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 SEEING IT THROUGH 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/seeingitthroughhOOadco 
 
SEEING IT THROUGH 
 
 HOW BRITAIN ANSWERED 
 THE CALL 
 
 A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 
 
 MCMXV 
 
.ft* 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons Ltd., London and Reading. 
 
 i««i. 
 
 //"" 
 
BRITAIN'S WAY. 
 
 There's a stir in every street 
 
 Like the sound of hearts that beat — 
 
 Every road that leads from England 
 Pulses with the tramp of feet ; 
 Who are these that without stay 
 Down the dark and dusty way 
 
 Of the Valley of the Shadow 
 March with faces toward the day ? 
 
 These are they who, called to arms, 
 Came from shops, and desks, and farms — 
 
 Men of Peace while Peace was with us, 
 Men of War at War's alarms ! 
 Swift the warning message ran 
 To the Empire's farthest span, 
 
 And they rose for England's honour, 
 Armed for love of God and man. 
 
 They have nothing there to gain 
 On the thunderous battle-plain 
 But the saving of the nations 
 That a tyrant would enchain ; 
 
They have seen the wrongs he wrought*, 
 And, undriven and unbought, 
 
 Go to fight again for Freedom, 
 As of old their fathers fought. 
 
 Let the wordy War-Lord boast 
 Of his mighty vandal host, 
 
 He shall end " The Day " he drank to 
 In the Night he did not toast ! 
 He and all his ravening race, 
 Brutes primeval, blonde and base, 
 
 Have outlived their barbarous era 
 And are passing to their place. 
 
 From the Britons oversea 
 That have never bent the knee 
 
 At the throne of any tyrant 
 Come the cohorts of the free : 
 They are with us to defend 
 All the Prussian Lord would rend, 
 
 And we've sworn an oath together 
 That his reign of blood shall end. 
 
 By the children he has slain, 
 By the patience and the pain 
 
 Of the Christ whose laws he tramples 
 And whose word he takes in vain, 
 
By the God he dare not trust, 
 We will curb his ruthless lust, 
 
 Break his pride and -power for ever, 
 Leave him humbled in the dust ! 
 
 At his blighting nod or frown 
 Church and cottage, thorpe and town 
 
 Crash in ruin — and in ruin 
 Shall his glory thus go down : 
 We will match his mightiest guns, 
 And outnumber all his Huns 
 
 With our surely gathering millions, 
 Freemen all, and Freemen's sons. 
 
 Listen — listen ! Day and night, 
 Through the dark and through the light 
 
 From the homes of all the Empire 
 Rolls the sea of England's might ; 
 Hear its tide across the gloom, 
 With a fateful surge and boom, 
 
 Rising, rising still — and, risen, 
 It shall sweep him to his doom. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Britain's Way 5 
 
 I. THE CLOUD BURSTS II 
 
 II. KITCHENER'S MEN - 26 
 
 III. HEROES AND MARTYRS - - 38 
 
 IV. " THE COLOSSAL BRITISH CALM " 61 
 V. THE SOUL OF THE NATION - - 75 
 
 VI. IN THE TRENCHES - - - 105 
 
 VII. KEEPING THE GATES - - - 143 
 
 VIII. FROM THE BRITAINS OVERSEAS - 160 
 
 IX. SEEING IT THROUGH - - -182 
 
 Epilogue - 192 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 The Cloud Bursts 
 
 Stand 
 Firm for your country, and become a man 
 Honoured and loved ; it were a noble life 
 To be found dead embracing her. 
 
 Ben Jonson's Catiline. 
 
 Already it seems years rather than months 
 since we were living at peace with all the 
 rest of the world and wrangling furiously 
 among ourselves — wrangling so furiously, 
 split into so many opposing sections, so 
 fatally disunited, to all appearance, that 
 a resolute, well-prepared enemy may be 
 forgiven for expecting to find us an easy, 
 almost helpless prey. To think of the 
 condition into which we were fallen less 
 than a year ago is like recalling a wild 
 nightmare. The labour world was seeth- 
 ing with discontent and bitter resentment 
 
 against an unjust division of the fruits 
 
 11 
 
12 The Cloud Bursts 
 
 of our national prosperity that resulted in 
 the disgraceful poverty of the too-poor 
 and the equally disgraceful affluence of 
 the too-rich. There had been rioting and 
 shooting in South Africa, you remember, 
 and the nine deported labour leaders exiled 
 here among us had accentuated the ill- 
 feeling, that was bad enough before they 
 came, between employers and employed. 
 There was trouble brewing in connection 
 with those Indian emigrants (now said to 
 have been dupes of German intrigue) who 
 had been refused permission to land and 
 settle in Canada. The suffragettes were 
 desperately militant, burning houses and 
 churches, breaking shop windows, damag- 
 ing works of art, and revolting in prison 
 to call attention to their demands. Another 
 storm was raging round the question of 
 Welsh Disestablishment. Ireland, apart 
 from its own acute labour agitations, was 
 an armed camp and apparently on the eve 
 of revolution, with Ulstermen ready to fly 
 at the throats of Nationalists, and officers 
 of our army out there threatening to throw 
 up their commissions sooner than obey 
 
The Cloud Bursts 13 
 
 orders of which they did not approve. 
 Even down to the end of last July gun- 
 running was still going on in Dublin. 
 
 At this moment, when all these and other 
 social and political disputes at home and 
 in our Colonies had us entangled in a very 
 Gordian knot of difficulties — the enemy 
 struck. And in a flash all our discords 
 ended, and the whole British Empire, 
 united as it never had been united before, 
 rose out of chaos and stood four-square 
 against the common danger. No wonder 
 Germany was surprised ; we were a little 
 surprised ourselves at the instant unanimity 
 with which all our warring elements 
 coalesced and, as at a sudden bugle-call, 
 were gathered into a loyal and mighty 
 brotherhood with a single determination 
 shaping all its energies — a determination 
 to fit itself swiftly and at any personal 
 sacrifice to cope with and crush for ever 
 the most ruthless, the most soulless renas- 
 cence of barbarism that has ever threatened 
 the peace and hopes of the civilised 
 world. 
 
 On July 28th; after a month of tortuous 
 
14 The Cloud Bursts 
 
 and obscure diplomatic negotiation con- 
 cerning the murder of the Austrian Crown 
 Prince by a Serbian subject, Austria, under 
 German influence, declared war upon Serbia, 
 and so doing lit a fire that swept with 
 terrible rapidity across Europe. The Czar, 
 as the traditional protector of the Slav 
 nations, had warned Austria that he would 
 not stand by and see Serbia destroyed, 
 so on August ist, Germany, ostensibly 
 supporting her ally, declared war against 
 Russia, and on the same day invaded 
 Luxemburg, which is not on the road 
 to Petrograd. On August 3rd, Germany 
 invaded Belgium, and on the 4th declared 
 war on Belgium and on France. On that 
 same 4th Great Britain, fulfilling her treaty 
 obligations, protested against the gross 
 violation of Belgian neutrality and delivered 
 an ultimatum that expired at midnight ; 
 and since no answer was forthcoming, in 
 the first hour of August 5th we declared 
 war on Germany. 
 
 It was this prompt and decisive action 
 on the part of the British Government that 
 upset Germany's, elaborate calculations, 
 
The Cloud Bursts 15 
 
 falsified the pretentious forecasts of her 
 academic military experts and bloody- 
 minded professors ; and she hates and 
 maligns us at this hour because we have 
 spoilt her programme by not proving our- 
 selves the fools and poltroons that her wise 
 men and heroes had thought us. She had 
 analysed our national character with that 
 cocksure, philosophic solemnity which sen- 
 sible people never take too seriously ; she 
 had weighed our enormous Empire in a 
 balance of her own making and found it 
 wanting everywhere. Her oracles had 
 assured her that whatever happened on 
 the Continent, Great Britian would not go 
 to war — she dare not, for her Empire was 
 rent with internecine strife and tottering 
 to its fall — India, a hot-bed of disaffection 
 and yearning for an opportunity to rise 
 and throw off our oppressive yoke : Canada, 
 Australasia, South Africa, weary of their 
 connection with us and certain to refuse to 
 become anyway involved in a European 
 war that might be our concern but could 
 not be theirs : Ireland obviously ready and 
 waiting for such a chance to strike for 
 
16 The Cloud Bursts 
 
 independence and join with an enemy to 
 crush us. All this looked so plausible and 
 gratifying on paper that the complacent 
 German people were convinced it was all 
 true. There was nothing scientific about 
 the construction of the British Empire ; 
 and Germany is so materialistic nowadays 
 that she has no faith in anything but brute 
 force and scientific machinery ; it had 
 grown slowly, unmethodically through the 
 centuries like a mere thing of nature, whilst 
 Germany had been clever enough to con- 
 struct her own carefully systematised 
 Empire in a matter of fifty years. Clearly, 
 then, the British were no authentic Empire 
 builders, had no scholarly, codified theory 
 of government and their Empire must 
 needs tumble to pieces at once before the 
 intelligent onslaught of a race that had 
 really studied and understood the business. 
 We had no method, they argued ; our 
 progress had been haphazard and acci- 
 dental ; the different parts of our dominion 
 were nothing but a disorderly mass of 
 unorganised countries — instead of being 
 forcibly and firmly clamped together under 
 
The Cloud Bursts 17 
 
 a uniform, cast-iron rule, most of them 
 made their own laws ; their relations with 
 us were purely voluntary ; England had no 
 power to compel them to obey her, and was 
 it likely that such free peoples, failing to 
 consult their own safety, would go forth 
 voluntarily to spend their blood and money 
 in assisting to maintain an Empire that 
 did not hold them in subjection, had never 
 bridled and harnessed them to its triumphal 
 chariot, and so, from the German point 
 of view, was an Empire in name only ? As 
 for the homeland itself, it was contempt- 
 ibly degenerate and effete, altogether given 
 over to a childish love of sport, to comfort 
 and luxury, to a narrow, unidealistic com- 
 mercial greed that made it more than ever 
 a nation of shopkeepers, so pusillanimous, 
 so shop-soiled, so wedded to peace at any 
 price that it would sacrifice anything except 
 its own skin and its own cash sooner than 
 allow its Government to become involved in 
 a Continental war. It seems a muddled 
 sort of reasoning, for neither a love of 
 sport nor commercial greed is compatible 
 with soft living, but these were their 
 
18 The Cloud Bursts 
 
 convictions, this is what their spuriously 
 subtle wiseacres thought they knew about 
 us. 
 
 I only know that after our ultimatum 
 had gone to Germany, throughout August 
 4th, which was a Bank holiday, the one 
 feeling in our London holiday crowd and, 
 as we afterwards learned, throughout the 
 kingdom, was a fear — not that we should 
 go to war, but lest our and Germany's 
 diplomatists might so shuffle the dirty cards 
 that we should not. There was a strong 
 sentiment that the entente with France, of 
 itself, ought to leave us no choice ; but, 
 above all, a deep indignation against the 
 invasion of Belgium fired us with an 
 intense desire to fulfil a duty made thus 
 doubly clear and imperative. At the root 
 of it, this fear was a consuming anxiety lest 
 a pacifist policy of non-intervention should 
 prevail ; lest Germany should offer us 
 pledges that might justify us, on diplo- 
 matic grounds, in standing aside from the 
 conflict, but must on every other ground 
 brand us with dishonour. 
 
 It was this feeling that fretted the multi- 
 
The Cloud Bursts 19 
 
 tude that gathered and overflowed White- 
 hall and all its tributaries late at night on 
 August 4th, and waited impatiently until 
 Big Ben struck twelve. Then there was 
 some cheering ; then a strange, expectant 
 silence. They were waiting for the news ; 
 and another half hour was not past before it 
 came. It ran through the dense crowd in 
 a moment that war had been declared on 
 Germany, and it was greeted everywhere 
 with a sense of profound relief and satis- 
 faction. The cheers that stormed up thun- 
 derously thrilled you with a certainty that 
 this vast crowd spoke for the nation its 
 pride and its thankfulness that our people 
 had in this supreme crisis stood firm and, 
 without hesitation and fearlessly, done the 
 only right thing in the only right way. 
 Cheer after cheer rose almost frantically, 
 it was so good to be freed of the almost 
 intolerable tension of suspense ; then, as 
 by a common impulse, hats where whipped 
 off and, standing bareheaded, those exultant 
 thousands lifted their voices first in the 
 National Anthem, then in the stirring 
 strains of the Marseillaise. There was no 
 
20 The Cloud Bursts 
 
 mafficking ; no rowdyism ; for this was a 
 crowd sanely and deeply in earnest. Still 
 cheering, it broke up and went its ways, 
 neither boasting nor fearing, but merely 
 glad from the heart of it that we had thrown 
 down the gage to a braggart, arrogant 
 race whose squalid, out-of-date religion of 
 bloodshed and conquest was a challenge 
 and an abomination to all decent, civilised 
 human beings. 
 
 Next day, Lord Kitchener succeeded 
 Mr. Asquith as Minister of War, and whilst 
 we were preparing swiftly and in a most 
 practical, resolute spirit to enter upon our 
 share of the greatest war that had ever 
 fallen to our hands, tidings came that 
 Canada, Australia, New Zealand were en- 
 thusiastically raising and equipping troops 
 that were to come and join our battle line ; 
 that the warrior Princes of India were 
 eagerly placing themselves and their armies 
 at our service and petitioning to be sent 
 to the front ; that South Africa would 
 relieve us of garrison duties, raise troops 
 for her own defence, make war on Germany's 
 South African colonies and undertake to 
 
The Cloud Bursts 21 
 
 suppress any outbreak of the rebellion 
 that Germany had been fomenting among 
 a certain small section of the Boer-British 
 community. And at home here, no sooner 
 did Lord Kitchener call for a new volunteer 
 army than men of every class, rich and 
 poor, clerk and docker, the town or country 
 aristocrat with the swineherd and the 
 bricklayer, went swarming in thousands to 
 the recruiting stations all over the kingdom. 
 Some of the newspapers chattered 
 shrewdly about capturing German trade, 
 but no such ambition as that could have 
 inspired a man among us to take up arms. 
 It was a flaming anger against the unpro- 
 voked wrongs inflicted upon Belgium, a 
 spontaneous sympathy with France, 
 threatened by a cunning, calculating aggres- 
 sor whose avowed intention was to break 
 and humble her so utterly that she should 
 never again be able to lift her head from the 
 dust — it was these things, far more even 
 than any thought of the danger that 
 threatened our own shores and our exist- 
 ence as a nation, that appealed irresistibly, 
 transformed as by magic our men of peace 
 
22 The Cloud Bursts 
 
 into men of war and sent them to Whitehall 
 and the other recruiting depots in such 
 enormous numbers that many of them had 
 to return there two and three days in 
 succession to take their places again in the 
 long queues, before they were able to get 
 in at the doors to be examined and passed 
 for service. 
 
 One could not witness these things then, 
 and cannot recall them now without some 
 touch of pride and emotion. None of those 
 men were unwilling conscripts, blind ser- 
 vants of a tyrannical system : they were 
 free men who knew why and for what they 
 were to fight and were giving themselves 
 to their country's cause because they felt 
 it was a cause that was good enough to 
 live for, or to die for. 
 
 In the very early days of all this I met 
 with an old friend who had been a most 
 pronounced pacifist, an uncompromising 
 denunciator of all wars and of those who 
 made them ; but now, he had sacrificed 
 a lucrative appointment, cast off his civilian 
 tall hat and morning coat, and walked clad 
 in khaki, keen and alert to fit himself to be 
 
The Cloud Bursts 23 
 
 sent out quickly to the front as a private 
 soldier. 
 
 " Yes," he said, guessing at my surprise, 
 " but this is not war in the usual sense of 
 the word. I'm out to fight for peace ; 
 that's all. There can be no peace in the 
 world so long as a nation so brutally militant 
 as Germany sits in the middle of it hungry 
 for conquests and forcing all its neighbours 
 to live under arms in self-defence. It's 
 a stupid state of things that can't be 
 tolerated at this time of day. It has 
 simply got to be ended, and it can only 
 be ended by smashing Germany, so for 
 the sake of peace I'm going to war. I have 
 been sick for years of the big armament 
 savagery and seeing all Europe showing 
 its teeth. If Bernhardi's gospel of murder 
 and silly swaggering domination is good 
 enough to fight for, well, I reckon the sane 
 gospel of peace is too good to be given up 
 till we've had one last hard fight for it. 
 So far as I'm concerned the war is just 
 a horrible necessity — it's a war to end war, 
 and that's why I'm in it." 
 
 In those early days, too, when the Kaiser 
 
24 The Cloud Bursts 
 
 was still telling us clamorously that God 
 was his old ally and sure to give him victory 
 over his enemies, I happened to pay a 
 visit to a kindly, gentle old lady who holds 
 strict and quite orthodox views in all 
 matters of religion. 
 
 "Strange," I remarked to her, "that 
 while the papers are full of tales of German 
 atrocities the Kaiser still seems to think that 
 God is with him and will reward him for all 
 he is doing." 
 
 "I do not trouble about what the 
 Kaiser thinks of God," she said quietly. 
 " We know what God thinks of the 
 Kaiser." 
 
 I was rather taken aback, but, without 
 noticing this, she opened the Bible that lay 
 on the table beside her, turned to the sixth 
 chapter of Proverbs, and read out, with a 
 glance up at the end of each verse to see 
 that I caught its significance : 
 
 " These six things doth the Lord hate ; 
 yea, seven are an abomination unto 
 him : 
 
 " A proud look, a lying tongue, and 
 hands that shed innocent blood : 
 
The Cloud Bursts 25 
 
 " An heart that deviseth wicked imagina- 
 tions, feet that be swift in running to 
 mischief : 
 
 " A false witness that speaketh lies, and 
 he that soweth discord among brethren." 
 
 She shut the book. 
 
 " Now," she asked emphatically, " is 
 there more than one king among those that 
 are righting who need tremble when he reads 
 those words ? " 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Kitchener's Men 
 
 " Come ye, whate'er your creed — waken all. 
 Whate'er your temper, at your Country's call, 
 Resolving (this a free-born Nation can) 
 To have one soul, and perish to a man 
 Or save this honoured land from every lord 
 But British reason and the British sword." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 Somebody just behind me in the crowd 
 remarked, " It's wonderful when you come 
 to think of it ! " and I guessed what he 
 meant. 
 
 We were standing on the pavement in 
 Queen Victoria Street watching a few 
 hundreds of Kitchener's new soldiers march- 
 ing past in the roadway ; smart well-set-up 
 fellows in khaki, keeping step with that 
 keen, buoyant look men have when they 
 are doing something they are able to put 
 their hearts into. 
 
 26 
 
Kitchener's Men 27 
 
 The wonder was that until a week or 
 two ago most of these men had never so 
 much as dreamt of ever handling a gun. 
 They were placidly serving behind counters, 
 writing at desks in quiet offices, teaching 
 in schools ; they were factory hands, farm 
 labourers, or idle young men of means 
 lounging through an easy life about town. 
 For the strength of Kitchener's army 
 is that it is a real democratic force, a 
 people's army in the actual sense of the 
 term. Every grade of society is repre- 
 sented in its ranks, from navvies to univer- 
 sity professors, from costermongers to the 
 younger sons of peers. 
 
 And, on second thoughts, it was no such 
 wonder, after all, that our men of peace 
 should have been so swiftly transformed 
 into enthusiastic and capable men of war. 
 Our German enemy never made a worse 
 mistake than when he complacently as- 
 sumed that because we were not an aggres- 
 sively military nation, because soldiering 
 was not a universal business with us, 
 therefore we must needs be weak degener- 
 ates with no fighting spirit left in us ; 
 
28 Kitchener's Men 
 
 that merely because we were not always 
 showing our teeth we did not possess any. 
 
 Germany's military scientists, who know 
 so much more of machinery than of men, 
 appear to have convinced themselves that 
 the fighting spirit was something which 
 kindled under a brass helmet and was 
 extinguished by a top-hat ; and that when 
 they had counted the numbers of our 
 professional soldiers they had counted all 
 that mattered of our fighting men. 
 
 Well, in less than twelve weeks after 
 he had called for a new army of a million, 
 over eight hundred thousand had responded 
 eagerly to Lord Kitchener's appeal, and 
 by now there are already some two million 
 who are proud to be known as " Kitchener's 
 men." And this great force is made of far 
 finer, more reliable stuff than if he had 
 raised it by conscription, for there is no 
 leaven of unwilling or constitutionally un- 
 military material in it. Each one of these 
 men has his own good reason for what he 
 is doing : he knows why he has joined, 
 what he is going to fight for, and goes gladly 
 and ardently to fight for it. 
 
Kitchener's Men 29 
 
 Take, for instance, a man in my own 
 neighbourhood, who enlisted almost as 
 soon as Kitchener's call to arms appeared 
 on the hoardings. He is a grocer in a 
 small way, a steady, decent, hard-working 
 fellow with so little of swagger or dash 
 about him that once I should have said 
 there was not an ounce of the warrior in his 
 blood ; but now I know better. I met 
 him in his khaki, a month after he had 
 enlisted, when he was home on a week- 
 end leave ; and he was looking as perfect 
 a soldier as any I have seen. At first 
 he was a little diffident and awkward in 
 accounting for himself, for even in normal 
 times he was one of the reticent kind. I 
 could get no more from him than that he 
 had felt it was up to him to go, the same 
 as anybody else ; that he didn't care to 
 stick at home and let somebody else go 
 and fight for him, he just wanted to do 
 his share ; then, suddenly, he broke out : 
 
 " Look here — it's like this. My wife 
 can manage the shop all right till I come 
 back, and — well, look here, you know 
 what's happened in Belgium, and do you 
 
30 Kitchener's Men 
 
 think I want to risk having to see my 
 kiddies grow up under this sanguinary- 
 Kaiser ? Well, there you are — and it isn't 
 going to be my fault if ever they have to." 
 
 Feelings of that sort have prompted a good 
 many of the volunteers who have shouldered 
 a gun and gone to the front, or are presently 
 going. 
 
 I know of another, a Sussex labourer. 
 He did not join quite early in the day, only 
 because his wife begged him not to. But 
 he read the papers restlessly, and it was 
 the stories of German atrocities that roused 
 him so and were more than he could endure. 
 They tell me he was fond of children, and 
 a little grave in the village churchyard 
 held the only one that had been his own. 
 One evening he came in from work and put 
 the newspaper down before his wife and 
 showed her a report of how a party of 
 Uhlans had ruthlessly butchered a Belgian 
 mother and three children. 
 
 " Read that," he said, terribly moved. 
 " It's no use, lass — I must go — I must go. 
 I can't stand any more of it — I must go." 
 
 She read, and so far from opposing him 
 
Kitchener's Men 31 
 
 further agreed that he must. She still did 
 not want him to go, but she was convinced 
 that he must and, weeping bitterly, walked 
 with him to the station — and he went. 
 
