MAJOR-GENERAL L. B. FRIEND(President of Claims Commission)
The Claims Commission, which in the later stages of the war had its headquarters at Paris Plage and Le Touquet, did its work to the satisfaction of everybody. At first its responsibilities were confined to paying claims for damage done. Later it took over all the financial adjustments in connection with the hiring and the requisition of civilian land and property. Its tasks called for a great deal of tact and a wide variety of resourcefulness. In the Spring of 1918 the abandonment in evacuated areas by civilians of wine and portable property caused trouble. The events at Amiens illustrate the position. As soon as the city came under enemy shell fire the civil authorities left, and with them most of the respectable inhabitants. Less respectable people remained, and probably were guilty of some excesses. The British Army Authorities, however, were prompt in taking over control, and on April 3rd the city was quiet and orderly.But very serious reports of damage by British troops were put into circulation. On investigation by the Claims Department the actual cases resolved themselves into two: in one house three doors had been broken down; in the other case the British Army had stolen a rabbit "which had been abandoned by its owners." These were the only two charges definitely preferred. But it was, seemingly, a fact that in some villages outside of Amiens regrettable incidents arose from the fleeing civilians abandoning stores of wine or disposing of them to the troops at sacrifice prices. The French Authorities were asked to assist in forbidding the importation by civilians of intoxicants into threatened areas.
Towards the end of the war some of the French towns which had been sheltering large numbers of British troops raised the question of the payment of octroi duties on the goods consumed by the troops. As I suppose is well known, French towns have local customs duties (called octroi because the right to collect them for local purposes was originally a concession from the King). All food, etc., coming into the town pays a small tax. Supplies for the British Army did not pay this tax, and the towns complained of the loss thus caused to their municipal revenues. G.H.Q. willingly conceded the payment of octroi. A lump sumwas allowed for the past period, and an arrangement made for the future payment of so much per head every half year for each soldier billetted within the town boundaries. Theper capitacharge varied greatly. A few French towns refused to make any claim, saying that they were well content to make that concession to their British guests.
On the whole the financial record of the British Army in France is something to be proud of. We paid justly—sometimes generously—for everything, and no civilian was left with a legitimate grievance.
There is a sort of grim pleasantry in the fact that the German submarine war, which was to bring Great Britain to her knees, only brought her to a school of economy where she learned some lessons which will be very useful in the future, once the after-the-war phase of reckless extravagance has passed away. When the cumulative effect of the unlimited submarine war made itself felt in 1918 it did not stop operations, though it may claim some of the responsibility for the extent of the German success in the Spring of that year, which might have been much more limited if we had had full supplies of wire and other defence material. What it did do was to set G.H.Q. to devising valuable economies.
The German was in effect too late with this, as with his other desperate steps. At theoutset of the war, with an inferior sea power, Germany had yet the chance of using sea forces with great, and perhaps decisive, effect by raids on the British supply routes with light cruisers and converted merchantmen. She had prepared for this but neglected the one necessary act of forethought and daring by not sending out to sea her commerce destroyers. Such a sea policy would, of course, have been ruthless; but it could have been made effective without violation of sea law and without outrages on neutrals. After August, 1914, Germany sought vainly to repair her initial lack of sound naval sense by the submarine naval war, in which every canon of sea law and every sentiment of justice and humanity were violated. The more the submarine war showed signs of failing the more atrocious and reckless it became, until in its final shape it set almost all the world against the German Empire. Yet withal the U-boat atrocities went for nothing. The German people must see now that their Prussian masters put them very much in the position of the innkeeper of the old creepy German story. He and his wife resolved to kill in his sleep and rob a chance traveller who had come to their inn. They killed him and found that his purse was empty and that he was their own long-lost son.
On the debit side, as a result of the German submarine war we had in 1918 a lack of certainmaterial—particularly of chocolate, biscuits, and tinned fruits in the canteens. On the credit side we had those fine economy organisations, Salvage, Agriculture and Forestry, the effect of which was not only to make savings at the time but also to teach the soldier a fuller appreciation of his civil duties.
"Salvage" explained itself very clearly in its official publication:
"The world shortage of almost every kind of raw material used for war supplies makes Salvage an important Administrative Service. Without a well-organised and thorough Salvage system, the full maintenance of our Force in the Field would be made difficult."The co-ordination of all Salvage work is in the hands of the Controller of Salvage at G.H.Q. His duties include the inspection of executive Salvage work, the arrangements for the disposal of Salvage material, the investigation of methods for recovering bye-products, and keeping of statistical records showing the amount of material salved and disposed of and the resultant gain to the State."The Salvage Organisation is not intended to take the place of, or in any way discourage, a consistent effort on the part of every supply department to recover for repair and re-issue its own articles and itsown empties. It is intended to supplement that effort; to collect and put to use what would otherwise become derelict; to ensure that nothing utilisable is allowed to go to waste."To this end it is necessary to arrange, in the first place, for the collection of unserviceable or derelict material, and, in the second, for its disposal so that it may be brought again into use with the least delay and to the best advantage."
