EXPLAINING * THE BRITISHERS FREDERIC WILLIAM WILE I EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS FREDERIC WILLIAM WILE "GETTING TOGETHER" HOISTING THE STARS AND STRIPES AND UNION JACK FROM THE SAME FLAGSTAFF OVER THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, LONDON, APRIL 1917. EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS TEE STORY OF ENGLAND'S MIGHTY EFFORT IN LIBERTY'S CAUSE, AS SEEN BY AN AMERICAN BY FREDERIC WILLIAM WILE AUTHOR OF "MEN AROUND THE KAISER" AND "THE ASSAULT" WITH ILLUSTRATIONS NEW ^SJr YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Copyright, 1919, By George H. Doran Company Printed in the United States of America FOREWORD Our country has sent millions of her sons to fight in the International Army of Civilisation. Our object is to win a complete victory as soon as possible and return to our homes. We therefore wish our help to be of the max- imum efficiency. The better we know the Allies, the more efec- tive our co-operation will be. All of us know in a general way the splendid fortitude and glorious deeds of the soldiers and sailors of Great Britain, France, and Italy. But how much do we know of their tremendous losses in lives or of the labours and suffering of their civil populations? This book was written by an American who lived in England before and throughout the war. His purpose is to explain exactly what sort of a chap the Britisher is and what the Army, Navy, and people of Great Britain and her Colonies have done in Freedom's cause. Mr. Wile shows how the Britishers bore the brunt of the onslaught of an enemy which had been preparing for this war for nearly half a century. Any American soldier, sailor, or civilian who takes the trouble to read these pages will find that vi FOREWORD both the men and women of the British nation have to their credit a truly wonderful record of courage and accomplishment. Nearly a million of their fighting men have been killed in battle, and twice as many wounded, but there was never any sign of weakening. I am sure that a clear understanding of the ex- tent of the Britishers' sacrifices, both on the firing- line and at home, will inspire all Americans to put forth their best efforts to bring this distressing war to a satisfactory end. Commanding U. S. Naval Forces Operating in European Waters. CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD v CHAPTER I ENGLAND AND AMERICA 9 II "PLAYING THE GAME" 19 III THE BRITISH NAVY 29 IV THE BRITISH ARMY 43 V THE HOME ARMY 55 VI IRELAND AND THE COLONIES .... 69 VII How THE BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED . 84 VIII THE BULLDOG BREED 99 IX THE REAL BRITISHER 116 vii ILLUSTRATIONS "Getting Together" Frontispiece Hoisting the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack from the same flagstaff, over the Houses of Parliament, London, April, 1917. PAGE General John J. Pershing 20 Admiral Wm. S. Sims 34 London's Mighty Welcome to the American Van- guard, Trafalgar Square, August 15, 1917 . 56 King George and Queen Alexandra reviewing the Americans march past Buckingham Palace, May 25, 1918 56 Major-General John Biddle 86 Ambassador and Mrs. Page, with American Bluejackets, at "Eagle Hut," London, April 6, 1918, the first anniversary of the entry of the United States into the War IOO "The Stuff to Give 'Em" (American Gunners at Chateau-Thierry) IOO EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS CHAPTER I ENGLAND AND AMERICA How many of you fellows, I wonder, landed on the shores of England with the same ideas about her that I had when I first came? Two things were uppermost in my thoughts first, that we once fought her in order to win our independence, and, secondly, that every Englishman hated us as the Devil hates holy water. I arrived in England with a chip on my shoulder, and I expected to have it knocked off. With my primary-school United States history deep and patriotically in- grained in me, I felt sure that I had come to a country with which America was no longer at war but which was still our "enemy" all the same. Now I venture to think that each and every one of you who has already arrived on British soil has been here just long enough to realise that our boy- hood-schoolday notions about England are woe- 9 10 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS fully out of date. I do not mean that we should forsake George Washington and the Fourth of July, and all the glorious traditions that enshrine them in our hearts. They are immortally dear to us. I do not mean that we should forget about that King of England, George III., against whom the American Colonies rebelled, or Lord North, his Prime Minister, on whose misguided counsel he acted. I do not mean that we should erase from our memories the fundamental fact that the Americans arranged the Boston Tea Party in 1773 because they objected to Taxation Without Representation. I do not mean that Bunker Hill and Brandywine, Ticonderoga and Valley Forge, Yorktown, Lafayette and Rochambeau, are names that American boys should no longer mention. All these things are precious to us, for they are the concrete upon which our skyscraper Republic is firmly imbedded. But the Declaration of Independence is a vener- able document. John Hancock, Benjamin Frank- lin, Thomas Jefferson and our other sainted na- tional heroes signed it 142 years ago. Five gen- erations of Americans have come and gone since 1776, and as many generations of English men and women have been making history in the seven score years and two that have intervened. The England of to-day the England in which you have arrived on the final stage of your trip to the battlefield is no more the England of George ENGLAND AND AMERICA 11 III. and Lord North than our own United States is the America of the eighteenth century. Any Englishman who cherished about us in 1918 the Tory notions of 1750-1780 would be just as ludi- crous a figure as an Englishman in satin knicker- bockers, powdered wig and a cocked hat. He would be a joke. He would not dare to show him- self in public. He would be laughed to scorn. The times have changed. I have never looked through an English pri- mary-school history book to see what English boys and girls are taught about the American War of Independence. I don't suppose they get a great deal of it indeed there is far too little taught in England, even in the great Universities, about the United States and United States institutions. The war ought to, and probably will, remedy that state of affairs. At any rate, one of the results of our comrade- ship-in-arms with the Britishers in this war ought to be a new American school history of the War of Independence. Such a history, as I have al- ready suggested, need not and should not omit the vital fact that the Colonies rebelled in a just cause and won an independence to which they were en- titled. But it ought also to teach that England's leading statesmen were on America's side; that George III. and his official advisers were acting against the views of large sections of the British people; that these views could not be enforced 12 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS because only 200,000 Britishers out of a popula- tion of 8,000,000 had a vote; that several British generals resigned their commissions rather than fight against the American Colonists; that George III. had to adopt the expedient of hiring 30,000 German mercenaries (Hessians) to fight for him in America; that Pitt, Fox and Burke, the three outstanding political leaders of the day, all op- posed George III.'s obstinate policy toward the Americans, and that Pitt (later Lord Chatham) withdrew his own sons from the Regular Army in order that they might not have to fight against the Colonies. These are historical facts. As American schoolboys, you and I did not get them, except in rare instances. That is why, to a large extent, we were brought up and grew up on anti-British dope. I have mixed with, lived among and worked for Englishmen for twelve years. It is my privilege to know cooks' sons and Dukes' sons, as they say- hereabouts, and even a Duke or two, and I have enjoyed friendly contact, without feeling the need of wearing smoked glasses, with Sirs and Lords of high degree. I am acquainted with all sorts and conditions of English folk, from commoners to nobles. I belong to their clubs, I eat at their tables, I am the recipient of their confidences, and they receive my own in a spirit of patience and generosity. On the evidence of my own observa- tions and my journalistic occupation makes them intimate to a degree far beyond the opportunities ENGLAND AND AMERICA 13 enjoyed by the average American resident in the British Isles I say without hesitation that no Englishman whose opinion is worth a tinker's cuss has anything to-day except boundless contempt for the policies which tore the American Colonies from the British crown a century and a half ago. He is ashamed of them. He pities the short- sightedness of the statesmen who carried them out to England's eternal disadvantage. He will tell you, as hundreds of Englishmen have told me, that a George III. who tried in this age and day to govern British Colonies as our Original Thir- teen were governed would wake up one fine morn- ing as an Irishman might put it and find him- self beheaded. That is what Englishmen of at least one era did with a King who, in their opinion, was not running his job properly. Some day, perhaps, wou will come to London on leave. In Whitehall, the famous street on which the great Government offices stand, you will see a grey old building, celebrated as the scene of the execution of Charles I. He was the monarch who played fast and loose with the liberties of the people and lost his head for it. The plain fact of the matter is that present-day Englishmen the kind who are giving you the glad hand at this very hour, wherever you are dis- avow the policy that "lost America to England," because they love Liberty just as much as we Americans do. And this is something you may 14 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS not fully comprehend they have just as much Lib- erty as we have, in every respect. They are in the war because they want to retain their Liberty as we do. England is a Republic with a King instead of a President. That is the difference between our respective forms of Government in a nutshell. The English have a hereditary instead of an elected Ruler. They respect and venerate their monarch just as we respect and venerate our Pres- idents. They stand at the salute when "God save the King" is sung or played because the King is the accepted guardian, protector and embodiment of English liberties. His crown which he only wears, by the way, once or twice a year for some traditional ceremonial at Court or in Parliament is not a symbol of despotic power like the crown that the Kaiser wears. It is the emblem of the majesty of British freedom, of which the reigning Sovereign is the figurehead. That is the long and short of "the King business" in England. When the occupant of the throne happens to be a regular fellow like King George a real he-man, a good sportsman, Democratic to the core, a hard worker, and a 100 per cent, gentleman "the King busi- ness" is safe and sound. We prefer a President because, as the boy who had red hair said, we were born that way. But the liberty-loving Eng- lish are perfectly satisfied with their system of a President who is called a King. Get that, and you will understand why the Eng- ENGLAND AND AMERICA 15 lish and ourselves are now fighting shoulder to shoulder to destroy Autocracy. We are fellow- Democrats. Both of us believe, as Abraham Lin- coln believed, that the only just Government is Government of the people, by the people, and for the people. England has been fighting for four years, and will go on fighting for forty more, if necessary, in order that Government of that sort shall not (in Lincoln's words at Gettysburg) "perish from the face of the earth." I guess we are all agreed that a friend in need is a friend indeed. England, in your lifetime and mine, proved herself to be precisely that kind of a friend of the United States. I refer to the Spanish-American War. Nearly all of you boys were babes in arms in 1898, or at least kids. So it may be new to many of you that England played an important part in our short and snappy conflict with the Spaniards. You all know who Admiral George Dewey was the man whom President McKinley sent to the Philippine Islands with in- structions to destroy the Spanish Fleet. He made a clean job of it bright and early on the morning of May i, and, after sending Admiral Montojo's squadron to the bottom, Dewey established a blockade of Manila Bay. Besides the victorious American fleet, there were two other squadrons in Philippine waters a British squadron, commanded by Admiral Chichester, and a German squadron, commanded by Admiral von Diederichs. The Brit- 16 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS ish, with centuries of Naval traditions and experL ence, respected Admiral Dewey's blockade un qualifiedly. The Germans, being people who butt in where angels fear to tread, were surly. They questioned Dewey's rights and set up some chesty pretensions of their own. Courteous protests by Dewey having failed to convince the Germans that he meant business when he told them that he was boss in the Bay and intended to remain so, the American Admiral trained his guns on the German Fleet. Then he notified Admiral von Diederichs that the guns might go off if the Germans con- tinued to be ugly. This made von Diederichs sit up. He sent his flag-lieutenant (von Hintze, who was German Minister of Foreign Affairs for a few minutes this year) to talk matters over with Dewey and the British Admiral. Dewey's reply was straight to the point. "Tell your Admiral," he said, "that if Germany wants war with the United States, she can have it in five minutes !" The interview which von Diederichs' flag-lieu- tenant had with Admiral Chichester, the British commander, was also very pointed. "I have come to you," said von Hintze, "to ask what the British squadron will do in case there is trouble between the Germans and the Americans." "Tell Admiral von Diederichs, with my compli- ments," replied Chichester, "that that is a matter known only to Admiral Dewey and myself." It was not long after that, to Admiral von Die- 17 derichs' astonishment, that the British squad- ron manoeuvred into a position that would have brought the German ships, had they dared to fire a shot, in conflict not only with the American squadron but with the British as well. Diederichs gave Dewey no more trouble after that. That was the first, but not the last, great proof of friendship which England showed us during the Spanish-American War. The Dewey-Diederichs episode angered the Kaiser and his fellow War Lords in Germany beyond words. They had just launched their famous Naval programme, and nothing would have proved more useful for their purposes than a victory, bloodless or otherwise, over the "arrogant Yankees" in Manila Bay. The Kaiser swore to be revenged for the "insult" Dewey had put upon the German Admiral. He vowed that Spain by hook or by crook must be spared the ignominy of defeat by the United States. Germany decided to form a league of European .Governments, which should go to the American Government and say that they did not propose to let "the upstart of the Western World" crush an ancient and proud European nation. The German Ambassador at Washington, Baron von Holleben, laid the Kaiser's scheme before the Brit- ish Ambassador, Sir Julian Pauncefote. It got no further. England put her big foot down, and once again Germany's plot to embarrass and humiliate Uncle Sam was kiboshed. The German Fleet was 18 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS nearly as strong as ours in 1898, if not stronger, but the Kaiser knew that if he dared to interfere in the settlement of our quarrel with Spain, Germany would probably have to reckon with the British Navy, too. So he concluded not to burn his fingers. The Government archives at Washington con- tain plenty of evidence that England and the United States have marched shoulder to shoulder, as friends and mutual well-wishers, on numerous other occasions. But as fighting-men I think the Philippines episode, and what followed, will make the strongest appeal to you. For my own part, I have always thought that if John Bull had never done anything else to deserve our help when he was in a tight corner, his action at Manila in May, 1898, was enough to entitle England to our undy- ing gratitude. In the opening chapter of this story it has merely been my aim to refresh your memories on modern Anglo-American history. And now I want to tell you, as best as I can, how mother Britain, hope- lessly unprepared, rolled up her sleeves in August, 1914 slowly, as is her way but gritting her teeth more resolutely all the time, until to-day she stands forth a giantess in arms, her world-wide territories uninvaded, her flag supreme on the high seas, her will unbroken, and all her hundreds of millions of people, white and black, united in one fierce, firm determination to "carry on" till vic- tory, complete and final, is achieved. CHAPTER II "PLAYING THE GAME" CRICKET is England's national game. It is to her what baseball is to us. Every English kid grows up on cricket, just as you and I were raised on baseball. Though there are professional crick- eters, cricket has always been an essentially amateur, or "gentleman's," game. English boys have their great cricket heroes like C. B. Fry, just as we have our Ty Cobbs. To be the best bowler at your school, college or university in England, or to play for your County, is to win one of the finest honours you can possibly achieve. The distinction is more than likely to cling to you through life. It may be mentioned in "Who's Who," and perhaps help you to get elected to Parliament provided, first and always, that you have "played the game." It is with that feature of cricket "playing the game," v, hich means playing it not only well but honourably, fairly and squarely all the time that I want to deal, briefly. It means everything in England. It means so much that when a man doesn't deal honestly with his fellow-men, or stoops to anything low or underhanded, people say, "It 19 20 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS isn't cricket." He has not "played the game." Baseball became immensely popular in England this year, thanks to the presence of so many Amer- ican soldiers and sailors on British soil. But it will never take the place of cricket in Englishmen's affections. It can no more do that than the Amer- ican temperament can be grafted on to the English character. Cricket is English temperament and character in composite. To our way of thinking, of course, the game isn't in the same street with baseball. I never met a Yankee who could keep awake during a whole cricket game, which isn't so surprising, seeing that a real cricket match can last three whole days; and Englishmen have fallen asleep at a World's Championship match between the Giants and the White Sox. Cricket to us is slow, old-fashioned and unexciting. Baseball, in Englishmen's eyes, is noisy, nerve-wracking and upsetting. In the fact that cricket is deliberate and baseball spontaneous, we get, in my opinion, very close to the main difference in the English and American make-ups. I took an English pal to the Army and Navy baseball game in London on the Fourth of July, when the King and Queen and other Royal person- ages were present. I wanted to convert my friend from cricket to baseball. I wanted to show him what a sure-enough outdoor game was like where victory goes to the team that thinks fastest, acts quickest, and is up on its toes and moving every GENERAL JOHN J. PERSHING "PLAYING THE GAME" 21 second of the time. It was a red-hot contest and as it progressed I rejoiced that my English friend was seeing such a splendid exhibition. The pitch- ing was superfine, a lot of men were fanned out, the base-running and fielding were almost perfect, and the Army nearly tied the score in the last inning if they had, I would have been five plunks to the good! At any rate, it was a hair-raising finish. Although my English comrade had not yelled him- self hoarse, or joined with me in abusing the um- pire, or "stretched" at the seventh, I felt pretty sure he had been deeply impressed. I couldn't wait for him to volunteer his joy, so, while walking home, I tried to extort it. You have to pry enthu- siasm out of an Englishman with a jemmy. "Baseball is very exciting and requires skilful playing I can see that," he said. "But I prefer cricket. It is better suited to the English nature. We could never learn to play baseball well because we are not made for it. It is too impulsive. It requires things to be done in too much of a hurry. There is no time to think them over. And then, you see, cricket means much more to us than just two or three hours' sport in the open air. It is our way of building and training character. Welling- ton, who defeated Napoleon, said that Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton our famous public school. Do you know what Wellington meant by that? He meant that the tenacity, the sticking-to-it, the honourable fighting, the never- 22 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS say-die spirit, that enabled the British Army at Waterloo to conquer, were the fruits of the lessons the lads of England learn on the cricket-field. They learn there to 'play the game,' calmly, coolly, un- excitedly. They are taught to play hardest when the luck seems to be running against them the most. 