Heavy losses had been sustained by both sides. The German attacks, made in massed formation, had caused a formidable death roll. They claimed to have taken 400 British prisoners.
GERMANS GAIN IN THE CAMBRAI AREA—COLD WEATHER HALTS IMPORTANT OPERATIONS
All day long the waves of battle rolled around Masnières on December 1, 1917. The Germans made nine strong attacks, all of which were repulsed. It was declared by eyewitnesses that the British destroyed more Germans during the fight here between dawn and dark than in any similar period since the beginning of the war. From the first German assault there was no pause in the struggle.
Late in the day south and east of Masnières the German guns heavily bombarded the town. The British line formed a sharp salient around the place, which made the position difficult to hold, as it was dominated by the high ground held by the Germans. It was therefore decided by the British command to withdrawto the southeastern outskirts of the town and there establish the line to the great benefit of the entire front.
Gonnelieu, which the British captured during the day, though the Germans still clung to portions of the ruins, was completely "cleaned up" during the night, about 300 prisoners being taken here. After the recapture of Gauche Wood the British continued to push on up to the higher ground southwest of the wood. During the assault on Gauche Wood one British tank captured fifteen machine guns from the enemy.
December 2, 1917, the Germans continued their terrific attacks on the British front south and southwest of Cambrai. With a mighty concentration of artillery, and employing great forces of infantry, they tried to pierce the British defenses in the Gonnelieu sector, but General Byng's army had been strongly reenforced and held fast.
The battle began along a front that extended from La Vacquerie southward to Vendhuile. The Germans attacked British positions at La Vacquerie at 8:45 in the morning, and penetrated the village, but only won temporary foothold, when they were forced out. As the day wore on the fighting spread northward toward Masnières, which the British had evacuated on the previous day. During the night the town was an uncomfortable place to hold, as the British continued to deluge it with shells and the Germans were forced to find refuge in tunnels and dugouts. Southwest of Bourlon village General Byng's troops won back a trench system that the Germans had captured during the push of November 30, 1917. Bourlon Wood was again in possession of the British, though a few Germans still clung to some points on the outskirts. South of Marcoing the Germans continued their powerful attacks on the British lines, but were unable to cut through the defenses.
The battle of Cambrai.
The battle of Cambrai.
Under cover of the darkness the British withdrew from the salient about Bourlon Wood during the night of December 4-5, 1917, to a prepared line which would be stronger and easier to hold. Not until some hours had passed did the Germans discover the retirement, when they swarmed into the vacant territory and dug themselves in. Bourlon Wood had been generallystripped of troops; only a rear guard being left when the British retired, and they were later withdrawn. The Germans continued, however, to bombard the wood, showing that they were all in the dark concerning British movements.
The devastated area which the British had abandoned, and which included the mined towns of Graincourt, Anneux, Cantaing, Noyelles, Marcoing, and Masnières, was gradually occupied by the Germans. They had no easy task before them, for the British guns dominated this desert with tons of explosives, and hundreds of shells were hurled into their advanced ranks as they went forward to prospect for desirable positions for defense. Meanwhile the British army had found exceptional quarters in the captured Hindenburg trenches with their wonderful dugouts and network of front-line and communication trenches, all ready for occupancy.
There was continued fighting during the 6th between advanced patrols of British and Germans. North of La Vacquerie Ulster troops won some important defenses that strengthened the British line.
Artillery duels and sporadic raids were the only military events in this fighting area during the several succeeding days. The British anticipated that this lull would be followed by renewed fighting, for it was known that the Germans had been bringing forward strong reenforcements, probably from the Russian front.
The German offensive began on December 12, 1917, but was far from being as formidable as the British feared. The first attack was made at dawn against an elbow in the bend of the British line between Bullecourt and Queant, about ten miles west of Cambrai. The Germans were in strong force, the troops, principally from Bavaria, advancing in waves and close formation, and by sheer weight of numbers won about 500 yards of front-line trenches before they could be checked. Other attacks were made from the east, and the third south of Riencourt, both of which were shattered by British rifle and machine-gun fire.
The Germans were evidently trying to discover weak spots in the British lines by a process of testing, for on December 14, 1917, they made an assault on the Ypres front in Flanders. The strokewas delivered on a front of about 300 yards southeast of Polygon Wood, against British positions near Polderhoek Château. They won a section of front-line trench, but were repulsed at all other points of attack.
East of Bullecourt, in the Cambrai area, German gunfire had increased in violence. During the night the British engaged in bomb fighting that was highly successful, and enabled them to improve their lines. North of Bullecourt in the afternoon of December 15, 1917, the British carried out a successful raid in which a number of prisoners were captured and enemy dugouts and defenses were destroyed.
Snow began to fall during the night on this date, and by morning the countryside was deeply covered, and the ugly scars of battle hidden from sight. The snow lay in heavy drifts on the roads and fields. No military operation was possible, and even the sinister-looking guns were silent.
This white truce was appreciated by the British as it must have been by the soldiers of the kaiser, for both armies had been under a severe strain since General Byng's advance on Cambrai, November 20, 1917.
It was estimated by conservative military observers that the German strength on the Franco-British front at this time was 154 divisions, one less than the great force amassed here in the previous July, when the German military effort against France was at its maximum.
During these momentous days on the British battle front the French had been nibbling away at the German positions around Verdun and along the Aisne and Meuse Rivers. The capture of the entire line of lights through which runs the famous Chemin-des-Dames had given them command of the strongest positions in that region. The Germans, forced to retire across the Ailette and to abandon the whole valley to the French, were so situated that it would be taking a gambler's chance to attempt an offensive on a large scale. Nor was a direct attack on Verdun probable, for they had lost all their gains on both sides of the Meuse, while every point of vantage in this sector was in possession of the soldiers of the Republic.
The Champagne front between Rheims and Verdun offered the most favorable field for the Germans to deliver a hard blow. By a strong offensive the French positions to the east, in the Argonne Forest, might be turned, compelling the French to draw their lines back; converting into a narrow-necked wedge the Verdun lines, which would be hemmed in on nearly every side.
On the Alsace and Lorraine fronts there was little to fear of any strong action on the part of the Germans, as every movement must be made through narrow passes, conditions that rendered large operations impossible.
Meanwhile the Germans were evidently testing the French fronts for a weak spot where they might strike a shrewd blow. Around Verdun and farther east the German guns thundered unceasingly, and German trench raids were of daily and nightly occurrence throughout the month of December. For "a worn-out army," as the French troops had been called by their enemies, they fought with astonishing spirit. The Germans made slight gains from time to time, but they were unable to retain them.
