically, the Alsatians +despaired and--"we had to live together, _bon gre, mal gre_. But deep +in our hearts lay our French sympathies. When I was a young student, +hating my German teachers, the love for France beat in my pulses, like +a ground wave" (_comme une vague de fond_). + +Then after 1900 the Germans "changed greatly." They became every year +richer and more arrogant; Germany from beyond the Rhine developed +every year an increasing _appetit_ for the native wealth and commerce +of Alsace; and the methods of government became increasingly +oppressive and militarist. By this time some 400,000 native Alsatians +had in the course of years left the country, and about the same number +of immigrant Germans had taken their places. The indifference or +apathy of the old population began again to yield to more active +feelings. The rise of a party definitely "Anti-Allemand," especially +among the country people, made itself felt. And finally came, in Dr. +Bucher's phrase, the period of "la haine" after the famous Saverne +incident in 1912. That extraordinary display of German military +insolence seemed to let loose unsuspected forces. + +"All of a sudden, and from all sides, there was an explosion of fury +against the Germans." + +And as the Doctor spoke, his sensitive, charming face kindling into +fire, I remembered our slow passage the day before, through the +decorated streets of the beautiful old town of Saverne, in the wake of +a French artillery division, and amid what seemed the spontaneous joy +of a whole population! + +Through all these years Dr. Bucher was a marked man in the eyes of the +German authorities, but he was careful to give them no excuse for +violence, and so great was his popularity, owing clearly to his +humanity and self-devotion as a doctor, that they preferred to leave +him alone. The German prefect once angrily said to him: "You are a +real _poison_ in this country, Herr Doctor!"--and not very long before +the war a German official to whom he was applying for leave to invite +M. Andre Tardieu to lecture in Strasbourg, broke out with pettish +exasperation: "For twenty years you have been turning my hair grey, M. +le Docteur!"--and permission was refused. At the outbreak of war, he +naturally escaped from Strasbourg, and joined the French army; while +during the latter part of the struggle, he was French military attache +at Berne, and, as I understand, the head of a most successful secret +service. He was one of the first Frenchmen to re-enter Strasbourg, and +is now an invaluable _liaison_ official between the restored French +Government and the population. + +The practical difficulty of the moment, in January last, was how to +meet the Alsatian impatience to get rid of their German masters, bag +and baggage, while at the same time maintaining the ordinary services. +Every night, meetings were being held in the Strasbourg squares to +demand the immediate departure of the Germans. "_Qu'ils +partent--qu'ils partent tous--et tout de suite!_" The French officials +could only reply that if an immediate clearance were made of the whole +German administration--"we can't run your trains--or carry your +posts--or deliver your goods." But the German employes were being +gradually and steadily repatriated--no doubt with much unavoidable +hardship to individuals. Strasbourg contained then about 65,000 +Germans out of 180,000. Among the remaining German officials there was +often a curious lack of realisation of what had happened to Germany +and to them. "The Germans are very _gauche_--their tone is still just +the same!" And the Doctor described a scene he had witnessed in one of +the bureaux of the prefecture only the day before. A German official +was at his desk. Enter an Alsatian to make an inquiry about some point +in a bankruptcy case. The German answered him with the curt rudeness +which was the common official tone in old days, and finally, +impatiently told the applicant to go. The Alsatian first opened his +eyes in astonishment, and then--suddenly--flamed up. "_What!_--you +think nothing is changed?--that you are the masters here as you used +to be--that you can treat us as you used to treat us? We'll show you? +We are the masters now. Get out of that chair!--Give it me!--while I +talk to you. Behave civilly to me, _ou je vais vous flanquer un coup +dans le dos!_" And the Alsatian went threateningly forward. But the +German looked up--grew white--and said slowly--"Monsieur--you are +right! I am at your service. What is your business?" + +I asked about the amount of inter-marriage that had taken place during +the forty years. Dr. Bucher thought it had been inconsiderable--and +that the marriages, contracted generally between German subalterns and +girls of the inn-keeping or small farming class, had been rarely +happy. The Alsatian strain was the stronger, and the wife's relations +despised the German intruder. "Not long before the war I came upon two +small boys fighting in a back street." The boy that was getting the +worst of it was abusing the other, and Dr. Bucher caught the +words--"dirty Prussian!" (_sale Prussien!_) The boy at whom this was +hurled, stopped suddenly, with a troubled face, as though he were +going to cry. "No--no!--not me!--not me! _my father!_" Strange, tragic +little tale! + +As to the Church, a curious situation existed at that moment in +Strasbourg. The Archbishop, a good man, of distinguished German birth, +was respected and liked by his clergy, who were, however, French in +sympathies almost to a man. The Archbishop, who had naturally excused +himself from singing the victors' Te Deum in the Cathedral, felt that +it would be wiser for him to go, and proposed to Rome that he should +resign his see. His clergy, though personally attached to him, were +anxious that there should be no complications with the French +Government, and supported his wish to resign. But Rome had refused. +Why? No doubt because the whole position of the Church and of +Catholicism in these very Catholic provinces represents an important +card in the hand of the Vatican, supposing the Papacy should desire at +any time to reopen the Church and State question with Republican +France. What is practically the regime of the Napoleonic Concordat +still obtains in the recovered provinces. The clergy have always been +paid by the State, and will be still paid, I understand, in spite of +the Combes laws, by a special subvention, for the distribution of +which the bishops will be responsible. And M. Clemenceau, as the +French Prime Minister, has already nominated one or more bishops, as +was the case throughout France itself up to 1905. + +Everything indeed will be done to satisfy the recovered provinces that +can be done. They are at present the spoiled children of France; and +the poor devastated North looks on half enviously, inclined to think +that "Paris forgets us!"--in the joy of the lost ones found. But Paris +knows very well that there are difficulties ahead, and that the French +love of symmetry and logic will have to make substantial concessions +here and there to the local situation. There are a number of +institutions, for instance, which have grown up and covered the +country since 1871, which cannot be easily fitted to the ordinary +_cadre_ of French departmental government. The department would be too +small a unit. The German insurance system, again, is far better and +more comprehensive than the French, and will have, in one way or +another, to be taken over. + +But my own strong impression is that goodwill, and the Liberal _fond_, +resting on the ideas of 1789, which, in spite of their Catholicism, +has always existed in these eastern provinces (Metz, however, has been +much more thoroughly Germanised than Strasbourg since the annexation), +will see France through. And meanwhile the recovery of these rich and +beautiful countries may well comfort her in some degree for her +desolate fields and ruined towns of the North and Centre. The capital +value of Alsace-Lorraine is put roughly at a thousand millions, and +the Germans leave behind them considerable additions to the wealth of +the province in the shape of new railway-lines and canals, fine +stations, and public buildings, not to speak of the thousands of +fruit-trees with which, in German fashion, they have lined the +roads--a small, unintentional reparation for the murdered fruit-trees +of the North. + + * * * * * + +A few days after our Strasbourg visit we drove, furnished with General +Gouraud's notes and maps, up into the heart of the "front de +Champagne." You cross the wide, sandy plains to the north of Chalons, +with their scanty pine-woods, where Attila met his over-throw, and +where the French Army has trained and manoeuvred for generations. And +presently, beyond the great military camp of pre-war days, you begin +to mount into a region of chalk hills, barren and lonely enough before +the war, and now transformed by the war into a scene which almost +rivals the Ypres salient and Verdun itself in tragic suggestiveness. +Standing in the lonely graveyard of Mont Muret, one looks over a +tortured wilderness of trenches and shell-holes. Close by are all the +places famous through years of fighting--Souain, Navarin Farm, Tahure, +the Butte de Tahure, and, to the north-west, Somme-Py, Ste. Marie-Py, +and so on to Moronvilliers and Craonne. In the south-western distance +I could just descry the Monts de Champagne, while turning to the north +one faced the slopes of Notre Dame des Champs, and recalled the +statement of General Gouraud that on that comparatively open ground +the fiercest fighting of last October had taken place. + +And now, not a soul, not a movement! Everywhere lay piles of unused +shell, German and French, small heaps of hand-grenades and bundles of +barbed wire. The camouflaged battery positions, the deep dug-outs and +strong posts of the enemy were all about us; a dead horse lay not far +away; and in front, the white crosses of the graveyard. A grim scene, +under the January sky! But in the very middle of the little cemetery +some tender hand had just recently fastened a large bunch of white +narcissus to one of the crosses. We had passed no one that I could +remember on the long ascent; yet the flowers were quite fresh and the +thought of them--the only living and beautiful thing for miles in that +scarred wilderness, over which a creeping fog was beginning to +gather--stayed with me for days. + +The Champagne-battle-field is indeed deeply interwoven with the whole +history of the war. The flower of the French Army and almost all the +leading French Generals--Castelnau, Petain, Nivelle, Gouraud, have +passed through its furnace. But famous as it is, and for ever +associated with the remarkable and fascinating personality of General +Gouraud, which gives to it a _panache_ of its own, it has not the +sacredness of Verdun. + +We had spent the day before the expedition to Champagne at St. Mihiel +and Verdun. To St. Mihiel I will return in my next chapter. Verdun I +had never seen, and the impression that it makes, even in a few hours, +is profound. In March, 1916, I well remember at Havre, at Boulogne, at +St. Omer, how intent and absorbed a watch was kept along our front +over the news from Verdun. It came in hourly, and the officers in the +hotels, French and English, passed it to each other without much +speech, with a shrug, or a look of anxiety, or a smile, as the case +might be. When we arrived on March 6th at the Visitors' Chateau at +G.H.Q.--then, of course, at St. Omer--our first question was: +"Verdun?" "All right," was the quick reply. "We have offered help, but +they have refused it." + +No--France, heroic France, trod that wine-press alone; she beat back +her cruel foe alone; and, at Verdun, she triumphed alone. Never, +indeed, was human sacrifice more absolute; and never was the spiritual +force of what men call patriotism more terribly proved. "The _poilu_ +of Verdun," writes M. Joseph Reinach, "became an epic figure"--and the +whole battle rose before Europe as a kind of apocalyptic vision of +Death and Courage, staged on a great river, in an amphitheatre of +blood-stained hills. All the eyes in the world were fixed on this +little corner of France. For a Frenchman--"Verdun was our first +thought on waking, and was never absent from us through the day." + +The impression made by the battle--or rather, the three battles--of +Verdun does not depend on the numbers engaged. The British Battle of +the Somme, and the battles of last year on the British front far +surpassed it in the number of men and guns employed. From March 21st +last year to April 17th, the British front was attacked by 109 +divisions, and the French by 25. In the most critical fighting at +Verdun, from February 21st to March 21st, the French had to face 21 +divisions, and including the second German attack in June and the +triumphant French advance in December, the total enemy forces may be +put at 42 divisions. But the story is incomparable! Everything +contributed--the fame of the ancient fortress, the dynastic and +political interests involved, the passion of patriotism which the +struggle evoked in France, the spendthrift waste of life on the part +of the German Command. + +After the French rally, indeed, from the first terrific bombardment, +which nearly gave the German Command its coveted prey, the thing +became a duel, watched by all Europe, between Petain and the Crown +Prince; between the dynastic interests of the Hohenzollerns, served by +a magnificent army, and the finest military and patriotic traditions +of France. From day to day the public in this country watched the +fluctuations of the struggle with an interest so absorbing that the +names of Douaumont, Vaux, Mort Homme, Cumieres, the Goose's Crest, +came to ring in our ears almost as the names of Hougoumont, La Haye +Sainte, La Belle Alliance, rang in those of an earlier time. + +Verdun, from a distance, produces the same illusion as Rheims. The +Cathedral and the town are apparently still in being. They have not +lost their essential outlines, and the veils of grey and purple haze +between the spectator and the reality disguises what both have +suffered. Then one draws nearer. One enters the famous fortress, +through the old Vauban fortifications, and over the Vauban +bridge--little touched, to all appearance. And presently, as one +passes along the streets, one sees that here is not a town, but only +the ghost, the skeleton of a town. The roofless, windowless houses, of +which the streets still keep, as in Rheims, their ancient lines, stare +at you like so many eyeless skulls--the bare bones of a city. Only the +famous citadel, with its miles of underground passages and rooms, is +just as it was before the battle, and as it will be, one may hope, +through the long years to come; preserved, not for any active purpose +of war, but as the shrine of immortal memories. Itself, it played a +great part in the struggle. For here, in these dormitories and +mess-rooms and passages so far underground that even the noise of the +fierce struggle outside never reached them, it was possible for troops +worn out by the superhuman ordeal of the battle, to find complete +rest--_to sleep_--without fear. + +We entered through a large mess-room full of soldiers, with, at its +further end, a kitchen, with a busy array of cooks and orderlies. Then +someone opened a door, and we found ourselves in a small room, very +famous in the history of the war. During the siege, scores of visitors +from Allied and neutral countries--statesmen, generals, crowned +heads--took luncheon under its canopy of flags, buried deep +underground, while the storm of shell raged outside. There, in the +visitors' book, one might turn to the two signatures--one of them then +only a fortnight old--that all France knows: + + "March, 1916--_On les aura! Petain_" + + "January, 1918--_On les a! Petain_" + +A courteous Commandant, telephoned to from below, came from some upper +region to greet us and to show us something of the endless labyrinth +of rooms, passages and dormitories, which during the siege often +sheltered thousands of men. The veteran Colonel Duhay, who was in +command of the citadel during the greater part of the year-long +battle--a splendid, square-built tower of a man--I saw later in Paris. +It was ill-luck not to have been able to walk with him over the tragic +battle-field itself, for few men can have memories of it at once so +comprehensive and so close. From the few words I had with him I retain +a shuddering impression as of a slaughter-house; yet nothing could be +cheerfuller or humaner than the broad soldier-face. But our talk +turned on the losses of Verdun, and although these losses--_i.e._, the +proportion of death to the square yard--were probably exceeded in +several later battles, in none, it seems to me, has the massacre of +men on both sides left so terrible a mark on the survivors. There came +a time when the French were sick of slaying, and the German dead were +piled metres high on the slopes of Mort Homme and Cumieres; in those +weeks at the end of May, when the Germans, conscious that their +prestige had suffered irreparably in the hundred days--which were to +have been four!--of desperate and indecisive fighting, were at the +opening of that fierce last effort which gave them Fort Vaux and its +hero-commander, Commandant Raynal, on June 7th--put them in +short-lived possession of Thiaumont and Fleury later--and was then +interrupted at the end of the month by the thunder of the Allied +attack on the Somme. + +After leaving the citadel and the much-injured cathedral, beneath the +crypt of which some of the labyrinthine passages of the old fortress +are hewn, we drove through the eastern section of the battle-field, +past what was once Fort Souville, along an upper road, with Vaux on +our right, and Douaumont on the northern edge of the hill in front of +us; descending again by Froide Terre, with the Cote de Poivre beyond +it to the north; while we looked across the Meuse at the dim lines of +Mort Homme, of the Bois des Corbeaux and the Crete de l'Oie, of all +that "chess-board" of hills which became so familiar to Europe in +those marvellous four months from February to June, 1916. Every yard +of these high slopes has been fought over again and again, witnessing +on the part of the defenders a fury of endurance, a passion of +resolve, such as those, perhaps, alone can know who hear through all +their being the mystic call of the soil, of the very earth itself, the +actual fatherland, on which they fight. "_We are but a moment of the +eternal France_:"--such was once the saying of a French soldier, dying +somewhere amid these broken trenches over which we are looking. What +was it, asks M. Reinach, that enabled the French to hold out as they +did? _Daring_, he replies--the daring of the leaders, the daring of +the troops led. The word hardly renders the French "_audace_" which is +equally mis-translated by our English "audacity." "_Audace_" implies a +daring which is not rashness, a daring which is justified, which is, +in fact, the military aspect of a great nation's confidence in itself. +It was the spirit of the "Marseillaise," says M. Reinach again--it was +the French soul--_l'ame francaise_--the soul of country and of +freedom, which triumphed here. + +And not for France alone. At the moment when the attack on Verdun +began, although the British military power was strengthening month by +month, and the Military Service Act of May, 1916, which put the +finishing touch to Lord Kitchener's great work, was close at hand, the +French Army was still not only the principal, but the essential +element in the Western campaign. France, at Verdun, as in the Battle +of the Marne, was defending not only her own freedom, but the freedom +of Europe. A few months later, when the British Army of the Somme went +over its parapets at daybreak on July 1st, Verdun was automatically +relieved, and it was clear to all the world that Britain's +apprenticeship was past, and that another great military power had +been born into Europe, on whom, as we now know, the main +responsibilities of final victory were to rest. But at Verdun France +fought for _us_--for England and America no less than for herself; and +that thought must always deepen the already deep emotion with which +English eyes look out upon these tortured hills. + +That dim line on the eastern ridge, which marks the ruins of Fort +Vaux, stands indeed for a story which has been entrusted by history to +the living memory of France's Allies, hardly less than to that of +France herself. As we pause among the crumbling trenches and +shell-holes to look back upon the height of Vaux, I seem to see the +lines of French infantry creeping up the hill, through the +communication trenches, in the dark, to the relief of their comrades +in the fort; the runners--eager volunteers--assuring communications +under the incessant hail of shell; the carrier-pigeons, when the fort +is altogether cut off, bringing their messages back to Headquarters; +the red and green signal lights shooting up from the ridge into the +night. One of these runners, when the siege was nearing its end, +arrived at an advance post, having by a miracle got through a terrible +barrage unhurt. "You might have waited a few instants," said the +Colonel, kindly. But the runner, astonished, showed the envelope. "My +Colonel, look--it is written--'_urgent!_'" + +That was the spirit. Or listen to this fragment from the journal of +Captain Delvert, defending one of the redoubts that protect Fort Vaux: + + "Six o'clock--the bombardment has just begun again. The + stretcher-bearer, L----, has just been leaning a few + moments--worn out--against the wall of my dug-out. His good, + honest face is hollow, his eyes, with their blue rims, seem + starting out of his head. '_Mon Capitaine_, I'm used up. There + are only three stretcher-bearers left. The others are dead or + wounded. I haven't eaten for three days, or drunk a drop of + water.' His frail body is only held together by a miracle of + energy. Talk of heroes--here is a true one! + + "Eight o'clock. We are relieved. + + "Eleven o'clock. Message from the Colonel. 'Owing to + circumstances the 101st cannot be relieved.' + + "_Merci!_ + + "What a disappointment for my poor fellows! Lieutenant X---- is + lost in admiration of them. I daresay--but I have only + thirty-nine of them left." + +Eighteen hours later. + + "The order for relief has come. We shall leave our dead behind us + in the trench. Then-comrades have carefully placed them out of + the passage-way.... There they are--poor sentinels, whom we leave + behind us, in a line on the parados, in their blood-stained + uniforms--solemn and terrible guardians of this fragment of + French soil, which still in death they seem to be holding against + the enemy." + +But the enemy advances inexorably, and within the fort the dead and +dying multiply. + + "Captain Tabourot fought like a lion," says another witness. "He + was taller than any of us. He gave his orders briefly, encouraged + us, and placed us. Then he plunged his hand into the bag of bombs, + and, leaning back, threw one with a full swing of the arm, aiming + each time. That excited us, and we did our best." + +But meanwhile the enemy is stealing up behind, between the trench and +the fort. Captain Tabourot is mortally hit, and is carried into the +dressing-station within the fort. Commandant Raynal, himself wounded, +comes to see him. "No word of consolation, no false hope. The one +knows that all is over; the other respects him too deeply to attempt a +falsehood." A grasp of the hand--a word from the Commandant: "Well +done, _mon ami_!" But the Captain is thinking of his men. "_Mon +Commandant_--if the Boches get through, it is not the fault of my +company. They did all they could." Then a last message to his wife. +And presently his name is carried through the dark by a carrier-pigeon +down to the Headquarters below: "The enemy surrounds us. I report to +you the bravery of Captain Tabourot, seriously wounded. We are holding +out." And a few hours later: "Captain Tabourot of the 142nd has died +gloriously. Wound received in defending the north-eastern breach. +Demand for him the Legion of Honour." + +For five days the heroic defence goes on. All communications are cut, +the passages of the fort are choked with wounded and dying men, the +water is giving out. On the 4th, a wounded pigeon arrives at +Headquarters. It brings a message, imploring urgently for help. + +"This is my last pigeon." The following day communication is partly +re-established, and a few fragmentary messages are received. "The +enemy"--signals the fort--"is working on a mine to the west of the +fort. Turn on the guns--quick." ... "We don't hear your artillery. Are +attacked by gas, and flame throwers. Are at the last extremity." Then +one message gets through from below--"Courage! we shall soon attack." +The fort waits, and at night another fragmentary message comes from +Raynal asking for water and relief. "I am nearly at the end of my +powers. The troops--men and officers--have in all circumstances done +their duty.... You will come, no doubt ... before we are completely +exhausted. _Vive la France!