Chapter 12
But to-day! Those great empty workshops that I saw in February, in the making, or the furnishing, are now full of workers and machines; and thousands like them all over the country. Last night (Aug. 15), the new Minister of Munitions, Mr. Montagu, who, a few weeks ago, succeeded Mr. Lloyd George, now Minister for War, rendered an account of his department up to date, which amazed even the House of Commons, and will surely stir the minds of men throughout the British Empire with a just and reasonable pride. The "effete" and "degenerate" nation has roused herself indeed!
Here is the bare résumé of the Minister's statement:--
_Ammunition._--The British output of ammunition at the beginning of the war was intended for an army of 200,000 men.
Naturally, the output rose steadily throughout the first year of war.
_But_--the same output which in 1914-15 took 12 months to produce could now be produced--
As to 18-pounder ammunition, in 3 weeks " Field howitzer " in 2 weeks " Medium gun and howitzer ammunition, in 11 days " Heavy shell, in 4 days
We are sending over to France _every week as_ much as the whole pre-war stock of land service ammunition in the country.
As to _guns_, I would ask my readers to turn back to the second and third chapters in this little book, which show something of the human side and the daily detail of this great business, and then to look at this summary:--
_Every month, now_, we are turning out nearly twice as many big guns as were in existence for land service--i.e., not naval guns--when the Ministry of Munitions came into being (June, 1915).
Between June, 1915, and June, 1916, the monthly output of _heavy guns_ has increased _6-fold_--and the present output will soon be doubled.
For every 100 _eighteen-pounders_ turned out in the first 10 months of the war, we are now turning out 500.
We are producing 18 times as many _machine-guns_.
Of _rifles_--the most difficult of all war material to produce quickly in large quantities--our weekly home production is now 3 times as great as it was a year ago. We are supplying our Army overseas with rifles and machine-guns entirely from home sources.
Of _small-arms ammunition_ our output is 3 times as great as a year ago.
We are producing 66 times as much _high explosive_ as at the beginning of 1915; and our output of _bombs_ is 33 times as great as it was last year.
At the same time, what is Great Britain doing _for her Allies_?
The loss of her Northern Provinces, absorbed by the German invasion, has deprived France of three-quarters of her steel. We are now sending to France _one-third of the whole British production of shell-steel_.
We are also supplying the Allies with the _constituents of high explosive_ in very large quantities, prepared by our National factories.
We are sending to the Allies _millions of tons of coal and coke every month_, large quantities of machinery, and 20 per cent. of our whole production of machine tools (indispensable to shell manufacture).
We are supplying Russia with millions of pairs of Army boots.
And in the matter of ammunition, we have not only enormously increased the quantity produced--we have greatly improved its quality. The testimony of the French experts--themselves masters in these arts of death--as conveyed through M. Thomas, is emphatic. The new British heavy guns are "admirably made"--"most accurate"--"most efficient."
Meanwhile a whole series of chemical problems with regard to high explosives have been undertaken and solved by Lord Moulton's department. If it was ever true that science was neglected by the War Office, it is certainly true no longer; and the soldiers at the front, who have to make practical use of what our scientific chemists and our explosive factories at home are producing, are entirely satisfied.
For that, as Mr. Montagu points out, is the sole and supreme test. How has the vast activity of the new Ministry of Munitions--an activity which the nation owes--let me repeat it--to the initiative, the compelling energy, of Mr. Lloyd George--affected our armies in the field?
The final answer to that question is not yet. The Somme offensive is still hammering at the German gates; I shall presently give an outline of its course from its opening on July 1st down to the present. But meanwhile what can be said is this.
The expenditure of ammunition which enabled us to sweep through the German first lines, in the opening days of this July, almost with ease, was colossal beyond all precedent. The total amount of heavy guns and ammunition manufactured by Great Britain in the first ten months of the war, from August, 1914, to June 1, 1915, would not have kept the British bombardment on the Somme going _for a single day_. That gives some idea of it.
Can we keep it up? The German papers have been consoling themselves with the reflection that so huge an effort must have exhausted our supplies. On the contrary, says Mr. Montagu. _The output of the factories, week by week, now covers the expenditure in the field_. No fear now, that as at Loos, as at Neuve Chapelle, and as on a thousand other smaller occasions, British success in the field should be crippled and stopped by shortage of gun and shell!