'Play up, and play the game,' says one of our schoolboy recitations, as familiar to English youths as 'Paul Revere's Ride,' or 'The Village Black- smith,' or 'Barbara Frietchie' is to American boys." "No," continued my English pal, "we'll stick to cricket. It is slow and methodical and old- fashioned. The rules are very strict and never changed for the purpose of speeding up the game or making it more thrilling. We play it as our grandfathers played it, because it breeds in us the conservatism and caution which, we like to think, are the bedrock on which the British Empire has been built up. Cricket shows us how to 'play the game' how to rejoice reasonably when we win, how to take defeat and punishment without whim- pering when we lose." I have told you all this not for the purpose of weaning you from baseball to cricket it would be a national calamity if the United States Army and Navy went home and turned their back on baseball. I just want to make you understand, if I can, how cricket, as the traditional athletic pursuit of Young England, inspired the Britishers to "play the game" in August, 1914, when the British Empire "PLAYING THE GAME" 23 and Civilisation in general were confronted by the supreme crisis in human history. The German propaganda in the United States tried to make us believe that England declared war on Germany because John Bull was jealous of Germany's trade successes in the markets of the world. Even the Germans know now that that was a lie. They have heard from the Kaiser's own Ambassador in Lon- don, Prince Lichnowsky, that the British Govern- ment worked tooth and nail till the last minute to preserve peace. England proposed to settle the quarrel between Austria, Serbia and Russia by arbitration. But the Kaiser was all dressed up and had nowhere to go. So he went to war. England went to war because her name was signed to a treaty which guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium. When you keep to your treaty obliga- tions when you look upon a solemn international agreement as a bond of honour and not as a "scrap of paper" you play the game. It would not be "cricket" to do anything else. So Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Lloyd George and the other statesmen who were at the helm of British affairs in August, 1914, remembered the first maxim of life which cricket teaches to Englishmen to stick to the rules, to fight when an honourable cause requires you to fight, and to keep on fighting, hard but cleanly, till you have the other fellow underneath or are knocked out yourself. England did not rush into war. She thought it over a long time so 24 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS long that right up to the eleventh hour there was still considerable doubt whether she would "go in." Cricket, you see, taught her statesmen the impor- tance of never going off half-cocked. But when they had weighed all the pros and cons of the situation slowly, deliberately, thoroughly Old England took the leap, for better or for worse. She decided to play the game. She determined to avenge Germany's violation of Belgium. It was cricket. The British Navy, of course, was ready. If it hadn't been, you and I might not be here to-day you to read, or I to tell, the story. But England's decision to fight to help France, to protect Bel- gium meant that she had to go up against not only the Naval forces of Germany, but to jump in on land and face the mightiest Military Power that then existed anywhere in the world. England as a factor in a land war in which armies of millions were already engaged looked like a flea-bite. No wonder that the Kaiser spoke of "the contemptible little British army." Germany had anywhere from 4,000,000 to 6,000,000 trained soldiers to call up- on. England had ready for fighting overseas about 4 per cent, of the number of troops actually mobilised in Germany. Yet on August 17, less than two weeks after England made up her mind to play the game, the "First Seven Divisions" had ar- rived in France, fully equipped with horses, guns, ammunition and all the other vast trappings of an "PLAYING THE GAME" 25 Expeditionary Force. It was a record in transport which was never approached even in our own land of Hustle. A week later the British Army was in battle position before the German hordes at Mons, in Belgium, fiercely engaged in a struggle to stem the progress of overwhelmingly superior forces. Here and there in England to-day you will en- counter Tommies and officers who wear a rainbow- like strip of ribbon on their breasts. It is a simple combination of red, white and blue, fading one into another. Tommy Atkins calls it the "Go'-bli' me" ribbon the Cockney for a swear-phrase which in plain English says, "God blind me." Every time I pass a man adorned with the Mons Ribbon for that is what the "Go'-bli' me" strip is officially called I feel like taking off my hat to him. For the British Expeditionary Force at Mons with- stood as ferocious an onslaught as any army in the annals of war ever had to face. The Kaiser had ordered "the British Contemptibles" to be wiped off the earth. Two full German Army Corps and two Cavalry Divisions were hurled against the troops of General Sir John French. The terrific battle grew in fury and bloodiness from minute to minute. Within twenty-four hours of taking the field, the British were locked in a grapple for life or death with the crack regiments of the most highly-trained army in Europe. The British did not yield. They died but did not surrender. They took frightful punishment, giving it, too, in such 26 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS kind as their inferior strength permitted, but on the third day of the battle, so magnificent had been their resistance, the Germans threw in three more Army Corps, making five altogether, besides a re- serve corps. With these tremendous odds against them, sole salvation for the British lay in retreat, and, fighting tenaciously, General French decided to extricate what was left of his little Army. The fields around Mons were by this time richly drenched with the best blood of England, for it had cost the "Contemptibles" dearly to "play the game." It was due to nothing but the superhuman heroism of General French's remaining forces that they were not crushed by the masses of Germans hurled against them. It became known afterwards that the Kaiser's legions practically staked their all on wiping out the British Army. So the escape of its gallant remnant from Mons was a military feat of skill and glory. Thus before the great war for Liberty was a month old England lived up splendidly to its cen- tury-old tradition of playing the game. Without any obligation, save the greatest and most sacred of all that of honour and of loyalty to friends in need England not only flung all she had into the furnace of war, but prepared forthwith to fling more and more, and if need be all she had, into its consuming fires. Every man and every gun lost at Mons was replaced practically while the retreat was still in progress. "PLAYING THE GAME" 27 In the knapsack of each soldier who now went forward to the fray was a message from Lord Kitchener, the new Minister of War, with instruc- tions that it should be kept in the active-service pay-book. The message was as follows: "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 cour- age, 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 the struggle. 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 loot- ing 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 28 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS guard against any excesses. In this new ex- perience you may find temptations in both 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." It was in this spirit, with these orders, that the boys of England went forth in 1914, as you are now going forth as Crusaders for the Right, each remembering what he had learned on the cricket- field: that come victory, come defeat, men must always "play the game," giving hard, taking man- fully, and battling with clean hands, in order that when triumph comes it may be deserved. CHAPTER III THE BRITISH NAVY WHEN Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, declared in his memorable speech in the House of Commons on August 3, 1914, that England had no intention of "running away from the obligations of honour" toward Belgium and France, he added: "We are prepared. We are prepared for the consequences that may arise from the atti- tude we have adopted. We are ready to take our part." What Grey meant was that "Our sure shield," as the Britishers call their Navy, was ready. It's a way they've had in the Navy for 900 years, for since William the Conqueror came from Nor- mandy in 1066, British soil has never been trodden by an invader. The geographical date which you and I, as American schoolboys, best remembered was 1492, when Christopher Columbus hiked across the Atlantic to an unimagined destination and made the most important discovery in the 29 30 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS world's history. The date that every British schoolboy knows by heart is 1066. It is well that he does, for it marks the historical fact that for nearly nine centuries this little bunch of islands in the North Sea whose total area of 121,000 odd square miles is smaller than that of our State of New Mexico has not only been preserved from the ignominy and horrors of invasion, but has be- come the centre of a Commonwealth of great Na- tions. On its vast territories in two hemispheres the sun never sets. Its 13,150,000 square miles girdle the globe and 450,000,000 souls acknowl- edge the Democratic sovereignty of the British Crown. Millions of them have been killed and maimed in the defence of their gigantic realm dur- ing the past four years of bloodshed and tears. But not one solitary inch of it has ever been soiled by German invasion. Do you know the reason why? The answer is, the British Navy. I have set myself the task of sketching in a short chapter a subject to which some day an entire ency- clopaedia will be devoted the story of the British Navy since 1914. But we Yanks have a gift for grasping the essentials of a thing if its outstand- ing features are put before us. That is all I intend to try. Do you realise, for example, that nearly two million American troops have been safely landed "Over There" mainly because Great Britain commands the seas? Up to October, 1918, 1,766,160 United States THE BRITISH NAVY 31 soldiers crossed the ocean, bound for France. During the summer and autumn of this year they came at the average rate of 300,000 a month, or 10,000 a day. With the exception of the 291 lives we lost when the Germans torpedoed the Tuscania, that gigantic feat of transport, like which there has been nothing in history, was accomplished as serenely as if those footpads of the sea, U-boats, had never been invented. More than half of our troops have been transported in vessels of the Brit- ish Mercantile Marine, but sixty per cent, of the total number were escorted across the Atlantic by the United States Navy. I know with what joy and pride you have seen the Stars and Stripes flapping from our own warships which have con- voyed you to Europe, or through the danger zone around the British Isles. I know the sense of security their proximity inspired in you. Yet even the United States Navy could not have played its great part if the British Fleet had not cinched its command of the sea at the outset of the war and held it unchallenged from that hour to this. Ad- miral Sims and the United States naval forces now operating in European waters an Armada of more than 250 vessels and 45,000 officers and men ^ 'Would have had urgent business nearer home. You and I and General Pershing's army are safe and sound in Europe to-day because Britannia still "rules the waves." Only once during the entire war at the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916 has 32 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS the Kaiser's Fleet made a serious attempt to break out of the iron ring which the British Navy so relentlessly keeps drawn around the German coasts. The Germans object on that occasion the "enterprise," as they described it, on which they set out was to contest and demolish British supremacy at sea. If the Germans had accom- plished their purpose, the war would have come to a sudden and disastrous end for Liberty's cause. There would have been no occasion for America to "come in." There would have been nothing to "come in" for. We should have had to face single- handed and alone a Europe of which Germany was the indisputable master. But her "enterprise" was wrecked. Admiral Beatty gave the German Fleet, though at cruelly heavy cost to his own in ships and men, such a frightful mauling that the Ger- mans have never once since then dared to show their nose in any way that would enable the British to take a second crack at them. Now and then their destroyers have dashed into the North Sea on raids, always turning tail as soon as danger was scented. But their so-called High Seas Fleet has not looked for a stand-up fight for the last two years. Whenever the Germans are ready to repeat their "enterprise," they will find Beatty (and Sims) ready, too. To date they have evinced no taste for another dose of the medicine they got at Jutland. Every once in a while I hear Britishers asking, THE BRITISH NAVY 33 "What is the Navy doing?" Americans frequently ask the same thoughtless question. People know what the British Army is doing because its heroic deeds are recorded in the open, day by day, by men who are given that special task. The lime- light is on the Army all the time. But the Navy has to work in silence and out of sight. Only on those rare occasions when German men-of-war appear on the surface of the sea, are we reminded that the British Navy is on the job. Yet it is on the job day and night, in sunshine and storm, sum- mer and winter, always and everywhere. Lord Nelson, England's immortal sailor, whose one- armed effigy stands eternal sentinel on the tall column which bears his name in London's Trafal- gar Square, said that in Naval warfare "Time is everything; five minutes make the difference be- tween a victory and a defeat." So while the European storm-clouds were gathering, on July 29, 1914, the British Navy took time by the fore- lock, moved silently from its moorings on the West coast and assembled at strategic anchorages in the East and North. Henceforward the Navy became known as "The Grand Fleet," an unexam- pled organisation of fighting strength; and from that moment every possibility of Germany's win- ning the war vanished. She had lost her one conceivable chance of securing the command of the sea. It is our own celebrated naval expert, Ad- miral Mahan, you know, who has shown that Sea 34 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS Power is the decisive factor in war. When Britain, without firing a shot, took action that assured Allied supremacy at sea, Germany's hope of enslaving civilisation and imposing upon it the rule of Brute Force was shattered and wrecked. What has the British Navy done in the four years that have intervened? To begin with, first and foremost, it has effectually baffled the hopes and plans of Germany to win the war with U-boats. Let me say right here that the Britishers are the first to acknowledge that the American Navy has proved itself a friend in need, and a very efficient one. It has had an important hand in smashing up the U-boat campaign. When Ad- miral Sims and our first destroyer flotilla came to England in the Spring of 1917, the submarine war was in full blast. More than 1,000,000 tons of Allied shipping were sunk in April of that year. Well one thing is dead sure the sinkings "curve" has been bending even more markedly in the wrong direction for Germany since American naval forces have co-operated in fighting the sub- marine. Some day we'll know just how many U-boats that never got back home had Sims's chasers and depth-charges and mine-barrage to thank for their fate. We shall be proud of the figures and of the deeds of heroism and skill which they represent. Submarines have contin- ADMIRAL WM. S. SIMS THE BRITISH NAVY 35 ued to cause enormous damage to British and Al- lied shipping. They are not yet killed off, but they have failed in their main object, which was to starve England, destroy British sea power, and keep American troops from reaching France. As the British Prime Minister puts it, "the U-boat has ceased to be a peril and is now only a nui- sance!' In addition to defeating the submarine cam- paign, the British Navy has: Blockaded Germany and bottled up the German Navy. Driven German commerce from the sea. Preserved the British Empire from invasion. Brought Germany to the verge of starvation. Enabled the British Empire to wage war in ten dif- ferent parts of the world. Kept the high seas open for the legitimate service of mankind. Made ultimate defeat of Germany absolutely certain, no matter how long delayed. These are the facts about the British Navy. Now let me give you a few figures. "Figures talk," we Americans say. None ever talked more eloquently than these. The British Navy has : Increased its total tonnage from 2,500,000 to 8,000,- ooo. Patrolled incessantly the 140,000 square nautical miles of the North Sea. Steamed in one month alone (June, 1918) 8,000,000 miles. 