Mr. Punch's History of the Great War Part 27

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FINAL TOMMY;(ex-footballer): "We was just wipin' them off the face of the earth when Foch blows his whistle and shouts 'Temps!'"]

These are only some of the heroes who have added to the glories of our blood and State, but the roll is endless--wonderful gunners and sappers and airmen and dispatch riders, devoted surgeons and heroic nurses, stretcher-bearers and ambulance drivers. But Mr. Punch's special heroes are the Second Lieutenants and the Tommy who went on winning the War all the time and never said that he was winning it until it was won.

As for the young officers, dead and living, their record is the best answer to the critics, mostly of the arm-chair type, who have chosen this time to a.s.sail our public school system. In the papers of one of them killed on August 28 there was found an article written in reply to "The Loom of Youth," ending with these words: "Perhaps the greatest consolation of these attacks on our greatest heritage in England (for we are the unique possessors of the Public Schools) is the conviction that they will have but little effect. Every public school boy is serving, and one in every six gives up his life. They cannot be such bad places after all."

Of the great mistakes made by Germany perhaps the greatest was in reckoning on the detachment of the Dominions. The Canadians have made answer on a hundred stricken fields before and after Vimy Ridge. Australia gave her goodliest at Gallipoli, crowning the imperishable glory of those who died there by her refusal to make a grievance of the apparent failure of the expedition, and by the amazing achievement of her troops in the last six months of the War.

The immortal dead, British, Australians, New Zealanders, who fell in the great adventure of the narrow straits are not forgotten in the hour of triumph.

GALLIPOLI _Qui procul hinc ante diem perierunt_.

Ye unforgotten, that for a great dream died, Whose failing sense darkened on peaks unwon, Whose souls went forth upon the wine-dark tide To seas beyond the sun, Far off, far off, but ours and England's yet, Know she has conquered! Live again, and let The clamouring trumpets break oblivion!

Not as we dreamed, nor as you strove to do, The strait is cloven, the crag is made our own; The salt grey herbs have withered over you, The stars of Spring gone down, And your long loneliness has lain unstirred By touch of home, unless some migrant bird Flashed eastward from the white cliffs to the brown.

Hard by the nameless dust of Argive men, Remembered and remote, like theirs of Troy, Your sleep has been, nor can ye wake again To any cry of joy; Summers and snows have melted on the waves.

And past the n.o.ble silence of your graves The merging waters narrow and deploy.

But not in vain, not all in vain, thank G.o.d; All that you were and all you might have been Was given to the cold effacing sod, Unstrewn with garlands green; The valour and the vision that were yours Lie not with broken spears and fallen towers, With glories perishable of all things seen.

Children of one dear land and every sea, At last fulfilment comes--the night is o'er; Now, as at Samothrace, swift Victory Walks winged on the sh.o.r.e; And England, deathless Mother of the dead, Gathers, with lifted eyes and unbowed head, Her silent sons into her arms once more.

Crowns and thrones have rocked and toppled of late, but our King and Queen, by their unsparing and unfaltering devotion to duty, by their simplicity of life and unerring instinct for saying and doing the right thing, have not only set a fine example, but strengthened their hold on the loyalty of all cla.s.ses. And King Albert, who defied Germany at the outset, shared the dangers of his soldiers in retreat and disaster, and throughout the war proved an inspiration to his people, has been spared to lead them to victory and has gloriously come into his own again. His decision to resist Germany was perhaps the most heroic act of the War, and he has emerged from his tremendous ordeal with world-wide prestige and unabated distaste for the limelight. The liberation and resurrection of Belgium and Serbia have been two of the most splendid outcomes of the World War, as the _debacle_ in Russia and the martyrdom of Armenia have been its greatest tragedies.

Parliament has been seen at its best and worst. When the Prime Minister rose in the House on the afternoon of the 11th to announce the terms of the Armistice signed at 5 A.M. that morning, members from nearly all parts of the House rose to acclaim him. Even "the ranks of Tuscany" on the front Opposition bench joined in the general cheering. Only Mr. Dillon and his half-dozen supporters remained moody and silent, and when Mr. Speaker, in his gold-embroidered joy-robes, headed a great procession to St. Margaret's Church, and the ex-Premier and his successor--the man who drew the sword of Britain in the war for freedom and the man whose good fortune it has been to replace it in the sheath--fell in side by side, behind them walked the representatives of every party save one. Mr. Dillon and his a.s.sociates had more urgent business in one of the side lobbies--to consider, perhaps, why Lord Grey of Falloden, in his eve-of-war speech, had referred to Ireland as "the one bright spot." This Irish aloofness is wondrously ill.u.s.trated by the _Sunday Independent_ of Dublin, which, in its issue of November 10, spoke of a racing event as the only redeeming feature of "an unutterably dull week." We have to thank Mr. Dillon, however, for unintentionally enlivening the dulness of the discussion on the relations of Lord Northcliffe to the Ministry of Information and his forecast of the peace terms. Mr. Baldwin, for the Government, while endeavouring to allay the curiosity of members, said that "Napoleons will be Napoleons." Mr.