By whom has this result been brought about? By that army of British workmen--and workwomen--which Mr. Lloyd George in little more than one short year has mobilised throughout the country. The Ministry of Munitions is now employing _three millions and a half of workers_--(a year ago it was not much more than a million and a half)--of whom 400,000 _are women_; and the staff of the Ministry has grown from 3,000--the figure given in my earlier letters--to 5,000, just as that army of women, which has sprung as it were out of the earth at the call of the nation, has almost doubled since I wrote in April last. Well may the new Minister say that our toilers in factory and forge have had some share in the glorious recent victories of Russia, Italy, and France! Our men and our women have contributed to the re-equipment of those gallant armies of Russia, which, a month or six weeks earlier than they were expected to move, have broken up the Austrian front, and will soon be once more in Western Poland, perhaps in East Prussia! The Italian Army has drawn from our workshops and learnt from our experiments. The Serbian Army has been re-formed and re-fitted.
Let us sum up. The Germans, with years of preparation behind them, made this war a war of machines. England, in that as in other matters, was taken by surprise. But our old and proud nation, which for generations led the machine industry of the world, as soon as it realised the challenge--and we were slow to realise it!--met it with an impatient and a fierce energy which is every month attaining a greater momentum and a more wonderful result. The apparently endless supply of munitions which now feeds the British front, and the _comparative_ lightness of the human cost at which the incredibly strong network of the German trenches on their whole first line system was battered into ruin, during the last days of June and the first days of July, 1916:--it is to effects like these that all that vast industrial effort throughout Great Britain, of which I saw and described a fragment three months ago, has now steadily and irresistibly brought us.
II
This then is perhaps the first point to notice in the landscape of the war, as we look back on the last three months. For on it everything else, Naval and Military, depends:--on the incredibly heightened output of British workshops, in all branches of war material, which has been attained since the summer of last year. In it, as I have just said, we see an _effect_ of a great cause--i.e., of the "effort" made by Great Britain, since the war broke out, to bring her military strength in men and munitions to a point, sufficient, in combination with the strength of her Allies, for victory over the Central Powers, who after long and deliberate preparation had wantonly broken the European peace. The "effort" was for us a new one, provoked by Germany, and it will have far-reaching civil consequences when the war is over.
In the great Naval victory now known as the Battle of Jutland, on the other hand, we have a fresh demonstration on a greater scale than ever before, of that old, that root fact, without which indeed the success of the Allied effort in other directions would be impossible--i.e., _the overwhelming strength of the British Navy_, and its mastery of the Sea.
In a few earlier pages of this book, I have described a visit which the British Admiralty allowed me to make in February last to a portion of the Fleet, then resting in a northern harbour. On that occasion, at the Vice-Admiral's luncheon-table, there sat beside me on my right, a tall spare man with the intent face of one to whom life has been a great arid strenuous adventure, accepted in no boyish mood, but rather in the spirit of the scientific explorer, pushing endlessly from one problem to the next, and passionate for all experience that either unveils the world, or tests himself. We talked of the war, and my projected journey. "I envy you!" he said, his face lighting up. "I would give anything to see our Army in the field." My neighbour was Rear-Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot, commanding the First Cruiser Squadron, who went down with his flagship _H.M.S. Defence_, in the Battle of Jutland, on the 31st of May last, while passing between the British and German fleets, under a very heavy fire. "It is probable," said Admiral Jellicoe's despatch, "that Sir Robert Arbuthnot, during his engagement with the enemy's light cruisers, and in his desire to complete their destruction, was not aware of the approach of the enemy's heavy ships, owing to the mist, until he found himself in close proximity to the main fleet, and before he could withdraw his ships, they were caught under a heavy fire and disabled." So, between the fleets of Germany and England, amid the mists of the May evening, and the storm and smoke of battle, my courteous neighbour of three months before found, with all his shipmates, that grave in the "unharvested sea" which England never forgets to honour, and from which no sailor shrinks. At the same luncheon-table were two other Admirals and many junior Officers, who took part in the same great action; and looking back upon it, and upon the notes which I embodied in my first Letter, I see more vividly than ever how every act and thought of those brave and practised men, among whom I passed those few--to me--memorable hours, were conditioned by an intense _expectation_, that trained prevision of what must come, which, in a special degree, both stirs and steadies the mind of the modern sailor.
But one thing perhaps they had not foreseen--that by a combination of mishaps in the first reporting of the battle, the great action, which has really demonstrated, once and for all, the invincible supremacy of Great Britain at sea, which has reduced the German Fleet to months of impotence, put the invasion of these islands finally out of the question, and enabled the British blockade to be drawn round Germany with a yet closer and sterner hand, was made to appear, in the first announcements of it, almost a defeat. The news of our losses--our heavy losses--came first--came almost alone. The Admiralty, with the stern conscience of the British official mind, announced them as they came in--bluntly--with little or no qualification. A shock of alarm went through England! For what had we paid so sore a price? Was the return adequate, and not only to our safety, but to our prestige?
