diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:48:08 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:48:08 -0700 |
| commit | 48cdb904fad8a49d4ce8b74815b3fac34f12c792 (patch) | |
| tree | cafa5c6f0fdefe2faf836ff7c9fefb42bf9bba1f | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-8.txt | 5285 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 124756 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 1012266 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/16089-h.htm | 5542 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img1.jpg | bin | 0 -> 37303 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img1h.jpg | bin | 0 -> 88137 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img2.jpg | bin | 0 -> 36152 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img2h.jpg | bin | 0 -> 86187 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img3.jpg | bin | 0 -> 29803 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img3h.jpg | bin | 0 -> 70924 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img4.jpg | bin | 0 -> 35518 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img4h.jpg | bin | 0 -> 116465 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img5.jpg | bin | 0 -> 36562 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img5h.jpg | bin | 0 -> 86121 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img6.jpg | bin | 0 -> 34410 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img6h.jpg | bin | 0 -> 105358 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img7.jpg | bin | 0 -> 35631 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089-h/images/img7h.jpg | bin | 0 -> 84765 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089.txt | 5285 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 16089.zip | bin | 0 -> 124699 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
23 files changed, 16128 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/16089-8.txt b/16089-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..409f9a1 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5285 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The War on All Fronts: England's Effort +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: The War on All Fronts: England's Effort + Letters to an American Friend + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Commentator: Joseph H. Choate + +Release Date: June 18, 2005 [EBook #16089] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR ON ALL FRONTS: *** + + + + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Christine +D and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Transcriber's notes: Original spelling retained, original copyright +information retained, italics are indicated by underscores.] + + +Volume II + +England's Effort + +Letters To An American Friend + +[Illustration: Spring-time in the North Sea--Snow on a British +Battleship.] + + + + +_The War On All Fronts_ + + +England's Effort + +Letters To An American Friend + +By Mrs. Humphry Ward + +With A Preface By Joseph H. Choate + + +Illustrated + + +New York Charles Scribner's Sons 1918 + +Copyright, 1916, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + + + +Preface + +HAS ENGLAND DONE ALL SHE COULD? + + +That is the question which Mrs. Ward, replying to some doubts and queries +of an American friend, has undertaken to answer in this series of letters, +and every one who reads them will admit that her answer is as complete and +triumphant as it is thrilling. Nobody but a woman, an Englishwoman of warm +heart, strong brain, and vivid power of observation, could possibly have +written these letters which reflect the very soul of England since this +wicked and cruel war began. She has unfolded and interpreted to us, as no +one else, I think, has even attempted to do, the development and absolute +transformation of English men and women, which, has enabled them, living +and dying, to secure for their proud nation under God that "new birth of +freedom" which Lincoln at Gettysburg prophesied for his own countrymen. +Really the cause is the same, to secure the selfsame thing, "that +government of the people, by the people, and for the people may not perish +from the earth";--and if any American wishes to know how this has been +accomplished, he must read these letters, which were written expressly for +our enlightenment. + +Mrs. Ward had marvellous qualifications for this patriotic task. The +granddaughter of Doctor Arnold and the niece of Matthew Arnold, from +childhood up she has been as deeply interested in politics and in public +affairs as she has been in literature, by which she has attained such +world-wide fame, and next to English politics, in American politics and +American opinion. She has been a staunch believer in the greatness of +America's future, and has maintained close friendship with leaders of +public thought on both sides of the water. Her only son is a member of +Parliament, and is fighting in the war, just as all the able-bodied men +she knows are doing. + +She has received from the English government special opportunities of +seeing what England has been doing in the war, and has been allowed to go +with her daughter where few English men and no other women have been +allowed to go, to see the very heart of England's preparedness. She has +visited, since the war began, the British fleet, the very key of the whole +situation, without whose unmatched power and ever-increasing strength the +Allies at the outset must have succumbed. She has watched, always under +the protection and guidance of that wonderful new Minister of Munitions, +Lloyd George, the vast activity of that ministry throughout the country, +and finally in a motor tour of five hundred miles, through the zone of the +English armies in France, she has seen with her own eyes, that marvellous +organization of everything that goes to make and support a great army, +which England has built up in the course of eighteen months behind her +fighting line. She has witnessed within three-quarters of a mile of the +fighting line, with a gas helmet at hand, ready to put on, a German +counter attack after a successful English advance something which no +other woman, except herself and her daughter, who accompanied her, has +ever had the opportunity to see. + +Mrs. Ward admits that at the beginning England was unprepared, which +itself demonstrated that as a Nation she never wished for war with +Germany, and never expected it. Her countrymen had no faith in Lord +Roberts's ten-year-long agitation for universal national service, based on +the portentous growth of the German army and navy. She never knew of any +hatred of Germany in the country. On the contrary, she realized what +England and all the rest of the world owed to Germany in so many ways. + +England was not absolutely unprepared in the sense that the United States +is unprepared, even for self-defence from external attack, but except for +the fleet and her little expeditionary force, England had neither men nor +equipment equal to the fighting of a great Continental war. + +The wholly unexpected news of the invasion of Belgium aroused the whole +country to realize that war on a scale never known before had come, and, +as the firing upon Fort Sumter awakened America, convinced England that +she must fight to the death for her liberties, unready as she was;--but +Mr. Balfour, the First Lord of the Admiralty, says that, since the war +began, she has added one million to the tonnage of her navy, and has +doubled its personnel, and is adding more every day. + +In the matter of munitions the story that Mrs. Ward tells is wonderful, +almost beyond belief. Much had been done in the first eight months of the +war, in the building of munition shops, and the ordering of vast +quantities from abroad, before the second battle of Ypres, in April, 1915, +which led to the formation of the new Coalition Ministry, including a +wholly new department, the Ministry of Munitions, with Mr. Lloyd George at +its head. + +From that time to this the work has been colossal, and almost incredible, +and without serious collision with the working classes. Vast new buildings +have been erected all over England, and a huge staff, running into +thousands, set in action. The new Minister has set out with determination +to get the thing done at whatever cost, and to remove all obstacles that +he found in his way. The Government has absolutely taken control of the +whole work of the creation of munitions and the regulation of workmen, +employed in it by whatever employers, and everything and everybody has had +to submit to his imperious will, and the greatest change of all has been +the employment of women on a vast scale to do the work that only men had +ever done before. France had set about it immediately after the battle of +the Marne, and allowed no Frenchman to remain idle who could do such work. + +Mrs. Ward does not fail to do full justice to the working men of Great +Britain, and shows that besides the hundreds of thousands that they have +sent to the fighting line, a million and a half remained at work in the +shops, creating munitions with the aid of skilled experts and the +astonishing help of the women, who never before had expected to have +anything to do with guns and shells, with bombs, rifles, and machine-guns. +The old ways were laid aside, old distinctions of class and sex +forgotten, and all worked with a common and indomitable will for the +saving of the country. + +To give a single instance, what was a few months ago a smiling pasture is +now found covered with vast buildings, in which these manufactures are +carried on by thirty-five hundred working people, of whom a large +proportion are women. I love to quote a single sentence from the utterance +of her companion on a visit to this establishment: "As to the women, they +are saving the country. They don't mind what they do. Hours? They work ten +and a half, or, with overtime, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. The +Government are insisting on one Sunday, or two Sundays a month off. I +don't say they aren't right, but the women resent it. 'We're not tired,' +they say. And look at them! They are not tired." + +This unheard-of spectacle of great engineering establishments filled with +women, all hard at work, is a sure proof of the undying purpose of the +whole English race. They are mostly young and comely, and their beauty of +form and feature is only enhanced by their enthusiasm for their labors, +and at the same time it has increased the ardor and intensity of their +fellow workmen. Mrs. Ward found four thousand women to five thousand men +engaged in this nation-saving labor, in a single establishment. They know +that they are setting the skilled laborers free for work which women +cannot do, and the unskilled in large numbers free for the army. + +Every building, as well as every man and woman, that could be put to the +work, has been availed of, and the results have been incredible. Another +instance she gives of special interest: "An old warehouse, bought, so to +speak, overnight, and equipped next morning, has been turned into a small +workshop for shell production, employing between three and four hundred +girls with the number of skilled men necessary to keep the new unskilled +labor going. These girls are working on the eight-hours' shift system; +working so well that a not uncommon wage among them, on piece-work, of +course, runs to somewhere between two and three pounds a week," and all +the time they are at work they remember that they are doing common service +with their husbands, and sweethearts, and sons, and brothers, who are +perilling their lives in the trenches. + +None of this distinguished writer's romances compare in vivid description +and heart-inspiring eloquence with these accounts that she gives of what +she has seen with her own eyes of the resurrection of England. + +It is not for me to anticipate her startling and thrilling narratives on +this subject. She takes for her text what Mr. Lloyd George said in his +speech in the House of Commons on reviewing his new department: "Unless we +quicken our movements, damnation will fall on the sacred cause for which +so much gallant blood has flowed," and Mr. Asquith's serious words in +December: "We cannot go on," said he, "depending upon foreign countries +for our munitions. We haven't the ships to spare to bring them home, and +the cost is too great. We must make them ourselves." + +Mrs. Ward dwells with keen insight upon the difficulties met with among +the trade-unions and labor people, and successfully overcome, and explains +in full what they call over there the work of the Dilution Commissioners, +which is a wholly new phrase for us, and she gives this clear definition: +"Dilution means, of course, that under the sharp analysis of necessity, +much engineering work, generally reckoned as 'skilled' work, and reserved +to 'skilled' workmen by a number of union regulations, is seen to be +capable of solution into various processes, some of which can be sorted +out from the others, as within the capacity of the unskilled, or +semiskilled worker. By so dividing them up and using superior labor with +economy, only where it is really necessary, it can be made to go +infinitely further, and the inferior, or untrained, labor can then be +brought into work where nobody supposed it could be used; where, in fact, +it never has been used." This novel experiment, together with the equally +novel employment of women in such work, soon proved a triumphant success, +and the women proved themselves able to do the work of men, some of it +even better. There were, of course, difficulties at first, but the +mischief, whatever it was, was quickly cured, and in one factory that Mrs. +Ward names, "men and women soon began to do their best. The output of the +factory, which had been planned for four thousand shells a week, ran up to +twenty thousand, and everything has gone smoothly since." + +The adaptation of firms and factories, already existing, the control of +which was taken by the Government, was wonderful, but the national +shell-factories, founded, financed, and run by the Ministry of Munitions, +are more wonderful still, and give us many new ideas about government +ownership in an emergency, which we may sometimes have to think of more +seriously. The speed, the efficiency, the success of the new system have +been marvellous, so that in the short space of a year the demands of Mr. +Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith have been satisfied, and England will depend +no more upon foreign contracts and foreign supplies for her ammunition, +but will be able not only to manufacture all she can use herself, but to +help to supply her Allies. + +In one department of labor, it is a very startling thing to learn that "in +a single fuse factory, what they call the danger buildings, mostly women +are employed. About five hundred women are found at work in one of these +factories on different processes connected with the delicate mechanism and +filling of the fuse and gaine, some of which is really dangerous, like +detonator work." It is the insertion in the shell of the little pellet +which gives it its death-dealing power, that is so risky, but the women do +not shrink from even this. In the largest fuse shop known, quite new, +fourteen hundred girls, in one shift, are at work. + +"An endless spectacle of gun-carriages, naval turrets, torpedo-tubes, army +railway-carriages, small Hotchkiss guns for merchant ships, tool-making +shops, gauge shops, seems to be going on forever, and in the tool-making +shops the output has risen from forty-four thousand to three million a +year." The vastness of the work, and the incessant and enormous +multiplication of all the products for war must be as overwhelming as it +is monotonous. And then there were the huge shipyards, which before the +war were capable of the berth of twenty ships at once, from the largest +battleship downward, and which, as we have already had Mr. Balfour's word +for it, have since the beginning of the war added a million tons to the +navy, but Mrs. Ward in her rapid journeys had not time to stop and inspect +these, to our very great regret, for her description of them would have +been most instructive. + +She declares from actual observation that in the Clyde district, in whose +populous centre some threats of disquiet have existed, the work done by +thousands and tens of thousands of workmen since the beginning of the war, +especially in the great shipyards, and done with the heartiest and most +self-sacrificing good-will, has been simply invaluable to the nation, and +will never be forgotten, and the invasion of women there has, perhaps, +been more startling to the workmen than anywhere else. Where not a single +woman was employed in the works and factories before the war, except in +textiles, "there will soon be fifteen thousand of them in the munition +workshops alone, and that will not be the end." + +Wherever she goes, Mrs. Ward's eyes are wide open. From her own home, +which is in the midst of one of the most patriotic regions of the realm, +she can witness the perpetual activity which has come about in preparation +for the war in all its varied phases and branches; everything and +everybody is in vigorous motion, both there and in all the counties of +England which she has visited. Great camps in every direction for the +shelter and training of recruits, all coming and going, all marching and +countermarching, training and drilling everywhere, and as fast as the +citizen is converted into a soldier, he is bound for the seat of war with +all the equipments that war requires, tramping everywhere, tramp, tramp, +along the land; tramp, tramp, along the sea, until the new supports, all +ready for vital service, reach their destination on French soil. + +Mrs. Ward has made a careful study of the effect of the novel introduction +of women into all these works of men, especially in the munition +factories, and dwells with great significance upon the rapidity of the +women's piece-work and the mingling of classes, where educated and refined +girls work side by side and very happily with those of an humbler type. +What Mrs. Ward well calls "the common spirit" inspires them all, and holds +them all in just and equal relations. At every step she is startled by the +vastness of the work and the immense hand that women have in it, finding +one shop turning out about four thousand shrapnel and four thousand +high-explosive shells per week, heavy shell work all, which they thought +at first they must furnish men to lift in and out of the machines, but +"the women thrust the men aside in five minutes." Surely this new +education of women, of these girls and women who are to become the mothers +of the next generation, must have a most inspiring and exalting effect +upon the days to come. War may be postponed for whole generations, but +England will never fail to be ready for it as a necessary part of the +education of the race. + +It is quite evident that this war is breaking down the barriers that have +heretofore been impassable, not only between men and women, but between +the various classes of society, and that it cannot possibly end without +bringing these more closely together, all working to the same end in a +more perfect harmony, and that the result of it must be that England will +hereafter be an even more perfect democracy than it has been up to this +time. + +France! Glorious France! The conduct of whose government and people in the +war seems to have been absolutely perfect, has at last reached a wonderful +result after her hundred years of agonies and revolutions. We hear from +France no complaints, no internal dissensions, but all the people, mankind +and womankind, working together, each in its proper sphere, to the one +common end, the salvation of the State. I trust that we shall never +forget all that the world and we, especially, owe to France. She is adding +to our obligations now by fighting our battles for us. + +And now with her daughter under the special protection and guidance of the +war office, this distinguished woman followed the khaki-clad soldiers of +England, now numbered by millions, across the channel, and everything was +thrown freely open to her. She soon found out what the great supply bases, +on which the British army in France rests, really mean, made up of the +Army Ordnance, Army Service, Army Medical, Railroad, Motor, and Transport, +and she found it a deeply interesting study, "whose work has involved the +labor of some of the best brains in the army," and she learned the +organizing power that has gone to make the career of the English army in +France possible. + +There was the immense dock, and its vast storehouse, the largest in the +world, "built three years before the war, partly, it is said, by German +money, to house the growing cotton trade of the port, but now it houses a +large proportion of the food of the British army," a building half a mile +long, bounded on one side by the docks, where the ships discharge the +stores and the men, and on the other by the railway lines where the trains +are perpetually loading for the front. On the quays ships of all nations, +except Germany, are pouring out their stores, and on the other side the +trucks that are going to the front are loading with the supplies that are +wanted for every regiment in the service. Her eyes light upon one wired in +space, labelled "Medical Comforts," and generally known as "The Cage," +where, while medical necessaries are housed elsewhere, are "the dainties, +the special foods, the easing appliances of all kinds," which are to make +life bearable to the wounded men, and she stops to think how the shade of +Florence Nightingale would have paused at this spot. + +The huge sheds of Army Ordnance are filled with everything that a soldier +does not eat, all metal stores, whatever, and the men who work in them are +housed in one of the longest sheds in tiers of bunks from floor to +ceiling, and then there are the repairing sheds and workshops, established +near by, and that is the most wonderful thing of the whole to my +mind--never done before in connection with an army in the field. Trainsful +of articles to be repaired come down from the front every day, and almost +every imaginable article that the men at the front can use, from guns to +boots, comes here to be repaired, or if found beyond repair, to be sent to +Yorkshire for shoddy. The marvellous thing is that, as soon as they are +received, they are repaired and made nearly as good as new and returned +to their owners at the front, a vast work in itself. The boot and uniform +sheds alone, where again she finds five hundred French women and girls, +and the harness-making room are doing an enormous work. The Colonel in +charge began work with one hundred and forty men, and is now employing +more than a thousand, and his repairing sheds are saving thousands of +pounds a week to the British government. + +Recreation and amusement are supplied in near locality for the waiting +soldiers and, although the snow is more than ankle-deep, they visit such +places as recreation rooms and cinema theaters, and on a neighboring hill +great troops of men are going through some of the last refinements of +drill before they start for the front. Here are trenches of all kinds and +patterns, in which the men may practise, planned according to the latest +experience brought from the front. "The instructors are all men returned +from the front, and the new recruits, trained up to this last point, would +not be patient of any other teachers." + +Having thus seen all that one day could afford them at the very base of +the great army, our visitors make their way in closed motors through the +snow, passing scores of motor lorries, and other wagons, stuck in the +snow-drifts. They stop for the night at a pleasant hotel full of +officers, mostly English, belonging to the Lines of Communication, and a +few of the mothers and sisters of the poor wounded in the neighboring +hospitals, who have come over to nurse them. + +Every gun, every particle of munition, clothing, and equipment, and +whatever else is necessary, including the food of the armies, every horse, +every vehicle, has to be brought across the British channel, to maintain +and reinforce the ever-growing British army, and the ever-daily increasing +congestion at all the ports makes it more and more difficult every day to +receive, disembark, accommodate, and forward the multitude of men and the +masses of material, and all the time there are thousands of troops passing +through, thousands in the hospitals, and thousands at work on the docks +and storehouses. Everything tending to Tommy Atkins's comfort is supplied, +including again palatial cinemas and concerts, all of which results in +excellent behavior and the best of relations between the British soldier +and the French inhabitants. At the docks armies of laborers and lines of +ships discharging men, horses, timber, rations, fodder, coal, coke, +petrol, and the same at the storehouses and depots. + +The visitors spend a long Sunday morning in the motor transport depot, and +it gave a good illustration of the complete system of discipline and +organization that prevailed everywhere. This depot began, said the Colonel +in charge, on the 13th of August, 1914, "with a few balls of string and a +bag of nails." Its present staff is about five hundred. All the drivers of +twenty thousand motor vehicles are tested here, and the depot exhibits +three hundred and fifty different types of vehicles, and in round figures, +one hundred thousand separate parts are now dealt with, stored, and +arranged in this same depot. The Sunday morning began with a simple +service in the Young Men's Christian Association hut, at which five +hundred motor-drivers attended, about half of the whole number in the +station. + +The same day they explored endless camps and the wards of a Red Cross +hospital. It was impossible to take in everything at once, and our ladies +retired at night, bewildered by mingled impressions of "human energy, +human intelligence, human suffering," but full of pride and exultation at +the efficiency of their country and of the good relations of their +soldiers with the French. They carried with them as a last impression of +the day the picture of a canteen worked day and night in three shifts by a +heroic band of women close by the railway station, full of soldiers just +departing for the front, young, gay and full of spirits; then came the +train to take the soldiers off for the fighting line, and the women, left +behind, set up the song, already familiar in the Midlands, "Keep the home +fires burning till the boys come home." + +In the village where they stopped, some forty miles from the actual front, +a special messenger from the general headquarters brings the amazing news +that General Headquarters invites Mrs. Ward and her daughter for two days, +and will send a motor for them, if they accept, which, of course, they did +upon the instant, looking forward with eagerness to the great mysteries of +the front, its camps, its men, and its hospitals, that they were to see +with their own eyes to-morrow. + +The remainder of the day before they are to start for the front suffices +for the visit to a camp set down in one of the pleasantest spots in +France, a favorite haunt of French artists before the war, now occupied by +a British reinforcement camp, the trees having all been cut away, by long +lines of hospitals, by a convalescent depot, and by the training grounds, +to which we have already referred. + +I must copy the bare catalogue of what this vast camp contained: "Sleeping +and mess quarters for those belonging to the new armies; sixteen hospitals +with twenty-one thousand beds" (and this shows now what it was to be near +the front); "rifle ranges; training camps; a vast laundry, worked by +French women under British organization, which washes for all the +hospitals thirty thousand pieces a day; recreation huts of every possible +kind; a cinema theatre seating eight hundred men, with performances twice +a day; nurses clubs; officers clubs; a supply depot for food; an ordnance +depot for everything that is not food; railroad sidings on which every +kind of man and thing can go out and come in without interruption; a +convalescents' depot of two thousand patients; and a convalescent horse +depot of two thousand horses; all this in one camp, established since last +April." + +Ah! But the deepest impression left on the minds of our ladies is of the +terrible sufferings in the hospitals, of the smiling endurance with which +they were borne, of the timely skill, pity, and devotion of the doctors +and nurses, taking care of the twenty thousand wounded. Realizing the +sympathy of America with all these scenes and sufferings, they do not fail +to note the hospitals organized by the Universities of Chicago and of +Harvard, staffed by American sisters and doctors, each providing +thirty-four doctors and eighty nurses, and dealing with a thousand +patients, and a convalescent depot of two thousand beds. Every day the +ambulance train comes in, and splendid hospital ships are taking the +brave wounded back to England for home and rest. + +And now came the day in which they were to motor forty miles to be the +guests of the G.H.Q. Soon they seemed to be in the midst of the battle, +"our own guns were thundering away behind us, and the road was more and +more broken up by shell holes." The British lines are just beyond, +cottages close by, and the German lines just in front of a wood near them, +three-quarters of a mile away. Already they had been nearer than any +woman, even a nurse, had been in this war, to the actual fighting on the +English line, and the cup of impressions was full. They actually saw the +brave boys whom they had passed an hour before, sitting in the fields +waiting for orders, now marching into the trenches to take their turn +there--they knew that they were marching into the jaws of death, but they +walked as quietly and as cheerfully as if they were going to a parade, the +guns crashing close by them all the time. The firing being too hot for the +women, the captain in charge of them was relieved when they elected to +turn back. + +The next day, their second as guests of G.H.Q., as they came down from +breakfast, our ladies were surprised to find the motor at the door, a +simple lunch being packed up, and gas-helmets got ready for them to use, +for the captain greeted them in the best of spirits with the news that a +very successful action had been fought that morning, "we had taken back +some trenches on the Ypres-Comines Canal that we lost, a little while ago, +and captured about two hundred prisoners; and if we go off at once we +shall be in time to see the German counter attack." The one impossible +thing for any woman ever to have hoped to see! + +Somehow or other they very quickly got to the very post of danger. Soon +they got close to the Tower of Ypres, which Mrs. Ward well describes as +"mute witness of a crime that beyond the reparation of our own day, +history will revenge through years to come." Then the English guns spoke, +and they watched and saw the columns of white smoke rising from the German +lines as the shells burst. The German lines are right in sight, and soon +their shells begin to burst on the English trenches. The German counter +attack is on. All the famous sites of the early part of the war are then +in sight, but all they can fully see is the bursting German shells, as +from moment to moment they explode. + +In her final letter Mrs. Ward shows other great efforts which Great +Britain has made since the war began; that the taxes imposed for the +support of the war and cheerfully borne demand a fourth part of his income +from every well-to-do citizen; that five hundred million sterling, or +twenty-five hundred million dollars have been already lent by Britain to +her allies, a colossal portion of her income; that she has spent at the +yearly rate of three thousand million dollars on the army, a thousand +million dollars on the navy, while the munition department is costing +about four hundred million sterling, and is employing close upon two +million workers, one-tenth, I think, women; that the export trade of the +country, in spite of submarines and lack of tonnage, is at this moment +greater than it was in the corresponding months of 1913; she has raised an +army of four millions of men, and will get all she wants. + +What is more precious than all the rest, besides the vast amount of +treasure that she has lavished upon the war, besides the rich mansions in +all parts of the land that she has devoted to the uses of the sick and the +wounded, she has given thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands of her +choicest youth, who have willingly surrendered their lives for the great +cause; young men of the noblest pedigree, without number, by their lives +and deaths have attested their right to be regarded as the flower of the +British youth; the professional classes and the universities have emptied +their halls so that the men of Oxford and Cambridge might take their +places with the rest, and offer up their lives as willing sacrifices, and +all the men of England of every degree have joined with them and been +welcomed as brothers in the ranks for the great sacrifice. The rank and +file, who are fighting and dying for England, are fighting in the same +spirit as their leaders and falling by the hundred thousand for the +nation's salvation. How exactly Emerson's noble verse fits them: + + "So nigh is grandeur to our dust, + So near is God to man, + When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' + The youth replies, 'I can!'" + +No one who reads this book can doubt for a moment, I think, that ENGLAND +HAS DONE ALL SHE COULD, has put forth efforts worthy of her history and of +her great traditions, that her national spirit is invincible, her national +resources inexhaustible, and that her irresistible will to conquer and to +rescue freedom and civilization for all the world from this terrible +contest, is absolutely sure to win. + +All America is vastly indebted to Mrs. Ward for her triumphant success in +proving that England has done her best and for making this great story so +clear. + +In this introduction, too hastily prepared for want of time, which is +really little better than a synopsis of the book itself, I have not +hesitated to use her own language from beginning to end, as the clearest +by which to express and condense her narrative, and with occasional +indications by quotation marks. + +I still believe absolutely that nine-tenths of my countrymen are in +earnest sympathy with the Allies and are confident of their final and +complete success. + +JOSEPH H. CHOATE. + +NEW YORK, May 19th, 1916. + + + + +Author's Foreword + + +This little book was the outcome of an urgent call from America sent by +various friends whose whole sympathy is with the Allies. I have done my +best to meet it, in four strenuous months, during which the British +Government has given me every possible facility. But such work has to be +done rapidly, and despatched rapidly. I beg my friends, and England's +friends, beyond the Atlantic, to excuse its defects. I can honestly say, +however, that I have done my best to get at the facts, and that everything +which is here put forward rests upon independent enquiry, so far as the +limit of time allowed. + +The title has caused me much trouble! Will any son of gallant Scotland, or +loyalist Ireland, or of those great Dominions, whose share in the war has +knit them closer than ever to the Mother Country--should he come across +this little book--forgive me that I have finally chosen "England" to stand +for us all? "Gott strafe England!" has been the German cry of hate. I have +given what I conceive to be "England's" reply. "Britain"--"Great Britain" +are words that for all their profound political significance have still +to be steeped a good deal longer in life and literature before they stir +the same fibres in us as the old national names. And "England" as the seat +of British Government has, it is admitted, a representative and inclusive +force. Perhaps my real reason is still simpler. Let any one try the +alternatives which suggest themselves, and see how they roll--or do not +roll--from the tongue. He or she will, I think, soon be reconciled to +"England's Effort"! + +MARY A. WARD. + + + * * * * * + + +NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION + +There has been added to this edition an epilogue in the shape of a seventh +letter, bringing the story up to August 16, including munitions, finance, +the battle of Jutland, and the Somme offensive. + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + +Spring-time in the North Sea--Snow on a British +Battleship _Frontispiece_ + + FACING PAGE + +Marines drilling on the quarterdeck of a British Battleship 24 + +Fifteen-inch guns on a British Battleship 25 + +A forest of shells in a corner of one of England's +great shell filling factories 86 + +A light railway bringing up ammunition 87 + +One of the wards of a base hospital, visited by the King 132 + +A Howitzer in the act of firing 133 + + + + +ENGLAND'S EFFORT + +I + + +Dear H. + +Your letter has found me in the midst of work quite unconnected with this +hideous war in which for the last eighteen months we in England have lived +and moved and had our being. My literary profession, indeed, has been to +me, as to others, since August 4th, 1914, something to be interposed for a +short time, day by day, between a mind tormented and obsessed by the +spectacle of war and the terrible reality it could not otherwise forget. +To take up one's pen and lose oneself for a while in memories of life as +it was long, long before the war--there was refreshment and renewal in +that! Once--last spring--I tried to base a novel on a striking war +incident which had come my way. Impossible! The zest and pleasure which +for any story-teller goes with the first shaping of a story died away at +the very beginning. For the day's respite had gone. The little "wind-warm" +space had disappeared. Life and thought were all given up, without mercy +or relief, to the fever and nightmare of the war. I fell back upon my +early recollections of Oxford thirty, forty years ago--and it was like +rain in the desert. So that, in the course of months it had become a habit +with me never to _write_ about the war; and outside the hours of writing +to think and talk of nothing else. + +But your letter suddenly roused in me a desire to write about the war. It +was partly I think because what you wrote summed up and drove home other +criticisms and appeals of the same kind. I had been putting them +mechanically aside as not having any special reference to me; but in +reality they had haunted me. And now you make a personal appeal. You say +that England at the present moment is misunderstood, and even hardly +judged in America, and that even those great newspapers of yours that are +most friendly to the Allies are often melancholy reading for those with +English sympathies. Our mistakes--real and supposed--loom so large. We are +thought to be not taking the war seriously--even now. Drunkenness, +strikes, difficulties in recruiting the new armies, the losses of the +Dardanelles expedition, the failure to save Serbia and Montenegro, tales +of luxurious expenditure in the private life of rich and poor, and of +waste or incompetence in military administration--these are made much of, +even by our friends, who grieve, while our enemies mock. You say the +French case has been on the whole much better presented in America than +the English case; and you compare the international situation with those +months in 1863 when it was necessary for the Lincoln Government to make +strenuous efforts to influence and affect English opinion, which in the +case of our upper classes and too many of our leading men was unfavourable +or sceptical towards the North. You who know something of the vastness of +the English effort--you urge upon me that English writers whose work and +names are familiar to the American public are bound to speak for their +country, bound to try and make Americans feel what we here feel through +every nerve--that cumulative force of a great nation, which has been slow +to rouse, and is now immovably--irrevocably--set upon its purpose. "Tell +me," you say in effect, "what in your belief is the real spirit of your +people--of your men in the field and at sea, of your workmen and employers +at home, your women, your factory workers, your soldiers' wives, your +women of the richer and educated classes, your landowners and politicians. +Are you yet fully awake--yet fully in earnest, in this crisis of England's +fate? 'Weary Titan' that she is, with her age-long history behind her, and +her vast responsibilities by sea and land, is she shouldering her load in +this incredible war, as she must shoulder it; as her friends--the friends +of liberty throughout the world--pray that she may shoulder it?" + +Yes!--I must answer your questions--to the best of my power. I am no +practised journalist--the days of my last articles for _The Pall Mall_ +under the "John Morley" of those days are thirty odd years behind me! But +I have some qualifications. Ever since--more than half a century ago--I +paid my first childish visit to the House of Commons, and heard Mr. +Roebuck, the "Tear 'em" of _Punch's_ cartoon, make his violent appeal to +the English Government to recognise the belligerency of the South, it +would be almost true to say that politics and affairs have been no less +interesting to me than literature; and next to English politics, American +politics and American opinion; partly because of my early association with +men like W.E. Forster, stanch believers, even when Gladstone and John +Russell wavered, in the greatness of the American future and the justice +of the Northern cause--and partly because of the warm and deep impression +left upon me and mine by your successive Ambassadors in London, by Mr. +Lowell above all, by Mr. and Mrs. Phelps, by the John Hays, the Choates +and the Bayards--no less than by the many intimate friendships with +Americans from different worlds which my books have brought me since 1888. +During the last thirty years, also, I have had many friends--and some +kinsmen--among the leaders of English politics, and in both political +parties. At the present moment my only son is a member of the English +House of Commons, and a soldier fighting in the war. All my younger +kinsfolk are fighting; the sons of all my friends are fighting; and their +daughters are nursing as members of Voluntary Aid Detachments--(marvellous +what the girl V.A.D.'s, as England affectionately calls them, have done +since the beginning of the war!)--or working week-end shifts to relieve +munition workers, or replacing men of military age in the public offices +and banks. I live in one of the Home Counties, within five miles of one of +the military camps. The small towns near us are crowded with soldiers; +the roads are full of marching infantry, of artillery-trains and +supply-wagons. Our village has sent practically all its able-bodied men of +military age to the front; the few that remain are "attested" and only +waiting to be called up. A great movement, in which this household is +engaged, is now beginning to put women on the land, and so replace the +agricultural labourers who have gone either into the armies or the +munition factories. And meanwhile all the elderly men and women of the +countryside are sitting on War Committees, or working for the Red Cross. +Our lives are penetrated by the war; our thoughts are never free from it. + +But in trying to answer your questions I have gone far beyond my own +normal experience. I asked the English Government to give me some special +opportunities of seeing what Great Britain is doing in the war, and in +matters connected with the war, and they have given them ungrudgingly. I +have been allowed to go, through the snow-storms of this bitter winter, +to the far north and visit the Fleet, in those distant waters where it +keeps guard night and day over England. I have spent some weeks in the +Midlands and the north watching the vast new activity of the Ministry of +Munitions throughout the country; and finally in a motor tour of some five +hundred miles through the zone of the English armies in France, I have +been a spectator not only of that marvellous organisation in northwestern +France, of supplies, reinforcements, training camps and hospitals, which +England has built up in the course of eighteen months behind her fighting +line, but I have been--on the first of two days--within less than a mile +of the fighting line itself, and on a second day, from a Flemish +hill--with a gas helmet close at hand! I have been able to watch a German +counter attack, after a successful English advance, and have seen the guns +flashing from the English lines, and the shell-bursts on the German +trenches along the Messines ridge; while in the far distance, a black and +jagged ghost, the tower of the Cloth Hall of Ypres broke fitfully through +the mists--bearing mute witness before God and man. + +For a woman--a marvellous experience! I hope later on in these letters to +describe some of its details, and some of the thoughts awakened by them in +a woman's mind. But let me here keep to the main point raised by your +question--_the effort of England_. During these two months of strenuous +looking and thinking, of conversation with soldiers and sailors and +munition workers, of long days spent in the great supply bases across the +Channel, or of motoring through the snowy roads of Normandy and Picardy, I +have naturally realised that effort far more vividly than ever before. It +seems to me--it must seem to any one who has seriously attempted to gauge +it--amazing, colossal. "What country has ever raised over sixty per cent +of its total recruitable strength, for service beyond the seas in a few +months?" asks one of our younger historians; and that a country not +invaded, protected by the sea, and by a supreme fleet; a country, +moreover, without any form of compulsory military service, in which +soldiering and the soldier have been rather unpopular than popular, a +country in love with peace, and with no intention or expectation of going +to war with any one? + + +II + +For there we come to the root of everything--the _unpreparedness of +England_--and what it meant. It meant simply that as a nation we never +wished for war with Germany, and, as a nation, we never expected it. Our +Governments, of course, contained men who saw more or less plainly the +dangers ahead, and had spent years of effort in trying to avoid them. On +several occasions, during the last twenty years, as we all remember, a +wave of sudden anxiety as to German aims and intentions had spread through +the thinking portion of the nation--in connection with South Africa, with +Morocco, with the Balkans. But it had always died away again. We know now +that Germany was not yet ready! Meanwhile fruitless efforts were made by +successive English Governments to limit armaments, to promote arbitration, +and extend the scope of the Hague Tribunal. In vain. Germany would have +none of them. Year by year, in a world of peace her battle-navy grew. "For +what can it be intended but to attack England?" said the alarmist. But how +few of us believed them! Our Tariff Reformers protested against the +encroachments of German trade; but, outside a handful of persons who +seemed to most of us fanatics, the emphasis lay always on care for our own +people, and not on hostility to Germany. Those who warned us passionately +that Germany meant to provoke a struggle, that the struggle must come, +were very little heeded. Nobody slept the worse at night for their +harangues. Lord Roberts's agitation for National Service, based on the +portentous growth of the German Army and Navy, made comparatively little +way. I speak from personal experience of a large Parliamentary division. +"Did you foresee it?" I said to one of the ablest and most rising men in +the Navy a fortnight ago. He thought a little. "I always felt there might +be a clash over some colonial question--a quarrel about black men. But a +war between the white nations over a European question--that Germany would +force such a war--no, that I never believed!" Nor did any of us--except +those few--those very few persons, who Cassandra-like, saw the coming +horror plainly, and spoke to a deaf country. + +"There was _no_ hatred of Germany in this country"--I quote a Cabinet +Minister. "Even in those parts of the country which had most reason to +feel the trade rivalry of Germany, there was no thought of war, no wish +for war!" It came upon England like one of those sudden spates through +mountain clefts in spring, that fall with havoc on the plains beneath. +After such days of wrestling for European peace as have left their +indelible mark upon every member of the English Cabinet which declared +war on August 4th, 1914, we fought because we must, because, in Luther's +words, we "could no other." + +What is the proof of this--the proof which history will accept as +final--against the vain and lying pleas of Germany? + +Nothing less than the whole history of the past eighteen +months!--beginning with that initial lack of realisation, and those +harassing difficulties of organisation with which we are now so often and +so ignorantly reproached. At the word "Belgium" on August 4th, practically +the whole English nation fell into line. We felt no doubts--we knew what +we had to do. But the problem was how to do it. Outside the Navy and the +Expeditionary Force, both of them ready to the last gun and button, we had +neither men nor equipment equal to the fighting of a Continental war, and +we knew it. The fact is more than our justification--it is our glory. If +we had meant war, as Germany still hoarsely but more faintly says, week +after week, to a world that listens no longer, could any nation of sane +men have behaved as we did in the years before the war?--233,000 men on +active service--and 263,000 Territorials, against Germany's +millions!--with arsenals and equipment to match. Is it any wonder that the +country--our untouched, uninvaded country--safe as it believed itself to +be under the protection of its invincible Navy, was, in some sections of +our population at any rate, slow to realise the enormous task to +which--for the faith of treaties' sake, for self-defence's sake--it was +committed? + +And yet--was it after all so slow? The day after war was declared the +Prime Minister asked Parliament to authorise the addition of half a +million of men to the Army, and a first war credit of a hundred millions +of money (five hundred million dollars). The first hundred thousand men +came rolling up into the great military centres within a few days. By +September 4th nearly three hundred thousand fresh men had enlisted--by +Christmas half a million. By May, a million men had been added to the new +Armies; by September, 1915, Sir John French alone had under his command +close on a million men on the lines in France and Flanders, and in +December, 1915, the addition of another million men to the Army was voted +by Parliament, bringing up the British military strength to approximately +four millions, excluding Colonials. And what of the Dominions? By +November, 1915, Canada and Australia alone had sent us forces more than +equal to the whole of that original Expeditionary Force, that +"contemptible little army" which, broken and strained as it was by the +sheer weight and fierceness of the German advance, yet held the gates of +the Channel till England could fling her fresh troops into the field, and +France--admirable France!--had recovered from the first onslaught of her +terrible and ruthless enemy. + +In one of my later letters I hope to give some particulars of this first +rush of men, gathered from those who witnessed it and took part in it. +One remarkable point in connection with it is that those districts most +heavily employed in munition-making and coal-mining, the two industries +absolutely indispensable to our Army and Navy, have also sent the largest +supply of men to the fighting line--take, for instance, Newcastle and the +Clyde. There have been anxious episodes, of course, in the great +development. Was your own vast levy in the Civil War without them? And for +the last half million men, we have had to resort, as Lincoln resorted, to +a modified form of compulsion. There was, no doubt, a good deal of +unnecessary waste and overlapping in the first camp and billeting +organization of the enormous forces raised. But when all is said, did we +not, in the language of a French observer "improvise the impossible"?--and +have we not good reason to be proud?--not with any foolish vainglory, but +with the sober and resolute pride of a great nation, conscious of its +past, determined to correct its mistakes, and looking open-eyed and +fearless towards the future? + +Then as to munitions: in many ways, as you will perhaps say, and as I +agree, a tragic story. If we had possessed last spring the +ammunition--both for ourselves and our allies we now possess, the war +would have gone differently. Drunkenness, trade-union difficulties, a +small--very small--revolutionary element among our work people--all these +have made trouble. But the real cause of our shortage lay in the fact that +no one, outside Germany, realised till far into the war, what the +ammunition needs--the absolutely unprecedented needs--of this struggle +were going to be. It was the second Battle of Ypres at the end of April +last year which burnt them into the English mind. We paid for the grim +knowledge in thousands of our noblest lives. But since then? + +In a later letter I propose to draw some picture in detail of the really +marvellous movement which since last July, under the impulse given by Mr. +Lloyd George, has covered England with new munition factories and added +enormously to the producing power of the old and famous firms, has drawn +in an army of women--now reckoned at something over a quarter of a +million--and is at this moment not only providing amply for our own +armies, but is helping those of the Allies against those final days of +settlement with Germany which we believe to be now steadily approaching. +American industry and enterprise have helped us substantially in this +field of munitions. We are gratefully conscious of it. But England is now +fast overtaking her own needs. + +More of this presently. Meanwhile to the military and equipment effort of +the country, you have to add the financial effort--something like +$7,500,000,000, already expended on the war; the organising effort, +exemplified in the wonderful "back of the army" in France, which I hope to +describe to you; and the vast hospital system, with all its scientific +adjuncts, and its constantly advancing efficiency. + +And at the foundation of it all--the human and personal effort!--the lives +given for England, the blood so generously shed for her, the homes that +have sacrificed their all, our "golden lads" from all quarters and +classes, whose young bodies lie mingled with an alien dust that "is for +ever England," since they sleep there and hallow it; our mothers who mourn +the death or the wreck of the splendid sons they reared; our widowed wives +and fatherless children. And this, in a quarrel which only very slowly our +people have come to feel as in very deed their own. At first we thought +most often and most vividly of Belgium, of the broken treaty, and of +France, so wantonly attacked, whose people no English man or woman could +ever have looked in the face again, had we forsaken her. Then came the +hammer blows that forged our will--Louvain, Aerschot, Rheims, the +air-raids on our defenceless towns, the senseless murder of our women and +children, the Bryce report, the _Lusitania_, the execution of Edith +Cavell--the whole stupefying revelation of the German hatred and greed +towards this country, and of the qualities latent in the German character. +Now we _know_--that it is they, or we--since they willed it so. And this +old, illogical, unready country is only just arriving at its full +strength, only just fully conscious of the sternness of its own resolve, +only just putting out its full powers, as the German power is weakening, +and the omens are changing--both in East and West. + + +III + +No!--the effort of England during the past eighteen months in spite of all +temporary ebbs and difficulties, in spite of that chorus of self-blame in +which the English nation delights, has been one of the great things in the +history of our country. We have "improvised the impossible" in every +direction--_but one_. + +In one point, indeed, there has been no improvisation. Nothing was +trusted to chance. What is it that alone has secured us the time to make +the effort we have made? + +It is now about a month ago that, by permission of the Admiralty, I found +myself driving towards a certain pier in a harbour opening on the North +Sea. The Commodore of a Cruiser Squadron was to send his boat for me, and +I was to lunch with him on board his Flag-ship. I duly passed the +distrustful sentry on the road leading to the pier, arrived at the +pier-head and descended from the motor which had brought me. The morning +was mistily sunny, and the pier strangely deserted. Where was the boat? +Where was my friend who had hoped to come for me himself? No signs of +either. The few old sailors employed about the pier looked at me in +astonishment, and shook their heads when I inquired. Commodore ----'s boat +was not there; no boat had been in that morning from the ships. I took the +Commodore's letter from my hand-bag, to assure myself I had not been +dreaming, and reread it in perplexity. No dates could be clearer--no +directions more precise. Suddenly I perceive one tall naval officer on the +pier. "Can you help me, sir?" And I hand him the Commodore's letter. He +looks at me--and at the letter. His face twinkles with repressed laughter; +and I laugh, too, beginning to understand. "Very sorry," says the charming +young man, "but I think I can assure you there will be no boat, and it is +no use your waiting. Commodore ---- went to sea last night." + +I thanked him, and we laughed together. Then I walked up the pier a little +way, seeing a movement in the mist. A sailor came up to me. "They all went +to sea last night," he said in my ear--"and there are the slow ones coming +back!" And out of the mist came the black shapes of war-ships, moving +majestically up the harbour--one might have fancied, with a kind of +injured dignity, because their unreasonable fellows had been faster and +had gone farther afield than they. + +I walked back to my motor, disappointed indeed, and yet exulting. +It was good to realise personally through this small incident, +the mobility and ever-readiness of the Fleet--the absolute +insignificance--non-existence even--of any civilian or shore interest, for +the Navy at its work. It was not till a week later that I received an +amusing and mysterious line from Commodore ----, the most courteous of +men. + +[Illustration: Marines Drilling on the Quarterdeck of a British +Battleship.] + +[Illustration: Fifteen-inch Guns on a British Battleship.] + + +IV + +By the time it reached me, however, I was on the shores of a harbour in +the far north "visiting the Fleet," indeed, and on the invitation of +England's most famous sailor. Let me be quite modest about it. Not for me +the rough waters, or the thunderous gun-practice-- + + "Breaking the silence of the seas + Among the farthest Hebrides"-- + +which I see described in the letters of the Russian or American +journalists who have been allowed to visit the Grand Fleet. There had +been some talk, I understand, of sending me out in a destroyer; it was +mercifully abandoned. All the same, I must firmly put on record that mine +was "a visit to the Fleet," by Admiralty permission, for the purpose of +these letters to you, and through you to the American public, and that I +seem to have been so far the only woman who, for newspaper ends, has been +allowed to penetrate those mysterious northern limits where I spent two +wonderful days. + +It was, indeed, a wintry visit. The whole land was covered with snow. The +train could hardly drag itself through the choked Highland defiles; and it +was hours behind its time when we arrived at a long-expected station, and +a Vice-Admiral looking at me with friendly, keen eyes came to the carriage +to greet me. "My boat shall meet you at the pier with my Flag-Lieutenant +to-morrow morning. You will pick me up at the Flag-ship, and I will take +you round the Fleet. You will lunch with me, I hope, afterwards." I tried +to show my grateful sense both of the interest and the humour of the +situation. My kind visitor disappeared, and the train carried me on a few +miles farther to my destination for the night. + +And here I take a few words from a journal written at the time: + + It is nearly dawn. A red light in the northeast is coming up + over the snowy hills. The water, steely grey--the tide + rising. What strange moving bodies are those, scudding along + over the dim surface, like the ghosts of sea planes? Dense + flocks of duck apparently, rising and falling along the + shallows of the shore. Now they are gone. Nothing moves. The + morning is calm, and the water still. And on it lie, first a + cruiser squadron, and then a line of Dreadnoughts stretching + out of sight. No lights anywhere, except the green lights on + a hospital ship far away. The great ships lie dark and + silent, and I sit and watch them, in the cold dawn, thinking + that but for them, and the multitude of their comrades that + guard these seas and shores, England would be as Belgium or + as Northern France, ravaged and destroyed by a barbarian + enemy. My heart goes out to you, great ships, and you, + gallant unwearied men, who keep your watch upon them! That + watch has been kept for generations. Never has there been + such need for it as now.... + +But the day has risen, and the sun with it. As I leave the shore in the +Vice-Admiral's boat, the sunlight comes dancing over a low line of hill, +lighting up the harbour, the mighty ships, with their guns, and, scattered +out to sea along the distance, the destroyers, the trawlers, the +mine-sweepers, the small auxiliary craft of all kinds--those "fringes of +the fleet"--which Kipling has caught and photographed as none but he can. + +The barge stops beside the Flag-ship, and the Admiral descends into it. +What is the stamp, the peculiar stamp that these naval men bear?--as of a +force trained and disciplined to its utmost capacity, and then held +lightly in check--till wanted. You see it in so many of their faces, even +in eyes hollow for want of sleep. It is always there--the same strength, +the same self-control, the same humanity. Is it produced by the testing +weight of responsibility, the silent sense of ever-present danger, both +from the forces of nature and the enmity of man, the high, scientific +training, and last but not least, that marvellous comradeship of the Navy, +whether between officer and officer, or between officers and men, which +is constantly present indeed in the Army, but is necessarily closer and +more intimate here, in the confined world of the ship, where all live +together day after day, and week after week, and where--if disaster +comes--all may perish together? + +But on this bright winter morning, as we pass under and round the ships, +and the Admiral points out what a landswoman can understand, in the +equipment and the power of these famous monsters with their pointing guns, +there was for the moment no thought of the perils of the Navy, but only of +the glory of it. And afterwards in the Admiral's pleasant drawing-room on +board the Flag-ship, with its gathering of naval officers, Admirals, +Captains, Commanders, how good the talk was! Not a shade of boasting--no +mere abuse of Germany--rather a quiet regret for the days when German and +English naval men were friends throughout the harbours of the world. "Von +Spee was a very good fellow--I knew him well--and his two sons who went +down with him," says an Admiral gently. "I was at Kiel the month before +the war. I _know_ that many of their men must loathe the work they are set +to do." "The point is," says a younger man, broad--shouldered, with the +strong face of a leader, "that they are always fouling the seas, and we +are always cleaning them up. Let the neutrals understand that! It is not +we who strew the open waters with mines for the slaughter of any passing +ship, and then call it 'maintaining the freedom of the seas.' And as to +their general strategy, their Higher Command--" he throws back his head +with a quiet laugh--and I listen to a rapid sketch of what the Germans +_might_ have done, have never done, and what it is now much too late to +do, which I will not repeat. + +Type after type comes back to me:--the courteous Flag-Lieutenant, who is +always looking after his Admiral, whether in these brief harbour rests, or +in the clash and darkness of the high seas--the Lieutenant-Commanders +whose destroyers are the watch-dogs, the ceaseless protectors, no less +than the eyes and ears of the Fleet--the Flag-Captain, who takes me +through the great ship, with his vigilant, spare face, and his +understanding, kindly talk about his men; many of whom on this Thursday +afternoon--the quasi half-holiday of the Fleet when in harbour--are +snatching an hour's sleep when and where they can. That sleep-abstinence +of the Navy--sleep, controlled, measured out, reduced to a bare minimum, +among thousands of men, that we on shore may sleep our fill--look at the +signs of it, in the eyes both of these officers, and of the sailors +crowding the "liberty" boats, which are just bringing them back from their +short two hours' leave on shore! + +Another gathering, in the Captain's room, for tea. The talk turns on a +certain popular play dealing with naval life, and a Commander describes +how the manuscript of it had been brought to him, and how he had revelled +in the cutting out of all the sentimentalisms. Two men in the +play--friends--going into action--shake hands with each other "with tears +in their eyes." A shout of derisive laughter goes up from the tea-table. +But they admit "talking shop" off duty. "That's the difference between us +and the Army." And what shop it is! I listen to two young officers, both +commanding destroyers, describing--one, his adventures in dirty weather +the night before, on patrol duty. "My hat, I thought one moment the ship +was on the rocks! You couldn't see a yard for the snow--and the +sea--_beastly_!" The other had been on one of Admiral Hood's monitors, +when they suddenly loomed out of the mist on the Belgian coast, and the +German army marching along the coast road to Dunkirk and Calais marched no +more, but lay in broken fragments behind the dunes, or any shelter +available, till the flooding of the dikes farther south completed the +hopeless defeat which Admiral Hood's guns had begun. + +Then the talk ranges round the blockade, the difficulties and dangers of +patrol work, the complaints of neutrals. "America should understand us. +Their blockade hit us hard enough in the Civil War. And we are fighting +for their ideals no less than our own. When has our naval supremacy ever +hurt them? Mayn't they be glad of it some day? What about a fellow called +Monroe!"--so it runs. Then its tone changes insensibly. From a few words +dropped I realise with a start where these pleasantly chatting men had +probably been only two or three days before, where they would probably be +again on the morrow. Some one opens a map, and I listen to talk which, in +spite of its official reticence, throws many a light on the vast range of +England's naval power, and the number of her ships. "Will _they_ come out? +When will they come out?" The question runs round the group. Some one +tells a story of a German naval prisoner taken not long ago in the North +Sea, and of his remark to his captors: "Yes, we're beaten--we know +that--but we'll make it _hell_ for you before we give in!" + +For that final clash--that Armageddon that all think must come, our +sailors wait, not despising their enemy, knowing very well that they--the +Fleet--are the pivot of the situation, that without the British Navy, not +all the valour of the Allies in France or Russia could win the war, and +that with it, Germany's hope of victory is vain. While the Navy lives, +England lives, and Germany's vision of a world governed by the ruthless +will of the scientific soldier is doomed. + +Meanwhile, what has Germany been doing in her shipyards all this time? No +one knows, but my hosts are well aware that we shall know some day. + +As to England--here is Mr. Balfour moving the Naval Estimates in the House +of Commons--the "token votes" which tell nothing that should not be told. +But since the war began, says the First Lord, we have added "one million" +to the tonnage of the Navy, and we have _doubled its personnel_. We are +adding more every day; for the Admiralty are always "wanting more." We are +quite conscious of our defects--in the Air Service first and foremost. But +they will be supplied. There is a mighty movement afoot in the workshops +of England--an effort which, when all drawbacks are allowed for, has +behind it a free people's will. + +In my next letter I propose to take you through some of these workshops. +"We get the most extraordinary letters from America," writes one of my +correspondents, a steel manufacturer in the Midlands. "What do they think +we are about?" An American letter is quoted. "So you are still, in +England, taking the war lying down?" + +Are we? Let us see. + + + + +II + + +Dear H. + +In this second letter I am to try and prove to you that England is _not_ +taking the war "lying down." + +Let me then give you some account--an eye-witness's account--of what there +is now to be seen by the ordinary intelligent observer in the "Munition +Areas," as the public has learned to call them, of England and Scotland. +That great spectacle, as it exists to-day--so inspiring in what it +immediately suggests of human energy and human ingenuity, so appalling in +its wider implications--testifies, in the first instance, to the fierce +stiffening of England's resolve to win the war, and to win it at a +lessened cost in life and suffering to our men in the field, which ran +through the nation, after the second Battle of Ypres, towards the close of +April, 1915. That battle, together with the disagreement between Mr. +Winston Churchill and Lord Fisher at the Admiralty, had, as we all know, +momentous consequences. The two events brought the national +dissatisfaction and disappointment with the general course of the spring +fighting to a head. By May 19th the Ministry which had declared the war +and so far conducted it, had disappeared; a National or Coalition +Ministry, drawn from the leading men of both parties, reigned in its +stead. The statement made by Mr. Asquith, as late, alack, as April 20, +1915, that there was "no truth in the statement" that our efforts at the +front "were being crippled or at any rate hampered" by want of ammunition, +was seen almost immediately, in the bitter light of events, to be due to +some fatal misconceptions, or misjudgments, on the part of those informing +the Prime Minister, which the nation in its own interests and those of its +allies, could only peremptorily sweep away. A new Ministry was +created--the Ministry of Munitions, and Mr. Lloyd George was placed at its +head. + +The work that Mr. Lloyd George and his Ministry--now employing vast new +buildings, and a staff running into thousands--have done since June, 1915, +is nothing less than colossal. Much no doubt had been done earlier for +which the new Ministry has perhaps unjustly got the credit, and not all +has been smooth sailing since. One hears, of course, criticism and +complaints. What vast and effective stir, for a great end, was ever made +in the world without them? + +Mr. Lloyd George has incurred a certain amount of unpopularity among the +working classes, who formerly adored him. In my belief he has incurred it +for the country's sake, and those sections of the working class who have +smarted under his criticisms most bitterly will forgive him when the time +comes. In his passionate determination to _get the thing done_, he has +sometimes let his theme--of the national need, and the insignificance of +all things else in comparison with it--carry him into a vehemence which +the workmen have resented, and which foreign or neutral countries have +misunderstood. + +He found in his path, which was also the nation's path, three great +foes--drunkenness, the old envenomed quarrel between employer and +employed, and that deep-rooted industrial conservatism of England, which +shows itself on the one hand in the trade-union customs and restrictions +of the working class, built up, as they hold, through long years, for the +protection of their own standards of life, and, on the other, in the +slowness of many of the smaller English employers (I am astonished, +however, at the notable exceptions everywhere!) to realise new needs and +processes, and to adapt themselves to them. Could any one have made such +an omelet without breaking a great many eggs? Is it wonderful that the +employers have sometimes felt themselves unbearably hustled, sometimes +misunderstood, and at other times annoyed, or worried by what seems to +them the red tape of the new Ministry, and its apparent multiplicity of +forms and inquiries? + +Men accustomed to conduct their own businesses with the usual independence +of regulation have been obliged to submit to regulation. Workmen +accustomed to defend certain methods of work and certain customs of their +trade as matters of life and death have had to see them jeopardised or +swept away. The restoration of these methods and customs is solemnly +promised them after the war; but meanwhile they become the servants of a +public department almost as much under orders as the soldier himself. They +are asked to admit unskilled men to the skilled processes over which they +have long kept so jealous a guard; above all, they are asked to assent +wholesale to the employment of women in trades where women have never been +employed before, where it is obvious that their introduction taps an +immense reservoir of new labour, and equally obvious that, once let in, +they are not going to be easily or wholly dislodged. + +Of course, there has been friction and difficulty; nor is it all yet at +an end. In the few danger-spots of the country, where heads are hottest, +where thousands of the men of most natural weight and influence are away +fighting, and where among a small minority hatred of the capitalist +deadens national feeling and obscures the national danger, there have been +anxious moments during the winter; there may possibly be some anxious +moments again. + +But, after all, how little it amounts to in comparison with the enormous +achievement! It took us nine months to realise what France--which, +remember, is a Continental nation under conscription--had realised after +the Battle of the Marne, when she set every hand in the country to work at +munitions that could be set to work. With us, whose villages were +unravaged, whose normal life was untouched, realisation was inevitably +slower. Again we were unprepared, and again, as in the case of the Army +itself, we may plead that we have "improvised the impossible." "No +nation," says Mr. Buchan, "can be adequately prepared, unless, like +Germany, it intends war; and Britain, like France paid the penalty of her +honest desire for peace!" + +Moreover, we had our Navy to work for, without which the cause of the +Allies would have gone under, must have gone under, at the first shock of +Germany. What the workmen of England did in the first year of the war in +her docks and shipyards, history will tell some day. + +"What's wrong with the men!" cried a Glasgow employer indignantly to me, +one evening as, quite unknown the one to the other, we were nearing one of +the towns on the Clyde. "What was done on the Clyde, in the first months +of the war, should never be forgotten by this country. Working from six to +nine every day till they dropped with fatigue--and Sundays, too--drinking +just to keep themselves going--too tired to eat or sleep--that's what it +was--I saw it!" + +I, too, have seen that utter fatigue stamped on a certain percentage of +faces through the Midlands, or the districts of the Tyne and the +Clyde--fatigue which is yet indomitable, which never gives way. How fresh, +beside that look, are the faces of the women, for whom workshop life is +new! In its presence one forgets all hostile criticism, all talk of +strikes and drink, of trade-union difficulties, and the endless worries of +the employers. + +The English workman is not tractable material--far from it--and he is not +imaginative; except in the persons of some of his chosen leaders, he has +never seen a ruined French or Flemish village, and he was slow to realise +the bitterness of that silence of the guns on the front, when ammunition +runs short, and lives must pay. But he has sent his hundreds of thousands +to the fighting line; there are a million and a half of him now working at +munitions, and it is he, in a comradeship with the brain workers, the +scientific intelligence of the nation, closer than any he has yet known, +and lately, with the new and astonishing help of women--it is he, after +all, who is "delivering the goods," he who is now piling the great +arsenals and private works with guns and shells, with bombs, rifles, and +machine-guns, he who is working night and day in the shipyards, he who is +teaching the rising army of women their work, and making new and firm +friends, through the national emergency, whether in the trenches or the +workshops, with other classes and types in the nation, hitherto little +known to him, to whom he, too, is perhaps a revelation. + +There will be a new wind blowing through England when this war is done. +Not only will the scientific intelligence, the general education, and the +industrial plant of the nation have gained enormously from this huge +impetus of war; but men and women, employers and employed, shaken perforce +out of their old grooves, will look at each other surely with new eyes, in +a world which has not been steeped for nothing in effort and sacrifice, in +common griefs and a common passion of will. + + +II + +All over England, then, the same quadruple process has now been going on +for months: + +The steady enlargement of existing armament and munition works, national +or private. + +The transformation of a host of other engineering businesses into munition +works. + +The co-ordination of a vast number of small workshops dealing with the +innumerable metal industries of ordinary commerce, so as to make them feed +the larger engineering works, with all those minor parts of the gun or +shell, which such shops had the power to make. + +The putting up of entirely new workshops--National Workshops--directly +controlled by the new Ministry, under the Munitions Acts. + +Let me take you through a few typical scenes. + +It was on February 1st, the day after the Zeppelin raid of January 31st, +that I left a house in the north where I had been seeing one of the +country-house convalescent hospitals, to which Englishwomen and English +wealth are giving themselves everywhere without stint, and made my way by +train, through a dark and murky afternoon, towards a Midland town. The +news of the raid was so far vague. The newspapers of the morning gave no +names or details. I was not aware that I was passing through towns where +women and children in back streets had been cruelly and wantonly killed +the night before, where a brewery had been bombed, and the windows of a +train broken, in order that the German public might be fed on ridiculous +lies about the destruction of Liverpool docks and the wrecking of "English +industry." "English industry lies in ruins," said the _Hamburger +Nachrichten_ complacently. Marvellous paper! Just after reading its +remarks, I was driving down the streets of the great industrial centre I +had come to see--a town which the murderers of the night before would have +been glad indeed to hit. As it was, "English industry" seemed tolerably +active amid its "ruins." The clumsy falsehoods of the German official +reports and the German newspapers affect me strangely! It is not so much +their lack of truth as their lack of the ironic, the satiric sense, which +is a certain protection, after all, even amid the tragedy of war. We have +a tolerable British conceit of ourselves, no doubt, and in war we make +foolish or boasting statements about the future, because, in spite of all +our grumbling, we are at bottom a nation of optimists, and apt to see +things as we wish. But this sturdy or fatuous lying about the past--the +"sinking" of the _Lion_, the "capture" of Fort Vaux, or the "bombardment" +of Liverpool docks--is really beyond us. Our sense of ridicule, if nothing +else, forbids--the instinct of an old people with an old and humourous +literature. These leading articles of the _Hamburger Nachrichten_, the +sermons of German pastors, and those amazing manifestoes of German +professors, flying straight in the face of historic documents--"scraps of +paper"--which are there, none the less, to all time--for us, these things +are only not comic because, to the spiritual eye, they are written in +blood. But to return to the "ruins," and this "English industry" which +during the last six months has taken on so grim an aspect for Germany. + +My guide, an official of the Ministry, stops the motor, and we turn down a +newly made road, leading towards a mass of spreading building on the left. + +"A year ago," says my companion--"this was all green fields. Now the +company is employing, instead of 3,500 work-people, about three times the +number, of whom a large proportion are women. Its output has been +quadrupled, and the experiment of introducing women has been a complete +success." + +We pass up a fine oak staircase to the new offices, and I am soon +listening to the report of the works superintendent. A spare, powerful man +with the eyes of one in whom life burns fast, he leans, his hands in his +pockets, against the wall of his office, talking easily and well. He +himself has not had a day's holiday for ten months, never sleeping more +than five and a half hours, with the telephone at his bedhead, and waking +to instant work when the moment for waking comes. His view of his workmen +is critical. It is the view of one consumed with "realisation," face to +face with those who don't "realise." "But the raid will do a deal of +good," he says cheerfully. + +"As to the women!"--he throws up his hands--"they're saving the country. +They don't mind what they do. Hours? They work ten and a half or, with +overtime, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. At least, that's what +they'd like to do. The Government are insisting on one Sunday--or two +Sundays--a month off. I don't say they're not right. But the women resent +it. '_We're_ not tired!' they say. And you look at them!--they're not +tired. + +"If I go down to the shed and say: 'Girls!--there's a bit of work the +Government are pushing for--they say they must have--can you get it done?' +Why, they'll stay and get it done, and then pour out of the works, +laughing and singing. I can tell you of a surgical-dressing factory near +here, where for nearly a year the women never had a holiday. They simply +wouldn't take one. 'And what'll our men at the front do, if we go +holiday-making?' + +"Last night" (the night of the Zeppelin raid) "the warning came to put out +lights. We daren't send them home. They sat in the dark among the +machines, singing, 'Keep the home fires burning,' 'Tipperary,' and the +like. I tell you, it made one a bit choky to hear them. They were thinking +of their sweethearts and husbands I'll be bound!--not of themselves." + +In another minute or two we were walking through the new workshops. Often +as I have now seen this sight, so new to England, of a great engineering +workshop filled with women, it stirs me at the twentieth time little less +than it did at first. These girls and women of the Midlands and the north, +are a young and comely race. Their slight or rounded figures among the +forest of machines, the fair or golden hair of so many of them, their +grace of movement, bring a strange touch of beauty into a scene which has +already its own spell. + +Muirhead Bone and Joseph Pennell have shown us what can be done in art +with these high workshops, with their intricate distances and the endless +crisscross of their belting, and their ranged machines. But the coming in +of the girls, in their close khaki caps and overalls, showing the many +pretty heads and slender necks, and the rows of light bending forms, +spaced in order beside their furnaces or lathes as far as the eye can +reach, has added a new element--something flower-like, to all this flash +of fire and steel, and to the grimness of war underlying it. + +For the final meaning of it all is neither soft nor feminine! These +girls--at hot haste--are making fuses and cartridge-cases by the hundred +thousand, casting, pressing, drawing, and, in the special +danger-buildings, filling certain parts of the fuse with explosive. There +were about 4,000 of them to 5,000 men, when I saw the shop, and their +number has no doubt increased since; for the latest figures show that +about 15,000 fresh women workers are going into the munition works every +week. The men are steadily training them, and without the teaching and +co-operation of the men--without, that is, the surrender by the men of +some of their most cherished trade customs--the whole movement would have +been impossible. + +As it is, by the sheer body of work the women have brought in, by the +deftness, energy, and enthusiasm they throw into the simpler but quite +indispensable processes, thereby setting the unskilled man free for the +Army, and the skilled man for work which women cannot do, Great Britain +has become possessed of new and vast resources of which she scarcely +dreamed a year ago; and so far as this war is a war of machinery--and we +all know what Germany's arsenals have done to make it so--its whole aspect +is now changing for us. The "eternal feminine" has made one more +startling incursion upon the normal web of things! + +But on the "dilution" of labour, the burning question of the hour, I shall +have something to say in my next letter. Let me record another visit of +the same day to a small-arms factory of importance. Not many women here so +far, though the number is increasing, but look at the expansion figures +since last summer! A large, new factory added, on a bare field; 40,000 +tons of excavation removed, two miles of new shops, sixty feet wide and +four floors high, the output in rifles quadrupled, and so on. + +We climbed to the top floor of the new buildings and looked far and wide +over the town. Dotted over the tall roofs rose the national flags, marking +"controlled" factories, i.e., factories still given over a year ago to +one or other of the miscellaneous metal trades of the Midlands, and now +making fuse or shell for England's Armies, and under the control of the +British Government. One had a sudden sharp sense of the town's corporate +life, and of the spirit working in it everywhere for England's victory. +Before we descended, we watched the testing of a particular gun. I was to +hear its note on the actual battle-field a month later. + +An afternoon train takes me on to another great town, with some very +ancient institutions, which have done very modern service in the war. I +spent my evening in talking with my host, a steel manufacturer identified +with the life of the city, but serving also on one of the central +committees of the Ministry in London. Labour and politics, the chances of +the war, America and American feeling towards us, the task of the new +Minister of Munitions, the temper of English and Scotch workmen, the flux +into which all manufacturing conditions have been thrown by the war, and +how far old landmarks can be restored after it--we talked hard on these +and many other topics, till I must break it off--unwillingly!--to get some +sleep and write some notes. + +Next day took me deep into the very central current of "England's +Effort"--so far as this great phase of it at any rate is concerned. In +this town, even more than in the city I had just left, one felt the throb +of the nation's rising power, concentrated, orderly, determined. Every +single engineering business in a town of engineers was working for the +war. Every manufacturer of any importance was doing his best for the +Government, some in connection with the new Ministry, some with the +Admiralty, some with the War Office. As for the leading firms of the city, +the record of growth, of a mounting energy by day and night, was nothing +short of bewildering. Take these few impressions of a long day, as they +come back to me. + +First, a great steel warehouse, full of raw steel of many sorts and kinds, +bayonet steel, rifle steel, shell steel, stacked in every available corner +and against every possible wall--all sold, every bit of it, and ready to +be shipped--some to the Colonies, some to our Allies, with peremptory +orders coming in as to which the harassed head of the firm could only +shake his head with a despairing "impossible!" + +Then some hours in a famous works, under the guidance of the managing +director, one of those men, shrewd, indefatigable, humane, in whose +company one learns what it is, in spite of all our supposed deficiencies, +that makes the secret of England's industrial tenacity. An elderly +Scotchman, very plainly marked by the labour and strain of the preceding +eighteen months, but still steadily keeping his head and his temper, +showing the signs of an Evangelical tradition in his strong dislike for +Sunday work, his evident care for his work-people--men and women--and his +just and sympathetic tone towards the labour with which he has to +deal--such is my companion. + +He has a wonderful story to tell: "In September, 1914, we were called upon +to manufacture a large extra number of field-guns. We had neither +buildings nor machinery for the order. However, we set to work. We took +down seven dwelling-houses; in three weeks we were whitewashing the walls +of our new workshop and laying in the machinery. My idea was to make so +many guns. The Government asked for four times as many. So we took down +more houses, and built another much larger shop. The work was finished in +ten weeks. Five other large workshops were put up last year, all built +with lightning speed, and everywhere additions have been made to the +machinery in every department wherever it was possible to put machines." + +As to their thousands of workmen, Mr. C. has no complaints to make. + +"They have been steadily working anything from 60 to 80 hours per week; +the average is 64.29 hours per week, and the average time lost only 3.51 +per cent. A little while ago, a certain union put forward a claim for an +advance in wages. We had to decline it, but as the meeting came to an end, +the trade-union secretary said: + +"'Of course, we are disappointed, and we shall no doubt return to the +matter again. But whether you concede the advance of wages or not, our +members will continue to do their level best, believing that they are not +only working for themselves, but helping the Government and helping our +soldiers to wage this war to a successful conclusion.'" + +And the manager adds his belief that this is the spirit which prevails +"among the work-people generally." + +Before we plunge into the main works, however, my guide takes me to see a +recent venture, organised since the war, in which he clearly takes a +special interest. An old warehouse bought, so to speak, overnight, and +equipped next morning, has been turned into a small workshop for shell +production--employing between three and four hundred girls, with the +number of skilled men necessary to keep the new unskilled labour going. +These girls are working on the eight hours' shift system; and working so +well that a not uncommon wage among them--on piece-work, of course--runs +to somewhere between two and three pounds a week. + +"But there is much more than money in it," says the kind-faced woman +superintendent, as we step into her little office out of the noise, to +talk a little. "The girls are perfectly aware that they are 'doing their +bit,' that they are standing by their men in the trenches." + +This testimony indeed is universal. There is patriotism in this grim +work, and affection, and a new and honourable self-consciousness. Girls +and women look up and smile as a visitor passes. They presume that he +or she is there for some useful purpose connected with the war, and +their expression seems to say: "Yes, we are all in it!--we know very +well what _we_ are doing, and what a difference we are making. Go +and tell our boys ..." + +The interest of this workshop lay, of course, in the fact that it was a +sample of innumerable others, as quickly organised and as efficiently +worked, now spreading over the Midlands and the north. As to the main +works belonging to the same great firm, such things have been often +described; but one sees them to-day with new eyes, as part of a struggle +which is one with the very life of England. Acres and acres of ground +covered by huge workshops new and old, by interlacing railway lines and +moving trolleys. Gone is all the vast miscellaneous engineering work of +peace. The war has swallowed everything. + +I have a vision of a great building, where huge naval guns are being +lowered from the annealing furnace above into the hardening oil-tank +below, or where in the depths of a great pit, with lights and men moving +at the bottom, I see as I stoop over the edge, a jacket being shrunk upon +another similar monster, hanging perpendicularly below me. + +Close by are the forging-shops whence come the howitzers and the huge +naval shells. Watch the giant pincers that lift the red-hot ingots and +drop them into the stamping presses. Man directs; but one might think the +tools themselves intelligent, like those golden automata of old that +Hephæstus made, to run and wait upon the gods of Olympus. Down drops the +punch. There is a burst of flame, as though the molten steel rebelled, and +out comes the shell or the howitzer in the rough, nosed and hollowed, and +ready for the turning. + +The men here are great, powerful fellows, blanched with heat and labour; +amid the flame and smoke of the forges one sees them as typical figures in +the national struggle, linked to those Dreadnoughts in the North Sea, and +to those lines in Flanders and Picardy where Britain holds her enemy at +bay. Everywhere the same intensity of effort, whether in the men or in +those directing them. And what delicate and responsible processes! + +In the next shop, with its rows of shining guns, I stop to look at a great +gun apparently turning itself. No workman is visible for the moment. The +process goes on automatically, the bright steel emerging under the tool +that here, too, seems alive. Close to it is a man winding steel wire, or +rather braid, on a 15-inch gun; beyond again there are workmen and +inspectors testing and gauging another similar giant. Look down this +shining tube and watch the gauging, now with callipers, now with a rubber +device which takes the impression of the rifling and reveals any defect. +The gauging turns upon the ten-thousandth part of an inch, and any mistake +or flaw may mean the lives of men.... + +We turn out into a pale sunshine. The morning work is over, and the men +are trooping into the canteens for dinner--and we look in a moment to see +for ourselves how good a meal it is. At luncheon, afterwards, in the +Directors' Offices, I am able to talk with the leading citizens of the +great town. + +One of them writes some careful notes for me. Their report of labour +conditions is excellent. "No organised strikes and few cessations of work +to report. Overtime is being freely worked. Little or no drunkenness, and +that at a time when the average earnings of many classes of workmen are +two or three times above the normal level. The methods introduced in the +twenty years before the war--conference and discussion--have practically +settled all difficulties between employers and employed, in these parts at +any rate, during this time of England's trial." + +After luncheon we diverge to pay another all too brief visit to a +well-known firm. The managing director gives me some wonderful figures of +a new shell factory they are just putting up. It was begun in September, +1915. Since then 2,000 tons of steelwork has been erected, and 200 out of +1,200 machines required have been received and fixed. Four thousand to +5,000 hands will be ultimately employed. + +All the actual production off the machines _will be done by women_--and +this, although the works are intended for a heavy class of shell, +60-pounder high explosive. Women are already showing their +capacity--helped by mechanical devices--to deal with this large type of +shell; and the workshop when in full working order is intended for an +output of a million shell per annum. + +I drive on, overshadowed by these figures. _"Per annum!"_ The little +common words haunt the ear intolerably. Surely before one more year is +over, this horror under which we live will be lifted from Europe! Britain, +a victorious Britain, will be at peace, and women's hands will have +something else to do than making high-explosive shell. But, meanwhile, +there is no other way. The country's call has gone out, clear and stern, +and her daughters are coming in their thousands to meet it, from loom and +house and shop. + +A little later, in a great board-room, I find the Munitions Committee +gathered. Its function, of course, is to help the new Ministry in +organising the war work of the town. In the case of the larger firms, the +committee has been chiefly busy in trying to replace labour withdrawn by +the war. It has been getting skilled men back from the trenches, and +advising the Ministry as to the "badging" of munition workers. It has +itself, through its command of certain scientific workshops, been +manufacturing gauges and testing materials. + +It has turned the electroplate workshops of the town on to making steel +helmets, and in general has been "working in" the smaller engineering +concerns so as to make them feed the larger ones. This process here, as +everywhere, is a very educating one. The shops employed on bicycle and +ordinary motor work have, as a rule, little idea of the extreme accuracy +required in munition work. The idea of working to the thousandth of an +inch seems to them absurd; but they have to learn to work to the +ten-thousandth, and beyond! The war will leave behind it greatly raised +standards of work in England!--that every one agrees. + +And I carry away with me as a last remembrance of this great town and its +activities two recollections--one of a university man doing some highly +skilled work on a particularly fine gauge: "If you ask me what I have +been doing for the last few weeks, I can only tell you that I have been +working like a nigger and have done nothing! Patience!--that's all there +is to say." And another of a "transformed" shop of moderate size, where an +active and able man, after giving up the whole of his ordinary business, +has thrown himself into the provision, within his powers, of the most +pressing war needs, as he came across them. + +In July last year, for instance, munitions work in many quarters was +actually held up for want of gauges. Mr. D. made something like 10,000, to +the great assistance of certain new Government shops. Then the Government +asked for a particular kind of gun. Mr. D. undertook 1,000, and has +already delivered 400. Tools for shell-making are _everywhere_ wanted in +the rush of the huge demand. Mr. D. has been making them diligently. This +is just one example among hundreds of how a great industry is adapting +itself to the fiery needs of war. + +But the dark has come, and I must catch my train. As I speed through a +vast industrial district I find in the evening papers hideous details of +the Zeppelin raid, which give a peculiar passion and poignancy to my +recollections of a crowded day--and peculiar interest, also, to the talk +of an able representative of the Ministry of Munitions, who is travelling +with me, and endeavouring to give me a connected view of the whole new +organisation. As he speaks, my thoughts travel to the English battle-line, +to the trenches and casualty clearing-stations behind it, to distant +Russia; and I think of the Prime Minister's statement in Parliament--that +the supply of munitions, for all its marvellous increase, is not yet equal +to the demand. New shops, new workers, new efforts--England is producing +them now unceasingly, she must go on producing them. There must be no +pause or slackening. There will be none. + +I am going now to see--after the Midlands--what the English and Scotch +north is doing to swell the stream. And in my next letter there will be +plenty to say about "Dilution" of labour, about wages, and drink, and some +other burning topics of the moment. + + + + +III + + +Dear H. + +It is now three months since Mr. Lloyd George made his startling speech, +as Munitions Minister, in the House of Commons in which, as he wound up +his review of his new department, he declared: "Unless we quicken our +movements, damnation will fall on the sacred cause for which so much +gallant blood has flowed!" The passion of this peroration was like the +fret of a river in flood chafing at some obstacle in its course. Generally +speaking, the obstacle gives way. In this case Mr. George's obstacle had +begun to give way long before December 21st--the date of the speech. The +flood had been pushing at it with increasing force since the foundation of +the Ministry of Munitions in the preceding summer. But the crumbling +process was not quick enough for Great Britain's needs, or for the energy +of her Minister. + +Hence the outspoken speech of December 21st, supported by Mr. Asquith's +grave words of a few weeks later. "We cannot go on," said the Prime +Minister in effect, "depending upon foreign countries for our munitions. +We haven't the ships to spare to bring them home, and the cost is too +great. We _must_ make them ourselves." "Yes--and _quicker_!" Mr. Lloyd +George had already said, with a sharp emphasis, meant to "hustle" that +portion of the nation which still required hustling; overpainting his +picture, no doubt, but with quite legitimate rhetoric, in order to produce +his effect. + +The result of that fresh "hustling" was the appointment of the Dilution +Commissioners, a second Munitions Act amending the first, and a vast +expansion all over the country of the organisation which had seemed so +vast before. It was not till midwinter, in the very midst of the new and +immense effort I have been describing, that the Minister of Munitions and +those working with him convinced themselves that, without another resolute +push, the barrier across the stream of the nation's will might still +fatally hold it back. More and more men were wanted every week--in the +Army and the workshops--and there were not men to go round. The second +push had to be given--it was given--and it still firmly persists. + +In the spring of 1915, the executives of the leading trade-unions had +promised the Government the relaxation of their trade rules for the period +of the war. Many of the trade-union leaders--Mr. Barnes, Mr. Henderson, +Mr. Hodge, and many others--have worked magnificently in this sense, and +many unions have been thoroughly loyal throughout their ranks to the +pledge given in their name. The iron-moulders, the shipwrights, the +brassworkers may be specially mentioned. But in the trades mostly +concerned with ammunition, there were certain places and areas where the +men themselves, as distinct from their responsible leaders, offered a +dogged, though often disguised resistance. Personally, I think that any +one at all accustomed to try and look at labour questions from the point +of view of labour will understand the men while heartily sympathising with +the Minister, who was determined to get "the goods" and has succeeded in +getting them. Here, in talking of "the men" I except that small +revolutionary element among them which has no country, and exists in all +countries. And I except, too, instances which certainly are to be found, +though rarely, of what one might call a purely mean and overreaching +temper on the part of workmen--taking advantage of the nation's need, as +some of the less responsible employers have no doubt, also, taken +advantage of it. But, in general, it seems to me, there has been an honest +struggle in the minds of thousands of workmen between what appears to them +the necessary protection of their standards of life--laboriously attained +through long effort--and the call of the war. And that the overwhelming +majority of the workmen concerned with munitions should have patriotically +and triumphantly decided this struggle as they have--under pressure, no +doubt, but under no such pressure as exists in a conscripted, still more +in an invaded, nation--may rank, I think, when all is said, with the +raising of our voluntary Armies as another striking chapter in the book of +_England's Effort_. + +In this chapter, then, Dilution will always take a leading place. + +What is Dilution? + +It means, of course, that under the sharp analysis of necessity much +engineering work, generally reckoned as "skilled" work, and reserved to +"skilled" workmen, by a number of union regulations, is seen to be capable +of solution into various processes, some of which can be sorted out from +the others as within the capacity of the unskilled or semiskilled worker. +By so dividing them up, and using the superior labour with economy, only +where it is really necessary, it can be made to go infinitely further; and +the inferior or untrained labour can then be brought into work where +nobody supposed it could be used, where, in fact, it never has been used. + +Obvious enough, perhaps. But the idea had to be applied in haste to living +people--employers, many of whom shrank from reorganising their workshops +and changing all their methods at a moment's notice; and workmen looking +forward with consternation to being outnumbered, by ten to one, in their +own workshops, by women. When I was in the Midlands and the North, at the +end of January and in early February, Dilution was still an unsettled +question in some of the most important districts. One of the greatest +employers in the country writes to me to-day (March 24): "Since January, +we have passed through several critical moments, but, eventually, the +principle was accepted, and Dilution is being introduced as fast as +convenient. For this we have largely to thank an admirable Commission (Sir +Croydon Marks, Mr. Barnes, and Mr. Shackleton) which was sent down to +interview employers and employed. Their tact and acumen were remarkable. +Speaking personally, I cannot help believing that there is a better +understanding between masters and men now than has existed in my memory." + +A great achievement that!--for both employers and employed--for the +Minister also who appointed the Commission and thus set the huge stone +rolling yet another leap upon its way. + +It will be readily seen how much depends also on the tact of the +individual employer. That employer has constantly done best who has called +his men into council with him, and thrown himself on their patriotism and +good sense. I take the following passage from an interesting report by a +very shrewd observer,[A] printed in one of the northern newspapers. It +describes an employer as saying: + + I was told by the Ministry that I should have to double my + output. Labour was scarce and I consulted a deputation of + the men about it. I told them the problem and said I should + be glad of suggestions. I told them that we should either + have to get men or women, and I asked them for their + co-operation, as there would be a great deal of teaching to + be done. "Probably," I said, "you would like to find the + men?" They agreed to try. I gave them a week, and at the end + of a week they came to me and said they would rather have + women. I said to them: "Then you must all pull together." + They gave me their word. Right from the beginning they have + done their level best to help, and things have gone on + perfectly. On one occasion, a woman complained that the man + directing her was "working against her." I called the men's + committee together, said the employer. I told them the + facts, and they have dealt with the offender themselves. + +[A] _Yorkshire Observer_, February 1, 1916. + +The general system now followed in the shell factories is to put so many +skilled men in charge of so many lathes worked by women workers. Each +skilled man, who teaches the women, sets the tools, and keeps the machines +in running order, oversees eight, ten, or more machines. But sometimes the +comradeship is much closer. For instance (I quote again the witness +mentioned above), in a machine tool shop, i.e., a shop for the making of +tools used in shell production, one of the most highly skilled parts of +the business, you may now see a man, with a woman to help him, operating +two lathes. If the woman falls into any difficulty the man comes to help +her. Both can earn more money than each could earn separately, and the +skilled man who formerly worked the second lathe is released. In the same +shop a woman watched a skilled man doing slot-drilling--a process in which +thousandths of an inch matter--for a fortnight. Now she runs the machine +herself by day, while the man works it on the night shift. One woman in +this shop is "able to do her own tool-setting." The observer thinks she +must be the only woman tool-setter in the country, and he drops the remark +that her capacity and will may have something to do with the fact that she +has a husband at the front! Near by, as part of the same works, which are +not specialised, but engaged in _general_ engineering, is a bomb shop +staffed by women, which is now sending 3,000 bombs a week to the trenches. +Women are also doing gun-breech work of the most delicate and responsible +kind under the guidance of a skilled overseer. One of the women at this +work was formerly a charwoman. She has never yet broken a tool. All over +the works, indeed, the labour of women and unskilled men is being utilised +in the same scientific way. Thus the area of the works has been doubled in +a few months, without the engagement of a single additional skilled man +from outside. "We have made the men take an interest in the women," say +the employers. "That is the secret of our success. We care nothing at all +about the money, we are all for the output. If the men think you are going +to exploit women and cheapen the work, the scheme is crabbed right away." + +I myself came across the effect of this suspicion in the minds of the +workmen in the case of a large Yorkshire shell factory, where the +employers at once detected and slew it. This great workshop, formerly used +for railway work, now employs some 1,300 women, with a small staff of +skilled men. The women work forty-five hours a week in eight-hour +shifts--the men fifty-three hours on twelve-hour shifts. There is no +difficulty whatever in obtaining a full supply of women's labour--indeed, +the factory has now a waiting-list of 500. Nor has there been any +difficulty with the men in regard to the women's work. With the exception +of two operations, which are thought too heavy for them, all the machines +are run by women. + +But when the factory began, the employers very soon detected that it was +running below its possible output. There was a curious lack of briskness +in the work--a curious constraint among the new workers. Yet the employers +were certain that the women were keen, and their labour potentially +efficient. They put their heads together, and posted up a notice in the +factory to the effect that whatever might be the increase in the output of +piece-work, the piece-work rate would not be altered. Instantly the +atmosphere began to clear, the pace of the machines began to mount. + +It was a factory in which the work was new, the introduction of women was +new, and the workers strange to each other, and for the most part strange +to their employers. A small leaven of distrust on the part of the men +workers was enough, and the women were soon influenced. Luckily, the +mischief was as quickly scotched. Men and women began to do their best, +the output of the factory--which had been planned for 14,000 shells a +week--ran up to 20,000, and everything has gone smoothly since. + +Let me now, however, describe another effect of Dilution--the employment +of unskilled _men_ on operations hitherto included in skilled engineering. + +On the day after the factory I have just described, my journey took me to +another town close by, where my guide--a Director of one of the largest +and best-known steel and engineering works in the kingdom--showed me a new +shell factory filled with 800 to 900 men, all "medically unfit" for the +Army, and almost all drawn from the small trades and professions of the +town, especially from those which had been hard hit by the war. Among +those I talked to I found a keeper of bathing-machines, a publican's +assistant, clerks, shop assistants, three clergy--these latter going home +for their Sunday duty, and giving their wages to the Red Cross--unemployed +architects, and the like. + +I cannot recall any shop which made a greater impression of energy, of a +spirit behind the work, than this shop. In its inspecting-room I found a +graduate from Yale. "I had to join in the fight," he said quietly--"this +was the best way I could think of." And it was noticeable besides for some +remarkable machines, which your country had also sent us. + +In other shell factories a single lathe carries through one process, +interminably repeated, sometimes two, possibly three. But here, with the +exception of the fixing and drilling of the copper band, and a few minor +operations, one lathe _made the shell_--cut, bored, roughed, turned, +nosed, and threaded it, so that it dropped out, all but the finished +thing--minus, of course, the fuse. The steel pole introduced at the +beginning of the process made nine shells, and the average time per shell +was twenty-three minutes. No wonder that in the great warehouse adjoining +the workshop one saw the shell heaps piling up in their tens of +thousands--only to be rushed off week by week, incessantly, to the front. +The introduction of these machines had been largely the work of an able +Irish manager, who described to me the intense anxiety with which he had +watched their first putting up and testing, lest the vast expenditure +incurred should have been in any degree thrown away. His cheerful looks +and the shell warehouse told the sequel. When I next met him it was at a +northern station in company with his Director. They were then apparently +in search of new machinery! The workshop I had seen was being given over +to women, and the men were moving on to heavier work. And this is the kind +of process which is going on over the length and breadth of industrial +England. + +So far, however, I have described the expansion or adaptation of firms +already existing. But the country is now being covered with another and +new type of workshop--the National Shell factories--which are founded, +financed, and run by the Ministry of Munitions. The English Government is +now by far the greatest engineering employer in the world. + +Let me take an illustration from a Yorkshire town--a town where this +Government engineering is rapidly absorbing everything but the textile +factories. A young and most competent Engineer officer is the Government +head of the factory. The work was begun last July, by the help of borrowed +lathes, in a building which had been used for painting railway-carriages; +its first shell was completed last August. The staff last June was 1. It +is now about 200, and the employees nearly 2,500. + +A month after the first factory was opened, the Government asked for +another--for larger shell. It was begun in August, and was in work in a +few weeks. In September a still larger factory--for still larger +shells--(how these demands illustrate the course of the war!