Told in gallant deeds

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

VI

Now I must tell you about Lieut.-Commander Max K. Horton, of Submarine E9, and how he earned the nickname of “The Double-toothed Pirate.”

You know how terribly dangerous the submarine service is. These ships are long and narrow, shaped rather like a cigar, and they can travel a long way under the water. But they are very fragile, and their gallant crews are always ready for instant death.

The day before the Carmania sank the Cap Trafalgar, September 13, Lieut.-Commander Horton took a little trip out to the Frisian Islands in E9. He found the German light cruiser Hela and sank her with a torpedo, and got away without being seen.

The loss of the Hela herself did not matter much to the Germans, as she was nearly ten years old and not of much fighting value. But what did matter was the upset to the nerves of the Germans. This is a most valuable thing in war—to make your enemy feel “jumpy.”

It is said that E9 came back to Harwich flying a little yellow flag bearing a skull and crossbones, which, as you probably know, is the badge of the Kaiser’s favourite regiment of Brandenburg Hussars.

The next exploit of E9 was even more daring, even more certain to make the Germans “jumpy.”

Again the little ship went off to the Frisian Islands, and there she torpedoed and sank a German destroyer. If you look at the map, you will see how close these islands are to the German naval stations of Wilhelmshaven and Emden. What should we have felt if a German submarine had come up and sunk a British ship quite close to Portsmouth and Plymouth? However, the War may bring us worse surprises than that, and if it does we must bear them bravely.

E9 had an exciting time. While she was watching for her prey, she saw a big German cruiser and she had to dive. When she came up again, the cruiser had gone, but there was a destroyer instead, and this she marked down. At one time she was actually too near the destroyer to fire a torpedo because it would have been dangerous to herself. At last she got about six hundred yards off and then she fired two torpedoes, one after the other. The first missed, but the second hit the destroyer fairly in the middle and blew her to pieces. Another German destroyer which was near hastily ran away.

Lieut.-Commander Horton and his gallant men returned to Harwich flying the little yellow flag, and underneath it a little white flag, also bearing the grim device of a skull and crossbones. It was then that he was given the jesting nickname of “The Double-toothed Pirate,” for as you know the skull and crossbones has always been the emblem of pirates.

I do not myself like this nickname, for Lieut.-Commander Horton is by no means a pirate. On the contrary, he always fights fair. He is as clever as he is brave, and he has always been a great believer in submarines, which he has been studying for years. When he was serving in H.M.S. Duke of Edinburgh he won a gold medal for saving life. That was when the Delhi went ashore with the Princess Royal and the late Duke of Fife and their children on board.

An amusing story is told which shows the coolness of submarine officers. One of these gallant fellows, finding that the enemy could see him on the surface by daylight, sank his boat to the bottom and waited for night. Someone asked him what he did all that time. “I did very well,” he said, “we played auction bridge, and I won 4s. 11½d.” But games like this at the bottom of the sea are the great exception.

Never forget our seamen and what they are doing for us in storm, in cold, and in fog. If you have the good fortune to be related to a boy or man in the Navy, write to him regularly and tell him all the home news. He will love to hear it, and, busy as he may be, will probably find time to answer you. But if you don’t hear for a long time, remember that the delightful verses—with only one word altered—which were written by the Earl of Dorset at sea in 1665 are as true now as they were two hundred and fifty years ago:

“To all you children now at land

We men at sea indite;

But first would have you understand

How hard it is to write:

The Muses now, and Neptune too,

We must implore to write to you.

For though the Muses should prove kind,

And fill our empty brain,

Yet if rough Neptune rouse the wind

To wave the azure main,

Our paper, pen, and ink, and we,

Roll up and down our ships at sea.”

CHAPTER III
BRITAIN, TO ARMS!

This England never did, nor never shall

Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror.

Come the three corners of the world in arms

And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue

If England to herself do rest but true

Shakespeare.

Men whisper that our arm is weak,

Men say our blood is cold,

And that our hearts no longer speak

That clarion note of old;

But let the spear and sword draw near

The sleeping lion’s den,

Our island shore shall start once more

To life with armèd men.

Sir Walter Scott.

Just before the war broke out, a friend of mine took her three grandchildren for a holiday to Wimereux, a French seaside place near Boulogne. They were quite little children, the youngest indeed being still a baby. On the day that my friend knew that war was certain she was naturally very anxious to get the children safely back to England.

That night she sent them to bed early, and she herself did not sit up late. On her way to her room she looked in on the children to see if they wanted anything. To her surprise, only the baby was in bed. The two elder ones had drawn up the blind and were looking out of the window on the sea.

“Oh, Granny!” they cried, “do come and look!”

My friend went and stood beside them, and there, spread out before her in the moonlight, she saw a most wonderful sight, one that no Englishwoman could look upon without a thrill of pride.

Beyond the fort built by Napoleon, beyond a rock on which stood a solitary French sentinel leaning on his rifle, the whole sea was covered with the British Fleet, ship after ship in regular lines—Dreadnoughts, cruisers, all with their attendant torpedo-boats, destroyers, and submarines.

There they lay, with none of the bravery of flags flying and bands playing, as when the King reviews his Fleet, but cold and vigilant, all stripped for action. Not a man could be seen on board—only the long guns.

The children, looking on, partly understood the silent strength of that great armada of warships, and they went back to bed contented with their grandmother’s promise to tell them all about it to-morrow.

Next morning the children ran to the window, but the British Fleet had gone, vanished as silently as it had come, and the sea was almost clear.

“What has happened? Why have the ships gone?” The children pressed my friend with eager questions, and as you will also want to put the same questions, I cannot do better than tell you what she told them.

The great war with Germany had begun, and the British Fleet had gone eastwards to the North Sea, there to watch for the German Fleet!

But the most wonderful thing was that now, after a hundred years, British soldiers were going to fight again on the Continent. Almost exactly a hundred years ago Wellington, aided by German troops, had finally crushed Napoleon on the field of Waterloo. But now the British and the French were fast friends, and they were going to fight shoulder to shoulder against the German hosts.

A great writer, who was even greater as a poet, George Meredith, wrote some noble lines on this new-found friendship. I quote one verse:

“Joy that no more with murder’s frown

The ancient rivals bark apart.

Now Nelson to brave France is shown

A hero after her own heart:

And he now scanning that quick race

To whom through life his glove was thrown,

Would know a sister spirit to embrace.”

You must never think of the past as if it were something quite different from the present. In some ways this great war brings us much nearer the glorious old England which was always at war in Flanders, as Belgium was then called.

Those old heroical conflicts of long ago produced some wonderful books. Let us hope that the time will come when some great writer of the future will create as vividly real a man as Sterne’s Uncle Toby.

After being wounded at the siege of Namur, Uncle Toby spent his peaceful old age in following Marlborough’s army on his bowling-green. Sterne describes how the old man set up model fortifications with batteries, saps, ditches, and palisadoes, and so, with the help of maps and books as well as of Corporal Trim, his soldier servant, he was able to fight over again, not only his old battles but those that were still going on.

The Uncle Toby of the future will set up miniature pieces of artillery and tiny trenches in place of the batteries and palisadoes of the past. Let us hope, however, that he will be as noble-hearted and kindly a man as his famous predecessor.

When you are older, I hope you will read and re-read this wonderful book, which is called “Tristram Shandy.” I will only add here Uncle Toby’s defence of Britain at war, because it applies so well to the present War with Germany.

“What is War,” he asked, “what is it, when fought as ours has been, upon Principles of Liberty and Principles of Honour, what is it but the Getting together of Quiet and Harmless People with their Swords in their Hands, to keep the Ambitious and Turbulent within Bounds?”

I cannot help feeling rather sorry that most of you will not remember what the British Army was like before the days of khaki. I am rather sorry for myself that I cannot remember the time when our troops wore the occasionally beautiful, the always quaint, and the sometimes grotesque uniforms which you see in old pictures and engravings. At the Naval and Military Tournament every year some of the old picturesque uniforms and the curious old drill are revived. I remember, in particular, how Sir Mark Sykes with wonderful skill brought to life again before us in this way a company of the famous “Green Howards.”

Not much more than a hundred years ago, soldiers all wore pigtails, but both officers and men hated them, and when at last they were abolished, in 1808, some of the regiments actually made bonfires of their pigtails while others buried them!

The French still wear the blue and red uniform, and sad to say it is greatly owing to that fact that they have suffered so terribly from the German fire. It seems that an airman, even when flying very high, sees the bright patches of blue lying beneath him, when the British khaki, and even more the greenish-grey German uniform, would be quite invisible.

Many of you, I am sure, have been to Boulogne, either to spend a happy summer holiday there, or when going through to some other part of France. Henceforth we shall all look upon the beautiful old French port with a new interest and a new respect. For there the British Expeditionary Force landed in August 1914.

Till that date Boulogne was chiefly famous as having been the “jumping-off place” from which Napoleon planned to make a victorious invasion of England. It was the Battle of Waterloo which saved us from that invasion. So Boulogne had a long and intimate acquaintance with British warriors, but never till this year in the guise of friends. The noble ghosts of these British warriors were evoked in splendid fashion in the following lines by Mr. Justin Huntly M‘Carthy:

“One dreamer, when our English soldiers trod

But yesterday the welcoming fields of France,

Saw war-gaunt shadows gathering stare askance

Upon those levies and that alien sod—

Saw Churchill’s smile and Wellington’s curt nod,

Saw Harry with his Crispins, Chandos’ lance,

And the Edwards on whose breasts the leopards dance:

Then heard a gust of ghostly thanks to God

That the most famous quarrel of all time

In the most famous friendship ends at last;

Such flame of friendship as God fans to forge

A sword to strike the Dragon of the Slime,

Bidding St. Denis with St. George stand fast

Against the Worm. St. Denis and St. George!”

I ought perhaps to explain that “Churchill’s smile” does not mean the smile of Mr. Winston Churchill, but of his great ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough. The Worm is of course an old name for the Dragon and stands in this case for Germany, and St. Denis is the old battle-cry of France, as St. George is that of England.

In spite of what people may tell you to the contrary, never believe that a secret cannot be kept. Honourable people always keep a secret. It shows how very many honourable people there must be, both in England and in France, when I tell you that the fact that this wonderful force of 110,000 men with all their guns and stores was being taken across to France, was never publicly revealed till Lord Kitchener allowed it to be announced in the newspapers.

And yet what was happening day by day and hour by hour must have been known to thousands of people in both countries. The reason for this secrecy was, as you can easily guess, to furnish a nice little surprise for the enemy. And that it was a real surprise for the enemy is proved by a German Army Order, which afterwards fell into our hands, referring to a rumour that a British force might be coming. That Army Order was dated August 21, after the whole force had landed!

I want you particularly to understand also that it is a difficult job to take an army of horse and foot and guns across even so short a bit of sea as the English Channel. It takes many big ships, called transports, and they have to be most carefully guarded by warships while they are crossing.

Never forget that if it had not been for the British Navy the Army could never have got across the Channel safely. Nor could the constant stream of fresh troops and horses and food and shells and cartridges and all the other hundred and one things that an army needs in the field of battle.

Everything possible was done to prevent the enemy from knowing about the force which was being sent against him. The regiments left their depots in ignorance of where they were being sent. Even the drivers of the engines which drew the trains to Southampton were not told their destination beforehand. Most wonderful of all, the captain of each ship bearing a thousand or more soldiers started out from Southampton not knowing whither he was bound till he was ten miles from shore. Then he opened a sealed envelope containing his orders. Of course everyone had a shrewd suspicion, but there was no talking, no gossip.

Equally in the dark were the people of Boulogne, though they must have known great events were astir, for they could not help seeing some of the preparations which had to be made for receiving such an army.

Before he left our shores each soldier received a message from the King and a message from Lord Kitchener. This is the whole of the King’s message:

“You are leaving home to fight for the safety and honour of my Empire. Belgium, which country we are pledged to defend, has been attacked, and France is about to be invaded by the same powerful foe. I have implicit confidence in you, my soldiers. Duty is your watchword and I know your duty will be nobly done. I shall follow your every moment with deepest interest and mark with eager satisfaction your daily progress. Indeed, your welfare will never be absent from my thoughts. I pray God to bless you and guard you and bring you back victorious.

“George R. et I.”

“R. et I.” means “Rex et Imperator,” the Latin for King and Emperor, for the King is also Emperor of India.

The message from Lord Kitchener was a good deal longer, and I will only give you these sentences from what has been well described as the noblest message ever sent to fighting men:

“You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French comrades against the invasion of a common enemy.

“Remember that the honour of the British Empire depends on your individual conduct, and you can do your country no better service than in showing yourself in France and Belgium in the true character of a British soldier.

“Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind. Always look upon looting as a disgraceful act. You are sure to meet with a welcome and to be trusted; your conduct must justify that welcome and that trust.

“Do your duty bravely. Fear God. Honour the King.

“Kitchener, Field-Marshal.”

It was rather a fine touch of the French military authorities to set aside for the British Army the exact stretch of ground where Napoleon encamped his Expeditionary Force nearly a century before. The more we know about this war, the more wonderful a man Napoleon turns out to have been. Even in this matter of choosing the best and healthiest spot for a camp, the modern commanders could not do better than follow closely in his firm footsteps.

Those of us who have been to Boulogne must have driven or walked to the column which the town put up many years ago to the memory of England’s great enemy. How strange to think that British soldiers rested, before starting out on the most serious venture in their history, under the very shadow of that column!

The people of Boulogne—or one ought to say what was left of them, for of course their husbands, sons, and brothers were already at the front—gave our troops a most wonderful welcome. This was, however, but a foretaste of how they were to be treated in every district of France traversed by them. As many of our soldiers wrote home, they were in some cases almost killed with kindness.

Some of our troops were fortunate enough to remain at Boulogne ten days. Others only had a few hours’ rest before they were hurried up to the front. Yet others again left the camp full of high spirits, with laughter and happy au revoirs, to come back within a very few days wounded and on their way to hospital.

As you all know, the command of the British Force was given to Field-Marshal Sir John French, and you may like me to tell you something of this great soldier.

The first interesting thing about him is that, perhaps owing to the fact that his father was a naval officer, he served for a time in the Navy as a midshipman. Then he became a lieutenant in the Militia, or, as we should say now, the Territorials, and afterwards joined the 19th Hussars. He soon showed the splendid stuff he was made of, both in peace and in war. I think you will like to know that he was among those British officers who made the last desperate attempt to rescue General Gordon.

He is what is called a great cavalry leader, and it has been said that what Murat was to Napoleon, French proved himself to be to Roberts and to Kitchener during the South African War. If a service of great hazard and peril had to be performed, it was always French and his men who were asked to do it.

But what I want you to remember about Sir John French is, not only that he is a great soldier and a very brave man, but also that he is a singularly modest man. In each and all of his despatches during this great war he has always under-estimated his victories, in this setting an example which has not been followed by the enemy.

Sir John French has another very rare quality, and one which some famous military commanders have lacked, I mean the quality of generosity. There is not in his nature a touch of envy, or of that feeling which has sometimes made even very great men dislike and deplore any kind of rivalry. He has paid noble tributes to the officers working under him, and his commendation of his gallant army must have filled every man of them with a glow of pride and pleasure. Among the rank and file, who call him among themselves simply “Johnny,” he is almost worshipped, and they have the most absolute belief in his powers of leadership.

Like all great cavalry leaders, Sir John French is exceedingly fond of horses. He felt bitterly the death of a favourite charger which had carried him through the whole of the South African campaign, and which wore a medal round its neck recording its services. Sir John French had this good horse buried at Aldershot, and a memorial now marks the gallant charger’s grave.

You may be interested to learn that Napoleon’s charger, a small, thick-set barb, lives in many a noble painting. He spent his old age at the Jardin des Plantes, the “Zoo” of Paris, and used to be regularly visited by the members of his master’s Old Guard.

