(c) To raise a compulsory levy of 500,000 men for Home defence.
This levy should be formed upon the cadres of the Territorial divisions, so as to enable a proportion of the Territorial army to be released at the end of the sixth month. The question of sending any part of the compulsory levy by compulsion to the Continent would not arise until after this force had been trained. The steady augmentation of British military strength during the progress of the war would, however, put us in a position by the end of the twelfth month to secure or re-establish British interests outside Europe, even if, through the defeat or desertion of allies, we were forced to continue the war alone.
No lesser steps would seem adequate to the scale of events.
W. S. C.
The Conference separated. Apprehension lay heavy on the minds of all who had participated in it.
The War Office hummed with secrets in those days. Not the slightest overt action could be taken. But every preparation by forethought was made and every detail was worked out on paper. The railway time-tables, or graphics as they were called, of the movement of every battalion—even where they were to drink their coffee—were prepared and settled. Thousands of maps of Northern France and Belgium were printed. The cavalry manœuvres were postponed “on account of the scarcity of water in Wiltshire and the neighbouring counties.” The press, fiercely divided on party lines, overwhelmingly pacific in tendency, without censorship, without compulsion, observed a steady universal reticence. Not a word broke the long drawn oppressive silence. The great railway strike came to an end with mysterious suddenness. Mutual concessions were made by masters and men after hearing a confidential statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In the middle of August I went to the country for a few days. I could not think of anything else but the peril of war. I did my other work as it came along, but there was only one field of interest fiercely illuminated in my mind. Sitting on a hilltop in the smiling country which stretches round Mells, the lines I have copied at the top of this chapter kept running through my mind. Whenever I recall them, they bring back to me the anxieties of those Agadir days.
From Mells I wrote the following letter to Sir Edward Grey. It speaks for itself.
Mr. Churchill to Sir Edward Grey.