On the Cambrai front the fighting was confined to raids and minor actions of slight importance. On December 30, 1917, the Germans made strong local attacks on a front of over two miles against the British position on the spur known as Welsh Ridge south of Cambrai. The attackers were forced back in the center, but on the right, toward the north of La Vacquerie, and on the left to the south of Marcoing, they penetrated and occupied two small salients in the British lines. In the morning of the following day, after a short but heavy bombardment, the Germans renewed their attack against Welsh Ridge on a front of about 1,200 yards south of Marcoing. The southern portion was assaulted by strong forces, and assisted by liquid fire they succeeded in gaining a foothold in one of the British trenches. The gain was only temporary, for the British quickly rallied, and in a fierce counterattack drove out the invaders and reoccupied the entire trench system.
German artillery thundered unceasingly throughout the day on January 1, 1918, near La Vacquerie on the Cambrai front, and in the Lens, Armentières and Ypres sectors. In the evening,under cover of a heavy bombardment, three bodies of German troops attempted to raid British positions in the vicinity of Méricourt southeast of Lens. The assaulting troops came under the concentrated fire of the British artillery and were hurled back with heavy losses before they could reach their objectives. In no-man's-land these disorganized Germans ran into a British patrol, and again lost heavily, very few escaping from the field.
The British front was now in the icy grip of winter. Snow-drifts made the roads impassable for motor cars. The Germans, however, were not deterred by unfavorable weather conditions from making sporadic raids on British positions. On January 5, 1918, they had some success at Bullecourt, where they captured a British advance post—a dearly bought operation that cost them a heavy toll in casualties. In the afternoon the British came back in force, and, after a tense, close struggle, drove out the Germans and reoccupied the position.
On the French front, where a blizzard had been raging and the heaviest snowstorm in years made military operations on any large scale impossible, the Germans continued to be active, and the French were kept busy defending their costly won positions.
On January 8, 1918, French troops carried out an extensive and successful raid which was intrusted to foreign legionaries and sharpshooters. The attack was delivered along a front of a mile and to a depth of half a mile in front of Flirey and westward toward St. Mihiel. The French completely cleaned out the German defenses, capturing 178 men and officers and numbers of machine guns and trench mortars. The Germans were so completely taken by surprise that their artillery did not get into action until the French had finished the job. The attack was carried out with such dispatch and in so thorough a manner that the French suffered not more than a dozen casualties, while the German dead lay thick about the field and the snow was streaked with ominous stains.
On the same date (January 8) the spell of silence which had brooded for some days on the British front was broken by a hostile attack made by the Germans east of Bullecourt.
In the early dawn the British lines were bombarded with high explosives and gas, and about 6.35 three parties of Bavarian troops, who had been lying concealed during the night in no-man's-land, made a quick rush for the British defenses. The front line attacked had been weakened by the recent withdrawal of troops, as an enemy attack was not expected in a sector considered "quiet."
Two of the parties of Bavarians carried flame throwers of the most approved type, which darted a jet of fire thirty feet, and literally wiped out with a touch a man's life. This engine of destruction had a terrifying effect on troops who saw it in operation for the first time, but the British soldiers defending the trenches at Bullecourt were seasoned fighters and well acquainted with every type of German frightfulness.
The Bavarians in this attack succeeded in penetrating the British line and proceeded to make themselves at home in the position and to strengthen the defenses. A swift counterattack delivered by the British killed a number of them, but the others continued to hold on through the early morning hours. Shortly before noon the snow began to fall heavily, making observation difficult. Through the storm swept a body of British troops to assault for a second time. The Bavarians were taken by surprise and driven out of the position, leaving a score of prisoners and a number of wounded in British hands. Such minor operations and small raids made on both sides were the only interruptions of the quiet that prevailed on the entire front where General Winter ruled. The troops, who were enduring every discomfort in their snow-bound trenches, longed eagerly for clearing weather, when they might find release from deadly inaction.
The British were better off than the Germans, since they had won the ridges on the front. They could keep dry, while the kaiser's troops occupied trenches that were often in a fearful condition owing to lack of natural drainage, which in bad weather transformed them into bogs. The British took prisoners in dugouts that were filled with water. The miserable occupants of these holes seemed to be glad enough to fall into the hands of their enemy.
In these days there was considerable relaxation in the iron discipline of the German army—on the British front at least. It was learned that their officers were cautious about punishing the troops too severely even for grave offenses against discipline. Deserters were not shot, but sent back to Germany, where it was said the prisons were full of such offenders. To escape service in the front-line trenches the soldiers shammed gas-poisoning and resorted to other devices to avoid duty.
On the French front during these dreary winter days the Germans continued their raiding attacks in Chaume Wood in the Verdun sector, and at other points, in which every weapon of "frightfulness," including lavish use of liquid fire, was employed. But the French troops defeated every effort made by the enemy to oust them from the important positions that had been won by costly sacrifices. These futile assaults served to keep up their fighting spirit, which otherwise might have gone down with the mercury.
During the night of January 13, 1918, Canadian troops attacked the German trenches to the north of Lens. The Germans offered only a feeble resistance, and after damaging the defenses the Canadians withdrew, bringing with them a number of prisoners. The adventure was a success, and almost unique in its way, because the raiders had not lost a man or suffered a single casualty.
On January 13-14, 1918, during the night and the day following, the guns of the French and Germans were active at various points along the Champagne front and on the right bank of the Meuse. In the region north of Louvemont the Germans had concentrated for attack, when they came under fire of the French guns and were dispersed. This discouraged any further attempts of the enemy to launch an infantry action that day.
On the Alsatian front, between the Thur and Doller Rivers, an artillery duel was fought all day on January 15, 1918. In the region of Badonviller the French carried out a successful raid that led to the capture of forty prisoners including some officers.
During these days peace reigned in a military sense on the British front in France and Flanders. There was generally,however, enough going on to keep up interest among the soldiers, even if they were not called on to do any hard fighting.
German batteries in a fitful way continued to rain a deadly fire around the outer edge of the Ypres salient from Passchendaele downward, and scattered shells lavishly among the back areas across the Menin road and the old fighting grounds of Monchy and Fampoux. The British troops holding defenses in the suburbs of Lens, Bullecourt, and Havrincourt were not spared by these destructive visitants.
The British certainly did their part in keeping the Germans at attention, doing counterbattery work with the aid of aeroplanes whenever there was an hour or two of visibility, showering tons of bombs and explosives on German working parties, trenches, and roads.
Notwithstanding the boggy condition of the ground, when it was not deep with snow, a rumor arose, though it was impossible to trace the source, that the Germans contemplated a great offensive. They possessed inventive skill and perhaps they would find means to get their cannon through the swamps of no-man's-land and the roads where heavy guns would sink wheel deep.
During the night of January 21, 1918, British aviators raided towns in the occupied parts of Belgium and German Lorraine. Two tons of bombs were dropped on the steelworks at Thionville, on railway sidings at Bernstorf, thirty miles south of Metz, and on the Arneville railway junction.
