The Assault Part 13

It is not enough, for the actual requirements of the war call insistently for more and more, yet "K.'s" recruiting achievement stands forth without parallel in military history. It is certainly without precedent of even approximate magnitude in the annals of a non-conscript democracy. Lord Kitchener's accomplishments in other directions have notoriously not kept pace with his successes as a recruiting-sergeant.

The sh.e.l.ls affair can hardly fail to dim his reputation. The deficiencies of the voluntary system can not be called a failure directly chargeable to him, in that it has not brought forward men in quant.i.ty commensurate with the developed necessities of the campaign.

Kitchener has hinted, but only that, that he is prepared to resort to Conscription the moment he is convinced that Voluntaryism has collapsed.

But it does not seem unlikely that history may condemn him for clinging to the voluntary principle too long and hesitating to make Englishmen do their duty, instead of relying endlessly on their casual inclination to perform it. Kitchener has ruled the British War Office practically as an autocrat. He brooked no interference, even from the Cabinet. Viewed from that standpoint, "K." can hardly be absolved from cardinal responsibility for British military failures. Before the end of 1915 General Sir Ian Hamilton had disappeared from Gallipoli, Sir John French returned from France, General Townshend retreated from Baghdad, and the Allied "Relief" Expedition to Serbia had retired to Salonica, whence it had set out less than ten weeks previous.

CHAPTER XVI

THE GENERAL, THE ADMIRAL AND THE KING

That Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in France and Flanders, an army which reduces to comparative insignificance the largest host ever marshaled by Napoleon, comes from fighting stock is plain enough from the fact that his only sister, Mrs. Despard, is a militant suffragette. She herself provides homely evidence that the appointment of her brother (whom she practically "brought up") to lead the British fight against the Germans on land realized a boyhood aspiration. "When we were children," Mrs. Despard relates, "the great province of Schleswig-Holstein was taken from Denmark by what was then Prussia. We were discussing the disgraceful incident of poor little Denmark losing the province, and a certain little boy, then ten or twelve years of age, strutted about and said: 'If I was only a man, I know what I'd do to them.' He was very indignant. That little boy is now commander of Britain's great army."

It has been said that South Africa is the grave of British military reputations. Sir Redvers Buller's was buried there, and though those of Roberts and Kitchener emerged from the Boer War, the renown of Botha and Dewet admittedly outshone them. One British General at least was "made"

by the three years' conflict with the Dutch Republics--Sir John French, the cavalryman who relieved Kimberley, and whose escutcheon during the sorry South African campaign was alone untarnished by blunder or reverse. As Kitchener was the logical choice for organizer of Britain's new armies, Sir John French was the natural selection for their field-commandership. French, following in paternal footsteps, began his fighting career in the navy, but he has been a soldier for the past forty-one years--he was sixty-three in September, 1915. A man whose entire manhood has been lived in the army, who knows it through and through, loves it pa.s.sionately, has devoted himself to it with the zeal of a student, and fought in all its campaigns for nearly half a century, had an ideal claim upon its supreme honor in the hour of superlative crisis. Doubtless in the Government's mind when it entrusted "Jack"

French with the command of the British Expeditionary Force was the reputation he had won in South Africa as a fighting field-general.

Unquestionably the broad sweeping movements his cavalry divisions executed at Elandslaagte, Lombard's Kop, Bloemfontein, Pretoria and Barberton were operations which contributed, perhaps, more than any other scheme of the brilliantly mismanaged Boer campaign finally to bring it to a victorious end. Neither the British nor the German General Staff realized in August, 1914, that Armageddon was going to develop into a trench or "positional" war, with little or no lat.i.tude for those grandiose tactical maneuvers which delighted the heart of Moltke and made a Sedan the ambition of every modern tactician. Yet Sir John French, whose military virtues include adaptability, if not imaginativeness, which is oftener born, than acquired, turned out to be ideally fitted for "spade warfare," in which the qualities of endurance, steadfastness and patience have displaced the more spectacular talents of daring and recklessness and those bold strokes of magnificent vastness known as Napoleonic. Bonaparte's scintillating genius, his predilection for the stupendous, would probably have counted for little amid such immobile conditions as the Allied armies have had to face in the West, just as the Germans' prized Moltke traditions in the same region have come to naught.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir John French.]

