At the outbreak of the war, M. Thomas, torn from peaceful Socialistic propaganda in L'Humanité, where he supported M. Jean Jaurès in his opposition to Three-Years, went to the Front as a lieutenant of reserve. After a few weeks in the trenches, he joined his General's Staff and then was summoned to Bordeaux, whither the Government had retired from threatened Paris. "Will you organise Munitions?" he was asked. The battle of the Marne had revealed not only their primordial necessity, but the grievous shortage of France, and it was said that had she been better provided, the Germans would have had no chance of re-establishing themselves on the line of the Aisne. So M. Thomas, faced with the crude need of the hour, undertook the post and flung himself into it with his accustomed energy. His acquaintance with steel, both in the works he had studied and the railway he had controlled, fortified his resolution to undertake the responsibility. Day and night he passed rapidly, from point to point, in his motor-car, organising munition work and exhorting and advising the engineers of the country engaged in it, until, gradually, the production was screwed up to a point where, with the shells made in England, it equalled the output of the German factories. Here was a strange destiny for a man whose reading and reflection had induced him to believe that the tide of humanity was set towards universal brotherhood. Looking as little like a professor of war as could be possibly imagined—a little plethoric, a little heavy in face and figure, and glancing out upon the world through kindly spectacles—this new embodiment of Mars accepted his position with a frank and systematised zeal that led directly to success. In a short time, the tree brought forth prodigious fruit. He worked ceaselessly, turning Sundays into days of labour; his only relaxation from exhausting office was to undertake further journeys of inspection.
There was advantage in the fact that he was a man of wide general views and not an expert. Had he been a gunner, he would have thought exclusively of the pointing of his piece; as an engineer he would have reflected on the life-history of the gun from its early inception to its appearance as a finished article of destruction. But being the intelligent amateur, he was able, like an airman, to soar over intercepted space, and think of the problem in its wider aspects: how to obtain the ore and transport it from the other ends of the earth; how to procure the quickest output from the arsenals; how to adjust factory labour to the new law against the shirker; how to provide a sufficiency of food for the monsters he was evolving; how to cultivate the scientific terrain of the war; and finally, how he could deliver his deadly wares into the hands of those who would use them against the enemy. There were a hundred different problems arising out of the great military post which the war had given him, and he managed them all with the ease and optimism that belong to rapid assimilation combined with poise, with sang-froid, and decision of character. All these virtues contributed to the success of M. Thomas. He was rewarded by official appointment to the post of Under Secretary of State for Munitions, specially created for him by M. Millerand, the then Minister of War. The honour was unique in the history of the Third Republic, which does not always advantage those who serve it best.
All the departments connected with guns had to be concentrated at the Ministry of Munitions in the Champs Elysées. At the outbreak of war the building was a cosmopolitan hotel on the verge of opening; the Government, needing quarters for its new department of State, acquired it, and there amidst Louis XVI chairs and Empire cabinets were installed M. Thomas and his coadjutors. The Socialist pacifist had become the Grand Armourer of France, the licensed provider of artillery, in a house of luxury built for the wealthy classes.... In his chain of duties, however, was a broken link. He was not given charge of the powder, though it was essential to his full usefulness; and officials in that department corresponded directly with the Minister of War. But Galliéni, when he came to the Rue St. Dominique, saw the faults of the system and immediately invested his titular subordinate with the necessary powers. It was at this moment, when work was piling high upon his willing shoulders, that M. Thomas gave M. Claveille authority over the construction of the guns. And the railway manager's experience proved invaluable in his new post.
France had every reason to be proud of her organisation of Munitions, and for the spirit which the crisis prompted amongst her functionaries and workers. As a University man of distinction, M. Thomas placed his faith in higher education and was surrounded by men who had achieved distinction in science and letters. A Sorbonne professor of Romance languages, M. Roques, acted as his chief secretary; and a scholar of European reputation occupied unremunerated leisure in conducting the correspondence of the Department. Thus the Ministry provided another example of public spirit in France and of Gallic accessibility to new ideas.
