The Message Part 16

THE TRAGIC WEEK

England can never have an efficient army during peace, and she must, therefore, accept the rebuffs and calamities which are always in store for the nation that is content to follow the breed of cowards who usually direct her great affairs. The day will come when she will violently and suddenly lose her former fighting renown to such an unmistakable extent that the plucky fishwives will march upon Downing Street, and if they can catch its usual inmates, will rend them. One party is as bad as the other, and I hope and pray that when the national misfortune of a great defeat at sea overtakes us, followed by the invasion of England, that John Bull will turn and rend the jawers and talkers who prevent us from being prepared to meet invasion.--_From a letter written by Lord Wolsley, ex-Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, to Lord Wemyss, and published, and ignored by the public, in the year 1906._

It is no part of my intention to make any attempt to limp after the historians of the Invasion. The Official History, the half-dozen of standard military treatises, and the well-known works of Low, Forster, Gordon, and others, have allowed few details of the Invasion to escape unrecorded. But I confess it has always seemed to me that these writers gave less attention to the immediate aftermath of the Invasion than that curious period demanded. Yet here was surely a case in which effect was of vastly more importance than cause, and aftermath than crisis. But perhaps I take that view because I am no historian.

To the non-expert mind, the most bewildering and extraordinary feature of that disastrous time was the amazing speed with which crisis succeeded crisis, and events, each of themselves epoch-making in character, crashed one upon another throughout the progress toward Black Sat.u.r.day. We know now that much of this fury of haste which was so bewildering at the time, which certainly has no parallel in history, was due to the perfection of Germany's long-laid plans. Major-General Farquarson, in his "Military History of the Invasion," says:

"It may be doubted whether in all the history of warfare anything so scientifically perfect as the preparations for this attack can be found.

It is safe to say that every inch of General von Fuchter's progress was mapped out in Berlin long months before it came to astound and horrify England. The maps and plans in the possession of the German staff were masterpieces of cartographical science and art. The German Army knew almost to a bale of hay what provender lay between London and the coast, and where it was stored; and certainly their knowledge of East Anglia far exceeded that of our own authorities. The world has never seen a quicker blow struck; it has seldom seen a blow so crus.h.i.+ngly severe; it has not often seen one so aggressively unjustifiable. And, be it noted, that down to the last halter and the least fragment of detail, the German Army was provided with every conceivable aid to success--_in duplicate_.

"Never in any enterprise known to history was less left to chance. The German War Office left nothing at all to chance, not even its conception--a certainty really--of Britain's amazing unreadiness. And the German Army took no risks. A soldier's business, whether he be private or Field Marshal, is, after all, to obey orders. It would be both foolish and unjust to blame General von Fuchter. But the fact remains that no victorious army ever risked less by generosity than the invading German Army. Its tactics were undoubtedly ruthless; they were the tactics necessitated by the orders of the Chief of the Army. They were more severe, more crus.h.i.+ng, than any that have ever been adopted even by a punitive expedition under British colours. They were successful. For that they were intended. Swiftness and thoroughness were of the essence of the contract.

"With regard to their humanity or morality I am not here concerned. But it should always be remembered by critics that British apathy and neglect made British soil a standing temptation to the invader. The invasion was entirely unprovoked, so far as direct provocation goes. But who shall say it was entirely undeserved, or even unforeseen, by advisers whom the nation chose to ignore? This much is certain: Black Sat.u.r.day and the tragic events leading up to it were made possible, not so much by the skill and forethought of the enemy, which were notable, as by a state of affairs in England which made that day one of shame and humiliation, as well as a day of national mourning. No just recorder may hope to escape that fact."

In London, the gravest aspect of that tragic week was the condition of the populace. It is supposed that over two million people flocked into the capital during the first three days. And the prices of the necessities of life were higher in London than anywhere else in the country. The Government measures for relief were ill-considered and hopelessly inadequate. But, in justice to "The Destroyers," it must be remembered that leading authorities have said that adequate measures were impossible, from sheer lack of material.

During one day--I think it was Wednesday--huge armies of the hungry unemployed--nine-tenths of our wage-earners were unemployed--were set to work upon entrenchments in the north of London. But there was no sort of organization, and most of the men streamed back into the town that night, unpaid, unfed, and sullenly resentful.

