(a) The Labour Corps, including:(i) Labour Companies.(ii) Divisional Employment Companies.(iii) Area Employment Companies.(b) Canadian Labour Battalions.(c) Middlesex (Alien) Labour Companies.(d) South African Native Labour Corps.(e) Cape coloured Battalion.(f) Egyptian Labour Corps.(g) Chinese Labour Corps.(h) Fijian Labour Detachment.(i) Indian Labour Corps.(j) Non-Combatant Corps.(k) Prisoner of War Companies.(l) French and Belgian Civilian Labour.
The core of the organisation was British loyal labour, men who were too old or too decrepit to fight but who "did their bit" behind the lines, making roads or working at various Army jobs. These were excellent stout fellows, and as they did not object to taking the risk of death for their country, they could be, and were, employed in areas of danger. Another type of British Labour, not so admirable, were the Conscientious Objectors. A few groups of these were employed in France as burial parties, etc. Yet another type was known as the Middlesex Contingent—why that county should have been associated with them I know not. They were men British-born but of German parentage, whose loyalty was suspect. They could not be trusted in the army; they were used for some types of labour, but were not allowed near ammunition dumps or other points where they might do mischief.
Second in order of merit came French and Belgian civilian labour, men too old or decrepit for the fighting line, but willing to work for a wage. It was a condition of their employment that they should not be stationed within range of long-distance shell fire, but this condition was sometimes relaxed at their own wish and with the consent of the French Government. At first the British Army insured these Frenchworkers against accident, illness, and death through the French State Insurance Department. Subsequently it was found more economical to insure them directly.
German prisoners of war labour was under the Labour Directorate, and in the organisation of it some very good work was done. Prisoners were very plentiful from 1916 onwards, and the Labour Directorate, when a new push was mooted, made its plans to have skeleton prisoners-of-war companies ready to be filled by the new prisoners as they arrived. I think the record was in one case when three days after some Germans arrived at our "cages," they were at work on the roads at the rear of the Army. It was the law that prisoners of war should not be employed anywhere near the firing line, and on the British side this law was very strictly observed.
My impression of the Germans as road labourers was not very favourable. They seemed to loaf as much as they could. But some of the German prisoners of the artisan class did excellent work in our various shops and factories at Base. In tailoring shops, motor repair shops, etc., there were many German prisoners who seemed to take a delight in intelligent industry. German prisoners were very well treated and got on very well with their guards.
Now to the various classes of coloured labour. The Chinese I have already dealt with. Theywere quite the most satisfactory on the whole. The Indian labour was willing enough but did not stand the climate so well. Kaffir labour proved on the whole unsatisfactory, and so did Egyptian labour. A West Indian contingent did fairly good work. A model lot were the Fijians, all volunteers (and all Christians, by the way), and wonderfully good stevedores. Unfortunately there were very few of them and they did not stand the climate well. One of the Fijian Labour Corps left his studies at Oxford University to join up.
The Labour organisation had two main objects:
(a) To release the fighting soldier for his legitimate work.(b) To assist the Services and Departments to carry out their tasks.
(a) To release the fighting soldier for his legitimate work.
(b) To assist the Services and Departments to carry out their tasks.
Nine hours was the normal working day, exclusive of the time occupied for meals and for going to and from the place of work. If the distance from the place of parade to the work was more than 1½ miles, the time taken to march the excess distance was deducted from the hours of work. For labour of low medical category the normal working day was eight hours.
Excellent work was done by the Labour Corps. Itsmoralewas carefully studied and it was part of the instructions to officers that:
All ranks should have briefly explained to them the object of the work, for what, and by whom,it will be used, what purpose it will serve, and, especially, that all the work is being done for the prosecution of the war and is not merely a "fatigue." A few minutes spent in rousing the men's interest in their work is usually time well spent. A healthy spirit of emulation should be created by pointing out the quantity of work of any kind which should be done per day, and the amount done by other and better Companies. Above all the men must be made to understand that whether they are working on time, or on task work, no slacking can be allowed. The men in the fighting line depend on the men of the Labour Corps to keep them supplied with all they require.Our Allies are just as anxious for victory as we are. The French and the Belgians have suffered more than we have, but, in spite of it, never complain. Hence they should receive every consideration at our hands. As we are in their countries we should respect their customs and wishes as much as we can. In all our relations with any of our Allies, it is obviously desirable for us to be polite and courteous in our dealings with them. It must be borne in mind that every misunderstanding or unpleasantness tends to weaken our alliance and to help the enemy.
All ranks should have briefly explained to them the object of the work, for what, and by whom,it will be used, what purpose it will serve, and, especially, that all the work is being done for the prosecution of the war and is not merely a "fatigue." A few minutes spent in rousing the men's interest in their work is usually time well spent. A healthy spirit of emulation should be created by pointing out the quantity of work of any kind which should be done per day, and the amount done by other and better Companies. Above all the men must be made to understand that whether they are working on time, or on task work, no slacking can be allowed. The men in the fighting line depend on the men of the Labour Corps to keep them supplied with all they require.
