Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918. Sir C. E. Callwell
with the Expeditionary Force, and went off to France, carrying off his assistants with him. As far as personnel was concerned, this cupboard was left as bare as a fashionable lady's back when en grande tenue in "Victory Year." Charge of it was assumed by an extremely capable and energetic substitute brought in from outside (Colonel D. L. MacEwen), who, however, suffered under the disability of knowing practically nothing about the peculiar class of work which he was suddenly called upon to take up.
As an example of the extreme inconvenience which this caused, the following somewhat comical incident may be related. Three or four days after the declaration of war a brace of very distinguished civil servants, one representing the Foreign Office and the other the Home Office, came across Whitehall by appointment and with long faces, and the four of us sat solemnly round a table—they, Colonel MacEwen, and I. It appeared that we had been guilty of terrifying violations of international law. We had seized numbers of German reservists and German males of military age on board ships in British ports, and had consigned some of them to quarters designed for the accommodation of malefactors. This sort of thing would never do. Such steps had not been taken by belligerents in 1870, nor at the time of the American War of Secession, and I am not sure that Messrs. Mason and Slidell were not trotted out. The Foreign and Home Secretaries, the very distinguished civil servants declared, would not unlikely be agitated when they heard of the shocking affair. Soldiers, no doubt, were by nature abrupt and unconventional in their actions, and the Foreign and Home Offices would make every allowance, realizing that we had acted in good faith. But, hang it all—and they gazed at us in compassionate displeasure.
Will it be believed? My assistant and I knew so little about our business that we did not fall upon that pair of pantaloons and rend them. We took them and their protestation quite seriously. We accepted their courteous, but uncompromising, rebuke like small boys caught stealing apples, whose better feelings have been appealed to. For the space of two or three hours, and until we had pulled ourselves together, we remained content, on the strength of doctrines enunciated by a couple of officials fossilized by having dwelt in a groove for years, to accept it as a principle that this tremendous conflict into which the Empire had been plunged at a moment's notice was to be a kid-glove transaction. Within three weeks the Foreign Office and the Home Office were, however, praying us in the War Office for goodness' sake to take all questions in connection with the internment and so forth of aliens entirely off their hands because they could make nothing of the business.
The above reference to my having been virtually left in the lurch with regard to these, to me, occult matters is not made by way of complaint. It is made because it illustrates with signal force how completely the relative importance of the Expeditionary Force as compared to the task which the War Office had to face had been misunderstood when framing plans in advance for the anticipated emergency. Colonel Macdonogh became head of Sir J. French's Intelligence Department in the field. That was a very important appointment and one for which he was admirably fitted, but it was one which many other experienced officers in the army could have effectually filled. The appointment at the War Office which he gave up was one which no officer in the army was so well qualified—nor nearly so well qualified—to hold as he was, and it was at the outbreak of war incomparably the more important appointment of the two. The arrangement arrived at in respect to this matter indicated, in fact, a strange lack of sense of proportion. It argued a fundamental misconception of the military problem with which the country was confronted.
In his book, "1914," in which he finds so much to say in disparagement of Lord Kitchener, Lord French has very frankly admitted his inability to foresee certain tactical developments in connection with heavy artillery and so forth, which actual experience in the field brought home to him within a few weeks of the opening of hostilities. Most of the superior French and German military authorities who held sway in the early days of the struggle would probably similarly plead guilty, for nobody in high places anticipated these developments. The Field-Marshal, on the other hand, makes no reference to any failure on his part to realize in advance the relatively insignificant part which our original Expeditionary Force would be able to play in the great contest. He makes no admission as to a misconception with regard to the paramount problem which faced the British military authorities as a whole after mobilization was decreed. He would not seem to have been aware, when a conflict of first-rate magnitude came upon us, that the creation of a great national army was of far greater consequence than the operations of the small body of troops which he took with him into the field. The action taken in connection with the personnel of the General Staff in Whitehall is significant evidence of the extent to which the whole situation had been misinterpreted.
It may be urged that Sir J. French (as he then was) was not responsible. He had—under circumstances which will not have been forgotten—ceased to be Chief of the Imperial General Staff some four months before war broke out. But Sir Charles Douglas, who had then taken his place, although a resolute, experienced soldier, equipped with an almost unique knowledge of the army, was a deliberate, cautious Scot; he was the very last man to shirk responsibility and to shelter himself behind somebody else, but, on the other hand, he was not an impatient thruster who would be panting to be—in gunner's parlance—"re-teaming the battery before the old major was out of the gate." He accepted, and he was indeed bound to accept, the ideas of a predecessor of the highest standing in the Service, who had made a special study of campaigning possibilities under the conditions which actually arose in August 1914, and under whose aegis definite plans and administrative arrangements to meet the case had been elaborated beforehand with meticulous care. Enjoying all the advantages arising from having made a close study of the subject and from having an Intelligence Department brimming over with detailed information at his beck and call, Sir J. French entirely failed to grasp the extent and nature of the war in its early days. Lord Kitchener did. Suddenly summoned to take supreme military charge, a stranger to the War Office and enjoying none of Sir J. French's advantages, the new Secretary of State mastered the realities of the position at once by some sort of instinct, perceived what a stupendous effort would have to be made, took the long view from the start, and foretold that the struggle would last some years.
It must have been about the 11th of August, three days before G.H.Q. crossed the Channel, that I went in with Sir John to see Colonel Dallas, the head of my Intelligence section dealing with Germany. One had been too busy during the previous few days to bother much about the German army, and at the time I knew little more about that formidable fighting machine than what was told in books of reference like the Statesman's Year-book, which gave full particulars about First Line Troops, but said uncommonly little about Reserve Formations. Information with regard to these could only be obtained from secret sources. What we were told by Dallas was a revelation to me. There seemed to be no end to the enemy's fighting resources. He kept on producing fresh batches of Reserve Divisions and Extra-Reserve Divisions, like a conjurer who produces huge glass bowls full of goldfish out of his waistcoat pocket. He seemed to be doing it on purpose—one felt quite angry with the man. But it was made plain to me that we were up against a tougher proposition than I had imagined. The Field-Marshal must have been, or at all events ought to have been, perfectly well aware of all this, seeing that he had been C.I.G.S. up till very recently, and had devoted special attention to the problems involved in a war with Germany.
In a foot-note near the end of "1914," Lord French mentions having, on some occasion during the few days when war was still trembling in the balance, suggested to Lord Kitchener that they should repair together to the Prime Minister and propose that Lord Kitchener should be commander-in-chief of the field army, with him (French) as Chief of Staff. That was a self-sacrificing suggestion; but it surely indicates an absence of what Lord Haldane calls "clear thinking." Sir J. French had been organizing and training the Expeditionary Force for some years previously, knew all about it, was acquainted with its generals and staffs, was up-to-date in connection with progress in tactical details, and had studied the strategical situation in Belgium and France. Lord Kitchener had, on the other hand, been in civil employment and out of touch with most military questions for some considerable time previously. Lord Kitchener would have been thrown away commanding the Expeditionary Force. He was needed for the much more important position which he actually took up.
CHAPTER II