CHAPTER XV.
THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT.
The disappointments of 1916 and 1917—The collapse of Russia—The Cambrai Battle—The German propaganda—Fears of irresolution at Home—Reassurances from Home—Effects of the Submarine war—An economical reorganisation at G.H.Q.—A new Quartermaster General—Good effects of cheerfulness at Home.
The Somme campaign, 1916, had been begun with very high hopes. The main conception of it was a sound one, to attack the German line at the point of junction between the French and British forces, the point where, according to all the accepted principles, the Allied line should have been weakest but actually was not. That was the only way to bring an element of the unexpected into a grand attack in those days of long and laborious artillery preparations. (The Tank did not appear on the scene until the Battle of the Somme was two months old and did not develop its usefulness as a substitute for artillery preparation until nearly a year later).
For the Somme battle an enormous artillery concentration was made, and a special "Army of Pursuit" was trained in the rear of our lines to follow through when the German line had been breached. Then there was a preliminary bombardment of the German positions from the sea to beyond the Somme, and, amidst many feint attacks, the British and the French offensive north and south of the Somme was launched.
The First Battle of the Somme made the walls of Jericho quake but just failed to bring them down. The Army of Pursuit was given no chance of pushing to the Rhine; its energies had to be diverted towards sustaining the attack. The fighting season closed in 1916 with the Germans still holding their main defences but convinced, so far as the reasonable section of their leaders were concerned, that the game was up and that the best thing to do was to work for a peace on the best terms possible.
ON THE RAMPARTS
Thus 1916 was a somewhat disappointing year; 1917 was even more so. The fighting season, that year, closed with the Allied cause in a worse position than in 1916 and with Germany correspondingly encouraged. There would have been some reasonable excuse if in the winter of 1917-18 tails drooped at G.H.Q. The weather was particularly vile. Every day the winds that howled over the bleak hill-top seemed to have come straight from Russia and Germany, bringing with them a moral as well as a physical cold. The casualty lists of the Autumn were not cheerful to ponder over; and it was singularly depressing to hear from Home that in some political circles those casualty lists were being conned over with the idea of founding on them a case against the Army.
Nobody was inclined to try to represent the late Autumn campaign as altogether satisfactory. But it was felt by the soldiers that "they had done their durn'dest, angels can do no more;" and that there was not sufficient appreciation of the fact at Home that with Russia down and out, France in a very bad way, Italy tottering, the British Army had had to step into the breach, had had to take a gruelling without being able to accomplish much more than defence.
It had seemed in 1916 that the time had arrived for Germany to pay the penalty. But a triumph not of a military kind came to her rescue. The German methods of espionage and civil corruption were on the whole as blundering and as disastrous as her other methods during the Great War. They helped to alienate practically all the civilised neutral world. But in Russia—mystic, generous, trusting Russia—they had an unhappy success. In the Autumn of 1916 this first showed. Roumania at that time joined in the war against Germany, and this new accession of strength apparently marked the near end of the war. But Russia mysteriously collapsed owing to the effects of German corruption. Roumania was left "in the air," and a large part of her territory was over-run. From this date, though many of the gallant soldiers of Russia made heroic efforts to safeguard their country's honour, that great Ally was practically out of the fight. By the winter of 1917-18 she was quite out. The French had had grave troubles. The Italians had had to send out an S.O.S. signal.
We should have been more cheerful if the Cambrai attack, 1917, had had the full success it deserved. That really was in its conception and execution a very fine affair. At the time Germany was drawing troops and guns from the Russian Front and pouring them on to our Front in wholesale fashion. Both France and Great Britain had had to send Armies to the help of Italy. Our Battle of Passchendaele was not exactly flourishing. To undertake a new battle was the last development the enemy expected of us; and to do what is absolutely unexpected is to do the big thing in war. The British command collected an Army ostensibly for Italy, made a great secret assemblage of Tanks, and suddenly attacked the Germans in the strongest part of their Hindenburg line. Their line was particularly strong at that point. It comprised three series of defences each one covered by triple barriers of wire from 50 to 60 yards deep. A system of dug-outs (constructed with the labour of Russian prisoners) at a depth of 50 feet below the surface made an underground city with water and electric light installations, kitchens, drying-rooms and the like. Above the surface the houses were closely packed with the earth removed from the excavations, and thus became great earthworks indestructible by any shell-fire.
