CHAPTER XITHE PRINCE OF WALES
One evening, a few years ago, I stood on the platform of theGare du Nord, and saw the arrival of the London train that was bringing the young Prince of Wales to Paris for a stay of a few months before going to Magdalen College, Oxford. The arrival was quite informal. There was no red carpet, no guard of honour, only a few old friends of King Edward, like the Marquis de Breteuil, with whom the Prince was going to live, and M. Louis Lépine, most Parisian of police prefects. “Comme tout ça fait penser à son grand-père!” one of those present said to me as the train steamed in. “Il aimait Paris, celui-là!”
Because of his grandfather, Paris from the first opened her heart wide to the young Prince, a fair-haired slip of a boy, as I saw him that day at theGare du Nord, acknowledging with just a trace of embarrassment the cordial welcome of the friends of that other “Prince de Galles.” The newspapers very chivalrously acceded to his wish that his movements should be ignored, and for a few brief months the Prince of Wales enjoyed that magic experience which everyone would give the best years of his life to be able to taste again, the first acquaintanceship with Paris. From the windows of the Breteuil mansion in theAvenue du Bois he saw spring creeping into the trees of the Bois de Boulogne, while in London winter still drearily held sway. Many a time I met him swinging along the paths of the Bois with his tutor, the tallMr.Hansell, or caught a glimpse of him driving out with one of the young Breteuils.
During his stay in Paris the young Prince went to the theatre, and visited the museums, and played tennis at the courts of the Bois de Boulogne or the Ile de Puteaux. M. Georges Cain, Curator of the Carnavalet Museum, and the greatest living authority on antiquarian Paris, led him into all the historic nooks and corners; M. Lépine took him round the Halles and the queer cabarets and lodging-houses surrounding the markets; while withMr.Hansell he made excursions into the wider France—to Reims, and Amiens, and Tours, of cathedral fame; to the château country of the Loire; to Avignon and the Palace of the Popes; to Brest and Toulon, where M. Delcassé, another faithful friend ofEdouard Sept, showed him the French Navy at work.
In the months he spent amongst the French I know the Prince learnt to love and admire France—eternal France, in President Poincaré’s noble phrase. In a conversation which I was privileged to have with the Prince in London before he went out to the front, he spoke with affectionate remembrance of his days in Paris, with indignation at the German air-raids on the city. Now, by a strange dispensation of Providence, the Prince of Wales is in France again, but the France he finds to-day is not the France he left a year or two ago.
He finds Paris tranquil, but sobered—digne, in the phrase of a Parisian. He finds France vibrating with a passion she has not known since the cry, “La Patrie en danger!” brought the tatterdemalions of the Revolution flocking in their thousands to take service under theTricouleur. He finds in France England’s stanch and helpful Ally, finds theentente cordialewhich his grandfather built up with such infinite tact and inexhaustible patience welded into a firm alliance by the blood of Frenchman and Briton spilled in defence of a common ideal of liberty. When, in the fulness of time, Edward, Prince of Wales, shall succeed, by the grace of God, to the throne of his fathers, History shall count it a wise and far-seeing decision that sent the Heir-Apparent into the field to play his part in those great events which shall throw their shadow over his reign and the reign of his sons and grandsons.
Directly the war broke out the Prince of Wales, like every other Englishman of spirit, was burning to play his part; but the sending of the Prince to the front was undoubtedly something in the nature of an experiment. History and precedent were against such a course—an argument often adduced by authorities when there is a question of checking the ardour of youth.
Yet if there were those who doubted the wisdom of exposing the Prince of Wales to the perils and hardships of campaigning, there was one person thoroughly and completely convinced as to the propriety of his going to the front. That person was the Prince himself; and to objectors his rejoinder, eminently practicaland modest, was something to the effect that he had brothers at home if anything happened to him.
It speaks volumes for the energy of the young Prince that, although he only joined the Grenadier Guards at the beginning of the war, he should have rapidly passed through the necessary preliminary training, and then have succeeded in overcoming any opposition to his dearest wish.
In the earliest days of the war the Prince was seen taking his turn on the guard atSt.James’s, and performing the ordinary routine duty of a Guards Subaltern.
This, however, was not to last long, and soon the happy day came when theLondon Gazetteannounced the appointment of Lieutenant the Prince of Wales, K.G., Grenadier Guards, to be A.D.C. to Field-Marshal Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in the Field; and the Prince left for General Headquarters.