36 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS Sunk, destroyed or captured more than 150 German submarines. Raised its personnel from 145,000 to 450,000. Enabled the safe transport of 20,000,000 men, 2,000,000 horses and mules, 500,000 vehicles, 25,000,000 tons of war munitions and stores to British fronts throughout the world, 51,000,000 tons of oil and fuel, and 130,000,000 tons of food and other material. Armed and maintained 3,500 auxiliary patrol boats, as against less than 20 when war began. Enabled food for the 46,000,000 inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland to be brought from oversea, despite the furious German U-boat campaign whose principal object was to "choke" them into submission. Kept Britain's 8,000,000 odd soldiers and sailors well fed and well armed, no matter how distant the field in which they were fighting. Made possible the uninterrupted supply of munitions, food and coal needed by the armies, navies, and 75,000,000 inhabitants of France and Italy. This is what the British Navy has done. Think over it carefully, and you will rightly come to the conclusion that but for the British Fleet the war might have been over and won by Germany months, even years, ago. Truly the Prime Min- ister, Lloyd George, has said: "Unless the Allies had been completely triumphant at the outset of the war at sea, no efforts on land would have saved them. The British Fleet is mainly responsible for that complete triumph." The symbol of the British Navy is a bulldog. It has fought like a bulldog every time it had a THE BRITISH NAVY 37 chance to show its teeth. I would need a whole chapter of this booklet merely to catalogue the names of the British men and boys of "the bulldog breed" who have won heroes' laurels in the long and grim struggle at sea. The fights put up by destroyer crews, in desperate melees with German submarines and torpedo-boats, will supply mate- rial some day for thrilling and glorious tales. Whether opportunity comes to him to distinguish himself or not, every mother's son in the British Navy has perpetually in his mind's eye the signal that Nelson flew at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 : "England expects this day that every man will do his duty." Admiral Hood and the gallant 6,000 or 7,000 officers and men who went down with their ships in the Battle of Jutland did their duty. "Jack" Cornwell, a ship's boy, who lost his life in that same glorious scrap, sticking to his post to the last second, showed the stuff that British sailor-lads are made of. Nineteen-year-old mid- shipman Donald Gyles, of the destroyer Broke, who single-handed drove off six burly Germans who attempted to board his ship, was a chip of the old block. Captain Fryatt, of the North Sea mer- cantile service, whom the Germans captured, tor- tured and murdered, will be for all time a token of the bravery that inspires the sea-dogs of the Brit- ish race. The thousands of fishermen of Britain who are sweeping mines throughout the vast stretch of sea from Shetland to Greenland, from 38 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS Greenland to Iceland, from Iceland to the coast of Norway "the most savage waters in the world, always angry, resenting the intrusion of Man by every device known to Nature" do their duty, unseen, unsung, unknown. The brawny sailors, thanks to whose competent care and indifference to danger so many of you were brought in safety to this side of the world the tars who man the pas- senger and food ships, the munition-carrying freighters, the huge troop-transports these, too, as none knows better than yourselves, are doing their duty. The U-boat campaign is aimed principally, as you know, at the British Mercantile Marine. Among that splendid service the German pirates have claimed many victims. When I recall the names of the Lusltania, and the Sussex, and the Arabic, and all the other vessels which have been torpedoed, you will know what I mean when I re- fer to the terrors which the British merchant serv- ice has so bravely faced. But the Germans made another of their bad guesses about British charac- ter when they thought that their murderous torpe- does would scare the British sailor from the sea. It has had only one effect on that bluff and hardy manner. It has made him hate the word German with a fury that the authors of U-boat warfare will rue for the rest of their damnable lives. I should not like to be a member of the crew of the first German ship that pokes its nose into a British THE BRITISH NAVY 39 harbour after the war. Some welcome is in pickle for that bunch, believe me. When danger calls, the British Navy is always there. In April, 1 9 1 8, it was decided to sink some old ships, partly laden with concrete, in order to seal up the Germans' principal U-boat nests, the Belgian harbours of Zeebrugge and Ostend. It was a certain chance for glory and death, and everybody realised that the men chosen to carry out the expedition had a through ticket to Davy Jones's locker. Yet three times as many British sailors volunteered for the job as were needed. The Hobson tradition, established by American sailors in Santiago harbour in 1898, prevails throughout the British sea service. Though U- boats make life at sea as dangerous as the front- line trenches, the Mercantile Marine has more boys than it can use for eighteen months! So much for the effect of submarines on Young Brit- ain's nerve. And then there is the aviation branch, the sleep- less eye, of the Grand Fleet. German aircraft, both Zeppelins and aeroplanes, have shown truly enough that England "is no longer an island." But the impunity with which German sky pirates used to visit and harass these shores is a thing of the past. They cannot, of course, be kept away altogether. Yet on the occasion of their last at- tempt to murder sleeping women and babes on 40 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS British soil it was in August of this year the Germans discovered to their cost and chagrin that the British Navy has a punch in the air as well as on the sea. A Zeppelin squadron, commanded by the enemy's most skilful airship pilot, Captain Strasser, who had raided England often before, was driven from the East coast when it tried to approach and sent scurrying back across the North Sea battered and burning. The squadron's flagship, with Strasser and his crew, was pursued 40 miles out to sea, then attacked at close-range by airmen of the Grand Fleet's air force, and finally sent crashing into the sea, a flaming wreck. It was a Jutland in the sky. Another German "en- terprise" had been nipped in the bud. The German propaganda has dinned incessantly into the world's ears that the Kaiser is fighting to secure and assure "the freedom of the seas." The Germans try to excuse the tyranny of Militarism and its menace to Civilisation by shrieking that "Prussian Militarism" is no worse than "British Navalism." It has only been since 1914 that the Germans have discovered that the seas are not "free." Prior to then they were as "free" to Ger- man ships and as open to their peaceful activities as they were to the ships of the rest of the world. The leviathans of Hamburg and Bremen entered the ports of Liverpool, Dover, Plymouth and Southampton, Cape Town and Sydney, Montreal THE BRITISH NAVY 41 and Vancouver, Bombay, Singapore, and King- ston wherever the Union Jack flew as "freely" as British ships themselves. German shipping, indeed, grew fat and prosperous because of the complete freedom of the seas. It was Admiral Mahan, the American whom I have already quoted, who pointed out that "con- ceptions of representative government, law and liberty prevail in North America from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, because the command of the sea at the decisive era belonged to Great Britain." If it had not, Napoleon's sway might have been established over what is now Democratic North and South America ; and if the same command of the sea did not belong to the same Great Britain at this hour, that imitation Napoleon, that would-be but now sorely-chastened world-conqueror, William II. of Potsdam, would even now be stretching his blood- smeared tentacles across the hemisphere which the Monroe Doctrine stakes out as American for all time. "I shall stand no nonsense from America after the war," said the Kaiser to Mr. Gerard at Berlin. Which means, if it means anything, that the guns of the Grand Fleet, the bulldogs which bark when Beatty gives the word, have stood during the past four years not only between German ag- gression and the British Isles, but between that 42 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS hideous tyranny and the security of our own be- loved United States. That is something else, that the British Navy has done. CHAPTER IV THE BRITISH ARMY WHEN the Britishers declared war on Germany in August, 1914, their standing army the troops they had ready to send abroad as an Expedition- ary Force numbered roundly about 160,000. It was a small army, measured by modern stand- ards, but as the British barrack-yard ditty puts it, "A Little British Army Goes a Dam Long Way." Meantime more than 7,500,000 men have been enrolled. Of that mighty total there have been lost in killed alone more than five times the number of the original Expedi- tionary Force, or 800,000. Some estimates place the total of killed even higher and assert that goo,OOO Britishers have "gone West" I can almost hear you gasp when you read these figures; and well you may, for there is not one American out of a hundred who realises how lav- ishly British blood has been poured out in the com- mon cause. What Americans have been told in- cessantly during the past four years is that Eng- land was prepared to fight "to the last French- man." As soon as Uncle Sam waded into the fray, the German propaganda varied its deceitful 43 44 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS tune and said that England would fight "to the last American." Sometimes the German hot-air merchants put it this way: "England is playing safe. She always does. It's her game to let the other fellows get killed and save her own skin." A lot of us believed these tales. Some Americans believe them yet. What are the facts? British casualties in officers and men have been as follows: August, 1914, to the end of 1915 550,000 In the year 1916 650,000 In the year 1917 800,000 In six months of 1918 (estimated) 500,000 2,500,000 In other words, far from "playing safe," the Britishers' casualties have amounted during the first four years of the war to roundly one-third of their entire army. America is properly proud of the great army she has despatched to France. By July 4, 1918, it was a million in round numbers. But Britain had by then already LOST nearly a million in dead. I have not exaggerated these figures. They are not official, but have been com- puted by competent authorities. We know some of the details. During one month in France in 1917 the Brit- ishers had 27,000 men KILLED. In the first twelve months of the war they had 6,660 officers and 95,000 men KILLED. During the month of April this year, as the result of the great battles which began on March 21, THE BRITISH ARMY 45 1918, they had more than 10,000 casualties among officers alone. In all candour, it is not our fault that we be- lieved for so long that the Britishers were not "do- ing their bit." It was their fault. They didn't tell us. They were themselves aware that they were doing their full duty, but they didn't think it worth while to say anything about it. For months and months after the war began the Britishers fought it in the dark, as far as the outside world was con- cerned. The Britishers are long on self-deprecia- tion. When I lived in Berlin an English-owned Luna Park Company had a red-blooded American advertising-man. He considered that it was his duty to make the Park known far and wide by every means available. One day he rushed into the manager's office, bubbling with enthusiasm, and announced that after weeks of effort he had se- cured permission to put up an electric flash sign 50 feet high and 150 feet across in Potsdamer-Platz a district like 42nd and Broadway. The Amer- ican expected his English manager to explode with joy. He did nothing of the sort. He lit a fresh cigarette, thought for a minute or two, and then said: "But don't you think a sign of that kind will be a bit conspicuous?" Now, that is exactly the British point of view where their own deeds and virtues are concerned. They do not believe in making them conspicuous. 46 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS They expect people to take them for granted. So it has been with their war achievements. Though the little British Army that fought at Mons won glory enough to last the nation for all time, little more was said about it than if Mons had been a sham battle on Salisbury Plain. Britishers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Newfoundland, from all the Dominions oversea, were pouring across the seven seas by the shipload to fight for King, Liberty, and Motherland. From the great Empire of India native troops led by ra- jahs rushed to arms and to the strange and far-off battlefields of France because the issues at stake meant as much for Calcutta, Bombay, or Delhi as they did for London, Liverpool, Toronto, Mel- bourne, or Capetown. From the cities, towns and hamlets of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ire- land the Britishers who inhabited their own Isles flocked to the colours in myriads. But the Brit- ishers didn't advertise this glorious news. Meantime, while "Kitchener's Army" of volun- teers was being hurriedly recruited and trained, the British Expeditionary Force in France and Bel- gium was fighting for its very life. Not only was it handicapped by inferior numbers, but it was compelled to face the crack divisions of the Kai- ser's Army so short of guns and shells that it will for ever remain a miracle that it was not wiped out of existence in the first ninety days of the war. THE BRITISH ARMY 47 It was well supplied with only one thing unbreak- able courage. In October around Ypres (in Bel- gium) the British Army, still hopelessly outnum- bered, outgunned and outshelled, was engaged in as ferocious a struggle with the Germans as the history of war records. The Germans were mak- ing their first desperate bid for Calais and the coast of the English Channel, in the hope of at- tacking by land, sea and air their "grimmest and most stubborn foe England." Ypres was pound- ed into a shell. The countryside for miles in every direction was fertilised red by the blood of Brit- ish soldiers, who fell in thousands. But Ypres did not fall. Above its shattered fragments the Union Jack still flies. The road to Calais remains barred. Again and again the Germans have tried to gain it, but never so fiercely or at such terrible cost to the defenders as in those soul-trying days of October and November, 1914. How many Americans know the story of Mons and Ypres? In battle glory they reduce to insig- nificance anything that happened at Waterloo. Yet the Britishers did not shout about them. It was not their way. They had helped to save Civilisa- tion that was all. But nobody in England thought it important enough to bluster about for the benefit of foreign countries. Nobody saw any use in letting the outside world know the glorious news that from every nook and corner of the Em- 48 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS pire the British clans were gathering. Nobody considered it worth his while to make known the fact that the British Lion was rousing himself slowly, but determinedly, for a fight to the finish. Nobody found it advisable to let people know that the British Fleet had already won the war at sea. Nobody said one solitary word about any of these things. To a large extent the British Cen- sor wouldn't allow anything to be said. But to a still larger extent nothing was said because the British, as Kipling remarked of Lord Roberts, "don't advertise." I visited the United States in February and March, 1915. The war had been on for nearly eight months. The British casualty lists were already enormous. John Bull was in it up to his neck in blood and tears but not grum- bling. What was it Americans asked me when I got home ? They wanted to know "When is Eng- land going to do something?" It is the Britisher's passion for self-depreciation that caused us to think they were asleep at the switch. Now I am going to tell you, in the eloquent language of figures, just what the Britishers have done in the way of raising an army. They began the war with an Expeditionary Force, as I have already explained, of 160,000. By the end of 1917, after three and a quarter years, the British Army had grown to almost fifty times that size, or 7,500,000. The Germans tried to make the world believe that England was fighting not only "to the last Frenchman" but "to the last Colonial." The figures show up this THE BRITISH ARMY 49 libel, too, in its true colours. Out of the 7,500,000 men provided by the Empire up to the end of 1917, 5,600,000 or 74.7 per cent. about three-quarters came from Eng- land, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The proportions were as follows: Per Cent, of Total. England 4,530,000 60.4 Scotland 620,000 8.3 Wales 280,000 3.7 Ireland 170,000 2.3 Australia New Zealand Canada Newfoundland South Africa > 900,000 12.O India and other Over- sea dominions 1,000,000 13.3 Total 7,500,000 loo.o That is to say, the British Isles themselves this little country that Texas could swallow up twice over and whose population isn't half as large as that of the United States have raised even a bigger army than the 5,ooo,ooo-men establish- ment planned by us Americans ourselves. By July, 1918, Great Britain had raised more than 8,000,- ooo men for all the purposes of war. Reviewing the Britishers' achievement, their Prime Minister truly said that if the United States of America were to call to the Colours the same number in proportion to population it would mean very near- ly 15,000,000 men. 50 EXPLAINING THfe BRITISHERS Before I leave the statistical side of the British Army, I want to nail another German campaign lie. Since the war began the world has been fa- miliar with three kinds of fakes plain lies, damned lies, and German propaganda. One of the propaganda lies that the Swindle Department of the Kaiser's Government loves to keep in circu- lation is that the Britishers systematically spare the hides of English soldiers and let the "Coloni- als" (Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders and other Dominion troops) do the dirty work and get killed. Once again there are figures which show at a glance what the facts are. Study this little table: Percentage of Population of British Empire and Per- centage of Troops supplied by Countries named: Population. Troops Raised. Casualties. Per Cent. Per Cent. Per Cent. England 62 70 ] Scotland 8 g \ 86 Ireland 7 6 J Overseas 23 16 14 (This table does not include India.) You see that England, Scotland and Ireland contributed 85 per cent, of the troops raised, and suffered a fraction more than a corresponding quota of the losses. The Colonies furnished 16 per cent, of the men, and suffered 2 per cent, less of the casualties. Australian casualties to mid- summer, 1918, worked out at about 7% P er cent - THE BRITISH ARMY 51 of the total British losses ; Canada's casualties, at about 6*/6 per cent. The proportion of British casualties to Colonial casualties during the last half of 1917 per Division was 7 to 6. By the time this booklet reaches the hands of the men for whose information it was originally written the American soldiers and sailors bound for or already in Europe many of them will have made the acquaintance, face to face, of British soldiers and sailors. Other Yanks, to whose at- tention I fondly hope the booklet may come, will have brushed shoulders with Tommies in the fight- ing-line. I shall not need to tell those Americans what sort of scrappers the Britishers are. The best witnesses on that point would be German prisoners. Any Huns who have fought on the Western front could say things about Tommy At- kins far more eloquent and convincing than any- thing my faithful Waterman could put on paper. On August 8 and 9, 1918, when Haig's army smashed the crack corps of Hindenburg's forces and liberated Amiens, the Britishers delivered a blow that the Germans themselves described as "the first reverse we had suffered during the war." That is not quite true, for when the French and British won the first battle of the Marne in Sep- tember, 1914, the Germans sustained a "reverse" from which they never entirely recovered. But the punch in the jaw that Tommy gave Fritz in 52 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS August of this year was the first dose of the real stuff that the Britishers handed the Germans. It was the goods, because it represented the British Army at last in its full stride, fortified by four years' experience with every device of warfare, however devilish, that the German method of fighting had taught it to employ. The army that Haig sent into battle to relieve Amiens took, in the single month of August, 57,318 prisoners, including 1,283 officers; 657 guns, including over 