Then, like cannon shots, came the reports of the fall of York, Bradford, Leeds, Halifax, Hull, and Huddersfield, and the apparently wanton demolition of Norwich Cathedral. The sinking of the _Dreadnought_ near the Nore was known in London within the hour. Among the half-equipped regulars who were hurried up from the southwest, I saw dozens of men intercepted in the streets by the hungry crowds, and hustled into leaving their fellows.

Then came Friday's awful "surrender riot" at Westminster, a magnificent account of which gives Martin's big work its distinctive value. I had left Constance Grey's flat only half an hour before the riot began, and when I reached Trafalgar Square there was no s.p.a.ce between that and the Abbey in which a stone could have been dropped without falling upon a man or a woman. There were women in that maddened throng, and some of them, crying hoa.r.s.ely in one breath for surrender and for bread, were suckling babies.

No Englishman who witnessed it could ever forget that sight. The Prime Minister's announcement that the surrender should be made came too late.

The panic and hunger-maddened incendiaries had been at work. Smoke was rising already from Downing Street and the back of the Treasury. Then came the carnage. One can well believe that not a single unnecessary bullet was fired. Not to believe that would be to saddle those in authority with a less than human baseness. But the question history puts is: Who was primarily to blame for the circ.u.mstances which led up to the tragic necessity of the firing order?

Posterity has unanimously laid the blame upon the Administration of that day, and a.s.suredly the task of whitewas.h.i.+ng "The Destroyers" would be no light or pleasant one. But, again, we must remind ourselves that the essence of the British Const.i.tution has granted to us always, for a century past at least, as good a Government as we have deserved. "The Destroyers" may have brought shame and humiliation upon England.

Unquestionably, measures and acts of theirs produced those effects. But who and what produced "The Destroyers" as a Government? The only possible answer to that is, in the first place, the British public; in the second place, the British people's selfish apathy and neglect, where national duty and responsibility were concerned, and blindly selfish absorption, in the matter of its own individual interests and pleasures.

One hundred and thirty-two men, women, and children killed, and three hundred and twenty-eight wounded; the Treasury buildings and the official residence of the Prime Minister gutted; that was the casualty list of the "Surrender Riot" at Westminster. But the figures do not convey a t.i.the of the horror, the unforgettable shame and horror, of the people's attack upon the Empire's sanctuary. The essence of the tragedy lay in their demand for immediate and unconditional surrender; the misery of it lay in "The Destroyers'" weak, delayed, terrified response, followed almost immediately by the order to those in charge of the firing parties--an order flung hysterically at last, the very articulation of panic.

No one is likely to question Martin's a.s.sertion that Friday's tragedy at Westminster must be regarded--"not alone as the immediate cause of Black Sat.u.r.day's national humiliation, but also as the crucial phase, the pivot upon which the development of the whole disastrous week turned."

But the Westminster Riot at least had the saving feature of unpremeditation. It was, upon the one side, the outcry of a wholly undisciplined, hungry, and panic-smitten public; and, upon the other side, the irresponsible, more than half-hysterical action of a group of terrified and incompetent politicians. These men had been swept into great positions, which they were totally unfitted to fill, by a tidal wave of reactionary public feeling, and of the blind selfishness of a decadence born of long freedom from any form of national discipline; of liberties too easily won and but half-understood; of superficial education as to rights, and abysmal ignorance as to duties.

But, while fully admitting the soundness of Martin's verdict, for my part I feel that my experiences during that week left me with memories not perhaps more shocking, but certainly more humiliating and disgraceful to England, than the picture burnt into my mind by the Westminster Riot. I will mention two of these.

By Wednesday a large proportion of the rich residents of Western London had left the capital to take its chances, while they sought the security of country homes, more particularly in the southwestern counties. Such thoroughfares as Piccadilly, Regent Street, and Bond Street were no longer occupied by well-dressed people with plenty of money to spend.

Their usual patrons were for the most part absent; but, particularly at night, they were none the less very freely used--more crowded, indeed, than ever before. The really poor, the desperately hungry people, had no concern whatever with the wrecking of the famous German restaurants and beer-halls. They were not among the Regent Street and Piccadilly promenaders.

The Londoners who filled these streets at night--the people who sacked the Leicester Square hotel and took part in the famous orgy which Blackburn describes as "unequalled in England since the days of the Plague, or in Europe since the French Revolution"; these people were not at all in quest of food. They were engaged upon a mad pursuit of pleasure and debauchery and drink. "Eat, drink, and be vicious; but above all, drink and be vicious; for this is the end of England!" That was their watchword.