There was considerable activity on the French front on this date when German lines west of the Navrain Farm in the Champagne were successfully raided. The French cut through the enemy defense as far as the third parallel, and after destroying a trench brought away a goodly number of dispirited and bedraggled prisoners.
In Belgium during the day there was violent gunfire in the Nieuport sector. To the east of that place the Germans after a heavy bombardment made a dashing attack and succeeded in penetrating the French first-line trenches. They had hardly gained a foothold when the French rushed a counterattack anddrove out the intruders, who fled to their own lines after losing a considerable number in wounded and prisoners.
On the right bank of the Meuse the artillery on both sides was active during January 23, 1918, around that much-fought-over sector, Hill 344, and the front of Chaume Wood. Following up an intense bombardment, the Germans tried to penetrate the wood, but were scattered by the French artillery fire.
On the 25th a strong assault was delivered on the French positions west of St. Gobain Forest. The enemy struck in at the western edge, and at one time seemed to be in a fair way to succeed, for the attack lacked neither daring nor persistence, but the French guns, whose fire had been withheld for a time that the Germans might advance near enough to present a better target, now poured out such death-dealing volleys that the attackers were halted and then fled back to their lines in disorder, leaving many dead on the field.
French aviators were busy on this date as long as there was visibility. Four German machines were brought down in aerial combats. Enemy defenses were successfully bombed, and tons of explosives were dropped on German establishments. Much damage was wrought to the railway stations at Thionville, and on Freiburg in Breisgau, the aniline works at Ludwigshafen and the cantonments in the Longuyon region.
Owing to the military collapse of Russia Germany was enabled to transfer thirty-eight or forty divisions from east to west, which meant that the French and British had now facing them at least 3,000,000 enemy troops. A great German offensive was in preparation on a vaster scale than any before attempted, having for its main object the capture of Paris or Calais. The Allied command expected the threatened drive might begin early in February, and had made their plans accordingly. Confident in their strength, they waited eagerly the great battle that might end the war.
THE NEW ALLY IN COUNCIL
The weight of America's participation in the war did not begin to be felt until the autumn of 1917, when the aftermath of the Russian collapse, followed by the Italian disasters, made the Allies turn with more and more reliance to the new belligerent. Not alone in men, money, ships, and munitions did the Allies look for American aid, but for business counsel and administrative efficiency. The war had not been well conducted. Lloyd George frankly said so. The American mind was needed at the Allied conferences to contribute its share in remedying the defects of a division of command, from which had flowed a succession of costly errors. Hence the United States, being in the war to join hands with a unified Allied command, not to act independently, became an influential factor at the war parleys.
The presence of American representatives for the first time at an Allied war conference in Paris, which took place in November, 1917, was greeted in belligerent Europe as an event of deep significance. The United States since its belligerency had not shared in the Allied deliberations; but the need of unity—a single front, a single army, a single nation, as the French Premier, M. Painlevé, defined it—made its representation imperative. The delegation, which was headed by Colonel Edward M. House, and included Admiral Benson and General Bliss, set out on an avowed war mission while peace balloons floated in the air. As the President's reputed bosom confidant, who had been to Europebefore on supposed peace missions, Colonel House was credited with bearing instructions to look over the ground for practicable peace formulas. His presence among the American representatives made this impression so general that the State Department had to deny that he was a Wilson peace envoy. He was heading a war mission pure and simple whose aim was to weld the United States firmly as a member of the Allied powers.
The purpose of the Allied conference was to form a more complete coordination of the activities of the various nations warring against Germany. A more comprehensive understanding of their respective needs, in order that their joint efforts attained the highest war efficiency, was also sought. A prime factor to this end was to avoid any conflict of interests among the participants.
"The United States," Secretary Lansing explained, "in the employment of its man power and material resources desires to use them to the greatest advantage against Germany. It has been no easy problem to determine how they can be used most effectively, since the independent presentation of requirements by the Allied Governments have been more or less conflicting on account of each Government's appreciation of its own wants, which are naturally given greater importance than the wants of other governments.
"Though the resources of this country are vast and though there is every purpose to devote them all, if need be, to winning the war, they are not without limit. But even if they were greater they should be used to the highest advantage in attaining the supreme object for which we are fighting.
"It is the earnest wish of this Government to employ its military and naval forces and its resources and energies where they will give the greatest returns in advancing the common cause."
The American Government accordingly was represented at the conference to determine how this object could be achieved. Primarily the conferees met to create in effect a great general staff to direct the energies of the cobelligerents and so motivate military strategy that entire nations would act merely as unitsin the operations. They endeavored to make the whole fighting forces of the Allies into one mighty war-making machine.
The United States projected as an indispensable bulwark in this scheme by being practically the treasury and storehouse of the Allies. It had already poured out money and supplies at their call with lavish hand. Each had sent a mission to the United States to present its case and needs. The Government heard them, and the resources of the United States were freely drawn upon to meet their necessities. Each mission, however, had confined its requests largely or solely to its own requirements. Each clamored for men, ships, money, food, munitions, or whatever other war essential it wanted. A lack of coordinated plans and predetermined objectives weakened the scope of America's assistance on account of the scattered and piecemeal methods by which it was obtained. Consequently the United States, while providing for its own war necessities, determined that it must have a voice in arbitrating on the further needs of the Allied nations by weighing them side by side at the war conference, so that its resources could be distributed among them in pursuance of a coordinated plan aiming at achieving collective, not individual, advantage. Germany had pointed the way in showing the success to be obtained by combined effort. Germany and her three partners were one. The Allies were many and, so far, had been disjointed. The entry of the United States became the occasion for making an endeavor to coalesce the Allies to a closely knitblocon the Teutonic method.
Great Britain, momentarily disheartened by the checks the Allied cause had sustained owing to a division of command and organization, was braced by the appearance of the American mission at the Allied conference. Said the London "Times":
"In several points, of late, things have not been going too well for the Allies, but none of their reverses or disappointments matters if only the great war power of the United States, military and economic, is rightly directed to the common end."
"The gain to the Allied cause of the alert American intellect and American freedom from convention," the "Daily Graphic" said, "should be of priceless value. Seeing that the guidingprinciple of the American delegates is to discover how the resources of their country can give the greatest results in bringing about the defeat of Germany, the unanimity of the conference is assured."
"Americans," remarked J. L. Garvin in the London "Observer," "have less jaded brain cells and more open minds. They are not involved in any past mistakes or shortcomings. They are uncommitted to any set theory and are relatively free from local European feelings. Their moral compass, so to speak, is less exposed to magnetic aberrations and is more likely to point true. They are in Europe only to win the war in Europe. They want to get to the bottom of the problem. They will have all conceivable data for getting to the bottom of it."
