Great Britain's Part —

Observations Of An American Visitor To The British Army In France At The Beginning Of The Third Year Of The War

Paul D. Cravath

• Publisher: Verdun Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781782890744
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War I
• Index: History

Paul Cravath was a prominent New York lawyer and partner of the law firm known as Cravath, Swaine and Moore: a leader of the Anglophile "Atlantacist" movement that preached closer ties with Britain in opposition to the isolationist policies of several American administrations. As part of his cause, he visited Britain during the First World War and wrote of his experiences and opinions on the war effort.An interesting political book, passionately argued.Author — Cravath, Paul D. 1861-1940.Text taken, whole and complete, from the edition published in New York [etc.] D. Appleton and company, 1917.Original Page Count – vi and 127 pages

GREAT BRITAIN’S PART

I

AN invitation to visit the British war zone in France came quite unexpectedly after I had spent the greater part of July studying war conditions in England. I had seen a good deal of the British army at home. I had visited recruiting stations, training camps, munition factories, hospitals, and camps for German prisoners. I had heard the conduct of the war discussed from every conceivable angle—in the House of Commons, at public meetings, at the Clubs, around the dinner table, and at the street corner. Indeed, in London, one hears very little else. I had heard as much of criticism as of praise, doubtless because the critic usually has a taste for conversation and leisure to gratify it.

The more I saw of the army that was training in England, the keener became my ambition to see the army that was fighting in France. I had little hope of gratifying this ambition, because I had been told that, since the inauguration of the great “Push,” visits to the front by civilians were rarely permitted. Finally some good friends in the war office concluded that as I had heard so much in England from the critics, it would be worthwhile to send me to the front to form my own opinions.

What I saw so completely revolutionized my conceptions of the war, based on what I had been able to hear and read, that I have concluded that by publishing my impressions I may help other Americans to a better appreciation of the transcendent importance of the war and of the unparalleled scale on which it is being waged.

At the time of my visit I had no idea of publishing my observations. I accordingly made no notes and my knowledge of military affairs is very limited. I can therefore do little more than give my impressions.

II

IT would be hard to overstate the unpreparedness of England on that fateful fourth day of August, 1914, when she declared war against Germany. It will be to her everlasting glory that she responded so promptly to the call of duty without stopping to count the cost. She was not only wanting in all of the material preparations for war on land, but neither her government nor her people had any real conception of the colossal demands that the war would make upon the manhood and resources of the Empire. Anyone who has traveled in Germany or France can appreciate in some degree the magnitude of the task which confronted England, when he realizes that before she could really be a factor in the war on land it was necessary to build up a military organization in all of its manifold departments, practically equaling, in proportion to her population, the establishments which it had taken Germany and France half a century to create. She not only had to provide the material equipment for several millions of soldiers, such as barracks, training camps, ammunition factories, artillery, apparel, supplies of every kind and even the rifles which her soldiers were to carry, but she had the even more difficult task of arousing the war spirit in a people who from time immemorial had been trained in the occupations of peace.

How little the leaders of England realized what was before them is shown by the division of opinion in the Government during the first days of the war as to whether any army should be sent to France. Kitchener’s first call was for only a hundred thousand men. The second call was for half a million. Even after the war had fairly started and the Germans were swarming before the very gates of Paris, less than half a million men were in training. The failure to make even a fair beginning in providing for the necessary munitions, until the lack of them was revealed by the terrific slaughter in the second battle of Ypres in the ninth month of the war, was due to the Government’s inability to grasp the scale on which the war was being waged by Germany.

When one realizes all this, England’s achievements at the close of the second year of the war seem little short of miraculous. They certainly are without parallel in history. In two years, or, if one allows for the wasted first months, in less than a year and a half, while maintaining, and even enlarging in the face of serious losses, the greatest navy the world has ever known, England, with the aid of her colonies, created, trained, equipped and munitioned an army of considerably over four million men. Of this army approximately half a million were furnished by Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Most remarkable of all, it was chiefly a volunteer army, for conscription did not come until the war had lasted for over a year and a half, when from eighty to ninety per cent of the men of England, Scotland, Wales and Ulster and many from the rest of .Ireland had volunteered.

Although at the time of my visit the British were maintaining an army of about a million and a half men in France and at least half a million more in the East and must have lost three or four hundred thousand men in killed, wounded and prisoners, England was still a veritable armed camp. Soldiers were everywhere. Each district had its training camp. There were about two hundred thousand men in training on Salisbury Plain alone and as many more at Aldershot and at the training camps where the Canadian regiments were concentrated. There were probably between a million and a half and two million soldiers in various stages of training throughout the United Kingdom.

