The great Princes of India—notably the Maharajahs of Nepaul, Gwalior, Patiala, Baratppur, Sikkim and Dholpur—placed the entire military resources of tens of millions of people at the disposal of the King-Emperor. The Maharajah of Rewa cabled this splendid message: “What orders from His Majesty for me and my troops?” The Nizam of Hyderabad and the Maharajah of Bikanir offered not only their troops, but the entire resources of their great states and their own personal services at the front. Bengal gave a million bags of jute for the army and the Maharajah of Mysore proffered 3,500 men and 50 lakhs of rupees (about $350,000). Practically all the 700 native rulers of states in India offered personal services, men and money. For active personal service the Viceroy selected the Chiefs of Jodhpur, Bikanir, Kishangarh, Rutlam, Sachin, Patiala, Sir Pertab Singh, Regent of Jodhpur, and others. Contingents of cavalry and infantry, supplies and transports were forwarded besides a camel corps from Bikanir, horses from many states, machine guns, hospital-bed contributions, motor cars and large gifts to the Patriotic and Belgian Relief Funds. New Zealand sent a first contingent of 8,000 troops and relief forces, prepared to send more and promised, like Canada and Australia, to continue training and sending troops as long as they should be required. On the other hand Great Britain undertook to finance the actual military operations of these countries by lending the four Dominions $210,000,000 and undertaking to provide more when needed.
It was with this unity, and in this spirit, that the British Empire entered the great War for the redemption of its pledges to Belgium and adherence to its French obligations—Russia only coming indirectly into the first stage of the question and Japan, through the force of its Treaty, undertaking to guard British interests in the East.
Chapter V.
THE WORLD’S GREATEST WAR
Wars as Mileposts—A Continent in Arms—How Canada Prepared for War—the British Sentiment—Lord Kitchener’s Career—A Forceful Character
The history of the leading events in the nations of Europe during a hundred years of the past, so far as they related to the decline of autocratic power in the monarchs and the development of popular rights and liberty, has been given in the preceding chapters, where it is brought down to the close of the Balkan War and the opening of the great war that succeeded in 1914. As regards this war, its story cannot be told or even summarized in a chapter, but some indication of its general character may be given.
WARS AS MILEPOSTS
Wars serve as convenient mileposts in the history of mankind. They deal with the great struggles which break up the monotony of peace and bring the nations into volcanic relations. They have been many and their causes and effects various; strifes for spoil or dominion; savage invasions of civilized lands; overflow of vast areas by conquering tribes or nations. But among all the world has so far known there has been none so stupendous in character, so portentous in purpose, so vast in fighting multitudes, so terrible in bloodshed, as the one with which we are here concerned, the lurid meeting of the nations on the blood-stained fields of battle which broke upon the quiet of the world with startling suddenness in the summer of 1914. Launched on the borders of little Servia, it soon had the continent for its field of action, and all but one of the greater nations of Europe for its participants. It may therefore fitly be designated the Great War. Great it was, alike in the number and strength of the Powers involved, in the enormous array of armed men engaged, in the destructive power of the weapons employed, in the loss of life and waste of wealth that attended its earthquaking development.
In reading the history of the past we find it thickly strewn with stories of fierce battles, a day, two days, rarely much longer in extent, protracted intervals of marching and countermarching succeeding before the armies again locked horns. Such was the case in the American Civil War, in which the three days’ battle at Gettysburg was the greatest in length, if the six days’ fighting before Richmond be taken to constitute a succession of battles.
In the Russo-Japanese war much longer struggles took place. The armies at Liaoyung fought for eight days and those before Mukden for twenty days. But a more obstinate struggle still was that of September and October, 1914, when two armies, stretched out over a line two hundred miles or more in length, fought with ceaseless fury, by day and night alike, for more than a month. On the moving picture screen of time this vast conflict stands out without parallel in the world’s annals, the most unyielding, incessant battling ever known.