[[ Mirrored from archive.org, with more info at http://www.314th.org/times-history-of-the-war/times-history-of-the-war.html ]] The Times HISTORY OF THE WAR Vol. XV PRINTING HOUSE SQUARE. PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY "THE TIMES" PRINTING HOUSE SQUARE, LONDON. 1918 CONTENTS OF VOL. XV. CHAPTER CCXXII. PAGE SOUTH AMERICA, 1914-1917 CHAPTER CCXXIII. THE WESTERN OFFENSIVES OF 1917 : BULLECOUHT . . CHAPTER CCXXIV. THE WESTERN OFFENSIVES OF 1917 : MESSINES . . 73 CHAPTER CCXXV. INDIA DURING THE WAR CHAPTER CCXXVI. THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM CHAPTER CCXXVII. FROM THE BATTLE OF MESSINES TO THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPIU:S . . CHAPTER CCXXVIII. VICTORIA CROSSES OF THE WAR (IV.) . . CHAPTER CCXXIX. FOOD CONTROL AND RATIONS IN GREAT BRITAIN CHAPTER CCXXX. GERMANY: AUGUST, 1916 FEBRUARY, 1913 .. CHAPTER CCXXXI. THE THIRD BATTLE OF YI>RES (I.) CHAPTER CCXXXII THK THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES (II.) CHAPTER CCXXXIII. THE ITALMN OFFENSIVE OF JULY SEPTEMBER, 1917 . . CHAPTER CCXXXIV. THE SHIPPING PROBLEM (II.) ., CHAPTER CCXXII. SOUTH AMERICA, 1914-1917. TRADITIONAL RELATIONS WITH EUROPE FIRST EFFECTS OF THE WAR BALANCE OF SYMPATHIES INFLUENCE OF THE UNITED STATES THE MONROE DOCTRINE -PAN-AMERICANISMECONOMIC CONDITIONS : ARGENTINA, BRAZIL, CHILE THE " BLACK LIST " AND GERMAN TRADE GERMAN PROPAGANDA AND INTRIGUE THE LUXBURG DISPATCHES ARGENTINA AND GERMANY CHILE AWD GERMANY OTHER STATES THE BRAZILIAN DECLARATION OF WAR. UPON the outbreak of war the at- titude of educated public opinion throughout South America towards the belligerents was generally one of detachment and neutrality, tempered by great and widespread affection for France, as the spiritual home of Latin civilization. The Governments of the Republics, in declaring their neutrality in 1914, acted in accordance with public sentiment, which, as in the United States, had then no desire to take an active part in the struggle. The foreign policy of the leading Republics Argentina, Chile, and Brazil reflected the Monroe doctrine's theoretical aloofness from the destinies of monarchical and " capitalist " Europe ; it reflected also an unmistakable though subdued undercurrent of popular opinion, that none of the belligerents had shown in the past sufficient appreciation of the moral and material progress of Southern (as distinguished from Central) America to justify any overt manifestation of sympathy or support. Material considerations, the finan- cial and commercial interests involved, all tended at the outset to impose strict neutrality upon the Latin Republics of South America, and this policy was energetically reinforced in a vigorous Press propaganda by Germany's political and commercial agents all over the Continent. During the first onrush of the Teutonic hordes in the invasion of France the attitude Vol. XV. Part 183 of Germans from Patagonia to Pernambuco was so boastful and blustering as to lead many South American thinkers and writers to perceive something of the dangers to which the democracies of the new world must speedily be exposed in the event of victorious Germany becoming the paramount Power in Europe In Chile, and more especially in South Brazil, the typically insolent bearing of the German colonists during the first few weeks of the war was of the kind that is not easily forgiven or forgotten ; it led to the rapid growth of feelings hostile to Germany in many quarters where none had previously existed, and prepared the public mind for the gradual process of its identification with the cause of the Allies. After the battle of the Marne, and even more markedly after the destruction of the German squadron at the Falkland Islands, the sons of the Fatherland began to walk more delicately overseas ; their dreams of creating a New Germany to extend from Southern Brazil to the River Plate were relegated to the back- ground of prudent silence. But as the German Government's contempt for all the ideals and agreements of civilized humanity became more and more emphasized in its methods of warfare, public opinion throughout South America became more and more unmistakably convinced that the Central Powers were re- sponsible for the outbreak of the war, and that German Kultur, as displayed by her military THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. PgrtoRico C3 .BarOudaifo 5! VincentiBrjf "Barbadoe?. ' * S Trinidad (Bg VENEZUELA Pernambuco Jaaseirn lialu'a or MattoGrosso . . o Cuyabc ufcs$^ arani i T^R]Q DE JANEIRO s/ } Cordoba SantaFe T Valpai-aisA \ <;auTiA<<i-> i "BUENOS ., AYRES ConcepSiSD ' DECLARED WAR Ofl GERMANY. Cuba__April 1917 Panama_" " Brazil Oct. " Scale of Miles. 100 400 600 800 1000 = Declared War on Germany Shown tflus^ (977) Severed Relations with Germany shown thus. Neutral -Shown tihite SEVERED RELATIONS WITH GERMANY. Bolivia- Apl.1917 S.Domingo.June 1917 Haiti Peru Oct. Guatemala Honduras May Nicaragua Ecuador., Dec. 1917. NEUTRAL. Argentina Paraguay Salvador Colombia Chile Costa Rica Venezuela Du. Guiana Porto Rico SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA: WAR MAP AT END OF 1917. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. and political leaders, involved the negation of the elementary principles of humanity arid decency: And side by side with this conviction the old love and reverence for France, as the fountain-head of the Latin ideal of democracy, acquired new inspiration and a new strength. The process was naturally more rapid and more emphatic in certain places than in others. In some it was restrained from above by the successful activities of German propaganda in liigh places ; in others, the pro-German influence of many of the Roman Catholic clergy tended to check the growth of active sympathy for the cause of the Allies ; in others again, a lavish expenditure of German money, and the ramifications of commercial interests thereby created, served to modify the expression of widespread popular indignation against every- thing German. But after the sinking of the Lusitania and other similar manifestations of Germany's methods of warfare, while prudent statecraft still continued to recognize the necessity for maintaining neutrality so long as the United States had not been drawn into the struggle, there was no longer any question as to the feelings of the people in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, or Santiago. They had come to realize that the war was in truth a stupendous clashing of two forms of civiliza- tion fundamentally and eternally antagonistic, a conflict between the German doctrine of might superior to right and the Latin ideal of the predominance of law over force. They had come to regard Germany's methods of enforcing her doctrine as something unspeak- ably sinister and inhuman a new point of view, which, even before it was emphasized and confirmed by the truculent treachery of Count Luxburg, found expression in the break- ing of many German official windows. During the celebration of tha centenary of the Argentine Republic in July, 1916, despite the benevolent neutrality of the Government, the German flag was conspicuous by its absence from every street and public ceremony. In the same year the Uruguayan Government officially pro- claimed the 14th of July as a national festival ; the citizens of Montevideo celebrated the occa- sion by enthusiastic singing of the "Marseillaise " and by a gala entertainment at the Urquiza Theatre in honour of M. Boudin's special mission, at which fervent sympathy wns expressed for the Allies and particularly for the sufferings of Belgium. Even in Rio, when! the influence of Germany's " peaceful pene- tration " was most marked at the beginning of the war, a distinct revulsion of popular feeling had taken place before the end of 1915, and many neutral traders, hitherto conspicuous for their pro-German tendencies, had begun to realize the possible scope and effect of the British Black List and to make DR. WENCESLAO BRAZ, President of Brazil. profession of their complete independence of all German connexions. In Chile, as the result of the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy on the one hand and of German professors and military instructors on the other, the attitude of the Government was characterized from the outset by a neu- trality which on more than one occasion appeared to be unduly strained in favour of the Teuton. This was particularly the casa during the period in which the German cruisers, effectively aided by German residents in Chile, waged destructive warfare upon British and Allied merchant shipping on the Chilean coast. But the outrages committed by these German cruisers served to convince the Chilean peoplo they also produced a profound economic crisis throughout the country that a nation which could act with such cynical indifference to international law, andtathe sovereign rights of smaller nations, would eventually, if victorious, threaten their own liberties. Senor Carlos 183 2 Till: TIMES HISTOBY OF THE WAR. Silva Vilddsola, an eminent publicist of San- tiago, writing at the beginning of 1916, declare. I that the great majority of his countrymen had come to desire the triumph of the Allies and the destruction of German militarism, " in defence of the constituent principles of all democracies and to save from destruction the Latin civilization to which we all belong." It is interesting to record the fact that, a year before President Wilson had definitely pro- claimed his country's recognition of the necessity for crushing " this menace of com- bined intrigue and force which we now so clearly see as the German power, a thing without conscience or honour, or capacity for covenanted peace," Senor Vildosola had summed up the convictions of his countrymen on funda- mental points in memorable words, which, lika those uttered by Senhor Ruy Barbosa at Rio, expressed the general (as distinct from the official) sentiments of South America. Amongst other things Senor Vildosola declared : " That the triumph of a nation which proclaims military necessity as a sufficient reason for violating treaties, and in which nations are denied their essential liberties- would be the greatest peril that could be encountered by modern democracies and by all those principles upon which American independence was established ; and " That there exists at the heart of this struggle a conflict between the two philoso- phical and political tendencies that have disputed for the domination of peoples and t h<- inspiration of their movements one based upon right and the other upon force ; one upon liberty and the other upon subjection ; one upon fraternity and the other upon hatred, cultivated as a sacred and almost mystical principle." Similarly, Senor Nicolas F. Lopez, a dis- tinguished military officer and Government official of Ecuador, in a pamphlet published in 1917, expre>se.l the increasing apprehension of public opinion in regard to the possible effect of the wnrl.l st Mingle upon the. future destinies and liberties of South America. Senor Lopez laid stress on the duty incumbent upon all the Latin Republics, as a matter of self-preservation and national dignity, to unite "in frank and decided support of the United States, which has presented itself as the paladin of the liberties of the world against the iniquities of the Great War." He con- tend..! that as Germany had lightly set at naught the fundamental rights of neutrals, in regard to the inviolability of their territory and the free use of the sea as a commercial highway, the twenty-one American Republics could not do otherwise than suspend diplomatic relations with her, " particularly in view of the fact that Germany had not denied the reports concerning a suggestion which she made to the countries of the Entente with respect to a possible return of all the invaded territory of Belgium, Russia, and the Balkans, provided she be given a free hand in Latin-America." Before the end of 1916 every instinct of humanity, apart from that of self-preservation, had led to a very general consensus of opinion throughout all classes in South America in favour of the cause of the Entente. At the same time it was clearly perceived, by all who looked ahead, that if the United States con- tinued to adhere to a policy of neutrality, nothing in the Monroe doctrine could hereafter protect from German retaliation and invasion any Republic which might throw in its lot with the Allies. Realization of this fact undoubtedly carried much weight with South America's statesmen in determining their adherence to prudent courses of neutrality, even after their rights as neutrals had been violated by Germany's declaration of indiscriminate sub- marine warfare. But when it became apparent that the Colossus of the North was about to join in the struggle " to make the world safe for democracy," the whole situation in the Latin Republics was immediately altered. Slowly but surely, as the nature of Germany's preparations for war, her methods of waging it, and her ambitions towards world supre- macy became more and more apparent, the truth was perceived that the fertile and thinly populated countries of South America had enjoyed immunity from attack and inva- sion mainly thanks to the armed forces of Great Britain and France, upholders of the sacredness of treaties and of the liberties of small nations. Senator Root expressed the prevalent opinion on this subject on January 25, 1917, when, ad dressing the Congress of Constructive Patriotism at Washington, he said that the Monroe doc- trine was not international law, and that it had been maintained by three things : first, that the men of Monroe's time had never thought of such a thing as not being ready to fight for their rights ; secondly, that the balance of power in Europe had been so even, and every- THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. body had been so doubtful about what the other fellows were going to do, that nobody found it worth while to take on a row with the United States ; and, thirdly, England's fleet. In the lace of the futility of the treaty which guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium and of the humane ordinances of the Hague Convention, it was manifest that the Monroe doctrine could afford no valid defence against German Imperialism triumphant so long as the United States remained in a condition of military unpre- of the war must be reckoned the change which took place in. the attitude of the South American Republics, not only in regard to the future of the Monroe doctrine but to that of the Pan-American ideal. In the early stages of the struggle it became apparent that, without resort to force, the United States could not aspire to maintain the doctrine in its original scope. In October, 1914, a statement by Count Bernstorff, the German Ambassador in Wash ngton, was published through the Associated Press, that Germany might obtain CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS AT BUENOS \IRES, JULY, 1916. Troops parading before the President. paredness : no panoply of sounding phrases could serve henceforward to guard the world's richest granaries against the danger of high- handed aggression. The entry of the United States into the war put an end to the long- cherished tradition of American self-sufficiency And to the splendid dream of continental isolation ; but it gave the continent, north and south, new assurances for dignified security in the future, in co-operation with the foremost democracies of the Old World, which the political insight of the Latin Republics was not slow to perceive and to appreciate at their true significance. Amongst the most conspicuous consequences " at least a temporary " foothold in Canada if she could land troops there, and the state- ment was accompanied by the suggestion that' as Canada had sent troops to Europe, such retaliation ought not to be regarded as a vio- lation of the Monroe doctrine. This foolish utterance, like many others from the same source, did more to enlighten public opinion in the United States and to stiffen it against Germany than any of the Allies' official pro- paganda. Herr Djrnburg, then chief German propagandist in the United States, hastened to repudiate his Ambassador's indiscretion by declaring that Germany would not only regard South America as inviolable but that she would H11-: TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. BUENOS AIRES: PROCESSION ON THE OCCASION OF THE TAKING OF THE OATH BY THE PRESIDENT. extend the benefits of the Monroe doctrine, to Canada ; but the cat was out of the bag. Its subsequent excursions into the field of American politics were assisted by a declara- tion made by Mr. Taft to the effect that nothing in the Monroe doctrine precluded a < lei-man invasion of Canada " provided it is not followed by an attempt to hold terri- tory permanently." The doctrine was evi- dently in extremis. At the end of November, 1914, The Times Correspondent at Washington observed that Mr. Taft's view was universally accepted, "just as everybody accepted the administration's view that the Allies had the right to take temporary police measures in South America." (This referred to certain breaches of neutrality in favour of Germany by Ecuador and Colombia to which Great Britain had taken exception.) He noted at the same time "a growing tendency to make the primary object of the Monroe doctrine the prevention of the permanent acquisition by extra-American Powers of territory, especially near Panama ; and to avoid its more vague, and barren responil, //.V.o. ' (..nfn.nte,! by a world in arms, the fiimiiiis doetrine proved to be praet it-ally useless for the fulfilment of its original purposes, as Admiral \l;>.lin had ded l.e. The Tinted States. u ,,t, to mention the le;* him Republics of the South, !..ul grown too large, and the world too inter- dependent, for it. President Wilson, it is true, reaffirmed his adherence to the doctrine in his annual message to Congress in December, 1915, emphasising " the rights of the American Repxiblics to work out their destinies without interference," but his words carried no great conviction or comfort to those immediately concerned, and certain of the more turbulent Republics of Central America did not fail to point out that unwelcome interference in their destinies had hitherto come from the United States. A year later, after the failure of his final effort to make such honourable terms with Germany as would have justified him in remaining neutral, Mr. Wilson's message to Congress vaguely implied the forthcoming abandonment of the doctrine of continental aloofness from the " European system," and the substitution iii its place of a world League of Nations, not to enforce but to ensure peace. The new shibboleth proposed, " as it were, i hat the nations should with one accord atlopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world ; that no nation should seek to extend over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left tree to determine its own polity, its own way of development, unhindered, lint hreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful." The nations, moreover, were hence- t'ortli to avoid "entangling alliances which THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. would draw them into competitions of power." South America, to judge from Press utterances on the subject, found nothing very attractive in the idea of a League to Enforce Peace. Quite apart, however, from, its apparent ineffectiveness as a weapon of defence against aggression from or by Europe, the Monroe doctrine had fallen into disrepute, even before the war, in several of the Southern Republics, where public opinion was frankly opposed to it on the ground that on more than one occasion the manner of its assertion by the Government at Washington involved claims to a moral trusteeship and general protectorate incom- patible with their dignity as sovereign States. President Wilson's expansion of the doctrine in connexion with the troubles in Mexico was widely construed in South America as placing the United States in the position of censor morum over the Central Republics ; the Latin American Press, even in countries far removed from the seat of trouble, expressed lively apprehension and resentment at the idea. As Lord Bryce has observed in his work on South America, " South American statesmen appre- ciate the value of Washington's diplomacy in trying to preserve peace between those Re- publics whose smouldering enmities often threaten to burst into flame. On the other hand, they are jealous of their own dignity, not at all disposed to be patronised, and quick to resent anything bordering on a threat even when addressed, not to themselves, but to some other Republic." In regard to the action of the United States in Mexico, the protestations of American disinterestedness were greeted with general scepticism, , frankly expressed. Popular hostility to " Monroismo," as asserted by the United States, had become in 1913 a force that threatened to stultify Pan- American activities and ideals. In Argentina, Brazil and Chile, the idea of an alliance of the Latin Republics was widely mooted, for the purpose of preserving . the balance of power. Mr. Roosevelt's lecture tour in South America, undertaken in that year, was intended to soothe the susceptibilities and assviage the fears of Latin America ; the burden of his message waa contained in a Pan-American extension of the Monroe doctrine, which was to become conti THE AVENIDA DE MAYO. BUENOS AIRES. s THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. iientaland eea.se to be unilateral ; the greater southern Republics were to share with the United States the duty of protecting and policing the Continent. The Confederation of the Americas, thus adumbrated, was to be a stage in the progress towards world-confedera- tion, and the modernized Monroe doctrine would thus become a potent instrument of pacifism. Mr. Roosevelt's idea, in short, was to put the hegemony of the Americas into commission, in much the same way as that of dynastic: Europe was vested in the Holy Alli- ance a century before. But his tour, despite the warmth of the personal welcome accorded to him, revealed a very general disposition to concur in the declaration made by Senor Marcial Martinez, in welcoming the ex-President to the University of Chile, namely, that the Monroe doctrine had become obsolete, in so far at least as it had been interpreted to imply any right of supervision by the United States over the independent Latin Republics. At Santiago de Chile the attitude of the crowd was unmis- takably hostile to Mr. Roosevelt, and his ap- pearance was greeted with shouts of " Viva Mi-xico ! " and " Viva Colombia " ! At Buenos Aires Senor Zeballos, ex-Foreign Minister of Argentina, while welcoming Mr. Roosevelt's de- claration that such Republics as Argentina, Brazi 1 and Chile had attained a position which entitled them to claim equality with the United States, took care 'to emphasize his opinions that the Monroe doctrine could not be applicable to tho Argentine Republic. In a letter to the editor of The Times (January 27, 1914) he gave his reason for this opinion, in the following words, significant of rifts that were likely to be revealed subsequently in the Pan-American lute. " The Argentine civilization," he said, " is in origin and character purely European, it can therefore only follow a Pan-American policy on con- dition of respecting and maintaining its strong moral, intellectual and economic ties with Europe." Tin- views expressed by these speakers and many others at that time emphasized tho determination of the leading South American Republics to reject any Pan-American project or policy which might fetter them in their free initiative and independent relations, as reign States, with European countries, not only in the realm of finance and economics but in political affairs. President Wilson's declara- tion that the United States would not tolerate any foreign financial or industrial control in L.Jin America resulted in crystallizing public opinion in this direction. It was openly denounced in the Brazilian Chamber as meaning in effect "that, under pretence o5 emancipating these Republics and of guard- ing them from a highly fanciful peril of European Imperialism, the United States . would submit them purely and simply to its own control." It was inevitable that one of the first results of the war in Europe should be to increase the political, financial and commercial influence of the United States in South America ; equally inevitable that, as the struggle proceeded and as admiration and sympathy for France increased, the Latin Republics should become more definitely opposed to the idea of excluding from their Continent the political influence >f those European Powers which might serve as a counterpoise to the development of " Yankee Imperialism." A leading article in the Santiago Mercurio expressed the common sentiment in this matter in May, 1916, as follows : The collective formula for tho guarantee of territorial integrity and of the republican model is unnecessary, and tends to destroy the moral equilibrium of the true Continental policy, by giving a juridical foundation to possible tendencies towards the predominance of one nart of the Continent over another. The Pan-American poticy of concord we have said it many times is a spontaneous sentiment and expression of union ; that of predominance, in one form or another, is a threat of discord, in respect either of the form or of the underlying principle. From this significant modification of Pan- Americanism there followed gradually, in many influential circles of political thought, recognition of the fact that the emergence of the United States into the front rank of World Powers could not fail to render obsolete Washington's policy of avoiding " entangling alliances." The tradition of aloofness as a fundamental axiom of national policy might die hard amongst the older politicians, but public opinion had been rapidly educated by the war to substitute the planetary for the parochial conception of human affairs. Presi- dent Wilson, in his speech to the Pan-American Congress in January, 1916, appeared to cling to his ideas of consolidating all the nations of the new world into a happy family, far removed from the troubles of the old, and preserved from possibilities of strife by arbitration agree- ments and mutual guarantees, ideas which he had previously failed to embody in formal Treaties owing to the lack of active sympathy THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. displayed towards them in the Southern Republics. The Congress at Washington sup- ported the central idea of a Pan-American Alliance for the protection of democracy and the territorial integrity of all concerned, but the feeling was prevalent that the successful application of President Wilson's idaas must ultimately be dependent upon force, and, this being so, that an " American " Confederation pledged to ideals of civilization and humanity doctrine in 1913 had gone beyond that of 1909. " Pan-Americanism," it declared, " is a tripod that cannot stand on two legs alone. Only a combination of the Latin countries, the United States and Great Britain, that is to say a combination of all the American Powers, can make it a safe and useful organization in the world to-day." Doubtless, as the attitude of the Senate indicated, these radical changes of opinion in the most vital region of American [Harris & a-iVg. THE COUNCIL OF THE PAN-AMERICAN UNION. Photographed at the sitting of November 1, 1916. Reading round the table from the left are : Hon. R. Landing, president (United States Secretary of State), Dr. R. S. Naon (Argentine Ambassador), Dr. C. M. de Pena (Minister of Uruguay), Dr. S. Mennos (Haiti), Dr. S. A. Dommici (Venezuela), Don M. de Freyre y Santander (Peru), Don G. M. Varela (Chile), Mr. Barrett (Director-General, standing), and Don F. J. Yanes (Sub-Director), Right from the president in front : Dr. D. da Gama (Brazilian Ambassador), Don I. Calderon (Bolivian Minister), Don J. Mondez (Minister of Guatemala), Dr. A. Membreno (Minister of Honduras), Dr. G. S. Cordova (Minister of Ecuador), Dr. C. M. de Cespedes (Cuban Minister), Dr. R. Zaldfvar (Minister of S. Sal- vador), Dr. J. C. Zavala (Nicaragua), Don J. E. Lefevre (Panama). The Ministers of Colombia. Paraguay, Mexico, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic were not present at this sitting. must sooner or later come to include the British Empire, as one of the greatest territorial and democratic Powers on the Continent. As the Philadelphia Ledger put it, " it seemed an absurdity to talk of ' Pan -Americanism ' and in the same breath to ignore the fact that one of the greatest of the American Powers is not included in it." The New Republic, always in the van of intelligent anticipation in the field of world politics, went farther, giving to Pan-Americanism a new definition as far advanced- beyond that of pre-war days as Mr. Roosevelt's re-definition of the Monroe foreign policy were ahead of their time, but they were nevertheless straws that showed the force of the wind which the war had brought to bear upon the edifice of ancient tradition. As regards the effect of the war on the economic conditions and trade of South America, three facts stood out conspicu- ously from the experiences of the leading Republics during 1914-1917 ; first, that ,the Continent as a whole was being, and would hereafter be, liberally compensated for the disabilities with which it had had to contend 10 THE 77.W/'> HIXTnliY OF THE WAR. in common with other ncutr.il countries, by .11 (.1 the greatly increased demand and high prices paid by Europe tor foodstuffs and raw mutt-rials ; secondly, that, as a result of tin- inevitable curtailment of manufactured goods from Europe, an mi|-tus bad been given (most notably in Brazil) to the develop- meiit of valuable national industries ; thirdly, LOADING CHILLED BEEF AT LA PLATA. that the compulsory curtailment of mp.ny of the conveniences and luxuries of life had given the easy-going South American communities a badly needed lesson in self-denying economy, which but for the war they might only have acquired by direct and more painful experienc-e. This last fact stands out most prominently in the case of Argentina, a country whose economic position had probably benefited more from the war than any other, with the possible exception of Japan. She had not onl\ gained by the enormously increased value of her staple exports grain, meat, wool and hides but in the development of local industries and by the fact that the war compelled the nation to take stock of its position and to modify its expenditure. A year before the outbreak of the struggle in Europe Argentina had been confronted with a severe crisis, due to over-importation and prodigality in public finance. The crops of \\hen.t. linseed and oats in 1914 had been comparative failures, and the fact hud U'civ clearly reflected m the trade statistics of the first half of the year. The first effect of the \var wa- a renewal of financial depression and a restriction in consumption due to interference with supplies from the belligerent countries. The general tightness of money which resulted from the curtailment of creilit- in Europe was acutely felt in Buenos Aires in 1914, but it proved a blessing in disguise, in that it cured the light-hearted estanciero's " manana " habit of mind, addicted to piling up commitments to be met, God willing, by the proceed * of future harvests. The first week of the war brought something like a panic : the banks, the Bolsa and the Caja Conversion remained closed till August 10 ; a 30 days' moratorium was declared for 80 per cent, of liabilities, credits were rigorously curtailed and many businesses closed down. It was not long, however, before the effect of remedial measures began to make itself felt ; New York came forward to take the place of London in supplying the capital required to lubricate the wheels of Argentine finance. In 1915 the country's imports were greatly redxiced, while exports advanced rapidly, as the following table shows : 1915 1914 1913 1912 1911 During 1916 difficulties in the matter of tonnage began to be seriously felt, and the export of cereals was considerably reduced in consequence, but the shipments of meat to (Ireat Britain and her Allies surpassed all records. The country's finances were sensibly improved, the Government's estimates for 1916 showing a small surplus, as compared with an actual deficit of nearly 15,000,000 in 1914. During 1915 the German import trade into Argentina officially came to an end, though until the entry of the United States into the war it continued to be carried on through subterranean channels. In 1913 this trade amounted to a value of 14,121,000 (as against Great Britain's 22,641,000); German money continued nevertheless to be freely spent throughout the country in whole- sale purchases of wool and hides. Much of the remarkable rise in prices for these and other prodvicts of South America was directly due to German competition; at an early stage of the war far-seeing individuals in Hamburg and Berlin realized that non-perish- iible goods on the other side of the Atlantic Imports. Kx-ports. 45,000,000 ... 110,550,000 53,825,327 ... 69,159,000 83,436,000 95,744.1100 76,208,600 95,127,000 72,635,800 64,290,000 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 11 were likely to prove a better investment than the German mark. At the end of 1915 the Germans at Buenos Aires and Montevideo were credited with holding wool (much of it said to be purchased on Government account) to the value of over 6,000,000, and were loading it in their interned steamers to save storage expenses. The price of cereals was also rapidly advanced as the result of German competition ; there was no possible reason for doubting that the enormously increased shipments of grain to Scandinavian ports were bought on German account by enter- prising neutrals. In Germany the actual and prospective value of South America as a source of supply for foodstuffs and raw, materials and as a dumping ground for German manufactures was fully realized before the war. Apprehensions as community continued long after the outbreak of war to reflect the country's cosmopolitan tendencies and its lack of homogeneous public opinion ; and the organized State-directed activities of the Fatherland took full advantage of the situation. They were greatly encouraged and assisted, moreover, by the British Govern- ment's inexplicable reluctance to put an end to trading with the enemy during the first two years of the war and its failure to use the effective weapon of the Black List for the uprooting of Gorman commerce. It soundk almost incredible, but it is, nevertheless, true;, that owing to the graceful concessions made by Great Britain in 1915, German goods continued to arrive in Buenos Aires, often in British ships, both directly and from the United States. The particular concession (made in deference to protest by the American TRANSPORTING WOOL IN ARGENTINA. to the future protective policy of the Allies, as outlined at the Paris Conference, served to emphasize that value after the German flag was driven from the seas and German trade compelled to seek the kindly offices of neutrals to avoid complete destruction. In Argentina several causes contributed to assist the German in retaining, more or less successfully, his place in the sun. Although public sentiment, as distinguished from the official attitude, was overwhelmingly pro -Ally from the outset, the views and proceedings of the commercial Government) by virtue of which German goods were .released for export if ordered and paid for before March, 1915, was naturally abused and exploited to the utmost, German houses combining with native firms to secure the permits. Had no such facilities been given for enemy trading, it is safe to say that nine -tenths of the Germans in South America would have gone out of business before the end of 1915. What actually happened under the benevolent latitude allowed them was that they were frequently placed in a position of J83 3 12 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. advantage as compared with British firms. The British command of the sea had made it practically impossible for the German in South America to return to the Fatherland ; he, therefore, remained to serve his country by keeping his business going while thousands of his British competitors returned home to enlist. Those that remained had to contend with restricted credit facilities, whilst the German banks, backed by the German Govern- ment, gave extra assistance to their country- men to enable them to keep up their business. Even so the bulk of their trade must speedily have been extinguished had it not been for the complaisance of the British Government and the support extended to German houses by British financiers and traders of the cosmopoli- tan, free-trading persuasion. As a Times correspondent pointed out, there existed no efficient censorship of overseas mails until late in 1915, and the censorship between the I'uited Kingdom and South America did not commence until June, 1916. Hence it will hardly come as a surprise to anyone to know that a great deal of German South American business was actually financed from London, and that the < !>-rmans in Buenos Aires weiv thoroughly satisfied with the general progress of events. Writing in January 1916, The Titni'n Convsp. mil.. nt at Buenos Aires welcomed Lord Kobcit Cecil's declaration that the pro- hibition of enemy trading was to be extended so MONTEVIDEO. as to include enemy firms in neutral countries ; he added the significant statement that " up to now German firms here have been as free to trade with British firms, and British firms at home with local German houses here, as if there had been no declaration of war and no Orders in Council." German goods disap- peared in 1915 from the official Argentine returns, but German firms were still able to accept large orders with guarantees of normal delivery and to compete openly with their British rivals. They received their stocks through various channels ; in some cases direct from British firms, in others through Sweden and Holland, where the shipments were duly certified by consular certificates to be of Swedish or Dutch origin. Small wonder if the Argentine official and citizen, observing these things, came to the conclusion that British trade was dependent at many points on German intelligence and energy ; small wonder that British prestige suffered accordingly. Under the circumstances it was unreasonable for Englishmen on the spot to criticize the cautious prudence of Argentina's utilitarian neutrality. The institution of the Black List came as a severe shock to German traders in South America and to their friends in Europe, and the < ierman-subsidized Press in Buenos Aires and elsewhere waxed violently abusive. Argentine politician.-! were invited, and some were induced, to challenge the legality of the measure on the THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 13 ground of neutrality. This proving to be impracticable, a German Chamber of Commerce was started, for the purpose of consolidating German trade interests in Argentina, especially for post-war activities, and to " black list " the majority of British firms as a retaliatory measure. Meanwhile, in order to evade the Statutory List, German business took to concealing its identity under various disguises, using faked names and addresses for the beguiling of European shippers, or trading as bond fide American or Argentine concerns, with managers Schultz and Schmidt in the position of industrious German employees. Simultaneously an enormous expansion took place in the parcel post traffic to South America from Lisbon and the United States. It was only after the latter country's entry into the war that the German trader in the Southern Con- tinent was made to realize the seriousness of his position and to look to the future with gloomy forebodings. The effect of the war on the finances and trade of Brazil is fairly reflected in the following trade returns : Exports. Trade Balance. 56,375,377 + 14,837,429 52,970,000 46,511,000 64,948,000 1916 1915 1914 1913 Imports. 40,537,948 30,088,000 35,439,000 67,166,366 + 22,882,000 + 11,072,000 2,217,605 In 1913 the country was suffering from acute economic depression. The outlook was any- thing but promising, there being no immediate prospect of relieving the national finances from the vicissitudes which had resulted from their dependence upon the two staple products, rubber and coffee, exposed to severe com- petition from Ceylon, the Dutch Colonies and Malaya. At the close of 1914 the foreign debt amounted to 104,481.728 and the Federal Government was compelled to promulgate a scheme in October whereby the greater part of this amount was included in a funding arrange- ment, interest being paid for three years in new 5 per cent, bonds and sinking funds suspended. In 1915, thanks to a drastic reduction of expenditure and a steady increase in trade, the credit of the Republic began to improve. To meet the situation created by the inevitable curtailment of imports from Europe new industries were successfully established; to this industrial development must be ascribed the rapid recovery which took place in the finances of the State of Bio. In an address delivered before the Manufacturers' Association at Rio de Janeiro on September 29, 1917, the Brazilian Minister of Finance (Dr. Antonio Carlos) observed that the war had naturally brought about a great reduction of imports into Brazil, which meant a serious loss of DRYING HIDES, MONTEVIDEO. 14 THK TIMES HISTORY Ul-' Till- MM/,'. revenue from Customs duties: since 1913 the Treasury had subsisted on revenue derived from the taxation of |>n>.luets for national consumption. Owing to the lack of many necessities formerly imported, several branches of national industry had increased their capacity and range of production. Their large output had greatly contributed to reducing the cost of living in Brazil ; at the same time economic reforms had been introduced with excellent results. In spite of the reduced immigration caused by the war, Brazilian agriculture had succeeded in extending the area under cultiva- tion throughout the country and introducing new products, so that a certain amount of cereals had become available for export. The situation created in Europe by the depletion of stocks of raw materials and foodstuffs had constituted an opportunity for countries like Brazil to develop their resources to meet the new demand. The development of the Brazilian trade in frozen meat had afforded striking proof of the possibilities of the pastoral industry of the country in the future. The Minister of Finance estimated that the consumption tax on national produce would bring in about 6,000,000 in 1917, a sum nearly sufficient to balance the loss of import duties. In view of the abundant stocks of coffee held in England at the beginning of the war and the necessity for conserving tonnage, Great Britain's embargo upon further importation was fully justified; it was none the less a source of : erious embarrassment", economic and political, to the Brazilian Government, and was exploit "(I to the utmost for the purposes of German propaganda in the Republic. Until the entry of Portugal into the war, Brazil's neutrality was marked by a very deferential attitude towards Germany and the Germias ; nor is this surprising in view of the large German colonies established in the southern maritime provinces of the Republic and the widespread influence of German trade and finance through- out the country. Portugal's enlistment oa the side of the Allies naturally produced a marked effect on public opinion ; nevertheless, so long as the United States remained neutral, it was safe to predict that Brazil would do the same. Even after the rupture of diplomatic relations, when a declaration of war by Brazil against Germany had become practically inevitable, the opinion continued to be widely held in commercial circles that the door should be kept open for trading with Germany in the future, as she was likely to be a better customer than Great Britain. The coffee embargo remained a sore point and accounted in no small measure for the President's non-committal attitude. The Rio Impartial gave expression LOADING COFFEE AT SANTOS, BRAZIL. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 15 TRAMP STEAMBRS OF THE ALLIES LOADING AT BAHIA BLANCA. to the Germanophile view in commenting editorially on the Finance Minister's address in October 1917. It observed that Great Britain's future policy would be to favour the produce of her own Colonies and Dominions by a protective tariff, whereas Germany would continue to purchase raw materials from Brazil, sending in return manufactured produce upon advantageous conditions. The German banks and big traders certainly did their best to prove themselves good customers. Their large purchases of coffee and other produce at Santos, Bahia and Pernambuco constituted a powerful argument in their favour especially when contrasted with Great Britain's embargo on the country's chief staple export. These questions are referred to farther on in dealing with the course of events that led to Brazil's declaration of war on October 26, 1917. The first results of the war in Chile were clearly reflected in the sharp contrast between the trade returns for 1914 and 1915 ; they pointed to a severe dislocation of the nation's vital industry the production and sale of nitrate so severe as to make the fiscal position of the country a source of serious . anxiety. The figures are as follows : First half of 1914 1915 Imports. 10,986,482 4,781,607 Export?. 13,917,303 9,803,070 The balance of trade remained largely in Chile's favour, so that Chilean exchange stood high ; but as the Chilean Treasury derives nearly half its revenues from the export duty on nitrate, and as the shipments during the first year of the war amounted to only about half of the total for the preceding twelve months, the position remained somewhat critical for a time. By March, 1915, out of 134 nitrate companies in working when the war broke out, 98 had suspended operations, and the price of the commodity had fallen to something near the cost of production. There- after, as the demand increased for refined nitrate for the making of explosives, the tide turned swiftly in Chile's favour, with the result that the country's trade and finances for 1916 touched high-water mark. In 1914 the Treasury had had to face a deficit of 2,700,000 ; the estimates for 1916 showed a, surplus of a million. As in other parts of South America, one of the first effects of the war was to make necessity the mother of many salutary inventions. Willy-nilly, the country learned how to do without things from abroad ; imports in 1915 decreased by .over 50 per cent. At the same time the pro- duction of iron and copper was stimulated and increased attention was directed to agri- culture, with excellent results. The position attained in 1916 was succinctly stated in The Times' financial review for the year : Never before has the year's export of nitrate of soda, the prime factor in the national economy, approached within measurable distance of the quantity shipped in the last 12 months, or enjoyed so strong a market ; and not for many years has the Chilean peso touched, as in November last, the shilling mark. Copper and wool, two export products which are now of real importance, were shipped in record quantities and fetched unprecedented prices ; national industry, favoured by the state of war in Europe, made in 1916 an indubitable start ; capital, chiefly North American, evinced a very practical interest in Chile's potentialities, mainly in the direction of mining ; agriculture in the centre of the country has benefited by the state of affairs in the nitrate pampas of the north. Evidence of this general prosperity is naturally visible in the savings banks returns. It has been a boom year for Chile, and to crown all Congress announced towards the end of October that the British Government had presented the Chilean Navy with five American-built submarines as compensation for the disorganization of Chile's naval construction programme caused by the requisitioning of certain important Chilean units building in British shipyards at the outbreak of the war. 16 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. A certain number of the nitrate -producing companies urc in German hands, and a con- siderable proportion of the total output before the war was absorbed by Germany for agri- cultural purposes. The stock (about 200,000 tons) held by these companies was necessarily immobilized bv British trade restrictions, until, through the medium of the Chilean DR. HIPdLITO IRIGOYEN, President of the Argentine Republic. Government, they were sold (in September 1917) to the American Dupont Powder Com- pany acting under instructions of the United States Government, an arrangement which enabled the German concerns to renew their producing activities and to lay up fresh stocks for use after the war. In other directions ( lerman trailers were compelled to mark time. Their movements, here as elsewhere, were drastically curtailed by the operation of t he Black List ; so much so that all their powers of intrigue and propaganda were directed to induce the Chilean Government to adopt retaliatory measures. Resulting therefrom a iliscussion on the subject took place in the Senate, and a declaration was obtained from ilie Minister for Foreign Affairs that he was discussing the possibility of joint action with Argentina and Brazil. But the entry of the I'nitecl StiU.-s into the war made such discussions unprofitable. Before the end of 1917 American cooperation in measures de- signed to prevent shipments from reaching German firms through intermediaries' had produced most satisfactory results, and the German Government's efforts to maintain the back door open in Argentina and elsewhere had begun to assume an aspect of futility that impressed even its sympathisers. In Venezuela, where Germany's share of the foreign trade (20 per cent.) was almost equal to that of Great Britain, the outbreak of war was severely felt. The cessation of German activities led to demoralization in the market for hides and other produce. The principal business houses at Ciudad Bolivar, for example, being German, found it impossible to import or export anything through Trinidad, and were compelled to suspend their operations until regular communication had been estab- lished with La Guaira, the port of transhipment for cargo consigned to the United States. The result was a glut on the New York markets for Venezuelan produce and a temporary cessation of demand. Condemned perforce by England's command of the seas to a period of watchful waiting, the Germans in South America were not content to be idle in the service of Deutschtum and the protection of their own trade interests. On the contrary, throughout all the Latin Republics German agents and propagandists worked unceasingly to educate public opinion to the idea that the economic position of Germany after the war would be such as to make her the best possible customer and general pur- veyor for South America, and that to alienate her goodwill would be a suicidal policy. In many places, notably in Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile, much of the German seed thus sown fell upon ground well prepared to receive it. On the one hand, the heavy artillery of German finance was brought to bear in buying up vast quantities of Argentine and Uruguayan wool, Brazilian coffee, and other staples ; on the other, the light infantry of their commerce, in skirmishing order, ranged all over the continent, showing ranges of samples, canvassing for orders, and offering guarantees of delivery after the war at pre-war prices. So long as their interned ships remained laden with German cargo, under the German flag, conspicuous in all the chief harbours of the South American seaboard, they served to reinforce the arguments and assurances with which politicians, pressmen, and mer- THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 17 chants were industriously assailed. These vessels were an earnest of future German activi- ties, which, as the propagandists explained, were bound to be concentrated on South American markets because of the restrictions that Great Britain and her Allies would place on them elsewhere. Possibly the guarantees for the delivery of cheap German manu- factures after the war might be of no more value than any other scrap of paper, but there was every reason for Argentine and Chilean importers to believe that Germany would re -enter the field with large surplus stocks, to be dumped in generous mood upon South America in return for wool, hides, tallow, and foodstuffs. Would England be in a posi- tion to offer them similar advantages ? If not, was it wise to deprive themselves of the opportunities thus presented by boycotting German commerce as a penalty for the crimes of German militarism ? This, roughly speaking, was undoubtedly the attitude of a considerable section of political and commercial opinion in most of the Latin Republics. Strictly unsentimental and utilitarian, it was opposed to the chivalrous instincts of the great bulk of the people, but it was none the less influential in high places. It was supported with charac- teristic thoroughness by societies officially inspired and organized in Germany, and by the publication of illustrated monthly papers in Spanish and Portuguese (El Menaajero de Ultramar and O Transatlantico) nicely adapted to gild the pill of peaceful penetration with the sugar of lofty sentiments and idealistic motives. The " German Economic Association for South and Central America " was established at Berlin in 1915, and, notwithstanding the difficulty of interrupted communications, it was able to boast before the end of 1916 that it had successfully established branches, in touch with it, in all the 21 Republics. Some time later a Germanic League for South America was organized, ostensibly for the purpose of bringing together into closer union " all persons of German extraction whose speech, sympathies and habits of thought are German " (or, in other words, the quest of the wandering sheep) ; but the League announced its readiness to welcome to its ranks " all representatives of such nations as think it of vital importance to the world that Germanic morality and Germanic civilization should be preserved to DRYING AND PACKING NITRATE, CHILE. 18 TllK TIMK8 HISTORY OF THE WAR. it in all their purity." One of the principal riiiuiH'ratod iii the League's pro- is "the cultivation of the German language and (i riniiuii- customs and assidu- ous cooperation in the preservation and foundation of German schools and other Germanic educational institutions." In South lini/.il mid in Chile, where the insidious in- fluences of the independent German school had long been denounced by patriotic citizens as a danger to the State, subversive alike of national unity and dignity, the assertion of the League's founders that its purposes were in no sense political was not likely to mislead any but those who wished to be deceived. But German propagandist activities were by no means confined to the legitimate object of maintaining and extending German trade and influence in South America after the war. Throughout the Latin Republics, as in the United States and in the Far East, Germany's agents, spies and hirelings worked unceasingly and unscrupulously, under the direction of their Legations, to create internal and international dissensions favourable to the German cause. Much energy and money were spent in sub- sidizing and acquiring control of sections of the Press. From the outset German telegrams emanating from the New York branch of the German Press Bureau were supplied gratuitously to every newspaper that would print thorn : tli- -so war bulletins were of the usual men- dacious type, systematically directed to- wards discrediting the Allies and throwing upon them all responsibility for the war. Towards the end of 1914 a German organ. printed in Spanish, La Union, made its ap- pearance in Buenos Aires, and Argentina was flooded with a number of profusely illustrated periodicals, whereby German Kul- twr was skilfully displayed for the edification of the masses. For the benefit of the large Italian colony in Argentina the Central Labour Exchange at Berlin organized tlio publication of a paper, II Lavoro, which was widely circulated. Directed from Buenos Aires, the influence of German propaganda radiated throughout the continent. Its influence was particularly noticeable in Chile ; the Press of Santiago refrained with practical unanimity from editorial comments on the sinking of the Lusitania. A " Society for German Kul- tur " was founded in that city by Germans and German-Chileans ; for a long time Ger- man influence continued to be paramount in the clerical, military and financial circles of the Chilean capital. In Buenos Aires also was located, under the competent direction of the notorious Luxburg, the headquarters of a system of espionage and intrigue whose THE CUBAN INSURRECTION: UNITED STATES BLUE-JACKETS LANDED IN SANTIAGO TO RESTORE ORDER. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. activities extended northward to the Caribbean Sea. The Times Correspondent at Washington in September 1917, quoting a Buenos Aires dispatch to the New York World, reported that, an the result of official enquiries, the head- quarters of this spy system had been located in a German Bureau financed by the German Government, and that the Argentina authorities were in possession of proof that German agents had been regularly, collecting information con- cerning the departures and cargoes of ships and the movements of neutral vessels. All the evidence available on the spot con- cerning the causes conducing to the serious railway strike, which cut off Buenos Aires from communication with the interior in October, 1917, tended to confirm the opinion of those who looked beyond the superficial aspects of the movement that Gorman machinations and German money were behind it. As The Times Correspondent observed at the time : There has existed, and still exists, in the minds of 99 out of every 100 men outside the ranks of the strikers themselves, the conviction that German intrigue, Gorman money and German designs were at the root of the strike. The coincidence between the declaration by both Houses of the Argentine Congress in favour of a rupture of relations with Germany and the outbreak of a general strike was too marked, especially when the analogy of similar strikes at critical moments in Spain, in the United States and in Russia, is taken into account. There was ample evidence among the strikers of money in profusion, far beyond anything that could have come from their own resources ; another significant feature of the movement was the notable recrudescence of anti-British and pro -neutrality propaganda. In the chronically turbulent tropics and in the lesser Republics bordering on the Caribbean Germany found material for cruder and more overt treasons and stratagems than she could safely foment in the south. The Cuban insur- rection of February, 1917, was attributed by the State Department at Washington to the instigation of German agents ; later in the year they fomented a strike of the sugar-mill operatives at Santa Clara ; there was evidence, moreover, to prove that the Cuban Consul- General at Rotterdam had been induced to act as the forwarding agent for German corre- spondence. (In the same way Chilean official channels were used to evade the censorship of the Allies. The Ba ico Aleman Transatlantico was thus enabled to remit funds to Germany ; the Chilean Government denied direct responsi- bility and attributed the breach of neutrality to the slackness of subordinates.) At Panama the activities of German plotters compelled the Government in May, 1917, to arrest and deport to Colon the most prominent offenders. In Nicaragua a violent demonstration against the United States occurred in March 1917, Congress demanding the withdrawal of the United States marines ; German instigation was undoubtedly a factor in this outbreak. In Colombia the services of one Haines, an Irish rebel, were enlisted to take command of SENOR J. LUIS SANFUENTES, President of Chile. a .buccaneering expedition, which equipped two coastguard vessels with German crews, at Puerto Colombia. At Bahia bombs were placed on board of British and Allied ships, timed to explode three days after the vessels had put to sea. The Republic of San Salvador received through Mexico in February, 1917, a " present " of a complete Telefunken wireless installation, with German mechanics to erect it. In Costa Rica and Haiti German intrigue was a powerful factor in local politics ; in the former Republic German priests displayed the greatest activity in propagandist work directed against the United States. Throughout the Central Republics the aggressive Gennanophile proclivities of the Mexican Government under Senor Carranza were fully exploited to create dissensions and unrest, especially in Guatemala and Honduras. But in spite of all these pernicious activities, the weight of public THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. GERMAN SHIPS AT BUENOS AIRES. opinion in most of these minor Republics became more and more pronouncedly hostile to Germany as the truth concerning her methods of warfare emerged from the smoke-clouds of her propaganda. It is safe to say that by the end of 1917 the name of Germany stank in the nostrils of the general public, of every self- respecting gaucho and peon from Panama to Patagonia, and it was clear that, whatever the prudent path of politicians might be, it would be long before the German in South America could live down the infamies which had dis- graced his nation in this war. The infamous telegrams transmitted to Berlin by the German representative at Buenos Aires (Count Luxburg) through the Swedish legation, which were made public by the State Department at Washington on Sep- tember 8, 1917, and subsequent dates, left no further ground for any disinterested neutral to doubt the nature and extent of German official intrigues. As in the United States (to quote President Wilson's words) it was dear tliat from the outset of the war Germany had filled the unsuspecting communities of tin- South American Republics " and even the offices of Government with spies, and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot ; more- over, that these intrigues were carried on with tin- support and even under he personal < I inaction of official agents of the German Government accredited to the Governments of the Republics." Count Luxburg's par- ticularly cynical machinations had involved not only the Swedish Government bvit that of Argentina in gross breaches of the elementary obligations of neutrality ; they served to throw final enlightenment on the criminal practices of German diplomacy, as earlier revealed in the von Papen papers, and to evoke violent manifestations of indignation throughout the Latin Republics. The announcement in which the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at. Washington published the first three of the long series of dispatches which had been secured by the United States there were over 400 of them was as follows : The Department of State has secured certain tele- grams from Count Luxburg, German Charge d'Affaires at Buenos Aires, to the Foreign Office. Berlin, which I regret to say were dispatched from Buenos Aires la- the Swedish Legation as their own official messages addressed to the Stockholm Foreign Office. The follow- ing are English translations of the German text : " May 19, 1917, No. 32. This Government has now released the German and Austrian ships in which hitherto a guard has been placed. In consequence of the settle- ment of the Monte (Protegido) case there has been a great change in public feeling. The Government will in future only clear Argentine ships as far as Las Palmas. | Las Palmas is one of the Canary Islands, and is the last neutral touching place on the ordinary ocean route between South America and North-western Kurope. It belongs to Spain.} I beg that the small steamers Oran and Gnazo, January 31 (meaning which sailed on Janu- ary 31), 300 tons, which are now nearing Bordeaux, witli a view to changing flags, may be spared if possible, or else sunk without a trace being left (spurlos veraenkt). LUXBURG." The second message reads : - " July 3, 1917, No. 59. I learn from .1 reliable source- THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 21 that the Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, who ia a notorious ass and Anglophile, declared in secret session of the Senate that Argentina would demand from Berlin a promise not to sink more Argentine ships. If not agreed to relations would be broken off. I recommend refusal, or, if necessary, calling in the mediation of Spain. Signed LTJXBURQ." The third message reads : "July 9, 1917, No. 64. Without showing any ten- dency to make concessions postpone reply to Argentine Note until receipt of further reports. Change of Ministry probable. As regards Argentine steamers, I recommend either compelling them to turn back, sinking them without leaving any trace, or letting them through. They are all quite small. LUXBURO." Thus, as The Times put it, The accredited representative of the German Empire at Buenos Aires, while actually enjoying the hospitality of the Argentine Republic, was seen advocating the deliberate murder of Argentine subjects on the high seas, in order that the sinking of Argentine ships by German submarines should leave no trace which would make their crime known in the Argentine, and so make an enemy of that country. Public opinion in Argentina and elsewhere was not slow to express its indignation at the damnable treachery which had solemnly promised " to respect the Argentine flag," even while it was plotting to sink it " without a trace being left " ; it was equally incensed at the manner in which the Argentine Govern- ment had welcomed Germany's " settlement " of the Monte Protegido case and proclaimed it as a diplomatic victory and justification for benevolent neutrality. Count Luxburg had placed his friend President Irigoyen in the awkward predicament of confessing himself either the associate or the dupe of the apostles of criminal Kultur. That the German Govern- ment promptly disavowed its representative's actions in reply to Argentina's request for " explanations " had little or no effect in quelling popular resentment. On September 12 Count Luxburg received his passports with an inti- mation to the effect that he had ceased to be persona grata, but throughout South America the Press generally remained unsatisfied and urged the inauguration of a Pan-American movement in support of the United States and Brazil. On the same night there were serious anti -German riots in Buenos Aires ; the German Club was set on fire and several business houses, including the office of the German newspaper, destroyed. On September 15 a large public meeting was held at Buenos Aires, demanding a rupture with Germany and the extirpation of espionage ; meanwhile the friends of Count Luxburg, with cynical effrontery, had circu- lated a report to the effect that Sefior Pueyr- redon, the Argentine Minister for Foreign Affairs, had himself suggested to Count Luxburg the sinking of Argentine ships without leaving a trace ! It was subsequently proved by further publication of the German repre- sentative's dispatches and of his Government's A HERD OF LLAMAS. The Llama is bred in the higher parts of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, and its wool, like that of the Alpaca, constitutes a staple export of those countries. 22 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAE. replies that thi> ("it-mum Government was fully informed and approved of his " diplomacy." Undeterred by the dismissal of Count Lux- burg, public opinion at Buenos Aires continued to display intense indignation, in remarkable contrast to the non-committal complacency of Seiior Irigoyen's Cabinet. On September 20, by 23 votes to 1, the Senate approved a minute in favour of a rupture with Germany. COUNT LUXBURG, German Minister at Buenos Aires until September, 1917. On the night of the 22nd the Minister for Foreign Affairs announced in the Chamber that he had asked Germany for satisfactory explanations, failing which the Argentine Government would adopt extreme measures. Just as the Chamber of Deputies was about t < ) vote for the severance of diplomatic relations it was informed that the following dispatch had been received from Merlin: The Imperial Government keenly reerets what has lmp|>ened, and absolutely iliMipprnvcs of the ideas ' M" ""' l.u\l>ur_' mi the method of carrying out submarine warfare. 'J h. . M,a, are personal to him. They huve not had, and will not have, any influence on tho decision and promises of the Empire, d) Kuhllimnn. In view of this ofiiciul sacrifice of the diplo- nmtic scapegoat, the Chamber's action was urned to tin- 2r>th, when the vote in favour of an imiiied ale rupture was adopted by . r >:t to 18. The Cabinet was expected to take r.ction accordingly, but nothing happened, all the Government's att?ntion being apparently concentrated on an opportunely instigated railway strike. But the end of the Luxburg revelations, was not, yet. On October 28 messages from Rio de Janeiro were published in the Press of Buenos Aires, announcing that the Brazilian Minister for Foreign Affairs had confirmed the statement that the further deciphering of the ex-Minister's telegrams had revealed a plot for a German invasion of South Brazil. The Argentine Press thereupon de- manded that the reticence of the Government in regard to the Luxburg dispatches should cease and that it should either publish tho documents in full or authorize foreign Govern- ments to publish them. On November 11 these Brazilian intrigues were cheerfully dis- avowed by the Berlin Foreign Office. Herr von Kiihlmann's alacrity to disassociate the ex -Minister from all connexion with his Govern- ment betrayed Germany's desperate anxiety to avoid a rupture with Argentina, and Presi- dent Irigoyen was pleased to be able to place all responsibility upon Count Luxburg per- sonally. However, more was yet to come. On December 20 the State Department at Washington published a further batch of tele- grams, one of which revealed the fact, of international importance to South America, that Count Luxburg had induced the President of the Argentine Republic to endeavour to form a secret agreement with Chile and Bolivia, with a view to " a mutual rapprochement for their protection against North America." Indicative of the means which the Grman repre- sentative had employed for communicating with the Berlin Foreign Office, one of these dis- patches refers to his fear that his " secret wire " might havo been discovered. The secret agreement dispatch was as follows : August 1. The President has at last made up his mind to conclude secret agreement with Chile and Bolivia regarding a mutual rapprochement for protc < . tion vis-A-ris N. America before the Conference idt-n is taken up again. Sasuier, with friendly Under-Secret ary of State and full power, is en route to ... and Santiago. Statements by the Argentine Ministe- for Foreign Affairs and by the President of Chile denied the truth of Count Luxburg's state- ments in regard to the alleged negotiations, but public opinion remained uneasy and un- convinced. Meanwhile Count Luxburg's own position had become one of extreme discomfort. Unable to obtain a safe conduct for Europe, he first asked permission to reside at an THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 28 fflancia in the interior as a private citizen ; this was refused. Ho then endeavoured to make arrangements to go to Chile, but neither that country nor Uruguay nor Paraguay would receive the unwelcome guest. Finally, on October 7, he disappeared, and it was rumoured that he had left in a tug to join the steamer Reina Victoria Eugenia at the mouth of the River Plate for Spain. It subsequently transpired that he had attempted to escape into the interior ; he was arrested, brought back to Buenos Aires and interned (October 12) on the island of Martin Garcia, a result which The Times Correspondent at Buenos Aires attributed to " the pressure of popular indig- nation at his remaining in the country." Next, an Argentine citizen applied for a writ of habeas corpus for the ex-Minister, claiming his right to reside as a private individual in Argentina. Eventually, the British Govern- ment magnanimously granted him a safe conduct on condition that he should sail by the Dutch s.s. Hollandia in November for some country bordering on Germany. He was thereupon released from internment and restored to the German Legation pending his departure ; but the strain had been too great, even for a German diplomatist, and he was shortly afterwards admitted to a German hospital suffering from mental and nervous breakdown. Exit Luxburg, sunk, not without traces, by his own craft. The fashionable world and the clubs of Buenos Aires regretted the disappearance of one whose petulant outbursts of almost Kaiserlike tantrums had long been a source of innocent merriment to the community. A very different individual from the suave and studious Luxburg known to Peking diplomacy in former days was the mailed-fist-and-shining-sword individual developed in Buenos Aires by the bitter uses of adversity and the sense of increasing isola- tion. He endeavoured to console himself and his compatriots for the undignified help- lessness of their position by continual and cliildish protests on every conceivable ground, asserting his dignity at the Plaza Hotel (from which he refused to remove his unwelcome presence) by declining to use the lift in. company with any fellow guest of enemy nationality, and by many other similar displays of Teutonic temper. ANTI-GERMAN RIOTS IN BUENOS AIRES: THE GERMAN CLUB, WHICH WAS BURNT BY THE POPULACE. 24 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. At the close of the year 1917 the majority of the South American Republics had followed the example of the United States and officially declared their sympathy with the Allies. The two most notable exceptions were Argentina and Chile. In the latter country German influence had too long been firmly established in military, educational and clerical circles ; nevertheless, as has already been shown, this influence steadily declined, while that of the Entente increased, as the war revealed German KuUur in all its frightfulness. Popular senti- ment, here as in Argentina, had been converted to the cause of the Allies long before the third year of the war ; but the Government, power- fully swayed by Roman Catholic influence and by fear of German reprisals, adhered persistently to its policy of cautious neutrality. North America's entry into the war was not calculated to modify its attitude, for the reason that the United States have never been popular in Chile. To put the matter briefly, the Govern- ment at Santiago feared the United States more than Germany ; furthermore it showed itself to be extremely jealous of anything savouring of infringement on its independent initiative. In April 1917, the Chilean Govern- ment intimated through its Minister in London that it did not feel called upon to follow the example of the United States and Brazil for the reason that Chile's sovereign rights had not been attacked by Germany. If they were, Chile would be prompt to take suitable action. The tendencies of the official class were indicated, even at this period, by the fact that the Chilean Government appointed a German as its Con- sular representative at Tampico, a danger point of friction, and that its Consul-General in Mexico City was also a German. In June it declined to place armed guards on board the interned German ships, citing in support the example of Argentina. But even the Chilean administration was shaken by the depths of depravity and duplicity revealed in the Luxburg dispatches, and towards the close of the year there was evidence in the Press of ,-i growing sense of the disadvantages of national isolation. The action taken by the Peruvian Government, in severing relations with Ger- many (October 5), was not without weight at Santiago de Chile, for until the sinking of the barque Lorton, the attitude of Peru had been in all important respects similar to that of her neighbour. Nevertheless, at the end of 1917 the attitude of the Chilean Government remained to all appearances as it was when officially defined at the time of the United States entering the war, namely, that Chile would maintain her impartial neutrality so long as she was not the object of direct attack. At the beginning of the war the flagrant violations of Chilean neutrality committed by German warships in Chilean waters and the assistance rendered to these warships by vessels clearing from Chilean ports led to a situation which, had it developed, might easily have embroiled Chile with the Allies. But the action taken by the Chilean authorities in LOADING ORANGES ON THE PARANA* RIVER. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 25 suppressing the activities of German wireless stations and supply ships of the Kosmos line relieved the strain produced by earlier incidents: moreover, the spontaneous attacks by the crowd at Valparaiso on the German Consulate and Bank were a compensating feature. Even- URUGUAYAN GAUCHOS. tually the undeniable violation of Chilean territorial waters by the British squadron which sank the Dresden (March 14, 1915), close in shore off Juan Fernandez, was tacitly accepted on both sides as a squaring of accounts, fittingly terminated by Sir Edward Grey's ample apology. The Chilean Press expressed com- plete satisfaction with " the happy conclusion of the incident " and contrasted the British Government's prompt amende with Germany's failure to reply to five protests lodged by the Chilean Government between December 1914 and May 1915. Similarly, the Chilean Press strongly sup- ported the action of the United States in February 1917. According to The Times Correspondent at Valparaiso, the effect of the German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare was " to undo the work of 2J years of laboured propaganda." The Chilean Govern- ment defined its position in reply to Mr. Wilson's Note by declaring that " Germany's declaration implied a restriction of the rights of neutrals which could not be accepted." After the United States declaration of war the position of Chile became one of considerable difficulty, especially in view of the future of the nitrate trade with North America. Following upon several meetings of the Cabinet it was decided that Chile had no valid reasons to take separate action in support of the United States, while Argentina was obviously holding back. The attitude of the Chilean Government was likewise influenced by the fact that Germany held 2,500,000 of conversion funds and that she had confiscated Chilean iodine (just as she confiscated Brazilian coffee) in German handsi for which Chile could not hope to receive payment except in the shape of German ships. In Argentina at the beginning of the war there were several reasons to make prudent neutrality a popular policy. In the first place, the Argentine army had been trained by German officers and wore German uniforms, like the armies of Chile and Paraguay. Belief in German military power was therefore almost universal ; just as, thanks to the German A ROUGH ROAD IN ASUNCION, PARAGUAY. banks, was the belief in German trade organiza- tion The stout defence put up by invaded Belgium and the barbarities inflicted upon her brave people were the first factors in creating a definite anti -German feeling throughout Argentina. The shooting of Mr. Hummer, the Argentine Vice -Consul at Dinan, by the Germans increased this feeling. The Times Correspondent at Buenos Aires reported (October 9) that 26 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. there was much public irritation at the Govern - ment s failure to obtain satisfaction for this < it it rage, and "it was feared that the inactivity of the Government might give rise to a wrong impression abroad." Unfortunately, many sub- sequent events tended to create the impression, especially after the election of Senor Hip6!ito DR. FELICIANO VIERA, President of Uruguay. Irigoyen to the Presiden&y (June 12, 1916), that public opinion in Argentina does not exercise the driving power or the influence in public affairs which in theory it possesses, and this because of its cosmopolitan and conglomerate nature. Moreover, as the atti- tude of Senor Irigoyen proved, the policy of Argentina is constitutionally inclined rather to base itself on the exigencies of the situation in South America than to take a wide view of worlil politics and international agreements. Rivalry with Brazil for the predominant posi- tion in the Southern Continent has been, and re- mains, a determinant factor of Argentine policy, mid the fact that Brazil is more American- i/.ed than Argentina affords in itself a partia.1 explanation of the latter's refusal to follow the lead of the United States against Germany. Finally, there can be no doubt that to the Clerical influences brought to bear upon Presi- ilen Irigoyen anil some of his iwlvisers must be HHcritx-d in great measure his disregard of tli" sentiments unmistakably expressed by the majority of his countrymen and of the advice of Congress. At certain moments in 1917 the attitude of his Government seemed to be wavering, in tho face of some particularly strong demonstration of public irritation (as after the sinking of the Monte Protegido), but on each occasion Germany was prompt to save the face of the Government and to enable it to DR. MANUEL FRANCO, President of Paraguay. justify its passivity by apparently graceful concessions. The Argentine reply to Germany's declaration of indiscriminate submarine warfare expressed regret that the Emperor should have deemed it necessary to adopt such extreme measures, but added that " the Republic's conduct would continue to be based on the fundamental principles of international law " In subsequent conversation with the German representative, the Minister for Foreign Affairs explained that the Republic could not agree to the German blockade, and that it desired to reserve its freedom of action with a view to initiating peace negotiations, should occasion arise to avail itself, in fact, of the opportunity to secure the disputed leadership of South America. Public opinion was frankly disap- pointed and convinced that the original terms of the Note had been reduced to non-committal mildness by the President ; furthermore, that a splendid opportunity of establish'ng the solidarity of the leading South American Republics had been sacrificed to the desire to tvlmims er a rebuff to the United States. It THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 27 is of interest that at this juncture much German gold was being remitted to Buenos Aires from North America. On February 26 the Buenos Aires Press reported that the Argentine Government had taken the lead in a movement for joint action by the South American Republics to offer mediation to the belligerents and to discuss measures for the protection of thei own mutual interests. This idea of a Latin- American Conference, subsequently mooted on several occasions, was doomed to futility by reason of the conflicting interests and opinions of those concerned. At the end of 1917 even President Irigoyen appears to have recognized its hopelessness (at that date only Mexico had definitely promised to attend), but during the critical period after the United States' severance of relations with Germany it frequently served, !'.< Count Luxburg's dispatches show, to com- plicate the issues and to divert public attention. Brazil's rupture with Germany on April 11 created no little sensation in Buenos Aires. An official statement issued by the Argentine Government on the night of the 10th announced that the Government supported the position taken up by the United States in reference to > Germany ; this was followed by enthusiastic pro- Ally demonstrations in the capital. But those who thought that Argentina was now definitely committed to an attitude of active sympathy for the cause of the Allies were speedily un- deceived ; on the 16th the German representa- tive lodged a protest against the demonstrations which had taken place (in which the German Legation and Consulate had been attacked) after SOUTH AMERICAN AGRICULTURE: PLOUGHING UP ESPARTILLO GRASS FOR WHEAT-SOWING. 23 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAE. the M. 111(0 Protegido inciden . The Argentine r-.i\vrniiieiit replied by demanding an explana- ii. in through i(s Minister in Berlin; Germany (hereupon agreed to make reparation and to salute the Argentine flag. Honour was thus satisfied, and, in the words of The Thin'* Correspondent at Buenos Aires, " discussion of the project for a South American Conference temporarily overshadowed the Monte Protegido incident." During May and June the Argentine Govern- ment's attitude continued to give evidence of decidedly benevolent tendencies towards Ger- many. Its action in placing an embargo on wheat exports was so obviously directed against Great Britain and her Allies that it evoked a threat from the United States to prohibit shipments of coal to Argentina, and the British Minister at Buenos Aires advised the diversion of British shipping from Argentine ports. Karly in June permission was granted for the establishment of a wireless telegraph station to provide direct communication between Argentina and Germany. The first week of July, however, brought the sinking of two more Argentine vessels by German submarines, the Oriana and the Toro, followed by a fresh out- burst of public indignation. Negotiations with Germany ensued ; in a Note dispatched on July 4 the Republic demanded guarantees that the Argentine flag would hencefortli be respected wherever found, and, as Germany evaded the issue, a categorical Note was sent to Berlin early in August. On August 26 Germany's friends at Buenos Aires, led by Senor Demaria, President of the Chamber, and a group of Catholic deputies, came forward and submitted a manifesto to the President, urging maintenance of Argentina's neutrality and supporting the Pope's peace movement. Two days later Germany's reply to the Argen- tine Note promised compensation in the Toro case, and the Government hastened to proclaim the result as a triumph of diplomacy for the Republic. Then came the Luxburg dispateln--. revealing the manner in which Senor Irigojvn and his advisers had been cajoled and tin- Argentine people duped, with the results already recorded. On September 25 The Times Correspondent at Buenos Aires (assum- ing a breach with Germany to be inevitable) telegraphed a report that the Government's naval and military mobilizations were probably being made with a view to sending a contingent to Europe ; on the other hand, they might only be intended to deal with the railway strike. On the 27th he described the anti- German demonstration of the previous day RIO DE JANEIRO: A PRO-WAR PROCESSION IN THE AVENIDA CENTRAL IN 1917 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 29 THE CAPITOL, BUENOS AIRES: THE SEAT OF THE ARGENTINE LEGISLATURE. as overwhelming proof of the strength of public opinion ; it was emphasized by similar demon- strations in Uruguay and Paraguay, both these States evidently expecting Argentina to take the lead at last. But President Irigoyen was not to be shaken from his policy of inaction either by votes of the Chamber or by other manifestations of the will of the people. On the contrary, he proceeded to convert the inter- national situation into a question of party politics and to make support of his neutrality a test of loyalty for the Radical Party which had elected him to office. Even Uruguay's severance of relations with Germany (October 7) failed to move him, though its effect upon the amour propre of his countrymen was un- mistakably reflected in the Buenos Aires Press. As one Republic after another took independent action in support of the fundamental ideals of civilization, Senor Irigoyen's hope of forming a South American League of Neutrals was reduced to undignified futility. Early in October there were rumours of grave dissensions and resignations In his Cabinet. Nevertheless, the President remained firm in his policy of neutrality. Thus matters stood at the close of the year, Argentina, the " leading " Republic, lagging behind the flowing tide of South American sentiment in a backwater of oppor- tunism. The Republic of Venezuela declined to take any action in regard to Germany's submarine campaign in February 1917, although strongly urged to do so by the United States Government on the curious ground that the Venezuelan Government had received no direct communica- tion from Germany in the matter. The Presidential message on the subject contained nothing more than platitudinous expressions of goodwill towards men. But the internal con- dition of Venezuelan politics in 1916-17 was of a nature to preclude any reasonable hope of .the country's achieving an enlightened foreign policy. Indeed, towards the end of 1917 it seemed more than probable that President Gomez's cup of wickedness must overflow and necessitate forcible intervention by the United States for the protection of life and property and the maintenance of inter- national amenities. His regime of summary arrests, plunder and peculation became a matter of concern to the Allies in August 1917, when, by his orders, two newspapers favourable to the Entente and opposed to Venezuela's THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. SANTIAGO DE CHILE: THE CHILEAN NATIONAL CONGRESS BUILDING. maintenance of neutrality were arbitrarily suppressed. In June the ever-active Tele- funken Company were negotiating for the erection of a wireless station on an island off the Venezuelan coast. In fact, throughout all the politically distressful and morally back- ward region that lies to the north of the Amazon and on the shores of the Caribbean Sea Ger- many's agents were persistently active. The attitude of Ecuador, like that of Vene- zuela, was to a great extent determined at the outset by jealous susceptibilities and feara of interference in her internal affairs by the United States, especially as regards the vexed question of her financial obligations. The country suffered severely, aftqr the second year of the war, from lack of coal, as the result of which railway communications were frequently suspended. Public opinion, whenever it found expression after Brazil's declaration of war against Germany, was opposed to President Moreno's -policy of lukewarm neutrality, but its inclination towards the cause of the Allies was based more often on commercial and tin. MI,-,,, I grounds tliiiu on intelligent appre- intion of the moral issues of the European conflict. In 1917 a marked change took place, however, and in August the Government intimated its readiness to follow the example "f the fnited State- and Brazil if assured of facilities for the importation of jute, coal and money: Crent Britain was also asked to allow a eertaiu amount of e,,eiia to he imported from Ecuador into England. The Republic's rela- tions with Germany were finally severed on December 7. Throughout the rest of Central and South America the tide of public opinion turned decidedly against the Central Powers after February, 1917. Bolivia severed her relations with Germany on April 13, formally intimating her intention to support unreservedly the American policy of Brazil, where the German Minister had received his passports two days earlier. Bolivia had her own grounds of com- plaint against Germany by reason of the sinking of the Tubantia, attacked by a submarine in neutral waters. In February the Government announced its intention of supporting the policy of the United States, and organized a special mission to Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador to urge upon these Republics the advisability of joint action. After a long period of anxious hesitation, induced partly by fears of an armed German colonists' invasion from Southern Brazil, and partly by the example of Argentina's persistence in neutrality, the Republic of Uruguay severed its diplomatic and commercial relations with < Sermany on October 7, 1917. There was never, at any time, any real doubt as to the sym- pathies of this small but highly cultured and progressive State ; the cautious prudence of its Government during the earlier stages of the eonfliet was induced by traditional recognition T>f the country's highly vulnerable position. Because of its situation, as a buffer State between Argentina and Brazil, the foreign THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 31 policy of Uruguay has always been domin- ated by South American rather than inter- national considerations, and by a very natural desire to avoid doing anything at the instance of either of these rival States which might give umbrage and a cause of offence to the other. In the present instance, so long as Brazil's attitude remained undefined, it would have been folly for the Uruguayan SENOR JOSE PARDO, President of Peru. Government to declare for the Allies, and thus risk the possibility of an armed incursion of predatory Germans from over the Brazilian frontier. Moreover, apart from the local aspects of the problem, the Uruguayan Govern- ment hoped to obtain from England, France and Italy certain political advantages in return for following the example of the United States and Brazil, namely, the signature of a Treaty of Arbitration, originally proposed in 1914, whereby all disputes would be settled by arbi- tration and without diplomatic intervention. Until the visit of the United States squadron to Montevideo, at the end of July 1917, the Minister for Foreign Affairs was not disposed to revoke the Republic's neutrality Decrees in favour of the Allies, pending a satisfactory conclusion of this Treaty question. After the overwhelming demonstration of welcome given by the citizens of Montevideo to the American squadron it became evident that Uruguay would not wait much longer for the expected lead from Argentina. On October 15, a wed- after the severance of relations with Germany, the Government revoked its Decrees of neu- trality in favour of the Entente, to the manifest satisfaction of the nation. No specific reason was given to the German Minister for handing liim his passports ; it was generally stated by the Press to be due to the Government's desire to emphasize Pan-American solidarity and to emphasize the country's condemnation of Germany's methods of waging war. The joint GENERAL GOMEZ, President of Venezuela in 1917. resolution of both Houses of Congress in favour of the rupture of relations was adopted by 105 votes to 6. It is an interesting fact that the South American Republic which had attracted by far the largest number of German colonists, Brazil, should have been the first to declare war on Germany a fact which goes to show that the Teuton does not identify or ingratiate himself with the Latin country of his adoption. The large German settlements in the Southern States of Brazil Parana, Santa Catharina and Rio Grande do Sul had long been a source of anxiety to the Brazilian Government. Many thoughtful writers had drawn attention to the dangers arising from the imperium in imperio which 'they had gradually been allowed to create in these fertile provinces. Senor Garcia Calder6n in his work on " Latin America " pointed out that the 350,000 Germans estab- lished there " enjoy rights of self-government, despise the half-castes and negroes and live in aristocratic isolation." The German colonies were exponents of Deutschlum ; they had re- 32 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. MULE TEAM CARRYING WINE FROM SAN RAFAEL, ARGENTINA. tained the language, traditions, and prejudices of their native country. They proudly contrast the magnificent destinies of the Vaterland with the turbulent federalism of the Brazilian States. The colonization companies affiliated to the powerful and active banks (especially the " Deutsche Uberseeische") are extending the prosaic Teutonic hege- mony through Brazil and the whole of Latin America. Senhor Sylvio Romero, discussing the perils of the German expansion in A America Latino, in 1907, ad vised that the teaching of Portuguese be made compulsory in the German settlements' schools, that the creation of large land trusts be prohibited, that military colonies should be established in the threatened regions and indigenous centres created among the German settlers. German writers had justified these fears. One of them, Milkau, declared " we are effecting a new conquest, slow, persistent and pacific in the means employed, but terrible in its ambitious intention." Another (Hentz) prophesied that the Germans would eventually " kill off the sensual and foolish natives who have built up their societies upon the splendid soil and have degraded it by their turpitude." Small wonder that the "foolish native" '"..pared these truculent self-invited guests with the loyal citizenship and assimilative l'ity of the Italian settlers in th -ir midst. Even at Petropolis, the headquarters of diplo- macy near Rio, the German community was a law unto itself, its religion, education and poli- '""I aspirations supplied and controlled from 'l.n. A writer in The Time* pointed out at beginning of the war (September 22, 1914) 1 >"' tewteney <,f . h, ir organized system of peace- ful penetration. r!"", in ^"nany [he said] of the pohfcal asp.rat.ons towards the eventual possession of. at all events, the vast and fertile regions in the south of Brazil ; a map of " Antarctic Germany," comprising at least those territories, has already been published, if not at the instigation or with the approval, at least with the tacit sanction, of the German Government. All these dreams were based on the assump- tion that the United States would not take part in the war and that America would be unable to maintain the Monroe doctrine once Germany had reduced Europe to submission. The actual result of the war was to arouse the rulers and people of Brazil to their danger. They had learned the real significance of these German colonies in their midst and would no longer tolerate them on the old footing. German towns like Porto Alegre (the capital of Rio Grande do Sul) would either have to change their methods and manners to conform to Brazilian ideas of good citizenship or they would become centres of Teutonic emigration on a large scale. Owing to the insidious influences of German finance and the widespread ramifications of the German credit system in commerce, and also because of the general detachment of public opinion in Brazil from European affairs, which at the outset obscured the real causes and meaning of the war, the attitude of the average Brazilian during the first two years of the war was characterized by aloofness. But after the sinking of the Lusitania, all Germans were expelled from the Club Central at Rio ; there- after Portugal took her place with the Allies, and the main issues became clear to the Bra- zilian people, the artful piping of the German propagandist fell upon deaf ears, and the work of the patriotic LigapelosAlliados became more and more popular. As Germany's methods of THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. barbarism in warfare developed, sympathy with the Allies became more generally manifest. The German band, which continued to earn its livelihood by making music in the streets of Rio, had become tactfully cosmopolitan by the summer of 1916; its repertoire included the " Marseillaise " and even " Tipperary." That the Germans were wise in walking delicately DON JOSfi N. GUTIERREZ GUERRA, President of Bolivia. was shown by the outbursts of popular feeling which took place after the United States' declaration of war serious anti-German riots occurred at Porto Alegre and Sao Paolo in April and by the increasing evidence of public dissatisfaction with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Lauro Miiller, whose German extraction and proclivities were continually attacked until his resignation (May 2, 1917). After the sinking of the Parana, the Liga pelos Alliados urged the confiscation of all arms held by the Confederation of German Rifle Clubs in South Brazil and the establishment of perma- nent supervision over all German residents. The position of the Brazilian Government in regard to the war and the expression of its active sympathy for the cause of the Allies were affected by several considerations upon which little stress was laid by the Brazilian Press. There was not only the traditional rivalry between Argentina and Brazil to be taken into account ; inter-State rivalries and jealousies within the Republic frequently proved detrimental to the expression of a united national policy. Thus, for example, when the proposal to sever relations with Germany came to the front in April 1917, the State of Sao Paolo was not at first prepared to support it unless Great Britain and her Allies would undertake to guarantee payment of the sum of 6,000,000 due to the Sao Paolo Treasury by Germany for coffee seized at Hamburg and Antwerp. Moreover, certain political representatives of this rich and powerful State were opposed to supporting Great Britain, on the ground that the British embargo on coffee had been imposed with the object of coercing Brazil, and that to submit DR. JOS6 VICENTE CONCHA, President of Colombia. to this embargo was therefore inconsistent with the nation's dignity ; in the same way they were opposed to the seizure of the German ships interned in Brazilian harbours, on the ground that it would afford Germany a pretext for refusing to pay for the requisitioned coffee. Dr. Lauro Miiller, to give him his due, was by no means the principal creator of the difficulties with which the pro-Ally element in the Govern- ment had to contend ; in fact, his German supporters in his native State of Santa Catharina attacked him just as fiercely for his lack of proper German feelings as his enemies did for 54 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. S H a S H H O S z a a a H K 3 -3 O M B H en - Z w j N THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAE. his pro-German tendencies fair evidence that as Foreign Minister he did his best to play an impossible part. The President of the Republic, Dr. Wenceslao Braz, was for a long time opposed to severing relations with Germany in fact, until public opinion became too strong for him. His attitude was influenced, no doubt, by tactful regard for the critical finan- cial condition of the Republic (currency depre- ciation had reached 55 per cent, in February 1917) and by his anxiety to avoid all appearance of allowing Brazilian policy to be dictated, or even suggested, from, the outside. After the sinking of the Brazilian steamer, Parana (April 4), State and party opinions alike gave way to a sense of the nation's dignity and responsibilities. In answering the German submarine Note on February 9, Brazil had announced her intention to hold Germany responsible for whatever consequences might ensue from these threats against neutral ship- ping. Discussing the sinking of the Parana, with the loss of several of her crew, the Minister for Foreign Affairs at Rio said : " The whole world has seen how prudent Brazil's attitude has ben in the past ; it shall now see how firm her attitude will be in the future." After a Cabinet meeting held on April 9, the President declared himself " determined to act with the spirit demanded by the national dignity." The German Minister received his passports on the llth. His proposal to discuss com- pensation for the loss of the Parana was ignored. The Brazilian Press was by no means satisfied with the severance of diplomatic relations ; even the semi-official O Paz was in favour of war with Germany. But six months were to elapse before the Government was prepared to take this step. In the opinion of the executive at the end of April the situation was considered equivalent to a state of war, but it was left to Congress to decree this state and to put it into execution. On May 22 the Chtimber of Deputies revoked the Decree of April 23 whereby Brazil had proclaimed her neutrality as between the United States and the Central Powers. On June 2 the Govern- ment took possession of 45 German vessels (235,191 tons) interned in Brazilian ports. At this time Senhor Nilo Pecanha, a former President of the Republic, had succeeded Dr. Lauro Miiller as Minister for Foreign Affairs. His policy was frankly pro-Ally, but he found himself confronted, as his predecessor had been, by a strong agitation against Great Britain's embargo on coffee, Brazil's chief export staple. There is no doubt that had it not been for this agitation, and for the financial difficulties created by the drastic limitation of coffee ship- ments, Brazil would have joined the Allies much sooner than she did. At the end of July the coffee question was still a very vexed one, but the situation was relieved at the beginning of August when France removed her restrictions on the trade and arranged to purchase a year's supply. Great Britain was SENHOR NILO PEgANHA, Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs. also prepared to allow shipments to be resumed on the understanding that the German vessels should be used for the purpose, but the Brazilian Government was not disposed to accept this condition. Meanwhile preliminary negotiations had taken place with the United States, of a nature calculated to improve Brazil's financial position and prospects, their main object being to provide arrangements whereby the United States would assist Brazil with funds and expert advice in the reorganization and equip- ment of her dockyards, iron works and arsenals. On June 28 the Brazilian Government revoked the Decrees which had proclaimed its neutrality in the war between the Allies and Germany ; in official circles at Washington this step was regarded as implying Brazil's active participation in the war, especially as it was followed by an intimation that the Brazilian Navy (16 units) would cooperate with United States warships in patrol work on the South American coast. Without a formal declaration of war, the situation thus created was undeniably irregular. Senhor Pecanha explained it in May by saying that 86 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. " Brazil was not declaring war on anybody, but merely defending herself." But it was evii lent that this state of affairs could not be protracted indefinitely, even though Brazil might have no intention of sending any armed forces to Europe. The torpedoing of the Brazi- lian (ex -German) ship Macao off the Spanish coast on October 22 afforded good and final grounds for a formal declaration of war, which was accordingly proclaimed on the 26th. The vote in the Chamber was carried by 149 to 1. On November 3 a Presidential message to Congress advised, inter alia, the cancellation of all contracts with Germans, the control of all German banks and commercial firms and the internment of German suspects. Thus, as the result of her submarine campaign, Germany had destroyed all her long labour of years, all her far-reaching plans in Brazil, one of the most important of the countries overseas upon whose goodwill must depend her supplies of many raw materials in the lean years to come. Peru's attitude towards the belligerents on both sides during the first three years of the war was one of dignified and impartial neu- trality, in many respects similar to that adopted by her neighbour, Chile. The Peruvian Govern- ment's reply to the United States Note on the subject of Germany's submarine campaign in February 1917 was friendly but non-committal, and a similar attitude was adopted in reply to Brazil at the end of April, when that Republic communicated its severance of rela- tions with Germany. In both cases the Government's action was endorsed by public opinion. In June a proposal to place armed guards aboard the interned German ships (10 vessels, aggregating 42,000 tons) was negatived by the Government, following the example of Argentina. In September, however, the tor- pedoing of the Peruvian vessel Lorton and Germany's subsequent disregard of the Peruvian Government's ultimatum on the subject resulted in the severance of diplomatic relations (October 5) by a resolution in Con- gress, voted by 105 to 6. Peru's final opinion in regard to the war was shown by her agree- ment with Brazil in November to accept the Argentine Government's invitation to a South American Conference only on condition that Argentina should bind herself also to sever relations with Germany. In October she offered the hospitality of her harbours to His Majesty's ships. Of the Central American States, Panama severed her relations with Germany in April, 1917, President Valdez signing a proclamation on April 7 committing Panama unreservedly to the assistance of the United States in the defence of the Canal. Cuba declared war against Germany on the same day. Guatemala broke off relations on April 27, Honduras and Nicaragua, in May. and Haiti and San Domingo in June. In less than a year, by the display of her insolent indifference to international law and civilized usage in warfare, Germany solidified public opinion against her throughout the length and breadth of the South American continent, amongst nations which were destined by their peculiar economic advantages and resources to play no small part in the future history of the world. The wisdom of the Junker would have it so ; but the German nation was likely to repent at long leisure the Berseker folly which had made the name of Germany a byword from Panama to Patagonia. CHAPTER CCXXIII. THE WESTERN OFFENSIVES OF 1917 : BULLECOURT. SITUATION ON APRIL 17 THE GERMAN DEVASTATION APRIL 23 : BATTLE OF GAVRELLE FONTAINE ANALYSIS OF THREE DAYS' OPERATIONS RESULTS ACHIEVED APRIL 28 : ARLETJX COOPERA- TION WITH THE FRENCH MAY 3 : FRESNOY THE CAPTURE OF BULLTSCOURT THE AUSTRALIANS PREPARATIONS FOR THE BATTLE OF MESSINES SIR DOUGLAS HAIG'S STRATEGY. THE gains made by the British up to April 16 have been described in Chapter CCXX. On April 16 the sun at first shone brightly, but was soon obscured. Tor- rential rain descended, accompanied by a south-west gale. Notwithstanding the weather, fighting proceeded on the north and south of Lens, from which thick volumes of smoke were .seen rising. A fierce struggle raged round Hill 70, near Loos, and Home's men pushed their way through the mining suburb of St. Edouard, captured some machine guns and drew closer to the city along the Bethune road. South of Lens the enemy resisted stubbornly on the Arras road in the vicinity of the Culotte redoubt. Though Prince Rupprecht may not have fathomed Haig's intentions, it was no part of the British plan to squander the lives of his men in the centre of the mass of battered houses. Lens was not such a dangerous salient in the German as Ypres was in the British lines. The proper tactics were clearly to surround, not storm, the city, and meanwhile to deluge it with high explosives and gas shells. The weather continued bad through the night, and on the 17th there were short bursts of watery sunshine alternating with squalls of rain and snow, driven before a howling wind. 'Throughout the day encounters took place Vol. XV. Part 184 west and north-west of Lens, and along the region between Lens and Bullecourt our artillery kept up a tremendous bombardment which might or might not be the prelude to another pitched battle. This day a sergeant- major of the German 141st Regiment, lying in a hole before Vis en-Artois, a village on the road from Arras to Cambrai below the Scarpe Heights in the valley of the Cojeul, made an entry in his diary which is a striking comment on the discomfort which his countrymen had to suffer when driven out from the comfort- able lines they had held, and forced to remain in a new position composed mainly of holes made by the British shells. The diary complains : It is misery to be here ; the dogs at home are better off than we are. The 61st Regiment is said to have had heavy losses yesterday. Not half the men are left in some companies. It is a scandal that the troops who were here before gave up to the enemy such com- fortable, such beautifully built positions, while we have to lie out here in the open. The English are again bombard- ing the whole country with their artillery as if they were mad. South of the Bapaume-Cambrai road the British approached close on both sides of the Peronne-Cambrai railway at two points. During the previous night they had captured Tombois Farm, two miles east by south of Epehy, and they had gained ground along the spur north- cast of Epehy station on the railroad. Nearer 37 88 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. Cambrai on the 17th they progressed west of the railroad in the neighbourhood of Havrin- court Wood North of Lens our line started at the B^thune-Lens road, 600 yards north of the latter city, ran east of -the suburbs of St. Pierre and Jeanne d'Arc through Biaumont Wood to the Souchez river. Thence it went east of Cite Memicourt through the Petit Bois, over the Arras-Lens road, about a quarter of a mile south of La Coulotte. It then proceeded a mile south of Mericourt in the direction of the Scarpe, passing west of Arleux-en-Gohelle, Oppy and Gavrelle. The Scarpe was touched between Fampoux and Ro3ux. South of the river it twisted just east of Monchy-le-Preux and west of Gu6- mappe, descending into the valley of the Cojeul east of Wancourt and Heninel. From Heninel, over the low ground, it ran south- eastwards round the ends of the two German lines at Bullecourt and Queant, crossed the Bapaume-Cambrai road east of Boursies, and turned south, traversing the western and southern faces of Havrineourt Wood, and east of Gouzeaucourt, crossed the P6ronne-Cambrai chaussee. Next to the east of the Peronne- Cambrai railway it passed west of Goucho Wood to Tombois Farm, and between Hargi- court and Villeret struck southwards to Le Verguier. From the latter village it turned eastwards, approaching the Cambrai-St. Quen- tin high road at Fricourt and Fayet, and finally went back by Fraiicilly and Savy Wood, round the western environs of St. Quentin. Such was the situation on April 17 On the morning of the 18th, Home's troops captured some of the enemy's trenches south- east of Loos, and during the night of the 17th-18th Allenby's men gained ground north of the Scarpe in the direction of Rreux. South-west of Queant, near Lagnicourt, we also progressed, and in the morning of the 18th the village of Villers-Guislain, south-east of Gou- zeaucourt, between the Peronne-Cambrai rail- road and the Scheldt-Somme canal, was cap- tured. On the 19th, by which date the number of German guns captured since the 9th amounted to 228, we advanced slightly south-east of Loo?, east of Fampoux, and south of Monchy-le- Preux, but the heavy and continuous rain delayed our movements. Before assaulting the Oppy-Queant, Drocourt-Queant and Queant-St. Quentin lines, it was necessary to bring forward the heavy guns which had been so successful at the Battle of Vimy-Arras, but the effect of the rain on the roads and oil the ground devastated by the Germans retreating [Canadian War Records* ONCRETE FORT NEAR LENS DESTROYED BY CANADIAN ARTILLERY. THE TIMES H1STOEY OF THE WAE. 39 PIONEER RELIEF PARTY PASSING PIONEERS RETURNING FROM [Official photograph. THE TRENCHES. between Arras and St. Quentin rendered this a difficult and laborious operation. Friday, April 20, when the weather im- proved, was an uneventful day but for the fact that after dark the British dislodged the enemy from Gonnelieu, east of Gouzeaucourt and north of Villers-Guislain The village was on high ground ; on the south-east there was a drop of 75 ft. in 500 yards. Sunken roads, well fortified, protected the approaches, but nothing could withstand the impetuous charge of our soldiers. A number of prisoners were captured, and when the next day, Saturday, April 21, the enemy attempted to recapture this important post, he was caught by shell fire and retired precipitately, leaving behind him a trail of dead and wounded. The same day on the north bank of the Scarpe we edged towards Rceux, while our line was slightly advanced south-west of Lens, two German counter-attacks being beaten off. During Sunday, April 22, the fighting continued west and north-west of Lens, the enemy violently but fruitlessly counter-attacking. South of the Bapaume-Cambrai road we carried the southern portion of Trescault, a ruined village just east of Havrincourt Wood, which was by now almost isolated. The condition of Tres- cault may be gathered from a German soldier's letter, found on a prisoner, written while the " Hindenburg devastation " was being carried out.* To give you a picture of our situation I will go bar-h in my mind a few days to Trescault. It is 8 p.m. Our company has just returned from trench-digging. A beautiful scene is presented to our eyes. A little later there suddenly arise flames, and Trescault is 'Manchester Guardian, April 18. doomed to destruction. Everywhere explosions are heard. A terrific heat reaches us. Then we, too, are seized with the madness of destruction and set fire to everything. All Trescault is in flames, and a mar- vellous spectacle one which I shall never forget meets the eye. On a little hill stands the wonderful castle, spared by us till the last moment because we were quartered there. But the castle must go too, and quickly flames envelop it. Where before were a peaceful people and a flourishing village is now a heap of ruins. Far, indeed, did the destructive fury of the 230th extend, and we can scarcely be looked upon as soldiers. When we are up at the front it is as if we were the greatest criminals. Thus it is we do our work of des- truction in France. Picture to yourself how we live now not like men, but like beasts. Far and wide there are no trenches, only bare fields and stumps of trees growing where once man chosen .of God ploughed his field and worked for wife and child. That is our retirement and our part in it. My mind cannot dispel the dark thought that I shall not return. The obstacles encountered by Allenby's, Gough's and Rawlinson's forces moving across the region devastated by Hindenburg's orders rendered such incidents as the capture of Gonnelieu and Trescault very meritorious. A Times correspondent, on April 22, described what he saw when he paid a visit to the out- skirts of St. Quentin. I have spent the last two days at the south end of the battle front, working over new parts of the area recently evacuated by the enemy, and once more getting so close to St. Quentin that, though the air was thick, the details, not only of the Cathedral but of the other main buildings, were clearly visible. All the country through which I have passed is one indescribable scene of desolation, rapine, and wanton brutality, but I think that what fills one most with rage, amid all the havoc, are the ruins of the village and chateau of Caulaincourt. It was a princely estate, Caulaincourt, and lying in a hollow on the little stream of Omignon, it had, and could have, no strategic value. Before reaching the village, by the roadside, is a fine mortuary chapel, wherein, on tablets closing the entrances to the tombs, one reads the honours of the family, the head of which is the Marquis of Caulain- court and Duke of Vicenza. The ladies of the house. 