Towards The Goal - Mrs. Humphry Ward
TOWARDS THE GOAL
By MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
Author of "ENGLAND'S EFFORT," etc.
With an introduction by
THE HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT
1917
To
ANDRE CHEVRILLON
True Son of France
True Friend of England
I dedicate this book.
INTRODUCTION
England has in this war reached a height of achievement loftier than
that which she attained in the struggle with Napoleon; and she has
reached that height in a far shorter period. Her giant effort, crowned
with a success as wonderful as the effort itself, is worthily described
by the author of this book. Mrs. Ward writes nobly on a noble theme.
This war is the greatest the world has ever seen. The vast size of the
armies, the tremendous slaughter, the loftiness of the heroism shown,
and the hideous horror of the brutalities committed, the valour of the
fighting men, and the extraordinary ingenuity of those who have designed
and built the fighting machines, the burning patriotism of the people
who defend their hearthstones, and the far-reaching complexity of the
plans of the leaders--all are on a scale so huge that nothing in past
history can be compared with them. The issues at stake are elemental.
The free peoples of the world have banded together against tyrannous
militarism and government by caste. It is not too much to say that the
outcome will largely determine, for daring and liberty-loving souls,
whether or not life is worth living. A Prussianised world would be as
intolerable as a world ruled over by Attila or by Timur the Lame.
It is in this immense world-crisis that England has played her part; a
part which has grown greater month by month. Mrs. Ward enables us to see
the awakening of the national soul which rendered it possible to play
this part; and she describes the works by which the faith of the soul
justified itself.
What she writes is of peculiar interest to the United States. We have
suffered, or are suffering, in exaggerated form, from most (not all) of
the evils that were eating into the fibre of the British character three
years ago--and in addition from some purely indigenous ills of our own.
If we are to cure ourselves it must be by our own exertions; our destiny
will certainly not be shaped for us, as was Germany's, by a few towering
autocrats of genius, such as Bismarck and Moltke. Mrs. Ward shows us the
people of England in the act of curing their own ills, of making good,
by gigantic and self-sacrificing exertion in the present, the folly and
selfishness and greed and soft slackness of the past. The fact that
England, when on the brink of destruction, gathered her strength and
strode resolutely back to safety, is a fact of happy omen for us in
America, who are now just awaking to the folly and selfishness and greed
and soft slackness that for some years we have been showing.
As in America, so in England, a surfeit of materialism had produced a
lack of high spiritual purpose in the nation at large; there was much
confusion of ideas and ideals; and also much triviality, which was
especially offensive when it masqueraded under some high-sounding name.
An unhealthy sentimentality--the antithesis of morality--has gone hand
in hand with a peculiarly sordid and repulsive materialism. The result
was a soil in which various noxious weeds flourished rankly; and of
these the most noxious was professional pacificism. The professional
pacificist has at times festered in the diseased tissue of almost every
civilisation; but it is only within the last three-quarters of a century
that he has been a serious menace to the peace of justice and
righteousness. In consequence, decent citizens are only beginning to
understand the base immorality of his preaching and practice; and he has
been given entirely undeserved credit for good intentions. In England as
in the United States, domestic pacificism has been the most potent ally
of alien militarism. And in both countries the extreme type has shown
itself profoundly unpatriotic. The damage it has done the nation has
been limited only by its weakness and folly; those who have professed it
have served the devil to the full extent which their limited powers
permitted.
There were in England--just as there are now in America--even worse foes
to national honour and efficiency. Greed and selfishness, among
capitalists and among labour leaders, had to be grappled with. The
sordid baseness which saw in the war only a chance for additional money
profits to the employer was almost matched by the fierce selfishness
which refused to consider a strike from any but the standpoint of
the strikers.
But the chief obstacle to be encountered in rousing England was sheer
short-sightedness. A considerable time elapsed before it was possible to
make the people understand that this was a people's war, that it was a
matter of vital personal concern to the people as a whole, and to all
individuals as individuals. In America we are now encountering much the
same difficulties, due to much the same causes.
In England the most essential thing to be done was to wake the people to
their need, and to guide them in meeting the need. The next most
essential was to show to them, and to the peoples in friendly lands,
whether allied or neutral, how the task was done; and this both as a
reason for just pride in what had been achieved and as an inspiration to
further effort.
Mrs. Ward's books--her former book and her present one--accomplish both
purposes. Every American who reads the present volume must feel a hearty
and profound respect for the patriotism, energy, and efficiency shown by
the British people when they became awake to the nature of the crisis;
and furthermore, every American must feel stirred with the desire to see
his country now emulate Britain's achievement.