Dillon seemed to desire the appointment of a "Northcliffe Controller," but that is impracticable. All our bravest men are too busy to take on the job.

Better still was the pointed query of Lord Henry Bentinck, "Is it not possible to take Lord Northcliffe a little too seriously?" But there are other problems to which the House has been addressing itself with a justifiable seriousness--and demobilisation, the shortage of food and coal, and the question how at the same time we are to provide for the outlay of coals of fire and feed the Huns and not the guns.

And how has England taken the news? In the main soberly and in a spirit of infinite thankfulness, though in too many thousands of homes the loss of our splendid, n.o.ble and gallant sons--alas! so often only sons--who made victory possible by the gift of their lives, has made rejoicing impossible for those who are left to mourn them. Yet there is consolation in the knowledge that if they had lived to extreme old age they could never have made a n.o.bler thing of their lives. Shakespeare, who "has always been there before," wrote the epitaph of those who fell in France when he spoke of one who gave

His body to that pleasant country's earth, And his pure soul unto his captain, Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARMISTICE DAY

SMALL CHILD (excitedly): "Oh, Mother, what _do_ you think? They've given us a whole holiday to-day in aid of the war."]

And it is a source of unspeakable joy that our children are safe. For though to most of them their ignorance has been bliss, they have not escaped the horrors of a war in which non-combatants have suffered worse than ever before. Only the healing hand of time can allay the grief of those for whom there can be no reunion on earth with their nearest and dearest:

At last the dawn creeps in with golden fingers Seeking my eyes, to bid them open wide Upon a world at peace, where Sweetness lingers, Where Terror is at rest and Hate has died.

Loud soon shall sound a paean of thanksgiving From happy women, welcoming their men, Life born anew of joy to see them living.

Mother of Pity, what shall I do then?

Of the people at large Mr. Punch cannot better the praise of one, the late Mr. Henry James, who was nothing if not critical, and who proved his love of England by adopting her citizenship in the darkest hour of her need: "They were about as good, above all, when it came to the stress, as could well be expected of people. They didn't know how good they were," and if they lacked imagination they stimulated it immensely in others.

Apart from some effervescence in the great cities, Armistice Day was celebrated without exultation or extravagance. In one village that we know of the church bells were rung by women. In London our deliverance was to many people marked in the most dramatic way by the breaking of his long silence by Big Ben:

Gone are the days when sleep alone could break War's grim and tyrannous spells; Now it is rest and joy to lie awake And listen to the bells.

So the Great War ended. But there yet remained the most dramatic episode of all--the surrender of the German Fleet to Admiral Beatty at Scapa Flow--a surrender unprecedented in naval history, a great victory won without striking a blow, which yet brought no joy to our Grand Fleet. For our admirals and captains and bluejackets felt that the Germans had smirched the glory of the fighting men of the sea, hitherto maintained in untarnished splendour by all vanquished captains from the days of Carthage to those of Cervera and Cradock.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN HONOUR OF THE BRITISH NAVY

To commemorate the surrender of the German Fleet]

EPILOGUE

It remains to trace in brief retrospect the record of "the months between"--a period of test and trial almost as severe as that of the War.

Having steadfastly declined the solution of a Peace without Victory, the Allies entered last November on the transitional period of Victory without Peace. The fighting was ended in the main theatres of war, the Kaiser and Crown Prince, discrowned and discredited, had sought refuge in exile, the great German War machine had been smashed, and demobilisation began at a rate which led to inevitable congestion and disappointment. The prosaic village blacksmith was not far out when, in reply to the vicar's pious hope that the time had come to beat our sword into a ploughshare, he observed, "Well, I don't know, sir. Speaking as a blacksmith of forty-five years'

experience, I may tell you it can't be done." "The whole position is provisional," said the _Times_ at the end of November. If Germany, Austria, and Russia were to be fed, how was it to be done without disregarding the prior claims of Serbia and Roumania? Even at home the food question still continued to agitate the public mind.

The General Election of December, 1918, which followed the dissolution of the longest Parliament since the days of Charles II., was a striking, if temporary proof, of the persistence of the rationing principle. It proved a triumph for the Coalition "Coupon" and for Mr. Lloyd George; the extremists and Pacificists were snowed under; Mr. Asquith was rejected and his followers reduced to a mere handful; Labour came back with an increased representation, though not as great as it desired or deserved. The triumph of the irreconcilables in Ireland was a foregone but sinister conclusion to their activities in the War, and an ominous prelude to their subsequent efforts to wreck the Pence. The pledges in regard to indemnities, the treatment of the Kaiser, and conscription so lavishly given by the Coalition Leaders caused no little misgiving at the time, and pledges, like curses, have an awkward way of coming home to roost. Mr. Punch's views on the Kaiser, expressed in his Christmas Epilogue, are worth recalling. Mr.