As for the Duke of Wellington’s famous horse, Copenhagen, familiar in many pictures, he was remarkable for his endurance, and however hard a day he had gone through—on one occasion Copenhagen carried the Iron Duke for sixteen hours at a stretch—he never refused his corn, which he used to eat very oddly, lying down. When he died of old age at Strathfieldsaye, he was buried with military honours.

Crimean Bob was for a long time the oldest horse in the British Army. He was a pretty, chestnut-coloured horse, and joined as a four-year-old in 1833. In 1842, he went on foreign service for the first time. He came back without a scratch, and embarked for the Crimea in 1854. He was ridden in the Charge of the Light Brigade—the story of which you know from Tennyson’s famous poem, “Half a league, half a league, half a league onward”—as well as all through the battles of the Alma and Inkerman. During the whole of the campaign he was never once struck off duty through sickness. On his return home he was carefully looked after at Cahir Barracks in Ireland till his death, which took place at an extraordinary old age.

Perhaps the thing which first made many of the country people in peaceful England understand that we were really at war, was what is called the “requisitioning” of horses. Supposing one of you had been leading a horse along a lane near home, you might, and almost certainly would, have been suddenly ordered to hand it over to be used for army purposes, of course at a fair price.

I heard of one venerable lady who was taking a nice drive, as she always did for an hour every afternoon. Her two fat horses were being driven, as always, by her fat old coachman, when suddenly an officer jumped out of a wood at the side of the road and politely requested her to hand them over!

The old lady was very much agitated, and the coachman pleaded that he might at least take his mistress home. “Yes, if you give me your word to have the horses back here within an hour.” “And what is to happen to me? It’s my living you’re taking away, sir!” “Oh, you can come too, and look after your horses!”

A pretty little story was told about the same time. A mare arrived at a well-known depot with other requisitioned animals. Tied round her neck was a label, with a tiny sprig of heather fastened by a piece of blue silk ribbon. The label bore the brief but pathetic message: “Sorry Lady has to leave us. Hope she will return to us safe and sound. With much love.”

This appeal found its way to a soldier’s heart, and he wrote from Woolwich to the Daily Sketch:

“I should be obliged if you would inform Ivy Clayton that her little horse has arrived here safe and well, and that she can rest assured that ‘Lady’ will receive every attention during her brief stay with us. Sincerely hoping that she will soon recover her pet,

“Gunner R.H.A.”

But to return to Sir John French and his officers. This word “officer” is so familiar that I do not suppose anyone of you has ever stopped to think what it means.

The ideal officer is gallant, intelligent, and energetic. He is aware that influence over his men is not obtained by discipline alone, but by kindness, firmness, and good sense. He explains to a certain extent to the men under him the reasons for his orders. He does not require of them the blind obedience which is exacted by the German officer. In fact, I cannot do better than quote the description given by a certain corporal in an old comedy called The Poor Gentleman:

“A good officer, do you see, cannot help being a kind-hearted man. Ship an officer, we will say, with his company to a foreign climate; he lands and endures heat, cold, and fatigue, hunger, thirst, sickness; now marching over the burning plain, now up to his knees in wet in the trench; how could a man suffer such hardships with a parcel of honest fellows under his command, and not learn to feel for his fellow-creatures?”

It is because our officers are good officers that the men follow them to the death. It is because they are not only firm and just, but also kind, that they are loved, honoured, and obeyed. A soldier never fails his officer if he has confidence in him, and if he knows he will never be asked for undue exertion unless the good of the service requires it.

During the passage across the Channel of our Expeditionary Force many wonderful deeds of daring were done by our brave airmen. One such was considered so remarkable as to be told in the official news later despatched from the front, and it is, I think, difficult to beat for cool courage.

During one of the airship patrols it became necessary to change a propeller blade of one of the engines. The captain feared it would be necessary to descend for this purpose, but two of the crew immediately volunteered to carry out this difficult task in the air. Climbing out on to the bracket, carrying the propeller shafting, they completed the hazardous work of changing the blade 2000 feet above the sea.

It was a long time before some of us realised that not only England, Scotland, and Ireland, but also the Greater Britain on which the sun never sets, had gone to war. Gallant deeds are being performed every day all over the Empire, and it is only by accident that we hear of some of them. The War enormously increased their number.

Take, for instance, the magnificent courage shown by Mr. Saxby Wellacott, the son of the Vicar of Totnes. This young man is not a soldier but a civilian attached to the Public Works Department at Accra, in West Africa. Yet he played an active part in the operations of the Field Force which added Togoland to our Empire early in August. The Germans put up a good fight. They mined the roads and railways and electrified the wire entanglements; but it is also reported that they used dum-dum bullets, which as you know is not fair fighting.

Mr. Wellacott, together with two French officers and thirty Senegalese troops, advanced on a river called the Chra. The Germans blew up a bridge and opened fire on the tiny allied force with three Maxim guns and a couple of hundred rifles. The firing went on for two hours, and Mr. Wellacott got left behind. He managed, however, to get back to his motor-cycle, started it and rode it for five miles with a wounded man in the side-car. Most wonderful of all, he succeeded in carrying the motor-cycle over two bridges, though it weighed six hundredweight. At last to his great joy he found the main column but rest was not for him yet. The Allied forces had to fight all day the next day, achieving victory the following morning.

The Germans were foolish enough to think when the war broke out that there would be terrible trouble in Ireland, a rebellion in India, and that the great Dominions—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa—would seize the opportunity to desert the Empire.

As a matter of fact, the very opposite of these things happened. Irishmen of all parties rushed to enlist. A great wave of passionate loyalty swept over India. Her Princes and her peoples poured out their offerings of men and money. Regiments of magnificent native soldiers—Rajputs, Sikhs, Gurkhas, Pathans—were granted the dearest wish of their hearts, namely to fight shoulder to shoulder with our white troops.

As for the Dominions, most valuable help in men and money was instantly offered by Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and gratefully accepted by the Mother Country. South Africa’s help was not less valuable, for the Union Government undertook to conquer the German colonies on the East and the West.

About the middle of October, quite a little army came from Canada: horse, foot, gunners, sappers, all fully equipped. These splendid fellows are used to roughing it, and have their wits sharpened by Colonial life. They brought a great many pets and mascots—dogs, goats, birds, and so on—but the strangest of all was a little boy! He had been a paper boy, and he was so eager to come with the Canadians that one regiment smuggled him into their ship. By the time they landed in England the little chap had blossomed into a bugler!

I must tell you about the song sung by the Canadian cavalry contingent composed of British Columbian Rough Riders, as they rode through their beautiful country to the sea. This song soon became extraordinarily popular. Here are two verses:

“British Columbia Horse are we,

From Canada’s Pacific Sea,

To make the Kaiser understand

He must respect our Motherland.

We’ll make him bow and scrape to us

For stirring up this horrid fuss;

We’ll make him dance the Highland Fling

And ‘Rule Britannia’ loudly sing!”

These lines may not be very fine poetry, but they have the merit of letting us know exactly how those who sing them feel about this war.

Of course it took some time for the whole British Empire to get to work, but it was clear from the very beginning that the German hopes of trouble were absurd. I cannot help picturing to myself with some amusement what a shock it must have been to the Kaiser and his advisers when they began to understand what a blunder they had made. Instead of breaking up the British Empire, they had actually succeeded in drawing it closer together and making it very much stronger.

At home also you remember how the outbreak of war seemed to bring us all nearer together, rich and poor alike.

Lord Kitchener became Minister of War, and in response to his appeal hundreds of thousands of fine young men hastened to enlist. Party quarrels stopped like magic, and Conservatives and Liberals and Labour men alike joined together to do what they could to help. The younger members of Parliament went off to join the colours, while the older ones made speeches about the war and took their share of the work of relieving those on whom the war had brought much unmerited suffering.

The Prince of Wales started a great fund for helping people in distress. At the time when I write these words he had collected the enormous sum of nearly four millions. The Prince also joined the Grenadier Guards as a subaltern and trained with great enthusiasm. To his bitter disappointment Lord Kitchener did not consider him experienced enough to go to the front yet awhile.

King George was unwearied in visiting his troops in camp, and the wounded in hospital. This in addition to all the heavy daily work he had to do with his Ministers.

Unlike the Kaiser, our King did not boast and rush about making silly speeches. He just set to work and did his duty like the modest gentleman that he is, and the example of coolness and courage that he showed was an inspiration to the whole Empire.

Among all the people who helped on the outbreak of war, I do not think any did better than the Boy Scouts.

They did excellent work, especially in guarding railways and bridges, and about this I heard at the time an amusing story.

A man who was certainly old enough to know better resolved to play a practical joke on some Boy Scouts who were guarding an important railway bridge. Taking a little bag with him, he crept stealthily along the line. Soon the Scouts challenged him, and then this foolish man pretended to be a German! “Ach!” he cried, trying to imitate the German accent, “Liddle boys, I vill blow up zis bridge.” Here the Scouts interrupted him to such purpose that he had to spend a considerable time in hospital! There, let us hope, he repented of his silly joke.

Many hundreds of Boy Scouts did regular coastguard duty in place of the coastguards who were called away on active service. As the weather got cold the Scouts found themselves in urgent need of warm clothing, and Sir Robert Baden Powell, the Chief Scout, appealed for mittens, comforters, stockings, and so on.

Here I may say that every boy and girl ought to help in making such things. Your elders will tell you at any time what things are particularly wanted for the soldiers and sailors exposed to wind and rain and storm on land and sea.

An exciting story of a London boy who would not give his side away is that of Freddy Ascher, aged sixteen. Freddy was at school near Peronne, in Belgium, when the war broke out. One Sunday morning after church he decided to cycle to Peronne to look for Germans, who were said to be close by.

Just outside the town, two German soldiers on bicycles suddenly pounced on him and took him into the German lines. There he was searched, and from letters which he had from his parents, the German officers discovered that he was English, and of course they began questioning him as to where he had seen the English troops, and if any were near.

Now Freddy had seen some Lancers on the evening before, but he was not going to tell the Germans, whatever might happen to him, so he said he had no idea where the British were. “They must be where you have come from,” declared the German officer. But the boy stuck to it that he had not seen them, and the officer at last said: “We are going to keep you a week till you tell me something.”

“Of course I was a bit frightened,” said Freddy, “but I had resolved that I would never give away the English. They gave me a meal, and after two hours we started on the march. I had to walk between two German soldiers, and was told that if I ran away I should be shot. At the end of three days we got close to Mons. I had often cycled over the roads we went, and knew the country well. I was again questioned by officers as to where I had seen British troops, but I still said I had never seen any. And then an officer said: ‘We are going to let you go, but you must not come back through German lines.’”

They gave him back his bicycle, and two German soldiers took him a mile, and then told him to ride off.

CHAPTER IV
THE BATTLE OF MONS

And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,

Dewy with nature’s teardrops as they pass,

Grieving, if aught inanimate e’er grieves,

Over the unreturning brave,—alas!

Ere evening to be trodden like the grass

Which now beneath them, but above shall grow

In its next verdure, when this fiery mass

Of living valour, rolling on the foe

And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.

Byron.

On Sunday, August 23, 1914, there was fought what will rank as one of the great Battles of the Ages. For on that Sunday the whole flower of the German Army, including the pick of their famous cavalry, was hurled against the British Army in the proportion of six to one!

I had hoped not to sully with the Kaiser’s now notorious address to his troops the pages of a book in which were to be recorded only gallant deeds. But alone it explains the strong preponderance of numbers at the Battle of Mons.

This is what the German Emperor evidently thought to be an inspiring and dignified message to his generals. I must tell you it was issued on August 19, that is, only four days before our first contact with the enemy:

“It is my Royal and Imperial command that you concentrate your energies, for the immediate present, upon one single purpose, and that is that you address all your skill and all the valour of my soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous English and walk over General French’s contemptible little army.”

How hard the Kaiser’s legions tried to obey his commands you will shortly see. Also how completely they failed, and that although, as I must again remind you, the great outstanding feature of the Battle of Mons was the overwhelming number of the enemy compared to our forces.

The simplest and most homely account often brings a fact more truly home to us than any fine language would do, and I doubt if we shall ever read a more vivid picture of the opening of this terrific fight than the following passage in a letter written by a young British soldier to his father, who is a gardener: “You complained last summer, Dad, of the swarm of wasps that destroyed your fruit. That will give you an idea of how the Germans came for us!”

Yet another who took part in this terrific battle, wrote: “It looked as if we were going to be snowed under! The mass of men who came on was an avalanche, and everyone of us must have been trodden to death, if not killed by shells or bullets, had not our infantry charged into them on the left wing, not 500 yards from the trench I was in.”

A non-commissioned officer also shows how our side was outnumbered: “No regiment ever fought harder than we did, and no regiment has ever had better officers; they went shoulder to shoulder with their men. But you cannot expect impossibilities, no matter how brave the boys are, when one is fighting forces twenty to thirty times as strong.”

Everyone of the great battles in the world’s history has some outstanding heroic action to its credit. The heroes of Mons were British cavalry, for the 9th Lancers made there a charge every whit as gallant and glorious as the famous Charge of the Light Brigade.

A German battery of ten guns had been posted inside a wood, each gun having been skilfully made to look like a small haystack, which caused the British to approach them unsuspectingly. When the guns opened fire, terrible havoc was caused in our ranks, and it seemed impossible to silence them.

It was then that the 9th Lancers made their splendid charge.

The whole regiment rode straight at the German battery, cut down all the gunners, and put the guns out of action. As was the case in the Charge of the Light Brigade they lost more men as they rode back than on their way in.

I think the best account of this wonderful cavalry charge was written by one who was wounded in it. “We were flying at one another as hard as the horses could go. It was a charge such as you see in a picture, every man hoping he would not get his knees crushed by the fellows on each side of him.” Does not that remind you of Sir Walter Scott’s splendid lines?

“On came the whirlwind—like the last

But fiercest sweep of tempest blast;

On came the whirlwind—steel gleams broke

Like lightning through the rolling smoke,

The war was waked anew.”

There were at least two Frenchmen in this historic charge. The Vicomte de Vauvineux, a French cavalry officer, who rode with the brigade as interpreter, was killed instantly—a gallant officer whose death many in England mourned. Captain Letourey, the French master at Blundell’s School in Devon, rode by the side of de Vauvineux, but escaped death as by a miracle. His horse was shot under him, but he caught another, riderless, and rode off unscathed.

While the bulk of the brigade swerved to the right, riding for a hundred yards across the face of the machine guns, a few rode desperately on, bearing charmed lives. But only for a few yards. The trap, baited by the desultory fire of the artillery, was complete. Wire entanglements were buried in the grass thirty yards in front of the guns. Riding full tilt into these, the few who kept their line to the guns fell, and were made prisoners.

Of the 9th Lancers, not more than forty gathered that night in a village hard by. Others came in next day, and finally some two hundred and twenty in all mustered out of the entire regiment.

A trooper of the 9th Lancers in writing home mentioned a fact which I thought very touching, and the admission of which showed that he was really a brave man. He said that when going into action he found himself crying out “Mother!” “Mother!” and then suddenly he felt courage, as he strikingly put it, “loom” up in him.

I think, without boasting, we may say that it is characteristic of both armies that whereas the German soldiers are played into action by a band, the British march into action singing. During the present campaign they seem to have preferred “It’s a long way to Tipperary,” and it is on record that an Irish regiment sang that stirring old song “God save Ireland.” The Manchester Regiment sing “Killaloe,” the Rifle Brigade are fond of that fine old ballad “Colonel Coote Manningham’s a very good man.” The Fusiliers have their own song, “Fighting with the Royal Fusiliers.”

