Should 'cushy' jobs, immune from risk, infest,
While other 'blokes,' undaunted—aye in masses,—
Naught asking, bit the dust, and so—'went west'?
Who made the law?"
[8.] [Extract from Paper read by Mr. Brett before the Engineering Conference of the Institution of Civil Engineers, June, 1899, and published in Engineering, June 30th, 1899.]
[CHAPTER X]
1914-1918 PASSENGERS AND GOODS
"Unless we had order, unless we had certainty, in the moving of large masses, the day of battle, which might come, would be to us a day of disaster."—Colonel McMurdo, late Inspector-General of the Volunteer Forces, January 9th, 1865.
Der Tag, which came on August 4th, 1914, was not fated after all, as we know, to be a day of disaster. That it was not so is perhaps attributable in the main to two causes. "Miraculous" is the manner in which escape from disaster has been described; but as we have already seen (and of this fact we cannot remind ourselves too often), the miracle was performed primarily and essentially by the loss of those "many thousands of brave men whose sacrifice we deplore, while we regard their splendid gallantry and self-devotion with unstinted admiration and gratitude." A secondary, but by no means inconsiderable, cause contributory to the successful working of the miracle lay in the fact that we did possess the "order," the "certainty," in regard to the moving—not exactly of "large masses" in the more recently accepted meaning of the term, but at any rate—of that part of the Army which was detailed for home defence, and of the six divisions of which the original Expeditionary Force was composed, and which were flung across the Channel to assist in stemming the initial German onrush. And it is with regard to this "order," this "certainty," and the attendant successful working of the railways that the ensuing pages are concerned.