Then for a long time we heard no more of the Prince of Wales. Now and again a soldier’s letter from the front contained a brief mention of his doings—that the Prince had been in the trenches or had visited a hospital—and an occasional paragraph in the French newspapers revealed the fact that he had been in the French or Belgian lines. But it was the Commander-in-Chief himself who first broke the silence anent the Prince’s doings. In his despatch dealing with the battle of Neuve Chapelle he mentioned that the Prince of Wales had acted asliaisonofficer with the First Army during that engagement, and paid a tribute to the zeal and quickness with which the Prince haddischarged his duties, and the deep interest he took in the comfort and general welfare of the men. It was the Prince of Wales himself who brought that despatch to London, and Londoners were able to see for themselves how he had filled out and hardened during the months he had spent with the army in the field. His eyes shone with the light of health, his face was tanned with exposure to the rain and wind of winter and the pale sunshine of spring in Flanders, and his whole being exuded that bodily fitness and mental vigour which are the symptoms of a man whose heart is in his work.
This was my impression of the Prince when I saw him in the field myself one wet afternoon in March. It was when the Second Army, with whom I was on that particular occasion, was carrying out a local attack against the Germans in the northern part of our line. The valley was heavy with mist, and reverberating with the sound of our guns carrying out the artillery preparation, our shrapnel bursting with a gleam of orange-coloured fire against the white haze enveloping the ridge we were going to attack.
As I stood and watched the fascinating spectacle—I find there is no sight which holds the attention more than the play of bursting shells—I noticed two young officers ascending the road leading to the point where a group of Generals and Staff Officers was posted. The new-comers stalked up the steep path at a good pace, and as they passed I saw that the one who was leading was the Prince of Wales. He was in field kit, with long trousers and putties, after the manner of the Guards, and was wearing his accoutrementsstrapped on over his “British warm.” He appeared to be soaked through, and his walk through the steamy air had made him very hot. He saluted punctiliously as he passed the group of Generals, then took up his position with his companion and, unstrapping his glasses, began to survey the scene that unfolded itself in the valley.
As darkness was falling I saw him again, walking along a road where soldiers were standing to, preparatory to marching away to take their turn in the trenches. As the men came running out of the roadside hovels where they had been billeted, hoisting their packs on their backs or tugging at their strappings, they recognized the Prince, who acknowledged their salutes with a smile. He stopped for a minute and talked to one or two of the men, then walked on through the gathering shadows to a neat little racing-car standing by the roadside, in which he was going to drive himself and his companion back to G.H.Q.
For many months the Prince lived at G.H.Q. He shared quarters with Lieutenant-Colonel S. L. Barry and Lord Claud Hamilton, and was a member of the Commander-in-Chief’s mess. Colonel Barry, a distinguished cavalry officer and a delightful companion, arranges the details of the Prince’s plans at the front, and his visits to different parts of our lines and to the French and Belgian Armies; while in Lord Claud Hamilton, the youngest brother of the Duke of Abercorn, who won the D.S.O. for gallantry while serving with his regiment, the Grenadier Guards, in the trenches, the Prince has a comrade of his own age.
With that gift of easy self-effacement which ourPublic Schools and ’Varsity inculcate, the Prince slipped without any apparent difficulty into his place in Sir John French’s small and intimate household at G.H.Q. All ceremonial was waived as far as the Prince was concerned, to his own great relief, and he was treated like any other officer of the personal Staff. Perfectly natural as he is, the Prince has small liking for the elaborations of Court etiquette in private life. He has shown that, at State functions, he can acquit himself with dignity, but excessive demonstrations of respect in private life embarrass him, for, first and last, he is English, as English in mind and manner as he is in appearance.
The Prince is English in his love of fresh air and hard exercise and bodily fitness. Anything gross and unwieldy and fat and slothful is repugnant to him. He takes a tremendous amount of exercise at the front. He is always in training. He eats and drinks very little. He thinks nothing of going for a run before breakfast, riding until luncheon, then walking ten miles or so, with a three-mile run home to finish up with. No doubt his intense mental alertness and energy, a positively Celtic quickness of temperament, have something to do with this love of physical exercise; but I believe it mainly springs from pride of body, the clean and sane and English desire to be perfectly healthy.
