Towards the Goal Part 2
Your cause, your effort, are his. Details will come. Discussion will come. But there is a breathing s.p.a.ce first, in which feeling rests upon itself before it rushes out in action. Such a breathing s.p.a.ce for England are these Easter days!
Meanwhile, the letters from the Front come in with their new note of joy. "You should see the American faces in the Army to-day!" writes one.
"They bring a new light into this dismal spring." How many of them?
Mayn't we now confess to ourselves and our Allies that there is already, the equivalent of an American division, fighting with the Allied Armies in France, who have used every honest device to get there? They have come in by every channel, and under every pretext--wavelets, forerunners of the tide. For now, you too have to improvise great armies, as we improvised ours in the first two years of war. And with you as with us, your unpreparedness stands as your warrant before history, that not from American minds and wills came the provocation to this war.
But your actual and realised co-operation sets me on lines of thought that distract me, for the moment, from the first plan of this letter.
The special Musketry School with which I had meant to open it, must wait till its close. I find my mind full instead--in connection with the news from Washington--of those recently issued War Office pamphlets of which I spoke in my last letter; and I propose to run through their story.
These pamphlets, issued not for publication but for the information of those concerned, are the first frank record of _our national experience_ in connection with the war; and for all your wonderful American resource and inventiveness, your American energy and wealth, you will certainly, as prudent men, make full use of our experience in the coming months.
Last year, for _England's Effort_, I tried vainly to collect some of these very facts and figures, which the War Office was still jealously--'and no doubt quite rightly--withholding. Now at last they are available, told by "authority," and one can hardly doubt that each of these pa.s.sing days will give them--for America a double significance.
Surpa.s.s the story, if you can; we shall bear you no grudge! But up till now, it remains a chapter unique in the history of war. Many Americans, as your original letter to me pointed out, had still, last year, practically no conception of what we were doing and had done. The majority of our own people, indeed, were in much the same case. While the great story was still in the making, while the foundations were still being laid, it was impossible to correct all the annoying underestimates, all the ignorant or careless judgments, of people who took a point for the whole. The men at the heart of things could only set their teeth, keep silence and give no information that could help the enemy. The battle of the Somme, last July, was the first real testing of their work. The Hindenburg retreat, the successes in Mesopotamia, the marvellous spectacle of the Armies in France--and before this letter could be sent to Press, the glorious news from the Arras front!--are the present fruits of it.
Like you, we had, at the outbreak of war, some 500,000 men, all told, of whom not half were fully trained. None of us British folk will ever forget the Rally of the First Hundred Thousand! On the 8th of August, four days after the Declaration of War, Lord Kitchener asked for them.
He got them in a fortnight. But the stream rushed on--in the fifth week of the war alone 250,000 men enlisted; 30,000 recruits--the yearly number enlisted before the war--joined in one day. Within six or seven weeks the half-million available at the beginning of the war had been _more than doubled._
Then came a pause. The War Office, snowed under, not knowing where to turn for clothes, boots, huts, rifles, guns, ammunition, tried to check the stream by raising the recruits' standards. A mistake!--but soon recognised. In another month, under the influence of the victory on the Marne, and while the Germans were preparing the attacks on the British Line so miraculously beaten off in the first battle of Ypres, the momentary check had been lost in a fresh outburst of national energy.
You will remember how the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee came into being, that first autumn?--how the Prime Minister took the lead, and the two great political parties of the country agreed to bring all their organisation, central or local, to bear on the supreme question of getting men for the Army. Tory and Radical toured the country together.
The hottest opponents stood on the same platform. _L'union sacree_--to use the French phrase, so vivid and so true, by which our great Ally has charmed her own discords to rest in defence of the country--became a reality here too, in spite of strikes, in spite of Ireland.
By July 1915--the end of the first year of war--more than 2,000,000 men had voluntarily enlisted. But the military chiefs knew well that it was but a half-way house. They knew, too, that it was not enough to get men and rush them out to the trenches as soon as any kind of training could be given them. The available men must be sorted out. Some, indeed, must be brought back from the fighting line for work as vital as the fighting itself.
_So Registration came_--the first real step towards organising the nation. 150,000 voluntary workers helped to register all men and women in the country, from eighteen to sixty-five, and on the results Lord Derby built his group system, which _almost_ enabled us to do without compulsion. Between October and December 1915, another two million and a quarter men had "attested"--that is, had pledged themselves to come up for training when called on.
