Towards the Goal Part 1

Towards The Goal.

by Mrs. Humphry Ward.

INTRODUCTION

England has in this war reached a height of achievement loftier than that which she attained in the struggle with Napoleon; and she has reached that height in a far shorter period. Her giant effort, crowned with a success as wonderful as the effort itself, is worthily described by the author of this book. Mrs. Ward writes n.o.bly on a n.o.ble theme.

This war is the greatest the world has ever seen. The vast size of the armies, the tremendous slaughter, the loftiness of the heroism shown, and the hideous horror of the brutalities committed, the valour of the fighting men, and the extraordinary ingenuity of those who have designed and built the fighting machines, the burning patriotism of the people who defend their hearthstones, and the far-reaching complexity of the plans of the leaders--all are on a scale so huge that nothing in past history can be compared with them. The issues at stake are elemental.

The free peoples of the world have banded together against tyrannous militarism and government by caste. It is not too much to say that the outcome will largely determine, for daring and liberty-loving souls, whether or not life is worth living. A Prussianised world would be as intolerable as a world ruled over by Attila or by Timur the Lame.

It is in this immense world-crisis that England has played her part; a part which has grown greater month by month. Mrs. Ward enables us to see the awakening of the national soul which rendered it possible to play this part; and she describes the works by which the faith of the soul justified itself.

What she writes is of peculiar interest to the United States. We have suffered, or are suffering, in exaggerated form, from most (not all) of the evils that were eating into the fibre of the British character three years ago--and in addition from some purely indigenous ills of our own.

If we are to cure ourselves it must be by our own exertions; our destiny will certainly not be shaped for us, as was Germany's, by a few towering autocrats of genius, such as Bismarck and Moltke. Mrs. Ward shows us the people of England in the act of curing their own ills, of making good, by gigantic and self-sacrificing exertion in the present, the folly and selfishness and greed and soft slackness of the past. The fact that England, when on the brink of destruction, gathered her strength and strode resolutely back to safety, is a fact of happy omen for us in America, who are now just awaking to the folly and selfishness and greed and soft slackness that for some years we have been showing.

As in America, so in England, a surfeit of materialism had produced a lack of high spiritual purpose in the nation at large; there was much confusion of ideas and ideals; and also much triviality, which was especially offensive when it masqueraded under some high-sounding name.

An unhealthy sentimentality--the ant.i.thesis of morality--has gone hand in hand with a peculiarly sordid and repulsive materialism. The result was a soil in which various noxious weeds flourished rankly; and of these the most noxious was professional pacificism. The professional pacificist has at times festered in the diseased tissue of almost every civilisation; but it is only within the last three-quarters of a century that he has been a serious menace to the peace of justice and righteousness. In consequence, decent citizens are only beginning to understand the base immorality of his preaching and practice; and he has been given entirely undeserved credit for good intentions. In England as in the United States, domestic pacificism has been the most potent ally of alien militarism. And in both countries the extreme type has shown itself profoundly unpatriotic. The damage it has done the nation has been limited only by its weakness and folly; those who have professed it have served the devil to the full extent which their limited powers permitted.

There were in England--just as there are now in America--even worse foes to national honour and efficiency. Greed and selfishness, among capitalists and among labour leaders, had to be grappled with. The sordid baseness which saw in the war only a chance for additional money profits to the employer was almost matched by the fierce selfishness which refused to consider a strike from any but the standpoint of the strikers.

But the chief obstacle to be encountered in rousing England was sheer short-sightedness. A considerable time elapsed before it was possible to make the people understand that this was a people's war, that it was a matter of vital personal concern to the people as a whole, and to all individuals as individuals. In America we are now encountering much the same difficulties, due to much the same causes.

In England the most essential thing to be done was to wake the people to their need, and to guide them in meeting the need. The next most essential was to show to them, and to the peoples in friendly lands, whether allied or neutral, how the task was done; and this both as a reason for just pride in what had been achieved and as an inspiration to further effort.

Mrs. Ward's books--her former book and her present one--accomplish both purposes. Every American who reads the present volume must feel a hearty and profound respect for the patriotism, energy, and efficiency shown by the British people when they became awake to the nature of the crisis; and furthermore, every American must feel stirred with the desire to see his country now emulate Britain's achievement.

In this volume Mrs. Ward draws a wonderful picture of the English in the full tide of their successful effort. From the beginning England's naval effort and her money effort have been extraordinary. By the time Mrs.