All this the British Third Army, in a surprise attack carried out by the Tanks and the Infantry, over-ran and captured in a day's attack. So fierce was the British advance and so feeble the German defence when taken by surprise that we almost got into Cambrai. If that centre had been won the German Front in the West would have been deprived of its central pillar. The German defence, however, rallied in time to avoid absolute disaster. When the German military mind was given time to think it could always make a good show, and the riposte to our Cambrai attack was a good one. We lost most of the fruits of a dramatic coup. It was more than annoying to think that just when we had successfully solved the problem of a break-through we had not the means, owing to commitments elsewhere, to push the thrust home.
Cambrai was a good deal "boomed" in the English Press at the time on "popular" lines. But I do not think that the skill of generalship and organisation that it showed were quite appreciated. The favourite British pose of being a complete ass, altogether inferior to the "other fellow," used to be pushed to the extreme point in regard to military matters. The British had a quaint humility in respect to their military skill. In a shame-faced kind of way they admitted that their soldiers were brave; but for examples of military genius they always referred to the "other fellow." Yet one may be daring enough, perhaps, to say something on the other side; and to suggest that in the Great War the German was really surpassed in most points of military skill by the British. The difference was not always great, but where the difference was greatest was just in those points of invention, of new tactics and new strategy, which show the better brain. Heresy it will seem; but the truth is that from 1914 to 1918 the British military system showed itself superior to the German in resource and sagacity. Perhaps it would be better to say the British-French military system, for it is difficult to separate the achievement of one from the other.
Consider one by one the main features of the great campaign. The warfare in the air was its most dramatic feature. Everything of air tactics and strategy that the German used he copied from the British and French. It was the British who originated aeroplane attack with incendiary bullets on captive balloons, aeroplane escort of attacking infantry, aeroplane sallies at low altitude on enemy trenches, and the various combinations of observing machines with fighting machines. In the first battle of the Somme, when the British and French first disclosed their sky tactics, the German was absolutely driven out of the air. He had then to learn to copy all our methods; and he originated none of his own.
Another dramatic feature, the complicated and terribly effective artillery curtain fire, was evolved by the British-French command. It was copied by the Germans, who themselves contributed nothing new to artillery science during the war. Yet another leading feature was the Tank, the Tank which made its real value first felt at Cambrai. This was a purely British invention, evolved during this war for the needs of this war.
Our "Winter of discontent" was not made any sweeter by the suspicion that existed of a possible yielding on the part of the political powers at Home to German propaganda. This German propaganda took the form of blazoning the preparations for a sensational Spring offensive in 1918; it was trumpeted like a Fat Woman at a Fair, and supplemented by an almost equally strident advertisement of a gigantic defensive. In addition to preparing a great on-rush in which Calais, Paris, Rome, and perhaps London were to be captured, the German High Command wished the world to know that it was also preparing a mighty series of defensive positions back to the Rhine. Wonderful showmen! They had not only the most marvellous Fat Woman, but also a miraculous Skeleton Man. And the prize they wished to win, by bluff if not by fighting, was agreement to an inconclusive peace.
The soldiers were not affected much by these tactics. They took solid comfort from two facts. The first fact was expressed in the homely proverb "Much cry, little wool." Had the Germans been confident that they could smash through the steel wall which barred them on the West from the sea, from the capitals of civilisation, and from the supplies of raw material for which they were starving, there would have been no preliminary advertisement. The effort would have been made, and Germany's enemies would have had to abide by the result. There would not have been any compunction at the consequent cost in blood. The mere extravagance of the advertisement of the German plans was proof to the soldiers at G.H.Q. that those plans were recognised not to have a solid enough military foundation, and had to be reinforced by showy bluff.
The second fact which gave solid comfort was that in any comparison at all of forces the German group was inferior to the West European-American group. There was not any doubt at G.H.Q. Indeed the more the Germans protested of what they were going to do in the Spring of 1918 the more firm was G.H.Q. in believing that the enemy was at last coming to the end of his resources and was anxious to "bluff" a peace rather than "show" a weak hand.
But it was feared that the people at Home might take the other view, and it had to be admitted that the German put up a very strong bluff. Perhaps its cleverest form at the time was in the discussion of "peace terms"—a discussion in which it was presumed that the German would impose a victorious peace before the summer of 1918. A characteristic discussion—G.H.Q. kept a close eye on the German press and minutely examined every German paper published during the war—would begin with some Prince pointing out the minimum indemnity that Germany should exact from her foes, and explaining in what form it should be exacted. Germany's need, it would be pointed out, would be for raw materials, food, cotton, wool, rubber, tobacco, silk and the like. It was these that must be supplied to Germany by way of indemnity. They would have to be supplied not free, but at a price 20 per cent. lower than the current market price, and the annual value of this discount would only reach the modest sum of £50,000,000 a year.
