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THE PRESS AND THE GENERAL STAFF
A HISTORY OF AERONAUTICS
E. C. Vivian and
Lt.-Col. W. LocKwooD Marsh
(Secretary of the Royal Aeronautical Society)
Large Demy 8vo. With 48 Plates. 30/- net
MR. BAL,FOUR : A biography
E. T. Raymond
Demy 8vo. 12/d net
WHEN LABOUR RULES
Rt. Hon. J. H. Thomas, M.P.
(General Secretary, National Union of Railwaymen)
Demy 8vo. 10/- net
FROM THE UNCONSCIOUS TO THE CONSCIOUS
GUSTAVE GELEY
Demy 8vo. 12 Plates. 15/- net
THE PRESS AND THE
i^ GENERAL STAFF ^
NEVILLE LYTTON
LONDON: 48 PALL MALL. S. W.
W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND
Copyright 1920
'"'.OuAlU. .JM,ltorL- p^tyzyiu^
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Cje^ryjej (DLcmet
cylxe houtTuxiisL urftc ivx? n t/ve. lucur
J
>-
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CO
THEY TOLD ME BEFORE GOING TO FRANCE THAT
WHENEVER A SOLDIER WAS IN TROUBLE OR IN
DANGER HE THOUGHT OF HIS MOTHER. I WISH,
DEAREST MOTHER, THAT YOU ONLY KNEW HOW I
THOUGHT OF YOU.
o
£9
; i8228' ;
Note
All the letters quoted in this book are written
to Lady Wentworth and published with her
consent
PREFACE
In this book I do not intend to deal with the whole
question of the Press in relation to the war, but simply
to that portion of the Press of the world that was attached
to the British Expeditionary Force in France. The
importance of the relation between the Press and the
General Staff, and the relation between the Press and the
fighting man cannot be exaggerated, and the experiences
of the war must be clearly set forth so that the mistakes
we have made may be avoided in the future. This war
has differed from all others simply in the matter of scale;
no one foresaw accurately the scale of the effort Ukely
to be made by all belligerents and so no preparations
were quite suitable. The simple fact that the huge battle-
line stretched across the continent, with its flanks reposing
on insuperable geographical boundaries, made the task
of the war-correspondent entirely different from what
it was in South Africa. In those days he trotted about
on a pony with a pocketful of gold, purchasing his food
or rations and making his own cabhng arrangements;
but what use would a pony be to a correspondent trying
to report on two engagements, one taking place at Ypres
and the other at St Quentin, or how could he depend
on his own energies alone for describing the activities
of twenty-two army corps. A complicated organisation
is required and the Press has to be treated as an arm,
like tanks or aeroplanes, suitable for defence and
attack.
vii
Preface
No one had foreseen what a great power for good and
evil the Press might become; there were a certain number
of correspondents ear-marked for active service, but
the idea of accredited correspondents did not appeal
to Lord Kitchener. When the clouds of war began to
gather, editors of newspapers proceeded to scatter their
correspondents on the continent, and it was not till Mr
Hamilton Fyfe sent his sensational despatch that the
War Office woke up and saw the importance of doing
something. General Swinton was appointed as chief
eyewitness and proceeded to France. Now in my
opinion the 'eyewitness' system is absolutely wrong.
The public is very loath to swallow 'peptonised dope,'
and, moreover, reporting for newspapers is an art like
any other, with a technique which has to be acquired by
years of practice. The system was short-lived and failed
through no fault of the excellent officers who did the
work; they had no cabUng faciUtites, and General Swinton
himself has informed me that his despatches were censored
by several Generals.
The Newspapers Proprietors Association then selected
a group of war-correspondents, who were accredited to
G.H.Q., the free-lances were recalled and the first step
at proper organisation was taken; but though the system
was now all right the attitude of the General Staff remained
all wrong for many months to come. The soldiers' ideal
of the newspaper man was that he was a badly bred,
ill-mannered, uneducated fellow who revelled in indiscre-
tions, and it is entirely to the credit of the correspondents
that before the end of the war the soldier came to look
upon them with affection, confidence, and admiration.
No trouble can be too great in choosing a first-rate man
for the job of war-correspondent, but, once he is attached
to the army, the General Staff must treat him as an
viii
Preface
officer, i.e., with complete confidence and trust. It must
not be forgotten that the correspondent deals not only
with facts but with moods; the General Staff can put him
on the right lines and can check his figures, but he must
get the psychology of the fight from the fighting men
themselves. There is nothing more irritating to those
who have come out of a 'show,' probably with immense
losses, than to read an account of their battle which is
out of tune with facts because information has been
gathered from officers too comfortably far behind the
lines. The correspondents reaHsed this very thoroughly,
and spared no pains to get their information first-hand,
and, whenever necessary, they showed a contempt of
danger that does them infinite credit. During the course
of the war there were not a few casualties, and the idea
that a war-correspondent is a worthless 'embusque' is
absurd. If they were not up in the front lines for long
periods at a time it was simply because they had to keep
touch with their cabling centres.
In the early stages of the war the facihties were not
nearly great enough, and the censorship imposed upon
them was much too severe, especially in the matter of
mentioning the names of units. Owing to this lack of
freedom it cannot be said that the accounts of the early
battles — Neuve Chapelle, Festubert, Loos, and the early
phases of the Somme — gave any idea of the true psycho-
logy of the fighting man. At that time I was with my
battalion and never had the smallest suspicion that I
should have anything to do with the Press. The feeHng
we had in the line was that the correspondents saw the
war too much through rose-coloured spectacles. To the
infantry soldier the whole thing was a nightmare; and
though this is a difficult mood to deal with in the Press,
yet I am convinced that it is possible to report on tragic
ix
Preface
events in a truthful and simple manner that will give no
offence to the fighters themselves and that will help
people at home to get the right perspective of the heroism
of their relations at the war. It seems to me that there
are two ways of reporting a battle — one is to detail the
facts in a cold analytical manner — like Mr Percival
Phillips of the Daily Express, or M. Henri Bidou of the
Journal — the other is to bring out the relation of facts
to humanity in the manner of Mr Bean, Mr Nevinson,
Mr Phihp Gibbs, or Mr Masefield. In either case, precise
facts should be the basis of these compositions, and it is
the duty of the General Staff to provide an organisation
that will enable correspondents to get the truth, the
whole truth, with the least possible difficulty. This is
where the General Staff failed till the latter phases of the
Battle of the Somme, when Lord Northchffe and others
brought such pressure to bear on G. H. Q, that gradually
the correspondents were treated with the confidence they
deserved. In 1917 the faciUties went on increasing and
many of them became such friends with commanding
officers that they were welcomed wherever they went.
With the Battle of Messines they came into close touch
with General Plumer's army, and his Chief of Staff,
General Harrington, started an arrangement which
afterwards became general throughout the armies.
Before each offensive he would receive them and give
a detailed staff lecture — laying before them with absolute
trust the enemy order of battle, our own order of battle,
the objective maps, the barrage maps, the arrangements
for supply and transport, the engineering preparations,
and every detail of staff work necessary for a modem
battle. General Harrington used to prepare these lectures
under numbered headings and take infinite trouble to
make an accurate statement of the situation. Considering
X
Preface
the amount of work he carried on his shoulders at that
time, his forethought and kindness to the Press'were
amazing, and we shall ever owe this wise and broad-
minded soldier an eternal debt of gratitude. He was
such a good craftsman that I truly believe that he enjoyed
showing us the perfection of his work. Many is the
time that I had wished that I was a young officer about
to take up the profession of arms instead of a man grown
gray in the pursuit of another calling. After these
lectures the correspondents would go to their rooms,
take an early dinner and a few hours of sleep, and then
proceed by motor to some hill-top just behind the battle-
line. After zero hour some would go on to the battle-
fields, others would go ' corps-era wHng, ' i.e., collecting
information from corps headquarters, and they would all
return to their mess by two o'clock. A conference would
then take place among themselves, and all information
gathered, from whatever source, was pooled, and they
retired to their rooms to write their despatches. This
pooUng was initiated by the British correspondents,
as they thought, quite rightly, that the war was too big
a thing to admit of ' scoops.' From 1917 onwards, besides
the British, there was an Allied Press unit, an American
Press and a Neutral Press — in all some fifty men. During
offensive operations these all were scattered along the
front, and, as they returned to their headquarters, the
Press ofiicers who accompanied them had orders to pass
on to me any crumbs of news which they had gathered.
The despatches had always to be written against time,
and they were generally dog-tired before they sat down
to write, as they got little or no sleep. Similarly, censor-
ship had to be done against time by tired officers with the
knowledge that one slip meant dismissal and disgrace.
Nothing could be mentioned that was at variance with
xi
Preface
the official communique, and the communique always
came out after the despatches had been sent. This
'censorship while you wait' is not easy, and I should
never have succeeded without the assistance of such
capable officers as Captain Cadge, Captain R. de Trafford
and Captain Montague.
In the latter stages of the war many great difficulties
had been overcome and our system was more elastic
and supple. The friendship that had sprung up between
all units and the Press contributed greatly to the collecting
of accurate information quickly. The chiefs of staff of
all armies gave us conferences, and always drew our
attention to units that had fought particularly well.
One of our great difficulties in the big advance was to
get suitable headquarters. We had to be behind the
armies so as not to interfere with billeting arrange-
ments of fighting troops; we had to be near cabling centres
such as St Omer, Montreuil, or Abbeville, and yet our
area of information was as a rule in front of Infantry
Brigade H.Q's. The situation was stiU further com-
plicated by the fact that in the Somme area (from Amiens
to Cambrai) there were eighty kilometres of destroyed
country; the distances that our Vauxhall cars accom-
plished in those days were incredible, and the energy
of the correspondents is beyond all praise. Any effort,
however, to record the fighting of our armies in the
autumn of 1918 was worth while, for such an achievement
is never likely to occur again in the history of Great
Britain. Our foreign correspondents also worked with
similar zeal; their loyalty to us in the bad days of March,
igi8, was only equalled by their enthusiasm on and after
August 8th, 1 9 18. At the moment of the armistice they
were enthusiastic and said of the British, 'Vous etes les
grandes vainqueurs de la guerre.'
xii
Preface
I do not think it is too much to say that we had at the
end of the war the best organisation of news service
that existed in any army in the world. I wish I could
say the same of the photographic and cinematographic
sections and of the historical record side. In both these
matters the French were streets ahead of us; this was
partly due to patriotism, partly to organisation. Their
patriotism made them wilUng to spend the necessary
money, and the French War Office instituted a 'section
photographique et cinematographique de I'arm^e' whose
chiefs were soldiers under miUtary discipUne. The work
of Lieut. Croze on the front was magnificent; some
forty of his operators were divided up and worked with
each army; thus from the early days of the war they
began to collect methodically material for an illustrated
record of the war. Lieut. Croze was a man of education
and imagination, and was able to guide his operators in
choosing the subjects that would be most interesting to
posterity. Our War Office, on the other hand, only
provided two photographers and two cinema operators
for something like twenty army corps.
In the winter of 1917-18 the Ministry of Information
was created, thus making confusion worse confounded,
causing a dual control, part civil and part military. In
war time the soldier is top dog; why in heaven's name
doesn't he use his power to full advantage? In France,
Lord Beaverbrook would have been mobilised and the
services of his brain would have been placed at the
disposal of his country in return for a colonel's pay.
The new Ministry did not provide the army with any
more photographers, but it held exhibitions of war photo-
graphs which were enlarged to the size of life and smeared
with incredible colours. The man who enlarged and
coloured the photographs got a knighthood; the
xiii
Preface
photographers who daily risked their Hves for three
years got the O.B.E. The energy and contempt of
danger of the photographers on the front were altogether
admirable.
In the matter of compiling material for historical and
artistic records the French were also a long way ahead
of us. With each of their armies they had an 'oihcier
informateur,' whose duty it was, after a battle, to collect
all the dramatic episodes on each divisional front and to
put them into hterary shape. These officers were men
of intellectual endowment who had had plenty of experience
of front-Hne work. The result of their labours was sent
all over the world; they did not interfere with war-
correspondents' work, but rather helped it, inasmuch as
they passed on any good stories to those writing for
daily papers, taking time to compose their own work
which took the form of small historical pamphlets. At
my instigation this system was also adopted in our army,
but it had not begun to take effect by the time the armistice
arrived. The work of these French ' officiers informateurs '
was most successful during the Battle of Verdun, which
was admittedly the best advertised show of the whole war.
Up till the last year we had but an incomplete organisa-
tion to deal with the emotional and historical side;
consequently there are many episodes of human tragedy
and human valour that will never be recorded. Our
histories will be compiled from the official war diaries,
which are usually as dull as ditch water; you might as
well expect a historian to make a great work from such
documents as a painter to produce a masterpiece from
photographs. This neglect on the part of our general
staff is the more regrettable as a great writer (Mr John
Masefield) had proved his genius for recording battles
in the Gallipoli campaign,
xiv
Preface
The French again were wiser than us in their use of
artists; their painters were all mobilised according to
their class without distinction or favour. When they
had served about a year in the trenches, they were pulled
out of the line and given a job in the Camouflage branch
which left them enough leisure to do sketches of battle-
fields. We, on the other hand, adopted the ridiculous
procedure of making our most popular artists Majors,
even though they were of military age and should have
been serving as combatant soldiers. These comparatively
young men were called upon to put on canvas the
majesty and horror of war without having had any war
experience. No wonder that the only good works that
have been produced have been done by such painters
as Mr Eric Kennington, who have seen some real service
before becoming official artists. Organised artistic effort
in this country has ever been, to put it mildly, a scream;
so long as our Royal Academy was an artistic club
composed of Reynolds and his friends, it was good :
ever since Reynolds's death it has become more and
more the Church and State concern that we now know
it to be, unillumined by the divine flame of art.
The harmony that existed finally between the war-
correspondents and all units was due to the first-rate
men that were sent out by the Newspapers Proprietors
Association. They had a battle to win hke everybody
else, and they won it. All honour to them.
XV
CONTENTS
CHAP. VAOB
I. 'malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre' I
II. THE LUMINOUS WATCH 7
III. THE FRONT 20
IV. 'THE ALLIED PRESS* 57
V. THE CAMPAIGN OF I917 85
VI. REORGANISATION I35
VII. LUDENDORFf's OFFENSIVE I46
VIII. 'the black day for the GERMAN ARMY' 178
INDEX 223
P.G.S. B XVII
CHAPTER I
'malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre.'
My publisher assures me that war books are a dnig in
the market, and that the whole world is fed up with the
subject; the truth is that people will get bored with
anything if it goes on long enough — even with battle,
murder, and sudden death. At the beginning of the war
were we not all thrilled to the marrow when we heard
of some of the heroic deaths of our dearest friends?
Long before we had reached the armistice, we used to
say, ' Poor old Tom was done in yesterday. What
a good fellow he was. I wonder if his wife will marry
again. He was her third husband since the war,' and
so one passed on wearily to the business of the day,
while bald heads sitting before the plate-glass windows
of the clubs yawned as they ran their eyes down the
enormous casualty lists. Yet, notwithstanding the
universal boredom, this must inevitably be one of the
great events of all history. Before the war, and after
the war, will represent two different periods as distinctly
as before Christ and after Christ : so I mean to have
my say even though it may attract Uttle attention.
Before I get to my dealings with the Press, I intend
to give some account of my early experiences, otherwise
what I say later on would carry little or no consideration.
Few will have forgotten the horror of the first news in
August 19 14; the sense of tragedy was made more
tragic by the unusually brilliant weather, day after day
I
The Press and the General Staf
of clear skies with baking sun. My home never looked
more beautiful, yet there was no pleasure in anything
once I knew that France was overrun by the hated
German; for I had been brought up in France, and I
have always loved it as dearly as my own country. Then
I got news that a great friend of mine, a cavalry officer,
had been killed; he had been shot in the leg and a brother
officer had picked him up and put him across the saddle
and galloped off with him, but in this position he was
again hit in the head. He took four days to die, and he
was in a house where there were no anaesthetics; the
news sickened me and Ufe became an absolute burden,
and yet I had never had any military service, so it was
frightfully difficult to know what to do; I knew France
so well that I thought I might be used as interpreter,
and I offered my services to the War Office, but naturally
enough nothing ever came of it. What finally determined
me to become a soldier of some sort was the arrival of
the Somersetshire Yeomanry, who camped in our park;
they arrived about midday and at tea-time the Colonel
came over with one of his officers. This officer was an
acquaintance of mine, and I had always despised him
because he was very dressy and was in the habit of
scenting himself, and he used to cut me out in the affec-
tions of young ladies to whom I was attached; and yet
there he was bronzed and virile, after a three days'
march from Somersetshire, thirsting for German blood.
This officer afterwards had a most gallant career in the
war; he had a bad wound, and, when he was recovered,
he returned again and was killed. How often did this
war prove that men whom I had despised were possessed
of qualities that I would have given my soul to possess.
One of the things that astonished me most was to find out
the types of men who were most brave; the drunkards,
2
* Malbrouck s'en va-t-en Guerre '
the rakes, the dandies were a long way first — the high-
minded rehgious people of strong principles were often
good diers but not often good fighters — the orderly,
well-disciplined, obedient types were more often than not
quite useless in the face of the enemy. I was once dis-
cussing the psychology of bravery with ' Sem,' the French
caricaturist, and I was telUng him how extremely gallant
were the dandies and the fops, and he made this wise
answer. 'Apres tout — le courage — c'est une elegance.'
I could not stand it a moment longer, and I determined
to go. Determination breeds opportunity, and the next
day I noticed that Colonel Claude Lowther had obtained
leave from Lord Kitchener to raise a battalion of Sussex
men, and I determined to go to him and put myself at his
disposition. He received me most amiably, and I told
him that I was willing to be a private in his battaUon;
he asked me if I had any influence in the county and
whether I thought I could raise him some men. I said
that I had a certain amount, and that I would do my
best, so he gave me a big parcel of attestation papers
and sent me off. The next day I hired a car and started
on a tour of my part of the county; some days I got a
doctor to come with me and, being a J. P. myself, we
examined and swore in the men then and there as we went
from house to house. I can't say that I was a very
welcome visitor at most of these cottages, but the fact
that I was going myself carried a certain amount of
conviction. The most irritating people were those who
said, 'I be'nt going till they Germans come here; then
I dare say I shall be as good as some of they.' After about
a fortnight's work I had got together the best part of a
company, which was not so bad. In my spare time I
fetched a drill sergeant over from Horsham to drill me,
and I practised my word of command on my family; I
3
The Press and the General Staff
found it difficult at that stage of my military career to
get a squad composed of my two daughters and a gover-
ness to form fours satisfactorily, also, whenever I said
'right,' my daughters turned to the left, and this confused
my brain to such an extent that, when I eventually drilled
a company and they carried out my orders correctly,
I was utterly nonplussed and had brain stoppage so
that no further words of command would come into my
head.
Having succeeded so far I wrote to Colonel Lowther
and asked him what my next step should be. He rephed
that our training camp was to be at Cooden Beach just
above the golf club, and that I was to report to Colonel
Howard, who was camp commandant, on a certain day,
and that I was to warn my men that they should report
at the same place a week later. Accordingly I got
together a certain amount of camp kit and started off
on the day named. I thought it wise to take an early
train so as to have many hours of dayhght in my new
quarters; my family accompanied me to the station, and
there was a most tearful parting. It seemed to me that
I was really off on active service; I confidently beUeved
that I should be in France within six weeks. After the
first few days of the war, which brought nothing but
misery at the loss of friends and a guilty conscience at
my own inaction, I now felt that I was doing something,
no matter how badly, and this brought a great sense of
calm and rest, also the spirit of adventure was in the air,
and I felt myself an adventurer and deUghted in it. When
I got to camp I found Colonel Howard in a very troubled
state of^mind, and he seemed more troubled at my arrival.
'Here I am,' I said. 'Well, go back,' he said. 'You are
not wanted for another week.' The camp was not ready,
the tents had not arrived, and I saw clearly that I could
4
^ Malbrouck s'en va-t-en Guerre^
be of no use whatever. I looked at my watch; there was
a train back in ten minutes; I dashed off and just managed
to get into the last carriage as the train was moving out.
When I reached home again I found the whole family
out; the strain of saying farewell had been too much.
and they had all gone to spend the day in the forest.
I was dead tired, and so I threw myself on the sofa and
fell fast asleep. I must have slept many hours, for, when
I woke, the lamps were lit and my family were standing
over me with faces Uvid with horror. I think they
thought that I had already got killed and that this was
my ghost, or that it was a vision prophetic of disaster to
come. I explained the situation, and I must confess it
was a terrible anti-climax. When I went off by the same
train a week later no one accompanied me to the station,
and there was not a tear shed by a single member of the
household.
Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre
Mironton ton tin mirontaine
Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre
Qui sait quand reviendra.
Why is it that there is always something comic about
actions that purport to be heroic? On this journey
parties of my recruits joined the train at various stations
between Three-Bridges and Eastbourne, and, when we
formed up outside Cooden Beach and numbered off,
there were some hundred and fifty of the finest specimens
in Sussex, including eighty of the West Sussex PoUce.
I was thirty-six years of age at the outbreak of this war,
and since the age of twenty I had hved a life of almost
complete seclusion. I had been a student in Paris from
seventeen to twenty, and that tired me of towns, so I
5
The Press and the General Stag
went to live in the country in England. I was not obliged
to make money for my living, and I determined to study
alone and remain aloof from all the myriad art movements
that have troubled this period. A war did not enter into
my calculations; certainly I never expected to find myself
at the head of one hundred and fifty men marching into
camp. How lucky it is that one cannot foretell the
future, and how much easier it is to face unforeseen
situations if one has made no special preparations for
them. It is easier to bear cold water if you have first
had a warm bath, and from this fact one may conclude
that violent contrasts are wholesome and stimulating,
and prevent boredom and apathy. To get the most out
of life it would be a good thing to be alternately very rich
and very poor, very powerful and very humble; first a
Prime Minister then a dock-hand, next an Archbishop
then again a beggar. Thus one really would have some
knowledge of human nature.
CHAPTER II
THE LUMINOUS WATCH
During the first few days of camp life my ' robber band '
was made up to full strength of a modern company, and
an officer who had seen service in South Africa was put
in command. After several weeks of intensive training,
I was given a captain's commission. We still thought
we should be out by the New Year, and we all worked
with feverish energy. Colonel Lowther was convinced
that a greater number of men could be raised from the
county of Sussex outside the ordinary recruiting methods,
and he again obtained leave from Lord Kitchener to raise
three more battalions and form a brigade. Thus our
training was interrupted by another recruiting campaign.
The battalion, already well-drilled, was marched ' musique
en tete' to the neighbouring towns of Eastbourne, St
Leonards, and Hastings and formed up in the market-
place, while the officers mounted on tubs and addressed
the multitude. Furthermore, the officers and N.C.O.'s
went back to their native towns and villages, and
described their fife in camp in all its details. This certainly
was the most successful method of all, for what deters
the average man from becoming a soldier is the sense
of the unknown. Colonel Lowther also made a wise
arrangement whereby all the men from the same district
were kept together in platoons. By these means two more
battaUons were raised without much difficulty, and
Lowther began to hope that he would be given the
7
The Press and the General StaJ
command of the brigade which had been raised at his
initiative. He certainly had ideas of organisation that
ran on big lines, but all small details worried and irritated
him; after all, what else is a soldier's life but one endless
round of small details where great accuracy is required?
Possibly if Lowther, at this stage, had gone out to France
and had been attached to a brigade staff in the trenches
for some weeks, he would have gained the confidence
of the higher command sufficiently to get this appoint-
ment. However, his health was not good, and possibly
this was the reason which kept him at home. His second
in command at that time was Major Grisewood; he had
been for some years a regular officer in a cavahy regiment,
but had retired before the war. In my opinion he was
one of the few English officers that I had ever met who had
a positive genius for soldiering. He had considerable
mathematical ability and some experience of business
(which was lacking in most of us), and, above all things,
imagination. Had he been in the French army he might
have risen to the very highest rank; he might even
have been a second Foch. Unfortunately, he had two
defects — ^he was a devout CathoUc, and he had a tendency
to favour people of his own persuasion, also he had a
complete intolerance of fools in high places. This led
him to quarrel as often as not with his immediate seniors,
and this was eventually his undoing; moreover, he was
half Italian, and his delightful Latin temperament was
not understood by most EngHsh regular officers. During
the continued absence of the Colonel, who was, at this
time, ill for long periods together, Grisewood undertook
the training of the battahon and he did it exceedingly
well. He paid the most scrupulous attention to those
little buff pamphlets which were issued from time to
time by the General Staff in France and which formed
8
The Luminous Watch
an admirable basis for sound training. He also got some
sort of order into our interior economy which was badly
in need of attention. Most amateur soldiers think that
soldiering in war time means fighting or field operations
preparatory to fighting; they fail to see that modern
armies are huge business concerns, and that the ' Q ' side
is of vast importance. From time to time the district
commander and other officers, Inspector-Generals of
infantry came down to review the battalion, and I think
I am right in saying that their reports were invariably
favourable. After one of these inspections, the Inspecting-
General asked Colonel Lowther whether he was satisfied
with the morals of his men; Lowther at that time was
thoroughly annoyed at the slowness of our equipment
and the continued absence of rifles, etc., and so he replied
somewhat angrily, ' They have more morals than maxims,
sir.'
Many wounded officers were now returning from France,
and among them I had several friends whom I persuaded
to come down to lecture to the men. It became obvious
to us that there was no fun at all in this particular war,
and without exception all these soldiers fresh from the
fight had the expression of tragedy on their faces. What
I wanted to acquire above all things was some sense of
scale — that is, how much space a division occupied,
both in width and depth; what was the relation of the
field artillery to the infantry, and of the howitzers to
the field-guns; and where the headquarters of companies,
battalions, and brigades were situated. I never succeeded
at getting at this, nor did I ever have the smallest idea
of scale till I got over myself.
This first winter was not all beer and skittles; the
weather broke with a vengeance and it rained continuously
for months on end. The men got depressed as there were
9
The Press and the General Stajff
no signs of our being sent to France; they had been
served out with very shabby blue uniforms and a few
obsolete rifles; we still continued field practices, even
in the bad weather, and the blue uniforms became filthy
in spite of every care and incessant cleaning; then the
camp became a mud pie, and worst of all we had an
epidemic of meningitis. A few men died and the company,
of which I was by then in command, had to be spht up
and all proper training became impossible; however,
the epidemic was very skilfully dealt with by the battalion
doctor, and the danger passed with the first days of the
New Year.
About this time Colonel Lowther was warned that an
Inspector-General would shortly come down, and that he
would wish to see the battalion make an attack as part
of a tactical scheme. In that neighbourhood was a farm
called Court Lodge Farm; Lowther was attracted to
this farm by the vast beauty of its architecture, and he
evidently thought it would be a pleasant spot to stand
with the Inspecting-General while his lambs (the battalion
had been nick-named 'Lowther's Lambs') gambolled
around him. For this great day we rehearsed and rehearsed
and rehearsed. The role allotted to my company was a
flanking movement; I was to approach the farm from the
west, moving up from behind some hills, remaining on
dead ground till the final moment, when my front platoons
were to appear, in open order, giving covering fire for
another company which was to maJce the assault from
the north. We eventually got the synchronisation of
movements to perfection, and each company made
an enlargement of a smaU scale map. Then the great
day came and the battaUon was at its assembly point by
10 o'clock; the officer's call was sounded and the Colonel
explained the scheme to us as if for the first time. I
10
The "Luminous Watch
must say he acted with great skill and so did all the other
officers, who knitted their brows with Napoleonic con-
centration as they poured over the map; one captain
went almost too far in his naif questions, and almost
took in the Colonel, who had a moment of great nervous-
ness lest the whole thing should go wrong. However,
there was no hitch; the first skirmishers of my company
appeared on the sky-line at exactly the right moment —
an unforeseen menace which was duly and appropriately
pointed out to the General. I gradually reinforced my
firing line (how simple it is to manoeuvre when there are
no bullets and no shells) and then the great moment for
the assaulting company to charge arrived; at this point
I seized a bicycle from my orderly in a desperate effort
to be in at the death; the bicycle had no brake and the
hill was steep, so I steered for a dung heap near an out-
lying shed and arrived just in time for the final charge.
In the pow-wow that followed the fight the General
singled me out for special praise, the truth being that
when my men first appeared the General inquired whose
company it was and the Colonel told him that it was mine;
when the final assault was being made the General again
asked which company it was, and the Colonel, having
forgotten whether it was ' A ' or ' B ' company looked for
an officer and saw me, somewhat hectic from the bicycle
episode, so he again answered that the company was
mine. Had this been the case my men would have had
to travel as fast as I did on a bicycle going down a steep
hill without a brake, and naturally this impressed the
General considerably. We all hoped that this successful
manoeuvre would have secured for Lowther the command
of the Brigade, but General Woollcombe, the commander
of the district, decided otherwise, and so Lowther losing
interest in this venture which had been begun with so
II
The Press and the General Stajff
much enthusiasm, gradually faded out of sight and
severed his connection with the battaUon.
The next event of importance, naturally enough, was
the arrival of a real Brigadier; I say a real Brigadier for
he was a regular soldier. Even in those days the battle
between the professional and the amateur soldier had
begun; each had the heartiest contempt for the other,
and to this day I cannot make out which side is most
justified in their opinion. My company was warned to
stand by for inspection on a certain day, and I made a
large outlay in cleaning materials, but nothing really had
much effect on those blue uniforms stained with Sussex
clay; still we did our best to turn out smart. The
Brigadier came round with Grisewood and made a
most thorough inspection of the company; then he made
me stand the men easy and called me apart. I had hoped
he was going to address them somewhat on these lines —
'You have come forward in the first hours of your country's
distress, and this is an action for which you will be proud
to the day of your death. The real test of your sacrifice
has not yet come, but it is the first step that counts,
and from this I know that you will perform all that is
asked of you.' Nothing of the sort ! ' I think that your
pack straps should be right over left, not left over right.
See to it another time, will you.' Surely the moral side
of soldiering does count even with a phlegmatic race;
it is not human so to treat people who have volunteered
in the first days of the war — many of them men of money
and position. The only regular British ofhcer that I ever
met who succeeded in inspiring us was Colonel Campbell,
the bayonet-fighting man; after his first lecture we were
all of us ready to assault anything from Hindenburg
to our own Brigadier; such was our spirit of the offensive.
As the winter yielded and the spring came on, and yet
12
The Luminous Watch
there was no news of our going abroad, I obtained leave
to take my company for a four-day march; officers and
men ahke, we all carried full kit with ammunition and
riile, and we slept in barns and farm sheds at night. At
this time my junior captain was a man of fifty-eight
years of age, Capt. Otho Paget; previous to the war he
had a great reputation in Leicestershire as a fearless
rider, and he stuck this march, and indeed all the other
hardships he was called upon to bear throughout the
campaign, with the utmost courage and endurance.
We averaged twenty miles a day, starting out along the
coast through Hastings and St Leonards to Rye and
Winchelsea, and then turned northwards into Kent and
came home by Hurstmonceux. At one of the villages
on the borders of Kent and Sussex a romantic episode
occurred. In the early days of the previous autumn I
had been recruiting in this same village with a brother
officer, and we had just been to call upon the vicar, who
had directed us to the house of a well-known Justice of
the Peace in the neighbourhood; our car was climbing
a steep hill outside the village when we passed a most
graceful young lady with two little boys. She was Uke
the very best Caldecott damsel, the embodiment of
English freshness and charm. The hill was so steep that
it would have been inhuman not to give her a lift; while
my friend interviewed the J. P., she told me that she
was the governess to the vicar's children and that she
had a sister who was a teacher at a school in Bexhill.
We set her down again at the vicar's door and I thought
no more about her, till we passed through the same
village during this march some six months later. Our
billet was just outside the village, and, after I had seen
that the men had got their rations, I could not resist
having a wash and a shave, and calling upon the dear
13
The Press and the General Stajf
vicar. He received me somewhat coldly, somewhat
suspiciously I thought. 'Sir,' I said, 'do you remember
me coming to see you in the early days of the war ? The
kind help you then gave me enabled me to obtain recruits,
who are now trained and fit to fight ; at this very moment
they are encamped on the outskirts of this village, but
that is not the matter of my visit. Is Miss M still
with you as governess ? for I have a letter from her sister,
who lives at Bexhill, and this letter she asked me to deUver
in person.' (God forgive me for a Uar !) The vicar
assured me that Miss M was still in his service, but
that she was out for the moment — would I wait — did I
care for rock gardens. I said 'Yes, passionately,' (more
forgiveness.) I admired everything, even his coloured
leaves, and then he had to leave me as there was a mothers'
meeting at the other end of the garden. I took a chair
among the perambulators and studied a blackboard with
a table of diet, containing food values of articles suitable
and cheap for war time. Two oranges = one banana, two
bananas = one ounce of walnuts, etc. Really I did feel a
bit ashamed. The time passed very slowly. At last I
spotted my friend coming down the carriage ride, and
I tore towards her with a letter in my hand. ' From your
sister,' I cried, 'it is urgent; I have to dehver it in person
and will take back an answer.' Bless her ! She tumbled
to it. A few minutes later we were in the rock garden
and I was telling her the correct Latin names for at least
fifty per cent of the plants. She told me that she found
more favour with Mr Vicar than with Mrs Vicar (I was
not surprised) — that she had recently had a birthday
and that her brother (sic) had given her a lovely little
wrist watch, and she held out her pretty hand for me to
admire. This I did enthusiastically, but she said, 'You
can't really appreciate it by daylight.' 'All right,' I
14
The Luminous Watch
said, 'the sun sets at 7.30. Meet me at the stile in the
field next to the Goat and Compasses' at 8.30. I leave
you to square the vicar.' I returned to the company to
hold a foot inspection, and at 8.30 I was at the trysting
place and so was the lady. Marvellous to relate I dis-
covered that the watch was luminous. Quite recently
I received an invitation to the wedding of Miss M
to a gallant sailor. She is now busily engaged in living
happily ever after.
On return to camp I found rumours of a move, but this
did not take place at once. We had another field day;
we had to make a very early start, march to Ashburnham
Park and consolidate a position in anticipation of an
attack; our approach to the Park was to be hindered by
the enemy (force unknown), and my company was to be
the advance guard company. Of course, we all knew
that the unknown force was a company of Kent Cyclists
employed on Coast Defence. I knew the country like
the palm of my hand; also I knew that Ashburnham
Park had but one entrance. Profiting by this knowledge
I managed to manoeuvre so that the entire force of the
enemy was captured. This annoyed the Brigadier not
a little, for the day was over before it had begun, and I
got properly told off. As the nights were now warm our
training was all done at night, and I am sure we all got
great benefit from it, as darkness is an enemy in itself,
which increases very greatly the alertness of the troops.
Previous to these practices we had a lecture from our
gallant Brigadier, and the opening phrase has stuck in
my head. 'The subject for this lecture is "night opera-
tions." Night operations are movements by troops
carried out in the dark.' Some Bromide. The khaki
uniforms now arrived, and this was a source of infinite
pleasure to the men. Their old blue uniforms had been
p G.s. c 15
The Press and the General Stajff
worn out ten times over and were in rags; for months
past on the march the men used to sing to the tune of
' For he's a jolly good fellow,' 'We want that suit of khaki
(three times) and so say all of us/ and the officers used to
answer (strophe and antistrophe) ' You'll all of you have
to go naked (three times) and so say all of us.' Then
came orders to move. Grisewood addressed the battalion
and told us that the last lap of our training had begun,
and that we must pull our socks up. Poor man ! he Httle
knew how often he was obliged to say that before we
actually left England. We went b}- train to Detling, near
Maidstone, in Kent, and encamped on some low-lying
ground where the climate was most depressing, especially
after the glorious air of Cooden Beach. Every day we
went up to the Downs and dug trenches in that mercilessly
flinty soil. I used to strip to the waist and dig with the
men; it rained nearly every day, but rain on one's bare
back while taking strong exercise is a luxury that is
more exquisite than all the luxuries of all the hotel
Ritz's in the world. It was mortal dull, but it gave
us the most magnificent muscles. From time to
time our Brigadier did Grisewood and me the honour
to invite us to dinner : on these occasions we found
it a great drawback not to be able to have a fund of
anecdotes of previous campaigns, for the conversation
of real soldiers seemed to consist entirely of reminis-
cences. Our host, whose strong point was certainly not
tact, seemed to wish to impress upon us that his past life
had been chock-full of vital experiences, each one of which
went to make up that subtle quahty, the power to com-
mand. Grisewood and I were at lirst rather bowled out
by this stream of reminiscences, but it soon occurred to
us that, if our uneventful but blameless past was free
from incident of military importance, we had at least
i6
The Luminous Watch
rich powers of invention and could easily pretend that
we had taken part in many small frontier campaigns.
He would say to me, 'Do 3^ou remember, Lytton, that
little affair down in Rangoon, when we climbed on to the
roof ? ' and I could answer, ' Yes, colonel, and do you
remember when I turned the hose-pipe on to the mutineers
that night that the battalion Sergeant-Major's wife had
her first baby ? ' This left the Brigadier and his Brigade-
Major pink with annoyance, and on our way back to our
tents we would say, ' We got old Ponto's (that was our
nickname for him) goat to-night all right.'
Our next move was to Aldershot; the start from
Detling was made at 3 a.m. (Everything in war always
starts at 3 a.m.) Grisewood, who was by then Colonel,
exhorted us to be extra smart so as to impress the
thoroughly military neighbourhood with our soldier-like
appearance, but unfortunately it was raining bucketfuls.
When we got into the train we were all wet to the bone;
dear old Paget pulled off his top-boots, and, his feet
swelling, he could never get them properly on again;
also wishing to protect his chest he stuffed a copy of
The Times inside his waistcoat ; this printed paper
rapidly became a most horrible pulp and he forgot to
remove it, and thus strangely camoufle'ed he marched
past the governor's house in rear of the company.
We found ourselves made up into a division with two
other brigades who had very little training, and so we
had to begin platoon drill all over again. Luckily there
were the ranges, and we fired our musketry course, which
was great fun; our battalion came out top of the whole
division. Grisewood was very anxious that I should be
his second in command and, indeed, I worshipped him
and should have liked it, but the divisional commander
decided against it. I was chosen to form a sniping school,
17
The Press and the General Stajff
possibly as a result of the excellent shooting of my
company on the ranges, and I was given twenty-five men
from each battalion in the brigade. We had a little camp
all to ourselves, and a range. The Aldershot command
asked me to devise a scheme of training, finishing up
with a competition for which they would offer a cup to
the winning team. I had heard from my friends in France
that all the sniping was done at daybreak or at sunset,
so I made my snipers dig lairs by night as silently as
possible, with covering parties ahead (these lairs were
made on the range between the firing points). Another
party of snipers were posted in the butt pit, as though
in a trench; these sent out patrols in order to locate the
position of the enemy working parties, and took bearings
from definite points in the butt pit. In the morning,
before daybreak, the lairs were manned and the butt party
would light fires as though for cooking breakfast, and
exhibit figure targets for short exposures in the half -fight;
the snipers had orders not to fire unless they were
pretty well sure to hit. By daylight there was a crawling
competition; the men had to crawl from the camp to
the 300 yards firing point, a distance of almost 300 yards;
they were to make use, as much as possible, of dead
ground, and for the bulk of the distance they were pro-
tected by a Uttle hillock when they could stand upright
and walk in a normal way, nevertheless the average time
for this distance was three hours. While this crawhng
went on there was also a party in the butt pit observing
by means of periscopes, and as soon as they spotted a
crawler they would ring one up on the telephone at the
firing point and give a description of the spot where they
had seen the crawler. It was astonishing what enthusiasm
the men put into this training even though it was in the
middle of the winter and the weather was extremely
18
The Luminous Watch
severe; some of them became remarkably good marksmen,
and it is interesting to record that the moment they got
to France they began killing Germans. At the end of
the competition we marched back to Witley, where the
rest of the di\ision was encamped. The final kit inspec-
tions were already taking place, and it was obvious that
we would soon be on the move. A great controversy was
raging over a defence scheme of a little hill on Witley
Common; the Brigadier, who was just beginning to
assimilate the tactics of 1914, was positive that all trenches
should be sited on the reverse slope. It was assumed
that a state of trench warfare already existed, and all the
senior officers were called upon to produce a detailed
defence scheme with map enlargements. I remember
suggesting that the hill should be tunnelled and that the
front line should be on the forward slope, and the
support and reserve lines on the reverse slope. This was
considered rather impudently precocious, and yet ninety
per cent of the hills on the western front were defended
in this manner.
19
CHAPTER III
THE FRONT
For the last few weeks all the officers had been sending
home packages of their superfluous kit; the last thing I
sent home was my sword. This immediately brought
forth a batch of letters from the family; 'Now we know
it means business. Up to this we have never been taken
in by the rumours of your being sent abroad, but since
your sword has been sent home to be stored in lavender,
we know that you are indeed going to fight.'
There was the usual 3 a.m. start in pouring rain and
this time Captain Paget surpassed himself; not only
did he carry the full equipment, which in all conscience
is heavy enough, but in addition he had a frying-pan,
several bird-cages, sponge racks, and other impedimenta,
so that by the time he arrived at the station he was in a
fainting condition. However, he was completely consoled
as soon as he got a fire going in the carriage and fried some
bacon, very much to the annoyance of his brother
officers.
We reached Southampton by daybreak and hung about
there all day; at nightfall we embarked on a horrible
little transport called the Viper. The weather was
stormy, the men were packed like sardines and were
frightfully sick all over each other. We reached Havre
at sunrise and formed up on the quay; a very much
creased and shop-soiled looking lot we were, and the
20
The Front
march discipline from the harbour to the concentration
camp was not all that was perfect. The weather was
bitter cold and the camp was covered with snow; tents
were our only shelter and we were already chilled to the
marrow by the night journey. We remained there that
day and part of the night; never did I welcome the 3 a.m.
start more readily, for I was literally frozen. Unfor-
tunately, the windows of our carriage were all broken, and
though we sat huddled together with our arms round each
other's waist we could not raise a spark of animal heat. We
travelled via Abbeville and St Pol and eventually reached
a little village called Morbecque, some few kilometres
from Hazebrouck. My company was billeted in a
delightful little farm; the men had clean straw to sleep on
and, for the few days we stayed there, I think they were
perfectly happy; they were amazed at the industry of
the Flemish peasants; I think they imagined that every
Frenchman they met would have a flat-brimmed hat,
a pointed beard and an incessant shrug of the shoulders,
instead of which they found a huge rugged race with the
women as fierce and as strong as the men. The tenant
farmer of our farm was a glorious specimen of his race,
tall, handsome and sad; every night he would come in
after dinner and have long conversations about Time,
Death, and Judgment. He liked my men, who were
nearly all from the country, and they helped him with
his work, and this made him very hospitable and good
tempered to us. He had been a soldier in his young days,
and he told me that he considered that it took five years
to make a soldier. I said, * Why so long? ' and he repUed,
'It takes all that time to eradicate the fear of death.'
'Yes,' I thought, 'and possibly a little longer.' Certainly
one of the most difficult things to acquire, during the
transition from civil to mihtary, is what the Japanese
21
The Press and the General Stajf
call the doctrine of impermanency, and once acquired it
is equally difficult to shed.
Rumours reached us that men, after being in the line
a certain time, acquired an incredible fierceness, and I
heard this story of an incident that occurred during a minor
offensive when our guns were bombarding the German
lines. A German soldier went mad with shell shock and
stood up on the parapet with his arms raised shouting,
'Gott mit uns.' 'Got mittens 'ave yer,' cried one of our
Tommies, 'well, 'ere's socks,' and he shot him.
We rested here for a few days and then marched to
Estaires; once again Captain Paget reUeved the monotony
of the route. We were infonned that Divisional corps
and Army Commanders would be standing at a certain
comer to sample the new division. We were warned to
look to our march discipline, but not to pay compliments.
Paget, among his many antipathies to conventional attire,
could not bear to wear boots; his favourite foot-gear was
sand-shoes, and, thinking himself at last in the battle
zone, he casi all effort to appear hke a soldier, and wore
his favourite shoes. The route from Morbecque to Estaires
is entirely paved with cobble stones and, long before we
reached the comer where the distinguished Generals
were standing, Paget 's shoes were a memory, and his
heels were showing bright pink on the frosty stones.
We stayed at Estaires but a few hours, 'A' and 'B'
companies moving forward after a short rest. Estaires
was then (March 1916) fairly well knocked about by
shell fire, and at night the flashes of the guns were all
round and about. As we listened to the dull roar that
first night we murmured to each other 'Good old "A"
Coy., they are catching it.' On the following evening
'C (which was mine) and 'D' companies moved on to
Fleurbaix, a Uttle village just south of Armentieres.
22
m.\B2Z \
The Front
Here at last was true Bairnsfather scenery with all the
buildings shot to blazes; as we reached the village our
machine-guns were keeping up a frightful rattle with
indirect fire on the entrances to German communication
trenches, and the ' Verey ' lights shed a ghastly flickering
glare on the ruined buildings. My company was attached
to a company of Yorks and Lanes, and at mess that night
the officers told us all about the peculiarities of the
sector. Apparently for the last week or so brother Fritz
had been perfectly quiet; they were expecting us to
reheve them shortly, as they were likely to be moving
down south for the coming concentration on the Somme.
That night one of our men got hit by a stray bullet
as he was entering a communication trench, and was
killed dead; I had a look at the poor chap as he lay all
waxy and white in a destroyed cottage which was used
as a mortuary. This was our first man ' Killed in Action ';
every time we were in the trenches from now onwards
there were always a certain number of these war accidents
that caused a steady diminution of our strength without
achieving anything. One of our company Sergeant-
majors was also nearly killed by a sentry of the Yorks
and Lanes battalion to which we were attached; the
saturated atmosphere of that part of Flanders had given
him such a cold that he had completely lost his voice,
so that when he was challenged and asked to give the
countersign he could not make himself heard, and nearly
had a bayonet through his stomach.
The following day I was attached for instruction to a
commander of a battery of R.F.A.; by eight o'clock I
was at his headquarters. After breakfast he showed me
his guns, which were in magnificent condition, and then
I went with him on a tour of inspection round his observa-
tion posts and the front line trenches. The first view of
23
The Press and the General Staf
the trenches is thrilUng, and I was greatly impressed with
the complete absence of a single living thing. In order
to reach the front you pass through villages crammed
with troops, and then through horse lines and lorry parks
and R.E. dumps, and linally you reach the entrenched
area, and from that moment you can't see a soul, and it is
difficult to believe at first that you are in any danger of
being seen by the enemy. After the O.P's we went on down
the front line to see if the company commanders had
any new targets which wanted dealing with; there were
the boys of the ' A ' and ' B ' company filling sandbags and
looking as much at home as though they had been out since
'14. The officers of 'A' Coy informed me that during the
night Paget had appeared shortly after dinner in a striped
(hoop-wise) bathing suit and had proceeded to pick his way
through our wire, and was half-way across no-man's-land
before he ran into one of our patrols, and was fetched back.
