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

by Frederic William Wile

"The average daily number of men employed was 10,349, and the average number of men out on each day of the week was: Monday, first quarter, 2,135, and the whole day, 1,156; Tuesday, 1,421 and 1,030; Wednesday, 1,439 and 1,231; Thursday, 1,764 and 1,126; Friday, 1,492 and 984; and Saturday, 1,057 and 1,015. The average number out per day for the whole period was 1,552 who lost a quarter, and 1,090 losing the whole day. In other words, fifteen per cent. lost a quarter, and about ten and one-half per cent. did not go into work at all on every day of the whole twenty weeks. The loss of working hours on ordinary working days was a million and a half, and represented a full week's work for nearly thirty thousand men; or, alternatively, the time lost practically represented a complete shutting down of the whole establishment for three working weeks. Neither the men themselves nor their societies could plead ignorance of what was going on. Frequent appeals had been made to representative deputations of the men in the works by the managing director of the company, also to the local representatives of the men's unions, pointing out this most discreditable state of affairs. Seeing that the men had proved deaf to all persuasion, and had shown no improvement in response to appeals either from Ministers of the Crown, their own trade unions, or their employers, the only course was to prosecute them before that tribunal."

The announcement of the sentences on the shirkers caused an outbreak of dissatisfaction, and the chairman of the Tribunal was interrupted several times by the men as he was giving the judgments. Half a dozen or more of the men all attempting to speak at once caused great confusion. "There'll be a revolution in this country," cried one, and such phrases as, "It's time the Germans were here if we are to be treated like this," "What did South Wales do? Defy them!" "We are not here as slaves" were shouted from various quarters. The disturbers were asked to leave the Court. "Let's all go," called one of the men--and they all went, giving "three cheers for the British workman."

Labor pleads in extenuation of its seemingly treasonable disregard of national interests that it is not merely reluctance to yield ground on fixed trade-union principles which inspires a spirit of revolt in the "munition areas." It is only fair to record that the attitude of Union leaders throughout has generally been above reproach. Their counsel to the men to forget "rules" and give the best that is in them has in many cases fallen on deaf ears. What particularly gnawed at the men's hearts was a conviction that they were not getting even an approximately "square deal" under the abnormal conditions of "war industry." They insisted that while employers' profits had risen inordinately in almost every branch--shipping, collieries, the steel and iron trades, and primarily, of course, in the armaments industries--the wages of the men who were doing the actual producing lamentably failed to keep step with the masters' swollen revenue. The men assert, indeed, that such advance in wages as has taken place does not remotely correspond to the increased cost of living, which averaged forty per cent. up to the end of the summer of 1915, with a further rise in almost inevitable prospect. Labor, in other words, so the working classes claimed, was being "sweated" in order that the coffers of the "profiteers" might continue to overflow. If British trade-unionism had an epigrammatist as inventive as Mr. Bryan, it would no doubt have adopted as its war-time slogan the aphorism that Capital was determined to press down a crown of thorns upon Labor's brow, and crucify working mankind upon a cross of gold. Those, at any rate, were precisely the sentiments which fired British Labor's soul.

But if revolt on the old-time issues of output, overtime and Unionism was bitter and menacing, it was destined to be a mere whisper compared to Labor's rebellious hostility to Conscription. The "controlled establishment" system evoked more or less continuous opposition. Almost every day batches of workmen, ranging from twos and threes to troops of fifty or a hundred, were dragged before Munition Tribunals, and fined a week's pay for shirking. In one or two cases they preferred the martyrdom of imprisonment to money punishment. But on the whole, notwithstanding the ceaseless howl of Ramsay Macdonald's Labor Leader and George Lansbury's Socialist Herald against the "tyranny" and "slavery" of the Munitions Act and the "unchecked piracy of the employer-profiters," the ambitions of Lloyd-George to "speed up" war industry were satisfactorily realized. He was able to state that "taking the figure one as representing the output of shells in September, 1914, the figure for July, 1915, was fifty times greater. It was a hundred times greater in August, and thenceforward production would continue to rise in a surprisingly rapid crescendo."

