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Page 40
As to what we have got for our money, Parliament has authorised an Army
of 4,000,000 men, and it is on the question of the last half million that
England's Effort now turns. Mr. Asquith will explain everything that has
been done, and everything that still remains to do, _in camera_ to
Parliament next Tuesday. But do not, my dear friend, make any mistake
_England will get the men she wants_; and Labour will be in the end just
as determined to get them as any other section of the Community.
Meanwhile, abroad, while we seem, for the moment, in France to be
inactive, we are in reality giving the French at Verdun just that support
which they and General Joffre desire, and--it can scarcely be
doubted--preparing great things on our own account. In spite of our
failure in Gallipoli, and the anxious position of General Townshend's
force, Egypt is no longer in danger of attack, if it ever has been; our
sea-power has brought a Russian force safely to Marseilles; and the
possibilities of British and Russian Collaboration in the East are
rapidly opening out. As to the great and complex war-machine we have been
steadily building up on French soil, as I tried to show in my fourth
letter, whether in the supply bases, or in the war organisation along the
ninety miles of front now held by the British Armies, it would indeed
astonish those dead heroes of the Retreat from Mons--could they comes back
to see it! We are not satisfied with it yet--hence the unrest in
Parliament and the Press--we shall never be satisfied--till Germany has
accepted the terms of the Allies. But those who know England best have no
doubt whatever as to the temper of the nation which has so far "improvised
the impossible," in the setting up of this machine, and means, in the end,
_to get out of it what it wants_.
The temper of the nation? In this last letter let me take some samples of
it. First--what have the rich been doing? As to money, the figures of the
income-tax, the death-duties, and the various war loans are there to show
what they have contributed to the State. The Joint War Committee of the
Red Cross and the St. John's Ambulance Association have collected--though
not, of course, from the rich only--close on 4,000,000 sterling (between
$18,000,000 and $19,000,000), and the Prince of Wales Fund nearly
6,000,000 ($30,000,000). The lavishness of English giving, indeed, in all
directions during the last two years, could hardly I think have been
outdone. A few weeks ago I walked with the Duke of Bedford through the
training and reinforcement camp, about fifteen miles from my own home in
the country, which he himself commands and which, at the outbreak of war,
he himself built without waiting for public money or War Office
contractors, to house and train recruits for the various Bedfordshire
regiments. The camp holds 1,200 men, and is ranged in a park where the
oaks--still standing--were considered too old by Oliver Cromwell's
Commissioners to furnish timber for the English Navy. Besides ample
barrack accommodation in comfortable huts, planned so as to satisfy every
demand whether of health or convenience, all the opportunities that
Aldershot offers, on a large scale, are here provided in miniature. The
model trenches with the latest improvements in plan, revetting,
gun-emplacements, sally-ports, and the rest, spread through the sandy
soil; the musketry ranges, bombing and bayonet schools are of the most
recent and efficient type. And the Duke takes a keen personal interest in
every man in training, follows his progress in camp, sees him off to the
front, and very often receives him, when wounded, in the perfectly
equipped hospital which the Duchess has established in Woburn Abbey
itself. Here the old riding-school, tennis-court, and museum, which form a
large building fronting the abbey, have been turned into wards as
attractive as bright and simple colour, space, flowers, and exquisite
cleanliness can make them. The Duchess is herself the Matron in charge,
under the War Office, keeps all the records, is up at half past five in
the morning, and spends her day in the endless doing, thinking, and
contriving that such a hospital needs. Not very far away stands another
beautiful country house, rented by Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw Reid when they
were in England. It also is a hospital, but its owner, Lord Lucas, not a
rich man, has now given it irrevocably to the nation for the use of
disabled soldiers, together with as much land as may suffice a farm colony
chosen from among them. The beautiful hospital of 250 beds at Paignton, in
North Devon, run entirely by women of American birth now resident in Great
Britain, without any financial aid from the British Government, was
another large country house given to the service of the wounded by Mr.
Singer. Lady Sheffield's hospital for 25 beds at Alderley Park is an
example of how part of a country house with all its green and restful
surroundings may be used for those who have suffered in the war, and it
has many fellows in all parts of England. Altogether about 700 country
houses, large and small, have been offered to the War Office.
But money and houses are the very least part of what the old families,
the rich manufacturers, or the educated class generally have offered to
their country in this war. Democracy has gone far with us, but it may
still be said that the young heir to a great name, to estates with which
his family has been connected for generations, and to the accumulated
"consideration" to use a French word in a French sense, which such a
position almost always carries with it--has a golden time in English
life. Difficulties that check others fall away from him; he is smiled
upon for his kindred's sake before he makes friends for his own; the
world is overkind to his virtues and blind to his faults; he enters
manhood indeed as "one of our conquerors"; and it will cost him some
trouble to throw away his advantages. Before the war such a youth was
the common butt of the Socialist orator. He was the typical "shirker"
and "loafer," while other men worked; the parasite bred from the sweat
of the poor; the soft, effeminate creature who had never faced the facts
of life and never would. As to his soldiering--the common profession of
so many of his kind--that was only another offence in the eyes of
politicians like Mr. Keir Hardie. When the class war came, he would
naturally he found shooting down the workmen; but for any other war, an
ignorant popinjay!--incompetent even at his own trade, and no match
whatever for the scientific soldier of the Continent.
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