Our Allies are just as anxious for victory as we are. The French and the Belgians have suffered more than we have, but, in spite of it, never complain. Hence they should receive every consideration at our hands. As we are in their countries we should respect their customs and wishes as much as we can. In all our relations with any of our Allies, it is obviously desirable for us to be polite and courteous in our dealings with them. It must be borne in mind that every misunderstanding or unpleasantness tends to weaken our alliance and to help the enemy.
The Labour Directorate, with many different races to manage, their religions and food habits to study, had one of the difficult tasks of the war; and carried it out on the whole very well. The chiefs of the directorate in my time at G.H.Q. were Colonel (now General) E. G. Wace, Lieut.-Col. S. G. L. Bradley, andLieut.-Col. H. A. H. Newington, with Colonel Fairfax as Adviser, Chinese Labour, and Colonel Pritchard as Adviser, South African Labour. The staff was about equally divided between big business men and typical Oxford men. It was always a pleasure at dinner to sit at the same table with the "Labour" people. They hunted, or rather dined, in couples as a rule, a leading light of the commercial world pairing off with one of the "Oxford group." So one could always reckon on good talk and argument from opposite points of view.
At the summit of its strength the Labour Corps mustered 387,000, a great Army in itself, and it had representatives of almost every European nationality, Chinese, West Indians, Pacific Islanders, Kaffirs, Zulus, Burmese, Egyptians, Maltese and almost every Indian race including Nagas, Pathans, Chins, Manipuris, Bengalis and Santals. And the Labour Corps' patriotism cost it dear at times; for sometimes it had over a thousand casualties in a month.
Photo by Bassano Ltd.BRIG-GENERAL E. G. WACE(Controller of Labour)
Photo by Bassano Ltd.BRIG-GENERAL E. G. WACE(Controller of Labour)
What did G.H.Q., whose view may be taken as the authoritative one, think in 1918 of what used to be known as "the New Army?" G.H.Q. in 1918 represented in the main the pick of the old Regular Army. Nearly all its senior officers were "Regulars." The majority of the junior officers were "Temporaries." What was the feeling between them after the mutual knowledge that the years had brought?
Often I talked this over at dinner, sometimes with men whose opinions I had known in 1914 and 1915. There was H——, for instance, who, in those early years of the war, was an unsparing critic of the "New Army" which was, he used to say then, slovenly and a makeshift sort of show and could not salute properly, and suffered, and always would suffer, from the "non-military mind."
The non-military mind, according to him, was an affliction which was born in one, likeoriginal sin, and could only be exorcised by going to a Military Academy and becoming a Regular Soldier. I used to be very meek and long-suffering with him (he was senior to me) and only occasionally mentioned people like Blake (a civilian whom Cromwell made a General, and afterwards an Admiral, and a right good General and a right better Admiral he was) or non-militarily-minded men like Botha and Smuts.
But to what argument I did venture upon he was impervious. I noted that fact for him and quoted it as, perhaps, a characteristic of the mind which wasnotnon-military. And altogether we had some charming quarrels, as amusing, almost, as those of old men in their clubs, who if they could not bicker could not digest their dinners, and then where would they be?
Now H—— takes it all back. He is at last convinced that the New Army is all right. Of course it is. Why should it not be? Is not the British Empire all right? And is not the New Army a sort of Representative Assembly of the British Empire?
G.H.Q. in 1918 saw clearly enough that never before in the history of any Empire was such splendid raw material for an Army gathered together as in Great Britain in 1914-1918. There were things to offend dainty tastes in the recruiting campaign of which the New Armieswere the harvest. But nothing can spoil the value of the result, that many hundreds of thousands of the best men who ever served in an Army joined the colours.
Judge the New Army by the standard of the "Regulars."
The soldiers of the first Expeditionary Force (the "Regulars," the men who, despite the booming of certain special units, did the greater part of the heroic work of Lord French's command up to Loos) have proved themselves so nobly that it is possible to say now, without fear of offence, that if they had been judged as individuals before they joined the Army, they might not have been held to represent the best average of the British people. There is nothing ungracious in saying this now, when even the furious and blinded foe is compelled to admit their excellent virtue. The men of the old Regular Army themselves would admit almost unanimously that it was the Army that made them, and that they occasionally took the King's shilling for lack of prospect of another shilling. The people of England must confess, on their part, that they rather boasted of "not being a military nation" and were content with an army system which did not seek to levy fairly upon the average manhood of the nation but trusted chiefly to the patriotism and instinct for rule of an officer class.