--how they are +themselves illustrated by the history of Verdun!) was seen to be +necessary. It was begun in September, and is now running. Almost all the +machines used in the factory have been made in the town itself, and about +100 small firms, making shell parts--fuses primers, gaines, etc.--have +been grouped round the main firm, and are every day sending in their work +to the factory to be tested, put together, and delivered. + +No factory made a better impression upon me than this one. The large, airy +building with its cheerful lighting; the girls in their dark-blue caps and +overalls, their long and comely lines reminding one of some processional +effect in a Florentine picture; the high proportion of good looks, even of +delicate beauty, among them; the upper galleries with their tables piled +with glittering brasswork, amid which move the quick, trained hands of +the women--if one could have forgotten for a moment the meaning of it all, +one might have applied to it Carlyle's description of a great school, as +"a temple of industrious peace." + +Some day, perhaps, this "new industry"--as our ancestors talked of a "new +learning"--this swift, astonishing development of industrial faculty among +our people, especially among our women, will bear other and rich fruit for +England under a cleared sky. It is impossible that it should pass by +without effect, profound effect upon our national life. But at present it +has one meaning and one only--_war_! + +Talk to these girls and women. This woman has lost her son--that one her +husband. This one has a brother home on leave, and is rejoicing in the +return of her husband from the trenches, as a skilled man, indispensable +in the shop; another has friends in the places and among the people which +suffered in the last Zeppelin raid. She speaks of it with tight lips. Was +it she who chalked the inscription found by the Lady Superintendent on a +lathe some nights ago--"_Done fourteen to-day. Beat that if you can, you +devils_!" + +No!--under this fast-spreading industry, with its suggestion of good +management and high wages, there is the beat of no ordinary impulse. Some +feel it much more than others; but, says the clever and kindly +Superintendent I have already quoted: "The majority are very decidedly +working from the point of view of doing something for their country.... A +great many of the fuse women are earning for the first time.... The more I +see of them all, the better I like them." And then follow some interesting +comments on the relation of the more educated and refined women among them +to the skilled mechanics--two national types that have perhaps never met +in such close working contact before. One's thoughts begin to follow out +some of the possible social results of this national movement. + +[Illustration: A Forest of Shells in a Corner of One of England's Great +Shell Filling Factories.] + +[Illustration: A Light Railway Bringing Up Ammunition.] + + +II + +But now the Midlands and the Yorkshire towns are behind me. The train +hurries on through a sunny afternoon, and I look through some notes sent +me by an expert in the great campaign. Some of them represent its humours. +Here is a perfectly true story, which shows an Englishman with "a move +on," not unworthy of your side of the water. + +A father and son, both men of tremendous energy, were the chiefs of a very +large factory, which had been already extensively added to. The father +lived in a house alongside the works. One day business took him into the +neighbouring county, whilst the son came up to London on munition work. On +the father's return he was astonished to see a furniture van removing the +contents of his house. The son emerged. He had already signed a contract +for a new factory on the site of his father's house; the materials of the +house were sold and the furniture half gone. After a first start, the +father took it in true Yorkshire fashion--wasting no words, and +apparently proud of his son! + +Here we are at last, in the true north--crossing a river, with a climbing +town beyond, its tiled roofs wreathed in smoke, through which the +afternoon lights are playing. I am carried off to a friend's house. Some +directors of the great works I am come to see look in to make a kindly +plan for the morrow, and in the evening, I find myself sitting next one of +the most illustrious of modern inventors, with that touch of _dream_ in +manner and look which so often goes with scientific discovery. The +invention of this gentle and courteous man has affected every vessel of +any size afloat, whether for war or trade, and the whole electrical +development of the world. The fact was to be driven home even to my +feminine ignorance of mechanics when, a fortnight later, the captain of a +Flag-ship and I were hanging over the huge shaft leading down to the +engine-rooms of the Super-dreadnought, and my companion was explaining to +me something of the driving power of the ship. But on this first meeting, +how much I might have asked of the kind, great man beside me, and was too +preoccupied to ask! May the opportunity be retrieved some day! My head was +really full of the overwhelming facts, whether of labour or of output, +relating to this world-famous place, which were being discussed around me. +I do not name the place, because the banishment of names, whether of +persons or places, has been part of the plan of these articles. But one +can no more disguise it by writing round it than one could disguise +Windsor Castle by any description that was not ridiculous. Many a German +officer has walked through these works, I imagine, before the war, smoking +the cigarette of peace with their Directors, and inwardly ruminating +strange thoughts. If any such comes across these few lines, what I have +written will, I think, do England no harm. + +But here are some of the figures that can be given. The shop area of the +ammunition shops alone has been increased _eightfold_ since the outbreak +of war. The total weight of shell delivered during 1915 was--in +tons--fourteen times as much as that of 1914. The weight of shell +delivered per week, as between December, 1914, and December, 1915, has +risen nearly ten times. The number of work-people, in these shops, men and +women, had risen (a) as compared with the month in which war broke out, to +a figure eight times as great; (b) as compared with December, 1914, to one +between three and four times as great. And over the whole vast enterprise, +shipyards, gun shops, ammunition shops, with all kinds of naval and other +machinery used in war, the numbers of work-people employed had increased +since 1913 more than 200 per cent. They, with their families, equal the +population of a great city--you may see a new town rising to meet their +needs on the farther side of the river. + +As to Dilution, it is now accepted by the men, who said when it was +proposed to them: "Why didn't you come to us six months ago?" + +And it is working wonders here as elsewhere. For instance, a particular +portion of the breech mechanism of a gun used to take one hour and twenty +minutes to make. On the Dilution plan it is done on a capstan, and takes +six minutes. Where 500 women were employed before the war, there are now +close on 9,000, and there will be thousands more, requiring one skilled +man as tool-setter to about nine or ten women. In a great gun-carriage +shop, "what used to be done in two years is now done in one month." In +another, two tons of brass were used before the war; a common figure now +is twenty-one. A large milling shop, now entirely worked by men, is to be +given up immediately to women. And so on. + +Dilution, it seems to me, is breaking down a number of labour conventions +which no longer answer to the real conditions of the engineering trades. +The pressure of the war is doing a real service to both employers and +employed by the simplification and overhauling it is everywhere bringing +about. + +As to the problem of what is to be done with the women after the war, one +may safely leave it to the future. It is probably bound up with that other +problem of the great new workshops springing up everywhere, and the huge +new plants laid down. One thinks of the rapid recovery of French trade +after the war of 1870, and of the far more rapid rate--after forty years +of machine and transport development, at which the industry of the Allied +countries may possibly recover the ravages of the present war, when once +peace is signed. In that recovery, how great a part may yet be played by +these war workshops!--transformed to the uses of peace; by their crowds of +work-people, and by the hitherto unused intelligence they are everywhere +evoking and training among both men and women. + +As for the following day, my impressions, looking back, seem to be all a +variant on a well-known Greek chorus, which hymns the amazing--the +"terrible"--cleverness of Man! Seafaring, tillage, house-building, +horse-taming, so muses Sophocles, two thousand three hundred years ago; +how did man ever find them out? "Wonders are many, but the most wonderful +thing is man! _Only against death has he no resource_." + +_Intelligence_--and _death_! They are written everywhere in these endless +workshops, devoted to the fiercest purposes of war. First of all, we visit +the "danger buildings" in the fuse factory, where mostly women are +employed. About 500 women are at work here, on different processes +connected with the delicate mechanism and filling of the fuse and gaine, +some of which are dangerous. Detonator work, for instance. The Lady +Superintendent selects for it specially steady and careful women or girls, +who are paid at time-and-a-quarter rate. Only about eight girls are +allowed in each room. The girls here all wear--for protection--green +muslin veils and gloves. It gives them a curious, ghastly look, that fits +the occupation. For they are making small pellets for the charging of +shells, out of a high-explosive powder. Each girl uses a small copper +ladle to take the powder out of a box before her, and puts it into a +press which stamps it into a tiny block, looking like ivory. She holds her +hand over a little tray of water lest any of the powder should escape. +What the explosive and death-dealing power of it is, it does not do to +think about. + +In another room a fresh group of girls are handling a black powder for +another part of the detonator, and because of the irritant nature of the +powder, are wearing white bandages round the nose and mouth. There is +great competition for these rooms, the Superintendent says! The girls in +them work on two shifts of ten and one-half hours each, and would resent a +change to a shorter shift. They have one hour for dinner, half an hour for +tea, a cup of tea in the middle of the morning--and the whole of Saturdays +free. To the eye of the ordinary visitor they show few signs of fatigue. + +After the fuse factory we pass through the high-explosive factory, where +250 girls are at work in a number of isolated wooden sheds filling +18-pounder shell with high explosive. The brass cartridge-case is being +filled with cordite, bundles of what look like thin brown sticks, and the +shell itself, including its central gaine or tube, with the various deadly +explosives we have seen prepared in the "danger buildings." The shell is +fitted into the cartridge-case, the primer and the fuse screwed on. It is +now ready to be fired. + +I stand and look at boxes of shells, packed, and about to go straight to +the front. A train is waiting close by to take them the first stage on +their journey. I little thought then that I should see these boxes, or +their fellows, next, on the endless ranks of ammunition lorries behind the +fighting lines in France, and that within a fortnight I should myself +stand by and see one of those shells fired from a British gun, little more +than a mile from Neuve Chapelle. + +But here are the women and girls trooping out to dinner. A sweet-faced +Superintendent comes to talk to me. "They are not as strong as the men," +she says, pointing to the long lines of girls, "but what they lack in +strength they make up in patriotic spirit." I speak to two educated women, +who turn out to be High School mistresses from a town that has been +several times visited by Zeppelins. "We just felt we must come and help to +kill Germans," they say quietly. "All we mind is getting up at five-thirty +every morning. Oh, no! it is not too tiring." + +Afterwards?--I remember one long procession of stately shops, with their +high windows, their floors crowded with machines, their roofs lined with +cranes, the flame of the forges, and the smoke of the fizzling steel +lighting up the dark groups of men, the huge howitzer shells, red-hot, +swinging in mid-air, and the same shells, tamed and gleaming, on the great +lathes that rough and bore and finish them. Here are shell for the _Queen +Elizabeth_ guns!--the biggest shell made. This shop had been put up by +good luck just as the war began. Its output of steel has increased from +80 tons a week to 1,040. + +Then another huge fuse shop, quite new, where 1,400 girls in one shift are +at work--said to be the largest fuse shop known. And on the following +morning, an endless spectacle of war work--gun-carriages, naval turrets, +torpedo tubes, armed railway carriages, small Hotchkiss guns for merchant +ships, tool-making shops, gauge shops--and so on for ever. In the +tool-making shops the output has risen from 44,000 to 3,000,000 a year! + +And meanwhile I have not seen anything, and shall not have time to see +anything of the famous shipyards of the firm. But with regard to them, all +that it is necessary to remember is that before the war they were capable +of berthing twenty ships at once, from the largest battleship downward; +and we have Mr. Balfour's word for it as to what has happened, since the +war, in the naval shipyards of this country. "We have added _a million +tons to the Navy--and we have doubled its personnel_." + +And now let me record two final sayings. + +One from a manager of a department: + + We have a good many Socialists here, and they constantly + give trouble. But the great majority of the men have done + wonderfully! Some men have put in one hundred hours a week + since the war began. Some have not lost a minute since it + began. The old hands have worked _splendidly_. + +And another from one of the Directors: + + I know of no drunkenness among our women. I don't remember + ever having seen a drunken woman round here. + + +III + +I have almost said my say on munitions, though I could continue the story +much longer. But the wonder of it consists really in its vastness, in the +steady development of a movement which will not end or slacken till the +Allies are victorious. Except for the endless picturesqueness of the +women's share in it, and the mechanical invention and adaptation going on +everywhere, with which only a technical expert could deal, it is of course +monotonous, and I might weary you. I will only--before asking you to +cross the Channel with me to France--put down a few notes and impressions +on the Clyde district, where, as our newspapers will have told you, there +is at the present moment (March 29th) some serious labour trouble, with +which the Government is dealing. Until further light is thrown upon its +causes, comment is better postponed. But I have spoken quite frankly in +these letters of "danger spots," where a type of international Socialism +is to be found--affecting a small number of men, over whom the ideas of +"country" and "national honour" seem to have no hold. Every country +possesses such men and must guard itself against them. A nucleus of them +exists in this populous and important district. How far their influence +is helped among those who care nothing for their ideas, by any real or +supposed grievances against the employers, by misunderstandings and +misconceptions, by the sheer nervous fatigue and irritation of the men's +long effort, or by those natural fears for the future of their Unions, +to which I have once or twice referred, only one long familiar with the +district could say, I can only point out here one or two interesting +facts. In the first place, in this crowded countryside, where a small +minority of dangerous extremists appear to have no care for their +comrades in the trenches, the recruiting for the new Armies--so I learn +from one of the leading authorities--has been--"taken on any basis +whatever--substantially higher than in any other district. The men came +up magnificently." That means that among those left behind, whatever +disturbing and disintegrating forces exist in a great Labour centre have +freer play than would normally be the case. A certain amount of patriotic +cream has been skimmed, and in some places the milk that remains must be +thin. In the second place--(you will remember the employer I quoted to you +in a former letter)--the work done here by thousands and thousands of +workmen since the beginning of the war, especially in the great shipyards, +and done with the heartiest and most self-sacrificing good-will, has been +simply invaluable to the nation, and England remembers it well. And +finally, the invasion of women has perhaps been more startling to the +workmen here than anywhere else. Not a single woman was employed in the +works or factories of the district before the war, except in textiles. +There will soon be 15,000 in the munition workshops, and that will not be +the end. + +But Great Britain cannot afford--even in a single factory--to allow any +trifling at this moment with the provision of guns, and the Government +must--and will--act decisively. + +As to the drinking in this district of which so much has been said, and +which is still far in excess of what it ought to be, I found many people +hard put to it to explain why the restriction of hours which has worked so +conspicuously well in other districts has had comparatively little effect +here. Is it defects of administration, or a certain "cussedness" in the +Scotch character, which resents any tightening of law? One large employer +with whom I discuss it, believes it would suit the Scotch better to +abolish all restrictions, and simply punish drunkenness much more +severely. And above all--"open all possible means of amusement on Sundays, +especially the cinemas!"--a new and strange doctrine, even now, in the +ears of a country that holds the bones of John Knox. There seems indeed to +be a terribly close connection between the dulness of the Scotch Sunday +and the obstinacy of Scotch drinking; and when one thinks of the heavy +toil of the week, of the confinement of the workshops, and the strain of +the work, one feels at any rate that here is a problem which is to be +_solved_, not preached at; and will be solved, some day, by nimbler and +humaner wits than ours. + +In any case, the figures, gathered a month ago from those directly +concerned, as to the general extension of the national effort here, could +hardly be more striking. In normal times, the district, which is given up +to Admiralty work, makes ships and guns, but has never made shells. The +huge shell factories springing up all over it are a wholly new creation. +As usual, they are filled with women, working under skilled male +direction, and everywhere one found among managers and superintendents the +same enthusiasm for the women's work. "It's their honour they work on," +said one forewoman. "That's why they stand it so well." The average +working week is fifty-four hours, but overtime may seriously lengthen the +tale. Wages are high; canteens and rest-rooms are being everywhere +provided; and the housing question is being tackled. The rapidity of the +women's piece-work is astonishing, and the mingling of classes--girls of +education and refinement working quite happily with those of a much +humbler type--runs without friction under the influence of a common +spirit. This common spirit was well expressed by a girl who before she +came to the factory was working a knitting-machine. "I like this +better--_because there's a purpose in it_." A sweet-faced woman who was +turning copper bands for shell, said to me: "I never worked a machine +before the war. I have done 912 in ten hours, but that tired me very much. +I can do 500 or 600 quite easily." + +On the same premises, after leaving the shell shops, we passed rapidly +through gun shops, where I saw again processes which had become almost +familiar. "The production of howitzers," said my guide, "is the question +of the day. We are making them with great rapidity--but the trouble is to +get enough machines." The next shop, devoted to 18-pounder field-guns, was +"green fields fifteen months ago," and the one adjoining it, a fine shed +about 400 feet square, for howitzer work, was started in August last, on a +site "which was a bog with a burn running through it." Soon "every foot of +space will be filled with machines, and there will be 1,200 people at work +here, including 400 women. In the next shop we are turning out about 4,000 +shrapnel and 4,000 high-explosive shells per week. When we started women +on what we thought this heavy shell, we provided men to help lift the +shell in and out of the machines. The women thrust the men aside in five +minutes." + +Later on, as I was passing through a series of new workshops occupied with +all kinds of army work and employing large numbers of women, I stopped to +speak to a Belgian woman. "Have you ever done any machine work before?" +"No, Madame, never--_Mais, c'est la guerre. Il faut tuer les Allemands_!" +It was a quiet, passionless voice. But one thought, with a shiver, of +those names of eternal infamy--of Termonde, Aerschot, Dinant, Louvain. + +It was with this woman's words in my ears that I set out on my last +visit--to which they were the fitting prelude. The afternoon was darkening +fast. The motor sped down a river valley, sodden with rain and melting +snow, and after some miles we turn into a half-made road, leading to some +new buildings, and a desolate space beyond. A sentry challenges us, and we +produce our permit. Then we dismount, and I look out upon a wide stretch +of what three months ago was swamp, or wet plough land. Now its 250 acres +are enclosed with barbed wire, and patrolled by sentries night and day. A +number of small buildings, workshops, stores, etc., are rising all over +it. I am looking at what is to be the great "filling" factory of the +district, where 9,000 women, in addition to male workmen, will soon be +employed in charging the shell coming from the new shell factories we have +left behind in the darkness. + +Strange and tragic scene! Strange uprising of women! + +We regain the motor and speed onwards, my secretary and I, through unknown +roads far away from the city and its factories towards the country house +where we are to spend the night. In my memory there surge a thousand +recollections of all that I have seen in the preceding fortnight. An +England roused at last--rushing to factory, and lathe, to shipyard and +forge, determined to meet and dominate her terrible enemy in the workshop, +as she has long since met and dominated him at sea, and will in time +dominate him on land--that is how my country looks to me to-night. + +... The stars are coming out. Far away, over what seems like water with +lights upon it, there are dim snowy mountains--majestic--rising into the +sky. The noise and clamour of the factories are all quiet in the night. +Two thoughts remain with me--Britain's ships in the North Sea--Britain's +soldiers in the trenches. And encircling and sustaining both the justice +of a great cause--as these white Highland hills look down upon and +encircle this valley. + + + + +IV + + +Dear H. + +A million and a half of men--over a quarter of a million of women--working +in some 4,000 State-controlled workshops for the supply of munitions of +war, not only to our own troops, but to those of our allies--the whole, in +the main, a creation of six months' effort--this is the astonishing +spectacle of some of the details of which I have tried, as an eye-witness, +to give you in my previous letters a rapid and imperfect sketch. + +But what of the men, the Armies, for which these munitions are being made +and hurried to the fighting-lines? It was at Aldershot, a few days ago, +that I listened to some details of the first rush of the new Armies, given +me by a member of the Headquarters Staff who had been through it all. +Aldershot in peace time held about 27,000 troops. Since the outbreak of +war some million and a quarter of men have passed through the great camp, +coming in ceaselessly for training and equipment, and going out again to +the theatres of war. + +In the first days and weeks of the war--during and after the marvellous +precision and rapidity with which the Expeditionary Force was despatched +to France--men poured in from all parts, from all businesses and +occupations; rich and poor, north and south country men, English, Scotch, +Irish, and Welsh; men from the Dominions, who had flung themselves into +the first home-coming steamer; men from India, and men from the uttermost +parts of Africa and Asia who had begged or worked their way home. They +were magnificent material. They came with set faces, asking only for +training, training, training!--and "what the peace soldier learns in six +months," said my companion, "they learnt in six weeks. We had neither +uniforms nor rifles, neither guns nor horses for them. We did not know how +to feed them or to house them. In front of the headquarters at Aldershot, +that Mecca of the soldier, where no one would dare to pass in ordinary +times whose turnout is not immaculate, the most extraordinary figures, in +bowler hats and bits of uniform, passed unrebuked. We had to raid the +neighbouring towns for food, to send frantic embassies to London for bread +and meat; to turn out any sort of shed to house them. Luckily it was +summer weather; otherwise I don't know what we should have done for +blankets. But nobody 'groused.' Everybody worked, and there were many who +felt it 'the time of their lives.'" + +And yet England "engineered the war!" England's hypocrisy and greed +demanded the crushing of Germany--hence the lying "excuse" of +Belgium--that apparently is what all good Germans--except those who know +better--believe; what every German child is being taught. As I listen to +my companion's story, I am reminded, however, of a puzzled remark which +reached me lately, written just before Christmas last, by a German nurse +in a Berlin hospital, who has English relations, friends of my own. "We +begin to wonder whether it really was England who caused the war--since +you seem to be so dreadfully unprepared!" So writes this sensible girl to +one of her mother's kindred in England; in a letter which escaped the +German censor. She might indeed wonder! To have deliberately planned a +Continental war with Germany, and Germany's 8,000,000 of soldiers, without +men, guns, or ammunition beyond the requirements of an Expeditionary Force +of 160,000 men, might have well become the State of Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. But +the England of Raleigh, Chatham, Pitt, and Wellington has not generally +been reckoned a nation of pure fools. + +The military camps of Great Britain tell the tale of our incredible +venture. "Great areas of land had to be cleared, levelled, and drained; +barracks had to be built; one camp alone used 42,000 railway truck-loads +of building material." There was no time to build new railways, and the +existing roads were rapidly worn out. They were as steadily repaired; and +on every side new camps sprang up around the parent camps of the country. + +The Surrey commons and woods, the Wiltshire downs, the Midland and +Yorkshire heaths, the Buckinghamshire hills have been everywhere +invaded--their old rural sanctities are gone. I walked in bewilderment the +other day up and down the slopes of a Surrey hill which when I knew it +last was one kingdom of purple heather, beloved of the honey-bees, and +scarcely ever trodden by man or woman. Barracks now form long streets upon +its crest and sides; practise-trenches, bombing-schools, the stuffed and +dangling sacks for bayonet training, musketry ranges, and the rest, are +everywhere. Tennyson, whose wandering ground it once was, would know it no +more. And this camp is only one of a series which spread far and wide +round the Aldershot headquarters. + +Near my own home, a park and a wooded hillside, that two years ago were +carefully guarded even from a neighbour's foot, are now occupied by a +large town of military huts, which can be seen for miles round. And +fifteen miles away, in a historic "chase" where Catharine of Aragon lived +while her trial was proceeding in a neighbouring town, a duke, bearing one +of the great names of England, has himself built a camp, housing 1,200 +men, for the recruits of his county regiments alone, and has equipped it +with every necessary, whether for the soldier's life or training. But +everywhere--East, North, South, and West--the English and Scotch roads are +thronged with soldiers and horses, with trains of artillery wagons and +Army Service lorries, with men marching back from night attacks or going +out to scout and skirmish on the neighbouring commons and through the most +sacred game--preserves. There are no more trespass laws in England--for +the soldier. + +You point to our recruiting difficulties in Parliament. True enough. We +have our recruiting difficulties still. Lord Derby has not apparently +solved the riddle; for riddle it is, in a country of voluntary service, +where none of the preparations necessary to fit conscription into ordinary +life, with its obligations, have ever been made. The Government and the +House of Commons are just now wrestling with it afresh, and public opinion +seems to be hardening towards certain final measures that would have been +impossible earlier in the war.[B] The call is still for men--more--and +more--men! And given the conditions of this war, it is small wonder that +England is restless till they are found. But amid the cross currents of +criticism, I catch the voice of Mr. Walter Long, the most practical, the +least boastful of men, in the House of Commons, a few nights ago: Say what +you like, blame, criticise, as you like, but "what this country has done +since August, 1914, is an almost incredible story." And so it is. + +And now let us follow some of these khaki-clad millions across the seas, +through the reinforcement camps, and the great supply bases, towards that +fierce reality of war to which everything tends. + +[B] Since these lines were written the crisis in the Government, the Irish +rising, and the withdrawal of the military service bill have happened in +quick succession. The country is still waiting (April 28th) for the last +inevitable step. + + +II + +It was about the middle of February, after my return from the munition +factories, that I received a programme from the War Office of a journey in +France, which I was to be allowed to make. I remember being at first much +dissatisfied with it. It included the names of three or four places well +known to be the centres of English supply organisation in France. But it +did not include any place in or near the actual fighting zone. To me, in +my ignorance, the places named mainly represented the great array of +finely equipped hospitals to be found everywhere in France in the rear of +our Armies; and I was inclined to say that I had no special knowledge of +hospital work, and that one could see hospitals in England, with more +leisure to feel and talk with the sufferers in them than a ten days' tour +could give. A friendly Cabinet Minister smiled when I presented this view. +"You had better accept. You will find it very different from what you +suppose. The 'back' of the Army includes everything." He was more than +right! + +The conditions of travelling at the present moment, within the region +covered by the English military organisation in France, for a woman +possessing a special War Office pass, in addition to her ordinary +passport, and understood to be on business which has the good-will of the +Government, though in no sense commissioned by it, are made easy by the +courtesy and kindness of everybody concerned. From the moment of landing +on the French side, my daughter and I passed into the charge of the +military authorities. An officer accompanied us; a War Office motor took +us from place to place; and everything that could be shown us in the short +ten days of our tour was freely open to us. The trouble, indeed, that was +taken to enable me to give some of the vividness of personal seeing to +these letters is but one of many proofs, I venture to think, of that warm +natural wish in British minds that America should understand why we are +fighting this war, and how we are fighting it. As to myself, I have +written in complete freedom, affected only by the absolutely necessary +restrictions of the military censorship; and I only hope I may be able to +show something, however inadequately, of the work of men who have done a +magnificent piece of organisation, far too little realised even in their +own country. + +For in truth we in England know very little about our bases abroad; about +what it means to supply the ever-growing needs of the English Armies in +France. The military world takes what has been done for granted; the +general English public supposes that the Tommies, when their days in the +home camps are done, get "somehow" conveyed to the front, being "somehow" +equipped, fed, clothed, nursed, and mended, and sent on their way across +France in interminable lines of trains. As to the details of the process, +it rarely troubles its head. The fact is, however, that the work of the +great supply bases abroad, of the various Corps and Services connected +with them--Army Ordnance, Army Service, Army Medical, railway and motor +transport--is a desperately interesting study; and during the past +eighteen months, under the "I.G.C."--Inspector-General of +Communications--has developed some of the best brains in the Army. + +Two days spent under the guidance of the Base Commandant or an officer of +his staff among the docks and warehouses of a great French port, among the +huts of its reinforcement camp, which contains more men than Aldershot +before August, 1914, or in its workshops of the Army Ordnance Corps, gave +me my first experience of the organising power that has gone to these +departments of the war. The General in command of the base was there in +the first weeks of the struggle and during the great retreat. He retired +with his staff to Nantes--leaving only a broken motor-car behind +him!--just about the time that the French Government betook itself to +Bordeaux. But in September he was back again, and the building-up process +began, which has since known neither stop nor stay. That the commercial +needs of a great French port should have been able to accommodate +themselves as they have to the military needs of the British Army speaks +loudly for the tact and good feeling on both sides. The task has not been +at all times an easy one; and I could not help thinking as we walked +together through the crowded scene, that the tone and temper of the able +man beside me--his admiration, simply expressed, yet evidently profound, +for the French spirit in the war, and for the heroic unity of the country +through all ranks and classes, accounted for a great deal. In the presence +of a good-will so strong, difficulties disappear. + +Look now at this immense hangar or storehouse--the largest in the +world--through which we are walking. It was completed three years before +the war, partly, it is said, by German money, to house the growing +cotton-trade of the port. It now houses a large proportion of the food of +the British Army. The hangar is half a mile long, and is bounded on one +side by the docks where the ships are discharging, and on the other by the +railway lines where the trains are loading up for the front. + +You walk through avenues of bacon, through streets of biscuits and jam. On +the quays just outside, ships from England, Canada, Norway, Argentina, +Australia are pouring out their stores. Stand and watch the endless cranes +at work, and think what English sea power means! And on the other side +watch the packing of the trucks that are going to the front, the order and +perfection with which the requisitions, large and small, of every regiment +are supplied. + +One thinks of the Crimean scandals. The ghost of Florence Nightingale +seems to move beside us, watching contentedly what has come of all that +long-reforming labour, dealing with the health, the sanitation, the food +and equipment of the soldier, in which she played her part; and one might +fancy the great shade pausing specially beside the wired-in space labelled +"Medical Comforts," and generally known as "The Cage." Medical +_necessaries_ are housed elsewhere; but here are the dainties, the special +foods, the easing appliances of all kinds which are to make life bearable +to many a sorely-wounded man. + +As to the huge sheds of the Army Ordnance, which supply everything that +the soldier doesn't eat, all metal stores--nails, horseshoes, oil-cans, +barbed wire--by the ton; trenching-tools, wheelbarrows, pickaxes, razors, +sand-bags, knives, screws, shovels, picketing-pegs, and the like--they are +of course endless; and the men who work in them are housed in one of the +largest sheds, in tiers of bunks from floor to ceiling. + +Perhaps the most interesting part of the Depot to the outsider are the +repairing sheds and workshops established in a suburb of the town to which +we drive on. For this is work that has never been done before in +connection with an army in the field. Day by day trains full of articles +for repair come down from the front. I happened to see a train of the +kind, later on, leaving a station close to the fighting line. Guns, +rifles, range-finders, gun-carriages, harness, all torn and useless +uniforms, tents, boots by the thousand, come to this base to be repaired, +or to be sent home for transformation into "shoddy" to the Yorkshire +towns. Nothing seems too large or too small for Colonel D.'s department. +Field-glasses, periscopes, water-bottles, they arrive from the trenches +with the same certainty as a wounded howitzer or machine-gun, and are +returned as promptly. + +In one shed, my guide called my attention to shelves on which were a +number of small objects in china and metal. "They were found in kits left +on the field," he says gently. "Wherever we can identify the owner, such +things are carefully returned to his people. These could not be +identified." + +I took up a little china dog, a bit of coarse French pottery, which some +dead father had bought, at Poperinghe, perhaps, or Bailleul, for the +children at home. Near by were "souvenirs"--bits of shell, of German +equipment; then some leaves of a prayer-book, a neck-medallion of a +saint--and so on--every fragment steeped in the poignancy of sudden +death--death in youth, at the height of life. + +The boot and uniform sheds, where 500 French women and girls, under +soldier-foremen, are busy, the harness-mending room, and the engineering +workshops might reassure those pessimists among us--especially of my own +sex--who think that the male is naturally and incorrigibly a wasteful +animal. Colonel D. shows me the chart which is the record of his work, and +its steadily mounting efficiency. He began work with 140 men, he is now +employing more than a thousand, and his repairing sheds are saving +thousands of pounds a week to the British Government. He makes all his own +power, and has four or five powerful dynamos at work. + +We come out into a swirl of snow, and henceforward sightseeing is +difficult. Yet we do our best to defy the weather. We tramp through the +deepening snow of the great camp, which lines the slopes of the hills +above the river and the town, visiting its huts and recreation-rooms, its +Cinema theatre, and its stores, and taking tea with the Colonel of an +Infantry Base Depot, who is to be our escort on the morrow. + +But on the last morning before we start we mount to the plateau above the +reinforcement camp, where the snow lies deep and the wind blows one of the +sharpest blasts of the winter. Here are bodies of men going through some +of the last refinements of drill before they start for the front; here are +trenches of all kinds and patterns, revetted in ways new and old, and +planned according to the latest experience brought from the fighting line. +The instructors here, as at other training-camps in France, are all men +returned from the front. The men to whom they have to give the final touch +of training--men so near themselves to the real thing--are impatient of +any other sort. + +As we stand beside the trenches under the bright sun and piercing wind, +looking at the dark lines of British soldiers on the snow, and listening +to the explanations of a most keen and courteous officer, one's eyes +wander, on the one side, over the great town and port, over the French +coast and the distant sea, and on the other side, inland, over the +beautiful French landscape with its farms and country houses. Everything +one sees is steeped in history, a mingled history, in which England and +France up to five centuries ago bore an almost equal share. Now again they +are mingled here; all the old enmities buried in a comradeship that goes +deeper far than they, a comradeship of the spirit that will surely mould +the life of both nations for years to come. + +How we grudged the snow and the low-sweeping clouds and the closed motor, +on our drive of the next day! I remember little more of it than occasional +glimpses of the tall cliffs that stand sentinel along the river, a hasty +look at a fine church above a steeply built town, an army lorry stuck deep +in the snow-drifts, and finally the quays and ships of another base port. +Our escort, Colonel S., pilots us to a pleasant hotel full of officers, +mostly English, belonging to the Lines of Communications, with a few poor +wives and mothers among them who have come over to nurse their wounded in +one or other of the innumerable hospitals of the base. + +Before dinner the general commanding the base had found me out and I had +told my story. + +"Oh, we'll put some notes together for you. We were up most of last night. +I dare say we shall be up most of this. But a little more or less doesn't +matter." I protested most sincerely. But it is always the busiest men who +shoulder the extra burdens; and the notes duly reached me. From them, from +the talk of others spending their last ounce of brain and energy in the +service of the base, and from the evidence of my own eyes, let me try and +draw some general picture of what that service is: Suppose a British +officer speaking: + + Remember first that every man, every horse, every round of + ammunition, every article of clothing and equipment, all the + guns and vehicles, and nearly all the food have to be + brought across the English Channel to maintain and reinforce + the ever-growing British Army, which holds now so important + a share of the fighting line in France. The ports of entry + are already overtaxed by the civil and military needs of + France herself. Imagine how difficult it is--and how the + difficulty grows daily with the steady increase of the + British Army--to receive, disembark, accommodate, and + forward the multitude of men and the masses of material! + + You see the khaki in the French streets, the mingling + everywhere of French and English; but the ordinary visitor + can form no idea of the magnitude of this friendly invasion. + There is no formal delimitation of areas or spaces, in + docks, or town, or railways. But gradually the observer will + realise that the town is honeycombed with the temporary + locations of the British Army, which everywhere speckle the + map hanging in the office of the Garrison Quartermaster. And + let him further visit the place where the long lines of + reinforcement, training and hospital camps are installed on + open ground, and old England's mighty effort will scarcely + hide itself from the least intelligent. _Work, efficiency, + economy_ must be the watchwords of a base. Its functions may + not be magnificent--_but they are war_--and war is + impossible unless they are rightly carried out. + + When we came back from the Loire in September, after our + temporary retreat, the British _personnel_ at this place + grew from 1,100 to 11,000 in a week. Now there are thousands + of troops always passing through, thousands of men in + hospital, thousands at work in the docks and storehouses. + And let any one who cares for horses go and look at the + Remount Depot and the Veterinary Hospitals. The whole + treatment of horses in this war has been revolutionised. + Look at the cheap, ingenious stables, the comfort produced + by the simplest means, the kind quiet handling; look at the + Convalescent Horse Depots, the operating theatres, and the + pharmacy stores in the Veterinary Hospitals. + + As to the troops themselves, every Regiment has its own + lines, for its own reinforcements. Good food, clean cooking, + civilised dining-rooms, excellent sanitation--the base + provides them all. It provides, too, whatever else Tommy + Atkins wants, and _close at hand_; wet and dry canteens, + libraries, recreation huts, tea and coffee huts, palatial + cinemas, concerts. And what are the results? Excellent + behaviour; excellent relations between the British soldier + and the French inhabitants; absence of all serious crime. + + Then look at the docks. You will see there armies of + labourers, and long lines of ships discharging horses, + timber, rations, fodder, coal, coke, petrol. Or at the + stores and depots. It would take you days to get any idea of + the huge quantities of stores, or of the new and ingenious + means of space economy and quick distribution. As to the + Works Department--camps and depots are put up "while you + wait" by the R.E. officers and unskilled military labour. + Add to all this the armies of clerks, despatch riders, and + motor-cyclists--and the immense hospital _personnel_--then, + if you make any intelligible picture of it in your mind, you + will have some idea of what bases like these mean. + +Pondering these notes, it seemed to me that the only way to get some kind +of "intelligible picture" in two short days was to examine something in +detail, and the rest in general! Accordingly, we spent a long Sunday +morning in the Motor Transport Depot, which is the creation of Colonel B., +and perhaps as good an example as one could find anywhere in France of the +organising talent of the able British officer. + +The depot opened in a theatre on the 13th of August, 1914. "It began," +says Colonel B., "with a few balls of string and a bag of nails!" Its +staff then consisted of 6 officers and 91 N.C.O.'s and men--its permanent +staff at present is about 500. All the drivers of some 20,000 motor +vehicles--nearly 40,000 men--are tested here and, if necessary, instructed +before going up to the fighting lines; and the depot deals with 350 +different types of vehicles. In round figures 100,000 separate parts are +now dealt with, stored, and arranged in the depot. The system of records +and accounts is extraordinarily perfect, and so ingenious that it seems to +work itself. + +Meanwhile Colonel B.'s relations with his army of chauffeurs, of whom +about 1,000 are always housed on the premises, are exceedingly human and +friendly in spite of the strictness of the army discipline. Most of his +men who are not married, the Colonel tells me, have found a "friend," in +the town, one or other of its trimly dressed girls, with whom the English +mechanic "walks out," on Sundays and holidays. There are many engagements, +and, as I gather, no misconduct. Marriage is generally postponed till +after the war, owing to the legal and other difficulties involved. But +marriage there will be when peace comes. As to how the Englishman and the +French girl communicate, there are amusing speculations, but little exact +knowledge. There can be small doubt, however, that a number of hybrid +words perfectly understood by both sides are gradually coming into use, +and if the war lasts much longer, a rough Esperanto will have grown up +which may leave its mark on both languages. The word "narpoo" is a case in +point. It is said to be originally a corruption of "_il n'y a plus_"--the +phrase which so often meets the Tommy foraging for eggs or milk or fruit. +At present it means anything from "done up" to "dead." Here is an instance +of it, told me by a chaplain at the front. He was billeted in a farm with +a number of men, and a sergeant. All the men, from the chaplain to the +youngest private, felt a keen sympathy and admiration for the women of the +farm, who were both working the land and looking after their billetees, +with wonderful pluck and energy. One evening the chaplain arriving at the +open door of the farm, saw in the kitchen beyond it the daughter of the +house, who had just come in from farm work. She was looking at a pile of +dirty plates and dishes which had to be washed before supper, and she gave +a sigh of fatigue. Suddenly in the back door on the other side of the +kitchen appeared the sergeant. He looked at the girl, then at the dishes, +then again at the girl. "Fattigay?" he said cheerfully, going up to her. +"Narpoo? Give 'em me. Compree?" And before she could say a word he had +driven her away, and plunged into the work. + +The general relations, indeed, between our soldiers and the French +population could not be better. General after General, both in the bases, +and at the front dwelt on this point. A distinguished General commanding +one of our armies on the line, spoke to me of it with emphasis. "The +testimony is universal, and it is equally creditable to both sides." The +French civilian in town and country is, no doubt, profiting by the large +demand and prompt payments of the British forces. But just as in the case +of the women munition workers, there is infinitely more in it than money. +On the British part there is, in both officers and men, a burning sympathy +for what France has suffered, whether from the outrages of a brutal +enemy, or from the inevitable hardships of war. The headquarters of the +General I have mentioned were not more than fifteen or twenty miles from +towns where unspeakable things were done by German soldiers--officers no +less than men--in the first weeks of the struggle. With such deeds the +French peasantry and small townsfolk, as they still remain in Picardy and +Artois, can and do contrast, day by day, the temper, the courtesy, the +humanity of the British soldier. Great Britain, of course, is a friend and +ally; and Germany is the enemy. But these French folk, these defenceless +women and children, know instinctively that the British Army, like their +own, whether in its officers, or in its rank and file, is incapable, +toward any non-combatant, of what the German Army has done repeatedly, +officially, and still excuses and defends. + +[Illustration: One of the Wards of a Base Hospital Visited by the King.] + +[Illustration: A Howitzer in the Act of Firing.] + +The signs of this feeling for and sympathy with the French _civils_, among +our soldiers, are many. Here is one story, slight but illuminating, told +me by an eye-witness. She is one of a band of women under a noble chief, +who, since very early in the war, have been running a canteen for +soldiers, night and day, at the large railway-station of the very base I +have been describing, where trains are perpetually arriving from and +departing to the front. In the early days of the war, a refugee train +arrived one afternoon full of helpless French folk, mainly of course women +and children, and old people, turned out of their homes by the German +advance. In general, the refugees were looked after by the French Red +Cross, "who did it admirably, going along the trains with hot drinks and +food and clothing." But on this occasion there were a number of small +children, and some of them got overlooked in the hubbub. "I found a raw +young Scotchman, little more than a boy, from one of the Highland +regiments," with six youngsters clinging to him, for whom he peremptorily +demanded tea. "He had tears in his eyes, and his voice was all husky as he +explained in homely Scotch how the bairns had been turned out of their +homes--how he _couldn't_ bear it--and he would give them tea." A table +was found. "I provided the milk, and he paid for bread and butter and +chocolate, and waited on and talked to the six little French people +himself. Strange to say, they seemed to understand each other quite well." + + +III + +It was with this railway-station canteen that my latest memories of the +great base are concerned. All the afternoon of our second day at ---- was +spent in seeing a fine Red Cross hospital, and then in walking or driving +round the endless reinforcement and hospital camps in the open country. +Everywhere the same vigourous expanding organisation, the same ceaselessly +growing numbers, the same humanity and care in detail. "How many years +have we been at war?" one tends to ask oneself in bewilderment, as the +spectacle unrolls itself. "Is it possible that all this is the work of +eighteen months?" And I am reminded of the Scotch sergeant's reply to his +German captive, who asked his opinion about the duration of the war. "I'll +tell you what--it's the furrst five years that'll be the worst!" We +seem--in the bases--to have slipped through them already, measuring by any +of the ordinary ratios of work to time. On my return home, a diplomat +representing one of the neutral nations, told me that the Military +Secretary of his staff had been round the English bases in France, and had +come back with his "eyes starting out of his head." Having seen them +myself, the phrase seemed to me quite natural. + +Then, last of all, as the winter evening fell, we turned toward the +canteen at the railway-station. We found it going on in an old goods' +shed, simply fitted up with a long tea and coffee bar, tables and chairs; +and in some small adjacent rooms. It was filled from end to end with a +crowd of soldiers, who after many hours of waiting, were just departing +for the front. The old shabby room, with its points of bright light, and +its shadowy sides and corners, made a Rembrandtesque setting for the +moving throng of figures. Some men were crowding round the bar; some were +writing letters in haste to post before the train went off; the piano was +going, and a few, gathered round it, were singing the songs of the day, of +which the choruses were sometimes taken up in the room. The men--drafts +going up to different regiments on the line--appeared to me to come from +many parts. The broad Yorkshire and Cumbrian speech, Scotch, the cockney +of the Home Counties, the Northumberland burr, the tongues of Devon and +Somerset--one seemed to hear them all in turn. The demands at the counter +had slackened a little, and I was presently listening to some of the talk +of the indefatigable helpers who work this thing night and day. One of +them drew a picture of the Canadians, the indomitable fighters of Ypres +and Loos, of their breathless energy, and impatience of anything but the +quickest pace of life, their appetites!--half a dozen hard-boiled eggs, at +_3d_ each, swallowed down in a moment of time; then of the +French-Canadians, their Old World French, their old-world Catholicism, +simple and passionate. One of these last asked if there was any chance of +his being sent to Egypt. "Why are you so anxious to go to Egypt?" "Because +it was there the Holy Family rested," said the lad shyly. The lady to whom +he spoke described to him the tree and the Holy Well in St. Georgius, and +he listened entranced. + +Sometimes a rough lot fill the canteen, drawn from the poorest class, +perhaps, of an English seaport. They hustle for their food, shout at the +helpers, and seem to have no notion that such words as "please" and "thank +you" exist. After three or four hours of battling with such an apparently +mannerless crew one of the helpers saw them depart to the platform where +their train was waiting for them, with very natural relief. But they were +no sooner gone, when a guardsman, with the manners, the stature, and the +smartness of his kind, came back to the counter, and asked to speak to +the lady in charge of it. "Those chaps, Miss, what have just gone out," he +said apologetically, "have never been used to ladies, and they don't know +what to say to them. So they asked me just to come in and say for them +they were very much obliged for all the ladies' kindness, but they +couldn't say it themselves." The tired helper was suddenly too choky to +answer. The message, the choice of the messenger, as one sure to do "the +right thing," were both so touching. + +But there was a sudden movement in the crowd. The train was up. We all +surged out upon the platform, and I watched the embarkation--the endless +train engulfing its hundreds of men. Just as I had seen the food and +equipment trains going up from the first base laden with everything +necessary to replace the daily waste of the army, so here was the train of +human material, going up to replace the daily waste of _men_. After many +hours of travelling, and perhaps some of rest, these young soldiers--how +young most of them were!--would find themselves face to face with the +sharpest realities of war. I thought of what I had seen in the Red Cross +hospital that afternoon--"what man has made of man"--the wreck of youth +and strength, the hideous pain, the helpless disablement. + +But the station rang with laughter and talk. Some one in the canteen began +to play "Keep the Home Fires Burning"--and the men in the train joined in, +though not very heartily, for as one or two took care to tell me, +laughingly--"That and 'Tipperary' are awfully stale now!" A bright-faced +lad discussed with D---- how long the war would last. "And _shan't_ we +miss it when it's done!" he said, with a jesting farewell to us, as he +jumped into the train which had begun to move. Slowly, slowly it passed +out of sight, amid waves of singing and the shouting of good-byes.... + +It was late that evening, when after much talk with various officers, I +went up to my room to try and write, bewildered by a multitude of +impressions--impressions of human energy, human intelligence, human +suffering. What England is doing in this country will leave, it seems to +me, indelible marks upon the national character. I feel a natural pride, +as I sit thinking over the day, in all this British efficiency and power, +and a quick joy in the consciousness of our fellowship with France, and +hers with us. But the struggle at Verdun is still in its first intensity, +and when I have read all that the evening newspapers contain about it, +there stirs in me a fresh realisation of the meaning of what I have been +seeing. In these great bases, in the marvellous railway organisation, in +the handling of the vast motor transport in all its forms, in the feeding +and equipment of the British Army, we have the scaffolding and preparation +of war, which, both in the French and English Armies, have now reached a +perfection undreamt of when the contest began. But the war itself--the +deadly struggle of that distant line to which it all tends? It is in the +flash and roar of the guns, in the courage and endurance of the fighting +man, that all this travail of brain and muscle speaks at last. At that +courage and endurance, women, after all, can only guess--through whatever +rending of their own hearts. + +But I was to come somewhat nearer to it than I thought then. The morrow +brought surprise. + + + + +V + + +Dear H. + +Our journey farther north through the deep February snow was scarcely less +striking as an illustration of Great Britain's constantly growing share in +the war than the sight of the great supply bases themselves. The first +part of it, indeed, led over solitary uplands, where the chained wheels of +the motor rocked in the snow, and our military chauffeur dared make no +stop, for fear he should never be able to start again. All that seemed +alive in the white landscape were the partridges--sometimes in great +flocks--which scudded at our approach, or occasional groups of hares in +the middle distance holding winter parley. The road seemed interminably +long and straight, and ours were almost the first tracks in it. The snow +came down incessantly, and once or twice it looked as though we should be +left stranded in the white wilderness. + +But after a third of the journey was over, the snow began to lessen and +the roads to clear. We dropped first into a seaport town which offered +much the same mingled scene of French and English, of English nurses, and +French _poilus_, of unloading ships, and British soldiers, as the bases we +had left, only on a smaller scale. And beyond the town we climbed again on +to the high land, through a beautiful country of interwoven downs, and +more plentiful habitation. Soon, indeed, the roads began to show the signs +of war--a village or small town, its picturesque market-place filled with +a park of artillery wagons; roads lined with motor lorries with the +painted shell upon them that tells ammunition; British artillerymen in +khaki, bringing a band of horses out of a snow-bound farm; closed +motor-cars filled with officers hurrying past; then an open car with +King's Messengers, tall, soldierly figures, looking in some astonishment +at the two ladies, as they hurry by. And who or what is this horseman +looming out of the sleet--like a figure from a piece of Indian or Persian +embroidery, turbaned and swarthy, his cloak swelling out round his +handsome head and shoulders, the buildings of a Norman farm behind him? +"There are a few Indian cavalry about here," says our guide--"they are +billeted in the farms." And presently the road is full of them. Their +Eastern forms, their dark, intent faces pass strangely through the Norman +landscape. + +Now we are only some forty miles from the line, and we presently reach +another town containing an important British Headquarters, where we are to +stop for luncheon. The inn at which we put up is like the song in "Twelfth +Night," "old and plain"--and when lunch is done, our Colonel goes to pay +an official call at Headquarters, and my daughter and I make our way to +the historic church of the town. The Colonel joins us here with another +officer, who brings the amazing news that "G.H.Q."--General +Headquarters--that mysterious centre and brain of all things--invites us +for two days! If we accept, an officer will come for us on the morning of +March 1st to our hotel in Boulogne and take us by motor, some forty miles, +to the guest-house where G.H.Q. puts up its visitors. "_Accept!"_ Ah, if +one could only forget for a moment the human facts behind the absorbing +interest and excitement of this journey, one might be content to feel only +the stir of quickened pulses, of gratitude for a further opportunity so +tremendous. + +As it was, I saw all the journey henceforward with new eyes, because of +that to which it was bringing us. On we sped, through the French +countryside, past a great forest lying black on the edge of the white +horizon--I open my map and find it marked Bois de Crecy!--past another old +town, with Agincourt a few miles to the east, and so into a region of pine +and sand that borders the sea. Darkness comes down, and we miss our way. +What are these lines of light among the pine woods? Another military and +hospital camp, which we are to see on the morrow--so we discover at last. +But we have overshot our goal, and must grope our way back through the +pine woods to the sea-shore, where a little primitive hotel, built for the +summer, with walls that seem to be made of brown paper, receives us. But +we have motored far that day, and greet it joyfully. + +The following morning we woke to a silvery sunlight, with, at last, some +promise of spring over a land cleared of snow. The day was spent in going +through a camp which has been set down in one of the pleasantest and +healthiest spots of France, a favourite haunt of French artists before the +war. Now the sandy slopes, whence the pines, alack, have been cut away, +are occupied by a British reinforcement camp, by long lines of hospitals, +by a convalescent depot, and by the training-grounds, where, as at other +bases, the newly arrived troops are put through their last instruction +before going to the front. As usual, the magnitude of what has been done +in one short year filled one with amazement. Here is the bare catalogue: +Infantry Base Depots, i.e. sleeping and mess quarters, for thousands of +men belonging to the new armies; 16 hospitals with 21,000 beds, 3 rifle +ranges; 2 training-camps; a machine-gun training-school; a vast laundry +worked by Frenchwomen under British organisation, which washes for _all_ +the hospitals, 30,000 pieces a day; recreation huts of all types and +kinds, official and voluntary; a Cinema theatre, seating 800 men, with +performances twice a day; nurses' clubs; officers' clubs; a Supply Depot +for food; an Ordnance Depot for everything that is not food; new sidings +to the railway, where 1,000 men can be entrained on the one side, while +1,000 men are detraining on the other; or two full ambulance trains can +come in and go out; a Convalescent Depot of 2,000 patients, and a +Convalescent Horse Depot of 2,000 horses, etcetera. And this is the work +accomplished since last April in one camp. + +Yet, as I look back upon it, my chief impression of that long day is an +impression, first, of endless hospital huts and marquees, with their rows +of beds, in which the pale or flushed faces are generally ready--unless +pain or weariness forbid--as a visitor ventures timidly near, to turn and +smile in response to the few halting words of sympathy or inquiry which +are all one can find to say; and, next, of such a wealth of skill, and +pity, and devotion poured out upon this terrible human need, as makes one +thank God for doctors, and nurses, and bright-faced V.A.D.'s. After all, +one tremblingly asks oneself, in spite of the appalling facts of wounds, +and death, and violence in which the human world is now steeped, is it yet +possible, is it yet true, that the ultimate thing, the final power behind +the veil--to which at least this vast linked spectacle of suffering and +tenderness, here in this great camp, testifies--is _not_ Force, but Love? +Is this the mysterious message which seems to breathe from these crowded +wards--to make them _just_ bearable. Let me recollect the open door of an +operating theatre, and a young officer, quite a boy, lying there with a +bullet in his chest, which the surgeons were just about to try and +extract. The fine, pale features of the wounded man, the faces of the +surgeon and the nurses, so intent and cheerfully absorbed, the shining +surfaces and appliances of the white room--stamp themselves on memory. I +recollect, too, one John S----, a very bad case, a private. "Oh, you must +come and see John S----," says one of the Sisters. "We get all the little +distractions we can for John. Will he recover? Well, we thought +so--but"--her face changes gravely--"John himself seems to have made up +his mind lately. He knows--but he never complains." Knows what? We go to +see him, and he turns round philosophically from his tea. "Oh, I'm all +right--a bit tired--that's all." And then a smile passes between him and +his nurse. He has lost a leg, he has a deep wound in his back which won't +heal, which is draining his life away--poor, poor John S----! Close by is +a short, plain man, with a look of fevered and patient endurance that +haunts one now to think of. "It's my eyes. I'm afraid they're getting +worse. I was hit in the head, you see. Yes, the pain's bad--sometimes." +The nurse looks at him anxiously as we pass, and explains what is being +tried to give relief. + +This devotion of the nurses--how can one ever say enough of it! I recall +the wrath of a medical officer in charge of a large hospital at Rouen. +"Why don't they give more Red Crosses to the _working nurses_? They don't +get half enough recognition. I have a nurse here who has been twelve +months in the operating theatre. She ought to have a V.C.!--It's worth +it." + +And here is a dark-eyed young officer who had come from a distant colony +to fight for England. I find him in an officer's hospital, established not +long after the war broke out, in a former Casino, where the huge +baccarat-room has been turned into two large and splendid wards. He is +courteously ready to talk about his wound, but much more ready to talk +about his Sister. + +"It's simply _wonderful_ what they do for us!" he says, all his face +lighting up. "When I was worst there wasn't an hour in the day or night my +Sister wasn't ready to try anything in the world to help me. But they're +all like that." + +Let me here gratefully recall, also, the hospitals organised by the +Universities of Chicago and Harvard, entirely staffed by American Sisters +and Doctors, each of them providing 34 doctors and 80 nurses, and dealing +with 1,040 patients. Harvard has maintained a general hospital with the +British Force in France since July, 1915. The first passages and uniforms +were paid for by the British Government, but the University has itself +paid all passages, and provided all uniforms since the start; and it is +proposed, I am told, to carry on this generous help indefinitely. + +Twenty thousand wounded!--while every day the ambulance trains come and go +from the front, or to other bases--there to fill up one or other of the +splendid hospital ships that take our brave fellows back to England, and +home, and rest. And this city of hospitals, under its hard-pressed +medical chief, with all its wealth of scientific invention, and painsaving +device, and unremitting care, with its wonderful health and recovery +statistics, has been the growth of just twelve months. The mind wavers +between the two opposing images it suggests: war and its havoc on the one +hand--the power of the human brain and the goodness of the human heart on +the other. + + +II + +It was late on the 29th of February that we reached our next +resting-place, to find a kind greeting from another Base Commandant and +final directions for our journey of the morrow. We put up at one of the +old commercial inns of the town (it is not easy to find hotel quarters of +any kind just now, when every building at all suitable has been pressed +into the hospital service) and I found delight in watching the various +types of French officers, naval and military, who came in to the _table +d'hôte_, plunging as soon as they had thrown off their caps and cloaks, +and while they waited for their consommé, into the papers with the latest +news of Verdun. But we were too tired to try and talk! The morning came +quickly, and with it our escort from G.H.Q. We said good-bye to Colonel +S., who had guided our journey so smoothly through all the fierce +drawbacks of the weather, and made friends at once with our new guide, +the staff-officer who deals with the guests of G.H.Q. Never shall I +forget that morning's journey! I find in my notes: "A beautiful drive--far +more beautiful than I had expected--over undulating country, with distant +views of interlocking downs, and along typical French roads, tree or +forest bordered, running straight as a line up-hill and down-hill, +over upland and plain. One exquisite point of view especially comes +back to me, where a road to the coast--that coast which the Germans +so nearly reached!--diverged upon our left, and all the lowlands +westward came into sight. It was pure Turner, the soft sunlight of +the day, with its blue shadows, and pale-blue sky; the yellow chalk +hills, still marked with streaks of snow; the woods, purple and madder +brown, the distances ethereally blue; and the villages, bare and unlovely +compared with the villages of Kent and Sussex, but expressing a strong +old historic life, sprung from the soil, and one with it. The first +distant glimpse, as we turned a hill-corner, of the old town which was +our destination--extraordinarily fine!--its ancient church a towered +mass of luminous grey under the sunshine, gathering the tiled roofs +into one harmonious whole." + +But we avoided the town itself and found ourselves presently descending an +avenue of trees to the eighteenth-century château, which is used by G.H.Q. +as a hostel for its guests--allied and neutral correspondents, military +attachés, special missions, and the like. In a few minutes I found myself +standing bewildered by the strangeness and the interest of it all, in a +charming Louis-Quinze room, plain and simple in the true manner of the +genuine French country house, but with graceful panelled walls, an old +_armoire_ of the date, windows wide open to the spring sun, and a +half-wild garden outside. A _femme de ménage_, much surprised to be +waiting on two ladies, comes to look after us. And this is France!--and we +are only thirty miles from that fighting line, which has drawn our English +hearts to it all these days. + +A map is waiting for each of us down-stairs, and we are told, roughly, +where it is proposed to take us. A hurried lunch, and we are in the motor +again, with Captain ---- sitting in front. "You have your passes?" he asks +us, and we anxiously verify the new and precious papers that brought us +from our last stage, and will have to be shown on our way. We drive first +to Arques, and Hazebrouck, then southeast. At a certain village we call at +the Divisional Headquarters. The General comes out himself, and proposes +to guide us on. "I will take you as near to the fighting line as I can." + +On we went, in two motors; the General with me, Captain ---- and D. +following. We passed through three villages, and after the first we were +within shell range of the German batteries ahead. But I cannot remember +giving a thought to the fact, so absorbing to the unaccustomed eye were +all the accumulating signs of the actual battle-line; the endless rows of +motor-lorries, either coming back from, or going up to the front, now with +food, now with ammunition, reserve trenches to right and left of the road; +a "dump" or food-station, whence carts filled from the heavy lorries go +actually up to the trenches, lines of artillery wagons, parks of +ammunition, or motor-ambulances, long lines of picketed horses, +motor-cyclists dashing past. In one village we saw a merry crowd in the +little _place_ gathered round a field-kitchen whence came an excellent +fragrance of good stew. A number of the men were wearing leeks in their +ears for St. David's Day. "You're Welsh, then?" I said to one of the cooks +(by this time we had left the motor and were walking). "I'm not!" said the +little fellow, with a laughing look. "It's St. Patrick's Day I'm waitin' +for! But I've no objection to givin' St. David a turn!" + +He opened his kitchen to show me the good things going on, and as we moved +away there came up a marching platoon of men from the trenches, who had +done their allotted time there and were coming back to billets. The +General went to greet them. "Well, my boys, you could stick it all right?" +It was good to see the lightening on the tired faces, and to watch the +group disappear into the cheerful hubbub of the village. + +We walked on, and outside the village I heard the guns for the first time. +We were now "actually in the battle," according to my companion, and a +shell was quite possible, though not probable. Again, I can't remember +that the fact made any impression upon us. We were watching now parties of +men at regular intervals sitting waiting in the fields beside the road, +with their rifles and kits on the grass near them. They were waiting for +the signal to move up toward the firing line as soon as the dusk was +further advanced. "We shall meet them later," said the General, "as we +come back." + +At the same moment he turned to address a young artillery-officer in the +road: "Is your gun near here?" "Yes, sir, I was just going back to it." He +was asked to show us the way. As we followed I noticed the white puff of a +shell, far ahead, over the flat, ditch-lined fields; a captive balloon was +making observations about half a mile in front, and an aeroplane passed +over our heads. "Ah, not a Boche," said Captain ---- regretfully, "but we +brought a Boche down here yesterday, just over this village--a splendid +fight." + +Meanwhile, the artillery fire was quickening. We reached a ruined village +from which all normal inhabitants had been long since cleared away. The +shattered church was there, and I noticed a large crucifix quite intact +still hanging on its chancel wall. A little farther and the boyish +artillery-officer, our leader, who had been by this time joined by a +comrade, turned and beckoned to the General. Presently we were creeping +through seas of mud down into the gun emplacement, so carefully concealed +that no aeroplane overhead could guess it. + +There it was--how many of its fellows I had seen in the Midland and +northern workshops!--its muzzle just showing in the dark, and nine or ten +high-explosive shells lying on the bench in front of the breech. One is +put in. We stand back a little, and a sergeant tells me to put my fingers +in my ears and look straight at the gun. Then comes the shock--not so +violent as I had expected--and the cartridge-case drops out. The shell has +sped on its way to the German trenches--with what result to human flesh +and blood? But I remember thinking very little of that--till afterwards. +At the time, the excitement of the shot and of watching that little group +of men in the darkness held all one's nerves gripped. + +In a few more minutes we were scrambling out again through the deep, muddy +trench leading to the dugout, promising to come back to tea with the +officers, in their billet, when our walk was done. + +Now indeed we were "in the battle"! Our own guns were thundering away +behind us, and the road was more and more broken up by shell holes. "Look +at that group of trees to your left--beyond it is Neuve Chapelle," said +our guide. "And you see those ruined cottages, straight ahead, and the +wood behind." He named a wood thrice famous in the history of the war. +"Our lines are just beyond the cottages, and the German lines just in +front of the wood. How far are we from them? Three-quarters of a mile." It +was discussed whether we should be taken zigzag through the fields to the +entrance of the communication-trench. But the firing was getting hotter, +and Captain ---- was evidently relieved when we elected to turn back. +Shall I always regret that lost opportunity? You did ask me to write +something about "the life of the soldiers in the trenches"--and that was +the nearest that any woman could personally have come to it! But I doubt +whether anything more--anything, at least, that was possible--could have +deepened the whole effect. We had been already nearer than any woman--even +a nurse--has been, in this war, to the actual fighting on the English +line, and the cup of impressions was full. + +As we turned back, I noticed a little ruined cottage, with a Red Cross +flag floating. Our guide explained that it was a field dressing-station. +It was not for us--who could not help--to ask to go in. But the thought of +it--there were some badly wounded in it--pursued me as we walked on +through the beautiful evening. + +A little farther we came across what I think moved me more than anything +else in that crowded hour--those same companies of men we had seen sitting +waiting in the fields, now marching quietly, spaced one behind the other, +up to the trenches, to take their turn there. Every day I am accustomed to +see bodies, small and large, of khaki-clad men, marching through these +Hertfordshire lanes. But this was different. The bearing was erect and +manly, the faces perfectly cheerful; but there was the seriousness in them +of men who knew well the work to which they were going. I caught a little +quiet whistling, sometimes, but no singing. We greeted them as they +passed, with a shy "Good luck!" and they smiled shyly back, surprised, of +course, to see a couple of women on that road. But there was no shyness +towards the General. It was very evident that the relations between him +and them were as good as affection and confidence on both sides could make +them. + +I still see the bright tea-table in that corner of a ruined farm, where +our young officers presently greeted us--the General marking our maps to +make clear where he had actually been--the Captain of the battery +springing up to show off his gramophone--while the guns crashed at +intervals close beside us, range-finding, probably, searching out a +portion of the German line, under the direction of some hidden observer +with his telephone. It was over all too quickly. Time was up, and soon +the motor was speeding back towards the Divisional Headquarters. The +General and I talked of war, and what could be done to stop it. A more +practical religion "lifting mankind again"?--a new St. Francis, preaching +the old things in new ways? "But in this war we had and we have no choice. +We are fighting for civilisation and freedom, and we must go on till we +win." + + +III + +It was long before I closed my eyes in the pretty room of the old château, +after an evening spent in talk with some officers of the Headquarters +Staff. When I woke in the dawn I little guessed what the day (March 2nd) +was to bring forth, or what was already happening thirty miles away on the +firing line. Zélie, the _femme de ménage_, brought us our breakfast to our +room, coffee and bread and eggs, and by half-past nine we were +down-stairs, booted and spurred, to find the motor at the door, a simple +lunch being packed up, and gas-helmets got ready! "We have had a very +successful action this morning," said Captain ----, evidently in the best +of spirits. "We have taken back some trenches on the Ypres-Comines Canal +that we lost a little while ago, and captured about 200 prisoners. If we +go off at once, we shall be in time to see the German counter-attack." + +It was again fine, though not bright, and the distances far less clear. +This time we struck northeast, passing first the sacred region of G.H.Q. +itself, where we showed our passes. Then after making our way through +roads lined interminably, as on the previous day, with the splendid +motor-lorries laden with food and ammunition, which have made such a new +thing of the transport of this war, interspersed with rows of ambulances +and limbered wagons, with flying-stations and horse lines, we climbed a +hill to one of the finest positions in this northern land; an old town, +where Gaul and Roman, Frank and Fleming, English and French have clashed, +which looks out northward towards the Yser and Dunkirk, and east towards +Ypres. Now, if the mists will only clear, we shall see Ypres! But, alas, +they lie heavy over the plain, and we descend the hill again without that +vision. Now we are bound for Poperinghe, and must go warily, because there +is a lively artillery action going on beyond Poperinghe, and it is +necessary to find out what roads are being shelled. + +On the way we stop at an air-station, to watch the aeroplanes rising and +coming down, and at a point near Poperinghe we go over a casualty-clearing +station--a collection of hospital huts, with storehouses and staff +quarters--with the medical officer in charge. Here were women nurses who +are not allowed in the field dressing-stations nearer the line. There were +not many wounded, though they were coming in, and the Doctor was not for +the moment very busy. + +We stood on the threshold of a large ward, where we could not, I think, be +seen. At the farther end a serious case was being attended by nurses and +surgeons. Everything was passing in silence; and to me it was as if there +came from the distant group a tragic message of suffering, possibly death. +Then, as we passed lingeringly away, we saw three young officers, all +wounded, _running_ up from the ambulance at the gate, which had just +brought them, and disappearing into one of the wards. The first--a +splendid kilted figure--had his head bound up; the others were apparently +wounded in the arm. But they seemed to walk on air, and to be quite +unconscious that anything was wrong with them. It had been a success, a +great success, and they had been in it! + +The ambulances were now arriving fast from the field dressing-stations +close to the line, and we hurried away, and were soon driving through +Poperinghe. Here and there there was a house wrecked with shell-fire. The +little town indeed with its picturesque _place_ is constantly shelled. +But, all the same, life seems to go on as usual. The Poperinghe boy, like +his London brother, hangs on the back of carts; his father and mother +come to their door to watch what is going on, or to ask eagerly for news +of the counter-attack; and his little brothers and sisters go tripping to +school, in short cloaks with the hoods drawn over their heads, as though +no war existed. Here and in the country round, poor robbed Belgium is +still at home on her own soil, and on the best of terms with the English +Army, by which, indeed, this remnant of her prospers greatly. As I have +already insisted, the relations everywhere between the British soldier and +the French and Belgian populations are among the British--or shall I say +the Allied?--triumphs of the war. + +Farther on the road a company from a famous regiment, picked men all of +them, comes swinging along, fresh from their baths!--life and force in +every movement--young Harrys with their beavers on. Then, a house where +men have their gas-helmets tested--a very strict and necessary business; +and another, where an ex-Balliol tutor and Army Chaplain keeps open doors +for the soldier in his hours of rest or amusement. But we go in search of +a safe road to a neighbouring village, where some fresh passes have to be +got. Each foot now of the way is crowded with the incidents and +appurtenances of war, and war close at hand. An Australian transport base +is pointed out, with a wholly Australian staff. "Some of the men," says +our guide, "are millionaires." Close by is an aeroplane descending +unexpectedly in a field, and a crowd of men rushing to help; and we turn +away relieved to see the two aviators walking off unhurt. Meanwhile, I +notice a regular game of football going on at a distance, and some +carefully written names of bypaths--"Hyde Park Corner," "Piccadilly," +"Queen Mary's Road," and the like. The animation, the life of the scene +are indescribable. + +At the next village the road was crowded both with natives and soldiers to +see the German prisoners brought in. Alack! we did not see them. +Ambulances were passing and re-passing, the slightly wounded men in cars +open at the back, the more serious cases in closed cars, and everywhere +the same _va et vient_ of lorries and wagons, of staff-cars and +motor-cyclists. It was not right for us to add to the congestion in the +road. Moreover, the hours were drawing on, and the great sight was still +to come. But to have watched those prisoners come in would have somehow +rounded off the day! + + +IV + +Our new passes took us to the top of a hill well known to the few +onlookers of which this war admits. The motor stopped at a point on the +road where a picket was stationed, who examined our papers. Then came a +stiff and muddy climb, past a dugout for protection in case of shelling, +Captain ---- carrying the three gas-helmets. At the top was a flat green +space--three or four soldiers playing football on it!--and an old +windmill, and farm-buildings. + +We sheltered behind the great beams supporting the windmill, and looked +out through them, north and east, over a wide landscape; a plain bordered +eastward by low hills, every mile of it, almost, watered by British blood, +and consecrate to British dead. As we reached the windmill, as though in +sombre greeting, the floating mists on the near horizon seemed to part, +and there rose from them a dark, jagged tower, one side of it torn away. +It was the tower of Ypres--mute victim!--mute witness to a crime, that, +beyond the reparations of our own day, history will avenge through years +to come. + +A flash!--another!--from what appear to be the ruins at its base. It is +the English guns speaking from the lines between us and Ypres; and as we +watch we see the columns of white smoke rising from the German lines as +the shells burst. There they are, the German lines--along the Messines +ridge. We make them out quite clearly, thanks to a glass and Captain +----'s guidance. Their guns, too, are at work, and a couple of their +shells are bursting on our trenches somewhere between Vlamertinghe and +Dickebusche. Then the rattle of our machine-guns--as it seems from +somewhere close below us, and again the boom of the artillery. + +The counter-action is in progress, and we watch what can be seen or +guessed of it, in fascination. We are too far off to see what is actually +happening between the opposing trenches, but one of the chief fields of +past and present battle, scenes which our children and our children's +children will go to visit, lie spread out before us. Half the famous sites +of the earlier war can be dimly made out between us and Ypres. In front of +us is the gleam of the Zillebeke Lake, beyond it Hooge. Hill 60 is in that +band of shadow; a little farther east the point where the Prussian Guard +was mown down at the close of the first Battle of Ypres; farther south the +fields and woods made for ever famous by the charge of the Household +Cavalry, by the deeds of the Worcesters, and the London Scottish, by all +the splendid valour of that "thin red line," French and English, cavalry +and infantry, which in the first Battle of Ypres withstood an enemy four +times as strong, saved France, and thereby England, and thereby Europe. In +that tract of ground over which we are looking lie more than 100,000 +graves, English and French; and to it the hearts of two great nations will +turn for all time. Then if you try to pierce the northern haze, beyond +that ruined tower, you may follow in imagination the course of the Yser +westward to that Belgian coast where Admiral Hood's guns broke down and +scattered the German march upon Dunkirk and Calais; or if you turn south +you are looking over the Belfry of Bailleul, towards Neuve Chapelle, and +Festubert, and all the fierce fighting-ground round Souchez and the +Labyrinth. Once English and French stood linked here in a common heroic +defence. Now the English hold all this line firmly from the sea to the +Somme; while the French, with the eyes of the world upon them, are making +history, hour by hour, at Verdun. + +So to this point we have followed one branch--the greatest--of England's +effort; and the mind, when eyes fail, pursues it afresh from its +beginnings when we first stood to arms in August, 1914, through what Mr. +Buchan has finely called the "rally of the Empire," through the early rush +and the rapid growth of the new armies, through the strengthening of +Egypt, the disaster of Gallipoli, the seizure of the German Colonies; +through all that vast upheaval at home which we have seen in the munition +areas; through that steady, and ever-growing organisation on the friendly +French soil we have watched in the supply bases. Yet here, for us, it +culminates; and here and in the North Sea, we can hardly doubt--whatever +may be the diversions in other fields--will be fought, for Great Britain, +the decisive battles of the war. As I turn to those dim lines on the +Messines ridge, I have come at last to sight of whither it all moves. +There, in those trenches is _The Aggressor_--the enemy who has wantonly +broken the peace of Europe, who has befouled civilisation with deeds of +lust and blood, between whom and the Allies there can be no peace till the +Allies' right arm dictates it. Every week, every day, the British Armies +grow, the British troops pour steadily across the Channel, and to the +effort of England and her Allies there will be no truce till the righteous +end is won. + +But the shadows are coming down on the great scene, and with the sound of +the guns still in our ears we speed back through the crowded roads to +G.H.Q., and these wonderful days are over. Now, all that remains for me is +to take you, far away from the armies, into the English homes whence the +men fighting here are drawn, and to show you, if I can, very shortly, by a +few instances, what rich and poor are doing as individuals to feed the +effort of England in this war. What of the _young_, of all classes and +opportunities, who have laid down their lives in this war? What of the +mothers who reared them, the schools and universities which sent them +forth?--the comrades who are making ready to carry on their work? You ask +me as to the _spirit_ of the nation--the foundation of all else. Let us +look into a few lives, a few typical lives and families, and see. + + + + +VI + + +_April 22nd_. + +Dear H. + +As I begin upon this final letter to you comes the news that the +threatened split in the British Cabinet owing to the proposed introduction +of general military service has been averted, and that at a Secret Session +to be held next Tuesday, April 25th, Ministers will, for the first time, +lay before both Houses of Parliament full and complete information--much +more full and complete at any rate, than has yet been given--of the +"effort" of Great Britain in this world war, what this country is doing in +sea-power, in the provision of Armies, in the lending of money to our +Allies, in our own shipping service to them, and in our supply to them of +munitions, coal, and other war material--including boots and clothing. If, +then, our own British Parliament will be for the first time fully apprised +next Tuesday of what the nation has been doing, it is, perhaps, small +wonder that you on your side of the Atlantic have not rightly understood +the performance of a nation which has, collectively, the same love of +"grousing" as the individual British soldier shows in the trenches. + +Let me, however, go back and recapitulate a little. + +In the first of these letters, I tried, by a rapid "vision" of the Fleet, +as I personally saw an important section of it amid the snows of February, +to point to the indispensable condition of this "effort," without which it +could never have been made, without which it could not be maintained for a +day, at the present moment. Since that visit of mine, the power of the +Fleet and the effect of the Fleet have strengthened week by week. The +blockade of Germany is far more effective than it was three months ago; +the evidence of its growing stringency accumulates steadily, and at the +same time the British Foreign Office has been anxiously trying, and +evidently with much success, to minimise for neutrals its inevitable +difficulties and inconveniences. Meanwhile, as Mr. Asquith will explain +next Tuesday, the expenditure on the war, not only on our own needs but on +those of our Allies is colossal--terrifying. The most astonishing Budget +of English History, demanding a fourth of his income from every well-to-do +citizen, has been brought in since I began to write these letters, and +quietly accepted. Five hundred millions sterling ($2,500,000,000) have +been already lent to our Allies. We are spending at the yearly rate of +600,000,000 sterling ($3,000,000,000) on the Army; 200,000,000 on the Navy +as compared with 40,000,000 in 1913; while the Munitions Department is +costing about two-thirds as much (400,000,000 sterling) as the rest of the +Army, and is employing close upon 2,000,000 workers, one-tenth of them +women. The export trade of the country, in spite of submarines and lack of +tonnage, is at the moment greater than it was in the corresponding months +of 1913. + +As to what we have got for our money, Parliament has authorised an Army +of 4,000,000 men, and it is on the question of the last half million that +England's Effort now turns. Mr. Asquith will explain everything that has +been done, and everything that still remains to do, _in camera_ to +Parliament next Tuesday. But do not, my dear friend, make any mistake +_England will get the men she wants_; and Labour will be in the end just +as determined to get them as any other section of the Community. +Meanwhile, abroad, while we seem, for the moment, in France to be +inactive, we are in reality giving the French at Verdun just that support +which they and General Joffre desire, and--it can scarcely be +doubted--preparing great things on our own account. In spite of our +failure in Gallipoli, and the anxious position of General Townshend's +force, Egypt is no longer in danger of attack, if it ever has been; our +sea-power has brought a Russian force safely to Marseilles; and the +possibilities of British and Russian Collaboration in the East are +rapidly opening out. As to the great and complex war-machine we have been +steadily building up on French soil, as I tried to show in my fourth +letter, whether in the supply bases, or in the war organisation along the +ninety miles of front now held by the British Armies, it would indeed +astonish those dead heroes of the Retreat from Mons--could they comes back +to see it! We are not satisfied with it yet--hence the unrest in +Parliament and the Press--we shall never be satisfied--till Germany has +accepted the terms of the Allies. But those who know England best have no +doubt whatever as to the temper of the nation which has so far "improvised +the impossible," in the setting up of this machine, and means, in the end, +_to get out of it what it wants_. + +The temper of the nation? In this last letter let me take some samples of +it. First--what have the rich been doing? As to money, the figures of the +income-tax, the death-duties, and the various war loans are there to show +what they have contributed to the State. The Joint War Committee of the +Red Cross and the St. John's Ambulance Association have collected--though +not, of course, from the rich only--close on 4,000,000 sterling (between +$18,000,000 and $19,000,000), and the Prince of Wales Fund nearly +6,000,000 ($30,000,000). The lavishness of English giving, indeed, in all +directions during the last two years, could hardly I think have been +outdone. A few weeks ago I walked with the Duke of Bedford through the +training and reinforcement camp, about fifteen miles from my own home in +the country, which he himself commands and which, at the outbreak of war, +he himself built without waiting for public money or War Office +contractors, to house and train recruits for the various Bedfordshire +regiments. The camp holds 1,200 men, and is ranged in a park where the +oaks--still standing--were considered too old by Oliver Cromwell's +Commissioners to furnish timber for the English Navy. Besides ample +barrack accommodation in comfortable huts, planned so as to satisfy every +demand whether of health or convenience, all the opportunities that +Aldershot offers, on a large scale, are here provided in miniature. The +model trenches with the latest improvements in plan, revetting, +gun-emplacements, sally-ports, and the rest, spread through the sandy +soil; the musketry ranges, bombing and bayonet schools are of the most +recent and efficient type. And the Duke takes a keen personal interest in +every man in training, follows his progress in camp, sees him off to the +front, and very often receives him, when wounded, in the perfectly +equipped hospital which the Duchess has established in Woburn Abbey +itself. Here the old riding-school, tennis-court, and museum, which form a +large building fronting the abbey, have been turned into wards as +attractive as bright and simple colour, space, flowers, and exquisite +cleanliness can make them. The Duchess is herself the Matron in charge, +under the War Office, keeps all the records, is up at half past five in +the morning, and spends her day in the endless doing, thinking, and +contriving that such a hospital needs. Not very far away stands another +beautiful country house, rented by Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw Reid when they +were in England. It also is a hospital, but its owner, Lord Lucas, not a +rich man, has now given it irrevocably to the nation for the use of +disabled soldiers, together with as much land as may suffice a farm colony +chosen from among them. The beautiful hospital of 250 beds at Paignton, in +North Devon, run entirely by women of American birth now resident in Great +Britain, without any financial aid from the British Government, was +another large country house given to the service of the wounded by Mr. +Singer. Lady Sheffield's hospital for 25 beds at Alderley Park is an +example of how part of a country house with all its green and restful +surroundings may be used for those who have suffered in the war, and it +has many fellows in all parts of England. Altogether about 700 country +houses, large and small, have been offered to the War Office. + +But money and houses are the very least part of what the old families, +the rich manufacturers, or the educated class generally have offered to +their country in this war. Democracy has gone far with us, but it may +still be said that the young heir to a great name, to estates with which +his family has been connected for generations, and to the accumulated +"consideration" to use a French word in a French sense, which such a +position almost always carries with it--has a golden time in English +life. Difficulties that check others fall away from him; he is smiled +upon for his kindred's sake before he makes friends for his own; the +world is overkind to his virtues and blind to his faults; he enters +manhood indeed as "one of our conquerors"; and it will cost him some +trouble to throw away his advantages. Before the war such a youth was +the common butt of the Socialist orator. He was the typical "shirker" +and "loafer," while other men worked; the parasite bred from the sweat +of the poor; the soft, effeminate creature who had never faced the facts +of life and never would. As to his soldiering--the common profession of +so many of his kind--that was only another offence in the eyes of +politicians like Mr. Keir Hardie. When the class war came, he would +naturally he found shooting down the workmen; but for any other war, an +ignorant popinjay!--incompetent even at his own trade, and no match +whatever for the scientific soldier of the Continent. + +Those who knew anything of the Army were well aware long before 1914 that +this type of officer--if he still existed, as no doubt he had once +existed--had become extraordinarily rare; that since the Boer War, the +level of education in the Army, the standard of work demanded, the quality +of the relations between officers and men had all steadily advanced. And +with regard to the young men of the "classes" in general, those who had to +do with them, at school and college, while fully alive to their +weaknesses, yet cherished convictions which were more instinct than +anything else, as to what stuff these easy-going, sport-loving fellows +might prove to be made of in case of emergency. + +Well, the emergency came. These youths of the classes, heirs to titles and +estates, or just younger sons of the old squirearchy of England, so far as +it still survives, went out in their hundreds, with the old and famous +regiments of the British line in the Expeditionary Force, and perished in +their hundreds. Forty-seven eldest sons, heirs to English peerages had +fallen within a year of the outbreak of war--among them the heirs to such +famous houses as Longleat, Petworth, and Castle Ashby--and the names of +Grenfell, Hood, Stuart, Bruce, Lister, Douglas Pennant, Worsley, Hay, St. +Aubyn, Carington, Annesley, Hicks Beach--together with men whose fathers +have played prominent parts in the politics or finance of the last half +century. And the first ranks have been followed by what one might almost +call a _levée en masse_ of those that remained. Their blood has been spilt +like water at Ypres and La Bassée, at Suvla and Helles. Whatever may be +said henceforward of these "golden lads" of ours, "shirker" and "loafer" +they can never he called again. They have died too lavishly, their men +have loved and trusted them too well for that--and some of the +working-class leaders, with the natural generosity of English hearts, have +confessed it abundantly. + +And the professional classes--the intellectuals--everywhere the leading +force of the nation--have done just as finely, and of course in far +greater numbers. Never shall I forget my visit to Oxford last May--in the +height of the summer term, just at that moment when Oxford normally is at +its loveliest and fullest, brimming over with young life, the streets +crowded with caps and gowns, the river and towing-path alive with the +"flannelled fools," who have indeed flung back Rudyard Kipling's gibe--if +it ever applied to them--with interest. For they had all disappeared. They +were in the trenches, landing at Suvla, garrisoning Egypt, pushing up to +Baghdad. The colleges contained a few forlorn remnants--under age, or +medically unfit. The river, on a glorious May day, showed boats indeed, +but girls were rowing them. Oriel, the college of Arnold, of Newman, of +Cecil Rhodes, was filled with women students, whose own college, +Somerville, had become a hospital. The Examination Schools in the High +Street were a hospital, and the smell of disinfectants displaced the +fragrance of lilac and hawthorn for ever associated in the minds of +Oxford's lovers with the summer term. In New College gardens, there were +white tents full of wounded. I walked up and down that wide, deserted lawn +of St. John's, where Charles I once gathered his Cavaliers, with an old +friend, an Oxford tutor of forty years' standing, who said with a +despairing gesture, speaking of his pupils: "So many are gone--so +_many_!