Ward's first book was written, the work of industrial preparedness was in full blast; but it could yet not be said that England's army in the field was the equal of the huge, carefully prepared, thoroughly coordinated military machines of those against whom and beside whom it fought. Now, the English army is itself as fine and as highly efficient a military machine as the wisdom of man can devise; now, the valour and hardihood of the individual soldier are being utilised to the full under a vast and perfected system which enables those in control of the great engine to use every unit in such fashion as to aid in driving the ma.s.s forward to victory.

Even the Napoleonic contest was child's play compared to this. Never has Great Britain been put to such a test. Never since the s.p.a.cious days of Elizabeth has she been in such danger. Never, in any crisis, has she risen to so lofty a height of self-sacrifice and achievement. In the giant struggle against Napoleon, England's own safety was secured by the demoralisation of the French fleet. But in this contest the German naval authorities have at their disposal a fleet of extraordinary efficiency, and have devised for use on an extended scale the most formidable and destructive of all instruments of marine warfare. In previous coalitions England has partially financed her continental allies; in this case the expenditures have been on an unheard-of scale, and in consequence England's industrial strength, in men and money, in business and mercantile and agricultural ability, has been drawn on as never before.

As in the days of Marlborough and Wellington, so now, England has sent her troops to the continent; but whereas formerly her expeditionary forces, although of excellent quality, were numerically too small to be of primary importance, at present her army is already, by size as well as by excellence, a factor of prime importance, in the military situation; and its relative as well as absolute importance is steadily growing.

And to her report of the present stage of Great Britain's effort in the war, Mrs. Ward has added some letters describing from her own personal experience the ruin wrought by the Germans in towns like Senlis and Gerbeviller, and in the hundreds of villages in Northern, Central, and Eastern France that now lie wrecked and desolate. And she has told in detail, and from the evidence of eye-witnesses, some of the piteous incidents of German cruelty to the civilian population, which are already burnt into the conscience of Europe, and should never be forgotten till reparation has been made.

Mrs. Ward's book is thus of high value as a study of contemporary history. It is of at least as high value as an inspiration to constructive patriotism.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

SAGAMORE HILLS,

_May 1st_, 1917.

TOWARDS THE GOAL

No. 1

_March 24th, 1917._

DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,--It may be now frankly confessed--(you, some time ago, gave me leave to publish your original letter, as it might seem opportune)--that it was you who gave the impulse last year, which led to the writing of the first series of Letters on "England's Effort" in the war, which were published in book form in June 1916. Your appeal--that I should write a general account for America of the part played by England in the vast struggle--found me in our quiet country house, busy with quite other work, and at first I thought it impossible that I could attempt so new a task as you proposed to me. But support and encouragement came from our own authorities, and like many other thousands of English women under orders, I could only go and do my best.

I spent some time in the Munition areas, watching the enormous and rapid development of our war industries and of the astonishing part played in it by women; I was allowed to visit a portion of the Fleet, and finally, to spend twelve days in France, ten of them among the great supply bases and hospital camps, with two days at the British Headquarters, and on the front, near Poperinghe, and Richebourg St. Vaast.

The result was a short book which has been translated into many foreign tongues--French, Italian, Dutch, German, Russian, Portuguese, and j.a.panese--which has brought me many American letters from many different States, and has been perhaps most widely read of all among our own people. For we all read newspapers, and we all forget them! In this vast and changing struggle, events huddle on each other, so that the new blurs and wipes out the old. There is always room--is there not?--for such a personal narrative as may recall to us the main outlines, and the chief determining factors of a war in which--often--everything seems to us in flux, and our eyes, amid the tumult of the stream, are apt to lose sight of the landmarks on its bank, and the signs of the approaching goal.

And now again--after a year--I have been attempting a similar task, with renewed and cordial help from our authorities at home and abroad. And I venture to address these new Letters directly to yourself, as to that American of all others to whom this second chapter on England's Effort may look for sympathy. Whither are we tending--your country and mine?

Congress meets on April 1st. Before this Letter reaches you great decisions will have been taken. I will not attempt to speculate. The logic of facts will sweep our nations together in some sort of intimate union--of that I have no doubt.

How much further, then, has Great Britain marched since the Spring of last year--how much nearer is she to the end? One can but answer such questions in the most fragmentary and tentative way, relying for the most part on the opinions and information of those who know, those who are in the van of action, at home and abroad, but also on one's own personal impressions of an incomparable scene. And every day, almost, at this breathless moment, the answer of yesterday may become obsolete.