In this volume Mrs. Ward draws a wonderful picture of the English in the
full tide of their successful effort. From the beginning England's naval
effort and her money effort have been extraordinary. By the time Mrs.
Ward's first book was written, the work of industrial preparedness was
in full blast; but it could yet not be said that England's army in the
field was the equal of the huge, carefully prepared, thoroughly
coordinated military machines of those against whom and beside whom it
fought. Now, the English army is itself as fine and as highly efficient
a military machine as the wisdom of man can devise; now, the valour and
hardihood of the individual soldier are being utilised to the full under
a vast and perfected system which enables those in control of the great
engine to use every unit in such fashion as to aid in driving the mass
forward to victory.
Even the Napoleonic contest was child's play compared to this. Never has
Great Britain been put to such a test. Never since the spacious days of
Elizabeth has she been in such danger. Never, in any crisis, has she
risen to so lofty a height of self-sacrifice and achievement. In the
giant struggle against Napoleon, England's own safety was secured by the
demoralisation of the French fleet. But in this contest the German naval
authorities have at their disposal a fleet of extraordinary efficiency,
and have devised for use on an extended scale the most formidable and
destructive of all instruments of marine warfare. In previous coalitions
England has partially financed her continental allies; in this case the
expenditures have been on an unheard-of scale, and in consequence
England's industrial strength, in men and money, in business and
mercantile and agricultural ability, has been drawn on as never before.
As in the days of Marlborough and Wellington, so now, England has sent
her troops to the continent; but whereas formerly her expeditionary
forces, although of excellent quality, were numerically too small to be
of primary importance, at present her army is already, by size as well
as by excellence, a factor of prime importance, in the military
situation; and its relative as well as absolute importance is
steadily growing.
And to her report of the present stage of Great Britain's effort in the
war, Mrs. Ward has added some letters describing from her own personal
experience the ruin wrought by the Germans in towns like Senlis and
Gerbeviller, and in the hundreds of villages in Northern, Central, and
Eastern France that now lie wrecked and desolate. And she has told in
detail, and from the evidence of eye-witnesses, some of the piteous
incidents of German cruelty to the civilian population, which are
already burnt into the conscience of Europe, and should never be
forgotten till reparation has been made.
Mrs. Ward's book is thus of high value as a study of contemporary
history. It is of at least as high value as an inspiration to
constructive patriotism.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
SAGAMORE HILLS,
_May 1st_, 1917.
CONTENTS
No. 1
England's Effort--Rapid March of Events--The Work of the Navy--A Naval
Base--What the Navy has done--The Jutland Battle--The Submarine
Peril--German Lies--Shipbuilding--Disciplined Expectancy--Crossing the
Channel--The Minister of Munitions--Dr. Addison--Increase of
Munitions--A Gigantic Task--Arrival in France--German Prisoners--A Fat
Factory--A Use for Everything--G.H.Q.--Intelligence Department--"The
Issue of the War"--An Aerodrome--The Task of the Aviators--The
Visitors' Chateau.
No. 2
A French School--Our Soldiers and French Children--Nissen Huts--Tanks--A
Primeval Plough--A Division on the March--Significant Preparations
--Increase of Ammunition--"The Fosses"--A Sacred Spot--Vimy
Ridge--The Sound of the Guns--A Talk with a General--Why the Germans
Retreat--Growth of the New Armies--Soldiers at School.
No. 3
America Joins the Allies--The British Effort--Creating an Army--_L'Union
Sacree_--Registration--Accommodation--Clothing--Arms and Equipment--A
Critical Time--A Long-continued Strain--Training--O.T.C.'S--Boy
Officers--The First Three Armies--Our Wonderful Soldiers--An Advanced
Stage--The Final Result--Spectacle of the Present--Snipers and
Anti-snipers--The Result.
No. 4
Vimy Ridge--The _Morale_ of our Men--Mons. le Maire--Ubiquitous
Soldiers--The Somme--German Letters--German Prisoners--Amiens--"Taking
Over" a Line--Poilus and Tommies--"Taking Over" Trenches--French
Trenches--Unnoticed Changes--Amiens Cathedral--German Prisoners
--Confidence.
No. 5
German Fictions--Winter Preparation--Albert--La Boisselle and
Ovillers--In the Track of War--Regained Ground--Enemy
Preparations--German Dug-outs--"There were no Stragglers"
--Contalmaison--Devastation--Retreating Germans--Death,
Victory, Work--Work of the R.E.--A Parachute--Approaching Victory.
