"Cheerful at morn, wakes from short repose,
Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes;"
but unlike the latter, who moves in comparative safety on terra firma, the former, throughout the length of his flying hours, literally carried his life in his hands, illustrative of which fact may be taken those vivid and realistic sketches penned by Major W. B. Bishop, V.C., who, in his little volume "Winged Warfare," jots down a few impressions of his own breathless experiences. "In the air," for instance, he says, "one did not altogether feel the human side of it. It was not like killing a man so much as just bringing down a bird;" and yet in diving after an enemy machine, "I had forgotten caution and everything else in my wild and overwhelming desire to destroy this thing that for the time being represented all Germany to me." Undeniably the heart of an airman must be "a free and a fetterless thing" to brave the combination of risks incidental to his magnetic calling, and Sir Douglas Haig has not omitted to refer in brief but glowing terms to the "splendid traditions of the British Air Service," the "development of which is a matter of general knowledge," and the combining of whose "operations with those of other arms ... has been the subject of constant study and experiment, giving results of the very highest value." In every direction "much thought had to be bestowed upon determining how new devices could be combined in the best manner with the machinery already working," and in laying stress upon this question of "effective co-operation of the different arms and services," he alludes, for instance, to "increase in the power and range of artillery," which "made the maintenance of communications constantly more difficult." It was in order to assist in the maintenance of a highly efficient system of communications that Crewe was asked to supply quantities of cart cable-drums, the several parts of which required forging, machining, and accurately fitting, and by means of which, when completed as a whole, wires could be run out at a speed of 100 yards per minute; in fact, as Sir Douglas Haig points out, "something of the extent of the constructional work required, in particular to meet the constant changes of the battle-line and the movement of head-quarters, can be gathered from the fact that as many as 6500 miles of cable-wire have been issued in a single week. The average weekly issue of such cable for the whole of 1918 was approximately 3300 miles."
Summing up his observations on mechanical contrivances in general, Sir Douglas Haig urges that "immense as the influence of these may be, they cannot by themselves decide a campaign. Their true rôle is that of assisting the infantryman, which they have done in a most admirable manner. They cannot replace him. Only by the rifle and bayonet of the infantryman can the decisive victory be won."
But surely the rifle itself, it may pardonably be contended, is nothing if not a mechanical contrivance? Granted always that without the pressure of the infantryman's finger on the trigger, the thrust of his arm behind the bayonet, the rifle is incapable of deciding a campaign, equally self-evident is the fact that the infantryman is helpless to win the decisive victory without the aid of the rifle.
Side by side, too, with the rifle, and yet another mechanical contrivance to receive "a mention," is the machine-gun, of which the "immense influence" as an injunct indispensable to the infantryman may be gauged from the statement that "from a proportion of one gun to approximately 500 infantrymen in 1914, our establishment of machine guns and Lewis guns had risen at the end of 1918 to one machine gun or Lewis gun to approximately 20 infantrymen." It was in order to bring about this enormous increase in the number of machine guns, that millwrights were sent from Crewe in the summer of 1915 at the urgent request of Mr. Lloyd George (then Minister of Munitions) to install in some newly erected works in Birmingham the machinery necessary for their manufacture. Crewe may therefore be permitted to claim a certain degree of credit for the final issue; for, in addition to furthering the output of Lewis guns which, as we know, assisted the infantryman in so admirable a manner, she was also responsible for the various extremely delicate gauges necessary for the manufacture of rifles, which in turn enabled the infantryman to win the decisive victory.
Invaluable as mechanical contrivances have been in giving "a greater driving power to war," their sinister aspect cannot in any way be veiled; for, as has been only too apparent, "the greater strength of modern field defences, and the power and precision of modern weapons, the multiplication of machine guns, trench-mortars, and artillery of all natures, the employment of gas, and the rapid development of the aeroplane as a formidable agent of destruction against both men and material, all combined to increase the price to be paid for victory."
Sir Douglas Haig estimates the total number of British casualties "in all theatres of war, killed, wounded, missing and prisoners, including native troops, as being approximately three millions (3,076,388)."
The killed, as Napoleon has said, "are the only loss that can never be replaced." The missing—one invariably shudders when considering what may have been their fate. Significant, for instance, is the reproduction of a letter from an enemy officer who writes—(cp. the Times, April 11th, 1917)—"I have been entrusted with a task of which every good German should be proud. Eight days ago we left France with 400 British.... On arriving at Frankfurt we discovered that we had lost on the journey 380." As to the lot of those who, taken prisoner, were nevertheless permitted to exist, we have only to refer for enlightenment to the report of the Government Committee on Wittenberg Camp, dated April 6th, 1916. Two extracts only may be allowed to suffice. "The state of the prisoners beggars description. Major Priestley (one survivor of six sent to replace the German medical staff who abandoned the camp on the outbreak of typhus) found them gaunt, of a peculiar grey pallor, and verminous. Their condition, in his own words, was deplorable." Ultimately the Committee were "forced to the conclusion that the terrible sufferings and privations of the afflicted prisoners during the period under review are directly chargeable to the deliberate cruelty and neglect of the German officials."