"The world shortage of almost every kind of raw material used for war supplies makes Salvage an important Administrative Service. Without a well-organised and thorough Salvage system, the full maintenance of our Force in the Field would be made difficult.
"The co-ordination of all Salvage work is in the hands of the Controller of Salvage at G.H.Q. His duties include the inspection of executive Salvage work, the arrangements for the disposal of Salvage material, the investigation of methods for recovering bye-products, and keeping of statistical records showing the amount of material salved and disposed of and the resultant gain to the State.
"The Salvage Organisation is not intended to take the place of, or in any way discourage, a consistent effort on the part of every supply department to recover for repair and re-issue its own articles and itsown empties. It is intended to supplement that effort; to collect and put to use what would otherwise become derelict; to ensure that nothing utilisable is allowed to go to waste.
"To this end it is necessary to arrange, in the first place, for the collection of unserviceable or derelict material, and, in the second, for its disposal so that it may be brought again into use with the least delay and to the best advantage."
AN ARMY POSTER.
"Salvage," in order to secure a practical interest in its work, used to issue statements to the soldiers showing how salved articles were utilised. Some examples:
Clothing:Cleaned and repaired locally. If beyond repair, sent to the United Kingdom as rags.Sacking:Sent to the United Kingdom.Entrenching tools:Heads cleaned and sharpened. If irreparable, disposed of as scrap.Steel helmets:Cleaned and relined. If irreparable, indiarubber pads in lining removed and utilised for lining serviceable helmets. Chin strap sold as old leather, and helmet disposed ofas scrap steel.Rubber (gum boots, tyres, etc.):Sent to Paris for classification and repair. If irreparable, sent to the United Kingdom.Mess tins, camp kettles, field kitchen boilers:Cleaned in caustic soda, reblocked, resoldered if necessary, and retinned. If irreparable, disposed of as scrap steel.Water-bottles:Old felt removed—bottles cleaned, recovered with new felt and recorked. Old felt sent to the United Kingdom. Water-bottles not fit for re-issue as such are used for packing small quantities of oil or paint for the Front.Web equipment, cotton bandoliers, etc.:Broken into component parts—dry-cleaned on motor-driven brushes, darned and repaired. If irreparable, sent to the United Kingdom as cotton rags, after brass or metal fittings have been removed.Leather equipment, harness, saddlery, etc.:Broken down into component parts, washed with soft soap in lukewarmwater, dried in a drying cupboard at 100 deg. F., treated with fish-oil and repaired. If irreparable, sent to United Kingdom as old leather after brass or metal fittings have been removed.Boots:Classified, repaired and passed through fish-oil baths. The uppers of irreparable boots as far as possible made into shoe laces or heel lifts and used for filling.
"Salvage" had to suffer much from kindly "ragging." It was known as "Rags and Bones," and as "Swill." It was the favoured sport of the humourist to devise new salvage dodges, one of which I recall as holding the record for sheer asininity. It drew attention to the fact that the little circles of paper, punched out of folios so that they could be put on files, might be collected and sold as confetti!
But with all this "ragging," G.H.Q. had a very real respect and liking for Brigadier-General Gibbs and his Salvage Corps, and recognised fully the solid and practical patriotism which made them devote a passionate interest to the recovery of solder from old tins, to collecting waste paper, old boots, nails,horseshoes, rags and buttons. "There is nothing of the débris of the battlefield which we cannot put to some use," General Gibbs announced; and by his personal enthusiasm he made Salvage collection quite a popular sport in the Army.
Some of the items of salvage value from a return will show the wide range of the department: swill for piggeries, value 16,000 francs; solder from old tins, value 91,000 francs; cotton waste, 14,000 francs; tin-plate (won by unrolling old biscuit tins, etc.), 61,000 francs; old lead, 10,000 francs; various bye-products 7,000,000 francs. The old rags collected did a great deal to help the cloth shortage at Home, as they made the best kind of shoddy. The old bones collected helped to find the glycerine for explosives.
But perhaps the moral effect of the Salvage department was even more valuable than its excellent material results. War is a wretchedly wasteful business and must inculcate in soldiers a spirit of waste. But in the final phase of this campaign every soldier had brought home to him most urgently the wisdom of saving and the real value of what seemed to be waste bye-products. Many of them must have learned the lesson and carried it home with them to the advantage of the general community.
Agriculture was another economy organisation that we owed to the German submarinewar. It had begun in a small way towards the end of 1917; indeed its germ was alive before then, for from the first our units had helped the French with labour and horses during harvest time, and some units enjoying a certain security of tenure had established flower and vegetable gardens. But in December, 1917, the world's food position suggested an earnest effort to utilise spare labour and spare land within army areas in France to grow food. Major-General Ellison and Dr. Keeble came over to G.H.Q. from the War Office, and a scheme was drawn up to cultivate 50,000 acres of land. In January, 1918, an Agriculture Directorate was formed under Brigadier-General the Earl of Radnor, and search was made for a suitable area for a big farm. The quest was not a simple one. We could not poach on land that the French might want. We wished to avoid selecting an area which might be needed for a manœuvre ground for our troops in the carrying out of the next Big Push. In seeking to avoid these two rocks we landed on a worse one. The area selected around Roye-Nesle was the area which the Germans were going to over-run in their Spring offensive. All unconscious of that, we began ploughing in February, 1918. The Home authorities had supplied an abundance of excellent machinery, and labour was quickly collected and trained. By March 21st we had got up to a record of ploughing 300 acres per day and a total of 4,742 acres hadbeen turned over. Then the German came.
BRIG-GENERAL THE EARL OF RADNOR(Director of Agricultural Production)
By a fine feat of organisation and courage the Agriculture Directorate saved most of its machinery. Some of the agricultural tractors came in useful as aids to the heavy artillery in the retreat. Others, charging for home at their best speed, were mistaken for German Tanks and in one or two cases fired on by our troops.
Despite that unlucky experience with the big farm, Agriculture put to its credit some useful work. It had promoted vegetable gardens in Base Camps, and the total area of those gardens was 7,496 acres and their products did much to help out the rations. Soon, too, "Agriculture" found that though it had not sown on its big farm it might still reap in other quarters. The German onrush had brought a great area of French cultivated land within army areas, some of it actually within the zone of fire. Since every ear of wheat was precious, Agriculture organised to save this part of the French harvest, and actually reaped the product of 18,133 acres. It was gallant work, done mostly by fighting men in the intervals between their turns in the trenches. Sometimes the area to be reaped was under the fire and the observation of the enemy, and the crop was cut at night. The enemy used gas shells to prevent this work, and the reapers had to work in gas masks. One area of six acres of corn was so close to theenemy trenches that the idea of saving it seemed a desperate one. But volunteers were found, and one night seventeen men with scythes cleared the whole six acres, in the three hours of darkness that were available. I own that such acts of heroism impress me more than deeds done in the heat and ardour of battle.
In the Autumn of 1918 the enemy were in full run for the Rhine, and the Agriculture Directorate resolved to make another attempt at cultivating a big farm. An area of 20,000 acres was chosen, this time near Corbie. The site had been desolated by the Somme battles, and the work of preliminary clearing (which was done by Prisoners of War) was the hardest part of its preparation for agriculture. But when ploughing began with tractors other unexpected difficulties cropped up. The big armour-piercing shell with delay-action fuse, when it missed the emplacement for which it was designed and struck the ground, penetrated to a great depth, exploded there, and often formed a big subterranean cavern without showing any crater on the surface. A heavy tractor going over one of these caverns would break through and disappear. Digging it out would then be a laborious task.
When the Armistice came the Corbie farm was, in accordance with the wishes of the French Government, passed over to it. So the Agriculture Directorate never got in a bigcrop of its own sowing. But it had done excellent work on its farm gardens and in saving the French crop within the battle area.
Forestry was another department which we owed to the German submarine war. In 1916 shipping losses were already so great as gravely to prejudice the prospects of bringing in timber from Scandinavia. It was Scandinavia which felt the earliest effects from the submarine campaign; Norway, especially, which with fine courage had refused to allow its mercantile shipping to take refuge in harbour.
The Norwegian paperTidens Tegnpublished an optimistic statistical review of the position as regards Germany's submarine war on October 9th, 1917. This, covering a wide period and dealing with a mercantile service which the German pursued with particular venom, attracted great attention at the time. Pointing out that for the week ending October 9th not one Norwegian vessel was sunk by German submarines, theTidens Tegncommented that this was the first time for a year that such a thing could be said. It gave then in detail the record of U-boats' ravages on Norwegian shipping from May, 1917, until October, 1917, the record showing a steady decrease of losses. But the sad truth was that the Norwegian shipping had suffered such terrible losses that there was not much left of it to destroy.