I have no wish to repeat Blackburn's terrible stories of rapine and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, of the frenzy of intoxication, and the blind savagery of these Saturnalias. In their dreadful nakedness they stand for ever in the pages of his great book, a sinister blur, a fiery warning, writ large across the scroll of English history. I only wish to say that scenes I actually saw with my own eyes (one episode in trying to check the horror of which I lost two fingers and much blood), prove beyond all question to me that, even in its most lurid and revolting pa.s.sages, Blackburn's account is a mere record of fact, and not at all, as some apologists have sought to show, an exaggerated or overheated version of these lamentable events.

Regarded as an indication of the pa.s.s we had reached at this period of our decadence, this stage of our trial by fire, the conduct of the crowds in Western London during those dreadful nights, impressed me more forcibly than the disaster which Martin considers the climax and pivot of the week's tragedy.

One does not cheerfully refer to these things, but, to be truthful, I must mention the other matter which produced upon me, personally, the greatest sense of horror and disgrace.

Military writers have described for us most fully the circ.u.mstances in which General Lord Wensley's command was cut and blown to pieces in the Epping and Romford districts. Authorities are agreed that the records of civilized warfare have nothing more horrible to tell than the history of that ghastly butchery. As a slaughter, there was nothing exactly like it in the Russo-j.a.panese war--for we know that there were less than a hundred survivors of the whole of Lord Wensley's command. But those who mourned the loss of these brave men had a consolation of which nothing could rob them; the consolation which is graven in stone upon the Epping monument; a consolation preserved as well in German as in English history. Germany may truthfully say of the Epping shambles that no quarter was given that day. England may say, with what pride she may, that none was asked. The last British soldier slaughtered in the Epping trenches had no white flag in his hand, but a broken bayonet, and, under his knee, the Colours of his regiment.

The British soldiers in those blood-soaked trenches were badly armed, less than half-trained, under-officered, and of a low physical standard.

But these lamentable facts had little or nothing to do with their slaughter. There were but seven thousand of them, while the German force has been variously estimated at between seventy thousand and one hundred thousand horse and foot, besides artillery. One need not stop to question who should bear the blame for the half-trained, vilely equipped condition of these heroic victims. The far greater question, to which the only answer can be a sad silence of remorse and bitter humiliation, bears upon the awful needlessness of their sacrifice.

The circ.u.mstances have been described in fullest detail from authentic records. The stark fact which stands out before the average non-expert observer is that Lord Wensley was definitely promised reinforcements to the number of twenty thousand horse and foot; that after the Westminster Riot not a single man or horse reached him; _and he was never informed of the Government's forced decision to surrender_.

And thus those half-trained boys and men laid down their lives for England within a dozen miles of Westminster, almost twelve hours after a weak-kneed, panic-stricken Cabinet had pa.s.sed its word to the people that England would surrender.

That, to my thinking, was the most burning feature of our disgrace; that, as an indication of our parlous estate, is more terrible than Martin's "pivot" of the tragic week.

XX

BLACK SAt.u.r.dAY

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men.

WORDSWORTH.

In the afternoon of Black Sat.u.r.day, General von Fuchter, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army in England, took up his quarters, with his staff, in the residence of the German Amba.s.sador to the Court of St. James in Carlton House Terrace, and, so men said, enjoyed the first sleep he had had for a week. (The German Amba.s.sador had handed in his credentials, and been escorted out of England on the previous Monday.)

Throughout the small hours of Sat.u.r.day morning I was at work near Romford as one of the volunteer bearers attached to Constance Grey's nursing corps. That is one reason why the memory of the north of London ma.s.sacre will never leave me. One may a.s.sume that the German Army had no wish to kill nurses, but, as evidence of the terrible character of the onslaught on the poor defences of London, I may recall the fact that three of our portable nursing shelters were blown to pieces; while of Constance Grey's nurses alone five were killed and fourteen were badly wounded.

Myself, I had much to be thankful for, my only wound being the ploughing of a little furrow over the biceps of my right arm by a bullet that pa.s.sed out through the back of my coat. But a circ.u.mstance for which my grat.i.tude was more deeply moved was the fact that Constance Grey, despite a number of wonderfully narrow escapes, was entirely uninjured.