To have had to provide yearly a tribute of any kind to Germany would of course have taken away the independence of the Allies completely. They would have been put in the position of admitting a German suzerainity, and would have become as the oppressed Christian provinces of the old Turkish Empire. But to provide this tribute of raw material, the discount on which at 20 per cent. would be £50,000,000 a year, would have been to engage to send to Germany yearly raw materials of her choice to the value of £250,000,000. This would have been the first call on the farms, the mines, the shipping of the Allies, and only after that call was met would the Allies have been able to begin to supply their own larders and their own factories.
That was one direction the German Peace Propaganda took. The idea of it was, presumably, to strike terror into our hearts, to make us welcome with something like relief the actual official terms of a peace negotiation when they came to be promulgated.
Then someone in Germany would take the other side. Assuming with absolute cock-sureness that Germany must win the war in the Spring of 1918, this publicist would affect to regret the savage terms of peace imposed upon Russia. These terms, it was argued, did not represent the considered wishes of the German people. But in war the wisdom of the statesmen was pushed aside by the eagerness of the soldiers. The German politicians were overwhelmed in regard to the Russian peace because the Russian had allowed things to go too far. But if only the Western Powers would agree to negotiate for peace now, the "reasonable German politicians" would be able to assert their authority. There would be no ruthless military conditions such as were imposed upon Russia. Sweetly and moderately the Germans would frame their terms; but the Powers of the Entente must "put the war into liquidation at once." Delay would mean that the "reasonable German politicians" would lose their power to restrain the military party.
G.H.Q. remembered the old fable about certain trustful animals being invited to pay friendly visits to the cave of a beast of prey. One wise animal noticed that whilst there were many tracks of visitors going into the cave there were no tracks of visitors coming out. We had noticed that a free Russia went into negotiation with Germany to conclude a friendly and reasonable peace on terms of "no annexations and no indemnities." No free Russia came out.
But G.H.Q. was honestly alarmed for a time that resolution would be shaken at Home, and welcomed with joy (as the Germans did with rage), the firm declarations of the Versailles Council of the Allies and the unshaken confidence and resolution shown in the speech from the Throne at the prorogation of the British Parliament.
As soon as the Home political situation was seen to be clear, G.H.Q. set about preparing for the "wrath to come" with a good deal of cheerfulness and with some amusement that the German propaganda should, as a final kick, make a strong though forlorn effort to revive the old story that Great Britain contemplated the seizure from France of Calais and the department of Pas-de-Calais. "Even," said the German Wireless about this time, "if it is not openly admitted that the English will never voluntarily evacuate the French port of Calais, which they have occupied—" etc., etc.
This lie revived in our Mess between British and French liaison officers an old topic of humorous conversation. For when this particular lie was burdening the German Wireless some time before, a British General was showing to a French General the arrangements of the British Base at Etaples. He exhibited with pride the great bath houses for the men, built of concrete and "good for a hundred years." "Ah yes, very solid—good for a hundred years," said the French General, laughing. Then they both laughed.
Christmas, 1917, was celebrated with the usual British merriment at G.H.Q., and on New Year's Day everybody's cheerful greeting was "That this year may see the end of the war." But I think there were few officers of standing who thought that a peace Christmas was possible in 1918. No one would contemplate the possibility of losing the war, of stopping on any terms short of a German surrender; but few could see any possibility of victory near ahead. There were thick clouds all round the horizon. Russia was finished. Italy was not cheerful. France was recovering but not yet showing sure signs of emergence from that fit of depression out of which M. Clemenceau was to pull her—the soul of a Richelieu in his frail body.
The worst symptom of all from the point of view of the British Army was the threat of a shortness of supplies. Just when the collapse of Russia had allowed the enemy to concentrate his full strength on the Western Front, the great reservoir of British wealth, which was the main financial resource of the Alliance, showed signs of not being inexhaustible. There was a call at the same time for greater preparation and greater economy. From the beginning of 1918 there were two great cross-currents of correspondence between G.H.Q. and the Home Government, one demanding new weapons, new defences, new equipment, the other demanding rigid economy in steel, in timber, in shipping space, in food, in oil, in expenditure generally. This was partly due to actual lack of money and of credit. But in the main it was the result of the submarine war.