 When I go over the long roll call of my 
 personal friends who have enlisted I grow 
 ashamed of the causes that keep me still 
 at home, though I am prouder than ever 
 of the country that is mine, of the race to 
 which I belong. Some went, maybe, from 
 a gallant love of adventure ; many, as I 
 know, because being qualified by age and 
 circumstances, they were bound in honour 
 to go, this fight being what it is — for our 
 common human right of freedom, and 
 against the most stupid and most merciless 
 tyranny that ever sought to throw civilisa- 
 tion into the melting-pot and revive the 
 brute-glories of a primeval day. It may 
 be needless to praise those who are merely 
 doing their duty in face of this general 
 peril, but one cannot but have admiration, 
 and something more than admiration, for 
 the many that march beside them who 
 were under no such obligation to go. 
 
 One of these is a man of forty-six, who 
 
32 Kitchener's Men 
 
 has spent his time and money in a long 
 struggle to make headway in his profession. 
 He is an accomplished violinist, and at 
 last seemed to have come within sight of 
 the goal he had striven so strenuously to 
 reach. In the last five years or so he had 
 toured successfully through the country, and 
 has had engagements at some of London's 
 largest halls. But he happened to have 
 studied under a famous teacher in Paris, 
 and at the outbreak of the war his sympathy 
 and affection for the French people pulled 
 him — the thought of their being trampled 
 into the dust under German hoofs became 
 intolerable to him. He had everything 
 to lose and nothing whatever to gain by 
 putting his sympathies into action, never- 
 theless he promptly flung his profession 
 to the winds, turned his back on his private 
 hopes and ambitions, and offered himself 
 for enlistment. 
 
 At the recruiting station he gave his 
 age as thirty-four. He is physically fit, 
 but he scarcely looks so young, and the 
 officer at the table eyed him critically, and 
 asked : 
 
Kitchener's Men 33 
 
 " What particular branch of the service 
 do you want to join ? " 
 
 " Any that will have me/' said he. 
 
 " That's good— thank God for that ! " 
 said the officer, with emphasis. " So many 
 insist on joining special regiments, and 
 that often makes difficulties. But you're 
 the man for us. We'll find room for you." 
 
 And they did. 
 
 Another was an expert mechanic ; he 
 has had experience in the building of aero- 
 planes, and has flown in them as an assistant. 
 He is over fifty, but the spirit moved him, 
 and he offered himself to a flying corps, 
 giving his age as forty. He would have 
 risked being younger if he had not been 
 grey-haired. 
 
 " You are as right as rain," said the 
 doctor who examined him ; " your con- 
 stitution is not more than thirty-five, and 
 there are so many applications that the 
 younger men stand the best chance." 
 
 So when he reached the military authori- 
 ties he was careful to adopt the age of his 
 constitution. 
 
 " I daresay I can put you through," 
 
34 Kitchener's Men 
 
 observed the officer, " but of course our 
 people are taking the younger men first. 
 " If you had not been more than thirty, 
 now " 
 
 "As a matter of fact," interrupted the 
 recruit, " I am thirty, but as I am a bit 
 grey I thought you might not believe me 
 if I said so." 
 
 " Oh, I believe you," laughed the officer. 
 " You tell the truth and stick to your right 
 age if you want to get through quick." 
 
 And as he got through at once you may 
 depend that he stuck to it. 
 
 " But," he confessed to some of us after- 
 wards, " I hope to goodness they won't 
 go on expecting me to take much more off, 
 or I shan't be born presently." 
 
 But somehow, I think, perhaps the recol- 
 lection of this kind that touches me most 
 poignantly is one of a certain old gentleman 
 of private means who enjoyed all the com- 
 forts of life in a pleasant house of his own 
 some forty miles to the north of London. 
 Shortly after Kitchener asked for his new 
 army, a large number of troops were in 
 training on the common that stretches 
 
Kitchener's Men 35 
 
 within sight of his door, and one morning 
 he walked into camp to interview the 
 Colonel in command. He and the Colonel 
 were old friends ; they had played golf 
 together in piping times of peace, and 
 more than once he had carried the Colonel 
 with him on his yearly caravanning holidays. 
 Tall, thin, full of energy, he is a sturdy 
 man still, though he is nearer seventy than 
 sixty, 
 
 " I have come, Colonel," he said quietly, 
 " to offer my services. Now, wait a minute 
 — listen to me. I am not so mad as to 
 ask you to help me, at my age, to get 
 a commission, or even to imagine they 
 would pass me anywhere to serve in the 
 ranks. I would do it if they would, but 
 they won't. Still, you know, I'm a capital 
 cook — I haven't gone caravanning for 
 nothing — so I want you to arrange to take 
 me into one of your battalions as cook." 
 
 They tell me the Colonel stared at him 
 for a minute, and was oddly moved. 
 
 " My dear old chap," he said, " do 
 you know what you are asking for ? You 
 would have nothing but the damn'dest hard. 
 
36 Kitchener's Men 
 
 dirty work, and no possible chance of any- 
 kind of honour or distinction at all." 
 
 " I know that," said the game old 
 gentleman obstinately. " I don't care about 
 that. But do you think I'm just going to 
 sit at home like this all the while ? I can't 
 do it — I won't do it. I am determined 
 to do my bit in this business somehow, 
 and I'm asking you as a friend to give 
 me the only job I'm fit for, and I shan't 
 die happy if you don't let me have this 
 chance." 
 
 There was no dissuading him ; within 
 a week he might have been seen, smart 
 and active, swathed in an apron, cooking 
 for those troops out on that Buckingham- 
 shire common, and he has since gone 
 joyously to the front with them to cook 
 for them there. 
 
 Almost everyone you meet now can tell 
 you such tales of our countrymen — of 
 the gallant, self-sacrificing spirit in which 
 old and young alike have risen to the great 
 occasion and made haste to meet the German 
 challenge. And this is the people that our 
 enemy had fatuously written down as 
 
Kitchener's Men 37 
 
 degenerate and negligible. If I were to 
 say all I think in my heart of these and 
 many other such incidents I might seem 
 to be talking boastfully, foolishly. But I 
 have not gone about in these latter days, 
 mixing with all sorts and conditions of my 
 fellows, without being made to feel that the 
 old fighting spirit which built up our 
 Empire is not dead in us or even asleep. 
 It is alive and alert and as ready to answer 
 any good call that is made on it as it was 
 when Shakespeare felt it gloriously astir 
 in the air of his time and wrote exultantly : 
 
 ' ' This England never did and never shall 
 Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Heroes and Martyrs 
 
 " They were heroic souls who had lain life's all 
 On Freedom's hungry altar." 
 
 Gerald Massey. 
 
 I remember being told when I was a boy, 
 by a man who spoke as if he knew, that 
 the French are a very gallant people, 
 but emotional ; and that much the same 
 might be said of the Italians. I gathered 
 from him that to be emotional is not exactly 
 anything to their discredit ; it is a national 
 characteristic and we have no right to 
 blame them for it — they are born like that 
 and are unable to hide their weakness. On 
 the other hand, he gave me to understand 
 that we Britons are made of much sterner 
 stuff ; are not given to sentiment at all, 
 and, though we have the best kind of human 
 feelings, we are a proud, self-controlled 
 race and never reveal them in public. Of 
 
 38 
 
Heroes and Martyrs 39 
 
 course, it is nothing to boast of — this 
 dignified reticence — it just happens to be a 
 national characteristic of ours, and no 
 more. 
 
 I doubt whether I should ever have found 
 this fact out for myself. I accepted his 
 word for it because he appeared to be so 
 well informed. But ever since Belgian 
 refugees began to come over to England, 
 and ever since we have had Belgian 
 wounded soldiers in our midst, I have 
 been exercised with a growing suspicion 
 that perhaps he may have been mis- 
 taken. 
 
 Naturally, we were bound to feel sorry 
 for the martyred Belgian people assailed 
 by a dishonourable, barbarous enemy and 
 ruthlessly driven out of their ruined towns 
 and villages, Naturally we could not help 
 admiring and honouring the indomitable 
 heroism of the Belgian soldiers. I say 
 nothing against that ; but I keep coming 
 across English men and women who break 
 all such bounds and go enthusiastically 
 beyond them, and somehow it does not 
 seem fair to that national characteristic 
 
40 Heroes and Martyrs 
 
 which serious students of psychology have 
 for so long attributed to us. 
 
 That my tailor should have failed in 
 this respect does not matter so much ; one 
 does not look for stoicism in a tailor ; 
 besides, he never even mentioned the 
 matter until I chanced to speak of the war 
 whilst we were trying the coat on. Then 
 he agreed that it was terrible, and added 
 quite casually — much as he might have 
 referred to the acquisition of a new fashion 
 in waistcoats — that he and his wife had 
 arranged to adopt a little Belgian boy and 
 girl, whose parents had been butchered, 
 and intended to bring them up with their 
 own children. He made a few more chalk 
 marks where the coat did not fit nicely on 
 the shoulders, and that was all we said 
 about it. And I was rather pleased that 
 we both knew how to behave ourselves so 
 properly. 
 
 But I can't say so much for that police- 
 man at Charing Cross. You may have read 
 the story in the papers at the time. Soon 
 after the sack of Louvain, sixteen Belgian 
 refugees, mostly old folks and weary child- 
 
Heroes and Martyrs 41 
 
 ren, arrived at the station towards midnight, 
 when he was going off duty. He contrived 
 to make out who they were, and as it was 
 then too late to take them to the Belgian 
 Consul, he carried the smallest child in his 
 arms and shepherded the rest of the 
 forlorn party to his own home. He and 
 his wife fed them, gave up their bed to two, 
 and manufactured beds for the others in 
 their sitting-room and kitchen. In the 
 morning, after a good breakfast, the police- 
 man took them all by bus to the Belgian 
 Consulate. Meanwhile, the refugees had 
 made a private collection among themselves, 
 but when one of them at parting offered 
 him the money, I understand that he 
 laughed and waved it aside with a large 
 official gesture and would have none of it 
 — would even have gone off abruptly with- 
 out so much as letting them thank him 
 only they went after him ; and, after all, 
 it was not his fault that they were in tears, 
 nor that some of them insisted on kissing 
 the hand that had been kind to them. 
 
 But there was another thing that I 
 witnessed myself. Some weeks later, after 
 
42 Heroes and Martyrs 
 
 committees had been formed to take care 
 of these wanderers whom the modern Huns 
 have left homeless, two shabby women, 
 an old and a young one, with two bewildered 
 little girls were in the centre of a question- 
 ing, well-meaning crowd at the corner of 
 Kingsway, but nobody in the crowd could 
 understand what they were saying. Sud- 
 denly a passing carriage was checked and 
 drew up at the kerb, an elegant young lady, 
 who had noticed them, stepped out briskly, 
 pushed through, spoke to the poor women 
 in their own language, and, taking an arm 
 of the elder one and a hand of one of the 
 children, walked with them a hundred 
 yards or so and led them into the Belgian 
 Refugee Committee Room that was near 
 by. Two cheerful girls came forward to 
 meet them in the vestibule, as if they had 
 been waiting their arrival, and in a couple 
 of minutes, without wasting any time 
 on formalities, had them seated at a table 
 with a pleasant array of bread and butter 
 and cakes and cups-and-saucers and tea set 
 out on the cloth before them. The two 
 children started at once to eat ravenously, 
 
Heroes and Martyrs 43 
 
 and if the two sad women delayed and cried 
 a little first, you may be sure it was not 
 entirely because of the trouble through 
 which they had come. 
 
 Nevertheless, I did not think our national 
 characteristic came out quite strongly on 
 that occasion. And, if I am to tell the 
 truth, it gets very badly shaken whenever 
 we happen to come upon a Belgian soldier 
 in the streets. Some of us may pretend 
 not to look at him, but as a matter of fact 
 we can't help looking at him, and you will 
 see a good many of us turn and stand to 
 gaze back at him after he has gone past. 
 One day two of those soldiers, one of them 
 limping slightly, were strolling along Fen- 
 church Street, and these eyes beheld an 
 Englishman, a weedy, poor fellow who 
 might have been a carpenter, pass them 
 staring intently, and then turn impetuously 
 and hurry back and get in front of them and 
 snatch off his cap and wave it, crying 
 " Vive Belgium ! " with tears running down 
 his cheeks. Even that did not altogether 
 satisfy him ; he stood there saying foolish, 
 friendly things to them in English which 
 
44 Heroes and Martyrs 
 
 they evidently did not understand, and still 
 with his hat off he shook hands with them 
 both, and they smiled and seemed pleased, 
 though they had to answer him awkwardly, 
 in a language that was as incomprehensible 
 to him as his was to them. And somehow 
 I was pleased too. I admit I was a bit 
 ashamed of him, but I thoroughly approved 
 of what he had done and felt that, for the 
 moment, he was the delegate of the whole 
 street. 
 
 Again — last Lord Mayor's Day I did not 
 go out to see the Show ; it is our habit to 
 affect indifference towards that ancient 
 institution ; but being out I was caught 
 by sheer accident in the thick of the crowd 
 on Ludgate Hill. I was crushed at the 
 back of it, and could see nothing but heads 
 and the tops of bayonets as the procession 
 went by. But exactly opposite, on the 
 other side of the way, four wounded Belgians 
 with a couple of Red Cross nurses sat in a 
 window to themselves, and I and that part 
 of the mob which was packed beside and 
 behind me were contented to be able to 
 watch how they were enjoying it. Some 
 
Heroes and Martyrs 45 
 
 of those behind me were continually talking 
 of them, of their heroism, their misfortune, 
 the brutality of the German enemy, or 
 calling attention to the eagerness with which 
 all four leaned forward with their faces 
 against the glass to find out what was 
 coming next, when there was a break in 
 the procession ; but when, all of a sudden, 
 the four Belgians rose spontaneously, one 
 with his head in bandages, and, each 
 lifting a hand, stood at the salute whilst 
 the Lord Mayor's fairy-coach was passing, 
 nobody talked — nobody said a word ; and 
 I believe I understood why, for just then 
 I doubt if I could have said a word myself. 
 Somewhere about that same date, when 
 I was setting out for the city one morning 
 I found the gates at the level crossing closed 
 rather sooner than usual ; boys and girls 
 were perched on the top of them, and a 
 vast, motley crowd was surging alertly 
 round, waiting to see the train go by. 
 Another crowd overflowed the booking- 
 office of the station. Whilst I was wrig- 
 gling and pushing a way through, a crisp 
 bugle-call rang out, and when I contrived 
 
46 Heroes and Martyrs 
 
 to reach the platform I found that all the 
 excitement centred on a contingent of some 
 hundred Belgian soldiers who were en 
 route for London. 
 
 Presently the train came steaming in, and 
 to roar upon roar of cheering the Belgians 
 boarded it. I scrambled in where I could, 
 and so came to share a carriage with five of 
 them, one being, to my particular gratifica- 
 tion, the bugler. 
 
 They did not possess a complete uniform 
 between them — these five. One wore the 
 khaki cap of a British infantryman ; the 
 others had tweed caps of a civilian fashion ; 
 their trousers and mufflers were glaringly 
 unmilitary ; but they were all as cheerful 
 and high-spirited as if they were going on a 
 picnic instead of back into the firing line. 
 They were too much occupied at the 
 moment to pay any attention to me, and 
 I only found out where they were going 
 and something about them when we were 
 well advanced on our journey. It was 
 not till then, when we had become calm 
 enough to converse in such broken language 
 as we could manage, that they told me they 
 
Heroes and Martyrs 47 
 
 had all been wounded, and been in hospital 
 at Dollis Hill, but for the last fortnight had 
 been recuperating in my own neighbourhood 
 on the skirts of a small fishing town near 
 the mouth of the Thames. And you might 
 gather some notion of the number of friends 
 they had made in that fortnight from the 
 swarm of people that had come to-day to 
 see them off. There were girls and boys 
 and old men who had tramped in from 
 villages three miles away on purpose to 
 give them a last good-bye. 
 
 The bugler and another stood at the 
 window on my side of the carriage ; the 
 other three made the most of the window 
 opposite. When the train started the 
 cheering, which had never ceased since it 
 came in, swelled to a deafening volume. 
 First a porter, then girls and men from the 
 general throng darted forward for a shake 
 of the eager hands held out to them ; 
 the bugler, who was blowing gloriously all 
 the while, keeping one hand free for this 
 friendly use. We swept in triumph be- 
 tween the gates of the crossing, and some- 
 thing in the sunlit air, the heartfelt cheers, 
 
48 Heroes and Martyrs 
 
 the waving hands, hats and handkerchiefs 
 stirred your blood even more than the 
 ringing call of the bugle did. 
 
 The lane that runs for some distance 
 beside the line was packed with fishermen, 
 labourers who had dodged out from the 
 gas works there, women and girls and 
 children ; there were people leaning from 
 upper windows, or dashing out hurriedly 
 into little back yards, and everywhere was 
 the flutter of hands and the mingling treble 
 and roar of human voices. And the soldiers 
 cheered back as heartily, and the bugler blew 
 and blew and blew till the last of the crowd 
 was left out of sight behind. 
 
 Then the two soldiers at my window sat 
 down, looking at me and laughing apolo- 
 getically, as it were, for their excitement. 
 One drew in from the other window, a 
 grave, stolid man, who smoked thereafter 
 and scarcely uttered a word throughout the 
 journey ; but the remaining two, keen 
 vivacious boys of twenty, still stood gazing 
 out over the country. 
 
 The man who sat facing me was a homely, 
 rural-looking fellow of thirty or so ; the 
 
Heroes and Martyrs 49 
 
 bugler, who made his seat alongside me, 
 was younger. It was the homely man 
 who spoke first. He nodded to me again, 
 smiled and winked in that odd, apologetic 
 way, and said, as explaining their be- 
 haviour : 
 
 " Ah, ye-es, everybody so kind." 
 
 " You are going back to the Front ? " 
 I suggested, with a view to developing 
 conversation. 
 
 " The Front ! " cried the bugler, catching 
 at the familiar word. " Yah ! To Paree — 
 then the Front." 
 
 " The Front ! The Front ! " chuckled 
 the homely man, pleased to give me a 
 word that we both understood. Then he 
 raised an imaginary rifle to his shoulder, 
 tilted his head, closed one eye, as taking 
 aim at a mark, and added, still chuckling, 
 "Der Kaiser! Der Kaiser!" 
 
 Thereupon our talk became as miscel- 
 laneous as our linguistic difficulties would 
 allow. The bugler showed me an address 
 on an envelope to inform me of his name 
 and indicate the whereabouts of the hospital 
 where their wounds had been nursed ; then 
 
50 Heroes and Martyrs 
 
 he reached down a bundle from the rack, 
 took out a gigantic cigar-box and opened 
 it to show me his treasures — a bundle of 
 picture postcards, three cigars, several 
 packets of cigarettes, some chocolate, a 
 small knitted purse, which he picked out 
 and held towards me in his palm, with a 
 droll, roguish twinkle in his eyes. 
 
 After insisting on my testing one of the 
 cigarettes, he put these away ; then pro- 
 duced from his pocket an album of patriotic 
 songs, words and music ; probably another 
 present ; and turning the leaves, struck 
 up the Marseillaise, the homely man joining 
 lustily in the tune, and the stolid one 
 removing his pipe to help with the chorus. 
 They sang the Belgian National Anthem ; 
 then the Russian ; then " lah-lah'd " the 
 English, giving " Send him victorious," 
 and " God save the King " in my own 
 tongue with great gusto, glancing at me 
 to see that I recognised the words. 
 
 At intervals, one of the two boys, who 
 were not yet able to tear themselves away 
 from the window, would turn to shout 
 eagerly and beckon, and on the instant 
 
Heroes and Martyrs 51 
 
 the bugler would leap up, squeeze in between 
 them and blow a resounding blast, which 
 would move some men who were working 
 far off in the fields to straighten their 
 backs and look round, and when they saw 
 the heads that must have been protruding 
 from most of the carriages of the train, 
 they would snatch off their hats and you 
 could see they were cheering madly, though 
 you could not hear a sound of it. Some- 
 times, half a mile away, they would 
 start running in a frantic endeavour to 
 keep pace with the train, waving and 
 cheering, till we had hopelessly outstripped 
 them. 
 
 By and by, when all the district they 
 knew and that had known them was left 
 well in the rear, the two boys reluctantly 
 pulled their heads in. One dropped into 
 his seat resignedly and lit a cigarette. 
 The other, a bright-faced, good-looking 
 youngster, hesitated a minute ; then seeing 
 me in my corner, the only Englishman 
 present, he suddenly threw out his hands 
 towards me with a curious, impulsive, 
 appealing gesture, and cried : 
 
52 Heroes and Martyrs 
 
 " I go — ah, yes, I go — and I lose my 
 second Motherland ! " 
 
 And sat down abruptly, and covered 
 his face with his hands. 
 
 His comrades shot a shamefaced glance 
 at me and at each other, and then began 
 to laugh quietly. I can't describe what 
 a sort of kindness and good humour was 
 in that laughter of theirs. And first the 
 bugler, then the others took out handker- 
 chiefs, or substitutes for them — one was 
 obviously a blue checked duster ; one was a 
 miniature Union Jack — and made burlesque 
 pretences of weeping. They nudged the 
 boy and, calling to him in their own 
 language, persisted in pressing the loan 
 of their handkerchiefs upon him, till he 
 straightened up quickly and, with a swift 
 glance round, laughed back as gaily as 
 any of them ; but they were real tears that 
 were shining in his eyes. 
 
 Two stations beyond mine we have a large 
 hospital which is crowded with British, 
 French and Belgian soldiers who have been 
 broken in the war ; and on another morn- 
 ing when I got into the train to go to 
 
Heroes and Martyrs 53 
 
 London there was a Belgian in the now 
 familiar blue uniform, though then it was 
 still strange to most of us, seated in the 
 carriage. He carried his right arm in a 
 sling, and had a corner next the door. 
 Beside him sat a large, expansive English- 
 man in a tall hat and a frock coat ; a man 
 of a loud, rolling voice and a complacent, 
 rather pompous manner. He was talking 
 when I got in, and he continued talking, 
 with the rarest intervals of silence after 
 he had asked a question, but even then 
 he did not pause long enough to obtain 
 an answer. Sometimes he used a French 
 word or two, by way of intimating that 
 he could converse in that tongue if he 
 thought it desirable to do so, but for the 
 most part he compromised by orating in 
 the kind of broken English that foreigners 
 employ and so may be considered to find 
 more comprehensible ; and the soldier 
 listened and nodded and smiled with 
 unfailing politeness and amiability. 
 
 " The mistake — mee-stake — you Belgians 
 made was," said the expansive man in the 
 friendliest style, emphasising the important 
 
54 Heroes and Martyrs 
 
 words by shouting them louder, " in trying 
 to hold those forts at Liege. My dear sir, 
 forts are no good against modern artillery. 
 No, no. Non, non. No good. But it 
 was brave, mind you ! — it was noble — 
 no-bell. It was hero-ic. But," he closed 
 his eyes, shook his head slowly and flour- 
 ished his hands, " it was attempting the 
 impossible — ze impossi-bell ! Now, when 
 you knew the Germans were coming to 
 attack Liege, my advice to you would have 
 been this. ..." 
 