The conference found it easier to enunciate a formula than work it out practically; but at least a beginning was made in forming an organization to prevent duplication. Leaks of energy were stopped as well as waste of material. The relations of the Allies one with another were humanized by personal contact and a good feeling established which promised a guaranty against future misunderstanding. The envoys of every nation concerned met with great expectations from America. On that one subject there was a remarkable unity. All their needs were generously met, the American resources available being allocated on the basis of war needs as a whole. But the calls upon the American barrel were so great that it was tilted at an angle which revealed that it was not like the purse of Fortunatus.
As to the results of the conference, Colonel House thus reported on his return to the United States:
"Our mission was a great success. When we left Paris the efforts of all the Allies were focused. Up to the time of the Allied conferences they were not focused. They were not working together. They are working together now, and the promises are that they will continue to do so."
The principal recommendations made by the American delegation were:
"That the United States exert all their influence to secure the entire unity of effort, military, naval, and economic, betweenthemselves and the countries associated with them in the war.
"Inasmuch as the successful termination of the war by the United States and the Allies can be greatly hastened by the extension of the United States shipping program, that the Government and the people of the United States bend every effort toward accomplishing this result by systematic coordination of resources of men and materials.
"That the fighting forces of the United States be dispatched to Europe with the least possible delay incident to training and equipment."
Much foundation work was accomplished, covering the entire field of the war organization, diplomatic, naval, military, finance, shipping, war trade, war industries and food.
An Interallied Naval Council was formed to coordinate the naval forces of the United States and those of its associates as one. Embraced in this scheme were plans for a combined prosecution of the naval war against the German submarines and keeping the American fleet informed of the operations and policy of the British Admiralty.
In the military field the extent of the operations of the American army in Europe was determined, after lengthy conference with the chiefs of the Allied armies on the western front. All military resources of the Allied belligerents were to be pooled, the contribution of each, including the United States, being specified. The pooling arrangement, according to the State Department, guaranteed that full equipment would be available to all American troops sent to Europe during the year 1918. The United States was also to participate in the deliberations of a Supreme War Council which was created. The problem of effecting the expeditious debarkation of American troops and their transport, with the needful equipment, to the military bases, called for careful survey, and new arrangements to that end, as well as for the production of military instruments and supplies, were made.
Consideration of a vital question, that of shipping tonnage, covered a study of the loss of vessels since the war began, theestimated output of new tonnage in 1918, and the framing of a program whereby the importations of all the Allies were to be restricted in order to release a maximum amount of tonnage for the transportation of American troops.
The United States plainly was not to be a silent partner in the war. In every sphere of joint action it was to have a voice and a vote. America was to be represented at a Supreme War Council to determine the conduct of military operations, at an Interallied Naval Council, at financial, shipping, and food councils. All that was to be known of the Allied war situation the American delegates ascertained. They consulted with the British Cabinet, the British Admiralty, and with all the Allied Governments; they interviewed chiefs of staff and commanders in chief, they inspected the fronts. War preparations in the United States now proceeded with the fullest cognizance of the conditions they were designed to meet.
The need of American troops in Europe was more than hinted by the agreement of the Allies to sacrifice importations so that tonnage could be available to bring the troops across the Atlantic. "Hurry your men across," Lord Derby urged. Admiral Sir David Beatty and Sir Auckland Geddes were convinced that the growing American army was destined to strike the deciding blow of the war. Germany watched the American preparations with mingled feelings, which could only find expression in simulated doubt, derision, and scorn. The projects for raising a huge army, an armada of transport and freight ships, and a fleet of airships were ridiculed by her press writers as examples of American bluff and bluster. Americans thought in exaggerations and talked in superlatives. The United States could not conduct a war in Europe on any such unexampled scale. Neither troops nor transports—supposing the latter could be built, which was doubtful—would reach their destination. German submarines would interpose. Besides, the United States never really intended to make more than a demonstration. It was merely making a flourish. The American army was weak any way and that assured its futility as a factor in the war. It was no better than Rumania's army when that country entered the war. "Themore noise the Americans make," the Cologne "Gazette" concluded, "the less they accomplish." That journal actually informed its readers that the Liberty Loan was a failure. Field Marshal von Hindenburg saw no importance in the raising of an American army, because if it were sent abroad Japan might "show a sudden inclination to square old accounts with America." The American call to arms suggested "advertising methods" to him. "The transport question would offer difficulties not less than supplies," and, of course, "the German U-boats would be a further obstacle."
The gradual on-coming of the American hosts was otherwise seen by John St. Loe Strachey, editor of the London "Spectator," who drew this picture:
"I see America entering upon the field of war as does the shadow in an eclipse. At first the orb of the moon seems barely touched. There is only a slight irregularity perceptible on the outline of the sphere, but gradually the inexorable shadow spreads and spreads till the crisis of totality is reached; in the words of the Chinese astrologers, the dragon has eaten the moon.
"What could be more soul-shaking or could bring home the sense of a force that cannot be denied than the advance of the shadow! Nothing can hurry it, nothing can delay it, nothing can avert it. The process is begun; the doom will be accomplished.
"So be it, so it must be, so it will be with America and Germany in 1918."
ON THE LORRAINE FRONT
The American expeditionary force in France were still in process of being "broken in" when the war entered upon its fourth year. They remained well behind the firing lines in their training camp, continuing their education in trench warfare. The manipulation of the hand grenade, rifle, bayonet, trench mortar, and machine gun under conditions to which the Britishand French had long been inured, and, most irksome and unpopular task of all, trench digging, formed the order of the day. Contingents gradually progressed toward the stage closely approximating real warfare by undergoing the ordeal of "gassing" in order to be equal to the quick adjustment of masks when gas shells were fired in action. Other companies found their way behind the British lines to drill their nerves to withstand scenes of ruin and desolation, the whine of high-explosive shells, and the rattle of shrapnel. All these preliminaries were directed toward a modest aim—storming a trench line. Formerly troops were trained for undertaking rapid marches and complicated maneuvers. In this war their endurance and fighting spirit became restricted to a narrow field—that of penetrating enemy lines on a front of ten kilometers, whose depth did not extend beyond one kilometer.
The American troops did not take kindly to "digging in." Their officers found great difficulty in impressing them with the importance of taking cover. They were like their Canadian brothers-in-arms, of whom it was said that they would die in the last ditch but never dig it. They were averse to submitting to the unheroic obligation of learning to fight in ambush; they clung to primitive ideas of warfare and wanted to spring upon and charge the enemy in the open. Only bitter losses finally persuaded the Canadians, French, and Australians that fighting the Germans from a hole in the ground was the only way of fighting them at all; but the Americans had yet to pay their toll for yielding to their natural antipathy to fighting underground. Their zeal for the pick and shovel, despite the war's terrible object lessons, remained lukewarm.