184-2 40 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. a- one reads, were daughters of '' very high and very puissant seigneurs," and dames in waiting to Josephine and Marie-Louise. They read very .stately, these tablets of black marble, with gold lettering, and half of them have been wrenched out of place by the Him and lie ou the floor, exposing the tombs within, and you can see where coffins have been opened and imper- fectly screwed up again. Beyond in the village was a church, but nothing remains of it now. Out of the wreckage where it stood British hands have rescued and set up conspicuously [Official photograph. TOMB OF THE MILHEM - DEVAUX FAMILY IN VENDELLES CEMETERY, SACKED BY THE GERMANS. by the roadside one pathetic tablet which says : " Here lies the heart " (so it is worded) " of Anne Josephine Barandier, Marquise of Caulaincourt, Duchess of Vio?nza, etc.'* I say again that the destruction of this church, where the heart of the poor Duchess hoped to find peace, could have no possible military value. Nothing but pure ferocity dictated its destruction, and that of village and chateau. So noble a seat was the chateau that its ruins make almost a new Coliseum. It is destroyed to every wall of stable, outhouse, cottage, and belvedere as utterly < rage, armed with all modern explosives, could destroy. Among the acres of tumbled brick, showing the massive- ness of every building, whence one looks on the sweeping park and lovely artificial lake, one finds fragments of statues, carved lions' heads, and great vases broken and overturned. It fills one with bitter anger and Contempt. And from .efugees one hears how each successive batch of German officers who occupied the chateau took off what plunder from the priceless furnishings tapestries, pictures, and bric-d-brac pleased their fancy Layer by layer, the old chateau was denuded of every i thing of value, till at last the day came when lyddite torch did their last ignoble work. Of course, it is only the same as a hundred other things all over this nuntry, but I think none of us who has seen them will I to remember as the most brutal outrage of all tin- violation of the tombs and the wreckage of the chateau of the family of Caulaincourt. Beside it pales even the pathos of the Church of s-en-Chausee, with the graves evidently recentlv opencd m the churchyard and filled again hastily with tumbled clods, and whence again, from among ,1,, wreckage, British soldier, have gathered what thev .-mud-^uch as an iron crucifix, set leaning against a fragment of wa,,, an eag.e lectern, Mown by the ex,,,, sion out into the churchyard. Missals and other Holy books scorched by fire and warped by exposure in tho ruin. Of the other villages in this area there is little indi- vidually to be said. In Vraignes, although the church, if cracked and tottering, still stands, each building, even the poorest cottage, has been separately burned. Of Poeuilly, nothing remains but a litter of bricks and the tall crucifix at the cross-roads outside the village. The ancient earth ramparts of Vermand enclose only acres of ruin. Attilly is non-existent, us is Brie, which once must have been a very pleasant place on the high banks above the river, with an open tree-studded slope, between which once, doubtless, was the village park and the lovers' meeting place. I have threaded, also, the paths through Bois d'Holnon. paths made by the feet of German soldiers, which ran from one camping ground to another within the wood, and outside the wood on the St. Quentin side the cart tracks and hoof marks are deep in the softer ground of the little valley through which the German transport came up to the troops. The best thing about the wood is the large quantity of cut firewood nicely stacked in cords, which the enemy had provided for his own use and left behind. It is from beyond there that nowadays one gets the best view of St. Quentin, crowned by the great mass of [Official photograph. A VAULT RIFLED BY THE GERMANS. the church, with its curious bell-shaped tower over the lantern, and with all the lesser spires and factory chimneys and blocks of buildings. From where we were they say that on a clear day you can see individual Germans and machine-guns in the windows. Perhaps. We were content to have a day when, if we could not see the enemy, he could not see us. Externally, St. Quentin looks reasonably intact .is yet, but that is no indication of what it will be when it again becomes French. Reports through civilians, refugees from the neighbourhood, say that most things of value have long ago been removed from private houses and public buildings alike. The famous pastels of Quentin de la Tour are specifically mentioned as gone, as doubtless they would be. After seeing Caulaincourt. one realizes more than ever how nearly synonymous the words German officer and thief have come to be, and one wonders if, in the final settlement, each individual thief is to be punished and made to disgorge his swag. There can be no possible question that such outrages as these must find their place in the ultimate account, and in some measure the disgrace ought to be made personal to those responsible. On April 16, as we have seen in Chapter CCIX, the French on their part had commenced their main offensive on the Aisne, and shortly after that date the weather on the Arras front THE TIMES! HISTORY OF THE WAR. 41 GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUINS OF began to improve. Our preparations made more rapid progress, and we were ready to deliver our next attack on April 21. High winds and indifferent visibility persisted, how- ever, and so interfered with the work of our artillery and aeroplanes that it was found necessary to postpone operations for a further two days. Meanwhile there were frequent local fights, and our line was improved slightly r.t a number of points. On April 22 the Germfxn sergeant-major sta- t ioned at Vis-en- Artois, part of whose diary has already been quoted, made his last entry. " The English commenced," he said, '' an absolutely [Official photograph. THE CHATEAU OF CAULAINCOURT. dreadful artillery and machine-gun fire. Our men never got forward. It appears that our troops could not get back to our line and had to lie in the open till the evening. No one has any protection. Arras will certainly be an eternal memory to all. Everyone only asks to get out of it alive." The next day, Monday, April 23, the British attacked. The battle of Gavrelle-Fontaine-lez-Croisilles, which lasted three days, was not, as the German Staff mendaciously alleged in its communique, of April 24, " a great thrust in order to break through the German lines." Nor was it de- livered " on a front of 30 kilometres (20 miles)." ^Official photograph. RUINS OF THE CHATEAU OF CAULAINCOURT: BRITISH SOLDIERS CLEARING A PASSAGE FOR THE WATER. 42 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. CLEARING THE SCARPE OF FALLEN TREES. (Official photograph. It was equally untrue to state that fiphtine took place in " the western suburbs of Lens, Avion, and Oppy." Allenby's aim was more modest. Some nine miles of the lino from Gavrelle on the Arras-Douai road across the Scarpe near Roeux to Fontaine-lez-Croisilles was subjected to intensive treatment with high explosive shells of all calibres. Gavrelle and Roeux, the latter situated between the Arras-Douai railroad and the marshy Scarpe, Pelves across the river at the foot of the Scarpe Heights, the Sart and Vert Woods just below Monchy-le-Preux on those heights, Guemappe south of Monchy and the Arras-Cambrai chaussee on the eastern edge of the ridge were to be attacked from the west, while from the south we were to push down the undulating valley of the Sensed and its western tributary the Cojeul. The course of the Cojeul had already been secured as far as Wancourt, which lies just south-west of Guemappe, but on the right bank of the Sensee the enemy was strongly entrenched in Fontaine-lez-Croisilles three mile, or so south-east of Wancourt, and, iini-th of Fontaine, in C'hriisy. Where the Arras-C'ambrai road crossed the Sensee he held Vis-en-Artois on the left bank of the river and the high wooded ground north of the road and east of the stream. From Vis-en-Artois rein- forcements could be brought over the Cojeuf into Guemappe and the Sart and Vert woods. As the Drocourt-Queant line was not quite completed, Prince Rupprecht was not pre- pared to abandon these positions. He was fighting for time, and to gain it division after division was thrown 'into the battle. For example, between the Scarpe and Fontaine- lez-Croisilles, the fortified zone on his extreme left was held by the 35th Division (61st, 141st Pomeranian and 171st Regiments) which had just replaced the 18th Reserve Division. In the course of the fighting the division had to be withdrawn and the 13th Division sub- stituted for it. This in turn was so mauled that the 199th Division was sent to relie\e it- Siinilarly the 3rd Bavarian Division round Guemappe was, during the struggle, reinforced by the 4th Bavarian Division and the 3rd Guard Reserve Division, while in front of Monchy the 20th Wurtemburg Division had on the 25th to be deployed in Sart and Vert Woods. North of the Scarpe similar scenes were enacted. Before the battle ended the 4th Division of Prussian Guards and the 26th and 220th Divisions made their appearance, so important did it seem to the Gentian Higher THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 43 Command that Allenby should not get wit'iin striking distance of the Drocourt-Queant line. Moreover, though inferior to our own, the Ger- man artillery was considerably stronger than it had been at the opening of the fighting. Having but half-finished entrenchments to defend, the enemy was obliged to do his utmost to keep down the fire of our guns by counter- battery work. The atmosphere on April 22 had been pecu- liarly clear, and the British artillerymen, assisted by our intrepid airmen, had surpassed even the bombardment which had preceded the battle of Vimy-Arras. Throughout the bitterly cold night the guns thundered con- tinuously from the region of Loos to the west of St. Quentin. " This is no longer war," said an old Bavarian sergeant who lived through the battle only to be taken prisoner, " this is no longer wr,r, it is wholesale murder, for men cannot stand against guns." A similar lament burst from the lips of a Prussian lieutenant, who in excellent English apostro- phized his captors. " Why don't you fight fairly ? " he demanded, to which they naturally replied : " Why don't you ? " Under the pitiless hail of shells villages and farms crumbled away, " pill-boxes " vanished, the deepest dug-outs became death traps, and barbed wire entanglements were rent into shreds. At dawn on Monday, April 23, in bright spring sunshine, Allenby's men poured forward, Englishmen, Scotsmen and Newfoundlanders. It was St. George's day, the day of the year when Shakespeare, Froude and Allenby him- self had been born. Many of the soldiers wore red and white rosettes to commemorate the day. The poet and the imperialist historian, whose " Oceana " had made us realize the nature of the British Empire, would have seen in soldiers and leader worthy descendants of the Elizabethans who had defeated Spain and settled in Newfoundland. Tanks ac- companied the advance, breaking through obstacles and wiping out the fire from redoubts and trenches. To avoid confusion it will be well to treat the three-days battle in three parts, and to follow the fortunes of the British first on the left, next in the centre, and then on the right. It will not bo forgotten that Allenby's turning movement was directed, on the right, up the valley down which flows the Cojeul and the Serisee. So long as the part of the German line from Lons through Mericourt, Acheville, Fresnoy, Oppy to Gavrelle held, it was impos- sible to attack the enemy between Gavrelle and Guemappe from tho north. On all three days activity in the air was most marked, and Sir Douglas Haig observed [From a German photograph. GERMAN SOLDIERS CHANGING GUARD IN THE PLACE DE L'HOTEL DE VILLE, ST. QUENTIN. 44 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. that on the 23rrl " there was a greater amount of fighting in the air than has before taken place in a single day." Fifteen ( Jerman machines were destroyed, 24 driven down out of control and a twin-engine three-seater aeroplane captured. These aerial contests, in which the new German fighting machines with red wings took part, were well described by the Associated Press Correspondent at the British Headquarters. The intensely bitter ground fighting of the past two days has been reflected in the air. and the British Royal Flying Corps yesterday established a new record by bringing down 40 German machines. The remark- able part of yesterday's performance is that only two British machines are missing. It was the finest day's war flying that the young pilots in khaki ever had. One intrepid young flying man, failing to find a single German observation balloon aloft, sought out one in its hangar on the ground, dived at it, and set the big gasbag ablaze from stem to stern. A British pilot, after felling two German machines and all his ammunition being gone, descended, reloaded, filled up his petrol tanks and took the air again, and within half H'i hour had bagged his third machine for that day. Another pilot felled two others, 35 German machines being divided among a similar number of British pilots. The greatest fight yesterday, oddly enough, was a drawn battle. One of the British pilots met a brilliant German flier, and for a full hour they manoeuvred in the most marvellous manner without either being able to bring his gun to bear on the other. They rolled, looped, twisted, and deliberately stalled their engines, and, standing their machines on the tail end, slid backwards through the air, but all to no avail. It, was probably the most wonderful air duel the war 1ms yet seen. The British pilot reported to-day that <ev<-nil times he felt sure he would get his adversary between his sights, but the latter invariably wriggled out of the line of fire. The British airman was himself kept busy avoiding the German, and once he had to dive almost perpendicularly. The combat did not break off until both pilots had fairly exhausted both themselves and their petrol. Strangely enough, later in the daj' another British pilot encountered the ^ame German machine. He was winging his way borne after a hard day's work, but jockeyed with the German for nearly a quarter of an hour before flying on. In strange contrast to this was the experience of the British pilot who somewhat peevishly complained last night, "I ^nly got a rabbit." He explained this by saying that, while his opponent had a good machine, he was a clumsy fellow who could not fight at. all, and was sent spinning with the first burst of gunfire. Still another pilot, mounted on a fast new machine, deli- berately allowed a German machine to get on his tail. Then suddenly he looped behind his adversary, caught him just within the sights, i-iid fired, killing him instantly. The machine swerved, and the dead man was pitched out 10,000 ft. from the ground. An enemy machine was also shot, down by anti-aircraft gunners, and the day before seven kite balloons had been sent to the ground in flames. Railways, ammunition dumps, and aerodromes behind the German lines were treated with bombs, one on the 24th blowing an engine off the line and wrecking its train. On the same day seven enemy aeroplanes were destroyed, eight others driven down out of A SIGNAL-BOX DESTROYED BY SHELL FIRE, THE LEVERS THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 45 control, and two observation balloons were exploded. Our total losses in the two days fighting were eight machines, but on the 26th the balance was against us and we lost three machines to two of the enemy's destroyed and a third forced to descend. These exploits, it need hardly be observed, were not the only deeds of prowess performed by the modern Knight Errants. Our airmen discharged jets of bullets at the heads of the enemy moving across country, or along the north of Gavrelle reinforcing the garrison there. The attack on Rceux was a matter of greater difficulty because of the marshy ground in its vicinity and because the enemy on the south bank of the Scarpe and in Pelves could rake the approaches to the village on the Fampoux or British side. It was shielded also from the north by the embankment of the Arras-Douai railroad. Just outside Rceux on the Gavrelle road were strongly fortified chemical works in which were numerous mine throwers. These A TANK BESTRIDING A TRENCH. roads. Our aeroplanes had become flying machine-guns. The sector to be assaulted north of the Scarpe extended from Gavrelle over the Arras- Douai railroad to Rceux on the edge of the Scarpe. A cross-road connected the two villages. Gavrelle lay in the plain a couple of miles or so south-east of the southern end of the Vimy Ridge. Beyond it nearer to Douai was Fresnes, which, like Gavrelle, was on the chaussee from Arras to that city. From Rceux through PI ou vain a cross-road ran to Fresnes, beyond which there was a wood. Between Fresnes and Plouvain were a group of copses affording cover for counter-attacks, and a low ridge Greenland Hill ran from Plouvain north-westwards to the east of Gavrelle. Holding as we did the high Vimy ridge, we could prevent, by gun fire the enemy from Oppy works, the railway station and chateau, formed one fortress closely attached to the loopholed cemetery and ruined cottages of the village. On the main front of attack good progress was made at first at almost all points. By 10 a.m. the remainder of the high ground west of Cherisy had been captured by the attacking English brigades, and Scottish troops had pushed through Guemappe. East of Monchy- le-Preux British battalions seized the western slopes of the rising ground known as Infantry Hill. On their left English county troops had reached the buildings west of Rceux Station and gained the line of their objectives on the western slopes of Greenland Hill, north of the railway. Gavrelle was a typical example of a German fortified post one of the dug-outs there alone sheltered 60 men and four machine-guns but 46 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. before 10 a.m. on Monday, April 23, it \v;is taken by the Royal Xaval Division. Our men were not left in undisturbed I >< tssrssion. No less than five times on Monday, three times on Tuesday, and more than once during the night of Tuesday -Wednesday the enemy charged up the Arras-Douai road from Fresnes and its wood. As many as 6,000 men were employed in one counter-attack. All these attacks were completely crushed by our artillery barrage and machine -gun fire. In one instance only did a wave of Germans momen- tarily eject the British from the ruins. It was but a temporary success. A bayonet charge swiftly sent the enemy flying back towards Fresnes. When the battle died down swathes of German corpses lay between Gavrelle and Fresnes, while 500 -prisoners, including 17 officers, had been sent to the British rear. Simultaneously with the advance of the English on Gavrelle, Highland Territorials of the 51st Division, with more Highland troops (the staunch 9th Division) on their left, attacked the western outskirts of Ronix wood. They stormed the railway ' station, chemical works, and chateau, and even penetrated into the cemetery and the village, between which and Gavrelle the German line ran. But tha failure of our troops to storm Pelves across the river rendered the position of the Scotsmen in the village and cemetery untenable. Disputing every inch of the ruins and tombs they fell back and maintained themselves in the chemical works, which were successfully defended up tc the end of the battle. Between Gavrelle and Rceux desperate German counter-attacks in combination with the assaults on Gavrelle were beaten off. Wave after wave of infantry came over the low ridge and through the copses. Raked by our machine guns in Gavrelle and scattered by shrapnel, Brandenburgers and Hamburgers retired in confusion. Two battalions of the 161st Regiment of Rhinelanders massing for a counter-attack near the Arras-Douai railway were caught by our artillery fire ; one battalion was wiped out and the other so depleted that for practical purposes it may be said to have ceased to exist. During the afternoon counter- attacks in great force developed all along the line, and were repeated by the enemy with the utmost determination, regardless of the heavy losses inflicted by our fire. Many of these counter-attacks were repulsed after severe 'K -.-aw AWAITING THE ORDER TO ADVANCE. [Official photograph. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 47 [Drawn by Joseph Gray. A BRITISH BOMBING PARTY CLEARING A TRENCH NEAR RCEUX. fighting, but on our right our troops were ultimately compelled by weight of numbers to withdraw from the ridge west of Cherisy and from Guemappe. As soon as it was clear that the whole of our objectives for the 23rd April had not been gained, orders were issued to renew the advance at 6 p.m. In this attack Guemappc was retaken by men of the 15th Scottish Division, but farther south our troops were at once met by a counter-attack in force, and made no progress. Fighting of a more or less intermittent character continued in this area all through the night. It has been mentioned that Roeux could not be completely captured on the 23rd because the English county troops had been unable to oust the Germans from Pelves on the south bank of the Scarpe. It had been attacked at dawn by the 17th Division, which fought heroically with all advantage of the ground in the enemy's favour, but snipers and machine- gunners from hidden trenches thinned their ranks, and the repulse of the simultaneously delivered attack on the Vert and Sart Woods in front of Moiichy rendered it advisable to suspend the advance, as the enemy might have thrown himself on the flank of the British and driven them into the river. In the early morning of April 24 the enemy's resistance weakened all along the front attacked south of the Arras-Cambrai Road. Our troops were thus able to reach most of their objec- tives of the previous day without serious opposition After 24 hours of very fierce fighting, there- fore, in which the severity of the enemy's casualties were in proportion to the strength and determination of his numerous counter- attacks, we remained in possession of the villages of Guemappe and Gavrelle, as well as of the whole of the high ground overlooking Fontaine-lez-Croisilles and Cherisy. Very ap- preciable progress had also been made east of Monchy-le-Preux, on the left bank of the Scarpe, and on Greenland Hill. In the course of these operations of April 23 and 24 we captured a further 3,029 prisoners, including 56 officers, and a few guns. On the battle field, which remained in our possession, great numbers of German dead testified to the costliness of the enemy's obstinate defence. To the Vert and Sart Woods the Germans naturally attached great importance, as they prevented our men in and around Monchy from moving down the Scarpe Heights and turning Pelves. Redoubts on the Arras- Cambrai road enfiladed the Middlesex and Argyll and Sutherland companies endeavouring to eject the Germans from the woods ; never- theless, our men entered them, although the 184-3 48 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. greater part were obliged to fall back. But a considerable detachment of these men remained behind and were able to maintain their position. At 10 a.m. strong bodies of Rhinelanders emerged from the Vert Wood and counter- attacked. The grey lines with bayonets glitter- ing in the sunshine moved forward as if on parade. " It was so much like the pictures of war I saw as a child," said one young officer, " that we simply admired, and for a moinent for- got our real purpose. . . . The only comment I heard from one of my men was, ' I wish they had brought their bands with them ! ' ' They checked our advance, but were them- selves almost wiped out by the rifle fire of the Newfoundlanders and Worcesters of the 29th Division. Some 4,000 Germans who had been moved unperceived into the Sart Wood were detected by our airmen, and the British artillery with gas and other shells killed and wounded most, of them. In the afternoon the German guns began to bombard Monchy, which had hitherto been spared, doubtless in the hope that it might be retaken. First the roofs of the village disappeared, and then cottage after cottage vanished in great pink clouds Before bunset there was not a single wall standing. Fortunately the British were not within but on the outskirts of the village. At dawn on Tuesday they resumed the advance, and succeeded in rescuing the party of Middlesex Official photograph. OF HIGHLANDERS IN EARLY MORNING. and Argyll and Sutherlands who, with their 14 prisoners, had held out. Throughout the day the struggle before Monchy went on, each side being strongly reinforced. On Wednesday the 26th Wiirtemburger Division relieved the hard-pressed enemy in the Vert and Sart Woods. These were still in German hands when the battle closed. Between the Scarpe and the Arras-Oambrai ohaussee there had been a standstill. It was south of the highway that Allenby scored mo.st heavily. In the dim light which preceded sunrise on the 23rd, long loose lines of the Highlanders of the 15th Division followed the barrage down the Scarpe Heights and made for the ruins of Guemappe and the northern banks of the Cojeul. For nearly three hours they were engaged in extinguishing the fire from the numerous strong points in front of the village. Troops of the 3rd Bavarian Division offered a stubborn resistance, but, one by one, the nests of machine-guns were bombed and 200 prisoners taken. Then with loud shouts and cheers the impetuous Celts went through and beyond Guemappe. A blast of bullets from Cavalry Farm and some " pill-boxes " momentarily checked them, but the charge was driven home and the enemy flung back across the stream. Towards noon huge masses of Bavarians issuing from Vis-en- Artois massed in the valley between the Sensee and the Cojeul. An avalanche of shells de- scended on Cavalry Farm and Guemappe as the Bavarians forded the Cojeul to close with the Highlanders. Lewis guns, rifle and rifle THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. grenade fire tore rents in the waves of Germans ascending the ridge. Over the dead and wounded the survivors pressed on, Evacuating Cavalry Farm the Highlanders, with their faces to the foe, -slowly retired on Guemappe. In small groups they kept the Bavarians at bay. For four hours one officer with 70 men remained isolated north of the village. The cemetery was the scene of a terrible conflict. Officers could be seen working the machine guns or sniping at the enemy. In vain the German artillery ringed Guemappe with barrages, for a time completely isolating the village. The Bavarians were unable to overpower the brave garrison. At 6 p.m. fresh Highland troops dashed through the barrage from the direction of the Arras -Cambrai road. The Bavarians in the ruins were bayoneted or taken prisoners. Supported by their comrades whom they had come to support, the High- landers passed onwards ; Cavalry Farm was retaken and the enemy sullenly re-furded the Cojeul and sought refuge in Vis-en-Artois. On Tuesday and Wednesday the Bavarians, rein- forced by the 3rd Guard Reserve Division, made furious efforts to drive the Highlanders from Cavalry Farm and Guemappe. Cavalry Farm was recovered, but Guemappe, like Monchy to its north and Wancourt to its south-west, remained in British occupation. Another link in the German line had been gained. On the first night of the battle, in the un- dulating open country between the Cojeul and the Sensee, down which it was designed to turn the enemy, there had also been a long and bloody struggle. The British 21st, 30th, 33rd, and 50th Divisions were engaged in this southern sector of the attack. The enemy had constructed a cordon of trenches from the Cojeul, in the neighbourhood of Wancourt, to the Sensee, south of Fontaine lez-Croisilles Through both villages counter-attacks could be delivered against the right flank of the British pushing forward between the streams. At dawn on Monday we attacked the 141st Pomeranian Regiment of the 35th Reserve Division holding this arc of trenches and redoubts. The nerves of the Pomeranians had been shattered by the bombardment and they put up a poor resistance. Some 1,600 prisoners were captured and a battery of field guns. Pressing on, our men approached Fontaine-lez-Croisilles, the whole area about which was a very labyrinth of trench and (Official photograph. IN MONCHY. 50 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. fortified positions. At this moment parties of riflemen hidden in a disused cjtiarry or concealed in craters suddenly fired on our men from the rear, while a body of the enemy rushed at them from the village. The British retreated, but at 6 a.m. again charged up to the outskirts of Fontaine. At 7 p.m. columns of the Germans issued from Fontaine and Cherisy and once more our troops fell back. During the night and on the morning of Tuesday we, however, -again .advanced. First the German 13th Division and then the 199th Division were brought up to stem the tide. They succeeded in saving Fontaine-lez-Croisilles but were unable to regain the trenches and the tower, on which had once stood a windmill, occupied by the Pomeranians at the opening of the struggle. Such was the Battle of Gavrelle-Fontaine-lez- Croisilles. On the 24th the Kaiser sent the following message to Prince Rupprecht : The fresh British assault on the battlefield of Arras has been broken by your troops. To the heroes of Arras and their trustworthy leaders, who in capacity, ability, and success have equalled their comrades on the Aisne and in Champagne, I send mine and the Father- land's thanks. God help you further. WILHELM I.R. It was even more a perversion of the truth than usual. The " fresh British assault," which had not been delivered on " the battlefield of Arras " but miles to the east of that city, had resulted in the Germans losing two sections of the Oppy- Queant line and great numbers of killed, wounded, and prisoners While the battle was proceeding we had also captured on Monday most of Havrincourt Wood, and the remainder of the village of Trescault and Villers-Plouich and Beaucamp east of it, and gained ground east of Epehy, reaching the Scheldt-Somme Canal in the neighbourhood of Vend'huile. In the minor operations south-west of Lens Cornish troops established themselves on the railway loop east of Cit6 de Petits Bois, and succeeded in maintaining their position in spite of numerous hostile counter-attacks. On the night of April 24, the hamlet of Bilhem, north-east of Trescault, was also carried. On Friday, April 27, preparations for another thrust between Lens and the Scarpe were made. Our troops moved a little eastwards to the foot of the ridge, Greenland Hill. South of the Scarpe they dislodged the enemy from strong points on the Arras- 59 HOWITZER, MADE ON THE ,3th tSSSSSS* IN APRIL ON THE WESTERN FRONT. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 51 WANCOURT. [f rnic* official photograph Cainbrai road. During the preceding night we had ejected the enemy from quarries on the eastern outskirts of Hargicourt, nine miles north-west of St. Quentin, and we had defeated a minor attack near Foyet in the northern environs of that city. The strength of the opposition encountered in the course of this attack was in itself evidence that our offensive was fulfilling the part designed for it in the Allied plans. As the result of the fighting which had already taken place 12 German divisions had been with- drawn exhausted from the battle or were in process of relief. A month after the com- mencement of our offensive the number of German divisions so withdrawn had increased to 23. On the other hand, the strength of the enemy opposite our front compelled us for a time to adopt the less aggressive form of a wearing-down battle. On the Aisne and in Champagne, also, the French offensive had met with very obstinate resistance. It was becoming clear that many months of heavy fighting would be necessary before the enemy's troops could be reduced to a condition which would permit of a more rapid advance. None the less, very consider- able results had already been achieved, and our Allies continued their efforts against the long plateau north of the Aisne traversed by the Ohemin-des-Dames. In order to assist them, we arranged that, until their object had been attained, we would continue our operations about Arras. The necessary readjustment of troops, guns and material required to complete our preparations for our northern operations was accordingly postponed, and preparations were undertaken to repeat our attacks on the Arras front until the results of the French offensive should have become evident. The first of these attacks was delivered on April 28 on a front of about eight miles, north of Monchy-le-Preux. With a view to econo- mizing our troops, our objectives were shallow ; and for a like reason, and also in order to give the appearance of an attack on a more imposing scale, demonstrations were continued south- wards to the Arras-Cambrai road and north- wards to the Souchez River. The front attacked was smaller than in the battle of Gavrelle- Fontaine-lez-Croisilles. The Germans pre- tended that it measured nearly 19 whereas in reality it was about seven miles long. They also alleged that it was another " attempt to break through the German lines," which, on the face of it, was absurd, because Sir Douglas Haig would never have tried to storm the intact Qu6ant-Drocourt line, until he had made further gaps in the German line in front o^ it. Since the estimate (grossly exaggerated) of our losses given in the German communique of April 30 was only 6,000 killed and wounded, etc , and 1,000 prisoners, with 40 machine- guns taken and 10 Tanks* destroyed, the German staff was well aware that it was lying. It coujd not have seriously supposed that a battle on a front of 19 miles, delivered with the object of piercing two fortified zones, would have resulted in loss less than that * No Tanks were, as a lact, employed in this battle. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. suffered by us in 1915 at the action of Neuve Chapelle. It was with the object of clearing the way for an assault on the Queant-Drocourt positions that the battle was delivered, not in " great masses," as the German Staff asserted, small numbers only being employed and only con- centrated where serious attack was undertaken, The left of the British now rested on the Vimy- Acheville road, some 4,000 yards south of Avion, the southernmost quarter of the Lens mining district. As the enemy's line at Arleux-en- Gohelle was well to the west of Acheville to the north of that village, no attempt was made to storm Acheville. The British advanced to within 1,200 yards of Acheville and awaited the result of the fighting between Arleux and the Scarpe. At Oppy a trench ran northward along a crest round Arleux-en-Gohelle to Acheville, and behind, to the east of it, another trench con- nected Acheville, Fresnoy and Oppy. Our main efforts were directed to securing the external or western trench with the villages of Arleux (this was taken by the Canadians) and Oppy. Our possession of Gavrelle, which was attacked no less than seven times on April 28 and 29, and ground to its north, enabled us to attack Oppy from the south as well as from the west. Arleux, the buildings in which were still comparatively undamaged, consisted of a single straggling street, flanked by isolated groups of cottages with small gardens and orchards. Each of the cottages had been turned into a German redoubt. Wire entanglements of great width extended in front of the village. To its north three successive sunken roads had been wired and provided with numerous machine-gun posts. The ground before Arleux was undulating, and the attackers had to advance along two hollows, an intervening ridge hiding one column of assault from the other. Behind Arleux a long dip ran backwards towards Fresnoy and German machine-guns swept this open funnel. The lllth German Division defended the line from Arleux to Oppy. Unfortunately our gunners had not completely destroyed the wire, and the Canadian battalion deputed at dawn to storm Arleux found difficulty in advancing. Its left, delayed by the machine- guns in the sunken roads, was for a time held up. The centre and right, however, penetrated into the village, and, though losing heavily, reduced one by one the strongholds there Some 360 prisoners, including 7 officers, were captured, and when the last cottage fell the assaulting infantry was rejoined by the companies on tho left who had at last secured the sunken roads. Scarcely was this accomplished when the German artillery poured a deluge of shells on Arleux. Its buildings disappeared in clouds of red and yellow dust. Towards evening a violent counter-attack from Fresnoy was delivered against it ; it was repulsed and, when sun set, the Canadians were well east of Arleux in front of Fresnoy. Meanwhile at Oppy and in the wood which screened it an even fiercer struggle had been proceeding. In the branches of the trees platforms for machine-guns had been con- structed and the English troops could only move slowly and carefully through the wood to the village. At last the wood was cleared, but in the cottages there were desperate hand-to-hand conflicts. In the German background lines of motor -omnibuses could be seen racing for .Neuvireuil, whence streams of reinforcements were poured into Oppy and towards Gavrelle. Counter-attack succeeded counter-attack, and at nightfall we were still only on the outskirts of the village. Our advance, too, from Gavrelle on Oppy had been checked. Still the enemy's trenches for two miles north and south of Arleux-en-Gohelle and some posts north of Gavrelle had been secured. At the same time we had advanced up the western slopes of Greenland Hill between Gavrelle and Roeux, the troops engaged here being the 37th and 34th Divisions, which had already seen very hard fighting in the Arras-Vimy battle and were much under strength This ridge ran south- eastwards to the Arras-Douai railway near Plouvain, north-east of Roeux. Its capture would ensure the defeat of the Germans in Roeux. A thousand. yards east of the western edge of Greenland Hill was a small patch of woodland, known as Square Wood. The trench in front of it had been obliterated by our gunners, anJ^two companies of a London regiment crossed it and drove the German garrison out of the shattered trees. A thousand yards beyond was another and larger wood, called " Railway Copse." The Londoners, with both flanks in the air, made for it and forced the enemy to withdraw his guns on the western edge of the wood, entering which our men dug themselves in and waited for their comrades to line up with them. As these had had to halt to receive counter-attacks, the two companies fell back through Square Wood. In the meantime on their right a determined 54 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. effort had been made by other troops of the 37th Division to seize the crest of Greenland Hill Round the remains of a windmill on the crest charge followed charge, but at night- full the highest point above Plouvain still re- mained in German hands. While the stru.unlo swayed to and fro on the ridge, troops of the 34th Division from the Chemical Works flung themselves on the cemetery and ruins of Roeux, which, in the words of a British officer, " simply bristled with machine-guns." Some progress was made but the bulk of the village was not reduced. Across the Scarpe, under fire from the Roeux Wood on the north bank and from the Monchy region, the British drew a little nearer to Pelves, and between Pelves and Monchy-le Preux we slightly advanced out- line. In the course of the bloody fighting on the 28th an incident occurred worthy of mention. A Bavarian battalion, counter-attacking, ex- pelled some of our men from a captured trench. Pursuing blindly they were cut off by a body of Lincolns and North Country troops inferior to them in numbers. A terrible combat at handy- strokes ensued, with bayonet, clubbed rifle and even stones and flints The result was that the British practically destroyed the whole batta- lion, except some two or three prisoners. On Sunday, April 29, we increased our gains by taking a mile of the enemy's trench system south of Oppy. The Germans offered a stub- born resistance and delivered several unsuccess- ful counter-attacks. On April 30, the date when the Battle of Moronvilliers bad beer, renewed, the Germans counter-attacked between the Scarpe and Moiichy-le-Preux, but were completely repulsed and failed to recover the ground lost between Arleux and Gavrelle. The Oppy Wood was the scene of very severe fighting. During April 1917 the British had taken over 19,500 prisoners including over 400 officers, and captured 257 guns and howitzers, among them 98 heavy guns and howitzers, also 227 trench-mortars and 404 machine-guns. They had gained the Vimy Ridge and the Scarpe Heights. Nevertheless the area in front of any considerable section of the Wotan line (as the Germans called the Drocourt-Queant line) had not yet been cleared. To prevent Prince Rupprecht reinforcing the German Crown Prince's armies south of CANADIANS IN POSSESSION OF AN OLD GERMAN TRENCH THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 55 [Official photograph. CROSS-ROADS NEAR TINCOURT BLOWN UP BY THE GERMANS. Laon and north of Moronvilliers, Sir Douglas Haig on May 3 once more attacked. May 1, 1917, had beon uneventful. The next day, Wednesday, May 2, all our batteries rained projectiles from the south of Lens to the neigh- bourhood of Cambrai: The German guna replied fiercely. This artillery duel was the prelude to the Battle of Fresnoy-Bullecourt. The two preceding battles had brought us up to the Oppy-Queant line. In that about to be narrated the objective of Home and Allenby and Gough, whose Fifth Army cooperated on Allen- by's right, was to clear the enemy out of it from the north of Arleux across the Scarpe to Bulle- court where the line touched the devastated region.. The front assaulted measured con- siderably longer than had hitherto been the case. While the Third and First Armies attacked from Fontaine-lez-Croisilles to Fresnoy the Fifth Army was to move once more against the Hindenburg line in the neighbourhood of Bullecourt. The total distance was over 16 miles. Our preliminary bombardment was terrific. On the night of Wednesday, May 2, the whole sky was lighted up with the blaze of guns and of bursting shells. At 3.45 a.m. on Thursday. May 3, the advance began in the dark. It was, indeed, by the accident of weather, too dark. Our men had great difficulty in keeping direction. The number of troops used was small in proportion to the front attacked, and taken as a whole, the day was, perhaps, the least satisfactory of all the fighting in this area. 'r The attack penetrated the German positions practically along the whole front. Eastern county battalions entered Rceux and captured the German trenches south of Fresnoy. On the extreme left Home's Canadians from Arleux assaulted Fresnoy village ; on the extreme right Gough's Australians endeavoured to wedge themselves between Bullecourt and Queant, the southern terminus of the German line from Drocourt, while south of the Canadians and north of the Australians, battalions ot' English, Scottish, and Irish regiments threw themselves at the German entrenchments in the district traversed by the Scarpe between Arleux and Bullecourt. It was a day of hot sunshine, and the physical energies of the men were tried to their utmost. Fresnoy, defended by the German 15th Reserve Division (10th, 29th and 69th Regi- ments), was very strongly fortified and wired. Between the wire and Arleux the enemy put up a barrage of shells through which the Canadians who attacked here had to pass. Following our own barrage some of them rushed for the gaps in the entanglements, others tried to force the ruins from the north and south. Innumerable feats of veJour were performed. For example, one Canadian single- handed killed the crew of a machine-gun as it emerged from a dug out ; another Canadian when a Stokes bomb fell at his feet picked it up and flung it at a " pill-box." The Germans beat off the frontal attack bxit the flank attacks succeeded. Some 250 prisoners and eight officers were captured. The garrison in Fres- noy, which had been strengthened, made a sortie against our line an hour later and suffered very heavily. In the evening hostile infantry violently counter-attacked supported by an intense bombardment of heavy guns. Fighting of the most severe character ensued which raged during the afternoon and far into the night, and our troops were forced back from Rceux and Cherisy. They clung on, however, to Fresnoy and the Hindenburg line east of Bullecourt and to parts of the German trenches west of Fontaine-lez-Croisilles 56 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. II L^ -^~ '.f^^^-.J jChfry'WoVd ) 'f -_r'C Q loncHeust -?=y) XT' 1 1 "'">- ^ I ^~^^/^font3\n^ ^ "5 S-'- .// X- , . /C7 CrO'S>tles / <, ' j^vr . k. CMmcwt / P^J^%^ : \ "v^"' C-^O v j% -- * j MAP ILLUSTRATING THE FIGHTING AROUND BULLECOURT. and south of the Scarpe. These operations had given us 968 prisoners, of whom 29 were officers. While the enemy retained Oppy and Roeux it was impossible to advance on a wide front north of the Scarpe against this part of the German line. Of the two villages Oppy was the more exposed, because it was menaced by the British in Arleux to its north and in Gavrelle to its south. Roeux, on the other hand, was protected on the oouth by the Scarpe and by the Germans between the river and the Sart Wood. To the defence of Oppy Prince Rupprecht sent forward the Prussian 2nd and 1st Guard Reserve Divisions. The 2nd was disposed round Oppy ; the 1st confronted the British in the vicinity of Gavrelle. Before daybreak on May 3, English troops, after the guns had thinned the trees and demolished the entangle- ments in Oppy Wood, burst into it, and entered the street leading to Neuvireuil. They penetrated as far as the south-eastern end of Oppy, but were forced back by vigorous counter-attacks. The Prussian Guards had not been entirely cleared out of the wood. Many from platforms in- the trees poured jets of bullets from their machine guns ; the wrecked chateau in the wood had not been reduced. Attacked in flank from the south and south-east by masses of Prussian Guards our men slowly evacuated the village and \vooc I . Between Fresnoy and Oppy, however, some progress had been achieved, and the English had united up with the victorious Canadians. From Oppy to Gavrelle the ground, studded with " pill-boxes," had been the scene of desperate and prolonged righting. The wind- mill on the outskirts of Gavrelle, just north of the Arras-Douai road, changed hands no less than nine times. The Prussian Guards, issuing from the ruins of Manville Farm, north-e;vst of Fresnes, and from the Fresnes Woods, refused to abandon the brick-strewn mound, but at nightfall the British by a magnificent bayonet charge succeeded in securing this THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 57 coveted and long -disputed spot. The struggle between Fresnoy and Gavrelle had been in- decisive ; from Gavrelle over Greenland Hill to Roaux and Plouvain on the Scarpe the enemy also stubbornly maintained his position. The terrain was so churned up with shell craters that our troops could advance only with the greatest difficulty. In every crater were German snipers and machine-guns. At the end of the day we had not captured Roeux, but we had edged round it on three sides, and, in the afternoon, our artillery had inflicted heavy losses on two battalions of the enemy coming from Plouvain. Plouvain were fairly protected from fire across the river. It was with a view to rendering the position of the Germans between the Scarpe and the Arras-Cambrai road untenable that Allenby's right wing delivered its attack from Guemappe to Bullecourt. On May 3, Cavalry Farm, north- east of Gueinappe, was stormed, and our troops forced their way down the road to St. Rohart Factory on the Cojeul, about a mile west of Vis- . en-Artois. Just south of the road, the enemy were ensconced in a triangular patch of wood- land, called " Triangle Wood," and in three quarries joined up by tunnels with exits leading [Official photograph. BREAKING UP A GERMAN STRONGHOLD. South of the Scarpe, Allenby's troops on May 3 won several minor actions. They ad- vanced between the river and the Arras- Cambrai chaussee on the average about 500 yards, carrying " Infantry Hill." When sun set we were in Keeling Copse, 1,500 yards due south of Pelves, and our outposts were 300 yards west of the Vert Wood. The Sart and Vert Woods had been, throughout the day, converted into veritable infernos, the British gunners throwing streams of shells into them. But neither the woods nor Pelves was taken, and until they were, the Germans in Roeux and to the Sensee. The wood was slowly cleared and the garrisons of the quarries bombed into the open, where they were annihilated by a barrage. At this point the Sensee was crossed. Meantime our troops had assaulted Cherisy at dawn, from the banks of the Cojeul, west of the Sensee. Trench lines, heavily wired, and two sunken roads ran in front of the village. Overcoming all obstacles, the British troops burst over the ruins and reached the Sensee which was also crossed at this point. But a succession of German counter-attacks and powerful barrages obliged the British to retreat, THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 59 and Cherisy was recovered by the enemy. Simultaneously with the attack on Cherisy, other British troops had proceeded against Fontaine-lez-Croisilles on the east bank of the Sensee. The wood north of the village was gained, but in the ruins, in the sunken roads west of and in the trenches south and south- east of them, the enemy continued to hold his own. Prince Rupprecht was still fighting for time to complete the Queant -Droeourt line, and the Germans clung desperately to Fon- taine, the possession of which impeded our advance down the right bank of the Sensee. From Fontaine-lez-Croisilles the German forti- fied zone ran southwards, passing to the west of Bullecourt. Thence it proceeded south- eastwards to the west of Queant, where the junction was protected by a deep semi-circular system of trenches and wire entanglements of immense strength. On April 11, it will be remembered, Australian troops had broken the zone between Bullecourt and Queant, to the left of the junction. It was the first effort to use Tanks instead of artillery barrage in an assault, but only a dozen were employed, and they failed to make any impression upon the great fortress of Bullecourt, on the Australians' left, which was ,to have been stormed by British troops after the Tanks had given. the signal a signal which was either not given or not seen. Nearly surrounded, enfiladed from both sides, without much artillery support, and without communication trenches, the Australians were ordered back. This first peep into the much-vaunted Hindenburg line had been sufficient to prove its strength. But it was by no means un- conquerable. It could hot compare with the later " pill-box " and concrete redoubt system adopted by General Sixt von Armin in the north, which compelled on our part a strategy of limited offensives, and required in Flanders a policy of consistent steady thrusts. The Hindenburg line was little more than two lines of massive trenches, some 80 yards apart. Each line was heavily wired, and replete with deep dug-outs and shelters, but the British and Australian corps in the Somme country had so harried and hastened the retreat that the Germans had not had time to complete the system, and even as late as May no revetting had been done in the trenches. The fighting in this sector was judged of special importance. For it was hoped that the Fifth Army by breaking the Hindenburg line would cut off and capture the Germans as they were driven down from the north- west by Allunby. The end of April and the first days of May saw the completion of Gough's far-flung pre- parations for his section of the attack. Battery after battery had been driven or dragged over the devastated Somme region, and there were great accumulations of shells. Although the Fifth Army had moved 20 miles from it winter lines, a barrage probably without parallel on our side until that date, was arranged There was little time for the studied emplacement of guns, and detailed observation of enemy positions, which previous- ly at Vimy and later at Messines and Ypres, made destruction of defences certain ; it was a battle barrage under the conditions of the new war of movement, which Hindenburg's Somme retreat had brought into being. Yet it seemed to express the full meaning of Britain's vast efforts in the making of munitions. The " heavies " mercilessly pounded, for many days, the German defences and their covering wire-work. And when the barrage opened at dawn on May 3, it was like a rolling storm of projectiles. " Before the first grey light of the morning," wrote Mr. C. E. W. Bean, the Official Pross Correspondent with the Austra- lians, " guns for mile upon mile behind us, and to the north-west behind the British front as far as the eye could see, burst into a fire faster than the rolling of a kettle drum." This barrage continued without reduction for more than three hours. It showered destruction upon the Germans, rolling onwards to far beyond their trench system, whilst heavy guns pounded their back areas and the points where their -troops left the vehicles to march on foot to the front trenches. Varying fortunes attended the day. On the right half of General Gough's sector, the Fifth Corps dented the German lines, but did not get tlirough. On the left, the Second Australian Division fought through the whole system of defences, and awaited the fall of Bullecourt for a further advance. That evening it seemed that the great aim was to be achieved. Strong counter-attacks were expected, but the ultimate junction of Allenby's troops with the Australians would have enveloped a large German force, and another attack at dawn was ordered against the great impediment Bullecourt. That fortress was to become the centre of a 60 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. MI Hstro.n which raged for 13 days, and it is worth describing in detail. Wherever men of York, of Aberdeenshire, of Essex, tell of the deeds of their sons, Bulk-court will be on their lips ; in the lonely country homos and thriving cities of Australia, it is known with Gallipoli, Pozieres, and Passchendaele as a national battle-name. Its great strength lay in its concrete machine-gun emplacements and cellars, its deep tunnel through which reserves were constantly brought up, and in the tenacity of its defenders. Its few dozen cottages clustered with the Australian division at Riencourt, up the hill, towards which Victorian troops (Sixth Brigade) had already gone according to time-table. That they did not manage this was due to nothing that valour or death could achieve ; for in Bullecourt they had encountered a defensive position which with Thiepval will rank as one of the stoutest ever defended by German troops in France. The fighting of May 4 brought no change, and all hope of captures had to be given up. Counter-attacks pushed back the troops GETTING A HEAVY HOWITZER INTO between a large brick building at the south- western edge, and a refinery at the back. All Jay on the flat and almost treeless side of a hill, overlooking the Hindenburg line to the south, and hidden to the north by the rise of the slope. It jutted out, a sinister ravelin, in such a way as to seem ahead of the chosen line, like a solitary fortress ; but it was stiffly connected into the general defence, and a strong trench system ran round it. The 62nd Division had penetrated through this system on May 3, and had proved the merits of the late divisions of the New Army by storming many of the village defences. Isolated parties were in Bullecourt through- out the day ; some even reached the refinery across the Hindenburg line They were des- j>erately anxious to keep their appointment. [Official phntograpli, POSITION DURING THE ADVANCE. atCherisy and Fontaine-le/-0roisilles to their original line, and the attack on Bullecourt, which was not accompanied by heavy artillery fire, owing to the hope of saving the resolute British troops holding out in it, failed. The Australians had had a severe day and night. They had indeed several times been within an ace of that retirement to the old line which had become inevitable along other portions of the battle front. Their hold on the Hindenburg line was extraordinarily slender. Originally it was a mere 400-yard break marie by the 23rd and 24th Battalions (Victorian), whose third wave had passed on towards Riencourt before the failure of the attacks on Bullecourt had bee.i realized. The Fifth Brigade (New South Wales) which had advanced on the right of the Sixth, forming the extreme right flank in the THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 61 A BOMBARDMENT WITH HEAVY HOWITZERS IN PROGRESS. order of battle, had found the German lines held in great strength, and all those who reached it were killed. Part of the Brigade later joined their Victorian comrades, and with great dash bombed down the German trenches towards their first and second objectives. This work was continued by the Seventh and the First Brigades, and by night time the Austra- lians had secured all that portion of the Hinden- burg line marked out for them in the general scheme some 1,200 yards. More than half of this had been won by bombing, which was now the intensest form of hand-to-hand fighting on the Western front. Some Western Australian troops had also been sent against the south- western side of Bullecourt, to aid the 62nd Division ; the first wave was annihilated, and the orders to the others were countermanded. Throughout the night the Germans tried desperately to turn the Australians out of the line, and counter-attacks were numerous. The Australian position was like a large flower on a very slender stalk a single communication sap, bravely dug by the engineers during the first hours of the attack, being tho only link between the new positions and the old. The heaviest counter-attack was made at 10, and consisted of waves of " storm troops," who advanced from Bullecourt on the one side and from Quearit on the other. They used flame throwers, mortars and bombs, and were met with a hail of Stokes mortar-bombs and with cold steel The Australians' right was slowly driven in. The Germans reached even to the sap. They came on wave after wave ; the heroic survivors of the 23rd and 24th Bat- talions, which still clung to their gains of the morning, seemed doomed to isolation. " The precious grip on the Hindenburg line," wrote an Australian correspondent, " seemed to slacken and fail under mere weight of the enemy thrusts. Back at the railway embank- ment, the old Australian front line, every man was given a post of defence. The Brigadier seized a rifle. Eight hundred yards forward in the new line the word went round to retire. ' Who said retire ? ' said the men. ' None of our officers will say retire.' They resolved, these Victorians, to die where they stood rather than give up their gains. And it seemed at that moment that the choice had definitely come." The counter-attacks were beaten back before midnight, and during the day troops of the First Australian Division recovered by bombing all the lost ground. By the evening of May 4 tho battle had become a stern struggle for the retention of this pathway through the Hindenburg line. To the north the fighting simmered down ; the hope of great captures was abandoned. But here was the vital breach, through which further advance might become possible ; and the forthcoming events on the French front demanded that the full enemy strength should be kept employed. General Gough brought up the Seventh Division, which relieved the 62nd on the 62 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. Bullecourt front ; the remaining brigades of the First Australian Division moved up in support of the Second Australian Division, and General Hobbs's Fifth Australian Division was brought within striking distance. It was determined to take Bullecourt by a series of frontal assaults, and to hold at all costs the breach in the Hindenburg line to the right, despite the mass of artillery which the Germans were now concentrating on this solitary spot that some of the 62nd Division were still holding out, was commenced. Bullecourt changed shape visibly under our fire. During May 5 and 6, and indeed, though in lesser degree, throughout the remaining days of the battle, Bullecourt and the positions to the south were an inferno of explosions. The enemy barrages were little less fierce than our own, whilst our steady pounding of the ruined buildings cast a pall of dull reddish smoke over the battlefield. A strong assault was launched by Gordons ^Official photograph. A TRACTOR DISABLED BY THE ROUGHNESS OF THE ROAD. The battle of Fresnoy-Bullecourt had thus yielded appreciable results. Home's Cana- dians had secured Fresnoy. Birdwood's Aus- tralians had inserted themselves between the Oppy-Queant and the Drocourt-Queaht lines. On the first day we had taken ovar 900 prisoners, including 28 officers, and we had prevented Prince Rupprecht reinforcing the German Crown Prince, who, as described in Chapter CCIX, was successfully attacked on May 4, 5 and 6 by General Nivelle north of the Aisne. Some brave reconnoitring work by officers' patrols and aeroplane observation established the fact that all the life showing in Bullecourt was German. The drenching with heavy shells, which had been avoided in the hope of the 7th Division in the early morning of Monday, May 7. The 207th German Division had been brought up to defend it, and the fight- ing was stubborn. The Gordons penetrated into the ruins, and at the same time troops of the 1st Australian Division began to bomb down the trenches on .the western side. Since May 3 the Australian position had been fully exposed on each flank, the points where their occupation of the German system ended being marked only by sand-bag barricades. The Scottish troops, known everywhere amongst the Aus- tralians as " Jocks," clung to a line across the south-eastern corner of the village, and about noon that day the union of Scottish and Au- tralians took place in the Hindenburg line on THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 63 the south-western slope of Bullecourt, and a continuous front was established firmly from the pounded hillside to which the Australians had so tenaciously held. The Germans would not yet admit defeat. But in a supreme test of strength, in which they showed no lack of men, guns, or shells, they were being steadily thrust back off their highly-prized ground. Their leaders seemed apprehensive and nervous. They were not yet ready with the. Drocourt-Queant line, from one, and seeming to lurch forward and plunge into the next. It was well done, but it was irresistibly funny to watch. Our men stood on the parapet, and breast-high against it, with cigarettes in their mouths, and shot as they have seldom had the chance to shoot. The attackers were simply wiped out with rifle and machine-gun fire, though some got close to our line. They tried at the same time a bombing attack on the flank, and this was well countered by our Stokes guns." [Official photograph. A GERMAN OBSERVATION POST DESTROYED BY GUN-FIRE. according to the reports of our airmen, and they placed great importance upon regaining what they had lost near and in Bullecourt. By May 8 they had counter-attacked in this area no Jess than 13 times. New methods were em- ployed. An Australian general thus described a counter-attack in which shell holes were used : " It was for all the world like a school of seals. First the heads of a number of Ger- mans were seen in the sunken road, near Biencourt, to which some of our men had penetrated during the first minutes of the assault. The counter-attacking troops were forming up. Then they came over the top. They came, two or three hundred together, diving from shell-hole to shell-hole crawling By all the theory of war the Australians should have been thrown out of their position. A captured Prussian officer, who could not understand their venturing to retain so exposed a salient, spoke of them hopelessly as " those madmen from the Antipodes." But every yard gained in Bullecourt increased the area over which the Germans had to distribute their shells, and the linking up with the 7th Division firmly secured the left flank. By a second assault the 7th Division slightly increased their grip on the village, but for four days after the junction great efforts were still required to consolidate the position, defeat counter-attacks, and pre- pare for the assault planned for May 12 as 3 O U H X O iZ 03 H THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 05 At dawn on that day the village was assaulted from three sides. Gordon Highlanders and Devons dashed into the ruins from the west, .English troops from the south-west, and Australians from the south-east. The battle proceeded during this day and the next with all its old fury. The Australians' part was entrusted to the 15th Brigade (Victorians), who were so close to the German positions that an artillery preparation had to be dis- pensed with. There were in particular here two strong posts bristling with machine guns in concrete emplacements, and fenced with thick wire. Fearing to withdraw his men whilst artillery destroyed the entanglements, lest the Germans should occupy their old positions, Birdwood decided to rely wholly upon a hurricane fire with Stokes mortars. The fight was a lively one, but thoroughly successful. A heavy German barrage descended before the attack, and two sections of Stokes mortars were blown away or buried. The remaining guns, however, together with the larger trench mortars, provided an adequate though singular barrage. In and about one strong point there were 150 dead Germans, and those who survived seemed utterly cowed. The storming troops met a shower of bombs, but the Germans soon capitulated. Similar success on the other sides of the village brought the British line on Sunday, May 13, through the northern corner of Bulle- court, and all that remained to be done was the capture of a strong point near the refinery. Sunday we spent in repulsing counter-attacks and evicting the enemy from the cellars and dug-outs, and the gap in the Hindenburg line became nearly two miles in width. A final effort was made by Prince Rupprecht to re-establish it. On May 12 he had withdrawn the Lehr Regiment from the 3rd Guard Division, which opposed the Aus- tralians.* The regiment was one of the most famous in the Gorman Army. It was told that the honour of recovering the Hindenburg line was to belong to it, and that after the battle it would be sent to a pleasant resting place. Whether the " Cockchafers " the regiment's nickname at Potsdam and Berlin enjoyed the prospects which had been earned, * The Lehr Regiment consists of small detachments brought together from the various Prussian regiments to be trained together so as to ensure when they return to their units that they may impart instruction on identical lines. they were told, by their singular prowess on the Eastern Front is not related in the records of the prisoners afterwards taken. But they appear to have rehearsed the attack with great thoroughness. Aeroplane photo- graphs were taken of the Australian positions, and model trenches made for the rehearsals. The regiment went over the attack by day, and then by night. Little white screens were used to mar!c the distances, so that the men would by practice know almost by instinct the places they had reached. Every man was taught his exact duty in the attack. A great bombardment preceded this assault. All day on May 14 German artillery and mor- tars pounded the Australian line. At night the bombardment intensified, and an hour before dawn it became terrific. At 3.45 the " Cockchafers " advanced. They attacked the Australians from right flank, which was still in the air, to the junction with the 7th Division, whilst other specially trained troops advanced towards the British in Bullecourt itself. At this point the Germans had to come in frontal assault across level ground, and our garrison of London troops shot them down before they reached the trenches. On the right, however, where Australians 4 and Ger- mans were only 40 yards apart, severe hand- to-hand fighting took place. Mr. Bean wrote the following description of the " Cockchafers' " temporary success : One after another, four waves of dark figures attempted to rush over the tumbled earthen sea against the two ends of the trenches held by the Australians. A good part of them were mown down at once with bombs and machine- guns. A portion managed to struggle through towards our front trench, and the dark figures could be seen running along it and at once dropping in. But the attack was always utterly disorganized. Within two minutes of the assault having been begun, the results of alt this careful planning and practice had been thrown to the winds. All that remained of it was between two and three hundred Germans in a section of Australian trench, with scarcely any idea of where they were and what, was happening, machine -gun bullets sweeping above their heads and making any sort of movement utterly perilous. The Germans held their small gain for some three hours. None escaped. All were im- mediately cut off from their own line by a heavy barrage, which thundered down with fine precision behind them. Two counter- attacks, both launched straight at them across the top by the New South Wales garrison, accounted for the lot. The first counter- attack drove them into a small corner of the trenches ; the second, which was supported by Londoners, who temporarily took over part 66 THE TIMIM HISTORY OF THE WAR. of the Australian line, clcv.r.'.l them all up. This .M'unt.T-1'li'.st was delivered in broad dn.y- light, and it marked the finish of the Gorman ivsistanee in the battle of Bullecourt. Next day the last strong point on the battlefield \\-ns sri/ed by British troops. The prolonged battle for Bullecourt and for the consolidation of the conquered southern sector of the Oppy-Queant line had its main value in the distinct beating and hammering it inflicted upon Prince Rupprecht's army. As events turned out, the possession of Bullecourt was not made use of in further movement in this sector, for immediately upon the stoppage of the French offensive changes were made in the Allied plan, and the centre of the British actions moved farther to the north. Bvit Bulle- court tied German divisions to the sector during fateful days, it mauled them, and it had a distinct moral effect. It proved our definite capacity, despite massing of troops and guns, to advance into and even beyond the Hinden- burg line. During the battle of Fresnoy- Bullecourt and in the interval between it and the battle of Wytschaete-Messines, several incidents occurred deserving, of detailed notice. On Saturday, May 5, a day of great heat, when there was a haze so thick that from a height of 2,000 feet aviators could scarcely see the ground, five of our aeroplanes engaged a squadron of 27 German machines arranged in three formations, one of which had cut in behind the British fliers. For a full hour, from 5 to 6 p.m., the unequal combat proceeded, the enemy's anti- aircraft guns pouring shells upward through the haze to the danger of friend and foe alike. In the first few minutes one German machine was seen to fall in flames. Then another wenh down, turning over and over. A third was sent spinning down and crashed on the ground. Directly afterwards a British machine in trouble dived from 11,000 to 3,000 feat pursued by a German aeroplane. The pursuer was in his turn pursued and put out of action, and our machine righted itself, in the midst of exploding shells, and rejoined its comrades at the moment when still another German aviator was sent to his doom. Again a British machine, with its reserve petrol tank in flames, was obliged to descend and was pursued. It made its way towards our lines. A German aeroplane which <lived at it was mortally hit and dropped like a stone. Three more German aeroplanes wen- next disposed of, and the rest of the squadron, which was believed to be " von Billow's circus," * retired. The performance of our men was the more meritorious because, with the exception of the flight loader, few of them had had much experience of aerial fighting. The same day Captain Ball, the well-known aviator, fought two of his last successful fights. Having disposed of hostile machines he re- turned safely to his aerodrome. On Sunday, single-handed, he attacked four Albatross scouts of a new type, sent one to the ground and put the remaining three to flight. Saturday, May 5, was also memorable for the capture of a section of the German front line south of the Souchez river. On Sunday morning a counter-attack was beaten off. It was on the evening of Monday, May 7, that Captain Ball closed his career. Together with another machine he drove down a Hun aeroplane and then closed with four others. His comrade sent one crashing to the ground, but, wounded in the wrist, was forced to make for home. What exactly happened to Captain Ball has not yet transpired. He was in his 21st year ; he had accounted for some forty enemy machines in the course of his brief and heroic career and he met his death in glorious encounter. The next day, Tuesday, May 8, the Germans gained their first distinct success since the opening of the British offensive. Under cove r of a tremendous bombardment and clouds of a new poison gae, the 15th Reserve and the 4th Guard and 1st Guard Reserve Divisions assaulted the Canadian and English troops in and around Fresnoy. They were repulsed, but, later in the morning, an entirely fresh division, the 5th Bavarian, was flung in close formation at ovir weary men. Fresnoy and its Wood were lost. A few hours later part of the abandoned ground was recovered, but the village remained in the hands of the enemy . In the evening German attacks north of Fres- noy and north-east of Gavrelle collapsed. On Wednesday, May 9, there was violent fighting round Fresiioy. The next day, May 10, at nightfall, the Germans, encouraged by their recovery of Fresnoy, attacked Arleux and the British defences between that ruined village and the Souchez river. Columns and * There were two of these "circuses" at this date; the other was commanded by Captain Baron von Richt- hofen. Each comprised from 24 to 30 machines. They travelled along the front and were used at various points. Hen. -i- the name. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 67 waves of men were recklessly thrown forward, only to be thinned and checked by our guns and machine-guns. On the llth the attacks were renewed for three hours against our positions south of the Souchez. With flame- throwers the enemy succeeded in - driving us back, but all the trenches were recaptured in the afternoon by counter attacks. Meanwhile the loss of Fresnoy had been counterbalanced by the capture of most of Rceux. After a terrific bombardment on the evening of Friday, May 11, English, Scottish Haig was able to announce that the whole of Roeux was in the possession of the British. On May 16, in the morning, the enemy counter-attacked between Gavrelle and the Scarpe. The advance was preceded by one of the heaviest bombardments yet experienced by our men. Three several columns came on behind the German barrage. One moved' up the north bank of the river ; another between Roeux and the chemical works ; the third fol- lowed the embankment of the Douai- Arras .railway. The first two columns were smashed [Official photograph. COOKING DINNER AMID THE RUINS OF A CAPTURED VILLAGE. and Irish troops at last cleared the enemy, con- sisting chiefly of troops of the 4th Ersatz Division, out of the chemical works, the chateau, cemetery and western houses of the village. On the morning of Saturday, May 12, we continued our advance and carried the German positions on a front of about a mile and a half. Some 700 prisoners, including 11 officers, and a number of trench mortars and machine-guns, were captured. Simultaneously, south of the Scarpe along the Arras-Cambrai road, we stormed a German fort and pushed forward to a point about 1,500 yards east of Guemappe. On Monday, May 14, Sir Douglas by the British shells and bullets ; the third temporarily penetrated our lines, to be promptly evicted before many minutes had elapsed. A number of prisoners were left in our hands. North-west of Bullecourt, near Fontaine -lez- Croisilles, our troops the same day progressed a little on the left bank of the Sensee. The capture of Bullecourt was followed by a vieorous and successful blow aimed at the German lines between Bullecourt and Fontaine- lez-Croisilles. Shortly after 5 a.m. on Sunday, May 20, the day when the French finished the Battle of Moronvilliers by capturing Mt. Cornillet and its tunnel, English, including 68 TH1-: TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. Kentish, and Scottish, troops attacked the German 49th Reserve Division, consisting of the 225th, 226th and 228th Regiments. Our jznns had been relentlessly pounding the sector for several days, and the Germans on both sides of the Sensee offered little effective resistance. Some 3,000 yards of trenches and redoubts 600 yards west and 2,400 yards east f the river- were captured. A second attack in the early evening carried us forward into the enemy's support line, and involved the capture <>f the huge long tunnel beneath it. Con- structed by gangs of British and Russian prisoners and fitted with alcoves containing sleeping bunks, shelves for rifles and bomb supplies, and lighted by electricity, it had formed a valuable shelter for Germans, the loss of which involved a long part of the trenches connected with it. Over 200 prisoners had been secured in this operation. With the exception of a front of 2,000 yards adjoining Bullecourt on the north-west, the Germans npw retained nothing south of Fontaine-lez- Croisilles. The action on May 20, like that on the same day at Mt. Cornillet, virtually closed for the time being the Allied offensive between Lens nnd Auberive. From May 20, to the opening ' of the Battle of Wytsehaete-Messines, on June 7, little was accomplished on the British front in the Arras region. On the 23rd we successfully raided the enemy's lines south-east of ( iavrelle. Two days later (May 25) a portion of the enemy's front trench system south-east of Loos was secured with 25 prisoners, and counter-attacks north-east of Arleux and south- west of Fontaine-lez-Croisilles were repulsed. West and north-west of the last-named village we progressed slightly on Saturday, May 26, and on Sunday, May 27, when also, after dark, German raids south of Lens and north-west of Cherisy ended in our inflicting numerous casual - tics and taking prisoners. On the 27th several combats in the air occurred. We wrecked 12 and drove down 10 other machines out of contiol with a loss of three of our own aero- planes. One hostile machine was shot down by our anti-aircraft guns. During the night of May 29-30, more enemy raids near Fontaine- lez-Croisilles and west of Lens were repulsed. The next night a slight advance was made by us west of Cherisy. By that date, since May 1, we had captured 3,412 prisoners, including 68 officers, 1 field gun, 21 trench mortars, and 80 machine-guns. In the first days of June there was renewed PRISONERS AWAITING THEIR RATIONS. [Official pholr graph. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 69 [Official plh,t. graph. WORKING PARTIES FOLLOWING UP THE ADVANCE. liveliness. On the night of Friday, June 1, the Germans vigorously attacked a post south of Oppy, and on the night of Saturday, June 2 the Canadians west and south-west of Avion assaulted the enemy on a front of 2,000 yards south of the Souchez river, while the Germans attacked our line of advanced posts south-west of Cherisy. The moon that night shone brightly. By early dawn on June 3, the Canadians had taken the trenches garrisoned by troops of the 56th Bavarian Division, and also the ruins of the electric-light works, 500 yards south of the Souchez, a-id those of a so-called brewery on the Arras-Lens road TOO yards farther east. Over 100 prisoners had been made. The Canadians were, how- ever, not destined to hold the captured ground long. Numerous German guns east of Lens opened fire and waves of Germans advanced. By nightfall our men had been forced back to their original position. At Cherisy during the night of June 2-3, the enemy made some progress, but counter attacks drove him back and the last post won by him was retaken on the night of June 3-4. Twenty- four hours afterwards the electric-power station south of the Souchez river passed into our hands, and the next night (June 5-6) and on the morning of June 6, between Gavrelle and Rceux, we ejected the Germans from a milt- of trenches on the western slope of Greenland Hill, 162 prisoners (including 4 officers) being brought in. On the British front in less than a month there had been captured nearly 20,000 prisoners, including 400 officers. The gains in material amounted to 257 guns of which 98 were of large calibre, 464 machine guns, 227 trench mortars and immense quantities of other war material. While the fighting which followed the Battle of Fresnoy-Bullecourt proceeded between Lens and Bullecourt, nothing occurred of much moment north of the former and south of the latter. Apart from some small progress made north of Havrincourt Wood, north of Gonnelieu, north-east of Hargicourt, east of La Verguier and Gricourt a village between Le Verguier and St. Quentin within a few hundred yards of the Cambrai-St. Quentin ehaussee the British marked time arid consolidated their front in the devastated region. Between Lens and the Belgian coast several raids by British and Germans were reported in the neighbour- hoods of Ypres, Messines, Wytschaete, Ploeg- steert Wood, ArmentK'res, Neuve Chapellc and the battlefield of Loos. Whit Monday, May 28, was celebrated by our aeroplanes bombing St. Pierre Station at Ghent, the junction of the Bruges, Dixmude, 70 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAE. [Official photograph. A TIMBERED ROAD THROUGH A CAPTURED FRENCH VILLAGE. Courtrai, Oudenarde lines. The Kaiser and Hindenburg were in the waiting-room when at 8.45 p.m. our airmen appeared above the station Considerable damage was inflicted but the German Emperor and his suite escaped unscathed. On the night of June 4-5, the hostile shipping in Zeebrugge was successfully bombed and on Tuesday, June 5, our monitors shelled Ostend. The majority of the workshops in the dockyard were either wrecked or totally destroyed. The entrance gates to the dockyard basin, the wharf, the submarine shelter and a destroyer under repair were badly damaged. The next day (June 6), a squadron of naval aeroplanes hit a big shed at the aerodrome at Nieuwmun- ster, 15 miles from Blankenberghe. On that day a German ooldier on the Messines ridge wrote a letter, which was subsequently found by our men, the address of which was, " A Shell Hole in Hell." We are quite helpless against the English. Thirty men have been buried in mine galleries, and are burning into the bargain. Every day the English fetch over some of those in the front trench, or rather hole. What are the poor fellows to do ? Every one refuses to go to the frontline. We wait all night in immediate reading for action. We can no longer sit or lie down. Our heads ache from the gas. Our cigarettes taste of gas. The 23-centimetre steel shell would drive a lion mad and its effect is indescribable. Our artillery cannot fire in the daytime. Three days more and we shall go right up to the front line again for five days. We all look forward with joy to being made prisoners. We do not touch the hand grenades. It would be useless. Nowhere can a man be worse off, not even among Hottentots. Such a pitiful life no food, no drinking water all day, and the sun burns. At midnight dinner, and at 3 in the morning coffee, but not always, as in every act there is danger to- one's life. If we are not soon relieved we shall go mad ; we are already all muddled. He had only 24 hours to wait to find a stilf worse fate would overtake him, when on the opening day of the British attack he and thousands of his countrymen were blown sky- high by the mines which had been driven under their position. The above letter shows admirably the nature of the British preparations which preceded the battle delivered by Sir Herbert Plumer on June 7, against the German positions between Wytschaete and Messines on the eastern edge of the Mt. des Cats ridge. In the period just described the main opera- tions may be taken as terminating on May 5, which brought to an end the first half of General Haig's plan. The decisive action which it had been hoped might have resulted from the French advance had been proved to be impossible- THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 71 for a time, though the results obtained presaged well for the future. So far as the British gains were concerned our line had been pushed forward along 20, miles to a depth which at some points exceeded five miles and which everywhere represented a large and important conquest of enemy positions. We had snatched from his hold some 60 square miles of territory. The ground now held represented a very great improvement .'n our military position, compared with that at the commencement of the operations in question. The occupation of Vimy ridge had removed a constant menace to the security of our line and had turned what had been a danger to us into one which now threatened the enemy. His new lines from Oppy to Queant had been penetrated, and we were in a position to assume more active steps against him whenever we saw fit so to do. But for a time it was not necessary to press forward in this, quarter, and in accord- ance with his plan previously alluded to Sir Douglas Haig took the second step in the general advance of the British. General Sir Herbert Plumer, with the Second Army, was now to advance on June 7 against the Messines-Wytschaete Ridge. Its capture was of the highest importance, as it was a perpetual source of danger to our trenches in front of Ypres, which were completely dominated by it. Moreover, the Germans from these positions were able to see far over our lines farther north and to the west. The situation was analogous to what had been the case at the Vimy Ridge, but even more danger- ous to us. To conquer it was an indispensable postulate to the Flanders advance to be under- taken later. The British Commander-in-Chief had none too many troops at his disposal, and to obtain sufficient it was agreed that the French should again take over charge of part of the front which had been occupied by British on the Allies' left at the commencement of the year. This opera- tion was carried out without hindrance on May 20, by the French extending their front to the River Omignon. But something more was needed than a mere offensive against the line Messines-Wytschaete. It was necessary to keep the enemy fixed in front of the newly won positions, and so to attract attention as to render it impossible for him to judge from which que.rter the next blow was to be aimed. This was accomplished 1 [Official pltolograph. "PINE-APPLE" GRENADES LEFT BEHIND BY THE GERMANS IN THEIR HURRIED RETREAT. 72 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. Official photograph. CAVALRY TAKING THEIR HORSES TO WATER. by a carefully considered series of operations limited to a selected series of important objec- tives. They were to be attacked mainly by powerful artillery fire, the infantry being used on the most economical scale compatible with the proper carrying out of the objects to be attained. Here feigned attacks were made ; there others were undertaken beyond the immediate area of operations. The result was that the enemy was quite unable to determine from what point the new assault was to be delivered. The Germans naturally made the best they could out of the situation. In accordance with their habitual practice, every raid limited in character and from which our men were as a matter of course drawn back was magnified into a bloody repulse of enormous British forces. These existed only in the Teutonic imagination ; but they probably served to placate popular opinion in Germany. These various move- ments appear also to have puzzled the leaders of our enemy's forces, for although they knew attack was likely to come in the Messines Ridge direction, the attack was quite unexpected at the moment it was made. Yet there had been going on in that quarter a series of mining and coxmter-mining operations which could only be the prelude to a more definite attack. Of course, Sir Douglas Haig was unable to deny the gigantic successes claimed by the Germans it was not to his benefit to publish the details. But the various undertakings he had set going did their work, and oxir leader had no cause to complain of the campaign of German lying, which was a very feeble offset to the solid British successes which had been gained and were now about to be repeated on a larger scale. CHAPTER CCXXIV. THE WESTERN OFFENSIVES OF 1917 : MESSINES. THE GERMAN RIGHT IN JUNE, 1917 THE BRITISH OBJECTIVE PREPARATIONS FROM YPRES TO THE LYS THE FRONT OF ATTACK WYTSCHAETE MESSINES RIDGE SIXT VON ARMIN GENERAL, PLUMER MINING OPERATIONS AT THE RIDGE EXPLOSION OF THE MINES ON JUNE 7 THE ADVANCE MAJOR W. REDMOND CAPTURE OF THE RIDGK THE BRITISH VICTORY. IN earlier chapters we have seen the successes gained by the French from Craonhe-Reims to Moronvilliers, described the capture of the Vimy Ridge, and observed the reasons why the Messines ridge was to be the next objective of the British Forces. The more advanced positions which had been gained by the French were better suited for defence than those they had held before, but still were not favourable, for a time at any rate, for a further forward movement in that region. In front of the Vimy Ridge, which had resisted the attempts of Foch to take it in September 1915, but had now been stormed by the British, Sir Douglas Haig had decided for the present not to push forward into the plain of Douai or to fight a second Battle of Loos. Nor did he propose to attack the La Bassee salient, which, owing to the gains of the British at the Battle of Loos, was, like the salient of St. Mihiel, too narrow for Hindenburg to use as his base in an offensive westwards. From the western environs of La Bassee through Neuve Chapelle to Frelinghien on the Lys a belt of fortifications protected the British against an advance westwards of Prince Rupprecht's Army from the Aubers ridge, the northern face of the La Bassee promontory. Sir Douglas could, therefore, safely mass the Vol. XV. Part 185. 73 bulk of his available forces north of the Lys and fight a third Battle of Ypres. Now undoubtedly, from a strategical point of view, the most favourable direction for the Allies to deliver their main stroke was against the extreme German right in Belgium. For thi& it was a necessary preliminary to improve the British position at Ypres, pushing back the German trenches from the location they held which completely dominated our own. The aim of Joffre and French in 1914 at the first Battle of Ypres and at the Battle of the Yser had been to move on Ghent, so as to turn the right flank of the German Army. Met by an enormous superiority of men and guns, they had been forced to adopt the defensive. Tlianks largely to inundations, the Duke of Wiirtemberg's army had been baffled on the Yser and the Germans had been unable to force their way along the coast to Dunkirk and Calais. In June 1917 the enemy's outposts were in the Dunes, well east of Nieuport. Thence, southwards, by Dixmude, extended a lagoon to the edge of the forest of Houthulst north of Ypres and east of the canal which connects the Yser with the Lys. As the tongue of dry land between Nieuport and Ostend was of no great width and the enemy's coast batteries forbade a landing from the sea, the area in 74 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. j^W^^'^^^ "Ill/, Jv^^V y '" - ' l ',J|'."V>A.1 ,^-_>- '-' - &T .dtttUM ^ S^^PT*^ fe--S^^; ^isi?1^'JSSa^^^ :; -13 %% ^,. 'it X^av-^^^'^*^,,,^.^^- iranaen moieiviv \ U1 ,x ~" r, - v -^~/o r; 5. V\ a S?$ / \ ''^vMr-'IOf-iri ZillebekfT- & : .. $: :Ll^' ; ^-^ > *J^_. --.. s, ''\?<M&'ff. \ ?^3WJuriniJebe(.i>; T^|r; ;^t;"^^ "I Oosthoel^^^. ^--^v4" : ""V 1 '' 1 ' 1 ' ^^^".Sr^^'^^^ESSiTS^ ^3 m&.: ' ? V ^3>y ^gg^sf^^^ : ^%^.. X UJ^^^^olebe|^'^; Holi ;i \t|/\ ?^K \i^^ ffs^U A&:aftfc: ""^^A>\\.^ t B/ ? SffA^^^Sl^%FeT a SPrv^ ' - v...;^'K? ' ' .1 I IJ " it; soli i 'gi^ ^aS& ' .,fc- > - ,= _ \ . -- ?3\ ^k xV ^^SJS'^-", .. '^'3h\inn ^=^\\ //7 ' 7 "/;&, .,'n ~ m * dwrt^^'v-'Xa* < ^ -B ^ B ^ ^. ^ ,**. .'\y/ '"'' ' LCttWUl" ' ~n/P ,?'i" Vv ' "ff. ''".V.;. Inn','* -,"-S-,'- '- 1 '. ^ 'ill /-> V\ .( . v^sa'.v iKJ.mwmt ---- s* '** - w V:^hn ^^\^^^. \N ^^^^4Sx'|te-.l %5r;^'^''"^^Se 3^?\^^t?i ^^Sfe't-, ' ^SS/jW ^^V"' 7 '.*., fl iSS /W O-uen/Jmie?'..;:"\s** : ^*^ r \ ^v ^*r^^^:'v/;.4f ^X^V'- :; >-%X* v H^\ ^ ^C.^rV^^PlES^^i^^S, "'^v^ T \ -vV, f V Vl w*, r %,/ -At^-cA ".JHO^X N ^%>-' jL--*r \ \; ii- = = oJ|' v teifeS MN^JV osttavern^C^:= 50 1 .^V S.X. 1 AJ |^' = aVC l^^ffv*^ Houthe ^^_ ; > \'-- ,\ s ^3;^., ""%*;:' &} :..,,Gapaard^%^ ^m ^K'^\A^m''-^^^% ^^5^^^feksme8 " ^ i 5^^ FSrf 5^B8fe^5te5 \jLiPlusDouvcF'?' 1 v feeM " t yy ' ^*-*~ f ~*JL^ JtO/_/^^ Srtly \ // '""" 'i 1 "^ V '* 7/~^^**- ' "Frtl\ * ' 6 , ^^.^, 1 :^ -/ ^: '** \ ^"5-^v ^Q> - s^^ ^WARNETI MAP ILLUSTRATING THE BATTLE OF MESSINES. THE TIMES HISTOEY OF THE WAR. 75 which it was possible in the summer of 1917 to attack the Germans lay between the flooded region and Freliiighien on the Lys. This area was traversed by the canal known north of Ypres as the Yperlee and south of that city as the Ypres-Cornines canal. The Allies, at the end of the first Battle of Ypres, had retained a considerable salient east of these canals from near Steenstraate on the Yperlee, well south of the Forest of Honthulst, to a point north-west of Hollebeke. some three miles from Ypres on the canal which from Ypres evon on the western bank. The effect of these vintoward events was most unfortunate. The Ypres salient and Ypres itself had become shell traps v/hich had, it is true, been gallantly clung to, but which were intrinsically bad. It has been seen that the enemy possessed a footing on the Yser-Lys canal bank north of Ypres. South of Ypres, during the first battle of that name, he had fought his way up the wide valley between the canal and the eastern end of the Mont-dos-Cats range, almost up to St. Eloi, two and a half miles from Ypres ; [Official photograph. A FRENCH SOLDIER CARRYING A WOUNDED BRITISH COMRADE. enters the Lys at Cornines. This salient had been greatly reduced in size during tho second Battle of Ypres in April-May 1915, when, with the aid of poisonous gas, the Germans had temporarily broken our line. Near Holle- beke we had been driven from Hill 60, an earth heap formed from the cutting of the Ypres-Lille railroad ; we had had to abandon the woods, so celebrated in the first battle, on both sides of the road from Ypres to Menin and, further, to evacuate Broodseinde and also Xonnebeke on tho Ypres-Roulers railroad. Pushed back to about three miles from Ypres 'on the latter line, our front and that of the French, which had originally embraced Larige- marck and Pilkem on f.he Ypres-Staden- Thourout railway, had been withdrawn west- wards to the immediate vicinity of Ypres and to the Yperlee canal at Boesinghe. At some points north of Steenstraate the enemy were he had captured the woods north and west of Wytschaete and the end of the range from Wytschaete to Messines. From Messines his line went south over the Douve, a tributary which joins the Lys at Warueton. Since, apart from the hill of Cassel, south of Dunkirk, the eight mile long Mout-des-Cats, a range of abrupt, isolated elevations, contains the only considerable eminences in the vast plain between the Lys and the North Sea, the presence of the Germans at Wytschaete and Messines was a menace to the Allied forces in Flanders. Their communications with Ypres and the salient east of the canal were under observation and, at any moment, the Germans might take the offensive and endeavour to deprive us of Kemmel, the highest point of the Mont-des-Cats range. This, and the remainder of the range, secured, they would render untenable our lines north and south of 1852 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. THIRSTY SOLDIERS AROUND A WATER-CART. it and be in a . position again to strike at Dunkirk and Calais Before, then, it would be safe to break out from the Ypres salient, it was necessary to expel the enemy from his strongholds on the Mont-des-Cats range and also to compel him to abandoh a large part of the low, broken ground between it and the Ypres-Comines canal. From Wytschaete undulating but lower ground stretches north-eastwards to the Ypres-Menin road and then northwards past Passchendaele to Staden on the Ypres-Tho\irout-Bruges railway. If this rising ground could also be captured, it would form an advantageous step for the advance on Roulers and Ghent, and the position of the Germans towards Lille and south of it would also be menaced. Further, the British attack might ultimately turn the German defences 011 the Belgian coast so that they would be compelled to abandon it and give up Ostend and Zeebrugge, those bases for torpedo boats, light cruisers and submarines from wliich so much harm had been done to Allied shipping carrying food and raw materials to Great Britain. The plan of Sir Douglas Hale and General ri.-t.uiii was first to throw the British Second Army at the German salient south of Ypres, and to expel the enemy from the eastern end of the Mont-des-Cats range and the high ground north-east of it between Wytschaete and tho neighbourhood of " Hill 60," east of the Ypres- Comines canal. That being accomplished, the British Fifth Army, moved up from the south of Arras, supported on its left by a French Army under General Anthoine, the victor of Moroii- villiers, and on its right by the British Second Army, was in the autumn to debouch from the salient east of Ypres and endeavour to gain the high ground between " Hill 60 " and Staden. Since November 1916, when the plan of campaign for the next year had been settled at tho conference of military representatives of the Allied Powers, the preparations of the British in Flanders had been steadily pro- ceeding. The change of plans described iu the last chapter had delayed the offensive north of the Lys, and it was not till the prior demands of the operations round Arras had been satisfied that labour and material in sufficient quantities could be released. Tin- work of preparation was then swiftly carried to completion. At the opening of the war tin area behind the British front from Ypres THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 77 m CARTING STONES FOR ROAD-MAKING. , (Official photograph. to the Lys? had been served by only one railway, the trunk line from Calais to Lille by Armeri- tieres. At Hazebrouck, a line branched oft from it which, skirting the western end of the Mont-des-Cats range, connected Ypres with the railroads leading to Ostend, Bruges and Ghent. Between the first Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Virny-Arras these inadequate railway communications had been greatly supplemented, and in the subsequent weeks they developed to such an extent that behind our lines there existed, in the language of a war correspondent, " a series of Clapham Junctions, with broad gauge and narrow gauge trains, all as busy as a London terminus before a football Final." At the same time the roads and paths in the district were enlarged, metalled or extended. Forward dumps of material were made for the purpose of constructing new or reconstructing old thoroughfares in the crater-pitted region defended by the enemy. As the battle was to he fought in the summer, special precautions had to be taken to supply the assaulting infantry with water. Existing lakes were tapped, pits to catch rain-water were dug on the Moiit-des-Cats range round Kemmel, and the water of the Lys was pumped into barges and then sterilized. From lakes, pits and barges, pipe lines were taken forward and pro- vision made for their rapid extension in the event of victory. What was achieved by our engineers may be surmised from the fact that six days after the battle on June 15 from 450,000 to (500,000 gallons of water daily were being supplied to our men. Arrangements were also made for the trans- port of water, rations and stores by mules, horses, and men. So successful were they that during the attack water was delivered to the troops within 20 to 40 minutes of the taking of new positions, while in one case carrying parties arrived with .water and rations four minutes after the capture of an objective. It will be recollected that, before the Battle of Vimy-Arras, a plasticine model of the enemy's position had been constructed. A model, but on a larger scale covering more than an acre of ground, had also been made of the German linos. There, officers and men could study hour by hour miniature reproductions of the ruined villages, farms, inns and shattered woods Thanks to our airmen, most of the German trenches, redoubts and " pill-boxes '> Till-: TIME* ///STORY O.F THE WAR. were indicated on it The battle had been r.-hi -arsed bit by bit. Particular features on tin' model had been, in another place, on lurked In their natural si/.e and infantrymen carefully t ruined to act against them. The front selected for attack measured nearly 10 miles, from Mt, Sorrel to St. Yves. Our final objective was the Oosttaverne Line, which lay between these two points. Beginning t Mt. Sorrel, it extended south-westward* through "Hill 60" to the Ypres-Comines canal. West of the canal, it ran just south of St. Eloi and ascended to the Grand Bois north of Wytschaete. Skirting the western side of this wood, it went southwards well to the west of the village of Wytschaete (260 ft. high), which commanded the ruins of Ypres> and the whole of the British positions in the salient east of the Yser-Lys canal. North-east of Wulverghem the German line zig-zagged eastward down the valley of the Steeiiebeek a tributary of the Douve traversed this rivulet and, on the southern slopes of the spur of Messines, again turned southwards, crossed the Douve and ended east of St. Yves. Mes- sines, behind the German front, besides giving observers there a wide view of the valley of the Lys, enfiladed the British lines from the Douve to the Lys. The main road from Ypres to Armcntieres on the Lys passed through St. Eloi and crossed the Wytschaete-Messines ridge. From St. Eloi another chausee went east of the ridge, through the low ground between it and the Ypres-Comines canal to Warneton, also on the Lys. On this high road, level with Wytschaete, was the village of Oosttaverne, and level with Messines that of Gapaard. The villages of Hollebeke (north-east of Oosttaverne) and Houthem (north-east of Gapaard) on the western bank, the chateau of Hollebeke and the hamlet of Kortewilde on the eastern bank, barred an advance to the Lys along the canal, and beyond, or east of, the canal the famous broken and wooded ground round Klein-Zille- beke lay in the path of our men. In the sector of the arc between the Ypn-s- Menin road and the canal the most important features were Mount Sorrel and " Hill 60." The latter, since the Second Battle of Ypres, had been constantly attacked above and below the surface of the ground. The German position in this part was a mass of tunnels and redoubts. As " Hill 60 " was the most favourable of then- three artillery observation posts in the Ypres region, tin' (ieriiimis had used their best en- deavours to strengthen its defences. To give one instance, they had constructed a tiinbered gallery leading to a chamber 8 ft. high. The roof of this receptacle consisted of concrete 6 ft. thick in which were embedded masses of iron rails, rivetted solidly together. A flight of steps led up to a horizontal loophole in the outer wall, through which coukl be seen the whole of Ypres, the back of Mt. Sorrel and all our intricate mesh of trenches on the flank of the city. Between " Hill 60 " and the canal there were two spoil banks, one behind the other, very strongly prepared for defence. Beyond and on the edge of the canal and west of Hollebeke, was a park surrounded with a wood, "Battle \Vood" or "Ravine Wood." In this, opposite the second of the spoil banks, were the ruins of the Chateau Matthieu or White Chateau, once a fine mansion. In the park surrounding it a stream, in places 20 ft. broad, connected the canal with an artificial lake, south of which were the remains of some large stables. The timber in park and won: Is had been cut down and torn by shell fire, but the trunks and branches with the brick work still afforded some cover to the garrison, when it emerged from its underground shelters there. A straight road or drive, the Dainm Strasse, ran up from the White Chateau to Wytschaete. This road was partly sunken and partly, in front of St. Eloi, raised on an embankment half a mile long and some 15 ft. high. The sun- ken portion of the road was protected by deep concreted dug-outs, which sheltered the, neces- sary garrisons, while on the embankment were rows of " pill-boxes." In front of the Damm Strasse facing St. Eloi was the " Mound," a heap of earth, the spoil bank from a tunnel. This mound had been lost by the Canadians the year before. Its surface was now pitted with craters produced by our mines. South of the Damm Strasse were innumerable redoubts anil st retches of barbed wire. An inn on the side of the St. Eloi-Warneton road, called In de Sterkie, had been converted into a for- midable defence. Between the latter road and Wytschaete lay Oosttaverne Wood, honey- combed with dug-outs, while, nearer Warneton, the villages of Oosttaverne, Wambeke and Gapaard had been prepared for a stout defence by the enemy's engineers. Two chord positions had been constructed .south of the Damm Strasse. The first run THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 79 t .-l uslralian official pkotcgraph* PREPARATIONS FOR THE ADVANCE. Australians examining a large scale model of the battlefield. slightly to the east of Oosttaverne. The second a little more than a mile to the east of the first was known as the Warneton line, because it ended at that town. Both barriers would have to be dealt with by the British descending irmn St. Eloi to the Lys. From Wytschaete to the White Chateau and the Ypres-Comines canal stretched the Damm Strasse, with its belt of " pill-boxes." Between the Mound and the Grand Bois was a series of formidable defences with barbed-wire entangle- ments covering the Wytschaete end of the Wytschaete-Messines ridge. The Grand Bois was powerfully fortified, and just below the eastern crest of the ridge were obstacles called the Obvious Trench and Obvious Alley. Beyond them a farm building, known as the North House, had been made into a nest of dug- -II '////; TIMES I1ISTOHY OF THE \VAIi. outs Mini n-.iicliiin'-^iiM shelters. North House commanded the approaches from Obvious Alley to Oosttaverih' \\'00(I. \Vytschaete, a mere shapeless mass of inrisonry, had Km oruimi/.ed as n circular fort : \u-st of the village a large wood- Hois d.- Wytschaete and, beyond it, the Petit Hois, formed defences of the typt so familiar in this war Seen from our side, the \Vytscliaete Messines ridgu south of the fomier village was only a long, low slope running north and south a fi'w fields and patches of woodland showing above marshy ground. Hut this slope, so easy of ascent in times of peace, was seamed with trenches, and dotted with concrete redoubts sticking up from an enormous barbed- wire entanglement. Along the top of the mile and a half long plateau ran the road which ascends from St. Eloi, and, traversing Messines, descends to the Douve, and, by the west of Ploegsteert Wood, joins Ypres to Armentieres. At a point midway between Wytschaete nnd Messines were the ruins of some buildings christened by us " Middle Farm." Beyond " Middle Kami," on the en-st looking down into the Stcenebcek valley and across to the British lines, were Hell Wood (Bois de 1'Enfer) organized, like the other woods north of it a strong point with works of heavy blocks of concrete, called " .L'Enfer,'' and south of it n nest of redoubts, known as Hell Farm. Numerous machine-guns in L'Enfer enfiladed the area south of Wytschaete, those in Hell Farm the i-egion north of Messines. In front of Hell Farm was a curved projec- tion, concreted and wired, "Occur Trench," and. hard by Hell Farm, another redoubt, " Styx Farm." To reach the Wytsch. Messines road our men would have to advance down a long, exposed slope, cross the Steenebeek rivulet, mount the ridge and carry, beside Hell Wood and the redoubts, three lines of trenches. The road crossed, they would have still to storm two other trenches October Trench and October Support Trench which ran south- eastward from a little east of Wytschaete to the east of Messines, and also Despagne Farm at the head of the shallow valley running down to Gapaard. North of Deconinck Farm [French official f-Hftngra TnE SURE-FOOTED DONKEY DOES USEFUL WORK ON SLIPPERY ROADS. Carrying reels of telephone wire. THE TIMES H1STOEY OF THE WAE. 81 there was a flat plateau, affording no cover till Oosttaverne and Gapaard were carried. Messines itself was strongly defended and the approach to its western face protected by the work constructed round the hospice. To penetrate the milo and a half of fortified ridge and plateau between Wytschaete and Messines was, therefore, as difficult a task as any set by the German engineers to the Allies on the Western Front. It need hardly be mentioned that the garrison of the ruins of Measines and the southern and western slopes of its hill had been provided with every device for resisting the British. Beneath the foundations of the ruined church and in the main square a number of deep concreted caves had been established. A redoubt " Fanny's Farm " guarded on the north-east the approaches to the village. At the southern foot of Messines Hill ran, like a ditch, the Douve, three or four yards wide. Both banks of the river eastwards from the spot where the Ypres-St. Eloi-Wytschaete- Messines-Annentieres chaussee crossed it were in the possession of the enemy, whose external line ran over a low ridge southwards east of St. Yves and the Ploegsteert Wood to the Lys at Frelinghien. The road from the Douve upwards to Messines was wired and protected by defences such as Grey Farm and Hun's Walk. The neck of land between the German outermost line and the Lys from Frelinghien to Warneton where it is joined by the Douve, was a tangle of trenches and " pill -boxes." The Germans had had over two years to prepare the position above described. As it may be looked on as the gateway to Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne, they had naturally not wasted the time at their dis- posal, and a large number of prisoners of war had been ceaselessly at work on this sector. Anticipating danger in this quarter, Hinden- burg had entrusted the 'defence to General Sixt von Annin, a veteran of the war of 1870-1, who had fought at Gravelotte and had recently commanded a corps at the Battle of the Somme. The Fourth Army under him was posted between the Douve and the Ypres-Menin road. South of the Douve the right wing of the German Sixth Army held the line to the Lys at Frelinghien, while several divisions were held in reserve at Bruges and elsewhere ready to support Sixt von Armin, should he be attacked. To deal with the British Tanks four of the new anti-tank batteries were stationed behind the second-line trenches on the \Vytschaete- Messines ridge. Two were close to Wytschaete, two near Messines. Each battery consisted of six short 7'7 cm. guns mounted on low carriages which could be rapidly moved along the trenches. They fired shells capable of pene- [Official photograph. SAPPERS DIGGING A COMMUNICATION TRENCH NEAR MESSINES. trating the walls of a tank, which if hit by one of these was almost certain to be rendered hors-de-combat. But on this occasion these weapons did little harm. One battery was literally knocked to pieces by our artillery as its position had been accurately ascertained by one of our aeroplanes, although only brought into action at the last moment. In this par- ticular instance three of the six guns were actually struck by direct hits. Quite early in June, when the British intensive bombardment was already in progress, Sixt von Armin warned his troops that they would be attacked. The front of the expected battle was defined with considerable accuracy. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. General von Laffert, the commander of t lu- ll h Corps, entrusted with the defence of the \\ ytsohaete-Messines ridge, issued ou June 1 an Order to his men pointing out that the Ki. iit ion of the natural strong points of \\vtschaete and Me-isiiies wiis of the greatest importance for the domination of the Wy tschaete salient. " These two strong points," he added, must, therefore, not fall, even temporarily, into the enemy's hands. Both must be defended to the utmost and be held to the last man, even if the enemy cuts the connexions on both sides and ilso threatens them from the rear." The reserves of the divisions attacked would, von Laffert assured his officers, be avail- able for the purpose of repelling assaults. These, kept in forward positions, would strengthen the parts of the line attacked and aid them in holding it, and thus give time to bring up the division reserves for an immediate and powerful counter-attack. The troops were also to be told that very strong battle reserves both of infantry and artillery were posted close behind the front. These were to bo used to thrust back by a concentrated and powerful then iiny specially weak or threatened |><>int. Behind all these were the special battle re- serves at the disposal of the commanders of t he various sectors for the support of threatened points or for counter-attack. The Germans had, as we know, introduced poison gas into warfare, although this was distinctly forbidden by the Hague Convention of July 29, 1899, which had been signed by Germany and Austria-Hungary on September 4, 1900. Naturally we had replied to this by like measures. We seem, indeed, to have gone one better. At any rate, it is quite certain that Gennan leaders and German troops had, as they would themselves express it, " a heathen anxiety " with regard to the British gas, as the Commander of the German 40th Division in an Order addressed to the troops under his command shows. He said the greatest precautions were to be taken against hostile gas attacks, as the next division on the left had recently lost one hundred men from tliis cause. Disguise it as they might, there could be no doubt that the forthcoming attack was looked upon with apprehension, not merely BRITISH SOLDIERS ON THE WAY TO THE TRENCHES. [Official photograph. attack any of the hostile forces which might manage to break through, if the divisional battle reserves failed to stop them. The method employed seems to have been somewhat as follows : The actual front trenches were held by the minimum forces necessary for immediate security, behind these were sheltered supports, the two belonging probably to the same regiments, and forming together the first fighting line. Farther back, but still fairly close and under shelter, each division had in second line reserve troops which could be used to streng- by the troop leaders, but also by the troops under them. For the same General von Laffert instructed his troops that it was very important to determine the instant the actual attacks were begun by the British so that their infantry forces, while advancing, might at once be subjected to the most powerful fire to make their losses as heavy as possible. An excellent maxim suited to most, occasions, but one not always easy to put into practice. For our plan was first of all to bombard a length of German trenches far be- THE TIMES HISTOKY OF THE WAP. GENERAL SIXT VON ARM1N, Commanded the German Fourth Army. yond the point selected for assault, and further by bursts of high intensive artillery fire and other means to make our opponents think an attack was imminent at various points. These feints deceived them and made them nervous. " Is it coming here ? no, there ! " Were reserves brought up, they were subject to heavy fire on the road. Far back the lines of approach were swept. Numerous trench i-akls added to their anxiety. Did these mean the first attempts of a heavy attack or were they merely little local affairs ? The sum total of these acts completely puzzled the Germans, nt any rate so far as the front trenches were concerned, and kept their garrisons in a constant state of ner- vousness. Added to this was the necessity of seeing thai reinforcements sent up to the front line actually reached it When a column was moving up to the trenches it was laid down that " an ener- getic officer must always march in the rear of the column to prevent the men falling out." In other words, the men were shirking the duties of the fire trench. " Every man who left the front or reserve lines must have a pass." This was plainly for the same reason. " In casualty reports nothing is to be concealed about the condition of the troops, on the other hand the conditions are not to be painted unnecessarily black " The whole of the 3rd Bavarian Division, which, as it transpired, relieved the 40th Saxon Division on the ridge the night before the battle, had been placed at von Laffert's dis- posal* to support if necessary the counter- offensive. Sixt von Armin, it may be added, had, before our bombardment began, vastly increased his reserves of ammunition and the number of his howitzer batteries. At the same time, in anticipation of a reverse, he had removed farther back many of his heavy batteries. The troops in the front line, in case they were isolated, had been supplied with extra quan- tities of ammunition, food and water. The reverse side of the German position from GENERAL VON LAFFERT, In command of the 4th Army Corps. the Ypres-Comines canal to St. Yves was by nature of about the same strength as the side about to be assaulted. At the crisis of the First Battle of Ypres this position had been successfully defended for 48 hours against two "nearly fresh German Corps" by our weary dismounted troopers (probably some 4,000 men) of the then depleted British cavalry Corps, supported by two Indian battalions, and by 4,000 men of British infantry together with a battalion of the London Scottish Territorials, placed in roughly constructed trenches affording but little cover. Since the First Battle of Ypre.s the enemy had had more than two yeare to render their naturally strong position vastly stronger From his posts on Hill * This division had an unfortunate and brief expe- rience. It came up, was severely handled, and retired within 24 hours. It had also suffered heavily in the fighting south of Lens. 185-3 84 Till'. HIXTOUY <>!' THK WAIL LAYING A RAILWAY LINE 60, the Mound, Wytschaete Wood and near Messines every movement of the BritLsh, unless they were underground or otherwise hidden from view, was visible. The confidence dis- played by von Laffert was, therefore, apparently justified, and a frontal assault on the position was no light task. Fortunately the General opposed to Sixt von Armin was cautious and ingenious yet, withal, daring. Sir Herbert Charles Onslow Plumer, who commanded the Second Army, on which the task devolved, was a Devonshire man. Born on March 13, 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny, he was in June 1917 just turned 60 years of age. He entered the York and Lancaster Regiment in 1876. Promoted captain in 1882, he first saw active service in the Soudan in 1884, when, as adjutant of the 1st Battalion of his regiment, he was present at the Battles of El Tt-b and Tamai. During the campaign conducted by Sir Gerald Graham, he distinguished himself and was mentioned in dispatches, receiving the medal with clasp, the 4th Class of the Medjidieh and the Khedive's Star. A major in 1893 he, three years later, served with Sir Frederick Carrington in Rhodesia. There he raised and commanded a corps of mounted rifles, which materially helped to put down the Matabele rebellion. Again he was mentioned in dis- patches and received the mciliil. In the summer of 1899, he was sent to South Africa as a Special Service officer. Under Colonel Baden-Powell's direction, he raised a [Official photograph. ON GROUND JUST CAPTURED. force for the protection of the southern frontier of Rhodesia in the event of our being engaged, as was then highly probable, in hostilities with the Boers. When the South African War broke out, Colonel Baden-Powell, as will be well remembered, threw himself into Mafeking. For seven months Plumer with a few hundred men, though completely isolated, maintained -a vigorous offensive, diverting large Boer forces from the lines round Mafeking. In May 1900, Plumer joined Mahon's force for the relief of this place, which was accomplished on May 17, 1900. Joining subsequently in the advance on Pretoria, Plumer received the command of a column. His tireless pursuit of De Wet through Cape Colony won him golden opinions, and in the rapid and successful advance on Pietersburg in April 1901 he exhibited great energy. Slightly wounded in the course of the South African War, ho was mentioned thri-e times in dispatches, received the brevet of Colonel, made A.D.C. to King Edward VII., created a C.B., and finally promoted Major- General for distinguished service in the field in August 1902. " Throughout the campaign," wrote Lord Kitchener in his dispatch of June 23, 1902, " he has invariably displayed military qualifications of a very high order. Few officers have rendered better service." Plumer left South Africa with a high repu- tation. In the interval between the Peace of Vereeniging and the opening of the Great War he commanded the 4th Brigade, 1st Army Corps, THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 85 and the 10th Division and the 19th Brigade, 4th Army Corps. He deserves, therefore, some of the credit for the training of the troops who rendered such invaluable services in the first year of the gigantic struggle on the .Western Front, In 1904-5 he was Quartermaster-General to the Forces and Third Military Member of the newly created Army Council. When Lord Haldane became Minister of War, Plumer was given the command of the 5th Division, Irish Command, and in 1908 was made a Lieutenant- General. From 1911 to 1914 the Northern Command was under his direction. Plumer was not among the officers who accompanied the original Expeditionary Force to France. HLs organizing abilities had, however, ample scope at home in those momen- tous months whoa Lord Kitchener was busy creating the New Army. But in January, 1915, he was given the command of the Vth Corps, forming part of the Second Army under Sir Horace Srnith-Dorrieri. His powers of leader-ship were at once subjected to a severe test. The Vth Corps (27th and 28th Divisions) had to be hurried into the Ypres salient to relieve troop? of General d'Urbal's Army. "The trenches (so-called) scarcely existed," says an eye-witness, quoted by Sir A. Conan Doyle, "and the ruts which were honoured with the name were liquid." On March 14, two days after the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, Plumer was violently attacked in the region of St. Kloi, but, though he had to give ground, he prevented the enemy breaking through. At the Second Battle of Ypres in April-May 1915, during the surprise caused by the treach- erous use of poisonous gas by the Germans, tha Vth Corps was on the right of the Canadians, and it was largely due to Plumer's action in reinforcing the latter, that the surprise failed. So well had Plumer behaved in the Second Battle of Ypres that, when Smith-Dorrien returned to F.rigland at the end of April, Plumer took his place. Since the successful termination of that desperate contest for Ypres, Plumer had had to remain on the defensive. The Second Army had formed the northern pivot of the British line, when it attacked to pierce the German position at Loos, north of the Somme and north and south of Arras. The minor engage- ments (Hooge and the Bluff) fought by Plumer between May 1915 and Juno 1917 have been Official photograph. A CONCRETE STRONGHOLD LEFT INTACT BY THE GERMANS. 