Certain regiments hastily got together on the spot from men who could shoot and ride and who knew the Boers and their ways, performed most distinguished service during the South African War, so much so, indeed, that an idea got abroad amongst civilians at that time that the need for the elaborate and prolonged training, which professional soldiers always insisted upon, was merely a question of prejudice. Happily those who were responsible for our Army organization and for its preparation for war knew better, and August 1914 proved that they were right. It was not merely due to the stubborn grit of their personnel that the "Old Contemptibles" carried out their retreat from Mons in face of greatly superior hostile forces with what was in reality comparatively small loss, and that they were ready to advance and fight again as soon as they got the word. It was also due to rank and file and regimental officers and staff knowing their business thoroughly. Had those five divisions been, say, New Army divisions just arrived at the front, or divisions such as landed under General Birdwood's orders at Anzac on the 25th of April, they would have been swept back in hopeless confusion. They would not have known enough about the niceties of the game to play it successfully under such adverse conditions. The framework would not have stood the strain.
The sedentary type of operations which for three years played so big a part in most theatres was, it must be remembered, particularly favourable to newly created formations. Mobile warfare imposes a much more violent test. When really active work is being carried on in the field by partially trained troops, the platoon may do capitally, the company fairly well, the battalion not altogether badly; but the brigade will be all over the place, and the division will be in a state of chaos. Whatever conditions future campaigns may bring forth, trench warfare is unlikely to supervene immediately, nor to be brought about until something fairly important has happened; and it will not continue to the end unless the result of the conflict is to be indecisive. In 1918 there was nothing to choose between British divisions which had had no existence in August 1914 and those which had fought as the point of England's lance at Le Cateau, on the Marne and on the Aisne. But wars will not always last four years. Nor will the belligerent who has to create entirely new armies to carry on the struggle always prove victorious in the end.
THE END
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Footnote 1: Anglice, bank.[(Back to main text)]
Footnote 2: He brought his revolution off all right and was for a time President of the Southern China Republic.[(Back to main text)]
Footnote 3: While this volume has been in the press Sir G. Arthur's Life of Lord Kitchener has appeared, giving a different version of this story and probably the correct one. Walter Kitchener was speaking, I think, from hearsay.[(Back to main text)]
Footnote 4: A single "preliminary scheme of operations" would have been of little service to the C.-in-C. of "Medforce"—it must have been based on the mistaken assumption (which held good when he started) that the fleet would force the Straits, and it would consequently have concerned itself with undertakings totally different from those which, in the event, Sir Ian had to carry out. If the army was to derive any benefit from projects elaborated in the War Office, there must have been a second "preliminary scheme of operations" based on the assumption that the fleet was going to fail. What profit is there in a plan of campaign that dictates procedure to be followed after the first great clash of arms? In the case under consideration, the first great clash of arms befell on the 18th of March, five days after Sir Ian left London with his instructions, and it turned the whole business upside down.[(Back to main text)]
Footnote 5: The first I heard of the Tanks, which made so dramatic a debut near the Somme a year and a half later.[(Back to main text)]
Footnote 6: So late as the 21st of April 1920 The Times included the following passage in a leading article: "Every gunner officer on the Western Front during the winter of 1914-15 knows that there was a grave and calamitous deficiency of shells, and that no satisfactory attempt was made to rectify it until the matter was exposed in The Times." Dragging in the "gunner officer" at the front (who could not possibly tell what steps were being taken to rectify the deficiency) does not alter the fact that this passage amounts to an accusation that no satisfactory attempt was made to rectify the deficiency until after the Northcliffe Press stunt. The Times may have been so ill-informed as to the actual facts in 1915 as to suppose that this was true. The Times cannot have been so ill-informed as to the actual facts in 1920 as to suppose that it was true.[(Back to main text)]