It appears that lie had heard that a German prisoner
was badly wanted in order to estabhsh the German order
of battle, and, showing a contempt of danger every bit
as magnificent as his contempt of convention, he had
removed more than all traces of identification, and, thus
strangely disguised, was going to pay a call on Fritz in
his own trenches. I am sorry that circumstances prevented
my following this officer's career throughout the campaign,
but I am glad to know that he has survived and that his
splendid courage has been awarded with a M.C.
The country round Fleurbaix was completely water-
logged and I doubt if any system of drainage could have
kept the trenches dry, though the German trenches were
reported to be much better drained than our own. Our
communication trenches were more than half fuU of
water and the duckboards were raised accordingly; this
meant a steady occurrence of casualties during rehefs.
24
The Front
All German trenches that I have ever seen have been
immensely deep and the water has been drained off with
pipes; the walls of the trenches have been revetted with
wood and there has been a plentiful supply of bomb-
proof dug-outs. Thus by skilful engineering the German
soldiers had the maximum of safety and comfort, and their
apparently economic casualty lists have shown the wisdom
of this plan of taking the utmost care of the men. If we
could produce a comparative list of avoidable and unavoid-
able casualties the public would be appalled. Our trenches
in this sector were of the breastwork order; they were
revetted with sandbags, and whenever there was an extra
heavy fall of rain the walls of the trenches fell in; wooden
revetments would in the end have been cheaper and better.
We spent the whole day going round the entire sector
occupied by the division, and I did not get back to my
company headquarters till tea-time. After tea I had
fallen asleep when I was awakened by a loud explosion.
During my absence the Colonel of the Yorks and Lanes
battalion to whom we were attached had ordered squad
drill in a small orchard on the outskirts of the village,
and the men had practised fixing and unfixing bayonets.
This drill in an open field, in full view of the enemy
sausage balloons, seems to me to this day an incredibly
stupid proceeding. 'Ah ! discipline ! what sins are
committed in thy name ! ' In mid-winter, when visibility
is low, naturally the Germans don't waste their shells
on imaginary targets; therefore this village had been
perfectly quiet, but it was already March and on this
particular day (Friday 13th) there was at intervals a
harsh garish hght peculiarly suitable for air photography.
The Germans knew that our army was growing in strength
and they were on the lookout for fresh concentrations;
as we were attached to a division holding the hne, the
25
The Press and the General SfaJ
normal number of men was doubled and therefore, surely,
extra care sliould have been taken to lie low. Well,
this first shell came along and fell in the orchard where
the men had been drilling; we all jumped up and I must
say that I was intensely exhilarated at the thought of
being shelled. A few seconds later there arrived a second
shell; this one struck a building which was used as a
Quarter master-Sergt.'s store where rations were being
dealt out; the store was on the upper floor and the men
in the room were flung through the floor, and the shell
exploded amongst them and brought the building down
on the top of them. The company commander to whom
I was attached (Captain Cobbold) dashed into this
building with his company Sergt. -Major and I went after
them; we heard groans coming from a mass of debris
and we raked among the fallen beams to get some of these
poor fellows out. A German plane was now overhead
and every few seconds a huge crump landed in this httle
group of buildings; I followed Captain Cobbold, who
would listen as he heard one coming and then would
dash in one direction and another and fling himself on
his face. After each burst he would return to the building
that had been first struck and proceed with the dis-
entangling of the mangled forms that lay there in a heap.
I was equally amazed at his courage and at the skill with
which he judged where the shells would land. I did my
best to imitate him in both respects, and we got a lot of
fellows on to stretchers, but they were all dead. As time
went'on, the shriek of the shells became almost unbearable,
and I well understood how httle of this sort of thing
it requires to turn a sane man into a raving lunatic. Many
of the survivors of the platoon billeted in these buildings
did go mad. After the burst of one of these shells that
had fallen well behind me, I felt something brush my
26
The Front
breeches, but in the terror of the moment I paid no
attention to it. It is difficult to judge of time on such
occasions, but I should guess that we had been about
three-quarters of an hour in these buildings, and it was
obvious by then that there were no living survivors
among the debris, so we crossed the road and entered a
little sandbag shelter where the wounded had been
collected and began to help dress some of the wounds.
There was one wretched man who had all the muscles of
his back torn off and was in great agony; we consoled him
with the fact that it meant Blighty till the end of the war.
As we dressed these chaps, shells continued to fall in
the neighbourhood, and the terror on the faces of badly
wounded men when the bursts got closer was a ghastly
sight. When we had got the bandages on to the worst
ones, I noticed that my breeks were saturated with blood;
I thought at first that it was from the other fellows
wounds, but as the blood appeared to increase, I stripped
and saw that I had two wounds in the right leg. I had
felt not an atom of pain, and it was only when I knew
that I was wounded that I began to feel a Httle stiffness.
I think it is often the case that quite serious wounds do
not hurt much at the time, and this is a consoling thought.
^ As the darkness came on, the shelling stopped, ambulance
lorries came up and took away the stretcher cases. I was
in no hurry and waited till the lorries came back, and as
I was waiting I went to have a look at the ' bag ' laid out
in a back-yard. There were about nineteen killed; many
of them I could only identify by their discs. Some of
them were men from our own farms in Sussex whom I
had known for years. Poor fellows ! all this weary
preparation and training and then to be killed without
so much as a glimpse at the enemy or even a suspicion
of the lustre of their own glory.
27
The Press and the General Stajff
At the dressing station five legs had to be amputated;
four of these chaps died on the following day. The
survivor was an old campaigner who had been wounded
before, and I am sure that the reason that he survived
was that he was more or less proof against nervous shock
and he was thoroughly imbued with the doctrine of imper-
manency. I was injected with an anti-tetanus serum and
was then sent on to the CCS. at Merville; I got off to
bed about 11.30; I was covered with brick dust from head
to foot, and I must have been a horrible object on clean
sheets. I was beginning to wonder if I should ever go to
sleep again, when I became aware that the man in the
bed next to me was in great agony; I asked the Sister
about him and she told me that he had his stomach
pretty nearly shot away with machine-gun bullets. At
first he stifled his groans, but as they gave him more and
more morphia he lost his self-control, and he called out
upon his mother and his sweetheart and implored them
to come to his help. He was quite young and his frail
body seemed to be shattered with pain. His anguish
increased as the night wore on; I began to think that I
had almost had enough war already; at about 4 o'clock
I must have dozed off, for I am conscious of having been
awakened at five by people moving about; it was the
stretcher-bearers carrying this poor young fellow out with
the Union Jack over him. After breakfast I was washed,
and my wounds were dressed by the most marvellously
competent woman I ever came across. She was the
embodiment of all that was perfect in the art of nursing,
that art for which the British race has undoubtedly a
supreme genius. She was in many ways absolutely
beautiful — not altogether unlike the smiling Virgin of
Rheims. She was the true mixture of the classical and
the Christian; she had the dignity, the grace, and the
28
The Front
symmetry of the Greeks; with the solemnity, the aloofness,
and the pity of the Christians. She certainly was not
human, she was nearly divine. I, of course, was simply
No, 7; she took no personal interest in any of her cases,
but she was full of a strange dignity that came to her
from living continually in the 'no man's land' between
life and death. All that day I dozed and thought
alternately; I thought especially of Captain Cobbold and
his splendid example. I have not seen him from that
day to this; I heard that he had been badly wounded
on the Somme. If ever his eye should Hght on these pages
I should Uke him to know that in the hour of death and
on the day of Judgment I shall think of him and hope
to have a small particle of his glorious courage.
After two days in Merville I was sent down by train
to the Duchess of \A'estminster's Hospital at Le Touquet;
I arrived at about midnight ; went straight to bed,
and fell into the soundest sleep that I had ever had. On
waking, the next morning, I did not know whether I was
in heaven or hell. (I should not have been the least
surprised to find myself in either place). My sleepy eyes
rested on the words 'Salle des Cartes,' which made me
think it must be hell, but when a gramophone started
playing a hymn, I thought that might be the latest fashion
in heaven; the hymn, however, was immediately followed
by a ragtime and so I knew then that I was still in this
world. I like that touch though — the hymn while the night
nurses go off, and the ragtime while the day nurses come on.
In the bed on my right was a territorial Colonel who had
been wounded at the battle of Loos, and on my left was
a Canadian who slept for four consecutive days; I
thought he must be frightfully ill, but on the fifth day he
woke up as cheerful as possible. A bullet had grazed
his head and slightly cracked his skull, so he was ordered
29
The Press and the General Staf
to keep very still and, being short of sleep, he slept for
ninety-six hours on end. On the other side of him was a
Northumberland Fusiher, who was about 6 ft. 7 in. in
height, with a black stubbly beard of a few days' growth.
He looked as if he had absorbed all the coal in Newcastle,
and his head made an absolute black patch on the pillow;
he was not wounded and there was at first very Httle the
matter with him, but the Canadian and I christened him
the bantam, and told him that he was in the unlucky bed
(the name of the donor being something like Moses
Goldstein) ; this depressed him and his temperature chart
gradually began to look like forked Hghtning, and as I
left the Hospital he was in a critical condition.
The first visit I received was from Colonel Spurrell.
Colonel Spurrell was formerly in command of one of the
Sussex battalions of our brigade, but the higher command
had judged him to be too old for active service and he was
placed in command of the divisional infantry base depot,
situated at Etaples. This was a bitter blow to him, for
he was a frightfully keen soldier; brave as a lion and
gorgeously handsome. I don't think I ever saw a man
so Uke my idea of Thackeray's Colonel Newcome. The
sympathy which he showed me on this occasion was
perfectly dehghtful; he insisted upon taking me as soon
as I was able to walk to Holy Communion. It is many
years since I have practised any form of religion, and it
seems to me irreverend to partake of holy mysteries if
you don't believe in them; but he, so to speak, ordered
me to go and I saw that it would hurt him seriously if I
refused. Throughout the service I watched his splendid
face touched with the deepest emotion, and it was one of
the most beautiful sights I have ever seen; besides, I felt
so proud that he should show the affection of a father to
me. Later on he \dsited us in the line, and his visit
30
The Front
happened to coincide with a small German attack on my
company front. When the whole thing was over I
found him standing by my side on the fire step. The
trenches were then in a frightful state of slough, and I
think he realised it would have been impossible for him at
the age of sixty to be an infantry Colonel.
During my stay in hospital I fell in love with two
sisters and a V.A.D. who represented three elements of
perfection; there was Betty — my own particular sister —
who was Irish and had wit and conversation, and there
was Martha who had a splendid voice, and lastly, a night
V.A.D. whom I christened Lily Elsie. She was the
loveliest thing I have ever seen; I made up to her with
every means in my power but without success. My
compUments she spurned, then I tried to chaff ; she took
me 'au pied de la lettre' and was offended; finally I
reported her to the orderly officer for wrapping up my
shaving brush unrinsed in a woollen sock. This did have
a little effect for she tucked me up in bed after that. I
explained to the Duchess that polygamy must inevitably
come after the war, so I wanted these three ladies for my
\\dves, and she, seeing that my intentions were honourable,
encouraged my suits.
I was now receiving very depressed letters from Grise-
wood; the day after I was hit, his second in command had
been struck down with measles and one of his company
commanders had also gone sick. With very few officers
he had been obliged to take over the trenches from the
Yorks and Lanes, and after a week in the line he had been
relieved by another battalion; the rehef was a very long
affair, accompanied by an icy wind and snow and sleet;
the men were obliged to march about a dozen kilometres,
wet through to the skin, with feet swollen and tender from
standing for days in the water up to the knees. The strain
p.G.s. D 31
The Press and the General Stajf
had been too much for some of them and, among others,
Grisewood's brother caught meningitis and died within
twenty-four hours. Things being so, I resisted with all
my might and main every attempt to send me to England,
and appealed to the CO. of the hospital to return me
to my unit with the least possible delay. This he did, like
a real scout, and in about three weeks from the time I
arrived at Le Touquet, I was back with the battalion
at Merville; scabs had barely formed on my wounds,
and I was unable to get on a horse for six weeks. From
the moment that I knew that no metal had been left in
my leg, and as soon as I was assured that there was no
danger of arterial bleeding, I gave myself at least one hour's
massage every day, accompanied by resistance exercises
in the manner taught me by my excellent friend, Dr
Ryman, a Swedish doctor of great skill. I noticed that
many wound cases came into hospital in a fairly satis-
factory condition and got steadily worse from lying in
bed; I attributed this to local stagnation of the circulation,
and I was determined that this should not happen to me.
For eighteen years previous to the war I had lived without
any meat, and I think this also helped my recovery.
When I saw the doctor who had first treated me at
Merville, he could hardly believe that I was so soon
recovered, and he told me that he thought it quite
probable that I should lose my leg.
For some ten days the battalion rested in Merville,
and then we were off again. A new Brigadier was
appointed and I saw from the first minute that he
and Grisewood would never get on; Grisewood had been
handed over as 'troublesome goods,' and therefore the
new man was on the lookout for squalls. Our division
was to take over the Givenchy-Festubert sector from the
Welsh division — the divisional H.Q. being at Locon.
32
The Front
I was sent on ahead to take over Gore chateau, which was
the H.Q. of the support battaUon; at that tune the
chateau looked magnificent in its half-ruined state ; it
was a red brick building, seventeenth century, with superb
outhouses enclosing a vast courtyard, I occupied a room
which was supposed to have been slept in by the Crown
Prince during the German advance of 19 14; the room
contained the remains of a four-post bed the upper
part of which had been removed by a shell. It was like a
French engraving of the eighteenth century, and one could
imagine an elegant lady stretching out of bed a languid
hand to be kissed by some furtive lover, the husband
fast asleep — the whole scene lit by candle-light. The
walls were actually decorated with highly imdignified
cuttings from the Sketch, Tatler, and Vie Parisienne ;
such decorations represented indeed throughout the war,
as it were, the margarine of femininity. I was awakened
on the following morning by a Howitzer battery loosing
off in the orchard, this was followed by an aeroplane
fight overhead, and then came the familiar cry of
'Morning paper' in a perfect Strand accent. Before the
Welshmen cleared out, their band played superbly in
the courtyard; I don't think I have seen many things
more beautiful in the war than this glorious building
punctuated with khaki soldiers listening to the band;
and how those Welshmen do play, their rhythm is not
a whit less fine than that of the Germans themselves. The
Givenchy sector previous to the Somme offensive was
almost as lively as the Ypres saUent ; the indirect machine-
gun fire all along the village line was terrible, and there
was not the slightest protection from shell fire except
in the keeps or redoubts which were actually on the top
of the hill. During the winter whole portions of the
front line trench had fallen in, and onr division was
J3
The Press and the General Stajf
expected to reclaim these trenches now that the weather
was improving. On these gaps the Germans naturally
had fixed rifles, and our casualties were steady and
continuous; what a pity that we had not then found out
what the Germans learnt later on, that a continuous
uninterrupted Une is the worst possible form of defence.
Also in these days we employed hundreds and hundreds
of men in carrying up rations and ammunition; many
of these were expert bombers and first-rate marksmen,
and their energies and lives were certainly wasted to
some extent. Grisewood saw in the twinkling of an eye
what the situation was and immediately produced a Hght
railway scheme which would have solved the problem
completely, but his ideas were treated as an impertinent
bit of cheek (there is the difference between the colonials
and ourselves). With this system of employing men,
who should have been resting, as ration carriers, there
comes a sort of universal weariness that is the very anti-
thesis of the offensive spirit. Then the discipline business
in the trenches was greatly overdone; our men were
actually compelled to keep their full equipment on every
moment of the day and night; just fancy trying to sleep
on a fire step one foot wide with a pack on your back —
the idea is fantastic. I used constantly to see Germans
in their trenches from artillery O.P's and, of course,
they were untrammelled by unnecessary equipment and,
altogether, in battle areas, their discipline was far more
elastic and reasonable. My company on one occasion was
relieved by a company of the 2nd Argyll and Sutherlands,
and I told my men to find out something on the quiet from
them. Later on I asked one of my platoon sergeants
what he had discovered. ' Oh,' he said, ' one of the chaps
said that we were a fine body of men, but that we should
never stand a big attack because we took too much out
34
The Front
of ourselves and had not near enough rest.' There was
indeed no sort of sleep discipline, as could be seen by the
expressions on any of our officers or men. One would
have taken our sector to be an asylum for the melancholy
mad. The regulars or semi-regulars, such as were our
Brigadiers, always imagined that we should be slack;
now raw volunteer troops are never slack; they are
over-keen, very often over-brave (the Americans were),
but slack, never. The chief German activity in front-line
areas was rum-jars; one can see these coming both by day
and night, and, if one is nippy on the feet, one can get
out of harm's way in time, but the sport is wearing and
at best they make a horrible mess of the trench. Our
chief stock-in-trade was rifle grenades; there was a
Scotch division across the canal, and the Jocks used to
spot for us, cheering loudly when we lobbed one plumb
into the German trench.
One night all the gas gongs sounded, and S.O.S.'s were
sent up from the front hne; the first effect of every one
wearing gas masks is that no one is recognisable. We were
having dinner at the tune and in my extreme haste I put
my helmet on before I had swallowed a very pleasing
pancake; that bit had to remain in my mouth throughout
the attack. I was left to keep touch with Brigade H.Q.
while the Colonel went to advanced battalion H.Q.
How shall I ever forget those efforts of mine to keep
a jumpy General up to the latest developments
— Lewis Sydney reciting 'Kissing cup race' as
though with a split palate was not half as comic as I was.
Just have a try once on the London telephone to talk to
a friend with a gas-mask on, and you will get an idea of
the effort with a held telephone. I soon saw that the task
was hopeless, so I proceeded to advance H.Q. and to my
dismay found no Colonel ; I also found that a company of
The Press and the General Sfa^
the support battalion had manned the main communica-
tion trench instead of the support Une; I think my
language got through the mask. I had with me the
artillery liaison officer and, while he was trying to get
on to the group commander, we tapped a conversation
between the Colonel, who had lost his way, and the com-
pany commanders, so that I knew exactly the situation.
The Germans had replied to our S.O.S, barrage and shells
were falling pretty fast, but the thing soon died down as
we had only had a whiff which had drifted down wind
from another sector. As I was returning I passed a
sentry, who had stood rigidly at his post at the junction
of the two trenches in spite of many shells, and I com-
mended him for his courage, and he repUed, 'I was too
frightened to move, sir ! '
One morning the Colonel was rung up by the officer
who was commanding my old company (I being then
acting second in command) and was informed that the
company Sergt. -Major had been drunk in the trenches
during the night and was under close arrest; he was an
old regular soldier of much military experience and a
man of prodigious strength; he had apparently got hold
of the rum and I knew him to be a terror when in drink.
I took an escort with me and as soon as I reached the
company H.Q. I ordered him to be brought out of the
dug-out; he was no longer drunk but he was furious at
seeing an escort and said that he, an old soldier of the
old iron Sussex, was b y well not going with any
escort of new army men. It was not a pleasant situation;
I ordered the escort to fall out and then said to him,
'Now Sergt.-Major, come along with me.' At the same
time I put my hand on the stock of my revolver, and had
he hesitated a second I should have shot him dead. He
saw the situation and came like a lamb, sobbing all the
36
The Front
way. At his Court-Martial he was reduced to a private,
and was then transferred to another battalion; in a few
months he was again company Sergt. -Major, for what he
didn't know about soldiering would go in a tabloid and
then it would rattle. Later on in the offensive of the third
of September he was in command of an ammunition-
carrying party, and seeing our chaps go over the top he
could not resist the temptation and went with them.
He was never heard of again.
On one occasion when we were going back for a rest
I was ordered to police the exits of the communication
trenches, and to report when the relief was complete.
The wily Fritz must have suspected something of the
sort, for he kept up a steady machine-gun fire, and the
tired bullets pattered on the road through the village
like rain; luckily the men had simply to cross the road
and not to go along it, and there were no casualties.
When the last man was out, I collected my police and we
marched with all speed out of range; it was a fine moon-
light night, and those horrid ruins of the destroyed area
looked more ghastly than ever. Our first halting-place
was in a little wood; the weather was warm and mild
and delicious smells of fresh spring growth replaced the
stink of decaying sandbags; also the nightingales were
singing with all their might. This sudden change to divine
life from awful death was quite overpowering; you see,
this Givenchy sector was a place peopled with many dead
and few living, and it seemed impossible that one should
ever hear a sweet sound or smell a sweet smell again.
Shortly after this I went off with Grisewood on my first
leave ; at Boulogne I noticed a certain English ' grande
dame de par le monde' and her daughter. They were
in the fullest sense of the word social celebrities; as a
rule I hate social celebrities, but I was starved of female
37
it
The Press and the General Stajf
companionship and I placed my deck chair next to theirs.
Shortly after the boat had started, I noticed a man with
a cinema camera climb into the rigging, focus my fair
friends and begin to turn. Of what a strange mixture of
the sublime and the trivial is our race composed.
He who has never had a first leave from France during
this war does not begin to know what life is, nor ever will
know. I had had luck to be still ahve; I had had sufficient
experience to know that nothing was to be expected
except a dead level of horror, and I had ten days in which
to cram the whole of the prime of life. In the words of
Mr George Robey ' There was not much, but what there
was, was good.' At such times it is not difficult to dis-
tinguish those human beings who have a spark of glowing
affection from those who are indifferent; it is as though
one were privileged to assist at one's own funeral, and I
must say the experience was a bit of an eye-opener.
I travelled back with Grisewood and we got a lift in a
car from Boulogne to divisional headquarters; we
discovered that the Brigade was in the Cuinchy brick-
stack sector, and that the night previous the battalion had
had seventy-five casualties owing to the blowing of a
German mine. We proceeded to Brigade headquarters and
had dinner with the Brigadier; he seemed to get on well
with Grisewood and I was hoping that their relations might
now be pleasanter, but after dinner he asked Grisewood to
let him have plans immediately for a raid, as he wanted
one to be carried out on the following night. Grisewood
jibbed a bit at the short notice, but said that he would
immediately make a personaljeconnaissance. This he did,
but discovered that the lie of the land was extremely com-
plicated, and he informed the Brigadier that the raid would
not be successful unless he had three or four days for pre-
paration. The Brigadier was furious and immediately
38
The Front
took steps to get rid of him; the raid was carried
out by another battahon, but, needless to say, it was a
hopeless failure; several men were killed and no identi-
fications were obtained. The 'no-man's-land' in this
sector was entirely composed of mine craters; these
were defended by sap-heads run out from our first line.
At night time we used to climb about these craters and
lob bombs into the German saps; it was admirable
country for patrol-work, as there was plenty of protection
from traversing machine guns, and at this sport we were
greatly superior to the Germans. The unpleasant thing
was morning and evening 'stand-to,' for at these times
the Germans constantly exploded their mines; luckily
we were getting even with them also at this form of
warfare owing to the splendid work of our tunnelling
companies, chiefly composed of professional miners.
Several small mines went up while I was there, but they
were only protective mines and did no damage. It was
difficult to get men to stay properly at their posts at night,
for they had to lie outside the sap-head in order to have
any field of vision, and in such places the feeling of un-
comfortable loneliness is almost oveipowering. One of
my sentries that I had thus placed on one occasion thought
that things would be more sociable inside the sap, and
not many minutes afterwards the sap was rushed and we
had a job to dislodge the Germans. At the same time
that they got into this sap, they made a much bigger
attack farther down the line, but we were by this time
on the alert and gave Fritz all he wanted with Lewis guns.
It was during this attack that I received the visit from
Colonel Spurrell, mentioned above. Also in the middle
of this attack I had an earnest appeal from our Adjutant
to make an accurate return of all the maps that had been
issued to the Coy. since landing in France. Those of you
39
The Press and the General Staff
who have ever seen Bairnsfather's picture of Colonel
FitzShrapnel being called upon to make a return of jam
tins during a bombardment, can easily picture my attitude
under these similar circumstances.
Before long the division moved out of this sector and
without any rest went into the line again in the neighbour-
hood of Richebourg St Vaast; during the preliminary
reconnaissance of the line, I visited by night the church
of Richebourg St Vaast village. It was then bright moon-
light, the ruin looked magnificent; it was an eighteenth
century building and a short time before the Germans
had bombarded it with eight-inch shells; the round
classic arches were laid bare where the roof had given
way, also the tombs of the departed had been churned up,
and it was curious to read Requiescat in Pace on the
tombstones and then to see the skeletons of the deceased
underneath performing a sort of danse macabre with
emphatic gestures of horror and disapproval. The German
line ran out into a sharp point in this sector and almost
touched our sap-head; the place was known as the
'Boar's Head.' We were soon informed that we were
to attack this 'Boar's Head and that the main object
of our attack was to cause a diversion from the big Somme
offensive; a secondary object was to bite off the 'Boar's
Head' and 'straighten out that bit of the line.' We
began to dig assembly trenches, the new work being
perfectly visible to the enemy; also several pieces of
heavy artillery rolled up by daylight and began to register
in a deliberate manner such as was our practice at that
period of the war. The task allotted to my company was
to hold the line prior to an attack and make careful observa-
tion on our destruction of the German concrete gun-
emplacements. Our shooting was shockingly bad and our
heavies never touched one of these emplacements, a fact
40
The Front
which I reported regularly every night and morning. The
Germans, on the other hand, knocked our line about con-
siderably, and the fire on both sides was so intense that no
sleep was possible for eight days that I held the line prior
to the attack. Meanwhile Grisewood had been sent home.
Extract of letter. '28-6-16.
' Eight nights running without closing an eye is a bit
thick, isn't it, and the noise has been too much to sleep by
day, and the rain and mud terrible. I am out of the
trenches for one night — perhaps two. I hope at any rate
to have some clear sleep. These are exciting times, and
I don't expect there will be much rest. I am well, though
tired.
' Alas, my dear Colonel has gone. He had to go quite
suddenly vdthout even saying good-bye. It was a bitter
moment for me. I wish I could say as in the Book of
Job, "And yet he reviled not God." '
Letter of Colonel Grisewood to me.
' My very dear Neville, — An order has come from the
Brigade that I am to clear off at once. I am too miserable
to come round and say good-bye. Anyhow, you know I
hope all I wish for yourself, and how much I valued your
real friendship during the two years that have passed.
' I am off to the Division to-night to try and fix up
staying on until this show is over anyhow. The whole
thing is utter misery.
' My dear old boy good luck — God speed you.
' Ever yours,
• W. L. G.
' I will write the first chance I get.
' Explain to them all the how and why of this rotten
business. ' W. L. G.'
41
The Press and the General StaJ
The plan of attack, which had been advertised as skilfully
as any patent medicine, was to contain this one element
of surprise — namely that a big bombardment was to take
place at 5 o'clock one evening, and that the infantry
attack would not take place till the following morning
at daybreak, after a much shorter bombardment. The
first bombardment was a very successful one, and had
our chaps rushed over to bayonet the survivors and come
back again, it might have been quite a good little show,
but during the night they put in new troops and evacuated
the wounded, and at zero next morning there was a barrage
of artillery and machine-gim lire on our trenches so
precise that hardly a soul escaped; of the men who went
over about ninety per cent became casualties. This
accurate German artillery barrage on our front line and
assembly trenches proved that our counter-battery work
was completely ineffective. The plan as regards its local
effect was a complete failure — indeed the conception of
the attack was so futile that nothing but failure could
have resulted. Then as a diversion to the Somme offensive,
where some forty divisions were concentrated, it was
absurd to do a show where only one brigade was involved.
The Divisional General was ungummed, but it seemed
to us that there were others who were responsible, and,
if they had lost their commands after this failure, possibly
greater disasters might have been avoided, for a similar
experiment was made a little later on with two divisions
and the result was exactly the same. Naturally in the
Communique our attack appeared as a successful raid —
nothing more, and yet our casualties were in excess of
the casualties of the worst day in S. Africa when
The Times was printed with black borders. After we
were relieved and were resting just behind the line
Grisewood turned up again; he had been sent to England
43
The Front
on leave, and as soon as the leave expired he returned.
They were not at all pleased to see him at divisional
H.Q., but he told them that if he were not posted to
another battalion within one week, he would demand a
Court of Inquir3\ Of course, he was appalled at the news
of our attack, and he was the more depressed that he had
always prophesied that some such thing would happen.
Our battalion, as a matter of fact, was not very heavily
involved, but Grisewood's other brother had been killed,
and his heart was very much in his boots. Within a
few days he went to take command of a Manchester
battalion on the Somme.
After Grisewood's departure the Brigadier, thinking
that I needed a rest, and that possibly I would not
get on well with our new Colonel, attached me to his
brigade staff. He had a strong prejudice against me for
being Grisewood's friend, and he had a further prejudice
against men who belonged to the so-called gentlemen
class, and had received a public-school education. At
first he gave me nothing to do, but I used to sit with an
open map and a prismatic compass lost in contemplation,
and I think he mistook this for industry, for, little by
Uttle, he gave me more and more work till I was as busily
employed as any one on the British front. Among other
things he made me take on my old sniping job again,
and though I was miserable at being away from my old
friends in the battalion, yet I did undoubtedly enjoy the
work. In the hrst place I had movement; instead of
sitting down in a dug-out waiting for a direct hit, I used
to cover the whole brigade front, starting my rounds
at daybreak. Then I had a certain amount of regular
sleep every night, which greatly improved my health;
further, I had the training of observers as well as snipers,
and the intelligence side of the job interested me
43
The Press and the General Stajff
enormously. I got a really good knowledge of the habits
of German gunners, and it was astonishing to me to find
out to what an extent their national characteristics
came out in fighting; day after day they would fire at
the same targets at the same hour, and in all they did
they were actuated by method, method, method. I am
sure that a less capricious people has never existed.'
After the 'Boar's Head' show we returned to our old haunts
at Givenchy and Festubert ; these sectors had now become
exceedingly calm owing to the Somme offensive farther
south; it was midsummer, and the absence of artillery
fire and the long grass suited my snipers to perfection.
I used to cover them with long grasses and then place
them, before it was light, either just in front or just
behind our line; every day they would take up different
positions and we often got as many as four Huns a day
on a brigade front. The sniperscope rifle had by this time
been invented, and a couple of snipers used to be employed
all day, on each battaUon front, with this weapon, firing
armour-piercing ammunition at the German loop-holes;
the true snipers on the other hand only fired when a good
target presented itself. One misty morning I was observ-
ing in a sniper's post for one of my snipers and a magni-
ficent, fierce-looking German sniper exposed himself to
the waist and proceeded to take a good look at our Une.
I gave the target — 'two sandbags left of centre loophole'
— to my sniper, and he had a shot which carried too low
and hit the sandbags just below the German; he ducked
instantly and then came up again for a second to shake
his fist. Stupidly, I did not notice that his post faced
up our fine at an angle, and, going on to our next post
and opening the loophole, I must have been plumb in the
middle of his field of vision, for as my eye was at the
loophole three shots struck the armour plating about
44
The Front
one inch from my eye. For the rest of that morning
the German's post had a bad time, but I could not help
thinking that I did not deserve such luck after doing
such an idiotic thing. A few more ill-prepared raids were
carried out without success; the Festubert line consisted
of an irregular line of island posts, and at night or in a
bad light it was extremely difficult to find one's way about.
During one of these raids a gallant Colonel thought it
was about time that he should do something courageous,
and he led the raiding party himself; losing his direction
he mistook one of our posts for the enemy line and charged
it with fixed bayonets. Naturally enough some of his
own men were kOled by the defenders, and when the
episode was over he discovered that he had captured
with some loss that which already belonged to him.
We were not left long in these peaceful parts, but were
withdrawn and taken back to a place called Monchy
Breton, to do some intensive training preparatory to an
attack on the Ancre in the neighbourhood of Thiepval-
Beaumont Hamel. On my way through Bethune I was
met by Grisewood who was going north with his new unit.
I was able to get leave to dine with him, and we had a
couple of hours of blissful intercourse. The poor fellow
looked at least twenty years older than when I last saw
him, and his hair had gone absolutely white; he had
taken over the command of his battalion in Trones Wood,
and a few days in that nightmare of a spot had turned
him into an old man. He said that we had no conception
of the horrors that awaited us, and no conception at all
of what really big concentrations of artillery meant.
Grisewood was particularly annoyed at the cheerful view
the British Press took of the Somme offensive; he, like
the rest of us, was incensed at the impression conveyed
that when troops go over the top they felt as if thev
45
The Press and the General Stajff
were at a football match or a picnic. We were convinced
that German, French, or British, all were of the same
mind — namely, that these offensives were undiluted hell,
and we had a most bitter feeUng against all those who
preferred to take pleasure, vicarious or otherwise, in the
pestilential business. I think his experiences on the
Somme destroyed his health, for not long afterwards
he was sent home to England with rather serious heart
trouble, and he never came to France again.
Our training was like any other preparation for attack;
the lie of the land was similar to the land over which the
actual attack would take place; we had facsimile trenches
laid out according to air photographs; we even had
smoke bombs to imitate barrage fire. The men practised
walking over the course very slowly in the modem
formation of attack, keeping extremely close to the
barrage; the first wave reaching their objective started
to consolidate and the other waves passed them, leap-
frog fashion. In this practice every attention was paid
to the smallest detail, and each man knew exactly his
task and his relative position; the only drawback to
such rehearsals is that the men act exactly the same in
the real attack without paying sufficient attention to some
unforeseen circumstance that throws the whole thing out
of gear. This actually happened later on as will be seen.
Before the main body moved south I was sent on in
front, by the Brigadier, to make a thorough reconnaissance
of the sector, and to make sketches of the Ancre Valley.
Besides my own mare, I had a pack pony, that carried
my tent and four day's rations; unfortunately, my groom
sprained his ankle during the first few kilometres, and
so I made him ride and walked myself. The weather was
magnificent, and this was a real Cobbett's rural ride;
we passed throught St Pol and Doullens and eventually
46
The Front
fetched up at a village called Englebelmer. Between St
Pol and Doullens we came across some Indian cavalr\%
looking superbly dignified with impeccable discipline;
a short way beyond Doullens I lunched on l:he second day
with some Auflralian gunners. It was the first time
that I had seen these magnificent men in any numbers,
and I was struck all of a heap with their astounding
beauty of physique; a glance was sufficient to show that
their discipline was entirely different to our own; they
were much dirtier, and their hair was almost as long as
the hair of Red Indians. Of course, they were just out
of the line and were considerably battle-stained; they had
loose, lithe bodies and expressions of extreme cruelty,
such as you see on the faces of birds of prey; they never
troubled about saluting, and they called me ' mate ' when-
ever I spoke to any one of them; they seemed to me
frightfully efficient, and never required any order of any
kind, every one knew just exactly what to do. I reached
Englebelmer at sunset of the second day since leaving
Monchy Breton, and I dined and slept with the town
major; he had a ver^^ comfortable little cellar as a dormi-
tory, his office and mess being on the ground floor. It
seemed to me a dreadful thing to sleep in a cellar after
these two days of uninterrupted pure air, but during
that night a big shell landed in the neighbouring house
and killed seventeen men; after that, I felt very grateful
to have such protection. The next day I went carefully
round the line with the intelligence officer of the Brigade
that we were about to relieve; there was desultory shell-
fire going on, but nothing out of ordinary. We went on
beyond our own front line and sat in 'no-man's-land,'
and for the first time I got a clear idea of what a colossal
disaster to our army was the battle of the first of July,
1916; there were literally avenues of graves. Wave
P.G.S. E 47
The Press and the General Stajff
after wave must have been mown down by the German
machine-gunners. We were able to sit in 'no-man's-land'
then unmolested, because the Germans had some eleven
rows of barbed wire in front of their trenches, and it
would have been impossible for them to see anything of
our line. I made a very thorough reconnaissance, taking
copious notes, and then began to think of my sketches;
there was a communication trench called 'Jacob's ladder'
which ran over a hill immediately east of MesnO, and from
this hill I got a magnificent view of the Ancre valley,
which was at that time a fine classic landscape in the
manner of Claude Lorrain. No greater contrast could
possibly be imagined to the horrid flat marshes of Flanders;
here was fine rolling country in the midst of which was
a winding marshy stream of great beauty. The valley
was still green and the German lines stood out in white
(the soil being chalky) as clearly as the lines of a lawn-
tennis court on an English lawn; the trees had not been
seriously destroyed by shell-fire. I reproduce here the
sketch that I made during this afternoon, and at the same
time another sketch done three months later, showing the
astounding change brought about by modern shell-fire.
I had almost finished my sketch on this lovely summer
evening, when the Germans started a terrific bombardment ;
the show began Hke a clap of thunder, and in about five
minutes the hill south of the river was one blaze of shell-
fire. It was the first time that I had seen a perfectly up-
to-date bombardment and I was amazed and appalled;
the Germans were using thermite shells, which sent out
great tongues of flame, and as the light got lower from the
setting sun these flames showed up more and more
brilliantly. By great good fortime hardly any shells fell
on my side of the river, and yet I was not more than five
hundred metres from the attack; the valley was very
48
4
The Front
soon filled with black smoke and field-glasses became
quite useless. Our guns were not slow to reply, and at one
particular moment they went off like a pack of hounds
that have recovered the scent. In vain did I search for
human figures; I could not make out a living soul.
Gradually night came on and the fire died down. When
I got back to Englebelmer I inquired what had actually
happened and this is what I was told; I give the story
for what it is worth. Battalions of Wilts and Worcesters
were holding the line, and the Colonel of one of these
battalions got anxious about his front-line companies;
when the bombardment started, his telephone wires were
all destroyed, and so he sent a runner to find out the
situation. This runner lost his way owing to the complete
churning up of the trenches, and he reached a point close
enough to the German line to see troops of the Prussian
Guard assembling for the attack. He managed to get
back safely through the German barrage and informed
his Colonel of what he had seen; the Colonel immediately
sent a message through to the gunners, who concentrated
on these trenches, and the attacking troops were entirely
wiped out. Certainly no infantry attack did materialise,
for in that boiling furnace I could not distinguish a human
figure. The really extraordinary thing about this war
is that there should be a single survivor; statisticians
afiirm that it took at least a ton of metal to kill a man,
and yet during a big bombardment it would seem that
even a small field-mouse could not escape.
Foiu: days later the brigade turned up and I made my
report to the Brigadier; our headquarters were in a
comer of the village called Vitermont. Here there were
three magnificent dug-outs built by the French; they
were built right down into the bowels of the earth and
were proof against any sort of shell, no matter how large.
49
The Press and the General Stajff
The Brigadier lived in one of them, another was occupied
by the Brigade-Major and the Staff-Captain, and the
third was inhabited by the 'learners.' There were eight
or nme of us in this last and I christened it 'the girls'
school' ; we generally got to bed about midnight, and
though we had to be up again at five, we generally gave
vent to some hilarity before falling asleep. Each of us
in turn would act the part of the Brigadier giving orders
to his Brigade-Major; he had a voice like a sanctimonious
clergyman schoolmaster, which lent itself admirably to
caricature, and we put into his unctuous mouth words
that would have curdled a cup of fresh milk. The truth
is we were all of us regimental officers and we had the true
natural antipathy to the general officer and his staff,
When one is in the front line one cannot help having a
fairly deep sympathy for the wretched fellow in the other
front line across 'no-man's-land'; one knows that he is
going through just as many dangers and discomforts,
and that he is simply caiTying out the orders of some
general whose dangers and discomforts are infinitely less,
and the hatred that you both have towards these generals
breeds a common sympathy that is irresistible, except
of course during a show. There are no doubt certain
generals whose simplicity, honesty, and sympathy for
the sufferings of men are such that they remain tnily
beloved throughout a desperate war such as this one
(among these can be counted Haig and Plumer in our
own army or Petain and Gouraud in the French army),
but they are few and far between. It must be admitted
that our Brigadier was exceedingly brave, and therefore
he retained our respect to a large extent, in spite of his
schoolmaster's manner. Unfortunately, he could not
consent to delegate authority, and he left no initiative
to his subordinates; he treated his colonels like company
50
The Front
commanders, and they supplied him with any amount
of eyewash. He had a terribly symmetrical mind, and
symmetry and good organisation rarely go together; also
he loved blood, and he seemed callous as to whether the
blood was German or British; danger excited him but
blood intoxicated him, and his eyes would glow when a
show was on. Possibly this more or less homicidal mania
took the place of other vices, for both wine and women
were a dead letter to him.
Most of the serious fighting, during the first month
of our occvipation of the Ancre sector, took place on our
right flank, i.e. on the left bank of the Ancre; we helped
with our artillery and made some Chinese attacks only;
the Germans opposite us were constantly exposing them-
selves in their eagerness to see what was going on during
the prolonged fight for the Schwaben redoubt, and my
snipers had a fine time; there was a small ruined cemetery
on the outskirts of the village of Hamel and from this
hillock our observation of the enemy lines was magnificent.
I was allowed a plentiful supply of ground observers, and
I started a new system of intelligence; instead of keeping
a log-book of events day by day, I classified all enemy
activities under different headings, such as trench -mortars,
field-guns, field howitzers, high -velocity gims on railways,
machine-gun posts, new defences, snipers posts, etc., and
with each battalion rehef I would give each incoming
colonel an up-to-date map, and he in his turn would fill
in any freshly -observed activities.
One day on my rounds I observed a sentry looking
intentl}' through a periscope. 'What are you observing? '
I said to him. 'The famous Beaumont Hamel crater,'
he replied. ' Oh ! ' said I, ' I think you're wrong, that is a
bit of our own Une, and to convince you of the fact I \dll
go and put a bully beef tin exactly where you are looking.'
51
The Press and the General Sta£
Of course I was right, but this wretched fellow for hours
had been serving his ungrateful country by intently
watching our own line. This is very typical of the British
Tommy, who was exceptionally slow to take in a name or
read a map. On one occasion I was told off to pilot
General Gough round the line; I first took him to an
observation post from where he could see the whole
country; he then went on to a forward post, called the
'Bowery,' out of which one of my observers had just
been shelled; but this did not deter Gough, who meant
to make a thorough reconnaissance, and he did not leave
the line till he had seen everything and more than every-
thing.
The day of our big attack (the one that we had re-
hearsed at Monchy Breton) was now fast approaching.
I tried my best to get back to the company both before
and after the attack, as I was not happy at Brigade
Headquarters, but the Brigadier was adamant and would
not let me go. It was bound to be a terrible affair, for
the enemy were expecting us and his wire was still
immensely strong; on the day, the 3rd of September, 191 6,
I was liaison officer with a neighbouring unit, and there-
fore I knew every half -hour exactly how things were
going. Of our brigade the nth Sussex and the 14th
Hants attacked; the barrage went a bit too fast and our
chaps lost touch with it. The Colonel of the Sussex
managed to get into communication with his gunners,
and they corrected the pace; this enabled them to take
. their first two objectives, but the Hants were less fortunate,
and they tried to crawl up a steep slope exactly as they
had done during the rehearsals, and the barrage having
passed over the German front Une, the Germans shot
them down hke rabbits. Hardly a man escaped. The
division on our right was also unsuccessful in gaining
52
Preparing for an attack. Somme 1916. -p^s^ 5^
The Front
its objectives, in spite of great gallantry on the part of the
officers, and so the wretched Sussex were left to fight it
out all day in the enemy lines. Those few of the Hants
who got there also fought with the utmost bravery. At
nightfall the position became untenable and our own men
were withdrawn — that is, the few that were left. The
officer who commanded my old company (Lieut. Northcote,
a descendant of the biographer of Sir Joshua Reynolds)
was killed as he was returning to our lines; one of the
men told me that he had fought so splendidly that he must
have won the Victoria Cross several times over. All the
company commanders were killed except one, and our
losses were extremely severe. Another good day for the
Germans, I fear; the truth of the matter is that they
had such wonderful defences that our artillery fire had
not broken the morale of the defending troops, and
therefore the situation was not yet ripe for an infantry
attack. All through that night and for the next forty-
eight hours the Germans mercilessly shot all our wounded
lying between the two front-line trenches. This certainly
was one of the big failures of the Somme, for many
divisions were involved, and not a yard of ground was
gained. Our division was now strung out very thin, and
we had an exceptionally wide front; all day and every
night we plastered the enemy trenches with shells, and
in spite of his success on September 3rd we had the
impression that he was cracking, and that he would not
hold out much longer. This wide front suited my snipers
to perfection, for we got cross observation from the crest
of each Httle hill; I had a school just near Brigade Head-
quarters where I built a range, and the snipers fired at the
targets from a proper trench where were three or four
sorts of snipers' posts. As soon as they became expert
enough I put them into the line alongside thoroughly
53
The Press and the General Sta^
trained men, and they very quickly picked up the job;
m}^ best results were nearly always obtained from un-
expected positions, such as the top of a completely exposed
parapet, the sniper clothing himself from the crown of
his head to the sole of his boots in sandbags. I only used
the obvious posts to draw the enemy's fire by using
smoky ammunition. During the whole course of my
sniping career I only had two casualties (one killed, one
wounded) among my snipers {i.e. from enemy snipers)
and our bag of Huns must have run into fifties if not
hundreds. Of course, I owed a good deal to Hesketh
Pritchard and his methods, at whose school I had received
a course of instruction.
Though the British were very skilful in practising all
sorts of tricks for hiding their snipers' lairs and concealing
themselves by imitating the surroundings of nature,
3'et at the fine art of camouflage the French were ahead
of us. On one occasion their camouflage artists made
a facsimile of a dead horse which was lying out in
'no-man's-land'; the inside of this facsimile was armour-
plated, giving protection to a sniper who fired through
the eye of the horse. The real dead horse was removed
at night, and the facsimile put in its place.
So life went on, the daily round — the common task;
every night that I got into my dug-out I heaved a sigh
of gratitude, for this sector was lively, to say the least of
it. I still hold that it would have been a disgrace to get
killed by a German shell, given the methodical habits
of German gunners, but there were places that I had to
pass through that were shelled incessantly day and
night, and it was difficult to move quick enough; also
one night a week we all had to take turns at sleeping next
to the telephone, which was not in the dug-out, and as
regular^ as clockwork at 3 a.m. the Germans plastered the
54
The Front
neighbourhood with gas shells. Of course, before very
long they got a direct hit on this small cottage and
wounded two of the brigade clerks; luckily they destroyed
the last bit of shelter, and we moved.
One fine morning a wire came which ran as follows,
'Major Lytton will report to advanced G.H.O. for an
interview with General Charteris, B.G.I.' From that
instant the attitude of every one changed towards me
from the Brigadier downwards; I heard my worst enemies
murmming that they had always recognised in me symp-
toms of genius, and some of the more sycophantic ones
began to implore me to remember them when I was made
chief of the staff to the C.-in-C. Up to then I had always
thought, and still think, that there was a prejudice against
all completely amateur soldiers; an order had gone forth
that all the plum jobs were to be kept for the regulars,
and the Colonel who had succeeded Grisewood and who
was a regular soldier thought that no irregular soldier
could have any serious merit. He thought that the
duties of a regimental officer were so intricate and so
important that he should be a celibate, hke a Catholic
priest. I pointed out to him that not only was Julius
Caesar married but he had a wife who was above suspicion.
He replied that he did not think that Caesar would have
made a good regimental officer. This foolish man was
married himself long before the war was over.
Advanced G.H.O. was at that time in the neighbourhood
of Doullens, and once again I mounted my trusty mare,
and taking my groom with me, started westwards. It
is a pleasant thing on a gorgeous summer's day, after weeks
of narrow escapes, to be trotting leisurely away from the
front line; I had nearly worn out all my tunics and they
were more like a patchwork quilt than anything else, with
constant crawhng about trenches, and I am afraid I
55
The Press and the General Stajff
cannot have made a very brilliant impression on General
Charteris. I found him extremely good-humoured and
affable, and the warmth of his greeting was so human
that I could hardly believe him to be a regular soldier.
He told me that he wanted me to organise a foreign
press mission to be attached to the British armies in
France; the French especially, he said, had no conception
of the greatness of our effort, inasmuch as they followed
more or less the attitude of that villain, Andr6 Tardieu,
who had made a great name for himself in America by
running us, the British, down — an unpardonable act on
the part of an allied statesman in time of war. He
asked me if I had any experience of the Press and I said
that I had none, but that I knew the French intimately
and was very fond of them. 'Well,' he said, 'you won't
succeed. No one has ever succeeded in handling the
French Press and no one ever will, but we are convinced
that something must be attempted, and you must under-
take the job and we shall see how you get along.' The
job was to carry with it the grade of G.S.O. 3. I returned
to the Brigade and awaited my movement order, which
came in about a week's time; I was immensely touched
by the good feeling and affection of my fellow learners at
the Brigade, and the divisional staff officers were more
than charming. They told me that the intelligence of
the Brigade had been excellent during the time that I
had been in charge, and that the work could not have
been better done. One fine morning a superb Vauxhall
car came for me and I was whisked away to Amiens;
luckily I was allowed to keep my mare, and she followed
me with my groom in a few days' time. That night I
slept in a bed with sheets, and it seemed so strange,
after what I had been accustomed to, and so uncomfort-
able that I never slept a wink.
56
«
CHAPTER IV
'the allied press'
My immediate CO. was now Colonel Hutton Wilson,
who ran that branch of G.H.Q. known as Id; for a week
I stayed with the British Press at Amiens trying to learn
the job of press censorship. It is not quite so easy as
it might appear, for it has to be done at a terrific pace
against time, and the problem of how much information
you are giving to the enemy is not a fixed one, but varies
every single day. At that time press censorship was in
its infancy and the censors were absurdly over-cautious;
later on we got a much better liaison with the operation
staff of aU units and our methods became more elastic.
From the very start it was impressed upon me that if I
made a mistake I would inevitably lose my job. In the
course of my career as a press officer I did make a few
mistakes, but I don't think they were ever found out.
I spent about a week or ten days as a learner and then I
pushed off on my own; I was allowed two officers besides
myself, and I insisted that one of them should be a first-
class man. I had my eye on a certain Lieutenant (after-
wards Captain) Rudolf de Trafford, who seemed to me about
the cleverest young man that I had ever met. Naturally
my Colonel did not want to lose him and the fight for him
was long and fierce, but luckily in the end I got him, and
if our foreign press mission was a success — and I think
it was — it was largely due to the personality of this
exceptional young man. My headquarters were at first
57
The Press and the General Stajff
in a small hotel near the station at Amiens, and I started
my enterprise with four correspondents — Monsieur Andre
Tudesq of the Journal, Monsieur de Feuquieres of the
Petit Parisien, Monsieur OUvier of the Matin, and Monsieur
RufBn of the Agence Havas. After our first dinner
together I made them a little address in which I said that
the most important thing in our army was the fighting
man of all arms, and that if they were willing we would
start our campaign by visiting the forward areas, and
that later on when the weather became bad we would
visit the bases and the lines of communication. Every
day I would have the summaries of operations of armies
sent to me, and I would give them in French a rSsume of
these, also we should have advanced situation reports
sent to us every morning, and so we could direct our steps
to those quarters where there was the greatest interest.
At that time M. Olivier and M. de Feuquieres were not in
very good health, and were unable to take long walks,
but M. Ruffin and M. Tudesq were fuU of zeal and anxious
to see every phase of a modern battle. The open air life
gradually improved M. Olivier's constitution, and before
many months he was able to undertake the most arduous
excursions, and he became the most dashing and enter-
prising war correspondent. Monsieur de Feuquieres's
health was never very good, and he soon found himself
unfitted for the job.
The fighting at this time was almost entirely confined
to the Ancre valley and its immediate neighbourhood,
and as I knew the ground backwards I was able to be an
efficient guide either by day or night. A big attack was
made on the 13th November, and it proved to be the
biggest success that the Somme offensive had yet
given us. The Highland division succeeded in taking
Beaumont Hamel, the Naval division had got as far as
58
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Beaucourt-sur-Ancre (here Freybourg won his V.C),
and my own beloved division had taken the Schwaben
redoubt and had reached a place on the outskirts of
Grande ourt. This was the first bit of luck that the
division had had; the troops had performed a cunning
enveloping movement, the right flank advancing some
considerable distance before the left flank and the centre
moved from their assembly trenches ; when they had
gained the crest of the hill they consolidated, and as they
were consolidating they caught a German relief — some
columns of Germans marched into their trenches quite
imaware that they had been captured. This went on for
a considerable time, and altogether the division took
over 1800 prisoners. The total bag on the first day was
over 4000 prisoners, and the numbers swelled considerably
in the next few days. That same evening I managed to
get Ruffin and Tudesq into the outskirts of Beaumont
Hamel; it was not quite dark while we were going down
the communication trenches, but it was complete night
before we got back to the car. The whole area had been
plastered with tear shells, which excited Ruffin and
Tudesq enormously, '(^a — c'est vraiment la guerre,' they
said. The enemy artillery was disorganised, whereas
our guns had advanced to new positions and were blazing
away like mad. The correspondents had never seen gun
flashes at night — they had never before experienced the
sort of hell let loose that is a modern fight. They
certainly were most courageous, and I thought that with
two such companions my new job was going to be fine;
we met some tanks coming back from the day's work,
and in the dim smoky light they looked most terrifying.
One of them had got temporarily stuck on the top of a
German dug-out where a German Colonel was working;
he noticed that his concrete ceiling was beginning to
59
The Press and the General Staf
crack, and he rushed out in a blue rage; for he had ordered
the engineers to make his dug-out absolutely safe. As he
appeared at the door he saw the machine-gun of a tank
pointing at him and he instinctively put his hands up;
the tank took him prisoner and absorbed him into its
inside and carried him about for the next five or six hours
while it slew countless Germans. Another tank had also
got stuck across a trench and so it pretended to be dead;
at its approach all the Germans had gone to ground, but
thinking that the tank was scuppered they had crawled
out again, first in twos and threes and then in larger
numbers; when there were about two hundred of them
the tank opened its blinkers, and all the Germans sur-
rendered and were marched back by the tank commander.
Naturally, the two war correspondents were enchanted
with these stories. The next day they were determined
to go out again, and this time we went over the ground
where my division had attacked on September 3rd;
the Naval division had lost heavily and the dead were
lying on the ground pretty thick; that wretched con-
founded wire was still partly intact, and some of our poor
chaps were hanging to it. On this occasion I saw in the
German front line two corpses, one British and one
German; they had got each other by the throat, and I
suppose a shell had killed them; this is the only direct
evidence of hand-to-hand fighting I came acrossjin the
whole of the war. Many of these chaps had fallen forward
as they advanced with their heads down, and their faces
still retained the colour of life; they looked, I thought,
extraordinarily beautiful, and I was never so much
impressed with the glory of the supreme sacrifice of those
'tu6s au champ d'honneur, face k I'ennemi .' My com-
panions were as much impressed with the beauty of the
scene as I was, and I don't think thev will ever forget
60
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what Britain did in the war; from that moment through-
out all the vicissitudes of the campaign they and their
comrades were unswervingly loyal to the British Army,
and is it not right and proper that the good opinion of
France towards our country should have been won by
our heroes on the field of battle? They will now he for
ever on French soil, and I hope that their graves will keep
green the friendship between these two great races so
different in character, temperament, and tradition. As
the correspondents were writing their articles, I wrote
a letter of which the following is an extract : — 'I have
been to-day to Beaucourt-sur-Ancre, and, though I am
now an old and tired soldier accustomed to every aspect
of war, I am still capable of being infinitely moved by
the sights of a battlefield.'
I have a drawing which I did of the valley of the
Ancre, as it was after my ride last summer, which I
described to you. I also have a drawing as it is to-day —
a bitterly sad landscape with a winter wind.
It is a curious thing to walk over enemy trenches that
I have watched like a tiger for weeks and weeks, but
what of the boys who took those trenches with their
eleven rows of barbed wire in front of them. I don't
think ever, before to-day, I have rated the British soldier
at his proper value. His sufferings in this weather are
indescribable. When he is not in the trenches his dis-
comforts are enough to kill any ordinary mortal, when
he is in the trenches it is a mixture between the North
Pole and Hell, and yet when the moment comes he jumps
up and charges at the impossible and conquers it, and with
all this to bear he loves the officer who makes him do it ,
and he is grateful to the Country who feeds him and clothes
him well enough to give him heart to die.
Some of the poor fellows who lay there as they fell
6i
The Press and the Gene7'al Staff
looked to me absolutely noble, and I thought of t?i'^'r
families who were aching for news of them, and .oping
against hope that they would not succumb and be left
unburied in their misery.
All the loving and tender thoughts we !^ave lavished
on them are not enough. There are no >vords to describe
the large hearts of these men — God bless them. And what
of the French on whose soil they lie? Can they ever
forget the blood that is mixed with their own? I hope
not. I don't think England has ever had so much cause
to be proud as she has to-day.'
In spite of the lateness of the year great pressure was
kept up all along the valley of the Ancre; our concentra-
tion of artillery in this section was formidable, and the
Germans nicknamed it 'the \'^alley of Death.' Many
French visitors came to our front about this time, and
they all said that it was more desolate and shot-about
than the worst bits around Verdun. On one occasion
Grandcourt had just fallen, and I was conducting General
Verrau (who wrote for VCEnvre) and the Count de Fels to
see the place, and on our return journey we met an ofhcer
of the French mission who had received an order from his
chief at G.H.Q. to go to Grandcourt and see what buildings
were suitable for billets. On hearing this we all of us had
a fit of Homeric giggles, for Grandcourt for many months
past had been nothing but a heap of spillikens. On this
trip also I remember seeing a group of German corpses
which had been killed that same morning, and about a
few yards from them was a young gunner officer having
his lunch spread out on an improvised table; there were
all sorts of dehcacies and sweets and oranges, a copy of
the Daily Mirror, a packet of letters freshly arrived, and
a gramophone. On another occasion I visited the Trones
Wood sector with two French senators; one was the
62
. -^ . < * - » 1« wli^^
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' The AUied Press '
political head of the Catholic partJ^ the other was a well-
known Socialist and Atheist. As we passed through the
village of Montauban, they were struck by a completely
intact painted terra-cotta figure of the Virgin, which stood
out most conspicuously in this surrounding of complete
desolation. The Gennans had made a concrete dug-out
underneath the Church, and they probably placed the
statue there for safety's sake; when our Tommies
inherited the place, as soon as it was no longer under
regular fire, they restored the statue to its original
place near where the altar once was. The head of the
Catholic party would have it that the statue had remained
above ground throughout the bombardments, and he saw
evidence of the hand of God in its miraculous preservation.
The vSocialist, on the other hand, scoffed at the idea, and
a heated argument arose between the two. A few weeks
later the statue fell to pieces; wet weather had succeeded
to hard frosts and the fragile terra-cotta which had
survived one of the fiercest fights of the war succumbed
to atmospheric conditions.
Gradually it became noised abroad in the 'Coulisses'
of the French press that French correspondents on the
British front were having the time of their lives, and
my numbers began to increase very considerably, so
much so in fact that my transport was no longer sufficient,
and I had to fix a limit beyond which I could not go.
Monsieur Raymond de Maratray came as the permanent
correspondent of the Petit Journal, Monsieur Serge
Basset replaced Monsieur de Feuquieres for the Petit
Parisien, Monsieur Pierre Mille came for the Temps,
Monsieur Henri Bidou for the Debats, and ]\Ionsieur Babin
of L' Ilhistration and Monsieur Tardieu of the Echo de
Paris. I had one permanent Portuguese correspondent,
Signor Negreros, and several Italians came to my mission,
PCS. F 63
The Press and the General Sta^
but only two remained more or less permanently, Signor
Bedolo of the Giornale d'ltalia and Signor Barzini of
the Corriere della Sera; a few months later I also had
Monsieur Matagne of La Nation Beige.
During the first few weeks I had a bit of a tussle with
Colonel Hutton Wilson on the matter of the privileges
that were to be allowed to the foreign correspondents.
He Uved with the British correspondents, and they not
unnaturally resented the arrival of foreign correspondents,
and not unnaturally Colonel Hutton Wilson sympathised
with them. I pointed out to him , however, that the foreign
correspondents rarely bothered the staffs of armies or
corps as they could not make themselves understood,
but that the news in the foreign papers must synchronise
with the news in the British papers, also that it was of
vital importance that we should show the utmost con-
sideration to the AlUed correspondents. Colonel Hutton
Wilson saw my point and with great good sense gave me
every facility to carry out my programme. From the
very first I have always insisted that the attitude of the
general staff towards the press must be one of trust; war
correspondents must be treated as officers and gentlemen,
and if by any chance any one of them should not come
up to the standard he must be mercilessly fired out.
In my experience I only came across about three who
were unworthy of such trust.
My foreign correspondents having by this time visited
every part of the Somme battlefield, asked me to arrange
a trip for them to the North to see the Lens, La Bass6e,
Armentieres, and Ypres sectors, but before starting this
journey they were frightfully keen to have an interview
with Sir Douglas Haig. 'We now know your Tommies,'
they said, 'and appreciate them at their true value, and
by means of our articles the French public is getting to
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know them, but the personaUty of your Chief is shrouded
in mystery. Our editors are very keen for us to give them
an article on him and we hope that you will be able to
arrange this for us.' It must be remembered that in
1914 and 1915 French popular opinion was somewhat
anti-British; they felt that they were carr^dng too much
of the burden of the war on their shoulders, and their
losses had been so great that their nerves were very much
on edge. The Somme battle had to a very large extent
changed all that; we had the French vingtieme corps,
which was a corps d'^Ute, next to us and their verdict
was 'Les Anglais sont tres chics.' That was good enough
for the Frenchmen who were in the know of things, but
the mass was still anxious to be informed whether this
new British army was a great striking force composed
of many divisions of shock troops, or whether they were
simply troops who could hold quiet parts of the line and
so release other troops for attacking. The moment was
therefore ripe for such an interview, and I explained
the matter to General Charteris, who said he would
do what he could, but warned me that the Chief
loathed interviews. My efforts were eventually successful
and the interview came off; my correspondents were
charmed beyond measure at the personality of the Chief;
his distinguished appearance and his perfect manners
struck them as being a glorious contrast to the typical
German military man, Haig began by asking them
whether they had been to see the men in the trenches,
and they pointed out to him on a raised map all the
places they had visited, and I think he was pleased that
they had been so enterprising and so thorough. They
then asked him whether he was confident that his armies
could attack with success and bring the war to a successful
issue, to which he replied that they had proved their
^5
The Press and the General Stajff
fighting ability on the Somme, and that the experience
that they had gained would make them most formidable
in the coming year. 'What about cavalry, sir?' said one
of them. 'It is almost certain that cavalry wiU be as
essential as all the other arms before the end of the
campaign.' The conversation then turned on the material
side of the war, the immense amount of ammunition
that was required and the constant repairs that were
necessary for guns of all calibres. He spoke in a charming
manner of his relations with the French. Throughout
the interview he spoke in French, which was extremely
good; he is not fluent in any language, but he is not much
less fluent in French than he is in English and he has very
little accent ; moreover, his words were well-chosen, and I
was surprised at his thorough knowledge of the language.
I don't think I shall ever forget the impression that
the Chief made upon me; it was the first time that I had
ever seen him, and I fell immediately under the spell of
his personal magnetism. It is one thing to see a great
General riding triumphantly through the streets of
London in a victory pageant, it is quite otherwise seeing
him in his office in the thick of the fight when the issue
is still most uncertain. I felt that if only he had been my
Colonel or my Brigade Commander, instead of but
no matter, I would have been willing to die for him a
himdred times over. I confess that I am one of those
who will do anything for one sort of man and nothing
for another; weU, with Haig I felt immediately such a
longing to gain a word of praise from him that I should
have liked him to ask me to do some impossible exploit
that I might prove my devotion to him. The common
sajdng is, ' Oh ! Haig is not a clever man.' I don't think
he is very clever; personally I have never admired clever-
ness, it is the attribute of small successful men. Haig's
66
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' The Allied Press '
qualities are much more moral than intellectual; what
intellectual qualities he has have been used almost
entirely within his own profession, but he exhales such an
atmosphere of honour, virtue, courage, and sympathy
that one feels upUfted like as when one enters the Cathe-
dral of Beauvais for the first time. Surely it is this sense
of trust that has made Haig come out on top in spite of
a terrible rough passage; not one of his subordinates
has ever suspected that he could act from any motive of
self-interest. It is largely the great character of the
Commander-in-Chief that brought about the astounding
result that Great Britain had the finest field army of the
world in the autumn of 19 18. Where I think Haig fails
is in being too insular; he thinks too much that the
Britisher is the only man who can fight. He got on with
the French because he is such a gentleman, but his
temperament would not be in harmony with any Latin;
he cannot conceive that moral frivoHty can go with
intellectual severity. It is the old tug-of-war between the
romantic and the classical, the Christian and the Greek.
I only met one man Hke Haig in the war and that was
Gourand; I don't know how much Latin blood flows in
Gourand's veins, but he seems to me eminently a Celtic
type. I had the task of taking him round our front for
two days once, and I noticed the same qualities of sublime
virtue; it seemed to me also that he and Haig were like
two brothers. There is a very charming storj^ told of
Gourand; when he returned from GalUpoli, having been
badly wounded and having lost an arm, he was met at
the station by his mother. As his mother caught sight
of him with his armless sleeve, she burst into tears,
whereupon he went up to her in a most tender manner
and said, 'Comment, Maman, n'es tu pas contente de me
voir ? '
67
The Press and the General Stajff
My correspondents were naturally delighted with the
interview and spread themselves considerably over their
articles; when they had finished them they brought
them to me for censorship, but I warned them that
General Charteris wished to censor them himself; they
informed me that they had notified their editors to re-
serve the best place in their papers for these articles, and
they hoped that there would be as little delay as possible.
In journalism what is a good copy at twelve o'clock on
one day is hopelessly out of date at eight o'clock the next
day; my friends were terrified lest some event of world-
wide importance should take place and so spoil the
effect of these articles on Haig, I took them to Colonel
Hutton Wilson, who in his turn took them into G.H.Q.
without delay, but as ill-luck would have it General
Charteris had gone to England on leave. To my mind it
was out of the question to wait ten days for his return,
so the articles were sent to England where General
Charteris censored them. Censorship is a thing which
should be done every day or not at all; it is only constant
habit that can give people the requisite judgment to
admit as much of the truth as possible without letting
pass any indiscretions. Therefore I think it would have
been better to let me censor the articles right away; if
I had censored them badly it would have been so easy
to say that a subordinate officer had blundered and had,
in consequence, lost his job. As it was, I think General
Charteris censored them too much with a view to the
foreign press only, and did not gauge the effect they would
have when they appeared, badly translated, in the
English papers. Their effect in the French papers was
indeed exactly what was wanted, but the English trans-
lations caused a storm of disapproval; the translations
were much too literal, and it appeared as if Haig bad been
68
' The Allied Press '
boasting and vainglorious. The rumpus was so great that
it seemed as if Haig might lose his command. I was sent
for by telephone and had a brief interview with the Chief,
who sent me forthwith to London to explain to the War
Cabinet exactly what had happened.
I had no kit with me, not even shaving materials, but
there was no time to be lost, so I motored to Calais where,
I was told, a destroyer would be waiting. To have a
destroyer told off specially for me seemed to be the very
summit of human greatness, and I felt proportionately
proud, but at Calais I was met by a Staff officer of the base
who informed me, with a disappointed air, that he was
expecting a distinguished soldier, and he asked me if I
had seen anything of him. I nearly said, 'I am the
distinguished soldier,' but luckily I refrained. It trans-
pired shortly afterwards that Sir WiUiam Robertson was
the person in question, and that it was his pet private
destroyer, and that I was only an insignificant portion of
his excess luggage We travelled from Dover to London
in a special train, and during the journey the distinguished
soldier sent for me and said, ' Well, 'ave you anything to
say to me ? ' I related to him the story of the interview
in all its details, and I also read to him a letter from M.
de Maratray, in which he said that some one was evidently
seeking a pretext for shooting Haig in the back. Robert-
son said, 'Ah! read that letter to the War^^Cabinet.'
He then told me to be at his office at 9.45 the next morning,
and to be careful to have all my facts at my finger-ends
as the meeting was one of vital importance.
I was there to the minute, and at ten o'clock I followed
Sir William into the room where those great deliberations
were held. The rooms of our Government offices generally
give the impression of gloom and respectability, and this
room was a very good sample of the species. In the middle
69
The Press and the General Staff
was an oblong table. Lloyd George was sitting at the
centre of the table on the fire-place side, and the other
members of the War Cabinet were on the opposite side,
with their backs to the windows. Immediately opposite
to the Prime Minister was a vacant place left for me.
WTien I had taken my seat I noticed on my right Lord
Curzon (who was next to me), Arthur Balfour, and Mr
Bonar Law; on my left were Lord Derby, Mr Henderson,
and Sir WiUiam Robertson. There may have been others
present, but if there were I did not take them in. Lloyd
George appeared to be in a towering passion, and I saw
that vay job was not going to be too easy. Without delay
he asked me to explain what bad occurred, and I related
to him M'hat happened as I have told it above. I men-
tioned to him also that the articles were destined for the
French press and that they had been censored no doubt
accordingly, and that the translations which had appeared
in the British press were ridiculous as is often the case
when French is translated too literally into Enghsh. The
Prime Minister seemed unwilling to believe a word of
what I said, and I, in turn, getting angiy, very nearly
left the room. I was shocked that any one could so
misinterpret the character of Haig, who is the most
modest man on earth ; besides, if what I said was
not believed, I was better back in France, where I
had important work to do. Lord Curzon now took
it upon himself to become the 'advocatus diaboli'; he
persistently called me 'Mr Lytton,' ostentatiously
emphasising the 'Mr.' He asked me why I had not
censored the articles myself, and I said that I had received
an order not to censor them : this reason, I could see, he
70
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' The Allied Press '
thought was entirely inadequate. Luckily, Mr x-^rthur
Balfour came to my rescue : he emphasised the points
that I had made in more suave and parliamentary
language, and his wisdom turned the opinion of the
Cabinet in the right direction.
Sir William Robertson said nothing during the meeting,
but before dismissing me he said, ' You see what I have
to put up with every da3^'
I was not over-confident of what might happen, so I
immediately telephoned to Lord Northcliffe, and he asked
me to come and see him that evening in the country. I
had met him in France, and he had given me every support
in my efforts with the French press, also I knew that his
actions during the war had always been completely dis-
interested, and that he was one of the few men who had had
the courage to swim upstream against the current. He
had had the courage to attack a popular idol (Kitchener)
when he thought that he was no longer up to his job;
he had helped very considerably to get rid of the
Asquith Government, because he thought that Asquith's
brain was not suitable to such a war. Later on he let
Lloyd George have his way about Sir William Robertson,
but he undoubtedly maintained Haig where he was.
On this occasion he immediately grasped the situation,
and the articles which appeared in his press on the
following day calmed matters down and the episode was
at an end. I returned to France immediately and told
the Chief what had happened; naturally he was less
surprised than I had been at the Prime Minister's attitude,
for no doubt this was not the first episode of the kind.
71
Th^ Press and the General Hta^
What would have happened if Lord Northcliffe had
not upheld Haig? In my opinion Haig would have
gone.
I dined with him that night, and I spoke to him on
this occasion, as indeed on many others, of my deep
attachment to the French race; his staff were very anti-
French, and I don't think they liked me for my opinions ;
but the Chief enjoyed the argument, and I am sure that
he liked me for expressing my preference so frankly in
spite of the awe-inspiring surroundings.
We now started on our northern tour, and as the countrj^-
side was covered in deep snow we had some difficulty
on the steep hills. Our first visit was to Arras, which then
was and still is the most magnificent city; I know nothing
finer than Hispano-Flemish architecture. It is incon-
ceivable to me that the French do not fix their northern
universit}^ there instead of at Lille. The one thing that we
inartistic English people think essential for j^outh is the
environment of beauty; what could be more lovely than
Eton or \\'inchester, Oxford or Cambridge, and 3^et here
in artistic France is a city as beautiful as Oxford, and before
the war it was just a dull garrison town. We then went
on to the Canadians in the Lens area; unfortunately,
the weather was so misty that we could see practically
nothing, but the French correspondents were much moved
at the evidences of heavj' French losses on the crest of
Notre Dame de Lorette. In the neighbourhood of this
hill the Canadians had a corps school, and we were shown
their system of preparing raids, and they gave us a display
72
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of rapid lire with stokes guns; during this demonstration
there was an accident with a premature burst that very
nearly poUshed off the lot of us. This school was the best
thing I have ever seen of the kind, and we were immensely
impressed with the Canadians; their system of Ught
railways in forward areas was perfection itself, and
everjrthing about the corps seemed first-rate, including
the discipline. Sir JuHan Bjoig was then in command,
and, though he disliked press-men as a rule, he received
my foreigners with the greatest goodwill, and gave them
a talk about the front that his corps held, which was a
model of its kind.
After that we visited the Hohenzollem redoubt, and
my old friends Givenchy, Festubert, and Richebourg St
Vaast; General Home, the Commander of the First Army,
received us to dinner at LiUers and also gave a most
valuable lecture on the special features of his army front.
The next day we went on to Armentieres, and that night
we slept at Cassel, and then proceeded to explore the
Second Army front from Ploegstreet Wood to Ypres.
At Ploegstreet there were some marvellous dug-outs,
where more than a brigade of men could be concentrated
without danger. They were quite as fine as any German
ones that I had seen on the Somme, and much finer than
anything else on the British front. In Ypres itself I
found my old Brigade in the ramparts; they were having
a fairly quiet time, but Ypres was always being shelled.
In the winter of 1916-1917 the city was stiU a magni-
ficent ruin, but what a death trap; I have since been
through the place hundreds of times, but never without
coming across exploding sheUs.
After visiting practically every sector on the British
front, we went to see some of the big aviation camps,
the big railheads, and the bases. The bases give a better
73
The Press and the General Sta^
idea of the scale of the war even than the front ; the food
store at Calais was amazing, and the ordnance repair
shops were a miracle of human ingenuity. Gradually
we worked back again to Amiens after one of the most
interesting tours it is possible to imagine. Since then I
have seen the Belgian front from Ypres to the sea, and
also the sector from Peronne to La Fere, so I can claim
to be one of the very few British officers that have been
in every sector of this vast battle area.
Earlier in the year I had visited a French regiment
in the line in the neighbourhood of Rancourt. It was an
important part of the hne and the Germans plastered
it with shells; in order to diminish casualties the French
used tiny little Moroccan donkeys for carrying up ammuni-
tion and rations. These little fellows got very clever and,
when shelled, used to lie down quietly in shell holes till
the firing was over. I lunched with a staff of a Regimental
Commander and I was amazed at the amount they ate,
but I forgot at the time that even in the trenches they
only have a cup of coffee in the morning, and so by twelve
noon they are capable of eating anything. The cooking
was as good as at a first-rate Paris restaurant and the
wines were delicious. We fell to discussing the different
attributes of English and French soldiers; these officers
maintained that when we had done washing and saluting
there was no time left for anything else. One hefty
looking warrior who had been through the original
retreat, the Marne, the Aisne, Verdun, and the Somme
declared, 'Un soldat doit manger quand il peut — doit
boire quand il peut — doit faire I'amour quand il peut,
mais quant a se laver, ^a jamais.' I was introduced to
the Brigade Commander, who had been wounded many
times; he was well advanced in age like all French senior
officers, but in spite of his wounds and years he had
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refused important staff jobs in order to stay with his men.
I have often said to the Chief that if he could see the
French regimental officers in the hne he would find them
inspired by a white fever heat of patriotism. The
French had an excellent system of runners for carr^dng
messages; throughout the shelled districts they would
construct bomb-proof dug-outs at distances of about
200 metres; in each of these dug-outs there w^ere relays
of runners; each runner had only to sprint these 200
metres and then he would get to ground and anotlier
nniner would take a similar sprint. They had learnt by
bitter experience in the first two years of the w^ar that
each man's life was worth its weight in gold.
Soon after we got back to Amiens the first symptoms
of the big German retreat to the Hindenburg line began
to appear; fires and explosions were visible every night
behind the enemy's lines; prisoners told marvellous tales
of this trench system which was on a new model, superior
to anything that had yet been thought of. In the Somme
valley during the winter there are incessant mists, and
a carefully prepared retreat is fairly easy to execute. The
Germans gradually held their trenches lighter and lighter;
a few men were employed at night to walk up and down the
hne putting up ' Verey ' lights from different positions, so
as to make it appear that the trenches were held in force.
Then they retired altogether, simply leaving rearguards
of highly-trained machine-gunners. Throughout the war,
whether in attack or defence, these machine-gunners
fought magnificently; the Germans realised that in a
war where every single man between eighteen and fifty
is used, it is quite out of the question to expect a very
high general level of efficiency, and therefore they went
through their classes wdth a fine comb and separated their
athletes from their crocks; their athletes were trained
75
The Press and the General Staff
and trained, either as expert machine-gunners or as
expert bombers, or as expert Ught trench-mortar men.
The crocks held the line, and as a rule kept themselves
under cover as much as possible. Thus we were nearly
always master of the situation in 'no-man's-land'; the
only activity the Germans went in for was wiring, and in
this respect they were streets ahead of us. We, on the
other hand, squandered our enterprising athletic types
to a ridiculous extent; in my brigade, for instance, there
was a young officer who for many seasons had played
cricket for Surrey; like many athletes he was clever
as well as strong. One night our Brigadier met him and
asked him if he had been out with a patrol, and he said
no; and when the Brigadier asked him why, he said that
he was acting company commander and thought that
his duty (quite rightly) was to stay in the trench and
supervise his company. The Brigadier then ordered him
to go out, and he walked straight over to the German
wire and was killed. Our 'no-man's-land,' as a rule, even
on bright moonlight nights, was like Hampstead Heath
on a Bank Holiday; with such numbers exposed to the
traversing machine-gun fire, no wonder that we lost men
who were quite irreplaceable. I remember hearing a
French officer remark, 'We always thought that our
Generals were butchers, but they are not in it compared
with yours.'
It must be admitted that the time for this retreat was
well chosen, and the Germans did not lose a man or a
rifle more than was absolutely necessary. Furthermore,
their public at home had been well prepared, for they
were told that it was a strategic retreat, which typified
the extraordinary genius of Hindenburg, and as soon as
it was completed their papers were full of enthusiastic
articles on the masterly manoeuvre. Certainly they worked
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absolutely to their time schedule, for at that season
of the year it was impossible for us to hustle
them.
One day I set forth with Monsieur de Maratray and a
young American officer; we expected that we might
possibly get into Le Transloy, and with this view we
called at an AustraUan Bde. H.Q, in the neighbourhood of
High Wood (le Bois des Foureaux). He told us that the
Boche was on the move, and that we might possibly get
into Bapaume; we therefore made for the nearest hill-
top where we could get a view. It was a brilliantly fine
day, and we could see that the country was empty as far
as the Bapaume ridge, where there was a lot of shell fire;
whether they were German or British shells it was impos-
sible to distinguish at that distance. There was no other
way of going except on our flat feet, for there were no
roads; I knew that it would be a tremendous walk, so I
made my companions eat their sandwiches before starting.
As soon as lunch was over we marched straight across
country to Bapaume; at first the going was good, but
soon we came to the old front line area in the neighbour-
hood of the Butte de Warlencourt, where the ground was
entirely churned up by shell fire; for each step we took
we were up to our knees in mud, and we had to zigzag
round the lips of the shell craters full of loose wire. At
last we got beyond this area on to the green slopes leading
to the Vauban fortifications; Maratray had stuck it
most pluckily (he was no longer in his first youth, and he
had had trouble with varicose veins), and we had a
short halt. We could now see that Bapaume was in
British hands, but the Germans were indulging in harassing
fire, which is the most disagreeable kind of shelling, for,
inasmuch as there is no guiding principle behind it,
it is a pure fluke whether you get hit or not. A number
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The Press and the General ^ta^
of men were being hit by the shells, and the stretcher-
bearers were fairly active; we pushed on therefore without
delay, got down into the moat, climbed the brick walls,
and established ourselves in a high garden which over-
looked the centre of the town. It was a wonderful sight,
for the town was in flames, and the Germans were shelling
the cross roads; our artillery had not yet come up, but
our machine-gunners had occupied all the high ground,
and were giving Fritz a shower-bath as he retired down
the roads. The Australian battalion that had captured
the town an hour or so before had rounded up a good
number of prisoners; we met the battalion commander
shortly afterwards, a young Australian major bursting
with good humour and self-confidence; he gave us the
story of the capture of the town; the Australians
are always doing the unexpected in war, and they had
managed to do a pinching movement which had bottled
up a number of Germans who could not get out of the
town in time. Having finished his account, this young
man dashed off to find a dug-out, if possible, free from
booby traps. Our return journey was a wearisome busi-
ness, but Maratray was buoyed up with the thought
that he was the first war correspondent in Bapaume;
as a matter of fact Philip Gibbs of the Daily Chronicle
had got there about the same time, but we did not know
that then. There were an extraordinary number of
unburied Geraian corpses all over the old front line areas;
our artillery on the Pozieres ridge had evidently made
life extremely unpleasant for the Germans, After passing
through the village of Le Thilloy we got a hft from some
Australian gunners, but along the tracks there were many
concealed shell holes filled to the brim with mud, and
we had some narrow shaves from drowning in mud, which
would have been an inglorious death. We reached
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Amiens after dark, having been about twelve hours on
the go; that evening Maratray went out to make some
purchases in the town, and he fell down in a fainting fit.
I came across him quite unconscious, and immediately
undid his collar and drove back the crowd that was
round him, for he was getting no air. I was with Pierre
Mille at the time, who is a bit short-sighted, and, on
seeing this prostrate figure, he said 'Oh, pour celui la,
il n'y a plus rien a faire, il est completement fichu.' This
immediately brought Maratray to his senses, who jumped
up completely recovered.
The following day Peronne fell, and we were all off to
get into this important city as soon as possible; as a
matter of fact the Germans had gone back a good way
by the time we reached the town, and there was
only very infrequent shelling by guns firing at extreme
range. Our troops had already gone through; the
abomination of desolation was frightful; these vile
Huns had blown up with explosive every building in the
place, and then had stuck in the main square a huge notice
board with 'NICHT ARGEN, NUR WUNDERN'
written on it. Peronne is beautifully situated with
hills all round and with the Somme flowing through it
and round it in the most attractive way; many of the
buildings were old and beautiful and the general aspect
of the place, before the barbarians destroyed it, must
have been like an illustration of Pol de Limbourg to some
Flemish book of hours. What the feelings of Frenchmen
were, who had been born and brought up in such a place,
is hard to imagine. I did see some French troops in the
neighbourhood and they were murmuring, 'Ah, les salops,
les sales Boches, on n'en tuera jamais assez.' It is at
such moments that one thinks of Kipling's saying, ' There
is but one good Boche, and he is a dead Boche.' After
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The Press and the General Stajff
going through such experiences it is hard for the returning
soldier to stomach the attitude of many stay-at-homes,
mostly pacifists, who throw up their pious hands in horror
at the revengeful nature of the French. What is sweeter
than vengeance when you catch your enemy red-handed
in the act of wanton unwarrantable destruction, for what
was the military use of destroying these beautiful build-
ings? In a week from the day the town fell, thousands
of troops were billeted there, and there were officers'
clubs and all sorts of things. If the French had lynched
every German they caught from then on to the end of the
war, their conduct would have been fully justified. Did
not Christ chase the moneylenders from the Temple?
is there no such thing as justifiable anger? For a people
whose leaders are so barbaric, violent brutal vengeance
is the only cure, the only remedy. Thank God, the
German army did contain some human souls, for among
the letters which we captured sentiments of utter disgust
at this useless destruction were expressed. A week
later I took Mr Sharp, the United States Ambassador to
France, to see Peronne, and his feelings of rage were as
great as mine, and I know that he wrote a despatch to
his President expressing his feeUngs most definitely.
For the next few days our front line consisted of an
advance guard of mobile troops, cyclists and cavalry;
in fact, it was very hard to know whether one was in
German territory or not. Of course, as the Germans got
nearer to their Hindenburg line their resistance stiffened
and they started counter-attacking our advancing
troops.
During the latter half of this winter John Masefield
came out to France ; I had lately read his book on Galli-
poli and it had made a profound impression on me. It
seemed against the fitness of things that no one should
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record the amazing feats of arms and the superhuman
endurance of our men, but here at last I thought was a
second Homer. I found him wandering about Colonel
Hutton Wilson's headquarters like a soul in distress;
no one seemed to be looking after him and his opportunities
of getting into touch with the war appeared to me to be
nil. The ignorance and irreverence that professional
soldiers have in regard to the great men of other profes-
sions is astounding. Directly I found out Masefield's
identity, I applied to have him attached to my mission
and my request was granted. Of course, he had nothing
to do with foreign press, but there was often a vacant
place in one of my cars, and when I could not send him
out he used to 'lorry -jump' with consummate skill.
To my amazement I found that he had come out to write
about the Somme battle, which was just drawing to a
close. How can the greatest genius in the world do
anything good when he writes about things that he has
not experienced? There were to be two years more of
war containing the most stirring episodes, and yet Masefield
was confined to writing about the Somme, which was
over, and then was sent to America to do propaganda.
It is incredible that, after producing such a masterpiece
as GalHpoh, his unique gifts should have been wasted;
and yet masses of 'stunt' artists were employed who
have produced an exhibition of pictures which are the
pictorial equivalent of a jazz band — such indecent
irreverence towards the most sublime of human tragedies
is without parallel in history. Masefield was at first a
great puzzle to the French correspondents; they could
not understand his shy, unassuming manners. 'Mais
voyons, c'est une jeunne fille,' they said, until gradually
they found out that he knew considerably more about
most things, including French literature, than themselves,
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The Press and the General Stajff
and that his remarks, uttered with a voice no louder
than that of a mouse in a cheese, were full of point and
wit. Prior to the German retreat to the Hindenburg Hne,
I had taken Masefield on an expedition to Beauregard
Dovecote in the neighbourhood of Miraumont, and I
had done my best to describe to him the colossal struggle
there had been around Beaumont Hamel and along the
valley of the Ancre. He was wonderfully quick to take
everything in, and he was untiring in his zeal to reconstruct
the past, but there is no such thing as vicarious inspiration.
Had he come on with us to follow th^ Arras campaign,
the Battle of Messines, the Flanders and Cambrai offen-
sives, the big retreat of March 1918, and the final glorious
victory beginning on August 8th, 1918, we might have
had a narrative poem of the calibre of Dauber, The
Everlasting Mercy or Reynard the Fox, and England
would have been the richer. Masefield had done his
best to get into the army when war broke out, but he
could not pass the medical examinations; failing this,
there is nothing he would have liked better than to
occupy a post such as Mr Bean had with the Austrahans,
but we are less patriotic than the Australians, and
Masefield was wasted.
When this big retreat to the Hindenburg line began,
it was a curious sight to see all our heavy artillery hurrying
away from the retreating enemy instead of following him
up; the explanation was that our next blow was to be
in the Arras sector and therefore the heavy guns had to
side-step along the main lateral roads. The Somme
battle was now definitely over, and though the honours
rested with us it must be admitted that the enemy put
up an extraordinarily successful defence; every step
was gained at a terrible price. This fine fighting on the
part of the Germans is all the more extraordinary as their
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' The Allied Press '
morale was never high during this period. Russia was still
in the war, the Germans had failed at Verdun, and they
were now thrown back on the defensive and were likely
to remain so till the end of the campaign. Letters
captured in enemy trenches were invariably gloomy in
tone. I am convinced that the war should have ended
now; had there been a Generalissimo of the skill of
Marechal Foch, the French success of the first few days
of July might have been exploited, and the fresh British
army, if used as reinforcements to the tired French army,
might have turned the Somme from the South and have
avoided that pitched battle between the Somme and the
Ancre where the Germans were expecting to be attacked
and where the defences were wellnigh impregnable.
The Germans supposed that the French were done for after
Verdun, and they did not believe them to be capable of
taking part in any offensive; therefore they caused a
surprise when they attacked with us on the Somme, and
therefore they scored a great success. That success was
never exploited because the rules of the game then were
that the British should fight on the British front and the
French on the French front, that there should be a point
of liaison but never an amalgamation. Therefore I think
that the British forces were not used to the best advantage.
It may be that our staffs at that time were not sufficiently
experienced to do a 'passing through' movement, but
French troops were already at the outskirts of Peronne
in the first days of July, and then there was no Hindenburg
line in the Cambrai-St Ouentin area. It is impossible
to say what might have happened, but I firmly beUeve
that a big initial victory on the Somme, with the German
morale very low, would just about have done the trick.
That big victory was impossible without a Generalis-
simo, and so it never happened. If only the war could
S3
The Press and the General Staf
have ended then, and according to the pieces on the
board it should have ended, the world would have been
saved from this terrible exhaustion which has made
victory almost as bitter as defeat. It seems to me that
history will for ever blame Great Britain for standing
out against the appointment of a French Generalissimo;
I have had many conversations with General Charteris
on this subject, and he always maintained that what
was important was unity of intention rather than unity
of command. This contention is rubbish; you might
as well say that it suffices to have unity of intention
among four company commanders. Every military
text -book says that an order must be an order and not a
request, and that the responsible officer must give his
orders clearly and concisely, and he must see that they
are rigorously carried out. At the beginning of the war
it would have been so easy to give the French
supreme command on land, all the more so because our
generals were unaccustomed to armies on a Continental
scale. In exchange we could have insisted upon the
supreme command at sea, and the AUies generally would
have profited enormously thereby. As it was, we were
competing in a race with Germany, who was running like a
single athlete on two legs, whereas we were, with France,
like two competitors tied together in a three-legged race.
Naturally Germany had an immense advantage, and
possibly we should never have won at all had not the
disaster to our Fifth Army in 1918 brought about the
creation of a Generalissimo.
84
CHAPTER V
THE CAMPAIGN OF I917
During the brief rest that occurred during the final
stages of the German retreat to the Hindenburg line and
our spring attacks, I happened to make the acquaintance
of the commandant of a German prison camp in France.
This officer was singularly efficient; he managed to get
the utmost work out of his prisoners and yet he admin-
istered them in such a way that they all adored him. One
day he asked me if I would like him to arrange a small
concert among the prisoners, which might possibly be
of interest to my correspondents. I jumped at the idea,
and accordingly one evening I motored to his camp with
two French correspondents. It is difficult to find any group
of Germans that does not contain some excellent musicians,
and this camp was no exception to the rule. Some of
them had got mouth organs, and others portable instru-
ments, and their fittle concerted pieces were excellent
in tone and rhythm; also their part singing was admirably
directed by a private, who, in civifian life, was a school-
master. They also performed a Httle play; the acting
was somewhat gross but not unskilful. Then they sang
a Berlin night song, which apparently was extremely
improper, fuU of 'double entendre,' but I do not under-
stand German well enough to seize more than a single
meaning. It was a very catchy tune (which is running
in my head at the moment) and immediately it was over
the English Sergeant in charge of the escort asked the
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The Press and the General Stajff
commandant whether he would have any objection to
his singing a parody to this song. Apparently he and
his Corporal had spent many hours in selecting an English
version of the song, finding with some skill English words
that had a likeness to German pronunciation. The Colonel
gave his leave and they got upon the stage; their accom-
panist was the German schoolmaster and he appeared to
take no interest in the words of the song, which were most
ribald — fuU of allusions to old Hindenburg and big and
little Willie, but he did take a huge interest in making
them start each verse on the right beat, and one heard
him whispering 'Ein-zwei-drei,' and then saw him give a
vigorous nod of the head. This occurred before each verse,
and his complete indifference to the 'lese majeste' of
the words and his extraordinary desire that they should
keep good time was one of the most typically German
and strangely comic things that I have ever seen. Before
the end of the concert I asked the Commandant to let
them sing the 'Wacht am Rhein' in part, as the tune is
so magnificent, and he gave his consent on condition that
we all immediately replied with ' Rule Britannia.' They
divided up into tenors, altos, and basses, and they gave a
first-rate rendering of their national song. Quite recently,
since the signing of peace, some British officers were in
a cafe in Cologne where the 'Wacht am Rhein' was played,
and the Germans were much surprised to see these
officers standing up while the air was being played. They
asked them why they stood, and the British officers
replied, 'W^ell, you see, we are the Watch on the Rhine.