 Whilst he unfolded his advice confi- 
 dently and at great length, I noticed how 
 the squat, sturdy old man who sat next 
 to me was glaring across at the Belgian 
 with a peculiar expression of vindictiveness. 
 From his appearance, I should have guessed 
 him to be a labourer of some kind : his 
 hands were rough and knotty, his clothes 
 and his cloth cap the worse for wear, his 
 face was seamed with wrinkles, and he 
 had a stiff tuft of grey beard that thrust 
 forward aggressively from under his chin. 
 His look was so darkly malevolent that I 
 could not help watching him, puzzled ; 
 
Heroes and Martyrs 55 
 
 I fancy he was confused by the talk of the 
 expansive Englishman and, catching only 
 his louder, broken English, took him, also, 
 to be some kind of foreigner ; and presently 
 he seemed to feel that I was regarding him, 
 and our glances met. 
 
 " What's he doin' here ? " he demanded 
 huskily, leaning towards me and signalling 
 at the Belgian with a flick of his eyelid. 
 " No right to allow these wounded Germans 
 to run round loose like this." 
 
 I explained matters in an undertone, 
 and his face cleared, and softened curiously. 
 
 " I thought they was a pair of them 
 Germans what ought to be kept locked up 
 like the papers complains about," he 
 growled. " Belgian soldier, is he — that 
 one ? " 
 
 He fixed his eyes on the wounded man, 
 and there was a new, strange light in them. 
 
 " My son's out there," he went on growl- 
 ing to me presently. " We had a letter 
 from him only the other day. My missis 
 read it out to me — my eyes are no good — 
 and he said in the letter these Belgians, 
 he says, they're the right stuff. He says 
 
56 Heroes and Martyrs 
 
 his regiment would have been all cut up 
 by the Germans if some Belgians hadn't 
 come up in time to help them ; they were 
 good pals and stood by them, he says, and 
 if ever you meet any of 'em over here, 
 he says, don't you forgit it but do what 
 you can for 'em. Some of 'em died for us 
 chaps, he says, and don't you forgit 
 it." 
 
 He fell silent, and stared, as if he could 
 not take his eyes from that Belgian's face. 
 Once he made as if to lean forward and 
 speak to him, but he drew back as quickly, 
 perhaps from some feeling of shyness, 
 perhaps only because the soldier was too 
 completely absorbed by the overpowering 
 attentions of the tall-hatted gentleman 
 to have any chance of noticing him. 
 
 " You are going to Hampstead ? To 
 visit a wounded friend ? Yes, yes. Oui, 
 oui, m'sieu. Good ! " the tall-hatted 
 gentleman was saying. " Now, Hampstead 
 is a long way. Have you ever been there 
 before ? . . . No, you haven't. Well, well, 
 well. Then, of course, you don't know 
 how to get there. Let me see if I can 
 
Heroes and Martyrs 57 
 
 explain to you which is the best and 
 quickest route." 
 
 He proceeded to elaborate and minute 
 explanations, and concluded them with, 
 " When you get to the Hampstead station 
 you will have a longish walk — von long 
 valk, you understand — to the address you 
 want. But it's a pretty straight road. 
 You will have no difficulty ; " and he 
 proceeded to impress upon him the names 
 of the thoroughfares he must traverse, 
 and the right and left turnings he must 
 take. 
 
 " How can he understand all that jaw 
 about the roads he's got to take ? He 
 couldn't remember it if he did," the old 
 man breathed scornfully in my ear. " And 
 he don't look equal to no long walks. Why, 
 I reckon he's only just up out o' bed." 
 
 He sat brooding darkly, still with his 
 eyes feasting on the Belgian. By-and-by, 
 he furtively fumbled in his pocket, brought 
 out his money and appeared to be covertly 
 counting it. I grew hot and uncomfortable, 
 fearing he was thinking of offering a trifle 
 to the soldier, who looked better off than 
 
58 Heroes and Martyrs 
 
 himself, and was relieved when he put it 
 back without doing so. 
 
 Before we reached the terminus the tall- 
 hatted gentleman had repeated his direc- 
 tions several times, and when we got out 
 he grasped the Belgian by the arm in a 
 masterful manner and led him off ahead of 
 us. I overtook them downstairs in the 
 doorway, where he was telling his protege 
 which way he must go in order to reach 
 the station whence he could book to 
 Hampstead. 
 
 " Now, if you are not quite sure you can 
 find it," he concluded, " say so, and I'll 
 come along with you and show you where 
 it is." 
 
 " No, no," cried the Belgian anxiously. 
 " Tank you, tank you, but I find him 
 easy, quite well. Yes. Tank you. Tank 
 you." 
 
 " Very well, very well. You can't miss 
 it. I am delighted to have met you. 
 Good-bye." And to my surprise he not 
 only shook hands again but he raised his 
 hat and added a boisterous, " God bless 
 you ! " 
 
Heroes and Martyrs 59 
 
 He strode away to the left, and the 
 Belgian went to the right, as directed, and 
 the next moment I perceived that my small 
 man with the tuft of grey beard was 
 following him. He overtook him before 
 they reached the corner, touched him 
 diffidently on the arm and raised a forefinger 
 to his cap respectfully. 
 
 They spoke together in some compli- 
 cated fashion ; I was not near enough to 
 hear what was said, but the Belgian laughed, 
 a pleased, breezy laugh, and shook his 
 head emphatically. But the other was 
 obstinate ; he laid a detaining, a pleading 
 hand on the soldier's shoulder, and whilst 
 I was wondering whether he was thus 
 pressingly inviting him to adjourn to the 
 tavern that was conveniently adjacent and 
 accept refreshments, he glanced round and 
 signalled to a taxi which stood by the kerb. 
 He called to the driver some instructions 
 concerning a hospital at Hampstead, then 
 drew the still laughing and protesting 
 Belgian forward, resolutely helped him 
 into the cab, climbed in after him, and 
 slammed the door. 
 
60 Heroes and Martyrs 
 
 I forgot all about our national character- 
 istic as I stood and saw the taxi drive 
 away with them. I had a rash, silly 
 impulse to take off my hat and shout, and 
 though I was too self-conscious to do 
 anything of the sort, I did, as a matter 
 of truth, take it off in my heart to them 
 both. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 " The Colossal British Calm " 
 
 " The gods love courage armed with confidence." 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's Bonduca. 
 
 There is something very boyish, something 
 almost childish in the German idea of 
 " fright fulness." It harmonises with the 
 ferociously upturned moustaches of the 
 Kaiser, with the swagger of the ridiculous 
 goose-step, with the wearing of impressively 
 spiked helmets that look like iron or steel 
 but are for the most part papier mache, 
 and indicates an attitude of mind that is 
 common to boys and undeveloped races 
 who seriously fancy they can scare an 
 adult opponent with horrible noises, ghastly 
 painted faces and other shocking sights. 
 There was a time when our ancestors 
 decorated themselves with woad, wore grim 
 head-dresses and did their best to frighten 
 the enemy with shows of terror, but that 
 
 61 
 
62 The Colossal British Calm 
 
 was long ago. We are now a mature 
 people, and it would be strange if this 
 sort of thing moved us to anything but 
 amusement and contempt. But though 
 their efforts in this direction on Belgian 
 territory have done no more than frighten 
 women and children and inspire Belgian 
 manhood with a deep resentment and more 
 determined courage, the Germans still 
 cling with a pathetic tenacity to a belief 
 in these crude methods of boyhood and 
 barbarism. They have told us that when 
 they land in England they will so devastate 
 our country that ruined Belgium shall 
 seem a garden by comparison ; they have 
 sternly warned us that if our civilians 
 dare to take up arms in defence of their 
 homes they will slaughter them ruthlessly ; 
 they have stated that they intend to strike 
 our whole nation with panic by bombarding 
 our coast towns and sending enormous fleets 
 of Zeppelins over our inland cities tc* 
 murder us helpless citizens with bombs — 
 even though we are not to be allowed 
 to fire on their sacred soldiery. And the 
 other day a prominent German official 
 
The Colossal British Calm 63 
 
 declared that they were just about to begin 
 this essay in " fright fulness," and would 
 do such things as would shake " that 
 colossal calm on which the British so 
 pride themselves." 
 
 Nevertheless, I go about at large among 
 my fellow countrymen and discover no 
 signs of perturbation. Nor did I expect to. 
 We may be a more emotional people than 
 is generally supposed — I think we are ; but 
 fear is not to any extent one of our emo- 
 tions. I confess I have been surprised to 
 see stolid business men weep over the 
 sufferings of the Belgians ; I have seen the 
 tears come into their eyes when they heard 
 of the heroism of some of our men at the 
 front ; but though I have spoken on 
 the subject with hundreds of them I have 
 never yet found a man or a woman among 
 us who has been affected by those German 
 menaces to anything but laughter or a quiet 
 readiness to abide the event. It is not 
 that we consider them incapable of carrying 
 out their worst threats, but, as I say, our 
 race has left its boyhood behind it, and in 
 the main, we face the great issues of life 
 
64 The Colossal British Calm 
 
 and death with the sanity and philosophy 
 that are natural to mature years. It is 
 because we have arrived at this stage 
 of maturity that we read in their own 
 papers with surprise of the implacable, 
 limitless rage of hatred that burns in the 
 universal heart of Germany against our 
 country. We have no such hatred of the 
 Germans ; I cannot conceive that we 
 are capable of it. We dislike them, no 
 doubt, but not beyond the limits of decent 
 human feeling. In proof of which I could 
 adduce many personal experiences, of 
 which the following anecdote is sufficiently 
 typical. 
 
 In the first few weeks of the war, certain 
 of our newspapers started a rather frenzied 
 campaign against German spies in England, 
 and especially in London. They conveyed 
 a false impression to foreigners that our 
 nerves just then were in a quite jumpy 
 condition, but the scare went very little 
 beyond the columns of those newspapers. 
 The man in the street was interested, but 
 he did not take the German barber or the 
 German waiter too seriously as a dangerous 
 
The Colossal British Calm 65 
 
 secret agent ; he assumed that the usual 
 authorities were probably as well informed 
 as any excitable journalist and that if 
 the alien enemy in our midst needed looking 
 after they would look after him. At that 
 period, I went one morning into the shop 
 of a City barber whom I occasionally 
 patronise. Usually four Germans were at 
 work there. That morning there was only 
 one assistant, and he was an Englishman. 
 
 " A good job too," he remarked viciously, 
 as he lathered me. " Been too many o' 
 them Germans over here taking the bread 
 out of us Englishmen's mouths. Now some 
 of us will get a chance. They're glad now 
 to be able to get hold of some of us. But 
 we haven't cleared them all out yet — 
 not by a jug-full ! I know where plenty 
 of them are still at work. Out 'em all, that's 
 what I say. I'd like to raise a party of 
 our chaps and go round London and root 
 out every man jack of 'em. I know where 
 to find 'em. Why, there's two still workin' 
 just round the corner here. Deceut enough 
 fellows in their way — I used to work in 
 the same shop with them once — but let 
 
66 The Colossal British Calm 
 
 'em stick to their own country ; that's 
 what I say. We don't want 'em here, 
 p'ticularly not now. Clear 'em out — every 
 one of 'em." 
 
 " Certainly," I agreed, " if they are spies, 
 or even if there is the smallest reason for 
 suspecting them. But I don't like being 
 too indiscriminate. I met a German yes- 
 terday whose business was shut up and 
 ruined, and he was in a state of absolute 
 despair. He was going back home because 
 he had to, but so far as I could judge he was 
 much more bitter against his own country 
 than against ours. His friends are here, 
 and he had grown prosperous here. After 
 all — what share did you have in making 
 this war ? " 
 
 " Me ? Why, none, of course. How 
 could I ? " 
 
 " Neither did I. And it seems possible 
 that many of these poor beggars of Germans 
 over here had no more to do with making it 
 than you or I did." 
 
 " Well," he confessed tolerantly, " that's 
 what one of 'em said to me. These two 
 round the corner- — I was passing their shop 
 
The Colossal British Calm 67 
 
 on my way here to-day and one of 'em 
 was standing at the door, and spotting me 
 he come out fussy-like to shake hands. All 
 right in his way, y'know, as I say— we was 
 always pretty good friends when I worked 
 along of him ; so what could you do ? I 
 shook hands, but I says to him, ' Look here, 
 what are you doing over here ? Why 
 haven't you gone back home ? ' ' Zis is my 
 home — here,' says he. ' I'm not going.' 
 1 Haven't you had your papers ? Haven't 
 they called you back to serve ? ' I arst him. 
 ' No matter,' he says, ' I'm not going. I 
 did not make zis blasted var,' he says — just 
 like that, in his broken English, y'know, 
 ' and vhy should I fight it ? I vill not. 
 I have lived here over twenty years ; my 
 vife is English, and I haf my children,' he 
 says, ' and one of dem is in ze hospital 
 and I vill not go.' ' Well, you can thank 
 your precious Kaiser for that,' says I ; 
 ' he's the curse of Europe, that's what he is.' 
 ' Tank him ! ' he says, stamping his foot 
 and all of a tremble. ' Dam der Kaiser, 
 dat's vat I say, bringing all zis misery on 
 his own people and everybody else — dam 
 
68 The Colossal British Calm 
 
 der Kaiser ! ' Well, what could yer do ? 
 I thought he was going to bust out crying, 
 so I just said dam the Kaiser too, and shook 
 hands with him again and left it — and there 
 you are. What could yer do ? " 
 
 So far as my experience has gone, our 
 average man's hatred of the German seldom 
 goes much deeper than that. He reserves 
 his hatred for the autocratic German govern- 
 ment and the barbarous German system 
 that drives its people in such subjection 
 as a self-governing nation would never 
 submit to. 
 
 In the bulk we are not a fussy race ; we 
 have no marked inclination for pushing 
 around to tell everybody else how his work 
 ought to be done. It was impossible for 
 those newspapers to make our flesh creep 
 with sensational tales of the German spies 
 who were swarming up and down the 
 country betraying us with impunity, simply 
 because we were satisfied that our elected 
 governors were as anxious and as competent 
 as ourselves to deal with that question ; 
 and it is as impossible for the Kaiser to 
 alarm us with his timid coast bombard- 
 
The Colossal British Calm 69 
 
 merits and his flamboyant threats of Zep- 
 pelin raids, simply because we are confident 
 in the capacity and proved courage of our 
 army and navy to give us all the protection 
 that is humanly practicable. This night, 
 as I am writing these lines, messengers have 
 been sent through the little town where I 
 live, near the mouth of the Thames, to 
 warn us that the streets will remain un- 
 lighted to-night and that our windows must 
 be completely darkened as a wireless warn- 
 ing has come that a fleet of Zeppelins and 
 aeroplanes left Germany this evening for 
 a raid on England. Well, we have duly 
 screened our windows and are contentedly 
 minding our business as usual, taking it for 
 granted that the local authorities are mind- 
 ing theirs and are in need of neither our 
 advice nor assistance. Which does not 
 indicate any slackness or indifference in us, 
 as I have shown and shall show further, 
 but that our native common-sense stands 
 us in good stead even under the shadow 
 of danger. 
 
 The only effect of the wanton bombard- 
 ment of unprotected Scarborough, apart 
 
70 The Colossal British Calm 
 
 from the brutal murder of women and 
 children and unarmed men, was to stiffen 
 the backs of some who had been hesitating 
 and quicken our recruiting movement. The 
 more recent and equally barbarous air- 
 raid on Yarmouth had the same healthful 
 effect. No sooner had the enemy air- 
 craft finished scattering death and destruc- 
 tion at random and run away, than the 
 men of the town marched in a great pro- 
 cession through the streets shouting the 
 war-cry of our troops at the front, " Are 
 we downhearted ? " and answering it with 
 a thunderous " No ! " So far from being 
 terror-stricken you will find, if you go among 
 them, that the folk of Scarborough and of 
 Yarmouth take a sort of perverse pride and 
 satisfaction in what has happened to them, 
 for the fact that they too are sharing in the 
 perils and horrors of the war seems in some 
 strange, fine way to draw them into closer 
 sympathy and fellowship with their lads 
 who are out in the firing line and make them 
 brothers in arms with them. 
 
 I understand the feeling, and in a lesser 
 degree have been warmed by it myself. 
 
The Colossal British Calm 71 
 
 For on Christmas Day a German aeroplane 
 flew over my own little town and flung down 
 bombs at a venture that fell harmlessly 
 on the outskirts of a small village farther up 
 the river. The loud buzzing of the machine 
 overhead and a sound of occasional shots 
 brought a good many people out into the 
 streets : they stood in groups here and 
 there to watch the enemy machine flying 
 rapidly seawards hotly pursued by two 
 British airmen and, as soon as they were 
 beyond sight, broke up, laughing and 
 chattering, and returned to their Christmas 
 dinners. It was an inevitable accompani- 
 ment of the war ; the sort of thing we had 
 all been expecting since the Yarmouth 
 affair. It aroused a keen interest in the 
 neighbourhood ; there was a little natural 
 excitement, the pleasant thrill of satis- 
 faction that we, like our fellows in France, 
 were in the danger zone, but never a thought 
 of fear in any man, woman or child of us 
 all. 
 
 " They're bound to come over and have 
 a try," was the general comment, " and 
 if they didn't get a little bit of useless 
 
72 The Colossal British Calm 
 
 success now and then, as they did at Scar- 
 borough, it would be a miracle, and we 
 never expected miracles." 
 
 Two days ago (on Sunday, January 24th) 
 we heard the boom of heavy gun-firing in 
 the distance. It was faint, far-away, and 
 we guessed that something was happen- 
 ing off the coast ; that perhaps the fort 
 at Shoeburyness was engaged, some five 
 or six miles beyond us at the mouth of the 
 Thames, or the fort at Sheerness on the 
 other side of the river. The firing was 
 continuous until nearly one o'clock, and 
 when we saw yesterday's papers we con- 
 cluded that it must have been the sound of 
 the fight in the North Sea that was raging 
 on Sunday morning and ended in disaster 
 and defeat for the marauding Germans, 
 who had sallied forth to attempt another 
 coast bombardment. But at the time 
 we could only guess at the meaning of the 
 sounds and wait for enlightenment. 
 
 About noon I went out for half an hour's 
 walk, and the streets were fairly alive with 
 the usual streams of worshippers going 
 home from church. They were gossiping 
 
The Colossal British Calm 73 
 
 as unconcernedly as on any ordinary Sun- 
 day, though the intermittent throb and 
 rumble in the air mingled rather ominously 
 with their cheerful talk. I caught enough 
 of their conversation in passing to know 
 that the war was rarely the subject of it, 
 and the only sign they gave that they were 
 aware of the distant thunder of battle was 
 that now and then somebody would turn 
 towards the sound and throw a casual glance 
 skyward, as if wondering whether there 
 were any hostile airships in the vicinity. 
 
 In a sedate byway I overtook two com- 
 fortable-looking, tall-hatted, middle-aged 
 men walking in the road, whilst their two 
 comfortable, middle-aged wives walked in 
 line with them on the pavement. 
 
 " It has been going on for a long time 
 now," one of the ladies remarked as I went 
 by. " I expect it's the Germans again. 
 Another air-raid, perhaps." 
 
 " Maybe," said one of the men ; with a 
 placid suggestion in his tone that it was 
 somebody else's business and was no doubt 
 being attended to. "I shouldn't be sur- 
 prised." 
 
74 The Colossal British Calm 
 
 " Either that/' added the other, as 
 blandly, "or a submarine attack down by 
 Shoebury — something of that sort." 
 
 " I took his word for it," said the first 
 man, evidently resuming an interrupted 
 narrative. " I never care about buying 
 second-hand things as a rule, but he being 
 a friend and anxious to sell it, and as he 
 assured me it was as good as new — and 
 then the very first time we used it . . ." 
 
 And the guns went on booming. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 ' ' Count how many they stand, 
 All of them sons of the land." 
 
 E. B. Browning. 
 
 " Day, like our souls, is fiercely dark ; 
 What then ? 'Tis day ! 
 We sleep no more ; the cock crows — hark ! 
 To arms ! Away ! " 
 
 Ebenezer Elliot. 
 
 Even in those early days when men were 
 flocking to the recruiting stations in such 
 vast numbers that the wonderful emergency 
 organisation of the War Department was 
 inadequate to cope with them, a few 
 of our public men and a few of our news- 
 papers began to cry out that the manhood 
 of the nation was not doing its duty and 
 that a measure of conscription should at 
 once be brought into operation. We, who 
 know our public men and our newspapers, 
 
 75 
 
76 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 listened to or read this too self-opinion- 
 ated minority, and did not worry. Lord 
 Kitchener had the best means of knowing 
 the truth, and he told us that he was fully 
 satisfied with the recruiting — it was going 
 on so rapidly that the army clothiers and 
 the armament factories could not keep 
 pace with it. Moreover, those of us who 
 took the trouble to go about with our 
 eyes open saw for ourselves, and were 
 profoundly moved to see, how eagerly and 
 in what a spirit of gallant self-sacrifice our 
 fellows from every walk of life, rich and 
 poor, gentle and simple, were giving them- 
 selves by thousands in answer to our 
 country's call. An infinitely finer, more 
 inspiring and more effective spectacle than 
 if we had been needlessly dragooning 
 willing men and unwilling, natural fighters 
 and natural non-fighters into a possibly 
 even larger, but certainly less potent army. 
 Nevertheless, our mechanical, stay-at-home 
 Jeremiahs, who will never admit that they 
 are mistaken, have continued at intervals 
 to repeat their lamentable and needless 
 appeal for conscription. It is of no con- 
 
The Soul of the Nation 77 
 
 sequence here, where we understand what 
 it means, but to speak plainly it is a false 
 and unpatriotic cry, and one that has 
 done us no little harm in neutral countries 
 that have naturally been misled by it. 
 
