Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 Part 2

It was then that those who were directing the British operations as a whole suddenly intervened and induced the Belgians to alter their plan. The very recently improvised Naval Division was set in motion for Antwerp. Mr. Churchill, a bolt from the blue, appeared in the city. And, instead of King Albert's forces getting clear in good time and moving off, practically unmolested, to join the Anglo-French host in Western Flanders, they only escaped by the skin of their teeth after being roughly handled, and the all-important junction was delayed so long that a most critical situation arose. Moreover, the Seventh Division and a Cavalry Division were packed off in a hurry from this country to help the Belgians out of a mess which they would not have got into had they been left alone, instead of being sent to join the Expeditionary Force where they were badly wanted. That is how I read the proceedings at the time, and how I read them still.

War Office procedure did not at that stage conform to the methods which had held good previous to mobilization, and which had been devised to hold good in time of war; something further will be said on the subject in a later chapter. The Director of Military Operations did not on this particular occasion hear about the Seventh Division and the cavalry being diverted to the Belgian coast until after instructions for the move had been issued and the troops were preparing to proceed to the port of embarkation. How far my chief, Sir C. Douglas, concurred in this disposition of our limited available fighting forces, how far he was consulted and what part he performed in giving the orders, I do not know. I have no recollection of ever discussing the matter with him. But there was a circ.u.mstance in connection with the transaction which does suggest that the C.I.G.S.

did not play a very prominent role in the business.

Some time after I had learnt what was going forward--it was next day, I think--the idea occurred to me to find out what steps had been, or were being, taken to provide the necessary organization for a base and line of communications for this force which was about to be projected suddenly across the narrow seas. Enquiries elicited the startling information that nothing whatever had been done in the matter; some of those most concerned in such questions in Whitehall had not even heard that the force was preparing to start. The problem, such as it was, was promptly solved as soon as it was grappled with. The Directors dealing with such subjects met in my room, and in a few minutes the requisite staff had been selected, arrangements had been decided upon, and orders had been despatched--it was as easy as falling downstairs once machinery had been set in motion. But how came it that this had not been thought of before? Now, I can quite understand Sir C. Douglas holding that this particular phase of the Antwerp project, sending Generals Capper and Byng with their divisions to sustain the Belgians and the Naval Division by a landing at Zeebrugge, was a sound one from the strategical point of view--such questions are necessarily questions of opinion. But I cannot understand a master of military administration such as he was, a soldier equipped with exceptional knowledge of organization and with wide experience of the requirements of a British army in the field, sending a considerable body of troops off oversea to a theatre of operations, where fighting might be expected almost as soon as they landed, without making provision for their base and communications.

Actually, what turned out to be a tragic episode was not without some little comic relief. There was consternation in Whitehall one evening, just before the dinner-hour, when tidings arrived that a couple of the transports conveying this force to its destination had pa.s.sed the rendezvous where the convoy was mustering, and were at large, heading without escort or orders for a water-area known to be mined by both sides, and where enemy destroyers and similar pests were apt to make their appearance unexpectedly. Fortunately the panic was of short duration. On returning to the office after dinner one learnt that the straying vessels had both fetched up on the Goodwins--luckily about low water--and were under control again.

In any criticism of H.M. Government's action in connection with the Antwerp affair (as regards the prosecution of the war in the field, H.M. Government for all practical purposes then meant Mr. Asquith, Lord Kitchener, and Mr. Churchill) it must be allowed that the situation at the time was a most complicated and perplexing one. Lord French in his book makes it clear that, while he objected strongly to the Seventh Division and the Third Cavalry Division being sent to the Belgian coast under the independent command of Sir H. Rawlinson instead of their being sent to Boulogne and placed under his own orders, he did not wish Antwerp to be abandoned. Lord Kitchener had, as a matter of fact, seized upon Antwerp as a means of inducing reluctant colleagues to a.s.sent to the United Kingdom being denuded of these regular troops and their being hurried to the theatre of war.

Knowing what we know now, it seems almost certain that, no matter where the fresh troops from England turned up or whose orders they were under, the Belgian army and the Naval Division would have been lost for good and all had they not cleared out of the fortress when they did. The verdict of history will probably be that both H.M.