We must not allow ourselves to forget that other regiments of our cavalry were also engaged in this great battle, among them the 18th Hussars and the 4th Dragoons, who performed noble feats of valour and suffered severely.

Another historic “scrap” was that between a regiment of Irish infantry and three regiments of German cavalry splendidly horsed, equipped, and armed. The Irishmen, who had been joking and smoking, rose up to meet the oncoming rush of horsemen, and one who was there said they looked like a bristling bulwark of giants, holding weapons of steel in steel grips.

For a few minutes there was an awful chaos of horses, soldiers grey and soldiers yellow, glittering lances and bayonets, the automatic spit of machine guns, the flashes of musketry. Amidst it all the men in khaki stood steadfast. Grimly and without budging they threw back, at the bayonet’s point, in utter demoralisation, the cavalry of the Kaiser. While they fought they sang “God save Ireland,” and “Whistle to me, said I.”

Martial songs have always had a very great effect on armies taking the field. The British have a great many battle songs. The French have only the “Marseillaise.” The most famous German battle songs are “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles,” and “Die Wacht am Rhein.” The marching song of the troops who fought under Marlborough was “Lillibullero.”

In the American Civil War there were many splendid songs sung by the men going into action, of which perhaps the best known is “John Brown’s body lies a’mouldering in the grave.” It is probable that nowadays, invoking the shade of Lincoln, Americans would swing into battle singing “We are coming, Father Abraham.”

There is a touching story to the effect that on one occasion when the two great opposing armies—the strenuous North and the chivalrous South—were actually only separated by a river, the soldiers on one side began singing “Annie Laurie,” and suddenly the refrain was heard floating over from the other side. Long after the deadly conflict which took place the next day was forgotten, the incident of the song was remembered in both Northern and Southern homes.

The instinctive fear felt and shown by the Germans of our cavalry, and the great deeds of valour performed by them in the Battle of Mons, recalls an exciting incident which occurred in the Indian Mutiny, when what was known as the Volunteer Cavalry, raised by Sir Henry Lawrence from among the unattached officers and civilians of Lucknow, did a marvellous feat of arms while on their way to that beleaguered city.

There came a moment when Lawrence saw himself in danger of being surrounded. He gave the order to retreat, a retreat which soon degenerated into a rout. On approaching the Kokral stream which ran across the road to Lucknow, about four hundred rebel cavalry were seen prepared to dispute the passage of the one bridge on which depended the safety of the fugitives. The situation was saved by the Volunteer Cavalry. Without a moment’s hesitation some thirty of them with their commander, Captain Radcliffe, at their head, hurled themselves at the dense mass in their front, and before they could strike a blow the enemy broke and fled, leaving the bridge free. To this splendid charge alone was due the fact that a remnant of the British force finally reached Lucknow in safety.

Let me recall in the same connection another tale of the Mutiny. It was during the night of the 19th of June, when an especially determined attack was made on the British position outside Delhi. Hope Grant, in command of the cavalry, kept back the fiercest attacks of the enemy on the rear of the British camp. At last, unhorsed, surrounded by the foe, he must have fallen, had not his sowar, or native orderly, Rooper Khan, ridden up to him saying, “Take my horse, sir, it is your only chance of safety!” Hope Grant refused, but taking a firm grip of the animal’s tail he was dragged by his sowar out of the mass of fighting men.

The British cavalry have been celebrated from the days of Julius Cæsar. In his famous Commentaries, Cæsar remarks of his brave British foes, “They display in battle the speed of horse with the firmness of infantry; and by daily practice and exercise attain to such expertness that they are accustomed, even on a declining and steep place, to check their horses at full speed and manage to turn them in an instant.”

The British cavalryman regards his horse as his friend. It is recorded that after each of the great cavalry charges at Mons the men, though in considerable danger of being “sniped,” went round and shot the poor wounded horses, so that they might be at once put out of their misery.

Those of you who have ponies of your own may like to hear how kindly and tenderly our battle-horses are treated. The Army Veterinary Corps, officered by fully trained veterinary surgeons, always accompanies our troops in the field. Immediately after an engagement these officers attend to those horses which are only slightly wounded, and send them along to a horse hospital if it be necessary.

As to what care horses should have on active service, opinions differ curiously. In a letter written by the Duke of Wellington to a cavalry officer, he begged him when in the field not to allow his men to dress their horses’ skins. “You have no conception how much warmth the animals derive from the dust which accumulates in their coats.”

Cavalry horses love the stir and din, even perhaps the danger, of battle. The story goes that one day a milkwoman passing in her cart near where a regiment of cavalry was manœuvring, heard the trumpets sound. Her horse pricked up his ears and started off at full gallop towards the sentries, dragging the cart after it in spite of the poor woman’s efforts. It did not stop till it had joined the ranks!

We will now go back to the Battle of Mons—to the firing line, and to a remarkable act of gallantry performed by Captain Grenfell. The tale, as told by a corporal, cannot be improved on:

“The gunners had all been killed by shrapnel, and there were the guns with no one to look after them, and a good chance that the Germans might get them. The horses were safe enough, but there was no one to harness them. Captain Grenfell stepped out. ‘We’ve got to get those guns back,’ he said. ‘Who’s going to volunteer for the job?’ He had a couple of dozen of us before he had finished speaking. Since our chaps have seen him in the firing line, they would go anywhere with him.

“Well, we went out. There were bullets flying all round us and shrapnel bursting all over the place, but Captain Grenfell was as cool as if he was on parade. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They can’t hit us. Come along!’ We got to the guns all right, hitched up the horses, and brought them back, and only three of our chaps were hit. It’s a wonder the whole lot of us were not wiped out.”

It was later in that same day that this gallant Captain Grenfell was wounded. He got a bullet in the thigh, and a couple of his fingers were hurt. His men brought him back from the firing line and sent for an ambulance to take him away, but while they were waiting for the ambulance a motor-car came along. “That’s exactly what I want,” said the Captain. “What’s the use of an ambulance to me? Take me back to the firing line.” And he got into the motor-car and went back, leaving the doctors to make what they liked of it!

Here is another story, of which the hero this time is a cavalry sergeant. This man had been badly wounded three times, but was still going on fighting. Suddenly he heard a corporal shouting to be taken out of the line. Turning round, he bound up his comrade’s wounds, set him on his own horse and sent him back out of the way. Then, regardless of his own condition, he limped along to his regiment, and started fighting again.

And now for a very pathetic little incident.

In the middle of the battle, in a beautiful cornfield from which the men fighting could see all over the country, one of the drivers of a battery was badly wounded. He asked to see the colours before he died. His officer told him that the guns were his colours, and he answered: “Yes, that is true. Tell the drivers to keep their eyes on their guns, for if we lose our guns we lose our colours.”

These brave drivers have the strongest feeling of affection and loyalty for their guns.

On one occasion, also at Mons, two drivers brought a gun out of action, the shells bursting all round them. They had noticed that the gunners had all been killed, so they walked their horses down to save the gun. One driver held the horses under a fearful fire while the other “limbered up.” The gun was rushed safely back, neither men nor horses being hit. Their comrades, watching them from the trenches, thought it quite impossible for them to escape death, for shot and shell were ploughing the ground up all round them.

So many were the brave, chivalrous, and merciful deeds in this battle that it is difficult to make a choice. I should like, however, to tell you of one such performed by a lieutenant of the “A” Company of the 1st Cheshires, whose nickname is “Winkpop.”

He was shot through his right leg, and on the road some of his men cut off his boots and tried to bandage his wounds. As he rose to his feet, he saw a private in distress about fifteen yards away. Seizing a rifle he hobbled forward and managed to bring him in on his back under a murderous fire from the enemy.

This gallant deed recalls a splendid act of valour performed by two non-commissioned officers, who were among the first group of V.C. heroes. They were among the very few to return unscathed from the Charge of the Light Brigade. Regardless of their own danger, they remained by one of their wounded officers, and at last, by making a bandy-chair with their arms, they actually brought him in safety to the British lines.

The cool courage of the doctors and of the ambulance men whose duty it is to rescue and then to attend to the wounded must never be lost sight of in what may be called the more showy deeds performed by our soldiers and sailors.

The story you have just read recalls the astonishing coolness and bravery of the man who, I believe, was the first doctor to receive the V.C.—Surgeon Mouat of the Inniskillings. He dressed the wound, under fire, of Captain Morris, of the 17th Lancers, who had just taken part in the Charge of the Light Brigade, thereby saving his patient’s life.

The Middlesex Regiment, who bear the glorious nickname of “The Die Hards,” greatly distinguished themselves on those eventful days, August 23 and 24. They were much pleased by a communication received by them, containing a statement by Mr. J. B. Dolphin, British Vice-Consul at Liège, in which the following passage occurred:

“A German general said that he had never dreamt of such magnificent bravery as that displayed by them. The accuracy of their firing was a revelation: their coolness was wonderful, and their trench work splendid.”

As you will see later in this book, “The Die Hards” also distinguished themselves in one of the later battles of the war.

In the first public speech made in England by a British officer wounded at Mons, Captain Buchanan Dunlop, he paid a fine tribute to the French non-combatants, as people who are not soldiers are called in a country at war:

“I think England might get a very good lesson from the inhabitants of France and Belgium. All the way as we proceeded through that country all the inhabitants turned out and did all they could for us. They brought us coffee, bread and butter, cigarettes, and anything they could think of. The ladies even turned out balls of string in case the men might find them useful, and handkerchiefs. We advanced up through this country, and then had to retire through it. You can imagine our feelings going back through the same country that we had previously traversed. This did not make the slightest difference to the way we were treated by the inhabitants. They brought us coffee and other things as before.

“Fugitives flying from their homes were eager to give us of the food which they were carrying back for their own consumption. What struck us the whole time was the thought, If this was England? What an awful thing it would be to have an invading army in England, and everything happening here that is now going on in France!”

Captain Buchanan Dunlop also told two splendid little stories to show what pluck and fight our men have in them:

“I was talking to an officer of my own regiment in town yesterday. He was also wounded, and he told me about a fight on Wednesday week when one of his men lying just in front of him under heavy shell fire, turned to him and said: ‘Sir, may I retire?’ ‘Why?’ asked the officer. ‘Sir,’ replied the man, ‘I have been hit three times.’”

Here is the other little incident:

“On the very first day we were holding a canal bank, and during the night we had orders to retire, having held off the enemy all day. We were to blow up the bridges. By some mishap a sergeant with ten men was left on the wrong side of that canal with the Germans about two hundred yards in front. We could hear the Germans talking. The next morning, when we called the roll, we expressed sorrow at thinking that this sergeant and his men must have been captured. But in the morning, when they found they were cut off, what did they do? They did not put up their hands, but blazed away at the Germans, with the result that the Germans fled and the sergeant and his men got away.”

The following story shows how many sides there are to a modern battle.

It was at Mons that a fight occurred for the possession of a canal bridge, and a handful of British soldiers held at bay the enemy, who were in force a hundred yards away. The odds were overwhelmingly against our soldiers, and the Germans were preparing to rush the bridge, when an engineer sergeant perceived that if the enemy succeeded our men would be cut off.

Urging the men to concentrate their fire on one particular point, this cool, brave man proceeded to dynamite the bridge. But as time was short he could only employ a few inches of fuse. This meant that he went to certain death. Sure enough, he and the bridge blew up together, and as an eye-witness quaintly said, “Another Victoria Cross was saved.”

A young Isle of Wight gunner named Butchers, from the pretty village of Brading, was the hero of a magnificent episode.

A half battery in rather an exposed position was galling the enemy by the accuracy of its aim. Several of the German batteries therefore made a combined attack on it. It was a fight between a David and half-a-dozen Goliaths. One by one its guns were silenced. The men who had been serving them were shot down till at last only Butchers was left. He went on doing his best, working steadily and to all appearance calmly, till an officer called him away.

One of the first letters received from the fighting line contained the following striking tribute from the writer, a private, to one of his officers:

“You know I have often spoken of Captain ——, and what a fine fellow he was. There was no braver man on the field. He got knocked over early with a piece of a shell, which smashed his leg. He must have been in great pain, but kneeling on one knee he was cheerful and kept saying, ‘My bonnie boys, make sure of your man.’ When he was taken away on the ambulance he shouted, ‘Keep cool and mark your man.’”

You have already heard how splendidly our soldiers were welcomed by the women and children when they landed in France. Well, during the Battle of Mons the French peasant women showed their gratitude in an even more practical way. It was very hot during those hours of fierce fighting, and these valiant women brought water, and luscious cooling fruit, right into our trenches and firing line. “I can assure you they are the bravest souls I have ever met,” wrote a British private to his mother.

During the Battle of Mons the Germans may be credited with having performed at least one act of kindness.

Lieutenant Irwin, of the South Lancashire Regiment, was wounded by shrapnel at the end of the day’s hard fighting. He lay all night in a turnip field. In the morning some German soldiers discovered him and one of them brought a bundle of hay for Mr. Irwin to lie on till the stretcher came up. He was taken to Valenciennes, and the German commander most kindly allowed him to write home to his friends. There were many French doctors and nurses in this hospital, and the German officers behaved well to them also.

Very different was the experience of Private Charles Baker, of the 20th Hussars.

After being wounded, he was taken into a cottage which had been turned into a temporary hospital and where there were already twenty men, including three Germans, in charge of an English doctor. Suddenly this poor little hospital was raided by a party of fifty Germans, all more or less drunk. Roughly they ordered the British wounded to say where their regiment was, but, as Private Charles Baker wrote home to his people, “Not one of us would give the game away.” Thereupon they were threatened with death, and as Private Baker very honestly remarks: “I can tell you I began to shake. I was really afraid then. I thought my number was up!”

Suddenly a most unexpected thing happened. The three wounded Germans implored their comrades to spare the British, pointing out how very kindly they had been treated by the English doctor. So the fifty Germans went off as quickly as they had come in, and the next day the wounded were all moved to another hospital.

Those of you who know anything of the Crimean War are aware what a terrific battle was Inkerman. The British losses at Mons were the highest for any single battle since Inkerman. On the other hand, there were probably ten times greater forces engaged at Mons than at Inkerman, when the numbers on either side were fairly even.

Now one last word as to where this battle was fought.

Very few English people who had not actually been there were familiar with the name of Mons, and yet the town which gave its name to the first big battle of this war, is not only the centre of the French “Black Country,” but it has had a long and romantic history, and was founded by Julius Cæsar.

A certain King of Spain, to whom Mons once belonged, must have been very like the Kaiser. The latter, as we know, has with magnificent lavishness, bestowed the Prussian V.C., the great decoration of the Iron Cross, on some fifty thousand of his men. This King of Spain was once so pleased with the inhabitants of Mons that he conferred a peerage on every member of the Town Council!

CHAPTER V
THE GREAT RETREAT

No thought was there of dastard flight

Linked in the serried phalanx tight,

Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,

As fearlessly, and well.

Scott.

You will remember that the Battle of Mons was fought on the 23rd of August, a Sunday.

On the Monday the whole world, with the exception of Germany and Austria, heard with dismay that the famous Belgian fort of Namur had fallen, after holding out as long as it could against the great German guns.

Now Namur was in a sense the key to France, so you can understand how very very serious a matter for the Allies, as the French and British forces were henceforth to be called, was the fall of this great fortress. In these days it is rather curious to remember that fourteen British regiments, including the Grenadier Guards, the Scots Guards, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, the Coldstreams, the Royal Irish, and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, bear the honorary distinction, “Namur, 1695,” upon their colours, for having captured this stronghold two hundred and nineteen years ago.

Through the town of Namur flows the Meuse, a lovely river, shared by France and Belgium, which has already seen some of the hardest fighting of this war.

On the banks of the Meuse, Joan of Arc, as a little girl, must often have played, for in France it laves the village of Domrémy. When it reaches Belgium, this storied river flows by the grave of an extraordinary man who in some ways had certain affinities with Joan of Arc—I mean Peter the Hermit, who is buried in the gardens of the old Abbey of Neufmoustier.

