Warnings of disaster had been frequent—but disaster had always been averted, and fair words had prevailed. For years we had been living on the verge of national ruin through strikes of railway-men, transport-workers, miners, or the spinners and weavers of Lancashire, but at the last moment conciliation always won; there was always room for compromise. Though civil war in Ireland seemed imminent, it was comforting to reflect how much common sense there was in the world. Besides, had it not been proved to every one’s satisfaction that under modern conditions war between great nations could not possibly last for more than a month or two, as in that short period victor and vanquished would alike be reduced to bankruptcy and impotence? Knowing this no Great Power would be likely to commit suicide. We were living in the twentieth century, and a great European war was an abstract conception, not something that could actually occur.

In the closing days of July 1914 this complacency was giving way to a very real dread. War might mean suicide even for the victor, might be “unthinkable,” but it was in sight—plain, stark, menacing. War such as other nations had known; not a war in which those who had a taste for soldiering might take part while the rest of us could read about it in the papers, feel proud of a success and depressed by a disaster, and wonder whether sixpence would be added to the income tax. The fantastic image that had thrilled us not altogether unpleasantly—as children experience ecstatic shudders when listening to tales of ogres and hobgoblins—was taking on an appearance of grim reality. Could it after all be a grisly spectre and not a mere bogey of turnip and white sheet? England began to regret that the warnings of her greatest soldier had passed unheeded.

A day or two later Germany flung down her challenge to Christianity and Civilization, stripped herself of the cloak of decency and stood revealed in stark brutishness; and on Tuesday, August 4, 1914, England took up the challenge and declared war. The decision was apparently not expected by the German Staff. To them it was rather a matter for exasperation than for apprehension. England had her hands full at home, and her vast possessions would prove a source of weakness. She had a small regular army, a force with high traditions, well trained and well equipped for service on the frontiers of India and other outposts of the Empire, containing a larger proportion of officers and men with experience of actual fighting than any other army of the Great Powers, yet so small in numbers and so scattered over the face of the globe, that one can almost sympathize with the German belief that the few thousand men who could be spared from the duty of policing India, Egypt, South Africa, and other possessions, might safely be regarded as negligible. She had, too, a small, indifferently trained and equipped, unprofessional, home-defence force, but even the British themselves did not take the Territorials seriously.

As to the rest of the potential fighting material of the British Isles, had it not been proved to the satisfaction of the Germans (who had made a special study of such matters with the typical Teutonic thoroughness which works so efficiently when applied to material facts, and fails so lamentably when the human factor enters) that the young manhood of the nation was mainly decadent, of poor physique, weak-chested, half-educated, lacking in patriotic purpose, with no thought of the morrow and no ideals? With the exception of the few hundred thousands who had received some training in physical drill and discipline in the Boys’ Brigade and its daughter-organizations which teach discipline, self-respect, and esprit de corps, or in the School Cadet Corps, all were utterly untrained, and they hated discipline. England had clearly shown that she was too selfish to submit to any form of compulsory service; too wrapped up in the love of comfort, ease and luxury to do more than bribe fools to die for her. It was a nation that had lost its soul. The military aid she could give to France could be contemptuously brushed aside. When France had been paralysed and the Channel ports secured, the British mercantile marine could be sunk or scared off the seas, and the British Empire brought to its knees.

Teutonic reasoning was wrong. The British character is too simple or too complex for the Hun. It may be that no other nation brings so much froth to the top as ours; that none extends such tolerance to cranks, nor gives so much rope to little cliques of shrieking egoists, nor shows such stolid indifference when the few, claiming to speak on behalf of the nation, so egregiously misrepresent her. On August 5, 1914, it was seen that practically every man, woman and child approved what the Government had done, and felt instinctively that their country would have been shamed had there been a day’s hesitation. England had found her soul, not lost it. A nation supposed to consist largely of pleasure seekers, of lovers of compromise, conciliation and tolerance, of comfort and luxury, had decided that all it held most dear would be as dust and ashes if it stood aside, a passive spectator of the agony of France and Belgium. Practically without a dissentient voice the nation prepared to sacrifice its all. Unhappily, the politicians, unaccustomed to realities, were not ready to make the most of this spirit of sacrifice. Unable to leave their grooves of finesse, intrigue, and opportunism, they knew not how to appeal simply to the noblest instincts; so they talked of “business as usual,” and attempted to cajole the nation into giving a part when the whole was ready to be offered.

Composition of the Division

This is the story of the part played in the most appalling of human tragedies by the East Lancashire Territorial Division, which, on leaving England, was composed of the following units—

The twelve battalions of infantry were brigaded as follows—

The Lancashire Fusiliers Brigade—the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Battalions, Lancashire Fusiliers.