"It seems a shame to curb the fine fighting spirits of our troops," an American training officer said; "but they must be made to understand as far as possible that impetuosity must be subordinated to steadiness. This has become a time-clock war. The men must advance in given time and go no further. Every step of infantry advance must first be worked out with the artillery, and when the plan is arranged it must be strictly adhered to.
"We realize that it will be difficult to hold our men to this plan. If they see a battle going on, their favorite impulse will be to push on as fast as they can, and some are bound to do so, just as the Canadians did in the earlier stages. We will undoubtedly have big losses in this way, but the men who come through our first battles will be worth their weight in gold thereafter. They will learn quickly the value of steadiness and absolute discipline under fire, and they will be the steadying influence we can distribute through the newer units of our great army as they get their final preparation for trial by fire."
More to their taste was the training practice of charging dummy Germans in specially prepared trenches under the direction of an English sergeant major. At one camp three short lines of such trenches were constructed in a dip in the ground, ending at a rise some hundred yards off, with tin cans on sticks dotting them. The charge was thus undertaken:
"'Ready, gentlemen,' said the drill sergeant. 'Prepare for trench bayonet practice by half sections. You're to take these three line of trenches, lay out every boche in the lot, and then get to cover and fire six rounds at them 'ere tin 'ats. Don't waste a shot, gentlemen; every bullet a boche. Now, then, ready! Over the top and give 'em 'ell right in the stomach! Fritz likes his victuals, but not that sort. Get at 'em!'"
The men ran some ten yards and dug their bayonets savagely into dummy Germans made of sacks, which swung in the wind, and disappeared in the first trench. Their rifle butts rose and fell as they lunged desperately at the supposed foe. Then they reappeared and advanced farther, taking cover and lying spread-eagled behind a shallow trench, blazing at the cans, which fell rattling.
After some four months' training in camp, the long-looked-for tidings that American troops had taken their place beside the fighting forces of the Allies at length came from General Pershing's headquarters. On October 27, 1917, the first official announcement of war news from that source was issued in this form:
"In continuation of their training as a nucleus for instruction later, a contingent of some battalions of our first contingents,in association with veteran French battalions, are in the first-line trenches of a quiet sector on the French front. They are supported by some batteries of our artillery, in association with veteran French batteries.
"The sector remains normal. Our men have adapted themselves to actual trench conditions in the most satisfactory manner."
The "quiet sector" was occupied by helmeted infantry of the United States, without the knowledge of the enemy, by arriving at night through pouring rain and seas of mud. At six o'clock on the morning of that day, American artillery, already installed, fired the first American shot of the war at the German working party and shelled the German positions. The Germans gave shell for shell. The fusillades continued all day.
During the lull in the firing at dusk the first American machine guns appeared in a little deserted, shell-wrecked village well within hostile gun range and a few kilometers from the American trenches. The guns were hauled by Missouri mules, whose drivers were swathed in ponchos and helmeted to their eyes. The cavalcade moved in a long, silent line along a road margining a dark canal, followed by infantry rolling camp kitchens.
Other infantry followed through the cobble-paved streets. The darkness hid lines of men with packs on their backs, rifles slung on their shoulders, rain glistening on their helmets and coats, the wind whipping their coat skirts round limbs moving with machinelike precision. Only the tramp of many hobnailed boots disclosed their march through the village. They safely entered their trenches, unit by unit, and passed quickly to the places assigned them. The French welcomed them with ardor. Every American was shaken by the hand, some were hugged, and even kissed on both cheeks in the French custom. Quietness was essential, since the German trenches were not far away; but the fervor of the French troops overcame their precaution. It was too great a day for mute welcomes. The Americans had arrived!
The American front in France where the first clashes between Americans and Germans occurred.
The American front in France where the first clashes between Americans and Germans occurred.
The trenches were found to be muddy but well constructed. The troops settled down in them, and at daylight, under low-hanging,dripping clouds, they obtained their first view of the German lines, stretching away in the rolling terrain. They were in contact with the enemy at last.
They received their baptism of fire mingled with showers of mud, their clothes soaked to the skin. American shells fell and exploded in German territory, and German projectiles broke near the American positions, sprinkling fragments, but doing no serious damage. They were merely establishing contact as a prelude to more serious operations. Gunners and infantrymen alike, the latter in first-line trenches, over which both American and German shells whizzed, were satisfied, though wet, feeling that the distinction of being the first Americans to be in action more than recompensed for weather discomforts.
Their first quarry was a stray German mail carrier who had lost his way in the dark and was taken prisoner near the American trenches. He encountered an American patrol in no-man's-land in company with another German, and was shot while running away after refusing to halt.
While waiting for a real attack sniping engaged the troops' attention, especially on clear days, when German snipers sought targets. Many bullets passed singing harmlessly overhead. Their frequency called for retorts, and a number of infantrymen were detailed to single out the snipers. Sniping the sniper became part of the preliminaries of settling down to trench warfare.
The troops realized by these activities, trifling though they were, that mimic charges and class-room demonstrations of the training camp were things of the past and that they faced the real foe. The Germans in fact, were not tardy in impressing them with their new situation. They discovered that Americans were facing them and set about making a raid. Berlin announced the result in a brief bulletin on November 3.
"At the Rhine-Marne Canal, as the result of a reconnoitering thrust, North American soldiers were brought in as prisoners."
The news brought the American people a step nearer to a realization of the actualities of the great struggle. It also disclosed that the Americans were established on a section of thefront defended by the German Crown Prince's army and facing Lorraine. The so-called "quiet sector" stood revealed as the only front through which war could be carried into the heart of Germany. It lay before the gap in the French barrier forts, Verdun-Toul and Epinal-Belfort, flanked by the invulnerable Verdun on the northeast and the French positions in the Alsatian Vosges on the southeast. A quiet sector it might be, but more than 40,000 German dead lie buried there, the flower of the army of the Crown Prince of Bavaria. They fell in a twenty-eight day battle in August and September, 1914, when five French army corps under General Castelnau fought seven under the Crown Prince The Germans finally retired into Lorraine after vainly attempting to cross the Moselle. Both General Pétain—who attempted an offensive there in 1916, but was checked from proceeding with it by political high commands—and General Castelnau were convinced of the vulnerability of this sector as a roadway into Germany, and prophets were not wanting who saw in the presence of the Americans there a foretoken that an American army might essay what the two French Generals had not accomplished. At any rate, after an unbroken calm of three years, the sector was no longer quiet.
The Germans had scored by drawing first blood. The Berlin press was riotously gleeful over the event, one journal, the "Lokal-Anzeiger," gloating over it in these terms:
"Three cheers for the Americans! Clever chaps they are, it cannot be denied. Scarcely have they touched the soil of this putrefied Europe when they already are forcing their way into Germany.