But, as every observer of this new England knows, we have here less than half the story. From a nation not invaded, protected, on the contrary, by its sea ramparts from the personal cruelties and ravages of war, to gather in between four and five million voluntary recruits was a great achievement. But to turn these recruits at the shortest possible notice, under the hammer-blows of a war, in which our enemies had every initial advantage, into armies equipped and trained according to modern standards, might well have seemed to those who undertook it an impossible task. And the task had to be accomplished, the riddle solved, before, in the face of the enemy, the incredible difficulties of it could possibly be admitted. The creators of the new armies worked, as far as they could, behind a screen. But now the screen is down, and we are allowed to see their difficulties in their true perspective--as they existed during the first months of the war.
In the first place--accommodation! At the opening of war we had barrack-room for 176,000 men. What to do with these capped, bare-headed, or straw-hatted mult.i.tudes who poured in at Lord Kitchener's call! They were temporarily housed--somehow--under every kind of shelter. But military huts for half a million men were immediately planned--then for nearly a million.
Timber--labour--lighting--water--drainage--roads--everything, had to be provided, and was provided. Billeting filled up the gaps, and large camps were built by private enterprise to be taken in time by the Government. Of course mistakes were made. Of course there were some dishonest contractors and some incompetent officials. But the breath, the winnowing blast of the national need was behind it all. By the end of the first year of war, the "problem of quartering the troops in the chief training centres had been solved."
In the next place, there were no clothes. A dozen manufacturers of khaki cloth existed before the war. They had to be pushed up as quickly as possible to 200. Which of us in the country districts does not remember the blue emergency suits, of which a co-operative society was able by a lucky stroke to provide 400,000 for the new recruits?--or the other motley coverings of the hosts that drilled in our fields and marched about our lanes? The War Office Notes, under my hand, speak of these months as the "tatterdemalion stage." For what clothes and boots there were must go to the men at the Front, and the men at home had just to take their chance.
Well! It took a year and five months--breathless months of strain and stress--while Germany was hammering East and West on the long-drawn lines of the Allies. But by then, January 1916, the Army was not only clothed, housed, and very largely armed, but we were manufacturing for our Allies.
As to the arms and equipment, look back at these facts. When the Expeditionary Force had taken its rifles abroad in August 1914, 150,000 rifles were left in the country, and many of them required to be resighted. The few Service rifles in each battalion were handed round "as the Three Fates handed round their one eye, in the story of Perseus"; old rifles, and inferior rifles "technically known as D.P.,"
were eagerly made use of. But after seven months' hard training with nothing better than these makeshifts, "men were apt to get depressed."
It was just the same with the Artillery. At the outbreak of war we had guns for eight divisions--say 140,000 men. And there was no plant wherewith to make and keep up more than that supply. Yet guns had to be sent as fast as they could be made to France, Egypt, Gallipoli. How were the gunners at home to be trained?
It was done, so to speak, with blood and tears. For seven months it was impossible for the gunner in training even to see, much less to work or fire the gun to which he was being trained. Zealous officers provided dummy wooden guns for their men. All kinds of devices were tried. And even when the guns themselves arrived, they came often without the indispensable accessories--range-finders, directors, and the like.
It was a time of hideous anxiety for both Government and War Office. For the military history of 1915 was largely a history of shortage of guns and ammunition--whether on the Western or Eastern fronts. All the same, by the end of 1915 the thing was in hand. The sh.e.l.ls from the new factories were arriving in ever-increasing volume; and the guns were following.
In a chapter of _England's Effort_ I have described the amazing development of some of the great armament works in order to meet this cry for guns, as I saw it in February 1916. The second stage of the war had then begun. The first was over, and we were steadily overtaking our colossal task. The Somme proved it abundantly. But the expansion _still_ goes on; and what the nation owes to the directing brains and ceaseless energy of these nominally private but really national firms has never been sufficiently recognised. On my writing-desk is a letter received, not many days ago, from a world-famous firm whose works I saw last year: "Since your visit here in the early part of last year, there have been very large additions to the works." Buildings to accommodate new aeroplane and armament construction of different kinds are mentioned, and the letter continues: "We have also put up another gun-shop, 565 feet long, and 163 feet wide--in three extensions--of which the third is nearing completion. These additions are all to increase the output of guns. The value of that output is now 60 per cent, greater than it was in 1915. In the last twelve months, the output of sh.e.l.ls has been one and a half times more than it was in the previous year." No wonder that the humane director who writes speaks with keen sympathy of the "long-continued strain" upon masters and men. But he adds--"When we all feel it, we think of our soldiers and sailors, doing their duty--unto death."
And then--to repeat--if the _difficulties of equipment_ were huge, they were almost as nothing to the _difficulties of training_. The facts as the War Office has now revealed them (the latest of these most illuminating brochures is dated April 2nd, 1917) are almost incredible.
