CHAPTER V.

GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR.

The war had come suddenly upon Great Britain, but it found a Government well prepared to withstand the enemy and a Parliament and a people whose divisions--on which the Germans had staked their hopes--were rapidly closing, and whose determination to carry on the contest to a victorious issue was being quickly perfected by a growing knowledge of the real position. Promises of help began to pour in from all parts of the Empire; at home steps were at once taken to detain Austrian and German reservists, and to seize or capture enemy ships within reach of British or French cruisers or lying in British ports. Twenty such vessels were taken on the first day of the war; the following days added many others and German oceanic trade was stopped at once. The British Fleets, brought together at Spithead (p. 158) had taken up their stations in the North Sea, and cruisers had been sent to protect the great trade routes from German warships, or from "auxiliary cruisers" in the shape of fast German liners, armed, and partly coaled, at sea. Horses and motor-lorries were hastily requisitioned for war purposes, and even harvesting was impeded by the (illegal) seizure of farm horses by too zealous agents; and preparations, perfectly well known in the ports, were actively made for the despatch to France of the British Expeditionary Force; but it was only by inadvertence that hints of their nature were published in the Press, and most of the papers patriotically suppressed the news. Then began that system of secrecy as to movements and details, loyally observed by all concerned and rigorously enforced by authority, which was kept up throughout the year by all the belligerents. Baffling to the contending commanders, it was still more so to the contemporary historian; and, for the first few days, it obscured the gravity of the contest.

The first day of war was marked in the Commons by the announcements of the resignations of Ministers (p. 173), of the violation of Belgian neutrality, and of an impending Vote of Credit--which was loudly cheered--for 100,000,000_l._; and then two war measures were passed almost without debate. The first amended the procedure in Prize Courts in accordance with the findings of a recent Departmental Committee, the second empowered the Crown, in time of war or national emergency, to impose restrictions on aliens, especially with a view to the removal or detention of spies. Next, on the adjournment, the Chancellor of the Exchequer made his statement on the financial position. The emergency, he said, was due to temporary causes, largely to the stoppage of remittances from abroad to enable the discount market to meet its liabilities; there was no failure of credit. After conferences at the Treasury it had been decided not to suspend special payments, but to take steps to suspend the Bank Charter Act, in order to economise the supply of gold. After strongly condemning the hoarding of gold as helpful to the enemy, he stated that on August 7 Government notes for 1_l._ and 10_s._ would be issued, convertible into gold at the Bank of England, postal orders would also be legal tender, and similarly convertible, and would be issued free of charge. The Bank rate would be reduced to 6 per cent., and the moratorium extended for a month. Bills and cheques would be dealt with as usual, subject to the discretion of the bankers in preventing an abnormal withdrawal of gold. This satisfactory account of the position was fully endorsed by Mr. A. Chamberlain.

Late that evening a White Paper was officially published (Cd. 1467) containing correspondence respecting the European Crisis. It embodied nearly 160 documents, and could not be rapidly grasped; but it eventually enabled the British people to form their own opinion as to the responsibility for the war. Later it was republished, with additions, in pamphlet form at the price of a penny, and German and French translations were circulated abroad.[2]

The course of events, so far as Great Britain was concerned in them, in the fortnight preceding the war, was as follows: The Austrian Note to Serbia, which was in fact an Ultimatum, was delivered at Belgrade on July 23, and a reply was demanded within forty-eight hours. Sir Edward Grey, while earnestly deprecating any time-limit to this Note, had laid stress, before knowing its contents, on the appalling consequences that would follow should it lead to a European war between four Powers--a complete collapse of European credit and industry which, in great industrial States, would mean "a state of things worse than that of 1848." But he declined to express an opinion on the merits of the Austro-Serbian dispute. Between the presentation of the Note and the expiry of the time-limit, however, Great Britain made three attempts at peace. In conjunction with Russia, whose Foreign Minister described the Note as "provocative and immoral," she urged the extension of the time-limit on Austria, and pleaded with Germany to do the same. Next, she proposed that Germany, France, and Italy should work together at Vienna and St. Petersburg in favour of conciliation. Italy, France, and Russia assented; Germany had no objection, if Austro-Russian relations became threatening. Thirdly, the Russian, French, and British representatives at Belgrade were instructed to advise Serbia to go as far as possible to meet Austria. Serbia, in fact, conceded very nearly all the Austrian demands; but Austria had determined on war, and Germany, when Sir Edward Grey urged her to persuade Austria to accept the reply, merely "passed on" his message to Vienna. The time-limit having expired, Sir Edward Grey proposed (July 26), by telegram to the British representatives at Paris, Berlin, and Rome, a Conference in London between himself and the French, German and Italian Ambassadors, to discuss the best means towards a settlement. France and Italy accepted; Russia agreed, if direct explanations with Vienna should prove impossible; Germany, however, said that the Conference would practically amount to a court of arbitration, but subsequently "accepted in principle" mediation by the four Powers between Austria and Russia. But Austria now declared war against Serbia. On July 28, however, Sir Edward Grey was informed through the German Ambassador that Germany was endeavouring to mediate between Russia and Austria. He then sent word to the German Government asking them, if they did not like the Conference he had proposed, to suggest any other form of mediation.

The German Chancellor's answer was to invite the British

Ambassador, Sir E. Goschen, to call on him, late at night, on July 29. He intimated that, should Austria be attacked by Russia, a European conflict would become inevitable; he thought it clear that Great Britain would not allow France to be crushed, but this was not Germany's aim; if Great Britain's neutrality were certain, Germany would promise, if victorious, to make no territorial acquisitions at the expense of France. But he was unable, on being asked, to give a similar undertaking in regard to the French colonies. Germany would promise to respect the integrity and neutrality of the Netherlands so long as her adversaries did likewise. German operations in Belgium, he said, depended on the action of France, but, after the war, Belgian integrity would be respected if Belgium had not sided against Germany. He hoped that these assurances might lead to an Anglo-German understanding, and ultimately to a neutrality agreement. Sir Edward Grey replied (July 30) with an absolute refusal; France, without further territory being taken from her in Europe, could be so crushed as to become merely subordinate to Germany, and it would be an indelible disgrace to Great Britain to make this bargain at the expense of France; nor could she bargain away any obligation or interest she had regarding Belgian neutrality. The one way of maintaining the good relations between Great Britain and Germany was by the co-operation of the two Powers to preserve the peace of Europe. But, if the peace of Europe could be preserved, he would endeavour to promote some arrangement to which Germany would be a party, by which she and her allies could be assured against any aggressive or hostile policy on the part of France, Russia, or Great Britain. He had desired and worked for this as far as possible during the Balkan crisis, and, Germany having a like object, Anglo-German relations sensibly improved. The idea had hitherto been too Utopian for definite proposals, but he hoped for some more definite _rapprochement_ between the Powers when the existing crisis was over.

On the same day, July 30, M. Cambon reminded Sir Edward Grey of a letter written by the latter on November 22, 1912, agreeing that while consultations between military and naval experts of their two nations did not pledge their Governments to co-operate, yet, should either Government have grave reason to expect an unprovoked attack by a third Power, or something that threatened the general peace, it should immediately discuss with the other whether, and by what measures, they should co-operate in opposition. M. Cambon also showed a letter from the French Foreign Minister, indicating that Germany was preparing to invade France. Sir E. Grey answered next day, after a Cabinet Council, that as yet Great Britain could not definitely pledge herself to intervene. The preservation of the neutrality of Belgium might be an important factor in determining the British attitude. Sir E, Grey also asked the French and German Governments, through their Ambassadors, whether they were prepared to respect Belgian neutrality provided it was not violated; and he asked the Belgian Government whether it would remain neutral. France and Belgium replied affirmatively at once. The German Government temporised, and eventually gave no answer, though Sir Edward Grey had warned the German Ambassador on August 1 of the probable effect of a violation on public feeling in Great Britain.

Meanwhile Russia and Austria were still negotiating (July 30, 31). On the 29th Germany had suggested to Austria that she should content herself with occupying Belgrade. That night Russia offered to stop all military preparations if Austria would recognise that the Austro-Serbian conflict had become a matter of general European interest, and would eliminate from the ultimatum the points involving a violation of the sovereignty of Serbia. Austria now agreed at last to discuss the whole question of her ultimatum, and Russia asked the British Government to assume the direction of these discussions.

But the hope of peace thus held out was wrecked by the German ultimatum requiring Russia to countermand her mobilisation. Germany, meanwhile, had gone further towards mobilisation than Russia; the German Secretary of State refused to discuss a last proposal from Sir Edward Grey for joint action of Great Britain, Germany, France, and Italy, pending a reply from Russia; and on the afternoon of August 1 Germany declared war against France. Next morning the Germans violated the neutrality of Luxemburg. British merchant ships had already been detained at Hamburg--though the detention was temporarily countermanded on representations from the British Ambassador--and the only question now left for the British Government was whether Great Britain should remain neutral. The determining factors proved to be the violation of Belgian neutrality and the danger to France; and the position was fully explained by the Foreign Secretary on August 3 (p. 170) and by the Prime Minister two days later.

The Prime Minister moved the Vote of Credit (Aug. 5) in a speech continuing the noblest traditions of Parliamentary eloquence. After an emphatic tribute to the unremitting efforts of the Foreign Secretary to preserve peace both in the Balkan crisis and to the very last stage of the recent negotiations, he quoted from the German Chancellor's communication to the British Ambassador at Berlin the appeal for British neutrality, the refusal to undertake to respect the integrity of the French colonies, and the treatment of what, to himself personally, had always been a crucial and almost the governing consideration--the position of the small States. The proposal, Mr. Asquith said, amounted to this--as regarded France, free licence to Germany to annex, if successful, the whole of the French possessions outside Europe; as to Belgium, the British reply to the pathetic appeal of the King of the Belgians would have been that "without her knowledge, we should have bartered away to the Power that was threatening her our obligation to keep our plighted word." He characterised the German proposal as infamous; and in return Great Britain was to get a promise--nothing more--from a Power "which was at that very moment announcing its intention to violate its own treaty obligations and inviting us to do the same. Had we even dallied or temporised with such an offer, we, as a Government, should have covered ourselves with dishonour." He quoted at length from Sir E. Grey's reply, which showed that the Foreign Secretary, who had already earned the title of the peacemaker of Europe, persisted to the last in his efforts for peace. "The war has been forced upon us." Every member of the Government had had before him throughout the vision of the almost unequalled suffering entailed by war, not only to the present generation, but to posterity and the whole prospects of European civilisation. Nevertheless, they had thought it to be the duty as well as the interest of Great Britain to go to war. They were fighting, first, to fulfil a solemn international obligation; secondly, to vindicate the principle that small nationalities were not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power. He believed no nation ever entered into a great struggle--and this was one of the greatest in history--with a clearer conscience and stronger conviction that it was fighting, not for aggression or the maintenance of its own interest, but for principles whose maintenance was vital to the civilised world. "With the full conviction not only of the wisdom and justice, but of the obligation to challenge this great issue," and in order to ensure that the whole resources of the Empire should be thrown into the scale, he asked for a Vote of Credit of 100,000,000_l._ not only for naval and military operations, but to assist the food supplies, promote the continuance of trade, industry, business, and communications, relieve distress, and generally for all expenses arising out of the state of war. This gave the Government a free hand, and the expenditure would be subject to the approval of the House. He asked also, as War Secretary, for a Supplementary Estimate for men for the Army. He had taken that office in order that the unfortunate conditions existing should be ended and complete confidence re-established; and he believed and knew that it had been. There was no more loyal and united body, none in which the spirit and habit of discipline were more deeply ingrained and cherished, than the British Army. It was unfair that his own attention should be divided, and Lord Kitchener, with great public spirit and patriotism, had undertaken the office. He was not a politician, and his acceptance did not identify him with any set of political opinions. On his behalf, the Prime Minister continued, he himself was asking for power to increase the Army by 500,000. India was proposing to send two divisions; every one of the Dominions had already tendered unasked the utmost help, in men and in money, that it could afford to the Empire in time of need. The mother country must set the example, while responding to these filial overtures with gratitude and affection. "We have a great duty to perform, a great trust to fulfil, and confidently we believe Parliament and the country will enable us to do it."

Mr. Bonar Law, speaking for the whole Opposition, gave their whole-hearted support to the Government. He had said in his first speech on foreign policy as Opposition leader (Nov. 27, 1911) that an Anglo-German war would be due to human folly; it was due to human folly and wickedness; but neither were in Great Britain. Though she was under no formal obligations to take part, the Triple Entente was understood to mean that, if any of its members were attacked aggressively, the others would be expected to aid. Berlin might have prevented war, but a miscalculation had been made about Russia and Great Britain. He endorsed entirely the Prime Minister's view of the position. The struggle was Napoleonism once again. "Thank Heaven, so far as we know, there is no Napoleon." There was danger, not of a scarcity of food, but of a fear of scarcity, and he warned the country against panic. With the command of the sea Great Britain would have freedom of trade with the colonies and the whole of the American Continent, without the competition of her enemies or her allies. He offered the Government the full services of any member of the Opposition.

After further debate, which exhibited the progress of the Liberal conversion to the necessity of the war, the motion was agreed to, and also the increase of the Army by 500,000 men and the Navy and Coastguard by 67,000.

Subsequently, on the second reading of the Appropriation Bill, the President of the Local Government Board summarised the measures to be taken to prevent or relieve distress. For the prevention of unemployment, manufacturers were making patriotic efforts to keep their businesses going, and working short time instead of discharging employees; additional employment would be provided by the Road Board, the Development Commission, and various Government Departments, while Distress Committees and Local Authorities were invited to plan relief works. As to relief, the Prince of Wales's Fund would, it was hoped, supersede local funds; local authorities were being asked to see to the feeding of school children, local representative committees were to be formed for the distribution of the Prince of Wales's Fund, and a Central Advisory Committee had been formed with himself as Chairman, and including Mr. Long, Mr. Burns, and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald. He invited suggestions. The Poor Law was kept in reserve, as a last line of defence.

The Prince of Wales issued his appeal, endorsed by the Queen, on August 6, and the response was immediate. In the first two days the subscriptions amounted to 400,000_l._; they ultimately passed 4,000,000_l._ Queen Alexandra also issued an appeal for soldiers' and sailors' families, and hosts of other appeals followed for Red Cross and hospital work and other matters; to these also response was generous.

Meanwhile the British Navy had achieved its first success and suffered its first disaster. On August 5 the third Destroyer Flotilla, shepherded by H.M.S. _Amphion_, and patrolling the approaches to the Channel, found the small Hamburg-American converted liner _Königin Luise_ laying mines off the estuary of the Thames. She was chased by a destroyer and sunk by a torpedo, some fifty being saved out of a crew of 130. Early next morning, however, the _Amphion_ herself struck a mine and was sunk, and about 130 of the crew and one officer--a paymaster--were lost, besides twenty German prisoners. In officially announcing the disaster to the House of Commons (Aug. 7) the First Lord of the Admiralty said that this indiscriminate scattering of mines, imperilling even neutral merchantmen, was a new fact calling for the attention of the nations. He added, however, that the strict censorship of the Press permitted the rise of many alarming rumours, and a Press Bureau would therefore be appointed under Mr. F. E. Smith, M.P., which would give out "a steady stream of trustworthy information" from both the War Office and the Admiralty, and he emphatically commended the patriotic reticence as to war preparations shown by the Press. (The Press Bureau, however, hardly fulfilled this forecast.)

The first instalment of emergency war legislation was completed before the adjournment (Aug. 10) of both Houses as follows. The Defence of the Realm Act empowered the King in Council to issue regulations authorising the trial by court-martial and the punishment of persons contravening regulations designed to stop certain specified forms of espionage, such as obtaining information to assist the enemy, tapping wires, or blowing up railway bridges or docks. The Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks (Temporary Rules) Act extended the powers of the Board of Trade to make rules under the Patents and Designs Act, 1907, and the Trade Marks Act, 1908. Its object was essentially to enable the Board to allow the rights in patents or trade marks owned by enemies to be ignored in the United Kingdom during the War. An Electoral Disabilities Removal Act prevented members of the Militia, Reserves, Yeomanry, and Territorial Forces from being disqualified by absence on the military or naval service of the Crown, or by the grant of poor-law relief towards their families during such absence. Another Act enabled the Government to requisition food, forage and stores for the Army; another empowered it to requisition foodstuffs withheld "unreasonably," _i.e._ in order to raise their price. Finally, a Housing Act revived for one year, in order to reduce unemployment, the powers conferred on the Government by the dropped clause of the new Housing Act (_post_, p. 209). The Board of Agriculture in rural districts, the Local Government Board in towns, were authorised to acquire land and buildings and to arrange for housing with local authorities or authorised societies. It was explained that they would proceed by lending money to such societies, and use the other powers given them only in the last resort. This Bill was amended, at the instance of certain Unionists, so as to require the concurrence of the Development Commission--an amendment to which some Liberals reluctantly agreed in order to avoid imperilling the Bill. This done, the Houses adjourned for a fortnight, and it was announced that the leaders would attempt to avert controversial debates.

The efforts to compose the Home Rule conflict were not entirely successful (_post_, p. 203); but less menacing differences were settled or suspended at once. The contest in the London building trade, which had been somewhat mitigated in July by sectional submissions on the part of several of the Trade Unions concerned, was settled on August 6 by the abandonment of the project of a general lock-out by the masters, and the withdrawal on the part of the men of their refusal to work with non-unionists; and settlements were also effected of a dockers' strike at Liverpool, of various sectional railway disputes, and of a coal strike in South Wales, which for a day or two had seemed likely to interfere with the supply of coal for the Fleet. Political propaganda, too, was formally suspended, notably by the Women's National Liberal Association and the Land Union; and the appointment of Earl Kitchener as a non-political War Minister was followed by rumours of the impending establishment of a coalition Government. The only approach made to this, however, consisted in the invitations to Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Mr. Long, Mr. F. E. Smith, and other Unionist leaders, to give their counsel and assistance in various departments to the Government; and they accepted cordially. A general amnesty was announced (Aug. 11) both for suffragist prisoners and for persons convicted of offences in connexion with industrial disturbances; and both the non-militant and the militant groups of the suffrage societies provisionally abandoned their agitation (though a few of the militants made a scene at the Home Office on August 27), and organised themselves for the relief, in various ways, of the women and children sufferers by the war. Admirable work was done in these directions by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and by the Women's Emergency Corps; and Miss Christabel Pankhurst, on her return from Paris a little later, repaid the Government by speaking at meetings designed to encourage recruiting for the "new Army."

Earnest appeals had already been issued for recruits; the response was immediate; and on August 9 Earl Kitchener, as War Minister, issued a circular to Lord-Lieutenants of Counties and Chairmen of County Territorial Associations, asking for 100,000 men to form a new Army. Recruits came in for it at the rate, at first, of 3,000 daily; most of the members of the Universities' Officers' Training Corps applied for commissions in the Territorials or Special Reserve; those who asked to be appointed to the latter were offered commissions in this "New Army," and sent (if they accepted) to officers' training camps, whence they were despatched by instalments to join their units elsewhere. Retired officers and non-commissioned officers largely returned to the colours and were used in these units, which formed additional "Service Battalions" of the existing infantry regiments, their numbers following those of the Territorial Battalions. This Army was formed into six (territorial) divisions each of three brigades. By the end of the year there were also a second and a third new Army formed, or in process of formation, on the same lines. The officers' training camps, however, had been given up.

The Navy, meanwhile, was active. Cruisers were guarding the great trade routes and patrolling the North Sea; a German submarine attack on the First Cruiser Squadron was repulsed, and it was announced on August 10 that the German submarine U 15 had been sunk by H.M. cruiser _Birmingham_. The German cruiser _Karlsruhe_ had been surprised (Aug. 7) by H.M.S. _Bristol_ 200 miles south of Bermuda while coaling from the Hamburg-American liner _Kronprinz Wilhelm_ and had escaped after a 200 miles' chase; the German battle cruiser _Goeben_ and the light cruiser _Breslau_, after the latter had shelled Tunis, escaped from a pursuing Allied Fleet through the Straits of Messina, and proceeded to Constantinople, where they were bought by the Porte. (Rear-Admiral Berkeley Milne, commanding the Mediterranean squadron and Rear-Admiral Troubridge, commanding the pursuing fleet, were exonerated from responsibility for their escape.)

Further events were reassuring for the British public. The German wireless station at Dar-es-Salaam, the only good harbour in German East Africa, was destroyed (Aug. 9) by a British force; another British force occupied Togoland in West Africa (Aug. 7); and Japan (Aug. 5) and Portugal (Aug. 10) formally announced that they recognised the obligations imposed by their respective alliances with Great Britain.

Help was tendered lavishly from the Dominions and Crown Colonies; at home private houses and other buildings were freely offered for hospital purposes, yachts were converted by their owners into hospital ships, and the great London hospitals allotted beds for the wounded. Great activity--sometimes marked by zeal rather than knowledge--was shown in preparing for Red Cross work, and in making clothes for soldiers and others. The Queen issued an appeal to all needlework guilds throughout the British Isles (Aug. 10) to send in underclothing for soldiers and sailors, and ordinary garments for their wives and children and such of the civil population as might suffer through unemployment; steps were taken locally to consider how distress might be mitigated, and the newspapers were full of suggestions for help. But, after the first shock, the great mass of British citizens kept their heads, responded as far as possible to the call for "business as usual," and prepared to face bravely the prospect of lessened income--already visible in the withholding of many interim dividends--and the huge sacrifices demanded by the contest.

In two respects only there had been at the outset a tendency to panic. Before the Bank Holiday there had been some attempt by private persons to lay in large stores of food, and to draw gold from the banks; when the shops reopened on August 4, there was a rush to buy provisions in many great provincial cities; next day the alarm spread to London; the great stores were besieged; one of them had to close its provision department, another refused to supply customers with more than ordinary quantities; many of the small shops were speedily sold out; in the East End certain wholesale dealers, to encourage a rise in prices, actually provided purchasers with money; and, in the West End and some southern residential towns on that day and for some days afterwards, well-to-do people personally loaded hundredweights of stores into their own motor-cars, and packed their houses to the roof. But there was no real lack of foodstuffs; steps were taken at once by the Government to keep open the foreign sources of supply by a scheme of insurance against war risks; it took over the flour mills; and a Consultative Committee on Food Supplies met the representatives of certain great distributive companies and of the Grocers' Federation, representing some 17,000 shops, and lists of maximum retail prices were issued, as given below. The interruption was mainly in the supply of sugar from the Continent, and in that of butter, bacon, and eggs from Denmark. The following list (given in _The Times_, Aug. 7) shows the first effect of the war on wholesale prices.

July 28. August 6.

_s._ _d._ _s._ _d._

Flour 1-1/4 1-1/2 Sugar, Cubes 1 3/4 4 Beef, English 6-1/2 7-1/2 " Chilled 6 7-1/2 " Frozen 4-1/2 6-1/2 Mutton, English 8 8-1/4 Bacon, Danish 8-1/4 10-1/2 Cheese, Colonial 6-3/4 8-1/2 Butter 1 1 1 3

The following lists of maximum retail prices were agreed on by the Advisory Committee:--

August 7. August 11.

