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Page 27
Strange and tragic scene! Strange uprising of women!
We regain the motor and speed onwards, my secretary and I, through unknown
roads far away from the city and its factories towards the country house
where we are to spend the night. In my memory there surge a thousand
recollections of all that I have seen in the preceding fortnight. An
England roused at last--rushing to factory, and lathe, to shipyard and
forge, determined to meet and dominate her terrible enemy in the workshop,
as she has long since met and dominated him at sea, and will in time
dominate him on land--that is how my country looks to me to-night.
... The stars are coming out. Far away, over what seems like water with
lights upon it, there are dim snowy mountains--majestic--rising into the
sky. The noise and clamour of the factories are all quiet in the night.
Two thoughts remain with me--Britain's ships in the North Sea--Britain's
soldiers in the trenches. And encircling and sustaining both the justice
of a great cause--as these white Highland hills look down upon and
encircle this valley.
IV
Dear H.
A million and a half of men--over a quarter of a million of women--working
in some 4,000 State-controlled workshops for the supply of munitions of
war, not only to our own troops, but to those of our allies--the whole, in
the main, a creation of six months' effort--this is the astonishing
spectacle of some of the details of which I have tried, as an eye-witness,
to give you in my previous letters a rapid and imperfect sketch.
But what of the men, the Armies, for which these munitions are being made
and hurried to the fighting-lines? It was at Aldershot, a few days ago,
that I listened to some details of the first rush of the new Armies, given
me by a member of the Headquarters Staff who had been through it all.
Aldershot in peace time held about 27,000 troops. Since the outbreak of
war some million and a quarter of men have passed through the great camp,
coming in ceaselessly for training and equipment, and going out again to
the theatres of war.
In the first days and weeks of the war--during and after the marvellous
precision and rapidity with which the Expeditionary Force was despatched
to France--men poured in from all parts, from all businesses and
occupations; rich and poor, north and south country men, English, Scotch,
Irish, and Welsh; men from the Dominions, who had flung themselves into
the first home-coming steamer; men from India, and men from the uttermost
parts of Africa and Asia who had begged or worked their way home. They
were magnificent material. They came with set faces, asking only for
training, training, training!--and "what the peace soldier learns in six
months," said my companion, "they learnt in six weeks. We had neither
uniforms nor rifles, neither guns nor horses for them. We did not know how
to feed them or to house them. In front of the headquarters at Aldershot,
that Mecca of the soldier, where no one would dare to pass in ordinary
times whose turnout is not immaculate, the most extraordinary figures, in
bowler hats and bits of uniform, passed unrebuked. We had to raid the
neighbouring towns for food, to send frantic embassies to London for bread
and meat; to turn out any sort of shed to house them. Luckily it was
summer weather; otherwise I don't know what we should have done for
blankets. But nobody 'groused.' Everybody worked, and there were many who
felt it 'the time of their lives.'"
And yet England "engineered the war!" England's hypocrisy and greed
demanded the crushing of Germany--hence the lying "excuse" of
Belgium--that apparently is what all good Germans--except those who know
better--believe; what every German child is being taught. As I listen to
my companion's story, I am reminded, however, of a puzzled remark which
reached me lately, written just before Christmas last, by a German nurse
in a Berlin hospital, who has English relations, friends of my own. "We
begin to wonder whether it really was England who caused the war--since
you seem to be so dreadfully unprepared!" So writes this sensible girl to
one of her mother's kindred in England; in a letter which escaped the
German censor. She might indeed wonder! To have deliberately planned a
Continental war with Germany, and Germany's 8,000,000 of soldiers, without
men, guns, or ammunition beyond the requirements of an Expeditionary Force
of 160,000 men, might have well become the State of Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. But
the England of Raleigh, Chatham, Pitt, and Wellington has not generally
been reckoned a nation of pure fools.
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