"It is our good fortune that we are equipped to receive and entertain numerous guests and that we shall be able to provide quarters for these gentlemen. They will find comfort in the thought that they are rendering their almighty President, Mr. Wilson, valuable services, inasmuch as it is asserted he is anxious to obtain reliable information concerning conditions and sentiments in belligerent countries.
"As Americans are accustomed to travel in luxury and comfort, we assume that these advance arrivals merely representcouriers for larger numbers to come. We are sure the latter will come and be gathered in by us. At home they believe they possess the biggest and most colossal everything, but such establishments as we have here they have not seen.
"Look here, my boy, here is the big firm of Hindenburg & Co., with which you want to compete. Look at its accomplishments and consider whether it would not be better to haul down your sign and engage in some other line. Perhaps your boss, Wilson, will reconsider his newest line of business before we grab off more of his young people."
A salient of the American position occupied by a small detachment had been successfully raided by the Germans before daybreak, resulting in three Americans killed, several wounded, and a dozen captured or missing. The Teutons started a heavy barrage fire, which isolated the salient, so that help could not reach the troops, nor could they retire, and thus had the besieged men at the mercy of their superior force. The Americans fought obstinately until they were overwhelmed. They had only been in the trenches a few days and were part of the second contingent who had entered them for training under actual war conditions. They succeeded in capturing a German prisoner, and inflicting casualties; but the latter did not become known as the enemy, in fleeing the trench, took their dead and wounded with them.
After shelling the barbed-wire front of the trenches, dropping many high-explosive missiles of large caliber, the Germans directed a heavy artillery fire to cover all the adjacent territory, including the passage leading to the trenches, thereby effecting a complete barrage of the salient front and rear. Soon after the enemy, exceeding two hundred in number, rushed the breaches and wire entanglements on each side of the salient, lifting the barrage in the forefield to permit their passage.
It was an elaborate encircling bombardment to achieve a trifling object. An American platoon, numbering only nineteen men, were corraled by a heavy fire from 77's and 115's, which searched the whole line of trenches communicating with the salient where they were isolated. The French, who had onlyrecently vacated the position to make way for the Americans, estimated that the German shells expended exceeded eight thousand.
With the raising of the frontal barrage, the German raiders advanced. They were composed of storm troops, volunteers, machine gunners, artillerymen, pioneers to destroy the wire entanglements, and stretcher bearers to carry off their casualties. They had gathered round a group of ruined farm buildings some seven hundred yards from the American trenches, armed with grenades, revolvers, trench knives, and rifles. They followed, in columns of fours, a tape across no-man's-land laid out by leaders who had previously been over the ground. Advancing across a swampy ravine toward the salient, they penetrated the gaps in the American wire entanglements, and a number reached the trenches at the rear of their barrage. The Americans were thus cut off from behind. Other raiders stayed outside the trenches to protect those who entered them and to shoot any Americans who appeared above the parapet. The trenches were stormed right and left of the salient, one party clearing them as they proceeded, the other invading the dugouts for prisoners.
The darkness of the trenches veiled what next happened. After the Germans had completed their work and retired, an American trooper, private Enright, was found with his throat cut from ear to ear on the top of the parapet. While fighting a German in front of him he appeared to have been attacked from behind by another armed with a trench knife. A second trooper, private Hay, lay dead in the trench, and outside a dugout was the body of Corporal Gresham.
In the confusion some of the American troops mistook the Germans for their own comrades, and paid for their error. Corporal Gresham, for example, was the sentry at a dugout door when three men advanced toward him. Supposing them to be Americans he shouted:
"Don't shoot! I'm an American."
"It's Americans we're looking for," answered one of the three, and shot him dead with a revolver.
It was a brief, ordinary affray, in nowise different from other happenings occurring nightly all along the front. But nineteen Americans were set upon by over 200 Germans, and it was the Americans' first taste of Teutonic warfare. They fought stoutly with pistols, knives, and bayonets until overcome, whereupon the Germans went off with an American sergeant, a corporal, and ten privates, all of whom were trapped in a dugout near the tip of the besieged salient.
The raid scarcely lasted five minutes and outside the salient no one in the American lines knew it was proceeding. The German communiqué dismissed it in three lines. From Berlin's viewpoint it was inconsequential; but to Americans it was of moment in being their first clash with the enemy. Young, inexperienced soldiers, cooped in a position they were not familiar with, encountering their baptism of fire under circumstances of surprise, uncertainty, and darkness, had acquitted themselves well against heavy odds, and prevented the enemy from penetrating beyond the first line of trenches.
The American dead were buried with due honors on French soil. The general commanding the French division in the section delivered an oration at their graves in the presence of French and American troops amid the roaring of guns and whistle of shells. His words belong to the record of America's part in the war:
"Men! These graves, first to be dug in our national soil, and but a short distance from the enemy, are as a mark of the mighty land we and our allies firmly cling to in the common task, confirming the will of the people and the army of the United States to fight with us to a finish, ready to sacrifice as long as is necessary until final victory for the most noble of causes, that of the liberty of nations, the weak as well as the mighty. Thus the deaths of these humble soldiers appear to us with extraordinary grandeur.
"We will, therefore, ask that the mortal remains of these young men be left here, left with us forever. We inscribe on the tombs, 'Here lie the first soldiers of the Republic of the United States to fall on the soil of France for liberty and justice.'The passer-by will stop and uncover his head. Travelers and men of heart will go out of their way to come here to pay their respective tributes.
"Private Enright, Private Gresham, Private Hay! In the name of France I thank you. God receive your souls. Farewell!"
After this foray shelling became of daily occurrence. The troops continued their training under fire, the first contingent giving place to the second contingent, and the second to the third in occupying the trenches, after each had undergone a spell of patrol work, sharpshooting, and accustoming their nerves to falling shrapnel. Trench conditions enabled them to acquire a better insight of the science of war than they could learn in months of instruction in training camps. While the infantry were thus engaged in their underground finishing school, the gunners, in addition to making progress in actual firing, acquired greater facility in observation work and in locating enemy batteries by the sound method. The heavy guns on both sides engaged in duels at long range, with the lighter pieces working at targets nearer the lines. This gun activity was not without its toll. German casualties due to American marksmanship, of course, could not be ascertained, but they were probably equal to the American killed and wounded.
The troops were eager for an opportunity to retaliate on the foe for trapping their comrades in the salient, and on November 14, 1917, a patrol succeeded in exacting a partial revenge. Assisted by some French troops they planned a night ambuscade near the German lines on a shell-ruined farm. It was a dreary vigil in the mud, where they lay throughout the small hours, until their patience was rewarded by the appearance of a large German patrol, in number more than double those of the Franco-Americans. They permitted the Germans to pass, and then attacked them on their flank. The fusillade of French and American bullets from shell craters and other shelters where the sharpshooters lay concealed took the Germans by surprise. They precipitately fled, taking their fallen with them. No French or American trooper was hit by the shots the Germans fired in their hurried retreat.