86 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. described in previous chapters He had fully justified liis selection and was now about to associate his name with one of the most striking successes won in the war. After the improvement of the roads, rail- roads, and water supply behind Plumer's lines, other measures had been taken. In the < lays preceding the battle, a great number of guns of all calibres, howit/ers, and trench mortars were brought up for the final bombardment, and poured a continuous and overwhelming A SMASHED [Official photograph. FORT AT MESSINES. rain of shells on the German positions. Most important of all, the gigantic series of mines designed to blow up the whole main German front position was brought to completion. To obtain the command of the air was in this ease a condition precedent to victory, because otherwise observation of the German position was impossible. Unless the entrenchments and gun positions were accurately ascertained the attack would have been very costly. When the Arras offensive died down in the middle of May a strong aerial offensive was commenced against the enemy. Between June 1 and June 0, at a cost of 10 machines, no less than 24 German aeroplanes were destroved, and 23 others driven down out of control. The result of this attack was so successful thai the mastery of the air was gained over a line which overlapped considerably the front of attack. Accurate observation located every new trench or strong point. Every gun pesition \MIS noted and the German commu- nications to the rear were continuously bombed. So far as our airmen could accomplish it, the fortified zone to be stormed was isolated. Behind their front line the< ierman communiea- (ions, iiillets and back areas were all brought under heavy fire. The supremacy in the air which was thus obtained not only assisted our map-makers but most materially aided the gunners engaged in the work of sweeping away the wire en- tanglements, destroying the defences and silencing the German butteries. The devasta- tion wrought by the bombardment which opened 011 the last day of April and continued steadily up to the eve of the battle exceeded anything hitherto attempted in war. Ti..- \vere reduced to match-wood, the slopes nt the .hills stripped bare, arid the villages nota'ily Wytschaete and Messines- v.cre turned r<> shapeless heaps of broken brickwork. In a woek the guns had reduced the scene from cultivated civilization to primeval chaos. The Germans in the- Great War had sprung .several surprises o;i their enemies. The huge Austrian dismountahlc howitzers had reduced Liege and Namur. Throwing their treaty obligations to the whirls they had introduced flame throwers and asphyxiating gas, though neither of these produced the effect their treacherous inventors hoped for. The British Army had also brought many novelties into the field. The Stokes mortal's with their very rapid fire of shells ; the Tanks, which had proved so useful on the Soinine were completely new to war ; while our liquid-lire shells were a great improvement on the clumsy flame-throwers of the Germans. The result of our continuous artillery fire was that the carefully prepared defensive organizations of the enemy were swept away by our batteries. Gun-pits were wrecked : telephone lines above, ground were cut and even some of the buried cables destroyed, thus rendering it almost impossible to keep up com- munication from front to rear. Forward posts could only summon aid by rockets, and it was often almost impossible to send up supports in' provisions to the first line. In the latter, life was a complex hell of devastating explosions and deafening noise, and the garrisons could do little more than sit down under it and wait, with rapidly deteriorating nerves, for the coming blow. The general direction of this was, as we have seen, known to the enemy, but not the special point of assault Yet all this whirlwind of destruction bore but a small proportion to the absolute annihilation which was to come. For many months mining operations had THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 87 GENERAL SIR HERBERT I >een in progress on so vast a scale that nothing like it had ever before been seen in war. The Messiries-Wytschaete ridge offered favourable pVoimd for subterranean war. Mining gal- leries could be driven underneath it which for some time would be unlikely to be detected by the enemy, and undeterred by the magnitude of the task the British leaders had undertaken it. For if successfully carried out, its effect on the enemy's front position would be decisive it would be blown bodily away. [Elliott & Fry. C. O. PLUMER, G.C.B. The project had been under discussion since July 1915, when indeed some steps were taken. But it was not till January 1916 that it was finally determined to begin the mining opera- tions on the gigantic scale on which they were thenceforward conducted. The British Army was fortunate in having many mining com- panies of Royal Engineers recruited among miners from the Mother Country and from the Dominions beyond the Seas. To these trained men the excavation of the galleries, fiS THI-: TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAP. A MINE EXPLODING ON THE WYTSCHAETE RIDGE. [Official photograph. compared with what they had been accustomed to in civil life, was mere child's play. But there were features in its actual carrying out which were novel ; they were exposed to the risk of destruction by the enomy'8 counter mines, a danger greater naturally than any they had previously run in the most dangerous coal mines. It is difficult for those who have never been engaged in a struggle of this kind to compre- hend its trying nature. The gallery is driven onward, here and there listening galleries will be pushed out right and left to listen for the sound of the enemy's counter-operations. A faint sound of picks or the deadened sound of mining machinery shows that the opponent is also thrusting out his galleries, to intercept or blow in our own. He will go on till he is near enough to strike, then the sound ceases he is loading up to blow in our gallery. We endeavour to anticipate him and, if successful, blow in his countermine and gallery. The charges used in these cases, technically known as camouflets, arc smaller than for mines in- tended to produce a crater. This is not their object, but rather is it to be avoided, as i! a crater \veie made it could be seized by the. aggressive side and would act as a stepping stone onward towards its objective. The camouflet aims only at destroying the gallery and killing the miners without disturbing the surface of the ground. This short description shows the trying nature of subterranean warfare. The men engaged on it once they have approached fairly near to the enemy's line never know when they may suddenly be destroyed by an ex- plosion or confined behind a destroyed gallery which alone can give them a safe exit, and thus find themselves imprisoned in a living tomb. Besides the inherent dangers of their task the British miners on the Messines Ridge found many physical difficulties in their way. Water- bearing strata were met which had to be coffer- dammed off and the water which had run into the mine, before this had been done, pumped out. In such conditions had many of our men worked over a year. Well might an Aus- tralian officer exclaim, " No more underground work for me after this war." On one occasion he had been buried for 48 hours, and had to dig his own way out ! Twenty-four mines were constructed, four of which were outside the front eventually assaulted, while one was destroyed by a German count t'r-mine. Of the 19 left many had THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 89 been completed a year before they were made use of, and these required ceaseless care to prevent injury from the enemy's counter- measures For the Germans had become aware in a general and, fortunately, inaccurate way of the work we had in hand, and were them- selves using a deep-lying mine system to coun- teract it. Thus beneath Hill 60 a continuous struggle was kept up during the 10 months before the final explosion. Here we had two mines of groat importance which were only saved from destruction by persistent watchfulness in the face of always threatening danger. 'Just before the date settled for the advance, it was dis- covered that the Germans were driving a gallery which would have cut into the one which gave access to our two mine chambers under the German lines on the Hill in question. Careful listening and careful deduction from it enabled our engineers to say that if the date for the assault were adhered to the enemy would jtist Jail to reach our gallery. The reader can judge for himself the delicacy of this situation. Altogether the length of galleries driven amo<inted to little short of five miles The mines they served were loaded with over a million pounds of the high explosive ammonal, an amount which had never been used in any land operation before, but of which the aggre- gate effect had been precisely calculated by the engineers who had prepared it. The ^whole operation did them much credit.* While listening to the operations of the enemy the mines had to be loaded, and this done so quietly as not to attract attention by the rumbling of trucks bringing up the charges or other materials, so that the enemy should hear nothing whicli would lead him to believe that we were getting ready It was a near thing, but was successfully accomplished, and on "Our Day" we were ready and the enemy was not. At the point known as the Bluff also the On October 10, 1885. some 140 tons, or 313,600 Ib., of Rack-a-Roek had been employed to blow up the Flood Rock at the dangerous point for navigation known as Hell Gate in the Channel approaching New York. Nine acres of rock had been shattered ; and the sur- rounding water had risen by the explosion to a height of 200 ft. On the Messines-Wytschaete ridge, it will be observed, more than three times this amount was employed. A itstmlian oflic GERMAN SHELLS BURSTING IN YPRES. 00 THE TIMKS HI STOP Y OF THE WAR. underground coinbflt went on without ei -ii tion between January 16, 1010, and June 7 in the following year ; 27 camouflets were exploded in this locality. Seventeen of these were our work, 10 that of the Germans. From the beginning of February 1917, it became evident that the enemy was begin- ning to be uneasy at the extensive mining operations which he had in some measure begun to realize. Camouflet- were tired to crush in our galleries, and several heavy mines exploded in the hope of severely damaging our work. One of these blew in a gallery which led to the Spanbroekmolen mine, and cut through it, thus rendering it useless. Two Australians stationed in a listening gallery hard by were isolated there. Neither, fortu- nately, was injured, arid they contrived to keep a record of what they heard until both were rescued. Communication with them was only reopened after the most strenuous efforts and only terminated on the day preceding the attack. Then the mine was loaded and when it was exploded at the right moment, produced the largest crater of all the nineteen, which com- pletely annihilated everything over a radius of 70 yard-. . On Wednesday, June 6, 1917, all was now ready, and the final touch had been given to the preparations, with a thorough and attention to detail beyond all praise \\ Inch reflected the greatest credit on Sir i lerbert Pi inner, the Commander of the Second Army, and his staff, as well as on the leaders of the various formations concerned and on the artillery and engineers. The final objective of our troops was the Oosttaverne Line, which lay between Mount Sorrel and St. Yves. This represented a depth to be captured of two jind a half miles. During the previous night the 3rd Bavarian Division was coming into the German trenches to relieve the Saxons on the Wytsehaete- Messines ridge, at the same time as the men of the British Second Army made their way to the posts assigned to them, when our protecting barrage started. Both German divisions were caught by it, and both alike suffered heavily. The contemplated transfer of duties never took place, the few Germans who tried to stop wen 1 thrust back a mile by our infantry advance. The llth Division after its experience in the Bullecourt fighting had been sent to support von Armin's men by forced marches It is not to GUNNERS AT WORK DURING A GAS L A ua-alian official photograph. ATTACK. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 91 BRIDGING A MINE CRATER ON A ROAD. i Official photograph. be wondered that it had but small stomach for further fighting. The following extracts from the diary of a German stretcher-bearer at Messines from May 27 to June show what the preliminary treatment of the German lines had been : MAY 27. The English are firing on us heavily. MAY 28. We have two dead and two wounded. That is a charming Christian festival (Whit Sunday). One despairs of all mankind. This everlasting murder. JUNE 1. The English are bombarding all the trenches and as far as possible destroying the dugouts. They keep sending over shot after shot. To-day we have a whole crowd of casualties. The casualties increase terribly JUNE 2. The English never cease their bombard- ment. All the trenches are clodded up. Nothing more to be made of them. Casualties follow on casualties. JUNK 3. The English are trying to demolish our dugout, too. JUNE 4. -The casualties become more numerous all the time. No shelter to bnng the men under. They must now sleep in the open ; only a few dugouts left. JUNE 5. Casualty follows casualty. We have slipped out of the dugout and moved elsewhere. There are many buried by earth. To look on such things is utter misery. JUNE 6. The English are all over us. They blow up the earth all around us and there is shell hole after sliisll hole, some of them being large enough for a house to be built in. We have already sustained many casualties. It is not surprising that nerve-shattered as the Germans were they did not put up any great resistance to the first attack. Along this front three of the six army corps composing our Second Army were disposed. The northernmost of these was the X. Corps under General Morland, comprising the 23rd, 47th, and 51st Divisions in front line, with the 24th Division in support. Next this came the IX. Corps, General Hamilton Gordon, with the 19th, IGth, and 30th Divisions leading the attack, and the 1 1th Division supporting it. On the south was the II. Arizac Corps, General Godley, having the 25th (Ulster) Division on its left, then the New Zealand Division, tho 3rd Australian Division on the right and the 4th Australian Division in reserve.* The 3rd Australian Division was astride the Douve, the New Zealanders above them faced Messines. The ridge from Messines to L'Enfer had been assigned to the 25th Division, which included the Cheshire Regiment. In reserve behind was the 4th Australian Division. The right flank attack mustered in the trenches north of the village of Wulverghem. L'Knfer and the ridge as far as the southern defences of Wytschaete were the objectives of the Ulster Division. A South Ireland The order of those Corps and Divisions is given from left to right. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. >A usfralian o BATTLE OF MESSINES : GERMAN SHELLS BURSTING. Division on its left was to storm the Petit Bois and the Bois de Wytschaete and assault Wytschaete from the west. Welsh ami West Country troops had the task of clearing the Grand Bow at the angle of the enemy's line north of Wytschaete. Thence to the Ypres-Comiues Canal were deployed other English County regiments with the Londoners on their left. The Londoners wore to advance on both banks of the canal ; the others were to assist them in capturing Ravine Wood and the White Chateau, and were also to carry the Mound, south of St. Eloi, the Damm Strasse, and, in conjunction with the Westerners, the outskirts of Oosttaveme. To the east of the Lon- doners, English North-Country troops formed the extreme left of the army. It may be pointed out that Sir Herbert Plumer placed the Australians side by side with the New Zea- landers, and the South Irish Division (composed mostly of Catholics) between the Ulster and Welsh troops. Thus, the various races were placed in a friendly rivalry. The few days preceding the battle had been almost continuously fine and extremely hot. On June <>, between 6 and 7 p.m.. a very violent thunderstorm, accompanied by torrents of rain, burst north of the Lys. The heat caused the mist to rise up from the rairi-soddened low ground mid covered for a time the ground over which the attack was to be delivered. The sky was overcast, rendering the air warm. The enemy .-n-pecte.l something was about to happen mid sent up Very lights and red. yreen i nd yellow rockets from their lines, asking for barrage fire and possibly for the divisional supports to come up into the front line. In answer to these signals the enemy's guns poured shrapnel and high -explosive on the roads leading back from our lines and on all places where our troops were expected to be congre- gating. The British bombardment on the other hand was becoming somewhat less intense as if for the time the intention to attack had been abandoned. It caused, however, soon after midnight, a huge conflagration north of Wytschaete, probably due to the ignition of an ammunition dump. By 2.30 a.m. on Thursday, June 7, the clouds had almost disappeared and a full moon looked down on the battlefield. A party of bombing aeroplanes, each showing a tiny light, came back, and other machines by fours and sixes flew eastward to continue the work of bombing various objectives behind the enemy's lines. In the half light balloons went up, flashing back luminous signals to report what they saw. The flames from a thousand or more German guns showed up their positions behind their front, while the shells they fired hurtled through the air and burst about our lines. A little before the hour fixed for the explosion of the mines, groups of officers stood in various dug-outs round the switches which were to make the. electrical contact to fire the charges and set in action the huge masses of explosives. " The last two minutes," related one officer, " scorned interminable. I thought the final 30 seconds would never finish. Slowly Hie tired hand of my watch crawled uj- *.he finishing THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. quarter of the dial 60 seconds were complete it was ten minutes past three Fire ! "* Precisely at 3.10 a.m. the order was given The surface of Hill 60 was seen to be thrown into mighty waves with a dull sound, and mounting upwards to the sky they were rent in segments, accompanied by a mighty roar which was heard in London and other parts of England The first phase of the battle had begun. The smoke towered aloft and among its clouds were seen fragments of trench and con- crete, of wire entanglement, and portions of what, a few seconds before, had been living human beings onlookers from the Mont des-Cats observing positions, the scene was indescribably grand and terrible. Volcanoes belching fountains of orange flame suddenly appeared on the long arc from Hill 60 to the ruins of Messines. Pillars of dust arid smoke shot up to the sky ; the earth rocked and the deafening noise and earth vibrations carried the news far over the Flemish plain to the North Sea. Below, south- west of Wytschaete the side of the Hill seemed to be rent asunder as if the door of some huge blast furnace had been flung outwards with its molten contents. The Spanbroekmoleh mine, opposite L'Enfer Hill when fired created a. SMASHED GERMAN TRENCHES. [Canadian ojficiat photograph. In some instances hardly w-aiting for the smoke to clear away our men went over the parapet. As it cleared away the Australians saw in front of them a vast crater, some 60 feet deep and 90 yards broad littered with a tangle of barbed wire and smashed concrete, broken weapons and human remains. Round the edges of the crater, south of St. Eloi, there tumbled thick slabs of concrete scattered about from riven fortified defences. At one point there stood a solitary pill-box among the ruins, whether missed by the explosion or flung there by it none could say. The dead, distorted occupants within could tell no tale. Such was the scene at but two spots. To the * Morninrj P'ist. June 11, 1917. crater 140 yards in diameter and 70 feet deep, a huge cavity which would have held a cathedral. Scarcely had the echoes of the explosions died away, while the 19 columns of smoke and debris were beginning to disperse, than the back- ground of the British lines was lit up with thousands of lightning flashes of our guns accompanied by a volume of deafening sounds which became amalgamated into one continuous roar as they began to pour a concentrated fire of the most intense and rapid character on the position where the German lines had stood before the explosion, and on the support trenches farther back. To the nerve-shattered Germans, the air appeared to be alive with THE TIMES HISTOKY OF THE WAH. myriads of shells, their bursts standing out against the pale morning sky, while above. behind, before them, to left, to right, spraying tin-in with liquid fire or inn!t<"i metal, choking them with poison gas, smashing eonerete into atoms or raining shrapnel upon steel helmet-, crushing all courage out of the fi-w \vlio had survived the terrible explosion, fell the awful rain of projectiles. A bank of smoke and fumes rapidly settled down over the battle- lid' 1 from Mt. Sorrel to the Douve ; and behind rose the sun, flushing the sky with an angry red. On both sides of the fog com- pounded of mist and the smoke of battle rose captive balloons, while thousands of feet above them squadrons of our aeroplanes darted and wheeled, here descending to observe the effect of the bombardment, there passing swiftly on to pepper with bombs and with their Lewis guns the enemy's reinforcements hurrying up the roads leading to the ridges. Others went on to bomb aerodromes, bridges, railroads, and batteries. Few, if any, aviators of the Germans ventured to ascend, but the sky was dotted with the puffs of bursting shrapnel dis- charged by their anti-aircraft guns. Still some of the enemy clung to parts of the shattered ridge, and the ceaseless rat-tat-tat of their machine-guns showed they were trying to carry out the orders they had received to cling at any cost to the Sfeesines-WytAohacte position. Onward through the still clinging gas fumes went our men, some, held up for a brief time by their poisonous effects, but always trying to follow close on our artillery barrage. The feats performed by the men in the recking, smoke-and-gas-laden atmosphere can be but briefly outlined. East of the Ypres- < 'mi lines canal the tremendous explosions in the Hill 60 region caused a veritable panic among the Germans Below Mt. Sorrel and Armagh Wood groups of Wiirtembergers and Jaegers rose from dug-outs and with out- stretched hands implored mercy of the English troops. Some were found cowering half -dazed at the bottom of the smashed concrete obser- vation posts. Hill 60 itself was seciu-ed with little difficulty, and our losses on the extreme left were trifling, one English battalion reaching its goal with only three dead and seven wounded. Another battalion had a death-roll of less than thirty. On the eastern and western banks of the canal there was a different tale to tell. The Londoners were held up by machine-gun fire from the two spoil banks. One of these they stormed, but the other put up a spirited resistance. The troops, therefore, paused and V;* 'A ustratian official ph:>ttgraph. BRITISH SIEGE ARTILLERY MANNED BY AUSTRALIANS. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 95 {Official photograph. BRITISH TROOPS MOVING FORWARD OVER SHELL-PITTED GROUND waited until their comrades west of the canal had stormed Battle Wood, the White Chateau and the eastern end of the Damm Strasse. The rest of the Londoners, rushing in the half light along the western bank of the canal, at first carried everything before them. They entered Battle Wood, crossed the end of the Damm Strasse smashed out of recognition by our artillery and assaulted the chateau, which was defended by a company and a half of German infantry. They were met by volleys of bombs, yet managed to penetrate the ruins, only, however, to be driven back. In nowise deterred by this rebuff our gallant men swung round its flanks, tossing incendiary bombs for nearly an hour into the cellars. At last the garrison emerged into the open with their hands up. The stables, outhouses and orangery were next attacked and reduced ; 450 prisoners were captured as a result of the fighting. The lake, which was nearly dry, was seamed at its edges with tunnels and dug-outs. Some time elapsed before these were cleared of their defenders, and the stream connecting the lake with canal traversed. All through the morning anil the early afternoon the Londoners were engaged in putting out of action the numerous strong points in tliis neighbourhood which remained to be taken. In Battle Wood they also rendered valuable help to the Southern English troops struggling with the Prussians for Ravine Wood, west of it. On the night of June 6 the Southerners had occupied the trenches south of St. Eloi opposite the Mound, which, like Hill 60, had been blown up when at 3.10 a.m. the charges were fired. The hummock disappeared and a chasm took its place. With ringing cheers, wave after wave of riflemen and bombers swept for- ward, capturing the dazed defenders and' passing to the right and left of or between the craters. Beyond loomed the formidable Damm Strasse which, under the heavy fire of high explosive shells directed against it, was seen to be crumbling to pieces. Struggling up the broken embankment and casting bombs into the few " pill-boxes " left intact, the men cleared this obstacle and joined hands with the Londoners in Battle Wood. Hundreds of prisoners were taken. Descending from the Damm Strasse, the Southerners moved against the Ravine Wood on the top of the slops and down the Rodzebeek valley, the lower and eastern end of which was being occupied by detach- ments of the Londoners. At this moment from the In de Sterkie inn our men were struck by a torrent of machine-gun bullets. Taking cover, they opened fire with their rifles, silenced the machine-guns, and Q a ffl as EL) c/l z 3 O U w -1 a O < H Z - z a o x en - 03 a - O en a Z on en Ed S THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 97 then advancing bayoneted the few surviving gunners. Fresli waves of English troops arrived on the scene and Ravine Wood was assaulted. Among the broken down and entangled branches a long and severe combat ensued. Companies of the German 35th Division counter-attacked at the point of the bayonet. They were met by Kentish troops, and the morning sun gleamed on the crossing bayonets. It was but for an instant. " Fighting like lions," as an officer present described it, " the British thrust and stabbed to death their adversaries." Tanks joined the victors, and helped to expel or kill the few Prussians left in the wood. While the fortified zone from the canal to the eastern outskirts of Oosttaverne was being stormed, the great assault on the Wytschaete- Messines ridge at right angles to it had been delivered. On the northern slopes of the ridge was the Grand Bois. It was attacked from the west by Welsh and from the north by West Country troops. The entrenchments running eastward from it across the Ypres- Armentieres high road were carried by other Westerners. The Welsh, a large proportion of whom were miners, mustered at the opening of the battle round Hollandscheschuur Farm. Between them and the wood were strong points, under- neath which were British mines. Like the others these were exploded at 3.10 a.m., and the Welshmen went over the top of their assembly trenches against them. Skirting the edges of the huge craters, they made for the works just in front of the wood, bayoneting and bombing their occupants. Entering the wood, after much heavy fighting they reached the farther edge. The wood bristled with numerous machine-gun emplacements. East of the wood the Welshmen paused and waited for reinforcements. When these appeared the advance was resumed, and " Obvious Trench " and " Obvious Alley," just over the edge of the crest, were secured. Twelve guns nnd two trench mortars were captured there. The ruins of the farm building, North Houe, were next stormed, Oosttaverne Wood was slowly threaded, and the assault on Oosttaverne itself begun. By 3.45 p.m. the village was finally carried. The Welsh troops halted in Oosttaverne, the miners rapidly entrenching the village and its environs. Simultaneously with the advance on Oostta- verne of the Welsh and West-Country troops over the northern shoulder of the ridge, the South Irish Division moved on Wytschaete. To reach the crumbled village they had to traverse Petit Bois and the Bois de Wytschaeto. The former wood, garrisoned by a company, had been mined, and at 3.10 a.m. it was wiped off the map by an explosion so violent that it broke timbers even in our own dug-outs. Singing And if perchance we do advance To Wytschaete and Messines They'll know the guns that strafed the Huns Were wearing o' the green, the Irish swept round the Petit Bois and raced for the larger wood. " I have heard," said an astonished German officer who was taken prisoner, " that the Irish were great fighters, but I never expected to see anyone advance like that." At their head was John Redmond's brother, Major Willie Redmond, M.P., who, well over military age, had joined the Army on the outbreak of war. After gallant service in the trenches he had been appointed to the Staff, but on this day, which was destined to be his last, he had insisted on accompanying his old battalion. Scarcely had he got out of the trenches than he was struck by a fragment of a shell and mortally wounded. An Ulster ambulance carried him to the rear, where, after lingering for a few hours, he died, lamented by Irishmen of every party and admired throughout the British Empire. The fall of Redmond, which signified so niuch to them, roused his comrades to their fullest fury. Machine-guns played on them through webs of uncut wire, but nothing could stop their ardour : in a moment Wyt- schaete Wood was rushed by the enraged soldiery. The cries of bayoneted Germans, the explosions of grenades, the rattle of mus- ketry, all told that the beloved commander was being grimly avenged. Soon only one machine- gun, isolated in a defence of wired trunks in the centre of the wood, continued firing. Sal- voes of rifle grenades* speedily killed the little garrison, and Wytschaete Wood was won. Still a German non-commissioned officer hero- ically remained at his post up a tree signalling to the guns. He was not at first observed, * A section of each platoon carries these weapons. They consist of a grenade on a long stem (a species of ramrod) which is fired from the rifle by a special cart- ridge with a small charge. Fired at a high angle they come down into the point aimed at. Thus, when troops are held up for want of artillery and are not near enough to throw hand-grenades they can by the rifle grenades bomb out the defenders. Till-: V/.Wf.'N ///.sTo/.-y OF THE WAR. .IIP! it was not till Inter that IK- was discovered and brought down The sun was well above the horizon when the Irish, issuing from the wood, poured across the open ground and assaulted the northern and western faces of Wytsehaef. In the meantime the risternien to their right, assisted by the panic cause,! among the Germans by the explosion of the gigantic Spanbroekmolen mine, had reached I/ Knt'cr Hill and the southern Mile of the village at 5.30 a.m. They had on the way taken over l.ouO prisoners. Before noon Wytschaete, turned on the en-' by the Welshmen descending on Oosttaverne, was ours. The leading companies of South Irish and Ulstermen had at. first been checked, but, when the supports arrived, machine-gun posts and redoubt-* were soon reduced. A strong point in the centre of the village alone offered any serious resistance. It was stormed, and the Irishmen, crossing the Ypres-Armen- tieres road, commenced to move down the eastern slopes of the ridge in order to protect the flank of the Welshmen preparing to assault Oosttaverne. Between L'Enfer Hill and Messines the fighting on this day was exceptionally hard. The English troops on the right of the Ulster- men had here a broader fortified zone to cross. The valley of the Steenebeek lay before them, and they had to advance down its long exposed western slope under fire of numerous machine guns* hidden in the eastern face of the hollow. When the English got across the little brook running along the bottom of the valley, they had in front of them the succession of obstacles described at p. 80. From the Kruistreat trenches to the summit of the Wytschaete-Messines ridge was some 2,000 yards in a straight line. The actual distance the troops had to traverse was con- siderably longer. The English were about to meet, not troops dispirited by bombard- ment, but the 3rd Bavarian Division, which arrived after a forced march to relieve the 40th Saxon Division during the night of June 6-7. The charge of the English was preceded by a daring feat. During the evening, the Cheshires near Wulverghem entered No Man's Land and dug a trench 4 ft. 6 in. deep and 1,050 yards long for their jump-off line the next day. As this trench would not be likely * The day before 26 more of these weapons had, it was known, been brought up and posted on the slope. THE GRAVE OF MAJOR W. REDMOND, M.P. [Official photograph THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 99 to be marked on the enemy's maps, it was hoped that, if the Cheshires started from it, they would escape the German barrage which would be naturally directed more to the west. When the hour approached for the opening of the battle, the Cheshires, who had returned to our lines, slipped into this trench and there awaited the explosion of the mines. At 3.10 a.m. the Spanbroekmolen mine and the other mines north-east, north, and south-east of it went up and immediately afterwards the Cheshires and the other English troops picked their way through the smoke and fumes down the slopes to the Steenebeek, crossed this stream, and in waves began the ascent of the ridge. The trench which curved round Hell Farm and the trenches in front of it had been obliterated by our guns. On the crest of the ridge, in Hell Wood, the south-west corner of which was entered by the Cheshires, hand to hand fighting began. A company of Bavarians attacked our men in flank, but an officer whipped round two machine guns and sprayed them with bullets. Almost all who escaped were bayo- neted. The Cheshires captured 14 machine guns and 50 prisoners. The Saxons and their relieving Bavarians were driven back with severe loss. Hell Farm and Styx Farm were stormed by the same troops, who then dug themselves in. From Hell Farm it was no great distance to the Ypres-Armentieres road before which lay October Trench with Middle Farm attached to it and, beyond it, October Support Trench. The Cheshires resuming their advance and moving on October Trench, got ahead of the time table. An officer suddenly realized that they would be caught by the British barrage. He ordered the men to take refuge in shell craters. The barrage crept over them, inflict- ing some few casualties. Meanwhile the other troops of the Division, linking up with the Ulstermen on L'Enfer Hill, prepared, like the Cheshires, to assault October Trench. A broad belt of uncut wire barred approach to it. A couple of companies of troops farther south turned the position, while our men smashed their way through the wire as best they could Bleeding and toin the survivors stormed Middle Farm, round which a few minutes later lay 300 German corpses. There was now a pause while fresh troops arrived to storm October Support Trench. In long unbroken waves they lined up beyond the groups of wounded men. The German last line on the ridge, already turned by the Ulstermen in Wytschaete, was speedily carried after sharp fighting and the Cheshires captured Despagne Farm, repulsing a violent counter-attack from the direction of Gapaard up the shallow valley. The Bavarians retiring over the ridge- MAJOR W. REDMOND, M.P. melted away under the fire of machine-guns and rifles and never even reached the Cheshires' improvised trenches. Long before the October Support Trench and Despagne Farm were carried, the New Zea- landers, with Australians in support, had expelled the enemy from Mcssines and Fanny's Farm, north-east of it. Under heavy shell fire the New Zealanrters went forward through the dense clouds of smoke caused by the mines and shells into the valley of the Steenebeek, and ascended the southern end of the ridge. At 4.20 a.m. the red dome of the sun began to rise and some 23 British aeroplanes, fired at by shrapnel, droned overhead. At 5.8 a.m. the skyline of the crest of the ridge appeared out of the haze and smoke. Near the northern end of the humps and hummocks, which showed the position of Messines, the figures of the English and a Tank could be perceived. South of the village the New Zealanders were slowly pro- ceeding towards the site of the church and the square. By 7 a.m. the Germans in Messines were all killed, wounded or captured. The New Zealanders at ouce proceeded to dig a trench 100 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. A DUCK-BOARD BRIDGE. [Official photograph. along the whole of the position they had taken, while the Australians came up and carried on the work of thrusting the enemy off the ridge. The redoubt at Fanny's Farm, north-east of Messines, for a time held up their advance, but the Tank referred to came forward and with two or three shots forced the garrison to surrender. Hard by, in a hedge, was found one of the batteries of anti-Tank guns, which had been smashed before our machine came on the scene. Messines and its hill were not the most southerly points attacked by Sir Herbert Plumer. If Messines Hill were captured it would have to be protected from counter- attacks delivered up its south-eastern slopes. Beyond the Douve towards St. Yves other Australian troops had, therefore, been detailed to advance our line, and then cross to the north bank of the stream and assist their comrades and the New Zealanders. Against the Aus- tralians were the forces forming the extreme right of the German 6th Army, the northern wing of which rested on the rivulet. The Douve at this point, it will be remembered, is only some three or four yards wide. " Duck- board " bridges, resembling wooden tables, had been prepared and were carried by the Australians. The operation was skilfully carried out. Our men got tlu - ough the German barrage, placed the bridges and pa>sed over them to the northern bank under fire from the ruin called Grey Farm. A young Australian officer, with his company, crawled through a hedge and set fire to the combustible materials in this redoubt. The garrison, driven into the open, were shot down. Farther to the north, Huns' Walk, on the road to Messines, held out. The wire round it had been uncut. A Tank crawled along the entanglement, flattened it, and shelled the Germans into submission. Other machine-gnu emplacements were reduced in similar fashion and the enemy expelled from the area between the slopes of the Wytschaete-Messines ridge and the Douve. Taken on the whole the progress of the attack all along the line had been mar- vellously rapid and our final objectives on both flanks were reached, except at a few places, early in the afternoon. These were at the eastern end of Battle Wood and in strong points in the spoil banks of the Ypres-Comines canal. In the centre our line advanced to within 400 to 800 yards of the German Oosttaverne line and parallel to it. The guns needed for the further attack on this portion had now been brought up, while the THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 101 troops and Tanks detailed to take part in the new movement were steadily arriving. Mean- while our long-range artillery shelled the bridges and roads leading out of the triangle formed by the Lys and the Canal. The final attack of the day was about to be delivered. By 3 45 p.m. the Welshmen finally got possession of Oosttaverne. At 4 p.m. troops from the northern and western English Counties entered the Oostta- verne line east of the village and captured two batteries of German field guns. This line was a m : le to the east of the Warneton line and was the last of the three fortifier! zones between the British and the Lys eastward of Freling- hien. Half an hour later other English batta- lions broke through this line farther north. The enemy was becoming demoralized at this point, he had suffered very heavy casualties and his men were surrendering freely. The capture of the main ridge had enabled our guns on it to fire down at the Germans in the Oosttaverne line and to enfilade that portion of it between the southern outskirts of Oostta- verne and the Ypres-Comines canal. This had materially aided the final assault. By sunset the Oosttaverne line had been taken, and our objectives in that part of the field had been gained. During the night the captured posi- tions were consolidated, and Tanks patrolled to the east and south between the Oosttaverne and Warneton lines and assisted to repulse a counter-attack of the Germans made up the Wambeek Valley. This act of the battle has been graphically described by Mr. C. E. W. Bean, the official correspondent with the Australian Forces. Mr. Bean watched t he- struggle from a spot at its southern end. He wrote : It was about three in the afternoon that the shelling suddenly became heavier to the right of Messines. It was both British and German. It suggested that the Germans were preparing the way for a counter- attack, and we knew that within a few minutes the Australians, who were moving beyond and through th& New Zealanders and the British, were to attack farther along the whole of the south of the line, while the British advanced along all the line to the north of them. At a little past three, parties began to move up the open, past the farthest Australian line. They seemed, at the first, too small for the great distance they had to- go. But it was only a preliminary move. Afew?ninutes later there moved up near to them two " Tanks,'* a third following at a short distance. As the "Tanks " parsed where the front of the infantry had been, the whole- hill slope suddenly swarmed with men. "Tanks " and men moved together over the crest, the " Tank " guns Hashing continually. The German shells were falling-' thick, again and again blotting out all sign of the advance in dust and smoke. But whenever the dust- LOADING SHELLS ON A LIGHT RAILWAY. [Official photograph.. 10-! TIU-: OF ;1 \oit could sec tin- " '1'illlU- ami tin- infiititry .IIIIL'. I'll.- " Tiinks " stooil still on tlii- civ-t tor a moment, firing heavih. out it moment Inter moved towiinls u nes(, of ( l.TMiun trcnchr> hidden liv the ttee-.. \Villi t IK-MI went the- infantry. Kor it lew miimte- men could still be seen going ln-yond the crest. Then tin- li.it ili- i>iissiul out of view. The farthest objective whero we could see it hail eertiiinly l>een gained. A quarter of an hour Inter a grey .shape appeared around those fur trees, followed shortly by another. It was the "Tanks" returning, their duty done. One ot t h<- i wo wits on fire ; the roof of it could he seen blazing But it still continued to work its way out. For several minutes it stopped, and the onlookers thought it dos- tlu total loss was probably not far short of .~'IUMM> men and many weapons were buried lietirath the fullina earth.* Our losses wt'i-o about 10,000 killed and wounded, including Brigadier-General C. H. J. Brown, D.S.O., of the New Zealand Forces. Xo description of the battle would be complete without an account of Che great assistance given to the British attack by the aeroplanes. We have seen in previous pages [Belgian offit ial photuf rapk. THE BELL OF WYTSCHAETE CHURCH. Found by the British troops amid the ruins of the Church, this bell was presented by General Plumer to the King of the Belgians. troyed. But presently it veered and found another way down the hill. For 25 minutes, with that fire blazing from the roof of it, it made its track down the hill to safety. The " Tanks " came back, but the infantry stayed. At 4 a.m. on June 8 the British captured a small portion of trench near Septieme Barn where the Germans had managed to hold out against our first attack. Plumer had decisively defeated Sixt von Armin. Some 7,200 prisoners, 67 guns, 94 trench mortars, and 294 machine guns had been taken by the British. The total loss of men and material suffered by the Germans has never been made known. How many Germans arid German guns had vanished in the mine explosions, it is difltcult to say, but what they had done before the assault in the way of reconnaissance, how they had located the enemy's battery emplacements and bombed his communications, shelters, and ammunition dumps. But on the day of battle they sur- passed all their former deeds. Working hard through the night, they had poured destruction on the German aerodromes and other points * Among the trophies in this part of the field was the fossil remains of a mammoth. It was discovered in certain digging operations, and with it were flint imple- ments used either to kill the beast or to out it up. The process of exhumation was not complete, indeed had hardly begun at the time of the attack though it had gone far enough to show that it was an unusually good specimen, and was handled with due scientific care. The eountrv whero it was found is rich in remains of prehistoric man. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 103 [Official photograph. A BRITISH HEAVY BATTERY. at which aeroplanes were congregated. As day broke their audacity increased ; they came down to quite short ranges, often not over 500 ft. above their target, braving anti-aircraft shells, machine-gun, and rifle fire. One airman discovered a four-gun battery moving up to the front. Coming down almost on top of it he poured on the teams a stream of bullets from his Lewis gun. His next move was against au infantry battalion. Swooping over it he shot a blast of bullets among the men and sent them helter-skelter to seek the shelter of the nearest woods and ditches they could find. German anti-aircraft guns were volleyed on and machine-guns in more or less open positions shattered by their fire. Like hawks they went for groups of Germans sheltering in shell - craters, and far back wrought havoc among the lorries and motor cars bringing men or muni- tions to the front. One pilot swept so close to a motor car that the driver lost his head and overturned car and passengers into a ditch beside the road it was moving on. Another aviator, flying over the back roads of the German lines, spotted an aerodrome. No sootier seen than he went for it. A macliine eun was fired at him and this ho silenced with his own, then, turning his attention to the aeroplane sheds, he proceeded to bomb them and sweep them with his machine-gun fire. It is astonish- ing to learn, and shows the demoralization that a daring attack can create, that he made his way back in safety, though on his return journey he lost his left elevator. [A us'raliin official photcgraph. AUSTRALIANS MARCHING THROUGH A VILLAGE NEAR YPRES. JU4 ////-,' TIMl'.S HISTORY OF THE WAR. A BRITISH "CAMEL" (SOPWITH BIPLANE) CHASING AN ENEMY. It was not one but many airmen who per- formed such deeds, firing on troops in their trenches and forcing them to rush for safety into their dug-outs. Trains bringing up troops so bombed and deluged with machine-gun lire that the Germans in them abandoned them ! 1 1 seek for better shelter. This audacity, in fact, so ureatly damaged the moral of the enemy's aviators that they made no serious attempt to dispute the mastery of the air with. ours. Thus it was that our flying men could locate and send back to our artillery such accurate infor- mation as to German gun positions that approximately 300 hostile guns were reduced to silence. The results wh'ch were obtained on this day showed what might be expected in the future when really large numbers of powerful aero- planes were employed in war. At present this arm, if 110 longer in its infancy, hail certainly not yet emerged from childhood. So severely had the enemy been handle'! at the Battle of Mcssines that, apart from the feeble counter-attack above narrated, he made practically no attempt on June 7. Nor was it till seven in the evening of the 8th that a serious attempt to recover his lost positions was made. Covering the movement by an intense bombardment, Sixt von Armin, whose army had meanwhile been heavily reinforced, made a not very severely pushed effort to capture the line we had gained, but was bloodily repulsed. Consolidation of our line and the establish A BIG WATER DEPOT. Official (holograph. THE TIMES HISTORY OF I HE WAR. 105 ment of advanced posts continued during the four following days. The Australians seized La Potterie Farm, south-east of Messiiies; and Gapaard, a mile and a half to the east of Messines between Oosttaverne and W'arneton on the Ypres-Warueton road. Our progress on the right of the battle front had made the enemy's positions in the neck of ground between the Lys and St. Yves untenable. The right wing of the German 6th Army therefore gradually evacuated this area until it vested on the Lys at La Basse Ville. When these consolidation steps had been taken and our defensive position thoroughly secured the British Commander-in-Chief turned his attention to his main offensive north and east of Ypres. To carry this out effectively a re -arrangement of our battle front was necessary. In the first place the French troops holding the line from St. Georges to the sea were replaced by British u nits, and the change was completed by June 20. The Fifth Army was brought from the British, right centre and took up ground from Observatory Ridge to Boesinghe on New Zealand official ph?t( graph. TROPHIES FROM MESSINES INSPECTED BY THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT Our patrols kept touch with the enemy and by the evening of June 14 the Warneton line had been abandoned. On that evening wo again attacked on both sides of the Ypres-C'omiries canal in the direction of Hollebeke and south and east of Messines. The attack was com- pletely successful, and our line was advanced on practically the whole front from the river Warnave to Klein Zillebeke. By this operation the Second Army front had pushed forward as far as Sir Douglas Haig then thought desirable, and on this portion of our line our efforts were limited to strengthening our new defences and establishing forward posts. June 10. The French First Army under General Anthoine extended the British left flank beyond Boesinghe and relieved the Belgian troops who had hitherto kept the front from that point to Xordschoote. While these movements were in hand the communications behind the front and the left flank of our main force were undergoing the same improvements which had been carried out before the Vimy-Ypres operations had been undertaken. The further offensive more northerly will be dealt with later. In accordance with their usual practice, as soon as they had been beaten the Germans set THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. tn \\iirk In !><-liftle or explain away the result-; i.l' the lis.'.htiiifi Their official report of June S ran as follows : FROST or CROWN I'BIXCB RUPPBECHT. On the coast and on the Yser front the fighting activity still remains slight. The attack* of the English delivered between Yprrs and Ploegsteert Wood, north of Armentieroa, after days of strong destructive fire, were repulsed to the south-east of Ypros by Lower Schleswig and Wiirtem- berg Regiments. We also fought successfully on the southern wing of the battlefield. On the other hand, the enemy succeeded, a the result of numerous explosions, in penetrating into our positions at St. Eloi, Wytschaoto. and Messines, and in advancing, after stubborn variable fighting, via Wyt- schaete and Mesyim 1 -. A strong counter-attack by Guard and Bavarian troops drove the enemy back in the direction of Messim-s, Farther north he was brought to a standstill by fresh reserves. Later our regiments who were fighting bravely, were withdrawn from the salient protruding towards the west into a prepared position between the bend of the canal to the north of Hollebeke and the Douve basin, two kilometres (about 1J miles) to the west of Warneton. On the Arras front the artillery duel was of great intensity in several sectors. EVENING. To-day the English were unable to continue the battle in Flanders with the forces which they employed for the attack yesterday. A locul advance to the east of Messines was repulsed. The official proclamation was, of course, backed up by various semi-official utterances in different German newspapers. Some reported the battle a.-- a surprise, and seemed to think we had taken an unfair advantage of them Others stati d boldly, following the official lead, that the conquered positions hail only been held lightly and that the troops were intended from the first to retire into a prepared position between Hollebeke and Warneton. If this were the case, why were the troops in the front line ordered to hold on to the last, as we have previously seen on page 82 ? Why, moreover, were such elaborate measures taken for rein- forcing the front and for counter-attack to regain it if lost ? Plainly it was thought, and quite rightly thought, that the front position, with its command of view and fire over the ground to bo crossed by our troops, was of the highest valuf?. When the superior fighting power of our men turned them out of it the Germans had resort to the meatiest subterfuges and silliest falsehoods to cover their defeat. Their reserves were used to re-establish the battle, but failed to do so. Take, again, the question of gun. Josses. The Germans claimed that the whole of the large number lost had been previously rendered useless. This is entirely without foundation. GERMAN PRISONERS CAPTURED IN THE MESSINES [Official photograph. BATTLE. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 107 BATTLE SCENE AT PILKEM. [Official pliotograpli. Many of the German heavy guns had been withdrawn before the assault took place because von Armin was afraid of losing them. Some were destroyed by our fire, but not deliberately by their own detachments, and many guns of all calibres were captured, and as considerable dumps of ammunition were found they were turned on their late possessors. Two novelties were employed at this battle. Our own incendiary shells, which contained a large amount of highly inflammable liquid. These were " lobbed " over into the German trenches and caused hideous havoc. The other was a German one the anti-tank gun which has been described in the foregoing pages Of course, if a shell of any size pene- trates a Tank it destroys it. But on the whole the special German batteries created to stop the Tanks obtained little success The reason is a plain one : they were in fixed positions, or at any rate were kept stationary, and they were not behind solid cover. Consequently they were detected and snuffed out either by our airmen or by our artillery. The fire of our guns was astonishingly accurate, as indeed it had been for a long time past. A good proof of it was shown at one part of our line. Passing over No Man's Land a narrow strip of almost unhurt grass was to be seen It was a narrow ribbon of green where no shells fell between the two wide brown streaks of the opposing lines. In it the grass was rank, high and full of flowers. Then some 20 yards on this side of the German front line came the area where our shells fell, and gave wonderful evidence of the accuracy of our fire. The line was clean cut and ran for miles. On one side of the line was deep green grass and on the other was chaos nothing but a mere wilderness of interlocking shell holes, in which the German barbed wire lay heaped in twisted knots. The ohaos continued to where the German front-line trench had been, but which was now mere shell holes, where no man could walk more than a few yards continuously. It was the same over all the network of the second line and support and reserve and communication trenches. Coming down the gentle slope of the Ridge was a tumbling progression from shell-hole to shell-hole, climbing out of one and sliding down into another; and everywhere was the wreckage of dugouts and once solidly built machine-gun emplacements. Modern artillery fire is an affair of science. Meteorological conditions are taken into con- sideration at intervals during the day, because 108 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAB. [Official photograph. HAULING OUT A CAPTURED GERMAN GUN NEAR MESS1NES. temperature and barometric pressure affect the products of explosion of the propellent. The gunner rarely lays in his opponent over his gun-sights, but from a hidden position shoots on his target and regulates his fire by the reports of the forward observing officer and the infor- mation of the aviators. In this he is aided by a map divided into squares, so that the in- formation enables him to place accurately the point he wishes to fire on Results such as described above are only possible when fire is conducted by modern scientific methods, but so certain are theso that our infantry could follow in behind the artillery barrage in perfect safety while the latter moves on at regular intervals of time, sweeping away opposition, destroying constructions and blow- ing to pieces men and guns. Since the beginning of the war artillery had made greater progress than it had done in the whole period from the introduction of rifled cannon to the outbreak of the hostilities in 1914. CHAPTER CCXXV. INDIA DURING THE WAR. INDIA'S INTERNAL LINES OF.CLKAVAGE NATIONALISM BEFORE THE WAB THE MORLEY-MINTO REFORMS LORD HAHDINGE AS VICEROY SITUATION IN 1914 GERMAN INTRIGUES AGAINST INDIA GERMAN TRADE THE EMPLOYMENT OF INDIAN TROOPS INDIA'S REMOTENESS FROM THE WAR LOYALTY AND PATRIOTISM LORD CHELMSFORD AS VICEBOY MESOPOTAMIA REFORM SCHEMES INDIAN DELEGATES TO IMPERIAL WAR CONFERENCE INDIAN WAR LOAN COMPULSORY SERVICE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION MR. CHAMBERLAIN AND MR. MONTAGU BRITISH POLICY IN AUGUST 1917 MATERIAL PROSPERITY FINANCE AND INDUSTRY MORE GERMAN PLOTS CONSPIRACY TRIALS THE SINGAPORE MUTINY IN 1915 THE NEUTRALITY OF AFGHANISTAN- THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER. IN no part of the Empire are the effects of the war more complex and difficult to appraise than in India. Though we speak of India as one country, and our centralized system of administration as well as the increasing diffusion of English as the lingua franca of the western-educated Indians from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin has produced a somewhat artificial appearance of unity, this great sub-continent, with its 315,000,000 inhabi- tants one fifth perhaps of the human race still remains a vast congeries of peoples of different stocks, different creeds, different languages, different customs and traditions, <lifferent stages of civilization. Though the great social religious system of Hinduism, which claims to embrace two-thirds of the whole population and has exercised a permanent influence, sometimes negative and sometimes active, on millions who are nominally outside its pale, has no doubt been in the main a unifying force of resistance against successive tides of foreign invasion, the dominant insti- tution of caste, which is the cornerstone of the system, has created and perpetuated internal lines of cleavage as immutable in all essentials as they are profound. There are 50,000,000 Vol. XV. Part 186 of backward people who count as Hindus and whose ambition it is to climb on to even the lowest rungs of the Hindu social ladder, but who are still called and treated as " untouch- able " by all other Hindus within the recognized pale, whilst the Brahmin, in virtue of his mere birth into the highest caste of all, still reigns hierarchically supreme over all. Besides various small and quite distinct communities, such as Sikhs and Jains and Parsees and the remnants of the followers of Buddha, whose religion about 2,000 years ago went near to superseding Hinduism, the Mahomedans form another fifth of the population, and between them and the Hindus the antagonism bred of centuries of conflict lies deep and fierce beneath the surface of all temporary compromises. Politically the Native or Feudatory States, with a total area more than a third and a population nearly a fourth of the Indian Empire, have retained a varying but always very considerable measure of autonomy under their own here- ditary rulers and constitute so many enclaves outside the sphere of ordinary British adminis- tration, enjoying special but often ill -defined relations with the supreme Government which the late Sir William Lee -Warner described 109 11C TEE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. !Z" EAST^TURKISTAN ) INDIA AND HER FRONTIERS. not inaptly as relations of subordinate alliance. Different climatic conditions quite as much as differences of descent, and tradition have pro- duced yet another broad and by no means arbitrary distinction between the fighting and the non-fighting races of India, the former belonging for the most part to the plains of Northern Hindustan and the lower slopes and valleys of the Himalayas. It was the anarchy let loose amongst all these discordant elements by the decay of the Mogul Empire during the eighteenth century that compelled the East India Company to extend its authority reluctantly, but irre- sistibly, north and south, east and west, from its original small trading settlements on the coast and to build up the vast Indian Empire which was finally placed directly under the British Crown hi 1858 after the expiring con- vulsion of the Mutiny. Under British rule a highly efficient system of administration brought India a measure of peace and justice, of good government and prosperity such as had never oeen known in the whole course of her long history, and all the old forms of internal strife were damped down. But the western educa- tion it had imported into India was destined to produce a new form of unrest which, though in itself inevitable and by no means altogether unhealthy, has taken on at times a very dangerous character, and has rendered the task of British rulers on the accustomed lines of a paternal, if benevolent, despotism more and more difficult. Western education long ago outstripped the objects which Macaulay had immediately in view when he urged its introduction into India more than eighty years ago for the purpose of supplying the sub- ordinate indigenous agency required for tho administration of the country. Appealing at first almost exclusively and still mainly to the same priestly and clerical castes of Hinduism that had always enjoyed a monopoly of such learning as existed in earlier times, it spread rapidly in all the larger Indian towns, and began to find favour with other sections, too, of the urban communides. Fed largely on English history and English literature, the THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. Ill yovith of India who passed through the new colleges and universities we had founded were bound to be affected by the new British ideals of freedom and the British conceptions of government thus set before them. Out of this ferment there grew up at first a wholesome reaction against the barbarous superstitions and cruel customs which degraded their own social system, and the most enlightened leaders of the western-educated classes seemed for a time to realize that far-reaching social reforms could alone form a fitting preparation for those changes in the political relationship between the rulers and the ruled for which the more immature spirits were already beginning to agitate. When the Indian National Congress was founded, in 1885, to give an organized expression to the aspirations of the new western-educated classes, it was hoped that the social reform movement would receive a great impetus, as the many delicate religious and social questions which such a movement was bound to raise were just those with which the Indians themselves rather than their alien rulers were best qualified to deal. But unfor- tunately on these very questions the most acute differences were soon shown to prevail amongst even western-educated Indians, and the social reform movement, browbeaten by the reactionary forces of Hindu orthodoxy, subsided into the background to make room for a more facile agitation in favour of political reforms. The Indian National Conjgress be- came a platform for the ventilation of racial grievances and for the assertion of political rights based upon the theories of British democratic government, for which, in the eyes of her rulers and of the bulk of Indian opinion outside the small western-educated classes, India was still utterly unripe. A considerable enlargement of Indian representation on the Imperial and Provincial Legislative Council, under Lord Lansdowne's Viceroyalty in 1892, was a distinct concession to the Congress agitation, but it gave the Indians no real power and no real responsibility, and it served mainly as a jumping-off ground for further demands. Various causes, amongst which per- haps not the least potent was the increasing familiarity of many Indians who had been to Europe with the seamy side of western civili- zation, tended to produce a new school of Indian thought which, harking back to the more or less mythical legends of a golden age when India was free and wealthy and wise beyond the wisdom of all the rest of the world, resented not only a system of administration entirely controlled by aliens, but the as- DELHI: MAHOMEDANS AT PRAYER. 186-2 Z O ^" u O as a. a. S S H O Z D a < at a X ttl ttl a 01 Q - X D Q Z O H < Z O as O u 112 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 113 cendancy of an alien civilization and the very fact of alien rule. The South African war, in which the two small Boer republics held the whole forces of the British Empire so long at bay, and the Russo-Japanese war, which showed even an Asiatic people to be capable of defeating a great European Power, gave a tremendous stimulus to the new creed of Indian nationalism. At this juncture the Partition of Bengal and Lord Curzon's Education Act, which even the more moderate amongst the western-educated classes chose to construe as a direct challenge to them, gave the Extremists a welcome opportunity for inflaming political passions and racial prejudices to white heat. A campaign of unprecedented violence on the platform and in the Press led to a series of dastardly murders and outrages, of which the victims were not only Englishmen, but even more often Indians in the service of Govern- ment. However hostile the Indian Nationalist might be to western civilization, he never hesitated to import into India the latest and most approved methods of western anarchism. These methods nevertheless had one good effect. They gave pause to some of the more sober Indian politicians who had at first been almost carried away by the rising tide of Ex- tremism ; and thanks mainly to the firm stand made by the late Mr. G. K. Gokhale and Sir Pherozshah Mehta, an attempt by the Extremists to capture the Congress at Surat at the end of 1907 collapsed, though the meet- ing had to be dissolved amidst scenes of wild confusion which discredited it for several years. Government, which had lamentably failed to foresee the storm or to appreciate at first its significance, realized once more, though again very late in the day, that, whilst the forces of disorder had to be met by repression, it was equally necessary to rally to the cause of order the moderate elements in India by some generous political concessions. The Indian Councils Act of 1909, better known as the Morley-Minto reforms, marked a consider- able step in the direction of giving to Indians a larger share in the conduct of public affaire. Its most notable feature was the appointment of Indians to the Executive Councils of the Viceroy and of the Provincial Governors, and to the Secretary of State's Council at the India Office. For the rest it was practically an extension of the Act of 1892, for it provided for a greatly enlarged Indian representation on an elective basis in the Imperial as well as in the provincial Legislative Councils, though in the former an official majority was still retained intact. The inherent weakness of these reforms was that, whilst they gave the Indian opposition vastly increased oppor- tunities for discussion and criticism, they still gave it no real power and no real responsibility. SIR PHEROZSHAH MEHTA, An opponent of " Extremism." The satisfaction which they afforded to Indian sentiment proved, therefore, short-lived. They helped, indeed, to rehabilitate the more con- stitutional methods of agitation for which the Congress claimed to stand and they stemmed the epidemic of anarchist outrages. They also prepared the way for the visit of the King Emperor and his Consort to India at the end of 1911, which evoked a great and genuine outburst of Indian loyalty to the person of the Sovereign The bomb thrown at Lord Hardinge whilst he was making his state entry into Delhi on the first anniversary of the Imperial Durbar at which it had been pro- claimed as the new capital of India, showed however, that if anarchism had been scotched, it was not yet killed, .and the subsequent Delhi conspiracy trials revealed a widespread network of sedition and crime, the full extent of which was only disclosed during the war. In Bengal, too, the continuance of " political " 114 Till'. 77.1//-.'.S HISTORY OF THE WAR. ilivkoitics perpetrated by youths of the better classes proved how persistent were the effects nt' tin- poison with which students and school- buys hail been inoculated, even by so-called moderate leaders like Mr. Surendranath Banerjee, during the ant i- part it ion campaign. VISCOUNT MORLEY. O.M., Secretary of State for India, 1905-1910. Lord Hardinge, who had succeeded to Lord Minto as Viceroy in November, 1910, had not been slow to realize that the Morley-Minto reforms could only mark a stage in the develop- ment of Indian political institutions. In a statesmanlike dispatch the new Viceroy pro- pounded, on August 25, 1911, a scheme of pro- vincial autonomy with a large devolution of powers by the Central Government which, had LordCrewe, then Secretary of State, endorsed it, and been ready to carry it promptly into effect, mignt have deflected Indian political activities into safer paths. The appointment, in 1912, of a Royal Commission of Enquiry into the Indian Public Services was designed also to meet the growing demand of the western-educated classes for a larger share in the actual adminis- tration of the country. But whilst Indian opinion recognized Lord Hardinge's sym- pathetic attitude towards a progressive policy and wns touched by the fortitude and nns>-m\ of any vindictiveness which he displayed after the Delhi outrage, he owed his unprecedented popularity amongst Indians chiefly to the courage with which he was known to have on several occasions championed Indian rights and interests, even in opposition to Whitehall, notably in regard to the treatment of British Indians in South Africa. But, whilst many thoughtful Indians were disposed once more to turn aside from the barren field of politics to that of social service or at least to follow the lead given by Mr. Gokhale when, without abandoning the political arena, ho founded and devoted a large share of his energies to his Servants of India Society, the more advanced parties were successfully exploiting the general disappointment with the practical results of the Minto-Morley reforms in order to revive the Nationalist movement, or at any rate to press for a radical transfer of power from the British administrators to the self-styled representatives of the Indian people. The Congress which had been always inclined to play the part of an Indian Parliament, though a Parliament en- tirely divorced from responsibility, recovered no little of the influence which it had lost after the scandalovis scenes at Surat and still more on the enlargement of the Indian element in the Legislative Councils which at first seemed to dwarf its importance. Moreover, a considerable change had taken place in the attitude of a certain section at least of the Mahomedan community towards the Congress. For many years the Mahome- dans held entirely aloof from the Congress and, acting upon the advice of their great leader Sir Syed Ahmed, they preferred to rely solely for the protection of their social, political and religious interests on the justice and imparti- ality of their British rulers. They had, how- ever, been seriously alarmed as time went on by the growing influence of the Congress, which was essentially a Hindu organization, and they had founded in 1905, as a counterpoise to it, an All -Indian Moslem League, whose first achieve- ment was to secure from Government the special representation of Mahomedan interests, in the Morley-Minto reforms scheme. Mean- while there was growing up a younger genera- tion of Mahomedans whom western educa- tion had brought into closer touch with the more advanced school of Hindu politicians and whose feelings towards their rulers had been very unfavourably affected by the unfriendly policy, THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 115 as they read it, of Great Britain towards the Mahomedaii Powers outside India, and especially towards the greatest of them, Turkey. In the occupation of Egypt, in the recognition of French ascendancy, in Tunis and in Morocco, in the Anglo -Russian Convention with regard to Persia, and in the pressure constantly brought, to bear upon Turkey for the benefit of the Christian races under the Sultan's rule, they detected evidence of a settled purpose to destroy what remained of Mahomedan independence and power. The Italian invasion ot Tripoli in 1911, and the Balkan wars in 1912-13, strengthened their belief in a conspiracy of the Christian Powers against Islam to which Great Britain was a party, and some of the " young " Maho- medan leaders who went to Constantinople in charge of Indian Bed Crescent missions arid camo there into personal contact with " young " Turkey, returned to India with their hearts full of bitterness. The re -par- tition of Bengal in 1911, which was held to favour the Hindus at. the expense of the Mahomedans, had also caused much bad blood. EVMI so paltry a question as that DELHI: STATE ENTRY OF LORD HARDINGE, DEC. 23, 1912, On which occasion he was injured by a bomb. 110 THE TIMES HISTOHY OF THE WAR. which arose at Cawnpore out of the demolition of an outlying building belonging to a mosque to make room for a new road, whereas the road had been deflected iti another part merely to spare a Hindu shrine, revealed a dangerous feeling of irritability which was not confined merely to the local Mahomedans, but spread to those of other provinces and into the Native States. Lord Hardinge even thought [Elliott & Frv. LORD HARDINGE, K.G., Viceroy of India, 1910-1916. it advisable to take the matter out of the hands of the Local Government and settle the dispute by his own personal intervention on the spot. The compromise served to assuage Mahome- dan feeling, but it did not disarm the hostility of the " young " Mahomedan party, who allied themselves more and more closely with the advanced Hindu party in the Congress on the basis of a common nationalism. Thus when the Great War broke out in the summer of 1914 the internal situation was not indeed dangerous but difficult. The Morley- Minto reforms had ceased to satisfy the demands of even the moderate Indian politicians, whilst the Extremists were endeavouring to give a more and more definite interpretation to the vague aspirations towards colonial self-government which the Congress had on various occasions publicly encouraged. The breach was widening between the western- educated classes, who claimed to voice the wishes of the people of India, and the British administrators, who stoutly denied that claim with the tenacity of official conservatism and also with a strong sense of responsibility for the welfare of the Indian masses, holding that they were themselves in far closer touch with the real interests and desires of the vast agricultural population than lawyers and pro- fessors and journalists born and bred in a few large urban centres, which had little in common with the rural districts. Very few, even amongst educated Indians, had taken any sustained interest in European politics. The Congress, taking its cue from the Radical Party in England, had from time to time pro- tested against military expenditure in India and against the Indian Exchequer being saddled with any part of the costs of the various military expeditions outside India in which the Indian Army had been, much to its credit, employed. Some of the Extremists had occa- sionally hinted with unconcealed glee at the possibility of grave European complications which might give India her opportunity to shake off the British yoke. But Indians and Kuropeans alike and especially the soldiers had been taught for so many decades to regard Russia as the one European Power capable of threatening our Indian Empire that the growth of Germany's world -ambitions and the signi- ficance of her activities in the Near and Middle East had never been more than dimly appre- hended. Lord Hardinge knew, for he had been one of the first British diplomatists to realize the German clanger, and had played an impor- tant part in bringing about the rapprochement first with France and then with Russia, by which it was hoped to keep the vaulting ambitions of the Emperor William II. within bounds. The Government of India were fully acquainted with the whole story of the Kaiser's pilgrimages to Constantinople, of German economic and political ascendancy in Turkey, of German railway penetration in Asia Minor, of the great B.B.B. line Berlin- Byzantium-Baghdad of German intrigues in the Persian Gulf, already recounted at length in Chapter LII. of this history. But the Govern- ment of India have never thought it their duty to enlighten or to guide Indian opinion, and even British Ministers, it must be remem- bered, deemed it often wiser to mislead than to lead public opinion at home with regard to the true inwardness of Anglo-German relations. Nor can Lord Hardinge, with his diplomatic THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 117 experience, have overlooked the choice which Germany insisted on making of picked diplo- matists to discharge the modest functions of German Consul-General in India, or the number of military officers attached to the German Consulate-General, or the large suite of experts whom the German Crown Prince brought in his train during his Indian tour, or the mysterious visit which Count Wolff- Metternich paid to India in company with a military nephew just after he had retired Irom the post of German Ambassador in London That Germany had encouraged the Pan- Islamic propaganda which had spread to the frontiers of India, and to a lesser extent into India itself in the days of Abdul Hamid, and had been prosecuted on still more aggres- sive lines by the " young " Turks, was no secret, even before Prince Biilow cynically disclosed in his memoirs the sinister purpose with which the Kaiser posed as the friend of Turkey and the special protector of Islam If William II. reckoned xipon Turkey adding 10 army corps to the German legions in the event of war he reckoned with scarcely less confidence on the indirect support of the Mahomedan populations outside Turkey as soon as the Ottoman Khalif should unfurl at his behest the Green Banner of the Prophet. Nor was it the loyalty of Indian Mahomedans only that he hoped to tamper with. Even before the war Berlin was in close touch with the centres of Hindu sedition in Europe, and one of the officials of the German Consulate in Zurich was intimately associated with a dangerous group of Indian anarchists who had made Switzerland their headquarters. There can be no doubt either that the large German commercial community as well as the host of German missionaries in India acted, HS in every other country, as zealous agents of German policy. Though the Indians themselves were, for the most part, in favour of protection for Indian industries, the British Government maintained their own free trade system in India, and German merchants had taken full advantage of it to develop of late years a grow- ing import and export trade, which in 1913-14 had exceeded that of any other foreign country. In the import trade German travellers had pushed their cheaper manufactured articles with their customary energy, being more ready to adapt themselves to the requirements and taste of native purchasers, and at one time they were undoubtedly helped by the boycott movement against British importer! goods which the Extremists started in support of their political agitation. One of the most notorious Extremist leaders boasted, for in- stance, publicly that his newspaper was not printed on British imported paper, but only on paper brought from Germany and Austria. It was, however, in the export trade of raw materials for her own industries, such as hides, [Vandyk. THE MAHARAJAH OF BIKANIR, One of the Indian Members of the Imperial War Conference, 1917. 118 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. Malabar copra, manganese ore, wolfram or tungsten from Burma, that Germany had made the most determined and successful endeavours to capture the Indian market. In accordance, 1,10. with her universal policy of economic penetration, she had set herself to acquire a footing in, and sometimes commanding control of, mercantile and industrial firms that were regarded as wholly British. As to the wide- spread diffusion of German influence through missionary channels, it may be enough to quote the statement of the Society for the Propaga- tion of the Gospel that iu 1914 in the Chota ^Jagpur district of Orissa alone there were 32 German missionaries in charge of over 300 schools, with 42 native pastors, 449 catechists, 477 school teachers, and a total flock of about 100,000 native Christians. When the storm broke Lord Hardinge was able to measure at once the magnitude of the struggle to which the British Empire was committed, though even he may not have foreseen its duration. He realized that great risks would have to be taken if India was to answer worthily to the military call of the Empire, and he was prepared to take them because he felt he could rely personally on the confidence and affection of the Princes and people of India. As the Maharajah of Bikanir testified three years later at the Mansion House Banouet, which he attended as one of the Indian delegates to the Imperial War Con- ference : " \Ve Indians often wonder whether it is fully realized in Great Britain how for- tunate it was in every way for the Empire that a statesman of Lord Hardinge's sagacity, sym- pathy and broad-minde Iness was representing the Sovereign in India when the storm burst." It required, indeed, not merely a knowledge of the military necessities of the Empire, but profound confidence in the essential loyalty of India to denude her without the slightest hesitation of almost all her British garrison as well of her Indian troops and to throw all her military resources into the melting pot in order to fill the gaps in our fighting line in France, which, owing to our own unpreparedness and the still greater unpreparedness of the Dominions for a great war, could not have been filled from any other quarter during the supremely critical period when the Germans, having failed to reach Paris, were making their great effort to break through to Calais and the French Channel coast. The dispatch of the Indian Expeditionary Force to France and the important part played by it in the winter campaign of 191415 have been fully dealt with in Chapter LXI. Indian troops bore their share also in many other stricken fields, in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, at the Dardanelles, in East Africa, and in cooperation with our Japanese Allies in the INDIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE: GURKHAS DETRAINING TO GO ABOARD THE TRANSPORTS. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 119 A STREET IN MADRAS. Far East. But it was the crucial decision, due to Lord Hardinge's insistency, to send her sons straight to the chief battle front in the West to face, shoulder to shoulder with the British and the Dominion troops, the flower of the German hosts that roused a feeling of intense war-like pride throughout India and ensxired her loyalty. The consciousness of brotherhood in arms seemed to obliterat3 suddenly all racial differences and to unite India, as never before under British rule, in one great impulse of loyalty to a common Empire and a common cause. Many of the Indian princes proffered and rendered personal service at the front All placed the resources of their States at the disposal of Government. The great landlords and gentry of British India responded equally to the call. The great bulk of the Maho- medans vied with the Hindus in their assurances of devotion. The battle spirit stirred not only Rajputs and Sikhs and all the old martial races that form the backbone of the Indian Army, but many others who had not hitherto been wont to seek military service. The educated classes, who pride themselves on having assimilated something of the demo- cratic spirit of the West, rallied to the Empire's cause as the cause of freedom, and even the most bitter critics of the British raj were for the nonce converted to its merits by the far more intolerable menace of German dominion, to which the raid of the Emden and the half- dozen shells she fired into Madras lent momen- tary reality. At the Congress session in the last days of 1914, the President, Mr. Bhupen- dranath Bose, declared, amidst general applause, that that was " not the time to deal with matters on which we may differ. We must present to the world the spectacle of a United Empire." Both Government arid the Indian opposition in the Legislative Councils agreed that during the war there should be a truce to political controversies The Indian members of the Imperial Council gave a remarkable proof of their sincerity by passing in a single day, on March 18, 1915, on a mere assurance from Lord Hardinge that it was a necessary war measure, the Defence of India Act, modelled on the British Defence of the Realm Act, notwithstanding their repugnance to some of its more drastic provisions ; arid, as it were, in return, the Viceroy was able a few months later, on September ' 22, to confirm the new sense of India's partnership in the Empire by announcing that he was authorized by the British Government to accept a reso- lution introduced by a distinguished Punjabi 186-3 120 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. Mahometan, Mr. Mohammed Shafi. to tin- ,-!'lrrt that India, like the Dominions, shnuKI have her own representation in any future Imperial Conference. Further satisfaction wns given to Indian sentiment by another armoiinue- Mi' nt which Lord Hardinge was in a position to make before leaving India. He had obtained the sanction of the Secretary of State to the abolition of Indian indentured labour in tin- Colonies a system productive of grave abuses anil terrible social evils. there was little to bring home to the Indian people the realities of war. Considerable as had been the total contingents furnished by India, they were, when compared with the huge levies in the United Kingdom or in the Dominions, small for her total population and only drawn for the most part from small sections of that population. The number of Indians who had kith or kin or close personal friends at the front was, therefore, very small, and smallest of all amongst the educated tgraph. INDIAN CYCLISTS IN FRANCE. Lord Hardinge's tenure of office, which would normally have expired in November 1915, was renewed for a further six months, to the intense satisfaction of Indian public opinion. But even before he left India there were only too many indications that the first great wave of enthusiasm had spent itself. The war was dragging on much longer than people in India had anticipated. Interest in the military operations, as endless apparently us they were often disappointing, began to flag. Except in the Bombay Presidency, where most of the sick and wounded were iimded from Mesopotamia, and in a few other centres where hospitals had to be provided to meet the requirements of increasing losses. classes, for whom the Indian Army provided no career, and soldiering, it was generally believed, offered in itself very little attrac- ion. The most poignant element of personal interest which made the war bulk so large in the daily hopes and anxieties of almost every family in Britain was seldom present to the people of India, who, for the most part, were quite incapable of visualising the remote and unknown scenes amidst which the actual operations of war were carried on. From all the immediate terrors of war India was prac- tically immune, and for a long time even from its financial burdens. In fact, after a first spasm of economic depression, the war brought her a steady increase of material prosperity THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 121 There was a mistaken notion that Indian opinion would take alarm if the strain of war were allowed to cause any very marked depar- ture from the ordinary official or even social life of the European community. The keenness of the younger members of the public services to volunteer for the front was systematically discouraged, whilst the military authorities continued to treat the reserve of Indian Army officers, drawn mostly from the Anglo-Indian commercial class, with their customary frigidity, and every public department adheied as closely as possible to its usual routine. Thought- ful Indians, reading public speeches about the life and death struggle in which the Empire was engaged, were puzzled by this official attitude of seeming indifference which extended equally to suggestions made by Indians themselves for a fuller utilization of Indian resources, both of men and materials, for the prosecution of the war. Upon others the increasing horrors of the European war, the successive " methods of frightfulness " imported into it by a nation that prided itself upon being above all others the chosen exponent of European culture, arid the concentration of the whole energies and resources of tha.westem world on the mere work of destruction, produced a not unnatural revul- sion against the vaunted superiority of our civi- lization. On the other hand, the bulk of the western-educated classes, whose mind had been so long steeped in politics, dwelt chiefly on the generous and almost excessive praise lavished in the British Press and by responsible Ministers themselves on the loyalty of India. Whilst they indignantly repudiated all idea of claiming a reward for loyalty, they interpreted the promise of a " changed angle of vision " as foreshadowing nothing less than the speedy concession of all the political demands they had hitherto pressed for in vain. The Nationalists read into every declaration of the Allies that the war was being waged in support of demo- cratic ideals and to secure the right of every small nation to shape its own destinies a justi- fication of their own theories of Indian nation- hood. There were some, moreover, amongst the Extremists who had perhaps swung rather reluctantly to the inflowing tide of loyalty, and who, less squeamish in their views as to the real obligations of loyalty, were not prepared to allow its reward to be deferred until the restoration of peace conditions might possibly diminish its marketable value. Anyhow they drew a broad distinction between loyalty to the Crown itself and loyalty to those who represented the Crown in India, and did not hesitate to resume their subversive agitation [Official photograph. INDIAN CAVALRY IN FRANCE. 122 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. against British administration, though it \viis bound to render the ordinary task of govern- ment far more diflicult in war-time than in limes of peace. The old ferment was at work again, and when the Congress met in Bombay for its next annual session at the end of 1915, the atmosphere was very different from that of the previous session at the end of 1914. It required all the ability and prestige of Sir S. Sinha, who occupied the Presidential chair on this occasion, to restrain the advanced party and to defeat the aggressive tactics advocated by Mrs. Besant, who, having lost a good deal of the influence she had originally acquired as a Theosophist vessel of spiritual enlighten- ment with the more conservative and sober leaders of Hinduism, was seeking to gain new popularity with the younger generation by constituting herself the impassioned champion of the most extreme Indian Nationalism. Sir S. Sinha, speaking with the experience he had learnt as the first Indian member of the Viceroy's Executive Council, pleaded with the utmost earnestness and force for patience and moderation, and declared emphatically that though the goal to keep before them was ultimate self-government, India was not yet ripe for it. His audience listened grudgingly to this language of sane patriotism, for Mrs. Besant had already adroitly launched the catch- word of Home Rule for India, against which Lord Hfucdinge vainly uttered hie own grave warning in his farewell speech to the Imperial Council at Delhi on March 24, 1910. Lord Chelmsf ord , who, in obedience to the call of patriotism, had already spent over a year in India during the war as an ordinary Territorial oflicer, landed in Bombay, after a short visit to England, on April 4, 1916, to take over the \ 7 iceroyalty from Lord Hardinge, who sailed on the same day, after unprecedented demonstrations of gratitude and affection from the Ruling Princes as well as the people of India. In his very first speech in reply to an address of welcome at Bombay Lord Chelms- ford pledged himself to continue his prede- cessor's policy. But for a time his attention had to be largely diverted to the grave mili- tary problems in Mesopotamia with which the fall of Kut almost at once confronted him. Evidence had been accumulating for some time past that Army Headquarters in India had failed to rise to the emer- INDIAN TROOPERS IN FRANCE. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 123 INDIAN MACHINE-GUN IN FLANDERS. gency created by the first serious reverse which our arms had encountered on the Tigris namely, at Ctesiphoii in November 1916 The lack of river transport .and the neglect to supplement it by the construction of a military railway had hampered all opera- tions for the relief of Kut, and ever since the retreat from Ctesiphon harrowing stories had reached India of the sufferings of our sick and wounded which showed a lament- able breakdown of the medical field service as the result, in part at least, of inadequate transport. Lord Chelmsford had himself been on the point of proceeding to Meso- potamia, on a mission of inquiry which Lord Hardingo had asked him to undertake, when he had to change his plans on his appointment to the Viceroyalty. That mission was subsequently entrusted by Lord Hardinge to Sir William Vincent, afterwards Home Member of the Government of India with whom were associated Major-Geiieral Bingley, and later Mr. E. A. Kidsdale. Their report, ultimately made public with the Report of the Parliamentary Commission on the Meso- potamian Expedition, reached the Govern- ment of India after Lord Chelmsford had assumed office, and confirmed him in the opinion that sweeping changes were imperatively required both at Army Headquarters in India and in the higher command in Mesopotamia. The Commander-in-Chief, Sir Beauchamp Duff, had proved himself an able administrator so long as no excessive strain was thrown on to the military machine of which he was in charge, and he had deserved and received great credit for the prompt dispatch of the large expe- ditionary forces sent from India to France at the beginning of the war. But the far-reaching changes in the system of Indian Army Adminis- tration effected in 1906 at Lord Kitchener's instance, when he held the post of Commander- iii-Chief in India with Sir Beauchamp Duff as his Chief of the Staff, had borne the fruits which Lord Curzon had at the time vainly insisted they were bound ultimately to bear. For they combined in the Commander-in- Chief the twofold functions of executive and administrative head of the Indian Army. Even in peace time such a combination could onlv succeed with a man of Lord Kitchener's own masterful personality and indomitable energy. Under the stress of war its failure was inevitable. Sir Beauchamp Duff was tied to his Department, by the increasing pressure of administrative work, which lie was perhaps too reluctant to delegate to others, and though, as Commander-in-Chief, he ought to have been able at least occasionally to see things with his own eyes especially when things were obviously going wrong he had never found a day to spare during nearly three 124 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. years of war to emerge from tin- seclusion of hi-: olliee nt Delhi or Simla. In .Inly, 1917, he \viis recalled to Knu'land to give t vidcncc In-fur.- tin' Mesopotiimiaii Cammiation, and Sir Charles Mourn, who hud held with great distinction tin important command in France, was sent out to succeed him as Command) r- in-Ohic-f, uud at onci- proceeded to Mesopotamia to take the measure of the military situation for himself. Equally important changes had meanwhile taken place in the higher commands in Mesopotamia, and notably the supersession of Sir Percy Lake, formerly Chief of the Staff to Sir Beauchamp Duff whose appoint- ment early in 1917 to thu supreme command in Mesopotamia had been much criticized at the time by Sir Stanley Maude, the brilliant general who was so soon to retrieve the whole situation by the conquest of Baghdad, and then again so soon to be arrested by the hand of death in his splendid career of victory. Even before these changes had relieved the new Viceroy from the grave military pre- occupations of his first few months in India he had found himself compelled to take up the difficult problem of political reforms, to which his predecessor had already given much attention. In close consultation with the mem- bers of his Executive Council, Lord Chelmsford devoted his first summer in Simla to the pre- paration of an extensive scheme for submission to the Secretary of State. But the new Viceroy's natural reserve, from which, moreover, he could hardly have departed so long as the scheme had not obtained the sanction of the British Government, was soon skilfully exploited by the advanced party to cast doubts upon his "sympathy for Indian aspirations" and to stimulate the growing impatience of Indian politicians. The extremists did not hesitate to denounce him as the reactionary nominee of a reactionary Secretary of State (Mr. Austen Chamberlain), and, as a newcomer, he had not yet had time or opportunity to acquire public confidence sufliciently to counteract the insi 1 1 ions campaign directed against him. During the autumn session of the Viceroy's Legis- lative Council nineteen Indian "elected" members submitted a written memorandum containing a list of measures which, in their opinion, constituted a minimum instalment of the changes which India was entitled to demand from " the new angle of vision " at home. The memorandum had been hastily prepared, and at once provoked expressions of dissent from other Indian representatives who hat! been ignored by the signatories as mere "nominated" members. Whilst some of its demands weij; quite reasonable, such as the repeal of the Indian Arms Act, and t he m-iinting of Army commissions to Indians, which had ioiig been overdue, the consti- tutional reforms, as far as their meaning was intelligible, seemed calculated either to angravate the defects of tho Morley-Minto reforms by increasing the power of the Indian opposition to criticize and obstruct tho action of thu Kxecutivo without having to bear any corresponding responsibility, or else to involve a revolutionary change in the entire system of Indian government, only conceivable if India were endowed with really representative institutions. However crude this document was, the Government of. India would perhaps have done better not to ignore it completely. Their silence played into the hands of the extremists, who captured the Indian National Congress at its next annual session held in Christmas week, 1916, at. Lucknow. Mrs. Besant, whose mischievous activities had led to her exclusion from the Bombay Presidency and some other provinces, and Mr. Tilak, the great Deccan agitator, who reappeared for the first time on the scene after having served his six years' term of transportation to Mandalay for sedition, were the heroes of the session. After many impas- sioned orations, in which tho most fervid Nationalists had, as usual, to declaim against " alien " misrule in an " alien " tongue, as English is the one language they have in common and the one practical bond of national unity between them, the Congress passed a series of resolutions claiming for India the status of a self-governing State, with complete financial, legislative, and administrative auto- nomy, and, as a first step, the election of half the Government of India by the non-official Indian members of the Viceroy's Legislative Council, and other reforms of a similar uud even more drastic character for the Indian Provincial Governments. Lord Chelmsford had delivered in advance during a visit to Calcutta an earnest warning against such " cataclysmic changes," and, in reply to an address presented to him a few weeks later by a body of Indian journalists who demanded the repeal of the Press Act, he pointed out, with abundant quotations from the extremist press and, in particular, from Mrs. Besant's own organ, [Vanlyt. LORD CHRLMSFORD, O.C.M.G., Appointed Viceroy of India, 1916. 12/5 126 ////' 'l'!MI-:s HISTORY OF THE WAE. New I ml in, the dangerous, if not actually criminal, lengths to which political agitation was being carried. Unfortunately, whilst the Viceroy's admonitions were so much breath wasted on the extremists, he was not in a lEllioU & Fry. SIK JAMES S. MESTON, K.C.S.I., Lieutenant-Governor of Agra and Oudh, 1912-1917. One of the representatives of India in the Imperial War Conference of 1917. position to rally the moderates to his support by any definite enunciation of policy, as the Government of India were still engaged in a protracted exchange of views with the Secretary of State. Nor, indeed, did there seem to be any fixity of purpose or uniformity of policy at Delhi. Whereas the Home Rule agitation was spreading all over India and assuming the character of an unmistakably All-Indian movement, the Government of India shrank from the responsibility of dealing with it themselves, and left it to the Provincial Governments to take such measures as they might deem necessary under their own authority. The result was a deplorable lack of uniformity, which produced merely an impression of irre- solution and weakness i.e., the most fatal impression possible in any Oriental country. The appointment of three delegates to repre- sent India at the special Imperial War Con- ference held in London in the spring of 1917 temporarily eased the situation. It was i> generous fulfilment of the pledge which Lord Harding- had been authorized to give twelve months before. Besides Sir James Meston, Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces, well known for his warm sympathy with all legitimate Indian aspirations, the Maharajah of Bikanir, an Indian Ruling Prince of an- cient lineage and great parts, and Sir S. Sinha, an able leader of moderate Indian opinion, who had been the first Indian member of tho Viceroy's Executive Council in Lord Minto's time, and had presided over the Indian National Congress of 1915, proceeded to England to speak for India for the first time in the xmited counsels of the whole Commonwealth of British nations with an authority worthy of the share she had borne in the great war. The sple&did reception given to them by their colleagues from the self-governing Dominions, as well as by the British Government and the British people, made a great impression in India and went far to counteract an organized campaign of suspicion and ill-feeling against the Dominions, for which the treatment of Indian settlers in South Africa and the whole very difficult and delicate question of Indian immigration into British colonies had often afforded good, or at least specious, grounds. In the calmer atmosphere thus created, the Government of India were able to introduce two important measures connected with the prose- cution of the war which received at first a con- siderable amount of support from Indian opinion. One was an undertaking to contribute 100,000,000 as India's share of the Empire's war expenditure and the issue of an Indian loan to cover a first instalment of that contribution. Many Indians had themselves expressed their regret that the Empire had not made a larger appeal to Indian patriotism, and the share India had hitherto borne of ' the financial burdens of the war had been scarcely appre- ciable, as it was only in the Budget of 1916 that a slight increase of taxation had taken place, and the Imperial Exchequer continued to defray all the extra costs involved by the em- ployment of Indian troops in the various theatres of war outside India. It must, however, be remembered that, whilst the Dominions had spent very little before the war on Imperial defence, a considerable portion of the revenues of India had always been devoted to the Army, and she had thus been in a position to place a large and well-equipped force in the field at an early and critical stage of the war well ahead of THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 127 the Dominion contingents. The Indian War Loan was launched with very general approval, even from leading extremists, and ultimately produced a sum of nearly 40,000,000, which was four times as much as the Finance Member, Sir William Meyer, had ventured to anti- cipate. The other measure was an Act to impose a restricted form of compulsory military training and service on the European com- munity, and to arrange for the voluntary enrolment of Indians in a special military force to be raised for the war in all parts of India. It was a measure which might with advantage have been taken as soon as the war broke out, and the European Volunteer Corps would then have welcomed it heartily, whereas the manner and the season of the year in which the new Act was put into operation, just at the beginning of the hot weather of 1917, caused a great deal of unnecessary hardship and heartburning. It was none the less loyally carried into effect. The appeal to Indians was less successful. At first it also received general support from Indian public men, who seemed to realize how valuable such an experiment might prove for the future organization of an All-Indian army on territorial lines. Moreover, a good many young Indians of the educated classes had set an excellent example by volunteering during the early stages of the war for active service as doctors and in the Ambulance Corps, and had acquitted them- selves very creditably in France and in Meso- potamia. A double company of Bengalis had also been voluntarily raised as a combatant unit under special authority granted in response to the insistent wishes of the people of Bengal. But the larger movement which Government was now endeavouring, again rather tardily, to encourage was blighted by political distrust. The conditions in regard to pay and status, though similar to those under which our own Territorial!* had been recruited at home, were keenly attacked by the extremists as conveying some slur of racial inferiority ; and within tliree months Government had to give public expres- sion to its disappointment in a resolution stating that only 300 Indian recruits had so far come forward in the whole of India instead of the 5,000 asked for by the military authorities. *Not the least potent of the influences which favoured a recrudescence of political unrest was the Russian Revolution. It created a profound impression all over India, and the extremists hailed in it above all the downfall of a tyrannical bureaucracy with which for many years past they had been wont to compare the Anglo- Indian bureaucracy, and always, of course, to the latter's disadvantage. A powerful impetus was again given to the extremist propaganda by the publication of the Mesopotamian Report, which was construed into a scathing indictment not only of Indian military administration, but of the whole system of Indian Government, civil as well as military ; and the language used in the course of the Parliamentary debates on the Report by Mr. Edwin Montagu a very short time before he was appointed to the India Office lent itself, unfortunately, to a similar \0fficial pMa&apk. INDIAN CONTINGENT IN MESOPOTAMIA. Sepoys cleaning reserve bombs for front line trench. interpretation. This was all the more unfor- tunate as the internment of Mrs. Besarit (June 19) by the Government of Madras had given the extremists an opportunity to raise a storm of indignant protests and to threaten a campaign of " passive resistance." Many moderate Indians regarded the action of the Madras Government as, to say the least, ill- 128 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. IN MESOPOTAMIA: INDIAN MOUNTAIN GUN SECTION. timed, and futile into the bargain, as it merely meant the transfer of that lady's activities, with very slight restrictions, from her own headquarters at Adyar, just outside Madras, to Ootacamund, the summer headquarters'- of Government, which she herself selected out of the various alternatives offered to her for her enforced residence. The Government of India continued to maintain a sphynx-like attitude of silent reserve, though the agitation which cantruil more and more round Mcs. Besant had spread throughout political circles all over India. The appointment of three new Indian members to the India Council in Whitehall one of whom, Mr. Bhupendranath Bose, had presided over the Indian National Congress with marked ability and moderation during the 'first year of the war was one of Mr. Chamber ^ Iain's last acts before he left the India Office ; but he got little credit for it in the over-heated atmosphere of Indian politics, and his resig- nation on July 12, followed by the announce- ment that Mr. Montagu had been selected to succeed him, was welcomed as foreshadowing a repudiation by the British Government of the raactionary policy so mischievously but suc- cessfully imputed to him and to the Viceroy appointed during his tenure of the India Office. What actually happened had a very dif- ferent meaning. Mr. Montagu realized perhaps more fully than Mr. Chamberlain had done the importance of allaying the political excite- ment in India by a prompt declaration of policy, but the declaration which he made on behalf of the British Government, and in full agreement with the Government of India, was itself the result of the prolonged exchange of views that had already taken place between Mr. Chamberlain and the Viceroy. The an- nouncement made by Mr. Montagu on August 20, 1917, marks so important a stage in the evolution of British rule in India that its terms deserve to be quoted in full : The policy of his Majesty's Government, with which the Government of India are in complete accord, is that of the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration, and the gradual development of self-governing institutions, with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire. They have decided that substantial steps in this direction should be taken as soon as possible, and that it is of the highest importance as a preliminary to considering what these steps should be that there should be a free and informal exchange of opinion between those in authority at home and in India. His Majesty's Government have accordingly decided, with his Majesty's approval, that I should accept the Viceroy's invitation to proceed to India to discuss these matters with the Viceroy and the Govern- ment of India, to consider with the Viceroy the views of local governments, and to receive with him the suggestions of representative bodies and others. 1 would add that progress in this policy can only be achieved by successive stages. The British Government and the Government of India, on whom the responsibility THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 129 lies for the welfare and advancement of the Indian peoples, must be the judges of the time and measure of each advance, and they must be guided by the coopera- tion received from those upon whom new opportunities of service will thus be conferred, and by the extent to which it is found that confidence can be reposed in their sense of responsibility. Ample opportunity will be afforded for public discussion of the proposals, which will be submitted in due course to Parliament. It was perhaps too much to expect that evou so clean-cut and far-reaching a pledge of our determination to set the feet of India in the path of self-government would disarm an agitation which, if not openly directed agpjnst the British overlordship of India, had behind it some dangerous forces bent on paralyzing the whole system of Indian administration. The Government of India, anxious to restore a happier atmosphere in view of Mr. Montagu's arrival in India, prevailed upon the Madras Government to rescind the order for Mrs. Besant's internment, and would have extended the same indulgence to the Mahomedan extremist leader, Mr. Mahomed Ali, had he not refused to give a promise of good behaviour during the war in the form not unreasonably laid before him for signature. The election of this " young " Mahomedan, who before his internment had never made any secret of his sympathies with the " Young " Turks, to the Presidency of the All-India Moslem League was merely an empty demonstration, as he remained interned, but it was no less significant of an irreconcilable temper than that of Mrs. Besant herself to the Presidency of the Indian National Congress at the annual session of those two assemblies held at Christmas 1917, in Calcutta. How artificial was the " national " unity for which they professed to stand had been once more shown only a few weeks before by an unusually violent explosion of those racial and sectarian passions which even the strong arm of the British ruler cannot always keep under restraint. In the western districts of Bihar, adjoining the United Pro- vinces, widespread disturbances, in which a number of educated Hindus played a shameful part, broke out between Hindus and Maho- medans, and considerable military forces were required to put them down, not without loss of life and only after the Hindus had indulged in a veritable orgy of looting and arson and violence, in which even Mahomedan women had not been spared. Nevertheless, the Con- gress and the League agreed to pass resolutions to the effect that nothing would satisfy India short of Dominion Home Rule within 10 years and the immediate adoption of the extreme programme embodied in their resolutions of Christmas 1916. Such demands, to which Mrs. Besant's Presidential Address had im- parted a very minatory tone, were not only in themselves extravagant, but they deliberately flouted that part of the British Government's HON. EDWIN S. MONTAGU. M.P., Secretary of State for India, 1917. 