[CHAPTER III]
MECHANICAL MISCELLANEA
"I am more than grateful to you and your fellow-locomotive superintendents of the various railway companies for your readiness to help us in this time of pressure."
In these brief but none the less straightforward and sincere terms, did the late Sir F. Donaldson, then superintendent of Woolwich Arsenal, address himself to Mr. Cooke in the early part of November, 1914, terms expressive, not merely of his own personal feelings of gratitude, but also of Government appreciation of the assistance so spontaneously proffered by the chief mechanical engineers of the great railway concerns of the country.
Looking back over the four and a half years during which was fought out that "stupendous and incessant struggle," not without reason perhaps described as "a single continuous campaign," Sir Douglas Haig, in his final Despatch, under date of March 21st, 1919, whilst reminding us that we were at the outset "unprepared for war, or at any rate for a war of such magnitude," lays especial stress on the fact that "we were deficient both in trained men and military material, and, what was more important, had no machinery ready by which either men or material could be produced in anything approaching the requisite quantities." In short, "the margin by which the German onrush in 1914 was stemmed was so narrow, and the subsequent struggle so severe that the word 'miraculous' is hardly too strong a term to describe the recovery and ultimate victory of the Allies."
There can be no gainsaying the fact that in spite of frequent and bombastic assurances to the contrary emanating from the All-Highest, the Almighty must indeed have been on our side, for surely never in the history of mankind did a people "ask for trouble" in quite the same barefaced manner as did the great British people in the early part of the twentieth century of grace?
"Give peace in our time," might well be the prayer purred by the devout lips, year in year out, of innumerable comfortably-respectable, smug, and faithful citizens on each succeeding Sabbath day. Obviously, for there was "none other that fighteth for us but only Thou." There was never any attempt at denial; we were unprepared and well-nigh negligible, "deficient in trained men and military material." It will be argued, no doubt, that the practice of offering up prayer and supplication is a very desirable and eminently estimable form of procedure, but it is nevertheless a generally accepted theory that the Almighty helps those only who help themselves. Miracles do not perform themselves in these matter-of-fact work-a-day times, and we may pause to reflect both upon the cost at which, and the means by which, the miracle of our timely recovery and ultimate victory was performed.
"To our general unpreparedness," writes Sir Douglas Haig, "must be attributed the loss of many thousands of brave men whose sacrifice we deeply deplore, while we regard their splendid gallantry and self-devotion with unstinted admiration and gratitude."
This then was the cost, "the loss of many thousands of brave men," this the price in blood, the sacrifice upon the altar of unpreparedness. "Can the lesson," despairingly asks the writer of a leading article in the Times of April 11, 1919, "of this great soldier's remarks be missed by the most reckless of politicians, or the most fanatical of 'pacifists'?" Can it be missed either, it may be asked, by those congregations of the faithful, who, repeating as of yore the old, old cry "Give peace," resemble rather the ostrich that buries its head in the sand, making no active endeavour to combat the approaching storm?
Incredible that the lesson should be missed by any, and having marked the undying tribute which Sir Douglas Haig has paid to those thousands of brave men who for us paid the price, we may turn to that other tribute which this same great soldier unhesitatingly pays to those who supplied the means by which, miraculously enough, recovery was assured, and ultimate victory achieved.
"The Army owes a great debt to science and to the distinguished scientific men who placed their learning and their skill at the disposal of their country." Such is the praise bestowed upon the distinguished heads of industry and of science as representing the vast mass of workers at the back, the backbone of the country, and undoubtedly, as the great Field-Marshal goes on to explain, "a remarkable feature of the present war has been the number and variety of mechanical contrivances to which it has given birth, or has brought to a higher state of perfection." But perhaps the most remarkable of all these remarkable features was that particular one evinced by that particular body of distinguished scientific men, to wit, the chief mechanical engineers of the great railway companies, in that, by their ingenuity and versatile ability, they succeeded in producing not the quantities only, but the varieties also, of all those mechanical contrivances which, as we know, added to the horrors of, as well as to the interest in, modern warfare.