More notable than such skirmishes on the American front before Lorraine was the part a number of unarmed American engineers, in company with Canadians, took in the encircling movement the Germans made on the British positions before Cambrai on November 30, 1917. For some time past American engineers had not only been of yeoman service behind the French lines in hauling tons of ammunition and other equipment to supply the French forces, but had been engaged on the railroad in the rear of the British front. They did not belong to the fighting units, and no achievements were looked for from men whose sole arms were picks and shovels. But the ramifications of the German assault on Gouzeaucourt brought these workers in the rear to the forefront of the attack, and they distinguished themselves in a manner which drew tributes from both the French and British high commands. A staid official account of the rôle they played thus describes the situation:
"Two and one-half companies of railway engineers, with a strength of eight officers and 365 men, were encamped at Fins on November 30, 1917, having completed their work in the neighborhood. At 6.30 four officers and 280 men went to Gouzeaucourt, arriving at 7 and starting to work with Canadian engineers. The entire contingent was under a Canadian major and an American captain. The area was three miles in the rear of the line and none of the troops was armed.
"At 7.15 German barrage fire moved on Gouzeaucourt after heavy shelling to the east. At 7.30 a general retirement was ordered, and it was effected with some difficulty, due to the artillery, machine-gun and airplane fire.
"A number of losses were sustained at this time, and also among the men who, cut off by the German advance, had taken refuge in dugouts. Some of these men who had been cut off succeeded in joining British combatant units and fought with them during the day."
A story of American grit and pluck lay concealed in the last sentence. The American and Canadian engineers, cut off as described, were taken prisoners by the Germans. They were fifty in number, and accompanied by a German escort marched alongthe road leading from Gouzeaucourt to Cambrai. As they proceeded disconsolately toward the zone of the German prison cages, they encountered a small body of British troops who had been separated from their comrades and were wandering about aimlessly. The appearance of the Germans with the prisoners produced an immediate charge toward them by the British. The Germans sought to drive their captives toward La Vacquerie before the advancing British reached them. But the prisoners, seeing rescue at hand, turned upon their guards and fought them barehanded until the British troops interposed and vanquished the Germans. The American engineers and their comrades thereupon took possession of the German rifles and with their rescuers found their way back to the British lines.
A number of American engineers were killed and injured, presumably during the German attack on Gouzeaucourt, since no mention was made of casualties in the adventure on the highroad. Their losses were largely due to their being unarmed when the Germans came, a predicament which forced them to seize the guns of dead and wounded soldiers to protect themselves. The army commands afterward ordered that all engineers be armed to enable them to take their place with the troops in any future emergency which brought them again face to face with the foe. The French Government was so impressed with their performance that it sent the following communication to Washington:
"We must remark upon the conduct of certain American soldiers, pioneers and workmen on the military railroad in the sector of the German attack west of Cambrai on November 30, 1917. They exchanged their picks and shovels for rifles and cartridges and fought with the English. Many died thus bravely, arms in hand, before the invader. All helped to repulse the enemy. There is not a single person who saw them at work who does not render warm praise to the coolness, discipline, and courage of these improvised combatants."
Their exploit stirred the American camp to enthusiasm mingled with envy. The British front at Cambrai was a long step from the American trenches in the Lorraine sector, and tidingsof the happenings at Gouzeaucourt impressed the troops with the fact that not on them only was the glory of the Stars and Stripes being upheld on the soil of France. An infantry sergeant voiced the general feeling of his comrades thus:
"We stay in the trenches for a spell and let Fritz shoot his artillery at us and have never really had a chance to use our rifles except to snipe and pot Fritz out in no-man's-land on dark nights. These railroaders managed to run their trains right into a good, thick scrap, and if this isn't luck, I don't know what it is."
Casualties continued to grow with the constant shelling. Sporadic raids over no-man's-land and visitations of German airships added to them. Bombs were dropped on a party of engineers, killing one of them, and two privates were victims of a German aviator's explosive over a wood in which they were camped.
Winter set in with a snowfall that impeded the training of the troops and communications. Roads became impassable by drifts, and many motor trucks, after crawling at a snail's pace over the hilly roads, became stranded in the snow. A thaw in January turned icy roads into river beds. Torrential streams flowed from melting snows in the hills, and together with a downpour of fine rain combined to make weather conditions on the American front the worst the troops had encountered since their arrival in France. The roads were cluttered in places with ditched motor trucks. Here and there mule-drawn vehicles were mired. Transport trains drawn by mules suffered most before the thaw, the animals slipping and falling on the icy roadbeds, and were unable to rise except by the aid of thick layers of branches and twigs placed under their hoofs. The beginning of 1918, in short, found the American army in France, like their allied comrades on the rest of the front, stalled by the weather, and little tidings came of their accustomed activities.
POPE AND PRESIDENT
Peace efforts, assiduously pursued in Berlin, and culminating in the Reichstag resolution recorded in the previous volume, had meantime taken a new turn; but they encountered a new element in the United States as a resolute belligerent.
The Vatican interposed with an olive branch. The Pope tread cautiously, sensible of the delicacy of his task in seeking to effect world peace; but his proposals were hopelessly futile and died in the borning. Their only welcome came from the Central Powers, and even there dissentient voices were heard. The Allies' reception of his note was cold, unresponsive, suspicious, and resentful. "As you were," the Pope virtually proposed to the two groups of belligerents, running directly counter to the chief aim of the Allies, which was to overturn thestatus quo ante, and establish a European concert of nations on a new, safer, and enduring foundation.
The Papal note, communicated to the various belligerent powers on August 1, 1917, invited their governments to agree on the following points, which seemed to his Holiness, "to offer the basis of a just and lasting peace":
"First, the fundamental point must be that the material force of arms shall give way to the moral force of right, whence shall proceed a just agreement of all upon the simultaneous and reciprocal decrease of armaments, according to rules and guarantees to be established, in the necessary and sufficient measure for the maintenance of public order in every State; then, taking the place of arms, the institution of arbitration, with its high pacifying function, according to rules to be drawn in concert and under sanctions to be determined against any State which would decline either to refer international questions to arbitration or to accept its awards.
"When supremacy of right is thus established, let every obstacle to ways of communication of the peoples be removed byinsuring, through rules to be also determined, the true freedom and community of the seas, which, on the one hand, would eliminate any causes of conflict, and on the other hand, would open to all new sources of prosperity and progress.
