Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918

by Sir C. E. Callwell

The mischief done in this matter rather influenced one against the Press, and perhaps made one all the more ready to take cognizance of its blunders and to accept its criticisms (when these were ill-informed) in bad part. Are we not, however, in any case rather disposed to take our journals too seriously, and is not one result of this that we have the Press that we deserve? Public men have to treat the journalistic world with respect, or it will undo them; but that does not apply to mere ordinary people. Yet we all bow the knee before it, submissively accept it at its own valuation, and consequently it fools us to the top of our bent. We believe what we see stated in our paper as a matter of course, unless we happen by some accident to know that the statement is totally contrary to the actual fact. The Fourth Estate is exalted into an acknowledged autocrat because it is allowed to have things all its own way; and your autocrat, whether he be a trade union official or he be a sceptred potentate or he be the President of a republic saddled with a paradoxical constitution, is an anachronism in principle and is apt to be a curse in practice.

Autocracy is particularly to be deprecated in the case of the Press, seeing that here we have what is in reality the most widespread trade union in the country. Journalism harbours its internal squabbles and jealousies, no doubt, just as is the case with most great associations; but, assail it from without, and it closes up its ranks as a nation rent with faction will on threat from some foreign foe. It is generally acknowledged that in political life a formidable opposition in the legislature renders the government of the day all the more efficient. But the Press, in what may be called its corporate capacity, is not disciplined nor stimulated by any organized opposition at all, and the consequence is that it has perhaps got just a little too big for its boots. Judged by results in respect to its handling of military questions during the Great War, the Fourth Estate has not (taken as a whole, and lumping together journals of the meaner class with the representative organs which have great financial resources to refresh them) proved itself quite so efficient an institution as its protagonists claim it to be.

Before the war, one was disposed to accept as gospel the pontifical utterances of newspapers concerning matters with which one was unacquainted—the law, say, or economics, or art. But never again! Journalists on occasion gave themselves away too badly during those years over warlike operations, army organization, and so forth, for one to let oneself be bluffed in future. Given the leisure, the inclination, and the necessary access to a large number of the organs of the Press, a libraryful of scrap-books could have been got together, replete with gaffes and absurdities seriously and solemnly set out in print. One or two examples of such blunders may be given for purposes of illustration.

After a shameful U-boat outrage committed on a hospital ship, a London morning paper actually urged, in its first leader, that half a dozen German officers should be "sent to sea in every hospital ship and in every transport" (the italics are mine). Here was a case of an editor (surely editors read through the leaders which are supposed to give the considered opinion of the journal of which they are in charge) deliberately proposing that this country should play as dirty a trick as any Boche was ever guilty of. A belligerent has a perfect right to sink a transport in time of war, just as he has a perfect right to bomb a train full of enemy troops. The Japanese sank a Chinese transport at the outbreak of the war of 1894 in the Far East, causing serious loss of life; the vessel was conveying troops from Wei-hai-wei to the Korean coast. According to this newspaper, a hostile attack upon the flotilla of vessels of various sorts and kinds which conveyed our Expeditionary Force to France would have been as much an act of treachery and a breach of the customs of war, as would an attack upon the vessels covered by the Red Cross which brought the wounded back.

An Army Order in April 1918, again, laid down that promotion to the rank of general would in future be by selection, not by seniority. A number of newspapers of quite good standing thereupon promptly tumbled head over heels into a pitfall entirely of their own creation. They started an attack upon the War Office for not having recognized the principle of advancement in the higher grades of the army by merit sooner, having failed to notice that the Army Order concerned the question of promotion to the rank of full general. Of their own accord, and quite gratuitously, they exposed their ignorance of the fact that promotions to the ranks of brigadier-general, major-general and lieutenant-general had been effected by selection for several years previously; and they also exposed their ignorance of the fact that, up till the time of the Great War, there had never been any special importance attached to the rank of full general. In the South African War, when we had a far larger military force on active service than ever previously in our history, only three general officers of higher rank than lieutenant-general were employed—Lord Roberts, Sir R. Buller, and Lord Kitchener—and, although all three were in the field together, Lord Roberts was a field-marshal; when, later, Lord Kitchener was in supreme command he had no full general under him.