130 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE \\'Alt. declaration, reserving to their own judgment tin: time and measure of each advance towards the ultimate goal of Indian self -government. Happily thero was a considerable body of Indian opinion far less noisy and more sober, which Mr. Montagu, who widely kept his own counsel, had ample opportunity of eliciting during his progress through India in company with the Viceroy. Moderate Indians may seem at times to be carried away or submerged by the rising tide of extremism, but whilst it would be unwise to ignore the dangerous forces at work behind the Indian Home Rule move- ment in its more extravagant forms, the methods to which they resorted at a time when the whole Empire, including India, was engaged in a life-and-death struggle failed to affect the substantial and steady support which India as a whole continued to the prosecution of the war a support which even the extremists themselves always pro- fessed, at any rate publicly, to endorse Material prosperity is always a steadying factor, and of material prosperity during the war India enjoyed a more abundant share than any other part of the Empire. If we take in the first instance the history of Indian finance during the period 1914-1917, we find it to have been a strange record of surprises, but of surprises which led up to unexpectedly satisfactory results. The broad characteristic of Indian finance is that the country has large obligations to discharge in England every year, estimated at approxi- mately 20,000,000. It has in India a large unfunded debt, chiefly deposits invested in Post Office Savings Banks; an extensive note circulation entirely managed by Govern- ment ; and a token currency whose sterling exchange value is guaranteed and buttressed by a Gold Standard Reserve maintained almost entirely in London. In order to ensure financial equilibrium it is necessary to preserve a substantial balance of trade in favour of the country, and it was always assume 1 that in time of crisis there would be a great demand for sterling exchange, which Govern- in, i it would have to meet from the Gold Standard lie-serve if the financial policy in- augurated in lH!i:$ and consummated in 189S. directed mainly to tho maintenance of the sterling value of the. rupee, was not to collapse. Furthermore, in India, owing to the shyness of capital and tli<- undeveloped condition of banking institutions, Government has to stand behind the principal banks in time of crisis, not only by the us.e of its credit, but by the provision of actual cash. It was fortunate for India that the outbreak of hostilities found the country in an excep- tionally strong financial position The Treasury balances in England and India were 1,500,000 in advance of the estimated value, the gold holding was 23,500,000, and tho Presidency banks, the principal financial in- stitutions in the country, were unusually well provided with fluids. Fortified by these resources, the Government was able to meet the first shock to credit with success. This shock took the form which was generally anticipated an immediate demand for sterling exchange, which was not satisfied until gold bills on London of the value of 8,750,000 had been sold. This process automatically trans- ferred a corresponding amount of the Gold Standard Reserve from London to India, and it was fortunate that this was so There was an immediate rush on the Post Office Savings Banks, which induced the withdrawal of 7,000,000 and a demand for the encashment in bullion of currency notes to the extent of 4,000,000. By borrowing from the Gold Standard Reserve the Government was able readily to meet the demands on the Savings Banks, whilst confidence in the paper cur- rency was speedily restored by increasing tho facilities for encashment throughout the country. So far Indian finance and currency had pursued the anticipated course ; thereafter it assumed forms entirely upsetting all calcu- lations arid arrangements. Trade rapidly adjusted itself to the new conditions, and by the close of March, 1915, it had found a fresh equilibrium. The very large demand for tho chief products of India, such as jute, cotton, oilseeds and hides arid skins, coupled with the reduced import of manufactured goods arising from tho closure of the chief Continental markets and the reduced productive power of the United Kingdom, brought about an in- creasing balance of trade in favour of India. A further factor of strength was introduced when the Indian Government, began to spend very largely in India on account of the Home Government for the maintenance of the forces in Mesopotamia, East Africa, and Egypt ; this expenditure amounted to an indirect remittance from London to Calcutta and THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 331 INDIANS ON THE WESTERN FRONT: COOKING CHUPATTIES. Bombay. The result of these forces was to make the cliief embarrassment of Government not the provision of sterling remittances from India, but the provision of rupee remittances from London ; not to find sterling resources from the Gold Standard Reserve, but to meet in India an almost insatiable demand for rupee currency. This necessitated a number of expedients The ordinary sale of Council Bills on India in London was reduced to Rs. 80 lakhs, and then to Rs. 60 lakhs per week ; Government took entire control of the imports of gold and silver ; and with the price of silver soaring above the fixed ratio of the rupee to the sovereign namely, 15 to 1 it raised the rate of exchange to Re. 1-5, approximately at that time gold point, taking into account the increase in freight arid insurance. Towards the close of 1917 small notes of the denomination of one rupee and Rs. 2-8-0 were introduced to econo- mize the use of silver. None of these ex- pedients would have availed, in face of the very heavy expenditure on account of the Home Government, if the borrowings in India had not been on an unprecedented scale In AT DINNER. [Official photograph. normal years the Government of India esteems itself fortunate if it is able to borrow in the Indian market 2,000,000. In 1916 a con- version loan yielded 4 ; 250,00i>, and in 1917 a special effort to raise a " Loan of Victory " brought to the exchequer the relatively large sum of 39,000,000. In the closing months of 1917 Treasury Bills were issued for the first time in India and freely taken up. i The interaction of all these forces produced in India conditions of great prosperity and con- siderable strength. All the manufacturing and producing industries of India were passing through halcyon days, and the prosperity of 132 ////: TIMKS HISTORY OF THE WAR. tin- export trade u a-, only limited by the amount of freight available for export. The banks were full of money, and a feeling of optimism was abroad. It was fairly claimed that the cur- rency system of India had stood the shock of war better than the currency system in any other country in the world. India had not altogether escaped additional taxation. In the first year SIR THOMAS H. HOLLAND, K.C.I.E., President of the Indian Industrial Commission. 1916, and of the Board of Munitions, India, 1916. of the war, acting in the belief that the war would b of short duration and it was un- necessary to look far ahead, it was arranged to meet the estimated deficit by new borrowings. In 1916-17 additional revenue amounting to 3,600,000 was raised by increasing the customs tariff, the salt duty and the income tax ; in 1917-18 a super-tax was imposed for the first time, and the customs duties were further raised, including tho duties on cotton piecegoods, despite the vehement protests of the Lancashire industry. Simultaneously India rendered valuable contributions to the financial strength of the Empire. She dis- charged all her floating debt in London, and invested large sums of the Paper Currency Reserve and the Gold Standard Reserve in British securities, and finally, in 1917, assumed the sole responsibility for interest and sinking fund on 100,000,000 of the Imperial war expenditure. Whilst even reproductive State expenditure had to be severely curtailed in many directions, as, for instance, important railway extensions and irrigation works, the lessons taught by the war proved invaluable for the future development of Indian economic resources. For the war showed just where the old policy of laisser faire, laisser oiler had failed in the past. It showed how far-reaching German methods of commercial penetration had be- come. It showed how important it is, even in the interests of the Empire, to promote tho growth of Indian industries and to make them self-contained and, in case of need, independent of reinforcement from home. The appointment of an Industrial Commission to investigate these matters was an earnest of the new interest taken in them by Government, though its fruitful labours had to be inter- rupted in order to allow its energetic chair- man, Sir Thomas Holland, to undertake the still more urgent task of organizing the special war industries of India. Industrial labour never before received such high wages. Yet, whilst more liberal conditions of service and generous treatment of men who had returned disabled from the front and of the families of those who had fallen gave a fresh stimulus to recruiting amongst the old fighting races, it was found possible to raise at the same time very considerable labour corps for Meso- potamia and France. Above all, agriculture, which must always remain the greatest of Indian industries, was favoured by a suc- cession of bounteous rains and abundant harvests. The overwhelming majority of the population of India ask for nothing more. If on the whole, and in spite of an unfortunate recrudescence of political unrest, British rule in India stood the test of the world-war with unimpaired and even increasing strength, there were from time to time, both within and beyond the frontier, insidious attempts to disturb the peace of India, which only the vigilance and firmness of Government turned to the con- fusion of the German plotters who engineered them. As soon as war broke out the chief Indian seditionists in Europe and some who had set up their headquarters in America and in Japan proceeded to Berlin, where they were Organized into an Indian political department working under the orders of the German Foreign Office and War Office. A few of them were young Indians of considerable attain- ments, such as Har Dyal, a Hindu who had been formerly a Government of India scholar at THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 133 Oxford ; Chattopadhya, also a Hindu, who had been refused admission to the English Bar after the assassination of Sir Curzon Wyllie in London ; Barkut Ullah, a Mahomedan who had been editor of an anti-British newspaper, Islam Fraternity, published in Japan ; and Ajit Singh, a Sikh, who had been deported from India in 1 907, at the same time as Lajpat Rai, on sus- picion of tampering with the loyalty of Indian troops. Herr von Oppenheim, familiar to many Englishmen when, as a peripatetic member of the German Consular service, he had his headquarters in Cairo, where he was a 'pernona 'jrata with the Egyptian Nationalists, and spent even more of his time on mysterious journeys, professedly of exploration and archiBO- logical research in Northern Arabia, Syria and other Arab -speaking regions, was placed in charge of this Indian department. Its primary objects were to work up revolutionary move- ments in India itself and to stir up trouble in the borderlands. Amongst its minor activities it endeavoured, with very scant success, to induce Indian prisoners of war, especially Mahomedan?. to take service against us with the Turks, and it composed a series of wonderful fables about the state of India, partly to cheer the German public, but still more, no doubt, for consump- tion in Turkey and other Oriental countries where fairy stories always obtain ready credence. At one time it was the Nizam of Hyderabad who hr.>; been deposed by his Mahomedan subjects because of his loyalty to ths British Crown. On another occasion it was a mythical Hindu rajah who was heading a combined insurrection of Brahmins, Buddhists and Mahomedaris. Then again it was a tale of grave disorders at Bombay, Madras and half a dozen other places, where rebels had prevented the departure of troops for Europe and had seized the arsenals and barracks. Hard as the Indian Bureau in Berlin un- doubtedly worked, and large as were the sums which it expended, its actual achievements were on a much more modest scale, and in com- parison with its ambitions proved lamentable failures. None the less credit is, however, due to the Criminal Investigation Department of the Government of India, whose agents, under the direction of Sir Charles Cleveland, tracked and mastered successively all the elaborate rami- fications of a German organization which, from its Berlin base, extended across America to all the neutral countries in the Far East, especially the Dutch East Indies and Siam, and China, where it had its instruments ready to hand in every German settlement. It con- trived even to secure a strong secret foothold in .lapan amongst a disaffected section of the large body of Indian students who had flocked for INDIANS IN FRANCE AT THEIR DEVOTIONS. 184 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. some time past to its universities and col- leges. It was to British Columbia and California that the attention of the Germans was in the first place directed by their chief adviser, Har Dyal, who had been engaged there for some years before the war in organizing a revolutionary movement known as the Ghadr, or Mutiny the name given also to a newspaper he published in the Urdu and Gomukhi lan- guages, which are respectively the chief Mahomedan and Sikh vernaculars in Northern India. This movement, which had its head- quarters in California, was to secure the com- plete overthrow of British rule in India by means of another rising on the lines of the 1857 mutiny; and Har Dyal openly preached by word of mouth as well as in his organ a gospel of wholesale murder and massacre, based upon fierce racial hatred, which, how- ever, did not prevent the Germans from wel- coming him as a friend and ally. The dis- abilititss imposed upon Indian immigrants on the Pacific slope had helped to embitter many of the Indian settlers, largely Sikhs, and Har Dyal and other Indian anarchists had thus found a fruitful soil on which to scatter the seeds of sedition. Har Dyal himself hud foretold in a public speech, as early as May, 1914, the imminence of a war between Germany and Great Britain, which would be India's opportunity to shake off the British yoke. Just about the same time, one Gurdit Singh, a Sikh, deliberately chartered a Japanese steamer, the Komagata Maru, to take over several hundred Indian labourers, mostly Sikhs from the Punjab, to Vancouver arid land them there in defiance of the laws of British Columbia. He and his fellow conspirators knew that this attempt was foredoomed to failure, and the ignorant coolies, embittered by their treatment, were easily duped into venting their wrath, not upon the real authors of their misfortunes, but upon their British rulers, who had done their best to mitigate the hardships of their ease and, indeed, defrayed the costs of their repatriation. A number of agitators took passage with them on their enforced return to India, feeding them constantly with seditious harangues and promises of an early and successful insurrection all over India. Details of dacoities and plans for suborning the native troops, looting the Government treasuries, and seizing the chief armouries in the Punjab were worked out, and parties were landed at Hong Kong, Singa- pore, Ponang and Rangoon to seduce the Indian garrisons. The main body, numbering 329, reached the Hooghly in the Komagata. Maru at the end of September 1914, where they were landed at Budge-Budge, near Cal- cutta. There had been abundant information that their arrival would mean trouble, and the Government of the Punjab had sent down agents to persuade the men to return peace- DELHI, THE NEW CAPITAL OF INDIA, WITH THE JUMMA MUSJID. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 185 fully to their homes and, if necessary, to issue the requisite orders under the lugresa into India Ordinance recently promulgated. The measures taken by the Government of Bengal proved entirely inadequate to prevent grave- disturbances. Only 62 of the men agreed to get quietly into the special trains provided for them, and the rest set out in defiance of the authorities to inarch by road to Calcutta. A force of police and some troops hastily called out succeeded in barring their way and turning them back to Budge-Budge. But they still refused to entrain, and when hustled by the police constables present they opened fire upon them with guns and pistols they had secreted. The small police force was over- powered, and when troops arrived to quell tho riot a small pitched battle ensued, and consider- able loss of life, before the majority of the rioters surrendered, only a small number, in- cluding, however, the ringleader, Gurdit Singh, making good their escape. This was but the forerunner of much more widespread trouble in the Punjab iteelf. Fresh arrivals of disaffected elements from Canada and the United States and from the ports of the Far East, where the local police forces for the European settlements had for many years past been largely recruited amongst Punjabi Sikhs, filtered steadily into India, and whilst a good many were dealt with under the Ingress Ordinance and interned, enough got through to carry on their nefarious propa- ganda in India, and veiy shortly a regular campaign of murder and dacoity was started in the Punjab. A rising was actually planned for February 19, 1915, with the object of seizing the Government arsenals at Lahore and Ferozepur, whilst continuous endeavours had been made to seduce the Indian troops in those cities as well as at Meerut, Wilsonpur and other smaller cantonments .in Northern India. An attempt was actually made to blow up the Doraba bridge at Ambala by means of a bomb, and in the Ferozepur dis- trict a sub-inspector of police and one of his men were shot dead in broad daylight on the public road. But the Punjab Government were fully alive to the danger, and it had at its head in Sir Michael O'Dwyer a Lieutenant- Governor who, like the Lawrences and Ed- wardes of the old Mutiny days, had won the complete confidence of the law-abiding population of his province by the keen interest he had personally taken in their welfare and by his accessibility and frankness as well as by Ids keen sense of justice. Like his great pre- decessors 60 years before, he was also pre- pared to strike fearlessly when necessary. Tho well-to-do classes showed no sympathy with the revolutionary doctrines and anarchical methods of the conspirators, and in the villages as Well as in the towns the people rallied whole- heartedly to the cause of law and order. In ,#' - *'$. SIR MICHAEL O'DWYER, G.C.I.E., Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. several cases it was the villagers themselves who turned upon the outrage-mongers and, having seized them, turned them over to the police. A large number of offenders had soon been laid by tho heels, and whilst the majority were summarily dealt with by the ordinary courts, the worst criminals were committed for trial by a special tribunal at Lahore. These trials disclosed for the first time publicly tho part which Germany had played in fomenting the trouble. The evidence showed that the revolutionary propaganda amongst the Indians in America had been steadily engineered by the two men Har Dyal and Ajit Singh, who had proceeded to Berlin as soon as the war broke out to organize rebel- lion in India under the auspices of the German Foreign Office. Their programme specifically included, as soon as the rebellion started, the murder of all civilian Europeans, the wreck- ing of trains and railway bridges and a sudden attack on and the killing of all European lot; Till'; TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. troops. That the conspirators would have fully carried out this sanguinary programme had thry been given the chaucf WHS abundantly shown by the cold-blooded brutality they dis- played in the perpetration of the crimes brought home to them against their i.wn innocent fellow- countrymen. One of the conspirators describe< 1 an interview they had with a German Consul in I !n- Kar Kast who, whilst anxious not to commit himself to any definite engagements, impressed upon them the necessity of hastening on the revolution, as India would never have a better opportunity, and he promised to secure them from any harm from the Emden, which was just then successfully sinking our merchant-ships in Indian waters Another witness, who had gone across from America to Europe at the beginning of the war, stated that he had been told by the German Consul at Geneva to go and see Har Dyal in Berlin. He visited him there with other Indians connected with the Ohadr movement, and their meetings were attended by German officials and other Germans who knew India, and at some of them Herr von Oppenheim presided and Har Uyal delivered lectures. Anti-British pamphlets were prepared and printed at a Government press. Barely hod this revolutionary conspiracy been nipped in the bud than serious disorders, due, however, mainly to economic causes, broke out in another part of the Punjab. The Maho- medans, who form the bulk of the population in the backward North-Western districts around Multan, took advantage of the panic caused by plague and the flight of many Hindu shop- keepers and moneylenders in the villages to start a sudden campaign of looting and violence against their " capitalist " rivals It spread like a prairie fire, and troops as well as police had to be called out, and it took them a whole month to restore order. Though it was in its origin little more than an unusually severe explosion of the bitter hatred ever latent between Maho- medans and Hindus, it was certainly aggravated by mischievous reports about the war and German successes which induced the belief that British power w:as waning. Very significant was the evidence given during the trial of the ringleaders at Multan that two of tho worst called themselves " the big German " and " tho little German," and professed to represent, the Kaiser and the Crown Prince, from whom they had received special authority to loot the Hindiiri ! Fresh light was thrown upon Germany's connexion with the Ohadr movement by the trial at Mandalay in 1916 of another batch of disaffected Sikhs who had selected Siam and Burma for their operations. At the same time as one body of revolutionists were making their way direct to India in the Komagata Maru another stream turned off to Manila and Siam. So long as the United States remained neutral, Manila wa.s a veiy convenient base for the conspirators, and the German Consul gave them abundant encouragement and assistance. They were even promised the cooperation of 300 Germans who were to be collected there " for the Siamese affair." A Sikh, called Jadh Singh, who had been sent over to America from Berlin by Har Dyal, was the prime mover, and two Gt-r- man agents, Jacobsen and Boehm, whom he met in Chicago, had told him that men were being sent to Siam to fight for Germany and a military expedition was to be directed from there against India. Bangkok became the head- quarters of this branch of the Ohadr movement, which had already made a good many recruits amongst the Sikhs who had settled in consider- able numbers in Siam, and some of the bolder spirits extended their propaganda into Burma, both by sea to Rangoon and by the longer land route up the Menam Valley to the Upper Bur- ma frontier. Others tried to link up with Ger- man agents, in Shanghai through the Chinese province of Yunnan and the Yangtse Valley An approver stated that he was to have met German officers in Yunnan, and the capture, on another part of the frontier early in 1917, of important German officers who had come across the Pamirs with large sums of money from Peking, si lowed this statement to have been by no means improbable. After lengthy preparations which were repeatedly disturbed by the vigi- lance of the British authorities, the " military expedition " against India resolved itself into two small parties, loaded up with Browning pistols and explosives and an abundance of Ohadr literatim?. Some of them were promptly arrested on reaching Burma by men of a native mountain battery whom they tried to seduce, and a few escaped back to Siam. If the Germans built more upon " the Siamese business " and gave it more direct assistance and support than to " the Punjab business." it collapsed even more miserably. But it fully justified the judicial pronouncement that " Germany has consistently encouraged the Ghadr movement, has, in some instances, THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 187 financed it, has, in part, assumed the direction of its activities, and has been prepared to act in concert with the revolutionists and to use them for her own ends in the war, and that the revolutionists have eagerly asso- ciated themselves with Germany." More- over, after the United States joined in the war, judicial investigations were conducted under Federal authority into the Oliadr con- during his State entry into Delhi on the first anniversary of the Imperial Durbar. The Benares conspiracy trial at the end of 1915 disclosed the existence of a murder organiza- tion, in which the prime mover was Rash Behari Bose, an educated Hindu, at one time in Government service, who had figured prominently in the Delhi proceedings, but successfully eluded arrest. One of the religious [Official ftk'ilograph. ON THE WESTERN FRONT: A SIRHIND BRIGADE BACK FROM A SUCCESSFUL RAID. spiracy which had until then continued its activities in California, and the indictments ultimately returned included the names of the former German Consuls at San Francisco, Chicago. Honolulu, and Manila, as well as of officials of the German Embassy in Wash- ington. But if the Berlin plotters pinned their faith principally upon the Ghadr movement, in which a small section of the Sikhs were their chief dupe.s, they certainly did not lose sight of the group of Hindu revolutionists with whom Har Dyal always remained in close touch, and who had first introduced the bomb as a political weapon into India. Their most notorious exploit had been the attempt to kill the Viceroy rites performed by the conspirators, whose favourite deity was, as apparently with all Hindu revolutionists, the goddess Kali, con- sisted in cutting up white pumpkins which represented the heads of the European victims to be sacrificed to her. Rash Behari had brought rifles, revolvers and explosive sub- stances from Calcutta, and he taught his adepts that whatever they did was done by God, and that they should not therefore be held responsible for their deeds. Their only duty was to be ready to die for their country, and the hour had come, as risings were imminent all over the Unitod Provinces. Bengal, too, was a province to which the Germans naturally turned their attention. 138 '////: TIMKS HISTORY OF THE WAR. ON THE MESOPOTAMIAN FRONT: INDIAN OX-CARTS BRINGING UP STORES. For ever since the troublous years 1905-1910 there had beeil a good deal of seditious lawless- ness amongst the younger generation, chiefly in the shape of political dacoities, i.e., looting by organized bands, who do not even shrink from murder. Government got on the track of certain remittances from Germany, and towards the end of 1915 information was received that German agents in Batavia were collecting arms and ammunition to be dispatched in a neutral vessel and landed in the Bay of Bengal for distribution to a party of Bengalee conspirators who were to raise the standard of rebellion on Christmas Bay. This plot ended iu a complete fiasco, for the neutral vessel was unable to run the gauntlet of the British naval patrols, and the police were waiting for the revolutionists and received effective help from the local peasantry in laying them by the heels. Never- t In-less the anti-British propaganda and the constant dissemination of adverse rumour* concerning the war kept, the embers of Bengalee disiilioction smouldering, and an increasing i. umber of political outrages, which in liUf> in- cluded five murders and seven dacoities in Calcutta itself, necessitated the vigorous use of the preventive powers conferred upon the authorities by the Defence of India Act, and the internment of several hundred suspicious characters. Whilst in India itself the endeavours of Indian seditioiusts to tamper with the loyalty of the native troops rarely met with any suc- cess, and only in the case of a very few in- dividuals, whom their comrades were generally prompt to denounce, there is evidence now to show that they had a hand in the serious Singapore mutiny which broke out on Feb- ruary 15, 1915 i.e., almost on the same date on which the general rising in India was to have started in the Punjab. The Fifth Light Infantry Regiment was on the point of embarking for Hong Kong, and had only that morning been satisfactorily inspected by, the general officer commanding, when at 3 p.m. a shot fired at the Regimental Guardroom at the Alexandra Barracks proved the signal for an outbreak which was only quelled after several days' sharp but intermittent fighting and considerable loss of life. The British officers of the regiment, several of whom were brutally murdered by their men, were taken com pletely unawares, and no one in Singapore, where the, large Chinese community was cele- brating the Chinese New Year with the usual festivities arid daylight fireworks, appears to have anticipated any trouble. European civilians and ladies who wvre taking their usual afternoon drives were struck down THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 189 without any warning. The only military forces at once available were very small, and the loyalty of the mountain battery of the Malay States Guides stationed at Alexan- dra Barracks was at least open to suspicion. But a landing party from H.M.8. Cadmus and the European Volunteer force gallantly held up the mutineers and occupied the most important pointo'for the protection of the city and the harbour until the arrival of reinforce- ments from French, Japanese, Russian and further British warships summoned by wire- less. Within a week order was completely restored, and 614 mutineers had been captured or surrendered. The circumstances which determined or precipitated the outbreak remained obscure. But it is known that emissaries of the Ghadr movement had landed at Singapore on their way from America to India, and some of those subsequently con- cerned in " the Siamese business " had actually been in Singapore when the mutiny broke out The mutineers themselves lost no time in throwing open the gates of a German prisoners- of-v\ar camp near the barracks, and tried to demonstrate their friendly intentions by shak- ing hands \vith the prisoners, but the latter were at first, it is said, too terrified to respond, and only some hour? later did a few of them avail themselves of the opportunity to escape, and most of them were easily recaptured. According to the official report, there were no signs of any organized plan of action amongst the mutineers, or of any real leadership. Nor did the whole regiment mutiny. A body of SO men came over almost at once, and some other batches soon gave themselves up. The worst mutineers seemed to be dazed after their first excesses, and, though for some hours Singapore was almost at their mercy, they took no advantage of their opportunity. After the second day they were mainly on the defensive, and mere fugitives thoiv,after. Those who camo in and gave themselves up at an early stage were afterwards given an opportunity of redeeming their reputation in Africa, and they made good use of it. It was to the Indian Mahomedans far more than to the Hindus that Germany, as we know, had for some time past looked to overthrow, or at least to paralyse, British power in India, if she could only succeed in dragging Tin-key after her in a war against Great Britain, and the German Press did not conceal its exultation when Turkey actually joined the Central Powers on October 31, SIAM: THE KING HEADING A PRO-WAR PROCESSION IN BANGKOK. 140 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. WITH THE FORCES ACTING AGAINST THE GERMANS IN EAST AFRICA, Indian Troops entraining on the Uganda Railway. ]914. For the entry of such a great Maho- medan Power into the war in alliance with Germany was bound to distress and disturb the Mahomedans of India, who already dis- liked the idea of fighting on the same side as Russia, whom they regarded as the sworn foe of Islam. The Viceroy lost no time in issuing a full statement of the British case, and a subsequent announcement that Great Britain would not interfere with the holy places of Arabia or with the port of Jeddah, in the Red Sea, which serves Mecca, so long as the pilgrim traffic was not molested by the Turks, went far to reassure the Mahomedan community, whose loyalty to the raj never seriously wavered, even under so severe a strain upon their religious allegiance to the Sultan as Khalif. Only a section of the " young " Mahomedan politicians who had been in close contact with the " young " Turks showed signs of restiveness, and some of the newspapers they controlled were so little able to conceal under a thin veneer of lip loyalty their sympathy with the Turks and their admiration for Germany that Govern- ment had to suppress their organs, and two of their most mischievous leaders, Mahommed AH, the editor of The Comrade, and his brother Shaukat AH, were interned by Lord Hardinee under the provisions of the Defence of India Act After that there was no reason to doubt the- absolute failure of the hopes enter- tained by Germany that the unfurling at her behest of the Prophet's flag at Constantinople and the proclamation of a Jehad or Holy War against the Allies would shake the staunch allegiance of Indian Mahomedans to the British Crown. The revolt of the Sherif of Mecca against the Sultan produced an unfavourable impression on Mahomedan opinion, but chiefly in its religious bearings, whilst the increasingly close co-operation of the Moslem League and the advanced Mahomedan politicians who control it with the Congress Extremists continued to be regarded with distrust by the bulk of the Mahomedans, and especially by the conservative land-owning classes and by the religious teachers of the community, to whom the orthodoxy of the " young " Mahomedan Indians was as suspect as that of the "young" Turks, who ex- ploited Pan-Islamism for their own political purposes. A few very rare cases of desertion from Mahomedan regiments at the front, or of attempted mutiny in India itself, cannot for a moment weigh in the scale against such overwhelming proofs of unalterable loyalty as were given by the Mahomedan soldiers who form a large proportion of the Indian Army, in every field and not least against the Turks themselves, as well as by the rulers of the great Mahomedan Native States, Hy- derabad, Bhopal, and others, and indeed by the vast majority of the 66 million THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 141 Mahornedans owning allegiance to the King- Etnperor. It was on and beyond the borders of India that the results of Turkey's entry into the war were at times, or threatened to be, far more serious. What German and Turkish agents and the roving bands they enrolled and the direct pressure of Turkish armies on the western frontier of Persia tried to achieve, or temporarily achieved, in the Shah's dominions has already been recounted. But these hostile activities were not confined to Persia. They spread from Persia into Afghanistan and directly or indirectly contributed not a little to the frequent disorders which we had to repress by force along a great part of the north-western frontier of India. Since the Afghan campaigns of 1878 and 1879 our relations with Afghanistan hail always re- mained amicable, though they were at times rendered difficult by the traditional Asiatic rivalry between Russia and Great Britain. The Ameer Abdurrahman, who had ruled for 20 years with a rod of iron, and transformed Afghanistan from a feudal into a despotically centralized military State, died in 1901 and bequeathed to his eldest son Habihallah, who succeeded him, not only his unquestioned authority throughout Afghanistan, but also his policy of friendship towards the British Kmpire and the British rulers of India whom tie had learnt to trust. The new Ameer re- mained faithful to that policy, and from the visit he paid to India in 1906 he brought back with him both the recognition of a royal title which flattered his amour-propre and a very shrewd appreciation of British power and of India's military resources. Moreover, whilst the Anglo-Russian Convention specifically guaranteed the position of Afghanistan and the rights of the Ameer, it destroyed the possi- bility, upon which Afghan rulers had always reckoned, of being able on occasion to play off their two formidable neighbours against one another. The Ameer never consented to acquiesce formally in the Convention, though Great Britain had undertaken to obtain his assent, but he knew what it meant and he tacitly accepted the consequences. The Government of India controlled under treaty the foreign relations of Afghanistan, and when war broke out in 1914 the Ameer was at once advised to maintain complete neutrality and to exert himself to preserve order on both his Indian and Russian frontiers. To this he readily agreed. But when, after Turkey went to war, he was urged to take steps to arrest any religious effervescence amongst his turbu- lent tribes, his own position became one of considerable difficulty, as fanaticism is strong amongst Afghans and the country was gradually overrun with Germans and Turks, who made their way in through Persia and were reinforced by German and Austrian prisoners of war escaped from Russian Turkestan. The wildest rumours were spread abroad that the German Emperor had turned Mahomedan and that large Turco-German armies were on the march [Official photograph. IN PALESTINE: GURKHA RIFLEMAN FIRING A LEWIS GUN. to overthrow the British and to restore the supremacy of Islam in Asia. In the early 'summer of 1915 a large party of Germans and Turks, giving themselves out to be a Special Embassy from the Kaiser and the Sultan, crossed over from Khorassan into the province of Herat and were sent on by the Afghan Governor to Kabul, where the Ameer kept them at arm's length. Whilst treating these un- welcome guests with formal courtesy and hos- pitality, he renewed to the Viceroy his assurances of friendship and his desire to maintain neu- trality. That a large proportion of his subjects and some of his most influential Sirdars were anxious to see Afghanistan espouse, as they called it, the cause of Islam there can be no doubt. His next brother, Nasrullah Khan, who 142 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. had always rallied round him all the elements of more or less latent disaffection and especially those of Mahomedan fanaticism, was believed to be at the head of the hostile faction, whilst a younger brother, Mahommed Umar Khan, who enjoyed over his elders the advantage of royal descent through his mother as well as through his father, sat on the fence [Official photograph. INDIAN RIFLE CORPS SIGNALLER IN PALESTINE. waiting for developments, though holding ostensibly with the Ameer rather than with Nasrullah. The bulk of the Afghan people, who ever look down with lustful eyes from their inhospitable mountains on to the rich and fertile plains of Hindustan, thought their opportunity had come to harry and plunder them again as in the good old days of Indian anarchy. The Ameer's zeal for his religion had been suspect with a good many of his people since his journey to India, where he was known to have joined freemasonry at Lord Kitchener's instance, and, though there are many freemasons amongst Mahomedans in India and in other parts of the East, it still savours of infidelity with the Afghans. The Ameer also commonly wore European clothes, and he had adopted many European fashions and new-fangled inventions, such as motor-cars, electric light and even golf, which wore not wholly atoned for by the regularity with which he performed his daily prayers and attended tho mosque on Fridays. His manner of handling disaffection was less ruthless than was his father's, and he felt, perhaps rightly, that he must rely on the methods of Oriental statecraft, rather than on those of Oriental despotism in order to hold his own against the combination of adverse forces that confronted him. He allowed anti-British sentiment to let off steam in the fiery articles of the only newspaper tolerated in Kabul, which, strangely enough for an organ of Mahomedan fanaticism, was edited by a Hindu seditionist who had taken refuge in Afghanistan, and to the arguments put forward sometimes in his own Council, urging him to throw in his lot with Turkey and CHANDNI CHAUK, DELHI : FRUIT AND TOY STALLS. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAE. 148 Germnny. he seems wnernllv to Tinve returned a soft answer, counselling prudence and delay, and reminding his hot-headed advisers that, unliko them, he had been in India and seen for himself the might of the British raj. At the same time he knew how to impress upon tho Government of India the value of his support, and obtained from them in the autumn of 1915 an increase by two lakhs of his annual subsidy. The Russian retreat and the British reverses in Mesopotamia, followed by the fall of Kut, magnified, of course, tenfold by the hostile agencies established in Afghanistan, exposed the Ameer to renewed pressure from the forward party as well as from the frontier tribes on the Indian border, who looked to him to lead them against the infidel. But his temporising policy was not to be shaken. In due course the Turco-German " Embassy " received a significant, hint that, the climate of Kabul might prove too trying for them if their stay was prolonged, and they were politely sent about their business, only a certain number of Austrian prisoners of war being allowed to remain in Kabul in a sort of honourable intern- ment. The resumption of our offensive in Mesopotamia and the occupation of Baghdad dealt a severe blow to the anti -British party to which.it was doubtful whether the military collapse of Russia after the Revolution would afford a sufficient offset. The Ameer's loyalty not only preserved the neutrality of Afghanistan, but contributed very largely to avert a general conflagration along the north-western frontier, the great moun- tainous no-man's-land which lies beyond the boundary of direct British administration and equally beyond effective reach of the Ameer's authority The fierce but poverty-stricken tribes that inhabit this region are fanatical Mahomedans, but since the creation of a separate North-West Frontier Province by Lord Curzon they had been successfully bound over to keep the peace, .though with occasional lapses, by a judicious admixture of force and persuasion in the shape of allowances dependent upon good behaviour. At first the war aroused very little excitement amongst the more lawless tribes, whilst a fine example of loyalty was set by the more remote but important chieftains of Khelat and Chitral and Hunza and Nagar, as well as by the great tribes of the Khyber and Swat and Tochi. Even at the beginning of 1915 the Waziris assured the Government of India that they could safely withdraw all their troops, as *ho triViRsmon th^m=e 1 w? wnulcl guarantee the maintenance ot peace and order. But when tho news of Turkey's entry into the war slowly filtered into these distant regions LIEUT.-COLONEL SIR GEORGE ROOS KEPPEl., G.C.I.E., Chief Commissioner and A (fen I to Governor- General, North-West Frontier Province, India, since 1908. some of the most fanatical Mullahs, whose influence is always formidable in times of crisis, began to preach the Holy War. As far back as 1898 it was the echo of the Turkish victories over the Greeks in the preceding year that resounded in the general frontier rising which brought about the Tirah campaign. The out- break cf hostilities between the British and the Turks in alliance with a great European nation whose War Lord was alleged to have embraced Islam was a still more potent stimulus to their ignorant fanaticism. The Mohmands began to raid into the Peshawar district, first in November 1914, and then in January 1915, and in April, encouraged by letters falsely pro- fessing to proceed from the Ameer and pro- claiming a Jehad, a lashkar about 6,000 strong, consisting partly of Afghans, entered British territory and had to be dispersed at Shabkadr by a strong force, which lost three British officers killed and one wounded besides some (50 other casualties In January 1915, and again two months later, the Khostwalis tried to J44 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. raid in force into Tochi and were only dispersed after heavy fighting by the Banu movable column and part of the North Waziristan Militia. In August the Swatis attacked a British camp at Chakdara and the Bunerwalis, joined by some of the Hindustani fanatics, whose stronghold in Buner had become a regular Alsatia for Hindu seditionists from all parts of India as well as for disaffected Ma- homedans, made repeated attempts to invade British territory by the Ambela Pass. The Mohmands too, in spite of the Ameer's warnings, resumed hostilities at the beginning of Sep- tember at the instigation of the notorious Baba Mullah, who collected 10,000 followers, recruited from different clans. They were beaten back near Hafiz Khor on September 5, but they received considerable reinforcements from Afghan territory, and a succession of raids into the Peshawar district culminated in an attack in December on Charsada, where nearly the whole bazaar was burnt down. During the cold weather, however, the economic blockade of the Mohmand, Bunerwali and Upper Swat valleys and retaliatory measures taken against the tribesmen within British territories who were suspected of aiding and abetting the raiders, proved sufficiently effective to induce the refractory tribes to ask for terms and pay a heavy fine before the return of the hot weather in April 1916. Nevertheless, the turbulent spirit of the Mohmands had not yet been quelled, and by the autumn they had again collected a Ioshkar 6,000 strong, which was finally broken up on November 14, when aeroplanes were for the first time used by us in frontier warfare, to the terrified amazement of the tribesmen. The blockade continued to exhaust their powers of resistance, and they finally made their submission in August 1917. Meanwhile a still more serious outbreak had taken place in the Mahsud country, and in March, April and May large bands attacked British detachments with no small measure of success, and on one occasion surprised and overwhelmed a British convoy with very slight losses to themselves. In June operations on a large scale were undertaken with several brigades advancing from Tank, in which aero- planes again played a conspicuous part. The Mahsuds hastily retired, and when pursued into their own country they sued for an armistice and finally took the oath of submission on August 10, 1917. Peace was at length restored all along the frontier, but the whole of those two and a half years were a period of great anxiety for the Government of India, whose military resources had been drained to dispatch and maintain the large Indian forces sent to France and Mesopotamia and other theatres of war. Fortunately the outbreaks, which could in every case be traced to the fanatical preachings of individual Mullahs of great local influence and reputed sanctity, had remained more or less isolated movements, and the powerful Afridi tribe around the Khyber, without whose cooperation no frontier rising can acquire homogeneity, had never wavered in their loyalty. This result was largely due to the extraordinary personal influence with the Afridis of that distinguished Pathan, the Nawab Sir Abdul Qayyum, Indian Political Assistant to the Com- missioner of the North-West Frontier Province, and to the sagacity and experience of Sir George Roos Keppel himself, who had long been successful Warden of the Marches from Pebhawar. CHAPTER CCXXVI. THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. REVIEW OF PALESTINE OPERATIONS JULY-DECEMBER, 1917 GENERAL ALLENBY'S PLANS TURKS' DEFENSIVE PREPARATIONS MINOR OPERATIONS BRITISH OFFENSIVE OPENED BOM- BARDMENT OF GAZA BEERSHEBA CAPTURED STIFF FIGHTING , ON THE HEBRON ROAD OUTER DEFENCES OF GAZA CAPTURED TURKISH CENTRE SMASHED AT SHERIA GAZA EVACUATED sy THE ENEMY TURKISH ARMY IN RETREAT YEOMANRY CHARGE AT Huj THROUGH THE LAND OF THE PHILISTINES BATTLE OF EL MUGHAR TURKISH FORCES CUT IN Two YEOMANRY CHARGE AT ABU SHUSHEH JOPPA CAPTURED ADVANCE INTO JUDEAN HILLS ENVER AND FALKENHAYN AT JERUSALEM GERMANS LEAVE THE CITY NEBI SAMWIL RIDGE WON HEAVY ENEMY COUNTER- ATTACKS THE WELSH HORSE AT BETH HORON BRITISH ADVANCE RESUMED HEBRON AND BETHLEHEM OCCUPIED NORTHERN DEFENCES OF JERUSALEM CAPTURED- FLIGHT OF THE TURKS TO JERICHO SURRENDER OF THE HOLY CITY GENERAL ALLENBY'S OFFICIAL ENTRY FREEDOM FOR ALL FAITHS TURCO-GERMAN ATTEMPTS TO DISCOUNT Loss OF JERUSALEM GRATITUDE OF THE ARABS EFFECT ON THE JEWS ATTITUDE OF THE VATICAN AND OF GERMAN CATHOLICS. GENERAL ALLENBY opened the campaign which, in seven weeks, resulted in the surrender of Jeru- salem by an attack on Beersheba on October 31, 1917. Since the failure of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force to capture Gaza in the spring of 1917 there had been little fight- ing on the Palestine border, but on both sides great preparations had been made for the coming contest. The military situation in the autumn of 1917 in the outlying provinces of the Turkish Empire was not favourable to the Ottomans. They had lost Baghdad in March, 1917, and had since suffered serious reverses both on the Tigris and Euphrates ; the Russian Army of the Caucasus, though inactive, still held Armenia, while the forces of the Grand Sherif of Mecca, who had proclaimed his independence in the summer of 1916, had advanced to the south-eastern borders of Syria. In these circumstances the Turks were compelled to defend Palestine to the utmost of their ability, and in the six months Vol. XV. Part 187. 145 between the second battle of Gaza and the open- ing of General Allenby's offensive they had constructed most formidable defences on the Gaza-Beersheba front. Strategic railways were built, the garrison of Southern Palestine was largely reinforced and provided with powerful artillery ; the air service was enlarged and rendered very efficient. In all these measures the Turks had the active help of the Germans, who were concerned for the preservation of their own interests in the Near East. General von Falkenhayn had been sent to Syria as military adviser of the Turks and from his headquarters he watched developments both on the Mesopotamia and Palestine fronts. If the Turks succeeded in holding the British at Gaza and Beersheba, von Falkenhayn was credited with the intention of endeavouring to recapture Baghdad. The Turks, however, failed to hold their lines in Palestine. Beersheba was captured the same day it was attacked, and during the next few days the enemy line was crumpled up and the Turks 146 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. driven from their positions between Beersheba mid the Mediterranean, Gaza itself being taken on November 7. The swiftness with wliich General Allenby followed up these first successes completely disorganized, for a time, the Turkish Army. The British made rapid progress across the Plain of Philistia, seized the junction of the Jerusalem-Damascus railways, cut the enemy forces in two, and on November 17 occupied Jaffa (Joppa). The disorder into which the Turks had been thrown enabled General Allenby's troops to penetrate the gorges of the Judean Hills from the west with com- The Turkish Army, which had now recovered its moral, took up very strong positions a few miles north and east of Jerusalem. The loss of Jerusalem, next to Mecca and Medina the most sacred of cities to Moslems, was a severe blow to Ottoman prestige, and a serious effort was made to recapture it. For this attempt the Turks were reinforced by a considerable part of two German divisions. A determined attack was made on the British lines on December 27. It failed, and the British in a counter-attack captured positions which rendered Jerusalem secure against any SOUTHERN PALESTINE AND PHILISTIA. parative ease, and on November 21 the Nebi Samwil ridge, five miles north-west of Jerusalem, was seized. On December 4 an advance was made from the south through the hill country, and Hebron was occupied on the 6th. There had meantime been severe fighting in the Nebi Samwil district, but as the force from the south got nearer Jerusalem the troops at Nebi Samwil advanced (December 8). The next morning the troops from the west gained positions astride the road running north to Shechem, and those from the south reached on the east the road to Jericho. The Turks had already fled, and Jerusalem, thus isolated, was surrendered (December 9) by its mayor. Two days later General Allenby, on foot, made his formal entry into the city. surprise attack. Meantime the forces of the King of the Hedjaz (the Sherif of Mecca) had become increasingly active on the left flank of the Turks and by the beginning of February 1918 had established themselves in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea. The capture of Jericho by General Allenby on February 21 practically completed the conquest of Southern Palestine. General Allenby, when he took over the command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force from Sir Archibald Murray (June 28, 1917), had instructions to report upon the conditions in which offensive operations might be undertaken in the autumn or winter. After visiting the front and consulting Sir Philip Chetwode, the commander of the Eastern Force, he submitted THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 147 (H. Wilier Barnett, filmlofrapft. GENERAL SIR EDMUND ALLENBY, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., Commander-in-Chief Egyptian Expeditionary Force operating in Palestine. proposals in the second week of July. They received the approval of the War Cabinet. His plan was to strike the main blow at the eastern end of the Turkish line and thus obtain an open flank against which to operate. General Allenby put on record that this plan was based on General Chetwode's " appreciation of the situation and on the scheme which he put forward to me on my arrival in Egypt." And to General Chetwode's "strategical foresight and tactical skill," added the Commander-in-Chief, " the success of the campaign was largely due." Much had to be done before the plan was ready to be executed ; fortunately the period 1872 148 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. of preparation included the summer months, when the heat is so great in the Sinai -Palestine borderlands that campaigning is usually avoided though the Turks in 1910 had invaded Sinai in August, the very hottest season. For the purposes of the offensive two striking forces were formed out of the troops of the Eastern Force ; one, wliich General Chetwode personally directed, was to operate at the eastern or Beersheba end of tho trout. The other, with .Major-General E. S. Bulfln, C.B., in local command, was on the western or Gaza side. Major-General Sir H. Chauvel commanded the mounted troops, composed of Yeomanry, Australian Light Horse, New Zealand Mounted Rifles, and Indian cavalry. The infantry divisions chiefly employed were the 53rd (Welsh), which was with Chetwode, and the 54th (Lowland), with Bulfin. The Imperial Camel Corps was with the Beersheba force. Major-General L. J. Bols, C.B., D.S.O., was Chief of Staff to General Allenby and performed " brilliant work." * * Other officers whom General Allenby specially mentioned were Major-General J. Adye, Deputy Adjutant General, Major-General Sir Walter Campbell, Deputy Quartermaster-General, and Brevet Lieut. -Colonel G. P. Dawnay, Brig.-General, General Staff. Chetwode, Bulfin and Chauvel all held the temporary rank of Lieut. -General . The decision not to make the main attack at tha Gaza end of the line was fully justified by tho character of the Turkish defences. Gaza had been made into " a strong modern fortress, heavily entrenched and wired, offering every facility for protracted defence." Beyond the immediate environs of Gaza, following roughly tha road to Beersheba, the Turks had constructed a series of works known as the Sihan group, the Atawina Ridgo works, the Baha group, and the Hareira-Sheria group. By the end of October these works had been joined up, and formed a practically continuous line from the Mediterranean to a point south of Sheria. Then, after a gap of some 4| miles, were the defences covering Beersheba. Beyond Beersheba was a considerable desert area where the Turks had no troops. The forces they had still farther west, to the south of the Dead Sea and along the line of the Hedjaz railway, took no part in the campaign ; they had enough to do to meet the attacks of the Hedjaz Arabs. Including the gvp between Sheria and Beer- sheba the Turkish front was about 30 miles long. The enemy's communications were good and any threatened point of his line could be easily reinforced. Beersheba was connected by railway with Sheria and the north, and GAZA: A STRONG TRENCH WELL PROTECTED WITH CACTUS. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 149 CAMEL AND CATERPILLAR IN THE DESERT. another railway crossing the Plain of Philistia came to Beit Hanun, only five miles north of Gaza. A short branch line served Huj, a place nine miles north-west of Sheria and 8J miles north-east of Gaza, where the Turks had a huge depot. Roads fitted for motor traffic connected several of the defence systems. The Turks, too, had the great advantage of occupying fertile, well-watered land. With the British it was otherwise. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force was in the desert, .or at best, near the Gaza end, "in the strip with verdure strown, which just divides the Desert from the Sown." Its front extended for 22 miles, from the sea south of Gaza, more or less along the line of the Wadi Ghuzze to Gamli, some 15 miles west of Beersheba, and 10 miles from the nearest point of the Turkish defences. Except in the small sector near Gaza, where only a mile or so separated the Turkish and British trenches, General Allenby was not able to get within effective striking distance of the enemy until his very elaborate preparations were complete. These included a supply of water sufficient for a week or more to the troops which were to operate in the desert. * * The first attack on Gaza, when success was in sight, had to be_abandoued through lack of water. The difficulties to be overcome to maintain the Expeditionary Force in the desert were dealt with in the chapter on the first battles of Gaza (Vol. XIV., Chap. CCXVL). These difficulties did not become less as time passed : Practically the whole of the transport available in the Force* (wrote General Allenby), including 30,000 pack camels, Tiad to be allotted to one portion of the Eastern Force to enable it to be kept supplied with water, food, and ammunition at a distance of 15 to 20 miles in advance of railhead. In consequence of the deep sand, and the steep banks of the wadis which scored the ground behind the British front, little use could be made of motor transport thero was not a good road in all the lines of commu- nication. What could be done by extending the railways was done. From Khan Yunus a branch line had been built to Shellal. It was now carried on, as rapidly as material could be brought by the overburdened main line from Egypt, towards Karm a place midway between Shellal and B ;ersheba. Another line was begun from Gamli to El Buggar, a spot somewhat nearer Beersheba than Karm. While preparing for the offensive a number of minor operations were carried out. On the night of July 2021 a raid was made on the trenches south-west of Gaza, the Turks losing 102 in * That is, the whole army in Egypt. 150 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE IV A II. killed and 17 in prisoners, besides a machine-gun and trench mortar. In another night raid later in July 20 Turks were killed. Again, on the night of August 89, British patrols had a lively bayonet fight with the enemy, whose losses were between 30 and 40, the British casualties being 22. Then, after several more raids, on August 30, the British line south-west of Gaza was advanced, with very slight loss, on a front of 800 yards, despite heavy artillery and machine-gun fire. And throughout this period of preparation the Turkish positions at Gaza were kept under fire ; many direct hits on guns and emplacements being obtained. On their part the Turks kept observation on the British lines mainly by aeroplane, but occasionally mounted patrols, chiefly from the Beersheba end of the front, were sent out, their object being to interfere with railway con- struction. On July 19 two regiments of cavalry advanced to El Buggar but were driven back to Beersheba ; in September other cavalry raids were made by the Turks. Towards the end of October arrangements for the offensive were completed. Every endea- vour was made to induce the enemy to expect the chief attack at the western end of his line, and with this object a violent bombardment of the Gaza defences was begun on October 27 by the land batteries in the matter of artillery the British were at length ahead of the Turks. On October 30 the French warship Requin and monitors and other ships of the British squadron under Rear-Admiral T. Jackson joined in the bombardment. General Chetwode's force had meantime begun to make for its objectives. Its blow was to be struck against the left flank of the main Turkish position that of Sheria-Hareira. But BEERSHEBA. before that position could be attacked in flank " the capture of Beersheba was a neces- sary preliminary, to secure the water supplies at that place and to give room for the deploy- ment of the attacking force on the high ground north and north-west of Beersheba " (General Allenby). As in the days of Abraham and Isaac, Beersheba still had wells and water, but it was an outpost on the desert's verge, and beyond it, on the British side, was a parched and thirsty land. Beersheba is built in a hollow in the hills, the Wadi es Saba, a tributary of the Wadi Ghuzze, running by its southern side, and it was pro- tected on the west and south by works three to five miles distant. These works were in hilly country, were well made, heavily wired, ade- quately manned and provided with many field and machine guns. There were other defences immediately east of Beersheba, but on the south-east the Turks trusted to the desert for protection. They were prepared for a frontal assault, but they had not calculated upon what happened. General Chetwode attacked Beer- sheba not only from south and south-west, but his mounted troops made a wide flanking move- ment and attacked the place from the east. This flanking operation decided the fate of Beersheba. The Bavarian officer, Kress von Kresseii- stein, who still commanded the Turkish Army in Southern Palestine Djemal Pasha, the Commander-in-Chief in Syria, was then at Damascus had not guessed General Allenby'* THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 151 plans, but he was apprehensive about the exten- sion of the British railway towards Sheria and Beersheba, and in the latter part of October the eriemyeavalry were repeatedly sent out to recon- noitre. The Turkish cavalryman was no mean foe. "A fine horseman, a fine shot, especially at long ranges, his drill and discipline are perfect, and'you have to get up very early in the morning to catch him out " (Captain Lord Apsley, M.C. ). These cavalrymen now pushed reconnaissances 12 and 15 miles into the desert. Thus on October 23 a squadron of Gloucester Yeomanry, taking up an outpost line south-east of El Sha'uth just before dawn, encountered a strong enemy patrol and had a sharp skirmish. On another occasion a regiment of Turkish cavalry was pushed out to enable certain staff officers, who followed in motor cars, to reconnoitre from a high hill. As it hap- pened, Yeomanry had been sent to seize the same hill. There was a lively little fight, the Turks being driven from the hill " before the generals at tha top had more than five minutes to look around." Apart from diversions such as these the Turks, just before the British offensive opened, made one reconnaissance in force, thus described by General Allenby : On the morning of October 27 the Turks made a .strong reconnaissance towards Karm from the direction of Kauwukah [Sheria sector], two regiments of cavalry and two or three thousand infantry, with [12] guns, being employed. They attacked a line of outposts near Rl Girheir, held by some [London] Yeomanry, covering railway construction. One small post was rushed and cut up, but not before inflicting heavy loss on the enemy ; another post, though surrounded, held out all day, and' also caused the enemy heavy loss. The gallant resis- tance made by the Yeomanry enabled the 53rd (Welsh) Division to come up in time, and on their advance the Turks withdrew. [The British ca'iua'ties were under 100.] These enemy activities did not disarrange General Chetwode's movements. The attack on Beersheba had been fixed for October 31, and by the previous evening his troops were concentrated in positions of readiness. They werj to make a night inarch, deploy and attack at dawn. There were two movements, that of ths troops which were to make the frontal assault, and that of the mounted*men who were to make the flanking movement. The first body consisted of two divisions, infantry and dismounted Yeomanry, with the Imperial Camel Corps and a cavalry regiment to guard DJEMAL PASHA AT HIS HEADQUARTERS IN PALESTINE, With German officers in attendance. 152 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. the flanks. This force moved in an inner circle, and was traasported by rail as far as pos- sible. The mounted troops, Australian Light Horse, New Zealand Mounted Rifles and Yeomanry, started on the night of October 27 from their bases at Sha'uth and Shellal and rode south and east to Khalasa and Asluj, oases where the water supplies had been developed. Here they had a brief pause before the last stage of the desert ride. The infantry marched during the night in accordance with the arranged programme, guns themselves cleverly concealed. But the troops advanced with great spirit. Bombers sprang into the trenches through gaps in the wire, and where the wire had not been broken the men tore it down with their hands. Within an hour the fight was over and all the enemy positions south of the Wadi cs Saba captured. Later in the day (7.30 p.m.) the enemy works north of the wadi were also seized. During this last stage a Lewis gun detachment charged and captured a Turkish field battery. Meanwhile the mounted troops had played ENGINEERS BORING FOR WATER. every unit reaching its appointed place by the assigned hour. The action began at daybreak, and after a brief bombardment London Territorials stormed Hill 1070, on which were the enemy's advanced works. Among the 90 prisoners taken was a German machine-gun crew. Field guns then methodi- cally bombarded the enemy's main works, partially destroying the wire entanglements. Clouds of dust raised by the Khamseen (the wind from the desert) from time to time com- pelled the British gunners to pause, and to this cause may be attributed the survival of part of the enemy's wire. At 12.15 p.m. the assault was ordered. In moving to their positions the troops, London Territorials and dismounted Yeomanry, suffered a good deal from the hostile artillery, the firing of the Turkish guns being very accurate and the their part. They left Khalasa and Asluj in the evening of October 30 on their great ride, and by 5 a.m. on the 31st had reached their positions east of Beersheba, some high hills immediately east of the Wadi Khasim Zanna. The troops from Khalasa had covered 25 and those from Asluj 35 miles. " The column," said an officer with the Khalasa force, " was 15 miles long. Our wallets were full of corn for the horses. We rode through endless dust a full moon, but the dust so thick you could not see five yards." No enemy was encountered, the wide sweep into the void served its purpose, and when the horsemen appeared on the hills overlooking Beersheba the surprise of the Turks was complete. The Yeomanry took up positions around Khasim Zanna, acting as the reserve force, while the Australians and New Zealanders went into THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 153 action. Between Khasim Zanna and Beer- sheba was an almost flat plain commanded by rising ground to the north and flanked by Tel es Saba, a hill some 1,000 feet high, beneath which lay a village of the same name. Saba hill and village, and the hills to the north, through which runs the road to Hebron, were garrisoned by the enemy, who also had trenches immediately east of Beersheba. General Chay- tor, in command of the Anzac Division, sent a force of Australian Light Horse north to secure positions on the Hebron road. This force was engaged by Turkish cavalry through- out the day, but achieved its object and kept the enemy well in check. Another force, of Australians and New Zealanders, attacked, dismounted, Tel es Saba. The hill had been strongly fortified, and was held in considerable strength ; moreover, it could only be approached from the south by crossing the steep banks of the Wadi es Saba. Here there was stiff fighting for several hours, but late hi the afternoon the hill was captured. Various attempts had been made by small parties of Australians and New Zealanders to cross the open plain and reach Beersheba. Hitherto they had not succeeded, but in a dismounted attack the village of Saba was taken, soon after the fall of the redoubt on the hill. Evening had fallen, the moon was again up and Beersheba was not yet taken. Some anxiety began to be felt, and at 7.30 p.m. the Yeomanry in reserve at Khasim Zanna received orders to attack the place. They moved out, but the work assigned them was already done. Half an hour earlier the 4th Australian Light Horse had settled the matter. They had cleared some houses held by the enemy. Then mounting their horses they charged straight for the town. They galloped over two trenches, each 8 feet deep and 4 feet wide, using their fixed bayonets as lances against the Turks who filled them, and rode, cheering, into Beersheba, where the enemy soldiers still in the place promptly surrendered. A very strong position was thus taken with slight loss, and the Turkish detachment at Beersheba almost completely put out of action. Some 500 dead Turks were found on the battlefield and about 2,000 among them some Germans were taken prisoners. The total British casualties were fewer than the number of prisoners. The Turks had, at the last moment, endeavoured to destroy their military stores, . but they had not time to complete their task. The British captured 13 guns and a large quan- tity of corn, clothing, and equipment of all kinds. A direct hit from a heavy gun on the railway bridge over the wadi had pre- vented the removal of the rolling stock ; a train was found standing in the station loaded with goods. EARLY ARRIVALS AT BEERSHEBA STATION, NOVEMBER 1, 1917. 154 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. was more famous than beautiful,* luwl more mud huts than substantial buildings. but it wa-< in 1'nlestiue. The British troops for nine mouths had been g.v/.in" at the Promise.! Land ; now they had set foot in it. But if Beersheba \vm in gonoral a poor place there was plenty of evidence that tha troops had been well cared for ; the Germans had seen to that. There were excellent dug-out quarters for man and beast, shell-proof except from direct overhead . bombing. Though the Turks left in a hurry they found time to set many booby-traps engines and trucks mined so that they blew up when moved, bridles hung on the walls attached to bombs, and so on. The famous wells " which our father Abraham digged " were there, and many others. They had all been mined, but the ever resourceful Engineers coped with that difficulty, and a pipe supply of water was found uninjured. Nevertheless, the water available was not so abundant as had been anticipated, while the transport arrangements proved unexpectedly difficult. Complete success had attended the opening move of the campa'gn, but a brief pause had to be made before General Chotwode could launch his attack on the Sheria-Haroira position. In the interval, both to prevent Kress von Kressen- stein sending reinforcements to Sheria and to draw the hostile reserves to the Gaza sector, it had been determined to make an assault on a section of the defences of that city in the early morning of November 2. The bombardment of Gaza had been going on continuously, and not only of Gaza but of the railway north of the town, and all military establishments which could be reached by the guns of warships. The work of the Allied squadron attracted little attention at home, but it was extremely valuable, and wan not performed without loss. On November 1 the enemy gunners obtained several hits on the French warship Requin, killing 9 and wounding 29 of her crew. The damage to the vessel was comparatively slight and the Requin continued in action. Two British ships were less fortunate. A destroyer and a small monitor were torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, 33 lives beitiK lost. The part of the Gaza defences which it had been deeided to attack extended from a height * The phra-n from " l)a:i to Beershcba " respectively lln' northern ii'id southern limits uf I'iili-Miin> is u- ulil 11- tin- inn.- ni Samson (who was of the tribe of Dan). on the eastern side of Samson's Ridgo known as fmbivllii Hill (2,000 yards south-west of Gaza) to Sheikh Hasan, on the Mediterranean (2,500 y.inls north-west of the town). The front of t he attack was about 6,000 yards, Sheikh Hasan, the most distant objective, being over 3,000 yards from the advanced British line. The intervening ground consisted of sand dunes, in places 150 feet high ; the sand very deep and heavy going. Owing to the considerable dis- tance between the British trenches and the Turkish positions the attack was made before daylight, and as Umbrella Hill flanked the enemy trenches farther west it was chosen as the first objective. In the evening of Novem- ber 1 very heavy concentrated fire was poured for a short time upon Umbrella Hill. Then at 11 p.m. the hill was stormed by a part of the 52nd (Lowland) Division. Directly the Turks at Gaza learned that Umbrella Hill was lost they bombarded it and the British front line. Ap- parently they thought they had to deal with a local affair only, for after two hours the bom- bardment ceased, " in time," said Sir E. Allenby, " to allow the main attack, which was timed for 3 a.m. (on Nov. 2) to form up without inter- ference." The attack was made by Scottish and East Anglian troops, and a composite force consisting of West Indian and Indian troops and detachments from the French and Italian con- tingents.* They were helped by a number of Tanks, which, though they found some difficulty in getting over the heavy sand, proved of value. The Turk fought well but was defeated, the British gaining nearly all their objectives, including Sheikh Hasan. The enemy had suf- fered severely from the preliminary bombard- ment and his losses in the action were heavy. Some of his trenches were almost full of dead. Among the 450 prisoners were over 50 officers the prisoners stated that one of their divisions lost 33 per cent, of its effectives and had to be replaced by a division from the general reserve. The British losses were also considerable but " not in any way disproportionate to the results obtained " (General Allenby). The Italian troops of the composite battalion had some warm fighting, and showed great gallantry. The demonstration against flaza had attained * These contingents were themselves composit e, and ineludod Regulars, Territorials, and Africans. Some of the French troops had been at Verdun, and had enjoyed it six months' rest at Beni Sela, a village near Khan Yunus. The district had a particular interest for the French, for here Napoleon in his Syrian cam- paign narrowly escaped capture'. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 155 its object. Nevertheless Kress von Kressen- stein, fully alive to the danger which threatened his lines by the capture of Beersheba, at once employed all his immediately available reserves in a counter -stroke, seeking to draw a consider- able body of British troops north of Beersheba ; that is, into the exceedingly rough and hilly country, with very scanty water supplies, leading to Hebron. Had this scheme succeeded General Chetwode would have been left with Sheria and occupied Abu Irgeig, while the 53rd (Welsh) Division and the Imperial Camel Corps moved due north of Beersheba 12 or 13 miles in excessive heat and mounted troops, Yeo- manry, Australians and New Zealanders, were sent along the Hebron road. The object of the movement north of Beersheba was to secure the right flank of the British during the Sheria offensive, but it fitted in with the enemy's plan. There was a good deal of fighting in the A "TANK" AT THE GATES OF GAZA. forces too weak to break the enemy's centre at Sheria-Haroira " in which case Beersheba would only have been an incubus of a most inconvenient kind." At firpt circumstances seemed to favour the Turks. As already stated, the water and transport difficulties at Beersheba proved greater than had been anticipated, and the attack on the Sheria works, first planned for November 3 or 4, had to be put off for a day or two. Flank positions, necessary for this attack, were, however, seized. On November 1 Irish troops moved direct along the road to hills oa November 2 and 3 ; by the evening of the 3rd it was ascertained that the Turks were entrenched along the line Ain Kohleh-Tel el Khuweilfeh (i.e.,. between Sheria and the Hebron road). The enemy forces in this sector were being increased, and on November 4 and 5 several determined attacks were made on the mounted troops. There were then on this front the 19th Turkish Division, the remains of the 27th Division (which had held Beersheba), part of the 16th Division, the majority of his cavalry and infantry (" depot " troops) drawn from Hebron. 187 3 156 Till-: TIMI-:s HISTORY OF THE WAR. AN INDIAN RIFLE BATTALION ON THE PALESTINE FRONT. A Company in reserve. All the Turkish attacks were broken, but the fighting was of a severe and apparently con- fused character. The country itself, though it had open and cultivated patches, was, as one officer aptly put it, more fitted for Bersaglieri than cavalry. For every hill top, almost, there was a struggle. We had another scrap the other day (wrote a yeo- manry officer) ; we took a hill and held it for two days under rather trying conditions. It was very hot, there being a south wind all the time, and we had no water for man the second day, or beast either day ; also we had Turks on three sides, and were shot at and shelled from front and both flanks. On the evening of the second day we were attacked by about 1,800 cavalry and infantry, supported by their guns, but beat them off. My squadron did not come in for this a squadron of Worcesters relieving us. A .squadron of the Warwicks had to beat them [the Turks] oft one place with the bayonet. Another picture of this campaigning in the liills was given by a brother officer. We had (he wrote) to gallop across a couple of miles of country under their machine guns, but with a wide axtension you get very few men hit, and we got across with only one or two casualties. That afternoon we hold an outpost line, and my squadron [of Gloucester, shire Hussars] was sent on to take up a night line it was a rather difficult, anxious job as I hadn't seen the country by daylight. Awful country, all rocks, and I Boon got rid of my horse as I got " on the floor " twice, and finished the night on foot. Next morning we hoped we should be relieved, but had to hold the line all day. It was very difficult to keep touch with the units on my flunk a- mounted patrols could only move at a walk in the bad ground, and dreadful country to keep direction in,^ At 3.30 we were relieved [but] just as we were going off to Beersheba we were rushed back as the Turk- lutil counter-attacked. It fizzled out after an hour, hut we Imd two oflicors hit and a good many men. At I w.i, ili-linitnly relieved by New Zealanders. . . \itern 12-mile nmreh we got to water ; neither men nor hor-<>s had had a drop for 42 hours, and the horses had had loads on the whole time. I've been pretty thirsty once or twice, but never like that. We had had a Khamseen blowing all day, and had had a hard day and night. In one instance Turkish infantry, with bayonets fixed, advanced to attack a hill held by New Zealand Mounted Rifles, but were caught by machine-gun fire and dispersed after suffering some 300 casualties. The work of the men behind the front was equally strenuous, and if the water supply was scanty it was not for lack of effort on the part of the engineers. The difficulty was not so much the absence -of water as its inaccessibility. The wells were fairly numerous but generally deep, and gear was lacking. You cannot imagine what it is (said an officfr writing home) when you start to try and water perhaps 5,000 horses (at one well 150 feet deep) that have had no water for 24 or 48 hours and the only gear you have is a canvas bucket at the end of a rope ! The wells are good enough to supply the villages, but a Cavalry Division soon dries them up. Mr. W. T. Massey, one of the two Press correspondents with the British force, writing on November 4 told how General Allenby, visiting the front line, saw Australian Engineers preparing a water supply. " Some men were working stripped to the waist, others were quite naked. The General was told that these soldiers had worked for 24 hours on end in order to get a good flow. He thanked them personally." The spirit of these Australian Engineers was typical of the whole force, and in the fighting in the hills north of Beersheba the Welsh infantry and the Imperial Camel Corps hail THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 157 borne a full share. The net result of the four days' contest was that the British had held what they had gained, hut were threatened by a superior and highly mobile enemy. Kress von Kressenstein's manoeuvre to entangle the British in the hill country between Beersheba and Hebron appeared to have succeeded. General Allenby, however, had not swerved from his original intention. If the troops iu the hills had not been able to make the progress at first hoped for, they formed a sufficient pro- tection for the right flank to justify the attack on Sheria, and the Irishmen and London Territorials now at Abu Irgeig were ready on tho left flank. The moment for striking the main blow had come. It was decided to give battle on November 6. The principal enemy works were on a two-mile- long ridge known as Kauwukah. some 10 miles west of Beersheba, and immediately east of the railway to Sheria. Abu Irgoig was five miles south-east of Kauwukah. The plan of battle was for dismounted yeomanry to attack the extreme east of the Kauwukah works, and the London and Irish troops the south-east. On the right flank the 53rd Division was to attack Tel el Khuweilfeh, 11 miles north-east of Beersheba, and, the enemy's resistance being broken, the mounted troops were to sweep westward behind Sheria. The battle proved to be the decisive action of the campaign. Before nightfall the enemy was beaten, Gaza had been rendered untenable and the whole Turkish line had to give way. By dawn the dismounted yeomanry had taken up positions opposite the eastern end of Kauwukah and as soon as it was light they advanced to the attack. The enemy works, two deep trenches 3,000 yards apart, connected by a series of strong points, were stubbornly defended, but the yeomen stormed the first trenches with great dash and by one o'clock had possession of the second line also. Most of the British casualties, slight in comparison with those of the enemy, were sustained by the yeomanry in the early hours of the day. During the afternoon the same troops captured several detached works along the line of the railway and reached the Wadi es Sheria. While they were thus " making good " the London and Irish regiments brought forward their guns to wire-cutting range and bombarded ^Palestine affinal pholcgrgplt. SPRING AT SOLOMON'S POOL. The photograph shows a canvas trough for watering animals. 158 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. the south-eastern face of Kauwukah. Mr. \1 i soy, who witnessed the battle, wrote : From a high hill I KUW Kauwukah being torn by a tornado of hi u-h -ex plo-ive shells. The lower slopes showed of curly grikss. mid this slight grateful colouring wiis iinlmrined by the gunfire, but the higher yellow slopes, which hid the. Turks in the trench-sciirrcd surface. were bruised and battered every few seconds. Behind our line miles deep were columns of transport and ammunition, raising dust in clouds of great height. The swift eddies of the wind lifted woolly puffs of sand and sent them whirling across ridge and flat, resembling waterspouts in tropical seas, an illusion which th" mirage accentuated. Soon after midday the Londoners and Irish went forward to the assault, which was com- pletely successful. They followed this up by the capture of the Rushdi system, between Sheria and Hareira, and by 5 o'clock had occupied Sheria railway station. Troops sent farther to the left reached as far as Hareira redoubt, where the Turks, though isolated, still held out. Australian and New Zealand mounted troops held in reserve at Beersheba had meantime been sent west of the railway to pursue the large masses of the enemy retreating towards Huj. Away in the hills north-west of Beersheba the 53rd Division had captured Tel el Khuweilfeh, but the sweeping movement behind Sheria which was to have followed could not be carried out. A vivid impression of what " capturing Khuweilfeh " meant was conveyed in a letter written by Father Kuvanagh, and published in The Tablet. The padre, who was a few wrrks later mortally wounded, was invited by the colonel " to see the scrap, it's the chance of a lifetime." The troops then held a hill opposite Khuweilfeh. I pushed to the top of our hill (wrote Father Kavanagh) and lay down in the firing line ; .then we crawled on our bellies to the sky-line, over which bullets were spat - tering at long range. "Now, lads." said the oflicer in command, "prepare for a move." And a moment after we all pelted over the top together, then down and down a steep and stony descent, and ten minutes later found ourselves lying panting and bewildered in a gully at the foot. The sergeant-major .stood up and shouted. " I want six men to go forward ; then another six." I ran with the third lot, and we rushed down that gully, then up another, and began to climb a most precipitous hill, banded every few yards with courses of alluvial rock, and just behind which the enemy were waiting. Presently an aeroplane swooped down on us. discharging a machine-gun, which knocked out several of our fellows. I got to the top and lay down amongst them behind the sky-line, over which bullets were pouring. Just before we got there the colonel was wounded, through the chest. The Turks, who were in much superior strength, counter-attacked and drove the infantry from one hill, but the Welshmen, determined to avenge the heavy losses they had suffered in the second battle of Gaza, reattacked and again carried the hill. They next seized another height, which improved their position a good deal. This was the beginning of a con- test which lasted all day. The infantry, said (V War Office report, in conjunction BRITISH TRENCHES AND SAND-BAG DEFENCES BEFORE GAZA. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 159 AMMUNITION CAMELS SHELTERING IN A WADI NEAR GAZA. with mounted troops were heavily engaged in beating oft repeated counter-attacks made by at least two hostile divisions* with the object of cutting us off from our water supply at Beersheba, and thereby stopping our turning movement. Our troops, which included Welsh and English county regiments, behaved splendidly, and the Turkish casualties were enormous. In this manner General Chetwode's right wing frustrated the strongest effort made by the Turks on November 6 and enabled the main attack to develop without interference. Its work on November 2-6 " paved the way," as General Allenby said, " for the success of the attack on Sheria." The troops concerned had " drawn in and exhausted " the Turkish re- serves. As an example of the severity of the enemy losses, and of the valour with which they fought, General Chetwode reported that in front of one position alone the Welshmen buried 500 Turks. The Hareira redoubt was taken very early on November 7, and Sheria itself was captured by London Territorials by a bayonet charge at 4 a.m. The Turks there had four field guns in action. A -battalion commander at the head of a party of volunteers charged the foe, bayoneted the gunners and captured all the guns. A bridgehead was then formed over the Wadi Sheria. The Turks made several unsuc- cessful counter-attacks on the Londoners, who in the evening pushed forward their line to high ground a mile north of the town. During the These were known as the Lightning and Tempest Divisions. day the mounted troops, who now included Yeomanry, in moving on Huj and Jemmameh also met with strong opposition from rear- guards. The cause of this stubborn resistance was the decision taken by Kress von Kressen- stein on the news of the fall of the Sheria works. The centre of his line was gone, irretrievably as he knew, and Gaza was in danger. He there- fore resolved to draw back his whole army. The movements of the main force had to be masked as far as possible by rearguards. Gaza was evacuated on the night of Novem- ber 6, and so skilfully that " though a certain amount of movement on the roads north of Gaza \vas observed by our airmen and fired on by our heavy artillery [there was] nothing indicating a general retirement." By this prompt retreat von Kress avoided a battle, for another attack on Gaza was the natural sequel to the_ Sheria battle, and an attack had been ordered for the night of November 6-7. The attack was to be from Outpost and Middlesex hills on the south and east to the sea on the west. Small garrisons had been left at Outpost and Middlesex hills by the Turks. They offered but slight opposition to the attacking force, West Country regiments and Indians, while by the coast East Anglian troops on the morning of November 7 found none to bar their way. Patrols pushed forward reported the enemy gone. Ali Muntar and the other defences were occupied, and tho old capital of the Philistines, before which tho British had been held up for nine months, was now won. 160 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. The troops as they marched over the battle- fields of March and April found many evi- dences of those combats wreckage of all kinds, and many unburied bodies. In some instances, however, decent burial had been given by the Turks to fallen foes. The fate of many men who had been posted as " wounded and miss- ing " was now made clear ; among those who it was ascertained had been killed in the second battle of Gaza was Lieutenant C. J. Law, K.O.S.B., the second son of Mr. Bonar Law, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Gaza had fallen, but from Beit Hamm, five miles north, and from the Atawinn works to tin- east, Turkish artillery fired sullenly on the lost city, making a special mark of AH Muntar, against which 12 hours earlier the British guns had been firing heavily. That the Turks would try to hold Atawina long enough to give time for their army to retreat was clear, and an effort was made to cut off the rearguards holding it and neighbouring trenches known as the Tank* system. The effort failed, for once again the enemy slipped away during the night of November 7. Many scattered parties of Turku and much booty were, however, captured, and by the morning of November 8 the whole of the original Turkish front was in possession of the 'British. Unlike Beersheba, Gaza was an objective worth gaining in itself, or rather as the key of Syria, giving an open way into the Plain of Philistia. Of the five chief cities of the Philistines (wrote a correspondent) Gaza alone, through all the ages, had retained its importance. This had been recognized by the Germans, who had established schools there, schools which they regarded as the most distant outpost of Teutonic Kultur. These schools had been closed, and life in the town was not pleasant. The townsfolk, mainly Arabs, were in no favour with the Turks. Early in March the mufti, a member of the venerated Husseini family, had been arrested, taken to Jerusalem, and hanged outside the Jaffa gate for alleged treason. Later most of the civilians were deported. Houses were ruth- lessly plundered for the furnishing of dug-outs and the lining of trenches. Our troops found sandbags made of rich silks. And on evacuating Gaza the Turks did what further damage they could in particular choking all the wells. When the British entered the town through the orchards, palm trees and cactus, which formed a deep fringe of green around it, there was disappointment, that such a famous place presented so poor an appear- ance. But there was evidence of former greatness in the marble used to beautify modern buildings columns ;nd slabs taken from ancient temples and churches. Relics, too, of the Crusades were found. The west end of the town, an intricate maze of narrow, dirty streets, was promptly dubbed Belgravia by the 'soldiers, all of * From one of the British tanks burnt out in the April battle. Its wreck stood on a sand dune right on the skyline. whom seemed to make a point of climbing Ali Muntar ("the watch tower"), to which, according to tradition, Samson carried the gates of the city. Major (temporary Lieut. -Colonel) W. D. Kenny, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, was ap- pointed military governor of Gaza, and the clearing of the wells and the sanitation of the town was taken in hand. The extension of the main railway from Egypt, which then ended at Deir el Belah, some 10 miles south of Gaza, was also begun at once one of the most urgent problems confronting the Expeditionary Force, as the area of operations extended north, was that of transport. The weather had broken in the Judean Hills and the roads were already much worn by the Turks in their retreat. Whatever the difficulties, immediate ad- vantage was taken of the enemy retreat. Hardly had Gaza been entered than Indian cavalry pressed towards Beit Hanun, which place, as the terminus of the Gaza railway, had been the headquarters of von Kress. The Turks held Beit Hanun all day on Novem- ber 7, but at nightfall their rearguard withdrew. Already the enemy line of retreat was threatened, for Scottish troops were north of Beit Hanun. General Bulfin, to whose " determination in attack, and dash and drive in pursuit " was due, said General Allenby, " the swift advance to Jerusalem," had sent these Scots, Highlanders and Glasgow men, north as soon as Gaza was in his hands. After an exhausting march through the sand dunes lining the coast they crossed the Wadi Hesi by 5 p.m. towards dusk. A bayonet charge by the Glasgows secured some high ground nortli of the wadi ; the enemy made several attempts to retake the position but could not dislodge the Scots. The enemy rearguards on the extreme right of the Turkish Army were thus doing their best to delay the British advance, and more to the centre the defenders of the Atawina and Tank positions were able, as already stated, to get away during the night of November 7. But the rout of the enemy was soon com- plete. November 8 was a great day for the British. Both from the Gaza and Sheria sectors they struck hard at the Turks. A smart action was fought near Beit Hanun, where Indian Imperial Service Cavalry captured many prisoners and a heavy howitzer, and the Scottish infantry at the Wadi Hesi greatly distinguished themselves. Field and heavy artillery had been drawn through the ankle- THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 161 deep sand from Gaza, and a ridge overlooking Deir Sineid was seized. Deir Sineid was the starting point of the short branch line to Huj, along it the Turks were bringing back guns and stores, and they made great efforts to stave off its capture. Four times the Turks drove the Scots off the ridge, and four times the Scots retook it. A fifth attack by the Turks failed and the Scots were loft in possession of a position which commanded the railway. On the Sheria sector November 8 was marked by equal, if not greater, success. Oa this whelming odds at Katia and were not loath to have the chance of getting their revenge on the Turk. The charge, made by the advance party, ten troops of Worcosters and War- wicks, was, said General Allenby, " at once carried out in face of heavy gun and machine- gun and rifle fire with a gallantry and dash worthy of the best traditions of British cavalry." At the first sign of the approach of horsemen the enemy gunners, who were covering the retreat of their infantry, turned their fire on the yeomanry. These gunners were Austrians CAPTURE OF A TURKISH HOWITZER BY YEOMANRY. sector the chief honours fell to London Terri- torials and' a yeomanry brigade. The Lon- doners, whose marching was wonderful, thrice drove back the enemy, and prisoners, guns, ammunition and stores fell into their hands. Meanwhile the yeomanry on their right had come up and the last position held by the Turk rearguards covering Huj was reached. The Turks, who had not had time to remove half their stores from Huj, were blowing up or setting on fire what they had to leave behind. The officer commanding the Londoners, recon- noitring the position, saw a considerable body of the enemy on the march about 2,500 yards away. He ordered the yeomanry to charge the retiring enemy. The yeomanry, consist- ing of Worcesters, Warwicks and Gloucesters, wished for nothing better. They remembered their gallant, but hopeless, stand against ovr- and they stuck to their guns to the last. The yeomen, in open ranks, swept forward, raced down a slope, crossed a flat, took the final rise at a great pace and then made straight for the guns. There were twelve pieces, three 5-9 howitzers and nine field guns. The crewa fired as fast as they could load, and, as the foe drew near, set their fuzes at zero so that the shells should burst at the mouth of the gun. But nothing stopped the yeomen and every one of the Austrians was sabred at his gun. Then riding on again the Warwicks and Worcesters captured three machine guns which had been firing upon them. These machine guns wereat once turned on the retreating Turkish infantry, who were now too far off for pursuit. In this charge the yeomanry casualties were about 40, including two squadron leaders. Lieut. -Colonel Wiggin, D.S.O., who led the 162 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. charge, was wounded. Two squadrons of Gloucesters, which galloped up in support, arrived just as the engagement ended. The battlefield, wrote one of the officers, was exactly like what one has always pictured it would look like men and horees lying all around ; one horse was lying across the trail of a gun. I shall always regret my bad luck not being in it ; it was a most splendid and gallant show. Their casualties are heavy. I put the squadron on to pick up wounded, and dug two big graves with my men and Turk prisoners, a horrible job. Huj and Jemmameh were captured and the mounted troops established contact with the forces advancing from Gaza. The evidence had not been serious, but to guard against surprises the Imperial Camel Corps was sent to a position (Tel el Nejile) where it would be on the flank of any further counter-stroke from the hills. The British business was for the time with the plain. November 9, 10 and H were days of very great activity, much hardship, many minor enterprises, but no big actions. The enemy, meantime, had come to a halt, and had strung out his forces, or, as General Allenby said, " all the remainder of the Turkish Army which GAZA. showed that the Turkish Army had been thrown into considerable disorganization, and orders were therefore issued to the cavalry on November 9 directing them " to press the enemy relentlessly." The objective given was the point where the railway from Beersheba going north to Damascus crossed the railway to Jerusalem. With this junction seized the Turks' Jerusalem Army would be cut off from that under von Kress. The one direction whence there might be a threat to the British was from the hill country north of Beersheba, where the 53rd Division still held Khuweilfeh. On November 8 the enemy force there 4,000 to 5,000 strong had withdrawn towards Hebron, but it returned on the 9th, and on the 10th made a demonstration, not against Beersheba, but towards Arak el Menshiye, a place north-east of Huj. The demonstration proved futile and the Hebron Turks again retired. This threat to the British right flank could be induced to fight " estimated at not more than 20,000 rifles in an effort to stop the British before they could reach the junction station of the Beersheba-Jerusalem railways, to which came his main supplies from the north. The new Turkish front extended, some 20 miles, in a semi -circle from the village of El Kubeibeh south-west of Ramleh on the north, by El Mughar, some five miles west of the railway junction, and then soxith-east to about Beit Jebrin. From Beit Jebrin the line was loosely continued to Hebron. This line, as far as Beit Jebrin, General Allenby arranged to attack on November 13. In bringing the British forces up to the new Turkish line the problem had become one of supply rather than manoeuvre, the provision of water and forage being particularly difficult. Some of the horses were without water for 84 hours ; the troops also suffered much from thirst, but they were men " whom no danger THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 168 RUINS OF ASCALON. or hardship could daunt," and they pressed toward the mark, overrunning in their course the Land of the Philistines. The advance was made by the 52nd Division, Indian, and other troops along the coast, cavalry screens going ahead ; by the Londoners and Yeomanry more to the centre, and by Australian and other mounted troops on the right. The Welshmen (53rd Division) remained at Khuweilfeh on guard along the Hebron road. The Scottish troops, who, always ahead of the railway, had marched the whole weary way across the desert from the Suez Canal, performed marvels. In four days and nights they made three bayonet charges and advanced 25 miles. The day after their capture of the railway by Deir Sineid (on November 8) in their march north they passed parallel to Ascalon, which once famous city of the Philistines and later the chief port of Palestine is now desolate though its magnificent ruins testify to its former greatness. But it is inhabited and was held by a small body of Turks. As the Scots could not tarry, eight or nine mounted men, an officer and some grooms, dashed off, made a brave show, and received the submission of the enemy. Later in the day infantry and guns moved into Ascalon, examining with interest the ruin wrought by Saladin and Bibars and remembering, perhaps, that here Richard the Lion Hearted made his last conquest. Meantime a small party of horsemen had galloped on to Mejdel, on the railway some miles inland, secured it and prevented the Turks there from blowing up a big ammunition dump. The Scots came up to the \Vm!i Sukerier on November 10, near Beit Duras, and found Australian Light Horse ahead. The Sukerier, one of the rivers transverse to the British line of advance, has steep banks, and the Turks were showing some disposition to make a stand by it. A charge by Glasgow men cleared the high ground north of Beit Duras and the Turks gave way. The mounted troops then pushed on to Ashdod (Esdud), where in the time of the Judges the Ark of the Covenant had been brought into the temple of Dagon. The crossing of the Sukerier at Jisr Esdud was forced on the llth, and by the morning of November 12 the 52nd Division and the other troops of the British left wing were in touch with the new line which the enemy was hastily strengthening. The Londoners by November 12 had also come within striking distance of the enemy. Some infantry, moving in support, covered 29 miles in one day on one bottle of water. On the edge of the mountains of Judea, on the right of the infantry, Yeomanry pushed forward to Gath they seem to have made no difficulty in identifying the city of Goliath with the ruins at Tel es San where the Gloucesters were unexpectedly attacked by 2,000 to 3,000 Turks who had been brought by rail from the Ramleh junction station to hold up the enemy as long as possible. With odds of 10 to 1 against them tho Gloucesters held out until the infantry were able to take over the line. The advance was delayed but a few hours. A little farther east the Australian Light Horse did very good work and took up a wide front. Their advanced troops were also 1G4 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR, Jff ^^^ J ~ tni.iM -J ^Bethany '' ' ^ W?*?AbuDis ^M^y'^n Keuii t Tineh . MILES. 07 2 J 4 5 THE APPROACHES TO JERUSALEM. counter attacked on November 12, and driven back a short distance, but the enemy did not press farther forward. For five days the British, in an area covering 600 square miles, had been pursuing the Turks. From Beersheba and from Gaza the enemy had removed nearly all the civilians, but in their flight they left behind many of the inhabitants of the other towns and villages : as many able-bodied men as they could they pressed into their service. The natives every- where welcomed the British troops, and that the great majority were glad to be rid of Ottcman rule there was no doubt. It is an extraordinary sight (wrote an officer) following up a defeated army. The amount of stuff the Turks left behind was marvellous many thousands of rounds of ammunition, guns carts, railway material, every- thing. Near Gath alone we got 3,000 worth of engi- neers* stores, besides any quantity of gun ammunition. The men love collecting the loot and wearing Turkish clothes, etc. Dead bullocks and horses were every- where. It was only lack of water for our tired horses that stopped us. Many died, many had to be evacuated to mobile veterinary stations. . . . Our horses are nearly done, men hungry and tired, but cheerful as usual ; half rations yesterday, none to-dav. . . . Open rolling country, rather hot, flies bad round the villages. The Turks burn as much of their stuff as they can. Such were some of the incidents of the pursuit. In the new battle for possession of the vital railway junction, the chief attack was to be in the plain south-west of Ramleh. At dawn on the 12th cavalry pushed considerably north of the Sukereir ; Burkah was also seized and the right flank of the Turks was almost turned. The enemy's effort to guard this flank led to stiff fighting. On the British side the troops engaged included the Lowlanders (the 52nd Division), West of England Regiments, Indians (horse and foot) and a brigade of Berks, Bucks and Dorset Yeomanry. Two Edinburgh and two Rifle Battalions (\vrot Mr. Massey) attacked Burkah, an extremely difficult position prepared beforehand, consisting of two lines of perfectly sited trenches. The first had to be attacked up a glacis, then 1,000 yards of absolutely flat ground to another glacis. The Riflemen made a stirring advance, swept the Turks out of the first line, and then, supported by most accurate artillery fire, carried the second. The .Edinburgh troops were counter-attacked on " Brown Hill." They were driven off, but came back, supported by Gurkhas, and retook the hill. The Turks left a large number of dead. The attempt to prevent the British taking up advantageous ground thus ended in failure and on November 13 the general attack on the Turkish position was made. The British were now some 35 miles north of their railhcail, and the Gaza railway, though now in their hands, was of little immediate use ; it was of a narrow gauge, and had been badly damaged THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 165 by the fire of the British warships during the previous weeks.* Yet supplies and ammuni- tion and guns, including two heavy batteries, were brought up in time. The country over which the attack took place (wrote General Allenby) is open and rolling, dotted with small villages surrounded by mud walls, with plantations of trees outside the walls. The most prominent feature is the line of heights on which are the villages of Katrah [199 feet] and El Mughar [236 feet], standing out above the low flat ground which separates them from the rising ground to the west, on which stands the village of Beshshit, about 2,000 yards distant. This Katrah-El Mughar line forms a very strong position, and it was here that the enemy made his most deter- mined resistance against the turning movement directed side of El Mughar. With the Lowlanders in front and the Yeomen on their right flank the Turks surrendered. Both El Mughar arid Katrah were won. " A most dashing charge," was Genera] Allenby's verdict on the Yeomen'a exploit, and the whole operation was, he said, " a fine feat of arms." The Turks had fought hard ; they left 400 dead at Katrah alone, while between them the Lowlanders and Yeomanry took 1,100 prisoners, 3 field and 16 machine guns. Farther south there had been a fierce struggle near the village of Yasur. CAMEL TEAM DRAWING A CABLE-LAYING CHARIOT. against his right flank [which rested on the Mediter- ranean]. El Mughar and Katrah were attacked by the 52nd Division and Yeomanry. The Lowlanders got on to the ridge upon which, divided by the Wadi Surar, the villages lie. The Turks, entrenched behind thick hedges of cactus and among clumps of cypress trees, were dislodged, but twice regained the ridge. A third attack was made and the Scots got close to the enemy trenches. When the fight was at its hottest West of England infantry made an opportune thrust at the Turks' left, and a charge by the Berks, Bucks and Dorset Yeomanry Brigade settled the issue. For two miles, the whole time under heavy fire, they galloped across the open plain, then breasted a ridge, dismounted and attacked the enemy trenches on the northern * Nevertheless some help was derived from this line. " We caught three of the Turkish railway engines," said a member of the force, " and it was rather amusing getting them going and turning them to our own use." The Turks here had dug trenches and gun pits on a small eminence. Territorials, part of a Scottish battalion (which had gained distinction in the fight of November 2 at Gaza), rushed the mound in the face of murderous machine-gun fire. Tho Turks in a strong counter-charge drove back their opponents. The Scots reformed, and again attacked. With bayonet and clubbed rifle they won the position. Sixty of the enemy lay doad on the ground, several with their skulls smashed. On the right eastern flank of the British the fighting had not been so severe, and after the loss of El Mughar the enemy resistance weakened on the whole line. By the evening the Turks were in general retreat, part of the beaten force going north and part east towards Jerusalem. The British line extended from Et Tineh on the east by Katrah and Mughar to Yebnah and the sea. Yebnah, the Jabneel of Joshua, had been taken by the Yeomanry before their attack on Mughar. Et Tineh had been captured by Australians. Situated at the junction of the Gaza and Beersheba railways, 166 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. and only a few miles south of the junction of the Beersheba and Jerusalem railways, it contained large dep&ts of ammunition and other stores. These at the last moment the Turks themselves began to rifle. The looters were disturbed by an armoured motor car which dashed up with its machine guns busy ; over 200 Turks were killed or wounded and many prisoners made. suit. CAPTAIN NEIL PRIMROSE, M.C., M.P., He had held the appointments of Under-Secretary to Foreign Office (1915), Military Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions (1916), and Chief Whip (1916-17). The Turkish army was being split up, but one more effort was made by von Kress to keep control of the railway connecting Jerusalem with the north. Infantry sent forward to " Junction Station," as the British called it, met with some opposition and were held up for the night. Early on November 14, however, it was found that the Turks had vanished. The station was occupied* and a solid wedge of troops thrown in cut in two the enemy army. The eastern or Jerusalem part was isolated from the portion in the coast sector. Only on a line con- siderably farther north could the two fragments unite, and to effect that union would involve, so it seemed, the abandonment of Jerusalem. A definite stage in the advance had been reached and General Allenby thus summarized the results attained : l:i 15 days our force had advanced GO miles on its right and about 40 on its left. Tt had driven a Turkish Army of nine infantry Divisions and one Cavnlrv Division out of a position in which it had boon en- trenched for six months, and hn<l pursued it, giving battle whenever it attempted to stand, and inflict in^ fn it losses amou:itirij_' prohubly to nearly two-thirds of the enemy's original effectives. Over 9,000 prisoners, The Flying Corp.. in bombing raids on this junction had obtained some 60 direct hits. about 80 guns, more than 100 machine guns, and very large quantities of ammunition and other stores bail been captured.* From this point Allenby's chief concern was Jerusalem. First, however, it w r as necessary to clear up the situation on his left flank, the flank resting upon the Mediterranean, and to this end the occupation of the country up to Joppa (Jaffa) was essential. The Turkish forces which had gone north soon showed that they were not negligible. They had retreated but five miles and enemy guns were shelling their lost Junction Station. During November 14, however, the mounted troops, followed hard by the infantry, pressed towards Ramleh and Lydda. Ekron (Akir) the last of the five chief cities of the Philistines was gathered in and the Jewish colony at New Akir found uninjured. Most progress was made by the New Zealandcrs, who advanced west of the Ramleh line to Ayim Kara, only six miles south of Joppa. Upon them the Turks made a strong counter-attack. " Running very quickly behind a somewhat strong gun fire, the Turks got to within 15 yards of our line, attacking with bombs and rifles, when the whole line of Auckland troops, with some Wellington Mounted Rifles, rushed for- ward with the bayonet. The Turks broke and fled, leaving over 400 dead as a result of the bayonet charge alone." (Mr. Massey.) On the next day, November 15, there was another the fourth of those brilliant charges by mounted troops which marked the campaign. Covering the main road from Ramleh to Jeru- salem, and flanking the advance of the British to Ramleh, a ridge, 756 ft. high, stands up prominently out of the low foot hills. This is the site of the ancient Gezer, once a royal city of the Canaanites and given to the King of Egypt as a dowry to his daughter on her marriage to Solomon. Near the ruins, in the village of Abvi Shusheh, a Turkish rearguard had established itself. Infantry attacked the ridge from the west, while the Berks. Bucks and Dorset Yeomanry moved to the south. At first the Turks fought stoutly, but seeing the movement of the yeomanry endeavoured to retire. It was too late. Sweeping over the level ground at a great pace the yeomen gnllnpcd up the ridge and got among the Turks with the sabre. The rout of the enemy uas * By December 9 the guns captured, apart from machine guns, had increased to over 100, and mora than 20.000,000 rounds of rifle ammunition and 250.000 rounds of gun ammunition had been seized. Over 20 aeroplanes had been destroyed by British airmen or burnt by the enemy to avoid capture. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. U!7 complete. Four hundred and thirty-one dead Turks were counted on the ground, and 360 prisoners and one .gun were taken. Thus twice in two days the Berks, Bucks and Dorset Yeomanry had charged mounted and on each occasion had won their objec- tives. . They suffered losses, among the killed The capture of Abu Shusheh marked the end, for a few days, of the Turkish resistance in the coast region. Bamleh, which had been the main enemy headquarters, was occupied on the afternoon of November 15, and Lydda, the reputed birthplace and burial place of St. George, the Patron Saint of England, IN PALESTINE: BRINGING IN A CAPTURED GERMAN AEROPLANE. being Captain Neil Primrose, M.C., M.P. (Royal Bucks Hussars), younger son of Lord Rosebery. Mr. Primrose was one of the most brilliant of the younger generation of politicians, and thrice during the war had held important offices in the Ministry. But preferring his military duties he had, after service in France , gone to Egypt early in 1917. He was buried in the garden of the French convent at Ramleh.