150 "Heavies"; 5,750 machine-guns; 1,000 trench-mortars; 3 complete railway trains; 9 locomotives; Numerous complete ammunition and en- gineering dumps, including hundreds of thousands of rounds of artillery and rifle ammunition, and war materials of all sorts. The British Army that gave the Germans that stinging uppercut was no longer the outnumbered, outgunned, outshelled Army that fought a forlorn hope at Mons in August, 1914. This August, superiority of strength and skill was on the British side. Thanks very larely to their magnificent equip- ment with aircraft and with that exclusively Brit- ish invention, the tank I think the tank is charac- teristically British because it is big, cumbersome, THE BRITISH ARMY 53 slow-moving and deadly once it gets started the Tommies simply waded through the Germans. American troops fought with Haig, too, and there must be plenty of Yank eye-witnesses who can con- firm every word I am now setting down, viz., that on August 8 and 9 of 1918 A.D. the British Army showed once and for all that it is the equal of any fighting organisation that ever went into battle. It took the Britishers four years to get going, but "by the splendour of God," as their King Hal used to vow, they have done it. The British Army (supported and succoured al- ways by the British Navy, don't forget) has not been playing a merely defensive role on the blood- soaked plains of France and Belgium. It has fought in a dozen different places in various parts of Europe, Africa and Asia. It has con- quered all the German Colonies overseas. To- day, with the Russians out of the war, the British- ers have to fight the Turkish army single-handed in Mesopotamia and Palestine. They helped to knock out the Bulgarians in Macedonia. They are rounding up the remnants of the German Army still at large in East Africa and the Came- roons. They rushed to the help of Italy last win- ter when the Austrians broke the Italian front. They sent troops across north-western Persia to occupy the great Russian oil-city of Baku, on the Caspian Sea, in order that a Germanised Russia, betrayed by the traitor-Bolsheviks, might not be 54 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS the stepping-stone for a German lunge at the heart of India. In the far north of Russia, at Arch- angel, British troops were landed, to prevent Germany's seizure of Russia's one gateway to the Atlantic. At Vladivostok, on the Pacific Coast, British troops are in line alongside American, Japanese and gallant Czecho-Slovak contingents to preserve Siberia from the rapacious designs of Germany in that direction. In all theatres of war British armies up to August 19, 1918, had taken 224,787 prisoners, including 159,787 in France. The spoils of Napoleonic victory have not yet fallen to the Britishers' lot. But when the full story of the Great War is written, I believe its chroniclers will say that Britain bit off far more than Napoleon ever tried to chew and chewed it. By backing France for four long years, the Brit- ish Army saved Europe. While we were getting ready, the Britishers held the fort the fort from which you and they, marching shoulder to shoulder with our glorious and invincible French Allies, are now sallying forth to victory. CHAPTER V THE HOME ARMY MODERN war is not merely a matter of soldiers, guns and ships. It has to be waged on two fronts, one just as important as the other the fighting line and at home. The folks you khaki chaps left behind you the tens of millions who don't wear uniforms, obtain commissions or reap any of the spectacular glory of war are just as essential to conducting and winning the war as soldiers in the trenches or sailors in battleships. They make up the Home Army, without whose loyalty and indus- try the real army "Over There" would soon be- come useless. In previous chapters I have dealt with the regu- lar Army and Navy of Great Britain. I would now like to tell you what the Home Army has done, for the achievements of the civilian popula- tion of these islands are as splendid and vital a contribution to Liberty's Cause as anything their fighting lads have accomplished. It is solely be- cause this class of Britishers men, women and children have "carried on" patiently, stubbornly, for four hard years that the British Army and 55 56 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS Navy are not only still intact, despite heavy losses, but are in every way stronger than ever. It is the devotion of the Home Army that has enabled the Government to build up a gigantic munition indus- try. British civilians have given freely of their money, subscribing incessantly from their savings for War Loans and submitting without a whimper to heavy taxes on their incomes and on some of the principal necessities of life. They have tolerated uncomplainingly the rationing of their food. They have accepted rigid control of their drink. In- deed, they have almost been put on the water- wagon. They have not objected to interference with the commonest everyday liberties. They have put up, in short, with any and every thing deemed necessary to victory. The Germans have done all these things because they had to, and whined about it. The Britishers have done them because they wanted to, and took pride in doing so. I don't mean for a minute that Great Britain has transferred from the easy-going standards of peace to the grim conditions of war without kicking. They call it "grousing" over here, and there are just as many "grousers" to the square inch in these islands as there are kickers in other countries. When I say that the Britishers have "carried on" in a spirit of high-minded patriotism, I mean the great broad masses of the country, the over- whelming majority. I mean particularly the working classes, and I mean quite particularly the KING GEORGE AND (JTKKX ALEXANDRA HEVIK \VI XG AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE, MAY 25, 1918. IE AMERICAN" MARCH 1'AST LOXDOJf's MIGHTY WELCOME TO THE AMERICAX VAXGUARD TRAFALGAR SQUARE, AUGUST 15, 1917. THE HOME ARMY 57 women-folk. British workers and British women have been splendid. They have borne the brunt magnificently. In your meanderings up and down England and Scotland and Wales you are meeting, I guess, many a Britisher who tells you he is "fed up" with the war. The chances are you'll hear Tommies home on leave say the same thing, especially lads with the Mons ribbon or chevrons, which indicate that they've been in the game going on four years or more. Yes, the Britishers are "fed up" with the war. Good Lord, who wouldn't be, after what they have gone through ? Do you suppose that we Yanks will be as eager, as "keen" (as the English say), about the war as we are now if Providence inflicts four years of it on us? We shall be more than human if we are. But don't make the mistake of imagining that "fed up" means despair. It may mean that the Britishers are tired. War- worn they certainly are. Heaven knows, a rest is coming to them. But that does not mean they are ready to throw up the sponge. The piece of war slang that summarises the Britishers best is this bit of doggerel: "Are We Downhearted? NO!" As the war drags on from month to month, and from year to year, I often think of John Bull as a champion heavyweight pugilist, like our "John L.," of immortal memory. "John L." faced many a tough antagonist in his day. Usually he knocked 58 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS them out in the early rounds, but every once in a while he met a man who made him fight like Hell for a dozen rounds or more. The champion on these occasions had to stretch himself to the limit of his powers. One of his eyes was blackened. Good red blood oozed from his battered nose. He was black and blue at half a dozen places, but his wind was all right, his vision was not impaired, his arms could still shoot out rights, lefts and up- percuts, and he was firmly on his legs. To rattle John L., the other fellow's seconds would call out: "Why don't you quit you're groggy!" And then the champion, by way of contemptuous retort, would hand his opponent a stiffer punch than any "John L." had yet delivered. The British "ex- hausted," so the German Government told the German people handed Hindenburg this Autumn the nastiest smacks in the eye that he has had for many a day. John Bull gave Heinie a little of the John L. stuff. The Britishers' attitude toward the war the attitude of the Home Army reminds me, too, of the American Admiral in our 1812 war with Eng- land. When the Admiral was asked to surrender because his inferior squadron was badly mauled, he replied: "Surrender? By God, I've only be- gun to fight !" Yes, the Britishers have been bad- ly mauled. But now that at last they face on something like equal terms, instead of bare-breast- THE HOME ARMY 59 ed, a foe which had been dolling up for war for half a century, they have "only begun to fight." The Britishers face the Germans on approxi- mately equal terms because they are to-day pro- vided with the principal sinews of war arms and ammunition on a gigantic scale. While the Army and Navy were holding the foe at bay on land and sea, the Home Army created an indus- trial plant that has been well described as "the miracle of munitions." John Bull opposed the Mailed Fist of the Kaiser in 1914 with practically an ungloved hand. The original Expeditionary Force went into battle at Mons, I suppose, with about as many machine-guns per division as the German Army had per company. It was May, 1915 ten months after the war started before the Britishers discovered that they were fighting Germany's high-explosive shells with almost use- less shrapnel. Our comrades-in-arms had paid dearly in life and treasure before they found that out, but it proved to be the turning-point of the war. Thereupon the British Government created a "Ministry of Munitions," which set itself the task not only of making up the deficiency from which the Army suffered, but of outstripping the superiority which the Germans so long enjoyed. The Britishers have done the trick. They have out-Krupped Krupps. To-day Britain is one im- mense arsenal, her man and woman power mobil- 60 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS ised, her industries placed upon a war footing, her every thought and energy concentrated upon the single task of supplying her fighting forces with their essential needs. About 2,500,000 men and 1,000,000 women are now at work on munition- making big guns, shells, rifles, small arms am- munition, aeroplanes, machine-guns, tanks, gas, and all the other junk required for "kanning the Kaiser." National arsenals (Government-owned munition works) have increased from three in 1914 to more than 180 in 1918. Private manu- facturing firms engaged on munitions num- ber over 10,000. "Controlled Establishments" (firms which give precedence to Government work and employ labour under conditions fixed by the Ministry of Munitions) total more than 5,000. The following table shows the comparative rate of output in the first four years of the war, with the figure i as a basis : AMMUNITION: 1914-15 1915-16 1916-17 1917-18 For light guns i 5 19 5 For medium guns .. I 5 25 22 For heavy guns i 6 70 400 For very heavy guns i 21 220 280 GUNS: Machine-guns I 12 39 70 Heavy guns and Howitzers I 5 27 40 Very heavy ditto. i 5 13 16 STEEL (million tons) 7 9 10 10 THE HOME ARMY 61 To give you an idea of the rate at which the Home Army has turned out munitions, let me tell you that during the Somme offensive in 1916 Brit- ain was issuing to her armies on the Western Front an amount of ammunition equal to the entire stock available for her land service at the outbreak of the war. During the battles of this year (1918) the British Army is firing more than dou- ble the volume of shells it used up on the Somme in 1916. The present rate of output, moreover, al- lows for the production next year of enough guns and shells to make the British artillery even stronger still in weight, intensity and striking power. During the first five weeks of the German offen- sive which compelled the British to retreat in March and April, 1918, from their hard-won posi- tions on the Somme, the British lost nearly 1,000 field-guns and between 4,000 and 5,000 machine- guns including captured and destroyed. The amount of ammunition lost in dumps amounted to something between a week's and three weeks' total manufacture. These admissions are official. None the less, by the end of April all of these losses were more than made good, and there were actually more serviceable guns and ammunition available than when the battle opened. In aeroplane construction, too, the British have accomplished wonders. British factories are to- 62 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS day building in a single week more flying-machines than they made during the whole of 1914; in a single month, more than were made in the whole of 1915; and in three months more than in the whole of 1916. The output for the whole of 1918 will be several times what it was during 1917. These colossal achievements there is no other description for them are the result of two things : the Britishers' talent for organisation, mistakenly thought to be a German monopoly, and the zeal and patriotism of British workers, especially wom- en. Nine-tenths of the whole manufacture of shells are the result of the labour of women and girls who before the war had never even seen a lathe! I feel like taking off my hat to every Brit- ish lass I see in the brown or blue "kit" of a muni- tion worker, or in the uniform of a 'bus-conductor, or driving an Army or Navy or Air Force motor- car, or doing any of the many other jobs that girls and women are holding down in order to liberate men for the fighting services. If you could see, as I have seen, British girls of 18, 20, or 23 at work in the great steel mills of Sheffield at Hadfield's or Firth's swinging no-lb. red-hot steel ingots into the hydraulic presses, unafraid, skilled, veri- table daughters of Titan, you, too, would feel like saluting them; for it is they who are mainly re- sponsible for the fact that British heavy artillery is now able to pound the German line to a frazzle THE HOME ARMY 63 every time the guns bark. And remember that American artillery, too, is to a large extent sup- plied with shells which these British women and girls are making. Germany hoped to choke the life out of England by means of the U-boat, that is to say by destroy- ing so many ships that the British Isles could no longer import food or the other vital sinews of war. Thus the question of ships was the British- ers' chief problem, and here, too, the Home Army has worked wonders. The submarines have, in- deed, played frightful havoc with the world's ton- nage. Up to August i, 1918, according to Ger- man official claims, the pirates had sunk 18,800,- ooo tons of shipping Allied and neutral. That is rather more than the tonnage of the entire Brit- ish Mercantile Marine when war broke out. The large majority of vessels sunk by U-boats has, of course, been British shipping. The Britishers tackled with characteristic tenacity the question of making good these serious losses. In 1917, 1,163,000 gross tons of merchant shipping were launched from British yards, as compared with 542,000 tons in the previous year, and 1,919,000 tons during the last year of peace. Since 1917 British shipbuilding has been speeded up even still more. In the quarter ended June 30 there was an increase of 78 per cent, over the figures for the corresponding three months of 1917. 64 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS Hog Island and Seattle aren't the only places where shipbuilders know how to hustle. At the great Harland and Wolff yard at Belfast (Ire- land) the other day an 8,ooo-ton "standard" ship was made ready for sea six days after launching, the usual time being six weeks. Remember that in addition to replenishing their Mercantile Marine, the Britishers have had to keep up their warship construction. Repair work alone, on Naval and Mercantile craft, has been a gigantic job. Dam- aged craft of all nations limps to British dry docks for overhauling. It is no wonder that the British- ers look to us to concentrate on new shipbuilding. They are confident that "Charlie" Schwab will deliver the goods, too. The primary necessities of war nowadays are "the two M's" munitions and money. If you have to produce tons of munitions, you must put up tons of money. The Britishers have not failed in that direction. The figures are so fantastic as al- most to baffle ordinary comprehension. They run not into mere millions, but into tens of billions. The war is now costing them about $40,000,000 a day. Up to April, 1918, it had cost them about $35,070,000,000. By April, 1919, it is estimated that the war bill will have reached fifty billion dol- lars! The Britishers are not only financing them- selves but their European Allies as well. The Old Country (England, Scotland and Wales) is, as THE HOME ARMY 65 usual, bearing the burden for the whole Empire. Up to the end of July, 1918, Great Britain had advanced to her various Allies in Europe the fabu- lous sum of $7,010,000,000 that is to say, more than seven billion dollars. To her Colonies (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the rest) the Motherland had loaned another billion $1,042,500,000. The statement of her help to her Allies shows advances to Russia $2,840,000,000 France 2,010,000,000 Italy 1,565,000,000 Belgium 1 Serbia L 595,000,000 Greece Total $7,010,000,000 The Chancellor of the Exchequer (the Secre- tary of the Treasury) explained the other day what "a thousand million pounds" (five billion dollars ) really means. "It represents," he said, "the labour of ten million men for a whole year." That conveys some impression of what the British Home Army is doing in the way of providing money for the war. Never forget that it has been doing so not for a year and a half, like the United States, but for four years. It continues to "Pay, Pay, Pay," without a murmur. It puts up and shuts up. 66 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS In the Summer of 1918 the British broke all their previous financial war records, indeed estab- lished a world's record, by purchasing more than $5,000,000,000 in National War Bonds. They did it in exactly ten months. No previous loan in any country ever placed so much actually new money at the disposal of the State. It beat even the best Liberty Loan record in the United States. Before that the world's record was held by the British War Loan of 1917, which yielded $4,742,295,000 in actual cash received. The Na- tional War Bond drive, which lasted from Octo- ber, 1917, to August, 1918, surpassed that bumper figure by some $250,000,000. It was not a hip- hip-hurrah job of a week or a fortnight, mind you, with enthusiasm whipped up by all sorts of stunts. It represented regular, plugging, week-by-week investment. It meant money given by the plain people by the men, women, and even the children of the Home Army, who dug up their pounds, shillings and pence in order to let Germany know that Britain, far from being downhearted, is pre- pared to "carry on," whatever the cost. A nation raises money for war by two methods loans and taxation. By loan the Britishers have raised since 1914 the colossal sum of $25,850,- 000,000. In addition they have imposed upon themselves special war taxation more drastic than anybody would ever have thought possible, THE HOME ARMY 67 amounting thus far to $9,220,000,000. The Brit- ishers are paying income-tax at from 56 cents to $2.65 on every five dollars they earn above the exemption limit. Think of that. The very rich man is paying over one-half of his income in in- come-tax and super-tax alone. Tax must be paid on war profits to the extent of 80 per cent, of the total. The cost of railway travelling has been raised by 50 per cent. Britishers are now about to tax themselves four cents on every 25 cents spent on luxury articles. Meantime the cost of living in Great Britain has gone up enormously. The purchasing value of the sovereign ($5) for the necessaries of life has been reduced to about $3. The ordinary middle-class Briton, whose income has not gone up since 1914, is to-day practically in the position of having had it cut in half, so much has its buying-power de- creased. Yet the nation continues to come for- ward with its earnings and savings more lavishly, more freely, more confidently than ever. But even more splendid than the manner in which they are giving of their toil and treasure is the uncomplaining spirit in which the Britishers give of their life-blood. That's where their amaz- ing "reserve" and composure stand them in good stead. Parents lose their second, third, fourth sons ; wives, their husbands ; children, their bread- winners. But nobody whimpers. Lips are only stiffened. It is Sparta reborn. 