Military history will unquestionably accord the retreat of the British army from Mons a place among the finest achievements of all times. It was due to Sir John French's strategy that Berlin was cheated of that fiendishly coveted orgy of gloating over the "annihilation" of what the Kaiser is said to have called "the contemptible little British army."

Since Mons and the Marne the British Field-Marshal's task has been to "hold" the enemy and to inspire his men to fulfil, unflinchingly, that prodigious, but comparatively inglorious, task. In the circ.u.mstances it was fortunate that a man of Sir John French's temperament was in charge.

He knew how to "sit tight." Kinship with his soldiers has been his lifetime specialty. He is fond of sharing their joys and sorrows not in any stereotyped, dress-parade sense, but actually. He likes to move among them, and does so. His jaunty fighting bearing and unfailing good humor are a constant inspiration. Short and stocky, straight and energetic of movement, he looks every inch a soldier, and he has a soldier's habit of saying what he means, direct from the shoulder, whether it is a corporal, a staff officer, a brigadier or a Cabinet Minister to whom he is addressing himself.

The Allied military arrangement conferred supreme authority on General Joffre, but the British Field Marshal's character and career were considered a joint guarantee that Sir John French would not be found lacking when called upon to do and dare greatly on his own account. It would be going too far to say that the war has covered French with glory. He would be the first to banish such a thought. Though Britons have fallen laurel-crowned on a score of fields in France and Flanders and irrigated the c.o.c.k-pit which lies between the Alps and the Channel with as heroic blood as was ever spilled, the British offensives in the West have been little more than brilliant failures. Neuve Chapelle is an undying story of Anglo-Saxon gallantry, as was Ypres before it; but it was nothing else. The "big push" which England hoped had at last begun with the fighting in Artois and the Champagne at the end of September, 1915, turned out to be a victory of distressingly short life and little real effectiveness. Yet when Germany lost the war--when she failed to take Paris--the British army under Sir John French wrote history of which Englishmen will never be ashamed. Who it was that most effectually parried von Kluck and the Crown Prince's thrust at the French capital will probably, among generations of schoolboys yet unborn, be as fruitful a theme of argument as is the question who won Waterloo--Wellington or Blucher--but whatever the verdict of posterity the smashing of the Germans on the Marne reeked glory for all concerned, and Britain's share of it is a heritage which will survive with Blenheim, Balaclava, Kandahar and Khartoum.[1]

[1] Sir John French returned to England in December, 1915, relinquishing (at his own request, it was officially stated) the commandership-in-chief in France for the command of the Home Defense forces. King George conferred the dignity of a Viscountcy on the Field-Marshal.

Another Sir John--Admiral Jellicoe--is commander-in-chief of the British navy. Events still to come must determine whether Anglo-Saxon history is to be enriched with another Nelson. But as far as human prescience could foretell, "Jack" Jellicoe was of all men in the British Fleet preordained by talent, temperament and training to be the admiral in whose keeping could safely be entrusted British destinies more priceless than those which were safeguarded at Trafalgar.

Jellicoe was one of the G.o.dfathers of the dreadnought, having been summoned by Lord Fisher, the real author of that revolution in naval science, to support and carry into execution the all-big-gun ship idea.

Fisher had years before a.s.sociated young Captain Jellicoe with him as a.s.sistant director of naval ordnance, whereupon there ensued an intimacy which friends say will link their names together much as history a.s.sociated St. Vincent and Nelson as the twin victors of Trafalgar--the one, the far-sighted planner of preparatory reforms; the other, the faithful executor of their purpose.