_" + +But death and thirst--thirst, above all--are victors. On the 6th, a +few hours before the inevitable end, Marshal Joffre flashed his +message to the heights--in the first place, a message of thanks to +troops and Commander for their "magnificent defence," in the next, +making Commandant Raynal a Commander of the Legion of Honour. + +On the 7th a last heroic effort was made to relieve the fort. It +failed, and Raynal--wounded, with a handful of survivors--surrendered, +the Germans, in acknowledgment of the heroism of the defence, allowing +the Commandant to retain his sword. + +What manner of men were they that fought this fight? What traditions +did they represent? What homes did they come from? + +M. Henri Bordeaux, himself an eye-witness, to whose admirable and +moving book on _The Last Days of Fort Vaux_, I am indebted for the +preceding details, to some extent answers the question by quoting a +letter, addressed by his mother to the stretcher-bearer, Roger Vamier, +decorated in 1915 by General Joffre himself. + + "_Et toi, mon tresor_--you must have a great deal to do.... Well, + do all you can to save those poor wounded!--left there in the snow + and blood. My blood boils to be staying on here, when there is so + much to do over there, in picking up those poor fellows. Why won't + they have a woman?--there, where she could really help! It is the + business of mothers to pick up those poor lads, and give them a + good word. Well, you must replace the mothers, you, _mon cheri_, + you must do all you can--do the impossible--to help. I see you + running--creeping along--looking for the wounded. If I could + only be there too!--Yes, it is my place, _mon petit_, near you. + Courage, courage!--I know it is the beginning of the end--and + the end will be grand for all those who have fought in the just + cause." + +A month later thousands of English, Scotch, Welsh and Irish lads, men +from Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia, were passing on +the Somme through a similar furnace of death and suffering to that +borne by the French at Verdun. But the English ways of expression are +not the French; and both differ from the American. The instinct for +ringing and dramatic speech rarely deserts the Frenchman--or +Frenchwoman. It is present in the letter written by Roger Vamier's +mother, as in the _Ordres du Jour_ of Castelnau or Petain. Facility of +this kind is not our _forte_. Our lack of it suggests the laughter in +that most delightful of recent French books, _Les Silences du Colonel +Bramble_, which turns upon our national taciturnities and our +minimising instinct in any matter of feeling, an instinct which is +like the hiding instinct, the protective colouring of birds--only +anxious to be mistaken for something else. The Englishman, when +emotion compels him, speaks more readily in poetry than prose; it is +the natural result of our great poetic tradition; and in the +remarkable collections of war poetry written by English soldiers we +have the English counterpart to the French prose utterance of the +war--so much more eloquent and effective, generally, than our own. + + * * * * * + +One more look round the slopes over which the light is fading. The +heroism of the defence!--that, here, is the first thought. But on the +part of the attackers there was a courage no less amazing, though of +another sort; the effect of an iron discipline hypnotising the +individual will, and conferring on the soldier such superhuman power +of dying at another man's will as history--on such a scale--has +scarcely seen equalled. In the first battle of Verdun, which lasted +forty-eight days (February 21st to April 9th), the German casualties +were over 200,000, with a very high proportion of killed. And by the +end of the year the casualties at Verdun, on both sides, had reached +700,000. Opinion in Germany, at first so confident, wavered and +dropped. Why not break off? But the dynasty was concerned. Fortune, +_toute entiere a sa proie attachee_, drove the German Army again and +again through lanes of death, where the French 75's worked their +terrible will--for no real military advantage. "On the 10th of March," +says M. Henri Bordeaux, "the enemy climbed the northern slopes of Fort +Vaux. He was then from two to three hundred metres from the +counter-scarp. He took three months to cross these two to three +hundred metres--three months of superhuman effort, and of incredible +losses in young men, the flower of the nation." The German strategic +reserves were for the first time seriously shaken, and by the end of +this wonderful year Petain, Nivelle, and Mangin between them had +recovered from the assailants all but a fraction of what had been lost +at Verdun. Meanwhile, behind the "shield" of Verdun, which was thus +attracting and wasting the force of the enemy, the Allied Armies had +prepared the great offensive of the summer. Italy struck in the +Trentino on the 25th of June, Russia attacked in June and July, the +British attacked on the Somme on July 1st. The "wearing-down" battle +had begun in earnest. "Soldiers of Verdun," said Marshal Joffre, in +his order of the 12th of June, "the plans determined on by the +Coalition are in full work. It is your heroic resistance that has made +this possible. It was the indispensable condition, and it will be the +foundation, of our coming victories." "Germany"--says M. +Reinach--"during ten months had used her best soldiers in furious +assaults on Verdun.... These troops, among the finest in the world, +had in five of these months gained a few kilometres of ground on the +road to the fortress. This ground, watered with blood as no field of +carnage had ever been, which saw close upon 700,000 men fall, was lost +in two actions (October 24th--November 3rd and December 15th--18th), +and Germany was brought back to within a few furlongs of her starting +point.... Douaumont and Louvemont were certainly neither Rocroy nor +Austerlitz; but Verdun, from the first day to the last, from the rush +stemmed by Castelnau to the battles won by Nivelle and Mangin; Verdun, +with her mud-stained _poilu_, standing firm in the tempest, who said: +"They shall not pass!" _(passeront pas!_), and they have not passed; +Verdun, for the Germans a charnel-house, for us a sanctuary, was +something greater by far." + +With these thoughts in mind we dropped down the long hill to Verdun +again, and so across the bridge and on to that famous road, the _Voie +Sacree_, up which Petain, "the road-mender" (_Le Cantonnier_), brought +all his supplies--men, food, guns, ammunition--from Bar-le-Duc by +motor-lorry, passing and repassing each other in a perpetual +succession--one every twenty seconds. The road was endlessly broken +up, sometimes by the traffic, sometimes by shell, and as endlessly +repaired by troops specially assigned to the task. And presently we +are passing the Moulin des Regrets, where Castelnau and Petain met on +the night of the 25th, and the resolution was taken to counter-attack +instead of withdrawing. Verdun, indeed, is the classic illustration of +the maxim that attack is the best defence, or, as the British +Commander-in-Chief puts it in his latest dispatch, that "defensive +success in battle can be gained only by a vigorous offensive." The +long battle on the Meuse, "the greatest single action in history," was +in one aspect a vast school, in which a score of matters belonging to +the art of war were tested, illustrated, and explained, with the same +general result as appears throughout the struggle, a result insisted +on by each great commander, British or French, in turn; _i.e._, that +in the principles of war there is nothing new to be learnt. +Discipline, training, co-operation, attack; these are the unchanging +forces the great general has at command. It depends on his own genius +what he makes of them. + +Verdun fades behind us, and we are on our way to the Marne. In the +strange isolation of the car, passing so quickly, as the short winter +twilight comes on, through country one has never seen before and will +perhaps never see again, the war becomes a living pageant on the +background of the dark. Then, with the lights of Chateau-Thierry, +thought jumps in a moment from the oldest army in the war to the +youngest. This old town, these dim banks of the Marne, have a long +history. But in the history of last year, and the closing scenes of +the Great War, they belong specially to America. This is American +ground. + +To realise what that means, we must retrace our steps a little. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +AMERICA IN FRANCE + + +On March 2nd, 1917, I found myself lunching at Montreuil, then the +General Headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force, with the +Staff of the Intelligence Department. After lunch I walked through the +interesting old town, with the Chief of the Department, and our talk +turned on the two subjects of supreme importance at that +moment--America and Russia. When would America come in? For that she +would come in was clear. It was now a full month since diplomatic +relations between Germany and the United States had been broken off, +and about a week since President Wilson had asked Congress to arm +American vessels in self-defence against the new submarine campaign +announced by Germany in January. "It can't be long," said my companion +quietly; "Germany has gone too far to draw back. And the President +will have the whole country with him. On the whole I think he has been +right to wait. It is from Americans themselves of course that one +hears the sharpest criticism of the President's 'patience.'" + +My own correspondence of the winter indeed with American friends had +shown me the passion of that criticism. But on the 2nd of March there +was small further need for it. Germany was rushing on her fate. During +the course of the month, England and America watched the piling up of +the German score as vessel after vessel was sunk. Then on the 1st of +April came the loss of twenty-eight American lives in the _Aztec_, and +the next day but one we opened our London newspapers to find that on +April the 2nd President Wilson had asked Congress for a Declaration of +War. + +"America is in," wrote an officer at G.H.Q., "and the faces of +everybody one sees show a real bit of spring sunshine. People begin to +say: 'Now we shall be home by Christmas.'" + +But something else had happened in that fateful month of March. March +the 9th saw the strange, uncertain opening of the Russian revolution, +followed by a burst of sympathy and rejoicing throughout Europe. Only +those intimately acquainted with the structure of Russian society felt +the misgivings of those who see the fall of a house built on rotten +foundations and have no certainty of any firm ground whereon to build +its successor. But the disappointment and exasperation of the Allies +at that moment, as to all that had happened in Russia during the +preceding months, under the old regime, was so great that the mere +change bred hope; and for a long time we hoped against hope. All the +more because the entry of America, and the thrilling rapidity of her +earlier action put the Russian business into the shade, may, indeed, +have dulled the perceptions of the Allies with regard to it. In forty +days from the declaration of war the United States had adopted +Conscription, which had taken us two years; General Pershing and his +small force had sailed for France within eighty days; and by the end +of June, or within ninety days, America had adopted the blockade +policy of Great Britain, and assented to the full use of that mighty +weapon which was to have so vast an influence on the war. President +Wilson's speech, when he came to Congress for the Declaration of War, +revealed him--and America--to England, then sorely brooding over "too +proud to fight," in an aspect which revived in us all that was kinship +and sympathy, and put to sleep the natural resentments and +astonishments of the preceding years. Nay, we envied America a man +capable of giving such magnificent expression to the passion and +determination of all free nations, in face of the German challenge. + +Then came the days of disappointment. Troops arrived at a more +leisurely pace in France than had been hoped. Ships and aeroplanes, +which American enthusiasm in the early weeks of the war had promised +in profusion, delayed their coming; there was congestion on the +American railways, interfering with supplies of all kinds; and the +Weather God, besides, let loose all his storm and snow battalions upon +the Northern States to hamper the work of transport. We in England +watched these things, not realising that our own confidence in the +military prospects and the resisting power of the Allies, was partly +to blame for American leisureliness. It was so natural that American +opinion, watching the war, should split into two phases--one that held +the war was going to be won quickly by negotiation, before America +could seriously come in; the other that the war would go on for +another three years, and therefore there would be ample time for +America to make all her own independent plans and form her own +separate army with purely American equipment. English opinion wavered +in the same way. I well remember a gathering in a London house in +November, 1917, just after the first successful attack in the Battle +of Cambrai. It was a gathering in honour of General Bliss, and other +American officers and high officials then in London. General Bliss was +the centre of it, and the rugged, most human, most lovable figure of +Mr. Page was not far away. The Battle of Cambrai was in progress, and +English expectations, terribly depressed, at any rate among those who +knew, by the reports which had been coming through of the severe +fighting in the Salient, during the preceding weeks, were again rising +rapidly. Everybody was full of the success of the initial attack, of +the tanks above all, and what they might mean for the future. At last +Sir Julian Byng had achieved surprise; at last there had been open +fighting; if by happy chance we took Cambrai what might not happen? A +flash of optimism ran through us all. Victory and peace drew nearer. +Yet in the background there were always those dim rumours of the +appalling losses at Passchendaele, together with the smarting memory +of Caporetto, and of the British divisions sent to Italy. + +And in ten days more we knew that the German counter-attack had +checked the Cambrai advance, that Bourlon Wood was lost, that Cambrai +was still inaccessible, and we retained only a portion of the ground +gained by the dash and skill of the first days. The moral was, as +always--"more men!" and we settled down again to a stubborn waiting +for our own new recruits, then in the training camps, and for the +first appearance of the American battalions. Meanwhile the news from +Russia grew steadily worse; the Russian Army had melted away under the +Kerensky regulations; and the country was rapidly falling into chaos. +Brest-Litovsk was acutely realised for the German triumph that it was; +and the heads of the Army were already calculating with some precision +the number of German divisions, then on the Eastern front, which must +inevitably be transferred to France for the spring offensive of the +German Army. + +It was natural that those really acquainted with the situation should +turn feverishly towards America. When was her Army coming? In the +matter of money America had done nobly towards all the Allies. In this +field her help had been incalculably great. In the matter of munitions +and stores for the Allies she had done all that the state of her +railways, the weather of her winter, and the drawbacks of the American +Constitution, considered as a military machine, as yet allowed her to +do. Meanwhile one saw the President, aided by a score of able and +energetic men, constantly at work removing stones in the path, setting +up a War Industries Board, reorganising the Shipping Board and the Air +Service, and clearing the way for those food supplies from the great +American and Canadian wheatfields without which Europe could not +endure, and which were constantly endangered by the pressure of the +submarine attack. Perhaps in all that anxious winter the phase of +American help which touched us English folk most deeply was the +voluntary rationing by which hundreds and thousands of American +families, all over the vast area of the States, eagerly stinted +themselves that they might send food overseas to Great Britain and the +Allies--sixty million bushels of wheat by January 1st--ninety millions +before the 1918 harvest. We knew that it was only done by personal +sacrifice, and we _felt_ it in our hearts. + +Meanwhile, on this side of the sea, the anxiety for _men_ grew +steadily stronger. Who knew what the coming spring campaign would +bring forth? The French Army during 1917 had passed through that +_depression morale_ of which I have spoken in an earlier letter. Would +a country which had borne such a long and terrible ordeal of death and +devastation be capable of yet another great effort during the coming +year, whatever might be the heroic patriotism of her people? One heard +of the enormous preparations that America was making in France--of the +new docks, warehouses, and railways, of the vast depots and splendid +camps that were being laid out--with a mixture of wonder and +irritation. A friend of mine, on coming back from France, described to +me his going over a new American dock with two French officers: +"Magnificent!" said the Frenchmen, in a kind of despair--"but when are +they going to _begin_? Suppose the war is over, and France swallowed +up, _before_ they begin?" A large section of American opinion was +shaken with the same impatience. + +American letters to English friends, including those of Mr. Roosevelt to +his many English correspondents, among whom, to some small extent, I was +proud to reckon myself, expressed an almost fierce disappointment with +the slow progress of things. Ultimately, of course, an independent +American Army, under its own Commander-in-Chief, and fully equipped +from American factories. But why not begin by sending men in as large +numbers as possible to train with the British and French Armies, and to +take their places as soon as possible in the fighting line, as integral +parts of those armies, allowing the Allies to furnish all equipment +till America was really ready? It was pointed out that Canada and +Australia, by sending officers and men over at once to train and fight +with the British, and leaving everything else to be supplied by the +Allies, had in nine months from the outbreak of war already taken part +in glorious and decisive battles. Or why not adopt a two-fold +policy--of supplying men to the Allies as rapidly as possible, for +immediate aid, carrying on preparations the while for an independent +American Army with all its own supplies, as the ultimate goal? Time, it +was urged, was of the utmost importance. And what object was served by +experimenting with new types of munitions, instead of adopting the +types of the Allies, which the American factories were already turning +out in profusion? And so on. + +With such feelings did many of us on this side of the water, and a +large section apparently of American friends of the Allies on the +other side, watch the gradual unravelling of America's tangled skeins. +The _North American Review_ asked in December, 1917: "Are we losing +the war? No. But we are not winning it." In January, 1918, the editor +warned his readers: "The Allied forces are not in condition to +withstand the terrific onslaught which Germany is bound to make within +six months. America must win the war." In April the _New York Bankers' +Bulletin_ said: "We have not made progress as far as we might or +could," while months later, even in its September number (1918), the +_North American Review_ still talked of "our inexplicable military +sluggishness," and rang with appeals for greater energy. There was of +course an element of politics in all this; but up to March last year +it is clear that, in spite of many things not only magnificently +planned, but magnificently _done_, there was a great deal of sincere +anxiety and misgiving in both countries. + +But with the outbreak of the German offensive in March, as we all +know, everything changed. American troops began to _rush_ +over:--366,000 in round numbers, up to the end of March, and 440,000 +more, up to the end of June, 70 per cent, of them carried in British +ships; a million by the end of July, nearly a million and a half +before the Armistice. Wonderful story! Nobody, I think, can possibly +exaggerate the heartening and cheering effect of it upon the Allies in +Europe, especially on France--wounded and devastated France--and on +Italy, painfully recovering from Caporetto. How well I remember the +thrill of those days in London, the rumours of the weekly landings of +troops--70,000--80,000 men--and the occasional sight of the lithe, +straight-limbed, American boys marching through our streets! + +And yet, curiously enough--what _was_ exaggerated all the time, on +both sides of the Atlantic, both here and in America, was the extent +of the British set-back hi March and April, and its effect on the +general situation. That is clear, I think, when we look back on our +own Press at home, and still more on American utterances, both in the +States and in France. In _August_ of last year Mr. Secretary Baker +said: "We are only just beginning"--and he pointed to the millions of +men that America would have in France by 1919. On August 7th General +March, Chief of the American General Staff, said in the Senate +Committee, that America would have four millions of men in France, +with one million at home, for the campaign of 1919. "The only way that +Germany can be whipped is by America going into this thing with her +whole strength. It is up to us to win the war.... We must force the +issue and win." The editor of the _North American Review_ wrote in +August, and published in his September number, phrases like the +following: "But the hand of the enemy cannot be struck down for a long +time to come." "Virtually impregnable positions" are still held by +him. "No military observer is so sanguine as to anticipate anything +like conclusive results from the present campaign. The real test will +come next year, in the late spring and summer of 1919." By then the +Allies must have "a great preponderance of men and guns. These America +must supply." + +But when General March said in August: "It is up to us to win the +war," and the _North American Review_ talked of "virtually impregnable +positions," and the impossibility of "anything like conclusive results +from the present campaign"--the capture of those "impregnable +positions" by the British Army, and thereby the winning of the war, +were only a few weeks away! Similar phrases could be quoted from the +British Press, and from