The material of the ranks was not badmaterial, nor even poor material. The British blood is a good brew. For it has tapped the most adventurous and hardiest veins of the Celt, the Anglo-Saxon, the Scandinavian, and the Norman; and this British blood learned by some subtle alchemy to draw always fresh savour and wholesomeness from the girdling sea. Put out of consideration a few criminal degenerates, and the mentally emasculated politicians who used to preach the gospel of no nationalism, and no British stock is actually bad stock, as can be seen from the superb young nations that have sprung, partly from its lees, in the Dominions.
But the raw material of the New Armies represented a great improvement on the raw material from which was built up the old army. Other things being equal, therefore, the New Armies could be expected to beat the Expeditionary Force. Other things, unfortunately, were not equal, such as officers' education and time of training. But in all the circumstances the New Armies, after some blooding, might be expected to attain, and actually did attain, the high standard set in the field by the British Regular.
The material of the New Armies was such as no recruiting sergeant in 1913 could have hoped to secure. In a fairly typical batch of recruits which I had to take over one day were engine-fitters, brass finishers, coal miners, agricultural labourers, gamekeepers, two foremen, onecompositor, one valet, one pugilist (a champion), one stud groom, one cycle mechanic, one clerk. The wages of these men before they joined was high, and only two out of thirty-eight had been of the "usually unemployed" class. Among these men, accustomed to the discipline of the workshop, many of them with experience as gangers or foremen, possible non-commissioned officers were sprinkled thickly. I have seen batches of recruits for the old army just when they joined, and they looked usually rather forlorn—men accustomed to be unemployed, men at a loose end, disappointed men, with just a sprinkling of eager men taking to the soldier's life for the love of it. Only after three months of the wholesome life, the wholesome food, the kindly discipline of the Army, would they fairly compare in physique, manhood, and intelligence with the recruits of the New Armies.
A well-marked stream coming to join the flood of New Army recruits was that of British men from overseas. The British blood is strangely responsive to the magic of the seas. Send a careless young Englishman abroad to Australia, South Africa, or to some foreign land such as China or the Argentine, and the salt air of the seas as he traverses them seems to set tingling in his blood a new keenness of Imperial pride. His outlook comes closer to that of the Elizabethan Englishman. Perhapsit is from the first actual consciousness of what it means to be one of a nation which is mistress of the seas. Perhaps one must seek deeper for a more transcendental explanation, finding it in something analogous to the Greek myth of the giant who renewed his strength whenever he touched Mother Earth.
Let the reason be what it may, the fact is clear enough. Of British men abroad—I speak now of British born, not of those born citizens of the Dominions—one can dare the guess that ninety-nine out of a hundred turned their thoughts at once to the joy of service on the outbreak of this war.
In a city of China I know there were 18 young Englishmen in various commercial houses. Of them 17 came away home to the war. In most cases it meant abandoning their positions and all their future prospects. Money was scarce, and the little band travelled steerage. To realise how great a sacrifice that was, one must know the tropics and the disgusts of having coolies for fellow-travellers. From the Argentine, from Canada and the United States, from New Zealand and Australia, the English streamed home to serve. From such a place as the Argentine there was almost a stampede of British men of fighting age.
Starting with a big handicap of quality in their favour, the men of the New Armies very soon found that it was all necessary if, withinthe much briefer time allowed them to become fit for the fighting line, they were to succeed in keeping level with the soldiers who would be their comrades. The recruits of the old Regular Army before the war came into an organisation which was officered, from brigade generals down to junior subalterns, by specialists. Officers were drawn mostly from a class with a tradition of rule, and were given a very close training. Those who came in as officers from circles which had not that tradition were in a minority, and during their course of training learned to conform to the pattern set. Very much of the success of the British Army has been due to the qualities of courage, coolness, andnoblesse obligeof the officers. As a class they gave the best of leads—a far better lead than did the generally domineering, sometimes brutal, German officers. The recruits to the New Armies did not have the advantage of coming to an organisation fully officered by men with this tradition of command and technical knowledge of their work. They had to rely for officers on material which was slightly poorer on the average.
The officers of the New Armies came from five sources:—
1. A few officers spared from units at the Front and devoting themselves to the dull but glorious duty of helping on the new men. These were usually first class.2. "Dug-outs." A "dug-out" is not a form of entrenchment or shelter but an officer who, having completed, as he thought, his soldier's work, volunteered back to service in the New Army. Some of the dug-outs were up to the standard of the Regular Army and, having kept abreast of modern military progress, were able to "take post" from the outset. Other dug-outs were more or less behind-hand with modern military science. A few were frankly deplorable. But the "dug-out" in the majority of cases made an excellent officer after a little schooling (sometimes without). Lots of him were at G.H.Q. Sometimes he proved valuable only for the preliminary work of regimental organisation, and was then remorselessly passed over when his unit was finally put into shape for the Front. He bombarded the War Office with furious protests, then took up the licking into shape of another raw unit.3. Promoted non-commissioned officers from the Regular Force, nearly always proficient in their technical work, and in the majority of cases with also a sound instinct of leadership.4. Recruited officers from the Universities and the public schools. Almost invariably they had a sense of leadership. They hadlearned a tradition of rule. In most cases they soon learned the technical part of their work.5. Recruited officers from the bulk of the community: in many cases very good; sometimes just passing muster; in a few cases distinctly poor. The necessity of a weeding-out was soon recognised.