It will be an interesting time when our War Office and yours come to compare notes!--"when Peace has calmed the world." For you are now facing the same grim task--how to find the shortest cuts to the making of an Army--which confronted us in 1914.
In the first place, what military trainers there were in the country had to be sent abroad with the first Expeditionary Force. Adjutants, N.C.O.'s, all the experienced pilots in the Flying Corps, nearly all the qualified instructors in physical training, the vast majority of all the seasoned men in every branch of the Service--down, as I have said, to the Army cooks--departed overseas. At the very last moment an officer or two were shed from every battalion of the Expeditionary Force to train those left behind. Even so, there was "hardly even a nucleus of experts left." And yet--officers for 500,000 men had to be found--_within a month_--from August 4th, 1914.
How was it done? The War Office answer makes fascinating reading. The small number of regular officers left behind--200 officers of the Indian Army--retired officers, "dug-outs"--all honour to them!--wounded officers from the Front; all were utilised. But the chief sources of supply, as we all know, were the Officers' Training Corps at the Universities and Public Schools which we owe to the divination, the patience, the hard work of Lord Haldane. _Twenty thousand potential officers were supplied_ by the O.T.C's. What should we have done without them?
But even so, there was no time to train them in the practical business of war--and such a war! Yet _their_ business was to train recruits, while they themselves were untrained. At first, those who were granted "temporary commissions" were given a month's training. Then even that became impossible. During the latter months of 1914 "there was practically no special training given to infantry subalterns, with temporary commissions." With 1915, the system of a month's training was revived--pitifully little, yet the best that could be done. But during the first five months of the war most of the infantry subalterns of the new armies "had to train themselves as best they could in the intervals of training their men."
One's pen falters over the words. Before the inward eye rises the phantom host of these boy-officers who sprang to England's aid in the first year of the war, and whose graves lie scattered in an endless series along the western front and on the heights of Gallipoli. Without counting the cost for a moment, they came to the call of the Great Mother, from near and far. "They trained themselves, while they were training their men." Not for them the plenty of guns and sh.e.l.ls that now at least lessens the hideous sacrifice that war demands; not for them the many protective devices and safeguards that the war itself has developed. Their young bodies--their precious lives--paid the price. And in the Mother-heart of England they lie--gathered and secure--for ever.
But let me go a little further with the new War Office facts.
The year 1915 saw great and continuous advance. During that year, an _average number of over a million troops_ were being trained in the United Kingdom, apart from the armies abroad. The First, Second, and Third Armies naturally came off much better than the Fourth and Fifth, who were yet being recruited all the time. What equipment, clothes and arms there were the first three armies got; the rest had to wait. But all the same, the units of these later armies were doing the best they could for themselves all the time; n.o.body stood still. And gradually--surely--order was evolved out of the original chaos. The Army Orders of the past had dropped out of sight with the beginning of the war. Everything had to be planned anew. The one governing factor was the "necessity of getting men to the front at the earliest possible moment."
Six months' courses were laid down for all arms. It was very rare, however, that any course could be strictly carried out, and after the first three armies, the training of the rest seemed, for a time, to be all beginnings!--with the final stage farther and farther away. And always the same difficulty of guns, rifles, huts, and the rest.
But, like its own tanks, the War Office went steadily on, negotiating one obstacle after another. Special courses for special subjects began to be set up. Soon artillery officers had no longer to join their batteries _at once_ on appointment; R.E. officers could be given a seven weeks' training at Chatham; little enough, "for a man supposed to know the use and repairs of telephones and telegraphs, or the way to build or destroy a bridge, or how to meet the countless other needs with which a sapper is called upon to deal!" Increasing attention was paid to staff training and staff courses. And insufficient as it all was, for months, the general results of this haphazard training, when the men actually got into the field--all short-comings and disappointments admitted--were nothing short of wonderful. Had the Germans forgotten that we are and always have been a fighting people? That fact, at any rate, was brought home to them by the unbroken spirit of the troops who held the line in France and Flanders in 1915 against all attempts to break through; and at Neuve Chapelle, or Loos, or a hundred other minor engagements, only wanted numbers and ammunition--above all ammunition!--to win them the full victory they had rightly earned.
Of this whole earlier stage, the _junior subaltern_ was the leading figure. It was he--let me insist upon it anew--whose spirit made the new armies. If the tender figure of the "_Lady of the Lamp_" has become for many of us the chief symbol of the Crimean struggle, when Britain comes to embody in sculpture or in painting that which has touched her most deeply in this war, she will choose--surely--the figure of a boy of nineteen, laughing, eager, undaunted, as quick to die as to live, carrying in his young hands the "Luck" of England.
