[76] “To precipitate ideals is to retard their advent. . . . The surest method of establishing the reign of peace on earth is by making the way of the transgressor of the peace of nations too hard for the rulers of men to tread.”
[77] Some 30,000 Serbian boys were sent across the mountains to the sea to escape from the invader. Less than half reached the sea.
[78] See Lord Kitchener’s final telegram of November 22nd, 1915, which decided the War Cabinet to evacuate (p. 57 of Pt. II, the Final Report of the Dardanelles Commission).
CHAPTER XVII
MUNITIONS
“Like a rickety, clumsy machine, with a pin loose here, and a tooth broken there, and a makeshift somewhere else, in which the force of Hercules may be exhausted in a needless friction, and obscure hitches before the hands are got to move, so is our Executive, with the Treasury, the Horse Guards, the War Department, the Medical Department, all out of gear, but all required to move together before a result can be obtained. He will be stronger than Hercules who can get out of it the movement we require”—Colonel Lefroy’s letter to Miss Florence Nightingale, Sir Edward Cook’s Life of Miss Florence Nightingale, vol. i. pp. 322-3.
From the early days of the war Mr. Lloyd George had perceived that there were two great difficulties ahead of us—men and the arming of men—and that perhaps the greater of the two was the arming.[[79]] For the first year, at any rate, the question of men seemed to present little difficulty. England’s manhood came flocking to the banner of Lord Kitchener. The great multitudes of free citizens who freely poured into the recruiting offices after the retreat from Mons, will always be one of the most splendid episodes in our history. The patience and valour—the good-humour and endurance—of those first armies of “Kitcheners” will always add an imperishable glory to the name of him who summoned them.
So far, indeed, “nought shall make us rue.” England rested true to herself and her great cause.
But it was not enough to gather the legions. It was necessary also to arm them. Here it soon became clear that we were up against a new portent. The stupendous war equipment of the German armies, both in guns and in munitions, has since become a commonplace; at that time it was a wonder and a surprise. The War Office went into the war still thinking in terms of the Boer War, when machine-guns were a new miracle and shrapnel was the last word in shells. They found themselves faced with an army in which machine-guns had become a multitudinous commonplace and shrapnel was already the humble servant of the high-explosive shell.