 In these latter weeks I have had a good 
 many letters from Americans ; some of 
 them men who play a prominent part in 
 American public life ; and replying to one 
 who was especially troubled on this point, 
 I gave him a number of significant facts 
 that are within my own knowledge, and 
 begged him not to believe a word he might 
 read in one or two of our papers that 
 reflected on the spirit in which our men 
 were meeting this great crisis. When he 
 answered me, he said he had been over- 
 persuaded by an American editor who 
 had wanted to publish that letter of mine. 
 *' I hope I have not broken the laws of 
 courtesy," he went on ; for, of course, 
 I had written to him privately (though I 
 willingly absolve him for what he has done) . 
 " If I have, you must lay it to the strong, 
 universal desire on the part of Americans 
 to learn as well as possible the fighting 
 
78 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 spirit of England, to which your letter 
 bears ample testimony. You must not 
 blame us if we have been suspicious that 
 Englishmen were not responding as they 
 should. We did not want to believe it. 
 We wanted to think of them rising as in the 
 days of old with a powerful and united 
 front against the enemy. But your own 
 papers have been the cause of our suspicions, 
 if we have had any, as the enclosed clipping 
 bears out. . . . How I wish I were in 
 England ! I made a visit there in August, 
 1913, and took a trip almost encircling the 
 island. But I should like to be with you 
 to do some form of service for the fighters 
 or the workers. We all recognise that you 
 are fighting our battle, for if Germany 
 should win it would mean war with her for 
 us within ten years. You have our sym- 
 pathy because we are of the same racial 
 stock, because you are fighting for our 
 ideal, and because that ideal must be 
 absolutely valid. There is considerable 
 interest in doing what little we can for you 
 over here. Wherever you go you see 
 ladies knitting. They take their work 
 
The Soul of the Nation 79 
 
 with them to concerts, even to church in 
 some cases. But stricken Belgium gets 
 the most sympathy. I am to assist as 
 chairman of the committee in holding a 
 mass meeting in the interests of the Bel- 
 gians. Madame Vandervelde, the wife of 
 the Belgian Minister of State, will make 
 the appeal. We hope our city will respond 
 generously. ... Be assured that you have 
 American sympathy in this terrible crisis, 
 and we read with pride anything that tells 
 of the courage and daring deeds of the 
 British soldiers and sailors." 
 
 This represents very fairly the general 
 tone and attitude of those other letters I 
 have referred to. And as one of the un- 
 fortunates who are not qualified for service 
 in the first line, I can only say that I resent 
 angrily, and with all my heart, the way 
 in which the boundless enthusiasm and 
 courageous spirit of the men around me 
 have been misrepresented by even a few 
 of our own people. 
 
 Of course, there are slackers and possibly 
 cowards among us ; no nation on earth is 
 composed exclusively of saints or of heroes ; 
 
80 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 but it is already a commonplace that no 
 nation in the history of the world, without 
 being invaded and so forced to fight for 
 mere life, has ever risen as ours has risen, 
 so spontaneously and in millions, to this 
 high occasion. The slackers and cowards 
 are inevitable, but a minority. There are 
 numbers, fit and of the right age, who are 
 held back from enlistment by chafing cir- 
 cumstances which nothing short of an actual 
 emergency would justify them in ignoring ; 
 but most of these are serving in some home 
 defence force. There are some — too many 
 — who have been discouraged and held back 
 by the stupidities and blunderings of the 
 War Department, which uses too much red- 
 tape and too little practical business human- 
 ity in carrying out its obligations to the 
 men who are fighting for us ; and if I touch 
 first on this aspect of affairs it is because it 
 is good that we should know under what 
 disadvantages and in face of what dis- 
 couragements thousands of our comrades 
 have gone away to do their share of the 
 duty that is upon us all. 
 
 Only the unwise, and such as have not 
 
The Soul of the Nation 81 
 
 made themselves acquainted with the mot- 
 ley life that lies outside their own social 
 circle, will indiscriminately denounce all 
 the able-bodied young single men who 
 have not promptly joined the colours. If 
 they are young men of means, or poor men 
 with no dependents, then there is no excuse 
 for them, unless it be that they are naturally 
 effeminate and chicken-hearted, and so 
 even if they were impressed would form 
 elements of weakness in any regiment that 
 was unlucky enough to contain them. 
 Which is one of the reasons why I have not 
 the smallest faith in compulsory service. 
 The right enthusiastic and fearless spirit is 
 burning from end to end of the kingdom ; 
 we are already getting all the men we 
 want and more than we are prepared to 
 handle, and long ago we should have had 
 even more if we had conducted our re- 
 cruiting arrangements with a more business- 
 like efficiency. 
 
 Consider some of those difficulties and 
 discouragements in spite of which our new 
 armies have grown to upwards of two 
 million strong in half a year. 
 
82 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 " I wish to heaven I could go ! " said one 
 young fellow to me last August ; he is a 
 clerk in a city office. " I hate to be sitting 
 here adding up figures and keeping accounts 
 — it seems all so footling and useless at a 
 time like this. But what can I do ? You 
 know how I'm fixed. It isn't as if my dad 
 were still alive. There's my mother and 
 my young sister to think of. We have 
 never had enough income to be able to save 
 anything, and if I went how on earth could 
 they manage on my bob a day and the small 
 allowance I could get from the Government 
 for them ? We live cheaply enough, but 
 it would barely pay the rent and taxes of 
 our little bit of a house. My only way 
 would be to sell up the home and put them 
 in one room somewhere. That's what ties 
 me by the leg. If only some patriotic 
 millionaire johnny would allow them thirty 
 shillings a week while I'm away I'd be off 
 to-morrow — I can't tell you how I want to 
 go ! But as it is — what would you do if 
 you were me?" 
 
 That question has been put to me by at 
 least a dozen of such men, and I confess 
 
The Soul of the Nation 83 
 
 I have not dared to advise them that they 
 should brush those considerations aside 
 and unhesitatingly sacrifice their dependents 
 as well as themselves, until the nation's 
 need of them is greater than it is. Yet I 
 know of plenty who have made that sac- 
 rifice, and have in some cases been urged 
 to it by those they had to abandon. 
 
 On the outskirts of London, before the 
 days of the war, lived a certain family in 
 a very small house in one of the most unpre- 
 tentious of streets. The man of the house, 
 a sober, steady fellow, was a reservist. 
 His wife, two sons of nineteen and twenty- 
 one, and a male cousin who lodged with 
 them made up his establishment. On the 
 outbreak of war the husband rejoined his 
 regiment . As soon as Kitchener asked for re- 
 cruits, the cousin and the elder son enlisted, 
 and, said that soldier's wife bravely and 
 as if it were a matter of course, " it was 
 quite right that they should." A few 
 weeks later the younger son came home 
 from work one evening and said, " Look 
 here, mother, I'm afraid I shall have to go. 
 The others have all gone and I can't stay 
 
84 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 here behind. I can't do it — it makes me 
 miserable — I feel I must go." 
 
 " Well," she says, in telling you of it, 
 " I felt it would be a bit of a job to manage 
 all alone, but it seemed right, you know, 
 and I couldn't say anything to stop him." 
 
 So he too went. 
 
 When her four men were at home they 
 paid her between them an average of fifty- 
 six shillings a week. Now — her husband 
 allotted part of his pay to her, and the 
 authorities made it up to the usual allow- 
 ance of twelve shillings and sixpence a week 
 for herself and half-a-crown for her six-year- 
 old child. But this fifteen shillings was not 
 paid promptly ; it was some weeks before 
 it began to be paid at all, and how she 
 contrived to live in the interval I do not 
 know — I imagine her neighbours helped her, 
 as such poor neighbours always will, and 
 that the local tradesmen allowed her a 
 little credit. 
 
 In her district, as in every district all 
 over the country, committees, largely of 
 women, have been formed to find out and 
 visit the wives and mothers of soldiers and 
 
The Soul of the Nation 85 
 
 give them help if they need it, drawing on 
 the Prince of Wales's Fund for the purpose. 
 They are doing a useful and necessary 
 work, and on the whole doing it admirably. 
 Most of these women visitors are sensible, 
 kindly, sympathetic souls who, when it is 
 wise to strain a point in any direction, 
 strain it towards the home-folk of our 
 righting men ; but now and then, here and 
 there, a woman of the wrong sort happens 
 to have joined these committees, and I 
 would urge them to weed her out of her 
 place with as little delay as possible, for 
 apart from the pain she causes, she is doing 
 incalculable harm. A visitor of this wrong 
 sort happened to be the one that was chosen 
 to look after the welfare of the soldier's 
 wife of whom I am speaking. She was a 
 lady of considerable means, who never 
 having suffered poverty herself, or taken 
 much interest in such as did, had no com- 
 prehension of the matters she was dealing 
 with. She secured a contribution of four- 
 and-sixpence a week towards the rent of 
 her protege, and there her service, though 
 not her visits, ended. Thus we find our 
 
86 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 soldier's wife receiving a total income of 
 nineteen-and-six weekly. Out of this she 
 paid every week in rent, eight-and-six ; 
 the little daughter being consumptive, she 
 had to buy for her, under a doctor's orders, 
 special nourishment of eggs and milk, and 
 divers medicines, including Parrish's Food 
 and Scott's Emulsion, which took another 
 six-and-fivepence ; leaving her with four- 
 and-six a week for fire and light and her 
 own food. Later her position was im- 
 proved when by outside intervention the 
 committee was moved to grant her medical 
 relief, and she was able to procure the child's 
 medicines gratis. 
 
 This was a detail her visitor would have 
 put right more promptly had she realised 
 her duties. But she was so far from 
 doing this that during one of her visits, 
 having pestered and hurt her subject 
 with a too-inquisitorial catechism, she 
 said : 
 
 "I'm not surprised that you have not 
 let your rooms — you cannot expect to in 
 these times. You ought to sell some of 
 your furniture, then you and your child 
 
The Soul of the Nation 8 ? 
 
 could live very comfortably in one room 
 somewhere." 
 
 " No, ma'am, I can't do that," said the 
 soldier's wife resolutely. " I shall keep 
 things together if I can — I daresay I can 
 get some work to do — I must have a home 
 here for my man and the boys when they 
 come back." 
 
 In September she had heard from her 
 younger son that he had asked the War 
 Department to pay her from October ist 
 last three-and-sixpence a week, which was 
 half of his pay. But the money did not 
 arrive. Writing after a week or two she 
 mentioned this to the boy, and he replied 
 that he had made the arrangement and the 
 amount had been deducted each week 
 from his wage. She waited patiently, as- 
 suming that it would come in due course. 
 Then, on the advice of a friend, she wrote 
 to the authorities about it. Down to the 
 beginning of January not a penny of this 
 money, that had all along been scrupulously 
 deducted from her son's pay, had been 
 forwarded to her. It was only when a 
 troublesome outsider wrote indignantly to 
 
88 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 the defaulting War Department and threat- 
 ened that if it were not disgorged a full 
 statement of the facts should be sent 
 round to the press that all the arrears were 
 promptly sent on and the payment began 
 to be made regularly. Even now — and 
 this is the experience of many soldiers' 
 wives — the allowance on account of her 
 husband is occasionally allowed to fall 
 a week and two weeks in arrear, which is 
 a real and a great hardship, when you 
 remember how she is dependent on it. 
 
 But you are not to think that she com- 
 plains of all this. She never mentions it, 
 except by way of asking counsel of her in- 
 timates ; and if she ventures, being sorely 
 pressed, to send a note of reminder to the 
 authorities, she does it in fear and trembling, 
 lest she should get her husband or her sons 
 into trouble. But naturally her friends 
 talk of it, and such talk does not encourage 
 other men similarly placed to throw up 
 their situations and enlist, leaving their 
 wives subject to such privations. You or I 
 might blame the clerks of the War Depart- 
 ment and protest that any private firm 
 
The Soul of the Nation 89 
 
 would have a short way of dealing with such 
 muddlers ; but she is more tolerant and 
 makes excuses for them. They must have 
 a terrible lot to do, she thinks, and things 
 are bound to go wrong now and then, so 
 she says nothing and patiently makes the 
 best of it. 
 
 I like to remember a pleasant old lady 
 who is living alone in one of our sleepy 
 English villages. Her only son is away 
 in the firing line. She has a portrait of 
 him, taken in his khaki, standing on her 
 mantelpiece, and if you take notice of it 
 when you call at her cottage it does you 
 good to see and hear the quiet pride she 
 takes in him. 
 
 " He was in good work at the farm here, 
 but he was one of the first to go from these 
 parts," she says. " He came home and 
 said, ' Mother,' he says, ' Lord Kitchener 
 says he must have more men and it's up 
 to me to do my bit. I can't stick here 
 while other chaps go and fight for me, can 
 I ? I'll have to go. I must have a smack 
 at them Germans. I'll arrange about you,' 
 he said ; ' you'll be all right, but I feel I 
 
90 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 must go.' I didn't like him going, but 
 somebody had to go," she says, straightening 
 her back and glancing again at the portrait, 
 " and somehow I shouldn't have liked him 
 not to go, either. He's such a good boy, 
 too. There isn't a better lad in the 
 world." Wonderful how many of these 
 mothers use just the same words when they 
 are speaking of their sons. " He was 
 always fond of his mother. He writes to 
 me regular, and he keeps saying : ' Don't 
 you bother over me. I'm well and hearty. 
 Take care of yourself and write and tell 
 me how you are, and don't worry.' They 
 send me part of his money and an allow- 
 ance, and I'm glad because if I couldn't 
 write and say I was quite comfortable he'd 
 be anxious about me. But I can't help 
 worrying a little this bitter cold weather 
 for wondering whether he's got warm 
 things on in those dreadful trenches, and 
 sometimes I lie awake in bed for fear he 
 might be wounded and lying out there 
 on the ground with nobody to take care of 
 him, and I can't sleep for thinking of 
 it." 
 
The Soul of the Nation 91 
 
 She says it simply and almost without a 
 touch of emotion, and perhaps you have 
 a passing vision of how in every town and 
 village of the country, nowadays, some of 
 these mothers and wives lie awake at night 
 thinking like that. And this not only in 
 such homes where they are living as under 
 siege, keeping the wolves from the door, 
 but in countless homes where petty financial 
 cares are not added to the great anxiety. 
 
 These financial obstacles to recruiting 
 could be largely mitigated ; the nation 
 is rich enough to make adequate provision 
 for the responsibilities of its soldiers, and, 
 Which is even more important, is competent 
 to see to it that whatever provision be 
 granted is promptly and punctually paid. 
 There have been other serious obstacles — 
 there were bound to be, since we were taken 
 unprepared, and our recruiting arrange- 
 ments are only now sufficiently enlarged 
 and perfected — but their deterrent effect 
 has to be taken into account. There was 
 a period, indeed, when the authorities 
 deliberately damped down the enthusiasm 
 of recruits because they were coming 
 
92 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 forward in such unmanageable crowds; 
 and it is not easy to rekindle a gener- 
 ous enthusiasm that has been systema- 
 tically half-smothered. Before we say a 
 word about "slackers," real or imaginary, 
 it is chastening to recall these things. The 
 one other grave obstacle to recruiting that 
 still remains is the Official Press Bureau's 
 insistence on starving us of news as to 
 what is happening. We do not ask to be 
 told anything that should be kept from the 
 enemy. We can understand the need for 
 keeping us mystified as to when and where 
 our troops embark and where they are to 
 be stationed in the long line of battle ; 
 but we cannot understand why we are to be 
 told next to no details of any action that is 
 fought, even after the action is over. It is 
 very well to tell us that more men are 
 needed, but we want to see the need for 
 ourselves. You have to recollect that 
 thousands of men who hear and feel the call 
 to serve cannot answer it without making 
 great sacrifices — without flinging away a 
 career and prospects which, if they come 
 back, they may have no chance to resume. 
 
The Soul of the Nation 93 
 
 This is not a thing for practical men to do 
 lightly and with their eyes shut, and the 
 marvel is in the circumstances, not that 
 some have hesitated to do it, but that such 
 multitudes have done it without any hesita- 
 tion at all. The heart of the nation is 
 sound and fearless and willing. Show them 
 the truth ; let them see with their own 
 eyes what is happening ; and I will answer 
 for it that once the necessity is apparent 
 there is scarcely a two-legged man in the 
 country who will not make haste to offer 
 his services. Our people are no longer 
 an ignorant mob ; they can read, and think, 
 and judge for themselves, and they prefer 
 to do so. You cannot have been abroad 
 amongst them and learned to know them 
 without knowing they are not afraid of the 
 dark, but they are keen to go into it as free 
 men should — with their eyes open. 
 
 Howbeit, in defiance of all these and of 
 other obstacles, when we called for men 
 they came, as Lord Kitchener testifies, and 
 they are still coming. Down to July last 
 it was a rare thing for us to meet a soldier 
 or two about any but our garrison towns. 
 
94 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 Now they are a familiar sight everywhere. 
 Almost every week takes a new draft of 
 them away to the front ; you see trains 
 crammed with them and piled high with 
 their baggage ; you know they are gone, 
 and yet there is no appreciable difference 
 in the vast numbers that are still getting 
 ready to go. Walk up the main thorough- 
 fares of London at any hour of the day, and 
 every third or fourth man you meet is in 
 khaki. Go out into the suburbs ; travel 
 through country towns and villages and 
 they are there too in plenty. Heath and 
 moor and common have been turned into 
 training grounds ; and everywhere you 
 find the men keen to learn their new business, 
 drilling and shooting and digging trenches 
 with all their hearts and minds, living in 
 towns of brand new huts, or billeted in the 
 older, more permanent thorpes and towns 
 that are nearest to them. 
 
 If any man doubts or is foolishly pessi- 
 mistic about the patriotism or the fighting 
 spirit of the nation, let him cure himself 
 in a day by taking a motor-drive round 
 London and across it, and reflect that what 
 
The Soul of the Nation 95 
 
 is going on there is going on in and around 
 Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birming- 
 ham, Liverpool, and all our other cities. 
 From Clapham and Wimbledon Common 
 down south, round by the open spaces east 
 or west, and out to Hampstead Heath 
 and Stanmore Heath farther north — all 
 London is ringed with marching and drilling 
 regiments, in more or less advanced stages of 
 preparation. Drive across the town, and in 
 one street you overtake a company of 
 mounted troops, and a little farther on, 
 and a little farther on again, you meet a 
 battalion of khakied men out on a route 
 march — marching without any band, but 
 smart, alert, cheerful, whether they sing 
 or whistle a tune to keep step to or go by 
 in silence ; spick and span if they have 
 just started out, or dusty or splashed with 
 mud from a long journey. Mr. Will Irwin, 
 the American novelist, has seen these gallant 
 fellows footing it through London, and 
 though he has probably looked on them 
 with more impartial eyes than mine, he 
 says in a recent article in the Daily Mail, 
 " they marched with their heads thrown 
 
96 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 back ; for all their English calm, there was 
 a light of exaltation in their eyes. They 
 looked like people going to take a sacra- 
 ment. A far, far nobler thing than any 
 conscript has ever done " — because each 
 of these men has accepted his duty volun- 
 tarily. " He goes not for romance — there 
 is no romance in the madness of Europe — 
 nor yet for any religion of valour. He goes 
 for that noblest motive in war, pure 
 patriotism." 
 
 Still a little farther on, and you notice 
 some half a dozen companies of energetic 
 young civilians at company drill, or prac- 
 tising the charge, or the advance in open 
 order under the wintry trees of Temple 
 Gardens. And presently, as you pass the 
 Foundling Hospital, the crisp cry of the 
 drill instructor rings in the air, and there 
 are two large bodies of ununiformed troops 
 going through military evolutions in the 
 Hospital grounds. Round the corner, and 
 here are more of them, in their shirt-sleeves 
 despite the frost on the ground, lustily 
 practising Swedish drill in the private 
 centre-garden of a Bloomsbury square — 
 
The Soul of the Nation 97 
 
 four long lines of them, two at each end 
 of the garden. It is the same throughout 
 your ride — in Hyde Park, in Regent's Park, 
 wherever there is a large or small available 
 plot of ground, there are men, uniformed 
 or ununiformed, at drill on it. 
 
 There are other preparations going on 
 less publicly. I called at a city office one 
 evening to see a friend, but was told he had 
 gone for the day. 
 
 " He has gone early," I remarked. 
 
 " No," said the clerk, casually. " He 
 goes at five every Monday, Wednesday 
 and Friday — to drill, you know." 
 
 I did not know, for he had not mentioned 
 it. He is well past the military age, but it 
 seems he had joined one of the numerous 
 home defence forces, and three evenings a 
 week he devotes two hours to fitting himself 
 for active service . Thousands of the middle- 
 aged or elderly clerks, or dignified perhaps 
 rather pompous employers, that you see 
 busy in their shops and offices all day, are 
 doing likewise. One such employer told 
 me that thirty men had gone from his 
 works to the front (as many as six hundred 
 
98 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 have gone from another and much larger 
 establishment) ; he told me too, though not 
 till I asked him, that both his sons had 
 gone ; but he left me to find out for myself 
 that he was enrolled in the Citizen Army 
 that has been formed in his own neighbour- 
 hood, thirty miles out of London. All day 
 he issues orders to his manager, his staff 
 of clerks and boys ; but on three evenings 
 of every week he submits himself willingly 
 to the orders of a drill-sergeant in the 
 electric-lighted school-room of his parish. 
 These eyes have seen him standing stiffly 
 in a line of fifty others, local tradesmen and 
 shop-assistants, and have seen him turn 
 at the word of command and march, or 
 form fours, and go through the rest of his 
 exercise as submissively and as promptly 
 as any Tommy in the ranks. That sort 
 of thing is in progress in drill halls and 
 school-rooms in hundreds of towns. Every 
 now and then I keep coming across these 
 men — steady, unromantic business men, well 
 up in years, whom I had never suspected 
 of harbouring so fine a spirit. They will 
 do a hard day's work in the city, make a 
 
The Soul of the Nation 99 
 
 railway journey of anything up to forty 
 miles home, have an early dinner and then 
 turn out again, not merely uncomplaining, 
 but as keenly as they went to cricket or 
 football when they were boys, and for two 
 strenuous hours surrender themselves to the 
 drill-instructor to learn how to fight at 
 home for their country, if the occasion 
 comes, as their sons and nephews and 
 friends are fighting abroad. 
 
 And here you are not at the end of it, 
 for there are others of them in plenty who, 
 having finished a usual day in the office 
 or the shop, are parading the frosty streets 
 by night as special constables ; and still 
 you are not at the end of it when that has 
 been said. In my own district, as in far 
 more than I am aware of, rifle clubs have 
 been started, and to these go men who are 
 so circumstanced that they cannot contrive 
 to devote three evenings a week to the 
 work of one of the citizen armies. Go into 
 any one of such clubs between seven and 
 ten at night, and you shall see four or six 
 civilians shooting, with careful aim, at the 
 small targets, and a group of a dozen or so 
 
100 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 waiting their turns, with fresh arrivals 
 dropping in at intervals. 
 
 I once had some talk with a man in a 
 rifle range of that sort in one of our East 
 Coast towns. He was leaning against the 
 wall, holding a gun and waiting till a target 
 was free for him — a tall, scraggy, bald 
 man, with a mild, serious face and a fringe 
 of grey whiskers under his chin. 
 
 "I'm getting on pretty well," he replied 
 with a diffident grin. " I never had a 
 gun in my hand till a month ago, and I 
 made two bulls out of ten shots last time. 
 Not so bad ; and, anyhow, no German is so 
 small as the target, so I'm all right." 
 
 " Are you joining the Citizen Army ? " 
 
 " Wish I could, but I can't do the three 
 evenings a week. My assistant has gone 
 to the war, y'see, and I'm making a little 
 allowance to his missis till he comes back, 
 and rubbing along as best I can on my own, 
 and there's nobody to leave with the shop. 
 But I come here every early-closing night — 
 that's the best I can do, and I wanted to do 
 what I could. I've bought my own gun, 
 and I know how to use it a bit, so if there's 
 
The Soul of the Nation 101 
 
 going to be any run-away invasion like they 
 talk of, I begin to feel ready for them." 
 
