CHAPTER VI

FOR THE DURATION OF THE WAR

“Oh, well, I shall explain to ’em that the country’s at war.” —_The Law Divine._

On August 3rd or 4th, 1914, when war was declared, we were at Apple Porch. My sister Decima was with us, and I can remember her sitting in the garden drawing up on a piece of paper, headed “H. V. Esmond’s and Eva Moore’s Tour,” the details of her scheme for organising women’s work, so that it might be used to the best advantage in the coming struggle.

We went to London, and by the Saturday following the offices of the Women’s Emergency Corps were opened. Gertrude Kingston lent the Little Theatre, and it was there the work began. I was playing at the Vaudeville Theatre each evening, and working at the Little Theatre all day. Women enrolled in thousands; trained women were grouped into their proper classes, and untrained women were questioned as to what they “could do”. Weekly lists were sent to the War Office, containing full particulars as to the numbers of women we could supply for transport, cooks, interpreters, and so forth; and each week a letter was received in acknowledgment, saying that women “were not needed”. That was in 1914. Eighteen months later the Corps was found to be the “front door”, the place where women could be found to meet any emergency. It would be impossible to give one-tenth of the names of the women who worked for and with the Corps, women who gave time and money, brain and endurance, to the work. The Emergency Corps was the first body of women in this country regularly to meet the refugees from Belgium, find them hospitality, clothes, and food. It was the first organisation to make a definite attempt to supply British toys; it sent women, capable of teaching French, to most of the large training camps throughout the country. I remember we issued a small book, called _French for Tommies_, which was remarkably useful. The Corps sent thousands of blankets to Serbia, ran the first ambulances, organised canteens for the troops in France, provided cheap meals for workers, and a hundred other things which I cannot remember. When the cry for respirators was first raised, the Corps took a disused laundry, and supplied them in thousands; they were a pattern which was soon superseded, but that was the pattern supplied to us at the time.

When I went on tour, I undertook to enrol members in the provinces, and met with considerable success; and it was a year later, 1915, at Bournemouth, that I met Miss Marie Chisholm and Mrs. Knocker, who had been in Belgium with Dr. Munro, and who had the first Ambulance Corps out in Belgium and did such fine work in the early days of 1914. They were home on leave, to return when it was ended to their dressing-station on the Belgian front line. I was very interested in their work, and promised to do what I could to help. Through the kindness and generosity of the British public, I was able to send them money and many useful things. I should like to quote one instance—one of many—which shows how the public responded to any appeal. At Birmingham I heard from Miss Chisholm that the Belgian “Tommies” were suffering very badly from frost-bitten ears; the wind, coming over the inundated fields in front of the trenches, cut like a knife. “I would give anything,” she wrote, “for a thousand Balaclava helmets.” On the Thursday night, at the Birmingham theatre, I made my appeal, and in a week 500 had been sent to me, and 1000 followed in less than three weeks’ time. Sandbags, too, I was able to send out in thousands, through the interest and kindness of those who heard my appeals. It was through the Emergency Corps that I really first met them. Miss Chisholm had been my messenger in the very early days of the war, and, before I pass on to other matters, I want to say a last word about that organisation. It was the parent of practically all the other war societies. The Needlework Guilds formed their societies on the lines we had used; the various workrooms, in which women’s work was carried on, came to us to hear how it was done; the W.A.F. and W.A.A.C., and other semi-military organisations, were formed long after we had started the Women’s Volunteer Reserve. Much concern had been expressed at the bare idea of Women Volunteers; but Decima and Mrs. Haverfield stuck to their point, and Mrs. Haverfield carried on that branch finely. Nothing but a national necessity could have brought women together in such numbers, or spurred them on to work in the splendid way they did. The Corps was a “clearing house” for women’s work, and when women settled down into their proper spheres of usefulness, the Corps, having met the emergency, ceased as an active body to exist; but, before it did so, it had justified its existence a dozen times over.