Half the men one saw in the music halls and theaters and on Piccadilly and the Strand were soldiers, and on all the main thoroughfares within many miles of London military traffic predominated. The military hospitals in the United Kingdom were numbered by the hundreds. New munitions factories covering many square miles of land had been erected and most of the factories capable of producing munitions had been taken over by the Government until over four thousand factories were devoted in whole or in part to the manufacture of munitions of war. In addition to upward of four million men employed directly in the army and navy, between two and three millions more were engaged in activities exclusively or chiefly connected with the war. These gigantic activities were conducted by two great governmental departments with headquarters in London, the War Office and the Ministry of Munitions.

I shall not deal with the Ministry of Munitions, because its function is the production of munitions, the use of which in the conduct of the war is under the control of the army.

III

IT was on the seventeenth day of August that, armed with my “white pass” issued by G. H. Q. (General Headquarters) in France, I boarded a military train at Charing Cross Station. The routes for France via Folkstone and Boulogne and Dover and Calais had been taken over by the War Office, so that practically their entire traffic was military. My train carried General Sir Sam Hughes, War Minister of Canada, and his Staff, who were on their way to visit the Canadian troops, which constitute part of the British Army in France. The fleet which left Folkstone three hours later consisted of two transports carrying about three thousand troops, two hospital ships and a third transport, on which I was a passenger, which carried officers, Red Cross nurses, surgeons and civilian employees. The fleet was convoyed by two torpedo boat destroyers to protect it from German submarines.

When we were halfway across the Channel we passed a similar fleet coming in the reverse direction.

Although there seems never to have been a mishap to a military transport between England and France, we were all required to wear life preservers, and a queer looking lot we were. A dapper officer wearing a dirty life preserver across his chest and smoking a cigarette as he walks up and down the deck is one of the most humorous creations of the war.

Our voyage across the Channel was uneventful. We saw no signs of German submarines. The rumor is that the path of the transports plying between Folkstone and Boulogne is so well protected that it is almost impossible for submarines to approach. When we reached Boulogne I was met by an English Major, with whose aid I soon completed the necessary formalities with the French Aliens’ and Customs’ officials. On the pier I was turned over to an alert young Lieutenant in khaki, who announced that it was his job to look after me for the next three days.

Boulogne seemed more like a British military camp than a French city. On the piers and in the streets nearby were thousands of British soldiers, hundreds of lorries (motor trucks), ambulances and other military conveyances all painted a dull gray, and enormous quantities of munitions, provisions and war supplies of every kind. Boulogne is one of the chief distributing centers for the British army in France. It has a number of hospitals, enormous depots for supplies and that essential of every British military settlement, an Officers’ Club. My guide said there was no time to see the sights of Boulogne, for, if we did not start at once, we would be late for tea—a calamity which any well-ordered Englishman will avoid at all hazards.

We were soon out of Boulogne in a gray army motor car. After motoring for about an hour on perfect roads through a smiling and peaceful countryside we reached a picturesque little city which before the war had no importance, except as the center of a prosperous agricultural community. “This,” said my guide, “is G. H. Q.” In England I had heard G. H. Q. spoken of scores of times, but I had never been told the name of the mysterious city in which it was located. It is one of the rules of the War Office that the location of G. H. Q. is never to be mentioned by the initiated. Theoretically, no civilian ever knows where anybody is in the British army in France.

If your friend is at General Headquarters, he never mentions the name of the city. Your letters to him are simply addressed to G. H. Q. If your friend is in the ranks, he will give you the name of his army corps and his regiment, but never the name of the place where he is stationed. Your letters to him are addressed to B. E. F. (British Expeditionary Force) and, with surprising promptness, they reach him wherever he happens to be.

Our motor stopped before a charming inn in the courtyard of which a score or more of British officers and a few French officers were having their tea under the shade of the Virginia creeper vines which hung in festoons above. We were greeted by a Captain who announced that tea was ready. After chatting for half an hour with a group of officers around the tea table we resumed our journey toward the Front.

IV

T will simplify my narrative if I explain briefly the organization of the British army. The supreme authority in the conduct of Great Britain’s share in the war throughout the world, is the War Council{1}, which in August consisted of the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for War, the First Lord of the Admiralty and other members of the Cabinet. The War Council deals only with broad questions of policy.

The immediate direction of the war is under the General Staff in London, of which General Sir William Robertson is Chief and Major General Robert H. Whigham Deputy Chief. The General Staff has supervision of all the armies of England. Each of the forces in the various parts of the world has its own Commander in Chief who takes his orders from the General Staff in London. It is with the British Expeditionary Force in France that my observations deal. Its Commander in Chief is General Sir Douglas Haig, who in turn has a staff of several officers, each in charge of an important department of the army’s activities.