There were a few hours when both Great Britain--outside the handful of men who knew--and her friends throughout the world, hung on the answer. Meanwhile the German lie, which converted a defeat for Germany into a "victory," got at least twenty-four hours' start, and the Imperial Chancellor made quick and sturdy use of it when he extracted a War Loan of £600,000,000 from a deluded and jubilant Reichstag. Then the news came in from one quarter after another of the six-mile battle-line, from one unit after another of the greatest sea-battle Britain had ever fought, and by the 3rd or 4th of June, England, drawing half-ironic breath over her own momentary misgiving, had realised the truth--first--that the German Fleet on the 31st had only escaped total destruction by the narrowest margin, and by the help of mist and darkness; secondly--that its losses were, relatively far greater, and in all probability, absolutely, greater than our own; thirdly--that after the British battle-fleet had severed the German navy from its base, the latter had been just able, under cover of darkness, to break round the British ships, and fly hard to shelter, pursued by our submarines and destroyers through the night, till it arrived at Wilhelmshaven a battered and broken host, incapable at least for months to come of any offensive action against Great Britain or her Allies. Impossible henceforth--for months to come--to send a German squadron sufficiently strong to harass Russia in the Baltic! Impossible to interfere successfully with the passage of Britain's new armies across the seas! Impossible to dream any longer of invading English coasts! The British Fleet holds the North Sea more strongly than it has ever held it; and behind the barbed wire defences of Wilhelmshaven or Heligoland the German Fleet has been nursing its wounds.
Some ten weeks have passed, and as these results have become plain to all the world, the German lie, or what remained of it, has begun to droop, even in the country of its birth. "Do not let us suppose," says Captain Persius--the most honest of German naval critics, in a recent article--"that we have shaken the sea-power of England. That would be foolishness." While Mr. Balfour, the most measured, the most veracious of men, speaking only a few days ago to the representatives of the Dominion Parliaments, who have been visiting England, says quietly--"the growth of our Navy, since the outbreak of war, which has gone on, and which at this moment is still going on, is something of which I do not believe the general public has the slightest conception."
For the general public has, indeed, but vague ideas of what is happening day by day and week by week in the great shipyards of the Clyde, the Tyne, and the Mersey. But there, all the same, the workmen--and workwomen--of Great Britain--(for women are taking an ever-increasing share in the lighter tasks of naval engineering)--are adding incessantly to the sea-power of this country, acquiescing in a Government control, a loosening of trade custom, a dilution and simplification of skilled labour, which could not have been dreamt of before the war. At the same time they are meeting the appeal of Ministers to give up or postpone the holidays they have so richly earned, for the sake of their sons and brothers in the trenches, with a dogged "aye, aye!" in which there is a note of profound understanding, of invincible and personal determination, but rarely heard in the early days of the war.
III
So much for the Workshops and the Navy. Now before I turn to the New Armies and the Somme offensive, let us look for a moment at the present facts of British War Finance. By April last, the date of my sixth Letter, we had raised 2,380 millions sterling, for the purposes of the war; we had lent 500 millions to our Allies, and we were spending about 5 millions a day on the war. According to a statement recently made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (August 10), by March next our debt will have risen to 3,440 millions sterling, 1,060 millions more than it stood at in March last; our advances to our Allies will have increased to 800 millions, while our daily war expenditure remains about the same.
Mr. McKenna's tone in announcing these figures was extraordinarily cheerful. "We have every reason," he said, amid the applause of the House of Commons--"to be proud of the manner in which British credit has stood the strain." The truth is that by March next, at the present rate of expenditure, our total indebtedness (deducting the advances to our Allies) will almost exactly equal "one year's national income," i.e., the aggregate of the income of every person in the country. But if a man having an income of £5,000 a year, were to owe a total of £5,000, we should not consider his position very serious. "We shall collect a revenue in one year equal to 20 per cent. of the whole debt (i.e., 522 millions sterling), and we shall be able to pay, _out of existing taxation_, the interest on the debt, and a considerable sinking-fund, and shall still have left a large margin _for the reduction of taxation_"--words which left a comfortable echo in the ears of the nation. Meanwhile British trade--based on British sea-power--has shown extraordinary buoyancy, the exports steadily increasing; so that the nation, in the final words of the Chancellor, feels "no doubt whatever that we shall be able to maintain our credit to the end of the war, _no matter how long it may last_."
But do not let it be supposed that this huge revenue is being raised without sacrifice, _without effort_. It means--for the present--as I have already pointed out, the absorption by the State of five shillings in the pound from the income of every citizen, above a moderate minimum, and of a lesser but still heavy tax from those below that minimum; it means new and increased taxation in many directions; and, as a consequence, heavy increases in the cost of living; it means sharply diminished spending for large sections of our population, and serious pinching for our professional and middle classes.