prominent Englishmen, though not, unless my +memory plays me false, from any of our responsible military leaders. +The fact is that the view I represented, in my second article, as the +view taken by the heads of the British Army, of the March retreat, had +turned out by the summer to be the true one. The German armies _had_ +to a large extent beaten themselves out against the British defensive +battle of the spring: and while the Americans were making their +splendid spurt from April to August, and entering the fighting field +in force for the first time, the British Army, having absorbed its +recruits, taken huge toll of its enemies, and profited by all there +was to be learnt from the German offensive, was getting ready every +day to give the final strokes in the war, aided, when the moment came, +by the supreme leadership of Marshal Foch, by the successes of +Generals Mangin and Degoutte on the Marne, by the masterly campaign of +General Gouraud in Champagne, and the gallant push of General Pershing +in the Argonne. This position of things was not sufficiently realised +by the general public in England, still less by the American public, +as is shown by the extracts I have quoted. So that the continuous +series of British victories, from August 8th onward, which ended in +the Armistice, came as a rather startling surprise to those both here +and abroad who, like von Kluck in 1914, had been inclined to make too +much of a temporary British retreat. + +Moreover, behind the military successes of Great Britain--and not only +on the French front, but in the East also--stood always the deadly +pressure of the British blockade. When after the capture of the +Hindenburg positions, the line indicating "prisoners," on that chart +at G.H.Q., a reduced copy of which will be found at the end of this +book, leapt up to a height for which the wall in the room of the +Director of Operations could hardly find space, it meant not only +victory over Germany in the field, but also the disintegration of +German _morale_ at home; owing first and foremost to that deadly watch +which the British Navy, supported during the last year of the war by +the American embargo, had kept over the seas of the world, to +Germany's undoing, since the opening of the struggle. The final +victory of the Allies when it came was thus in a special sense Great +Britain's victory, achieved both by her mastery of the sea, and the +military expansion forced upon her by the German attack; conditioned, +of course, by the whole earlier history of the war, in which France +had led the van and borne the brunt, and immensely facilitated by the +"splendid American adventure," to use the phrase of an American. + +For to show that, in a strictly military sense, the British and +Dominion Armies, backed by the British Navy, brought the war to a +successful end--a simple matter of figures and dates--is not all, or +nearly all. The American intervention, and especially the marvellous +speeding-up of American action, from March to the end of the war, +quite apart from the brilliant promise of America's first appearances +in the field, had an effect upon Europe--Great Britain, France, +Italy--akin to that which the American climate and atmosphere produces +on the visitor from this side of the Atlantic. It breathed new life +into everything, and especially into the heart of France, the chief +sufferer by three years of atrocious war. As weary and devastated +France watched the American stream of eager and high-hearted youth, +flowing from Bordeaux eastwards, column after column, regiment after +regiment, of men admirable in physique, fearless in danger, and full +of a laughing and boundless confidence in America's power to help, and +resolve to win--at last it seemed that the long horror of the war must +be indeed coming to an end. "Three thousand miles!" said the French +villager or townsman to himself, as he turned out to see them +pass--"they have come three thousand miles to beat the Boche. And +America is the richest country in the world--and there are a hundred +millions of them." Hope rose into flood, and with it fresh courage to +endure. + +Nor was the effect less marked on the British nation, which had not +known invasion, and on the British Army, for all its faith in itself. +The rapid growth of American strength in France from March onward in +response to the call of the Allies, provided indeed a moral support to +the two older armies, which was of incalculable value and "influenced +the fighting qualities of both; while the knowledge of these mounting +reserves enabled the Allied Commanders to take risks which otherwise +could hardly have been faced." I am quoting a British military +authority of high rank. + +It was at Metz that--outside Paris--I first came in contact with this +"America in France," which History will mark on her coming page with +all the emphasis that belongs to new chapters in the ever-broadening +tale of man. It was in the shape of some "Knights of Columbus," +pausing at Metz for a night on their way to Coblenz. We only exchanged +a few words on the steps of the hotel, but I had time to feel the +interest and the strangeness of this American Catholicism in Europe, +following in the track of war, and looking with its New World eyes at +those old, old towns, those ancient churches in which American +Catholics were at home, yet not at home. At Strasbourg I saw no +Americans that I can remember. But our arrival at Nancy at midnight, +very weary after a long day in the car, during which we had missed our +way badly at least once, is linked in my recollection with the +apparition of two young American officers just as we were being told +for the third time that there was no room in the hotel to which we had +driven up. Should we really have to sleep in the car? There seemed to +be not a single vacant bedroom in Nancy; and there had been snow +showers during the day! But these two Americans heard from our French +Lieutenant that there were two English ladies in the car, and they +came forward at once, offering their rooms. Luckily we found shelter +elsewhere; but I shall not soon forget the kind readiness of the two +young men, and the thrill of the whole scene. There we stood in the +beautiful Place Stanislas, that workmen from Versailles built for the +father-in-law of Louis Quinze. A flickering moonlight touched the +gilding of the famous _grilles_ that shut in the square; and the only +light in the wide space seemed to come from this one hotel taken by +the American authorities for the use of their officers and Red Cross +workers passing to and from the Rhine. When that square was built, +George Washington was a youth of twenty, and after one hundred and +seventy years it stood within the war-zone of an American Army, which +had crossed the Atlantic to fight in Europe! + +Next day we spent entirely in the American sector, between Nancy and +Toul, where American road directions and sign-boards, and fine, +newly-built camps and depots for the American forces met us in all +directions. A military policeman from a coloured regiment put us into +the right road for St. Mihiel after leaving Toul--a strongly-built, +bronzed fellow, dealing with the stream of military and civil traffic +at a cross roads in Eastern France with perfect ease and _sang-froid_. +The astonishment and interest of this American occupation of a country +so intensely and ultimately national, so little concerned in ordinary +times with any other life than its own as France, provincial France +above all, never ceased to hold me as we drove on and on through the +American sector; especially when darkness and moonlight returned, and +again and again as we passed through wrecked villages where a few +chinks of light here and there showed a scattered billet or two, the +American military policeman on duty would emerge from the shadows, +tall, courteous, self-possessed, to answer a question, or show the +way, and we left him behind, apparently the only human being under the +French night, in sole possession of the ruins round him. + +But before darkness fell, during the central part of the day, we had +crossed the southern lines of the convergent American attack on St. +Mihiel. Trenches and wire-fields and artillery positions had all +belonged to the French battle-zone before the Americans took them +over, and there had been fierce fighting here by the French in 1915. +But for three years the position had changed but little, till the +newly-formed First American Army undertook in September the clearing +of the Salient. + +We left the car near the village of Beaumont, and walked to the brow +of the low ridge from which the American attack started. Standing +among what had been the _tranckees de depart_, with the ruins of the +village of Seichprey below us to the right, we had before us the +greater part of the American battle-field--Thiaucourt in the far +north-east; the ridge of Vigneulles, which had been the meeting-point +of the converging American attacks coming both from the north-west and +the south-east; while in the near foreground rose the once heavily +fortified Mont Sec. The American troops went over the parapet at five +o'clock on the morning of September 12th, and by the morning of the +13th their forces had met at Vigneulles, and the Salient, with its +perpetual threat to the French line, had disappeared. In three more +days the Heights of the Meuse had been cleared, and the foremost +Americans were already under the fire of the fortified zone protecting +Metz. + +It was a brilliant but happily not a costly victory. Von Gallwitz, the +German Commander, had probably already determined on retirement, when +the American attack forestalled him. So that the American troops with +certain French units supporting them achieved a great result with +small losses; and as the first battle of an independent American Army +the operation must always remain one of extraordinary interest and +importance, even though, in British military opinion, the palm of +difficulty and of sacrifice must be given rather to the splendid +fighting on the Marne in June and July, when the Americans were still +under French direction, or to the admirable performance of the two +American divisions, the 27th and the 30th, serving under Sir Henry +Rawlinson, a fortnight after St. Mihiel, on the Hindenburg line. "The +original attack," at St. Mihiel, says one of the keenest of British +military observers--"was carried out with extraordinary dash by very +eager and physically magnificent soldiers." Possibly, he adds, a more +seasoned army--the American troops had only had six months' experience +in the fighting line!--might have turned the effects of a successful +action to greater military advantage than was the case at St. Mihiel. +The British or French critic, mindful of the bitter lessons of four +years of war, is inclined to make the same criticism of most of the +American operations of last year, except the fighting on the Marne in +June and July, when French caution and experience found a wonderful +complement in the splendid fighting qualities of the American +infantry. "But"--adds one of them--"undoubtedly the American Command +was learning _very rapidly_." What an army the American Army would +have been, if the war had lasted through this year! The qualities of +the individual soldier, drawn many of them from districts among the +naturally richest in the world, together with the vast resources in +men and wealth of the nation behind them, and the mastery of the +lessons of modern war which was already promised by the American +Command, during the six months' campaign of 1918--above all, the +comparative freshness of the American effort--would, no doubt, have +made the United States Army the leading force among the Allies, had +the war been prolonged. That is one line of speculation, and an +interesting one. Another, less profitable, asks: "Could the Allies +have won without America?" The answer I have heard most commonly given +is: "Probably yes, considering, especially, the disintegration we now +know to have been going on in Germany, and the cumulative effects of +the British blockade. But it would have taken at least six months more +fighting, the loss of thousands more precious and irreplaceable lives, +and the squandering of vast additional wealth in the bottomless waste +of war." + +Thank God, we did not win without America! The effects, the +far-reaching effects, of America's intervention, of her comradeship in +the field of suffering and sacrifice with the free nations of old +Europe, are only now beginning to show themselves above the horizon. +They will be actively and, as at least the men and women of faith +among us believe, beneficently at work, when this generation has long +passed away. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +AMERICA IN FRANCE (CONTINUED) + + +It was late when we left Verdun, on the afternoon of the day which saw +us at its beginning on the southern edge of the St. Mihiel +battle-field, and the winter daylight had passed into darkness before +we began to run through a corner of the Argonne, on our way to St. +Menehould and Chalons, passing by the wholly ruined village of +Clermont in Argonne. The forest ran past us, a wintry fairyland, dimly +lit by our quickly moving lamps, and apparently impenetrable beyond +their range, an optical effect, however, that may be produced in +darkness by a mere fringe of trees along the roadside. But I knew +while I watched the exquisite effects of brown and silver, produced by +the succession of tall, pale trunks rising above the lace-work of the +underwood, as scene after scene pressed upon us out of the dark, that +we were indeed in a forest country, only some twenty miles away from +the scene of General Pershing's drive at the end of last September, +when he achieved on the first day an advance of seven miles through +difficult country, while General Gouraud was pushing forward in +Champagne; and I found myself speculating in the dark on the many +discussions I had heard both among English and Americans of that +advance, and of the checks and difficulties which, as I suppose is now +generally admitted, followed on the first brilliant operations. + +During the last few weeks further information has been forthcoming +about the Meuse-Argonne battle, as the American operations between the +Argonne and the Meuse from September 26th to November 11th are +apparently to be known. But a good deal of obscurity still hangs over +the details of the fighting. In the British Army I came across the +very general belief that the staff and transport work of the advance +had been--in the words of a well-known historian of the war--"as was +natural with a new army, scarcely adequate to the fighting qualities +of the troops engaged." And I often heard regret expressed that the +American Command had not been more willing to avail itself of the +staff experience of either or both of the older armies, which +might--so the British or French spectator thinks--have lessened the +casualty lists among extraordinarily gallant but inexperienced troops. +"Replacements fresh from home were put into exhausted divisions with +little time for training," says General Pershing's report. And "some +of the divisions were fighting their first battle." They were faced +also at the beginning of the advance by some of the best remaining +German troops. When one thinks of all the long and bitter training in +the field that went to the perfecting of French or British staff work, +and then of the difficult nature of the ground over which the First +American Army had to make its way, one can only feel the deepest +sympathy for the losses sustained by the fresh and eager troops. The +Argonne forest itself had long been recognised as impenetrable to +frontal attack, and on the Argonne side of the American twenty-mile +front, along the western edge of the valley of the Aire, the ground is +still heavily wooded and often very hilly. As one of the ablest +military critics, himself a soldier of great distinction, expressed it +to me: "Foch had set the Americans an uncommonly hard task!" + +But if there was some failure in those matters where neither bravery +nor natural intelligence can take the place of long training, and +experience in the field, there was no failure in ardour or in spirit. +In spite of heavy losses, General Pershing never failed to push on. +Starting from a line on the northern edge of the great Verdun +battle-field, Montfaucon, the German headquarters during the Verdun +fighting of 1916, was captured in three days. Then came severe +fighting against fierce counter-attacks, and great difficulties with +transport over shell-torn ground and broken roads, difficulties +increased by bad weather. But on October 4th the gallant attack was +renewed, and by October 10th, owing to the combined effects of the +British drive in the north and the pressure on both sides of the +Argonne, from General Gouraud on the west and the Americans on the +east, the enemy fell back and the famous forest was cleared. + +The third and last phase of the fighting began on the 23rd of October. +The enemy was now weakening rapidly along the whole of his line. For +while the American Army had been stubbornly fighting its way north +from Varennes to Grandpre, where it stood on November 1st, the British +Armies, in the great Battles of Cambrai-St. Quentin, Ypres, and +Courtrai, had not only captured the Hindenburg line and some fifty +thousand prisoners, but had brought about--without fighting--the +evacuation of Laon and the retreat of the Germans to the line of the +Aisne; the German withdrawal, also, to the Scheldt, involving the +freeing of Lille and the great industrial district of France; and +finally, in concert with Belgian, French, and some American units, the +clearing of the Belgian coast, and the recovery of Ostend, Zeebrugge +and Bruges. The end, indeed, was rushing on. Co-operation was +everywhere maintained, and blow followed blow. "During this period" +(6th to 31st October), says the British Commander-in-Chief, "our +Allies had been pushing forward steadily on both sides of the Argonne. +The enemy was held by their attacks on his southern flank, while to +the north the British offensive was driving forward rapidly behind his +right." + +Then, with November, the British Army, in the Battle of the Sambre, +"struck at and broke the enemy's last important lateral +communications, divided his forces into two parts on either side of +the Ardennes, and initiated a pursuit which only stopped with the +Armistice." About one hundred thousand prisoners had been taken by the +British Armies since September 26th. "Victory, indeed," in General +Gouraud's phrase, "had changed her camp!" Led by her, the British, +French, and American Armies streamed east and north through the few +days that remained, pursuing a beaten and demoralised enemy. The final +American advance was begun on November 1st, and on November 7th +patrols of the 42nd Division reached the Meuse at Wadelincourt, +opposite Sedan; while the Fifth Division was in the Forest of Woevre, +and the 90th Division had captured Stenay. + +Some very interesting figures have lately been given as to the forces +under General Pershing's command. Altogether some 770,000 men seem to +have been employed--both east and west of the Meuse--of whom 138,000 +were French. Forty-six German divisions, amounting, according to the +American estimate, to about 350,000 men, opposed the American advance. +The casualties are given as 115,000--among them 26,000 killed[8]--for +the American troops, and 7,000 for the French. The enemy casualties +are estimated at 75,000, and 16,000 prisoners were taken. + + [8] According to the latest estimate I have seen. + +One incident, relatively unimportant, but wonderfully picturesque, is +sure to find a place in the American song and story of the future. It +was during the rapid advance of the last days, when the far vision of +the Rhine was already beckoning forward the victorious Allies, and +giving wings to the feet of youth. On the night of November 3rd, after +a successful day, the 9th and 23rd Infantry of the Second Division +found themselves in column formation on the road leading north to +Beaumont, a small town south of Sedan. The way lay open, and they took +it. They marched on and on through the night, throwing out the usual +advance guard and flank patrols, but otherwise unprotected. By all the +rules of war the brigade should have been cut off. But in this +twilight-time--this _Goetterdaemmerung_ of the end, conditions were +abnormal, and the two regiments marched on through forest country, +right through the enemy lines towards the Meuse, for about eight +kilometres, capturing machine-gunners asleep at their guns, and +rounding up parties of the enemy on the roads, till in the early dawn +they reached a farm where German officers were sitting round tables +with lights burning--only to spring to their feet in dismay, as the +Americans surrounded them. The cold autumn morning--the young bronzed +faces emerging from the darkness--the humbled and astonished foe: +surely Old and New, Europe and America, were never brought together in +a moment more attractive to the story-teller. A touch of romance amid +the tragedy and the glory! But how welcome it is! + +The full history, however, of the Argonne fighting will probably not +be accurately known for some little time to come. No such obscurity +hangs over the glorious fighting on the Marne, through the scenes of +which I passed both on the railway journey from Paris to Metz, and in +motoring from Chalons to Paris on our return. Colonel Frederick +Palmer's book[9] gives an account of these operations, which, it seems +to me, ought to be universally read in the Allied countries. The +crusading courage of whole-hearted youth, the contempt of death and +suffering, the splendid and tireless energy which his pages describe, +if they touch other English hearts as deeply as they have touched +mine, will go a long way towards that spiritual bond between our +nations which alone can make real and lasting things out of Leagues +and Treaties. + + [9] _America in France_, by Lt.-Col. Frederick Palmer, S.C., U.S.A. + +It was on our way from Rheims to Paris after our drive through the +Champagne battle-field that we passed rapidly through the places and +scenes which Colonel Palmer describes. + +As we approached Rheims about midday, a thick white fog rolled +suddenly and silently over the chalk uplands that saw General +Gouraud's campaign of last September and October. We ran through it, +past a turning to Moronvilliers on the left--famous name!--and within +a short distance of Nogent l'Abbesse, the fort which did most to wreck +Rheims Cathedral, and so down in a dreary semi-darkness into Rheims +itself. + +Thirty-five years ago I was in Rheims for the first and only time, +before this visit. It was in September, not long before the vintage. +The town and the country-side were steeped in sunlight, and in the +golden riches of Mother Earth. The air indeed, as it shimmered in the +heat above the old town, and the hill slopes where the famous +vineyards lie, seemed to "drop fatness." Wealth, wine, the body and +its pleasures, the cunning handicraft and inherited lore of hundreds +of years and many generations seemed to take visible shape in the fine +old town, in its vast wine-cellars, and in the old inn where we stayed +with its Gargantuan bill of fare, and its _abonnes_ from the town, +ruddy, full-fleshed citizens, whose achievements in the way of eating +and drinking we watched with amazement. Even the cathedral seemed to +me to breathe the richness and gaiety of this central France; the +sculptures of the facade with its famous "laughing angel" expressed +rather the joy of living, of fair womanhood, of smiling maternity, and +childhood, of the prime of youth and the satisfied dignity of age, +than those austerer lessons of Christianity which speak from Beauvais, +or Chartres or Rouen. But how beautiful it all was, how full, wherever +one looked, of that old spell of _la douce France_! And now! Under the +pall of the fog we drove through the silent ruin of the streets, still +on their feet, so to speak, as at Verdun, but eyeless, roofless, and +dead, scarcely a house habitable, though here and there one saw a few +signs of patching up and returning habitation. And in the great square +before the Cathedral instead of the old comeliness, the old stir of +provincial and commercial life--_ruin!