Provision was made for the using up or removal of all possible stores; for the destruction of the remainder; for the destruction of all railroads, water-ways, signalling systems, factories, etc. Where British and French troops were operating together in a fighting zone, their respective responsibilities were delimited. Arrangements were also made, in case of withdrawal, to clear from certain water-ways all canal craft which might serve the enemy as bridge material over inundations.
Certainly it was not "gay," as the French say, this preparation for destroying the property of an Ally. But we took comfort from the fact that after all the position was better than in 1914. Then a German victory seemed possible. Now in 1918 the only question was what sacrifices we should yet have to make before achieving victory. In 1914, after 50 years of intensive preparation, the German had rushed upon an unsuspecting Europe. He neglected nothing in preparing for victory. He threw overboard every scruple in order to secure a rapid triumph, violating the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg merely because by so doing he gained a better field of deployment. His objective was Paris, and, according to authoritative accounts, his plan on reaching Paris was to divide it up into twelve quarters and burn down a quarter every day that the French Army delayed to surrender. The terms of surrender were to include the giving up of the French Fleet and the French ports for use in an invasion of England.
The danger at that time was very real. Germany was the only country adequately armed and organised. The British people had had to sacrifice in great measure the Regular Army to stay the first German onset. France was strained to a point which to any other country would have meant exhaustion. We could recall the preparations that had to be made to meet the imminent fear of an invasion of the British coast; the desperate shifts and expedients which had to be adopted in the first stages of the organisation of the New Armies; the peremptory demands for guns and shells when there were no factories to make either in anything like the quantity demanded. That was a time when it needed the highest of moral courage to remain calm and confident.
The Spring of 1918 is not a pleasant thing to think about; but it is hardly endurable, even now in safe retrospection, to think on the position of Great Britain at home or in the field from October, 1914, to September, 1915. It was that of an unsuspecting man before whose feet suddenly a pit of destruction opens. He falls scrambling, struggling down, and at last reaches a little ledge which gives a momentary safety. But it is still a desperate task merely to hang on. Far up, remote almost as a star, shines safety. Below are his friends of civilised Europe, all worse situated than himself, some at the point of complete destruction. From above a fierce storm of missiles rains on his head. From below come piteous appeals for help. To hold on to his little ledge, to help the friends below, to climb up and throttle the foe above—he has all these to do and little time to think before he acts. Hardly endurable, yet necessary to think over, so that the greatness of the danger into which the world was plunged by German militarism can be gauged.
In 1914 an occupation of the French Channel Ports with England almost entirely unarmed might have been a very serious thing. The serious view taken of it in Great Britain can be judged from the preparations which were made to devastate a great area in the South and East of England so as to give to the Germans only a desert as a foothold. In 1918 if the Germans had got Pas de Calais they would not have got any ports with it, and an invading force arriving in England would have met a force at least equal to it in equipment and war experience.
So we waited in some confidence for another Marne to follow another Mons, and smiled a little grimly at the change of tone in Germany. The Kaiser, cock-a-whoop again, was declaring now for a "strong German Peace." In one office, side by side with the "situation map" which showed from day to day the depth of the German advance, there were stuck up in derision extracts from the most vituperative of the German press. Here is one from the Deutsche Zeitung:
"Away with all petty whining over an agreement and reconciliation with the fetish of peace.... Away with the miserable whimpering of those people who even now would prevent the righteous German hatred of England and sound German vengeance. The cry of victory and retaliation rages throughout Germany with renewed passion."
This from Germania:
"There can be no lasting peace and no long period of quiet in the world until the presumptuous notion that the Anglo-Saxons are the chosen people is victorious or defeated. We are determined to force with the sword the peace which our adversaries did not see fit to confide to our honest word. We Germans are an incomparably strong nation."