Fields of Victory

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

EPILOGUE

June 1st.

I have thus brought these rapid notes—partly of things seen, partly of things read—to an end. They might, of course, go on for ever, and as I write I seem to see rising before me those libraries of the future, into which will come crowding the vast throng of books dealing in ever greater and greater detail with the events of the war and the causes of victory. But this slight summary sketch of the military events, and especially of the final "effort" of England and the Empire, in the campaign of last year, which I set myself to do, is accomplished, however inadequately. Except, indeed, for one huge omission which every reader of these few pages will at once suggest. I have made only a few references here and there to the British Navy. Yet on the British Navy, as we all know, everything hung. If the Navy could not have protected our shores, and broken the submarine peril; if the British Admiralty had not been able to hold the Channel against the enemy and ward him off from the coasts and ports of France; if the British ships and British destroyers had not been there to bring over 70 per cent of the American Armies, and food both for ourselves and the Allies; if the sea-routes between us and our Colonies, between us and the East, could not have been maintained, Germany at this moment would have been ruling triumphant over a prostrate world. The existence and power of the Navy have been as vital to us as the air we breathed and the sun which kept us alive, and the pressure of the British blockade was, perhaps, the dominating element in the victory of the Allies. But these things are so great and so evident that it seemed in this little book best to take them for granted. They have been the presuppositions of all the rest. What has not yet been so clear—or so I venture to think—to our own people or our Allies, has been the full glory of the part played by the Armies of the British Empire in the concluding phases of the war. The temporary success of the German sortie of last spring—a mere episode in the great whole—made so deep an impression on the mind of this nation, that the real facts of an annus mirabilis, in their true order and proportion, are only now, perhaps, becoming plain to us. It was in order to help ever so little in this process that I have tried to tell, as it appears to me, the end of that marvellous story of which I sketched the beginnings in England's Effort.

These main facts, it seems to me, can hardly be challenged by any future pressure from that vast critical process which the next generation, and generations after, will bring to bear upon the war. The mistakes made, the blunders here, or shortcomings there, of England's mighty effort, will be all canvassed and exposed soon enough. The process indeed has already begun. And when the first mood of thankful relief from the constant pre-occupation of the war is over, we may expect to see it in full blast. It would have been easy here to repeat some of the current discontents of the day, all of which will have their legitimate hearing in future discussion. But this is not the moment, nor is mine the pen. We are but just emerging from the shadow of that peril from which the British and Imperial Armies—bone of our bone and flesh or our flesh—have saved us. Let us now, if ever, praise the "famous men" of the war, and gather into our hearts the daily efforts, the countless sacrifices of countless thousands, in virtue of which we now live our quiet lives.

Nor have I dwelt much upon the terrible background of the whole scene, the physical horror, the anguish and suffering of war. Our noblest dead, to judge from the most impassioned and inspired utterances of the men who have suffered for us, would bid us indeed remember these things,—remember them with all the intensity of which we are capable—but with few words. They never counted the cost, though they knew it well; and what they set out to do, they have done.

Let us then, at this particular moment, dwell, above all, on the thing achieved. To that end, a few colossal figures must still be added to those already given. Since the beginning of the war, the total forces employed by the British Empire in the various theatres of war, have amounted to a total of eight million, six hundred and fifty-four thousand (24 per cent of the total white male population), of which the United Kingdom supplied 5,704,416 (25.36 per cent), and the Dominions, and Colonies, 1,425,864. The Indian and Coloured troops amounted to 1,524,000. If the Navy, the Merchant Service, and the men and women employed in various auxiliary military services at home are added, the total recruiting effort of the Empire reaches to much more than ten millions.

As to the financial part of this country in the war, by March 22nd, 1919, the war expenditure of Great Britain had reached a total of £9,482,442,482, of which rather more than two thousand five hundred millions have been raised by taxation. Included in this total are sums amounting to £1,683,500,000, lent to our Allies and Dominions. For the total casualties of the war, in an earlier chapter I have given the approximate figures so far as they can as yet be ascertained, amounting to at least some twenty millions. At such appalling cost then, in death, suffering and that wealth which represents the accumulated labour of men, have the liberties of Europe been rescued from the German attack. We are victors indeed; we have won to the shore; but the wreck of the tempest lies all round us; and what is the future to be?

It is four months now, since, in the splendid rooms of the Villa Murat, I listened to President Wilson describing the sitting of the Conference at which the Resolution was passed constituting the League of Nations—four months big with human fate. The terms of peace are published, and at the present moment no one knows whether Germany will sign them or no. The League of Nations is in existence. It has a home, a Constitution, a Secretariat. But the outlook over Europe is still dark and troubled, and the inner League of Three is still the surest ground in the chaos, the starting-point of the future. The Peace Terms are no final solution—how could they be? On their practical execution, on their adaptation year by year to the new world coming into being, all will depend. German militarism has met its doom. The triumph of the Allies is more absolute than any of them could have dreamed four years ago. Nor can the German crime ever be forgotten in this generation, or the German peril ignored. The whole civilised world must be—will be—the shield of France should any fresh outrage threaten her. But after justice comes mercy. Because Germany has shown herself a criminal nation, not all Germans are criminal. That same British Army which as it fought its victorious way through the German defences in the last four months of the war, and, while it fought the enemy, fed and succoured at the same time 800,000 French civilians—men and officers dividing their rations with starving women and children, and in every pause of fighting, spending all their energies in comforting the weak, the hungry, and the sick:—that very Army is sorry now for the German women and children, as it sees them in the German towns. It is our own soldiers who have been demanding food and pity.

The Allies, indeed, have been for some time sending food to their starving enemies. Mr. Hoover—all honour to the great man!—is ceaselessly at work. If only no hitch in the Peace interrupts the food-trains and the incoming ships, so that no more children die!

Some modifications in the Peace Terms would, clearly, be accepted by the public opinion of the Allied countries. No one, I believe, who has seen the Lens district, and the deliberate and cruel destruction of the French industrial north, will feel many qualms about the Saar valley. We may hold a personal opinion that it might have been wiser for France in her own interests to claim the coal only. But it is for France to decide, and it will be for the League of Nations to watch over the solution she has insisted on, in the common interest. But concessions as to Upper Silesia and East Prussia would be received, I have little doubt, with general relief and assent; and the common sense of Europe will certainly see both the wisdom and expediency of setting German industry to work again as speedily as possible, and of so arranging and facilitating the payment of her huge money debt to the Allies that it should not weigh too intolerably on the life of an unborn generation—an innocent generation, who will grow up, as it is, inevitably, under one of the darkest shadows ever cast by history.