Government and the commander of the British Expeditionary Force misread the situation, that H.M. Government's misreading was very much the graver of the two, that there was excuse for such misreadings when the inevitable fog of war is taken into consideration, and that the Germans threw away their chances and bungled the business worst of all.

A few days after Antwerp had fallen, and a week or so before that tremendous conflict which has come to be known as the First Battle of Ypres was fairly launched, Sir C. Douglas, who for a long time past had not been in the best of health and upon whom the strain had been telling severely during the previous two and a half months, did not make his appearance at the office one morning. He had struggled on with splendid grit and determination almost to the very end, for he died within a few days, a victim of devotion to duty and of overwork.

His place was taken by Sir J. Wolfe-Murray.

CHAPTER III

LORD KITCHENER'S START

A first meeting with Lord Kitchener -- Sent up to see him in Pretoria by his brother under unpromising conditions -- The interview -- The Chief's pleasant reception -- A story of Lord K.

from the Sudan -- An unpleasant interview with him in August 1914 -- Rare meetings with him during the first two or three months -- His ignorance of War Office organization -- His lack of acquaintance with many matters in connection with the existing organization of the army -- His indisposition to listen to advice on such subjects -- Lord K. shy of strangers -- His treatment of the Territorial Forces -- Their weak point at the outset of hostilities, not having the necessary strength to mobilize at war establishment -- Effect of this on the general plans -- The way the Territorials dwindled after taking the field -- Lord K.

inclined at first to pile up divisions without providing them with the requisite reservoirs of reserves -- His feat in organizing four regular divisions in addition to those in the Expeditionary Force -- His immediate recognition of the magnitude of the contest -- He makes things hum in the War Office -- His differences of opinion with G.H.Q. -- The inability of G.H.Q. to realize that a vast expansion of the military forces was the matter of primary importance -- Lord K.'s relations with Sir J.

French -- The despatch of Sir H. Smith-Dorrien to command the Second Corps -- Sir J. French not well treated at the time of the Antwerp affair -- The relegation of the General Staff at the War Office to the background in the early days -- Question whether this was entirely due to its having suffered in efficiency by the withdrawals which took place on mobilization -- The General Staff only eliminated in respect to operations.

My first meeting with Lord Kitchener had taken place under conditions that augured no agreeable experience. It was in March or April 1901.

At that time I had charge of a heterogeneous collection of guns in a body of troops operating in the Eastern Transvaal and commanded by General Walter Kitchener, the Chief's brother, and was also used by him as a sort of second-in-command to take charge of portions of the force when detached from time to time. Our commando had trekked out from Belfast and had camped in a likely spot, and on the morrow he took out part of the force in one direction and sent me off with part of the force in another direction, while the remainder stayed in camp guarding the impedimenta. I tumbled across a few snipers, and we enjoyed a harmless sc.r.a.p; but Walter b.u.t.ted into a whole lot of truculent burghers. These were being reinforced and were full of fight, so he decided to retire, and also to retire the camp; but the message directing me to conform unfortunately went astray. The result was that before long I found myself covering the retirement of the whole gang, and being rather harried to boot--one of those _reculer pour mieux sauter_ sort of movements where it is all _reculer_ and no _sauter_. The casualties were, however, small, and we lost nothing worth bothering about; but Walter took his big brother very seriously indeed, was much concerned as to how the Chief might regard an operation which we could not possibly represent as a success, and, after much cogitation, packed me off to Pretoria to report in person.