Major A. Gordon, who was King’s Messenger to the King of the Belgians, proved himself a great friend to the “Women of Pervyse” and myself. It was through his efforts that I was able to pay my memorable visit to the Belgian trenches in 1918, and later I had the honour of receiving the Order de la Reine Elizabeth. All we five sisters worked for the war in all different branches at home and abroad, and we all received decorations: Decima, the Commander of the British Empire, Medallion de Reconnaissance, and Overseas Medals; Bertha, the O.B.E. for home service; Emily (Mrs. Pertwee), Le Palm d’Or, for Belgian work; Ada, the Allied and Overseas Medals for services with the French and British, in both France and Germany, also, through her efforts in endowing a room in the British Women’s Hospital for the totally disabled soldier, Star and Garter. Speaking of this brings back the memory of the wonderful day at Buckingham Palace, when the Committee of the British Women’s Hospital, founded by the Actresses’ Franchise League in 1914, were commanded by the Queen to present personally to her the £50,000 they had raised for that hospital. If I remember rightly, about 23 of us were there. The Queen, after the presentation, walked down the line and spoke to each one of us with her wonderful gracious manner, and to many referred to the pleasure she had received from seeing our various theatrical performances. Before the Queen entered the room, we were asked by Sir Derek Keppel to form ourselves in alphabetical order, and Lady Wyndham (Miss Mary Moore), my sister Decima, Lady Guggisberg, and myself (Mrs. H. V. Esmond) all promptly grouped ourselves under the M’s as Moores.

In the spring of 1918, when the Germans were making their last big advance, I was able to arrange to pay a flying visit to Belgium, to see the dressing-station at Pervyse. We had to pass Fumes, and found it in flames. The sight of that town being steadily bombarded, with the houses flaming against a brilliant sunset, was one of the most terrible but wonderful coloured things I have ever seen. We arrived at the H.Q. of the 2nd Division of the Belgian Army, to find the evening strafe in full swing. I can see now the Belgian Tommy as I saw him then, quite unconcerned by the guns, planting little flowers, Bachelor’s Buttons, outside the General’s hut. I wished that I could have shared his unconcern; I found the noise simply ear-splitting, and when a particularly noisy shell burst, and I asked the General if “it was going or coming”, he roared with laughter. I have never felt less amused than I did at that moment!

He sent us over to Pervyse in his car, to collect some papers which Mrs. Knocker, who was returning to England in a few days, needed. The dressing-station was a small and much-shelled house, on the very edge of the flooded land which lay between the Belgian trenches and the enemy—from the little house you could actually see the German sandbags. The dressing-station itself was anything but a “health resort”, and there is no question that these two women faced great danger with enormous fortitude.

Afterwards we motored to G.H.Q., where the staff were at dinner—or, rather tragically for us, where the staff had just _finished_ dinner. I have the Menu still, signed by all who were present. It consisted of “Poached Eggs and Water Cress”, with Coffee to follow. We did not like to say we were “starving for want of food”, and so said we had dined. I was very glad to remember that in our car reposed a cooked chicken, which had been bought in Dunkirk. We—that is, Miss Chisholm, Mrs. Knocker (who had become by then Baroness T’Scerelles), her husband, and I—slept at a farmhouse some distance from H.Q. The only tolerably pleasant part of the night, which was noisy with the sound of shells, was the eating (with our fingers) of the cooked chicken. I do not think I have ever been so hungry in my life!

The following day I was taken to the trenches at Ramskeppelle. The men were very much astonished to see a woman in mufti. What struck me most was the beauty of the day, for the sun was shining, and birds singing, yet from behind us came the noise of the 15–inch guns, firing on the Germans, and back came the thunder of their replies. The sunshine, the birds, the beauty of the day—and war!

I stayed at Boulogne, on the way back, for the night, as the guest of Lady Hatfield at the Red Cross Hospital, and then returned home, bringing with me the Baroness, who was suffering from shock and the awful effects of gas. If it has seemed, or did seem at the time, that these two women had perhaps overmuch praise for what they did, I would ask you to remember that they worked in that exposed position, continually running grave risks, for three and a half years. It was the sustained effort that was so wonderful, which demanded our admiration, as well as the work which received the grateful thanks of the whole of the 2nd and 3rd Divisions of the Belgian Army.

To go back to the theatrical side of things. In 1914, the first week of the war, some 200 touring companies were taken “off the road”, and we—my husband and I—were advised to cancel our provincial dates at once. This we decided not to do, but to “carry on” as we had already arranged. The financial side was not very satisfactory, but I must say that the managers in the country appreciated our efforts; and, apart from that, we had the satisfaction of knowing that we were providing work for, at anyrate, a few artists and the staffs in the provincial theatres, at a time when work was very, very difficult to obtain.