It was at the end of 1915 that the German Admiralty prepared a memorandum arguing that if unrestricted submarine war were adopted as a policy (i.e., sinking everything, hostile or neutral, warship or passenger ship), then Great Britain would be compelled to sue for peace within six months. The memorandum gave various statistics regarding food supplies, tonnage, etc., to prove this hypothesis. The memorandum was forwarded to the Imperial Chancellor, and by him sent to Dr. Helfferich, Secretary of State for Finance, for a report. Dr. Helfferich reported adversely. He was not convinced that Great Britain would be brought to her knees. He feared the effect upon neutral nations of such a policy.
The German Admiralty persisted in its view. Thereupon the matter was submitted for report to ten experts representing finance, commerce, mining, and agriculture. These experts were asked to advise (1) as to the probable effect upon Great Britain (2) as to the probable effect upon Germany's relations with neutrals and (3) as to how far the situation in Germany demanded the employment of such a weapon.
All these experts agreed that the effect on Great Britain would be to force her to sue for peace within six months or less. Indeed, Herr Müller, President of the Dresden Bank, thought that Great Britain would collapse within three months. All the experts also agreed as to the third point of reference, arguing that Germany's position was so difficult that the most desperate measures were necessary to end the war. Herr Engelhardt, of Mannheim, Councillor of Commerce, thought the economic position of Germany so bad that a few weeks' delay might render even ruthless submarine war useless. On the second point, the effect on relations with neutrals, the experts were divided. Some thought that the United States would be driven to war, others thought not. In all cases they did not see a reason against ruthless submarine war in their possible relations with any neutral.
But the fateful decision was not taken until February, 1917, when the destruction of peaceful shipping, whether of enemy or of neutral countries, was ordered. It did not end the war in six months, nor in twelve months; but by the beginning of 1918 there were some very serious difficulties of supply just when the strictly military position demanded the most generous effort.
I wonder if those experts who bandy to and fro explanations and accusations in regard to the German break-through in the Spring of 1918 ever have looked at the matter from the point of view of supply, of the supply, say, of one sternly necessary item of defence, wire? At a careful computation we wanted 12,000 tons of barbed wire in January, 1918, and 10,000 more tons in February, 1918, to give our men a reasonable chance of holding the line which we knew to be threatened. Of that total of 22,000 tons we actually got 7,700 tons, i.e., 35 per cent. of what was needed.
I do not quote this fact to start another quarrel, shuttle-cocking blame from soldier to politician. I am more than ready to believe that the people at Home were then doing their best (as, pace all grousers, I believe they did their best from August, 1914, to November, 1918). But you cannot spin out wire like you spin out talk, especially barbed wire. The British soldier can, with his mere flesh and blood, and that gay courage of his, do wonders in the way of making up for want of material. But he could not hold up the attacked sector in the Spring of 1918 against overwhelming odds; and one of the reasons was that he had not enough wire in front of him. He had not the wire in front of him because it had not been, could not be, supplied.
How anxious was the task of G.H.Q. at the dawn of 1918 may be illustrated with these heads of correspondence, in and out.
To G.H.Q. from Home.
The greatest economy in steel is urged.
The position in regard to shipping is serious; the strictest economy in everything is necessary.
Lubricants are hard to get. We urge the greatest economy.
From G.H.Q. to Home.
More machine-guns are urgently needed.
There is a shortage of blankets; there is a shortage of 8,000 tons of barbed wire. New searchlights are needed; 300,000 box respirators are needed for the American Forces.
I could fill many pages with matter of the same sort. The poison of the submarine war began to have its cumulative effect just when we were getting the most peremptory reminders that Supply was going to be the determining factor of the final struggle, that war had become more and more a matter of striking at the enemy's life by striking at "the means whereby he lives." Munitions, food, equipment, railways, roads, ships—these had become the most important factors, and victory would incline to the Force which could best concentrate the means to maintain an overwhelming force at some particular point, which could best develop, conserve, and transport its material. The field for the strategist had moved more and more from the Front line towards the Base.