He gave me elaborate directions as to how best to approach the subject when in the presence. "No, don't put it that way, tell it him like this"--"He'll d.a.m.n me and you, but whatever you do, don't make excuses," and so forth. One had read Steevens' appreciation of the then Sirdar in his _With Kitchener to Khartum_, and had gathered from newspapers (the worst possible source of information about the character and the idiosyncrasies of persons of note) that this commander-in-chief of ours was a cold, exacting, unsympathetic figure, much more given to jumping down your throat than to patting you on the back. The consequence was that when, having fetched up in Pretoria after some adventures, I was wending my way to Lord K.'s headquarters I felt very much as one does when repairing to the dentist. It was worse, indeed, than going to the dentist, because when I got there Colonel Hubert Hamilton, the Military Secretary (who was killed when in command of the Third Division soon after it reached the Lys from the Aisne in October 1914), greeted me with "Very sorry, but the Chief's awfully busy to-day. Roll up about this time to-morrow, will you, like a good chap?" It was the same story again on the next day--the Chief up to the neck in correspondence. But on presenting myself on the third day, Hamilton promptly ushered me into the great man's study, where he was sitting at his desk.

"What d'you want?" demanded Lord K. I began explaining about our little affair near Belfast; but he cut me short with "Oh, I don't want to hear about all that. Had any trouble getting here?" Yes, the train in front of mine had been blown up, and----"They'll bag you on the way back," interrupted the Chief cheerily, "so I'd better get what I can out of you now; my brother writes that you've been about a good deal on the east side, and I'm going to take that in hand very shortly.

Come along over here." We went across to where there was a huge great map of the Eastern Transvaal, with the positions of the posts and columns, etc., marked on it, and for twenty minutes or so I found myself enjoying the pleasantest interview with a much senior officer than I had ever had in my life. He listened to my exposition of how it seemed best to round up the enemy commandos, where sedentary forces ought to be dumped down to act as stops, and what lines the mobile columns ought to operate along. Lord K. occasionally interjected a question or criticism as to some particular point, but seemed not in the least displeased when I stuck to my own view. When he dismissed me he spoke in a particularly friendly way, and my experience of him on this occasion was nothing short of a revelation.

"Had a satisfactory talk?" asked Hamilton when I came out, and, on my saying how nice the Chief had been, he remarked, "He's in one of his good moods to-day, but you mightn't always find him quite so tame.

He's been down to the Old Colony and back these last two days, and found things moving--that's why he could not see you before. But he always keeps his movements very close, so you mustn't let it go any further."

Walter Kitchener, not unnaturally, entertained unbounded admiration for, and belief in, his brother, and he often told me tales from Egyptian days of things that the Sirdar then did and of the resource he would display in unexpected emergencies. One of these yarns about the great War Minister at a stage of his career when he was still mounting the ladder of success deserves to be repeated here.[3] It happened one day, during the operations for the recovery of the Sudan from the Mahdi-ists, that "K." was riding forward with his staff, there being no troops nor transport actually on the move, he mounted on his camel, the rest on horses and ponies. By the wayside they came upon a heap of rolls of telegraph-wire lying near the track, which some unit had apparently abandoned as lumber or else had been unable to carry. "We can't leave that stuff behind," said the Sirdar to the staff; "bring it along." Two or three of them dismounted to see what could be done, but there was no gear available for lashing and the rolls were heavy. A little party of the small donkeys of the country was, however, being driven along by a native lad and came on the scene just at this juncture. "Hurry up. Put the wire on those donkeys. I don't want to sit here all day," commanded the Sirdar impatiently. The donkeys had no saddles nor equipment of any kind except rope halters of sorts, and the officers sampled various devices, without success, for placing the goods on the donkeys' backs and keeping them there.

They experimented with balancing a roll on the back of one, but it promptly fell off again. They tied two rolls together and slung them across the back of another, pannier fashion; but the little beast gave a kick and a wriggle and deposited the load on the ground. Various dodges were tried, perspiration poured off the faces of the officers, they were covered with dust, their language grew stronger and stronger, and at last, feeling themselves entirely nonplussed, one of them, looking up at their chief as he sat on his camel with a sardonic smile on his face, observed deprecatingly, "I'm afraid we really can't manage it, sir."

[Footnote 3: While this volume has been in the press Sir G. Arthur's _Life of Lord Kitchener_ has appeared, giving a different version of this story and probably the correct one. Walter Kitchener was speaking, I think, from hearsay.]