No. 6
German Retreat--Enemy Losses--Need of Artillery--Awaiting the
Issue--Herr Zimmermann--Training--A National Idea--Training--Fighting
for Peace--Stubbornness and Discipline--Training of Officers
--Responsibility--The British Soldier--Soldiers' Humour--A Boy
Hero--"They have done their job"--Casualties--Reconnaissance--Air
Fighting--Use of Aeroplanes--Terms of Peace.
No. 7
Among the French--German Barbarities--Beauty of France--French
Families--Paris--To Senlis--Senlis--The Cure of Senlis--The German
Occupation--August 30th, 1914--Germans in Senlis--German Brutality--A
Savage Revenge--A Burning City--Murder of the Mayor--The Cure in the
Cathedral--The Abbe's Narrative--False Charges--Wanton Destruction--A
Sudden Change--Return of the French--Ermenonville--Scenes of
Battle--Vareddes.
No. 8
Battle of the Ourcq--Von Kluck's Mistake--Anniversary of the
Battle--Wreckage of War--A Burying Party--A Funeral--A Five Days'
Battle--Life-and-Death Fighting--"_Salut au Drapeau_"--Meaux
--Vareddes--Murders at Vareddes--Von Kluck's Approach--The
Turn of the Tide--The Old Cure--German Brutalities--Torturers
--The Cure's Sufferings--"He is a Spy"--A Weary March--Outrages
--Victims--Reparation--To Lorraine.
No. 9
Epernay-Chalons--Snow--Nancy--The French People--_L'Union
Sacree_--France and England--Nancy--Hill of Leomont--The Grand
Couronne--The Lorraine Campaign--Taubes--Vitrimont--Miss Polk--A
Restored Church--Society of Friends--Gerbeviller--Soeur
Julie--Mortagne--An Inexpiable Crime--Massacre of Gerbeviller--"Les
Civils ont tire"--Soeur Julie--The Germans come--German
Wounded--Barbarities in Hospital--Soeur Julie and Germans--The French
Return--Germans at Nancy--Nancy saved--A Warm Welcome--Adieu to Lorraine
No. 10
Doctrine of Force--Disciplined Cruelty--German Professors--Professor von
Gierke--An Orgy of Crime--Return Home--Russia--The Revolution--Liberty
like Young Wine--What will Russia do?--America joins--America and
France--The British Advance--British Successes--The Italians--A
Soldier's Letter--Aircraft and Guns--The German Effort--April
Hopes--Submarines--Tradition of the Sea--Last Threads--The Food
Situation--More Arable Land--Village Patriotism--Food Prices--The Labour
Outlook--Finance--Messines--The Tragedy of War--A Celtic Legend--Europe
and America
TOWARDS THE GOAL
No. 1
_March 24th, 1917._
DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,--It may be now frankly confessed--(you, some time
ago, gave me leave to publish your original letter, as it might seem
opportune)--that it was you who gave the impulse last year, which led to
the writing of the first series of Letters on "England's Effort" in the
war, which were published in book form in June 1916. Your appeal--that I
should write a general account for America of the part played by England
in the vast struggle--found me in our quiet country house, busy with
quite other work, and at first I thought it impossible that I could
attempt so new a task as you proposed to me. But support and
encouragement came from our own authorities, and like many other
thousands of English women under orders, I could only go and do my best.
I spent some time in the Munition areas, watching the enormous and rapid
development of our war industries and of the astonishing part played in
it by women; I was allowed to visit a portion of the Fleet, and finally,
to spend twelve days in France, ten of them among the great supply bases
and hospital camps, with two days at the British Headquarters, and on
the front, near Poperinghe, and Richebourg St. Vaast.
The result was a short book which has been translated into many foreign
tongues--French, Italian, Dutch, German, Russian, Portuguese, and
Japanese--which has brought me many American letters from many different
States, and has been perhaps most widely read of all among our own
people. For we all read newspapers, and we all forget them! In this vast
and changing struggle, events huddle on each other, so that the new
blurs and wipes out the old. There is always room--is there not?--for
such a personal narrative as may recall to us the main outlines, and the
chief determining factors of a war in which--often--everything seems to
us in flux, and our eyes, amid the tumult of the stream, are apt to lose
sight of the landmarks on its bank, and the signs of the
approaching goal.
And now again--after a year--I have been attempting a similar task, with
renewed and cordial help from our authorities at home and abroad. And I
venture to address these new Letters directly to yourself, as to that
American of all others to whom this second chapter on England's Effort
may look for sympathy. Whither are we tending--your country and mine?