I left our Headquarters in France, for instance, some days before the news of the Russian revolution reached London, and while the Somme retirement was still in its earlier stages. Immediately afterwards the events of one short week transformed the whole political aspect of Europe, and may well prove to have changed the face of the war--although as to that, let there be no dogmatising yet! But before the pace becomes faster still, and before the unfolding of those great and perhaps final events we may now dimly foresee, let me try and seize the impressions of some memorable weeks and bring them to bear--so far as the war is concerned--on those questions which, in the present state of affairs, must interest you in America scarcely less than they interest us here.

Where, in fact, do we stand?

Any kind of answer must begin with the Navy. For, in the case of Great Britain, and indeed scarcely less in the case of the Allies, that is the foundation of everything. To yourself the facts will all be familiar--but for the benefit of those innumerable friends of the Allies in Europe and America whom I would fain reach with the help of your great name, I will run through a few of the recent--the ground--facts of the past year, as I myself ran through them a few days ago, before, with an Admiralty permit, I went down to one of the most interesting naval bases on our coast and found myself amid a group of men engaged night and day in grappling with the submarine menace which threatens not only Great Britain, not only the Allies, but yourselves, and every neutral nation. It is well to go back to these facts. They are indeed worthy of this island nation, and her seaborn children.

To begin with, the _personnel_ of the British Navy, which at the beginning of the war was 140,000, was last year 300,000. This year it is 400,000, or very nearly three times what it was before the war. Then as to ships,--"If we were strong in capital ships at the beginning of the war"--said Mr. Balfour, last September, "we are yet stronger now--absolutely and relatively--and in regard to cruisers and destroyers there is absolutely no comparison between our strength in 1914 and our strength now. There is no part of our naval strength in which we have not got a greater supply, and in some departments an incomparably greater supply than we had on August 4th, 1914.... The tonnage of the Navy has increased by well over a million tons since war began."

So Mr. Balfour, six months ago. Five months later, it fell to Sir Edward Carson to move the naval estimates, under pressure, as we all know, of the submarine anxiety. He spoke in the frankest and plainest language of that anxiety, as did the Prime Minister in his now famous speech of February 22nd, and as did the speakers in the House of Lords, Lord Lytton, Lord Curzon and Lord Beresford, on the same date. _The attack is not yet checked. The danger is not over._ Still again--look at some of the facts! In two years and a quarter of war--

Eight million men moved across the seas--almost without mishap.

Nine million and a half tons of explosives carried to our own armies and those of our Allies.

Over a million horses and mules; and--

Over forty-seven million gallons of petrol supplied to the armies.

And besides, twenty-five thousand ships have been examined for contraband of war, on the high seas, or in harbour, since the war began.

And at this, one must pause a moment to think--once again--what it means; to call up the familiar image of Britain's ships, large and small, scattered over the wide Atlantic and the approaches to the North Sea, watching there through winter and summer, storm and fair, and so carrying out, relentlessly, the blockade of Germany, through every circ.u.mstance often of danger and difficulty; with every consideration for neutral interests that is compatible with this desperate war, in which the very existence of England is concerned; and without the sacrifice of a single life, unless it be the lives of British sailors, often lost in these boardings of pa.s.sing ships, amid the darkness and storm of winter seas. There, indeed, in these "wave-beaten" ships, as in the watching fleets of the English Admirals outside Toulon and Brest, while Napoleon was marching triumphantly about Europe, lies the root fact of the war. It is a commonplace, but one that has been "proved upon our pulses." Who does not remember the shock that went through England--and the civilised world--when the first partial news of the Battle of Jutland reached London, and we were told our own losses, before we knew either the losses of the enemy or the general result of the battle? It was neither fear, nor panic; but it was as though the nation, holding its breath, realised for the first time where, for it, lay the vital elements of being. The depths in us were stirred. We knew in very deed that we were the children of the sea!

And now again the depths are stirred. The development of the submarine attack has set us a new and stern task, and we are "straitened till it be accomplished." The great battle-ships seem almost to have left the stage. In less than three months, 626,000 tons of British, neutral and allied shipping have been destroyed. Since the beginning of the war we--Great Britain--have lost over two million tons of shipping, and our Allies and the neutrals have lost almost as much. There is a certain shortage of food in Great Britain, and a shortage of many other things besides. Writing about the middle of February, an important German newspaper raised a shout of jubilation. "The whole sea was as if swept clean at one blow"--by the announcement of the intensified "blockade" of the first of February. So the German scribe. But again the facts shoot up, hard and irreducible, through the sea of comment. While the German newspapers were shouting to each other, the sea was so far from being "swept clean," that twelve thousand ships had actually pa.s.sed in and out of British ports in the first eighteen days of the "blockade." And at any moment during those days, at least 3,000 ships could have been found traversing the "danger zone," which the Germans imagined themselves to have barred. One is reminded of the _Hamburger Nachrichten_ last year, after the Zeppelin raid in January 1916. "English industry lies in ruins," said that astonishing print. "The sea has been swept clean,"

says one of its brethren now. Yet all the while, there, in the danger zone, whenever, by day or night, one turns one's thoughts to it, are the three thousand ships; and there in the course of a fortnight, are the twelve thousand ships going and coming.