 " You know what happened in Belgium 
 when civilians fired on the Germans ? " I 
 put in warningly. 
 
 " It would have happened anyhow," he 
 said with quiet conviction. " They were 
 out to murder and pillage, and they did 
 that first and then found an excuse after. 
 And it would be the same \i ever they 
 landed here. Besides, what's the use of 
 talking about laws of war? If civilians 
 mustn't shoot them, then their soldiers 
 mustn't come here in their aeroplanes and 
 throw bombs down on civilians. We can't 
 reach 'em in the air, but let them come on 
 their feet and me and a lot of us here have 
 made up our minds that before they start 
 the burning and murdering we'll have a 
 shot at them, and they'll have to settle us 
 first." 
 
 If you had seen the look that came over 
 his face and the light that kindled in his 
 eyes, as he spoke, you would have been 
 sure as I was that he would be as good as 
 his word. If ever the Germans do succeed 
 
102 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 in making a landing thereabouts, you may 
 take it that if he and his friends can have 
 no place in the recognised military forces, 
 they will set up a firing line of their own, 
 and render a respectable account of them- 
 selves. 
 
 But there is more of the story yet ; it is 
 growing and developing every hour. If I 
 were attempting the task of telling it in 
 full I should have to get in more than a 
 passing reference to the doctors, many of 
 whom have discarded valuable practices to 
 join the Army Medical Corps ; to the women 
 from every walk of life who are serving 
 on the field under the Red Cross, and nursing 
 in military hospitals at home, who are knit- 
 ting and sewing garments for the soldiers, or 
 working hard on the innumerable com- 
 mittees that are concerned for the welfare 
 not only of the soldiers' and sailors' families, 
 but of civilians who have lost work or been 
 reduced to embarrassed circumstances by 
 reason of the war. 
 
 All class distinctions and rivalries among 
 us seem to have been wiped out ; we are 
 stripped of them, and welded into a nation 
 
The Soul of the Nation 103 
 
 of men in earnest, with one purpose to fulfil, 
 a common enemy to grapple with, and no 
 thought of resting from our labours till they 
 are ended in victory. From the highest to 
 the lowest we are at one ; two hundred 
 peers are roughing it in our old and new 
 armies, and men have gone unforced from 
 every factory and workshop to fight beside 
 them or under their leadership. The very 
 invalids and cripples have found means to 
 do their share and, through newspapers or 
 otherwise, have got into touch with some 
 lonely soldier here and there in the trenches 
 who has nobody to write to him, and are 
 sending him books and tobacco and keeping 
 up a friendly interchange of letters. It is 
 not easy, indeed, to discover anyone who 
 is not doing something, in however humble 
 unobtrusive a fashion, for the great cause. 
 Thinking on all these things, and the like 
 of them, " methinks I see in my mind," 
 as Milton's stately phrase has it, "a noble 
 and puissant nation rousing herself, like a 
 strong man after sleep, and shaking her 
 invincible locks." Everywhere I turn I am 
 heartened by the new spirit of fellowship 
 
104 The Soul of the Nation 
 
 that has drawn us all together and encircles 
 us like an impregnable wall, by the sense 
 of irresistible courage and determination, 
 of mighty effort united to a righteous end, 
 that one feels in the very air like the first 
 invigorating breath of a new dawn, which 
 shall soon be a new day. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 In the Trenches 
 
 " Thou didst wage 
 War not with Frenchmen merely ; — no, 
 Thy strife was with the Spirit of the Age." 
 
 James Russell Lowell. 
 
 " Who counsels peace, when Vengeance like a flood 
 Rolls on, no longer now to be repressed ; 
 
 When innocent blood 
 From the four corners of the world cries out 
 For justice upon one accursed head ? " 
 
 Southey. 
 
 To understand that calmness and con- 
 fidence of our home-folk, the sight of which 
 seems to pique the enemy to new and more 
 sensational efforts of -' f rightfulness," one 
 must know something of what our soldiers 
 and sailors are doing in the war zone, and 
 the spirit in which they are doing it ; for, 
 of course, our confidence is not nearly so 
 much in ourselves as in them. It was too 
 deeply rooted in them to be shaken in 
 
 105 
 
106 In the Trenches 
 
 the least at any time ; from the first hour 
 of the war we have never doubted or lost 
 heart, because they haven't. 
 
 I went about London during the long, 
 heroic retreat from Mons, and there was 
 no gloom on the faces in the streets in 
 those days, no slackening of the air of 
 steady determination and confidence in 
 the result which still characterises our 
 people. We did not understand it, but 
 we knew there were men on the spot who 
 did, and that was enough for us. In a 
 practical, businesslike way we set to work 
 to raise new armies ; we put iron netting 
 round certain of our public buildings as 
 a precaution against air-bombs, and, by 
 and by, as a precaution against the same 
 menace, we began to keep the streets of 
 our cities less than half lighted of nights 
 and to give our coast towns over to com- 
 plete darkness. But the shadow over them 
 was not of fear, or even of anxiety ; it 
 might be a little inconvenient, but one 
 soon got used to it and forgot its signifi- 
 cance. I have groped my way through 
 some of those coast towns on nights that 
 
In the Trenches 107 
 
 were so black that passers-by could see 
 no sign of each other ; they walked in- 
 visible, and you only knew they were there 
 by the sound of footsteps, of voices in 
 careless talk, of the sudden laughter of 
 two who had come into collision. And our 
 cheerfulness in these circumstances, under 
 air-raids and coast bombardments and 
 blustering threats of more, is nothing but 
 a reflection of the cheerfulness of our 
 fighting men afloat and ashore. 
 
 When news came at last that the long 
 retirement from Mons was ended, that the 
 Allies had taken the offensive and the 
 Germans were falling back before them, 
 there was no particular excitement among 
 us ; it was the news we had been expecting, 
 sure it would come in good time. But the 
 troops themselves had carried out that bril- 
 liant movement grudgingly ; they did not 
 dream it was anything but a strategic move, 
 but if you talk to any man who shared in it 
 he will tell you how the men " groused " at 
 having to keep on going back, and fumed 
 and raged against it, asking when they 
 were to be allowed to hold their ground 
 
108 In the Trenches 
 
 and " stick it out." They entrenched, 
 and fought, and retreated ; entrenched 
 and fought and retreated, again and again, 
 day and night without rest, till they were 
 so wearied that some of them slept as they 
 marched, and some of their officers went 
 afoot because they could not keep awake 
 on their horses and fell off. Dirty, ragged, 
 worn, they were always ready to entrench 
 again and make another stand ; always un- 
 defeated, unbroken, facing the greatest odds 
 and the worst hardships light-heartedly, 
 with invincible courage, and only grumb- 
 ling when the command came to continue 
 the retirement. And when the retreat 
 ended and it was time to turn, " you couldn't 
 believe the change in everyone," says a 
 lieutenant in the R.F.A. "We hadn't 
 a minute's rest, any more than when we 
 were retiring, but now it was northwards, 
 driving the Germans before us, and every 
 one was whistling and singing." " The 
 long retreat had depressed no one," writes 
 Lieutenant-Colonel Lowther, of the Scots 
 Guards, " and we turned north with much 
 zest. ... All the time the men were very 
 
In the Trenches 109 
 
 cheerful, though dog-tired." Once, he says, 
 when it was raining all night and impossible 
 to get billets for three companies, the men 
 stood up all night round their camp-fires 
 " trying to keep dry ; but the rain did not 
 damp their spirits in the least." One of 
 the men finishes a description of the hard- 
 ships of the retreat by saying, " still, I 
 would not have missed it for a great deal " ; 
 and " we had a very warm time," remarks 
 another, " but now we are getting our own 
 back." But you get the spirit of them all 
 epitomised in two lines of a letter from 
 Corporal Cunningham, of the Irish Guards : 
 " A lot of us got knocked out," says he, 
 " but no one of the name of Cunningham 
 is properly knocked out until dead." And 
 you have it again in Sergeant M. H. 
 Crockett's phrase — after telling how all his 
 men were " altered " by the end of the 
 retirement and had " long beards and 
 haggard, worn faces," he adds " but we 
 still stick at it through thick and thin until 
 we are killed or wounded " ; and fre- 
 quently after they were wounded, for there 
 are many stories such as that Q f the 
 
110 In the Trenches 
 
 Highland Light Infantry Captain near Le 
 Cateau, who was hit in the arm by some 
 pieces of shrapnel, and the men near him 
 ejaculated, " That's done it," but he 
 laughed and said, " Stick to it, boys, I'm 
 not going away. It's nothing " ; took his 
 field-dressing from his pocket, bandaged 
 the arm himself, and held his place. 
 
 One thing that strikes you continually 
 in reading these letters from the front is the 
 fine sense of comradeship and brotherhood 
 that has grown up between officers and 
 men. Here are a few out of hundreds 
 of similar testimonies chosen at random 
 from the letters of private soldiers : "It 
 is marvellous, the pluck of our officers ; 
 they would face anything, and where they 
 go we follow them, and would follow them 
 anywhere." " Our officers are very careful 
 of our lives, and never bring us into action 
 without making a personal reconnaissance 
 of the position." " I have been asked what 
 I think of our officers. No words of mine 
 would ever convey any idea of what they 
 are like. They are real trumps. They 
 are our leaders, and we look to them to lead, 
 
In the Trenches HI 
 
 and they do it. No shirking with them." 
 " We are all good chums and very happy, 
 with very good officers." " Our troop 
 officer is great. He can speak the language 
 and fears nothing." " We cannot speak 
 too highly of our officers. Their bravery 
 and coolness is beyond words." " We 
 have lost heavily, but are not down- 
 hearted, as we know we are winning. You 
 have only to look at our officers to know 
 that. They are cool as cucumbers and 
 crack jokes with the men in a way that would 
 make my old Colonel turn in his grave. . . . 
 The only complaint against our officers is 
 that they will not take cover but expose 
 themselves too much." " There are some 
 fine men in the British Army. Take the 
 officers. They are the bravest of the brave. 
 Sometimes I watch them and think to my- 
 self there are no officers in the world like 
 ours." 
 
 Then for what the officers think of their 
 men : " The men are splendid," writes 
 one, " and as happy as schoolboys." " The 
 British Tommy is wonderful," says another, 
 " I do not think he can possibly lose his head 
 
112 In the Trenches 
 
 unless it is blown off by a Black Maria. 
 One of my men had his hat riddled with 
 bullets from a machine gun. He turned 
 round, picked up his hat, felt inside, pulled 
 out a mangled packet of Woodbines, said 
 a few well chosen words on the subject of 
 German machine guns, replaced his hat, 
 and advanced ! " And so you have it from 
 other officers : " The men are very good. 
 In comfortable billets they grouse like hell ; 
 but in a clay trench for forty hours in pour- 
 ing rain under heavy fire, no matches, very 
 little water or food, they laugh and jibe and 
 sleep and never a word of grumbling." 
 " From the general behaviour of the men we 
 might have been engaged in autumn man- 
 oeuvres. The fact that they were out- 
 numbered never for a moment affected 
 their spirits." " If anybody tells you about 
 the decadence of the British soldier, tell 
 him to go to blazes. There is not a finer lot 
 of fellows anywhere, and the way they 
 stand up to the most awful wounds is 
 marvellous." " If my friends in North 
 Hackney could see me, they certainly 
 would not recognise their representative," 
 
In the Trenches 113 
 
 writes Captain Raymond Green, North 
 Hackney's M.P. ; "we get covered with 
 mud, our clothes coated with clay, and we 
 look rather like a gang of miners who have 
 been working all day at digging ore. The 
 men really are heroes and stick to it without 
 any grumbling." ' What brave men are 
 ours," says Lieutenant L. Tasker, of the 
 R.A.M.C. " If the people of the United 
 Kingdom could see the conditions under 
 which our men fight, how they fight, how 
 they die, the deeds that are done, lives given 
 and wounds received, V.C.'s would be won 
 many times a day. You should see how 
 the wounded act. They suffer wounds 
 without a murmur, get them dressed, 
 take chloroform, give consent to having 
 limbs, fingers, etc., amputated as though 
 they were getting their hair cut. They 
 are all gloriously brave." " Only the 
 highest praise can be given to the men," 
 declares another Lieutenant ; and in a 
 letter from Captain L. A. F. Cane, of the 
 East Lancashire Regiment, you have a 
 casual revelation of how finely the officer 
 realises his responsibilities : " Our men are 
 
114 I n the Trenches 
 
 behaving admirably. . . . They put implicit 
 trust in their officers, so we must not let 
 them down." Since writing that, Captain 
 Cane has died at the head of his men, living 
 up to that high ideal. 
 
 Reading such things as these, it is easy 
 to believe there is not a word of exaggera- 
 tion in the letter General Sir H. Smith- 
 Dorrien wrote from the front to the Soldiers' 
 and Sailors' Families Association: "Never 
 has an army been called on to engage in 
 such desperate fighting as is of daily occur- 
 rence in the present war, and never have 
 any troops behaved so magnificently as 
 our soldiers in this war. The stories of 
 the battles of Le Mons and Le Cateau 
 are only beginning to be known, but at 
 them a British force not only held its own 
 against a German army four times its 
 own size, but it hit the enemy so hard that 
 never were they able to do more than follow 
 it up. Of course our troops had to fall 
 back before them, an operation which 
 would demoralise most armies. Not so 
 with ours, however ; though they naturally 
 did not like retiring for twelve successive 
 
In the Trenches 115 
 
 days, they merely fell sullenly back, 
 striking hard whenever attacked, and the 
 moment the order came to go forward 
 there were smiling faces everywhere. Then 
 followed the battles of the Marne and the 
 Aisne. Tell the women that all these 
 great battles have, day by day, witnessed 
 countless feats of heroism and brave fight- 
 ing. Large numbers will be given Victoria 
 Crosses and Distinguished Conduct Medals, 
 but many more have earned them, for it 
 has been impossible to bring every case to 
 notice. Tell the women that proud as I 
 am to have such soldiers under my com- 
 mand, they should be prouder still to be 
 near and dear relations to such men." 
 
 Since the great battles of the Marne and 
 the Aisne, the months of stubborn fighting in 
 trenches, with desperate night attacks, and 
 slow advances from time to time, have 
 made even sterner calls on the endurance 
 and heroism of the men and their officers, 
 and you may gather a sufficient idea of how 
 they have responded to it from these fifteen 
 letters that appeared in the Daily Tele- 
 graph ; 
 
116 In the Trenches 
 
 " The thing that has impressed me most 
 here," wrote Lord Castlereagh, on duty 
 somewhere in France, " has been the 
 aeroplane service — a splendid lot of boys 
 who really do not know what fear is " ; 
 and further testimony to the daring and 
 efficiency of our air-craft men appears in 
 the first of the following : 
 
 i. — From Lieutenant Jack Bainbridge, AS. C, 
 to Mr. B. G. Stone, of Elkington. 
 
 " Our aeroplanes are doing some wonder- 
 ful work. Every day the sky is full of 
 them, and in every direction you will see 
 little clouds of white smoke coming from 
 the shells as they burst above and around 
 them. I have counted over fifty shells 
 fired at one, but have never seen one hit yet. 
 Yesterday two came over and were chasing 
 each other ; we could distinctly hear the 
 shots as they fired at each other, and on 
 they went, still firing, out of sight. The 
 trenches are most without head cover, and 
 have two feet of water in some places, and 
 the poor men are simply wet through and 
 covered with mud, but I have never heard 
 
In the Trenches i17 
 
 a grumble yet, in fact they are always 
 cheery. I was up at the trenches last night 
 and talked to some of the Hunts men; 
 they were mud up to the eyes, but quite 
 cheery. It is truly an honour being allowed 
 to help such men, and if England only 
 knew one tiny bit what is happening out 
 here she would be proud of her sons." 
 
 2. — From Corporal E. Clark, ist Lincoln 
 Regiment, to Major Haggard, Chairman 
 of the Veterans' Club : 
 
 " We found ourselves surrounded in the 
 shape of a horseshoe, the enemy firing at 
 us from all angles. We just got the order 
 to retire when a shell struck the trench 
 just in front, a piece catching me on the 
 nose and burying me, but I managed to 
 crawl out nearly blind, and started to 
 retire under a murderous rifle fire. No one 
 could realise what it was like unless actually 
 there. Men were crawling about like ants 
 trying to reach safety, but it was only luck 
 for those that did. I managed to get to a 
 wood, where I found a number of wounded, 
 and waited until the firing cooled down, 
 
118 In the Trenches 
 
 when we chanced it over the river, getting 
 there as best we could, the Germans shelling 
 the bridge the whole time, also a railway 
 cutting in which we got for shelter. That 
 is where I received a shrapnel in the right 
 calf. 
 
 " It was impossible to leave there. The 
 ambulance could not get near us, so we 
 had to make the best of it until eight 
 o'clock at night, when the stretcher bearers 
 told us we must get to Braisne, about four 
 miles, as best we could. By this time I 
 could not open my eyes. It was the blind 
 leading the blind. How we got out of it 
 I do not know, but was not sorry when we 
 found ourselves in a farmhouse (a lot we 
 had to leave behind in different places, as 
 their wounds were too bad), so after a hot 
 meal — the first bit to eat for thirty-six 
 hours — we anchored for the night. 
 
 " In the morning the ambulance was 
 waiting for us. We collected ourselves 
 together, and no sooner were we outside 
 the door when a shell smashed through the 
 house, knocking it to the ground. We 
 managed to get in the ambulance, when they 
 
In the Trenches 119 
 
 sent us another reminder, catching me in 
 the left ankle, besides two or three more, 
 so I can thank my lucky stars I am still 
 alive. 
 
 " A private of the Welsh Regiment stay- 
 ing in my tent helped to bury your nephew 
 (Captain Mark Haggard). He told me his 
 last words were ' Go along, the Welsh,' 
 and that he was buried about twelve 
 midnight on September 14th in the battle 
 of the Marne." 
 
 3. — From an officer in the Duke of Edin- 
 burgh's (Wiltshire) Regiment to his 
 wife : 
 
 " We are living in fair-sized ' dug-outs,' 
 about 5 feet deep and 8 feet wide and 
 20 feet long. There are five of these 
 ' dug-outs ' on the edge of a wood all con- 
 nected by deep communication trenches. 
 The 'dug-outs' are roofed over with pine 
 logs and about 18 inches of earth. We 
 have tables and chairs and straw inside, 
 so we are fairly comfortable. We cannot 
 go outside much, as shrapnel keeps on 
 bursting over us and bullets that have gone 
 
120 In the Trenches 
 
 high over the trenches in front keep on 
 hitting the trees all round, which are all 
 pitted and cut with bits of shell. 
 
 " Our kitchen is just next door in a deep 
 hole, with a trench connecting up. You 
 would be very amused to see us all bobbing 
 in and out like a lot of rabbits. The firing 
 line is about three-quarters of a mile in 
 front of us. We have great difficulty in 
 getting water, which is scarce, and then 
 we have to boil it. However, we manage 
 to do ourselves pretty well all the same. 
 We get our Government rations every 
 day, and supplement them with the things 
 you all send out to us. Our menu to-night 
 is going to be 
 
 Tinned Ox Tail Soup. 
 
 Fried Fillet of Beef. 
 
 Potatoes and Peas. 
 
 Rice Pudding. 
 Whisky and soda. 
 " Don't you think I am pretty good at 
 raising a dinner. We sleep in one hut, all 
 huddled up, as it is very cold, but I use the 
 sleeping bag and find it very warm. We 
 have not been able to take our clothes off 
 
In the Trenches 121 
 
 now for four days. Although we are in 
 the best of spirits, we are going through a 
 pretty critical time, as the fighting has 
 been very heavy indeed." 
 
 4. — From a member of the Honourable 
 Artillery Company : 
 
 " Have had a very busy week — no time 
 to write a line. Up at six, off before dawn, 
 digging trenches near the firing line, back 
 at dark. Weather horrid — rain, and even 
 snow. Am feeling well, but tired. No 
 luxuries to eat. Do send me cake and 
 ' chocs.' Many thanks for mother's letter 
 and prayer-book, which I'll keep — though 
 no time to read — for her sake. We are 
 billeted in a beastly barn, into which rain 
 and wind blows, but we manage to keep 
 warm and well. It is most interesting 
 here. 
 
 " Tommy Atkins is magnificent even in 
 these conditions. They are very nice to us, 
 and to-day the Scots Fusiliers gave us tea 
 and apples while on the march. I have 
 had my first experience of fire. Very 
 interesting, no casualties ; we acted as 
 
122 In the Trenches 
 
 reserves. The battery shelled the Germans 
 out, the British retiring from first trench. 
 Then after hard fire, our first line charged, 
 capturing the first two German trenches 
 and 160 men. 
 
 " The Germans are thoroughly demor- 
 alised, and their fire is nothing to be 
 frightened at — even the artillery has not 
 the range or accuracy of ours. In fact, 
 they have been shelling our trenches for 
 weeks without damage until yesterday, 
 when, unfortunately, we sustained our first 
 loss — one killed and nine wounded in No. 3 
 Company ; I don't know them. The ex- 
 perience of going under fire is not at all 
 alarming." 
 
 5. — From Sapper George Comber, Royal 
 Engineers, whose father is a Redhill 
 tradesman : 
 
 " Those who condemn football would not 
 say a word against the game if they had 
 seen and heard what I have in passing to 
 and from the trenches and firing-line. 
 The grim horror of war is relieved by the 
 football instinct of many of our soldiers. 
 
In the Trenches 123 
 
 When the Royal Highlanders were ordered 
 to make a charge in an engagement they 
 jumped out of the trenches, and might have 
 been kicking off in a cup-tie final. They 
 commenced to shout, ' On the ball, High- 
 landers,' and ' Mark your men.' They 
 continued yelling to one another until they 
 had driven the Germans back, ' Mark 
 your men,' the officers and non-coms, joining 
 in as loud as they could. Who can say, 
 ' Mark your men ' did not have a stimu- 
 lating effect upon the Highlanders ? 
 
 " The French soldiers cannot understand 
 the sang-froid of the British troops. One 
 day at Bethune the Lincolns had a game of 
 football, and the Frenchmen looked on. 
 During the game a German aeroplane 
 came over and dropped a few bombs, but 
 no one was injured. The game was stopped, 
 and there was a rush for the rifles. They 
 fired, but did not wing the aeroplane, 
 and a French machine gun was brought 
 into action. It brought her down, and 
 the game was continued. The Frenchmen 
 cheered the players, and one of them 
 said to me, ' You English are very, very 
 
124 In the Trenches 
 
 misunderstandable. Fancy playing foot- 
 ball when German bombs are dropping 
 from the skies.' " 
 
 6. — From an officer in the ist Battalion 
 Devonshire Regiment to a friend in 
 England : 
 
 " On the night of October 22nd, we ad- 
 vanced a bit and dug ourselves more or 
 less in by dawn, and soon after light we saw 
 great masses of German infantry emerge 
 from woods and hedges some 1,000 yards 
 to our front, and advance to attack us. We 
 opened fire on them, and killed dozens. 
 This was answered by the Germans with 
 a tremendous shell fire from their heavy 
 guns. The Devons were perfectly wonder- 
 ful ; not a man left his trench. All day 
 long the battle raged, and you never saw 
 such an inferno. By night the place was 
 a mass of fire, smoke, dead, and dying. All 
 night they attacked us. Sometimes they 
 got right up to our trenches, only to be 
 hurled back by the Devons' bayonets. 
 Dawn broke on the 24th with the same 
 struggle still going on, and it continued all 
 
In the Trenches 125 
 
 day and night, and all through the 25th. 
 We never slept a wink, and by night we were 
 absolutely done. No humans could have 
 done more. 
 