As early as November, 1916, owing to the difficulties in getting Scandinavian timber, we had decided to draw our timber supplies chiefly from the French forests and from Switzerland, Spain, and Great Britain. Our Forestry Department started with a Canadian lumber-men's unit. Brig.-Gen. Lord Lovat was Director. In October, 1917, a fresh agreement was made with the French Government for the exploitation of French forests for the benefit of the Allied Armies. The magnitude of the operations can be gauged from the fact that the Forestry Directorate grew to 425 officers and 11,000 of other ranks, and employed in addition about 6,000 prisoners of war. But perhaps the public, with Whitehall departments in its mind's eye, may object that employment figures are no sound indication of work accomplished. But the production figures admit of no cavil. From November, 1917, to November, 1918, the Forestry Department produced from French forests 2,065,074 tons of timber. This was four-fifths of the total needs of the Army. Reference will be found in a subsequent chapter to our shortage of barbed wire in the Winter and Spring of 1918. Forestry did a great deal to fill the gap, producing 90,000 tons of defensive pickets between February and May, 1918.
AT FORESTRY H. Q., THE KING AND A MASCOT
In addition to its productive work Forestry was a valuable Directorate in the teaching ofeconomy in forest exploitation. If the lessons it inculcated are not wasted, British forestry should benefit greatly in the future.
Salvage, Agriculture, and Forestry were the three chief "Economy Directorates" of G.H.Q.; and if their spirit can be carried back into civil life by the demobilised soldier it will prove of real value in making up for the economic wastage of the war, vast as that has been. I wonder if those people who are celebrating peace with a long-drawn-out carnival of slackness and extravagance recognise as clearly as we were made to do at G.H.Q. in 1918 the extent to which the world is short of everything! Of course it is difficult for those who are not accustomed to give close attention to the problems of production to appreciate how deeply a world war of four years' duration affects every industry; and especially so when on one side the war was waged on the principle of destroying everything that could be got at, whether it was military or civil property, whether it was an enemy or a neutral possession. Germany, making a ruthless and unlimited war on "sink without trace" lines, forced practically the whole world to band against her in self-defence; and over practically the whole world labour and capital were largely withdrawn from production for purposes of defence.
In the days when the builders of Jerusalem worked with the trowel in one hand and the sword in the other, it may be concluded that progress was slow. For years a great deal of the world had the rifle in one hand and the gas mask in the other, figuratively or literally. It could do little in the way of normal production, because its chief energies were taken up with defence.
In regard to any industry, trace step by step the effect of a war such as this war. The first and most palpable loss is that of the labour directly withdrawn for armies and navies. That would be serious enough if it were the sole loss. But it was only one of many losses. A modern industry depends as much almost on capital as on labour. Capital was withdrawn from production and devoted to destruction at an appalling rate. That meant that industry was starved of machinery, of communications, of nutriment generally. Like a human body deprived of proper nourishment, it began to suffer from debility. Every neglect to replace machinery, to repair roads or to open up necessary new roads, every draft, too, made on the administrative staff, is just as much a weakening of an industry as the direct loss of hand workers. A healthy industry should be able to withstand for some time these losses, just as a healthy human body should be able to withstand some period of privation and even ofactual starvation. But there is a limit to the power of endurance in both cases. It is quite clear that in many world industries (and most particularly in those industries which are connected with the great staples of human comfort, the food industries, the clothing industries, the transport industries) that limit was reached long before the war was over, and the world began to suffer from a constitutional enfeeblement of its powers of production; something more serious than the temporary interruption of production, something which makes now a restoration of prosperity difficult and tedious.
All this is so true as to be truism. But it does not seem to be so clearly recognised by the people who stayed at home as by the people who went to war. Perhaps as the returned soldier makes his influence felt more strongly he will have his value in bringing the nation to a sense of the duty of economy. It was not possible to have two views about the need of economy when you had to forage the battlefield for old bits of metal and rags.
"There has never been an army that had more chaplains, or that needed them less." That was the verdict of one American observer on the British Army—a sound one. The British Army was notably well supplied with chaplains—"padres" as the soldier knows them; but this was not in answer to a call for spiritual leaders to combat a special degree of wickedness. Quite the contrary. The Army was a very well-behaved, sober-minded institution on the whole, as if it recognised the solemnity of its task and fitted its conduct accordingly. To this fact the French population can bear witness. The French villagers among whom the British soldiers have been quartered came to a view of them which was once eloquently expressed: "They are lions in the trenches and lambs in the villages."
So the padre went out for duty with the troops having no task of leading a forlorn hope against ramping wickedness. His trouble was rather in the other direction. "I don't see how I can have the 'front' to preach to these men," said a padre attached to an Artillery Division one day: "I'd rather they preached to me."
