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Page 28
The military camps of Great Britain tell the tale of our incredible
venture. "Great areas of land had to be cleared, levelled, and drained;
barracks had to be built; one camp alone used 42,000 railway truck-loads
of building material." There was no time to build new railways, and the
existing roads were rapidly worn out. They were as steadily repaired; and
on every side new camps sprang up around the parent camps of the country.
The Surrey commons and woods, the Wiltshire downs, the Midland and
Yorkshire heaths, the Buckinghamshire hills have been everywhere
invaded--their old rural sanctities are gone. I walked in bewilderment the
other day up and down the slopes of a Surrey hill which when I knew it
last was one kingdom of purple heather, beloved of the honey-bees, and
scarcely ever trodden by man or woman. Barracks now form long streets upon
its crest and sides; practise-trenches, bombing-schools, the stuffed and
dangling sacks for bayonet training, musketry ranges, and the rest, are
everywhere. Tennyson, whose wandering ground it once was, would know it no
more. And this camp is only one of a series which spread far and wide
round the Aldershot headquarters.
Near my own home, a park and a wooded hillside, that two years ago were
carefully guarded even from a neighbour's foot, are now occupied by a
large town of military huts, which can be seen for miles round. And
fifteen miles away, in a historic "chase" where Catharine of Aragon lived
while her trial was proceeding in a neighbouring town, a duke, bearing one
of the great names of England, has himself built a camp, housing 1,200
men, for the recruits of his county regiments alone, and has equipped it
with every necessary, whether for the soldier's life or training. But
everywhere--East, North, South, and West--the English and Scotch roads are
thronged with soldiers and horses, with trains of artillery wagons and
Army Service lorries, with men marching back from night attacks or going
out to scout and skirmish on the neighbouring commons and through the most
sacred game--preserves. There are no more trespass laws in England--for
the soldier.
You point to our recruiting difficulties in Parliament. True enough. We
have our recruiting difficulties still. Lord Derby has not apparently
solved the riddle; for riddle it is, in a country of voluntary service,
where none of the preparations necessary to fit conscription into ordinary
life, with its obligations, have ever been made. The Government and the
House of Commons are just now wrestling with it afresh, and public opinion
seems to be hardening towards certain final measures that would have been
impossible earlier in the war.[B] The call is still for men--more--and
more--men! And given the conditions of this war, it is small wonder that
England is restless till they are found. But amid the cross currents of
criticism, I catch the voice of Mr. Walter Long, the most practical, the
least boastful of men, in the House of Commons, a few nights ago: Say what
you like, blame, criticise, as you like, but "what this country has done
since August, 1914, is an almost incredible story." And so it is.
And now let us follow some of these khaki-clad millions across the seas,
through the reinforcement camps, and the great supply bases, towards that
fierce reality of war to which everything tends.
[B] Since these lines were written the crisis in the Government, the Irish
rising, and the withdrawal of the military service bill have happened in
quick succession. The country is still waiting (April 28th) for the last
inevitable step.
II
It was about the middle of February, after my return from the munition
factories, that I received a programme from the War Office of a journey in
France, which I was to be allowed to make. I remember being at first much
dissatisfied with it. It included the names of three or four places well
known to be the centres of English supply organisation in France. But it
did not include any place in or near the actual fighting zone. To me, in
my ignorance, the places named mainly represented the great array of
finely equipped hospitals to be found everywhere in France in the rear of
our Armies; and I was inclined to say that I had no special knowledge of
hospital work, and that one could see hospitals in England, with more
leisure to feel and talk with the sufferers in them than a ten days' tour
could give. A friendly Cabinet Minister smiled when I presented this view.
"You had better accept. You will find it very different from what you
suppose. The 'back' of the Army includes everything." He was more than
right!
The conditions of travelling at the present moment, within the region
covered by the English military organisation in France, for a woman
possessing a special War Office pass, in addition to her ordinary
passport, and understood to be on business which has the good-will of the
Government, though in no sense commissioned by it, are made easy by the
courtesy and kindness of everybody concerned. From the moment of landing
on the French side, my daughter and I passed into the charge of the
military authorities. An officer accompanied us; a War Office motor took
us from place to place; and everything that could be shown us in the short
ten days of our tour was freely open to us. The trouble, indeed, that was
taken to enable me to give some of the vividness of personal seeing to
these letters is but one of many proofs, I venture to think, of that warm
natural wish in British minds that America should understand why we are
fighting this war, and how we are fighting it. As to myself, I have
written in complete freedom, affected only by the absolutely necessary
restrictions of the military censorship; and I only hope I may be able to
show something, however inadequately, of the work of men who have done a
magnificent piece of organisation, far too little realised even in their
own country.
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