 "The men were perfectly splendid, and 
 repulsed every attack, with great loss to 
 the enemy. We were relieved at one a.m. 
 on October 26th, and as we marched back 
 a mile into billets all the troops cheered 
 us frantically. General Smith-Dorrien sent 
 a wire congratulating us on our splendid 
 fight. We heard officially from Divisional 
 Headquarters that there were 1,000 dead 
 Germans in front of our trenches. The 
 whole place was littered with their dead. 
 We lost four officers killed, four wounded, 
 and 150 men killed and wounded. One 
 shell pitched in my company's trench, 
 killing and wounding two officers and 
 thirty-five men. 
 
 " On the 27th we were in another fight. 
 This time we relieved another regiment, 
 some five miles north of our last fight, and 
 here we found the Germans entrenched 
 forty yards from us. W T e fought here until 
 November 1st, night and day again. The 
 
126 In the Trenches 
 
 Germans made six attacks on our left on 
 October 29th, all of which we drove off. We 
 killed a lot here. One of the bayonet 
 charges accounted for seventy dead Germans 
 and fourteen prisoners. The German losses 
 here are perfectly gigantic, and we are win- 
 ning all along. The splendid behaviour of 
 the English troops has won everyone's 
 admiration — even the German. After our 
 last fight, the Devons again were con- 
 gratulated all round. They have made a 
 tremendous name here, and everywhere 
 one goes all ranks pass the word, ' Good 
 old Devons.' " 
 
 7. — From a Lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. : 
 
 " In front of us are the German trenches, 
 only 100 yards away. A bobbing head, 
 a shaking fist, an occasional spade-wave, 
 bespeak the presence of our foe. Yester- 
 day, one of our merry men fixed up a 
 target. On white paper he drew the bull's- 
 eye, with a charred stick, tied it on a card- 
 board box, placed it in front of the trench, 
 and with flag behind recorded the misses 
 of our friend Fritz. I feel sure that if in 
 
In the Trenches 127 
 
 those trenches we had a more humorous 
 foe instead of the phlegmatic Teuton, we 
 might pass away many of the weary hours 
 of watching in friendly joke. But we are 
 up against a wary foe ; there is no leisure, 
 for barbed wire, artfully contrived hoops 
 and loopholes for ever claim the attention 
 of our brave men. 
 
 " There are times, though, when even 
 under fire the humour of our soldiers bursts 
 forth. On one occasion, after a German 
 shell had fired some wood, our men, seeing 
 the fire seized the opportunity to cook 
 their food. Yesterday I heard an amusing 
 story under trying circumstances told con- 
 cerning a man in the regiment lying next 
 to us. Shrapnel had burst killing two 
 men on his left, and badly shattering 
 another. He was trying to light a pipe, 
 and having some difficulty he said to his 
 mate, ' Shure 'tis Belgian tobacco, and 
 these French matches will be the death of 
 me.' I sometimes help the officers to 
 censor the men's letters home. One man 
 says, ' We have shells for breakfast — not 
 egg-shells. I shall be in Berlin in a fort- 
 
128 In the Trenches 
 
 night, and I'll send you some sausages.' 
 I overheard on the march one Pat say to 
 another, ' I never believe anything I hear, 
 and only half of what I say.' I might add, 
 ' nothing that you write,' for on one occa- 
 sion I saw the letter of a man sitting in 
 perfect safety beginning, ' Midst shot and 
 shell I write to thee, dear mother.' But 
 honestly, I think our men always try to 
 look on the light side of life, and they bear 
 their ailments with fortitude. It takes a 
 great deal to make them give in." 
 
 8. — From Corporal A. G. Reid, A.S.C., to 
 
 his brother-in-law at Redhill : 
 
 " I saw it stated in a letter that the 
 Germans were not brave. Don't you be- 
 lieve it. They will not stand up to the 
 bayonet unless pushed on to it — I know ; 
 but they face rifle fire and shrapnel in a 
 manner which you can't help but admire. 
 The way they are massed and marched 
 against trenches is madness, but they are 
 not cowards. I am telling you what I know 
 personally and have seen. 
 
 " It was only last week I saw such a sight. 
 
In the Trenches 129 
 
 I shall never forget it. I was at a place 
 just behind our trenches when a whole corps 
 of Germans made for us. Mind you, they 
 did not come in a mad rush, but they stepped 
 out as if out for a long march. They sang 
 their national song lustily, and must have 
 known, as they were so thickly massed, 
 they were marching on to destruction. 
 But they came on, and our chaps were 
 awaiting them with glee. Not a shot was 
 fired until they got so close that it was 
 impossible to miss them. 
 
 " Then the order was given, and didn't 
 our rifles and maxims speak ! Of course 
 they fell in their hundreds, but there was 
 no wavering. It was amazing. Hundreds 
 stepped into their places and the ranks 
 closed again. They still came on, only to 
 fall, and this kind of fighting went on for 
 some time until they realised that even 
 numbers can't take British trenches in this 
 fashion. They had to fall back to take 
 cover, but were shelled out of all kinds of 
 hiding places, only to face shrapnel. The 
 ground round the trenches was packed 
 with dead bodies, and hundreds were taken 
 
130 In the Trenches 
 
 prisoners. One of them who could speak 
 English well begged me to give him food." 
 
 9. — From an officer in the Camerons to the 
 Headmaster of Eton : 
 
 " Two of the Camerons were sitting in 
 their trench one day, when one of the 
 biggest ' Jack Johnsons ' arrived and blew 
 their rifles literally to matchwood, but did 
 not touch the men. One of the same sort 
 pitched in a farmyard some days before 
 we got here, where two horses were tethered 
 under a projecting sort of penthouse roof 
 of a big barn. It blew a big hole through 
 the roof and the largest piece of horse they 
 could find afterwards was a hind leg on the 
 top of the barn. In the early part of the 
 war we had two meals a day and more 
 exercise than we could do with ; now we 
 eat four meals a day and get no exercise 
 at all. I am getting a colossal size, and 
 can hardly button my coat. Perhaps it's 
 not a bad thing with cold weather and 
 possibly long treks in front of us. Anyhow, 
 I have made up my arrears of sleep now. 
 
 " We are beginning to be inoculated 
 
In the Trenches 131 
 
 against enteric, which is a good move ; 
 what with living in a pit like this and 
 unburied men and horses all over the 
 place, it won't be long before something 
 breaks out. I believe the Germans have 
 already got it. . . . We use our signal 
 officer's claymore for a toasting fork, and 
 a captured bayonet as a carving knife, and 
 a very good one it makes. Someone said 
 if you saw that being done in a war play on 
 the stage, like ' An Englishman's Home,' 
 you would say it was all rot, but somehow 
 we found ourselves doing it without think- 
 ing about local colour. 
 
 " The nightmare battle is still going on, 
 and no man can see the end. When it 
 comes to attacking you do want weight 
 behind you. The German theory is right 
 there, but they apply their weight in the 
 wrong place. Personally I have had enough 
 of this valley and of this excessively quiet 
 and lazy life. I should like to go straight 
 forward and have a look at the German 
 trenches and their position generally. It's 
 a natural curiosity when one has been 
 looking at a ridge for about a month, which 
 
132 In the Trenches 
 
 might as well be in the moon as far as 
 getting there goes. 
 
 " One odd feature of this show is the 
 universally pessimistic note of all the 
 diaries taken off dead and captured Deut- 
 schers. I have never been pessimistic or 
 optimistic either. I suppose the reason 
 is that, in common with every one else, I 
 have been confident all along that we are 
 bound to win in the end, so have not 
 worried. But unless all German soldiers 
 are ordered to keep pessimistic diaries, the 
 lot in front of us here have got their tails 
 down properly. This is in great contrast 
 to the French." 
 
 io. — From an officer in the Guards to his 
 father : 
 
 " We spent a quiet night in the trenches, 
 and on Sunday morning sniped some Ger- 
 mans about 500 yards away, bagging an 
 officer. At one p.m. the bombardment 
 began, and lasted till dark. They had the 
 range almost exact, and blew several 
 trenches into the air. I suppose 100 shells 
 burst within a few yards of me, coming in 
 
In the Trenches 133 
 
 groups of four as a rule, and shaking the 
 whole ground. At 6.30 p.m. we heard 
 cheering on our right, and gathered that a 
 counter-attack was taking place. Soon 
 after a considerable body of men were seen 
 approaching, and word was passed to us 
 that they were our troops, so we did not 
 fire. Three came right on to the traverse 
 of my trench, and about three yards from 
 me I saw a German helmet. We at once 
 opened fire. I shot the first man, the 
 second was bayoneted, and the third 
 taken prisoner, as he laid flat down until 
 the first flurry was over. 
 
 " We drove the whole lot back in about 
 fifteen minutes, with the exception of 
 about 200, who were captured, having 
 got through where the trenches were blown 
 in. It was awkward knowing some were 
 behind us, as we did not like to shoot for 
 fear of hitting our own reinforcements. In 
 my trench I and one man looked out behind, 
 the remainder watching the front. They 
 had a machine gun in front, and one had to 
 duck occasionally when one heard it. Our 
 gun behind was also sweeping with shrapnel 
 
134 Irx the Trenches 
 
 and every shell just touched our parapet, 
 so I had to watch for the flash and shout 
 ' Duck ! ' The other companies lost some 
 officers and men when rounding up those 
 that had got through, which was awkward 
 work, seeing that the darkness was only 
 relieved by the light of burning houses. 
 
 " From eight to nine a.m. on the 26th 
 the German guns wasted some ammunition 
 at some unoccupied trenches just in the 
 rear of the line ; but they then discovered 
 their mistake, and literally blew our 
 trenches to pieces. 
 
 " Fresh troops came up, and I believe all 
 is well with the situation. We are feeling 
 a bit tired, but are quite well, and in a few 
 days shall be ready to have another go." 
 
 11. — From Lance-Corporal J. Ryall, of the 
 1st King's Royal Rifles, to his mother at 
 
 Cowes : 
 
 " Our lads in the company are sticking 
 it well up till now. We all work together 
 and do our best. If we only had to fight 
 their infantry we would make a bit of a 
 name and soon be in Berlin, I think. 
 
In the Trenches 135 
 
 Smoking gives you a lot of comfort when 
 you are in the trenches, with only shots 
 and shells flying about. The Germans 
 have not moved from here yet, but before 
 we finish our tour of France we are either 
 going to make sausage-meat of them or 
 wait until November 5th, and burn them. 
 
 " Whilst I have been out here I have 
 seen the finest and saddest sights of my 
 life. You see some amusing incidents as 
 well. The Germans were shelling a field 
 opposite to us for an unknown reason, for 
 there were only a few dead cows there. 
 Some of our chaps were getting walnuts, 
 and the German shells were knocking 
 walnuts down and the men were picking 
 them up. During the first day of the 
 battle here two of our companies were 
 acting as right flank guard to the brigade, 
 and we encountered the Kaiser's famous 
 Prussian Guards. We were greatly out- 
 numbered, and our commanding officer 
 told us that we killed five of theirs to one 
 of ours. They were finely-built fellows 
 and a great height. 
 
 " Our position here puts me in mind 
 
136 In the Trenches 
 
 of the Wild West pictures. I think if I 
 come through safely I must have fourteen 
 lives, but I have been very lucky in all 
 these big scraps up till now." 
 
 12.; — From an officer of the ist Battalion 
 Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment: 
 
 " We had two days' fighting last week, 
 and the regiment did splendidly. Our 
 casualties were fortunately few, but the loss 
 inflicted upon the enemy was enormous. 
 The brigade took over 400 German prisoners 
 on one day, all of whom seemed only too 
 delighted to be behind our firing line instead 
 of in front of it. In our advance we were 
 pulling them out of the cottages and barns 
 and ditches in all directions, and a very 
 mixed lot they were. 
 
 " The German shrapnel fire was terrific, 
 but fortunately it did not cause us much 
 loss. We are all so used to it now that what 
 they call its ' moral effect ' is almost nil. 
 Their rifle fire is not to be compared with 
 that of our men, while our own shrapnel is, 
 on a low estimate, four times as deadly as 
 theirs, having far greater explosive power. 
 
In the Trenches 137 
 
 " One of the Queen's said to me the other 
 day, ' Why can't we stop the guns for 
 twenty-four hours, sir, and let us have a 
 good go at them with the bayonet ? ' 
 Every one of us feels and knows that he is a 
 match for three Germans at least. Our 
 only trouble is when we have more in front 
 of us than we can shoot in the time. They 
 have now taken to attacking at night in 
 order to minimise the effect of our rifle fire, 
 but even then they do not get any change 
 out of us. 
 
 " We are all extraordinarily well fed and 
 clothed, and as happy and contented as we 
 can be — a regular band of brothers. An 
 officer in another battalion who was watch- 
 ing the Queen's advance the other day said 
 he had never seen anything finer. He 
 said, ' Well, this is the real thing ; this is 
 war.' The absence of illness is quite extra- 
 ordinary. It really seems as if there were 
 more invalids in one street at home than 
 one ever sees out there. 
 
 " It is men we want. It is only by sheer 
 numbers and nothing else that the enemy 
 can push on. We all feel if our million 
 
138 In the Trenches 
 
 men were ready now we would drive the 
 Germans back to the Rhine as fast as we 
 could march behind them." 
 
 13. — From Trooper A. F inlay, of the Royal 
 Horse Guards (Blue) to his aunt at 
 Beckenham : 
 
 " The night of all nights and the one I 
 shall remember to my dying day was on 
 Sunday, the 1st. We were lying in the 
 trench, when we were all startled by a 
 band in front of us playing the German 
 National Anthem. Then on they marched 
 and the maxims commenced playing quite 
 a different tune. They then halted and 
 sang some sort of a hymn. What the idea 
 was I cannot quite grasp. Whether it was 
 to frighten us or to inspire confidence in 
 themselves I do not know. 
 
 " Anyhow, they came on with their 
 famous goose-step in six different columns, 
 five abreast, rifles at their hips, shouting 
 their war cry. But back they went, but 
 not all of them, not by a good many. Three 
 times they tried and three times they went 
 back. The boys were mad by this time. 
 
In the Trenches 139 
 
 It was as much as the officers could do to 
 hold them back. A party of Germans got 
 through on our left flank and came up 
 behind the regiment, but the ' contemp- 
 tible little army ' wiped out the lot. 
 
 " On our right flank was a small town, 
 which the enemy tried to get through, but 
 the Life Guards charged them with bayonets 
 — the first time in the annals of the English 
 Army that Life Guards have charged dis- 
 mounted with bayonets. And a fine show 
 they made. When we got to the trenches 
 we could not get in for dead. We could not 
 kill them fast enough either with bayonets 
 or bullets. The prisoners we took were 
 mere spits of boys, 16 to 17 years of age, 
 who cried for mercy." 
 
 14. — From the Rev. Owen Watkins, Wesleyan 
 Chaplain, serving with the 14th Infantry 
 Brigade : 
 
 " Lieutenant Davidson has just been 
 sent in wounded in one of the ambulance 
 wagons. Early in the day our gunners had 
 found it impossible to locate certain German 
 guns which were fast rendering our trenches 
 
140 In the Trenches 
 
 untenable. The country was so flat that 
 there was no possible point of vantage from 
 which the gunners could observe except 
 the steeple of the church in Lourges. But 
 the Germans knew that as well as we did, 
 so the church was being vigorously shelled, 
 and already no less than twelve lyddite 
 shells had been pitched into it. 
 
 " It was the duty of Lieutenant Davidson 
 to ' observe,' so he calmly went to the 
 church, climbed the already tottering tower 
 and, seated on the top, proceeded to tele- 
 phone his information to the battery. In 
 consequence German battery after German 
 battery was silenced, the infantry, which 
 at one time was in danger of extermination, 
 was saved, and the position, in spite of an 
 attack in overwhelming force by the enemy, 
 was successfully held. The church was 
 rendered a scrap-heap, but still Davidson 
 sat tight on the remnants of his tower. For 
 seven solid hours, expecting death every 
 moment, he calmly scanned the country 
 and telephoned his reports. 
 
 " At dark his task was done, and he came 
 down to rejoin his battery. As he left the 
 
In the Trenches 141 
 
 ruins a fall of timber in one of the burning 
 houses lit up everything with a sudden 
 glare, there was the crack of a rifle — the 
 German trenches were only a few hundred 
 yards away — and a bullet passed through 
 the back of his neck and out through his 
 mouth. But, without hurrying his pace, he 
 walked to his battery, gave them his 
 final information, and then said, ' I think 
 I'd better go and find the field ambulance, 
 for the beggars have drilled a hole in me 
 that needs plugging.' And he walked half 
 a mile to the nearest ' collecting point.' 
 
 " In the infantry of the 14th Brigade men 
 can talk of nobody else but ' Davidson of the 
 Gunners.' They themselves face death 
 every hour of the day and night, they them- 
 selves do unrecorded deeds of heroism 
 worthy of the V.C., but with one voice they 
 declare, ' Davidson is the real thing. If he 
 doesn't get the V.C. — well, nobody deserves 
 it.' So I sat and looked at the ruins, and 
 wondered what the thoughts and feelings 
 of that young man had been as he sat alone 
 on the shaky tower seven hours waiting 
 for death." 
 
142 In the Trenches 
 
 15. — From M. Paul Renault, an officer in 
 the French Army, to friends at Reigaie: 
 
 " To the British my own fair country 
 owes a debt it will never be able to repay. 
 To what has military greediness, ambition, 
 and jealousy brought us ? I cannot re- 
 strain myself when I think for one moment 
 of the loss of thousands of innocent lives, 
 of the misery and ruin that have been 
 brought about by the madness of one man 
 and his band of sycophants. 
 
 " Of your officers and men I cannot ex- 
 press my admiration of their prowess, their 
 steadiness, their humanity, and their fair- 
 ness to their enemy. I have been in adjoin- 
 ing trenches with them knee-deep in slush, 
 while a flood of rain and bullets beat down 
 from overhead, but not a word of complaint. 
 It was not far from my native village I 
 first came in touch with them, and their 
 conduct and bravery I freely admit gave 
 us courage then and also on many other 
 occasions." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Keeping the Gates 
 
 ' ' Never saw the wild North Sea 
 Such a gallant company 
 Sail the billows blue ! " 
 
 Longfellow. 
 
 If we have little enough of official news 
 about the deeds of our soldiers, of necessity 
 we know even less of what the Navy is 
 doing. Now and then, when some German 
 raiders are hunted down on the high seas, 
 or when one of our patrolling fleets catches 
 one of theirs sneaking out from behind 
 the shelter of Heligoland and shatters 
 and drives it home again, the veil lifts 
 and vivid but none too detailed reports 
 of those actions come to us ; then the 
 veil falls again, and day after day passes 
 and we see and hear no more. Except 
 unofficially, from the letters the sailors 
 write to their friends, or perhaps from a 
 
 143 
 
144 Keeping the Gates 
 
 talk with a chance bluejacket home on a 
 day or two's leave. 
 
 But this silence and secrecy is right and 
 inevitable. There is nothing, indeed, to 
 tell in the interval but a long story of 
 patient watching and waiting out on the 
 waste of waters in sun and rain and wind 
 and snow ; in clear nights when the great 
 ships with their flotillas of small attendant 
 vessels prowl still and ghostly under the 
 moon ; in black nights of fog or mist, when 
 they grope their way lampless and invisible, 
 peering and feeling after an enemy who may 
 possibly be coming upon them unawares 
 or trying to dodge past them through the 
 impenetrable darkness. All the while, by 
 day and night, in calm or storm, there is 
 the ever-present danger of touching a 
 floating mine and being suddenly whirled 
 into roaring destruction and death ; of 
 being taken unawares by a lurking sub- 
 marine and in a moment torpedoed out of 
 existence. This alert, unwearied policing 
 of the North Sea keeps our eastern and 
 northern coastline immune from invasion 
 and the English Channel inviolate, so that 
 
Keeping the Gates 145 
 
 our troops have crossed by thousands into 
 France without the loss of a single trans- 
 port. We hear very little about it ; we 
 know of it dimly and imperfectly, and not 
 till the full story comes to be told in later 
 days shall we realise, with wonder and 
 admiration and gratitude, all the perils and 
 the magnitude of the task that our Navy 
 is so masterfully fulfilling. 
 
 Thinking of it now, with such small 
 knowledge as we have of the facts, it seems 
 impossible that the stress and strain of seven 
 months of keeping such constant watch 
 and ward amidst hidden dangers, with a 
 powerful enemy for ever ready to spring 
 and strike in any unguarded hour, should 
 not wear down the most iron nerved, and 
 play havoc with the confidence and the 
 moral of the bravest and most disciplined 
 of men. But as a matter of mere truth 
 it has had no such effect. Officers and 
 men grow impatient and yearn more and 
 more to be at grips with the reluctant foe, 
 but through it all their cheerfulness and 
 their confidence and their courage remain 
 unabated. I have never read a complaint 
 
146 Keeping the Gates 
 
 in any of their letters home, except at the 
 timidity of the Germans. Over and over 
 again, with trivial variations of phrase, 
 you find them sighing, " I wish the German 
 fleet would come out." "It is a tiresome 
 job," says one, " waiting for the German 
 ships to come out. At any moment we 
 may be sent to the bottom by their mines, 
 but we are very happy, and in good fight- 
 ing trim." First-class stoker Lambert Tid- 
 man Evans writes to his mother, " We are 
 anxious to get a cut at the sausages, you 
 bet your boots. We will bust the Germans 
 or sink. ... If we meet with bad luck 
 you will know all died game, and that 
 your son has done his duty to his country, 
 pleased with the honour." " The spirit 
 of our men is wonderful ! " exclaims Signal- 
 man Fred Porch, of H.M.S. Lord Nelson ; 
 an officer assures his friends in England 
 that " the spirits of the sailorman, like all 
 good spirits, improve with keeping, and 
 the impatience produced by waiting for his 
 turn will send him into any action there 
 may be under a high head of steam." 
 Marine Colour-Sergeant W. Still, of the 
 
Keeping the Gates 147 
 
 Vanguard, touching on the same phase of 
 the proceedings, thinks " the time of wait- 
 ing for the final action is monotonous, but 
 if our friend William fancies that he is 
 going to wear us down by keeping us 
 waiting he never made a bigger mistake in 
 his life." They always sleep with one eye 
 open, he adds, ready at any moment to 
 engage the Germans, day or night, " if 
 their ships will only come out." Some- 
 times they write rather enviously of the 
 men on those ships that are or have been 
 in action off the Belgian coast shelling the 
 Germans ashore, being shelled in return, 
 and smartly dodging the submarines that 
 steal on them out of Zeebrugge ; " still," 
 they console themselves, " we are all merry 
 and bright, and our day will come." " To 
 be always on the look out for so long a 
 period," Carpenter Joseph Payne, of the 
 St. Vincent, writes to his father, " becomes 
 monotonous, but our spirits are good. We 
 are not depressed, because we live in hope 
 that when ' The Day ' comes we shall put 
 the German fleet where they are not likely 
 to trouble us again " ; and he takes the 
 
148 Keeping the Gates 
 
 news that " Syd has been wounded " with 
 the admirable philosophy that " this being 
 the fortune of war we cannot complain." 
 