--and the terrible thing is that I can't feel it as I once did--as +blow follows blow one seems to have lost the power." + +Let me evoke the memory of some of them. From Balliol have gone the two +Grenfell brothers, vehement, powerful souls, by the testimony of those +who knew them best, not delightful to those who did not love them, not +just, often, to those they did not love, but full of that rich stuff which +life matures to all fine uses. The younger fell in the attack on Hooge, +July 31st, last year; the elder, Julian, had fallen some months earlier. +Julian's verses, composed the night before he was wounded, will be +remembered with Rupert Brooke's sonnets, as expressing the inmost passion +of the war in great hearts. They were written in the spring weather of +April, 1915, and a month later the writer had died of his wounds. With an +exquisite felicity and strength the lines run, expressing the strange and +tragic joy of the "fighting man" in the spring, which may be his last--in +the night heavens--in the woodland trees: + + "The woodland trees that stand together + They stand to him each one a friend; + They gently speak in the windy weather; + They guide to valley and ridge's end. + + "The kestrel hovering by day + And the little owls that call by night, + Bid him be swift and keen as they + As keen of ear, as swift of sight. + + "The blackbird sings to him, 'Brother, brother, + If this be the last song you shall sing, + Sing well, for you may not sing another + Brother, sing.' + + "In dreary, doubtful waiting hours, + Before the brazen frenzy starts, + The horses show him nobler powers;-- + O patient eyes, courageous hearts! + + "And when the burning moment breaks, + And all things else are out of mind + And only Joy of Battle takes + Him by the throat and makes him blind + + "Through joy and blindness he shall know + Not caring much to know, that still + Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so + That it be not the Destined Will. + + "The thundering line of battle stands, + And in the air Death moans and sings; + But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, + And Night shall fold him in soft wings." + +A young man of another type, inheriting from the Cecils on the one side, +and from his grandfather, the first Lord Selborne, on the other, the best +traditions of English Conservatism and English churchmanship--open-eyed, +patriotic, devout--has been lost to the nation in Robert A.S. Palmer, the +second son of Lord and Lady Selborne, affectionately known to an ardent +circle of friends whose hopes were set on him, as "Bobbie Palmer." He has +fallen in the Mesopotamian campaign; and of him, as of William Henry +Gladstone, the grandson and heir of England's great Liberal Minister, who +fell in Flanders a year ago, it may be said, as his Oxford contemporaries +said of Sir Philip Sidney, + + Honour and Fame are got about their graves, + And there sit mourning of each other's loss. + +In one of his latest letters, quoted by a friend in a short biography, +Robert Palmer wrote:--"Who isn't weary to death of the war? I certainly +have been, for over a year; yes, and sorrowful almost unto death over it, +at times, as you doubtless have too. But of one thing I am and always +have been sure, that it is worth the cost and any cost there is to come, +to prevent Prussianism--which is Anti-Christ--controlling Europe." The +following eloquent passage written by an Oxford Fellow and Tutor, in a +series of short papers on the losses sustained by Oxford in the war, is +understood to refer to Mr. Palmer:-- + +"To-night the bell tolls in the brain (_haud rediturus_) over one of the +noblest--if it be not a treason to discriminate--of all the dead one has +known who have died for England. Graciousness was in all his doings and in +all the workings of his mind. The music and gymnastic whereof Plato wrote, +that should attune the body to harmony with the mind, and harmonise all +the elements of the mind in a perfect unison, had done their work upon +him. He seemed--at any rate, to the eyes of those who loved him, and they +were many--to have the perfection of nature's endowment: beauty of mind +knit to beauty of body, and all informed by a living spirit of affection, +so that his presence was a benediction, and a matter for thanksgiving +that God had made men after this manner. So to speak of him is perhaps to +idealise him; but one can only idealise that which suggests the ideal, and +at the least he had a more perfect participation in the ideal than falls +to the general lot of humanity." + +Such he was: and now he too is dead. From the work to which he had gone, +thousands of miles away (a work of service, and of his Master's service), +he had hastened back to England, and for England he has died. His tutor +had once written in his copy of the Vulgate: "_Esto vir fortis, et +pugnemus pro populo nostro et pro civitate Dei nostri_." He was strong; +and he fought for both. + +Another Oxford man, Gilbert Talbot, a youngest son of the much-loved +Bishop of Winchester, will perhaps stand for many, in coming years, as the +pre-eminent type of first youth, youth with all its treasure of life and +promise unspent, poured out like spikenard in this war at the feet of +England. Already assured at Oxford of a brilliant career in politics, a +fine speaker, a hard worker, possessing by inheritance the charm of two +families, always in the public eye and ear, and no less popular than +famous, he had just landed in the United States when the war broke out. He +was going round the world with a friend, youth and ambition high within +him. He turned back without a moment's hesitation, though soldiering had +never been at all attractive to him, and after his training went out to +France. He was killed in Flanders in July last. Let me give the story of +his identification after death on the battle-field, by his elder brother, +Neville, Army Chaplain, and ex-Balliol tutor, as Canon Scott Holland gave +it in the _Commonwealth_:-- + +"The attack had failed. There was never any hope of its succeeding, for +the machine-guns of the Germans were still in full play, with their fire +unimpaired. The body had to lie there where it had fallen. Only, his +brother could not endure to let it lie unhonoured or unblessed. After a +day and a half of anxious searching for exact details, he got to the +nearest trench by the 'murdered' wood, which the shells had now smashed to +pieces. There he found some shattered Somersets, who begged him to go no +farther. But he heard a voice within him bidding him risk it, and the call +of the blood drove him on. Creeping out of the far end of the trench, as +dusk fell, he crawled through the grass on hands and knees, in spite of +shells and snipers, dropping flat on the ground as the flares shot up from +the German trenches. And, at last, thirty yards away in the open ... he +knew that he was close on what he sought. Two yards farther, he found it. +He could stroke with his hand the fair young head that he knew so well; he +could feel for pocket-book and prayer-book, and the badge and the whistle. +He could breathe a prayer of benediction ... and then crawl back on his +perilous way in the night, having done all that man could do for the +brother whom he had loved so fondly; and enabled, now, to tell those at +home that Gilbert was dead indeed, but that he had died the death that a +soldier would love to die, leaving his body the nearest of all who fell, +to the trench that he had been told to take." + +Again, of Charles Alfred Lister, Lord Ribblesdale's eldest son, an Oxford +friend says: "There were almost infinite possibilities in his future." He +was twice wounded at the Dardanelles, was then offered a post of +importance in the Foreign Office, refused it, and went back to the +front--to die. But among the hundreds of memorial notices issued by the +Oxford Colleges, the same note recurs and recurs, of unhesitating, +uncalculated sacrifice. Older men, and younger men, Don, and +under-graduate, lads of nineteen and twenty, and those who were already +school-mastering, or practising at the Bar, or in business, they felt no +doubts, they made no delays. Their country called, and none failed in that +great _Adsum_. + +Cambridge of course has the same story to tell. One takes the short, +pathetic biographies almost at random from the ever-lengthening record, +contributed by the colleges. Captain J. Lusk, 6th Cameronians, was already +Director of an important steel works, engaged in Government business when +war broke out, and might have honourably claimed exemption. Instead he +offered himself at once on mobilisation, and went out with his battalion +to France last spring. On the 15th of June, at Festubert, he was killed in +volunteering to bring what was left of a frightfully battered battalion +out of action. "What seems to me my duty as an officer," he once wrote to +a friend, "is to carry my sword across the barriers of death clean and +bright." "This," says the friend who writes the notice, "he has done." +Lieutenant Le Blanc Smith, of Trinity, machine-gun officer, was struck in +the forehead by a sniper's bullet while reconnoitring. His General and +brother officers write: + + _He was a very fine young officer.... Every one loved + him.... His men would do anything for him...._ + +And the sergeant of his machine-gun brigade says: + + _Although only a non-commissioned officer myself, I feel I + have lost my brother, because he was so awfully good and + kind to me and us all_. + +Lieutenant Hamilton, aged twenty-five, says in a last letter to his +father: + + _Just a line while the beginning of the great battle is + going on. It is wonderful how peaceful one feels amid it + all. Any moment one may be put out of action, but one does + not worry. That quiet time alone with God at the Holy + Communion was most comforting_. + +Immediately after writing these words, the writer fell in action. Captain +Clarke, a famous Cambridge athlete, President of the C.U.A.C., bled to +death--according to one account--from a frightful wound received in the +advance near Hooge on September 25th. His last recorded act--the +traditional act of the dying soldier!--was to give a drink from his flask +to a wounded private. Of the general action of Cambridge men, the Master +of Christ's writes: "Nothing has been more splendid than the way the young +fellows have come forward; not only the athletes and the healthy, but in +all cases the most unlikely men have rushed to the front, and have done +brilliantly. The mortality, however, has been appalling. In an ordinary +way one loses one killed to eight or nine wounded; but in this war the +number of Cambridge men killed and missing practically equals the number +of wounded." Of the effect upon the University an eye-witness says: +"Eighty per cent of the College rooms are vacant. Rows and rows of houses +in Cambridge are to let. All the Junior Fellows are on service in one +capacity or another, and a great many of the Seniors are working in +Government Offices or taking school posts"--so that the school education +of the Country may be carried on. Altogether, nearly 12,000 Cambridge men +are serving; 980 have been wounded; 780 have been killed; 92 are missing. + +As to one's friends and kinsfolk, let me recall the two gallant grandsons +of my dear old friend and publisher, George Murray Smith, the original +publisher of _Jane Eyre_, friend of Charlotte Brontë, and creator of the +_Dictionary of National Biography_. The elder one, who had just married +before going out, fought all through the retreat from Mons, and fell in +one of the early actions on the Flanders front. "He led us all the way," +said one of his men afterwards. All the way!--All through the immortal +rear-guard actions of August--only to fall, when the tide had turned, and +the German onslaught on Paris had been finally broken! "In all my +soldiering," writes a brother officer, "I have never seen a warmer feeling +between men and their officer." "Was he not," asks a well-known Eton +master, "that tall, smiling, strong, gentle-mannered boy at +White-Thomson's?"--possessing an "affectionate regard and feeling for +others which boys as boys, especially if strong and popular, don't always, +or indeed often possess." The poor parents were uncertain as to his fate +for many weeks, but he finally died of his wounds in a hospital behind the +German lines. Then, little more than six months later came the second +blow. Geoffrey, the younger brother, aged nineteen, fell on September +29th, near Vermelles. Nothing could be more touching than the letters +from officers and men about this brave, sweet-tempered boy. "Poor old +regiment!" writes the Colonel to the lad's father--"we were badly knocked +about, and I brought out only 3 officers and 375 men, but they did +magnificently, and it was thanks to officers like your son, who put the +honour of the regiment before all thought of fatigue or personal danger. +Such a gallant lad! We all loved him." A private, the boy's +soldier-servant, who fought with him, writes: "I wish you could have seen +him in that trench.... All the men say that he deserved the V.C.... I +don't know if we are going back to those trenches any more, but if we do, +I am going to try and lay Mr. Geoffrey to rest in some quiet place.... I +cannot bear to think that I shall not be able to be with him any more." + +But how they crowd upon the mind--the "unreturning brave"! Take our +friends and neighbours in this quiet Hertfordshire country. All round us +the blows have fallen--again and again the only son--sometimes two +brothers out of three--the most brilliant--the best beloved. And I see +still the retreating figure of a dear nephew of my own, as he vanished +under the trees waving his hand to us in March last. A boy made of +England's best--who after two years in Canada, and at the beginning of +what must have been a remarkable career, heard the call of the Mother +Country, and rushed home at once. He was transferred to an English +regiment, and came to say good-bye to us in March. It was impossible to +think of Christopher's coming to harm--such life and force, such wisdom +and character also, in his strong, handsome face and thoughtful eyes! We +talked of the future of Canada--not much of the war. Then he vanished, and +I could not feel afraid. But one night in May, near Bailleul, he went out +with a listening party between the trenches, was shot through both legs by +a sniper, and otherwise injured--carried back to hospital, and after a few +hours' vain hope, sank peacefully into eternity, knowing only that he had +done his duty and fearing nothing. "Romance and melodrama," says Professor +Gilbert Murray, in one of the noblest and most moving utterances of the +war, "were once a memory--broken fragments living on of heroic ages in the +past. We live no longer upon fragments and memories, we have entered +ourselves upon an heroic age.... As for me personally, there is one +thought that is always with me--the thought that other men are dying for +me, better men, younger, with more hope in their lives, many of them men +whom I have taught and loved." The orthodox Christian "will be familiar +with that thought of One who loved you dying for you. I would like to say +that now I seem to be familiar with the thought that something innocent, +something great, something that loved me, is dying, and is dying daily for +me. That is the sort of community we now are--a community in which one man +dies for his brother; and underneath all our hatreds, our little anger and +quarrels, we _are_ brothers, who are ready to seal our brotherhood with +blood. It is for us these men are dying--for the women, the old men, and +the rejected men--and to preserve civilisation and the common life which +we are keeping alive, or building." + +So much for the richer and the educated class. As to the rank and file, +the Tommies who are fighting and dying for England in precisely the same +spirit as those who have had ten times their opportunities in this unequal +world, I have seen them myself within a mile of the trenches, marching +quietly up through the fall of the March evening to take their places in +that line, where, every night, however slack the fighting, a minimum of so +many casualties per mile, so many hideous or fatal injuries by bomb or +shell fire, is practically invariable. Not the conscript soldiers of a +military nation, to whom the thought of fighting has been perforce +familiar from childhood! Men, rather, who had never envisaged fighting, to +whom it is all new, who at bottom, however firm their will, or wonderful +their courage, hate war, and think it a loathsome business. "I do not +find it easy," writes a chaplain at the front who knows his men and has +shared all the dangers of their life--"to give incidents and sayings. I +could speak of the courage of the wounded brought in after battle. How +many times has one heard them telling the doctor to attend to others +before themselves! I could tell you of a very shy and nervous boy who, +after an attack, dug, himself alone, with his intrenching tool, a little +trench, under continuous fire, up which trench he afterwards crept +backwards and forwards carrying ammunition to an advanced post; or of +another who sat beside a wounded comrade for several hours under snipers' +fire, and somehow built him a slight protection until night fell and +rescue came. Such incidents are merely specimens of thousands which are +never known. Indeed it is the heroism of _all_ the men _all_ the time +which has left the most lasting impression on my mind after thirteen +months at the war. No one can conceive the strain which the daily routine +of trench life entails, unless one has been among the men. They never show +the slightest sign of unwillingness, and they do what they are told when +and where they are told without questioning; no matter what the conditions +or dangers, they come up smiling and cheery through it all--full of +'grouse,' perhaps, but that is the soldier's privilege!... It is, I think, +what we all are feeling and are so proud of--this unbreakable spirit of +self-sacrifice in the daily routine of trench warfare. We are proud of it +because it is the highest of all forms of self-sacrifice, for it is not +the act of a moment when the blood is up or the excitement of battle is at +fever heat; but it is demanded of the soldier, day in and day out, and +shown by him coolly and deliberately, day in and day out, with death +always at hand. We are proud of it, too, because it is so surely a sign of +the magnificent _'moral'_ of our troops--and _moral_ is going to play a +very leading part as the war proceeds.... What is inspiring this splendid +disregard of self is partly the certainty that the Cause is Right; partly, +it is a hidden joy of conscience which makes them know that they would be +unhappy if they were not doing their bit--and partly (I am convinced of +this, too,) it is a deepening faith in the Founder of their Faith Whom so +many appreciate and value as never before, because they realise that even +He has not shirked that very mill of suffering through which they are now +passing themselves." + +A few days ago, I accompanied a woman official distributing some leaflets +on behalf of a Government department, in some visits to families living in +a block of model dwellings somewhere in South London. We called on nine +families. In every single case the man of the family had gone, or was +expecting to go, to the war; except in one case, where a man who, out of +pure patriotism and at great personal difficulty had joined the Volunteer +Reserve at the outbreak of war, had strained his heart in trench-digging +and was now medically unfit, to his own bitter disappointment. There was +some grumbling in the case of one young wife that her husband should be +forced to go before the single men whom she knew; but in the main the +temper that showed itself bore witness both to the feeling and the +intelligence that our people are bringing to bear on the war. One woman +said her husband was a sergeant in a well-known regiment. He thought the +world of his men, and whenever one was killed, he must be at the burying. +"He can't bear, you know"--she added shyly--"they should feel alone." She +had three brothers-in-law "out"--one recently killed. One was an ambulance +driver under the R.A.M.C. He had five small children, but had volunteered. +"He doesn't say much about the war, except that 'Tommies are wonderful. +They never complain.'" She notices a change in his character. He was +always good to his wife and children--"but now he's splendid!" The brother +of another woman had been a jockey in Belgium, had liked the country and +the people. When war broke out he "felt he must fight for them." He came +home at once and enlisted. Another brother had been a stoker on a war-ship +at the Dardanelles, and was in the famous landing of April 25. Bullets +"thick and fast like hailstorm. Terrible times collecting the dead! Her +brother had worked hard forming burial parties. Was now probably going to +the Tigris. Wrote jolly letters!" + +Then there was the little woman born and bred in the Army, with all the +pride of the Army--a familiar type. Husband a sergeant in the Guards--was +gymnastic instructor at a northern town--and need not have gone to the +war, but felt "as a professional soldier" he ought to go. Three brothers +in the Army--one a little drummer-boy of sixteen, badly wounded in the +retreat from Mons. Her sailor brother had died--probably from exposure, in +the North Sea. The most cheerful, plucky little creature! "We are Army +people, and must expect to fight." + +Well--you say you "would like America to visualise the effort, the +self-sacrifice of the English men and women who are determined to see this +war through." There was, I thought, a surprising amount of cheerful +effort, of _understanding_ self-sacrifice in those nine homes, where my +companion's friendly talk drew out the family facts without difficulty. +And I am convinced that if I had spent days instead of hours in following +her through the remaining tenements in these huge and populous blocks the +result would have been practically the same. _The nation is behind the +war, and behind the Government_--solidly determined to win this war, and +build a new world after it. + +As to the work of our women, I have described something of it in the +munitions area, and if this letter were not already too long, I should +like to dwell on much else--the army of maidens, who, as V.A.D.'s (members +of Voluntary Aid Detachments), trained by the Red Cross, have come +trooping from England's most luxurious or comfortable homes, and are +doing invaluable work in hundreds of hospitals; to begin with, the most +menial scrubbing and dish-washing, and by now the more ambitious and +honourable--but not more indispensable--tasks of nursing itself. In this +second year of the war, the first army of V.A.D.'s, now promoted, has +everywhere been succeeded by a fresh levy, aglow with the same eagerness +and the same devotion as the first. Or I could dwell on the women's +hospitals--especially the remarkable hospital in Endell Street, entirely +officered by women; where some hundreds of male patients accept the +surgical and medical care of women doctors, and adapt themselves to the +light and easy discipline maintained by the women of the staff, with +entire confidence and grateful good-will. To see a woman dentist at work +on a soldier's mouth, and a woman quartermaster presiding over her stores, +and managing, besides, everything pertaining to the lighting, heating, and +draining of the hospital, is one more sign of these changed and changing +times. The work done by the Scottish Women's Hospital in Serbia will rank +as one of the noblest among the minor episodes of the war. The magnificent +work of British nurses, everywhere, I have already spoken of. And +everywhere, too, among the camps in England and abroad, behind the +fighting lines, or at the great railway-stations here or in France, +through which the troops pass backwards and forwards, hundreds of women +have been doing ardent yet disciplined service--giving long hours in +crowded canteens or Y.M.C.A. huts to just those small kindly offices, +which bring home to the British soldier, more effectively than many things +more ambitious, what the British nation feels towards him. The war has put +an end, so far as the richer class is concerned, to the busy idleness and +all the costly make-believes of peace. No one gives "dinner-parties" in +the old sense any more; the very word "reception" is dying out. The high +wages that munition-work has brought to the women of the working class, +show themselves, no doubt, in some foolish dressing. "You should see the +hats round here on a Saturday!" said the Manager of a Midland factory. But +I am bound to say he spoke of it proudly. The hats were for him a +testimony to the wages paid by his firm; and he would probably have +argued, on the girls' part, that after the long hours and hard work of the +week, the hats were a perfectly legitimate "fling," and human nature must +out. Certainly the children of the workers are better fed and better +clothed, which speaks so far well for the mothers; and recent Government +inquiries seem to show that in spite of universal employment, and high +wages, the drunkenness of the United Kingdom as a whole is markedly less, +while at the same time--uncomfortable paradox!--the amount of alcohol +consumed is greater. One hears stories of extravagance among those who +have been making "war-profits," but they are less common this year than +last; and as to my own experience, all my friends are wearing their old +clothes, and the West End dressmakers, poor things, in view of a large +section of the public which regards it as a crime "to buy anything new" +are either shutting down till better days, or doing a greatly restricted +business. Taxation has grown much heavier, and will be more and more +severely felt. Yet very few grumble, and there is a general and determined +cutting down of the trappings and appendages of life, which is to the good +of us all. + +Undoubtedly, there is a very warm and wide-spread feeling among us that in +this war the women of the nation have done uncommonly well! You will +remember a similar stir of grateful recognition in America after your War +of Secession, connected with the part played in the nursing and sanitation +of the war by the women of the Northern States. The feeling here may well +have an important social and political influence when the war is over; +especially among the middle and upper classes. It may be counter-balanced +to some extent in the industrial class, by the disturbance and anxiety +caused in many trades, but especially in the engineering trades, by that +great invasion of women I have tried to describe. But that the war will +leave _some_ deep mark on that long evolution of the share of women in our +public life, which began in the teeming middle years of the last century, +is, I think, certain. + +_May 2nd._--So I come to the end of the task you set me!--with what gaps +and omissions to look back upon, no one knows so well as myself. This +letter starts on its way to you at a critical moment for your great +country, when the issue between the United States and Germany is still +unsettled. What will happen? Will Germany give way? If not, what sort of +relations will shape themselves, and how quickly, between the Central +Empires and America? To express myself on this great matter is no part of +my task; although no English man or woman but will watch its development +with a deep and passionate interest. What may be best for you, we cannot +tell; the military and political bearings of a breach between the United +States and Germany on our own fortunes are by no means clear to us. But +what we _do_ want, in any case, is the sympathy, the moral support and +co-operation of your people. We have to thank you for a thousand +generosities to our wounded; we bless you--as comrades with you in that +old Christendom which even this war shall not destroy--for what you have +done in Belgium--but we want you to understand the heart of England in +this war, and not to be led away by the superficial difficulties and +disputes that no great and free nation escapes in time of crisis. Sympathy +with France--France, the invaded, the heroic--is easy for America--for us +all. She is the great tragic figure of the war--the whole world does her +homage. We are not invaded--and so less tragic, less appealing. But we are +fighting the fight which is the fight of all freemen everywhere--against +the wantonness of military power, against the spirit that tears up +treaties and makes peaceful agreement between nations impossible--against +a cruelty and barbarism in war which brings our civilisation to shame. We +have a right to your sympathy--you who are the heirs of Washington and +Lincoln, the trustees of liberty in the New World as we, with France, are +in the Old. You are concerned--you must be concerned--in the triumph of +the ideals of ordered freedom and humane justice over the ideals of +unbridled force and ruthless cruelty, as they have been revealed in this +war, to the horror of mankind. The nation that can never, to all time, +wash from its hands the guilt of the Belgium crime, the blood of the +_Lusitania_ victims, of the massacres of Louvain and Dinant, of Aerschot +and Termonde, may some day deserve our pity. To-day it has to be met and +conquered by a will stronger than its own, in the interests of +civilisation itself. + +This last week, at the close of which I am despatching this final letter, +has been a sombre week for England. It has seen the squalid Irish rising, +with its seven days' orgy of fire and bloodshed in Dublin; it has seen the +surrender at Kut of General Townshend and his starving men; it has seen +also a strong demonstration in Parliament of discontent with certain +phases of the conduct of the war. And yet, how shall I convey to you the +paradox that we in England--our soldiers at the front, and instructed +opinion at home--have never been so certain of ultimate victory as we now +are? It is the big facts that matter: the steady growth of British +resources, in men and munitions, toward a maximum which we--and +Russia--are only approaching, while that of the Central Empires is past; +the deepening unity of an Empire which is being forged anew by danger and +trial, and by the spirit of its sons all over the world--a unity against +which the Irish outrage, paid for by German money, disavowed by all that +is truly Ireland, Unionist or Nationalist, and instantly effaced, as a +mere demonstration, by the gallantry at the same moment of Irish soldiers +in the battle-line--lifts its treacherous hand in vain; the increasing and +terrible pressure of the British blockade of Germany, equivalent, as some +one has lately said, every twenty-four hours that it is maintained, to a +successful action in the field; the magnificent resistance of an +indomitable France; the mounting strength of a reorganised Russia. This +island-state--let me repeat it with emphasis--was not prepared for, and +had no expectation of a Continental war, such as we are now fighting. The +fact cries aloud from the records of the struggle; it will command the ear +of history; and it acquits us for ever from the guilt of the vast +catastrophe. But Great Britain has no choice now but to fight to the +end--and win. She knows it, and those who disparage her are living in a +blind world. As to the difficulty of the task--as to our own failures and +mistakes in learning how to achieve it--we have probably fewer illusions +than those who criticise us. _But we shall do it--or perish_. + + * * * * * + +_May 5th._--Since the preceding lines were written, the "Military Service +Bill" bringing to the Colours "every British male subject" between the +ages of 18 and 41, except when legally exempted, has passed the House of +Commons by an overwhelming majority, and will be law immediately. And the +Prime Minister informed Parliament three days ago, that "the total naval +and military effort of the Empire since the beginning of the war exceeds +five million men." + +With these two facts, these Letters may fitly close. Those who know +England best, her history, and the temperament of her people, will best +appreciate what they mean. + + + + +VII + +AN EPILOGUE + + +_August 16, 1916._ + +I + +It is now three months since I finished the six preceding Letters, written +in response to an urgent call from America; nor did I then anticipate any +renewal of my work. But while a French translation of the six Letters has +been passing through the Press, an appeal has been made to me from France +to add an Epilogue, or supplementary Letter, briefly recapitulating the +outstanding facts or events which in those three months have marked the +British share in the war, and played their part in the immense +transformation of the general outlook which has taken place during those +months. Not an easy task! One thinks first of one's own inadequacy; and +then remembers, as before, that one is a unit in a nation under orders. I +must therefore do what I can. And perhaps other readers, also, of this +little book, in America and England, as they look back over the +ever-changing scene of the war, will not find this renewed attempt to +summarise Britain's part in it as it has developed up to the present date +(August 16, 1916) unwelcome. The outstanding facts of the last three +months, as I see them, are, for Great Britain:-- + +1. The immense increase in the output of British Munitions of War; + +2. The Naval Battle of Jutland; + +3. The Allied offensive on the Somme. + +The first and third of these events are, of course, so far as the latter +concerns Great Britain, the natural and logical outcome of that "England's +Effort" of which I tried--how imperfectly!--to give a connected account +three months ago. + +At that time the ever-mounting British effort, though it had reached +colossal dimensions, though everybody aware of it was full of a steadily +growing confidence as to its final result, had still to be tested by those +greater actions to which it was meant to lead. After the local failures at +the Dardanelles, and in Mesopotamia, Great Britain was again, for a time, +everywhere on the defensive, though it was a very vigorous and active +defensive; and the magnificent stand made by the French at Verdun was not +only covering France herself with glory, and kindling the hearts of all +who love her throughout the world, but under its shield the new armies of +Great Britain were still being steadily perfected, and wonderfully armed; +time was being given to Russia for reorganisation and re-equipment, and +time was all she wanted; while Germany, vainly dashing her strength in men +and guns against the heights of Verdun, in the hope of provoking her +enemies on the Western front to a premature offensive, doomed to +exhaustion before it had achieved its end, was met by the iron resolve of +both the French and British Governments, advised by the French and British +Commanders in the field, to begin that offensive only at their own time +and place, when the initiative was theirs, and everything was ready. + +But the scene has greatly altered. Let me take Munitions first. In +February, it will be remembered by those who have read the preceding +Letters, I was a visitor, by the kindness of the Ministry of Munitions, +then in Mr. Lloyd George's hands, to a portion of the munitions field--in +the Midlands, on the Tyne, and on the Clyde. At that moment, Great +Britain, as far as armament was concerned, was in the mid-stream of a +gigantic movement which had begun in the summer of 1915, set going by the +kindling energy of Mr. Lloyd George, and seconded by the roused strength +of a nation which was not the industrial pioneer of the whole modern world +for nothing, however keenly others, during the last half-century, have +pressed upon--or in some regions passed--her. Everywhere I found new +workshops already filled with workers, a large proportion of them women, +already turning out a mass of shell which would have seemed incredible to +soldiers and civilians alike during the first months of the war; while the +tale of howitzers, trench-mortars, machine-guns, and the rest, was running +up week by week, in the vast extensions already added to the other works. +But everywhere, too, I saw huge, empty workshops, waiting for their +machines, or just setting them up; and everywhere the air was full of +rumours of the new industrial forces--above all, of the armies of +women--that were to be brought to bear. New towns were being built for +them; their workplaces and their tools were being got ready for them, as +in that vast filling factory--or rather town--on the Clyde which I +described in my third Letter. But in many quarters they were not yet +there; only one heard, as it were, the tramp of their advancing feet. + +But to-day! Those great empty workshops that I saw in February, in the +making, or the furnishing, are now full of workers and machines; and +thousands like them all over the country. Last night (Aug. 15), the new +Minister of Munitions, Mr. Montagu, who, a few weeks ago, succeeded Mr. +Lloyd George, now Minister for War, rendered an account of his department +up to date, which amazed even the House of Commons, and will surely stir +the minds of men throughout the British Empire with a just and reasonable +pride. The "effete" and "degenerate" nation has roused herself indeed! + +Here is the bare résumé of the Minister's statement:-- + + _Ammunition._--The British output of ammunition at the + beginning of the war was intended for an army of 200,000 + men. + + Naturally, the output rose steadily throughout the first + year of war. + + _But_--the same output which in 1914-15 took 12 months to + produce could now be produced-- + + As to 18-pounder ammunition, in 3 weeks + " Field howitzer " in 2 weeks + " Medium gun and howitzer ammunition, in 11 days + " Heavy shell, in 4 days + + We are sending over to France _every week as_ much as the + whole pre-war stock of land service ammunition in the + country. + +As to _guns_, I would ask my readers to turn back to the second and third +chapters in this little book, which show something of the human side and +the daily detail of this great business, and then to look at this +summary:-- + + _Every month, now_, we are turning out nearly twice as many + big guns as were in existence for land service--i.e., not + naval guns--when the Ministry of Munitions came into being + (June, 1915). + + Between June, 1915, and June, 1916, the monthly output of + _heavy guns_ has increased _6-fold_--and the present output + will soon be doubled. + + For every 100 _eighteen-pounders_ turned out in the first 10 + months of the war, we are now turning out 500. + + We are producing 18 times as many _machine-guns_. + + Of _rifles_--the most difficult of all war material to + produce quickly in large quantities--our weekly home + production is now 3 times as great as it was a year ago. We + are supplying our Army overseas with rifles and machine-guns + entirely from home sources. + + Of _small-arms ammunition_ our output is 3 times as great as + a year ago. + + We are producing 66 times as much _high explosive_ as at the + beginning of 1915; and our output of _bombs_ is 33 times as + great as it was last year. + +At the same time, what is Great Britain doing _for her Allies_? + + The loss of her Northern Provinces, absorbed by the German + invasion, has deprived France of three-quarters of her + steel. We are now sending to France _one-third of the whole + British production of shell-steel_. + + We are also supplying the Allies with the _constituents of + high explosive_ in very large quantities, prepared by our + National factories. + + We are sending to the Allies _millions of tons of coal and + coke every month_, large quantities of machinery, and 20 per + cent. of our whole production of machine tools + (indispensable to shell manufacture). + + We are supplying Russia with millions of pairs of Army + boots. + +And in the matter of ammunition, we have not only enormously increased the +quantity produced--we have greatly improved its quality. The testimony of +the French experts--themselves masters in these arts of death--as conveyed +through M. Thomas, is emphatic. The new British heavy guns are "admirably +made"--"most accurate"--"most efficient." + +Meanwhile a whole series of chemical problems with regard to high +explosives have been undertaken and solved by Lord Moulton's department. +If it was ever true that science was neglected by the War Office, it is +certainly true no longer; and the soldiers at the front, who have to make +practical use of what our scientific chemists and our explosive factories +at home are producing, are entirely satisfied. + +For that, as Mr. Montagu points out, is the sole and supreme test. How has +the vast activity of the new Ministry of Munitions--an activity which the +nation owes--let me repeat it--to the initiative, the compelling energy, +of Mr. Lloyd George--affected our armies in the field? + +The final answer to that question is not yet. The Somme offensive is still +hammering at the German gates; I shall presently give an outline of its +course from its opening on July 1st down to the present. But meanwhile +what can be said is this. + +The expenditure of ammunition which enabled us to sweep through the German +first lines, in the opening days of this July, almost with ease, was +colossal beyond all precedent. The total amount of heavy guns and +ammunition manufactured by Great Britain in the first ten months of the +war, from August, 1914, to June 1, 1915, would not have kept the British +bombardment on the Somme going _for a single day_. That gives some idea of +it. + +Can we keep it up? The German papers have been consoling themselves with +the reflection that so huge an effort must have exhausted our supplies. On +the contrary, says Mr. Montagu. _The output of the factories, week by +week, now covers the expenditure in the field_. No fear now, that as at +Loos, as at Neuve Chapelle, and as on a thousand other smaller occasions, +British success in the field should be crippled and stopped by shortage of +gun and shell! + +By whom has this result been brought about? By that army of British +workmen--and workwomen--which Mr. Lloyd George in little more than one +short year has mobilised throughout the country. The Ministry of Munitions +is now employing _three millions and a half of workers_--(a year ago it +was not much more than a million and a half)--of whom 400,000 _are +women_; and the staff of the Ministry has grown from 3,000--the figure +given in my earlier letters--to 5,000, just as that army of women, which +has sprung as it were out of the earth at the call of the nation, has +almost doubled since I wrote in April last. Well may the new Minister say +that our toilers in factory and forge have had some share in the glorious +recent victories of Russia, Italy, and France! Our men and our women have +contributed to the re-equipment of those gallant armies of Russia, which, +a month or six weeks earlier than they were expected to move, have broken +up the Austrian front, and will soon be once more in Western Poland, +perhaps in East Prussia! The Italian Army has drawn from our workshops and +learnt from our experiments. The Serbian Army has been re-formed and +re-fitted. + +Let us sum up. The Germans, with years of preparation behind them, made +this war a war of machines. England, in that as in other matters, was +taken by surprise. But our old and proud nation, which for generations +led the machine industry of the world, as soon as it realised the +challenge--and we were slow to realise it!--met it with an impatient and a +fierce energy which is every month attaining a greater momentum and a more +wonderful result. The apparently endless supply of munitions which now +feeds the British front, and the _comparative_ lightness of the human cost +at which the incredibly strong network of the German trenches on their +whole first line system was battered into ruin, during the last days of +June and the first days of July, 1916:--it is to effects like these that +all that vast industrial effort throughout Great Britain, of which I saw +and described a fragment three months ago, has now steadily and +irresistibly brought us. + + +II + +This then is perhaps the first point to notice in the landscape of the +war, as we look back on the last three months. For on it everything else, +Naval and Military, depends:--on the incredibly heightened output of +British workshops, in all branches of war material, which has been +attained since the summer of last year. In it, as I have just said, we see +an _effect_ of a great cause--i.e., of the "effort" made by Great +Britain, since the war broke out, to bring her military strength in men +and munitions to a point, sufficient, in combination with the strength of +her Allies, for victory over the Central Powers, who after long and +deliberate preparation had wantonly broken the European peace. The +"effort" was for us a new one, provoked by Germany, and it will have +far-reaching civil consequences when the war is over. + +In the great Naval victory now known as the Battle of Jutland, on the +other hand, we have a fresh demonstration on a greater scale than ever +before, of that old, that root fact, without which indeed the success of +the Allied effort in other directions would be impossible--i.e., _the +overwhelming strength of the British Navy_, and its mastery of the Sea. + +In a few earlier pages of this book, I have described a visit which the +British Admiralty allowed me to make in February last to a portion of the +Fleet, then resting in a northern harbour. On that occasion, at the +Vice-Admiral's luncheon-table, there sat beside me on my right, a tall +spare man with the intent face of one to whom life has been a great arid +strenuous adventure, accepted in no boyish mood, but rather in the spirit +of the scientific explorer, pushing endlessly from one problem to the +next, and passionate for all experience that either unveils the world, or +tests himself. We talked of the war, and my projected journey. "I envy +you!" he said, his face lighting up. "I would give anything to see our +Army in the field." My neighbour was Rear-Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot, +commanding the First Cruiser Squadron, who went down with his flagship +_H.M.S. Defence_, in the Battle of Jutland, on the 31st of May last, while +passing between the British and German fleets, under a very heavy fire. +"It is probable," said Admiral Jellicoe's despatch, "that Sir Robert +Arbuthnot, during his engagement with the enemy's light cruisers, and in +his desire to complete their destruction, was not aware of the approach of +the enemy's heavy ships, owing to the mist, until he found himself in +close proximity to the main fleet, and before he could withdraw his ships, +they were caught under a heavy fire and disabled." So, between the fleets +of Germany and England, amid the mists of the May evening, and the storm +and smoke of battle, my courteous neighbour of three months before found, +with all his shipmates, that grave in the "unharvested sea" which England +never forgets to honour, and from which no sailor shrinks. At the same +luncheon-table were two other Admirals and many junior Officers, who took +part in the same great action; and looking back upon it, and upon the +notes which I embodied in my first Letter, I see more vividly than ever +how every act and thought of those brave and practised men, among whom I +passed those few--to me--memorable hours, were conditioned by an intense +_expectation_, that trained prevision of what must come, which, in a +special degree, both stirs and steadies the mind of the modern sailor. + +But one thing perhaps they had not foreseen--that by a combination of +mishaps in the first reporting of the battle, the great action, which has +really demonstrated, once and for all, the invincible supremacy of Great +Britain at sea, which has reduced the German Fleet to months of impotence, +put the invasion of these islands finally out of the question, and enabled +the British blockade to be drawn round Germany with a yet closer and +sterner hand, was made to appear, in the first announcements of it, almost +a defeat. The news of our losses--our heavy losses--came first--came +almost alone. The Admiralty, with the stern conscience of the British +official mind, announced them as they came in--bluntly--with little or no +qualification. A shock of alarm went through England! For what had we paid +so sore a price? Was the return adequate, and not only to our safety, but +to our prestige? + +There were a few hours when both Great Britain--outside the handful of men +who knew--and her friends throughout the world, hung on the answer. +Meanwhile the German lie, which converted a defeat for Germany into a +"victory," got at least twenty-four hours' start, and the Imperial +Chancellor made quick and sturdy use of it when he extracted a War Loan of +£600,000,000 from a deluded and jubilant Reichstag. Then the news came in +from one quarter after another of the six-mile battle-line, from one unit +after another of the greatest sea-battle Britain had ever fought, and by +the 3rd or 4th of June, England, drawing half-ironic breath over her own +momentary misgiving, had realised the truth--first--that the German Fleet +on the 31st had only escaped total destruction by the narrowest margin, +and by the help of mist and darkness; secondly--that its losses were, +relatively far greater, and in all probability, absolutely, greater than +our own; thirdly--that after the British battle-fleet had severed the +German navy from its base, the latter had been just able, under cover of +darkness, to break round the British ships, and fly hard to shelter, +pursued by our submarines and destroyers through the night, till it +arrived at Wilhelmshaven a battered and broken host, incapable at least +for months to come of any offensive action against Great Britain or her +Allies. Impossible henceforth--for months to come--to send a German +squadron sufficiently strong to harass Russia in the Baltic! Impossible to +interfere successfully with the passage of Britain's new armies across the +seas! Impossible to dream any longer of invading English coasts! The +British Fleet holds the North Sea more strongly than it has ever held it; +and behind the barbed wire defences of Wilhelmshaven or Heligoland the +German Fleet has been nursing its wounds. + +Some ten weeks have passed, and as these results have become plain to all +the world, the German lie, or what remained of it, has begun to droop, +even in the country of its birth. "Do not let us suppose," says Captain +Persius--the most honest of German naval critics, in a recent +article--"that we have shaken the sea-power of England. That would be +foolishness." While Mr. Balfour, the most measured, the most veracious of +men, speaking only a few days ago to the representatives of the Dominion +Parliaments, who have been visiting England, says quietly--"the growth of +our Navy, since the outbreak of war, which has gone on, and which at this +moment is still going on, is something of which I do not believe the +general public has the slightest conception." + +For the general public has, indeed, but vague ideas of what is happening +day by day and week by week in the great shipyards of the Clyde, the Tyne, +and the Mersey. But there, all the same, the workmen--and workwomen--of +Great Britain--(for women are taking an ever-increasing share in the +lighter tasks of naval engineering)--are adding incessantly to the +sea-power of this country, acquiescing in a Government control, a +loosening of trade custom, a dilution and simplification of skilled +labour, which could not have been dreamt of before the war. At the same +time they are meeting the appeal of Ministers to give up or postpone the +holidays they have so richly earned, for the sake of their sons and +brothers in the trenches, with a dogged "aye, aye!" in which there is a +note of profound understanding, of invincible and personal determination, +but rarely heard in the early days of the war. + + +III + +So much for the Workshops and the Navy. Now before I turn to the New +Armies and the Somme offensive, let us look for a moment at the present +facts of British War Finance. By April last, the date of my sixth Letter, +we had raised 2,380 millions sterling, for the purposes of the war; we had +lent 500 millions to our Allies, and we were spending about 5 millions a +day on the war. According to a statement recently made by the Chancellor +of the Exchequer (August 10), by March next our debt will have risen to +3,440 millions sterling, 1,060 millions more than it stood at in March +last; our advances to our Allies will have increased to 800 millions, +while our daily war expenditure remains about the same. + +Mr. McKenna's tone in announcing these figures was extraordinarily +cheerful. "We have every reason," he said, amid the applause of the House +of Commons--"to be proud of the manner in which British credit has stood +the strain." The truth is that by March next, at the present rate of +expenditure, our total indebtedness (deducting the advances to our Allies) +will almost exactly equal "one year's national income," i.e., the +aggregate of the income of every person in the country. But if a man +having an income of £5,000 a year, were to owe a total of £5,000, we +should not consider his position very serious. "We shall collect a +revenue in one year equal to 20 per cent. of the whole debt (i.e., 522 +millions sterling), and we shall be able to pay, _out of existing +taxation_, the interest on the debt, and a considerable sinking-fund, and +shall still have left a large margin _for the reduction of +taxation_"--words which left a comfortable echo in the ears of the nation. +Meanwhile British trade--based on British sea-power--has shown +extraordinary buoyancy, the exports steadily increasing; so that the +nation, in the final words of the Chancellor, feels "no doubt whatever +that we shall be able to maintain our credit to the end of the war, _no +matter how long it may last_." + +But do not let it be supposed that this huge revenue is being raised +without sacrifice, _without effort_. It means--for the present--as I have +already pointed out, the absorption by the State of five shillings in the +pound from the income of every citizen, above a moderate minimum, and of a +lesser but still heavy tax from those below that minimum; it means new +and increased taxation in many directions; and, as a consequence, heavy +increases in the cost of living; it means sharply diminished spending for +large sections of our population, and serious pinching for our +professional and middle classes. + +But the nation, as a whole, makes no lament. We look our taxes in the +face, and we are beginning to learn how to save. We have our hearts fixed +on the future; and we have counted the cost. + +The money then is no difficulty. Our resisting power, our prosperity even, +under the blows of war, have been unexpectedly great. + +But what are we getting for our money? + +In the case of the Navy, the whole later course of the war, no less than +the Battle of Jutland, has shown what the British Navy means to the cause +of the Allies. It is as I have said, the root fact in the war; and in the +end, it will be the determining fact; although, of itself, it cannot +defeat Germany _as we must defeat her_; at any rate in any reasonable +time. + +Then as to the Army. Take first of all the administrative side. To +what--in the last four months--has come that wonderful system of +organisation and supply I tried to sketch in my fourth Letter, largely in +the words of some of the chief actors in it? + +Within the last fortnight, a skilled observer has been reporting to the +British public his impressions of the "Army behind the Lines" in France, +as I saw a portion of it last February, in the great British supply bases +and hospital camps, on the lines of communication, and throughout the +immense and varied activities covered by the British motor transport. + +"The Germans," says this recent eye-witness, "have persisted that, even if +we could find the men, we could not make the machine, which they have been +perfecting for forty years and more. But _it is here!_--operating with +perfect smoothness; a machine, which in its mere mass and intricacy, +almost staggers the imagination. One cannot speak of the details of the +system for fear of saying something which should not be told; but it is +stupendous in its proportion, dealing as it does with the methodical +handling of the men in their hundreds of thousands, of all their equipment +and supplies, food, miscellaneous baggage and ammunition, and with the +endless trains of guns--guns--guns, and shells, by millions upon millions, +all brought from England, and all here in their place, or moved from place +to place with the rhythm of clock-work. One cannot convey any idea of it, +nor grasp it in its entirety; but day by day the immensity of it grows on +one, and one realises how trivial beside it has been anything that British +military organisation has had to do in the past. That is the real miracle; +not the mere millions of men, nor even their bravery, but this huge +frictionless machine of which they are a part--this thing which Great +Britain has put together here in the last twenty months." + + +IV + +But just as in March my thoughts pressed eagerly forward, from the sight +allowed me of the machine, to its uses on the battle-front, to that line +of living and fighting men for which it exists--so now. + +Only, since I stood upon the hill near Poperinghe on March 2nd, that line +of men has been indefinitely strengthened; and the main scene of battle is +no longer the Ypres salient. Looking southward from the old windmill, +whose supports sheltered us on that cold spring afternoon, I knew that, +past Bailleul, and past Neuve Chapelle, I was looking straight toward +Albert and the Somme, and I knew too that it was there that the British +were taking over a new portion of the line,--so that we might be of _some_ +increased support--all that was then allowed us by the Allied Command!--to +that incredible defence of Verdun, which was in all our minds and hearts. + +But what I could not know was that in that misty distance was +hidden--four months away--a future movement, at which no one then guessed, +outside the higher brains of the Army. The days went on. The tide of +battle ebbed and flowed round Verdun. The Crown Prince hewed and hacked +his way, with enormous loss to Germany, to points within three and four +miles of the coveted town--fortress no longer. But there France stopped +him--like the beast of prey that has caught its claws in the iron network +it is trying to batter down, and cannot release them; and there he is +still. Meanwhile, in June, seven to eight weeks before the expected +moment, Brusiloff's attack broke loose, and the Austrian front began to +crumble; just in time to bring the Italians welcome aid in the Trentino. + +And still from the Somme to the Yser, the Anglo-French forces waited; and +still across the Channel poured British soldiers and British guns. In +industrial England, the Whitsuntide holidays had been given up; and there +were at any rate some people who knew that there would be no August +holidays either. Leave and letters had been stopped. But there had been +apparent signs, wrongly interpreted, before. The great Allied attack on +the West--was it ready, _at last_? + +Then--with the 27th of June, along the whole British battle-front of 90 +miles, there sprang up a violent and continuous bombardment varied by +incessant raids on the enemy lines. Those who witnessed that bombardment +can hardly find words in which to describe it. "It was an extraordinary +and a terrible spectacle," says a correspondent. "Within the dreadful zone +the woods are leafless, château and farm and village, alike, mere heaps of +ruins." Ah! _ce beau pays de France_--with all its rich and ancient +civilisation--it is not French hearts alone that bleed for you! But it was +the voice of deliverance, of vengeance, that was speaking in the guns +which crashed incessantly day and night, while shells of all calibres +rained--so many to the second--from every yard of the British front, on +the German lines. The correspondents with the British Headquarters could +only speculate with held breath, as to what was happening under that +ghastly veil of smoke and fire on the horizon, and what our infantry would +find when the artillery work was done, and the attack was launched. + +The 1st of July dawned, a beautiful summer morning, with light mists +dispersing under the sun. Precisely to the moment, at 7.30 A.M., the +Allied artillery lifted their guns, creating a dense _barrage_ of fire +between the German front and its support trenches, while the British and +French infantry sprang over their parapets and rushed to the attack of the +German first line; the British on a front of some twenty-five miles, the +French, on about ten miles, on both sides of the Somme. The English +journalists, who, watch in hand, saw our men go, "knowing what it was they +were going to, marvelled for the fiftieth time at the way in which British +manhood has proved itself, in this most terrible of all wars." + +But though it was a grand, it was an anxious moment for those who had +trained and shaped the New Armies of Britain. How would they bear +themselves, these hundreds of thousands of British and Imperial +volunteers, men, some of them, with the shortest possible training +compatible with efficiency--against the famous troops of Germany--beside +the veteran, the illustrious army of France? + +Four hours after the fighting began, Sir Douglas Haig telegraphed: "Attack +launched north of River Somme this morning at 7.30 A.M. In conjunction +with French, British troops have broken into German forward system of +defences, on front of sixteen miles. Fighting is continuing. French attack +on our immediate right proceeding equally satisfactorily." Twelve hours +later, on the same day, when the summer night had fallen on the terrible +battle-field, the British Commander-in-Chief added:--"Heavy fighting has +continued all day between the rivers Somme and Ancre. On the right of our +attack we have captured the German labyrinth of trenches on a front of +seven miles to a depth of 1,000 yards, and have stormed and occupied the +strongly fortified villages of Montauban and Mametz. In the centre on a +front of four miles we have gained many strong points. North of the Ancre +Valley the battle has been equally violent, and in this area we have been +unable to retain portions of the ground gained in our first attacks, while +other portions remain in our possession.... Up to date, 2,000 German +prisoners have passed through our collecting stations. The large number of +the enemy dead on the battle-field indicate that the German losses have +been very severe." + +So much for the first day's news. On the following day Fricourt was +captured; and the prisoners went up to 3,500, together with a quantity of +war material. Meanwhile the French on the right had done brilliantly, +capturing five villages, and 6,000 prisoners. The attack was well begun. + +And the New Armies?--"Kitchener's Men"? "Whatever we have imagined of our +New Armies," says an eye-witness of the first day's battle, "they are +better than we can have ever dared to hope. Nothing has in any case +stopped them, except being killed." And a neutral who saw the attack on +Mametz told the same eye-witness that he had seen most of the fighting in +the world in recent years, and that he "did not believe a more gallant +feat was ever performed in war." The story of the British advance was +written "in the dead upon the ground, and in the positions as they stand." +"Nothing which the Japanese did in the Russian War" was more entirely +heroic. + +But let me carry on the story. + +On Tuesday, July 11th, Sir Douglas Haig reported: "After ten days and +nights of continuous fighting our troops have completed the methodical +capture of the whole of the enemy's first system of defence on a front of +14,000 yards. + +"This system of defence consisted of numerous and continuous lines of +foretrenches, support trenches and reserve trenches, extending to various +depths of from 2,000 to 4,000 yards, and included five strongly fortified +villages, numerous heavily wired and intrenched woods, and a large number +of immensely strong redoubts." + +The villages captured were Fricourt, Mametz, Montauban, La Boiselle, and +Contalmaison--the latter captured on July 10th, after particularly fierce +fighting. Every observer dwells on "the immense strength of the German +defences." "All the little villages and woods, each eminence and hollow, +have been converted into a fortress as formidable as the character of the +ground makes possible." The German has omitted nothing "that could protect +him against such a day as this." + +Yet steadily, methodically, with many a pause for consolidation of the +ground gained, and for the bringing up of the heavy guns, the British +advance goes forward--toward Bapaume and Lille; while the French press +brilliantly on toward Péronne--both movements aimed at the vital German +communications through France and Belgium. Every step of ground, as the +Allies gain it, "is wrecked with mines, torn with shell, and watered with +the blood of brave men." The wood-fighting, amid the stripped and gaunt +trunks rising from labyrinths of wire, is specially terrible; and below +the ground everywhere are the deep pits and dugouts, which have not only +sheltered the enemy from our fire, but concealed the machine-guns, which +often when our men have passed over, emerge and take them in the rear. The +German machine-guns seem to be endless; they are skilfully concealed, and +worked with the utmost ability and courage. + +But nothing daunts the troops attacking day and night, in the name of +patriotism, of liberty, of civilisation. Men from Yorkshire and +Lancashire, from Northumberland, Westmoreland and Cumberland, the heart of +England's sturdy north; men from Sussex and Kent, from Somerset and Devon; +the Scotch regiments; the Ulster Division, once the Ulster Volunteers; +the men of Munster and Connaught; the town-lads of Manchester; the youths +of Cockney London:--all their names are in the great story. "There were no +stragglers--none!" says an officer, describing in a kind of wonder one of +the fierce wood-attacks. And these are not the seasoned troops of a +Continental Army. They belong to regiments and corps which did not exist, +except in name, eighteen months ago; they are units from the four-million +army that Great Britain raised for this struggle, before she passed her +Military Service Law. The "Old Army," the Expeditionary Force, which the +nation owed to the organising genius of Lord Haldane and his General +Staff, has passed away, passed into history, with the retreat from Mons, +the first victory of Ypres, the saving of the Channel ports; but its +spirit remains, and its traditions are firmly planted in the new +attackers. I think of the men I saw in March, during that long and weary +wait; of the desire--and the patience--in their eyes. + +And of patience they and the nations behind them will still have ample +need. Since surprise on the Somme front was no longer possible, the great +advance has gone surely indeed, but more slowly. On _July 14_, after delay +caused by extraordinarily heavy rains, _the German second line was +breached_, and their trenches carried, on a front of four miles and held +against counter attacks. Longueval, the wood of Bazentin-le-Grand, and the +village, Bazentin-le-Petit, were attacked and captured with an _élan_ that +nothing could resist. "The enemy losses in guns," said the British +Headquarters, "are now over 100. We have not lost one." On _July 17_, +Ovillers was cleared, Waterlot Farm taken, and 1,500 more yards of the +German line. The British had by now taken 11,000 prisoners, to a somewhat +larger number taken by the French, 17 heavy guns, 37 field-guns, 30 trench +howitzers, and 66 machine-guns. On Saturday night, _July 22-23_, the +greater part of Pozières, on the high ground toward Bapaume, was taken. +"Shortly after midnight," wrote the official correspondent at +Headquarters with the Australian Imperial Forces in France, "on the 23rd, +by a splendid night attack, the Australians took the greater portion of +Pozières." The previous bombardment had been magnificent. "I had never +before seen such a spectacle. A large sector of the horizon was lit up not +by single flashes, but by a continuous band of quivering light." And under +the protection of the guns, the Anzacs swept forward, passing over +trenches, so entirely obliterated by shell-fire that they were often not +recognised as trenches at all, till they were in the heart of the village. +Then for two days they fought from house to house, and trench to trench; +till on July 27th came the news--"The whole of the village of Pozières is +now in our hands." And the _Times_ correspondent writes "our establishment +at Pozières will probably be regarded historically as closing the second +phase of the battle of the Somme." + +Since then (I write on August 16) three weeks have passed. The German +Third Line has been entered at the Bois de Foureaux, the whole of Delville +Wood has been carried; and in the combined advance of July 30th, the +French swept on to Maurepas on the north of the Somme, and are closely +threatening both Combles and Péronne, while we are attacking Thiepval on +the left of our line and Guillemont on the right, and pushing forward, +north of Pozières, toward Bapaume. The whole of the great advance has been +_a thrust up-hill_ from the valley floors of the Ancre and the Somme +toward a low ridge running roughly east and west and commanding an +important stretch of country and vital communications beyond. "It has in +just four weeks of effort," writes Mr. Belloc--"accounted for some thirty +thousand unwounded or slightly wounded prisoners; for much more than 100 +guns; for a belt of territory over five miles in its extreme breadth, +and--what is much more important than any of these numerical and local +calculations--it has proved itself capable of _continuous effort against +all the concentration which the enemy has been able to bring against it._" + +But it has done yet more than this. It has welded the French and English +Alliance--the wills and minds of the two nations--more closely than ever +before; and it has tested the British war-machine--the new Armies and the +new arms--as they have never yet been tested in this war. The result has +set the heart of England aflame; even while we ponder those long, long +casualty lists which represent the bitter price that British fathers and +mothers, British wives and daughters have paid, and must still pay, for +the only victory which will set up once again the reign of law and +humanity in Europe. What the future has in store we cannot see yet in +detail; but the inevitable end is clear at last. The man-power of Germany +is failing, and with it the insolent confidence of her military caste; the +man-power of the Allies, and the gun-power of the Allies, are rising +steadily. Russia is well launched on her return way to Warsaw, to Cracow, +to East Prussia. Italy, after the fall of Gorizia, is on the march for +Trieste. The Turks are fleeing across the desert of Sinai; and the Allies +at Salonika are taking the first steps toward Sofia. + +But it is in the "holy spirit of man" itself that the secret of the future +lies. On the Somme battle-fields, thousands and thousands of young lives +have been again laid down, that England--that France--may live. Here is a +letter, written the day before his death in action, on July 1st, the +opening day of the offensive, by a young English Officer.[C] One must read +it, if one can, dry-eyed. Not tears, but a steeled will, a purer heart, +are what it asks of those for whom the writer died:-- + + "I am writing this letter to you just before going into + action to-morrow morning about dawn. + + "I am about to take part in the biggest battle that has yet + been fought in France, and one which ought to help to end + the war very quickly. + + "I never felt more confident or cheerful in my life before, + and would not miss the attack for anything on earth. The men + are in splendid form, and every officer and man is more + happy and cheerful than I have ever seen them. + + "I have just been playing a rag game of football in which + the umpire had a revolver and a whistle. + + "My idea in writing this letter is in case I am one of the + 'costs,' and get killed. I do not expect to be; but such + things have happened, and are always possible. + + "It is impossible to fear death out here, when one is no + longer an individual, but a member of a regiment and of an + army. To be killed means nothing to me, and it is only you + who suffer for it; you really pay the cost. + + "I have been looking at the stars, and thinking what an + immense distance they are away. What an insignificant thing + the loss of, say, forty years of life is compared with them! + It seems scarcely worth talking about. Well, good-bye, you + darlings. Try not to worry about it, and remember that we + shall meet again really quite soon. + + "This letter is going to be posted _if_...." + +The letter was posted. But its message of Death is also a message of +Victory. + +MARY A. WARD. + +[C] Published in the _Times_. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The War on All Fronts: England's Effort +by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR ON ALL FRONTS: *** + +***** This file should be named 16089-8.txt or 16089-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/0/8/16089/ + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Christine +D and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + +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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/16089-8.zip b/16089-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1dfc252 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-8.zip diff --git a/16089-h.zip b/16089-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b8ee706 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h.zip diff --git a/16089-h/16089-h.htm b/16089-h/16089-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..afd1df9 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/16089-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5542 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of England's Effort, by Mrs. Humphry Ward. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + .poem span.i1 {display: block; margin-left: 1em;} + .poem span.i6 {display: block; margin-left: 6em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The War on All Fronts: England's Effort +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: The War on All Fronts: England's Effort + Letters to an American Friend + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Commentator: Joseph H. Choate + +Release Date: June 18, 2005 [EBook #16089] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR ON ALL FRONTS: *** + + + + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Christine +D and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<p class="bbox">Transcriber's notes: Original spelling retained, original copyright +information retained, linked table of contents added by transcriber</p> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#Preface"><b>Preface</b></a><br /> +<a href="#Authors_Foreword"><b>Author's Foreword</b></a><br /> +<a href="#Illustrations"><b>Illustrations</b></a><br /> +<a href="#Englands_Effort"><b>England's Effort</b></a><br /> +<a href="#I"><b>Letter I</b></a>, +<a href="#II"><b>II</b></a>, +<a href="#III"><b>III</b></a>, +<a href="#IV"><b>IV</b></a>, +<a href="#V"><b>V</b></a>, +<a href="#VI"><b>VI</b></a>, +<a href="#VII"><b>VII</b></a>. +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + + +<h4>Volume II</h4> + +<h1>England's Effort</h1> + +<h4>Letters To An American Friend</h4> + +<p><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><a href="./images/img1h.jpg"> +<img src="./images/img1.jpg" width="278" height="399" alt="Spring-time in the North Sea—Snow on a British Battleship." title="Spring-time in the North Sea—Snow on a British Battleship." /> +</a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><span class="caption">Spring-time in the North Sea—Snow on a British Battleship.</span></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><i>The War On All Fronts</i></h2> + + +<h1>England's Effort</h1> + +<h4>Letters To An American Friend</h4> + +<h2>By Mrs. Humphry Ward</h2> + +<h4>With A Preface By Joseph H. Choate</h4> + +<h4>Illustrated</h4> + + +<h6>New York Charles Scribner's Sons 1918</h6> + +<h6>Copyright, 1916, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</h6> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Preface" id="Preface"></a>Preface</h2> + +<p>HAS ENGLAND DONE ALL SHE COULD?</p> + + +<p>That is the question which Mrs. Ward, replying to some doubts and +queries of an American friend, has undertaken to answer in this series +of letters, and every one who reads them will admit that her answer is +as complete and triumphant as it is thrilling. Nobody but a woman, an +Englishwoman of warm heart, strong brain, and vivid power of +observation, could possibly have written these letters which reflect the +very soul of England since this wicked and cruel war began. She has +unfolded and interpreted to us, as no one else, I think, has even +attempted to do, the development and absolute transformation of English +men and women, which, has enabled them, living and dying, to secure for +their proud nation under God that "new birth of freedom" which Lincoln +at Gettysburg prophesied for his own countrymen. Really the cause is the +same, to secure the selfsame thing, "that government of the people, by +the people, and for the people may not perish from the earth";—and if +any American wishes to know how this has been accomplished, he must read +these letters, which were written expressly for our enlightenment.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ward had marvellous qualifications for this patriotic task. The +granddaughter of Doctor Arnold and the niece of Matthew Arnold, from +childhood up she has been as deeply interested in politics and in public +affairs as she has been in literature, by which she has attained such +world-wide fame, and next to English politics, in American politics and +American opinion. She has been a staunch believer in the greatness of +America's future, and has maintained close friendship with leaders of +public thought on both sides of the water. Her only son is a member of +Parliament, and is fighting in the war, just as all the able-bodied men +she knows are doing.</p> + +<p>She has received from the English government special opportunities of +seeing what England has been doing in the war, and has been allowed to +go with her daughter where few English men and no other women have been +allowed to go, to see the very heart of England's preparedness. She has +visited, since the war began, the British fleet, the very key of the +whole situation, without whose unmatched power and ever-increasing +strength the Allies at the outset must have succumbed. She has watched, +always under the protection and guidance of that wonderful new Minister +of Munitions, Lloyd George, the vast activity of that ministry +throughout the country, and finally in a motor tour of five hundred +miles, through the zone of the English armies in France, she has seen +with her own eyes, that marvellous organization of everything that goes +to make and support a great army, which England has built up in the +course of eighteen months behind her fighting line. She has witnessed +within three-quarters of a mile of the fighting line, with a gas helmet +at hand, ready to put on, a German counter attack after a successful +English advance something which no other woman, except herself and her +daughter, who accompanied her, has ever had the opportunity to see.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ward admits that at the beginning England was unprepared, which +itself demonstrated that as a Nation she never wished for war with +Germany, and never expected it. Her countrymen had no faith in Lord +Roberts's ten-year-long agitation for universal national service, based +on the portentous growth of the German army and navy. She never knew of +any hatred of Germany in the country. On the contrary, she realized what +England and all the rest of the world owed to Germany in so many ways.</p> + +<p>England was not absolutely unprepared in the sense that the United +States is unprepared, even for self-defence from external attack, but +except for the fleet and her little expeditionary force, England had +neither men nor equipment equal to the fighting of a great Continental +war.</p> + +<p>The wholly unexpected news of the invasion of Belgium aroused the whole +country to realize that war on a scale never known before had come, and, +as the firing upon Fort Sumter awakened America, convinced England that +she must fight to the death for her liberties, unready as she was;—but +Mr. Balfour, the First Lord of the Admiralty, says that, since the war +began, she has added one million to the tonnage of her navy, and has +doubled its personnel, and is adding more every day.</p> + +<p>In the matter of munitions the story that Mrs. Ward tells is wonderful, +almost beyond belief. Much had been done in the first eight months of +the war, in the building of munition shops, and the ordering of vast +quantities from abroad, before the second battle of Ypres, in April, +1915, which led to the formation of the new Coalition Ministry, +including a wholly new department, the Ministry of Munitions, with Mr. +Lloyd George at its head.</p> + +<p>From that time to this the work has been colossal, and almost +incredible, and without serious collision with the working classes. Vast +new buildings have been erected all over England, and a huge staff, +running into thousands, set in action. The new Minister has set out with +determination to get the thing done at whatever cost, and to remove all +obstacles that he found in his way. The Government has absolutely taken +control of the whole work of the creation of munitions and the +regulation of workmen, employed in it by whatever employers, and +everything and everybody has had to submit to his imperious will, and +the greatest change of all has been the employment of women on a vast +scale to do the work that only men had ever done before. France had set +about it immediately after the battle of the Marne, and allowed no +Frenchman to remain idle who could do such work.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ward does not fail to do full justice to the working men of Great +Britain, and shows that besides the hundreds of thousands that they have +sent to the fighting line, a million and a half remained at work in the +shops, creating munitions with the aid of skilled experts and the +astonishing help of the women, who never before had expected to have +anything to do with guns and shells, with bombs, rifles, and +machine-guns. The old ways were laid aside, old distinctions of class +and sex forgotten, and all worked with a common and indomitable will +for the saving of the country.</p> + +<p>To give a single instance, what was a few months ago a smiling pasture +is now found covered with vast buildings, in which these manufactures +are carried on by thirty-five hundred working people, of whom a large +proportion are women. I love to quote a single sentence from the +utterance of her companion on a visit to this establishment: "As to the +women, they are saving the country. They don't mind what they do. Hours? +They work ten and a half, or, with overtime, twelve hours a day, seven +days a week. The Government are insisting on one Sunday, or two Sundays +a month off. I don't say they aren't right, but the women resent it. +'We're not tired,' they say. And look at them! They are not tired."</p> + +<p>This unheard-of spectacle of great engineering establishments filled +with women, all hard at work, is a sure proof of the undying purpose of +the whole English race. They are mostly young and comely, and their +beauty of form and feature is only enhanced by their enthusiasm for +their labors, and at the same time it has increased the ardor and +intensity of their fellow workmen. Mrs. Ward found four thousand women +to five thousand men engaged in this nation-saving labor, in a single +establishment. They know that they are setting the skilled laborers +free for work which women cannot do, and the unskilled in large numbers +free for the army.</p> + +<p>Every building, as well as every man and woman, that could be put to the +work, has been availed of, and the results have been incredible. Another +instance she gives of special interest: "An old warehouse, bought, so to +speak, overnight, and equipped next morning, has been turned into a +small workshop for shell production, employing between three and four +hundred girls with the number of skilled men necessary to keep the new +unskilled labor going. These girls are working on the eight-hours' shift +system; working so well that a not uncommon wage among them, on +piece-work, of course, runs to somewhere between two and three pounds a +week," and all the time they are at work they remember that they are +doing common service with their husbands, and sweethearts, and sons, and +brothers, who are perilling their lives in the trenches.</p> + +<p>None of this distinguished writer's romances compare in vivid +description and heart-inspiring eloquence with these accounts that she +gives of what she has seen with her own eyes of the resurrection of +England.</p> + +<p>It is not for me to anticipate her startling and thrilling narratives +on this subject. She takes for her text what Mr. Lloyd George said in +his speech in the House of Commons on reviewing his new department: +"Unless we quicken our movements, damnation will fall on the sacred +cause for which so much gallant blood has flowed," and Mr. Asquith's +serious words in December: "We cannot go on," said he, "depending upon +foreign countries for our munitions. We haven't the ships to spare to +bring them home, and the cost is too great. We must make them +ourselves."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ward dwells with keen insight upon the difficulties met with among +the trade-unions and labor people, and successfully overcome, and +explains in full what they call over there the work of the Dilution +Commissioners, which is a wholly new phrase for us, and she gives this +clear definition: "Dilution means, of course, that under the sharp +analysis of necessity, much engineering work, generally reckoned as +'skilled' work, and reserved to 'skilled' workmen by a number of union +regulations, is seen to be capable of solution into various processes, +some of which can be sorted out from the others, as within the capacity +of the unskilled, or semiskilled worker. By so dividing them up and +using superior labor with economy, only where it is really necessary, it +can be made to go infinitely further, and the inferior, or untrained, +labor can then be brought into work where nobody supposed it could be +used; where, in fact, it never has been used." This novel experiment, +together with the equally novel employment of women in such work, soon +proved a triumphant success, and the women proved themselves able to do +the work of men, some of it even better. There were, of course, +difficulties at first, but the mischief, whatever it was, was quickly +cured, and in one factory that Mrs. Ward names, "men and women soon +began to do their best. The output of the factory, which had been +planned for four thousand shells a week, ran up to twenty thousand, and +everything has gone smoothly since."</p> + +<p>The adaptation of firms and factories, already existing, the control of +which was taken by the Government, was wonderful, but the national +shell-factories, founded, financed, and run by the Ministry of +Munitions, are more wonderful still, and give us many new ideas about +government ownership in an emergency, which we may sometimes have to +think of more seriously. The speed, the efficiency, the success of the +new system have been marvellous, so that in the short space of a year +the demands of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith have been satisfied, and +England will depend no more upon foreign contracts and foreign supplies +for her ammunition, but will be able not only to manufacture all she +can use herself, but to help to supply her Allies.</p> + +<p>In one department of labor, it is a very startling thing to learn that +"in a single fuse factory, what they call the danger buildings, mostly +women are employed. About five hundred women are found at work in one of +these factories on different processes connected with the delicate +mechanism and filling of the fuse and gaine, some of which is really +dangerous, like detonator work." It is the insertion in the shell of the +little pellet which gives it its death-dealing power, that is so risky, +but the women do not shrink from even this. In the largest fuse shop +known, quite new, fourteen hundred girls, in one shift, are at work.</p> + +<p>"An endless spectacle of gun-carriages, naval turrets, torpedo-tubes, +army railway-carriages, small Hotchkiss guns for merchant ships, +tool-making shops, gauge shops, seems to be going on forever, and in the +tool-making shops the output has risen from forty-four thousand to three +million a year." The vastness of the work, and the incessant and +enormous multiplication of all the products for war must be as +overwhelming as it is monotonous. And then there were the huge +shipyards, which before the war were capable of the berth of twenty +ships at once, from the largest battleship downward, and which, as we +have already had Mr. Balfour's word for it, have since the beginning of +the war added a million tons to the navy, but Mrs. Ward in her rapid +journeys had not time to stop and inspect these, to our very great +regret, for her description of them would have been most instructive.</p> + +<p>She declares from actual observation that in the Clyde district, in +whose populous centre some threats of disquiet have existed, the work +done by thousands and tens of thousands of workmen since the beginning +of the war, especially in the great shipyards, and done with the +heartiest and most self-sacrificing good-will, has been simply +invaluable to the nation, and will never be forgotten, and the invasion +of women there has, perhaps, been more startling to the workmen than +anywhere else. Where not a single woman was employed in the works and +factories before the war, except in textiles, "there will soon be +fifteen thousand of them in the munition workshops alone, and that will +not be the end."</p> + +<p>Wherever she goes, Mrs. Ward's eyes are wide open. From her own home, +which is in the midst of one of the most patriotic regions of the realm, +she can witness the perpetual activity which has come about in +preparation for the war in all its varied phases and branches; +everything and everybody is in vigorous motion, both there and in all +the counties of England which she has visited. Great camps in every +direction for the shelter and training of recruits, all coming and +going, all marching and countermarching, training and drilling +everywhere, and as fast as the citizen is converted into a soldier, he +is bound for the seat of war with all the equipments that war requires, +tramping everywhere, tramp, tramp, along the land; tramp, tramp, along +the sea, until the new supports, all ready for vital service, reach +their destination on French soil.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ward has made a careful study of the effect of the novel +introduction of women into all these works of men, especially in the +munition factories, and dwells with great significance upon the rapidity +of the women's piece-work and the mingling of classes, where educated +and refined girls work side by side and very happily with those of an +humbler type. What Mrs. Ward well calls "the common spirit" inspires +them all, and holds them all in just and equal relations. At every step +she is startled by the vastness of the work and the immense hand that +women have in it, finding one shop turning out about four thousand +shrapnel and four thousand high-explosive shells per week, heavy shell +work all, which they thought at first they must furnish men to lift in +and out of the machines, but "the women thrust the men aside in five +minutes." Surely this new education of women, of these girls and women +who are to become the mothers of the next generation, must have a most +inspiring and exalting effect upon the days to come. War may be +postponed for whole generations, but England will never fail to be ready +for it as a necessary part of the education of the race.</p> + +<p>It is quite evident that this war is breaking down the barriers that +have heretofore been impassable, not only between men and women, but +between the various classes of society, and that it cannot possibly end +without bringing these more closely together, all working to the same +end in a more perfect harmony, and that the result of it must be that +England will hereafter be an even more perfect democracy than it has +been up to this time.</p> + +<p>France! Glorious France! The conduct of whose government and people in +the war seems to have been absolutely perfect, has at last reached a +wonderful result after her hundred years of agonies and revolutions. We +hear from France no complaints, no internal dissensions, but all the +people, mankind and womankind, working together, each in its proper +sphere, to the one common end, the salvation of the State. I trust that +we shall never forget all that the world and we, especially, owe to +France. She is adding to our obligations now by fighting our battles for +us.</p> + +<p>And now with her daughter under the special protection and guidance of +the war office, this distinguished woman followed the khaki-clad +soldiers of England, now numbered by millions, across the channel, and +everything was thrown freely open to her. She soon found out what the +great supply bases, on which the British army in France rests, really +mean, made up of the Army Ordnance, Army Service, Army Medical, +Railroad, Motor, and Transport, and she found it a deeply interesting +study, "whose work has involved the labor of some of the best brains in +the army," and she learned the organizing power that has gone to make +the career of the English army in France possible.</p> + +<p>There was the immense dock, and its vast storehouse, the largest in the +world, "built three years before the war, partly, it is said, by German +money, to house the growing cotton trade of the port, but now it houses +a large proportion of the food of the British army," a building half a +mile long, bounded on one side by the docks, where the ships discharge +the stores and the men, and on the other by the railway lines where the +trains are perpetually loading for the front. On the quays ships of all +nations, except Germany, are pouring out their stores, and on the other +side the trucks that are going to the front are loading with the +supplies that are wanted for every regiment in the service. Her eyes +light upon one wired in space, labelled "Medical Comforts," and +generally known as "The Cage," where, while medical necessaries are +housed elsewhere, are "the dainties, the special foods, the easing +appliances of all kinds," which are to make life bearable to the wounded +men, and she stops to think how the shade of Florence Nightingale would +have paused at this spot.</p> + +<p>The huge sheds of Army Ordnance are filled with everything that a +soldier does not eat, all metal stores, whatever, and the men who work +in them are housed in one of the longest sheds in tiers of bunks from +floor to ceiling, and then there are the repairing sheds and workshops, +established near by, and that is the most wonderful thing of the whole +to my mind—never done before in connection with an army in the field. +Trainsful of articles to be repaired come down from the front every day, +and almost every imaginable article that the men at the front can use, +from guns to boots, comes here to be repaired, or if found beyond +repair, to be sent to Yorkshire for shoddy. The marvellous thing is +that, as soon as they are received, they are repaired and made nearly as +good as new and returned to their owners at the front, a vast work in +itself. The boot and uniform sheds alone, where again she finds five +hundred French women and girls, and the harness-making room are doing an +enormous work. The Colonel in charge began work with one hundred and +forty men, and is now employing more than a thousand, and his repairing +sheds are saving thousands of pounds a week to the British government.</p> + +<p>Recreation and amusement are supplied in near locality for the waiting +soldiers and, although the snow is more than ankle-deep, they visit such +places as recreation rooms and cinema theaters, and on a neighboring +hill great troops of men are going through some of the last refinements +of drill before they start for the front. Here are trenches of all kinds +and patterns, in which the men may practise, planned according to the +latest experience brought from the front. "The instructors are all men +returned from the front, and the new recruits, trained up to this last +point, would not be patient of any other teachers."</p> + +<p>Having thus seen all that one day could afford them at the very base of +the great army, our visitors make their way in closed motors through the +snow, passing scores of motor lorries, and other wagons, stuck in the +snow-drifts. They stop for the night at a pleasant hotel full of +officers, mostly English, belonging to the Lines of Communication, and a +few of the mothers and sisters of the poor wounded in the neighboring +hospitals, who have come over to nurse them.</p> + +<p>Every gun, every particle of munition, clothing, and equipment, and +whatever else is necessary, including the food of the armies, every +horse, every vehicle, has to be brought across the British channel, to +maintain and reinforce the ever-growing British army, and the ever-daily +increasing congestion at all the ports makes it more and more difficult +every day to receive, disembark, accommodate, and forward the multitude +of men and the masses of material, and all the time there are thousands +of troops passing through, thousands in the hospitals, and thousands at +work on the docks and storehouses. Everything tending to Tommy Atkins's +comfort is supplied, including again palatial cinemas and concerts, all +of which results in excellent behavior and the best of relations between +the British soldier and the French inhabitants. At the docks armies of +laborers and lines of ships discharging men, horses, timber, rations, +fodder, coal, coke, petrol, and the same at the storehouses and depots.</p> + +<p>The visitors spend a long Sunday morning in the motor transport depot, +and it gave a good illustration of the complete system of discipline +and organization that prevailed everywhere. This depot began, said the +Colonel in charge, on the 13th of August, 1914, "with a few balls of +string and a bag of nails." Its present staff is about five hundred. All +the drivers of twenty thousand motor vehicles are tested here, and the +depot exhibits three hundred and fifty different types of vehicles, and +in round figures, one hundred thousand separate parts are now dealt +with, stored, and arranged in this same depot. The Sunday morning began +with a simple service in the Young Men's Christian Association hut, at +which five hundred motor-drivers attended, about half of the whole +number in the station.</p> + +<p>The same day they explored endless camps and the wards of a Red Cross +hospital. It was impossible to take in everything at once, and our +ladies retired at night, bewildered by mingled impressions of "human +energy, human intelligence, human suffering," but full of pride and +exultation at the efficiency of their country and of the good relations +of their soldiers with the French. They carried with them as a last +impression of the day the picture of a canteen worked day and night in +three shifts by a heroic band of women close by the railway station, +full of soldiers just departing for the front, young, gay and full of +spirits; then came the train to take the soldiers off for the fighting +line, and the women, left behind, set up the song, already familiar in +the Midlands, "Keep the home fires burning till the boys come home."</p> + +<p>In the village where they stopped, some forty miles from the actual +front, a special messenger from the general headquarters brings the +amazing news that General Headquarters invites Mrs. Ward and her +daughter for two days, and will send a motor for them, if they accept, +which, of course, they did upon the instant, looking forward with +eagerness to the great mysteries of the front, its camps, its men, and +its hospitals, that they were to see with their own eyes to-morrow.</p> + +<p>The remainder of the day before they are to start for the front suffices +for the visit to a camp set down in one of the pleasantest spots in +France, a favorite haunt of French artists before the war, now occupied +by a British reinforcement camp, the trees having all been cut away, by +long lines of hospitals, by a convalescent depot, and by the training +grounds, to which we have already referred.</p> + +<p>I must copy the bare catalogue of what this vast camp contained: +"Sleeping and mess quarters for those belonging to the new armies; +sixteen hospitals with twenty-one thousand beds" (and this shows now +what it was to be near the front); "rifle ranges; training camps; a +vast laundry, worked by French women under British organization, which +washes for all the hospitals thirty thousand pieces a day; recreation +huts of every possible kind; a cinema theatre seating eight hundred men, +with performances twice a day; nurses clubs; officers clubs; a supply +depot for food; an ordnance depot for everything that is not food; +railroad sidings on which every kind of man and thing can go out and +come in without interruption; a convalescents' depot of two thousand +patients; and a convalescent horse depot of two thousand horses; all +this in one camp, established since last April."</p> + +<p>Ah! But the deepest impression left on the minds of our ladies is of the +terrible sufferings in the hospitals, of the smiling endurance with +which they were borne, of the timely skill, pity, and devotion of the +doctors and nurses, taking care of the twenty thousand wounded. +Realizing the sympathy of America with all these scenes and sufferings, +they do not fail to note the hospitals organized by the Universities of +Chicago and of Harvard, staffed by American sisters and doctors, each +providing thirty-four doctors and eighty nurses, and dealing with a +thousand patients, and a convalescent depot of two thousand beds. Every +day the ambulance train comes in, and splendid hospital ships are +taking the brave wounded back to England for home and rest.</p> + +<p>And now came the day in which they were to motor forty miles to be the +guests of the G.H.Q. Soon they seemed to be in the midst of the battle, +"our own guns were thundering away behind us, and the road was more and +more broken up by shell holes." The British lines are just beyond, +cottages close by, and the German lines just in front of a wood near +them, three-quarters of a mile away. Already they had been nearer than +any woman, even a nurse, had been in this war, to the actual fighting on +the English line, and the cup of impressions was full. They actually saw +the brave boys whom they had passed an hour before, sitting in the +fields waiting for orders, now marching into the trenches to take their +turn there—they knew that they were marching into the jaws of death, +but they walked as quietly and as cheerfully as if they were going to a +parade, the guns crashing close by them all the time. The firing being +too hot for the women, the captain in charge of them was relieved when +they elected to turn back.</p> + +<p>The next day, their second as guests of G.H.Q., as they came down from +breakfast, our ladies were surprised to find the motor at the door, a +simple lunch being packed up, and gas-helmets got ready for them to use, +for the captain greeted them in the best of spirits with the news that a +very successful action had been fought that morning, "we had taken back +some trenches on the Ypres-Comines Canal that we lost, a little while +ago, and captured about two hundred prisoners; and if we go off at once +we shall be in time to see the German counter attack." The one +impossible thing for any woman ever to have hoped to see!</p> + +<p>Somehow or other they very quickly got to the very post of danger. Soon +they got close to the Tower of Ypres, which Mrs. Ward well describes as +"mute witness of a crime that beyond the reparation of our own day, +history will revenge through years to come." Then the English guns +spoke, and they watched and saw the columns of white smoke rising from +the German lines as the shells burst. The German lines are right in +sight, and soon their shells begin to burst on the English trenches. The +German counter attack is on. All the famous sites of the early part of +the war are then in sight, but all they can fully see is the bursting +German shells, as from moment to moment they explode.</p> + +<p>In her final letter Mrs. Ward shows other great efforts which Great +Britain has made since the war began; that the taxes imposed for the +support of the war and cheerfully borne demand a fourth part of his +income from every well-to-do citizen; that five hundred million +sterling, or twenty-five hundred million dollars have been already lent +by Britain to her allies, a colossal portion of her income; that she has +spent at the yearly rate of three thousand million dollars on the army, +a thousand million dollars on the navy, while the munition department is +costing about four hundred million sterling, and is employing close upon +two million workers, one-tenth, I think, women; that the export trade of +the country, in spite of submarines and lack of tonnage, is at this +moment greater than it was in the corresponding months of 1913; she has +raised an army of four millions of men, and will get all she wants.</p> + +<p>What is more precious than all the rest, besides the vast amount of +treasure that she has lavished upon the war, besides the rich mansions +in all parts of the land that she has devoted to the uses of the sick +and the wounded, she has given thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands +of her choicest youth, who have willingly surrendered their lives for +the great cause; young men of the noblest pedigree, without number, by +their lives and deaths have attested their right to be regarded as the +flower of the British youth; the professional classes and the +universities have emptied their halls so that the men of Oxford and +Cambridge might take their places with the rest, and offer up their +lives as willing sacrifices, and all the men of England of every degree +have joined with them and been welcomed as brothers in the ranks for the +great sacrifice. The rank and file, who are fighting and dying for +England, are fighting in the same spirit as their leaders and falling by +the hundred thousand for the nation's salvation. How exactly Emerson's +noble verse fits them:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So nigh is grandeur to our dust,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So near is God to man,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The youth replies, 'I can!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>No one who reads this book can doubt for a moment, I think, that ENGLAND +HAS DONE ALL SHE COULD, has put forth efforts worthy of her history and +of her great traditions, that her national spirit is invincible, her +national resources inexhaustible, and that her irresistible will to +conquer and to rescue freedom and civilization for all the world from +this terrible contest, is absolutely sure to win.</p> + +<p>All America is vastly indebted to Mrs. Ward for her triumphant success +in proving that England has done her best and for making this great +story so clear.</p> + +<p>In this introduction, too hastily prepared for want of time, which is +really little better than a synopsis of the book itself, I have not +hesitated to use her own language from beginning to end, as the clearest +by which to express and condense her narrative, and with occasional +indications by quotation marks.</p> + +<p>I still believe absolutely that nine-tenths of my countrymen are in +earnest sympathy with the Allies and are confident of their final and +complete success.</p> + +<p>JOSEPH H. CHOATE.</p> + +<p>NEW YORK, May 19th, 1916.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Authors_Foreword" id="Authors_Foreword"></a>Author's Foreword</h2> + + +<p>This little book was the outcome of an urgent call from America sent by +various friends whose whole sympathy is with the Allies. I have done my +best to meet it, in four strenuous months, during which the British +Government has given me every possible facility. But such work has to be +done rapidly, and despatched rapidly. I beg my friends, and England's +friends, beyond the Atlantic, to excuse its defects. I can honestly say, +however, that I have done my best to get at the facts, and that +everything which is here put forward rests upon independent enquiry, so +far as the limit of time allowed.</p> + +<p>The title has caused me much trouble! Will any son of gallant Scotland, +or loyalist Ireland, or of those great Dominions, whose share in the war +has knit them closer than ever to the Mother Country—should he come +across this little book—forgive me that I have finally chosen "England" +to stand for us all? "Gott strafe England!" has been the German cry of +hate. I have given what I conceive to be "England's" reply. +"Britain"—"Great Britain" are words that for all their profound +political significance have still to be steeped a good deal longer in +life and literature before they stir the same fibres in us as the old +national names. And "England" as the seat of British Government has, it +is admitted, a representative and inclusive force. Perhaps my real +reason is still simpler. Let any one try the alternatives which suggest +themselves, and see how they roll—or do not roll—from the tongue. He +or she will, I think, soon be reconciled to "England's Effort"!</p> + +<p>MARY A. WARD.</p> + + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + + +<p>Note To The Fourth Edition</p> + +<p>There has been added to this edition an epilogue in the shape of a +seventh letter, bringing the story up to August 16, including munitions, +finance, the battle of Jutland, and the Somme offensive.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Illustrations" id="Illustrations"></a>Illustrations</h2> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='left'>Spring-time in the North Sea—Snow on a British Battleship</td><td align='left'> <i><a href="#Page_2">Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>FACING PAGE</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Marines drilling on the quarterdeck of a British Battleship</td><td align='left'> <a href="#Page_24">24</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Fifteen-inch guns on a British Battleship</td><td align='left'> <a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>A forest of shells in a corner of one of England's great shell filling factories</td><td align='left'> <a href="#Page_86">86</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>A light railway bringing up ammunition</td><td align='left'> <a href="#Page_87">87</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>One of the wards of a base hospital, visited by the King</td><td align='left'> <a href="#Page_132">132</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>A Howitzer in the act of firing</td><td align='left'> <a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr> +</table></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Englands_Effort" id="Englands_Effort"></a>England's Effort</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2> + + +<p>Dear H.</p> + +<p>Your letter has found me in the midst of work quite unconnected with +this hideous war in which for the last eighteen months we in England +have lived and moved and had our being. My literary profession, indeed, +has been to me, as to others, since August 4th, 1914, something to be +interposed for a short time, day by day, between a mind tormented and +obsessed by the spectacle of war and the terrible reality it could not +otherwise forget. To take up one's pen and lose oneself for a while in +memories of life as it was long, long before the war—there was +refreshment and renewal in that! Once—last spring—I tried to base a +novel on a striking war incident which had come my way. Impossible! The +zest and pleasure which for any story-teller goes with the first +shaping of a story died away at the very beginning. For the day's +respite had gone. The little "wind-warm" space had disappeared. Life and +thought were all given up, without mercy or relief, to the fever and +nightmare of the war. I fell back upon my early recollections of Oxford +thirty, forty years ago—and it was like rain in the desert. So that, in +the course of months it had become a habit with me never to <i>write</i> +about the war; and outside the hours of writing to think and talk of +nothing else.