_s._ _d._ _s._ _d._

Granulated sugar per lb. 0 4-1/2 0 3-3/4 Lump sugar 0 5 0 4-1/2 Butter(imported) 1 6 1 6 Cheese, Colonial 0 9-1/2 0 9-1/2 Lard, American 0 8 0 8 Margarine 0 10 0 10 Bacon, Continental (by the side) 1 4 1 2 " British " 1 6 1 3

The prices of sugar were conditional on supplies being obtainable at the prices submitted by wholesale merchants. Sugar had jumped up from 15_s._ to 38_s._ per cwt. owing to the war. Of flour and imported meat there was no shortage. A Special Committee, with Sir Ailwyn Fellowes as chairman, was appointed by the Board of Agriculture and Foodstuffs and held its first meeting on August 10. But there proved to be little for it to do. The harvest, too, was promising, and the weather, except for one short spell of cold and some rain early in August, exceptionally fine.

In one other respect there was, for a long time, a considerable alarm. Many stories had been circulated during recent years as to the presence of an army of German spies in Great Britain, and even of the existence of a host of German reservists, for whom arms were said to be stored in London and elsewhere for immediate use at the outbreak of an Anglo-German War (A.R., 1909, p. 117). Some provision against these dangers was made by the posting of Territorial troops (and in some cases Boy Scouts and Scoutmasters) to guard railways, bridges, and waterworks, and by the formation of a force of special constables within the Metropolitan police area. That there was some ground for fear had been shown by the numerous trials for espionage; and the feeling, intensified by jealousy of the Germans as trade rivals, continued to find expression in a portion of the Press. Owing to the necessity of secrecy imposed by pending trials for espionage, it was not till October that the Home Department could defend itself fully against the charge of inaction. But on the outbreak of war the Aliens Restriction Act enabled the Government both to require all enemy alien residents to register, and to restrict their freedom of movement and residence; and an official statement was published later (Oct. 9) of the steps taken to check espionage. In 1909 a special Intelligence Department had been established for that purpose by the Admiralty and War Office, and had since acted in close touch with the police; the law was amended and extended by the Official Secrets Act, 1911, and the ramifications of the German spy system in England were discovered in 1911-14. Despite immense efforts and lavish expenditure, the German Government had got little information of value. The agents were watched and shadowed, and arrested only when plans or documents of value were about to be sent abroad. On August 4 twenty-one known spies were arrested, and 200 suspects noted and mostly interned. Any fresh organisation was impeded by a postal and cable censorship; certain areas were cleared under the Act above-mentioned; aliens were forbidden to possess wireless or signalling apparatus or homing pigeons; private wireless stations were forbidden, and a special system devised of wireless detection. The Defence of the Realm Act (p. 181) made espionage a military offence. The success of these measures was shown by the ignorance of the German generals on August 21 of the despatch a fortnight earlier of the British Expeditionary Force. The writers of letters to the Press alleging cases of espionage had been unable effectively to assist the police. Owners of homing pigeons had been registered, and the importation of the birds or their conveyance by rail prohibited. No trace had been found of a conspiracy to commit outrage; no bombs, and practically no effective arms had been found after search; and 9,000 Germans and Austrians of military age were held in detention camps as prisoners of war.

The interruption of national intercourse had made itself acutely felt in other ways. Alien enemies not of military age were allowed to leave Great Britain up to August 10 by certain specified ports, but after that date only with special permits; but graver difficulties arose with the hosts of British and American travellers for health or pleasure on the Continent who were cut off by the declaration of war. From Germany and Austria some hurried back at once without much difficulty, others experienced hardships and even brutality from the German officials and populace; those were in worst case who tried to pass from Germany into Belgium after the invasion had begun. But many British subjects, even invalids at health resorts, with their families, were detained in Germany and Austria, while those of military age were treated as prisoners of war. The care of British subjects was confided to the American Embassies and Consulates, but their friends in England were rarely able to communicate with them. By August 8 it appeared that France and Belgium were almost emptied of British tourists. But Switzerland, as usual, contained a host of them, whose letters of credit, cheques, and even British coin, were now refused, and who were unable to return owing to the stoppage of ordinary traffic on the French railways through mobilisation. But the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs was able to state in the Commons on August 11 that funds had been advanced to His Majesty's representatives at Berne, Lausanne, and Paris, to relieve the more pressing necessities of British subjects stranded abroad, and provide for their return. Some of those in Switzerland came by sea from Genoa; most, however, reached England only in the first days of September, by special trains, but after much discomfort and delay. Had war broken out a few days later, however, the numbers would have been far greater.

The case of American tourists for a time seemed even worse. The number in Europe at the outbreak of the war was estimated at 80,000; and they were impeded, not only on their way to England, but by the irregularity of the services across the Atlantic, and by the interruption of the international exchanges between New York and London. A Committee was formed to deal with them; it sat at the Savoy Hotel, and arrangements were made to cash letters of credit. But the liners leaving for the United States were overcrowded; even the steerage was given up to cabin passengers; berths were sold by holders at a huge premium, and a group of Americans even bought a steamer, the _Viking_, and charged 100_l._ to 125_l._ for passages. The Committee, however, did excellent work both in relieving the needs of the stranded passengers and repatriating them, and by the end of August the worst was over.

Meantime the Churches had done their part in impressing on the people the gravity of the situation, the need for endurance and sacrifice, and the righteousness of the British cause. On August 6 a Form of Public Intercession authorised by the Archbishops and Bishops was circulated to all incumbents in England and Wales for use on August 9, the first Sunday of the war; and on that day crowded and reverent congregations filled the places of worship of all denominations throughout the country, and special sermons were preached emphasising the coming trial and the duty of the nation. Friday, August 21, was appointed as a special Day of Intercession for the soldiers and sailors, frequent services were held at the churches and chapels throughout the kingdom; the King and Queen attended the afternoon service at Westminster Abbey; and the day was observed by the Roman Catholic Church and the Free Churches generally. With very rare exceptions, which included neither the Society of Friends nor the great mass of pacifists, the British people had made up its mind that the war was just and righteous, that it must go on at all costs till the arrogance of Prussian militarism was finally humbled, and that no peace would be acceptable which did not secure a general reduction of armaments and a better method of settling national disputes. It must be in short "a war to end war."

Meanwhile public feeling was encouraged by the checks given to the German invaders at Haelen and Liège, by the French advance in Alsace, and by the announcements (Aug. 12, 13) that twenty-four British and some French cruisers were searching for the five German cruisers known to be in the Atlantic, and that that ocean was clear of enemy warships as far south as Trinidad. On the other hand, the Admiralty warned shipowners that the North Sea had been rendered unsafe by the promiscuous strewing of German mines in it; but the Danish steamers were diverted from Harwich to more northern ports, and one at least of the Dutch regular services to London suffered little interruption.

The area of the war also continued to extend. War had been declared on August 12 between Great Britain and Austria-Hungary, not from any direct cause of quarrel, but through the menace of the latter towards France; and the Austrian Embassy was sent home by the British Government in a specially chartered liner to Genoa. The breach with a Power long friendly to Great Britain was generally regretted. On the other hand, the Germans had put themselves in the wrong at starting, and their conduct in Belgium exasperated British feeling more and more. The German feeling was expressed in an alleged proclamation--published in England at the end of September, but issued August 16, though its authenticity was denied at Berlin--in which the Kaiser directed his troops to "annihilate the contemptible little English army."

The arrival in France of the British Expeditionary Force was announced officially in England on August 18, though the French papers had published the news of its arrival ten days earlier on the authority of the French War Office. The delay had given rise to disquieting rumours, and it was officially stated that no casualties had as yet taken place among the troops. The route taken was mainly by way of Southampton to Havre and Boulogne; and it was learnt from the naval despatches (Oct. 23) that two destroyers and the eighth submarine flotilla had watched continuously to attack the German fleet had it interfered. The South-Western Railway Company dealt with the huge traffic admirably. At the same time (Aug. 18) there were published a Message from the King and Instructions from Earl Kitchener. The former, delivered before their departure, was as follows:--

You are leaving home to fight for the safety and honour of my Empire.

Belgium, whose country we are pledged to defend, has been attacked, and France is about to be invaded by the same powerful foe.

I have implicit confidence in you, my soldiers. Duty is your watchword, and I know your duty will be nobly done.

I shall follow your every movement with the deepest interest, and mark with eager satisfaction your daily progress. Indeed, your welfare will never be absent from my thoughts.

I pray God to bless you and guard you and bring you back victorious.

The following instructions were issued by Lord Kitchener to every soldier in the Expeditionary Army, to be kept in his active service pay-book:--

You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French comrades against the invasion of a common enemy.

You have to perform a task which will need your courage, your energy, your patience.

Remember that the honour of the British Army depends on your individual conduct.

It will be your duty not only to set an example of discipline and perfect steadiness under fire, but also to maintain the most friendly relations with those whom you are helping in this trouble.

The operations in which you are engaged will, for the most part, take place in a friendly country, and you can do your own country no better service than in showing yourself in France and Belgium in the true character of a British soldier.

Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind. Never do anything likely to injure or destroy property, and always look upon looting as a disgraceful act.

You are sure to meet with a welcome and to be trusted; your conduct must justify that welcome and that trust. Your duty cannot be done unless your health is sound. So keep constantly on your guard against any excesses. In this new experience you may find temptations, both in wine and women. You must entirely resist both temptations, and, while treating all women with perfect courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.

Do your duty bravely. Fear God. Honour the King.

KITCHENER, Field-Marshal.

The concentration of the Expeditionary Force in France was completed on August 21; but it was not till some days later that its location was even approximately known. Meanwhile the hopes set up in England by the earlier accounts from France and Belgium gradually gave place to anxiety as the Germans occupied Liège and advanced to Brussels, and the French retired in Alsace; and the sudden and as yet unexplained fall of Namur (Aug. 25) caused dismay. This event, it was announced, necessitated the retirement of a portion of the Allied troops from the line of the Sambre to their original defensive position on the Franco-Belgian frontier; but the British position was not fully revealed till Sir John French's despatch was published (Sept. 10). On August 22, he stated, he had moved the troops to positions for commencing operations in pursuance of General Joffre's plans (apparently to cover the French left on the Sambre). They occupied a line of about twenty-five miles in length from Condé westwards through Mons to Binche, the Second Corps extending from Condé and Mons, the first from Mons to Binche, the 6th cavalry brigade on the extreme right at Binche. After cavalry reconnaissances on August 22 and 23, the actual engagement began at 3 P.M. on the 23rd; but, having believed himself faced only by one or at most two German Army Corps, he learnt at 6 P.M. from General Joffre that there were at least three--a reserve corps and the 4th and 9th Corps, while a fourth was engaged in a turning movement on his left flank, and the French on his right were retiring before the Germans, who on the 22nd had secured the passages of the Sambre between Charleroi and Namur. He therefore began to retire at daybreak to the line Jeulain-Maubeuge, some ten miles farther back, a position previously surveyed, but difficult to hold, and reached it before nightfall. During this retirement the Second Cavalry Brigade, under General De Lisle, attempted a flank attack on the enemy's infantry, but was stopped by a wire entanglement, and the 9th Lancers and 18th Hussars suffered severely. Supported by the 19th Infantry Brigade, the Second Corps, under General Smith-Dorrien effected a retreat, but with two German corps on its front and one threatening the flank, it suffered great loss. From the new position, however, a retreat was necessitated by the efforts of the enemy to outflank the British force and drive it on Maubeuge, and on the 25th a further retirement was effected to a line some sixteen miles to the S.S.W., running from Cambrai by Le Câteau to Landrecies. The 4th Infantry Division now came up to assist; and the First Corps reached Landrecies at about 10 P.M. But the enemy, though much exhausted, came on, and the 4th Guards Brigade in Landrecies were heavily attacked by the 9th German Army Corps, which itself suffered tremendous loss in the narrow streets. Meanwhile the First Corps, under Sir Douglas Haig, was heavily engaged south and east of Maroilles; but, mainly through his skill, and with the assistance of two French reserve divisions, it was extricated in the night and resumed its march at dawn. The next day, August 26th, was the most critical. At daybreak it became apparent that the enemy was throwing his main strength against the left of the position occupied by the Second Corps and the 4th Division; General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien could not continue to retire, and no support could be sent him, nor had there been time properly to entrench the position; but the troops showed a magnificent front to a terrible fire, the Artillery, outnumbered by four to one, making a splendid fight; and at 3.30 a retirement was commenced, of necessity, and heroically covered by the Artillery and protected by the Cavalry. The left wing was saved by General Sir H. Smith-Dorrien's skill, to which Sir John French paid a very high tribute. The retreat was continued till the 28th, when the troops halted on the line Noyon-Chauny-La Fère, along the Oise some twelve to twenty miles south of St. Quentin. The British losses were very serious, but inevitable, inasmuch as the British Army, only two days after a concentration by rail, had had to withstand the attack of five German Army Corps. The enemy, however, was too exhausted by the 26th to pursue effectively. The services of officers and men were acknowledged by the Commander-in-Chief in the highest terms, and special note was taken of the gallantry of the Flying Corps, both in reconnaissance and in aerial combat.

But as yet only part of the truth was allowed to emerge in Great Britain. When Parliament reassembled on August 26th, Earl Kitchener made a statement in the House of Lords--his maiden speech, though he had been a Peer since 1898. As a soldier, he said, he had no politics, and his term as War Secretary was that of the new Army--for the war, but not for longer than three years, a term selected because others would then be ready to replace them. The Expeditionary Force, having advanced to near Mons, had then been for thirty-six hours in contact with a superior German force, and had maintained the traditions of British soldiers and behaved with the utmost gallantry. Since the beginning of active operations rather more than 2,000 had been placed _hors de combat_. Mobilisation had taken place without a hitch; the Expeditionary Force proved itself wholly efficient, thoroughly well equipped, and immediately ready to take the field. The Press and the public had aided the Government by a discreet and necessary silence, the civilian population by meeting requisitions; the railways had justified the confidence of the War Office, the troops, thanks to the Admiralty, had been conveyed across the Channel without any untoward incident. After laying stress on British moral support to France as "a factor of high military significance," and expressing hearty sympathy with Belgium, he pointed out that Great Britain's military system enabled her still to have a vast reserve from herself and the Dominions. Sixty-nine Territorial battalions had volunteered for service abroad; the hundred thousand recruits asked for had been practically secured; behind these were the Reserves. While the maximum force of the adversary Empires was constantly diminishing, Great Britain's reinforcements would steadily and increasingly flow out till she had an Army in the field not unworthy of the British Empire. The new Field Army might rise in the next six or seven months to a total of thirty divisions, continually maintained in the field. Should the war be protracted and its fortunes varied or adverse, exertions and sacrifices beyond any yet demanded would be required from the whole nation and Empire, and would not be denied by Parliament or the people.

In the Commons that day the chief business was a statement by the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs of the arrangements for repatriating and assisting British subjects stranded on the Continent, the introduction of much emergency legislation--to be summarised later--and the announcement by the Speaker of the receipt and acknowledgment of a congratulatory message from the Russian Duma. Next day (Aug. 27) the Prime Minister, in reply to a question, declared emphatically, in view of Lord Kitchener's statement, that compulsory military service was unnecessary; the sinking of the _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_ was announced, also the engagement of the British force, and the British occupation of Ostend (p. 193); and in the course of a discussion regarding the Moratorium, the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that while bankers, financial houses, and merchants favoured its continuance, manufacturers were two to one in favour of bringing it to an end. But the feature of the day was the speech of the Prime Minister in moving an Address expressing admiration for the heroic resistance offered by Belgium to the invader, and pledging Great Britain's support to her gallant ally. After a reference to the cause of the war he insisted on the binding obligation on Great Britain to intervene. We did so only when confronted with the choice of keeping or breaking solemn obligations, between the discharge of a binding trust and a shameless subservience to naked force. "We do not repent our decision." The issue was one which no great and self-respecting nation, certainly none bred and nurtured like ourselves in this ancient home of liberty, could have declined without undying shame. He recalled the struggles for integrity and national life made by small States, by Athens and Sparta, the Swiss cantons, and the Netherlands; never had the duty of asserting the preservation of that life been more clearly and bravely acknowledged and more strenuously and heroically discharged than by the Belgian King and people. The defence of Liège would always be one of the most inspiring chapters in the annals of liberty. The Belgians had won for themselves the immortal glory that belonged to a people who preferred freedom to ease, to security, and even to life itself. "We are proud of their alliance and their friendship." We were with them heart and soul, because we were defending with them the independence of small States and the sanctity of international covenants, and he assured them, in the name of Great Britain and the whole Empire, that they might count on our unfailing support.

Mr. Bonar Law, in seconding the motion, fully endorsed the Prime Minister's eulogies and promises. The events in Belgium confirmed the view that the war was a struggle of the moral influences of civilisation against brute force. Belgium had deserved well of the world and had placed Great Britain under an obligation, which would best be discharged by realising that for both countries the war was a struggle for life and death, and by employing all British resources to bring it to a successful end. Mr. John Redmond eloquently associated Ireland with the motion, eulogising Belgium, and suggesting that the loan contemplated (p. 216) should rather be a gift. The resolution was agreed to _nem. con._ In the House of Lords a similar Address was moved by the Marquess of Crewe, who said that Germany would have to make full reparation, and seconded by the Marquess of Lansdowne, who said that to Belgium was due the difference between the existing situation and that at the same time in 1870.

Next day (Aug. 28) a message was read in both Houses from Sir John French, describing the British resistance in the Cambria and Le-Câteau district; and Lord Kitchener, after communicating it to the House of Lords, announced that two divisions and a cavalry division, besides other troops, would be sent from India to France. The Marquess of Crewe added that the wonderful wave of enthusiasm and loyalty passing over India was largely based on the desire of the Indian people that Indian soldiers should stand side by side with their British comrades in repelling the invasion of France and Belgium. It was known in India that French African troops had been assisting in France, and "our loyal Indian fellow-subjects" would be disappointed if Indian troops could not assist British. The Indian frontiers would be fully held, and the popular enthusiasm precluded any internal trouble. It pervaded all classes, and found expression, among the princes, in munificent gifts for the service of the troops.

The British people did not yet know the whole story of the fighting in France, and Lord Kitchener's appeal for another 100,000 men did not excite alarm. The public disquiet might have been greater had the newspapers published particulars of the precautions taken on the East Coast--constant patrolling by destroyers and seaplanes, destruction of houses which might obstruct the line of fire on a hostile fleet or serve the enemy as sea-marks, extinguishing of street lamps on the sea front or in streets visible from it, prohibition or restriction of the lighting of such rooms in private houses as were visible from the sea, and eventually the temporary extinction, for the first time in 100 years, of all lighthouses and lightships. But these things were only revealed in private conversation or correspondence.

Meanwhile the British public was confirmed in its conviction that Great Britain had acted justly by the publication of the despatch from Sir Edward Goschen describing his final interview with the German Foreign Secretary and the Imperial Chancellor.[3] The refusal of the former to refrain from violating Belgian neutrality on the ground that "rapidity of action was the great German asset," and the phrase of the latter, that Great Britain was going to war "just for a scrap of paper," seemed to place Germany hopelessly in the wrong. The naval warfare, too, was encouraging. The _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_ had been sunk by H.M.S. _Highflyer_ off the Rio del Oro in West Africa--in neutral waters, according to the German contention; Ostend had been occupied by British marines; and the German cruiser _Magdeburg_ had been blown up in the Gulf of Finland. Still more encouraging news came on the evening of August 28, of a British victory that morning in the Bight of Heligoland. The official account, given in despatches published October 22, was substantially as follows. Information having been received from the submarines patrolling the North Sea of the probable movements of the enemy's ships, an attempt was made to draw them out; on August 26 and 27 the area to be occupied was searched for hostile submarines by the destroyers _Lurcher_ and _Firedrake_, and, at daylight on August 28, three submarines (E 6, E 7, E 8), followed by these destroyers, headed for Heligoland, the submarines running on the surface, to invite a German attack. Other British submarines were watching, submerged, in the area. Near Heligoland a mist settled on the water, facilitating a German surprise. In rear of these craft was the _Arethusa_, a new light cruiser just commissioned, with the First and Third Destroyer Flotillas. A German torpedo squadron was sighted making for Heligoland, and was attacked by the _Arethusa_ and the Third Flotilla. Then, at 7.57 A.M. two German cruisers, respectively with four and two funnels, were sighted; the _Arethusa_ engaged the nearest, and was attacked by both, and by several destroyers. All her torpedo tubes were disabled and all but one of her guns, and for a few minutes she was on fire. At 8.25 A.M., however, she shot away the fore bridge of the two-funnelled cruiser, which made off towards Heligoland. The four-funnelled cruiser had meanwhile turned on the _Fearless_, but the Germans drew off and retreated into the haze. Before their retreat, the British and German destroyers were engaged; the German commodore's destroyer (V 187) was sunk, and the crews of the British destroyers, having launched their boats to save life, had to retreat under a fire from a German cruiser, abandoning two boats. Thereupon the submarine E 4 (Lt. Com. Leir) proceeded to drive off the cruiser, which escaped her, covered the destroyers' retreat, and then took aboard, at great risk of attack, the British crew of one of the boats, with three Germans, leaving the other Germans, for whom, he had no room, and of whom some were badly wounded in the boats, to proceed to Heligoland. He left a German officer and six men to navigate them, and provided water, biscuit and a compass. Having effected temporary repairs and got all her guns but two in working order, the _Arethusa_, with the _Fearless_, proceeded in vain to search for the _Lurcher_ and _Firedrake_ (which, however, escaped the German cruisers), and then, though her speed had been reduced by the damage received, went forward again towards Heligoland. At 10.55 A.M. a four-funnelled German cruiser (possibly the _Yorck_) fired on her; the _Fearless_ and the First Flotilla came up, and the assailant disappeared in the mist. Ten minuter later she returned, but failed to get the range, and was driven off. A few minutes later three British ships sighted the German light cruiser _Mainz_, and after twenty-five minutes' action she was on fire, disabled and sinking; the Light Cruiser Squadron came up and finished her destruction, but 220 of her crew were saved by the _Lurcher_, many of them badly wounded. The Battle Cruiser Squadron under Admiral Beatty had been called up, and at 12.30 the _Lion_ drove off and pursued a four-funnelled cruiser, the _Köln_, which was engaging the _Arethusa_; the _Lion_, after firing two salvoes at the German cruiser _Ariadne_, which disappeared into the mist, on fire and sinking, returned to the chase of the _Köln_, and sank her with all hands. Soon afterwards the _Queen Mary_, battle cruiser, and the _Lowestoft_, light cruiser, were attacked by submarines, but avoided them, the former narrowly and with great skill. The _Laurel_ and _Arethusa_ were towed into Sheerness and Harwich, the latter being taken in tow by the _Hague_, with no light but two hand lanterns. Two German destroyers at least were sunk and eighteen or twenty badly damaged. The British vessels _Goshawk_, _Laertes_, _Ferret_, _Laurel_, _Laforey_, and _Liberty_ were among those specially distinguished.