It really was a difficult task—that of the padre at the Front, and only the best type of clergyman made a success of it. His attitude to life had to be manly, his character brave. But the padre who ran risks just for the sake of running them was often more of a bother than a help. The best padre's spirit was that of the careful soldier who will face any danger that comes in the way of duty, but will not go looking for danger in a spirit of bravado. The padre could make two mistakes. He could take things too easily and just be a parson available to conduct Divine service when he was wanted to; or he could try to do too much, to interfere too much and become a nuisance in the fighting line. The good padre struck the happy mean. He had the knack of being there when he was wanted, but he recognised that the Army's first duty was to fight, and he did not get in the way of its fighting activities. Above all he did not try to arrange a church parade for the morning after tired troops from the line had reached rest billets.
One of the most successful padres in France was known as "the Lost Sheep." He had a Mess to which he was properly attached and this Mess was responsible for having a comfortable billet for him. But he was rarely "At home." He wandered all over the district, picking up a meal here and there and sleeping wherever he found himself after dinner. At first it was thought to be fecklessness on his part. As a matter of fact it was artfulness. Moving about as he did, taking a meal and a bed anywhere, he got to know everybody and found out who needed him as padre.
The actual organisation of the padre service was a little difficult for the layman to understand. The "Principal Chaplain" with the Forces was a Presbyterian clergyman, the Rev. J. M. Simms. Under him came all the padres, including Roman Catholic priests, except the padres of the Church of England, who had a separate organisation under a Deputy Chaplain General, Bishop Gwynne, who had been Bishop of Khartoum before the war. What was the exact reason for the division of authority I could never quite make out. There was no ill-feeling at all or jealousy between the various padres. The Principal Chaplain had his headquarters at Montreuil and was a regular visitor to the Officers' Club. The Deputy Chaplain General had his headquarters at Paris Plage.
Of the typical padre it was said that he wasresponsible for at least as many sports meetings in rest camps as Divine services, but was a genuinely spiritual man withal. There was credited to one the aphorism that the men did so much worshipful work in the trenches that in rest camps the first thing to be rightly thought of was relaxation.
G.H.Q. Staff I fear were poor Church-goers. The Commander-in-Chief set a good example by attending Divine Service almost every Sunday at Montreuil, but most of the Staff Officers followed the maxim "laborare est orare" and were at their desks on Sunday. The padres understood the position and there were no reproaches.
At meals at the Officers' Club there were always a few padres. We were not expected to make too much concession to "the cloth" in the way of conversation, and the average padre stood his chaffing with the best of them.
I noted one, who had a rather pontifical manner (though he was a thoroughly good fellow at heart), take a hard hit in a sporting fashion. The conversation had turned on Lord Roberts' campaign before the war to try to arouse the British people to a sense of the imminence of the war and the necessity of preparation. The padre blundered in with:
"It seems to me that Lord Roberts and his friends must have been singularly lacking in clearness of argument and persuasiveness seeingthat, knowing the truth as they did yet they were not able to convince the people."
"Yes," retorted an officer, "arguing on the same lines, quite a number of excellent gentlemen seem to have been singularly lacking in clearness of argument and persuasiveness for nearly 2,000 years, seeing that, knowing the greatest truth of all, they have not yet been able to convince the world."
The padre took it in the right spirit and owned that it is not necessarily a reflection on a preacher if his hearers will not listen. Lord Roberts' name was venerated by most officers, and the Army was glad that when the time came for the good old man to lay down his sword it was from among old comrades at G.H.Q. that he passed away.
In addition to the padre service the British soldier in the field had a great number of semi-spiritual organisations looking after him. These followed a sound rule, generally, of providing hot coffee and harmless recreation as the best missionary work. G.H.Q. recognised the Y.M.C.A., the Church Army and the Salvation Army as semi-religious agencies, and all these bodies did excellent work in providing rest huts and reading and recreation rooms for the troops, and thus keeping them out of mischief when they had idle times. Satan, when he came roaming round, found the BritishArmy well dug in, and plenty of wire out.
To some proposed forms of guarding the welfare of the soldier G.H.Q. had to refuse sanction. There were many cranks with very curious notions on this point. Perhaps the most remarkable proposal was that which came from a lady, the goodness of whose intentions was obvious but who had "a marked moral strabismus," as a Scots doctor pawkily observed. She wanted to form an organisation of ladies (and said she could do so) to meet soldiers at the ports of disembarkation and take them to homes where would be provided all the comforts of domesticity. I believe that some such organisation once actually existed in an Eastern country whilst it was at war. But so far as the B.E.F. was concerned it had to be discouraged.