</p> + +<p>But your letter suddenly roused in me a desire to write about the war. +It was partly I think because what you wrote summed up and drove home +other criticisms and appeals of the same kind. I had been putting them +mechanically aside as not having any special reference to me; but in +reality they had haunted me. And now you make a personal appeal. You say +that England at the present moment is misunderstood, and even hardly +judged in America, and that even those great newspapers of yours that +are most friendly to the Allies are often melancholy reading for those +with English sympathies. Our mistakes—real and supposed—loom so large. +We are thought to be not taking the war seriously—even now. +Drunkenness, strikes, difficulties in recruiting the new armies, the +losses of the Dardanelles expedition, the failure to save Serbia and +Montenegro, tales of luxurious expenditure in the private life of rich +and poor, and of waste or incompetence in military administration—these +are made much of, even by our friends, who grieve, while our enemies +mock. You say the French case has been on the whole much better +presented in America than the English case; and you compare the +international situation with those months in 1863 when it was necessary +for the Lincoln Government to make strenuous efforts to influence and +affect English opinion, which in the case of our upper classes and too +many of our leading men was unfavourable or sceptical towards the +North. You who know something of the vastness of the English effort—you +urge upon me that English writers whose work and names are familiar to +the American public are bound to speak for their country, bound to try +and make Americans feel what we here feel through every nerve—that +cumulative force of a great nation, which has been slow to rouse, and is +now immovably—irrevocably—set upon its purpose. "Tell me," you say in +effect, "what in your belief is the real spirit of your people—of your +men in the field and at sea, of your workmen and employers at home, your +women, your factory workers, your soldiers' wives, your women of the +richer and educated classes, your landowners and politicians. Are you +yet fully awake—yet fully in earnest, in this crisis of England's fate? +'Weary Titan' that she is, with her age-long history behind her, and her +vast responsibilities by sea and land, is she shouldering her load in +this incredible war, as she must shoulder it; as her friends—the +friends of liberty throughout the world—pray that she may shoulder +it?"</p> + +<p>Yes!—I must answer your questions—to the best of my power. I am no +practised journalist—the days of my last articles for <i>The Pall Mall</i> +under the "John Morley" of those days are thirty odd years behind me! +But I have some qualifications. Ever since—more than half a century +ago—I paid my first childish visit to the House of Commons, and heard +Mr. Roebuck, the "Tear 'em" of <i>Punch's</i> cartoon, make his violent +appeal to the English Government to recognise the belligerency of the +South, it would be almost true to say that politics and affairs have +been no less interesting to me than literature; and next to English +politics, American politics and American opinion; partly because of my +early association with men like W.E. Forster, stanch believers, even +when Gladstone and John Russell wavered, in the greatness of the +American future and the justice of the Northern cause—and partly +because of the warm and deep impression left upon me and mine by your +successive Ambassadors in London, by Mr. Lowell above all, by Mr. and +Mrs. Phelps, by the John Hays, the Choates and the Bayards—no less than +by the many intimate friendships with Americans from different worlds +which my books have brought me since 1888. During the last thirty years, +also, I have had many friends—and some kinsmen—among the leaders of +English politics, and in both political parties. At the present moment +my only son is a member of the English House of Commons, and a soldier +fighting in the war. All my younger kinsfolk are fighting; the sons of +all my friends are fighting; and their daughters are nursing as members +of Voluntary Aid Detachments—(marvellous what the girl V.A.D.'s, as +England affectionately calls them, have done since the beginning of the +war!)—or working week-end shifts to relieve munition workers, or +replacing men of military age in the public offices and banks. I live in +one of the Home Counties, within five miles of one of the military +camps. The small towns near us are crowded with soldiers; the roads are +full of marching infantry, of artillery-trains and supply-wagons. Our +village has sent practically all its able-bodied men of military age to +the front; the few that remain are "attested" and only waiting to be +called up. A great movement, in which this household is engaged, is now +beginning to put women on the land, and so replace the agricultural +labourers who have gone either into the armies or the munition +factories. And meanwhile all the elderly men and women of the +countryside are sitting on War Committees, or working for the Red Cross. +Our lives are penetrated by the war; our thoughts are never free from +it.</p> + +<p>But in trying to answer your questions I have gone far beyond my own +normal experience. I asked the English Government to give me some +special opportunities of seeing what Great Britain is doing in the war, +and in matters connected with the war, and they have given them +ungrudgingly. I have been allowed to go, through the snow-storms of this +bitter winter, to the far north and visit the Fleet, in those distant +waters where it keeps guard night and day over England. I have spent +some weeks in the Midlands and the north watching the vast new activity +of the Ministry of Munitions throughout the country; and finally in a +motor tour of some five hundred miles through the zone of the English +armies in France, I have been a spectator not only of that marvellous +organisation in northwestern France, of supplies, reinforcements, +training camps and hospitals, which England has built up in the course +of eighteen months behind her fighting line, but I have been—on the +first of two days—within less than a mile of the fighting line itself, +and on a second day, from a Flemish hill—with a gas helmet close at +hand! I have been able to watch a German counter attack, after a +successful English advance, and have seen the guns flashing from the +English lines, and the shell-bursts on the German trenches along the +Messines ridge; while in the far distance, a black and jagged ghost, the +tower of the Cloth Hall of Ypres broke fitfully through the +mists—bearing mute witness before God and man.</p> + +<p>For a woman—a marvellous experience! I hope later on in these letters +to describe some of its details, and some of the thoughts awakened by +them in a woman's mind. But let me here keep to the main point raised by +your question—<i>the effort of England</i>. During these two months of +strenuous looking and thinking, of conversation with soldiers and +sailors and munition workers, of long days spent in the great supply +bases across the Channel, or of motoring through the snowy roads of +Normandy and Picardy, I have naturally realised that effort far more +vividly than ever before. It seems to me—it must seem to any one who +has seriously attempted to gauge it—amazing, colossal. "What country +has ever raised over sixty per cent of its total recruitable strength, +for service beyond the seas in a few months?" asks one of our younger +historians; and that a country not invaded, protected by the sea, and +by a supreme fleet; a country, moreover, without any form of compulsory +military service, in which soldiering and the soldier have been rather +unpopular than popular, a country in love with peace, and with no +intention or expectation of going to war with any one?</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>For there we come to the root of everything—the <i>unpreparedness of +England</i>—and what it meant. It meant simply that as a nation we never +wished for war with Germany, and, as a nation, we never expected it. Our +Governments, of course, contained men who saw more or less plainly the +dangers ahead, and had spent years of effort in trying to avoid them. On +several occasions, during the last twenty years, as we all remember, a +wave of sudden anxiety as to German aims and intentions had spread +through the thinking portion of the nation—in connection with South +Africa, with Morocco, with the Balkans. But it had always died away +again. We know now that Germany was not yet ready! Meanwhile fruitless +efforts were made by successive English Governments to limit armaments, +to promote arbitration, and extend the scope of the Hague Tribunal. In +vain. Germany would have none of them. Year by year, in a world of peace +her battle-navy grew. "For what can it be intended but to attack +England?" said the alarmist. But how few of us believed them! Our Tariff +Reformers protested against the encroachments of German trade; but, +outside a handful of persons who seemed to most of us fanatics, the +emphasis lay always on care for our own people, and not on hostility to +Germany. Those who warned us passionately that Germany meant to provoke +a struggle, that the struggle must come, were very little heeded. Nobody +slept the worse at night for their harangues. Lord Roberts's agitation +for National Service, based on the portentous growth of the German Army +and Navy, made comparatively little way. I speak from personal +experience of a large Parliamentary division. "Did you foresee it?" I +said to one of the ablest and most rising men in the Navy a fortnight +ago. He thought a little. "I always felt there might be a clash over +some colonial question—a quarrel about black men. But a war between the +white nations over a European question—that Germany would force such a +war—no, that I never believed!" Nor did any of us—except those +few—those very few persons, who Cassandra-like, saw the coming horror +plainly, and spoke to a deaf country.</p> + +<p>"There was <i>no</i> hatred of Germany in this country"—I quote a Cabinet +Minister. "Even in those parts of the country which had most reason to +feel the trade rivalry of Germany, there was no thought of war, no wish +for war!" It came upon England like one of those sudden spates through +mountain clefts in spring, that fall with havoc on the plains beneath. +After such days of wrestling for European peace as have left their +indelible mark upon every member of the English Cabinet which declared +war on August 4th, 1914, we fought because we must, because, in Luther's +words, we "could no other."</p> + +<p>What is the proof of this—the proof which history will accept as +final—against the vain and lying pleas of Germany?</p> + +<p>Nothing less than the whole history of the past eighteen +months!—beginning with that initial lack of realisation, and those +harassing difficulties of organisation with which we are now so often +and so ignorantly reproached. At the word "Belgium" on August 4th, +practically the whole English nation fell into line. We felt no +doubts—we knew what we had to do. But the problem was how to do it. +Outside the Navy and the Expeditionary Force, both of them ready to the +last gun and button, we had neither men nor equipment equal to the +fighting of a Continental war, and we knew it. The fact is more than our +justification—it is our glory. If we had meant war, as Germany still +hoarsely but more faintly says, week after week, to a world that +listens no longer, could any nation of sane men have behaved as we did +in the years before the war?—233,000 men on active service—and 263,000 +Territorials, against Germany's millions!—with arsenals and equipment +to match. Is it any wonder that the country—our untouched, uninvaded +country—safe as it believed itself to be under the protection of its +invincible Navy, was, in some sections of our population at any rate, +slow to realise the enormous task to which—for the faith of treaties' +sake, for self-defence's sake—it was committed?</p> + +<p>And yet—was it after all so slow? The day after war was declared the +Prime Minister asked Parliament to authorise the addition of half a +million of men to the Army, and a first war credit of a hundred millions +of money (five hundred million dollars). The first hundred thousand men +came rolling up into the great military centres within a few days. By +September 4th nearly three hundred thousand fresh men had enlisted—by +Christmas half a million. By May, a million men had been added to the +new Armies; by September, 1915, Sir John French alone had under his +command close on a million men on the lines in France and Flanders, and +in December, 1915, the addition of another million men to the Army was +voted by Parliament, bringing up the British military strength to +approximately four millions, excluding Colonials. And what of the +Dominions? By November, 1915, Canada and Australia alone had sent us +forces more than equal to the whole of that original Expeditionary +Force, that "contemptible little army" which, broken and strained as it +was by the sheer weight and fierceness of the German advance, yet held +the gates of the Channel till England could fling her fresh troops into +the field, and France—admirable France!—had recovered from the first +onslaught of her terrible and ruthless enemy.</p> + +<p>In one of my later letters I hope to give some particulars of this first +rush of men, gathered from those who witnessed it and took part in it. +One remarkable point in connection with it is that those districts most +heavily employed in munition-making and coal-mining, the two industries +absolutely indispensable to our Army and Navy, have also sent the +largest supply of men to the fighting line—take, for instance, +Newcastle and the Clyde. There have been anxious episodes, of course, in +the great development. Was your own vast levy in the Civil War without +them? And for the last half million men, we have had to resort, as +Lincoln resorted, to a modified form of compulsion. There was, no doubt, +a good deal of unnecessary waste and overlapping in the first camp and +billeting organization of the enormous forces raised. But when all is +said, did we not, in the language of a French observer "improvise the +impossible"?—and have we not good reason to be proud?—not with any +foolish vainglory, but with the sober and resolute pride of a great +nation, conscious of its past, determined to correct its mistakes, and +looking open-eyed and fearless towards the future?</p> + +<p>Then as to munitions: in many ways, as you will perhaps say, and as I +agree, a tragic story. If we had possessed last spring the +ammunition—both for ourselves and our allies we now possess, the war +would have gone differently. Drunkenness, trade-union difficulties, a +small—very small—revolutionary element among our work people—all +these have made trouble. But the real cause of our shortage lay in the +fact that no one, outside Germany, realised till far into the war, what +the ammunition needs—the absolutely unprecedented needs—of this +struggle were going to be. It was the second Battle of Ypres at the end +of April last year which burnt them into the English mind. We paid for +the grim knowledge in thousands of our noblest lives. But since then?</p> + +<p>In a later letter I propose to draw some picture in detail of the really +marvellous movement which since last July, under the impulse given by +Mr. Lloyd George, has covered England with new munition factories and +added enormously to the producing power of the old and famous firms, has +drawn in an army of women—now reckoned at something over a quarter of a +million—and is at this moment not only providing amply for our own +armies, but is helping those of the Allies against those final days of +settlement with Germany which we believe to be now steadily approaching. +American industry and enterprise have helped us substantially in this +field of munitions. We are gratefully conscious of it. But England is +now fast overtaking her own needs.</p> + +<p>More of this presently. Meanwhile to the military and equipment effort +of the country, you have to add the financial effort—something like +$7,500,000,000, already expended on the war; the organising effort, +exemplified in the wonderful "back of the army" in France, which I hope +to describe to you; and the vast hospital system, with all its +scientific adjuncts, and its constantly advancing efficiency.</p> + +<p>And at the foundation of it all—the human and personal effort!—the +lives given for England, the blood so generously shed for her, the homes +that have sacrificed their all, our "golden lads" from all quarters and +classes, whose young bodies lie mingled with an alien dust that "is for +ever England," since they sleep there and hallow it; our mothers who +mourn the death or the wreck of the splendid sons they reared; our +widowed wives and fatherless children. And this, in a quarrel which only +very slowly our people have come to feel as in very deed their own. At +first we thought most often and most vividly of Belgium, of the broken +treaty, and of France, so wantonly attacked, whose people no English man +or woman could ever have looked in the face again, had we forsaken her. +Then came the hammer blows that forged our will—Louvain, Aerschot, +Rheims, the air-raids on our defenceless towns, the senseless murder of +our women and children, the Bryce report, the <i>Lusitania</i>, the +execution of Edith Cavell—the whole stupefying revelation of the German +hatred and greed towards this country, and of the qualities latent in +the German character. Now we <i>know</i>—that it is they, or we—since they +willed it so. And this old, illogical, unready country is only just +arriving at its full strength, only just fully conscious of the +sternness of its own resolve, only just putting out its full powers, as +the German power is weakening, and the omens are changing—both in East +and West.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>No!—the effort of England during the past eighteen months in spite of +all temporary ebbs and difficulties, in spite of that chorus of +self-blame in which the English nation delights, has been one of the +great things in the history of our country. We have "improvised the +impossible" in every direction—<i>but one</i>.</p> + +<p>In one point, indeed, there has been no improvisation. Nothing was +trusted to chance. What is it that alone has secured us the time to make +the effort we have made?</p> + +<p>It is now about a month ago that, by permission of the Admiralty, I +found myself driving towards a certain pier in a harbour opening on the +North Sea. The Commodore of a Cruiser Squadron was to send his boat for +me, and I was to lunch with him on board his Flag-ship. I duly passed +the distrustful sentry on the road leading to the pier, arrived at the +pier-head and descended from the motor which had brought me. The morning +was mistily sunny, and the pier strangely deserted. Where was the boat? +Where was my friend who had hoped to come for me himself? No signs of +either. The few old sailors employed about the pier looked at me in +astonishment, and shook their heads when I inquired. Commodore ——'s +boat was not there; no boat had been in that morning from the ships. I +took the Commodore's letter from my hand-bag, to assure myself I had not +been dreaming, and reread it in perplexity. No dates could be +clearer—no directions more precise. Suddenly I perceive one tall naval +officer on the pier. "Can you help me, sir?" And I hand him the +Commodore's letter. He looks at me—and at the letter. His face twinkles +with repressed laughter; and I laugh, too, beginning to understand. +"Very sorry," says the charming young man, "but I think I can assure you +there will be no boat, and it is no use your waiting. Commodore —— +went to sea last night."</p> + +<p>I thanked him, and we laughed together. Then I walked up the pier a +little way, seeing a movement in the mist. A sailor came up to me. "They +all went to sea last night," he said in my ear—"and there are the slow +ones coming back!" And out of the mist came the black shapes of +war-ships, moving majestically up the harbour—one might have fancied, +with a kind of injured dignity, because their unreasonable fellows had +been faster and had gone farther afield than they.</p> + +<p>I walked back to my motor, disappointed indeed, and yet exulting. It +was good to realise personally through this small incident, the mobility +and ever-readiness of the Fleet—the absolute +insignificance—non-existence even—of any civilian or shore interest, +for the Navy at its work. It was not till a week later that I received +an amusing and mysterious line from Commodore ——, the most courteous +of men.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><a href="./images/img2h.jpg"> +<img src="./images/img2.jpg" width="399" height="280" alt="Marines Drilling on the Quarterdeck of a British Battleship." title="Marines Drilling on the Quarterdeck of a British Battleship." /> +</a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><span class="caption">Marines Drilling on the Quarterdeck of a British Battleship.</span></p> + +<p><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><a href="./images/img3h.jpg"> +<img src="./images/img3.jpg" width="399" height="274" alt="Fifteen-inch Guns on a British Battleship." title="Fifteen-inch Guns on a British Battleship." /> +</a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><span class="caption">Fifteen-inch Guns on a British Battleship.</span></p> + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>By the time it reached me, however, I was on the shores of a harbour in +the far north "visiting the Fleet," indeed, and on the invitation of +England's most famous sailor. Let me be quite modest about it. Not for +me the rough waters, or the thunderous gun-practice—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Breaking the silence of the seas<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Among the farthest Hebrides"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>which I see described in the letters of the Russian or American +journalists who have been allowed to visit the Grand Fleet. There had +been some talk, I understand, of sending me out in a destroyer; it was +mercifully abandoned. All the same, I must firmly put on record that +mine was "a visit to the Fleet," by Admiralty permission, for the +purpose of these letters to you, and through you to the American public, +and that I seem to have been so far the only woman who, for newspaper +ends, has been allowed to penetrate those mysterious northern limits +where I spent two wonderful days.</p> + +<p>It was, indeed, a wintry visit. The whole land was covered with snow. +The train could hardly drag itself through the choked Highland defiles; +and it was hours behind its time when we arrived at a long-expected +station, and a Vice-Admiral looking at me with friendly, keen eyes came +to the carriage to greet me. "My boat shall meet you at the pier with my +Flag-Lieutenant to-morrow morning. You will pick me up at the Flag-ship, +and I will take you round the Fleet. You will lunch with me, I hope, +afterwards." I tried to show my grateful sense both of the interest and +the humour of the situation. My kind visitor disappeared, and the train +carried me on a few miles farther to my destination for the night.</p> + +<p>And here I take a few words from a journal written at the time:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It is nearly dawn. A red light in the northeast is coming up + over the snowy hills. The water, steely grey—the tide + rising. What strange moving bodies are those, scudding along + over the dim surface, like the ghosts of sea planes? Dense + flocks of duck apparently, rising and falling along the + shallows of the shore. Now they are gone. Nothing moves. The + morning is calm, and the water still. And on it lie, first a + cruiser squadron, and then a line of Dreadnoughts stretching + out of sight. No lights anywhere, except the green lights on + a hospital ship far away. The great ships lie dark and + silent, and I sit and watch them, in the cold dawn, thinking + that but for them, and the multitude of their comrades that + guard these seas and shores, England would be as Belgium or + as Northern France, ravaged and destroyed by a barbarian + enemy. My heart goes out to you, great ships, and you, + gallant unwearied men, who keep your watch upon them! That + watch has been kept for generations. Never has there been + such need for it as now....</p></div> + +<p>But the day has risen, and the sun with it. As I leave the shore in the +Vice-Admiral's boat, the sunlight comes dancing over a low line of +hill, lighting up the harbour, the mighty ships, with their guns, and, +scattered out to sea along the distance, the destroyers, the trawlers, +the mine-sweepers, the small auxiliary craft of all kinds—those +"fringes of the fleet"—which Kipling has caught and photographed as +none but he can.</p> + +<p>The barge stops beside the Flag-ship, and the Admiral descends into it. +What is the stamp, the peculiar stamp that these naval men bear?—as of +a force trained and disciplined to its utmost capacity, and then held +lightly in check—till wanted. You see it in so many of their faces, +even in eyes hollow for want of sleep. It is always there—the same +strength, the same self-control, the same humanity. Is it produced by +the testing weight of responsibility, the silent sense of ever-present +danger, both from the forces of nature and the enmity of man, the high, +scientific training, and last but not least, that marvellous comradeship +of the Navy, whether between officer and officer, or between officers +and men, which is constantly present indeed in the Army, but is +necessarily closer and more intimate here, in the confined world of the +ship, where all live together day after day, and week after week, and +where—if disaster comes—all may perish together?</p> + +<p>But on this bright winter morning, as we pass under and round the ships, +and the Admiral points out what a landswoman can understand, in the +equipment and the power of these famous monsters with their pointing +guns, there was for the moment no thought of the perils of the Navy, but +only of the glory of it. And afterwards in the Admiral's pleasant +drawing-room on board the Flag-ship, with its gathering of naval +officers, Admirals, Captains, Commanders, how good the talk was! Not a +shade of boasting—no mere abuse of Germany—rather a quiet regret for +the days when German and English naval men were friends throughout the +harbours of the world. "Von Spee was a very good fellow—I knew him +well—and his two sons who went down with him," says an Admiral gently. +"I was at Kiel the month before the war. I <i>know</i> that many of their men +must loathe the work they are set to do." "The point is," says a younger +man, broad—shouldered, with the strong face of a leader, "that they are +always fouling the seas, and we are always cleaning them up. Let the +neutrals understand that! It is not we who strew the open waters with +mines for the slaughter of any passing ship, and then call it +'maintaining the freedom of the seas.' And as to their general strategy, +their Higher Command—" he throws back his head with a quiet laugh—and +I listen to a rapid sketch of what the Germans <i>might</i> have done, have +never done, and what it is now much too late to do, which I will not +repeat.</p> + +<p>Type after type comes back to me:—the courteous Flag-Lieutenant, who is +always looking after his Admiral, whether in these brief harbour rests, +or in the clash and darkness of the high seas—the +Lieutenant-Commanders whose destroyers are the watch-dogs, the +ceaseless protectors, no less than the eyes and ears of the Fleet—the +Flag-Captain, who takes me through the great ship, with his vigilant, +spare face, and his understanding, kindly talk about his men; many of +whom on this Thursday afternoon—the quasi half-holiday of the Fleet +when in harbour—are snatching an hour's sleep when and where they can. +That sleep-abstinence of the Navy—sleep, controlled, measured out, +reduced to a bare minimum, among thousands of men, that we on shore may +sleep our fill—look at the signs of it, in the eyes both of these +officers, and of the sailors crowding the "liberty" boats, which are +just bringing them back from their short two hours' leave on shore!</p> + +<p>Another gathering, in the Captain's room, for tea. The talk turns on a +certain popular play dealing with naval life, and a Commander describes +how the manuscript of it had been brought to him, and how he had +revelled in the cutting out of all the sentimentalisms. Two men in the +play—friends—going into action—shake hands with each other "with +tears in their eyes." A shout of derisive laughter goes up from the +tea-table. But they admit "talking shop" off duty. "That's the +difference between us and the Army." And what shop it is! I listen to +two young officers, both commanding destroyers, describing—one, his +adventures in dirty weather the night before, on patrol duty. "My hat, I +thought one moment the ship was on the rocks! You couldn't see a yard +for the snow—and the sea—<i>beastly</i>!" The other had been on one of +Admiral Hood's monitors, when they suddenly loomed out of the mist on +the Belgian coast, and the German army marching along the coast road to +Dunkirk and Calais marched no more, but lay in broken fragments behind +the dunes, or any shelter available, till the flooding of the dikes +farther south completed the hopeless defeat which Admiral Hood's guns +had begun.</p> + +<p>Then the talk ranges round the blockade, the difficulties and dangers +of patrol work, the complaints of neutrals. "America should understand +us. Their blockade hit us hard enough in the Civil War. And we are +fighting for their ideals no less than our own. When has our naval +supremacy ever hurt them? Mayn't they be glad of it some day? What about +a fellow called Monroe!"—so it runs. Then its tone changes insensibly. +From a few words dropped I realise with a start where these pleasantly +chatting men had probably been only two or three days before, where they +would probably be again on the morrow. Some one opens a map, and I +listen to talk which, in spite of its official reticence, throws many a +light on the vast range of England's naval power, and the number of her +ships. "Will <i>they</i> come out? When will they come out?" The question +runs round the group. Some one tells a story of a German naval prisoner +taken not long ago in the North Sea, and of his remark to his captors: +"Yes, we're beaten—we know that—but we'll make it <i>hell</i> for you +before we give in!"</p> + +<p>For that final clash—that Armageddon that all think must come, our +sailors wait, not despising their enemy, knowing very well that +they—the Fleet—are the pivot of the situation, that without the +British Navy, not all the valour of the Allies in France or Russia could +win the war, and that with it, Germany's hope of victory is vain. While +the Navy lives, England lives, and Germany's vision of a world governed +by the ruthless will of the scientific soldier is doomed.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, what has Germany been doing in her shipyards all this time? +No one knows, but my hosts are well aware that we shall know some day.</p> + +<p>As to England—here is Mr. Balfour moving the Naval Estimates in the +House of Commons—the "token votes" which tell nothing that should not +be told. But since the war began, says the First Lord, we have added +"one million" to the tonnage of the Navy, and we have <i>doubled its +personnel</i>. We are adding more every day; for the Admiralty are always +"wanting more." We are quite conscious of our defects—in the Air +Service first and foremost. But they will be supplied. There is a mighty +movement afoot in the workshops of England—an effort which, when all +drawbacks are allowed for, has behind it a free people's will.</p> + +<p>In my next letter I propose to take you through some of these workshops. +"We get the most extraordinary letters from America," writes one of my +correspondents, a steel manufacturer in the Midlands. "What do they +think we are about?" An American letter is quoted. "So you are still, in +England, taking the war lying down?"</p> + +<p>Are we? Let us see.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2> + + +<p>Dear H.</p> + +<p>In this second letter I am to try and prove to you that England is <i>not</i> +taking the war "lying down."</p> + +<p>Let me then give you some account—an eye-witness's account—of what +there is now to be seen by the ordinary intelligent observer in the +"Munition Areas," as the public has learned to call them, of England and +Scotland. That great spectacle, as it exists to-day—so inspiring in +what it immediately suggests of human energy and human ingenuity, so +appalling in its wider implications—testifies, in the first instance, +to the fierce stiffening of England's resolve to win the war, and to win +it at a lessened cost in life and suffering to our men in the field, +which ran through the nation, after the second Battle of Ypres, towards +the close of April, 1915. That battle, together with the disagreement +between Mr. Winston Churchill and Lord Fisher at the Admiralty, had, as +we all know, momentous consequences. The two events brought the national +dissatisfaction and disappointment with the general course of the spring +fighting to a head. By May 19th the Ministry which had declared the war +and so far conducted it, had disappeared; a National or Coalition +Ministry, drawn from the leading men of both parties, reigned in its +stead. The statement made by Mr. Asquith, as late, alack, as April 20, +1915, that there was "no truth in the statement" that our efforts at the +front "were being crippled or at any rate hampered" by want of +ammunition, was seen almost immediately, in the bitter light of events, +to be due to some fatal misconceptions, or misjudgments, on the part of +those informing the Prime Minister, which the nation in its own +interests and those of its allies, could only peremptorily sweep away. A +new Ministry was created—the Ministry of Munitions, and Mr. Lloyd +George was placed at its head.</p> + +<p>The work that Mr. Lloyd George and his Ministry—now employing vast new +buildings, and a staff running into thousands—have done since June, +1915, is nothing less than colossal. Much no doubt had been done earlier +for which the new Ministry has perhaps unjustly got the credit, and not +all has been smooth sailing since. One hears, of course, criticism and +complaints. What vast and effective stir, for a great end, was ever made +in the world without them?</p> + +<p>Mr. Lloyd George has incurred a certain amount of unpopularity among the +working classes, who formerly adored him. In my belief he has incurred +it for the country's sake, and those sections of the working class who +have smarted under his criticisms most bitterly will forgive him when +the time comes. In his passionate determination to <i>get the thing done</i>, +he has sometimes let his theme—of the national need, and the +insignificance of all things else in comparison with it—carry him into +a vehemence which the workmen have resented, and which foreign or +neutral countries have misunderstood.</p> + +<p>He found in his path, which was also the nation's path, three great +foes—drunkenness, the old envenomed quarrel between employer and +employed, and that deep-rooted industrial conservatism of England, which +shows itself on the one hand in the trade-union customs and restrictions +of the working class, built up, as they hold, through long years, for +the protection of their own standards of life, and, on the other, in the +slowness of many of the smaller English employers (I am astonished, +however, at the notable exceptions everywhere!) to realise new needs and +processes, and to adapt themselves to them. Could any one have made such +an omelet without breaking a great many eggs? Is it wonderful that the +employers have sometimes felt themselves unbearably hustled, sometimes +misunderstood, and at other times annoyed, or worried by what seems to +them the red tape of the new Ministry, and its apparent multiplicity of +forms and inquiries?</p> + +<p>Men accustomed to conduct their own businesses with the usual +independence of regulation have been obliged to submit to regulation. +Workmen accustomed to defend certain methods of work and certain customs +of their trade as matters of life and death have had to see them +jeopardised or swept away. The restoration of these methods and customs +is solemnly promised them after the war; but meanwhile they become the +servants of a public department almost as much under orders as the +soldier himself. They are asked to admit unskilled men to the skilled +processes over which they have long kept so jealous a guard; above all, +they are asked to assent wholesale to the employment of women in trades +where women have never been employed before, where it is obvious that +their introduction taps an immense reservoir of new labour, and equally +obvious that, once let in, they are not going to be easily or wholly +dislodged.</p> + +<p>Of course, there has been friction and difficulty; nor is it all yet at +an end. In the few danger-spots of the country, where heads are hottest, +where thousands of the men of most natural weight and influence are away +fighting, and where among a small minority hatred of the capitalist +deadens national feeling and obscures the national danger, there have +been anxious moments during the winter; there may possibly be some +anxious moments again.</p> + +<p>But, after all, how little it amounts to in comparison with the enormous +achievement! It took us nine months to realise what France—which, +remember, is a Continental nation under conscription—had realised after +the Battle of the Marne, when she set every hand in the country to work +at munitions that could be set to work. With us, whose villages were +unravaged, whose normal life was untouched, realisation was inevitably +slower. Again we were unprepared, and again, as in the case of the Army +itself, we may plead that we have "improvised the impossible." "No +nation," says Mr. Buchan, "can be adequately prepared, unless, like +Germany, it intends war; and Britain, like France paid the penalty of +her honest desire for peace!"</p> + +<p>Moreover, we had our Navy to work for, without which the cause of the +Allies would have gone under, must have gone under, at the first shock +of Germany. What the workmen of England did in the first year of the war +in her docks and shipyards, history will tell some day.</p> + +<p>"What's wrong with the men!" cried a Glasgow employer indignantly to me, +one evening as, quite unknown the one to the other, we were nearing one +of the towns on the Clyde. "What was done on the Clyde, in the first +months of the war, should never be forgotten by this country. Working +from six to nine every day till they dropped with fatigue—and Sundays, +too—drinking just to keep themselves going—too tired to eat or +sleep—that's what it was—I saw it!"</p> + +<p>I, too, have seen that utter fatigue stamped on a certain percentage of +faces through the Midlands, or the districts of the Tyne and the +Clyde—fatigue which is yet indomitable, which never gives way. How +fresh, beside that look, are the faces of the women, for whom workshop +life is new! In its presence one forgets all hostile criticism, all talk +of strikes and drink, of trade-union difficulties, and the endless +worries of the employers.</p> + +<p>The English workman is not tractable material—far from it—and he is +not imaginative; except in the persons of some of his chosen leaders, he +has never seen a ruined French or Flemish village, and he was slow to +realise the bitterness of that silence of the guns on the front, when +ammunition runs short, and lives must pay. But he has sent his hundreds +of thousands to the fighting line; there are a million and a half of him +now working at munitions, and it is he, in a comradeship with the brain +workers, the scientific intelligence of the nation, closer than any he +has yet known, and lately, with the new and astonishing help of +women—it is he, after all, who is "delivering the goods," he who is now +piling the great arsenals and private works with guns and shells, with +bombs, rifles, and machine-guns, he who is working night and day in the +shipyards, he who is teaching the rising army of women their work, and +making new and firm friends, through the national emergency, whether in +the trenches or the workshops, with other classes and types in the +nation, hitherto little known to him, to whom he, too, is perhaps a +revelation.</p> + +<p>There will be a new wind blowing through England when this war is done. +Not only will the scientific intelligence, the general education, and +the industrial plant of the nation have gained enormously from this huge +impetus of war; but men and women, employers and employed, shaken +perforce out of their old grooves, will look at each other surely with +new eyes, in a world which has not been steeped for nothing in effort +and sacrifice, in common griefs and a common passion of will.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>All over England, then, the same quadruple process has now been going on +for months:</p> + +<p>The steady enlargement of existing armament and munition works, national +or private.</p> + +<p>The transformation of a host of other engineering businesses into +munition works.</p> + +<p>The co-ordination of a vast number of small workshops dealing with the +innumerable metal industries of ordinary commerce, so as to make them +feed the larger engineering works, with all those minor parts of the gun +or shell, which such shops had the power to make.</p> + +<p>The putting up of entirely new workshops—National Workshops—directly +controlled by the new Ministry, under the Munitions Acts.</p> + +<p>Let me take you through a few typical scenes.</p> + +<p>It was on February 1st, the day after the Zeppelin raid of January 31st, +that I left a house in the north where I had been seeing one of the +country-house convalescent hospitals, to which Englishwomen and English +wealth are giving themselves everywhere without stint, and made my way +by train, through a dark and murky afternoon, towards a Midland town. +The news of the raid was so far vague. The newspapers of the morning +gave no names or details. I was not aware that I was passing through +towns where women and children in back streets had been cruelly and +wantonly killed the night before, where a brewery had been bombed, and +the windows of a train broken, in order that the German public might be +fed on ridiculous lies about the destruction of Liverpool docks and the +wrecking of "English industry." "English industry lies in ruins," said +the <i>Hamburger Nachrichten</i> complacently. Marvellous paper! Just after +reading its remarks, I was driving down the streets of the great +industrial centre I had come to see—a town which the murderers of the +night before would have been glad indeed to hit. As it was, "English +industry" seemed tolerably active amid its "ruins." The clumsy +falsehoods of the German official reports and the German newspapers +affect me strangely! It is not so much their lack of truth as their lack +of the ironic, the satiric sense, which is a certain protection, after +all, even amid the tragedy of war. We have a tolerable British conceit +of ourselves, no doubt, and in war we make foolish or boasting +statements about the future, because, in spite of all our grumbling, we +are at bottom a nation of optimists, and apt to see things as we wish. +But this sturdy or fatuous lying about the past—the "sinking" of the +<i>Lion</i>, the "capture" of Fort Vaux, or the "bombardment" of Liverpool +docks—is really beyond us. Our sense of ridicule, if nothing else, +forbids—the instinct of an old people with an old and humourous +literature. These leading articles of the <i>Hamburger Nachrichten</i>, the +sermons of German pastors, and those amazing manifestoes of German +professors, flying straight in the face of historic documents—"scraps +of paper"—which are there, none the less, to all time—for us, these +things are only not comic because, to the spiritual eye, they are +written in blood. But to return to the "ruins," and this "English +industry" which during the last six months has taken on so grim an +aspect for Germany.</p> + +<p>My guide, an official of the Ministry, stops the motor, and we turn down +a newly made road, leading towards a mass of spreading building on the +left.</p> + +<p>"A year ago," says my companion—"this was all green fields. Now the +company is employing, instead of 3,500 work-people, about three times +the number, of whom a large proportion are women. Its output has been +quadrupled, and the experiment of introducing women has been a complete +success."</p> + +<p>We pass up a fine oak staircase to the new offices, and I am soon +listening to the report of the works superintendent. A spare, powerful +man with the eyes of one in whom life burns fast, he leans, his hands in +his pockets, against the wall of his office, talking easily and well. He +himself has not had a day's holiday for ten months, never sleeping more +than five and a half hours, with the telephone at his bedhead, and +waking to instant work when the moment for waking comes. His view of his +workmen is critical. It is the view of one consumed with "realisation," +face to face with those who don't "realise." "But the raid will do a +deal of good," he says cheerfully.</p> + +<p>"As to the women!"—he throws up his hands—"they're saving the country. +They don't mind what they do. Hours? They work ten and a half or, with +overtime, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. At least, that's what +they'd like to do. The Government are insisting on one Sunday—or two +Sundays—a month off. I don't say they're not right. But the women +resent it. '<i>We're</i> not tired!' they say. And you look at them!—they're +not tired.</p> + +<p>"If I go down to the shed and say: 'Girls!—there's a bit of work the +Government are pushing for—they say they must have—can you get it +done?' Why, they'll stay and get it done, and then pour out of the +works, laughing and singing. I can tell you of a surgical-dressing +factory near here, where for nearly a year the women never had a +holiday. They simply wouldn't take one. 'And what'll our men at the +front do, if we go holiday-making?'</p> + +<p>"Last night" (the night of the Zeppelin raid) "the warning came to put +out lights. We daren't send them home. They sat in the dark among the +machines, singing, 'Keep the home fires burning,' 'Tipperary,' and the +like. I tell you, it made one a bit choky to hear them. They were +thinking of their sweethearts and husbands I'll be bound!—not of +themselves."</p> + +<p>In another minute or two we were walking through the new workshops. +Often as I have now seen this sight, so new to England, of a great +engineering workshop filled with women, it stirs me at the twentieth +time little less than it did at first. These girls and women of the +Midlands and the north, are a young and comely race. Their slight or +rounded figures among the forest of machines, the fair or golden hair +of so many of them, their grace of movement, bring a strange touch of +beauty into a scene which has already its own spell.</p> + +<p>Muirhead Bone and Joseph Pennell have shown us what can be done in art +with these high workshops, with their intricate distances and the +endless crisscross of their belting, and their ranged machines. But the +coming in of the girls, in their close khaki caps and overalls, showing +the many pretty heads and slender necks, and the rows of light bending +forms, spaced in order beside their furnaces or lathes as far as the eye +can reach, has added a new element—something flower-like, to all this +flash of fire and steel, and to the grimness of war underlying it.</p> + +<p>For the final meaning of it all is neither soft nor feminine! These +girls—at hot haste—are making fuses and cartridge-cases by the hundred +thousand, casting, pressing, drawing, and, in the special +danger-buildings, filling certain parts of the fuse with explosive. +There were about 4,000 of them to 5,000 men, when I saw the shop, and +their number has no doubt increased since; for the latest figures show +that about 15,000 fresh women workers are going into the munition works +every week. The men are steadily training them, and without the teaching +and co-operation of the men—without, that is, the surrender by the men +of some of their most cherished trade customs—the whole movement would +have been impossible.</p> + +<p>As it is, by the sheer body of work the women have brought in, by the +deftness, energy, and enthusiasm they throw into the simpler but quite +indispensable processes, thereby setting the unskilled man free for the +Army, and the skilled man for work which women cannot do, Great Britain +has become possessed of new and vast resources of which she scarcely +dreamed a year ago; and so far as this war is a war of machinery—and we +all know what Germany's arsenals have done to make it so—its whole +aspect is now changing for us. The "eternal feminine" has made one more +startling incursion upon the normal web of things!</p> + +<p>But on the "dilution" of labour, the burning question of the hour, I +shall have something to say in my next letter. Let me record another +visit of the same day to a small-arms factory of importance. Not many +women here so far, though the number is increasing, but look at the +expansion figures since last summer! A large, new factory added, on a +bare field; 40,000 tons of excavation removed, two miles of new shops, +sixty feet wide and four floors high, the output in rifles quadrupled, +and so on.</p> + +<p>We climbed to the top floor of the new buildings and looked far and wide +over the town. Dotted over the tall roofs rose the national flags, +marking "controlled" factories, <i>i.e.</i>, factories still given over a +year ago to one or other of the miscellaneous metal trades of the +Midlands, and now making fuse or shell for England's Armies, and under +the control of the British Government. One had a sudden sharp sense of +the town's corporate life, and of the spirit working in it everywhere +for England's victory. Before we descended, we watched the testing of a +particular gun. I was to hear its note on the actual battle-field a +month later.</p> + +<p>An afternoon train takes me on to another great town, with some very +ancient institutions, which have done very modern service in the war. I +spent my evening in talking with my host, a steel manufacturer +identified with the life of the city, but serving also on one of the +central committees of the Ministry in London. Labour and politics, the +chances of the war, America and American feeling towards us, the task of +the new Minister of Munitions, the temper of English and Scotch workmen, +the flux into which all manufacturing conditions have been thrown by the +war, and how far old landmarks can be restored after it—we talked hard +on these and many other topics, till I must break it +off—unwillingly!—to get some sleep and write some notes.</p> + +<p>Next day took me deep into the very central current of "England's +Effort"—so far as this great phase of it at any rate is concerned. In +this town, even more than in the city I had just left, one felt the +throb of the nation's rising power, concentrated, orderly, determined. +Every single engineering business in a town of engineers was working for +the war. Every manufacturer of any importance was doing his best for the +Government, some in connection with the new Ministry, some with the +Admiralty, some with the War Office. As for the leading firms of the +city, the record of growth, of a mounting energy by day and night, was +nothing short of bewildering. Take these few impressions of a long day, +as they come back to me.</p> + +<p>First, a great steel warehouse, full of raw steel of many sorts and +kinds, bayonet steel, rifle steel, shell steel, stacked in every +available corner and against every possible wall—all sold, every bit of +it, and ready to be shipped—some to the Colonies, some to our Allies, +with peremptory orders coming in as to which the harassed head of the +firm could only shake his head with a despairing "impossible!"</p> + +<p>Then some hours in a famous works, under the guidance of the managing +director, one of those men, shrewd, indefatigable, humane, in whose +company one learns what it is, in spite of all our supposed +deficiencies, that makes the secret of England's industrial tenacity. An +elderly Scotchman, very plainly marked by the labour and strain of the +preceding eighteen months, but still steadily keeping his head and his +temper, showing the signs of an Evangelical tradition in his strong +dislike for Sunday work, his evident care for his work-people—men and +women—and his just and sympathetic tone towards the labour with which +he has to deal—such is my companion.</p> + +<p>He has a wonderful story to tell: "In September, 1914, we were called +upon to manufacture a large extra number of field-guns. We had neither +buildings nor machinery for the order. However, we set to work. We took +down seven dwelling-houses; in three weeks we were whitewashing the +walls of our new workshop and laying in the machinery. My idea was to +make so many guns. The Government asked for four times as many. So we +took down more houses, and built another much larger shop. The work was +finished in ten weeks. Five other large workshops were put up last year, +all built with lightning speed, and everywhere additions have been made +to the machinery in every department wherever it was possible to put +machines."</p> + +<p>As to their thousands of workmen, Mr. C. has no complaints to make.</p> + +<p>"They have been steadily working anything from 60 to 80 hours per week; +the average is 64.29 hours per week, and the average time lost only 3.51 +per cent. A little while ago, a certain union put forward a claim for an +advance in wages. We had to decline it, but as the meeting came to an +end, the trade-union secretary said:</p> + +<p>"'Of course, we are disappointed, and we shall no doubt return to the +matter again. But whether you concede the advance of wages or not, our +members will continue to do their level best, believing that they are +not only working for themselves, but helping the Government and helping +our soldiers to wage this war to a successful conclusion.'"</p> + +<p>And the manager adds his belief that this is the spirit which prevails +"among the work-people generally."</p> + +<p>Before we plunge into the main works, however, my guide takes me to see +a recent venture, organised since the war, in which he clearly takes a +special interest. An old warehouse bought, so to speak, overnight, and +equipped next morning, has been turned into a small workshop for shell +production—employing between three and four hundred girls, with the +number of skilled men necessary to keep the new unskilled labour going. +These girls are working on the eight hours' shift system; and working so +well that a not uncommon wage among them—on piece-work, of +course—runs to somewhere between two and three pounds a week.</p> + +<p>"But there is much more than money in it," says the kind-faced woman +superintendent, as we step into her little office out of the noise, to +talk a little. "The girls are perfectly aware that they are 'doing their +bit,' that they are standing by their men in the trenches."</p> + +<p>This testimony indeed is universal. There is patriotism in this grim +work, and affection, and a new and honourable self-consciousness. Girls +and women look up and smile as a visitor passes. They presume that he or +she is there for some useful purpose connected with the war, and their +expression seems to say: "Yes, we are all in it!—we know very well what +<i>we</i> are doing, and what a difference we are making. Go and tell our +boys ..."</p> + +<p>The interest of this workshop lay, of course, in the fact that it was a +sample of innumerable others, as quickly organised and as efficiently +worked, now spreading over the Midlands and the north. As to the main +works belonging to the same great firm, such things have been often +described; but one sees them to-day with new eyes, as part of a struggle +which is one with the very life of England. Acres and acres of ground +covered by huge workshops new and old, by interlacing railway lines and +moving trolleys. Gone is all the vast miscellaneous engineering work of +peace. The war has swallowed everything.</p> + +<p>I have a vision of a great building, where huge naval guns are being +lowered from the annealing furnace above into the hardening oil-tank +below, or where in the depths of a great pit, with lights and men moving +at the bottom, I see as I stoop over the edge, a jacket being shrunk +upon another similar monster, hanging perpendicularly below me.</p> + +<p>Close by are the forging-shops whence come the howitzers and the huge +naval shells. Watch the giant pincers that lift the red-hot ingots and +drop them into the stamping presses. Man directs; but one might think +the tools themselves intelligent, like those golden automata of old +that Hephæstus made, to run and wait upon the gods of Olympus. Down +drops the punch. There is a burst of flame, as though the molten steel +rebelled, and out comes the shell or the howitzer in the rough, nosed +and hollowed, and ready for the turning.</p> + +<p>The men here are great, powerful fellows, blanched with heat and labour; +amid the flame and smoke of the forges one sees them as typical figures +in the national struggle, linked to those Dreadnoughts in the North Sea, +and to those lines in Flanders and Picardy where Britain holds her enemy +at bay. Everywhere the same intensity of effort, whether in the men or +in those directing them. And what delicate and responsible processes!</p> + +<p>In the next shop, with its rows of shining guns, I stop to look at a +great gun apparently turning itself. No workman is visible for the +moment. The process goes on automatically, the bright steel emerging +under the tool that here, too, seems alive. Close to it is a man +winding steel wire, or rather braid, on a 15-inch gun; beyond again +there are workmen and inspectors testing and gauging another similar +giant. Look down this shining tube and watch the gauging, now with +callipers, now with a rubber device which takes the impression of the +rifling and reveals any defect. The gauging turns upon the +ten-thousandth part of an inch, and any mistake or flaw may mean the +lives of men....</p> + +<p>We turn out into a pale sunshine. The morning work is over, and the men +are trooping into the canteens for dinner—and we look in a moment to +see for ourselves how good a meal it is. At luncheon, afterwards, in the +Directors' Offices, I am able to talk with the leading citizens of the +great town.</p> + +<p>One of them writes some careful notes for me. Their report of labour +conditions is excellent. "No organised strikes and few cessations of +work to report. Overtime is being freely worked. Little or no +drunkenness, and that at a time when the average earnings of many +classes of workmen are two or three times above the normal level. The +methods introduced in the twenty years before the war—conference and +discussion—have practically settled all difficulties between employers +and employed, in these parts at any rate, during this time of England's +trial."</p> + +<p>After luncheon we diverge to pay another all too brief visit to a +well-known firm. The managing director gives me some wonderful figures +of a new shell factory they are just putting up. It was begun in +September, 1915. Since then 2,000 tons of steelwork has been erected, +and 200 out of 1,200 machines required have been received and fixed. +Four thousand to 5,000 hands will be ultimately employed.</p> + +<p>All the actual production off the machines <i>will be done by women</i>—and +this, although the works are intended for a heavy class of shell, +60-pounder high explosive. Women are already showing their +capacity—helped by mechanical devices—to deal with this large type of +shell; and the workshop when in full working order is intended for an +output of a million shell per annum.</p> + +<p>I drive on, overshadowed by these figures. <i>"Per annum!"</i> The little +common words haunt the ear intolerably. Surely before one more year is +over, this horror under which we live will be lifted from Europe! +Britain, a victorious Britain, will be at peace, and women's hands will +have something else to do than making high-explosive shell. But, +meanwhile, there is no other way. The country's call has gone out, clear +and stern, and her daughters are coming in their thousands to meet it, +from loom and house and shop.</p> + +<p>A little later, in a great board-room, I find the Munitions Committee +gathered. Its function, of course, is to help the new Ministry in +organising the war work of the town. In the case of the larger firms, +the committee has been chiefly busy in trying to replace labour +withdrawn by the war. It has been getting skilled men back from the +trenches, and advising the Ministry as to the "badging" of munition +workers. It has itself, through its command of certain scientific +workshops, been manufacturing gauges and testing materials.</p> + +<p>It has turned the electroplate workshops of the town on to making steel +helmets, and in general has been "working in" the smaller engineering +concerns so as to make them feed the larger ones. This process here, as +everywhere, is a very educating one. The shops employed on bicycle and +ordinary motor work have, as a rule, little idea of the extreme accuracy +required in munition work. The idea of working to the thousandth of an +inch seems to them absurd; but they have to learn to work to the +ten-thousandth, and beyond! The war will leave behind it greatly raised +standards of work in England!—that every one agrees.</p> + +<p>And I carry away with me as a last remembrance of this great town and +its activities two recollections—one of a university man doing some +highly skilled work on a particularly fine gauge: "If you ask me what I +have been doing for the last few weeks, I can only tell you that I have +been working like a nigger and have done nothing! Patience!—that's all +there is to say." And another of a "transformed" shop of moderate size, +where an active and able man, after giving up the whole of his ordinary +business, has thrown himself into the provision, within his powers, of +the most pressing war needs, as he came across them.</p> + +<p>In July last year, for instance, munitions work in many quarters was +actually held up for want of gauges. Mr. D. made something like 10,000, +to the great assistance of certain new Government shops. Then the +Government asked for a particular kind of gun. Mr. D. undertook 1,000, +and has already delivered 400. Tools for shell-making are <i>everywhere</i> +wanted in the rush of the huge demand. Mr. D. has been making them +diligently. This is just one example among hundreds of how a great +industry is adapting itself to the fiery needs of war.</p> + +<p>But the dark has come, and I must catch my train. As I speed through a +vast industrial district I find in the evening papers hideous details of +the Zeppelin raid, which give a peculiar passion and poignancy to my +recollections of a crowded day—and peculiar interest, also, to the talk +of an able representative of the Ministry of Munitions, who is +travelling with me, and endeavouring to give me a connected view of the +whole new organisation. As he speaks, my thoughts travel to the English +battle-line, to the trenches and casualty clearing-stations behind it, +to distant Russia; and I think of the Prime Minister's statement in +Parliament—that the supply of munitions, for all its marvellous +increase, is not yet equal to the demand. New shops, new workers, new +efforts—England is producing them now unceasingly, she must go on +producing them. There must be no pause or slackening. There will be +none.</p> + +<p>I am going now to see—after the Midlands—what the English and Scotch +north is doing to swell the stream. And in my next letter there will be +plenty to say about "Dilution" of labour, about wages, and drink, and +some other burning topics of the moment.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2> + + +<p>Dear H.</p> + +<p>It is now three months since Mr. Lloyd George made his startling speech, +as Munitions Minister, in the House of Commons in which, as he wound up +his review of his new department, he declared: "Unless we quicken our +movements, damnation will fall on the sacred cause for which so much +gallant blood has flowed!" The passion of this peroration was like the +fret of a river in flood chafing at some obstacle in its course. +Generally speaking, the obstacle gives way. In this case Mr. George's +obstacle had begun to give way long before December 21st—the date of +the speech. The flood had been pushing at it with increasing force since +the foundation of the Ministry of Munitions in the preceding summer. But +the crumbling process was not quick enough for Great Britain's needs, or +for the energy of her Minister.</p> + +<p>Hence the outspoken speech of December 21st, supported by Mr. Asquith's +grave words of a few weeks later. "We cannot go on," said the Prime +Minister in effect, "depending upon foreign countries for our munitions. +We haven't the ships to spare to bring them home, and the cost is too +great. We <i>must</i> make them ourselves." "Yes—and <i>quicker</i>!" Mr. Lloyd +George had already said, with a sharp emphasis, meant to "hustle" that +portion of the nation which still required hustling; overpainting his +picture, no doubt, but with quite legitimate rhetoric, in order to +produce his effect.</p> + +<p>The result of that fresh "hustling" was the appointment of the Dilution +Commissioners, a second Munitions Act amending the first, and a vast +expansion all over the country of the organisation which had seemed so +vast before. It was not till midwinter, in the very midst of the new and +immense effort I have been describing, that the Minister of Munitions +and those working with him convinced themselves that, without another +resolute push, the barrier across the stream of the nation's will might +still fatally hold it back. More and more men were wanted every week—in +the Army and the workshops—and there were not men to go round. The +second push had to be given—it was given—and it still firmly persists.</p> + +<p>In the spring of 1915, the executives of the leading trade-unions had +promised the Government the relaxation of their trade rules for the +period of the war. Many of the trade-union leaders—Mr. Barnes, Mr. +Henderson, Mr. Hodge, and many others—have worked magnificently in this +sense, and many unions have been thoroughly loyal throughout their ranks +to the pledge given in their name. The iron-moulders, the shipwrights, +the brassworkers may be specially mentioned. But in the trades mostly +concerned with ammunition, there were certain places and areas where the +men themselves, as distinct from their responsible leaders, offered a +dogged, though often disguised resistance. Personally, I think that any +one at all accustomed to try and look at labour questions from the +point of view of labour will understand the men while heartily +sympathising with the Minister, who was determined to get "the goods" +and has succeeded in getting them. Here, in talking of "the men" I +except that small revolutionary element among them which has no country, +and exists in all countries. And I except, too, instances which +certainly are to be found, though rarely, of what one might call a +purely mean and overreaching temper on the part of workmen—taking +advantage of the nation's need, as some of the less responsible +employers have no doubt, also, taken advantage of it. But, in general, +it seems to me, there has been an honest struggle in the minds of +thousands of workmen between what appears to them the necessary +protection of their standards of life—laboriously attained through long +effort—and the call of the war. And that the overwhelming majority of +the workmen concerned with munitions should have patriotically and +triumphantly decided this struggle as they have—under pressure, no +doubt, but under no such pressure as exists in a conscripted, still more +in an invaded, nation—may rank, I think, when all is said, with the +raising of our voluntary Armies as another striking chapter in the book +of <i>England's Effort</i>.</p> + +<p>In this chapter, then, Dilution will always take a leading place.</p> + +<p>What is Dilution?</p> + +<p>It means, of course, that under the sharp analysis of necessity much +engineering work, generally reckoned as "skilled" work, and reserved to +"skilled" workmen, by a number of union regulations, is seen to be +capable of solution into various processes, some of which can be sorted +out from the others as within the capacity of the unskilled or +semiskilled worker. By so dividing them up, and using the superior +labour with economy, only where it is really necessary, it can be made +to go infinitely further; and the inferior or untrained labour can then +be brought into work where nobody supposed it could be used, where, in +fact, it never has been used.</p> + +<p>Obvious enough, perhaps. But the idea had to be applied in haste to +living people—employers, many of whom shrank from reorganising their +workshops and changing all their methods at a moment's notice; and +workmen looking forward with consternation to being outnumbered, by ten +to one, in their own workshops, by women. When I was in the Midlands and +the North, at the end of January and in early February, Dilution was +still an unsettled question in some of the most important districts. One +of the greatest employers in the country writes to me to-day (March 24): +"Since January, we have passed through several critical moments, but, +eventually, the principle was accepted, and Dilution is being introduced +as fast as convenient. For this we have largely to thank an admirable +Commission (Sir Croydon Marks, Mr. Barnes, and Mr. Shackleton) which was +sent down to interview employers and employed. Their tact and acumen +were remarkable. Speaking personally, I cannot help believing that there +is a better understanding between masters and men now than has existed +in my memory."</p> + +<p>A great achievement that!—for both employers and employed—for the +Minister also who appointed the Commission and thus set the huge stone +rolling yet another leap upon its way.</p> + +<p>It will be readily seen how much depends also on the tact of the +individual employer. That employer has constantly done best who has +called his men into council with him, and thrown himself on their +patriotism and good sense. I take the following passage from an +interesting report by a very shrewd observer,<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> printed in one of the +northern newspapers. It describes an employer as saying:</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> <i>Yorkshire Observer</i>, February 1, 1916.</p></div> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I was told by the Ministry that I should have to double my + output. Labour was scarce and I consulted a deputation of + the men about it. I told them the problem and said I should + be glad of suggestions. I told them that we should either + have to get men or women, and I asked them for their + co-operation, as there would be a great deal of teaching to + be done. "Probably," I said, "you would like to find the + men?" They agreed to try. I gave them a week, and at the end + of a week they came to me and said they would rather have + women. I said to them: "Then you must all pull together." + They gave me their word. Right from the beginning they have + done their level best to help, and things have gone on + perfectly. On one occasion, a woman complained that the man + directing her was "working against her." I called the men's + committee together, said the employer. I told them the + facts, and they have dealt with the offender themselves.</p></div> + +<p>The general system now followed in the shell factories is to put so many +skilled men in charge of so many lathes worked by women workers. Each +skilled man, who teaches the women, sets the tools, and keeps the +machines in running order, oversees eight, ten, or more machines. But +sometimes the comradeship is much closer. For instance (I quote again +the witness mentioned above), in a machine tool shop, <i>i.e.</i>, a shop for +the making of tools used in shell production, one of the most highly +skilled parts of the business, you may now see a man, with a woman to +help him, operating two lathes. If the woman falls into any difficulty +the man comes to help her. Both can earn more money than each could earn +separately, and the skilled man who formerly worked the second lathe is +released. In the same shop a woman watched a skilled man doing +slot-drilling—a process in which thousandths of an inch matter—for a +fortnight. Now she runs the machine herself by day, while the man works +it on the night shift. One woman in this shop is "able to do her own +tool-setting." The observer thinks she must be the only woman +tool-setter in the country, and he drops the remark that her capacity +and will may have something to do with the fact that she has a husband +at the front! Near by, as part of the same works, which are not +specialised, but engaged in <i>general</i> engineering, is a bomb shop +staffed by women, which is now sending 3,000 bombs a week to the +trenches. Women are also doing gun-breech work of the most delicate and +responsible kind under the guidance of a skilled overseer. One of the +women at this work was formerly a charwoman. She has never yet broken a +tool. All over the works, indeed, the labour of women and unskilled men +is being utilised in the same scientific way. Thus the area of the works +has been doubled in a few months, without the engagement of a single +additional skilled man from outside. "We have made the men take an +interest in the women," say the employers. "That is the secret of our +success. We care nothing at all about the money, we are all for the +output. If the men think you are going to exploit women and cheapen the +work, the scheme is crabbed right away."</p> + +<p>I myself came across the effect of this suspicion in the minds of the +workmen in the case of a large Yorkshire shell factory, where the +employers at once detected and slew it. This great workshop, formerly +used for railway work, now employs some 1,300 women, with a small staff +of skilled men. The women work forty-five hours a week in eight-hour +shifts—the men fifty-three hours on twelve-hour shifts. There is no +difficulty whatever in obtaining a full supply of women's +labour—indeed, the factory has now a waiting-list of 500. Nor has there +been any difficulty with the men in regard to the women's work. With the +exception of two operations, which are thought too heavy for them, all +the machines are run by women.</p> + +<p>But when the factory began, the employers very soon detected that it was +running below its possible output. There was a curious lack of briskness +in the work—a curious constraint among the new workers. Yet the +employers were certain that the women were keen, and their labour +potentially efficient. They put their heads together, and posted up a +notice in the factory to the effect that whatever might be the increase +in the output of piece-work, the piece-work rate would not be altered. +Instantly the atmosphere began to clear, the pace of the machines began +to mount.</p> + +<p>It was a factory in which the work was new, the introduction of women +was new, and the workers strange to each other, and for the most part +strange to their employers. A small leaven of distrust on the part of +the men workers was enough, and the women were soon influenced. Luckily, +the mischief was as quickly scotched. Men and women began to do their +best, the output of the factory—which had been planned for 14,000 +shells a week—ran up to 20,000, and everything has gone smoothly since.</p> + +<p>Let me now, however, describe another effect of Dilution—the employment +of unskilled <i>men</i> on operations hitherto included in skilled +engineering.</p> + +<p>On the day after the factory I have just described, my journey took me +to another town close by, where my guide—a Director of one of the +largest and best-known steel and engineering works in the +kingdom—showed me a new shell factory filled with 800 to 900 men, all +"medically unfit" for the Army, and almost all drawn from the small +trades and professions of the town, especially from those which had +been hard hit by the war. Among those I talked to I found a keeper of +bathing-machines, a publican's assistant, clerks, shop assistants, three +clergy—these latter going home for their Sunday duty, and giving their +wages to the Red Cross—unemployed architects, and the like.</p> + +<p>I cannot recall any shop which made a greater impression of energy, of a +spirit behind the work, than this shop. In its inspecting-room I found a +graduate from Yale. "I had to join in the fight," he said quietly—"this +was the best way I could think of." And it was noticeable besides for +some remarkable machines, which your country had also sent us.</p> + +<p>In other shell factories a single lathe carries through one process, +interminably repeated, sometimes two, possibly three. But here, with the +exception of the fixing and drilling of the copper band, and a few minor +operations, one lathe <i>made the shell</i>—cut, bored, roughed, turned, +nosed, and threaded it, so that it dropped out, all but the finished +thing—minus, of course, the fuse. The steel pole introduced at the +beginning of the process made nine shells, and the average time per +shell was twenty-three minutes. No wonder that in the great warehouse +adjoining the workshop one saw the shell heaps piling up in their tens +of thousands—only to be rushed off week by week, incessantly, to the +front. The introduction of these machines had been largely the work of +an able Irish manager, who described to me the intense anxiety with +which he had watched their first putting up and testing, lest the vast +expenditure incurred should have been in any degree thrown away. His +cheerful looks and the shell warehouse told the sequel. When I next met +him it was at a northern station in company with his Director. They were +then apparently in search of new machinery! The workshop I had seen was +being given over to women, and the men were moving on to heavier work. +And this is the kind of process which is going on over the length and +breadth of industrial England.</p> + +<p>So far, however, I have described the expansion or adaptation of firms +already existing. But the country is now being covered with another and +new type of workshop—the National Shell factories—which are founded, +financed, and run by the Ministry of Munitions. The English Government +is now by far the greatest engineering employer in the world.</p> + +<p>Let me take an illustration from a Yorkshire town—a town where this +Government engineering is rapidly absorbing everything but the textile +factories. A young and most competent Engineer officer is the Government +head of the factory. The work was begun last July, by the help of +borrowed lathes, in a building which had been used for painting +railway-carriages; its first shell was completed last August. The staff +last June was 1. It is now about 200, and the employees nearly 2,500.</p> + +<p>A month after the first factory was opened, the Government asked for +another—for larger shell. It was begun in August, and was in work in a +few weeks. In September a still larger factory—for still larger +shells—(how these demands illustrate the course of the war!—how they +are themselves illustrated by the history of Verdun!) was seen to be +necessary. It was begun in September, and is now running. Almost all the +machines used in the factory have been made in the town itself, and +about 100 small firms, making shell parts—fuses primers, gaines, +etc.—have been grouped round the main firm, and are every day sending +in their work to the factory to be tested, put together, and delivered.</p> + +<p>No factory made a better impression upon me than this one. The large, +airy building with its cheerful lighting; the girls in their dark-blue +caps and overalls, their long and comely lines reminding one of some +processional effect in a Florentine picture; the high proportion of good +looks, even of delicate beauty, among them; the upper galleries with +their tables piled with glittering brasswork, amid which move the +quick, trained hands of the women—if one could have forgotten for a +moment the meaning of it all, one might have applied to it Carlyle's +description of a great school, as "a temple of industrious peace."</p> + +<p>Some day, perhaps, this "new industry"—as our ancestors talked of a +"new learning"—this swift, astonishing development of industrial +faculty among our people, especially among our women, will bear other +and rich fruit for England under a cleared sky. It is impossible that it +should pass by without effect, profound effect upon our national life. +But at present it has one meaning and one only—<i>war</i>!</p> + +<p>Talk to these girls and women. This woman has lost her son—that one her +husband. This one has a brother home on leave, and is rejoicing in the +return of her husband from the trenches, as a skilled man, indispensable +in the shop; another has friends in the places and among the people +which suffered in the last Zeppelin raid. She speaks of it with tight +lips. Was it she who chalked the inscription found by the Lady +Superintendent on a lathe some nights ago—"<i>Done fourteen to-day. Beat +that if you can, you devils</i>!"</p> + +<p>No!—under this fast-spreading industry, with its suggestion of good +management and high wages, there is the beat of no ordinary impulse. +Some feel it much more than others; but, says the clever and kindly +Superintendent I have already quoted: "The majority are very decidedly +working from the point of view of doing something for their country.... +A great many of the fuse women are earning for the first time.... The +more I see of them all, the better I like them." And then follow some +interesting comments on the relation of the more educated and refined +women among them to the skilled mechanics—two national types that have +perhaps never met in such close working contact before. One's thoughts +begin to follow out some of the possible social results of this national +movement.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><a href="./images/img4h.jpg"> +<img src="./images/img4.jpg" width="399" height="279" alt="A Forest of Shells in a Corner of One of England's Great Shell Filling Factories." title="A Forest of Shells in a Corner of One of England's Great Shell Filling Factories." /> +</a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><span class="caption">A Forest of Shells in a Corner of One of England's Great Shell Filling Factories.</span></p> + +<p><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><a href="./images/img5h.jpg"> +<img src="./images/img5.jpg" width="399" height="274" alt="A Light Railway Bringing Up Ammunition." title="A Light Railway Bringing Up Ammunition." /> +</a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><span class="caption">A Light Railway Bringing Up Ammunition.</span></p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>But now the Midlands and the Yorkshire towns are behind me. The train +hurries on through a sunny afternoon, and I look through some notes sent +me by an expert in the great campaign. Some of them represent its +humours. Here is a perfectly true story, which shows an Englishman with +"a move on," not unworthy of your side of the water.</p> + +<p>A father and son, both men of tremendous energy, were the chiefs of a +very large factory, which had been already extensively added to. The +father lived in a house alongside the works. One day business took him +into the neighbouring county, whilst the son came up to London on +munition work. On the father's return he was astonished to see a +furniture van removing the contents of his house. The son emerged. He +had already signed a contract for a new factory on the site of his +father's house; the materials of the house were sold and the furniture +half gone. After a first start, the father took it in true Yorkshire +fashion—wasting no words, and apparently proud of his son!</p> + +<p>Here we are at last, in the true north—crossing a river, with a +climbing town beyond, its tiled roofs wreathed in smoke, through which +the afternoon lights are playing. I am carried off to a friend's house. +Some directors of the great works I am come to see look in to make a +kindly plan for the morrow, and in the evening, I find myself sitting +next one of the most illustrious of modern inventors, with that touch of +<i>dream</i> in manner and look which so often goes with scientific +discovery. The invention of this gentle and courteous man has affected +every vessel of any size afloat, whether for war or trade, and the whole +electrical development of the world. The fact was to be driven home even +to my feminine ignorance of mechanics when, a fortnight later, the +captain of a Flag-ship and I were hanging over the huge shaft leading +down to the engine-rooms of the Super-dreadnought, and my companion was +explaining to me something of the driving power of the ship. But on +this first meeting, how much I might have asked of the kind, great man +beside me, and was too preoccupied to ask! May the opportunity be +retrieved some day! My head was really full of the overwhelming facts, +whether of labour or of output, relating to this world-famous place, +which were being discussed around me. I do not name the place, because +the banishment of names, whether of persons or places, has been part of +the plan of these articles. But one can no more disguise it by writing +round it than one could disguise Windsor Castle by any description that +was not ridiculous. Many a German officer has walked through these +works, I imagine, before the war, smoking the cigarette of peace with +their Directors, and inwardly ruminating strange thoughts. If any such +comes across these few lines, what I have written will, I think, do +England no harm.</p> + +<p>But here are some of the figures that can be given. The shop area of the +ammunition shops alone has been increased <i>eightfold</i> since the +outbreak of war. The total weight of shell delivered during 1915 +was—in tons—fourteen times as much as that of 1914. The weight of +shell delivered per week, as between December, 1914, and December, 1915, +has risen nearly ten times. The number of work-people, in these shops, +men and women, had risen (a) as compared with the month in which war +broke out, to a figure eight times as great; (b) as compared with +December, 1914, to one between three and four times as great. And over +the whole vast enterprise, shipyards, gun shops, ammunition shops, with +all kinds of naval and other machinery used in war, the numbers of +work-people employed had increased since 1913 more than 200 per cent. +They, with their families, equal the population of a great city—you may +see a new town rising to meet their needs on the farther side of the +river.</p> + +<p>As to Dilution, it is now accepted by the men, who said when it was +proposed to them: "Why didn't you come to us six months ago?"</p> + +<p>And it is working wonders here as elsewhere. For instance, a particular +portion of the breech mechanism of a gun used to take one hour and +twenty minutes to make. On the Dilution plan it is done on a capstan, +and takes six minutes. Where 500 women were employed before the war, +there are now close on 9,000, and there will be thousands more, +requiring one skilled man as tool-setter to about nine or ten women. In +a great gun-carriage shop, "what used to be done in two years is now +done in one month." In another, two tons of brass were used before the +war; a common figure now is twenty-one. A large milling shop, now +entirely worked by men, is to be given up immediately to women. And so +on.</p> + +<p>Dilution, it seems to me, is breaking down a number of labour +conventions which no longer answer to the real conditions of the +engineering trades. The pressure of the war is doing a real service to +both employers and employed by the simplification and overhauling it is +everywhere bringing about.</p> + +<p>As to the problem of what is to be done with the women after the war, +one may safely leave it to the future. It is probably bound up with that +other problem of the great new workshops springing up everywhere, and +the huge new plants laid down. One thinks of the rapid recovery of +French trade after the war of 1870, and of the far more rapid +rate—after forty years of machine and transport development, at which +the industry of the Allied countries may possibly recover the ravages of +the present war, when once peace is signed. In that recovery, how great +a part may yet be played by these war workshops!—transformed to the +uses of peace; by their crowds of work-people, and by the hitherto +unused intelligence they are everywhere evoking and training among both +men and women.</p> + +<p>As for the following day, my impressions, looking back, seem to be all a +variant on a well-known Greek chorus, which hymns the amazing—the +"terrible"—cleverness of Man! Seafaring, tillage, house-building, +horse-taming, so muses Sophocles, two thousand three hundred years ago; +how did man ever find them out? "Wonders are many, but the most +wonderful thing is man! <i>Only against death has he no resource</i>."</p> + +<p><i>Intelligence</i>—and <i>death</i>! They are written everywhere in these +endless workshops, devoted to the fiercest purposes of war. First of +all, we visit the "danger buildings" in the fuse factory, where mostly +women are employed. About 500 women are at work here, on different +processes connected with the delicate mechanism and filling of the fuse +and gaine, some of which are dangerous. Detonator work, for instance. +The Lady Superintendent selects for it specially steady and careful +women or girls, who are paid at time-and-a-quarter rate. Only about +eight girls are allowed in each room. The girls here all wear—for +protection—green muslin veils and gloves. It gives them a curious, +ghastly look, that fits the occupation. For they are making small +pellets for the charging of shells, out of a high-explosive powder. Each +girl uses a small copper ladle to take the powder out of a box before +her, and puts it into a press which stamps it into a tiny block, looking +like ivory. She holds her hand over a little tray of water lest any of +the powder should escape. What the explosive and death-dealing power of +it is, it does not do to think about.</p> + +<p>In another room a fresh group of girls are handling a black powder for +another part of the detonator, and because of the irritant nature of the +powder, are wearing white bandages round the nose and mouth. There is +great competition for these rooms, the Superintendent says! The girls in +them work on two shifts of ten and one-half hours each, and would resent +a change to a shorter shift. They have one hour for dinner, half an hour +for tea, a cup of tea in the middle of the morning—and the whole of +Saturdays free. To the eye of the ordinary visitor they show few signs +of fatigue.</p> + +<p>After the fuse factory we pass through the high-explosive factory, where +250 girls are at work in a number of isolated wooden sheds filling +18-pounder shell with high explosive. The brass cartridge-case is being +filled with cordite, bundles of what look like thin brown sticks, and +the shell itself, including its central gaine or tube, with the various +deadly explosives we have seen prepared in the "danger buildings." The +shell is fitted into the cartridge-case, the primer and the fuse screwed +on. It is now ready to be fired.</p> + +<p>I stand and look at boxes of shells, packed, and about to go straight to +the front. A train is waiting close by to take them the first stage on +their journey. I little thought then that I should see these boxes, or +their fellows, next, on the endless ranks of ammunition lorries behind +the fighting lines in France, and that within a fortnight I should +myself stand by and see one of those shells fired from a British gun, +little more than a mile from Neuve Chapelle.</p> + +<p>But here are the women and girls trooping out to dinner. A sweet-faced +Superintendent comes to talk to me. "They are not as strong as the +men," she says, pointing to the long lines of girls, "but what they lack +in strength they make up in patriotic spirit." I speak to two educated +women, who turn out to be High School mistresses from a town that has +been several times visited by Zeppelins. "We just felt we must come and +help to kill Germans," they say quietly. "All we mind is getting up at +five-thirty every morning. Oh, no! it is not too tiring."</p> + +<p>Afterwards?—I remember one long procession of stately shops, with their +high windows, their floors crowded with machines, their roofs lined with +cranes, the flame of the forges, and the smoke of the fizzling steel +lighting up the dark groups of men, the huge howitzer shells, red-hot, +swinging in mid-air, and the same shells, tamed and gleaming, on the +great lathes that rough and bore and finish them. Here are shell for the +<i>Queen Elizabeth</i> guns!—the biggest shell made. This shop had been put +up by good luck just as the war began. Its output of steel has +increased from 80 tons a week to 1,040.</p> + +<p>Then another huge fuse shop, quite new, where 1,400 girls in one shift +are at work—said to be the largest fuse shop known. And on the +following morning, an endless spectacle of war work—gun-carriages, +naval turrets, torpedo tubes, armed railway carriages, small Hotchkiss +guns for merchant ships, tool-making shops, gauge shops—and so on for +ever. In the tool-making shops the output has risen from 44,000 to +3,000,000 a year!</p> + +<p>And meanwhile I have not seen anything, and shall not have time to see +anything of the famous shipyards of the firm. But with regard to them, +all that it is necessary to remember is that before the war they were +capable of berthing twenty ships at once, from the largest battleship +downward; and we have Mr. Balfour's word for it as to what has happened, +since the war, in the naval shipyards of this country. "We have added <i>a +million tons to the Navy—and we have doubled its personnel</i>."</p> + +<p>And now let me record two final sayings.</p> + +<p>One from a manager of a department:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>We have a good many Socialists here, and they constantly + give trouble. But the great majority of the men have done + wonderfully! Some men have put in one hundred hours a week + since the war began. Some have not lost a minute since it + began. The old hands have worked <i>splendidly</i>.</p></div> + +<p>And another from one of the Directors:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I know of no drunkenness among our women. I don't remember + ever having seen a drunken woman round here.</p></div> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>I have almost said my say on munitions, though I could continue the +story much longer. But the wonder of it consists really in its vastness, +in the steady development of a movement which will not end or slacken +till the Allies are victorious. Except for the endless picturesqueness +of the women's share in it, and the mechanical invention and adaptation +going on everywhere, with which only a technical expert could deal, it +is of course monotonous, and I might weary you. I will only—before +asking you to cross the Channel with me to France—put down a few notes +and impressions on the Clyde district, where, as our newspapers will +have told you, there is at the present moment (March 29th) some serious +labour trouble, with which the Government is dealing. Until further +light is thrown upon its causes, comment is better postponed. But I have +spoken quite frankly in these letters of "danger spots," where a type of +international Socialism is to be found—affecting a small number of men, +over whom the ideas of "country" and "national honour" seem to have no +hold. Every country possesses such men and must guard itself against +them. A nucleus of them exists in this populous and important district. +How far their influence is helped among those who care nothing for their +ideas, by any real or supposed grievances against the employers, by +misunderstandings and misconceptions, by the sheer nervous fatigue and +irritation of the men's long effort, or by those natural fears for the +future of their Unions, to which I have once or twice referred, only +one long familiar with the district could say, I can only point out here +one or two interesting facts. In the first place, in this crowded +countryside, where a small minority of dangerous extremists appear to +have no care for their comrades in the trenches, the recruiting for the +new Armies—so I learn from one of the leading authorities—has +been—"taken on any basis whatever—substantially higher than in any +other district. The men came up magnificently." That means that among +those left behind, whatever disturbing and disintegrating forces exist +in a great Labour centre have freer play than would normally be the +case. A certain amount of patriotic cream has been skimmed, and in some +places the milk that remains must be thin. In the second place—(you +will remember the employer I quoted to you in a former letter)—the work +done here by thousands and thousands of workmen since the beginning of +the war, especially in the great shipyards, and done with the heartiest +and most self-sacrificing good-will, has been simply invaluable to the +nation, and England remembers it well. And finally, the invasion of +women has perhaps been more startling to the workmen here than anywhere +else. Not a single woman was employed in the works or factories of the +district before the war, except in textiles. There will soon be 15,000 +in the munition workshops, and that will not be the end.</p> + +<p>But Great Britain cannot afford—even in a single factory—to allow any +trifling at this moment with the provision of guns, and the Government +must—and will—act decisively.</p> + +<p>As to the drinking in this district of which so much has been said, and +which is still far in excess of what it ought to be, I found many people +hard put to it to explain why the restriction of hours which has worked +so conspicuously well in other districts has had comparatively little +effect here. Is it defects of administration, or a certain "cussedness" +in the Scotch character, which resents any tightening of law? One large +employer with whom I discuss it, believes it would suit the Scotch +better to abolish all restrictions, and simply punish drunkenness much +more severely. And above all—"open all possible means of amusement on +Sundays, especially the cinemas!"—a new and strange doctrine, even now, +in the ears of a country that holds the bones of John Knox. There seems +indeed to be a terribly close connection between the dulness of the +Scotch Sunday and the obstinacy of Scotch drinking; and when one thinks +of the heavy toil of the week, of the confinement of the workshops, and +the strain of the work, one feels at any rate that here is a problem +which is to be <i>solved</i>, not preached at; and will be solved, some day, +by nimbler and humaner wits than ours.</p> + +<p>In any case, the figures, gathered a month ago from those directly +concerned, as to the general extension of the national effort here, +could hardly be more striking. In normal times, the district, which is +given up to Admiralty work, makes ships and guns, but has never made +shells. The huge shell factories springing up all over it are a wholly +new creation. As usual, they are filled with women, working under +skilled male direction, and everywhere one found among managers and +superintendents the same enthusiasm for the women's work. "It's their +honour they work on," said one forewoman. "That's why they stand it so +well." The average working week is fifty-four hours, but overtime may +seriously lengthen the tale. Wages are high; canteens and rest-rooms are +being everywhere provided; and the housing question is being tackled. +The rapidity of the women's piece-work is astonishing, and the mingling +of classes—girls of education and refinement working quite happily with +those of a much humbler type—runs without friction under the influence +of a common spirit. This common spirit was well expressed by a girl who +before she came to the factory was working a knitting-machine. "I like +this better—<i>because there's a purpose in it</i>." A sweet-faced woman who +was turning copper bands for shell, said to me: "I never worked a +machine before the war. I have done 912 in ten hours, but that tired me +very much. I can do 500 or 600 quite easily."</p> + +<p>On the same premises, after leaving the shell shops, we passed rapidly +through gun shops, where I saw again processes which had become almost +familiar. "The production of howitzers," said my guide, "is the question +of the day. We are making them with great rapidity—but the trouble is +to get enough machines." The next shop, devoted to 18-pounder +field-guns, was "green fields fifteen months ago," and the one adjoining +it, a fine shed about 400 feet square, for howitzer work, was started in +August last, on a site "which was a bog with a burn running through it." +Soon "every foot of space will be filled with machines, and there will +be 1,200 people at work here, including 400 women. In the next shop we +are turning out about 4,000 shrapnel and 4,000 high-explosive shells per +week. When we started women on what we thought this heavy shell, we +provided men to help lift the shell in and out of the machines. The +women thrust the men aside in five minutes."</p> + +<p>Later on, as I was passing through a series of new workshops occupied +with all kinds of army work and employing large numbers of women, I +stopped to speak to a Belgian woman. "Have you ever done any machine +work before?" "No, Madame, never—<i>Mais, c'est la guerre. Il faut tuer +les Allemands</i>!" It was a quiet, passionless voice. But one thought, +with a shiver, of those names of eternal infamy—of Termonde, Aerschot, +Dinant, Louvain.</p> + +<p>It was with this woman's words in my ears that I set out on my last +visit—to which they were the fitting prelude. The afternoon was +darkening fast. The motor sped down a river valley, sodden with rain and +melting snow, and after some miles we turn into a half-made road, +leading to some new buildings, and a desolate space beyond. A sentry +challenges us, and we produce our permit. Then we dismount, and I look +out upon a wide stretch of what three months ago was swamp, or wet +plough land. Now its 250 acres are enclosed with barbed wire, and +patrolled by sentries night and day. A number of small buildings, +workshops, stores, etc., are rising all over it. I am looking at what is +to be the great "filling" factory of the district, where 9,000 women, in +addition to male workmen, will soon be employed in charging the shell +coming from the new shell factories we have left behind in the darkness.</p> + +<p>Strange and tragic scene! Strange uprising of women!</p> + +<p>We regain the motor and speed onwards, my secretary and I, through +unknown roads far away from the city and its factories towards the +country house where we are to spend the night. In my memory there surge +a thousand recollections of all that I have seen in the preceding +fortnight. An England roused at last—rushing to factory, and lathe, to +shipyard and forge, determined to meet and dominate her terrible enemy +in the workshop, as she has long since met and dominated him at sea, +and will in time dominate him on land—that is how my country looks to +me to-night.</p> + +<p>... The stars are coming out. Far away, over what seems like water with +lights upon it, there are dim snowy mountains—majestic—rising into the +sky. The noise and clamour of the factories are all quiet in the night. +Two thoughts remain with me—Britain's ships in the North Sea—Britain's +soldiers in the trenches. And encircling and sustaining both the justice +of a great cause—as these white Highland hills look down upon and +encircle this valley.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2> + + +<p>Dear H.</p> + +<p>A million and a half of men—over a quarter of a million of +women—working in some 4,000 State-controlled workshops for the supply +of munitions of war, not only to our own troops, but to those of our +allies—the whole, in the main, a creation of six months' effort—this +is the astonishing spectacle of some of the details of which I have +tried, as an eye-witness, to give you in my previous letters a rapid and +imperfect sketch.</p> + +<p>But what of the men, the Armies, for which these munitions are being +made and hurried to the fighting-lines? It was at Aldershot, a few days +ago, that I listened to some details of the first rush of the new +Armies, given me by a member of the Headquarters Staff who had been +through it all. Aldershot in peace time held about 27,000 troops. Since +the outbreak of war some million and a quarter of men have passed +through the great camp, coming in ceaselessly for training and +equipment, and going out again to the theatres of war.</p> + +<p>In the first days and weeks of the war—during and after the marvellous +precision and rapidity with which the Expeditionary Force was despatched +to France—men poured in from all parts, from all businesses and +occupations; rich and poor, north and south country men, English, +Scotch, Irish, and Welsh; men from the Dominions, who had flung +themselves into the first home-coming steamer; men from India, and men +from the uttermost parts of Africa and Asia who had begged or worked +their way home. They were magnificent material. They came with set +faces, asking only for training, training, training!—and "what the +peace soldier learns in six months," said my companion, "they learnt in +six weeks. We had neither uniforms nor rifles, neither guns nor horses +for them. We did not know how to feed them or to house them. In front of +the headquarters at Aldershot, that Mecca of the soldier, where no one +would dare to pass in ordinary times whose turnout is not immaculate, +the most extraordinary figures, in bowler hats and bits of uniform, +passed unrebuked. We had to raid the neighbouring towns for food, to +send frantic embassies to London for bread and meat; to turn out any +sort of shed to house them. Luckily it was summer weather; otherwise I +don't know what we should have done for blankets. But nobody 'groused.' +Everybody worked, and there were many who felt it 'the time of their +lives.'"</p> + +<p>And yet England "engineered the war!" England's hypocrisy and greed +demanded the crushing of Germany—hence the lying "excuse" of +Belgium—that apparently is what all good Germans—except those who know +better—believe; what every German child is being taught. As I listen to +my companion's story, I am reminded, however, of a puzzled remark which +reached me lately, written just before Christmas last, by a German nurse +in a Berlin hospital, who has English relations, friends of my own. "We +begin to wonder whether it really was England who caused the war—since +you seem to be so dreadfully unprepared!" So writes this sensible girl +to one of her mother's kindred in England; in a letter which escaped the +German censor. She might indeed wonder! To have deliberately planned a +Continental war with Germany, and Germany's 8,000,000 of soldiers, +without men, guns, or ammunition beyond the requirements of an +Expeditionary Force of 160,000 men, might have well become the State of +Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. But the England of Raleigh, Chatham, Pitt, and +Wellington has not generally been reckoned a nation of pure fools.</p> + +<p>The military camps of Great Britain tell the tale of our incredible +venture. "Great areas of land had to be cleared, levelled, and drained; +barracks had to be built; one camp alone used 42,000 railway truck-loads +of building material." There was no time to build new railways, and the +existing roads were rapidly worn out. They were as steadily repaired; +and on every side new camps sprang up around the parent camps of the +country.</p> + +<p>The Surrey commons and woods, the Wiltshire downs, the Midland and +Yorkshire heaths, the Buckinghamshire hills have been everywhere +invaded—their old rural sanctities are gone. I walked in bewilderment +the other day up and down the slopes of a Surrey hill which when I knew +it last was one kingdom of purple heather, beloved of the honey-bees, +and scarcely ever trodden by man or woman. Barracks now form long +streets upon its crest and sides; practise-trenches, bombing-schools, +the stuffed and dangling sacks for bayonet training, musketry ranges, +and the rest, are everywhere. Tennyson, whose wandering ground it once +was, would know it no more. And this camp is only one of a series which +spread far and wide round the Aldershot headquarters.</p> + +<p>Near my own home, a park and a wooded hillside, that two years ago were +carefully guarded even from a neighbour's foot, are now occupied by a +large town of military huts, which can be seen for miles round. And +fifteen miles away, in a historic "chase" where Catharine of Aragon +lived while her trial was proceeding in a neighbouring town, a duke, +bearing one of the great names of England, has himself built a camp, +housing 1,200 men, for the recruits of his county regiments alone, and +has equipped it with every necessary, whether for the soldier's life or +training. But everywhere—East, North, South, and West—the English and +Scotch roads are thronged with soldiers and horses, with trains of +artillery wagons and Army Service lorries, with men marching back from +night attacks or going out to scout and skirmish on the neighbouring +commons and through the most sacred game—preserves. There are no more +trespass laws in England—for the soldier.</p> + +<p>You point to our recruiting difficulties in Parliament. True enough. We +have our recruiting difficulties still. Lord Derby has not apparently +solved the riddle; for riddle it is, in a country of voluntary service, +where none of the preparations necessary to fit conscription into +ordinary life, with its obligations, have ever been made. The Government +and the House of Commons are just now wrestling with it afresh, and +public opinion seems to be hardening towards certain final measures that +would have been impossible earlier in the war.<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> The call is still for +men—more—and more—men! And given the conditions of this war, it is +small wonder that England is restless till they are found. But amid the +cross currents of criticism, I catch the voice of Mr. Walter Long, the +most practical, the least boastful of men, in the House of Commons, a +few nights ago: Say what you like, blame, criticise, as you like, but +"what this country has done since August, 1914, is an almost incredible +story." And so it is.</p> + +<p>And now let us follow some of these khaki-clad millions across the +seas, through the reinforcement camps, and the great supply bases, +towards that fierce reality of war to which everything tends.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Since these lines were written the crisis in the Government, the +Irish rising, and the withdrawal of the military service bill have +happened in quick succession. The country is still waiting (April 28th) +for the last inevitable step.</p></div> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>It was about the middle of February, after my return from the munition +factories, that I received a programme from the War Office of a journey +in France, which I was to be allowed to make. I remember being at first +much dissatisfied with it. It included the names of three or four places +well known to be the centres of English supply organisation in France. +But it did not include any place in or near the actual fighting zone. To +me, in my ignorance, the places named mainly represented the great array +of finely equipped hospitals to be found everywhere in France in the +rear of our Armies; and I was inclined to say that I had no special +knowledge of hospital work, and that one could see hospitals in England, +with more leisure to feel and talk with the sufferers in them than a +ten days' tour could give. A friendly Cabinet Minister smiled when I +presented this view. "You had better accept. You will find it very +different from what you suppose. The 'back' of the Army includes +everything." He was more than right!