This news was accompanied by another stimulant to British action--the announcement of the atrocious and deliberate destruction of Louvain, "the Oxford of Belgium." In Great Britain, as elsewhere, it excited the deepest horror and indignation; and it gave additional force to a letter from the Prime Minister to the Lord Mayors of London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Cardiff--the capitals, so to speak, of the four divisions of the United Kingdom--announcing that the time had come for a combined effort to stimulate and organise public opinion and effort in the greatest conflict in British history, and proposing meetings throughout the country at which the justice of the British cause should be made plain, and the duty of every man to do his part should be enforced. He suggested that these four principal cities should lead the way, and offered to address a meeting in each; and he added that he could count on the co-operation of the leaders "of every section of organised public opinion."

But, while hope was encouraged by this movement (which had been previously suggested in the Press) and by the Russian successes in Galicia, London was horrified on August 30, by accounts of the retreat from Mons published in the _Daily Mail_ and _Times_, the latter speaking of "a retreating and a broken army," the former of a "pitiful story," and of an incessant German advance, and the gaps left by the Censor's editing suggested that the whole truth might be worse. The _Daily Mail_ telegram closed with an appeal for reinforcements at once. For a few hours this news produced something like a panic; but its diffusion was restricted as the day was Sunday, and in the afternoon the War Secretary issued a report of the four days' battle, showing that since the 26th, apart from cavalry fighting, the British Army had rested, reinforcements covering double the loss suffered had already joined, and that the French armies had that day stopped the German advance. A decisive British victory in France, it was added, would probably be fatal to the enemy; the continuance of Anglo-French resistance "on such a scale as to keep in the closest grip the enemy's best troops, could, if prolonged, lead only to one conclusion." Next day, in Parliament, these alarmist accounts were severely condemned by the Lord Chancellor and the Prime Minister, the latter describing them as a regrettable exception to the patriotic reticence of the Press; but it appeared that the Press Bureau had actually requested their publication, and that the closing paragraph, urging the necessity of reinforcements, was actually due to the head of the Bureau, Mr. F. E. Smith, himself.

This was the last discussion before the House adjourned till September 9. It had been preceded by the rapid passing of another batch of war legislation, and by a somewhat bitter debate on the treatment of the Home Rule and Welsh Church Bills. This instalment of war legislation included, _inter alia_, Bills authorising the appointment of special constables and making certain provisions regarding them; enabling licensing authorities, and, in London, the Chief Commissioner of Police, to restrict the hours of sale of liquor both in licensed premises and in clubs; empowering the military authorities to exercise control under the Defence of the Realm Act in training areas; extending the list of articles the importation of which might be prohibited; giving powers to seize goods unreasonably withheld (including farm produce and feeding stuffs); giving powers to deal with all patent licences and registered designs where the benefit accrued to an enemy; extending billeting to include the naval as well as the military force; remitting death duties on the property of those killed in the war, or dying within twelve months after it from wounds or disease contracted in the field; giving emergency powers to the courts (for the protection of debtors) in regard to the recovery of debts; and a War Loan Bill, empowering the Government to raise a loan, the amount and the method of raising it being alike left undefined.

On the adjournment, and before the explanations as to the Press Bureau, a discussion arose which showed that political divisions had by no means been healed by the war. The Prime Minister repeated that the Government wished that no party should gain or lose by the suspension of domestic controversy. Their intention was to put the Home Rule and Welsh Church Bills on the Statute Book, but they would regard it as most unfair to resort to a snap prorogation as though the Amending Bill had never been introduced; and with regard to it he hoped for a settlement. As to the Welsh Church Bill, the war had set up special conditions, in view of which the Government made a proposal. Mr. Bonar Law (U.) concurred; Mr. John Redmond (N.) hoped that the Home Rule Bill would not be prejudiced by the adjournment; whereupon Mr. Balfour protested against dealing with subjects of "acute political discussion" under present conditions, while disclaiming any desire to make party gain from the situation. The discussion was stopped after appeals from Mr. Cave (U.) and the Prime Minister, and the House passed on, before its adjournment, to the discussion of the Press Bureau and _The Times_. But the old passions reappeared later.

For the moment, however, party feeling was stilled by the imperative need of union and of greater preparation for efforts in the field. The flow of recruits, encouraged by the destruction of Louvain and the retreat from Mons, was further stimulated by the preparations in France to resist a siege of Paris, and by the specific accounts (Sept. 1) of German atrocities given by the Belgian Mission which visited London on its way to the United States, and was cordially welcomed at Buckingham Palace by the King. A Joint Parliamentary Committee of all parties was formed to promote recruiting; Sir Edward Carson advised the Ulster Unionist Council (Sept. 3) that all qualified Ulster Volunteers should at once enlist in Kitchener's Army, and, without receding from its ultimate intentions, it endorsed his recommendation; the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress issued a manifesto welcoming the response of the Labour members to the appeal to aid in recruiting, announcing that it had given assistance to the Parliamentary Committee for that end; it urged recruits to come forward to avert compulsory service and maintain democracy, and pressed the claims of their dependants on the State.

In the absence of details about the military operations a strange rumour arose, which for about a fortnight seemed better attested than many accepted facts in ancient history. Towards the end of August people told each other (though the newspapers were studiously silent) that trainloads of Russian troops had been landed at Leith from Archangel, presumably to escape the German cruisers and mines in the North Sea, and were being conveyed, with the blinds of the carriages drawn, on Saturday nights and Sundays, to Dover and other south-coast ports, _en route_ for Belgium or France. Specific details gave the story verisimilitude, and independent testimony came in from all parts of the area supposed to be affected, and was accepted by people likely to be well-informed, while corroborative evidence seemed to be provided by the great number of transports taken up by the Admiralty. At last a _Daily News_ correspondent said he had seen the Russians in Belgium, and a Cardiff paper published a statement from a marine engineer that he had travelled with 2,500 of them from Archangel and in the hundred and ninety-third train of them that had passed through York. Hereupon the Press Bureau (Sept. 15) issued an absolute denial of the rumours; and this was officially confirmed in Parliament on November 18. But for a time many people persisted in believing that the troops had indeed been sent, but had gone not to France or Belgium, but to seize the Kiel Canal. How the rumour arose was a mystery.

To return to solid facts, the Prime Minister opened his "educational campaign" at a crowded and eminently representative meeting of the citizens of London at the Guildhall on September 4. Three years earlier, he said (A.R., 1911, p. 92), he had spoken in the Guildhall on support of the Anglo-American arbitration movement, and its supporters were still confident in the rightness of their position, when reluctantly, but with a clear judgment and clear conscience, the whole strength of the Empire was involved in a bloody arbitrament between might and right. But how if they had stood aside? Sooner than be a silent witness--which meant a willing accomplice--of the intolerable wrongs done in Belgium, he would see Great Britain blotted out of the page of history. The cynical violation of Belgian neutrality was only a first step in a campaign against the autonomy of the free States of Europe, whose free self-development was a capital offence in the eyes of those who had made force their divinity. This was not merely a material but a spiritual conflict. The British Government and the Foreign Secretary had made repeated efforts for peace; the responsibility for the refusal of his offers rested with Germany alone. In the spirit which animated Britain in her struggle against Napoleon, they must persevere to the end. After reviewing the resources of the Allies and Great Britain, and laying special stress on the offers of the Dominions and India, he said that the response up to that day to Lord Kitchener's call for recruits was between 250,000 and 300,000, 42,000 having been accepted in London. But they wanted more men, men of the best fighting quality, and they would endeavour that men desiring to serve together should be allotted to the same regiment or corps. He asked also for retired non-commissioned officers and officers, to train men for whom no unit could at once be found; and as regarded the war he thought that in every direction there was abundant ground for pride and comfort, and recalled how England responded to Pitt's dying appeal to save Europe by her example. "Let us go and do likewise."

Mr. Bonar Law followed with a speech of notable force. The key of peace had been in Berlin. The head of the German Government had drawn the sword; "may the accursed system for which he stands perish by the sword." Great Britain was fighting for her national existence, and for the moral forces of humanity. After commenting on the German Chancellor's saying, "You are going to war for a scrap of paper," and on the deliberate German outrages in Belgium, he dwelt eloquently on the answer given by the fight of the past week to the German estimate of Britain as decadent, and appealed to those who remained behind to remember the dependants of those who went. Then Mr. Balfour and the First Lord of the Admiralty each made brief, stirring, and confident speeches, expressing the invincible resolve of the nation to persevere and conquer.

Lord Rosebery, as Lord-Lieutenant of Linlithgowshire, spoke in the same sense next day at Broxburn; and British feeling was further roused by the sinking of H.M.S. _Pathfinder_ and the Wilson liner _Runo_, which struck mines in the North Sea, and by the capture of fifteen British fishing vessels (Chron., Sept. 5). But the tide seemed to be turning. By a declaration signed in London (Sept. 5) the British, French, and Russian Governments agreed that they would not conclude peace separately, and that when terms came to be discussed, none of them would demand terms without the consent of the other two. Moreover, an official sketch of the operations in France was encouraging. It mentioned great, though merely incidental, rearguard battles, singling out that in which the First British Cavalry Brigade and the Guards Brigade had been engaged near Compiègne. The British left, it stated, was now covered by the Seventh (really Sixth) French Army, which, with the Fifth French Army on the British right, relieved the British force of much of the previous strain. After twelve days' continuous marching and fighting, September 2 had at last been a quiet day. Many men were missing, partly because in the course of the retirement in order on a wide front, they had missed their way and got separated, but a considerable number of them would safely rejoin. The losses were 15,000, not a third of those inflicted on the enemy; but the spirit of the force was not affected, drafts amounting to 19,000 men had arrived or were approaching, and, the interval of quiet since September 1 had been used to fill up the gaps and refit and consolidate the units. The British Army was south of the Marne, in a line with the French forces on its right and left; the enemy was neglecting Paris and marching south-eastwards, having apparently abandoned its flanking movement on the Allies' left. [This change in the German plans was made about Sept. 3.] It was added that the British troops had definitely established their superiority to the Germans alike in rifle fire and in cavalry and artillery work. Striking incidents of the fighting were mentioned; despite the heat, men and horses were in excellent condition; but "we must have more men."

This account must here be supplemented from Sir John French's despatch of September 17, published October 19. On August 28 the British retirement was followed closely by two German cavalry corps, moving south-east from St. Quentin; the Third and Fifth Cavalry Brigades, under General Gough and General Chetwode, respectively repelled the Uhlans of the Guard south of the Somme and routed the eastern German column near Cerizy. Next day the Sixth French Army got into position on the British left; but the German numbers were overwhelming. After a visit from General Joffre, Sir John French agreed to retire towards the line Compiègne-Soissons; and, as his communications with Havre were threatened, the British base was changed to St. Nazaire (on the Atlantic near Nantes) with an advanced base at Le Mans. General Joffre, however, ordered a general retirement to the line of the Marne, until he could reach a position enabling him to assume the offensive. Rearguard actions were frequent, and on September 1 the First Cavalry Brigade, south of Compiègne, were overtaken by German cavalry; they momentarily lost a Horse Artillery battery, but with the help of detachments from the Third Corps they recovered it and captured twelve German guns. The First Corps were also engaged at Villers-Cotterets, the Fourth Guards Brigade suffering considerably. On September 3, when the British forces were in position south of the Marne between Lagny and Signy-Signets, and Sir John French had taken steps to defend the passage of the river, General Joffre invited him to retire twelve miles farther, to a position behind the Seine. The enemy crossed, and there were several outpost actions; on September 5 General Joffre announced his intention of taking the offensive, and, at his request, the British Army changed front to its right, its left coming to rest on the Marne and its right on the Fifth Army. On September 6, the new battle began.

Some further encouragement was given by the announcement (Sept. 10) that the Fleet had swept the North Sea up to and including the Bight of Heligoland without finding any German ships or being troubled by German interference.

The character, now becoming visible, of the contest as a "war of attrition" was fully recognised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when (Sept. 8) a deputation from the Association of Municipal Corporations invited the Government to raise, as part of the war loan, money to be lent to municipalities at cost price for new works, and to make corporation mortgages and the stock of all boroughs of 20,000 inhabitants or more trustee investments by Act of Parliament. He agreed to their first request, but intimated (in accordance with the declared intention of the deputation) that the money must be spent solely on works undertaken to relieve or avert distress. It was the last few hundred millions, he declared, that would win the war.

In a war of such a character, help was eminently needed from the whole Empire; and when Parliament reassembled (Sept. 9) statements were made in both Houses of the wonderful offers of service and money made from India. In the Commons Mr. Charles Roberts, Under-Secretary for India, read a telegram from the Viceroy telling how the rulers of the Native States, in all nearly seven hundred, had offered their personal services and the resources of their States. A number of Princes and nobles had been selected for active service. The veteran Sir Pertab Singh, Regent of Jodhpur, would not be denied his right to serve the King-Emperor; his nephew, the Maharajah, aged sixteen, accompanied him. Twenty-seven of the Native States maintained Imperial troops, and all these were put at the service of the Government. Contingents had been accepted from twelve States, including a camel corps from Bikaner, and most had already embarked. The Maharajah of Mysore had placed fifty lakhs of rupees (about 330,000_l._) at the disposal of the Government for the Expeditionary Force. A hospital ship; thousands of horses for remounts from the Chief of Gwalior and other rulers; camels and drivers from the Punjaub and Baluchistan; large subscriptions to the Indian Relief Fund and Prince of Wales's Fund; loyal messages and offers from the Khyber tribes and Chitral; large donations from the Durbar and Maharajah of Nepaul; and--as a climax--even an offer of 1,000 troops from the Dalai Lama of Tibet, accompanied by a statement that throughout that country thousands of Lamas were praying for British success. The same spirit had prevailed throughout British India; offers of service and money had poured in from religious, political, and social associations of all classes and creeds, Moslem, Hindu, Sikh, or Parsee; meetings had been held to allay panic, keep down prices, and maintain confidence and credit; and generous contributions had poured in from all quarters to the Indian Relief Fund. The message was loudly cheered, and it was promised that it should be circulated throughout the Empire. It was also read in the Upper House by the Marquess of Crewe, together with an account of the demonstration of loyalty and sympathy made by the Legislative Council, and it was welcomed by the Marquess of Lansdowne, who laid stress on the magnitude and value of this loyally offered aid.

A message from the King to the Governments and peoples of his self-governing Dominions (published Sept. 9) was as follows:--

"During the past few weeks the peoples of my whole Empire at home and overseas have moved with one aim and purpose to confront and overthrow the unparalleled assault upon the continuity of civilisation and the peace of mankind.

"The calamitous conflict is not of my seeking. My voice has been cast throughout on the side of peace. My Ministers earnestly strove to allay the causes of strife and to appease differences with which my Empire was not concerned. Had I stood aside when, in defiance of pledges to which my kingdom was a party, the soil of Belgium was violated and her cities laid desolate, when the very life of the French nation was threatened with extinction, I should have sacrificed my honour and given to destruction the liberties of my Empire and of mankind. I rejoice that every part of the Empire is with me in this decision.

"Paramount regard for treaty faith and the pledged word of rulers and peoples is the common heritage of Great Britain and of the Empire. My peoples in the self-governing Dominions have shown beyond all doubt that they whole-heartedly endorse the grave decisions which it was necessary to take.

"My personal knowledge of the loyalty and devotion of my oversea Dominions has led me to expect that they would cheerfully make the great effort and bear the great sacrifices which the present conflict entails. The full measure in which they have placed their services and resources at my disposal fills me with gratitude, and I am proud to be able to show to the world that my people overseas are as determined as the people of the United Kingdom to prosecute a just cause to a successful end.

"The Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, and the Dominion of New Zealand have placed at my disposal their naval forces, which have already rendered good service to the Empire. Strong Expeditionary Forces are being prepared in Canada, in Australia and in New Zealand for service at the front, and the Union of South Africa has released all British troops and has undertaken important military responsibilities, the discharge of which will be of the utmost value to the Empire.

"Newfoundland has doubled the numbers of its branch of the Royal Naval Reserve, and is sending a body of men to take part in the operations at the front.

"From the Dominion and Provincial governments of Canada large and welcome gifts of supplies are on their way for the use both of my naval and military forces and for the relief of the distress in the United Kingdom which must inevitably follow in the wake of war.

"All parts of my overseas dominions have thus demonstrated in the most unmistakable manner the fundamental unity of the Empire against all its diversity of situations and circumstance."

In a special message to the Princes and Peoples of the Indian Empire His Majesty repeated the first part of the foregoing, and added:--

Among the many incidents that have marked the unanimous uprising of the populations of my Empire in defence of its unity and integrity, nothing has moved me more than the passionate devotion to my Throne expressed both by my Indian subjects and by the Feudatory Princes and the Ruling Chiefs of India, and their prodigal offers of their lives and their resources in the cause of the Realm.

Their one-voiced demand to be foremost in the conflict has touched my heart, and has inspired to the highest issues the love and devotion which, as I well know, have ever linked my Indian subjects and myself. I recall to mind India's gracious message to the British nation of goodwill and fellowship, which greeted my return in February, 1912, after the solemn ceremony of my Coronation Durbar at Delhi, and I find in this hour of trial a full harvest and a noble fulfilment of the assurance given by you that the destinies of Great Britain and India are indissolubly linked.

Next day in Committee of Supply the Prime Minister moved an additional vote for the land forces of 500,000 men for the current year, and it was passed unanimously. At the outbreak of war, he said, Parliament had voted 186,000 men for the Army; the Army Reserve and Special Reserve, which then became available as part of the Regular Forces, brought the number up roughly to 400,000. On August 6, another half million were voted, making 900,000. The recruits since the declaration of war numbered nearly 439,000. On one day, Sept. 3, the total enlisted was 33,204. In the past ten days the daily number of recruits was equal to that of a year in peace time, and no machinery could have met the emergency. The War Office had sent abroad the Expeditionary Force of about 150,000 men without the loss of a man or a horse, had provided for immediate and future wastage of men and material, and for everything except this enormous increase in the Regular Forces. The Territorial County Associations had been appealed to, the training centres multiplied; there had been congestion and consequent discomfort, and municipal buildings might have been used more fully for the men. But the first necessity was to get the men, and he was sure they would come forward. Men would now be allowed to go home after attestation until called on for training, and, while waiting, would be paid 3_s._ a day. With this half million, the Army in the field would number some 1,200,000, exclusive of the Territorials, the National Reserve, and the Indian and Dominion troops. It must now be made clear to recruits that every possible provision would be made for their comfort and well-being, and that they would take their place in the magnificent Army which had never shown itself more worthy of long centuries of splendid tradition than in the past fortnight. Mr. Bonar Law assured the Government of the support of his party, and insisted that the sacrifice must not come exclusively from the men who were coming forward with splendid spirit to risk their lives.

Parliament did not sit again till September 14; but on September 11 a great demonstration to aid recruiting was held at the London Opera House, under the joint auspices of the National Liberal and Constitutional Clubs. The First Lord of the Admiralty, while warning his audience that the war would be long and sombre, declared that the situation was far better than could have been expected at this early stage, and he was certain that it could be brought to a victorious conclusion. We were building on a sure foundation. The Navy had searched the so-called German Ocean without discovering the German flag; the attrition on which the Germans had counted had been only on their side; the health of the Fleet was better than during peace; and our naval control and sea power might be kept up indefinitely. "By one of those dispensations of Providence which appeal so strongly to the German Emperor, the nose of the bulldog has been slanted backward so that he can breathe in comfort without letting go." In the next twelve months more than twice as many great ships and three or four times as many cruisers would be completed for Great Britain as for Germany. It was now necessary to make a great Army, an Army of a million men. The Army in the field could be raised to 250,000, by the new year to 500,000, and by the early summer of 1915 to twenty-five Army Corps. An Army so formed would be the finest in the world. Germany could draw on no corresponding reserve of manhood. This would decide the issue. Let the British people concentrate their warlike feeling on fighting the enemy in the field, and let it be said, after the war was over, that "they fought like gentlemen." Germany in her three great wars had been the terror and bully of Europe. Let Great Britain fight for great and sound principles for Europe, the first being nationality. The British people and Empire were at last united, and while they remained so no forces were strong enough to beat them down or break them up. Mr. F. E. Smith declared that Great Britain was fighting for treaty obligations, for self-preservation, and for the existence of international law. Terms of peace would be arranged in London or Berlin, and we were encouraged to believe it would be in Berlin by the extraordinary spontaneity with which the whole Empire was springing to arms. There had never been anything like it in history. Mr. Crooks said that the fight was for liberty and home. "He would rather see every living soul blotted off the face of the earth than see the Kaiser supreme anywhere."

Unfortunately the patriotic unity of parties was presently marred by a sharp difference as to the treatment to be given to the Home Rule and Welsh Church Bills. Negotiations for a settlement between the leaders had failed, and it was announced in the Press on September 14 that the session would be wound up at once, and these Bills would become law automatically under the Parliament Act, but that the Government would introduce a Bill postponing their operation till after the war; and it was understood that it would also pledge itself to introduce an Amending Bill dealing with the Ulster question before the Home Rule Bill should become operative. On the other hand, the Marquess of Lansdowne would introduce a Bill providing that the Home Rule and Welsh Church Bills should be taken up after the war at the stages they had reached on July 30, 1914, so that their advantages under the Parliament Act would not be lost. The Opposition held that the Government plan violated the pledge that no party should be prejudiced by the cessation of party controversy; but at a meeting of Unionist members of Parliament at the Carlton Club (Sept. 14) it was agreed (Lord Hugh Cecil dissenting) that the party must maintain the national unity; they would support Ulster after the war, but for the present would merely protest and withdraw from the debate.

The Prime Minister briefly made his announcement that afternoon in the Commons, mentioning that the new Bill would provide that neither the Welsh Church Act nor the Home Rule Act should be put into operation for twelve months in any event, or, if the war were not then terminated, to such further date not later than its termination as might be fixed by Order in Council; and the Marquess of Crewe stated the views of the Government in the House of Lords. Failure to pass the Bills would mean an Opposition triumph; an Amending Bill would involve an undesirable platform campaign in Ireland to induce the two parties to accept it, and this was not the moment to bring Home Rule into operation. No responsible Government could contemplate imposing Home Rule on Ulster by force; but a Government might come in at the end of the war on some novel issue, and Ireland might thereby lose its chance of Home Rule. He gave, at greater length, the same pledges as the Prime Minister, promising an Amending Bill within the next twelve months, not necessarily excluding Ulster or part of Ulster; he claimed that no unfair advantage was being taken, and predicted that, when the Home Rule Bill became law, the whole of Ireland would rush to enlist. The Marquess of Lansdowne complained that the Ministerial decision must shatter the hope of a change in party relations. But the Unionists would not sulk. It was not a moment to rekindle controversy. The undertaking as to the Amending Bill was vague; the Welsh Church Bill had been referred to a Committee (p. 136) and it would be hard to raise an endowment fund after the war. The controversy on the last Amending Bill had established that the exclusion of Ulster was hateful and offered an almost insoluble problem; and he noted that Ulster was not to be coerced--though he was not quite satisfied with the assurance given on that point. He defended and introduced his own measure, the Legislation (Suspension during War) Bill (p. 204), but stated that his party was ready to meet the fear that the rise of new issues might shut out Home Rule by extending for the current Parliament the five years' time limit in the Parliament Act to six.

