But the maxim that "hesitation and half-measures ruin everything in war" had never been lost upon the "Great General Staff of (German) Imperial Supermen," who it might be opined had probably forgotten more in the gentle art of preparation for war than we ever set ourselves to learn. Gas shells, incendiary shells, tear shells, liquid fire, clouds of poison gas, aerial torpedoes, floating mines, submarines, mystery long-range guns, such were a few of the more obvious and less humanly unspeakable horrors in which the common enemy had specialised. Taken unawares, the question consequentially arose "How to hit them back?" Man for man, fist for fist, we were sure of giving as good as we received, and better.
"In bravery the French and English soldiers are the only ones to be compared with the Russians," was the verdict of Napoleon. Bravery, however, whilst being undoubtedly magnificent, is, on the other hand, in modern warfare liable to become a constraining source of suicide unless backed by commensurate means both of offence and of defence. "The machine," as Mr. Lloyd George pointed out, when reviewing on December 20th, 1915, the progress of events of the preceding months, "the machine is essential to defend positions of peril, and it saves life, because the more machinery you have for defence, the more thinly you can hold the line. On the other hand it means fewer losses in attacking positions of peril, because it demolishes machine-gun emplacements, tears up barbed wire, destroys trenches." Again, "What we stint in material we squander in life."
How criminal had been the lack both of prevision and of provision in regard to meeting possible contingencies may be gathered from the fact that on March 15th, 1906, Major Seely, M.P., in the House of Commons, in moving a reduction in the Army Estimates (estimates which at that time did not exceed the modest sum of sixty millions per annum), said, "We could not afford to continue the present establishment, for the House would not grant the money, and the country would not provide the men."
The folly of it all was coming home to us with a vengeance. Proportionate to the former mean and niggardly "cheese-paring" was the resultant appalling rate at which life was now being squandered. "We were short of all kinds of military weapons," Mr. Lloyd George was forced to confess, "but the lack of high-explosive shell was paralysing"; then as if in condonation of all former sins of omission, "we believe that what is being done now to provide a supply of munitions equal to all possible requirements will astonish the world when it becomes known."
In this respect, therefore, it is, perhaps, not unnatural that interest of a widespread nature should centre round Crewe, in virtue of the quota of munitions which she, albeit unobtrusively, contributed to the "world's astonishment"; indeed a certain sense of bewilderment not untinged with pride cannot fail to supervene in the minds of that vast section of the community, to wit the travelling public, and in particular the great North-Western-loving public, when, the official veil of secrecy being drawn aside, the mental faculty is free to note and to assimilate the degree of resourcefulness, the versatility of the locomotive engineer.
There is no concealing the fact that "the place acquired by machinery in the arts of peace in the nineteenth century has been won by machinery in the grim art of war in the twentieth century," but the anomaly was strange indeed when Crewe, essentially the cradle of what may perhaps be termed the haute noblesse of locomotive progeny, bowing to the dictates of stern necessity, extensively adapted her domain to the novel effort of high-explosive shell production.
Manifold and great as are the instances which may be cited as evidence of the strides made during the last decade in engineering science, no other branch of that science has surely ever made appeal more alluring alike to schoolboy as to popular imagination, than that embodied in the modern British locomotive. Who in the course of his travel experience has not happened at that "Mecca" of railway bustle and romance, "Euston," the epic terminus of Britain's premier line, and focussing with his eye the hazy limit of a far-receding platform, has not traced the tapering profile of some distant-bound express, marvelling the while that, harnessed on ahead, should be pent up a force eager, impatient, yet withal so mighty that of a sudden, subservient to its call, this elongated span of motionless inertia laden with living freight should smoothly glide away, and gathering momentum on its path with ceaseless rhythm, ever along, along and along, sweep towards the far elusive line of the horizon? Yet this, in plain prosaic English, was the ennobling vista opened through peaceful years of patient toil and perseverance to the public ken, and dull must be the mind which contemplates unmoved that splendid emblem of the locomotive world, the awe-inspiring "Claughton" of that ilk, noble of mien and black of tint, with breast-plate red, toying with trains the equal of 400 tons and more, ticking aside the minutes and the miles alike.
"Patriot."—A Typical Example of the "Claughton" Class of 6 feet 6 inch, Six Wheels Coupled Express Passenger Engine with Superheated Boiler; Four h.p. Cylinders, 15-3/4 inch Bore × 26 inch Stroke; Boiler Pressure, 175 lbs. per sq. inch; Maximum Tractive Force, 24,130 lbs.; Weight of Engine and Tender in Working Order, 117 tons.