The Great War produced an entirely new condition of things, because we then came to have operating in the field, not merely one army but several armies, each consisting of several army corps, and each of those army corps commanded by a lieutenant-general. It was therefore convenient that the armies should be commanded by full generals, and the rank of full general suddenly assumed a real instead of merely a nominal importance. It thus became necessary to effect promotion to full general by selection instead of by seniority. Nobody expects editors to know details of this kind; but it surely is their duty to investigate before starting on a crusade. In the case of people who knew the facts, this particular blunder merely made the newspapers that committed it look ridiculous; but the majority of those who read the drivel in all probability had no idea of the facts, and were led to imagine that promotions to the various ranks of general officer had hitherto all been a matter of seniority. It is an example of the way in which the public have been misled about the War Office by the Press for years past.

A year or so after the Armistice, one of the London evening papers, when criticizing the disinclination of the War Office to adopt new ideas in respect to devices for use in the field (a fair enough subject of discussion in itself), gave itself away by complaining that "tanks were not adopted before the war"! In that case the absurdity was so obvious that its effect upon most readers of the article probably was to make them regard the whole of it as rubbish, which was not correct. One wonders whether the following passage, which appeared in the very early days of the war in one of our foremost newspapers, may not have had something to do with that entirely unwarranted confidence in the "steam-roller" on the Eastern Front which prevailed in England between August 1914 and May 1915: "I refer to General Sukhomlinoff, the Russian Kitchener, who is reorganizing the Russian armies. Thanks to him, the Tsar's armies are irreproachably equipped." Compare [p. 283].

An article appeared in a leading Sunday newspaper in the spring of 1919, signalized by this amazing travesty of the actual facts. In a reference to our land forces of the early days of the struggle, the writer spoke of "armies sent to war lacking almost every modern requisite." Now, the Press generally manages to avoid grossly false statements of that kind when referring to individuals; if it does fall into such an error, the sequel is either an abject apology or else an uphill fight in the law courts followed by the payment of heavy damages. It is quite conceivable that the author of this unpardonable misrepresentation imagined himself to be telling the truth and that he erred out of sheer ignorance; but, if so, that merely serves to indicate how badly informed journalists often are of the matters which they are dealing with, when the question at issue happens to concern military subjects.

The expediency of affording greater opportunities to that great body of temporary officers who had joined up (many of them men of marked ability and advanced education), for occupying superior positions on the staff or for holding high command, was taken up warmly by a number of newspapers at the beginning of 1918. It is not proposed to discuss the theme on its merits—there was a good deal to be said for the contention. The matter is merely referred to because of the manner in which it was handled by the organs that were pressing it upon the notice of the public. Reference was very properly made to brains. But not one word was said about knowledge. Now, brains without knowledge may make an efficient Pressman—one is sometimes tempted to assume that the battalions of journalism are to some extent recruited from this source of supply. But brains without knowledge will no more make a superior staff officer who can be trusted, nor a commander of troops of all arms who will be able to make the most of them in face of the enemy, than will they make a successful physician or a proficient electrical engineer. It was also completely overlooked by the propagandists of this particular stunt that the experience which on every front, other than the Mesopotamian, temporary officers had been gaining was for practical purposes confined to trench warfare, and that, if a decision was ever going to be reached at all, it would be brought about under profoundly different tactical conditions from those which had been prevailing. The whole question hinged upon whether the requisite knowledge could be acquired, and upon what steps would be necessary to bring that desirable result about. The writers who dealt with the point perhaps recognized that brains were merely a means to the end, and not the end. But if they did, why did they fail ever even to mention the pinion upon which the whole question in reality hinged?

Journalists, when complaining of the censorship, have put forward the suggestion that this sort of thing ought to be left to the patriotism and honour of newspapers, that, if such a plan were adopted, the Press would of its own accord refrain from publishing any information that might be of value to the enemy in time of war, and that there would then be no need for any special official department dealing with this matter. That sounds plausible, but it will not stand examination for a moment. Granted that the great majority of editors and their staffs would never dream of wittingly disclosing information injurious to their country during hostilities, the fact remains that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. If one journal, in its eagerness to attract, prints what ought to have been kept secret, the reticence of the remainder is of no avail. Nor is this merely a question of honour and patriotism. It is also a question of competence. Censorship responsibilities demand knowledge and call for certain qualifications which the personnel of the Press in general does not possess. A few editors, no doubt, could be trusted to do the work efficiently; but that claim to omniscience which is unobtrusively, but none the less insistently, put forward by the Fourth Estate has no solid foundation. One of the lessons of the Great War has been that censorship is an extremely difficult operation to carry out even when in the hands of individuals well versed in the conditions that arise in times of national emergency. The idea that the Press could censor itself is ridiculous. That such a theory should ever have been put forward argues a strange inability to understand the essentials of the subject, and sets up a doctrine of infallibility in the world of journalism for which there is no justification.