_--only intensified by a group +of motors, come to bring distinguished Sunday visitors from Paris and +the Conference, to see as much of it as an hour's wait would enable +them to see. There in front of the great portal stood the Prime +Minister of England and the Cardinal-Archbishop--heroic Cardinal +Lucon, who, under the daily hail of fire, had never left his church or +his flock so long as there was a flock in Rheims to shepherd. And +above the figure of the Cardinal soared the great West Front, +blackened and scarred by fire, the summits of the towers lost in mist, +and behind them, the wrecked and roofless church. + +The destruction of irreplaceable values, other than human life, caused +by the war, is summed up, as far as France is concerned, in this West +Front of Rheims; so marred in all its beautiful detail, whether of +glass or sculpture, yet still so grand, so instinct still with the +pleading powers of the spirit. The "pity of it!" and at the same time, +the tenacious undying life of France--all the long past behind her, +the unconquerable future before her--these are the ideas one carries +away from Rheims, hot in the heart. Above all, for the moment, the +pity of it--the horror of this huge outrage spreading from the North +Sea to Switzerland, of what the French call so poignantly _nos +mines_--symbolised, once for all, by the brutal fate of this poem in +stone, built up by the French generations, which is Rheims Cathedral. +And as we passed away from Rheims, through the country roads and the +bombarded villages of the Tardenois, another district of old France, +which up to May last year was still intact, with all its farms and +village and country houses, and is now but little different from +Artois and Picardy, I found myself thinking with a passionate anxiety, +almost, of the Conference sitting in Paris and of its procedure. +"France is right--is _right_," I caught myself saying for the +hundredth time. "Before anything else--justice to her!--protection and +healing for her! Justice on the criminal nation, that has ravaged and +trampled on her, 'like a wild beast out of the wood,' and healing for +wounds and sufferings that no one can realise who has not witnessed +for himself the state of her richest provinces. It was she who offered +her breast to the first onslaught of the enemy, she who fought for us +all when others had still their armies to make, she who has endured +most and bled most, heavily as others--Britain, Italy, Belgium, +Serbia--have endured. Her claim must come first--and let those in +England and America who wish to realise why _come and see_." + +We drove down diagonally through the Marne salient as it was last +summer after the German break-through on the Marne, to Dormans and so +across the river. In the darkening afternoon we passed over the +Montagne de Rheims, and crossed the valley of the Ardre, near the spot +where the 19th British Division, in the German attack of last June, +put up so splendid a fight in defence of an important position +commanding the valley--the Montagne de Bligny--that the General of the +Fifth French Army, General de Mitry, under whose orders they were, +wrote to General Haig: "They have enabled us to establish a barrier +against which the hostile waves have beaten and shattered themselves. +This none of the French who witnessed it will ever forget." + +For if the Montagne de Bligny had gone, the French position on the +Montagne de Rheims, south-west of Rheims, and the Cathedral city +itself would have been endangered, no less than by the attack on the +north-east of the town, which General Gouraud a month later pinned to +earth. And when we reached Dormans, on the south bank, turning +west-ward to Chateau Thierry, we were on ground no less vital, where +in July the American troops in General Pershing's words wrote "one of +the most brilliant pages in our military annals." The story is well +known. The Germans were attempting to cross the river in force between +Donnans and Chateau Thierry, and then to thrust their way down the +valley of the Surmelin to Montmirail and the great main road to Paris, +which passes through that town. A single regiment of the 3rd American +Division held up the enemy, on the river bank to the east of Mezy, +fighting at the same time east and west against German parties who had +managed to get a footing at other points on the south side, and +finally counter-attacking, throwing two German divisions into complete +confusion, and capturing six hundred prisoners. No episode in the war +is more likely to ring in the memory of after-times. "In the bend of +the Marne at the mouth of the Surmelin," says Colonel Palmer, "not a +German was able to land. In all twenty boats full of the enemy were +sunk or sent drifting harmlessly down the stream." To the east of +Mezy also, four American platoons did incredible things in defence of +the Paris-Nancy railway. "They were not going to yield that track +alive--that was the simple fact." And their losses were appalling. In +the second platoon of the four engaged, all were killed except three +who were wounded, and half of the third were down before they had +driven the enemy from the embankment. The American graves lie all on +the south side of the line--the German on the north. "We actually took +over four hundred prisoners between the railroad and the river--the +6th German Grenadier Regiment was annihilated...." And the Germans +never reached the Surmelin valley, or that Montmirail road on which +they had set their hearts. "The deciding factor," says Colonel Palmer, +"was the unflinching courage of our men, and their aggressive spirit." +And the action, small as were the numbers engaged, could not have been +bettered. "It is a military classic." + +Over this hard-fought ground, consecrated by the graves of men who had +thus bravely--thus gaily--laid down their lives for a cause of which +they had no doubt, we ran on to Chateau Thierry, and that western +flank of the Marne salient, where in June, while the Germans were +still pressing south, and in July when Foch turned upon his trapped +foe, the Americans, most of whom were for the first time in real +battle, bore themselves to the astonishment and admiration of all the +watching Allies. In June especially, when matters were at their worst. +The capture of Bouresches, and Belleau Wood, the capture of Vaux on +July 1st, the gallant help which an American machine-gun battalion +gave the French in covering the French retreat across the bridge at +Chateau Thierry, before it was blown up, and foiling the German +attempts to cross, and the German move towards Paris, were perhaps, +writes a British military authority, "the most splendid service, from +a military standpoint, the Americans rendered to the Allied Cause. It +was certainly the first occasion on which they really made themselves +felt, and brought home to the Germans the quality of the opposition +they were likely to encounter from the American Armies." + +As we approached Chateau Thierry, the fog had cleared away and the +night was not dark. On our railway journey to Metz a week earlier, we +had seen the picturesque old place, with Hill 204 behind it, and the +ruins of Vaux to the north-west, in daylight, from the south bank of +the river. Now daylight had gone, but as we neared the Marne, the high +ground on the curving north bank, with its scattered lights and their +twinkling reflections in the water, made still a dimly beautiful +setting for the much injured but still living and busy town. We +crossed the temporary bridge into the crowded streets, and then as we +had come a long way, we were glad to dip for tea and a twenty minutes' +break into an inn crowded with Americans. Handsome, friendly fellows! +I wished devoutly that it were not so late, and Paris not so far away, +that I might have spent a long evening in their company. But we were +all too soon on the road again for Meaux and Paris, passing slowly +through the ruined streets of Vaux, with Bouresches and Belleau Wood +to our right, and behind us the great main road from Soissons to +Chateau Thierry, for the command of which in its northern sector, the +American divisions under General Mangin, and in its southern portion +those commanded by General Degoutte, had fought so stoutly last July. +Altogether seven American divisions, or close upon 200,000 men, were +concerned in Foch's counter-attack, which began on July 18th; and as +General Pershing notes with just pride: "The place of honour in the +thrust towards Soissons on the 18th was given to our 1st and 2nd +divisions, in company with chosen French divisions. These two +divisions captured 7,000 prisoners and over 100 guns." + +What one may call the "state entry" of America into the war had thus +been made, and Germany had been given full warning of what this new +element in the struggle must ultimately mean, were it given time to +develop. And during all these weeks of June and July, British and +American ships, carrying American soldiers, came in a never-ending +succession across the Atlantic. An American Army of 5,000,000 men was +in contemplation, and, "Why," said the President at Baltimore in +April, "limit it to 5,000,000?" While every day the British Navy kept +its grim hold on the internal life of Germany, and every day was +bringing the refreshed and reorganised British Army, now at the height +of its striking power, nearer to the opening on August 8th of that +mighty and continuous advance which ended the war. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +"FEATURES OF THE WAR" + + +_April 15th._ + +In these April days Sir Douglas Haig's latest Despatch, dated the 21st +March, 1919--the first anniversary of those black days of last +year!--has just been published in all the leading English newspapers. +It is divided into three parts: "The Advance into Germany," "Features +of the War," and "My Thanks to Commanders and Staffs." It is on the +second part in particular that public attention has eagerly fastened. +Nothing could well be more interesting or more important. For it +contains the considered judgment of the British Commander-in-Chief on +the war as a whole, so far, at least, as Great Britain is concerned. +The strong and reticent man who is responsible for it broke through +the limitations of official expression on two occasions only during +the war: in the spring of 1917, in that famous and much criticised +interview which he gave to certain French journalists, an incident, by +the way, on which this Despatch throws a good deal of light; and in +the impassioned Order of last April, when, like Joffre on the Marne, +he told his country: that England had her back to the wall. + +But here, for the first time, the mind on which for three and a half +years depended the military fortunes, and therewith the future destiny +of the British Empire, reveals itself with much fullness and freedom, +so far as the moment permits. The student of the war cannot read these +paragraphs too closely, and we may be sure that every paragraph in +them will be a text for comment and illustration in the history +schools of the future. The Despatch, moreover, is full of new +information on points of detail, and gives figures and statistics +which have never yet been made public. There are not, however, many +persons outside the Armies who will give themselves to the close study +of a long military despatch. Let me try, then, before I wind up these +letters of mine, to bring out very shortly both some of the fresh +points of view and the new detail which make the Despatch so +interesting. It will be seen, I think, that the general account given +in my preceding letters of British conclusions on the war, when tested +by the Despatch, may still hold its own. + +In the first place, the Field Marshal dwells in words of which the +subdued bitterness is unmistakable, on Great Britain's unpreparedness +for the war. "We were deficient in both trained men and military +material, and, what is more important, had no machinery ready by which +either men or material could be produced in anything like the +necessary quantities." It took us, therefore, "two and a half years to +reach the high-water mark of our infantry strength," and by that time +we had lost thousands of lives, which, had we been better prepared, +need never have been lost. + +And, moreover, our unpreparedness, and the fact that we were not able +to take a full share in the war till the summer of 1916, terribly +wasted the man-power of France. "The excessive burden," says Marshal +Haig, "thrown upon the gallant Army of France during that period +caused them losses the effect of which has been felt all through the +war and directly influenced its length." Meanwhile, what might have +been "the effect of British intervention on a larger scale, in the +earlier stages of the war, is shown by what was actually achieved by +our original Expeditionary Force." + +Who was responsible for this unpreparedness? + +Sir Douglas Haig does not raise the question. But those of us who +remember the political history of the years from 1906 to 1914 can +hardly be in doubt as to the answer. It was the Radical and +anti-militarist group of the Liberal party then in power, who every +year fought the Naval and Military Estimates--especially the +latter--point by point, and stubbornly hampered the most necessary +military provision, on whom, little as they intended or foresaw it, a +tragic responsibility for the prolongation of the war, and the +prodigal loss of life it involved, must always rest. Lord Haldane, +indeed during his years of office as the War Minister of the Liberal +Government, made a gallant fight for the Army. To him we owe the +Expeditionary Force, the Territorials, the organisation of the General +Staff, the Officers' Training Corps; and without his reforms our case +would have been black indeed when the storm broke. No one has repelled +more indignantly the common Tory charges against Lord Haldane than Sir +Douglas Haig himself. But, during his years at the War Office Lord +Haldane was fighting against heavy odds, attacked on the one hand by +the upholders of Lord Roberts's scheme, in which neither he nor the +General Staff believed, and under perpetual sniping on the other from +the extreme section of his own party. The marvel is that he was able +to do what he did! + +Granting, however, the unpreparedness of England, what a wonderful +story it is on which Sir Douglas Haig looks back! First, the necessary +opening stage of this or any war--_i.e._, a preliminary phase of +manoeuvring for position, on both sides, which came to an end with +"the formation of continuous trench lines from the North Sea to the +Swiss frontier." Then, when British military power had developed, +followed "the period of real struggle," in which the main forces of +the two belligerent Armies were pitted against each other in close and +costly combat--_i.e._, "the wearing-down battle" which must go on in +this war, as in all wars where large and equal forces are engaged, +till one or the other combatant begins to weaken. And, finally, the +last stage, when the weakening combatant stakes "on a supreme effort +what reserves remain to him," and must abide by the issue. Germany +staked her last reserves in the "great sortie" of her beleaguered +Armies, which lasted from April to July of 1918. She lost the game, +and the end, which was inevitable, followed quickly. + +For the British Commander-in-Chief insists that we must look upon the +war as a whole. In the earlier part of the wearing-down battle which +occupied its central years, we did what we could till our new armies +were ready, and without us France could not have held out. Without the +British Navy, in particular, the war must have collapsed in a month. +But the main brunt of the struggle on land had to be borne--and was +superbly borne--by France up to the summer of 1916, when we entered on +our full strength. Thenceforward the chief strain lay on the +constantly developing Armies of Great Britain. From July, 1916, to the +Armistice, Sir Douglas Haig bids us conceive the long succession of +battles fought by the Allies in France as "one great and continuous +engagement." "Violent crises of fighting" within such a conflict may +appear individually as "indecisive battles." But the issue is all the +time being slowly and inexorably decided. And as soon as the climax is +reached, and the weakening of one side or the other begins, nothing +but the entry of some new and unexpected factor can avert the +inevitable end. When Russia broke down in 1917, it looked for a time +as though such a new factor had appeared. It prolonged the war, and +gave Germany a fresh lease of fighting strength, but it was not +sufficient to secure victory. She did her utmost with it in 1918, and +when she failed, the older factors that had been at work, through all +the deadly progress of the preceding years of the war, were seen at +last for the avengers, irresistible and final, that they truly were. +"The end of the war," says the Commander-in-Chief, "was neither +sudden, nor should it have been unexpected." The rapid collapse of +Germany's military powers in the latter half of 1918 was the logical +outcome of the fighting of the previous two years. _Attrition_ and +_blockade_ are the two words that explain the final victory. As to the +cost of that victory, the incredible heart-rending cost, Sir Douglas +Haig maintains that, given the vast range of the struggle, and the +vital issues on which it turned--given also the unpreparedness of +England, and the breakdown of Russia, the casualties of the war could +not have been less. The British casualties in all theatres of war are +given as 3,000,000--2,500,000 on the Western front; the French at +4,800,000; the Italians, including killed and wounded only, 1,400,000; +a total of _nine million, two hundred thousand_. On the enemy side, +the Field Marshal gives the German and Austro-Hungarian losses at +approximately eleven millions. And to these have to be added the +Russian casualties before 1917, a figure running into millions; the +Serbian, Roumanian, and Turkish losses, and, lastly, the American. + +Some _seven million young men_ at least have perished from this +pleasant earth, which is now again renewing its spring life in beauty +and joy, and millions of others will bear the physical marks of the +struggle to their graves. Is there anything to console us for such a +spectacle? The reply of the British Commander-in-Chief is that "the +issues involved in this stupendous struggle were far greater than +those concerned in any other war in recent history. Our existence as +an Empire, and civilisation itself as it is understood by the free +Western nations was at stake. Men fought as they had never fought +before." + +"Go, stranger, and tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here, obedient +to their will." So the Greek epitaph that all men know. In the same +spirit, for country and home, for freedom and honour--at the Will of +that Power by whom "the most ancient heavens are fresh and +strong"--these fighters of our day laid down their ardent and obedient +lives. There is but one way in which we can truly honour them. A +better world, as their eternal memorial:--shame on us if we cannot +build it! + +_May 20th._ + +Since the preceding paragraphs were written, the French General Staff +has published an illuminating analysis of those military conditions in +the concluding months of the war which compelled the German Command +and the German Government to sue for an Armistice. The German +proclamation, when the conclusion of the Armistice allowed those +armies to retreat, proclaimed them "unconquered." Our own +Commander-in-Chief declares, it will be remembered, on the other hand, +that the fighting along the front of the British Armies from November +1st to November 11th had "forced on the enemy a disorderly retreat. +Thereafter he was neither capable of accepting nor refusing battle. +The utter confusion of his troops, the state of his railways, +congested with abandoned trains, the capture of huge quantities of +rolling-stock and material--all showed that our attack had been +decisive.... The strategic plan of the Allies had been realised with a +completeness rarely seen in war. When the Armistice was signed, his +defensive powers had already been definitely destroyed. A continuance +of hostilities could only have meant disaster to the German Armies, +and the armed invasion of Germany." + +To this statement from the leader of those armies to whom it fell to +strike the last decisive blows in the struggle may now be added the +testimony of the admirably served Intelligence Department of the +French General Staff, as to the precise condition of the German Armies +before the Armistice. "The strategic plan of the Allies," of which Sir +Douglas Haig speaks, was the supreme business of Marshal Foch, and the +facts and figures now given show how closely the great Frenchman was +informed and how "completely," to use Marshal Haig's word, his plans +were carried out. On the 3rd of October Hindenburg had written to +Prince Max of Baden, that "as a result ... of our complete inability +to fill up the gaps caused by the very heavy losses inflicted on us +during the recent battles, no hope is left ... of forcing the enemy to +make peace." How true this was is made plain by the details just +published. On September 25th--that is to say, the day before the +British attack on the Hindenburg line, and the French and American +attacks east and west of the Argonne--the Intelligence Department of +the French General Staff reported to Marshal Foch that since July +15th, in the Marne salient, at St. Mihiel, and in the British battles +of Amiens, Bapaume, and the Scarpe, the enemy had engaged 163 +divisions. His reserves were reduced to 68 divisions--as against 81 in +July--and of these only 21 were fresh troops. The German line had been +shortened by 125 miles, but so weakened were the German Armies, that +the same number of divisions had to be kept in the line as before the +shortening--each division representing only some three-quarters of its +former strength, and 16 divisions having been broken up to fill the +ranks in those that remained. + +_Following immediately on this report came the three converging +attacks of the Allies._ On October 9th the German Army, under British +pressure, abandoned the whole Hindenburg position, and entered upon a +general retreat from the North Sea to the Meuse. At that moment 44 of +the German divisions in line were not to be depended on for further +serious fighting, and there were only 22 divisions available to +replace them, of which 15 were of inferior quality, holding "quiet" +sectors. On October 11th the French Intelligence Bureau reported that +"it is impossible for the enemy, with the forces that he has at +present in line, to stop and face any considerable attack for an +appreciable time." + +On October 4th, the day after Hindenburg's letter to Prince Max, the +German Chancellor cabled to President Wilson, asking for an Armistice. +_Already, on September 28th_, in the very midst of the British attack +on the Hindenburg line, and on the morrow of General Gouraud's and +General Pershing's first advances in Champagne and the Argonne, the +German Command had warned the Chancellor that this step must be taken, +and from October 9th onward there was no more heart left in the German +Armies. The "prisoners" line in the chart,[10] brought daily up to date +at the Headquarters of the British Army, shows what the demoralisation +had become in the German ranks. After the British battle of the Sambre +(November 4th) there were practically no reserves left, and Marshal +Foch had plans in store