"Can't manage it, can't you!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Sirdar; "here, let me come." He made his camel kneel, and dismounted, stalked over to one of the donkeys, gripped the animal by the nose, backed it till its hind feet were inside one of the rolls, turned the roll up over the donkey's back from behind, gave the beast a smack on the rump, and after one or two wriggles and kicks, the creature was trotting along, adorned with a loosely fitting girdle of telegraph-wire round its waist which it could not get rid of. The same plan was promptly adopted with the other donkeys. And in a few minutes the party were riding along again, with the donkeys, carrying the whole of the abandoned wire, in close attendance.

That Lord Kitchener would cut up rough at times when things went wrong, as Hubert Hamilton had hinted at Pretoria, was brought home to me convincingly on the occasion of my first interview with him at the War Office after that visit to the Admiralty which is mentioned in Chapter I. General Hanbury Williams had been earmarked in advance for British Military Commissioner at Russian Headquarters, and he dashed off in a great hurry to take up the appointment on mobilization. I believe that he looked in to see me before starting, but I was not in my room at the moment; I am not sure, indeed, that I knew that he was going until after he had started. A few days later the Chief, when wanting to wire to his representative with the Tsar's armies, discovered that he had gone off without a cipher. It was possible, of course, to communicate through the Foreign Office and our emba.s.sy at St. Petersburg (as the capital was still called); but Lord K.

naturally desired means of direct communication. He was extremely angry about it, and he gave me a most disagreeable five minutes.

Although all this cipher business was under charge of one of my branches, the contretemps was due to no neglect on my own part. Nor was it the fault of the subordinate who actually handled the ciphers, because he did not even know that Hanbury Williams had gone until the row occurred. The mishap had resulted from our Military Commissioner making his exit at the very moment when new hands were taking up their duties and had not yet got the hang of these. But one guessed that explanations would not be received sympathetically by the Secretary of State, and that it would be wisest to take the rebuke "lying down"; he expected things to be done right, and that was all about it. Still, it was not an altogether encouraging start. Indeed I scarcely ever saw Lord K. during the first two or three months, and when I did, it was generally because some little matter had gone wrong in connection with the Secret Service or the Press, or owing to one of the Amateur Spy-Catchers starting some preposterous hare, or because he needed information as to some point of little importance. The fact is that--to put the matter quite bluntly--when he took up his burden the Chief did not know what the duties of his subordinates were supposed to be, and he took little trouble to find out. One day he sent for me and directed me to carry out a certain measure in connection with a subject that was not my business at all, and I was so ill-advised as to say, "It's a matter for the Adjutant-General's Department, sir, but I'll let them know about it." "I told you to do it yourself," snapped the Chief in a very peremptory tone. Under the circ.u.mstances, one could only go to the man concerned in the A.G. Department, explain matters, and beg him for goodness sake to wrestle with the problem and carry out what was wanted.

What, however, was still more unfortunate than Lord K.'s lack of acquaintance with the distribution of work within the Office was that he was by no means familiar with many very essential details of our existing military organization. That is not an unusual state of affairs when a new Secretary of State is let loose in the War Office.

But a new Secretary of State as a rule has the time, and is willing, to study questions of organization and policy closely before embarking on fresh projects. Lord Kitchener, however, arrived with certain preconceived ideas and cramped by defective knowledge of the army system. He had scarcely served at home since he had left Chatham as a young subaltern of the Royal Engineers. In Egypt, in India, even to a great extent in South Africa, the troops coming from the United Kingdom with which he had been brought into contact had been regulars.

He had never had anything to say to the provision of British military personnel at its source. For the three years previous to the outbreak of the Great War he had been holding a civil appointment afar off, and had necessarily been out of touch with contemporary military thought.

There must have been many matters in connection with the organization of His Majesty's land forces, thoroughly known to pretty well every staff-officer in the War Office, of which the incoming Secretary of State was entirely unaware. The British division of all arms of 1914 represented a far larger force than the British divisions of all arms had represented with which he had had to do in the days of Paardeberg and Diamond Hill. The expressions "Special Reserve" and "Territorial Forces" did not, I believe, when he arrived, convey any very clear meaning to him. He was not, in fact, in all respects fully equipped for his task.