Congress meets on April 1st. Before this Letter reaches you great
decisions will have been taken. I will not attempt to speculate. The
logic of facts will sweep our nations together in some sort of intimate
union--of that I have no doubt.
How much further, then, has Great Britain marched since the Spring of
last year--how much nearer is she to the end? One can but answer such
questions in the most fragmentary and tentative way, relying for the
most part on the opinions and information of those who know, those who
are in the van of action, at home and abroad, but also on one's own
personal impressions of an incomparable scene. And every day, almost, at
this breathless moment, the answer of yesterday may become obsolete.
I left our Headquarters in France, for instance, some days before the
news of the Russian revolution reached London, and while the Somme
retirement was still in its earlier stages. Immediately afterwards the
events of one short week transformed the whole political aspect of
Europe, and may well prove to have changed the face of the war--although
as to that, let there be no dogmatising yet! But before the pace becomes
faster still, and before the unfolding of those great and perhaps final
events we may now dimly foresee, let me try and seize the impressions of
some memorable weeks and bring them to bear--so far as the war is
concerned--on those questions which, in the present state of affairs,
must interest you in America scarcely less than they interest us here.
Where, in fact, do we stand?
Any kind of answer must begin with the Navy. For, in the case of Great
Britain, and indeed scarcely less in the case of the Allies, that is the
foundation of everything. To yourself the facts will all be
familiar--but for the benefit of those innumerable friends of the Allies
in Europe and America whom I would fain reach with the help of your
great name, I will run through a few of the recent--the ground--facts of
the past year, as I myself ran through them a few days ago, before, with
an Admiralty permit, I went down to one of the most interesting naval
bases on our coast and found myself amid a group of men engaged night
and day in grappling with the submarine menace which threatens not only
Great Britain, not only the Allies, but yourselves, and every neutral
nation. It is well to go back to these facts. They are indeed worthy of
this island nation, and her seaborn children.
To begin with, the _personnel_ of the British Navy, which at the
beginning of the war was 140,000, was last year 300,000. This year it is
400,000, or very nearly three times what it was before the war. Then as
to ships,--"If we were strong in capital ships at the beginning of the
war"--said Mr. Balfour, last September, "we are yet stronger
now--absolutely and relatively--and in regard to cruisers and destroyers
there is absolutely no comparison between our strength in 1914 and our
strength now. There is no part of our naval strength in which we have
not got a greater supply, and in some departments an incomparably
greater supply than we had on August 4th, 1914.... The tonnage of the
Navy has increased by well over a million tons since war began."
So Mr. Balfour, six months ago. Five months later, it fell to Sir Edward
Carson to move the naval estimates, under pressure, as we all know, of
the submarine anxiety. He spoke in the frankest and plainest language of
that anxiety, as did the Prime Minister in his now famous speech of
February 22nd, and as did the speakers in the House of Lords, Lord
Lytton, Lord Curzon and Lord Beresford, on the same date. _The attack is
not yet checked. The danger is not over._ Still again--look at some of
the facts! In two years and a quarter of war--
Eight million men moved across the seas--almost without mishap.
Nine million and a half tons of explosives carried to our own armies
and those of our Allies.
Over a million horses and mules; and--
Over forty-seven million gallons of petrol supplied to the armies.
And besides, twenty-five thousand ships have been examined for
contraband of war, on the high seas, or in harbour, since the war
began.
And at this, one must pause a moment to think--once again--what it
means; to call up the familiar image of Britain's ships, large and
small, scattered over the wide Atlantic and the approaches to the North
Sea, watching there through winter and summer, storm and fair, and so
carrying out, relentlessly, the blockade of Germany, through every
circumstance often of danger and difficulty; with every consideration
for neutral interests that is compatible with this desperate war, in
which the very existence of England is concerned; and without the
sacrifice of a single life, unless it be the lives of British sailors,
often lost in these boardings of passing ships, amid the darkness and
storm of winter seas. There, indeed, in these "wave-beaten" ships, as in
the watching fleets of the English Admirals outside Toulon and Brest,
while Napoleon was marching triumphantly about Europe, lies the root
fact of the war. It is a commonplace, but one that has been "proved upon
our pulses." Who does not remember the shock that went through
England--and the civilised world--when the first partial news of the
Battle of Jutland reached London, and we were told our own losses,
before we knew either the losses of the enemy or the general result of
the battle? It was neither fear, nor panic; but it was as though the
nation, holding its breath, realised for the first time where, for it,
lay the vital elements of being. The depths in us were stirred. We knew
in very deed that we were the children of the sea!