"As for the damages to be repaid and the cost of the war, we see no other way of solving the question than by setting up the general principle of entire and reciprocal conditions, which would be justified by the immense benefit to be derived from disarmament, all the more as one could not understand that such carnage could go on for mere economic reasons. If certain particular reasons stand against this in certain cases, let them be weighed in justice and equity.
"But these specific agreements, with the immense advantages that flow from them, are not possible unless territory now occupied is reciprocally restituted. Therefore, on the part of Germany, there should be total evacuation of Belgium, with guaranties of its entire political, military, and economic independence toward any power whatever; evacuation also of the French territory; on the part of the other belligerents, a similar restitution of the German colonies.
"As regards territorial questions, as, for instance, those that are disputed by Italy and Austria, by Germany and France, there is reason to hope that, in consideration of the immense advantages of durable peace with disarmament, the contending parties will examine them in a conciliatory spirit, taking into account, as far as is just and possible, as we have said formerly, the aspirations of the population, and, if occasion arises, adjusting private interests to the general good of the great human society.
"The same spirit of equity and justice must guide the examination of the other territorial and political questions, notably those relative to Armenia, the Balkan States, and the territories forming part of the old Kingdom of Poland, for which, in particular, its noble historical traditions and suffering, particularly undergone in the present war, must win with justice, the sympathies of the nations."
The deep esteem in which the Allies and the rest of the nations held the Pontiff assured an attentive and respectful hearing ofhis appeal. But his intervention was nevertheless denounced as an espousal of a German peace, in that it would enable Germany to take her place at the peace council table with all her lost colonies restored, exempt from every demand for reparation for the ruin she had wrought, secure in the possession of all her territory, and with the future of Alsace-Lorraine, Trent, Trieste, Poland, Rumania, and Serbia left for settlement by negotiation by the parties in conflict. The Papal proposals were also objected to in making no distinction between the combatants, but placed them all on the same footing as apparently "stricken by a universal madness."
It soon became apparent that the Allied Powers, including the United States, were a unit in agreeing that the Papal note, because it overlooked the issues for which the Entente was fighting, must be respectfully rejected. President Wilson became their spokesman in a note he addressed to the Pontiff on August 27, 1917. While recognizing the Pope's "moving appeal" and the "dignity and force of the humane motives which prompted it," the President considered it would be folly to take the path of peace the Pope pointed out if that path did not in fact lead to the goal proposed. As to the Pope's proposals generally, he said:
"It is manifest that no part of this program can be successfully carried out unless the restitution of thestatus quo antefurnishes a firm and satisfactory basis for it. The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of the world from the menace and the actual power of a vast military establishment, controlled by an irresponsible Government, which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard either to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long-established practices and long-cherished principles of international action and honor; which chose its own time for the war; delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly; stopped at no barrier, either of law or of mercy; swept a whole continent within the tide of blood—not the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of innocent women and children also and of the helpless poor; and now stands balked, but not defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world.
"This power is not the German people. It is the ruthless master of the German people. It is no business of ours how that great people came under its control or submitted with temporary zest to the domination of its purpose; but it is our business to see to it that the history of the rest of the world is no longer left to its handling.
"To deal with such a power by way of peace upon the plan proposed by his Holiness, the Pope, would, so far as we can see, involve a recuperation of its strength and a renewal of its policy; would make it necessary to create a permanent hostile combination of nations against the German people, who are its instruments; and would result in abandoning the newborn Russia to the intrigue, the manifold subtle interference, and the certain counter-revolution which would be attempted by all the malign influences to which the German Government has of late accustomed the world.
"We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guaranty of anything that is to endure unless explicitly supported by such conclusive evidence of the will and purpose of the German people themselves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting. Without such guaranties treaties of settlement, agreements for disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in the place of force, territorial adjustments, reconstitutions of small nations, if made with the German Government, no man, no nation, could now depend on.
"We must await some new evidence of the purposes of the great peoples of the Central Powers."
In other words, the Pope's proposals were regarded as untenable because the Allies could not trust the kaiser and his government to respect any covenants that might flow from them. There was no responsible person to negotiate with. The Vatican was disappointed, the German press greeted the President's answer with abuse, and the Allies found the American note so comprehensive and satisfying in expressing their views that they paid no further attention to the proposal.
Germany and Austria were more responsive; but the Allies' rejection through President Wilson of the papal suggestionsimparted something of an anticlimax to the Teutonic replies when they were forthcoming a month later. Both reflected an earnest desire for peace; both gave whole-hearted support to the Vatican's efforts. Austria was especially eager to enter into negotiations on the basis the Pope proposed. But neither was specific. The Austrian emperor favored disarmament and arbitration in a cloud of platitudes. The kaiser accepted the Pope's general aims, but was mute on particularizing the German aims. Both suppressed whatever terms of peace they longed to offer. Sifted down to essentials, and extricating their meaning from a welter of unctuous verbiage, the Teutonic answers merely conveyed an eager desire to reach a peace conference, withholding terms for submission until such parleys could begin. As each evaded any suggestion of definite concessions on vital points, the absence of which constituted the principal obstacles to peace, and as the Allies had already refused to negotiate with the German Government in any event, the Teutonic answers lost all significance except as diplomatic courtesies in response to the Pope's well-meant mediation. That was probably their main purpose.
Germany proposed nothing except that the war be ended by a promise on her part to reduce her army reciprocally with other nations—a promise she would not fulfill; by a promise that Great Britain reduce her navy—a promise she would expect Great Britain faithfully to fulfill; and a promise of the nations to arbitrate in future—a promise Germany would ignore if conditions favored a new war. She saw "the freedom of the seas" as the issue of the war; but the seas were as free to Germany in time of peace as they were to Great Britain, their reputed mistress. The rest of the world saw the German Government as the real issue of the war.
The next peace manifestation, which caused a momentary disturbance in Allied circles, came from the Marquis of Lansdowne, a former British Foreign Secretary, who had also been Viceroy of India and Governor General of Canada. Fearing that the prolongation of the war might lead to "the ruin of the civilized world," he besought the Allies to make a restatementof their war aims in order to bring about peace before that catastrophe came.
The Lansdowne communication to the press looked like a plea for Germany, and coming as it did from a British noble of ingrained toryism, who had done his share as a Cabinet Minister to develop British imperialism, was startling enough. To forestall any suspicion that he was voicing unofficial sentiments of the British Government, Bonar Law and Lord Robert Cecil declared that Lord Lansdowne only spoke his own views. The Government repudiated them, as did the Unionist party. Lord Lansdowne himself was obliged to acknowledge that his proposals were solely his own and that he consulted no one in formulating them. It was realized that his note only encouraged the German war party, which construed it as evidence of divided counsels in Great Britain, and that the British were weakening in their determination to conquer. The air was quickly cleared and showed that no peace movement was possible in England while Germany remained impenitent and unbeaten.