THE PRICE OF VICTORY AND THE PASSING OF A HERO.
In the old days a battle lasted a day or two at most; victory frequently came within a few hours, and couriers were speeding away with the news of victory or defeat before night had shrouded the stark bodies of the slain. But in this war battles have continued for weeks; one contest has merged into another, so that it is hard to say where one ends and another begins. The great series of fights which we call the Battle of Ypres began on 19th October, and did not end until 17th November; it lasted for thirty days!
The First Battle of Ypres was not only remarkable for its long duration, but also for the mighty armies that were arrayed against each other. Never before in the history of the world have such huge forces struggled for victory. During the battles of the Seven Years' War the combatants on both sides did not exceed 120,000, and in the Napoleonic wars the opposing armies at no time reached a total of 450,000. At Waterloo there were but 170,000 engaged, and at Inkerman, in the Crimean War, there were not 90,000. Some 320,000 men fought at Gravelotte[98] during the Franco-German War of 1870-71, and at Mukden, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, the forces engaged totalled about 510,000. These numbers sink into insignificance compared with the multitudes who fought in Artois and West Flanders during the thirty days of the Ypres battle. Germany alone had not less than a million men.
Great was the price of victory. Britain lost at least 40,000 men, the French and Belgians 70,000, and the Germans probably 250,000—that is, 360,000 in all—a number far exceeding the total of the whole armies engaged in any single battle of modern history down to the close of the nineteenth century. Whole battalions of the British army disappeared—the 1st Coldstreams, the 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers, the 2nd Wiltshires, and the 1st Camerons were practically wiped out. One regiment went into the campaign 1,100 strong, and came out with only 73. Another took 1,350 to Flanders, and had but 300 when the Battle of Ypres was won.
The Defeat of the Prussian Guard near Ypres on November 11, 1914. (See page [143].)
(By permission of The Sphere.)
You have already heard how the 7th Division was reduced to a shadow of its former strength. Sir Henry Rawlinson tells us that when the division was withdrawn to England to refit it was found that out of 400 officers who set out from England there were only 44 left, and out of 12,000 men only 2,336. One general, two brigadiers, nearly a dozen staff officers had fallen, and eighteen regiments and battalions had lost their colonels. Junior lieutenants frequently found themselves in command of a battalion, while a brigadier was left with one or two companies. History records no such tale of slaughter. More men fell in the Battle of Ypres than the North lost in the whole of the American Civil War.[99]
Two striking features of this long series of contests must detain us for a moment. The first is the extraordinary valour of the boys and elderly men who formed a large part of the German levies. They charged in mass again and again, and went to death in droves. The second is the even more extraordinary defence which the British—never more than 150,000 in number—made against overwhelming odds. There have been instances of armies holding forces which outnumbered them four or five times for a single day; but the British resisted for weeks against forces five times as great. Around Ypres during the worst part of the fighting we had but three divisions and some cavalry to meet five army corps, three of them belonging to Germany's first line. For the best part of two days the 7th Division of 12,000 men held a front of eight miles against 120,000! In all the long fighting annals of Britain no such feat had ever been performed before.
The Allies merely held their lines, yet really they won a great victory, because they had achieved their object. They had defeated a turning movement and a piercing movement, and had blocked the German advance to the sea. Thereafter in the west the enemy was not free to move, save at the will of the Allies; he was besieged from the Vosges to the North Sea.
The British played the lion's part in the great struggle; but without the splendid support of the French and the Belgians they could have achieved nothing. The regular regiments of the line proved themselves to be composed of the finest fighting material in the world; the cavalry, playing the part of infantry, on foot and in the trenches, were no less wonderful; and the gunners, though outmatched in numbers and weight of artillery, showed marvellous skill and tenacity; while the citizen soldiers, called from their peaceful pursuits to the unfamiliar work of war, displayed the spirit of veteran troops. The great struggle round Ypres was a soldiers' victory. There was little room for generalship; nevertheless Sir John French, by his coolness and doggedness, by the confidence with which he animated his men, and by the cheery good will with which he encouraged them, must be regarded as the real inspirer of victory.
In the centre of Calcutta is the famous Maidan,[100] or Esplanade, a great space of turf and trees and gardens, which is the special glory of the city. Here you will find monuments to the great soldiers and statesmen who have won and kept for us "the brightest jewel in the British crown." Perhaps the noblest of all these monuments is that which commemorates the martial fame of Lord Roberts of Kandahar.[101] Frederick Sleigh Roberts was born at Cawnpore[102] five years before Queen Victoria came to the throne. He was educated in England, but when his school days were over he returned to the land of his birth, and became an officer in the Indian army.
Hardly had he returned when that terrible uprising of the native soldiers which we call the Indian Mutiny began, and the first warfare which young Roberts knew was against the well-armed and well-trained sepoys[103] who had broken their oath of loyalty to the Queen, and were striving to drive the British out of the peninsula.