But the nation, as a whole, makes no lament. We look our taxes in the face, and we are beginning to learn how to save. We have our hearts fixed on the future; and we have counted the cost.
The money then is no difficulty. Our resisting power, our prosperity even, under the blows of war, have been unexpectedly great.
But what are we getting for our money?
In the case of the Navy, the whole later course of the war, no less than the Battle of Jutland, has shown what the British Navy means to the cause of the Allies. It is as I have said, the root fact in the war; and in the end, it will be the determining fact; although, of itself, it cannot defeat Germany _as we must defeat her_; at any rate in any reasonable time.
Then as to the Army. Take first of all the administrative side. To what--in the last four months--has come that wonderful system of organisation and supply I tried to sketch in my fourth Letter, largely in the words of some of the chief actors in it?
Within the last fortnight, a skilled observer has been reporting to the British public his impressions of the "Army behind the Lines" in France, as I saw a portion of it last February, in the great British supply bases and hospital camps, on the lines of communication, and throughout the immense and varied activities covered by the British motor transport.
"The Germans," says this recent eye-witness, "have persisted that, even if we could find the men, we could not make the machine, which they have been perfecting for forty years and more. But _it is here!_--operating with perfect smoothness; a machine, which in its mere mass and intricacy, almost staggers the imagination. One cannot speak of the details of the system for fear of saying something which should not be told; but it is stupendous in its proportion, dealing as it does with the methodical handling of the men in their hundreds of thousands, of all their equipment and supplies, food, miscellaneous baggage and ammunition, and with the endless trains of guns--guns--guns, and shells, by millions upon millions, all brought from England, and all here in their place, or moved from place to place with the rhythm of clock-work. One cannot convey any idea of it, nor grasp it in its entirety; but day by day the immensity of it grows on one, and one realises how trivial beside it has been anything that British military organisation has had to do in the past. That is the real miracle; not the mere millions of men, nor even their bravery, but this huge frictionless machine of which they are a part--this thing which Great Britain has put together here in the last twenty months."
IV
But just as in March my thoughts pressed eagerly forward, from the sight allowed me of the machine, to its uses on the battle-front, to that line of living and fighting men for which it exists--so now.
Only, since I stood upon the hill near Poperinghe on March 2nd, that line of men has been indefinitely strengthened; and the main scene of battle is no longer the Ypres salient. Looking southward from the old windmill, whose supports sheltered us on that cold spring afternoon, I knew that, past Bailleul, and past Neuve Chapelle, I was looking straight toward Albert and the Somme, and I knew too that it was there that the British were taking over a new portion of the line,--so that we might be of _some_ increased support--all that was then allowed us by the Allied Command!--to that incredible defence of Verdun, which was in all our minds and hearts.
But what I could not know was that in that misty distance was hidden--four months away--a future movement, at which no one then guessed, outside the higher brains of the Army. The days went on. The tide of battle ebbed and flowed round Verdun. The Crown Prince hewed and hacked his way, with enormous loss to Germany, to points within three and four miles of the coveted town--fortress no longer. But there France stopped him--like the beast of prey that has caught its claws in the iron network it is trying to batter down, and cannot release them; and there he is still. Meanwhile, in June, seven to eight weeks before the expected moment, Brusiloff's attack broke loose, and the Austrian front began to crumble; just in time to bring the Italians welcome aid in the Trentino.
And still from the Somme to the Yser, the Anglo-French forces waited; and still across the Channel poured British soldiers and British guns. In industrial England, the Whitsuntide holidays had been given up; and there were at any rate some people who knew that there would be no August holidays either. Leave and letters had been stopped. But there had been apparent signs, wrongly interpreted, before. The great Allied attack on the West--was it ready, _at last_?
Then--with the 27th of June, along the whole British battle-front of 90 miles, there sprang up a violent and continuous bombardment varied by incessant raids on the enemy lines. Those who witnessed that bombardment can hardly find words in which to describe it. "It was an extraordinary and a terrible spectacle," says a correspondent. "Within the dreadful zone the woods are leafless, château and farm and village, alike, mere heaps of ruins." Ah! _ce beau pays de France_--with all its rich and ancient civilisation--it is not French hearts alone that bleed for you! But it was the voice of deliverance, of vengeance, that was speaking in the guns which crashed incessantly day and night, while shells of all calibres rained--so many to the second--from every yard of the British front, on the German lines. The correspondents with the British Headquarters could only speculate with held breath, as to what was happening under that ghastly veil of smoke and fire on the horizon, and what our infantry would find when the artillery work was done, and the attack was launched.