68 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS The beginning of the fifth year of the war finds the Britishers going to it with bulldog determina- tion to "stick it" until they get the only kind of a peace they or we will ever accept a peace that leaves the Allies completely victorious and Ger- many at our mercy. CHAPTER VI IRELAND AND THE COLONIES IT will probably be a long time before the world decides upon the most appropriate name for the war. I still think that General Sherman's descrip- tion was the best for all wars. He called them "Hell." But as far as Germany is concerned, the best name would be "The War of Miscalcula- tions," or "The War of Bad Guesses." When he cranked his mighty war-machine in 1914, the Kaiser miscalculated right and left. His biggest miscalculation was the pipe-dream that the British- ers wouldn't fight. But even if they would some day be compelled to fight to ward off the attack which Germany was so long preparing to launch the Germans persistently led themselves to believe that the war would only be with England, Scotland and Ireland. This is the way they doped it out: "The British Empire will collapse like a house of cards the moment the old country finds itself mixed up in a serious European war. Ireland will secede. India will revolt. Egypt will break away. Australia, Canada and New Zealand will immedi- ately declare their independence. South Africa, 69 70 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS still sore from the effects of the Boer War, will seize the opportunity for revenge. England the tyrant will find herself stranded and forsaken by her oppressed Colonies and Oversea Dominions, and one day they will fall into Germany's lap like ripe fruit. Germany is the rightful heir to the British Empire." Yes, that was the dope in Germany for years. I was there, and I know it. I heard it and I wrote about it. The people of Germany believed it. They read it day after day in their newspapers and political literature. If they were university stu- dents, they got it direct from their professors, who taught the youth of the Fatherland war and the glory of war just as thoroughly as they taught them philosophy, or zoology, or mathematics. The Germans are a very systematic nation. They plan out things carefully in advance. So one of their long-distance arrangements for "The Day" on which they hoped to smash the British Empire was the sowing of discord throughout the British territories oversea. German spies and German in- triguers infested Ireland, India, Egypt and South Africa. Whenever there was a chance of stirring up old-time hatreds of England, these spies and intriguers got busy. It has been proved that wher- ever serious unrest has manifested itself in the British Empire during the war, Germans liberally supplied with German money were the niggers in the woodpile. But the funds were badly invested. IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 71 They produced no results of corresponding value. Germany backed the wrong horse when she put her money on "British Empire Revolution" in the World-War Race. Take Ireland. Tens of thousands of Pershing's great army are Irish by birth or ancestry. I saw a statement the other day that 25 per cent, of the American troops are Roman Catholic. The vast majority of that number must be "Oirish lads." Ireland is not a happy land. It never has been. It is troublous by nature because, as a witty Irishman himself has said, "An Irishman doesn't know what he wants, and, be-jabers, he won't be happy till he gets it." Thanks mainly to the activities of Sinn Fein agitators during the war, certain misguided patriots have kept the spirit of unrest alive in Ire- land. But how insignificant is their number, and how miserable the service they rendered their country, compared to the thousands of splendid Irish troops who have fought on the British side in France and elsewhere since the hour of the war's beginning! The great Irish leader taken away, unfortunately, in the midst of the war John Redmond, made a memorable speech in Parlia- ment on the eve of the war. He pledged his word that Ireland would remain loyal to Liberty's cause and do nothing to prevent Great Britain from fighting at full strength. Ireland would not se- cede, Redmond declared. Last year Redmond's own brother, Major Willie Redmond, fell in bat- tie on the Western front, fighting for England and for Ireland. Long before that a typical young Irishman, a poor boy named Mike O'Leary, won the Victoria Cross for conspicuous bravery in the field. There have been thousands of Willie Redmonds and Mike O'Learys, all Irish to the core, who have done their "bit" gallantly and are still doing it. They are imbued with the spirit that tore Tom Kettle, a brilliant young Irish law- yer, from a promising career in politics, and fired him with the determination to fight and die for Freedom's cause. Kettle was a deep-dyed Irish patriot. He was looked upon by many people as the future chieftain of the Nationalist party. But he was filled with the solemn conviction that no true Irishman could keep out of a fight against the nation branded by President Wilson as "the natural foe to liberty." So Tom Kettle got a com- mission in the Dublin Fusiliers and eventually died a hero's death in France. Irishmen like Red- mond and Kettle know that a Hun victory in this war would mean the occupation of Ireland by Germany and the enslavement of the Irish people for all time under the heel of Prussian militarism. In 1914 and 1915 many Irish soldiers fell into German hands as prisoners of war. The Kaiser soon found out the kind of stuff these brawny sons of Erin are made of. He tried to jolly them into forming an "Irish Legion" of the German Army. He promised them swell green uniforms, with IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 73 shamrocks embroidered on the collars and harps on the caps. He said they might all get drunk on St. Patrick's Day at Germany's expense and other- wise maintain the glorious traditions of the Seven- teenth of March. He told them they would be sent back to Ireland when the war was over, with their pockets lined with captured English gold. He held out all kinds of baits designed to induce Mike and Pat to be traitors. But the boys from Cork and Kilkenny, from Killarney and Tipper- ary, would stand for no bunk of that kind, however alluring. The Irish Guards, Irish Fusiliers, Con- naught Rangers, Royal Dublins, Royal Munsters, Irish Rifles, Inniskillings, or men of other famous Irish regiments, whom Germany wanted to seduce, simply howled down the treacherous comrades who tried to make speeches to them in favour of the Kaiser. Those whom they couldn't howl down they beat up. The "Irish Legion" is still languish- ing in those abodes of horror known as German prison camps. Mike and Pat prefer the terrors of German captivity to the glory of fighting for the Kaiser. I have told you about Ireland at this length be- cause many of you are Irish by origin and because all Americans love the Irish. I was educated by Irish Catholic priests and one of the best friends I have in the world is Father John Cavanaugh, C.S.C., President of my Alma Mater of Notre Dame University, Indiana. I played baseball with 74 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS "Jim" Burns and "Mike" Quinlan, who, like Cavanaugh, became priests and eminent figures in the Americal educational world. The Very Rev. "Jim" Burns made a speech at a Catholic Con- vention in 'Frisco the other day. He said that the khaki uniform which British and American sol- diers are now wearing "is the livery of God, and makes our sons and brothers soldiers of the Lord." At the same convention another Irish-American, John J. Barrett, speaking on Catholic loyalty, said : "We pledge our country our single-hearted allegiance. We entertain no scruples about the justice of her participation in the conflict. We approve the course she has taken in the crisis, and we would have had her take no other. We stand ready to promote our coun- try's fortunes at the sacrifice of all our re- sources of human life and earthly possessions. With all our strength and mind and heart we pray for victory to the arms of our country and her gallant Allies. We hold no alle- giance that conflicts with our love of the flag, and wherever it leads we are prepared to follow." When I read such things, I cannot help thinking that Irish-Americans to a man must profoundly re- gret that the Emerald Isle that "Little Bit of Heaven" has not played more of a man's-sized part in this struggle for civilisation and liberty. IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 75 Where shall I begin to tell the story of the mag- nificent role which the great self-governing Do- minions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa have played as members of the Brit- ish Empire ? Again, for lack of space, I shall have to confine myself to a few mere facts and figures. I would like to have devoted the whole book to them, for I know how fond you Yanks are of the husky boys from the Colonies. You rightly dis- cern that they are very much like yourselves, in physique and temperament. They are wide-shoul- dered and muscular, tall, lanky and breezy, and they almost speak our language ! Brought up, as we were, on vast continents, their point of view about life is broad-gauged. Like us, they find many things in England small, cramped and insular. But they have learned, as you will learn, that size isn't everything, and that even islands, if inhabited by men and women of red blood, cut ice too. The Anzacs from "down under," the Canucks from our side of the pond, and the big fellows from South Africa will all go home with very dif- ferent ideas about the Old Country; and, judging by the skylarking that is going on, I guess a good many of them will take back English wives, too. The significant fact about Colonial participation in the war is the evidence it supplies that the Colonies believe in the justice of the English cause. The Australians and New Zealanders would not have come 14,000 miles to fight if they didn't think 76 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS the English case was absolutely on the square. The lads of Dutch extraction who drove the Ger- mans out of South-West Africa would not have left the veldt and crossed 10,000 miles of sea to fight in Europe, as they are doing, if they weren't dead sure that England deserved their help. The Canadians would not have abandoned their farms and businesses to hurry across the Atlantic and bleed for the Motherland if they were not con- vinced that England was right. By the enthusiasm with which the British clans have gathered from the four quarters of the Empire, they have ex- posed the German propaganda claim that British rule is "tyrannical," that British foreign policy is "deceitful and aggressive," and that England went to war for gain and out of greed. The Colo- nials rushed to arms because the complete inde- pendence which they enjoy within the British Em- pire was just as much threatened by Germany as the liberties of England, Scotland, Wales and Ire- land. Australia's population is smaller than that of New York City, yet 426,000 Australian soldiers have been enlisted, every one of them volunteers. Up to August i, 1918, 321,000 of them had been embarked for various Allied fields of battle. That is more men than the whole British Empire sent to the South African war eighteen years ago ! Considerably over 8 per cent, of Australia's popu- lation has "joined up." Already 52,385 Austra- IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 77 Hans have been killed in action; 135,245 have been wounded, and only 3,353 have surrendered to the' enemy, most of these because wounds had put them out of action. The total war expenditure of Australia exceeds a billion dollars the exact total is $1,100,000,000. In 1918 her war bill will amount to $500,000,000. Alone and single- handed the 5,000,000 inhabitants of Australia have organised and paid for the equipment, trans- port and upkeep of their great army. For the past two years Australia has maintained five divisions in France, the equivalent of one cavalry division in Egypt and Palestine, and kept all battalions to strength by constant reinforcements from volun- tary enlistment. The personnel of the Royal Aus- tralian Navy exceeds 9,000 officers and men. This is the young Fleet which distinguished itself in the first three months of the war by hunting down and destroying the famous raider, Emden. The Aus- tralians have their own independent army or- ganisation hospitals, medical services, aviation branch, training camps, and everything. Their Corps in France, commanded by a self-made Mel- bourne business-man (General Sir John Monash), greatly distinguished itself in this summer's victori- ous Allied fighting in France. The Australians lived up splendidly to the brilliant record made by their earliest comrades, the heroes of the Allies' ill-starred venture at Gallipoli in 1915. The bravery of the Australian soldier is now prover- 78 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS bial. There are hardly any troops that the Ger- mans so hate to go up against as the boys from the bush country. Somebody told me that the Yanks on the Western front underwent their bap- tism of fire alongside Australian troops. Our army could have had no better model. Australia, having sent her boys to the war, intends seeing that they are well taken care of when they come back. She purposes repatriating all of them and re-es- tablishing them in civil life at an estimated cost of $150,000,000. Canada's record is no less glorious than that of Australia. She has enlisted 552,000 men, and sent 383,500 overseas. I guess that total includes the thousands of Yanks who enlisted in the Canadian Army before we came into the war. The Canadians have fought in many of the bloodiest engagements in which the British Army has taken part in France and Flanders. Up to the middle of this year Canadian casualties amounted to 159,084, including 43,279 killed in action, or died of wounds or disease. Thirty Canadians have won the Victoria Cross. Over 200 Cana- dian officers have been on duty in the United States as instructors. Like the Australians, the Canadians maintain a completely independent mil- itary organisation. They have a wonderful Air Service of their own, including champions like Lieut.-Colonel Bishop, V.C. (72 Hun machines brought to earth), and during the past 3^2 years IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 79 have sent into aviation a total of 14,000 men. Canada is becoming an important factor in ship- building. Her output of munitions is of the great- est importance. She has produced nearly a billion dollars' worth altogether. Of some particular varieties of shells Canadian munition works turned out during 1917 and 1918 40 per cent, of the en- tire needs of the British Army. Canada has come across with her money as well as with her men and munitions. Her war bill will total $1,200,000,000 by the end of this year. The Dominion Treasury has loaned to the Mother Country the sum of $460,000,000 to assist in pay- ing for munitions, and Canadian banks have loaned still another $100,000,000 for the same purpose. These are colossal achievements for a country whose population in 1911 (7,206,643) was not as large as Pennsylvania's (7,665,111). We of the United States are proud of our great neighbour on the North. Her sons and daughters live on the same sort of soil that we inhabit and breathe the same invigorating air. The coasts of their vast continent are washed by the identical waters that lash the shores of the United States. The Canadians have added fresh lustre to the North American name. Yanks in England are often mistaken for Canadians, and Canadians for Americans. Both of us chew gum, play base- ball, and have other tastes in common. The Brit- ishers say that we do the same things to the Eng- 80 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS lish language too. Well, I don't know how the Canucks feel about it; but if I were an American soldier I would be mighty glad if anybody thought I belonged to the army that made itself immortal at Vimy Ridge in 1917, and this year, in the great battle of Amiens, accomplished even greater deeds. Read how the proud Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian Corps, Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie a 43-year-old giant summarised the work of his men in front of Amiens : "On August 8 the Canadian Corps, to which was attached the 3rd Cavalry Division, the 4th Tank Brigade, the 5th Squadron R.A.F., attacked on a front of 7,500 yards. After a penetration of 22,000 yards the line to-night rests on a io,ooo-yard frontage. Six- teen German divisions have been identified, of which four have been completely routed. Nearly 150 guns have been captured, while over 1,000 machine-guns have fallen into our hands. Ten thousand prisoners have passed through our cages and casualty clearing sta- tions, a number greatly in excess of our total casualties. Twenty-five towns and villages have been rescued from the clutch of the in- vaders, the Paris-Amiens railway has been freed from interference and the danger of dividing the French and British Army has been dissipated." IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 81' That's glory enough, to my way of thinking, to last Toronto and Winnipeg, Alberta and Saskatch- ewan, Vancouver and Ottawa, till the crack of doom. I wish I had the space to continue the story, in detail, of what the other British clans have done in the hour of the Motherland's peril. But it would only be a repetition on a proportionate scale of what Australia and Canada are doing. New Zea- land, with a population of just over a million, has sent about 100,000 troops, white and coloured, to Freedom's battlefields. Together with the Aus- tralians, the New Zealanders formed the famous "Anzac" Corps at Gallipoli. They are mighty warriors, of the grim type of American plainsmen, and are feared and deeply respected on the Ger- man front. Many Maori tribesmen the same fighting stuff as our black men are in the N.Z. bunch. South Africa at the outbreak of the war gave the Germans one of their cruellest disappointments by raising a volunteer army of 58,000 under the leadership of General Louis Botha the Dutch- man who less than fifteen years previous was in arms against England on the same soil. Botha's army conquered the Kaiser's finest oversea col- ony, German South-West Africa, an area of 322,500 square miles. Since then the South African army under another old Boer War enemy of England, General Smuts, has conquered Ger- 82 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS man East Africa. In addition to kiboshing the Kaiser in Africa, the South Africans have sent nearly 10,000 men to Europe, including some of the finest fighting material which the British Em- pire affords. Little Newfoundland, the smallest British colony, has done her full bit, too, and con- tributed far more in men and money than might have been expected from a country of only 250,000 inhabitants. From wherever the Union Jack flies, Britannia's sons have rallied to fight and die for her from Malta, Fiji, Jamaica, Ceylon, Shang- hai, the Bahamas, Barbados, British Guiana, Do- minica, Trinidad, Bermuda. India, that priceless jewel in the British Crown, will