The most beautiful description of the Meuse at Namur was written by William Wordsworth:

“Is this the stream whose cities, heights, and plains,

War’s favourite playground are, with crimson stains

Familiar as the morn with pearly dews?

The morn, that now, along the silver Meuse,

Spreading her peaceful ensigns, calls the swains

To tend their silent boats and ringing wains,

Or strip the bough whose mellow fruit bestrews

The ripening corn beneath it. As mine eyes

Turn from the fortified and threatening hill,

How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade,

With its grey rocks clustering in pensive shade,

That, shaped like old monastic turrets, rise

From the smooth meadow-ground serene and still!”

Terrible fighting took place over that “smooth meadow-ground,” and at last the fortress surrendered.

Now let me tell you something of a happy and inspiriting nature.

While Namur was falling, the gallant little French fortress of Longwy was holding out against the Germans, and that though it was what is now called a fortress of the second class.

Longwy has always been regarded as of considerable importance, owing to its position on the Franco-German frontier. In the middle of the Great Revolution it was taken by Germans, and its fall very much upset the citizens of Paris. It put up a splendid fight in 1815, and was then besieged for three full months before it fell.

In the Franco-Prussian War it resisted for one week. But in this war it held out, against infinitely greater numbers and far more formidable siege artillery than in 1870, for twenty-four days! The enemy congratulated the French officer who had conducted the defence on his bravery and skill.

The fall of Namur forced the Allies back, and it was then that there began the British rearguard movement which was so brilliantly, skilfully, and successfully conducted by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien that it is considered worthy to rank with the great retreat of Sir John Moore at Corunna.

I should like here to tell you something of the soldier to whom Sir John French paid a grand tribute in his official despatches concerning those first momentous days of the War.

General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien is a younger son of a family which has given many distinguished soldiers to the Empire, and for generations has held feudal sway over the Scilly Isles. Those of you who know Cornwall may have visited the beautiful tropical gardens surrounding his old home.

Before he obtained his high command in the Expeditionary Force, Smith-Dorrien had seen a great deal of fighting, and one likes to quote now what he once said during the South African War:

“Give me a thousand Colonials, men well acquainted with the rifle and expert in horsemanship; let me train them for six months; and I shall then be ready to lead them against an equal number of men drawn from any Continental army with absolute confidence.”

Sir Horace has also had experience with another type of splendid soldier of the Empire; for at one time he commanded the 4th Infantry Division of the Indian Army, which includes some of the finest troops in the native ranks.

During the South African War, Smith-Dorrien performed one of the pluckiest deeds ever done by a British officer.

His brigade was moving forward to take a main Boer position, when two battalions, one of the Gordons and the other of the C.I.V.’s, lost touch. The Gordons, to put it shortly, rushed up the hill at Doornkop with such impetuosity that they got cut off, and the General saw that there was great danger of their being surrounded. Without wasting a moment, and under an awful fire which was being kept up by an invisible foe, he galloped straight across the enemy’s front and turned the Highlanders back.

When Smith-Dorrien rode in unscathed, a brother officer protested against the awful risk he had run. “Someone had to stop the Gordons! I couldn’t send anyone else to face that fire, could I?” was his only answer.

It must have been hard for so brave a man to have to organise a retreat, but he knew that it had to be done—and done fighting.

You will have heard of—you may even have known—someone whose name was included in the list sent home after a battle as “missing.”

Now there is something terrible and disturbing in the thought of a man being missing. It makes one feel that anything may have happened to him. But we must always remember that this disturbing word does not necessarily mean that any harm has come to the soldier in question, still less that he is killed. It very often means that he did not hear the order to retreat and so was left behind in the trenches to be taken prisoner by the enemy. Not a pleasant fate, but from the point of view of those who love him, better than if he had fallen, as the French proudly put it, on the Field of Honour. Also it is well to remember that the number of the missing, especially in what is called a rearguard action, is always greater than the number of killed or wounded.

A retreat has been well described as disheartening and painful, but in strategy it is an operation like any other. Very often, as in the case of Smith-Dorrien, it is the way to win in the end.

What is strategy? Strategy is another name for arranging your forces like chessmen on a chess-board with the object of winning in the end. Great strategists are born, not made. Cæsar was a great strategist, so was Napoleon, and so was Lord Roberts. Just as a composer can write a piece of music without the help of a piano or any other instrument, so the born strategist can work out the plan of a battle, and even make a shrewd guess as to who is going to win, when sitting in his study with a good map before him.

It may interest you to know that before each of his great battles Napoleon spent the night in his tent studying a number of large maps laid out on the floor. Lying flat on his stomach, and with a little stick in his hand, he would work out the dispositions of his troops and of the enemy. When he had made up his mind what was going to happen, down to every detail, he would call in his generals and explain to each of them exactly what he was to do the next day. His generals soon found that though he was not always certain what his own side would do, he could always foresee the plans of the enemy.

I have already spoken of Sir John Moore at Corunna. At the time that great soldier made his famous retreat, he was much criticised, but now all military historians regard it as having been a most wonderful piece of work, if only because it forced Napoleon to alter his whole plan of campaign.

Just as General von Kluck wished to obey the Kaiser and destroy the British Army, so Napoleon was most eager to destroy Sir John Moore’s forces. Fresh from a series of brilliant victories, at the head of a splendid host, Napoleon dashed into Spain, but Sir John Moore, by his masterly retreat, defeated all his plans.

The first of his contemporaries to realise the splendid thing Moore had done was Napoleon himself. While the British commanders—Moore’s own contemporaries and even his own friends—were criticising the dead man, for he fell at Corunna, Napoleon was putting on record his unbounded admiration of his foe.

How our gallant soldiers felt when ordered to fall back was graphically described by Private Harman, of the King’s Royal Rifles:

“We did not like the order to retire, for we knew we were doing better than the Germans, and inflicting heavy losses upon them. Our officers also knew we were disappointed. On the fifth day of the retreat—which was the last I was in before being knocked out—our commanding officer came round and spoke to us, saying, ‘Stick it, boys, stick it! To-morrow we shall go the other way and advance.’”

And in time, as we shall see, they did advance, but before that glad moment came they had to retreat, fighting.

Listen to this, written by another private:

“On one occasion seven of us were left to cover a Maxim gun while it was being limbered up to take some other position farther back. We had to take up the position of the gun, and we kept firing rapid so as to make it appear that the Maxim gun was still there. The Germans were shelling the position on both sides of us. Then we had to go at the double for about five miles to catch up to the others. It was a hard jog-trot all the way.”

It was during this skilful retreat that there came the first of those wonderful duels in the air which established, as Sir John French so well put it, the personal supremacy of our flying men, and proved that they are quicker and sharper in the air than those of the enemy:

“Our man got above the German, who tried his hardest to escape,” wrote an eye-witness. “The Englishman was firing his revolver, and the German seemed to plane down in good order, but when he got to the ground he was dead.”

Little by little, in some cases not for many weeks, came through stories of the daring and quenchless heroism which illumined the dark night of the great retreat.

A solitary grave, each day strewn with fresh flowers, is the last resting-place of an English soldier who, quite alone, fought his last fight till overwhelmed by numbers.

During the first rearguard action he had strayed from his comrades, and fallen exhausted from fatigue. Unable to find them, he took up his quarters in a deserted carriage. Thirty-six hours later the Germans appeared and fired at him. Undeterred by the fact that he was utterly alone, he replied, and such was his determination and accuracy of aim that he accounted for six German officers, one of them a general, before he fell under a volley.

The French from a village near by buried him where he had fought, erected a cross, and in honour of his gallantry, laid fresh flowers each day on his grave.

His name was David M. Kay, and he belonged to the 5th Lancers.

Hearken to another exploit, of which the hero was Corporal Shaw, who for three years was the twelve-stone wrestling champion of the Army in Ireland.

He saw a comrade in difficulty with his horse in the first retirement from Mons. The pack had slipped round to its side, and the rider was endeavouring to straighten it. Shaw dashed up and helped the soldier to straighten the pack. Bullets rained round the plucky champion, one darted into the soft part of his shoulder, another killed one of his comrades near by, but the man he was helping rode off clear.

CHAPTER VI
CAMBRAI, LANDRÉCIES, ST. QUENTIN

He, who in concert with an earthly string

Of Britain’s acts would sing,

He with enraptured voice will tell

Of One whose spirit no reverse could quell;

Of One that ’mid the failing never failed—

Who paints how Britain struggled and prevailed

Shall represent her labouring with an eye

Of circumspect humanity;

Shall show her clothed with strength and skill

All martial duties to fulfil;

Firm as a rock in stationary fight;

In motion rapid, as the lightning’s gleam;

Fierce as a flood-gate bursting at midnight

To rouse the wicked from their giddy dream—

Woe, woe to all that face her in the field!

Appalled she may not be, and cannot yield.

Wordsworth.

The first place to which our troops fell back (fighting hard all the way) was Cambrai, where cambric was first made, and where, in days of peace, much exquisitely fine linen is still woven. Cambrai and Le Cateau are practically one, and a very fierce engagement took place there.

Here I must tell you of a brave Englishwoman who had lived for fifteen years at Le Cateau. She kept a little restaurant, and during these terrible hours when such hard fighting was going on close to the town she went on cooking eggs and bacon for her fellow-countrymen. Both her French friends and the English soldiers begged her to leave the town, but, as only answer, she observed that she wouldn’t move “for all the Germans.”

It is to be hoped that her little house was saved, but the English soldier, who told the story of her pluck, fears that it must have been destroyed.

At the Battle of Cambrai, the charge of the 12th Lancers and Royal Scots Greys is said to have been the equal of anything seen at Waterloo. Indeed finer; for at Waterloo, in one cavalry charge at any rate, the men, after their first success, got out of hand, went too far, and suffered grievously in consequence.

An heroic passage of arms, in which the 2nd Battalion Connaught Rangers were concerned, was splendidly described by a private in a letter home:

“It was understood we were to pass the night at Cambrai, but we got a report that the Germans were approaching, and were close on us. Every man was called to stand to arms, and soon the German shells were falling amongst us. Our colonel was a perfect gentleman, and under his gallant lead the Rangers set a bold front. In the midst of the bursting of the German projectiles his clear, stentorian voice rang out: ‘Rangers of Connaught, all eyes are upon you to-night. While you have fists and a heart within you, charge them. If you don’t, never face me in this world nor in the next!’

“Our boys were greatly encouraged by the bravery shown by Colonel Abercrombie. Bayonets were fixed, but at the sight of the steel the enemy turned about. We were, however, completely outnumbered, and in a subsequent attack some of our men, including our brave commander, were taken prisoners.”

It must have been that same night that a brave deed was done for which the hero, had he survived, would surely have been awarded the Victoria Cross.

The British took the offensive against the Germans who were holding a bridge spanning a canal. It was very dark, and when our men reached an embankment running sharply down to the river, several failed to secure a foothold, and fell into the water.

Four of the men, who were unable to swim, were in imminent danger of drowning, when Corporal Brindall, an excellent swimmer, plunged into the river and rescued all four in turn. He was clambering up the embankment himself, when a German shell exploded near him, killing him instantly.

Even in the stir and din of battle funny and curious little incidents are always taking place.

Take the odd case of Private Joseph Davis, of the Dorset Regiment, a well-known footballer, who, at Cambrai, received a shrapnel bullet in the shoulder.

Now, strange to say, Mr. Davis has tattooed on his chest a gorgeous portrait of Queen Victoria. While he lay wounded on the field of battle, his one dread was that the Germans would see his chest and want to have a dig at the Queen! Happily his fears were not realised.

It was at Cambrai also that another amusing and most unexpected little incident took place.

An English governess who happened to be spending a holiday in a village on the route of our Army rushed for protection to the British lines during a skirmish. For four days she remained with the troops, marching, bivouacking, and sheltering during fights, until she was placed on a conveyance which ensured her safe passage to a port.

During her enforced visit to our gallant troops, she was continually exposed to danger, but she maintained an iron indifference to the inconveniences of her situation, and the soldiers met with such good luck in those four days that they came to regard the lady as a mascot, and were genuinely sorry when she departed.

A terrible toll of death was exacted during this awful battle, and as at the Battle of Mons, so many were the gallant and noble deeds that it is difficult to make a choice.

To Lieutenant Noel, a young officer killed in action, the following moving tribute was paid:

“Always cheerful, ever thoughtful for others, the best of companions with the kindest of hearts, Jack Noel endeared himself to all who knew him, and those who were privileged to be called his friends were bound to him by ties far stronger than those of common friendship.”

His death was a singularly heroic one, and in wonderful keeping with what we know of his life. A wounded corporal of his regiment, who was near him when he fell, says that “Lieutenant Noel, despite the fact that he was hit in or near his left eye by a shot that broke the half of his field-glasses, promptly picked up his glasses again, and, finding the right half of them still workable, continued to direct the fire of his platoon with his right eye, until a few minutes later he was killed by a shot in his left temple.”

Not the British only fought at Cambrai; deeds of unparalleled valour were done by the French, and also by France’s Arab troops, the Turcos. It was at Cambrai that the Turcos first saw fire. They were singled out, five hundred of them, to do a desperate piece of work on which the fate of thousands of men depended.

Straining as if at a leash, they waited for the order to advance. At last it came. They swung round and faced the foe. Onward they went, right up to the guns, and against what seemed to be an impregnable line of trenches.

Of the five hundred, only twelve survived; of the twelve, only one was unwounded. But the enemy’s guns were silenced, and the Germans had fled from their trenches. The men who fell were buried shoulder to shoulder as they fought.

The French peasant women, as we have seen, are wonderfully brave in the matter of going under fire. One of these showed herself possessed of a quieter type of courage, but courage nevertheless, during the retreat. Hear the tale as told by a British officer:

“After the Battle of Mons we were billeted at a large farmhouse, the occupants of which did not seem very pleased to see us. We had not touched any eatables for several hours, and I made the housewife understand that we wanted some food. She looked at us in a way which was not altogether an expression of friendliness, and, pointing at the table, round which a number of workingmen were gathered, to whom she was serving their meals, she said, ‘Après les ouvriers.’—‘After my work-people.’

“We waited patiently till the men had finished their meal, and then asked once more for food. But the woman merely remarked, ‘Après nous.’ ‘After us.’ And she and her husband subsequently prepared to eat their supper. It is rather trying to see somebody making an attack on a hearty meal while one has not tasted any food for a long time. So I demanded, in the name of the King, that we should be supplied with foodstuff immediately, the more so that the woman seemed so unwilling to grant our wishes. The only answer she made was that, if we were in want of food, we should have to look for it ourselves and try to prepare it.

“The situation was rather awkward, and I was wondering why these French peasantry were so extremely unkind towards British soldiers!

“Suddenly it entered my mind that perhaps she thought we were Germans! At the same time I had something like a happy thought in order to prove that we were not. One of our men, a tall, heavy chap, who was still outside the house, was ordered to substitute a German helmet for his own cap, and to knock at the door. He did, the door was opened, we dashed forward, and made ‘the German’ a prisoner.

“The whole scene changed all of a sudden. The whole family embraced us, almost choked us. Food and wine and dainties were supplied at once, and we had a most glorious time.”

August 26, a Wednesday, saw perhaps the fiercest hand-to-hand fighting which had yet taken place. All day our gallant men fought at Landrécies against fearful odds. There two companies of the Coldstream Guards held 3000 Germans at bay for four hours. Lieut. Percy Wyndham (a direct descendant of the great Irish rebel-hero, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and of his wife, the lovely Frenchwoman who lives in romance under the name of Pamela) stood up and fired a hundred rounds from his revolver so that his men could form up quietly behind him. He then shouted out to them: “Fall in, and die like Coldstreams!” This gallant young soldier fell in action a week later at Soissons.