Immediately every Britisher in the room replied with
'Rule Britannia,' sung with great feeling. At the first
note the senior German N.C.O. shouted 'Achtung' in a
voice of thunder, and every Gennan clicked his heels and
stood to attention, looking straight to his front without
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The Campaign ^1917
so much as a quiver of an eyelid. The Geniians then all
filed out and we sang 'God save the King'; many of the
prisoners joined in outside the hut. I think my French
friends were a bit shocked at the amount of good treatment
that was accorded to the Boche, but in my opinion, once
the enemy has been captured and has left the battlefield,
his person is sacred, and he must be treated with humanity
and common sense. Unfortunately, the Germans them-
selves are without this military virtue; here is an extract
of a letter which I wrote on April loth, 1917. ' This morn-
ing I saw one of our men, a private in the 5th Dorsets,
who had been taken prisoner by the Germans on Jan. nth,
and had just escaped. He was a walking skeleton. His
diet was one-quarter of a loaf a day and a plate of thin
soup ; sometimes he got a piece of meat the size of a lump
of sugar and sometimes a little coffee. One foot was
completely frozen and his toes were gangrenous. He had
had no treatment except that his toes were cut open
with scissors. He had never been allowed to wash. All
our men in that camp were covered with lice and boils.
This poor chap was quite listless and seemed never to
have had any pleasure. He was thirteen stone when
captured and now he is under eight stone. It will take
some forgetting what these brutes have done to our poor
fellows ! '
General Nivelle was now in command of the French
forces; he had made a successful offensive in the Autumn
of 1916, and had recaptured at Verdun all the tenitory
won by the Germans at great cost in their big Verdun
offensive. This victory was said to have been achieved
at very small cost, and our politicians at home had not
hesitated to point the moral and adorn the tale, comparing
this inexpensive French victory to General Gough's
costly victory on the Ancre. There was, however, a
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The Press and the General StaJ
strong suspicion in the British Army that the French
casualty returns were not strictly accurate. Anyhow,
this achievement secured for Nivelle the supreme com-
mand of the French Army, and General Joffre, who had
commanded since the beginning of the war, went into
retirement. Nivelle drew up a plan for 1917 in which
the main attack was to be carried out by the French
Army on the Chemin-des-Dames, and the British were
to do the containing attack in the Arras sector; the
British were to begin and, over and above any local
success which they might obtain, they were to pin down
as many German divisions as possible. Haig certainly
conformed to the French in every respect, and agreed
to undertake the minor role without a murmur, but it is
a great question whether this was the best way of using
the available forces. It is probable that great pressure
was brought to bear on Haig by the Prime Minister, and
that he (Haig) was not allowed to give free vent to his
genuine opinions. I cannot help thinking that had Foch
been then in supreme command he would have regarded
the forces under him as being composed of so many
'A' divisions and so many 'B' divisions quite regardless
of nationality. As it was, the French Army was exceed-
ingly tired and no wonder, for, up to the beginning of the
Somme offensive, they had carried the whole war on
their shoulders, and had taken a considerable share in
the Somme battle. Moreoever, at the beginning of 1917
there was some discontent among the poilus, as there
were many injustices in the French Army in regard to
leave, distribution of honours, etc., and it is doubtful
whether at the moment they could have carried out
successfully a gigantic offensive without the co-operation
of first-rate fresh divisions. The general attitude of the
senior officers of the French Army was lacking in confidence
88
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The Campaign of ic)ij
in the success of Nivelle's plan, and Nivclle himself
said that if it did not succeed during the first few days
it would not succeed at all.
Haig started his attack with some considerable success,
for he swept the enemy off the immensely strong fortress
of the Vimy Ridge; on the north the British reached the
outskirts of the town of Lens, and on the south they
advanced along the Scarpe as far as Rceux. This success
might have been even greater if we had at that period
of the war known how to take enemy trenches without
churning up the ground to such an extent that it took days
to make roads sufficiently good to carry heavy artillery.
The cavalry were used on the Third Army front, but most
people thought that they did not come into action till
twenty-four hours too late. They suffered very heavily
in the neighbourhood of Monchy-le-Preux. After the
first few days the enemy's resistance stiffened and the
fighting became exceedingly severe. Every one felt that
somehow or other we had only just missed a huge success,
but, as we had missed it, it seemed to most of us incredible
that we should go on attacking in that sector, with
the element of surprise completely absent. The enemy
had not fought well on the Vimy Ridge, and once again
it was proved that regular lines of trenches were quite
useless against a heavy concentration of artillery. But
as in most battles throughout this war on the Western
front, the enemy drew very clear deductions from his
initial defeat, and fought a losing fight with the utmost
skill and determination. He fought specially well in
the neighbourhood of Roeux and the chemical works;
abandoning his trenches he defended his ground with
groups of machine-gun nests skilfully concealed in the
rushes of the Scarpe Valley. These nests were sited
without any regularity, diamond-like so that each nest
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The Press and the General Stajff
protected its neighbour. This defensive system was so
successful that it was rapidly developed and improved
upon; each nest was given protection from enemy shell
fire by concrete structures, and thus the pill-box (which
was originally called the pillar-box) evolved from the
machine-gun nest. These pill-boxes were small fortresses
garrisoned by about a dozen men; they were completely
bomb-proof, and from them the machine-gunners could
fire in every direction. In our Flanders offensive later
on during this same year we found these pill-boxes to be
the most horrible obstacles to our rapid progress.
Our losses in the Scarpe Valley became very heavy,
and yet we continued to attack. The explanation no
doubt is very simple, namely, that we had to 'amuse' as
many German divisions as possible in order to help the
coming French offensive. Haig started his big attack
on April 9th, 1917, but previous to this date General
Gough had tried to force the Hindenburg line at a spot
where it hinged on to the old Hne, in the neighbourhood
of Bullecourt. For this attack he was without much
artillery, as all our guns were wanted farther south,
but he devised a plan whereby tanks were to take the
place of barrage fire and the infantry were to get through
the formidable wire in the wake of the tanks. For this
task he used Australian troops; the Australians had had
an awful winter in the Somme mud, following the most
desperate fight for the Pozieres ridge in the Autumn of
1916, and they were sorely in need of a rest, but in spite
of this they were still probably the finest attacking troops
in the world. If, therefore, this attack did not succeed,
it must be put down to an unskilful plan. The attack
was a most ghastly failure; the tanks lost direction;
even where they broke the wire, the wire immediately
sprang up again ; the losses were very great, and absolutely
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The Campaign of i()ij
nothing was achieved, except that the Australians felt
most bitterly towards General Goiigh, Possibly the staff
of the Tank Corps did also learn some most valuable
lessons.
Following this failure, as I have related above, there
came the successful attack of April gth, which ended in
very fierce and costly fighting along the Scarpe Valley.
Then the great French attack on the Chemin-des-Dames,
which, alas! was unsuccessful; certain French deputies
followed the fight from observation posts and they were
appalled at the losses. Returning to Paris, they made
\'igorous protests to the Minister of War, who called
for a return of casualties and then stopped the offensive,
dismissed General Nivelle, and put General Petain in
command in his stead. Petain, shortly after he had taken
over, went to Haig and told him that the French Army
was in a rotten state, that there were thousands of
mutineers and that the British must attack and continue
to attack throughout the rest of the season, and thus
secure for the French a complete rest from all fighting.
The situation was not pretty; Haig had humbly taken the
role that was allotted to him; he had done his part of the
job, on the whole, exceedingly well, and he was now told
that he must devise a new plan to fight the enemy single-
handed till the winter came on. This interference with
commanders in the field on the part of French politicians
caused a very bad impression at G.H.O. and made it
more difficult than ever for our military experts to submit
to the idea of a French Generalissimo. Haig had always
wished to carry out an offensive in Flanders, but the
season was now well advanced and it would take time
to change the centre of gravity from Arras to Ypres.
So far the fighting in 1917 had tended to prove that the
limited objective was much more reasonable than any
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The Press and the General Staff
idea of piercing completely the enemy's lines. P^tain
was of this opinion. Accordingly, the next step was to
capture the Wytschaete-Messines Ridge preparatory to
the larger offensive in the direction of Paschendaele.
Unfortunately, the enemy knew all about the state of
the French army, and therefore it was certain that when-
ever we attacked we should have the whole of the German
army opposite to us. Furthermore, the Germans were
pleased with the results of their submarine cam.paign,
and it was obvious that Russia would soon be out of the
war, so the state of morale in the German army was
manifestly better than during the Somme battle. The
Messines attack was entrusted to General Plumer and, in
the meanwhile, General Gough was sent north to take over
the sector between Plumer's army (the Second) and the
Belgians. This, to my mind, is one of the most difficult
things to understand in the whole war. Plumer stood very
high in the estimation of all those who had served under
him and, moreover, he knew the Ypres sector like no other
living soul. Gough had done fairly well in the latter
stages of the Somme and then had failed signally in his
attack at Bullecourt; immediately after this failure, he
was sent north to prepare for the biggest and most
important offensive the British ever undertook.
Before going on to describe these northern battles
there are many things yet to be said about the Battle of
Arras. Here are extracts of letters written by me.
'April loth, 1917. — Yesterday was a glorious day and
must be remembered alongside the 13th November, 1916,
as one of the great achievements of British arms. I had
reconnoitred the ground round Arras a few days before-
hand. The landscape is not unlike the weald between the
North and South Downs, but much less wooded, and
92
The Campaign of igiy
divided up by three straight French roads Hned with
trees. I stood on a small hill slightly south of Arras and
looked right across the valley to a hill called Monchy-
le-Preux (which is rather like Crooksbury Hill in Surrey).
Arras was like a town in a beautiful Turner drawing,
surrounded by trees, and beyond I could see the ruined
church of Mont Saint Eloi (this is like St Catherine's
Mount at Guildford), and the Vimy ridge. The bombard-
ment was terrific, more intense than any bombardment
during the palmiest days of last August. My correspon-
dents all went out at midnight previous to the attack;
they got on to the battlefield at about 3 a.m. A good deal
of shelling was going on, but it gradually died down, as
is usual before daybreak. I don't know whether this
calm took in the Boche, but it certainly took in the larks,
who gave us their sweetest songs. At 5.30 all the batteries
opened fire as one gun. It was still quite dark and each
gun flash told, and each shell that burst sent up a shower
of golden rain; added to these fireworks the Boche sent
up every variety of coloured rocket to signal to his
gunners that it was time for their counter-barrage. Soon
after daybreak a violent April shower came on with sleet
and snow and hail. Notwithstanding this storm, all our
airmen came out directly it was light enough to see, and
all our kite balloons went up. At one moment the sky
and the earth had the appearance of a room where
windows and doors are blown open and everything in the
room is scattered. In spite of these conditions each detail
of the attack was carried out like a book. The gunners'
fire was admirably directed by the airmen, and all counter
attacks were squashed. One Canadian coming back with
his arm shattered by a shell was asked by one of my
correspondents if he was in pain. 'Oh ! what does that
matter so long as we are beating them ! ' he replied. For
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The Press and the General Stajff
the last few days the exploits of our airmen have been
stupendous; their courage and skill, in spite of very heavy
losses, is sublime. No doubt this battle has been hell,
as all others have been, but our men can now keep their
heads in hell.'
'April 13th, 1917. — Yesterday I went on to the Vimy
Ridge and saw some of the Canadians who had done the
job. They all say that the Boche is not fighting nearly
so well as last year, but you have no idea of the weather.
WTien I started out there was a very hard frost, as on
the coldest days of winter; then there were a couple of
hours of sunshine, then a terrific hurricane like the worst
moments of an Atlantic gale, then a blizzard which lasted
all through the night. When you think of chaps Ijang
out with a leg blown off, you can hardly wonder
that everybody in the army wishes to murder those
correspondents who bring in 'the bank holiday touch.'
Neuville St Vaast was full of dead horses; I saw two of
them killed by shell splinters. The prisoners were more
dishevelled than ever they were last year; a more un-
military looking lot could not be imagined.'
'May 5th, 1917. — Yesterday I passed the day with the
flying men; the more I see of them the more impressed
I am. It is not that we are better at inventing or work-
manship or dash and daring than other countries, but we
have a higher all-round average. I believe that as in the
past we have been the great sailors of the world, so in
the future we shall be the great airmen. In other armies
the disciphne of fl3^ng men is slack; in ours it is superb.
I saw Ball; he had just got back from downing a Boche,
though he had got a bullet in his engine. He has now
accounted for thirty-nine of the enemy; he is a marvel.
94
The Campaign of i()ij
He is short and wiry, rather like a Welsh light-weight
boxer; his hair is longer and wilder than mine at its
wildest; he has quick alert eyes, wide apart, and he moves
his head just Uke a boxer; his appearance made me think
of the Fuzzie Wuzzies; he neither drinks nor smokes.'
'May loth, 1917. — Have you heard this story of the
Kaiser, who is very fond of going about in the parts of
France that are occupied by Germans. One day he saw a
little boy playing and he went up to him and spoke to
him kindly. Before going away he said rather pompously,
' Do you know who I am ? ' and the little boy answered,
' Je sais que t'es un Boche, mais je ne sais pas lequel.'"
During this Arras offensive Winston Churchill (who
was Minister of Munitions) came out on a visit to the
front, and I piloted him for two days. On one of these
days we lunched with the Chief and it was one of the
most unpleasant lunches that I have ever attended.
Haig was not pleased with the way things were going
in the valley of the Scarpe, and no doubt he was already
aware of the state of affairs in the French army, and he
was in no mood to regard politicians with a favourable
eye, least of all Winston. Possibly also Haig thought that
Winston was intriguing against him, but, though I know
that Winston did not approve of Haig's Flanders offensive,
he was, I am sure, a most loyal supporter of the Chief's
throughout igi8, both in good and bad fortune. Winston
had really come out to talk about tanks, and I fancy that
on this subject his conversation with Haig was all that
was satisfactory. As we were motoring towards the front
he asked me if I did not think it was very courageous
of Lloyd George to bring him back into power after the
GalHpoH affair. I answered that I thought he was the
courageous one in daring to show his face in public after all
P.G.s. H 95
The Press and the General Staff
the mistakes that he had made. I did not really think that
he was to blame for the Gallipoli failure, but I was annoyed
with him for going back to politics instead of sticking
to soldiering ; however, I was no doubt wrong, for, from
the army's point of view, he was a first-rate minister of
munitions and rendered incalculable service to his
country. He took my insults with good humour and we
spent a delightful afternoon together. We passed over
the Vimy Ridge at the point where the Bois de la FoHe
once stood and, beyond a sunken road on the forward
slope, we had a magnificent view of the Lens-Lievin
district. The light was behind us and we could distinguish
every detail through our glasses; any amount of shelling
was going on and we could not have had a better sample
of a ' paysage de guerre.' The next day we went to a small
machine-gun post on Greenland Hill from where we had
a splendid view of the Scarpe Valley. On the way home,
via Bapaume, we ran into a daylight raid which was
taking place in the neighbourhood of Croisilles; it was a
most curious sight, for the sun was shining from a clear
blue sky and yet, for a stretch of about three kilometres,
complete night was brought about by a smoke barrage,
and in the midst of this dark smoke the thermite shells
with their fiery tongues looked most diaboUcal. I did
not see Winston again till the Autumn of this year, just
after the Germans had made their successful counter-
attack in the Cambrai district. We were dining together
in Amiens at the Restaurant de la Cathedrale, and two
young subalterns, who had wine taken, sent him a note
saying, ' Are we winning the war ? ' Winston chucked it
across to me and said, 'What shall I answer.' So I simply
wrote on the same note, 'Wait and see.'
During the Arras offensive operations were confined
to the Third and First Army fronts; before the gth of
96
The Campaign of i<^ij
April, General Charteris had given us the general outline
of the offensive from the G.H.Q. point of view, but he
had not gone into details. Now, however, we were to go
north and reside with Plumer's Army for some time to
come, and General Harrington (Plumer's Chief of Staff)
received all the correspondents. Allied and British, and
gave them a complete lecture before each attack. The
first of these lectures took place the day before the
Messines offensive, and General Harrington began his
lecture with these momentous words, 'Gentlemen, I
don't know whether we are going to make history to-
morrow, but at any rate we shall change geography.'
He was right ; at, five o'clock the following morning
Hill 60 was a valley. He then went on to explain to us
how many tons of ammonal were underneath the Boche;
what troops were to take part in the attack; how the
artillery was disposed; exactly what German troops
were in the line and in reserve. The artillery barrage
map was itself a miracle of intricacy, worked out with
the utmost perfection of military science, with the pauses
clearly marked on each objective; the whole thing looked
like the astronomical reckonings of some expert in the
higher mathematics, and yet this complicated arrange-
ment, carried out by thousands of men, thousands of
guns, thousands of lorries, thousands of horses, was
absolutely adhered to during the attack, and there was
not five minutes difference with scheduled time even on
the final objective. The truth is that the Messines show
was a bijou attack of its kind, i.e. the kind that has a
limited objective; it did not represent an innovation in
tactics such as the Cambrai show later on, but it was a
perfect demonstration of that which before had only been
done imperfectly both on the French and British front.
No doubt the orders for this attack will be carefully
97
The Press and the General Staf
studied by all future staff college students, for it represents
a watershed in this great war. It required years of trial
and failure to reach this state of perfection, and almost
immediately these same methods became obsolete because
inventions and armaments were making such rapid
strides.
After the correspondents had digested this amazingly
interesting lecture of General Harrington's, they went off
to dine and sleep before motoring to a hiU-top in the
neighbourhood of the battle. There are not many hiUs
in Flanders, but the Messines-Wytschaete Ridge is just
the right distance from the Kemmel range, and it is
possible to get a good view of a battle in this neighbour-
hood without excessive danger, for one can run to ground
if the enemy's artillery becomes a nuisance. The day
previous to the attack had been a boiling hot day, but
a few drops of thunder rain cooled the night. The moon
was shining through clouds as in the Ruskin drawings
of Venice in Modern Painters. There was desultory
artillery firing, quite normal, and the usual number of
' Verey ' lights on both sides. When the great moment
came one huge mine went off a second before the others.
Then all down the line the rest followed. The sky was
dark enough still for the flames to make their full effect.
The hills of Flanders shook till it was difficult to stand;
at the same time there was a roar of guns such as has
never before been heard. The large number of heavy
batteries were impressive enough, but the drum-fire of
the field batteries was more terrifying still. The sound
is quite uninterrupted; it is exactly like the roll of a drum
that is used in music-halls before the star athlete dives
from the roof into a tank. One could not help thinking
of the months of suffering endured by our men in the
Ypres salient ; the suffering had to be reduced gradually
98
The Campaign of igij
by better trenches and more skilful engineering; then
came the moment to get a little of our own back. Was
ever vengeance more sweet or more complete ? The few
German survivors probably suffered more in ten minutes
than we had suffered in two and a half years. The first
batch of prisoners said that any defence was out of the
question; there was hopeless confusion, and our men
were on them and beyond them before they knew what
had happened. The battlefield itself was an extraordinary
sight ; many of the enemy had been killed by the concussion
of the mines and they were lying with cigars in their
mouths reading newspapers, and it was hard to believe
that they were not still alive. Our losses during the early
stages of the attack must have been extraordinarily Hght,
for I saw hardly any British corpses, but during the wait
that followed the attack, when the enemy saw that we
did not mean to press our advantage, his harassing fire
became very troublesome and our casualties increased.
One day on the ridge it was as though some one had a
pepper-pot full of shells and were sprinkling them from
above. Under such conditions the work of consolidation
had to be completed; this sort of job carries with it no
glory and no honours, and yet it is poisonously dangerous.
Herein lies the great drawback of the offensive with
limited objective; if the plan is perfectly conceived all
goes well on the day of the attack, but the moment that
objectives have been reached and movement stop, the
men who occupy the newly won territory become a target
for the enemy guns. On the other hand, the offensive
which seeks to pierce the enemy's lines, if it succeeds at
all, is much less costly and is more exhilarating to the
attacking troops, but if it does not succeed on the first
day, it can never succeed. During 1917 none of the Allied
attempts to pierce succeeded, except the Cambrai offensive;
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The Press and the General Stajff
the explanation of this great innovation in tactics will
come later.
Finding that we had gained a very big victory by means
of minute preparations on a vast scale, and yet had been
content to sit down on the position newly won, the
Germans can have had little difficulty in sizing up the
intentions of Haig; from the Battle of Messines onward
they must have foreseen the coming offensive farther
north. They began to construct pill-boxes all over the
place; these, like the machine-gun nests in the Scarpe
Valley, had no regular formation, except that each one
could cover another with protective fire. The weather,
which had been hot and line up till the end of July,
broke, and it rained continuously for three months.
Most of that Flanders country is below sea-level; the soil
is heavy clay and it is intersected with countless water-
courses. The big attack was launched on the 31st July,
and up to midday things were going very well for us;
from then onwards there was first a Scotch mist and then
a deluge. Our airmen could render no service. It was
shocking ill-luck; what success we should have had under
favourable conditions it is impossible to say. We know
from Ludendorff's memoirs that he was extremely anxious
about these attacks from the British; notwithstanding
the fact that there was no other fighting on the Western
front, he was hard put to it to prevent us breaking
through. Had we got well on towards Passchendaele
during the first few days, and could have made an attack
from the sea coast as well, it is quite possible that a
sensational victory might have been achieved, but this
was out of the question in such incessant downpours of
rain. The men in the front Hne areas were up to their
waists in water; their feet became swollen and useless;
the moral depression was ghastly. In order to carry up
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The Campaign of i()ij
shells to the guns and rations to the men, roads had to be
made entirely of wood. These showed up distinctly
on the Gennan photographs taken from aeroplanes,
and they shelled all our transport to blazes. Already from
Poperinghe the roads were kept under intense fire, and
from Ypres onwards the battlefield was a nightmare.
Under these circumstances was it wise to go on fighting
in this slough of despond? Even Haig's last reserve
corps (the Canadian) was involved before Passchendaele
was finally captured, but was it worth it ? No doubt Haig
had to go on attacking or else the Germans would have
gone for the French and there might have been disaster.
However, when the whole army was absolutely exhausted
(each division having been in the boiling pot two or three
times), one of the most brilliant and daring offensives
was carried out under Sir Julian Byng in the neighbour-
hood of Cambrai, but it was too late; the tired troops
could not force a big decision at that stage of the season.
As the offensive in Flanders dragged on, it became obvious
that Plumer handled his army with infinitely greater
skill than Gough. Plumer made his objectives more
and more limited, and the perfection of detail in all his
arrangements was remarkable. He took over more and
more of Gough's front, and it is doubtful whether any
commander in the world could have done better than
he did under the circumstances; but at best it was a very
costly affair, and the sufferings of the men surpassed
anything hitherto experienced by any troops in any area
of the war at any time of the war. A French army under
General Antoine co-operated with the British in the
neighbourhood of Houthoulst forest and they accomplished
all that was asked of them with the most consummate
skill, but they were not placed in a key position and their
losses were insignificant compared with our own.
lOI
The Press and the General Stajff
During this period the great French aviator Guj^nemer
was killed; he was brought down in the neighbourhood
of Houthoulst forest, and, later on, the ground where he
may have fallen was captured by our men. Two of my
French correspondents saw a chance of a 'scoop'; and
they determined to set forth and find the remains of
Guynemer's plane. Of course, on such a battlefield there
is a wreckage of countless planes and those correspondents
had little difficulty in finding a derehct machine. They
invented a purely imaginary story about the Tommies
discovering the plane and, out of reverence for Guynemer,
tying small bits of the propeller round their necks as
mascots. This made other correspondents furious, who
denied the 'canard' in their next articles. I quote this
as it is one of the rare instances of a search after the
clap-trap that occurred during the war. It was not one
of the censorship rules of the General Staff to insist upon
the truth, and I am sure that this should have been
otherwise. Had I had to censor the Guynemer story
myself, I would never have allowed it to pass. Further-
more, no 'scoops' were allowed at all; correspondents
were invariably accompanied by an officer, and the
officer disgorged all information, gleaned from whatever
source, even if the correspondents were unwilling to do
so. This excellent principle emanated from the British
correspondents, who saw with admirable good sense that
the war was too important to admit of individual rivalry,
and that the only way to cover such a vast front was to
pool all information.
An instance occurred during this Flanders offensive
of Press camouflage which shows what a dangerous
weapon it can be. The Canadians made a containing
attack in the neighbourhood of Lens. We wanted the
enemy to think that this was likely to be a big offensive
102
i
i
The Campaign 0/1917
and to withdraw divisions from the north. General
Charteris therefore told me to make much of it in the
Press. I thought it would not do to use all the big Paris
papers for this purpose or else the Boche would smell a
rat, so I simply threw out dark hints in one Paris paper
(the Debats, whose admirable correspondent was M.
Henri Bidou — every word of his articles was carefully
studied by the German General Staff) and one provincial
paper, the Telegramme de Boulogne. Unfortunately,
General Charteris did not inform the officer in charge of
the British Press of his intention to magnify the Lens
affair, and so the note struck in the British Press was
exactly the opposite to the attitude of the Debats and the
Telegramme de Boulogne. For the purpose of throwing
dust in the eyes of the German General Staff I consider
that this discrepancy was ideal, but it annoyed the British
Army Commander concerned, as, naturally enough, he
only read the British papers. Possibly it did deflect
some four to five German divisions, but what was not
foreseen was that pubUc opinion in America was adversely
affected, inasmuch as they accused the British of not
being able to accomplish their designs, which were
announced beforehand with a flourish of trumpets.
The Allied Press had by now become a very flourishing
concern — so much so, in fact, that the articles of the
French correspondents concerning British operations
were so well documented and so well presented that
Monsieur Painleve sent for the principal editors of French
papers and complained to them that their issues contained
nothing but news about British operations, and there was
never any mention made of French fighting and the
poilus were beginning to resent this. The editors rephed
that the British Staff gave their correspondents such
admirable opportunities for following operations, whereas
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The Press and the General Stajff
the French Staff held them at a distance. As a result
of this interview, I soon had at my headquarters two
French officers who wished to know how I managed their
own Press. I told them that if I had had any success I
thought it was due to the fact that the correspondents
had unlimited facihties for visiting battle areas and that
they were allowed to consult all summaries of intelligence
and operations. A mission was founded shortly afterwards
at French G.H.Q., but in my opinion they never gave
their correspondents the same facilities that we gave ours,
and therefore they never got the same value out of them.
"What the public wants in war time is facts; it does not
care a hang for the lyrical descriptions of the dash of the
poilu or the self-control of the Tommy, but precise
accurate detail both in good and bad fortune.
Here are some extracts of letters deahng with the
Flanders offensive.
'7.8,17. — The aspect of this battlefield is exactly the
same as that of Verdun, the Somme, the Ancre, Vimy,
Messines, etc. Yesterday there was a November mist
and therefore the war looked itself. No one should ever
paint this war in summer time. Gaunt wizard trees
and stinking marshes — villages like spiUikins — dead
horses — dead men — bursting shells and silent agile
soldiers — the deafening noise of countless batteries, and
above all the smell of three years' decay. The smell of
Flanders trenches goes back as far as five miles behind
the Hne, and it is quite different to a new corpse, which has
a sort of sweet sickly smell.
' One of our airmen the other day had many fights with
different enemy aircraft, and was obliged to descend to
within a few hundred feet of the ground; finally he had
a steeplechase, pursued by a Boche, rising like a driven
104
1
I
The Campaign 0/ 1 9 1 7
partridge over each hedge and ducking again on the other
side. This continued till the Bocheran out of ammunition
and then it was the other way on. The duel ended by the
Boche failing to avoid a forest and crashing into the trees.
'You see, the fight over here is some fight. All the
great episodes of great wars happen over and over again
every single day. Battles go on for months instead of
hours, and there is never a moment of silence or respite
from danger day or night.'
The Canadians now made their containing attack
(which has been referred to before) in the neighbourhood
of Lens.
Extract. — ' 16.8. 17. — It is difficult for any one to realise
what a modern assault is, but I will try to give you an
idea. I am not speaking of the days of preparation
beforehand, because that would be too technical; but on
the actual day before the assault, you pound the enemy
trenches and he replies by pounding yours. When you
have levelled him out, you run across; this sounds simple
enough, but in the meantime the Boche is levelling you
out and so you have a turmoil of fighting infantry under
a tornado of shells. The whole battle area becomes
filled with smoke, and out of this chaos the airmen have
to make sense and reason and report back to H.Q's.
When the enemy has found out where the attacking troops
have got to, he turns all his guns on to them and then
counter-attacks. However, our chance comes when he is
assembling his infantry for counter-attack; our airmen
have to spot his assembly place and our guns have to
deal with it. This is where liaison between aeroplane
gun, and rifle comes in. Yesterday and last night eight
counter-attacks were dealt with by the perfect co-opera-
tion of all arms; but think of the poor men who are
105
The Press and the General Staff
within a quarter of an inch of death and mutilation not
once but a million times during these proceedings. The
Boche will probably hold on to Lens a bit, but he will
continue to lose heavily. On my way up I passed through
a Canadian Brigade on the march; they were the same
men that I used to see at Hythe at the beginning of the
war; then they seemed to be lacking in discipUne, though
they were very fine in appearance; yesterday I thought
that I had never seen such discipline. Our wounded
were coming back with their clothes saturated with blood,
and that expression of divine patience that is beyond all
praise when one knows what they have to endure.*
I received a message from G.H.O. that this attack was
coming off and I suggested that, as it was summer time,
we should spend the night on one of the neighbouring
hills, so as to be present for the opening barrage. Un-
fortunately, the attack w^as postponed twenty-four hours
and my Colonel forgot to let me know. It became very
cold during the night, and most of these gentlemen,
being unaccustomed to open air life, passed a very
uncomfortable night and were furious with me when
they found there was no fight, especially as I slept ex-
tremely well. Monsieur Matagne, the correspondent of
the Nation Beige, was the handy man of the party, for he
had roughed it in the Congo and he was up to every dodge
of camp Ufe; we had no matches and yet he managed to
make a fire in an old German dug-out, which eventually
caught fire and made a horrible bright blaze. The Boche
could not help seeing such a light and their gunners
loosed off a few shells, which fell in a wood about a
kilometre to the rear, where our chauffeurs had parked
their cars and were preparing to have a comfortable
night. However, we soon got the fire out and no harm
io6
The Campaign 0/ 1 9 1 7
was done. My friend Monsieur de Maratray surpassed
himself on this occasion; he professed himself at all
times to be a lover of the simple life, and one of his
excellent theories was that we moderns wore too many
clothes, and that we should do better to imitate the
ancient Greeks and let the air of heaven nourish our
skins. At times he put this theory into practice, for he
used to do his Swedish exercises in the garden of the
Allied Press chateau dressed in nothing more substantial
than a shooting cap. On other occasions, however, he
would clothe himself inordinately, putting on several
coats, several capes, several caps, and several helmets,
blue spectacles and anti-dust goggles. This was one of
these occasions, but, in spite of such precautions, he seemed
paralysed \\'ith cold, and, striking the attitude of Rodin's
Balzac, he remained like a fancy dress Patience on a monu-
ment, motionless and mute throughout the entire night.
Considerable advance was made by the Canadians
during this attack, and my French correspondents got
very much excited at the thought that Lens might fall;
I did not think it likely and told them as much, but they
were bent on getting as near to the town as possible. I
took a party up to an O.P, in front of the Bois des Hiron-
delles, and from here they got a magnificnet view of the
town and surrounding country. One of the party was
Monsieur Serge Basset of the 1*6111 Parisien; on the
following day he was again extremely anxious to see if
he could get into the town, and he went out with Signor
Bedolo and Monsieur Ruffin under the guidance of one
of my officers, Captain Hale. Monsieur Basset was at
all times a man of complete fearlessness, but he had not
got a good eye for ground and he did not realise that,
when in the immediate presence of the enemy, certain
precautions were absolutely essential. On this occasion
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The Press and the General Stajff
there was a complete calm after the storm of the last
few days and Captain Hale was able to conduct his party
right on to Reservoir Hill, the eastern slopes of which
were still occupied by the enemy. In spite of his warnings,
that in such a forward area the greatest caution must
be observed, Monsieur Basset stood up in a shell hole,
exposing at least half of his body and a German sniper
shot him right through the chest. It was a very difficult
situation for Captain Hale, as he had to get Monsieur
Basset under some sort of cover, the while Signor Bedolo
went for some stretcher-bearers. As soon as these
appeared, naturally the gunners started firing and
plastered the hill-top with shells. Poor Basset did not
survive long, and died without pain about forty minutes
after he had been hit. His comrades, Ruffin and Bedolo
and Captain Hale, behaved under the circumstances with
a fine contempt of their own personal safety, but the body
could not be moved till after nightfall.
The loss of Basset cast a terrible gloom on our mess,
for he was an enchanting personality; he was like some
French knight of the Middle Ages — chivalrous, brave,
and honourable. He utterly despised those who shirked
the dangers of the war on the ground that they were
indispensable to their country owing to their artistic
genius or what not. He loathed the German, On one
occasion he fired off an eight -inch howitzer, and he said
with a look of ecstacy on his face, 'Peut-^tre cet obus
va tomber sur la gueule d'un Boche ! ' He had perfect
manners and a delicious sense of fun. He was hke Cyrano
without the bombast. I shall never cease to be proud
that I enjoyed his friendship, and I shall always regret
that his untimely death deprived the world of one of
the few perfect gentlemen.
I am pleased to say that our army gave him a funeral
io8
V
"•■ij^-i.-A--:!:»»'
I
The Campaign of i()ij
with full military honours; it was the most impressive
miUtary funeral that I have ever seen. The Cathohc
service was held in a little chapel at Noeux-les-Mines, a
smaU mining town undt" the enemy's shell-fire, and there
was a rumble of guns hroughout that lovely summer
afternoon. The priest who said the service was wearing
a cope of sumptuous design, and he intoned the magni-
ficent 'Deus Irae' with fervid dignity. Six N.C.O's of
a battaHon of the Buffs stood at attention either side of
the coffin, which was covered with the French tricolour
flag, and on the top of the coffin was the Cross of the
Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre, which had been
specially sent from Paris by the Minister of War. There
was httle light other than that of the tall candles that
surrounded the coffin. As the coffin was carried out,
I noticed that the senior sergeant had no less than eight
wound stripes. The coffin was taken to the cemetery
on a limber, the band playing the Dead March in Saul;
the road was Hned with soldiers with reversed arms and
bowed heads; the beauty of this gesture is indescribable,
indeed; the beauty of the ceremonial of a British military
funeral is one of the finest things in the modern world.
After the coffin had been lowered into the grave, a volley
was fired and the bugles sounded the last post. There was
then a pause of some five minutes while the attention
of all the mourners was concentrated on the dead hero;
after this pause the reveille was sounded by the bugles;
the drums then beat reveille accompanied by the fifes
playing the reveille tune, hke some traditional Morris
dance, as though the spirit had left the body and had
become part of eternity; thus grief was finished and
destiny fulfilled. My French friends were immensely
impressed with the amount of tradition that was still
alive in our British customs. Before the war they had,
109
The Press and the General Stajff
I think, the idea that we were a race of shopkeepers, now
they saw that our roots went deep down into the soil of
our country and that our sap was nourished with true
poetry. Once during the previous winter we had been
visiting Arras and the trenches in that neighbourhood,
and on our return journey we had passed through a
small village, three parts destroyed by shell-fire ; there
was a thick winter mist and everything in nature oozed
moisture; the sun was set and the hght was fast failing.
In this village a Highland battaUon was billeted, and at
retreat the pipes were playing a lament to slow time;
with their tin hats and their khaki shirts they looked
like some of Caesar's legionaries. They were extremely
stalwart, and the virility of their appearance contrasted
strangely with the tenderness of their lament, and yet
this sad tune was the very expression of the spirit of
nature at that moment; these great traditions are the
symbols of the great qualities of an ancient race; they
compel admiration and respect, and I hope they will
never fall into disuse, even though the league of nations
may triumph in overcoming war.
If I had succeeded with the French Press contrary to
all forecast and precedent, I think it was due to two
reasons : (i) that I like French people (I like even their
faults); (2) that I like Bohemians and hate people who
cover themselves with a great hide of respectability :
I have always lived among artists, where there is no class
and no grade, and it was in France that I served my
social apprenticeship. I left Eton at the age of seventeen
and went to the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris; during
my second year I was billeted at the pension of a certain
Madame Casaubon, who was one of the most charming
women that I have ever known. Under her hospitable
roof were gathered together the most extraordinary
no
The Campaign 0/ 19 17
antagonistic groups of people that could be imagined.
In the first place she kept a school for small boys, and the
teachers of these boys were young men preparing for
their baccalaitreat : she gave them board and lodging,
and in return they taught the boys in their spare moments.
All these students belonged to the 'extreme left' of
politics, in fact they were anarchists; at the same time
there were certain civil servants in Government employ,
among others a certain Monsieur le Sage, who was secre-
tary to the Colonial minister of the time, Monsieur le
Bon, who was the man who put the high wooden palisade
round Dreyfus on the Devil's Island to prevent him
seeing the view. The Dreyfus case was in full s\ving, and
every evening these students waged a most violent
warfare against the civil servants on the question of the
gviilt of Dreyfus and Jews in general. Their language
was violent and insulting, and yet Madame Casaubon had
a kind of power over both camps that was miraculous;
night after night I used to sit at her table and try to
analyse her extraordinary social gifts. This apprentice-
ship helped me with my journaUsts, and I was never the
least disturbed by their individual and combined mutinies,
which were of frequent occurrence. For great occasions
I had certain parlour tricks which they liked : I remember
once in Belgium we were to receive at luncheon the visit
of the French journalists attached to the French G.Q.G.
My own correspondents asked me to try and be at my
best as they had already sung my praises to their con-
freres. Towards the end of the feast every one became
rather merry, and we all began to imitate the noises of
animals, and when it was my turn I imitated ducks
lapping up weed on a pond, and this deUghted our guests
so much that they all cried ' Voila ce qu'il nous faut pour
notre mission au G.O.G ! Donnez nous un commandant
P.G.S. I III
The Press and the General Staf
qui salt faire le canard.' To which I replied 'Donnez
moi un joumaliste qui ne sait pas faire des canards.'
For extreme cases of open revolution I had a prescription :
for many years I have played an eighteenth century ivory
flute such as was used by Frederick the Great. This httle
flute has an exquisite tone capable of soothing the most
diabolical passions, and it rarely failed to produce its effect.
Whether it was the Hkeness to Frederick the Great or
the infinite charm of the old English airs that I used to
play I don't know, but 'le commandant et sa flute'
became an institution and made them wiUing in return
to submit to the very slight discipline that was essential.
Just after I left them in order to go to my new job, they
gave a dinner on the anniversary of the foundation of the
Allied Press; all through the meal farcical telegrams were
brought in to me in official envelopes as though from
signals. They were, of course, composed by the corre-
spondents, and some of them were extremely funny;
I remember one which was supposed to come from General
Cambronne of Waterloo fame and said, 'Tout est oubli^.'
Later in the evening the officer who had taken over from
me was about to propose my health ; he intended making
a little speech, but his inspiration forsook him and he
stood getting redder and redder, without being able to
produce a single word. At last one of the correspondents
said 'Tout est oublie,' and there were shrieks of laughter,
which relieved the awkwardness of the situation.
Shortly after I had returned to Flanders, General
Charteris sent for me and ordered me to take charge of
all the Press units attached to our armies; recently there
had been a certain amount of trouble with the British
Press, and the correspondents had threatened to down
pens and refuse to send home any despatches. I don't
know what the trouble was about, as it occurred before
112
The Campaign 0/ 1 9 1 7
I took over. My first chief had been Colonel Hutton
Wilson, and he had been appointed to another job some
months back. My second chief was Colonel Fawnthorpe
— a famous sportsman and a most charming man, whom I
was most sorry to lose. I was sorry also to leave my foreign
correspondents, with whom I lived in perfect harmony
and for whom I shall ever have the deepest affection.
I was apprehensive also of becoming the master censor
of the army (as regards Press); I had had experience
of the fury of politicians over mistakes in censorship,
and I knew that there was great public hostility at home
towards the censorship in France, because the names of
units were so little mentioned except in the case of
Colonial units; besides, the British correspondents were
in open revolt, and the situation generally seemed to me
thorny. I felt also that my new duties would be princi-
pally those of organisation and that I should be kept
too much on an office stool. However, one of the advan-
tages and one of the drawbacks of the army is that one
has to do what one is told.
The British correspondents were very sorry to lose
Colonel Fawnthorpe, but they in no way visited their
discontent upon me; indeed, from now onwards till the
end of the war I never had a word of difference with any
of them. I found Mr Perry Robinson of The Times,
Mr Percival Philips of the Daily Express, Mr Beach
Thomas of the Daily Mail, Mr Philip Gibbs of the Daily
Chronicle, Mr Simms of the United Press of America, and
Mr McKenzie of the Associated Press, also of America.
The British correspondents had been in France since
the system of accredited correspondents was first insti-
tuted; they were men who knew their job from A to Z,
and they worked with untiring zeal; during operations
they sent a despatch home every single day. There
113
The Press and the General Stajf
had been incessant fighting since April 9th, and I found
them vety much over tired and yet sticking to their
highly responsible work with the utmost tenacity. \'\'hat-
ever any one ma^'' think of the respective styles or methods
of the correspondents, or of their psychologic interpre-
tations of the emotions of this ghastly drama, I can
testify to the thorough seriousness of their endeavour.
They were fully aware that their duty was to inform
the near relatives at home of the doings of their men
folk, and they spared no pains to get at the truth. It
is not for me to criticise their achievement; that is the
province of the public. I can simply say that they did
not spare themselves, and I hope that the Government
will one day see that they are properly rewarded. ^ They
were not always in the front Une, but every day one or
other of them was in a forward area, and at the same
time they had the necessary tact to get on the friendly
side of the staffs of all units. They knew that I had not
the smallest wish that they should not tell the truth as
fully as possible, and they have informed me on several
occasions that, had there been no censorship, they would
have written in just the same strain. If any one ever cares
to consult the duplicate files of the correspondents'
despatches, he will see that there are no big alterations
and that many articles went home untouched by my
censors. The correspondents were as much in sympathy
with me as I was with them; we were out to help each
other in all good faith. During this Flanders offensive
they spoke of the angelic patience of the men and of their
great sufferings; they did not actually say that the task
was impossible, but they gave clearly the impression that
to fight the whole German army, on that narrow strip
of land between the Belgian inundations (on the north)
1 These gentlemen have since been knighted.
114
The Campaign of 1 9 1 7
and the industrial valley of the Lys (on the south) in
torrents of rain, was almost hopeless.
The representatives of the American Press used to
billet and work with the British correspondents, but I
never thought that two correspondents was sufhcient
to keep the vast continent of America infonned of our
doings, and I am not surprised that the Americans never
realised the greatness of our military effort. I immediately
applied to my chiefs to allow me to form a separate unit
for the American Press, and this was eventually granted.
In 1918 our American Press unit was on the road to being
the success that the AlUed Press had been. When I first
came to G.H.Q. there was only one American correspon-
dent, Mr Frederick Palmer; he worked like a Trojan
on our behalf during the Somme battle and then went
to America to lecture on our achievements. The amount
of trouble and risk he took to convince his countrymen
that we were great fighters was amazing.
About this time also I started a Neutral Press; at
first it was only an auxiUary to the Allied Press, but it
gradually became a seperate unit and yielded admirable
results. It seemed to me absurd that neutrals should
only hear the German point of view, and it was absurd
also that we should not use this means of conveying
unpleasant news into Germany. There was certainly
some risk, for these gentlemen might have left our front
and have gone straight into German}^ but there is very
little military news that is worth much when it is three
weeks old, and that little we naturally did not communi-
cate to neutrals. As a matter of fact most of those who
came out stayed as permanent correspondents and were
very grateful for the confidence that was placed in them.
The following is a list of those that were attached to G.H.O.
MM. Belaustegregoitia, Maeztu, Calvet, Bolin (Spanish),
115
The Press and the General StaJ
Mjelde (Norwegian), Major Goudet, Castell, Zimmermann,
(Switzerland), Van Hoiiten, De Tong, Van Shrive, Dr
Geyl (Holland), Brantnig, Nordstrom, Cederschiold, Mr
Henriksson (Sweden). Of these, Mr Cederschiold, Mr
Henriksson, Major Goudet, Mr Maetzu, and Mr Bolin
became permanent correspondents and followed the
campaign with passionate interest ; some of them actually
applied for commissions in the British Army after the
armistice.
Besides the British, American, Allied, and Neutral
Press units, I had under my command the photographic
and cinematographic section. Since the beginning of
the war this section had been run in a haphazard fashion,
and the War Office had not conceived any higher aim
for photographers and cinema men than to provide
material for our cheap illustrated Press. As the war
dragged on, the propaganda value of photos and films
was appreciated, but there had never been any serious
attempt to produce a methodical photographic record of
the war. For this purpose it would have been necessary
to have several operators with each army and a reserve
at G.H.Q, to throw into any part of the Hne as occasion
demanded. I could never get sanction for such an
estabhshment until the War Museum took an interest in
the matter and then it was too late, for the necessary
authority from the War Office did not arrive at G.H.Q.
till the armistice. At the moment of taking over my new
job there were only two photographers, Lieut. J. W. Brooke
and Lieut. E. Brookes, and they had to cover something
like twenty corps every day and get back with their
plates to a small chateau in the neighbourhood of Hesdin.
These two men worked incredibly hard and showed any
amount of pluck, but it was more or less luck whether
they ran into good material for photography. Lieut. J. W.
Ii6
The Campaign q/ 1 9 1 7
Brooke had served in King Edward's Horse and had
won the D.C.M.; as an official photographer he gave
proof of exceptional courage. He was always in the fore-
front of the battle; he had taken part in numerous
dayhght raids and patrols in order to attain records of
those episodes of battle that no man can imagine; on
many occasions men were killed all round him. An
appropriate reward would have been a V.C; but though
I recommended him time and again for a M.C., he never
got more suitable recognition than the O.B.E.
