‘Grave mother of majestic works,
From her isle-altar gazing down,
Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks,
And, King-like, wears the crown.’
Her possession of the trident was first definitely challenged[22] since Trafalgar on August 4th, 1914, and in the West Riding of Yorkshire, as elsewhere, the means of defence were swiftly organized.
Swift forethought in County areas, it should be noted, did not invariably lead to sound action at the executive centre. A trivial example will suffice. Three weeks after the outbreak of war, a letter was written to the Army Council suggesting that the West Riding Association should make provision for cardigan jackets, warm drawers, and other articles of clothing, which the troops would require in the winter months. The Army Council sent a dignified reply, thanking the Association for their offer, but stating that these articles would be provided by the Army Council itself. Later, on October 9th, the Army Council intimated its inability to supply cardigan jackets, warm drawers, and other articles of winter clothing for the Troops, and requested the Association to make provision. So far the experience was merely funny, but the sequel had a Gilbertian touch. When the Association made inquiry at the contractors, they were informed that all manufacturers of the articles in question had been forbidden by the Army Council to supply anyone else than the War Office. ‘These facts are brought before the Association’, remarked the Chairman in his quarterly report, ‘in order that members may know that everything possible was done to anticipate the requirements of the Troops, and that any failure in this respect is due to causes beyond its control.’ It was well and temperately said.
The heavy increase of work in the secretariat was fairly met by the voluntary help of the Hon. G. N. de Yarburgh-Bateson, Mr. Talbot Rice, Mr. Peter Green, some eighteen or twenty volunteers from the close of their day’s work till late at night, two clerks from the North Eastern Railway Company, a clerk from the York Probate Office, twenty-six additional full-time clerks, Boy Scouts and other useful helpers. The County Director was assisted by Col. Sir Thomas Pilkington, Bt.,[23] and Lieut.-Col. Husband, whom the G.O.C. had appointed as officers superintending the Lines of Communication and the arrangements for the care of the sick and wounded. Advisory Boards were formed for the 2nd and 3rd Northern General Hospitals at Leeds (Training College, Beckett’s Park) and Sheffield (Collegiate Hall) respectively, which as early as the end of August had already many patients from France and Belgium. These Boards, consisting, at Leeds, of the Lord Mayor, Alderman F. Kinder, Lt.-Col. Shann and the Matron of the Infirmary; and, at Sheffield, of the Lord Mayor, Lord Wharncliffe, Col. Hughes, Lt.-Col. Sinclair White and the Matron of the Infirmary, were intended to relieve the Commanding Officers of the Hospitals of some portion of their administrative functions, leaving them freer for professional work and discipline.
We omit the long figures and many Army Forms with which General Mends and his Staff had to wrestle. The 5,000 blankets and 2,000 sets of saddlery, the 32,887 complete suits of service-dress, the 16,803 water-bottles and 4,242 bandoliers; these requisitions and the rest of them are as tiresome and uninteresting in retrospect as they were absorbing and urgent at the time. There is one feature of their work, however, familiar by the mystic letters S/A, which cannot be passed over without notice, for it imposed a very severe strain on the Association’s capacity for expansion. S/A stands for separation allowance, and the regular issue of this grant to the wives and dependents of serving soldiers had been assigned by the Act of Parliament as part of an Association’s duty. It was by no means an easy task. Allowance has to be made for an inconvenient distribution of functions. A soldier, whether Regular or Territorial, drew his pay from his Commanding Officer out of the monies supplied on vouchers presented to the Regimental Paymaster. In the Regular Army the same Paymaster kept the soldier’s domestic account with his wife and children or other dependents; and, though errors inevitably occurred even when the accounts were thus linked, they could be checked and more readily adjusted, inasmuch as all the information was available in the same office. For the domestic account, it should be observed, was extremely sensitive to variations in the soldier’s rate of pay, and was affected by the soldier’s ‘casualties,’ whether major ones of death or desertion, or minor ones of leave, punishment and so forth. In the Territorial Force, however, the soldier’s domestic account was kept by his County Association, presumably owing to the fact that they were more likely to be in touch with the personnel of the units which they administered. In peace-time this worked very well. When a Territorial soldier went into camp for a week or fortnight in the summer, it was comparatively a simple matter for the local Territorial Force Association to pay the corresponding days’ allowances to those whom he left at home. But the immense expansion of the Force in 1914, and the extraordinarily complicated system of accountancy, added to the distribution of pay-duties between the Regimental Paymaster for the man and the County Association for his dependent, overtook these heavily burdened bodies at a time when they were least well qualified to discharge the work effectively. They did not understand it. It was difficult to engage clerks. The Army Pay Department of the War Office could not spare sufficient trained instructors; and, generally, the urgent problems of the mobilization, equipment and (as we shall see) the duplication of the Force, tended to postpone attention to what seemed less pressing domestic matters. The early war annals of the West Riding Association are full of evidence to these conditions:
‘The duty devolving on the Association of paying Separation Allowances and Allotments of Pay to the wives and families of the Territorial Troops entails very heavy work and responsibility.... The first payment was due to be made on the 9th August, and consisted of Separation Allowance only up to the 31st of the month. The September payment was duly made on the 31st August. The number of Money Orders sent out up to and for that date was 13,328, and on 3rd September, orders were received to also pay a compulsory Allotment of Pay for each married soldier.’
Though they split an infinitive in doing so, this payment, too, was duly made on September 11th; but it involved a further 5,430 Money Orders with the corresponding, inevitable Army Forms.