After further debate this Bill was read a first time.

Next day (Sept. 15) the Prime Minister introduced his Bill in the Commons. He said that the Opposition proposal would place the Bills at the mercy of a chapter of accidents. If the term of this Parliament were extended by a year, as had been suggested, the war might not be over, and the postponement of Home Rule would have damped the patriotic feeling of Irishmen not only in Ireland, but in the Dominions and the United States. He stated the Government proposal, promised an Amending Bill for the following session, and repudiated as unthinkable the idea of coercing Ulster in the existing patriotic atmosphere. As to the Welsh Bill, disendowment would necessitate a voluntary Sustentation Fund, which would be hampered by the war burdens and by new taxation. But disendowment was necessarily connected with disestablishment, and, subject to relatively formal matters, this Bill would be delayed like the Irish Bill. He was not troubled by the charge of breach of faith. He would leave his honour in the hands of his countrymen.

Mr. Bonar Law declared regretfully that the Government had taken advantage of the patriotism of the Unionists to betray them. As to the Welsh Bill there was no breach of faith, though the time-limit was inadequate, and it would have been better to await the report of the Select Committee (p. 136), but it was wrong to shock the consciences of its opponents at such a time. But the Government held that the Home Rule Bill and the Amending Bill hung together, and they were breaking solemn pledges in dealing with the former alone. On the morning of August 4 he and Sir Edward Carson had suggested to the Prime Minister that an acrimonious debate should be avoided, and the Prime Minister had promised that until the discussion of the Amending Bill was resumed, no controversial legislation should be taken--on which the Ulster Unionists drew up a resolution agreeing to the adjournment of that Bill--and also that by the postponement of controversial legislation no party to the controversy should be placed in a worse position. The Prime Minister had also told the House that the Home Rule Bill would not be presented for the King's assent till the Amending Bill had been disposed of in the Commons. He had said that circumstances made it inconvenient to fulfil this pledge, but was his new pledge stronger? Amid protests from the Ministerialists, some of whom, headed by the First Lord of the Admiralty, ostentatiously left the House, Mr. Bonar Law likened it to the German promise which the Prime Minister had contemptuously dismissed as valueless (p. 179). He stated that in the negotiations of some ten days earlier the Prime Minister offered the Unionists two alternatives: (1) his present course, which they refused to consider; (2) another suggestion which they accepted. [What this was did not transpire, but the Prime Minister, intervening, made clear that it was put forward only as a basis for criticism and further suggestion by the Opposition.] The Unionists, Mr. Bonar Law continued, had been prepared to agree to a Bill extending the operation of the Parliament Act to the succeeding session, and to the postponement of a general election till after Home Rule was settled. Mr. Redmond's speech (p. 172) was a promise of conditional loyalty; but he blamed him less than the Government. Ulster and the Unionists, in spite of all, would help the Government to preserve the country till the war was over; but they would withdraw from a debate which, under present circumstances, was indecent.

Mr. John Redmond (N.) said he would not waste time by replying to Mr. Bonar Law's speech. But the settlement was not a party triumph, but a severe disadvantage for the Nationalists, owing to the delay of the Home Rule Bill. But the moratorium was necessary, and he hoped it would lead to a very different Amending Bill. The two things he cared for most were, (1) that autonomy for Ireland should extend to the whole country, (2) that no county should be coerced into Home Rule. These things were then incompatible, but when Nationalists and Irishmen had fought side by side on the Continent and drilled together for home defence, he believed a real Amending Bill would be offered to the Government by agreement. Meanwhile the Nationalists must cultivate a spirit of conciliation. His speech (Aug. 3; p. 173) was not an offer of conditional loyalty, but an appeal to the Ulster Volunteers to allow the Nationalist Volunteers to fight by their side in defence of their country, and to the Government and the War Office to enable the Nationalists to do their duty. He regretted that it had found no response. Ireland had furnished proportionately a larger quota to the Army than Great Britain. In 1885 the numbers per thousand of the male population were Irish born 76, British born 42; in 1893 75 to 47, in 1903 69 to 44, in 1913 42 to 32. That was the record when Irish sentiment was completely out of touch with British; what would it be now, when Irish sentiment was wholly with Great Britain in the war? The little groups of Irishmen who were opposing enlistment were the bitterest enemies of the Nationalists. Ireland felt now that the British democracy had kept faith with her; she was specially moved by the fact that the war was undertaken in defence of small nations and oppressed peoples. Like South Africa, Ireland had been transformed from "the broken arm of England" into one of the strongest bulwarks of the Empire.

After other speeches, the Bill was brought in amid cheers.

In the House of Lords, meanwhile, the second reading of the Home Rule Bill was moved, but ultimately adjourned by 93 votes to 29. Violent attacks were made on the Government by Viscount Midleton and the Marquess of Londonderry, and its course was defended by the Lord Chancellor and the Marquess of Crewe. The latter said that any expectation on the Continent of civil war in Ireland had been encouraged quite as much by the threats from Ulster as by any action of the Government. What was important was that the Home Rule Bill and the Amending Bill should come into operation at the same time. The Marquess of Lansdowne said that the Unionist complaint was that the Government were enabling the Nationalists to obtain without a struggle what would otherwise have cost them a very serious struggle. They desired adjournment, partly because prolonged and minute discussion of Irish questions would just then be futile or mischievous, partly because they had no security that there would be an Amending Bill.

A similar motion adjourning the Welsh Church Bill was also carried by 89 to 27. The Archbishop of Canterbury said that there was no need for haste, save on purely political lines. The Bill now would be devastating to the Church. The Government were taking advantage of the war to do them an intolerable wrong. Other Peers also spoke. Lord Lansdowne's Legislation (Suspension during War) Bill was then passed through all its stages.

Sir Edward Carson issued an indignant manifesto to the Ulster loyalists, attacking the Government for taking advantage of the war to pass the Home Rule Bill, but reminding them that their motto, now as always, was "Our Country First," and that they must go on with their preparations to assist it to victory. But they would never have Home Rule--never!

Next day, however, the Commons, on the motion of the Home Secretary, disagreed with the Lords' amendments to the Suspensory Bill. He described that relating to the Welsh Church as "essentially absurd"; and the Lords gave way.

But interest that day centred in Earl Kitchener's second statement on the military situation. After paying an emphatic tribute to Sir John French's "consummate skill and calm courage," to the ability of his generals, and to the bravery and endurance of the officers and men, he said that the tide had turned, and there were good reasons for confidence. There were in the field rather more than six divisions of British troops and two cavalry divisions, which were being maintained at full strength; further Regular divisions and additional cavalry were being organised from units withdrawn from oversea garrisons and replaced where necessary by Territorials who had patriotically volunteered for service abroad. Troops were coming from India and the Dominions, and the response at home to the call for recruits had afforded a remarkable demonstration of the energy and patriotism of the young men. The difficulties in accommodating the recruits had been overcome; the War Office had had to deal with an ordinary year's supply of troops in a day. This "splendid material" was to be organised into four new armies, of which the first two were collected at training centres, the third was being formed at new camping grounds, the fourth formed by adding to the establishment of the reserve battalions, from which the units would be detached and organised like the other three. The Special Reserve and extra Special Reserve Units would be maintained as feeders to the Expeditionary Force. He referred also to the various local battalions being raised outside these Armies, to the progress of the Territorial Force and its volunteering for foreign service, and to the division of marines and bluejackets then being organised by the First Lord of the Admiralty. He spoke also of the means of providing officers, but said the chief difficulty was in material rather than _personnel_, but it was being overcome. By the spring the new armies would be well trained and formidable opponents to the enemy. He added details, also given by the Prime Minister in the Commons, of the increased allowances to wives of soldiers (wife 12_s._ 6_d._ with additions of 2_s._ 6_d._ for each child up to three and 2_s._ for the fourth. Provision was also foreshadowed for dependants of unmarried soldiers and naval men, and other matters.) The Marquess of Lansdowne said a few words expressing the "profound admiration and gratitude" of the House for the feat of arms of the Expeditionary Force, and its full concurrence in Earl Kitchener's praise of Sir John French.

Parliament was prorogued next day (Sept. 19) by Commission, after wholly unprecedented proceedings. The House of Lords was nearly empty; the Commons' and other galleries were crowded. The Royal Assent was given by Commission to a number of Bills, and then, in a new formula, to the Government of Ireland and Established Church (Wales) Act, "duly passed under the provisions of the Parliament Act, 1911." Loud cheers followed from the galleries, and no attempt was made to suppress them. Then the Lord Chancellor read the King's Speech as follows:--

MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN, I address you in circumstances that call for action rather than for speech.

After every endeavour had been made by My Government to preserve the peace of the world, I was compelled, in the assertion of treaty obligations deliberately set at nought, and for the protection of the public law of Europe and the vital interests of My Empire, to go to war.

My Navy and Army have, with unceasing vigilance, courage, and skill, sustained, in association with gallant and faithful allies, a just and righteous cause.

From every part of My Empire there has been a spontaneous and enthusiastic rally to our common flag.

* * * * *

GENTLEMEN OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, I thank you for the liberality with which you have met a great emergency.

* * * * *

MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN, We are fighting for a worthy purpose, and we shall not lay down our arms until that purpose has been fully achieved.

I rely with confidence upon the loyal and united efforts of all My subjects, and I pray that Almighty God may give us His blessing.

In the Commons, after one or two questions, members were summoned to the House of Lords as usual, and, on the return of the Deputy Speaker, loud cheers greeted his announcement of the passing of the Home Rule Bill, as also the last clause but one of the Royal Speech. Then, before the customary leave-taking, Mr. Crooks (Lab., _Woolwich_) asked if it would be in order to sing "God Save the King," and, after a moment's pause, began to do so. Every member rose and joined; so did the strangers in the galleries; Mr. Crooks, after calling for three cheers, which were heartily given, exclaimed "God save Ireland," to which Mr. J. Redmond responded "God save England." Members then took leave of the Deputy-Speaker, and thus this most exciting and astonishing session came to its close.

The war had produced much "emergency legislation," of which the most important items have been noticed; it had also increased the "massacre of the innocents," besides eliminating the debate on the Indian Budget. Of Government Bills passed and not previously noticed at length we may mention the Nationality and Status of Aliens Bill (tending to make this status uniform throughout the Empire), the Criminal Justice Administration Bill (extending the time for the payment of fines in lieu of imprisonment, and extending the probationary treatment of youthful offenders on the "Borstal system"); the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Bill, facilitating the establishment of residential schools for such children by local education authorities, the Board of Education finding half the cost; a Merchant Shipping Bill, giving effect to the chief recommendations of the International Conference (p. 9), the National Insurance Act, Part II., Amendment Bill (p. 115), the Milk and Dairies Bills (p. 115), and a Housing Bill. This originally empowered the Board of Agriculture to build cottages in rural districts at a cost of 3,000,000_l._ and to house workmen at Rosyth (where the lack of houses was a scandal, at a cost of 2,000,000_l._), but it was eventually cut down to apply to Rosyth only, and subsequently extended again to provide employment during the war (p. 182). An Importation of Plumage Bill, prohibiting such importation in the case of certain foreign birds mercilessly destroyed--often during the breeding season--was strongly supported by zoologists and humanitarians, but opposed by the trade and by a very few members as destroying British industry, and was drastically amended in Committee and finally crowded out.

Among private members' Bills which became law, we may mention the Education (Provision of Meals) Bill, extending the existing provision (A.R., 1906, pp. 41, 252) to vacations and instituting it everywhere in England and Wales; a non-party Agricultural Holdings Bill, giving compensation to tenants for unreasonable disturbance with a view to the sale of their holdings; a Grey Seals Protection Bill (saving a species threatened with extinction), and a Bill prohibiting the exportation of worn-out horses (in which there had been an extensive and very cruel traffic to Belgium), unless they were certified not to be permanently incapacitated for work, and requiring horses not so certified to be slaughtered at the ports.

Among private members' Bills discussed and dropped were two Bills restricting the sale of intoxicants on Sunday; a Weekly Rest Day Bill, which the Commons rejected (May 21) by 117 to 105, mainly because it was badly drafted; a Bill facilitating the further creation of small holdings in Scotland; a Children's Employment and School Attendance Bill, raising the age of leaving school to fifteen, enabling local authorities to compel attendance at continuation schools, abolishing half-time, and forbidding street trading to boys under fifteen and girls under eighteen; this was strongly opposed by a small minority, and dropped for want of time. A Unionist Housing Bill, setting up a Housing Department of the Local Government Board and providing a Government grant, preceded the first Government Housing Bill above mentioned and failed through Ministerial refusal to provide the grant. A Health Resorts and Watering Places Bill would have allowed local authorities to advertise the attractions of their borough or urban district to an extent limited by the yield of 1_d._ rate. It passed its second reading in the Commons by 109 to 28. Four unsuccessful essays at legislation in the House of Lords must also be mentioned--the Criminal Law Amendment Bill for the better protection of young girls, presented by the Bishop of London, greatly amended, and eventually withdrawn; a Moneylenders Bill; Lord Newton's Betting Inducements Bill, modified from that of 1913 (A.R., 1913, p. 196), which passed the House of Lords; and Lord Gorell's Matrimonial Causes Bill, based on his experience as Judge of the Probate and Divorce Division. This made the grounds for divorce the same for both sexes, and allowed a marriage to be nullified on account of insanity, incipient mental unsoundness, and epilepsy; but after a debate of the usual character (July 28), it was withdrawn to be reintroduced in 1915.

The Prime Minister had not waited for the prorogation to leave for Edinburgh, where he spoke at a meeting of 3,500 persons, primarily consisting of those eligible for the new Army, on September 18. Great crowds were unable to enter, and were addressed either by him at an overflow meeting or by speakers outside. Lord Provost Inches, who presided, mentioned that Edinburgh had enlisted 11,000 men in the new Army. Mr. Asquith began by referring to the origin of the war, and to Sir Maurice de Bunsen's despatch (p. 215), as showing that, largely through Sir Edward Grey's efforts, a peaceful settlement was already in sight when, on July 31, Germany deliberately made war a certainty. The only attempt to controvert the facts was by circulating such wanton falsehoods as that France was beginning to violate Belgian territory. England was at war (1) to vindicate the sanctity of treaty obligations and the public law of Europe; (2) to assert the independence of small States; (3) to withstand in the interest of civilisation the claim of a single Power to dominate Europe. Rebutting the German charge that England had never cared for treaties save in her own interest, he quoted Pitt's speech in 1793 on the French annulment of the treaties guaranteeing to Holland the navigation of the Scheldt, and cited Mr. Gladstone's action regarding Belgium in 1870 and his vindication of it at Edinburgh in 1880. The Germans practically did not contest the British statement that their aim was to dominate Europe. They avowedly believed that the supremacy of German culture was best for the world. Mankind owed much to Germany, but her specific share in the movement of the past thirty years had been intellectually the development of the doctrine of the prerogative of material forces, and, practically, primacy in the fabrication and multiplication of means of destruction. To those accepting this gospel treaties were merely pieces of parchment, and talk about the rights of the weak and the obligations of the strong merely threadbare and nauseating cant. Their creed had proved a purblind philosophy; they had miscalculated the strength of the British Empire, the feelings of the Colonies and India, the state of Great Britain. The fruits of this culture were seen in their action in Belgium and France--Louvain, Malines, Termonde, their proclamation at Reims. The British task might take months or years, but the economic, monetary, and military and naval position was encouraging; but more men were needed, and he eloquently appealed for them, reminding them of their hardships and dangers, and of their noble opportunity.

Next day the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke for a similar purpose at a meeting of Welshmen at the Queen's Hall, London. He said that no man detested war more than himself, but it could not have been avoided without national dishonour. France had respected Belgian neutrality at Sedan at the cost of her own ruin; Prussia's interest was to break the treaty, and she had done it. The German Chancellor called treaties "scraps of paper." Then let them burn their bank-notes; they were only scraps of paper. "What are they made of? Rags. What are they worth? The whole credit of the British Empire." The machinery of the world's commerce had stopped; it was moved by bills of exchange--wretched little scraps of paper, which yet moved great ships with precious cargoes across the world. What was the motive power behind them? The honour of commercial men. Treaties were the currency of international statesmanship. German merchants were as honourable as any, but if the currency of German commerce was to be debased to that of her statesmanship no trader would ever look at a German signature again. The German doctrine was the straight road to barbarism. It was as if one removed the magnetic pole whenever it was in the way of a German cruiser. The tales about conspiracy of France and Belgium had been vamped up afterwards. He dwelt on the outrages in Belgium, and on the Austrian treatment of Servia; and he remarked that, the greatest art, the most enduring literature, even the salvation of mankind had come through little nations. He contrasted the Russian action to free Bulgaria with Bismarck's saying that "Bulgaria was not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier." German civilisation was hard and material; the Emperor claimed to be God's Viceregent; "there has been nothing like it since the days of Mahomet." He did not mean all his speeches, but the men around him did. They meant to destroy Christianity; the new diet of the world they held was to be blood and iron. Britain was not fighting the German people, who were under the heel of the military caste. The Prussian Junker was "the road hog of Europe." If the old British spirit was alive, that bully would be torn from his seat. It would not be easy to beat them, but in the end we should march through terror to triumph. It was a great opportunity, and a greater blessing was emerging--a new patriotism, richer, nobler, more exalted than the old. We had been living in a sheltered valley; the stern hand of fate had scourged us to an elevation whence they could see the great peaks of honour--Duty, Patriotism, Sacrifice. We should descend again, but this generation would carry in their hearts "the image of those great mountain peaks whose foundations are not shaken, though Europe rock and sway in the convulsions of a great war."

Speaking at a recruiting meeting at Nottingham (Sept. 21) the Marquess of Lansdowne attributed to Germany a design to establish a great military despotism from the North Sea to the Adriatic, and described the action of the Dominions and India as unparalleled in history. The response to Lord Kitchener's appeal was magnificent, but two men in training were needed for every one in the field. The First Lord of the Admiralty on the same evening at Liverpool said that circumstances had so far been unexpectedly favourable to the Allied cause; if the British Empire had the time--and the Navy would give it--he thought, if its resolution did not fail, it could finally settle the fight as it chose. Without a battle, Great Britain was enjoying the advantages of a battle in which the German Navy had been destroyed. If the German ships did not come out, "they would be dug out like rats in a hole." Mr. F. E. Smith and Mr. T. P. O'Connor spoke also, and it was announced that the former was leaving for the front.

Mr. Churchill's speech, unfortunately, was promptly followed by the sinking of three British cruisers in the North Sea, with a heavy loss of officers and men; but encouragement was given by the news of the daring British air raid on Cologne and Düsseldorf, by the indignation roused throughout the civilised world by the German bombardment of Reims Cathedral (_post_, Chron., Sept. 20, 22), and still more by the announcement that, on the eleventh day of the Battle of the Aisne, the Allies were gaining ground. No full account, however, was given of the doings of the British Army in France till Sir John French's despatch was published, October 19; and we may here continue the story (p. 199) by summarising his account of the movement from the Marne to the Aisne.

The battle on September 6, he said, began on a front running from Ermenonville through Lizy, Mauperthuis, Cortecon, Esternay, Charleville, to a point north of Verdun. About noon a German retreat began, and a series of battles followed till, on the evening of September 10, the enemy, driven back to a line running from Compiègne to Soissons, were preparing to dispute the passage of the Aisne. He specially mentioned the forcing of the passage of the Petit Morin River (Sept. 8) by the First British Corps, and of the Marne by the First and Second Corps, and of the battle on September 10, when these Corps, assisted by the Cavalry division on the right and the Third and Fifth Cavalry Brigades on the left, drove the enemy northwards, capturing thirteen guns, seven machine guns, some 2,000 prisoners, and much transport.

A further despatch, dated October 8, but published with the first, practically completed the history of the fighting on the Aisne. On September 12, Sir John French stated, the enemy made a stand, and prepared to dispute the passage of the river (somewhat to the east of Soissons). The river valley, he explained, ran east and west; the bottom was flat, the hills bordering it were about 400 feet high, with numerous spurs and re-entrants; they were backed on the north by a high plateau with patches of wood, admirably adapted for concealing troops. The enemy held a very strong position on the north of the Aisne (a winding stream, 170 feet wide, and unfordable), commanding all the bridges, and with great facilities for concealment. On September 13 the British forces were ordered to advance and make good the Aisne. Portions of them that day crossed at various points a distance of about twelve miles from Bourg to Venizel (the latter some three miles east of Soissons), with comparative ease on their right, with great difficulty on their left, the Fifth Infantry Brigade, in particular, crossing in single file under heavy fire on the broken and only remaining girder of a bridge. The crossing was not completed till the evening of the 13th, when the enemy (though still holding some points on the Aisne) effected a general retirement and entrenched on the high ground two miles north of the river, leaving, however, detachments of infantry supported by powerful artillery, in commanding points on the slopes of the spurs of the high ground. The river was further bridged, under heavy artillery fire, by the Royal Engineers, and on the 15th there was a general advance, to ascertain whether the enemy intended to hold his position or was only halting. This cannot here be described in detail; a few points must suffice. The First Corps, under Sir Douglas Haig, gained positions on that day by "skilful, bold, and decisive" action which alone enabled the British forces to maintain their foothold on the north bank during three weeks' severe fighting; the most difficult part of this work was achieved, round Vendresse and Troyon, by the Loyal North Lancashires, the Royal Sussex, the King's Royal Rifles, and the Northamptons, reinforced by the Coldstream Guards. The enemy was found to be making a determined stand against the Allies in a strongly entrenched position along the whole line from Compiègne to Reims, supported by heavy artillery set free by the fall of Maubeuge. The British troops, therefore, had to entrench thoroughly, and eventually to establish a regular system of relief in the trenches, the cavalry men taking their turn, and also to obtain heavy howitzer batteries from England, which were first used September 24. On the 16th the Army was reinforced by the 6th Division. On the 17th, 18th, 19th, the Germans heavily bombarded the trenches and the First Corps was heavily engaged; on the 17th the Northamptons crept in mist to within 100 yards of the enemy's trenches, and then cleared them with the bayonet; on the night of the 18th the Gloucesters advanced near Chivy, filled in the German trenches and took two Maxim guns. From the 23rd to the 26th the enemy was less active; but on the 26th, and especially on the night of the 27th-28th, there were renewed German attacks, which were beaten off, and were the last great German effort in the battle. Sir John French eulogised the conduct alike of officers and men; the total casualties in four weeks were 561 officers and 12,980 men, and the heavy rain and cold during most of the battle imposed a severe tax on the endurance of the troops. The German losses, it must be noted, were far heavier; and after the end of September the German resistance died down and permitted the removal of the British troops to Ypres.