Punch did not clamour for the death penalty, or wish to hand him over to the tender mercies of German Kultur. "The only fault he committed in German eyes is that he lost the War, and I wouldn't have him punished for the wrong offence--for something, indeed, which was our doing as much as his.

No, I think I would just put him out of the way of doing further harm, in some distant penitentiary like the Devil's Island, and leave him to himself to think it all over; as _Caponsacchi_ said of _Guido_ in 'The Ring and the Book':

Not to die so much as slide out of life, Pushed by the general horror and common hate Low, lower--left o' the very edge of things."

[Ill.u.s.tration:

"Don't you think we ought to hang the Kaiser, Mrs. 'Arris?"

"It ain't the Kaiser I'm worrying about--it's the bloke what interjuiced his war-bacon."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: REUNITED

Strasbourg, December 8th, 1918.]

Christmas, 1918, was more than "the Children's Truce." Our bugles had "sung truce," the war cloud had lifted, the invaded sky was once more free of "the grim geometry of Mars," and though very few households could celebrate the greatest of anniversaries with unbroken ranks, the mercy of reunion was granted to many homes. Yet Mr. Punch, in his Christmas musings on the solemn memory of the dead who gave us this hour, could not but realise the greatness of the task that lay before us if we were to make our country worthy of the men who fought and died for her. The War was over, but another had yet to be waged against poverty and sordid environment; against the disabilities of birth; against the abuse of wealth; against the mutual suspicions of Capital and Labour; against sloth, indifference, self-complacency, and short memories.

So the Old Year pa.s.sed, the last of a terrible _quinquennium,_ bringing grounds for thankfulness and hope along with the promise of unrest and upheaval: with Alsace-Lorraine reunited to France, with the British army holding its Watch on the Rhine, and with all eyes fixed on Paris, the scene of the Peace Conference, already invaded by an international army of delegates, experts, advisers, secretaries, typists, 500 American journalists, and President Wilson.

Great Expectations and their Tardy Fulfilment, thus in headline fashion might one summarise the story of 1919, with Peace, the world's desire, waiting for months outside the door of the Conference Chamber, with civil war in Germany, Berlin bombed by German airmen, and anarchy in Russia, and here at home impatience and discomfort, aggravated in the earlier months by strikes and influenza, the largely increased numbers of unemployed politicians, the weariest and dreariest of winter weather.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RECONSTRUCTION: A NEW YEAR'S TASK]

Yet even January had its alleviations in the return of the banana, the prospect of unlimited lard, a distinct improvement in the manners of the retail tradesman, the typographical fireworks of the _Times_ in honour of President Wilson, and the retreat of Lord Northcliffe to the sunny south. Lovers of sensation were conciliated by the appointment of "F.E." to the Lord Chancellorship, the outbreak of Jazz, and the discovery of a French author that the plays usually attributed to Shakespeare were written by Lord Derby, though not apparently the present holder of the t.i.tle. The loss, through rejection or withdrawal, of so many of his old Parliamentary puppets was a serious blow to Mr. Punch, but the old Liberals, buried like the Babes in the Wood beneath a shower of Coalition coupons, already showed a sanguine spirit, and the departure of the freaks could be contemplated with resignation. The great Exodus to Paris began in December, but it reached its height in January. The mystery of the Foreign Office official who had _not_ gone was cleared up by the discovery that he was the caretaker, a pivotal man who could not be demobilised. Another exodus of a less desirable sort was that of the Sinn Fein prisoners, which gave rise to the rumour that the Lord Lieutenant had threatened that if they destroyed any more jails they would be rigorously released. Sinn Fein, which refused to fight Germany, had already begun to play at a new sort of war. Australia was preparing to welcome the homing transports sped with messages of G.o.dspeed from the Motherland:

Rich reward your hearts shall hold, None less dear if long delayed, For with gifts of wattle-gold Shall your country's debt be paid; From her sunlight's golden store She shall heal your hurts of war.

Ere the mantling Channel's mist Dim your distant decks and spars, And your flag that victory kissed And Valhalla hung with stars-- Crowd and watch our signal fly: "Gallant hearts, good-bye! _Good-bye!"_

[Ill.u.s.tration:

THE 1919 MODEL

MR. PUNCH: "They've given you a fine new machine, Mr. Premier, and you've got plenty of spirit, but look out for b.u.mps."]