Jellicoe resembles Sir John French in more than given name. Like him, he is of quite markedly small stature. Neither the Generalissimo or Admiralissimo of Britain in the Great War at all corresponds, physically, to the popular notion that the English are "big" men. Like French, again, Jellicoe is mild and gentle, a pair of conspicuously tight lips indicating poise, reserve force and self-confidence. The chieftain of the Grand Fleet--that is its official t.i.tle and not an effusive expletive--did not make his first acquaintance with danger afloat when von Tirpitz' submarines began to make life a burden for British sailors. He has been s.n.a.t.c.hed from the jaws of death on three separate occasions. In 1893 Jellicoe was commander of Sir George Tryon's _Victoria_, when it was sent to its doom in the Mediterranean, and, although "below" in the ship-hospital with fever at the moment of the disaster, was miraculously rescued by a midshipman when he came to the surface more dead than alive after the vessel foundered. Seven years previous, as if Fate was keeping a protecting hand over him for some great hour, Jellicoe had an equally marvelous escape from drowning when a gig he was commanding off Gibraltar capsized and he was washed ash.o.r.e. In the Boxer war of 1900, Jellicoe was flag captain to Admiral Seymour, the commander of the Allied expedition which marched from Tien-tsin to the relief of the Powers' legations in Pekin, and at the battle of Peitsang Jellicoe was struck by a Chinese bullet, incurring wounds which the flagship-surgeon considered fatal. Again Jellicoe was spared. A brother-officer tells a story of Jellicoe's agony on that occasion, which illuminates his capacity for facing the music, however doleful. He had asked how the advance to Pekin was proceeding. Told that everything was going satisfactorily, Jellicoe flashed back: "Tell me the truth, d.a.m.n it. Don't lie!"

The triumvirate which has accomplished that amazing, silent victory of the British Fleet in the war--the complete conquest of sea power without anything savoring of a decisive action in the open--consists of Lord Fisher, the creator of the dreadnought; Admiral Sir Percy Scott, the inventor of the central "fire control" system, and Sir John Jellicoe, to whose gunnery science and innovations in that all-important branch of naval warfare are ascribed, in large measure, the acknowledged preeminence of the British Fleet as a striking force. He had not been director of ordnance a year when the percentage of the navy's. .h.i.ts out of rounds fired increased from forty-two to more than seventy. "In other words," as a critic describes it, "Jellicoe enhanced by more than a third the fighting value of the British Fleet, and that without a keel being added to its composition."

Jellicoe, who is fifty-six years old, has nothing but sailor blood in his veins. His father was a captain in the Fleet before him, and one of his kinsmen, Admiral Philip Patton, was Second Sea Lord in Nelson's time. Jellicoe is the incarnation of the spirit, traditions, practises and brain-force of the British navy of to-day. He has the not inconsiderable advantage of having had opportunity personally to take the measure of his German antagonists, for he has visited their country, where he made the acquaintance of von Tirpitz, Ingenohl, Pohl, Behncke, Holtzendorff, Prince Henry and all the other naval men of the Fatherland, and was even privileged to cruise over Berlin in a Zeppelin.

England has heard little and seen nothing of Jellicoe during the war.

The veil of mystery which envelops the Grand Fleet is seldom lifted.

Not one Englishman in a million knows where the Fleet is, though all know that it is where it ought to be. A ten days' visit paid to the officers and men of the Armada by the Archbishop of York in the late summer of 1915 resulted in imparting to the nation the first glimmer of their life, of their indomitable watch and wait, which had been forthcoming.

"It is difficult for our sailormen," wrote the Archbishop, "to realize the value of their long-drawn vigil. Their one longing is to meet the German ships and sink them; and yet month after month the German ships decline the challenge. The men have little time or chance or perhaps inclination to read accounts in serious journals of the invaluable service which the Navy is fulfilling by simply keeping its watch; and naval officers do not make speeches to their men. I think, indeed I know, that it was a real encouragement to them to hear a voice from the land of their homes telling them of the debt their country owes them for the command of the seas--the safety of the ships carrying food and means of work to the people, supplies of men and munitions to the fields of battle--which is secured to us by the patient watching of the Fleet."