* * Major E. A. de Rothschild, a brother officer in the Uucks Yeomanry and a cousin of Mr. Neil Primrose, was mortally wounded and died on November 17. before the night fell. At Lydda 300 Turks surrendered and at both towns were large quantities of abandoned material. The remains of five aeroplanes were discovered. Neither town had suffered greatly and the inhabitants showed much hospitality to the victors. The advance from Lydda to Joppa met with ino resistance. Australians and New Zealanders rode quietly into the seaport of Jerusalem on the evening of November 16. Of the genuineness of the welcome given the British by the 168 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. townsfolk there was no doubt. Within a I'i'w (lays several of the Jewish inhabitants who had been forcibly deported the pre- vious March and had hidden in the neigh- bourhood returned to the town. None of tin- buildings of Joppa had been injured, but the magnificent orchards around it had been thinned, and some entirely destroyed, by the cutting down of the famous orange trees for fuel. General Allenby pushed a few miles north of Joppa across the Plain of Sharon to get a Jerusalem, it gave a new shock to the Turkish High Command. Until it happened, the Turkish Headquarters staff, and their German advisers, had not believed that the British could break through the Gaza-Beersheba defences and the rout of their army created the utmost alarm. Im- mediately it happened councils of war were held in Jerusalem to devise, if possible, means for its defence. Both Turks and Germans knew the loss of prestige which would follow its abandonment. Enver Pasha, hastening from JOPPA, WITH AN ITALIAN CRUISER IN THE ROADSTEAD. defensible front for his left flank on the southern bank of the Auja river and was then free to concentrate his efforts against Jerusalem, and secure his centre from possible incursions from the hills of Judea and Samaria. For the fulvance on Jersualem it was necessary to pause till railway communications were more forward ; meantime at Ascalon, Joppa and other places along the coast when weather permitted stores were landed, warships guard- ing against submarine attacks. To make secure the position in the centre it was, however, necessary to act at once, and accordingly on the day after the occupation of Joppa yeomanry were sent from Ramleh into the Judean hills ThouL'li this was in reality a defensive measure and did not indicate an immediate attack on the Imperial Headquarters at Constantinople, reached Jerusalem on November 12 and went on to Hebron, but he departed " as suddenly and silently as he had come."* The tyrannical Djernal, the organizer of massacres, who two months before had been the Kaiser's guest at Berlin, started from Damascus, by the Hedjaz railway. The train in which he travelled was blown up (Xovember 11) by the Arabs and Djemal had a narrow escape, mem- bers of his staff being killed. Djemal returned north, whence he issued orders for the forcible deportation, which meant death, of 300 Armenian families from Jerusalem. * This account of events in Jerusalem during the lost days of Turkish rule is based in part on an article in The Times of February 4, 1918. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 169 A greater figure arrived. General von Falkenhayn came from Aleppo to see if he could reorganize the Turkish Army. He was in the city during the battle at El Mughar and stayed till November 16, when he departed by road for Shechem'. The Turks were left to their own devices with the assurance, how- ever, that reinforcements would be sent. Ali Faud Pasha, the commander of the force in the Jerusalem district, and Izzet Bey, the governor of the city, determined that they would not abandon the town without a struggle, and the defence they put up shamed the Germans. They (the Germans) had been the first to give the signal to evacuate Jerusalem. When the news reached Jerusalem on Novem- ber 9 that the British were at Huj they began to leave. The Germans and Austrians were even now (said the correspondent of The Times) preparing to evacuate the Holy City. During the next few days lame or exhausted Turks, wounded and stragglers, whom the German motor-lorry drivers refused to pick up, and Turkish officers shaken into truthfulness by the extent of their defeat, brought news of the victory. Turkish officials at once began to leave the city with their families. The German dep6ts were hurriedly emptied of unessential supplies, such as sugar, which wore sold for a song. Munitions and essential stores were then sent north to Shechem, or east to Jericho. From the high towers of the city and from the Mount of Olives one could see a great double wall of dust along every road each day, and on a clear day one could see lorries, carts, and pack animals streaming up and down. Owners of the few horse carriages left asked for and obtained 10 a seat from fugitives who were making for Shochem. Ali Faud, relieved of the presence of Falken- hayn, further purged the city. The Latin, Greek, Armenian and Coptic patriarchs and Jewish notables suspected of Zionism were sent off to Shechem (November 19). The inhabitants of Jerusalem were warned that street fighting was to be expected and that in it they would have to aid the soldiery. The city was to be defended to the last. Moreover, Ali Faud strung out a thin line of troops through the hills to regain touch with the dismembered part of the army north of Joppa. By the railway through Central Palestine and by the Shechem road reinforcements, including field guns and many machine guns, were poured down from the north by Falkenhayn and Djemal, and the new troops were some of the finest in the Turkish Army. Thus the beaten host was reinvigorated, and on November 21 the Yeomanry which had advanced into the hills of Judea received a distinct check. Hope of saving Jerusalem revived. As already stated this first advance into the mountains was intended primarily to protect the British forces in the plain from precisely such a danger as developed the bringing up of enemy reinforcements and a flank attack from the east. At the same time the advance brought the British close to Jerusalem. Palestine is a GENERAL VON FALKENHAYN, German Military Adviser of the Turks. small country, and from Ramleh, at the foot of the hills, to Jerusalem is but 24 miles in a direct line. To get to Jerusalem only two main roads were available to the British that from the south from Beersheba through Hebron and that from the west from Joppa via Ramleh. Strategic reasons compelled General Allenby to attack Jerusalem from the west ; an advance by Hebron being intended in the later stages of the campaign. The Turks had the use of other roads, one east to Jericho and the Hedjaz Railway, a second going north to Shechem (Nablus). Since they had lost command of the Jerusalem railway it was by the Shechem road that they kept up communication with Northern Syria. Hence the first objective of the British advance into the mountains was to get a hold on that road. To penetrate the mountains was no easy task. Some of the difficulties are indicated in the following passage of General Allenby's dispatch : The west side of the Judtcan range consists of a series 170 Till-: TI.MKS HISTORY OF THE WAR. of spurs running east and west, anil separated from one another by narrow valleys. These spurs are stoep, bare, and stony for the most part, and in places preci- pitous. Between tin- fool of the spur of the main rani;.- and tlii! coastal plain is tin- low nm^e known us the Stwpbetah. On our inteniled lino of advance only one good road, the main Jaffa-Jerusalem roar!, traversed flu' lulls from east to west. For nearly four miles, I.etween Bab el Wad [the Gate of thn 1'ass] and Saris, this road passe.- through a narrow defile, and it had been damaged 1>\ the Turks in several places. The other roads were mere tracks on the side of the hill or up the stony beds of the wadi*. . . . Throughout these hills the water supply was scanty without development. Up the side tracks north of the main road mounted Yeomanry began to move on Novem- ber 17, the given objective being Beeroth (in Arabic El Bireh = the wells), a town on the Shechem road nine miles north of Jerusalem. The advance was begun so soon after the defeat of the Turks at Mughar that the disorganized enemy bands first met did not offer great opposition. The hills themselves were greater obstacles. After a short distance it was found that the tracks were impossible for any vehicle on wheels, and a little later the horses had to be sent back it was a desolate region, fitted perhaps for goats, but not for cavalry. " I cannot see," said one man, " why the people in the Bible made such a rattle about the country." By the evening of the 18th one party of Yeomanry had reached Beth Horon the Lowei (in Arabic, Beit ur el Tahta). They were traversing country which had been a battle- ground for thirty centuries ; it was at Beth Horon that Joshua in the fight with the five kings of the Amorites uttered the famous invocation : " Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon." Striking north from this spot, on the 20th the Yeomanry were only four miles from the Shechem road when, near Beitunia, they met with strong opposition. Next day, however, they succeeded in pushing forward another two miles. After heavy rain the weather had become bright and cold. On November 19, two days after the Yeomanry had entered the mountains, General Bulfin sent the 52nd Division, London Terri- torials, West Country Regiments, and other infantry from Ramleh, along the main Joppa- Jerusalem road, Australian mounted troops moving on their right flank. Latron and Amnus (Emmaus*) were taken without difficulty, the critical part of the advance came when the * Nb. the Emmaus where Christ " talked with the disciples on the way." troops entered the narrow defile by the Bab el Wad. the picturesque pass well known to travellers by road to Jerusalem. The steep sides of the pass are crowned by rocky heights clad with wild olive and other trees. Here the Turks had strong, well organized rearguards, but the gallantry of the Somerset, Wiltshire and Gurkha regiments to whom was given the honour of the attack prevailed, and by the evening they had cleared the defile and the British were at Saris. Having thus got through the most dangerous part of the road the march was continued on the 20th to Kuryet el Enab (only six miles from Jerusalem), which was cleared of the enemy by a bayonet charge. From this point a modification in what was the obvious line of advance straight forward was made. It was the desire of the British to avoid any damage to the sacred sites of Palestine and " in order to avoid any fighting in the close vicinity of the Holy City " the main body of the infantry were turned north towards Bireh. Somerset and other West Country regiments, climbing a path so steep that no wheeled traffic was possible, came under shell fire, but secured (November 21) a footing on the ridge, nearly 3,000 ft. high, on which stands Nebi Samwil, a tomb mosque, supposed to mark the burial place of the prophet Samuel, and held in special veneration by Moslems.* The mosque itself, a transformed Crusaders' church, fell to the British. The British had carefully avoided injuring the mosque, but the Turks, with their indifference to Islam, shelled it as soon as it passed from their hands. From Nebi Samwil Jerusalem, five miles away to the south-east, was clearly visible. While the main force secured this commanding position the troops left at Kuryet el Enab captured Kustil ridge, two and a half miles farther east. The position on the evening of November 21 was thus apparently very favourable to the British. Infantry held Nebi Samwil and Kustil and Yeomanry were but two miles west of the Shechem road at Bireh. The next two days showed, however, that this was the limit of their advance for the time. On the 22nd the Yeomanry were heavily attacked by the Turks (whose reinforcements had arrived) and were compelled, after bitter fighting, to fall back three miles, to Beth Horon Upper (Beit ur * A War Office communique described Nebi Samwil as " the ancient Mizpah," but it is not the Mizpah of the covenant " the Lord watch between me and thee." Mizpah is a common name in Palestine, denoting a watch tower or observation post. THE TIMES HISTOfiY OF THE WAR. 171 el Foka). On the same day the Turks made two strong assaults on the British positions on Nebi Samwil. They were repulsed, and on Novem- ber 23 and 24 determined and gallant attacks were made on the Turkish positions west of the Shechem road. But both attacks failed. The enemy was able to support his infantry by artillery fire from guns mounted on the hills, while, said General Allcnby, " our artillery, from lack of roads, could not be brought up to give adequate support to our infantry." and new roads, along which heavy and field artillery were hauled, built. Ammunition and supplies were brought up and the water supply greatly developed. Naturally Ali Faud Pasha did not let the British complete their prepara- tions without interruption. The whole period was one of severe local fighting in which the Turks were constantly on the offensive and during this fortnight the citizens of Jerusalem, who had thought their deliverance at hand, gave themselves up to despair. CAMEL AMBULANCES. In these circumstances orders wers given to consolidate the positions gained and prepare for relief. Summing up the results of this first advance into the mountains General Allenby wrote : Though these troops had failed to reach their final objectives, they had achieved invaluable results. The narrow passes from the plain to the plateau of the Judwan range have seldom been forced, and have been fatal to many invading arrnies. Had the attempt not been made at once, or had it been pressed with less deter- mination, the enemy would have had time to reorganize his defences in the passes lower clown, and the conquest of the plateau would then have been slow, costly, and precarious. As it wa.=<, positions had been won from which the final attack could be prepared and delivered with good prospects of success. It was 10 days before all reliefs were com- pleted and another four days before the advance could be resumed. In that fortnight the Engineers performed miracles. Existing roads and tracks were improved out of knowledge, From November 27 to November 30 the Turks delivered a series of attacks directed against the left flank of the British position from Beth Horon Upper to the Nebi Samwil ridge and El Burj, a position south-west of Nebi Samwil. There was particularly heavy fighting between El Burj and Beth Horon Upper, but the Yeomanry (Shropshire, Cheshire and Welsh Regiments) and Scottish Lowland troops successfully resisted all attacks and inflicted severe losses on the enemy. At Beth Horon Upper one company took 300 prisoners. At El Burj on November 30 a battalion attacked the British position and was repulsed. Then in a counter-charge Australian Light Horse virtually destroyed the battalion, taking 200 prisoners, and killing a much larger number. All the efforts of the enemy to recapture the Xebi Samwil ridge failed before the unshakable 172 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. resistance of London Territorials, who had relieved the West Country troops. Their attacks cost the Turks very dearly. " We took 750 prisoners between November 27 and 30, and the enemy's losses in killed and wounded wore undoubtedly heavy."* One incident of this fortnight's defensive fighting was specially noteworthy. At Beth Horon Upper the opposing lines were very close, the Turks holding the village, which is perched on a steep conical bill. A dismounted company of Welsh Horse was ordered to take the village. Working their way behind they got, in the dusk of evening, to the top of the hill from the Turkish side : In the village (wrote Mr. Massey) they found 500 Turks with a German officer. The enemy laid don n t hoi r arms, and when the Yeomen got into the tiny villago square they saw them standing to. The German officer began running about, shouting ' Start fighting." Some of the enemy picked up thoir rifles and began fighting and others followed. They w->re too late. The Yeomen, seeing the Turks had not surrendered, fired into the mass, and for five minutes there was a desperate battle in the small enclosure and the narrow streats leading therefrom, the range seldom exceeding 10 yards. The German officer was bayoneted and killed, as were many Turks. The remainder then gave in. They outnumbered our force by four to one. The Yeomanry officer decided not to hold the village, but to escort the prisoners to the British lines. The enemy in the failing light took this large party to be the British attacking the hill, and shallad them. In the oonfiuion soma Turks got away, but the Yeomen brought in eight, officers and 99 men, more than twice the number of our force. All Faud Pasha, aided by his reinforcements from Northern Syria, had done his best to keep the British from Jerusalem, and, as Sir Philip Chetwode said, " certain Turkish divisions, as always, fought like tigers." The enemy offen- sive in no way, however, affected the positions taken up by the British on November 22, nor did it impede the progress of General Allenby's preparations. These completed, the Commander- in-Chief fixed December 8 for the attack on Jerusalem. There was to be, if possible, no fighting close to the city and no injury to any of its buildings. General Allenby's plan was to * As became good strategists the Turks did not confine thoir offensive to the hill country, but demonstrated against the British left by Joppa. On November 25 the British advanced posts north of th^ Auja were driven across the river, and in the succeeding days the Turks assailed the front protecting Joppa. In an attack on tin' night of November 29 an enemy party 150 strong penetrated the outpost line north-east of the port, but next morning the whole hostile detachment was surrounded and captured by Australian Light Horse. This was not the only retaliatory move of tho British ; 40 men from an East County Regiment attacked a post on the Auja hMd by over 100 Turks, killed 50, and brought back prisoners. push his troops on the Nebi Samwil-Beth Horon line north-east astride the Jerusalem-Shechem road, while other troops coming from the south were to strike east between Jerusalem and Jericho. If this plan succeeded tho Holy City would be cut off from help. The plan did succeed, but the Turkish forces with- drew before the net round Jerusalem was complete. The Jerusalem operations proper began on December 4. Since their famous fight at Khuweilfeh on November 11 the 53rd (Welsh) Division had not budged from their position some 11 miles north of Beersheba. Now they were employed for the turning movement against Jerusalem from the south. With some Home County troops and a cavalry regiment they moved from their camp on December 4 northward. The region into which they moved was eminently suitable for defence, but the Welsh troops found that the Turks had with- drawn, and on December 6, without opposition, they entered Hebron, the city of Abraham, and David's capital before he conquered Jerusalem. By the evening of the 6th the head of the column was 10 miles north of Hebron. It was scheduled to reach Bethlehem on the 7th and the southern outskirts of Jerusalem by dawn on the 8th, and so careful was General Allenby that nothing should be done to injure any sacred site that the column was instructed that no troops were to enter the city. On Decem- ber 7, however, the weather broke, and for three days rain was almost continuous. The hills were covered with mist, the roads rendered almost impassable. In these circumstances the progress of the column was delayed, and on the morning of the 8th it was still some distance south of Jerusalem. The delay was not alto- gether due to the weather, but to the deter- mination not to injure the place where Christ was born. Bethlehem had been chosen by the Turks as their advanced southern line and they had posted their guns in such a position that counter-battery work would have endangered the village ; consequently the British were shelled without being allowed to reply. But in the end they drove back the enemy, and found the village, sacred by so many asso- ciations, uninjured. Despite rain, mud, mist and intense cold, and the delay to the southern column (which now constituted Allenby's right flank) the attack on the enemy positions guarding the Shechem (Nablus) road was delivered on the 8th a THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 173 JERUSALEM FROM THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. arranged. It was a dey calculated to try the stoutest troops. Observation from the air was quite impossible, and some of the roads had become such quagmires that the guns could not be brought up. The Turks, too, had placed their best troops in the field, organized storming companies, equipped with the best German skill. And these Turks put up so stout a resistance that all the troops and officials left in Jerusalem were able to get away not north- ward to Shechem, but eastward to Jericho. The day's fighting is thus described by General Allenby : The troops moved into positions of assembly by night, and, assaulting at dawn on the 8th, soon carried their first obJ3ctives. They then pressed steadily forward. Tho mere physical difficulty of climbing the steep and rocky hillsides and crossing the deep valleys would have sufficed to render progress slow, and the opposition encountered was considerable. Artillery support was soon difficult, owing to the length of the advance and the difficulty of moving guns forward. But by about noon London troops had already advanced over two miles, and were swinging north-east to gain the Nablus- Jerusalem road ; while the Yeomanry had 171 '////; TIMI'IS HISTOHY <>!' THH MM/,'. \\\-iv j>iv|mnn_: tr onptmv.l id.- licit UV-MI >j.iu. a further advanro. A* tin* ri^hr column [that from Hebron] hn<l hern dt'luycd ... it \vas ih-.-r ary for tin 1 Loii'ion troop-, to tlirou* back their riyht and form .1 l-'lcn -i\ ' flank fju-int; east towards .'crn-nlciii. from the western out - -kiru of which rori^iilcrMNc rill-- and artillery fira wa- ii.-.- I. MAJOR-GENERAL SIR L. J. BOLS, K.C.M.G., Chief of Staff to General Sir Edmund Allenby. This delayed the advance, and early in the afternoon it was decided to consolidate the line gained and resume the advance next day, when the right column would be in a position to exert its pressure. By nightfall our line ran from Nebi Samwil to the east of Beit Iksa. through Lifta to a point about H miles west of Jeru- salem, whence it wa.s thrown back facing east. All the enemy's prepared defences west and north-west of Jerusalem had been captured, and our troops were within a short distance of tha Nablus-Jerusalem road. The London troops and Yeomanry had displayed great endurance in difficult conditions. The London troops especially, after a night march in heavy rain to reach their positions of deployment, had made an advance of three to four miles in difficult hills in the face of stubborn opposition. During the day about 300 prisoners were taken and many Turks killed. Our own casualties were light. In Jerusalem it was a day of great tension the inhabitants and the Turks filled with alternate and contrary hopes and fears. Towards dusk (says the correspondent of The Time* already quoted) the British troops were reported to have passed Lifta, and to be within sight of the city. On this news being received a sudden panic fell on the Turks west and south-west of the town, and at five in the afternoon civilians were surprised to see a Turkish transport column galloping furiously citywards along the Jaffa road. In passing they alarmed all units within Mght or hearing, and the wearied infantry arose and fled, bootless, and without rifles, never pausing to think or to fight. Some were flogged from behind by officers and were compelled to pick up their arms ; others staggered on through the mud, augmenting the confusion of the retreat. After four centuries of conquest tlm Turk was ridding the land of his presence in the bitterness of defeat, and a great enthusiasm arose among the Jews. " The Turks are running," they called ; " the day of deliverance is cotno." The nightmare was fast passing away, but the Turk still lingered. In the evening he fired hi- guns contiiiinm-ly. Alnmt midnight I lie governor, Izzet Hey. wont p'T-onally to the telegraph ofl'ire. discharged the stuff, and himself smashed the in-t ruments \\-itli a hammer. At "I n. in. on Sunday (December !li tired Turks began fo troop through the. Jaffa gate from the west and south- west, ami arixiniis \vatehe--s. peering out through the \\imlows of the grand new hotel to learn the moaning "l I In- tramping, were rheeie<! hy the sullen remark of an oilieer. "(iitmayn inejboomz " (We've got to go), and from two till seven that morning the Turks streamed through and out of the city, \\-hieh echoed tin ihe last time their shnHling tramp. Thus when early on December 9 the British advance was resumed the London troops and Yeomanry, driving hack weak rearguards, had 110 difficulty in securing the Sheehem road. They occupied strong ground astride the road four miles north of the city. Meantime Welsh and Cheshire troops swinging north-east from the Bethlehem direction got across the Jericho road, a little while after the main Turkish force had passed in its flight eastward. Some companies had been left on the Mount of Olives to cover the enemy retreat and these shelled the British. But their guns were silenced ami they were driven from the Mount by Welsh troops. That was the end of the fighting. Izzet Bey, the last civil official to leave Jerusalem, had left behind a letter of surrender, " which the mayor, as the sun rose, set forth to deliver to the British commander, accompanied by a few frightened policemen holding two tremulous white flags. He walked towards the Lifta Hill, and met the first armed deliverers on a spot which may be marked in the future with a white stone as the site of an historic episode." It was the 2072nd anniversary of the day on which Judas Maccabeus had recaptured the Temple from the Selusids. The King rightly interpreted the general feeling when, on receiving news that Jerusalem had been captured, without injury to any of the Holy Places, he declared that " he joined with his people throughout the British Empire in welcoming the joyous tidings of this memorable feat of British Arms." For his service General Allenby was awarded the G.C.M.G. a specially appropriate honour for the soldier who had hoisted the Union Jack over the tomb of St. George and rewards were bestowed on his chief lieutenants.* Particular care was taken, how- ever, to demonstrate that the campaign was not directed against Islam, but for the liberation of all the peoples of Palestine Christians, Jews and Moslems alike from the tyranny of the * Generals liulfin and Chetwode received the K.C.B., General Bols the K.C.M.G. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 175 Osmaiilis, and that France and Italy fully asso- ciated themselves in this policy. Borton I'osha, a high British official in the Egyptian service, was at once appointed military governor, order restored in the city and the safety of the sacred sites secured. General Allenby made his official entry into Jerusalem on Tuesday, December 11. This historic ceremony was marked by studied simplicity ; in violent contrast to the theatrical entry of the Emperor William into the city (which he had not conquered) 19 years pre- viously. The procession was wholly on foot. A little before noon a guard of 100 men was drawn up on either side of the Jaffa gate, whose iron doors are rarely opened. Every man of this guard had been carefully chosen they [Palestine i THE ENTRY OF GENERAL ALLENbY INTO JERUSALEM BY THE JAFFA GATE. IS ^ H Q < O w 'fib O en o- H Dfl X H z o si I- < zo u o Dfl X O z 5 < ta 06 a X s ta 170 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 171 represented England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, India, France, and Italy. At midday came General Allenby, accom- panied by a few members of his staff and by Col. Picot, head of the French Political Mission, the commanders of the French and Italian detachments and by the military attaches of France, Italy, and the United States. The small company was met by Borton Pasha, and passing under the Jaffa gate turned to the right into the Armenian quarter the ancient Zion and halted at the Citadel, built on the site of David's palace. On the steps of the Citadel, by the base of the Tower of David, the pro- cession halted and a proclamation addressed "" To the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Blessed and the people dwelling in the vicinity " was read in Arabic, Hebrew, English, French, Italian, Greek, and Russian. It announced the estab- lishment of martial law, but " lest any of you should be alarmed by reason of your experience at the hands of the enemy . . . every person should pursue his lawful business without fear of interruption." The proclamation pro- ceeded : Furthermore, since your City is regarded with affection by the adherents of three of the great religions of man- kind, and its soil has been consecrated by the prayers and pilgrimages of multitudes of devout people of these three religions for many centuries, therefore do I make known to you that every sacred building, monument, Holy spot, shrine, traditional site, endowment, pious bequest, or customary place of prayer, of whatsoever form of the three religions, will be maintained and protected accord- ing to the existing customs and beliefs of those to whose faiths they are sacred. This charter of freedom for all Faiths having been read, the company walked up Zion Street to the barrack square, where General Allenby received the heads of the civil communities and other notables and deputies of the deported leaders of the various Christian confessions. The mayor and the mufti, the sheikhs in charge of the mosques of Omar and Aska, representatives of the Jewish committees and of the Anglican, Latin, Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Armenian, Syrian and Coptic Churches, and the Abyssinian Bishop were all presented, and finally the Spanish Consul, who, as almost the only neutral diplomatic personage in Jerusalem, had charge of the interests of most of the belligerents. The presentations over, General Allenby returned to the Jaffa gate. Not until he was outside the walls did he mount his horse. The simplicity and sincerity which had marked the whole ceremony created a deep impression on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, an impression heightened by the measures enforced for the protection of the Holy Sites. While other Christian and Jewish sacred sites were placed under guards belonging to those faiths, the hereditary Moslem custodians of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were asked to take up their accustomed duties " in remembrance of the magnanimous act of the Caliph Omar, who protected that Church." Thus Jerusalem passed from under the military domination of the Germans and the Turks. And having lost the Holy City by arms, they immediately set on foot a campaign of words, to deprive the liberators, if possible, of the moral results of their achievement. " Jerusalem has been evacuated," the German wireless announced on December 12. " The most important reason for the decision to evacuate it voluntarily was the fact that no nation in the world whieh believes in God could wish its sacred soil to be the scene of bloody battles. The keeping of a town which is worthless from a military point of view was of no importance in comparison with this con- sideration." Notwithstanding their protestation, the enemy, as has been shown, had done their best to " dismantle " Jerusalem from the religious point of view by deporting the Patriarchs of the several Christian confessions, as well as selected notables from the Christian and Jewish communities. Without incurring the odium of destroying the sacred edifices, they believed that they could in this way paralyse the religious life that centred in them and interrupt the maintenance of the several rites. This action on the part of the Turco- German military authorities was supplemented by propaganda in the German Press. A " Catholic Theologian " in the Cologne Gazette, developed the thesis that the earthly Jerusalem had no " religious value " for Christians, and implied that the heavenly Jerusalem " which no vile Englishman could conquer " was still within Germany's Machisphare. Heir Naumann, the gifted author of " Mitteleuropa," took 'a senti- mental line. " The real Jerusalem," he argued, " the place where Jesus died, the place whence proceeded the Holy Spirit," had been preserved in the sympathetic atmosphere of Turkish rule. But now Jerusalem was to be included in the modern, technical, commercial, capitalist, English-international system, and " under ITS ////, y/.VA'X 1IISTOHY OF THE WAR. Knglish guidance would tic improved in tin- Western sense." The instinct ivo perception that the Tureo- German r^i'.in^ was not destined to return was an interesting s\ mptom in the case of a historian of Herr Naumann's intuitive power : but from the beginning of the British occupation his characterization of the change that had occurred was belied by the course of events in Jerusalem itself. Ottoman rule in Jerusalem was just four centuries old ; Germany did not begin to cast her shadow there till the Kaiser's visit in 1898 ; both were passing incidents in the city's political history, and in her religious history they had not counted at all. The Turks ruled Jerusalem politically by the right of the sword. They had no religious footing there except through their adherence to Islam, which they shared with the majority of the native Arabic-speaking population. But under the reign of the Committee of Union and Progress, and especially during the military dictatorship of Djemal Pasha since the begin- ning of the war, they had repudiated the religious bond in favour of a violent-handed nationalism, and employed their political power to assail their Arab co-religionists with a racial war. As at Damascus and Beirut, so in Djemal singled out his victims among the Aral) leaders, and it is easy to understand thoir relief at the removal of the Turkish menace. The Moslem custodians of the Holy Places likewise expressed their satisfaction with General Allenby's dispositions, and the safety of the Mosque of Omar was at once assured by the detailment of a guard of Indian Moslems from the 123rd Outram'x Rifles. The departure of the self-styled " Turanian " Turks thus made no interruption in the Moslem tradition of 13 centuries, and the gratitude of the Arab nation was promptly expressed on December 1 5 by a joint Moslem-Christian delegation from the Syrian and Palestinian colonies in Great Britain to the War Cabinet. This delegation expressed, in its address, " the hope and assurance that His Majesty's armies and the French and Italian contingents would continue their victorious march for the deliverance of the populations they were freeing from the despotism of Turkish rule" ; and the King of the Hedjaz, the acknowledged representative of the Arab risorgimento, declared his appre- ciation of " the care and solicitude shown to the Holy Places," and ascribed the victory to the justice of the British cause. \l'.es'.ir,e offi<ial photograph. THE SCENE ON THE STEPS OF THE CITADEL AT THE FOOT OF THE TOWER OF DAVID. The officer holding a paper in his hands 'is reading the Proclamation in English. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 1TJ [Offit ial photcgraph GENERAL ALLENBY RECEIVES THE CITY NOTABLES IN THE BARRACK SQUARE. The liberation of Jerusalem meant still more to the Jews, for while it is only the third in sanctity of the Moslem Holy Places, it is the peculiar shrine of Judaism in the sense in which Mecca and Medina are of Islam. The British advance freed not only the most sacred places of ancient Jewry, but the site marked out for the future Jewish university, and also about 20 out of the 40 and more agricultural colonies founded by Jewish immigrants in Palestine during the last generation. This Jewish colonizing movement has been described in Chapter CCXVII. The British advance over the territory in which the more southerly colonies are situated was so rapid that the Turks had no time to lay them waste Buildings, plantations and public works were found practically intact ; only the live-stock and, unhappily, a large proportion of the able- bodied male population had been commandeered. These colonies offered an invaluable nucleus for the process of reconstruction, and before many weeks had passed a Zionist Commission, headed by the President of the English Zionist Federa- tion, Doctor Weizmann, was dispatched to Palestine with the authorization of the British Government. Their task was to reconstruct the ruins, not of three years, but of eighteen and a half centuries, for Jewry had lain in ruins in Palestine since Titus destroyed Jeru- salem in the year 70 A.n. For the first time since that catastrophe, conditions in Palestine had become favourable for the rebuilding of Jewish society there. The Germans realized how this beneficent effect of the British success would influence Jewish sympathies all over the world, and were anxious to make some counter-move little prospect though they had of reversing facts by propaganda. But the susceptibilities of their Turkish allies were grievously in the way. Th<> avowed war aims of the Committee of Union and Progress were the integrity, centralization, and " Turcification " of the Ottoman Empire. They could not forgive the Gennans for having left them militarily in the lurch, and their anger grew as they watched the German Government appropriating for itself vast territories in Europe at the expense of Russia. Talaat was demanding German military aid, and until that was forthcoming he did not see why he should disavow his party's war aims in order to enhance Germany's popularity with the Jews. It was, therefore, not surprising that when Talaat was induced to grant an interview on the subject of Zionism to the correspondent of the Vosiixche Zeitung at Constantinople, his statements should not prove felicitous from the German point of view. In this interview Talaat dismissed Mr. Balfour's letter as " an imposture," enlarged ISO THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. . if \\-hui tactlessly, considering the recent Djeinal regime) on past favours shown to Jews by Turks, talked of the limited capacity of Palestine for colonization, insisted that all Jewish colonists must become naturalized Ottoman subjects, and repeated several tin us that Jews could be given no special privi- leges over and above those enjoyed by other Ottoman citizens an ominous charter of rights, since it exposed Jews under Turkish dominion to the same fate as Arabs, Greeks and Armenians. Talaat's statement was criticized severely by the Jewish Press, which pointed out that the good faith of the British Government was guaranteed by the offers of territory for Jewish colonization at El Arish and in East Africa long before the war, as well as by the prompt assent, after the deliverance of Jerusalem, to the dispatch of a Zionist Commission. Turco- German propaganda was equally unsuccessful in trying to create trouble between England and France. The French interests in Syria were admitted by the whole world (except, of course, by the Turks and Germans themselves), and it was no secret that France had at one time regarded Palestine as falling within the Syrian sphere. But it was a na'ive supposition that the Allies had embarked on the Palestinian cam- paign without having arrived at a common political programme. On February 9 a Zionist representative, M. Sokoloff, was officially informed at Paris by M. Pichon that " the understanding between the French and British Governments was complete concerning the question of the establishment of the Jews in Palestine." The simple announcement of an obvious fact was sufficient to bring enemy propaganda in this direction to an end. The significance of the liberation of Jerusalem for Turks and Germans, Arabs and Jews, has now been described, but the survey would not be complete without some account of its reception by the Roman Catholic Church. Throughout the war the Vatican preserved scrupulous neutrality as a political power, but only the Pope's enemies accused him of being indifferent towards the moral issues which the War raised, or towards events in which his Church was affected as a religious and an international society. The transference of the Christian sanctuaries at Jerusalem from an exclusively Moslem rule to a regime in which none of the religions to which Jerusalem was holy was to have political precedence over another, was naturally a cause of satisfaction to His Holiness as the religious head of the Roman Catholic Church, and on December 13 the Cardinal Vicar accordingly published a proclamation announcing a thanksgiving service in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme for the Sunday following. The official organ of the Vatican, the Osservatore Romano, com- mented that " the entry of the British troops into Jerusalem had been received with satisfac- tion by all, and especially by Catholics," and added that " the conceptions of liberty and fair-mindedness which inspire the acts of England " created confidence that the rights and interests of the Catholic Church would be respected in Palestine under the change of regime. The Mtinchner Neueste Nachrichten chose to represent the Vatican's attitude as inconsistent with political neutrality, and the German " Catholic Theologian," whose article in the Cologne. Gazette has been referred to above, roundly declared that " for us German Catholics the possession and fate of Jerusalem are a purely political question . . . and in this political question let it be said aloud we German Catholics, as a matter of course, stand absolutely on the side of our country. We represent German interests." This theologian at Cologne, like his " Turanian " allies at Con- stantinople, was ready, in his intemperate nationalism, to sacrifice the unity of the religious society to which he belonged. His point of view, however, was not shared by the majority of Catholics in Central Europe, and especially in Austria-Hungary. It was rumoured that the Pope was definitely opposed to any attempt to recover Jerusalem for the Turks on the part of the Central Powers, and that pressure was brought to bear on the Govern- ments by Catholic influence to obey his wishes. Such rumours are by their nature incapable of verification, but whether or not this one was correct, there is little doubt that it found a ready reception in the irritated minds of the Committee of Union and Progress. It was, indeed, not improbable that the liberation of Jerusalem had led to the first serious rift between Berlin, Vienna and Constantinople. CHAPTER CCXXVII. FROM THE BATTLE OF MESSINES TO THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES. THE FIGHTING IN JUNE AND JULY, 1917 SITUATION BEFORE VERDUN GERMAN CONCENTRATION ATTACK ON JUNE 28 SLIGHT GERMAN GAINS FRENCH ATTACK, JULY 17 MORONVILLIERS : GENERAL GOURAUD IN COMMAND FRENCH ATTACK IN MT. CORNILLET SECTOR, JUNE 21 FURTHER OPERATIONS UNDER GOURAUD THE CRAONNE-BEIMS AREA ANALYSIS OP THE FIGHTING - KAISER AND CROWN PRINCE THE BRITISH FRONT PREPARATIONS FOR THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES GENERAL ALLENBY LEAVES FOR PALESTINE HAIG'S DEMONSTRATIONS BRITISH OPERATIONS NEAR LENS JULY 8 : GERMAN SUCCESS ON THE -YSER. THE Battle of Messines, described in Chapter CCXXIV., was the last act in the manoeuvres preliminary to the offensive in Flanders, undertaken by the British Fifth and Second Armies combined with the French First Army, which began on July 31, 1917. But while the final preparations for this new attack were being completed the Battles of Vimy-Arras, Craonne-Reims and Moronvilliers were renewed on a smaller scale. Beyond the extremities of the zone in question the Germans were able to inflict a slight reverse on the British in front of Nieuport and tem- porarily to recover some of the ground lost by the Crown Prince at the conclusion of the Battle of Verdun. This chapter will deal with these various encounters, viz., in the Verdun region, the actions on the Moronvilliers and Chemin des Dames ridges, the combats south and north of the Scarpe in the regions of Lens and Ypres, and the struggle round Lombartzyde on the coast of the North Sea between Nieuport and Ostend. The German success north of Verdun preceded the great French victory gained by General Guillaumat on August 20 north of Verdun, Vol. XV. Part 188 181 while the desperate struggles on and west of the Chemin des Dames ridge were preliminary to the decisive Battle of Malmaison won by General Maistre on October 23 The remainder of the operations to be described were fraught with no important consequences. The French did not descend the northern slopes of the Moronvilliers hills, nor did the British advance eastward from the Scarpe or the Vimy heights. Neither did the enemy attempt to follow up the advantage he had gained at Lombartzyde nor seek to push farther forward in the Verdun region. Before these various encounters are described the reader should be reminded that, after the failure of General Nivelle. in April 1917, to burst his way through the German lines into the plain of Laon, there had been a radical change in the strategy of the Allies. The French reverted to the plan of limited objectives, and their offensive on the right and centre was no longer of so aggressive a character, while the original plan of Sir Douglas Haig, which had been for a time suspended to enable him to support the French, was now reverted to. The main British effort was henceforth to be directed north of the Lys, and it was to be 182 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. supported by a French Army in Flanders. For Generals Petain and Foch, who took over the direction of the French forces at the end of April, had decided, in view of the losses suffered at the Battles of Craonne-Reims and Moronvilliers, that this course was better suited to the situation. The rapid dissolution of the Russian Army even the Russian contingent which had fought at Craonne-Reims had be- come disaffected induced them to adopt this more modest part, and they determined, there- fore, to await the arrival of the American forces before committing themselves to operations on a great scale. They were content to finish off, as it were, the Battles of Craonne-Reims and Moronvilliers, and, but for the German offen- sive west of the Meuse and north of Verdun on June 29, it may well be doubted whether they would have embarked in 1917 in any consider- able battle in Lorraine. That Petain and Foch had read the European situation rightly was shown by the complete failure of Brussiloff and Korniloff in July to galvanize the Russian Army into action against Germans and Austro-Hun- garians, and also by the unexpected collapse in November of a part of the Italian Army in the Julian Alps. On the German side also there was for a time a distinct tendency to adhere to detensive tactics which were dictated by the defeats of Arras- Vimy, Craonne-Reims, Moron- villiers and, above all, Messines. In Chapter CLXVI. the concluding phase of the First Battle of Verdun was described. At the opening of that gigantic struggle the French line had run from just south of Boureilles, on the eastern edge of the Argonne forest land, north-eastwards between the Bois de Mont- faucon and the Bois de Malancourt to Forges and the glen from Forges descending to the Mi 'use. On the west side of the river it covered the Cheppy and Avocourt Woods, the villages of Malancourt and B6thincourt to their east, Hill 304, which rises midway between those villages to their south, the Mort Homme (Hill 295) between Hill 304 and the Meuse, and Regneville on the left bank of the river. The Bois do Forges, north of Forges, was in the possession of the enemy. From Forges to Verdun as the crow flies is a distance of some nine miles. Crossing the Meuse, which, unlike the Lys, is a fairly wide river, the French line proceeded almost due eastwards between Consenvoye and Brabant-sur-Meuse over the heights of the Meuse to Ornes on their eastern slopes. From WRECKED GERMAN GUNS AT CRAONNE. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 188 HILL 304 FROM ESNES. Orncs it struck down south-eastwards below the Twins of Ornes a name given to two liiJls a little higher than the Mort Homme into the wooded and water-patched plain of the Woevre, passing just west of Etain and Buzy. It then ran sfiarpiy back to the Meuse Heights ; going round east of Fresnes and descending those heights to the southern en- virons of Les Eparges. Thence it descended south-soutn-eastwards to the Meuse, which it crossed north-west of St. Mihiel. Curving west of St. Mihiel, it recrossed both the Meuse and the Meuse Heights and again entered the VVoevre. From St. Mihiel to Verdun is a distance of some 20 miles, from Verdun to the furthest French outpost in the Woevre was 14 miles or so. Verdun, traversed by the Meuse, is in a hollow. The Heights ot the Meuse, a cultivated and wooded plateau rather than a range of hills, on an average some 500 feet above the stream and five or six miles broad, are the natural defences of Verdun on the east and north. Low hills on the left bank of the Mouse lie between Hill 304 and Verdun. South of Hill 304 and of the, Avocourt and Cheppy Woods is the great Foret de Hesse, extending from the Argonne to within a few miles of the city. It will be recollected that at the Battle of Verdun the Germans forced the French to withdraw from the piain of the Woevre to the Meuse Heights, and that they fought their way southwards along those heights to the south of Fort Vaux, reaching a point less than five miles from Verdun itself. On the wost bank of the Meuse, however, though the French had been obliged to evacuate Forges, Be^hincourt, Malancourt and Regneville, they had retained the southern slopes ot Mort Homme and Hill 304 and the village of Avocourt, and their line thence to the Argonne passed between the Avocourt-Cheppy Woods and the Hesse forest. The south-eastern end of the Avocourt Wood, with the celebrated Avocourt Redoubt, re- mained in their possession. On the left (west) bank of the Meuse the situation had become stationary by June 1916 ; on the right bank the stationary stage of the battle had not been reached till December 17. On October 24, General Mangin had recaptured the Village and Fort of Douaumont, north of Fort Vaux, and on November 1 the Germans retired from the latter fort. The village of Vaux, north of it, was retaken on the 5th. Some days later, on December 15-17, Mangin completely defeated the Germans north of Fort Douaumont, taking 11,300 prisoners and re- capturing Vacherauville on the Meuse, the Poivre Hill, Louvemont, Bezonvaux and Har- daumont with part of the Bois dcs Caurieres. It will be noticed that the French, despite their victories in October and December, had on neither side of the Meuse recovered the line originally organized by General Sarrail during and after the Battle of the Marne. The enemy from Fresnes northwards to Bezonvaux were at or close to the eastern slopes of the Heights of the Meuse and, north of the line Bezonvaux- Vacherauville, they were firmly entrenched on them. From Vacherauvillo to Verdun is but some five miles. Considering, too, that the 1882 184 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. Germans south of Verdun in the St. Miliiel salient were on the west bank of the Meuso, the position from the French standpoint was Btill unsatisfactory. Under these circumstances, General Petain and General Guillaumat, the Commander of the French 2nd Army entrusted with the defence of Verdun, could not but view with apprehension any renewed activity of the enemy west and east of the Meuse in the Verdun district. On Juno 15, 1917, a German detachment advanced to reconnoitre the French lines near Hill 304, and the same day another party of the enemy (June 9), the abdication of King Constantino on June 12, and the safe arrival in France on June 26 of the first American contingent, ren- dered it desirable for the Crown Prince to wipe out the memories of his failures by a victorious offensive which was to be executed by General von Gallwitz. Accordingly some 500 guns were secretly concentrated opposite the French lines. Those lines ran from the south-eastern end of the Avocourt Wood, in which our Allies still held some strong points, by the western and southern slopes of Hill 304, across a valley to the southern THE DEFENCES OF THE MORT HOMME AND HILL 304. w<is detected approaching the trenches of our Allies in the Bois des Chevaliers on the Heights of the Meuse. Both reconnaissances were promptly dispersed by the firo of the French guns. Four days later, on the 19th, the Germans vainly attempted to rush some small posts near the Calonne trench, south-west of Le Eparges, the southern pivot of the Verdun salient. On the 25th, the enemy attacked on a minor scale, from the St. Mihiel salient. The movements in the Bois des Chevaliers, near Les Eparges, and in the St. Mihiel salient were feints to conceal the real objective of the German Crown Prince, which was on the west of the Meuse between the Avocourt Wood and the Mort Homme. The political crisis in Ger- many, which ended on July 14 with the sub- stitution of Heir Michaelis for Herr von Beth- mann-Hollweg as Chancellor, the depression caused in Germany by the Battle of Messines slopes of Mort Homme. Between Avocourt Wood and Hill 304 there was a slight depression, forming a saddle known as the Col de Pom- merieux. Over it ran the Malancourt-Verdun road to the ruined village of Esnes From Esnes another road proceeded northwards along the valley between Hill 304 and the Mort Homme to Bethineourt, which village was connected by a cross road with Malancourt. If the Germans gained the Col de Pommerieux and the support- ing Frenches behind it they would secure exten- sive views of the French position in front of Esnes, and they would be able to attack from the rear the French on the western and southern slopes of Hill 304. The German 10th Reserve Division was held in readiness for the operation, and some of the French trenches on the slopes of Hill 304 were facsimiled, shock troops being carefully trained in the appropriate methods for storming such obstacles. THE TIMKS HISTORY OF THE WAR. 185 [Manuel. GENERAL GUILLAUMAT, Commanded the French Second Army at Verdun, 1917. ThU last precaution, as it happened, pre- vented the attack from being a complete sur- prise to our Allies. A French airman circling behind the enemy's lines on a photograph- ing expedition, perceived copies of French trenches, recognized that the trenches copied were some of those on Hill 304, and promptly informed General Guillaumat of his dis- covery. In the afternoon of June 28, 1917, the Crown Prince launched his attack. It was preceded by a short but violent bombardment from the 500 German guns. Most of the shells fired were of a heavy calibre. The front assaulted was bisected by the Malancourt-Esnes road and was some 2,200 yards in length. At 6.30 p.m. shock troops followed the German barrage and effected a lodgment on the Col de Pommerieux, penetrating as far as the supporting trenches behind J-he first line But a blockhouse in the region of Avocourt Wood and other strong points were not so easily carried. The garrison of the blockhouse beat off no fewer than 10 assaults and, after 12 hours of uninterrupted fighting, only retired when a formal order to retreat reached them. Every survivor of the company was wounded ; many were badly burned, but not a single prisoner was left in the enemy's hands. On the west of Hill 304 the French artillery had, meanwhile, been pounding the enemy who had gained a footing in the French front line. At 3.45 a.m. on June 29 an attack by tin- Germans east of Hill 304 was repulsed, but about the same time according to the enemy's communique a Wiirternberg regiment in the Avocourt Wood stormed 300 yards of trenches. In the afternoon the French counter-attacked west of Hill 304 ana recovered some trenches, while the Germans assaulted the French lines on a front of 1J miles between the eastern slopes of Hill 304 and the western slopes of Mort Homme. A squadron of 40 dismounted Breton Dragoons, holding a narrow salient protruding into the German trench-system on the east side of Hill 304, put up a heroic and successful resistance. Their works had escaped serious damage during the bombardment preceding the attack, but their communication trenches had been blotted out, and they were practically isolated. When the Germans charged, the lieutenant commanding them was carried away in the rush and killed or captured. The com- mand devolved on a non-commissioned officer of 24 years of age, who had been fighting since GENERAL VON GALLWI7Z, Conducted the German offensives against Verdun, 1917. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. August 1914 The doom of him and his troopers seemed certain. The French trenches on the left were swarming with the enemy, and in the gradually waning light throe squads of pioneers armed with flame-throwers, the squads twenty paces apart, were perceived advancing to the attack Behind the pioneers, through the intervals, were seen ttiree groups of bombers, and behind these was a continuous line of men with rifles and spades. Bringing up the rear a fourth line of soldiers with supplementary supplies of grenades and also sandbags made its appearance Two companies of the finest German shock troops were being thrown at 40 French cavalrymen. No sooner was the formidable and orderly mass of the enemy seen than the Bretons opened on it with their automatic rifles Visibly thinning, it continued, however, to advance as if on parade. When the pioneers were 50 yards from the salient they discharged from the machines they carried dense clouds of a dirty, poisonous smoke, which immediately hid them and their comrades in the rear from view. Fortunately the French barbed-wire en- tanglements were still intact, and the Dragoons, firing over or through them into the smoke, killed or wounded the bombers striving to burst their way to the trenches. The pioneers were mostly killed or wounded, and, the smoke dissipating, a litter of corpses was seen round the entanglements. Pioneers, bombers, riflemen were in full retreat. The frontal attack had failed. The German leader now marched his men round to the end of the French trench and tried to work up it. This manoeuvre had been noticed by the non- commissioned officer of Dragoons. At each traverse of the trench he posted two bombers and three men to supply them with grenades. For hours in the darkness a terrible struggle ensued. At the first traverse three Dragoons were put hors de combat, but their two com- panions, though wounded, managed to hold it. Beyond, the Germans broke into the trench and fought their way along it for some two hundred yards. The remnants of the little band of heroes retreated into the head of a communication trench, where they prepared to sell their lives dearly Suddenly the non- commissioned officer observed that the enemy was slackening his efforts. He rallied his men and ordered a counter-attack. The trench was recovered and the two Dragoons at the first traverse were rescued. Half of the Bretons were killed or wounded, but none had been cap- [Fr tnch official photrgraph. GENERAL GUILLAUMAT INSTRUCTING HIS OFFICERS BEFORE THE ATTACK ON HILL 304. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 187 SUPPORTS ON THE CHEMIN-DES-DAMES AWAITING THE Stretcher bearers also are seen in readiness. ORDER TO ATTACK. tured ; they had taken four prisoners and put out of action large numbers of the enemy. At most other points the Germans were repulsed, but on the western slopes of Mort Homme they gained slightly. For their small successes in the combats of the 28th and 29th they had had to pay a heavy price. Some companies of the 10th Reserve Division had been reduced to 50 or 60 men. On the 30th the Germans made several ineffective efforts to debouch from the captured posts on the western slopes of the Mort Homrne, where one point was lost and recovered five times by the French. It was finally abandoned by both parties, the entrenchments and refuges having been swept away or filled in by the bombardment. An attempt of the enemy to storm the Avocourt Redoubt was broken up by the fire of the French guns. Towards 2.30 a.m. on July 3, the Germans fruitlessly assaulted the south-eastern corner of Avocourt Wood on a front of about 500 yards, and the next day three successive attacks, .accompanied by gusts of liquid fire, against the French trenches south-west of Hill 304, were repulsed On July 6 the French batteries searched thoroughly the enemy's defences north and west of that eminence ; on the right bank of the Mouse there were patrol encounters on the northern edge of the Poivre Hill towards Louvemont. The French had been temporarily thrown on the defensive west of the river. During tho night of July 7-8 General Guillaumat began the series of brilliant offensives which by the end of August almost restored the French front north of Verdun to what it had been on February 21, 1916. After a brief bombardment his troops captured a strongly-organized salient west of the Mort Homme and two others south-west of Hill 304. German counter-attacks were beaten off on the 8th and 9th, and the French guns dis- persed bodies of the enemy endeavouring to surprise advanced posts on the Meuse Heights. This was a preliminary step to a more important operation. General Guillaumat had ordered General Lebocq to retake the whole of the position wrested from the French on June 28 between the Avocourt Wood and Hill 304. Under the almost daily bombard- ment the German 10th Reserve Division had lost half its effectives. The 48th Division, which had arrived from Russia, was so demora- lized that only parts of it could be employed to replace the shattered elements of the 10th Reserve Division. The 29th Division, which had suffered severely at the Battle of Moron- villiers and was resting behind the lines near Tahure, was now brought east of the Argonne. With certain units of the 48th, the 29th was in process of relieving the 10th Reserve Division, when, on July 17, Lebocq struck his blow. Bad weather had thrice delayed it. Lobocq's preparations for the forward move- ment left nothing to be desired. General Guillaumat had given him a sufficiency of 188 ////; V/.W/'.N HISTORY OF THE WAH. tn M s en a Q . u K u M S z o u < H E u z M 32 b. , aeroplanes to secure local command of the air. Thin was attained 36 hours before tho attack was launched. Unhampered by enemy machines, the French aviators were able to direct, with almost mathematical precision, the fire of the numerous guns detailed for the operation. Parapets and entanglements disap- peared under the rain of shells ; battery after battery of the Germans ceased to fire the pieces had been dismounted or the gunners killed by the gas from asphyxiating shells. So perfect was the long-distance bombardment that the roads leading back from the German lines became impassable. A battalion sent forward from Vilosno-sur-Meuse through Malan- court took 24 hours to traverse a couple of miles. The convoys were brought to a stand- still, reserves annihilated or dispersed. The 51st and 87th French regiments, re- cruited respectively in the St. Quentin and Beauvais districts, supported by a couple of battalions of the 97th Division and a battalion of the 73rd commanded by Colonel Rozier, were the infantry employed in the combat against those elements of the German 10th Keserve Division, and 29th aud 48th Divisions, which happened to be in position at dawn on July 17. At 6.15 a.m. the infantry went " over the top," issuing on the left from the Avocourt Wood and on the right from the salients re- covered on July 7-8. A feeble attempt at a barrage was made by the German guns, but only one machine-gun fired at the troops advancing from the Avocourt Wood. Its detachment was destroyed before they had fired 20 rounds. Save for a handful of snipers, here and there scurrying away, the ground in front of the French seemed scarcely to be occupied. In half an hour all the objectives were reached and the Col do Pommerieux was once again in French hands. Passing over the crest, our Allies pushed down the northern face, gaining a perfect view of the Bois de Malancourt and the northern slopes of Hill 304. The whole of the first German lino had been captured, and, shortly afterwards, tho second line, where more resistance was encountered, was taken. In ( lepth the French had progressed some 700 yards, and their front now ran from the south-eastern corner of the Avocourt Wood well north of the Col de Pommerieux through the little Bois Camard to the western slopes of Hill 304. In the afternoon several counter-attacks were repulsed with heavy losses to the Germans. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 189 The French casualties were insignificant ; one company, for instance, lost but a couple of men. On the other hand, the Germans left behind them 520 prisoners, including eight officers. Enemy counter-attacks the next day were complete failures, as was an attempt east of the Meuse to surprise the Calonne trench near Les Eparges. On the 19th the enemy tried by a sudden attack to enter the French lines in the Douaumont region. During the night 1916. The Crown Prince had not succeeded in dislodging the French from the whole of the Avocourt Wood, or from the Col dc Pom- merieux and the western slopes of Hill 304, or from the western and southern slopes of the Mort Homme On the heights of the Meuse he had regained none of the positions lost by him in the battles of October and December of the previous year. His failure at Verdun was uncompensated GENERAL LEBOCQ, COL. ROZIER, AND A GROUP OF FIGHTERS FROM AVOCOURT WOOD. of July 20-21, and on July 22, German raids against the Bois des Chevaliers were repulsed, and another raid near the Bois Bouchot was beaten off. On July 28, after an intense bombardment, the enemy again attacked between the Avocourt Wood and Hill 304. His infantry, met by accurate and intense shell-fire, scattered, leaving behind them heaps of dead and wounded. About the same time an attempted attack at the foot of the heights of the Meuse east of Verdun in the Moulain- ville region, resulted in a sanguinary check for the Germans. > At the end of July 1917, the situation at Verdun on both banks of the Meuse remained what it had been at the end of December by any successes in June or July at Moronvilliers or north of the Aisne. In spite of violent counter-attacks made by the Germans, our Allies continued to hold and also slightly to enlarge the positions gained by them at the Battles of Moronvilliers and Craonne-Reims described in Chapters OCX. and CCIX. On June 9 General Anthoine handed over the command of the 4th Army on the Moron- villiers Heights to General Gouraud, " the lion of the Argonne," and set out for Flanders, where he was followed by the French 1st Army in the middle of the month. Two days later (June 11) the Germans recon- noitred towards the French lines at Mt Cor- 190 THE TIMES HISTOBY OF THE WAE. nillct and Mt. Blond. They were easily repnl<fd and some prisoners taken. This demonstration of the enemy showed, however, to General Gouraud that his positions between the two hills needed to be improved. The Germans, though driven from the summits of Mt. Cor- nillet and Mt. Blond, still retained the Flens- burg Trench on the intermediate saddle, and, behind it, a trench which, under the names of Blonde Trench and Nouvelle Trench, ran eastwards from the western end of the Flens- burg Trench across the road to Nauroy and along the northern slopes of the saddle and Mt. Blond. As the French during the Battle of Moronvilliers had pushed down the northern face of Mt. Cornillet in the direction of Nauroy, they were able to turn from the west both trenches, which, if not captured, would have afforded an excellent starting point for a German offensive designed to penetrate the French lines on the crest. While the enemy maintained himself on the saddle, he had, moreover, good views of most of the southern slopes of the Moronvilliers Hills, and the pre- parations for any advance down them into the low ground to the north could be observed by him. To break through and turn the Flensburg and Blonde Trenches became, therefore, a matter of great importance to General Gouraud The General of the 132nd Division, entrusted with the defence of the Mt. Cornillet sector, consulted with his staff and examined the aerial photographs of the two trenches. Lieu- tenant d'Hauteville and Sergeants Portat and Pollerin of the Grenadiers were ordered to make a detailed reconnaissance. On the even- ing of June 19 and the early morning of the next day this was successfully accon plish )d. Tho obstacles that would be encountered were precisely located and a plan of attack prepared. It was approved by the Colonel of the 166th Infantry Regiment, which was to furnish the bulk of the troops engaged, and by the General of the Division. Though the numbers engaged were small the plan is worth detailed notice, because it allows the reader to see what careful preparations had to be made before even a small forward movement was attempted. The detachment told off for the operation consisted of 48 bombers accustomed to the use of rifle grenades, of 24 soldiers armed with automatic rifles, and of 16 bombers of the 132nd Division. Supporting them were to be five sections of the 166th Regiment and 20 men carrying reserve bombs to assist in holding the ground when captured. With these were to march 10 pioneers whose business was to construct communication trenches between the new and old front. Out of the above elements, numbering about 360 all told, five columns of assault were formed. Their objec- tives will be gathered from the accompanying plan. The first, \mder Sergeant Borel, moving west of the road to Nauroy from the sap-head A, was to break in to the western end of the Flensburg Trench and to capture the strong point F. The second column, under Sergeant Langeron, advancing from the sap-head B, French Trenches show German - - HfigUainHctresJ(IOtktres~3z-8FMt) <?-_ y;'r--- -.:'-- team OPERATIONS OF JUNE 21 BETWEEN MONT CORNILLET AND MONT BLOND. THE TIMES HISTOBY OF THE WAE. 191 just east of the Nauroy road, was to carry the redoubt at M. Automatic rifle-fire from B was to be directed simultaneously on the portion of the Flensburg Trench from M to R, at which latter point a communication trench ran back to the Blonde Trench. The column of Langeron had orders not to attack until the third column had entered the Flensburg Trench. This, the third column, under 2nd Lieutenant Leger, as soon as the column on its right had secured the redoubt at R was to storm the Flensburg Trench between M and R. The fourth column, commanded by 2nd Lieutenant Aligne, was to storm the eastern end of the Flensburg Trench, the above mentioned redoubt, and the communication trench going northward to the Blonde Trench at O. The Leger and Aligne CARRYING SOUP TO A FRONT TRENCH AND DODGING SHELLS ON THE WAY. detachments were directed by Lieutenant d'Hauteville and were to attack under cover of a fusillade from automatic rifles directed against the communication trench and the section of the Blonde Trench east of O as far as P. When L6ger's column had carried the redoubt at R and entered the communication trench, the fifth column, under 2nd Lieutenant Mangin, on its right was to make for the Blonde Trench between O and P. GENERAL GOURAUD, Took over the command of the French Fourth Army, June 1917. The operation was to commence with Aligne's 4th column, storming the R redoubt. When he had done so, Leger was to burst into the Flensburg Trench west of it, and immediately afterwards Langeron and Borel were to attack the M redoubt and the remainder of the trench as far as its junction with the western end r " .,e Blonde Trench, which was at the samo time to be assaulted by Mangin between O and P. Four sections of machine-guns and three " 37 " guns posted on the north-west slopes of Mt. Blond were to assist the infantry by firing on the communication trench, the Blonde Trench between O a;id P and the wooded ground to its north. Two sections of machine -guns stationed on the eastern face of Mt. Cornillet were simultaneously to open on the same points so that the Germans should be under a cross fire. Beyond the point where the western ends of the Flensburg and Blonde Trenches met, a section of Antoine May's company of the 366th Regiment, which had sapped eastward almost to the Nauroy road, was directed subsequently to cross that road and, in conjunction with the bombers, if they had succeeded in storming the redoubt at F, to enter from the north the Blonde Trench. Lower down the northern slopes of Mt. Cornillet, some bombers of the 166th Regiment had orders to keep the Flens- burg Trench under fire with their rifle bombs ; 1883 192 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. when it was taken, they were to turn their attention to the Blonde Trench. It was further arranged that rockets were to signal back to the guns behind the French trenches when they were to place a barrage of shells behind the Blonde Trench and on the Trench Nouvelle, its continuation eastwards north of Mt. Blond. As originally intended the action was to have begun at 9 p.m. on June 20, but it was postponed till 3.50 a.m. on June 21. Just before dawn it would be easier for the hand-bombers to get close to the enemy's works and, after the sun rose, the movements of the enemy who would inevitably counter-attack could be better observed. At 9 p.m., too, the darkness would GRENADE-THROWERS. prevent the machine-guns on Mt. Cornillet and Mt. Blond and the " 37 " guns on Mt. Blond from firing with accuracy at their objectives. There was another reason for the postpone- ment. The Germans, anticipating an atteck, hd barraged, all through the 20th, the southern slopes of Mt. Cornillet and Mt. Blond, and at 9 p.m. the number of bombs available was discovered to be insufficient for a prolonged combat. Some idea of the vital part played by munition-workers in the new warfare may be gathered from the fact that in this small affair about 10,000 rifle and hand bombs were used by the French. During the night, thanks to the courage and activity of the reserve battalion of the 166th Regiment, the stock of grenades was finally brought up to the amount considered necessary. In the evening the bombers and the soldiers OBSERVATION POST IN AN ADVANCED TRENCH. with automatic rifles were assembled in a sub- terranean chamber. Some hours earlier the Germans with bombs had attacked the barrier erected by the French in the trench leading to redoubt R, on the capture of which by Aligne's column depended the success of the operation. Grenadiers of the 166th Regiment had been ceaselessly fighting at the traverse. They were now relieved by a party of the bombers who were to take part in the attack. At 9 p.m., the hour originally fixed for the advance, the enemy again assaulted at this point but were beaten off with incendiary bombs. The rest of the French bombers at 1 a.m. on June 21, left their underground shelter and were distributed, according to the plan already described, in five columns -Borel on the extreme left, then Langeron's, Leger's, Aligne's, with Mangin's on the extreme right, nearest Mt. Blond. The important Flensburg salient was de- fended by a German battalion shaken by the previous fighting. Realizing that the French were about to attack, the German Commander sent up two fresh companies into the threatened area, and the enemy's artillery covered the ground in front of the Flensburg Trench, and the French first line and communication trenches, with shells from their "150" and THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 198 " 105 " guns. At 3 a.m. on June 21 the Germans violently assaulted the barrier in the trench opposite the redoubt R. The heads of Leger's and Aligne's detachments kept them at bay, but Aligne himself and two non-com- missioned officers were burned seriously by the phosphorus of the incendiary missiles flung at them. Without waiting till the time fixed for the assault arrived, Aligne at 3.30 a.m., with his and Leger's columns, assaulted the Flens- burg Trench. The Germans were driven from the barrier ; the R redoubt was carried. Leger's column then installed itself between the strong points of R and M. From the former Aligne proceeded down the communication trench towards the Blonde Trench. Meanwhile Mangin on his right, in spite of two counter- attacks delivered from the Nouvelle Trench, had entered the Blonde Trench. About 4 a.m. Mangin's and Aligne's columns joined hands at O, where the communication trench entered the Blonde Trench. On the left of Aligne's, Leger's column, ex- posed to a hail of machine-gun fire from the M redoubt, was in difficulties. Grenades ran out and fresh supplies could not be brought up across the crater-pitted ground by the men charged with that duty. Fortunately Lieutenant d'Hauteville, who was directing the move- ments of Aligne's and Leger's columns, succeeded in substituting for them other soldiers, and Leger's men were provided with the so sorely needed ammunition. At this moment Aligne appeared on the scene, took command of the detachment and flung it at the M redoubt, which with its environs was being bombed from both sides of the road to Nauroy by the heads of Langeron's and Borel's columns. The gunners of two machine-guns near it had been already put out of action with grenades. The Blonde Trench between P and O having been secured by Mangin, redoubt R and the communication trench by Aligne, and Leger's column, now under Aligne, being close to the M redoubt, the order was given to Lan- geron and Borel to charge. The two detach- ments carried everything before them. Seized by a panic the Germans abandoned the rest of the Flensburg Trench, together with the redoubt. The fugitives, caught by the fire of the machine-guns and " 37 " guns of Mt. Blond, and of the machine-guns on the eastern slopes of Mt. Cornillet, endeavoured to escape through the barrage of French shells. Only a few suc- ceeded in clearing the Blonde Trench and reach- ing the Nauroy Wood. Here and there groups still resisted, but these were speedily disposed of. In the course of these isolated combats the gallant Aligne was shot in the chest. The enemy's losses amounted to several hundreds, and among the booty were six machine-guns. A section of French machine- ' IN AN UNDERGROUND CHAMBER. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. guns pr9mptly arrived at M and was later shifted to F redoubt, the point of contact on the west of the Flensburg and Blonde Trenches. Communication trenches were rapidly made by the pioneers between the old French lines and the Flensburg Trench. A counter-attack at 3 p.m. by the two German companies held in reserve was severely repulsed. On June 22, about 9 p.m., the enemy sought to revenge his discomfiture of the day before by assaulting 400 yards of trenches on the crest of and east of the Teton, the most easterly of the northern hills forming the Moronvilliers massif. After a severe artillery preparation his infantry entered the French outpost posi- tions but were at once expelled from them. Desultory fighting on the heights continued during the next fortnight. On July 5, the French repulsed an attack west of Mt. Cornilleb and on the 6th reduced a small salient to its east and another on Mt. Haut. Four attempts to recapture these points by the enemy failed. The action on June 21 had deprived the Germans of all posts for direct observation of the southern face of the Moronvilliers Heights, with the exception of those on the saddle between Mt. Blond and Mt. Haut, and one on the western side of Mt. Haut a few yards from the French lines. From the east, by means of a periscope, he could obtain occasional and pre- carious glimpses of the French movements. Ex- pecting that General Gouraud would try, sooner or later, to clear him out of these points, the German Commander concentrated in the Moron- villiers region the 19th Hanoverian Division, and the 7th and 23rd Reserve Divisions. . The number of German guns was greatly augmented, and the 19th Hanoverian Division elaborately rehearsed an attack on the heights from Mt. Cornillet to Mt. Haut, the two other Divisions preparing to assault the Casque and the Teton and also to work their way through the wooded district towards Mt. Sans Nom and Auberive. As the Germans had not been thrust down to the northern foot of the hills, and they were in many places not 20 yards from the French trenches, the project of recovering the crest line seemed a reasonable one Unhappily for the German leader, his inten- tions were divined by General Gouraud. On July 12, the French artillery began a systematic, \\iilo, and deep bombardment of the enemy's position? For two days shells rained on the spots where the three German divisions \VTC trying to hide, and also on the tretiches which Gouraud had decided to capture. The Germans doubtless suspected which these were, but the breadth of the bombardment, which might have been the prelude to an effort to pierce the whole of the enemy's front, forced them to extend their own barrage, and waste large quantities of ammunition. As it happened the objectives of Gouraud were strictly limited. He proposed to expel the Germans from their elaborately protected observatories on the saddle between Mt. Blond and Mt. Haut, and simultaneously to extend the French lines on the Teton, the hill nearest to the road running from Nauroy through Moronvilliers to the Suippe at St. Martin 1'Heureux. The attacks were to be delivered on fronts of 800 yards and 600 yards respectively, and were not in either case to be pressed farther than 300 yards from the starting points. These distances may seem insignificant on the map, but represented in reality, considering the obstacles to be overcome, undertakings of considerable difficulty. July 14, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille in 1789, the National Fete Day, was the date chosen by Gouraud for his attacks. In Paris it had been marked by the assembly of detachments from most of the regiments of the French Army which had particularly distinguished themselves in the war. These marched through the densely thronged streets to the Place de la Nation. The enthusiasm of the crowds who saw them defile added to the impressive nature of the spectacle. To see the men who had done so much for France raised a spirit among both troops and spectators which presaged well for further efforts in the struggle for liberty. A week before, on the night of July 6-7, a daring feat by the French aviators had also aroused enthusiasm. ^Vllile 83 French aero- planes were bombing Troves, Coblenz, and Luclwigshafen, losing only two machines in the enterprise, Sergeant Gallois, a hardware merchant before the war, had flown up the valley of the Moselle past Metz and Troves, struck the Rhine at Coblenz, and, steering by compass and moon, circled over Essen at a, height of 6,000 feet. There, in a sky alive with bursting shells, he had dropped 10 bombs on brilliantly lighted munition works. Re- peatedly fired at 011 his return journey, he had escaped without injury, and safely reached the THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 195 aerodrome from which he had started. This achievement was a happy augury of future aerial attacks against the country which had set the example of attacking open towns of no military importance. On the greyish-white, crater-pitted slopes of the Moronvilliers Heights, on which a few black stumps alone now indicated where woods and copses had once stood, the great attack was about to begi-i. At 4.30 p.m. a side wind began to blow, so fiercely that The Times correspondent in rear could scarcely hear the firing of the guns and explosions of the shells. Yet hundreds of French and German pieces were in action, and the crest line seemed one long line ' of volcanic eruptions. At 7.30 p.m. Gouraud's DEFENDING A POSITION ON THE CHEMIN-DES-DAMES AGAINST A GERMAN COUNTBR-ATTACK.. 196 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE \\Afl. men went over the top and directly afterwards rockets, bursting into many coloured stars, ascended from the German trenches, summon- ing up supports to the threatened parts. Far over to the east the T6ton was a mass of smoke pierced by flashes of flame. In about six minutes the French infantry had secured their objectives on the T6ton and the saddle between Mt. Blond and Mt. Haut, and, some 20 minutes later, seven sausage balloons appeared to the north of the crests. It was visible evidence that the two operations were successful. Nearly 400 pri- soners had been captured. The enemy promptly counter-attacked, and throughout the night his troops endeavoured to regain the lost ground. Two waves were mown down, and one only succeeded in reaching the French lines. At the Teton the Germans were beaten back, but, by sheer weight of numbers, they managed to retake the position on the saddle. The French again charged THE NATIONAL FETE IN PARIS, JULY 14, 1917: SALUTING THE WOUNDED. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 197 A GERMAN "BLOCKHAUS" ON THE CREST OF THE TETON. and recovered possession of the disputed trenches. On the 17th the enemy, suffering very heavy losses, regained a footing at certain points north of the Teton. Five days afterwards, in the night of July 22-23, he transferred his Attentions to the French trenches north-west of Mt. Coraillet. His successive waves of attack were completely repulsed. On the evening of the 25th, after an. intense bombardment, the Germans again attacked ; this time Mt. Haut was their objec- tive. The struggle lasted till dawn ; but the enemy made no progress. Five successive assaults on the 26th and a surprise attack east of Auberive by the Germans met with a like fate. By the last days of July, General Gouraud had virtually completed the work begiui by General Anthoine on April 17, 1917. Between the Germans and the great plain of Chalons stood a new fortress on the Moronvilliors Heights, the guns of which raked the western end of the enemy's fortified zone stretching from the east bank of the Suippe at Vaudesin- court to the Argonne. Neither at Verdun nor at Moronvilliers had the German Crown Prince succeeded in reducing the heavy balance against him. On the battle-field of Craonne-Reims during June and July he was still more unfortunate. A series of violent offensives procure-" no appreciable results and their failure shook the moral of the German troops and prepared the way for General Maistre's great victory in the following October. The ineffective counter-attacks of the Ger- mans on the Chemin-des-Dames plateau have been narrated up to June 3. From that date onward to June 20 little occurred worth recording. An almost continuous bombard- ment from the guns on both sides was, however, occasionally varied by infantry combats. On June 20 the Germans endeavoured to penetrate the western end of the French positions, which now extended to the Ailette north of Vauxaillon. Here the opposed lines crossed Mont-des-Singes a mile east of Vauxaillon and, passing south near Moisy Farm, turned east just before the ruins of the mill were reached. At the north end of Mont-des-Singes, which rises rapidly from , the environs of Vauxaillon, the two trenches nearly approached each other, and the French had dug a trench to the summit of the hill and established a post on it. Thence they had the command of view over the valley of the Ailette, and over the ravine through which ran the railway from Soissons to Laon. After very violent artillery preparation, regiments.of the 78th Prussian Division, which three weeks before had been withdrawn from the eastern front, advanced at dawn on a mile and a half front between the Ailette and the Laffaux mill. On the Mont-des-Singes they were preceded 198 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE 'WAR. by shock-troops in shirt sleeves armed with grenades. They captured the post on the hill and their comrades following them descended the slopes and got behind the first French line, which was abandoned by our Allies. The shock-troops, having accomplished their tasks, retired. Within 50 minutes the French counter-attacked, and recovered all the trenches on the right. On the left, owing to the steep- ness of the hill, they were less successful. The Germans, holding the trench along the edge of the height, were able to drop their bombs on the heads of their assailants. In the afternoon the French advanced from the right, and for an hour and. a half a bombing combat pro- ceeded. The Germans stood on the parapet to meet their opponents but had to give ground. Night, however, fell with the enemy still on the edge of the Mont-des-Singes. During the night the German guns put up a terrific barrage of gas shells. The next morning our Allies recaptured almost the whole of the position. About the same time they assaulted the enemy who had established himself the previous day at places in the Moisy Farm sector. The Germans were driven out of most of the trench captured ; all that they retained was a salient north-east of the farm On June 22, Saxon troops east of Fort. Mahnaison tried to advance on the Hog's Back itself, on a front of a mile and a quarter between the Royere Farm and the Epine de Chevregny. In the centre they stormed a salient ; elsewhere they were heavily repulsed. On the night of the 22nd-23rd the fighting went on in the Vauxaillon and Royere Farm sectors, the Germans extending the front of their attack from the east of the Chevregny spur to the Froidmont Farm. The assaulting waves melted under the French fire and no progress was made by them. East of the Hog's Back, beyond Craonne in the Chevreux region, and south of the Aisne to the east of the Cavaliers de Courcy, north-north-west of Reims, other attempts of the enemy also failed. On the 24th the French recaptured the greater part of the salient still occupied by the Germans north-east of Moisy Farm. It was now the turn of the French to take the offensive. Our Allies in the battle of Craonne- Beims had secured most of the summit of the Hog's Back from the Chevregny spur to the California plateau above Craonne. In this sector from Courtecon, which remained in the enemy's hands, the second position of the Germans was not upon the Hog's Back but ran backwards to the Ailette, which it crossed, to Chamouille, where it turned east- CHAVONNE, AT THE FOOT OF THE CHEM1N-DES-DAMES RANGE. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 199 ON THE MONT DBS SINGES: THE FRENCH COUNTER-ATTACK ON THE CREST. wards parallel with the Chemin-des-Dames plateau by Neuville, Chermizy, Bouconville, connecting up with the defensive system of the enemy in the low ground north-east of Craonne. The valley of the Ailette was thus divided into two compartments, one west, the other to the east, of the line Courtegon-Chamouille. Approach to the valley in the eastern sector was difficult because the Germans still retained Cerny and Ailles on the northern slopes of the Hog's Back. The spur of La Bovelle which juts out between Cerny and Ailles had, however, been gained by the French, but on June 16 they had been dis- possessed of the spur to the north-west of Hurtebise Farm, called the " Hurtebise Finger." This spur was an important tactical point on the ridge, since it was its highest point (about 650 feet) and commanded the Vauclerc plateau to the east. If the French were dislodged from that plateau, it was hardly probable that they would be able to retain the Casemates and California plateaux beyond, for those plateaux could easily be attacked from the north through the still densely wooded Foret de Vauclerc. Unless, then, the French were prepared to sacrifice the gains made by them in the first week of May, it was imperative that they should once more eject the enemy from the " Hurtebise Finger." The task was pecu- liarly difficult because beneath it was an im- mense cavern, the Dragon's Cave, consisting of a string of limestone grottoes. At the Battle of the Aisne it had been occupied by the French, but early in 1915 the Germans by a lucky shot had closed the only entrance to the south and captured in it two companies. The northern part was, in June 1917, garrisoned by the Germans, who had built a loopholed wall across the middle directly under the trenches overhead on the spur The cavern was 300 yards long, 100 yards wide, and at one place 60 feet high. The southern part was damp and inconvenient for the French who had forced their way into it. From the roof to the surface of the spur and wall within their lines the Germans had made a number of shafts up and down which machine- guns could be hauled. Near the northern entrance were the beds of the garrison, a hos- pital, and a small cemetery. With what the British mines had accomplished at Messines still fresh in their memories, the French could not afford to be content with merely capturing the summit of the spur ; for the Germans could have accumulated high-explo- sives in the cave and blown them sky-high The operation, therefore, consisted of a fight below and a fight above ground. Hard by the monument to commemorate Napoleon's victory at Craonne in 1814 was a machine- gun emplacement of the Germans. It was so near to the French trenches that it was im- possible to smash it with explosive shells, the back action of which would have taken effect on, the French trenches. Liquid fire, 200 THE TIMES HISTOIiY OF THE WAR. FRENCH SOLDIERS EXAMINING THE PROPERTY OF DEAD GERMANS IN A CAPTURED FARM. the French Commander decided, should be employed to put the machine-guns out of action. Before the attack the heavy guns shelled the roof and the entrances to the cavern. Holes were thus made in the roof, and its main northern entrance was blocked up. On June 25, after a short but violent artil- lery preparation, detachments of Gaucher's Division on the summit advanced in three bodies at 6.2 p.m. The liquid fire from the flame -projectors fust failed to reach the machine-gunners. These, however, stifled by the smoke and blistered by the heat, took refuge in the cavern only to find it filled with poison gas. On the right 80 men who had volunteered for the 'dangerous work passed in two groups through the enemy's trenches and established a couple of posts on the edge of the spur commanding a wide view of the valley of the Ailette, a mile and a half to the north. Three companies in the centre carried the first three German lines, but the troops on the left after gaming their objectives were so heavily counter-attacked that four hours later they retired, leaving the centre and the right exposed to a flank fire. The moment was a critical one. Officers rallied the men, and with a wild cheer they again rushed forward and drove the enemy over the crest of the spur. The " Hurtebise Finger " had once more passed into the possession of the French. Some 150 half -dazed Germans were dis- covered in the Dragon's Cave. The total loss to the enemy amounted to close on 1,000 killed, wounded, and prisoners. Chasseurs and troopers of Nevers, Macon, and the Vosges had the credit of this eminently successful operation. During the night of June 28-29 the enemy again took the offensive. An intensive bom- bardment west of the Hurtebise region preceded the charge of a Westphalian regiment in the Cerny region. North-east of Cerny the West- phalians penetrated the French lines, but were speedily ejected. They renewed their attacks on the morning of the 29th with some slight success. At nightfall the struggle was renewed on the summit of the La Bovelle spur. Sup- ported by flame-throwers they dug themselves in in a salient south of La Bovelle Farm which had been completely flattened out by the bombardment. On July 1 a Lippe batta- lion east of Cerny on a front of 550 yards traversed by the Ailles-Paissy road, occupied the site of a line of French trenches, .\ttempt- THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 201; ing to advance farther they were severely hammered by our Ally's batteries. Great havoc was wrought in their ranks and they were brought to a standstill. Towards evening the French counter-attacked and recovered their original line. The ground was covered with German corpses Simultaneously with the offensive between Cerny and Allies, on June 29, several Bavarian battalions, preceded by shock-troops, attacked in the plain at the foot of the eastern end of the Hog's Back They endeavoured time after time to carry a salient south-east of Corbeny on both sides of the Laon-Reims road. The waves of assault caught by the French bar- rages failed to reach the trenches at any point. There was also fighting the same day north- west of Reims of a desultory character, and on the 30th between Reims and the Moronvilliers massif the Germans ineffectually attacked east of Fort de la Pompelle and north and north-east of Prunay. ENTRANCE TO THE DRAGON'S CAVE. 202 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. On July 2, at 6.30p.m., the Germans delivered mother series of violent attacks east of Cerny, on both sides of the Paissy-Ailles road. The fight swayed to and tro throughout the night of the 2nd-3rd and ended with the complete defeat of the enemy. Undeterred by the series of reverses suffered by him north of the Aisne since April 16, the Crown Prince, at 7.30 p.m. on July 3, delivered battle on a front of some 12 miles from a point on the plateau dominated by Fort de Mal- maison to the Chevreux Woods, just below the crest aoove Craonne. General von Bohm was, as before, the German local commander. In von Bohm's intention the battle was to be a surprise, and only half an hour was allowed for the artillery to play on the French trenches. The infantry, preceded by shock-troops, this time with knapsacks on their backs, an indication that victory was expected, advanced from their cover at 8 p.m. The main efforts were made east of Froidmont Farm, west and soutft-east of Cerny, round Ailles and on the Casemates and California plateaux. Von Bohm's design was to dislodge the French from the whole of the summit of the Hog's Back and to drive them back along the spurs or down the valleys leading to the Aisne. Five or six divisions, totaling about 50,000 to 00.000 men, were employed in the attack. One of these had just arrived from the Russian front, a tact revealed to the French" leader by a deserter. This caused him to anticipate an immediate assault and to take the necessary precautions for meeting it. He himself was in the front line to encourage his men ; one of his colonels of artillery the day before went to the trenches to regulate the fire of the gun^i when the battle opened. Consequently Von Bohm's surprise did not succeed. A minute or so after the German hurricane bombardment began it was answered by an even more violent tornado of shells from the French guns. The barrage and counter-battery work of our ally's artillery was a masterpiece, and in the region of Cerny and on the California plateau the waves of Germans were almost literally annihilated. At a few points they managed to penetrate, but they were speedily bombed or bayoneted. Four battalions which had emerged from the Forest of Vauclerc and had gained three small salients were driven out almost immediately by the Bretons on the Casemates plateau. An enemy group held ready in a trench with fixed bayonets did not dare to emerge Irum: .Cneir cover and vere killed or wounded by French grenadiers, who flung down 700 bombs at them. At 10 p.m. the fighting died down. Piles of corpses and numbers of mutilated but. living men, some of them boys of 19, lay before the French parapets The next day, July 4, Von Bohm's guns again opened, but his infantry was not sent forward. The French, on the other hand, carried a salient east of Cerny, strongly held by the enemy. For the next few days the weather was stormy and the Hog's Back became coated with a thick layer of glutinous mud. This assisted the French wherever they held the northern crest of the ridge, as the slopes descend- ing to the Ailette, up which the Germans had to come, became slippery and impassable. Von Bohm under the circumstances dater- minedto strike his next blow on the wider Mal- maison plateau. From the ruins of the fort and from those of the water-tower of Les Bovettes to its east the Germans had excellent views towards the Aisne Valley. Between the fort and the water-tower was a mound called the Pantheon, after the long-disappeared farm of that name. Manure and rubbish heaps and the foundations of buildings alone showed where the farm had once been. The French lines here formed a salient, and Von Bohm decided to carry it as a preliminary to clearing the French off the whole of the Malmaison height. To mystify his enemy, he arranged that just before the assault on the Pantheon a feint should be made north and east of Laffaux Mill towards Mennejean Farm by storm-troops from Nassau and West- phalian battalions. On a two-mile front between the Pantheon and the environs of Froklmont Farm he concentrated the Lower Saxon, Thuringian, Rhineland and West- phalian storm-troops borrowed from a neigh- bouring army, and a dozen or so battalions of fresh men. These were provided wi,th light trench-mortars, machine-guns, entrenching tools, barbed wire and everything needed to organize a position against counter-attacks. The frightful losses incurred in the last battle from the French guns in the half-hour which preceded the attack led him to order the infantry to advance the moment the German artillery opened fire. On the night of July 7 all was ready and at 3.45 a.m. on Sunday, July 8, the main attack was launched. A few minutes earlier the fighting had begun north and east of Laffaux Mill. At the Pantheon the French garrison was THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 203 composed of chasseurs In the dim light they perceived small columns of storm-troops moving forward by the Epaulette, Pantheon and Ecouvillon communication trenches. Behind them surged a thick wave of infantry. To left and right, lines of Germans, marching shoulder and shot 10 of them. Bombers in his wake killed or wounded the incursionists and the trench was recovered. At 9 a.m a second attack was delivered ; the Germans, however, were scarcely able to reach the barbed wire. In the afternoon, at 4 p.m., the enemy, heavily . [From a German pftotog'aph. GERMAN SHOCK-TROOPS PREPARING TO STORM A POSITION. to shoulder, moved to encircle the salient. These masses, though thinned by the French shells, flung themselves on the outnumbered chasseurs, who with bombs and bayonets put up a fierce resistance. On the right two French machine-guns enfiladed the enemy. One jammed but the other continued firing until the Ger- mans beat a retreat. On the left their com- rades managed to enter the Meche trench. A chasseur with an automatic rifle ran forward reinforced, once more renewed his assaults. Three were repulsed, but the fourth seemed about to succeed. The chasseurs had run out of bombs and their rifles were clioked with mud. Punching, kicking and knifing their assailants, they just managed to hold the position. Night fell, supplies of bombs arrived, and, when at 10 p.m. the enemy again advanced he was met with showers of grenades which, bursting, blew holes in his solid masses. The wearied chas- -204 I HE TIMES H1STOEY OF THE WAR. GERMAN OBSERVATION - POST OF CONCRETE, OVERTURNED BY FRENCH ARTILLERY. seurs remained masters of the blood-stained position. They had lost heavily, but not so heavily as the foe they had defeated. Meanwhile between the ruins of Les Bouvettes and the Chevregny spur the enemy had been a little more fortunate. He had secured a section of the French trenches, but only for a few hours. On Monday, July 9, our Allies counter-attacked with admirable dash, and recovered 1,600 yards of them. Against his great casualties von Bohm could set nothing but the gain of a trifling scrap of ground. On July 19, when the German counter- offensive in the East, which eventually ended in the defeat and dissolution of the Russian armies, commenced, the Crown Prince again set von Bohm's army in motion. The 5th Division of the Prussian Guards were flung in thick waves against the French position between Hurtebise Farm and the north-east of Craonne. Von Bohm hoped by stonning the Yauclerc, Casemates and California plateaux, that the French on the centre of the Hog's Back, with their left threatened by the enemy round Fort de la Malmaison, would be forced to retire on the Aisne, and a great victory could then be claimed by the Germans. Alarmed at the preparations being made by Sir Douglas Haig and General Anthoine in Flanders, the German Higher Command did not hesitate to sacrifice divisions in the Craonne region, trusting that a success there might reduce P6tain and Haig to the defensive during the autumn. For six continuous days the battle, which began on the 19th, raged in its very circum- scribed area. On a front of just over three miles 300 or more German guns were concen- trated, and all the other pieces within range from the valley of the Ailette eastwards across the Laon-Reims road to Berrieux and thence southwards through Juvincourt to the Aisne east of Berry-au-Bac were turned upon the narrow plateaux, -i.e., upon a space of less than a square mile. Seldom had the endurance of the French been so severely tested. The Casemates arid California plateaux were only some .~>oo yards broad. The troops on them had to fight in whirlwinds of rocks, shrapnel and shell-frag- ments. The situation of the Germans was no better. The French heavy and field artillery deluged the northern slopes with high-explosive and shrapnel. Barriers of bursting shells out- side the battle-field showed where the French and -German gunners were mutually trying to put out of action the batteries opposed to them. Overhead the aeroplanes moved in conflict amid showers of anti-aircraft shells. THE TIMES HISTOBY OF THE WAR. 205 On the 19th about noon five regiments of the Prussian Guard, preceded by shock-troops, mounted bravely through the French barrage and, after frightful losses, reached the crest of the Hog's Back. They were hurled backwards from the Vauclerc, Casemates and California plateaux, but Brandenburgers managed to cling to 700 yards of French trench between the two last-mentioned table-lands. At 8.30 p.m. the assaults were renewed by the Guards and Brandenburgers, and the struggle continued till an advanced hour of the night. The French defended themselves with magnificent valour. When day broke the situation was unchanged, but the northern slopes and the crests were covered with the dead and dying. On the 20th and 21st the Germans between Fort de la Mal- maison and the Hurtebise Farm attacked, north of Braye, south-west and south-east of Cerny, and south of Allies. At the first of these points they were speedily repulsed, and south- west of Cerny the assault, supported by flame- throwers, failed. South-east of Cerny, however, the enemy twice penetrated the French first trench on a front of 300 yards. On each occa- sion a vigorous counter-attack sent him flying. South of Ailles two assaults were repulsed by bombing. Sunday, July 22, saw a renewal of the battle for the Vauclerc, Casemates, and California plateaux. The Prussian 5th Reserve Division and the 15th Bavarian Division had been brought up to support the Guards. At 4 a.m. a furious bombardment opened, and an hour later the Guards, with the Prussian troops on their left and Bavarians on their right, mounted to the assault. The atmosphere that day was remarkably clear, and the French artillery wrought terrible execution among the clearly defined masses struggling upwards. Between Hurtebise Farm and the Casemates plateau the German waves were literally torn to pieces as soon as they left their cover. On the Casemates and California plateaux the French flung back the enemy with bayonet and grenade ; but still charge, succeeded charge through the long summer's day, and well into the night. The enemy was finally expelled from the Casemates, though on the California plateau he secured a footing in the northern trench. All attempts, however, to enter the French support trenches, were bloodily repulsed, some of the Prussian regi- ments losing half their effectives. The next day (Monday, July 23) there was a lull in the infantry fighting, but the bombard- [French official pholcgrapk. ENTRANCE TO A GERMAN SUBTERRANEAN STRONGHOLD. 206 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAE. A FRENCH RAID ON THE CHEMIN-DES-DAMES : "OVER THE TOP." ment of the plateaux continued with unabated violence. The bare top of the ridge was swept by a continuous tempest of heavy shells from both sides. On the morning of the 24th Touraine and Marne-et-Loire troops were sent forward and, in spite of the desperate resistance made by the Germans, recaptured all the lost ground on the California plateau with the exception of a small and completely wrecked work, and ejected the enemy from the Case- mates plateau and its environs. Several counter-attacks were repulsed on that and the next day, when at 5 a.m. an ineffective assault on the California plateau failed. The six days' battle for the Vauclerc, Casemates, and Cali- fornia plateaux had resulted in a decisive victory for our Allies. While this battle was ending the enemy again turned his attention to the section of the Hog's Back between the Vauclerc plateau and Fort de la Malmaison. On the 23rd he twice ineffectually attacked north-west of Braye The next morning he advanced between Corny and Ailles only to be repulsed. At 7 p.m. on the 25th a whole division was launched in successive waves oetween Ailles and the eastern environs of Hurtebise Farm, while another division supported the attack. During the night and the next day, the 26th, the struggle continued. Bound Hurtebise Farm the enemy was mowed down by the French guns, but south of Ailles some progress was made by the Westphalian regiments. On the night of the 27th-28th the Germans attacked on the entire Braye -Che vregny spur front and in the Hurtebise region. They were everywhere beaten back with heavy losses. At. nightfall on July 28 they vainly assaulted the French position west of Hurtebise Farm on a front of 650 yards. The next day at dawn our Allies counter-attacked between the west of Ailles and Hurtebise Farm. At all . . f f-' A FRENCH RAID: THE RAIDERS PASS THE WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS. A wounded man is seen returning to the trenches. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAE. 207 points they made progress. In the afternoon at 3 p.m. another German assault in the Hiirtebise region was frustrated by the French artillery and infantry fire. So far then from having reversed the decision of the Battle of Craonne-Reims, the Crown Prince and General von Bohm in June and July 1917 had suffered on the Chemin-des- Dames ridge a succession of bloody defeats, costing them, perhaps, 100,000 men killed, wounded, and captured. That no successes of the least importance had been gained north of the Aisne was evidenced by the fol- lowing telegram sent on July 27 by the Kaiser to Hindenbxirg : From the battlefields of Galicia, where my troops, in their unresting advance, have won fresh laurels, I recall with a grateful heart the unforgettable deeds of my armies in the West in repelling the enemy with tenacious perseverance. Above all, I think of my brave troops in Flanders, who have for weeks been the target of the most violent artillery fire, and who dauntlossly await future assaults. My confidence, like that of the Fatherland, whose frontiers they are defending against a world of enemies, is in them. May God be with us. Had the Crown Prince been winning it is unlikely that his father would have forgotten to bracket his victory with those undoubtedly gained against the Russians. On June 21 when reviewing troops on the Western Front he said : I express to the troops gathered here my fullest appreciation of their conduct and my firm confidence that they, as hitherto, and wherever they may be employed, will, trusting in God, do their duty and succeed in gaining the peace for the Fatherland which we need for its further development. The Kaiser concluded : I am especially delighted to be able once more to con- gratulate my well-tried Dragoon Regiment of Bayreuth of Hohenfriedberg fame. When in the late summer of 1916 I sent the Borecke squadron to Rumania I gave it on the way my order to maintain at all costs the old tradition wherever it might be, and to gain fresh laurels if possible. The regiment fulfilled the expectations of its Supreme War Lord, and accomplished deeds which will please Old Fritz up there in the Elysian Fields. May it remain so. We shall not loose our hold until a happy peace is gained.* That Frederick the Great would have been equally pleased with the butchery of the Prussian Guards on the siopes or the Vauc'.erc, Casemates, and California plateaux seems hardly probable. It is now necessary to recount the proceedings * The Battle of Hohenfriedberg was fought on June 4, 1745. Ten squadrons ot the Bayreuth Dragoons (1,500 men) charged through a gap in the Prussian line and drove back the wavering Austrian infantry w:h great loss. on the left wing of the Allies in the period between the Battle of Messines and the opening of the Third Battle of Ypres. King George and Queen Mary paid the soldiers a visit in the early part of July, and were received with great enthusiasm. There can be no doubt that such visits did a great deal to hearten up the troops. Before they arrived [Official photograph. THE KING'S VISIT TO FRANCE. Bidding farewell to General Petain. General Allenby had handed over the Third Army to Sir Julian Byng and set out for Palestine to take command of the Expedi- tionary Force destined at the end of the year to capture Jerusalem. It may here be not out of place to recall to the reader the services and career of this distinguished officer. General Sir Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby was born in 1861 ana was gazetted as a lieu- tenant to the Inniskilling Dragoons in May 1882, in which he passed all his regimental 208 THE TIMES H1STOKY OF THE WAR. THE ALLIED LINE IN JUNE 1917. service until he reached the rank of major. Proceeding with his regiment to South Africa he first saw active service in the Bechuanaland Expedition of 1884-5 under Sir Charles Warren. Promoted captain on January 10, 1888, he assisted at the suppression of the rising in Zululand. From March 1889 to March 1893 he was adjutant of his regiment. In May 1897 he became a major. The South African War, when he com- manded his regiment from April 1900 to January 1901 gave Allenby a wider oppor- tunity of showing that he was a daring and resourceful officer. In the latter month he was given the command of a column, and distin- guished himself in the operations round Coles- berg. When Roberts dispatched French to relieve Kimberley, Allenby accompanied the latter. He was present at the Battle of Paardeberg and at the actions of Poplar Grove, Dreifontein, Karee Siding and Sand River. After Pretoria was captured he was with the army which drove Kruger into Portuguese territory. Under Kitchener, who had replaced Roberts, Allenby was constantly employed, serving with French and Babington against lie la Rey in the last days of 1900. In Novem- ber of that year he had been given the brevet rank of lieutenant-colonel. The next year (1901) French assigned to him one of the columns operating in the Eastern Transvaal (January to April). In June he was transferred to the Western Transvaal. During September he and his column were railed to Dundee in Natal to help oppose Botha. After Botha's retreat from Natal, Allenby's column, consisting of 480 Scots Greys, 550 Carabiniers, and " O " Battery R.H.A., four guns, one pom-pom (E Sect.), was sent to Standerton and placed under General Bruce Hamilton. Allenby took a prominent part in the campaign (March-April 1902) against Botha just previous to the conclu- sion of peace. By the end of the war he had been three times mentioned in dispatches, was made a brevet colonel and received the Com- panionship of the Bath. Although the fighting was not of a very serious character, still the varied experience in South Africa was of great value in training for the command of still larger forces in his next campaign. On August 2, 1902, Allenby received the substantive rank of lieutenant-colonel on being posted to the 5th Lancers, which he commanded till 1905, when he became a substantive colonel in the army and was given (as Brigadier-general) the 4th Cavalry Brigade in the Eastern District. In April 1910 he was made Inspector of Cavalry, having been promoted to Major- general in September 1909. W 7 hen the war broke out in 1914 he went to France with the cavalry and became an Army Corps Commander in October. He was then made a temporary Lieutenant-general and received the substantive rank on January 1, 1916. In 1915 he was made a K.C.B., and he was subsequently given the command of the Third Army, and in 1917 selected for the com- mand of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. On June 10 Sir Hubert Gough's Fifth Army, the left wing of which had been engaged in the combats round Bullecourt described in Chapter CCXXIII., came into line on the left of the Second Army, occupying the trenches from Observatory Ridge to Boesinghe. It was destined to play an important part in the Third Battle of Ypres. Simultaneously with the transfer of Gough's forces from the devastated region to Flanders, the Fourth Army, com- manded by Sir Henry Rawlinson, moved north- wards, its place west and north-west of St. Quentin being taken by the French, and the Third Army, still commanded by Allenby, extended its right wing in the direction of Cambrai. Ten days later (June 20) the British THE TIMES HISTORY UF THE \VAli. 209 relieved the French between St. Georges and the North Sea, and on June 15 General Anthoine with the French First Army replaced the Bel- gians holding the line from Boesinghe, the extreme left of Gough's Fifth Army, andNord- schoote, south of Dixmude, on the Yperlee Canal. To mask as far as possible the complicated movements connected with the shifting of these hundreds of thousands of troops, Sir Douglas Haig, while the preparations for his great offen- sive at Ypres were being finished, maintained an offensive attitude at various points between Ypres and St. Quentin. On June 12, in the north-east to south-west across and south of the canal before Hollebeke. German counter- attacks on the 15th for the recovery of the. earthwork and these trenches broke down. The enemy in these combats had lost over 150 prisoners, one howitzer, four field guns, and seven machine-guns. Simultaneously we continued to press the Germans in the salient between St. Yves anil the Lys. South-east of Arras, at about 7.30 a.m. on the morning of the 14th, Scottish and Eastern County troops, without a preliminary bombardment, attacked on a front of some FRENCH TROOPS ENCAMPED PENDING A CHANGE OF SECTOR. morning, our line was slightly advanced south of Lens astride the Souchez River, 17 prisoners and three machine-guns being captured, and a counter-attack of the Germans delivered after dark was repulsed. In the night of the 12th- 1 3th we raided the enemy's front north-west of St. Quentin at Le Verguier, south-east of Bullecourt, at Lagnicourt, in the La Bassee salient and north-east of Neuve Chapelle. On the night of the 14th the small oval earthwork on the north bank of the Ypres-Comines canal, which had resisted the efforts of the Londoners at the Battle of Messines, was at last reduced, together with certain trenches running from three-quarters of a mile and carried the high- ground east of Monchy-le-Preux, known as Infan- try Hill, capturing 175 Bavarians, two officers, and a couple of machine-guns. The survivors of the German garrison fled down the communi- cation trenches to the Vert and Sart Woods. At night and during the morning of the 15th the German positions were raided east of Loos and north-west of Bullecourt, where a strong point was captured and retained. Early on the morn- ing of the 18th shock-troops dislodged the Scot- tish and Eastern Counties men from parts on the edge of Infantry Hill, the summit of which, how- ever, remained in the possession of the British. 