With many, indeed with most, men similarly placed this might not have greatly mattered. There were plenty of officers of wide experience in Whitehall who could have posted him up fully in regard to points not within his knowledge. But Lord Kitchener had for many years previously always been absolute master in his own house, with neither the need nor the desire to lean upon others. Like many men of strong will and commanding ability, he was a centralizer by instinct and in practice.

He took over the position of War Minister with very clearly defined conceptions of what must be done to expand the exiguous fighting forces of his country in face of the tremendous emergency with which it stood suddenly confronted. He was little disposed to modify the plans which he had formed for compa.s.sing that end, when subordinates pointed out that these clashed with arrangements that were already in full working order, or that they ignored the existence of formations which only stood in need of nursing and of consolidation to render them really valuable a.s.sets within a short s.p.a.ce of time for the purpose of prosecuting war. The masterful personality and self-confidence to which the phenomenal success that attended his creation of the wonderful New Armies was so largely due, was in some respects a handicap to him in the early days of his stewardship.

My impression of him--an impression unduly influenced perhaps by personal experiences--was that he was shy of strangers or comparative strangers. He did not give his confidence readily to subordinates with whom he found himself a.s.sociated for the first time. He would not brook remonstrance, still less contradiction, from a man whom he did not know. It was largely due to this, as it seemed to me, that he was rather out of hand, so to speak, during the critical opening months.

It was during those opening months that he performed the greatest services to the people of this land, that he introduced the measures which won us the war. But it was also during those opening months, when he was disinclined to listen to advice, that he made his worst mistakes.

I do not believe that there was one single military authority of any standing within the War Office, except himself, who would not have preferred that the cream of the personnel, men who had served in the regulars, who flocked into the ranks in response to his trumpet call to the nation, should have been devoted in the first instance to filling the yawning gaps that existed in the Territorial Forces, and to providing those forces with trained reservists to fill war wastage.

Such a disposition of this very valuable material seemed preferable to absorbing it at the outset in brand-new formations, which in any case would be unable to take the field for many months to come. Parliament would have readily consented to any alteration in the statutes governing the Territorial Forces which might have been necessary. Lord K.'s actions in this question to some extent antagonized the military side of the War Office just at first: we were thinking of the early future: he, as was his wont, was looking far ahead. My work was nowise concerned with the provision of troops in any form, and in later days, when I was often with the Chief, I never remember discussing the Territorials with him. But it is conceivable that he became somewhat prejudiced against this category of the land forces at the start on finding that they were unable to perform the very duty for which they were supposed to exist--that of home defence. Something may, therefore, perhaps be said here on this point.

Mobilization means producing the force concerned, at its full war establishment and composed of officers and men who at least have some pretence to military training. It is, moreover, supposed to be completed at very short notice. Owing to their being territorial and to officers and other ranks living in their territorial districts, the Territorial Forces ought to have been mobilized more rapidly by some hours than the Expeditionary Force, and I believe that, in so far as collecting what personnel there was available is concerned, the Territorial Forces beat the Expeditionary Force. But the ranks of the Territorials had never filled in pre-war days, and there were practically no organized reserves. The war establishment was roughly 315,000 of all ranks; but at the beginning of August the strength was only about 270,000, and this, be it remembered, included a proportion of totally untrained individuals, as well as sick, absentees, and so forth. To have mobilized these troops properly, the number of officers and men on the books at the start and before the order came ought to have amounted to at least 350,000.

The consequence of this shortage was that, at the very moment when the Government and the country were on the first occasion for a century confronted by a really grave and complex military situation, at the very moment when there was a scare as to German projects of an immediate invasion, that category of our land forces which was especially earmarked for the defence of the British Isles was not in a position to perform its functions. The Sixth Division, properly forming part of the Expeditionary Force, had to be fetched over from Ireland to East Anglia to bolster up the Territorials, and Sir J.

French was deprived of its use for six weeks at a very critical time.