I was at once impressed with our lack of operators
and lack of organisation in this branch, and I sent one
of my officers, Captain Holland, to iind what the French
were doing They, of course, had something like forty
operators on their front and a most perfect system of
recording every phase of the campaign. Captain Holland
made a report which afterwards formed the basis of a
discussion which took place at the War Office. For the
moment operations were in full swing and no reforms
were possible; Lieut. Bartholomew was sent out from
England as being an expert in photographic matters,
and I found him to be extremely clever and enterprising,
and till the end of the campaign he worked wonders with
his scanty material. As soon as winter came on and there
was a lull in the fighting. Captain Holland, Lieut. Bartho-
lomew, and I journeyed to London and took part in a
conference at the War Office. Sir Reginald Brade,
Sir George Riddell, Colonel Fisher and Major Holt
(representing Lord Beaverbrook) were present besides
ourselves. We stated our case and showed that, with
such inadequate numbers of operators, we could not
compete with the French or even with our own Colonies
in the matter of propaganda, and that the photographic
record which we should hand down to posterity would
117
The Press and the General Staff
be inadequate and trivial. We recommended that there
should be official photographers with each army (at least
two to each army) with a proper reserve at G.H.Q. No
one disagreed with our suggestions, but after the meeting
was over I was informed privately that nothing could
be done because Sir Reginald Brade was afraid to take
any action independent of Lord Beaverbrook, and that
Lord Beaverbrook was expecting to be made Minister
of Information (with portfolio), and until this appointment
was ratified he refused to sanction any reforms no matter
how urgently they were needed. It seemed to me a
'non sequitur' that Sir Douglas Haig's armies should
be kept short of photographers because Lord Beaverbrook
wanted to be a Minister of the Crown. However, even
after Lord Beaverbrook had been appointed Minister of
Information hardly any more operators arrived in France,
and therefore some of the greatest episodes in our mihtary
history will go unrecorded except by means of the lurid
imaginations of the ' Jazz ' painters that happen to be the
fashion of the day. Brookes was shortly afterwards
sent to Italy, but Brooke continued to the end to do
splendid work in France and Belgium, and Bartholomew
certainly achieved what no other man could have done
in the way of making bricks without straw. Considering
that the number of official photographers was totally
inadequate, our War Office made a great mistake in
forbidding cameras to be used except by offtcial photog-
raphers. It would not have been wise to allow every
officer to have a camera, but from the record point of
view it would have been a good thing to allow at least
one or two per battalion or battery. General Cox, who
was at one time head of the Intelligence branch in France,
was emphatic on the point that we had never gained
the slightest useful information from enemv photographs
ii8
The Campaign of 1 9 1 7
taken with private cameras. Our principal cinema
operator was Lieut. Macdowell, M.C.; he started his career
at the front under the guidance of Colonel (then Capt.)
Fawnthorpe, M.C., who was an admirable guide in front
line areas. Showing great enterprise and daring, Mac-
dowell provided the bulk of the material that went to
form our big war films, and he may well be proud of his
achievement. It cannot be said that great literary talent
was displayed at home by those who composed the titles
for these pictures.
There was also a photographer attached to the Cana-
dians, and one to the Australians (Capt. Wilkinson).
Captain Wilkinson produced a superb set of photo-
graphs. Of course, it was much easier to cover one corps
than twenty, but if any one should doubt the value of
photographic records, let him exaniine the collection
taken by Captain Wilkinson of the great advance of
the Australians along the Somme in 1918. The series
dealing with the capture of Mt. St Ouentin are specially
fine; in them one sees the Australian infantry attacking
in open order with the German infantry firing at them.
These photographs are equally valuable as historical
records or as text-book illustrations for training recruits.
Besides the photographers attached to the Colonial
corps there were also correspondents. Unfortunately,
I did not know the Canadian and New Zealand
correspondents as intimately as I could have wished,
but I became a very close personal friend of Mr Bean
(Australia), for whom I had the greatest admiration.
Here again the task of a correspondent who only wrote
about the operations of one corps was much easier, but
to give first-rate accounts of operations is never easy.
Mr Bean's cables were perfect; he would watch a battle
from a shell hole with his notebook in hand, and he would
119
The Press and the General Stajff
describe the special features of each fight hke an im-
pressionist painter. He knew almost every man in the
corps and his great personal courage made him respected
by every one. Outside his own special work he had many
great qualities and he thought deeply on all human
tendencies. He told me that the Australians had the
highest admiration for our Navy, and thought the
particular blend of initiative and discipUne in the senior
service was perfect; they admired our guards division
but thought that the Prussian discipline, typical of the
guards, did not produce such fine fighters as the Australian
elasticity. They thought that the average Tommy was
disgracefully servile and that his extreme obedience
killed all cleverness and originality. Bean himself thought
that many of our important appointments were made
through influence and class preference, and that we were
often content to put up with second-rate men in high
places when first-rate ones were available all the time.
To my mind Bean had but one fault, namely that he was
too partial to his countrymen ; but his was a high-minded
patriotism, and I must admit that most of his criticisms
of the Mother Country were justified. I wish that some
of our big lecture associations would invite him over here
and ask him to tell the British pubhc throughout the land
what he told me in our conversations during the war.
Bean is now writing a history of the AustraHans achieve-
ments in the war, and it should be one of the most interest-
ing of all war books, for he has seen and felt. We make a
great mistake in choosing historians who work solely
from documents; facts need inspiration as well as fiction.
The French know this and they appointed the ' Officiers
informateurs, ' to whom reference has been made in the
preface. These officers were men who, in civil life,
followed the profession of letters, and they were attached
120
The Campaign of i()ij
to the Staffs of armies only after having had experience
of front-Hne work. One of their duties was to collect
dramatic stories from the fighting troops; from these
stories they compiled short pamphlets, which appeared
from time to time under the heading 'En marge du
communique.' Their other duty was to act as haison
between the General Staff (operations and intelligence)
and war correspondents and visitors. Our British
correspondents were obliged to collect information from
the 'G' or 'I' officers of armies or corps, and during
offensives this was not always quite convenient. The
' Officiers informateurs ' had the situation at their fingers'
ends by the time the correspondents called; also, when
visitors arrived they were capable of giving a little lecture
on the problems of the army front and of imparting to
them some military knowledge before they went into
the front-line areas. I knew one of these officers. Lieu-
tenant M^nabrea, who was the 'Offtcier informateur' of
the First French Army. I made his acquaintance on
the Somme; he was then serving with the Vingtieme corps
as a chasseur Alpin. He had fought with great gallantry
as a light infantryman and had had his hand and arm
crumpled up with German machine-gun bullets; he was
about forty years old and much better educated than the
average EngHshman. His lectures on operations were
models of precision and clarity, and all that he wrote
had the quality of inspiration that comes to a man who
has held his life in his hand not once but a hundred times.
My first object, in taking over all the Presses, was to
make our system of censorship more elastic. One of our
greatest difficulties was to see that the correspondents'
despatches tallied, not only with events, but with the
official Press Communique; for instance, if the correspon-
dents were to announce that Passchendaele was taken
121
The Press and the General Stajff
and the comniimique did not mention the fact, the fat
would be in the fire. Very often correspondents, calling
at a Divisional headquarters on their way back from the
front, would be told that such and such a place had
fallen into our hands; by the time they reached their
billet, the place might have been taken back by the
Germans, and by the time again that the communique
was issued it may have been retaken by our troops.
Fortunately, we estabhshed very close relations with
Major Boraston, the officer at operations advanced G.H.Q.
who drafted the communique, and thus we synchronised
our information. If there were any doubt as to the exact
deliniteness of the situation, the conditional tense would
be used such as 'The position around Passchendaele is
not quite clear; the town appears to be in our hands.'
As to naming regiments who had done well, we adopted
the following plan. Sometimes the mention of Sussex
troops, Yorks or Lanes, etc., did not give away the
composition of a division as other battahons of these
regiments existed in other divisions; in such cases we
allowed the naming of these troops to pass; otherwise
we waited to hear from divisions themselves whether they
had actually lost prisoners to the enemy, in which case
no harm could be done. It must not be forgotten that
in a long war like this, with everything depending on
man power, the order of battle is a very important thing,
and, if through lack of care and censorship, information
is brought to the knowledge of the enemy, the result is
loss of life among our own men. Moreover, as it is
against the existing rules of censorship for correspondents
to bestow praise or blame, it would be better for the
communique to give the lead in the matter, which indeed
was the case during the last months of the war.
The actual collecting of news on such a vast front was
122
The Campaign of i()ij
a very difficult matter; the system of pooling which had
been initiated by the British correspondents was now
carried a step farther. Correspondents went forth from
all four Press units, British, Allied, Neutral, and American,
also the operators from the photographic section; some
of them visited one corps front, others another; some
went to aerodromes, others to tank battalion head-
quarters or gimner group commanders. Each one
brought back some bit of information and, immediately
on returning, the officer in charge of each batch of corre-
spondents communicated his story to those on duty
in my office either by word of mouth or by telephone,
and from my office it went out again to all press units.
Thus I became a clearing house for news. The British
and American despatches were sent by cable generally
from Montreuil, and the signal master undertook to send
so many words a day provided the messages w-ere
delivered at his office by six o'clock in the evening; they
were conveyed by despatch rider from British Press
headquarters to Montreuil. The correspondents did
not as a rule get back from the front till 2 p.m., and then
the despatches had to be sent off between 4 and 4.30 ; in
this brief space of time they had to be written and cen-
sored. Luckily the officers under me were first-rate men
and could do their job without referring to me, except
on rare occasions. The French, Italian, Spanish, and
Swiss articles were sent by despatch rider to Paris, and
the other neutral articles were sent to London by the
King's messenger's bag. It was very important that all
despatches, concerning England and France, should
appear in London and Paris on the same day. The co-
ordination of the supply and transport of news from the
front to all parts of the world needed ceaseless attention.
I am convinced, however, that it is impossible to dispense
123
The Press and the General Staf
with conespondents in war time; they know the technique
of their job, and it should be quite easy for the General
Staff to put them on the right hnes. The public and the
editors of newspapers not unnaturally suspect official
eyewitnesses who are soldiers; it is true that the 'ofiiciers
inf ormateurs ' are soldiers, but they in no way try to
keep pace with events and thus compete with correspon-
dents; their duty is rather to make small monthly
histories.
These different Press units were situated at different
places behind the battle fronts; in normal times the
British and American Presses were in the neighbourhood
of Hesdin, near St Pol, i.e. behind the First Army front,
somewhat north of the centre of our line; the Allied
Press was at Amiens, i.e. behind the southern portion of
our line; and the Neutral Press was sometimes near
Amiens,' sometimes near Hesdin, At all times of the day
and night situation reports reached the various Press
units, so that the correspondents knew what was happen-
ing, and could direct themselves to whatever part of the
front that they considered most suitable. If the enemy
attacked unexpectedly at any portion of the line it was
always possible for me to telephone to one or other of
these Press units, and within an hour a correspondent
and an officer could reach the scene of action. As a rule
the correspondents of the Neutral Press and some of the
Americans went for tours up and down the front, along
the Unes of communication and round the bases, where-
as the British and Allied correspondents and the represen-
tatives of the American cabling agencies kept themselves
in readiness for important events. Supposing that the
Germans attacked in the neighbourhood of Cambrai, I
would telephone to my officer at Amiens, who would set
out at once with a correspondent; he would probably
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The Campaign of igiy
call at Army H.Q. on his way to get the exact situation,
and then he would go on as near as was possible by motor,
and finally pick his way on foot to some point of vantage
where he could take in the situation, talk to the troops
who had been in action, and get some precise news; he
would probably call at division and corps on his way
back. On reaching his headquarters he would telephone
to me a resumdoi all that he had found out, and the news
would thus be disseminated among all the correspondents,
who would then have material for writing prehminary
despatches. If, while this attack had been going on at
Cambrai, there had been another attack in the neighbour-
hood of Ypres, the British correspondents would deal
with that in the same way. On the following day,
according to the development of the situation, the
correspondents themselves would decide whether to alter
their headquarters so as to be nearer the interesting part
of the line. Such alterations of the position of Press head-
quarters involvedconsiderable difficulties, as all the cabling,
telephoning, rationing, and billeting arrangements had
to be reorganised at a moment's notice. Each Press
unit possessed a certain number of cars and despatch
riders : The D,R's from the Allied and Neutral Presses
would take despatches by road from Amiens to Paris,
and the D.R's from the British and American Presses
would carry despatches to Montreuil or St Omer, from
which places they would be cabled to England, or, in case
of long despatches, sent by King's messenger. The photo-
graphers' headquarters was situated near Hesdin, where
their photographs were developed and sent to Montreuil
for censorship : a copy of each photograph was filed at
Montreuil and a duplicate sent to England for publication.
The British Press was financed by the Newspaper Pro-
prietors' Association, and the other Presses by the
125
The Press and the General Sta£
Ministry of Information. These arrangements were
moderately simple when the front was stationary or
when we were on the retreat, but as soon as a big advance
was made, correspondents' cars, motor-cycles, and officers
were on the verge of collapse. The colonial correspondents
were billeted on their respective corps, but they sent
their despatches to me for censorship, and I undertook
to forward them either by cable or King's messenger.
My new promotion brought me into close touch with
General Charteris, who was at that time B.G.I., that is,
the senior officer in the Intelligence branch. He was a
man of great nimbleness of mind, and certainly the most
intclhgent officer that was ever my chief.* He was not
popular with armies on accoimt of his extraordinary
optimism; this optimism was specially tr^dng during
the Flanders offensive of 1917, for the intense misery
of the men permeated even the staffs of armies. It was
often my lot to dine with him on the same day as I had
been on the Pilkem Ridge or the Westhoek Ridge, and I
used to give him the most emphatic descriptions of the
wretched conditions. This misery and depression was
much more noticeable in the army of General Gough,
and it is not too much to say that the vast majority of
all ranks under his command had their tails right do\Mi.
I used to try and drive some of this sense of tragedy into
the temper of General Charteris, but I was not altogether
successful; he used to say to me, without sufficient
conviction, I thought, that war was an ugly thing. When
he was removed from the IntelHgence branch at the
beginning of 1918, torrents of criticism rained on his head,
much of which he did not deserve. He had been the chief
agent in creating the finest intelligence machine in any
1 This in no way reflects on his successor, General Cox, who, to my
great regret, refused to keep the Press under his command.
126
The Campaign of i()ij
army in the world, and when that machine put before
him the most priceless information, his deductions and
conclusions were always slightly too favourable. He knew
exactly the requirements of the Press, and my work with
him in this respect was a delight and pleasure. He was a
much-travelled man; he had known 'many men and
cities'; he was witty and widely read, and he was in-
finitely less narrow than the average soldier. He served
his chief with chivalrous devotion, and when his downfall
came he took it Uke a man.
Having put my house in order as far as possible, I
now began to renew my acquaintance with battlefields.
Here is an extract of a letter : —
'29.9.17. — The fighting on the 26th was unusually
bloody and fierce; the enemy attacked us the day before,
starting his attack at 6 a.m. with enormous concentration
of artillery. The fighting went on practically the whole
of the 25th and by about 6 p.m. we had driven him off,
and our line was much as it was at the beginning of the
day. Nevertheless, even in those places where the German
attack was fiercest, the units in line were able to prepare,
assemble, organise, and attack at dawn. By the evening
of the 27th every single objective was attained. Ask
any soldier, who knows what modem battles are, what
he thinks of this. It is almost incredible. The Germans
have got a record concentration of guns up here and
nearly all these guns were put on to one Uttle knoll; our
troops bore that hell of shelling and then attacked with
success the next day.
' I got up on the Westhoek Ridge between 5 and 6 p.m.
of the 26th; it was the moment of German counter-
attacks. Our aeroplanes came over like startled plovers
and gave us warning in plenty of time. We knew the
p.G.s. K 127
The Press and the General StaJ
only places where the enemy could assemble; what did
he get ? Full measure — running over. It is small wonder
that the German prisoners look like the fox after the
hounds have got at him.
Coming back I saw a burying party in charge of a
non-commissioned officer (at Givenchy we used to call
him the ghoul N.C.O.) They had just come from the
ground where the fiercest fighting was the day before;
they had buried 580 Germans to 120 of our own and yet
we think that the enemy losses were much heavier over
on his side of the hne.
The battlefield was an extraordinary sight; the
slopes of the ridge are as bare as the Mokhattam hills
above Cairo; a few gaunt stumps surround the pools.
The transport was rushing forward amid bursting shells —
tongues of flame from every fold in the ground — the
piercing noise — the acid smell of high-explosive and, above
all, the sweet sickly stink that is the last legacy of fright-
fulness that Germany's 'unbeatable' soldiers leave to
this world.
From the ridge we saw Zonnebeke at our feet and
Passchendaele on the hill in front of us — four miles
behind us was Ypres. From the ridge of this recently
captured ground the Germans had bullied us for two
years; all that they are now getting is not enough for
them, even though each prisoner wants peace.
I see in this week's Punch there is a column headed
'An Extraordinary Day.' One extraordinary day is
when a staff officer goes up to the front and does not have
a narrow escape. It was an extraordinary day and I did
have plenty of luck, and the sweat was roUing off me and
my two companions. \Vhat of those poor chaps who
are in it day and night ?
Mv old battalion was in the show and did magnificently,
128 "
The Campaign 0/ 1 9 1 7
establishing posts beyond the objectives and repelling
five counter-attacks, and yet one cannot mention them
by name without giving away the order of battle. What
a pity we have not got the Fouragere in our army. The
Germans still fight well at moments and in places; in
the last battle there was a great deal of hand-to-hand
fighting, but most of the prisoners are too old or too
young; one sees several thin ones, and a thin German is
almost unrecognisable as a German.'
This account is typical of all the attacks that went on
all through that Autumn right up to the capture of
Passchendaele, which fell to the credit of the Canadians.
It rained ceaselessly, and it would have been difficult to
walk over such ground even if there were no enemy,
but added to the bad weather we had the whole of the
German army. Every yard of progress was at the cost
of countless precious fives. Was it worth it?
After the capture of Passchendaele I went on leave
and so missed General Byng's attack on Cambrai, greatly
to my regret. There was no stopping of leave as is usually
the case during big attacks, and in this, as in all other
respects, the guarding of the secret was perfect. General
Byng accomplished that which no other General had
been able to do; he attacked without any previous
bombardment ; consequently the ground was not churned
up and the gims and suppfies could follow the infantry
at a reasonable pace. Had the offensive succeeded
completely it would have cleared out the pocket made
by the Sensee and the Scarpe and we should have held
a line which would not have been too much exposed to
counter-attack. It was within an ace of complete success,
but it just failed and, though our gains were considerable,
I think it would have been better to retire to a suitable
129
The Press and the General StaJ
line rather than to try to remain in such a sharp saUent.
There was no thought, at such a late season of the year,
of attempting a complete break through. The conception
of the attack was the most brilliant thing that had as
3^et happened in the war; there was a formidable con-
centration of tanks, and to concentrate tanks secretly
is a big achievement in itself, because they make a
prodigious noise. That part of the Hindenburg line which
was captured was specially designed as an anti-tank
trench, and here is an instance where Hindenburg and
Ludendorff failed absolutely, for the tanks went through
it 'comme une lettre a la poste.' Many of the tanks
carried small pliable bridges, made of fascines, which were
completely successful as a pathway to infantry and light
vehicles. This attack was similar to General Cough's
attack at Bullecourt in the spring of the same year, only
it was successful instead of being a complete failure.
Further, it caused the German infantry to regard the tank
as an engine of terror for evermore. A German prisoner
said, ' Our papers at home make fun of the tanks, but we
in the front Une know better. We are terrified of them.'
One German battery commander on the Flesquieres
ridge fought magnificently and succeeded in putting
several tanks out of action; eventually all his guns
were scuppered and he was killed. His heroic defence
probably just saved the Germans from disaster; it is
such action in warfare that changes history, when a man
or a handful of men go on fighting against heavy odds
to the bitter end without a chance of saving their lives
or of wearing the halo of glory that is their due.
I arrived back in France the day that the Germans
made their counter-attacks ; they had concentrated a
great mass of divisions in a very short time, and I think
their extreme rapidity surprised our General Staff to a
130
The Campaign q/ 1 9 1 7
certain extent. Our troops in line had been warned that
they would be attacked, but the Germans, copying our
methods, dispensed with along preliminary bombardment.
They kept the heads of our infantrymen down with low
^ymg aeroplanes, which machine-gunned the front-line
trenches. Considering the sharpness of our salient it
was not surprising that the enemy, breaking through on
the southern flank, should soon be threatening our
Infantry Brigade headquarters and guns. I lost no time
in getting to the scene of action and here is an extract
of a letter written immediately afterwards : —
'2. 12. 17. — The Boche put up a terrific counter-
offensive against our Cambrai salient; he tried to pinch
the head of the salient by attacking both sides of the neck.
He threw in an immense number of divisions — in fact,
it was the biggest attack we have had against our lines
since the second battle of Ypres. It was naturally to
be expected that he would counter-attack, but these
enormous numbers are quite out of the ordinary; it was
an anxious day, but the whole of our defence was remark-
able for, on the south, he clearly got through and for a
time there was a complete severance of communication
between staffs and regiments, and yet never for a moment
was there panic or loss of common sense. Our counter-
attacks were extraordinarily prompt and beautifully
led. Since the 20th we have become acquainted with
elements of twenty different divisions on the offensive
front. Compare this with the number of German divisions
which were used against the Italians. The Germans were
not left long enough in conquered territory to get away
many of our guns. In the north he practically had no
success at all, for though he pierced our Une for a second
he was immediately outdriven. The gunners say that
131
The Press and the General Stajf
they could fire into the broMii, it was not necessary to
select targets, the enemy formations being so dense; in
fact, it was like the early days of the war when they
attacked arm-in-arm.
To-day I have been up into the salient and have seen
all the famous spots, Bourlon Wood, Masnieres, le canal
de I'Escaut, Rumilly, Villers Plouich,etc. Bourlon Wood
is much bigger than I expected from the map, and it is
right at the crest of the ridge and visible for miles around.
The general lie of the land consists of a series of crests and
valleys mth little villages dotted here, there, and every-
where. They are almost intact and the church spires are
clearly visible through the winter twigs. The soil is up to
now untroubled with excessive shell-fire — the grass is fresh
and springy and all surface water drains off quickly.
What a pleasant contrast to Flanders ! I could see
Cambrai through my glasses as plain as could be wished
■ — a very large town full of churches. The old 'no-man's-
land' between the old front lines hardly had a shell hole;
it must have been a delightfully quiet sector before the
push. There was our modest thin weedy line of wire
and there were the four sumptuous rusty walls of wire
in front of Hindenburg's ditch. The trench itself is
immensely wide; no doubt with the idea of being a
hopeless obstacle for tanks. It is a wavy line like a
communication trench, but it is not traversed. The fire
step is about two yards wide; the dug-outs are many and
deep and well strutted with wood, but there is no concrete
anywhere in the part in which I was. It must have been
an extremely comfortable, pleasant trench to five in, and
was designed for this purpose more than anything else,
no doubt. Whd± a wonderful change for the Germans
after spending a winter in the valley of the Ancre. How-
ever, if it had been bombarded with heavy artillery it
132
The Campaign oj \^\y
would not have given very much protection. How nice
to think that it failed absolutely in the respect in which
it was meant to be most successful, namely, as an obstacle
to tanks. I followed their broad and spacious paths
through the rows of wire. Their success was absolute,
and there is no doubt that their achievements on the
20th were completely unforeseen by the enemy. That
day is a red letter day in the tactics of this war.
To-day the enemy was doing all the shelling; he was
indulging in what is called 'harassing fire,' dealing them
out in fours all over the place. He was firing from north
and south across the neck of the salient. How funny the
swish of shells sounds again after this interval; they
appear to me more deadly than the most fiery glances of
the great ladies of London. (Did I tell you that at my
last visit to the Opera a fair Countess beckoned to me
from a box, where she was sitting with other great ladies,
and she said to me : — " Now tell me — is Mr Mozart a
Frenchman ? ") I was glad to keep to the trench because
of them, and also still more because of the piercing wind,
which made me feel naked for all my buckskin coat.
You ask for the human touch. Here it is. Out here we
use trafiic-control men at cross-roads; these men are in
every respect like London policemen except that they
add saluting to their other accomplishments. They hold
up their hand to traffic coming from one direction and
they wave vehicles forward coming from another direction.
During this famous German counter-offensive on the 30th,
the Boche reached Gouzeaucourt as our fellows left it.
These last, looking over their shoulders to get an idea
of how close the Boche was, had the pleasing sight of the
traffic-control man at the cross-roads of Gouzeaucourt
with his arm up, barring the German advance till the
road was clear of our men. We know that the Germans
133
The Press and the General Sfajff
are a well-disciplined people, and it is evident that they
respected the arm of municipal law. No doubt the reason
that they left the town in less orderly fashion was that
this poor policeman was probably killed or taken prisoner.
I can't quite forgive myself for having missed the
offensive; it was admirably devised for my kind of job,
and such a suitable country.
In our attack and the German counter-attack there
was, as there always is, a mixture of quaUties of fighting —
some magnificent and some otherwise. In the exchange
of pawns we are left with the bulge on the Boche —
especially in the matter of killing; in his counter-attack
he assembled in the open in full view of our gunners, who
on many occasions fired over open sights. In the course
of this fighting we have so far 'amused' twenty-seven
German divisions.*
At this particular moment it was most important that
the Germans should not have a lot of spare divisions to
send to the Italian front. After this fighting matters
quieted down on the Western front, but one had an
uncomfortable feeling that we had missed our good
chances and that the initiative had once again passed
to the enemy. We ought to have had the enemy down
and out at the end of 1916; we had not got the punch
because we had not got the Generalissimo. In 1917 we
fought him practically alone, and he had hung on, though
he had taken plenty of punishment. Now he had man-
aged to get rid of the Russians, and we saw clearly that
he would have a try to knock us out with the help of his
trained divisions from Russia before we could sufficiently
train the troops arriving from America. We knew that
the next few rounds could not be ours; how were we
going to take our punishment? We shall see.
134
CHAPTER VI
REORGANISATION
Towards the end of November, 1917, 1 had an interesting
interview with Marechal Joffre; I was a friend of his
A.D.C, Lieutenant Francois de Tessan, and he told me
that, if I cared to let him know when I was next in Paris,
the Marechal would be very pleased to see me. I had
always wished to make his acquaintance since I heard
his famous remark about the Scotch uniforms. 'Pour
la guerre, non. Pour I'amour, hon.' Joffre had just come
back from America where his tour had been a triumphant
success. Monsieur Viviani had accompanied him, and it
was common knowledge that between him and Joffre no
great amount of love was lost. Viviani was much annoyed
when he got to the States to find that every one had heard
of Joffre and that no one had heard of him; to create
a reputation, he had but his eloquence, and this was lost
on a people who were ignorant of his language. In the
vast audiences that he addressed every day, the only
person who was moved by the magic of his words was
Joffre, who could never keep dry-eyed when Viviani
described the glories of the Mame and Verdun. The
situation must have been charming — Joffre annoyed at
this 'd — d civilian' attempting to share in his honour
and yet being moved to tears by his eloquence. Viviani
being mad at finding himself very much a second fiddle,
and therefore throwing his utmost passion into his speeches
only to succeed in moving the one man who could
135
The Press and the General Sfajff
understand him and whom he probably wished at the
bottom of the sea.
The lustre of Joffre's glory has for the moment been
partially eclipsed by the brilliance of Foch's achievements,
but I cannot but think that history will give him a very
high place among the great soldiers of the world. Even
at this critical moment, though he had no official com-
mand, he was again giving proof of his prodigious common
sense. So many military experts were expressing their
opinions in the sense that America should put forth all
her energy in order to give the Allies food, clothing,
munitions and ships, but Joffre saw rightly that what
we wanted above everything was men. Having this
opinion, his advice to Americans was invaluable, and
naturally they gave him a tremendous welcome. We
all know how marvellously hospitable Americans are to
all strangers, and one can easily imagine to what extent
they killed the fatted calf for Joffre, and I am told that
he never refused anything — either food or drink — at any
hour of the da}^ or night.
I saw him at the end of his day, which had been bpent
(entirely, I believe) in interviewing American officers
whom he could not understand and who could not under-
stand him; possibly this accounts for his extreme cordi-
ality to me. I expected to have about ten minutes with
him at the outside, what time would be spent firing off
sumptuous phrases always ending and beginning most
correctly with 'Monsieur le Marechal'; but it was quite
otherwise. He seemed so pleased to be understood and
to understand that I felt almost as if I were talking to
my own brother, in fact too much so. The truth is that
I have lived many years of my life in the company of
French people whom I know extremely intimately, and
therefore the habit of ' tu-toyeing ' comes horribly natural
136
I
Reorganisation
to me. I never thought that this vice would attack me
in the presence of a 'Beau Marechal de France,' but the
transition from what I had expected to what actually hap-
pened — in fact, the transition from the awkward to the
easy, occurred so rapidly that there ... I am afraid
that some of my sentences were punctuated by these
emblems of tender familiarity. He paid great tribute
to the new British armies, and he said that he thought
we could not have achieved so much but for our habits
of sport; he thought that the American soldier would
be the same and prove himself a splendid lighter. I asked
him why the Belgians had never attacked, and he said that
he thought that so long as King Albert was in any doubt
as to whether he would recover that part of his country
which was under German domination, he would not like
to sacrifice any part of the male population that was left
to him. It will be remembered that, as soon as the
complete route of the Germans became probable, the
Belgians attacked and fought with conspicuous gallantry.
He spoke with affection and admiration of Lord Kitchener.
As I talked with him I felt more than ever what a curse
it is having to depend on photography for our impressions
of human beings; the lens of a camera has no inner eye
and therefore it is always false. Joffre is as different from
his photographs as chalk from cheese; his hair and eye-
brows are snow-white, and his eyes both in colour and
expression are curious, rare, subtle, and mysterious. It
is true he looks good, but above all things he looks full
of ruse and subtlety. There is nothing of the 'bon
bourgeois' in his actual appearance, and in his photo-
graphs there is nothing else; his distinction of manner is
worthy of the great traditions of his race. Marechal
Joffre once went to stay at the home of this same Lieu-
tenant de Tessan, which is situated at Meaux; as Tessan
137
The Press and the General Stajff
was showing Joffre round his garden, they came upon
a magnificent view of the river. 'What is that river?'
said Joffre. 'Monsieur le Marechal, it is the Mame, and
we speak of it with great respect in this household.*
Then Joffre, 'It is indeed a fine river !'
During the winter months a period of reorganisation
set in both at the back of the front and on the front itself.
General Kiggell, who had been Haig's chief of staff, and
General Charteris, who had been head of the Intelligence
branch, were removed to other appointments. Both
these distinguished officers were, to my mind, terribly
anti-French, and they influenced the Chief not a little.
General Charteris was above all things a business man,
and no true business man could possibly admire the
French, for in this respect they are a couple of hundred
years behind the times. Kiggell objected to our Allies
on the ground that they weren't gentlemen — especially
their politicians. That a man like Kiggell should har-
monise with a man like Thomas was an impossibility.
Personally I hate the word 'gentleman'; you may take
it as the highest term of praise that can be given to a
human being, embodying all the aristocratic quaUties
of body, mind, and soul, but in the Army and in English
life generally it is applied to those who dress conventionally,
and who are lacking in all power of thought, imagination,
or initiative. I always used to say 'give me Jews and not
gentlemen, and we will win the war.' Certain it is that
we had many magnificent officers who, by no flight of
imagination, could be described as gentlemen. When-
ever I had the honour to dine with the Chief I used
invariably to talk to him of my deep admiration for the
French; I used to describe to him the French regimental
officers that I had seen in the line, who had been wounded
again and again and yet persistently refused any jobs,
138
Reorganisation
even advancement, that took them away from their men.
I pointed out to him that it was impossible to move about
in that portion of France occupied by our armies without
seeing everywhere evidence of an amazing civilisation.
I thought then and still think, and probably shall always
think, that the best French brain is the best thing of its
kind in the world; also I came across thousands of French-
men during the war who burned with a white fever heat
of patriotism that should have satisfied even the conscience
of a Scotsman. I must say that the Chief was always full
of respect for my admiration for the French, though his
staff scowled. This anti-French atmosphere was fostered
and kept active by the attitude of the Prime Minister,
who admired French miUtary genius at the expense of our
own soldiers; Lloyd George has never been a soldier or a
sailor, and he has nothing in common with them; and
it was an enormous advantage when Clemenceau came to
lead the whole alliance, and the Chief could be in
contact with a politician who was familiar with military
principles that are common to all nationalities.
General Kiggell was replaced by General Lawrence;
Lawrence had been in the same regiment as Haig, and
had left the army at the time when Haig was given
command of the regiment. Since that time he had made
a success of a business career, and it was not unnatural
139
The Press and the General Stajff
that Haig should wish to ha\-e his old friend by his side.
The appointnient was imiversalh^ approved, and I never
once heard one word of hostile criticism of Lawrence
till the end of the war. He had been a Divisional Com-
mander, and his division had had some of the worst
fighting on the Flanders front. Had he said that war
was an ugly thing, he would have had a right to say so;
his face had that glorious sternness that comes to the
warrior who knows to the full what humanity is called
upon to suffer during such a war.
General Chart eris was replaced by General Cox — Cox
was quite a young man and a brilliant expert at la work ;
la means that vast and complicated organisation that
goes to estabhsh the enemy's order of battle. It is one
of the most important things in war, for if you know
the movements and numbers of enemy divisions you have
the main clue to his intentions. General Cox knew
perfectly that this was one of the most critical moments
of the war, and that if he succeeded in telling the Chief
accurately the movements of German divisions from the
Russian front and the manner of their concentration
behind our battle front he would be rendering him an
incalculable service. Therefore he wished to get rid of
all encumbrances from the Intelligence branch that
might possibly interfere v^ith his main work. He was
terrified lest, in the middle of some critical situation on
the front, he should find himself swooped down upon by
the Northcliffes or the Beaverbrooks and called to task
for some error in censorship. Therefore he got rid of
the Press and handed it over to another branch. I don't
blame him; it is a prickly business and it requires un-
interrupted attention ; but I regretted his decision, because
he was a wonderfully clever man — young, alert, simple,
in fact an ideal officer to be under. His work during the
140
Reorganisation
early spring and early summer of 1918 was marvellous,
and I am sure that his intelligence summaries during this
period will become models for the staff college students
of many generations to come. His forecasts were abso-
lutely correct, and his work was much superior to anything
of the same sort in the French army at that time. Un-
luckily he was drowned while bathing, and so we lost
one of the best brains at G.H.Q., but by the time of his
death the most critical situation was over, the tide had
turned, and our victory was certain and inevitable.
General Cox during these few months gained an immortal
place in the history of this war, and there is not the
slightest doubt that his clear-sighted brain and well-
balanced judgments helped enormously towards the final
complete rout of the German army.
My particular department now underwent the most
unholy reorganisation . The ideal of the British army seems
to be this — 'when you reorganise, put in ten senior staff
officers where one junior one would do.' Whole coveys
of Colonels turned up, peers among them, none of whom
had seen nny regimental service during the war. I got
on perfectly well severally with each one of them, and I
have nothing but pleasant thoughts and guileless gratitude
for their admirable manners, but their very charm at
times became a nuisance. Surely in such a war the
liaison between Press and operations is a very important
thing; the officer in charge of the Press should not be a
small item in a vast department, he should be immediately
responsible to the Chief of Staff. In the palmy days of
General Charteris I never occupied more of his time than
about one quarter of an hour per week, but that quarter
of an hour was of vital importance. One of the hardest
things to bear in the army is to see an organisation which
is largely the fruit of your own brain given over to the
141
The Press and the General Siaj^
merciless benevolence of a dozen G.S.O.I.'s. This also
was a period of frightful importance for me; one of our
armies was about to meet with hopeless defeat; our
allies would be cursing us; the neutrals would be cynical,
and our friends at home would be in a panic. Never
before had it been so necessary for me to be free to take
rapid decisions, and to have, if necessary, immediate
access to the fountain head of information, instead of
which there was immediately over me a civilian colonel
to act as a buffer between the General Staff and the big
proprietors of newspapers, and a military colonel to tell
him how to salute and to show him how to write ' passed
to you please for necessary action' on his minutes. We
were under a branch of G.H.Q. called Staff duties; now
whatever else the Press is, it certainly is not an item of
Staff duties. General Dawnay presided over this branch,
but he planed too high to have any sympathy with the
Press or knowledge of the psychology of the fighting man;
to him newspapers were a morass of inaccurate informa-
tion and bad writing, and he took no interest in them.
He was also not sufficiently familiar with current opera-
tions to be able to lecture to correspondents with advantage.
Our section of Staff duties was called C.P. (Censorship
and Press). I used to say, 'Put it up in the window and
the van will come round, but it is not the right way to
transport stop-press telegrams.*
While these terrible things (to me at any rate) were
happening at G.H.Q., even worse things occurred on the
front. It will be remembered that since April to November,
1917, we had fought uninterruptedly. Moreover, we had
practically fought the Germans single-handed. The
French had carried the whole weight of the war on their
backs up to 1916, and it was quite right and fair that
we should bear the main burden as soon as we could;
142
Reorganisation
but during 1917 we had done so, and no army has ever
faced an enemy with greater courage and determination.
Now, however, we were very tired, and our losses had been
tremendous; also only a bare trickle of reinforcements
was coming from England. In these circumstances
to extend our line and take over more front from the
French, who had been resting, seemed pure madness.
I know that Haig protested against this with the utmost
vigour, but our Prime Minister was deaf to his wise
counsels; furthermore, he kept in England a vast number
of men. We know that the men were there, for they came
out later on; we know also that Haig gave accurate warn-
ing of the German concentration; further, he prophesied
that the big attack would come in the Cambrai-St Quentin
area and at the junction of our weak attenuated army
with the French. Why, therefore, the Government kept
all those men in England is a mystery for which hitherto
there has been no explanation. Certain it is that the com-
plete disruption of the British Empire (so much wished for
by Mr Blunt) was ' moins cinq , ' as French sportsmen say.
What made the situation even more alarming was that.
General Gough was kept in com mand of our Fifth Army
and that the Fifth Army was covering that portion of
the front that was most threatened. After his failure at
BuUecourt in .the spring of 1917 and his failure in Flanders
in the autumn of the same year, it was not likely that the
officers under his command should have much confidence
in him. Our line extended to Barisis. It was a terrifying
thing to read in the Intelligence summary of the new
divisions arriving daily from Russia, and then go up to the
line and see how frightfully thin our men were on the
ground. What is the use of the finest military position
in the world if you have got no men to hold it with, and
ours was not the finest position in the world, for the
p.G.s. L 143
The Press and the General Sta^
Germans had seen to that in their 1916 retreat to the
Hindenburg line. This retreat had three objects — one,
to shorten their hne and to avoid our excessive shell
lire; two, to spoil our already prepared 1917 offensive;
three, to 'reculer pour mieux sauter,' that is, a suitable
spot was chosen where troops could be concentrated
secretly. This retreat therefore succeeded to a great
extent in all three capacities, and it must be considered
now as one of the wisest moves ever carried out by the
Germans. Not only did they have great railway facilities
for concentrating troops in this area, but the lie of
ground immediately behind their line favoured conceal-
ment; thirdly, if they pierced our hues they would
have the old Somme battlefields to fight over, where
were no civilians to hamper their progress.
At the same time as the Germans were preparing this
offensive in the Cambrai-St Quentin area, they were
also preparing an offensive in the Champagne district,
and the French were convinced that this was to be the
great coup. The situation therefore at the beginning of
igi8 was this — there were the tired British armies
unreinforced with recruits from home and strung out to
an impossible extent, the weakest army covering one
of the weakest spots where the defences were totally
inadequate. The forecast of the British Staff was that
the attack would be in the Cambrai-St Quentin area,
and the British reserves were disposed accordingly. The
forecast of the French Staff was that the main attack
would be in Champagne, and the French reserves were
disposed accordingly. Hence on the one side you had
two armies divergent in opinion with their reserves,
disposed solely with regard to their own half front. On
the other side you had the whole German army reinforced
with their divisions from the Russian front, where they
144
Reorgafiisation
had been having a bit of a rest cure, under one united
command, ready to drive down the Somme and to cleave
the British and French armies asunder.
The activity of the Chief at this time was prodigious;
he and his chief of staff were round the line almost every
day. His anxiety must have been terrible, for each visit
to the front must have convinced him more and more
that we were too much strung out, and therefore our
chance of making a good defence was very small.
The energies of the Fifth Army were mostly employed
in strengthening their defences; possibly this was a
mistake. It may have been wiser to foresee that under
such circumstances the enemy were bound to penetrate,
and that a state of open warfare was sure to occur, and
therefore to spend all spare time in training the men to a
war of movement. It's easy to say this now.
145
CHAPTER VII
LUDENDORFF S OFFENSIVE
Immediately before the German attack, I was again
called upon to do a bit of press camouflage. Our opera-
tions branch wanted to delay this attack for about six
days, and therefore I gave out to the press that we knew
the exact sector of attack and the precise date. Whether
this information had any effect on the German higher
command I don't know, but the delay did happen.
Frederick the Great has said that it is pardonable to be
beaten, but absolutely unpardonable to be surprised;
it is certain that we were in no sense surprised. We were
very unlucky, as we had always been, in the matter of
weather. A period of uninterrupted fine weather set in,
with cold nights and morning frosts; the contrast between
the day and the night temperatures produced thick fogs
which lasted till midday, and this favoured the attack
tremendously. It must be remembered that all through
1917 there had been a steady evolution of tactics which
was bound sooner or later to change the nature of the War.
To begin with, set lines of trenches had been abandoned
and forward areas were proteced by small posts, and the
theory of defence in depth had been put into practice.
Then counter-battery work had undergone a great
change owing to the immense quantity of gas shells.
Aeroplane photographs located the positions of the
enemy's guns, and before an attack these positions were
saturated with gas. Then gurmers had learned to fire
146
hudendorffs OJfenshe
accurate barrages by the map alone, without previous
registration; thus masses of guns could be brought up
just before the attack and never fire a shot till the day
itself. Then the introduction of the sensitive fuse had
made it possible to cut wire in a very short time. The
old shell used to make a huge crater and throw up a
quantity of earth and do little damage; now this new one
had a lateral burst and brushed barb-wire away as
though with a broom. Finally, there was the tank, but
this arm was never developed in the German army;
Ludendorff hsis told us that he had not enough iron to
go in for tanks. Thank God for this, for it might have
changed the German partial victory into a complete one.
In every other respect they had brought these up-to-date
methods to the greatest perfection, and they had put them
to the test on the Italian front. Perhaps one of our faults
of arrogance during the war was not to study the causes
and effects of things on other fronts. When the Italians
got beaten it was at once a case of 'the good old
macaronis are on the run. What price the ice-cream
merchants ! ' and yet in the initial stages of this spring
the roast beef of old England was on the run also.
Extract from letter : —
'30.3.18. — On the 2ist of March the morning was
unusually foggy; the enemy counterbeat our batteries
with gas shells and put a good accurate barrage on our front
Une ; it was well done but it had nothing miraculous. This
process always wipes out the front lines and the defenders
do not have much of a chance, but the few survivors
do expect to hold up the attack with machine-gun fire;
unfortunately, this mist prevented our machine-gunners
and field-gunners from seeing their targets. In many
147
The Press and the General Stajff
parts our wire was intact, but, while the enemy was
wading through it, cutting it as he went, we could not see
him. The second day the mist was even worse, and he was
able to pour great masses of men into our positions; a
large number got killed, no doubt, but, as in these big
pheasant shoots, a huge number were missed. He did
his utmost to deceive us as to the sector in which he was
going to attack, but in vain. He kept an old Landwehr
division holding the Une down by La Fere right up to
the last minute before the attack. The one point in which
he differs from ourselves is that he uses human meat
as we use munitions; he pours them into battle, just
as he did in 1914, in formations of incredible density;
it is in itself an alarming thing to see the whole landscape
alive with gray maggots; his concentration worked out
at five men per yard on a front of over eighty kilometres.
This procedure is like declaring "No trumps"; he leads
off with his strongest suit, and in piUng trick after trick
he produces a most alarming impression; the question
is, will he get the odd ? From the time the enemy pene-
trated our line, the whole type of warfare changed; he
dispensed with artillery, and simply covered his advance
with machine-gun scouts. He gave his men two days'
rations and passed division through division. In parts
our troops were well handled, and in front of each centre
of resistance the enemy lost heavily. It was impossible
to relieve our men in such kind of warfare, and if they
did not at any time get rushed it was due to very fine
discipline; the Germans in their Press allude to this
over and over again, 'The British soldier is a very brave
man.' If we are not quite so military as the German it
is for the same reason that we are not quite so musical;
we have not wanted to be soldiers (none less than I).
The average German soldier at this stage of the war is
148
hudendorff s Ojjensive
not an 'homme de courage,' but his experts, such as
machine-gunners, trench -mortar men, etc., are wonderful;
his officers are still awfully good, and the great stupid
mass with its iron discipline does exactly what it is told
to do.'
In truth, the German machine-gunners fought marvel-
lously well; their system was to try and penetrate, and
whenever they found our resistance feeble, they put up
Verey Hghts, and the common infantry followed. This
scientific method of infiltration made the defenders think
all the time that their flanks were being turned; whereas,
really, it is impossible in such warfare to have your flanks
turned without also turning the flanks of the enemy.
Such infiltration occurred nearly always along the valleys,
and our hill-tops and crests were possibly abandoned
too readily. Another fault on our side was that our
corps and divisional headquarters moved too rapidly
to the rear; corps pulled division back, and division
brigade, and brigade battalion, and battahon pulled
company back, so that the pace of our retreat was more
regulated by the senior formations in the rear than by
the enemy in front. The sense of being abandoned by
the staff is an awful thing for the regiment to feel. Those
who fought best were the cavalry and the horse gunners
(especially the horse gunners) and the Canadian motor
machine-gun section.
After the first two days it was obvious that Gough's
Fifth Army was going too fast; Byng's Third Army was
fighting wonderfully well, but then the odds against the two
armies were not the same. General Gough's fourteen
divisions and three cavalry divisions had to fight forty-
eight German divisions; the odds of three to one are a
bit too stiff, Gough's divisions were unused to open
149
The Press and the General Sta^
warfare, and they had Uttle or no confidence in their
army commander, and yet on this occasion he proved
himself a great man. He never got rattled; he kept his
head and he made the utmost use of his scanty forces.
It was his idea to make an independent force composed
of the sweepings of his army (afterwards known as Carey's
force), such as those undergoing instruction at schools,
cooks, batmen, light car drivers, etc. I saw this force
in the trenches just outside the village of La Motte; they
had no company rolls, and the officers were completely
unknown to the men, and yet they had some Lewis guns,
and I suppose at some little distance they were in-
distinguishable from a real fighting force.
The situation on the days of March 25th, 26th, and 27th
was exceedingly alarming, and it seemed as though the
habit of retreat had come upon us and would never
cease. On one occasion I was going out at night to get
news from the Fifth Army and I found an awful block
in the traffic at the level crossing on the Amiens-Peronne
road. There were about thirty trains, with steam up,
quite unable to move as the line farther up had been
destroyed by a bomb from an aeroplane; on the road
itself there were miles of traffic of all description, including
refugees. An army in retreat is a horrible sight. With
the help of some A.S.C. men I manged to uncouple the
last two carriages of a train and pushed them back so
as to let the stream of traffic through. Each night the
moon shone with odious brilliance and there was no
wind; the Boche bombed our rear communications
' somethink chronic ' as the Tommies say. The night the
enemy almost got to Villers-Bretonneux, he sent over
to Amiens countless bombing machines in relays; it is
not a large town and the chances of being hit were un-
pleasantly great; his airmen also flew down the streets
150
Ludendorffs OJffenshe
firing their machine-gims from a very low altitude. I
was staying at the Allied Press Chateau at the time and
houses on either side of us were completely destroyed.
It was an unpleasant experience, but the nerviness of
the situation was greatly relieved by one of my officers,
Capt. Johnstone Douglas, who had a beautiful voice
and sang us his most exquisite songs with intense feehng.
Every now and then there would be an ear-spHtting
crash followed by a cascade of broken glass; at these
moments Douglas would make a magnificent crescendo,
and really I don't think he ever sang so well before.
His performance, however, rather scandahsed the Havas
correspondent, who had gone to bed early; he thrust
his pyjamaed figure into the drawing-room for a moment
on his way to the cellar and shouted * Dire que des gens
osent chanter quand d'autres ont peur.' We noticed
also that our Portuguese correspondent stationed himself
continually under the framework of doorways; at
first this inadequate protection puzzled us, but suddenly
we remembered that it is the best place during an earth-
quake and probably he must have had some experience
of earthquakes in Portugal. We tried to tempt him from
his shelter by standing glasses of whisky on the table
in the middle of the room; he was extremely partial
to this drink, and when the whisky mounted up in the
glass to more than half-way, he would make a dash for it,
greatly to our dehght.
I thought at this crisis that the Foreign Press was of
even greater importance than the British. Never shall
I forget the admirable behaviour of the French corre-
spondents during these terrible days ; they were out
at the very front all day and every day. They saw the
magnificent fighting of our horse-gunners, and the
admirable discipHne that was maintained during every
151
The Press and the General Stajf
stage of the retreat, and they gave most excellent descrip-
tions to their newspapers. They also went for flying
visits to Paris, and were emphatic in their praise of our
men to their editors; already there was beginning to
be quite a serious anti-British feeling in France. 'Les
Anglais f 1 le camp,' was on every one's Ups, but
these correspondents never for a minute thought of their
own career or their own popularity; they knew that our
chaps were doing their best and fighting against fearful
odds, so they told the truth and went on telling it in
spite of the scoldings they got from their editors.
I was more than ever convinced that nothing should
be kept hidden from the foreign correspondents during
this defeat; I gave out every detail of numbers on both
sides and of the possibility of the extent of the disaster.
I insisted on their writing well-documented stuff and
cutting out all vague descriptions of gallantry and
heroism. Even the neutrals I took much more into my
confidence than ever before, and their loyalty to our
arms came largely, I am sure, from their certainty that
there was not a shadow of deception in our attitude
towards them.
The curious thing is that, though our men were on the
run in the wrong direction, their spirits were nothing like
as low as when they were crawling forward in the Flanders
mud of 1917 — anything to be out of trenches, out of mud,
and out of devastated areas; many of them were quite
unaccustomed to moving warfare and were below their
proper form under the novel conditions. What is more
curious is that the German officers, who said quite
frankly that it was 'der Tag,' were not in high spirits
and were not at all convinced that the offensive could
be completely successful. The average German officer
is such a good soldier that he knows by instinct which
152
hudendorff s OJens'we
side to back. The soldier who has been through many
years of war does not want victory so much as peace.
He no longer believes that he is defending his hearth and
home; if his life is given to prove the genius of Ludendorf^
or Hindenburg, that is no consolation to him. Through-
out these terrible days General Gough stuck to his
impossible task like a great soldier and, having given
proof (possibly for the first time during the war) of
remarkable qualities, he was removed from his command.
By chance I passed through Doullens on the 26th of
March — the day of the great conference that brought
about the appointment of the Generalissimo, who achieved
the most colossal victory in all history. The mixture
of statesmen in civilian clothes and glittering generals
in their 'kepis galonnes,' as they dashed by in Staff cars,
filled me with alarm; it was like a consultation of famous
surgeons round the body of a dying man. Would the
liberty of the world survive the next few days; it did
not then seem possible. Of course, I did not find out
what had happened for some time after, but we have
Foch's own word for it (in his preface to Sir Douglas
Haig's despatches) that at this conference Haig played
a very fine and a very unselfish part.
The Germans had now driven the point of their advance
down the Somme to the outskirts of Villers-Bretonneux;
this gave them a very pronounced salient, and it was
obvious that, if he wished to accomplish his purpose,
Ludendorff must widen the base of his triangle; it seemed
certain, therefore, that he would attack in the neighbour-
hood of Montdidier on the French front and in the
neighbourhood of Arras on the British front. The Arras
attack was fully expected by us; in fact it arrived exactly
according to forecast on the 28th of March. The ground
in this part of the front is magnificent for defence; gentle
153
The Press and the General Stajff
folding slopes provide ideal positions for machine-guns.
Thank heaven on this day there was no mist; our gunners
got the chance of a lifetime and they made full use of it.
All through the early part of this summer there were certain
days of vital importance, and if these days had all gone
against us, where should we be now ? On the first of these
important days (the 21st of March) the enemy had the
mist and he scored a great success; this 28th of March
was the next vital day, there was no mist and the enemy
took a terrible punishment. Later on he succeeded
against the Portuguese and then got held up by Givenchy
and the Forest of Nieppe; there were two big battles for
Givenchy and he twice failed, but if he had not . . . !
Later still he succeeded in taking Kemmel and then was
held up in front of the other hills of the same range.
So, throughout this period, one knew that certain points
must be held at all costs, and the excitement was almost
unbearable.
The enemy used the same methods as on the 21st —
gas shells for counter-battery work, a trench-mortar
barrage to cover the advance of his infantry who were
again in dense formations. Some of the prisoners that
we captured announced that their objective was St Pol;
they had two pair of boots and rations for four days.
All day long the gray masses advanced to the attack,
and all day long we pumped lead into them. Of course,
our losses were considerable; I saw a colonel of a battalion
of the London Rifle Brigade; he started the day with
560 rifles and a normal strength of officers; when he
was relieved by the Canadians he was reduced to sixty
and two officers. He said that he did not know what
killing was till that day, that most of his casualties were
wounded and not killed, and that the Canadians had
shaken the hands of his men (Londoners) as they took
154
Ludendorffs OJenstve
over the line after dark. What the German losses were
it is impossible to guess, and their gains were practically
nothing.
It seemed probable that the Canadians would become
involved in the fighting in the neighbourhood of the Vimy
Ridge, and General Currie (the Canadian corps commander)
issued his famous order of the day. I give it here along-
side of its French translation; it seems to me that this
is one of the rare instances of a piece of prose conceived
in English being better when reaUsed in French.
SPECIAL ORDER BY LIEUTENANT-GENERAL
SIR ARTHUR W. CURRIE, K.C.B., K.C.M.G.,
Commanding Canadian Corps.
27th March, 1918.
In an endeavour to reach an immediate decision the
enemy has gathered all his forces and stnick a mighty
blow at the British Army. Overwhelmed by sheer weight
of numbers the British Divisions in the line between the
Scarpe and the Oise have fallen back fighting hard,
steady, and undismayed.
Measures have been taken successfully to meet this
German onslaught. The French have gathered a powerful
Army, commanded by a most able and trusted leader,
and this Army is now moving swiftly to our help. Fresh
British Divisions are being thrown in. The Canadians
are soon to be engaged. Our Motor Machine-Gun Brigade
has already played a most gallant part and once again
covered itself with glory.
Looking back with pride on the unbroken record of
your glorious achievements, asking you to realise that
to-day the fate of the British Empire hangs in the balance,
I place my trust in the Canadian Corps, knowing that
where Canadians are engaged there can be no giving way.
155
The Press and the General Stajff
Under the orders of your devoted officers in the coming
battle you will advance or fall where you stand facing
the enemy.
To those who will fall I say, 'You will not die but
step into immortality. Your mothers will not lament your
fate but will be proud to have borne such sons. Your
names will be revered for ever and ever by your grateful
country and God will take you unto Himself.'
Canadians, in the fateful hour, I command you and
I trust you to fight as you have ever fought, with all
your strength, with all your determination, with all your
tranquil courage. On many a hard fought field of battle
you have overcome this enemy. With God's help you
shall achieve victory once more.
(Signed) A. W. Currie,
Lieutenant-General,
Commanding, Canadian Corps.'
L'ennemi, cherchant a atteindre immediatement un
resultat definitif, a rassembl6 toutes ses forces et porte
a I'arm^e britannique un coup puissant. Debord^es
par la seule sup6riorite numerique de l'ennemi, les divisions
britanniques occupant la ligne de la Scarpe a I'Oise se
sont repliees tout en resistant vigoureusement, fermes
et aucunement d^courag^es.
Des mesures ont pu 6tre prises pour f aire face ci I'assaut
allemand. Les Frangais ont rassembl^ une forte armee,
commande par un chef extremement habile et aim6.
Cette arm^e arrive rapidement a notre secours. Des
divisions britanniques fraiches sont jet^es dans Taction.
Les Canadiens y seront bientot engages. Notre brigade
de mitrailleuses automobiles a d6ja jou6 un role des
plus brillants et c'est une fois de plus couverte de
gloire.
156
Ludendorffs Ojffenshe
Me souvenant avec orgueil de vos hauls faits passes,
vous demandant de comprendre qu'aujourdhui c'est la
destin^e meme de I'Empire britannique qui se joue, je
place toute ma confiance dans le corps Canadien : je
sais que, ou se trouvent les Canadiens, la il ne peut y
avoir de recul. Dans la bataille qui va s'ouvrir, comman-
dos par vos officiers dOvoues, ou vous avancerez, ou vous
tomberez, face a I'ennemi, sur les positions que vous
occupez.
A ceux qui tomberant, je dis : Vous ne mourez pas :
vous entrez dans TetemitO. Loin de se lamenter sur
votre destin6e, vos meres seront fieres d'avoir mis au
monde de tels fils. Vos noms seront r6ver6s a jamais
par votre patrie reconnaissante et Dieu vous recevra k
ses c6t6s.
Canadiens, a cette heure supreme, je vous donne avec
confiance I'ordre de vous battre mieux encore que vous
ne vous 6tes jamais battus, avec toute votre force, avec
toute votre volonte, avec tout votre courage tranquille.
L'ennemi, vous I'avez deja vaincu dans bien des batailles
ou la lutte fut apre. Dieu aidant, vous remporterez la
victoire une fois encore.
I had tea with General Currie about this time and he
said with a most perfect Canadian accent, ' I can't see that
this kind of Boche is different to any other kind of Boche;
he's just as easy to kill.' Note. — General Currie informed
me that there was one Canadian Brigade which had never,
during the whole course of the war, had a German inside
the trenches held by them in various parts of the
front.
The Canadians, however, did not come into the boiling
pot yet awhile; evidently Ludendorff thought that the
combination of Canada and the Vimy Ridge was too
157
The Press and the General StaJ^
much, and he preferred the Lys and the Portuguese.
Now a lot of severe things have been said about the
fighting of the Portuguese; even before this attack our
General, had to check our men, referring to them as
'the ruddy geese,' and remind them that they were our
most ancient Allies. During the attack itself a German
company commander was captured towards the close of
the day (gth of April) , and he said that he had ridden on
his pony for four hours without having a shot fired at
him. This does not look as if much resistance had been
offered, but in my opinion the blame rests entirely with
the officers. There is no such thing as a bad soldier; there
are only bad officers. There are some races that are
natural fighters, and certainly the Portuguese are not of
these, but during this attack many Portuguese privates put
themselves under British officers and then they fought
extremely well. Leadership does not only begin during
a battle, but in the training camps, and here also the
Portuguese officer was defective; they were unable to
inspire their men with the necessary discipline and
esprit de corps. It must be stated in fairness to them,
however, that they had been in the line for a long time
and they were thoroughly tired; it was bad luck on our
higher command that the German attack forestalled
the complete relief of the Portuguese troops by a few
hours. Also on this 9th of April there was again a fog,
which greatly assisted the enemy; in the Lys sector most
of the trenches were of the breastwork order and such
trenches offer little protection from a heavy bombardment
unless they are heavily cemented, but we were never
the equal of the Germans in ferro-concrete fortifications.
The Germans, having broken through the Portuguese
troops , pushed on their advance with incredible rapidity;
but they never succeeded in taking Givenchy; the defence
158
Ludendorffs Ofenshe
of this little hill was of enormous importance and the
achievement of the 55th division who defended it cannot
be over-estimated. On the north of the new German
salient the fighting was very fierce; troops who had been
heavily engaged in the Somme fighting were again in
the thick of it without having had any rest; they had to
give ground but they fought splendidly. There was
another moment of intense anxiety when the Germans
began to get unpleasantly near Hazebrouck; an Aus-
tralian division was coming to the rescue, but the troops
that covered the detrainment of the Australians had to
counter-attack incessantly to gain the necessary time, and
as Haig says, 'No more brilliant exploit has taken place
since the opening of the enemy's offensive.' I saw the
attack on Bailleul from the Mont des Cats; it was exactly
like old-fashioned prints of battle scenes except that
there were not formal oblongs of advancing infantry.
There were, however, mounted generals and their staffs
pointing dramatically to different corners of the battle-
field, the famous windmill was still intact, our batteries
were spitting tongues of fire from behind every hedge,
the German infantry were sending up light signals and
star shells, and their black smoke shrapnel was bursting
over the town where one could just distinguish the
barricades made of wooden chairs and old furniture of
all sorts. I saw a woman flying from her home which
had already had one shell in it; she was dressed, Uke all
refugees, in her Sunday best, and she had a large collie
dog under her arm. One of our Tommies helped her and
her burden over a stile, and as she scurried towards
safer regions, the Tommy shook his head sadly at her
saying, ' No bon, Madame ! No bon ! '
French troops now came up north to our support; as
I was at work in my office one morning I heard the sound
P.G.S. M 159
The Press and the General StaJ
of cavalry passing the village, and I caught sight of the
French blue uniforms through the trees. They had made
an extraordinary forced march — all the more extra-
ordinary when one saw their horses which were just bags
of bones; their baggage and transport also was all tied
together with string and they looked for all the world
like a travelling circus. By Jove ! how pleased we were
to see them. Some cavalry officers were billeted on us
for a night, and we all agreed that they were as nice a
lot as we had ever come across. They had nothing but
friendliness and sympathy for the incessant attacks
that had been made on our armies, and I could see no
trace of reproach in their attitude towards us.
During the Lys fighting, one of my photographers,
Lieut. Console, lost a leg. The nation owes a great deal
of gratitude to our small band of photographers and
cinema men; most of them were in the thick of it every
single day; they got quiet nights which the infantry
soldier does not get when he is in the line, but on the
other hand the photographer never goes near a quiet
sector. He has to be at the most dramatic points of the
fight, and the most dramatic means the most dangerous.
Of all the daring ones Lieut. Brook was the most daring,
though he was never wounded; day after day he brought
back some plates exposed at the most interesting points
along the huge battle front. In his collection can be seen
episodes illustrating every phase of moving warfare —
small groups of Lewis gunners lying in ditches, hasty
barricades put up in the streets of towns, ofiicers engaging
the enemy with their revolvers, French and British
outpost sentry groups taken during the reliefs that had
to be carried out, very often, actually in the presence of
the attacking enemy, and many other things of extra-
ordinary interest. Lieut, Bartholomew, the head of the
1 60
Ludendorff s Offensive
photographic section, put the right spirit into his men
and got a very fine result from material that was all too
scanty. Poor Console bore his pain and suffering with
wonderful philosophy; he thought it an honour to give
something important to so great a cause, I met him not
long ago in the streets of London. I have always thought
that the feehngs of a 'mutile,' when all the excitement,
the honour and glory is over, must be intensely gloomy,
but Console was as much without bitterness a year after
the war as at the moment of his great sacrifice.
Towards the end of April two very important events
occurred; the German Alpine Corps succeeded in captur-
ing Kemmel Hill. The French were holding the hill, the
British being immediately on their left. The Germans
pinched a pocket on either side of the hill, and though
the French held out for some hours yet they were sur-
rounded like crows in a tree and had to surrender. In all
our combined actions with the French, we have had the
greatest difficulty in keeping time with our Allies, such is
the immense difference that separates the temperaments
of the two races. The British method is to work out orders
as methodically as possible and then compel the men
to stick to them precisely and in detail. The French
seem to depend infinitely more on local inspiration;
at one moment they feel like attacking, and at another
they don't. This inspiration that comes to them is
probably a right one, but it is fatal to co-operation with
troops who are working according to schedule. All
through the war the Germans made full use of this
difference of temperament, and always attacked us at
our points of haison; when such points of liaison
coincided with some geographical feature which was a
difficulty in itself (such as the terrain around Kemmel),
a disaster nearly always followed. Certainly the capture
>i V i6i
The Press and the General Staf
of the hill was an immense achievement for the Germans,
and none but the very finest troops could have accom-
pUshed it. In parts our fighting was excellent, and I
know from Belgians Uving in Menin whom I saw after
the armistice that the German losses were colossal and
that the hospitals could not deal with the numbers of
wounded, but our combination with the French or theirs
with us (whichever way you Uke to put it) was non-
existing. At one moment our counter-attacks, if they
had been supported by the French, would have recaptured
the hiU, but the support never came and so this serious
loss had to remain. A few days later the Germans again
attacked, hoping to capture the remaining hills of the
same range (Mont Noir, Mont Rouge, and the Scherpen-
berg) but they were completely repulsed. The Kaiser
is said to have watched the fight from the Messines-
Wytschaete Ridge, and, as usual, he brought his side the
worst possible luck. Throughout the war the Kaiser's
presence near a battlefield was sufficient to cause his troops
to be defeated; this fact made me suggest to Lord North-
cliffe (who was then in charge of propaganda in enemy
countries) that he should make more use of the fact that
the Kaiser was the evil genius of his country and that
he had the evil eye. This can be traced right back to
his quarrel with Bismarck. His very appearance suggests
it, with his superficial good looks and his withered hand.
The remarkable thing about the defence on this occasion
was the excellent fighting of the young raw recruits who
had just come out from England and had had no previous
experience; they repelled the waves of attackers by rifle
fire alone, giving convincing proof of the value of our
musketry practices in recruit training.
While this disaster was happening on the Flanders
front an equally great disaster occurred before Amiens,
162
Lude7idorff s 0£et2sive
but luckily the success of the Germans in this case
lasted but a moment. They attacked the village of
Villers-Bretonneux with large forces and with tanks, and
succeeded in capturing the village. Villers-Bretonneux
stands on a knoll and overlooks Amiens; from this place
the Germans would have had direct ground observation
on to Amiens and could have placed their shells when
and where they hked; as Amiens was a great railway
centre (even at this time) and some ninety trains a day
went through the station, the importance of Villers-
Bretonneux cannot be over-estimated. The German
tank was quite useless over rough country and was never
able to negotiate trenches, but, in village fighting, this
lumbering clumsy weapon did serve its purpose. In this
battle, for the first time during the war, our tanks fought
the German tanks and defeated them, but the German
infantry had got to the railway embankment west of the
village and could not be dislodged. The Austrahans,
however, made a counter-attack at night which was
completely successful. There was a moon, but the sky
was overcast; the plan of attack was to make a wide
encircling movement, the attackers separating and joining
again on the east side of the town. There was no time
to issue compUcated orders; hastily written messages in
pencil on the leaves of field notebooks was what produced
one of the most astounding manoeuvres of the war.
Everything worked out according to plan, thereby proving
that the battlefield discipline of the Australians must
be absolutely perfect, no matter what their billet dis-
cipline may be; the Germans holding the railway embank-
ment only discovered that something was wrong when
no rations reached them, for they were completely cut
off from their own side. Even if the Australians had
achieved nothing else during this war but the recapture of
163
The Press and the General Stajff
Villers-Bretonneux, they would have won the right
to be considered among the greatest fighting races of
the world; as it is, the French ought to put up a great
monument in their honour in the town of Amiens, for
without them the town might have been completely
destroyed.
Throughout this period of Ludendorff's offensive,
countless defensive Hues were prepared right behind our
front almost as far as the coast, and the energies of all
our labour companies, but especially the Chinese, were
remarkable. These Chinamen were almost invariably
light-hearted and cheerful, they seemed to imagine that
the war was one mammoth music-hall entertainment
provided for their entertainment. Tanks, aeroplanes,
officers, staff cars, etc., were a never ending source of
merriment to them, and in return for this gaiety, which
we provided, they used to provide us with food for fun
in their choice of head-gear. Out of a normal company
of 200 men there would be as many different sorts of
hats and types of coiffure. Some had their heads shaved,
others wore long hair, Hke women, done up in a chignon.
On one occasion I saw a Chinaman resting on his pick :
he was stripped to the waist, and on his head was perched
coquettishly a little straw hat such as used to be worn
by early Victorian governesses, the hat was kept on by
an elastic band which went round his hair, done up in
a bun at the back. His appearance was excruciatingly
funny. Sometimes, however, their camps, which were
in the neighbourhood of munition dumps, came in for
night bombardments by Gothas, and then their joy
turned to the wildest misery. Early one morning I once
came upon two utterly unshaved chinks sitting by the
roadside under one tin hat looking preternaturally
yellow : their camp had been bombed and they were
164
Ludendorff s O Jen she
told to scatter, and these two miserable human beings
had walked for twenty miles without stopping. On
another occasion there was a mutiny in a chink company
over a question of rations; they had been accustomed
to receive a quarter of an EngUsh loaf per man and then
the English loaf was changed for a heavier French loaf
and they only received a fifth — hence the mutiny —
The chief interpreter was called and brought a pair of
scales to show that the fifth of the French loaf was heavier
than the quarter of the English loaf, but to the Chinese
brain a fifth must under all circumstances be less than
a quarter. After much argument one platoon was
persuaded to go out and work, but they were continually
interrupted by the fractious platoons who looked on,
uttering celestial oaths and giving graphic descriptions
of the reception the good platoon would receive on
returning to camp. This eventually worked on the
nerves of the good platoon, who downed tools and
made off; whereupon the remaining platoons picked
up their tools and put in the best day's work of the
war.
During the fighting round Kemmel, the Belgians were
twice attacked on the Ypres-Staden railway, and on both
occasions they gave the Germans a severe hiding. I saw
a photograph of the battlefield taken after the second of
these attacks, and the numbers of German dead was
prodigious. I have always had a very high opinion of
the fighting quaUties of the Flemish and of the Walloons;
they have a good deal of self-control and yet at
times they are intensely fierce. They are a very
scientific race, and, though they did not fight much
in the latter stages of the war, they always fought
methodically.
During the fighting on the Somme this spring, the
165
The Press and the General Stajff
great German aviator, Richtofen, was brought down;
some of our airmen claimed him as their 'bird,' and some
Australian Lewis gunners did the same. The claim of
the Australians was eventually upheld, but there was no
absolute certainty about it. He was given a magnificent
funeral; it is an extraordinary thing that throughout
the war the airmen of all races managed to preserve some
chivalry. They fought as gentlemen, and were not above
honouring an honourable opponent. I have described
how impressive is the ceremonial of a British miUtary
funeral; in this case it was more than usually impressive,
for numbers of our airmen turned out to escort the soul
of this hero heavenwards. As though inspired by the
example of their German rival, they swooped down almost
1 o the grave's edge and then zoomed up, looped countless
loops, fell again like dead leaves and sparred like a flight
of homing pigeons in their grace and mastery of every
winged movement. Homer would have sold ten times
over his copyright of the war correspondence of the
Trojan War to have written an epic on this
scene.
With the German failure to capture the Flanders Hills
and Villers-Bretonneux, our front again became stabilised,
and the great German offensive, on the British front at
any rate, was brought to a standstill. This period of six
weeks' fighting is very complicated and very important;
I don't pretend to write a complete history, but I hope
to make clear to the ordinary man in the street that
which up to now has been obscure. Therefore, in summing
up what has already been said, it is necessary to emphasise
the following points : — Before the German attack of the
2ist of March our tired armies were strung out to an
impossible extent; our southern army (the Fifth) which
was in liaison with the French, was commanded by
i66
Ludendorff s Ojffensive
General Gougli, who had had an unsuccessful season in
1917; the French General Staff expected the main attack
to come in Champagne; the Germans, helped by mist,
gained an initial success of importance and proceeded
to overwhelm the Fifth Army, making rapid progress
towards Amiens; their progress in front of our Third
Army (General Byng) was slower and the German losses
here were appalling; in face of a desperate situation
General Gough showed the qualities of a great man, but
was removed from his command; the Germans were held at
the base of their big triangle, namely, in the neighbourhood
of Montdidier and at Arras; even if they had captured
Amiens, they could not have advanced much farther
without widening their base; that they did not capture
Amiens was almost entirely due to the superb fighting
of the Australians; on the 28th of March the Germans
launched a huge attack against Arras, hoping to reach
St Pol; there was no fog, and they were beaten to a stand-
still; finding that Arras and the Vimy Ridge was hopeless,
the enemy attacked the Portuguese on the Lj^s, hoping
to turn the Vimy Ridge, to capture the remaining coal-
fields of France, and eventually to capture the Channel
ports; the Portuguese officers fought very badly, but
some of the privates under British officers fought very
well; a great disaster was averted by the superb defence
of Givenchy and the equally fine fighting in front of
Nieppe Forest; the loss of Kemmel would have been
fatal had the remaining hills (Mont Rouge, Mont Noir,
and the Scherpenberg) been captured also and had the
Belgians failed to hold the Germans on the Ypres-Staden
railway; in all this fighting geographical features and
weather had played a considerable part; the fog on the
2ist of March and on the 9th of April had greatly helped
the enemy; the gentle slopes round Arras, the Vimy Ridge,
167
The Press and the General Stajff
the straight canal in the neighbourhood of Hinges, the
straight canal from La Bass6e to Bethune, the little hill
of Givenchy, and the Flanders hills had all helped the
defenders. We gradually saw that the German reserves
were being used up, but they still had enough left to
make another big push. "Where would the next attack
occur? Since Foch had been appointed to the supreme
command, Ludendorff' s task of separating the British and
French armies became much more difficult; a single mind
governed a single front; French and British divisions
turned up when and where they were wanted, but still
our bases were on the coast, and if Ludendorff could
continue down the Somme as far as Abbeville, the whole
of the north of France and Belgium would have to be
abandoned, for it is not the coast Une that counts but
the last lateral road parallel with the cocist. This
original plan of Ludendorff' s therefore still seemed to
be the best one, and it is difficult to account for what
happened during the next few weeks.
Towards the end of April three British divisions that
had taken a part in repelling both the big German attacks
— on the Somme and on the Lys — and one that had
been engaged in the Somme only, were sent down to the
French front, in the neighbourhood of Rheims, to have a
rest(!) I had seen General Campbell, the commander of
the 2ist at Clery, in March, and he had said to me, 'Go
back to G.H.O. and let them know that, if I am not
relieved before nightfall, I shall not have a thousand men
left in the division ! ' They were not relieved for several
days, and then, almost immediately, were involved in
the fighting north of the Lys. I saw General Campbell
again at G.H.Q. just as he was starting for the Rheims
front; he looked to me very sad and much aged, but he
seemed full of hope that, if he were given a little rest,
i68
hudcndorff s OJffenshe
he could soon bring the new drafts up to concert pitch.
As all the world now knows, he was involved almost
immediately in the fighting that followed the new German
attacks on the Aisne. It will be remembered that the
Germans had made preparations for an attack on this
front at the same time as they were preparing to attack
in the St Quentin area. Ludendorff had seen that it was
useless to attack at places where an attack was expected,
such as at Arras on the 28th of March; he had seen the
enormous value of surprise, as on the Lys on April gth,
and the value of catching the exhausted divisions at
places where they were supposed to be resting; yet he was
absolutely committed to the Somme idea, so much so
that it seemed improbable that he would attack else-
where except as a diversion. Hence it appears that
Marshal Foch himself was surprised by this attack on
the Aisne front, otherwise he could not have put our
tired divisions in line in this sector. Notwithstanding
their exhaustion, the British troops fought magnificently,
and they only gave ground to conform to troops on their
flanks. When it became obvious that throughout the
campaign French and British troops were going to be
mixed up continually together, I had a section of British
Press censors attached to the French Press bureau in
Paris; I had given these officers orders that nothing was
to be allowed to pass which implied criticism of our
fighting. Unfortunately, one of these officers so far
neglected his duty that he allowed a passage to pass in
an article in the Journal which asserted that this new
retreat was started by the British and that their in-
capacity to hold caused the French troops to retire also.
This was absolutely the contrary of the truth, as is proved
by this magnificent order of the day, which was published
by General Berthelot.
169
The Press and the General Stajff
VfeME Arm^e % Gal No. 371 — 21-8-18
2eme Bon du Regiment de Devonshire.
'Le 27 mai, 1918, au moment ou les defenseurs des
lignes anglaises ^taient soumis k des attaques puissantes
et incessamment renouvelees, le 2eme Bon du Regiment
de Devonshire a su, par sa tenacity et sa bravoure,
r&ister, heureusement k toutes les tentatives de I'ennemi
et conserver son front intact jusqu'^ une heure avancde
de la joum^e permettant ainsi I'organisation des defenses
au Sud de I'Ardre et leur occupation par les troupes de
renfort.
Cramponnes a la demi^re tranch^e conserv^e au Nord
de la riviere, sans espoir de secours, ^lectrisds par leur
chef, le Lt. -Colonel R. H. Anderson-Morshead demeur^
in^branlable malgr^ un bombardement qui faisait rage,
les rares survivants du Bon voulurent h^roiquement
r^sister jusqu'au demeir, comme ils en avaient I'ordre.
Le 2eme Bon du Regiment de Devonshire tout entier,
avec son chef, 28 offtciers et 552 hommes, a g^n6reuse-
ment consenti, en cette circonstance, le sacrifice total
qui lui ^tait demand^ a la cause sainte des Allies.'
And yet the survivors of this division who had fought
so gloriously were hooted by French civihans when they
were reUeved and were going back to rest. Naturally, this
censor officer was dismissed from his job, but the harm
was done, and many French people will go to their graves
thinking that we let them down during this battle, whereas
some of our battahons died to a man rather than yield a
foot to such an enemy when fighting shoulder to shoulder
with such an ally. This proves what I have said before,
170
Ludendorffs Ojffensive
namely, that Press censorship is a delicate matter; one
slip may produce incredible results.
In this battle, which, in my opinion, was certainly a
surprise to Marshal Foch, the Germans again made rapid
progress, and the threat to Paris seemed, to the uninitiated
at any rate, a very serious thing. Besides, it looked at
one moment as if the French public opinion was going to
turn against Foch and Clemenceau, I did not hesitate
to tell my French correspondents that this German success
had in no way effected the immense confidence in the
GeneraUssimo that was shared by all ranks of the British
Army; they in their turn lost no time in publishing an
expression of this confidence in their papers. Things
did look a bit ugly at one moment. The French believed
that Foch had been caught napping. Clemenceau coming
back from one of his strenuous visits to the front, addressed
the Chamber, and, for the moment, he appeared as an
old tired man, and it seemed as if even his indomitable
will must give way under the crushing burden that he
had to carry, I thought it as well to warn the Chief
of this meeting of the Chamber, which had been so hostile
to Clemenceau, and I remember him taking me round his
garden after dinner, where we spent an hour together.
He seemed to me like some saintly father in his miraculous
patience and self-control; he gave great praise to the
fighting spirit of Foch and Clemenceau, and I could see
that it would be a great blow to him if anything should
happen to upset such a combination. Clemenceau
regained the confidence of his countrymen by marching
a couple of American divisions through Paris; a division,
to the civilian eye, is like twenty armies, and the Paris
crowd thought that the whole population of the United
States had landed in France. This produced a tremend-
ously pro-American wave of opinion throughout France,
171
The Press and the General Stajff
with a corresponding anti-British tendency. My French
friends came to me in despair, and said, 'Why don't you
start a vigorous propaganda to counteract this.' I
thought it the wrong moment for propaganda, and if the
French people could be cheered at such a moment by
pro-American sentiments, such a result would be cheap
at the price. I said therefore to my friends, ' I am delighted
that you should welcome the Americans : they deserve
it. Come to me in three months' time (I have always been
an optimist), and I will Usten to your maturer judgment
of the Americans.' Clemenceau went every other day
to the most lively parts of the front and exposed himself
to danger with an absolute disregard of his personal
safety. This cheered the poilus not a little. Another
fact that cheered the Parisians (strange to say) was the
firing of the big long range gun on Paris; the Parisians
saw in it something comic; 'La grosse Bertha' became
the standing joke of the day. This childlike frivolity
counteracted the tenseness of the situation. What I
was afraid of was that the Germans might possibly get
within howitzer range of Paris, and that having trained
a couple of hundred howitzers on to the town, they would
say to the French, ' Here are our terms, accept them or we
destroy your capital.' If Ludendorff had had the good
sense to offer the 'status quo ante' at such a moment,
it would have been a difficult thing to refuse. In any case,
when his troops recrossed the Mame, it was astonishing
that he did not make overtures of peace, for he must
have known that trouble was coming. It is my firm
belief that there was a big difference of opinion in the
German camp. We know that a big offensive had been
prepared for some time past in the area occupied by the
group of armies of Prince Rupprecht ; dumps of ammuni-
tion could be seen on the air photographs; a large number
172
Ludendorffs O^ensive
of reserve divisions were concentrated in the Lille-
Valenciennes area, and captured prisoners gave us
information that pointed to an offensive on a large scale
on the front of our first and second armies. Even if
Ludendorff could no longer hope to separate us from our
Allies, he might still hope to cut us off from our channel
port bases, and I am convinced that he himself must have
been in favour of an attack in the north. It is probable,
however, that the Hohenzollern element in the council of
war put the case this wise : 'We have lost the war once by not
going for Paris, don't let us be such idiots a second time';
and the ' nach Paris ' party carried the day. The original
Ludendorff plan was a splendid one; this new stunt was
an absurdity. If Foch had been surprised at the attack
on the Aisne it was because he could not imagine
that such a good strategist as Ludendorff would
change foxes at this stage of the run. Once he
had assimilated this foolishness on the part of the
enemy and had realised that he had lead with the
wrong hand, it was not difficult for him to prepare a
terrific counter.
Foch foresaw most accurately that the Germans would
attack again east and west of Rheims; it was essential
that no more troops should be used in the defence than
was absolutely necessary. General Gouraud on whom
the attack was likely to fall was warned of this, and he
prepared a scheme of defence in depth which was a slight
innovation on any previous defence tactics. His method
proved successful beyond expectation. This enabled
Foch to give Petain enough troops to launch a great
counter-offensive on the front between Chateau-Thierry
and Soissons. Four British divisions were engaged in
this attack, and again they earned praise from their
French comrades. Among these divisions was the gallant
173
The Press and the General Stajff
Highland Division, the 51st. While fighting with this
division an old friend of mine, Lieut. Tredennick, was killed:
this officer had been badly wounded at the Battle of Loos
and, after he had recovered, he was posted to my battahon
to give us instruction. He was an Irishman with a Cornish
name, and he belonged to a Scottish regiment. He was
very handsome, very Irish, and as dashing as could be.
He had been my Adjutant when I had a sniping school at
Aldershot, and he was adored by my men; he had a most
fascinating way of lecturing : he would take a subject
and deviate from it almost immediately, like Stem :
his idea was that if you continually jumped from one
subject to another it kept the men interested. When we
went to France he was in command of a company of the
12th Royal Sussex : as a company commander, he was
almost too fond of dangerous enterprises : he spent all
his nights crawling about 'no-man's-land' and he used
to come back to the trenches in the morning covered
with mud from head to foot. One day our Brigadier ran
into him and said to him, 'You are the dirtiest thing I
have yet seen. Go and have a wash.' This was too
much for Tredennick, whose fiery nature would not stand
such an undeserved rebuke. I think he would have
murdered the Brigadier, had he not been wounded again
the next evening : a rifle grenade burst near him and
his back and shoulder were fuU of bits of shrapnel. He
came to my room to say good-bye before he went down to
the CCS : it was about five o'clock in the morning, and
his large dark eyes were surrounded with black circles
from many sleepless nights. He looked handsomer than
ever — a perfect picture of the ideal soldier — full of daring
and chivalry. I never saw him again : he recovered
from his wound as from the other and then married
Colonel Grisewood's sister. Even happiness could not
174
Ludendorff s Offensive
keep him away for long, and he died 'face k I'ennemi*
like the lion-hearted fellow he was.
While these events of passionate interest were taking
place on the French front a calm, very naturally, set in
opposite the British armies in the north, but the anxiety
about Paris was just as poignant with us as with the
French themselves. However, this tragic moment was
relieved by an episode which had a great effect on the
spirits of the army. I refer, of course, to the Pemberton
Billing case. On one particular day I passed through
many units from front to rear and I found every one,
without exception, waiting watch in hand for the arrival
of the newspapers. The disruption of the British Empire
and the collapse of civilisation was as nothing compared
with the odds on being one of the 47,000, or with the
satisfaction of seeing the names of the witnesses called
before the court to vindicate the purity of English
society.
Prince Rupprecht's long-prepared offensive was aban-
doned; his reserves were thrown into the fight on the
Crown Prince's front, and his ammunition dumps vanished
like lumps of sugar in a hot cup of tea. Simultaneously
the attitude of the British changed from the defensive
to the offensive, especially on the Australian corps front.
The Australians had never left the enemy alone; no
sooner had they stopped him before Amiens than they
began to nibble into his line, rounding up his machine-
gun posts and putting terror into his quivering outposts.
There is not enough paper in the world to contain in
writing all that has been said about discipline during the
war. Our regular officers told us that discipline would
win the war; they told us also that the Australians had
no discipline, and yet the Australian soldiers made rings
round the very best German troops, with all their iron
P.G.s. N 175
The Press and the General Staff
discipline. The truth is that the Australians had battle-
field discipline to perfection, and their initiative and
dash had not been crushed by traditional servility. Very
often the average English Tommy thinks that, if he is
impeccably clean, and salutes, and says 'Sir' on all
and every occasion, his duty is done. There are as many
different temperaments as there are men in the world,
and each temperament requires a different form of disci-
pline; it is impossible to deny that the combination of
the Australian discipline with the Australian temperament
has produced the most magnificent fighting in the war.
Here is an instance — An Australian infantry colonel was
going round his Une at ten o'clock one morning, and he
found every single man asleep, including the sentries;
there had been some liveliness during the night and this
colonel said to himself, ' If my chaps are asleep probably
the Boches are the same.' So he woke up his men and
called for volunteers to surprise, surround, and capture
a German post that was opposite to his front. Naturally,
they all volunteered, and from among them he chose a
sergeant and ten men, who crawled through the growing
corn in broad daylight and came back with the whole
garrison of the German post and their machine-guns.
Surely this was a perfect instance of the punishment
fitting the crime.
The patrol activity on the part of the Australians led
to a big battle for the capture of Hamel; General Monash
(the Australian Corps Commander) with considerable
cunning had carried out, for some days previous to the
attack, demonstrations of smoke barrages mixed with
gas shells; the Germans, surprised at first at these phenom-
ena, gradually got accustomed to them, and when the
attack was made with a smoke barrage, but without gas,
they were found sitting, with their gas masks on, quite
176
hudendorff s Ofenstve
unprepared. The new tanks took part in this attack,
and were a huge success; during the last few months
tank tactics had improved out of all knowledge, and the
new tanks were a great improvement on the old ones.
These latest models could be manoeuvred with such ease
and were so fast that shock tactics could be employed as
well as fire tactics. An instance of this occurred during
the battle — one tank oificer spotted a German machine-
gunner firing at our stretcher-bearers, so he went straight
for him, ran him over, and pivoted on the top of him.
When the German soldier is not protected by marvellous
trenches with dug-outs, pill-boxes, and masses of barbed
wire, he is not such a wonderful fighter. Americans
also operated with the Australians, and fought with
incredible fierceness, shouting 'Lusitania' as their battle
cry. The Australians said of them, 'They're all right,
but a bit rough.' The carefully prepared plan succeeded
in all its details. This show proved that the enemy was
cracking, and when Marshal Foch called upon Sir Douglas
Haig to make an offensive on a large scale, it is no wonder
that he chose this sector where the morale of the enemy
was probably low.
177
CHAPTER VIII
'the black day for the GERMAN ARMY'
It is not likely at this period that Foch's programme for
the remainder of 1918 included more than the complete
relief of Paris and the complete relief of Amiens, and
therefore what followed is largely due to the brilliant
tactics and determination of Haig. Haig decided on the
Amiens front, and his decision was undoubtedly right;
but to make a success of this big attack, the enemy must
be surprised. The extent of Haig's concentration was
three infantry corps, a cavalry corps, and all the extras,
such as big guns, tanks, aeroplanes, etc. The main road
to Roye runs south-east from Amiens, and at Longeau
another road branches off due east to Peronne; the
German line was about ten miles away from Amiens.
If we take the triangle made by these roads and the front
line, we find Longeau the apex of the triangle, and the
line Domart, Villers-Bretonneux the base. The sides
of the triangle are about seven miles long and the base
about four miles. Now this small triangle was the area
of concentration, and when we consider that a cavalry
corps in column of route takes something Uke twenty-
one miles of road space, it is possible to get an idea of
the staff problem with which Haig was confronted. I
repeat again, three infantry corps, a cavalry corps, and all
the extras were concentrated in this small triangle, and
brought up under the nose of the Boche without his
discovering it. Such a thing is unequalled in the history
178
* The Black Day j or the German Army *
of warfare. I have said earlier in this book that the
Flanders offensive of 1917 was a nightmare to all those
who took part in it; I think that the losses incurred in
taking Paschendaele were extravagant and out of all
proportion to the value of what was gained. Haig was
lucky to remain in command of the British armies at
the end of that year, but no one has ever given him due
credit for the great series of victories which began on
August 8th before Amiens. The initial success was due
to Staff work of unexampled brilUance, and the decision
to reap the fruits of this success to the full extent and to
bring the war to a victorious finish during this year was
an act of genius for which the nation can never be suffi-
ciently grateful. Our armies had been badly hammered
and had borne the main burden of the great German
attack; our losses had been great, and Haig knew that
by August, 1918, he had got all the men he was ever likely
to get; but he risked all and won all, and he deserves
praise and credit far beyond anything that has ever been
given to him. Not only was it a great achievement to
inflict such a signal defeat upon the enemy (Ludendorff
has called it the 'Black Day'), but it was an important
and responsible decision to continue to harass the de-
morahsed enemy till he was driven across the defences of
the Somme, right through his old Hindenburg line, and
finally brought to his knees in a state of abject collapse.
Great cunning was used to deceive the enemy; some
Canadians were sent north and were identified in the
line in the neighbourhood of Kemmel. An impression
was given that tanks were concentrating in the neighbour-
hood of St Pol. The Austrahan corps made a sHght
movement to the south, and actually lost prisoners to
the enemy just before the attack, but the men who were
captured held their tongues and gave nothing away to
179
The Press and the General StaJ
the enemy. The cavalry did not move till the last possible
moment : the noise of tanks crawUng to their assembly
places was drowned by the noise of low-flying Handley-
Page bombing aeroplanes which flew over the enemy lines
very low for several nights prior to the attack. I saw a
Canadian staff officer some days after the attack and he
told me that he had been round the triangle of ground
(described above) on August 7th, and could see no trace
of abnormal concentration — so carefully were the troops
hidden in the Httle woods which abound in that neighbour-
hood. The Third Corps, which was north of the Somme,
was attacked by the enemy on the 6th of August, and this,
no doubt, added greatly to the difficulties of this corps
in preparing for the attack on the 8th. The great success
of the day was won by the Austrahan and Canadian corps,
and they deserve unbounded honour. The French on our
right under General Debeney were also extremely
successful.
The morning of the 8th of August was foggy, thus
proving that the ' Bon Dieu ' does not always fight on the
side of the Germans. A terrific bombardment opened
the ball, and it was impossible to tell for some time what
was happening; then suddenly every battery appeared
to be moving forward. There was silence, and through
the mist there were silhouettes of things crawling forward;
everything that was visible had a forward movement,
and, as the mist cleared, the sense of a whole empire
advancing was most remarkable. The enemy's artillery
was first silenced and then captured, and the war corre-
spondents could follow the progress of the fight at very
close range; later in the morning they had the astounding
sight of the cavalry deploying and passing through the
tanks. 'Quel spectacle inoubUable,' was what the
French correspondents said ; their enthusiasm was
180
* The Black Day j or the German Army *
unbounded. Over this same ground they had borne
testimony to the value of our chaps during the most
anxious moments of the retreat; now they went forward
with them in the first step towards the final victory. On
the whole this was a rotten war for war correspondents
as well as for every one else; from now onwards, however,
there was movement and drama and romance. Each
day brought some fresh development, and it was not
long before the whole British army was pursuing the
defeated soldiers of the greatest military nation in the
world. Who will ever forget the campaign of 1918?
First it seemed as if we British were disgraced in the eyes
of the whole world; the line of the coast seemed daily
to come towards us. Then, no sooner had our anxieties
ceased, than the agony about Paris began. Then the tide
turned — victory after victory crowned our efforts.
We got into touch with the wretched civilians who had
been under the Prussian yoke for four and a half years,
and it became obvious that the vile Hun was done to
the world. Those who have lived through such times
will never forget it; all other great moments in the history
of our race seem as nothing compared with these.
Our casualties in the first stage were extraordinarily
light, but, as is always the case when the enemy has time
to reorganise his artillery, our losses became heavier
four or five days after the opening assault. The prisoners
were well 'nourished,' well fed, and well clothed, but the
rank and file were enchanted to be captured. The
German officers admitted that the great Ludendorff
offensive had definitely failed, and they saw no possibility
of winning the war, but they thought then that they could
hang on long enough to make a drawn game of it. Every
captured German admitted that the surprise was complete
and absolute, and it was obvious from the vast quantities
181
""he Press and the General Stajff
'of stores which we captured that the enemy was preparmg
for a quiet winter on these old Somme battlefields and
had not the smallest suspicion of the trouble that was
in store for him.
Towards the close of this first big attack I went out
with Mr Nevinson to explore thoroughly the whole area
that had been captured from the enemy. Mr Nevinson
had come out to replace Mr PhiUip Gibbs, who WcLS having
a short rest. Nevinson's distinguished appearance,
perfect manners, and his great personal bravery made
him welcome wherever he went. He told me on this
occasion an amusing story of himself in India; he had once
been interviewed by a native journalist, who wrote of him
as follows : — ' Outwardly he has the appearance of a
gentleman, but inwardly he is no better than a ranting
Socialist.' We saw no traces of heavy casualties till we
got close to a httle wood called the 'Bois de Z,' on the
road to Roye. This wood had been a famous show spot
after the original German retreat to the Hindenburg
line, for it contained the most marvellous dug-outs ever
constructed by the Germans. Here was a httle under-
ground palace with large rooms and electric fight and
every modem comfort; apparently these dug-outs had
not been destroyed by us in our March retreat, and the
enemy had made a great resistance at this spot. Some
young cavalry officer had tried to take the place by direct
assault, galloping up the main road; he and his men
had been mown down by machine-gun fire, and there was
a horrible scene of slaughter on the road. After repelHng
this attack the Germans came out of their shelters and
shook their fists at our dead. This sector was now in
French hands and they too had lost heavily and had not
captured the wood at the first attack. Nevinson and I
went through it on to the high ground beyond and had a
182
* The Black Day j or the German Army '
magnificent view of an attack on 'Caesar's camp' in the
outskirts of Roye; masses of the French light Renaud
tanks were sailing into action and the German gunners
were shooting wildly at them. Behind us several batteries
of French 75's were doing a rapid fire; no one who has
not seen these guns in action can imagine how quickly
they can fire, it is almost like a machine-gun. It was a
boiHng hot day and the smells were disgusting. The
French gunners had had no rest for days and several of
them were fast asleep between the wheels of their gun-
carriages while the guns were actually firing. The brilUant
beauty of the day and the sense of colossal victory that
was in the air made the sight of dead young men even
more pathetic than usual.
Haig having driven a huge pocket into the German
line, had now the possibility of some sort of manoeuvre.
Ludendorff in his great offensive had tried to pierce our
front but had not done so because our weak forces kept
on the move. You can snap a taut rope, but not a slack
one. Had he had a couple of divisions of good cavalry
and had attacked with them along the Villers-Bretonneux-
Amiens road, God only knows what would have happened.
As it was, he tried to widen the base of his pocket (at
Arras and Montdidier), but he failed to do so; after that,
his Lys attack and his Aisne attack were 'eccentric'
and therefore did not help each other. He was Hke a
man with too many talents for divergent energies that
had nothing to do with one another. Haig profited by
this mistake of Ludendorff's and made his attacks 'con-
centric,' so that each fresh attack profited by the success
of the former attack, till the main German lines of com-
munication were so threatened that they were quite
overwhelmed by the great mass of retreating humanity
that was trying to get back to Germany. Hence the
183
The Press and the General Sta£
complete capitulation of the enemy. This plan of con-
centric attacks seems simple enough now, but it had
never been done before in the war, and I am convinced
that it originated with Haig and his Staff. His method
was rather like a child eating a large slice of bread and
butter, working gradually by a succession of semicircles
towards the centre. The Fourth Army (General Rawlin-
son), having made the first semicircle, prepared the way
for the attack of the Third Army (General Byng). There
was a small overture to gain the Arras-Albert railway
and then the main attack was launched in a feu-de-joie
fashion i.e. the different corps and divisions came into
action one after the other, the start taking place by
moonlight and the other attacks following throughout
the morning. This method certainly confused the enemy,
who began by making a good defence and then crumpled
up. The old Somme battlefield was taken from north
to south, and the high ground of terrible memory about
Thiepval and Pozieres was pinched out. As yet another
battle of the Ancre began, I sallied forth, and this is an
extract of a letter : —
'22.8.18. — Yesterday I went out again to my old
haunts on the Ancre. I stood on the same ground as in
1916; the batteries were in the same positions; the same
spots were unhealthy, though not so unhealthy. I passed
through Mailly-Mailly Wood, where I was once nearly
killed; I saw a Brigade Headquarters in the same old
place, but not occupied by my old villain. The valley
of the river looked more gaunt than ever under the hot
sun that broke through the mist about eleven o'clock.
Aveluy Wood is now almost as ghastly as Thiepval;
Thiepval was still full of enemy machine-guns, but no
artillery. I came upon a packet of Boche prisoners,
184
* The Black Day for the German Army '
and I asked a young lad of twenty how he had been taken
prisoner. "Oh ! I surrendered," he said with the utmost
glee. "Are you pleased to be a prisoner ? " "Yes! delighted;
every German soldier would Hke to be a prisoner!"
That sounds more like peace, doesn't it ? I then questioned
the Tommy who was escorting them; he was just hke
a music-hall comedian with a north country accent.
" We was down at t'bottom and we heard a noise oop top
and th'officer got his goon (Lewis gun) into action — then
a large fellow stood oop and said in English — ' We all want
to surrender.' " Three years ago he was an inhabitant of
Folkestone. The battalion padre went over with us with
his soft hat on, saying, "If you're going to hell, boys, I
am going with you !"'
As our men advanced towards the river in the neigh-
bourhood of Miraumont, they caught a fox after a short
run; naturally, for the moment, Germans and machine-
guns were completely fogotten. In this fighting the
Welsh Division (the 38th) fought magnificently; the men
waded through the marshy river bed and climbed the
steep banks towards Thiepval under the heaviest machine-
gun fire. We had relieved this division in the Givenchy
sector in 1916; then they seemed to me dirty and their
trenches were in a shocking state, but now all their
transport lines showed marvellous discipline, and there
was an air of efficiency about them that was most impres-
sive. They continued to fight for many days after this
and had a rough time at the old terror spots, Longueval
and Delville Wood; by the time they were relieved they
had a wonderful record in captures of territory, guns, and
men.
It was evident that the enemy meant to stand on the
line Bapaume-Peronne-St Leger; his counter-attacks
185
The Press and the General Staf
were incessant, but in vain, and the morale of his troops
was not high enough to withstand the irresistible dash
of the British. It was some days, however, before he gave
up Bapaume, which was occupied by the New Zealand
division on the 29th of August.
The next astounding feat of arms was the capture of
Mont St Quentin by the Australians; this hill stands
N.W. from Peronne and commands all the surrounding
country. From this place the Germans had given us
hell during the latter stages of the first Somme battle;
I heard General Rawlinson tell one of my correspondents,
after the German retreat to the Hindenburg Hne, that it
was impregnable from the west. The thought of rushing
the position without a huge artillery preparation seemed
fantastic, and yet by now the Australians had such a
contempt for the Germans that they were willing to take
on anything. General Monash (the corps commander)
was specially anxious that the Germans should not be
given time to reorganise and hold the line of the Somme.
He made no attempt to cross the river opposite Mont
St Quentin, but went as far back as FeuilUeres and got
across on small newly constructed bridges; the attacking
troops reached Clery just as night was falling, conse-
quently all the preparations for the assault on Mont
St Quentin and the taking up of new positions on ground
freshly captured from the enemy had to be performed
in the dark. Such an attack, carried out along the banks
of a sinuous river, involves the overlapping of battalions
and brigades and can only be performed by perfectly
disciplined troops, magnificently led. On the next day
the summit of the mount was captured by sectional
rushes, according to text-book principles, each section
alternately giving its neighbour covering fire.j The
amazing cheek of the enterprise is as incredible as its
186
* The Black Day j or the German Army *
success; Mont St Quentin should become a place of
pilgrimage to all visitors from the Commonwealth who
take a pride in their history. With this hill in our posses-
sion, Peronne was bound to fall, and on the following day
the Australians completed the capture of the town.
The Germans were now in a serious position, and if they
wished to avert a hopeless disaster it would be necessary
for them to shorten their line and economise their man-
power. They began, therefore, to withdraw from the Lys
salient, and it was not long before we were again in
possession of the territory won by them in their offensive
launched against the Portuguese. In this salient the
enemy had been surrounded by our guns; he was without
his wonderful dug-outs and pill-boxes and his losses
were tremendous, especially in gunners. Our counter-
battery work had steadily been improving all through
the war, and proof of our gunners' skill was provided by
the German graveyards in the neighbourhood of the Lys.
The success of our Third Army, which had hardly been
less great than that of the Fourth, now made the situation
ripe for a third nibble at the slice of cake; accordingly
General Home's First Army came into action. The
Canadian corps had been removed from the line south of
the Australians and now attacked again south-east of
Arras. They met with instant success and captured
the hill of Monchy-le-Preux. Monchy is a small mountain
and we lost heavily here in 1917. This time the enemy
put up no sort of defence, and his troops swarmed down
the Arras road delighted to be captured; they had
packed up their spare kit and were waiting for their
first opportunity to give themselves up, determined to
enjoy their captivity as much as possible. The rations
which we found were excellent — good biscuits, sugar,
honey and coffee; all the prisoners were of good physique.
187
The Press and the General Stajff
On this same day Foucaucourt , on the Fourth Army front,
fell into our hands; it was reported that on the 8th of
August some of the Canadian motor machine-gun cars
had got into this place by dint of taking a turn in a
German traffic queue. They proceeded quietly along,
directed by many German military policemen, till they
eventually found some infantry in column of fours;
they had been waiting for this, and suddenly opened
fire, inflicting heavy casualties and causing hopeless
confusion.
Such progress was made in this initial attack of the First
Army that we were immediately up against the Drocourt-
Queant line; this was a switch from the main Hindenburg
line, constructed after our Arras offensive in 1917. It
was a line of great strength protected with masses of
barbed wire, and therefore it could not be tackled without
proper preparations; it took a week before these prepara-
tions were complete. There was now no element of sur-
prise; in 1917 or igi6 the Germans would have been
capable of holding out for months in such a position,
but their morale was excessively low, not because of
our propaganda, as Ludendorff foolishly asserts, but
because of our fighting efficiency, our tremendous artillery,
and our tanks. The tanks were becoming more and more
objects of terror to the Germans, for they felt that their
barbed wire was of no use to them; in this attack on the
Drocourt-Queant line forty tanks were used and greatly
helped to defeat the enemy. The most severe fighting
was in the neighbourhood of Queant, and it is a wonder
that our troops could ever get through such solid walls
of rusty wire. The capture of the Drocourt-Queant
line caused a general retreat in front of our First, Third,
and Fourth Armies, and it was a question whether
the enemy would attempt to make any further stand
188 . . t M
* The Black Day j or the German Army *
before retreating to his Hindenburg line. A position
does not simply consist of one line; to defend a position
it is necessary to fight in front of it, and in it and behind
it, and so we were obliged to make a fourth nibble at the
cake and attack again between Havrincourt and Epehy
These operations were successful and yielded twelve
thousand prisoners.
The extraordinary success of the Fourth, Third, and
First British Armies had obviously changed the outlook
for Marshal Foch; these concentric attacks, which had
taken place principally on the British front, were now to
spread all up and down the line. Instead of keeping to a
limited offensive with a view to training the Americans
during the winter, Foch saw that the enemy was all in,
and that, though there were only a few more months of
campaigning weather, he could be beaten into sub-
mission within the given time. Thus the French and
Americans were ordered to attack towards Mezieres,
the British towards Maubeuge, and a mixed force of
Belgians, British, and French, under King Albert, towards
Ghent. This last arrangement seems to me a stroke of
genius — to give King Albert a chance of sharing in the
death-blow struck at the wallowing ' blond beast.' Marshal
Foch naturally provided him with a first-rate chief of
staff. This was a difficult moment for Sir Douglas Haig;
the success of his plans had brought about a complete
change in the prospect of the allies, and yet now his
armies, which had been attacking incessantly since
August 8th, had the most difficult task of all before them
— namely, to pierce the strongest parts of the enemy's
defences. As I have said before, he knew that he would
receive no more reinforcements from home, and a failure
on the Hindenburg line would end all hopes of complete
victory before the winter. He might easily have said
189
The Press and the General StaJ
that his men had done enough for one year (and so they
had), but he decided to risk all, and his decision was
right.
The attack on the Hindenburg line was started by the
First and Third Armies, the while the Fourth Army kept
up a terrific bombardment. I went out with Beach
Thomas and Philip Gibbs to see the northern portion
of the attack, and this is an extract of a letter written at
the time : —
'29.9.18. — Yesterday I went to see the taking of
Bourlon Wood, which was a wonderful sight. In spite
of a start from my headquarters at 4.30 a.m., it was
already almost daylight when I got to the battle, and the
show was in full swing. Our barrage was fiercer than
ever, but the German fire was very weak; as the sun
rose, a stiff N.W. wind sprang up, which suited our
smoke screen to perfection. Dense white fleecy bursts
formed themselves into huge cumulus clouds, blotting
out entirely Bourlon Wood; this smoke is almost blue-
white like an arc lamp. After the shells have burst, the
smoke falls Uke the spray of a waterfall, and then bunches
itself into great fat thunder clouds; in the midst of these
clouds you see the jets of flame of the thermite shells.
A dawn attack has many curious effects, which I suppose
are difficult to imagine; first there is nothing but the
usual 'Verey' lights sent up from the trenches to Hght
up 'no-man's-land' and prevent patrols from working
up to the lines; then the barrage starts and there are
tongues of flame all round in front and behind, and bursts
of gold when the shells fall, at the same time all the
German S.O.S. signals go up; these are green, red, and
yellow rockets. Within a few seconds the enemy guns
open up, and there is a moment of some anxiety to know
190
' The Black Day j or the German Army *
if you are standing on one of the particular spots where
the enemy has registered; if not, all's well. While it is still
dark, you are not very conscious of the noise; it is nearly
all colour. If you turn your back on the enemy, you see
columns of men moving up in single] file, silhouetted
against the flames of the heavies. The moment daylight
appears, you become aware of an ear-splitting noise and
a lot of violence going on, some of it unpleasantly near
you. Yesterday the German fire was not a real barrage,
just harassing fire. Our chaps had to cross the Canal
du Nord, and this could only be done in certain places,
so one would have thought the Boche would have dammed
these places up with his fire, but he came down too late;
most of our men strolled across with light casualties.
I watched the show from the neighbourhood of Moeuvres;
this is in a hollow and the ground slopes gently up to
Bourlon. The whole of our manoeuvre was compUcated,
owing to the Canal being unfordable in many places;
troops had to cross in bunches and then to expand, fan
shape. Our men formed up in solid blocks, like in pictures
of old-fashioned battles; as the sun topped the wood, the
light caught their steel helmets and their naked bayonets.
They moved in mass, company commanders mounted;
it was a most beautiful sight. By about nine a.m. the
whole of Bourlon and Flesquieres ridges were blotted
out by this incandescent smoke and hidden from view;
I had my glasses up to see the detail, and could make
out small parties of infantry following a tank into the
Bois de I'Orival. A gunner observer at my elbow
suddenly shouted, ' There's an air fight : by Jove, she's in
flames.' By great good luck I switched my glasses just
right, and saw the plane, in all its detail, falling like a dead
leaf, with its petrol tank sending up a gigantic flame;
before reaching the ground, the pilot took a header,
P.G.s. o 191
The Press and the General Staf
but he must have been smashed to pieces. The plane
which had done him in followed its victim down, and then
zoomed up and made for the Boche lines; we were
aghast for a moment, but he turned round and came
right over us, and we saw that he was one of our scouts.
By the time this episode was over, the smoke barrage
had gone right over Bourlon, and we could see our shells
bursting well on the other side; we noticed also that our
heavies behind us had their noses well in the air, also
the Boche fire was harassing us no longer; I imagine that
his gunners were Umbering up. It was at that moment
brilliant sunshine, and all the valleys in our neighbourhood
were alive with things crawling forward. I came back
by divisional H.Q's and had the news in precise detail.
Small parties of prisoners were coming into the cages,
and I went to have a look at them; they were mostly a
bit pinched about the gills; German prisoners are always
very white; it is, I think, because they live a lot more
underground than our chaps do; they are like those
white caterpillars that you find under stones. There was
a group of officers from the 7th Cavalry division, very
markedly cavalrymen, and not to be confused with
common infantry soldiers. They had elegant short
side -whiskers, like me, and they flicked bits of dirt from
their tunics in a most dandified manner, and inhaled
their cigarette smoke till it all disappeared. This cage
was in the old Drocourt-Queant line, and they were
surrounded by belts and belts and belts of impregnable
wire; I thought they looked at it rather quizzically.
Behind the cage some Canadian Highlanders were moving
forward in single file — the most magnificent men I have
ever seen, with great muscular knees. Their kilts had the
most victorious swing to them. As I close this letter
I find we took, yesterday, 10,000 prisoners and 200 guns;
192
* The Black Day for the German Army '
most of these troops have been fighting continuously
since the 8th of August — it is marvellous. We have
attacked in the north and that is also going well — ' on les
aura' with a vengeance.
During this attack one of my Belgian correspondents,
Monsieur Montague, who represents the Nation Beige,
was in onr front-line trenches (accompanied by one
of my officers, Lieut. Macintosh) with our assaulting
troops — ^in fact, he made himself most useful by pointing
out German machine-gun nests to our men. He was
on all occasions absolutely fearless, and he knew the
conditions of modern warfare as well as any individual
on the western front.
I did not get back to my headquarters till two o'clock,
and I found a message waiting for me summoning all
correspondents to Fourth Army headquarters for a
lecture on the operations to take place on the morrow.
I sent this message round to all Press units and then I
did about two hours' concentrated censoring, and was off
to the neighbourhood of Peronne where the Fourth Army
was stationed. We were out again the next morning at
dawn; in those glorious days we had no rest nor wanted
any. General Montgomery, who was General Rawlinson's
chief of staff, gave us a most interesting talk; the coming
operation was to pierce the main Hindenburg line at its
strongest portion — a heavy bombardment of the enemy's
lines had been going on for two days — one of the main
features of the enemy's defen'sive system was the Scheldt
Canal; between Bellicourt and Vendhuile, a distance of
six kilometres, the canal goes underground, through a
tunnel; it was known that the enemy had bolt holes
from this tunnel, therefore it was of the utmost importance
to ' mop up ' the tunnel and all dug-outs in its neighbour-
hood. General Montgomery did not underrate the
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The Press and the General Stajff
difficulty of this enterprise; he informed us that two
American divisions were to take part in the show, and that
the Australians would be in close support and eventually
pass through the Americans; he underlined the point
that everything would depend on thorough ' mopping up '
by the Americans, and that they had been thoroughly
warned as to the importance of not rushing wildly on.
Unfortunately, on the following day the Americans
did not 'mop up,' and the Australians, coming up in
close support, found Germans between themselves and
their Allies. This caused a terrible lot of unnecessary
casualties both to the Austrahans and to the Americans.
Up to now, the Americans, who had fought with the
Austrahans, had fought exceedingly well, whereas some
of the United Kingdom troops in the recent fighting
had not been quite up to concert pitch. The Austrahans
lost no time in telHng their American friends that Great
Britain was the duddest of dud countries, and consequently
the Americans in our area had nothing bad enough to
say of poor Thomas Atkins. On this occasion, however,
the glory of the day was won by the 46th division, com-
posed of men from this contemptible Island. They
stormed the canal at BellengUse, which in this part has
precipitous banks, got across the water by means of rafts
and lifebelts (stolen from the leave boat), captured the
German trenches on the far side, then swung right-handed
and took the Germans in the rear, capturing many guns
in action. It was a most astounding achievement, equal
to anything done in the whole war; General Campbell,
who won his V.C. with the Guards division on the Somme
for rallying his men with a hunting horn, commanded
one of the brigades of this division. After this episode
one heard less of the dud country from the Austrahans;
it is only fair to say that they are as generous with their
194
* The Black Day J or the German Army '
praise as with their blame. During this one day the 46th
division alone captured over 4000 prisoners and seventy
guns.
It was not to be expected that the deep defensive zone
of the strongest portion of the Hindenburg line could be
captured in a day, but the success on this first day of
the attack was sufficient to ensure final success, and,
after nine days of intensive fighting, this whole position,
with the last defensive positions behind it, were captured.
As Sir Douglas Haig says in his despatches, the enemy's
defeat was overwhelming and there was now only the
smallest chance that he could make any serious resistance
against our victorious troops. While these events of
huge importance were taking place on the Cambrai-St
Quentin front, the King of the Belgians, in command
of a mixed force of British, Belgian, and French, launched
his attack on the Ypres front. The British forces that
co-operated were of General Plumer's Second Army.
General Plumer is certainly one of the outstanding
personaUties of the war; it may truly be said that he
never made one mistake.
In appearance General Plumer was like a caricature
of a British General in an Adelphi melodrama; he is of
full habit of body, with a rubicund face and an expression
of benign stupidity. I always thought that his exterior
was pure camouflage; every detail of his appearance
suggested brainlessness, but underneath there was wisdom
and astuteness to an uncommon degree. For a soldier
it is not a bad thing to look cleverer than you are, like
Kitchener, or to be cleverer than you look, like Plumer.
His troops had been situated in the most difficult
sector on the British front; they were in a salient, with
the enemy on three sides having the advantage of higher
ground. Our casualties had gradually to be reduced by
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The Press and the General StaJ[
better defences, and then the time was ripe for the great
Messines offensive, which was perfectly planned and
executed. After the Paschendaele offensive of 1917 he
went to Italy and achieved the impossible by getting on
equally well with the Italians and the French. His
mihtary wisdom and his personal humihty made him an
enormous influence for good in this crisis on the Italian
front. Now he was to fight yet another Battle of Ypres.
The German forces on this front were extremely thin,
and our men went over the top with hardly any protection
from artillery, but they had instantaneous success, their
worst enemy being the Flanders weather. The old
battlefields had no good roads and our progress was
delayed by transport difficulties. This new offensive
caused the enemy to fall back from Armentieres and Lens;
the country round Lens is like the country between
Birmingham and Wolverhampton, i.e. street upon street
of miners' cottages. No serious fighting could take
place under such conditions, but the enemy's rearguards
were constantly pressed by our patrols.
While the bad conditions of the Flanders roads neces-
sitated a slight delay in this sector, the same troops of
the First, Third, and Fourth Armies, who had been fighting
incessantly since August, again advanced to the attack.
The Third and Fourth Armies were the first off the mark,
helped by tanks; the German defences were incomplete
and were not a serious obstacle to the tanks, though the
enemy's infantry was pretty tough in the initial stages
of the fight and counter-attacked with great vigour.
Later they gave way and our cavalry had one of the few
opportunities of the war, harassing the disorganised
enemy and preventing him from carrying out his demoli-
tions. The new advance to the outskirts of Le Cateau
brought about a general German retirement, which
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* The Black Day jor the German Army *
disengaged Cambrai. At last it was possible to go and
examine this town that we had so often looked at through
our field-glasses. Monsieur Paul Dupuy, the proprietor
of the Fetit Parisien, came down specially from Paris
with his own car; his correspondent. Monsieur Jean
Vignaud, was of the party, and we started from Amiens
after an early lunch. The roads east of Bapaume were in
a terrible condition for a light private car, and we had to
go at a snail's pace for a few kilometres before reaching
Cambrai; this enabled Monsieur Dupuy to have a good
view of the defences in the neighbourhood of the Canal
du Nord, and he was much impressed with the obstacles
that our men had overcome. ' Mon Dieu ! que vous
avez fait de belles choses,' he said. We found Cambrai
still in flames, though most of the worst fires had been
got under by the Canadian engineers; bits of stone and
timber were falling from the houses, and the few people
in the town were in a holy terror of booby traps. A cottage
piano was standing in the main square outside the town
hall, and grenades had been placed in such -wise that
they would have gone off with the first note struck, but
luckily this trap was discovered and many others of a
like nature. Once more I realised how hard it is for those
who have not been at the war to feel the same degree of
hatred as the French towards this loathsome enemy.
The Germans were within a month of capitulation; they
knew that they were beaten and had nothing to hope for
except 'the quality of mercy,' yet here they were, burning
private houses and destroying property out of sheer
mischief, knowing that their actions would cause un-
necessary suffering and misery to perfectly innocent
people. The town was practically deserted, but there
were still flowers in the pots on the tables in the rooms,
and many other signs of life that had only just been
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The Press and the General Stajf
interrupted. Cambrai is not a very beautiful town, but
its ruins looked wonderfully picturesque; I believe that
all towns would look the better for being partially
destroyed; just imagine Hyde Park Corner knocked about
by shells and its imperfect proportions thoroughly
disguised; it might then appear like a genuine Greek
monument. The main church was horribly mutilated,
and the poor box had been forced open by some more
than usually avaricious Hun.
The advance beyond Cambrai made a very big bulge
in the German Une in the neighbourhood of Lille, and it
was evident that the northern army under the King of
the Belgians must attack again. WTien this offensive
opened, on the 14th of October, it could have been no sort
of surprise to the enemy; he had a strongly wired hne,
and another Une of pill-boxes with much wire, and yet
a third line of ordinary trenches. Part of this line was
held by troops of the 6th German cavalry division, who
had been having a beano in Lille a few days before, to
celebrate the advent of peace. Like all 'bons viveurs,'
they fought well and, during the first day, our advance
was extremely sticky; the mist on the ground was too
thick and some of our people lost touch. The following
day the attack continued and the Boche Hne began to
yield; we moved up the northern bank of the Lys, avoiding
the thickly populated industrial country, and by the time
we had got to Harlebeke the whole of the Lille sahent
began to give and this huge conglomeration of buildings,
containing thousands of civilians, was freed from the
hated enemy after four years of slavery. I went up to
this battle front to see what changes there were since
the terrible days of 1917, and, as I stood eating my
sandwiches by the cloth hall in Ypres, I thought, 'Now
at last one can breathe freely in this spot of ill-omen,
Z98
* The Black Day jor the German Army *
instead of hurrying like a driven rabbit across the broad
rides of a covert ' ; hardly had this idea formed itself in
my brain than a familiar swish came swinging through
the air, followed by an almighty burst somewhere just
behind me. It seemed incredible, for at that moment
French troops were entering Roulers; presumably it
was a last parting shot from a big naval gun somewhere
miles away, for no other shot was fired and there was no
artillery fire at all on the battlefield : it was something
to have seen the last shell burst in Ypres. The roads
were terribly blocked with traffic; French, British, and
Belgian transport was struggling forward on the old
wooden tracks and a cold penetrating drizzle was wetting
the very marrow in the men's bones. Some of the poilus
tried to be cheerful and shouted, ' Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing
en voiture tout le monde,' but for the most part the men
were, as they had been throughout this ghastly war,
silent, miserable, but uncomplaining. During Ludendorff's
March offensive it was our Fifth Army that bore the
brunt of the attack, and by April 1918 this army was
practically wiped off the slate; before the end of the
summer this same army had been reconstituted, with
General Birdwood in command, but it had only played
a very minor part in our offensive operations, and yet on
account of the glorious victories of our other armies,
it had the good fortune to Hberate the great industrial
city of Lille. It is curious also that General Haking
should have been the corps commander to enter the town
triumphantly, considering that he had made so many
unsuccessful attacks in this neighbourhood.
I shall never forget my visit to Lille;] our troops had
gone far beyond the town, but had not gone through it,
and the Lillois were beginning to wonder what was
happening. On this occasion I had a distinguished
199
The Press and the General StaJ[
American newspaper boss with me, and he thoroughly
enjoyed the experience. It was very difhcult to get into
the town, for it has walled fortifications surrounded by a
huge moat, and the bridges through the main gates had
been blown up by the enemy. At last my chauffeur
found the one bridge that had been repaired, and here we
had some difficulty with the local sentry; he was quite
unfamiUar with the G.H.Q. colours and he insisted on
our having a pass with the A.P.M's signature. I showed
him an Adjutant -General's white pass, and told him that
the Adjutant -General was the great Panjandrum of
A.P.M's, superior to them all; still the sentry hesitated,
so I informed him that I had just come from Sir Douglas
Haig in person and that he had instructed me to go to
Lille; this was not strictly true, but it did the trick.
The ramparts right away round the town were lined with
half -starved little children, who had been shouting the
Marseillaise since dawn. In motoring to Lille I had
passed through the Cuinchy sector near La Bassee,
where I used to be early in 1916; it was odd to be able
to motor gaily along a road which used to be blocked
with wire and dead bodies, and to look into ' the Jerusalem
crater' in broad daylight, instead of crawling round its
horrid lip at dead of night, lobbing bombs into the
enemy's sap-heads. Here the enemy made a double attack
in one night and I nearly went west from a rum- jar.
Perhaps all these reminiscences made me feel all the more
deeply the unfeigned joy of the inhabitants of Lille;
their warm-hearted gratitude was one of the most beautiful
things in the whole war. They kept sa5dng, 'Merci de
nous avoir hberee; vive les Anglais,' and then one was
devoured by kisses; before we had gone very far we had
to make for the deserted streets, for the skin on our
cheeks was completely worn away. They gave us huge
200
* The Black Day Jor the Germa?i Army '
bouquets of flowers and then, as we left, they asked for
them back again as souvenirs of the British Army; my
American friend remarked with a super-twang, 'The
Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.' Lille has none
of the filth and squalor of our Enghsh industrial towns,
and there are some fine eighteenth -century buildings;
possibly its great cleanliness was due to the fact that the
factories were not working. The Germans before leaving
had removed all the machinery, with the sole object of
crippling France's industry for many years to come.
Brutes ! Brutes ! Brutes ! The inhabitants were most of
them very much undernourished, and it is extraordinary
that they had enough energy left in them to show such
enthusiasm. During their occupation, the Germans
had finished building the new theatre, which was incom-
plete at the outbreak of war, and they used to have first-
rate performances by the best Berlin actors. Lille was
a place of leave, and many officers and men went there
for a week when the railways were too congested for
them to be sent back to Germany; no doubt they spent
a great deal of money in the town, and some of the officers
of the administrative staffs lived most luxurious lives
with mistresses and other extravagancies out of keeping
with the hardships endured by the fighting troops. In
all the big towns of Belgium and France there were
undoubtedly some women who sold their charms to the
hated enemy; but nature is stronger than nationality,
and under such conditions it is surprising to me that
these occurrences were so rare. Generally speaking, the
attitude of the Germans was arrogant and overbearing,
and on certain occasions officers committed acts of such
gross indecency as can hardly be imagined by civilised
human beings. It is unfortunate that our own adminis-
tration of the town was not wholly wise; certain tiresome
201
The Press and the General Sta^
restrictions were imposed upon ttie citizens that were
ynnecessary at that stage of the war, though the conduct
of the British private was admirable.
I lost no time in taking houses in Lille for all my various
Press units; we had had to contend with enormous
difficulties during this rapid advance, for the battle areas
were in some parts eighty to ninety kilometres deep. Our
correspondents had to reach front-line areas almost every
day, and yet they were obliged to keep touch with their
cabling centres. It was not long before telegraphic
communication was estabUshed between Lille and Paris,
but our nearest cabling centre for England was still
St Omer.
During the summer Lord Derby had offered me the
post of managing propaganda for him in Paris, but I
did not feel justified in giving up the Press on the front,
even though it meant promotion for me, as it was certainly
one of the most interesting appointments that an officer
could hold. From now onwards each day brought the
news of the capture of some important town; every part
of the front was in motion; the reward of all these years
of suffering was upon us. Before each of our big attacks
we were privileged to have lectures from the chiefs of staff
of all our armies; the enemy was fairly on the run and
we were fully conscious that we were living through the
greatest moment in the history of mankind. I would
not have missed this experience for all the Marshal's
batons in the world. Two more big attacks were necessary
before the enemy threw up the sponge; the first of these
was successful in bringing about the capture of the
enemy's position on the Selle, and during the last battle
(Battle of the Sambre) we captured the forest of Mormal
and the strongly fortified town of Le Quesnoy. This was
the last serious resistance of the enemy; from now
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* The Black Day jor the German Army '
onwards the advance was taken up by mobile troops,
cavalry and cyclists, and the German retreat became
disorderly and his dishevelled transport was mercilessly
bombed by our airmen.
Extract of letter: —
'6.11.18. — It looks as if the end is more or less in sight
now; we seem to have the Boche stiff and I don't see
what he can do. There have been some astounding
happenings lately; I will start with the most recent.
In our big attack the day before yesterday, the New
Zealanders captured the fortified town of Le Quesnoy;
it is an old town with a double line of moats, earthworks,
and walled fortifications. The New Zealanders attacked
it originally from the west, scaling the walls in truly
Shakespearean manner; they then found themselves
in a bad position and were under a terrible machine-gun
fire from the inner line, so their General ordered a retire-
ment the while he pressed his attack on both flanks.
When he had got his men all round and well east of the
town, he sent a New Zealand officer with a German officer
to claim the surrender of the garrison; one of our planes
also dropped messages to the effect that the garrison was
cut off and that if they surrendered they would be treated
with the honours of war. However, the German com-
mander refused and so the attack was pushed forward
beyond the town for several kilometres; a party of New
Zealanders being left behind to deal with the garrison
at the appropriate moment. These fellows solemnly
began to sharpen their bayonets and the German look-
out men reported the event to their colonel; it seems
to have had a great effect on the Germans, who then
decided to surrender. It is often said that in this war
there are no dramatic moments, but, if you can imagine
203
The Press and the General StaJ^
the scene in the German camp when the commander
sends for news of the enemy and he is told that they are
sharpening their bayonets, you have one of the finest
stage scenes imaginable. The first men to enter the town
were met by a nun — Sceur St Jean of the Order of the
Enfance de J6sus, who urged them to show no mercy
to the Germans as their treatment of our prisoners was
beyond all description vile; hundreds appear to have died
from lack of food and clothing; all the French civilians
say the same thing. I had a long interview with this
charming Sister, who used to nurse our sick and wounded;
the Germans never brought them into the convent till
they were so frightfully ill that all hope of recovery was
out of the question. She was helped in her nursing by
an Irish private, who acted as a sort of sanitary orderly.
I asked her the name and regiment of this Irishman
and, the Mother Superior being present, she searched
through her pocket-book in vain, but later on, when the
Mother Superior was in the kitchen, the address turned
up in that portion of the pocket-book reserved for things
never to be forgotten. Nature is not only stronger than
nationality, it is stronger than anything. One cannot
help being struck by the fine spirit of the French rescapes,
especially the religious ones; their attitude is Christian
in so far as it resembles Christ chasing the money-lenders
out of the Temple.
There have been several touching scenes and ceremonies
in the liberated towns; perhaps the most picturesque
episode was at Denain. Denain is a small mining town
with narrow squalid streets, and at the time of this peace
celebration the Germans were only a few kilometres away;
this did not prevent the population from decorating every
street with flags which must have been kept hidden
throughout the war; strings were stretched across from
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* The Black Day j or the German Army '
window to window and the flags hung down Uke stalactites.
The Mayor presented a special flag to the Canad^n
General (General Watson) for the Province of Quebec;
there was a procession of 1870 veterans, who marched
to the church wearing all their war medals, and the girls
of the town presented bouquets of flowers to the Prince
of Wales. Then followed High Mass; our most Protestant
Prince sat at the steps of the altar, and, at the end of
the service, a British military band played the Marseill-
aise — probably the first time this revolutionary tune
had ever been played in a Catholic church. The priests
were dressed in superb copes of dull gold, and the aisle
was Uned with warriors standing to attention with fixed
bayonets; they were not the spick-and-span soldiers one
sees in the Guards chapel at home in London, but fierce,
tired men with the look of death in their eyes. They
presented arms at the elevation of the Host, and the
goose skin quivered up and down my spine. The cur6
pronounced a most eloquent discourse in the manner
of Bossuet. Standing on the steps of the altar, he
suddenly began without any text — 'Merci,' with his
hands stretched out towards the congregation ; then,
turning suddenly to the altar, he stretched out his hands
again, saying, 'Thank you. Almighty God, to whom we
turned in our distress; we thought that you did not hear
our prayers, but we now realise that, though you wished
to prove our constancy, you did not leave our sufferings
unheeded, and that if you withheld your judgment it
was in order that the punishment of the tyrant and
oppressor might be more terrible.' Then he turned to
the little Prince, 'Merci, mon seigneur, noble prince d'un
noble pays. Nos ancStres se sont battus jadis dans
I'histoire. C'etait alors des guerres chevalresques entre
de loyaux combattants, mais quand il s'agissait de la
205
The Press and the General Staff
liberty du monde nous ne pouvions 6tre que des alli^.
L'Angleterre a entendu le cri de detresse de la Belgique,
et jamais la tenacity et la vaillance de vos hommes n'ont
paru plus ^clatantes que pendant cette guerre.' Then
he turned to the Canadian General. 'Thank you, mon
General; your men from Canada have travelled thousands
of miles to come and help us. We are not only brothers
in arms, but we have ties of blood. We have seen the
magnificent courage of your men as they chased our
enemies along the streets of Denain. May these senti-
ments of gratitude and affection endure for ever. Ainsi
soit il.'
Like a true Frenchman, this priest had seen that this
dramatic event was a fitting theme for his eloquence,
but that his sermon would be in vain unless he added a
sense of composition to his inspiration. It is the com-
bination of these two great qualities that makes a master-
piece.
H The you ng ladies of the town had prepared some beautiful
canticles, but their voices were not steady on account
of the lumps in their throats; while the band was playing
'O Canada,' 'La Marseillaise,' [and 'God save the King,'
most of us broke down. I suppose writing an account of
it like this in cold blood must make it appear like a cinema
show, but all the awkwardness of unrehearsed performance
centred round events of the highest historical importance
are not easy to describe.
After Mass we talked to the General of the Brigade
which had fought in the town and delivered it; the
Germans had a machine-gun post outside the church
and, as they enfiladed the High Street, they managed
to kill several civilians. When driven from here they
hung on to the railway embankment, and the General
had to bring up his light trench mortars and put a proper
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* The Black Day j or the German Army '
barrage over him; the Boche then surrendered and some
hundred of them were escorted back through the town
by httle half-starved boys carrying tricoloured flags,
singing the Marseillaise at the tops of their voices.
One of my French correspondents who entered Valen-
ciennes came upon three dead Germans lying just beyond
the Canal; a few yards farther on was a group of small
children playing. The next thing he saw was a despatch
rider carrying an important message from division to
brigade, wearing a top hat and a false nose. ' Apres tous
ces contrastes, il nous manquera quelque chose apres
la guerre ! '
There was another celebration in the town of Toumai;
Tournai Cathedral is one of the most beautiful buildings
in Belgium. Here also the priests were dressed in magnif-
icent clothes; those who served the Mass wore vestments
of a rare verdigris colour which contrasted admirably
with the stone of the building, which was of two shades of
gray. The solemn Te Deum after the Mass was intensely
beautiful, and, as the service ended, the organ struck
up the Brabanconne and the officiating priest headed a
procession, preceded by a man carrying the most colossal
flag that I have ever seen; as they left the church they
were Ut up by the faint sad rays of the late autumn sun.
On reaching the open place, they came up against the
troops of one of our Scottish divisions passing through
the town; the men were marching splendidly and the
pipes were having a great effect on the half-starved
population.
On getting back to our headquarters in Lille that
afternoon we heard that the enemy had asked for a cease-
fire between certain hours, in order to allow his envoys
plenipotentiary to cross the Hnes on the way to Marechal
Foch's headquarters. Later in the evening we heard that
p.G.s. p 207
The Press and the General Stajff
the cars bearing the German envoys had got hung up
in their own traffic, which was in a shocking state of
disorder, and that, being exceedingly late, they were
terrified lest they should be fired on, and were sending
out wireless messages in all directions. Finally we heard
that the cars had got safely across 'no-man's -land' and
that their white flag was large enough to be seen from
the Channel to the Swiss mountains. Of course, I was
nowhere near Foch's headquarters and was not a witness
of what took place on this great occasion, but I have
been given an account of what happened from two
different sources. The delegates arrived at their chateau
in the neighbourhood of Foch's train late in the evening;
at seven o'clock the following morning they sent round
to know what hour the Marshal would see them, and they
were told nine o'clock. At a few minutes before nine,
they came pattering along the duckboards outside
the train; they looked not a little sheepish, and, like
Agag, they walked delicately. They were shown into the
saloon and precisely at nine o'clock Foch stepped from
his study : ' Well, gentlemen, to what am I indebted
for this visit ? ' was his opening remark, which somewhat
staggered the Germans. ' We have come to find out your
terms for an armistice,' they replied. 'I don't want an
armistice, I am extremely satisfied with the military
situation.' ' Oh ! but we thought ... we understood
. . . President Wilson's notes had led us to suppose that
you would be willing to state your terms for an armistice,'
they said haltingly. 'Ah ! I understand,' replied Foch,
'it is you who want an armistice and you have come to
beg me for my terms.' Having thus put them, as it were,
in the position of beggars for mercy, Foch asked for
their credentials and took their papers into his study to
examine them at leisure. After he had satisfied himself
208
' The Black Day j or the German Army *
that all was in order, he returned and was formerly
introduced to each of the envoys. He then presented
them with the Allies terms, which, as all the world knows,
were of such a nature that, if the Germans agreed to them,
the war was over and finished. They did sign and the
war was over. One of the envoys before leaving had a
conversation with one of Foch's staff officers; he pleaded
for mercy on the ground that the condition of Germany
was hopeless, to which the French officer replied 'We
hate you.' 'Oh !' said the German, 'I am sorry — I was
speaking to you as a human being, not as a German.'
'I was speaking to you as a Frenchman.' This conversa-
tion is typical of the attitude of France. The German
soldiers deliberately went on destroying towns and
factories after they were hopelessly beaten, and it will
take centuries before Frenchmen forget it.
Since returning to England after the war I have met
countless people who have said, ' WTiat a pity it is we did
not go on and smash them, and destroy German towns
and kill every male German.' The idea is absurd; the
German army was smashed in the fullest sense of the word;
it is, however, impossible to round up the remnants of
two hundred divisions as neatly as when armies were
composed of four or five divisions. As it is, Germany
finds it impossible to pay her indemnities and her ex-
haustion is too great for the financial health of Europe,
but there are some bloodless politicians who are shocked
at the fervid hatred of the French towards the Germans.
This hatred, in my opinion, has been earned by innumer-
able acts of unnecessary cruelty and wanton destruction,
and we must not forget that France, besides having
vast tracts of rich country destroyed, has left a million
more dead than ourselves on the battlefields.
The news of the signing of the armistice terms reached
209
The Press and the General Stajff
me through my French Haison officer and I immediately
posted it outside my office in Lille. During the early
hours of the morning of November nth, the Canadians
had captured the town of Mons after a stiff fight, and so
we ended up where we started after four and a half years
of bitter fighting and suffering such as has never been
heard of before. All that is best in the youth of the
country has been slaughtered; homes that were peaceful
and happy before the war are wrecked for ever; the war
completely divides present from past and nothing can ever
be quite the same again, and the question is whether it
has been worth while. Personally, I think it has; the
prestige of great nations depends on their power to face
torture and death for great principles, and this ordeal
has revealed depths of nobility in human character
that were hitherto unsuspected, to me at any rate. I
consider that courage is one of the noblest of human
qualities, and that patriotism is the highest virtue, for it
carries with it no reward. In time of peace we are con-
tinually reading in the Press of this or that athletic
champion, this or that artist of super-dynamic power,
or this or that politician of prodigious low cunning, but
this war has brought out the uncommon virtues of the
common man; it is owing to his heroism that we are
able to hold up our heads to-day.
Extract of letter : —
'ii.ii.i8. — This series of letters will soon be brought
to a close. At breakfast this morning I heard that the
armistice was signed and orders were being issued to
cease fire at eleven o'clock. So we have finished where
we started, and in the meantime have completely defeated
our enemies : one of the most absolute and thorough
victories has been obtained for which there is no parallel
210
* The Black Day j or the German Army *
in history. It has certainly been achieved by prodigious
hard fighting, and surely Britain has risen if possible in
the world's estimation. It is curious to look back at my
own experiences; I remember the day when I saw Nelly
Hozier just after she had escaped from the Germans,
and she described to me the appearance of the German
army coming into Belgium, every road crawling alive
with gray humanity. "You will never beat them," she
said, "their organisation is marvellous, their numbers
unbehevable." Then I remember my first fateful day
at Fleurbaix, where so many of our poor chaps were
killed without so much as seeing a German trench, and my
extraordinary escape, and the horrible night in the
CCS. next to an olhcer who had had his stomach shot
away with machine-gun bullets. Then the long dreary
stretches of trench warfare, where every attack seemed
hopeless and where the battalion frittered away without
apparently achieving anything — the removal of my
dear friend Grisewood and the death of nearly aU the
young officers. That was the bad time, and the fighting
on the Ancre and Beaumont Hamel was certainly equal
to the other great horrors of the war. Then came my
change of job with the foreign Press. I was able to prove
to the French nation how magnificent our men were
under fire and how splendidly they met death. Those
who saw it have never forgotten it, and from the 13th
of November, 1916, 1 have had some ten French corre-
spondents all of them willing to die in order to uphold
the name of Great Britain. Their absolute devotion
through the dreadful year of 1917, and the terrific German
onslaught of this year certainly did much to hold the
alhance together. This last period has been a great strain,
because the whole press organisation has become a vast
concern. Since August 8th we have swept the front
211
The Press and the General StaJ
from end to end, constantly changing our headquarters,
and getting accurate news of the army's achievements
into practically every country in the world day by day.
The transport and the cabling and the ration difficulties,
the relations between Press, staffs, and troops, and all
these and many other things have been overcome, and
to-day my correspondents of all countries met in the
market square of Mons and saw the commander of the
Third Canadian division hand over the town to the
mayor, calling for three cheers for King Albert. The
enthusiasm was indescribable. The fight for the to\Mi
was very hard as the Boche no doubt wanted to hang on
to it for sentimental reasons. Many German dead were
found in the town. Little children watched the fight from
the windows of the houses and gave most excellent
descriptions to the correspondents. The ci\dlians are
very short of food, and already the Canadian corps alone
is feeding over 500,000. As the first British troops arrived
the town church played "Tipperary" on the few bells
that had been left by the Germans, In this part of
Belgium they think that "Tipperary" is the national
anthem, and they all stand to attention when it is played.
The town bellringers had been practising this tune
secretly for four years, but the Boche pinched some of
the bells, which hampered the accidentals; nevertheless,
the tune was recognised. "God save the King " is con-
sidered to be a German tune and regarded with suspicion.