Listen to the heroic end of yet another officer of the Coldstreams. Lieutenant Allan William George Campbell lost his life through a successful attempt to rescue a comrade who was in a worse plight than himself. He had already been wounded, when he noticed Captain Tollemache fall. Together with Colonel Ponsonby he went out and carried Captain Tollemache over a mile under fire to a position of safety; but while he was doing so, he was again terribly wounded, and he only lived a few days.

We get a touching glimpse of Lieut. G. C. Wynn, killed in action at Landrécies, in a letter from one of Mr. Wynn’s men, written to the young officer’s father:

“The last day he was alive we had got a cup of tea in the trenches, and we asked him to have one. He said, ‘No, drink it yourselves, you are in want of it’; and then with a smile he added, ‘We have to hold the trenches to-day.’ At Mons we had been fighting all day, and someone brought a sack of pears and two loaves of bread. Lieut. Wynn accepted only one pear and a very little bread. We noticed this. I had a small bottle of pickles in my haversack and asked him to have some. But it was the usual answer, ‘You require them yourself!’ He died doing his duty like the officer and gentleman he was.”

In a letter written from hospital after this engagement, a corporal told of how he had been saved from a lingering death on the field:

“They blazed at us from 350 yards, and as fast as we shot one lot down, another came up. At last I got a bit of shell in the calf of my leg. We retired all together. My captain put me on his horse and led it for miles, until we got to a train.”

St. Quentin, with which will ever be associated the name of a terrible battle, one of the three rearguard actions in which our army fought with such splendid bravery and against such fearful odds, is a beautiful old town. It was part of the dowry of Mary Queen of Scots, and all through her long, sad captivity, she still received money from the faithful city.

Long before this great war, St. Quentin saw terrific fighting. Spaniards, British, Germans and Flemings there defeated the French, who were led by the brave Coligny and the famous Constable Montmorency. That old Battle of St. Quentin was fought on St. Lawrence’s Day, and it was because he believed that God had helped him to win this victory that the sinister King of Spain, Philip II, built the Escurial, a marvellous Spanish palace formed in the shape of a gridiron.

The great charge of the Black Watch took place at St. Quentin. The men had marched close on eighty miles before word ran through the ranks they were going into action. Unmeasured was their joy! At once they put themselves in good skirmishing order, and, under cover of the guns, got closer and closer to the enemy. Not till they were within a hundred yards of the German lines did they receive the longed for command.

The Black Watch and the Scots Greys charged together. The Scots Greys galloped forward, the Black Watch hanging to their stirrups. On the horses flew through a cloud of bullets, but every sound was drowned by the thunder of the horses’ hoofs as they careered wildly on. Saddles emptied quickly as the charge closed on the German lines, and man and horse were on the German gunners before they knew where they were. Down the enemy went in hundreds, and still the deadly work of the bayonet continued. Soon the Germans broke and fled “like rabbits before the shot of a gun.” It is said that there were 2000 British against 20,000 Germans. Close on 4000 prisoners were taken, as well as an immense number of guns.

Many years ago a famous historian of the Scottish Highlands wrote concerning the Highlander words which hold as good to-day as they did in the ’45. “He is taught to consider courage as the most honourable virtue, cowardice the most disgraceful failing; to venerate and obey his chief, and to devote himself to his native country and clan; thus prepared to be a soldier, he is ready to follow wherever honour and duty call him.”

There is a fine little story concerning the men of the Black Watch on their first visit to England. The then King had never seen a Highlander at close quarters, and as he wished to do so, three men who were noted for their dexterity in the broad-sword exercise and with the lochaber axe were sent to St. James’s Palace. So pleased was the King with their performance that he gave them each a guinea, which they in turn gave to the porter of the gate as they went out. “Doubtless,” they observed, “the King has mistaken our character and condition in our own country.”

It is interesting to note that it was the gallantry of the Highlanders in covering the retreat of the Allied Forces at Fontenoy which received the special praise of the Commander-in-Chief. Fontenoy was their maiden experience of a foreign foe.

I want you specially to remember what our soldiers in this war have owed to what is called the Army Service Corps. You will recollect my telling you that Napoleon said an army marched on its stomach. All that is necessary for the physical well-being of our men is done quickly, quietly, and very bravely, by the officers and men of the Army Service Corps. Their adventures are often as perilous and exciting as those which befall the fighting soldier. They all have to bear the weight of considerable responsibility and ever-present anxiety. The enemy always does his best to harass, intercept, and, if possible, destroy the food which is on its way to our men. Not food only for the men, but forage for the horses is under the care of this wonderful Corps.

Never was the triumph of their organisation shown to such advantage as during the fighting retreat with which we are now concerned.

On one occasion the Germans, who, remember, were close on the heels of the British motors and waggons, were particularly anxious to get hold of a train of forty motor lorries stocked with food and ammunition. In addition to these were also several hundred horsed waggons similarly loaded.

At last, when close to St. Quentin, which was to be the next great stand, the men in charge of this huge convoy were informed that the Uhlans were only a mile away. The colonel in command made certain inquiries. To his dismay, he learnt that not only his men but their horses also were so dead tired that they could not go on any more. He, therefore, made up his mind to stay in the little village where they found themselves, and if attacked to put up a stout fight.

Wearied though they were, each was sent with a loaded rifle to a place on the line he was to defend. The waggons were all drawn up in the funny little narrow winding streets which make a French village not unlike an old Scottish town.

In a very short time everything was in order to receive the enemy.

I have not yet told you much of the fate of ordinary people during a great war, but you can fancy for yourselves how the inhabitants of this village felt when they realised that their home was about to be made into a battle-ground.

The wise colonel of our forces advised that all the village people should go into the church, and there the curé arranged to hold a service. The lady who generally played the organ eagerly gave her services, and soon the English soldiers guarding the convoys were heartened by hearing the sweet singing of French and Latin hymns.

Time went on. The horses got very restless, and a stampede was feared. Had that happened all would have been lost. But it did not happen, and at last day broke. No attack had been delivered, and it was clear that the enemy had gone to the right or left of the village, pressing onward in the belief that the British convoy was ahead.

Yet another exciting incident, which shows the kind of adventures the Army Service Corps takes as being all part of its day’s work.

A convoy had been drawn up some way from the firing line, and in the early morning rations were just about to be issued to a brigade of artillery who were going into action at 3 A.M., when the word went forth that the convoy was being quietly surrounded by a troop of German cavalry.

At once it was arranged that if it could not be got away it must be burnt. But before doing that the officers resolved to make a push for it.

Lorries and horses started off at top speed till they got to a railway bridge. There all the transport, with the exception of thirty motor lorries, passed over in safety. Another determined effort was made, and out of the thirty, twenty-eight got over safely. Then the bridge was blown up. A moment later the remaining two lorries were in the hands of the Germans, together with two officers and eight men, who were, we may suppose, taken prisoners.

A wonderful stand was also made by our retreating troops at Tournai, when 700 British soldiers resisted 5000 Uhlans. They stood their ground to a man, till of the 700 less than half remained. Even then there was no panic. Calmly, harassing their pursuers with a murderous fire, “all that was left of them” retreated with the wounded, their convoy intact. As for the guns, though some were lost, many more were put out of action. The enemy showed reckless bravery, hurling themselves on to the very muzzles of the British field guns.

A soldier always admires a brave man, no matter what his uniform is. Here is a fine tribute paid by a wounded British artilleryman to the enemy:

“The grandest thing I saw out there was the fight of a handful of good fighting men in German uniforms. These chaps were the last of a regiment to cross a stream under fiendish rifle and artillery fire.

“They were hotly pursued by French cavalry and infantry, and when they saw that it was all up the remnant made for a little hill and gathered round the regimental flag to fight to the last. The French closed round them, and called on them to surrender, but not they! They stood there back to back until the last man went down with the flag in his grasp and a dozen bullet wounds in his body.

“Then the flag was captured by the French, but there was no shouting over the victory, and every soldier who passed that way and knew the story of those brave chaps bared his head to the memory of brave men.”

During the last stage of the great retreat, the British fought splendidly at Compiègne. It was there that three non-commissioned officers in the Royal Horse Artillery won the V.C. in recognition of a deed of extraordinary bravery. Taken by surprise by the enemy, the now famous “L” battery fought their guns until only one remained, and the three men who became the V.C. heroes were the sole survivors of the battery working the gun. The story may be briefly told thus:

The battery was waiting for the order to retire; it was limbered up ready to move at a moment’s notice. There was a thick mist, and when it lifted the battery was suddenly subjected to a terrible fire from the ridge which they had supposed to be occupied by the French, but which was now occupied by the Germans. The first burst of fire killed nearly all the horses of the British gun teams, which made it impossible to retire with the guns, so the men, splendidly directed by their commanding officer, Captain Bradbury, unlimbered and began to reply to the German fire. Many of the gunners had been killed during the first few moments. Those remaining coolly replied with such good effect that one by one the German guns were put out of action. So terribly outnumbered were the British gunners that in a short time two out of the three of their guns in action had been silenced, and only one remained to defend the position. Officers and men went on serving this one remaining British gun till all were killed or wounded with the exception of three. At last they had put all the German guns out of action but one, and then an exciting duel began, till at last behind the shelter of their gun the three were found by a strong force of cavalry and infantry which had come to their rescue.

CHAPTER VII
BATTLES OF MEAUX AND THE MARNE

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,

Or close the wall up with our English dead!

... Teach them how to war! And you, good yeomen,

Whose limbs were made in England, show us here

The mettle of your pasture ...

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,

Straining upon the start.

The game’s afoot: Follow your spirit!

Shakespeare.

Right well fought all the Frenchmen who fought for France to-day,

And many a lordly banner God gave them for a prey.

Macaulay.

You all know what it is to be in a hurry. You have all said on some occasion or other, “I must get that done quickly or I shan’t be able to do it at all.” It is an anxious, worrying mood. Well, the Germans, when they started on this war, were one and all of them in that kind of mood. They all knew, from the Kaiser to the humblest soldier, that time was all-important in the French campaign. I think you will guess at once why this was so, but in case you have already forgotten, I may remind you that it was owing to the fact that the Germans have to fight in this great war, which they themselves provoked, not only the French and the British, but also the Russians. You know that this was their excuse for breaking their word of honour, and rushing through Belgium. This was also the reason why they made that astonishing, and we must admit, that magnificent rush towards Paris during our retreat from Mons.

But all the time they were pushing forward, deep in the heart of every German soldier there must have echoed the dreaded tramp of the Russian legions. The poet Marvell expressed in exquisite English exactly what the enemy must have been feeling during the whole of the French campaign:

“But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near.”

A retreat, in ordinary language, means a falling back. There are, however, many ways of falling back; indeed, as in everything else, there is a right way and a wrong way. Sir John French’s gallant army, and the French forces under General Joffre, accomplished their retreat in the right way. Although at the time the enemy was quite unaware of it, everything was done according to a well-thought-out and careful plan; and, as you have seen, while this falling back movement was going on, our retreating army constantly turned, harried, and even forced back the advancing enemy.

The object of the Germans may be told very shortly. It was to reach Paris, to enter that great city in the guise of conquerors, conclude a hasty peace with France, and then rush back by train and motor lorry to fight the Russians. It will interest you to know how and why this plan miscarried.

What I am going to tell you illustrates the soundness of the wise old saying, “Speech is silvern, silence is golden.” Even Paris remained all unknowing of the clever plan formed by the Allies. That great and beautiful city believed herself to be doomed. The awful fate of the inhabitants of Louvain was thought by many Parisians to be the forerunner of what would happen to themselves. The French Government, that is the President and his Ministers, left the capital for the distant town of Bordeaux, and orders were given that all those inhabitants of Paris who had babies and little children should leave the city.

Though to the great majority of French people Paris is in a sense the capital of the civilised world, the nation made up its mind to sacrifice this beloved and beautiful city if the good of the country as a whole required it. They did not say anything of their resolve. They simply made it, and waited grimly for the end.

At last the German Army was within a day’s march of Paris. Pretty American girls who had acquaintances among the German officers actually received letters from them arranging to come to tea with them! Every soldier in the great German Army believed that in twenty-four hours he would be comfortably resting in the most luxurious quarters in Europe.

Then suddenly, it will never be known exactly how, but probably through their clever airmen, the enemy’s commanders learnt that, hidden safely in the Palace of Versailles and under the great trees of the park surrounding that palace, was a new French army of fresh troops. Had the Germans penetrated into Paris, this army would have cut off their retreat and caught them, according to the proverbial saying, “like rats in a trap.” So it was that, instead of making their triumphal entry into Paris, the rushing, oncoming hosts swerved to one side, and very soon there developed close to Paris the great fights which will live in history under the names of the Battle of Meaux and the Battle of the Marne.

Superior people rather despise those who believe in omens, but sometimes even the holy and the learned find great comfort in them.

The most notable scholars in France belong to the Academy of Inscriptions in Paris. Now, in spite of the fact that war was raging and the enemy close to the gates of their city, these learned men decided to hold their usual monthly meeting. The proceedings opened with the statement that there had just been presented to the Louvre a Greek statue of surpassing charm and interest, the first gift made to the Louvre Museum since the outbreak of the war. After a short pause, the speaker added the words, “Gentlemen, the statue is that of the Winged Victory.” And all these grave old scholars rose to their feet and cheered the omen to the echo!

It was near Meaux that the German Army, commanded by the skilful and resourceful General von Kluck, seems to have met quite unexpectedly the large reserves of men—perhaps it is a mistake to call them an army—which had been brought up there by General Joffre. There are certain other notable facts about this battle which make me wish you should specially remember it, and that though its glories were somewhat dimmed by the greater and more important Battle of the Marne.

The Battle of Meaux turned the tide of the first German campaign. By a strange irony of fate, Von Kluck seems to have first got wind of the new French army on September 1. It was on September 2, 1870, that the Battle of Sedan was fought, the French suffering a crushing defeat at the hands of the Germans. The Germans confidently expected to enter Paris again on September 2, 1914, and celebrate there the anniversary of their great triumph. Not only was this confident expectation disappointed, but it was on that very day that they were forced to begin their retreat.

Before I begin to tell you of some of the deeds of valour and heroism performed during these two battles, I should like to tell you one or two interesting things about the town of Meaux.

Bossuet, who spoke so beautifully that, like St. Chrysostom, he was called “the golden mouthed,” was Archbishop of Meaux; he was also a brave and fearless man, and one of those who leave the world in which they live—in his case, a brilliant, frivolous, selfish world—better than they find it.

The present Bishop of Meaux is a worthy successor to Bossuet. When the Germans entered the town, the bishop was the only man of authority who remained at his post. The Mayor had advised the inhabitants to leave as soon as the Germans drew near. He and the other officials all went. The bishop refused to join them, saying, “My duty is here. I do not think the enemy will harm me, but if they do, God’s will be done. I cannot leave my cathedral. I cannot leave those of my flock who remain.”

When the Germans arrived, the bishop parleyed with their commanding officer and exacted a promise that his men should behave well. And they did. So we may well exclaim, “Bravo, brave bishop!”

In a little town close to Meaux called Château-Thierry, where much fighting took place, was the cheerful home of another Frenchman whose name some of you certainly know. I mean La Fontaine, who wrote the delightful animal fables. The hotels of Château-Thierry are very happily and appropriately named: they are called The Elephant, The Giraffe, and The Swan. The poor Giraffe was battered all to bits during the great battle, I am sorry to say, by the shells of the French, who with their help successfully dislodged the Germans. But the owner of the Giraffe is such an unselfish patriot that when showing his wounded house to an English gentleman after the battle, he exclaimed, “See how splendidly true our gunners’ aim was!” pointing out with pride that every single window had been neatly smashed.