never be forgiven in Berlin. Germany's fond- est hopes of all were pinned on "revolution" in the vast Empire of the Maharajahs. Incipient sedition has long been smouldering in isolated parts of India, and the Kaiser implicitly believed that the embers of unrest would speedily burst forth into a furious blaze among the 320,000,000 people of England's greatest dependency. He and his German spies fanned those embers for years. What happened? In September, 1914* a stately armada of transports entered Marseilles harbour, bearing 70,000 troops from India, under Indian officers, to fight for England and France against Germany ! Since then Indians have been in action with unfailing gallantry in almost every theatre of war in which England is fighting in Mesopota- IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 83 mia, in Palestine, in Macedonia, on the Suez Canal and in East Africa. The great native Princes of India, who are nominally the subjects of the King of England in his capacity as Emperor of India, have given freely of their vast fortunes for the British cause. By every means in their power they have urged their own native subjects to go forth in the Empire's cause. The Aga Khan, the head of the Mahomedans, called on all of the faithful to fight for England, and he himself vol- unteered to serve as a private in any Indian in- fantry regiment. The Grand Old Man of India, Lieutenant-General Sir Pertab Singh, has com- manded Indian troops in France. So runs the Empire's story of glory since 1914. Historians will compile volumes about it some day. Poets will be inspired to sing of it in verse. All that concerns us to-day is to know that the British Empire has made good with a big G. The demo- cratic system, under which these little islands gov- ern five hundred million people of all colours, creeds and conditions, was tried and not found wanting. HOW THE BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED THE British Empire is a free country. None freer exists anywhere on God's footstool. The Britishers boast that there is more freedom under their Union Jack than there is under our Stars and Stripes. We won't argue that point with them. I merely allude to it to make you understand that although they have a King and a House of Lords, and Princes and Dukes and titles, and all that sort of thing, the Britishers look upon themselves as being in all respects as Democratic and as free a nation as the United States. I have already de- scribed Great Britain to you as a country with a President who is called a King. I cannot think of any better or truer way of explaining the British Monarchy. There is one big difference. That is, that the Britishers' Royal Chief Magistrate has not got nearly as much power as our American Presidents have. I suppose that is why the Brit- ishers think that their little old country is freer than ours. At any rate, I guess a good many of you have been agreeably surprised to find how free the British atmosphere really is. Have you found HOW BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 85 the air around your Rest Camps a bit different from the air you breathed in New England, the Mississippi Valley, the South-West, or along the Pacific Coast? Except for the unfamiliar kind of English you've heard and the funny stunts of the British climate would you ever realise that you were in England instead of back home in Con- necticut, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Indiana, Minne- sota, or California? You haven't seen any signs up reading "The King forbids" this, that or the other thing, have you? You haven't seen the Tommies bowing and scraping in front of any Royal image, or speaking in awe-struck whispers about "His Majesty," have you? On your life, you have not. That's only done in Germany. It won't be done very much by the time you get there. Probably you've noticed that the British Army and Navy are called "His Majesty's Forces." The Government, too, is known as "His Majesty's Government." But, like the Monarchy itself, these things are only form. The Britisher loves form. In fact, he worships it. He knows just as well as you and I know that the Army and Navy are not "His Majesty's" forces really. They are the armed forces of the British Nation to-day they are the nation itself. But the Army and Navy have been termed "His Majesty's Forces" for a thousand years or more, and as the Britishers are very strong for the musty things of life, they cling to that description of their military 86 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS and naval establishments. It was good enough for their great-great-grandfathers and it's good enough for them. A lot of you by this time have memorised the first verse of the British National Anthem: "God save our gracious King, Long live our noble King, God save the King. Send him victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us, God save the King!" Now that's what the Britishers sing, and they always stand up when they sing it. Soldiers and sailors in uniform come stiffly to the salute when the anthem is played or sung. Don't get the idea that they show these signs of respect in any spirit of cringing servility to a crowned monarch. The King of England doesn't expect that kind of re- spect from his subjects who are called subjects, by the way, again out of sheer form. They are in fact citizens, just like you and me. If they were really his "subjects," he would have power of life and death over them. He does not possess any such power. A Britisher can only be put to death or deprived of his liberty after a fair trial. No, "God save the King" actually means "God save Britain." God is asked to send the King "victo- rious," but what the Britisher means when he sings MAJOR GENERAL JOHX HIDDI !:. that prayer is that Britain be "sent victorious." He prays that the King may be kept "happy and glorious" and "long to reign over us" because the King is their accepted, even if not elected, Sover- eign. They venerate the monarchal tradition which he represents. They want him "saved" not be- cause he happens to be named Albert Edward or George or something else, but because he is the physical, personal embodiment of their rights and liberties under the crown which the reigning King wears by their consent and with their approval. You will ask me where the King "comes in," if he has no such power as our President wields. Well, there must be a head or a figurehead to every great concern, and a nation is the greatest of all concerns. The King heads the British con- cern. The nearest thing the Britishers have to our President, as the actual head of their national administration, is the Prime Minister. Govern- ment in Great Britain is party government as it is in the United States. The political party that gets the most votes at a "General Election" which is held about every five years for the purpose of electing members to the House of Commons (the British equivalent of our House of Representa- tives) has the right to select one of its own mem- bers to be Prime Minister. If the Liberal Party gets a majority in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister will be a Liberal. If the Con- servative Party obtains the majority, a Conserva- 88 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS tive is appointed Prime Minister. The Labour Party is now very strong in Great Britain, and some day, perhaps, it will have a majority in the House of Commons. Then a Labour leader will be called to the Prime Ministership. Whoever becomes Prime Minister selects the members of his own administration, just as the newly-elected President of the United States picks out his own Cabinet. The King nominally asks So-and-So to be Prime Minister and to compose a Government. But that is only a bluff. It is "form" again. The political party that the voters of the country have placed in power in Parliament (the House of Commons) decides who shall be Prime Minister, and the King sends for him and "appoints" him. Do you get that? The Prime Minister of Great Britain, in other words, is every bit as much "the people's choice" as is the President of the United States. But the Prime Minister does not become the ruler of the country. Parliament is the ruler. The "P.M." holds office only by the will and consent of Parliament. They vote him in and they can vote him out. If he brings in a Bill for the passage of some new law, and the House of Commons rejects it in other words, turns the Prime Minister down he and his Government have to appeal to the country. A new election is necessary. If the country supports him and sends back to Parlia- ment a House of Commons with a majority in HOW BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 89 favour of the Prime Minister, he retains office. Otherwise, he is out of a job, and the leader of the party to which the country has given a majority succeeds him as head of the Government. There may be a newly-elected Parliament in England before 1918 is over, as there is a good deal of talk at the moment of a General Election. Then, once again, according to tradition, the King will formally "open" Parliament. He will ride from Buckingham Palace to the House of Lords and there deliver a so-called "Speech from the Throne." It will use old-fashioned expressions like "My Government," "My Army," "My Navy," "My People," and other similar phrases. Nobody in Britain will get angry when he reads them next day in the newspaper. The King will use those expressions because they are part and parcel of the Royal System which the Britishers tolerate and venerate. That's all. The King's venerable language will not alter the fact that through their Parliament the British people rule. You will notice that I said that the King opens Parliament in the House of Lords. He does not go to the House of Commons, where the elected representatives of the people sit and rule. The House of Lords prior to 1911 had a great deal more power than it now possesses. It is made up mostly of men who sit there by right of heredity because they are the sons of their fathers. When the Duke of Norfolk or the Duke of Sutherland 90 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS or the Duke of Portland dies, his eldest son be- comes the Duke of that name and takes his late father's place in the House of Lords, or Upper House, as it is sometimes called. So with the eldest sons (or other heirs) of Marquises, Earls, Viscounts, and plain Lords. The "Parliament Act of 1911" made certain changes in the rights and privileges of the House of Lords. Their effect was to leave the elected House of Commons prac- tically the boss of the show. The House of Lords is now more or less ornamental as far as the real government of Great Britain is concerned. Having tried, as simply as I could, to tell you what the British governing system is, I'll give you a little of the personal side of it. The Britishers couldn't have done the big things they have put across during the past four years if they didn't have Big Men at the helm. First of all, their King has proved himself to be a brick. Without thrusting himself into the spot-light that would have been neither Kingly, according to British tradition, nor British at all, because it would not have been "reserve" George V., like the hum- blest of his people, has played the game. He sent his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, to the front as a soldier, and the lad, who is 24, has proved him- self to be an intelligent, efficient young officer, popular with the rank and file and in every respect a fine type of the Briton of his age and class. The King's second and third sons, Prince Albert and HOW BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 91 Prince Henry, who are aged 23 and 18 respective- ly, followed their father's footsteps and entered the Navy, though Prince Albert is now in aviation. What King George has done in the war has been to set his people a high example of patriotism and hard work. He (and the Queen too) has been indefatigable in every sort of activity designed to fire the enthusiasm of the people in getting on with and winning the war. The King visits the wounded in hospital, mingles with the workers in the muni- tion factories, goes to the Front in France period- ically to sojourn among the soldiers in the field, inspect the Grand Fleet from time to time with the eye of an expert sailor, for that is the King's profession and in every way associates himself with the stirring life and times of the nation at this great hour. I don't suppose there is a man in all England who works harder at his job than the King does. He has to see an enormous number of important people, both British and foreign. He has to sign hundreds of documents daily. His advice, under the British Constitution, has to be sought and secured on countless occasions. He himself instituted the custom of conferring hon- ours, medals, decorations and titles for war serv- ice publicly, instead of privately within the walls of Buckingham Palace. He has tried in every way to be, and succeeded in being, a People's King. He likes Americans enjoys our breezy way of doing and saying things. Here's a story the King 92 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS himself tells. Some time ago he had an American General at lunch. Conversation turned on the subject of what the world would be like after the war. "How do you think things will be?" the King asked our General. "Well, I don't know," replied the American, "but I'm dead sure of one thing there'll be a lot of German talked in Hell!" The King loved that. He liked it because it was a free and easy come-back. He doesn't care much for side, either in himself or in others. He visited an American battleship in Irish waters last Sum- mer and shovelled coal into the furnace. When the stokers marvelled at his skill, the King said: "Oh, that used to be one of my jobs when I was in the Navy." Ann, of course, King George has a strong claim on our affections because he's a base- ball fan. The Prime Minister of England is David Lloyd George. He's a Welshman and the kind of man we honour in America, because he is self-made. He was a poor boy, with none of the advantages of wealth, birth, or position. He had nerve, ability, courage and a silver tongue, and those qualities made him Prime Minister in December, 1916. Lloyd George was a live wire in British politics long before that. In 1900, when I first came to this country, he was only a private Member of Par- liament, but had already won a reputation for pugnacity. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer (Secretary of the Treasury) when war broke HOW BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 93 out, and in that capacity rendered important service in mobilising the finances of Great Britain. Germany hated him cordially for sev- eral years before 1914, because when the Kai- ser got gay in Morocco in 191 1 and tried to bully France, it was a speech by Lloyd George that brought Germany to her senses and prevented war. In those critical hours in August, 1914, when there were divisions in the British Cabinet on the ques- tion of intervention in the war, Lloyd George was one of the men who advocated from the very first that Britain should go in. A man of pacific tend- encies, a Democrat who believed in peace, Lloyd George wanted only peace with honour. He knew that Britain could not have that kind of peace if she stayed out. In 1915, when Britain came to the conclusion that a special Ministry of Munitions had to be created for the production of guns and shells on a gigantic scale, Lloyd George was put in charge of it. It was the right place for a man of his driving power and organising skill, and he will have a great niche in the history of the war for what he accomplished as Munitions Minister. Lloyd George is precisely the sort of public man who would be popular in the United States. If he had been born there, I think it would be a hard job to keep him out of the White House, for he is a natural leader of wonderful magnetism. There is a good deal of the Teddy Roosevelt about him. 94 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS One of Lloyd George's heroes is Abraham Lin- coln, and his hobby is golf. I wish I had the space to tell in detail of a lot of the other Big Men of Britain. Lord Kitchener, who organised the great Volunteer Army of 1914- 15, accomplished a work that will have high place in the annals of war. Fortunately, his task was, for the most part, already accomplished when he was drowned in a British man-of-war while on his way to Russia in 1916. Lord French, who com- manded the old British Army in France for the first year and a half of the war, and is now Viceroy of Ireland, enhanced a military reputation which he won in South Africa in 1899-1900-1901. Sir Douglas Haig, the present British Commander-in- Chief in France, is a fine specimen of the modern British soldier and, as he has only recently proved, a strategist of no mean calibre. Marshal Foch, our great French Generalissimo, thinks very highly of Haig. In Admiral Beatty the British Navy has a Com- mander-in-Chief of the bulldog temperament that the hour calls for. When he got his teeth into the German Fleet at Jutland in May, 1916, he never let go until the Germans, having had their fill of the fray, scampered back to their ports, where they've been laid up for repairs ever since. Some people said Beatty was too eager on that occasion took too many risks. Well, he fought in accord- ance with the British Navy's tradition, which is to HOW BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 95 pound Hell out of the enemy whenever the chance is given, and to keep on pounding as long as you can. Admiral Beatty is only 47 years old. He is married to a charming American lady, the daugh- ter of the late Marshall Field, of Chicago. The naval service is rightly a service in which young blood predominates. In Sir Eric Geddes, First Lord of the Admiralty or what we would call Secretary of the Navy Britain has another man after our own heart, for he is not only youth- ful (42), but entirely self-made. He began life as a railway porter, and learned the railway busi- ness which is his occupation in civil life in our Southern States, where he spent several years lum- bering and working for the B. & O. Geddes visited the U.S.A. this autumn to get acquainted with Secretary Daniels and our home Naval estab- lishment. Winston Churchill, who is now responsible for the colossal work of the Ministry of Munitions, is half-American, his mother having been a Miss Jennie Jerome, of New York. He, too, enjoys the advantage of youthful energy, being just 44. There is also a North American touch about Bonar Law, who is Lloyd George's right-hand man in the conduct of the war, and is now in charge of Treasury and financial matters as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Law was born in Canada in New Brunswick. Lord Beaverbrook, the hustling young British Minister of Information (aged 39), 96 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS who has organised hospitality in Britain for the American forces on so splendid a scale, is also a Canadian and was born in the same town as Bonar Law. That extraordinarily virile Englishman, Viscount Northcliffe, who conducts British prop- aganda in Enemy Countries and is Germany's best- hated Britisher, is well known in the U.S.A., which he admires intensely and knows more in- timately, probably, than any living Britisher. Lord Northcliffe, whose newspapers rendered historic service in firing his country and its Governments with Get-On-with-the-War "pep," was Britain's Special Commissioner to the United States in 1917. Another prominent member of Lloyd George's Administration is Sir Albert Stanley, President of the Board of Trade (the Govern- ment's business department, which controls rail- ways, mines, shipping and all industrial affairs). He, too, may be described as "part Yank," as his entire business training, in electric transportation affairs, was gained in the U.S.A. He keeps up the youthful tradition of Britain's War Govern- ment, for he is only 43. So does the brilliant