The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-Time - Frederic William Wile

In the past England's volunteer army had been maintained by a recruiting system which produced, on the average, about thirty-five thousand new men a year. They did not come easily, even in halcyon peace times, and the gaily-caparisoned recruiting-sergeant in Trafalgar Square, who would buttonhole a hundred likely "Tommies" in a day, earned well his fee if he succeeded in inducing ten of them to "take the shilling." It remained to be seen if "the present grave National Emergency" would find dormant in Britain military talent and inclination hitherto undreamt of. In the opening flush of the excitement and enthusiasm which the war engendered, Lord Kitchener's hopes were satisfactorily realized. Recruiting-offices in numerous districts were literally stormed. The response from the middle, "upper-middle" and upper classes was particularly buoyant. Duke, peer, aristocrat, nobleman, "nut," banker, lawyer, doctor, merchant, teacher and clerk came forward splendidly. But artisan, docker and miner lagged. The lower class revealed an inclination to continue to throng the public-houses rather than the recruiting-offices. It seemed evident at the outset that it was not they who were bent on saving England. They gave disquieting indication that their sort of patriotism was primarily individual self-preservation, that for them, love of country began at home. A waking-up process in their unenlightened ranks was destined to come to pass, thanks mainly to "separation allowances" for missus and the kids, but it was never to attain the dimensions of a rousing which extorted from their atrophied intelligence even an approximate appreciation of their obligations or their country's peril. Britain's war is being waged, as it will be won--speaking broadly--by the patriotism and blood of the excoriated upper ten thousand. The struggle had been in progress for more than a year, at a cost of nearly five hundred thousand British casualties, when it was still necessary for Lloyd-George to remind working-class England, in as unqualified language as a politician dare speak to the nation's electoral masters, that it was not doing its full duty.

While Britain at large still hugged the delusion of easy victory, in grotesque underestimation of the enemy's power, and while Kitchener's recruit-finding machinery was being put in vigorous motion, the War Office, in co-operation with the navy, was accomplishing as magnificent a piece of military work as army annals hold--the silent landing of the British Expeditionary Force of one hundred and sixty thousand men, with its full complement of horses, guns and stores, on the shores of France. That feat will live as immortal disproof of the charge popular in the United States that "hustle" is a word which is conspicuously missing from the British lexicon. Compared to it, our "hustle" in landing an army in Cuba in 1898 was the quintessence of procrastination and muddle. The British railways had been taken over by the Government coincident with the arrival of war, an "Executive Committee" consisting of the General Managers of the main companies having been established more than a year previous as an advisory council for such an emergency as had now supervened. Embarkation of the Expeditionary Force commenced on the night of August 7th. Admiral Jellicoe, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet, assured Lord Kitchener that the channel passage was as safe as the Thames itself. The British public, receiving its first lesson in relentless censorship of war news, was kept so effectually in the dark as to the dispatch of the largest army which ever left English shores that it knew nothing whatever of it till the host was at its destination, with breasts bared to the foe. The landing of Sir John French's legions on the soil of France was accomplished, complete in every detail, by August 17th.

British railways, when the record of that marvel of transportation is compiled, will share the honors with the ironclads of Britain's navy and the liners of her mercantile marine. Southampton being the main port of departure, the performance of the London and Southwestern Railway, which has carried so many thousand Americans in pacific days from Waterloo Station to the ship's side, is a case in point. I heard Sir H. A. Walker, the "Southwestern's" general manager make before the American Luncheon Club in London the first announcement of the railways' part in England's military mobilization. With his subsequent permission, I was privileged to give the British public its first information on that subject. The L. & S. W. had been assigned the task of making ready for dispatch to Southampton within sixty hours three hundred and fifty trains of thirty cars each. It did the trick in forty-five hours. During the first three weeks of war there were dispatched to and unloaded at the ships' sides seventy-three of such trains every fourteen hours. They arrived from the four quarters of the kingdom, and none of them was late. "I come from the land of 'big railway stunts,'" said Henry W. Thornton, the American general manager of the Great Eastern railway when Sir H. A. Walker had told this convincing story of British "hustle." "We think we are 'pulling off' some feat when we handle G.A.R. encampments and national conventions, but what British railways accomplished in the ten days between August 7 and 17 last may fairly be claimed as a unique record in railway history." What Mr. Thornton modestly failed to add was that he himself, as a colleague presently bore testimony, had played a conspicuous rôle in the drama of British military mobilization. Certain inanimate things, almost as well known to Americans as Mr. Thornton, played big parts, too. The palatial Mauretania, with her suites de-luxe battered into cargo-room for Tommy Atkins, and her big new sister, Aquitania, with only a maiden crossing or two to her credit, similarly knocked to pieces, made incessant trips back and forth between Southampton and other channel ports to Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk, landing in France on each occasion no less than five thousand British fighting-men, ready for death and glory.

Each mother's son of them carried with him this little personal message from Lord Kitchener:

"You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French comrades against the invasion of a common enemy. You have to perform a task which will need your courage, your energy, your patience.

"Remember that the honour of the British army depends on your individual conduct. It will be your duty, not only to set an example of discipline and perfect steadiness under fire, but also to maintain the most friendly relations with those whom you are helping in this struggle. The operations in which you are engaged will, for the most part, take place in a friendly country, and you can do your own country no better service than in showing yourself in France and Belgium in the true character of a British soldier.

"Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind. Never do anything likely to injure or destroy property, and always look upon looting as a disgraceful act. You are sure to meet with a welcome, and to be trusted; your conduct must justify that welcome and that trust. Your duty can not be done unless your health is sound. So keep constantly on your guard against any excesses. In this new experience you may find temptations in wine and women. You must entirely resist both temptations, and, while treating all women with perfect courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.

"Do your duty bravely.
"Fear God.
"Honour the King.
"KITCHENER, Field-Marshal."

I remained in England only a week after my arrival from Germany. Part of the time had been pleasantly spent editing a special "American edition" of The Times for Lord Northcliffe, who placed the full machinery of his journalistic organization at the disposal of the "Yankee War Refugees." He was only prevented from extending them the hospitality of Sutton Place, his lovely estate in Surrey, now a hospital, for a "week-end" outing by the inability of the railways to guarantee the necessary special train facilities. To my astonishment but unalloyed delight Lord Northcliffe "ordered" me to take a month's vacation in the United States. He thought my family and kinsmen would like to have a look at an "English spy," fresh from Germany, before the earmarks of his nefarious trade had entirely evaporated, and so, having obtained the last bunk left on that veteran Cunard hulk, S.S. Campania, which had brought my wife and me to Europe on our honeymoon voyage, I sailed away from Liverpool on Saturday, August 15th, along with twelve hundred or fifteen hundred other sardines packed in an eighteen-knot steel box.