The last line of entrenchments against ennui and discomfort was provided by that wonderful organisation the Expeditionary Force Canteens. It provided for officers and men cheap shops, good rest and recreation centres, and for officers excellent hotels. The officer thus had never to wander to strange places. From the Expeditionary Force Canteens during the greater part of the time you could buy cigars, cigarettes, chocolate, sweets, all kinds of canned goods and so on, duty free, and at prices far lower than those of the London shops. Whisky and beer could be bought, too, duty free, undersome restrictions. The E.F.C. was, in short, the great comfort-bringer to the soldier at the front. I say comfort-bringer, for all necessities were supplied by rations.
Just consider what Tommy got from the country he was serving: an ample supply of meat (fresh meat in the main), and bacon and cheese, of bread, and of biscuit; a fair supply of vegetables, of butter, of jam, of tea, milk and sugar; a moderate supply of tobacco and cigarettes; a small ration of rum. I know from my own experience that one could live excellently on the men's rations. Nothing was actually needed to supplement them. But comforts, well, they were comforting; and the E.F.C. by bringing them almost up to the front trenches (as they did) helped materially to win the war.
The Expeditionary Force Canteens organisation was formed early in 1915 for the supply of canteen facilities to the troops in the field. Its operations commenced in France, but were subsequently extended to all theatres of war. The undertaking was from its commencement conducted by Sir Alexander W. Prince and Colonel F. Benson, both of whom patriotically gave their services. In due course the organisation took on various other functions, but its canteen business alone made it by far the biggest shopping concern in the world. The "supplies and shipping" departmentof the E.F.C. had for canteens alone an average annual turnover of approximately 500,000,000 francs. From three to four thousand lines appeared on the stock sheets, ranging from a packet of pins to officers' equipment.
The tonnage handled was enormous, and during the month of November, 1918, it reached nearly twelve thousand tons, representing 320,000 cases. But the record week was that ending March 16th, 1918, just prior to the great German offensive, when 3,643 tons of canteen supplies were landed, and a turnover amounting to 10,586,407 francs was reached. The tonnage off-loaded for the year 1918 was 121,000 tons, and comprised over three million packages.
Here is a table of figures of total sales at canteens and depôts:—
Half-year endedFrancs.June, 19153,283,641December, 191518,207,427June, 191648,629,071December, 1916104,288,430June, 1917150,786,105December, 1917191,063,817June, 1918223,931,847December, 1918223,247,454Total to end of December, 1918963,437,792
The E.F.C. was in business for the good ofthe troops, not to make profits for anyone. All profits that were earned will go back to the soldiers. But profits were kept to a strict minimum. By a happy decision prices for the same goods were the same on every Front. You bought a tin of tobacco at Baghdad for the same price as at Boulogne. Thus the soldier on the more comfortable nearer-home Fronts was able to feel that the little percentage of profit charged to him was helping his mate in Mesopotamia.
Yet another fine feature of the E.F.C. work was that it served the man in the front line first and the man at the Base second. In 1917-1918 the shipping position was so bad that economies had to be effected in every possible direction. E.F.C. supplies had to suffer with the rest, and the complaint came that what supplies did come over were largely absorbed at Base and on Lines of Communication, and the men in the front line got very little. The Q.M.G. got rid of that complaint very simply. An order went out that: (1) certain luxuries which were in very short supply should go only to front area canteens and not at all to the Base; (2) other goods should go in the proportion of four to front areas and one to the Base. As a consequence our Montreuil canteens were very poorly stocked, for G.H.Q. of course did not count as a front area. But the simple justice of the step was recognised.
In 1918, the Home Government was forced to the conclusion that the shipping position was so bad that no more beer could be consigned to the troops. Beer was a very bulky article and its shipping space must be saved. G.H.Q. did not like the prospect of stopping the soldiers' beer just at a time when they had plenty of other troubles. Perhaps G.H.Q. remembered a much earlier B.E.F. in Flanders in the reign of Henry VIII., which did very badly until that great War Minister, Cardinal Wolsey, took the matter of supplies in hand and saw that the Army was well supplied not only with arrows but with beef and beer. Thereafter that early B.E.F. retrieved its reputation. It occurred to G.H.Q., B.E.F., 1918, that whilst beer is a very bulky article, most of the bulk is water. Accordingly the Q.M.G. took over, in part or in whole, breweries in our Army areas and arranged to brew beer locally, importing only from England the malt and the hops, which were not particularly bulky.
I do not know whether the decision of the Home Government was in part a concession to teetotalism and in part only governed by shipping considerations. If so the teetotallers were disappointed. The British Army in 1918 continued to number beer among its comforts.