young Attorney-General, Sir Frederick E. Smith, who toured the United States in 1918. Smith is 46. No list of the Big Men of the war era would be complete without the name of Lord Reading, Brit- ish Ambassador to the United States. Earl Read- ing, to give him his full title, is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable Englishmen alive. He is HOW BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 97 a lawyer by profession, and when he was in private life and practised under his own name of Rufus Isaacs, he was the most skilful man at the Bar the kind that litigants always preferred to have for them rather than against them. Early in the war he was Attorney-General and then became Lord Chief Justice, which is the blue ribbon of the legal profession in this country. The Government sent Lord Reading to the United States on several im- portant war missions, principally in connection with finance, and he so endeared himself to the American people that he was the logical man for the Ambassadorship when it became vacant in 1918. No man has done more during the war to enable Britishers and Americans to get together. The working classes of Great Britain have to- day the largest share in the Government that La- bour in any country ever possessed. George N. Barnes (a mechanic by trade) is a member of the War Cabinet. George H. Roberts, a printer, is Minister of Labour. J. R. Clynes, a cotton oper- ative, is Food Minister. John Hodge, who began life as an iron puddler, is Minister of Pensions. William Brace, a coal miner, is Under-Secretary for Home Affairs and one of the most eloquent orators in England besides. And, before I forget it, the Britishers are hence- forth to be governed, in part, by their women. Six millions of them provided they're willing to 'fess 98 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS up that they're 30 years old will vote in future. Their great work in the war won for the women the right to a hand in the steering of the British ship of State. CHAPTER VIII THE BULLDOG BREED THERE is one thing about the Britisher that the Germans cannot understand. He never knows when he is licked. That is why men of the British race have come to be known as "the bulldog breed." They had that reputation long before this war, but have clinched their title to it a thou- sandfold during the past four years. Indeed, they would have deserved it on their record of the Spring and Summer of 1918 alone. Who would have dared to imagine that the British Army that was battered back through the Somme valley in March and April would so fully recover its punch by September that it would be smashing the "Hin- denburg Line" at will? Tommy Atkins has done what Jim Jeffries couldn't do. He "came back." One of Napoleon's marshals said that the right kind of an army was the army that is most dan- gerous when the enemy thinks it is broken. That is precisely what the British Army made of itself, after passing through the bitter waters of defeat for four weary, disheartening years. It's the bull- dog way. 99 100 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS We Yanks have for the most part formea our ideas of the Britisher from the American stage Englishman. I used to think that all Britishers were Cissy-like Lords with monocles, checked trousers, chesty manners, and a haw-haw attitude toward their humbler fellow-creatures such as mere Amer- icans. I imagine that a good many of you may have beenunderthe impression that nobody counts in the British Army unless he is of blue blood, with Dukes and Duchesses for his relations, and a wad of money in the bank. Also, I suppose, you have pictured to yourselves a British Army bossed and run by high and mighty Englishmen lording it over their menial subordinates. Well, I can clear your minds up about that. I have been at the British front twice during the war. My lasting impression on both occasions was of the good-fellowship exist- ing between officers and men. There are, of course, "class distinctions" in Britain just as there are in the United States, though we don't like to admit it. But these distinctions are levelled on the battle- field. There a man is just a man. What counts is what he is, not what his father is or his grand- father was. He has the same chance to make good that a Duke's son has. You'll know the spirit I'm trying to describe when I tell you that a Captain (Pollock of the East Yorks, son of a Knight who is a rich lawyer) was killed the other day while saving his soldier servant. Let me give you some more samples of what I AMBASSADOR AND MRS. PAGE WITH AMERICAN BLUEJACKETS AT "EAGLE HUT," LONDON, OX APRIL (), 1918, THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE ENTRY OF THE UNITED STATES INTO THE WAR. "THE STUFF TO GIVE 'EM" (AMERICAN GUNNERS AT CHATEAU-THIERRY) THE BULLDOG BREED 101 mean. When the war broke out 400,000 coal miners volunteered from England, Scotland and Wales. One of them was a man named Godfrey Jones, who began life as a pit-boy at the Ebbw Vale colliery in Wales. Joining as a private in September, 1914, Jones was speedily promoted corporal, then sergeant-major, and finally won his lieutenancy. On the Salonica front (in Greece) he conducted himself with such gallantry that he was promoted captain, won the Distinguished Serv- ice Order, and was later given the rank of lieu- tenant-colonel. Now the miner of 1914 has been recommended for a Brigadier-Generalship ! Jones is only 36 years old. Take the case of John Ward. Ward by trade is what they call in England a navvy about the most humble class of working-man, the kind who digs sewers and that sort of thing. He was a Labour representative in Parliament when the war began. He went out among his fellow-navvies, raised five battalions of volunteers, and became their Colonel. His lads were in a torpedoed trans- port, on their way to one of Britain's far-off battle- fields, and faced danger and imminent drowning for hours before relief came up. Ward's navvy- warriors spent their time singing "Rule, Britannia" and "Are we Downhearted? NO!" In August, 1914, a young man named James W. Watkins, son of a stationmaster, was a ticket- seller on the Midland Railway. Having mean- 102 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS time won the Military Cross and the Distinguished Service Order, Watkins is to-day a Lieutenant- Colonel in the Lancashire Fusiliers one of the characteristically democratic romances of the war. An equally remarkable career is that of J. P. Pitts, of the King's Liverpool Regiment. A few years ago he was a band-boy in the Bedfordshire Regiment, of humble origin, without pull of any kind, with nothing in his favour except the bulldog spirit. Pitts, who was at Mons, won the Military Cross, and is to-day, at 25, a Lieutenant-Colonel. Major Charles Clark, of the Royal Field Artil- lery, who was killed in action in April, 1918, was a farm-hand before the war. Four cotton-mill lads who left work in 1914 and 1915 to join the Army have won commissions in the field. An able seaman named Robert William Fox, of the Royal Naval Division, has become a Second Lieutenant. There have, of course, been thousands of cases of men of the humblest origin who have been given commissions after serving in the ranks. Lads who were office-boys in 1914 are Lieutenants now. One of the most amazing proofs of the demo- cratic atmosphere of the Army is Major-General John Monash, the Commander of the superb Australian Army Corps in France. He is a typical illustration of the fact that neither birth, creed, nor position in life cuts any ice whatever as far as British military career is concerned. When the war broke out, Monash, who is a Jew, was a civil THE BULLDOG BREED 103 engineer in Melbourne. To-day he is Commander- in-Chief of one of the finest armies the world has ever seen. Perhaps I might mention in passing that Lord Reading, British Ambassador at Wash- ington, is also a Jew and Lord Chief Justice of England besides. Jews are often members of the British Cabinet. The Royal Air Force of Britain the great "R.A.F.," which is doing as much to win the war, I suppose, as any other single branch overflows with examples of young fellows who have come to the top from humble origins. The British air champion, when he was killed in an accident this Summer, was James Byford McCudden, a young- ster of 23. Before the war McCudden was an air-mechanic. He became a pilot the most expert that the Army produced and when he met his fate he was a Major, with a record of 54 Huns brought down. One of his last feats was to lay low the German air crack, Flight Lieutenant Voss. No less famous than McCudden was Captain Albert Ball, a Nottingham boy who was 16 years old when war broke out and barely 20 when he was killed in action. He had brought down 42 Germans in air flights. The Captain's brother, also a flying-man of rare courage and skill, is a prisoner in Germany. I have given you a few examples, at random from among many, of how the so-called common people of Britain have done their bit and won 104t EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS through to high rank on merit. Don't think that it is only the lower and middle classes of Britishers who have achieved Death and Glory. I want particularly to rid your mind of such a notion, for it is one of the lies that Germany has spread abroad with persistent malevolence. No class of Britisher has done more nobly in the war than the highest class of British society. The first man to win the Victoria Cross was Captain Francis Gren- fell, of the 9th Lancers a scion of one of Eng- land's most aristocratic houses. Grenfell was one of the "Old Contemptibles," the little British Army that held up the German plunge through Belgium in the first three weeks of the war. His V.C. was granted for helping to save the guns of a Royal Field Artillery battery. Afterwards Gren- fell and his brother were killed in action. Ten Peers heads of great noble families have fallen fighting, including four Earls and six Barons, all members of the House of Lords. In addition to Peers who have lost their lives on the field of battle, sixty heirs to peerages have made the Great Sacrifice. Through their deaths twelve peerages have become extinct, as there were no heirs to the titles they held. Thus came to an end, for instance, the Marquisate of Lincolnshire, the Earldom of St. Aldwyn, and the Viscounty of Buxton. Many of the foremost families of the country have lost sons. Mr. Asquith, while Prime Min- THE BULLDOG BREED 105 ister, had to mourn the death of his heir, Raymond Asquith, a lawyer of talent and fine promise. Mr. Bonar Law, Chancellor of the Exchequer, has lost one son killed, another is a prisoner in the enemy's hands. The Hon. Neil Primrose, youngest son of the Earl of Rosebery, a former Prime Minister, fell in this year's fighting in Palestine alongside another scion of the aristocracy, Major Evelyn Rothschild, of the celebrated banking family. Two grandsons of the famous Victorian statesman, William E. Gladstone, met heroes' deaths. The two elder sons of Lord Rothermere have fallen. The Earl of Denbigh has lost two sons, one at sea and one in France. Any number of British fam- ilies have lost two members. Many have given three, and there are several cases of four boys belonging to the same family who have "gone West." All were sacrificed in the spirit in which the Widow Bixby of Massachusetts gave her five sons for the Union in our Civil War the mother to whom our sainted Lincoln wrote that famous and beautiful letter, acclaiming "the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom." No reference to the bulldog breed can be com- plete without a passing tribute to the mothers, wives, daughters, sisters and sweethearts of Brit- ain. How they face, dry-eyed, year after year, the losses of their men is one of the marvels of Britain's great era. I suppose it is due to that 106 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS "reserve'* and poise on which the British race so prides itself. Whatever it is that enables British women to stand the strain of war as they do, it is glorious. They are setting our mothers and wives, our sisters and sweethearts, a great and inspiring example. How can I begin to tell in deserving terms of the countless acts of bravery which the boys and men of the bulldog breed have performed? The highest British distinction for gallantry before the foe is the Victoria Cross "For Valour." It was founded by and named after Queen Victoria in 1856. It is a Maltese Cross of metal made from Russian cannon taken during the Crimean War at Sebastopol. When awarded to soldiers, the V.C. has a crimson ribbon; when given to sailors, it has a dark blue ribbon. In the four years up to Octo- ber, 1918, nearly 500 Victoria Crosses had been awarded. They do not even remotely begin, of course, to exhaust the deeds of unflinching courage that the men of the British Army and Navy have to their immortal credit. The thousands who re- ceived the Military Cross, the Distinguished Serv- ice Order, or medals of various grades, were just as heroic, just as ready to face danger and death, as the gallant 500 who won the Victoria Cross. The Victoria Cross is a thoroughly democratic institution. The lowest man in the ranks or the ship can aspire to it. An Irish hod-carrier has just as much chance to win it as an English Duke's THE BULLDOG BREED 107 son. I've been skimming over the V.C. roll of honour, and my eye catches names like Boyle, Ho- gan, McFadzean, O'Sullivan, O'Meara, and O'Leary. Several Jews have been awarded the prized badge of British courage. Even the fact that a man has "done time" does not bar him from a V.C., if he deserves it. One of the finest V.C. deeds was accomplished by an ex-convict, who was serving in the trenches alongside his former prison guards. By far the largest number of men in the proud list are (or were for many have been killed since they won the honour or were awarded it after death) privates. All branches infantry, artillery, cavalry, tanks, aircraft, submarines, de- stroyers are represented. Indians, Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders are among the heroes, for the bulldog breed seems to manifest itself regardless of calling, rank, origin or colour. Perhaps you would like to know exactly the kind of stuff that wins the Victoria Cross. Here are a few awards chosen indiscriminately: Acton, Private Abraham, 2nd Batt. Bor- der Regiment. For conspicuous bravery at Cuinchy on December 21, 1914, at Rouges Banes, in voluntarily going from his trench and rescuing a wounded man who had been lying exposed against the enemy's trenches for seventy-five hours, and on the same day again leaving his trench voluntarily, under heavy fire, to bring into cover another wounded 108 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS man. He and Private James Smith, V.C., were under fire for sixty minutes whilst con- veying the wounded men into safety. Boyle, Lieutenant-Commander Edward C., Royal Navy. For most conspicuous bravery, in command of submarine E 14, when he dived his vessel under the enemy's minefields and entered the Sea of Marmora on April 27, 1915. In spite of great navigational difficul- ties from strong currents, of the continual neighbourhood of hostile patrols, and of the hourly danger of attack from the enemy, he continued to operate in the narrow waters of the Straits, and succeeded in sinking two Turkish gunboats and one large military transport. Silton, Lance-Sergeant Ellis Welwood, late Canadian Infantry Batt. For most conspicu- ous bravery and devotion to duty. During the attack in enemy trenches Sergeant Silton's company was held up by machine-gun fire which inflicted many casualties. Having lo- cated the gun, he charged it single-handed, killing all the crew. A small enemy party advanced down the trench, but he succeeded in keeping these off till our men had gained the position. In carrying out this gallant act he was killed, but his conspicuous valour un- doubtedly saved many lives and contributed largely to the success of the operation. Mariner, Private William, 2nd Batt. King's Royal Rifle Corps. During a violent THE BULLDOG BREED 109 thunderstorm on the night of May 22, 1915, he left his trench near Cambrin, and crept out through the German wire entanglements till he reached the emplacement of a German machine-gun which had been damaging our parapets and hindering our working parties. After climbing on the top of the German parapet he threw a bomb in under the roof of the gun emplacement and heard some groaning and the enemy running away. After about a quarter of an hour he heard some of them coming back again, and climbed up on the other side of the emplacement and threw another bomb among them left-handed. He then lay still while the Germans opened a heavy fire on the wire entanglements behind him, and it was only after about an hour that he was able to crawl back to his own trench. Warneford, Flight Sub-Lieutenant, late Royal Flying Corps. For destroying single- handed the first German Zeppelin brought to grief in the war. Afterwards, although forced to descend on enemy soil, he succeeded in fly- ing back safely. (Since killed.) Maling, Temporary Lieutenant George Al- lan, M.B., Royal Army Medical Corps. For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty during the heavy fighting near Fauquis- sart on September 25, 1915. Lieutenant Mal- ing worked incessantly with untiring energy from 6.15 a.m. on the 25th till 8 a.m. on the 26th, collecting and treating in the open under 110 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS heavy shell fire more than 300 men. At about 1 1 a.m. on the 25th he was flung down and temporarily stunned by the bursting of a large high-explosive shell, which wounded his only assistant and killed several of his patients. A second shell soon after covered him and his instruments with debris, but his high courage and zeal never failed him, and he continued his gallant work single-handed. Addison, Rev. W. R. F., Temporary Chap- lain to the Forces, 4th Cl., Army Chaplains' Department. He carried a wounded man to the cover of a trench, and assisted several others to the same cover, after binding up their wounds under heavy rifle and machine- gun fire. In addition to these unaided efforts, by his splendid example and utter disre- gard of personal danger, he encouraged the stretcher-bearers to go forward under heavy fire and collect the wounded. Bingham, Comr. the Hon. Edward S. B. '(Prisoner of War in Germany) . For the ex- tremely gallant way in which he led his divi- sion in their attack, first on enemy destroyers and then on their battle-cruisers. He finally sighted the enemy battle-fleet, and, followed by the one remaining destroyer of his division (Nicator), with dauntless courage he closed to within 3,000 yards of the enemy in order to attain a favourable position for firing his torpedoes. While making this attack Nestor and Nicator were under concentrated fire of THE BULLDOG BREED 111 the secondary batteries of the High Sea Fleet. Nestor was subsequently sunk. Laidlaw, Piper Daniel, yth King's Own Scottish Borderers. For most conspicuous bravery prior to an assault on German trenches near Loos and Hill 70 on September 25, 1915. During the worst of the bombard- ment, when the attack was about to com- mence, Piper Laidlaw, seeing that his com- pany was somewhat shaken from the effects of gas, with absolute coolness and disregard of danger mounted the parapet, marched up and down, and played his company out of the trench. The effect of his splendid ex- ample was immediate and the company dashed out to the assault. Piper Laidlaw con- tinued playing his pipes till he was wounded. Frickleton, Lance-Corporal Samuel, New Zealand Infantry. For most conspicuous brav- ery and determination when with attacking troops, which came under heavy fire and were checked. Although slightly wounded, Cor- poral Frickleton dashed forward at the head of his section, pushed into our barrage, and personally destroyed with bombs an enemy machine-gun and crew which was causing heavy casualties. He then attacked a second gun, killing the whole of the crew