I look back on those years of the war as a rather confused series of emotions and pictures, when one worked, spoke at meetings, played in the evening, read the casualty lists, and always “wondered why”; when each day seemed to bring the news that some friend had made the supreme sacrifice, when each day brought the knowledge that the world was the poorer for the loss of many gallant gentlemen. Pictures that remain—tragic, humorous, and soul-stirring. The first detachment of men I saw leaving for the front! It was about a quarter to twelve; I had been playing at Kennington Theatre, and stood waiting for a ’bus at the end of Westminster Bridge. As I stood, I heard the sound of marching men, “the men who joined in ’14”. Out of the darkness they came, still in their civilian clothes, not marching with the precision of trained men, but walking as they would have done to their work. Not alone, for beside almost each man walked a woman, and often she carried his bundle, and he carried—perhaps for the last time—a baby. I wondered if King Charles, riding his horse in Trafalgar Square, had seen them pass and realised that in them was the same spirit as lived in the Englishmen who sent him to the scaffold—that England and the English people might be free? Nelson, watching from the top of his column, must have known that the spirit that lived in his men at Copenhagen, the Nile, and Trafalgar was still there, burning brightly; and His Grace of Cambridge, once Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, did he too watch the sons and grandsons of the men who fought in the Crimea, going out to face the same dangers, the same horrors, as the men he had known? So they passed, in silence, for at such times one cannot find words to cry “Good luck” or “God bless you”. Out of the darkness they came, and into the darkness again they went, in silence—“the men who joined up in ’14”.

And Southampton in the early days! One night men began to march past the Star Hotel at six in the evening, and at six the next morning men were still marching past, and all the time the sound of singing went with them, all night long—“Tipperary”. I wonder what “Tipperary” meant to them all; did it mean home, the trenches, or Berlin? Who knows! but they never seemed to tire of singing it.

In May, 1915, we went to Ireland, and in Dublin we heard of the loss of the “Lusitania”. No one believed it was true. It seemed impossible that England’s super-passenger ship could have been sunk almost in sight of land.

We reached Cork on the Sunday evening. Charles Frohman was one of the missing passengers. Early on the Monday, Harry and I went to Queenstown, to try and find his body. The sight we saw in the shed on the Cunard quay is beyond description. Lying on the concrete floor, their hands all tied with thick pieces of rope, lay nearly a hundred victims of war and German civilisation! Men, women, children, and little babies. I shall never forget the pathos of the dead children and babies! Dragged into the awful machinery of war, the Holy Innocents of the Twentieth Century, butchered by the order of a Modern Herod. In one corner lay a little girl, about nine years old; her face was covered with a cloth; the terrible pathos of her poor little legs, wearing rather bright blue stockings, the limp stillness of her! We found poor Mr. Frohman—the man who made theatrical destinies, launched great theatrical ventures, who had been sought after, made much of, and was loved by all those who knew him—lying there alone, although he was surrounded by silent men and women. We took him flowers, the only flowers in all that dreadful shed. They went with him to America, and later his sister told us they were buried with him. Outside in the streets and in the Cunard office were men and women, white-faced and dry-eyed: it was all too big for tears: tears were dried up by horror. Later in the week the streets from the station to quay had on each side of the road a wall of coffins.

I read in the papers accounts of the disaster, of the “wonderful peace which was on the faces of the dead”. That peace can only have existed in the minds of the writers—I know I did not see it. Horror, fear, amazement, and, I think, resentment at being hurled into eternity; but peace existed no more in the faces of the dead than it did in my heart. I came away from that shed and cursed the German nation. Yet even little children had done great things. Lady Allen, from Montreal, was on board with her two little girls. I was told by their sister, who was over doing Red Cross work, that they stood all three hand in hand, wearing life-belts, when a woman friend came up to them; she was without a belt. One of the little girls took off her belt, saying as she did so, “You take mine, because I have learnt to swim”. Lady Allen and the two children, holding hands, jumped into the sea; neither of the children was ever seen again alive.

I met an Australian soldier, in a tiny hotel (for every place was full to overflowing), who had been on board. He told me that in his boat there was a woman who sang steadily for hours to keep up the spirits of her companions; she was, he said, “perfectly wonderful”. After they had been on the water for five hours, they saw a man on a small raft; they had no oars, and neither had he. The Australian jumped overboard, swam to him, and towed the raft back to the boat. He did this with three ribs broken! The thing which he told me he regretted most was the loss of his concertina, which he had saved up for years to buy!

I do not mind admitting that I hated the sea trip back to England; apart from my own feelings, I felt that I was in a great measure responsible for the rest of our company. We left Dublin with all lights out, and went full steam ahead all the time. It was the quickest passage the boat had ever made. Immediately on going on board, I collected enough life-belts for every woman of the company to have one, piled them on the deck, and sat on them!

So the war dragged on, and one did what was possible. It is of no interest to record the visits to hospitals, the work, and so forth; everyone worked, and worked hard. My feeling was always, when some wounded man gave me thanks out of all proportion to what I had been able to do, that I should have liked to quote to him words from my husband’s play, _Love and the Man_: “I have done so little, and you have done so much”. Only the Tommy, being British, would have been very uncomfortable if I had said anything of the kind.