Fortunately, the British Army in France had for its Q.M.G. at this crisis a man with the courage and the knowledge to carry through a drastic reorganisation of the Supply and Transport services. Lieutenant-General Sir Travers Clarke, who took over as Q.M.G., France, at the end of 1917, was a daring experiment on Lord Haig's part; for he was a comparative youngster to be put into a post which was then the most anxious and onerous in the Army, and his actual substantive rank was that of a major; but he was an acting Major-General with a fine record in a minor theatre of the war. Lord Haig knew his man well, though, and, what was just as necessary, knew how to back his man. He put Sir Travers Clarke in the saddle and kept him there in spite, I have no doubt, of many thunderous protests from influential quarters, for Sir Travers Clarke was a ruthless reformer and a stubborn upholder of any course of action he thought necessary. A character sketch of him that appeared in the Morning Post in 1919 is worth quoting in part:
LIEUT-GENERAL SIR TRAVERS CLARKE
"'That big young man,' was a leading American officer's term to describe Sir Travers Clarke after he had met him in France in Conference, and had not caught his name. British G.H.Q. perhaps only learned to appreciate the Q.M.G. fully from the comments of foreign officers who came into touch with him in 1918. The masterful man took his power so quietly, came to big decisions with such an air of ease, such an absence of anything dramatic or violent, that it was a little difficult to understand his full strength.
"'T.C.'—as often before remarked, the British Army must reduce everything and everyone to initials—as a regimental officer in the 'Nineties never seemed to get an opening. Nor did his early Staff work bring him much recognition. But an officer of his to-day, who was a clerk under him when he was first a Staff Captain, insists that he always gave the impression of great power in reserve. 'He believed in the British Army, in hard work, and in himself.' That was the foundation of the career of a man who, once an opening showed, forged ahead with marvellous speed to his destiny.
"It took 'T.C.' ten years to become a major; within the next ten years he had become Lieutenant-General and Quartermaster-General to the British Armies in France. One year in that post, a year in which were crowded all the experiences that a great Army could have, marked him as a great leader of men and a superb organiser. How much the Allied victory owes to him a grateful country will not appreciate fully until not only the British but also the French and American campaigns are analysed.
"'T.C.' had the ideal personality for a military leader. You were always dreadfully afraid of him and sincerely fond of him. No general ever made sterner demands on his officers and men. If you could not stand up to a gruelling day's work and come up smiling for the next day's and the next day's, until the need had passed, you were no use, and you moved on to some less exacting sphere. But you were working under a worker, and you found yourself part of a massive machine which was rolling flat all obstacles. That made it easy. Further, there was the most generous appreciation of good work and a keen personal sympathy.
"Sir Travers Clarke has one rule to which he never permitted an exception: that it is the fighting man who has to be considered first and last. In France he was quite willing that the Staff should labour to the extreme point of endurance to take any of the load off the man in the trenches. He did not like about him men, however clever, who had not seen fighting. It was the first duty of the Staff, he insisted, to enter with the completest sympathy into the feelings and the difficulties of the fighting man. 'Bad Staff work mostly arises from not knowing the differences between an office and a trench,' was one of his aphorisms."
This is not a history of the war; nor a contribution to any of the numerous war controversies; it is merely a sketch of life at G.H.Q. as it appeared to a Staff Officer; but I cannot help obtruding a reply to some current criticisms of Lord Haig: that he was too inclined to stand by his officers, that he was reluctant to "butcher" a man, and that in consequence he did not get the highest standard of efficiency. Faithfulness to his friends and servants was certainly a marked characteristic of Lord Haig as Commander-in-Chief. He chose his men cautiously and, I believe, with brilliant insight. Having chosen them he stood by them faithfully in spite of press or political or service thunderings, unless he was convinced that they were not equal to their work.
It is a characteristic which, even allowing that there was an odd case of over-indulgence, of giving a man a little too much benefit of the doubt, worked on the whole for the good. Men do not do their best work with ropes round their necks; and I believe that a great newspaper magnate whose motto at first was "Sack, Sack, Sack," very soon found out that it was a mistake.
In this particular instance I suppose the Commander-in-Chief had powerful urging often enough to "butcher" his Q.M.G., who did things of so disturbing a character. He did not; and the event proved him right, as it did in practically every one of his great trusts during the war.