which, had there been any further resistance, +must have led to the wholesale capitulation of all that was left of +the German Armies. + + [10] See reproduction. + + * * * * * + +So in ignominy and shame the German onslaught on the liberties of +Europe came--militarily--to its bitter end. The long-drawn agony of +four and a half years was over, and the "wearing-out battle" had done +its work. Now, six months later, we are in the midst of that stern +Epilogue--in which a leagued Europe and America are dictating to +Germany the penalties by which alone she may purge her desperate +offence. A glance at the conditions of Peace published to the world on +May 11th, the anniversary of the-sinking of the _Lusitania_, will form +the natural conclusion to this imperfect survey of the last and most +glorious stage in "England's Effort." But for the moment, let me +return to the "Features of the War," and Marshal Haig's comments on +them in his last Despatch. Many, many books will be written about them +in the future! All I can do here is to single out a few of those that +seem to be most commonly in the minds of those who are still thinking +about the war. + + * * * * * + +Take, first, the value of cavalry in modern battle. In his April +Despatch, Sir Douglas Haig enters on a strong defence of it--the plea +of a great cavalry leader. Since the stabilisation of the trench +system in the West, it has been, as we can all remember, a commonplace +of the newspapers and of private conversation that cavalry were played +out--a mere useless or ornamental excrescence on armies that, by the +help of tanks and aeroplanes, could now excellently do without them. +"Not at all," replies Sir Douglas Haig. If the German Command had had +at their disposal last March and April "even two or three well-trained +cavalry divisions, a wedge might have been driven between the French +and British armies." In any case, the difficulties of our task would +have been greatly increased. On the other hand, our cavalry were +enormously useful to us in the same battle. "So great indeed became +the need for mounted men that certain units which had been dismounted +were hurriedly provided with horses and did splendid service. +Frequently when it was impossible to move forward other troops in time +our mounted troops were able to fill gaps in our line and restore the +situation." During the long trench battle of the middle years "the +absence of room for manoeuvre made the importance of cavalry less +apparent." But in the last stage of the struggle, when the Germans +"were falling back in disorganised masses," the moral effect of +British cavalry pressing on the heels of the enemy was "overwhelming," +and had not the Armistice stopped the cavalry advance, it would have +turned the enemy's disorganised retreat "into a rout." + +This is strong testimony, and will probably be stoutly fought by the +eager advocates of "mechanical contrivances." But Sir Douglas Haig +stands to it that no form of mechanical contrivance can ever either +make the cavalryman useless, or the infantryman, who is "the backbone +of defence and the spearhead of attack," less important. He admits, +indeed, fully that machine guns, tanks, aeroplanes, and motor +transport "have given a greater driving power to war," and that the +country which possesses most of such things has an advantage over its +opponents. But he insists that their only "real function" is to assist +the infantry to get to grips with their opponents, and that of +themselves "they cannot possibly obtain a decision." To imagine that +tanks and aeroplanes can ever take the place of infantry and cavalry +is to do these marvellous tools themselves a disservice by expecting +of them more than they can perform. "Only by the rifle and bayonet of +the infantry can the decisive victory be won." For, as the +Commander-in-Chief lays down no less strongly than this great French +colleague, Marshal Foch, "this war has given no new principles." But +it has greatly complicated the application of the old. Every new +invention makes the problem of co-operation--of interaction between +the different armies and services--more difficult and more imperative. + + * * * * * + +As to the artillery history of the war, the Field Marshal gives the +most amazing figures. When in 1916, at the suggestion of Mr. +Roosevelt, and by the wish of our Government, I went through some of +our leading munition districts, with a view to reporting what was +being done in them to England's friends in America, the great +development which started from the Munitions Act of 1915 was still +only in its earlier stages. Everywhere the Government factories were +rising with what seemed incredible rapidity, and the older works were +doubling and trebling their output. But the output was still far +behind the need. By the date of the Somme Battle, indeed--in the +autumn, that is, of the same year--it had risen enormously. I may +quote my own words in _England's Effort_ (October, 1916): "The total +amount of heavy guns and ammunition manufactured in Great Britain in +the first ten months of the war would not have kept the British +bombardment on the Somme _going for a single day_." + +And now? + +On that first day of the Somme Battle, July, 1916, says the Despatch, +"13,000 tons of ammunition were fired by us on the Western front. On +the _31st of July_, 1917, in the Third Battle of Ypres, _the British +Armies used_ 23,000 _tons of ammunition_." _Last year_, from August to +November, 700,000 _tons of ammunition_ were expended by the British +Armies on the Western front. On the days of most active fighting +20,000 _tons a day_ was a common ration. The supply never failed. In +the three months' offensive of last autumn all the Army Commanders had +to think of in the matter of artillery and ammunition was transport +and distribution. The amount was unlimited. While in the matter of +guns, the British Army, which on August 4th, 1914, possessed 486 +pieces of different calibres, all told, at the tune of the Armistice +was employing 6,437 guns and howitzers of all kinds, including the +heaviest monsters of the battle-field. + +And with this vast increase in material had gone perpetual advance in +organisation. Artillery commanders were introduced into all armies and +corps, with staffs acting under them. Hence a greater concentration of +brain and energy on the special artillery problems--very soon +justified by results. Science and experience had full play, and the +continuous artillery battle begun on the Somme ended, as it deserved +to end, "in the defeat of the enemy's guns." To that defeat new +inventions--or the marvellous development of old ones--were +perpetually tending. Take sound-ranging for instance, which, with +flash-spotting and air photography, has enabled the gunner more and +more certainly to locate his enemy's gun while concealing the position +of his own. For "the object of a gun or howitzer is to throw a +projectile to some spot the position of which is _known_." The older +way of knowing was by registration--throwing round after round, and by +the help of aeroplane or other observation of the results, getting +nearer and nearer to the target till the range was exactly found. By +this method, not only is the enemy warned, but your own position is +revealed. The newer method aims at _surprise_--the supreme aim of +modern war. + +"The principle of the location of guns by sound," writes an artillery +officer, "is simple enough. Suppose there are two observers in the +British lines, one at each end of a long line. Bisect this base, and +from the middle point draw a line at right angles to the base and +towards the German lines. Now, if a hostile gun fires from a position +on this line, the sound will reach both observers simultaneously. If +the gun fires from a position to the right of the line, the sound will +reach the right-hand observer first, and vice versa. Then, by +measuring exactly the time-interval between the arrival of the sound +at each observation post, the bearing to the gun can be calculated." + +"Until quite recently the Germans used four human observers, who timed +the sound intervals with stop watches. The British used six +microphones of a special type, connected electrically with a +photographic-recording apparatus. Instead of stop watches, therefore, +we used a timing device capable of recording the most minute +time-intervals with perfect precision. The whole system was +immeasurably superior to the German, and at least twenty times as +accurate, for the British system was absolutely automatic. It recorded +the arrival of the sound at the various microphones instantaneously on +a permanent record; while the German system, apart from its crude +method of measuring time, was subject to the combined errors of four +human 'microphones.' The British system requires only one forward +observer, placed well ahead of the base, and all he has to do is to +press a button and start the apparatus before the sound reaches the +microphones. + +"The photographic record is ready for the computer in from six to ten +seconds, and the gun position can be found and plotted in three or +four minutes. + +"Sound ranging also can be used for ranging our own guns with great +accuracy. When a record has been obtained of a hostile gun, all that +need be done is to record the burst of our own shell and give +corrections to our battery until the record of our shell-burst is +identical with that of the hostile gun. The shell must then be on the +target. + +"The system works equally well by day or by night, in rain or in fog. +Its one enemy is a wind which blows towards the hostile gun and +prevents the sound reaching the recording apparatus. It can detect a +gun as easily if it is in a wood or in a building as if it were on a +hill-top. + +"Simple as it appears, however, it is not so easy as one might think +to make a practical ally of sound ranging. We have succeeded. The +Germans failed. Towards the end of the war at least ninety per cent, +of the German artillery was marked down accurately by these means; and +the staff employed on sound-ranging and flash-spotting (the last a +kindred method depending on a mixture of observation and mathematics) +had grown from _four_ in 1914 _to four thousand five hundred_ in 1918. + +"Casualties have been heavy, and the work arduous. But those +responsible for it have, at any rate, 'done their bit.'" + +This is just one instance, such as we ignorant at home can more or +less follow, of that concentration of British wit and British +perseverance on the terrible business of war which carried us to our +goal. Germany prided herself, above all, on "scientific war." But the +nation she despised as slow-witted and effete has met her again and +again on her own boasted ground, and, brain for brain, has won. + +With the ever-growing importance of artillery has gone, of course, a +constant increase in artillery _personnel_, and in the proportion of +gunners to infantry. The Third Battle of Ypres in the autumn of 1917 +was "one of intense struggle for artillery supremacy," says the Field +Marshal. Germany had put out all her strength in guns, and was +determined to beat down the British artillery. The British Command met +the attack and defeated it, in a long-drawn battle, in which, +naturally, the proportion of artillery _personnel_ to infantry was +exceptionally high--at one time eighty-five per cent. Last spring, for +a short time, owing to the transference of batteries from the Russian +front, the enemy command succeeded in establishing "a definite local +artillery superiority." But it was soon over. Before the breakdown of +the March offensive "our guns had regained the upper hand," and in the +later battles of the year the German artillery was finally mastered. + +But immense as was the growth of the artillery factor, the ultimate +problem was the old problem of co-operation and combination of _all +factors_. "Deep study of work other than one's own," "understanding of +the other man's job"--for the highest success in any branch of the +Army, these were and are indispensable. Only so can the vast machine +work satisfactorily; only so can the human intelligence embodied in it +come to its own. + +To the two subsidiary services most in the public eye--tanks and +aeroplanes--I will return presently. As to the Signal Service, the +"nervous system" of the Army, on which "co-operation and combination" +depend, it has grown, says the Field Marshal, "almost out of +recognition." At the outbreak of war it consisted of 2,400 officers +and men; by the end of the war it had risen to 42,000. Cables, +telegrams, wireless, carrier-pigeons and dog messengers--every kind of +device was used for keeping up the communications, which mean +everything in battle. The signal officer and his men creeping out over +No Man's Land to mend a wire, or lay down a new one, in the very heart +of the fighting, have carried the lives of thousands in their hands, +and have risked their own without a thought. Sir Douglas Haig, from +his Headquarters, spoke not only to every unit in the British Army, +but to the Headquarters of our Allies--to London, Paris, and +Marseilles. An Army Headquarters was prepared to deal with 10,000 +telegrams and 5,000 letters in twenty-four hours; and wherever an army +went, its cables and telephones went with it. As many as 6,500 miles +of field cable have been issued in a single week, and the weekly +average over the whole of 1918 was 3,000. + +As to the Rearward and Transport Services, seeing that the Army was +really the nation, with the best of British intelligence everywhere at +its command, it is not surprising perhaps that a business people, +under the pressure of a vital struggle, obtained so brilliant a +success. In 1916, I saw something of the great business departments of +the Army--the Army Service, Army Ordnance, and Motor Transport depots +at Havre and Rouen. The sight was to me a bewildering illustration of +what English "muddling" could do when put to the test. On my return to +London, Dr. Page, the late American Ambassador, who during the years +when America was still neutral had managed, notwithstanding, to win +all our hearts, gave me an account of the experience of certain +American officers in the same British bases, and the impression made +on them. "They came here afterwards on their way home," he said--I +well remember his phrase, "with the eyes starting out of their heads, +and with reports that will transform all our similar work at home." So +that we may perhaps trace some at least of those large and admirable +conceptions of Base needs and Base management, with which the American +Army prepared its way in France, to these early American visits and +reports, as well as to the native American genius for organisation and +the generosity of American finance. + +But if the spectacle of "the back of the Army" was a wonderful one in +1916, it became doubly wonderful before the end of the war. The +feeding strength of our forces in France rose to a total approaching +2,700,000 men. The Commander-in-Chief tries to make the British public +understand something of what this figure means. Transport and shipping +were, of course, the foundation of everything. While the British Fleet +kept the seas and fought the submarine, the Directorate of Docks +handled the ports, and the Directorate of Roads, with the Directorates +of Railway Traffic, Construction and Light Railways, dealt with the +land transport. During the years of war we landed ten and a half +millions of persons in France, and last year the weekly tonnage +arriving at French ports exceeded 175,000 tons. Meanwhile four +thousand five hundred miles of road were made or kept up by the +Directorate of Roads. Only they who have seen with their own eyes--or +felt in their own bones!--what a wrecked road, or a road worn to +pieces by motor lorries, is really like, can appreciate what this +means. And during 1918 alone, the Directorate of Railway Traffic built +or repaired 2,340 miles of broad-gauge and 1,348 miles of narrow-gauge +railway. Everywhere, indeed, on the deserted battle-fields you come +across these deserted light railways by which men and guns were fed. +May one not hope that they may still be of use in the reconstruction +of French towns and the revival of French agriculture? + +As to the feeding and cooking and washing of the armies, the story is +no less wonderful, and I remember as I read the great camp laundry at +Etaples that I went through in 1917, with its busy throng of +Frenchwomen at work and its 30,000 items a day. Twenty-five thousand +cooks have been trained in the cookery schools of the Army, while a +jealous watch has been kept on all waste and by-products under an +Inspectorate of Economies. As to the care of the horses, in health or +in sickness, the British Remount and Veterinary Service has been famed +throughout Europe for efficiency and humanity. + +Of the vast hospital service, what can one say that has not been said +a thousand tunes already? Between the spring of 1916, when I first saw +the fighting front, and November, 1918, the hospital accommodation in +France rose from 44,000 to 175,000 persons. That is to say, we kept +our wounded in France during the height of the submarine campaign, +both to protect them from the chance of further suffering, and to +economise our dwindling tonnage, and fresh hospitals had to be built +for them. Of the doctors and nurses, the stretcher-bearers and +orderlies, whose brave and sacred work it was to gather the wounded +from the battle-line, and to bring to bear upon the suffering and +martyrdom of war all that human skill and human tenderness could +devise, Sir Douglas Haig has said many true and eloquent things in the +course of his despatches. He sums them all up in his last despatch in +the plain words: "In spite of the numbers dealt with, _there has been +no war in which the resources of science have been utilised so +generously and successfully for the quick evacuation and careful +tending of the sick and wounded, or for the prevention of disease_." + +Most true--and yet? Do not let us deceive ourselves! The utmost +energy, the tenderest devotion, the noblest skill, can go but a +certain way when measured against the sum total of human suffering +caused by war. The ablest of doctors and nurses are the first to admit +it. Those of us whose wounded brothers and sons reached in safety the +haven of hospital comfort and skilled nursing, and were thereby +brought back to life, are, thank Heaven, the fortunate many. But there +are the few for whose dear ones all that wonderful hospital and +nursing science was of no avail. I think of a gallant boy lying out +all night with a broken thigh in a shell-hole amid the mud and under +the rain of Flanders. Kind hands come with the morning and carry him +to the advanced dressing station. There is still hope. But miles of +mud and broken ground lie between him and the nearest hospital. +Immediate warmth and rest and nursing might have saved him. But they +are unattainable. Brave men carry the boy tenderly, carefully, the +three miles to the casualty clearing station. The strain on the +flickering life is just too much, and in the first night of hospital, +when every care is round it, the young life slips away--lost by so +little--by no fault! + +Is there any consolation? One only--the boy's own spirit. A comrade +remembers one of his last sayings--a simple casual word: "I don't +expect to come through--but--it's worth it." + +There one reaches the bed-rock of it all--the conviction of a just +cause. What would it avail us--this pride of victory, of organisation, +of science, to which these great despatches of our great +Commander-in-Chief bear witness, without that spiritual certainty +behind it all--the firm faith that England was fighting for the right, +and, God helping her, "could do no other." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +TANKS AND AEROPLANES + +THE STAFF WORK OF THE WAR + + +I have quoted in the preceding chapter the warning words of Sir +Douglas Haig on the subject of "mechanical appliances." The gist of +them is that mechanical appliances can never replace men, and that the +history of tanks in the war shows that, useful as they have been, +their value depends always upon combination with both infantry and +artillery. So far from their doing away with artillery, the +Commander-in-Chief points out that the Battle of Amiens, August 8th, +in which the greatest force of tanks was used, and in which they were +most brilliantly successful, was "an action in which more artillery +ammunition was expended than in any action of similar dimensions in +the whole war." + +The tank enthusiasts will clearly not be quite satisfied with so +measured a judgment! They point to the marked effect of the tanks on +the strategy of the last three months of the war, to the extraordinary +increase in the elements of mobility and surprise which their use made +possible, to the effect of them also on German opinion and _morale_, +and they believe that in any future war--if war there be!--they are +certain to play, not a subsidiary, but a commanding part. + +One of the most distinguished officers of the Tank Corps, who was +wounded and decorated before he joined the corps, was severely wounded +twice while he belonged to the corps, and was an eye-witness of the +incidents he describes, allows me to print the following letter: + + "You ask me for a short account of what tanks have done in the + war. In doing so, you set me a difficult problem! For three years + I have thought of practically nothing else but tanks, so that I + find it very difficult to deal with the subject briefly. However, + I will try. + + "The basic idea and purpose of tanks is a very simple one: to save + infantry casualties. A new tank can be built in a few months; a + new soldier cannot be produced under eighteen years. This idea--of + the use of mechanical means to save casualties--undoubtedly had + much to do with the production in the Tank Corps, a new unit and + without traditions, of the very high _esprit de corps_ it has + always shown, and without which it could not have developed + successfully. + + "Tanks were first used by the British on the 15th September, 1916, + in the Battle of the Ancre. They had, however, been designed to + meet the conditions which existed _in the preceding year_, before + the tremendous artillery bombardments of the middle stages of the + war reduced the ground to a series of shell-holes and craters, + which were so closely continuous over a large area of ground that + they could not possibly be avoided. Compared with the latest type + of tank, our first effort--known as Mark I.