1. A few officers spared from units at the Front and devoting themselves to the dull but glorious duty of helping on the new men. These were usually first class.
2. "Dug-outs." A "dug-out" is not a form of entrenchment or shelter but an officer who, having completed, as he thought, his soldier's work, volunteered back to service in the New Army. Some of the dug-outs were up to the standard of the Regular Army and, having kept abreast of modern military progress, were able to "take post" from the outset. Other dug-outs were more or less behind-hand with modern military science. A few were frankly deplorable. But the "dug-out" in the majority of cases made an excellent officer after a little schooling (sometimes without). Lots of him were at G.H.Q. Sometimes he proved valuable only for the preliminary work of regimental organisation, and was then remorselessly passed over when his unit was finally put into shape for the Front. He bombarded the War Office with furious protests, then took up the licking into shape of another raw unit.
3. Promoted non-commissioned officers from the Regular Force, nearly always proficient in their technical work, and in the majority of cases with also a sound instinct of leadership.
4. Recruited officers from the Universities and the public schools. Almost invariably they had a sense of leadership. They hadlearned a tradition of rule. In most cases they soon learned the technical part of their work.
5. Recruited officers from the bulk of the community: in many cases very good; sometimes just passing muster; in a few cases distinctly poor. The necessity of a weeding-out was soon recognised.
Summing up in regard to the officers of the New Armies it has to be admitted that they came below the standard of the Expeditionary Force, but not much below the standard: and that they got to the standard of the Territorials.
Put to the test of getting a post at G.H.Q., which was supposed to be the crowning test of efficiency, the New Army Officers did not do badly. I made a rough poll one night at the club dinner. More than half the officers present were "New Army" men. In what may be called "specialist" branches New Army men predominated.
The very wide sweep of the net which gathered in recruits gave the New Armies a very varied stock of knowledgeable men to draw upon. The ideal army officer should be, besides a gentleman and a skilled tactician, a good horse-master, a good house-keeper, and a clever mechanician, able to train men, to repair a telephone, a saddle, a cooking-pot or a wagon. No one man can have all that knowledge in perfection, but with the New Armies it waspossible to get within a unit men trained in civil life to every form of skill wanted. A regiment, with average luck, would have recruits from the most varied industries and trades, and the picked specialists in time got to "staff jobs" as a rule.
The "Regular" in 1914 and early 1915 was, I suppose, pretty generally convinced that there was not much hope in the "Temporary." Especially was this conviction firm in the mind of the very junior Regular. The "Shop" boy, the young second lieutenant just from Woolwich, had a blighting scorn for the "Temporary," whom he called a "Kitchener" and often affected to regard as not an officer at all but some sort of stranger whom you had to admit to Mess and tolerate in uniform because authority said so, but who obviously was not a "pukka" military man, for he could not talk about his "year" or exchange stories about wonderful "rags." The average senior Regular probably thought very much the same sort of thing, but, having cut his wisdom teeth, did not allow it to show so palpably.
There was a certain amount of justification for this feeling, for the advent of the huge number of "New" officers made a vast change in the social conditions of the Army. It soon became obviously necessary that the Temporary "Pip-Squeak" should come under a severelymotherly eye—that of the War Office and of various private philanthropic agencies who would have us all dull and good (and if we cannot be both we can be the one at least). That eye then also glared upon the Temporary lieutenant and other Temporary officers of more exalted grade, and also, to their intense disgust, on permanent officers, who professed to understand why the "Temporary" should be the victim of sumptuary regulation, but not the "pukka commission" man. All these officers agreed that it was the wickedness of the Temporary Second Lieutenant (otherwise Mr. Pip-Squeak) that had caused all the trouble, and could not understand why authority did not recognise this view and make their new rules apply only to the most junior officers. But the rain of rules fell on the just and the unjust alike, and some of the just were wroth.
I could sympathise a good deal, even if I laughed a good deal more, at the officer who found himself "treated like a child," as he put it. The dignity of the position of a British officer in the old Regular Armyquaofficer was remarkable. His officer's rank gave him the confidence of his banker, of his tradesmen, of society generally. To see a British officer in uniform with doubtful company or under doubtful circumstances was almost unknown. The tradition of the officer clan was jealously guarded by the system of training. When atlast, having got his commission, Mr. Regular Pip-Squeak reported to his regiment in the old days he found himself still very much in leading strings. Until he had won six months' standing his safest attitude, even in Mess, was that of "don't speak unless you are spoken to." Justice he could expect from his brother officers, and sympathy too, but the sympathy was tempered by severe snubbings to restrain any tendencies to effervescence. Above all things, he was trained to respect his uniform; and as he had generally the right to wear mufti when off duty, this high respect was more easy than in war time, when uniform had to be almost constantly worn.
