The man whom I have summarily sketched was invested by Joffre with the dignity of his Chief-of-Staff and the title of Major-General. The life-long friend became the chief aid in his deliberations, and the virtual leader on the Western Front, leaving to the highest in command the larger issues of a world-wide campaign. Even in Republican France there is thus place for the croyant and the aristocrat, as the names of Delangle de Gary, de Maud'huy, and D'Urbal show.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ORGANISATION OF MUNITIONS
One of the many surprises of the war was the vast place given to munitions. Not even the most careful calculator had foreseen the enormous consumption of war matériel that would result from a long continuance of trench warfare. The Germans had reckoned on an expenditure of 35,000 shells a day, and the French on about half that; the actual consumption was often 100,000 shells on each side.
Both French and German had based their figures on a rapid war, and, had the invaders' plans been realised, Paris would have been occupied and the French opposition paralysed in a fortnight. But this was reckoning without Joffre, without England, and without "General Chance," one of the most important factors in any war. Ammunition, by reason of its vast rôle, became as engrossing and as vitally important as the actual fighting. For it soon became apparent that in this war of matériel he would win who could most quickly assemble the largest quantity of guns and shot and shell. The Germans began with an immense advantage, for they had accumulated secretly a mass of machine-guns estimated at 50,000, leaving the Allies hopelessly in the rear in this respect. But even their perverse intelligence did not fully grasp the logical outcome of their own preparations, or foresee that, their first plan having failed, they would be caught inevitably in their own toils.
To the eternal credit of the French, they realised with great rapidity the character of the war, and set themselves with methodical speed to adapt themselves to its unexpected features. Factories sprang up all over the country, some created out of boards and bricks; others existing, but "controlled" in the English sense, with Army officers assisting the civilian directors; and a vast business of production was ordered and marshalled as if the French had never done anything else in their lives. At one bound, they developed into a manufacturing nation, though the term would have been refused them, in the long yesterday of the war, by England, the United States, and Germany. Their faculty for seeing clearly and acting quickly, so apparent in their history, again came to their aid. It was their distinguishing mark during the Great Revolution. Having seized the essentials of the problem, they acted upon their insight with startling rapidity and resolution. Of course they committed excesses of a dreadful kind, but their excuse was the gigantic character of the evil which they sought to remedy. Much the same spirit of swift determination, happily without its fearful manifestations, came upon the French people, and with all the old Republican ardour they set themselves, with a sort of grim alacrity, to face the crisis. The old stern common sense, which has always lain at the bottom of apparent volatility, again came to their rescue; and in no way did the French show a greater grasp of the situation than in their handling of munitions.
It had been supposed that they were wanting in order and method, and that their dramatic achievements were due to the impulse of the moment. But, even if this were ever wholly true, it was certainly not true of the second great struggle with Germany. The magnificent effort of France was the outcome, not of improvisation, but of the will to conquer and to adopt the proper means to secure that end. Nor was a Press campaign necessary, as in England, to bring home to the people the peculiar importance of war-work in the factories. It is true that M. Albert Thomas, who took charge of Munitions in the circumstances which I shall describe, made speeches to factory workers in his visits of inspection, but it was never necessary to wrestle with labour and cause it to abrogate its proud pretensions, months after the war had broken out. Conscription would have settled that question even if a vivid sense of realities had not rendered unnecessary any exhortation from Ministerial lips. The vital character of the war had penetrated to every intelligence; it had not stopped half-way through the social strata, as appeared to be the case in England. And the disposition of the working man in England towards conscription was only intelligible on the assumption that he did not understand. In France, the war was too deadly real, too close at hand for any to affect an attitude of light-hearted detachment.
The fact that men in the factories like those on the railways, were mobilised, simplified matters a great deal. A man could not desist from his labour on the pretext of claiming higher pay without running the risk of being treated as a deserter—a thing unthinkable in time of war. His duty, then was the soldier's—to remain where he was until relieved by order. "We have had no strike since the war began." How well I recall the pride with which those words were uttered by a functionary at the Ministry of Munitions. If it spoke well for the patriotism of the working-class, it spoke equally well for conscription as a scientific basis for waging war. For it had cast its net over the whole nation, and by its means the munitions worker took his place in the factory as did the combatant in the trench. But there were certain complications which arose, none the less, in practice. If there was no disturbance of the labour market to exercise the conciliatory powers of the Minister, production did not yet reach its maximum until long after the war had broken out. This was due to the unexampled demand made on munitions and to the logical completeness of conscription. It required many months to adjust a plan whereby the skilled worker was placed in his rightful position in the factory, whilst those who had wrongly usurped his name and functions were sent to the trenches. The most unlikely people had described themselves as mechanics; and one found lawyers, sculptors, school-teachers, painters, writers and a host of semi-professional people masquerading as munition-workers. On the other hand, numbers of highly trained specialists, some distinguished chemists and engineers, had to be extricated from the trenches to take up their natural positions in the factories, in the interests of national defence. This chassé-croissé, inevitable in such a country as France, where Government must be based upon equality, took some time to effect. Indeed, the chief duty of the publicist during the second year of the war seemed to be to urge an equitable and intelligent application of the Dalbiez law, which was aimed expressly at the shirker.