</p> + +<p>The conditions of travelling at the present moment, within the region +covered by the English military organisation in France, for a woman +possessing a special War Office pass, in addition to her ordinary +passport, and understood to be on business which has the good-will of +the Government, though in no sense commissioned by it, are made easy by +the courtesy and kindness of everybody concerned. From the moment of +landing on the French side, my daughter and I passed into the charge of +the military authorities. An officer accompanied us; a War Office motor +took us from place to place; and everything that could be shown us in +the short ten days of our tour was freely open to us. The trouble, +indeed, that was taken to enable me to give some of the vividness of +personal seeing to these letters is but one of many proofs, I venture to +think, of that warm natural wish in British minds that America should +understand why we are fighting this war, and how we are fighting it. As +to myself, I have written in complete freedom, affected only by the +absolutely necessary restrictions of the military censorship; and I only +hope I may be able to show something, however inadequately, of the work +of men who have done a magnificent piece of organisation, far too little +realised even in their own country.</p> + +<p>For in truth we in England know very little about our bases abroad; +about what it means to supply the ever-growing needs of the English +Armies in France. The military world takes what has been done for +granted; the general English public supposes that the Tommies, when +their days in the home camps are done, get "somehow" conveyed to the +front, being "somehow" equipped, fed, clothed, nursed, and mended, and +sent on their way across France in interminable lines of trains. As to +the details of the process, it rarely troubles its head. The fact is, +however, that the work of the great supply bases abroad, of the various +Corps and Services connected with them—Army Ordnance, Army Service, +Army Medical, railway and motor transport—is a desperately interesting +study; and during the past eighteen months, under the +"I.G.C."—Inspector-General of Communications—has developed some of the +best brains in the Army.</p> + +<p>Two days spent under the guidance of the Base Commandant or an officer +of his staff among the docks and warehouses of a great French port, +among the huts of its reinforcement camp, which contains more men than +Aldershot before August, 1914, or in its workshops of the Army Ordnance +Corps, gave me my first experience of the organising power that has gone +to these departments of the war. The General in command of the base was +there in the first weeks of the struggle and during the great retreat. +He retired with his staff to Nantes—leaving only a broken motor-car +behind him!—just about the time that the French Government betook +itself to Bordeaux. But in September he was back again, and the +building-up process began, which has since known neither stop nor stay. +That the commercial needs of a great French port should have been able +to accommodate themselves as they have to the military needs of the +British Army speaks loudly for the tact and good feeling on both sides. +The task has not been at all times an easy one; and I could not help +thinking as we walked together through the crowded scene, that the tone +and temper of the able man beside me—his admiration, simply expressed, +yet evidently profound, for the French spirit in the war, and for the +heroic unity of the country through all ranks and classes, accounted for +a great deal. In the presence of a good-will so strong, difficulties +disappear.</p> + +<p>Look now at this immense hangar or storehouse—the largest in the +world—through which we are walking. It was completed three years before +the war, partly, it is said, by German money, to house the growing +cotton-trade of the port. It now houses a large proportion of the food +of the British Army. The hangar is half a mile long, and is bounded on +one side by the docks where the ships are discharging, and on the other +by the railway lines where the trains are loading up for the front.</p> + +<p>You walk through avenues of bacon, through streets of biscuits and jam. +On the quays just outside, ships from England, Canada, Norway, +Argentina, Australia are pouring out their stores. Stand and watch the +endless cranes at work, and think what English sea power means! And on +the other side watch the packing of the trucks that are going to the +front, the order and perfection with which the requisitions, large and +small, of every regiment are supplied.</p> + +<p>One thinks of the Crimean scandals. The ghost of Florence Nightingale +seems to move beside us, watching contentedly what has come of all that +long-reforming labour, dealing with the health, the sanitation, the food +and equipment of the soldier, in which she played her part; and one +might fancy the great shade pausing specially beside the wired-in space +labelled "Medical Comforts," and generally known as "The Cage." Medical +<i>necessaries</i> are housed elsewhere; but here are the dainties, the +special foods, the easing appliances of all kinds which are to make life +bearable to many a sorely-wounded man.</p> + +<p>As to the huge sheds of the Army Ordnance, which supply everything that +the soldier doesn't eat, all metal stores—nails, horseshoes, oil-cans, +barbed wire—by the ton; trenching-tools, wheelbarrows, pickaxes, +razors, sand-bags, knives, screws, shovels, picketing-pegs, and the +like—they are of course endless; and the men who work in them are +housed in one of the largest sheds, in tiers of bunks from floor to +ceiling.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the most interesting part of the Depot to the outsider are the +repairing sheds and workshops established in a suburb of the town to +which we drive on. For this is work that has never been done before in +connection with an army in the field. Day by day trains full of articles +for repair come down from the front. I happened to see a train of the +kind, later on, leaving a station close to the fighting line. Guns, +rifles, range-finders, gun-carriages, harness, all torn and useless +uniforms, tents, boots by the thousand, come to this base to be +repaired, or to be sent home for transformation into "shoddy" to the +Yorkshire towns. Nothing seems too large or too small for Colonel D.'s +department. Field-glasses, periscopes, water-bottles, they arrive from +the trenches with the same certainty as a wounded howitzer or +machine-gun, and are returned as promptly.</p> + +<p>In one shed, my guide called my attention to shelves on which were a +number of small objects in china and metal. "They were found in kits +left on the field," he says gently. "Wherever we can identify the owner, +such things are carefully returned to his people. These could not be +identified."</p> + +<p>I took up a little china dog, a bit of coarse French pottery, which +some dead father had bought, at Poperinghe, perhaps, or Bailleul, for +the children at home. Near by were "souvenirs"—bits of shell, of German +equipment; then some leaves of a prayer-book, a neck-medallion of a +saint—and so on—every fragment steeped in the poignancy of sudden +death—death in youth, at the height of life.</p> + +<p>The boot and uniform sheds, where 500 French women and girls, under +soldier-foremen, are busy, the harness-mending room, and the engineering +workshops might reassure those pessimists among us—especially of my +own sex—who think that the male is naturally and incorrigibly a +wasteful animal. Colonel D. shows me the chart which is the record of +his work, and its steadily mounting efficiency. He began work with 140 +men, he is now employing more than a thousand, and his repairing sheds +are saving thousands of pounds a week to the British Government. He +makes all his own power, and has four or five powerful dynamos at work.</p> + +<p>We come out into a swirl of snow, and henceforward sightseeing is +difficult. Yet we do our best to defy the weather. We tramp through the +deepening snow of the great camp, which lines the slopes of the hills +above the river and the town, visiting its huts and recreation-rooms, +its Cinema theatre, and its stores, and taking tea with the Colonel of +an Infantry Base Depot, who is to be our escort on the morrow.</p> + +<p>But on the last morning before we start we mount to the plateau above +the reinforcement camp, where the snow lies deep and the wind blows one +of the sharpest blasts of the winter. Here are bodies of men going +through some of the last refinements of drill before they start for the +front; here are trenches of all kinds and patterns, revetted in ways new +and old, and planned according to the latest experience brought from the +fighting line. The instructors here, as at other training-camps in +France, are all men returned from the front. The men to whom they have +to give the final touch of training—men so near themselves to the +real thing—are impatient of any other sort.</p> + +<p>As we stand beside the trenches under the bright sun and piercing wind, +looking at the dark lines of British soldiers on the snow, and listening +to the explanations of a most keen and courteous officer, one's eyes +wander, on the one side, over the great town and port, over the French +coast and the distant sea, and on the other side, inland, over the +beautiful French landscape with its farms and country houses. Everything +one sees is steeped in history, a mingled history, in which England and +France up to five centuries ago bore an almost equal share. Now again +they are mingled here; all the old enmities buried in a comradeship that +goes deeper far than they, a comradeship of the spirit that will surely +mould the life of both nations for years to come.</p> + +<p>How we grudged the snow and the low-sweeping clouds and the closed +motor, on our drive of the next day! I remember little more of it than +occasional glimpses of the tall cliffs that stand sentinel along the +river, a hasty look at a fine church above a steeply built town, an army +lorry stuck deep in the snow-drifts, and finally the quays and ships of +another base port. Our escort, Colonel S., pilots us to a pleasant hotel +full of officers, mostly English, belonging to the Lines of +Communications, with a few poor wives and mothers among them who have +come over to nurse their wounded in one or other of the innumerable +hospitals of the base.</p> + +<p>Before dinner the general commanding the base had found me out and I had +told my story.</p> + +<p>"Oh, we'll put some notes together for you. We were up most of last +night. I dare say we shall be up most of this. But a little more or less +doesn't matter." I protested most sincerely. But it is always the +busiest men who shoulder the extra burdens; and the notes duly reached +me. From them, from the talk of others spending their last ounce of +brain and energy in the service of the base, and from the evidence of my +own eyes, let me try and draw some general picture of what that service +is: Suppose a British officer speaking:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Remember first that every man, every horse, every round of + ammunition, every article of clothing and equipment, all the + guns and vehicles, and nearly all the food have to be + brought across the English Channel to maintain and reinforce + the ever-growing British Army, which holds now so important + a share of the fighting line in France. The ports of entry + are already overtaxed by the civil and military needs of + France herself. Imagine how difficult it is—and how the + difficulty grows daily with the steady increase of the + British Army—to receive, disembark, accommodate, and + forward the multitude of men and the masses of material!</p> + +<p> You see the khaki in the French streets, the mingling + everywhere of French and English; but the ordinary visitor + can form no idea of the magnitude of this friendly invasion. + There is no formal delimitation of areas or spaces, in + docks, or town, or railways. But gradually the observer will + realise that the town is honeycombed with the temporary + locations of the British Army, which everywhere speckle the + map hanging in the office of the Garrison Quartermaster. And + let him further visit the place where the long lines of + reinforcement, training and hospital camps are installed on + open ground, and old England's mighty effort will scarcely + hide itself from the least intelligent. <i>Work, efficiency, + economy</i> must be the watchwords of a base. Its functions may + not be magnificent—<i>but they are war</i>—and war is + impossible unless they are rightly carried out.</p> + +<p> When we came back from the Loire in September, after our + temporary retreat, the British <i>personnel</i> at this place + grew from 1,100 to 11,000 in a week. Now there are thousands + of troops always passing through, thousands of men in + hospital, thousands at work in the docks and storehouses. + And let any one who cares for horses go and look at the + Remount Depot and the Veterinary Hospitals. The whole + treatment of horses in this war has been revolutionised. + Look at the cheap, ingenious stables, the comfort produced + by the simplest means, the kind quiet handling; look at the + Convalescent Horse Depots, the operating theatres, and the + pharmacy stores in the Veterinary Hospitals.</p> + +<p> As to the troops themselves, every Regiment has its own + lines, for its own reinforcements. Good food, clean cooking, + civilised dining-rooms, excellent sanitation—the base + provides them all. It provides, too, whatever else Tommy + Atkins wants, and <i>close at hand</i>; wet and dry canteens, + libraries, recreation huts, tea and coffee huts, palatial + cinemas, concerts. And what are the results? Excellent + behaviour; excellent relations between the British soldier + and the French inhabitants; absence of all serious crime.</p> + +<p> Then look at the docks. You will see there armies of + labourers, and long lines of ships discharging horses, + timber, rations, fodder, coal, coke, petrol. Or at the + stores and depots. It would take you days to get any idea of + the huge quantities of stores, or of the new and ingenious + means of space economy and quick distribution. As to the + Works Department—camps and depots are put up "while you + wait" by the R.E. officers and unskilled military labour. + Add to all this the armies of clerks, despatch riders, and + motor-cyclists—and the immense hospital <i>personnel</i>—then, + if you make any intelligible picture of it in your mind, you + will have some idea of what bases like these mean.</p></div> + +<p>Pondering these notes, it seemed to me that the only way to get some +kind of "intelligible picture" in two short days was to examine +something in detail, and the rest in general! Accordingly, we spent a +long Sunday morning in the Motor Transport Depot, which is the creation +of Colonel B., and perhaps as good an example as one could find anywhere +in France of the organising talent of the able British officer.</p> + +<p>The depot opened in a theatre on the 13th of August, 1914. "It began," +says Colonel B., "with a few balls of string and a bag of nails!" Its +staff then consisted of 6 officers and 91 N.C.O.'s and men—its +permanent staff at present is about 500. All the drivers of some 20,000 +motor vehicles—nearly 40,000 men—are tested here and, if necessary, +instructed before going up to the fighting lines; and the depot deals +with 350 different types of vehicles. In round figures 100,000 separate +parts are now dealt with, stored, and arranged in the depot. The system +of records and accounts is extraordinarily perfect, and so ingenious +that it seems to work itself.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Colonel B.'s relations with his army of chauffeurs, of whom +about 1,000 are always housed on the premises, are exceedingly human and +friendly in spite of the strictness of the army discipline. Most of his +men who are not married, the Colonel tells me, have found a "friend," in +the town, one or other of its trimly dressed girls, with whom the +English mechanic "walks out," on Sundays and holidays. There are many +engagements, and, as I gather, no misconduct. Marriage is generally +postponed till after the war, owing to the legal and other difficulties +involved. But marriage there will be when peace comes. As to how the +Englishman and the French girl communicate, there are amusing +speculations, but little exact knowledge. There can be small doubt, +however, that a number of hybrid words perfectly understood by both +sides are gradually coming into use, and if the war lasts much longer, a +rough Esperanto will have grown up which may leave its mark on both +languages. The word "narpoo" is a case in point. It is said to be +originally a corruption of "<i>il n'y a plus</i>"—the phrase which so often +meets the Tommy foraging for eggs or milk or fruit. At present it means +anything from "done up" to "dead." Here is an instance of it, told me by +a chaplain at the front. He was billeted in a farm with a number of men, +and a sergeant. All the men, from the chaplain to the youngest private, +felt a keen sympathy and admiration for the women of the farm, who were +both working the land and looking after their billetees, with wonderful +pluck and energy. One evening the chaplain arriving at the open door of +the farm, saw in the kitchen beyond it the daughter of the house, who +had just come in from farm work. She was looking at a pile of dirty +plates and dishes which had to be washed before supper, and she gave a +sigh of fatigue. Suddenly in the back door on the other side of the +kitchen appeared the sergeant. He looked at the girl, then at the +dishes, then again at the girl. "Fattigay?" he said cheerfully, going up +to her. "Narpoo? Give 'em me. Compree?" And before she could say a word +he had driven her away, and plunged into the work.</p> + +<p>The general relations, indeed, between our soldiers and the French +population could not be better. General after General, both in the +bases, and at the front dwelt on this point. A distinguished General +commanding one of our armies on the line, spoke to me of it with +emphasis. "The testimony is universal, and it is equally creditable to +both sides." The French civilian in town and country is, no doubt, +profiting by the large demand and prompt payments of the British forces. +But just as in the case of the women munition workers, there is +infinitely more in it than money. On the British part there is, in both +officers and men, a burning sympathy for what France has suffered, +whether from the outrages of a brutal enemy, or from the inevitable +hardships of war. The headquarters of the General I have mentioned were +not more than fifteen or twenty miles from towns where unspeakable +things were done by German soldiers—officers no less than men—in the +first weeks of the struggle. With such deeds the French peasantry and +small townsfolk, as they still remain in Picardy and Artois, can and do +contrast, day by day, the temper, the courtesy, the humanity of the +British soldier. Great Britain, of course, is a friend and ally; and +Germany is the enemy. But these French folk, these defenceless women and +children, know instinctively that the British Army, like their own, +whether in its officers, or in its rank and file, is incapable, toward +any non-combatant, of what the German Army has done repeatedly, +officially, and still excuses and defends.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><a href="./images/img6h.jpg"> +<img src="./images/img6.jpg" width="399" height="273" alt="One of the Wards of a Base Hospital Visited by the King." title="One of the Wards of a Base Hospital Visited by the King." /> +</a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><span class="caption">One of the Wards of a Base Hospital Visited by the King.</span></p> + +<p><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><a href="./images/img7h.jpg"> +<img src="./images/img7.jpg" width="399" height="271" alt="A Howitzer in the Act of Firing." title="A Howitzer in the Act of Firing." /> +</a></p> +<p class="figcenter"><span class="caption">A Howitzer in the Act of Firing.</span></p> + +<p>The signs of this feeling for and sympathy with the French <i>civils</i>, +among our soldiers, are many. Here is one story, slight but +illuminating, told me by an eye-witness. She is one of a band of women +under a noble chief, who, since very early in the war, have been running +a canteen for soldiers, night and day, at the large railway-station of +the very base I have been describing, where trains are perpetually +arriving from and departing to the front. In the early days of the war, +a refugee train arrived one afternoon full of helpless French folk, +mainly of course women and children, and old people, turned out of their +homes by the German advance. In general, the refugees were looked after +by the French Red Cross, "who did it admirably, going along the trains +with hot drinks and food and clothing." But on this occasion there were +a number of small children, and some of them got overlooked in the +hubbub. "I found a raw young Scotchman, little more than a boy, from one +of the Highland regiments," with six youngsters clinging to him, for +whom he peremptorily demanded tea. "He had tears in his eyes, and his +voice was all husky as he explained in homely Scotch how the bairns had +been turned out of their homes—how he <i>couldn't</i> bear it—and he would +give them tea." A table was found. "I provided the milk, and he paid for +bread and butter and chocolate, and waited on and talked to the six +little French people himself. Strange to say, they seemed to understand +each other quite well."</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>It was with this railway-station canteen that my latest memories of the +great base are concerned. All the afternoon of our second day at —— +was spent in seeing a fine Red Cross hospital, and then in walking or +driving round the endless reinforcement and hospital camps in the open +country. Everywhere the same vigourous expanding organisation, the same +ceaselessly growing numbers, the same humanity and care in detail. "How +many years have we been at war?" one tends to ask oneself in +bewilderment, as the spectacle unrolls itself. "Is it possible that all +this is the work of eighteen months?" And I am reminded of the Scotch +sergeant's reply to his German captive, who asked his opinion about the +duration of the war. "I'll tell you what—it's the furrst five years +that'll be the worst!" We seem—in the bases—to have slipped through +them already, measuring by any of the ordinary ratios of work to time. +On my return home, a diplomat representing one of the neutral nations, +told me that the Military Secretary of his staff had been round the +English bases in France, and had come back with his "eyes starting out +of his head." Having seen them myself, the phrase seemed to me quite +natural.</p> + +<p>Then, last of all, as the winter evening fell, we turned toward the +canteen at the railway-station. We found it going on in an old goods' +shed, simply fitted up with a long tea and coffee bar, tables and +chairs; and in some small adjacent rooms. It was filled from end to end +with a crowd of soldiers, who after many hours of waiting, were just +departing for the front. The old shabby room, with its points of bright +light, and its shadowy sides and corners, made a Rembrandtesque setting +for the moving throng of figures. Some men were crowding round the bar; +some were writing letters in haste to post before the train went off; +the piano was going, and a few, gathered round it, were singing the +songs of the day, of which the choruses were sometimes taken up in the +room. The men—drafts going up to different regiments on the +line—appeared to me to come from many parts. The broad Yorkshire and +Cumbrian speech, Scotch, the cockney of the Home Counties, the +Northumberland burr, the tongues of Devon and Somerset—one seemed to +hear them all in turn. The demands at the counter had slackened a +little, and I was presently listening to some of the talk of the +indefatigable helpers who work this thing night and day. One of them +drew a picture of the Canadians, the indomitable fighters of Ypres and +Loos, of their breathless energy, and impatience of anything but the +quickest pace of life, their appetites!—half a dozen hard-boiled eggs, +at <i>3d</i> each, swallowed down in a moment of time; then of the +French-Canadians, their Old World French, their old-world Catholicism, +simple and passionate. One of these last asked if there was any chance +of his being sent to Egypt. "Why are you so anxious to go to Egypt?" +"Because it was there the Holy Family rested," said the lad shyly. The +lady to whom he spoke described to him the tree and the Holy Well in St. +Georgius, and he listened entranced.</p> + +<p>Sometimes a rough lot fill the canteen, drawn from the poorest class, +perhaps, of an English seaport. They hustle for their food, shout at the +helpers, and seem to have no notion that such words as "please" and +"thank you" exist. After three or four hours of battling with such an +apparently mannerless crew one of the helpers saw them depart to the +platform where their train was waiting for them, with very natural +relief. But they were no sooner gone, when a guardsman, with the +manners, the stature, and the smartness of his kind, came back to the +counter, and asked to speak to the lady in charge of it. "Those chaps, +Miss, what have just gone out," he said apologetically, "have never been +used to ladies, and they don't know what to say to them. So they asked +me just to come in and say for them they were very much obliged for all +the ladies' kindness, but they couldn't say it themselves." The tired +helper was suddenly too choky to answer. The message, the choice of the +messenger, as one sure to do "the right thing," were both so touching.</p> + +<p>But there was a sudden movement in the crowd. The train was up. We all +surged out upon the platform, and I watched the embarkation—the endless +train engulfing its hundreds of men. Just as I had seen the food and +equipment trains going up from the first base laden with everything +necessary to replace the daily waste of the army, so here was the train +of human material, going up to replace the daily waste of <i>men</i>. After +many hours of travelling, and perhaps some of rest, these young +soldiers—how young most of them were!—would find themselves face to +face with the sharpest realities of war. I thought of what I had seen in +the Red Cross hospital that afternoon—"what man has made of man"—the +wreck of youth and strength, the hideous pain, the helpless disablement.</p> + +<p>But the station rang with laughter and talk. Some one in the canteen +began to play "Keep the Home Fires Burning"—and the men in the train +joined in, though not very heartily, for as one or two took care to tell +me, laughingly—"That and 'Tipperary' are awfully stale now!" A +bright-faced lad discussed with D—— how long the war would last. "And +<i>shan't</i> we miss it when it's done!" he said, with a jesting farewell to +us, as he jumped into the train which had begun to move. Slowly, slowly +it passed out of sight, amid waves of singing and the shouting of +good-byes....</p> + +<p>It was late that evening, when after much talk with various officers, I +went up to my room to try and write, bewildered by a multitude of +impressions—impressions of human energy, human intelligence, human +suffering. What England is doing in this country will leave, it seems to +me, indelible marks upon the national character. I feel a natural pride, +as I sit thinking over the day, in all this British efficiency and +power, and a quick joy in the consciousness of our fellowship with +France, and hers with us. But the struggle at Verdun is still in its +first intensity, and when I have read all that the evening newspapers +contain about it, there stirs in me a fresh realisation of the meaning +of what I have been seeing. In these great bases, in the marvellous +railway organisation, in the handling of the vast motor transport in all +its forms, in the feeding and equipment of the British Army, we have the +scaffolding and preparation of war, which, both in the French and +English Armies, have now reached a perfection undreamt of when the +contest began. But the war itself—the deadly struggle of that distant +line to which it all tends? It is in the flash and roar of the guns, in +the courage and endurance of the fighting man, that all this travail of +brain and muscle speaks at last. At that courage and endurance, women, +after all, can only guess—through whatever rending of their own hearts.</p> + +<p>But I was to come somewhat nearer to it than I thought then. The morrow +brought surprise.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2> + + +<p>Dear H.</p> + +<p>Our journey farther north through the deep February snow was scarcely +less striking as an illustration of Great Britain's constantly growing +share in the war than the sight of the great supply bases themselves. +The first part of it, indeed, led over solitary uplands, where the +chained wheels of the motor rocked in the snow, and our military +chauffeur dared make no stop, for fear he should never be able to start +again. All that seemed alive in the white landscape were the +partridges—sometimes in great flocks—which scudded at our approach, or +occasional groups of hares in the middle distance holding winter parley. +The road seemed interminably long and straight, and ours were almost the +first tracks in it. The snow came down incessantly, and once or twice it +looked as though we should be left stranded in the white wilderness.</p> + +<p>But after a third of the journey was over, the snow began to lessen and +the roads to clear. We dropped first into a seaport town which offered +much the same mingled scene of French and English, of English nurses, +and French <i>poilus</i>, of unloading ships, and British soldiers, as the +bases we had left, only on a smaller scale. And beyond the town we +climbed again on to the high land, through a beautiful country of +interwoven downs, and more plentiful habitation. Soon, indeed, the roads +began to show the signs of war—a village or small town, its picturesque +market-place filled with a park of artillery wagons; roads lined with +motor lorries with the painted shell upon them that tells ammunition; +British artillerymen in khaki, bringing a band of horses out of a +snow-bound farm; closed motor-cars filled with officers hurrying past; +then an open car with King's Messengers, tall, soldierly figures, +looking in some astonishment at the two ladies, as they hurry by. And +who or what is this horseman looming out of the sleet—like a figure +from a piece of Indian or Persian embroidery, turbaned and swarthy, his +cloak swelling out round his handsome head and shoulders, the buildings +of a Norman farm behind him? "There are a few Indian cavalry about +here," says our guide—"they are billeted in the farms." And presently +the road is full of them. Their Eastern forms, their dark, intent faces +pass strangely through the Norman landscape.</p> + +<p>Now we are only some forty miles from the line, and we presently reach +another town containing an important British Headquarters, where we are +to stop for luncheon. The inn at which we put up is like the song in +"Twelfth Night," "old and plain"—and when lunch is done, our Colonel +goes to pay an official call at Headquarters, and my daughter and I make +our way to the historic church of the town. The Colonel joins us here +with another officer, who brings the amazing news that "G.H.Q."—General +Headquarters—that mysterious centre and brain of all things—invites us +for two days! If we accept, an officer will come for us on the morning +of March 1st to our hotel in Boulogne and take us by motor, some forty +miles, to the guest-house where G.H.Q. puts up its visitors. "<i>Accept!"</i> +Ah, if one could only forget for a moment the human facts behind the +absorbing interest and excitement of this journey, one might be content +to feel only the stir of quickened pulses, of gratitude for a further +opportunity so tremendous.</p> + +<p>As it was, I saw all the journey henceforward with new eyes, because of +that to which it was bringing us. On we sped, through the French +countryside, past a great forest lying black on the edge of the white +horizon—I open my map and find it marked Bois de Crecy!—past another +old town, with Agincourt a few miles to the east, and so into a region +of pine and sand that borders the sea. Darkness comes down, and we miss +our way. What are these lines of light among the pine woods? Another +military and hospital camp, which we are to see on the morrow—so we +discover at last. But we have overshot our goal, and must grope our way +back through the pine woods to the sea-shore, where a little primitive +hotel, built for the summer, with walls that seem to be made of brown +paper, receives us. But we have motored far that day, and greet it +joyfully.</p> + +<p>The following morning we woke to a silvery sunlight, with, at last, some +promise of spring over a land cleared of snow. The day was spent in +going through a camp which has been set down in one of the pleasantest +and healthiest spots of France, a favourite haunt of French artists +before the war. Now the sandy slopes, whence the pines, alack, have been +cut away, are occupied by a British reinforcement camp, by long lines of +hospitals, by a convalescent depot, and by the training-grounds, where, +as at other bases, the newly arrived troops are put through their last +instruction before going to the front. As usual, the magnitude of what +has been done in one short year filled one with amazement. Here is the +bare catalogue: Infantry Base Depots, <i>i.e.</i> sleeping and mess +quarters, for thousands of men belonging to the new armies; 16 +hospitals with 21,000 beds, 3 rifle ranges; 2 training-camps; a +machine-gun training-school; a vast laundry worked by Frenchwomen under +British organisation, which washes for <i>all</i> the hospitals, 30,000 +pieces a day; recreation huts of all types and kinds, official and +voluntary; a Cinema theatre, seating 800 men, with performances twice a +day; nurses' clubs; officers' clubs; a Supply Depot for food; an +Ordnance Depot for everything that is not food; new sidings to the +railway, where 1,000 men can be entrained on the one side, while 1,000 +men are detraining on the other; or two full ambulance trains can come +in and go out; a Convalescent Depot of 2,000 patients, and a +Convalescent Horse Depot of 2,000 horses, etcetera. And this is the work +accomplished since last April in one camp.</p> + +<p>Yet, as I look back upon it, my chief impression of that long day is an +impression, first, of endless hospital huts and marquees, with their +rows of beds, in which the pale or flushed faces are generally +ready—unless pain or weariness forbid—as a visitor ventures timidly +near, to turn and smile in response to the few halting words of sympathy +or inquiry which are all one can find to say; and, next, of such a +wealth of skill, and pity, and devotion poured out upon this terrible +human need, as makes one thank God for doctors, and nurses, and +bright-faced V.A.D.'s. After all, one tremblingly asks oneself, in spite +of the appalling facts of wounds, and death, and violence in which the +human world is now steeped, is it yet possible, is it yet true, that the +ultimate thing, the final power behind the veil—to which at least this +vast linked spectacle of suffering and tenderness, here in this great +camp, testifies—is <i>not</i> Force, but Love? Is this the mysterious +message which seems to breathe from these crowded wards—to make them +<i>just</i> bearable. Let me recollect the open door of an operating theatre, +and a young officer, quite a boy, lying there with a bullet in his +chest, which the surgeons were just about to try and extract. The fine, +pale features of the wounded man, the faces of the surgeon and the +nurses, so intent and cheerfully absorbed, the shining surfaces and +appliances of the white room—stamp themselves on memory. I recollect, +too, one John S——, a very bad case, a private. "Oh, you must come and +see John S——," says one of the Sisters. "We get all the little +distractions we can for John. Will he recover? Well, we thought +so—but"—her face changes gravely—"John himself seems to have made up +his mind lately. He knows—but he never complains." Knows what? We go to +see him, and he turns round philosophically from his tea. "Oh, I'm all +right—a bit tired—that's all." And then a smile passes between him and +his nurse. He has lost a leg, he has a deep wound in his back which +won't heal, which is draining his life away—poor, poor John S——! +Close by is a short, plain man, with a look of fevered and patient +endurance that haunts one now to think of. "It's my eyes. I'm afraid +they're getting worse. I was hit in the head, you see. Yes, the pain's +bad—sometimes." The nurse looks at him anxiously as we pass, and +explains what is being tried to give relief.</p> + +<p>This devotion of the nurses—how can one ever say enough of it! I recall +the wrath of a medical officer in charge of a large hospital at Rouen. +"Why don't they give more Red Crosses to the <i>working nurses</i>? They +don't get half enough recognition. I have a nurse here who has been +twelve months in the operating theatre. She ought to have a V.C.!—It's +worth it."</p> + +<p>And here is a dark-eyed young officer who had come from a distant colony +to fight for England. I find him in an officer's hospital, established +not long after the war broke out, in a former Casino, where the huge +baccarat-room has been turned into two large and splendid wards. He is +courteously ready to talk about his wound, but much more ready to talk +about his Sister.</p> + +<p>"It's simply <i>wonderful</i> what they do for us!" he says, all his face +lighting up. "When I was worst there wasn't an hour in the day or night +my Sister wasn't ready to try anything in the world to help me. But +they're all like that."</p> + +<p>Let me here gratefully recall, also, the hospitals organised by the +Universities of Chicago and Harvard, entirely staffed by American +Sisters and Doctors, each of them providing 34 doctors and 80 nurses, +and dealing with 1,040 patients. Harvard has maintained a general +hospital with the British Force in France since July, 1915. The first +passages and uniforms were paid for by the British Government, but the +University has itself paid all passages, and provided all uniforms since +the start; and it is proposed, I am told, to carry on this generous help +indefinitely.</p> + +<p>Twenty thousand wounded!—while every day the ambulance trains come and +go from the front, or to other bases—there to fill up one or other of +the splendid hospital ships that take our brave fellows back to England, +and home, and rest. And this city of hospitals, under its hard-pressed +medical chief, with all its wealth of scientific invention, and +painsaving device, and unremitting care, with its wonderful health and +recovery statistics, has been the growth of just twelve months. The mind +wavers between the two opposing images it suggests: war and its havoc on +the one hand—the power of the human brain and the goodness of the human +heart on the other.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>It was late on the 29th of February that we reached our next +resting-place, to find a kind greeting from another Base Commandant and +final directions for our journey of the morrow. We put up at one of the +old commercial inns of the town (it is not easy to find hotel quarters +of any kind just now, when every building at all suitable has been +pressed into the hospital service) and I found delight in watching the +various types of French officers, naval and military, who came in to the +<i>table d'hôte</i>, plunging as soon as they had thrown off their caps and +cloaks, and while they waited for their consommé, into the papers with +the latest news of Verdun. But we were too tired to try and talk! The +morning came quickly, and with it our escort from G.H.Q. We said +good-bye to Colonel S., who had guided our journey so smoothly through +all the fierce drawbacks of the weather, and made friends at once with +our new guide, the staff-officer who deals with the guests of G.H.Q. +Never shall I forget that morning's journey! I find in my notes: "A +beautiful drive—far more beautiful than I had expected—over undulating +country, with distant views of interlocking downs, and along typical +French roads, tree or forest bordered, running straight as a line +up-hill and down-hill, over upland and plain. One exquisite point of +view especially comes back to me, where a road to the coast—that coast +which the Germans so nearly reached!—diverged upon our left, and all +the lowlands westward came into sight. It was pure Turner, the soft +sunlight of the day, with its blue shadows, and pale-blue sky; the +yellow chalk hills, still marked with streaks of snow; the woods, purple +and madder brown, the distances ethereally blue; and the villages, bare +and unlovely compared with the villages of Kent and Sussex, but +expressing a strong old historic life, sprung from the soil, and one +with it. The first distant glimpse, as we turned a hill-corner, of the +old town which was our destination—extraordinarily fine!—its ancient +church a towered mass of luminous grey under the sunshine, gathering the +tiled roofs into one harmonious whole."</p> + +<p>But we avoided the town itself and found ourselves presently descending +an avenue of trees to the eighteenth-century château, which is used by +G.H.Q. as a hostel for its guests—allied and neutral correspondents, +military attachés, special missions, and the like. In a few minutes I +found myself standing bewildered by the strangeness and the interest of +it all, in a charming Louis-Quinze room, plain and simple in the true +manner of the genuine French country house, but with graceful panelled +walls, an old <i>armoire</i> of the date, windows wide open to the spring +sun, and a half-wild garden outside. A <i>femme de ménage</i>, much surprised +to be waiting on two ladies, comes to look after us. And this is +France!—and we are only thirty miles from that fighting line, which has +drawn our English hearts to it all these days.</p> + +<p>A map is waiting for each of us down-stairs, and we are told, roughly, +where it is proposed to take us. A hurried lunch, and we are in the +motor again, with Captain —— sitting in front. "You have your passes?" +he asks us, and we anxiously verify the new and precious papers that +brought us from our last stage, and will have to be shown on our way. We +drive first to Arques, and Hazebrouck, then southeast. At a certain +village we call at the Divisional Headquarters. The General comes out +himself, and proposes to guide us on. "I will take you as near to the +fighting line as I can."</p> + +<p>On we went, in two motors; the General with me, Captain —— and D. +following. We passed through three villages, and after the first we +were within shell range of the German batteries ahead. But I cannot +remember giving a thought to the fact, so absorbing to the unaccustomed +eye were all the accumulating signs of the actual battle-line; the +endless rows of motor-lorries, either coming back from, or going up to +the front, now with food, now with ammunition, reserve trenches to right +and left of the road; a "dump" or food-station, whence carts filled from +the heavy lorries go actually up to the trenches, lines of artillery +wagons, parks of ammunition, or motor-ambulances, long lines of picketed +horses, motor-cyclists dashing past. In one village we saw a merry crowd +in the little <i>place</i> gathered round a field-kitchen whence came an +excellent fragrance of good stew. A number of the men were wearing leeks +in their ears for St. David's Day. "You're Welsh, then?" I said to one +of the cooks (by this time we had left the motor and were walking). "I'm +not!" said the little fellow, with a laughing look. "It's St. Patrick's +Day I'm waitin' for! But I've no objection to givin' St. David a turn!"</p> + +<p>He opened his kitchen to show me the good things going on, and as we +moved away there came up a marching platoon of men from the trenches, +who had done their allotted time there and were coming back to billets. +The General went to greet them. "Well, my boys, you could stick it all +right?" It was good to see the lightening on the tired faces, and to +watch the group disappear into the cheerful hubbub of the village.</p> + +<p>We walked on, and outside the village I heard the guns for the first +time. We were now "actually in the battle," according to my companion, +and a shell was quite possible, though not probable. Again, I can't +remember that the fact made any impression upon us. We were watching now +parties of men at regular intervals sitting waiting in the fields beside +the road, with their rifles and kits on the grass near them. They were +waiting for the signal to move up toward the firing line as soon as the +dusk was further advanced. "We shall meet them later," said the General, +"as we come back."</p> + +<p>At the same moment he turned to address a young artillery-officer in the +road: "Is your gun near here?" "Yes, sir, I was just going back to it." +He was asked to show us the way. As we followed I noticed the white puff +of a shell, far ahead, over the flat, ditch-lined fields; a captive +balloon was making observations about half a mile in front, and an +aeroplane passed over our heads. "Ah, not a Boche," said Captain —— +regretfully, "but we brought a Boche down here yesterday, just over this +village—a splendid fight."</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, the artillery fire was quickening. We reached a ruined +village from which all normal inhabitants had been long since cleared +away. The shattered church was there, and I noticed a large crucifix +quite intact still hanging on its chancel wall. A little farther and the +boyish artillery-officer, our leader, who had been by this time joined +by a comrade, turned and beckoned to the General. Presently we were +creeping through seas of mud down into the gun emplacement, so carefully +concealed that no aeroplane overhead could guess it.</p> + +<p>There it was—how many of its fellows I had seen in the Midland and +northern workshops!—its muzzle just showing in the dark, and nine or +ten high-explosive shells lying on the bench in front of the breech. One +is put in. We stand back a little, and a sergeant tells me to put my +fingers in my ears and look straight at the gun. Then comes the +shock—not so violent as I had expected—and the cartridge-case drops +out. The shell has sped on its way to the German trenches—with what +result to human flesh and blood? But I remember thinking very little of +that—till afterwards. At the time, the excitement of the shot and of +watching that little group of men in the darkness held all one's nerves +gripped.</p> + +<p>In a few more minutes we were scrambling out again through the deep, +muddy trench leading to the dugout, promising to come back to tea with +the officers, in their billet, when our walk was done.</p> + +<p>Now indeed we were "in the battle"! Our own guns were thundering away +behind us, and the road was more and more broken up by shell holes. +"Look at that group of trees to your left—beyond it is Neuve Chapelle," +said our guide. "And you see those ruined cottages, straight ahead, and +the wood behind." He named a wood thrice famous in the history of the +war. "Our lines are just beyond the cottages, and the German lines just +in front of the wood. How far are we from them? Three-quarters of a +mile." It was discussed whether we should be taken zigzag through the +fields to the entrance of the communication-trench. But the firing was +getting hotter, and Captain —— was evidently relieved when we elected +to turn back. Shall I always regret that lost opportunity? You did ask +me to write something about "the life of the soldiers in the +trenches"—and that was the nearest that any woman could personally have +come to it! But I doubt whether anything more—anything, at least, that +was possible—could have deepened the whole effect. We had been already +nearer than any woman—even a nurse—has been, in this war, to the +actual fighting on the English line, and the cup of impressions was +full.</p> + +<p>As we turned back, I noticed a little ruined cottage, with a Red Cross +flag floating. Our guide explained that it was a field dressing-station. +It was not for us—who could not help—to ask to go in. But the thought +of it—there were some badly wounded in it—pursued me as we walked on +through the beautiful evening.</p> + +<p>A little farther we came across what I think moved me more than anything +else in that crowded hour—those same companies of men we had seen +sitting waiting in the fields, now marching quietly, spaced one behind +the other, up to the trenches, to take their turn there. Every day I am +accustomed to see bodies, small and large, of khaki-clad men, marching +through these Hertfordshire lanes. But this was different. The bearing +was erect and manly, the faces perfectly cheerful; but there was the +seriousness in them of men who knew well the work to which they were +going. I caught a little quiet whistling, sometimes, but no singing. We +greeted them as they passed, with a shy "Good luck!" and they smiled +shyly back, surprised, of course, to see a couple of women on that road. +But there was no shyness towards the General. It was very evident that +the relations between him and them were as good as affection and +confidence on both sides could make them.</p> + +<p>I still see the bright tea-table in that corner of a ruined farm, where +our young officers presently greeted us—the General marking our maps to +make clear where he had actually been—the Captain of the battery +springing up to show off his gramophone—while the guns crashed at +intervals close beside us, range-finding, probably, searching out a +portion of the German line, under the direction of some hidden observer +with his telephone. It was over all too quickly. Time was up, and soon +the motor was speeding back towards the Divisional Headquarters. The +General and I talked of war, and what could be done to stop it. A more +practical religion "lifting mankind again"?—a new St. Francis, +preaching the old things in new ways? "But in this war we had and we +have no choice. We are fighting for civilisation and freedom, and we +must go on till we win."</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>It was long before I closed my eyes in the pretty room of the old +château, after an evening spent in talk with some officers of the +Headquarters Staff. When I woke in the dawn I little guessed what the +day (March 2nd) was to bring forth, or what was already happening thirty +miles away on the firing line. Zélie, the <i>femme de ménage</i>, brought us +our breakfast to our room, coffee and bread and eggs, and by half-past +nine we were down-stairs, booted and spurred, to find the motor at the +door, a simple lunch being packed up, and gas-helmets got ready! "We +have had a very successful action this morning," said Captain ——, + evidently in the best of spirits. "We have taken back some trenches on +the Ypres-Comines Canal that we lost a little while ago, and captured +about 200 prisoners. If we go off at once, we shall be in time to see +the German counter-attack."</p> + +<p>It was again fine, though not bright, and the distances far less clear. +This time we struck northeast, passing first the sacred region of G.H.Q. +itself, where we showed our passes. Then after making our way through +roads lined interminably, as on the previous day, with the splendid +motor-lorries laden with food and ammunition, which have made such a new +thing of the transport of this war, interspersed with rows of ambulances +and limbered wagons, with flying-stations and horse lines, we climbed a +hill to one of the finest positions in this northern land; an old town, +where Gaul and Roman, Frank and Fleming, English and French have +clashed, which looks out northward towards the Yser and Dunkirk, and +east towards Ypres. Now, if the mists will only clear, we shall see +Ypres! But, alas, they lie heavy over the plain, and we descend the hill +again without that vision. Now we are bound for Poperinghe, and must go +warily, because there is a lively artillery action going on beyond +Poperinghe, and it is necessary to find out what roads are being +shelled.</p> + +<p>On the way we stop at an air-station, to watch the aeroplanes rising and +coming down, and at a point near Poperinghe we go over a +casualty-clearing station—a collection of hospital huts, with +storehouses and staff quarters—with the medical officer in charge. Here +were women nurses who are not allowed in the field dressing-stations +nearer the line. There were not many wounded, though they were coming +in, and the Doctor was not for the moment very busy.</p> + +<p>We stood on the threshold of a large ward, where we could not, I think, +be seen. At the farther end a serious case was being attended by nurses +and surgeons. Everything was passing in silence; and to me it was as if +there came from the distant group a tragic message of suffering, +possibly death. Then, as we passed lingeringly away, we saw three young +officers, all wounded, <i>running</i> up from the ambulance at the gate, +which had just brought them, and disappearing into one of the wards. The +first—a splendid kilted figure—had his head bound up; the others were +apparently wounded in the arm. But they seemed to walk on air, and to be +quite unconscious that anything was wrong with them. It had been a +success, a great success, and they had been in it!</p> + +<p>The ambulances were now arriving fast from the field dressing-stations +close to the line, and we hurried away, and were soon driving through +Poperinghe. Here and there there was a house wrecked with shell-fire. +The little town indeed with its picturesque <i>place</i> is constantly +shelled. But, all the same, life seems to go on as usual. The Poperinghe +boy, like his London brother, hangs on the back of carts; his father +and mother come to their door to watch what is going on, or to ask +eagerly for news of the counter-attack; and his little brothers and +sisters go tripping to school, in short cloaks with the hoods drawn over +their heads, as though no war existed. Here and in the country round, +poor robbed Belgium is still at home on her own soil, and on the best of +terms with the English Army, by which, indeed, this remnant of her +prospers greatly. As I have already insisted, the relations everywhere +between the British soldier and the French and Belgian populations are +among the British—or shall I say the Allied?—triumphs of the war.</p> + +<p>Farther on the road a company from a famous regiment, picked men all of +them, comes swinging along, fresh from their baths!—life and force in +every movement—young Harrys with their beavers on. Then, a house where +men have their gas-helmets tested—a very strict and necessary business; +and another, where an ex-Balliol tutor and Army Chaplain keeps open +doors for the soldier in his hours of rest or amusement. But we go in +search of a safe road to a neighbouring village, where some fresh passes +have to be got. Each foot now of the way is crowded with the incidents +and appurtenances of war, and war close at hand. An Australian transport +base is pointed out, with a wholly Australian staff. "Some of the men," +says our guide, "are millionaires." Close by is an aeroplane descending +unexpectedly in a field, and a crowd of men rushing to help; and we turn +away relieved to see the two aviators walking off unhurt. Meanwhile, I +notice a regular game of football going on at a distance, and some +carefully written names of bypaths—"Hyde Park Corner," "Piccadilly," +"Queen Mary's Road," and the like. The animation, the life of the scene +are indescribable.</p> + +<p>At the next village the road was crowded both with natives and soldiers +to see the German prisoners brought in. Alack! we did not see them. +Ambulances were passing and re-passing, the slightly wounded men in cars +open at the back, the more serious cases in closed cars, and everywhere +the same <i>va et vient</i> of lorries and wagons, of staff-cars and +motor-cyclists. It was not right for us to add to the congestion in the +road. Moreover, the hours were drawing on, and the great sight was still +to come. But to have watched those prisoners come in would have somehow +rounded off the day!</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>Our new passes took us to the top of a hill well known to the few +onlookers of which this war admits. The motor stopped at a point on the +road where a picket was stationed, who examined our papers. Then came a +stiff and muddy climb, past a dugout for protection in case of shelling, +Captain —— carrying the three gas-helmets. At the top was a flat green +space—three or four soldiers playing football on it!—and an old +windmill, and farm-buildings.</p> + +<p>We sheltered behind the great beams supporting the windmill, and looked +out through them, north and east, over a wide landscape; a plain +bordered eastward by low hills, every mile of it, almost, watered by +British blood, and consecrate to British dead. As we reached the +windmill, as though in sombre greeting, the floating mists on the near +horizon seemed to part, and there rose from them a dark, jagged tower, +one side of it torn away. It was the tower of Ypres—mute victim!—mute +witness to a crime, that, beyond the reparations of our own day, history +will avenge through years to come.</p> + +<p>A flash!—another!—from what appear to be the ruins at its base. It is +the English guns speaking from the lines between us and Ypres; and as we +watch we see the columns of white smoke rising from the German lines as +the shells burst. There they are, the German lines—along the Messines +ridge. We make them out quite clearly, thanks to a glass and Captain +——'s guidance. Their guns, too, are at work, and a couple of their +shells are bursting on our trenches somewhere between Vlamertinghe and +Dickebusche. Then the rattle of our machine-guns—as it seems from +somewhere close below us, and again the boom of the artillery.</p> + +<p>The counter-action is in progress, and we watch what can be seen or +guessed of it, in fascination. We are too far off to see what is +actually happening between the opposing trenches, but one of the chief +fields of past and present battle, scenes which our children and our +children's children will go to visit, lie spread out before us. Half the +famous sites of the earlier war can be dimly made out between us and +Ypres. In front of us is the gleam of the Zillebeke Lake, beyond it +Hooge. Hill 60 is in that band of shadow; a little farther east the +point where the Prussian Guard was mown down at the close of the first +Battle of Ypres; farther south the fields and woods made for ever famous +by the charge of the Household Cavalry, by the deeds of the Worcesters, +and the London Scottish, by all the splendid valour of that "thin red +line," French and English, cavalry and infantry, which in the first +Battle of Ypres withstood an enemy four times as strong, saved France, +and thereby England, and thereby Europe. In that tract of ground over +which we are looking lie more than 100,000 graves, English and French; +and to it the hearts of two great nations will turn for all time. Then +if you try to pierce the northern haze, beyond that ruined tower, you +may follow in imagination the course of the Yser westward to that +Belgian coast where Admiral Hood's guns broke down and scattered the +German march upon Dunkirk and Calais; or if you turn south you are +looking over the Belfry of Bailleul, towards Neuve Chapelle, and +Festubert, and all the fierce fighting-ground round Souchez and the +Labyrinth. Once English and French stood linked here in a common heroic +defence. Now the English hold all this line firmly from the sea to the +Somme; while the French, with the eyes of the world upon them, are +making history, hour by hour, at Verdun.</p> + +<p>So to this point we have followed one branch—the greatest—of England's +effort; and the mind, when eyes fail, pursues it afresh from its +beginnings when we first stood to arms in August, 1914, through what Mr. +Buchan has finely called the "rally of the Empire," through the early +rush and the rapid growth of the new armies, through the strengthening +of Egypt, the disaster of Gallipoli, the seizure of the German Colonies; +through all that vast upheaval at home which we have seen in the +munition areas; through that steady, and ever-growing organisation on +the friendly French soil we have watched in the supply bases. Yet here, +for us, it culminates; and here and in the North Sea, we can hardly +doubt—whatever may be the diversions in other fields—will be fought, +for Great Britain, the decisive battles of the war. As I turn to those +dim lines on the Messines ridge, I have come at last to sight of +whither it all moves. There, in those trenches is <i>The Aggressor</i>—the +enemy who has wantonly broken the peace of Europe, who has befouled +civilisation with deeds of lust and blood, between whom and the Allies +there can be no peace till the Allies' right arm dictates it. Every +week, every day, the British Armies grow, the British troops pour +steadily across the Channel, and to the effort of England and her Allies +there will be no truce till the righteous end is won.</p> + +<p>But the shadows are coming down on the great scene, and with the sound +of the guns still in our ears we speed back through the crowded roads to +G.H.Q., and these wonderful days are over. Now, all that remains for me +is to take you, far away from the armies, into the English homes whence +the men fighting here are drawn, and to show you, if I can, very +shortly, by a few instances, what rich and poor are doing as individuals +to feed the effort of England in this war. What of the <i>young</i>, of all +classes and opportunities, who have laid down their lives in this war? +What of the mothers who reared them, the schools and universities which +sent them forth?—the comrades who are making ready to carry on their +work? You ask me as to the <i>spirit</i> of the nation—the foundation of all +else. Let us look into a few lives, a few typical lives and families, +and see.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2> + + +<p><i>April 22nd</i>.</p> + +<p>Dear H.</p> + +<p>As I begin upon this final letter to you comes the news that the +threatened split in the British Cabinet owing to the proposed +introduction of general military service has been averted, and that at a +Secret Session to be held next Tuesday, April 25th, Ministers will, for +the first time, lay before both Houses of Parliament full and complete +information—much more full and complete at any rate, than has yet been +given—of the "effort" of Great Britain in this world war, what this +country is doing in sea-power, in the provision of Armies, in the +lending of money to our Allies, in our own shipping service to them, and +in our supply to them of munitions, coal, and other war +material—including boots and clothing. If, then, our own British +Parliament will be for the first time fully apprised next Tuesday of +what the nation has been doing, it is, perhaps, small wonder that you +on your side of the Atlantic have not rightly understood the performance +of a nation which has, collectively, the same love of "grousing" as the +individual British soldier shows in the trenches.</p> + +<p>Let me, however, go back and recapitulate a little.</p> + +<p>In the first of these letters, I tried, by a rapid "vision" of the +Fleet, as I personally saw an important section of it amid the snows of +February, to point to the indispensable condition of this "effort," +without which it could never have been made, without which it could not +be maintained for a day, at the present moment. Since that visit of +mine, the power of the Fleet and the effect of the Fleet have +strengthened week by week. The blockade of Germany is far more effective +than it was three months ago; the evidence of its growing stringency +accumulates steadily, and at the same time the British Foreign Office +has been anxiously trying, and evidently with much success, to minimise +for neutrals its inevitable difficulties and inconveniences. Meanwhile, +as Mr. Asquith will explain next Tuesday, the expenditure on the war, +not only on our own needs but on those of our Allies is +colossal—terrifying. The most astonishing Budget of English History, +demanding a fourth of his income from every well-to-do citizen, has been +brought in since I began to write these letters, and quietly accepted. +Five hundred millions sterling ($2,500,000,000) have been already lent +to our Allies. We are spending at the yearly rate of 600,000,000 +sterling ($3,000,000,000) on the Army; 200,000,000 on the Navy as +compared with 40,000,000 in 1913; while the Munitions Department is +costing about two-thirds as much (400,000,000 sterling) as the rest of +the Army, and is employing close upon 2,000,000 workers, one-tenth of +them women. The export trade of the country, in spite of submarines and +lack of tonnage, is at the moment greater than it was in the +corresponding months of 1913.</p> + +<p>As to what we have got for our money, Parliament has authorised an Army +of 4,000,000 men, and it is on the question of the last half million +that England's Effort now turns. Mr. Asquith will explain everything +that has been done, and everything that still remains to do, <i>in camera</i> +to Parliament next Tuesday. But do not, my dear friend, make any mistake +<i>England will get the men she wants</i>; and Labour will be in the end just +as determined to get them as any other section of the Community. +Meanwhile, abroad, while we seem, for the moment, in France to be +inactive, we are in reality giving the French at Verdun just that +support which they and General Joffre desire, and—it can scarcely be +doubted—preparing great things on our own account. In spite of our +failure in Gallipoli, and the anxious position of General Townshend's +force, Egypt is no longer in danger of attack, if it ever has been; our +sea-power has brought a Russian force safely to Marseilles; and the +possibilities of British and Russian Collaboration in the East are +rapidly opening out. As to the great and complex war-machine we have +been steadily building up on French soil, as I tried to show in my +fourth letter, whether in the supply bases, or in the war organisation +along the ninety miles of front now held by the British Armies, it would +indeed astonish those dead heroes of the Retreat from Mons—could they +comes back to see it! We are not satisfied with it yet—hence the unrest +in Parliament and the Press—we shall never be satisfied—till Germany +has accepted the terms of the Allies. But those who know England best +have no doubt whatever as to the temper of the nation which has so far +"improvised the impossible," in the setting up of this machine, and +means, in the end, <i>to get out of it what it wants</i>.</p> + +<p>The temper of the nation? In this last letter let me take some samples +of it. First—what have the rich been doing? As to money, the figures of +the income-tax, the death-duties, and the various war loans are there to +show what they have contributed to the State. The Joint War Committee +of the Red Cross and the St. John's Ambulance Association have +collected—though not, of course, from the rich only—close on 4,000,000 +sterling (between $18,000,000 and $19,000,000), and the Prince of Wales +Fund nearly 6,000,000 ($30,000,000). The lavishness of English giving, +indeed, in all directions during the last two years, could hardly I +think have been outdone. A few weeks ago I walked with the Duke of +Bedford through the training and reinforcement camp, about fifteen miles +from my own home in the country, which he himself commands and which, at +the outbreak of war, he himself built without waiting for public money +or War Office contractors, to house and train recruits for the various +Bedfordshire regiments. The camp holds 1,200 men, and is ranged in a +park where the oaks—still standing—were considered too old by Oliver +Cromwell's Commissioners to furnish timber for the English Navy. Besides +ample barrack accommodation in comfortable huts, planned so as to +satisfy every demand whether of health or convenience, all the +opportunities that Aldershot offers, on a large scale, are here provided +in miniature. The model trenches with the latest improvements in plan, +revetting, gun-emplacements, sally-ports, and the rest, spread through +the sandy soil; the musketry ranges, bombing and bayonet schools are of +the most recent and efficient type. And the Duke takes a keen personal +interest in every man in training, follows his progress in camp, sees +him off to the front, and very often receives him, when wounded, in the +perfectly equipped hospital which the Duchess has established in Woburn +Abbey itself. Here the old riding-school, tennis-court, and museum, +which form a large building fronting the abbey, have been turned into +wards as attractive as bright and simple colour, space, flowers, and +exquisite cleanliness can make them. The Duchess is herself the Matron +in charge, under the War Office, keeps all the records, is up at half +past five in the morning, and spends her day in the endless doing, +thinking, and contriving that such a hospital needs. Not very far away +stands another beautiful country house, rented by Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw +Reid when they were in England. It also is a hospital, but its owner, +Lord Lucas, not a rich man, has now given it irrevocably to the nation +for the use of disabled soldiers, together with as much land as may +suffice a farm colony chosen from among them. The beautiful hospital of +250 beds at Paignton, in North Devon, run entirely by women of American +birth now resident in Great Britain, without any financial aid from the +British Government, was another large country house given to the service +of the wounded by Mr. Singer. Lady Sheffield's hospital for 25 beds at +Alderley Park is an example of how part of a country house with all its +green and restful surroundings may be used for those who have suffered +in the war, and it has many fellows in all parts of England. Altogether +about 700 country houses, large and small, have been offered to the War +Office.</p> + +<p>But money and houses are the very least part of what the old families, +the rich manufacturers, or the educated class generally have offered to +their country in this war. Democracy has gone far with us, but it may +still be said that the young heir to a great name, to estates with which +his family has been connected for generations, and to the accumulated +"consideration" to use a French word in a French sense, which such a +position almost always carries with it—has a golden time in English +life. Difficulties that check others fall away from him; he is smiled +upon for his kindred's sake before he makes friends for his own; the +world is overkind to his virtues and blind to his faults; he enters +manhood indeed as "one of our conquerors"; and it will cost him some +trouble to throw away his advantages. Before the war such a youth was +the common butt of the Socialist orator. He was the typical "shirker" +and "loafer," while other men worked; the parasite bred from the sweat +of the poor; the soft, effeminate creature who had never faced the +facts of life and never would. As to his soldiering—the common +profession of so many of his kind—that was only another offence in the +eyes of politicians like Mr. Keir Hardie. When the class war came, he +would naturally he found shooting down the workmen; but for any other +war, an ignorant popinjay!—incompetent even at his own trade, and no +match whatever for the scientific soldier of the Continent.</p> + +<p>Those who knew anything of the Army were well aware long before 1914 +that this type of officer—if he still existed, as no doubt he had once +existed—had become extraordinarily rare; that since the Boer War, the +level of education in the Army, the standard of work demanded, the +quality of the relations between officers and men had all steadily +advanced. And with regard to the young men of the "classes" in general, +those who had to do with them, at school and college, while fully alive +to their weaknesses, yet cherished convictions which were more instinct +than anything else, as to what stuff these easy-going, sport-loving +fellows might prove to be made of in case of emergency.</p> + +<p>Well, the emergency came. These youths of the classes, heirs to titles +and estates, or just younger sons of the old squirearchy of England, so +far as it still survives, went out in their hundreds, with the old and +famous regiments of the British line in the Expeditionary Force, and +perished in their hundreds. Forty-seven eldest sons, heirs to English +peerages had fallen within a year of the outbreak of war—among them the +heirs to such famous houses as Longleat, Petworth, and Castle Ashby—and +the names of Grenfell, Hood, Stuart, Bruce, Lister, Douglas Pennant, +Worsley, Hay, St. Aubyn, Carington, Annesley, Hicks Beach—together with +men whose fathers have played prominent parts in the politics or finance +of the last half century. And the first ranks have been followed by what +one might almost call a <i>levée en masse</i> of those that remained. Their +blood has been spilt like water at Ypres and La Bassée, at Suvla and +Helles. Whatever may be said henceforward of these "golden lads" of +ours, "shirker" and "loafer" they can never he called again. They have +died too lavishly, their men have loved and trusted them too well for +that—and some of the working-class leaders, with the natural generosity +of English hearts, have confessed it abundantly.</p> + +<p>And the professional classes—the intellectuals—everywhere the leading +force of the nation—have done just as finely, and of course in far +greater numbers. Never shall I forget my visit to Oxford last May—in +the height of the summer term, just at that moment when Oxford normally +is at its loveliest and fullest, brimming over with young life, the +streets crowded with caps and gowns, the river and towing-path alive +with the "flannelled fools," who have indeed flung back Rudyard +Kipling's gibe—if it ever applied to them—with interest. For they had +all disappeared. They were in the trenches, landing at Suvla, +garrisoning Egypt, pushing up to Baghdad. The colleges contained a few +forlorn remnants—under age, or medically unfit. The river, on a +glorious May day, showed boats indeed, but girls were rowing them. +Oriel, the college of Arnold, of Newman, of Cecil Rhodes, was filled +with women students, whose own college, Somerville, had become a +hospital. The Examination Schools in the High Street were a hospital, +and the smell of disinfectants displaced the fragrance of lilac and +hawthorn for ever associated in the minds of Oxford's lovers with the +summer term. In New College gardens, there were white tents full of +wounded. I walked up and down that wide, deserted lawn of St. John's, +where Charles I once gathered his Cavaliers, with an old friend, an +Oxford tutor of forty years' standing, who said with a despairing +gesture, speaking of his pupils: "So many are gone—so <i>many</i>!—and the +terrible thing is that I can't feel it as I once did—as blow follows +blow one seems to have lost the power."</p> + +<p>Let me evoke the memory of some of them. From Balliol have gone the two +Grenfell brothers, vehement, powerful souls, by the testimony of those +who knew them best, not delightful to those who did not love them, not +just, often, to those they did not love, but full of that rich stuff +which life matures to all fine uses. The younger fell in the attack on +Hooge, July 31st, last year; the elder, Julian, had fallen some months +earlier. Julian's verses, composed the night before he was wounded, will +be remembered with Rupert Brooke's sonnets, as expressing the inmost +passion of the war in great hearts. They were written in the spring +weather of April, 1915, and a month later the writer had died of his +wounds. With an exquisite felicity and strength the lines run, +expressing the strange and tragic joy of the "fighting man" in the +spring, which may be his last—in the night heavens—in the woodland +trees:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"The woodland trees that stand together<br /></span> +<span class="i6">They stand to him each one a friend;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">They gently speak in the windy weather;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">They guide to valley and ridge's end.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"The kestrel hovering by day<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And the little owls that call by night,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Bid him be swift and keen as they<br /></span> +<span class="i6">As keen of ear, as swift of sight.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"The blackbird sings to him, 'Brother, brother,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">If this be the last song you shall sing,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Sing well, for you may not sing another<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Brother, sing.'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"In dreary, doubtful waiting hours,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Before the brazen frenzy starts,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The horses show him nobler powers;—<br /></span> +<span class="i6">O patient eyes, courageous hearts!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"And when the burning moment breaks,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And all things else are out of mind<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And only Joy of Battle takes<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Him by the throat and makes him blind<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Through joy and blindness he shall know<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Not caring much to know, that still<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That it be not the Destined Will.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"The thundering line of battle stands,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And in the air Death moans and sings;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And Night shall fold him in soft wings."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A young man of another type, inheriting from the Cecils on the one side, +and from his grandfather, the first Lord Selborne, on the other, the +best traditions of English Conservatism and English +churchmanship—open-eyed, patriotic, devout—has been lost to the nation +in Robert A.S. Palmer, the second son of Lord and Lady Selborne, +affectionately known to an ardent circle of friends whose hopes were set +on him, as "Bobbie Palmer." He has fallen in the Mesopotamian campaign; +and of him, as of William Henry Gladstone, the grandson and heir of +England's great Liberal Minister, who fell in Flanders a year ago, it +may be said, as his Oxford contemporaries said of Sir Philip Sidney,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Honour and Fame are got about their graves,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And there sit mourning of each other's loss.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In one of his latest letters, quoted by a friend in a short biography, +Robert Palmer wrote:—"Who isn't weary to death of the war? I certainly +have been, for over a year; yes, and sorrowful almost unto death over +it, at times, as you doubtless have too. But of one thing I am and +always have been sure, that it is worth the cost and any cost there is +to come, to prevent Prussianism—which is Anti-Christ—controlling +Europe." The following eloquent passage written by an Oxford Fellow and +Tutor, in a series of short papers on the losses sustained by Oxford in +the war, is understood to refer to Mr. Palmer:—</p> + +<p>"To-night the bell tolls in the brain (<i>haud rediturus</i>) over one of the +noblest—if it be not a treason to discriminate—of all the dead one has +known who have died for England. Graciousness was in all his doings and +in all the workings of his mind. The music and gymnastic whereof Plato +wrote, that should attune the body to harmony with the mind, and +harmonise all the elements of the mind in a perfect unison, had done +their work upon him. He seemed—at any rate, to the eyes of those who +loved him, and they were many—to have the perfection of nature's +endowment: beauty of mind knit to beauty of body, and all informed by a +living spirit of affection, so that his presence was a benediction, and +a matter for thanksgiving that God had made men after this manner. So to +speak of him is perhaps to idealise him; but one can only idealise that +which suggests the ideal, and at the least he had a more perfect +participation in the ideal than falls to the general lot of humanity."</p> + +<p>Such he was: and now he too is dead. From the work to which he had gone, +thousands of miles away (a work of service, and of his Master's +service), he had hastened back to England, and for England he has died. +His tutor had once written in his copy of the Vulgate: "<i>Esto vir +fortis, et pugnemus pro populo nostro et pro civitate Dei nostri</i>." He +was strong; and he fought for both.</p> + +<p>Another Oxford man, Gilbert Talbot, a youngest son of the much-loved +Bishop of Winchester, will perhaps stand for many, in coming years, as +the pre-eminent type of first youth, youth with all its treasure of life +and promise unspent, poured out like spikenard in this war at the feet +of England. Already assured at Oxford of a brilliant career in +politics, a fine speaker, a hard worker, possessing by inheritance the +charm of two families, always in the public eye and ear, and no less +popular than famous, he had just landed in the United States when the +war broke out. He was going round the world with a friend, youth and +ambition high within him. He turned back without a moment's hesitation, +though soldiering had never been at all attractive to him, and after his +training went out to France. He was killed in Flanders in July last. Let +me give the story of his identification after death on the battle-field, +by his elder brother, Neville, Army Chaplain, and ex-Balliol tutor, as +Canon Scott Holland gave it in the <i>Commonwealth</i>:—</p> + +<p>"The attack had failed. There was never any hope of its succeeding, for +the machine-guns of the Germans were still in full play, with their fire +unimpaired. The body had to lie there where it had fallen. Only, his +brother could not endure to let it lie unhonoured or unblessed. After a +day and a half of anxious searching for exact details, he got to the +nearest trench by the 'murdered' wood, which the shells had now smashed +to pieces. There he found some shattered Somersets, who begged him to go +no farther. But he heard a voice within him bidding him risk it, and the +call of the blood drove him on. Creeping out of the far end of the +trench, as dusk fell, he crawled through the grass on hands and knees, +in spite of shells and snipers, dropping flat on the ground as the +flares shot up from the German trenches. And, at last, thirty yards away +in the open ... he knew that he was close on what he sought. Two yards +farther, he found it. He could stroke with his hand the fair young head +that he knew so well; he could feel for pocket-book and prayer-book, and +the badge and the whistle. He could breathe a prayer of benediction ... +and then crawl back on his perilous way in the night, having done all +that man could do for the brother whom he had loved so fondly; and +enabled, now, to tell those at home that Gilbert was dead indeed, but +that he had died the death that a soldier would love to die, leaving his +body the nearest of all who fell, to the trench that he had been told to +take."</p> + +<p>Again, of Charles Alfred Lister, Lord Ribblesdale's eldest son, an +Oxford friend says: "There were almost infinite possibilities in his +future." He was twice wounded at the Dardanelles, was then offered a +post of importance in the Foreign Office, refused it, and went back to +the front—to die. But among the hundreds of memorial notices issued by +the Oxford Colleges, the same note recurs and recurs, of unhesitating, +uncalculated sacrifice. Older men, and younger men, Don, and +under-graduate, lads of nineteen and twenty, and those who were already +school-mastering, or practising at the Bar, or in business, they felt no +doubts, they made no delays. Their country called, and none failed in +that great <i>Adsum</i>.</p> + +<p>Cambridge of course has the same story to tell. One takes the short, +pathetic biographies almost at random from the ever-lengthening record, +contributed by the colleges. Captain J. Lusk, 6th Cameronians, was +already Director of an important steel works, engaged in Government +business when war broke out, and might have honourably claimed +exemption. Instead he offered himself at once on mobilisation, and went +out with his battalion to France last spring. On the 15th of June, at +Festubert, he was killed in volunteering to bring what was left of a +frightfully battered battalion out of action. "What seems to me my duty +as an officer," he once wrote to a friend, "is to carry my sword across +the barriers of death clean and bright." "This," says the friend who +writes the notice, "he has done." Lieutenant Le Blanc Smith, of Trinity, +machine-gun officer, was struck in the forehead by a sniper's bullet +while reconnoitring. His General and brother officers write:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>He was a very fine young officer.... Every one loved + him.... His men would do anything for him....</i></p></div> + +<p>And the sergeant of his machine-gun brigade says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Although only a non-commissioned officer myself, I feel I + have lost my brother, because he was so awfully good and + kind to me and us all</i>.</p></div> + +<p>Lieutenant Hamilton, aged twenty-five, says in a last letter to his +father:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Just a line while the beginning of the great battle is + going on. It is wonderful how peaceful one feels amid it + all. Any moment one may be put out of action, but one does + not worry. That quiet time alone with God at the Holy + Communion was most comforting</i>.</p></div> + +<p>Immediately after writing these words, the writer fell in action. +Captain Clarke, a famous Cambridge athlete, President of the C.U.A.C., +bled to death—according to one account—from a frightful wound received +in the advance near Hooge on September 25th. His last recorded act—the +traditional act of the dying soldier!—was to give a drink from his +flask to a wounded private. Of the general action of Cambridge men, the +Master of Christ's writes: "Nothing has been more splendid than the way +the young fellows have come forward; not only the athletes and the +healthy, but in all cases the most unlikely men have rushed to the +front, and have done brilliantly. The mortality, however, has been +appalling. In an ordinary way one loses one killed to eight or nine +wounded; but in this war the number of Cambridge men killed and missing +practically equals the number of wounded." Of the effect upon the +University an eye-witness says: "Eighty per cent of the College rooms +are vacant. Rows and rows of houses in Cambridge are to let. All the +Junior Fellows are on service in one capacity or another, and a great +many of the Seniors are working in Government Offices or taking school +posts"—so that the school education of the Country may be carried on. +Altogether, nearly 12,000 Cambridge men are serving; 980 have been +wounded; 780 have been killed; 92 are missing.</p> + +<p>As to one's friends and kinsfolk, let me recall the two gallant +grandsons of my dear old friend and publisher, George Murray Smith, the +original publisher of <i>Jane Eyre</i>, friend of Charlotte Brontë, and +creator of the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>. The elder one, who +had just married before going out, fought all through the retreat from +Mons, and fell in one of the early actions on the Flanders front. "He +led us all the way," said one of his men afterwards. All the way!—All +through the immortal rear-guard actions of August—only to fall, when +the tide had turned, and the German onslaught on Paris had been finally +broken! "In all my soldiering," writes a brother officer, "I have never +seen a warmer feeling between men and their officer." "Was he not," asks +a well-known Eton master, "that tall, smiling, strong, gentle-mannered +boy at White-Thomson's?"—possessing an "affectionate regard and feeling +for others which boys as boys, especially if strong and popular, don't +always, or indeed often possess." The poor parents were uncertain as to +his fate for many weeks, but he finally died of his wounds in a hospital +behind the German lines. Then, little more than six months later came +the second blow. Geoffrey, the younger brother, aged nineteen, fell on +September 29th, near Vermelles. Nothing could be more touching than the +letters from officers and men about this brave, sweet-tempered boy. +"Poor old regiment!" writes the Colonel to the lad's father—"we were +badly knocked about, and I brought out only 3 officers and 375 men, but +they did magnificently, and it was thanks to officers like your son, who +put the honour of the regiment before all thought of fatigue or personal +danger. Such a gallant lad! We all loved him." A private, the boy's +soldier-servant, who fought with him, writes: "I wish you could have +seen him in that trench.... All the men say that he deserved the V.C.... +I don't know if we are going back to those trenches any more, but if we +do, I am going to try and lay Mr. Geoffrey to rest in some quiet +place.... I cannot bear to think that I shall not be able to be with him +any more."</p> + +<p>But how they crowd upon the mind—the "unreturning brave"! Take our +friends and neighbours in this quiet Hertfordshire country. All round us +the blows have fallen—again and again the only son—sometimes two +brothers out of three—the most brilliant—the best beloved. And I see +still the retreating figure of a dear nephew of my own, as he vanished +under the trees waving his hand to us in March last. A boy made of +England's best—who after two years in Canada, and at the beginning of +what must have been a remarkable career, heard the call of the Mother +Country, and rushed home at once. He was transferred to an English +regiment, and came to say good-bye to us in March. It was impossible to +think of Christopher's coming to harm—such life and force, such wisdom +and character also, in his strong, handsome face and thoughtful eyes! We +talked of the future of Canada—not much of the war. Then he vanished, +and I could not feel afraid. But one night in May, near Bailleul, he +went out with a listening party between the trenches, was shot through +both legs by a sniper, and otherwise injured—carried back to hospital, +and after a few hours' vain hope, sank peacefully into eternity, knowing +only that he had done his duty and fearing nothing. "Romance and +melodrama," says Professor Gilbert Murray, in one of the noblest and +most moving utterances of the war, "were once a memory—broken fragments +living on of heroic ages in the past. We live no longer upon fragments +and memories, we have entered ourselves upon an heroic age.... As for me +personally, there is one thought that is always with me—the thought +that other men are dying for me, better men, younger, with more hope in +their lives, many of them men whom I have taught and loved." The +orthodox Christian "will be familiar with that thought of One who loved +you dying for you. I would like to say that now I seem to be familiar +with the thought that something innocent, something great, something +that loved me, is dying, and is dying daily for me. That is the sort of +community we now are—a community in which one man dies for his brother; +and underneath all our hatreds, our little anger and quarrels, we <i>are</i> +brothers, who are ready to seal our brotherhood with blood. It is for +us these men are dying—for the women, the old men, and the rejected +men—and to preserve civilisation and the common life which we are +keeping alive, or building."</p> + +<p>So much for the richer and the educated class. As to the rank and file, +the Tommies who are fighting and dying for England in precisely the same +spirit as those who have had ten times their opportunities in this +unequal world, I have seen them myself within a mile of the trenches, +marching quietly up through the fall of the March evening to take their +places in that line, where, every night, however slack the fighting, a +minimum of so many casualties per mile, so many hideous or fatal +injuries by bomb or shell fire, is practically invariable. Not the +conscript soldiers of a military nation, to whom the thought of fighting +has been perforce familiar from childhood! Men, rather, who had never +envisaged fighting, to whom it is all new, who at bottom, however firm +their will, or wonderful their courage, hate war, and think it a +loathsome business. "I do not find it easy," writes a chaplain at the +front who knows his men and has shared all the dangers of their +life—"to give incidents and sayings. I could speak of the courage of +the wounded brought in after battle. How many times has one heard them +telling the doctor to attend to others before themselves! I could tell +you of a very shy and nervous boy who, after an attack, dug, himself +alone, with his intrenching tool, a little trench, under continuous +fire, up which trench he afterwards crept backwards and forwards +carrying ammunition to an advanced post; or of another who sat beside a +wounded comrade for several hours under snipers' fire, and somehow built +him a slight protection until night fell and rescue came. Such incidents +are merely specimens of thousands which are never known. Indeed it is +the heroism of <i>all</i> the men <i>all</i> the time which has left the most +lasting impression on my mind after thirteen months at the war. No one +can conceive the strain which the daily routine of trench life entails, +unless one has been among the men. They never show the slightest sign of +unwillingness, and they do what they are told when and where they are +told without questioning; no matter what the conditions or dangers, they +come up smiling and cheery through it all—full of 'grouse,' perhaps, +but that is the soldier's privilege!... It is, I think, what we all are +feeling and are so proud of—this unbreakable spirit of self-sacrifice +in the daily routine of trench warfare. We are proud of it because it is +the highest of all forms of self-sacrifice, for it is not the act of a +moment when the blood is up or the excitement of battle is at fever +heat; but it is demanded of the soldier, day in and day out, and shown +by him coolly and deliberately, day in and day out, with death always at +hand. We are proud of it, too, because it is so surely a sign of the +magnificent <i>'moral'</i> of our troops—and <i>moral</i> is going to play a very +leading part as the war proceeds.... What is inspiring this splendid +disregard of self is partly the certainty that the Cause is Right; +partly, it is a hidden joy of conscience which makes them know that they +would be unhappy if they were not doing their bit—and partly (I am +convinced of this, too,) it is a deepening faith in the Founder of their +Faith Whom so many appreciate and value as never before, because they +realise that even He has not shirked that very mill of suffering through +which they are now passing themselves."</p> + +<p>A few days ago, I accompanied a woman official distributing some +leaflets on behalf of a Government department, in some visits to +families living in a block of model dwellings somewhere in South London. +We called on nine families. In every single case the man of the family +had gone, or was expecting to go, to the war; except in one case, where +a man who, out of pure patriotism and at great personal difficulty had +joined the Volunteer Reserve at the outbreak of war, had strained his +heart in trench-digging and was now medically unfit, to his own bitter +disappointment. There was some grumbling in the case of one young wife +that her husband should be forced to go before the single men whom she +knew; but in the main the temper that showed itself bore witness both to +the feeling and the intelligence that our people are bringing to bear on +the war. One woman said her husband was a sergeant in a well-known +regiment. He thought the world of his men, and whenever one was killed, +he must be at the burying. "He can't bear, you know"—she added +shyly—"they should feel alone." She had three brothers-in-law +"out"—one recently killed. One was an ambulance driver under the +R.A.M.C. He had five small children, but had volunteered. "He doesn't +say much about the war, except that 'Tommies are wonderful. They never +complain.'" She notices a change in his character. He was always good to +his wife and children—"but now he's splendid!" The brother of another +woman had been a jockey in Belgium, had liked the country and the +people. When war broke out he "felt he must fight for them." He came +home at once and enlisted. Another brother had been a stoker on a +war-ship at the Dardanelles, and was in the famous landing of April 25. +Bullets "thick and fast like hailstorm. Terrible times collecting the +dead! Her brother had worked hard forming burial parties. Was now +probably going to the Tigris. Wrote jolly letters!"</p> + +<p>Then there was the little woman born and bred in the Army, with all the +pride of the Army—a familiar type. Husband a sergeant in the +Guards—was gymnastic instructor at a northern town—and need not have +gone to the war, but felt "as a professional soldier" he ought to go. +Three brothers in the Army—one a little drummer-boy of sixteen, badly +wounded in the retreat from Mons. Her sailor brother had died—probably +from exposure, in the North Sea. The most cheerful, plucky little +creature! "We are Army people, and must expect to fight."</p> + +<p>Well—you say you "would like America to visualise the effort, the +self-sacrifice of the English men and women who are determined to see +this war through." There was, I thought, a surprising amount of cheerful +effort, of <i>understanding</i> self-sacrifice in those nine homes, where my +companion's friendly talk drew out the family facts without difficulty. +And I am convinced that if I had spent days instead of hours in +following her through the remaining tenements in these huge and populous +blocks the result would have been practically the same. <i>The nation is +behind the war, and behind the Government</i>—solidly determined to win +this war, and build a new world after it.</p> + +<p>As to the work of our women, I have described something of it in the +munitions area, and if this letter were not already too long, I should +like to dwell on much else—the army of maidens, who, as V.A.D.'s +(members of Voluntary Aid Detachments), trained by the Red Cross, have +come trooping from England's most luxurious or comfortable homes, and +are doing invaluable work in hundreds of hospitals; to begin with, the +most menial scrubbing and dish-washing, and by now the more ambitious +and honourable—but not more indispensable—tasks of nursing itself. In +this second year of the war, the first army of V.A.D.'s, now promoted, +has everywhere been succeeded by a fresh levy, aglow with the same +eagerness and the same devotion as the first. Or I could dwell on the +women's hospitals—especially the remarkable hospital in Endell Street, +entirely officered by women; where some hundreds of male patients accept +the surgical and medical care of women doctors, and adapt themselves to +the light and easy discipline maintained by the women of the staff, with +entire confidence and grateful good-will. To see a woman dentist at work +on a soldier's mouth, and a woman quartermaster presiding over her +stores, and managing, besides, everything pertaining to the lighting, +heating, and draining of the hospital, is one more sign of these changed +and changing times. The work done by the Scottish Women's Hospital in +Serbia will rank as one of the noblest among the minor episodes of the +war. The magnificent work of British nurses, everywhere, I have already +spoken of. And everywhere, too, among the camps in England and abroad, +behind the fighting lines, or at the great railway-stations here or in +France, through which the troops pass backwards and forwards, hundreds +of women have been doing ardent yet disciplined service—giving long +hours in crowded canteens or Y.M.C.A. huts to just those small kindly +offices, which bring home to the British soldier, more effectively than +many things more ambitious, what the British nation feels towards him. +The war has put an end, so far as the richer class is concerned, to the +busy idleness and all the costly make-believes of peace. No one gives +"dinner-parties" in the old sense any more; the very word "reception" is +dying out. The high wages that munition-work has brought to the women of +the working class, show themselves, no doubt, in some foolish dressing. +"You should see the hats round here on a Saturday!" said the Manager of +a Midland factory. But I am bound to say he spoke of it proudly. The +hats were for him a testimony to the wages paid by his firm; and he +would probably have argued, on the girls' part, that after the long +hours and hard work of the week, the hats were a perfectly legitimate +"fling," and human nature must out. Certainly the children of the +workers are better fed and better clothed, which speaks so far well for +the mothers; and recent Government inquiries seem to show that in spite +of universal employment, and high wages, the drunkenness of the United +Kingdom as a whole is markedly less, while at the same +time—uncomfortable paradox!—the amount of alcohol consumed is greater. +One hears stories of extravagance among those who have been making +"war-profits," but they are less common this year than last; and as to +my own experience, all my friends are wearing their old clothes, and the +West End dressmakers, poor things, in view of a large section of the +public which regards it as a crime "to buy anything new" are either +shutting down till better days, or doing a greatly restricted business. +Taxation has grown much heavier, and will be more and more severely +felt. Yet very few grumble, and there is a general and determined +cutting down of the trappings and appendages of life, which is to the +good of us all.</p> + +<p>Undoubtedly, there is a very warm and wide-spread feeling among us that +in this war the women of the nation have done uncommonly well! You will +remember a similar stir of grateful recognition in America after your +War of Secession, connected with the part played in the nursing and +sanitation of the war by the women of the Northern States. The feeling +here may well have an important social and political influence when the +war is over; especially among the middle and upper classes. It may be +counter-balanced to some extent in the industrial class, by the +disturbance and anxiety caused in many trades, but especially in the +engineering trades, by that great invasion of women I have tried to +describe. But that the war will leave <i>some</i> deep mark on that long +evolution of the share of women in our public life, which began in the +teeming middle years of the last century, is, I think, certain.</p> + +<p><i>May 2nd</i>.—So I come to the end of the task you set me!—with what gaps +and omissions to look back upon, no one knows so well as myself. This +letter starts on its way to you at a critical moment for your great +country, when the issue between the United States and Germany is still +unsettled. What will happen? Will Germany give way? If not, what sort of +relations will shape themselves, and how quickly, between the Central +Empires and America? To express myself on this great matter is no part +of my task; although no English man or woman but will watch its +development with a deep and passionate interest. What may be best for +you, we cannot tell; the military and political bearings of a breach +between the United States and Germany on our own fortunes are by no +means clear to us. But what we <i>do</i> want, in any case, is the sympathy, +the moral support and co-operation of your people. We have to thank you +for a thousand generosities to our wounded; we bless you—as comrades +with you in that old Christendom which even this war shall not +destroy—for what you have done in Belgium—but we want you to +understand the heart of England in this war, and not to be led away by +the superficial difficulties and disputes that no great and free nation +escapes in time of crisis. Sympathy with France—France, the invaded, +the heroic—is easy for America—for us all. She is the great tragic +figure of the war—the whole world does her homage. We are not +invaded—and so less tragic, less appealing. But we are fighting the +fight which is the fight of all freemen everywhere—against the +wantonness of military power, against the spirit that tears up treaties +and makes peaceful agreement between nations impossible—against a +cruelty and barbarism in war which brings our civilisation to shame. We +have a right to your sympathy—you who are the heirs of Washington and +Lincoln, the trustees of liberty in the New World as we, with France, +are in the Old. You are concerned—you must be concerned—in the triumph +of the ideals of ordered freedom and humane justice over the ideals of +unbridled force and ruthless cruelty, as they have been revealed in this +war, to the horror of mankind. The nation that can never, to all time, +wash from its hands the guilt of the Belgium crime, the blood of the +<i>Lusitania</i> victims, of the massacres of Louvain and Dinant, of Aerschot +and Termonde, may some day deserve our pity. To-day it has to be met and +conquered by a will stronger than its own, in the interests of +civilisation itself.</p> + +<p>This last week, at the close of which I am despatching this final +letter, has been a sombre week for England. It has seen the squalid +Irish rising, with its seven days' orgy of fire and bloodshed in Dublin; +it has seen the surrender at Kut of General Townshend and his starving +men; it has seen also a strong demonstration in Parliament of discontent +with certain phases of the conduct of the war. And yet, how shall I +convey to you the paradox that we in England—our soldiers at the front, +and instructed opinion at home—have never been so certain of ultimate +victory as we now are? It is the big facts that matter: the steady +growth of British resources, in men and munitions, toward a maximum +which we—and Russia—are only approaching, while that of the Central +Empires is past; the deepening unity of an Empire which is being forged +anew by danger and trial, and by the spirit of its sons all over the +world—a unity against which the Irish outrage, paid for by German +money, disavowed by all that is truly Ireland, Unionist or Nationalist, +and instantly effaced, as a mere demonstration, by the gallantry at the +same moment of Irish soldiers in the battle-line—lifts its treacherous +hand in vain; the increasing and terrible pressure of the British +blockade of Germany, equivalent, as some one has lately said, every +twenty-four hours that it is maintained, to a successful action in the +field; the magnificent resistance of an indomitable France; the mounting +strength of a reorganised Russia. This island-state—let me repeat it +with emphasis—was not prepared for, and had no expectation of a +Continental war, such as we are now fighting. The fact cries aloud from +the records of the struggle; it will command the ear of history; and it +acquits us for ever from the guilt of the vast catastrophe. But Great +Britain has no choice now but to fight to the end—and win. She knows +it, and those who disparage her are living in a blind world. As to the +difficulty of the task—as to our own failures and mistakes in learning +how to achieve it—we have probably fewer illusions than those who +criticise us. <i>But we shall do it—or perish</i>.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><i>May 5th.</i>—Since the preceding lines were written, the "Military +Service Bill" bringing to the Colours "every British male subject" +between the ages of 18 and 41, except when legally exempted, has passed +the House of Commons by an overwhelming majority, and will be law +immediately. And the Prime Minister informed Parliament three days ago, +that "the total naval and military effort of the Empire since the +beginning of the war exceeds five million men."</p> + +<p>With these two facts, these Letters may fitly close. Those who know +England best, her history, and the temperament of her people, will best +appreciate what they mean.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2> + +<h4>An Epilogue</h4> + + +<p><i>August 16, 1916.</i></p> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>It is now three months since I finished the six preceding Letters, +written in response to an urgent call from America; nor did I then +anticipate any renewal of my work. But while a French translation of the +six Letters has been passing through the Press, an appeal has been made +to me from France to add an Epilogue, or supplementary Letter, briefly +recapitulating the outstanding facts or events which in those three +months have marked the British share in the war, and played their part +in the immense transformation of the general outlook which has taken +place during those months. Not an easy task! One thinks first of one's +own inadequacy; and then remembers, as before, that one is a unit in a +nation under orders. I must therefore do what I can. And perhaps other +readers, also, of this little book, in America and England, as they look +back over the ever-changing scene of the war, will not find this renewed +attempt to summarise Britain's part in it as it has developed up to the +present date (August 16, 1916) unwelcome. The outstanding facts of the +last three months, as I see them, are, for Great Britain:—</p> + +<p>1. The immense increase in the output of British Munitions of War;</p> + +<p>2. The Naval Battle of Jutland;</p> + +<p>3. The Allied offensive on the Somme.</p> + +<p>The first and third of these events are, of course, so far as the latter +concerns Great Britain, the natural and logical outcome of that +"England's Effort" of which I tried—how imperfectly!—to give a +connected account three months ago.</p> + +<p>At that time the ever-mounting British effort, though it had reached +colossal dimensions, though everybody aware of it was full of a +steadily growing confidence as to its final result, had still to be +tested by those greater actions to which it was meant to lead. After the +local failures at the Dardanelles, and in Mesopotamia, Great Britain was +again, for a time, everywhere on the defensive, though it was a very +vigorous and active defensive; and the magnificent stand made by the +French at Verdun was not only covering France herself with glory, and +kindling the hearts of all who love her throughout the world, but under +its shield the new armies of Great Britain were still being steadily +perfected, and wonderfully armed; time was being given to Russia for +reorganisation and re-equipment, and time was all she wanted; while +Germany, vainly dashing her strength in men and guns against the heights +of Verdun, in the hope of provoking her enemies on the Western front to +a premature offensive, doomed to exhaustion before it had achieved its +end, was met by the iron resolve of both the French and British +Governments, advised by the French and British Commanders in the field, +to begin that offensive only at their own time and place, when the +initiative was theirs, and everything was ready.