All this was as yet only known vaguely; but a possible danger to London had been impressed afresh on the public by the issue through the police authorities of an Admiralty statement of the measures taken to protect the capital against an air raid. More searchlights had been mounted, as well as special guns; at Hendon aerodrome men and machines of the Naval Air Service were held ready to pursue the raiders. Naval airships were to pay surprise visits, to test the effectiveness of the diminution of lighting; and for many months the darkness of the London streets, the consequent reduction in evening performances at the theatres, and (after the middle of November) the regulation that suburban trains must have their blinds drawn after nightfall, served as a reminder of the newest peril of modern war.

Besides all this, the conviction that Germany was essentially responsible for the war had been, if that were possible, intensified; first, by Sir Edward Grey's effective reply to a bungling attack on the sincerity of Great Britain made through the Danish Press by the German Chancellor (Sept. 15, 16), and next by the issue of two important diplomatic publications: (1) Sir Maurice de Bunsen's lengthy despatch (Sept. 16) which showed that the Austro-Hungarian Government had pressed on the war against Serbia in harmony with the wishes of the population of Vienna and other leading cities, and that Germany had by her intervention destroyed the last hopes of a peaceful solution; (2) the Russian Orange Book (Sept. 21; see _post_, For. Hist., Chap. II., III.).

It was amid these impressions that the Prime Minister addressed a great meeting at the Round Room of the Dublin Mansion House on September 25, the Lord Mayor in the chair. A small section of the National Volunteers had issued an anti-recruiting manifesto in the morning, and police and National Volunteers were ready to avert a disturbance, but these precautions were not needed. Mr. Asquith, who had an enthusiastic reception, said that he could base his title to speak on such service as he had tried throughout his political life to render Ireland. The Empire, as a family of nations, was united in defending principles vital to it and to civilisation and the progress of mankind. The proofs that Germany was responsible for the war were patent, manifold, and overwhelming; Germany had been preparing for a generation past, and had seized the opportunity of the Austro-Serbian dispute. But she made two profound miscalculations; as to the resistance of Belgium--to which he paid an eloquent tribute--and as to the attitude of England. She believed England to be paralysed by domestic disaffection and without interest in the conflict. But England had at stake her plighted word and the maintenance of the whole system of international goodwill. In 1870 Mr. Gladstone had said that "the greatest triumph of our time would be the enthronement of public right as the governing idea of European politics." That meant that the small nations must have as good a title as the large ones to a place in the sun, and finally the establishment of a real European partnership, based on the recognition of equal right and established and enforced by a common will. The victory of the Allies would bring this within the range of European statesmanship. The cause of the small nations specially appealed to Ireland. Let her take her share in the war. The British Empire had always been proud of its Irish regiments and their leaders; and he specially appealed to the National Volunteers (after a brief reference to the contests which had become unthinkable) to form an Irish Brigade, or, better still, an Irish Army Corps. Local associations would be maintained as far as possible, and officers of the Volunteers might receive commissions. He was certain that the Volunteers would become an integral part of the defensive forces of the Crown. Old animosities were dead; what was needed was the free-will offering of a free people.

The Earl of Meath, the Unionist Lord-Lieutenant of co. Dublin, also spoke; and Mr. John Redmond said that Ireland would feel bound in honour to take her place beside the other autonomous portions of the King's Dominions. She had been profoundly moved by the sufferings of Belgium, and he had promised Cardinal Mercier that Irishmen would avenge Louvain. Ireland's highest material interests were at stake in the war. After referring to the high proportion of Irishmen in the Army from the Peninsular War onwards he said that Ireland wanted an Irish Army Corps, and at the same time the Irish National Volunteers would be kept intact, and would be an inexhaustible source of strength to the new Army Corps and Army. Speaking for an overwhelming majority of the Nationalists, he said to the Prime Minister and Great Britain: "You have kept faith with Ireland; Ireland will keep faith with you." The Lord-Lieutenant, the Chief Secretary, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. Devlin spoke also, and the meeting closed with the singing of "God Save the King," "God Save Ireland," and "A Nation Once Again."

A day earlier the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in an impromptu speech at Criccieth, had mentioned that France and England had agreed that each should lend Belgium 10,000,000_l._ without interest, and that the Bank of England had been ready to let him have 40,000,000_l._ or more; and he urged Wales to be forward in recruiting for this eminently righteous war. He repeated this appeal at a great meeting in Cardiff (Sept. 29) called to promote the raising of a separate Welsh Army Corps. Wales, he said, would have under compulsory service to raise 250,000 men; it ought to provide 40,000 to 50,000 volunteers for the new Army. The war must be national, and conviction was essential to confidence. It was no picnic; but their war memories would compensate them. The Welsh were not a martial race; but neither were the men who composed Cromwell's Ironsides. If they failed through timidity, ignorance or indolence Welshmen would be unable to live down their evil repute for generations. In two months 36,000 men had joined the Army from Wales. If Welshmen came out manfully, the sons of Wales would have laid up for their native land treasures of honour and glory.

On the previous day, September 28, Belfast had celebrated the second anniversary of Ulster Day, which had not been dropped owing to the alleged breach by the Government of the "truce" (p. 204). But the proceedings were very largely a demonstration of a broader patriotism. Sir Edward Carson, indeed, announced that after the war he proposed to summon the Provisional Government, which would repeal the Home Rule Act as affecting Ulster and enact simultaneously that the Volunteers should carry out this decision; meanwhile, let them throw themselves whole-heartedly into the patriotic action demanded by the time. And Mr. Bonar Law, at a great demonstration that evening, after giving a formal pledge that the whole Unionist party would support Ulster unconditionally; repeated that Ulstermen had no ill-will to their Catholic fellow-countrymen, and went on to deal with the war. The meeting was called to stimulate Ulstermen to join the Army; such hesitation as there had been at first was due to the suddenness of the war, and it had not lasted long. The pressure put on individuals to join seemed to him detestable, and was utterly unnecessary. The Germans had been shown that we were not a decadent nation. We had reason to be proud of the Army, the Volunteers, and the spirit shown throughout the Empire. After urging the need of better allowances for dependants of soldiers, Mr. Bonar Law described the war as one of the greatest of crimes, due to one nation and largely to one man. The Germans had pulled down their spiritual altars and erected a temple to naked Force. It was Napoleonism without Napoleon. Apart from their Army they had made every possible mistake--with Italy, with Belgium, in neutral countries, as regarded the Dominions and India. The British people had no desire to humiliate the German people, but they were determined that the dread spectre that had haunted them should not do so again, and that the law of right, not of might, should govern the world.

Meanwhile the moral strength of the British case was emphasised by the elaborate reply of British theologians (Sept. 30) to an appeal issued by German theologians to Evangelical Christians abroad. This appeal described Germany as "confronted in other lands by a systematic network of lies." It attributed the war to the interference of Russia in the Servian dispute, complained that Russia had been joined by those who "by blood and history and faith are our brothers," and said that against a world in arms, Germans had to defend their existence, individuality, culture, and honour. "Unnameable horrors" had been committed against Germans living peaceably abroad, women and children, wounded and physicians; heathen Japan had been called in under pretext of an alliance; the mission fields indicated as most important by the World Missionary Conference, mid-Africa and Eastern Asia, were now the scenes of bitter rivalry between the peoples specially responsible for their Christianisation; the signatories, for the sake, not of Germany, but of the world-task of the Christian peoples in the decisive hour of the world-mission, addressed themselves to Evangelical Christians abroad, and repudiated German responsibility for the war and its consequences to the development of God's kingdom on earth. The British reply, signed by the two English Archbishops, the Primates of Ireland and Scotland, the Bishops of London, Winchester, and Ossory, the Chairman of the World Missionary Conference, and a host of other Anglican and Free Church divines and University dignitaries, began by a calm review of the origin of the war, and the violation of Belgian neutrality. It went on to note the absence of reference to the teachings of Treitschke and Bernhardi, questioned the allegation of atrocities, deplored the signatories' severance from German Christians and the effects of the war in the mission field, and declared that, dear to them as was the cause of peace, the principles of truth and honour were yet more dear. They took their stand for international good faith, the safeguarding of smaller nationalities, and the upholding of the essential conditions of brotherhood among the nations of the world.

But, though the British people supported the war with practical unanimity, it was found necessary to stimulate recruiting by a platform campaign. A more effective method would doubtless have been to give news from the front; but few details were given of the great battle on the Aisne, and the feats of particular corps were not mentioned for fear that the enemy should find out what troops it had to face. War correspondents, again, were not allowed at the front, and arrangements to permit them were vetoed, after long waiting, by the War Office. An official account, by an "eye-witness," was supplied to the Press; but it contained little that was definite. Popular feeling was encouraged by the surrender of Duala and the investment of Tsingtau, and exasperated by the _Emden's_ raid on Madras; but recruiting was encouraged only by advertisement and by speech-making, following the Ministerial lead.

The Prime Minister concluded his part in this campaign at Cardiff, where he addressed a thoroughly representative meeting of 9,000 persons (Oct. 2). He began by laying stress on the unparalleled unity of the British Empire in the war, which was due neither to ambition nor to ill-will. In regard to Germany in particular, British policy had aimed at establishing a firm basis for cordial relations; Ministers had repeatedly said that friendships with certain Powers did not imply coldness or hostility to others; but, as the Foreign Secretary had said (Nov. 27, 1911), "One does not make new friendships worth having by deserting old ones." Mr. Asquith then made an important disclosure. In 1912 the Cabinet had formally notified the German Government that Britain would "neither make nor join in any unprovoked attack on Germany." "Aggression upon Germany is not the subject and forms no part of any treaty, understanding, or combination to which Britain is now a party, nor will she become a party to anything that has such an object." But the German Government asked Britain for an absolute pledge of neutrality if Germany were engaged in war, and this at a time when Germany was enormously increasing both her aggressive and defensive forces, especially at sea. Only one answer was possible, but the British Government had continued, especially during the Balkan crisis, to work for peace. Both from a domestic and an international point of view the war could only be regarded as among the worst of catastrophes for Britain, but not the worst. In the four weeks since his Guildhall speech (p. 197) every day had increased the sombre and repulsive features of the German invasion--"worthy of the blackest annals in the history of barbarism." Had not Great Britain shown herself ready to strike with all her forces at the common enemy of civilisation and freedom she could only have gone down dishonoured to her grave. The world was as ready as ever to respond to moral issues. The new school of German ethics had taught for a generation that force alone was the test of right. But in the British Empire they still believed in the sanctity of treaties, the rights of small nationalities, and the worth of freedom; and they looked forward at the end of the war to a Europe in which those simple and venerable truths would be guarded for ever against the recrudescence of the era of blood and iron. Britain was confronted by the greatest emergency in her history. There was no ground for apprehension that the new Army would interfere with the Territorials, who were fit, according to the considered opinion of one of the most eminent generals, for any part either in home defence, in garrison, or in the battle lines at the front. He asked Welshmen to fill up the ranks of the Welsh Army Corps. Let them remember their past and leave to their children the richest of all inheritances--the memory of fathers who in a great cause put self-sacrifice before ease, and honour before life itself.

The recruiting campaign was now energetically carried on throughout the country; and in Ireland the Nationalist leaders took a prominent part in it. Mr. Redmond at Wexford (Oct. 4) did his best to secure the aid of the Irish National Volunteers, and to promote a general reconciliation on Home Rule; and he intimated that the Prime Minister had promised that there should be an Irish Brigade. Mr. Dillon the same day at Ballaghadareen, Mayo, condemned the efforts to check recruiting made by Sinn Fein and the Gaelic League; but these, unfortunately, were not ineffective. Complaints were made of the inadequate accommodation at the camps (which was mitigated by billeting, or even by allowing the recruits to live at home while under instruction), of the drunkenness caused by indiscreet treating by civilian sympathisers, and, in some cases, of immorality (Chron., Oct. 13), but voluntary effort did much to counteract these evils and to provide recreation for the men.

But the character of the war was being brought home to England by other means than the recruiting campaign. On the day the Premier spoke at Cardiff the Admiralty announced that the German mine-laying and submarine activities had constrained Great Britain to establish a minefield in the North Sea south of the German field (which extended to lat. 52°), and that it was now dangerous for ships to cross the area between lat. 51° 15' and 51° 40' and long. 1° 35' and 3°, but that navigation must not be supposed safe in any part of the south of that sea. This new minefield extended the danger area a line drawn from the mouth of the Eastern Scheldt to the Thames. On the other hand, it was encouraging that the Germans were failing to make any impression on the Allies on the Aisne, and that the German destroyer S 167 had been sunk off Schiermonnikoog by the British submarine E9 (Oct. 6) which had recently sunk the _Hela_ (Chron., Sept. 3); still more that Canada had decided to double her contribution in men and material; that British airmen had damaged a Zeppelin shed, and perhaps a Zeppelin, at Düsseldorf (Chron., Oct. 9); that the Home Office had taken effective measures against espionage (p. 185), though here the reassurance was only temporarily effective; and that alien enemy residents had been prohibited from changing their names, or continuing to use names changed since the outbreak of the war (Oct. 5).

But British confidence was shaken by the unexpected fall of Antwerp, where the Royal Naval Division, formed in September and consisting of two Naval Brigades and a Marine Brigade, in all 8,000 men, had reinforced the Belgian troops. The Marine Brigade of 2,200 men had arrived on the night of October 3-4, and relieved the Belgians in the trenches near Lierre, with an advanced post on the Nethe. Through the exhaustion of the Belgians--coupled with the superior numbers of the enemy, and the defenders' lack of heavy guns--they were driven back by several stages on the second line of defence, the Germans on the 5th forcing the passage of the Nethe, which was not under fire from the trenches. The two Naval Brigades reached Antwerp on the night of October 5-6; the first assisted in the withdrawal of the Marine Brigade (under a violent bombardment) on the following night from a position temporarily occupied to the second main line of defence, and the Naval Division occupied the intervals between the forts on this second line. The German heavy guns bombarded the town, forts, and trenches from midnight on October 7-8, the inability of the Belgians to hold the forts became evident during the 8th, and a retirement of the Division was decided on at 5:30 P.M., chivalrously facilitated by the Belgian commander, and carried out that evening under very difficult conditions. A large German force was in the rear, the roads were blocked by refugees, vehicles, and cattle, and for these and other reasons, partly fatigue, many of the First Naval Brigade were taken prisoners or crossed the border into Holland, where they were interned. The remainder entrained after an all-night march at St. Gillies-Waes, and completed their retreat; but the rearguard, a battalion of the Marine Brigade, entraining later with many refugees, found its journey interrupted by the enemy at Morbeke, and fought its way through with great difficulty, losing half its numbers; it then marched ten miles more to Selzaate and entrained there. The casualties altogether exceeded 2,500.

The full account was given in a report from Major-General Paris, published Dec, 4, and a covering despatch from Sir John French stated that General Paris had handled the force with great skill and boldness; its action had considerably delayed the enemy and enabled the Belgian Army to be withdrawn and regain its value as a fighting force, and had also facilitated the destruction of war material which would have been of great value to the enemy; moreover, the moral effect of this "necessarily desperate attempt" to succour the Belgian Army had greatly conduced to their efficiency as a fighting force.

This latter despatch was virtually a reply to Press strictures on a step regarded as essentially the enterprise of the First Lord of the Admiralty, who had, in fact, visited the city during the British occupation; and the _Morning Post_ of October 13 described it as "a costly blunder, for which Mr. Winston Churchill was primarily responsible"; the relief had come too late, and kept the Belgian Army there too long. In other quarters, however, it was pointed out that the despatch of the force must have been the act of the whole Cabinet, and that it had a moral value as a demonstration of sympathy with Belgium. Meanwhile, the Germans occupied Bruges and Thielt, bombarded Arras, and were evidently making a desperate effort to reach the coast at Dunkirk and Calais, hoping to interfere at least with British shipping in the Channel.

The capture of Antwerp, too, seemed to increase their means of interference. The defenders had destroyed the stores of petrol, and sunk or disabled the steamers in the port; and to have used it as a naval base even for submarines would have involved the violation of the neutrality of Holland. But it increased the danger of a Zeppelin raid on London; the Mayor of Gravesend issued a warning against hostile aircraft; and it opened the way for a German advance to the more suitable bases, at Zeebrugge and Ostend, for a naval or aerial attack.

The fall was accompanied by a fresh influx into England of Belgian refugees; in four days (Oct. 7-10) some 10,000 landed in Folkestone from Ostend; on Sunday, October 11, 4,250 landed there from Ostend and 900 from Flushing; by October 17 the total number in England was 100,000. Crowds reached other ports, notably Lowestoft, in sailing craft, amid great suffering. Belief was promptly given by committees at London and Folkestone, and shelter and hospitality was offered throughout Great Britain; while numbers of Belgian wounded were also provided for in improvised hospitals, private houses being frequently lent and fitted up by their owners with other voluntary aid. Many German spies were said to be among the refugees; and for this reason they were withdrawn from Dover and Grimsby.

The fate of Belgium was a powerful factor in the issue of a Labour manifesto (Oct. 15), signed by twenty-five Labour members of Parliament and thirty-five leading trade union officials, declaring that in view of Germany's conduct there must be no peace till she was beaten, and that during the war combatants and non-combatants must be supported to the utmost, though after the war the party favoured arbitration. With the rarest exceptions, the whole British people was equally convinced that the war must be fought out; and there was no dismay at the news of the Maritz rebellion or the loss of the _Hawke_, against which indeed might be set the arrival of the first Canadian contingent and the sinking of German destroyers off the Dutch coast (Chron., Oct. 17). Such disquiet as there was showed itself in a revival of the fear of espionage, which was met by the internment of a number of Germans and Austrians (Oct. 21, 22), and in the destruction of German shops in South London (Oct. 17); and complaint was also made of an order (shortly afterwards rescinded) that enemy passengers were not to be taken out of neutral ships and of the permission of transactions with branches of German and Austrian firms outside Germany and Austria. Recruiting, however, was proceeding rapidly; within the British Isles there were already 1,200,000 men "in organised form," and 100,000 troops were available as "a first instalment" from the outer Empire.

Meanwhile a daring attempt, not fully revealed till six weeks later, had been made by Sir John French to outflank the German forces in Northern France. Details must be sought in his lengthy despatch (published Nov. 30); but the general idea was to effect a turning movement north of Lille, and then, with the aid of the cavalry under Sir Henry Rawlinson, who had been covering the Belgian retreat from Antwerp, to advance on Bruges and Ghent. The position on the Aisne (p. 214) permitted the transfer from that region of the British troops; and this delicate operation was carried out (Oct. 3-19) with the full concurrence of General Joffre and the cordial co-operation of the French General Staff. Broadly, the plan arranged with General Foch, in charge of the French operations north of Noyon, was that the Second, Third, and First British Army Corps should successively take up positions on the French right, beginning at a point on the Lille-Bethune road, on a line running thence through Armentières towards, and beyond, Ypres, the British right being directed on Lille, while Sir Henry Rawlinson's cavalry was to co-operate, and the First Corps was to make for Bruges. The great battle of Ypres-Armentières, the result of this attempt, began October 11, and was unfinished at the end of the year. Its first stage closed about October 31. The Second Corps, under Sir H. Smith-Dorrien, reached the line Aire-Bethune on October 11; its cavalry that day came in contact with the enemy, and the corps moved eastward to the line Laventie-Lorges, advancing with difficulty over ground cut up by mines and factory buildings, and endeavoured to wheel to the right to take the Germans in flank at the rear of their position at La Bassée, which defied capture throughout. From the 13th to the 17th this corps fought its way on, the Dorset Regiment and the Artillery being specially commended, and at dark on the 17th the Lincolns and Royal Fusiliers took Herlies (three or four miles beyond the line) at the point of the bayonet. From the 19th to the 31st October they defended themselves against vigorous counter-attacks from much more numerous German forces, with the help, from the 24th, of Indian troops, but were forced back on to a line crossing their old one, and terminating slightly west of La Bassée. Meanwhile the Third Corps, under General Pulteney, coming through St. Omer and Hazebrouck, had moved forward towards the line Armentières-Wytschaete, and, fighting their way slowly forward amid rain and fog, occupied Bailleul (some six miles behind this line), secured the line of the River Lys from Armentières south-west to Sailly, and, till the 19th, attempted vainly to force the passage of the river, in order to be able to drive the enemy eastwards to Lille. Sir H. Rawlinson's force had already reached a line six miles east of Ypres, running from Zandvoorde to Zonnenboke, and an effort was made (Oct. 18) to capture Ménin (some twelve miles north of Lille), but this proved impracticable. The First Corps, under Sir Douglas Haig, had now arrived at a position between St. Omer and Hazebrouck; but it had to be sent to the north of Ypres to meet a German outflanking movement towards the Channel, which the exhausted Belgian Army could not have stopped without assistance. Sir Douglas Haig was therefore instructed (Oct. 19) to advance through Ypres north-eastwards to Thorout, on the Ypres-Bruges railway, with Bruges and Ghent as its eventual objective, but with the option, after passing Ypres, of attacking either the Germans on the north or those advancing from the east, French cavalry co-operating on his left and General Byng's Third Cavalry Division on his right. The British Army, Sir John French remarked, had a task arduous beyond precedent. "That success has been attained, and all the enemy's desperate attempts to break through our line frustrated, is due entirely to the marvellous fighting power and the indomitable courage and tenacity of officers, non-commissioned officers, and men." Never in all their splendid history had they answered so magnificently the desperate calls which of necessity were made on them.

The First Corps, however, was compelled to turn eastwards from Ypres, and was unable to advance beyond the line Zonnenbeke-St. Julien-Langemarck-Bixschoete, and had to remain on the defensive pending a French movement on its north (Oct. 21). A series of severe engagements took place in this neighbourhood on October 22-31, special mention being made of a recapture of trenches (Oct. 23) by the Queens, Northamptons, and King's Royal Rifles, and of the fighting round Gheluvelt (some six miles east-south-east of Ypres) against vastly superior numbers (Oct. 29-31), the village being retaken, on the 31st by a bayonet charge of the 2nd Worcesters, during the most critical portion of the whole great battle. It was discovered that three German Army Corps had been charged with the task of breaking the line near Ypres, and that the Emperor regarded the issue of the attack as vital to German success in the war. The Fourth Corps, which had been formed partly out of the troops from Antwerp and had been co-operating with the First, was broken up at the end of October and incorporated in the latter, the Commander proceeding to England to supervise the mobilisation of his 8th division; and the British Army had meanwhile been considerably reinforced, while French troops had been supporting it.

Meanwhile the Third Corps, in the Centre, had been severely pressed, holding as it did an extended front crossing the Lys, with several weak points, while adequate reserves could not be provided. High praise was given to the skill of its commander and the courage, tenacity, endurance and unparalleled cheerfulness of the men; and special mention was made of the frequent repulse of attacks (Oct. 22-24), a German attack on Le Gheir (29th) and its recapture by the Middlesex Regiment, with the aid of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders; of trenches temporarily lost; of a counter-attack by the Somerset Light Infantry, and of much fighting by the Cavalry Corps. In the Third Corps the East Lancashire, Hampshire, and Somersetshire Light Infantry Regiments were specially commended, and the Indian troops were said to have displayed much initiative and resource.