I think most of you will envy the two Eton boys who were on a bicycle tour in France when the war broke out, and who, when the tide began to turn, suddenly found themselves in the fighting zone! By luck more than anything else they stumbled on to the French General Staff, and there came across an English officer. Both implored him to help them to get into the French Army, and, amazing to tell, they were both made honorary sub-lieutenants. Soon they were put on the Commission which had the business of examining the villages improperly devastated by the enemy, for sad to say, as soon as the Germans began to get the worst of it, they wreaked their vengeance on the innocent inhabitants of the villages and small towns through which they were retreating.

Mean people always suspect others of being as mean as themselves. The Germans believe that the taking of an unfair advantage is quite the right thing to do in war. But in the end these practices recoil on their doers and keep them in a miserable state of constant fear and suspicion.

A worthy French priest and two innocent little boys very nearly fell a victim to the enemy’s terrors. The Germans were having a rest in a village, when their commander noticed that the church clock was stopped. He sent for the priest, and demanded that the clock should be set going again. The curé, accompanied by two of his choir boys, went to wind it up; and as was natural, when once it was wound up it began to strike. The German commander, in a great fright, decided that this was a dodge invented by the curé to warn the French that a number of weary Germans were in his village. At once he had him arrested, and the two little boys as well. Without more ado all three were sentenced to be shot the next morning.

All three were brave, but we can imagine what a sad night they must have spent, and how especially sad the old priest must have been that, owing to the fact that he had allowed the two lads to accompany him, they were to have their young lives cut short in such a dreadful way. Early in the morning, an hour before they were to have been executed, the news reached the Germans that the French were on them. They rushed out of the village, forgetting all about their captives. Meanwhile, the priest was so convinced that his last hour had come that he himself opened the door of his temporary prison and went to the village green in order to await the firing party, and to make a last appeal to them to spare the two lads. You can imagine his joy when he saw the familiar blue and red uniforms of his fellow-countrymen.

This great war has been illumined by star-like deeds of beautiful, simple humanity, performed, in many cases, by men who were unconscious of their own heroism. One such still shines forth from the Battle of Meaux.

A Scottish regiment was occupying a trench, swept by violent rifle and artillery fire, when two privates noticed that a Frenchman, attached to the battalion as interpreter, occupied the most exposed place in the trench.

“The Frenchman is awkwardly placed,” observed one of them, “let us widen his trench.”

At once the two Scots, paying no attention to the hail of bullets and shrapnel, set to deepening the trench, after which they calmly went back to their own stations.

I expect some of you will envy a certain French boy named André. He lived in Paris, and on the declaration of war he watched with very mixed feelings his brother and most of the grown-up men he knew start off for the front. In France every man between the ages of eighteen and forty-five is, in time of war, a soldier, ready to defend his dear country to the last drop of his blood.

André was only twelve years old, but when he heard that the enemy was now close to Paris, he decided that he must go and defend his country too. So he suddenly disappeared, leaving a letter which ran:

“My dear father and mother,

“I am starting for the war. Don’t worry about me. I have my savings bank money.”

After nearly a fortnight a sunburnt André reappeared in Paris, and told all that had befallen him. It had been quite easy for him to find the army, and the soldiers hadn’t had the heart to send him away. Marching with them by day, and sleeping in their bivouacs or billets at night, he stayed with them until the battalion reached Meaux. There the colonel began to ask questions. André’s soldier friends had to confess that they had adopted him as a human mascot. The colonel sent for André, and although at first very angry, soon relaxed into a broad smile, but insisted that the boy’s share in the campaign must now come to an end, and so André went sadly home.

In these days when hundreds of thousands of soldiers are pitted against one another, a battle consists of a number of separate fights, or, as we call them now, engagements. It was in one of these, during this same battle of Meaux, that a perambulator figures in a grand deed of heroism.

The hero of this story is an infantry officer, one who had only just left St. Cyr (the French Sandhurst, and once, funnily enough, the most famous girls’ school in the whole world), and who first went under fire at the Battle of Meaux. Looking round in the thick of the fight he saw his major, who was a very small man, lying severely wounded in a field swept by the fire of the German guns.

There were some houses close by. Into one of these Lieutenant Gesrel ran, and he came out wheeling a perambulator. The men lying about him, taking what shelter they could, looked at him in amazement. He wheeled it briskly, but without appearing to hurry, out into the bullet-swept open space, until he came to where the major lay.

The men could hear the wounded officer protest. “Go away,” he said. “Leave me; I shall be all right. It’s madness to expose yourself like that.”

The lieutenant took no heed of this, but picked his major up, put him in the perambulator, and started to wheel it back to the edge of the little wood. At last he reached safety with his precious burden. Then he ran and joined his men in the fight again.

I expect you have heard how, at Fontenoy, the French called out to the British, “Fire first, gentlemen.” But the latter refused to fire, shouting back at once rudely and politely, “No, gentlemen and assassins, you begin!”

This famous exchange of courtesies is recalled by the action of another French lieutenant, who, during a sharp fight which took place round a small railway station near Meaux, pursued a German officer into a locomotive shed, and found him under the tender of an engine. The two looked each other up and down, and by tacit agreement took up a duelling position at fifteen paces. “Please fire first,” cried the French officer. The German fired and missed. Then the Frenchman fired and hit.

The last human quality one would naturally associate with war is kindness. Yet it is not too much to say that every great battle, every scene of carnage, is brightened by truly wonderful acts of kindness. By this I do not mean deeds of heroism, the saving of one gallant soldier by a pal, but simple, homely kindness. Such was the following:

Trooper Philippe, of the 2nd Chasseurs, under heavy artillery fire, bullets and shrapnel falling thickly, not only brought his captain in, but after that went back eight times more to take water to the wounded.

A French soldier, wounded in this same battle of Meaux, had with him a dog nestled in his coat while the fighting was going on, as it was apparently terrified at the noise of the firing. The soldier fed it from his rations, and after he was wounded smuggled it in the train which took him to the hospital.

Our own soldiers have always had a special fondness for dogs. It is said that when a dog once enters barracks he never afterwards seeks to change his quarters.

At Vittoria the Guards made a poodle puppy a prisoner, and it became their pet. At Bidart, when Colonel Ponsonby was encouraging his men to advance, they were delighted to see the poodle jumping and barking, much amused at the bullets which rained round him. Colonel Ponsonby and the poodle were wounded at the same moment, a bullet breaking one of the dog’s legs. He was, however, tenderly nursed, and the rest of his life was happy, although spent on only three legs.

CHAPTER VIII
THE BATTLE OF THE AISNE

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light,

In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

But westward, look! the land is bright!

Arthur Clough.

After the German army had fallen back a long, long way, close on a hundred miles, they suddenly came to a stop, and prepared for a new and desperate stand.

Gradually, those of us who were watching anxiously from far off, learnt what the men at the front knew almost at once; General von Kluck had decided to turn and face his pursuers along the line of the river Aisne. It was an excellent choice. This river, broad and deep, was one of the easiest to defend in the whole of Europe. Moreover, von Kluck was well aware that in days of peace cunning Germans, masquerading in many cases as quiet wine merchants, had prepared there a series of almost impregnable trenches. Now the word impregnable means “impossible to take,” and when our officers, later, saw the trenches out of which the Germans had been driven, they declared that our men would have held them for ever!

It was there, in the beautiful country of vineyards and of the low, swelling hills which surround the famous town of Rheims, that began what has come to be known as the Battle of the Aisne.

I expect most of you know the meaning of the word “fortress.” Those of you who don’t will understand it best if I tell you that in old days every castle was a fortress. It was so built with ramparts, battlements, and little narrow windows, that every stone of it could be defended, either by archers with bows and arrows, or with men and guns.

Now the most striking fact about the great Battle of the Aisne, which, beginning on September 10, was to last longer than any previous battle in the history of the world, was that on the German side it was exactly like fortress or castle fighting. I mean that the Germans, with a foresight which did credit to their cleverness, had evidently thought it possible, though not probable, that they might be pushed far back, as in fact they were. They had, therefore, prepared long beforehand trenches and quarries which, from a little way off, actually looked like the battlements of a castle. There, snugly hidden behind natural and artificial ramparts, they were able to keep the British troops and those of our ally at bay during many long weary days.

The German trenches were all ready for the enemy to step into them, but every British and French trench had to be dug out and prepared at short notice. This, however, was soon done, and then there began that strange “life in the trenches,” of which so many vivid accounts were written home by officers and privates.

You will certainly want to know what a trench is like. A one-man trench is best described by its other name, “dug-out.” It is a large, neat hole, cut so deeply in the ground that a man can stand upright in it without being seen.

There is a great art in digging a trench. When finished it should be not unlike a tiny cottage room; the floor, however, is quite unlike that of a room, for instead of being flat it is slightly sloped, so that any rain that gets in may run away quickly. At the side there is a step, so that the occupier, when he cares to do so, can cautiously raise his head above the ground and look round. The best trenches have a kind of roof or head-cover. This protects the man inside, not only from rain and sun, but also from the awful bullets which come out of the shrapnel shells.

It is interesting to know that the shrapnel shell, which has done such deadly harm in this war both to ourselves and to the enemy, is called after a distinguished English soldier, General Henry Shrapnel, who invented it. On the park gates of the ancestral home of the Shrapnel family near Trowbridge are still to be seen inscribed the names of over twenty battles won with the aid of this shell. Sir George Wood, who commanded the artillery at Waterloo, declared that we owed to shrapnel the recovery of La Haye Sainte, on which part of the battle depended.

As to what trench life was like during the long Battle of the Aisne, it was in some ways like playing at keeping house.

When I was a little girl I often played at keeping house with my brother, but as we were very fond of soldiers, and lived in a stretch of beautiful country which was very suitable for la petite guerre, as military manœuvres were then called in France, our house was always a tent.

In those days we knew nothing of trenches, or it would have been a trench. Into our little house—we always called it a house though it was really a tent, for the roof was always made with a sheet, and the door was a big towel—we used to bring all the sort of things that we thought soldiers would want. But in these days a soldier’s requirements have grown, if only because he has to live in his trench for far longer than the soldier of long ago used to live in his tent.

I think it may interest some of you to know both what an officer generally has, and what he would like to have, with him, when he is in a trench. He generally has a canteen containing a knife, fork, and spoon; also a sponge, a tooth-brush, a piece of soap, and an extra pair of socks. As to a change of clothes, boots, and sleeping bag, they form part of his equipment. He also has a water-bottle, a revolver, a pair of field-glasses, and a compass. Only if he is lucky does he possess as extras a waterproof sheet, a torch with re-fills (many on the Aisne preferred candles), a canvas bucket, notepaper and envelopes, and an air pillow. There should be six thick pairs of socks made of good wool, twelve coloured handkerchiefs, four thick flannel shirts (khaki colour), a good wide comforter, and two sleeping caps (in case one gets wet). Any pencils sent to a man on active service ought to be indelible. Valuable, too, is a tiny medicine chest.

Very few people realise what an important part food—good, hot, and plenty of it—plays in war. Napoleon, who was the first great general to study closely the comfort of his troops, would have admired and envied the British commissariat.

However fierce the fighting during the Battle of the Aisne, there was in each trench or dug-out “the dinner ’ush from twelve to one.” The shells might continue to roar, and men be hit by bullets, but out fifty yards behind the trench the battalion reserves had their fires alight and were cooking dinner. Fifty yards of shell-swept ground behind men in trenches is, however, a long way off.

There were, however, always plenty of volunteers ready to rush to the belt of trees and return triumphant with mess-tins riddled with shrapnel bullets and some of their number on the ground, but with dinner safe for the famished battalion.

I wonder if you can guess what is the worst thing connected with life in the trenches? It is not the cold or the heat. It is not the damp or the wet. It is not even the fact that the soldier, however cleverly he may be entrenched, is in perpetual danger of death, or if not of death itself, then of some terrible and painful wound.

No, the worst thing about life in the trenches is the noise! All day long, and very often all night too, the boom of the great guns, and the long drawn-out screaming whistle of the shells, went on, backwards and forwards, across that narrow valley of the Aisne. Who can wonder that many of our brave soldiers were made temporarily deaf?

And yet, in spite of the distracting noise, a good deal of reading was done, for quite a number of books had been brought to the trenches.

One of the officers of the 1st Hampshire Regiment actually read Sir Walter Scott’s poem of “Marmion” aloud to his men while they were being subjected to a continuous fire. This fact becoming known to a retired naval officer, Commander Henry N. Shore, he wrote the following interesting letter to a paper:

“Curiously enough, the same thing happened a century ago during the last great war in which Great Britain was engaged. While Wellington’s army held the lines of Torres Vedras, a captain in an infantry regiment wrote to Sir Walter Scott telling him that while his men were waiting for an attack by the French he excited their martial ardour by reciting aloud to them a canto of ‘Marmion’ which had recently been published. Thus does history repeat itself.”

The French soldiers during this long drawn-out battle were astonished at the tidiness and cleanliness of their British comrades. Every morning our soldiers did their best to perform their toilets in the trenches, and that however hard the night had been. Each man had a little bit of looking-glass which he put up on the chalky earth, then he got his water and soap to hand, and shaved and washed as though for a parade! There was no compulsion; it was done because each man wanted to do it, and knew he would feel the better for it.

This kind of siege battle is very wearing to those engaged in it. The dogged courage, day and night, which it requires, seems to me every bit as splendid as those more striking deeds of gallantry for which men win the V.C. As a private wrote:

“We don’t care tuppence for shrapnel, which flies back and hardly ever hits us. What worries us is that the Germans have been turning their heavy siege guns upon us. The shells they fire are no joke. They rip a hole in the ground big enough to bury an entire regiment. One man standing near me was hurled into the lower branches of a tree by the concussion. We got him down, and strange to say he was comparatively unhurt.”

That makes one think of Sir Walter Scott’s lines:

“Three hundred cannon-mouths roared loud,

And from their throats with flash and cloud

Their showers of iron threw.”

It was early in the Battle of the Aisne that a British gunner, already slightly wounded, went on serving his gun, when suddenly down whizzed a shell and severely injured his leg. He picked himself up and calmly went on with his perilous job. The action was then very hot, and he refused to receive first aid. At last, when it became clear he could go on no longer, he was forced by his comrades to leave his post of duty and danger, but it took two of them to hold him down on the ambulance stretcher!

The Russians have an excellent proverb, “The bullet is a fool, but the bayonet is a brave fellow.” The bullet, however, especially when shot by one of our British soldiers, is by no means a fool, as our enemies have again and again found to their cost. The German soldiers usually fired their rifles at random from the hip. But our men are trained to take aim steadily from the shoulder, and so not many British bullets are wasted.

The modern bullet has a tremendous range. Before the Battle of Omdurman a wounded officer was placed at what was thought to be five thousand yards from the nearest point of fire. Yet a stray bullet traversed those three miles of desert, and striking him on the head killed him.

One is glad to know that the latest type of bullet usually inflicts quite a small, clean wound, which heals up quickly. In old days it was thought that no one could survive being shot through the heart, but it has now been proved that a bullet may actually puncture the heart without doing any permanent harm.

Sometimes—and this is a very piteous and woeful thought—a wounded soldier has to lie out a long time on the field of battle before he can be carried in. I am sorry to say that the Germans often fired on the men sent out to pick up wounded. As an example, I will tell you of the case of a soldier whose left thigh was fractured and right foot wounded in a very fierce engagement. He lay alone among the dead and dying, unseen, and apparently without any power of attracting the attention of the ambulance men. At last he plucked up enough strength to crawl along towards the British trenches.