But with the end of 1915, the first stage, the elementary stage, of the new Armies came to an end. When I stood, in March 1916, on the Scherpenberg hill, looking out over the Salient, new conditions reigned.
The Officer Cadet Corps had been formed; a lively and continuous intercourse between the realities of the front and the training at home had been set up; special schools in all subjects of military interest had been founded, often, as we have seen, by the zeal of individual officers, to be then gradually incorporated in the Army system. Men insufficiently trained in the early months had been given the opportunity--which they eagerly took--of beginning at the beginning again, correcting mistakes and incorporating all the latest knowledge.
Even a lieutenant-colonel, before commanding a battalion, could go to school once more; and even for officers and men "in rest," there were, and are, endless opportunities of seeing and learning, which few wish to forgo.
And that brings me to what is now shaping itself--the final result. The year just pa.s.sed, indeed--from March to March--has practically rounded our task--though the "learning" of the Army is never over!--and has seen the transformation--whether temporary or permanent, who yet can tell?--of the England of 1914, with its zealous mobs of untrained and "tatterdemalion" recruits, into a great military power,[This letter was finished just as the news of the Easter Monday Battle of Arras was coming in.] disposing of armies in no whit inferior to those of Germany, and bringing to bear upon the science of war--now that Germany has forced us to it--the best intelligence, and the best _character_, of the nation. The most insolent of the German military newspapers are already bitterly confessing it.
My summary--short and imperfect as it is--of this first detailed account of its work which the War Office has allowed to be made public--has carried me far afield.
The motor has been waiting long at the door of the hospitable headquarters which have entertained us! Let me return to it, to the great spectacle of the present--after this retrospect of the Past.
Again the crowded roads--the young and vigorous troops--the manifold sights ill.u.s.trating branch after branch of the Army. I recall a draft, tired with marching, clambering with joy into some empty lorries, and sitting there peacefully content, with legs dangling and the ever blessed cigarette for company, then an aeroplane station--then a football field, with a violent game going on--a Casualty Clearing Station, almost a large hospital--another football match!--a battery of eighteen-pounders on the march, and beyond an old French market town crowded with lorries and men. In the midst of it D---- suddenly draws my attention to a succession of great nozzles pa.s.sing us, with their teams and limbers. I have stood beside the forging and tempering of their brothers in the gun-shops of the north, have watched the testing and callipering of their shining throats. They are 6-inch naval guns on their way to the line--like everything else, part of the storm to come.
And in and out, among the lorries and the guns, stream the French folk, women, children, old men, alert, industrious, full of hope, with friendly looks for their Allies. Then the town pa.s.ses, and we are out again in the open country, leaving the mining village behind. We are not very far at this point from that portion of the line which I saw last year under General X's guidance. But everything looks very quiet and rural, and when we emerged on the high ground of the school we had come to see, I might have imagined myself on a Surrey or Hertfordshire common. The officer in charge, a "mighty hunter" in civil life, showed us his work with a quiet but most contagious enthusiasm. The problem that he, and his colleagues engaged in similar work in other sections of the front, had to solve, was--how to beat the Germans at their own game of "sniping," which cost us so many lives in the first year and a half of war; in other words, how to train a certain number of men to an art of rifle-shooting, combining the instincts and devices of a "Pathfinder"
with the subtleties of modern optical and mechanical science. "Don't think of this as meant primarily to kill," says the Chief of the School, as he walks beside me--"it is meant primarily to _protect_. We lost our best men--young and promising officers in particular--by the score before we learnt the tricks of the German 'sniper' and how to meet them." German "sniping," as our guide explains, is by no means all tricks. For the most part, it means just first-rate shooting, combined with the trained instinct and _flair_ of the sportsman. Is there anything that England--and Scotland--should provide more abundantly?
Still, there are tricks, and our men have learnt them.
Of the many surprises of the school I may not now speak. Above all, it is a school of _observation_. Nothing escapes the eye or the ear. Every point, for instance, connected with our two unfamiliar figures will have been elaborately noted by those men on the edge of the hill; the officer in charge will presently get a careful report on us.
"We teach our men the old great game of war--wit against wit--courage against courage--life against life. We try many men here, and reject a good few. But the men who have gone through our training here are valuable, both for attack and defence--above all, let me repeat it, they are valuable for _protection_."
And what is meant by this, I have since learnt in greater detail. Before these schools were started, _every day_ saw a heavy toll--especially of officers' lives--taken by German snipers. Compare with this one of the latest records: that out of fifteen battalions there were only nine men killed by snipers _in three months._
We leave the hill, half sliding down the frozen watercourse that leads to it, and are in the motor again, bound for an Army Headquarters.
No. 4
_April 14th_, 1917.