It transpired on December 16 that Sir Henry Rawlinson's troops, the Seventh Infantry and Third Cavalry Divisions, which were landed in Belgium about October 6, to support the British forces at Antwerp, had been compelled to retreat, fighting almost continuously, by Thielt and Roulers to Ypres, and there to keep several German Corps at bay till Sir John French's Army had come up from the Aisne. When they were released, the infantry had only 44 officers left out of 400, and only 2,336 men out of 12,000.

Episodes in Sir John French's movement were revealed soon after it, _inter alia_ the entry of the Indian troops into battle, the gallantry of the London Scottish (Territorials), of the Loyal North Lancashires, and other regiments. But attention at home was directed mainly to the struggle of the Belgians on the Yser, assisted by a British squadron, including the river monitors _Severn_, _Mersey_, and _Humber_, taken over at the beginning of the war from Brazil; their light draught and howitzer batteries enabled them to render effective aid. They left Dover on October 17, began to bombard the German forces at daybreak on the 19th, and landed detachments with machine guns; and the bombardment continued, with slight intermissions, for over a fortnight, H.M.S. _Attentive_, _Wildfire_, _Brilliant_, _Rinaldo_, the destroyer _Falcon_, the battleship _Venerable_, and other vessels (some almost obsolete), taking part, and inflicting heavy losses on the German troops. The Germans strove to protect themselves by removing the Wielingen and Wandelaar lightships, and by placing mines along the coast.

German methods of warfare had meanwhile been illustrated by the attempt to sink the French steamer _Amiral Ganteaume_, crowded with refugees from Calais, in the English Channel (Oct. 26), and indirectly by the terrible wreck of the British hospital ship _Rohilla_ off Whitby (Oct. 30), caused mainly by her keeping close inshore to avoid mines in an easterly gale, though she was believed to have struck one before stranding. On November 2 the Admiralty issued a warning that the Germans, through the agency of some merchant vessel under a neutral flag, had scattered mines indiscriminately on the route between America and Liverpool _via_ the north of Ireland; the White Star liner _Olympic_ had escaped them only by pure good luck; and, in view of the German practice, the whole of the North Sea must now be declared a military area; after November 5 any ship passing a line drawn from the north point of the Hebrides through the Faroes to Iceland must do so at its peril. Within the North Sea arrangements were made to prescribe safe routes for vessels trading with neutral countries, but even a slight deviation would be dangerous.

It was afterwards stated that the _Olympic's_ escape was caused by her response to a call on October 27 from one of the newest British battleships, which had struck a mine off Ireland while on patrol duty, and whose crew she had been able to save, though not the ship. The _Olympic_ was detained for some days in Lough Swilly, no one being allowed to land, and was then taken to Belfast. Particulars reached the American papers by mail and were published there with photographs and in neutral papers also, and rumours of the disaster had circulated in England for some time. But the Admiralty gave the story no official confirmation, and the name of the ship in question remained in the Navy List.

Apart from this, however, the naval war was sensibly drawing nearer to Great Britain. On October 27 the Admiralty closed all but one of the approaches to the Thames, and ordered vessels in a specified area of the estuary to anchor during the night and show no lights; H.M.S. _Hermes_ was torpedoed in the Downs, only two miles off Deal, on October 31; and on the morning of November 3 a German squadron fired on H.M.S. _Halcyon_ off Yarmouth, wounding one man, but were driven off by the approach of other British ships, and pursued by light cruisers, which failed to engage them. In retiring the Germans threw out mines promiscuously and the British submarine D 5 and two steam drifters were sunk. Rumour connected this advance with a German attempt at a raid.

But Germany had prepared also to attack in other quarters. The Porte entered the war on October 30, doubtless under German influence, by bombarding various Russian towns on the Black Sea; and on November 1 the Foreign Office issued a statement of the British position. At the beginning of the war Great Britain had assured the Porte that, if Turkey remained neutral, her independence and integrity would be respected during the war and in the terms of peace; ever since, the British Government had shown great patience and forbearance; but German officers had been sent in considerable numbers to Constantinople, the _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ had entered the Dardanelles, the Turks had attacked undefended towns, and had prepared to invade Egypt and excite a Holy War in Syria, and probably in India: and telegraphic communication had been interrupted without notice on October 30 with the British Embassy at Constantinople. The British Government, therefore, must take such action as was necessary to protect British interests, British territory, and Egypt. This statement was followed by the news that a British and French squadron had bombarded the Dardanelles, and that H.M.S. _Minerva_ had driven a Turkish force out of Akabah, thus checking a possible invasion of Egypt by sea, by a British declaration of war with Turkey, and by the annexation of Cyprus by Order in Council (Nov. 5)--a step which got rid of the anomalous tenure devised in 1878, which had been one of the objections most strongly felt by British Liberals to Lord Beaconsfield's acquisition of the island.

At home, meanwhile, the campaign against alien enemies had culminated in an attack in the _Globe_ on Prince Louis of Battenberg, the First Sea Lord, who had been popularly (but absurdly) reported for some time to be confined in the Tower on a charge of treason. On October 30 a letter from him was published tendering his resignation on the ground that his birth and parentage in some respects impaired his usefulness; and Mr. Churchill, in accepting his resignation, cordially testified to his great services, notably to his having taken the first step securing the concentration of the Fleet at the outbreak of the war. The attack, it need scarcely be said, was baseless; the Battenberg Princes had every reason to detest the Prussian Court, and Prince Louis had been an Englishman from boyhood, and had strenuously exerted himself to gain naval knowledge and apply it for the advancement of the British Navy. But he was regarded in some quarters as too compliant to the First Lord's demands, and he had not been forgiven for his disavowal of his alleged speech (p. 35). Lord Fisher of Kilverstone, however, proved an entirely satisfactory successor.

The new First Sea Lord was soon confronted with the task of avenging a grave British naval defeat. On November 6 it was announced that on Sunday, November 1, five German warships, the _Scharnhorst_, _Gneisenau_, _Leipzig_, _Dresden_, and _Nürnberg_, had concentrated off Santa Maria Island, near Coronel, Chile, and engaged a British squadron under Rear-Admiral Cradock, consisting of the cruisers _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_, the light cruiser _Glasgow_, and the armed merchant cruiser _Otranto_, and that the _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_ had been sunk and the _Glasgow_ seriously damaged. The details remained obscure for some time, even to the Admiralty; but it was eventually learnt that the British ships had been met near sunset by the German squadron, that the Admiral had determined to engage notwithstanding his inferiority in speed and gun-power, and had warned off the battleship _Canopus_, which was coming up from the Straits of Magellan, as her speed was insufficient to cope with the Germans, and had ordered the _Otranto_ to keep out of danger; that the Germans forced the British ships into a position where the setting sun interfered with their aim, that the British guns were outranged and that the _Monmouth_ was sunk, and the _Good Hope_ blown up while making for the shore, the _Glasgow_ escaping. The loss of men was heavy; so was the blow to British prestige.

It was tolerably clear, moreover, that the German ships, coming as they did from the Chinese coast, could not have obtained coal or provisions without some violation of neutrality; and it was found that they had been supplied by Kosmos liners from Chilean ports, by an American collier at Juan Fernandez, and by other ships at the Galapagos Islands, belonging to Ecuador. The Chilean Government had not been involved; but Ecuador and Colombia were suspected of breaches of neutrality. And in other quarters there were new dangers. The collapse of Maritz's rebellion at the Cape had been followed by a more serious rising led by Generals de Wet and Beyers; and the British forces had suffered a serious reverse on November 2 in German East Africa.

It was amid these impressions that the Lord Mayor's banquet was held at the Guildhall (Nov. 10). The first toast after the loyal toasts was that of "Our Allies," proposed by Mr. Balfour. He described the capture of Tsingtau as a most dramatic answer to one of the most insulting messages ever sent from one Sovereign to another [in 1897] and as a good omen for those still fighting the arch-enemy in Europe. Russia had shown not only dogged and boundless courage, but unexpected powers of organisation; the war had brought out the military genius not only of a nation, but of a man (the Grand Duke Nicholas). As for the gallant French, never would the time grow dim in which they and the British fought side by side against the common foe of civilisation. Serbia, to preserve the peace of the world, had been prepared to give up everything short of her national existence, but she had gallantly defended it, and there was no chance now that Austria would wrest it from her. The case of Belgium was even more tragic. Cynicism could go no farther than the Germans had carried it, and the memory of the accumulated infamy of their transaction would be remembered after the crime, great as it was, had been adequately expiated. The Allies were fighting for civilisation and the cause of small States, and whether the war was short or long, they would triumph. They had behind them all the finest moral influences of the civilised world.

M. Cambon, the French Ambassador, in reply, said that Europe had suffered invasions of barbarians in the past, but had never yet seen barbarism raised to dogma and reinforced by science. But its professors had not foreseen that they would come into conflict with the conscience of the civilised world.

The First Lord of the Admiralty, responding to the toast of "The Imperial Forces of the Crown," said that it was thanks to the Navy that they were there. In a recent conversation with Sir John Jellicoe and his chief Admiral they had remarked that Cornwallis was three years off Brest and Nelson more than two off Toulon; they themselves were only just beginning, and their turn would come. The multiplied duties of the Navy arising from the curious and novel conditions of naval warfare forced them to expose a target to the enemy incomparably larger than any target exposed to our own daring and vigilant sailors. The Navy was making good the motto "Business as usual"; the economic stringency resulting from a blockade required time to reach its full effectiveness; but in the sixth, ninth, or twelfth month they would see results gradually and silently achieved which would spell the doom of Germany. The Navy, too, gave Britain and the British Empire the time to realise their vast military power. At the end of a hundred days of war the Navy was actually and relatively stronger than when war was declared, particularly in the branches most influential in the struggle.

Earl Kitchener, who also responded, said that every officer returning from the front said that the men were doing splendidly. He eulogised the Regular, Territorial, and Indian troops, and those of each Ally, remarking that General Joffre was not only a great soldier, but a great man. The British Empire was fighting for its existence; only if that fact were realised could there come the great national and moral impulse without which Governments and armies could do little. He had no complaint to make of the response to his appeal for men, and the progress in military training of those already enlisted was remarkable; but he would want more men, and, still more, till the enemy was crushed. He alluded, briefly, to the inevitable discomforts of the recruits, as having been already greatly diminished, and remarked that the German use of elaborate destructive machinery was facilitated by their having fixed the date of war beforehand. He referred briefly to the gallant conduct of the Army in the trenches, to the Dominion contingents, and to the 1,250,000 soldiers in training in Great Britain eagerly waiting for the call. Every man would, in doing his duty, sustain the credit of the British Army, which had never stood higher.

The Prime Minister, in responding to the toast of His Majesty's Ministers, referred to the annexation of Bosnia and the Turkish revolution, the first as the earliest cause of the war, the second as raising vain hopes of the renascence of Turkey. Not the Turkish people, but the Ottoman Government, had sent Turkey to her doom. Great Britain had no quarrel with the Moslem subjects of the Sultan; millions of Mohammedans were among the most loyal subjects of the King; she was prepared, if necessary, to defend their Holy Places against all invaders. The Turkish Empire had committed suicide. Reviewing the financial measures taken by the Government, Mr. Asquith made special mention of the services of the Lord Chief Justice (Lord Reading), and of Mr. Walter Cunliffe, Governor of the Bank of England, on whom a Peerage was conferred. He warned his hearers that, though little was seen of the war save darkened streets and a preponderance of khaki-clad men, it would be a long-drawn out struggle, but there was nothing in the warfare of the past 100 days to damp British hopes or impair British resolve. The enemy had tried in turn three separate objectives--Paris, Warsaw, Calais; from each in turn they had retired balked and frustrated; but that was not enough. We should not sheathe the sword until Belgium recovered all and more than all that she had sacrificed, until France was adequately secured against the menace of aggression, until the rights of the smaller nationalities were placed on an unassailable foundation, until the military dominion of Prussia was fully and finally destroyed. It was a great task, worthy of a great nation. The Primate and the Lord Chief Justice were among the other speakers.

On the same evening the Chancellor of the Exchequer addressed a great Nonconformist recruiting meeting at the City Temple. The principle that drew him to resist his own country in the Boer War, he said--defence of small nationalities--had brought him there. One of the greatest French generals, describing his own experience, had said to him that "the man responsible for this war had the soul of a devil." Great Britain was not responsible. We were organised for defence--against all the Powers of the world. We had raised the greatest Volunteer Army on record, and in a few months we should double it. For an aggressive war we could not have raised a tenth of it. At the outbreak of war we were on better terms with Germany than we had been for fifteen years. The vulture had been hanging over Belgium, but it pounced, not on a rabbit, but on a hedgehog, and had been bleeding and sore ever since. We now knew that the counsellors of Germany had planned and organised the murder of peaceful neighbours, and even fixed the date to suit themselves. Peace at any price was not a Christian principle. The surest way of establishing peace on earth was to make the way of the peacebreaker too hard for rulers to tread. After denouncing German action in Belgium and coupling the Turks of the East with their fitting comrades the Turks of the West, he referred to the cost of the war--which would not be grudged--and condemned those who approved of the war and left the necessary sacrifices to others. Could Britain, fighting one of the most chivalrous wars the world had ever seen, not rely on her children to rally to her honour?

The encouragement given by these speeches had already been begun by the news that the _Königsberg_ had been shut up in East Africa by H.M.S. _Chatham_ and the _Emden_ destroyed by H.M.A.S. _Sydney_ at the Cocos or Keeling Islands (Chron., Nov. 10); and the sinking of H.M.S. _Niger_ by a submarine next day in the Downs, two miles off Deal, served merely as a salutary reminder that the war was near at hand. And the unity of the nation was further emphasised during the short session of Parliament which now began.

Parliament was opened by the King in person on November 11, with much the usual ceremony, save that the State coach with the famous cream-coloured horses was replaced by a glass coach with black horses. Many of the King's servants trained in Court ceremonial had gone to the front; the dresses of the Queen and most of the Peeresses in the House of Lords were black; and several members of the Commons wore khaki. (The members serving in the Navy, Army, and Auxiliary Forces numbered 126.) The King read his speech, of which only portions can be here given. The salient passage referring to the entry of Turkey into the war was as follows:--

MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,--In conjunction with My Allies, and in spite of repeated and continuous provocations, I strove to preserve, in regard to Turkey, a friendly neutrality. Bad counsels, and alien influences, have driven her into a policy of wanton and defiant aggression, and a state of war now exists between us. My Mussulman subjects know well that a rupture with Turkey has been forced upon Me against My will, and I recognise with appreciation and gratitude the proofs which they have hastened to give of their loyal devotion and support.

My Navy and Army continue, throughout the area of conflict, to maintain in full measure their glorious traditions. We watch and follow their steadfastness and valour with thankfulness and pride, and there is, throughout My Empire, a fixed determination to secure, at whatever sacrifice, the triumph of our arms, and the vindication of our cause.

The speech concluded as follows:--

GENTLEMEN,--The only measures which will be submitted to you, at this stage of the Session, are such as seem necessary to My advisers for the attainment of the great purpose upon which the efforts of the Empire are set.

I confidently commend them to your patriotism and loyalty, and I pray that the Almighty will give His blessings to your counsels.

The debates in both Houses, which cannot here be fully summarised, exhibited the unity of all parties regarding the essentials of the war, while there was some Opposition criticism of certain of its incidents. In the Upper House the Address was moved by Lord Methuen, who emphasised the pride of the nation in its Army, and seconded by Viscount Bryce, who referred to the "streams of letters" from the United States evincing the width and depth of American sympathy, and declared that a conflict of principles like the war could not end till one or other principle triumphed. Earl Curzon, in the absence through illness of the Marquess of Lansdowne, took his place as Opposition leader, reviewing the situation and criticising the scale of allowances and pensions to dependants of soldiers, and the official reticence as to the deeds of the troops in the field. The Marquess of Crewe, replying, promised consideration of these points; the Earl of Selborne asked about the Antwerp expedition and the defeat off Chile, criticised the First Lord's practice of sending messages to foreign Powers and the Fleets in his own name instead of that of the Board of Admiralty, and declared the attack on Prince Louis of Battenberg to be "a national humiliation." The Earl of Crawford, supported subsequently by Lord Leith of Fyvie, made important allegations of official laxity in dealing with alien enemies in Fifeshire, stating that petrol had been exported and dynamite imported illegally, and that a neutral steamer had been found with sawdust in some of her coal-bunkers, indicating that she had been laying mines.[4] The Lord Chancellor said that what was done at Antwerp had to be done quickly, and was done by the First Lord after consulting the War Secretary; the Government took the responsibility, and thought the intervention had been useful. The First Lord of the Admiralty had not, he thought, sent communications in his own name to an inordinate extent, but he was anxious to conform to the best practice on the subject. The Government were grateful for the support given by the Opposition.

In the Commons the Address was moved by Sir R. Price (L., _Norfolk, E._) and seconded by Mr. Middlebrook (L., _Leeds, S._).

Mr. Bonar Law, after an eloquent reference to the bereavements sustained by members, and a hopeful review of the situation, said that the Opposition would press no amendment to a division, but would raise certain questions. He mentioned the Antwerp expedition and the naval disaster off Chile, the treatment of alien enemies, in which he hoped that the Government was not being influenced by clamouring newspapers, the secrecy as to the doings of the armies, and two special hindrances to recruiting--the fact that the dependants of soldiers did not get what they were promised, and the uncertainty as to the intentions of the Government regarding their future after the war. He suggested the reference of the subject to a small Committee.

The Prime Minister, after expressing confidence in the success of the Allies, declared that the responsibility for the Antwerp expedition rested with the whole Government, and that the expedition was a material and useful factor in the campaign. The internment of alien enemies was preliminary to a sifting process. A censorship was inevitable in modern warfare, and news could only be published after consultation with our Allies. He defended the scale of allowances to childless widows (7_s._ 6_d._ as a weekly minimum) on the ground that a larger grant might depress the labour market. Moreover, the burden imposed by the existing scheme on the country for ten years after the war would be from 10,000,000_l._ to 15,000,000_l._ annually. He welcomed Mr. Bonar Law's proposal of a Committee, and mentioned that of the 1,186,000 men voted during the year for the Regular Army less than 100,000 were still lacking. He fully acknowledged the loyal co-operation of the Opposition and the Labour party.

Next day Mr. Henderson (Lab.), after promising the full support of organised Labour in maintaining the "splendid unity" of the nation, complained of the shocking lack of provision for recruits in the camps, the grievances of soldiers, and the ill-judged supervision exercised over their wives. Mr. Long (U.) dealt with the delays of pay and allowances, and the Financial Secretary of the War Office explained the inevitable difficulties set up by the novel conditions and the unprecedented strain on the War Office. Mr. Joynson-Hicks (U.) moved an amendment raising the question of danger from spies. The Home Secretary, after declaring that he ignored the unprecedentedly numerous Press attacks on himself personally, said that the responsibility for internment rested on the military authorities, and the Home Office acted under their direction. At first those interned were selected as being personally suspected, later as being out of employment and therefore possibly dangerous; in October the military question changed in aspect, and more were arrested at the wish of the military authorities, who again slackened their demand. He referred to an allegation unsupported by evidence, that the three cruisers (Chron., Sept. 22) had been sunk through espionage, and defended the Home Office against the charge of inaction. Mr. Bonar Law said that the better man a German was, the more likely he was to take risks for his country when it was at war; Lody (Chron., Nov. 5) was as much a patriot as any soldier killed in action. The Opposition wanted to see that the rounding up of spies was properly done. The enemy aliens most likely to injure England were the best educated and the best off. The Secretary for Scotland dealt with the measures taken in that country, but Sir H. Dalziel (L., _Kirkcaldy Burghs_) declared that petrol had been supplied from a Scottish port to German submarines through a Danish ship, and that some of the most dangerous spies were not Germans.

Sir W. Bull (U., _Fulham_) then moved an amendment complaining of the restrictions placed by the Press Bureau on the publication of war news. The Solicitor-General's reply was regarded on both sides as disquieting. The Bureau, he said, should not stop criticism unless it would destroy confidence in the Government or cause alarm by inducing a belief that the situation was very grave. He mentioned incidentally that the Censors had much news of disasters to British capital ships, all of it false, and that certain articles on foreign policy had impaired British relations with neutral States. His thought was only of British soldiers and sailors. The Press Bureau alone stood between the Press and the untempered severities of martial law.

A revised scheme had been issued earlier in the week of pensions for soldiers and sailors and their dependants. A widow with four children would receive 20_s._, with three 17_s._ 6_d._, with two 15_s._, with one, 12_s._ 6_d._, with none, 7_s._ 6_d._ These might be increased on the recommendation of the Old Age Pensions Committee. The separation allowance would be continued for six months after widowhood. The minimum disablement allowances would be 14_s._ for unmarried men, 16_s._ 6_d._ for married men without children, rising to a magnitude of 23_s._ The estimated burden on the country would range, according to the duration of the war and the percentage of deaths and disablements, from 99,000,000_l._ to 202,000,000_l._

At the opening of the following week--which was saddened by the unexpected news of the death of Earl Roberts--the Prime Minister moved a Vote of Credit for 225,000,000_l._, and an addition to the Regular Army of 1,000,000 men. He first explained--necessarily without details--that of the 100,000,000_l._ previously voted the largest portion had been spent on the operations of the war; other outlays were on loans to the Allies, a very large sum to secure the food supplies, especially sugar, wheat, and other necessaries, a considerable sum to obtain control of the railways, and expenditure on succour for refugees and destitute aliens. The bulk of the money now asked for would be spent on the Army and Navy; but loans not for the use of Great Britain would amount to 44,000,000_l._ This, however, would include a comparatively small sum possibly needed for the relief of local distress at home. The Belgian Government had already received 10,000,000_l._, the Servian Government 800,000_l._ The Government would relieve the Dominions of the responsibility of raising loans by advancing them 30,250,000_l._ The war had cost between 900,000_l._ and 1,000,000_l._ a day; the provision asked would last up to March 31, leaving a reasonable margin. The Estimates had been carefully considered and repeatedly revised, and represented the minimum which should be asked for in the greatest emergency in British history.

Mr. Long (U.) expressed satisfaction with the Prime Minister's statement, suggested improvement of the pay and allowances of officers, and urged that recruiting should be stimulated by war correspondence and that greater power should be given to commanders to confer decorations. Sir H. Dalziel (L.) gave surprising and suggestive figures of the increased exports of coal, cocoa, tea, and other articles to the neutral countries near to Germany; and, among other speakers, Mr. Healy (I.N.) vigorously condemned the Press censorship. There was some divergence of opinion as to the degree of drinking among the troops.

The Prime Minister replied at some length to the points raised. As to war correspondence, the other Allies must have the decisive voice. The increased exports of coal to Scandinavia were caused by the cessation of German supplies; as to tea, there were ways by which the export to Germany might be stopped. Of the new Army not more than 15 per cent. had suffered from disease of any kind, and its average standard of conduct was worthy of the country and of the cause. The Regular Army now numbered 1,100,000; since the beginning of August 700,000 recruits had joined, besides at least 200,000 Territorials. He gave very high praise to the latter Force. But they wanted another million. The votes were agreed to, and the sitting closed with an energetic repudiation by Mr. Edgar Jones (L., _Merthyr Tydfil_) and the Government of attacks recently made by Mr. Keir Hardie (Lab., _Merthyr Tydfil_) on the Army.