By midsummer of 1915 Britain was faced by an emergency not a whit less urgent than shells. She had effectively organized her facilities for turning out a maximum of high-explosives. She had now to confront and solve the insistent problem of manning her decimated armies. Kitchener and the voluntary system had worked wonders. The actual figures, for some unaccountably censorious reason, were never disclosed, except in the case of Ireland, which up to October 1 had furnished 81,000 recruits; but the authorities allowed to pass uncontradicted the statement that the United Kingdom and the Colonies between them had raised a volunteer army of approximately 3,000,000 men. Had it turned out to be anything except a War of Miscalculations, this gigantic contribution of British military force might have sufficed, but with 500,000 British casualties after fourteen months of fighting--roundly, 400,000 in France and Flanders and 100,000 in the Dardanelles--and with the Germans not only not yet expelled from Belgium or France, but in undisputed possession of Poland and about to pound through Serbia on "the road to Constantinople, Egypt and India," it was apparent that probably twice 3,000,000 British soldiers would be required. Two spectacular attempts to "break through" the wall of concrete and iron Germany had erected in the West had been made. Both failed, however gloriously. Neuve Chapelle and Artois inscribed fresh and imperishable deeds of valor on the scroll of the British army, but each was strategically valueless. Results attained were frightfully out of proportion to the price they cost in blood and treasure.

Succeeding events of the war of stalemate in the West and fiasco in the Dardanelles--dreary and weary months of fighting accounted "victorious" if it took three hundred yards of trenches, or a hill, or a cemetery, or a sugar-factory, or a strip of beach, or if it advanced the British line a mile and a half over a front of twelve miles--every "gain" entailing a terrible toll in killed and maimed and fabulous expenditure of shells--all demonstrated one outstanding, immutable fact: that nothing but sheer preponderance of man-power weight would or could "cleave the way to victory." If it cost 25,000 or 30,000 young British lives to win Neuve Chapelle, probably twice that many to carry out the trial push of the great offensive at the end of September, and 100,000 casualties to fail in Gallipoli, what rivers of blood would not have to be spilled along that once-vaunted "march to Berlin"?

Britain's volunteers had done nobly. But they manifestly did not do enough. Mighty as was their response, Britons must yet come, or be brought, forward in their millions if the Empire was to be saved. The specter of Conscription became more of a tangible reality from day to day. Voluntaryism had received a fair and a long and patient trial. It accomplished far more, probably, than its most sanguine supporters hoped for. It outstripped any record approximated by Lincoln in our Civil War, but now, like him, England was plainly compelled to resort to more heroic measures if the overthrow of Germany was to be anything more than a pious aspiration. "Mahanism" had given Britannia control of the sea, but "Moltkeism" was still unbeaten on the Continent.

Soldiers in the making--11th Battalion cook-house.

Now Organized Labor revolted afresh. It would not hear of the "Prussianization" of England by Conscription. It had already "surrendered" its "industrial liberty." It did not propose to part with whatever vestige of "personal freedom" remained. It pilloried Conscription as "Compulsion" and, as brazenly as they dared, certain leaders threatened any Government which essayed to fasten it upon the "British Democracy" with political ruin for itself and gory revolution for the country. The Conscriptionists were accused of wanting, instead of an army of volunteer freemen, "a servile, cheap and sweated army." They aspired to "something which would imperil the civic basis of British liberty and degrade the nation." Conscription was "desired for the war and for after the war, in order that its advocates might better be able to promote their Imperialistic schemes abroad and their class vanity and political interests at home." In the midst of a war to "crush militarism," it was now plotted to impose that monster on Englishmen themselves. Shrieked Bruce Glasier, for example, a paladin of the Socialist-Labor phalanx: