Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918

by Sir C. E. Callwell

Varied nature of my responsibilities — Inconvenience caused by a Heath-Caldwell being a brother-Director on the General Staff — An interview with Lord Methuen — The Man of Business — His methods when in charge of a Government Department — War Office branches under Men of Business — The art of advertisement — This not understood by War Office officials — The paltry staff and accommodation at the disposal of the Director of Supplies and Transport, and what was accomplished — Good work of the Committee of Imperial Defence in providing certain organizations for special purposes before the war — The contre-espionage branch — The Government's singular conduct on the occasion of the first enemy spy being executed at the Tower — The cable censorship — The post office censorship — A visit from Admiral Bacon — His plan of landing troops by night at Ostend — Some observations on the subject — Sir J. Wolfe Murray leaves the War Office — An appreciation of his work — The Dardanelles papers to be presented to Parliament referred to me — My action in the matter and the appointment of the Dardanelles Committee in consequence — Mr. Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War — His activities — I act as D.C.I.G.S. for a month — Sound organization introduced by Sir W. Robertson — Normal trench-warfare casualties and battle casualties — I learn the facts about the strengths of the different armies in the field — Troubles with the Cabinet over man-power — Question of resignation of the Army Council — The Tank Corps and Tanks — The War Office helps in the reorganization of the Admiralty — Some of the War Cabinet want to divert troops to the Isonzo — The folly of such a plan — Objections to it indicated — Arrival of General Pershing in London — I form one of the party that proceeds to Devonport to meet Colonel House and the United States Commissioners — Its adventures — Admirals adrift — Mr. Balfour meets the Commissioners at Paddington.

During those months as Director of Military Operations my responsibilities were in reality of a most varied nature. They covered pretty well the whole field of endeavour, from drafting documents bearing upon operations—subjects for the edification of the very elect—down to returning to him by King's Messenger the teeth which a well-known staff-officer had inadvertently left behind him at his club when returning to the front from short leave. One was for various reasons brought into contact with numbers of public men who were quite outside of Government circles and official institutions, and whose acquaintance it was agreeable to make. Moreover, officers of high standing, over from the front or holding commands at home, would look in to pass the time of day and keep one posted with what was going on afield. Soldiers appointed to some new billet overseas had constantly to be fitted out with instructions, or to be provided with books, maps, and cipher. The last that I was to see of that brilliant leader, General Maude, was when I went down to Victoria to see him and my old contemporary of "Shop" days, General E. A. Fanshawe, off on their hurried journey to the Dardanelles in August 1915.

A certain amount of minor inconvenience in connection with telephones, correspondence, visits, and so on, arose owing to General Heath-Caldwell taking up the appointment of Director of Military Training about six months after mobilization. That two out of the four Directors on the General Staff within the War Office should have practically the same name, was something of a coincidence. Lord Methuen, who was then holding a very important appointment in connection with the home army (with which I had nothing to do), was ushered into my room one day. He had scarcely sat down when he began, "Now I know how tremendously busy all you people are, and I won't keep you one moment, but ...," and he embarked on some question in connection with the training of the troops in the United Kingdom. I tried to interrupt; but he checked me with a gesture, and took complete command of the situation. "No, no. Just let me finish what I want to say ..." and off he was again in full cry, entirely out of control. After one or two other attempts to stop him, I had to give it up. You can't coerce a Field-Marshal: it isn't done. At last, after about five minutes of rapid and eager exposition of what he had come to the War Office to discuss, he wound up with "Well, what d'you think of that. I haven't kept you long, have I?" It was then up to me to explain that he had attacked the wrong man, that the question he was interested in did not concern me, and that the best thing I could do was to conduct him forthwith to Heath-Caldwell's lair.

One saw something of the Man of Business in those days, as also later. Next to the "Skilled Workman," the "Man of Business" is the greatest impostor amongst the many impostors at present preying on the community. Just as there are plenty of genuine Skilled Workmen, so also are there numbers of Men of Business who, thanks to their capacity and to the advantage that they have taken of experience, constitute real assets to the nation. Latter-day events have, however, taught us that the majority of the individuals who pose as Skilled Workmen are in reality engaged on operations which anybody in full power of his faculties and of the most ordinary capacity can learn to carry on within a very few hours, if not within a very few minutes. What occurred in Government departments during the war proved that a very large percentage of the Men of Business, who somehow found their way into public employ, were no great catch even if they did manage to spend a good deal of the taxpayer's money. To draw a sharp dividing-line between the nation's good bargains and the nation's bad bargains in this respect would be out of the question. To try to separate the sheep from the goats would be as invidious as it would be vain—there were a lot of hybrids. But it was not military men within the War Office alone who suffered considerable disillusionment on being brought into contact with the Man of Business in the aggregate; that was also the experience of the Civil Service in general.

The successful Man of Business has owed his triumphs to aptitude in capturing the business of other people. Therefore when he blossoms out as a Government official in charge of a department, he devotes his principal energies to trying to absorb rival departments. It was a case of fat kine endeavouring to swallow lean kine, but finding at times that the lean kine were not so badly nourished after all—and took a deal of swallowing. And yet successful Men of Business, when introduced into Government departments, do have their points. One wonders how much the income-tax payer would be saved during the next decade or two had some really great knight of industry, content to do his own work and not covetous of that of other people (assuming such a combination of the paragon and the freak to exist), been placed in charge of the Ministry of Munitions as soon as Mr. Lloyd George had, with his defiance of Treasury convention, with his wealth of imagination, and with his irrepressible and buoyant courage, set the thing up on the vast foundations already laid by the War Office. Unsuccessful Men of Business, when introduced into Government departments, have their points too, but they are mostly bad points.

The Man of Business' procedure, when he is placed at the head of a Government department, or of some branch of a Government department, in time of war is well known. He makes himself master of some gigantic building or some set of buildings. He then sets to work to people the premises with creatures of his own. He then, with the assistance of the superior grades amongst the creatures, becomes wrapped up in devising employment for the multitudinous personnel that has been got together. He then finds that he has not got sufficient accommodation to house his legions—and so it goes on. He talks in moments of relaxation of "introducing business methods into Whitehall." But that is absurd. You could not introduce business methods into Whitehall, because there is not room enough; you would have to commandeer the whole of the West End, and then you would be cramped. While the big men at the top are wrestling with housing problems, the staff are engaged in writing minutes to each other—a process which, when indulged in, in out-of-date institutions of the War Office, Admiralty, Colonial Office type, is called "red tape," but which, when put in force in a department watched over by Men of Business, is called "push and go." Engulfed in one of the mushroom branches that were introduced into the War Office in the later stages of the war, I could not but be impressed by what I saw. The women were splendid: the way in which they kept the lifts in exercise, each lady spending her time going up and down, burdened with a tea-cup or a towel and sometimes with both, was beyond all praise.

One is prejudiced perhaps, and may not on that account do full justice to the achievements of some of those civilian branches which were evolved within the War Office and which elbowed out military branches altogether or else absorbed them. But they enjoyed great advantages, and on that account much could fairly be expected of them. Your civilian, introduced into the place with full powers, a blank cheque and the uniform of a general officer, stood on a very different footing from the soldier ever hampered by a control that was not always beneficently administered—financial experts on the War Office staff are apt to deliver their onsets upon the Treasury to the battle-cry of Kamerad. Still, should the civilian elect to maintain on its military lines the branch that he had taken over, he sometimes turned out to be an asset. When the new broom adopted the plan of picking out the best men on the existing staff, of giving those preferred a couple of steps in rank, of providing them with large numbers of assistants, and of housing the result in some spacious edifice or group of edifices especially devised for the purpose, he sometimes contrived to develop what had been an efficient organization before into a still more efficient one. In that case the spirit of the branch remained, it carried on as a military institution but with a free hand and with extended liberty of action—and the public service benefited although the cost was considerably greater. But that was not always the procedure decided upon.

Whatever procedure was decided upon, every care was taken to advertise. Advertisement is an art that the Man of Business thoroughly understands, and as to which he has little to learn even from the politician with a Press syndicate at his back. Soldiers are deplorably apathetic in this respect. It will hardly be believed that during the war the military department charged with works and construction often left the immediate supervision of the creation of some set of buildings in the hands of a single foreman of works, acting under an officer of Royal Engineers who only paid a visit daily as he would have several other duties of the same nature to perform. But if that set of buildings under construction came to be transferred to a civilian department or branch—the Ministry of Munitions, let us say—a large staff of supervisors of all kinds was at once introduced. Offices for them to carry on their supervisory duties in were erected. The thing was done in style, employment was given to a number of worthy people at the public expense, and it is quite possible that the supervisory duties were carried on no less efficiently than they had previously been by the foreman of works, visited daily by the officer of Royal Engineers.

From the outbreak of war and for nearly two years afterwards, the headquarters administration of the supply branch of our armies in all theatres except Mesopotamia and East Africa was carried out at the War Office by one director, five military assistants and some thirty clerks, together with one "permanent official" civilian aided by half-a-dozen assistants and about thirty clerks. It administered and controlled and supervised the obtaining and distribution of all requirements in food and forage, as also of fuel, petrol, disinfectants, and special hospital comforts, not only for the armies in the field but also for the troops in the United Kingdom. This meant an expenditure which by the end of the two years had increased to about half a million sterling per diem. Affiliated to this branch, as being under the same director, was the headquarters administration of the military-transport service, consisting of some fifteen military assistants and fifty or sixty clerks. The military transport service included a personnel of fully 300,000 officers and men, and the branch was charged with the obtaining of tens of thousands of motor vehicles of all kinds and of the masses of spare parts needed to keep them in working order, together with many other forms of transport material. The whole of these two affiliated military branches of the War Office could have been accommodated comfortably on one single floor of the Hotel Metropole! Well has it been said that soldiers have no imagination.

There were four especial branches under me to which some reference ought to be made. Of two of them little was, in the nature of things, heard during the war; these two were secret service branches, the one obtaining information with regard to the enemy, the other preventing the enemy from receiving information with regard to us. Of the other two, one dealt with the cable censorship and the other with the postal censorship. The Committee of Imperial Defence has been taken to task in some ill-informed quarters because of that crying lack of sufficient land forces and of munitions of certain kinds which made itself apparent when the crisis came upon us. It was, however, merely a consultative and not an executive body. It had no hold over the purse-strings. Shortcomings in these respects were the fault not of the Committee of Imperial Defence but of the Government of the day. On the other hand, the Committee did splendid work in getting expert sub-committees to compile regulations that were to be brought into force in each Government department on the outbreak of war—compiling regulations cost practically nothing. Moreover, thanks to its representations and to its action, organizations were created in peace-time for prosecuting espionage in time of war and for ensuring an effective system of contre-espionage; these were under the control of the Director of Military Operations, and were the two secret branches referred to above.