With the first recruiting of the New Armies, commissions were freely issued to men with no training, and in some few cases with no manners. For a little while a bewildered public did not appreciate the change, and bankers, tradesmen, hosts, had some unhappy experiences. But what may be called the "commercial" aspect of the question was soon put right. Officers' rank ceased to give credit rights. Socially, the readjustment was far less easy. The War Office was at last compelled to assist that process of readjustment with various restrictive orders.
"We have been asking for it," commented one officer grimly when some particularly repressive regulations were published. Andwithout a doubt we had been asking for it—that is to say the conduct of some officers had made not merely advisable but necessary a degree of motherly (or grandmotherly) supervision. Exhortation preceded regulation by many months.
Afterwards commissions were only granted after some service or a Cadet term of training. But the stringent regulations, which offended the dignity of some "Regulars," remained. It was not that a milk-sop standard was aimed at. It was not the case that leave was only given to go out to Mothers' Meetings, Sewing Circles, and High Teas in Presbyteries. It was recognised that boys will be boys. But there is a time when parents must be parents; and the War Office was in this casein loco parentis.
But all that in 1918 was an old tale and mostly a forgotten tale. At G.H.Q. there was no scorn at all left for the Temporary who had done his share of fighting, even when he joined the scarlet-tabbed ranks of the elect. He was accepted as a brother officer with the fullest cordiality.
"Very much more interesting show, the Army is now," confessed one Regular Colonel to me. "Talk in Mess nowistalk. You've no idea how solemn and stuffy a Regular Mess could be, say in India or in a garrison town."
There remained a little good-humoured chaffstill for the Temporary who had jumped to a high appointment without any real soldier life at all. Brigadier-General ——, the eminent expert in ——, who became a General very suddenly, was reported to go around partly in dreadful, partly in proud anticipation of a guard turning out for him when he wandered from G.H.Q. area.
The chaff was good-humoured. It was never put under the nose of its object. So it did not do much harm. In truth I was struck by the general good temper with which the Trade Union of Officers ultimately took its "dilutees."
But without a doubt the Officers' Trade Union, or rather the Amalgamated Society of Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers, and Men of the Regular Army, was rather inclined to give the cold shoulder to the "dilutees" in Lord Kitchener's time. These New Army people had not put in their proper term of apprenticeship, had not paid their Union fees. Should they be treated as full members of the Society? But that feeling died away as the blood-bond of a stubborn campaign broadened and stiffened. It could not even be kept alive by the somewhat silly advertisement in some quarters of Territorial units and New Army units and Colonial units at the expense of their Regular brethren.
THE BOULOGNE GATEFrom the town
It was quite a little Parliament in its way, the Officers' Club at Montreuil, and one of its pet subjects of discussion was the Dominion soldier and the effect that the campaign would have on British Imperial relations. The talk covered a wide field and was sprinkled with anecdotes; it came up many evenings out of all sorts of incidents.
"The Dominion men, many of them, are too touchy," says an officer who has come back from aliaisonvisit. "A Canadian officer—the talk arising out of I do not know what incident—complained to me to-day: 'The Canadians do not seem to take on with the English.' 'Well, the Canadians have a very taking way with them at the Front,' I replied, hoping the allusion to Vimy Ridge would soothe him.But it didn't. I hear from the Australians, too, the same complaint—that the English people 'do not like them.'"
"What greedy young men they are," comments another. "What more do they want than the abject Anzac-worship and Canadian-worship among the British people? If anything ever went to the heart of the old Mother Country and dimmed her spectacles for her, it was the way in which the colonial troops came into the fighting line."
A Dominion officer at the table hazards that the British do seem "stand-offish" until you know them.
A British officer explains that the English are a shy people and a people with a high ideal of personal liberty and individualism; that the Englishman loves a corner seat in a train not so much because it is more comfortable but because it leaves his shyness, and his desire to keep himself to himself, safe on one side; that he does not like to be bothered, that he is very shy from the fear of bothering other people. "Those cold English passing you awkwardly by, my huffy Australians or Canadians, are very proud of you, and they do not go up to shake you by the hand and say so because they fear you would take it as a liberty."