Speaking of Admiral Jellicoe, the Archbishop said:

"It was refreshing and exhilarating beyond words to find oneself in a world governed by a great tradition so strong that it has become an instinct of unity and mutual trust. But to the influence of this great tradition must be added the influence of a great personality. I can not refrain from saying here that I left the Grand Fleet sharing to the full the admiration, affection, and confidence which every officer and man within it feels for its Commander-in-Chief, Sir John Jellicoe. He rea.s.suredly is the right man in the right place at the right time. His officers give him the most absolute trust and loyalty. When I spoke of him to his men I always felt that quick response which to a speaker is the sure sign that he has reached and touched the hearts of his hearers.

The Commander-in-Chief--quiet, modest, courteous, alert, resolute, holding in firm control every part of his great fighting engine--has under his command not only the ships but the heart of his Fleet. He embodies and strengthens that comradeship of single-minded service which is the crowning honor of the Navy."

More than once the criticism has been uttered in England itself that the Fleet has been conspicuously lacking in the "Nelson touch." Even Americans, friendly observers, have ventured to suggest that there seemed to be an absence of the Farragut or Dewey "to-h.e.l.l-with-mines"

spirit. Up to the end of the first year of war, Britons faced the fact that their "supreme navy" had lost seven battleships aggregating 97,600 tons (not counting a super-dreadnought reported by the foreign press to have been lost in the early months of the war, but which was a loss never "officially confirmed" in England), and ten cruisers aggregating 81,365 tons. Submarines, in that nerve-racking and troublous day before Scott and Jellicoe solved the problem of sinking "U boats" almost faster than German dockyards could launch subst.i.tutes, accomplished terrific havoc among the British merchant fleet, even though the sea commerce of these islands was never remotely in danger of being "paralyzed," as von Tirpitz and the minions of Frightfulness fondly planned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir J. R. Jellicoe.]

Yet all this while, the British Fleet was tightening its grip upon the command of the sea to an extent which may now be described as absolute.

The German flag, war ensign and merchant pennant, has been swept from the oceans as if it had never flown. Hamburg and Bremen, the Fatherland's prides, are as completely demolished, as far as their usefulness to Germany for war is concerned, as if they had been battered into smoking ruins. German mercantile trade simply no longer exists, except such of it as can be smuggled in tramps and ferries across the narrow reach of the Baltic between Pomerania and the Scandinavian ports.

The Germanic Allies can import and export nothing oversea except by the grace of Jellicoe. Their deported propaganda chieftains or compromised amba.s.sadors and attaches can not return to their homes in Europe from the United States without gracious "safe conduct" by the British Fleet.

The toymakers of Nuremberg can not deliver a solitary tin soldier to an American Christmas tree unless Jellicoe says yes. Two score proud German liners, including the queen of them all, the _Vaterland_, are rotting and rusting in United States harbors, ingloriously imprisoned by British naval power. In a dozen other ports throughout the world Hamburg and Bremen vessels tug at anchor--greyhounds enchained. Germany is banned from the oceans like an outlaw. Her people can eat and drink only on the ration basis. The British Fleet has done something else of which, it seemed to me, an American Presidential message might legitimately have made mention. It has enabled the people of the United States for many months to traverse the oceans in security.

These are the immediate effects of British sea supremacy on the enemy, but even they are incommensurate with the advantages which accrue to Britain herself. A navy has three cardinal functions: to preserve its own sh.o.r.es from invasion; to maintain inviolate its country's oversea communications, including cables, food supply, pa.s.senger traffic and postal transportation; and, finally, to destroy the sea forces of the enemy. The first two of these functions have been fulfilled by the Grand Fleet, and at a cost in men and material, though not inconsiderable, which is infinitesimal, measured by the results attained. To absolve the third, and, of course, climacteric, function, Jellicoe and his men and his ironclads stand ready when the opportunity is given them--readier, by far, than when the war began. They have not lost a really vital fighting unit (supposing unconfirmed reports to the contrary to be unfounded). They have had a priceless experience of sea warfare under almost every conceivable condition. They are veterans of every essential contingency. There is hardly a terror, military or atmospheric, which they have not faced and surmounted. They have added to their battle efficiency by a great many new and powerful ships.