The ranks of the Territorial Forces filled up very rapidly _after_ mobilization, but from the home defence point of view that was too late. We required our home defence army to be ready at once, so that the overseas army could be despatched complete to the Continent without _arriere pensee_. Its failure at the critical moment may have somewhat influenced Lord Kitchener in the estimates that he formed of it thenceforward. Instead of framing his plans with a view to reinforcing the Expeditionary Force as soon as possible with the existing fourteen Territorial divisions which were in some measure going concerns, by affording these special support, he preferred simply to expand the Territorial Forces as a whole. Four divisions were sent out of the country on garrison duty before the end of 1914, but although a number of individual battalions had preceded it, the first division to be sent to the front (the North Midland) did not sail from the United Kingdom till the end of February, more than six months after the outbreak of hostilities, while the two last to take the field did not leave till early in 1916. The policy may in the long run have proved the right one; but at the time it did seem a pity not to have accelerated the preparation of these existing troops for the ordeal of the field. None of us in Whitehall, however, wished the New Armies to be set up under the auspices of the Territorial a.s.sociations; that was a different question altogether.

Moreover, whatever was the cause of it, the Territorial divisions after they took the field seemed to be treated as veritable Cinderellas for a long time. They generally set out short of establishment, and they were apt to dwindle away painfully for want of reserves after they had spent a few weeks on the war-path. The Returns show this to have been the case. More than one of the divisional Generals concerned spoke to me, or wrote to me, on the subject in the later months of 1915. This discouraging shrinkage was not manifesting itself to at all the same extent at that stage in such New Army divisions as were at the front.

A good many of us at the War Office also did not, I think, see quite eye to eye with Lord K. in connection with his piling up of New Army divisions without providing them with reserves. The tremendous drain which modern war creates in respect to personnel came as a surprise to all the belligerents; but the surprise came fairly early in the proceedings, and the Adjutant-General's department had fully grasped what this meant, and had realized the scale of the provision necessary to meet it, by the end of 1914. If I remember aright, one whole "New Army" (the Fourth, I think it was) had to be broken up in the summer of 1915, and transformed into a reservoir of reserves, because the First, Second, and Third New Armies practically had none. It had been manifest long before these armies were gradually drawn into the fight that they would suffer heavy wastage, and that they would speedily become mere skeletons unless they had ample backing from home. Had the branches of the War Office which were supposed to deal with these questions been allowed their own way in regard to them, I imagine that greater foresight would have been displayed and that some confusion might have been avoided.

The preceding paragraphs read perhaps rather like a deliberate attempt to belittle the achievements of the greatest of our War Ministers. But they only touch upon one side, the dark side so to speak, of Lord Kitchener's work as an organizer and administrator during the Great War. Little has been said hitherto as to the other and much more important side, the bright side, of that work.

The marvels that he accomplished in respect to multiplying the land forces of the nation by creating improvised armies as it were by magic, have put in the shade a feat for which Lord Kitchener has never been given sufficient credit. Prior to August 1914, no organization existed for placing any portions of our regular army in the field in a Continental theatre of war, other than the Expeditionary Force and one additional division. The additional division was to be const.i.tuted if possible on the outbreak of war out of infantry to be withdrawn from certain foreign garrisons, and spare artillery, engineer and departmental units that existed in the United Kingdom. That additional division, the Seventh, was despatched to the Western Front within two months of mobilization. But Lord Kitchener also organized four further regular divisions, the Eighth, Twenty-seventh, Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth, of which the first three were in the field within five months of mobilization, joining Sir J. French respectively in November, December and January, and the remaining one was nearly ready to take the field by the end of the six months. The Secretary of State prepared for this immediately on taking up office, by recalling practically the whole of the regulars on foreign service, with the exception of the British troops included in four mixed Indian divisions. Would any War Minister other than Lord Kitchener have had the courage to denude India of British regular troops, artillery as well as infantry, to the extent that he did? Supposing any other War Minister to have proposed such a thing, would the Government have backed him up? It was the handiwork of a very big man.