Next day (Nov. 17) the proceedings in both Houses opened with tributes to the memory of Earl Roberts. In the House of Lords Earl Kitchener, Earl Curzon of Kedleston, and the Marquess of Crewe bore eloquent testimony to the late Field-Marshal's military achievements, his devotion to his country, his comradeship with his men, and his character as a Christian. In the Commons, the Prime Minister gave notice of an Address to the Crown, asking that a monument might be erected at the cost of the State, and spoke of Earl Roberts's consummate strategy, rare powers of leadership, a unique faculty of attracting the devotion of his men, and his mastery of the art of war, and of his eagerness, expressed in their last conversation, to be of use in any capacity in "this latest and greatest of our wars." Mr. Bonar Law found a parallel to his character in Thackeray's Colonel Newcome; Mr. John Redmond (N., _Waterford_) reminded the House that Earl Roberts was an honorary freeman of that borough, and mentioned that he had desired to speak at Dublin along with the Prime Minister and himself (p. 215); and Sir Ivor Herbert (L.) and Colonel Yate (U.) added their tributes as former officers of Earl Roberts's staff.

Earl Roberts's funeral took place on November 19 with simple but impressive ceremony. The remains, which had been brought back to his house at Ascot, were conveyed thence by special train to Charing Cross, whence they were borne on a gun carriage by the Embankment and Ludgate Hill to St. Paul's Cathedral, escorted by troops representing the Territorials, the Guards, Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery, a naval detachment, and a mountain battery; and Earl Kitchener, Sir Evelyn Wood, Lord Methuen, and Lord Charles Beresford, were among the pall-bearers, who attended the remains from the Embankment to the Cathedral. At the door the Cathedral choir and clergy met and preceded the coffin, which was followed by the pall-bearers, the Primate, and the King. Many hundreds of the public visited the grave in the afternoon. A memorial monument was to be erected at the public cost.

To return to Parliament: on November 17 the War Budget was introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. After giving figures (to be found in the appended table) showing that he had to provide for a deficit by March 31 of 339,571,000_l._, he argued that a substantial part of this must be raised by taxation, justifying this course by the precedents set by Pitt in the French wars and Gladstone in the Crimean War. This war would cost at least 450,000,000_l._ in the first full year; not to tax heavily for it would be a serious departure from honoured and unbroken national tradition. If Great Britain now rose to the heroic level of 1798, she would be raising a revenue of from 450,000,000_l._ to 700,000,000_l._, and no borrowing would be needed. It was wisest to assume that the war would be long; it would be folly to borrow to meet interest on loans and loss of revenue; four-fifths of the money raised would be spent in Great Britain, and during the war and after reconstruction there would be practically no competition in neutral markets, except from America. For four or five years, therefore, British industries would be artificially stimulated; but afterwards our customers' purchasing power would be crippled and much capital would have been exhausted. During the period of inflation, therefore, as much as possible should be raised by taxation. War, too, was a time of sacrifice and self-denial, and readiness to bear taxation would strengthen British credit. No taxes would be levied interfering with productive industries, but all classes would be reached. The income tax would be doubled, but in the current year would be collected on only one-third of the income, so that it would be 1_s._ 8_d._ from December 1 on unearned and 1_s._ on earned income. Arrangements would be made to meet serious cases of loss of income through the war. As to the class that did not pay income tax, Ministers had regretfully abandoned the idea of a tax on wages, owing to the difficulties of dealing with varying rates, casual labour, and half-timers, and of reaching small shopkeepers; and they had to resort to indirect taxation. Beer was taxed very lightly as compared with other alcoholic drinks. The half-pint was the commonest measure of consumption, and an additional duty of 17_s._ 3_d._ per barrel would enable an extra halfpenny per half-pint to be charged to the consumer, leaving a fair margin for the brewer and publican; the lighter the beer, the larger the margin. The licence duty would be reduced proportionately to the curtailment of hours (p. 195), except near camping centres, and the brewer would be given a month's credit for payment of duty. The estimated increase of revenue from the source in 1914-15 would be 2,050,000_l._ and in 1915-16 17,600,000_l._ Increased duties on spirits would be unproductive, on wine undesirable, because much of it came from our Allies or the Dominions, and the consumption was diminishing. The "elusive teetotaller" could not be reached, as people supposed, by taxing mineral waters, three-fourths of which were drunk with alcohol; tea must be taxed; a graduated tax was impossible, so the tax would be increased by 3_d._ all round, to the figure of the Boer War. Finally, 2,750,000_l._ would be raised, as he showed at length, by partially suspending the Sinking Fund. This would still leave a deficit of 321,321,000_l._ Of this 91,000,000_l._ had already been borrowed by Treasury Bills. As he showed at length, it was eminently desirable to borrow enough to carry on beyond the current financial year, and the sum proposed would render a further appeal unnecessary up to July, 1915. After extensive consultation, it had been decided to issue a loan at 3-1/2 per cent., a rate brought up to 4 per cent. by issue below par and the guarantee of early redemption. It would be a 3-1/2 per cent. security issued at 95, to be redeemed by the Government at par on March 1, 1928, or, subject to three months' notice, at any time between March 1, 1925, and March 1, 1928, and the amount would be 350,000,000_l._, of which 100,000,000_l._ had already been offered firm. It would not be issued in sums of less than 100_l._, as that course would deplete the savings banks. After explaining the arrangements, Mr. Lloyd George stated that the Bank of England would be prepared, till March 1, 1918, to make advances against deposits of the loan taken at the issue price without margin at 1 per cent. below the ordinary Bank rate. It was of immense importance that the money should be subscribed, but it would be an excellent investment, because Great Britain's credit was still the best, and it would be a still better investment after the war. There would then be no more màlevolent talk about the decay and downfall of the British Empire.

Mr. Chamberlain, speaking for the Opposition, took no objection to the spirit and principles of the Chancellor's speech, but regretted that the proposals had not been made at the outset of the war, and that revenue was confined to so few fruitful channels. But he made no opposition to the general proposals, and was sure that every income-tax payer would bear his share.

We append a table (taken from _The Times_) showing "the Budget in brief."

£ New Estimate of Revenue 195,796,000 New Estimate of Expenditure 535,867,000 ----------- Deficiency 339,571,000 Deficiency made up of-- Loss of Revenue due to War 11,128,000 War Expenditure 328,443,000 Deficiency met by-- New Taxation 15,500,000 Suspension of Sinking Fund 2,750,000 From Existing Loans 91,000,000 From New Loan 230,321,000

THE NEW TAXES.

Income-tax and supertax doubled and charged on one-third of the current year's income. 17_s._ 3_d._ on barrel of beer, equal to 1/2_d._ on a half-pint. 3_d._ per lb. on tea, making the tax 8_d._

INCOME TAX.

On earned incomes 1_s._ (instead of 9_d._) for rest of current year and 1_s._ 6_d._ for 1915-16.

On unearned incomes 1_s._ 8_d._ (instead of 1_s._ 3_d._) for rest of 1914-15 and 2_s._ 6_d._ for 1915-16.

YIELD OF NEW TAXATION.

------------------------------------------------------------- |Rest of Year| | | 1914-15. | 1915-16 | ---------------------------------|------------|--------------| | | | | £ | £ | Income-tax | 11,000,000 | 38,750,000 | Supertax | 1,500,000 | 6,000,000 | Beer Duty | 2,500,000 | 17,600,000 | Tea | 950,000 | 3,200,000 | ---------------------------------|------------|--------------| | | | | 15,950,000 | 65,550,000 | Less concessions on Licence Duty | 450,000 | 500,000 | |------------|------------- | | 15,500,000 | 65,050,000 | -------------------------------------------------------------

The sacrifices demanded by the Budget were patriotically accepted by the nation, but concessions were made in regard to the income tax, supertax, and the beer tax. In the debate (Nov. 19) the Attorney-General explained that payers of income tax would be allowed, as they had been before 1907, to take into account their actual income for the year, and supertax payers would pay on the year's income instead of the three years' average, provided that in both cases their income had been reduced owing solely to the war; Mr. Henderson (Lab.) thought that the tea duty should have been increased by 2_d._ only, and that the only fair way to treat the working classes was by a graduated wage tax--a proposition which the Chancellor of the Exchequer accepted in principle, but declared to be impracticable at that time. Objections made to the increase of the beer tax were met (Nov. 24) by the concession of a rebate of 2_s._ per barrel up to March 31, 1916, and 1_s._ from that date to March 31, 1917, to enable the trade to adapt itself. The tax was calculated, it was explained, by gravity, not by bulk, and the publican would gain most on the lighter beers. The concession, however, was regarded by Mr. A. Chamberlain and others as inadequate. A concession in respect of income tax was made also to members of the Army and Navy and Red Cross ambulance workers, allowing them to pay on actual instead of on average income.

The debates on the following days require little notice. A Committee of the Commons was appointed (Nov. 18) to deal with pensions and allowances to wounded soldiers, and to children and dependants of those killed in the war; and the Reports of Supply and the debates on the Consolidated Fund Bill provided opportunities for raising various questions connected with the war. It may be mentioned that Mr. Wedgwood (L.), who appeared in the House in uniform, asked the Government (Nov. 23) to direct the civil population what they were to do in the event of a German raid, improbable though such a contingency might be. He urged that every one ought to fight the Germans if they came. The Under-Secretary for War, however, replied that emergency committees to deal with the subject were being formed, but for the present it was undesirable to make public any instructions. [Such instructions were, however, issued privately to local authorities, parish clergy, and other prominent persons in certain districts.] We may mention also an emphatic protest by the Opposition leader against the restrictive interpretation put by the Solicitor-General on the powers of the Press Bureau (p. 233); as the result, the Government two days later agreed to qualify considerably the clause in the Defence of the Realm Bill giving them powers "to prevent the spread of reports likely to cause disaffection or alarm," and the Solicitor-General also qualified his previous utterance.

On November 25 the House was informed through the medium of the Under-Secretary for India, that Colombia and Ecuador had failed to observe an attitude of strict neutrality. Colombia, in spite of representations from the British _charge d'affaires_, had allowed the wireless station at Cartagena to continue working with its German staff, nominally under censorship, really under German influence; and German steamers in Colombian ports, though their wireless installations had ostensibly been dismantled, had continued to use them with the attachment of a muffler. As to Ecuador, its Foreign Minister had informed the British and French representatives at Quito on October 4 that German warships had used the Galapagos Islands as a naval base, and the Ecuadorean Government had not complied with the request of the British and French legations to prevent the use of the wireless station at Guayaquil as an intelligence centre for belligerents. The Government had therefore decided to appeal, in conjunction with that of France, to the good offices of the United States Government. [This was a notable recognition of the Monroe doctrine, but both the offending States were likely, from their recent history, to be specially resentful of American interference.]

The day following (Nov. 26) was marked by a grave naval disaster. The battleship _Bulwark_, lying off Sheerness, blew up at 7.35 A.M., probably through an internal magazine explosion, and only fourteen men were saved out of a crew exceeding 750. No reason was discovered for supposing that the disaster was not due to accident, but its precise cause was not ascertainable. In announcing the disaster to the House, the First Lord said that the mere loss of the ship did not sensibly affect the military position, and expressed, on behalf of the House, its sorrow and its sympathy with the relatives and friends of the victims.

Next, the Under-Secretary for India moved a resolution sanctioning the application of Indian revenues to war expenditure outside India, but not in Europe. He mentioned that the Indian troops, besides their work at Tsingtau, Fao, and Basra, were in force in Egypt, took part in the landing at Sheikh Said and in the attack, against great odds, in East Africa, and had speedily adapted themselves to the novel conditions of fighting in France. Of their record both India and England would be proud. He mentioned again the zeal and munificence of the ruling Chiefs, the reasoned loyalty of the Indian educated classes, as well as the "wave of instructive and emotional loyalty" that had swept over India, and announced the creation of an Executive Council in the United Provinces, and he indicated the hope of increasing friendship throughout the Empire which was encouraged by comradeship in arms.

In the miscellaneous debate which followed on the Consolidated Fund Bill the matter of most general interest was the action of the Government with regard to spies and alien enemies. The Home Secretary explained that while his Department was generally regarded as responsible for public safety throughout the country, he had no real power outside the metropolitan area. In this, since the war began, 120,000 cases of suspicion had been investigated, 342 persons interned, and 6,000 houses ransacked. Complaints had been made of favouritism towards Baron Schroeder and other wealthy Germans, but had the Baron not been naturalised his firm, the largest accepting house in the City, would have closed its doors, and there would have been a great commercial disaster. To lock up all Germans and Austrians, as some people desired, might lead to reprisals, and many of them were only technically foreigners. On the question of internment, the military authority was the decisive authority under the Hague Conventions. The really dangerous spies were those of British nationality.

The spy peril had been dealt with in the other House on the previous day (Nov. 25). The Earl of Crawford then admitted that much had been done since his last speech (p. 231), but the complaints in it had been substantiated, and a clear statement should be given of the legal responsibilities of the authorities concerned, and the policy of the Government should be codified and simplified. Lord Leith of Fyvie complained that money was coming from German sources to Germans in Great Britain, that favouritism was being shown to rich enemy aliens, and that coal was being supplied to German warships from the West of Scotland and Ireland. The Lord Chancellor asked for concrete instances, stating that there was no evidence of these supplies, explained the distribution of powers between the Home Office, the War Office, and the Admiralty, who were closely co-operating, and said that cases of espionage were being carefully followed up, but the difficulty of defeating it was enormous, and the worst offenders were probably English.

But the most interesting part of the proceedings in the Upper House was the further statement (Nov. 26) by Earl Kitchener on the progress of the war in the past six weeks. He mentioned that the delay caused by the British expedition to Antwerp in the release of its German besiegers just gave Sir John French time to prevent the Germans reaching the northern coast of France; that the British cavalry divisions, extended for seven miles of front in trenches, threw back the fierce attacks of a German Army Corps for more than two days; that Sir John French's position was attacked at one time by eleven army corps, and that on November 11 a supreme--but unsuccessful--effort was made by the Prussian Guard to force its way through the British lines, and carry them at all costs by sheer weight of numbers. The British troops before Ypres, after fourteen days and nights in the trenches, had been relieved by French reinforcements, and several Territorial battalions had joined. The British losses, though heavy, were slight in comparison with the German. He acknowledged the "tenacity and endurance," and the high fighting qualities of the French Army, and the pluck and gallantry of the Belgian Army and the King, and he mentioned that on the Eastern front the Russians had checked and defeated the Germans, inflicting on them heavier losses than they had ever sustained before. After referring to the operations against Turkey, he said that the publication of news must be governed by the needs of the French Army, the larger force, but the Government desired to keep nothing back which could not be utilised by the enemy. The difficulties of providing and equipping the new Army were being successfully met, and he felt confident that further calls on the manhood of England would be responded to in a manner and spirit which would ensure the prosecution of the war to its successful conclusion. Later, Earl Kitchener said that recruits were coming in at the rate of 30,000 weekly besides the regiments then being formed by different localities; and the Lord Chancellor promised that information should be given in the future as to the action of civilians during invasion.

On the Report of the War Loan Obligations Bill next day (Nov. 27) important statements were made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the First Lord of the Admiralty, reviewing the financial and naval position respectively. The former said that the Government had taken unprecedented responsibilities in the interest of the mechanism of international trade. In the Napoleonic wars practically all the countries were self-contained; Great Britain's total imports and exports amounted in value to some 86,000,000_l._; in 1912 their value exceeded 1,400,000,000_l._ The international trade in the Napoleonic wars amounted to perhaps 200,000,000_l._; in 1913 it was valued at 3,000,000,000_l._, and Great Britain provided the capital to raise and move the produce, and carried half the produce, of the world. Transactions between merchants in China and the United States, for instance, were paid for by bills of exchange on London. Very little of the business was done with gold; London in 1913 received 50,000,000_l._ in gold and paid out 45,000,000_l._ All this delicate paper machinery crashed into a war affecting two-thirds of the world. There was inevitable confusion, and a deadlock, due to a failure of remittances from abroad to cover bills representing 350,000,000_l._ to 400,000,000_l._ There was a complete breakdown of the exchanges, as if a shell had broken an aqueduct; Argentina owed Great Britain 400,000,000_l._, but the latter could not buy a single cargo of frozen meat. Had the machine been left broken, the general distress in Great Britain would have been unutterable. The Government had to save British industry, commerce, and labour. They had invited the assistance of men of great experience, and eventually had set up a permanent advisory Committee. He acknowledged the great assistance rendered by Mr. Chamberlain, Lords St. Aldwyn and Revelstoke, and the Lord Chief Justice, the latter, with Sir John Bradbury, constituting a Court of Appeal. They decided that something must be done at once to avert a run on the banks, and declared a limited moratorium, and then decided to advance to the banks Treasury notes up to 20 per cent. of their deposits. At first the banks availed themselves of this currency facility to the extent of 13,000,000_l._; the sum outstanding was only 244,000_l._ The currency notes of 1_l._ and 10_s._ outstanding amounted to 33,892,000_l._, 25,696,000_l._ being in 1_l._ notes. Next, the Government guaranteed the payment of all bills accepted by British houses, giving them a reasonable time to collect them. Great Britain had assets of some 4,000,000,000_l._ of good foreign securities, and some 13,000,000,000_l._ worth of collieries, mines, factories, etc., at home; to allow its credit to remain doubtful for some 350,000,000_l._, all or nearly all owing to British subjects, would have been criminal. By these three steps the unimpeachable character of the British bill of exchange had been guaranteed, and a financial catastrophe, probably without parallel, avoided. But they had to discriminate between bills, and experts could do so instinctively; and for this reason facilities had been partly refused in the case of Mr. Crisp, of which Sir A. Markham (L., _Notts_) had complained earlier in the debate. Only one member of an accepting house had been on the Committee of the Bank of England which examined the bills, and his business was with a neutral country. They discounted 57,000_l._ of Mr. Crisp's bills, but as collateral security for another 200,000_l._ he tendered only securities worth 72,000_l._ Only 50,000,000_l._ of bills, or about one-ninth of the total, would have to be put aside as dealing with belligerent countries or for analogous reasons. The loss would depend on the length and the issue of the war. Before ending the moratorium they had to consider: (1) the business specially affected by the war, such as the Scottish fishing industry, whose case they met by the Courts (Emergency Powers) Bill (p. 196); (2) the restoration of the foreign exchanges, which they effected by restoring the old-machinery, releasing the endorsers and drawers of Bills, and retaining simply the liability of the acceptors; (3) the restoration of the Stock Exchange, where the difficulty was that 70,000,000_l._ or 80,000,000_l._ of securities were hypothecated in respect of debts incurred before the war began. Had the banks pressed for these debts, the securities would have been placed on the market, their value would have been deplorably reduced, and the State, now the sole borrower, could have raised money only at incredible rates. The Government had left the banks to make their own arrangements with the Stock Exchange, but had agreed to advance 60 per cent. of the value of the securities on July 29 on condition that the banks undertook not to put their securities on the market till six months after the war; and had arranged that the Stock Exchange should only open with the sanction of the Treasury and under conditions to be imposed by it in the public interest. Not one application had been made for Government credit, either in respect of this arrangement or of a similar guarantee through which the Liverpool Cotton Exchange had been reopened. Provincial traders who had been sending goods to the Continent on credit, without receiving bills of exchange, had been promised Government assistance to the extent of 50 per cent. of the credit value of the interest, on condition that the local banks, who knew their men, undertook 25 per cent. Applications amounting to 16,000,000_l._ had come in in respect of these debts, and the Government hoped to do something at the earliest possible moment. Britain was still supreme in international commerce, its money market was better than any other, the gold at the Bank had risen during the war from 26,000,000_l._ to 85,500,000_l._ and they had raised in all 440,000,000_l._ with the Stock Exchange closed. The loan of 350,000,000_l._ (p. 236) had been over-subscribed, and there had been nearly 100,000 applications for small amounts, so the sum had been raised without any of the German expedients for raising a smaller loan at a higher interest. Unemployment had gone down, confidence had been restored, British credit had stood the strain, the market had been less affected than any in the world. The raising of the loan gave him confidence that British credit was built on foundations that no foreseeable contingency could destroy.

In the subsequent debate Mr. Austen Chamberlain paid special tributes to the services of the Bank of England, its Governor, its ex-Governor (Mr. Cole), and Lord Revelstoke; the President of the Board of Agriculture gave particulars of a proposed scheme for the manufacture of aniline dyes, hitherto made exclusively in Germany--the consumers to subscribe 3,000,000_l._, the Government, subject to certain conditions as to control, to guarantee debenture interest on another 1,500,000_l._; and Mr. Bonar Law endorsed this scheme and criticised, in moderate terms, the recent purchase by the Government of 18,000,000_l._ worth of sugar, and the total prohibition of the import of sugar in consequence. The Home Secretary explained that the sole aim was to prevent sugar coming from neutral countries and being replaced there by German sugar. The Bill was subsequently read a third time.

On the adjournment, Lord Charles Beresford (U.) commented favourably, on the whole, on the naval position. The First Lord of the Admiralty, in reply, said that it was useless to discuss particular incidents, such as the battle off Chile, the loss of the _Aboukir_ and her consorts, and the expedition to Antwerp, without the disclosure, at present impossible, of all the orders and the entire situation. The only rule as to publishing information was that the publication should not interfere with the operations of the war; and he expressed the gratitude of the Admiralty for the reserve shown by the Press. The incidents seen were a very small part of the work going on all over the world. The British Navy had been confronted in the event of war by four main perils--(1) surprise before it was in its war stations [which had been averted by the assemblage at Spithead]; (2) the escape of fast armed liners of the enemy, but only 1.9 per cent. of the mercantile marine had been lost, against an estimate before the war of 5 per cent.; (3) mines, but the limits of that danger could now be discerned and it was being further restricted and controlled; (4) submarines, a novel and very grave danger, but British power in submarines was far greater than German, and the only reason it could not produce greater results was the rarity of a target for attack. A fifth danger, oversea invasion, he dismissed curtly as an enterprise perilous for the invaders. Of British shipping 97 per cent. was plying, of German shipping less than 11 per cent. was plying or unaccounted for, and only ten German ships, it was believed, were trading on the seas, while the Germans were becoming deficient in war material. The results of the German policy of attrition so far were not unsatisfactory to Great Britain. The losses of submarines had been equal, but the German loss proportionately was much larger, the British vessels being more numerous; of destroyers, the British loss was _nil_, the German eight or ten; of the older armoured cruisers, it was six to two, but the British were three or four times more numerous, and therefore more frequently exposed to attack; in fast modern light cruisers,--the most important class of modern vessels,--the proportion had been 36 to 25; Britain had lost one-eighteenth, Germany one-fourth. The British additions, recent and future, would make the British strength beyond comparison greater. In Dreadnoughts British superiority at the start was just under 60 per cent.--36 to 21; by the end of 1915 Germany could not possibly have more than three besides; Great Britain should have fifteen, including two taken over from Turkey, and one from Chile, and could afford to lose a super-Dreadnought a month and yet be in about as good a position as at first. There was no attrition by wear and tear. The health of the Fleet was twice as good as in time of peace, and the conduct of the men almost perfect. There was no reason whatever for nervousness, anxiety, or alarm. We had powerful Allies on the seas, but, even were we single-handed indefinitely, we might go on drawing our supplies and transporting our troops as we pleased.