</p> + +<p>But the scene has greatly altered. Let me take Munitions first. In +February, it will be remembered by those who have read the preceding +Letters, I was a visitor, by the kindness of the Ministry of Munitions, +then in Mr. Lloyd George's hands, to a portion of the munitions +field—in the Midlands, on the Tyne, and on the Clyde. At that moment, +Great Britain, as far as armament was concerned, was in the mid-stream +of a gigantic movement which had begun in the summer of 1915, set going +by the kindling energy of Mr. Lloyd George, and seconded by the roused +strength of a nation which was not the industrial pioneer of the whole +modern world for nothing, however keenly others, during the last +half-century, have pressed upon—or in some regions passed—her. +Everywhere I found new workshops already filled with workers, a large +proportion of them women, already turning out a mass of shell which +would have seemed incredible to soldiers and civilians alike during the +first months of the war; while the tale of howitzers, trench-mortars, +machine-guns, and the rest, was running up week by week, in the vast +extensions already added to the other works. But everywhere, too, I saw +huge, empty workshops, waiting for their machines, or just setting them +up; and everywhere the air was full of rumours of the new industrial +forces—above all, of the armies of women—that were to be brought to +bear. New towns were being built for them; their workplaces and their +tools were being got ready for them, as in that vast filling factory—or +rather town—on the Clyde which I described in my third Letter. But in +many quarters they were not yet there; only one heard, as it were, the +tramp of their advancing feet.</p> + +<p>But to-day! Those great empty workshops that I saw in February, in the +making, or the furnishing, are now full of workers and machines; and +thousands like them all over the country. Last night (Aug. 15), the new +Minister of Munitions, Mr. Montagu, who, a few weeks ago, succeeded Mr. +Lloyd George, now Minister for War, rendered an account of his +department up to date, which amazed even the House of Commons, and will +surely stir the minds of men throughout the British Empire with a just +and reasonable pride. The "effete" and "degenerate" nation has roused +herself indeed!</p> + +<p>Here is the bare résumé of the Minister's statement:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Ammunition</i>.—The British output of ammunition at the + beginning of the war was intended for an army of 200,000 + men.</p> + +<p> Naturally, the output rose steadily throughout the first + year of war.</p> + +<p> <i>But</i>—the same output which in 1914-15 took 12 months to + produce could now be produced—</p> + +<div> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="output"> +<tr><td align='left'>As to 18-pounder ammunition,</td><td align='left'>in 3 weeks</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> " Field howitzer"</td><td align='left'>in 2 weeks</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> " Medium gun and howitzer ammunition,</td><td align='left'>in 11 days</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> " Heavy shell,</td><td align='left'>in 4 days</td></tr> +</table></div> + +<p> We are sending over to France <i>every week as</i> much as the + whole pre-war stock of land service ammunition in the + country.</p></div> + +<p>As to <i>guns</i>, I would ask my readers to turn back to the second and +third chapters in this little book, which show something of the human +side and the daily detail of this great business, and then to look at +this summary:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Every month, now</i>, we are turning out nearly twice as many + big guns as were in existence for land service—<i>i.e.</i>, not + naval guns—when the Ministry of Munitions came into being + (June, 1915).</p> + +<p> Between June, 1915, and June, 1916, the monthly output of + <i>heavy guns</i> has increased <i>6-fold</i>—and the present output + will soon be doubled.</p> + +<p> For every 100 <i>eighteen-pounders</i> turned out in the first 10 + months of the war, we are now turning out 500.</p> + +<p> We are producing 18 times as many <i>machine-guns</i>.</p> + +<p> Of <i>rifles</i>—the most difficult of all war material to + produce quickly in large quantities—our weekly home + production is now 3 times as great as it was a year ago. We + are supplying our Army overseas with rifles and machine-guns + entirely from home sources.</p> + +<p> Of <i>small-arms ammunition</i> our output is 3 times as great as + a year ago.</p> + +<p> We are producing 66 times as much <i>high explosive</i> as at the + beginning of 1915; and our output of <i>bombs</i> is 33 times as + great as it was last year.</p></div> + +<p>At the same time, what is Great Britain doing <i>for her Allies</i>?</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The loss of her Northern Provinces, absorbed by the German + invasion, has deprived France of three-quarters of her + steel. We are now sending to France <i>one-third of the whole + British production of shell-steel</i>.</p> + +<p> We are also supplying the Allies with the <i>constituents of + high explosive</i> in very large quantities, prepared by our + National factories.</p> + +<p> We are sending to the Allies <i>millions of tons of coal and + coke every month</i>, large quantities of machinery, and 20 per + cent. of our whole production of machine tools + (indispensable to shell manufacture).</p> + +<p> We are supplying Russia with millions of pairs of Army + boots.</p></div> + +<p>And in the matter of ammunition, we have not only enormously increased +the quantity produced—we have greatly improved its quality. The +testimony of the French experts—themselves masters in these arts of +death—as conveyed through M. Thomas, is emphatic. The new British heavy +guns are "admirably made"—"most accurate"—"most efficient."</p> + +<p>Meanwhile a whole series of chemical problems with regard to high +explosives have been undertaken and solved by Lord Moulton's department. +If it was ever true that science was neglected by the War Office, it is +certainly true no longer; and the soldiers at the front, who have to +make practical use of what our scientific chemists and our explosive +factories at home are producing, are entirely satisfied.</p> + +<p>For that, as Mr. Montagu points out, is the sole and supreme test. How +has the vast activity of the new Ministry of Munitions—an activity +which the nation owes—let me repeat it—to the initiative, the +compelling energy, of Mr. Lloyd George—affected our armies in the +field?</p> + +<p>The final answer to that question is not yet. The Somme offensive is +still hammering at the German gates; I shall presently give an outline +of its course from its opening on July 1st down to the present. But +meanwhile what can be said is this.</p> + +<p>The expenditure of ammunition which enabled us to sweep through the +German first lines, in the opening days of this July, almost with ease, +was colossal beyond all precedent. The total amount of heavy guns and +ammunition manufactured by Great Britain in the first ten months of the +war, from August, 1914, to June 1, 1915, would not have kept the British +bombardment on the Somme going <i>for a single day</i>. That gives some idea +of it.</p> + +<p>Can we keep it up? The German papers have been consoling themselves with +the reflection that so huge an effort must have exhausted our supplies. +On the contrary, says Mr. Montagu. <i>The output of the factories, week by +week, now covers the expenditure in the field</i>. No fear now, that as at +Loos, as at Neuve Chapelle, and as on a thousand other smaller +occasions, British success in the field should be crippled and stopped +by shortage of gun and shell!</p> + +<p>By whom has this result been brought about? By that army of British +workmen—and workwomen—which Mr. Lloyd George in little more than one +short year has mobilised throughout the country. The Ministry of +Munitions is now employing <i>three millions and a half of workers</i>—(a +year ago it was not much more than a million and a half)—of whom +400,000 <i>are women</i>; and the staff of the Ministry has grown from +3,000—the figure given in my earlier letters—to 5,000, just as that +army of women, which has sprung as it were out of the earth at the call +of the nation, has almost doubled since I wrote in April last. Well may +the new Minister say that our toilers in factory and forge have had some +share in the glorious recent victories of Russia, Italy, and France! Our +men and our women have contributed to the re-equipment of those gallant +armies of Russia, which, a month or six weeks earlier than they were +expected to move, have broken up the Austrian front, and will soon be +once more in Western Poland, perhaps in East Prussia! The Italian Army +has drawn from our workshops and learnt from our experiments. The +Serbian Army has been re-formed and re-fitted.</p> + +<p>Let us sum up. The Germans, with years of preparation behind them, made +this war a war of machines. England, in that as in other matters, was +taken by surprise. But our old and proud nation, which for generations +led the machine industry of the world, as soon as it realised the +challenge—and we were slow to realise it!—met it with an impatient and +a fierce energy which is every month attaining a greater momentum and a +more wonderful result. The apparently endless supply of munitions which +now feeds the British front, and the <i>comparative</i> lightness of the +human cost at which the incredibly strong network of the German trenches +on their whole first line system was battered into ruin, during the last +days of June and the first days of July, 1916:—it is to effects like +these that all that vast industrial effort throughout Great Britain, of +which I saw and described a fragment three months ago, has now steadily +and irresistibly brought us.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>This then is perhaps the first point to notice in the landscape of the +war, as we look back on the last three months. For on it everything +else, Naval and Military, depends:—on the incredibly heightened output +of British workshops, in all branches of war material, which has been +attained since the summer of last year. In it, as I have just said, we +see an <i>effect</i> of a great cause—<i>i.e.</i>, of the "effort" made by Great +Britain, since the war broke out, to bring her military strength in men +and munitions to a point, sufficient, in combination with the strength +of her Allies, for victory over the Central Powers, who after long and +deliberate preparation had wantonly broken the European peace. The +"effort" was for us a new one, provoked by Germany, and it will have +far-reaching civil consequences when the war is over.</p> + +<p>In the great Naval victory now known as the Battle of Jutland, on the +other hand, we have a fresh demonstration on a greater scale than ever +before, of that old, that root fact, without which indeed the success of +the Allied effort in other directions would be impossible—<i>i.e., the +overwhelming strength of the British Navy</i>, and its mastery of the Sea.</p> + +<p>In a few earlier pages of this book, I have described a visit which the +British Admiralty allowed me to make in February last to a portion of +the Fleet, then resting in a northern harbour. On that occasion, at the +Vice-Admiral's luncheon-table, there sat beside me on my right, a tall +spare man with the intent face of one to whom life has been a great arid +strenuous adventure, accepted in no boyish mood, but rather in the +spirit of the scientific explorer, pushing endlessly from one problem to +the next, and passionate for all experience that either unveils the +world, or tests himself. We talked of the war, and my projected journey. +"I envy you!" he said, his face lighting up. "I would give anything to +see our Army in the field." My neighbour was Rear-Admiral Sir Robert +Arbuthnot, commanding the First Cruiser Squadron, who went down with his +flagship <i>H.M.S. Defence</i>, in the Battle of Jutland, on the 31st of May +last, while passing between the British and German fleets, under a very +heavy fire. "It is probable," said Admiral Jellicoe's despatch, "that +Sir Robert Arbuthnot, during his engagement with the enemy's light +cruisers, and in his desire to complete their destruction, was not aware +of the approach of the enemy's heavy ships, owing to the mist, until he +found himself in close proximity to the main fleet, and before he could +withdraw his ships, they were caught under a heavy fire and disabled." +So, between the fleets of Germany and England, amid the mists of the May +evening, and the storm and smoke of battle, my courteous neighbour of +three months before found, with all his shipmates, that grave in the +"unharvested sea" which England never forgets to honour, and from which +no sailor shrinks. At the same luncheon-table were two other Admirals +and many junior Officers, who took part in the same great action; and +looking back upon it, and upon the notes which I embodied in my first +Letter, I see more vividly than ever how every act and thought of those +brave and practised men, among whom I passed those few—to me—memorable +hours, were conditioned by an intense <i>expectation</i>, that trained +prevision of what must come, which, in a special degree, both stirs and +steadies the mind of the modern sailor.</p> + +<p>But one thing perhaps they had not foreseen—that by a combination of +mishaps in the first reporting of the battle, the great action, which +has really demonstrated, once and for all, the invincible supremacy of +Great Britain at sea, which has reduced the German Fleet to months of +impotence, put the invasion of these islands finally out of the +question, and enabled the British blockade to be drawn round Germany +with a yet closer and sterner hand, was made to appear, in the first +announcements of it, almost a defeat. The news of our losses—our heavy +losses—came first—came almost alone. The Admiralty, with the stern +conscience of the British official mind, announced them as they came +in—bluntly—with little or no qualification. A shock of alarm went +through England! For what had we paid so sore a price? Was the return +adequate, and not only to our safety, but to our prestige?</p> + +<p>There were a few hours when both Great Britain—outside the handful of +men who knew—and her friends throughout the world, hung on the answer. +Meanwhile the German lie, which converted a defeat for Germany into a +"victory," got at least twenty-four hours' start, and the Imperial +Chancellor made quick and sturdy use of it when he extracted a War Loan +of £600,000,000 from a deluded and jubilant Reichstag. Then the news +came in from one quarter after another of the six-mile battle-line, from +one unit after another of the greatest sea-battle Britain had ever +fought, and by the 3rd or 4th of June, England, drawing half-ironic +breath over her own momentary misgiving, had realised the +truth—first—that the German Fleet on the 31st had only escaped total +destruction by the narrowest margin, and by the help of mist and +darkness; secondly—that its losses were, relatively far greater, and +in all probability, absolutely, greater than our own; thirdly—that +after the British battle-fleet had severed the German navy from its +base, the latter had been just able, under cover of darkness, to break +round the British ships, and fly hard to shelter, pursued by our +submarines and destroyers through the night, till it arrived at +Wilhelmshaven a battered and broken host, incapable at least for months +to come of any offensive action against Great Britain or her Allies. +Impossible henceforth—for months to come—to send a German squadron +sufficiently strong to harass Russia in the Baltic! Impossible to +interfere successfully with the passage of Britain's new armies across +the seas! Impossible to dream any longer of invading English coasts! The +British Fleet holds the North Sea more strongly than it has ever held +it; and behind the barbed wire defences of Wilhelmshaven or Heligoland +the German Fleet has been nursing its wounds.</p> + +<p>Some ten weeks have passed, and as these results have become plain to +all the world, the German lie, or what remained of it, has begun to +droop, even in the country of its birth. "Do not let us suppose," says +Captain Persius—the most honest of German naval critics, in a recent +article—"that we have shaken the sea-power of England. That would be +foolishness." While Mr. Balfour, the most measured, the most veracious +of men, speaking only a few days ago to the representatives of the +Dominion Parliaments, who have been visiting England, says quietly—"the +growth of our Navy, since the outbreak of war, which has gone on, and +which at this moment is still going on, is something of which I do not +believe the general public has the slightest conception."</p> + +<p>For the general public has, indeed, but vague ideas of what is happening +day by day and week by week in the great shipyards of the Clyde, the +Tyne, and the Mersey. But there, all the same, the workmen—and +workwomen—of Great Britain—(for women are taking an ever-increasing +share in the lighter tasks of naval engineering)—are adding +incessantly to the sea-power of this country, acquiescing in a +Government control, a loosening of trade custom, a dilution and +simplification of skilled labour, which could not have been dreamt of +before the war. At the same time they are meeting the appeal of +Ministers to give up or postpone the holidays they have so richly +earned, for the sake of their sons and brothers in the trenches, with a +dogged "aye, aye!" in which there is a note of profound understanding, +of invincible and personal determination, but rarely heard in the early +days of the war.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>So much for the Workshops and the Navy. Now before I turn to the New +Armies and the Somme offensive, let us look for a moment at the present +facts of British War Finance. By April last, the date of my sixth +Letter, we had raised 2,380 millions sterling, for the purposes of the +war; we had lent 500 millions to our Allies, and we were spending about +5 millions a day on the war. According to a statement recently made by +the Chancellor of the Exchequer (August 10), by March next our debt will +have risen to 3,440 millions sterling, 1,060 millions more than it stood +at in March last; our advances to our Allies will have increased to 800 +millions, while our daily war expenditure remains about the same.</p> + +<p>Mr. McKenna's tone in announcing these figures was extraordinarily +cheerful. "We have every reason," he said, amid the applause of the +House of Commons—"to be proud of the manner in which British credit has +stood the strain." The truth is that by March next, at the present rate +of expenditure, our total indebtedness (deducting the advances to our +Allies) will almost exactly equal "one year's national income," <i>i.e.</i>, +the aggregate of the income of every person in the country. But if a man +having an income of £5,000 a year, were to owe a total of £5,000, we +should not consider his position very serious. "We shall collect a +revenue in one year equal to 20 per cent. of the whole debt (<i>i.e.</i>, 522 +millions sterling), and we shall be able to pay, <i>out of existing +taxation</i>, the interest on the debt, and a considerable sinking-fund, +and shall still have left a large margin <i>for the reduction of +taxation</i>"—words which left a comfortable echo in the ears of the +nation. Meanwhile British trade—based on British sea-power—has shown +extraordinary buoyancy, the exports steadily increasing; so that the +nation, in the final words of the Chancellor, feels "no doubt whatever +that we shall be able to maintain our credit to the end of the war, <i>no +matter how long it may last</i>."</p> + +<p>But do not let it be supposed that this huge revenue is being raised +without sacrifice, <i>without effort</i>. It means—for the present—as I +have already pointed out, the absorption by the State of five shillings +in the pound from the income of every citizen, above a moderate minimum, +and of a lesser but still heavy tax from those below that minimum; it +means new and increased taxation in many directions; and, as a +consequence, heavy increases in the cost of living; it means sharply +diminished spending for large sections of our population, and serious +pinching for our professional and middle classes.</p> + +<p>But the nation, as a whole, makes no lament. We look our taxes in the +face, and we are beginning to learn how to save. We have our hearts +fixed on the future; and we have counted the cost.</p> + +<p>The money then is no difficulty. Our resisting power, our prosperity +even, under the blows of war, have been unexpectedly great.</p> + +<p>But what are we getting for our money?</p> + +<p>In the case of the Navy, the whole later course of the war, no less than +the Battle of Jutland, has shown what the British Navy means to the +cause of the Allies. It is as I have said, the root fact in the war; and +in the end, it will be the determining fact; although, of itself, it +cannot defeat Germany <i>as we must defeat her</i>; at any rate in any +reasonable time.</p> + +<p>Then as to the Army. Take first of all the administrative side. To +what—in the last four months—has come that wonderful system of +organisation and supply I tried to sketch in my fourth Letter, largely +in the words of some of the chief actors in it?</p> + +<p>Within the last fortnight, a skilled observer has been reporting to the +British public his impressions of the "Army behind the Lines" in France, +as I saw a portion of it last February, in the great British supply +bases and hospital camps, on the lines of communication, and throughout +the immense and varied activities covered by the British motor +transport.</p> + +<p>"The Germans," says this recent eye-witness, "have persisted that, even +if we could find the men, we could not make the machine, which they have +been perfecting for forty years and more. But <i>it is here!</i>—operating +with perfect smoothness; a machine, which in its mere mass and +intricacy, almost staggers the imagination. One cannot speak of the +details of the system for fear of saying something which should not be +told; but it is stupendous in its proportion, dealing as it does with +the methodical handling of the men in their hundreds of thousands, of +all their equipment and supplies, food, miscellaneous baggage and +ammunition, and with the endless trains of guns—guns—guns, and shells, +by millions upon millions, all brought from England, and all here in +their place, or moved from place to place with the rhythm of clock-work. +One cannot convey any idea of it, nor grasp it in its entirety; but day +by day the immensity of it grows on one, and one realises how trivial +beside it has been anything that British military organisation has had +to do in the past. That is the real miracle; not the mere millions of +men, nor even their bravery, but this huge frictionless machine of which +they are a part—this thing which Great Britain has put together here in +the last twenty months."</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>But just as in March my thoughts pressed eagerly forward, from the sight +allowed me of the machine, to its uses on the battle-front, to that line +of living and fighting men for which it exists—so now.</p> + +<p>Only, since I stood upon the hill near Poperinghe on March 2nd, that +line of men has been indefinitely strengthened; and the main scene of +battle is no longer the Ypres salient. Looking southward from the old +windmill, whose supports sheltered us on that cold spring afternoon, I +knew that, past Bailleul, and past Neuve Chapelle, I was looking +straight toward Albert and the Somme, and I knew too that it was there +that the British were taking over a new portion of the line,—so that we +might be of <i>some</i> increased support—all that was then allowed us by +the Allied Command!—to that incredible defence of Verdun, which was in +all our minds and hearts.</p> + +<p>But what I could not know was that in that misty distance was +hidden—four months away—a future movement, at which no one then +guessed, outside the higher brains of the Army. The days went on. The +tide of battle ebbed and flowed round Verdun. The Crown Prince hewed and +hacked his way, with enormous loss to Germany, to points within three +and four miles of the coveted town—fortress no longer. But there France +stopped him—like the beast of prey that has caught its claws in the +iron network it is trying to batter down, and cannot release them; and +there he is still. Meanwhile, in June, seven to eight weeks before the +expected moment, Brusiloff's attack broke loose, and the Austrian front +began to crumble; just in time to bring the Italians welcome aid in the +Trentino.</p> + +<p>And still from the Somme to the Yser, the Anglo-French forces waited; +and still across the Channel poured British soldiers and British guns. +In industrial England, the Whitsuntide holidays had been given up; and +there were at any rate some people who knew that there would be no +August holidays either. Leave and letters had been stopped. But there +had been apparent signs, wrongly interpreted, before. The great Allied +attack on the West—was it ready, <i>at last</i>?</p> + +<p>Then—with the 27th of June, along the whole British battle-front of 90 +miles, there sprang up a violent and continuous bombardment varied by +incessant raids on the enemy lines. Those who witnessed that bombardment +can hardly find words in which to describe it. "It was an extraordinary +and a terrible spectacle," says a correspondent. "Within the dreadful +zone the woods are leafless, château and farm and village, alike, mere +heaps of ruins." Ah! <i>ce beau pays de France</i>—with all its rich and +ancient civilisation—it is not French hearts alone that bleed for you! +But it was the voice of deliverance, of vengeance, that was speaking in +the guns which crashed incessantly day and night, while shells of all +calibres rained—so many to the second—from every yard of the British +front, on the German lines. The correspondents with the British +Headquarters could only speculate with held breath, as to what was +happening under that ghastly veil of smoke and fire on the horizon, and +what our infantry would find when the artillery work was done, and the +attack was launched.</p> + +<p>The 1st of July dawned, a beautiful summer morning, with light mists +dispersing under the sun. Precisely to the moment, at 7.30 A.M., the +Allied artillery lifted their guns, creating a dense <i>barrage</i> of fire +between the German front and its support trenches, while the British and +French infantry sprang over their parapets and rushed to the attack of +the German first line; the British on a front of some twenty-five miles, +the French, on about ten miles, on both sides of the Somme. The English +journalists, who, watch in hand, saw our men go, "knowing what it was +they were going to, marvelled for the fiftieth time at the way in which +British manhood has proved itself, in this most terrible of all wars."</p> + +<p>But though it was a grand, it was an anxious moment for those who had +trained and shaped the New Armies of Britain. How would they bear +themselves, these hundreds of thousands of British and Imperial +volunteers, men, some of them, with the shortest possible training +compatible with efficiency—against the famous troops of Germany—beside +the veteran, the illustrious army of France?</p> + +<p>Four hours after the fighting began, Sir Douglas Haig telegraphed: +"Attack launched north of River Somme this morning at 7.30 A.M. In +conjunction with French, British troops have broken into German forward +system of defences, on front of sixteen miles. Fighting is continuing. +French attack on our immediate right proceeding equally satisfactorily." +Twelve hours later, on the same day, when the summer night had fallen on +the terrible battle-field, the British Commander-in-Chief added:—"Heavy +fighting has continued all day between the rivers Somme and Ancre. On +the right of our attack we have captured the German labyrinth of +trenches on a front of seven miles to a depth of 1,000 yards, and have +stormed and occupied the strongly fortified villages of Montauban and +Mametz. In the centre on a front of four miles we have gained many +strong points. North of the Ancre Valley the battle has been equally +violent, and in this area we have been unable to retain portions of the +ground gained in our first attacks, while other portions remain in our +possession.... Up to date, 2,000 German prisoners have passed through +our collecting stations. The large number of the enemy dead on the +battle-field indicate that the German losses have been very severe."</p> + +<p>So much for the first day's news. On the following day Fricourt was +captured; and the prisoners went up to 3,500, together with a quantity +of war material. Meanwhile the French on the right had done brilliantly, +capturing five villages, and 6,000 prisoners. The attack was well begun.</p> + +<p>And the New Armies?—"Kitchener's Men"? "Whatever we have imagined of +our New Armies," says an eye-witness of the first day's battle, "they +are better than we can have ever dared to hope. Nothing has in any case +stopped them, except being killed." And a neutral who saw the attack on +Mametz told the same eye-witness that he had seen most of the fighting +in the world in recent years, and that he "did not believe a more +gallant feat was ever performed in war." The story of the British +advance was written "in the dead upon the ground, and in the positions +as they stand." "Nothing which the Japanese did in the Russian War" was +more entirely heroic.</p> + +<p>But let me carry on the story.</p> + +<p>On Tuesday, July 11th, Sir Douglas Haig reported: "After ten days and +nights of continuous fighting our troops have completed the methodical +capture of the whole of the enemy's first system of defence on a front +of 14,000 yards.</p> + +<p>"This system of defence consisted of numerous and continuous lines of +foretrenches, support trenches and reserve trenches, extending to +various depths of from 2,000 to 4,000 yards, and included five strongly +fortified villages, numerous heavily wired and intrenched woods, and a +large number of immensely strong redoubts."</p> + +<p>The villages captured were Fricourt, Mametz, Montauban, La Boiselle, and +Contalmaison—the latter captured on July 10th, after particularly +fierce fighting. Every observer dwells on "the immense strength of the +German defences." "All the little villages and woods, each eminence and +hollow, have been converted into a fortress as formidable as the +character of the ground makes possible." The German has omitted nothing +"that could protect him against such a day as this."</p> + +<p>Yet steadily, methodically, with many a pause for consolidation of the +ground gained, and for the bringing up of the heavy guns, the British +advance goes forward—toward Bapaume and Lille; while the French press +brilliantly on toward Péronne—both movements aimed at the vital German +communications through France and Belgium. Every step of ground, as the +Allies gain it, "is wrecked with mines, torn with shell, and watered +with the blood of brave men." The wood-fighting, amid the stripped and +gaunt trunks rising from labyrinths of wire, is specially terrible; and +below the ground everywhere are the deep pits and dugouts, which have +not only sheltered the enemy from our fire, but concealed the +machine-guns, which often when our men have passed over, emerge and take +them in the rear. The German machine-guns seem to be endless; they are +skilfully concealed, and worked with the utmost ability and courage.</p> + +<p>But nothing daunts the troops attacking day and night, in the name of +patriotism, of liberty, of civilisation. Men from Yorkshire and +Lancashire, from Northumberland, Westmoreland and Cumberland, the heart +of England's sturdy north; men from Sussex and Kent, from Somerset and +Devon; the Scotch regiments; the Ulster Division, once the Ulster +Volunteers; the men of Munster and Connaught; the town-lads of +Manchester; the youths of Cockney London:—all their names are in the +great story. "There were no stragglers—none!" says an officer, +describing in a kind of wonder one of the fierce wood-attacks. And these +are not the seasoned troops of a Continental Army. They belong to +regiments and corps which did not exist, except in name, eighteen months +ago; they are units from the four-million army that Great Britain raised +for this struggle, before she passed her Military Service Law. The "Old +Army," the Expeditionary Force, which the nation owed to the organising +genius of Lord Haldane and his General Staff, has passed away, passed +into history, with the retreat from Mons, the first victory of Ypres, +the saving of the Channel ports; but its spirit remains, and its +traditions are firmly planted in the new attackers. I think of the men I +saw in March, during that long and weary wait; of the desire—and the +patience—in their eyes.</p> + +<p>And of patience they and the nations behind them will still have ample +need. Since surprise on the Somme front was no longer possible, the +great advance has gone surely indeed, but more slowly. On <i>July 14</i>, +after delay caused by extraordinarily heavy rains, <i>the German second +line was breached</i>, and their trenches carried, on a front of four miles +and held against counter attacks. Longueval, the wood of +Bazentin-le-Grand, and the village, Bazentin-le-Petit, were attacked and +captured with an <i>élan</i> that nothing could resist. "The enemy losses in +guns," said the British Headquarters, "are now over 100. We have not +lost one." On <i>July 17</i>, Ovillers was cleared, Waterlot Farm taken, and +1,500 more yards of the German line. The British had by now taken 11,000 +prisoners, to a somewhat larger number taken by the French, 17 heavy +guns, 37 field-guns, 30 trench howitzers, and 66 machine-guns. On +Saturday night, <i>July 22-23</i>, the greater part of Pozières, on the high +ground toward Bapaume, was taken. "Shortly after midnight," wrote the +official correspondent at Headquarters with the Australian Imperial +Forces in France, "on the 23rd, by a splendid night attack, the +Australians took the greater portion of Pozières." The previous +bombardment had been magnificent. "I had never before seen such a +spectacle. A large sector of the horizon was lit up not by single +flashes, but by a continuous band of quivering light." And under the +protection of the guns, the Anzacs swept forward, passing over trenches, +so entirely obliterated by shell-fire that they were often not +recognised as trenches at all, till they were in the heart of the +village. Then for two days they fought from house to house, and trench +to trench; till on July 27th came the news—"The whole of the village of +Pozières is now in our hands." And the <i>Times</i> correspondent writes "our +establishment at Pozières will probably be regarded historically as +closing the second phase of the battle of the Somme."</p> + +<p>Since then (I write on August 16) three weeks have passed. The German +Third Line has been entered at the Bois de Foureaux, the whole of +Delville Wood has been carried; and in the combined advance of July +30th, the French swept on to Maurepas on the north of the Somme, and are +closely threatening both Combles and Péronne, while we are attacking +Thiepval on the left of our line and Guillemont on the right, and +pushing forward, north of Pozières, toward Bapaume. The whole of the +great advance has been <i>a thrust up-hill</i> from the valley floors of the +Ancre and the Somme toward a low ridge running roughly east and west and +commanding an important stretch of country and vital communications +beyond. "It has in just four weeks of effort," writes Mr. +Belloc—"accounted for some thirty thousand unwounded or slightly +wounded prisoners; for much more than 100 guns; for a belt of territory +over five miles in its extreme breadth, and—what is much more important +than any of these numerical and local calculations—it has proved itself +capable of <i>continuous effort against all the concentration which the +enemy has been able to bring against it.</i>"</p> + +<p>But it has done yet more than this. It has welded the French and English +Alliance—the wills and minds of the two nations—more closely than ever +before; and it has tested the British war-machine—the new Armies and +the new arms—as they have never yet been tested in this war. The result +has set the heart of England aflame; even while we ponder those long, +long casualty lists which represent the bitter price that British +fathers and mothers, British wives and daughters have paid, and must +still pay, for the only victory which will set up once again the reign +of law and humanity in Europe. What the future has in store we cannot +see yet in detail; but the inevitable end is clear at last. The +man-power of Germany is failing, and with it the insolent confidence of +her military caste; the man-power of the Allies, and the gun-power of +the Allies, are rising steadily. Russia is well launched on her return +way to Warsaw, to Cracow, to East Prussia. Italy, after the fall of +Gorizia, is on the march for Trieste. The Turks are fleeing across the +desert of Sinai; and the Allies at Salonika are taking the first steps +toward Sofia.</p> + +<p>But it is in the "holy spirit of man" itself that the secret of the +future lies. On the Somme battle-fields, thousands and thousands of +young lives have been again laid down, that England—that France—may +live. Here is a letter, written the day before his death in action, on +July 1st, the opening day of the offensive, by a young English +Officer.<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> One must read it, if one can, dry-eyed. Not tears, but a +steeled will, a purer heart, are what it asks of those for whom the +writer died:—</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> Published in the <i>Times</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I am writing this letter to you just before going into + action to-morrow morning about dawn.</p> + +<p> "I am about to take part in the biggest battle that has yet + been fought in France, and one which ought to help to end + the war very quickly.</p> + +<p> "I never felt more confident or cheerful in my life before, + and would not miss the attack for anything on earth. The men + are in splendid form, and every officer and man is more + happy and cheerful than I have ever seen them.</p> + +<p> "I have just been playing a rag game of football in which + the umpire had a revolver and a whistle.</p> + +<p> "My idea in writing this letter is in case I am one of the + 'costs,' and get killed. I do not expect to be; but such + things have happened, and are always possible.</p> + +<p> "It is impossible to fear death out here, when one is no + longer an individual, but a member of a regiment and of an + army. To be killed means nothing to me, and it is only you + who suffer for it; you really pay the cost.</p> + +<p> "I have been looking at the stars, and thinking what an + immense distance they are away. What an insignificant thing + the loss of, say, forty years of life is compared with them! + It seems scarcely worth talking about. Well, good-bye, you + darlings. Try not to worry about it, and remember that we + shall meet again really quite soon.</p> + +<p> "This letter is going to be posted <i>if</i>...."</p></div> + +<p>The letter was posted. But its message of Death is also a message of +Victory.</p> + +<p>MARY A. WARD.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The War on All Fronts: England's Effort +by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR ON ALL FRONTS: *** + +***** This file should be named 16089-h.htm or 16089-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/0/8/16089/ + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Christine +D and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + +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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/16089-h/images/img1.jpg b/16089-h/images/img1.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bcfada6 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img1.jpg diff --git a/16089-h/images/img1h.jpg b/16089-h/images/img1h.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e4c4b31 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img1h.jpg diff --git a/16089-h/images/img2.jpg b/16089-h/images/img2.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e885f33 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img2.jpg diff --git a/16089-h/images/img2h.jpg b/16089-h/images/img2h.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9f7db34 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img2h.jpg diff --git a/16089-h/images/img3.jpg b/16089-h/images/img3.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..75d81e7 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img3.jpg diff --git a/16089-h/images/img3h.jpg b/16089-h/images/img3h.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..55a1d45 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img3h.jpg diff --git a/16089-h/images/img4.jpg b/16089-h/images/img4.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c4894ac --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img4.jpg diff --git a/16089-h/images/img4h.jpg b/16089-h/images/img4h.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..39fb2e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img4h.jpg diff --git a/16089-h/images/img5.jpg b/16089-h/images/img5.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ac995c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img5.jpg diff --git a/16089-h/images/img5h.jpg b/16089-h/images/img5h.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..adb8fac --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img5h.jpg diff --git a/16089-h/images/img6.jpg b/16089-h/images/img6.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9279a73 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img6.jpg diff --git a/16089-h/images/img6h.jpg b/16089-h/images/img6h.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..903afbb --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img6h.jpg diff --git a/16089-h/images/img7.jpg b/16089-h/images/img7.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7cba2ef --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img7.jpg diff --git a/16089-h/images/img7h.jpg b/16089-h/images/img7h.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8e55f40 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089-h/images/img7h.jpg diff --git a/16089.txt b/16089.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a03b993 --- /dev/null +++ b/16089.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5285 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The War on All Fronts: England's Effort +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: The War on All Fronts: England's Effort + Letters to an American Friend + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Commentator: Joseph H. Choate + +Release Date: June 18, 2005 [EBook #16089] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR ON ALL FRONTS: *** + + + + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Christine +D and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Transcriber's notes: Original spelling retained, original copyright +information retained, italics are indicated by underscores.] + + +Volume II + +England's Effort + +Letters To An American Friend + +[Illustration: Spring-time in the North Sea--Snow on a British +Battleship.] + + + + +_The War On All Fronts_ + + +England's Effort + +Letters To An American Friend + +By Mrs. Humphry Ward + +With A Preface By Joseph H. Choate + + +Illustrated + + +New York Charles Scribner's Sons 1918 + +Copyright, 1916, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + + + +Preface + +HAS ENGLAND DONE ALL SHE COULD? + + +That is the question which Mrs. Ward, replying to some doubts and queries +of an American friend, has undertaken to answer in this series of letters, +and every one who reads them will admit that her answer is as complete and +triumphant as it is thrilling. Nobody but a woman, an Englishwoman of warm +heart, strong brain, and vivid power of observation, could possibly have +written these letters which reflect the very soul of England since this +wicked and cruel war began. She has unfolded and interpreted to us, as no +one else, I think, has even attempted to do, the development and absolute +transformation of English men and women, which, has enabled them, living +and dying, to secure for their proud nation under God that "new birth of +freedom" which Lincoln at Gettysburg prophesied for his own countrymen. +Really the cause is the same, to secure the selfsame thing, "that +government of the people, by the people, and for the people may not perish +from the earth";--and if any American wishes to know how this has been +accomplished, he must read these letters, which were written expressly for +our enlightenment. + +Mrs. Ward had marvellous qualifications for this patriotic task. The +granddaughter of Doctor Arnold and the niece of Matthew Arnold, from +childhood up she has been as deeply interested in politics and in public +affairs as she has been in literature, by which she has attained such +world-wide fame, and next to English politics, in American politics and +American opinion. She has been a staunch believer in the greatness of +America's future, and has maintained close friendship with leaders of +public thought on both sides of the water. Her only son is a member of +Parliament, and is fighting in the war, just as all the able-bodied men +she knows are doing. + +She has received from the English government special opportunities of +seeing what England has been doing in the war, and has been allowed to go +with her daughter where few English men and no other women have been +allowed to go, to see the very heart of England's preparedness. She has +visited, since the war began, the British fleet, the very key of the whole +situation, without whose unmatched power and ever-increasing strength the +Allies at the outset must have succumbed. She has watched, always under +the protection and guidance of that wonderful new Minister of Munitions, +Lloyd George, the vast activity of that ministry throughout the country, +and finally in a motor tour of five hundred miles, through the zone of the +English armies in France, she has seen with her own eyes, that marvellous +organization of everything that goes to make and support a great army, +which England has built up in the course of eighteen months behind her +fighting line. She has witnessed within three-quarters of a mile of the +fighting line, with a gas helmet at hand, ready to put on, a German +counter attack after a successful English advance something which no +other woman, except herself and her daughter, who accompanied her, has +ever had the opportunity to see. + +Mrs. Ward admits that at the beginning England was unprepared, which +itself demonstrated that as a Nation she never wished for war with +Germany, and never expected it. Her countrymen had no faith in Lord +Roberts's ten-year-long agitation for universal national service, based on +the portentous growth of the German army and navy. She never knew of any +hatred of Germany in the country. On the contrary, she realized what +England and all the rest of the world owed to Germany in so many ways. + +England was not absolutely unprepared in the sense that the United States +is unprepared, even for self-defence from external attack, but except for +the fleet and her little expeditionary force, England had neither men nor +equipment equal to the fighting of a great Continental war. + +The wholly unexpected news of the invasion of Belgium aroused the whole +country to realize that war on a scale never known before had come, and, +as the firing upon Fort Sumter awakened America, convinced England that +she must fight to the death for her liberties, unready as she was;--but +Mr. Balfour, the First Lord of the Admiralty, says that, since the war +began, she has added one million to the tonnage of her navy, and has +doubled its personnel, and is adding more every day. + +In the matter of munitions the story that Mrs. Ward tells is wonderful, +almost beyond belief. Much had been done in the first eight months of the +war, in the building of munition shops, and the ordering of vast +quantities from abroad, before the second battle of Ypres, in April, 1915, +which led to the formation of the new Coalition Ministry, including a +wholly new department, the Ministry of Munitions, with Mr. Lloyd George at +its head. + +From that time to this the work has been colossal, and almost incredible, +and without serious collision with the working classes. Vast new buildings +have been erected all over England, and a huge staff, running into +thousands, set in action. The new Minister has set out with determination +to get the thing done at whatever cost, and to remove all obstacles that +he found in his way. The Government has absolutely taken control of the +whole work of the creation of munitions and the regulation of workmen, +employed in it by whatever employers, and everything and everybody has had +to submit to his imperious will, and the greatest change of all has been +the employment of women on a vast scale to do the work that only men had +ever done before. France had set about it immediately after the battle of +the Marne, and allowed no Frenchman to remain idle who could do such work. + +Mrs. Ward does not fail to do full justice to the working men of Great +Britain, and shows that besides the hundreds of thousands that they have +sent to the fighting line, a million and a half remained at work in the +shops, creating munitions with the aid of skilled experts and the +astonishing help of the women, who never before had expected to have +anything to do with guns and shells, with bombs, rifles, and machine-guns. +The old ways were laid aside, old distinctions of class and sex +forgotten, and all worked with a common and indomitable will for the +saving of the country. + +To give a single instance, what was a few months ago a smiling pasture is +now found covered with vast buildings, in which these manufactures are +carried on by thirty-five hundred working people, of whom a large +proportion are women. I love to quote a single sentence from the utterance +of her companion on a visit to this establishment: "As to the women, they +are saving the country. They don't mind what they do. Hours? They work ten +and a half, or, with overtime, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. The +Government are insisting on one Sunday, or two Sundays a month off. I +don't say they aren't right, but the women resent it. 'We're not tired,' +they say. And look at them! They are not tired." + +This unheard-of spectacle of great engineering establishments filled with +women, all hard at work, is a sure proof of the undying purpose of the +whole English race. They are mostly young and comely, and their beauty of +form and feature is only enhanced by their enthusiasm for their labors, +and at the same time it has increased the ardor and intensity of their +fellow workmen. Mrs. Ward found four thousand women to five thousand men +engaged in this nation-saving labor, in a single establishment. They know +that they are setting the skilled laborers free for work which women +cannot do, and the unskilled in large numbers free for the army. + +Every building, as well as every man and woman, that could be put to the +work, has been availed of, and the results have been incredible. Another +instance she gives of special interest: "An old warehouse, bought, so to +speak, overnight, and equipped next morning, has been turned into a small +workshop for shell production, employing between three and four hundred +girls with the number of skilled men necessary to keep the new unskilled +labor going. These girls are working on the eight-hours' shift system; +working so well that a not uncommon wage among them, on piece-work, of +course, runs to somewhere between two and three pounds a week," and all +the time they are at work they remember that they are doing common service +with their husbands, and sweethearts, and sons, and brothers, who are +perilling their lives in the trenches. + +None of this distinguished writer's romances compare in vivid description +and heart-inspiring eloquence with these accounts that she gives of what +she has seen with her own eyes of the resurrection of England. + +It is not for me to anticipate her startling and thrilling narratives on +this subject. She takes for her text what Mr. Lloyd George said in his +speech in the House of Commons on reviewing his new department: "Unless we +quicken our movements, damnation will fall on the sacred cause for which +so much gallant blood has flowed," and Mr. Asquith's serious words in +December: "We cannot go on," said he, "depending upon foreign countries +for our munitions. We haven't the ships to spare to bring them home, and +the cost is too great. We must make them ourselves." + +Mrs. Ward dwells with keen insight upon the difficulties met with among +the trade-unions and labor people, and successfully overcome, and explains +in full what they call over there the work of the Dilution Commissioners, +which is a wholly new phrase for us, and she gives this clear definition: +"Dilution means, of course, that under the sharp analysis of necessity, +much engineering work, generally reckoned as 'skilled' work, and reserved +to 'skilled' workmen by a number of union regulations, is seen to be +capable of solution into various processes, some of which can be sorted +out from the others, as within the capacity of the unskilled, or +semiskilled worker. By so dividing them up and using superior labor with +economy, only where it is really necessary, it can be made to go +infinitely further, and the inferior, or untrained, labor can then be +brought into work where nobody supposed it could be used; where, in fact, +it never has been used." This novel experiment, together with the equally +novel employment of women in such work, soon proved a triumphant success, +and the women proved themselves able to do the work of men, some of it +even better. There were, of course, difficulties at first, but the +mischief, whatever it was, was quickly cured, and in one factory that Mrs. +Ward names, "men and women soon began to do their best. The output of the +factory, which had been planned for four thousand shells a week, ran up to +twenty thousand, and everything has gone smoothly since." + +The adaptation of firms and factories, already existing, the control of +which was taken by the Government, was wonderful, but the national +shell-factories, founded, financed, and run by the Ministry of Munitions, +are more wonderful still, and give us many new ideas about government +ownership in an emergency, which we may sometimes have to think of more +seriously. The speed, the efficiency, the success of the new system have +been marvellous, so that in the short space of a year the demands of Mr. +Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith have been satisfied, and England will depend +no more upon foreign contracts and foreign supplies for her ammunition, +but will be able not only to manufacture all she can use herself, but to +help to supply her Allies. + +In one department of labor, it is a very startling thing to learn that "in +a single fuse factory, what they call the danger buildings, mostly women +are employed. About five hundred women are found at work in one of these +factories on different processes connected with the delicate mechanism and +filling of the fuse and gaine, some of which is really dangerous, like +detonator work." It is the insertion in the shell of the little pellet +which gives it its death-dealing power, that is so risky, but the women do +not shrink from even this. In the largest fuse shop known, quite new, +fourteen hundred girls, in one shift, are at work. + +"An endless spectacle of gun-carriages, naval turrets, torpedo-tubes, army +railway-carriages, small Hotchkiss guns for merchant ships, tool-making +shops, gauge shops, seems to be going on forever, and in the tool-making +shops the output has risen from forty-four thousand to three million a +year." The vastness of the work, and the incessant and enormous +multiplication of all the products for war must be as overwhelming as it +is monotonous. And then there were the huge shipyards, which before the +war were capable of the berth of twenty ships at once, from the largest +battleship downward, and which, as we have already had Mr. Balfour's word +for it, have since the beginning of the war added a million tons to the +navy, but Mrs. Ward in her rapid journeys had not time to stop and inspect +these, to our very great regret, for her description of them would have +been most instructive. + +She declares from actual observation that in the Clyde district, in whose +populous centre some threats of disquiet have existed, the work done by +thousands and tens of thousands of workmen since the beginning of the war, +especially in the great shipyards, and done with the heartiest and most +self-sacrificing good-will, has been simply invaluable to the nation, and +will never be forgotten, and the invasion of women there has, perhaps, +been more startling to the workmen than anywhere else. Where not a single +woman was employed in the works and factories before the war, except in +textiles, "there will soon be fifteen thousand of them in the munition +workshops alone, and that will not be the end." + +Wherever she goes, Mrs. Ward's eyes are wide open. From her own home, +which is in the midst of one of the most patriotic regions of the realm, +she can witness the perpetual activity which has come about in preparation +for the war in all its varied phases and branches; everything and +everybody is in vigorous motion, both there and in all the counties of +England which she has visited. Great camps in every direction for the +shelter and training of recruits, all coming and going, all marching and +countermarching, training and drilling everywhere, and as fast as the +citizen is converted into a soldier, he is bound for the seat of war with +all the equipments that war requires, tramping everywhere, tramp, tramp, +along the land; tramp, tramp, along the sea, until the new supports, all +ready for vital service, reach their destination on French soil. + +Mrs. Ward has made a careful study of the effect of the novel introduction +of women into all these works of men, especially in the munition +factories, and dwells with great significance upon the rapidity of the +women's piece-work and the mingling of classes, where educated and refined +girls work side by side and very happily with those of an humbler type. +What Mrs. Ward well calls "the common spirit" inspires them all, and holds +them all in just and equal relations. At every step she is startled by the +vastness of the work and the immense hand that women have in it, finding +one shop turning out about four thousand shrapnel and four thousand +high-explosive shells per week, heavy shell work all, which they thought +at first they must furnish men to lift in and out of the machines, but +"the women thrust the men aside in five minutes." Surely this new +education of women, of these girls and women who are to become the mothers +of the next generation, must have a most inspiring and exalting effect +upon the days to come. War may be postponed for whole generations, but +England will never fail to be ready for it as a necessary part of the +education of the race. + +It is quite evident that this war is breaking down the barriers that have +heretofore been impassable, not only between men and women, but between +the various classes of society, and that it cannot possibly end without +bringing these more closely together, all working to the same end in a +more perfect harmony, and that the result of it must be that England will +hereafter be an even more perfect democracy than it has been up to this +time. + +France! Glorious France! The conduct of whose government and people in the +war seems to have been absolutely perfect, has at last reached a wonderful +result after her hundred years of agonies and revolutions. We hear from +France no complaints, no internal dissensions, but all the people, mankind +and womankind, working together, each in its proper sphere, to the one +common end, the salvation of the State. I trust that we shall never +forget all that the world and we, especially, owe to France. She is adding +to our obligations now by fighting our battles for us. + +And now with her daughter under the special protection and guidance of the +war office, this distinguished woman followed the khaki-clad soldiers of +England, now numbered by millions, across the channel, and everything was +thrown freely open to her. She soon found out what the great supply bases, +on which the British army in France rests, really mean, made up of the +Army Ordnance, Army Service, Army Medical, Railroad, Motor, and Transport, +and she found it a deeply interesting study, "whose work has involved the +labor of some of the best brains in the army," and she learned the +organizing power that has gone to make the career of the English army in +France possible. + +There was the immense dock, and its vast storehouse, the largest in the +world, "built three years before the war, partly, it is said, by German +money, to house the growing cotton trade of the port, but now it houses a +large proportion of the food of the British army," a building half a mile +long, bounded on one side by the docks, where the ships discharge the +stores and the men, and on the other by the railway lines where the trains +are perpetually loading for the front. On the quays ships of all nations, +except Germany, are pouring out their stores, and on the other side the +trucks that are going to the front are loading with the supplies that are +wanted for every regiment in the service. Her eyes light upon one wired in +space, labelled "Medical Comforts," and generally known as "The Cage," +where, while medical necessaries are housed elsewhere, are "the dainties, +the special foods, the easing appliances of all kinds," which are to make +life bearable to the wounded men, and she stops to think how the shade of +Florence Nightingale would have paused at this spot. + +The huge sheds of Army Ordnance are filled with everything that a soldier +does not eat, all metal stores, whatever, and the men who work in them are +housed in one of the longest sheds in tiers of bunks from floor to +ceiling, and then there are the repairing sheds and workshops, established +near by, and that is the most wonderful thing of the whole to my +mind--never done before in connection with an army in the field. Trainsful +of articles to be repaired come down from the front every day, and almost +every imaginable article that the men at the front can use, from guns to +boots, comes here to be repaired, or if found beyond repair, to be sent to +Yorkshire for shoddy. The marvellous thing is that, as soon as they are +received, they are repaired and made nearly as good as new and returned +to their owners at the front, a vast work in itself. The boot and uniform +sheds alone, where again she finds five hundred French women and girls, +and the harness-making room are doing an enormous work. The Colonel in +charge began work with one hundred and forty men, and is now employing +more than a thousand, and his repairing sheds are saving thousands of +pounds a week to the British government. + +Recreation and amusement are supplied in near locality for the waiting +soldiers and, although the snow is more than ankle-deep, they visit such +places as recreation rooms and cinema theaters, and on a neighboring hill +great troops of men are going through some of the last refinements of +drill before they start for the front. Here are trenches of all kinds and +patterns, in which the men may practise, planned according to the latest +experience brought from the front. "The instructors are all men returned +from the front, and the new recruits, trained up to this last point, would +not be patient of any other teachers." + +Having thus seen all that one day could afford them at the very base of +the great army, our visitors make their way in closed motors through the +snow, passing scores of motor lorries, and other wagons, stuck in the +snow-drifts. They stop for the night at a pleasant hotel full of +officers, mostly English, belonging to the Lines of Communication, and a +few of the mothers and sisters of the poor wounded in the neighboring +hospitals, who have come over to nurse them. + +Every gun, every particle of munition, clothing, and equipment, and +whatever else is necessary, including the food of the armies, every horse, +every vehicle, has to be brought across the British channel, to maintain +and reinforce the ever-growing British army, and the ever-daily increasing +congestion at all the ports makes it more and more difficult every day to +receive, disembark, accommodate, and forward the multitude of men and the +masses of material, and all the time there are thousands of troops passing +through, thousands in the hospitals, and thousands at work on the docks +and storehouses. Everything tending to Tommy Atkins's comfort is supplied, +including again palatial cinemas and concerts, all of which results in +excellent behavior and the best of relations between the British soldier +and the French inhabitants. At the docks armies of laborers and lines of +ships discharging men, horses, timber, rations, fodder, coal, coke, +petrol, and the same at the storehouses and depots. + +The visitors spend a long Sunday morning in the motor transport depot, and +it gave a good illustration of the complete system of discipline and +organization that prevailed everywhere. This depot began, said the Colonel +in charge, on the 13th of August, 1914, "with a few balls of string and a +bag of nails." Its present staff is about five hundred. All the drivers of +twenty thousand motor vehicles are tested here, and the depot exhibits +three hundred and fifty different types of vehicles, and in round figures, +one hundred thousand separate parts are now dealt with, stored, and +arranged in this same depot. The Sunday morning began with a simple +service in the Young Men's Christian Association hut, at which five +hundred motor-drivers attended, about half of the whole number in the +station. + +The same day they explored endless camps and the wards of a Red Cross +hospital. It was impossible to take in everything at once, and our ladies +retired at night, bewildered by mingled impressions of "human energy, +human intelligence, human suffering," but full of pride and exultation at +the efficiency of their country and of the good relations of their +soldiers with the French. They carried with them as a last impression of +the day the picture of a canteen worked day and night in three shifts by a +heroic band of women close by the railway station, full of soldiers just +departing for the front, young, gay and full of spirits; then came the +train to take the soldiers off for the fighting line, and the women, left +behind, set up the song, already familiar in the Midlands, "Keep the home +fires burning till the boys come home." + +In the village where they stopped, some forty miles from the actual front, +a special messenger from the general headquarters brings the amazing news +that General Headquarters invites Mrs. Ward and her daughter for two days, +and will send a motor for them, if they accept, which, of course, they did +upon the instant, looking forward with eagerness to the great mysteries of +the front, its camps, its men, and its hospitals, that they were to see +with their own eyes to-morrow. + +The remainder of the day before they are to start for the front suffices +for the visit to a camp set down in one of the pleasantest spots in +France, a favorite haunt of French artists before the war, now occupied by +a British reinforcement camp, the trees having all been cut away, by long +lines of hospitals, by a convalescent depot, and by the training grounds, +to which we have already referred. + +I must copy the bare catalogue of what this vast camp contained: "Sleeping +and mess quarters for those belonging to the new armies; sixteen hospitals +with twenty-one thousand beds" (and this shows now what it was to be near +the front); "rifle ranges; training camps; a vast laundry, worked by +French women under British organization, which washes for all the +hospitals thirty thousand pieces a day; recreation huts of every possible +kind; a cinema theatre seating eight hundred men, with performances twice +a day; nurses clubs; officers clubs; a supply depot for food; an ordnance +depot for everything that is not food; railroad sidings on which every +kind of man and thing can go out and come in without interruption; a +convalescents' depot of two thousand patients; and a convalescent horse +depot of two thousand horses; all this in one camp, established since last +April." + +Ah! But the deepest impression left on the minds of our ladies is of the +terrible sufferings in the hospitals, of the smiling endurance with which +they were borne, of the timely skill, pity, and devotion of the doctors +and nurses, taking care of the twenty thousand wounded. Realizing the +sympathy of America with all these scenes and sufferings, they do not fail +to note the hospitals organized by the Universities of Chicago and of +Harvard, staffed by American sisters and doctors, each providing +thirty-four doctors and eighty nurses, and dealing with a thousand +patients, and a convalescent depot of two thousand beds. Every day the +ambulance train comes in, and splendid hospital ships are taking the +brave wounded back to England for home and rest. + +And now came the day in which they were to motor forty miles to be the +guests of the G.H.Q. Soon they seemed to be in the midst of the battle, +"our own guns were thundering away behind us, and the road was more and +more broken up by shell holes." The British lines are just beyond, +cottages close by, and the German lines just in front of a wood near them, +three-quarters of a mile away. Already they had been nearer than any +woman, even a nurse, had been in this war, to the actual fighting on the +English line, and the cup of impressions was full. They actually saw the +brave boys whom they had passed an hour before, sitting in the fields +waiting for orders, now marching into the trenches to take their turn +there--they knew that they were marching into the jaws of death, but they +walked as quietly and as cheerfully as if they were going to a parade, the +guns crashing close by them all the time. The firing being too hot for the +women, the captain in charge of them was relieved when they elected to +turn back. + +The next day, their second as guests of G.H.Q., as they came down from +breakfast, our ladies were surprised to find the motor at the door, a +simple lunch being packed up, and gas-helmets got ready for them to use, +for the captain greeted them in the best of spirits with the news that a +very successful action had been fought that morning, "we had taken back +some trenches on the Ypres-Comines Canal that we lost, a little while ago, +and captured about two hundred prisoners; and if we go off at once we +shall be in time to see the German counter attack." The one impossible +thing for any woman ever to have hoped to see! + +Somehow or other they very quickly got to the very post of danger. Soon +they got close to the Tower of Ypres, which Mrs. Ward well describes as +"mute witness of a crime that beyond the reparation of our own day, +history will revenge through years to come." Then the English guns spoke, +and they watched and saw the columns of white smoke rising from the German +lines as the shells burst. The German lines are right in sight, and soon +their shells begin to burst on the English trenches. The German counter +attack is on. All the famous sites of the early part of the war are then +in sight, but all they can fully see is the bursting German shells, as +from moment to moment they explode. + +In her final letter Mrs. Ward shows other great efforts which Great +Britain has made since the war began; that the taxes imposed for the +support of the war and cheerfully borne demand a fourth part of his income +from every well-to-do citizen; that five hundred million sterling, or +twenty-five hundred million dollars have been already lent by Britain to +her allies, a colossal portion of her income; that she has spent at the +yearly rate of three thousand million dollars on the army, a thousand +million dollars on the navy, while the munition department is costing +about four hundred million sterling, and is employing close upon two +million workers, one-tenth, I think, women; that the export trade of the +country, in spite of submarines and lack of tonnage, is at this moment +greater than it was in the corresponding months of 1913; she has raised an +army of four millions of men, and will get all she wants. + +What is more precious than all the rest, besides the vast amount of +treasure that she has lavished upon the war, besides the rich mansions in +all parts of the land that she has devoted to the uses of the sick and the +wounded, she has given thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands of her +choicest youth, who have willingly surrendered their lives for the great +cause; young men of the noblest pedigree, without number, by their lives +and deaths have attested their right to be regarded as the flower of the +British youth; the professional classes and the universities have emptied +their halls so that the men of Oxford and Cambridge might take their +places with the rest, and offer up their lives as willing sacrifices, and +all the men of England of every degree have joined with them and been +welcomed as brothers in the ranks for the great sacrifice. The rank and +file, who are fighting and dying for England, are fighting in the same +spirit as their leaders and falling by the hundred thousand for the +nation's salvation. How exactly Emerson's noble verse fits them: + + "So nigh is grandeur to our dust, + So near is God to man, + When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' + The youth replies, 'I can!'" + +No one who reads this book can doubt for a moment, I think, that ENGLAND +HAS DONE ALL SHE COULD, has put forth efforts worthy of her history and of +her great traditions, that her national spirit is invincible, her national +resources inexhaustible, and that her irresistible will to conquer and to +rescue freedom and civilization for all the world from this terrible +contest, is absolutely sure to win. + +All America is vastly indebted to Mrs. Ward for her triumphant success in +proving that England has done her best and for making this great story so +clear. + +In this introduction, too hastily prepared for want of time, which is +really little better than a synopsis of the book itself, I have not +hesitated to use her own language from beginning to end, as the clearest +by which to express and condense her narrative, and with occasional +indications by quotation marks. + +I still believe absolutely that nine-tenths of my countrymen are in +earnest sympathy with the Allies and are confident of their final and +complete success. + +JOSEPH H. CHOATE. + +NEW YORK, May 19th, 1916. + + + + +Author's Foreword + + +This little book was the outcome of an urgent call from America sent by +various friends whose whole sympathy is with the Allies. I have done my +best to meet it, in four strenuous months, during which the British +Government has given me every possible facility. But such work has to be +done rapidly, and despatched rapidly. I beg my friends, and England's +friends, beyond the Atlantic, to excuse its defects. I can honestly say, +however, that I have done my best to get at the facts, and that everything +which is here put forward rests upon independent enquiry, so far as the +limit of time allowed. + +The title has caused me much trouble! Will any son of gallant Scotland, or +loyalist Ireland, or of those great Dominions, whose share in the war has +knit them closer than ever to the Mother Country--should he come across +this little book--forgive me that I have finally chosen "England" to stand +for us all? "Gott strafe England!" has been the German cry of hate. I have +given what I conceive to be "England's" reply. "Britain"--"Great Britain" +are words that for all their profound political significance have still +to be steeped a good deal longer in life and literature before they stir +the same fibres in us as the old national names. And "England" as the seat +of British Government has, it is admitted, a representative and inclusive +force. Perhaps my real reason is still simpler. Let any one try the +alternatives which suggest themselves, and see how they roll--or do not +roll--from the tongue. He or she will, I think, soon be reconciled to +"England's Effort"! + +MARY A. WARD. + + + * * * * * + + +NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION + +There has been added to this edition an epilogue in the shape of a seventh +letter, bringing the story up to August 16, including munitions, finance, +the battle of Jutland, and the Somme offensive. + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + +Spring-time in the North Sea--Snow on a British +Battleship _Frontispiece_ + + FACING PAGE + +Marines drilling on the quarterdeck of a British Battleship 24 + +Fifteen-inch guns on a British Battleship 25 + +A forest of shells in a corner of one of England's +great shell filling factories 86 + +A light railway bringing up ammunition 87 + +One of the wards of a base hospital, visited by the King 132 + +A Howitzer in the act of firing 133 + + + + +ENGLAND'S EFFORT + +I + + +Dear H. + +Your letter has found me in the midst of work quite unconnected with this +hideous war in which for the last eighteen months we in England have lived +and moved and had our being. My literary profession, indeed, has been to +me, as to others, since August 4th, 1914, something to be interposed for a +short time, day by day, between a mind tormented and obsessed by the +spectacle of war and the terrible reality it could not otherwise forget. +To take up one's pen and lose oneself for a while in memories of life as +it was long, long before the war--there was refreshment and renewal in +that! Once--last spring--I tried to base a novel on a striking war +incident which had come my way. Impossible! The zest and pleasure which +for any story-teller goes with the first shaping of a story died away at +the very beginning. For the day's respite had gone. The little "wind-warm" +space had disappeared. Life and thought were all given up, without mercy +or relief, to the fever and nightmare of the war. I fell back upon my +early recollections of Oxford thirty, forty years ago--and it was like +rain in the desert. So that, in the course of months it had become a habit +with me never to _write_ about the war; and outside the hours of writing +to think and talk of nothing else. + +But your letter suddenly roused in me a desire to write about the war. It +was partly I think because what you wrote summed up and drove home other +criticisms and appeals of the same kind. I had been putting them +mechanically aside as not having any special reference to me; but in +reality they had haunted me. And now you make a personal appeal. You say +that England at the present moment is misunderstood, and even hardly +judged in America, and that even those great newspapers of yours that are +most friendly to the Allies are often melancholy reading for those with +English sympathies. Our mistakes--real and supposed--loom so large. We are +thought to be not taking the war seriously--even now. Drunkenness, +strikes, difficulties in recruiting the new armies, the losses of the +Dardanelles expedition, the failure to save Serbia and Montenegro, tales +of luxurious expenditure in the private life of rich and poor, and of +waste or incompetence in military administration--these are made much of, +even by our friends, who grieve, while our enemies mock. You say the +French case has been on the whole much better presented in America than +the English case; and you compare the international situation with those +months in 1863 when it was necessary for the Lincoln Government to make +strenuous efforts to influence and affect English opinion, which in the +case of our upper classes and too many of our leading men was unfavourable +or sceptical towards the North. You who know something of the vastness of +the English effort--you urge upon me that English writers whose work and +names are familiar to the American public are bound to speak for their +country, bound to try and make Americans feel what we here feel through +every nerve--that cumulative force of a great nation, which has been slow +to rouse, and is now immovably--irrevocably--set upon its purpose. "Tell +me," you say in effect, "what in your belief is the real spirit of your +people--of your men in the field and at sea, of your workmen and employers +at home, your women, your factory workers, your soldiers' wives, your +women of the richer and educated classes, your landowners and politicians. +Are you yet fully awake--yet fully in earnest, in this crisis of England's +fate? 'Weary Titan' that she is, with her age-long history behind her, and +her vast responsibilities by sea and land, is she shouldering her load in +this incredible war, as she must shoulder it; as her friends--the friends +of liberty throughout the world--pray that she may shoulder it?" + +Yes!--I must answer your questions--to the best of my power. I am no +practised journalist--the days of my last articles for _The Pall Mall_ +under the "John Morley" of those days are thirty odd years behind me! But +I have some qualifications. Ever since--more than half a century ago--I +paid my first childish visit to the House of Commons, and heard Mr. +Roebuck, the "Tear 'em" of _Punch's_ cartoon, make his violent appeal to +the English Government to recognise the belligerency of the South, it +would be almost true to say that politics and affairs have been no less +interesting to me than literature; and next to English politics, American +politics and American opinion; partly because of my early association with +men like W.E. Forster, stanch believers, even when Gladstone and John +Russell wavered, in the greatness of the American future and the justice +of the Northern cause--and partly because of the warm and deep impression +left upon me and mine by your successive Ambassadors in London, by Mr. +Lowell above all, by Mr. and Mrs. Phelps, by the John Hays, the Choates +and the Bayards--no less than by the many intimate friendships with +Americans from different worlds which my books have brought me since 1888. +During the last thirty years, also, I have had many friends--and some +kinsmen--among the leaders of English politics, and in both political +parties. At the present moment my only son is a member of the English +House of Commons, and a soldier fighting in the war. All my younger +kinsfolk are fighting; the sons of all my friends are fighting; and their +daughters are nursing as members of Voluntary Aid Detachments--(marvellous +what the girl V.A.D.'s, as England affectionately calls them, have done +since the beginning of the war!)--or working week-end shifts to relieve +munition workers, or replacing men of military age in the public offices +and banks. I live in one of the Home Counties, within five miles of one of +the military camps. The small towns near us are crowded with soldiers; +the roads are full of marching infantry, of artillery-trains and +supply-wagons. Our village has sent practically all its able-bodied men of +military age to the front; the few that remain are "attested" and only +waiting to be called up. A great movement, in which this household is +engaged, is now beginning to put women on the land, and so replace the +agricultural labourers who have gone either into the armies or the +munition factories. And meanwhile all the elderly men and women of the +countryside are sitting on War Committees, or working for the Red Cross. +Our lives are penetrated by the war; our thoughts are never free from it. + +But in trying to answer your questions I have gone far beyond my own +normal experience. I asked the English Government to give me some special +opportunities of seeing what Great Britain is doing in the war, and in +matters connected with the war, and they have given them ungrudgingly. I +have been allowed to go, through the snow-storms of this bitter winter, +to the far north and visit the Fleet, in those distant waters where it +keeps guard night and day over England. I have spent some weeks in the +Midlands and the north watching the vast new activity of the Ministry of +Munitions throughout the country; and finally in a motor tour of some five +hundred miles through the zone of the English armies in France, I have +been a spectator not only of that marvellous organisation in northwestern +France, of supplies, reinforcements, training camps and hospitals, which +England has built up in the course of eighteen months behind her fighting +line, but I have been--on the first of two days--within less than a mile +of the fighting line itself, and on a second day, from a Flemish +hill--with a gas helmet close at hand! I have been able to watch a German +counter attack, after a successful English advance, and have seen the guns +flashing from the English lines, and the shell-bursts on the German +trenches along the Messines ridge; while in the far distance, a black and +jagged ghost, the tower of the Cloth Hall of Ypres broke fitfully through +the mists--bearing mute witness before God and man. + +For a woman--a marvellous experience! I hope later on in these letters to +describe some of its details, and some of the thoughts awakened by them in +a woman's mind. But let me here keep to the main point raised by your +question--_the effort of England_. During these two months of strenuous +looking and thinking, of conversation with soldiers and sailors and +munition workers, of long days spent in the great supply bases across the +Channel, or of motoring through the snowy roads of Normandy and Picardy, I +have naturally realised that effort far more vividly than ever before. It +seems to me--it must seem to any one who has seriously attempted to gauge +it--amazing, colossal. "What country has ever raised over sixty per cent +of its total recruitable strength, for service beyond the seas in a few +months?" asks one of our younger historians; and that a country not +invaded, protected by the sea, and by a supreme fleet; a country, +moreover, without any form of compulsory military service, in which +soldiering and the soldier have been rather unpopular than popular, a +country in love with peace, and with no intention or expectation of going +to war with any one? + + +II + +For there we come to the root of everything--the _unpreparedness of +England_--and what it meant. It meant simply that as a nation we never +wished for war with Germany, and, as a nation, we never expected it. Our +Governments, of course, contained men who saw more or less plainly the +dangers ahead, and had spent years of effort in trying to avoid them. On +several occasions, during the last twenty years, as we all remember, a +wave of sudden anxiety as to German aims and intentions had spread through +the thinking portion of the nation--in connection with South Africa, with +Morocco, with the Balkans. But it had always died away again. We know now +that Germany was not yet ready! Meanwhile fruitless efforts were made by +successive English Governments to limit armaments, to promote arbitration, +and extend the scope of the Hague Tribunal. In vain. Germany would have +none of them. Year by year, in a world of peace her battle-navy grew. "For +what can it be intended but to attack England?" said the alarmist. But how +few of us believed them! Our Tariff Reformers protested against the +encroachments of German trade; but, outside a handful of persons who +seemed to most of us fanatics, the emphasis lay always on care for our own +people, and not on hostility to Germany. Those who warned us passionately +that Germany meant to provoke a struggle, that the struggle must come, +were very little heeded. Nobody slept the worse at night for their +harangues. Lord Roberts's agitation for National Service, based on the +portentous growth of the German Army and Navy, made comparatively little +way. I speak from personal experience of a large Parliamentary division. +"Did you foresee it?" I said to one of the ablest and most rising men in +the Navy a fortnight ago. He thought a little. "I always felt there might +be a clash over some colonial question--a quarrel about black men. But a +war between the white nations over a European question--that Germany would +force such a war--no, that I never believed!" Nor did any of us--except +those few--those very few persons, who Cassandra-like, saw the coming +horror plainly, and spoke to a deaf country. + +"There was _no_ hatred of Germany in this country"--I quote a Cabinet +Minister. "Even in those parts of the country which had most reason to +feel the trade rivalry of Germany, there was no thought of war, no wish +for war!" It came upon England like one of those sudden spates through +mountain clefts in spring, that fall with havoc on the plains beneath. +After such days of wrestling for European peace as have left their +indelible mark upon every member of the English Cabinet which declared +war on August 4th, 1914, we fought because we must, because, in Luther's +words, we "could no other." + +What is the proof of this--the proof which history will accept as +final--against the vain and lying pleas of Germany? + +Nothing less than the whole history of the past eighteen +months!--beginning with that initial lack of realisation, and those +harassing difficulties of organisation with which we are now so often and +so ignorantly reproached. At the word "Belgium" on August 4th, practically +the whole English nation fell into line. We felt no doubts--we knew what +we had to do. But the problem was how to do it. Outside the Navy and the +Expeditionary Force, both of them ready to the last gun and button, we had +neither men nor equipment equal to the fighting of a Continental war, and +we knew it. The fact is more than our justification--it is our glory. If +we had meant war, as Germany still hoarsely but more faintly says, week +after week, to a world that listens no longer, could any nation of sane +men have behaved as we did in the years before the war?--233,000 men on +active service--and 263,000 Territorials, against Germany's +millions!--with arsenals and equipment to match. Is it any wonder that the +country--our untouched, uninvaded country--safe as it believed itself to +be under the protection of its invincible Navy, was, in some sections of +our population at any rate, slow to realise the enormous task to +which--for the faith of treaties' sake, for self-defence's sake--it was +committed? + +And yet--was it after all so slow? The day after war was declared the +Prime Minister asked Parliament to authorise the addition of half a +million of men to the Army, and a first war credit of a hundred millions +of money (five hundred million dollars). The first hundred thousand men +came rolling up into the great military centres within a few days. By +September 4th nearly three hundred thousand fresh men had enlisted--by +Christmas half a million. By May, a million men had been added to the new +Armies; by September, 1915, Sir John French alone had under his command +close on a million men on the lines in France and Flanders, and in +December, 1915, the addition of another million men to the Army was voted +by Parliament, bringing up the British military strength to approximately +four millions, excluding Colonials. And what of the Dominions? By +November, 1915, Canada and Australia alone had sent us forces more than +equal to the whole of that original Expeditionary Force, that +"contemptible little army" which, broken and strained as it was by the +sheer weight and fierceness of the German advance, yet held the gates of +the Channel till England could fling her fresh troops into the field, and +France--admirable France!--had recovered from the first onslaught of her +terrible and ruthless enemy. + +In one of my later letters I hope to give some particulars of this first +rush of men, gathered from those who witnessed it and took part in it. +One remarkable point in connection with it is that those districts most +heavily employed in munition-making and coal-mining, the two industries +absolutely indispensable to our Army and Navy, have also sent the largest +supply of men to the fighting line--take, for instance, Newcastle and the +Clyde. There have been anxious episodes, of course, in the great +development. Was your own vast levy in the Civil War without them? And for +the last half million men, we have had to resort, as Lincoln resorted, to +a modified form of compulsion. There was, no doubt, a good deal of +unnecessary waste and overlapping in the first camp and billeting +organization of the enormous forces raised. But when all is said, did we +not, in the language of a French observer "improvise the impossible"?--and +have we not good reason to be proud?--not with any foolish vainglory, but +with the sober and resolute pride of a great nation, conscious of its +past, determined to correct its mistakes, and looking open-eyed and +fearless towards the future? + +Then as to munitions: in many ways, as you will perhaps say, and as I +agree, a tragic story. If we had possessed last spring the +ammunition--both for ourselves and our allies we now possess, the war +would have gone differently. Drunkenness, trade-union difficulties, a +small--very small--revolutionary element among our work people--all these +have made trouble. But the real cause of our shortage lay in the fact that +no one, outside Germany, realised till far into the war, what the +ammunition needs--the absolutely unprecedented needs--of this struggle +were going to be. It was the second Battle of Ypres at the end of April +last year which burnt them into the English mind. We paid for the grim +knowledge in thousands of our noblest lives. But since then? + +In a later letter I propose to draw some picture in detail of the really +marvellous movement which since last July, under the impulse given by Mr. +Lloyd George, has covered England with new munition factories and added +enormously to the producing power of the old and famous firms, has drawn +in an army of women--now reckoned at something over a quarter of a +million--and is at this moment not only providing amply for our own +armies, but is helping those of the Allies against those final days of +settlement with Germany which we believe to be now steadily approaching. +American industry and enterprise have helped us substantially in this +field of munitions. We are gratefully conscious of it. But England is now +fast overtaking her own needs. + +More of this presently. Meanwhile to the military and equipment effort of +the country, you have to add the financial effort--something like +$7,500,000,000, already expended on the war; the organising effort, +exemplified in the wonderful "back of the army" in France, which I hope to +describe to you; and the vast hospital system, with all its scientific +adjuncts, and its constantly advancing efficiency. + +And at the foundation of it all--the human and personal effort!--the lives +given for England, the blood so generously shed for her, the homes that +have sacrificed their all, our "golden lads" from all quarters and +classes, whose young bodies lie mingled with an alien dust that "is for +ever England," since they sleep there and hallow it; our mothers who mourn +the death or the wreck of the splendid sons they reared; our widowed wives +and fatherless children. And this, in a quarrel which only very slowly our +people have come to feel as in very deed their own. At first we thought +most often and most vividly of Belgium, of the broken treaty, and of +France, so wantonly attacked, whose people no English man or woman could +ever have looked in the face again, had we forsaken her. Then came the +hammer blows that forged our will--Louvain, Aerschot, Rheims, the +air-raids on our defenceless towns, the senseless murder of our women and +children, the Bryce report, the _Lusitania_, the execution of Edith +Cavell--the whole stupefying revelation of the German hatred and greed +towards this country, and of the qualities latent in the German character. +Now we _know_--that it is they, or we--since they willed it so. And this +old, illogical, unready country is only just arriving at its full +strength, only just fully conscious of the sternness of its own resolve, +only just putting out its full powers, as the German power is weakening, +and the omens are changing--both in East and West. + + +III + +No!--the effort of England during the past eighteen months in spite of all +temporary ebbs and difficulties, in spite of that chorus of self-blame in +which the English nation delights, has been one of the great things in the +history of our country. We have "improvised the impossible" in every +direction--_but one_. + +In one point, indeed, there has been no improvisation. Nothing was +trusted to chance. What is it that alone has secured us the time to make +the effort we have made? + +It is now about a month ago that, by permission of the Admiralty, I found +myself driving towards a certain pier in a harbour opening on the North +Sea. The Commodore of a Cruiser Squadron was to send his boat for me, and +I was to lunch with him on board his Flag-ship. I duly passed the +distrustful sentry on the road leading to the pier, arrived at the +pier-head and descended from the motor which had brought me. The morning +was mistily sunny, and the pier strangely deserted. Where was the boat? +Where was my friend who had hoped to come for me himself? No signs of +either. The few old sailors employed about the pier looked at me in +astonishment, and shook their heads when I inquired. Commodore ----'s boat +was not there; no boat had been in that morning from the ships. I took the +Commodore's letter from my hand-bag, to assure myself I had not been +dreaming, and reread it in perplexity. No dates could be clearer--no +directions more precise. Suddenly I perceive one tall naval officer on the +pier. "Can you help me, sir?" And I hand him the Commodore's letter. He +looks at me--and at the letter. His face twinkles with repressed laughter; +and I laugh, too, beginning to understand. "Very sorry," says the charming +young man, "but I think I can assure you there will be no boat, and it is +no use your waiting. Commodore ---- went to sea last night." + +I thanked him, and we laughed together. Then I walked up the pier a little +way, seeing a movement in the mist. A sailor came up to me. "They all went +to sea last night," he said in my ear--"and there are the slow ones coming +back!" And out of the mist came the black shapes of war-ships, moving +majestically up the harbour--one might have fancied, with a kind of +injured dignity, because their unreasonable fellows had been faster and +had gone farther afield than they. + +I walked back to my motor, disappointed indeed, and yet exulting. +It was good to realise personally through this small incident, +the mobility and ever-readiness of the Fleet--the absolute +insignificance--non-existence even--of any civilian or shore interest, for +the Navy at its work. It was not till a week later that I received an +amusing and mysterious line from Commodore ----, the most courteous of +men. + +[Illustration: Marines Drilling on the Quarterdeck of a British +Battleship.] + +[Illustration: Fifteen-inch Guns on a British Battleship.] + + +IV + +By the time it reached me, however, I was on the shores of a harbour in +the far north "visiting the Fleet," indeed, and on the invitation of +England's most famous sailor. Let me be quite modest about it. Not for me +the rough waters, or the thunderous gun-practice-- + + "Breaking the silence of the seas + Among the farthest Hebrides"-- + +which I see described in the letters of the Russian or American +journalists who have been allowed to visit the Grand Fleet. There had +been some talk, I understand, of sending me out in a destroyer; it was +mercifully abandoned. All the same, I must firmly put on record that mine +was "a visit to the Fleet," by Admiralty permission, for the purpose of +these letters to you, and through you to the American public, and that I +seem to have been so far the only woman who, for newspaper ends, has been +allowed to penetrate those mysterious northern limits where I spent two +wonderful days. + +It was, indeed, a wintry visit. The whole land was covered with snow. The +train could hardly drag itself through the choked Highland defiles; and it +was hours behind its time when we arrived at a long-expected station, and +a Vice-Admiral looking at me with friendly, keen eyes came to the carriage +to greet me. "My boat shall meet you at the pier with my Flag-Lieutenant +to-morrow morning. You will pick me up at the Flag-ship, and I will take +you round the Fleet. You will lunch with me, I hope, afterwards." I tried +to show my grateful sense both of the interest and the humour of the +situation. My kind visitor disappeared, and the train carried me on a few +miles farther to my destination for the night. + +And here I take a few words from a journal written at the time: + + It is nearly dawn. A red light in the northeast is coming up + over the snowy hills. The water, steely grey--the tide + rising. What strange moving bodies are those, scudding along + over the dim surface, like the ghosts of sea planes? Dense + flocks of duck apparently, rising and falling along the + shallows of the shore. Now they are gone. Nothing moves. The + morning is calm, and the water still. And on it lie, first a + cruiser squadron, and then a line of Dreadnoughts stretching + out of sight. No lights anywhere, except the green lights on + a hospital ship far away. The great ships lie dark and + silent, and I sit and watch them, in the cold dawn, thinking + that but for them, and the multitude of their comrades that + guard these seas and shores, England would be as Belgium or + as Northern France, ravaged and destroyed by a barbarian + enemy. My heart goes out to you, great ships, and you, + gallant unwearied men, who keep your watch upon them! That + watch has been kept for generations. Never has there been + such need for it as now.... + +But the day has risen, and the sun with it. As I leave the shore in the +Vice-Admiral's boat, the sunlight comes dancing over a low line of hill, +lighting up the harbour, the mighty ships, with their guns, and, scattered +out to sea along the distance, the destroyers, the trawlers, the +mine-sweepers, the small auxiliary craft of all kinds--those "fringes of +the fleet"--which Kipling has caught and photographed as none but he can. + +The barge stops beside the Flag-ship, and the Admiral descends into it. +What is the stamp, the peculiar stamp that these naval men bear?--as of a +force trained and disciplined to its utmost capacity, and then held +lightly in check--till wanted. You see it in so many of their faces, even +in eyes hollow for want of sleep. It is always there--the same strength, +the same self-control, the same humanity. Is it produced by the testing +weight of responsibility, the silent sense of ever-present danger, both +from the forces of nature and the enmity of man, the high, scientific +training, and last but not least, that marvellous comradeship of the Navy, +whether between officer and officer, or between officers and men, which +is constantly present indeed in the Army, but is necessarily closer and +more intimate here, in the confined world of the ship, where all live +together day after day, and week after week, and where--if disaster +comes--all may perish together? + +But on this bright winter morning, as we pass under and round the ships, +and the Admiral points out what a landswoman can understand, in the +equipment and the power of these famous monsters with their pointing guns, +there was for the moment no thought of the perils of the Navy, but only of +the glory of it. And afterwards in the Admiral's pleasant drawing-room on +board the Flag-ship, with its gathering of naval officers, Admirals, +Captains, Commanders, how good the talk was! Not a shade of boasting--no +mere abuse of Germany--rather a quiet regret for the days when German and +English naval men were friends throughout the harbours of the world. "Von +Spee was a very good fellow--I knew him well--and his two sons who went +down with him," says an Admiral gently. "I was at Kiel the month before +the war. I _know_ that many of their men must loathe the work they are set +to do." "The point is," says a younger man, broad--shouldered, with the +strong face of a leader, "that they are always fouling the seas, and we +are always cleaning them up. Let the neutrals understand that! It is not +we who strew the open waters with mines for the slaughter of any passing +ship, and then call it 'maintaining the freedom of the seas.' And as to +their general strategy, their Higher Command--" he throws back his head +with a quiet laugh--and I listen to a rapid sketch of what the Germans +_might_ have done, have never done, and what it is now much too late to +do, which I will not repeat. + +Type after type comes back to me:--the courteous Flag-Lieutenant, who is +always looking after his Admiral, whether in these brief harbour rests, or +in the clash and darkness of the high seas--the Lieutenant-Commanders +whose destroyers are the watch-dogs, the ceaseless protectors, no less +than the eyes and ears of the Fleet--the Flag-Captain, who takes me +through the great ship, with his vigilant, spare face, and his +understanding, kindly talk about his men; many of whom on this Thursday +afternoon--the quasi half-holiday of the Fleet when in harbour--are +snatching an hour's sleep when and where they can. That sleep-abstinence +of the Navy--sleep, controlled, measured out, reduced to a bare minimum, +among thousands of men, that we on shore may sleep our fill--look at the +signs of it, in the eyes both of these officers, and of the sailors +crowding the "liberty" boats, which are just bringing them back from their +short two hours' leave on shore! + +Another gathering, in the Captain's room, for tea. The talk turns on a +certain popular play dealing with naval life, and a Commander describes +how the manuscript of it had been brought to him, and how he had revelled +in the cutting out of all the sentimentalisms. Two men in the +play--friends--going into action--shake hands with each other "with tears +in their eyes." A shout of derisive laughter goes up from the tea-table. +But they admit "talking shop" off duty. "That's the difference between us +and the Army." And what shop it is! I listen to two young officers, both +commanding destroyers, describing--one, his adventures in dirty weather +the night before, on patrol duty. "My hat, I thought one moment the ship +was on the rocks! You couldn't see a yard for the snow--and the +sea--_beastly_!" The other had been on one of Admiral Hood's monitors, +when they suddenly loomed out of the mist on the Belgian coast, and the +German army marching along the coast road to Dunkirk and Calais marched no +more, but lay in broken fragments behind the dunes, or any shelter +available, till the flooding of the dikes farther south completed the +hopeless defeat which Admiral Hood's guns had begun. + +Then the talk ranges round the blockade, the difficulties and dangers of +patrol work, the complaints of neutrals. "America should understand us. +Their blockade hit us hard enough in the Civil War. And we are fighting +for their ideals no less than our own. When has our naval supremacy ever +hurt them? Mayn't they be glad of it some day? What about a fellow called +Monroe!"