Still, this was after all a quite minor detail in the constructive labours undertaken by one of the most ill.u.s.trious public servants of our time. His paramount claim to the grat.i.tude of his countrymen rests upon his nimble perception of the nature of the task which he had been suddenly called upon to perform, and upon the speed with which he set every channel in motion to accomplish his purpose. He realized, as it seemed by instinct, that this contest was going to be a very big business indeed, an incomparably bigger business than these topmost military authorities who had been in the confidence of the Government before the blow fell had any idea of. It is no exaggeration to say that in this matter he was a giant amongst the pigmies. He grasped the truth at once that this world war was to be a protracted struggle, a struggle in which the Entente would not gain the upper hand unless a tremendous effort was to be put forward by the British Empire. He saw almost at a glance that our military system such as it was, and as previously devised with a view to war conditions, provided what represented numerically no more than an insignificant fraction of the host which would ultimately be needed to give us victory. He furthermore--and it is well to insist upon this thus early, in view of fabrications which have been put about on the subject of munitions--clearly discerned the need for a huge expansion in the country's powers of output in respect to war material; so that under his impulse existing factories and establishments were developed on generous lines, and arrangements were instantly set on foot for creating entirely new factories and establishments. The result was that, after a lean and discouraging period for the troops in the field, the needs of an army which was ten times as strong as the army which soldiers of light and leading had been contemplating before war broke out, were being adequately met within fifteen months of the British ultimatum to Germany.

Within the War Office itself he certainly made things hum. In pre-war, plain-clothes days, those messengers of distinguished presence--dignity personified in their faultlessly-fitting official frock-coats and red waistcoats--had lent a tone of respectability to the precincts, compensating for the unfortunate impression conveyed by Adjutant-Generals and such like who perambulated the corridors in grimy, abandoned-looking "office jackets." (No scarecrow on duty afield in the remotest of rural districts would have been seen in the garment which my predecessor, now F.M., Bart., and G.C.B., left hanging up as a legacy in the apartment which he vacated in my favour.) But--although old hands will hardly credit it and may think I am romancing--I have seen those messengers tearing along the pa.s.sages with coat-tails flying as though mad monkeys were at their heels, when Lord K. wanted somebody in his sanctum and had invited one of them to take the requisite steps. If the Chief happened to desire the presence of oneself, one did not run. Appearances had to be preserved. But one walked rather fast.

An earlier paragraph has hinted that, owing to military authorities in Whitehall not seeing quite eye to eye with the new Secretary of State when he took up his appointment, he was to some small extent working in an atmosphere of latent hostility to his measures. This state of affairs was, however, of very short duration, and certainly did not hamper his operations in the slightest degree; he would indeed have made uncommonly short work of anybody whom he found to be actively opposing him, or even to be hanging back. But the situation in the case of G.H.Q. of the Expeditionary Force was different. It is a matter of common knowledge--anybody who was unaware of it before the appearance of Lord French's "_1914_" will have learnt it from that volume--that the relations between Lord Kitchener and some of those up at the top in connection with our troops on the Western Front were, practically from the outset, not quite satisfactory in character.

The att.i.tude taken up by G.H.Q. over a comparatively small matter during the first few days is an example of this. The Secretary of State had laid his hands upon one officer and one or two non-commissioned officers of each battalion of the Expeditionary Force, and had diverted these to act as drill-instructors, and so forth, for the new formations which he proposed to create. That his action in this should have been objected to within the bereft units was natural enough; their officers could hardly be expected to take the long view on the question at such a juncture. But that the higher authorities of our little army proceeding to the front should have taken the measure so amiss was unfortunate. And it was, moreover, instructive, indicating as it did in somewhat striking fashion the lack of sense of proportion prevalent amongst some of those included in G.H.Q. This chapter deals only with early days; but it may perhaps be mentioned here that there was a disposition to deride and decry the New Army at St. Omer almost up to the date, May 1915, when the first three of its divisions, the Ninth, Twelfth and Fourteenth, made their appearance in the war zone.

Watching the progress of events from behind the scenes, one could not but think that in respect to the occasional _traca.s.series_ between the War Minister and the Commander-in-Chief of the British troops in France and Flanders, there were faults on both sides. The wording of some of the telegraphic messages pa.s.sing between Lord K. and Sir J.