The actual entry of General von Fuchter and his troops into London has been so often described that nothing remains for me to say about that.

Also, I am unable to speak as an eye witness, since Constance Grey and myself were among those who returned to London, in the rear of the German troops, with the ambulances. The enemy's line of communications stretched now from the Wash to London, and between Brentwood and London there were more Germans than English. I believe the actual number of troops which entered London behind General von Fuchter was under forty-eight thousand; but to the northward, northeast, and northwest the huge force which really invested the capital was spread in careful formation, and amply provided with heavy artillery, then trained upon central London from all such points as the Hampstead heights.

Although a formal note of surrender had been conveyed to General von Fuchter at Romford, _after_ the annihilation of our entrenched troops, occasional shots were fired upon the enemy as they entered London.

Indeed, in the Whitechapel Road, one of the General's aides-de-camp, riding within a few yards of his chief, was killed by a shot from the upper windows of a provision shop. But the German reprisals were sharp.

It is said that fifty-seven lives paid the penalty for the shooting of that aide-de-camp. Several streets of houses in northeast London were burned.

By this time the Lord Mayor of London had been notified that serious results would accrue if any further opposition were offered to the German acceptance of London's surrender; and proclamations to that effect were posted everywhere. But the great bulk of London's inhabitants were completely cowed by hunger and terror. Practically, it may be said that, throughout, the only resistance offered to the Army of the invaders was that which ended so tragically in the trenches beyond Epping and Romford, with the equally tragical defence of Colchester, and some of the northern towns captured by the eighth German Army Corps.

In London the people's demand from the first had been for unconditional surrender. It was this demand which had culminated in the Westminster Riot. The populace was so entirely undisciplined, so completely lacking in the sort of training which makes for self-restraint, that even if the Government had been possessed of an efficient striking force for defensive purposes, the public would not have permitted its proper utilization. The roar of German artillery during Friday night and Sat.u.r.day morning, with the news of the awful ma.s.sacre in the northern entrenchments, had combined to extinguish the last vestige of desire for resistance which remained in London.

Almost all the people with money had left the capital. Those remaining--the poor, the refugees from northward, irresponsibles, people without a stake of any kind; these desired but the one thing: food and safety. The German Commander-in-Chief was wise. He knew that if time had been allowed, resistance would have been organized, even though the British regular Army had, by continuous reductions in the name of "economy," practically ceased to exist as a striking force. And therefore time was the one thing he had been most determined to deny England.

It is said that fatigue killed more German soldiers than fell to British bullets; and the fact may well be believed when we consider the herculean task General von Fuchter had accomplished in one week. His plan of campaign was to strike his hardest, and to keep on striking his hardest, without pause, till he had the British Government on its knees before him; till he had the British public--maddened by sudden fear, and the panic which blows of this sort must bring to a people with no defensive organization, and no disciplinary training--cowed and crying for quarter.

The German Commander has been called inhuman, a monster, a creature without bowels. All that is really of small importance. He was a soldier who carried out orders. His orders were ruthless orders. The instrument he used was a very perfect one. He carried out his orders with the utmost precision and thoroughness; and his method was the surest, quickest, and, perhaps, the only way of taking possession of England.

At noon precisely, the Lord Mayor of London was brought before the German Commander-in-Chief in the audience chamber of the Mansion House, and formally placed under arrest. A triple cordon of sentries and two machine-gun parties were placed in charge of the Bank of England, and quarters were allotted for two German regiments in the immediate vicinity. Two machine-guns were brought into position in front of the Stock Exchange, and all avenues leading from the heart of the City were occupied by mixed details of cavalry and infantry, each party having one machine-gun.

My acquaintance, Wardle, of the _Sunday News_, was in the audience chamber of the Mansion House at this time, and he says that he never saw a man look more exhausted than General von Fuchter, who, according to report, had not had an hour's sleep during the week. But though the General's cheeks were sunken, his chin unshaven, and his eyes blood-red, his demeanour was that of an iron man--stern, brusque, taciturn, erect, and singularly immobile.

Food was served to this man of blood and iron in the Mansion House, while the Lord Mayor's secretary proceeded to Whitehall, with word to the effect that the Commander-in-Chief of the German forces in England awaited the sword and formal surrender of the British Commander, before proceeding to take up quarters in which he would deal with peace negotiations.