210 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. The sultry weather was now broken by a series of violent thunderstorms, accompanied by gales of wind which uprooted trees and over- turned wagons, thus interfering with Sir Douglas Haig's preparations for the Ypres offensive. During the next few days there was little to report. We raided on the night of the 1 8th- 1 9th the German lines south-east of Le Verguier anil in the neighbourhood of the Bapaume- Cambrai chaussee and gained some ground south of the Cojeul and njrth of the Souchez rivers. We also recovered the posts lost on the edge of Infantry Hill. The Germans four times counter-attacked ineffectually in the Souchez region. Raids of the enemy east of Epehy and at Guillemont Farm hard by, were repulsed on the night of the 21st-22nd ; ours south-east of Queant and in the Neuve Chapelle and Armentieres regions were successful. The next evening Portuguese troops * south of * The Portuguese troops have been dealt with to a large extent in Chapter CXLVI. Their presence on the battlefields of France was a gallant proof of Portugal's adherence to her old ally, England, and recalled the days of the Peninsular War, when Portuguese troops had fought so well in Wellington's Army. Their uniform was out in the English fashion, but the colour was a modifica- tion of the French " bleu d'horizon," resembling the French grey of the old Indian Light Cavalry regiments. Annentieres killed or captured the whole of a ( ; en nan patrol ; the enemy's positions north of Gavrelle were entered and a sueeesst'ul operation near Warneton was carried out by us. On GERMAN OFFICERS TESTING A MACHINE-GUN AT OSTEND. the morning of the 24th parties of the enemy approaching our trenches south-east of Armen- tieres and south-east of Gavrelle were caught by our guns ON THE CANAL NEAR BOES1NGHE. [Official plioh graph. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 211 BOESINGHE: ARTILLERY PASSING AN OLD COMMUNICATION TRENCH.'^ The night of the 24th-25th and the day of June 25th were distinguished by a number of minor operations on our part between Hooge and Epehy Below the Messines ridge the British established posts on the Warneton road, almost a mile above the village imme- diately in front of the Warneton line. The anxiety of the Germans in this quarter was evidenced by the fires of destruction burning in Comines. East of Vermelles a raiding party captured two mine-throwers, and remained some two hours in the German line, bombing dug-outs and communication trenches. Near Bceux on the banks of the Scarpe five Germans were captured, while south of the Scarpe our raids near Bullecourt and Epehy gave useful results. Close to the canal side at Vendhuille the garrison of a redoubt was annihilated. It was, however, on the outskirts of Lens that the most successful action was fought. A stroke at Lens was, perhaps, the movement best calculated to mystify Prince Rupprecht as to the region selected for the coming Anglo- French offensive. General Home's troops were already north, west, and south of Lens, and it might well be expected that the British would endeavour to eject the Germans out of that important mining centre before they attempted to make a further advance north of the Lys. To protect Lens the enemy had been busy blowing up the roads on its south side in the Avion area, and he had flooded the flat land between Lens and Avion south of the Souchez river. A lake half a mile broad and a mile long had been formed, out of which rose the ruins of the industrial suburb known as Cite St. Antoine. The immense railway yards there were under water. Almost every build- ing in the Cite du Moulin, the western suburb of Lens, had been levelled to the ground to give the garrison of the city a good field of fire. Similar levelling had been done at other points, and Lens now was but the husk of a city. To the west of Lens rose a hillock. Hill 65, the key to the defences on that side. It was strongly fortified above and below ground, and the dug-outs and trenches were held by detachments of the Prussian 56th Division, recruited in the Rhineland. On Sunday, June 24, in the evening our heavy guns deluged this eminence with huge shells. After two hours' bombardment South Midland troops went " over the top," and, meeting with little or no opposition, seized Hill 65. In vain the 212 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. GERMAN CONCRETE EMPLACEMENTS IN LENS CANADIAN ARTILLERY. [Canadian War Recotds. SMASHED BY Rhinelanders were incited to counter-attack. They were promised, if they were successful, to be at once relieved, but their moral had been shaken by weeks of shell-induced tension, and they could not be prevailed upon to do so. The loss of Hill 65 obliged the enemy to withdraw a considerable distance south of the Souchez. Soon after 7 a.m. on the 25th, in the wake of a violent barrage, OUT troops stormed the brewery on the Arras-Lens road, and to the southward pushed up along the railway line. Before noon they were less than half a mile south of Avion. During the 26th La Coulotte, a village on the Arras-Lens highway due west of Avion between the Souchez and Avion, was occupied by the British. Thus the enemy's positions astride the river on a front of two miles and to an average depth of a thousand yards had been secured. Meantime, south of the Scarpe at midnight on Monday, June 25, some 500 yards of trenches on the west bank of the Sensee, in front of Fontaine-lez-CroisUles, had been captured by the Durhams after a heavy bombardment and gas barrage. A battalion of Westphalians counter-attacked while the North Countrymen were digging themselves in. The Durhams had no time to seize their rifles, but with uplifted spades felled the Westphalians, most of whom were lads of 18 or 19, inflicting terrible wounds. Storm troops were brought up to the support of the cowed Westphalians, but the DurHams shot them down. Later a third counter-attack was repulsed by shell-fire. West of Oppy on the evening of the 26th we raided successfully, and on the morning of the 27th we beat off a German party south of Rceux on the marshy banks of the Scarpe. The operations west and south of Lens paused Prince Rupprecht to imagine that Sir Douglas Haig set great store on immediately capturing the city. In the German communiqut of June 27 it was stated that the British were " attacking the Lens salient." On June 28 General Home in the evening made elaborate demonstrations to give the impression that this was so. On a 12-mile front, from Hulluch to Gavrelle, gas, smoke and thermit were discharged and a number of small raids were made, together with real attacks on a two and a-half mile front astride the Souchez and on a 2,000 yards' front opposite Oppy. Further to mystify the enemy the war correspondents after the event were permitted to state that there were " four simultaneous but disjointed minor operations," a statement scarcely likely to take in the masters of the art of deliberate falsehood; but nevertheless the following passage from the German communique of the 29th seems to prove that Prince Rupprecht was completely deceived by General Home's demonstration. In the salient went and scmth-west of Loos, which had long since been abandoned by us as a battle-ground, an attack by strong English forces was launched early in the morning along the road to Arras. It proved to be a thrust in the void. In the evening, after drumfire, several divisions THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 213 attacked between Hulluch and Mericourt, and from Fresnoy to Gavrelle. Near Hulluch, as well as between Loos and the road to Lens and Lievin, the enemy were driven back by our fire, and as a result of our counter- thrust. West of Loos, after violent fighting with our advanced troops, a new enemy attack was not carried out. Near Avion a first assault was launched with extraordinary energy, but failed completely. The nemy attacked here again after bringing up reinforce- ments. This attack also was frustrated by our fire and counter-thrust. Between Fresnoy and Gavrelle the enemy fed with a continual stream of fresh troops his storming waves, which at first collapsed with heavy losses under our artillery activity. After fierce close-quarter battles, the British estab- lished themselves between Oppy and the windmill of Gavrelle in our foremost lines. Our troops fought admirably. The enemy suffered bloody losses against our well-organized defence and in the hand-to-hand fighting. The bombardment began soon after 7 p.m. and was crushing in its effect. A thousand guns suddenly opened and the earth trembled with their reverberations, while a crown of bursting shells was formed round Lens. Directly afterwards heaven's thunder mingled with that of the guns. The day had been threatening and the sky was overcast. A violent thunderstorm, accompanied by tropi- cal rain, burst, and the jagged lightning illuminated the scene. Through storm, smoke and gas the British advanced. North of Lens, in the Loos region, English troops stormed certain trenches in the Cite St. Laurent area. Here the men of the Prussian 8th Division fought stubbornly and, as the attack was not intended by General Home to be pressed home, it soon ended. Astride the Souchez river the advance was no feint. Early in the morning the Canadians, south of the river, had pushed forward on the Arras-Lens road as far as the hamlet of Eleu dit Leauvette, below that point had entered the southern fringe of Avion, and farther south had occupied a trench defended by detachments of the 5th Prussian Grenadiers beyond the rail- way. Above Leauvette the Germans had de- stroyed the bridge across the Souchez. With English troops, including South Midlands, north of the river, the Canadians in the drench- ing rain resumed their forward movement. The South Midlands punished severely units of the 1 1th Reserve Division, which had relieved the 56th Division and were endeavouring to reach the Cite du Moulin. As for the Canadians [Canadian War Records. HIDDEN TREASURE RECOVERED AT SOUCHEZ. The Mayor and Aldermen of Souchez are carrying away money which had been buried when the inhabitants 8ed before the Germans. a o E-H I z o A ts, Z si a H C/3 w w z o CO S-, O O as H as 02 H O O C/2 pa Q H B O Z THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 215 they burst into Avion and bombed and bayoneted the Germans in the southern and western streets. On their right the pit-heads of Fosse 4 and 4 Bis de Lievin defended by machine-guns held them up. They swung to the left of these and established themselves on a diagonal line striking north-west and south-east through the wrecked houses of Avion. But the pitheads at dawn were still untaken. Some prisoners and 12 machine-guns had been secured ; on a front of four miles we had advanced in depth a mile. Simultaneously English troops from the East Midland (among them the Royal Warwicks) and Northern eountiej had attacked the trenches west and south of Oppy. They were held by the 5th Bavarian Regiment, which offered a stubborn resistance. Nevertheless, all were carried and 240 prisoners taken. On June 30 heavy rain fell, but in the night north of Souchez a further advance was made on a front of half a mile west and south- west of Lens. During July raids similar to those in June were made by the British between Ypres and St. Quentin, and the Germans attempted several times to penetrate our lines In most of the combats we maintained the upper hand. For example, in the small hours of July 23 the Canadians on a front of about 600 yards south of Avion reached tho high embankment of the Avion-Mericourt railway and attacked the dug-outs in it. As the enemy had been employing gas shells on the previous afternoon the Canadians wore gas masks After bombing the dug-outs and capturing 60 prisoners they returned to their lines. On the other hand, the Germans were success - ful on a few occasions. Thus on July 25, in the early morning, after a heavy bombardment, with the assistance of flame-throwers they drove in some advanced posts on Infantry Hill. But, taken as a whole, they got much the worst of the exchanges, except in one instance now to be narrated. It has been seen that on June 20 the British relieved the French between St. Georges and the North Sea. Their presence round Lombartzyde in tho Dunes, nine miles from Ostend, appears to have puzzled Prince Rupprecht and his staff. They may have imagined that they would act in conjunction with some force to be landed on ' the coast under cover of the guns of the British fleet. Be that as it may, the German leaders decided to drive our men back into Nieuport and across the canalised Yser. We were in a difficult position The front was a narrow one, our backs were to the canal : no proper trenches or dug-outs could be made, water being so close to the surface ; and our only defences were breastworks and barbed wire. A dyke, the Geleede Creek, ran perpendicularly across our front, entering the Yser, south-west of Lombartzyde, dividing it into two sections. If the bridges over the creek were smashed, the troops in the left section could not reinforce those in the right and vice ver.id . if the bridges over the Yser were destroyed - Bdins-^ 1P!^% ;* Westende V'ej/eertgg&.'&'p % fes^^g^'/L^VLombartiyde BambffhFf ^"*-S J orges (988) THE GERMAN SUCCESS ON THE YSER: JULY 8, 1917. the British garrison in this bridge-head would be isolated. At first sight it would hav<" seemed good policy to have withdrawn our men from so exposed an area, but to have done so would have meant our losing control of the machinery regulating the Yser inunda tions. Moreover, if the Third Battle of Ypres resulted in a crushing victory for the Allies, the possession of the bridge-head would be of great value to us when pursuing the enemy should he evacuate Ostend. On the evening of July 8 the Germans began a systematic and heavy bombardment of the British position The bridges over the Geleede Creek and the Yser were destroyed, the wire entanglements torn into fragments, anil the breastworks levelled to the ground. At 7.45 p.m. on July 10 German Marines and other troops were sent forward. The brunt of the attack was borne by the King's Royal Rifles 216 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. FRENCH TROOPS LEAVING THE NIEUPORT SECTOR On being relieved by the British, some of whom are seen looking on. molding the coast end of the line with the North- amptons on their right. Six to seven hundred yards behind them was the canal. For more than an hour the British kept the Marines at bay. Most of them died fighting, a few swam the Yser and escaped. The enemy had cut off the western end of our position on a front of 1,400 yards and reached the right bank of the Yser near the sea, but on the other side of the Geleede Creek he was driven back. Such was, in the language of the German communique of July 12, " the great and mag- nificent success " of July 10. The enemy claimed to have captured 1,250 prisoners, including 27 officers, but, amongst these, were doubtless counted very many who were dead. On the 13th he attempted to complete his plan by attacking south of Lombnrtzyde, but was repulsed. The attempt was again repeated on the 19th with the same result. Tho southern section of the British line on the coast covering Xienport remained in British hands, when the Third Battle of Ypres opened. It will be noticed that the operations described in this chapter were none of them com- manding in results. But regarded as a whole they were not unimportant. Many valuable points were seized, and the moral of the Allied troops had shown itself superior to that oi their opponents. The Germans had lost heavily in killed, wounded and prisoners, considerably in material, and to some extent in terrain. They had never been able to follow up any of their minor successes, and in nearly every instance where they had gained ground temporarily they had been driven out of it again. It may fairly be said that the result of the fighting in June and July had been advantageous to the Allies CHAPTER CCXXVIII. VICTORIA CROSSES OF THE WAR. (IV.) NUMBER OF AWARDS THE SYSTEM OF ANNOUNCEMENT CROSSES FOR SKIPPERS THE AFFAIRS OF DRIFTERS AND A SMACK NAVAL AWARDS CAPTAIN BISHOP'S GLORIOUS AIR DEEDS DECORA- TIONS FOR CANADIANS BATCHES OF AWARDS SINGLE-HANDED EXPLOITS GUARDSMEN'S BRAVERY BRIGADIER-GENERAL COFFIN INDIVIDUAL HAULS OF GUNS AND MEN A FAITHFUL MESSENGER CASES OF EXTREME ENDURANCE GRENADIERS AND BOMBERS A STOKES SHELL EPISODE HONOURS FOR RECIPIENTS OF THE CROSS A CAPTAIN'S VALIANT DEFENCE SIMILARITY OF CASES " EXTRAORDINARILY GOOD WORK " ATTACKS ON " PILL-BOXES " A COLONEL'S CROSS A MACHINE-GUNNER'S HEROISM THIRTY SECONDS' " RECKLESS BRAVERY " MORE FINE INDIVIDUAL DEEDS THE AUSTRALIAN IMPERIAL FORCE A HAND-TO-HAND FIGHT A CARRIER OF BANDOLIERS BAYONET-CHARGE BY A HIGHLANDER DEVOTION OF A TANK LEADER POSTHUMOUS AWARDS A CORPORAL'S FATE FEARLESS LEADERSHIP CAVALRY DASH THE VICTORIA CROSS WARRANTS. PARLIAMENT, at the end of October 1917, passed a memorable vote of thanks to the Navy and Army for their war services. In the House of Lords the resolution was moved by Earl Curzon, who, in dealing with the work that the naval, military and air forces had done spoke of the extraordinary valour of all ranks. He said that to the Army 301 Victoria Crosses had been awarded, and two bars to the Crosses ; and 28 Crosses had been awarded to the Navy. These honours were included in a list of awards which justified the speaker in declaring that some of the deeds for which they were given were almost past belief, and as time went on would be enshrined in legend and form lessons to be taught to the future generations of our race. It was remarked in Chapter CLI. (Victoria Crosses of the War. I.) that the new system of warfare had produced new types of fighters the airman, the submarine man, the bomber, the trenchrnan, doers of " things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme," and that statement held good for all the period during which Vol. XV. Part 189. 217 the great honour of the Cross was conferred. Modern war's appalling forms had evolved a race of heroes whose acts had no rivals out of the realms of mythology ; the very Sagas paled before the glamour of the tales of deeds for which the Cross was charily awarded. Every fresh development had given British fighting men the chance to show that they were fully qualified to meet and master it when victory was needed ; and now there was to come the hero of the drifter, the smack, the " pill-box " and the tank. It was all wonderful and varied to the point of numbing receptivity and understanding ; yet what even to imagina- tion seemed impossible proved achievable through British enterprise and courage The announcements of the awards were made for the most part in considerable batches, and in a few cases the official story was of unusual length ; but there were instances when nothing was added to the bare statement that the Cross had been given for certain special work, these being invariably in connexion with naval operations. While expediency undoubtedly justified the with- THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. A DRIFTER FLEET AT SEA. holding of details in such cases it was difficult to understand the official method of consistently using the term " enemy." The system was well enough adapted to earlier days of the Cross, when there was no doubt as to the identity of the opponent, but it no longer applied to the very greatly altered circumstances of the war, and it was impossible to suppose that the use of the word " German " could have conveyed information of any value to the foe. If a British fighter slew and captured Germans wholesale in straightforward conflict and British fighters did both no one knew the humiliating fact sooner or better than the Germans themselves, and no official craft in employing the expression " enemy " could conceal the knowledge from them. Yet " enemy " was persistently, tediously and unilluminatingly employed, and it was left to the reader to choose from the German, Austrian, Turkish or Bulgarian forces ; the selection being a matter of personal knowledge or inference. It was not until the war had entered upon its fourth, year that a Victoria Cross was bestowed upon a member of that vast army of auxiliaries who swept and patrolled the seas in such small craft as steam trawlers and drifters. . For the most part the crews of these vessels were fishermen, and they had done invaluable service in sweeping the seas clear of mines, in hunting and capturing submarines, and in patrol and other work. These services had involved constant peril and hardship, with inevitable heavy losses. There had been many meetings with the enemy, encounters in near and distant waters, and in all these fights the toilers of the deep sea had upheld their splendid reputation for courage and endurance. One of the most remarkable fights of all was that in the Straits of Otranto on the morning of May 15, 1917. The circumstances were very unusual, the forces very unequal, and the odds heavily in favour of the enemy The Allied SKIPPER JOSEPH WATT. drifter line was attacked by Austrian light cruisers, one of which, at about 100 yards range, hailed the drifter Gowanlea and ordered the skipper, Joseph Watt, to stop and abandon her. The Gowanlea was a typical drifter, with a length of keel of less than 90 feet, a depth of less than 10 feet, and a breadth of 18 feet THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 219 SECOND HAND T. W. CRISP Returning from the Palace wearing his own D.S.M. and his father's V.C. and D.S.C. 6 inches. She had as crew a mere handful of men, and as armament one gun that was almost toy-like in appearance. The size and power of the Austrian cruiser were not stated, but at her stone's-throw distance she must assuredly have towered above her tiny prey. It was one thing for an Austrian to give an order to a British fisherman turned fighter, but a very different thing for that stanch seaman to obey. So far from heeding the enemy. Skipper Watt, though instant destruction seemed certain, ordered full speed ahead and called upon his crew to give three cheers and fight to a finish. The very audacity of the defiance might well have taken the Austrian aback ; at any rate, fire was opened on the cruiser. Then began a short, sharp, curious fight. Anything in the shape of a cruiser should have had a very easy and simple task in destroying the drifter, but the Austrian found his opponent so little to his liking that he was content to maintain a running fight, the running on his part being towards the safest part of the battle-area. One round only had been fired from the drifter's gun when the weapon was disabled at the breech. The gun's crew, however, in spite of heavy fire, tried to work the gun. Luckily for the Gowanlea, the cruiser passed, and then Skipper Watt, not content with what he had done, and disregarding his own damage, took his little ship alongside another drifter, the Floandi, which was in worse case than his own, and helped to remove the dead and wounded. It was for his gallantry on this strenuous occasion that Skipper Watt received the Victoria Cross, the announcement being made on August 29, 1917. That affair of drifters in the Adriatic showed the sterling quality of the fishers' mettle: it was an episode which appealed with special force to the public at home, but there was soon to be given the story of another fisher V.C. hero which, in some respects, made an even deeper appeal, for it contained the elements of splendid tragedy and sacrifice. This was the story of Skipper Thomas Crisp, a fisherman of Lowestoft. The tale was first told in the House of Commons by the Prime Minister, who SKIPPER THOMAS CRISP. was paying a glowing tribute to the loyalty and courage of the fishermen ; on November 2 the London Gazette announced the posthumous grant of the Cross to Crisp and the award of the Distinguished Service Medal to his son, Second Hand Thomas William Crisp. The details which were published were unusually full. One August afternoon, shortly before three o'clock, the smack Nelson, of which Skipper 1892 220 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. Crisp was in command, was on the port tack. with her trawl down. The skipper was below, packing fish, and one hand was on deck, cleaning fish for next morning's breakfast. The skipper came on deck and seeing an object on the horizon he examined it closely and sent for his glasses. What he saw caused him to shout almost instantly, " Clear for action ! Sub- marine ! " He had scarcely uttered the words when a shot fell on the smack's port bow, only about 100 yards away. Thereupon the motor man got to his motor, the hand on deck dropped his fish and went to the ammunition-room, and the other hands, at the skipper's orders, let go the warp and put a " dan " on the end of LIEUT. CHARLES G. BONNER, D.S.C., R.N.R. it the " dan " being the buoyed flag which trawlers use to locate shoals of fish or other objects. The gunlayer the Nelson had only a three-pounder as armament held himself in readiness until Crisp said, " It's no use waiting any longer ; we'll have to let them have it ! " Brave words indeed, worthy of the deep sea man and the name of the smack which he commanded. Meanwhile the submarine, which was in the distance, in almost absolute security, was shelling the smack. The earlier of the shots missed their target, but the fourth shell went through the port bow, just above the water-line. " Then the skipper shoved her round." Again the shells screamed, but there was no confusion, not even when the seventh shell came, passed through the skipper's side, and out through the deck and the side of the smack. That terrible missile ended the life of the skipper and his vessel, for while he fell to the deck with shattered body the smack was sinking rapidly. Undaunted by what seemed like certain fate, the mortally wounded man's son, who was second hand, or mate, of the Nelson, took charge, the firing continuing and the vessel being dragged down by the sea that surged into her. The gunlayer went to his skipper to see if he could help him with first aid ; but the gallant Crisp knew that he was far beyond the well-meant help. " It's all right, boy, do your best," he said. Then, with the ruling passion of duty strong in death, he said to his son, who also had gone to him, " Send a message off." Obedient to the order, the words were sent : " Nelson being attacked by submarine. Skipper killed. Send assistance at once." That having been done, the skipper spoke again to his son, " Abandon ship. Throw the books overboard." As a forlorn hope, the son asked his father if they might lift him into the boat, but the dying skipper knew too well how futile such an effort at salvation would be, and his only answer was, "Tom, I'm done. Throw me overboard." And so, on the shattered, reddened deck on which he was breathing his last, they had to leave him. They took to the small boat, and in 15 minutes the Nelson went down, taking her commander with her. During that day and night and the next day and night until morning broke the survivors rowed and were blown about in the little craft ; then they were saved, and the story of the Nelson and her skipper was made known. Many valiant men and lads had won the Cross on land and sea and in the air, but there had been no more splendid exhibition of true loyalty and courage and resource than Skipper Thomas Crisp's. There was not and could not be for him the fierce joy of ordinary battle, or the exultation of a skilful sea or air combat ; he was trapped to death, there was no hope of escape or rescue yet knowing all that full well he died, refusing even to have his maimed body taken away from his sinking vessel, lest it should delay and hamper his son and the rest of liis crew. The official story of Crisp's achievement did not indicate the means by which his message was sent ; but an explanation was afforded subsequently in The Times, in a short article describing how fighting men's lives had been saved by homing pigeons. It was pointed out that the work of the Government pigeons was sometimes literally a matter of life and death THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 221 to our fighters, many of whom owed their lives to the speed of the birds. Skipper Crisp was given as a notable instance a bird flew away with his appeal for help for the crew. Simultaneously with the award of the Cross to Skipper Crisp there was announced the award of the same honour to Lieutenant Charles George Bonner, D.S.C., R.N.B., and Petty SETTING OUT. Officer Ernest Pitcher. No details were given in Bonner's case beyond the general statement that the decoration was conferred for services in action with enemy submarines ; while in the case of the petty officer it -was stated that he had been selected by the crew of a gun of one of H.M. ships to receive the Cross in accordance with the Warrant of 1856. The honours, decorations, and medals which were awarded at this time were an indication of the persistent and successful war which had been waged against enemy submarines. A very interesting item in the list was: "Second bar to the D.S.O. -.Captain G. Campbell, V.C , D.S.O. R.N." The first Cross to be announced in the fourth year of the war was to an airman, a distin- guished member of the force which had become known as the " cavalry of the air," and whose exploits appealed with special force to a people who above all things valued and admired dash and enterprise in unfamiliar circumstances though even desperate conflicts high in the air were becoming common happenirgs. This re cipient was Captain William Avery Bishop, Canadian Cavalry and Royal Flying Corps, who, like the lamented young hero, Captain Albert Ball,* had already won the D.S.O. and the M.C. Here again was a case exemplifying such astounding daring and success that without the bare official facts to prove it the Chapter CCV., p. 302. story would have been incredible ; for Bishop, single-handed, attacked enemy aerodromes, engaged the enemy against overwhelming odds, did much material damage, and finally returned in safety to his station. Bishop had been sent out to work independently. First of all he flew to an aerodrome, but finding no machine about he flew on to another aerodrome some three miles south-east, which was at least twelve miles on the other side of the line. On the ground were seven machines, some with their engines running. From a height of only about 50 feet the captain attacked them, and a CAPTAIN W. A. BISHOP, Canadian Cavalry and R.F.C. mechanic who was starting one of the engines was seen to fall. One of the machines got off the ground, but at a height of 60 feet Bishop fired fifteen rounds into it at very close range and it crashed to the ground. His action apparently goaded the enemy into further effort, for a second machine got off the ground. This aeroplane had little better luck than its predecessor Bishop, at a range of 150 yards, fired 30 rounds into it, and the machine fell into a tree. Two more machines then rose 222 THI-: TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. from the aerodrome, and at a height of 1,000 feet Bishop engaged one of them, emptying the rest of his drum of ammunition with such good effect that the machine crashed 300 yards from the aerodrome. The captain had now accounted for three machines ; into the fourth he emptied a whole drum of ammunition ; then, andltot till then, he made for his station. The demoralizing effect upon the enemy of this single-handed, skilful and inflexible onslaught was such that although four hostile scouts THE KING PRESENTING H"R HUSBAND'S V.C. TO MRS. ACKROYD. were about 1,000 feet above Bishop for some- thing like a mile of his return journey, " they would not attack." These gallant achieve- ments aroused the Canadian people to en- thusiasm, and this they showed in October 1917, when Bishop, who had been promoted major, was married in Toronto. In passing it may be noted that at the end of 1917 7,000 decorations had been conferred on members of the Canadian Expeditionary I- '>!<( for valour in the field and outstanding war service, these awards including 19 Vic- toria Crosses seven to officers and twelve to men. CAPTAIN (Temp. Lieut. -Colonel) BEST-DUNKLEY, Lancashire Fusiliers. BERTRAM Before being killed in action, Temporary Captain Harold Ackroyd, M.C., M.D., B.A.M.C., attached to the Royal Berkshire Regiment, saved the lives of many wounded officers and men, his courage being shown in circumstances of the greatest peril, for he worked in the open, under heavy fire from artillery, machine guns, and small anus. The announcement of Ack- SECOND LIEUT. (Acting Captain) THOS. R. COLYER-FERGUSSON, Northamptonshire Regiment. THE TIMES HISTOKY OF THE WAR. 223 royd's Cross was made known on September 6, 1917, and with it were published eight other awards. Of this total of nine no fewer than five were posthumous honours, Ackroyd's SERGEANT ROBERT BYE, Welsh Guards. fallen comrades being Captain (T. Lt.-Col.) Bertram Best-Dunkley, Lancashire Fusiliers, Second Lieutenant (acting Captain) Thomas Riversdale Colyer-Fergusson, Northampton- shire Regiment, Corporal James Llewellyn Davies, Royal Welsh Fusiliers (Nantymoel, Glamorgan), and Private Thomas Barratt, South Staffordshire Regiment (Tipton). Lieutenant-Colonel Best-Dunkley, by his bravery and devotion to duty while in com- mand of his battalion, added to the already great reputation which the Lancashire Fusiliers had won in the war. Colyer-Fergusson's conduct was an " amazing record of dash, gallantry and skill, for which no reward can be too great, having regard to the importance of the position won." In his case great skill and bravery were shown when plans had gone wrong, and the tactical situation had de- veloped contrary to expectation. Confronted with serious difficulties, he rose to the situation with an energy and ability which saved it, and he performed many acts of personal valour before he was killed by a sniper. Davies was another example of single-handed exploits He fought successfully with the bayonet, then, wounded though he was, he led a bombing party in an assault on a defended house, killing a sniper who was harassing his platoon. The corporal was so severely wounded that lie subsequently died. Barratt also did fine work against hostile snipers, some of whom, at close range, he stalked and killed. He had safely regained our lines when he had the misfortune to be killed. Barratt was a fine marksman, and his accurate shooting caused many casual- ties to the enemy and prevented their advance. He was an orphan who belonged to the little parish of Tipton. Some of his early years were spent in the workhouse, and in that institution his father died. Running away from it, the boy was cared for by his grand- mother, who at the time of his death made her living by selling fruit in a poor district. A Welsh Guardsman Sergeant Robert Bye (Penrhiwceiber, Glamorgan) showed the " most remarkable initiative." He saw that two enemy blockhouses were causing a good deal of trouble, and rushing at one of them he put the garrison out of action ; then he rejoined his company, and went forward to the assault of the second objective. When the troops had gone forward to the attack of a third objective, and a party was detailed to clear up a line of blockhouses which had been passed, Bye CORPORAL JAS. LLEWELLYN DAVIES, Roynl Welsh Fusiliers. volunteered to take charge of the party. He accomplished his object and took many pri- soners ; and he made more prisoners when he afterwards advanced to the third objective. In all his operations he gave invaluable help to the assaulting companies. f A Coldstream Guardsman Private Thomas Witham (Burnley) also very greatly dis- tinguished himself during an attack and was the means of saving many lives and helping the whole line to advance. An enemy machino 224 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. gun was enfilading the battalion on the right, and Withain, on his own initiative, immediately worked his way from shell hole to shell hole through our own barrage, and rushed the gun and captured it, with an officer and two other ranks. PRIVATE THOS. WITHAM, Coldstream Guards, shows his Victoria Cross. A Gordon Highlander Private George Mclntosh (Buckie, Banffshire) boing, with his company, under machine-gun fire at close range, unhesitatingly rushed forward under heavy fire, and reaching the emplacement threw a Mills bomb into it, killing two of the enomy and wounding a third. Entering the dug-out afterwards, he found two light machine guns, which he carried back with him. Corporal Leslie Wilton Andrew, Infantry Battalion, New Zealand Force, completed this list of nine. In his case the objective was the very unattractive one of a machine-gun which had been located in an isolated building. On leading his men forward he unexpectedly encountered a machine-gun post which was holding up the advance of another company Immediately attacking this, he captured the gun and killed several of the crew ; then ho turned his attention to the isolated building and took this post, killed several of the enemy, and put the rest to flight. That self-sacrificing hero, Captain Noel Godfrey Chavasse,* headed a list of 1 1 recipients of the Cro=s whose acts were recorded in the Londm Gazette of September 14. 1917. That list ulso contained the name of another officer * Chapter CLXXXV., p. 170 ; Chapter CUV., p i94. who was to be added to the higher ranks of the roll. This was Laeut.-Col. (T. Bng.-Gen.) Clifford Coffia, D.S.O., R.E. A conspicuous feature of this award was the absence of any special exploit or act such as those for which the Cross had been usually given : there was no hand-to-hand encounter to record, no dashing assault on a " pill-box " or a band of Germans the record was one of calm consistent bravery under the heaviest fire from both machine-guns and rifles, and in full view of the enemy. Brigadier-General Coffin showed an utter disregard of personal danger. He walked quietly from shell hole to shell hole, " giving advice generally, and cheering the men by his presence." His was one of the notable cases of stedfast courage and unconquerable cheerful- ness on the field of battle, and it was " generally agreed that Brigadier-General Coffin's splendid example saved the situation, and had it not been for his action the line would certainly have been driven back." Extraordinary bravery and persistence were shown by Lieut. John Reginald Noble Graham, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, attached Machine Gun Corps, who was four times wounded before loss of blood forced him to retire. He accompanied his guns across open ground under very heavy fire, he helped to carry CORPORAL (afterward Sergeant) LESLIE W. ANDREW, Infantry Battalion, New Zealand Force. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 225 ammunition, he disabled his gun so that it should be useless to the enemy, and he brought a Lewis gun into action with excellent effect until all the ammunition was finished. His courage and skilful handling of his guns held up a strong enemy attack which threatened to roll up tha left flank of the brigade. A remarkable case was that of Second Lieut. Denis George Wyldbore Hewitt, Hamp- shire Regiment, who, while waiting for the barrage to lift, was hit by a piece of shell, which exploded the signal lights in his haversack and set fire to his equipment and clothes. Hewitt extinguished the flames, then, in spite of his wound and the severe pain he was suffering, he led forward the remains of a company and captured and consolidated his objective. This gallant young officer was subsequently killed by a sniper while inspecting the consolidation and encouraging his men. Seven machine guns and 45 prisoners were captured in a blockhouse which was assaulted in the most courageous manner by Sergeant Edward Cooper, King's Royal Rifle Corps (Stock- ton). From the blockhouse, which was only 250 yards away, machine-guns were holding up the advance of a battalion on the sergeant's left and causing serious loss to his own battalion. Cooper, with four men, immediately rushed THE KING DECORATING PRIVATE GEORGE MclNTOSH, Gordon Highlanders. BRIGADIER-GENERAL CLIFFORD COFFIN LEAVING BUCKINGHAM PALACE AFTER RECEIVING THE VICTORIA CROSS. 22fi THE TUJKX H1STOHY OF THE WAR. SERGEANT EDWARD COOPER Receives his V.C. from the King. towards the blockhouse, though heavily fired on, and having got within about 100 yards of it he ordered his men to lie down and fire at the blockhouse. This firing failing, the sergeant wasted no further time he rushed straight at the machine guns and fired his revolver into an opening in the blockhouse, whereupon the machine-guns ceased firing, the garrison sur- rendered and the intrepid sergeant and his little band were to the good to the extent of the seven weapons and 45 captives mentioned. Though three times wounded in two days. Sergeant Alexander Edwards, Seaforth Higli- ATTACK ON A BLOCKHOUSE. landers (Lossiemouth), showed the coolness, resource, and bravery which won for him the Cross. He located a hostile machine-gun in a wood, and leading some men against it with great dash and courage killed all the team and captured the gun. Having done this, and though badly wounded in the arm, he crawled out to stalk a sniper who was causing casualties, and killed him also ; then, when only one officer was left with the company, the sergeant led his men on until the farthest objective, on which the success of the operation depended, was captured. Edwards, while continuing his brave and most useful work, was twice wounded on the following day. " Extraordinary courage and boldness " were credited to Sergeant (acting C.Q.-M.S.) William H. Grimbaldeston, King's Own Scottish Borderers (Blackburn), whose conduct resulted in his capturing 36 prisoners, six machine-guns and one trench mortar, and enabled the whole line to continue its advance. This Borderer saw that the unit on his left was held up by machine- gun fire from a blockhouse. He was wounded, but lie collected a small party to fire rifle grenades on the blockhouse ; then he got a volunteer to help him with rifle fire. After these preliminaries he pushed on towards the blockhouse and in spite of very heavy fire reached the entrance, from which he threatened, with a hand grenade, the machine-gun teams inside. One after another these defenders were forced to surrender, leaving to the sergeant's credit the heavy total which has been men- tioned. Very similar to this achievement was the act of Sergeant Ivor Rees (LJanelly), who gave to THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 227 SERGEANT (Acting C.Q.M.S.) W. H. GRIMBALDESTON, King's Own Scottish Korderers. SERGT. ALEX. EDWARDi, Seaforth Highlanders. SERGEANT IVOR REES, South Wales Borderers. the South Wales Borderers another Cross. Having worked up to about 20 yards from a machine-gun which was doing a great deal of damage, the sergeant rushed forward towards the team, shot one, bayoneted another, then bombed the large concrete emplacement, killing five men, taking 30 prisoners, including two officers, and capturing an undamaged machine- gun- coming. Single-handed, Skinner bombed and took the first blockhouse ; then, leading his six men towards the other two blockhouses, he skilfully cleared them, taking no fewer than 60 prisoners, three machine-guns, and two trench mortars. Corporal (L.-Sgt.) Tom Fletcher Mayson, Royal Lancaster Regiment (Silecourt, Cumber- land), did not trouble to wait for orders when a SECOND LIEUT. D. G. VV. HEWITT, Hampshire Regiment. Blockhouse operations also gave opening for the display of uncommon valour and resource by Sergeant (Acting C.S.-M.) John Skinner, King's Own Scottish Borderers (Pollokshielris, Glasgow). This non-commissioned officer's deeds were in perfect keeping with those of nis brother Borderer, Grimbaldeston. Skinner wn wounded in the head, but he collected six men and resolutely worked round the flank of three blockhouses from which machine-gun fire was LIEUT. J. R. N. GRAHAM, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. machine-gun was barring the attack of his platoon, but instantly made for the weapon and bombed it out of action. He wounded four of the team, and the remaining three fled. Tim sergeant followed them to a dug-out, and there he killed them with his bayonet. Later, single- handed, he tackled a machine-gun and killed six of the team, crowning his work by taking charge of an isolated post and holding it until ordered to withdraw, his ammunition being exhausted. J89 3 228 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAIL A private from Leeds Wilfrid Edwards, King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and one from Sheffield Arnold Loosemore, West Riding Regiment completed this list of September 14 ; both cases being specially noticeable because of the brilliant success of individual effort. Edwards showed his uncommon courage when under heavy machine-gun and rifle fire from a strong conciete fort. Having lost all his company officers, he dashed forward at great personal risk, bombed through the loopholes, CORPORAL (L.-Sergt.) T. F. MAYSON, Royal Lancaster Regiment. PRIVATE ARNOLD LOOSEMORE, West Riding Regiment. SERGEANT (Acting C.S.M.) JOHN SKINNER, King's Own Scottish Borderers, receives his Cross. surmounted a fort, and waved to his company to advance. His fine example " saved a most critical situation at a time when the whole battalion was held up and a leader urgently needed." It was more than brilliant it was uncommonly successful, for Edwards took three officers and 30 other ranks prisoner in the fort. Subsequently he did most valuable work as a runner, and guided most of the battalion out through very difficult ground. The " Havercake Lad," Loosemore, as reck- less of personal safety as his fellow Yorkshire fighter, crawled through partially cut wire, dragging his Lewis gun with him, and single- handed he dealt with a strong party of the enemy, of whom he killed about 20. Imme- diately afterwards his Lewis gun was blown up by a bomb, and three of the enemy rushed him ; but he shot them all with his revolve? . Several more snipers were shot by him, though he was each time exposed to heavy fire. Then Loosemore performed one of the acts for which alone the Victoria Cross had been frequently awarded on returning to his original post he brought back a wounded comrade under heavy fire and at the risk of his life. Of nine recipients of the Cross whose awards were announced in the London Gazette of October 17, 1917, one, Sergeant Frederick Hobson, Canadian Infantry Battalion, was killed in the fighting which gave him his honour, and two died of wounds Temporary Second - Lieutenant Hardy Falconer Parsons, Glouces- tershire Regiment, and Private Harry Brown, Canadian Infantry Battalion. Though Hob- son was not a gunner he rushed from his trench THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 229 on seeing that a Lewis gun was buried by a shell and that with the exception of one man the crew had been killed. He dug out the gun and got it into action against the enemy, who were advancing down the trench and across the open. The gun jammed, but Hobson, in spite PRIVATE WILFRID EDWARDS, King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. of wounds, left the gunner to correct the stop- page and, single-handed, rushed at the enemy with bayonet and clubbed rifle and held them back until he was killed by a rifle shot. His courage and resource enabled the gun to be got into action again, and, reinforcements arriving, the enemy were beaten back. Parsons also greatly distinguished h'm ielf in a single-handed exploit, his conduct being specially noteworthy because it was in connexion with a night attack. A strong enemy party attacked a bombing post which was held by the subaltern's com- mand. The bombers holding the block were forced back, but Parsons remained at his post, and, alone, although badly scorched and burned by liquid fire he " continued to hold up the enemy with bombs until severely wounded." Private Brown must be added to the very small band of V.C. heroes whose faithful delivery of all-important messages won for them the greatest honour. He and another soldier were ordered to deliver a message at headquarters, at all costs. A position had been captured, and the enemy had massed in force and counter- attacked. The situation was very critical, all wires being cut ; and it was of the utmost importance to get word back to headquarters. Brown's comrade was killed in obeying the orders, and Brown's arm was shattered ; but, loyal and determined, he continued his way on through an intense barrage until he reached the close support lines and found an officer. Exhausted, he fell down the dug-out steps, but was able to hand over his message and to say, " Important message ! " Then he became unconscious and in the dressing-station a few hours later he died. Three cases of extreme endurance were furnished, two by Irish Guardsmen, Lance- Sergeant John Moyney (Rathdowney, Queen's County) and Private Thomas Woodcock (Wigan). and the other by Corporal Sidney James Day, Suffolk Regiment (Norwich). The cases of the Guardsmen were obviously closely related to each other. Moyney was commanding 15 men who formed two advanced posts, and in spite of being surrounded by the enemy and having no water and little food, he held his post for four days and four nights. On the morning of the fifth day a large force of the enemy advanced to dislodge him. Moyney ordered his men out of their shell holes and taking the initiative he bombed the advancing enemy, while he used his Lewis gun with great effect from a flank. On seeing that he was surrounded by superior numbers the lance-sergeant led his men back in a charge through the enemy and reached a stream which lay between the TEMP. SECOND LIEUT. H. F. PARSONS, Gloucestershire Regiment. posts and the line. Here he instructed his party to cross at once, while he and Private Woodcock remained to cover their retirement. It was not until the whole of his force, unscathed, had gained the south-west bank that the lance- sergeant himself crossed, and this he did undar 230 -: T1MKS HISTORY OF THE WAR. tv shower oi bombs. Woodcock was one of a post commanded by Moym'y which was sur- rounded by the enemy ; but he also held out for 96 hours. After that remarkable feat ho was crossing a river and heard cries for help. He returned and waded into the water and umid a shower of enemy bombs rescued another member of the gallant little band. Day's achievement began with killing two machine- cxploded. Establishing himself in an advanced position he remained for GO hours at his post, under intense hostile shell and rifle-grenade fire. Much resourcefulness had been shown by several winners of the Cross in dealing with grenades and bombs ; but there had not been any exact parallel to 'the deed of Sergeant John C'armichael, North Staffordshire Rcgi- ment (Glasgow). He was excavating a trench LANCE-SERGEANT JOHN MOYNEY AND PRIVATE THOMAS WOODCOCK, IRISH GUARDS. when he saw that a grenade had been unearthed and had begun to burn. Rushing to the spot and shouting to his men to get clear, the sergeant put his steel helmet over the grenade, and not content with that he stood on the helmet. The grenade exploded, and Carmichael was blown out of the trench and seriously injured. The courage of his act and the swiftness of his decision will be realized when it is borne in mind that he could have thrown the bomb out of his trench, but that would have endan- gered the lives of the men who were working on top. Fit companion to Carmichael was Private William Boynton Butler, West Yorkshire Regiment (Hunslet, Leeds) who was picking np a Stokes shell which was accidentally fired in an emplacement. Butler rushed to the entrance, and having urged a party of passing infantry to hurry, as the shell was " going off." he turned round, placed himself between the party and the shell and so held it until they were out of danger. Then the private threw the shell on to the parados and took cover in the bottom of the trench. Almost as soon as CORPORAL S. J. DAY, Suffolk Regiment. gunners and taking four prisoners when he was in command of a bombing section and clearing the enemy out of a maze of trenches. A stick bomb falling into a trench which was occupied by two oflicers, one of whom was badly wounded, and three other ranks, Day seized the missile and threw it over the trench, where it instantly THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 231 it had left his hand the shell exploded and greatly damaged the trench, Butler, by extra- ordinary good luck, being only bruised. This list of nine was completed by the case of Acting Lance-Corporal Frederick G. Room, Royal Irish Regiment (Bristol), who, while in Bassano. PRIVATE W. B. BUTLER, West Yorkshire Regiment. charge of his company stretcher-bearers, worked continuously under intense fire, dressing tha wounded and helping to remove them. He was the means of saving many of his comrades' lives. For a considerable period after the war began the established method of announcing the award of the Cross was adhered to, but gradu- ally certain improvements were made, and amongst these none was more successful and welcome than the statement, so far as non- commissioned officers and men were concerned, of the city, town or village to which they belonged. For example, Southsea, Notting- ham, Old Trafford (Manchester), Merthyr Tydvil, Flemington and Kirriemuir were men- tioned in connexion with winners, the names of the places being added to the names of the regiment. In this way fellow-townsmen were able to share in the honour which had been conferred, and in many instances they took prompt steps to show their satisfaction very practically. There was a feeling that in some respects this custom of adding to the honour of the Cross by making presents of plate or money, or both, was overdone, and that it was not altogether desirable, as the distinction of the decoration itself was enough, without the addition^of any other gift whatsoever. It was not possible, either, to establish an equality of recognition, and so it happened that while one man might receive as much as 1,500, another would not get a penny beyond the allowance which went with the award. In January, 1918, it was announced that the Mayor of Coventry's Fund on behalf of Corporal Hutt, Coventry's first V.C., was nearing 1,000 ; in addition Hutt had received 200 from another source, and his former employers had given him War Bonds of the value of 250. In the earlier days of the awards there had been substantial presentations to recipients of the Cross, but there had been a period of quiescence in this respect ; when, however, names of places were officially given there was something of an epidemic of grateful recognition, and in one month alone, at the end of 1917, appreciation was shown of the valour of soldiers ranging from the rank of brigadier-general to private. The people of Darlington, justly proud of their Brigadier-General Bradford,* who was a fellow-townsman, opened a national fund to commemorate his career ; the villagers of East Haddon, Northamptonshire, subscribed for a gold watch and chain, which was pre- sented to Captain H. Reynolds, of the Royal Scots ; a gold hunter watch, inscribed with the St. Pancras borough arms, was presented to Sergeant Burman, of the Rifle Brigade ; War Bonds were given by the people of Tiverton to Private T. H. Sage, a native of the town. ACTING LANCF-CORPCRAL F. G. ROOM, Royal Irish Regiment. From the top of the tank which visited Bir- mingham in 'connexion with the War Saving-; Chapter CLXXXV., p. 174. Bradford's death was made known on Docember 5, 1917. He was only 25 years of age. Twice during 1917 ho was reported wounded. 232 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. campaign the Lord Mayor presented a framed and illuminated address, which had been voted bv the City Council to Birmingham's fifth V.C. hero, Sergeant A. J. Knight, of the King's Royal Rifle Corps. Seamen, too, came into their own, townspeople of Swanage presenting a silver salver and 67 war saving certificates to First -Class Petty Officer Ernest Pitcher. The system of indicating a recipient's native town or place of residence occasionally meant dark by-ways from the station, he reached his home while the deputation still held possession of the station. Subsequently, when the skipper was publicly presented with a testimonial, and when it seemed that he was fairly captured and must at last utter a few words, however haltingly, he again circumvented his friends' intentions, for he got someone else to rise and acknowledge the gift on his behalf. Another batch of nine Crosses was announced PRESENTATION OF AN ILLUMINATED ADDRESS TO SERGEANT A. J. KNIGHT, V.C., BY THE LORD MAYOR OF BIRMINGHAM. a double recognition, for the regiment itself would be moved to bestow honour on its member, apart from anything which a to\\ n had done. Almost invariably a winner of the Cross found it harder to face an audience than to confront an enemy in overwhelming force. A case in point was afforded by Skipper Watt, of Adriatic fame. He was due home on short leave, and his proud fellow-townsmen of Fraser- burgh took steps to welcome him officially. A civic reception was prepared, with a deputa- tion at the station ; but the man who had so valiantly faced deadly odds at sea had no pluck for this sort of meeting, and by travelling in a train by which he was not expected, and pursuing a policy of masterly pilotage by in the London Gazette of November 8, 1917, two of the awards being posthumous. These cases again proved the amazing personal courage of the recipients of the honour and the performance by them of almost incredible deeds. Well was it said of the officer whose name was given first in the list that he showed except ion 1 devotion to duty. This officer was Captain (acting Major) Okill Massey Learmouth, Canadian Infantry, who had already won the Military Cross. His company having been temporarily surprised during a determined counter-Attack on our new positions, Learmouth instantly charged and personally dispo3td of the attackers ; after which he carried on " a tremendous fight " with the advancing enemy. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 238 He was mortally wounded and under intense barrage fire, yet he stood on the parapet of the trench, and while he continuously bombed the enemy he inspired his men to keep up a gallant resistance. This conduct itself, on the part of a man whose hours were numbered, compelled deep admiration, but to add to its merit he " actually caught bombs thrown at him by the enemy, and threw them back." This valiant defence and glorious example Captain Learmouth maintained until his wounds made it impossible for him to carry on ; yet, even when so helpless, he refused to be carried out of the line, and Continued to give instructors and invaluable advice to his junior officers, finally handing over all his duties before he was taken to hospital, where he died. The Colonies furnished the second case also of the posthumous award, the recipient being Second Lieutenant Frederick Birks, Australian Imperial Force, who showed most conspicuous bravery when, in attack, accompanied only by a corporal, he rushed a strong point which was holding up an advance. A bomb wounded the corporal, but Birks went on alone, killed the rest of the enemy who held the position, and captured a machine gun. Having done this, the subaltern organized a small party and attacked another strong point which was occupied by about 25 of the enemy. Of that defensive party many were killed and an officer and 15 men were made prisoners. During the whole of the dangerous and impor- tant work he carried out Birks showed wonder- ful coolness and courage, and he performed that best of all tasks keeping his men in splendid MAJOR O. M. LEARMOUTH, Canadian Infantry. SECOND LIEUT. FREDERICK BIRKS, Australian Imperial Force. spirits. It was his fate to be killed at his post by a shell while trying to extricate some of his men who had been buried by a shell. There was strong similarity in the cases of Second Lieutenant Hugh Colvin, Cheshire Regiment, Second Lieutenant Montagu Shacl- worth Seymour Moore, Hampshire Regiment, Company Sergeant-Major Robert Hanna, Canadian Infantry, Sergeant James Ockenden, Royal Dublin Fusiliers (Southsea), and Sergeant Alfred Joseph Knight, London Regiment (Nottingham). Each of these bold fighters showed a personal courage amounting to recklessness, yet it was only by the display of such valour that their acts were possible, for without exception they fought against very great odds, and fairly threw themselves into positions which invited death. Colvin took command of his own and an- other company when both had suffered severely, and with great dash and success he led them forward in attack, under heavy machine-gun fire. Seeing the battalion on his right held up by machine-gun fire, he led a platoon to their help, then he went on with only two men to a dug-out. Leaving the men on the top, he entered the dug-out alone and brought up 14 prisoners. Then he proceeded with his two men to another dug-out which, with rifle and J i~ O " T3 8 w as 5 u " oa -n U] H *" m cs en U) U ^ii S 2,2 < 2 f? 'S 2i D 5w u aa * .o U C 9 fc o 2S gFs ::-* r S g ^ U g o Ifo Mljf en en O - u !4 ^* Q f T ! as 2 as Oeu_. b O en Z U u a as o X o 234 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 235 machine-gun fire and bombs, had been holding up the attack. This dug-out was reached, and the crew were either killed or captured and the machine gun was taken. The lieu- tenant ws then attacked from another dug- out by 15 of the enemy under an officer, and one of his" men was killed and the other wounded. Undaunted still, Colvin seized a SECOND LIEUT. M. S. S. MOORE, Hampshire Regiment. rifle and shot no fewer than five of the enemy, then, using another as a shield, he forced most of the survivors to surrender. Such was the courage, quickness and resource of this young officer that he cleared several other dug-outs alone or with one man, taking in all about .50 prisoners. He then skilfully consolidated his position, and personally wired his front under heavy close-range sniping in broad daylight, " when all others had failed to do so." Official credit was given to Colvin's leadership and courage for the complete success of the attack in this part of the line. Second Lieutenant Moore's exploit was in connexion with a fresh attack on a final objective which had not been captured. He unhesita- tingly volunteered for the duty, and dashed forward at the head of about 70 men. Heavy machine-gun fire, by the time the objective, some 500 yards on, had been reached, had so severely punished the lieutenant's party that he had on'y a sergeant and four men left ; but undismayed he immediately bombed a largo dug-out and took 28 prisoners, two machine guns and a light field g in. Gradually the half-dozen assailants were strengthened to a force of about 00 by the arrival of more officers and men. Moore's position was entirely isolated, as the troops on the right had not advanced ; but he dug a trench and throughout the night he repelled bombing attacks. Forced to retire a short distance next morning, at the earliest moment he reoccupied his position. Most of his men's rifles had been smashed, but he re-armed his little force with enemy SECOND LIEUT. HUGH COLVIN, Cheshire Regiment. rifles and bombs and with these he beat off more than one counter-attack, the enemy, not for the first time by many, having been in this way hoist with his own petard. For 36 hours the gallant subaltern . held this post under continual shell fire, altho-igh out of six officers and 130 men who had started the operation only 10 were available. When at last he was able to withdraw under cover of a thick mist he did not do so without getting his wounded away thus crowning his gallant deed. It was in attack also that Hanna distinguished himself. His company had met with most severe resistance and all the officers had become casualties. The attack was against a strong point which was strongly protected by wire and held by a machine-gun. It was " a most important tactical point," and no fewer than three assaults by the company had been driven off with serious losses. These desperata conditions gave to Hanna that opportunity of personal distinction and determination which had marked so many of the achievements of the Canadians. He calmly set about the task of collecting a party of men, and having got il/ together he headed a rush against the strong 236 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAE. objective, and so successful was he that he won through the wire and personally bayoneted three of the enemy and brained a fourth, the result being that the point was captured and the machine gun was silenced. It was due to Hanna's outstanding courage and resolute leading that a desperate situation was saved. Sergeant Ockenden was acting as company- sergeant-major in attack when he saw the platoon on the right .held up by an enemy machine gun ; whereupon he instantly rushed in a shell hole ; and, unsupported though he was, he bayoneted two men, shot a third, and scattered the rest. This terrific plyer of the bayonet, the weapon which, at close quarters. the German justly dreaded, was forced by oppressive circumstance to change his tactics and fall back upon his faithful rifle, another arm against which so often the enemy could not make a stand successfully. An attack was being made on a fortified position and it happened that the sergeant was " entangled SERGT. JAS. OCKENDEN, CO.-SERGT.-MAJOR R. HANNA, Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Canadian Infantry. SERGT. A. J. KNIGHT, London Regiment. the weapon and captured it, killing the crew, with the exception of one man, who escaped but only for the time, for the sergeant followed him and " when well in front of the whole line " killed him and returned to his company. This in itself was a deed worthy of the famous Fusiliers to which the sergeant belonged ; but his work was only partly done, for having accounted for both gun and crew he led a section to the attack on a farm. Rushing forward under very heavy fire he called upon the garrison to surrender. The enemy, however, continued to fire upon him, and the sergeant in turn opened fire so hotly and effectively that four of the defenders of the farm were killed and the rest, numbering 16, surrendered. Even more dramatic was the achievement of Sergeant Alfred Joseph Knight. The sergeant began his " extraordinarily good work " by showing exceptional bravery and initiative when his platoon was attacking an enemy strong point and came under a machine-gun's very heavy fire. He rushed through our own barrage, bayoneted the enemy gunner and single-handed took the position. Whetted to his work by this success he subsequently rushed forward, alone, upon a dozen of the enemy, who, with a machine gun, had been encountered up to his waist in mud." He rose superior to the situation, however. Seeing a number of the enemy firing on our troops, he instantly, nearly buried though he was, opened fire, and with so much coolness and precision that he killed six of them. Having now 10 of the enemy to his credit, Sergeant Knight got clear of tin* mud and was ready for further calls upon his valour. A fresh demand was made upon him when he noticed that the company on his right flank was held up in an attack on another farm. He collected some men and took up <v position on the flank of this farm, which, as a result of the heavy fire he brought to bear, was captured. Of the inspiring acts of this member of the London Regiment it was remarked that all the platoon officers of the company had become casualties before the first objective was reached, and that he took command of all the men of his own platoon and of the platoons without officers. Knight's individual exploits, performed under heavy machine -gun and rifle fire, saved a great many casualties and he was the direct cause of the' objectives being captured. A " pill-box " figured in the conspicuous bravery for which the Cross was awarded to Temporary Captain Henry Reynolds, M.C., THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 237 Royal Scots In attack, and when approaching their final objective, having suffered heavily from machine-gun fire and the " pill -box " which had been passed by the first wave, Reynolds reorganized his scattered men, and then proceeded alone by rushes from shell- hole to shell-hole. When near the " pill-box " he threw a grenade, intending that it should go inside ; but this purpose was frustrated TEMP. CAPTAIN H. REYNOLDS, M.G., Royal Scots. through the enemy having blocked the entrance. Determined to fulfil his desperate enterprise, the captain crawled to the entrance and forced a phosphorous grenade inside the " pill-box." This weapon set the place on fire and caused the death of three of the enemy and the surrender of the survivors, seven or eight, with two machine guns. Afterwards, though wounded, Reynolds led his company against another objective most successfully, for he took 70 prisoners and two more machine guns. These brave deeds were done under continuous heavy machine-gun fire from the flanks. The old yet ever new and moving tale of succouring the wounded under fire was told of the other member of that noble band of nine Private Michael James O'Rourke, Caiia- iian Infantry. He was a stretcher-bearer, and for three days and nights he strove un- ceasingly to bring the wounded into safety, dressing them, and getting them food and water. During those prolonged operations O'Rourke worked in an area which was swept by shell, machine-gun and rifle fire ; and several times he was knocked down and partially buried by enemy shells. He rescued a comrade who had been blinded and was stumbling about ahead of our trench, in full view of the enemy, who were sniping him ; he brought in another comrade under heavy fire, and on a third occasion he brought in a wounded man " under very heavy enemy fire of every description." Neither fire, nor exces- sive work, nor exhaustion deterred him from persisting in his humane work, which was very rightly acknowledged by the award to him of the highest recognition that can be made of devotion to the helpless on the battlefield. Of twenty Crosses gazetted on November 26, 1917, no fewer than six were awarded for gallant attacks on " pill-boxes," and it was significant of the danger attending the assaults on these strong structures that the only two posthumous honours in the list were given to members of the half-dozen. Both of these belonged to the Australian Imperial Force. These recipients were : Sergeant Joseph Lister, Lancashire Fusiliers (Reddish, Stockport), Sergeant Lewis McGee, Australian Imperial Force, Lance -Sergeant John Harold Rhodes, Grenadier Guards (Tunstall, Staffordshire), Lance-Corporal William Henry Hewitt, South African Infantry, Private Patrick Bugden, Australian Imperial Force, and Private Frederick George Dancox, Worcestershire Regi- ment (Worcester). Sergeant Lister's conduct was remarkably prompt and courageous and was most helpful in enabling our line to advance almost unchecked and to keep up with the barrage. His company was advancing to the first objective when it came under machine-gun fire from the direction of two " pill-boxes." The sergeant saw that the galling fire would hold up our advance and prevent our troops keeping up with the barrage. He dashed ahead of his men and found a machine-gun firing from a shell-hole in front of the " pill-box ." Lister shot two of the enemy gunners, a swift act which induced the rest to surrender to him. Having done this, he went on to the " pill-box " and shouted to the occupants to surrender. This call they obeyed, with the exception of one man, whom Lister shot dead. The sergeant's intrepid conduct and his obvious determination to rout the enemy at all costs compelled about 100 of the enemy to come out of shell-holes farther to the rear, and surrender. Sergeant McGee's exploit was single-handed 238 ////; TIMES HISTOUY OF THE WAR. STRETCHER-BEARERS UNDER FIRE. and he was armed only with a revolver when he showed the valour which was rewarded witli the Cross and was the prelude to his subsequent death in action. In the advance to a final objective his platoon was suffering severely and machine-gun fire from a " pill-box " stopped the company's advance. It was then that the sergeant, alone, rushed the post and by shooting some of the crew and capturing ihe rest enabled the advance to proceed. C'odlly and deliberately he reorganized the remnants of his platoon, he was foremost in the rest of the advance and he did splendid work in consolidating the position, contributing largely to the success of the company's opera- tions. Rhodes, the Grenadier, belonged to the enterprising band of V.C. heroes who in addition to showing the highest personal courage and capturing prisoners managed also to -ec m-e valuable information. He was in charge of a Lewis gun section covering the consolida- tion of the right front company and in carrying out his task he accounted for several of the enemy with his rifle, as well as by Lewis gun fire. Seeing three enemy leave a "pill-box," THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 289 he went out alone through our own barrage and hostile machine-gun fire and performed the dangerous exploit of entering the " pill -box " Having done this, he captured nine of the enemy, amongst whom was a forward observa- tion officer who was connected by telephone with his battery. Rhodes brought these prisoners, PRIVATE MICHAEL J. O'ROURKE, Canadian Infantry. " together with valuable information," back with him. Hewitt's attack on a " pill -box " was of the most desperate and determined nature. With his section he assaulted his objective and tried to rush the doorway ; but the garrison very stubbornly resisted. In his efforts the lance-corporal was severely wounded ; nevertheless he held on. Foiled in one direction he, like a skilful and resourceful fighter, tried another which might promise more encourage- ment. Turing from the inhospitable doorway, he daringly made his way to the loophole of the " pill-box " and did his best to put a bomb into it. Again he was wounded, in the arm ; but neither wounds nor failures daunted him. He at last got a bomb inside, and this missile dislodged the occupants, of whom it was significantly recorded that " they were success- fully and speedily dealt with by the remainder of the section." To the lasting fame of Private Patrick Bugden it was told of him that he was always foremost in volunteering for any dangerous mission and that it was during the execution of one of them that he was killed. His deeds were of the sort which were specially associated with the many Australians who had won the Cross. Twice he distinguished himself when our advance was held up by strongly-defended "pillboxes." In the face of "devastating fire from machine guns " he led small parties in assaults on these strong points and silenced the guns with bombs and captured the garrison at the point of the bayonet At another time, when a corporal had been made prisoner by the enemy and was being taken to the rear, Bugden, single-handed, rushed to his rescue, shot one of the enemy, bayoneted the other two, and so released his comrade. Five times he rescued wounded men under intense shell and machine-gun fire, constantly showing the greatest contempt of danger. One of a party of about 10 men de- tailed as " moppers-up," Private Dancox and his comrades found it very difficult to work round a flank, owing to the posi- tion of an enemy machine-gun emplace- ment on the edge of our protective bar- rage. The emplacement was of concrete and the gun had caused many casualties and considerably hampered our work of consolida- tion. In spite of the difficulties of the situation Private Dancox gallantly worked his way round through the barrage and entered the "pill- box " from the rear, threatening the garrison with a Mills bomb. Soon afterwards he " re- SERGEANT JOSEPH LISTER, . Lancashire Fusiliers. appeared with a machine-gun under his arm, followed by about 40 enemy" The weapon was brought back to our position by Daneox, who kept it in action throughout the day The picture suggested of this resolute and cheerful soldier " with a machine-gun under his arm, followed by about 40 of the enemy " was calou- 240 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. lated to have upon his comrades precisely the effect which it exercised, for their moral was maintained "at a very high standard under extremely trying circumstances." The Germans made a boast one of many that when a new device was used against them in the field by the British they found a means of overcoming it. This they specially claimed to have done in relation to the Tanks ; but there was no record, even in the German statements of claims, that they ever succeeded LANCE-CORPORAL W. H. HEWITT, South African Infantry, in finding a remedy for the unconquerable daring which alone made possible such deeds as those of Private Dancox and his gallant comrades who beat and battered at the doors and loopholes of " pill-boxes " until their urgent call was heard and obeyed. A field officer who had been already awarded the D.S.O. was included in the sec-re. This was Major (Acting Lieut. -Colonel) Lewis Pugh Kvans, D.S.O., Royal Highlanders, command- ing a battalion Lincolnshire Regiment. It was n '!>!( If 1 1 of this oflicer t hat he took his battalion in perfect order through a terrific enemy bar- rage, personally formed up all units and led them to the assault. Again, a case arose of a machine-gun emplacement causing casualties arid giving an opening for the display of fine courage and resource. While these losses were being sustained and the troops were working round the flank, the colonel rushed at the emplacement and forced the garrison to capitulate by the effective means of firing his revolver through the loophole. He was severely wounded in the shoulder after capturing the first objective ; but he refused to be bandaged, and re-formed the troops, pointed out all future objectives, and once more led his battalion forward. Colonel Evans was again badly wounded, yet he held on to his command until the second objective had been won and consolidated ; then he collapsed from loss of blood, but as there were many casualties he refused help, and his indomitable spirit enabled him at last to reach a dressing station. The East End gave two more Londoners to the Roll of the Cross. These were Sergeant William Francis Burman, Rifle Brigade (Step- ney), and Lance -Corporal Harold Mugford, Machine Gun Corps (East Ham). Burman distinguished himself in an attack when his command was held up by machine-gun firing at point-blank range. Shouting to the men next to him to wait a few minutes, he went for- ward alone. Death seemed certain, but the PRIVATE F. G. DANCOX, Worcestershire Regiment. sergeant showed such dash and resolution that he killed the enemy gunner and then carried the gun to the company's objective, where he subsequently used it with great effect. Through this "exceptionally gallant deed" the progres-i of the attack was assured. Sergeant Burman had already done great things, but he was very THE TIMES HISTORY Of THE WAR. 241 ATTACKING A GERMAN BLOCKHOUSE. soon to surpass them. About 15 minutes later it was seen that the battalion on the right was being impeded by about 40 of the enemy, who were enfilading them. The sergeant, this time with two other men, ran forward and got behind the enemy, killing six and capturing two officers and 29 other ranks. Mugford also showed uncommon daring in handling a machine-gun under intense shell and machine-gun fire. In spite of these diffi- culties, he got his gun into a forward and much exposed position, and from this point he was able to deal most effectively with the enemy, who were massing for counter-attack. The corporal's No. 2 was killed almost immediately, and he was himself severely wounded at the same moment. Mugford was then ordered to a new position and told to go into a dressing- station as soon as the position was occupied. He, however, refused, and insisted on con- 242 777 K TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAE. SERGT. W. F. BURMAN, Rifle Brigade. LANCE-CORP. H. MUGFORD, Machine Gun Corps. CORP. E. A. EGERTON, Notts and Derby Regiment tinuing on duty with his gun, with the result that he severely punished the enemy. So far this machine-gunner had covered himself with glory, he had won an enviable renown by his consistent bravery, and it seemed as if he could not do more ; yet, as so often happened with the officers and men who won the Cross, he excelled even his own gallant preliminary per- formances. Soon after he had refused to go to a dressing-station Mugford was again wounded this time terribly, for both of his legs were broken by a shell. Even now, a hero among heroes, he remained with his gun, and, thinking only of his comrades, he begged them to leave him and take cover. But he had no option in the matter ; he was no longer able to refuse to be removed, and so he was taken to a dressing-station, where he was again wounded, in the arm. For the third tune, therefore, this non-commissioned officer had been wounded, and it was not until he was absolutely helpless that he allowed his shattered body to be carried from the field of battle. Well indeed was it put on record concerning this lance-corporal of the Machine Gun Corps that his valour and initiative were instrumental in breaking up the enemy's impending counter-attack. There had been frequent assertions that on many occasions the enemy had become de- inorali/ed in the presence of the British and that they had collapsed under the amazing audacity of some of the minor assaults of British units. These declarations were substantiated by several of the records of deeds which won the Cross. Swift and successful was the act of Corporal Ernest Albert Egorton, Nottingham- shire and Derbyshire Regiment (Longton), whoso " reckless bravery " relieved in less than 30 seconds an extremely difficult situation. Fog and smoke had obscured visibility during an attack, and consequently the two leading waves of the attack passed over some hostile dug-outs without clearing them. From these dug-outs rifles and machine-guns caused heavy casualties amongst the advancing waves. When volunteers were called for to help to clear up the situation, Egerton at once jumped up and dashed for the dug-outs under heavy fire, at short range. " He shot in succession a rifleman, a bomber, and a gunner, by which time he was supported, and 29 of the enemy surrendered." A swift, smart piece of work was also credited to Private Albert Halton, King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment (Carnforth), who, after the objective had been reached, rushed forward about 300 yards under very heavy rifle and shell fire and captured a machine-gun and its crew which was causing many losses to our men. The private then went out again and brought in about a dozen prisoners, showing the greatest disregard of his own safety and setting a fine example to those around him. It was officially told of Acting Corporal Filip Konowal, Canadian Infantry, that he alone killed at least sixteen of the enemy ; and of Lance-Corporal Walter Peeler, Australian Im- perial Force, that he " actually accounted for over 30 of the enemy." Konowal was in charge of a section in attack and to that section fell the difficult task of " mopping up " cellars, craters and machine-gun emplacements. His direction was so successful that all resistance was over- come and heavy casualties were inflicted on the enemy. These " mopping-up " enterprises in- volved many desperate encounters with an enemy at bay, and in all sorts of odd holes and corners, at unexpected times, there were meetings which inevitably meant death to at least some of the combatants. That these encounters were not shirked by British fighters, THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 24b ACTING CORPORAL KONOWAL, Canadian Infantry. PRIVATE A. HALTON, King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment. LANCE-CORPORAL W. PEELER. Australian Imperial Force. and indeed especially appealed to their com- bative and sporting instincts, was shown by such cases as that of this Canadian Infantryman. In one cellar he himself bayoneted three enemy and attacked, single-handed, seven others in a crater, killing them all. When the objective was reached the corporal found that a machine- gun was holding up the right flank and causing many casualties. Rushing forward, he entered the emplacement and having killed the crew brought the gun back to our own lines. Such was the one day's toll of Corporal Konowal. The next day, still single-handed, he again attacked another machine-gun emplacement, killed three of the crew, and destroyed the gun and emplacement with explosives. The exact total to his credit was not, apparently, known with certainty ; but there were at least the sixteen mentioned and the corporal carried on continuously during the two days' actual fighting until he was severely wounded. Of Lance-Corporal Walter Peeler the story was told in the London Gazette that when, with a Lewis gun, he was accompanying the first wave of an assault he encountered an enemy party sniping advancing troops from a shell- hole. The position was immediately rushed by Peeler, who accounted for nine of the enemy and cleared the way for the advance. Twice after- wards he performed similar acts of valour, accounting each time for a number of the enemy. Being directed to a position from which an enemy machine-gun was being fired on our troops he located and killed the gunner, and the rest of the enemy party ran into a dug-out which was near. They were, however, dislodged from the shelter by a bomb, and 10 of the enemy ran out. " These he disposed of," was the cold official explanation of their fate. In the manner described the lance-corporal " actually ac- counted for over 30 of the enemy," thus adding to a list of exceptional perfor- mances. Another member of the Australian Imperial Force, Sergeant John James Dwyer, Australian Machine Gun Corps, distinguished himself in connexion with machine-gun fighting. He was in charge of a Vickers machine-gun and went forward with the first wave of the brigade. When he reached the final objective he rushed his gun forward in advance of the captured position, so that he could obtain a commanding spot. Seeing an enemy machine-gun firing on our right flank and causing casualties, Dwyer unhesitatingly rushed his weapon forward to within 30 yards of the enemy gun and by firing point blank put out of action and killed the crew. Snipers from the rear of the enemy position made a strong effort to destroy Dwyer, but totally ignoring them he seized the gun and carried it back across the shell-swept ground to our front line ; then he established both this gun and the Vickers gun on the right flank of our brigade. The sergeant now commanded these guns with much coolness and gave great help in repulsing counter-attacks. Next day, when the position was heavily shelled, Dwyer took up several positions. His Vickers gun, with which he had done so much useful work, was blown up by shell fire ; but he conducted his gun team back to headquarters through the enemy barrage, and having secured one of the reserve guns, rushed it back without delay to our position. So far in this batch of 20 four members of the Australian Imperial Force have been dealt with ; there remains a fifth Private Reginald Roy Inwood, who showed the greatest courage 244 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. during an advance to a second objective. A I one he moved forward through our barrage to an enemy strong post, and this he captured with nine prisoners, killing several of the enemy, During the evening Inwood volunteered for a special all-night patrol, which went out 600 yards in front of our line, and there his coolness and sound judgment enabled him to secure and send back some very valuable information as to the enemy's movements. In the early morning of September 21 Inwood located a machine-gun which was'causing several casualties. Again acting alone, he bombed the gun and team, killing all but one, and that man he brought in captive with the weapon. A hand-to-hand fight characterized the exploits for which the Cross was given to Sergeant John Molyneux, Royal Fusiliers (St. Helens). There were in this little affair the elements of a stirring drama. There was a house, and a trench in front of it, and from that trench a machine-gun was doing grievous mis- chief to our men in an attack. The assault was being held up by the weapon This was the sort of opportunity for which the British [BaSSino SERGEANT J. J. DWYER, Australian Machine Gun Corps. fighter longed, and when it came he took it. Sri<_M-;ml Molyneux instantly organized a lioiiibinc party to clear the trench in front of the house. Many enemy were killed, and a machine-gun captured." The Fusilier had opened his work well ; he promptly finished it. This perilous ob tac'e having been cleared, he jumped out of the trench and, calling for some- one to follow him, he rushed for the house. The sergeant was ahead of his gallant followers, and by the time they arrived he was " in the thick of a hand-to-hand fight." This combat was brief and very decisive the enemy sur- rendered, and in addition to the dead and ACTING CORPORAL F. GREAVES, Notts and Derby Regiment. wounded between 20 and 30 prisoners were taken. The achievement in itself was brilliant ; it irresistibly appealed to the British fighter and aroused in him all that was best of his sporting qualities, but more than that the affair was important because it prevented a slight check from becoming a serious block in the advance, and saved many lives. Another stirring example of initiative and leadership in non-commissioned and lower ranks was afforded by the case of Acting Corporal Fred Greaves, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment (Balborough). Machine- gun fire from a " concrete stronghold " tem- porarily held up his platoon, and the platoon commander and sergeant were casualties. Seeing this, and realizing that unless this post was quickly taken his men would lose the barrage. Greaves, followed by another non- commissioned officer, rushed forward, reached the rear of the building, bombed the occupants, killed or captured the garrison, and took no fewer than four machine-guns It was solely due to his personal pluck and initiative that the assaulting line at his point was not held uj> THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 246 and that our troops escaped serious casualties. A most critical stage of the battle arose later in the afternoon, when the troops of a flank brigade had temporarily given way under a heavy counter-attack and all the officers of the company were casualties. Quickly grasping the situation. Greaves threw out extra posts " pill-box " or man-handling an enemy group ; it was an exhibition of sheer calm pluck and disregard of personal danger which was specially noticeable even in the annals of the Crosses of the war. There was more of the joy of adventure and the thrill of action in the case of a member of PRIVATE CHAS. MELVIN, Royal Highlanders. CORP. J. B. HAMILTON, Highland Light Infantry. SERGT. JOHN MOLYNEUX. Royal Fusiliers. on the threatened flank and opened up rifle und machine-gun fire to enfilade the advance. It was recorded of the corporal that the effect of his conduct on his men could not be over- estimated, and that those under his command gallantly responded to his example. A display of perfect coolness in circumstances of the utmost danger was rewarded with the Cross in th case of Private (Acting Lance- Corporal) John Brown Hamilton, Highland Light Infantry (Lanarkshire). In this incident there were wanting those thrilling surround- ings which marked the honours that have been already dealt with ; yet his bravery was of the highest character. One of those crises had arisen in which there was great difficulty in supplying small-arm ammunition to the front and support lines. The supply had reached a seriously low ebb and Hamilton on several occasions, on his own initiative, carried bando- liers of ammunition through the enemy's belts of fire to the front and support lines ; then, passing along these lines in full view of the hostile snipers and machine-gunners, at close range, he distributed the ammunition to the men. This courageous conduct not only ensured the steady continuance of the defence by rifle fire, but the moral effect of the larce- corporaPs example inspired and heartened all who saw him. There was not in this case any of the glamour or excitement of rushing a another North Country regiment. This was Private Charles Melvin, Royal Highlanders (Kirriemuir), whose conduct added lustre to the famous Black Watch. His company had advanced to within 50 yards of the front-line trench of a redoubt ; they were then forced to lie down, owing to the enemy's intense fire, and await reinforcements. Delay, however, was not to the liking of Private Melvin, and he rushed on alone over ground that was swept from end to end by machine-gun and rifle fire. Halting when he reached the enemy trench, he fired two or three shots into it and killed one or two of the enemy. This warning failing to scatter the enemy, who went on firing at him, the Highlander jumped into the trench and attacked the foe with his bayonet in his hand, for he had not been able to fix it on his damaged rifle. So resolute and gallant was this single- handed assault that most of the enemy fled to the second line ; but not before the private had killed two more and disarmed eight unwounded and one wounded opponents. True to the British tradition of humanity, he attended to the hurts of the wounded man and then, " driving his eight unwounded prisoners before him, and supporting the wounded one, he hustled them out of the trench, marched them in and delivered them over to an officer." This might have satisfied most men, but Melvin was not content until he had provided himself with a 246 THE TIMKS HISTORY OF THE WAR. load of ammunition tuid returned to tiie firing- line, where he reported himself to his platoon sergeant. The valour of these acts was heightened by the fact that all were performed under intense rifle and machine-gun fire, and that the whole way back Melvin and his party were exposed to a very heavy artillery barrage fire. Completing the score was Private Arthur Hutt, Royal Warwickshire Regiment (Earlsdon, Coventry), who distinguished himself greatly both as a leader and a fighter. When all the officers and non-commissioned officers of No. 2 Platoon had become casualties he took command of and led forward the platoon. Being held up by a strong post on his right, he at once ran forward alone in front of the platoon and shot the officer and three men in the post, causing between forty and fifty others to surrender. Finding that he had pushed too far, he withdrew his party, personally covering the withdrawal by sniping the enemy and killing a number. He then carried back a badly wounded man and put him under shelter. Having organized and consolidated his position, and learning that some wounded men were lying out and were likely to become prisoners it' left, no stretcher-bearers being available, Hutt went out and carried in four men under heavy fire. Standing well out in a list of ten awards made known on December 18, 1917, was a Tank leader whose devotion cost him his life. This was Second Lieutenant Clement Robertson, SECOND LIRUT. CLEMENT ROBERTSON, Royal West Surrey Regiment, S.R. (Temporary Lieutenant, Acting Captain, Tank Corps.) [Bassano. PRIVATE ARTHUR HUTT, Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Royal West Surrey Regiment, S.R., Temporary Lieutenant, Acting Captain, Tank Corps. Here again was one of the cases in which V C. awards indicated the remarkable developments of the methods of modern warfare, and the success of a purely British invention. Robert- son was leading his Tanks in attack under heavy shell, machine-gun and rifle fire, and his course lay over ground which shell-fire had heavily ploughed. He knew to the full how great was the risk of the Tanks missing their way, yet he continued to lead them on foot, " guiding them carefully and patiently towards their objective, although he must have known that his action would almost inevitably cost him his life." Such, indeed, was the end of the brave captain, who was killed after his objective had been reached ; but death did not come until his skilful leading had assured successful action. To appreciate fully this officer's devotion to duty it is only necessary to bear in mind the desperate enterprises on which Tanks were sent, the uncommon perils into which these land-forts were driven, and the considerable protection which was lost by a man who voluntarily left the shelter of the metal structure and coolly exposed himself to the intense mixed fire with which a Tank was invariably greeted by the enemy when at close quarters. THE TIMES HJSTOTtY OF THE WAR. 247 There were three inoiv posthumous awards in this particular list ; making no fewer than four out of a total of ten. These awards were to Major Alexander Malius Laforie, Yeomanry ; Captain Clarence Smith Jeffries, Australian Imperial Force, and Corporal William Clamp, Yorkshire Regiment (Flemmgton). 'Major CORPORAL WILLIAM CLAMP, Yorkshire Regiment. Lafone's was one of the very rare cases in which enemy cavalry were mentioned, and the details indicated one of the engagements which appealed with exceptional force to a man of Lafone's resource and fighting power. For more than seven hours he held a position against vastly superior enemy forces, his task being made the harder because heavy shelling of his position made it very difficult to see. In one attack enemy cavalry charged his flank ; but the major drove them back with heavy losses. In another charge the enemy left 15 casualties within 20 yards of the major's trench, Lafono himself bayoneting one man who reached the trench. The time came in this desperate affair when all Lafone's men except three had been hit and the trench was so full of wounded that it was difficult to move and fire ; then the major ordered those who could walk to move to a trench slightly in the rear, and from his own post he maintained " a most heroic resistance." When at last he was surrounded and charged by the enemy he stepped into the open and went on fight- ing until he was mortally wounded and fell unconscious. Captain Jeffries showed his liigh coin-age and inspiring example in an attack when his company was held up by enemy machine-gun iiro from concrete emplacements. In the first , having organized a party, he rushed an em- placement and captured four machine-guns and 35 prisoners, after which he led his company forward under extremely heavy enemy artillery barrage and enfilade machine-gun fire to the objective. Later he again organized a success- ful attack on a machine-gun emplacement, this time capturing two machine-guns and 30 more prisoners, so having to his credit six machine- guns and no fewer than 65 prisoners. The gallant Jeffries was killed during the second attack, but it was entirely due to his courage and initiative that the centre of the attack was not held up for a lengthy period. The fate which had befallen not a few V.C. men from snipers' bullets overtook Corporal William Clamp when he had shown very great bravery in attacking concrete blockhouses. Intense machine-gun fire from these and from snipers in ruined buildings checked an advance ; but the corporal with two men dashed forward and tried to rush the largest blockhouse. The two men having been knocked out, Clamp's brave effort failed ; but instantly collecting some bombs and calling upon two men to follow him, he again dashed forward. The corporal was the first to reach the blockhouse, and hurling in the bombs he killed many of the occupants. Then he entered and brought o ut a machine-gun and about 20 prisoners, whom he MAJOR ALEXANDER M. LAFONE, Yeomanry. took back under heavy fire from neighbouring snipers. This was one of the critical situations which so often arose and with which men like Corporal Clamp so successfully dealt. In this case he again went forward and encouraged his 248 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. men, cheering them and rushing several snipers' posts. This high courage and cheerful example the corporal maintained until a sniper's bullet killed him. Fearless leadership under most difficult con- ditions, in darkness and in an unknown country, was recognized by the award of the Cross to Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Drummond Borton, D.S.O., London Regiment. In these most unfavourable and dangerous circumstances he deployed his battalion for attack, and at dawn led his attacking companies against a strongly held position. The colonel showed an utter contempt of danger when a withering machine- gun fire checked the leading waves, and under heavy fire he moved freely up and down his lines. He reorganized his command and lead- ing his men forward captured the position. At a later stage of the fight Colonel Borton led a party of volunteers against a battery of field guns in action at point-blank range, capturing the guns and the detachments. It was re- corded of him that his fearless leadership was an inspiring example to the whole Brigade. The dash and daring of our cavalry whenever it was possible for the mounted arm to act was shown by the conduct of Lieutenant Henry Strachan, M.C., Canadian Cavalry. The squad- ron leader was killed while galloping towards the enemy front line and Strachan took com- mand. He led the squadron through the L1EU1ENANT HENRY STRACHAN, M.G., Canadian Cavalry. LIEUT.-COLONEL A. D. BORTON, D.S.O., London Regiment. enemy line of machine-gun posts, then, with the surviving men, he led the charge on the enemy battery, killing seven of the gunners with his sword. This variant personal example re- sulted in all the gunners being killed and the battery silenced ; then Strachan rallied his men and fought his way back, at night, through the enemy's line, not only bringing in all unwounded men safely but also 15 prisoners. The result of this uncommonly gallant opera- tion was the silencing of an enemy battery, the killing of the whole battery personnel and many infantry, and the cutting of three main lines of telephone communication two miles in rear of the enemy's front line. Within a month of the announcement of the award to Captain Strachan there was a largo gathering in Bo'ness (Linlithgowshire) Town Hall on the occasion of the presentation of a sword of honour to him. A very interesting feature of the report of the ceremony which appeared in The Times was the statement that the Cross was awarded to Captain Strachan " for his daring leadership of cavalry at the break through at Cambrai." Lord Bosebery was present, and in a characteristic speech he said he was proud to congratulate Captain Strachan on the honour he had brought to his native town and the county. It was not a bad thing, he added, when the war lumbered slowly along, that they should receive occasionally the encouragement of feeling that they had a hero of their own Another Canadian officer Lieutenant Robert Shankland, Canadian Infantry showed great courage and resource under critical and THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 249 adverse conditions and gave to all ranks that inspiration which was so invaluable in times of special stress. Shankland had gained a position in action and then rallied the remnant of his platoon and men of other companies and disposed them to command the ground in front. The lieutenant inflicted heavy casual- ties upon the retreating enemy, and later ho dispersed a counter-attack and so enabled supporting troops to come up unmolested. Shankland having shown his grit as a fighter, displayed first-rate qualities as an intelligence officer, for he personally communicated to battalion hsadquarters an accurate and valu- able report as to the position of the brigade frontage, after which he rejoined his command and carried on until he was relieved. It was owing to his courage, skill and splendid example that a very critical position was undoubtedly saved. " He bayoneted fifteen of the enemy," " he led the final assault with the utmost skill," " this gallant non-commissioned officer re- peatedly went out under heavy fire and brought wounded back to cover, thus saving many lives," he was " conspicuous in rallying and leading his command " these were things said of the conduct of Acting Corporal John Collins, Royal Welsh Fusiliers (Merthyr Tydvil), who provided yet one more instance of extra- ordinary courage and leadership in the lower ranks in the Army. The corporal's conduct was the more noticeable because, after deploy- ment before an attack, his battalion was forced to lie out in the open under heavy shell and machine-gun fire which caused many casualties. Destructive fire and uncut wire were powerless to restrain him, great odds melted before his powerful plying of the bayonet, and after that exploit with the steel he pressed on with a Lewis gun section beyond the objective and most effectively covered the reorganization and con- solidation, although isolated and under fire from guns and snipers. The same cool leadership and inspiring ex- ample characteri ?ed the acts of Sergeant Harry Coverdale, Manchester Regiment (Old Trafford, Manchester), who in attack on enemy strong points, and when close to his objective, killed an officer and took two men prisoners, the three being snipers ; then he rushed two machine- guns, killing or wounding the teams. Later he reorganized his platoon in order to capture another position ; but after getting within 100 yards of it he was held up by our own bar and forced to return, having sustained nine casualties. Subsequently he again went out with five men to capture this position, but seeing a considerable number of the enemy advancing he withdrew his detachment man by man. He was the last to retire and was able to report that the enemy were forming for a counter-attack. This list of 10 was completed with Private ACTING CORPORAL JOHN COLLINS, Royal Welsh Fusiliers. Thomas Henry Sage, Somersetshire Light Infantry (Tiverton), whose act was the result of great promptness and presence of mind, and nearly cost him his life. He and eight other men were in a shell-hole. One of the men was shot while throwing a bomb. The bomb fell into the shell-hole, and Sage immediately threw himself on it, " thereby undoubtedly saving the lives of several of his comrades, though he himself sustained very severe wounds." The Victoria Cross Warrants had been so framed that it was possible for civilians to win the decoration, and there were three well-known instances of civilian recipients -Mr. Thomas Henry Kavanagh, Mr. Ross Lowis Mangles and Mr. William Fraser McDonell, all members of the Bengal Civil Service ; and all three of whom were awarded the Cross for acts of bravery in the Indian Mutiny in 1857. The original Warrant of January 29, 1856, expressly ordained that the Cross should only be awarded to those officers or men who had served in the 260 '////; 77.VK.S HISTOKY OF THE WAR. presence of the enemy, and that " neither rank. nor long service, nor wounds, nor any other circumstance or condition whatsoever, save the merit of conspicuous bravery " should be held to establish a sufficient claim to the honour. It was undoubtedly open to civilians to win the Cross, but no such award had been made since the days of the Mutiny, nor had there been any clear understanding as to the position of women with regard to the decoration ; and with the purpose of getting information on this most interesting point a question was asked in the House of Commons on December 3, 1917, by Sir A. W. Yeo, the member for Tower Hamlets, Poplar. In reply Mr. Ian Macpherson, Tinder-Secretary for War, said " When a case arises in which a woman performs an action in the circumstances contemplated by the Victoria Cross Warrant consideration will be given to an extension of the conditions. At present the warrant would not, I think, admit of a grant.'' As a matter of fact neither the original Warrant nor the subsequent Warrants of 1867, 1881 and PRIVATE THOMAS H. SAGE, Somersetshire Light Infantry. 1911 provided for such a case as that which had been mentioned, and only time was to show whether one or more members of the army of women who had enrolled for war work would have the unparalleled honour of being awarded the Cross. That noble clause which has been quoted from the original Warrant of the Cross that conspicuous bravery only should establish a claim to the honour was thoroughly exem- plified by details which were given from time to time relating to the personality of the winners All classes alike were in equal fellow- ship ; even more than that there was the man from the lowest depths who, given the chance of redemption, found and took it on the. field of battle. Such a case was mentioned by a well-known criminal lawyer, who wrote : " One of the most notorious of pre-war criminals gave his life for his country in a deed ot gallantry that won for him the posthumous honour of the V.C." SERGEANT HARRY COVERDALE, Manchester Regiment. The following awards of the Victoria Cross were announced between August and the end of December 1917 : ACKBOYD, Temp. Capt. Harold, M.C., M.D., R.A.M.C., attached R. Berkshire Regt. ANDREW, Corpl. Leslie Wilton, Infy. Bn., New Zealand Force. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 251 BABRATT, Pte. Thos., South Staffordshire Regt. (Tipton). BEST-DUNKLEY, Capt. (Temp. Lieut. -Colonel) Bertram, Lancashire Fusiliers. BIRKS, 2nd Lieut. Frederick, Australian Im- perial Force. BISHOP, Capt. Wm. Avery, D.S.O., M.C., Canadian Cavalry and R.F.C. BONNER, Lieut. Charles George, D.S.C., R.N.R. BORTON, Lieut. -Colonel Arthur Drummond, D.S.O., London Regt. BROWN, Pte. Harry, Canadian Inf. Bn. BUGDEN, Pte. Patrick, Australian Imperial Force. BURMAN, Sergt. William Francis, Rifle Brigade (Stepney, E.). BUTLER, Pte. William Boynton, West Yorks. Regt. (Hunslet, Leeds). BYE, Sergt. Robt., Welsh Guards (Penrhiw- ceiber, Glamorgan). CABMICHAEL, Sergt. John, North Staffordshire Regt. (Glasgow). CLAMP, Corpl. William, Yorkshire Regt. (Flem- ington). COFFIN, Lieut. -Colonel (Temp. Brig. -General) Clifford, D.S.O., R.E. COLLINS, Acting-Corpl. John, Royal Welsh Fusiliers (Merthyr Tydvil). COLVIN, 2nd Lieut. Hugh, Cheshire Regt. COLYER-FERGUSSON, 2nd Lieut. (Acting Capt.) Thos. Riversdale, Northamptonshire Regt. COOPER, Sergt. Edward, King's Royal Rifle Corps (Stockton). COVERDALE, Sergt. Harry, Manchester Regt. (Old Trafford, Manchester). CRISP, Skipper Thomas, R.N.R. DANCOX, Pte. Fk. Geo., Worcestershire Regt. (Worcester). DAVIES, Corpl. James Llewellyn, R. Welsh Fusi- liers (Nantymoel, Glamorgan). DAY, Corpl. Sidney James, Suffolk Regt. (Nor- wich). DWYER, Sergt. John Jas., Aus. M.G. Corps, Aus. Imp. Force. EDWARDS, Sergt. Alexander, Seaforth High- landers (Lossiemouth). EDWARDS, Pte. Wilfrid, King's Own Yorks L.I. (Leeds). EGERTON, Corpl. Ernest Albert, Nottingham- shire and Derbyshire Regt. (Longton). EVANS, Major (Acting Lieut. -Colonel) Lewis Pugh, D.S.O., Rov-il Highlanders, command- ing a Battalion Lincolnshire Regt. GRAHAM, Lieut. John Reginald Noble, A. and S Highrs., attached M.G.C. GREAVES, Acting Corpl. Fred, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regt. (Balborough). GRIMBALDESTON, Sergt. (Acting C.Q.M.S.) Wm. H , K.O. Scottish Bord. (Blackburn). HALTON, Pte. Albert, King's Own Royal Lan- caster Regt. (Carnforth). HAMILTON, Pte. (Acting Lee. Corpl.) John Brown, Highland Light Inf. (Lanarkshire). HANNA, Coy. Sergt. -Major R., Canadian Inf. HEWITT, 2nd Lieut. Denis Geo. Wyldbore, Hampshire Regt. HEWITT, Lee. Corpl. William Henry, South African Inf. HOBSON, Sergt. Frederick, Canadian Inf. Bn. HUTT, Pte. Arthur, Royal Warwickshire Regt (Earlsdon, Coventry). INWOOD, Pte. Reginald Roy, Australian Imperial Force. JEFFRIES, Capt. Clarence Smith, Australian Imperial Force. KONOWAL, Acting Corpl. Filip, Canadian Inf. KNIGHT, Sergt. Alfred Joseph, London Regt. (Nottingham). LAFONE, Major Alexander Malius, Yeomanry. LEARMOUTH, Capt. (acting Major) Okill Massey, M.C., Canadian Inf. LOOSEMOBE, Pte. Arnold, West Riding Regt. (Sheffield). LISTER, Sergt. Joseph, Lancashire Fusiliers (Reddish, Stockport). McGEE, Sergt. Lewis, Australian Imp. Force. MclNTOSH, Pte. Geo., Gordon Highlanders, Buckie, Banffshire. MAYSON, Corpl. (Lee. Sergt.) Tom Fletcher, R. Lancaster R. (Silecpurt, Cumberland). MELVIN, Pte. Charles, Royal Highlanders (Kirriemuir). MOLYNEUX, Sergt. John, Royal Fusiliers (St. Helens). MOOBE, 2nd Lieut. Montagu Shadworth Sey- mour, Hampshire Regt. MOYNEY, Lee. Sergt. John, Irish Guards (Rath- downey, Queen's County). MUGFORD, Lee. Corpl. Harold, M.G. Corps (East Ham,). OCKENDEN, Sergt. James, Royal' Dublin Fusi- liers (Southsea). O'RouBKE, Pte. Michael James, Canadian Inf. 252 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. PARSONS, Temp. 2nd Lieut. Hardy Falconer, Gloucestershire Regt. PEELER, Lee. Corpl. Walter, Australian Imperial Force. PITCHER, Petty Officer Ernest. REES, Sergt. Ivor, South Wales Borderers (Llanelly). REYNOLDS, Temp. Capt. Henry, M.C., Royal Scots. RHODES, Lee. Sergt. John Harold, Grenadier Guards (Tunstall, Staffordshire). ROBERTSON, 2nd Lieut. Clement, Royal West Surrey Regt., S.R. (Temp. Lieut., Acting Capt., Tank Corps). ROOM, Pte. (Acting Lee. Corpl.) Fk. G., Royal Irish Regt. (Bristol). SAGE, Pte. Thos. Hy., Somersetshire Light Inf. (Tiverton). SHANKLAND, Lieut. Robt., Canadian Inf. SKINNER, Sergt. (Acting C.S.M.) John, King's Own Scottish Borderers (Pollokshields, Glas- gow). STRACHAN, Lieut. Hy., M.C., Canadian Cavalry. WATT, Skipper Joseph, R.N.R WITH AM, Pte. Thos., Coldstream Guards (Burn- ley). WOODCOCK, Pte. Thos., Irish Guards (Wigtin, Lancashire). CHAPTER CCXXIX. FOOD CONTROL AND RATIONS IN GREAT BRITAIN. ABUNDANCE DURING Two YEARS OF WAR APPOINTMENT OF FOOD CONTROLLER AT END OF 1916 CAUSES OF SHORTAGE THE RUNCIMAN PUBLIC MEALS ORDER LORD DEVONPORT LORD RHONDDA'S APPOINTMENT PURCHASING POWER OF THE SOVEREIGN MR. J. R. CLYNES A STANDARD NINEPENNY LOAF MAXIMUM PRICES LOCAL COMMITTEES SUGAR CARDS INDIVIDUAL REGISTRATION " VOLUNTARY " RATIONS SHORTAGE OF FATS QUEUES MEAT PRICES MEAT SHORTAGE THE MEAT RATIONING SCHEME EXPLAINED FIRST EFFECTS OF RATIONING GERMAN EXPERIENCE LORD RHONDDA'S SUCCESS. IT was almost a commonplace before the war, among certain schools of political and economic thought, that an island country which was not self-supporting in food would be in danger of starvation soon after the outbreak of an armed conflict with any large maritime Power. Like so many of the other prophecies which were widely be- lieved in those days this unpleasant forecast was completely falsified by events. The out. standing feature of the food situation as it developed in Great Britain was the insignifi- cance of the interference of military and naval operations with the provisioning of the civilian population during the first two years of hostili- ties. Except for a gradual and sustained up- ward movement of the prices of most of the articles of common consumption there was no food problem in the country until the nations had entered on the third year of war. Up to this point the people of the United Kingdom were in the happy position of being spectators at a distance, and not always perhaps with a clear vision, of the food troubles of enemy countries, and regarded with little more than academic interest the elaborate schemes of rationing by which the enemy Governments sought to overcome those troubles. Vol. XV. Part 190 253 But the situation underwent a perceptible change in the closing months of 1916, and for a variety of reasons, which will be examined more closely later, the problems of supply and distribution began to thrust themselves on the attention of the people and the Govern- ment. To many who had been lulled into security by two years of plenty, the possibility that their daily bread and the rest of the things they ate might not continue to reach them by the same almost automatic process as in normal times came with a little shock, and when they found it difficult to get two or three articles of food in the quantities to which they had been accustomed, they exercised the Englishman's prerogative and made a noise about the matter. It has to be recorded that when first a scarcity of butter, margarine, meat, bacon, cheese and tea caused inconvenience and some actual hardships among the poorer classes, the dis- content which arose was rather out of pro- portion to the burden which the people had to carry. Lord Rhondda, who was then the Food Controller, in a speech made at a meeting of the Aldwych Club, told the " grousers " quite bluntly that what they were speaking of as famine would be regarded as luxury in Ger- many. Even in the forty-fourth month of the 254 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. war the Prime Minister was able to say that there was less hunger in this country than there had been before the war began. To some extent the discontent was not seen in its true perspective. Resentment was created and fed, not so much by the diffi- culty in getting accustomed foods, as by a belief among the working people that unfair distribution enabled the wealthy to get sup- plies without trouble to themselves while the poor were deprived of their share. This im- pression rested on very slender foundations, but it was fostered and spread by men and women with pacifist leanings, and also quite honestly by less flabby speakers, who believed that the disparity they described existed, and whose sole wish was to remedy a supposed injustice. Complaints would have been fewer if the scarcity had come earlier in the war. The pinch was suddenly felt at a time when the strain of three years of unremitting toil, the draining of the man-power resources of the country, and the losses in the field which left few people untouched, had " dulled the enthu- siasm for sacrifice " and created a sense of weariness. It was not a weariness that brought the nation to any thought of peace without victory, but it made life less buoyant, and men and women less able to take up an addition to their cares. Out of the situation as it developed there arose a popular cry for rationing which gave the necessary impetus to a demand con- sistently advanced much earlier by those who realized how vital an influence the food question might have in turning the balance between victory and disaster. It was not, however, until the beginning of 1918 that the Govern- ment definitely sanctioned the putting into operation of a national scheme to restrict and regularize the consumption of foods of which a seal-city had arisen. Even then, in spite of vague assurances given and repeated at fre- quent intervals of the existence of a carefully thought-out plan, the machinery for rationing was not. ready, or had not got beyond the stage of experiment, and the national system had to follow upon the gradual fusion and extension of local schemes started in industrial areas where a dearth of supplies and labour pressure had compelled the authorities to take action. The reluctance of the Government to resort to rationing may have been partly prompted by a desire to avoid encouraging the enemy in hopes of success for his " ruthless " sub- marine campaign, but it was also an outcome of the great achievement of the Navy and the British Mercantile Marine in maintaining month after month, and year after year, the transport of meat and grain, oils and fats, tea and sugar, from all parts of the world, to British ports. Many fine ships and much valuable food went to the bottom of the sea, but, in a greater degree than these losses, it was the world shortage due to diminished harvests and decreased production that brought men to take thought of the danger that the people's bread might fail. The soar- city of butter and margarine, and the sudden diminution of the meat supplies -two things which made rationing inevitable had their origin more in the exigencies of war policy and mistakes in the exercise of food control than in the attacks of the German submarines. Had the duration of the war been less pro- longed, and the means of defence against the development of the submarine more effective, the triumph of our seamen would have been complete. Although the United Kingdom in the days of peace produced only a little over a third of the food necessary for the existence of the population, and the closing of the sea would have meant, as the theorists had told us, starvation and surrender within a period measured by months, the outstanding fact of the first two years of the war was that a scarcity of food was not felt at all, and that the working classes, with higher wages, actually enjoyed better and more substantial meals than they had been able to obtain in normal times. When at length certain shortages developed, they were felt severely, but through the skilful use of the available tonnage tho actual fall in imports late in 1917 compared with peace-time figures was only 4 per cent. If it is stated that, apart from supplying the needs of the civil population at home, the shipping problem included the service of our armies in many theatres of war, and the partial provisioning of our Allies, the extent of the national indebtedness to the men who guarded or sailed the seas may in some sense be measured. Notwithstanding this, the Government cannot be acquitted of blame for carrying optimism to the extent of deferring even effective organi- zation for rationing the nation until rationing was practically thrust on them by industrial areas whers the food situation had become acute. There was probably a third cause influencing the hesitation and distrust with THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 255 which the Government viewed rationing pro- posals. Great Britain is a democracy, and a democracy " peculiarly intolerant of precise regulations in the home." Ministers feared the possible effect of any official interference with the nation's habits. A bureaucracy like Ger- many could ignore what is known as public opinion, and develop its plans accordingly. In Great Britain, a Government nervous about the way in which the public might regard the inconvenience and dimciilties; of rationing, once again trailed unwillingly in the rtar of be dealt with merely by the making of speeches urging national economy. On November 17 of that year wide powers were conferred on the Board of Trade for the control of the manu- facture, sale, and use of food, and in the exercise of these powers Mr. Runciman issued on November 20 a Milling Order which made obligatory a 76% extraction of flour from wheat. This very modest step was followed on December 5 by the first Public Meals Order, which put a limitation on the number of courses that might be served at luncheon and dinner DEMONSTRATION OF MANCHESTER WORKERS IN FAVOUR OF COMPULSORY RATIONING JANUARY 26, 1918. that opinion, and had suddenly to recognize that people demanded that they should be rationed. Several months were then occupied in building the foundations on which national rationing might be based, and in developing ft scheme out of the pioneer experiments tested locally. Food control in Great Britain did not take definite form until the end of 1916. In Chapter CXCII it was shown that Mr. Asquith's Government, shortly before its fall, was com- pelled, " largely as the result of a Press cam- paign," to recognize that a situation which was beginning to cause uneasiness could not in hotels, restaurants and clubs. Then Mr. Lloyd George became Prime Minister, and made the establishment of a Food Controller one of his first actions. He chose Lord Devonport for the position and gave him what at the time was regarded as a comparatively free hand to seek a solution for the problem which had arisen. Lord Devonport held office foi about five months. Soon after his appoint- ment the position in regard to the national reserve of cereals became acute and people of foresight began to urge the advisability of compulsory rationing. It was announced that the necessary machinery for rationing would 1902 256 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL FOR SOLDIERS. The Food Production Department of the Board of Agriculture opened a school for soldiers of low medical classification, many of whom had seen service at the front. be prepared, but neither the machinery nor a plan for rationing ever reached such a stage under tho first Food Controller that details could be made public. The policy of the Department was more effectively directed to checking the consumption of wheat by increas- ing the extraction of flour from the grain, making an admixture of flour milled from other cereals compulsory, prohibiting the sale of new bread, and similar measures. At the same time an appeal was made for the voluntary observance of a rationed scale of consumption of bread, meat and sugar, and a Food Economy Campaign, organized by Mr. Kennedy Jones, M.P., carried this appeal through the country, with the result that a good many people, chiefly of the upper and professional classes, regulated their housekeeping on the basis suggested to them. There is no evidence that the really heavy eaters of bread men engaged on industrial and agricultural work made any attempt to economize, either in food or anything else which increased earnings brought within their reach. The inherent weakness of the scale was that it imposed a flat rate, so that a worker accustomed to eating eight to ten pounds of bread in a week regarded the sug- gestion that he should cut down his consumption to four pounds as stupid, and ignored the appeal altogether. Later the appeal took the form of a request that everybody should reduce the consumption of bread by one pound a week, but by this time it was fairly well known that the reserves of grain had been considerably augmented and that real danger had for the time been averted, Lord Devonport did not add greatly to his reputation by his service as a Minister and his resignation of office caused few regrets. But much of the work he did was good. His busi- ness knowledge and energies were chiefly centred on supply, and by exerting pressure on the Government to provide shipping to bring more food into the country, encouraging pro- duction at home, and taking various measures to get all the bread possible from the wheat which could be sent to the mills, he removed the threat of a bread famine, prepared the way for the bountiful potato harvest lifted in the autumn of 1917, and saw the stocks of cattle and sheep raised to a reassuring figure. These were achievements, however, of which the public at the tune had little knowledge, and meanwhile Lord Devonport and the Government in the spring of 1917 had become the targets for sharp criticism arising out of resentment at the inflation of the price of many articles of food. There was a widespread conviction that the steadily rising cost of meat, vegetables, bread and other essentials could be attributed to the taking of unreasonable profits by the producers, wholesale dealers or THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 25? retailers, through whom food reached the consumer. Lord Devonport made one or two rather timid attempts to stem the upward rush of prices, but his experiments were either made too late as in the days of a dearth of potatoes or lacked boldness. At a time when popular dissatisfaction over " profiteering " had become so marked that it could not be ignored by the Government, Lord Devonport resigned his post. It is the purpose of this chapter to describe the gradual development of the situation which led to the adoption of compulsory food rationing and to deal with the experiments in local ration- ing which were the foundation of a national scheme. For this reason it must be concerned with the activities and policy of the second Food Controller, Lord Bhondda, rather than the first, and no more need be said of Lord Devonport except that his one constructive contribution to rationing was a revised Public Meals Order which substituted for Mr. Runci- inan's limitation of the number of courses which could be served in an hotel or restaurant a well-thought-out system of rationing by bulk. The details of this system and some account of other orders put into operation while Lord Devonport held office were given in Chapter CXCII. For some time after Lord Devonport had asked to be relieved of his office there was considerable doubt as to who would be his successor. The task to be taken up was a difficult and a thankless one ; it promised no reward, and ambitious politicians showed no eagerness to compete for a position which might lay upon them the fetters of failure. Even Labour fought shy of the appointment, although the War Emergency Workers' National Committee a body representing the various sections of the Labour, Cooperative and Industrial Women's Movement had on May 12 published a comprehensive " draft " policy on the question of food supply. In a modified form much of this policy was carried into effect later in the year by a " capitalist " peer. The things demanded were : GOVERNMENT POLICY. (a) The purchaso of all essential imported foodstuffs. (6) The commandeering or controlling of all home- grown food products such as wheat, meat, oats, barley, potatoes, and milk. (c) The commandeering of ships and the control of transport facilitios. (d) The placing on the retail markets of all supplies BO obtained and controlled at prices which will secure ETON BOYS AT WORK IN THE POTATO FIELD. 