After a short speech of concurrence from Mr. Bonar Law the House adjourned till February 2.

The war legislation passed in the first instalment of this new Session included Bills to consolidate and amend the Defence of the Realm Acts, based on the experience gained during the war; providing pensions for soldiers and their dependants; enacting that acceptance of a commission in the Army or Navy ["office under the Crown"] by members of the Commons should not vacate their seats; providing that members of local authorities should not be disqualified by absence, if they were on naval or military service; facilitating land drainage (as a means of employment); and, notably, amending the Trading with the Enemy Act. This last measure set up a custodian of enemy property in the person of the Public Trustee (in England and Wales; other arrangements were made in Scotland and Ireland) to whom must now be paid all dividends, interest, or share of profits which would otherwise have gone to an alien enemy, for him to hold till after the war, The Bill contained also provisions against the transfer of enemy claims, or stock or shares, to neutrals, and against the transformation of German into British companies; and it made even an offer to trade with the enemy a criminal offence.

About ten days before the adjournment, the work of recruiting for the new armies had been facilitated through the commencement of the issue by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee (representing all parties) of a circular to every householder in the United Kingdom, asking for the names of such members of the household as might be able to enlist.

Meanwhile, the war had been going well for Great Britain. The Germans had clearly been foiled in their attempts to break through in Flanders; Zeebrugge was heavily bombarded by a British squadron (Nov. 23) consisting of three small cruisers and some destroyers and torpedo boats, with the effect, it was hoped, of destroying the German preparations for its use as a base for submarines. The British positions before Ypres had been held, and the floods between Dixmude and Nieuport had rendered a German advance there impossible. In the Vosges the French were advancing slightly, elsewhere they were holding their own. A daring air raid on the Zeppelin airship factory at Friedrichshafen had been undertaken from French territory (Nov. 21) by Squadron Commander E. F. Briggs of the Royal Naval Air Service, with Flight Commander J. T. Babington and Flight Lieutenant S. V. Sippe, who dropped bombs on the factory under heavy fire, and, it was believed, did, considerable damage. Commander Briggs was wounded and captured; the others returned safely. (This startling raid of 250 miles, 120 of which were in enemy territory, caused a complaint from the Swiss Government that Swiss territory had been violated, a contention which the British Government denied.) Even more encouraging was the news from the Persian Gulf that the British and Indian troops which had landed at the mouth of the Shatt-el-Arab, after defeating the Turks on November 15 and 17, had occupied Basra on the 21st, only seventeen days from the declaration of war. At sea the large German submarine U 18 was rammed by a British patrol vessel, surrendered, and sank (Nov. 23). On the other hand, it was disquieting that a German submarine should have sunk two merchant vessels near Havre at three days' interval; and the terrible explosion of the _Bulwark_ (p. 239), though the ship was almost obsolete, reduced the _personnel_ of the Navy by some 750 men.

The confidence of the British military authorities was exhibited by the visit paid to the troops at the front by the King--the first such visit by a British monarch since George II fought at Dettingen in 1743. On Sunday, November 29, His Majesty crossed to France in a warship; he was met by the Prince of Wales on landing, and next day, after inspecting some of the base hospitals (including one for Indian troops) he reached the British general headquarters. During the three ensuing days (Dec. 1-3) he made a tour of the Army Corps, visiting their headquarters, meeting the generals and staffs, and inspecting all the troops not in the trenches, who were lined up, in large or small bodies, to greet him as he motored past. On December 1 he visited the Fourth Army Corps, and met President Poincaré, M. Viviani (the French Premier), and General Joffre, who accompanied him in his inspection; the last named he invested with the G.C.B., the two former dined with him. On December 2 he visited a Cavalry Corps and the Third Army Corps, and invested several French officers with British orders; on December 3 he invested Sir John French with the Order of Merit, inspected the First and Second Corps and some cavalry, and obtained a view of the battlefield, including Lille, Roubaix, and Ypres, where shells were bursting. On December 4 he made himself acquainted with the work of various departments of the Staff and of the auxiliary services; and he visited the Belgian headquarters and met King Albert on the last fragment of Belgian territory still unoccupied by the invader. On December 5 he saw the work of other auxiliary services, and visited the headquarters of the Royal Flying Corps. Throughout his visit this corps had "carried out a continuous aerial patrol" above him. That night he returned to England.

Before leaving, His Majesty issued a special order to the Army as follows:--

Officers, Non-commissioned Officers, and Men:

I am very glad to have been able to see my Army in the Field.

I much wished to do so, in order to gain a slight experience of the life you are leading.

I wish I could have spoken to you all, to express my admiration of the splendid manner in which you have fought and are still fighting against a powerful and relentless enemy.

By your discipline, pluck, and endurance, inspired by the indomitable regimental spirit, you have not only upheld the tradition of the British Army, but added fresh lustre to its history.

I was particularly impressed by your soldierly, healthy, cheerful appearance.

I cannot share in your trials, dangers, and successes, but I can assure you of the proud confidence and gratitude of myself and of your fellow-countrymen.

We follow you in our daily thoughts on your certain road to victory.

GEORGE, R.I.

GENERAL HEADQUARTERS, _December 5, 1914_.

The Prince of Wales, it must here be noted, had gone to the front at his own earnest desire six weeks earlier, and had proved himself, according to _The Times_ military correspondent, "one of the keenest and hardest soldiers of the army." He was aide-de-camp to Sir John French; but he had had a varied experience, had visited the trenches, including those occupied by the Indian troops, and had been several times under fire.

Though few details as to the military operations were published, it seemed clear that the Germans would be dislodged only by much larger numbers; and enlistment was supposed to be hampered by the continuance of professional (Association) football. The matches attracted thousands, many of them, doubtless, needed by home industries, but these, it was contended, might have been better employed drilling than looking on; and the players were excellent military material, but were bound by contract to their clubs. Attempts to induce enlistment from among the crowds of spectators in London (Nov. 21) brought only one recruit. An International Football Conference (representing the nations of the United Kingdom) decided at the end of November to drop the "international" matches, but not the cup ties, _i.e._ the matches determining the competitors for the Association Challenge Cup, decided at the Crystal Palace in the spring. The Scottish delegates, after consulting the War Office, decided to abandon both sets of contests till after the war; but the Council of the Football Association confirmed the decision of the Conference (Dec. 7). Its course was defended, partly because the matches provided recreation for workers who could not be spared, partly in view of the financial needs of the clubs and the players. The Association, it was urged, had done something for recruiting, and had contributed to the various war funds. The formation of a Footballers' Battalion was authorised by the War Office; but the episode provided another argument for the advocates of compulsory service.

The naval element in the war, however, seemed at least as important as the military; and here the signs were promising. It was true that extensive preparations against a raid had been made in the last week of November, though little was said of them in the Press; and also that the Admiralty had notified (Dec. 4) that lighthouses and buoys in the Channel on the east of a line drawn from Selsey Bill to Cape Barfleur, might be altered or withdrawn, and signals in this area changed or discontinued, without notice, and had specified stations where pilots could be obtained for the ports or areas affected--arrangements probably motived by the activity of German submarines off Havre (p. 245); and that the German merchant cruiser _Berlin_, which had run into Trondhjem short of coal and had been interned there, was believed to have been laying oceanic mines. But these were only temporary inconveniences; and the country was inspirited (Dec. 10) by the news of a great German naval defeat off Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, on December 8. Vice-Admiral Sir F. Sturdee, who had recently been Chief of Staff at the Admiralty, and had been in London at the time of the action off Chile (p. 226), had left Devonport (as afterwards transpired) about November 15, and with a squadron of six cruisers, the _Kent_, _Carnarvon_, _Cornwall_, _Glasgow_, _Bristol_ and _Macedonia_, the latter a converted P. and O. liner, and the battle cruisers _Inflexible_ and _Invincible_, had arrived at Port Stanley (where they met the _Canopus_) on December 7 to coal, before searching for the German squadron. Next day this squadron approached Port Stanley, intending, it was said, to occupy it as a coaling station. It consisted of the _Scharnhorst_, _Gneisenau_, and three small cruisers, the _Leipzig_, _Dresden_, and _Nürnberg_, with a merchant cruiser, the _Prinz Eitel Fritz_, and two transports. On their approach the _Canopus_ opened fire; the other British ships at once came out, chased the Germans for nearly six hours, and then engaged them. The battle cruisers, assisted by the _Carnarvon_, concentrated their fire, first on Admiral von Spee's ship, the _Scharnhorst_, which sank, refusing to cease firing, about 4 P.M.; next on the _Gneisenau_, which sank two hours afterwards. The German cruisers had meanwhile diverged southwards; but the _Glasgow_ overtook the _Leipzig_, and, with the _Cornwall_, sank her, after some hours' fighting, at 9.15 P.M.; the _Kent_, meanwhile, came up with the _Nürnberg_, and sank her about 7.30 P.M.; while her crew were being picked up, the _Dresden_ and _Prinz Eitel Fritz_ got away. The _Bristol_ and the _Macedonia_ sank the two transports or supply ships, the _Baden_ and _Santa Ysabel_, which had gone off to the west. The _Dresden_ was reported shortly afterwards at Punta Arenas, Straits of Magellan, but had not been heard of again by the end of the year. Some 2,000 Germans were lost, and less than a dozen British.

Two days after this news was published, a daring feat was achieved at the mouth of the Dardanelles. The British submarine B 11, Lieut.-Commander Norman Holbrook, dived under five rows of mines, sank the Turkish battleship _Messudiyeh_, which was guarding a minefield, and returned in safety--a feat which seemed to indicate that the entrance was not quite impregnable. For this feat Lieut.-Commander Holbrook received the V.C.

But now it was the Germans' turn. At 8 A.M. on the morning of December 16 three German warships appeared off Hartlepool, and bombarded it from 8.15 to 8.50, killing seven and wounding fourteen of the Durham Light Infantry who were stationed there, and also killing or wounding many of the civil population, who crowded into the streets. About the same time a battle cruiser and an armoured cruiser bombarded Scarborough, damaging several churches, the Grand Hotel, and many smaller buildings, and, rather later, two ships--probably the same--fired a few shots at Whitby, aiming at the signal station, but damaging the famous ruined Abbey and several buildings, though the casualties here were few. The ships, at any rate off Hartlepool, were attacked by British patrol vessels, and a mist facilitated their escape. Five British seamen were killed, fifteen wounded; the rest of the injured were civilians, including many women and children. At Hartlepool the total of deaths eventually mounted to 119, though a few victims lingered for some weeks; at Scarborough seventeen were killed and about twenty seriously injured; at Whitby two were killed and two injured. People were killed in the streets, while dressing, or at breakfast; and several of the dead were young children.

The raid was hailed with delight in Germany, where it was defended on the ground that the three towns were "fortified places"--which was hardly true even of Hartlepool; but in England it stimulated recruiting, and excited no panic. Probably all the five German battle cruisers were engaged; and, if so, only British battle cruisers could have overtaken them. British opinion was expressed by the First Lord of the Admiralty in a letter of sympathy to the Mayor of Scarborough, pointing out that the effectiveness of British naval pressure was proved by the frenzy of hatred it aroused in the enemy. The letter closed as follows:--

Practically the whole fast cruiser force of the German Navy, including some great ships vital to their fleet and utterly irreplaceable, has been risked for the passing pleasure of killing as many English people as possible, irrespective of sex, age, or condition, in the limited time available. To this act of military and political folly they were impelled by the violence of feelings which could find no other vent. This is very satisfactory, and should confirm us in our courses. Their hate is the measure of their fear. Its senseless expression is the proof of their impotence and the seal of their dishonour. Whatever feats of arms the German Navy may hereafter perform, the stigma of the baby-killers of Scarborough will brand its officers and men while sailors sail the seas.

Only a small proportion of the property injured was insured against war risk; but it was announced that the Government would compensate the sufferers.

A few days earlier (Dec. 12) Mr. Balfour, at a recruiting meeting at Bristol, had denounced the German effort at world-dominion as a crime against civilisation, which would not succeed while there was one cartridge or one stout heart left in Great Britain. The superman, if he appeared, might be left to the police; the super-State was absolutely inconsistent with the true notion of a great community of nations. The whole international future of the world, in his judgment, was hanging in the balance.

Such disregard of the ordinary usages of civilised warfare as was evinced by this bombardment tended to strengthen this attitude, and with it the national unity achieved at the outset of the war; and on its achievement Mr. Bonar Law threw fresh light in a speech at an informal meeting of Unionist chairmen and agents of Parliamentary constituencies held at the Hotel Cecil to consider the means of co-operation as to the war and other matters. He stated that on Sunday, August 2, he had sent the following letter to the Prime Minister:--

DEAR MR. ASQUITH,--Lord Lansdowne and I feel it our duty to inform you that in our opinion, as well as in that of all the colleagues whom we have been able to consult, it would be fatal to the honour and security of the United Kingdom to hesitate in supporting France and Russia at the present juncture; and we offer our unhesitating support to the Government in any measures they may consider necessary for that object.--Yours very truly,

A. BONAR LAW.

The Opposition, he claimed, had kept this pledge in letter and spirit; and it was the first time in the history of English Parliamentary government that an Opposition had refrained from harassing Ministers. They had determined to make no criticism which might injure the country; perhaps, indeed, they had not criticised the Government enough. But he preferred this mistake to that of criticising too much. After referring to the patriotic reserve of the Press in publishing news, he said that the country could gain from the war only peace, and security for that peace in the future; and for this they must have a united nation. They could look forward to the future with complete confidence; never before had British soldiers shown such devotion and heroism, and the statements as to the insufficiency of recruiting were entirely unjustified. Great Britain had got, and would get, all the men she needed without resorting to compulsion.

For a short time this unity seemed again in danger through the refusal of a section of Liberals at Swansea to accept the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (pp. 27, 33, 109) as the successor of Sir D. Brynmor Jones, who had vacated his seat on appointment as Commissioner in Lunacy. A three-cornered contest was expected; but the Chancellor declined the nomination.

The unity of the Empire was not less notable. Gifts and offers of money or local produce had poured in since the war began from the Dominions, Crown Colonies, and Protectorates, for the use of the troops or for the relief funds; and the donors comprised not only the Governments, but local groups or associations, private firms, and the population as a whole. From the Dominions came flour and meat; Rhodesia sent tobacco; Jamaica cigarettes; Montserrat guava jelly; Mauritius sugar; South African farmers fruit and eggs; the Emirs of Nigeria gave 38,000_l._ which was applied to the military expenditure of the Protectorate; a body of Masai sent bullocks, the Kavirondo chiefs 3,000 goats; Niue, in the Cook Islands, sent 164_l._ to the Empire Defence Fund and offered 200 men, the chiefs describing their island as "a small child that stands up to help the Kingdom of George V." The Somali chiefs and those of Uganda expressed their strong desire to fight for the King.

While the Empire thus drew together, two notable developments occurred in its foreign relations. The first was the formal change in the legal _status_ of Egypt, which was declared to be--what it had long been in fact--a British Protectorate (Dec. 18). The Khedive Abbas, who had become an open enemy, and was in Constantinople, was deposed; his successor, Prince Kamel Pasha, received the title of Sultan; and a British Resident--Colonel Sir Arthur MacMahon--was appointed with the title of High Commissioner instead of, as formerly, Consul-General.

A more novel change was the despatch of a British envoy to the Vatican in the person of Sir Henry Howard, whose mission was to last till the end of the war. Its exact scope was not stated; but it seemed probable that the Pope, whose attempt to effect a truce at the front for Christmas had been frustrated by the opposition of Russia, intended in due time to offer his mediation; if so, the mission was easily intelligible. But it caused some misgiving, and not only among extreme Protestants; for it might conceivably be interpreted abroad as implying some sort of recognition of the temporal power of the Papacy.

It was commonly felt that one of the conditions of peace, whenever it might come, must be the punishment of the persons responsible for the outrages and breaches of the laws of war committed by German soldiers in Belgium and France. Much evidence of these had been collected and sifted, and on December 16 it was announced that a Committee had been appointed to consider this evidence. It was a very strong one: Viscount Bryce was the Chairman; the other members were Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., Sir Alfred Hopkinson, K.C., Prof. A. L. Fisher, an eminent historian, and Mr. Harold Cox, sometime M.P. for Bath, and editor of the _Edinburgh Review_.

Meanwhile it was clear that the end of the war could only be hastened by sending more men into the fighting line; and Mr. Bonar Law again spoke at recruiting demonstrations in his constituency of Bootle on December 21. He said that it had been evident for years that Germany was preparing for war with Great Britain as her final objective; because he knew it, he had said (A.R., 1911, p. 262) in the Commons that he did not believe in inevitable wars; if war came, it would be due to the want of human wisdom, and the best and perhaps the sole guarantee of peace was that one country should realise the strength of the other. He had thought that the rapid growth of Russian resources would deter Germany, but she had struck precisely because of its rapidity. Like Napoleon, she had aroused against herself the moral forces of the world. She had not merely ignored these moral forces, but despised them; hence her mistakes. The coast raid had made the British people realise that they were fighting, not a superman, but a wild beast. He eulogised the British Army; no army equal in size to the new Army had ever been raised by voluntary enlistment, nor could it have been so raised anywhere but in Great Britain. We should get all the men we needed, but, if not, compulsion would be demanded by the nation. The Earl of Derby, who also spoke, remarked that Prince Henry of Prussia, one of the heads of the German Navy, knew that Scarborough was defenceless, having visited it in 1912 as a guest.

It was unfortunate that, while so many efforts were being made to stimulate recruiting, the military authorities should have issued a circular implying that soldiers' wives would be under the special supervision of the police. This called forth indignant protests from local authorities and trade unions; but it was explained to mean that the police desired lists of the wives of soldiers, in order to treat them leniently should they be charged with drunkenness. Their increased leisure and their Government allowances tended to increase their temptations to this offence.

A fresh stimulus to patriotic feeling, however, was provided by the group of air raids which marred Christmas peace in this amazing year. On Christmas Eve a British naval airman dropped twelve bombs on an airship shed in Brussels, inflicting, it was hoped, considerable damage on the Parseval airship it was believed to contain. On the same day a German aeroplane attempted to drop a bomb on Dover Castle, but missed its mark by some 400 yards, and, beyond a hole in a bed of cabbages and some broken windows, no damage was done. On Christmas Day another German aeroplane was sighted over Sheerness at 12.35 midday; aided by fog, it went up the Thames as far as Erith, probably to drop bombs on Woolwich Arsenal; but it was chased by three British aeroplanes and fired at by aircraft guns, and an exciting conflict took place within sight of Southend about 1.30; but it escaped, though probably the airman was mortally wounded. Earlier on that day a British raid of considerable significance had been made on Cuxhaven and the German warships lying off that port. Seven naval seaplanes, starting from a point near Heligoland, and escorted by H.M.S. _Arethusa_ and _Undaunted_, two of the newest light cruisers, and by a destroyer flotilla and several submarines, dropped bombs on the warships and on "points of military significance." The escort was attacked by two Zeppelins and several hostile seaplanes and submarines, but the Zeppelins were easily put to flight, the seaplanes missed the British ships, and the submarines were avoided. None of the other German warships came out; the British ships remained three hours, and re-embarked three of the seven British airmen with their machines, three without them; the seventh, Flight-Commander Hewlett, disabled his machine, which had met with an accident, and was picked up by a Dutch trawler, and allowed some days later to return to England. It was believed that a Zeppelin had been hit, and that the raid, which caused great delight in England, had set up a corresponding degree of disquiet in Germany.

But these exciting episodes had no direct bearing on the fortunes of the war. Its ultimate outcome was likely to depend partly on the cohesive and combative power of the British Empire, partly on the attitude of the greater neutral nations, partly on the economic pressure exercised on Germany by the British Navy, and partly on the ability of Great Britain to adjust her trade to the new conditions imposed by the loss of her best customer and of the sources of supply of the components of many of her manufactured goods. On all these the outlook as the year closed was encouraging. The unity of the Empire had never been more conspicuously manifested, and, as the year closed, it was seen to extend even to the Sudan. Recruiting at home, in spite of the pessimists, was not officially regarded as unsatisfactory, and the difficulties in the equipment of the three (or more) new Armies were apparently being overcome. Meanwhile numbers of men past the military age or unable to enlist for other reasons were serving as special constables or organising themselves into bodies of auxiliary troops. There were signs that Italy and Roumania might soon be fighting on the side of the Allies in order to share in the heritage of the tottering Dual Monarchy; the sympathy of the great mass of the neutral nations was estranged from Germany, and the complaints of British interference with their trade were not regarded as giving ground for apprehending serious friction, even in the case of the American Note (_post_, For. Hist., Chap. VII.). At home, serious crime had become rare, and the economic outlook was unexpectedly hopeful. The sufferings predicted by Sir Edward Grey (p. 171) had not as yet been experienced; and unemployment, owing to the demands set up by the provision of the new Armies, was far less than it had commonly been in time of peace. It was seriously felt only in the cotton trade, in a few luxury trades, and in some of the fishing ports, owing to the interruption caused by the war and the loss of the German market for herrings. Pauperism in England and Wales had risen rapidly at the outset of the war; it had subsequently declined to a point only a little above the exceptionally low figures of a year earlier; in London it was actually below them. Doubtless this temporary prosperity was mainly due to an essentially unproductive consumption which would bring its own penalties; but it seemed probable that some compensation might be found for war losses in the capture of certain branches of German trade. A movement for the production in Great Britain of goods for which British consumers had hitherto been dependent on German or Austrian industry had been favoured by the Patents and Designs Act, through which British consumers were enabled to ignore the patent rights of alien enemies, and was energetically aided by the Board of Trade, which collected and supplied the fullest possible information as to the means of carrying out the processes, and providing the components, which had hitherto been left to German or Austrian industry alone. Business had begun to adapt itself to the new conditions, and the Stock Exchange was about to reopen. Finally, the Government had carried out a number of daring measures, which had collectively averted a colossal economic disaster. Some of these, notably its huge purchases of sugar and the subsequent prohibition of the importation of that commodity (Oct. 24, p. 243) in order to prevent the sale of the German surplus, were severely criticised by orthodox economists, and set up speculation as to the possibility of a complete change after the war in the financial and commercial policy of Great Britain. But as war measures they were generally received with acquiescence. On all grounds, therefore, the British nation felt itself entitled to look forward to the issue of the struggle with quiet confidence, and to possess its soul in patience until a vigorous offensive should become possible in the spring.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] The Introduction to this pamphlet has been used in the following sketch of the negotiations, The Belgian Grey Book (Oct. 6), the Russian Orange Book (Sept. 21) and the French Yellow Book (Dec. 1) further set forth the Allies' case. Many of the official documents were published as a pamphlet by the _New York Times_.

[3] "Great Britain and the European Crisis" (the "Penny Blue Book"), No. 107.

[4] A letter from the Scottish Secretary contesting these statements was published November 21.