A staff officer who didliaisonwork between Australians and the British during the first battle of the Somme thinks that one of theresults of the Somme was the moulding during its course of a truly Imperial Army. Forces of differing types went into the cauldron. One type came out. All did a full share in the offensive, and by what they taught and by what they learned had their influence in moulding this "Imperial" Force. He blamed some newspapers for having devoted well meant but mischievous energy to spoiling the work of this amalgamation. A good deal of newspaper effort, if it had been taken seriously, he says, would have fostered among the various troops a spirit of third-class theatrical jealousy, as if they were a mob of people competing for public favour and public notice: "Since the issue has been raised in other quarters, let it be said that between Dominion troops and British troops there was a fine emulation in skill and courage, and that no sound judge could give the palm to any one section over another. There were differences in method of courage and skill, no differences in degree."
We all agreed on that; and that the spirit of comradeship between all was firm. Someone noted as a curious thing that there seemed to be an understanding that what is known among soldiers as "chipping" should be dropped in inter-imperial relations. A Durham might explain—with no real but all apparent seriousness—how lucky it was for the Yorks to have the Durhams to lean upon; and the Yorks wouldrespond in kind. In the next trenches a New-South-Waler might, with a vigour that concealed well the want of earnestness in hisblague, explain the hopelessness of the Victorians. But between British, Canadian and Australian this "chipping" was dropped. They were good comrades, but felt that their mutual intimacy had not yet grown to a stage which allowed of "ragging" or "chipping."
Officers' Club G.H.Q. was inexhaustibly interested in the "Anzacs." They were frequently under discussion. There was far more talk of them than of their fellow colonials, the Canadians. They seemed to have more dramatic interest. Their rakish hats challenged notice, and their rakish actions.
Almost every day there was some fresh yarn of the Anzacs, a yarn of some fine feat told admiringly, a yarn of some classic bit of impudence told tolerantly. One tells a tale of the Anzacs' curious ideas of discipline. Another caps this with the reminder that the Australian corps has the best Salvage Record in the Army—that is to say is the most industrious in rag-picking, shell-case gathering, waste-paper collecting, and so on.
"I don't wonder," the first speaker retorts. "They're always after records. They'd go over and raid the Boche trenches for Salvage sooner than play second fiddle."
"They did marvels saving the French harvest this year under shell-fire."
"Yes, they are all right if you keep them busy. But they are the very devil in rest camp. Now in Cairo——"
But the table refuses to hear the story of Cairo again, because it is not a very pleasant story.
The conclusion I came to is that the British officer had really a very soft spot in his heart for the "wild Colonial boys"—Canadians and Australians. I was always being appealed to, as knowing Australia, to "explain" the Anzac, which I did at great length on various occasions, and here is the substance of it all:
The Anzac striding—or limping—along with rakish hat and challenging glance, for the first time brought Australasia actually home to the Mother Country. These Australasians, the men of the Bush, were as remarkable, as significant almost, as the Dacians in the army of another Imperial nation two thousand years ago. Easily can they be picked out. They walk the streets with a slightly obvious swagger. When they are awed a little, it is a point of honour not to show it. When they are critical a little, it peeps out. Two by two, they keep one another in countenance and are fairly comfortable. Catch one alone and you may see in his eyes a hunger for a mate, a need for some other Anzac. For all hisbravuraair, theAnzac has no great self-confidence; and he has a child's shy fear of making himself ridiculous by a false step. The same fear makes him difficult to know. He will often set up, as a protective barrier against a real knowledge of him, a stubborn taciturnity, or a garrulous flow of what Australasians call "skite" and Londoners call "swank."
In pre-war days an Australian in England might have felt himself a little of the barbarian in so smooth a comity, where people loved moderately and hated very moderately; walked always by paths; were somewhat ashamed of their own merits and suavely tolerant of others' demerits; and were nervous of allowing patriotism to become infected with the sin of pride. But England at war understood them better—the Anzacs, the young of the British. The young of the British, not of the English only, though that is the master element of the breed. The Anzac is a close mixture of English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh colonists, with practically no foreign taint.
There is, however, a wild strain in the mixture. One of the first great tasks of Australasia was to take the merino sheep of Spain and make a new sheep of it—a task brilliantly carried out. A concurrent task was to take black sheep from the British Isles and make good white stock out of them. The success in this was just as complete. The"rebels" of the Mother Country—Scottish crofters, Irish agrarians, English Chartists and poachers—mostly needed only full elbow room to become useful men. Even for the Micawbers a land of lots of room was regenerative.
Was it Charles Lamb's quip that the early population of the British Colonies should be good "because it was sent out by the best judges?" That was a truth spoken in jest. The first wild strain was of notable value to a new nation in the making. It came to Australasia not only from the original settlers but also from the rushes to the goldfields. And—note here the first sign that the Anzac people were to be dominated by the British spirit and were to keep the law even while they forgot conventions—there was never a Judge Lynch in an Australasian mining camp. The King's writ and Trial by Jury stood always.