--may appear crude; but + much genius had been expended upon it, and it is worth noting that + both the French and German tanks, produced long after this tank, + were much inferior to it. + + "The Ypres salient, let me begin by saying, was never favourable + to the employment of tanks. In the Third Battle of Ypres (31st + July to November, 1917), which I personally believe to have been + the hardest battle of the whole war, the tanks were unable to cope + with the wet and shelled ground." + +Nevertheless, towards the end of the Ypres battle the tank attack in +the first Battle of Cambrai was being planned, and there, at last, the +enthusiasts of the Tank Corps had the conditions for which they had +been long hoping--a good ground and a surprise attack. + + "It is important to remember, the letter continues, that the + Hindenburg line at that time presented an insoluble problem. The + _sea of wire_ which protected its well-developed trenches and + machine-gun positions was placed almost throughout on the _reverse + slope_ of the hills or rising ground of which the line took + advantage. The artillery observer could hardly get a view of the + wire at all; beside which, it was so deep it would have taken a + month to cut it by artillery fire. + + "_The tank provided the solution_--the only solution. The tank, by + _crushing down the wire_--in a few minutes--was able to do what + there seemed no other way of doing. And the tank success at + Cambrai was not a mere flash in the pan. To the end of the war the + Hindenburg line, or any other line organised in the same way, was + entirely at the mercy of the tanks. + + "The tanks, however, did not make their full weight felt until + August, 1918. They had become a very important factor before that, + and had saved thousands of lives; but from the beginning of the + counter-offensive of last year they were a dominating feature of + the war. Ludendorff had already recognised their importance in + July, after the French use of them in the Battle of Soissons, when + he wrote to his Army Commanders that 'the utmost attention must be + paid to combating tanks. Our earlier successes against tanks led + to a certain contempt for this weapon of warfare. We must now + reckon with more dangerous tanks.'" + +The "earlier successes" mentioned were those of the Third Battle of +Ypres. In the Ypres salient, however, the real anti-tank defence was +the mud, and the general conclusions which the German Higher Command +drew from the derelict tanks they captured during the fighting of +October, 1917, were entirely misleading, as they soon discovered to +their cost, a few weeks later, in the First Battle of Cambrai. They +showed, indeed, throughout a curious lack of intelligence and +foresight with regard to the new weapon, both as to its possibilities +and as to the means of fighting it. They were at first entirely +surprised by their appearance in the field; then they despised them; +and it was not till July and August, 1918, at the beginning of the +last great Allied offensive--when it will be remembered that Sir Henry +Rawlinson had 400 tanks under his command--that the Germans awoke--too +late--to the full importance of the new arm. + +Thenceforward "the enemy was overcome by a great fear of the Allied +tanks, and in some cases even over-estimated their effect." But it was +now too late to put up an adequate defence against "the more dangerous +tanks," which were already available in large numbers on the Allied +side. It seems incredible, but it is true, that _the Germans never +possessed at any time more than fifteen tanks of their own_, plus some +twenty-five captured and repaired British tanks; and the only action +in which they employed them with any considerable success was at the +capture of Villers Bretonneux, April 24th, 1918 (the success which was +so quickly turned into defeat by the Australians). After last July, +however, the German panic with regard to them grew rapidly, and on the +15th of August we find it stated that everything possible must be done +to give the artillery "freedom of action _in its main role_, viz., the +engagement of tanks." "Its main role!" The phrase shows that under the +pressure of the tanks, the two chief pillars and axioms of the former +German defence system--"protective barrages" and "immediate +counter-attack"--were giving way, in the case at least of tank +attacks, with, of course, the natural result of confusion and +weakness. After the Battle of Amiens (August 8th) the German Command +issued an explanation of the defeat, signed by Ludendorff. Chief among +the reasons given appears: "The fact that the troops were surprised by +the massed attack of tanks, and lost their heads when the tanks +suddenly appeared behind them, having broken through under cover of +fog and smoke." The Crown Prince's group of armies reports on the same +battle: "That during the present fighting large numbers of tanks broke +through on narrow fronts, and, pushing straight forward, rapidly +attacked battery positions and the headquarters of divisions. In many +cases no defence could be made in time against the tanks, which +attacked them from all sides." + +And the peremptory order follows: + + "Messages concerning tanks will have priority over all other + messages or calls whatsoever." + +Naturally the German Army and the German public had by this time begun +to ask why the German Command was not itself better equipped with +tanks before the opening of the Allied offensive. The answer seems to +be, first of all, that they were originally thought little of, as "a +British idea." "The use of 300 British tanks at Cambrai," says a +German document, "was a 'battle of material.' The German Higher +Command decided from the very outset not to fight a 'battle of +material.'" They preferred instead their habitual policy of "massed +attack"--using thereby in the fighting line a number of inferior men, +"classified as fit for garrison or labour duties," but who, if they +"can carry a rifle, must fight." The German Command were, therefore, +"not in a position to find the labour for the construction of new and +additional material such as tanks." For the initial arrogance, +however, which despised the tanks, and for the system which had +prevented him from building them in time, when their importance was +realised, the enemy was soon plunged in bitter but unavailing regrets. +All he could do was to throw the blame of failure on the Allies' new +weapon, and to issue despairing appeals to his own troops. The Allies +were sometimes stated to have captured such and such a place "by the +use of masses of tanks," when, as a matter of fact, very few tanks had +been used. And this convenient excuse, as it appeared in the official +_communiques_, began soon to have some strange and disastrous results. +The German regimental officer began to think that as soon as tanks +appeared, it was _a sufficient reason for the loss of a position_. For +the German Army last year might be divided into three categories: "A +small number of stout-hearted men (chiefly machine-gunners), who could +be depended on to fight to the last; men who did not intend to fight, +and _did_ intend to put up their hands on the first occasion; and, +thirdly, the 'great middle class,' who were prepared to do their duty, +and had a sense of discipline, but who could not be classed as +heroes.... It was they who came to consider that when tanks arrived, +'there was nothing to be done.'" + +Moreover, the failure of the German Higher Command to produce tanks +themselves to fight those of the Allies had a very serious effect, not +only on the faith of the troops in their generals, but also on the +_morale_ of the public at home. German war correspondents and members +of the Reichstag began to ask indignant questions, and the German War +Office hurriedly defended itself in the Reichstag. As late as October +23rd General Scheuch, the German War Minister, declared: "We have been +actively engaged for a long period in producing this weapon (which is +recognised as important) in adequate numbers." It seems to be true +that efforts were then being made, but not true that these efforts +were of long standing. "Altogether 'slowness' was the keynote +throughout of the German attitude towards the tank idea." He neither +appreciated their true use nor the best means of fighting them; and +even when we presented him with derelict tanks, as was soon the case +on the Ancre in 1916, he failed to diagnose the creature accurately. + + "It is natural, I think," my correspondent continues, "that the + British should pride themselves on being the introducers and + leading exponents of this weapon. What the future will bring no + one knows; but if war is to persist, there can be no doubt that + mechanical means in general, and tanks in particular, must develop + more and more. If any civilised state is compelled to use force, + it will, if really civilised, strive to sacrifice its wealth and + its material as far as possible, rather than its human lives. + + "As to incidents, you asked me for some recollections of those + which had particularly impressed themselves upon me. It is hard to + choose. The Third Battle of Ypres, to which I have referred, + brought out many wonderful deeds of deliberate self-sacrifice. + Take the following: + + "In one case a section of three tanks were the only ones available + to support an infantry attack. The ground over which they had to + proceed was in a terrible state, and their chances of success were + small. Their only chance of success, in fact, depended on their + finding in the early dawn, and in the fog of battle, one single + crossing over the marshy stream. The enemy front line was actually + in front of this stream. The officer commanding the section + considered that the only way of finding the route was on foot. + With the knowledge that this meant certain death, he led his + section of tanks through the bad ground under very heavy fire. He + found the bridge safely, and was killed as he reached it. The + tanks went on and succeeded in their mission, and many infantry + lives were saved by this act of sacrifice." + +Then take the case of the incident of General Elles at the First +Battle of Cambrai. As my correspondent of the Tank Corps, who was in +the battle, says: "In modern warfare the place of the General +Commanding is almost invariably in the rear of his troops, in a +position where communications are good, and where he can employ his +reserves at the right moment. At this battle all the available Tanks +(about four hundred) were being used. There were no reserves. So the +General Commanding led the attack, flying the Tank Corps flag. He came +safely through the attack, which undoubtedly owed some measure of its +success to the inspiration which this act gave to the troops." + +A quiet account!--given by a man who was certainly not very far away +from his General in the affair. Let me supplement it a little by the +story of Mr. Philip Gibbs, who seems to have seen as much as any +correspondent might, of this wonderful "show" of the Tanks. + +"For strange, unusual drama, far beyond the most fantastic +imagination, this attack on the Hindenburg line before Cambrai has +never been approached on the Western Front; and the first act began +when the Tanks moved forward, before the dawn, towards the long wide +belts of wire which they had to destroy before the rest could follow. +These squadrons of Tanks were led into action by the General +Commanding their corps, who carried his flag on their own Tank--a most +gallant gentleman, full of enthusiasm for his monsters and their brave +crews, and determined that this day would be theirs. They moved +forward in small groups, several hundreds of them, rolled down the +Germans' wire and trampled down its lines, and then crossed the deep +gulf of the Hindenburg main line, pitching nose downward as they drew +their long bodies over the parapets, and rearing themselves again with +forward reach of body, and heaving themselves on to the German parados +beyond.... The German troops, out of the gloom of the dawn, saw these +grey inhuman creatures bearing down upon them, crushing down their +wire, crossing their impregnable lines, firing fiercely from their +flanks and sweeping the trenches with machine-gun bullets." A captured +German officer thought "he had gone mad," as he watched the Tanks, +while his men ran about in terror, trying to avoid the bursts of fire, +and crying out in surrender. "What could we do?" + +Meanwhile, our own men, English, Irish, and Scottish troops, went +behind the Tanks, "laughing and cheering when they saw them get at the +German wire and eat it up, and then head for the Hindenburg line, and +cross it as though it were but a narrow ditch." + +And yet, after this experience, the Germans still delayed to make +Tanks! No doubt they argued that, after all, the Cambrai attack, in +spite of the Tanks, had ended in a check for the British, and in the +loss of much of the ground which had been gained by the surprise +attack of the "grey monsters." Meanwhile, the Russian front was +rapidly breaking down, and in their exultant anticipation of the fresh +forces they would soon be drawing from it to throw against the British +Armies, the standing contempt of the German Command for "British +ideas" and a "battle of material" won the day. + +The German General Staff, therefore, maintained its refusal to spare +labour and material to make Tanks, and the refusal must have seemed to +them fully justified by the initial success of their March offensive. +Tanks played practically no part in the fighting withdrawal of the +British Armies in March and April, 1918. But all this time Tank +development was going on; and the believers in Tanks were working away +at the improvement of the types, convinced now, as ever, that their +day would come. It dawned with the Australian attack at +Villers-Bretonneux on April 24th, when the fortunes of battle were +already changing; it rose higher on July 4th, when the Australians +again took Hamel and Vaire Wood, the Tanks splendidly helping; it was +at the full on and after August 8th, at the Battle of Amiens, the +first page in the last chapter of the war. + +The next incident described by my correspondent occurred at the taking +of the St. Quentin section of the Hindenburg line by the 4th British +Army, two American divisions leading the way. + +"The attack," he writes, "had been a very difficult one, and had only +been successful in certain sectors. As usual, the attack had been +launched at dawn, and the morning had been exceptionally misty. Later +on the mist began to roll away rather quickly, and it was found that +in one sector where the attack had made no progress, the Germans were +in a position"--owing to the ridge they occupied having been till then +shrouded in mist--"to bring very heavy machine-gun fire to bear on the +backs of the troops advancing in a sector where the attack had gone +well. Unless something were done at once to drive the Germans from the +ridge they were holding, not only would many lives be lost, but the +result of the attack which had gone well would be jeopardised. Without +waiting for orders and on their own initiative, two Tanks, which were +standing by in order to attack with fresh troops later in the day, +drove straight for the ridge.[11] _Two Tanks, without either infantry +or artillery support, went straight for an unbroken portion of the +German line._ They reached the ridge, and drove the Germans off it. +Both Tanks were hit by several shells, and caught fire. The survivors +of the crews, with a few infantry soldiers, organised the ridge for +defence, turned the German machine guns round, and when the Germans +counter-attacked, this small but determined garrison poured so hot a +fire on them from their own guns that they were driven back, and the +important post secured." + + [11] The italics are mine. + +There is nothing, I think, that need prevent me from pointing out, +what there is no hint of in the letter itself--that the writer of it +was in one of the Tanks, and was severely wounded. + +In the last actions of the war, even the semblance of a Tank was +sometimes enough! "Supply Tanks"--writes my informant--"were then +being used, which looked like the real thing, but were only very +slightly armoured. They were intended to carry material, sometimes +munitions, and even food. Three of these pseudo-tanks were carrying up +material to rebuild a bridge which had been destroyed. They +discovered, when they neared the place, that the enemy were holding it +in some strength, and our infantry could not advance. Moreover +directly the Tanks appeared, they began to draw fire--which they were +not meant to face--and the situation was threatening. But, with great +pluck and resource, the Tanks decided just to go on, and trust to +their looks, which were like those of the fighting Tanks, to drive the +enemy from the position.... One Tank became a casualty; but the other +two went straight for the German lines; and the Germans, under the +impression that they were being attacked by fighting Tanks, either put +up their hands or fled." + +Thus, in its last moments of resistance, the German Army, now but the +ghost of itself, was scattered by the ghost of a Tank! What was being +prepared for it, had the struggle gone on, is told in a memorandum on +Tanks organisation which has come my way, and makes one alternately +shudder at the war that might have been, and rejoice in the peace that +is. In the last weeks of the war, Tank organisation was going rapidly +forward. A new Tank Board, consisting of Naval, Military, and +Industrial members, was concentrating all its stored knowledge on "the +application of naval tactics to land warfare," in other words, on the +development of Tanks, and had the war continued, the complete +destruction of the German Armies would have been brought about in 1919 +by "a Tank programme of some _six thousand machines_." When one +considers that for the whole of the three last victorious months in +which Tanks played such an astonishing part, the British Armies never +possessed more than four hundred of them, who travelled like a circus +from army to army, the significance of this figure will be understood. +Nor could Germany, by any possibility, have produced either the labour +or the material necessary, whereby to meet Tank with Tank. The game +was played out and the stakes lost. + + * * * * * + +But of fresh headings in this last tremendous chapter of _England's +Effort_, there might be no end. I can only glance at one or two of +them. + +The Air Force? Ah, that, indeed, is another story--and so great a one, +that all I can attempt here is to put together[12] a few facts and +figures, in one of those comparisons of the "beginning," with the +"end," of time with time, by which alone some deposit from the stream +of history in which we are all bathed filters into the mind, and--with +good luck: stays there. Here, in Hertfordshire, in the first summer of +the war, how great an event was still the passage of an aeroplane over +these quiet woods! How the accidents of the first two years appalled +us, heart-broken spectators, and the inexorable military comment upon +them: "Accidents or no accidents, we have got to master this thing, +and master the Germans in it." And, accidents or no accidents, the +young men of Britain and France steadily made their way to the +aviation schools, having no illusions at all, in those early days, as +to the special and deadly risks to be run, yet determined to run them, +partly from clear-eyed patriotism, partly from that natural call of +the blood which makes an Englishman or a Frenchman delight in danger +and the untried for their own sakes. Thenceforward, the wonderful tale +ran, mounting to its climax. At the beginning of the war the military +wing of the British Air Service consisted of 1,844 officers and men. +At the conclusion of the war there were, in round numbers, 28,000 +officers and 264,000 other ranks employed under the Air Board. From +under 2,000 to nearly 300,000!--and in four years! And the uses to +which this new Army of the Winds was put, grew perpetually with its +growth. Let us remember that, while aeroplane _reconnaissance_ was of +immense service in the earliest actions of the war, _there was no +artillery observation by aeroplane till after the first Battle of the +Marne_. There is the landmark. Artillery observation was used for the +first time at the Battle of the Aisne, in the German retreat from the +Marne. Thenceforward, month by month, the men in the clouds became +increasingly the indispensable guides and allies of the men on the +ground, searching out and signalling the guns of the enemy, while +preventing his fliers from searching out and signalling our own. Next +came the marvellous development of aerial photography, by which the +whole trench world, the artillery positions and _hinterland_ of the +hostile army could be mapped day by day for the information of those +attacking it; the development of the bombing squadrons, which began by +harassing the enemy's communications immediately behind the fighting +line, and developed into those formidable expeditions of the +Independent Force into Germany itself, which so largely influenced the +later months of the war. Finally, the airman, not content with his own +perpetual and deadly fighting in the air, fighting in which the +combatants of all nations developed a daring beyond the dreams of any +earlier world, began to take part in the actual land-battle itself, +swooping on reserves, firing into troops on the march, or bringing up +ammunition. + + [12] From the recent Official Report issued by the Air Board. + +And while the flying Army of the Winds was there developing, the +flying Army of the Seas, its twin brother, was not a whit behind. The +record of the Naval Air Service, as the scouts for the Fleet, the +perpetual foe of, and ceaseless spy upon, the submarine, will stir the +instincts for song and story in our race while song and story remain. +It was the naval airmen who protected and made possible the safe +withdrawal of the troops from Suvla and Helles; it was they who +discovered and destroyed the mines along our coasts; who fought the +enemy seaplanes man to man, and gun to gun; who gave the pirate nests +of Zeebrugge and Ostend no rest by day or night, who watched over the +ceaseless coming and going of the British, Dominion, and American +troops across the Channel; who were the eyes of our coasts as the +ships, laden with the men, food, and munitions, which were the +life-blood of the Allied Cause, drew homeward to our ports, with the +submarines on their track, and the protecting destroyers at their +side. + +Nor did we only manufacture planes and train men for ourselves. "The +Government of the United States," says the Air Service Report, "has +paid a striking tribute to the British Air Service by adopting our +system of training. The first 500 American officer cadets to be +trained went through the School of Military Aeronautics at Oxford, +afterwards graduating at various aerodromes in England. These officers +formed the nucleus of American schools, which were eventually started +both in the United States and in France.... In all about 700 American +pilots have passed through our schools.... And when the question of +producing a standardised engine was considered every facility was +given and all our experience placed at the disposal of the American +Government, with the result that the Liberty engine was evolved." + +Meanwhile the constant adaptation to new conditions required in the +force stimulated the wits of everybody concerned. Take aerial +photography. The first successful photograph was taken in November, +1914, of the village of Neuve Chapelle. The photographic section then +consisted of two officers and three men, with two cameras and a +portable box of chemicals. At the present day it contains 250 officers +and 3,000 men--with a large training school; and its prints have been +issued by the million. + +Meanwhile the development of our aircraft fire had driven the aerial +photographer from a height of 3,000 feet up to a height of 22,000, +where, but for invention, he might have perished with cold, or found +it impossible to breathe. But intelligence pursued him, providing him +with oxygen and with electric heating apparatus in the upper air. And +when, on the other hand, he or his comrade swooped down to within a +few hundred feet of the earth, in order to co-operate in attack with +infantry or Tanks, again intelligence came into play, inventing a +special armoured machine for the protection of the new tactics. + +The growth of "wireless," as a means of air-communication, is another +astounding chapter in this incredible story. Only _one_ of the +machines which left with the original Expeditionary Force was fitted +with "wireless" apparatus, and it was not used till the first Battle +of the Aisne, when co-operation with the artillery first began. There +are now 520 officers in the "wireless" branch and 6,200 other ranks; +while there are 80 "wireless" stations in France alone and several +hundred battery stations. "Wireless" telephony, too, has been made +practical since 1917; and over a range of some 75 miles has been of +deadly use to the artillery, especially at night, when the watcher in +the skies becomes aware of lighted aerodromes, or railway stations, +behind the enemy lines. + +"Many wonders there be, but none more wonderful than man," said +Sophocles, in the fifth century before Christ, and he gives the +catalogue of man's discoveries, as the reflective Greek saw it, at +that moment of the world's history. Man, "master of cunning," had made +for himself ships, ploughs, and houses, had tamed the horse and the +bull; had learned how to snare wild creatures for food, had developed +speech, intelligence, civilisation. Marvels indeed! But had it ever +occurred to such a Greek to ponder the general stimulus given to human +faculty by war? Probably, for the wise Greek had thought of most +things, and some reader of these pages who knows his rich literature +better than I do, will very likely remember how and where. Modern +history, indeed, is full of examples, from the Crusades onward. But +there can never have been any such demonstration of it as this war has +yielded. The business of peace is now, largely, to turn to account the +discoveries of the war--in mechanics, chemistry, electricity, medical +science, methods of organisation, and a score of other branches of +human knowledge, and that in the interests of life, and not of death. +For the human loss of the war there is no comfort, except in those +spiritual hopes and convictions by which ultimately most men live. But +for the huge economic waste, the waste of money and material and +accumulated plant, caused by the struggle, there _is_ some comfort, in +this development of faculty, this pushing forward of human knowledge +into regions hitherto unmapped, which the war has seen. This week, for +instance,[13] American and British airmen are competing in the first +Atlantic flight, and the whole world is looking on. Again there is +risk of danger and death, but the prizes sought are now the prizes of +peace, the closer brotherhood of men, a truer knowledge one of +another, the interchanges of science and labour; and they are sought +by means taught in the furnace of war. Thus, from the sacrifices of +the terrible past may spring a quickened life for the new world. Will +that new world be worthy of them?