Towards The Goal - Mrs. Humphry Ward
But what are these strange figures swarming beside the road--black
tousled heads and bronze faces? Kaffir "boys," at work in some quarries,
feeling the cold, no doubt, on this bright bitter day, in spite of their
long coats. They are part of that large body of native labour, Chinese,
Kaffir, Basuto, which is now helping our own men everywhere to push on
and push up, as the new labour forces behind them release more and more
of the fighting men for that dogged pursuit which is going on
_there_--in that blue distance to our right!--where the German line
swings stubbornly back, south-east, from the Vimy Ridge.
The motor stops. This is a Headquarters, and a staff officer comes out
to greet us--a boy in looks, but a D.S.O. all the same! His small car
precedes us as a guide, and we keep up with him as best we may. These
are mining villages we are passing through, and on the horizon are some
of those pyramidal slag-heaps--the Fosses--which have seen some of the
fiercest fighting of the war. But we leave the villages behind, and are
soon climbing into a wooden upland. Suddenly, a halt. A notice-board
forbids the use of a stretch of road before us "from sun-rise to
sunset." Evidently it is under German observation. We try to find
another, parallel. But here, too, the same notice confronts us. We dash
along it, however, and my pulses run a little quicker, as I realise,
from the maps we carry, how near we are to the enemy lines which lie
hidden in the haze, eastward; and from my own eyes, how exposed is the
hillside. But we are safely through, and a little further we come to a
wood--a charming wood, to all seeming, of small trees, which in a week
or two will be full of spring leaf and flower. But we are no sooner in
it, jolting up its main track, than we understand the grimness of what
it holds. Spring and flowers have not much to say to it! For this wood
and its neighbourhood--Ablain St. Nazaire, Carency, Neuville St.
Vaast--have seen war at its cruellest; thousands of brave lives have
been yielded here; some of the dead are still lying unburied in its
furthest thickets, and men will go softly through it in the years to
come. "Stranger, go and tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here,
obedient to their will:"--the immortal words are in my ears. But how
many are the sacred spots in this land for which they speak!
We leave the motor and walk on through the wood to the bare upland
beyond. The wood is still a wood of death, actual or potential. Our own
batteries are all about us; so too are the remains of French batteries,
from the days when the French still held this portion of the line. We
watch the gunners among the trees and presently pass an encampment of
their huts. Beyond, a high and grassy plateau--fringes of wood on either
hand. But we must not go to the edge on our right so as to look down
into the valley below. Through the thin leafless trees, however, we see
plainly the ridges that stretch eastward, one behind the other,
"suffused in sunny air." There are the towers of Mont St. Eloy--ours;
the Bertonval Wood--ours; and the famous Vimy Ridge, blue in the middle
distance, of which half is ours and half German. We are very near the
line. Notre Dame de Lorette is not very far away, though too far for us
to reach the actual spot, the famous bluff, round which the battle raged
in 1915. And now the guns begin!--the first we have heard since we
arrived. From our left--as it seemed--some distance away, came the short
sharp reports of the trench mortars, but presently, as we walked on,
guns just behind us and below us, began to boom over our heads, and we
heard again the long-drawn scream or swish of the shells, rushing on
their deadly path to search out the back of the enemy's lines in the
haze yonder, and flinging confusion on his lines of communication, his
supplies and reserves. He does not reply. He has indeed been strangely
meek of late. The reason here cannot be that he is slipping away from
our attack, as is the case farther south. The Vimy Ridge is firmly held;
it is indeed the pivot of the retreat. Perhaps to-day he is economising.
But, of course, at any moment he might reply. After a certain amount of
hammering he _must_ reply! And there are some quite fresh shell-holes
along our path, some of them not many hours old. Altogether, it is with
relief that as the firing grows hotter we turn back and pick up the
motor in the wood again.
And yet one is loath to go! Never again shall I stand in such a
scene--never again behold those haunted ridges, and this wood of death
with the guns that hide in it! To have shared ever so little in such a
bit of human experience is for a woman a thing of awe, if one has time
to think of it. Not even groups of artillery men, chatting or completing
their morning's toilet, amid the thin trees, can dull that sense in me.