 Nevertheless, a distinct increase of the 
 note of joyousness is apparent in the letters 
 that are written just after an action has, 
 at last, been fought. " On the whole, it 
 was an enjoyable day," comments a wire- 
 less operator on the Fearless, in describing 
 the first big battle off Heligoland. " It 
 was great," writes another bluejacket on 
 the same occasion. " I hope they will 
 come out again, and oh, may it be soon ! " 
 But I particularly like the epistle from the 
 middy who, in view of his experiences, is 
 full of pity for his brother who is still at 
 school at Harrow, and admits, "It is 
 awful for Reg, while this is going on. But 
 I have written to try and cheer him up by 
 saying the war is certain to last for two 
 years, and by that time he may be able 
 to join us." Lance-Corporal J. Butnell, of 
 the Undaunted, sends his mother a vivid 
 account of a brisk combat with four German 
 destroyers, and concludes, "It is very 
 exciting, the way you attack the enemy 
 
Keeping the Gates 149 
 
 and, my word, my captain is a brick and 
 goes right into them. I feel honoured to 
 fight under such a gentleman " ; and lead- 
 ing wireless telegraphist William Pegg, of 
 the same ship, gives his father this little 
 sketch of the same engagement : 
 
 " We engaged the enemy's four destroyers 
 and finished them off nicely in about an 
 hour and twenty minutes — pretty smart 
 work, eh ? I was on watch in the wireless 
 telegraphy office, but went up on deck 
 to watch the firing. It looked pretty 
 awful to see their ships go down, especially 
 one, whose magazine blew up in one big 
 flare. A lot of German sailors were swim- 
 ming, but, as you can guess, we had no 
 time to pick them up ; we were too busy. 
 You know it would have been quite possible 
 to have got torpedoed through stopping. 
 As it was they tried hard to torpedo us, 
 but our skipper was there every time and 
 simply altered our course and we steamed 
 past them. They fired ten torpedoes at 
 our ship alone. 
 
 " The last to go took a lot of sinking, 
 so we ordered one of our destroyers — the 
 
150 Keeping the Gates 
 
 Legion, I think it was — to take off her 
 survivors. She sent a boat to her, but 
 when the boat was being rowed alongside 
 the dirty cads opened fire and blew off a 
 lieutenant's foot, and a seaman had his 
 leg blown off. The latter has since died. 
 Then we gave her a couple of additional 
 shots to go on with, and she finished. 
 We captured thirty Germans, including one 
 officer. We had all our boats smashed by 
 concussion from our guns, and missed a 
 cloud of shrapnel by a few yards. One 
 thing has been amply demonstrated : our 
 captain is O.K., and everybody on board 
 knows it. The way he manoeuvred our ship 
 around those torpedoes was marvellous." 
 
 More than once you read in the sailors' 
 letters that they are " tired of waiting," 
 and wish it were possible for them to land 
 and help the soldiers, " because," says one, 
 " they seem to be fighting against such 
 terrible odds " ; while a man on the 
 Venerable, well occupied off Nieuport in 
 rendering that help, by shelling the Germans 
 out of their trenches on land, is convinced 
 that " we are the luckiest ship in the Navy, 
 
Keeping the Gates 151 
 
 because we are in the thick of it and 
 getting all the fun." But even the men 
 who are left to that dreary game of waiting 
 and watching, day and night, in the North 
 Sea, know how to make the best of things ; 
 they contrive to get some fun out of it too, 
 as you may gather from this letter, which 
 a Welsh officer recently received from his 
 brother : 
 
 " Thank you very much for your letter. 
 Letters mean more to men now than they 
 have ever done before. Life on board 
 during active service is necessarily hard 
 and grim, full of discomforts and alarms, 
 but for all that it is astonishing how one 
 and all make the best of things, how one 
 fixes one's eye on the bright side. Occa- 
 sionally one detects in ordinary conversa- 
 tion the unforgettable fact that we are 
 at any moment liable to be hurled into 
 eternity. On a dark, bitterly cold, stormy 
 night, for example, a man cheerfully re- 
 minds the rest of us that a torpedo would 
 make our last moments very unpleasant 
 indeed in such a sea. 
 
 " Personally I get a lot of fun out of my 
 
152 Keeping the Gates 
 
 shipmates. My servant is a source of 
 unending amusement to me. He is a 
 Marine Reservist ; one knows that because 
 just below the lowest of a series of very 
 whiskery chins he keeps his tunic collar, 
 and upon the collar is his badge and the 
 letter ' R.' He has many protuberances 
 in the equatorial regions ; he has several 
 teeth knocked out on the port side of his 
 face ; and keeps a nasty little excrescence, 
 which was once an ear, on the starboard 
 side. Both these disfigurements are relics 
 of youthful scraps. He seldom talks. He 
 walks with stupendous dignity. 
 
 " Fortunately there are times when he 
 loosens his tongue and unbends his dignity. 
 At such a moment he confided to me that 
 he is an ' Hex Pug.' This I gathered was 
 only his way of saying that he is an ex- 
 pugilist. I can only say that he thoroughly 
 looks his part, notwithstanding the fact 
 that years and fat have somewhat toned 
 him down. 
 
 " Then there is the bugler, a cheeky, perky 
 little chap of fifteen. Unfortunately, every 
 member of the crew, for no apparent reason, 
 
Keeping the Gates 153 
 
 fetches him a clip on the ear if he happens 
 to come within arm's length and provided 
 there is no officer about. You will gather, 
 therefore, that he walks through life warily 
 and very circumspectly. But is he down- 
 hearted ? No. He boldly faces this 
 decidedly unpleasant situation with sailor- 
 like pluck ; with a frantic effort he recovers 
 his tongue again, and his features then 
 reveal the satisfied and joyful condition of 
 his soul. What if his outlook on life is 
 made gloomy and melancholy when a clip 
 is fetched on the ear ? Is it not immedi- 
 ately made bright and cheerful again by 
 deftly rescuing an elusive tongue ? 
 
 " I always picture him as he appeared 
 one night in the North Sea. We had a 
 nasty surprise about 10.30. It was pitch 
 dark or foggy at the time. The look-out 
 suddenly came upon a warship about half 
 a mile ahead. We made a recognition 
 signal, but got no reply, simply because 
 we were still in a bank of fog, and the 
 other ship could not see our flashlight 
 signals. Without exaggeration we were 
 in full fighting trim within 60 seconds, 
 
154 Keeping the Gates 
 
 every man — many only half-dressed — at 
 his post, decks cleared, guns loaded, spare 
 shells in readiness, aim set. The first 
 sound of a bugle would have caused our 
 guns to spit out steel death into the ship 
 ahead. But where was the bugler ? The 
 poor child was still fast asleep. In one 
 second he was the centre of an agitated 
 crowd. What a display of energy of lan- 
 guage, of clips on the ear, of tongue swallow- 
 ing, of its joyful recovery ! One large man 
 shot him up the gangway and deposited 
 him — a dazed and bewildered little fellow — 
 upon the decks, a still larger man rammed 
 the best part of a bugle down where his 
 tongue usually slipped. With his custom- 
 ary dexterity he rescued both the bugle and 
 his tongue, and dolefully shouted, ' Where's 
 me breeks ? I ain't got my breeks on.' 
 Fortunately, at that moment our signal 
 was repeated, and this time answered by 
 one of our own ships. Within five minutes 
 practically every man was in bed again, 
 including the poor bugler, just as if nothing 
 had happened." 
 
 The other day, shortly after the North 
 
Keeping the Gates 155 
 
 Sea fight, in which the Blucher was sunk, 
 I fell in with a sailor who had taken part 
 in it ; his ship was repairing in harbour 
 and he was ashore on leave. A big, genial, 
 capable-looking fellow, he walked with the 
 leisurely seafaring roll of his kind, and 
 was carrying under his arm a large, flat 
 parcel, carefully wrapped in brown paper 
 and tied round with string. We were 
 going the same way and drifted easily into 
 conversation, and when I made out that 
 he was fresh from the latest sea victory I 
 thought I might get a few descriptions and 
 impressions from him. 
 
 " How did you feel," I asked him, 
 " when you were first under fire ? " 
 
 " Oh, I was in that other scrap too," he 
 said, " when we settled the Mainz." 
 
 ' You had a pretty hot time then," I 
 suggested. 
 
 " About the same as this last time," he 
 replied. " It was warm while it lasted, 
 but," he laughed, " it was jolly good. 
 We were glad to get on to them, I can tell 
 you. It was fine. A bit slow, I expect, 
 for some of the chaps who didn't happen 
 
156 Keeping the Gates 
 
 to be working the guns, but we all liked it. 
 They'll give us a chance for another go 
 soon, I hope." 
 
 " You haven't had a look in yet at any 
 of their best Dreadnoughts, have you ? " 
 I inquired artlessly. 
 
 " Dreadnoughts ! " he grinned. " They 
 ain't got none. Dreadeverythings is all 
 they've got, as our chaps say, and as soon 
 as they like to bring 'em out we'll take 
 care they don't go in again, don't you 
 fear." 
 
 I tried to lure him on into describing 
 the battle, but he seemed to have been 
 too busy to take particular notice. 
 
 " They was running away all the time," 
 he said, " and we was after them, peppering 
 them a fair treat. They shelled us back a 
 bit, but nothing to matter much. If you 
 want to know what it was like, this," 
 tapping the parcel under his arm, " is a 
 picture I did of our ship in action." 
 
 Yielding to my natural curiosity, he 
 presently untied the string and produced 
 from the brown paper a large painting on a 
 sheet of cardboard. I am not going to 
 
Keeping the Gates 157 
 
 pretend that, as a work of art, it showed 
 any great talent ; to be quite outspoken, 
 it was rather crude in the matter of execu- 
 tion, but it had a certain rough and ready 
 realism and was astonishingly spirited. 
 There was a long, lean-bodied, black cruiser, 
 going full speed with great plumes of 
 black smoke fluttering from its funnels and 
 a handsome wave splitting away from its 
 prow and foaming mightily. Guns along 
 the side of it were spitting out red and 
 yellow fire, and round the ship and over it 
 large shells were bursting in great blots 
 and splashes of brilliant colour. 
 
 " Capital," said I. "It looks impossible 
 for anything to live in such a hail of fire, 
 doesn't it ? " 
 
 " Oh, I dunno," he returned placidly. 
 " I daresay it looks a bit worse in a picture 
 than we noticed it at the time. But 
 that's what it was like. I showed it to 
 my captain, and he was awfully pleased 
 with it and wanted to buy it ; but I give 
 it to him, and glad to, and it's hanging in 
 his cabin now, and this is a copy of it 
 which I painted for my mother. She'll 
 
158 Keeping the Gates 
 
 like it. I didn't reckon my captain would 
 think so much of it, but he did." 
 
 " Pretty good sort, is he ? " I enquired. 
 
 " Good sort ! " he spoke almost indig- 
 nantly. " One o' the very best. There 
 ain't a better officer in the Navy ; you 
 take that from me. The pluckiest chap 
 — it'd take more than all these Germans 
 could do to upset him." For the first time 
 a sort of enthusiasm seemed to get the 
 better of him. " You ought to see him 
 in action ! Takes no more notice of the 
 shells than if they was confetti. Good 
 sort ! — why, our chaps would do anything 
 for him. Good sort ! Why, if he was to 
 want the ship took into hell itself, he's 
 only got to say the word. He knows that. 
 So do we. That's the sort he is. A real 
 gentleman." 
 
 His heat had simmered down, and he was 
 beginning to wrap the picture up again 
 when I checked him to ask : 
 
 " Which is your gun ? " 
 
 " This is mine." He laid his finger on 
 a noble cabbage of smoke with a crimson 
 heart. " It was hot while it lasted, but 
 
Keeping the Gates 159 
 
 jolly good. We helped to polish off the 
 Blucher. I went in one o' the boats 
 to help pick up some o' them Germans out 
 o' the water after she'd gone down. Funny 
 thing was, y'know," his face beamed into 
 a slow, amused grin, " when we heard about 
 that Scarborough bombardment, killin' 
 women and kiddies, our fellows said no 
 more saving drowning Germans — not after 
 that ; and when we'd got the blighters 
 safe aboard I reminded a pal o' mine about 
 that, and he smacks hisself on the leg — like 
 that — and says, ' Damme,' he says, ' I'd 
 forgotten that ! ' And funny thing was 
 so had I till that minute." 
 
 He laughed quietly at the recollection, a 
 big, genial, easy-going laugh, and we shook 
 hands on it, and I left him feeling, some- 
 how, prouder of that forgetfulness of his 
 than I could have felt if he and his gallant 
 comrades, remembering in time, had sung 
 some silly Hymn of Hate against Germany 
 and left their beaten enemies to drown. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 From the Britains Overseas 
 
 " Show the way, England ! 
 Let that grim master 
 Of earth's disaster, 
 Let the War shadow 
 But darken the sun — 
 Trust your child, Canada, 
 She will be with you, 
 Shoulder to shoulder, 
 Gun to your gun : — 
 She will reply with you, 
 Fight for you, 
 Die with you. 
 So wide to the world 
 Be the old flag unfurled — 
 Show the way, England ! " 
 
 Wilfred Campbell. 
 
 ' ' Then each shall take with stubborn grip 
 His rifle as he took his whip. 
 
 And when the Flag's unfurled, 
 The clerk shall drop his futile pen 
 To lift his well-loved lance — and then 
 A nation fronts the world ! " 
 
 Arthur H. Adams (Australasia). 
 
 There was a time, not so very long ago, 
 when I used to argue that the idea of 
 nationality was primeval and should be 
 
 160 
 
From the Britains Overseas 161 
 
 obsolete ; that it was a survival of crude 
 tribal feelings, a local, a parochial gospel 
 that was unworthy of an enlightened 
 generation. I was all for a wide inter- 
 national brotherhood, a realisation of the 
 common humanity of all mankind that 
 should know nothing of different countries 
 and stop short at no accidental frontiers. 
 I thought, and still think, it is almost 
 as absurd to regard as aliens all men who 
 live on the other side of the English Channel 
 as it would be for the men of London City 
 and the men of Southwark to treat each 
 other as foreigners merely because the 
 Thames divided them. But now I have 
 modified those notions. I still believe in 
 that ideal of international brotherhood, 
 but I believe as strongly, too, in the idea 
 of nationality. The two are not incom- 
 patible ; they can and should exist side 
 by side. A reasonable man need not stifle 
 his own individuality in order to be able 
 to live in the friendliest community with 
 his neighbours. 
 
 This war has taught us, among many 
 other things, how inexplicable, how potent 
 
162 From the Britains Overseas 
 
 and how beautiful a spirit is that of nation- 
 ality. Who has not been thrilled by its 
 mighty workings in France, in Russia, in 
 Belgium, in Servia ? It may be carried 
 to extremes, like everything else, and then 
 it becomes a vice and a public nuisance. 
 So far as one can see, the German race has 
 over-indulged in it, and as a consequence 
 the spirit that should be only in their 
 hearts has got into their heads they are 
 drunk with it, and, as drunken men often 
 do, that have grown obsessed with a notion 
 of their own amazing superiority and in- 
 tolerably quarrelsome ; they have been 
 foolishly fired by it to attack outside 
 nationalities in a frenzied yearning to 
 smash them into subservience and swagger 
 over them triumphantly. Yet one cannot 
 but admire, even in Germany, and despite 
 the nameless brutalities with which she 
 has sullied her record, the passionate love 
 of country which has braced and united 
 her people and brings her soldiers in close- 
 packed ranks, as mere foredoomed " can- 
 non-fodder," singing undaunted to their 
 deaths. 
 
From the Britains Overseas 163 
 
 But it is the larger, subtler, more finely 
 human manifestations of this spirit of 
 nationality that have filled me with pro- 
 found wonder and given me a new love 
 of my country and my own people. Here, 
 in England, for instance, you have a man 
 who has met with nothing but misfortune. 
 Circumstances here have been hard upon 
 him ; he has been poor, burdened with care, 
 without hope, and at last has shaken from 
 his feet the dust of the land that has proved 
 so inhospitable and unkind, and has gone 
 away to the other end of the earth in search 
 of opportunities that were denied to him 
 in the place of his birth. Far off, when we 
 have forgotten him, he has established a 
 home for himself, is enjoying a prosperous 
 career, is happy and at rest. If a chance 
 traveller from England visits him he speaks 
 harshly to him of us ; he has a feeling that 
 we wronged him and drove him into exile. 
 Then one day news reaches him that the 
 old country is at war ; that she is assailed 
 by a powerful enemy, threatened with 
 invasion, and calling her sons together to 
 a struggle for very life. He does not even 
 
164 From the Britains Overseas 
 
 hesitate ; he puts his private interests 
 aside, forgets his present happiness and his 
 past misery, knows only that the homeland 
 is in danger and as swiftly as a ship can 
 carry him he is back here to fight beside 
 us for its safety, and if need be to die for 
 it. We can understand this, but we can't 
 explain it ; it is too big and fine a thing to 
 be subject to our peddling little psychologi- 
 cal dissections. 
 
 But the sense of nationality moves men 
 even more mysteriously than that. Per- 
 haps your broken exile, instead of going 
 into quite foreign parts, emigrates to one 
 of the great British Dominions oversea. 
 He settles down there, makes a position for 
 himself, and feels he has done with the 
 homeland for ever. Sons are born to him, 
 the years pass, and he dies. Then one day 
 War bursts upon us terribly, and the 
 call goes forth, and those sons who have 
 never seen their father's land, nor heard 
 from him much that was good about it, are 
 among the first to sacrifice their careers 
 and hasten over to take their place with us 
 in the firing line, eager to give their lives 
 
From the Britains Overseas 165 
 
 sooner than the old country shall be 
 worsted in the strife. 
 
 Typical of the letters from Britons who 
 have gone to live abroad was that received, 
 in the initial stages of the War, by Colonel 
 J. M. McMaster, commanding the 5th 
 Battalion of the King's Liverpool Regi- 
 ment. The writer had aforetime been a 
 sergeant in the battalion, and wrote now 
 to say, " I beg to offer myself as a volunteer 
 for the front. I am thirty-nine, in the 
 best of health, and hard as nails. I have 
 arranged all my affairs here, and can pay 
 my own expenses." So far from feeling 
 that he was laying his homefolk under any 
 obligation, he added : "I shall consider 
 it an honour if you can view my offer 
 favourably." An Australian who has four 
 sons on active service, one in the Australian 
 Navy, and three out with the Australian 
 contingent that is helping to hold the Suez 
 Canal against the Turks, says that all four 
 volunteered promptly during his absence 
 from home, and he is proud and glad that 
 they did. One writing to tell him of what 
 they had done, said : " The old country 
 
166 From the Bri tains Overseas 
 
 wants all the fighting men she can get, 
 and it is up to us to do our bit so we have 
 joined and expect to embark before you 
 get back " ; and another, explaining how 
 he felt it impossible for him not to go 
 concluded : " Don't worry. I shall do 
 my best, and if the worst happens, anyhow, 
 you will know that I did the right thing." 
 And that is a noble, characteristic letter 
 written to Mr. L. L. Grimwade, of Stoke- 
 on-Trent, by his brother Edward, settled 
 in New Zealand, who has sent one son to 
 the war and is ready, if need be, to let 
 the other go : "On this subject his mother 
 is in liquidation, and his dad not much 
 better. None the less, if the Motherland 
 calls, Ted must go too ... I am prepared 
 to give another son (as I have given one) 
 and I am prepared to get into the fighting 
 line myself. Further, I am prepared to 
 suffer loss of fortune and see starvation 
 rather than sacrifice the honour of our 
 Empire. . . . My boy, Len, went away 
 with his regiment yesterday. All we can 
 say is ' The Lord bless the lad.' " There 
 are South Africans serving in our new 
 
From the Britains Overseas 167 
 
 Armies, and we know the heavy work they 
 have undertaken for the Empire within 
 their own borders. And Canada has an- 
 answered the call as immediately and as 
 whole-heartedly. " Thirty-three thousand 
 of our boys have come over here already," 
 as one who had come with them said to 
 me, " and if three hundred thousand are 
 wanted they will be ready before your folk 
 ask for them." Privates in the ranks of 
 those thirty-three thousand are several 
 Members of Parliament, wealthy merchants, 
 doctors, lawyers, University professors; 
 clergymen, and certain financial magnates 
 who equipped sections of the troops at 
 their own expense. Amongst them also 
 is a good sprinkling of Americans, several 
 of whom abandoned enviable commercial 
 positions in order to hurry over the border 
 and be in time to sail with the first regi- 
 ments to set out from Canada. 
 
 I spent parts of two or three days last 
 August with an American citizen who was 
 over here on a month's holiday, and at 
 first he was disposed to be puzzled and 
 disappointed at what seemed to him our 
 
168 From the Britains Overseas 
 
 indifference in the face of such a momentous 
 crisis. 
 
 " You don't seem to be half so excited 
 about it in London as we are in N* York," 
 he remarked. " Just before I left, if I 
 went out at night, there were crowds singing 
 the ' Marseillaise/ and once I heard them let 
 themselves go on your National Anthem, 
 waiting outside one of our newspaper offices 
 to see the latest news flashed on to a huge 
 sheet all up the front of the building. But 
 here I go out at nights and everybody's 
 comfortable and cheerful as usual and 
 nothing more doing outside the newspaper 
 offices than anywhere else." 
 
 I tried to persuade him that we had set 
 our teeth to see this job right through, 
 and were working at it vigorously, 
 resolutely, and with a thorough appreciation 
 of its magnitude, though we were making 
 no fuss about it ; and when I met him 
 again a few days later he had satisfied 
 himself that it was so. 
 
