Chapter 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.