I hope in England there will be some sort of real tribute
to Sir Douglas and the army; I don't think any one
realises what they have accomplished this year. The
French did the thing splendidly by their vote in the
Senate, passing a resolution to the effect that " Les
armees, le citoyen Georges Clemenceau et le Marechal
Foch ont bien merite de la patrie." Could anything
212
* The Black Day for the German Army *
be more simple or more perfect ? Clemenceau has indeed
been. a wonder; he is one of the few men who have led,
against the current too. I saw him with our Chief at
the worst moments and his impartiahty and loyalty to
us were magnificent. Also he went down every day to
the unhealthy parts of the Une and really encouraged
his soldiers, having some very narrow escapes. I have
never met Foch, but his achievement is extraordinary;
he flung his divisions about with prodigious elasticity,
but his principles were those of the traditional French
"maitre d'armes," letting his enemy attack him while
using only a small proportion of his strength in defence,
and then falling upon him with incredible violence when
the right moment came, and never easing up till the
result was obtained. In order to keep intact the necessary
reserves he had to call upon superhuman powers of
endurance from the divisions already engaged; only
perfectly disciplined troops could have carried out his
programme. The entire credit of the 8th of August
victory and subsequent victories is due to Haig and the
British Army. We accomplished the surprise of the war
by concentrating three infantry corps and a cavalry corps
in a very small triangle of ground right under the nose of the
enemy. Then the same troops went on fighting, fighting,
sustained only by victory. They went over the Ancre,
over the Somme, over the Canal du Nord, over the Canal
de St Quentin, over the Scheldt, buffeting the enemy
Hke a tired boxer till they gave him the knock out at
Mons; and so it seems to me that Sir Douglas Haig and
the British Armies "ont bien merite de la patrie." I
hope in a few days to go to the Rhine and describe to
you the fruits of victory, and then I hope to be no longer
"the major," and, "every inch a soldier," but to become
a civilian.'
213
The Press and the General Stajf
The effect of the signing of the armistice on the troops
was most curious; hardly a man would believe it, and
those that did could not realise it. They seemed almost
disappointed — not because they liked being killed or
did not want to get home, but because habit becomes ten
times nature. To me the most dramatic effect was when
I went out on the night of the nth of November and
there were no gun flashes in the sky. The first thing that
had struck me with horror, when I arrived in France at
the beginning of igiG.was the thought that these flashes
had been going on incessantly every night since August
1914; they had gone on ever since, and now suddenly
this frightful madness was over, and this outward and
visible sign of incessant slaughter was at an end. It
was uncanny.
The next day the road to Brussels was crammed with
prisoners of all nationalities : the Germans had just
opened the doors of the prison cages, leaving the prisoners
to find their way as best they could. There was every
nationality and every type of uniform on this road —
Itahans, Russians, Servians, Rumanians, etc. There
must have been the same sort of scene on this same road
after the Battle of Waterloo one hundred years before.
Our own men were mostly dressed in German uniforms
and they were in a disgusting state; they had not had
a wash of any description since they had been captured
in March; they were covered with lice and boils, and were
in a half-starved condition. They all bore most glowing
testimony to the generosity of the Belgian civilians
who were very short of food themselves and yet insisted
on giving everything to these poor wretched prisoners.
My photographers were very difficult to control at this
time and I had to remind them forcibly that the terms
of the armistice laid down that there should be a space
214
* The Black Day j or the German Army '
between oursleves and the Germans : one of them, in
an excess of copy-hunting zeal, photographed a German
brigade commander at the head of his troops carrying
out the initial stage of 'the day's march nearer home';
luckily the Germans were delighted to be photographed,
but I took steps to ensure that this sort of incident
should not occur again.
I saw the triumphal entry of King Albert into
Ghent; I was mixing with the crowd outside the Hotel
de Ville when I saw two Belgian officers making signs
to me. At first I thought they must have recognised a
friend behind me, but they soon made it clear that they
wished me to come up and share their window. I was
so much touched at this act of spontaneous generosity
that I prepared an extra polite speech, 'Gentlemen,'
I said 'on such a day you must be proud to be Belgian
officers.' 'We should be still more proud to be English
officers' they rephed. That evening I went out to see
the sights of the town with Phillip Gibbs : Belgian
soldiers were dealing out summary punishment to those
citizens who had, during the war, shown 'Flamagan'
tendencies; their windows were broken and a bonfire
made of their furniture. All those women who had
kept company with German officers were having their
hair shaved off in the open streets. (Many of our women
war-workers who have adopted the fashion of short hair
during the war, and who have visited the Belgian battle-
fields since, were quite surprised at the peculiarly interested
glances occasioned by their short hair in Belgium).
Gibbs and I finally fetched up at a hall where a soldiers'
ball was in progress; here again we had an example of
how national characteristics never change. The Belgian
Tommies and their ladies were dancing a sort of Kermesse
exactly Uke the picture by Rubens in the Louvre. The
215
The Press and the General Stajff
women were glorying in their ample charms, and the men
had their heads thrown back and their heels well forward
in the traditional Flemish attitude; the alcoves that
surrounded the main hall were crowded with amorous
couples who were rapidly attaining the final objectives
of lovemaking.
This Ghent festivity was a sort of rehearsal for the
big Brussels show that came off a few days later. Never
have I seen a town so beautifully decorated as Brussels;
the Belgian flags and banners seem to be larger than those
of any other nation; they hung, Uterally, from the top
story windows to the street. It seems to me also that
the Belgians have a finer sense of pageantry than any other
race, no doubt a reUc of the great Spanish period. The
city looked magnificent on this frosty autumn morning.
Just before the cortege started from its assembly "point,
all the little school children were marched down the
streets and were posted in the front rank of the spectators.
The authorities evidently thought this was a sight to
be impressed upon young minds, and they knew that they
were too small to hide the view from the grown-ups.
Unfortunately, the British contingent wore caps instead
of helmets, and so they lost a little of that splendidly
war-Uke appearance they had on the battlefields. I
managed to get a place in the Hotel de Ville for the
reception of the King by Monsieur Max, the burgomaster :
there was a long wait as the King was very late, but his
reception was stupendous. As he was coming up the
stairs there was dead silence and the usher announced
' le Roi ' ; still not a sound was heard till the King reached
the middle of the room where all could see him, and then
there was such a shout of 'Vive le Roi,' as was never
heard before. We all sang the Belgian national anthem,
and the King looked overcome, his face being as white as
2l6
* The Black Day j or the German Army *
a sheet. He delivered his speech with great simplicity
and then went round the room and shook hands with his
subjects.
After Brussels there was but one great event — namely,
the arrival of our troops in Cologne. It was curious to
cross the frontier by motor and come abruptly upon the
cessation of triumphal arches and bunting, and pass
through villages where there were no signs of rejoicing.
It is curious also to notice how that, as you approach
the German frontier, the physical type of the inhabitants
becomes less attractive, and, in exact inverse ratio to
their ugliness, their talent for music becomes more apparent .
It is the law of compensation, if the eyes are tortured,
the ears must be flattered. I got to Cologne by lunch
time on the day that our troops made their first entry.
To my mind the inhabitants behaved in a perfectly
natural manner : they were all of them curious and
interested, a few of them arrogant, a few of them
obsequious, and a great many of them intent on the
business of the day and comparatively indifferent to our
presence. Our administration of the town during the
first few days was shockingly bad; contradictory pro-
clamations were posted, and then were amended and
altered. There was an unhappy compromise between
weakness and severity, and a general impression of
vacillation that created the worst possible effect on the
German mind. What was even more regrettable was the
behaviour of some of our officers : several of them went
about openly with German women, and were seen at
cafes and other public places where were also privates
and non-commissioned officers. The average German
knows that he is more industrious and a more thorough
organiser than we are, but he does believe or did believe
that we had more style and were gentlemen; I am
217
The Press and the General Stajff
afraid that on this occasion we must have shattered his
last ideal about us. Many Canadian officers of senior
rank got dead drunk and were seen in street brawls;
it was a pity that we lost this opportunity of setting a
good example. As for Thomas Atkins, he behaved as
always, in a creditable manner, but it was obvious at
once that between our men and the Germans there is
considerable natural sympathy; our soldiers found the
German housemaid no uglier and ten times as wiUing as
those at home in London, and in many points there is
racial affinity. With the French it is quite otherwise;
there are no points of similarity between them and
ourselves. All through they are a complete contrast;
but it is in my opinion better to choose one's companions
through life for reasons of contrast rather than for
reasons of S3mipathy and similarity. From the Germans
we have not much to learn, from the French everything :
hence I hope that our alliance with them may last for
generations.
It now became time for me to wind up my various
Press units and save the Government from unnecessary
expense, but I had long cherished a wish that the Chief
should say good-bye to all my correspondents, assembled
en masse, on the Hohenzollem bridge across the Rhine.
In his original interview with French correspondents,
he told them that he was confident that the war would
end in complete victory, and that we should get into
Germany, and now this result had been achieved, very
largely owing to the superlative excellence of Sir Douglas
Haig's army and to his skilful handling of it. On all
occasions he hated interviews, but he was well aware of
the splendid service that had been rendered by the
correspondents and he was anxious to thank them for
their work, and so he consented. He arrived one morning
218
' The Black Day j or the German Army '
by train at Cologne and I saw him in his saloon; he told
me that it was his intention to give all the correspondents
a small Union Jack to keep as a souvenir of the British
Army, and he asked me if I thought that they would
appreciate it, and I said that I thought that they would.
As a matter of fact all the foreign correspondents expected
that the Chief would pin the Order of the Bath on their
chests, and they thought that this was too much Hke a
cracker off a Christmas Tree. In the innocence of my
heart I was so certain that our Government would
confer upon them some suitable decoration within the
next few days (instead of waiting nearly two years), that
I appeased them with the promise of some such honour.
Haig made an excellent httle speech; he called the
attention of the correspondents to the German citizens
all round, who were defeated and disgraced, and yet,
after their victor^' of 1870, it seemed as if they should
prosper for ever. He remarked that 'swelled head' often
followed great victories, and that pride came before a
fall. The setting for such a farewell meeting was indeed
admirable; we were only a few steps away from the statue
of the Emperor, who had just deserted his countrymen in
their hour of sore need. Through the arches of the recess
where we were collected we had a magnificent view of
the broad stately Rhine; it was Hke the background
in an early German altar-piece. As the German waiter
in the hotel put it, we had at last wound up the 'Watch
of the Rhine.' After his speech, the Chief said good-bye
to each correspondent, individually, and then drove off
in his car with General Plumer and General Lawrence.
During their stay in Cologne, the foreign correspondents
interviewed the Bishop of Cologne, and the Rector of
the University of Bonn. Neither of them expressed the
slightest regret at Germany's share of the war in general,
219
The Press and the General Staf
or at any other particular incident of the war. The
Belgian correspondents were specially anxious to find out
what attitude the Bishop would take up as to the violation
of the neutrality of Belgium, but the Bishop only repeated
what the German soldiers have said — namely, that it
was a matter of military necessity and that they had
proofs that France intended to do the same — an assertion
which is absolutely untrue.
My job was now over, and I returned as soon as possible
to G.H.Q. at Montreuil; on my way back I stopped at
Louvain and had a long conversation with a learned
priest. I asked him to furnish me with some sort of
explanation of the sacking of the town by the Germans
in 1914, for this act was not typical of German policy
in Belgium, and this is what he told me. The German
troops who were holding the line in the neighbourhood
of the town got scared, as it was rumoured that the AUies
had attacked with some success farther north. The local
German regimental commander therefore sent north a
few companies as reinforcements, but they found that
the rumour was unfounded and so returned to Louvain.
They did not arrive back till late when it was almost dark,
and their comrades, who were in a particularly nervous
state, mistook them for the enemy and fired on them,
killing a considerable number. The colonel did not dare
to report the truth and so he accused the Belgian francs-
tireurs of being the cause of these casualties; when the
news reached the ears of the German Army commander,
he was furious and ordered the principal buildings to be
set on fire. This seems to be a very probable explanation
of what happened.
For several months past, I had been living principally
with the British Press, but I constantly stayed with each
different Press unit in turn, and I had become accustomed
220
^ The Black Day j or the German Army '
to the company of these gentlemen, who were all of them
well read and widely travelled. Their profession had kept
them in touch with all classes and all nationalities, and
I found their company most stimulating; but on returning
to G.H.Q. I was once more in a purely military mess, and
I was struck all of a heap with the narrow outlook and
lack of versatility that is the result of exclusive attention
to the daily round and the common task of military
routine. Fortunately, the dull work of collecting the
various records of each Press unit, the winding up of
accounts, etc., did not take so very long, and early in 1919
I returned to England to be demobilised.
I had a great desire to sketch the battlefields before
the spring growth should be too far advanced, and
fortunately I found no difficulty in getting the Imperial
War Museum to send me out for a three weeks' trip. I was
lucky in the weather, for every day there were threaten-
ing skies and the heavy Flanders clouds so typical of
this war, but very little rain. It was bitterly cold and
I got chilled to the marrow, but it was intensely interest-
ing. I took the Ypres area and the Lens-La Bassee
area, and I was accompanied by a young French soldier
who was the clerk of my former liaison officer (Captain
Titeux); this young man was an expert in bombs and
he scoured the battlefields in search of derelict grenades;
the pins were rusty and rotten, but he had a sublime
contempt of his own personal safety, and I suppose he
wanted me to get the true war spirit into my drawings
for violent explosions went on all round me while I was
sketching. On one occasion a bursting bomb covered
my sketch book with mud and brick-dust; needless to
say, that particular drawing has since been sold at a very
high price. Many of these drawings have since been
purchased by the French government.
221
The Press and the General StaJ^
I started my work at the Cuinchy brickstacks, where
I found the old 'no-man's-land' full of dead men's bones.
I then went on to Reservoir Hill to see the exact place
where poor Serge Basset had been killed ; from here
there was a magnificent view of the Bois des Hirondelles
and the Bois de Riaumont, and in the extreme distance
the crest of Notre Dame-de-Lorette. I finished up in
the Menin road area, and as I sat hour offer hour and day
after day contemplating these horrible slopes with their
grim relics, I came to the conclusion that no one but a
madman could ever wish for war; the highly poHshed
boots, the bright buttons, the ghttering medals and
the clicking of spurred heels must never again deceive
humanity into thinking that war is anything but the
blackest tragedy from start to finish.
INDEX
Abbeville, 21, 16S.
Agence Havas. See Ruffin, M.
Aisne, LudendorflE's offensive, 169-77,
183.
Albert, King, 137, 189; at Ypres,
195, 198; in Mons, 212; in
Ghent, 215-16; in Brussels,
216-17.
Aldershot, 17, 174.
America, public opinion on some
incidents, 103, 115; tour of
M. Joffre, 135-36.
American Press Unit, the, xi., 115;
method of sending despatches,
123-25.
Americans, the, in Paris, 171-72;
with the AustraUans at Hamel,
177; attack at Mezieres, 189;
on the Scheldt canal, 194-5.
Allied Press, the, xi.; Headquarters
at Amiens, 56-58, 63-64, 74-75,
77-79, 124-25, 150-51; and
Sir Douglas Haig, 65-67.
Amiens, 56-58, 74-75, 79, 124-25,
150-51, 162-64, 167; Restaurant
de la Cathedrale, 96; Haig's
decision regarding, 178, 197.
Ancre, the, fighting on, 45, 51, 104;
cost of General Gough's victory,
87-88; battle of August, 1918,
184.
Ancre valley, 46, 48, 58, 82, 132;
the 'Valley of Death,' 61-62.
Anderson-Morshead, Lieut. -Col. R.
H., 170.
Antoine, General, loi.
Armentieres, 64, 73, 196.
P.G.S.
Armistice, the, 208-14.
Arras, 72, 167, no, 187; General
Nivelle's plans, 82, 88-91;
extracts of letters describing
the battle, 92-95; Ludendorff's
attack in March, 1918, 153-54,
169, 183; the Germans held at,
167.
Arras-Albert Railway, 184.
Ashburnham Park, 15.
Asquith, Mr, 71.
Associated Press, the, 113.
Australians, the, physique, 47; at
Bapaume, 77-78; Mr Bean and,
82, 119-20; at BuUecourt, 90-91;
photographic section, 119; at
Hazebrouck, 159; recapture of
Villers-Bretonneux, 162-64; fall
of Richtofen claimed by, 166-67;
successes and discipline of,
175-77. 180; Mont St Quentin
taken, 186-87; capture of
Monchy-le-Preux, 187; on the
Scheldt canal, 194-95.
Aveluy Wood, 184.
Aviation camps, 73.
Babin, M., of L' Illustration, 63.
Bailleul, 159.
Balfour, Arthur, 70-71.
Ball, the airman, 94-95.
Bapaume, 96, 186, 197; the
AustraUans at, 77-78.
Bapaume-Peronne-St Leger line,
185-86.
Barisis, 143.
Bartholomew, Lieut., 117-18, i6o-6r.
Q 223
Index
Barzini, Signor, of the Corriere
della Sera, 64.
Bases, immensity of, 73-74.
Bassee, La, 64, 168, 200.
Basset, M. Serge, of the Petit
Parisien, 107-10, 222.
Bean, Mr, x., 82, 119-20.
Beaucourt-sur-Ancre, 59-61.
Beaumont Hamel, 51, 58, 59, 82.
Beauregard Dovecote, 82.
Beauvais Cathedral, 67.
Beaux Arts, Ecole de, no.
Beaverbrook, Lord, xiii., 1 17-18.
Bedolo, Signor, of the Giornale
d'ltalia, 64, 107-8.
Belaustegregoitia, M., 115.
Belgian Correspondents and the
Bishop of Cologne, 220.
Belgian front, 74.
Belgians, reason for non-attack by,
137; at Kemmel, 165; at the
Ypres-Staden Railway, 167;
attack towards Ghent, 1S9,
198; goodness to the British in
Brussels, 214.
Bellenglise, 194.
Bellicourt, 193.
Berthelot, General, an order of,
quoted, 169-70.
Bethune, 45, 168.
•Betty,' 31.
Bidou, M. Henri, of the DSbats, x.,
63, 102.
Bird wood, General, 199.
Bismarck, 162.
'Black Day,' Ludendorfl's, 179.
Blunt, Mr, 143.
'Boar's Head' raid, the, 40-41.
Bohn, M., 1 1 5- 1 6.
Bon, M. le, in.
Bonn University, interview with
the Rector, 219-20.
Booby traps, 197.
224
Boraston, Major, 122.
Boulogne, 37-38.
Bourlon Wood, 132; taking of,
190-93.
Brade, Sir Reginald, 11 7-18.
Brantnig, M., 116.
British Armies, M. Joffre on the,
137; victories directly due to,
213
British Contingent in Brussels, 216.
British military funerals, loS-io;
Richtofen's, 166.
British methods compared with the
French, 161.
British Press Censors at the French
Press bureau, 169.
British Press Unit, xi, 56-58, 64,
103-4, 1 13-14, 220; the corres-j
pondents and Colonel Fawn-j
thorpe, 113; work of the, 113-
15. 151-52; method of sending;|
despatches, 123-25; financing
the, 125-26.
British Prisoners, German treatment|
of, 87, 204.
Brooke, Lieut. J. W., 11 6- 18, 160.
Brookes, Lieut., 116, 118.
Brussels, the prisoners, 214; King
Albert in, 216-17.
BuUecourt, General Gough at, 90-91,]
130, 143-
Byng, Sir Julian, and the Foreign!
Correspondents, 73; attack ouj
Cambrai, loi, 129-30; command]
of the Third army, 149, 167,]
1S4.
Cadge, Captain, xii.
'Caesar's Camp,' 183.
Calais, food store, 74.
Calvet, M., 115.
Cambrai, 82, 96, 99-100; Sir Julian,
Byng at, loi, 129-30; the
Index
German counter-attack, 130-
34; German evacuation, 197-98.
Cambrai-St Quentin front, 83; the
German offensive, 143-44;
successes on the, 193-95.
Cambronne, General, 112.
Camouflage, French art of, 54.
Campbell, General, 12, 168, 194.
Canadians, the, at Lens, 72-73, 102,
104, 107; at Vimy Ridge, 93-
94. 154-55. 157-58; Haig and
the, 1 01; photographic section,
119; their war correspondent,
119-20; capture of Passchendaele,
129; their motor machine-gun
section, 149, 155, 188; at
Kemmel, 179; success in
August, 1918, 180; at Bourlon
Wood, 192; at Cambrai, 197;
in Denain, 205-6; capture of
Mons, 210, 212; in Cologne,
218.
'Carey's force,' 150.
Casaubon, Mme., iio-ii.
Cassel, 73.
Castell, M., 116.
Cateau, Le, German retirement,
196-97.
Cats, Mont des, 159.
Cavalry, use of, 89, 149, iSo-Si,
196; German, 192, 198.
CederschiSld, M., 116.
'Censorship and Press,' 142.
Champagne, 144.
Charteris, General, 'Major Lytton
to report to,' 55-56; arranges
the interview with Sir Douglas
Haig, 65, 68; on unity of in-
tention, 84; and the Press, 97,
103, 112; personality, 126-27;
removal, 138, 141.
Chateau-Thierry-Soissons line, 173.
Chemin des Dames, 88, 91.
Chinese labour companies, 164-65.
Churchill, Mr Winston, 95-96.
Cinematographic Section, the, 116,
117, iig, 160-61.
Clemenceau, Sir Douglas Haig and,
139; hostile meeting in the
Chamber, 171; at the front,
172; the vote in the senate,
212-13.
Clery, 168, 186.
Cobbold, Captain, 26, 29.
Cologne, our troops in, 217-18;
Bishop of, interview, 219-20.
Colonial Correspondents, 119.
Colonial units, mention of, 113.
'Commandant et sa flute (Le),' 112.
Concentric attacks. Sir D. Haig's
method, 183-84, 189-92.
Console, Lieut., 160-61.
Cooden Beach, 4, 5, 16.
Corriere delta Sera. See Barzini,
Signor.
Court Lodge Farm, 10.
Cox, General, and the Press, 126
note, 140-41; and the Photo-
graphic Section, 118-19.
Croisilles, 96.
Crooksbury Hill, Surrey, 93.
Croze, Lieut., xiii.
Cuinchy, 38, 200, 222.
Currie, Lieut. -Gen. Sir A. W., his
order of 27th March, 191S,
155-57-
Curzon, Lord, the War Cabinet,
70-71.
Daily Chronicle. See Gibbs, Mr
Philip.
Daily Express. See Philips, Mr
Percival.
Daily Mail. See Beach, Mr Thomas.
Daily Mirror, the, 62.
Dawnay, Gen., 142.
225
Index
Debeney, Gen., i8o.
Delville Wood, 185.
Denain, liberation of, 204-5.
Derby, Lord, 70; offer to Mr Neville
Lytton, 202.
Despatch riders, 125.
Despatches, method of sending,
123-24.
Detling, 16-17.
Devonshires, the, 170.
Domart, 178.
Donkeys, Moroccan, use of, 74.
Dorsets, the 5th, 87.
Douglas, Capt., Johnstone, 151.
DouUens, 46, 47, 55, 153.
Dreyfus, M., 11 1.
Drocourt-Queant line, 188-89, 192.
Dupuy, M. Paul, of the Petit Parisien,
197.
Echo de Paris. See Tardieu, M.
Englebelraer, 47, 49.
Epehy, 189.
Escaut, Canal de 1', 132.
Estaires, 22.
Etaples, 30.
Eton, no.
Fawnthorpe, Col., and the British
correspondents, 113; and the
Photographic Section, 119.
Eels, Count de, 62.
Fere, La, 74, 148.
Festubert, 44, 45, 73.
Feuillieres, 186.
Feuquieres, M. de, 58, 63.
Fisher, Colonel, 117.
Flanders, hiUs of, 168; bad roads
of, 196.
Flanders offensive, difficulties of
the, 82, 1 14-15, 126, 179; the
pill-boxes, 90; some letters
deahng with the, 104-6.
226
Flemish, fighting quahties. 165.
Flesqui^res, 130, 191.
Fleurbaix, 22-24, 211.
Foch, Marechal, skill of, 83, 88;
conference with Haig, 153;
supreme command, 168; and
the attack on the Aisne front,
169-71, 173; arrangements for
the offensive, 177; use of the
Americans, 189; reception of
the German envoys, 207-8; the
vote in the senate, 212-13.
Fohe, Bois de la, 96.
Foreign Press and the Ludendorff
offensive, 151-52.
Forty-sixth Division, on the Scheldt
canal, 194-95.
Foucaucourt, 188.
Foureaux, Bois des, 77.
Fourth Army headquarters, corres-
pondents summoned to, 193.
France, military methods compared
with British. 161; hatred of
Germany, 209; the vote in the
senate, 212-13.
French correspondents, the, 63-65,
85, 104, 111-12, 151-52; method
of sending despatches, 123.
French missions, 62, 104.
French Press Bureau, 169.
French system of photography, 117.
French vingtifeme corps, the, 65.
Freybourg, 59.
Funeral, a British militarj', loS-io.
Fyfe, Mr Hamilton, viii.
Gallipoli, Mr John Masefield's book,
80-81; Mr ChurchiU and, 95-96.
Generahssimo, need for a, 83-84,
134-
George, Mr Lloyd, opposition to
Sir Douglas Haig, 70-71, 139,
143; and Mr Churchill, 95-96.
Index
German Alpine Corps, i6i.
German, Press, tribute to the British
soldier, 148.
German prisoners, British treatment
of, S5-87; their anxiety to
surrender, 184-85, 187-S8.
Geyl, Dr, 116.
Ghent, 189; entry of King Albert,
215-16.
GJbbs, Mr Phihp, of the Daily
Chronicle, x., 113, 182, 190;
at Bapaume, 78; in Ghent,
Giornale d'ltalia. See Bedolo, Signor.
Givenchy, 33, 37-39. 44. 73. 128,
154, 158, 167-68, 185.
Gore Chateau, 33.
Goudet, Major, 116.
Gough, General, character, 52; the
Ancre, 87-88; BuUecourt, 90-92,
130, 143; Gen. Plumer and,
compared, loi; misery of his
men, 126; commanding the
5th Army, 143. 145, 149-50,
153, 166-67.
Gouraud, General, 50, 173 ; person-
ality, 67.
Gouzeaucourt, 133.
Grandcourt, 59, 62.
Greenland Hill, 96.
Grisewood, Colonel, 8-9, 12, 16,
31-32, 34, 37-41, 211; command
of the Manchesters, 42-43, 45-
46; sister of, 174.
Guards' Chapel, London, 205.
Guynemer, death, 102.
Haig, Sir Douglas, personality, 50,
66-67; interview with the
Correspondents, 64-66, 68-69;
Lloyd George and, 70-71, 139,
143-45; Lord Northclifife's
support, 71-72; Vimy Ridge,
S8-90; General P6tain and, 91;
and Winston Churchill, 95;
plan at Messines, 100; and
Foch, 153, 177; praise given
by, 159; decision regarding the
Amiens front, 171, 178; method
of concentric attacks, 183-84,
189-92; on the enemy's August
defeat, 195; use of his name,
200; victories due to, 212-13;
last interview with the Corres-
pondents, 218-19.
Making, General, 199.
Hale, Captain, 107, 108.
Hamel, village of, 51 ; the Australians
at, 176-77.
Hand-to-hand fighting, 60.
Hants, the 14th, 52-53.
Harlebeke, 198.
Harrington, General, and the Press,
x.-xi., 97-98.
Havrincourt, 189.
Hazebrouck, 21, 159.
Henderson, Mr, 70.
Henriksson, Mr, 116.
Hesdin, 116, 124, 125.
High Wood (le Bois des Foureaux),
77-
Highland division, the, 58, 173-74.
Hill 60, 97.
Hindenburg, and the tanks, 130.
Hindenburg line, the German retreat
to, 75-77, 82, 144; the attack
on, August, 1918, 189-92.
Hinges canal, 168.
Hirondelles, Bois des, 107, 222.
Hohenzollern Bridge, 218.
Hohenzollern element in the German
war councils, 173.
Hohenzollern redoubt, 73.
Holland, Captain, 117.
Holt, Major, 117.
Home, General, 73, 1S7.
227
Index
Horse-gunners, bravery, 149.
Houten, Mr Van, 116.
Houthoulst Forest, 101-2.
Howard, Colonel, 4-5.
Hozier, Nelly, 211.
Hythe, 106.
la work, 140.
Id branch of G.H.Q., 57.
Imperial War Museum, 116, 221.
Indian cavalry, 47.
Information, Ministry of, xiii.-xiv.;
the Press units financed by,
126.
Italian correspondents, 63-64;
method of sending despatches,
123.
Italian front, 131, 134; General
Plumer in Italy, 196.
'Jacob's Ladder,' communication
trench, 48.
Joffre, Marechal, 88; in the States,
135-36; Mr Neville Lytton and,
136-37; personality, 137-38.
Journal, The. See Tudesq, M.
Andre.
Kaiser, stories of the, 95; 'luck' of
the, 162.
Keramel Range, 98, 154, 161-62,
165, 167, 179.
Kennington, Mr Eric, xv.
Khaki, first arrival of, 15-16.
Kiggell, General, 138-39.
King Edward's Horse, 117.
King's messenger, use by Press
units, 123, 125-26.
Kipling, saying of, quoted, 79.
Kitchener, Lord, and the Press, viii;
Lord Northcliffe and, 71;
JofFre's admiration for, 137;
appearance, 195.
228
Labour companies, Chinese, 164-65.
Law, Mr Bonar, 70.
Lawrence, General, 139-40; in
Cologne, 219.
Lens, 64, 89, 196; containing attacks
by the Canadians near, 72, 102,
104, 107.
Lens-Lie ven district, 96.
Lille, 72; liberation of, 198-202;
Press headquarters, 207, 210.
Lillers, 73.
Lille-Valenciennes area, 173.
'Lily Elsie,' 31.
Limited objective, drawbacks, 99.
Locon, 32.
London Rifle Brigade, 154.
Longeau, 178.
Longueval, 185.
Loos, battle of, 174.
Louvain, sack of, 220.
Louvre, the Rubens, 215.
Lowther, Colonel Claude, recruiting
methods, 3-4, 7-12.
Ludendorff, Memoirs, 100; and the
tanks, 130, 147; offensive,
March, 1918, 146-77, 199; and
the Canadians, 158; his lost
opportunities, 183; on our
propaganda, 188.
Lys, the fighting at, 115, 158-60,
167; General Campbell at, 168-
69; LudendorS's attack, 183;
German withdrawal, 187, 198.
Macdowell, Lieutenant, 119.
Machine-gun nests, defensive system,
89-90.
Machine-gunners, German, 75-76,
149.
Macintosh, Lieutenant, 193.
McKenzie, Mr. 113.
Maeztu, M., 1 15-16.
Mailly-Mailly Wood, 184.
Index
Maratray, M. Raymond, of the
Petit Journal, 63, 107; a letter
from, 69-71; at Bapaume, 77-
78; his illness, 79.
Marne, the, a remark of M. Joffre,
138; German recrossing, 172.
' MarseiUaise ' in Lille, 200; in
Denain, 205.
'Martha,' 31.
Masefield, John, x., xiv.; visit to
France, 80-S2.
Masnieres, 132.
Mass in Denain, 205-6; in Tournai,
207.
Matagne, M., of La Nation Beige,
64, 106-7.
Matin. See OUvier, M.
Maubeuge, 189.
Max, M., 216.
Meaux, 137.
Menabrea, Lieutenant, 121.
Menin, 162, 222.
Merville, 28, 29, 32.
Mesnil, 48.
Messines, 82, 92, 104.
Messines offensive, General Harring-
ton on the, 97-9S; plan of,
99-100.
Messines-Wytschaete Ridge, 92, 98,
162.
Mezieres, 189.
MiUe, M. Pierre, of the Temps, 63,
79-
Miraumont, 82, 185.
Mjelde. M., 116.
Moeuvres, 191.
Mokhattam hills, 128.
Monash, General, 176; taking of
Mont St. Quentin, 186-87.
Monchy Breton, 45, 47, 52.
Monchy-le-Preux, 89, 93; captured
by the Australians, 187.
Mons, Canadian capture of, 210, 212.
Montagne, M., of the Nation Beige,
193-
Montague, Captain, xii.
Montauban village, 63.
Montdidier, 153, 167, 183.
Montgomery, General, 193-94.
Montreuil, 123, 125, 220.
Morbecque, 21-22.
Mormal, forest of, 202.
Motte, La, village of, 150.
Naval division at Beaucourt-sur-
Ancre, 58-60.
Negreros, Signor, 63.
Neutral Press Unit, xi, 1 15-16,
124-25.
Neuville St Vaast, 94.
Nevinson, Mr, x., 1S2-83.
New Zealanders, war correspondents
of the, 119-20; at Bapaume,
August, 1918, 186; capture of
Le Quesnoy, 202-3.
Newspaper Proprietors' Association,
viii, 125.
Nieppe Forest, 167.
Nivelle, General, success at Verdun,
87-88; dismissed, 91.
Xoeux-les-Mines, 109.
Noir, Mont, 162, 167.
Nord, Canal du, 191, 197.
Nordstrom, M., 116.
Northcliffe, Lord, x.; supports Sir
D. Haig, 71-72; propaganda
work, 162.
Northcote, Lieutenant, 53.
Notre Dame de Lorette, 72, 222.
'Oflficiers Informateurs,' xiii., xiv.,
120-21, 124.
Oise, 155.
Olivier, M., of the Matin, 58.
Orival, Bois de 1', 191.
Paget, Capt. Otho, 13, 17, 20-22.
229
Index
Painlev^, M., 103-4.
Palmer, Mr Frederick, 115.
Paris, threatened, 171, 175; march
of the Americans through, 171-
72; 'La Grosse Bertha,' 172;
intention of Foch concerning,
178.
Passchendaele, 92, 100, loi, 128,
129, 179, 196.
Pemberton-Bilhng case, 175.
Peronne, 74, 79-80, 83, 178,
186-87.
Petain, General, 50; Haig and, 91;
the counter-offensive, 173-74.
Petit Journal. See Maratray, M.
Raymond.
Petit Parisien. See Vignaud, M.
Jean.
Phihps, Mr Percival, of the Daily
Express, x., 113.
Photographic Section, the, 1 16-19,
160-61; headquarters of, 125;
an incident, 214-15.
Pilkem Ridge, 126.
Pill-box, the, evolution, 90; use
after Messines, 100.
Ploegstreet Wood, dug-outs, 73.
Plumer, General, x., 50; at Messines,
92, 97; plans of, loi; position
of the 2nd Army, 195-96; in
Cologne, 219.
Poohng of information, system of,
xi., 123.
Poperinghe, 101.
Portuguese correspondents, 63, 151;
Portuguese, the, at Lys, 154, 15S,
167, 187.
Pozieres Ridge, 78, 184; the Aus-
tralians on, 90.
Press, the, all units taken over by
Mr N. Lytton, 112, 121; dis-
position of, 124-25; re-
organisation, 141-42; in Lille,
202; interview with Sir Douglas
Haig, 218-19.
Press-censorship, learning the busi-
ness, 57.
Pritchard, Hespeth, 54.
Punch, reference to, 128.
Queant, 188.
Quebec, Province of, flag for, 205.
Quesnoy, Le, capture, 202-3.
Rain, our ill luck, loo-ioi.
Rancourt, 74.
Rawlinson, General, 184, 193;
opinion regarding Mont St
Quentin, 186.
Reservoir Hill, 108, 222.
Rheims, 168-69, 173.
Riaumont, Bois de, 222.
Richebourg St Vaast, 40, 73.
Richtofen, funeral of, 166.
Riddell, Sir George, 117.
Robertson, Sir William, at the War
Cabinet, 69-71.
Robinson, Mr Perry, of the Times,
113-
Roeux, 89.
Rouge, Mont, 162, 167.
Roulers, 199.
Royal Sussex, the 12th, 174.
Roye, 178, 182, 183.
Ruffin, M., of the Agence Havas, 58,
59, 107, 108, 151.
Rumilly, 132.
Runners, French system, 75.
Rupprecht, Prince, armies of, 172;
offensive abandoned, 175.
Ruskin, Modern Painters, 98.
Russia, 83, 92, 134; divisions from,
M3-45-
Ryman, Dr. 32.
Sage, M. le, iii.
»
Index
St Catherine's Mount, Guildford, 93.
St Eloi, Church of. Arras, 93.
St Jean, Soeur, of Le Quesnoy, 204.
St Omar, 125, 202.
St Pol, 21, 46-47, 124, 154, 167, 179.
St Quentin, Mont, 119, 169; taken
by the Australians, 186-87.
Sambre, battle of the, 202.
Scarpe, the, 129, 155; British
advance, 89-91; view of the
valley, 96.
Scheldt Canal, 193-95.
Scherpenberg, the, 162, 167.
Schwaben redoubt, 51, 59.
'Scoops,' forbidden, 102.
Scotch Uniforms, remark of M.
Joffre, 135.
Second Argyll and Sutherlands, 34.
Selle, the, 202.
'Sem,' the French caricaturist, 3.
Sensee, the, 129.
Sharp, Mr, 80.
Short hair, punishment of, 215.
Shrive, M. Van, 116.
Simms, Mr, 113.
Sniperscope rifle, the, 44.
Soissons, 173.
Somme offensive, 40, 41, 42, 45-46,
64, 65, 81-84, 88, 104, 184, 186.
Spanish despatches, method of
sending, 123.
Spurrell, Colonel, 30, 39.
Staff duties, the Press and, 142.
Submarine campaign, 92.
Sussex, the nth, 52-53.
Swinton, General, viii.
Tanks, near Beaumont Hamel, 59-
60; at Bullecourt, 90-91; at
Cambrai, 130; not developed
by Germany, 147; engagement
between British and German,
163; the new, 177; the French
Renaud, 183; German fear of,
188.
Tardieu, M., EcJio de Paris, 56, 63.
Tear shells, 59.
Telegramme de Boulogne, 103.
Tessar, Lieut. Francois de, 135,
137-38.
Thermite shells, 48.
Thiepval, 184-85.
Thiepval-Beaumont-Hamel line, 45.
Thilloy, Le, village of, 78.
Thomas, Mr Beach, of the Daily
Mail, 113, 138, 190.
Times, The. See Robinson, Mr
Perry.
'Tipperary' in ^lons, 212.
Titeux, Captain, 221.
Tong, M. de, 116.
Touquet, Le, Duchess of West-
minster's hospital at, 29-32.
Tournai Cathedral, 207.
Trafiord, Captain Rudolf de, xii.,
57-58.
Transloy, Le., 77.
Tredennick, Lieut., 174-75.
Trenches, German, draining of, 25;
Hindenburg's line, 75; anti-
tank, 130, 132-33; set lines
abandoned, 146.
Trones Wood, 45, 62-63.
Tudesq, ]\L Andre, of the Journal,
58-59.
United Press of America, 113.
Units, non-mention of, 113.
Valenciennes, 207.
Vauban fortifications, 77.
Vendhuile, 193.
Verdun, 104; desolateness of, 62;
German impressions, 83;
General Nivelle's success, 87-88.
Verrau, General, 62.
231
Index
Vignaud, M. Jean, 197.
Villers Plouich, 132.
Villers-Bretonneux, 150, 153, 162-64,
178, 183.
Vimy Ridge, 89, 93-94. 96, 104, 155,
157-58, 167.
Viper, transport, 20.
Vitermont, 49.
Viviani, M., 135-36.
Wales, Prince of, in Denain, 205-6.
Walloons, fighting qualities, 165.
War Museum, the, 116, 221.
War Office conferences, 69-70, 117.
Warlencourt, Butte de, 77.
Waterloo, 214.
Watson, General, in Denain, 205-6.
Welsh Division, the 38th, 185.
Westhoek Ridge, 126-28.
Wilkinson, Capt., 119.
Wilson, Colonel Hutton, 57, 64, 63,
81, 113.
Wilson, President, quoted, 208.
Wilts, the, 49.
Wiring, German system, 76.
Witiey, 19.
Woolcombe, General, 11.
Worcesters, the, 49.
Wytschaete-Messines Ridge, 92, 98,
162.
Ypres, 33, 64. 73-4. 98-g, 128, 131,
King Albert at, 195; General
Plumer's offensive, 196; evacu-
ation of the Germans, 198-99.
Ypres-Staden Railway, 165, 167.
Z., Bois de, 182.
Zimmerman, M., 116.
Zonnebeke, 128.
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bloody or bloodless, the change is imminent, and in this book Mr Gould,
who combines his labours as a poet and essa\-ist \vith a pecuharly active
life as sub-editor of The Daily Herald, endeavours to foreshadow the
economic future of this empire under the coming conditions. As an
Oxford scholar he is fuUy quahfied to treat the subject academically,
while his constant contact with the leading pohtical thinkers and practical
men in the most advanced camp, his interest and sympathy with the
movement as a whole, give him the power to speak with authority and
intimate knowledge of the probable trend of coming events.
Mr Balfour
A Biography by E. T. RAYMOND
Author of Uncensored Celebrities, etc.
Demy 8vo. With Portrait Frontispiece. Price 12s. Q>d. net.
A famous editor used to say in times of political crisis, when the
columns of his daily paper were under discussion : ' I hope no one •v.-iW.
suggest that we should interview Mr Balfour.' The subject of this
biography is probably the least 'interviewed' prominent figure in England.
Therefore we are the more intrigued by his character. The proof of the
pudding is in the eating, maybe, but the ingredients are the real point
of speculation. Every one will welcome this searching and critical analjrsis
of a complex personahty, whose public actions and utterances have so
often puzzled the country.
Could a more suitable biographer have been found than the witty,
nimble Mr Raymond, whose recent books of portrait studies, Uncensored
Celebrities and All and Sundry — More Uncensored Celebrities, have lately
entertained thousands of readers? To many people this book will reveal
for the first time the guiding characteristics of one of the most varied
brains, charming personalities, and wisest counsellors in the whole of
British history.
The Press and the General Staff
The Hon. NEVILLE LYTTON
Demy 8yo. With illustrations by the author. Price 15s. net.
Here is possibly the wittiest and shrewdest view of the war that has
yet been given us, which will be read not only for its very striking matter
but also for its highly vivacious manner. Mr Lytton, who began hfe as
an infantry officer, takes us hghtly and easily over the opening part of
his experiences in and out of the trenches, till we get to the pith of the
book when he tells of how he was put to organise the work of the press
correspondents at G.H.Q.
There is a good deal of inner history revealed in his account, and
he gives sparkling anecdotes of nearly aU the big men of the war, with
many of whom he was in constant contact. There has been no book
like it, and although we are supposed to be tired of all that has to do
with the war, it will indeed be a rired man who does not find many hours
of amusement between the covers of this lively book.
The Journey : Odes and sonnets
GERALD GOULD
Large Crown Svo. Boards, 6s.nei.
Mr Gould is a writer of graceful and distinguished verse of a very
high order, whose work has found acceptance not only among the critics
but also with a discriminating yet ample pubUc. This volume of Odes
and Sonnets contains some of his finest work up to the present, showing
the development of his poetic talent and increasing technical skill.
A History of Aeronautics
E/-> "\7T"\7T A XT Author of Passion Fimit, etc.
. Kj. VlVl/\i>, Formerly Editor of FZyinS
AND LIEUT-COL.
W. LOCKWOOD MARSH, o.b.e.
Secretary of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
Demy Svo. With numerous illustrations and diagrams. Price 30s. net.
There has hitherto been no complete history of the art and develop-
ment of aviation, heavier or lighter than air. It is to fiU the undoubted
gap left in the Uterature of this subject, a heterogeneous mass of disjointed
narrative and technical treatises, that this book has been designed. It
takes aviation from its legendary period right through to the facts and
feats of to-day. The technical side of the subject has special treatment,
for instance, the development of the internal combustion engine, which
has formed the vital core of a\4ation. The book is profusely illustrated
from photographs and diagrams. It is the only book that covers the
whole ground and is written in simple and very readable stjie.
Aspects of Literature: Essays in Literary- criticism
J. MIDDLETON MURRY
Demy 2>vo. Price 10s. net.
The theme developed in this book of essa^'^ by the Editor of The
Athenesum, who is recognised as our leading critic of the new school, is
the necessity of formulating a new theory of criticism. This is, however,
attempted with a minimum of abstract argument, since Mr Murry's
view is that criticism can only be of cogency and value when it deals
with specific works of art. Accordingly he considers in separate essays
a variety of writers and literary subjects : Thomas Hardy, Samuel
Butler, Coleridge, Keats, Tchehov, Rousseau, Ronsard, Anatole France,
The Present Condition of EngHsh Poetry, Shakespeare's Criticism. The
conclusions he reaches as to the scope and principles of literary criticism
are formulated in an introductory essay on 'The Function of Criticism.'
This contains what is, in effect, a new theory of criticism, of which
the essence is an emphasis on the intimate relation of hterature to life.
This relation is envisaged under a new aspect, and established as the
pinnacle of a humanistic Philosophy. From this naturally derive standards
of literary criticism which are vahd for the criticism of hfe also. These
standards are to some degree implicit throughout the essays in the book,
which is, however, put forward less as a complete exposition in practice
of the theories reached in conclusion than as a document showing the
phases of a critical evolution.
Dostoevsky and His Creation
A Psycho-Critical Study JANKO LAVRIN
Crown 8vo. Is. 6d. net.
Mr Janko Lavrin is probably the first Serbian author whose critical
Uterary work has been produced in England. His study of Dostoevsky
is an extremely able book, and Mr Lavrin attacks his subject from a
different point of view to that which we are accustomed to in this
country. He was educated partly in Russia and while still a University
student was for two years editor of a Russian literary and pohtical
monthly, Slavansky Mir (Slavonic World). He was subsequently on the
staff of the biggest Russian newspaper, Novoe Vremya. His contributions
to that paper written from Albania and Serbia during the first tAvo years
of war were pubUshed in book form in Petrograd. He is now Lecturer
in Russian and Russian Uterature at the University of Nottingham.
Apart, however, from the interest of the origin of this highly modem
study, his criticism is admirably done and his scholarship on this particular
subject unimpeachable.
Modern Drama in Europe
STORM JAMESON
Croism Svo. 10s. 6d. net.
The very low ebb to which the drama has fallen in recent years in
England is found also to be the mark in most European countries. An
amount of criticism has been levelled at the productions offered that If
surprising both in its virulence and in its ineffectiveness. This faUun
to be constructive is probably due to the fact that modem criticism i
mostly ephemeral in nature, appearing in the daily press and obliterate
like the grass of the field, written out of many different minds, fro-
different standards and points of view. Here is a more permanen
comprehensive work that passes all contemporary drama beneath t
same spear, measuring its quahty by the same measure. Some of
dramatists reviewed are Ibsen, Strindberg, Hauptmann, Barrie, Sh
Galsworthy, Pinero, Drinkwater, Donnay, Rostand, Guitry, etc. I
an able and searching study, constmctive in idea.
LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND
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