Quite apart from the attitude of labour, admirably attuned to the circumstances, there arose the material difficulty of finding men. The Loi Dalbiez was rigorous in its application, and there was a dearth of young and vigorous men, both skilled and unskilled, in the factories. I have spoken of some of the methods adopted by M. Thomas to meet the case: now he went to the colonies and employed Arabs and Kabyles, Annamites, and other friendly nationals from France overseas. This exotic labour worked harmoniously with the dominant race. Wages were on a far less generous scale than in England, and no worker, however skilled, obtained £8 a week or even half that amount. Such prices were unthought of. The common wage for unskilled labour was five francs for a ten-hour day for men and women. Where the operations were perfectly simple and required only adroitness, the wages for female labour were sometimes only 3 frs. a day. Even the trained mechanic earned no more than 15 frs., the highest price being generally 13 frs. 50. Thus, you see, there was a vast difference between the English and the French positions, and it is clear that the cost to the country of shell production was infinitely less in France, even at a moment when the output was infinitely greater. There were no lady workers in the factories—"heureusement non"—said the official, with an expressive shrug, when I asked the question, and the whole scheme of production was worked on carefully considered, economical, and patriotic lines. Certainly, the worker made very little profit out of his labour, and the intensity of it in France, as in England, put a considerable strain upon his health.
A veritable scientific mobilisation was necessary in the Champs Elysées. Highly trained brains were needed for the delicate calculations essential to the manufacture of explosives and to the creation of new types of guns. It meant the installation of eminent specialists at the Ministry and the carrying out of elaborate experiments in laboratories and open-air trial grounds. The syndicates, I repeat, made no difficulty for the Minister by adherence to rules framed for peace; but, of course, the power of these bodies in France over their fellow-workers is less pronounced than across the Straits. But, though it has its stringent rules, it raised no finger of protest against the speeding-up of production, the continuous shifts, the employment of women and children and of coloured labour. The difficulty that existed was entirely due to the fear of creating any suspicion of favouritism amongst those who were fighting the country's battles by any arbitrary selection of men for employment in the factories. None the less, the munitions worker had to be recruited on a large scale, for the consumption of shot and shell exceeded all belief and emphasised the fantastic character of the conflict.
No doubt the physical existence of the Channel was answerable for the difference in attitude of French and English labour. It was difficult for our workers to visualise the situation in France with its invaded departments, its devastated villages, its ruined industries, its strangulated commerce and those other disabilities which weigh upon a nation that has suffered defilement from the foe. But the French soon came to see that the loyalty of the British working man was not in question because of his reluctance to accept a system which, however, both Abraham Lincoln and Cromwell found necessary in the raising of armed forces for the carrying out of national purposes. And yet neither could be accused of being indifferent to the claims of democracy.
CHAPTER IX
FRENCH DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP
A certain number of political students had come to the discouraging conclusion that discipline could not exist side by side with a pure democracy. The two things, they said, were incompatible. Trade Union leaders in England were for a long time apparently under the same illusion. Joffre, whom I have tried to show as the perfect democrat, will not accept any such view. In a frank and engaging mood of communicability, he explained to an American writer, Mr. Owen Johnson, who visited him at Headquarters, that democracy was by no means the uneasy bedfellow of discipline; the two could exist in the most perfect harmony. "Where a nation is truly Republican, I do not think there is any danger to the spirit of democracy in military preparation," said Joffre, in reply to the suggestions that the existence of a large army was a constant incitement to war, and opposed, therefore, to those pacific principles upon which a modern republic must be founded. Military discipline does not undermine democracy: that is his argument. "In a republic where the need of individual liberty is always strong, military service gives the citizen a quality of self-discipline which he needs, perhaps, to respect the rights of others, as well as to act in organised bodies." And then he added that if America—and the remark applies, of course, to England—dreaded military service, it was because the citizen had his eyes fixed on the German ideal rather than on the French. The distinction between the French Army and the German was a difference in the conception of the rôle of the soldier. The German system made a man into a machine. It was based on fear, and robbed him of his initiative. It explained the attack in close formation, the stupendous throwing away of life, and an officer class, a veritable Brahmin caste, that did not transmit orders directly, but through sergeants and corporals. The French spirit, on the other hand, implied fraternity. The officer was interested in the welfare of his men and regarded them as his children. Nothing was indifferent to him which affected them morally or materially. The German system was the revolver at the head, the French the word of encouragement, the smile, the bonne camaraderie.