But the Prince of Wales is nothing of a prig or a faddist. He has arranged his life in this healthful way of his own initiative entirely, with a quiet decision that is rather surprising in a young man who has the world at his feet. But then the Prince ofWales knows his own mind, and acts, as far as he can, according to his own ideas. His manners are charming, he is quite unaffected and absolutely unspoilt, and he talks freely in a manner that betrays a strongly marked sense of humour.
Of fear, I think, he knows nothing. If he had had his way, he would be permanently in the firing-line. He has been with his Grenadiers in the trenches. He has been under shell-fire. But the experience did not suffice him. He wants to savour in person the perils and hardships which so many of his friends in the army (whom he regards with unconcealed and frankly expressed envy) are experiencing day after day. “I want to see a shell burst really close,” he said on one occasion. “I want to see what it is like.” Someone pointed out that a shell had burst over the headquarters in which he had been lunching that day. “I know,” he exclaimed quite wrathfully, “but I didn’t see it!”
When an engagement is on, as he cannot obviously be allowed to go to the firing-line (in the Flanders flats there is no chance of a close view of a battle with even a reasonable chance of safety from shell-fire), he sometimes visits a casualty clearing-station, where the wounded are being brought in. He goes round the stretchers while the doctors are examining the wounds, and talks freely with the men about their experiences. Many a wounded man sent down from the front has been taken to hospital in the Prince’s own car, with the Prince himself at the steering-wheel. Infinitely good-natured as he is, he is always doing good turns like this to casual people he meets on theroad as he motors about between the armies in the execution of his duties.
The Prince is no shirker. Nor is he content with being given merely nominal tasks which he could scramble through anyhow if he pleased. Everything he does he does with all his heart, for he wants to play his part in this war, not from ostentation or personal ambition, but a sheer sense of duty. He follows the operations of the armies, both the French and the British, and makes his own maps. He keeps a diary of all he sees. If he cannot be present in person with the men in the front line, he is with them in spirit night and day, and follows their movements, their successes, and their mishaps, as closely as any officer of the General Staff.
His thoughts are often with the Fleet, in which he began his career. I believe the Prince had once hoped that he might have put to sea with Sir John Jellicoe, as his younger brother was privileged to do. His friends in the navy send him long letters full of the most amusing gossip about the “shows” they have been in, about their life at sea, about the adventures of old shipmates of the Prince. The Prince, who, like all real naval men, will talk naval “shop” for hours without ever being bored, devours these letters, and sometimes reads out extracts to his friends at G.H.Q.
When he was at G.H.Q. the Prince of Wales learnt all there was to know about the organization of the army. He visited in person all the different services at G.H.Q., the bathing-stations behind the front, the railheads, the ammunition-parks, the R.E. stores.He went down the lines of communication, and saw for himself the unloading and distribution of supplies. He inspected the hospitals at the base. He has been to see the French Army at work. He has paid many visits to the Belgian lines. In everything he has seen he has displayed the same intense interest, the same absorbing thirst for information.
He has done service with his own regiment, the Grenadier Guards, has lived with them in the trenches and in billets. If there is an officer with the British in the field to-day who knows what the army has accomplished, not only in the way of organized efficiency, but of uncomplaining endurance of hardships and danger, it is the Prince of Wales.
In the summer the Prince of Wales left G.H.Q., and was attached to the First Army, with which he went through a regular course of training as a Staff Officer. For some time he was on the Intelligence. Here his work was to read through the German newspapers, and the letters and documents taken from prisoners or the dead, and translate any passages that appeared to furnish useful information. When I was going down to visit a portion of our line towards the south in June, it was the Prince of Wales, who was then serving in the Q.M.G. branch of the First Army, who handed over our passes.
It is the fate of all writers who would describe the lives of Princes to be exposed to the charge of sycophancy. Yet there is no life for a plant of this growth in the perfectly natural and wholesome atmosphere surrounding the Prince of Wales at the front. He is not playing at soldiering. His periods of leave arefew and far between. His life must often be very monotonous by reason of the restrictions which considerations of State must necessarily place upon his young and ardent temperament. Nevertheless, he sticks to his work, because he feels that his place is with our army in France. In after years, when the land over which the young Prince will one day rule is reaping the harvest of that peace for which our men in Flanders endured and died, the months which Edward, Prince of Wales, spent, of his own wish, with the army in the field will surely form another and a closer tie between him and the Empire.