The Anzac started thus with good blood. To carry a study of the type to the next stage, to note how the breed was influenced by environment, it is necessary at the outset to put away the idea that the Australasian people are engaged, to the exclusion of all other interests, in the task of subduing the wildnesses of their continent. They have done, continue to do, their pioneer work well, but have always kept some time for the arts and humanities. To ignore that fact is, I think, a common mistake,even in the days when every European opera-house of note had heard an Australasian singer or musician, every European salon had shown Australian pictures, and there was even a tiny representation of Australian Art in pre-war Montreuil.
"Does anybody in Australia then have time to read Greek?" a schoolmaster's wife in England asked once with surprise.
She was answered with another question: "Who is the great Greek scholar of the day?"
"Professor Gilbert Murray."
"Well, he is an Australian."
It was a specious argument, for one swallow does not make a summer. But the truth—that Australasia produces at a high rate mental as well as physical energy—could have been proved categorically.
The Australian is not only a pioneer wrestling with the wilderness. He is a creature of restless mental energy, keenly (perhaps with something of a spirit of vanity) eager to keep in the current of world-thought, following closely not only his own politics but also British and international politics; a good patron of the arts; a fertile producer and exporter of poetasters, minor philosophers, scientists, writers, and artists. There is nothing that the Anzac, nationally, resents more than to be regarded as a mere grower of wool and wheat, a hewer of wood and digger of minerals. He aspires to share in allthe things of life, to have ranches and cathedrals, books and sheep. Above all, perhaps, he has a passion forla haute politique.
All this was in the blood. The "wild strain" was not only of men who found in the old country a physical environment too narrow. It was partly of men who desired a wider mental horizon. Some very strange minor elements would show out in a detailed analysis of early Australasian immigration—disciples of Fourier who gave up great possessions in England to seek an idealistic Communism in the Antipodes: recluse bookworms who thought they could coil closer to their volumes in primitive solitudes. But one element was strong—the political and economic doctrinaire; and the conditions of the new country encouraged the growth of this element particularly, so that Australia soon won quite a fame for political inventions (e.g., the "Australian Ballot" and the "Torrens Land Title"). But the general growth of what may be termed a "thinking" class was encouraged by the very isolation which, it would seem at first thought, should have an opposite effect. Whilst other young countries lost to older and greater centres of population their young ambitious men, Australasia's antipodean position preserved her from the full extent of the drain of that mental law of gravity which makes the big populations attract the men whoaspire to work with their brains more than with their hands. Australasia will always be claiming attention not only as a producer of wheat, wool and well-knit men, but also of ideas.
The ideas of this young nation of the British, nurtured in the Australasian environment, would strike the pre-war England of five years ago as naively reactionary. The Anzac, faced by natural elements which are inexorably stern to folly, to weakness, to indecision, but which are generously responsive to capable and dominating energy, had become more resourceful, more resolute, more cruel, more impatient than his British cousin. The men who followed the drum of Drake were much akin to the Australasian of to-day.
Australian Imperialism, in truth, must have had for some years past a fussy air to the cooler and calmer minds of England; though the good sense and good humour of the Mother Country rarely allowed this to be seen. When New South Wales insisted on lending a hand in the little Soudan War she was not snubbed. Nor was Victoria, pressing at the same time a still more unnecessary naval contingent. In the South African War Australian eagerness to take a part was more than generously recognised, and when Australia next insisted on giving help also in the suppression of the Boxer Rising, room was patiently found for her naval contingent.
About this here is an illustrative story, which is welcomed as "quite Australian." When the Australian Gunboat "Protector" arrived in Chinese waters the British admiral went on board to pay his compliments and was not stinting in praise of Australian military and naval prowess. Thereupon the Australian band is said to have struck up with a tune from "The Belle of New York:" "Of courseyoucan never be quite like us."
It is perhaps a true story; certainly possible. There is a touch of gay impudence in the Australian character which an ex-Governor confessed he loved "because it was so young."
Always one comes back to that word "young." It is the key to an understanding of the Anzac—youth with its enthusiasms, rashnesses, faults, shynesses; youth, raw, if you will, but of good breed and high intentions.
Australasian life leads to a certain hardness of outlook. Life is prized, of course, but its loss—either of one's own or of the other fellow's—is not regarded with any superstitious horror. Certainly it is not regarded as the greatest evil. To go out with a mate and to come back without him and under the slightest suspicion of not having taken the full share of risk and hardship would be counted greater. Living close up to Nature (who can be very savage with tortures of fire and thirst and flood), the back-country Anzac—who sets the national type—mustlearn to be wary and enduring and sternly true to the duties of mateship. The Bedouin of tradition suggests the Anzac in his ideals of mateship and of stoicism. The Anzac follows the same desert school of chivalry in his love for his horse and dog and his hospitality to the stranger within his gates. He will share his last water with the animal he is fond of; and in the back-country the lonely huts of the boundary riders are left open to any chance caller, with a notice, perhaps, as to where to find the food stores, and to "put the treacle back where the ants cannot get to it." It is, of course, a point of honour not to take except in case of need.