“I was about finished,” he wrote afterwards, “when a man of the Welsh Regiment saw me and came out for me. That man ought to get the Victoria Cross. I didn’t ask his name, and I don’t know what it was, but he was a real good one, and no mistake. He got me up on his shoulders and he carried me right in. The Germans were firing all the time, and I was so near finished that I wanted him to drop me and let me die. It didn’t seem right for him to be worrying about getting me in. All he said was, ‘You hold tight, old man; I’ve got you all right, and I don’t intend to let you go!’”

Wherever the British wounded passed they were loaded with gifts by the French peasants. Old men and women, children even, brought them the best they had. They would bring the milk kept for the baby’s bottle, or their only and much valued bottle of champagne or old wine.

A Lancashire private showed his comrades an agricultural medal an old man had given him. “It is not much in itself, I dare say,” he said, to excuse the tears in his eyes, “but I could see it was what the old fellow was proudest of, so you see I have to keep it careful.”

Some of you, when walking through one of our beautiful, peaceful, country churchyards, may have cast a sad thought to the lonely graves where so many of our bravest soldiers lie in France. But let me tell you that one of the best traits in the French character is respect for death. A tramp found dead on the wayside near a French village will be given a decent funeral, and what is more there will be women present, not only at the Mass said for his soul, but also at the grave side.

That being so, you will readily imagine with what reverence and care the British dead who have died fighting for France have been treated by the people whose sad fate it has been to live close to the great battlefields of this war. After each action the dead were sought for, and after their personal possessions had been put aside for their relations, they were buried on a strip of ground called “The Field of Honour.” There French and British lie side by side, as you will see from the following letter written by a lieutenant of the Royal Army Medical Corps serving with the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders:

“Poor Colonel Bradford! I can’t tell you how great our loss is. He was brave, and a born commander, but in the twinkling of an eye, while trying to safeguard his regiment, a shell carried him off. We could not fetch him in during daylight because of drawing fire, but at midnight, on September 14, we laid him with two other officers and men to rest in their champ d’honneur, on a hillside overlooking a fair river and valley.

“It was a sad but glorious moment for us to stand and hear the padre tell us that they had not shrunk from duty, and had fallen for the sake of comrades. The next day I found some Scotch thistle growing close by. I plucked the blooms, and formed a cross over our chieftain’s grave.”

In a letter to Miss Rose-Innes, of Jedburgh, Colonel Richardson-Drummond-Hay, writing from the regimental quarters of the Coldstream Guards at the Battle of the Aisne, paid a splendid tribute to a Scots surgeon, named Dr. Huggan. It told how two days before the young man was killed he was recommended for the Victoria Cross for organising and leading a party of volunteers to remove a number of wounded from a barn that had been set alight by the German shells. The work was carried out under very heavy fire, and all the wounded were saved.

Dr. Huggan, who was killed at the Battle of the Aisne on September 16, was a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps, attached to the 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards. He was a native of Jedburgh, and played Rugby with the Jedforest Club for some years.

The doctors on both sides have taken a splendid part in this great war.

Let me tell you here of an exceptionally kind and delicate-minded action on the part of a German doctor.

In a French town temporarily captured by the Germans, a certain French gentleman lay very ill. He was an old man, too old for fighting, and just now too ill to be moved away by his friends. There were no French doctors left in the town. Hearing of this case, one of the German doctors took off his uniform, put on an overall, and pretended to be a captured English doctor, in order to go and see the sick man. He took all this trouble because he thought the excitement (hatred of the Germans by his patient) would be bad for the old gentleman. This was all the kinder, inasmuch as, being an Army doctor, he was, of course, under no obligation to treat people in the town.

I am sorry that I cannot tell you the name of one of the bravest men mentioned in this book. There is, however, one fact about him which can be stated. He is a private in the West Yorkshire Regiment.

This soldier was in the trenches when suddenly he saw that close to the German lines a number of his comrades had been struck down while in the act of charging the enemy. He took off his coat and equipment, and walked over to where they lay under a perfect hail of bullets. Beginning with the adjutant, he made altogether eleven journeys, bringing in also his colonel and nine men. Small wonder that he is said to have been recommended for the Victoria Cross.

During the first two months of the war, the British Veterinary Corps, which, by the way, was first formed after the South African War, had 30,000 horse patients through its hands. Horses, in spite of motor transport, have already played an important part in this great war, and it does not require much thought to know that their supply in almost every country is limited. Russia alone seems to have an inexhaustible number—in fact, it has been asserted that there are no fewer than thirty million horses at the disposal of the Tsar.

Our horses are better looked after than any others in the field. The wounded ones are cared for most tenderly, and are often cured of quite serious wounds. Not only have they their comfortable hospitals, but there have actually been set apart for them splendid convalescent homes. Some of these consist of the fine racing stables belonging to well-known Frenchmen whose colours are often seen on English racecourses.

I have been told that one of the strangest and, in a sense, most pathetic sights on the battlefields of the Aisne was the loose horses which rushed hither and thither aimlessly while shells whistled overhead. Another curious sight is the terror of the birds when an aeroplane flies low. They swirl about, beside themselves with fright, and evidently believe that the flying machine is a huge monster of their own kind bent upon their extermination.

A private of the Royal Irish Fusiliers described how he and his comrades once went under fire:

“As we stood up, there was a ghastly shower of bullets, and shells burst all round. Into it we had to go, and as I looked ahead one of our chaps said, ‘I think we’ll have to get our great-coats, boys; it’s raining bullets to-night, and we’ll get wet if we’re not careful.’ Men of “C” Company started laughing, and then they took to singing ‘Put up your umbrellas when it comes on wet!’ The song was taken up all along as we went into the thick of it, and some of us were humming it as we dashed into the German trenches.”

During the retreat from Mons a slightly wounded Scot, an artilleryman, asked a German for water, and was refused. Long afterwards, during the Battle of the Aisne, the artilleryman recognised the same German among a party of wounded whose cries for water couldn’t be attended to quickly enough.

The recognition was mutual, and the German stopped his moaning, thinking he was sure to be paid back in his own coin. But the Highlander took out his water-bottle and handed it to the German without a word. According to one who was there, the German had the grace to look very shamefaced indeed.

Our flying men played a most important part in this Battle of the Aisne. What they did, and how they did it, was excellently described in the following letter written by Lord Castlereagh from Champagne. As you read it you will feel as if you were there, watching the wonderful and inspiring sight:

“The thing that has impressed me most here has been the aeroplane service, a splendid lot of boys who really do not know what fear is. The Germans shoot shrapnel at them, and you see the aeroplane like a dragon-fly in the air, and then a lot of little puffs of white smoke, which are the shells bursting. Luckily the shots are very wide, and so far none have been brought down. One man was shot in the thigh by a German airman whom he was chasing.

“I watched for twenty-five minutes an aeroplane doing what is called ‘ranging’ for a battery of heavy guns. The aeroplane watches where the shells drop, and then signals to say where the shells are falling, whether too far or not far enough. This aeroplane was being shelled by the enemy with shrapnel, and three times it flew round and showed the battery where they were shooting. The Germans must have fired forty shells.

“The aeroplane, about five thousand feet up, and easily in sight, looked like an eagle, and about the same size, and the shells made a cloud of white smoke and looked about the size of a cabbage. It was a wonderful sight, and if such a picture appeared in an illustrated paper no one would think it was anything else but an imaginary one.”

On September 22 a daring exploit was performed by a group of British aviators. They flew off and made a successful raid into Germany. Flight-Lieut. C. H. Collet dropped three bombs on the Zeppelin shed at Düsseldorf, and as the whole shed burst into flames it is clear that his object was accomplished.

Both this gallant airman and his companion were most careful to do no harm to private or public buildings in the towns through which they flew. In fact, they could have destroyed another Zeppelin shed had they not thought it wrong to run the risk of injuring innocent women and children in the misty weather which then prevailed.

I cannot help contrasting this behaviour with the conduct of German airmen, who killed or mutilated with their bombs numbers of women and children in open towns like Paris and Ostend.

Some of the most gallant deeds of this great war have been done some way from the fields of battle, and in what may be called cold blood. A fine story of Irish heroism was told by a trooper of the Irish Dragoons:

“There was a man of ours who carried a chum to a farmhouse under fire, and when the retreat came got left behind. A German patrol called and found them. There were only the two, one wounded, against a dozen Uhlans. Behind a barrier of furniture they kept the Germans at bay. At last the Germans made off and brought a machine gun to the house and threatened to destroy it.

“The two soldiers were not unmindful of the kindness shown them by the owners of the farm, and rather than bring loss on them or the village they made a rush out with some mad idea of taking the gun. Just over the threshold of the door they both fell dead.”

Among the most moving and beautiful stories of this great struggle is one that also has as hero a nameless Irish private. What happened was perfectly told by a wounded corporal of the West Yorkshire Regiment:

“The regiment was approaching a little village near Rheims. We went on through the long narrow street, and just as we were in sight of the end the figure of a man dashed out from a farmhouse on the right. Immediately the rifles began to crack in front, and the poor chap fell dead before he reached us.

“We learned that he had been captured the previous day by a marauding party of German cavalry, and had been held a prisoner at the farm where the Germans were in ambush for us. He tumbled to their game, and though he knew that if he made the slightest sound they would kill him, he decided to make a dash to warn us of what was in store.

“He had more than a dozen bullets in him, and there was not the slightest hope for him, so we carried him into a house until the fight was over. We buried him the next day with military honours, but as his identification disc and everything else was missing, we could only put over his grave the tribute that was paid to a greater: ‘He saved others; himself he could not save.’”

CHAPTER IX
OUR ALLY RUSSIA

Prepare, prepare the iron helm of war,

Bring forth the lots, cast in the spacious orb;

The Angel of Fate turns them with mighty hands,

And casts them out upon the darkened earth,

Prepare, prepare!

Prepare your hearts for Death’s cold hand! Prepare

Your souls for flight, your bodies for the earth!

Prepare your arms for glorious victory!

Prepare your eyes to meet a holy God!

Prepare, prepare!

Blake.

I should now like to tell you something of our great ally, Russia, and of the gallant deeds performed by her soldiers in this war.

Valour does not belong to one nation more than to another, but each country, and this is rather a curious fact, has its own kind of valour. The British excel in what I should call the “forlorn hope”—the kind of valour that stood our soldiers in such fine stead at Mons, and during Sir John French’s magnificent retreat. The Marquis of Montrose embodied the spirit of England and this peculiar stoical type of valour when he wrote:

“He either fears his fate too much,

Or his deserts are small,

That dares not put it to the touch

To gain or lose it all.”

The Briton never fears his fate too much to put it to the touch—that is why he generally gains it all!

Now the Russian has a singularly splendid kind of valour. It is the kind that faces certain death for love of country, with joy rather than with resignation. Never in the history of mankind was a finer thing done than the sailing of the Russian Fleet to certain doom, during the Russo-Japanese War. Every man, from admiral to stoker, knew of the fate awaiting him, and every man went cheerfully to the encounter for the sake of “Holy Russia.”

This courage of the Russians is part of their grand passion for romance, or what people now call idealism. A great many years ago a writer quaintly and truly wrote in Blackwood’s Magazine: “I have seen the unromantic drop like sheep under the rot of their calamities, while the romantic have been buoyant and mastered them.” So never let anyone laugh us out of being romantic. Too often those who try to do so are in the sad case of the fox who, having lost his tail, could not endure to see any other fox with one.

It was this same peculiar strain of magnificent, romantic courage which made the Governor of Moscow, after having given orders to burn the city, when Napoleon and his Grand Army were approaching, himself set fire to his own beloved house. This great deed will live in the long noble history of human sacrifice and valour as long as the world endures, for it was the burning of Moscow which turned the tide against the greatest conqueror Europe had known since Julius Cæsar.

The Russians are as mighty with the pen as with the sword. The finest story ever written on war was written by a Russian named Count Tolstoi. It is called “War and Peace.”

And now to the Russians this great war with Germany is a crusade, a holy war. They are fighting for their fellow-Slavs, who like them belong to the Greek Church, and who if they became Germans and Austrians would be most cruelly oppressed by their conquerors. So strong is this feeling in Russia that it has united everyone—from the Tsar to the poorest moujik—in one great passion for justice and freedom.

The following moving letter from his mother was found on the breast of a Russian officer killed in action. It will show you more than anything I can tell you how Russia feels about this war:

“Your father was killed very far from us, and I send you for the sacred duty of defending our dear country from the vile and dreadful enemy. Remember you are the son of a hero. My heart is oppressed, and I weep when I ask you to be worthy of him. I know all the fateful horror of these words, what suffering it will be for me and you, but we do not live for ever in this world. What is our life? A drop in the ocean of beautiful Russia. We must die, but she will live for ever. I know we shall be forgotten, and our happy descendants will not remember those who sleep in ‘brothers’ graves’ (soldiers’ graves).

“With kisses and blessings I parted with you. When you are sent to perform a great deed, don’t remember my tears but only my blessing. God save you, my dear, bright, loved child. One word more; it is written everywhere that the enemy is cruel and savage. Don’t be led by blind vengeance. Don’t raise your hand at a fallen foe, but be gracious to those whose fate it is to fall into your hands.”

What a noble and beautiful end is that to this letter, but how one’s heart aches for the writer now that the dear, bright, beloved son sleeps in “brothers’ graves.”

Of all the Tsar’s soldiers the most typically Russian is the Cossack. Now the Cossack has been well described as being a man of war from his youth upwards. He is always the child of a soldier, and his mother cradles him with war songs. When he gets a little older and begins crawling about the floor, his games are mimic battles, and his father takes him off to the stables for at least an hour every day that he may regard horses as his friends and playfellows.

At seventeen he becomes a Cossack, and after a very few weeks’ training he is ready for war. The Cossack’s equipment is most peculiar, and it is so arranged that he can creep along, even when on horseback, quite noiselessly. A proverb in Russia runs: “One dragoon makes more noise than a regiment of Cossacks!” The Cossack’s claim is that what mortal man can do he will do, and a great deal more besides. As a rule he is a small man and his horse is a small horse, in fact what we should call a pony. No cavalryman is on better terms with his mount, and many and many a time a Cossack has given his life for his horse. But a Cossack never allows his mount to know what the inside of a comfortable stable is like; the Cossack’s horse has to learn to be as hardy as his master.

Small wonder therefore that the Cossacks are the most amazingly clever horsemen in the world. One of their favourite manœuvres, when on active service, is to swing down beneath their horses’ girths, thus causing the enemy to believe that they have before them a number of runaway horses.

The story goes that a patrol of ten Cossacks lately came upon a German squadron who, to avoid a fight at close quarters, opened fire. The Russian horsemen swung round under their horses; the Germans mounted and set forth to capture what they believed to be runaway horses. When they came close up the Cossacks reappeared in the saddle, and attacking them with awful fury, cut them to pieces!

The Cossacks have retained their old, picturesque uniform—not for them the sober khaki—and an action in which they engage recalls the verse of Robert Burns:

“The trumpets sound, the banners fly,

The glittering spears are rankêd ready,

The shouts o’ war are heard afar,

The battle closes thick and bloody.”

The Cossack trooper has a great deal of that simple, resourceful cunning which is so important an asset to all sportsmen and fighting men.

This was shown in the present war by the adventure of one such brave horseman called Polkovnikoff, who was taken prisoner by the Austrians.

His captors treated Polkovnikoff kindly, and asked him many questions concerning his famous corps. “How do you manage to unsaddle just in front of the enemy’s entrenchments, and attack them on foot? Is not your horse a drag upon you?” they asked.

Polkovnikoff volunteered to show how it was done, so they lent him a fine horse, belonging to an officer, to enable him to make an exhibition of his skill. Conscientiously and artistically he went through some vaulting exercises. Then, in order to put the finishing touch to one of his feats, he went the furthest possible distance from the assembled company, and, before they realised what was happening, he had put spurs to the horse and was galloping madly away!

