Everyone wanted to know the reason why. The position was then at its very worst, so the humourist who surmised that it was "waiting for the wine orders of the —— Mess," for once found his jape fall flat. The truth was for a long time known only to a select few. That motor lorry was told off to carry away the maps and important papers from Montreuil to the coast, since the evacuation of the town and of all France north of the Somme was possible at an hour's notice.
So critical was the position for some days that that motor lorry was never off duty night or day.
But G.H.Q. went about its work unperturbed to all outward seeming, and there was not a whisper of losing the war, not even from those who knew what would be the full consequences of evacuating Pas de Calais. One officer—he would not like his name to be published even now—spoke with the most frank recognition of facts and yet with a robust confidence that was distinctly comforting:
"If we go behind the Somme it will give the Germans the Coast from the Canche right up to the Scheldt for their submarines. That is the most serious factor. We won't leave them much in the way of harbour works, of course; but still they will be able in a year or two to restore things a bit."
"In a year or two? But will it last...?"
"Oh yes, you can give the war another ten years at least in that event. For there won't be any American Army to speak of; no port to land them or supply them from. Our British Army will have to come down in strength for the same reason. You can't keep a bigger army anywhere than you can keep supplied with food and shells. Look at the ports and the railways. There will be Havre, Brest, Cherbourg, Bordeaux as ports of supply and the railways from them as the channels of supply to the front line. No good talking of millions of Americans pouring in. They can't pour. Funnel's too narrow."
But there wasn't in that officer's mind a hint of the possibility of failure.
"It's only a question of organising to get at them. In time weight must tell. The Germans and their friends are, say, 140,000,000 in population. The allies who are in the war against them have 600,000,000 of population and another 400,000,000 of reserve population if Japan came in fully, and China, and Brazil. I count Russia on neither side, but she is still a liability more than an asset to the Germans. In money and resources the odds against them are even greater. I like to go back to the simple basis of arithmetic sometimes. Of course weight doesn't tell against skill. But now the skill is about even. The Germans had their one and only chance at the beginning, the very beginning, of the war; because they were ready and no one else was. They had to win by Christmas, 1914, or not to win at all."
He went on to sketch vividly the story of the war up to that date, the very nadir of our depression. He argued that the enemy had obviously committed some tremendous blunders. The Prussian military leaders had been very clever in securing spectacular victories (generally after a preliminary corruption of some weak section of their opponents) and thus the military position was not easy to see in its true proportion. But even a surface consideration must show that whilst Germany was always announcing victories, she was never really within sight of victory.