Reorganisation of Supply and Transport filled the attention of G.H.Q. during the early months of 1918. Over a curiously wide range of subjects swept a wave of reform and retrenchment. As I have already told, there was a definite organisation to collect the salvage of the battlefields, an organisation which saved millions of money in rags, bottles, waste-paper, swill, bones and grease as well as in the more obvious matters of shell-cases and derelict arms and ammunition. An Agricultural Directorate was set to work to grow potatoes and oats and vegetables and other food stuffs behind the lines. Rations were judiciously reduced, a substantial difference being left in favour of the man in the actual fighting line as compared with the man at the Base. The supply of certain luxuries at the E.F. canteens was stopped or limited, but it was provided that the man in the fighting line should suffer less from this than the man at the Base. Weekly conferences were instituted to discuss the most economical use of labour, of material and of plant. Every matter great and small had searching attention, and the British Army began to be run like an up-to-date competitive business. Some of the injudicious laughed. They christened the General in charge of Salvage "O.C. Swills" and "Rags and Bones." They could not "see" a Colonel whose mission in life was to cut down laundry costs and arrange for the darning of the men's socks when they came out of the wash.
But all these things had to do with the winning of the war. It is a fact that if the lavishness of 1914-15-16-17 had been carried into 1918 we could not have won the war, because we should have been bankrupt of material.
G.H.Q. at the dawn of the Spring of 1918 was very serious in mind, but not so much so as to fail to get some amusement as well as interest out of the various new ideas in military administration; and fully confident now that the people at Home were going to stick it out. In this connection there was often mentioned with cheerfulness a London bye-election towards the end of 1917 for an area which had had special attention from the German air-raids. Some rather expected to see a candidate come forward from among the little group known as "Pacifists," who would seek votes on the plea that the best way to stop air-raids quickly and to get out of the discomforts of the war would be to meet half-way the proposals of the Germans who were trying for an inconclusive peace.
What actually happened was quite different. A candidate came forward under the banner of the Government, pledged to the Government's programme of carrying on the war until German militarism was crushed and Germany made reparation for the ruin she had wrought in Europe. This candidate had the support of both the old political parties. Against him there came out another candidate. Did this candidate seek to win votes by pleading for a friendly consideration of Germany's hypocritical peace proposals? He did not. From what one could gather of the feeling of the electorate, if he had done so he would have been ducked in the nearest pond. No, his appeal was based on the plea that the Government candidate did not go far enough in hostility to Germany, and that that gentleman was not fully in favour of carrying to German homes the dastardly air-war which Germany waged on a civilian population.
Then a third candidate appeared on the scene. He was not for any half-hearted policy. His cry to the electors was that neither of the other two candidates was sufficiently earnest in regard to the war against Germany. His programme was of one clause only, the necessity of bombing Germany out of her barbarism. He did not believe that any method of sweet reasonableness was of any use. A thousand tons of bombs daily on Berlin, and a ration in proportionate scale on other German towns, was his idea.
Women speakers came to take part in the contest. Did they advocate making concessions to the German desire to sneak away from the consequences of the crime of 1914? They did not. They were more vigorous than any of the men speakers in demanding a full measure of reprisal on Germany. No one throughout the whole contest whispered "peace."
It was altogether inspiriting. Here was a chance to see what the people of England, the people who stood behind the Army and the Navy and were our ultimate supports, felt about the war. We could see that they were utterly resolute, with not a sign of weariness, nor of fear, nor of tolerance for a craven peace. Their message was "Fight on, Fight on. Bring us home a real peace. We will put up with everything the Boche can do; we will carry on. But no palter, no surrender. Finish the job you are at."
The English people terrorised? Not a bit of it. They were only getting their blood up. And G.H.Q. saw that and was comforted.
There was also a good deal of solid comfort in the way that London took the bitter experience of "rations." We never had any food scarcity in the Army and, going on leave, officer or soldier had a food card that guaranteed him a good holiday supply. So we were in the best position to appreciate the cheerful way in which Great Britain took the very thin gruel of ration times. Every officer coming back from leave expressed his glowing admiration of civilian patience.
Those German agents in London who relieved the tedium of the war for the Allies by reporting to Berlin such "happenings" as the Battle of Oxford Street and the destruction of whole quarters of London by air attacks, set out, for the fooling of the German public, some fine accounts of dismay and discontent caused by food tickets. But as a matter of truth, London on rations surprised and gratified the most cheerful optimists. The old city "took her medicine" not only with patience but with an actual gaiety.
To sum up: between the close of the fighting season of 1917 and the beginning of that of 1918, G.H.Q. was at first a little depressed at the thought that political developments would prevent the Army from seeing the job through in a satisfactory way; was subsequently reassured as to the feeling of the civilian population; and thereafter faced the future with complete confidence.