Their _morale_ is unbroken.

When the Kaiser's Ca.n.a.l Armada finally makes up its mind, as I believe that German public opinion will some day compel it to, to forsake the snug harbors of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven and the screen of Heligoland for the high sea, it will find that Jellicoe has up his iron sleeve a welcome, as to the issue of which no one in these islands is capable of cherishing the remotest doubt. History is barren of an instance of a Power defeated in war, who retained command of the sea. Were there no other considerations which spell the eventual, though probably not the early, frustration of Germany's ambition to master Europe and, as William II once sighed, to s.n.a.t.c.h the trident from Britannia's grasp, the vise-like grip of naval power which Jellicoe has wrested alone denotes that Armageddon can have but one ending, however long it be deferred.

In this cursory review of the men at Britain's helm, the Sovereign is deliberately put at the end instead of the beginning. I mean to cast no impious slur upon George V in thus cla.s.sifying his relative importance in the scheme of British war life, yet to rank him at the front of the captains of the State would be hyperbole as unpardonable in a chronicler as gratuitous defamation would be.

To discuss the figure cut by England's King during the past year is a task which a foreigner approaches with diffidence. I should not dream of taking such liberties with their Britannic Majesties, for example, as my gifted friend and colleague, Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb, who recently diagnosed the Royal situation in England thus: "I have seen the King and Queen, and I know now why they call him George the Fifth; Mary's the other four-fifths." Whether this subtle tribute to the undoubtedly potent influence of the gracious Queen explains it or not, the indisputable fact remains that the part played by King George in the day of supreme British national trial has been a keen disappointment to a great many of his subjects. It is not a topic which they discuss at all in public, nor one upon which it is easy to extract their views even in private. But when an inquiring alien even of unmistakably sympathetic sentiment accomplishes the miracle of inducing a Briton to pour out his heart, he will secure evidence corroborative of an impression the foreigner has had from the start, if he has lived in England since August, 1914--that the monarchy, as such, has not given a wholly satisfactory account of itself. Men who are so utterly un-English as to be "quite" frank even suggest that King George's insistence not only upon enacting the "const.i.tutional monarch," but _overplaying_ that role, has not inconsiderably undermined the solidity of the Royal principle in numerous British hearts. They will tell you, if in communicative mood, that George has failed to rise to the majestic opportunities of the moment. They contrast his incorrigibly "const.i.tutional" behavior with what they feel a.s.sured is the red-blooded lead King Edward would have given. They a.s.sert that the hour of Imperial peril, when national existence itself is at stake, has caused so many cherished shibboleths to go by the board, that the strait-jacket of "const.i.tutional monarchy,"

which is another name for Irresponsibility, ought to go with them. In times of peace, say Englishmen, a conscientious figurehead on the throne is good enough. In times of war, they want a King. He need not be the blatant, ubiquitous limelight-chaser that the Kaiser is, but some of that royal dynamo's attributes, diluted with English seasoning, would not have been unwelcome to his people during the past year and a half.

Britons, though, I repeat, they do not cry it out for the mult.i.tude to hear, are not edified by the spectacle of a sovereign who has sojourned with his army and fleet only in the most formal manner, whose war-time activities are confined to peripatetic visits to hospitals and convalescent homes, to inspections and reviews, and to distribution of Victoria Crosses and Distinguished Service medals at Buckingham Palace.