Nor did private patronage and political "pull" wholly disappear, even in the stringent atmosphere of a national crisis. This was, perhaps, to expect too much of human nature. And so the Minister of Munitions constantly received recommendations for factory employment from persons whose intervention it was hard to resist. On the one hand, the Minister was asked by important deputies to bring back this or that worker from the Front; on the other, he was warned by groups of Republican zealots of the danger to democracy of showing partiality and conniving at the existence of the shirker. In a laudable effort to strike the happy medium, M. Thomas decided to receive no more nominations to the factory, and decreed that only the indispensable man was to be kept in the rear. Even the good workman, if of military age, must become a combatant; his place in the factory would be taken by an older man. But there remained, naturally, a certain rivalry between the trench and the workshop, not unconnected with the fact that assiduous munition-workers also received their Croix de Guerre—a decoration that, assuredly, should have been reserved for deeds of gallantry on the battle-field. But these various difficulties, which M. Thomas settled with habitual celerity and savoir faire, were, after all, only questions of detail, and in no way affected the broad principle of conscription or the working of the new Act against the embusqués. There was no quarrel with compulsion, for each worker recognised the right of the nation to ask him to suspend his individual rights at such a moment. "We are at war; the vital interests of the country are at stake." This was a sufficient argument. And so all energies were directed to increasing the output. In connection with the establishment of factories, the "white coal" or water-falls of the mountains were harnessed to the work, and engineer shops were set up under the falls themselves to employ the power directly. Inventors were given carte blanche to work out their ideas and valuable improvements resulted in the opportunity given to scientific brains to simplify processes, and thus effect economies in manufacture. For the first time France had begun to explore and develop her own scientific estate, which she had left, hitherto, largely to the Germans. For, if the latter were foremost in chemistry, they had learned not a little from the researches of Berthelot and Pasteur. The great bacteriologist's study of ferments contributed sensibly to the growth of the German brewing industry. Under the direction of scientific soldiers and officials, production rose to immense heights, and it soon reached more than 100,000 shells a day, at a time when, according to Mr. Lloyd George, the English output was scarcely more than 15,000 a day. M. Charles Humbert, Senator for the Meuse and editor of the Journal, preached in his columns the need of more guns and shells, and his gospel was enforced by other writers; but the root argument laid in the comprehension of the people themselves and in their instinctive realisation of what there was to be done and how to do it. Latin brains and Latin culture triumphed in an absolutely new field.
The genius of Munitions was M. Albert Thomas, who sprang into prominence from the unlikely beginnings of a schoolmaster and parliamentarian with Socialistic leanings. His assets were youth and vigour and a large stock of learning. He had graduated from the "Higher Normal School," the training ground for secondary teachers, with an agrégation in history—equivalent to a Fellowship Examination in England—and then became tutor to a grandson of Victor Hugo. In the family were steelworks situated in the Loire, and the tutor's active mind became interested in the fascinating processes which turned the unwrought metal into shining implements of labour. This knowledge, strengthened by many visits, stood him in good stead when he became a deputy, and thereafter Reporter to the State Railways Committee. His constituency was Sceaux, on the outskirts of the capital, and therein was his native commune, Champigny, where he was born of humble shopkeepers and continued to reside. In the Chamber his connection with the railways brought him into contact with M. Claveille, then coming into fame as administrator of the Ouest-Etat line. M. Thomas must be impressed by the catenation of events, for, on arriving at the Ministry of Munitions, he bethought him of the railway manager and installed him first as his master of contracts and, then, at the head of manufacture. So that the guns began to arrive at their appointed place with the same punctuality with which the trains on the State Railway, under the reforming zeal of M. Claveille, began to steam into the Gare St. Lazare.