French did not strike one as altogether felicitous, and, if messages from G.H.Q. were provocative, the replies were not always calculated to pour oil on troubled waters. The truth is, that when a pair of people both of whom require "handling" become a.s.sociated under conditions of anxiety and stress that are bound to be trying to the temper and jarring on the nerves, it's a horse to a hen they won't make much of a fist of handling each other. The Secretary of State's action in sending Sir H. Smith-Dorrien to command the Second Corps at the very outset of the campaign after General Grierson's tragic death, struck me at the time as a mistake. Sir J. French had asked for General Plumer who was available, and his wishes might well have been acceded to. Owing to circ.u.mstances of a quite special character the selection was not in any case an altogether happy one, as the relations between the new commander of the Second Corps and the chief of the B.E.F. had not always been too cordial in the past. Having been away from home so much, Lord K. may not have been aware of this; but I imagine that if he had consulted the Military Members of the Army Council they would have mentioned it, as it was almost a matter of common knowledge in the Service.

On that unpleasant controversy with regard to the rights and the wrongs of what occurred when the War Minister paid his sudden visit to Paris during the retreat from Mons, of which so much has been heard, I can throw no light whatever. At a later date "Fitz" (Colonel O.

Fitzgerald, Lord K.'s constant companion) and I were in pretty close touch, and he used to keep me informed of what his chief had in his mind; but I hardly knew him to speak to during the early weeks. In respect to the Antwerp business, it certainly did seem to me that our princ.i.p.al commander on the Western Front (for the moment there were two) was not being very well treated. From a perusal of some of the communications that were flying about at a juncture when Sir J. French was confronted by a complex problem, and was virtually embarking on an entirely new set of operations, one gathered that he was hardly being kept so well informed of what was in progress and of what was contemplated as he had a right to expect, and as was indeed demanded by the situation. Still, this was no doubt due to what one might call bad Staff work, and not to any wish to keep Sir John in the dark as to Sir H. Rawlinson's orders, nor as to the position of this new British force that was being planted down in the war zone. It may well have been the direct result of Lord K.'s system of keeping all telegraphic work in connection with operations in his own hands, instead of this being carried out by the General Staff as under the existing regulations it was supposed to be.

Much has been written and has been said in public about the pushing of the General Staff into the background at the War Office during the early months of the war. An idea exists that this subversion was mainly, if not indeed entirely, consequential on the weakening of its personnel as a body owing to a number of its most prominent and experienced members having gone off to the wars. While readily admitting that its efficiency suffered as a result of these withdrawals, I am by no means sure that it would have managed to keep in the foreground even if the whole of its more shining lights had on mobilization remained where they were in Whitehall. Lord Kitchener had never been closely a.s.sociated with Generals Robertson and Henry Wilson, its two princ.i.p.al members to leave for the front, and it by no means follows that if they had remained they would, during the first few critical weeks, have been much more successful than were Sir C.

Douglas and Sir J. Wolfe-Murray in keeping a hand on the helm. The Secretary of State would no doubt have learnt to value their counsel before long, but he would no more have tolerated the slightest attempt at dictation in respect to the general conduct of the war until he knew his men, than he would have put up with dictation as to how the personnel which he was attracting into the ranks at the rate of tens of thousands per week were to be disposed of. The story of how the General Staff gradually recovered much of its lost ground will, however, be touched upon in the next chapter, and on that point no more need be said at present.

It may, however, be remarked here that the comparative elimination of the General Staff was virtually confined to its elimination in respect to what admittedly is its most important function in times of national emergency--advising the Government of the country on the subject of the general conduct of the war--and in respect to the administrative task of actually issuing instructions as to operations to those in supreme command in the theatres of conflict. The duties of the General Staff cover many other matters besides these. They include collection of information, secret service, questions of international law, military education, training of troops, etc. It fulfilled its mission in connection with such subjects just as had always been intended, nor, in so far as they were concerned, was it thrust on one side in any sense. Lord Kitchener's system of centralization only directly affected a small proportion of the very numerous directorates, branches, and sections into which the War Office was divided up.