On the whole ours was the most comforted and comfortable Army in the Field, as allliaisonofficers from allied units agreed. TheAmericans were as well off in most respects, but being a "dry" Army interfered somewhat with the comfort of its majority. The average American was not a teetotaller and did not object to wine and beer or even an occasional whisky. At his own canteens he had to be. The French of course always had a wine ration, but in other respects their "comforts" were not up to our standard. The privilege that was extended to Frenchliaisonofficers of dealing at our canteens was very highly appreciated.
The Great War revived, to a degree that few dream of, methods of very old campaigns, when the hero had his attendant myrmidons and the Spartan foot soldier his helots. Study a "ration strength" return of the B.E.F., France, 1918, and discover how the actual fighting men in trench or gun-pit had to be supported not only by Base soldiers but by British non-combatant labour companies, by French civilian labour companies, by Q.M.A.A.C.s, by prisoner-of-war labour companies, by Indian, West Indian, Fijian, and Chinese labour companies. It was a big business, this organisation of the labour behind the fighting area.
Chinese labour was of very notable help to the British Army. At its best it was the most efficient and hard-working force imaginable.At its worst it was at least a good source of fun. The Chinaman came over to the war with very definite ideas of making as good a thing out of it as possible. "I sell my labour" was his formula in signing the contract, and, though he probably would not recognise as his own the old British law formulacaveat emptor, that was the principle on which he acted. If the buyer of his labour was fool enough to pay the price and not get the work that was the buyer's look-out.
Every Chinese coolie on arrival (as we soon found out) was "put wise" by the representative of his secret society, his "Tong," that "this is a good place. You have only to pretend to work." He acted on that, and unless the people in charge knew how to deal with Chinese, so little was done as to make the most finished British exponent of "ca-canny" go green with envy. But, given an officer who knew his business, knew how to get the Chinese headmen to get the Chinese coolies to work, and the results were splendid.
The Chinaman knew that by his contract he was not to suffer war risks, that he was not supposed to work under shell-fire, and he was soon sufficiently advanced to interpret an occasional air bombardment as "shell-fire," and to give it as a reason for demanding more pay. As a rule he was willing to take risks, if he were paid extra. When sick or wounded he was a great nuisance, for if a Chinaman died ofsickness whilst in charge of the white man the conclusion was that he had been done to death. Ordinarily a sick Chinaman demobilised two workers—himself and some member of his own secret society who had to accompany him to hospital to see that all was fair.
The most earnest effort was therefore made to keep the Chinaman from dying, not only from ordinary motives of humanity, but because as a corpse he was an even greater nuisance. A British soldier might be buried in a blanket, but the Chinese dead had to have wooden coffins, and their graveyards had to be chosen with great care—preferably in a valley with a stream running through it. All this to satisfy the spiritual world of the Chinese, which seems to be very exigent in such matters. The official instructions regarding Chinese graves stated: "The ideal site to secure repose and drive away evil spirits is on sloping ground with a stream below, or gully down which water always or occasionally passes. The grave should not be parallel to the N.S.E. or W. This is specially important to Chinese Mohammedans. It should be about four feet deep, with the head towards the hill and the feet towards the water. A mound of earth about two feet high is piled over the grave."
In matters of finance the Chinaman was also a little bothersome. He had to have his pay right down on the nail; he distrusted any whiteman's savings-bank or any system of deferred pay. In time Chinese savings-banks were instituted, and these solved the difficulty that the Chinaman would not let the white paymaster keep his money for him, and if he had it in personal custody gambled it away.
Keener even than his passion for gambling was the Chinaman's passion for decoration. Was it in a sense of real fun on his part or was it an accident that his taste for decoration culminated in the two "grand passions"—an Australian hat and a Scotsman's kilt? If either of these came within his reach the Chinaman knew real bliss. One Chinaman who managed to get hold of both at once, and paraded a Base town in their joint glory for a full half-hour was the legendary hero of all the Chinese coolies in France. Of course to be in possession of an unauthorised article of military equipment was an offence, and the Chinaman going out in a kilt or an Australian hat, or a general's red-haloed cap, knew that he was in for severe punishment. That was no deterrent if his ingenuity could secure, by theft or purchase, such glory. As often as it did the Chinaman was quite willing to stand the subsequent racket. One Chinese coolie used to light up a quarter of Boulogne with a decoration that challenged military discipline successfully. He had secured one of those brass basins still used in places as barbers' signs, had fixedthis on his ordinary coolie hat, polished it resplendently, and sported it with Celestial pride. His was the brassiest hat of any brass hat in France; but the basin was not an article of military equipment, and authority decided to wink at it. In a hot sun you had to wink with both eyes.