An English padre who put in two years in the "Back of Beyond" of Australia as a "Bush Brother" confesses that his first impression was that the Anzac of the Bush was cruel and pagan. His last impression was that the Anzac was generally as fine a Christian as any heaven for human beings would want. An incident of this parson's "conversion" (he related) was the entry into a far-back town of a band of five men carrying another on a stretcher. The six were opal miners with a little claim far out in the desert. One had been very badly mauled in an explosion. The others stopped their profitable work at once and set themselves to carry him in to the nearest township with a hospital The distance was forty-five miles.On the road some of the party almost perished of thirst, but the wounded man had his drink always, and always the bandages on his crushed leg were kept moist in the fierce heat of the sun. One of the men was asked how they had managed to make this sacrifice.
"It was better to use the water that way than to hear the poor blighter moan."
Many a night we speculated to what degree the different Dominion types will approximate as a result of this war. Certainly when the Dominion and British troops were in contact tidal currents of knowledge flowed to and fro which left both the gainers. Points which had been particular property became common: regarding economy in the use of the water-bottle, the art of making a bed in a shell-hole, informal methods of acquiring horses, the best tracks towards the soft side of Ordnance, the true dignity of salutes, sniping as a sport, the unpatriotism of recklessness, and other matters. Slang was pooled and trench language much enriched. In all things the essential kinship of the British race was disclosed.
We agree that after the war, the British Empire will have more of a general likeness. Colonial ideas will have penetrated more strongly into the Mother Country. British ideas will have permeated the Colonial restlessness and impatience. What an ideal race theBritish could be with a constant coming and going from the Mother's home to the children's houses; an exchange of good grey wisdom with eager enthusiasm, the equable spirit of green and cloudy England mingling with the ardency of the Dominions.
Finally a Dominion officer sums up:—
"I do not think an Empire managed on the old British lines could survive another great shock. It is charming to be so equable and good-tempered and to love your enemy as yourself and to do good to those who hate you. But it brings a nation too close to the fate which overcame the Peruvians under the Incas (they were a charmingly equable and good-tempered and confiding race). Yet those who hope for an Empire managed on Canadian lines, or on Australian lines, leave me cold. I want good wheat crops and cathedrals, the best of the new and of the old spirit. And just as the sole real advantages of being rich are that one can be honest and generous, there would be no use at all in being a great Empire and yet not feeling strong enough to 'play the game' fairly and chivalrously. I hate hearing the talk—which is the swing back from the excess of British tolerance—of a cold-blooded and merciless efficiency as the ideal of national life. Better to perish than to be a German Empire trampling on the faces of women and babes to the throne of power."
In the last phase of the war G.H.Q. saw a remarkable new development in Army organisation: the inclusion of civic education as part of the soldier's Army course. Before this war, of course, there had been Army schoolmasters, and these in peace time did valuable work in teaching illiterate soldiers. Cobbett, we know, owed his education to the Army; so did one of the famous Generals of this war, Sir William Robertson; and once we had as a visitor and lecturer at G.H.Q. an American University Professor whose first education had been won as a ranker in the British Army.
But the new Education Scheme had a much wider scope than the old Army schools. The plan in brief was to make civic education a definite and compulsory part of Army life, so that every man joining the Army should have acourse of humane and technical or professional education. The plan is now in course of being carried on to successful fruition, and in the future the Army will be a Continuation School as well as a defence service.
This may prove to be one of the most useful results of the war. It was due to the enthusiasm of a little band of soldiers and civilians, the leaders of which were Colonel Borden Turner, Major-General Bonham-Carter, Colonel Lord Gorell and Sir Henry Hadow.
The Army Educational movement had a small beginning with the organisation of lectures. After the fighting of 1917 it was felt that something more than the usual round of cinema shows and the performances of Divisional theatrical troupes was necessary to help to recreate the fighting value of the Army, and that what was required was something more solid and intellectual, something that would raise an interest in civic subjects quite apart from the war. It was therefore decided to get as many scholars as possible to come out and give lectures to the men. During the previous winter the Y.M.C.A. had arranged for a few lecturers to come out and lecture in back areas, and they had machinery already existing for looking after them in France. The Y.M.C.A. now again undertook the work of housing, feeding, and transporting the lecturers in France, and for all arrangements for getting them to the country. Major-General Bonham-Carterpersuaded some of the Government offices, viz., Reconstruction, Food Control, Pensions, Labour, Education, to send out men who could help the movement; and Lieutenant-Colonel (then Captain) Borden Turner came to G.H.Q. to supervise the details. All arrangements for lectures were made by the General Staff with the Y.M.C.A. Lecturers were sent to units in the fighting areas rather than to the Lines of Communication.