--so it runs. Then its tone changes insensibly. From a few words +dropped I realise with a start where these pleasantly chatting men had +probably been only two or three days before, where they would probably be +again on the morrow. Some one opens a map, and I listen to talk which, in +spite of its official reticence, throws many a light on the vast range of +England's naval power, and the number of her ships. "Will _they_ come out? +When will they come out?" The question runs round the group. Some one +tells a story of a German naval prisoner taken not long ago in the North +Sea, and of his remark to his captors: "Yes, we're beaten--we know +that--but we'll make it _hell_ for you before we give in!" + +For that final clash--that Armageddon that all think must come, our +sailors wait, not despising their enemy, knowing very well that they--the +Fleet--are the pivot of the situation, that without the British Navy, not +all the valour of the Allies in France or Russia could win the war, and +that with it, Germany's hope of victory is vain. While the Navy lives, +England lives, and Germany's vision of a world governed by the ruthless +will of the scientific soldier is doomed. + +Meanwhile, what has Germany been doing in her shipyards all this time? No +one knows, but my hosts are well aware that we shall know some day. + +As to England--here is Mr. Balfour moving the Naval Estimates in the House +of Commons--the "token votes" which tell nothing that should not be told. +But since the war began, says the First Lord, we have added "one million" +to the tonnage of the Navy, and we have _doubled its personnel_. We are +adding more every day; for the Admiralty are always "wanting more." We are +quite conscious of our defects--in the Air Service first and foremost. But +they will be supplied. There is a mighty movement afoot in the workshops +of England--an effort which, when all drawbacks are allowed for, has +behind it a free people's will. + +In my next letter I propose to take you through some of these workshops. +"We get the most extraordinary letters from America," writes one of my +correspondents, a steel manufacturer in the Midlands. "What do they think +we are about?" An American letter is quoted. "So you are still, in +England, taking the war lying down?" + +Are we? Let us see. + + + + +II + + +Dear H. + +In this second letter I am to try and prove to you that England is _not_ +taking the war "lying down." + +Let me then give you some account--an eye-witness's account--of what there +is now to be seen by the ordinary intelligent observer in the "Munition +Areas," as the public has learned to call them, of England and Scotland. +That great spectacle, as it exists to-day--so inspiring in what it +immediately suggests of human energy and human ingenuity, so appalling in +its wider implications--testifies, in the first instance, to the fierce +stiffening of England's resolve to win the war, and to win it at a +lessened cost in life and suffering to our men in the field, which ran +through the nation, after the second Battle of Ypres, towards the close of +April, 1915. That battle, together with the disagreement between Mr. +Winston Churchill and Lord Fisher at the Admiralty, had, as we all know, +momentous consequences. The two events brought the national +dissatisfaction and disappointment with the general course of the spring +fighting to a head. By May 19th the Ministry which had declared the war +and so far conducted it, had disappeared; a National or Coalition +Ministry, drawn from the leading men of both parties, reigned in its +stead. The statement made by Mr. Asquith, as late, alack, as April 20, +1915, that there was "no truth in the statement" that our efforts at the +front "were being crippled or at any rate hampered" by want of ammunition, +was seen almost immediately, in the bitter light of events, to be due to +some fatal misconceptions, or misjudgments, on the part of those informing +the Prime Minister, which the nation in its own interests and those of its +allies, could only peremptorily sweep away. A new Ministry was +created--the Ministry of Munitions, and Mr. Lloyd George was placed at its +head. + +The work that Mr. Lloyd George and his Ministry--now employing vast new +buildings, and a staff running into thousands--have done since June, 1915, +is nothing less than colossal. Much no doubt had been done earlier for +which the new Ministry has perhaps unjustly got the credit, and not all +has been smooth sailing since. One hears, of course, criticism and +complaints. What vast and effective stir, for a great end, was ever made +in the world without them? + +Mr. Lloyd George has incurred a certain amount of unpopularity among the +working classes, who formerly adored him. In my belief he has incurred it +for the country's sake, and those sections of the working class who have +smarted under his criticisms most bitterly will forgive him when the time +comes. In his passionate determination to _get the thing done_, he has +sometimes let his theme--of the national need, and the insignificance of +all things else in comparison with it--carry him into a vehemence which +the workmen have resented, and which foreign or neutral countries have +misunderstood. + +He found in his path, which was also the nation's path, three great +foes--drunkenness, the old envenomed quarrel between employer and +employed, and that deep-rooted industrial conservatism of England, which +shows itself on the one hand in the trade-union customs and restrictions +of the working class, built up, as they hold, through long years, for the +protection of their own standards of life, and, on the other, in the +slowness of many of the smaller English employers (I am astonished, +however, at the notable exceptions everywhere!) to realise new needs and +processes, and to adapt themselves to them. Could any one have made such +an omelet without breaking a great many eggs? Is it wonderful that the +employers have sometimes felt themselves unbearably hustled, sometimes +misunderstood, and at other times annoyed, or worried by what seems to +them the red tape of the new Ministry, and its apparent multiplicity of +forms and inquiries? + +Men accustomed to conduct their own businesses with the usual independence +of regulation have been obliged to submit to regulation. Workmen +accustomed to defend certain methods of work and certain customs of their +trade as matters of life and death have had to see them jeopardised or +swept away. The restoration of these methods and customs is solemnly +promised them after the war; but meanwhile they become the servants of a +public department almost as much under orders as the soldier himself. They +are asked to admit unskilled men to the skilled processes over which they +have long kept so jealous a guard; above all, they are asked to assent +wholesale to the employment of women in trades where women have never been +employed before, where it is obvious that their introduction taps an +immense reservoir of new labour, and equally obvious that, once let in, +they are not going to be easily or wholly dislodged. + +Of course, there has been friction and difficulty; nor is it all yet at +an end. In the few danger-spots of the country, where heads are hottest, +where thousands of the men of most natural weight and influence are away +fighting, and where among a small minority hatred of the capitalist +deadens national feeling and obscures the national danger, there have been +anxious moments during the winter; there may possibly be some anxious +moments again. + +But, after all, how little it amounts to in comparison with the enormous +achievement! It took us nine months to realise what France--which, +remember, is a Continental nation under conscription--had realised after +the Battle of the Marne, when she set every hand in the country to work at +munitions that could be set to work. With us, whose villages were +unravaged, whose normal life was untouched, realisation was inevitably +slower. Again we were unprepared, and again, as in the case of the Army +itself, we may plead that we have "improvised the impossible." "No +nation," says Mr. Buchan, "can be adequately prepared, unless, like +Germany, it intends war; and Britain, like France paid the penalty of her +honest desire for peace!" + +Moreover, we had our Navy to work for, without which the cause of the +Allies would have gone under, must have gone under, at the first shock of +Germany. What the workmen of England did in the first year of the war in +her docks and shipyards, history will tell some day. + +"What's wrong with the men!" cried a Glasgow employer indignantly to me, +one evening as, quite unknown the one to the other, we were nearing one of +the towns on the Clyde. "What was done on the Clyde, in the first months +of the war, should never be forgotten by this country. Working from six to +nine every day till they dropped with fatigue--and Sundays, too--drinking +just to keep themselves going--too tired to eat or sleep--that's what it +was--I saw it!" + +I, too, have seen that utter fatigue stamped on a certain percentage of +faces through the Midlands, or the districts of the Tyne and the +Clyde--fatigue which is yet indomitable, which never gives way. How fresh, +beside that look, are the faces of the women, for whom workshop life is +new! In its presence one forgets all hostile criticism, all talk of +strikes and drink, of trade-union difficulties, and the endless worries of +the employers. + +The English workman is not tractable material--far from it--and he is not +imaginative; except in the persons of some of his chosen leaders, he has +never seen a ruined French or Flemish village, and he was slow to realise +the bitterness of that silence of the guns on the front, when ammunition +runs short, and lives must pay. But he has sent his hundreds of thousands +to the fighting line; there are a million and a half of him now working at +munitions, and it is he, in a comradeship with the brain workers, the +scientific intelligence of the nation, closer than any he has yet known, +and lately, with the new and astonishing help of women--it is he, after +all, who is "delivering the goods," he who is now piling the great +arsenals and private works with guns and shells, with bombs, rifles, and +machine-guns, he who is working night and day in the shipyards, he who is +teaching the rising army of women their work, and making new and firm +friends, through the national emergency, whether in the trenches or the +workshops, with other classes and types in the nation, hitherto little +known to him, to whom he, too, is perhaps a revelation. + +There will be a new wind blowing through England when this war is done. +Not only will the scientific intelligence, the general education, and the +industrial plant of the nation have gained enormously from this huge +impetus of war; but men and women, employers and employed, shaken perforce +out of their old grooves, will look at each other surely with new eyes, in +a world which has not been steeped for nothing in effort and sacrifice, in +common griefs and a common passion of will. + + +II + +All over England, then, the same quadruple process has now been going on +for months: + +The steady enlargement of existing armament and munition works, national +or private. + +The transformation of a host of other engineering businesses into munition +works. + +The co-ordination of a vast number of small workshops dealing with the +innumerable metal industries of ordinary commerce, so as to make them feed +the larger engineering works, with all those minor parts of the gun or +shell, which such shops had the power to make. + +The putting up of entirely new workshops--National Workshops--directly +controlled by the new Ministry, under the Munitions Acts. + +Let me take you through a few typical scenes. + +It was on February 1st, the day after the Zeppelin raid of January 31st, +that I left a house in the north where I had been seeing one of the +country-house convalescent hospitals, to which Englishwomen and English +wealth are giving themselves everywhere without stint, and made my way by +train, through a dark and murky afternoon, towards a Midland town. The +news of the raid was so far vague. The newspapers of the morning gave no +names or details. I was not aware that I was passing through towns where +women and children in back streets had been cruelly and wantonly killed +the night before, where a brewery had been bombed, and the windows of a +train broken, in order that the German public might be fed on ridiculous +lies about the destruction of Liverpool docks and the wrecking of "English +industry." "English industry lies in ruins," said the _Hamburger +Nachrichten_ complacently. Marvellous paper! Just after reading its +remarks, I was driving down the streets of the great industrial centre I +had come to see--a town which the murderers of the night before would have +been glad indeed to hit. As it was, "English industry" seemed tolerably +active amid its "ruins." The clumsy falsehoods of the German official +reports and the German newspapers affect me strangely! It is not so much +their lack of truth as their lack of the ironic, the satiric sense, which +is a certain protection, after all, even amid the tragedy of war. We have +a tolerable British conceit of ourselves, no doubt, and in war we make +foolish or boasting statements about the future, because, in spite of all +our grumbling, we are at bottom a nation of optimists, and apt to see +things as we wish. But this sturdy or fatuous lying about the past--the +"sinking" of the _Lion_, the "capture" of Fort Vaux, or the "bombardment" +of Liverpool docks--is really beyond us. Our sense of ridicule, if nothing +else, forbids--the instinct of an old people with an old and humourous +literature. These leading articles of the _Hamburger Nachrichten_, the +sermons of German pastors, and those amazing manifestoes of German +professors, flying straight in the face of historic documents--"scraps of +paper"--which are there, none the less, to all time--for us, these things +are only not comic because, to the spiritual eye, they are written in +blood. But to return to the "ruins," and this "English industry" which +during the last six months has taken on so grim an aspect for Germany. + +My guide, an official of the Ministry, stops the motor, and we turn down a +newly made road, leading towards a mass of spreading building on the left. + +"A year ago," says my companion--"this was all green fields. Now the +company is employing, instead of 3,500 work-people, about three times the +number, of whom a large proportion are women. Its output has been +quadrupled, and the experiment of introducing women has been a complete +success." + +We pass up a fine oak staircase to the new offices, and I am soon +listening to the report of the works superintendent. A spare, powerful man +with the eyes of one in whom life burns fast, he leans, his hands in his +pockets, against the wall of his office, talking easily and well. He +himself has not had a day's holiday for ten months, never sleeping more +than five and a half hours, with the telephone at his bedhead, and waking +to instant work when the moment for waking comes. His view of his workmen +is critical. It is the view of one consumed with "realisation," face to +face with those who don't "realise." "But the raid will do a deal of +good," he says cheerfully. + +"As to the women!"--he throws up his hands--"they're saving the country. +They don't mind what they do. Hours? They work ten and a half or, with +overtime, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. At least, that's what +they'd like to do. The Government are insisting on one Sunday--or two +Sundays--a month off. I don't say they're not right. But the women resent +it. '_We're_ not tired!' they say. And you look at them!--they're not +tired. + +"If I go down to the shed and say: 'Girls!--there's a bit of work the +Government are pushing for--they say they must have--can you get it done?' +Why, they'll stay and get it done, and then pour out of the works, +laughing and singing. I can tell you of a surgical-dressing factory near +here, where for nearly a year the women never had a holiday. They simply +wouldn't take one. 'And what'll our men at the front do, if we go +holiday-making?' + +"Last night" (the night of the Zeppelin raid) "the warning came to put out +lights. We daren't send them home. They sat in the dark among the +machines, singing, 'Keep the home fires burning,' 'Tipperary,' and the +like. I tell you, it made one a bit choky to hear them. They were thinking +of their sweethearts and husbands I'll be bound!--not of themselves." + +In another minute or two we were walking through the new workshops. Often +as I have now seen this sight, so new to England, of a great engineering +workshop filled with women, it stirs me at the twentieth time little less +than it did at first. These girls and women of the Midlands and the north, +are a young and comely race. Their slight or rounded figures among the +forest of machines, the fair or golden hair of so many of them, their +grace of movement, bring a strange touch of beauty into a scene which has +already its own spell. + +Muirhead Bone and Joseph Pennell have shown us what can be done in art +with these high workshops, with their intricate distances and the endless +crisscross of their belting, and their ranged machines. But the coming in +of the girls, in their close khaki caps and overalls, showing the many +pretty heads and slender necks, and the rows of light bending forms, +spaced in order beside their furnaces or lathes as far as the eye can +reach, has added a new element--something flower-like, to all this flash +of fire and steel, and to the grimness of war underlying it. + +For the final meaning of it all is neither soft nor feminine! These +girls--at hot haste--are making fuses and cartridge-cases by the hundred +thousand, casting, pressing, drawing, and, in the special +danger-buildings, filling certain parts of the fuse with explosive. There +were about 4,000 of them to 5,000 men, when I saw the shop, and their +number has no doubt increased since; for the latest figures show that +about 15,000 fresh women workers are going into the munition works every +week. The men are steadily training them, and without the teaching and +co-operation of the men--without, that is, the surrender by the men of +some of their most cherished trade customs--the whole movement would have +been impossible. + +As it is, by the sheer body of work the women have brought in, by the +deftness, energy, and enthusiasm they throw into the simpler but quite +indispensable processes, thereby setting the unskilled man free for the +Army, and the skilled man for work which women cannot do, Great Britain +has become possessed of new and vast resources of which she scarcely +dreamed a year ago; and so far as this war is a war of machinery--and we +all know what Germany's arsenals have done to make it so--its whole aspect +is now changing for us. The "eternal feminine" has made one more +startling incursion upon the normal web of things! + +But on the "dilution" of labour, the burning question of the hour, I shall +have something to say in my next letter. Let me record another visit of +the same day to a small-arms factory of importance. Not many women here so +far, though the number is increasing, but look at the expansion figures +since last summer! A large, new factory added, on a bare field; 40,000 +tons of excavation removed, two miles of new shops, sixty feet wide and +four floors high, the output in rifles quadrupled, and so on. + +We climbed to the top floor of the new buildings and looked far and wide +over the town. Dotted over the tall roofs rose the national flags, marking +"controlled" factories, i.e., factories still given over a year ago to +one or other of the miscellaneous metal trades of the Midlands, and now +making fuse or shell for England's Armies, and under the control of the +British Government. One had a sudden sharp sense of the town's corporate +life, and of the spirit working in it everywhere for England's victory. +Before we descended, we watched the testing of a particular gun. I was to +hear its note on the actual battle-field a month later. + +An afternoon train takes me on to another great town, with some very +ancient institutions, which have done very modern service in the war. I +spent my evening in talking with my host, a steel manufacturer identified +with the life of the city, but serving also on one of the central +committees of the Ministry in London. Labour and politics, the chances of +the war, America and American feeling towards us, the task of the new +Minister of Munitions, the temper of English and Scotch workmen, the flux +into which all manufacturing conditions have been thrown by the war, and +how far old landmarks can be restored after it--we talked hard on these +and many other topics, till I must break it off--unwillingly!--to get some +sleep and write some notes. + +Next day took me deep into the very central current of "England's +Effort"--so far as this great phase of it at any rate is concerned. In +this town, even more than in the city I had just left, one felt the throb +of the nation's rising power, concentrated, orderly, determined. Every +single engineering business in a town of engineers was working for the +war. Every manufacturer of any importance was doing his best for the +Government, some in connection with the new Ministry, some with the +Admiralty, some with the War Office. As for the leading firms of the city, +the record of growth, of a mounting energy by day and night, was nothing +short of bewildering. Take these few impressions of a long day, as they +come back to me. + +First, a great steel warehouse, full of raw steel of many sorts and kinds, +bayonet steel, rifle steel, shell steel, stacked in every available corner +and against every possible wall--all sold, every bit of it, and ready to +be shipped--some to the Colonies, some to our Allies, with peremptory +orders coming in as to which the harassed head of the firm could only +shake his head with a despairing "impossible!" + +Then some hours in a famous works, under the guidance of the managing +director, one of those men, shrewd, indefatigable, humane, in whose +company one learns what it is, in spite of all our supposed deficiencies, +that makes the secret of England's industrial tenacity. An elderly +Scotchman, very plainly marked by the labour and strain of the preceding +eighteen months, but still steadily keeping his head and his temper, +showing the signs of an Evangelical tradition in his strong dislike for +Sunday work, his evident care for his work-people--men and women--and his +just and sympathetic tone towards the labour with which he has to +deal--such is my companion. + +He has a wonderful story to tell: "In September, 1914, we were called upon +to manufacture a large extra number of field-guns. We had neither +buildings nor machinery for the order. However, we set to work. We took +down seven dwelling-houses; in three weeks we were whitewashing the walls +of our new workshop and laying in the machinery. My idea was to make so +many guns. The Government asked for four times as many. So we took down +more houses, and built another much larger shop. The work was finished in +ten weeks. Five other large workshops were put up last year, all built +with lightning speed, and everywhere additions have been made to the +machinery in every department wherever it was possible to put machines." + +As to their thousands of workmen, Mr. C. has no complaints to make. + +"They have been steadily working anything from 60 to 80 hours per week; +the average is 64.29 hours per week, and the average time lost only 3.51 +per cent. A little while ago, a certain union put forward a claim for an +advance in wages. We had to decline it, but as the meeting came to an end, +the trade-union secretary said: + +"'Of course, we are disappointed, and we shall no doubt return to the +matter again. But whether you concede the advance of wages or not, our +members will continue to do their level best, believing that they are not +only working for themselves, but helping the Government and helping our +soldiers to wage this war to a successful conclusion.'" + +And the manager adds his belief that this is the spirit which prevails +"among the work-people generally." + +Before we plunge into the main works, however, my guide takes me to see a +recent venture, organised since the war, in which he clearly takes a +special interest. An old warehouse bought, so to speak, overnight, and +equipped next morning, has been turned into a small workshop for shell +production--employing between three and four hundred girls, with the +number of skilled men necessary to keep the new unskilled labour going. +These girls are working on the eight hours' shift system; and working so +well that a not uncommon wage among them--on piece-work, of course--runs +to somewhere between two and three pounds a week. + +"But there is much more than money in it," says the kind-faced woman +superintendent, as we step into her little office out of the noise, to +talk a little. "The girls are perfectly aware that they are 'doing their +bit,' that they are standing by their men in the trenches." + +This testimony indeed is universal. There is patriotism in this grim +work, and affection, and a new and honourable self-consciousness. Girls +and women look up and smile as a visitor passes. They presume that he +or she is there for some useful purpose connected with the war, and +their expression seems to say: "Yes, we are all in it!--we know very +well what _we_ are doing, and what a difference we are making. Go +and tell our boys ..." + +The interest of this workshop lay, of course, in the fact that it was a +sample of innumerable others, as quickly organised and as efficiently +worked, now spreading over the Midlands and the north. As to the main +works belonging to the same great firm, such things have been often +described; but one sees them to-day with new eyes, as part of a struggle +which is one with the very life of England. Acres and acres of ground +covered by huge workshops new and old, by interlacing railway lines and +moving trolleys. Gone is all the vast miscellaneous engineering work of +peace. The war has swallowed everything. + +I have a vision of a great building, where huge naval guns are being +lowered from the annealing furnace above into the hardening oil-tank +below, or where in the depths of a great pit, with lights and men moving +at the bottom, I see as I stoop over the edge, a jacket being shrunk upon +another similar monster, hanging perpendicularly below me. + +Close by are the forging-shops whence come the howitzers and the huge +naval shells. Watch the giant pincers that lift the red-hot ingots and +drop them into the stamping presses. Man directs; but one might think the +tools themselves intelligent, like those golden automata of old that +Hephaestus made, to run and wait upon the gods of Olympus. Down drops the +punch. There is a burst of flame, as though the molten steel rebelled, and +out comes the shell or the howitzer in the rough, nosed and hollowed, and +ready for the turning. + +The men here are great, powerful fellows, blanched with heat and labour; +amid the flame and smoke of the forges one sees them as typical figures in +the national struggle, linked to those Dreadnoughts in the North Sea, and +to those lines in Flanders and Picardy where Britain holds her enemy at +bay. Everywhere the same intensity of effort, whether in the men or in +those directing them. And what delicate and responsible processes! + +In the next shop, with its rows of shining guns, I stop to look at a great +gun apparently turning itself. No workman is visible for the moment. The +process goes on automatically, the bright steel emerging under the tool +that here, too, seems alive. Close to it is a man winding steel wire, or +rather braid, on a 15-inch gun; beyond again there are workmen and +inspectors testing and gauging another similar giant. Look down this +shining tube and watch the gauging, now with callipers, now with a rubber +device which takes the impression of the rifling and reveals any defect. +The gauging turns upon the ten-thousandth part of an inch, and any mistake +or flaw may mean the lives of men.... + +We turn out into a pale sunshine. The morning work is over, and the men +are trooping into the canteens for dinner--and we look in a moment to see +for ourselves how good a meal it is. At luncheon, afterwards, in the +Directors' Offices, I am able to talk with the leading citizens of the +great town. + +One of them writes some careful notes for me. Their report of labour +conditions is excellent. "No organised strikes and few cessations of work +to report. Overtime is being freely worked. Little or no drunkenness, and +that at a time when the average earnings of many classes of workmen are +two or three times above the normal level. The methods introduced in the +twenty years before the war--conference and discussion--have practically +settled all difficulties between employers and employed, in these parts at +any rate, during this time of England's trial." + +After luncheon we diverge to pay another all too brief visit to a +well-known firm. The managing director gives me some wonderful figures of +a new shell factory they are just putting up. It was begun in September, +1915. Since then 2,000 tons of steelwork has been erected, and 200 out of +1,200 machines required have been received and fixed. Four thousand to +5,000 hands will be ultimately employed. + +All the actual production off the machines _will be done by women_--and +this, although the works are intended for a heavy class of shell, +60-pounder high explosive. Women are already showing their +capacity--helped by mechanical devices--to deal with this large type of +shell; and the workshop when in full working order is intended for an +output of a million shell per annum. + +I drive on, overshadowed by these figures. _"Per annum!"_ The little +common words haunt the ear intolerably. Surely before one more year is +over, this horror under which we live will be lifted from Europe! Britain, +a victorious Britain, will be at peace, and women's hands will have +something else to do than making high-explosive shell. But, meanwhile, +there is no other way. The country's call has gone out, clear and stern, +and her daughters are coming in their thousands to meet it, from loom and +house and shop. + +A little later, in a great board-room, I find the Munitions Committee +gathered. Its function, of course, is to help the new Ministry in +organising the war work of the town. In the case of the larger firms, the +committee has been chiefly busy in trying to replace labour withdrawn by +the war. It has been getting skilled men back from the trenches, and +advising the Ministry as to the "badging" of munition workers. It has +itself, through its command of certain scientific workshops, been +manufacturing gauges and testing materials. + +It has turned the electroplate workshops of the town on to making steel +helmets, and in general has been "working in" the smaller engineering +concerns so as to make them feed the larger ones. This process here, as +everywhere, is a very educating one. The shops employed on bicycle and +ordinary motor work have, as a rule, little idea of the extreme accuracy +required in munition work. The idea of working to the thousandth of an +inch seems to them absurd; but they have to learn to work to the +ten-thousandth, and beyond! The war will leave behind it greatly raised +standards of work in England!--that every one agrees. + +And I carry away with me as a last remembrance of this great town and its +activities two recollections--one of a university man doing some highly +skilled work on a particularly fine gauge: "If you ask me what I have +been doing for the last few weeks, I can only tell you that I have been +working like a nigger and have done nothing! Patience!--that's all there +is to say." And another of a "transformed" shop of moderate size, where an +active and able man, after giving up the whole of his ordinary business, +has thrown himself into the provision, within his powers, of the most +pressing war needs, as he came across them. + +In July last year, for instance, munitions work in many quarters was +actually held up for want of gauges. Mr. D. made something like 10,000, to +the great assistance of certain new Government shops. Then the Government +asked for a particular kind of gun. Mr. D. undertook 1,000, and has +already delivered 400. Tools for shell-making are _everywhere_ wanted in +the rush of the huge demand. Mr. D. has been making them diligently. This +is just one example among hundreds of how a great industry is adapting +itself to the fiery needs of war. + +But the dark has come, and I must catch my train. As I speed through a +vast industrial district I find in the evening papers hideous details of +the Zeppelin raid, which give a peculiar passion and poignancy to my +recollections of a crowded day--and peculiar interest, also, to the talk +of an able representative of the Ministry of Munitions, who is travelling +with me, and endeavouring to give me a connected view of the whole new +organisation. As he speaks, my thoughts travel to the English battle-line, +to the trenches and casualty clearing-stations behind it, to distant +Russia; and I think of the Prime Minister's statement in Parliament--that +the supply of munitions, for all its marvellous increase, is not yet equal +to the demand. New shops, new workers, new efforts--England is producing +them now unceasingly, she must go on producing them. There must be no +pause or slackening. There will be none. + +I am going now to see--after the Midlands--what the English and Scotch +north is doing to swell the stream. And in my next letter there will be +plenty to say about "Dilution" of labour, about wages, and drink, and some +other burning topics of the moment. + + + + +III + + +Dear H. + +It is now three months since Mr. Lloyd George made his startling speech, +as Munitions Minister, in the House of Commons in which, as he wound up +his review of his new department, he declared: "Unless we quicken our +movements, damnation will fall on the sacred cause for which so much +gallant blood has flowed!" The passion of this peroration was like the +fret of a river in flood chafing at some obstacle in its course. Generally +speaking, the obstacle gives way. In this case Mr. George's obstacle had +begun to give way long before December 21st--the date of the speech. The +flood had been pushing at it with increasing force since the foundation of +the Ministry of Munitions in the preceding summer. But the crumbling +process was not quick enough for Great Britain's needs, or for the energy +of her Minister. + +Hence the outspoken speech of December 21st, supported by Mr. Asquith's +grave words of a few weeks later. "We cannot go on," said the Prime +Minister in effect, "depending upon foreign countries for our munitions. +We haven't the ships to spare to bring them home, and the cost is too +great. We _must_ make them ourselves." "Yes--and _quicker_!" Mr. Lloyd +George had already said, with a sharp emphasis, meant to "hustle" that +portion of the nation which still required hustling; overpainting his +picture, no doubt, but with quite legitimate rhetoric, in order to produce +his effect. + +The result of that fresh "hustling" was the appointment of the Dilution +Commissioners, a second Munitions Act amending the first, and a vast +expansion all over the country of the organisation which had seemed so +vast before. It was not till midwinter, in the very midst of the new and +immense effort I have been describing, that the Minister of Munitions and +those working with him convinced themselves that, without another resolute +push, the barrier across the stream of the nation's will might still +fatally hold it back. More and more men were wanted every week--in the +Army and the workshops--and there were not men to go round. The second +push had to be given--it was given--and it still firmly persists. + +In the spring of 1915, the executives of the leading trade-unions had +promised the Government the relaxation of their trade rules for the period +of the war. Many of the trade-union leaders--Mr. Barnes, Mr. Henderson, +Mr. Hodge, and many others--have worked magnificently in this sense, and +many unions have been thoroughly loyal throughout their ranks to the +pledge given in their name. The iron-moulders, the shipwrights, the +brassworkers may be specially mentioned. But in the trades mostly +concerned with ammunition, there were certain places and areas where the +men themselves, as distinct from their responsible leaders, offered a +dogged, though often disguised resistance. Personally, I think that any +one at all accustomed to try and look at labour questions from the point +of view of labour will understand the men while heartily sympathising with +the Minister, who was determined to get "the goods" and has succeeded in +getting them. Here, in talking of "the men" I except that small +revolutionary element among them which has no country, and exists in all +countries. And I except, too, instances which certainly are to be found, +though rarely, of what one might call a purely mean and overreaching +temper on the part of workmen--taking advantage of the nation's need, as +some of the less responsible employers have no doubt, also, taken +advantage of it. But, in general, it seems to me, there has been an honest +struggle in the minds of thousands of workmen between what appears to them +the necessary protection of their standards of life--laboriously attained +through long effort--and the call of the war. And that the overwhelming +majority of the workmen concerned with munitions should have patriotically +and triumphantly decided this struggle as they have--under pressure, no +doubt, but under no such pressure as exists in a conscripted, still more +in an invaded, nation--may rank, I think, when all is said, with the +raising of our voluntary Armies as another striking chapter in the book of +_England's Effort_. + +In this chapter, then, Dilution will always take a leading place. + +What is Dilution? + +It means, of course, that under the sharp analysis of necessity much +engineering work, generally reckoned as "skilled" work, and reserved to +"skilled" workmen, by a number of union regulations, is seen to be capable +of solution into various processes, some of which can be sorted out from +the others as within the capacity of the unskilled or semiskilled worker. +By so dividing them up, and using the superior labour with economy, only +where it is really necessary, it can be made to go infinitely further; and +the inferior or untrained labour can then be brought into work where +nobody supposed it could be used, where, in fact, it never has been used. + +Obvious enough, perhaps. But the idea had to be applied in haste to living +people--employers, many of whom shrank from reorganising their workshops +and changing all their methods at a moment's notice; and workmen looking +forward with consternation to being outnumbered, by ten to one, in their +own workshops, by women. When I was in the Midlands and the North, at the +end of January and in early February, Dilution was still an unsettled +question in some of the most important districts. One of the greatest +employers in the country writes to me to-day (March 24): "Since January, +we have passed through several critical moments, but, eventually, the +principle was accepted, and Dilution is being introduced as fast as +convenient. For this we have largely to thank an admirable Commission (Sir +Croydon Marks, Mr. Barnes, and Mr. Shackleton) which was sent down to +interview employers and employed. Their tact and acumen were remarkable. +Speaking personally, I cannot help believing that there is a better +understanding between masters and men now than has existed in my memory." + +A great achievement that!--for both employers and employed--for the +Minister also who appointed the Commission and thus set the huge stone +rolling yet another leap upon its way. + +It will be readily seen how much depends also on the tact of the +individual employer. That employer has constantly done best who has called +his men into council with him, and thrown himself on their patriotism and +good sense. I take the following passage from an interesting report by a +very shrewd observer,[A] printed in one of the northern newspapers. It +describes an employer as saying: + + I was told by the Ministry that I should have to double my + output. Labour was scarce and I consulted a deputation of + the men about it. I told them the problem and said I should + be glad of suggestions. I told them that we should either + have to get men or women, and I asked them for their + co-operation, as there would be a great deal of teaching to + be done. "Probably," I said, "you would like to find the + men?" They agreed to try. I gave them a week, and at the end + of a week they came to me and said they would rather have + women. I said to them: "Then you must all pull together." + They gave me their word. Right from the beginning they have + done their level best to help, and things have gone on + perfectly. On one occasion, a woman complained that the man + directing her was "working against her." I called the men's + committee together, said the employer. I told them the + facts, and they have dealt with the offender themselves. + +[A] _Yorkshire Observer_, February 1, 1916. + +The general system now followed in the shell factories is to put so many +skilled men in charge of so many lathes worked by women workers. Each +skilled man, who teaches the women, sets the tools, and keeps the machines +in running order, oversees eight, ten, or more machines. But sometimes the +comradeship is much closer. For instance (I quote again the witness +mentioned above), in a machine tool shop, i.e., a shop for the making of +tools used in shell production, one of the most highly skilled parts of +the business, you may now see a man, with a woman to help him, operating +two lathes. If the woman falls into any difficulty the man comes to help +her. Both can earn more money than each could earn separately, and the +skilled man who formerly worked the second lathe is released. In the same +shop a woman watched a skilled man doing slot-drilling--a process in which +thousandths of an inch matter--for a fortnight. Now she runs the machine +herself by day, while the man works it on the night shift. One woman in +this shop is "able to do her own tool-setting." The observer thinks she +must be the only woman tool-setter in the country, and he drops the remark +that her capacity and will may have something to do with the fact that she +has a husband at the front! Near by, as part of the same works, which are +not specialised, but engaged in _general_ engineering, is a bomb shop +staffed by women, which is now sending 3,000 bombs a week to the trenches. +Women are also doing gun-breech work of the most delicate and responsible +kind under the guidance of a skilled overseer. One of the women at this +work was formerly a charwoman. She has never yet broken a tool. All over +the works, indeed, the labour of women and unskilled men is being utilised +in the same scientific way. Thus the area of the works has been doubled in +a few months, without the engagement of a single additional skilled man +from outside. "We have made the men take an interest in the women," say +the employers. "That is the secret of our success. We care nothing at all +about the money, we are all for the output. If the men think you are going +to exploit women and cheapen the work, the scheme is crabbed right away." + +I myself came across the effect of this suspicion in the minds of the +workmen in the case of a large Yorkshire shell factory, where the +employers at once detected and slew it. This great workshop, formerly used +for railway work, now employs some 1,300 women, with a small staff of +skilled men. The women work forty-five hours a week in eight-hour +shifts--the men fifty-three hours on twelve-hour shifts. There is no +difficulty whatever in obtaining a full supply of women's labour--indeed, +the factory has now a waiting-list of 500. Nor has there been any +difficulty with the men in regard to the women's work. With the exception +of two operations, which are thought too heavy for them, all the machines +are run by women. + +But when the factory began, the employers very soon detected that it was +running below its possible output. There was a curious lack of briskness +in the work--a curious constraint among the new workers. Yet the employers +were certain that the women were keen, and their labour potentially +efficient. They put their heads together, and posted up a notice in the +factory to the effect that whatever might be the increase in the output of +piece-work, the piece-work rate would not be altered. Instantly the +atmosphere began to clear, the pace of the machines began to mount. + +It was a factory in which the work was new, the introduction of women was +new, and the workers strange to each other, and for the most part strange +to their employers. A small leaven of distrust on the part of the men +workers was enough, and the women were soon influenced. Luckily, the +mischief was as quickly scotched. Men and women began to do their best, +the output of the factory--which had been planned for 14,000 shells a +week--ran up to 20,000, and everything has gone smoothly since. + +Let me now, however, describe another effect of Dilution--the employment +of unskilled _men_ on operations hitherto included in skilled engineering. + +On the day after the factory I have just described, my journey took me to +another town close by, where my guide--a Director of one of the largest +and best-known steel and engineering works in the kingdom--showed me a new +shell factory filled with 800 to 900 men, all "medically unfit" for the +Army, and almost all drawn from the small trades and professions of the +town, especially from those which had been hard hit by the war. Among +those I talked to I found a keeper of bathing-machines, a publican's +assistant, clerks, shop assistants, three clergy--these latter going home +for their Sunday duty, and giving their wages to the Red Cross--unemployed +architects, and the like. + +I cannot recall any shop which made a greater impression of energy, of a +spirit behind the work, than this shop. In its inspecting-room I found a +graduate from Yale. "I had to join in the fight," he said quietly--"this +was the best way I could think of." And it was noticeable besides for some +remarkable machines, which your country had also sent us. + +In other shell factories a single lathe carries through one process, +interminably repeated, sometimes two, possibly three. But here, with the +exception of the fixing and drilling of the copper band, and a few minor +operations, one lathe _made the shell_--cut, bored, roughed, turned, +nosed, and threaded it, so that it dropped out, all but the finished +thing--minus, of course, the fuse. The steel pole introduced at the +beginning of the process made nine shells, and the average time per shell +was twenty-three minutes. No wonder that in the great warehouse adjoining +the workshop one saw the shell heaps piling up in their tens of +thousands--only to be rushed off week by week, incessantly, to the front. +The introduction of these machines had been largely the work of an able +Irish manager, who described to me the intense anxiety with which he had +watched their first putting up and testing, lest the vast expenditure +incurred should have been in any degree thrown away. His cheerful looks +and the shell warehouse told the sequel. When I next met him it was at a +northern station in company with his Director. They were then apparently +in search of new machinery! The workshop I had seen was being given over +to women, and the men were moving on to heavier work. And this is the kind +of process which is going on over the length and breadth of industrial +England. + +So far, however, I have described the expansion or adaptation of firms +already existing. But the country is now being covered with another and +new type of workshop--the National Shell factories--which are founded, +financed, and run by the Ministry of Munitions. The English Government is +now by far the greatest engineering employer in the world. + +Let me take an illustration from a Yorkshire town--a town where this +Government engineering is rapidly absorbing everything but the textile +factories. A young and most competent Engineer officer is the Government +head of the factory. The work was begun last July, by the help of borrowed +lathes, in a building which had been used for painting railway-carriages; +its first shell was completed last August. The staff last June was 1. It +is now about 200, and the employees nearly 2,500. + +A month after the first factory was opened, the Government asked for +another--for larger shell. It was begun in August, and was in work in a +few weeks. In September a still larger factory--for still larger +shells--(how these demands illustrate the course of the war!--how they are +themselves illustrated by the history of Verdun!) was seen to be +necessary. It was begun in September, and is now running. Almost all the +machines used in the factory have been made in the town itself, and about +100 small firms, making shell parts--fuses primers, gaines, etc.--have +been grouped round the main firm, and are every day sending in their work +to the factory to be tested, put together, and delivered. + +No factory made a better impression upon me than this one. The large, airy +building with its cheerful lighting; the girls in their dark-blue caps and +overalls, their long and comely lines reminding one of some processional +effect in a Florentine picture; the high proportion of good looks, even of +delicate beauty, among them; the upper galleries with their tables piled +with glittering brasswork, amid which move the quick, trained hands of +the women--if one could have forgotten for a moment the meaning of it all, +one might have applied to it Carlyle's description of a great school, as +"a temple of industrious peace." + +Some day, perhaps, this "new industry"--as our ancestors talked of a "new +learning"--this swift, astonishing development of industrial faculty among +our people, especially among our women, will bear other and rich fruit for +England under a cleared sky. It is impossible that it should pass by +without effect, profound effect upon our national life. But at present it +has one meaning and one only--_war_! + +Talk to these girls and women. This woman has lost her son--that one her +husband. This one has a brother home on leave, and is rejoicing in the +return of her husband from the trenches, as a skilled man, indispensable +in the shop; another has friends in the places and among the people which +suffered in the last Zeppelin raid. She speaks of it with tight lips. Was +it she who chalked the inscription found by the Lady Superintendent on a +lathe some nights ago--"_Done fourteen to-day. Beat that if you can, you +devils_!" + +No!--under this fast-spreading industry, with its suggestion of good +management and high wages, there is the beat of no ordinary impulse. Some +feel it much more than others; but, says the clever and kindly +Superintendent I have already quoted: "The majority are very decidedly +working from the point of view of doing something for their country.... A +great many of the fuse women are earning for the first time.... The more I +see of them all, the better I like them." And then follow some interesting +comments on the relation of the more educated and refined women among them +to the skilled mechanics--two national types that have perhaps never met +in such close working contact before. One's thoughts begin to follow out +some of the possible social results of this national movement. + +[Illustration: A Forest of Shells in a Corner of One of England's Great +Shell Filling Factories.] + +[Illustration: A Light Railway Bringing Up Ammunition.] + + +II + +But now the Midlands and the Yorkshire towns are behind me. The train +hurries on through a sunny afternoon, and I look through some notes sent +me by an expert in the great campaign. Some of them represent its humours. +Here is a perfectly true story, which shows an Englishman with "a move +on," not unworthy of your side of the water. + +A father and son, both men of tremendous energy, were the chiefs of a very +large factory, which had been already extensively added to. The father +lived in a house alongside the works. One day business took him into the +neighbouring county, whilst the son came up to London on munition work. On +the father's return he was astonished to see a furniture van removing the +contents of his house. The son emerged. He had already signed a contract +for a new factory on the site of his father's house; the materials of the +house were sold and the furniture half gone. After a first start, the +father took it in true Yorkshire fashion--wasting no words, and +apparently proud of his son! + +Here we are at last, in the true north--crossing a river, with a climbing +town beyond, its tiled roofs wreathed in smoke, through which the +afternoon lights are playing. I am carried off to a friend's house. Some +directors of the great works I am come to see look in to make a kindly +plan for the morrow, and in the evening, I find myself sitting next one of +the most illustrious of modern inventors, with that touch of _dream_ in +manner and look which so often goes with scientific discovery. The +invention of this gentle and courteous man has affected every vessel of +any size afloat, whether for war or trade, and the whole electrical +development of the world. The fact was to be driven home even to my +feminine ignorance of mechanics when, a fortnight later, the captain of a +Flag-ship and I were hanging over the huge shaft leading down to the +engine-rooms of the Super-dreadnought, and my companion was explaining to +me something of the driving power of the ship. But on this first meeting, +how much I might have asked of the kind, great man beside me, and was too +preoccupied to ask! May the opportunity be retrieved some day! My head was +really full of the overwhelming facts, whether of labour or of output, +relating to this world-famous place, which were being discussed around me. +I do not name the place, because the banishment of names, whether of +persons or places, has been part of the plan of these articles. But one +can no more disguise it by writing round it than one could disguise +Windsor Castle by any description that was not ridiculous. Many a German +officer has walked through these works, I imagine, before the war, smoking +the cigarette of peace with their Directors, and inwardly ruminating +strange thoughts. If any such comes across these few lines, what I have +written will, I think, do England no harm. + +But here are some of the figures that can be given. The shop area of the +ammunition shops alone has been increased _eightfold_ since the outbreak +of war. The total weight of shell delivered during 1915 was--in +tons--fourteen times as much as that of 1914. The weight of shell +delivered per week, as between December, 1914, and December, 1915, has +risen nearly ten times. The number of work-people, in these shops, men and +women, had risen (a) as compared with the month in which war broke out, to +a figure eight times as great; (b) as compared with December, 1914, to one +between three and four times as great. And over the whole vast enterprise, +shipyards, gun shops, ammunition shops, with all kinds of naval and other +machinery used in war, the numbers of work-people employed had increased +since 1913 more than 200 per cent. They, with their families, equal the +population of a great city--you may see a new town rising to meet their +needs on the farther side of the river. + +As to Dilution, it is now accepted by the men, who said when it was +proposed to them: "Why didn't you come to us six months ago?" + +And it is working wonders here as elsewhere. For instance, a particular +portion of the breech mechanism of a gun used to take one hour and twenty +minutes to make. On the Dilution plan it is done on a capstan, and takes +six minutes. Where 500 women were employed before the war, there are now +close on 9,000, and there will be thousands more, requiring one skilled +man as tool-setter to about nine or ten women. In a great gun-carriage +shop, "what used to be done in two years is now done in one month." In +another, two tons of brass were used before the war; a common figure now +is twenty-one. A large milling shop, now entirely worked by men, is to be +given up immediately to women. And so on. + +Dilution, it seems to me, is breaking down a number of labour conventions +which no longer answer to the real conditions of the engineering trades. +The pressure of the war is doing a real service to both employers and +employed by the simplification and overhauling it is everywhere bringing +about. + +As to the problem of what is to be done with the women after the war, one +may safely leave it to the future. It is probably bound up with that other +problem of the great new workshops springing up everywhere, and the huge +new plants laid down. One thinks of the rapid recovery of French trade +after the war of 1870, and of the far more rapid rate--after forty years +of machine and transport development, at which the industry of the Allied +countries may possibly recover the ravages of the present war, when once +peace is signed. In that recovery, how great a part may yet be played by +these war workshops!--transformed to the uses of peace; by their crowds of +work-people, and by the hitherto unused intelligence they are everywhere +evoking and training among both men and women. + +As for the following day, my impressions, looking back, seem to be all a +variant on a well-known Greek chorus, which hymns the amazing--the +"terrible"--cleverness of Man! Seafaring, tillage, house-building, +horse-taming, so muses Sophocles, two thousand three hundred years ago; +how did man ever find them out? "Wonders are many, but the most wonderful +thing is man! _Only against death has he no resource_." + +_Intelligence_--and _death_! They are written everywhere in these endless +workshops, devoted to the fiercest purposes of war. First of all, we visit +the "danger buildings" in the fuse factory, where mostly women are +employed. About 500 women are at work here, on different processes +connected with the delicate mechanism and filling of the fuse and gaine, +some of which are dangerous. Detonator work, for instance. The Lady +Superintendent selects for it specially steady and careful women or girls, +who are paid at time-and-a-quarter rate. Only about eight girls are +allowed in each room. The girls here all wear--for protection--green +muslin veils and gloves. It gives them a curious, ghastly look, that fits +the occupation. For they are making small pellets for the charging of +shells, out of a high-explosive powder. Each girl uses a small copper +ladle to take the powder out of a box before her, and puts it into a +press which stamps it into a tiny block, looking like ivory. She holds her +hand over a little tray of water lest any of the powder should escape. +What the explosive and death-dealing power of it is, it does not do to +think about. + +In another room a fresh group of girls are handling a black powder for +another part of the detonator, and because of the irritant nature of the +powder, are wearing white bandages round the nose and mouth. There is +great competition for these rooms, the Superintendent says! The girls in +them work on two shifts of ten and one-half hours each, and would resent a +change to a shorter shift. They have one hour for dinner, half an hour for +tea, a cup of tea in the middle of the morning--and the whole of Saturdays +free. To the eye of the ordinary visitor they show few signs of fatigue. + +After the fuse factory we pass through the high-explosive factory, where +250 girls are at work in a number of isolated wooden sheds filling +18-pounder shell with high explosive. The brass cartridge-case is being +filled with cordite, bundles of what look like thin brown sticks, and the +shell itself, including its central gaine or tube, with the various deadly +explosives we have seen prepared in the "danger buildings." The shell is +fitted into the cartridge-case, the primer and the fuse screwed on. It is +now ready to be fired. + +I stand and look at boxes of shells, packed, and about to go straight to +the front. A train is waiting close by to take them the first stage on +their journey. I little thought then that I should see these boxes, or +their fellows, next, on the endless ranks of ammunition lorries behind the +fighting lines in France, and that within a fortnight I should myself +stand by and see one of those shells fired from a British gun, little more +than a mile from Neuve Chapelle. + +But here are the women and girls trooping out to dinner. A sweet-faced +Superintendent comes to talk to me. "They are not as strong as the men," +she says, pointing to the long lines of girls, "but what they lack in +strength they make up in patriotic spirit." I speak to two educated women, +who turn out to be High School mistresses from a town that has been +several times visited by Zeppelins. "We just felt we must come and help to +kill Germans," they say quietly. "All we mind is getting up at five-thirty +every morning. Oh, no! it is not too tiring." + +Afterwards?--I remember one long procession of stately shops, with their +high windows, their floors crowded with machines, their roofs lined with +cranes, the flame of the forges, and the smoke of the fizzling steel +lighting up the dark groups of men, the huge howitzer shells, red-hot, +swinging in mid-air, and the same shells, tamed and gleaming, on the great +lathes that rough and bore and finish them. Here are shell for the _Queen +Elizabeth_ guns!--the biggest shell made. This shop had been put up by +good luck just as the war began. Its output of steel has increased from +80 tons a week to 1,040. + +Then another huge fuse shop, quite new, where 1,400 girls in one shift are +at work--said to be the largest fuse shop known. And on the following +morning, an endless spectacle of war work--gun-carriages, naval turrets, +torpedo tubes, armed railway carriages, small Hotchkiss guns for merchant +ships, tool-making shops, gauge shops--and so on for ever. In the +tool-making shops the output has risen from 44,000 to 3,000,000 a year! + +And meanwhile I have not seen anything, and shall not have time to see +anything of the famous shipyards of the firm. But with regard to them, all +that it is necessary to remember is that before the war they were capable +of berthing twenty ships at once, from the largest battleship downward; +and we have Mr. Balfour's word for it as to what has happened, since the +war, in the naval shipyards of this country. "We have added _a million +tons to the Navy--and we have doubled its personnel_." + +And now let me record two final sayings. + +One from a manager of a department: + + We have a good many Socialists here, and they constantly + give trouble. But the great majority of the men have done + wonderfully! Some men have put in one hundred hours a week + since the war began. Some have not lost a minute since it + began. The old hands have worked _splendidly_. + +And another from one of the Directors: + + I know of no drunkenness among our women. I don't remember + ever having seen a drunken woman round here. + + +III + +I have almost said my say on munitions, though I could continue the story +much longer. But the wonder of it consists really in its vastness, in the +steady development of a movement which will not end or slacken till the +Allies are victorious. Except for the endless picturesqueness of the +women's share in it, and the mechanical invention and adaptation going on +everywhere, with which only a technical expert could deal, it is of course +monotonous, and I might weary you. I will only--before asking you to +cross the Channel with me to France--put down a few notes and impressions +on the Clyde district, where, as our newspapers will have told you, there +is at the present moment (March 29th) some serious labour trouble, with +which the Government is dealing. Until further light is thrown upon its +causes, comment is better postponed. But I have spoken quite frankly in +these letters of "danger spots," where a type of international Socialism +is to be found--affecting a small number of men, over whom the ideas of +"country" and "national honour" seem to have no hold. Every country +possesses such men and must guard itself against them. A nucleus of them +exists in this populous and important district. How far their influence +is helped among those who care nothing for their ideas, by any real or +supposed grievances against the employers, by misunderstandings and +misconceptions, by the sheer nervous fatigue and irritation of the men's +long effort, or by those natural fears for the future of their Unions, +to which I have once or twice referred, only one long familiar with the +district could say, I can only point out here one or two interesting +facts. In the first place, in this crowded countryside, where a small +minority of dangerous extremists appear to have no care for their +comrades in the trenches, the recruiting for the new Armies--so I learn +from one of the leading authorities--has been--"taken on any basis +whatever--substantially higher than in any other district. The men came +up magnificently." That means that among those left behind, whatever +disturbing and disintegrating forces exist in a great Labour centre have +freer play than would normally be the case. A certain amount of patriotic +cream has been skimmed, and in some places the milk that remains must be +thin. In the second place--(you will remember the employer I quoted to you +in a former letter)--the work done here by thousands and thousands of +workmen since the beginning of the war, especially in the great shipyards, +and done with the heartiest and most self-sacrificing good-will, has been +simply invaluable to the nation, and England remembers it well. And +finally, the invasion of women has perhaps been more startling to the +workmen here than anywhere else. Not a single woman was employed in the +works or factories of the district before the war, except in textiles. +There will soon be 15,000 in the munition workshops, and that will not be +the end. + +But Great Britain cannot afford--even in a single factory--to allow any +trifling at this moment with the provision of guns, and the Government +must--and will--act decisively. + +As to the drinking in this district of which so much has been said, and +which is still far in excess of what it ought to be, I found many people +hard put to it to explain why the restriction of hours which has worked so +conspicuously well in other districts has had comparatively little effect +here. Is it defects of administration, or a certain "cussedness" in the +Scotch character, which resents any tightening of law? One large employer +with whom I discuss it, believes it would suit the Scotch better to +abolish all restrictions, and simply punish drunkenness much more +severely. And above all--"open all possible means of amusement on Sundays, +especially the cinemas!"--a new and strange doctrine, even now, in the +ears of a country that holds the bones of John Knox. There seems indeed to +be a terribly close connection between the dulness of the Scotch Sunday +and the obstinacy of Scotch drinking; and when one thinks of the heavy +toil of the week, of the confinement of the workshops, and the strain of +the work, one feels at any rate that here is a problem which is to be +_solved_, not preached at; and will be solved, some day, by nimbler and +humaner wits than ours. + +In any case, the figures, gathered a month ago from those directly +concerned, as to the general extension of the national effort here, could +hardly be more striking. In normal times, the district, which is given up +to Admiralty work, makes ships and guns, but has never made shells. The +huge shell factories springing up all over it are a wholly new creation. +As usual, they are filled with women, working under skilled male +direction, and everywhere one found among managers and superintendents the +same enthusiasm for the women's work. "It's their honour they work on," +said one forewoman. "That's why they stand it so well." The average +working week is fifty-four hours, but overtime may seriously lengthen the +tale. Wages are high; canteens and rest-rooms are being everywhere +provided; and the housing question is being tackled. The rapidity of the +women's piece-work is astonishing, and the mingling of classes--girls of +education and refinement working quite happily with those of a much +humbler type--runs without friction under the influence of a common +spirit. This common spirit was well expressed by a girl who before she +came to the factory was working a knitting-machine. "I like this +better--_because there's a purpose in it_." A sweet-faced woman who was +turning copper bands for shell, said to me: "I never worked a machine +before the war. I have done 912 in ten hours, but that tired me very much. +I can do 500 or 600 quite easily." + +On the same premises, after leaving the shell shops, we passed rapidly +through gun shops, where I saw again processes which had become almost +familiar. "The production of howitzers," said my guide, "is the question +of the day. We are making them with great rapidity--but the trouble is to +get enough machines." The next shop, devoted to 18-pounder field-guns, was +"green fields fifteen months ago," and the one adjoining it, a fine shed +about 400 feet square, for howitzer work, was started in August last, on a +site "which was a bog with a burn running through it." Soon "every foot of +space will be filled with machines, and there will be 1,200 people at work +here, including 400 women. In the next shop we are turning out about 4,000 +shrapnel and 4,000 high-explosive shells per week. When we started women +on what we thought this heavy shell, we provided men to help lift the +shell in and out of the machines. The women thrust the men aside in five +minutes." + +Later on, as I was passing through a series of new workshops occupied with +all kinds of army work and employing large numbers of women, I stopped to +speak to a Belgian woman. "Have you ever done any machine work before?" +"No, Madame, never--_Mais, c'est la guerre. Il faut tuer les Allemands_!" +It was a quiet, passionless voice. But one thought, with a shiver, of +those names of eternal infamy--of Termonde, Aerschot, Dinant, Louvain. + +It was with this woman's words in my ears that I set out on my last +visit--to which they were the fitting prelude. The afternoon was darkening +fast. The motor sped down a river valley, sodden with rain and melting +snow, and after some miles we turn into a half-made road, leading to some +new buildings, and a desolate space beyond. A sentry challenges us, and we +produce our permit. Then we dismount, and I look out upon a wide stretch +of what three months ago was swamp, or wet plough land. Now its 250 acres +are enclosed with barbed wire, and patrolled by sentries night and day. A +number of small buildings, workshops, stores, etc., are rising all over +it. I am looking at what is to be the great "filling" factory of the +district, where 9,000 women, in addition to male workmen, will soon be +employed in charging the shell coming from the new shell factories we have +left behind in the darkness. + +Strange and tragic scene! Strange uprising of women! + +We regain the motor and speed onwards, my secretary and I, through unknown +roads far away from the city and its factories towards the country house +where we are to spend the night. In my memory there surge a thousand +recollections of all that I have seen in the preceding fortnight. An +England roused at last--rushing to factory, and lathe, to shipyard and +forge, determined to meet and dominate her terrible enemy in the workshop, +as she has long since met and dominated him at sea, and will in time +dominate him on land--that is how my country looks to me to-night. + +... The stars are coming out. Far away, over what seems like water with +lights upon it, there are dim snowy mountains--majestic--rising into the +sky. The noise and clamour of the factories are all quiet in the night. +Two thoughts remain with me--Britain's ships in the North Sea--Britain's +soldiers in the trenches. And encircling and sustaining both the justice +of a great cause--as these white Highland hills look down upon and +encircle this valley. + + + + +IV + + +Dear H. + +A million and a half of men--over a quarter of a million of women--working +in some 4,000 State-controlled workshops for the supply of munitions of +war, not only to our own troops, but to those of our allies--the whole, in +the main, a creation of six months' effort--this is the astonishing +spectacle of some of the details of which I have tried, as an eye-witness, +to give you in my previous letters a rapid and imperfect sketch. + +But what of the men, the Armies, for which these munitions are being made +and hurried to the fighting-lines? It was at Aldershot, a few days ago, +that I listened to some details of the first rush of the new Armies, given +me by a member of the Headquarters Staff who had been through it all. +Aldershot in peace time held about 27,000 troops. Since the outbreak of +war some million and a quarter of men have passed through the great camp, +coming in ceaselessly for training and equipment, and going out again to +the theatres of war. + +In the first days and weeks of the war--during and after the marvellous +precision and rapidity with which the Expeditionary Force was despatched +to France--men poured in from all parts, from all businesses and +occupations; rich and poor, north and south country men, English, Scotch, +Irish, and Welsh; men from the Dominions, who had flung themselves into +the first home-coming steamer; men from India, and men from the uttermost +parts of Africa and Asia who had begged or worked their way home. They +were magnificent material. They came with set faces, asking only for +training, training, training!--and "what the peace soldier learns in six +months," said my companion, "they learnt in six weeks. We had neither +uniforms nor rifles, neither guns nor horses for them. We did not know how +to feed them or to house them. In front of the headquarters at Aldershot, +that Mecca of the soldier, where no one would dare to pass in ordinary +times whose turnout is not immaculate, the most extraordinary figures, in +bowler hats and bits of uniform, passed unrebuked. We had to raid the +neighbouring towns for food, to send frantic embassies to London for bread +and meat; to turn out any sort of shed to house them. Luckily it was +summer weather; otherwise I don't know what we should have done for +blankets. But nobody 'groused.' Everybody worked, and there were many who +felt it 'the time of their lives.'" + +And yet England "engineered the war!" England's hypocrisy and greed +demanded the crushing of Germany--hence the lying "excuse" of +Belgium--that apparently is what all good Germans--except those who know +better--believe; what every German child is being taught. As I listen to +my companion's story, I am reminded, however, of a puzzled remark which +reached me lately, written just before Christmas last, by a German nurse +in a Berlin hospital, who has English relations, friends of my own. "We +begin to wonder whether it really was England who caused the war--since +you seem to be so dreadfully unprepared!" So writes this sensible girl to +one of her mother's kindred in England; in a letter which escaped the +German censor. She might indeed wonder! To have deliberately planned a +Continental war with Germany, and Germany's 8,000,000 of soldiers, without +men, guns, or ammunition beyond the requirements of an Expeditionary Force +of 160,000 men, might have well become the State of Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. But +the England of Raleigh, Chatham, Pitt, and Wellington has not generally +been reckoned a nation of pure fools. + +The military camps of Great Britain tell the tale of our incredible +venture. "Great areas of land had to be cleared, levelled, and drained; +barracks had to be built; one camp alone used 42,000 railway truck-loads +of building material." There was no time to build new railways, and the +existing roads were rapidly worn out. They were as steadily repaired; and +on every side new camps sprang up around the parent camps of the country. + +The Surrey commons and woods, the Wiltshire downs, the Midland and +Yorkshire heaths, the Buckinghamshire hills have been everywhere +invaded--their old rural sanctities are gone. I walked in bewilderment the +other day up and down the slopes of a Surrey hill which when I knew it +last was one kingdom of purple heather, beloved of the honey-bees, and +scarcely ever trodden by man or woman. Barracks now form long streets upon +its crest and sides; practise-trenches, bombing-schools, the stuffed and +dangling sacks for bayonet training, musketry ranges, and the rest, are +everywhere. Tennyson, whose wandering ground it once was, would know it no +more. And this camp is only one of a series which spread far and wide +round the Aldershot headquarters. + +Near my own home, a park and a wooded hillside, that two years ago were +carefully guarded even from a neighbour's foot, are now occupied by a +large town of military huts, which can be seen for miles round. And +fifteen miles away, in a historic "chase" where Catharine of Aragon lived +while her trial was proceeding in a neighbouring town, a duke, bearing one +of the great names of England, has himself built a camp, housing 1,200 +men, for the recruits of his county regiments alone, and has equipped it +with every necessary, whether for the soldier's life or training. But +everywhere--East, North, South, and West--the English and Scotch roads are +thronged with soldiers and horses, with trains of artillery wagons and +Army Service lorries, with men marching back from night attacks or going +out to scout and skirmish on the neighbouring commons and through the most +sacred game--preserves. There are no more trespass laws in England--for +the soldier. + +You point to our recruiting difficulties in Parliament. True enough. We +have our recruiting difficulties still. Lord Derby has not apparently +solved the riddle; for riddle it is, in a country of voluntary service, +where none of the preparations necessary to fit conscription into ordinary +life, with its obligations, have ever been made. The Government and the +House of Commons are just now wrestling with it afresh, and public opinion +seems to be hardening towards certain final measures that would have been +impossible earlier in the war.[B] The call is still for men--more--and +more--men! And given the conditions of this war, it is small wonder that +England is restless till they are found. But amid the cross currents of +criticism, I catch the voice of Mr. Walter Long, the most practical, the +least boastful of men, in the House of Commons, a few nights ago: Say what +you like, blame, criticise, as you like, but "what this country has done +since August, 1914, is an almost incredible story." And so it is. + +And now let us follow some of these khaki-clad millions across the seas, +through the reinforcement camps, and the great supply bases, towards that +fierce reality of war to which everything tends. + +[B] Since these lines were written the crisis in the Government, the Irish +rising, and the withdrawal of the military service bill have happened in +quick succession. The country is still waiting (April 28th) for the last +inevitable step. + + +II + +It was about the middle of February, after my return from the munition +factories, that I received a programme from the War Office of a journey in +France, which I was to be allowed to make. I remember being at first much +dissatisfied with it. It included the names of three or four places well +known to be the centres of English supply organisation in France. But it +did not include any place in or near the actual fighting zone. To me, in +my ignorance, the places named mainly represented the great array of +finely equipped hospitals to be found everywhere in France in the rear of +our Armies; and I was inclined to say that I had no special knowledge of +hospital work, and that one could see hospitals in England, with more +leisure to feel and talk with the sufferers in them than a ten days' tour +could give. A friendly Cabinet Minister smiled when I presented this view. +"You had better accept. You will find it very different from what you +suppose. The 'back' of the Army includes everything." He was more than +right! + +The conditions of travelling at the present moment, within the region +covered by the English military organisation in France, for a woman +possessing a special War Office pass, in addition to her ordinary +passport, and understood to be on business which has the good-will of the +Government, though in no sense commissioned by it, are made easy by the +courtesy and kindness of everybody concerned. From the moment of landing +on the French side, my daughter and I passed into the charge of the +military authorities. An officer accompanied us; a War Office motor took +us from place to place; and everything that could be shown us in the short +ten days of our tour was freely open to us. The trouble, indeed, that was +taken to enable me to give some of the vividness of personal seeing to +these letters is but one of many proofs, I venture to think, of that warm +natural wish in British minds that America should understand why we are +fighting this war, and how we are fighting it. As to myself, I have +written in complete freedom, affected only by the absolutely necessary +restrictions of the military censorship; and I only hope I may be able to +show something, however inadequately, of the work of men who have done a +magnificent piece of organisation, far too little realised even in their +own country. + +For in truth we in England know very little about our bases abroad; about +what it means to supply the ever-growing needs of the English Armies in +France. The military world takes what has been done for granted; the +general English public supposes that the Tommies, when their days in the +home camps are done, get "somehow" conveyed to the front, being "somehow" +equipped, fed, clothed, nursed, and mended, and sent on their way across +France in interminable lines of trains. As to the details of the process, +it rarely troubles its head. The fact is, however, that the work of the +great supply bases abroad, of the various Corps and Services connected +with them--Army Ordnance, Army Service, Army Medical, railway and motor +transport--is a desperately interesting study; and during the past +eighteen months, under the "I.G.C."--Inspector-General of +Communications--has developed some of the best brains in the Army. + +Two days spent under the guidance of the Base Commandant or an officer of +his staff among the docks and warehouses of a great French port, among the +huts of its reinforcement camp, which contains more men than Aldershot +before August, 1914, or in its workshops of the Army Ordnance Corps, gave +me my first experience of the organising power that has gone to these +departments of the war. The General in command of the base was there in +the first weeks of the struggle and during the great retreat. He retired +with his staff to Nantes--leaving only a broken motor-car behind +him!--just about the time that the French Government betook itself to +Bordeaux. But in September he was back again, and the building-up process +began, which has since known neither stop nor stay. That the commercial +needs of a great French port should have been able to accommodate +themselves as they have to the military needs of the British Army speaks +loudly for the tact and good feeling on both sides. The task has not been +at all times an easy one; and I could not help thinking as we walked +together through the crowded scene, that the tone and temper of the able +man beside me--his admiration, simply expressed, yet evidently profound, +for the French spirit in the war, and for the heroic unity of the country +through all ranks and classes, accounted for a great deal. In the presence +of a good-will so strong, difficulties disappear. + +Look now at this immense hangar or storehouse--the largest in the +world--through which we are walking. It was completed three years before +the war, partly, it is said, by German money, to house the growing +cotton-trade of the port. It now houses a large proportion of the food of +the British Army. The hangar is half a mile long, and is bounded on one +side by the docks where the ships are discharging, and on the other by the +railway lines where the trains are loading up for the front. + +You walk through avenues of bacon, through streets of biscuits and jam. On +the quays just outside, ships from England, Canada, Norway, Argentina, +Australia are pouring out their stores. Stand and watch the endless cranes +at work, and think what English sea power means! And on the other side +watch the packing of the trucks that are going to the front, the order and +perfection with which the requisitions, large and small, of every regiment +are supplied. + +One thinks of the Crimean scandals. The ghost of Florence Nightingale +seems to move beside us, watching contentedly what has come of all that +long-reforming labour, dealing with the health, the sanitation, the food +and equipment of the soldier, in which she played her part; and one might +fancy the great shade pausing specially beside the wired-in space labelled +"Medical Comforts," and generally known as "The Cage." Medical +_necessaries_ are housed elsewhere; but here are the dainties, the special +foods, the easing appliances of all kinds which are to make life bearable +to many a sorely-wounded man. + +As to the huge sheds of the Army Ordnance, which supply everything that +the soldier doesn't eat, all metal stores--nails, horseshoes, oil-cans, +barbed wire--by the ton; trenching-tools, wheelbarrows, pickaxes, razors, +sand-bags, knives, screws, shovels, picketing-pegs, and the like--they are +of course endless; and the men who work in them are housed in one of the +largest sheds, in tiers of bunks from floor to ceiling. + +Perhaps the most interesting part of the Depot to the outsider are the +repairing sheds and workshops established in a suburb of the town to which +we drive on. For this is work that has never been done before in +connection with an army in the field. Day by day trains full of articles +for repair come down from the front. I happened to see a train of the +kind, later on, leaving a station close to the fighting line. Guns, +rifles, range-finders, gun-carriages, harness, all torn and useless +uniforms, tents, boots by the thousand, come to this base to be repaired, +or to be sent home for transformation into "shoddy" to the Yorkshire +towns. Nothing seems too large or too small for Colonel D.'s department. +Field-glasses, periscopes, water-bottles, they arrive from the trenches +with the same certainty as a wounded howitzer or machine-gun, and are +returned as promptly. + +In one shed, my guide called my attention to shelves on which were a +number of small objects in china and metal. "They were found in kits left +on the field," he says gently. "Wherever we can identify the owner, such +things are carefully returned to his people. These could not be +identified." + +I took up a little china dog, a bit of coarse French pottery, which some +dead father had bought, at Poperinghe, perhaps, or Bailleul, for the +children at home. Near by were "souvenirs"--bits of shell, of German +equipment; then some leaves of a prayer-book, a neck-medallion of a +saint--and so on--every fragment steeped in the poignancy of sudden +death--death in youth, at the height of life. + +The boot and uniform sheds, where 500 French women and girls, under +soldier-foremen, are busy, the harness-mending room, and the engineering +workshops might reassure those pessimists among us--especially of my own +sex--who think that the male is naturally and incorrigibly a wasteful +animal. Colonel D. shows me the chart which is the record of his work, and +its steadily mounting efficiency. He began work with 140 men, he is now +employing more than a thousand, and his repairing sheds are saving +thousands of pounds a week to the British Government. He makes all his own +power, and has four or five powerful dynamos at work. + +We come out into a swirl of snow, and henceforward sightseeing is +difficult. Yet we do our best to defy the weather. We tramp through the +deepening snow of the great camp, which lines the slopes of the hills +above the river and the town, visiting its huts and recreation-rooms, its +Cinema theatre, and its stores, and taking tea with the Colonel of an +Infantry Base Depot, who is to be our escort on the morrow. + +But on the last morning before we start we mount to the plateau above the +reinforcement camp, where the snow lies deep and the wind blows one of the +sharpest blasts of the winter. Here are bodies of men going through some +of the last refinements of drill before they start for the front; here are +trenches of all kinds and patterns, revetted in ways new and old, and +planned according to the latest experience brought from the fighting line. +The instructors here, as at other training-camps in France, are all men +returned from the front. The men to whom they have to give the final touch +of training--men so near themselves to the real thing--are impatient of +any other sort. + +As we stand beside the trenches under the bright sun and piercing wind, +looking at the dark lines of British soldiers on the snow, and listening +to the explanations of a most keen and courteous officer, one's eyes +wander, on the one side, over the great town and port, over the French +coast and the distant sea, and on the other side, inland, over the +beautiful French landscape with its farms and country houses. Everything +one sees is steeped in history, a mingled history, in which England and +France up to five centuries ago bore an almost equal share. Now again they +are mingled here; all the old enmities buried in a comradeship that goes +deeper far than they, a comradeship of the spirit that will surely mould +the life of both nations for years to come. + +How we grudged the snow and the low-sweeping clouds and the closed motor, +on our drive of the next day! I remember little more of it than occasional +glimpses of the tall cliffs that stand sentinel along the river, a hasty +look at a fine church above a steeply built town, an army lorry stuck deep +in the snow-drifts, and finally the quays and ships of another base port. +Our escort, Colonel S., pilots us to a pleasant hotel full of officers, +mostly English, belonging to the Lines of Communications, with a few poor +wives and mothers among them who have come over to nurse their wounded in +one or other of the innumerable hospitals of the base. + +Before dinner the general commanding the base had found me out and I had +told my story. + +"Oh, we'll put some notes together for you. We were up most of last night. +I dare say we shall be up most of this. But a little more or less doesn't +matter." I protested most sincerely. But it is always the busiest men who +shoulder the extra burdens; and the notes duly reached me. From them, from +the talk of others spending their last ounce of brain and energy in the +service of the base, and from the evidence of my own eyes, let me try and +draw some general picture of what that service is: Suppose a British +officer speaking: + + Remember first that every man, every horse, every round of + ammunition, every article of clothing and equipment, all the + guns and vehicles, and nearly all the food have to be + brought across the English Channel to maintain and reinforce + the ever-growing British Army, which holds now so important + a share of the fighting line in France. The ports of entry + are already overtaxed by the civil and military needs of + France herself. Imagine how difficult it is--and how the + difficulty grows daily with the steady increase of the + British Army--to receive, disembark, accommodate, and + forward the multitude of men and the masses of material! + + You see the khaki in the French streets, the mingling + everywhere of French and English; but the ordinary visitor + can form no idea of the magnitude of this friendly invasion. + There is no formal delimitation of areas or spaces, in + docks, or town, or railways. But gradually the observer will + realise that the town is honeycombed with the temporary + locations of the British Army, which everywhere speckle the + map hanging in the office of the Garrison Quartermaster. And + let him further visit the place where the long lines of + reinforcement, training and hospital camps are installed on + open ground, and old England's mighty effort will scarcely + hide itself from the least intelligent. _Work, efficiency, + economy_ must be the watchwords of a base. Its functions may + not be magnificent--_but they are war_--and war is + impossible unless they are rightly carried out. + + When we came back from the Loire in September, after our + temporary retreat, the British _personnel_ at this place + grew from 1,100 to 11,000 in a week. Now there are thousands + of troops always passing through, thousands of men in + hospital, thousands at work in the docks and storehouses. + And let any one who cares for horses go and look at the + Remount Depot and the Veterinary Hospitals. The whole + treatment of horses in this war has been revolutionised. + Look at the cheap, ingenious stables, the comfort produced + by the simplest means, the kind quiet handling; look at the + Convalescent Horse Depots, the operating theatres, and the + pharmacy stores in the Veterinary Hospitals. + + As to the troops themselves, every Regiment has its own + lines, for its own reinforcements. Good food, clean cooking, + civilised dining-rooms, excellent sanitation--the base + provides them all. It provides, too, whatever else Tommy + Atkins wants, and _close at hand_; wet and dry canteens, + libraries, recreation huts, tea and coffee huts, palatial + cinemas, concerts. And what are the results? Excellent + behaviour; excellent relations between the British soldier + and the French inhabitants; absence of all serious crime. + + Then look at the docks. You will see there armies of + labourers, and long lines of ships discharging horses, + timber, rations, fodder, coal, coke, petrol. Or at the + stores and depots. It would take you days to get any idea of + the huge quantities of stores, or of the new and ingenious + means of space economy and quick distribution. As to the + Works Department--camps and depots are put up "while you + wait" by the R.E. officers and unskilled military labour. + Add to all this the armies of clerks, despatch riders, and + motor-cyclists--and the immense hospital _personnel_--then, + if you make any intelligible picture of it in your mind, you + will have some idea of what bases like these mean. + +Pondering these notes, it seemed to me that the only way to get some kind +of "intelligible picture" in two short days was to examine something in +detail, and the rest in general! Accordingly, we spent a long Sunday +morning in the Motor Transport Depot, which is the creation of Colonel B., +and perhaps as good an example as one could find anywhere in France of the +organising talent of the able British officer. + +The depot opened in a theatre on the 13th of August, 1914. "It began," +says Colonel B., "with a few balls of string and a bag of nails!" Its +staff then consisted of 6 officers and 91 N.C.O.'s and men--its permanent +staff at present is about 500. All the drivers of some 20,000 motor +vehicles--nearly 40,000 men--are tested here and, if necessary, instructed +before going up to the fighting lines; and the depot deals with 350 +different types of vehicles. In round figures 100,000 separate parts are +now dealt with, stored, and arranged in the depot. The system of records +and accounts is extraordinarily perfect, and so ingenious that it seems to +work itself. + +Meanwhile Colonel B.'s relations with his army of chauffeurs, of whom +about 1,000 are always housed on the premises, are exceedingly human and +friendly in spite of the strictness of the army discipline. Most of his +men who are not married, the Colonel tells me, have found a "friend," in +the town, one or other of its trimly dressed girls, with whom the English +mechanic "walks out," on Sundays and holidays. There are many engagements, +and, as I gather, no misconduct. Marriage is generally postponed till +after the war, owing to the legal and other difficulties involved. But +marriage there will be when peace comes. As to how the Englishman and the +French girl communicate, there are amusing speculations, but little exact +knowledge. There can be small doubt, however, that a number of hybrid +words perfectly understood by both sides are gradually coming into use, +and if the war lasts much longer, a rough Esperanto will have grown up +which may leave its mark on both languages. The word "narpoo" is a case in +point. It is said to be originally a corruption of "_il n'y a plus_"--the +phrase which so often meets the Tommy foraging for eggs or milk or fruit. +At present it means anything from "done up" to "dead." Here is an instance +of it, told me by a chaplain at the front. He was billeted in a farm with +a number of men, and a sergeant. All the men, from the chaplain to the +youngest private, felt a keen sympathy and admiration for the women of the +farm, who were both working the land and looking after their billetees, +with wonderful pluck and energy. One evening the chaplain arriving at the +open door of the farm, saw in the kitchen beyond it the daughter of the +house, who had just come in from farm work. She was looking at a pile of +dirty plates and dishes which had to be washed before supper, and she gave +a sigh of fatigue. Suddenly in the back door on the other side of the +kitchen appeared the sergeant. He looked at the girl, then at the dishes, +then again at the girl. "Fattigay?" he said cheerfully, going up to her. +"Narpoo? Give 'em me. Compree?" And before she could say a word he had +driven her away, and plunged into the work. + +The general relations, indeed, between our soldiers and the French +population could not be better. General after General, both in the bases, +and at the front dwelt on this point. A distinguished General commanding +one of our armies on the line, spoke to me of it with emphasis. "The +testimony is universal, and it is equally creditable to both sides." The +French civilian in town and country is, no doubt, profiting by the large +demand and prompt payments of the British forces. But just as in the case +of the women munition workers, there is infinitely more in it than money. +On the British part there is, in both officers and men, a burning sympathy +for what France has suffered, whether from the outrages of a brutal +enemy, or from the inevitable hardships of war. The headquarters of the +General I have mentioned were not more than fifteen or twenty miles from +towns where unspeakable things were done by German soldiers--officers no +less than men--in the first weeks of the struggle. With such deeds the +French peasantry and small townsfolk, as they still remain in Picardy and +Artois, can and do contrast, day by day, the temper, the courtesy, the +humanity of the British soldier. Great Britain, of course, is a friend and +ally; and Germany is the enemy. But these French folk, these defenceless +women and children, know instinctively that the British Army, like their +own, whether in its officers, or in its rank and file, is incapable, +toward any non-combatant, of what the German Army has done repeatedly, +officially, and still excuses and defends. + +[Illustration: One of the Wards of a Base Hospital Visited by the King.] + +[Illustration: A Howitzer in the Act of Firing.] + +The signs of this feeling for and sympathy with the French _civils_, among +our soldiers, are many. Here is one story, slight but illuminating, told +me by an eye-witness. She is one of a band of women under a noble chief, +who, since very early in the war, have been running a canteen for +soldiers, night and day, at the large railway-station of the very base I +have been describing, where trains are perpetually arriving from and +departing to the front. In the early days of the war, a refugee train +arrived one afternoon full of helpless French folk, mainly of course women +and children, and old people, turned out of their homes by the German +advance. In general, the refugees were looked after by the French Red +Cross, "who did it admirably, going along the trains with hot drinks and +food and clothing." But on this occasion there were a number of small +children, and some of them got overlooked in the hubbub. "I found a raw +young Scotchman, little more than a boy, from one of the Highland +regiments," with six youngsters clinging to him, for whom he peremptorily +demanded tea. "He had tears in his eyes, and his voice was all husky as he +explained in homely Scotch how the bairns had been turned out of their +homes--how he _couldn't_ bear it--and he would give them tea." A table +was found. "I provided the milk, and he paid for bread and butter and +chocolate, and waited on and talked to the six little French people +himself. Strange to say, they seemed to understand each other quite well." + + +III + +It was with this railway-station canteen that my latest memories of the +great base are concerned. All the afternoon of our second day at ---- was +spent in seeing a fine Red Cross hospital, and then in walking or driving +round the endless reinforcement and hospital camps in the open country. +Everywhere the same vigourous expanding organisation, the same ceaselessly +growing numbers, the same humanity and care in detail. "How many years +have we been at war?" one tends to ask oneself in bewilderment, as the +spectacle unrolls itself. "Is it possible that all this is the work of +eighteen months?" And I am reminded of the Scotch sergeant's reply to his +German captive, who asked his opinion about the duration of the war. "I'll +tell you what--it's the furrst five years that'll be the worst!" We +seem--in the bases--to have slipped through them already, measuring by any +of the ordinary ratios of work to time. On my return home, a diplomat +representing one of the neutral nations, told me that the Military +Secretary of his staff had been round the English bases in France, and had +come back with his "eyes starting out of his head." Having seen them +myself, the phrase seemed to me quite natural. + +Then, last of all, as the winter evening fell, we turned toward the +canteen at the railway-station. We found it going on in an old goods' +shed, simply fitted up with a long tea and coffee bar, tables and chairs; +and in some small adjacent rooms. It was filled from end to end with a +crowd of soldiers, who after many hours of waiting, were just departing +for the front. The old shabby room, with its points of bright light, and +its shadowy sides and corners, made a Rembrandtesque setting for the +moving throng of figures. Some men were crowding round the bar; some were +writing letters in haste to post before the train went off; the piano was +going, and a few, gathered round it, were singing the songs of the day, of +which the choruses were sometimes taken up in the room. The men--drafts +going up to different regiments on the line--appeared to me to come from +many parts. The broad Yorkshire and Cumbrian speech, Scotch, the cockney +of the Home Counties, the Northumberland burr, the tongues of Devon and +Somerset--one seemed to hear them all in turn. The demands at the counter +had slackened a little, and I was presently listening to some of the talk +of the indefatigable helpers who work this thing night and day. One of +them drew a picture of the Canadians, the indomitable fighters of Ypres +and Loos, of their breathless energy, and impatience of anything but the +quickest pace of life, their appetites!--half a dozen hard-boiled eggs, at +_3d_ each, swallowed down in a moment of time; then of the +French-Canadians, their Old World French, their old-world Catholicism, +simple and passionate. One of these last asked if there was any chance of +his being sent to Egypt. "Why are you so anxious to go to Egypt?" "Because +it was there the Holy Family rested," said the lad shyly. The lady to whom +he spoke described to him the tree and the Holy Well in St. Georgius, and +he listened entranced. + +Sometimes a rough lot fill the canteen, drawn from the poorest class, +perhaps, of an English seaport. They hustle for their food, shout at the +helpers, and seem to have no notion that such words as "please" and "thank +you" exist. After three or four hours of battling with such an apparently +mannerless crew one of the helpers saw them depart to the platform where +their train was waiting for them, with very natural relief. But they were +no sooner gone, when a guardsman, with the manners, the stature, and the +smartness of his kind, came back to the counter, and asked to speak to +the lady in charge of it. "Those chaps, Miss, what have just gone out," he +said apologetically, "have never been used to ladies, and they don't know +what to say to them. So they asked me just to come in and say for them +they were very much obliged for all the ladies' kindness, but they +couldn't say it themselves." The tired helper was suddenly too choky to +answer. The message, the choice of the messenger, as one sure to do "the +right thing," were both so touching. + +But there was a sudden movement in the crowd. The train was up. We all +surged out upon the platform, and I watched the embarkation--the endless +train engulfing its hundreds of men. Just as I had seen the food and +equipment trains going up from the first base laden with everything +necessary to replace the daily waste of the army, so here was the train of +human material, going up to replace the daily waste of _men_. After many +hours of travelling, and perhaps some of rest, these young soldiers--how +young most of them were!--would find themselves face to face with the +sharpest realities of war. I thought of what I had seen in the Red Cross +hospital that afternoon--"what man has made of man"--the wreck of youth +and strength, the hideous pain, the helpless disablement. + +But the station rang with laughter and talk. Some one in the canteen began +to play "Keep the Home Fires Burning"--and the men in the train joined in, +though not very heartily, for as one or two took care to tell me, +laughingly--"That and 'Tipperary' are awfully stale now!" A bright-faced +lad discussed with D---- how long the war would last. "And _shan't_ we +miss it when it's done!" he said, with a jesting farewell to us, as he +jumped into the train which had begun to move. Slowly, slowly it passed +out of sight, amid waves of singing and the shouting of good-byes.... + +It was late that evening, when after much talk with various officers, I +went up to my room to try and write, bewildered by a multitude of +impressions--impressions of human energy, human intelligence, human +suffering. What England is doing in this country will leave, it seems to +me, indelible marks upon the national character. I feel a natural pride, +as I sit thinking over the day, in all this British efficiency and power, +and a quick joy in the consciousness of our fellowship with France, and +hers with us. But the struggle at Verdun is still in its first intensity, +and when I have read all that the evening newspapers contain about it, +there stirs in me a fresh realisation of the meaning of what I have been +seeing. In these great bases, in the marvellous railway organisation, in +the handling of the vast motor transport in all its forms, in the feeding +and equipment of the British Army, we have the scaffolding and preparation +of war, which, both in the French and English Armies, have now reached a +perfection undreamt of when the contest began. But the war itself--the +deadly struggle of that distant line to which it all tends? It is in the +flash and roar of the guns, in the courage and endurance of the fighting +man, that all this travail of brain and muscle speaks at last. At that +courage and endurance, women, after all, can only guess--through whatever +rending of their own hearts. + +But I was to come somewhat nearer to it than I thought then. The morrow +brought surprise. + + + + +V + + +Dear H. + +Our journey farther north through the deep February snow was scarcely less +striking as an illustration of Great Britain's constantly growing share in +the war than the sight of the great supply bases themselves. The first +part of it, indeed, led over solitary uplands, where the chained wheels of +the motor rocked in the snow, and our military chauffeur dared make no +stop, for fear he should never be able to start again. All that seemed +alive in the white landscape were the partridges--sometimes in great +flocks--which scudded at our approach, or occasional groups of hares in +the middle distance holding winter parley. The road seemed interminably +long and straight, and ours were almost the first tracks in it. The snow +came down incessantly, and once or twice it looked as though we should be +left stranded in the white wilderness. + +But after a third of the journey was over, the snow began to lessen and +the roads to clear. We dropped first into a seaport town which offered +much the same mingled scene of French and English, of English nurses, and +French _poilus_, of unloading ships, and British soldiers, as the bases we +had left, only on a smaller scale. And beyond the town we climbed again on +to the high land, through a beautiful country of interwoven downs, and +more plentiful habitation. Soon, indeed, the roads began to show the signs +of war--a village or small town, its picturesque market-place filled with +a park of artillery wagons; roads lined with motor lorries with the +painted shell upon them that tells ammunition; British artillerymen in +khaki, bringing a band of horses out of a snow-bound farm; closed +motor-cars filled with officers hurrying past; then an open car with +King's Messengers, tall, soldierly figures, looking in some astonishment +at the two ladies, as they hurry by. And who or what is this horseman +looming out of the sleet--like a figure from a piece of Indian or Persian +embroidery, turbaned and swarthy, his cloak swelling out round his +handsome head and shoulders, the buildings of a Norman farm behind him? +"There are a few Indian cavalry about here," says our guide--"they are +billeted in the farms." And presently the road is full of them. Their +Eastern forms, their dark, intent faces pass strangely through the Norman +landscape. + +Now we are only some forty miles from the line, and we presently reach +another town containing an important British Headquarters, where we are to +stop for luncheon. The inn at which we put up is like the song in "Twelfth +Night," "old and plain"--and when lunch is done, our Colonel goes to pay +an official call at Headquarters, and my daughter and I make our way to +the historic church of the town. The Colonel joins us here with another +officer, who brings the amazing news that "G.H.Q."--General +Headquarters--that mysterious centre and brain of all things--invites us +for two days! If we accept, an officer will come for us on the morning of +March 1st to our hotel in Boulogne and take us by motor, some forty miles, +to the guest-house where G.H.Q. puts up its visitors. "_Accept!"_ Ah, if +one could only forget for a moment the human facts behind the absorbing +interest and excitement of this journey, one might be content to feel only +the stir of quickened pulses, of gratitude for a further opportunity so +tremendous. + +As it was, I saw all the journey henceforward with new eyes, because of +that to which it was bringing us. On we sped, through the French +countryside, past a great forest lying black on the edge of the white +horizon--I open my map and find it marked Bois de Crecy!--past another old +town, with Agincourt a few miles to the east, and so into a region of pine +and sand that borders the sea. Darkness comes down, and we miss our way. +What are these lines of light among the pine woods? Another military and +hospital camp, which we are to see on the morrow--so we discover at last. +But we have overshot our goal, and must grope our way back through the +pine woods to the sea-shore, where a little primitive hotel, built for the +summer, with walls that seem to be made of brown paper, receives us. But +we have motored far that day, and greet it joyfully. + +The following morning we woke to a silvery sunlight, with, at last, some +promise of spring over a land cleared of snow. The day was spent in going +through a camp which has been set down in one of the pleasantest and +healthiest spots of France, a favourite haunt of French artists before the +war. Now the sandy slopes, whence the pines, alack, have been cut away, +are occupied by a British reinforcement camp, by long lines of hospitals, +by a convalescent depot, and by the training-grounds, where, as at other +bases, the newly arrived troops are put through their last instruction +before going to the front. As usual, the magnitude of what has been done +in one short year filled one with amazement. Here is the bare catalogue: +Infantry Base Depots, i.e. sleeping and mess quarters, for thousands of +men belonging to the new armies; 16 hospitals with 21,000 beds, 3 rifle +ranges; 2 training-camps; a machine-gun training-school; a vast laundry +worked by Frenchwomen under British organisation, which washes for _all_ +the hospitals, 30,000 pieces a day; recreation huts of all types and +kinds, official and voluntary; a Cinema theatre, seating 800 men, with +performances twice a day; nurses' clubs; officers' clubs; a Supply Depot +for food; an Ordnance Depot for everything that is not food; new sidings +to the railway, where 1,000 men can be entrained on the one side, while +1,000 men are detraining on the other; or two full ambulance trains can +come in and go out; a Convalescent Depot of 2,000 patients, and a +Convalescent Horse Depot of 2,000 horses, etcetera. And this is the work +accomplished since last April in one camp. + +Yet, as I look back upon it, my chief impression of that long day is an +impression, first, of endless hospital huts and marquees, with their rows +of beds, in which the pale or flushed faces are generally ready--unless +pain or weariness forbid--as a visitor ventures timidly near, to turn and +smile in response to the few halting words of sympathy or inquiry which +are all one can find to say; and, next, of such a wealth of skill, and +pity, and devotion poured out upon this terrible human need, as makes one +thank God for doctors, and nurses, and bright-faced V.A.D.'s. After all, +one tremblingly asks oneself, in spite of the appalling facts of wounds, +and death, and violence in which the human world is now steeped, is it yet +possible, is it yet true, that the ultimate thing, the final power behind +the veil--to which at least this vast linked spectacle of suffering and +tenderness, here in this great camp, testifies--is _not_ Force, but Love? +Is this the mysterious message which seems to breathe from these crowded +wards--to make them _just_ bearable. Let me recollect the open door of an +operating theatre, and a young officer, quite a boy, lying there with a +bullet in his chest, which the surgeons were just about to try and +extract. The fine, pale features of the wounded man, the faces of the +surgeon and the nurses, so intent and cheerfully absorbed, the shining +surfaces and appliances of the white room--stamp themselves on memory. I +recollect, too, one John S----, a very bad case, a private. "Oh, you must +come and see John S----," says one of the Sisters. "We get all the little +distractions we can for John. Will he recover? Well, we thought +so--but"--her face changes gravely--"John himself seems to have made up +his mind lately. He knows--but he never complains." Knows what? We go to +see him, and he turns round philosophically from his tea. "Oh, I'm all +right--a bit tired--that's all." And then a smile passes between him and +his nurse. He has lost a leg, he has a deep wound in his back which won't +heal, which is draining his life away--poor, poor John S----! Close by is +a short, plain man, with a look of fevered and patient endurance that +haunts one now to think of. "It's my eyes. I'm afraid they're getting +worse. I was hit in the head, you see. Yes, the pain's bad--sometimes." +The nurse looks at him anxiously as we pass, and explains what is being +tried to give relief. + +This devotion of the nurses--how can one ever say enough of it! I recall +the wrath of a medical officer in charge of a large hospital at Rouen. +"Why don't they give more Red Crosses to the _working nurses_? They don't +get half enough recognition. I have a nurse here who has been twelve +months in the operating theatre. She ought to have a V.C.!