This delightful little sketch of a Cossack officer will show you how fortunate these Russian cavalrymen are in their leaders. It was written by a British war correspondent on his way to the front.

“At Pavlodar a Cossack officer came on board, who will ever stand out in our memory as a great little man. He was clean-shaven, fat, and jolly-looking. Within two hours he had the reservists under his thumb to such an extent that had they been asked to storm, unarmed as they were, a German position, they would have gone without hesitation! His treatment was paternal, almost to the extent of the schoolroom. He read to them, and he told them funny little stories. Then he made them sing choruses, and wound up by warning them that upon their arrival at the great concentration camp of Omsk they must remember to treat all strangers with courtesy.”

A Cossack never “retires” from active service. He goes on being a fighting man as long as he can ride well and straight. A Cossack whose leg was amputated clamoured for a quick recovery that he might go back to the front. The doctor asked him what he could do in the war with only one leg. He replied proudly, “Have I not still my strong right arm with which to strike down the enemy?”

All grown-up people hope that among the very best consequences of this great war will be the restoration of freedom and happiness to heroic Poland. It is the unhappy fate of this valiant country to be, as it were, a buffer State. I expect you know that a buffer is something wedged in between two contending forces. India-rubber, which is at once hard and yielding, makes an excellent buffer. Poland is between Russia and Germany, and before the war she had been divided between them. Neither had treated her well, but for many years past Germany treated her part of Poland with far more harshness than Russia treated hers. As a consequence of this, even German Poland now sides with Russia, the more so that the Tsar, very early in the war, issued a general proclamation in which he promised the Poles their freedom after victory.

Poland has been the scene of some fierce conflicts, and the Poles have had the opportunity of performing many gallant deeds. The Polish villagers have also been very good to the wounded of both sides. In one village a little girl of seven years old went up to a wounded man and saw that he was bleeding dreadfully from a wound in his head. She tried her best to staunch the blood with her pinafore, but as it went on coming through she put her hand tight down on the place, and sent her baby brother to fetch an ambulance man.

You will remember how more than one French boy managed to get to the front. This has also happened in Russia. Indeed, it is said that there boys as young as eight years have run away from home in the hope of fighting for Holy Russia.

Touching stories of the kind are being told in Petrograd concerning not only boys but girls.

Very soon after the war broke out, four little girls made their way to a police station. Each had a bundle on her back, each wore a Red Cross armlet. The police inspector was much surprised to see them. “Has someone sent you with these things?” he asked, pointing to their bundles. “If so, you must go on to the hospital.” “No, indeed,” said the boldest of the four; “we have come here on our way to the front. We intend to nurse the soldiers ourselves.” Proudly they exhibited their bundles, which contained bits of old linen and cotton wool. The inspector did not like to make fun of these valiant and patriotic little girls, so he kept them there while he sent out men to look for their parents. At last these arrived. The spokeswoman of the party then turned on the inspector and, with a look of grave reproach, exclaimed, “We trusted you with our secret, and now you have given us away!”

And here I must stop and tell you that very early in this stupendous war, where whole nations and their manhood are engaged, Russia did a very noble thing by her allies. Knowing that Germany had thrown her full strength into an effort to defeat, once for all, the British and the French armies, the Russian Commander-in-Chief made up his mind to create what is called a diversion. Although he was not yet really ready to meet so powerful and fully prepared a foe, he threw a large force over the German frontier.

Filled with alarm, the enemy hurried a big army to meet the oncoming Russians. This successfully relieved the rush on the British and French, but at a heavy cost to Russia. In a very real sense thousands of Russians then laid down their lives for their friends. Had they not been idealists and romantics, they could not have brought themselves to do it, for it requires a kind of courage differing from every other courage (and there are ever so many other kinds), deliberately to face defeat.

Very soon the Russian Army, completely ready by now to face their formidable foe, showed how temporary had been the check her commanders had knowingly courted and endured.

The Russian peasant is noted for his kindness of heart, and when he becomes a soldier this beautiful human quality stands him in good stead. In one instance four classes of the Order of St. George, which is like our Victoria Cross, were conferred upon a Hussar trooper, the orderly of a dangerously wounded officer, whom he rescued amid a hail of shot, and carried four miles. On the way he evaded numerous patrols of the enemy, and several times he had to swim broad streams, holding up the officer as best he could while they were both being “potted” from the banks.

We in our country did not know at first of the fine things being done in Russia. Many people were surprised to learn, for instance, how very good is the Russian Army Air Corps.

You are of course aware that an airman takes his life in his hand every time he goes out to observe what is going on in the enemy’s lines. Putting aside all the ordinary—they ought to be called the extraordinary—dangers of air service, there are times when a great deal may depend on a flying scout being willing to give his life for his beloved country. How true that is was shown by a grand exploit performed by Captain Nesteroff, the Russian Pegoud, one of the first men in Russia to loop the loop.

During a fierce battle with the Austrian troops, Captain Nesteroff was able to convey information of extreme value to the Russian commander. He was resting after his exertions, when he observed two Austrian aeroplanes making their way towards the Russian positions. Aware that at the moment of their appearance a strategic move of the utmost importance to the safety of the Russian Army was in progress, and that it was absolutely necessary to prevent information from reaching the enemy, he took the air and flew towards them.

By skilful manœuvring he succeeded in getting so close to one of the aeroplanes that he was able to fire his revolver almost point blank at the pilot. The latter was wounded, and fell with his machine to the ground, where he was captured. As soon as he had fired, Captain Nesteroff commenced a spiral upward flight, and he was at once followed by the second Austrian airman. Realising that it was, above all else, necessary to prevent the enemy aeroplane from returning to the Austrian lines with the valuable information that he had gathered, Nesteroff nerved himself for a supreme effort, and launched his aerial craft full tilt at his foe. The machines came together with a crash, and descended to the ground interlocked, both the gallant airmen being killed.

I have told you that the Russian peasant has a very kind heart. Kindness almost always implies sympathy and understanding. When the first trainload of wounded Austrians arrived on Russian soil they were treated at each place the train stopped with wonderful kindness and sympathy, and one poor woman was seen, while feeding a young Austrian soldier, to be crying bitterly.

“What is the matter?” asked one of the doctors. “Has he insulted or annoyed you in any way?”

“No, indeed,” she answered; “I am crying because I cannot help feeling sorry to see a boy like this all alone in a foreign country, not even able to say a word in our language. I am mourning over what his mother must be feeling now. If you will allow me, I will take him home with me and nurse him back to health!”

And yet this peasant woman, simple as she may have been, must have known quite well that Austria has always had a peculiar dislike, and even contempt, for the Slav race to which she belonged, and for the sake of which Russia is at war.

The following little story illustrates the same beautiful qualities of mercy and of kindness, but this time the hero of it is a soldier.

An artilleryman’s battery, after hours of hard work, was at last ordered to retire. As it sullenly retreated, he saw a baby girl toddle from the doorway of one of the houses of the village right into the path of the battery. Amid a rain of shell and shrapnel, this brave fellow went to the baby’s rescue, while his comrades gave him up for lost. As he reached the child a shrapnel shell burst overhead, and, throwing himself down, the man shielded the child’s body with his own. One bullet passed through his back, injuring him so badly that he could not regain his feet. But two of his comrades immediately went to his assistance, and carried him, with his little protégée, to the battery, whence they were removed to hospital.

It has been said that every country has the Jews it deserves. Now Jews have never been quite fairly treated by the Russian Government. But during this war they have shown themselves to be true patriots and brave soldiers, and so we may hope that they will be treated as well as they deserve to be in future.

Very early in the campaign a Jewish soldier, named Pernikow, won the St. George’s Cross for valour. He was charged with the delivery of important secret despatches, and, though very seriously wounded on the way, he struggled on to his journey’s end, and fulfilled his mission.

We must not forget another of our Allies, the country which Russia regards as her small sister—I mean Serbia.

This gallant little country was the greatest help to the Allies, and especially to Russia. She had by no means recovered from the terrible Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, when Austria fell upon her. But little Serbia not only drove away the enemy, but herself invaded Austrian territory. Thus she engaged and defeated large Austrian forces which would otherwise have been thrown against Russia.

Here is the story of a young Serbian officer who at one time was well known in London and in Paris, for his father is a diplomatist.

Lieutenant Voislav Grashanin was not only a keen soldier, beloved and honoured by his men, but he was also a very clever and many-sided man. A comrade thus described his gallant death:

“It fell to our detachment to lead the attack on Iverak and Golo Tchuk. Grashanin was first in the charge, and after a fierce tussle he reached the height of Golo Tchuk and ranged his men quickly in firing order once more. I saw him passing among the lines, and heard him say: ‘Now, brothers, show how straight you can aim! There is glory in store for us here if we know how to take it. Who cares for life? We’ve all got to die some day!’ Shortly afterwards the enemy began to fall back, and Grashanin called: ‘What did I tell you? See! A battery is offered us. A battery of our own. Forward, and seize their guns!’

“Just then he was shot in the right hand. He bound up the wound where he stood, and lifted the other hand to give the signal, when that hand, too, was struck by a bullet. This time the wound was graver, his fingers being severed. We bound it up for him as well as we could, for he refused to go to the rear. He had taken off his coat for the hasty operation, and now the bandages were so clumsy that he could not pass his arm through the sleeve. We hung it by one button round his neck, and he went on giving orders as before.

“We advanced steadily, and again the enemy made a backward move. Then Voislav shouted, ‘Come on for the guns!’ At that moment a bullet lodged in his chest. He fell, but got up again on his knees to command: ‘The guns! Take the guns!’

“Our lieutenant was dead when we brought up the guns to where he lay. Still, I think he must have heard our ‘Hurrah!’ when we took the guns. Every man of us kissed him before we buried him, and we dug him the deepest grave I have seen in this campaign. We were very fond of him because of his kind heart and elegant manner of speech. Some had nicknamed him ‘the Parisian,’ but he was Serbian to the core.”

CHAPTER X
OUR ALLY FRANCE

O torn out of thy trance,

O deathless, O my France,

O many-wounded mother, O redeemed to reign!

O rarely sweet and bitter

The bright brief tears that glitter

On thine unclosing eyelids, proud of their own pain;

The beautiful brief tears

That wash the stains of years

White as the names immortal of thy chosen and slain.

Swinburne.

Tout homme deux pays—le sien et puis la France.

Victor Hugo.

Among the many changes which this great war will bring about, it will certainly again make true Victor Hugo’s touching boast, “Two countries hath each man—his own and France.”

For nearly a thousand years this was true of all the gentlepeople in our three kingdoms. Scotsmen and Irishmen might be at daggers drawn with England, but always they remained not only friendly, but on the closest terms of intimacy with France. Charming French princesses married Scottish kings, and you will perhaps remember that when the great Scots wizard waved his wand, “the bells would ring in Notre Dame,” not, observe, in Westminster Abbey or in Old St. Paul’s!

There was a Scots College and an Irish College in Paris, and no one in Scotland and Ireland was reckoned a scholar unless he had studied in France.

The fact that England and France were almost always at war made no difference to this pleasant state of things, and now we like to remember that the one place where, till this year, British and French fought side by side, was in the Holy Land during the Crusades. In old days wars raged over years, not over weeks or months, and now and again great stretches of French country belonged to England. I know a beautiful parish church in the heart of France which was built by the British in the thirteenth century—seven hundred years ago.

Those of you who have learned any history must know that poor Queen Mary exclaimed that when she died the word “Calais” would be found graven on her heart, so deeply had she felt its recapture by the French. Not long ago, speaking of the Germans’ desperate wish to get to Calais, a great English writer observed, smiling, “As to the effect which their occupation of Calais would produce on this country, they are three hundred years too late. Calais is not inscribed on the heart of our Queen Mary!”

Ill-fortune often brings countries far more closely together than does good fortune. After the execution of Charles I, English, Scottish, and Irish loyalists fled to France, and lived there long years of a not unhappy exile. Louis XIV gave them a magnificent welcome. He presented the Stuarts with one of his most comfortable palaces, one, too, within an easy distance of his own palace at Versailles; and when you read the enchanting, intimate letters of Madame de Sévigné to her daughter, you will see how much the two courts intermingled, and what a constant coming and going there was from France to England and from England to France. When Charles II became king he did not forget his French friends. In fact I think it may be whispered that he remained far more of a Parisian than a Londoner, and you will feel this too if you ever read the letters he wrote to his beloved sister, the fascinating Henrietta, who had married the brother of Louis XIV.

England was very English in the eighteenth century, but, even so, there was constant intercourse between London and Paris. English names occur almost as often as French ones in the correspondence of the famous Madame du Deffand, and the best picture of the French society of that day is to be found in the letters of her old friend, Horace Walpole. Marie Antoinette had many dear English friends, and Englishwomen as well as Englishmen were made very welcome by her, not only in the Palace of Versailles, but at her own beloved Petit Trianon.

So close was the tie then between the two countries that they read as a matter of course each other’s books. Innumerable little girls in France are now called Clarisse because of a wonderful story, written by an English bookseller named Benjamin Richardson, called “Clarissa Harlowe.” Equally in this country, few, if any, children were named Clare or Julia before the publication of “La Nouvelle Héloise,” written by the Jean Jacques Rousseau to whom I alluded in my first chapter.

You might have thought that the great Revolution would have broken the old connection between the two countries and the two capitals. So far was this from being the case that there were many people in England who sympathised with the aims of the Revolution. Others, while regarding all that went on in the France of that day with horror, yet felt their affection for France and the French people become closer. An affectionate familiarity between the two countries was further encouraged by the sudden appearance in England of thousands of French people, who, known as the Emigrés, were largely composed of members of the French nobility who had escaped from France on the eve of the great Revolution. Many of them lived in England till after the Battle of Waterloo, and our grandmothers were all taught French, dancing, and the harp by lady Emigrées.

Even the Napoleonic Wars did not really break the links binding France and England. In some ways they may even be said to have strengthened them. Not only were our troops always on the Continent, but Napoleon occasionally made a great sweep of any English travellers he could catch, either in France, or in the countries which he successively conquered. These unfortunate people were what would now be called “interned” in various French towns, where in some cases they were compelled to remain for years. But I am glad to tell you that these forlorn creatures were treated most kindly by their French neighbours, and when they finally came back to England, so fond had they become of France that some of them used to go back there for two or three months of each year.

Gradually, it is difficult to say why, the two countries drifted apart. Indeed it began to seem that the nearer they grew together in a material sense—the less and less time it took to get from London to Paris, for instance—the less all that was best in French art and in French life, appealed to English people.

One thing that perhaps made the English nation distrust the French was France’s constant change of rulers. After France had had a king for a few years she would suddenly change about and have a republic; then would come a king again, another small revolution, and then an emperor! It was during the reign of an emperor, Napoleon III, that Paris became for the first time the playground of Europe, the place where foreigners went rather to amuse themselves in stupid ways, instead of to see beautiful things and to meet agreeable and interesting people.

Then, quite suddenly, there came a terrible day, just forty-four years ago, when the playground of Europe became a battle-ground, and when, with surprise and horror, England saw that the French, busily engaged in amusing themselves and other people, had entirely neglected to get ready for the awful thing, War, which had suddenly come upon them. As a result of this neglect, Germany, for the first time in their joint history, conquered France.

So easily, so surprisingly quickly, was this conquest achieved, that it made the Germans get what is vulgarly called “swelled head.” It also undoubtedly led to their confident belief that everything must go well with them in the present war. But France, as Germany now knows to her bitter cost, had learned her lesson. Without spending nearly so much time and thought on war, and the terrible engines of war, as Germany had done for forty years, she yet prepared quietly and soberly for the big conflict which, unlike England, she felt quite sure must be coming on Europe, if only because of the extraordinary preparations which she noticed her bullying neighbour was continually making.