_They_ are only "strafing" Fritz or making ready to "strafe" him; they
have had an excellent midday meal in the huts yonder, and they whistle
and sing as they go about their work, disappearing sometimes into
mysterious regions out of sight. That is all there is in it for them.
They are "doing their job," like the airmen, and if a German shell finds
them in the wood, why, the German will have done _his_ job, and they
will bear no grudge. It is simple as that--for them. But to the
onlooker, they are all figures in a great design--woven into the
terrible tapestry of war, and charged with a meaning that we of this
actual generation shall never more than dimly see or understand.
Again we rush along the exposed road and back into the mining region,
taking a westward turn. A stately chateau, and near it a smaller house,
where a General greets us. Lunch is over, for we are late, but it is
hospitably brought back for us, and the General and I plunge into talk
of the retreat, of what it means for the Germans, and what it will mean
for us. After luncheon, we go into the next room to look at the
General's big maps which show clearly how the salients run, the smaller
and the larger, from which the Germans are falling back, followed
closely by the troops of General Gough. News of the condition of the
enemy's abandoned lines is coming in fast. "Let no one make any mistake.
They have gone because they _must_--because of the power of our
artillery, which never stops hammering them, whether on the line or
behind the line, which interferes with all their communications and
supplies, and makes life intolerable. At the same time, the retreat is
being skilfully done, and will of course delay us. That was why they did
it. We shall have to push up roads, railways, supplies; the bringing up
of the heavy guns will take time, but less time than they think! Our men
are in the pink of condition!"
On which again follows very high praise of the quality of the men now
coming out under the Military Service Act. "Yet they are conscripts,"
says one of us, in some surprise, "and the rest were volunteers." "No
doubt. But these are the men--many of them--who had to balance
duties--who had wives and children to leave, and businesses which
depended on them personally. Compulsion has cut the knot and eased their
consciences. They'll make fine soldiers! But we want more--_more!_" And
then follows talk on the wonderful developments of training--even since
last year; and some amusing reminiscences of the early days of England's
astounding effort, by which vast mobs of eager recruits without guns,
uniforms, or teachers, have been turned into the magnificent armies now
fighting in France.
The War Office has lately issued privately some extremely interesting
notes on the growth and training of the New Armies, of which it is only
now possible to make public use. From these it is clear that in the
Great Experiment of the first two years of war all phases of intellect
and capacity have played their part. The widely trained mind, taking
large views as to the responsibility of the Army towards the nation
delivered into its hands, so that not only should it be disciplined for
war but made fitter for peace; and the practical inventive gifts of
individuals who, in seeking to meet a special need, stumble on something
universal, both forces have been constantly at work. Discipline and
initiative have been the twin conquerors, and the ablest men in the
Army, to use a homely phrase, have been out for both. Many a fresh, and
valuable bit of training has been due to some individual officer struck
with a new idea, and patiently working it out. The special "schools,"
which are now daily increasing the efficiency of the Army, if you ask
how they arose, you will generally be able to trace them back to some
eager young man starting a modest experiment in his spare time for the
teaching of himself and some of his friends, and so developing it that
the thing is finally recognised, enlarged, and made the parent of
similar efforts elsewhere.
Let me describe one such "school"--to me a thrilling one, as I saw it on
a clear March afternoon. A year ago no such thing existed. Now each of
our Armies possesses one.
But this letter is already too long!
No. 3
_Easter Eve_, 1917.
DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,--Since I finished my last letter to you, before the
meeting of Congress, great days have come and gone.
_America is with us!_
At last, we English folk can say that to each other, without reserve or
qualification, and into England's mood of ceaseless effort and anxiety
there has come a sudden relaxation, a breath of something canning and
sustaining. What your action may be--whether it will shorten the war,
and how much, no one here yet knows. But when in some great strain a
friend steps to your side, you don't begin with questions. He is there.
Your cause, your effort, are his. Details will come. Discussion will
come. But there is a breathing space first, in which feeling rests upon
itself before it rushes out in action. Such a breathing space 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 passing days will give them--for America a double significance.
Surpass 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 multitudes 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 shells 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 shells 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 shells 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; nobody 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.