 " Man," he cried enthusiastically, " I've 
 been two days running and stood outside 
 your chief recruiting station in Scotland 
 
From the Britains Overseas 169 
 
 Yard, and there's a line of men four deep 
 stretching clean out into Whitehall, and 
 it never grows shorter, because as fast as 
 the guys inside can attend to them and 
 some more are let in, others have added 
 themselves on at the other end of the line — 
 all of them as full of ginger and as keen to 
 get in as if it was the pit door of a theatre. 
 It struck me dumb. When I could talk 
 I spoke to one of your cops about it, and 
 he was as unmoved as if he'd been made of 
 wood. He seemed to pity my excitement. 
 " Oh, it's like this every day," says he, as 
 if there was nothing uncommon in it at all. 
 I've chatted with some of your business 
 people — solemn old boys some of 'em, 
 and some of 'em as stodgy as they make 
 'em anywhere, but you've only got to give 
 them a scratch and you find under the 
 surface they're all full of this affair and on 
 fire with it. I believe I begin to understand 
 you over here. You're a great people ; I 
 admit it ; and I suppose like all big things 
 you are solid and quiet. But you're doing 
 it, and you'll get it done. I feel that in 
 my bones. I've had a letter from an old 
 
170 From the Britains Overseas 
 
 pal of mine in New York this morning. He 
 tells me he and two other fellows were 
 just bolting North to join your Canadian 
 contingent. True-blue Americans all of 
 them, and one the head clerk in his office. 
 Mad it sounds, doesn't it ? No business o' 
 theirs, eh ? But I dunno— perhaps it is 
 because we haven't strained all the British 
 blood out of us even yet. Quaint thing! 
 Why, do you know when I stood watching 
 those recruits outside Scotland Yard I 
 found the tears in my eyes once, and had a 
 frantic impulse to tack myself on the end 
 of the queue and go and be one of them. 
 I believe if I went there too much I should 
 do it, too ! " 
 
 I had not had a chance to talk with any 
 of the Oversea soldiers until late one evening 
 last December, when I was coming back to 
 town from Reading, and designedly got 
 into a railway carriage where five of them 
 were seated. Four were kilties, and they 
 had the four corners ; the other, a well- 
 featured, rather shy looking youngster in 
 khaki had a centre seat opposite me. Two 
 of the kilties were stolid, uncommunicative 
 
From the Britains Overseas 171 
 
 youths, who smoked and said nothing ; one 
 in the right-hand corner facing me was a 
 stout, genial, quiet man with black, twink- 
 ling eyes ; the fourth, immediately on my 
 left, was a tall, raw-boned, solderly looking 
 fellow of a downright manner of speech that 
 had a pleasant hint of a brogue in it ; and 
 it was to him that I addressed myself : 
 
 " I see there are a lot of you on the train 
 here. You are not off to the front, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 " To the front ! " with an exaggerated 
 air of surprise. " No such luck. Why, 
 I hear that Kitchener isn't going to send us 
 out till about March, and by that time 
 there won't be any sanguinary war to go 
 to." 
 
 " Oh, it won't be over by then," I said 
 consolingly. 
 
 " Won't it ? We'll see. I'll bet we shall 
 see nothing of it, and I'm fairly fed up with 
 messing about here all this time. I didn't 
 come over here to play about on Salisbury 
 Plain learning my ABC. I'm an old 
 Boer War man. I was eighteen months in 
 South Africa. I know my business, yet 
 
172 From the Britains Overseas 
 
 here I am wasting my time forming fours 
 and playing kiss-in-the-ring with a swarm 
 of raw recruities. Mind you, I'm not 
 blaming Kitchener. He knows what he's 
 doing. Most of us are new hands, and have 
 got to be properly trained before they're 
 good for anything. But there's a good 
 ten thousand of old Boer War men among us 
 who are fit and ready to go this minute. 
 Why can't we be sorted out and formed 
 into separate battalions and let us go out 
 now — at once ? That's what I say. What 
 do you say, Wally ? Am I right ?" 
 
 " Quite right, boy," agreed the stout 
 kiltie, smiling and twinkling at us placidly. 
 
 " If I'd known we were going to be set 
 down here like this I don't believe I'd 
 have come. I reckoned on going straight 
 to the front. When I knew the old country 
 wanted men, I wasn't going to stop out of 
 it. What do you think ? I chucked a job 
 worth ten pounds a week on purpose to 
 come. So did Wally there. Didn't you, 
 Wally ? " 
 
 " Ah, I did," Wally contentedly agreed. 
 
 ii Yes. There you are. Then they tell 
 
From the Britains Overseas 173 
 
 us to run away and play on Salisbury Plain. 
 I want to go to the front. I joined because 
 I wanted to do a bit for the old place and 
 have a smack at these blighted Germans. 
 If Fd only wanted a holiday I'd have gone 
 to the seaside. I'd ha' got decent grub 
 there, at all events." 
 
 " And don't you now ? " I asked gently. 
 
 " Don't I now ? Look here ! Ever since 
 we landed in this country we've had 
 nothing but Irish stew. Nothing but Irish 
 stew — day after day till I'm sick of the 
 very smell of it. Is that so, Wally/' 
 
 "That's so, boy," Wally chuckled. 
 " Quite right." 
 
 " I've no fault to find with the food," 
 the khaki youngster put in a little diffi- 
 dently. 
 
 " Oh, haven't you ? " The lean kiltie 
 was down on him promptly. " What do 
 you have, then ? " 
 
 " Bit of bacon for breakfast, porridge 
 sometimes ; sometimes an egg." 
 
 " What do you have for dinner ? " 
 
 " Sometimes beef, sometimes mutton. 
 And we always have a pudding— " 
 
174 From the Britains Overseas 
 
 " My God, Wally," the other burst forth 
 explosively, " this chap has pudding ! 
 Whereabouts is your camp ? Pudding ! 
 He don't know where he is. He's in 
 Paradise ! What sort of pudding ? " 
 
 " Oh, plum duff." 
 
 " My— God ! " He sank back over- 
 come with memories. " I haven't tasted 
 plum duff since — since — Do you pay any 
 extra for it ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes." 
 
 " Ah, well, there you are. You can have 
 anything if you pay for it, but we're rough- 
 ing it and taking what comes and nothing 
 ever comes but Irish stew. And now, when 
 we ought to be out yonder having a go in 
 the trenches, because we've been good boys 
 we're let off for a couple of days leave in 
 London." 
 
 "I'm going to Glasgow," said the khakied 
 youngster. 
 
 " What for ? " the lean kiltie demanded. 
 " Isn't London good enough for you ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, and I shall stop in London if 
 I can't catch the ii.io from Euston to- 
 night. Do you think," he asked me, " we 
 
From the Britains Overseas ^5 
 
 shall reach Paddington in time for me to 
 catch that ? " 
 
 "We might," I thought, "but it will 
 mean a rush, and you'll only do it by the skin 
 of your teeth." 
 
 " I'll have a try," he said quietly. 
 
 " What do you want to bother about 
 Glasgow f or ? " enquired the kiltie. " Born 
 there ? " 
 
 " Oh, no. I was born in Canada." 
 
 " Oh ! Relatives up there, I suppose ? ,; 
 
 " No. I don't know anybody there. I 
 just thought I'd like to have a look at it, 
 that's all." 
 
 He made a queer little nervous gesture 
 with his hands and cast a quick, shy glance 
 first at the kiltie, then at me, and was silent. 
 
 We were silent too. I knew somehow, 
 as well as if he had said it, that his father, 
 perhaps his grandfather, was born in 
 Glasgow, he had listened to their reminis- 
 cent talk of the old home-place, and had 
 a sort of longing to see it. I fancy the 
 kiltie had a suspicion of this as well, for 
 after he had said nothing for a while he 
 looked at his watch and growled. 
 
176 From the Britains Overseas 
 
 " You'll just about do it, man." 
 
 And when we got out at Paddington he 
 shouted, 
 
 " There you are — there's a taxi yon. 
 Nip into that." 
 
 And the youngster took his advice. 
 
 " Well, now," I said to the lean kiltie, as 
 we were saying good-bye, "I'm awfully sorry 
 you are having such a rotten bad time over 
 here, and " 
 
 " Look here — that's all right," he inter- 
 rupted. " I daresay I've made the worst 
 of it. I'd have come if I'd known it was 
 going to be ten times as bad, and that's 
 straight. But if a British soldier isn't 
 entitled to grumble, then what rights has 
 he got left to him, eh ? I don't mind 
 about the stew, or anything. What I want 
 is to go to the front. That's what I came 
 for. Once I get out there, give me stew all 
 the while till I get to Berlin and you won't 
 hear me grousing about it — not a whisper. 
 I want to be where the Germans are — 
 that's my only complaint. Put me among 
 the Germans, and there'll be nothing the 
 matter with me." 
 
From the Britains Overseas 177 
 
 Since then, some of the Canadian troops 
 have been fighting gallantly beside our own 
 out in France, and I hope and believe that 
 kiltie from Canada has had his desire and 
 is one of them. 
 
 Even if we take it as nothing more than 
 natural and magnificently right that these 
 brothers of our own blood should stand so 
 doughtily by us in the hour of our necessity, 
 you cannot explain the enthusiastic loyalty 
 of our Indian fellow subjects in the same 
 way. Something of self-consciousness al- 
 ways makes me a little ashamed when I 
 speak in praise of my country or my 
 countrymen, though I can really do so with 
 a kind of detachment, I have had so in- 
 finitesimal a personal share in whatever 
 ruling has been done ; but it seems to me 
 that had our methods of government been 
 intolerant, oppressive, unjust, it must have 
 been impossible for us to inspire any 
 people under the sun with such a spon- 
 taneous eagerness to serve us and lay down 
 their lives in our cause as our Indian com- 
 rades ha^e shown and are showing. We 
 may have blundered at times, but I think 
 
 M 
 
178 From the Britains Overseas 
 
 that in the main we have striven to deal 
 justly by them, we have aimed at giving 
 them righteous rule, enlarging their liber- 
 ties, and opening more and more all the 
 ways in which they can fit themselves for 
 self-government ; and, for my part, I 
 accept their instant loyalty, their pride in 
 counting themselves one with us, co- 
 partners in the Empire, as an unhesitating 
 recognition of this. 
 
 If it had been otherwise, they and their 
 Princes never could have offered their 
 services with such generous promptitude, nor 
 have fought by our other men so valiantly 
 and with such invincible cheerfulness. The 
 papers are rich already in stories of their 
 heroism — of the terrible, irresistible charges 
 of the Ghurkas, the Pathans, the Bengal 
 Lancers, the steady valour under fire of 
 Hindoo and Mohammedan regiments alike. 
 But my business is not so much with details 
 of the fighting as with the spirit in which 
 the Indians, in common with the rest of the 
 Empire, have risen to the height of this 
 great argument, so I shall content myself 
 with one or two notes that sufficiently 
 
From the Britains Overseas 179 
 
 illustrate this. Again and again you read 
 in letters from their officers of how keen 
 they are to be advancing and to be allowed 
 to quit the trenches and drive the enemy 
 back at the point of the bayonet, and Eng- 
 lish soldiers who have seen them on the 
 field say, " Once they get the order to 
 charge there is no holding them back " ; 
 " Their officers can hardly get them to 
 come out of the trenches when a battle is 
 finished." " They are very eager for fight- 
 ing. A lot came in the other day to have 
 their wounds dressed, and as soon as the 
 doctor turned his back they sloped back 
 to the firing line." " The Ghurkas always 
 want to be advancing and it is a job to 
 keep them back." An Indian officer went 
 to visit a Sikh soldier who was in hospital, 
 shot through both legs and one arm, and 
 said how sorry he was to see him so badly 
 injured. " Sahib, what does it matter ? " 
 replied the Indian, with a smile. " This is 
 what we came out for." " This is a good 
 war," said another Indian ; and another, 
 when he was asked by Lieutenant Anne 
 how he liked being in action, ejaculated, 
 
180 From the Britains Overseas 
 
 " Oh, Sahib, all wars are beautiful, but 
 this one is heavenly ! " " These Indians 
 fight remarkably well," writes Lieutenant 
 Gendre - Chardoux. " They had never 
 heard the guns before, and at first they 
 showed some nervousness, but they soon 
 grew accustomed to it. The Ghurkas the 
 other day gave it hot to some German 
 regiments. They crawled in the fields for 
 two hours without being seen by the Ger- 
 mans. When they got quite close to the 
 enemy they sprang up with their kukri in 
 hand, and what was left of the Germans 
 took to their heels. The Ghurkas are born 
 fighters. They are very small men, well 
 knit, with a Japanese face. They are as 
 nimble as cats." 
 
 The only Indian I have seen who has 
 been at the front was at a kind of social 
 gathering, when a number of wounded 
 English and Belgian soldiers were present. 
 He was a stately, upstanding figure of a 
 man, dignified, silent, and carried his left 
 arm in a sling. A lady who had been 
 particularly interesting herself in the Bel- 
 gians, passed over to him and after some 
 
From the Britains Overseas 181 
 
 friendly questions about his wound asked, 
 partly no doubt to make conversation and 
 partly to satisfy a casual curiosity as to 
 what part of India he hailed from : 
 " And which force do you belong to ? " 
 He eyed her deferentially, evidently rather 
 doubtful of her meaning, then flashing his 
 white teeth in a sudden smile, said, with the 
 slightest touch of pride : 
 
 " Madame, I am a Britisher." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Seeing it Through 
 
 The great word went from England to my soul, 
 And I arose." 
 
 Browning's Strafford. 
 
 This morning, as I was sitting down to make 
 a beginning of the present chapter I caught 
 the monotonous, rather melancholy sound 
 of a bugle, far off, blowing continuously 
 on the same two or three flat notes. I 
 knew what it meant, for in these last five 
 months I have heard it many times ; so 
 I stood at my window and presently could 
 see, as I have seen before, a file of Belgian 
 soldiers marching into view down the long 
 road that winds in from the small town 
 that lies beyond the fields. They were 
 men who had been wounded. Discharged 
 from hospital, they had been convalescing 
 in the country hereabouts, and were making 
 now for the railway station, that lies ten 
 
 182 
 
Seeing it Through 183 
 
 minutes below my house, on their way back 
 to the front. There were about a hundred 
 of them, marching three abreast, with the 
 bugler leading. Shabby, war-worn, muf- 
 flered and overcoated, none of them in a 
 complete uniform, they trudged on sturdily, 
 though here and there was one that still 
 went with a slight limp. As they were 
 passing, the bugler's wind seemed to give 
 out and he rested from his blowing. In- 
 stantly, all the men broke into singing the 
 Marseillaise and, keeping step to that, it 
 was good to see how their shoulders squared 
 and their pace quickened. I watched till 
 they had winded out of sight, and listened 
 till their singing had lessened and died in 
 the distance. 
 
 There was something strangely touching 
 in the sight and in the sound of them. 
 There was all the desolation of Belgium in 
 it, the crying of slaughtered women and 
 children, the black ruin of shattered villages, 
 the wail of the living for the dead, the 
 misery of a desolated country and a people 
 wandering homeless. But there was in it, 
 too, an undercurrent of high courage, an 
 
184 Seeing it Through 
 
 unbroken confidence that the end was not 
 yet, and would not be until their wrongs 
 were avenged and their country their own 
 again. It was the defiant ring in their 
 voices and something in the dogged set of 
 their figures, I think, that brought back 
 to my recollection the story told by our 
 soldiers of how in the Belgian trenches 
 they saw a woman placidly seated beside 
 her husband. He was all that was left 
 to her ; her children had been butchered ; 
 her home was in ashes ; her other friends 
 slain or scattered ; so she stayed there 
 resolutely in the trenches by her man, 
 keeping him supplied with ammunition and 
 loading his gun for him. 
 
 We are so afraid of appearing unpractical 
 and foolish that it comes easier to say that, 
 as a nation, we have gone into this war 
 in self-defence, and because we knew that 
 if Germany crushed France and Russia 
 we should soon have to fight against her 
 alone for our very existence. I won't 
 answer for the diplomatists, but I repeat 
 that, beyond question, it was a keen sym- 
 pathy with France and above all a flaming 
 
Seeing it Through 185 
 
 indignation against the barbarous cruelties 
 that have made Belgium a wilderness and 
 a place of tears, a feeling that our honour 
 was pledged to the protection of that small 
 nation, which appealed to the chivalry of 
 our manhood and was largely responsible 
 for the eagerness with which thousands of 
 volunteers hastened to swell the ranks 
 of our new Armies. It is this sentiment, 
 principle — call it what you will — that has 
 roused the women of our country and made 
 them as warlike as their men ; and it is 
 this that helps to stiffen the determination 
 of our fighters in the field, and that rankles 
 in the minds of our wounded and makes 
 them impatient of their inactivity. " I 
 shall be going back next week, and I'm jolly 
 glad," one man said to me, who was inva- 
 lided home near the end of the retirement 
 from Mons. " If you had seen those poor 
 devils of Belgians bolting out of blazing 
 villages, terrified women and old men 
 lugging bundles of things along with them, 
 and poor little bits of kids crying their 
 hearts out — I wake in the night and it 
 makes me mad to remember it — you'd 
 
186 Seeing it Through 
 
 never be able to rest till we have seen this 
 thing right through." 
 
 Turn over the letters from our soldiers 
 and the same thing is constantly cropping 
 up in them : " You can't possibly under- 
 stand what those Belgians have suffered 
 unless you could come over here and see for 
 yourself. ' ' ' ' The worst part of it all is to see 
 the poor little kiddies in their stockinged 
 feet, and some with none on, straggling 
 along behind their mothers. It is awful." 
 Another tells of how he and his comrades 
 could not bear to hear these children crying 
 for food : "I have seen our soldiers give 
 them their own meal and go to bed hungry 
 after fighting all day." There are scores 
 of such tales : "I gave my rations and my 
 waterproof sheet to a Belgian woman with 
 three children who were wet through and 
 hungry." " We met a lot of tired women 
 and children who had been driven out of 
 their village . They were pretty well starved . 
 We gave them our day's rations. It was all 
 we could do for them." " There was a poor 
 Belgian woman almost naked. My chum 
 gave her his blanket. Do send him out 
 
Seeing it Through 187 
 
 another blanket if you can. Send it care 
 of me." " If you had seen some of the 
 things that we have seen out here, you 
 would not wonder if our fellows are roused 
 and would sooner be killed to the last man 
 than be beaten in such a war as this." 
 
 But they will not be beaten, and they 
 know it. Turn to another phase of their 
 letters and you find behind all their humanity 
 a settled confidence and a grim soldierly joy 
 of battle that will carry them through to 
 victory at all costs : " Mind you, we are 
 doing this with a good heart, and whatever 
 happens, we will win in the end." " We 
 shall win, right enough. In fact we shall 
 not hear of anything else." "It is tough 
 work, very tough work, but we are out 
 for business, and we are going to win, and 
 to win well." "It is worse than murder, 
 but it has got to be done." " Everyone 
 here is sticking it." " It is going to be a 
 long, long struggle, but it has got to be done, 
 or we would never be able to live in peace." 
 " We are not worrying ; we feel that our 
 day has come." " We keep pegging away. 
 Slowly but surely we are going to Berlin." 
 
188 Seeing it Through 
 
 " I shall not be sorry when it's over, but 
 rather than let them win I would sooner 
 keep at war for ever." " We will struggle 
 on till we beat them, no matter what lives 
 it costs." 
 
 This is how the men at the front are 
 taking it, and if you look at the letters from 
 the men in hospitals at home, here is a 
 handful of characteristic utterances : "I 
 had rough times of it, but I have that 
 feeling — I want to be at the front." " I 
 want to get back and be at 'em again." 
 " When my time to return comes, I shall 
 go with a good heart." " I shall be back 
 again before long, and I shall not be sorry. 
 I've got a reckoning to have with the 
 Germans." " As you say, it is glory to 
 have done a bit, but of course as soon as 
 I'm better I shall be off to the front again." 
 And this from another, anxious to mend 
 and go back to his place beside his com- 
 rades, puts into simple black and white 
 what has been said to me in effect by 
 several of the wounded men I have spoken 
 with : " It is lovely lying in a nice soft 
 bed instead of in the trenches, but so long 
 
Seeing it Through 189 
 
 as the boys are fighting out there my mind 
 is not at ease." 
 
 Another very striking thing in many of 
 the letters and stories from the front is 
 their revelation of a completely selfless 
 devotion to a sense of duty. The men 
 who write them, or are the theme of them, 
 are so obviously not out after any personal 
 honour ; it is the honour of their country 
 they fight and, if need be, die for, and 
 bound up with that, for each man, is the 
 honour of his regiment. If you would 
 know the real spirit of chivalry and self- 
 sacrifice that lies behind the pluck and 
 light-heartedness with which so many of 
 our soldiers have gone uncompelled to this 
 war, it is in this anecdote related by a 
 doctor in one of our Field Hospitals. After 
 a furious bayonet charge, a young British 
 infantryman was carried in unconscious 
 and fatally wounded. At the last, he 
 became conscious, but lay with fast glazing 
 sight, painless but indifferent, till of a 
 sudden he seemed to remember, half raised 
 himself on his elbow, and looking up at the 
 doctor with kindling eyes, asked anxiously, 
 
190 Seeing it Through 
 
 " How did we do ? " " Magnificently, my 
 boy," said the doctor. " Your chaps 
 cleared the Germans out of the trenches 
 and chased them for a mile." He dropped 
 back with a satisfied sigh, muttered, 
 " That's all right, then," and next minute 
 was dead. And that same selfless devo- 
 tion finds ever larger and nobler utterance 
 in the letter, published in the Daily Tele- 
 graph, that was written to a friend at home 
 by Captain Norman Leslie, shortly before 
 he was killed in action : 
 
 " Try and not worry too much about the 
 war units. Individuals cannot count. 
 Remember we are writing a new page in 
 history. Future generations cannot be 
 allowed to read of the decline of the British 
 Empire and attribute it to us. We live 
 our little lives and die, and to some is given 
 the chance of proving themselves men, 
 and to others no chance comes. Whatever 
 our individual faults, virtues or qualities 
 may be, it matters not ; when we are up 
 against big things let us forget individuals 
 and let us act as one great British unit, 
 united and fearless. Some will live and 
 
Seeing it Through 191 
 
 many will die, but count not the loss. It 
 is far better to go out with honour than 
 survive with shame." 
 
 This is not the spirit of a decadent nation, 
 or of a nation that has finished its work ; 
 and so far as my reading and experience 
 go — and they have gone a good way — 
 it is in this spirit, more or less consciously, 
 that our people the world over have an- 
 swered and are still answering the call of 
 the Empire. 
 
EPILOGUE. 
 
 Still from far off the listening spirit hears 
 
 A music of the spheres, 
 Though heard too close their sweet accord may round 
 
 To one gross roll of sound. 
 
 And War, that with its thunderous gloom and gleam 
 Storms through our days, may seem, 
 
 By peaceful hearths, in some far-coming year, 
 
 A music, that was discord heard too near. 
 
 The soul of beauty walks with aspect sad, 
 
 And not in beauty clad ; 
 And when God's angel comes, his passing by 
 
 Blinds us like light too nigh. 
 
 But the too-dazzling day that dims our sight 
 
 Leads us, when all its light, 
 Upgathered in Night's lifted hands afar, 
 
 Orbs to the still perfection of a star. 
 
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