CHAPTER FOUR THE DOOR CLOSED

"Proprium humani ingenii est, odisse quem laeseris."

Tacitus: Agricola C. 42.

1

As I write, the war has been in progress for two and a half years, and it is beyond the wit of man to foretell how much longer it will continue, though there is the annual feeling that peace will come before the autumn. In August we shall reach the end of the three years which Lord Kitchener had in mind when he began his preparations, but I for one look forward to the summer of 1917 with greater apprehension than ever I felt a year ago. During 1916 I was the unconscious psychological victim of men like Grayle who were so convinced of our predestined failure under the existing régime that they went some way towards convincing me. In June the field of war was extended by the Bulgarian inroads into Greece, and, though we talked still of the "Russian steam-roller," it was not until July that the Austrian counter-drive in Russia and Italy was checked. The New Army, which had been so grandly raised, went into action at the Somme and covered itself with immortal renown; we did not quickly see how much had been spent and how little achieved—"Six hundred thousand casualties and an unbroken German front," as Grayle declared to me in the Smoking-Room at the House one night.

Grayle's political sense was good in that from the breakdown of the Somme offensive he saw that the days of the Government were numbered. Ministers never recovered the prestige which they had lost in the Irish rising. The disastrous expedition to the Dardanelles was being discussed so widely and bitterly that an enquiry had to be instituted; so with the no less disastrous expedition to Mesopotamia; and, as more men were frittered away in Salonica, we began to wonder whether we should not have to hold a third enquiry, indeed an enquiry into every subsidiary enterprise which every amateur strategist in the Cabinet undertook in any theatre of war.

There were many who began at this time to swell Grayle's clamour for a change,—a series of changes, indeed, simultaneously in the Ministry which was weak enough to embark on this succession of costly failures and in the soldiers who failed to achieve success with such conditions of men, material and ammunition as the Germans had never equalled in the days when the balance tipped highest in their favour. I had, myself, always simulated rather a superior aloofness, for I felt that, as the war was a bigger and longer enterprise than my fellows would admit, so we must be prepared for greater failures in coping with it. Yet I can see now that I began to listen less impatiently to the critics. The War Office at this time was in the charge of a distinguished soldier who had had the vision and courage to prophesy a long war and whose personality and reputation were of inestimable value in creating the armies which came to bear his name. Largely on newspaper prompting, the Government had made Lord Kitchener Secretary of State for War, and the country as a whole was reassured by the presence of an expert military brain in the deplorably civilian councils of the cabinet. There was a simple-minded faith, which expressed itself in Maurice Maitland's phrase, "Leave it to K."; a volume of work which no single man could accomplish was thereupon trustingly concentrated in the hands of one who loved to hold as many strings as possible. Stagnation in the War Office gave way to chaos, until one function after another—recruiting, equipment and munitions—were withdrawn from his grasp and confided to others. Later the Staff control was separated from the political control, and Lord Kitchener gave no orders that were not countersigned by his Chief of Staff; later still an effort was made in the cabinet to deprive him of an office which he had ceased usefully to fill. He was sent to inspect the Eastern theatre of war; he was sent also to Russia....

I am unlikely to forget a day when I was lunching with Bertrand at the Eclectic Club. Maitland sat down with a blank face and said, "I've got some bad news for you men. K's been drowned. He was going out to Russia, and his ship—the 'Hampshire'—was sunk by a mine or torpedo—they don't know which, and the North Sea must be full of loose mines after this Jutland action. The sea was so rough that the escort had to turn back almost at once...." Some time passed before we could discuss Maitland's news, for Lord Kitchener had been so imposing an idol, so aloof and mysterious—until you met him at close quarters, as I had done a few days before, when a deputation of us waited on him and sought enlightenment on subjects which we could not discuss openly in the House—so well-established and unshakable; we never expected him to die in the middle of the war, certainly we never dreamed of a death so fortuitous, unnecessary, so much the freak of Providence.

"Yet I'm not sure it's not the best thing for his reputation," Maitland said. "Felix opportunitate mortis, you know. There's a whole crop of failures to explain, and his prestige must have suffered. Don't you sometimes feel that we want a clean sweep, Stornaway?... I'm a soldier myself, but it was a great mistake, whatever people may think, putting a soldier at the War Office...."

The news was being cried in the streets, as I went back to my department; half-way through the afternoon a messenger came into my room to say that all blinds in all government offices were to be drawn; that night, Yolande told me, was the worst she had known since the tidings reached her nearly two years before that her brother had been killed in the retreat from Mons. Wave after wave of men poured from the leave-trains and surged into her canteen, demanding confirmation of this story which was being whispered at the coast. And, when she told them or pointed to the official report, they still, would not believe it. He was the man under whom they had enlisted....