Discipline was good with the Chinese coolies if the controlling officers knew their business and took care to "save face" of the headmen of the gangs. An officer had to see that the headman did not fool him or ill-treat the coolies and then to back up the headman always. If the coolies got to think that the headman was out of favour with the white boss nothing could be done with them. In matters of prohibitions the Chinese language showed a strange inadequacy. It was decided to forbid smoking in labour camps, and a notice "Smoking is Prohibited," was printed in English, German, and Chinese, to be affixed in the compounds. After some months a distinguished visitor, who was (or thought he was) skilled in the Chinese language, pointed out to high authority that the literal translation of the Chinese notice was "Do not get caught smoking." The educated Chinese who had drawn up the notice originally was sent for. He blandly insisted that that was the only way to say "Smoking is Prohibited," in Chinese, and that the Chinese coolie would understand nothing else.
On the whole the Chinaman was a cheerful soul. He organised his own theatrical companies and enjoyed those interminable Chinese operas which are familiar to travellers in the East and to visitors to the Chinese quarters of American or Australian cities.
The "Chink" gambled as much as the regulations allowed him to. But he could stand up to a hard day's work with constant cheerfulness, and, apart from his craze for some prohibited military decoration, contrived to make his uniform picturesque enough. The barber was an important unit of every camp, for Chinese head-dressing is a matter of complicated ritual.
Taking one consideration with another, Chinese labour in France was a success. It released many scores of thousands of men for the fighting line. If the Germans had not thrown in their hand at the time they did, it is probable that another 100,000 coolies would have been recruited in China for France, though most other types of coloured labour were being dispensed with as not being worth while.
Chinese labour has a way of cropping up in British history. It might have lost the Mother Country a whole continent of colonies at one time, when Sir Henry Parkes, a leonine Norfolk peasant who had become Prime Minister for New South Wales, dared Great Britain to veto Australian exclusion of Chinese immigrants.Later it loomed, with vast possibilities of mischief, over South African history. In the Great War Chinese labour appeared again, but this time with no sinister threat of trouble, but very helpful in matters of railway-building and ship-building, and lightening, with a touch of Celestial humour, the grim business of putting the German in his place.
The Labour Directorate had control not only of Chinese Labour but of all other non-combatant working units, except the W.A.A.C.s (or Q.M.A.A.C.s as they came to be called when, as a reply to base gossip about their morals, Queen Mary took nominal command of the corps and they became Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps). Distinctly cruel—though it was probably not meant to be cruel and was only thoughtlessness—was the gossip about the W.A.A.C.s. According to some London scandal-mongers a very large proportion of the Corps qualified for a maternity hospital almost as soon as they got to France. As a matter of fact the standard of conduct among them was very high. They represented at least the average of British womanhood, probably they were ahead of the average, and it would be a libel on our race to discredit them with a charge of looseness.
Nor was it a fact that the W.A.A.C.s were in a position unusually open to temptation; it was quite the contrary. They were busy. Thesoldiers among whom they worked were busy, and it wasn't a case of the Devil having idle hands at his mercy. Further, the system of supervision was well thought out and excellently administered. The W.A.A.C.s had better guardianship than in the average British home. They lived in settlements, with their own recreation rooms. These settlements were strictly out of bounds for soldiers. All private houses, cafés, restaurants, etc., were "out of bounds" to the W.A.A.C.s. Nor could a W.A.A.C. "walk out" with a soldier in her leisure time except by permission of her officer.
At G.H.Q. there were very few W.A.A.C. clerks or telephone orderlies; but there was a little band of W.A.A.C. waitresses at the Officers' Club. A better set of girls it would be hard to find, and it is hardly necessary to say that they were always treated with respect and courtesy by the officers. A saying at G.H.Q. was that if you wanted to be sent away suddenly there were two short courses to that undesirable end: one, to curse your general to his face in public, the other to be caught winking at a W.A.A.C. G.H.Q. did not wink at the W.A.A.C.s. We had too much respect for them, too much gratitude for the spirit of sportsmanship and patriotism that led them to come out to France to lead a dull and laborious life for our comfort. It is difficult to imagine what a touch of "England, Home and Beauty"those deft young women gave after experience of soldier orderlies as waiters.
From personal knowledge I can only speak of the W.A.A.C.s at G.H.Q. But I had the best of means of judging their general standard of conduct throughout France. In case of a lapse from grace a W.A.A.C. was retired from the Corps, her uniform was withdrawn and she had a grant of £5 to enable her to buy a civilian costume. There were not many cases of that £5 being paid.
But the W.A.A.C.s, as I have said, did not come under the Labour Directorate but under their own Administrator. Every one else whose job was to work rather than to fight did, and that made "Labour" an extraordinarily interesting department. It had under its control: