Interesting in a smaller way is the reply given by the French War Minister to a question by a deputy, the Marquis de Ludre, who asked for information about a consignment of knives which had been provided for the army, but were found to be quite useless. The Minister explained that the Generalissimus having requested the immediate dispatch of 165,000 knives, the department charged with the execution of the order had no time to examine the goods, and the circumstance was overlooked that all kinds of knives were supplied, without any reference to the purpose for which they were destined.[140] The Minister added that no one should be blamed for this, inasmuch as it was “the result of exaggerated but praiseworthy zeal.” This construction is charitable and may be true in fact. But the soldiers who, in lieu of a serviceable blade, found themselves in possession of a dessert knife may have taken a different view of the transaction.
This is hardly what is understood by organization.
Beside those scenes from chaos set this picture of order: “In a small French town in which the supreme etape commando of Kluck’s army was situated, we inspected a field postal station. On the ground floor the letters were being received and delivered. The stream of soldiers was endless. They were sending field postcards, which are forwarded gratuitously. The difficult work of sorting the correspondence was being transacted on the first storey. Every day from 1800 to 2000 post sacks arrive, mostly with small packets and postcards, and day after day the same difficult problem presents itself—how to find the addressee. Many regiments, it is true, have permanent quarters, but there are mobile columns as well. Quick transfers are possible, and individuals may be shifted to another place or incorporated in a different regiment. The arranging of the correspondence went forward in a spacious room; the letters which it was difficult to deliver were handed over to a number of specialists, who sat in an adjoining apartment and studied all the changes caused by the transfer of troops. They found help in an address-book containing a list of all the field formations. About once every four days, or even oftener, a new edition of this work was issued. By the middle of December 1914 the eighty-fourth edition was in print.”[141]
This talent for organization, this capacity of thought concentration in circumstances which tend to strengthen emotion at the cost of reason, have been constantly displayed by our enemies throughout the entire struggle of the past thirty years, and never more conspicuously than during the present war. Every emergency found them ready. The most unlikely eventualities had been foreseen and provided for. Private initiative, which “grandmotherly legislation” was supposed to have killed, was more alert and resourceful than among any of the Entente nations. Every German is in some respects an agent of his Government. Each one thinks he foresees some eventuality with the genesis of which he is especially conversant, and he forthwith communicates his forecast and at the same time his plan for coping with the danger to some official. And all suggestions are thankfully received and dealt with on their intrinsic merits. For such matters the rulers of the Empire, however engrossed by urgent problems, have always time and money.
It is instructive and may possibly be helpful to compare this spirit of detachment from the personal and party elements of the situation, this accessibility to every call of patriotic duty, this self-possession under conditions calculated to hinder calm deliberation, with the hesitations, the bewilderment, the conflicting decisions of the Entente leaders and their impatience of unauthorized initiative and offers of private assistance. Outsiders are not wanted. Their money is not rejected, but nothing else that they tender is readily received.
In other more momentous matters the Allies also lagged behind their adversaries. Despite their vast resources and the generous offers of private help, the care taken of the wounded left a good deal to be desired. The articles on this subject which were published in the London Press provided ample food for bitter reflection. In France, at the beginning of the war, wounded soldiers, after receiving first aid, were conveyed for days in carts over uneven roads to the hospitals in which they were to be treated. An American gentleman, witnessing the sufferings of these victims of circumstance, collected a number of motors in which to have them transported rapidly and with relative comfort. But his offer of these conveyances was rejected by all the departments to which he applied. And it was only after he had spent weeks in visiting influential friends in London that he finally obtained an introduction to the Secretary for War, who, overriding the decisions of his subordinates, closed with the proposal and sent the benefactor with his motors to the front.
It has been affirmed by unbiassed neutral witnesses who evinced special interest in the subject that tens of thousands of the allied wounded who died of their injuries might have been saved had they had proper care. But defective organization and other avoidable causes deprived them of efficient medical help.
By Great Britain more comprehensive measures were fitfully taken, of which our wounded have reaped the benefit. A French journal[142] enumerated, with a high tribute of praise, the results of the observations made by a commission of British physicians in the Grand Palais Hospital in Paris: “More than half, to be exact 54 per cent., of the wounded entrusted to the care of the doctors of the Grand Palais since last May have been sent back to the front, completely cured. What an achievement!” Undoubtedly it is a feat to be proud of, if we compare it with the percentage of cured in certain other countries and in the Dardanelles. But if we set it side by side with what is claimed for and by the Germans, it may appear less remarkable. It cannot be gainsaid that the British authorities have spared neither money nor pains to alleviate the sufferings and heal the injuries of the wounded. And if the measure of their success is still capable of being extended, the reason certainly does not lie in any lack of good will.
On the incapacitated German soldier every possible care is bestowed. His every need is foreseen and when possible provided for with an eye to thoroughness and economy. Waste and niggardliness are sedulously eschewed. Every man is provided with a square of canvas with eyelets, which serves as a carpet on which he lies at night, as a stretcher on which, when wounded, he is carried to the place where he can have his injuries attended to, and which, when he is killed, is used as a winding-sheet. The medical organization of the army is as thorough as the military. And the results attained justify the solicitude displayed. From month to month the percentage of wounded who are able to return to the front has been augmenting steadily, and the death-rate has decreased correspondingly. During the first month of the war, out of every hundred wounded there were 84·8 capable of further service, 3·0 dead, and 12·2 incapacitated or sent home. In September of the same year the number of those able to return to the front rose to 88·1, or about 4 per cent. more. And at the same time the death-rate sank from 3 to 2·7 per cent. In the third month the proportion of soldiers able to resume their places in the ranks of fighters was 88·9, while the deaths had been reduced to 2·4. During the period beginning with November and ending in March the number of the wounded who went back to the front oscillated between 87·3 and 88·9. In November the percentage of deaths was only 2·1 per cent., and in December only 1·7 per cent. January 1916 showed a further improvement, the death-rate having fallen to 1·4 and in February 1·3 per cent. During the two following months the percentage rose again to 1·4, but declined slowly until in June and July it had descended to 1·2 per cent. The number of wounded men who were sent back to their places at the front had meanwhile increased by April to 91·2, and by June 1915 to 91·7, and in May and July to 91·8. Seven per cent. were wholly incapacitated or dismissed to their homes. Among the latter a considerable percentage returned subsequently to the ranks. Altogether, then, about 91·8 per cent. of the wounded German soldiers who fall in battle are so well taken care of that they are able to fight again, and no more than 1·2 per cent. of the total number succumb to their wounds.[143]
This strict conformity to the material and psychological conditions of success marks the method by which the Germans proceed to realize a grandiose plan which is understood and furthered by one and all. Their talent for organization, their insight, their inventiveness, and their highly developed social sense are all pressed into the service of this patriotic cause. And it is to these permanent qualities, more even than to their thirty years’ military and economic preparation, that they owe their many successes. The cynicism and ruthlessness of our arch-enemy should not be allowed to blind us to his enterprise, his stoicism, his meticulous applications of the law of cause and effect. These are among his most valuable assets, and unless we have solid advantages of our own to set against and outweigh them, our appeals to the justice of our cause and our denunciations of his wicked designs will avail us nothing. It is to our interest to seek out and note whatever strength is inherent in himself or his methods and to appropriate that. The struggle will ultimately be decided by the superiority of equipment, material and moral, which one side possesses over the other. As for the conceptions of public law and international right which the antagonists severally stand for, they must be gauged by quite other standards than heavy guns and asphyxiating gases. It is not impossible that in the course of time, and by dint of reciprocal action and reaction, the German views may be sufficiently modified and moralized to render possible the usual process of assimilation with which the history of speculative ideas and social movements has rendered us familiar. Meanwhile, truth compels us to admit that part at least of the western system is being overtaken by decay, and stands in need of speedy and thorough renovation.