--It's worth +it." + +And here is a dark-eyed young officer who had come from a distant colony +to fight for England. I find him in an officer's hospital, established not +long after the war broke out, in a former Casino, where the huge +baccarat-room has been turned into two large and splendid wards. He is +courteously ready to talk about his wound, but much more ready to talk +about his Sister. + +"It's simply _wonderful_ what they do for us!" he says, all his face +lighting up. "When I was worst there wasn't an hour in the day or night my +Sister wasn't ready to try anything in the world to help me. But they're +all like that." + +Let me here gratefully recall, also, the hospitals organised by the +Universities of Chicago and Harvard, entirely staffed by American Sisters +and Doctors, each of them providing 34 doctors and 80 nurses, and dealing +with 1,040 patients. Harvard has maintained a general hospital with the +British Force in France since July, 1915. The first passages and uniforms +were paid for by the British Government, but the University has itself +paid all passages, and provided all uniforms since the start; and it is +proposed, I am told, to carry on this generous help indefinitely. + +Twenty thousand wounded!--while every day the ambulance trains come and go +from the front, or to other bases--there to fill up one or other of the +splendid hospital ships that take our brave fellows back to England, and +home, and rest. And this city of hospitals, under its hard-pressed +medical chief, with all its wealth of scientific invention, and painsaving +device, and unremitting care, with its wonderful health and recovery +statistics, has been the growth of just twelve months. The mind wavers +between the two opposing images it suggests: war and its havoc on the one +hand--the power of the human brain and the goodness of the human heart on +the other. + + +II + +It was late on the 29th of February that we reached our next +resting-place, to find a kind greeting from another Base Commandant and +final directions for our journey of the morrow. We put up at one of the +old commercial inns of the town (it is not easy to find hotel quarters of +any kind just now, when every building at all suitable has been pressed +into the hospital service) and I found delight in watching the various +types of French officers, naval and military, who came in to the _table +d'hote_, plunging as soon as they had thrown off their caps and cloaks, +and while they waited for their consomme, into the papers with the latest +news of Verdun. But we were too tired to try and talk! The morning came +quickly, and with it our escort from G.H.Q. We said good-bye to Colonel +S., who had guided our journey so smoothly through all the fierce +drawbacks of the weather, and made friends at once with our new guide, +the staff-officer who deals with the guests of G.H.Q. Never shall I +forget that morning's journey! I find in my notes: "A beautiful drive--far +more beautiful than I had expected--over undulating country, with distant +views of interlocking downs, and along typical French roads, tree or +forest bordered, running straight as a line up-hill and down-hill, +over upland and plain. One exquisite point of view especially comes +back to me, where a road to the coast--that coast which the Germans +so nearly reached!--diverged upon our left, and all the lowlands +westward came into sight. It was pure Turner, the soft sunlight of +the day, with its blue shadows, and pale-blue sky; the yellow chalk +hills, still marked with streaks of snow; the woods, purple and madder +brown, the distances ethereally blue; and the villages, bare and unlovely +compared with the villages of Kent and Sussex, but expressing a strong +old historic life, sprung from the soil, and one with it. The first +distant glimpse, as we turned a hill-corner, of the old town which was +our destination--extraordinarily fine!--its ancient church a towered +mass of luminous grey under the sunshine, gathering the tiled roofs +into one harmonious whole." + +But we avoided the town itself and found ourselves presently descending an +avenue of trees to the eighteenth-century chateau, which is used by G.H.Q. +as a hostel for its guests--allied and neutral correspondents, military +attaches, special missions, and the like. In a few minutes I found myself +standing bewildered by the strangeness and the interest of it all, in a +charming Louis-Quinze room, plain and simple in the true manner of the +genuine French country house, but with graceful panelled walls, an old +_armoire_ of the date, windows wide open to the spring sun, and a +half-wild garden outside. A _femme de menage_, much surprised to be +waiting on two ladies, comes to look after us. And this is France!--and we +are only thirty miles from that fighting line, which has drawn our English +hearts to it all these days. + +A map is waiting for each of us down-stairs, and we are told, roughly, +where it is proposed to take us. A hurried lunch, and we are in the motor +again, with Captain ---- sitting in front. "You have your passes?" he asks +us, and we anxiously verify the new and precious papers that brought us +from our last stage, and will have to be shown on our way. We drive first +to Arques, and Hazebrouck, then southeast. At a certain village we call at +the Divisional Headquarters. The General comes out himself, and proposes +to guide us on. "I will take you as near to the fighting line as I can." + +On we went, in two motors; the General with me, Captain ---- and D. +following. We passed through three villages, and after the first we were +within shell range of the German batteries ahead. But I cannot remember +giving a thought to the fact, so absorbing to the unaccustomed eye were +all the accumulating signs of the actual battle-line; the endless rows of +motor-lorries, either coming back from, or going up to the front, now with +food, now with ammunition, reserve trenches to right and left of the road; +a "dump" or food-station, whence carts filled from the heavy lorries go +actually up to the trenches, lines of artillery wagons, parks of +ammunition, or motor-ambulances, long lines of picketed horses, +motor-cyclists dashing past. In one village we saw a merry crowd in the +little _place_ gathered round a field-kitchen whence came an excellent +fragrance of good stew. A number of the men were wearing leeks in their +ears for St. David's Day. "You're Welsh, then?" I said to one of the cooks +(by this time we had left the motor and were walking). "I'm not!" said the +little fellow, with a laughing look. "It's St. Patrick's Day I'm waitin' +for! But I've no objection to givin' St. David a turn!" + +He opened his kitchen to show me the good things going on, and as we moved +away there came up a marching platoon of men from the trenches, who had +done their allotted time there and were coming back to billets. The +General went to greet them. "Well, my boys, you could stick it all right?" +It was good to see the lightening on the tired faces, and to watch the +group disappear into the cheerful hubbub of the village. + +We walked on, and outside the village I heard the guns for the first time. +We were now "actually in the battle," according to my companion, and a +shell was quite possible, though not probable. Again, I can't remember +that the fact made any impression upon us. We were watching now parties of +men at regular intervals sitting waiting in the fields beside the road, +with their rifles and kits on the grass near them. They were waiting for +the signal to move up toward the firing line as soon as the dusk was +further advanced. "We shall meet them later," said the General, "as we +come back." + +At the same moment he turned to address a young artillery-officer in the +road: "Is your gun near here?" "Yes, sir, I was just going back to it." He +was asked to show us the way. As we followed I noticed the white puff of a +shell, far ahead, over the flat, ditch-lined fields; a captive balloon was +making observations about half a mile in front, and an aeroplane passed +over our heads. "Ah, not a Boche," said Captain ---- regretfully, "but we +brought a Boche down here yesterday, just over this village--a splendid +fight." + +Meanwhile, the artillery fire was quickening. We reached a ruined village +from which all normal inhabitants had been long since cleared away. The +shattered church was there, and I noticed a large crucifix quite intact +still hanging on its chancel wall. A little farther and the boyish +artillery-officer, our leader, who had been by this time joined by a +comrade, turned and beckoned to the General. Presently we were creeping +through seas of mud down into the gun emplacement, so carefully concealed +that no aeroplane overhead could guess it. + +There it was--how many of its fellows I had seen in the Midland and +northern workshops!--its muzzle just showing in the dark, and nine or ten +high-explosive shells lying on the bench in front of the breech. One is +put in. We stand back a little, and a sergeant tells me to put my fingers +in my ears and look straight at the gun. Then comes the shock--not so +violent as I had expected--and the cartridge-case drops out. The shell has +sped on its way to the German trenches--with what result to human flesh +and blood? But I remember thinking very little of that--till afterwards. +At the time, the excitement of the shot and of watching that little group +of men in the darkness held all one's nerves gripped. + +In a few more minutes we were scrambling out again through the deep, muddy +trench leading to the dugout, promising to come back to tea with the +officers, in their billet, when our walk was done. + +Now indeed we were "in the battle"! Our own guns were thundering away +behind us, and the road was more and more broken up by shell holes. "Look +at that group of trees to your left--beyond it is Neuve Chapelle," said +our guide. "And you see those ruined cottages, straight ahead, and the +wood behind." He named a wood thrice famous in the history of the war. +"Our lines are just beyond the cottages, and the German lines just in +front of the wood. How far are we from them? Three-quarters of a mile." It +was discussed whether we should be taken zigzag through the fields to the +entrance of the communication-trench. But the firing was getting hotter, +and Captain ---- was evidently relieved when we elected to turn back. +Shall I always regret that lost opportunity? You did ask me to write +something about "the life of the soldiers in the trenches"--and that was +the nearest that any woman could personally have come to it! But I doubt +whether anything more--anything, at least, that was possible--could have +deepened the whole effect. We had been already nearer than any woman--even +a nurse--has been, in this war, to the actual fighting on the English +line, and the cup of impressions was full. + +As we turned back, I noticed a little ruined cottage, with a Red Cross +flag floating. Our guide explained that it was a field dressing-station. +It was not for us--who could not help--to ask to go in. But the thought of +it--there were some badly wounded in it--pursued me as we walked on +through the beautiful evening. + +A little farther we came across what I think moved me more than anything +else in that crowded hour--those same companies of men we had seen sitting +waiting in the fields, now marching quietly, spaced one behind the other, +up to the trenches, to take their turn there. Every day I am accustomed to +see bodies, small and large, of khaki-clad men, marching through these +Hertfordshire lanes. But this was different. The bearing was erect and +manly, the faces perfectly cheerful; but there was the seriousness in them +of men who knew well the work to which they were going. I caught a little +quiet whistling, sometimes, but no singing. We greeted them as they +passed, with a shy "Good luck!" and they smiled shyly back, surprised, of +course, to see a couple of women on that road. But there was no shyness +towards the General. It was very evident that the relations between him +and them were as good as affection and confidence on both sides could make +them. + +I still see the bright tea-table in that corner of a ruined farm, where +our young officers presently greeted us--the General marking our maps to +make clear where he had actually been--the Captain of the battery +springing up to show off his gramophone--while the guns crashed at +intervals close beside us, range-finding, probably, searching out a +portion of the German line, under the direction of some hidden observer +with his telephone. It was over all too quickly. Time was up, and soon +the motor was speeding back towards the Divisional Headquarters. The +General and I talked of war, and what could be done to stop it. A more +practical religion "lifting mankind again"?--a new St. Francis, preaching +the old things in new ways? "But in this war we had and we have no choice. +We are fighting for civilisation and freedom, and we must go on till we +win." + + +III + +It was long before I closed my eyes in the pretty room of the old chateau, +after an evening spent in talk with some officers of the Headquarters +Staff. When I woke in the dawn I little guessed what the day (March 2nd) +was to bring forth, or what was already happening thirty miles away on the +firing line. Zelie, the _femme de menage_, brought us our breakfast to our +room, coffee and bread and eggs, and by half-past nine we were +down-stairs, booted and spurred, to find the motor at the door, a simple +lunch being packed up, and gas-helmets got ready! "We have had a very +successful action this morning," said Captain ----, evidently in the best +of spirits. "We have taken back some trenches on the Ypres-Comines Canal +that we lost a little while ago, and captured about 200 prisoners. If we +go off at once, we shall be in time to see the German counter-attack." + +It was again fine, though not bright, and the distances far less clear. +This time we struck northeast, passing first the sacred region of G.H.Q. +itself, where we showed our passes. Then after making our way through +roads lined interminably, as on the previous day, with the splendid +motor-lorries laden with food and ammunition, which have made such a new +thing of the transport of this war, interspersed with rows of ambulances +and limbered wagons, with flying-stations and horse lines, we climbed a +hill to one of the finest positions in this northern land; an old town, +where Gaul and Roman, Frank and Fleming, English and French have clashed, +which looks out northward towards the Yser and Dunkirk, and east towards +Ypres. Now, if the mists will only clear, we shall see Ypres! But, alas, +they lie heavy over the plain, and we descend the hill again without that +vision. Now we are bound for Poperinghe, and must go warily, because there +is a lively artillery action going on beyond Poperinghe, and it is +necessary to find out what roads are being shelled. + +On the way we stop at an air-station, to watch the aeroplanes rising and +coming down, and at a point near Poperinghe we go over a casualty-clearing +station--a collection of hospital huts, with storehouses and staff +quarters--with the medical officer in charge. Here were women nurses who +are not allowed in the field dressing-stations nearer the line. There were +not many wounded, though they were coming in, and the Doctor was not for +the moment very busy. + +We stood on the threshold of a large ward, where we could not, I think, be +seen. At the farther end a serious case was being attended by nurses and +surgeons. Everything was passing in silence; and to me it was as if there +came from the distant group a tragic message of suffering, possibly death. +Then, as we passed lingeringly away, we saw three young officers, all +wounded, _running_ up from the ambulance at the gate, which had just +brought them, and disappearing into one of the wards. The first--a +splendid kilted figure--had his head bound up; the others were apparently +wounded in the arm. But they seemed to walk on air, and to be quite +unconscious that anything was wrong with them. It had been a success, a +great success, and they had been in it! + +The ambulances were now arriving fast from the field dressing-stations +close to the line, and we hurried away, and were soon driving through +Poperinghe. Here and there there was a house wrecked with shell-fire. The +little town indeed with its picturesque _place_ is constantly shelled. +But, all the same, life seems to go on as usual. The Poperinghe boy, like +his London brother, hangs on the back of carts; his father and mother +come to their door to watch what is going on, or to ask eagerly for news +of the counter-attack; and his little brothers and sisters go tripping to +school, in short cloaks with the hoods drawn over their heads, as though +no war existed. Here and in the country round, poor robbed Belgium is +still at home on her own soil, and on the best of terms with the English +Army, by which, indeed, this remnant of her prospers greatly. As I have +already insisted, the relations everywhere between the British soldier and +the French and Belgian populations are among the British--or shall I say +the Allied?--triumphs of the war. + +Farther on the road a company from a famous regiment, picked men all of +them, comes swinging along, fresh from their baths!--life and force in +every movement--young Harrys with their beavers on. Then, a house where +men have their gas-helmets tested--a very strict and necessary business; +and another, where an ex-Balliol tutor and Army Chaplain keeps open doors +for the soldier in his hours of rest or amusement. But we go in search of +a safe road to a neighbouring village, where some fresh passes have to be +got. Each foot now of the way is crowded with the incidents and +appurtenances of war, and war close at hand. An Australian transport base +is pointed out, with a wholly Australian staff. "Some of the men," says +our guide, "are millionaires." Close by is an aeroplane descending +unexpectedly in a field, and a crowd of men rushing to help; and we turn +away relieved to see the two aviators walking off unhurt. Meanwhile, I +notice a regular game of football going on at a distance, and some +carefully written names of bypaths--"Hyde Park Corner," "Piccadilly," +"Queen Mary's Road," and the like. The animation, the life of the scene +are indescribable. + +At the next village the road was crowded both with natives and soldiers to +see the German prisoners brought in. Alack! we did not see them. +Ambulances were passing and re-passing, the slightly wounded men in cars +open at the back, the more serious cases in closed cars, and everywhere +the same _va et vient_ of lorries and wagons, of staff-cars and +motor-cyclists. It was not right for us to add to the congestion in the +road. Moreover, the hours were drawing on, and the great sight was still +to come. But to have watched those prisoners come in would have somehow +rounded off the day! + + +IV + +Our new passes took us to the top of a hill well known to the few +onlookers of which this war admits. The motor stopped at a point on the +road where a picket was stationed, who examined our papers. Then came a +stiff and muddy climb, past a dugout for protection in case of shelling, +Captain ---- carrying the three gas-helmets. At the top was a flat green +space--three or four soldiers playing football on it!--and an old +windmill, and farm-buildings. + +We sheltered behind the great beams supporting the windmill, and looked +out through them, north and east, over a wide landscape; a plain bordered +eastward by low hills, every mile of it, almost, watered by British blood, +and consecrate to British dead. As we reached the windmill, as though in +sombre greeting, the floating mists on the near horizon seemed to part, +and there rose from them a dark, jagged tower, one side of it torn away. +It was the tower of Ypres--mute victim!--mute witness to a crime, that, +beyond the reparations of our own day, history will avenge through years +to come. + +A flash!--another!--from what appear to be the ruins at its base. It is +the English guns speaking from the lines between us and Ypres; and as we +watch we see the columns of white smoke rising from the German lines as +the shells burst. There they are, the German lines--along the Messines +ridge. We make them out quite clearly, thanks to a glass and Captain +----'s guidance. Their guns, too, are at work, and a couple of their +shells are bursting on our trenches somewhere between Vlamertinghe and +Dickebusche. Then the rattle of our machine-guns--as it seems from +somewhere close below us, and again the boom of the artillery. + +The counter-action is in progress, and we watch what can be seen or +guessed of it, in fascination. We are too far off to see what is actually +happening between the opposing trenches, but one of the chief fields of +past and present battle, scenes which our children and our children's +children will go to visit, lie spread out before us. Half the famous sites +of the earlier war can be dimly made out between us and Ypres. In front of +us is the gleam of the Zillebeke Lake, beyond it Hooge. Hill 60 is in that +band of shadow; a little farther east the point where the Prussian Guard +was mown down at the close of the first Battle of Ypres; farther south the +fields and woods made for ever famous by the charge of the Household +Cavalry, by the deeds of the Worcesters, and the London Scottish, by all +the splendid valour of that "thin red line," French and English, cavalry +and infantry, which in the first Battle of Ypres withstood an enemy four +times as strong, saved France, and thereby England, and thereby Europe. In +that tract of ground over which we are looking lie more than 100,000 +graves, English and French; and to it the hearts of two great nations will +turn for all time. Then if you try to pierce the northern haze, beyond +that ruined tower, you may follow in imagination the course of the Yser +westward to that Belgian coast where Admiral Hood's guns broke down and +scattered the German march upon Dunkirk and Calais; or if you turn south +you are looking over the Belfry of Bailleul, towards Neuve Chapelle, and +Festubert, and all the fierce fighting-ground round Souchez and the +Labyrinth. Once English and French stood linked here in a common heroic +defence. Now the English hold all this line firmly from the sea to the +Somme; while the French, with the eyes of the world upon them, are making +history, hour by hour, at Verdun. + +So to this point we have followed one branch--the greatest--of England's +effort; and the mind, when eyes fail, pursues it afresh from its +beginnings when we first stood to arms in August, 1914, through what Mr. +Buchan has finely called the "rally of the Empire," through the early rush +and the rapid growth of the new armies, through the strengthening of +Egypt, the disaster of Gallipoli, the seizure of the German Colonies; +through all that vast upheaval at home which we have seen in the munition +areas; through that steady, and ever-growing organisation on the friendly +French soil we have watched in the supply bases. Yet here, for us, it +culminates; and here and in the North Sea, we can hardly doubt--whatever +may be the diversions in other fields--will be fought, for Great Britain, +the decisive battles of the war. As I turn to those dim lines on the +Messines ridge, I have come at last to sight of whither it all moves. +There, in those trenches is _The Aggressor_--the enemy who has wantonly +broken the peace of Europe, who has befouled civilisation with deeds of +lust and blood, between whom and the Allies there can be no peace till the +Allies' right arm dictates it. Every week, every day, the British Armies +grow, the British troops pour steadily across the Channel, and to the +effort of England and her Allies there will be no truce till the righteous +end is won. + +But the shadows are coming down on the great scene, and with the sound of +the guns still in our ears we speed back through the crowded roads to +G.H.Q., and these wonderful days are over. Now, all that remains for me is +to take you, far away from the armies, into the English homes whence the +men fighting here are drawn, and to show you, if I can, very shortly, by a +few instances, what rich and poor are doing as individuals to feed the +effort of England in this war. What of the _young_, of all classes and +opportunities, who have laid down their lives in this war? What of the +mothers who reared them, the schools and universities which sent them +forth?--the comrades who are making ready to carry on their work? You ask +me as to the _spirit_ of the nation--the foundation of all else. Let us +look into a few lives, a few typical lives and families, and see. + + + + +VI + + +_April 22nd_. + +Dear H. + +As I begin upon this final letter to you comes the news that the +threatened split in the British Cabinet owing to the proposed introduction +of general military service has been averted, and that at a Secret Session +to be held next Tuesday, April 25th, Ministers will, for the first time, +lay before both Houses of Parliament full and complete information--much +more full and complete at any rate, than has yet been given--of the +"effort" of Great Britain in this world war, what this country is doing in +sea-power, in the provision of Armies, in the lending of money to our +Allies, in our own shipping service to them, and in our supply to them of +munitions, coal, and other war material--including boots and clothing. If, +then, our own British Parliament will be for the first time fully apprised +next Tuesday of what the nation has been doing, it is, perhaps, small +wonder that you on your side of the Atlantic have not rightly understood +the performance of a nation which has, collectively, the same love of +"grousing" as the individual British soldier shows in the trenches. + +Let me, however, go back and recapitulate a little. + +In the first of these letters, I tried, by a rapid "vision" of the Fleet, +as I personally saw an important section of it amid the snows of February, +to point to the indispensable condition of this "effort," without which it +could never have been made, without which it could not be maintained for a +day, at the present moment. Since that visit of mine, the power of the +Fleet and the effect of the Fleet have strengthened week by week. The +blockade of Germany is far more effective than it was three months ago; +the evidence of its growing stringency accumulates steadily, and at the +same time the British Foreign Office has been anxiously trying, and +evidently with much success, to minimise for neutrals its inevitable +difficulties and inconveniences. Meanwhile, as Mr. Asquith will explain +next Tuesday, the expenditure on the war, not only on our own needs but on +those of our Allies is colossal--terrifying. The most astonishing Budget +of English History, demanding a fourth of his income from every well-to-do +citizen, has been brought in since I began to write these letters, and +quietly accepted. Five hundred millions sterling ($2,500,000,000) have +been already lent to our Allies. We are spending at the yearly rate of +600,000,000 sterling ($3,000,000,000) on the Army; 200,000,000 on the Navy +as compared with 40,000,000 in 1913; while the Munitions Department is +costing about two-thirds as much (400,000,000 sterling) as the rest of the +Army, and is employing close upon 2,000,000 workers, one-tenth of them +women. The export trade of the country, in spite of submarines and lack of +tonnage, is at the moment greater than it was in the corresponding months +of 1913. + +As to what we have got for our money, Parliament has authorised an Army +of 4,000,000 men, and it is on the question of the last half million that +England's Effort now turns. Mr. Asquith will explain everything that has +been done, and everything that still remains to do, _in camera_ to +Parliament next Tuesday. But do not, my dear friend, make any mistake +_England will get the men she wants_; and Labour will be in the end just +as determined to get them as any other section of the Community. +Meanwhile, abroad, while we seem, for the moment, in France to be +inactive, we are in reality giving the French at Verdun just that support +which they and General Joffre desire, and--it can scarcely be +doubted--preparing great things on our own account. In spite of our +failure in Gallipoli, and the anxious position of General Townshend's +force, Egypt is no longer in danger of attack, if it ever has been; our +sea-power has brought a Russian force safely to Marseilles; and the +possibilities of British and Russian Collaboration in the East are +rapidly opening out. As to the great and complex war-machine we have been +steadily building up on French soil, as I tried to show in my fourth +letter, whether in the supply bases, or in the war organisation along the +ninety miles of front now held by the British Armies, it would indeed +astonish those dead heroes of the Retreat from Mons--could they comes back +to see it! We are not satisfied with it yet--hence the unrest in +Parliament and the Press--we shall never be satisfied--till Germany has +accepted the terms of the Allies. But those who know England best have no +doubt whatever as to the temper of the nation which has so far "improvised +the impossible," in the setting up of this machine, and means, in the end, +_to get out of it what it wants_. + +The temper of the nation? In this last letter let me take some samples of +it. First--what have the rich been doing? As to money, the figures of the +income-tax, the death-duties, and the various war loans are there to show +what they have contributed to the State. The Joint War Committee of the +Red Cross and the St. John's Ambulance Association have collected--though +not, of course, from the rich only--close on 4,000,000 sterling (between +$18,000,000 and $19,000,000), and the Prince of Wales Fund nearly +6,000,000 ($30,000,000). The lavishness of English giving, indeed, in all +directions during the last two years, could hardly I think have been +outdone. A few weeks ago I walked with the Duke of Bedford through the +training and reinforcement camp, about fifteen miles from my own home in +the country, which he himself commands and which, at the outbreak of war, +he himself built without waiting for public money or War Office +contractors, to house and train recruits for the various Bedfordshire +regiments. The camp holds 1,200 men, and is ranged in a park where the +oaks--still standing--were considered too old by Oliver Cromwell's +Commissioners to furnish timber for the English Navy. Besides ample +barrack accommodation in comfortable huts, planned so as to satisfy every +demand whether of health or convenience, all the opportunities that +Aldershot offers, on a large scale, are here provided in miniature. The +model trenches with the latest improvements in plan, revetting, +gun-emplacements, sally-ports, and the rest, spread through the sandy +soil; the musketry ranges, bombing and bayonet schools are of the most +recent and efficient type. And the Duke takes a keen personal interest in +every man in training, follows his progress in camp, sees him off to the +front, and very often receives him, when wounded, in the perfectly +equipped hospital which the Duchess has established in Woburn Abbey +itself. Here the old riding-school, tennis-court, and museum, which form a +large building fronting the abbey, have been turned into wards as +attractive as bright and simple colour, space, flowers, and exquisite +cleanliness can make them. The Duchess is herself the Matron in charge, +under the War Office, keeps all the records, is up at half past five in +the morning, and spends her day in the endless doing, thinking, and +contriving that such a hospital needs. Not very far away stands another +beautiful country house, rented by Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw Reid when they +were in England. It also is a hospital, but its owner, Lord Lucas, not a +rich man, has now given it irrevocably to the nation for the use of +disabled soldiers, together with as much land as may suffice a farm colony +chosen from among them. The beautiful hospital of 250 beds at Paignton, in +North Devon, run entirely by women of American birth now resident in Great +Britain, without any financial aid from the British Government, was +another large country house given to the service of the wounded by Mr. +Singer. Lady Sheffield's hospital for 25 beds at Alderley Park is an +example of how part of a country house with all its green and restful +surroundings may be used for those who have suffered in the war, and it +has many fellows in all parts of England. Altogether about 700 country +houses, large and small, have been offered to the War Office. + +But money and houses are the very least part of what the old families, +the rich manufacturers, or the educated class generally have offered to +their country in this war. Democracy has gone far with us, but it may +still be said that the young heir to a great name, to estates with which +his family has been connected for generations, and to the accumulated +"consideration" to use a French word in a French sense, which such a +position almost always carries with it--has a golden time in English +life. Difficulties that check others fall away from him; he is smiled +upon for his kindred's sake before he makes friends for his own; the +world is overkind to his virtues and blind to his faults; he enters +manhood indeed as "one of our conquerors"; and it will cost him some +trouble to throw away his advantages. Before the war such a youth was +the common butt of the Socialist orator. He was the typical "shirker" +and "loafer," while other men worked; the parasite bred from the sweat +of the poor; the soft, effeminate creature who had never faced the facts +of life and never would. As to his soldiering--the common profession of +so many of his kind--that was only another offence in the eyes of +politicians like Mr. Keir Hardie. When the class war came, he would +naturally he found shooting down the workmen; but for any other war, an +ignorant popinjay!--incompetent even at his own trade, and no match +whatever for the scientific soldier of the Continent. + +Those who knew anything of the Army were well aware long before 1914 that +this type of officer--if he still existed, as no doubt he had once +existed--had become extraordinarily rare; that since the Boer War, the +level of education in the Army, the standard of work demanded, the quality +of the relations between officers and men had all steadily advanced. And +with regard to the young men of the "classes" in general, those who had to +do with them, at school and college, while fully alive to their +weaknesses, yet cherished convictions which were more instinct than +anything else, as to what stuff these easy-going, sport-loving fellows +might prove to be made of in case of emergency. + +Well, the emergency came. These youths of the classes, heirs to titles and +estates, or just younger sons of the old squirearchy of England, so far as +it still survives, went out in their hundreds, with the old and famous +regiments of the British line in the Expeditionary Force, and perished in +their hundreds. Forty-seven eldest sons, heirs to English peerages had +fallen within a year of the outbreak of war--among them the heirs to such +famous houses as Longleat, Petworth, and Castle Ashby--and the names of +Grenfell, Hood, Stuart, Bruce, Lister, Douglas Pennant, Worsley, Hay, St. +Aubyn, Carington, Annesley, Hicks Beach--together with men whose fathers +have played prominent parts in the politics or finance of the last half +century. And the first ranks have been followed by what one might almost +call a _levee en masse_ of those that remained. Their blood has been spilt +like water at Ypres and La Bassee, at Suvla and Helles. Whatever may be +said henceforward of these "golden lads" of ours, "shirker" and "loafer" +they can never he called again. They have died too lavishly, their men +have loved and trusted them too well for that--and some of the +working-class leaders, with the natural generosity of English hearts, have +confessed it abundantly. + +And the professional classes--the intellectuals--everywhere the leading +force of the nation--have done just as finely, and of course in far +greater numbers. Never shall I forget my visit to Oxford last May--in the +height of the summer term, just at that moment when Oxford normally is at +its loveliest and fullest, brimming over with young life, the streets +crowded with caps and gowns, the river and towing-path alive with the +"flannelled fools," who have indeed flung back Rudyard Kipling's gibe--if +it ever applied to them--with interest. For they had all disappeared. They +were in the trenches, landing at Suvla, garrisoning Egypt, pushing up to +Baghdad. The colleges contained a few forlorn remnants--under age, or +medically unfit. The river, on a glorious May day, showed boats indeed, +but girls were rowing them. Oriel, the college of Arnold, of Newman, of +Cecil Rhodes, was filled with women students, whose own college, +Somerville, had become a hospital. The Examination Schools in the High +Street were a hospital, and the smell of disinfectants displaced the +fragrance of lilac and hawthorn for ever associated in the minds of +Oxford's lovers with the summer term. In New College gardens, there were +white tents full of wounded. I walked up and down that wide, deserted lawn +of St. John's, where Charles I once gathered his Cavaliers, with an old +friend, an Oxford tutor of forty years' standing, who said with a +despairing gesture, speaking of his pupils: "So many are gone--so +_many_!--and the terrible thing is that I can't feel it as I once did--as +blow follows blow one seems to have lost the power." + +Let me evoke the memory of some of them. From Balliol have gone the two +Grenfell brothers, vehement, powerful souls, by the testimony of those +who knew them best, not delightful to those who did not love them, not +just, often, to those they did not love, but full of that rich stuff which +life matures to all fine uses. The younger fell in the attack on Hooge, +July 31st, last year; the elder, Julian, had fallen some months earlier. +Julian's verses, composed the night before he was wounded, will be +remembered with Rupert Brooke's sonnets, as expressing the inmost passion +of the war in great hearts. They were written in the spring weather of +April, 1915, and a month later the writer had died of his wounds. With an +exquisite felicity and strength the lines run, expressing the strange and +tragic joy of the "fighting man" in the spring, which may be his last--in +the night heavens--in the woodland trees: + + "The woodland trees that stand together + They stand to him each one a friend; + They gently speak in the windy weather; + They guide to valley and ridge's end. + + "The kestrel hovering by day + And the little owls that call by night, + Bid him be swift and keen as they + As keen of ear, as swift of sight. + + "The blackbird sings to him, 'Brother, brother, + If this be the last song you shall sing, + Sing well, for you may not sing another + Brother, sing.' + + "In dreary, doubtful waiting hours, + Before the brazen frenzy starts, + The horses show him nobler powers;-- + O patient eyes, courageous hearts! + + "And when the burning moment breaks, + And all things else are out of mind + And only Joy of Battle takes + Him by the throat and makes him blind + + "Through joy and blindness he shall know + Not caring much to know, that still + Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so + That it be not the Destined Will. + + "The thundering line of battle stands, + And in the air Death moans and sings; + But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, + And Night shall fold him in soft wings." + +A young man of another type, inheriting from the Cecils on the one side, +and from his grandfather, the first Lord Selborne, on the other, the best +traditions of English Conservatism and English churchmanship--open-eyed, +patriotic, devout--has been lost to the nation in Robert A.S. Palmer, the +second son of Lord and Lady Selborne, affectionately known to an ardent +circle of friends whose hopes were set on him, as "Bobbie Palmer." He has +fallen in the Mesopotamian campaign; and of him, as of William Henry +Gladstone, the grandson and heir of England's great Liberal Minister, who +fell in Flanders a year ago, it may be said, as his Oxford contemporaries +said of Sir Philip Sidney, + + Honour and Fame are got about their graves, + And there sit mourning of each other's loss. + +In one of his latest letters, quoted by a friend in a short biography, +Robert Palmer wrote:--"Who isn't weary to death of the war? I certainly +have been, for over a year; yes, and sorrowful almost unto death over it, +at times, as you doubtless have too. But of one thing I am and always +have been sure, that it is worth the cost and any cost there is to come, +to prevent Prussianism--which is Anti-Christ--controlling Europe." The +following eloquent passage written by an Oxford Fellow and Tutor, in a +series of short papers on the losses sustained by Oxford in the war, is +understood to refer to Mr. Palmer:-- + +"To-night the bell tolls in the brain (_haud rediturus_) over one of the +noblest--if it be not a treason to discriminate--of all the dead one has +known who have died for England. Graciousness was in all his doings and in +all the workings of his mind. The music and gymnastic whereof Plato wrote, +that should attune the body to harmony with the mind, and harmonise all +the elements of the mind in a perfect unison, had done their work upon +him. He seemed--at any rate, to the eyes of those who loved him, and they +were many--to have the perfection of nature's endowment: beauty of mind +knit to beauty of body, and all informed by a living spirit of affection, +so that his presence was a benediction, and a matter for thanksgiving +that God had made men after this manner. So to speak of him is perhaps to +idealise him; but one can only idealise that which suggests the ideal, and +at the least he had a more perfect participation in the ideal than falls +to the general lot of humanity." + +Such he was: and now he too is dead. From the work to which he had gone, +thousands of miles away (a work of service, and of his Master's service), +he had hastened back to England, and for England he has died. His tutor +had once written in his copy of the Vulgate: "_Esto vir fortis, et +pugnemus pro populo nostro et pro civitate Dei nostri_." He was strong; +and he fought for both. + +Another Oxford man, Gilbert Talbot, a youngest son of the much-loved +Bishop of Winchester, will perhaps stand for many, in coming years, as the +pre-eminent type of first youth, youth with all its treasure of life and +promise unspent, poured out like spikenard in this war at the feet of +England. Already assured at Oxford of a brilliant career in politics, a +fine speaker, a hard worker, possessing by inheritance the charm of two +families, always in the public eye and ear, and no less popular than +famous, he had just landed in the United States when the war broke out. He +was going round the world with a friend, youth and ambition high within +him. He turned back without a moment's hesitation, though soldiering had +never been at all attractive to him, and after his training went out to +France. He was killed in Flanders in July last. Let me give the story of +his identification after death on the battle-field, by his elder brother, +Neville, Army Chaplain, and ex-Balliol tutor, as Canon Scott Holland gave +it in the _Commonwealth_:-- + +"The attack had failed. There was never any hope of its succeeding, for +the machine-guns of the Germans were still in full play, with their fire +unimpaired. The body had to lie there where it had fallen. Only, his +brother could not endure to let it lie unhonoured or unblessed. After a +day and a half of anxious searching for exact details, he got to the +nearest trench by the 'murdered' wood, which the shells had now smashed to +pieces. There he found some shattered Somersets, who begged him to go no +farther. But he heard a voice within him bidding him risk it, and the call +of the blood drove him on. Creeping out of the far end of the trench, as +dusk fell, he crawled through the grass on hands and knees, in spite of +shells and snipers, dropping flat on the ground as the flares shot up from +the German trenches. And, at last, thirty yards away in the open ... he +knew that he was close on what he sought. Two yards farther, he found it. +He could stroke with his hand the fair young head that he knew so well; he +could feel for pocket-book and prayer-book, and the badge and the whistle. +He could breathe a prayer of benediction ... and then crawl back on his +perilous way in the night, having done all that man could do for the +brother whom he had loved so fondly; and enabled, now, to tell those at +home that Gilbert was dead indeed, but that he had died the death that a +soldier would love to die, leaving his body the nearest of all who fell, +to the trench that he had been told to take." + +Again, of Charles Alfred Lister, Lord Ribblesdale's eldest son, an Oxford +friend says: "There were almost infinite possibilities in his future." He +was twice wounded at the Dardanelles, was then offered a post of +importance in the Foreign Office, refused it, and went back to the +front--to die. But among the hundreds of memorial notices issued by the +Oxford Colleges, the same note recurs and recurs, of unhesitating, +uncalculated sacrifice. Older men, and younger men, Don, and +under-graduate, lads of nineteen and twenty, and those who were already +school-mastering, or practising at the Bar, or in business, they felt no +doubts, they made no delays. Their country called, and none failed in that +great _Adsum_. + +Cambridge of course has the same story to tell. One takes the short, +pathetic biographies almost at random from the ever-lengthening record, +contributed by the colleges. Captain J. Lusk, 6th Cameronians, was already +Director of an important steel works, engaged in Government business when +war broke out, and might have honourably claimed exemption. Instead he +offered himself at once on mobilisation, and went out with his battalion +to France last spring. On the 15th of June, at Festubert, he was killed in +volunteering to bring what was left of a frightfully battered battalion +out of action. "What seems to me my duty as an officer," he once wrote to +a friend, "is to carry my sword across the barriers of death clean and +bright." "This," says the friend who writes the notice, "he has done." +Lieutenant Le Blanc Smith, of Trinity, machine-gun officer, was struck in +the forehead by a sniper's bullet while reconnoitring. His General and +brother officers write: + + _He was a very fine young officer.... Every one loved + him.... His men would do anything for him...._ + +And the sergeant of his machine-gun brigade says: + + _Although only a non-commissioned officer myself, I feel I + have lost my brother, because he was so awfully good and + kind to me and us all_. + +Lieutenant Hamilton, aged twenty-five, says in a last letter to his +father: + + _Just a line while the beginning of the great battle is + going on. It is wonderful how peaceful one feels amid it + all. Any moment one may be put out of action, but one does + not worry. That quiet time alone with God at the Holy + Communion was most comforting_. + +Immediately after writing these words, the writer fell in action. Captain +Clarke, a famous Cambridge athlete, President of the C.U.A.C., bled to +death--according to one account--from a frightful wound received in the +advance near Hooge on September 25th. His last recorded act--the +traditional act of the dying soldier!--was to give a drink from his flask +to a wounded private. Of the general action of Cambridge men, the Master +of Christ's writes: "Nothing has been more splendid than the way the young +fellows have come forward; not only the athletes and the healthy, but in +all cases the most unlikely men have rushed to the front, and have done +brilliantly. The mortality, however, has been appalling. In an ordinary +way one loses one killed to eight or nine wounded; but in this war the +number of Cambridge men killed and missing practically equals the number +of wounded." Of the effect upon the University an eye-witness says: +"Eighty per cent of the College rooms are vacant. Rows and rows of houses +in Cambridge are to let. All the Junior Fellows are on service in one +capacity or another, and a great many of the Seniors are working in +Government Offices or taking school posts"--so that the school education +of the Country may be carried on. Altogether, nearly 12,000 Cambridge men +are serving; 980 have been wounded; 780 have been killed; 92 are missing. + +As to one's friends and kinsfolk, let me recall the two gallant grandsons +of my dear old friend and publisher, George Murray Smith, the original +publisher of _Jane Eyre_, friend of Charlotte Bronte, and creator of the +_Dictionary of National Biography_. The elder one, who had just married +before going out, fought all through the retreat from Mons, and fell in +one of the early actions on the Flanders front. "He led us all the way," +said one of his men afterwards. All the way!--All through the immortal +rear-guard actions of August--only to fall, when the tide had turned, and +the German onslaught on Paris had been finally broken! "In all my +soldiering," writes a brother officer, "I have never seen a warmer feeling +between men and their officer." "Was he not," asks a well-known Eton +master, "that tall, smiling, strong, gentle-mannered boy at +White-Thomson's?"--possessing an "affectionate regard and feeling for +others which boys as boys, especially if strong and popular, don't always, +or indeed often possess." The poor parents were uncertain as to his fate +for many weeks, but he finally died of his wounds in a hospital behind the +German lines. Then, little more than six months later came the second +blow. Geoffrey, the younger brother, aged nineteen, fell on September +29th, near Vermelles. Nothing could be more touching than the letters +from officers and men about this brave, sweet-tempered boy. "Poor old +regiment!" writes the Colonel to the lad's father--"we were badly knocked +about, and I brought out only 3 officers and 375 men, but they did +magnificently, and it was thanks to officers like your son, who put the +honour of the regiment before all thought of fatigue or personal danger. +Such a gallant lad! We all loved him." A private, the boy's +soldier-servant, who fought with him, writes: "I wish you could have seen +him in that trench.... All the men say that he deserved the V.C.... I +don't know if we are going back to those trenches any more, but if we do, +I am going to try and lay Mr. Geoffrey to rest in some quiet place.... I +cannot bear to think that I shall not be able to be with him any more." + +But how they crowd upon the mind--the "unreturning brave"! Take our +friends and neighbours in this quiet Hertfordshire country. All round us +the blows have fallen--again and again the only son--sometimes two +brothers out of three--the most brilliant--the best beloved. And I see +still the retreating figure of a dear nephew of my own, as he vanished +under the trees waving his hand to us in March last. A boy made of +England's best--who after two years in Canada, and at the beginning of +what must have been a remarkable career, heard the call of the Mother +Country, and rushed home at once. He was transferred to an English +regiment, and came to say good-bye to us in March. It was impossible to +think of Christopher's coming to harm--such life and force, such wisdom +and character also, in his strong, handsome face and thoughtful eyes! We +talked of the future of Canada--not much of the war. Then he vanished, and +I could not feel afraid. But one night in May, near Bailleul, he went out +with a listening party between the trenches, was shot through both legs by +a sniper, and otherwise injured--carried back to hospital, and after a few +hours' vain hope, sank peacefully into eternity, knowing only that he had +done his duty and fearing nothing. "Romance and melodrama," says Professor +Gilbert Murray, in one of the noblest and most moving utterances of the +war, "were once a memory--broken fragments living on of heroic ages in the +past. We live no longer upon fragments and memories, we have entered +ourselves upon an heroic age.... As for me personally, there is one +thought that is always with me--the thought that other men are dying for +me, better men, younger, with more hope in their lives, many of them men +whom I have taught and loved." The orthodox Christian "will be familiar +with that thought of One who loved you dying for you. I would like to say +that now I seem to be familiar with the thought that something innocent, +something great, something that loved me, is dying, and is dying daily for +me. That is the sort of community we now are--a community in which one man +dies for his brother; and underneath all our hatreds, our little anger and +quarrels, we _are_ brothers, who are ready to seal our brotherhood with +blood. It is for us these men are dying--for the women, the old men, and +the rejected men--and to preserve civilisation and the common life which +we are keeping alive, or building." + +So much for the richer and the educated class. As to the rank and file, +the Tommies who are fighting and dying for England in precisely the same +spirit as those who have had ten times their opportunities in this unequal +world, I have seen them myself within a mile of the trenches, marching +quietly up through the fall of the March evening to take their places in +that line, where, every night, however slack the fighting, a minimum of so +many casualties per mile, so many hideous or fatal injuries by bomb or +shell fire, is practically invariable. Not the conscript soldiers of a +military nation, to whom the thought of fighting has been perforce +familiar from childhood! Men, rather, who had never envisaged fighting, to +whom it is all new, who at bottom, however firm their will, or wonderful +their courage, hate war, and think it a loathsome business. "I do not +find it easy," writes a chaplain at the front who knows his men and has +shared all the dangers of their life--"to give incidents and sayings. I +could speak of the courage of the wounded brought in after battle. How +many times has one heard them telling the doctor to attend to others +before themselves! I could tell you of a very shy and nervous boy who, +after an attack, dug, himself alone, with his intrenching tool, a little +trench, under continuous fire, up which trench he afterwards crept +backwards and forwards carrying ammunition to an advanced post; or of +another who sat beside a wounded comrade for several hours under snipers' +fire, and somehow built him a slight protection until night fell and +rescue came. Such incidents are merely specimens of thousands which are +never known. Indeed it is the heroism of _all_ the men _all_ the time +which has left the most lasting impression on my mind after thirteen +months at the war. No one can conceive the strain which the daily routine +of trench life entails, unless one has been among the men. They never show +the slightest sign of unwillingness, and they do what they are told when +and where they are told without questioning; no matter what the conditions +or dangers, they come up smiling and cheery through it all--full of +'grouse,' perhaps, but that is the soldier's privilege!... It is, I think, +what we all are feeling and are so proud of--this unbreakable spirit of +self-sacrifice in the daily routine of trench warfare. We are proud of it +because it is the highest of all forms of self-sacrifice, for it is not +the act of a moment when the blood is up or the excitement of battle is at +fever heat; but it is demanded of the soldier, day in and day out, and +shown by him coolly and deliberately, day in and day out, with death +always at hand. We are proud of it, too, because it is so surely a sign of +the magnificent _'moral'_ of our troops--and _moral_ is going to play a +very leading part as the war proceeds.... What is inspiring this splendid +disregard of self is partly the certainty that the Cause is Right; partly, +it is a hidden joy of conscience which makes them know that they would be +unhappy if they were not doing their bit--and partly (I am convinced of +this, too,) it is a deepening faith in the Founder of their Faith Whom so +many appreciate and value as never before, because they realise that even +He has not shirked that very mill of suffering through which they are now +passing themselves." + +A few days ago, I accompanied a woman official distributing some leaflets +on behalf of a Government department, in some visits to families living in +a block of model dwellings somewhere in South London. We called on nine +families. In every single case the man of the family had gone, or was +expecting to go, to the war; except in one case, where a man who, out of +pure patriotism and at great personal difficulty had joined the Volunteer +Reserve at the outbreak of war, had strained his heart in trench-digging +and was now medically unfit, to his own bitter disappointment. There was +some grumbling in the case of one young wife that her husband should be +forced to go before the single men whom she knew; but in the main the +temper that showed itself bore witness both to the feeling and the +intelligence that our people are bringing to bear on the war. One woman +said her husband was a sergeant in a well-known regiment. He thought the +world of his men, and whenever one was killed, he must be at the burying. +"He can't bear, you know"--she added shyly--"they should feel alone." She +had three brothers-in-law "out"--one recently killed. One was an ambulance +driver under the R.A.M.C. He had five small children, but had volunteered. +"He doesn't say much about the war, except that 'Tommies are wonderful. +They never complain.'" She notices a change in his character. He was +always good to his wife and children--"but now he's splendid!" The brother +of another woman had been a jockey in Belgium, had liked the country and +the people. When war broke out he "felt he must fight for them." He came +home at once and enlisted. Another brother had been a stoker on a war-ship +at the Dardanelles, and was in the famous landing of April 25. Bullets +"thick and fast like hailstorm. Terrible times collecting the dead! Her +brother had worked hard forming burial parties. Was now probably going to +the Tigris. Wrote jolly letters!" + +Then there was the little woman born and bred in the Army, with all the +pride of the Army--a familiar type. Husband a sergeant in the Guards--was +gymnastic instructor at a northern town--and need not have gone to the +war, but felt "as a professional soldier" he ought to go. Three brothers +in the Army--one a little drummer-boy of sixteen, badly wounded in the +retreat from Mons. Her sailor brother had died--probably from exposure, in +the North Sea. The most cheerful, plucky little creature! "We are Army +people, and must expect to fight." + +Well--you say you "would like America to visualise the effort, the +self-sacrifice of the English men and women who are determined to see this +war through." There was, I thought, a surprising amount of cheerful +effort, of _understanding_ self-sacrifice in those nine homes, where my +companion's friendly talk drew out the family facts without difficulty. +And I am convinced that if I had spent days instead of hours in following +her through the remaining tenements in these huge and populous blocks the +result would have been practically the same. _The nation is behind the +war, and behind the Government_--solidly determined to win this war, and +build a new world after it. + +As to the work of our women, I have described something of it in the +munitions area, and if this letter were not already too long, I should +like to dwell on much else--the army of maidens, who, as V.A.D.'s (members +of Voluntary Aid Detachments), trained by the Red Cross, have come +trooping from England's most luxurious or comfortable homes, and are +doing invaluable work in hundreds of hospitals; to begin with, the most +menial scrubbing and dish-washing, and by now the more ambitious and +honourable--but not more indispensable--tasks of nursing itself. In this +second year of the war, the first army of V.A.D.'s, now promoted, has +everywhere been succeeded by a fresh levy, aglow with the same eagerness +and the same devotion as the first. Or I could dwell on the women's +hospitals--especially the remarkable hospital in Endell Street, entirely +officered by women; where some hundreds of male patients accept the +surgical and medical care of women doctors, and adapt themselves to the +light and easy discipline maintained by the women of the staff, with +entire confidence and grateful good-will. To see a woman dentist at work +on a soldier's mouth, and a woman quartermaster presiding over her stores, +and managing, besides, everything pertaining to the lighting, heating, and +draining of the hospital, is one more sign of these changed and changing +times. The work done by the Scottish Women's Hospital in Serbia will rank +as one of the noblest among the minor episodes of the war. The magnificent +work of British nurses, everywhere, I have already spoken of. And +everywhere, too, among the camps in England and abroad, behind the +fighting lines, or at the great railway-stations here or in France, +through which the troops pass backwards and forwards, hundreds of women +have been doing ardent yet disciplined service--giving long hours in +crowded canteens or Y.M.C.A. huts to just those small kindly offices, +which bring home to the British soldier, more effectively than many things +more ambitious, what the British nation feels towards him. The war has put +an end, so far as the richer class is concerned, to the busy idleness and +all the costly make-believes of peace. No one gives "dinner-parties" in +the old sense any more; the very word "reception" is dying out. The high +wages that munition-work has brought to the women of the working class, +show themselves, no doubt, in some foolish dressing. "You should see the +hats round here on a Saturday!" said the Manager of a Midland factory. But +I am bound to say he spoke of it proudly. The hats were for him a +testimony to the wages paid by his firm; and he would probably have +argued, on the girls' part, that after the long hours and hard work of the +week, the hats were a perfectly legitimate "fling," and human nature must +out. Certainly the children of the workers are better fed and better +clothed, which speaks so far well for the mothers; and recent Government +inquiries seem to show that in spite of universal employment, and high +wages, the drunkenness of the United Kingdom as a whole is markedly less, +while at the same time--uncomfortable paradox!--the amount of alcohol +consumed is greater. One hears stories of extravagance among those who +have been making "war-profits," but they are less common this year than +last; and as to my own experience, all my friends are wearing their old +clothes, and the West End dressmakers, poor things, in view of a large +section of the public which regards it as a crime "to buy anything new" +are either shutting down till better days, or doing a greatly restricted +business. Taxation has grown much heavier, and will be more and more +severely felt. Yet very few grumble, and there is a general and determined +cutting down of the trappings and appendages of life, which is to the good +of us all. + +Undoubtedly, there is a very warm and wide-spread feeling among us that in +this war the women of the nation have done uncommonly well! You will +remember a similar stir of grateful recognition in America after your War +of Secession, connected with the part played in the nursing and sanitation +of the war by the women of the Northern States. The feeling here may well +have an important social and political influence when the war is over; +especially among the middle and upper classes. It may be counter-balanced +to some extent in the industrial class, by the disturbance and anxiety +caused in many trades, but especially in the engineering trades, by that +great invasion of women I have tried to describe. But that the war will +leave _some_ deep mark on that long evolution of the share of women in our +public life, which began in the teeming middle years of the last century, +is, I think, certain. + +_May 2nd._--So I come to the end of the task you set me!--with what gaps +and omissions to look back upon, no one knows so well as myself. This +letter starts on its way to you at a critical moment for your great +country, when the issue between the United States and Germany is still +unsettled. What will happen? Will Germany give way? If not, what sort of +relations will shape themselves, and how quickly, between the Central +Empires and America? To express myself on this great matter is no part of +my task; although no English man or woman but will watch its development +with a deep and passionate interest. What may be best for you, we cannot +tell; the military and political bearings of a breach between the United +States and Germany on our own fortunes are by no means clear to us. But +what we _do_ want, in any case, is the sympathy, the moral support and +co-operation of your people. We have to thank you for a thousand +generosities to our wounded; we bless you--as comrades with you in that +old Christendom which even this war shall not destroy--for what you have +done in Belgium--but we want you to understand the heart of England in +this war, and not to be led away by the superficial difficulties and +disputes that no great and free nation escapes in time of crisis. Sympathy +with France--France, the invaded, the heroic--is easy for America--for us +all. She is the great tragic figure of the war--the whole world does her +homage. We are not invaded--and so less tragic, less appealing. But we are +fighting the fight which is the fight of all freemen everywhere--against +the wantonness of military power, against the spirit that tears up +treaties and makes peaceful agreement between nations impossible--against +a cruelty and barbarism in war which brings our civilisation to shame. We +have a right to your sympathy--you who are the heirs of Washington and +Lincoln, the trustees of liberty in the New World as we, with France, are +in the Old. You are concerned--you must be concerned--in the triumph of +the ideals of ordered freedom and humane justice over the ideals of +unbridled force and ruthless cruelty, as they have been revealed in this +war, to the horror of mankind. The nation that can never, to all time, +wash from its hands the guilt of the Belgium crime, the blood of the +_Lusitania_ victims, of the massacres of Louvain and Dinant, of Aerschot +and Termonde, may some day deserve our pity. To-day it has to be met and +conquered by a will stronger than its own, in the interests of +civilisation itself. + +This last week, at the close of which I am despatching this final letter, +has been a sombre week for England. It has seen the squalid Irish rising, +with its seven days' orgy of fire and bloodshed in Dublin; it has seen the +surrender at Kut of General Townshend and his starving men; it has seen +also a strong demonstration in Parliament of discontent with certain +phases of the conduct of the war. And yet, how shall I convey to you the +paradox that we in England--our soldiers at the front, and instructed +opinion at home--have never been so certain of ultimate victory as we now +are? It is the big facts that matter: the steady growth of British +resources, in men and munitions, toward a maximum which we--and +Russia--are only approaching, while that of the Central Empires is past; +the deepening unity of an Empire which is being forged anew by danger and +trial, and by the spirit of its sons all over the world--a unity against +which the Irish outrage, paid for by German money, disavowed by all that +is truly Ireland, Unionist or Nationalist, and instantly effaced, as a +mere demonstration, by the gallantry at the same moment of Irish soldiers +in the battle-line--lifts its treacherous hand in vain; the increasing and +terrible pressure of the British blockade of Germany, equivalent, as some +one has lately said, every twenty-four hours that it is maintained, to a +successful action in the field; the magnificent resistance of an +indomitable France; the mounting strength of a reorganised Russia. This +island-state--let me repeat it with emphasis--was not prepared for, and +had no expectation of a Continental war, such as we are now fighting. The +fact cries aloud from the records of the struggle; it will command the ear +of history; and it acquits us for ever from the guilt of the vast +catastrophe. But Great Britain has no choice now but to fight to the +end--and win. She knows it, and those who disparage her are living in a +blind world. As to the difficulty of the task--as to our own failures and +mistakes in learning how to achieve it--we have probably fewer illusions +than those who criticise us. _But we shall do it--or perish_. + + * * * * * + +_May 5th._--Since the preceding lines were written, the "Military Service +Bill" bringing to the Colours "every British male subject" between the +ages of 18 and 41, except when legally exempted, has passed the House of +Commons by an overwhelming majority, and will be law immediately. And the +Prime Minister informed Parliament three days ago, that "the total naval +and military effort of the Empire since the beginning of the war exceeds +five million men." + +With these two facts, these Letters may fitly close. Those who know +England best, her history, and the temperament of her people, will best +appreciate what they mean. + + + + +VII + +AN EPILOGUE + + +_August 16, 1916._ + +I + +It is now three months since I finished the six preceding Letters, written +in response to an urgent call from America; nor did I then anticipate any +renewal of my work. But while a French translation of the six Letters has +been passing through the Press, an appeal has been made to me from France +to add an Epilogue, or supplementary Letter, briefly recapitulating the +outstanding facts or events which in those three months have marked the +British share in the war, and played their part in the immense +transformation of the general outlook which has taken place during those +months. Not an easy task! One thinks first of one's own inadequacy; and +then remembers, as before, that one is a unit in a nation under orders. I +must therefore do what I can. And perhaps other readers, also, of this +little book, in America and England, as they look back over the +ever-changing scene of the war, will not find this renewed attempt to +summarise Britain's part in it as it has developed up to the present date +(August 16, 1916) unwelcome. The outstanding facts of the last three +months, as I see them, are, for Great Britain:-- + +1. The immense increase in the output of British Munitions of War; + +2. The Naval Battle of Jutland; + +3. The Allied offensive on the Somme. + +The first and third of these events are, of course, so far as the latter +concerns Great Britain, the natural and logical outcome of that "England's +Effort" of which I tried--how imperfectly!--to give a connected account +three months ago. + +At that time the ever-mounting British effort, though it had reached +colossal dimensions, though everybody aware of it was full of a steadily +growing confidence as to its final result, had still to be tested by those +greater actions to which it was meant to lead. After the local failures at +the Dardanelles, and in Mesopotamia, Great Britain was again, for a time, +everywhere on the defensive, though it was a very vigorous and active +defensive; and the magnificent stand made by the French at Verdun was not +only covering France herself with glory, and kindling the hearts of all +who love her throughout the world, but under its shield the new armies of +Great Britain were still being steadily perfected, and wonderfully armed; +time was being given to Russia for reorganisation and re-equipment, and +time was all she wanted; while Germany, vainly dashing her strength in men +and guns against the heights of Verdun, in the hope of provoking her +enemies on the Western front to a premature offensive, doomed to +exhaustion before it had achieved its end, was met by the iron resolve of +both the French and British Governments, advised by the French and British +Commanders in the field, to begin that offensive only at their own time +and place, when the initiative was theirs, and everything was ready. + +But the scene has greatly altered. Let me take Munitions first. In +February, it will be remembered by those who have read the preceding +Letters, I was a visitor, by the kindness of the Ministry of Munitions, +then in Mr. Lloyd George's hands, to a portion of the munitions field--in +the Midlands, on the Tyne, and on the Clyde. At that moment, Great +Britain, as far as armament was concerned, was in the mid-stream of a +gigantic movement which had begun in the summer of 1915, set going by the +kindling energy of Mr. Lloyd George, and seconded by the roused strength +of a nation which was not the industrial pioneer of the whole modern world +for nothing, however keenly others, during the last half-century, have +pressed upon--or in some regions passed--her. Everywhere I found new +workshops already filled with workers, a large proportion of them women, +already turning out a mass of shell which would have seemed incredible to +soldiers and civilians alike during the first months of the war; while the +tale of howitzers, trench-mortars, machine-guns, and the rest, was running +up week by week, in the vast extensions already added to the other works. +But everywhere, too, I saw huge, empty workshops, waiting for their +machines, or just setting them up; and everywhere the air was full of +rumours of the new industrial forces--above all, of the armies of +women--that were to be brought to bear. New towns were being built for +them; their workplaces and their tools were being got ready for them, as +in that vast filling factory--or rather town--on the Clyde which I +described in my third Letter. But in many quarters they were not yet +there; only one heard, as it were, the tramp of their advancing feet. + +But to-day! Those great empty workshops that I saw in February, in the +making, or the furnishing, are now full of workers and machines; and +thousands like them all over the country. Last night (Aug. 15), the new +Minister of Munitions, Mr. Montagu, who, a few weeks ago, succeeded Mr. +Lloyd George, now Minister for War, rendered an account of his department +up to date, which amazed even the House of Commons, and will surely stir +the minds of men throughout the British Empire with a just and reasonable +pride. The "effete" and "degenerate" nation has roused herself indeed! + +Here is the bare resume of the Minister's statement:-- + + _Ammunition._--The British output of ammunition at the + beginning of the war was intended for an army of 200,000 + men. + + Naturally, the output rose steadily throughout the first + year of war. + + _But_--the same output which in 1914-15 took 12 months to + produce could now be produced-- + + As to 18-pounder ammunition, in 3 weeks + " Field howitzer " in 2 weeks + " Medium gun and howitzer ammunition, in 11 days + " Heavy shell, in 4 days + + We are sending over to France _every week as_ much as the + whole pre-war stock of land service ammunition in the + country. + +As to _guns_, I would ask my readers to turn back to the second and third +chapters in this little book, which show something of the human side and +the daily detail of this great business, and then to look at this +summary:-- + + _Every month, now_, we are turning out nearly twice as many + big guns as were in existence for land service--i.e., not + naval guns--when the Ministry of Munitions came into being + (June, 1915). + + Between June, 1915, and June, 1916, the monthly output of + _heavy guns_ has increased _6-fold_--and the present output + will soon be doubled. + + For every 100 _eighteen-pounders_ turned out in the first 10 + months of the war, we are now turning out 500. + + We are producing 18 times as many _machine-guns_. + + Of _rifles_--the most difficult of all war material to + produce quickly in large quantities--our weekly home + production is now 3 times as great as it was a year ago. We + are supplying our Army overseas with rifles and machine-guns + entirely from home sources. + + Of _small-arms ammunition_ our output is 3 times as great as + a year ago. + + We are producing 66 times as much _high explosive_ as at the + beginning of 1915; and our output of _bombs_ is 33 times as + great as it was last year. + +At the same time, what is Great Britain doing _for her Allies_? + + The loss of her Northern Provinces, absorbed by the German + invasion, has deprived France of three-quarters of her + steel. We are now sending to France _one-third of the whole + British production of shell-steel_. + + We are also supplying the Allies with the _constituents of + high explosive_ in very large quantities, prepared by our + National factories. + + We are sending to the Allies _millions of tons of coal and + coke every month_, large quantities of machinery, and 20 per + cent. of our whole production of machine tools + (indispensable to shell manufacture). + + We are supplying Russia with millions of pairs of Army + boots. + +And in the matter of ammunition, we have not only enormously increased the +quantity produced--we have greatly improved its quality. The testimony of +the French experts--themselves masters in these arts of death--as conveyed +through M. Thomas, is emphatic. The new British heavy guns are "admirably +made"--"most accurate"--"most efficient." + +Meanwhile a whole series of chemical problems with regard to high +explosives have been undertaken and solved by Lord Moulton's department. +If it was ever true that science was neglected by the War Office, it is +certainly true no longer; and the soldiers at the front, who have to make +practical use of what our scientific chemists and our explosive factories +at home are producing, are entirely satisfied. + +For that, as Mr. Montagu points out, is the sole and supreme test. How has +the vast activity of the new Ministry of Munitions--an activity which the +nation owes--let me repeat it--to the initiative, the compelling energy, +of Mr. Lloyd George--affected our armies in the field? + +The final answer to that question is not yet. The Somme offensive is still +hammering at the German gates; I shall presently give an outline of its +course from its opening on July 1st down to the present. But meanwhile +what can be said is this. + +The expenditure of ammunition which enabled us to sweep through the German +first lines, in the opening days of this July, almost with ease, was +colossal beyond all precedent. The total amount of heavy guns and +ammunition manufactured by Great Britain in the first ten months of the +war, from August, 1914, to June 1, 1915, would not have kept the British +bombardment on the Somme going _for a single day_. That gives some idea of +it. + +Can we keep it up? The German papers have been consoling themselves with +the reflection that so huge an effort must have exhausted our supplies. On +the contrary, says Mr. Montagu. _The output of the factories, week by +week, now covers the expenditure in the field_. No fear now, that as at +Loos, as at Neuve Chapelle, and as on a thousand other smaller occasions, +British success in the field should be crippled and stopped by shortage of +gun and shell! + +By whom has this result been brought about? By that army of British +workmen--and workwomen--which Mr. Lloyd George in little more than one +short year has mobilised throughout the country. The Ministry of Munitions +is now employing _three millions and a half of workers_--(a year ago it +was not much more than a million and a half)--of whom 400,000 _are +women_; and the staff of the Ministry has grown from 3,000--the figure +given in my earlier letters--to 5,000, just as that army of women, which +has sprung as it were out of the earth at the call of the nation, has +almost doubled since I wrote in April last. Well may the new Minister say +that our toilers in factory and forge have had some share in the glorious +recent victories of Russia, Italy, and France! Our men and our women have +contributed to the re-equipment of those gallant armies of Russia, which, +a month or six weeks earlier than they were expected to move, have broken +up the Austrian front, and will soon be once more in Western Poland, +perhaps in East Prussia! The Italian Army has drawn from our workshops and +learnt from our experiments. The Serbian Army has been re-formed and +re-fitted. + +Let us sum up. The Germans, with years of preparation behind them, made +this war a war of machines. England, in that as in other matters, was +taken by surprise. But our old and proud nation, which for generations +led the machine industry of the world, as soon as it realised the +challenge--and we were slow to realise it!--met it with an impatient and a +fierce energy which is every month attaining a greater momentum and a more +wonderful result. The apparently endless supply of munitions which now +feeds the British front, and the _comparative_ lightness of the human cost +at which the incredibly strong network of the German trenches on their +whole first line system was battered into ruin, during the last days of +June and the first days of July, 1916:--it is to effects like these that +all that vast industrial effort throughout Great Britain, of which I saw +and described a fragment three months ago, has now steadily and +irresistibly brought us. + + +II + +This then is perhaps the first point to notice in the landscape of the +war, as we look back on the last three months. For on it everything else, +Naval and Military, depends:--on the incredibly heightened output of +British workshops, in all branches of war material, which has been +attained since the summer of last year. In it, as I have just said, we see +an _effect_ of a great cause--i.e., of the "effort" made by Great +Britain, since the war broke out, to bring her military strength in men +and munitions to a point, sufficient, in combination with the strength of +her Allies, for victory over the Central Powers, who after long and +deliberate preparation had wantonly broken the European peace. The +"effort" was for us a new one, provoked by Germany, and it will have +far-reaching civil consequences when the war is over. + +In the great Naval victory now known as the Battle of Jutland, on the +other hand, we have a fresh demonstration on a greater scale than ever +before, of that old, that root fact, without which indeed the success of +the Allied effort in other directions would be impossible--i.e., _the +overwhelming strength of the British Navy_, and its mastery of the Sea. + +In a few earlier pages of this book, I have described a visit which the +British Admiralty allowed me to make in February last to a portion of the +Fleet, then resting in a northern harbour. On that occasion, at the +Vice-Admiral's luncheon-table, there sat beside me on my right, a tall +spare man with the intent face of one to whom life has been a great arid +strenuous adventure, accepted in no boyish mood, but rather in the spirit +of the scientific explorer, pushing endlessly from one problem to the +next, and passionate for all experience that either unveils the world, or +tests himself. We talked of the war, and my projected journey. "I envy +you!" he said, his face lighting up. "I would give anything to see our +Army in the field." My neighbour was Rear-Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot, +commanding the First Cruiser Squadron, who went down with his flagship +_H.M.S. Defence_, in the Battle of Jutland, on the 31st of May last, while +passing between the British and German fleets, under a very heavy fire. +"It is probable," said Admiral Jellicoe's despatch, "that Sir Robert +Arbuthnot, during his engagement with the enemy's light cruisers, and in +his desire to complete their destruction, was not aware of the approach of +the enemy's heavy ships, owing to the mist, until he found himself in +close proximity to the main fleet, and before he could withdraw his ships, +they were caught under a heavy fire and disabled." So, between the fleets +of Germany and England, amid the mists of the May evening, and the storm +and smoke of battle, my courteous neighbour of three months before found, +with all his shipmates, that grave in the "unharvested sea" which England +never forgets to honour, and from which no sailor shrinks. At the same +luncheon-table were two other Admirals and many junior Officers, who took +part in the same great action; and looking back upon it, and upon the +notes which I embodied in my first Letter, I see more vividly than ever +how every act and thought of those brave and practised men, among whom I +passed those few--to me--memorable hours, were conditioned by an intense +_expectation_, that trained prevision of what must come, which, in a +special degree, both stirs and steadies the mind of the modern sailor. + +But one thing perhaps they had not foreseen--that by a combination of +mishaps in the first reporting of the battle, the great action, which has +really demonstrated, once and for all, the invincible supremacy of Great +Britain at sea, which has reduced the German Fleet to months of impotence, +put the invasion of these islands finally out of the question, and enabled +the British blockade to be drawn round Germany with a yet closer and +sterner hand, was made to appear, in the first announcements of it, almost +a defeat. The news of our losses--our heavy losses--came first--came +almost alone. The Admiralty, with the stern conscience of the British +official mind, announced them as they came in--bluntly--with little or no +qualification. A shock of alarm went through England! For what had we paid +so sore a price? Was the return adequate, and not only to our safety, but +to our prestige? + +There were a few hours when both Great Britain--outside the handful of men +who knew--and her friends throughout the world, hung on the answer. +Meanwhile the German lie, which converted a defeat for Germany into a +"victory," got at least twenty-four hours' start, and the Imperial +Chancellor made quick and sturdy use of it when he extracted a War Loan of +L600,000,000 from a deluded and jubilant Reichstag. Then the news came in +from one quarter after another of the six-mile battle-line, from one unit +after another of the greatest sea-battle Britain had ever fought, and by +the 3rd or 4th of June, England, drawing half-ironic breath over her own +momentary misgiving, had realised the truth--first--that the German Fleet +on the 31st had only escaped total destruction by the narrowest margin, +and by the help of mist and darkness; secondly--that its losses were, +relatively far greater, and in all probability, absolutely, greater than +our own; thirdly--that after the British battle-fleet had severed the +German navy from its base, the latter had been just able, under cover of +darkness, to break round the British ships, and fly hard to shelter, +pursued by our submarines and destroyers through the night, till it +arrived at Wilhelmshaven a battered and broken host, incapable at least +for months to come of any offensive action against Great Britain or her +Allies. Impossible henceforth--for months to come--to send a German +squadron sufficiently strong to harass Russia in the Baltic! Impossible to +interfere successfully with the passage of Britain's new armies across the +seas! Impossible to dream any longer of invading English coasts! The +British Fleet holds the North Sea more strongly than it has ever held it; +and behind the barbed wire defences of Wilhelmshaven or Heligoland the +German Fleet has been nursing its wounds. + +Some ten weeks have passed, and as these results have become plain to all +the world, the German lie, or what remained of it, has begun to droop, +even in the country of its birth. "Do not let us suppose," says Captain +Persius--the most honest of German naval critics, in a recent +article--"that we have shaken the sea-power of England. That would be +foolishness." While Mr. Balfour, the most measured, the most veracious of +men, speaking only a few days ago to the representatives of the Dominion +Parliaments, who have been visiting England, says quietly--"the growth of +our Navy, since the outbreak of war, which has gone on, and which at this +moment is still going on, is something of which I do not believe the +general public has the slightest conception." + +For the general public has, indeed, but vague ideas of what is happening +day by day and week by week in the great shipyards of the Clyde, the Tyne, +and the Mersey. But there, all the same, the workmen--and workwomen--of +Great Britain--(for women are taking an ever-increasing share in the +lighter tasks of naval engineering)--are adding incessantly to the +sea-power of this country, acquiescing in a Government control, a +loosening of trade custom, a dilution and simplification of skilled +labour, which could not have been dreamt of before the war. At the same +time they are meeting the appeal of Ministers to give up or postpone the +holidays they have so richly earned, for the sake of their sons and +brothers in the trenches, with a dogged "aye, aye!" in which there is a +note of profound understanding, of invincible and personal determination, +but rarely heard in the early days of the war. + + +III + +So much for the Workshops and the Navy. Now before I turn to the New +Armies and the Somme offensive, let us look for a moment at the present +facts of British War Finance. By April last, the date of my sixth Letter, +we had raised 2,380 millions sterling, for the purposes of the war; we had +lent 500 millions to our Allies, and we were spending about 5 millions a +day on the war. According to a statement recently made by the Chancellor +of the Exchequer (August 10), by March next our debt will have risen to +3,440 millions sterling, 1,060 millions more than it stood at in March +last; our advances to our Allies will have increased to 800 millions, +while our daily war expenditure remains about the same. + +Mr. McKenna's tone in announcing these figures was extraordinarily +cheerful. "We have every reason," he said, amid the applause of the House +of Commons--"to be proud of the manner in which British credit has stood +the strain." The truth is that by March next, at the present rate of +expenditure, our total indebtedness (deducting the advances to our Allies) +will almost exactly equal "one year's national income," i.e., the +aggregate of the income of every person in the country. But if a man +having an income of L5,000 a year, were to owe a total of L5,000, we +should not consider his position very serious. "We shall collect a +revenue in one year equal to 20 per cent. of the whole debt (i.e., 522 +millions sterling), and we shall be able to pay, _out of existing +taxation_, the interest on the debt, and a considerable sinking-fund, and +shall still have left a large margin _for the reduction of +taxation_"--words which left a comfortable echo in the ears of the nation. +Meanwhile British trade--based on British sea-power--has shown +extraordinary buoyancy, the exports steadily increasing; so that the +nation, in the final words of the Chancellor, feels "no doubt whatever +that we shall be able to maintain our credit to the end of the war, _no +matter how long it may last_." + +But do not let it be supposed that this huge revenue is being raised +without sacrifice, _without effort_. It means--for the present--as I have +already pointed out, the absorption by the State of five shillings in the +pound from the income of every citizen, above a moderate minimum, and of a +lesser but still heavy tax from those below that minimum; it means new +and increased taxation in many directions; and, as a consequence, heavy +increases in the cost of living; it means sharply diminished spending for +large sections of our population, and serious pinching for our +professional and middle classes. + +But the nation, as a whole, makes no lament. We look our taxes in the +face, and we are beginning to learn how to save. We have our hearts fixed +on the future; and we have counted the cost. + +The money then is no difficulty. Our resisting power, our prosperity even, +under the blows of war, have been unexpectedly great. + +But what are we getting for our money? + +In the case of the Navy, the whole later course of the war, no less than +the Battle of Jutland, has shown what the British Navy means to the cause +of the Allies. It is as I have said, the root fact in the war; and in the +end, it will be the determining fact; although, of itself, it cannot +defeat Germany _as we must defeat her_; at any rate in any reasonable +time. + +Then as to the Army. Take first of all the administrative side. To +what--in the last four months--has come that wonderful system of +organisation and supply I tried to sketch in my fourth Letter, largely in +the words of some of the chief actors in it? + +Within the last fortnight, a skilled observer has been reporting to the +British public his impressions of the "Army behind the Lines" in France, +as I saw a portion of it last February, in the great British supply bases +and hospital camps, on the lines of communication, and throughout the +immense and varied activities covered by the British motor transport. + +"The Germans," says this recent eye-witness, "have persisted that, even if +we could find the men, we could not make the machine, which they have been +perfecting for forty years and more. But _it is here!_--operating with +perfect smoothness; a machine, which in its mere mass and intricacy, +almost staggers the imagination. One cannot speak of the details of the +system for fear of saying something which should not be told; but it is +stupendous in its proportion, dealing as it does with the methodical +handling of the men in their hundreds of thousands, of all their equipment +and supplies, food, miscellaneous baggage and ammunition, and with the +endless trains of guns--guns--guns, and shells, by millions upon millions, +all brought from England, and all here in their place, or moved from place +to place with the rhythm of clock-work. One cannot convey any idea of it, +nor grasp it in its entirety; but day by day the immensity of it grows on +one, and one realises how trivial beside it has been anything that British +military organisation has had to do in the past. That is the real miracle; +not the mere millions of men, nor even their bravery, but this huge +frictionless machine of which they are a part--this thing which Great +Britain has put together here in the last twenty months." + + +IV + +But just as in March my thoughts pressed eagerly forward, from the sight +allowed me of the machine, to its uses on the battle-front, to that line +of living and fighting men for which it exists--so now. + +Only, since I stood upon the hill near Poperinghe on March 2nd, that line +of men has been indefinitely strengthened; and the main scene of battle is +no longer the Ypres salient. Looking southward from the old windmill, +whose supports sheltered us on that cold spring afternoon, I knew that, +past Bailleul, and past Neuve Chapelle, I was looking straight toward +Albert and the Somme, and I knew too that it was there that the British +were taking over a new portion of the line,--so that we might be of _some_ +increased support--all that was then allowed us by the Allied Command!--to +that incredible defence of Verdun, which was in all our minds and hearts. + +But what I could not know was that in that misty distance was +hidden--four months away--a future movement, at which no one then guessed, +outside the higher brains of the Army. The days went on. The tide of +battle ebbed and flowed round Verdun. The Crown Prince hewed and hacked +his way, with enormous loss to Germany, to points within three and four +miles of the coveted town--fortress no longer. But there France stopped +him--like the beast of prey that has caught its claws in the iron network +it is trying to batter down, and cannot release them; and there he is +still. Meanwhile, in June, seven to eight weeks before the expected +moment, Brusiloff's attack broke loose, and the Austrian front began to +crumble; just in time to bring the Italians welcome aid in the Trentino. + +And still from the Somme to the Yser, the Anglo-French forces waited; and +still across the Channel poured British soldiers and British guns. In +industrial England, the Whitsuntide holidays had been given up; and there +were at any rate some people who knew that there would be no August +holidays either. Leave and letters had been stopped. But there had been +apparent signs, wrongly interpreted, before. The great Allied attack on +the West--was it ready, _at last_? + +Then--with the 27th of June, along the whole British battle-front of 90 +miles, there sprang up a violent and continuous bombardment varied by +incessant raids on the enemy lines. Those who witnessed that bombardment +can hardly find words in which to describe it. "It was an extraordinary +and a terrible spectacle," says a correspondent. "Within the dreadful zone +the woods are leafless, chateau and farm and village, alike, mere heaps of +ruins." Ah! _ce beau pays de France_--with all its rich and ancient +civilisation--it is not French hearts alone that bleed for you! But it was +the voice of deliverance, of vengeance, that was speaking in the guns +which crashed incessantly day and night, while shells of all calibres +rained--so many to the second--from every yard of the British front, on +the German lines. The correspondents with the British Headquarters could +only speculate with held breath, as to what was happening under that +ghastly veil of smoke and fire on the horizon, and what our infantry would +find when the artillery work was done, and the attack was launched. + +The 1st of July dawned, a beautiful summer morning, with light mists +dispersing under the sun. Precisely to the moment, at 7.30 A.M., the +Allied artillery lifted their guns, creating a dense _barrage_ of fire +between the German front and its support trenches, while the British and +French infantry sprang over their parapets and rushed to the attack of the +German first line; the British on a front of some twenty-five miles, the +French, on about ten miles, on both sides of the Somme. The English +journalists, who, watch in hand, saw our men go, "knowing what it was they +were going to, marvelled for the fiftieth time at the way in which British +manhood has proved itself, in this most terrible of all wars." + +But though it was a grand, it was an anxious moment for those who had +trained and shaped the New Armies of Britain. How would they bear +themselves, these hundreds of thousands of British and Imperial +volunteers, men, some of them, with the shortest possible training +compatible with efficiency--against the famous troops of Germany--beside +the veteran, the illustrious army of France? + +Four hours after the fighting began, Sir Douglas Haig telegraphed: "Attack +launched north of River Somme this morning at 7.30 A.M. In conjunction +with French, British troops have broken into German forward system of +defences, on front of sixteen miles. Fighting is continuing. French attack +on our immediate right proceeding equally satisfactorily." Twelve hours +later, on the same day, when the summer night had fallen on the terrible +battle-field, the British Commander-in-Chief added:--"Heavy fighting has +continued all day between the rivers Somme and Ancre. On the right of our +attack we have captured the German labyrinth of trenches on a front of +seven miles to a depth of 1,000 yards, and have stormed and occupied the +strongly fortified villages of Montauban and Mametz. In the centre on a +front of four miles we have gained many strong points. North of the Ancre +Valley the battle has been equally violent, and in this area we have been +unable to retain portions of the ground gained in our first attacks, while +other portions remain in our possession.... Up to date, 2,000 German +prisoners have passed through our collecting stations. The large number of +the enemy dead on the battle-field indicate that the German losses have +been very severe." + +So much for the first day's news. On the following day Fricourt was +captured; and the prisoners went up to 3,500, together with a quantity of +war material. Meanwhile the French on the right had done brilliantly, +capturing five villages, and 6,000 prisoners. The attack was well begun. + +And the New Armies?--"Kitchener's Men"? "Whatever we have imagined of our +New Armies," says an eye-witness of the first day's battle, "they are +better than we can have ever dared to hope. Nothing has in any case +stopped them, except being killed." And a neutral who saw the attack on +Mametz told the same eye-witness that he had seen most of the fighting in +the world in recent years, and that he "did not believe a more gallant +feat was ever performed in war." The story of the British advance was +written "in the dead upon the ground, and in the positions as they stand." +"Nothing which the Japanese did in the Russian War" was more entirely +heroic. + +But let me carry on the story. + +On Tuesday, July 11th, Sir Douglas Haig reported: "After ten days and +nights of continuous fighting our troops have completed the methodical +capture of the whole of the enemy's first system of defence on a front of +14,000 yards. + +"This system of defence consisted of numerous and continuous lines of +foretrenches, support trenches and reserve trenches, extending to various +depths of from 2,000 to 4,000 yards, and included five strongly fortified +villages, numerous heavily wired and intrenched woods, and a large number +of immensely strong redoubts." + +The villages captured were Fricourt, Mametz, Montauban, La Boiselle, and +Contalmaison--the latter captured on July 10th, after particularly fierce +fighting. Every observer dwells on "the immense strength of the German +defences." "All the little villages and woods, each eminence and hollow, +have been converted into a fortress as formidable as the character of the +ground makes possible." The German has omitted nothing "that could protect +him against such a day as this." + +Yet steadily, methodically, with many a pause for consolidation of the +ground gained, and for the bringing up of the heavy guns, the British +advance goes forward--toward Bapaume and Lille; while the French press +brilliantly on toward Peronne--both movements aimed at the vital German +communications through France and Belgium. Every step of ground, as the +Allies gain it, "is wrecked with mines, torn with shell, and watered with +the blood of brave men." The wood-fighting, amid the stripped and gaunt +trunks rising from labyrinths of wire, is specially terrible; and below +the ground everywhere are the deep pits and dugouts, which have not only +sheltered the enemy from our fire, but concealed the machine-guns, which +often when our men have passed over, emerge and take them in the rear. The +German machine-guns seem to be endless; they are skilfully concealed, and +worked with the utmost ability and courage. + +But nothing daunts the troops attacking day and night, in the name of +patriotism, of liberty, of civilisation. Men from Yorkshire and +Lancashire, from Northumberland, Westmoreland and Cumberland, the heart of +England's sturdy north; men from Sussex and Kent, from Somerset and Devon; +the Scotch regiments; the Ulster Division, once the Ulster Volunteers; +the men of Munster and Connaught; the town-lads of Manchester; the youths +of Cockney London:--all their names are in the great story. "There were no +stragglers--none!" says an officer, describing in a kind of wonder one of +the fierce wood-attacks. And these are not the seasoned troops of a +Continental Army. They belong to regiments and corps which did not exist, +except in name, eighteen months ago; they are units from the four-million +army that Great Britain raised for this struggle, before she passed her +Military Service Law. The "Old Army," the Expeditionary Force, which the +nation owed to the organising genius of Lord Haldane and his General +Staff, has passed away, passed into history, with the retreat from Mons, +the first victory of Ypres, the saving of the Channel ports; but its +spirit remains, and its traditions are firmly planted in the new +attackers. I think of the men I saw in March, during that long and weary +wait; of the desire--and the patience--in their eyes. + +And of patience they and the nations behind them will still have ample +need. Since surprise on the Somme front was no longer possible, the great +advance has gone surely indeed, but more slowly. On _July 14_, after delay +caused by extraordinarily heavy rains, _the German second line was +breached_, and their trenches carried, on a front of four miles and held +against counter attacks. Longueval, the wood of Bazentin-le-Grand, and the +village, Bazentin-le-Petit, were attacked and captured with an _elan_ that +nothing could resist. "The enemy losses in guns," said the British +Headquarters, "are now over 100. We have not lost one." On _July 17_, +Ovillers was cleared, Waterlot Farm taken, and 1,500 more yards of the +German line. The British had by now taken 11,000 prisoners, to a somewhat +larger number taken by the French, 17 heavy guns, 37 field-guns, 30 trench +howitzers, and 66 machine-guns. On Saturday night, _July 22-23_, the +greater part of Pozieres, on the high ground toward Bapaume, was taken. +"Shortly after midnight," wrote the official correspondent at +Headquarters with the Australian Imperial Forces in France, "on the 23rd, +by a splendid night attack, the Australians took the greater portion of +Pozieres." The previous bombardment had been magnificent. "I had never +before seen such a spectacle. A large sector of the horizon was lit up not +by single flashes, but by a continuous band of quivering light." And under +the protection of the guns, the Anzacs swept forward, passing over +trenches, so entirely obliterated by shell-fire that they were often not +recognised as trenches at all, till they were in the heart of the village. +Then for two days they fought from house to house, and trench to trench; +till on July 27th came the news--"The whole of the village of Pozieres is +now in our hands." And the _Times_ correspondent writes "our establishment +at Pozieres will probably be regarded historically as closing the second +phase of the battle of the Somme." + +Since then (I write on August 16) three weeks have passed. The German +Third Line has been entered at the Bois de Foureaux, the whole of Delville +Wood has been carried; and in the combined advance of July 30th, the +French swept on to Maurepas on the north of the Somme, and are closely +threatening both Combles and Peronne, while we are attacking Thiepval on +the left of our line and Guillemont on the right, and pushing forward, +north of Pozieres, toward Bapaume. The whole of the great advance has been +_a thrust up-hill_ from the valley floors of the Ancre and the Somme +toward a low ridge running roughly east and west and commanding an +important stretch of country and vital communications beyond. "It has in +just four weeks of effort," writes Mr. Belloc--"accounted for some thirty +thousand unwounded or slightly wounded prisoners; for much more than 100 +guns; for a belt of territory over five miles in its extreme breadth, +and--what is much more important than any of these numerical and local +calculations--it has proved itself capable of _continuous effort against +all the concentration which the enemy has been able to bring against it._" + +But it has done yet more than this. It has welded the French and English +Alliance--the wills and minds of the two nations--more closely than ever +before; and it has tested the British war-machine--the new Armies and the +new arms--as they have never yet been tested in this war. The result has +set the heart of England aflame; even while we ponder those long, long +casualty lists which represent the bitter price that British fathers and +mothers, British wives and daughters have paid, and must still pay, for +the only victory which will set up once again the reign of law and +humanity in Europe. What the future has in store we cannot see yet in +detail; but the inevitable end is clear at last. The man-power of Germany +is failing, and with it the insolent confidence of her military caste; the +man-power of the Allies, and the gun-power of the Allies, are rising +steadily. Russia is well launched on her return way to Warsaw, to Cracow, +to East Prussia. Italy, after the fall of Gorizia, is on the march for +Trieste. The Turks are fleeing across the desert of Sinai; and the Allies +at Salonika are taking the first steps toward Sofia. + +But it is in the "holy spirit of man" itself that the secret of the future +lies. On the Somme battle-fields, thousands and thousands of young lives +have been again laid down, that England--that France--may live. Here is a +letter, written the day before his death in action, on July 1st, the +opening day of the offensive, by a young English Officer.[C] One must read +it, if one can, dry-eyed. Not tears, but a steeled will, a purer heart, +are what it asks of those for whom the writer died:-- + + "I am writing this letter to you just before going into + action to-morrow morning about dawn. + + "I am about to take part in the biggest battle that has yet + been fought in France, and one which ought to help to end + the war very quickly. + + "I never felt more confident or cheerful in my life before, + and would not miss the attack for anything on earth. The men + are in splendid form, and every officer and man is more + happy and cheerful than I have ever seen them. + + "I have just been playing a rag game of football in which + the umpire had a revolver and a whistle. + + "My idea in writing this letter is in case I am one of the + 'costs,' and get killed. I do not expect to be; but such + things have happened, and are always possible. + + "It is impossible to fear death out here, when one is no + longer an individual, but a member of a regiment and of an + army. To be killed means nothing to me, and it is only you + who suffer for it; you really pay the cost. + + "I have been looking at the stars, and thinking what an + immense distance they are away. What an insignificant thing + the loss of, say, forty years of life is compared with them! + It seems scarcely worth talking about. Well, good-bye, you + darlings. Try not to worry about it, and remember that we + shall meet again really quite soon. + + "This letter is going to be posted _if_...." + +The letter was posted. But its message of Death is also a message of +Victory. + +MARY A. WARD. + +[C] Published in the _Times_. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The War on All Fronts: England's Effort +by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR ON ALL FRONTS: *** + +***** This file should be named 16089.txt or 16089.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/0/8/16089/ + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Christine +D and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + +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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/16089.zip b/16089.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6b6989b --- /dev/null +++ b/16089.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f1779fe --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #16089 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16089) |