Some years ago, when I visited India, I went, as in duty bound, to Delhi,[104] the present capital, and the great storm centre of fighting during the Mutiny. Memorials of that terrible time abound in Delhi. About a mile to the north of the city is the "Ridge," a low, narrow hill on which a band of Britons, the mere skeleton of an army, hungry, fever-stricken, "stormed at with shot and shell," held its own against an army of sepoys during the awful heat of an Indian summer.
From the Flagstaff Tower in which the women and children took refuge during that dread time a road runs directly to the city, and on the right of it is a little garden in which stands a bronze statue to John Nicholson,[105] the hero of the siege. Close by the Nicholson statue is the Kashmir Gate, preserved in its ruinous condition to recall the marvellous daring of the six Britons who blew it up, and thus opened a way for the British troops to enter the city. Roberts, as a young subaltern of twenty-five, saw Nicholson lying wounded and dying by the side of the road not far from this gate. Nicholson was the most distinguished of that group of young men who by almost superhuman devotion saved India for the Empire during the Mutiny. It was under the influence of such men as Nicholson—men of lofty ideals of duty, of iron resolution and unfaltering courage—and amidst scenes of the most glorious heroism, that Roberts began his military career. Nicholson was his type and model. When the Mutiny was at an end Roberts was a veteran of ability and experience, and he wore the Victoria Cross on his breast.
For forty-one years he served India, taking part in all the important campaigns, and gradually rising in the service until, in 1885, he became Commander-in-Chief. He won great fame in the Afghanistan campaigns, and became the idol of the Indian army, to whom he was known as "Bobs." No Indian commander-in-chief has ever been so admired and loved by the troops under his command. He never strove for popularity, but he could not escape it. His men assayed him, and found him pure gold throughout.
Earl Roberts of Kandahar.
By no means was his life-work done when he left India. When disaster succeeded disaster during the early months of the Boer War, the nation looked to him as the one man who could pluck victory out of defeat. With his appearance on the veldt came the turn of the tide, and after his great march to Pretoria[106] the issue of the contest was no longer in doubt. Full of years and honours, he might have retired from public life, conscious that he had served his country greatly, and that his fame was secure. But he ever "scorned delights and lived laborious days," and when he had long passed the allotted span he devoted himself to the task of trying to bring home to the British people the danger of allowing their young men to grow up unprepared for that great European war which he was convinced would come within a few short years. Alas! we did not heed him, and when the day of battle arrived it found us unprepared, and forced to improvise armies while strife was raging and the fate of the Empire was hanging in the balance.
Soon after the beginning of the great war which he had foreseen, Lord Roberts addressed the following message to the children of the Empire:—
"CHILDREN OF THE EMPIRE:
"You have all heard of the war; you have all heard of the fighting forces sent from every part of the Empire to help the Mother Country. Why are we fighting? Because the British Empire does not break its promises, nor will it allow small nations to be bullied.
"Now, the British Government promised, with all the Great Powers of Europe, including Germany, that no army should set foot on the territory of the little nation of Belgium without her leave; in other words, she 'guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium.'
"Germany, however, was bent on war, and on dominating other nations. Britain did her best to keep the peace, but Germany (breaking her word) marched her armies into Belgium to try and conquer France.
"Children of the Empire, this is why we are at war—to hold our promise, to help our friends, and to keep the Flag of Liberty flying, not only over our own Empire, but over the whole world.
"God save our King and Empire."
When Indian soldiers were summoned to help the Mother Country in her hour of need, Lord Roberts felt a great desire to go over to France in order to meet them face to face once more, to greet them in their own languages, and to inspire them with some of his own dauntless courage. "I must go and see the Indian soldiers," he said. "It is the most useful thing I can do at this moment." He arrived in France on Wednesday, 11th November, and next day he saw the men to whom he was bound by such strong ties. Everywhere they greeted him with admiration and affection. On Friday evening he was found to be suffering from chill; disease of the lungs set in, and the old warrior, now in his eighty-second year, had no strength to resist the attack. He gradually sank, and at 8 p.m. on Saturday, 14th November 1914, within sound of the guns thundering around Ypres, he died.
Lord Roberts was a man of war from his youth up, and it was fitting that he should pass away on a battlefield, amidst the soldiers who adored him. Officers from every corps in the British and Indian armies, and representatives of the French army, escorted the coffin to the hall at St. Omer where the body was laid in state, and a simple but affecting funeral service was held. The Prince of Wales[107] was there, as well as Prince Alexander of Teck, and all the chiefs of the army who could be spared from their duties. By the head of the coffin stood Prince Pertab Singh,[108] taking a last farewell of the warrior who was his old friend and ideal.[109] The hymns, "Now the labourer's task is o'er," and "O God, our help," were sung, and it seemed quite natural that Christian, Hindu, and Mohammedan should all join in the service.
