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Page 7
The title has caused me much trouble! Will any son of gallant Scotland, or
loyalist Ireland, or of those great Dominions, whose share in the war has
knit them closer than ever to the Mother Country--should he come across
this little book--forgive me that I have finally chosen "England" to stand
for us all? "Gott strafe England!" has been the German cry of hate. I have
given what I conceive to be "England's" reply. "Britain"--"Great Britain"
are words that for all their profound political significance have still
to be steeped a good deal longer in life and literature before they stir
the same fibres in us as the old national names. And "England" as the seat
of British Government has, it is admitted, a representative and inclusive
force. Perhaps my real reason is still simpler. Let any one try the
alternatives which suggest themselves, and see how they roll--or do not
roll--from the tongue. He or she will, I think, soon be reconciled to
"England's Effort"!
MARY A. WARD.
* * * * *
NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
There has been added to this edition an epilogue in the shape of a seventh
letter, bringing the story up to August 16, including munitions, finance,
the battle of Jutland, and the Somme offensive.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Spring-time in the North Sea--Snow on a British
Battleship _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Marines drilling on the quarterdeck of a British Battleship 24
Fifteen-inch guns on a British Battleship 25
A forest of shells in a corner of one of England's
great shell filling factories 86
A light railway bringing up ammunition 87
One of the wards of a base hospital, visited by the King 132
A Howitzer in the act of firing 133
ENGLAND'S EFFORT
I
Dear H.
Your letter has found me in the midst of work quite unconnected with this
hideous war in which for the last eighteen months we in England have lived
and moved and had our being. My literary profession, indeed, has been to
me, as to others, since August 4th, 1914, something to be interposed for a
short time, day by day, between a mind tormented and obsessed by the
spectacle of war and the terrible reality it could not otherwise forget.
To take up one's pen and lose oneself for a while in memories of life as
it was long, long before the war--there was refreshment and renewal in
that! Once--last spring--I tried to base a novel on a striking war
incident which had come my way. Impossible! The zest and pleasure which
for any story-teller goes with the first shaping of a story died away at
the very beginning. For the day's respite had gone. The little "wind-warm"
space had disappeared. Life and thought were all given up, without mercy
or relief, to the fever and nightmare of the war. I fell back upon my
early recollections of Oxford thirty, forty years ago--and it was like
rain in the desert. So that, in the course of months it had become a habit
with me never to _write_ about the war; and outside the hours of writing
to think and talk of nothing else.
But your letter suddenly roused in me a desire to write about the war. It
was partly I think because what you wrote summed up and drove home other
criticisms and appeals of the same kind. I had been putting them
mechanically aside as not having any special reference to me; but in
reality they had haunted me. And now you make a personal appeal. You say
that England at the present moment is misunderstood, and even hardly
judged in America, and that even those great newspapers of yours that are
most friendly to the Allies are often melancholy reading for those with
English sympathies. Our mistakes--real and supposed--loom so large. We are
thought to be not taking the war seriously--even now. Drunkenness,
strikes, difficulties in recruiting the new armies, the losses of the
Dardanelles expedition, the failure to save Serbia and Montenegro, tales
of luxurious expenditure in the private life of rich and poor, and of
waste or incompetence in military administration--these are made much of,
even by our friends, who grieve, while our enemies mock. You say the
French case has been on the whole much better presented in America than
the English case; and you compare the international situation with those
months in 1863 when it was necessary for the Lincoln Government to make
strenuous efforts to influence and affect English opinion, which in the
case of our upper classes and too many of our leading men was unfavourable
or sceptical towards the North. You who know something of the vastness of
the English effort--you urge upon me that English writers whose work and
names are familiar to the American public are bound to speak for their
country, bound to try and make Americans feel what we here feel through
every nerve--that cumulative force of a great nation, which has been slow
to rouse, and is now immovably--irrevocably--set upon its purpose. "Tell
me," you say in effect, "what in your belief is the real spirit of your
people--of your men in the field and at sea, of your workmen and employers
at home, your women, your factory workers, your soldiers' wives, your
women of the richer and educated classes, your landowners and politicians.
Are you yet fully awake--yet fully in earnest, in this crisis of England's
fate? 'Weary Titan' that she is, with her age-long history behind her, and
her vast responsibilities by sea and land, is she shouldering her load in
this incredible war, as she must shoulder it; as her friends--the friends
of liberty throughout the world--pray that she may shoulder it?"
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