And now again the depths are stirred. The development of the submarine
attack has set us a new and stern task, and we are "straitened till it
be accomplished." The great battle-ships seem almost to have left the
stage. In less than three months, 626,000 tons of British, neutral and
allied shipping have been destroyed. Since the beginning of the war
we--Great Britain--have lost over two million tons of shipping, and our
Allies and the neutrals have lost almost as much. There is a certain
shortage of food in Great Britain, and a shortage of many other things
besides. Writing about the middle of February, an important German
newspaper raised a shout of jubilation. "The whole sea was as if swept
clean at one blow"--by the announcement of the intensified "blockade" of
the first of February. So the German scribe. But again the facts shoot
up, hard and irreducible, through the sea of comment. While the German
newspapers were shouting to each other, the sea was so far from being
"swept clean," that twelve thousand ships had actually passed in and out
of British ports in the first eighteen days of the "blockade." And at
any moment during those days, at least 3,000 ships could have been found
traversing the "danger zone," which the Germans imagined themselves to
have barred. One is reminded of the _Hamburger Nachrichten_ last year,
after the Zeppelin raid in January 1916. "English industry lies in
ruins," said that astonishing print. "The sea has been swept clean,"
says one of its brethren now. Yet all the while, there, in the danger
zone, whenever, by day or night, one turns one's thoughts to it, are the
three thousand ships; and there in the course of a fortnight, are the
twelve thousand ships going and coming.
Yet all the same, as I have said before, there is danger and there is
anxiety. The neutrals--save America--have been intimidated; they are
keeping their ships in harbour; and to do without their tonnage is a
serious matter for us. Meanwhile, the best brains in naval England are
at work, and one can feel the sailors straining at the leash. In the
first eighteen days of February, there were forty fights with
submarines. The Navy talks very little about them, and says nothing of
which it is not certain. But all the scientific resources, all the
fighting brains of naval England are being brought to bear, and we at
home--well, let us keep to our rations, the only thing we can do to help
our men at sea!
How this grey estuary spread before my eyes illustrates and illuminates
the figures I have been quoting! I am on the light cruiser of a famous
Commodore, and I have just been creeping and climbing through a
submarine. The waters round are crowded with those light craft,
destroyers, submarines, mine-sweepers, trawlers, patrol boats, on which
for the moment at any rate the fortunes of the naval war turns. And take
notice that they are all--or almost all--_new_; the very latest products
of British ship-yards. We have plenty of battle-ships, but "we must now
build, as quickly as possible, the smaller craft, and the merchant ships
we want," says Sir Edward Carson. "Not a slip in the country will be
empty during the coming months. Every rivet put into a ship will
contribute to the defeat of Germany. And 47 per cent, of the Merchant
Service have already been armed." The riveters must indeed have been
hard at work! This crowded scene carries me back to the Clyde where I
was last year, to the new factories and workshops, with their
ever-increasing throng of women, and to the marvellous work of the
ship-yards. No talk now of strikes, of a disaffected and revolutionary
minority, on the Clyde, at any rate, as there was twelve months ago.
Broadly speaking, and allowing for a small, stubborn, but insignificant
Pacifist section, the will of the nation, throughout all classes, has
become as steel--to win the war.
Throughout England, as in these naval officers beside me, there is the
same tense yet disciplined expectancy. As we lunch and talk, on this
cruiser at rest, messages come in perpetually; the cruiser itself is
ready for the open sea, at an hour and a half's notice; the seaplanes
pass out and come in over the mouth of the harbour on their voyages of
discovery and report, and these destroyers and mine-sweepers that he so
quietly near us will be out again to-night in the North Sea, grappling
with every difficulty and facing every danger, in the true spirit of a
wonderful service, while we land-folk sleep and eat in peace;--grumbling
no doubt, with our morning newspaper and coffee, when any of the German
destroyers who come out from Zeebrugge are allowed to get home with a
whole skin. "What on earth is the Navy about?" Well, the Navy knows.
Germany is doing her very worst, and will go on doing it--for a time.
The line of defensive watch in the North Sea is long; the North Sea is a
big place; the Germans often have the luck of the street-boy who rings a
bell and runs away, before the policeman comes up. But the Navy has no
doubts. The situation, says one of my cheerful hosts, is "quite healthy"
and we shall see "great things in the coming months." We had better
leave it at that!