Yet all the same, as I have said before, there is danger and there is anxiety. The neutrals--save America--have been intimidated; they are keeping their ships in harbour; and to do without their tonnage is a serious matter for us. Meanwhile, the best brains in naval England are at work, and one can feel the sailors straining at the leash. In the first eighteen days of February, there were forty fights with submarines. The Navy talks very little about them, and says nothing of which it is not certain. But all the scientific resources, all the fighting brains of naval England are being brought to bear, and we at home--well, let us keep to our rations, the only thing we can do to help our men at sea!

How this grey estuary spread before my eyes ill.u.s.trates and illuminates the figures I have been quoting! I am on the light cruiser of a famous Commodore, and I have just been creeping and climbing through a submarine. The waters round are crowded with those light craft, destroyers, submarines, mine-sweepers, trawlers, patrol boats, on which for the moment at any rate the fortunes of the naval war turns. And take notice that they are all--or almost all--_new_; the very latest products of British ship-yards. We have plenty of battle-ships, but "we must now build, as quickly as possible, the smaller craft, and the merchant ships we want," says Sir Edward Carson. "Not a slip in the country will be empty during the coming months. Every rivet put into a ship will contribute to the defeat of Germany. And 47 per cent, of the Merchant Service have already been armed." The riveters must indeed have been hard at work! This crowded scene carries me back to the Clyde where I was last year, to the new factories and workshops, with their ever-increasing throng of women, and to the marvellous work of the ship-yards. No talk now of strikes, of a disaffected and revolutionary minority, on the Clyde, at any rate, as there was twelve months ago.

Broadly speaking, and allowing for a small, stubborn, but insignificant Pacifist section, the will of the nation, throughout all cla.s.ses, has become as steel--to win the war.

Throughout England, as in these naval officers beside me, there is the same tense yet disciplined expectancy. As we lunch and talk, on this cruiser at rest, messages come in perpetually; the cruiser itself is ready for the open sea, at an hour and a half's notice; the seaplanes pa.s.s out and come in over the mouth of the harbour on their voyages of discovery and report, and these destroyers and mine-sweepers that he so quietly near us will be out again to-night in the North Sea, grappling with every difficulty and facing every danger, in the true spirit of a wonderful service, while we land-folk sleep and eat in peace;--grumbling no doubt, with our morning newspaper and coffee, when any of the German destroyers who come out from Zeebrugge are allowed to get home with a whole skin. "What on earth is the Navy about?" Well, the Navy knows.

Germany is doing her very worst, and will go on doing it--for a time.

The line of defensive watch in the North Sea is long; the North Sea is a big place; the Germans often have the luck of the street-boy who rings a bell and runs away, before the policeman comes up. But the Navy has no doubts. The situation, says one of my cheerful hosts, is "quite healthy"

and we shall see "great things in the coming months." We had better leave it at that!

Now let us look at these destroyers in another scene. It is the last day of February, and I find myself on a military steamer, bound for a French Port, and on my way to the British Headquarters in France. With me is the same dear daughter who accompanied me last year as "dame secretaire"

on my first errand. The boat is crowded with soldiers, and before we reach the French sh.o.r.e we have listened to almost every song--old and new--in Tommy's repertory. There is even "Tipperary," a s.n.a.t.c.h, a ghost of "Tipperary," intermingled with many others, rising and falling, no one knows why, started now here, now there, and dying away again after a line or two. It is a draft going out to France for the first time, north countrymen, by their accent; and life-belts and submarines seem to amuse them hugely, to judge by the running fire of chaff that goes on. But, after a while, I cease to listen. I am thinking first of what awaits us on the further sh.o.r.e, on which the lights are coming out, and of those interesting pa.s.ses inviting us to G.H.Q. as "Government Guests," which lie safe in our handbags. And then, my thoughts slip back to a conversation of the day before, with Dr. Addison, the new Minister of Munitions.