--there is the question on which all +depends. A certain anguish clings to it, as one measures the loss, and +cannot yet measure the gain. + + [13] May 19th. + + * * * * * + +I have dwelt on some of the accomplished wonders--the _results_ of the +war, in the material field--guns, Tanks, and aeroplanes. But just as +mechanical devices were and are, in the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief, +of no avail without the fighting men who use them; so behind the whole +red pageant of the war lie two omnipresent forces without which it +could not have been sustained for a day--Labour at the base, Directing +Intelligence at the top. In the Labour battalions of the Army there +has been a growth in numbers and a development in organisation only +second to that of the fighting Army itself. Labour companies were +already in being in 1914, but they chiefly worked at the ports, and +were recruited mainly from dock labourers. Then it was realised that +to employ the trained soldier on many of the ordinary "fatigue" duties +was to waste his training, and Labour began to be sent plentifully to +the front. For trench-digging, for hut-building, for the making and +repair of roads and railways, for the handling and unloading of +supplies and ammunition, for sanitation, salvage, moving the wounded +at casualty clearing stations, and a score of other needs, the demand +on the Labour battalions grew and grew. + +How well I remember the shivering Kaffir boys and Indians at work on +the handling of stores and ammunition in the cold spring of 1917!--and +the navvy battalions on the roads before the Chinese had arrived in +force, and before the great rush of German prisoners began. Between +the British navvy battalions, many of them elderly men past military +age, or else unfit in some way for the fighting line, and their +comrades in the trenches, there were generally the friendliest +relations. The fighting man knew well what he owed to the "old boys." +I have before me an account by a Highland officer of the relation +between a navvy and a regular battalion in the Ypres salient. "Their +huts stretched along the side of the road which led us towards our +trenches; and every time we passed that way the sound of the pipes +would bring them out of their billets in crowds to cheer us in, or to +welcome us back if we were returning. They kept that road in splendid +repair, despite the heavy wear and tear of the endless traffic which +used it, and we blessed them many times. There was a two-miles stretch +across shell-torn, muddy country just behind the fighting line. Tired +men, just relieved from the trenches, and carrying heavy equipment, +naturally loathed it as a Slough of Despond; but when we struck the +good, honest surface of the navvy battalion's road, though there were +many miles still between us and rest, we felt the journey was as good +as over, so easy, by comparison, had marching become. A close +friendship grew up between our battalions. Our officers invited their +officers to dinner. Our men saluted their officers, and if one of our +officers happened to come on the scene of their operations, some old +veteran, wearing perhaps the medal ribbon of campaigns dating back a +generation, would call his gang to attention, and gravely give the +salute after the manner of thirty years ago. And when one realised +what the age of these men must be, who were wearing decorations of +Egyptian and Indian frontier campaigns, with not a few Zulu ribbons +among them, one marvelled at the skill and strength with which the old +fellows wielded pick and shovel. They could not march any great +distance, and we helped them along in motor buses; but once set them +down by their tracks, though the road might be chaos and the +shell-holes innumerable, obstacles were cleared away, holes filled up, +and the new surface well and truly laid with a magical rapidity.... +The idea of taking shelter never seemed to occur to them; they openly +rejoiced at being under fire.... Perhaps though they mended our roads +and gave us easy walking, they helped us most by the quiet +steadfastness of their example. One never saw them toiling away in the +deathtrap of the Ypres salient without realising that they were the +fathers of our generation, men who had already spent themselves in +Britain's cause when we were children, and had now come out to serve +her again, at her call, and to watch how we young ones played up." + +Some more recent notes from G.H.Q. dwell warmly on the invaluable +services rendered by the Labour Corps in the Battle of Cambrai, +November, 1917, in the defensive battle of last spring, and in the +autumn attacks which ended the war. In the Cambrai attack the Labour +men were concentrated 1,000 yards behind the line, so as to be ready +for immediate advance. A light railway was run into Marcoing within +twenty-four hours of its capture, and another into Moeuvres under +heavy fire, while the approaches to the bridges over the Canal du Nord +were carried out by men working only 1,000 yards from the enemy +machine guns posted on one of the locks of the Canal. In the +withdrawals of last March and April, throughout the heavy defensive +fighting of those dangerous weeks, no men were steadier. Theirs was +the heavy work of digging new defence lines--at night--with long +marches to and from their billets. Casualties and wastage were heavy, +but could not be helped, as fighting men could not be spared. Yet the +units concerned behaved "with the greatest gallantry." "One company," +says a report from G.H.Q., "worked day and night in a forward +ammunition dump for three days, and then marched seventy miles in six +days, working a day and night in another ammunition dump on the way, +with no transport but one G.S. wagon to help them; in their +retirements, effected as they were with almost no transport, they lost +practically all their equipment, and yet without getting time to rest +and re-equip, they had to be moved at once to work on defence lines." + +The total number of Labour men employed in stemming the German rush on +Amiens, by the construction of new lines of defence, was no less than +62,000--two-thirds, nearly, of the whole British Army at Waterloo! + +Then, when our counter-attack began, the task of the Labour men was +reversed. Now it was for them to go forward, well ahead of the +reserves, and some 1,000 yards ahead of the skilled transport troops +and the construction trains that were laying the line for which the +Labour men prepared the way. Death or wounds were always in the day's +risks, but the Labour men "held on." By this time there were 350,000 +men under the Labour Directorate--a force about equal to our whole +Territorial and Regular Army before the war. They were a strange and +motley host!--95,000 British, 84,000 Chinese, 138,000 Prisoners of +War, 1,500 Cape Coloured, 4,000 West Indians, 11,000 South African +natives, 100 Fijians, 7,500 Egyptians, 1,500 Indians--so run the +principal items. The catalogue given of their labours covers all the +rough work of the war household. They were the handy men everywhere, +adding on occasion forestry and agriculture to their war-work, and the +British Labour battalions were, of course, the stiffening and +superintending element for the rest. + +In the handling of the Coloured Labour Units there were naturally many +new and occasionally surprising things to be learnt by the British +soldiers directing them. A party of Nagas, for instance, were among +the Indian Labour Units. "They were savages from a country which has +only recently been brought thoroughly under British rule," writes an +officer of the A.G.'s department. "Their pastime is head-hunting, and +their 'uniform' when at home is that bestowed on them by Nature. They +were extraordinarily cheerful, willing workers, and gave no trouble at +all. The trouble of providing the special kind of food which in +general the natives of India require, was entirely absent in the case +of the Nagas. They have a strong liking for rats, and the only food +they object to is monkeys. A company of Nagas, about May, 1917, after +the advance at Arras in April, were sent up to somewhere near Boisleux +to bury dead horses. The dead horses were disposed of--but not by +burial. And in addition an Infantry Brigade in the neighbourhood had +soon to mourn the loss of all their dogs." + +The Chinese were a constant source of amusement and interest to the +British. All that neatness and delicacy of finger which is shown in +Chinese art and hand-work, the infinite pains, the careful finish +which the Chinaman inherits from his age-long, patient past, were to +be seen even in the digging of trenches. Their defence lines were a +marvel of finish, in spite of the fact that in hard manual labour they +were ahead of any other unit--shifting, often, 240 cubic feet of soil +per day, per man. As porters, too, they were beyond rivalry; and their +contempt for the German prisoners' capacity in this direction was +amusing. A Chinese coolie, watching two prisoners handle a stack of +cased goods, could not at last contain himself. He walked up to them, +saying: "Hun no damn good," and proceeded to show them how it should +be done. The stolidity of the Chinaman is generally proof against +surprise, but some of those coming from the backwoods of Northern +China were occasionally bewildered and overwhelmed when set down amid +the amazing and to them terrifying wonders of the "back" of a European +Army. One company of such men arrived at their appointed camp, and the +next day there was a fight with enemy aeroplanes overhead. One of the +poor coolies was so terrified that he went and hanged himself, and the +rest could only be pacified with great difficulty. On the other hand, +a flying officer once offered a ride to a Chinese ganger who, with his +men, had been doing some work on an aerodrome for the R.A.F. "The +ganger went up with glee; and the pilot's feelings may be imagined +when, at a good height, he looked round and saw the ganger standing +up, as happy as could be, looking over the edge and pointing down to +the camp where his company lived, and other landmarks he was able to +recognise." + + * * * * * + +Of the noble army of women, who, since 1917, have formed part of that great +force behind the fighting lines I have been rapidly sketching--what shall +one say but good and grateful things? + +In 1917, as our car wound through the narrow streets of Montreuil, I +remember noticing a yellow car in front of us, unlike the usual Army +car, and was told that it contained the new head of the Women's Army +Auxiliary Corps, and that 10,000 women were now to be drafted into +France, to take the place of men wanted for the fighting line. And a +little later at Abbeville I found General Asser, then Inspector-General +of the Lines of Communication, deep in the problems connected with the +housing and distribution of the new Women's Contingent. "Two women +want the accommodation of three men; but three women can only do the +work of two men." That seemed to be the root fact of the moment, and +accommodation and work were being calculated accordingly. Then the +women came, and took their place in the clerical staffs of the various +military departments, of Army or other Headquarters, in the Army +canteens, in the warehouses and depots of the ports. It is clear that, +during the concluding year of the war, they rendered services of which +British women may reasonably be proud; and in the retreat of last +March, by universal testimony, they bore themselves with special +coolness and pluck. Many of them were suddenly involved in the rush +and confusion of battle, which was never meant to come near them. They +took the risks and bore the strain of it with admirable composure. The +men beside whom they marched or rode when depots canteens, and +headquarters disappeared in the general over-running of our fighting +lines, took note! It was yet another page in that history of a new +Womanhood we are all collaborating in to-day. And I will add a last +touch, within my personal knowledge, when in January, at Montreuil, in +a room at G.H.Q., an officer of A. described to me how he had recently +interviewed a gathering of women belonging to Queen Mary's Auxiliary +Army Corps, and had asked them whether they wished to be immediately +demobilised. Almost without exception the answer came: "Not while we +can be useful to the Army." They had enlisted for the war; the war was +not over, in spite of the Armistice; and, though it would be pleasant +to go home, they still stuck to their job. + + * * * * * + +Thus hastily I have run through the labour of various kinds which was +the base and condition of the fighting force. I have left myself room +for only a few last words as to that Directing Intelligence which was +its brain and soul--_i.e._, the Staff work of the Army--from the +brilliant and distinguished men at General Headquarters immediately +surrounding the Commander-in-Chief, down to the Brigade and Battalion +Staffs, the members of which actually conduct the daily and nightly +operations of war from the close neighbourhood of the fighting line. +In a preceding chapter I have given a general outline of the duties +falling to the Staff of the First Army in the attack on the Hindenburg +line. The range and variety of them was immense. But their success, no +less than the success of the campaign as a whole, depended on the +faithful execution of all the minor Staff work of the Army, from the +battalion upward. The skill, precision and personal bravery required +from the officers concerned are not as much realised, I think, as they +ought to be by the public at home. An officer engaged as a +Brigade-Major in the fight on the Ancre, September, 1917, has written +me a detailed account of four days' experience in that battle, +involving the relief of one brigade by another, and a successful but +difficult attack, which gives a vivid idea of Staff work as carried on +in the actual fighting line itself. We see, first, the night journey +of the four infantry battalions and their machine-gun company and +trench-mortar battery, from Albert to Pozieres by motor-bus, then the +four-mile march of the troops in darkness and rain along a duck-board +track, to the trenches they were to relieve. The Brigade-Major +describes the elaborate preparation needed for every movement of the +relief and the attack, and the anxiety in the Brigade Headquarters, a +dug-out twenty feet below the ground, when the telephone--which is +constantly cut by shell fire--fails to announce the arrival of each +company at its appointed place. Presently, the left company of the +battalion on the left is missing. In the darkness, and the congestion +of men moving up to and back from the trenches on the narrow track, +clearly something has gone wrong. The Brigade-Major sets out to +discover the why and wherefore. The attack is to start at 6 A.M., and +from 9 P.M. till nearly 5 A.M.--that is, _for close on eight hours_, +the Brigade-Major is up and down the track, inquiring into the causes +of delay--(a trench, for instance, has been blown in at one point, and +the men forced into the mud beside it)--watching and helping the +assembly of the troops, and "hunting" for the company which has not +arrived, and is "apparently lost." About five he returns to his +brigade, hoping for the best. + +Then, half an hour before the moment appointed for the advance, "we +heard a bombardment starting. The enemy had either discovered the hour +of our attack, or were about to attack us." The Brigadier and his +Brigade-Major anxiously go up to the top of their dug-out to survey +the field. It is clear that the British line is being heavily +attacked. Messages begin to arrive from the battalion commander on the +left to say that all communication with his companies has now been +cut. The commander on the right also rings up to report heavy +casualties. Then the telephone wires on both sides are broken, and the +Staff signal officer goes out to repair them under fire. At last, +precisely at the moment appointed, five minutes past six, in the rainy +autumn dawn, our own guns--an enormous concentration of them--open a +tremendous fire, and the earth-shaking noise "helps men to forget +themselves, and go blind for the enemy." Then steadily the artillery +barrage goes forward, one hundred yards every four minutes, and the +infantry advance behind it, past the German front trench, to a ravine +about three hundred yards further, which is known to be strongly held. +The final objective is a strong German position protecting a village +in the valley of the Ancre. + +Meanwhile, in the headquarters' dug-out, messages come pouring in "by +telephone, by lamp-signal, by wireless, by pigeon, by runners, and +reports dropped from aeroplanes." The progress of the battle is marked +on the maps spread out on a table in the dug-out, and the Brigadier +has to decide when his reserve battalion must be sent forward to +assist. Information is scanty and contradictory, but "at half-hourly +intervals the situation, as we believed it to be, was telephoned to +our Divisional Headquarters and to the brigades on either flank." +Reports come in of success at certain places and a check at others; +also of a German counter-attack. All reports agree that casualties +have been heavy. The ravine, indeed, has been taken with seven hundred +prisoners, but the situation is still so obscure that "the Brigadier +sent me out to find out the real situation." + +"So I started out with an orderly." The direct route to be taken was +under fire and had to be circumvented. "I was making for an old +dug-out in a small ravine, where some men of our left attacking +battalion had suffered heavily whilst assembling prior to the attack. +The area was still being shelled, and we made a bolt for the dug-out, +which we reached safely." In the dug-out is the commander of the +support battalion, who reports that the commanders of the attacking +battalions have gone forward to the big ravine. "I found out all I +could from him, and then went forward with him to the ravine." On the +way the Staff officer notices that the wire entanglements in front of +the German trenches are still formidable and have not been properly +cut by our artillery. "When we reached the big ravine we crawled down +the steep bank to the bottom of it, and the first sight that we saw +was the entrance to a German dug-out, with its previous occupants +lying at the mouth of it.... I then found the commander of the left +attacking battalion, who had established his headquarters in an old +German dug-out." From him the Brigade-Major hears a ghastly tale of +casualties. Not a single officer left, with any of his four attacking +companies! Yet in spite of the loss of all their company officers, and +of the fact that the left company of the battalion had been +practically wiped out before the attack started, the greater portion +of the battalion, led by their regimental sergeant-major, had reached +their final objective.... "It was certainly," says the Brigade-Major +quietly, "a very magnificent performance." + +Meanwhile he finds the commander of the right battalion further up the +ravine. The greater portion of the support battalion is also in the +ravine. Here there were elements of three battalions, considerably +disorganised, suffering from want of sleep and a terribly hard time. +The commanders, dead beat, want reinforcements, and take a pessimist +view. The Brigade-Major, coming fresh, thinks, on the contrary, that +there are already too many men on the ground, who only want +reorganising. To satisfy himself he goes forward, with the adjutant of +the right battalion, to find out "exactly where our leading troops +were and in what condition." + + "I satisfied myself of the exact situation, and having visited the + troops of the brigades on both flanks, went back to the ravine, + and from one of the battalion headquarters telephoned to my + Brigadier and told him what I had found out. I mentioned that both + the battalion commanders said they needed more troops to reinforce + them, but added that in my opinion there were already sufficient + troops on the spot, and that all that was necessary was that they + should be placed under the command of one officer, and reorganised + by battalions, to hold their present positions. I told him + everything I knew, and tried to give him a good idea of the + condition of the troops on the spot. He then sent orders to me + that the senior battalion commander was to assume command of all + troops on the brigade front, and that under his orders they were + to be reorganised into battalions and companies, in order that the + defence should be as strong and efficient as possible. I then + returned to Brigade Headquarters to tell my Brigadier more fully + what I had seen." + +The following night the brigade was relieved, after what was on the +whole a very successful action. All the officers responsible for its +Staff work seem to have been on duty, without rest or sleep, for some +thirty-six hours, and after the attack was over there were still +German prisoners to be examined. + +Such is Staff work in the actual battle-line. What it needs of will, +courage, and endurance will be clear, I think, to anyone reading this +account, and the experience may be taken as typical of thousands like +it at every stage of the war, so long as it was a war of trenches and +positions. And what is also typical is that while the personal risks +of the writer are scarcely hinted at, his mind, amid all his cares of +superintendence and organisation, is still passionately alive to the +individual risks and sufferings of his comrades. He ends on what he +calls "another small point which deserves mention": + + "When the officers and men of those two attacking battalions lay + in the mud on that pitch-black night, soaked to the skin and + shivering with cold, as they lay there waiting for the awful hour + when it seems as if horror itself has been let loose, and as they + wondered in their own minds what lay before them, gradually the + German bombardment started, and then by degrees increased in + intensity, until for fully thirty minutes before zero hour it + became perfect hell. Every one of those officers and men, without + a doubt, realised that the enemy had discovered that he was going + to be attacked, and that he would be on the alert and waiting for + them. Yet did any one of them falter, did any one of them for a + single moment dream of not starting with the rest of his comrades + and doing what he knew it was his duty to do?" + + "I only know two things: Firstly, that a very great number of + them, if not all, realised only too well that the enemy had + discovered our plans; and, secondly, that the only ones who did + not start were those who could not, because they had been either + killed or wounded." + +And now turn with me to the top of all--the General Staff of the Army +in France--the brain of the whole mighty movement. It was with no +light emotion that I found myself last January, on a bitter winter +day, among a labyrinth of small rooms running round the quadrangle of +the old Ecole Militaire at Montreuil, while they were still full of +Staff officers gathering up the records of the war. Here, or in the +Staff train moving with the Commander-in-Chief along the front, the +vast organisation of battle culminated in a few guiding brains from +which energising and unifying direction flowed out to all parts of the +field of war. Here were the heads of Q., of A., of G.