A scrap of paper

by Emile Joseph Dillon

And coming to particulars, the public men of the Military Powers derided the army and the navy. They revelled in accounts of the long sequence of mishaps that befell French warships a couple of years ago. They savoured the stories of the powder that was not only smokeless, but fireless, when it was needed for the guns, and which exploded quickly enough to hurl ships and crews into destruction. Yet the most patriotic statesman of the Republic, M. Delcassé, was then presiding over the destinies of the Republic’s sea forces. And as for the army, who, it was asked, has forgotten the exodus of its best generals and officers on account of the treatment to which their views on religion subjected them? Here in Germany we have Catholic generals and officers fighting side by side with Protestants and Atheists, because one and all we are and feel ourselves Germans. It is possible that our Government or our Kaiser may impose a Professor on a University because he is an Orthodox Lutheran or a good Catholic, as was the case when the Kaiser sent Professor Spahn to a University chair in order to conciliate the Centre. But is it conceivable that any man, however influential or favoured, should receive a command in the German army or navy on other grounds than his strictly technical qualifications? Of course not. If we possessed a really good strategist, he would make his way to the top even if he were an incarnate demon. We have no political appointments in either of our services. There the maxim is supreme that the career is open to talents. For over forty years we have concentrated all our energies, diplomatic, financial, scientific, technical, upon the creation of two formidable weapons of defence and aggression, and have subordinated every other consideration to that end. What other people in Europe has done this, nay, attempted it? And we now possess that weapon. There is not the slightest doubt that if the Republic were foolish enough to venture all it has and is on the issue of a war with Germany, it would not stop at this blunder. It would go further, and select for its army leaders men who are good radicals or republicans, and who never go to mass, rather than able military men who can handle millions of soldiers and make their mark in strategy.

“You must surely have read the disclosures about the plight of the French army recently made by Senator Humbert,” politicians remarked to me. “They reveal a condition of affairs which renders France, as we say in German, ‘harmless.’ It would be a mistake, therefore, to take the Republic too seriously. Such fighting power as is left in her is but a pithless simulacrum of what once was hers. You doubt the accuracy of the Senator’s allegations? But they are of a piece with everything else we saw and heard and knew of France long before M. Humbert rose to complain of the mess his friends and colleagues had made of the national defences. But if you want a more direct proof, read the corroborating testimony of the present War Minister, M. Messimy. That personage must surely know. He took stock of his department before uttering his opinion. And he endorsed the judgment of the Senator. No. France among virile nations is what Maxim Gorky’s ‘beings that once were men’ are among the social classes. She is to be included among the submerged. And that is why your Government will shake her off if she is drawn into war for Russia’s sake. You cannot save a nation against itself. And France is dying gradually of self-inflicted wounds.

“One of the most valuable assets of a nation which has to hold its possessions by force of arms is the ease and rapidity with which it can get its fighting men and material together and throw them into the enemy’s country. Well, no country can approach Germany or even Austria in this respect. Our system of mobilization goes with unparalleled smoothness and velocity. To use a slang phrase, which is not without picturesqueness, it works with the swiftness and sureness of greased lightning. Now of all countries in Europe, Russia herself not excepted, the French are the most backward in this respect. Forty-four years’ peace have not provided them with leisure enough to make perceptible progress in this elementary operation of war.”

To my query on what grounds this amazing statement could be advanced and supported, I was treated to a sort of lecture on the subject which was then applied to the French railway system in the following ingenious way:

What mobilization is to a campaign, the railway system of a country is to mobilization. Almost everything depends upon the smooth and rapid running of the trains from all parts of the country to the base, and from there to the front or fronts. Order and rapidity are essential to success. And in the railway system of the Republic you look for these qualities in vain. To you who have travelled much in France the truth of this statement should be self-evident. Everybody who has used the German and French railways has had the contrast between them borne in upon him unpleasantly. Once off the principal lines in France, you find yourself in a railway sphere a quarter of a century behind the times. Examine the rolling stock, inspect the carriages, watch the railway officials at their work, compare the time-tables with the actual hours of the trains’ departure and arrival, and you will then be able to form some notion of the disadvantage under which the French armies would begin a campaign against this country. They would resemble the warrior who, having set out for the field of battle, had to go home for the weapons which he had forgotten.

Military transport in war-time is a much more formidable enterprise than the conveyance, say, of agricultural produce in peace. In fact, there is no comparison between them. But if the easier of the two problems makes impossible demands on the railway system, one is warranted in concluding that the more difficult one will prove wholly beyond its capacities. Well, that demonstration has already been made in the eyes of the world.

The test case occurred in the autumn of the year 1911, and we watched it closely.[8] In Austria-Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy the fruit-crops had failed, and the demand for fruit in those countries was unprecedented. Most of their supplies had to be drawn from France. On the French railways, therefore, an unusually heavy strain was put, very much less, of course, than one would look for during a general mobilization, but still a telling strain. One difference, however, there was between the two emergencies: the export of French fruit in abnormal quantities had been anticipated and prepared for in advance, whereas the need for mobilization might make itself felt unawares and without any margin of time for preparative measures. Well, the French railway administration provided for the exportation of these enormous quantities of fruit no less than 15,000 wagons. The average distance over which this produce had to be conveyed was in round numbers six hundred miles.

Some of the trains accomplished the journey much quicker than others. But the swiftest of them all took twelve or thirteen days. And these expeditious ones were few. The next in order required three weeks—three whole weeks for a journey of 600 miles in peace time, and despite a long notification and elaborate preparations. But some of the trains were four, five, and even six weeks on the way. One hundred miles a week for perishable fruit, which rotted at the stations and sidings! Now, over against this speed-rate of thirty miles a day in normal times, you have to set the speed of the German and Austrian military train in war-time. It is thirty miles an hour. And the German goods trains running to the western borders of the Empire go from six to eight and a half times more quickly than the French.

With the reasons for this astounding backwardness we are not, they went on to say, concerned. That is the business of the Republic, not ours. Speaking summarily, one might fairly ascribe it to the lack of sufficient numbers of side stations, soundly laid rails, of engines and rolling stock, and last, but nowise least, to the Republican system of railway administration. In this branch of the public service, as in the army and the navy, what is most peremptorily required is authority, and that in France is lacking. Everybody wants to command, nobody cares to obey. Not only an army, but also a railway administration should be organized on the lines of an absolute monarchy—of a despotic State, if you like—one man’s will and its manifestations, direct and indirect, being law, and from that law there should be no facile appeal. Unless this condition is realized, you cannot reasonably expect to get from the railway mechanism all the advantages which the general staff should be able to count on securing from it in war-time. This is especially true in France, where personal jealousy or disfavour so often disqualifies talent and pitchforks mediocrity into the high places of responsibility and trust. In short, France is politically moribund. From her we have nothing to fear. She will certainly not go to war to shield Servia from well-deserved punishment. And that is precisely the present issue.

On two occasions since then these strictures and the German anticipations which were built upon them came back to my mind with painful vividness. During the first couple of weeks after the war, I heard the Belgians in Liége, Louvain, Brussels, Alost, Ghent, and Bruges anxiously inquiring, “Where are the French troops that should be here to succour us? When are they coming? It is only a few hours’ railway journey to Paris. Why are they not here? Surely they have had ample time to get to Belgium.” And when I ransacked my brain for a comforting reply, all I found there was the image of the German statesman propounding his view of French railways and the chaotic confusion which would accompany and retard mobilization.