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Page 52
"The Germans," says this recent eye-witness, "have persisted that, even if
we could find the men, we could not make the machine, which they have been
perfecting for forty years and more. But _it is here!_--operating with
perfect smoothness; a machine, which in its mere mass and intricacy,
almost staggers the imagination. One cannot speak of the details of the
system for fear of saying something which should not be told; but it is
stupendous in its proportion, dealing as it does with the methodical
handling of the men in their hundreds of thousands, of all their equipment
and supplies, food, miscellaneous baggage and ammunition, and with the
endless trains of guns--guns--guns, and shells, by millions upon millions,
all brought from England, and all here in their place, or moved from place
to place with the rhythm of clock-work. One cannot convey any idea of it,
nor grasp it in its entirety; but day by day the immensity of it grows on
one, and one realises how trivial beside it has been anything that British
military organisation has had to do in the past. That is the real miracle;
not the mere millions of men, nor even their bravery, but this huge
frictionless machine of which they are a part--this thing which Great
Britain has put together here in the last twenty months."
IV
But just as in March my thoughts pressed eagerly forward, from the sight
allowed me of the machine, to its uses on the battle-front, to that line
of living and fighting men for which it exists--so now.
Only, since I stood upon the hill near Poperinghe on March 2nd, that line
of men has been indefinitely strengthened; and the main scene of battle is
no longer the Ypres salient. Looking southward from the old windmill,
whose supports sheltered us on that cold spring afternoon, I knew that,
past Bailleul, and past Neuve Chapelle, I was looking straight toward
Albert and the Somme, and I knew too that it was there that the British
were taking over a new portion of the line,--so that we might be of _some_
increased support--all that was then allowed us by the Allied Command!--to
that incredible defence of Verdun, which was in all our minds and hearts.
But what I could not know was that in that misty distance was
hidden--four months away--a future movement, at which no one then guessed,
outside the higher brains of the Army. The days went on. The tide of
battle ebbed and flowed round Verdun. The Crown Prince hewed and hacked
his way, with enormous loss to Germany, to points within three and four
miles of the coveted town--fortress no longer. But there France stopped
him--like the beast of prey that has caught its claws in the iron network
it is trying to batter down, and cannot release them; and there he is
still. Meanwhile, in June, seven to eight weeks before the expected
moment, Brusiloff's attack broke loose, and the Austrian front began to
crumble; just in time to bring the Italians welcome aid in the Trentino.
And still from the Somme to the Yser, the Anglo-French forces waited; and
still across the Channel poured British soldiers and British guns. In
industrial England, the Whitsuntide holidays had been given up; and there
were at any rate some people who knew that there would be no August
holidays either. Leave and letters had been stopped. But there had been
apparent signs, wrongly interpreted, before. The great Allied attack on
the West--was it ready, _at last_?
Then--with the 27th of June, along the whole British battle-front of 90
miles, there sprang up a violent and continuous bombardment varied by
incessant raids on the enemy lines. Those who witnessed that bombardment
can hardly find words in which to describe it. "It was an extraordinary
and a terrible spectacle," says a correspondent. "Within the dreadful zone
the woods are leafless, ch�teau and farm and village, alike, mere heaps of
ruins." Ah! _ce beau pays de France_--with all its rich and ancient
civilisation--it is not French hearts alone that bleed for you! But it was
the voice of deliverance, of vengeance, that was speaking in the guns
which crashed incessantly day and night, while shells of all calibres
rained--so many to the second--from every yard of the British front, on
the German lines. The correspondents with the British Headquarters could
only speculate with held breath, as to what was happening under that
ghastly veil of smoke and fire on the horizon, and what our infantry would
find when the artillery work was done, and the attack was launched.
The 1st of July dawned, a beautiful summer morning, with light mists
dispersing under the sun. Precisely to the moment, at 7.30 A.M., the
Allied artillery lifted their guns, creating a dense _barrage_ of fire
between the German front and its support trenches, while the British and
French infantry sprang over their parapets and rushed to the attack of the
German first line; the British on a front of some twenty-five miles, the
French, on about ten miles, on both sides of the Somme. The English
journalists, who, watch in hand, saw our men go, "knowing what it was they
were going to, marvelled for the fiftieth time at the way in which British
manhood has proved itself, in this most terrible of all wars."
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