"The King," to whom Englishmen, before 10 P.M., still drink in reverential sincerity, and who rise in devout respect when they hear the anthem which beseeches Divine salvation for him, is an inst.i.tution from which Britain felt it had a right to expect both lead and deed in a great war. She did not demand, or at least no conspicuous section of her has, that the King should take the field or the sea, and prance about in the saddle or on the quarter-deck, but they did hope, I think, for something more inspiring than nebulous const.i.tutionalism. It was many months after thousands of other British mothers had sent their sons to death and glory that Queen Mary consented to the dispatch of the twenty-one-year-old Prince of Wales to the trenches. And Prince Albert, who is twenty, and was in the navy before the war, was never, as far as the public is informed, able to gratify his desire to return to active service afloat, but must cool his martial ardor in the inglorious capacity of an Admiralty messenger in London. Britons look across to Germany, Russia and Italy, even to Belgium and Serbia, and, contrasting the spectacle with "const.i.tutionalism" in their own Royal household, acknowledge that theirs is not a thrilling picture.

If you attempt to penetrate into what may strike you as a mystery, you will be told that the cause as far as King George is concerned, is twofold: first, his high-minded, even slavish, devotion to his conception of his const.i.tutional limitations, and, secondly, his equally incorrigible shyness. Sarah Bernhardt, when King George and Queen Mary were in Paris a couple of years ago, was once summoned to the royal box of the Comedie Franchise for presentation to the British sovereigns.

She explained to friends afterward that the King's modesty positively unnerved her. He was as bashful as a schoolgirl. I have been told that his manner in the presence even of his Ministers is almost deferential.

He does not know the meaning of "mixing," an art in which his late father excelled. "The King and Queen are fond of lunching alone, and usually take their tea together," I read the other day in a "well-informed" society paper. Edward VII was fond of lunching with men of affairs. He did not heed the hoots of the aristocratic set, which was scandalized by his intimacy with tea-merchants and money kings, because through them he was accustomed to keep in touch with the human currents of his people's life and times. Edward would hardly have allowed even the Empire's greatest soldier (Englishmen explain) to call the new army "Kitchener's Army." It would have been called the "King's Army" and the King would have thrown his incalculably great moral influence into the breach in some more practical way than lending his photograph for recruiting advertis.e.m.e.nts. George V could have been England's finest recruiting sergeant. He preferred to remain a const.i.tutional monarch.

[Ill.u.s.tration: King George V.]

Englishmen excuse, rather than blame, the King. They point out, in his extenuation, that George's is a gentle, self-effacing nature little fitted for the soul-stirring era in the midst of which Fate decreed that his reign should fall. They cast no aspersions on his rugged patriotism or even on his kingly zeal. They believe that, according to his lights, he exercises faithfully what he considers to be his prerogatives. They feel, they tell you, that it is not his fault that he remains the only man in the Kingdom who still wears a Prince Albert coat. His is, somehow, not the magnetic influence which, if it were that of Edward VII, would still be condemning Englishmen to cling to that ancient robe.

They explain that it is his psychic misfortune, rather than a failing, that n.o.body thinks it worth while to emulate him by taking the pledge "for the duration of the war" and drinking barley-water. Edward VII's abstemious decree would have blotted the liquor trade out of existence, because in the lap of his example sat militant loyalty. The "old King's" wish was law.

Perhaps--I do not know--George V is wiser than men think. Perhaps he is not being kept in cotton-wool by his Victorian private secretary.

Perhaps he is not yielding as supinely as many people imagine to the inflexible mandates of const.i.tutionalism. Perhaps he has his ear closer to the ground than his contemporaries realize, and with it hears the far-off but unmistakable rumbles of the limitlessly democratized Britain which is already emerging from the crucible of war. Perhaps injustice is done to him by those who accuse him of not rising more vigorously to the opportunities of his Empire's hour of destiny. May he not be fitting himself still to sit the throne in that coming day when Britain will perhaps want even a more const.i.tutional ruler than ermine and the crown now rest upon?

CHAPTER XVII

YOUR KING AND COUNTRY WANT YOU

"Luna Park," in Berlin, once had an English manager and an American "publicity agent." In pursuit of his lime-light duties the transatlantic hustler, who had been engaged because he was such, reported to the manager one day that he had accomplished a feat on which he had been plodding for weeks. The owners of a building which commanded the most prominent view in Berlin had finally consented to let "Luna Park" affix a gigantic electric flash-light sign to the roof.