Then, at last, came that wonderful morning in November, when, riding on the top of a ’bus in Piccadilly, I heard the “maroons”, and saw all the pent-up emotion of the British people break loose. They had heard of disasters, lost hopes, the death of those they loved best in the world, almost in silence, but now—“it was over”, and a people thanked God that “England might be Merrie England once again”. I went on to my Committee meeting, a meeting for the organisation of a scheme to raise funds for St. Dunstan’s Blind Soldiers, and I remember, when it was ended, walking up the Haymarket with Forbes Robertson, and noticing the change that had come over everything. If we lost our heads a little that day, who can blame us? For four years we had, as it were, lived in dark cellars, and now, when we came out into the light, it blinded us—we were so unaccustomed to “being happy”.

That night Harry was playing at Wyndham’s Theatre in _The Law Divine_. He told me that the audience certainly only heard about half of the play, owing to the noise in the street outside.

My sister Decima, after having been attached to the French Army in January, 1915, ran the Leave Club in Paris, which did such fine work and made a home for thousands of British soldiers in 1917; it continued there after the Armistice, till 1920. I shall not attempt to describe it, as I hope she may one day do so herself. When the Armistice was signed, she went at once to Cologne. She was one of the first women to get to the city, and began at once to organise a club for the Army of Occupation, on the same lines as the one in Paris. Before she left, the work of the club had come to an end, owing to the large reduction of the Army of Occupation. I went over, and together we did a tour of the battlefields. With my sister were her Commandant, Miss Cornwallis, Mrs. Carter, whose husband did fine work with the submarines and went down in the one he commanded, and Miss Fisher, who was my sister’s chauffeuse in Cologne. We took the same route as the Germans had taken into Belgium in 1914, and travelled over a thousand miles of devastated land. From Ypres to Verdun, everywhere the Graves Commission were busy. We saw cemetery after cemetery full of little wooden crosses, which Rupert Brooke said made “some corner in a foreign field ... forever England”. We saw the parties of Annamites who collected the dead from the battlefields; they were most repulsive looking, and I was told that they were the only people who could be persuaded to do the work. From Fort Fleure, in the valley, we saw the little village of wooden huts where they lived, under the direction of one British soldier, who lived there with his wife. Through all the battle area were dwarfed, distorted trees, twisted into almost sinister shapes; and among them moved the blue figures of the Annamites from Tonkin, looking for the dead.

It was spring-time, and on Vimy Ridge the cowslips were growing, and at Verdun the ground was thick with violets. I gathered bunches and placed them on lonely graves. Looking in my note-book, I see under “Verdun” the words, “miles of utter desolation”. I shall never forget those miles and miles of wasted land, torn and churned up by the guns, the ground still scarred by trenches and pitted with shell-holes, here and there a grave with a wooden cross, and often a steel helmet on it—a pathetic loneliness. I thought what England had escaped: we still had our green fields, our wonderful trees; our villages were still standing, and our factories still held machinery that was useful and might be worked:

“This fortress built by Nature for herself, Against infection and the hand of war;

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This precious stone set in a silver sea.”

England was unchanged. The memory of what I saw there in France made me understand why the French people demand reparations from the nation that wasted France.

Outside Arras we met an R.A.C. man and asked him to tell us of an hotel where we might stay for the night. He told us of one, and we went on our way. When we got to the town we could not find the hotel, and asked a Tommy near the ruined Cathedral if he could direct us. He offered to show us the way, and got on to the step of the car beside Miss Cornwallis, who was riding outside. She asked him what part of England he came from, and found he came from the same small place in Kent that she had lived in all her life. He gave her the additional information: “I know you quite well; I’ve driven your father’s cows scores of times!” We reached the hotel, which was a kind of large bungalow, with canvas walls, run by an Australian—and very well run, too. I went to my room, which I was sharing with my sister, and realised that every word which was said in the next room could be heard. The next room was occupied by the R.A.C. soldier who had directed us to come to the hotel. He was not alone, but was saying “Good-bye” to his French sweetheart. Poor girl, he was leaving for England the next day, and she wanted very much to come with him. It was rather pathetic, and I wished so much the walls had not been so thin.

When one thinks now of the “Lights out”, the marching men, the ambulances at the stations, the men in khaki, and the air raids, it all seems like something that happened hundreds of years ago! Talking of air raids reminds me that some time ago I was rehearsing with an American producer for an American play. Everyone on the stage had to be in a great state of tension, and, to convey his meaning, he said to me: “You’re all as if you were waiting for a bomb to drop. Do you understand what I mean? Have you ever heard a bomb drop?” I assured him that I had, and knew exactly what “it was like”. I thought, too, “What do some of you know of England, and England in war time!”