--in other words, +of Supply, Reinforcement, and Operations. In a bare room, with a few +chairs and tables and an iron stove, the Director of Operations was at +work; close by was the office of the Quartermaster-General, while up +another staircase and along another narrow passage were the quarters +of the Adjutant-General; and somewhere, I suppose, in the now historic +building, was or had been the office of the Commander-in-Chief +himself. The Intelligence Department was not far off, I knew, in the +old town; I had been its grateful guest in 1917. The directing +Intelligence of the Army flowed out from here to the front, while from +the front, at the same time, there came back a constant stream of +practical knowledge and experience, keeping the life of G.H.Q. +perpetually fresh, correcting theory by experience and kindling +experience by theory. The complexities and responsibilities of the +work done were vast indeed. + + "At any time," says an officer of the General Staff, "during the + operations of the past year, work was commenced here in the + office, or on the train, when G.H.Q. was advanced nearer the + battle-line, at any hour before nine o'clock. The work to be done + consists, in general terms, of co-ordinating all the arrangements + for the operations undertaken and carried out by the several + armies; the issuing of general orders and instructions for + operations, the details of which were worked out by the armies + concerned; the issuing of orders for the movement of divisions, of + artillery units, cavalry, and Tanks--in fact, all the different + services which go to make up the Army. These orders must be so + arranged as to fit in with the roads and railway facilities, or + the mechanical transport available, and must be so couched as not + to interfere or clash with arrangements made by the armies in the + Army areas. This necessitates very intimate _liaison_ with the + armies and with the departments concerned. Maps have to be kept up + to date, showing the dispositions of troops at all times, both on + the battle-front and in back areas. + + "In addition, there are the arrangements with our Allies, the + fixing of areas between ourselves and our Allies, and between our + own armies and the lines of communication. During operations + messages have to be sent out giving information of the situation + to the troops, to the public, and to the War Office at home. + Schemes are worked out beforehand to deal with any possible + eventuality, so that in the event of a hostile attack the movement + of troops may be carried out with the least possible delay. + Similar schemes are worked out for operations to be undertaken by + ourselves, and methods of attack are thrashed out in consultation + with the Army Commanders and Staff. The various details of this + work fill in the day very thoroughly. This office (of Operations) + rarely closes before midnight, and the principal officers are + frequently at work until the small hours of the morning. There is, + of course, an officer on duty all night. + + "During the German attack in March the officer responsible here + for the movement of troops by rail did not leave the office even + for meals for a number of days on end." + +So the long ascent climbs, from the humblest platoon in the field, +through company, battalion, division, corps, and Army to the General +Staff, and the British Commander-in-Chief, moving and directing the +whole; with beyond these, again, as the apex of the great +construction, the figure of the illustrious Frenchman, who for the +last six months of the war, by the common consent of the Allies, and +especially by the free will of England and her soldiers, held the +general scheme of battle in his hands. In the British Army what we +have been watching is an active hierarchy of duty, discipline, +loyalty, intelligence--the creation of a whole people, bent on victory +for a great cause. Must it, indeed, vanish with the war, like a dream +at cock-crow, or shall we yet see its marvellous training, its +developments of mind and character, gradually take other shapes and +enter into other combinations--for the saving and not the slaying of +men? + + + + +EPILOGUE + + +_June 1st._ + +I have thus brought these rapid notes--partly of things seen, partly +of things read--to an end. They might, of course, go on for ever, and +as I write I seem to see rising before me those libraries of the +future, into which will come crowding the vast throng of books dealing +in ever greater and greater detail with the events of the war and the +causes of victory. But this slight summary sketch of the military +events, and especially of the final "effort" of England and the +Empire, in the campaign of last year, which I set myself to do, is +accomplished, however inadequately. Except, indeed, for one huge +omission which every reader of these few pages will at once suggest. I +have made only a few references here and there to the British Navy. +Yet on the British Navy, as we all know, everything hung. If the Navy +could not have protected our shores, and broken the submarine peril; +if the British Admiralty had not been able to hold the Channel against +the enemy and ward him off from the coasts and ports of France; if the +British ships and British destroyers had not been there to bring over +70 per cent of the American Armies, and food both for ourselves and +the Allies; if the sea-routes between us and our Colonies, between us +and the East, could not have been maintained, Germany at this moment +would have been ruling triumphant over a prostrate world. The +existence and power of the Navy have been as vital to us as the air we +breathed and the sun which kept us alive, and the pressure of the +British blockade was, perhaps, the dominating element in the victory +of the Allies. But these things are so great and so evident that it +seemed in this little book best to take them for granted. They have +been the presuppositions of all the rest. What has not yet been so +clear--or so I venture to think--to our own people or our Allies, has +been the full glory of the part played by the Armies of the British +Empire in the concluding phases of the war. The temporary success of +the German sortie of last spring--a mere episode in the great +whole--made so deep an impression on the mind of this nation, that the +real facts of an _annus mirabilis_, in their true order and +proportion, are only now, perhaps, becoming plain to us. It was in +order to help ever so little in this process that I have tried to +tell, as it appears to me, the end of that marvellous story of which I +sketched the beginnings in _England's Effort_. + +These main facts, it seems to me, can hardly be challenged by any +future pressure from that vast critical process which the next +generation, and generations after, will bring to bear upon the war. +The mistakes made, the blunders here, or shortcomings there, of +England's mighty effort, will be all canvassed and exposed soon +enough. The process indeed has already begun. And when the first mood +of thankful relief from the constant pre-occupation of the war is +over, we may expect to see it in full blast. It would have been easy +here to repeat some of the current discontents of the day, all of +which will have their legitimate hearing in future discussion. But +this is not the moment, nor is mine the pen. We are but just emerging +from the shadow of that peril from which the British and Imperial +Armies--bone of our bone and flesh or our flesh--have saved us. Let us +now, if ever, praise the "famous men" of the war, and gather into our +hearts the daily efforts, the countless sacrifices of countless +thousands, in virtue of which we now live our quiet lives. + +Nor have I dwelt much upon the terrible background of the whole scene, +the physical horror, the anguish and suffering of war. Our noblest +dead, to judge from the most impassioned and inspired utterances of +the men who have suffered for us, would bid us indeed remember these +things,--remember them with all the intensity of which we are +capable--but with few words. They never counted the cost, though they +knew it well; and what they set out to do, they have done. + +Let us then, at this particular moment, dwell, above all, on _the +thing achieved_. To that end, a few colossal figures must still be +added to those already given. Since the beginning of the war, the +total forces employed by the British Empire in the various theatres of +war, have amounted to a total of _eight million, six hundred and +fifty-four thousand_ (24 per cent of the total white male population), +of which the United Kingdom supplied 5,704,416 (25.36 per cent), and +the Dominions, and Colonies, 1,425,864. The Indian and Coloured troops +amounted to 1,524,000. If the Navy, the Merchant Service, and the men +and women employed in various auxiliary military services at home are +added, the total recruiting effort of the Empire reaches to much more +than _ten millions_. + +As to the financial part of this country in the war, by March 22nd, +1919, the war expenditure of Great Britain had reached a total of +L9,482,442,482, of which rather more than _two thousand five hundred +millions_ have been raised by taxation. Included in this total are +sums amounting to L1,683,500,000, lent to our Allies and Dominions. +For the total casualties of the war, in an earlier chapter I have +given the approximate figures so far as they can as yet be +ascertained, amounting to at least some _twenty millions_. At such +appalling cost then, in death, suffering and that wealth which +represents the accumulated labour of men, have the liberties of Europe +been rescued from the German attack. We are victors indeed; we have +won to the shore; but the wreck of the tempest lies all round us; and +what is the future to be? + +It is four months now, since, in the splendid rooms of the Villa +Murat, I listened to President Wilson describing the sitting of the +Conference at which the Resolution was passed constituting the League +of Nations--four months big with human fate. The terms of peace are +published, and at the present moment no one knows whether Germany will +sign them or no. The League of Nations is in existence. It has a home, +a Constitution, a Secretariat. But the outlook over Europe is still +dark and troubled, and the inner League of Three is still the surest +ground in the chaos, the starting-point of the future. The Peace Terms +are no final solution--how could they be? On their practical +execution, on their adaptation year by year to the new world coming +into being, all will depend. German militarism has met its doom. The +triumph of the Allies is more absolute than any of them could have +dreamed four years ago. Nor can the German crime ever be forgotten in +this generation, or the German peril ignored. The whole civilised +world must be--will be--the shield of France should any fresh outrage +threaten her. But after justice comes mercy. Because Germany has shown +herself a criminal nation, not all Germans are criminal. That same +British Army which as it fought its victorious way through the German +defences in the last four months of the war, and, while it fought the +enemy, fed and succoured at the same time 800,000 French +civilians--men and officers dividing their rations with starving women +and children, and in every pause of fighting, spending all their +energies in comforting the weak, the hungry, and the sick:--that very +Army is sorry now for the German women and children, as it sees them +in the German towns. It is our own soldiers who have been demanding +food and pity. + +The Allies, indeed, have been for some time sending food to their +starving enemies. Mr. Hoover--all honour to the great man!--is +ceaselessly at work. If only no hitch in the Peace interrupts the +food-trains and the incoming ships, so that no more children die! + +Some modifications in the Peace Terms would, clearly, be accepted by +the public opinion of the Allied countries. No one, I believe, who has +seen the Lens district, and the deliberate and cruel destruction of +the French industrial north, will feel many qualms about the Saar +valley. We may hold a personal opinion that it might have been wiser +for France in her own interests to claim the coal only. But it is for +France to decide, and it will be for the League of Nations to watch +over the solution she has insisted on, in the common interest. But +concessions as to Upper Silesia and East Prussia would be received, I +have little doubt, with general relief and assent; and the common +sense of Europe will certainly see both the wisdom and expediency of +setting German industry to work again as speedily as possible, and of +so arranging and facilitating the payment of her huge money debt to +the Allies that it should not weigh too intolerably on the life of an +unborn generation--an innocent generation, who will grow up, as it is, +inevitably, under one of the darkest shadows ever cast by history. + +Meanwhile now that the just and stern verdict of Europe has been given +on the war and its authors, the second and greater half of the Allied +task remains. Vast questions are left to the League of Nations, +outside the Peace; the re-settlement, politically, of large tracts of +Europe; the whole problem of disarmament, involving the future of +British and American sea-power; the responsibilities of America in +Europe; the economic adjustment of the world. But perhaps the greatest +problem of all is the ethical one. How long shall we keep our wrath? +Germany has done things in this war which shame civilisation, and seem +to make a mockery of all ideas of human progress. But yet!--we must +still believe in them; or the sun will go out in heaven. We must still +believe that in the long run hatred kills the civilised mind, and to +put it at its lowest, is a mortal waste of human energies. Has +Christianity, swathed as it is in half-decayed beliefs, any longer +power to help us? Yet whatever else in the Christian system is +breaking down, the Christian idea of a common fellowship of man holds +the field as never before. And both the Christian idea and common +sense tell us that till there is again some sort of international life +in Europe, Europe will be unsound and her wounds unhealed. We call it +impossible. But the good man, the just man, the merciful man is still +among us, and-- + + "What he wills, he does; and does so much + That proof is called impossibility." + +MARY A. WARD. + + + + +APPENDIX[14] + +A CHART OR DIAGRAM OF THE WAR PROM JANUARY, 1916, TO THE ARMISTICE, +WITH AN EXPLANATION + + [14] As I have already stated, in a footnote, I owe permission to + publish this small reproduction of an interesting and unique + document to the kindness of Lieut.-General the Hon. Sir Herbert + Lawrence, K.C.B., etc., Chief of the General Staff. + + + + +APPENDIX + +EXPLANATION OF CHART[15] + + [15] [My readers will be as grateful as I am to Captain W.O. Barton, + lately at work at G.H.Q., for this vivid explanation of the Chart.] + + +THE CHART.--This Chart is a small scale reproduction of one used and +corrected from day to day at British G.H.Q. in France. It shows +graphically the actual position at any given date of the British +forces in FIGHTING STRENGTH, FRONT HELD, and HEAVY GUN POWER: when big +operations are in progress it gives at a glance the number of CASUALTIES +incurred and PRISONERS taken, perhaps the surest indication of the +measure of success gained. Owing to the size of the reproduction, the +horizontal scale lines of the original Chart cannot be given. To +calculate a number at any particular date from the Chart as reproduced, +it is only necessary to measure with a rule the height of the desired +line at the given date. Reference to the appropriate numerical scale at +the side will then give the number. + +1916, STRENGTH AND FRONT.--Begin with the FRONT and FIGHTING STRENGTH +lines. The _Strength_ line tells the Commander his actual numbers (by +reference to scale 2), but he needs more. He looks at the line +representing _Front_ and marks the proportion it bears to _Fighting +Strength_. Measure these lines in mid-June, 1916. Since January, FRONT +(scale 1) has expanded by about one-fifth--from 67 to 90 miles. The +Chart shows the reason. But meanwhile _Fighting Strength_, then the +vital factor for attack, has risen from 470,000 to 680,000, nearly +one-half. The Army has been built up by new Divisions for the great +Somme offensive. + +CASUALTIES.--The battle opens. The red line of casualties leaps into +prominence and, with its ascent, STRENGTH falls. Reinforcements are +needed. They arrive to replace casualties, and STRENGTH goes up again. +So through the long conflict these lines act and react. Ground is won, +but hardly and at great cost: the ascent of the Front line is slow. + +PRISONERS.--What are the enemy losses? How are his men fighting? The +PRISONERS line (scale 5) tells best. Gradually the proportion of +prisoners to (British) casualties increases: his casualties are +growing, his resistance becoming less effective: the wearing-out +process tells. Mark the concluding phases of the Somme battle. The +PRISONERS line is nearer to that of casualties. The Tank has been +introduced, and here is ocular evidence of its effectiveness. More +tanks is one of the lessons of the lines. + +1917, ARRAS.--The Somme fighting ends. Again our armies are built up, +until the 760,000 point is reached. FRONT, increased to nearly 120 +miles by a relief of French troops, falls again to 105, owing to the +German retirement about ARRAS. Heavy guns have increased from just +over 300 to 1,500. Again our armies are ready, and the Battle of ARRAS +opens the ALLIED SPRING OFFENSIVE. It is immediately effective, for +casualties never reach the same height as in the Somme, and prisoners +are much more numerous. The lines for the two battles show the +difference vividly. But mark the big curve downward of the STRENGTH +line. Casualties are now not so easily replaced. + +MESSINES, YPRES, PASSCHENDAELE.--Before STRENGTH is fully restored the +Messines ridge is rent with mines (June 7th) and taken. July is +devoted to preparation: STRENGTH reaches its zenith, guns still +increase, and on July 31st the Battle of YPRES opens the great +northern offensive. Fighting is bitter, and more costly than at Arras; +CASUALTIES are at first high in relation to prisoners, but the +PRISONERS line, as in the Somme, but more consistently, tends upward. +The German is not "sticking" the terrible conditions and fierce +fighting so well as the Britisher. + +CAMBRAI.--Then, in December, comes our surprise attack at Cambrai: it +is effective, for PRISONERS nearly approaches CASUALTIES. LINE +increases, owing to the salient formed by the British advance. Then, +the _German_ counter-attack, with CASUALTIES high, PRISONERS few, and +LINE decreasing. The Germans have reduced the salient made by our +attack. + +ITALY'S PLIGHT.--But meanwhile, the enemy has struck at Italy, and +Italy, reeling under his blows, is clamant for aid. Division after +Division hurries off! STRENGTH falls, never again to ascend. The +handicap is permanent. + +1918. With STRENGTH almost at its lowest since 1916, after a year of +ceaseless fighting and heavy casualties, with five Divisions diverted +to Italy, miles of FRONT have to be taken over from the French. Line +held reaches its maximum, 130 miles. _Fighting strength_ has fallen by +mid-March--when Divisions have been reorganised from 12 to 9 +battalions, owing to the dwindling of reinforcements--to 580,000. + +THE GERMAN THRUSTS.--The Chart has shown when we might attack. Now it +gives the warning to expect attack. Now, if ever, is Germany's moment, +and her first great blow falls on March 21st--the thrust at Amiens. +CASUALTIES soar to a height never before approached. The red line +predominates--STRENGTH falls and falls. Divisions are summoned from +Italy and Egypt. The second German blow falls on the Lys. CASUALTIES +are again immense, though not so high as in the first attack. STRENGTH +falls again. The Lys salient increases the line held, but by the end +of May the Line is firm throughout. Some few thousand Americans for a +time reinforce the war-weary British Divisions; but the Portuguese +cease to be reckoned in our _fighting strength_, though still in +France. Reorganisation follows. STRENGTH is built up a little, though +CASUALTIES are still heavy. The IXth Corps is fighting fiercely on the +French Front to stem the Paris Thrust in May, and four British +Divisions help in Foch's July counter-thrust. Guns, despite our losses +to the enemy, have again increased. Guns are now more easily replaced +than men. + +THE FINAL PHASES.--Then the final phase. With decreased FIGHTING +STRENGTH but with abundant GUNS (and, be it added, Tanks), we strike +our first great blow in the Battle of Amiens on August 8th. STRENGTH +falls abruptly, CASUALTIES are many, but high above the casualty line +soars--for the first time--the line of PRISONERS. The toll taken of +the German armies increases, as Bapaume and the Scarpe swiftly follow +Amiens. + +THE VITAL LINE.--Now the PRISONERS line has become vital. Consider the +position in December before what is, perhaps, the decisive battle of +the world war, the breaking of the Hindenburg line. GUNS are ever +increasing, LINE has fallen somewhat, but lower even than in the dark +days of spring has fallen the line of FIGHTING STRENGTH. To the +General, studying this line alone, attack upon a position vaunted as +impregnable would seem sheer madness. But he sees the Chart as a +whole, with the PRISONERS line dominating everything in its sustained +height. The enemy's total casualties are incalculable; never have ours +been so few in comparison with prisoners taken: the hammering of +previous years has borne fruit: the German _morale_, such is the +lesson of the line, has gone irretrievably. + +THE GREAT DECISION.--So, despite his own weakness, despite heavy +losses not made good, the Commander takes the great decision and +stakes all. He strikes, lets loose the tempest of his guns, and his +infantry, diminished but indomitable, sweep through the vast +fortresses of the Hindenburg line, hurl the enemy from defence after +defence, pass from victory to victory. + +Such is the story of the Chart. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Fields of Victory, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIELDS OF VICTORY *** + +***** This file should be named 13827.txt or 13827.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/8/2/13827/ + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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