G. H. Q., which we were visiting, is the administrative center of the army, as distinguished from what may be termed the fighting center, which is at Advanced G. H. Q., nearer the front, where General Haig and those of his staff who have to do with the actual conduct of the fighting are stationed. At G. H. Q. are the Quartermaster General in charge of supplies, the Surgeon General in charge of hospitals, the Chief of Transportation, and the heads of the various other departments which may be termed the business departments of the army. Compared with the British army, regarded as a business enterprise, the Standard Oil Company with its seventy-five thousand employees, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company with two hundred and forty thousand and the United States Steel Corporation with two hundred and fifty thousand, are mere pigmies.

The magnitude of the administrative responsibilities centered at G. H. Q. will be apparent when it is remembered that the British army in France consists of about a million and a half of men and each day suffers wastage varying from several hundred to several thousand men, most of whom are taken back to England for convalescence, while other men from England fill their places. In order to maintain the force at the front, it is necessary to bring an average of three or four thousand men from England each day and almost as many must be taken back. As the force in France is enlarged the number of men transported from England is correspondingly increased. The transport service comprises a large fleet of channel steamers, numerous railroad trains, barges on rivers, twenty-five or thirty thousand lorries and thousands of ambulances and motor cars. There are also three or four hundred thousand horses and mules and tens of thousands of horse-drawn vehicles, including ammunition wagons and artillery. Most of the provisions and supplies for the feeding, clothing and maintenance of this enormous army, and all of its munitions, must be transported from England. There are hundreds of hospitals in France filled with British wounded and scores of training camps. There are many sub-centers of activity such as Amiens, Rouen, Havre, Abbeville, St. Omer, Boulogne and Calais. All of these activities are directed from G. H.’ Q. in the quiet little village in which we were taking tea with nothing about us to suggest war except the uniforms of the officers.

V

WE did not have time to visit the buildings in which G. H. Q. conducted its operations. We were told we would find them very much like the offices of any other great business, with hundreds of clerks, divided into departments, each with its administrative head. After leaving G. H. Q. we motored for about two hours by well tilled farms and through quiet villages where the only signs of war were the paucity of young men, the many women in mourning and the haunted look on the faces of the women and children. We reached Amiens just in time for dinner. Here, within a few miles of the present front, center many of the activities of the British Expeditionary Force and of General Foch’s army, the most westerly of the French armies. Here is the headquarters of the British Intelligence Department and of the war correspondents, of whom at the time of my visit there were five for the British press and one for the American press. It is usually from Amiens that civilian visitors are taken to the Somme front of both armies.

The dining room of the Hotel du Rhin was a scene of great animation. It was crowded as it had never been crowded before the war. Most of the hundred or more diners were officers, chiefly British. There were several French officers and a few visitors from the Russian army. I could not help contrasting Amiens at the height of the British Advance in 1916 with Brussels in 1815 before the Battle of Waterloo as described by Byron and Thackeray. There was no “sound of revelry,” there were no Amelias and Rawdon Crawleys, for women, unless they are Red Cross nurses, are not allowed to visit the British front, and there were no civilian hangers-on. The streets of the city were dark and deserted and there were no lights in the windows. A more complete absence of gayety and revelry could not be imagined. At Amiens we began to realize that modern war is grim, businesslike and unromantic.

Early next morning our party started in our gray Government motor car for the actual front. My traveling companion was Joseph Reinach, of Paris, the most important of the French historians of the war, whose daily commentaries contributed to the Figaro under the name of “Polyle” already amount to half a dozen volumes. Our faithful guide sat next to our soldier-chauffeur. Although Amiens was in the possession of the Germans for a short time during the first month of the war, it had suffered very little. It was full of soldiers, both French and English, and of lorries, ambulances, artillery and war equipment of every kind.

We motored several miles through a rural district which showed little evidence of the ravages of war. The Germans had occupied it for such a brief period during their first advance and during their retreat from the Marne that they left but few scars and most of those had disappeared. Soon the swarms of British soldiers in the villages made us realize that we were nearing the Front. In France the soldiers who are not actually in the trenches do not, as a rule, live in tents but are “billeted” in the villages. To make room for them the civil population is reduced and sometimes almost entirely excluded so that in the average village within a few miles of the British Front one sees more English soldiers than French peasants.

The British Tommies are very popular in the French villages, particularly with the ladies. They are gallant, good-natured and liberal with their money. Though they are the worst linguists in the world, they have been able to develop surprisingly effective means of communication. They are gradually creating an Anglo-French dialect which serves in France very much the same purpose that pidgin English does in the Orient. The streets of the villages occupied by the British have been renamed for the occasion. One is startled to see in a village which looks as unlike England as a French village can look, such signs as Rotten Row, Leicester Square, Piccadilly and Park Lane. At first I did not understand why soldiers were so abundant many miles back from the firing line. Our guide explained thai only a small part of the British army in France is actually in the trenches at any particular time. The larger part of the army was in the villages and encampments at the rear. Some of these soldiers were resting after their week in the trenches; others were waiting their turn to enter the...