of twelve. By the destruction of these two guns he un- doubtedly saved his own and other units from very severe casualties, and his magnificent courage and gallantry ensured the capture of 112 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS the objective. During the consolidation of the position he received a second severe wound. He set throughout a great example of heroism. McFadzean, Private W. F., late Royal Irish Rifles. While in a concentration trench and opening a box of bombs for distribution prior to an attack, the box slipped down into the trench, which was crowded with men, and two of the safety pins fell out. Private McFadzean, instantly realising the danger to his comrades, with heroic courage threw him- self on the top of the bombs. The bombs ex- ploded, blowing him to pieces, but only one other man was injured. He well knew his danger, being himself a bomber, but without a moment's hesitation he gave his life for his comrades. Robinson, Lieutenant William Leefe, Wor- cester Regiment and Royal Flying Corps. For most conspicuous bravery. He attacked an enemy airship trying to bomb London under circumstances of great difficulty and danger, and sent it crashing to the ground as a flam- ing wreck. He had been in the air for more than two hours, and had previously attacked another airship during his flight. Jackson, Private W., Australian Infantry. On the return from a successful raid several members of the raiding party were seriously wounded in "No Man's Land" by shell fire. Private Jackson got back safely, and, after THE BULLDOG BREED 113 handing over a prisoner whom he had brought in, immediately went out again under very heavy shell fire and assisted in bringing in a wounded man. He then went out again, and with a sergeant was bringing in another wounded man, when his arm was blown off by a shell and the sergeant was rendered unconscious. For gallantry and devotion to duty in the second blocking operation in Ostend Harbour on May 9-10, when the old warship Vindictive was sunk in the harbour, the following awards of the Vic- toria Cross were announced: Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Heneage Drummond, R.N.V.R. Volunteered for res- cue work in command of M.L. 254. Although severely wounded in three places, he re- mained on the bridge and navigated his ves- sel, seriously damaged by shell fire, alongside Vindictive and took off two officers and 38 men, some of whom were killed and many wounded while embarking. He backed his vessels out clear of the piers before sinking exhausted from his wounds. Lieut-Commander Roland Bourke, D.S.O., R.N.V.R. After M.L. 254 had backed out of the harbour he, in command of M.L. 276, made a further search of Vindic- tive, but finding no one, withdrew. Hearing cries in the water, he again entered the har- 114. EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS hour, and after a prolonged search found Lieut. Sir John Alleyne and two men, all badly wounded, clinging to an upended skiff, and rescued them. All the time the motor- launch was under heavy fire at close range, being hit in 55 places. Lieut. Victor A. C. Crutchley, D.S.C., R.N. He was in Brilliant in the unsuccessful at- tempt to block Ostend on April 22-23 an d at once volunteered for the second effort. He was 1st Lieutenant in Vindictive, and when his commanding officer was killed and the sec- ond in command severely wounded, he took command. He did not leave Vindictive until he had made a thorough search with an elec- tric torch for survivors under heavy fire. He took command of M.L. 254 when Lieutenant Drummond sank exhausted from his wounds. Only by dint of baling with buckets did Lieut. Crutchley and the unwounded keep the launch afloat until picked up. The great stunts that won these sixteen V.C.'s are typical of the bulldog spirit. The other 480 odd differ from them only in detail. All were deeds of mighty valour. But they will afford you a graphic idea, I hope, of the stuff that the fighting Britisher is made of. Perhaps the remarkable thing about these out- standing feats of British heroism is that in the overwhelming majority of cases they were per- formed by the most ordinary type of fellow, dis- THE BULLDOG BREED 115 tinguished in no way, as far as anybody ever knew, for courage or nerve. And the thing that marks all V.C. men is their invincible modesty. "Cut it out," they say, when you ask them to tell you what they did to win a place among Britannia's im- mortals. ***** The war has not produced many great poems. A sonnet written by an Englishman, Major Maurice Baring, Independent Air Force, in honour of his friend and comrade, the Hon. Julian Grenfell, himself a poet and who followed his V.C. cousin Francis to a hero's death in France, is the best I have seen. It sings of the bulldog breed: "Because of you we will be glad and gay, Remembering you, we will be brave and strong, And hail the advent of each dangerous day And meet the last adventure with a song. And as you proudly gave your jewelled gift, We'll give our lesser offering with a smile, Nor falter on that path where, all too swift, You led the way and leapt the golden stile. Whether new paths, new heights to climb you find, Or gallop through the unfooted asphodel, We know you know we shall not lag behind Nor halt to waste a moment on a fear. And you will speed us onward with a cheer And wave beyond the stars that all is well." * * [Reproduced with the author's permission.] CHAPTER IX THE REAL BRITISHER THE preceding pages of this booklet have been devoted in large part to an account of what the Britishers have accomplished during the war. I would like to wind up with a heart-to-heart talk on the subject of the Britisher as he really is. To begin with, he is not at all what he seems to be on first acquaintance, namely, a chilly proposi- tion. Like a foreign language, he requires to be studied, and studied carefully. I've been studying him for nearly twenty years and I'm just commenc- ing to understand him. He is dawning on me for what he is a regular fellow, a white man, and one of our kind. It won't take you twenty years to know him. The war has made a lot of changes in him and he thaws faster than he used to. The Britishers and the Americans belong to the same English-speaking race, even though we don't say "raw-ther" when we mean rather. Both of us are Democratic to the core, too. That's why we're on the same side in this war. Sure. But other- wise most of our traits, habits, impulses and or- dinary views about things are as different as day 116 THE REAL BRITISHER 117 from night. That is not quite correct. They only seem different, for it is my experience that when Britishers and Yanks get together and thrash things out, they find that their notions about life aren't as far apart as they appeared to be. We discover that we only look at life through spec- tacles of different colours. Our tastes and ideals are very similar. All we do is to gratify the tastes and pursue the ideals in our own ways. If a Britisher steps on you by mistake, he says "Sorry." A Yank says "Beg your pardon." What each means is that he wishes he hadn't done it. They put it differently : that's all. When you took your girl out for the last time before leaving the U.S.A., she probably told you that she had had a "bully" evening. The first girl you took out in England, I'll bet, assured you that you had given her a "ripping" time. But your Yank girl and your British girl meant precisely the same thing. The Britishers' English differs from Yank Eng- lish all along the line, but that doesn't signify that it is bad English. After all, the language belongs to them. They saw it first. They do with it what they please; and we do to it what we please. Take their railroad lingo. To begin with, "there ain't no such animal" as a "railroad" in this country. They've only got "railways." They "shunt" their trains. We "sidetrack" ours. By a "depot" the Britisher means a place where stuff is stored. By "depot" we mean the place we go to or come from 118 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS when travelling by rail. Britishers "book places." If they talked our language, they'd "reserve ac- commodations." And they call conductors and brakesmen "guards." So it is with the thousand and one things in which our respective characteristics differ. Americans, for instance, are hail-fellow-well-met sort of peo- ple. When we slap a man on the back as a welcome, we mean it. We're mighty glad to see him. We let him know it by the effusiveness of our greeting, by the warmth of our hand-clasp and usually by a slap on the back. These being our emotions, we display them. We don't hide them away as if we were ashamed of them. It's our way. The Britisher's way is different. He seldom slaps you on the back. If he is meeting you for the first time, he never does. His welcome is polite, but never effusive. In the grip of his hand there is courtesy rather than cordiality. You do not get the glad hand from a Britisher till he is sure that you deserve it. Once you've proved that you have a right to his friendship, you get it in full measure. I often wonder what it is that makes the Brit- isher act like an iceberg. He is not an iceberg, but he likes to make you think he is. You Yanks in khaki are talked to, I guess, in British railway trains by natives who happen to be your fellow- passengers. But American civilians like myself might travel the whole length of the British Isles in a train and never have a Britisher open his head THE REAL BRITISHER 119 to us except to inquire, politely, if we object to his keeping the window open. I can forgive a Brit- isher anything, by the way, except his ungovern- able passion for open windows in a railway-car, even though the temperature outside be Arctic. I like fresh air, all right, but I go outdoors when I want it. Why shouldn't people talk to one another in a train? Life is short and railroad journeys are long. Not all Britishers act like icebergs, but I have come to the conclusion that ninety-nine out of a hundred spend their lives trying to be as Polar as possible. A celebrated English General and Colonial administrator told me the other day that he belongs to a London club in which he hasn't been spoken to for twenty-five years. He talked to a fellow-member once and the man nearly died of apoplexy. A famous Irishman named Daniel O'Connell said that the average Englishman has all the qualities of a poker except its occasional warmth. He was right. The average Englishman tries to keep himself as stiff as a poker. He hates un- bending. He was taught at school that it was not "good form" to appear to be emotional. I have a Yank kid of my own at a typical English boarding- school for boys of from nine to fourteen years of age. I can see in him, from term to term, the exact effect of the British system of suppressing emotions. When parents visit their boys at an English boarding-school, the boys object to being 120 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS kissed or embraced in sight of their comrades. They are taught that such exhibitions of natural effusiveness are "unmanly" and more fit for little girls than for English lads who are growing into young gentlemen. The boys don't object to being made a fuss of when they're alone with their parents, but they don't want any of the sob-stuff in public. Thus from his tenderest years the Britisher is brought up to look upon "reserve"and "poise" as the finest of human qualities. The effect of this system is to make the average Britisher shy. When my kid started in at Eastbourne he was a typical young American holy terror. Three years of Hold-Yourself-In training turned him from an un- tamed cub into a sucking-dove. He is frightfully shy. He faces strangers almost in embarrassment. He never rushes up and at them as if he were really glad to see them. He is polite, all right, but always "reserved." He's been taught to be. It's the English way. If you will remember this, you will be on the right road to understanding the British tempera- ment. The Britisher's apparent coldness, which Americans so often mistake for rudeness, is noth- ing in the world but inborn and inculcated shy- ness. By that I mean that he has not only in- herited "reserve" from his father before him, but in order that he should grow up to be the right kind of a Britisher he has "reserve" taught to him THE REAL BRITISHER when he goes to school. He learns there that he must never wear his heart on his sleeve. It's one of the explanations of the phenomenal cool- headedness with which the Britishers have weath- ered the terrific ordeal of the war. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. How has the system on which Young Britain is raised turned out in practice? Well, I think the answer to that can be found in this book. Britain has made good. Her system of rearing her manhood has made good. I have been talking about the "reserve" and "poise" of British boys. The same thing applies to British girls. They have made good in this war too. The very lads, the very girls, who were brought up on the non-emotional scheme of education the "Public School" youth of both sexes, the boys from Eton, Harrow and Winchester, the girls from Cheltenham, Roedean and Wycombe are the ones who have "carried on" in the field and at home. The British Army to-day is officered to a large extent by "men" who were boys in 1914, attending either the "public schools" (what we call "prep." schools) or the universities. Oxford and Cambridge, the Yale and Harvard of England, have been practically de- serted for four years. Their famous old halls and dormitories are Officers' Training Corps head- quarters now, and have been ever since the war began. Hundreds of fellows who went out from them as undergraduates have meantime won glory 122 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS as competent, gallant officers. Hundreds of them, too, as you will see if you ever visit Oxford or Cambridge and look at the Rolls of Honour on the doors of the college chapels, have laid down their young lives in Liberty's cause. These were the boys who were brought up to be shy and re- served and always to keep their poise who didn't like to be babied by their fathers and mothers when other kids were looking, who were trained not to be effusive when introduced to strangers, who grew up trying to look and act as much like icebergs as their fathers did. Yet in the Great Test they were not found wanting. Nor were the girls who in 1914 were at boarding-school, "flap- pers," as their sort is called, because they wear their hair "flapping" up and down their backs. These girls, many of whom four years ago lived only for chocolate creams and sweethearts and novels, are "W.A.A.C.'s" [Women's Army Auxi- liary Corps], or "V.A.D.'s" [Voluntary Aid De- tachment] to-day, or land girls, or chauffeurs, or hard at work in one of the other countless war occupations in which the supposedly weaker sex is distinguishing itself in all belligerent countries. These young Britishers boys and girls are the backbone of their country in this critical hour. You see, it didn't harm them at all to be brought up differently from us. They have turned out to be real men and women just the same. Americans who are in England for the first time THE REAL BRITISHER find everything old-fashioned the dinky rail- way trains, the low, grey old buildings in the big cities, the snail-like elevators, the people's love for doing things in the way their grandfathers did them and because their grandfathers did them. We don't find enough hustle in the air. The Britishers don't seem to know how to get a move on. Now, the fact is that there is nearly as much hustle to the square inch in these islands as there is in the United States, only the Britisher doesn't make such a fuss about it. His railway trains do look dinky alongside of ours, but you will probably be surprised to know that some of the fastest pas- senger trains in the world (in ordinary time) are the expresses which cover the long-distance stretches in this country, like the London-Plymouth line, a run of something like 225 miles which be- fore the war used to be done without a stop. The Britisher loves old things buildings, customs, habits, traditions, precedents. I heard a man say once that an Englishman would only adopt a new idea on condition that it didn't look new. Being only 142 years old as a nation, we're too young to have acquired veneration for the antique. When we have 1,000 years and more of national history back of us, we'll not want to pull down beautiful old churches that, to the average Yank's way of thinking, obstruct traffic such as a pair of musty piles squatting squarely in the middle of London's busy Strand. We'll love them, as the Britisher 124 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS loves them, because they are old. At present we're In the sky-scraper phase of our existence, in the age when newness, bigness, quickness, seem to us the important things of life. We will outgrow that phase. An Englishman's home is his castle that's one of the most famous of British sayings. To know the real Britisher he has to be seen in his home. The homes of Britain are thrown wide open to the American soldier and sailor, and I hope each and every one of you may have the opportunity of enjoying British private hospitality. You will find it to be the real thing. There will be no chilly deals or "reserve" within the four walls in which you will be asked to make yourself perfectly at home. It will not make any difference whether the home you're invited to is a workman's cottage or a Ducal establishment. The Britisher leaves all "side" outside when he takes you inside. You will discover very promptly that his "poise" is really not poise at all, but pose. He turns out to be a human being probably to your surprise, certainly to your pleasure and complete satisfaction On one or two occasions I have been the guest of a real, live English Duke one of the noblest in the realm. He was as Dukish as I expected him to be till we reached his home, which was a real castle. Then he suddenly transformed himself into a full- blooded man and into one of Nature's gentlemen. He grabbed my suit-case out of my hand, as soon THE REAL BRITISHER 125 as we crossed the threshold, and personally es- corted me to my bedroom. Half an hour later he knocked at the door (it was late at night) and inquired: "Anything you want -before you go to sleep?" I was up against the Britisher as he really is. It used to be the fashion in our country to twist the British Lion's tail. Every politician after votes, or every Fourth of July orator who wanted to make a hit, roasted the British. Those days, I hope, are gone for ever. It will be for you and for me, who have made the acquaintance of the real Britain, to see that they never return. I firmly believe that the keeping of the world's peace, when this war is over, will be mainly in the hands of the English-speaking peoples. We shall not need to enter into a formal "alliance" with the British Empire. The alliance that has been sealed by the shedding of British and American blood on common battlefields is signed in ink that will out- last all the written alliances that could ever be put on paper. And if I may indulge in one parting thought before I finish a work that has been for me a labour of love, I would ask you to banish from your thoughts the notion that America came into the war to "save England." England has saved herself. France has saved herself. We are in the war to save ourselves. We entered it because self-preservation is the first law of Nature. We 126 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS are at war with Germany for precisely the same reasons that Britain, France and Italy are at war with her because her victory would demolish the very foundations on which American life rests. We are at war to make the world safe for Democ- racy for our own Democracy as well as for the Democracy of the other nations alongside whose scarred and veteran legions it is our high privilege to fight. THE END UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FAC A 000102808 .