258 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. the full benefit of Government action to t hn consumer ; imu tin- proportional regulation, on a family basis, of tho salo of any foodstuffs in which there is a shortage of supplies. (*) The selling of lirrad aiul flour for the period of the war and six months afterward* at a price not ex- ceeding 6J. per quartern loaf. any loss HO involved to be met as a portion of tho general cost of tho war. MUNICIPAL POLICY. Powers to be given to municipal, urban, and other local authorities to M-I up.-poeial food control committees, to which shall bo co-opted representatives of Labour, cooperative and industrial women's organizations, for the purpose of supervising the registration of consumers, tho equitable local distribution of foodstuffs, and thi- institution of municipal food service. for nearly six months, and by his energy and freedom from " departmentalism " had raised that Department to a high pitch of efficiency. Before joining the Government he was Managing Director of the Cambrian Combine and other colliery companies in South Wales, and VVMS regarded as a business man first and a House of Commons ma.n afterwards. At the time of his change of office it was said of him in The Times (June 16, 1917): "He is a believer in direct methods and may be trusted to bring 1" Times" phot graph LORD RHONDDA AT HIS DESK AT THE MINISTRY OF FOOD. One of the men invited by the Prime Minister to become Food Controller was Mr. Robert Smillie, President of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, an able Labour leader, but a bitter critic of the Government. Mr. Smillie was assured that if he took the post he would have full power over the distribution and over the fixing of prices of food, but he refused to accept the responsibility of constructive work. Eventually, on June 15, Mr. Bonar Law announced in the House of Commons that Lord Rhondda had consented to go to the Food .Ministry. Lord Rhondda had then been Proxidrnt of the Local Government Board to the uneasy task of food control not only wide understanding of commercial and business conditions, but energy and freedom from pre- conceived ideas." Experience of his adminis- tration showed that Lord Rhondda added to this equipment a sense of humour, a knowledge of how to handle men, readiness to receive and weigh the advice of others, and what he him- self would have called a " thick skin." He made it quite clear when he consented to be- come Food Controller that he did so only at the pressing request of the Prime Minister, but having committed himself to the work he set out vigorously to carry his ideas into effect. The THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR 259 intentions with which he assumed office can be summarized from a statement made on June 17 : I have been given very ample authority by the Government to deal with the whole situation. I am empowered, should I find it necessary, to take over the food supplies of the country and to adopt strong measures to check all speculation in the necessities of life. . . . My first action will be directed towards securing a reduct ion in the price of bread. This I consider to be the urgent need of the moment. I intend to be as fair as the conditions of war will permit, but frankly my sympathies are with the consumer. I want the help of local authorities in the matter of distribution, and I confidently count on the advice and active help of the cooperative societies and other distributing agencies. This was followed a week later by an official statement which gave an indication of the lines on which Lord Rhondda intended to work in seeking to reduce the existing high prices. The declaration was in the following form : Lord Rhondda has decided that, in order to limit further rises in the prices of the more important food- stuffs and as far as possible to reduce the present level of prices, it will be necessary to institute much stricter and more complete measures of control in the industries engaged in the production of foodstuffs. Maximum prices require to be enforced by strict control through the producer and the retailer, with the object of limiting profits at every stage of production and distribution to a fair remuneration for services rendered. The first step is to determine the costs of production and handling. For this purpose the Food Controller has already taken stops to sot up a Costings Department in the Ministry of Food, consisting of highly skilled accountants, who will have full powers to examine books and obtain all particulars which may assist him to arrive at accurate figures as to costs. The object of control will be to fix prices by reference to actual costs with the addition of the normal pre-war rate of profit independent of market fluctuations in the manner which has already enabled the Army authorities to purchase many of their essential supplies at prices considerably below the market prices ruling for civil consumption. Nothing could have been more to the public mind than that the new Food Controller should devote himself to the consideration of food prices. A man at this period would have needed to be deaf and unable to read to escape the conclusion that people of all classes were looking to Lord Rhondda to give them cheaper food. The following table shows the rise in the cost of living up to July 1, 1917, and the reduced purchasing power of the sovereign spent on food in the large towns of the United Kingdom during the war : 1904 ... 1914. July August 8 August 29 September 12 September 30 October 30 December 1 Coit of one week's fo3d for family. s. d. . 22 25 29 27 27 28 28 29 Percentage increase above July 1914. 16 per cent. 11 11 13 13 17 .. Purchasing power of a sovereign spent on food. s. d. 20 17 18 18 17 17 17 1915. a. d- s. d. January 1 ... 29 9 ... 19 per cent. ... 16 10 February 1 ... 30 9 ... 23 ... 16 3 March I ... 31 6 ... 26 ., ... 15 10 April 1 ... 31 6 ... 26 ... 15 10 May 1 ... 32 ... 28 ... 15 7 June 1 ... 33 9 ... 35 ... 14 10 July 1 ... 33 9 ... 35 ... 14 10 August 1 ... 34 ... 36 ... 14 8 September 1 ... 34 3 ... 37 ... 14 7 October 1 ... 35 6 ... 42 ... 14 1 November 1 ... 35 9 ... 43 ... 14 December 1 ... 36 6 ... 46 ... 13 8 January 1 ... 37 ... 48 ... 13 6 February 1 ... 37 3 ... 49 ... 13 5 March 1 ... 37 9 ... 51 ... 13 3 April 1 ... 38 ... 52 ... 13 2 May 1 ... 39 9 ... 59 ... 12 7 June 1 ... 40 6 ... 62 ... 12 4 July 1 ... 41 3 ... 65 ... 12 1 August 1 ... 40' 6 ... 62 ... 12 4 September 1 ... 42 ... 68 ... 11 11 October 1 ... 42 9 ... 71 ... 11 8 November 1 ... 45 3 ... 81 ... 11 December 1 ... 46 9 ... 87 ,. ... 10 8 1917. January 1 ... 47 9 ... 91 ... 10 5 February 1 ... 48 3 ... 93 ... 10 4 March 1 ... 49 3 ... 97 ... 10 2 April 1 ... 49 9 ... 99 ... 10 May 1 ... 50 6 ... 102 9 11 June 1 ... 51 6 ... 106 9 8 July 1 ... 52 3 ... 109 ... 9 6 While the advance in prices applied to nearly every article of general consumption luxury foods, chiefly owing to the fall in the demand, alone escaped the increase popular unrest mainly arose out of the heavy cost of bread and meat. In the summer of 1917 the price of the quartern loaf had risen to one shilling compared with a normal price of 6d. The advance in meat prices is shown in the following figures, contrasting the wholesale prices pre- vailing at the London Central Markets on June 25, 1914, with the quotation on June 24, 1917. The prices were per stone of 8 Ib. : 1914 1917 Beef Scotch sides ... 4s, English ... ... 4s American Forequartors, chilled .. Mutton Scotch 6s English 3s Australian ... 2s Lamb English 5s Scotch 6s Australian ... 3s 6d. to 5s. 2d. I0i. 8d. to 1 Is. Id. 2d. to 4s. 5d. I0.<. 3d. 2s. 2d. to 2s. 4d. Od. to 6s. 4d. 6d. to 4s. Od. 2d. to 2a. 8d. 8d. to 6s. 8d. Od. to 7s. Od. 6d. to 4s. Od. 7s. 3d. 11s. 5d. lls. Id. 6s. Id. 1.1s. 6d. 12s. Od. 7s. Od. To enable him to deal with speculation and profiteering wherever it was established that these evils existed, Lord Rhondda, soon after he had taken office, obtained by Order in Council powers similar to those already possessed by the Army Council, the Admiralty and the 260 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. Ministry of Munitions, for the requisitioning of supplies and the control of prices. These powers as exercised by the Departments named had resulted in extensive economies of public money. As applied to food supplies they enabled Lord Rhondda to requisition the whole or part of the output of any factory and to apply a price based on the cost of production, with the addition of a reasonable pre-war rate of profit, without regard to the price ruling in the open market. Authority was given to the Food Controller to examine books and to ascertain such particulars as to output, cost, and rate of profit as might be required for fixing a reasonable price. Mr. U. F. Wintour, C.B., C.M.G., who as Director of Army Con- tracts had been concerned with the practical application of such a system, was appointed Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Food, and Mr. E. F. Wise, who had had charge of the section of the Army Contracts Department which dealt with the control of raw materials required for clothing and equipping the Army, was also brought in as an assistant secretary. Early in July Lord Rhondda secured as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food, Mr. J. R. Clynes, the Labour M.P. for North-East Manchester. In this way the Labour movement became directly associated with food control, and in Mr. Clynes gave one of its soundest and most efficient representatives to the task. Within the limitations of his. subordinate office, Mr. Clynes from the first did valuable work, and not only as an adminis- trator, but as a moderating influence in the councils of his own working-class organizations, he served his country well. A slightly-built, delicate, studious man, passionately but sanely concerned with the interests of the masses of the people and the betterment of their conditions of life, he talked little, but worked incessantly to render what good he* could to his fellows. As a member of the Government he achieved a rare success ; he retained the confidence of Labour and gained the ardent loyalty and admiration of the permanent officials some of them conservative- minded Civil Servants who came under his control. This he did through his transparent sincerity and natural ability. He had no use for official " eyewash," and at the same time he showed scanty toleration for the rhetorical excesses of men who sought to exploit the diffi- culties of the food situation to foment class anta- GIRL MILLERS AT NOTTINGHAM. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 261 gonisms. More than once be had to face the task of quieting at Labour Party and Trade Union conferences a sense of uneasiness and doubt aroused by glib but ill-informed speakers who had tried to convince the delegates that the poor and the workers were suffering through the selfishness of the rich and the class bias of the Government. He never failed to upset the artificial case of the extremists by his quiet but unassailable statements of facts. He took office because he " was satisfied that genuine and drastic measures would be tried to save the situation " as the situation existed when he joined the Ministry, and he found congenial but abundant work in helping to shape and direct those measures. Before the end of July, Lord Bhondda had sufficiently developed his policy to announce that from an early date he would standardize the price of flour in such a way as would enable bread to be sold at 9d. the quartern loaf. This standardizing was effected some weeks later by the grant of a State subsidy, the cost of which was estimated at 40,000,000 a year. In agreement with the Army Council, he had also arranged that the maximum prices for live cattle usually only partially fattened for the Army should be reduced to 74s. per cwt. in September, 72s. in October, 67s. in November, and 60s. in January. The prices represented considerable reductions on those ruling at the time, and they were later made the basis in fixing maximum wholesale prices for meat for civilian consumption. From the first the scale was attacked by those interested in agriculture, and events as they developed showed that the decision to proceed on a falling schedule had a serious effect on the meat supplies of the country ; eventually the necessity for a revision of prices was realized, but, as will be shown later, the rushing into the markets of immature cattle and the reluctance of farmers to fatten stock which would have to be sold at a rate regarded as unremunerative had created a scarcity which called for very drastic restriction of con- sumption. So far as Lord Rhondda's respon- sibility is concerned, it should be said that he stated to a deputation of the Central Chamber of Agriculture that he would have preferred to have fixed a flat price from September onwards and to have compensated farmers who lost money because of the high price they had paid for store cattle, but he was advised that this was impracticable. At the time the prices were fixed no danger of a dearth of meat seemed imminent. A meatless day in public eating places had been revoked, the meat rations in force in the restaurants permitted the con- sumption of no less than 5J Ibs. a head a week ['Times " photograph. MR. J. R. CLYNES. Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food. if customers cared to have it, and the voluntary meat ration for households of 2J Ibs. a head a week proposed by Lord Devonport remained unchanged. The duties of the Food Controller during the war were to economize and maintain supplies, to restrict high prices and excessive profits, and to secure equality of distribution where scarcity was found to exist. Public interest in the third summer of the war, however, when the tension in regard to the wheat reserves had been temporarily relieved and the Director of Food Economy, Mr. Kennedy Jones, M.P., after a few months' work, had resigned his position and described his work as done, was centred not on supplies or even distribution, but on prices, and the Government and Lord Bhondda were concerned above everything else in taking steps to allay the discontent caused by the high cost of living. For a period a large proportion of the orders issued by the Minister of Food were solely concerned with price fixing and securing the control over supplies which made fixed prices possible. Eventually there were scarcely any 262 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. foods, except vegetables, the retail cost of which was not regulated. The following schedule gives the maximum prices which prevailed early in 1918 for some of the con- trolled articles : BREAD. s. d. 4lb. loaf 21b. loaf 4J I Ib. loaf 2J FLOUR. IVr 14 Mi. 2 8 Thick flan|f steak .. ... . t . Chuck steak Gravy beof Minced beef Sausage to contain not less than 50 per cent, of meat Sa'.isage, 67 per cent. ... Bones Mutton and Lamb : Leg, whole Loin, whole Best end Loin chops, not trimmed Saddles per Ib. 8. d. 1 10 1 8 1 4 1 6 1 3 1 6 2 1 7 1 5 1 8 1 10 1 5 GIRL LAND-WORKERS IN THE LORD MAYOR'S SHOW, 1917. MKAT. perlb. R-rl . d. Ti>,iilr of i-oimil 8 6 7 8 6 7 8 G 6 8 4 3 3 8} 2 2 Buttock steak ... 20 Silvrr>iilr. \\-ilh hone Thick flank Best cut Knurklr end ... Aitch bone ... " Sirloin Thin flank l^o .,rl -K.l Suet \\'inu r rihs, iimr bout'-. ... l.'int; nln Bark ril)^ ....... Top nh- Brisket rlnil mi'l Mirki],-, -ith bone Kutup Rump stoak, bimelns.-, ... Hll.'t steak Shoulders. .. Neck, whole Best end Scrag Best neck chops... Breasts, whole Cut, best end ... Suet Pork: Logs, whole Middle Hnid loin, whole... ... ... ... ... Fore loin or griskin or spare rib, without blade bone Loin, ex back fat Best end Neck end Shoulder, without hock... Blade bone Belly Chops or steaks ... per Ib. s. d. 1 5 1 2 1 6 11 1 8 11 1 1 2 1 6 1 10 1 8 1 8 1 8 1 9 1 7 1 6 1 6 1 7 1 10 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 268 per '*>. per Ib. Pork Continued ; a. d. Sugar: 8 . d . Heads, including tongue 9 Cubes and chips 6} Tongues ... Granulated, crystals, dry white sugar, West ~, haps J 2 Indian'crystal*, etc. . .05} * ock ' 8 Jam: Feet ... ... 4 Tenderloin, without bone I .J. ~1 SStaS"" Z 'J ,0 Pork bones, excluding factory bone 3 Blackberry or greengage ! 10J Sausage, to contam not less than 60 per cent. Raspberry and red currant 11 Raspberry 111 cTTpwT' t0 C ntain " Ot 16SS tha " 5 ^ 1 4 Apricot, "black currant, strawberry, or cherry 1 Pickled pork could be sold at Id per Ib. above fresh ft hfts faeen mentioned thftt the 9( j , oaf pork pnces, but must not be sold as bacon. Rabbits, skinned, each 1 9 could be made possible only by a Government Perlb 10 subsidy. A further subsidy was required to 5H ' Whole fish. Cuts, give the farmers a guaranteed price of 6 per Ib. perib. to 6 10s. a ton for the 1917 potato crop. Bream (fresh and salt water) ... l"' <?' After the failure of Supplies in the spring of the Brill 26 33 year the Government sought to persuade ^ - | * growers to put all the land they could under Dabs I 3 potatoes, and as an inducement gave a pledge Dogfish (skinned or filleted) ... l o that the selling price should not fall below a John Dory ...... 13 Eels (freshwater) 2 certain level. The intention was that the Eels (conger) 10 14 public should pay this guaranteed price, but Gra"";!, the Cr P WaS SO heavy that the ""PP^ exceeded Gurnards ... 10 ^ ie demand, and the farmers could not dispose Haddock ... ..13 l 10 of their stocks at the official minimum rate. Ha l ibut 26 3 ; To avo 'd w a st e the Food Controller undertook Herrings (fresh) o 8 to supply bakers with potatoes to be used with ,'"'" ' 8 flour in the manufacture of bread at a price Mackerel 8 Mullet, Red 30 of 3 10s. a ton, and made up the difference to Gre y the growers. The subsidy was also given in Pike or Jack 14 i 10 respect of other sales under the guaranteed Pilchards ... ... ... ... o 8 rates. In many ways the procedure was not satisfactory, and when in 1918 it again became Salmon (including grilse) 30 40 Skate (Wings) 14 16 desirable that the largest possible crop of Soles and Slips 3 6 potatoes should be raised a fresh arrangement Soles (Lemon) ... ...... 2 . . , , . ,. g rats g was made. The chief objection to the 1917 Tench l 4 scheme was that while it guaranteed the Trout (fresh and saltwater after farmer certain price it did not guarant ee a Februarys) ,.. 30 40 Turbot 26 33 certain market, but exception was also taken Whiting 13 to the fixing of a flat rate which did not take Smoked Cod 20 . . ... Smoked Haddock 2 o lnto a 0601111 * quality, the place where the Kippered Herrings 1 o potatoes were grown, or the time when they Bloatered Herrings... ..'. 10 were delivered. Under Lord Rhondda's plan Frozen Salmon 22 29 freedom in the matter ot price was left to the Butter, per Ib. ... ... ... ... ... 2 6 ,. , -, ,, , c XT farmer until the beginning of November. Margarine, per Ib. ... ... ... ... 1 to 1 4 Government cheese, per Ib. 14 After November 1 the Food Controller was to Milk, per gallon 2 8 take over the whole of the remaining crop in Tea, per Ib 2 8 Coftee (roasted), per Ib I 6 to 2 6 Grea t Britain at a price to be assessed on the Chocolate, per oz. ... ... ... ... ... 3 basis of the yield, the quality of the potato, the Potatoes, per stone of 14 Ib 7d. to 1 5 ^^j where j Wftg ftnd ^ time Qf per Ib. Onions, British 3 delivery; and which would ensure that the l-i'MtiN average price for the lowest quality would not Maize ... ... ... ... ... ... 3i _, Oatmeal 4J ^' below 5 15s. per ton in England and Rice 4 5 5s. per ton in Scotland. For better varieties Peas, blue and green 9 proportionate increase in price was promised. White haricot beans ... ... ... ... 6 Large butter beans o 8 and for potatoes grown on acreage in excess 1903 264 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. of the total acreage under potatoes on any farm in 1910 specially attractive prices were offered. Some indication of the activity of the Food Controller's Department may be gathered from the fact that during 1917 over 180 orders and general licences were issued by Lord Devonport and Lord Rhondda, and of these more than 130 remained in force or were coming into force at the end of the year. Even before Lord Devonport gave up office it had become apparent that the duties of the Ministry were too numerous and too general for food control to be efficiently exercised by a central body acting alone. The task of ensuring that the ever-growing volume of regulations were properly applied and observed called for local administration. At the Local Government Board Lord Rhondda had shown himself to be a firm believer in decentralization, and before he had been Food Controller many weeks the Government had decided to entrust to local authorities important duties in connexion with the distribution and prices of foodstuffs and with the maintenance of national economy in their consumption. In thus decentralizing food control work Lord Rhondda had to choose between appointing local committees himself and entrusting their appointment to such bodies as borough, urban, and rural district councils. He took the latter course, largely because it allowed of a considerable measure of popular control over the appointment and proceedings of the committees. While avoiding any dictation to local authorities in detail of the lines on which the committee should be chosen, he gave them a strong lead in policy in the circulars he issued. It will be the first duty of the Committee Ihe wrote] to safeguard the interests of the consumers, and this should be borne in mind at the time of its appointment. It will be provided that the Committee must include at leant one representative of labour and one woman. The local authority should also consider the desirability of taking full advantage of the experience and advice of representatives of cooperative societies and other traders in their area. In another circular he said : Lord Rhondda regards it as of the greatest importance that food control committees should secure at the niit-ri the full confidence of the public in their areas and he nix'ns that the interests of the consumer should l.i- tin- tir-t consideration to be borno in mind by local authorities when appointing them. Rather unexpectedly, keen controversy arose over the appointment of the committees. In many districts attempts were made to include among the members a number of local traders, and as it was understood that the committees would have considerable powers in dealing. with food prices strong objection was taken to the election of grocers, butchers, and other shopkeepers, who might naturally be supposed to have an interest in keeping prices at a high level. In some towns the protests led to changes in the constitution of the committees, and to meet the general feeling that the situation required the inter- ference of the Ministry, Lord Rhondda announced that if it could be shown that any Food Control Committee failed in its trust and that the local authority, notwithstanding . this, declined to consider an alteration of its membership, he would be prepared to inter- vene. At the same time he called for a return showing in detail the membership of all the committees, and gave an undertaking to make inquiries into any case in which the intercuts of the private trader seemed to be unduly represented. The chief fault in the appoint- ment of the committees was that they repre- sented in nearly every district the grouping of parties or interests as represented on the local councils. Before the war Labour had obtained only a small representation on these councils, and a system, therefore, which repeated on a reduced scale the constitution of the responsible local authority could hardly fail to cause disappointment and some bitter- ness among the working classes. Eventually the agitation, having partly effected its purpose, died down, and in the course of a few months the committees, to the number of nearly 2,000, were doing their work smoothly, if with varying degrees of energy and thoroughness. When towards the end of the year it became apparent that rationing could no longer be postponed, and, in the continued absence of a national plan, the local committees were invited to put into operation schemes of their own devising, sanction was given to an increase in the membership of the committees so that addi- tional Labour representatives could be appointed. Concurrently with the decision to decen- tralize food control work the Government came to the conclusion that a scheme for the better distribution of sugar must be put into force. From the first days of the war there had been a scarcity of sugar, " due chiefly," as has already been shown, " to the shutting off of imports from enemy sources," and the position instead of improving had steadily THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 265 become worse. Expedients to secure an equitable sharing out of the available supplies had not been entirely successful, and eventually it was recognized that only by a form of rationing could fairness be secured. The sugar distribution scheme may be regarded as the first real test of food rationing in Great Britain. Before it came into operation on December 31, 1917, a few food control com- mittees had found it necessary to ration tea, butter, and margarine in their own dis- tricts, but these local schemes at that time covered a very small percentage of the popu- tered customers whose cards had been deposited with him. (c) Caterers of all kinds wore to have their supplies regulated after consideration of the number of meals ordinarily served and the sugar they normally used. (d) Institutions would hove their supplies of sugar regulated in accordance with the number of residents or the number of meals served. (e) Manufacturers would have their supplies of sugar regulated according to any restrictions imposed on their use of sugar. (/) Begistered retailers were to have their supplies of sugar regulated in accordance with the number of their registered customers and the quantities of sugar any caterers, institutions, or manufacturers were authorized to buy from them. (g) Wholesalers were to have their supplies regulated in accordance with th uantities which registered INDEXING APPLICATIONS FOR SUGAR CARDS AT THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE. lation. Five months' preparation was needed to set up the machinery of sugar rationing, and even then controlled distribution had to be started with hundreds of thousands of people unaware that rationing with its res- trictive regulations and obligations was to be introduced. The main features of the scheme as it was originally drawn up were as follows : (a) No sugar was to bo sold retail except by retailers registered by a local Food Control Committee. (5) Every household was to obtain from the local food office a sugar registration card to cover all members of the household not in receipt of Government rations. A portion of this card was to be deposited by the house- holder with the registered retailor he selected for the purpose. ^ The retailor, when the scheme came into operation, would bo required to give preference to regis- rotailors, caterers, institutions, and manufacturers or other wholesalers were authorised to obtain from them. Application forms for sugar cards were sent out to householders about the end of September. The system then contemplated, as indicated in paragraph (6) above, was one of family registration and family tickets. One sugar registration card was to be issued by the local food office in response to every valid application, and was to cover the number of persons named in the application. The application forms were duly filled in, except by a considerable minority of the population, which, in spite of newspaper announcements 2fif. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. C/3 z ta S BE] X and the lavish display of posters ou hoardings, appeared to have no knowledge of the scheme, and towards the end of October the registra- tion cards were distributed to those people who had succeeded in filling up the forms accurately. An amazing number of the forms, however, were useless as returned, owing to the failure of householders to understand what they were required to do. Thousands of applicants instead of writing their own address on the line indicated for the purpose copied a fictitious address printed en posters or leaflets as a guide to the public. Further thousands D O Q < a I Z o X CC _] J ae t- Z O o o X a E gave no address at all, and every possible variety of error or omission that could be imagined was perpetrated. If the public blundered, the Department added its own share to the confusion. When the con- sumers, the retailers, and everyone else had grown accustomed to the idea of the family card, the system was suddenly thrown over in favour of individual registration, and individual cards or ration papers. The mistake did not lie in the decision to adopt a more complicated but more efficient system, but in the time and money wasted in the THE TIMES HISTOEY OF THE WAR. 267 preparation for distribution through the tamily and not the individual. For some time the officials were at no pains to make it clear that a sweeping change had been decided upon. It was announced that people who had not obtained cards must apply through the Post Office for sugar ration papers, and it was indicated that those who removed must also exchange an individual card for a ration paper with coupons. What was partially obscured for some time was that the first scheme had been " scrapped," that new application forms had to be obtained, additional information given to the food control committees, and a separate card obtained for each member of the household. When the adoption of this new plan was realized sharp criticism was heard of the Department, and while some of the strongest abuse had a political motive and was aimed at the Government as a whole rather than the Food Ministry, a general impression prevailed that the discovery that the family system of registration would prove ineffective might have been made earlier if more care had been given to the consideration of the matter. When the merits of the family and the individual cards respectively were examined, the latter at once appeared sounder and more flexible. The one question asked was why Lord Rhondda's officials had taken so long to realize how much the better it was of the two systems. The advantages of individual registration were really more marked than could be sus- pected by those who were unaware of the full importance of the information demanded on the new application papers. Many people were puzzled to know why the authorities must be told the day, month, and year of birth of each member of a family. Women resented what they called the " impertinence " of questions which required them to disclose their age, and an assurance had to be given that the information would be regarded as strictly confidential and would be used only for official purposes. The date of birth supplied on the forms enabled the authorities to make use of an ingenious form of index of the cards issued, so that quick reference could be made to a card at any moment. The system made fraud easy to detect ; certain discovery awaited any attempt to put in duplicate applications. A staff of 800 girls was installed at the Imperial Institute to compile the index, send out ration papers, and deal with removals and births and deaths. Every application after it had been dealt with was filed according to the day of birth and the first letter of the surname, and this had the effect of bringing each paper into a bundle which, on the average, did not include more than 220 forms. In spite of the labour involved by the eleventh hour change of plans, the work was carried through with such expedition that on the day appointed sugar rationing came into effect. Large numbers of people at the time had not received either cards or ration papers, but a start with the way only three-parts prepared was regarded as better policy than delay in the hope of achieving perfection. Events justified the decision to go ahead. Against the temporary inconvenience caused to a minority and a busy period during which the position of the people without cards had to be regularized, must be set the undoubted fact that the complicated machinery of the scheme worked with comparative smoothness from the first week. For this the section of the Ministry of Food which carried through the work should be given the credit it undoubtedly earned. The ration of sugar allowed for each member of a household was half a pound a week and this quantity was success- fully distributed. Before the scheme came into force no one could be sure of obtaining in any week so much as half a pound of sugar. Some people got more ; some got less. With distribution controlled from the importer to the consumer, everyone was quickly assured of his equitable share of the supplies. When a scheme for sugar rationing was first announced there was no indication that a scarcity of other foods was imminent. By the end of November of 1917, however, the distribution of butter, margarine, and tea had partially broken down and all over the country people were finding it necessary to hunt around to get even a part of the supplies of these articles to which they had been accustomed At this time a new Director of Food Economy Sir Arthur Yapp, the efficient and resourceful secretary of the Y.M.C.A. had undertaken at the request of Mr. Lloyd George to organize a second campaign to secure a reduction, by voluntary determination, of the consumption of cereals, fats, and meat. A new scale of voluntary rations, calculated on scientific lines, and ostensibly based on the available or visible supplies of the rationed articles, had been drawn up and submitted for 268 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. general observance. The scale differed very materially from that put forward in the first months of the year by Lord Devoiiport, and wu* in tin- following terms: \\EEKLY K vnON. BREAD. Ib. oz. Men on heavy industrial work or agricultural work 8 Wen on ordinary industrial or other manual work 7 Men unoccupied or on sedentary work ... ... 4 8 Women on heavy industrial or agricultural work 5 Women on ordinary industrial work or in domestic service ... ... ... ... ... 4 Women unoccupied or on sedentary work ... :< 8 OTHER FOODS. (For all adults.) Cereals, other than bread 12 Meat '2 Butter, margarine, lard, oils, and fate ... ... 10 Sugar 8 No definite scale was at first laid down for children, but it was suggested that they should receive " reasonable " rations. Mothers, puzzled to know how much to order, generally interpreted " reasonable " as being the quantity required to satisfy fully the appetities of their growing boys and girls, and the broad tendency of the scheme was to increase considerably the total authorized consumption of bread. The new scale served the purpose of " tiding over an interval," and as a considered experiment furnished useful guidance when compulsory rationing plans had to be prepared. The scale was published on November 13. By the end of the month the majority of the people were finding difficulty in getting fats even in smaller quantities than the 10 oz. a head laid down as the voluntary weekly ration. Butter and margarine queues were reported in The Times of December 1 not only in the poorer districts of London but in the middle-class suburbs as well. From the industrial districts of South Wales came accounts of women standing in queues for four and five hours to get supplies ; the situation was equally serious in the North. On December 4 a deputation of women from all parts of the country, headed by Mrs, Drummond, waited on Lord Rhondda to urge the necessity of compulsory rations. Lord Rhondda in his reply said that the decision whether there should be compulsory rationing or not did not finally rest with him, but it is certain that at this time rationing had come within the circle of practical politics, and officials of the Ministry were giving serious attention to the question. BLENDING AND PACKING MARGARINE. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 269 A BUTTER QUEUE AT TONYPANDY IN THE WINTER OF 1917. The shortage of fats took the country by surprise, and it is probable that the Food Control Department was also unprepared for the situation as it showed itself. Otherwise a voluntary fat ration of 10 ounces weekly for each person would never have been sanctioned on the, eve of the scarcity being felt, and considered measures rather than expedients would have been available to meet the danger of the queues. The shortage was due to several causes. Submarine activity temporarily held up supplies of margarine from Holland ; our block- ade of Germany involved interference with the supply of feeding stuffs for Scandinavian cattle, with the result that the export of agricultural produce from the Northern coun- tries had to be reduced ; British farmers were able to obtain only limited quantities of feeding stuffs for their own stock; and British margarine factories were too few in number to yield an output which would make up for the falling off in imported fats and the decrease in the home manufacture of butter. By the middle of December the available supplies from all quarters were barely sufficient to provide four ounces of margarine and one ounce of butter a week per head of the population. Unequal distribution and the determination of the greedy to get more than their share resulted in many families failing to obtain either butter or margarine, even in the smallest quantities. During the weeks before Lord Rhondda took action to check the evil the only alternative to going without these foods was to stand for hours outside the provision shops. In The Times of December 17, 1917, it was pointed out in a leading article that over and above the vast collective loss of time and energy which the weary waiting repre- sented, the queues were obviously a fertile source of grumbling and discontent. " We see that Lord Rhondda attributes them," the article continued, " to the shortness of certain articles of consumption ! If that were the whole story, we can only say that they provide the most complete argument for compulsory rationing in these particular articles, though his attitude hardly suggests that he realizes it. But in point of fact the queue is sometimes at least as much the consequence of failure in distribution as of failure in stocks. In certain communities the stocks are there in bulk and the money is there in the pockets of would-be purchasers to pay for them. What is lacking IIIXTOKY or THE WAR. COMMANDEERING MARGAR1NK FROM A MULTIPLE SHOP FOR DISTRIBUTION BY OTHER RETAILERS. is the ordinary channel from one to the other, the result of the calling up of shop-assistants, the absence of storage accommodation in small shops and the general curtailment of all facilities for transport. Half the trouble would be at an end in these cases if the existing stocks could be placed in the hands of a larger number of dealers, and if there were machinery for bringing them from these dealers to the homes of the people." A few days later Lord Rhondda acted on this suggestion to the extent of making an Order which gave powers to the local food committees to control supplies of margarine in their areas, and arrange for equitable distribution to the shops. The chief home manufacturers of margarine consented to ration their shops according to the Food Controller's estimated requirements, and to allocate the surplus to competing retailers iu the same area. Where this was insufficient the local committees made use of their powers to requisition the surplus from any shop which had excessive supplies in relation to the accom- modation it was able to provide for the sale of margarine, and to transfer the surplus to other shops. By this procedure the queues were split up, but the remedy only touched the fringe of the trouble, and large numbers of people continued to obtain more than their share at the expense of others. The queues were very much abused. Women sent out children sometimes four or five from one household to stand in the lines and buy for them. At one period a firm with hundreds of branch shops served out margarine in 2 Ib. parcels, and persistent persons in the queues were able to get six, eight, or more pounds in one day. A business was made of buying margarine to sell at a good profit to those who through illness or unwillingness to waste time would not join ft queue. These " experts " devoted the whole day to roaming from queue to queue, or if the conditions were favourable, to rejoining a queue to get a second supply from one shop. Another evil of the queues was their dangerous psychological effect. The sight of a line of people waiting to buy an article emphasized in the minds of others the fact that there was a food scarcity, with the result that there was a rush to obtain supplies, and the queues were lengthened. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 271 Generally the waiting people were cheerful, but the seed of discontent was in them, and each time the queue had to be used by ordinary decent people to make purchases, the incon- venience and waste of time were more deeply felt. There is evidence, too, that agitators and people who sought to persuade the country to conclude a premature peace were only too ready to use the discontent as an instrument to serve their purpose. Rationing by this time had really become inevitable, and failing national action some of the more enterprising municipal authorities determined to put local schemes of their own devising into operation. The first direct move was made by the Birmingham Corpora- tion, and out of a deputation which waited on Lord Bhondda on December 1 2 there came the system which was ultimately to lead not only to a wide development of similar local plans in all parts of the country but to general compulsory rationing. The deputation, which included the Lord Mayor and other represen- tatives of the Birmingham Food Control Committee, asked for and obtained permission to put into local operation a scheme " to improve the methods of distributing essential food commodities." The proposal was that each household should be supplied with a card, tying him to a particular retailer and entitling him to prescribed rations of tea, butter, and margarine. The sugar card was to be adopted as the basis of supply, and, as far as possible, no retailer would be allowed to register a larger number of customers -than his staff or premises would permit him to serve with reasonable promptitude. It was a tradition in Birmingham that if the municipality set its hand to a task, that task should be carried through with energy, enthusiasm, and efficiency, and within less than three weeks, in spite of the enormous work involved, rationing had been applied to a population of over 1,000,000 people. The scheme, of course, was no brought into operation without a certain amount of confusion. Thousands of people during the first week or 10 days were unable to buy rationed foods because they were without the necessary cards. They had neither regis- tered their names with retailers for the supply of sugar nor made application for a sugar- ration paper, and as the Birmingham scheme was based on the sugar card, their dilatoriness or ignorance deprived them temporarily not SUPPLYING COMMANDEERED MARGARINE TO A SMALL DAIRY FOR DISTRIBUTION 272 THE TIMES HISTOEY OF THE WAR. only of sugar, but of tea and margarine as wll. \Vomen presented themselves at the Birmingham Food Office and with transparent truthfulness told the clerks that they had never heard anything about a sugar card. The inquiries dealt with by the Food Com- mittee's officials in six days numbered more than 50,000. In innumerable cases women had lost their sugar cards, and beyond this in the short period of 10 days 1,000 or so people had actually lost their tea and mar- garine cards. There were further complica- tions caused by domestic servants changing their situations, lodgers moving into fresh apartments, and other problems. Still another difficulty arose through the very large number of small retailers, who, with a limited business, had been in the habit of getting supplies from two, three, or even more wholesalers. Returns made during a period of eight weeks showed that in that time one shopkeeper sold 19 Ib. of tea taken from five wholesale firms, and there were dozens of similar instances of a lack of coordination and regulation in distribution. It must be said that the Birmingham authorities grappled with all these difficulties with a great measure of success, and by the end of January the scheme was working smoothly. The rations in Birmingham were 4 oz. of butter or margarine and 1 oz. of tea a week for each man, woman, or child, and this scale was adopted by other municipalities which decided to put local rationing schemes into force. Among the pioneer cities and towns were Chesterfield, Sheffield, Nottingham, Gravesend, Pontypool, Preston, and the Cleveland group of boroughs in north-east Yorkshire. In Preston an experiment was tried of distributing tickets allowing purchases to be made only at certain specified hours, but this broke down in practice and the local committee had to turn to other methods. To prepare the way for local rationing in Sheffield and Nottingham a kind of census of the resident population was taken. The task in both cities was carried through by school teachers, and useful preliminary work was done by explaining to the children the purpose of the census and the information which the parents would be asked to supply. This interesting numbering of the people had to be organized in a hurry, and was of a rough-and-ready character. For this reason it produced its own difficulties, but, as was very properly pointed out at the time, the country was indebted to every local authority which had the initiative and courage to undertake experiments in the endeavour to arrange an equitable distribution of food supplies. In an appreciation of the value of local effort which appeared in The Times it was stated that if the Food Committees would only avail themselves to the full of their new authority an order which enabled the committees to enforce schemes for controlling the distribution and consumption of any article of food in their areas there should at least be an end henceforth of the scandal and misery of unnecessary queues, and the country would be projected, inevitably, and as the need in each case arose, into a system of compulsory rationing for the staple foodstuffs. While in a rather irregular way rationing schemes were being prepared in isolated districts, the demand for general rationing grew steadily in volume. On the last Satur- day of the year an important National Labour Convention in London passed a strongly worded resolution protesting against the pro- longed delay of the Government in organizing an equitable system of distribution of the supplies of food, and demanding compulsory rationing to ensure equal sharing of the available food among all families, without dis- tinction of wealth or class. On January 1, 1918, Lord Rhondda issued a memorandum to local committees outlining a model scheme of food distribution. The suggested system followed closely on the lines of the plan which on that day was put into operation in Birming- ham. It was recommended that every customer should be registered with one shop for the purchase of a particular foodstuff and not allowed to buy elsewhere ; that the shopkeeper should be required to divide his weekly supplies in fair proportion among all customers registered with him ; that the supplies of any particular article should be distributed among the retailers in a district in proportion to the number of customers registered with them, and a limit fixed to the quantity of the article which any particular class of customer might obtain ; and that distribution should be regulated by cards containing spaces to be marked up each week as the holder purchased supplies. There was a further recommendation that committees whose areas formed one district for the purpose of food distribution should act in close consultation in any scheme which they prepared. This memorandum served the purpose of spurring slow-moving THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 273- committees to take steps to deal with the queue problem and gave them a definite founda- tion on which to build. Draft schemes began to arrive at the Ministry of Food for approval in increasing numbers. At the same time large tracts of country some of them agricultural where the food pinch had not been felt, but some also industrial districts where the com- mittees stubbornly set themselves against any local ventures in rationing continued to hold aloof, and it was not until a scarcity of moat in an aggravated form suddenly introduced a new factor into the situation that the next that the butchers should be limited to 75 per cent, of their previous sales. He was asked by the Board of Agriculture not to do this as it would cause a good deal of discontent among the farmers. Bight through to Christmas there was an abundance of meat, and- few people except the dealers and butchers realized that this appearance of plenty was caused by the sale and slaughter of immature stock. From the time when it was announced that wholesale beef prices would gradually be reduced until a bottom figure of 7s. 4d. a stone of 8 Ibs. was reached in January 1918, the PREPARING BIRMINGHAM'S 900,000 MEAT CARDS IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE. important move towards general rationing was taken. Warnings that the meat supplies would fail during the winter months were continually uttered in the autumn of 1917 by those who spoke for the agricultural industry ; con- sumers, however, regarded the warnings as an attempt by the farmers to hold to the profits which the falling scale of maximum prices instituted by Lord Bhondda threatened to take from them, and paid little attention to the ominous forecasts which were circulated. Lord Rhondda himself in October saw that cattle were being killed too rapidly and proposed farmers pursued a policy of rushing to the markets bullocks which were not fully fattened. Revisions of the scale which postponed the final reduction first until July 1918, and then until July 1919, might have checked the prac- tice, but the position had been made worse by the fact that the absence of fixed live weight prices tempted butchers to offer for cattle exorbitant rates which bore no proportion to- the dead meat schedules. When maximum, wholesale and retail prices for meat were fixed by the Ministry of Food it was believed that the- traders would adjust their methods so as to render further intervention unnecessary, but 274 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. .a period of senseless competition ensued that led to n premature exhaustion of reserves which under better regulated conditions would have been kept back and marketed in smaller graded consignments. No part of Lord Bhondda's administration aroused more criticism than his regulation of prices for meat, and when the time came that supplies fell away in the markets Lord Chaplin in the House of Lords introduced a motion declaring that the Food Controller must be regarded as largely responsible for the shortage, and that any powers vested in his Department by which the production of food could be affected should be transferred to the Board of Agriculture, and be subject to the control of that Board alone. In an indictment of what he called " the mania for fixing prices," Lord Chaplin contended that 250,000 lean . cattle had been slaughtered. Lord Rhondda in his reply showed that on July 1, 1917, the price of beef stood at 232 as compared with 100 before the war, while mutton on the same date had risen 142 per cent, beyond the pre-war rates. When he took office, he said, there was seething discontent among large masses of the people, which, had it been allowed to continue, would not only have seriously embarrassed those to whom had been entrusted the conduct of the war, but would have rendered victory for the Allies well-nigh impossible. The reports of the Industrial Commissioners showed that the unrest was chiefly caused by the high food prices. Had the law of supply and demand been allowed to continue, prices would have increased several fold, and essential articles would have been placed beyond the -reach of millions of the poorer classes of the community. His policy had been one of fixing prices at every stage from the producer to the consumer, based on the cost plus a reasonable profit. It was a mistake to think that prices had been fixed haphazard. They were fixed after con- sultation with expert advisers, whose services he had utilized to the fullest extent. With regard to the descending scale of prices for cattle, Lord Rhondda stated that these were recommended by a committee set up by the Board of Agriculture before he came into offico, and that so far from being responsible for it he had endeavoured to alter it. He met the suggestion that prices should be fixed by the Board of Agriculture by a claim that the existing arrangements were working: satis- MR. FROTHF.RO, LORD RHONDDA, AND LORD CHAPLIN AT GAXTON HALL, Where they spoke at an important meeting of Farmers, February 1, 19J8. THE TIMES H1STOEY OF THE WAR. 275 WAITING FOR THEIR SUNDAY JOINT AT SMITHFIELD MEAT MARKET. The absence of the usual rows of carcases is a noticeable feature of this photograph. factorily. It was wide of the mark, he added, to say that prices were fixed so low that farming could not be made to pay. Notwithstanding the fact that prices had been fixed months previously for fat cattle, farmers were still prepared to pay what appeared to be extrava- gant prices for store cattle. What happened in 1917 was that 2,632,000 cattle were slaughtered as compared with 2,522,000 in 1916. The increase, however, took place entirely in the last three months of the year, and apart from Army slaughtering was between 10 and 12 per cent, over the figures of the corresponding period of the previous year. The net result was that the number of cattle in the country in December was 5 per cent, less than in December, 1916. While the normal aggregate of cattle was not seriously redxiced, what remained when the shortage became felt were mostly young lean stock and breeding animals quite unfit for slaughter as they stood. The action which suddenly denuded the markets of beasts was the fixing of live weight prices and the introduction of a system of grading, but even without this, the reckless sending of cattle to the slaughter yard could not long have continued on the scale followed in the autumn months of 1917. The live weight prices arranged were as follows : BULLS, BULLOCKS AND HEIFERS. Yielding meat, per cwt. Grade. per cent. s. d. 1st ... ... 56 and over ' ... ... 75 2nd 52to56 70 3rd 48 to 52 65 1st 2nd 3rd COWS 52 and over 46 to 52 42 to 46 70 62 53 These rates came into operation on December 27, 1917. The effect was immediate. At Lin- coln on January 1, 1918, less than one-sixth of the usual number of beasts were offered for sale. At the Leeds cattle market there was a demand for 600 cattle and only 14 were offered. On the following day at Leicester 41 beasts came to the market instead of the usual 400 ; at Wolver- hampton there were 95 instead of 400, and a similar state of affairs prevailed throughout the country. On the other hand, there was an abnormally large show of sheep everywhere, sheep at this time not havinK been made subject 276 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. to live weight prices. The mutton, it may be said, disappeared very promptly when a few days later sheep were made subject to the same regulations as cattle. Lord Rhondda next found it necessary to fix the retail price of rabbits at 2s. each with their skins, or Is. 9d. each without the skins, and then the rabbits in their turn vanished from the shops. With a general scarcity prevailing, moat queues were added to the margarine queues, and there were extraordinary week-end scenes in London. Outside the retail shops near to Smithfield Market as many as 4,000 people gathered in one queue and the customers began to assemble as early as two o'clock in the morning. In the market itself retail butchers had to line up in .long queues to get meagre supplies for their shops. It was suggested at first that farmers were deliberately withholding stock because they resented the fixing of prices and the intro- duction of the grading system. At the Ministry of Food experts gave repeated assurances that the contraction of supplies would be temporary, and that in a few days, or weeks, or months, the situation would come nearer to the normal. On January 7, 1918, however, it was stated bluntly in The Times that the whole country was confronted with a meat famine. Com- pulsory rationing of meat had become impera- tive, but as this could not he brought into operation by a wave of the hand, other expe- dients were adopted to ease the situation, while a practical scheme of rationing was being pre- pared. By an Order made on January 12, 1918, butchers' supplies were cut down to 50 per cent, of those returned for the previous October. Steps were taken, though they were not at the time enforced, to enable the Govern- ment to requisition cattle. The plan provided for the organization of the farmers into groups, one for each market district, which could be called upon by the Live Stock Commissioners of the Ministry of Food to produce for slaughter a stated quota of cattle each month Another measure was the drastic revision of the Public Meals Order. This increased the quantity of bread which could be eaten, but severely limited the permitted consumption of meat, and included fats for the first time among the rationed foods. The new scale provided that the meat, flour, bread, sugar (except in th<' case of continuous residents who were entitled to one ounce a clay), butter and margarine and other fats served should be in accordance with the following average quanti- ties per meal : Butter, Margarine, Meat. Sugar Bread. Flour and other Fats. Oz. Oz. Oz. Oz. Oz. Breakfast Nil Nil 3 Nil J Luncheon (including midday dinner)... 3*21 J Dinner (including supper and ni'-nt tea) 3 3 1 J Tea Nil Nil 1J Nil J It has been shown that under the Public Meals Order made by Lord Devonport the consumption of meat allowed in each week was 5} Ibs. ; Lord Rhondda reduced the quan- tity to six ounces a day and instituted two com- pulsory meatless days, so that the weekly con- sumption was cut down to 1 Ib. 14 ozs. The traditional character of the Englishman's breakfast was shattered by the disappearance of bacon from the meal, and the heavy meat tea favoured in the Northern counties became impossible. The only class of eating-place excluded from the new regulations was that which did not serve meals exceeding Is. 2d. in price. The saving clause was intended to enable the working man to get his meals in the usual way. , At the time when the scarcity of meat lent additional urgency to the problem of the queues a scheme of local rationing was being prepared for application to ten million people living in London and the counties of Middlesex, Herts, Essex, Kent, Surrey and Sussex. It had been intended that in the early stages of its operation the scheme should chiefly be directed to the prevention of the margarine queues, but pro- vision was made for the extension of the rationed distribution to other foods, the con- sumption of which it might become desirable to regulate. Within 10 days of the first publi- cation of the details of the scheme Lord Rhondda had asked the representatives of the food com- mittees to include the rationing of meat, as well as of butter and margarine, in their arrangements, and when, on February 25, the system was put into force meat cards formed a part of the machinery The London scheme was by far the most important of the local experiments in rationing which preceded the national enforcement of the principle, and with the possibility that in the event of successful working being obtained the plan in its main outlines would become the foundation for the THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 277 IBy special permission of the proprietors ot " Punch." OUT OF CONTROL. Lord Rhondda : "My next illusion, ladies and gentlemen, is the one-and-ninepenny rabbit. I now drop that sum into the hat, and in its place the rabbit will " [Rabbit disappears. expected general scheme, food committees in other partrf of the country took it over bodily for application to their own districts. The preliminary work necessary to bring rationing into operation had to be carried through with almost excessive rapidity in London, but the borough food committees devoted themselves to the task with com- mendable energy, and if the way had not been made perfectly smooth by February 25 the scheme was launched with much less confusion than the pessimists had predicted as inevitable. The first step was the circulation of application forms for cards to all the heads of households. The method of distribution was left to the dis- cretion of the committees and the plan generally adopted was to send out the form by post on the basis of the sugar registrations, and then supply cards in accordance with the returns which were made. The one fault of this pro- cedure was that it resulted in delay through the inability of people to furnish correctly the comparatively simple information required. The muddle of the sugar applications in fact 278 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. was repeated. Applicants failed to give their addresses or did not state the retailers with whom they intended to register. These, and other omissions, made it necessary either to send back the forms for correction or to wait until the people concerned came to the food offices to find out why they had not received their cards. A few of the committees foresaw LONDON AND HOME COUNTIES. MEAT CARD [U u< R C.} Onto or lint CTBSiriKHIMCTItBl A. H.UtNuw:- THE KING'S MEAT CARD. the situation which would arise, and took effective measures to avert the trouble. At Bethnal Green, where the position was com- plicated by the large number of aliens living in the district, a " Food Card Sunday " was arranged. The head of every household in the borough had to take his completed form to the nearest school. There the form was scrutinized by voluntary clerks, errors were put right and the applicant received on the spot the cards to which his family were entitled. As about 27,000 applications had to be dealt with and some 220,000 food and meat cards issued, the committee had set themselves a serious task, but an appeal for voluntary clerks brought over 2,000 helpers, and the plan was carried through with gratifying success. Tn another London borough Wands worth the application forms had also to be taken by the householder or his representative personally to one of a number of local centres for scrutiny and possible correction of inaccu- racies, and here, too, confusion was avoided. The issue of cards to the householders began on February 5, and by February 18 the majority had been sent out. In some parts of the area delay caused by an inadequate supply of cards led to anxious enquiries during the last week before rationing came into operation, but there were comparatively few families, except those from which inaccurate forms had been returned, which were not provided with the essential tickets on " the appointed day." It is probable that no law or regulation affecting the domestic habits of the people of this country ever aroused more general interest than the rationing of food. For days before the scheme came into force its details were a daily subject of conversation alike in the home and in public places. There were people who argued that rationing, or, at any rate, meat rationing, must inevitably break down in operation, and others who, with irrepressible optimism, found in the use of cards and coupons the solution of the whole problem of the queues and the equitable distribution of reduced supplies. Officials and others who had steadily urged the advisability of compulsory rationing expected a formidable outcrop of difficulties and complexities, but believed that within a few weeks the great majority of people would make themselves familiar with the machinery of the. scheme, and that with a little goodwill and patience smooth working was not only possible, but was assured. The essential features of the scheme at the time of its in- auguration may be smnmarized in the following way: Two cards were issued to each person, a food card and a meat card. The food card had to be used if butter or margarine was required, and the meat card when purchases of butchers' moat, poultry, game or rabbits \\vro made. Butter, margarine, and meat could be bo\ight only from the retailers with whom the consumer was rc^i<- tered. Tho cards were valid for twenty weeks. In each week -} Ib. of butter or margarine could be bought by each person ; the meat ration \\~as estimated to average 1} Ib. a week. The meat card had 80 coupons attached, four of which could be used in any one wsek. Only three out of the four wore available for fresh beef, mutton, or pork : the fourth was intended for the purchase of bacon, poultry, game, and cooked meats. For the purpose of getting butchers' meat the coupons had a currency value, each one enabling the customer to make purchases to the value of 5d. If used for buying other meats a weight value was substituted. All the coupons, if desired, could be used to obtain poultry and similar articles. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 279 "Times" photograph. A SITTING OF THE CONSUMERS' COUNCIL, MARCH 20, 1918. Left to right : Mrs. Reeves, Messrs. Watkins, Wilson, Syrett, Hyndman, Bartle, Sexton, Chard, Col. Weigall, Messrs. Coller, Kramley, Carmichael and Dudley, the Countess of Selborne, Sir William Ashley, Mr. Stuart-Bunning, Lord Rathcreedan, and Mrs. Cottrell. Five members were not present at this sitting. The coupons could also be used to obtain meat meals in restaurants. Special cards were issued for children under 10 years of age. These were available for the full ration of butter or margarine, but only half the quantity of meat could be supplied on them. When butter or margarine was purchased the retailer had to cancel a square on the food card. When meat was bought the butcher or other trader detached the necessary number of coupons from the meat cards. Meat rationing presented difficulties owing to the decision to combine currency and weight values for the coupons. This decision was largely influenced by the wishes of the Con- sumers' Council, a body set up by Lord Rhonclda to keep the Ministry of Food in direct touch with the people on matters affecting rationing, distribution, and prices. Mr. J. R. Clynes presided over the meetings of the Council, and the members included representatives of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, the War Emergency Workers' National Committee, the Parliamentary Com- mittee of the Co-operative Congress, and the Women's Industrial Organizations. The view taken by the Council in regard to meat was that if the coupons were made valid for pur- chases up to a certain price those people who wanted the best cuts of beef and mutton would have to be satisfied with smaller quantities than could be had if cheaper joints were selected. The principle could not bo extended to poultry or game, however, as on a price value 20 or more coupons would have been required for a single fowl. A way out was found by arranging a scale of equivalent weights, arid the scheme as first put into operation provided that with each full coupon the amounts of meat set out below could be obtained : 1. Fivepennyworth of uncooked butcher's meat, including pork or offal. 2. The following weights of other uncooked meats : 12J oz. of poultry or any bird, uncooked, without feathers, but including offal, or 9 oz. without offal. 10 oz. of rabbit or hare, uncooked, without skin but including offal ; or 7J oz. without offal. 6 oz. of venison or horseflesh with bone, 5 oz. without bone. 4 oz. of uncooked ham or bacon with bone ; 3 oz. without bone. 6 oz. of first-quality uncooked sausages containing not less than 67 per cent, of butcher's meat, including pork or offal. 3. The following weights of cooked, canned, preserved, and miscellaneous meats : 3J oz. butcher's meat (including pork) or offal, cooked with the usual bone ; 2J oz. without bone. 6 oz. of any cooked bird. fi oz. of cooked rabbit or hare. 4 oz. of venison or horseflesh, cooked with the usual bone ; 3 oz. without bone. 3 oz. of cooked ham or bacon with bone ; 2$ oz. w ithout bone. 280 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. PREPARING FOOD CARDS AT CAMBERWELL. 2J oz. of canned, preserved, and potted meats of any kind in tin, glass or other container, according to the estimated weight of the actual meat without the con- tainer. 2$ oz. of meat pics, cooked sausages, sandwiches, and similar articles, according to the estimated weight of the meat. 4 oz. of preserved sausages, according to the estimated weight of the actual meat. Practical experience of the scheme in opera- tion did not suggest, at any rate during the first month, any grave flaws in its constitution. A beginning was not possible without some groaning of new and untested machinery, but the initial hitches were not very serious. The one formidable rock ahead was the possi- bility that industrial workers who had been led by a long course of platform speeches to believe that the rationing of food would give them a larger share of the available supplies might allow disappointment over the inevitable collapse of false hopes to breed resentment and opposition to the system. On (lie day that rationing came into force this serious warning was given in a leading article in The Times : Rations will not give more food to most people, but ratlirr ] ( -s-;; mid (1,,. i.-hirf danger about them at thn moment is the disappointment of those who w.-rc misN.,1 int., believing that the rich wore getting abumlmit liipplii". ,,f nu'at ami huttrr while the poor were goin K f hort. But the compulsory eqmility of the rationing system should take the sting out of the disappointment and we do'- not anticipate any serious consequences from it. So far as the hard manual worker was con- cerned, Lord Rhondda, in sanctioning the introduction of a rather hastily prepared plan, had not lost sight of the possibility that for this class the meat ration was not really sufficient, and before the first protest could be made he let it be known that not only was the question of a supplementary ration for men engaged on heavy manual work under con- sideration, but that he also hoped, in pre- paring a system of general national rationing, to grade the population as far as possible on a basis of occupation and to arrange the scale of rations in accordance with this grading. With this threatened source of troubles foreseen and forestalled, the minor problems that arose out of the operation of the scheme could bo dealt with as they appeared, and in the main they proved to be matters of detail which could be disposed of better by local administrative action than by central decisions. Perhaps the most unexpected among the points which first called for attention was the almost unanimous determination of people who had to take meals in restaurants and clubs in London not to eat meat away from home. With a few THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 281 exceptions confined to the cheaper and more popular type of public eating places, the restaurants, in spite of the fact that the coupons of the meat cards could be used in halves, decided that for any meat dish served at least a whole coupon must be given up. Most men, and particularly those of small households, found that, if a joint of meat was to be bought at the week-end, and a little bacon obtained for breakfast, no coupons could be spared for meals in restaurants. The result of this was that thousands turned to fish and egg dishes, and towards the end of the week caterers found they were holding stocks of beef and mutton for which there was no demand. To avoid waste, local food committees had to give dispensations for the disposal of the meat without the surrender of coupons, and the restaurant cooks were warned to reduce the estimates of their requirements when they prepared then" next application. Another development was that the sale of butcher's edible offals, such as sweetbreads, kidneys, liver, and hearts, fell away to nothing, and poulterers and game dealers found it equally difficult to sell fowls, ducks, plover and hares. In some districts it became necessary to remove these articles temporarily from the list of rationed foods, and in addition the scale of equivalent weights was revised so that it became possible to get a chicken weighing three pounds with three coupons or a hare weighing six pounds with nine coupons. The poulterers asked for further concessions and in some quarters the suggesti n was put forward that birds and game should not be rationed. It was believed, however, and there were reasons to justify the belief, that people would be ready to buy poultry if the prices were reduced. During January and February when it was almost impossible to obtain butcher's meat without standing in queues outside the shops, unreasonably high prices were easily obtained for chickens, hares and other meat for which maximum rates had not been fixed. Roasting chickens went up to 3s. 6d. a lb., and hares cost as much as 15s. each. The dealers once having secured such prices showed reluctance in reducing them when the demai d slackened, and it was chiefly because of this attitude that their stocks found few purchasers after rationing had equalized the distribution of beef and mutton. There was a tendency to abuse the pro- SOLDIERS AND SAILORS, HOME ON LEAVE, APPLYING FOR "EMERGENCY* RATION CARDS, CAMBERWELL. 282 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. vision in the rationing schemes which inudo possible the sale without coupons of .perishable goods in danger of spoiling. Reports which reached the Minister of Food showed that traders sold without obtaining the necessary licence from the local committee, obtained unnecessarily large stocks of highly perishable goods, or sold goods which were not immediately liable to perish. Within a FOOD CARD. London uiicl Koma Coo title**. D.3. Customer'* Name Addret* a g SI 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 !l 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 B. 1 IT 2 I2~ 3 ~13~ 4 TT 5 15 6 TF 7 17 8 18 9 19~ 10 IJcT C. i 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 O. i 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 thopkcper' Name: C, Sfcopkerfttr't Sim* : B. ttopkrrptr Nm : A. Butter and Margarine Shppkr?prr' Name: FOOD CARD. Originally available for Butter and Margarine, but with provision for the supply of other goods. fortnight of the scheme coming into operation firm measures had to be taken to bring these sales under strict control, and one of the steps taken was to give local committees power when they granted a licence for the disposal without coupons of any foodstuffs to fix maximum prices at which the articles might be sold. Another problem which had to be settled was the position under rationing of people who kept their own poultry, shot or trapped rabbits, or in other ways supplied themselves with meat without going for it to a retailer. A committee was appointed with Lord Somerleytown as chairman to go into the question. The committee reported that in their opinion the restriction of consumption imposed by any rationing scheme must extend to pro- ducers of food, and should be enforced by requiring them to produce cards or coupons to their Food Control Committees to cover their consumption of their own produce. They recommended, however, that as in all foreign rationing schemes, actual producers of certain foods, and their dependents, should be granted larger rations of these foods than they could buy on their cards, and that so long as there was no general prohibition of private transport of rationed food by post or rail, the producers should be allowed to supply their households, wherever resident, with their own produce at the special ration calculations. The scale of rations suggested was as follows : CATTLE AND SHEEP. No extra. Pios. Double the normal weight of meat to the coupon for the flesh of the first pig killed in each half- year, and one-half more than the normal weight to the coupon for other pig.s ; offal and lard to be outside the ration for self-suppliery. VENISON. No extra WILD BABBITS, HARES, WOOD PIGEONS. Ration free. TAME RABBITS. Ration free. POULTRY. No extra. GAME BIRDS. One-half more than the normal weight to the coupon. BUTTER. One-half more than the normal weekly ration. Such difficulties as have been described weighed little in the balance against the remark- able improvement in food distribution which rationing effected. The butter and margarine queues disappeared from the streets, and although at first Saturday customers of the butchers had to line up in some districts, this was chiefly attributable to the general post- ponement of shopping to the last day of the week and to the considerable time occupied in the process of calculating what meat could be served on the number of coupons the customer was prepared to use. Experience of the working of the system qiiickly reduced the waiting. It had been intended that meat rationing on the lines of the London and Home Counties scheme should be extended to the whole country on March 25, but a postponement of a fortnight was found necessary to enable Lord Rhondda to complete his plans for allowing a supple- mentary ration for industrial workers. The only essential difference in the national scheme compared with that in operation in London \v;is that a consumer could register at separate shops for butchers' meat and pork. Provision for this double registration was made because in the country and particularly in the North of England the sale of pork and pork products was to a con- siderable extent a distinct trade. As in London, THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 283 the local administration of the scheme was en- trusted to the local food control committees. Before concluding this survey of the coming into operation of rationing a few words must be added about the development of food hoarding, influenced in some degree through a desire to forestall rationing by the formation of reserves, which in the first weeks of 1918 was exposed by a large number of raids on private houses and by prosecutions. The Order prohibiting the hoarding of food was made by Lord Devonport and came into effect on April 9, 1917. It provided that no person should " acquire any article of food so tliat the quantity of such article in his possession or under his control at any one time exceeded the quantity required for ordinary use and consumption in his house- hold or establishment." For several months 4? <^ PUBLICATIONS ^' SUPPLIED EREE O ENQUIRE HERE LADY RHONDDA OPENING A " GOVERNMENT INFORMATION BUREAU." At these bureaux which were erected in the large retail stores, the stations, and other places, leaflets and books explaining the food regulations could be obtained. 284 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. the regulation was not stringently applied, and there can be no doubt that many households were unpleasantly surprised when the searching out of culprits began. During January of 1918 the defendants brought before the magistrates included some well-known people, and heavy penalties were imposed in a majority of the cases. While the whole country approved the prosecutions, and the punishment of the offenders, a stage eventually was reached when the thrifty housewife found herself becoming nervous over the modest contents of her store cupboard, even when hoarding could never have been charged against her. Fears were ex- pressed that the officials of the Food Depart- ment intended to ransack dwelling houses indiscriminately and to force everybody " to purchase incessantly in very small quantities." Although search warrants were not issued on idle reports and action in any case was taken only after careful consideration and inquiry, there was some danger of the growth of a sys- tem of domestic or neighbourly espionage which would have been entirely foreign to British traditions. For these reasons and for the still more serious one that people who had large illicit stocks of food were believed to be destroying their excess supplies, an announce- ment made on February 6 granting a con- ditional indemnity to people who had rendered themselves liable to the provisions of the Hoarding Order was well received. It was provided that during the week beginning February 11 members of the public might report excess stocks to the local food com- mittees with a view to their voluntary surrender for the benefit of the public. Persons report- ing and surrendering their supplies in these circumstances were indemnified against pro- secution. Publication of the terms of the amnesty resulted in an urgent demand for a definition of hoarding, but the Minister of Food would not give a more explicit explanation than that a fortnight to three weeks' supply of any of the staple articles of food was not excessive, and that home-produced food like bacon, jam, bottled fruit, and preserved eggs did not come under the Hoarding Order. This statement reassured many people, but it was too vague to be entirely satisfactory, and food committees all over the country were worried by people with trivial reserves who came seek- ing advice as to their position. Serious con- fessions of hoarded food were exceedingly POTATOES IN PLACE OF FLOUR. Mrs. Wcigall gives a demonstration of the uses of the potato as a flour substitute. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 285 A COMMANDEERED FOOD HOARD. In this particular case nearly a ton of food was removed, and a fine of 90, with 28 7s. costs, was inflicted. few in number, but, on the other hand, during the surrender week hospitals received hundreds of anonymous gifts of tea, sugar, flour, rice and other articles from people who chose this way of disposing of their stores rather than admit their possessions to the authorities. When the probability that compulsory rationing would have to be adopted in this country was first seriously discussed, an article was published in The Times from its Correspon- dent formerly in Berlin describing the blunders through which, in the development of State distribution, the German authorities groped their way to comparative wisdom. It was then noted that the German Government's lack of foresight concerning the probable duration of the crisis had governed the whole situation, and that if they could retrace their steps, the enemy authorities would undoubtedly begin, first, by planning their whole policy to cover a long period of time ; and, secondly, by dealing at the outset with the whole range of consumption. " If I may venture to suggest some rough conclusions from German experi- ence," The Times Correspondent said, " they are these : The whole object of rationing should be to reduce consumption generally and over a long period of time. Measures should be taken to ensure the widest possible control of supplies, including the supplies of foods which appear to be abundant, and foods which are, or may become, ' substitutes ' for staple foods. Both in collection and distribution the fullest use should be made of existing agencies, and the large agencies, without too much official interference, should deal with the small pro- ducer. The system of ' lists of customers ' should be applied to the retail trade ; Germany found it to be the remedy for the intolerable ' waiting ' at food shops of queues of customers who, having placed no orders, had to take their chance of finding food to buy. There should be as little interference as possible with prices, and the proper point for interference is pre- vention of retail profiteering by checking the difference between wholesale cost and retail prices. Maximum prices must not be allowed to check production. The proper remedy for profiteering on the part of producers is taxation, and ultimately the proper remedy for want, in so far as it is due to high prices, is relief. ..." These suggestions were made in May 1917, and in the same article the following quotation was given from a circular issued by Herr von THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. Wife of Pro6teer: "Er can you tell me if- Batocki's Press Bureau at the beginning of the year: Already the English and French have to accustom themselves to the idea of copying our system oi State distribution, which they have ridiculed so freely ; it remains to bo seen whether, in face of the approaching crisis, they will be able bj mere feeble imitation to supply the equivalent of the experience and habit which we have gained in two and a half year> of war economic.-. Rationing, as has already been shown, was started in this country only after much hesita- tion and reluctance, but it cannot be charged against Lord Rhondda that he descended to the " feeble imitation " which Heir von Batocki expected. If we " groped our way " towards rationing, the groping was done in accordance with our own methods. Lord Rhondda, in shaping his policy, avoided as far as possible any rough riding over British habits and preju- dices ; some of the criticism which fell upon him arose out of the very caution with which he negotiated those prejudices. Even the delay in getting rationing into operation that caused local authorities to embark on their own experi- ments had its useful as well as its regrettable side, although this was no adequate compensa- tion for the dilatoriness of the Government in preparing for rationing. Local application of ompulsory economy in food gave the people, By special permission of the Proprietors of ' Punch." er really nice people eat herrings ? " through men of their own selection, a voice in making the regulations to which they had to conform, and with this there was a realisation that rationing was a self-determined remedy to meet a situation which had become danger- ous. When eventually arrangements for national and uniform rationing were made in the case of meat, local schemes had to be fitted into the general system, but local administration was maintained The one way in which Ger- man procedure was followed was in beginning rationing with only one or two staple foods. Fortunately, so far as could be seen in March, 1918, the consequences were not likely to be the same in England as they had been in Germany. But, as has been shown, our supplies were comparatively abundant, and time alone would show whether the country would have reason to regret the waste of foods to wliich consumption was diverted from the one or two staple foods which were rationed at first. Germany's first experiments were with butter tickets ; the first foods after sugar to be rationed in Great Britain were butter and margarine, though meat cards quickly followed. By the late summer of 1916 Germany had THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 287 rationed bread, potatoes, sugar, milk, meat, butter and fats, cheese, coffee, cocoa, tea, rice, macaroni, and other articles. In Great Britain, in the spring of 1918, national rationing had been extended only to sugar and meat. Local rationing of butter and margarine became almost general except in the agricultural dis- tricts, but the need to ration tea, which led to this article finding a place in the earliest among the local schemes, soon disappeared Although some anxiety was felt about bread, Mr. Clynes on March 14 was able to say in the House of Commons that with care in consumption ration- ing might be indefinitely postponed. It was and it abolished rather than created queues outside the food shops. A direct effect of the introduction of the London and Home Counties scheme was to reduce the number of people joining food queues in the Metropolitan police district from an average for Saturday, the popu- lar shopping day, of 600,000 to 25,000. As for the point that there should be " as little inter- ference as possible with prices," it has been shown that Lord Rhondda became Food Controller under conditions which made the fixing of food prices imperative. Production, or at any rate supply, may have been checked by the limitation of the cost to the consumer, Food Queues /n Merropo//fan Po/t'ce D/'sfr<c/~ Jams" Feb.4 fh Feb.ii? 1 feb.ia? feb.zs* soo,ooo 800,000 wqooo 300,000 200,000 /oqooo CHART showing the estimated number of persons attending food queues in the Metropolitan Police District on each day from January 28 to March 9, 1918 i.e., four weeks before and two weeks after the introduction of rations. found advisable in the distribution of milk to institute a scheme which gave priority to invalids, children and nursing mothers, but this was controlled by the local committees without recourse to rigid rationing regulations. So far as the other foods were concerned, cheese was the only article mentioned at this period as likely to be brought within the operation of the food cards. The contention that " the whole object of rationing should be to reduce consumption generally and over a long period of time " was one which found no divergence of opinion at the Ministry of Food, and it can equally be said that Lord Rhondda's policy aimed at the "' widest possible control of supplies." Rationing in Great Britain from the first was arranged on a basis of registration of customers with retailers, but the Food Controller had to stand within this danger in turning to what appeared to be the less of two evils. To impartial observers it seemed that when in the future a considered judgment could be passed the policy pursued would be regarded as fully justified. Whatever mistakes or miscalcula- tions he made, Lord Rhondda, after holding a difficult and highly responsible office for nine months, was still Food Controller and remained in office with the goodwill and approval of the majority of the population. Compulsory rationing, with its complexities and restrictions, aroused very little of the irritation that had been expected, and during the period which followed the introduction of rationing regulations there was probably less grumbling about the food situation than had been heard 288 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. A TRACTOR PLOUGH. The Government placed a number of tractors at the disposal of farmers in order to facilitate the ploughing up of uncultivated land. at any time during the preceding twelve months. After the trials with the queues, the inconve- niences of limited consumption were regarded complacently and were a subject of jest rather than of complaint When the nation could laugh, and with no trace of bitterness behind the mirth, over an unaccustomed, if still a very mild, restraint of its freedom, there was obviously little resentment threatening the position of the Minister who had found it essential first to sanction and then to compel rationing. It could; on the contrary, almost be said of the second Food Controller that he became popular, except with the farmers and some of the produce merchants, and his rela- tions with the agricultural industry were really better than some of the spokesmen of the industry suggested. Within the limits of a survey mainly devoted to the progressive control of the available food supplies and the gradual evolution of rationing on a national basis, it is not possible to deal with many of the measures by which the British people received their food during the first three and a-half years of war. The world-wide activities of the Royal Commission on Wheat Supplies, the loyal help and self-sacrifice of America in provisioning the Allied larders, and the extraordinary development of food produc- tion in Great Britain, are interesting topics which cannot be dealt with in the present chapter. CHAPTER CCXXX. GERMANY: AUGUST, 1916 FEBRUARY, 1918. POLITICAL SITUATION AT END OF 1910 RUMANIA AMERICAN INTERVENTION BETHMANN HOLLWEG'S SPEECHES PROMISES OF INTERNAL " REFORMS " PRUSSIAN FRANCHISE RESCRIPT THE " ERZBERGER CRISIS," JULY, 1917 FALL OF BETHMANN HOLLWEO His RECORD THE MICHAELIS CHANCELLORSHIP THE REICHSTAG " PEACE RESOLUTION," JULY 19 MINIS TERIAL CHANGES KUHLMANN BECOMES FOREIGN SECRETARY THE " WILHELMSHAVEN MUTINY " FALL OF MICHAELIS COUNT HERTLING BECOMES CHANCELLOR HERTLING'S CAREER AND POLICY PROGRESS OF THE SOCIALIST " SPLIT " MAJORITY AND MINORITY THE STOCKHOLM CONFERENCE PLOT ITS HISTORY AND FAILURE STRIKES IN APRIL, 1917, AND JANUARY, 1918 ECONOMIC SITUATION FOOD FINANCE AND INDUSTRY PUBLIC OPINION- THE GROWTH OF CHAUVINISM TEXTS OF POPE'S PEACE NOTE AND REPLIES. EARLIER chapters have sketched the main course of events in Germany during the first two year* of war. It has also been seen how the" German " peace " campaign of December, 1916, was the preface not to peace but to " unrestricted ' submarine warfare and war with the United States, and in that connexion some account has been given of the first stages of the new red/me which was inaugurated under Hinden- burg and I/udendorff in the autumn of 1916, after the intervention of Rumania and the Italian declaration of war on Germany.* The present chapter is a review of German affairs from the beginning of the third year of war down to February, 1918. It was a period of tremendous events, during which the incal- culable weight of the United States was thrown into the balance on the side of the Allies, while, on the other hand, the Russian Empire passed through Revolution into chaos and from chaos to speedy humiliation and disruption, with * See Vol. IX.. Chapter CXLVH. : " Germany'* Second Year of War " ; and Vol. XI., Chapter CLXXX. : "The German Peace Campaign of December, 1910." Vol. XV. Part 191. 289 the immediate result that the European War threw its shadows ever wider, and threat- ened not only the Farthest West but the Farthest East. The war had become a " world war " indeed. In Germany itself all these great events were accompanied by incessant disputing and debating. When once the veto upon dis- cussion of German " war aims " had been removed, and the " peace " proposals ot December, 1918 had been made, a German political offensive ran parallel with the Geiman military effort. This political offensive, be- cause it was directed against the great demo- cracies of the West, necessitated a pretence not only of reasonableness in the settlement of the war but of readiness to refoim Germany from within. Thus general discussion of the constitutional and political structure of the German Empire became inevitable, and all parties took a hand in it There were repeated " crises," of a kind familiar enough to those who had studied German politics before the war. but bewildering and misleading to the world at large. Even leading statesmen 290 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAE. in England still more, perhaps, in tho t'nited States for a time believed seriously that the Russian Revolution, which was hailed with delight at Potsdam, threatened Germany with '' infection. ' At some moments it was seriously supposed that the militarist domination of Germany was menaced, or even that the spirit of Prussia could be changed and purified by the inspired wisdom of the Reichstag. Brief Labour troubles, again, were in many quarters exaggerated and misunderstood. In reality autocracy and militarism emerged ever stronger from their harmless ordeals. They showed their new strength by the overthrow of the fifth Imperial Chancellor, Heir von Bethmann Hollweg, in July, 1917, and they destroyed, for the time, all serious opposition by their dictation of " peace " to Russia. The first months of the third year of war were very anxious and, upon the whole, depressing. The intervention of Rumania produced an impression which was too easily forgotten afterwards, when the Bolshevist betrayal led to the Rumanian tragedy. In the decision of Bukarest it is not too much to say that Berlin read the judgment of the world the cool and considered judgment that Germany would be defeated, and that, in particular, her ambitions in the East and Sotith-East would be wrecked In the Italian declaration of war Berlin read, similarly, the cool and considered judgment of the world that the Triple Alliance would never rise again Meanwhile, in spite of all German promises, the Battle of the Somme went on and on, putting an apparently intolerable strain upon German man-power and material resources. Yet, faced by the final defection of two former Allies, Germany was preparing to make in the United States a new and mighty enemy, whose action must inevitably sway the whole neutral .world outside the range of Germany's immediate neighbours, who were hostile but helpless The near-sighted diplo- matists of the Wilhelmstrasse still clung to the hope of a miracle. " Wilson mut mediate," they would say to American visitors. And in their most sanguine moments they perhaps believed that the Asquith Government would stay in power and would be unable to refuse such mediation. At the end of November, 1916, Herr von Jagow, the mild-mannered Foreign Secretary, retired. The pace wa.- getting too hot for him. It was characteristie of the time that the North German Gazettr published an astonishing panegyric of Jagow pretty evidently from the pen of the Chancellor himself applauding his tireless energy, adroit- ness, vigilance, and " wise advice." It would have been more pertinent to congratulate him on his happy escape into obscurity. STREET VENDORS IN MUNICH ON A " VICTORY-DAY. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 291 As has been seen elsewhere, Heir von Jagow's successor, Herr Zimmermann, was full of wild schemes of adventure, and thought he could meet the intervention of the United States by an alliance with Japan and Mexico ! In reality German diplomacy was now utterly in the iron grip of the Army leaders. Herr von Bethmann Hollweg was repeating the experiences of July, 1914. Reluctant, even outwardly recalcitrant, he was calling " peace " but being driven the way that the General Staff meant him to go. When Tirpitz had tried to drive the Government into " ruthless " submarine warfare and war with the United States, Bethmann Hollweg had been strong enough to overthrow him. When the Army led the campaign, in the name of Hindenburg, but with the whole weight of Prussian mili- tarism and industrialism and the Prussian autocracy behind it, the Chancellor was over- powered. Moreover, he was himself marked down for sacrifice, in punishment of his reluc- tance, and in due time, as will be seen, he fell. His repeated protests that his objections to " ruthless " submarine warfare had always been only temporary and opportunist damaged his reputation abroad without availing him anything at home. Herr von Bethmann Hollweg's speeches in and after the autumn of 1916 reflected his endless oscillation between militarism and sham democracy. At the end of September he was still railing at England : Our existence as a nation is to bo crushed. Militarily defenceless, economically crushed and boycotted by the world, condemned to lasting sicklinesy that is the Germany which England wants to see at her feet. Then, when there is no German competition to be feared, when France has been bled to death, when all the Allies financially and economically are doing slave work for England, when the neutral European world must submit to every British order, every British black list, then upon an impotent Germany the dream of British world supremacy is to become a reality. A few days later the Government summarily dismissed the Reichstag for a long vacation, in order to avoid a public debate on submarine warfare. Early in November, when proceed- ings were confined to the secrecy of the Main Committee, the Chancellor reverted to the origins of the war. " No honourable critic," he declared, could deny that the Triple Alliance had always been on the defensive against the " aggressive character " of the Triple Entente ; " not in the shadow of Prussian militarism did the world live before the war, but in the shadow of the policy of isolation which was to keep Germany down " So far from opposing a League of Nations Germany was ready to place herself at the head of it ! The first conditions for the development of inter- national relations by means of an arbitration court ahd the peaceful liquidation of conflicting antagonisms would be that henceforth no aggressive coalitions should be formed. Germany is ready at all times to join the HERR VON BETHMANN HOLLWEG, German Imperial Chancellor 1909-1917. union of peoples, and even to place herself at the head of such a union which will restrain the disturber of the peace. Then came, in quick succession, the " peaee offer," the declaration of " unrestricted " sub- marine warfare, and the break with the United States and other Powers. These subjects have been dealt with so fully that it is not necessary here to do more than note one or two of the official utterances of the Chancellor. On January 31, 1917, he read to the Reichstag the German Note on submarine warfare, and said : No one among us will close his eyes to the seriousness of the step which we are taking. That our existence is at stake everyone has known since August 4, 1914, and this has been brutally emphasized by the rejec- tion of our peace offer. When, in 1914, wo had to seize and have recourse to the sword against the Russian general mobilization, wo did so with the deepest sense of responsibility towards our people and conscious of the resolute strength which says, " We must, and therefore we can." Endless streams of blood have since been shed, but. they have not washed away the " must " and the.-" can." 1912 2! 1-2 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE TIM//. In now d'Tidri.; lo employ the best and sharpest \\eapon, \\-i' are guided solel\ by a sober consideration ot all the circumstances that come into question, and by a firm determination to help our people out of the distress and disgrace which our enemies contemplate for them. Success lies in a higher hand, but as regards all that human strength can do to enforce success war, the Chancellor did all he could to explain away the crimes at sea and to promote a sham display of " democratization." On February 27 he made another long and argumentative speech in the Reichstag about submarine warfare and y 3 a u a) a a, en en < J en b a o z z Z o si a - for the Fatherland you may be assured, gentlemen, that nothing has been neglected. Everything in this respect will be clone. During the two months, February and March, which intervened between the rupture of diplo- matic relations and the American declaration of about the " friendly relations " with America which Bismarck had once called " an heirloom from Frederick the Great." He was full of " regret " for " the rupture with a nation which, by its history, seemed to be predestined to work together with us, not against us, for common THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. ideals. ' But there could be no " going back," since Germany's " honest desire for peace had only encountered hostile ridicule on the part of her enemies." On March 29 Herr von Bethmann Hollweg made one more attempt. He said to the Reichstag : In a few days the representatives of the American people meet to decide on the question of war or peace between the American and the German people. Germany has never had the smallest intention of attacking America, and has none to-day. Germany has never desired war with America, nor has she any desire for war to-day. We have more than once told the United States that we renounced the unrestricted use of submarine warfare in the expectation that England would bo brought to observe in her blockade policy the laws 01 humanity and international agreements. England has not only maintained, but continually intensified, her illegal and indefensible blockade policy. She haw, in common uith her allies, scornfully rejected our peace offer, and announced war aims which amount to the annihilation of ourselves and our allies. For this reason we resorted to unrestricted submarine warfare ; for this reason we were forced to resort to it. Does the American people see in this any reason for declaring war gix the German people, with which it has lived at peace for more than a hundred years ? Does it, for this reason, desire to increase the bloodshed ? It is not we who bear the responsibility for such a result. A few days later Germany and the United States were at war. It is a remarkable fact that, although he remained in office for three and a -half months longer, Herr von Bethmann Hollweg never again mentioned the United States in a public speech and seldom spoke of the submarine war. In his last speech in the Reichstag (May 16) he said : " Our submarines are operating with increasing success. I will not employ any fine words about them. The deeds of our submarine men speak for them- selves. I think that even the neutrals will recognize this. As far as is compatible with our duty towards our own people, who come first, we take into account the interests of the neutral States." That was all. This time there was not, as in Herr von Bethmann Hollweg's famous speeeh of August 4, 1914, on the invasion of Belgium, any public admission of " the wrong " that Germany had committed and he had authorized. But the Chancellor's silence was significant. In point of fact it soon became the deliberate policy of Germany to keep the United Stair, as far as possible out of the public view of the war. The rapid adoption of compulsory service was a shock to Germany, but a long period of preparation must precede effective military action by the United States, and the German Press was content to conceal the future and merely to encourage the German public with occasional ridicule of the American effort and some abuse of President Wilson, who was regarded much as Sir Edward Grey had been regarded in the first year of the war. The Army leaders had little desire to provoke discussion of America's real military resources ; the poli- ticians hoped against hope that American idealism could be brought into some sort of antagonism to British and other Allied aims and interests. At the same time it was of great importance to prevent simple German minds from being assailed at one and the same time by the collapse of Russian autocracy and the rising against Germany of American democracy. In any case Germany's main business was for the present with Russia, where the outbreak of the Revolution had preceded by three weeks the intervention of the United States. It has been said that the Revolution was hailed with joy at Potsdam. But until the failure of the Russian offensive in July it was not certain that the first-fruits of the Revolution would fall to Germany, and nearly a year was to pass before they actually ripened into a German " peace." Meanwhile Germany passed through a series of mild convulsions. Unfortunately they were without any real result except to strengthen the reaction when it came, and they seriously darkened counsel in the countries of the Allies. On the-one hand, Germany continued the " peace offensive " ; on the other hand, the German Government endeavoured to meet the apparently rising tide of democracy by more or less innocuous domestic " reforms." Herr von Bethmann Hollweg, for his part, was not entirely insincere. He had always feared the extreme rigidity of Prussia, Prussian bureaucrat and Junker though he was to the bone, and he knew enough of western civilisation to believe that Prussia-Germany could retain its stability only with the help of considerable constitutional changes. In the Prussian Diet on March 14 Herr von Bethmann Hollweg declared that unity could be secured only by granting the people in general equal cooperation in the administration of the Empire, and he exclaimed : Woe to the statesman who does not recognize the sifiis of the time ; who, after this catastrophe, the like of which the world has never seen, believes that he can take up the work where it was interrupted. But in the Reichstag on March 31 he again urged delay even in the reform of the Prussian franchise : I admit that it would be most conpenial to me if I could carry out the reform to-morrow. But at this- 294 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. moment, when the war has reached its crisis, when it is a question of bringing all even our last ouneo of strength to bear, I must consider very soberly whether the advantages of attempting such an action are greater than the disadvantages which are inevitably bound up with it. . . . Since I am compelled to lirinu forward tht-M> serious considerations, I must say that the stake at issue in this war is far too great for us to allow our- to be carried away by our opinions. If I am forced to hold this view, it is wrong and unjustifiable to reproach me with pursuing a policy of stagnation. Meanwhile Germany was professing an almost disinterested benevolence towards the Russian Revolution. It was insisted that she would do nothing that could interfere with the internal affairs of Russia, and that the Russian people need have no fear of any meddling. In reality, of course, whatever may have been the confused hopes of Herr von Bethmann Hollweg for " reform " in his own country, it was obviously to the interests of Germany to allow the disinte- gration of Russia to continue undisturbed, pro- vided that Germany herself could be kept safe from revolutionary infection. In these circum- stances, and under cover of " democratic " dis- plays, the German Government embarked upon an ingenious scheme the attempt to organize an International Socialist Conference, at the apparent instance of the Russian revolution- aries, but at the real instigation of the German ( lovornment, acting through the "tame" German Socialists. If the conference could be arranged, Germany would have secured what she had failed to secure by her direct " peace offer " in December ; if the Western Powers refused to be entangled, their refusal could be turned to good account in Russia. It will be necessary to return to this subject later, and to disentangle other outstanding features of the complicated history of the next few months especially the labour troubles, which first made their appearance on a con- siderable scale in April, the development of dis- sensions among the Socialists, and the reception of a " peace " Note from the Pope. Meanwhile let us trace the main events which led to Herr von Bethmann Hollweg's fall. They turned throughout upon the definition of German policy at home and abroad, upon " reform " and " war aims," upon the choice between positive action in either sphere or both, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, " stagnation " at home while the war was pushed to a purely military conclusion. On April 7, notwithstanding his hesitating speech a week before. Herr von Bethmann Holl- FEEDING BERLIN : THE SOUP CARTS. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 295 POOR BERLINERS FETCHING THEIR TEN-PFENNIG DINNERS FROM THE RED CROSS FOOD KITCHEN. weg was able to publish what became known as the Easter Rescript. It was addressed by the Kaiser as King of Prussia to himself as Minister President of Prussia, and ran : Never has the German people shown itself so firm as during this war. The knowledge that the Fatherland is acting in bitter self-defenco has exorcised a wonder- fully reconciling power, and in spite of all sacrifices of blood on the battlefield and severe privations at home, the resolve has remained unshakable to stake the utmost for a victorious issue. National and social spirit have understood each other and become united and given us enduring strength. Everyone has felt that what has been built up in the course of long years amid many internal struggles was worthy of defence. Brilliant before my eyes stand the achievements of the entire nation in battle and distress. The expe- riences of this struggle for the existence of the Empire introduce with sublime solemnity a new ago. It falls to you* as the responsible Chancellor of the German Empire and tho First Minister of my Government in Prussia, to help to fulfil tho demands of this hour by the right means and at the right time. On various occasions you have laid down the spirit in accordance with which the forms of our political life must be con- structed in order to make room for the free and willing cooperation of all members of our people. The princi- ples which you have developed in doing so have, as you know, mv approval. I feel conscious of remaining thus in the path taken by my grandfather, who, as King of Prussia in the sphere of military organization, and as Emperor of Germany in the sphere of social reform. gave a pattern of tho fulfilment of the duties of a monarch and laid tho foundations which will enable the German people in united and stern perseverance to overcome these bloody times. The maintenance of the fighting Jorce as a true people's army, and the promotion of the social progress of the people in all its classes, have been my object from tho beginning of my reign. Anxious as I am, while strictly preserving the unity of people and Monarchy, to serve the interests of the whole, I am resolved, so soon as the war situation permits, to set to work on the building up of our internal political, economic, and social life. Millions of our fellow-countrymen are still in the field, and still the decision of the conflict of opinions, which is inevitable in a far-reaching change of the Constitution must, in the highest interests of the Fatherland, be post- poned until the time of the return of our warriors comes, and they themselves can in counsel and action cooperate in the progress of the new era. But in order that after the successful ending of the war, which, I confidently hope, is no longer far off, whatever is neces- sary and appropriate in this respect may be done at once, t desire the preparations to be carried out without delay. The reform of tho Prussian Diet and the liberation of the whole of our internal political life from this question is particularly near my heart. At the very beginning of the war preparations for the alteration of the franchise for the Prussian Lower House were undertaken at my suggestion. I now charge you to lay before me the definite proposals of the Ministry, in order that on the return of our warriors this work, which is fundamental for tlfe internal construction of Prussia, may ba carried out rapidly by means of legis- lation. After the gigantic accomplishments of the whole people in this terrible war, thero is, in my opinion, no room Jeft in Prussia for th> class franchise. The Bill \\ ill further have to provide for the immediate and secret election of deputies. The services of the Upper House and its permanent iii.|)ortance for tho State no King of Prussia will fail to recognize. But the Upper House will be better able to do justice to the gigantic demands of the coming time if it unites in its midst, to a greater degree than hitherto, leading men, marked out by the respect of their fellow- eitizons, from all classes and callings of the people. I act according to tho traditions of great ancestor-: when, in renewing in important respects our firmly planted and storm-proved Constitution. T -*how to a loyal THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. brave, efficient, and highly developed people the eon- lidfiice it deserves. I charge you to make this edict known forthwith. Thus legislation was still to be postponed until "after the war." The Rescript satisfied nobody. The Conservatives were given warn- ing that the Prussian three-class franchise, based upon the qualification of wealth, was to be abolished, and that voting would be HERR ERZBERGER, The Centre Party Deputy who provoked the "Chancellor crisis" in July, 1917. direct and secret, instead of indirect and open. But in a speech from the Throne in 1909 the Kaiser-King of Prussia had made similar promises and broken them, and the Rescript confirmed the suspicions of the Chancellor's most powerful enemies without gaining him new friends. Moreover, while the monstrous anachronism of the medieval Prussian franchise was traditionally the great test question in German politics, no genuine " reform " was possible in Germany with- out changes in the Imperial Constitution which would give the Reichstag some real power and introduce Ministerial responsibility to Parliament. The Imperial Government showed no serious intention of effecting any real reforms whatever. The Reichstag set up a "Constitution Committee." Its pro- eeeilings were at first widely advertised for the benefit of "pacifists" all over the world, but they rapidly became a mere farce ham- pered at every turn by the official in the Ministry of the Interior, Herr Lewald, whom the Government had selected to control them ! What of the Chancellor's " war aims " and " peace " policy ? After prolonged Party and Press controversies he made a speech in the Reichstag on May 15. He was now fighting hard for his own position, and assumed a Prussian militarist pose, banging his fist on the table, grasping his sword hilt, and as the Berliner Tageblatt observed delivering his principal passages in a " tone of command." A few quotations will suffice : I thoroughly and completely understand the pa-SMonate interest of the people in our war-aims and the conditions of peace. I understand the demand for a prrri>" statement. But in a debate on war-aims the only guiding line for mo is an early and satisfactory conclusion of the war. Beyond that I cannot do anything, arid cannot say anything. If the general situation obliges me to maintain an attitude of reserve, as is the case at present, I will maintain this reserve. . . . Shall I immediately give our enemies an assurance which would enable them to prolong the war indefinitely without danger of losses to themselves ? . . . Shall I nail down the German Empire in all directions by a onesided statement which comprises only one part of the total peace conditions, renounces the successes gained by the blood of our sons and brothers, and leaves everything else in a state of suspense ? No, I reject such a policy. . . . Our military position has never been so good since the beginning of the war. . . Time is on our side. In full confidence we can trust that we are approaching a satisfactory finish. Then the time will ome when we can negotiate with our enemies about our war -aims, regarding which I am in full harmony with the Army Command. Then we shall attain a peace which will bring to us liberty to rebuild what the war has des- troyed, in unimpaired development of our strength, so that from all the blood and all the sacrifices an Empire, a people, will rise again strong, independent , unthi eatened by its enemies, a bulwark of peace and of work. That was the conclusion of Herr von Beth- mann Hollweg's last Reichstag speech. The Reichstag adjourned, and when it met again at the beginning of July a " crisis " immediately developed. The formal issue before the Main Committee of the Reichstag when it met on July 5 was the voting of new war credits, and the first sign of trouble was the Committee's decision to post- pone the vote until after a political debate. On July 6 Herr Erzberger, a member of the Catholic Centre Party, made a sensational speech. Although all reports of the proceedings were suppressed, it soon became known that he had violently attacked the Government. He had accused Ministers of misrepresenting the military situation, and he had insisted upon the fact that, when " unrestricted " submarine war was proclaimed at the end of January, the naval authorities had promised that in six months Kngland would be forced to make peace. Xow that the six months had passed, he challenged the Government to tell the truth. In view of the situation which he had described, ho urged that immediate action must be THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 297 taken for the reform of the Prussian franchise, and that the Reichstag and the Government should agree upon a " war aims " formula, which would strengthen Germany at home, impress neutrals, and increase " pacifism " in enemy countries, especially in Russia. Erz- berger had for years been regarded as a sort of enfant terrible of the Centre Party. Some- times his actions were purely irresponsible ; sometimes he was employed by the Party leaders as an agent whom it was easy to disavow ; all the time he was an intriguer, equally ready to accept inspiration from Munich, Vienna, or Rome, or to carry out an international mission on. behalf of the Prussian Government. The present plot was skilfully laid, and in a few days the Imperial Chancellor found himself deserted and alone. On July 7 he appeared before the Committee, and refused the demands of Erzberger and the Socialists. The Centre Party then openly supported Erzberger, and the Radicals joined the oppo- sition, while the National Liberals whose only object was to overthrow Bethmann in the interests of their annexationist policy displayed a sudden passion for " reform." On the same day the Kaiser, Hindenburg, and Ludendorff arrived in Berlin, and there were Icing discussions with the Chancellor. On July 9 a Crown Council was held, at which the Chancellor appears to have secured with difficulty approval of his " reform " proposals. On the following day he utterly refused to inform the Reichstag Committee of the Crown Council's decisions. On July 11 a second Crown Council was held, this time in the presence of Bethmann's old enemy, the Crown Prince, who had been summoned to Berlin for the purpose. The immediate result was the fol- lowing rescript, addressed by the Kaiser as King of Prussia to Herr von Bethmann Hollweg as Minister President of Prussia : Upon the report which my Government made to me, in obedience to my decree of April 7 of the current year, I herewith decide, in order to supplement the same, that tho draft liill dealing with the alteration of the electoral law for the Hons? of Deputies, which is to be submitted to the Diet of the Monarchy for decision, is to be drawn up on a basis of eoual franchise. The Bill is to be submitted in any case early enough for the next elections to take place according to the new franchise. I charge you to make all the necessary arrangements for this purpose. At the same time it became known that it was proposed to create a sort of State Council, consisting of Parliamentary representatives, to cooperate with the Imperial Government. Suddenly Herr von Bethmann Hollweg dis- FUNERAL OF COUNT ZEPPELIN AT STUTTGART, MARCH 12, 1917. The King of Wurtemberg is prominent behind the coffin. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. covered that his fate was in reality sealed. On the one hand, the Bayrische Staatszeitung , the official organ of the Bavarian Government, declared, on July 12, that Bavaria would have nothing to do with " Ministerial responsibility " to the Reichstag, and that all schemes to HERR GEORG MICHAELIS. German Imperial Chancellor July-October, 1917. graft a Parliamentary system on to the German Constitution must be condemned absolutely as an encroachment on the foundations of the federal character of the Empire. On the other hand, the Crown Prince entered into direct communication with the leaders of all the Reichstag parties, and was able to assure his father that Bethmann enjoyed no support and could well be dismissed at once. On July 13 the Kaiser offered the post of Chan- cellor to Count Hertling, the Prime Minister of Bavaria, who had undoubtedly contributed greatly to Bethmann' s overthrow, both by the Bavarian resistance to " reform " and by his own immense influence with the Centre Party, of which he had for many years been the leader in the Reichstag. " After serious consideration "Hertling disclosed these facts five months later in the Prussian Diet he refused the post, and on the same day the Kaiser " accepted the resignation " of Bethmann Holl weg.and appointed an almost unknown Prus- sian official, Herr Georg Michaelis, to be Imperial Chancellor and Minister President of Prussia. Herr von Bethmann Hollweg had been in office for exactly eight years ; he had succeeded Prince Bulow on July 14, 1909. For the second time the Kaiser announced the dis- missal of his chief servant on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. He did so, he wrote, "with heavy heart," but he added only per- functory words of recognition and the minor favour of the " Cross of Grand Commander of the Order of my House of Hohenzollern." As in the case of Prince Billow, the Centre Party had arranged the Parliamentary setting. But it was the Crown Prince, inspired by Hinden- burg and Ludendorff, who compassed Beth- mann's fall. Upon Bulow, in 1909, the Emperor had taken revenge for the humiliation to which he had been subjected in the matter of the famous Daily Telegraph interview. Upon Bethmann the Crown Prince took revenge for the humiliation which he had suffered in the autumn of 1911, when he had made a public demonstration in the Reichstag of his dis- approval of the Morocco treaty concluded with France. Thus the Crown Prince paid off an old personal score, but his action repre- sented the triumph of the militarists and reactionaries, and the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, the Army leaders, and the Junkers, industrialists and Clericals all joined hands. Herr von Bethmann Hollweg, in spite of the stubbornness with which he had clung to office, proved in the end an easy victim.* He was a man of great industry and limited ability, whose good intentions bore no fruit. He had attempted to arrive at agreements with Gre.it Britain in the years before the war, and had made the British declaration of war inevitable. He it was who, in the act of admitting tho " wrong " that Germany was doing in the invasion of Belgium, told the Reichstag thivt " necessity knows no law," and who, in his last conversation with the British Ambas- sador, defined an international treaty as "a scrap of paper." He had resisted unrestricted submarine warfare, only to consent to it ami to make the American declaration of war inevitable. He had displayed an apparent moderation without showing the least ability to give effect to his policy, and he had preached internal " reform " without showing the least ability to practice it. After three years of war, during which he had assumed the respon- sibility for greater crimes than any civilized Power had yet committed, he disappeared unwept and unsung. As has been seen, Count Hertling for the present -declined the succession, and Beth- THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 299 mann's victorious enemies seem to have been in some little doubt as to what they should do next. They did not venture to go the length of perfecting the military dictatorship by making Hindenburg himself, or some other general, Imperial Chancellor, and they decided to select some Prussian bureaucrat as their figure-head. The choice fell upon Michaelis because he had chanced to acquire a certain prominence during the past few months in the reform of the food control, and could be put forward as an embodiment of Prussian effi- ciency. At the beginning of the war Michaelis, after an uneventful bureaucratic career, had reached the position of an Under -Secretary in the Prussian Ministry of Finance. Early in 1917 he had made proposals for the reform of the food control organization, had himself been appointed to the new post of Prussian State Commissary, and had shown himself a vigorous and determined official. He was sixty years of age, entirely innocent of any .experience in foreign affairs, and an utterly unknown figure in domestic politics. His appointment was a contemptuous rebuff to the Reichstag. " The leaders of the Reichstag parties," remarked the Berliner Tagehlatt, " were told nothing about this appointment. Whether Herr Michaelis is merely a severe and strictly matter-of-fact bureaucrat or a demo- cratic reformer, whether he recognizes the necessity of ' parliamentarizing ' the method of government in the Empire, or is hampered by quite different tendencies and sympathies, the fact is that ha is sent down to the people and the representatives of the people from the heights of Olympus, whence in quite ancient times fate came to mankind." What remained of the " crisis " provoked by Erzberger, except the fact that Bethmann had been overthrown ? Only the second Rescript concerning the Prussian franchise to which it will be necessary to revert later and the proposal that there should be some agreed declaration about war aims. While Beth- mann's fate was being settled outside, the Reichstag proceeded with the drafting of a Resolution. On July 13 representatives of the Centre Party, the Radicals, and the Majority Socialists had a conference on the subject with Hindenburg and Ludendorff, and on July 14 there was a second conference, at which Michaelis, the new Chancellor, was present.* * The part played by the military authorities was kept secret until January, 1918, when the tacts wiv disclosed by the Radical Freisinnige Zeitung. The Resolution ultimately took the following form, and on July 19 it was adopted by the Reichstag by 212 votes-against 126 : As on August 4, 1914, so on the threshold of the fourth year of war, the word of the Speech from the Throne holds good for the German people : " We are not impelled by lust of conquest." For the defence of her freedom and independence, for the integrity of her territorial possessions (lerrit'triales flesitzstfjnfies), Germany took up arms. The Reichstag strives for a peace of understanding and of permanent reconciliation of the peoples. With such a peace forced acquisitions of territory and political, economic, or financial oppressions are incompatible. The Reichstag also rejects all schemes which aim at economic barriers and hostility between the peoples (Absperrung und Verjeindimg) after the war. Tho freedom of the seas must be made secure (aichergestollt were/en). Only economic peace will prepare the ground for a friendly intercourse among the nations. The Reichstag will actively promote the creation ot international law organization-;. MARSHAL VON HINDENBURG IN 1917. So long, however, as the enemy Governments do not accept such a peace, so long as they threaten Germany and her Allies with conquest (Kroberung) and oppression (Yergewaltigung), the German nation will .stand together like one man, and unshakably hold out and fight until its own and its allies' right to life and development is secured (ges-icherf}. The German nation is invincible in its unity. The Reichstag knows that it is at one in this statement with the men who in heroic fights arc protecting the Fatherland. The imperishable gratitude of the whole people is assured to them. Comparison of the final text with drafts which had previously been published show how the military authorities had stiffened it. 1913 300 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. The phrase " territorial possessions " was substitute, I for words (Beslnnil) which would luLve meant the German Empire alone. The reference to the Speech from the Throne in August, 1914, was mr.de explicit in order to disavow Bcthmann's famous admissions and pledges about Belgium, in his Reichstag speech of August 4, 1914. The references to " freedom of the seas " and economic " hos- tility " were greatly strengthened. Finally, the whole sense of the original Resolution was altered by the substitution of the words "the with the Government and with the military leaders, who had entirely controlled the "crisis." The facts were, indeed, perfectly clear. And yet the ruse had a remarkable success. For months the " Reichstag Peace Resolution,'" as it was called, affected foreign opinion, and it was of the utmost value to the ( German Government throughout the whole period leading up to the dictation of terms to the Bolshevists. Herr Michaelis remained Chancellor for three and a half months from the middle of July, SHORTAGE OF PAPER IN BERLIN : COLLECTING WASTE PAPER. German nation will . . . fight until its own and its allies' right to life and development is .secured," for the words "the German people is determined . . . to hold out for the defence of its own and its allies' right to life and develop- ment." The minority which voted against the Resolution consisted of 57 Conservatives, 5 members of the Centre Party, 42 National Liberals, and 22 Minority Socialists. Herr Haase, the lender of the Socialist Minority. e\pl:ii u i.tl very fully that the Resolution was a meaningless piece of hypocrisy, and that the Reichstag was in reality conniving once more at the policy of annexations, in conspiracy 1917, to the end of November. He was utterly unfit for his post. His ignorance of affairs, his tactlessness, and, above all, the fact that he had merely accepted office in obedience to orders, as a soldier accepts a command, were very clearly shown. " Miehaelis and I," said the Kaiser on one occasion, " must become Siamese twins, like Hindenburg and Luden- dorff." But that partnership was never realized, and " the old fox," as Count Hertling was admiringly described in Bavaria, had not long to wait for the high office which he had momentarily refused. Michaelis's failure was the more remarkable because circumstances really favoured him. The hopelessness of the THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 301 SHORTAGE OF WOOL IN GERMANY: MAKING BLANKETS OF NEWSPAPERS. Russian offensive showed itself immediately after his appointment, and in Germany there were no such acute difficulties as had troubled Bethmann's last days. The only important diplomatic development during his chancel- lorship was favourable to German schemings the Peaco Note which the Pope addressed to all belligerent Powers in August. But Michaelis made blunder after blunder, and was at no time likely to establish his position. When a bungled Government conspiracy brought him into conflict with the German naval authorities, there was no doubt about the result. Michaelis met the Reichstag on July 19. Concerning the Prussian franchise, he briefly stated his acceptance of the Second Rescript, of July 11, and the subject did not seriously arise again during his chancellorship. Con- cerning the government of the Empire, he proposed the mild measure of " calling to executive positions men who, in addition to their personal qualification for the post con- cerned, possess also the full confidence of the great parties in the popular representative body." "I will not," he boldly affirmr;!. " permit the conduct of affairs to be taken from mv hands." The "conduct of affairs" was in the hands, not of Michaelis, but of his military masters, and it was they wno dictated the following passage of his speech : [u the first place, the Fatherland's territory is in- violable. With an enem.v who approaches us with the demand to take from us German territory (Reichiycbiet) we cannot negotiate. When we make peace we must primarily achieve that the frontiers of the German Empire shall be secured for all time. We must by way of agreement and bargaining guarantee the vital conditions of the German Pimpire on the Continent and overseas. The peace must provide the basis for a lasting reconciliation of the nations. It must, as your resolution puts it, prevent the further creation of hostility among the nations by economic barriers. It must provide a guarantee that the armed alliance of our enemies shall not develop into an economic offensive alliance, against us. These ends are attainable within the limits of your resolution as 1 understand it. " Your resolution as I understand it ! " Such was the contemptuous attitude of the Government and the Army, after all the hag- gling and argument. Even the Reichstag majority could not in decency refrain from protest, and for weeks to come there was futile wrangling about the Government's attitude 'and the degree to which it had, or had not, endorsed the " Peace Resolution." At the beginning of August the Ministerial changes were announced. Five Prussian Ministers who in the Crown Council of July 11 had refused to have anything to do with reform of the Prussian franchise, now retired ; they were Herr von Beseler, Minister of Justice 302 THE TIMES HISTOEY OF THE WAR. Herr von Trott zu Solz, Minister of Education, Baron von Schorlemer, Minister of Agriculture, Herr Lenze, Minister of Finance, and Herr von Loebell, Minister of the Interior. A few reactionary deputies were given minor offices, and the Food Controller, Herr von Batocki with whom Michaelis had had many quarrels gave place to Herr von Waldow. More in- HERR VON KUHLMANN, Appointed German Foreign Secretary July, 1917. teresting was the removal of Herr Zimmermann from the Secretaryship of State for Foreign Affairs, and the appointment of Herr von Kiihlmann to succeed him. Kiihlmann had been for many years before the war Counsellor of the German Embassy in London, and he had undoubtedly been very largely responsible for the policy which led to the war. Clever, ambitious and unscrupulous to a degree, he had hitherto taken care to avoid full responsibility ; he was now to play a very prominent part in the diplomacy of the war, and much more will be heard of him in these pages. He had for a time been German Minister at The Hague a convenient post for observation of England, and, since November, 191 (i, he had been German Ambassador in Constantinople. The Michaelis Chancellorship was essentially a ]'riod of transition, during which Kiihlmaim was feeling his way in foreign policy, while Russia was unhappily going from bad to worse. Michaelis, in so far as he had any policy of his own, was more reactionary than Bethmaim Hollweg, and if he had been able to establish his position ho would pretty certainly have been disposed to rely upon Conservative sup- port. When he paid his official visit to Vienna in August, the Austrians, according to the Frankfurter Zeitung, observed with relief that he "by no means justified the fears aroused by the firmness of his countenance ; instead of appearing as an iron-eater and a man of extreme severity, he ... declared an honourable peace by agreement to bo the best thing to aim at." But after a few weeks' experience the Conserva- tives were pretty confident that Michaelis was on their side. At the end of August Ccunt Schwerin, President of the Lower House of the Prussian Diet, described Michaelis as a " good Prussian " and " a fighter by nature, who would never lose sight of his fixed goal." The new Chancellor apparently intended to get round the terms of the franchise rescript, and hits general point of view was accurately explained by Count Schwerin as follows : As a result of the horrible pessimist campaign of Erzberger, Scheidemann and others, which Bethmann did not know how to oppose effectively, the Reichstag majority had succumbed to a complete nervous collapse. In these circumstances the new Chancellor had to avoid, at any rate, the worst impression which this pusillanimity on the part of the Reichstag, although it by no means corresponded with feeling in the country, was bound to produce abroad. Whether he liked it or not, the new Chancellor had, therefore, to satisfy himself with making the manifestation as harmless and unimportant as possible. But ho was entitled to say to himself that after a few weeks after new successes for German arms, and when the greatest food difficulties had been overcome feeling in the country would of itself prove to be quite different from the feeling which Erzberger and Scheidemann had described in the Reichstag: and so, in view of Germany's military achievements, the Reichstag demonstration would soon be forgotten. After a conference with the Emperor and the military authorities, Herr Michaelis proceeded at the end of August to set up a so-called " free committee," consisting of seven members of the Reichstag and seven members of the Federal Council, which was to be consulted on broad issues of policy, especially concerning war aims, and to be advertised as a movement towards " democratisation." This committee was actually consulted to some extent concern- ing the reply to the Pope's Peace Note, but it soon disappeared, and the innovation had no practical effect whatever. The reply to the i'ope was described by Herr von Kiihlmanh, in a speech in the Main Committee of the Reichstag on September 28, as " a well-cementod structure in which stone is so fi. inly clamped to stone that THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 803 any attempt to break out a single stone, or, in other words, to make detailed comment, would only weaken its effect." The object, as Herr von Kiihlmann more truly observed, was " to create atmosphere." German policy was onco more surrounded with a cloud of vague generali- ties, combined with an impudent eulogy of the Kaiser's devotion to peace throughout the whole course of his reign.* By the beginning of October reports began to appear in Pan -German journals that the Chancellor's " health " was unsatisfactory. His fall was imminent, and although he re- mained in office for another month it was only on sufferance. It was not understood at the time in England and other Entente countries that so far from any real change of spirit, taking place in Germany reaction and militar- ism were more powerful than ever. The Michaelis " crisis " arose immediately from the fact that the Pan-Germans and Junkers, more arrogant and confident than they had been at any time since the first stages of the war, * The text of the Pope's Note, of the German reply, of a separate reply which was sent by Bavaria, and of President Wilson's reply, are printed in full at the end of the present chapter. The Governments of the Allies, while associating themselves informally with President Wilson's action, left the Pope's Note unan- swered. selected this moment for a general assault on the " Peace Resolution " policy of the Reichstag and upon the Socialist Minority the only genuine democratic force in the country. Michaelis lacked the necessary experience and ability for dealing with such a situation. He was incapable even of expressing himself clearly in the Reichstag ; on several occasions his speeches had, after delivery, to be altered for publication, and on at least one occasion the foreign telegraph service had to be sus- pended in order to prevent transmission of his indiscretions. During the first week in October the Reichstag debated the subject of Pan- German propaganda in the Army. It was shown that, under the auspices of the Father- land Party, to which further reference will be made, the Pan-Germans were rapidly obtaining control of the whole organization of lectures and entertainments for the troops, and were spread- ing the most violent forms of military doctrine and denunciation of Parliament the " rabble " and " traitors " who in the Reichstag dared to talk of " peace." Criticism was largely directed against Herr Helfferich, the very unpopular Vice-Chancellor. Instead of making such easy concessions as would have satisfied the wounded pride of the Reichstag, Herr Michaelis allowed himself to be involved in an absurd attempt HINDENBURG'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1917. School children scattering flowers in the path of the Field-Marshal. 304 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE \V.lll. to turn the tables upon the Socialists, and to represent "revolutionary" propaganda in the Xivvy as far more serious than any Pan- ' : nuaii propaganda in the Army. On October 9 a Minority Socialist named Dittmaun raised the question of violent measures which had been adopted by the nava! authorities for the sup HERREN SCHEIDEMANN AND EBERT, Leaders of the Socialist Majority. pression of Socialist opinion, and he asked whether it was true that many sailors had been sentenced to long periods of penal servitude, and that sailors had even been shot " because they held Socialist opinions." Thereupon the Chancellor, after a warm defence of patriotic- propaganda in the Army, called upon Admiral von Capelle, Tirpitz's successor as Secretary ot' State for the Navy. Capelle made the following statement : I must inform yon of the lamentable fact that the Russian Revolution has turned the heads of some few people on board our fleet, and swollen revolutionary ideas within them. The crazy plan of these few people was to wine confidential agents on all ships in order to mislead tho'iwhole crew into disobeying orders, and, in this way, in case of necessity with the use of force, to cripple the fleet and compel and enforce peace. It is the fact that these people had relations with the Inde- pendent Socialist Party. (Uproar. Dittmann : " Prove it.") It is established by documents thai, the chief agitator explained the plans here in the Reichstai* building in the rooms of the Independent Social-Demo- cratic Party to the deputies Herrcn Dittmann, Haase, and Vogtherr, who approved of them. (Tumultuous shouts of " Shamo ! " from the Right.) (Uproar on the extreme Left, shouts of " Transparent swindle " and "Incredible.") The deputies pointed out the dangers of such procedure and advised the greatest caution, but promised I heir full support by the supply of seditions material for the incitement of the fleet. (Repealed ehouts of " Shame : " from Right.) In view of this Mtuiition, it was my first duty to prevent, us far as was in my power, that the promised material should find access to the fleet. I therefore instructed the naval authorities i-um-crned to prevent by all means the circu- lation of this material. (Applause.) As regards subsequent occurr -nc-es in the fleet I can make no nent here. A few unprincipled and di<li.\.il persons who committed a severe offence have met tho fate they deserved, but nevertheless I want to state from a public platform that the rumours which are fiirrent, and naturally also came to my kiiowl, .!_. ni-ii immensely exaggerated. The prepare. in. >-: .,)' the Heet was not in doubt a single moment, and thus it >h.tll continue to be. (Applau-e.) The truth was that the Government hud seized the opportunity to exploit, for its apparent political advantage, some compara- tively insignificant, disturbances which had taken place at Wilhelmshaven at least six weeks previously. Marvellous stories \\<'tv published of a wide-spread " mutiny," in which many German officers were supposed to have been murdered ; lurid details were freely borrowed from the terrible experiences in the, Russian Baltic and Black Sea fleets. The only established facts were that two German sailors had been convicted respectively of mutiny and incitement to mutiny. One of them, named Reichnitz, was sentenced to death on August 30 and shot on September 5. It may bo added that the naval authorities, so far from taking the view of the " mutiny " which Capelle now thought fit to take, had been chiefly concerned to conceal the execution of the unfortunate Socialist sailor, and it was only by accident that his parents were informed of his fate. Even the Government soon discovered that it. could not carry through its political con- [Fnm "Dec WMSjks.-l" HAIG-SISYHHUS. A German view of the British offensives. spiracy, and that the attempt to convict the whole Socialist Minority of high treason was a failure. The Chancellor let it be said that Admiral von Capelle had exceeded his instruc- tions, and it was announced that Capelle had THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 305 sent in his resignation. But it was Michaelis, not Capello, who was to be sacrificed. For the second time the Kaiser offered the Chancellor- ship to Count Hertling. Hertling, according to his own subsequent account (see p. 298), regarded the political situation as " extremely complicated," and the circumstances as " still more difficult " than when he had refused office in July. He asked time for consideration, and then made his acceptance conditional upon his ability to reach a modus vivendi with the Reichstag Majority. Hertling knew very well that the Reichstag Majority only desired to save its face, and his chief difficulty was to reconcile any bargaining with the Reichstag at all with his own reactionary convictions and the reactionary basis upon which he meant to build his policy whatever " Liberal " facade ho might find it necessary to put upon tho structure. " All my life long," he said in defending himself against subsequent Conserva- tive criticism, " I have been a decided Monarch- ist, and as a Monarchist I will die. I repudiate just as absolutely the suggestion that I arn giving my hand to the exercise of any influence upon the federal character of the Empire." As a matter of fact Hertling's negotiations although prolonged, and ultimately concluded only by the intervention of Herr von Kiihlmann were extremely successful. While Hen- Michael is was still in office, the Centre Party, National Liberals, Radicals and Majority Socialists, addressed the' following commu- nication to the Kaiser, through his Civil Cabinet : Should His Majesty tho Kaiser determine upon a change of Chancellors, it is of service to the highest interest of the State that a complete guarantee should be provided for tranquil development of domestic policy until the end of the war. Only so can the soli- darity be established which is imperatively needed by the people in arms' and at home. Tho way to this goal is a sincere agreement about the foreign and domestic policy of tho Empire until the end of the war. The domestic difficulties of rec3nt months must be attributed to the lack of such an agreement. We, therefore, pray His Majesty thn Kaiser, before arriving at his decision, to instruct the personage selected for the Chancellorship to enter into conversations with the Reichstag. To the timid German politicians this mild prayer seemed to be action of unparalleled audacity, and the letter was carefully concealed for sorno months.* What it really meant was that tho Reichstag was quite ready to give binding pledges of good behaviour for the whole duration of the war, in return for perfectly * The document was published by the T-Iadical leailor, Herr Conrad Haussmann, in January 1918. (Frank- Jurt'jr Zeiluitij, January 7, 1918.) harmless concessions. Naturally the Kaiser and Hertling, while displaying reluctance, accepted the proposals. The terms of the bar- gain were clear. On the one hand although the Reichstag Resolution of July 19 was not openly disavowed ; it still had its uses in enemy countries Hertling pledged himself, ADMIRAL VON CAPELLE, Tirpitz's successor as Secretary of State for the Navy. not to the Reichstag Resolution, but to the vague generalities of the Cierinan reply to the Pope. Secondly, he consented to the appoint- ment of Herr Friedberg, a chauvinist National Liberal, to be Vice-President of the Prussian Ministry, and of Herr von Payer, the Wiirtem- berg Radical leader, to be Vice-Chancellor. On tho other hand, the Reichstag Majority formally agreed to prevent all serious debate on foreign or domestic affairs, to confine itself ta brief statements in support of Count Hertlinsr's 30f. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. COUNT HERTLING, Appointed Imperial Chancellor November 1, 1917. policy, and then to vote supplies with the utmost possible speed. Any parties which might attempt to go outside the agreed programme were to be voted down " until after the war." Finally, the next meeting of the Reichstag was " to display to foreign countries and to Ger- many a picture of national unity." The Reichstag had been effectually muzzled, and on November 1 Count Hertling was formally appointed Imperial Chancellor and Minister President of Prussia. Thus for the second time in the history of the German Empire the offices of Imperial THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 807 DR. FRIEDBERG, Vics-Prtsident of the Prussian Ministry under Hertling. Chancellor and Minister-President of Prussia were filled by a Bavarian. Prince Hohenlohe, when he succeeded Caprivi in 1894, was 75 years of age ; Count Hertling, the seventh Chancellor, was in his 75th year. There was a great difference between the circumstances and meaning of the two appointments. Hohen- lohe had regarded the creation of the German Empire as a IJberal gain, and to the best of his ability had represented " South German liberalism " against the Prussian Junkers and their firm ally, the Catholic Centre Party. Hertling had for years been the leader of the Centre Party in the Reichstag, and he had fought all his life against " Liberalism " even in opposition to South German Catholicism. Hertling was horn at Darmstadt in 1843, and for 13 years, from 1867 to 1880, he was a mere Privatdozent at Bonn University, his promotion admittedly being impeded by his strongly ultramontane views. In 1880 he became a Professor at Munich. He had then already been a member of the Reichstag for some years, and he succeeded Dr. Lieber as chairman of the Centre Party, which he dominated until 1912, when he became Minister President of Bavaria. Hertling had an unrivalled know- ledge and experience of German politics and German intrigue ; but above all he had for nearly 40 years been the chief, although un- official, representative of Germany at the Vatican. For a generation he had conducted every important German negotiation with the Pope. His appointment to the Chancellorship was, in the existing situation, very natural. He had a sufficient knowledge of foreign affairs to avoid elementary blunders and to speak with at least an appearance of authority ; the selec- tion of a Bavarian was congenial to the non- Prussian States ; and, most important of all, he could command the Centre Party in the Reichstag and so make it pretty certain that in all circumstances the Government should command a Parliamentary majority. Accord- ing to circumstances, he could either keep together the so-called " Reichstag Majority," which consisted of practically the whole Reich- stag except the Conservatives on the extreme Right and the Socialist Minority on the extreme Left ; or, if it appeared desirable to drive the Radicals and Majority Socialists into opposition, he could rely upon the Centre Party, Conserva- tives and National Liberals. In the event, Hertling had not the slightest difficulty, during the period reviewed in this chapter, in keeping the " Riclistag Majority " together. Every- thing combined to ease the situation. First the striking military success of the invasion of Italy, and then the collapse of Russia, the dictation of " peace " in the East, and the HERR VON PAYER, German Vice-Chancellor under Hertling. 808 THE TIMES HJ.sTO.VV OF THE MM/.'. preparation for a great onslaught upon the \\esteru Power*. favoured reaction in Germany. Tin- controversies which remained from the r.etliiiiaiiii "crisis" in July and the Midiaelis "crisis" in October lingered on. But such trouble as there was was superficial and unreal. [From " Lustigf B:alt!f." "THE TOBOGGAN.". The Reichstag which, while the outlook was anxious and uncertain, had clamoured so loudly for a share in the determination of policy, had no share in the policy ultimately pursued by Kiihlmann and the Army leaders against Russia - no share except to approve and to applaud. Yet incessant debates served to keep up democratic appearances, and to provide material for " pacifism " in enemy countries. As for the interminable Prussian franchise question, the Government at the end of Novem- ber introduced three "Reform" Bills in the Prussian Diet. First, a Franchise Bill fulfilled. in the letter, the Kaiser's promises of a secret, direct and universal franchise, although the franchise was carefully hedged about and there was to be no redistribution of seats. Secondly, the franchise concession was balanced by an extraordinarily reactionary Bill concerning the composition of the I'ppcr House, carefully devised to secure and entrench Junker domina- tion. A third Bill went still farther, by enabling the t'pper lloir-e to interfere in the control of finance. These measures provided the politi- cians and the Press with harmless occupation during the winter. Their progress was blocked and hampered at every turn, and little progress \\as made with them, although it became clear that the Government intended ultimately to obtain legislation of some sort postponing it us long as possible, in order in the end to grant it as a graciovis reward to a " victorious '' people. In his first Reichstag speech, on November 29, Count Hertling was able not only to dih;i-' upon the successes against Italy but to announce the Bolshevist proposal of an armistice and a "general peace." He stated his thus : policy Our war aims from the first day onward- were the defence of the Fatherland, t IIP in vinlar.ility of it < territory, and the freedom and independence of its economic life. On that account we could greet rli'>irfully the peace appeal of the Pope. The spirit in which the answer to the Papal Note was invi-ii is still alive to-day, hut this answer signifies no licence for a criminal tengthoaing ot' the war. For the continuation of the terrible au^hter and the destruction of irreplaceable works of civili/.atior, for the mad self-mutilation of Kurope, the enemy alone bears the responsibility, and will have also to bear the consequences. . . . The German watchword must be to wait, to endure, to bold .out. We trust in God, our righteous cause, our great army leaders. We trust in our lighters on tlu> land, on the sea, and in the air. We trust in the -pirii and the moral strength of our people at home. The Army and the country, in harmonious cooperation, will win victory. At the end of January, 1918, Hertling em- barked upon an elaborately hypocritical reply to a speech in which President Wilson had sketched " fourteen points " of peace policy. He expressed amiable devotion to the principle of open diplomacy and abolition of secret agreements, a readiness to discuss limitation of armaments " after the war," .and a positive enthusiasm for " freedom of the seas "--especi- ally if " claims to strongly fortified naval bases on important international routes, such as England maintains at Gibraltar, Ma'ta, Aden, Hong-Kong, on the Falkland Islands, and at maiiv other points, were renounced " ! For tho rest, it will suffice to record Hertling' s insolent statements concerning Russia, Belgium and France : The Entente States having refused to join in tlie negotiations within the period agreed upon by Russia and i he four allied Powers. I must decline, in the name of the latter, any sub-ec|uent iuteriercin-e. The question here involved is one which alone concerns Russia and the four allied Powers. I cherish the hope that, under the conditions ot tin- recognition of the right of self- detcrmination for the nations within the western boundaries ot the former Russian Empire, it will be po~-ihle to be in good relations with the-e nations as well as with the rest of Russia, for whom we urgently wish a return of gtiaruitee- whi.-h \\-ill secure a peuc.-tid order of things and the welfare of the country . . . THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 309 As far as the Belgian question is concerned, it has been declared repeatedly by my predecessors in office that at no time during the war has the forcible annexa- tion of Belgium by the German Empire formed a point in the programme of German politics. The Belgian question belongs to a complexity of questions, the details of which will have to be regulated during the peace negotiations. As long as our enemies do not unreservedly adopt the attitude that the integrity of the territory of the Allies offers the only possible founda- tion for peace negotiations I must adhere to the stand- point which, up to the present, has always been taken, and must decline any discussion of the Belgian question until the general discussion takes place. . . . The occupied parts of France are a valuable pawn in our hands. Here also forcible annexation forms no part of the official German policy. The conditions and mode of the evacuation, which must take into consideration the vital interests of Germany, must b4 agreed between Gennany and France. I can only once again expressly emphasize that there can never be any question of the separation of' the Imperial Pro- vinces. We will never permit ourselves to be robbed of Alsace-Lorraine by our enemies under the pretext of any fine phrases of Alsace-Lorraine which, in the meantime, has become more and more closely allied internally with German life, which is developing more and more economically in a highly satisfactory manner, and where more than 87 per cent, of the people speak the German mother tongue. > It was at this time a feature of the policy of the Central Powers to allow Austria-Hungary to employ tones milder than those of Berlin, and Count Czernin, the Austrian Foreign Minister, speaking on the same day as Hertling, and in collusion with him, expressed sentiments which were thought to be to some extent more attractive to the Allies and especially to Presi- dent Wilson. But the intrigue was too obvious, aid although the exchange of speeches con- tinued incessantly, the real situation remained unchanged at the end of three and a half years of war. As has been said, the German Government made a great effort during the summer of 1917 to promote an International Socialist Confer- once. After the rejection of the official Ger- man " peace offer " at the end of 1916, it was the policy of Berlin to reach enemy countries through any or every " international " channel Socialist, religious, humanitarian, or even financial. The object was to create " peace atmosphere," to promote peace talk, and to weaken the enemy's " home front." There were many attractions about the idea of a Socialist conference. There wan a genuine desire in honest Labour circles everywhere to keep alive the idea of the international solidarity of Labour. Secondly, it was well known in Berlin that British and French opinion was deeply sympathetic to the liberation of Russia, so that it would be difficult to counter any German plan which could be pxirsued in the name of the Russian Revolution. Again, it admirably suited the German Government to conceal its aims and policy behind an apparently open-minded cooperation with Labour. In the German Socialist Majority the German Government had an excellent and trustworthy tool. It has been seen (Vol. IX., p. 374) that in ELEPHANTS FROM THE BERLIN ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS AT WOKK FOR THE FATHERLAND 810 THE TIMES HISTOBY OF THE WAR. March, 1916, there \vas an open " split " in the Socialist Party, and that 18 influential Socialists, led by Herr Haase, broke away and formed the " Social Democratic Labour Union." The popular success of this movement was at once considerable, especially in Berlin and other large towns, and all efforts to reunite the Party failed. In September, 1916, a conference of all the Socialists was held in Berlin, the " Labour Union " taking part under protest, and the official party adopting a resolution in favour of continued support of Germany's " defensive war." The official leaders then proceeded to annex for the purposes of their policy practically the whole Socialist Press, which had hitherto, for the most part, adopted the attitude of the " Labour Union " ; the Berlin Vorwarts, for example, rapidly became hardly distinguish- able from any ordinary organ of the German Government. In January, 1917, the " Labour Union " held a rival conference in Berlin, and adopted resolutions which denounced German Socialist policy since the outbreak of war and demanded international cooperation in the interest of " a peace by agreement, in which there shall be neither victors nor van- quished." The official party committee there- upon announced that the members of the " Labour Union " had " separated themselves from the Socialist Party " ; in fact, the mem- bers of the " Labour Union " were formally expelled. The gulf between the two groups then widened rapidly. The " Labour Union " members of the Reichstag drew up an inde- pendent 'political programme, which they presented to the Reichstag, in the form of a motion, at the end of March. During the first week in April the " Labour Union " convened a conference at Gotha, and the new party was then formally constituted under the name of " Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany." The old party and the new party were, however, commonly known as " the Majority " and " the Minority " without regard to their actual strength in the country. The future alone could show whether the " Minority " Socialists, led by Haase, Bernstein, Ledebour and Kautsky, could establish any really effective opposition to the German Government. During the period now under review the new party formed a not unimportant rallying point for what remained of genuine Socialism. But events for the time favoured the militarists, and the Socialist Majority, under Ebert and Scheidemann, having seized the whole machinery of the old Socialist Party, and enjoying the thinly veiled support of the Government, was able to continue its support of the war without shedding the last pretence of cherishing " international " ideals. A sham Socialism could continue to be, in a phrase of Herr Bernstein's, " the Government's train- bearer." And, unfortunately, there were al- ways some dishonest minds at work abroad ready to represent to the Entente peoples that Herr Seheidemann's base coins were really hard cash. Almost from the beginning of the Russian Revolution the " Government Socialists " cherished the idea of profitable contact with the Revolutionaries. They were greatly as- sisted by the fact that, during April, 1917, strikes broke out among munition workers in Berlin and other large centres. To some extent the movement was due to the " infection " of events in Russia, but the chief cause of trouble was shortage of food, and the Government deliberately made the situation worse by a sudden reduction of the bread ration, which was subsequently found to have been quite unnecessary. The strikes were, in any case, a mere demonstration, and they were stopped at once by drastic military threats. But they served as an additional excuse for the Russians to enter into relations with their " German brothers." The introductory negotiations were conducted by a Danish Socialist, M. Borgbjerg, who conveyed messages and suggestions from Herr Scheidemann and his fellow conspirators to M. Kerensky in Petrograd. The subsequent proceedings were conducted under the auspices of a Dutch-Scandinavian Committee, the lead- ing parts being played by the Dutch Socialist, Mr. Troelstra, and M. Camille Huysmans, who, although a Belgian subject, preferred his office as Secretary-General of the defunct Socialist Internationale to the more obvious duties of a Belgian citizen. On the other hand, the desire for peace and the desire to restore the inter- national solidarity of Labour won the sympathy of the Ententophil Swedish Socialist, M. Branting, and the movement was greatly assisted, in their various ways, by Mr. Arthur Henderson in England and M. Albert Thomas in France to say nothing of the " pacifist " leaders in all countries. Here, however, we are concerned only with the actual course of events, chiefly in its bearing upon German policy. By the middle of May the " Stockholm THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAE. 811 [By special permission of the proprietors oj " Pu-tch." THE REAL VOICE OF LABOUR. Tommy: "So you're going to Stockholm to talk to Fritz, are you P Well, I'm going back to France to fight him." Conference " idea was fully launched, and it remained one of the great political factors during the whole period down to the Bol- shevist submission to Germany. Early in July Herr Scheidemann gave an illuminating account in the Vorwdrts of M. Borgbjerg's first conversations with the Soviet : The first question which was put to him by the Russian comrades was whether the Imperial Chancellor was in agreement with our declarations. It then appeared at once how incredibly wrongly people abroad are informed about the position of the German Social Democracy. Borgbjerg explained very thoroughly to the Russian comrades that we had nothing to do with the Chancellor, and that we are neither a Government Party nor a Majority Party. A further question put by the Russians was whether other parties are of the same opinion as ours. Borgbjerg replied that, beyond doubt not inconsiderable sections of the German people thought just as we did. The Russians asked, further, whether there would bo a revolution in Germany in the near future, and whether it was safe to reckon upon that. Borgbjerg replied that 312 77 .!//>' HIXTOHY OF THE WAI!. according to hi- c-,m\ iritou. there wo\il<l quite certainly hr mi ri'Miliitinii in (ii'riniiny ilurini; the war. . . . He .suiil tluit for tlit> Western States only u social revolution eoulil lie in i|uestiiin. Nevertheless the Soviet informed M. Borg- bjerg that " his mission had succeeded ! " Invitations to Stockholm were then duly issued, niul the Allied Governments were faced by the question whether they would permit their subjects to attend. At the end of May the French Socialists decided in favour of accepting the invitation to Stockholm, where representa- tives of both the German Majority and German Minority had already arrived. But M. Ribot, who was then Prime Minister, promptly National Seamen and Firemen's Union decide. 1 that no British ship should carry British dele- gates, and the Union's efficient organization actually captured Mr. MacDonald and Mr. F. W. Jowett at the port from which they hoped to sail, and sent them back to London. It was only in the middle of August, after " Stockholm " had produced a political crisis, and Mr. Henderson had resigned office, that the British Government definitely announced a final refusal to grant passports, and the final decision of Great Britain, France, the United States and Italy that peace terms should not bo discussed with the enemy until they could NEUTRAL ORGANIZERS OF THE STOCKHOLM CONFERENCE, 1917. Sitting, left to right : Van Kol, Troelstra (Netherlands), Albarda ; standing, Staumng (Denmark) and Branting (Sweden). announced in the Chamber that the French Government would refuse passports. " No," he said, " peace can come only through victory. All our energies must be directed towards hastening victory." The British Government, hampered by many considerations, but espe- cially by the fact that Mr. Henderson was at the moment in Petrograd with almost ambas- sadorial powers, hesitated, and had actually given a passport to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald for a journey to Petrograd not, indeed, to Stock- holm, but Stockholm was on the way. The situation was saved by the British seamen, who had suffered more than any other single class or calling from German crimes. The be discussed by the representatives of the whole nation. Meanwhile the " Stockholm Conference " had dwindled down to a series of meetings between the Dutch-Scandinavian Committee and the delegations from the various Socialist parties and groups in the countries of the Centra! Powers. The German " Majority " produced a memorandum as full of amiable generalities as any Imperial Chancellor's speech, and distinguished by an emphatic refusal to restore Alsace-Lorraine to Franco. The German object was perfectly clear, and the German Press had been too excited to conceal it. In August, when it seemed for a THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAE. 313 moment that British labour had been captured, the Vorwarts exclaimed triumphantly : According to the utterances of Henderson and others, the English were to go to Stockholm only to champion the cause of the Entente, to shatter Germany's moral RUBBER SHORTAGE IN GERMANY. Steel springs as substitutes for rubber tyres. power of resistance, and to facilitate the final victory. But the air of a peace conference is unhealthy for inten- tions of such a kind, and the opponents of participation were right from their point of view when they expressed the opinion that he who says A must also say B, and that he who goes to a peace conference will not find it fasy to come out of it as the apostle of war which he was before. Or, as an inspired Government writer put it in the Frankfurter Zeiliing at an earlier stage of the German intrigue : One must not overestimate the immediate importance .of the Stockholm conversations between Labour leaders of the Central Powers and Labour leaders from Russia, and perhaps from other Entente countries. This Conference cannot arrive at decisions which will be politically binding. It could, however, affect feeling among the masses in a manner which will compel consideration on the part of the Governments. Nor was any secret made of the fact that it was, above all, the British masses that the German Government and its " Socialists " were determined to '"affect." The whole labour situation in Germany was most clearly illuminated by the events which occurred at the close of the period under review. At the end of January, 1918, strikes again broke out in Berlin and in various parts of Germany but not, it is important to ob- serve, in the principal centres of the munitions industries, which held almost entirely aloof. This time the movement was continued, at any rate in Berlin, for more than a week, but the Government was mainly responsible. The strikes were doubtless promoted by the Socialist Minority, and they were sufficiently popular for the Majority leaders to hesitate about their attitude or rather, after a little hesitation, to decide that they should assume control of the strikes, with a view, on the one hand, to improving their Socialist prestige, and, on the other hand, to gaining fresh credit with the Government by putting a speedy end to the , disturbance of war work. Meanwhile the Trade Union authorities formally declared their " neutrality " which meant that there would be no " strike pay," and that prolonged cessation of work would be impossible. In Bavaria, and even at Cologne, for example, the authorities gladly accepted the Socialist leaders' help, and easily arranged matters. Berlin, however, preferred to give a display of militarist " firmness." The Chancellor and other Ministers relused to receive deputations, the police closed the strikers' headquarters and drove them into the street, and the utmost ruthlessness was shown in suppressing such slight disorders as were the natural results. Consequently the whole trouble was quite unnecessarily prolonged, and was triumphantly ended by the machinery of martial law. Once more the whole world rang with foolish stories "JOHN BULL'S UNRULY DOGS" John Bull: " Damn it 1 The more dogs on^my leash the less respect they seem to have for me." of impending revolution in Germany. Once more it was proved that German Socialism \\ us impotent as well as insincere. In so far as the strikes had a political mean- ing, they were due to the belief that the German Government's method of negotiating with the Bolshevists at Brest-Litovsk was imperilling 814 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. TO SAVE SHOE-LEATHER: BOYS ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL BAREFOOTED. the much desired peace. Innocent, ignorant, and also some dishonest, people in Allied coun- tries hastened, therefore, to declare that the German people was exhibiting its hostility to " annexations and indemnities." What happened ? The German Government and the German militarists pursued their course. They parleyed with the Bolshevists until a deadlock was reached. Then they again hurled the German forces against helpless Russia, and dictated an annexationist peace, to the delight of the whole German nation. The Socialist Vorwdrls led the chorus of denunciation of the Bolshevists and all their principles and actions, and Herr Erzberger, chief engineer of the crisis and " Peace Resolution " of July, 1917, declared in February, 1918, that the whole political operation had been, carried out accord- ing to plan ! So much has been said in earlier chapters about the development of the economic situation in Germany during the war that it is not neces- sary here to discuss in detail the progress of the country's privations. The third winter of the war was extremely severe, and suffering was intense. The hard weather made matters much worse, and, in particular, produced a transport crisis. Diminished man-power and worn out railways meant shortage of coal and the addition of cold to hunger. But during 1917 the situation as regards food reached a sort of dead level, prophecies that Germany would not be able to hold out until the new harvest were completely falsified, and, if anything, life in Germany as a whole became rather more tolerable. The mild winter of 1917-18 was an' immense boon to Germany. Bad though the whole situation was, the sufferings of the people did not become an effective factor which could be capable of upsetting the calcu- lations of the Army Command and the deter- mination of the Government. The result of the Government control was that the burden of suffering was thrown upon the shoulders of the poorest classes in the largest towns, who were least able to bear it, but also least able to rebel. It was the deliberate policy of the Government to provide first for the Army, then for the munitions and other " war " industries, and to leave the municipal authorities to provide as best they could for the ordinary population of the towns ; meanwhile the power of the agrarians always prevented a really exhaustive control of food production at the source. In the winter of 1917-18 the food control broke down badly. The municipalities were forced themselves to break the law and to engage largely in secret trading buying supplies wherever, and at whatever prices, they could THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 815 be obtained, and so playing into the hands of the profiteers. A secret memorandum pre- pared by the municipal authorities of Neukolln (Berlin) at the end of 1917 shed much light on the prevailing chaos. " The same state of things," it observed, " is to be found, in greater or less degree, in every municipality and in every industrial district. A competition is taking place between the industries and the municipalities, and it is ruthlessly exploited by the profiteers. The profiteers have the special advantage that the parties concerned hide their methods from one another, because they are illegal." Indeed, one of the most remarkable develop- ments was the general collapse of public and private morality. During the fourth winter of the war crime increased enormously, and in Berlin and most other large towns the police had to be reinforced by a regular service of military patrols. Everybody was trying to make as much as possible out of the war, and the murderers and burglars vied with the more respectable profiteers. The bureaucracy be- came more and more corrupt, the postal and railway services more and more insecure. As a competent economic writer, Heir Heinz Potthoff, wrote in Die Hilfe in January, 1918 : The chief of the crooked paths is bribery. Throughout Droad areas of our economic life bribery of employees has become a recognized trade custom, without which it is impossible to obtain either an order or the delivery of goods. A second method is embezzlement or theft. I should not like to go so far as to say that embezzlement and theft are already recognized as a trade custom, but. anybody can see that respect for the property of others has been badly shaken. If a wagon is left for a short time unguarded in the street or on the railway, it is certain to be half plundered. Consignments of food, fuel, and all necessities of which there is a shortage are reckoned as " fair game." The results of the first four German war loan issues have already been stated the total being 1,825,705,000. (See Vol. IX., p. 384.) The fifth loan, issued in September, 1916, produced subscriptions to the total amount of 532,000,000. The sixth and seventh war loans, which were issued in the spring p.nd autumn of 1917, together produced 1,281,500,000. Thus the nominal amount of the war loan subscriptions from the beginning of the war down to the end of 1917 was 3,639,205,000. For propaganda purposes great stress was laid upon the apparent consolidation of over 75 per cent, of the German war debt. But even in Germany there were a few critics honest enough to admit the total failure of the German Empire to devise any effective system of taxation or to show any prospect of putting the finances of the Empire on a sound basis : everything depended on the restoration of REPAIRING BOOTS WITH WOOD. 316 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. credit by " winning the war " and forcing enemy countries to accept German commercial dictation. The economic clauses of the " peace " treaties concluded with the Ukraine and with the Bolshevists were eloquent enough, and after the conclusion of " peace " in the East German statesmen again began to talk openly of the extortion of indemnities in the West. It has been seen that in the course of 1916 the value of the mark declined in neutral countries by about 30 per cent. The fluctuations in 1917 were extraordinary. They really depended xipon the variations in the military throughout the period under review. Germany was labouring incessantly, in order to throw her whole combined strength, financial, in- dustrial and commercial, into the scales on the very day after the conclusion of the war. A remarkable development in 1917 was the passage of the Bill for the Restoration of the Mercantile Marine. It amounted to the direct grant to the ship-owning companies of the sums necessary for rebuilding Germany's merchant navy. Government representatives 'candidly stated that this procedure was pre- ferred to the establishment of a direct State monopoly, in order to preserve the apparent FOOD SHORTAGE IN BERLIN : QUEUE AT A MUNICIPAL POTATO DEPOT fortunes of the Central Powers. Bottom was touched in October, 1917, and there was then a sharp recovery as the result of the successes in Italy and the negotiations with Russia. The following interesting table shows the values of the mark in Holland, Denmark, and Swit- zerland respectively: ioo Ml) 100 fluriiis. kronen. francs. .Inly 11. 11114 ... 169 112-15 81-30 H-rrmlxT 31, 1916 2311 163-25 117 -Murrli 31, 1917 248 17(1-25 123-51) October 31, 1917 :i 1 5 230-25 157 November 30. 1917 2110 220-25 158-02 December 22, 1017 226 170-25 125-62 Capitalist and industrialist concentrations and fusions continued on a remarkable scale independence of the companies with a view to international negotiations. The legislation caused great activity in the shipbuilding industry, arid many new yards were estab- lished. Germany proposed, so far from paying the penalty of her piracies and murders, to recommence competition on the most advan- tageous terms for the carrying trade of the world ! As has been shown, German opinion as a whole was characterized during the period under review by a great increase of militarist chauvinism. " Unrestricted " submarine war brought Germany a host of new enemies, but THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 817 it relieved her of the need to make further pretence, and, so long as the new enemies were unable to alter the military situation, a position of defiant isolation was stimulating. The overthrow of Russia, Germany's most powerful neighbour, exercised a tremendous effect upon German opinion. Again, heavy blows were struck at Italy, one of the former Allies by whom Germany had been deserted, and the other delinquent, Rumania, was crushed as Belgium and Serbia had been crushed. The result of it all was an intoxi- cating sense of power, which found expression in countless schemes of conquest, east and west, north and south. The Pan-German propaganda assumed ex- traordinary proportions leagues and associa- tions of all sorts, politicians of every colour, from Conservative and National Liberal to Majority Socialist, poured out endless plans for a German domination of the world. The most remarkable organization, perhaps, was a so-called Fatherland Party, which was headed by the former Secretary of State for the Navy, Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, and backed by unlimited funds. It was the centre of a vast scheme of Pan-German bribery and corruption, built by the Junkers and industrialists upon their huge profits from the war. They bought many newspapers and bribed many others by means of industrialist advertisements, and they carried on a powerful propaganda in all parts of the country. They advocated German expansion and penetration in all parts of the world, but concentrated especially upon the destruction of Russia, the annexation of Belgium, the seizure of a large colonial empire, and the overthrow of British naval supre- macy. The whole militarist campaign was per- sistently based upon idolization of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, which assumed forms ever more extravagant. Occasionally the Kaiser was brought forward out of the seclusion to which he was relegated whenever German fortunes seemed doubtful. Take, for example, the productions of a certain Herr Max Bewer, who in the autumn of 1917 was presented to the public as " the German poet." Bewer's avowed ambition was to do for the Kaiser what Goethe had failed to do for Frederick the Great, and to perpetuate the life of the German FOOD DISTRIBUTION BY THE MILITARY IN A BERLIN SUBURB. 318 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. heroes in terms worthy of Homer, the Northern Skaals, or the Bible ! Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Mnckensen, the Bavarian Lion of Arras, the heroes in the air and on the < :i. ascended like a wreath of stars about our Kaiser's heiul. When 1 saw him at the Great Headquarters, he was encircled by iron crosses and airmen's crosses, flashing and scintilla! ni^ mi uniforms of field-grey and tea-blue. ['' Simp&issimus" Oct. 16, 1917- "ENGLAND'S ANSWER TO THE POPE'S NOTE." John Hull: "It is not an Angel of Peace but a Devil of Death that we want to send to Germany." To look upon the Kaiser is like looking upon a wonderful autumn day. Think of fields and woods in all their brown fulness, while up above, on the tops 01 the mountains, there is the first bright, clean, white snow, and above the snow the flashing, blue sunny sky of a wonderful day. There from the hand of Nature, you have the faithful picture of the Kaiser as he looks with his great, blue, flashing, but still good-natured, eyes upon a life that has ripened in fulness of work, and looks blameless into the mists of the war. The full snowy hair is parted boyishly ; in freely curling waves it moves as if the sea wind from the Kaiser's cruises on the seas and at regattas were still playing in it. The forehead is broad, free and high, and burnt in the field up to a line where helmet and field cap have left the lighter shading. Through the brown cheeks often passes a healthy rosy colour. The lip* arc fine and firm, not too full and not too thin, and the moustache is clipped somewhat shorter than in time of peace. The powerful cut of the cheeks and an oner, getic chin, adorned, however, with an attractive dimple, complete this Kaiser head, beautiful as a picture, which, side by side with the patriarchal heads of Charles the Great and Barbarossa, will preserve for ever in German Kaiser-history its young-Germanic type. What this remarkable Byzantine did for the Kaiser, Herr Dernburg, forgetful of his record of espionage and intrigue in America, attempted about the same time to do for the German people : Steadfastness and righteousness are the qualities which the German people values in the highest degree, which it has tried to develop most thoroughly, and which have brought it a good and honourable reputation in the whole world. Thus those arts do not fit us which enjoy high appreciation in the war lies and deception, ambiguity and hypocrisy, intrigue and low cunning. When we make experiments in these things we suffer hopeless and brutal failure. Our lies are coarse and improbable, our ambiguity is pitiful simplicity, and our intrigues are without salt and without grace. The history of the war proves this by a hundred examples. That is the very least that must be said of our employ- ment of these immoral weapons which are foreign to our character. When the war broke out and our enemies poured all these things upon us like a hailstorm, and when we convinced ourselves of the effectiveness of such tactics, the tactics rose in our estimation, and we tried to imitate them. But these tactics will not fit the German. We are rough but moral, we are credulous but honest, we are adroit but inexperienced.* Herr Dernburg's article was one of many indications that the Germans, having exhausted every resource of crime and cunning during the war, were preparing as a German traveller in Switzerland observed to " organize sym- pathy." When they talked of " peace by understanding," they meant a peace which would merely throw a thin veil over an actual German victory. A well-known Socialist deputy in the Reichstag, Dr. Paul Lensch, writing in Die Glocke in the autumn of 1917, candidly observed that the Central Powers " will be counted the victors if they succeed in preventing any diminution in the extent of their former frontiers, in keeping Alsace- Lorraine, the colonies, and Trent and Trieste, and in refusing their enemies any indemnity." And he added : The consequences which such a peace would have for English world-power we have often explained. It would bo for Great Britain the greatest defeat in its history and the beginning of its ruin. It is just because people in England are well aware of that that they are resolute for the war and will hear nothing of a peace by understanding. . . . For that very reason, on the other hand, the Central Powers will and can press all the more persistently for such a peace. . . . Germany will have won the war if she does not lose it, but England will have lost the war if she does not win it. So much for the prolonged German " peace " intrigues, which loomed so large in the period from the autumn of 1916 to the spring of 1918. They failed, but German successes in the East increased German appetites and ambitions, and the battles for the freedom of the world were resumed on a still more gigantic scale. The Pope's proposals for peace were addressed from the Vatican, August 1, 1917. "to the Heads of the Belligerent Peoples." The following is a translation of the French text : Since the beginning of our Pontificate, amid the horrors of the terrible war let loose on Europe, we From Deutsche Politik, September 28, 1917. Captain Kleine, commander of raiding squadron. 2. Putting on life-saving jackets. 3. Packing before the journey. 4. Testing weather and wind. 5. One of the bombs. 6. The squadron at starting-place. PREPARING FOR AN AIR RAID ON ENGLAND. (From Gfrmdn photograph*. 319 820 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. have kept in mind three things above all : to main- lain perfect impartiality towards all tho belligerents, as become"' him who is the common father and who love, with equal affection all his Children; to strive constantly to do to all the greatest possible good, with- out exception of persons, without distinction of nation- ality or religion, as is enjoined upon us both by the Universal Law of charity and by the supremo spiritual rlwrge confided to us by Christ: finally, as our paci- fying mission equally requires, to omit nothing, as fer as might be in our power, that could help to hasten the cad of this calamity, by essaying to bring the peoples and their Heads to more moderate counsels and to tho serene deliberations of peace a peace "just and lasting." Whoever has followed our work during the three sad years just elapsed has been able easily to recognize that, if wo have been ever-faithful to our resolve of absolute impartiality and to our beneficent action, we have never ceased to exhort the belligerent peoples and governments to resume their brotherhood, even though all that we have done to achieve this most noble aim has not been made public. Towards the end of the first year of war we addressed to the nations in conflict the liveliest exhortations, and pointed out, moreover, the path along which a peace, stable and honourable for all, might be attained. Unfortunately our appeal was not heeded, and the war went on desperately, with all its horrors, for another two years ; it even became more cruel, and spread, on land, on sea nay, in the very air ; upon defenceless cities, quiet villages, and their innocent inhabitants, desolation and death were seen to fall. And now none can imagine how the sxifferings of all would be increased and intensified were yet other months, or still worse, other years, added to this bloody triennium. Shall, then, the civilized world be nought but a field of death ? And shall Europe, so glorious and flourishing, rush, as though driven by universal madness, towards the abyss, and lend her hand to her own suicide ? In a situation so fraught with anguish, in the presence of so grave a peril, we, who have no special political aim, who heed neither the suggestions nor the interests of either of tho belligerent parties, but are impelled solely by the feeling of our supreme duty as the common father of the people, by the prayers of our children, who implore from us intervention and our word of peace, by the very voice of humanity and of rea on, we raise again a cry for peace, and renew a pressing appeal to those in whoso hands lie the destinies of nations. But in order no longer to confine ourselves to general terms, such as were counselled by cireum- stances in the past, we desire now to come down to more concrete and practical proposals, and to invite the Governments of the belligerent peoples to agree upon the following points, which seem a, though they ought to bo the bases of a just and lasting peace, leaving to their charge the completion and the more precise definition of those points. First, the fundamental point should be that the moral force of right should replace the material force of arms ; hence a just agreement between all for the simultaneous and reciprocal diminution of arma- ments, according to rules and guarantees to be established, to the extent necessary and sufficient for the maintenance of public order in each State ; then, in the place of armies, the establishment of arbitration with its exalted pacifying function, on lines to be concerted and \vith sanctions to be settled agaitist any State that should refuse either to submit international questions to arbitration or to accept its awards. The supremacy of right once established, let every obstacle be removed from the channels of communica- tion between peoples, by ensuring, under rules likewise to be laid down, the true freedom and common enjoy- ment of the seas. This would, on the one hand, remove BELLS OF A BERLIN CHURCH TO BE MELTED DOWN FOR MUNITIONS. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAP. 321 SHORTAGE OF LABOUR IN BERLIN. A Count and I. is family clearing snow from the road. manifold causes of conflict, and would open on the other, fresh sources of prosperity and progress to all. As to the reparation of damage and to the costs of war, we see no way to solve the question save by laying down as a general principle, complete and reciprocal condonation, which would, moreover, he justified by the immense benefits that would accrue from dis- armament ; all the more, since the continuation of such carnage solely for economic reasons would bo incomprehensible. If, in certain cases, there exist, nevertheless, special reasons, let them be weighed with justice and equity. But these pacific agreements, with the immense advantages they entail, are impossible without the reciprocal restitution of territories now occupied. Consequently on the part of Germany there must be the complete evacuation of Belgium, with a guarantee of her full political, military, and economic indepen- dence towards all Powers whatsoever ; likewise tho evacuation of French territory. On the part of the other belligerent parties, there must be a similar resti- tution of the German colonies. As regards territorial questions like those at issue between Italy and Austria, and between Germany and France, there is reason to hope that in considera- tion of tho immense advantages of a lasting peace with disarmament, tho parties in conflict will examine them in a conciliatory spirit, taking account, in the measure of what is just and possible, as we have before said, of the aspirations of the peoples, and, as occasion may offer, co-ordirmting particular interests with the general weal of the great human society. Tho same spirit of equity and justice must reign in the study of the other territorial and political quest ions, notably those relating to Armenia, the Balkan SM1rs and to the territories forming part of the ancient Kingdom of Poland, to which, in particular, its noble histori.-nl traditions and the sufferings endured, especially ilum._< the present war, ought justly to assure the sympathies of nations. Such are tho principal bases upon which we believe the future reorganization of peoples should be founded. They are such as to render impossible a return of similar conflicts, and to prepare the solution of the economic question, so important for the future and the material welfare of al! tho belligerent States. Therefore, in laying them before you, who guide at this tragic hour tho destinies of the belligerent, nations, we are inspired by a sweet hope tho hope of seeing them accepted and thus of seeing ended at the earliest moment the terrible struggle that appears increasingly a useless massacre. Every' one recognises, moreover, that, on the one side and on the other, the honour of arms is safe. Lend, therefore, your ear to our prayer, accept the paternal invitation that we address to you in the name of the Divins Redeemer, the Prince of Peace Think of your very heavy responsibility before God and men ; upon your resolves depend the repose and the joy of innumerable families, the life of thousands of youths, in a word, the happiness of the peoples to whom it is your absolute duty to assure these boons. May the Lord inspire in you decisions in accord with His most holy will. May Heaven grant that, in deserving the plaudits of your contemporaries, you will gain also for yourselves the name of peacemakers among future generations. As for us, closely united in prayer and penitence with all faithful souls who sigh for peace, we pray that the Divine Spirit grant you light and counsel. The President of the United States sent the following reply to the Pope ; it was published on August 30, 1917 : Every heart that has not been blinded and hardened by this terrible war must be touched by this moving appeal of his Holiness the Pope, must feel the dignity and force of the humane and generous motives which prompted it, and must fervently wish that we might take 322 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. STARS. ORDERS AND MEDALS OF THE ENTENTE POWERS OFFERED FOR SALE IN BERLIN ON BEHALF OF THE GERMAN RED CROSS. the path of peace ho so persuasively points out. But it would be folly to take it if it does not in fact lead to the goal ho proposes. Our response must be based upon the stern facts and upon nothing else ; it is not a mere cessation of arms he desires ; it is a stable and enduring peace. This agony must not be gone through with again, and it must be a matter of very sober judgment what will insure us against it. His Holiness in substance proposes that wo return to the status quo ante bellum, and that then there can be a general condonation, disarmament, and a concert of nations based upon an acceptance of the principle of arbitration ; that by a similar concert freedom of the BOOS be established ; and that the territorial claims of France and Italy, the perplexing problems of the Balkan States, and the restitution of Poland be left to such conciliatory adjustments as may be possible in thn new temper of such a peace, due regard being paid to the a-tpirations of the peoples whoso political fortunes and affiliations will be involved. It is manifest that no part of this programme can be successfully carried out unless the restitution of the status quo attte furnishes a firm and satisfactory basis for it. The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of the world from the menace and the actual power of a vast military establishment controlled by an irresponsible Government, which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard either to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long-established practices and long-cherished principles of international action and honour ; which chose its own time for the war ; delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly ; stopped at no barrier either of law or of mercy ; swept a whole continent within the tide of blood, not the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of innocent women and children also and of the helpless poor ; and now stands balked but not defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world. This power is not the German people. It is tho ruthless master of the German people. It is no business of ours how that great people came under its control or submitted to its temporary zest, to the domination of its purpose ; but it is our business to see to it that the history of tho rest of the wjrld is no longer left to its handling. To deal with such a power by way of peace upon the p'an proposed by his Holiness tho Pope would, so far as we can see, involve a recuperation of the strength and renewal of tho policy ; would make it necessary to create a permanent has tile combination of the nations again-tt the German people, who are its instruments ; would result in abandoning the new-born Russia to the intrigue, tho manifold subtle interference, and the certain counter-revolution, which would be attempted by all the malign influences to which the German Government has of late accustomed the world. Can peace be based upon a restitution of its power or upon any word of honour it could pledge in a treaty of settlement and accommodation ? Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, if they never saw before, that no peace can rest securely upon political or economic restrictions moant to benefit some nations and cripple or embarrass others, upon vindictive action of any sort, or any kind of revenge or deliberate injury. The American people have suffered intolerable wrongs at the hands of tho Imperial German Government, but they desire no reprisal upon the German people, who have themselves suffered all things in this war, which they did not choose. They believe that peace should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of Governments, the rights of peoples, great or small, weak or powerful, their equal right to freedom and security and self-government, and to a participation upon fair terms in the economic oppor- tunities of the world, the German peoples, of course, included, if they will accept equality nnd not seek domination. The tost, therefore, of every plan of peace is this: Is it based upon tho faith of all the peoples involved or merely upon tho word of an ambitious and intriguing Government on the one hand and of a group of free peoples on tho other? This is a tost which goes to tho root of tho matter ; and it is the tost which must be applied. Tho purposes of the United States in this war are known to the whole world to every people to whom Un- truth has been permitted to come. They do not need to be stated again. We seek no material advantage of any kind. We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in this war by the furious and brutal power of the Imperial German. Government ought to be repaired, but not at tho expease of the sovereignty of any people rather in vindication of the sovereignty both of those that are wvnk and of those that are strong Punitive damages, the dismemberment of empires, the establi-h- ment of selfish and exclusive economic leagues, we doom inexpedient, and in the end worse than futile, no proper basis for a peace of any kind, least of all for an enduring peace. That must bo based upon justice and fairness and the common rights of mankind. We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to endure, unless explicitly, supported by such conclusive evidence of the will and purpose of the German people themselves THE TIMES HISTOEY OF THE WAR. as the other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting. Without such guarantees, treaties of settle- ment, agreements for disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in the place of force, territorial adjust- ments, reconstitutions of small nations, if made with the German Government, no man, no nation, could now depend on. We must await some new evidence of the purposes of the great peoples of the Central Kmpires. God grant it may be given soon, and in a way to restore the confidence of all peoples everywhere in the faith of the nations and the possibility of a cove- nanted peace. The German Imperial Government sent the following reply, dated from Berlin on September 19: Horr Cardinal, your Eminence has been good enough, with your letter of August 2, to transmit to the Kaiser and King, my most gracious master, the Note of his Holiness the Pope, in which hi" Holiness, filled with grief at the devastations of the world war, makes an emphatic appeal for peace to the heads of the belli- gerent peoples. The Kaiser and King has deigned to acquaint me with your Eminence's letter and to entrust the reply to me. His Majesty has been following for a considerable time with high respect and sincere gratitude his Holi- iiess's efforts in a spirit of true impartiality to alleviate as far as possible the sufferings of the war and to hasten the end of hostilities. The Kaiser sees in the latest step of his Holiness a fresh proof of his noble and humane feelings, and cherishes a lively desire that for the benefit of the entire world the Papal appeal may meet with success. The effort of Pope Benedict XV. to pave the way to an understanding amongst the peoples might the more surely reckon on a sympathetic reception and whole-hearted support from his Majesty, seeing that the Kaiser, since taking over the Government, has regarded it as his principal and most sacred task to preserve ths blessings of peace for the German people and the world. In his first speech from the throne at the opening of the German Reichstag on June 25, 1888, the Kaiser promised that love of the German Army and his position towards it should never lead him into the temptation to cut short the benefits of peace unless war were a necessity forcsd upon us by an attack on the empire or its allies. The German Army should safeguard peace for us, and, should peace nevertheless bo broken, be in a position to win it with honour. The Kaiser has, by his acts, fulfilled the promise he then made in 26 years of happy rule, despite provocations and temptations. In the crisis which led to the present world-conflagration his Majesty's efforts were, up to the last moment, directed towards settling the conflict by peaceful means. After war had broken out, against his wish and desire, the Kaiser, in conjunction with his high allies, was the first solemnly to declare his readiness to enter into peace negotiations. The Gorman people supported his Majesty in his efficacious desire for peace. Germany sought within her national frontiers free development of her spiritual and material possessions, and outside imperial territory unhindered competition with nations enjoying equal rights and equal esteem. The free play of forces in the world in peaceable wrestling with one another would have led to the highest perfecting of the noblest human possessions. A disastrous concatenation of events in the year 1914 absolutely broke off the hopeful course of development, and transformed Europe into a bloody battle arena. Appreciating the importance of the declaration of his Holiness, the Imperial Government has not failed to submit the suggestions contained in it to earnest and scrupulous examination. The special measures which the Government has taken, in the closest contact with the representatives of the German people, to discuss and answer the questions raised prove how earnestly it desires, in unison (Einklang) with the desire of his Holiness, and with the peace resolution adopted by the Reichstag on July 19, to find a practical basis for a just and lasting peace. The Imperial Government welcomes with especial sympathy the leading ideas of the peace appeal, in which his Holiness clearly expresses his conviction that, in the future, the material power of arms must be superseded by the moral power of right. We also are convinced that the sick body of human society can only be healed by the fortifying moral strength of right. From this would follow, according to the view of his Holiness, the simultaneous diminution of the armed forces of all States, and the institution of obligatory arbitration in international disputes. We share the view of his Holiness that definite rules and certain safe- guards for the simultaneous and reciprocal limitation of armaments on land and sea and in the air, as well as for the true freedom and community of the high seas, THE BUREAU FOR THE PURCHASE OF GOLD AT HANOVER. 824 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. are tin* thing* in treating which the new spirit that in tut urn should prevail in international relations should Hud its first hopeful expression. The task would then imineditite!\ arise of deciding international diffe- rences of opinion as they emerge, not by the use of armed forces, but by peace t'ul methods, especially by way of arbitration, the great peace-producing effect of which we, together with his Holiness, fully recognize. The Imperial Government will, in this respect, support every proposal which is compatible with the vital interests of the German Empire and people. Germany, owing to her geographical situation and her economic requirements, has to rely on peaceful intercourse with her neighbour-; and distant countries. No people, therefore, has more reason than theGerman people to wish that, instead of universal hatred and battle, a con- ciliatory and fraternal spirit should prevail between the nations. If the nations, guided by this spirit, will recognize to their salvation that the important thing is to lay more stress upon what unites them, than upon what separates thorn in their relations, they will also succeed in settling individual points of conflict which are still undecided in such a way that conditions of existence which will be satisfactory to every nation will be created, and thereby a repetition of the great world-catastrophe would appear to be impossible. Only on this condition can a lasting peace be founded which will promote a spiritual nipprorhtment and a return of human society to economic prosperity. This serious and sincere conviction encourages our confidence that our enemies also may see in the ideas submitted for consideration by his Holiness a suitable, basis for approaching nearer to the preparation of a future peace under conditions corresponding to the spirit of reasonableness and to the position of Europe ('fie Laye Europti* . The King of Havana, sent the following weparate reply, dated from Munich on Septem- ber 21 : Most holy Father ! Your Holmes-, in your Note of August 2 of the current year, addressed a solemn appeal to the heads of the States of the countries at war, with the object, of ending the horrors of this fearful war by a just and lasting peace and of restoring pe*<v t the world. Your Holines* has shown mo the high favour of allowing this deeply significant document to reach me also, for which I beg to tender my m<vt -incere thanks. I read the words of your Holiness with the deepest emotion. In every sentence of this Note, dedicated to the preparation of peace, there speaks the burning an. I earnest zeal of your Holiness, as the representative of *he divine Prince of Peace, to restore to suffering humanity the blessings of peace. In this way your Holiness is Drowning in the noblest manner the work which your Holiness 1m-: set before yourself from the first day of your pontificate ; namely, by all -embracing fatherly love and impartiality as far as possible to shorten tlm horrors of this conflict of the peoples and to mitigate the sufferings of the war. Your Holiness may certainly count on the everlasting thanks of all humanity for this indefatigable noble work. Every stop which yoxir Holiness has undertaken for the preparation of a peace lasting and honourable for all parties ha* b*pn followed with the most heartfelt sympathy by me and by His Majesty the German Kaiser and King of Prussia, and all the other German Federal Princes, as by the whole German people. History proves that the German nation, since the founding of the German Empire, has had no other and no more eager wish than to cooperate in peace and honour in the solution of the highest tasks of human culture with all its might, and to dedicate itself to the unhindered development of its economic life. Nothing could He farther from the peace-loving German nation and its Government in pursuing this task, than the thought of an attack on other nations and the effort to extend its territory by violence. For no victory and no gain of territory couM in its eye-., even in the most distant degree, counterbalance the Fearful horrors of a war and the annihilation of ethical and economical values necessarily connected with it. The policy of the German Kaieer and of the Imperial Government, conducted in entire agreement with the. German Federal Governments, which always had in view the preservation and assurance of peace often to the very limit of what was compatible with German interests, therefore met always with the fullest approval of the German nation and its chosen representatives. Not until Germany was obliged to consider her very existence threatened, when the German nation saw itself with its loyal allies attacked on all sides, there was no other choice but to fight with the exertion of all its forces for honoxir, liberty, and existence. But even during this unexampled war which was forced on us, and which has now been raging for more than three* years, the German Government has given unequivocal proofs of its readiness for peace, and, iiid-'ed, quite especially by the solemn challenge addressed to our enemies in union with our allies as long ago as the end of the year 1916, to enter on peace negotiations. [f this first serious attempt at making an end to the horrors of war failed, the responsibility for the failure falls on our enemies, who entirely refused to consider the proposal. All the more earnest are the wishes which I, as well as the German Kaiser, and as well as the whole German nation, cherish for the success of the step now undertaken by your Holiness, so that by it a lasting peace, honourable for all parties, may be prepared in the interests of the whole world. I have the honour to sign myself the entirely obedient son of your Holiness. CHAPTER CCXXXI. THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES (I.). PREPARATIONS FOR THE COMBINED ALLIED OFFENSIVE AIR AND COUNTER-BATTERY WORK THE NEW SYSTEM OF DEFENCE " PILL-BOXES " AND CRATERS GOUGH'S FIFTH ARMY THE GERMAN FRONT FROM THE LYS TO STEENSTRAAT THE FRENCH FRONT OPENINU OF THE BATTLE ON JULY 31, 1917 INITIAL GAINS PILKEM CAPTURED ST. JULIEN POMMERN REDOUBT THE SECOND ARMY'S ATTACK RESULTS OF FIRST DAY BAD WEATHER FURTHER OPERATIONS TO AUGUST 15 THE THREAT TO LENS HILL 70. BY the middle of July, 1917, the arrangements for the Allied advance from their left flank, in which British, French and Belgian troops were to cooperate, were nearing completion. The pre- liminary steps which were to prepare the way for the offensive advance were therefore begun. The first of these was, as usual, to overwhelm the lines to be assaulted by artillery fire. For under modern conditions it is impossible for infantry to carry by frontal attack the enemy's trenches unless the access to them has been cleared of the wire entanglements placed before them and his artillery fire has been largely diminished. Both these tasks need accurate and destructive fire. The modern artillery position is not an open one from which the gunner lays his gun directly on the target; it is a covered one, defiladed from view, so that the guns are not directly exposed to hostile fire. Guns in such positions must, to correct their fire, know exactly where each projectile falls. Forward observing positions on the ground may, if circumstances be favourable, do some- thing to help the gun-layers. But obviously the number of such positions must often be relatively small. The country will not always afford sufficient of them, and they are liable to be snuffed out by hostile fire. But in the aviator modern artillery possesses a coadjutor who is far better than any groundling Vol. XV. Part 192 observer. The man in the aeroplane has a purview which embraces a wide range of country, and looking down on the hostile guns he can note their position, and even if they are silent nearly always ascertain their emplace- ments from various indications which clearly disclose them to the trained observer. He can watch the fall of the shells from his own side's guns and by wireless telegraphy send back in- formation as to range and deflection which will enable the gun-layers to correct their aim. This alone will enable the latter, in the words of Sir Douglas Haig, " to carry out successfully a methodical and comprehensive programme." But before all this can be undertaken, the enemy's aeroplanes must be mastered to a large extent, so as to allow our own fairly free passage over the hostile lines. This task was successfully accomplished, and so effective did it make our fire that the Germans commenced to draw many of their guns back to more retired positions of greater safety. And it must be remembered that every retirement of this kind reduces the efficacy of the fire of the guns, for they cannot so well act in support of their infantry from the increased ranges. July 25 had been originally selected for the assault. To give the opportunity to our airmen to locate exactly the German new gun positions and also allow time for our 325 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. artillery to bring their weapons to closer, and therefore more effective, ranges, a delay of three days was granted. But unexpected difficulties arose in bringing some of the artillery forward, and for some days the visibility was so bad as to interfere materially with aerial observation. The opening day for the infantry was therefore postponed till the 31st. During this time the enemy was freely subjected to raids and to extensive gas attacks. On July 27 our airmen engaged till dark in very earnest fighting and obtained many successes. With a loss to ourselves of only railways, and an ammunition depot were suc- cessfully bombed. July 29 was not favourable to work in the air after 10 a.m., when iv severe and sudden thunderstorm prevented further flying. Nevertheless, 'four German aeroplanes were shot down and two others were seen to fall out of control. But many of our aviat >rs were caught in the storm and six of our machines failed to return, of which four owed their fate to the weather. The next day there was, owing to atmospheric conditions, very little work done in the air. Still, on the whole, we had accounted for 67 aeroplanes and 20 obser- [Belgian official photograph. BELGIAN ANTI-AIRCRAFT MACHINE-GUNS ON THE DUNES. three machines, 15 of the Germans were driven headlong to the ground and 16 more were seen to descend out of control. During the night important railway stations and two aerodromes were bombed. During daylight a number of bombing raids were carried out and much photographic and observing work for the artillery accomplished. The aerial combat was continue! 1 without interruption. Sixteen of the enemy's aeroplanes and two observation balloons were destroyed and 14 more driven to the ground out of control. On the other hand, 13 of our machines failed to come back. During the night operations were carried on beliind the German lines. An aerodrome, two important vation balloons, incurring a loss of 22 of our own machines. Raids also had been continuously and successfully carried on during the period of preliminary bombardment. On July 25 the German headquarters reported that the artillery fire had increased to the greatest intensity. Under its cover on the previous day four British raids brought in 114 prisoners. On the 25th further raids at many points brought a considerable number more. Against this the Germans could only set off the capture of a few advanced posts on Infantry Hill, east of Monchy. The 26th was marked by a successful raid near Armentieres and the THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 327 capture of La Basse Ville near \Varneton, in which 29 prisoners were taken. But a counter- attack of the Germans against the last named point compelled our advanced detachments to retire to their old positions. Tho village was not definitely captured by us until the forward 'movement of the 31st. On the 27th and 28th there was considerable British raiding activity, especially around Ypres and in the Hindenburg lino south of- the Scarpe. Near Roeux 30 prisoners were captured. Altogether in the neighbourhood of Ypres over 200 German prisoners were taken during the week. July 29 saw -a raid near, the Belgian coast and some patrol encounters near Arras. The minor operations were slacking oft' to make room for the great endeavour which was to begin on July 31. During the preliminary measures, careful observation was kept on the Germans lest they should endeavour to withdraw to a rear- ward position before the Allies had delivered their stroke against their front line. The object of the Allied Commanders was not merely to occupy an abandoned position but to kill and capture the enemy in it before he could evade the blow. On July 27 it was discovered that lie had given up a portion of his forward defences opposite the northern end of the 'Fifth Army front and behind the Yser Canal, either because they afforded but feeble shelter from our artillery or because he feared that we were again going to move our armies against him. British Guards and French troops were there- fore pushed forward over the canal and took firm hold of the enemy's first line and its support trenches on a front of about 3,000 yards cast and north of Bocsinghc. The German counter-attacks till failed and our troops were able during the night to complete 17 bridges over the canal, which rendered it easy to reinforce our troops holding the newly con- quered position mid greatly simplified any further advance, ensuring the easy passage of the canal, which had hitherto been a formidable obstacle. The German lines at the section to be attacked viz., from the valley of the Lys across the eastern slopes of the Messines-Wytschaete ridge to the Yser canal, a distance rough! v of 15 miles were mostly constructed on a different system from that with which our troops had hitherto had to deal. The result of the fighting during 1910 and the first six months of 1917 was held by the Germans to prove the vulner- ability of the method of placing their dug-outs for the garrisons of the front trenches imme- diately under the parapets. One of two things constantly happened ; either they were des- troyed by the preliminary artillery fire when hot deep down, or, if they were not, they formed mere traps for the men, who often would not come out of them to man the parapets and were subsequently taken prisoners. Nothing is more common in the description of our FRENCH OBS RVATION BALLOON PREPARING TO ASCEND. 192-2 :i-2s THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. r.ssvilts tlvvi the account of some dug-out from which p.M't of tin- garrison camo out with Irvids up while tli'- rest who did not surrender wore destroyed by bomb:! thrown down r-nong them. The deductions made from thoir experience by the German Commanders were embodied in an Army Order published on June 30. It began by laying down as a general principle that the value of the defences depended largely on success of the precautions taken to cover them from observation, especially by the hostile aviators. In place of the old system of con- tinuous lines which clearly marked out the position, it was laid down that the ground held should be organized in a deep zone of several lines, the most advanced of which was to be broken up into sections with spaces between them. It was to be based on the shell craters or other unobtrusive cover, affording little centres of resistance, in which were ensconced a few men with machine-guns.* It was thought that these were not so open to view as a trench line, and being disposed more or less chequer- wise would form a number of points from which not only direct but also a flanking fire could bo brought to bear on hostile troops attempting to * In Gorman these arc called Trichternoster '.<. crater nests. penetrate between thorn. These organizations might be extended to a depth of a thousand to two thousand yards. The front of this portion of the German position was to be covered by n continuous and powerful wire entanglement of irregular form, and this was also constructed in parts of the line of defence in directions more or less perpendicular to the front, so as to check troops breaking through the front obstacle and compel them to move in directions in which they would be exposed to firo. Any existing shelters were to be made use of to cover infantry intended to act as supports or to be used for counter-attacks. Where no shelters were available these troops were to find cover in shell craters, woods, and hollows, or in any place which would give them cover from view. The Germans appear at this time to have made the discovery known in England since tho War of 1870 that villages were not suitable for obstinate defence. They form easily visib! targets, while their comparatively solid struc- tured houses of brick or stone are excellent for ensuring the bursts of high explosive shells witl. percussion fuses. The Germans hopod that their advanced line of defended shell craters would serve to split up the Allies' assaults and render easy the concentration of countor- OLD GERMAN LINE IN A CANAL BANK. [French offida THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 320 TYPES OF GERMAN CONCRETE DEFENCES. attacks against the divided party. But it did not constitute their main line of resistance. This was to be composed of at least three lines of continuous trenches roughly about 500 yards or somewhat less apart, established whenever possible on the reverse slope of the crest line occupied by the advanced line. The front of the whole of this organization was to be pro- tected by a deep and powerful wire entangle- ment with intervals here and there to allow the reserves to come up through them for counter- attack. Of the three lines of trenches the first was only provided with shelters, shallow in character and at fairly wide intervals, for about one-sixth of the garrison. In the second and third lines the dug-outs were to be more numerous and much deeper. This threefold line of trenches formed a strong position for .the troops holding it and served to cover the artillery stationed behind . it. If thought necessary, a second similar position might be established still farther back, in case the Germans were driven out of the first one. This system of defence was largely employed in Flanders and there were found scattered along the three lines those "pill-boxes" which formed security for machine-guns and which, so long as they were not destroyed, constituted formidable points difficult to be dealt with by infantry alone. . It will be seen that the new system was based mainly on the idea that it was not well to depend on a highly organized rigid front line, which experience showed was always annihilated by artillery fire, but to employ a plan which would break up the attacking force when it was advancing into separated masses and then over- whelm these by counter-attacks of superior number before our troops had time to organize the position won for defence. The whole system was not very successful and the reason i clear. Once the wiro entangle- ments which covered the lines of held craters were destroyed the little groups in the latter were not likely to offer any prolonged resistance. Numbers give a feeling of confidence and the small pockets of men were often too much engrossed with their own safety to offer the determined resistance expected of them. More - over, the advanced line troops had very little cover from fire even if they had fair cover from view, and a heavy shrapnel fire thrown over the zone they occupied, and which was certain to be more or less revealed to the Allied artillery by the observing aeroplanes and balloons, generally sufficed to take the heart .out of them. A large proportion of the advanced line garrison was therefore killed or wounded and in fact became incapable of great resistance. It was a difficult thing for the Commanders of the main line to judge when to send up reserves to counter-attack; when they did they \veje liable to the heavy losses involved in moving over open ground. It' they did not. the arrival of the demoralized refugees from the advanced line did not tend to improve the moral of tiie troops who witnessed the arrival of the defeated units. General Haig's observation on their new method of defence was that earlv in tl-e 830 7V//-; VV.W/VN ///.sT< >/.'}' THL 1 TIM/.'. autumn the Germans had alre;vly recognized its fuihire i-jinl " were endeavouring to revert to their old practice 'of holding their forward positions in strength. " It was doomed to failure from the first because it assumed that a small part of the infantry would suflu-e to stop the assault, whereas it is certain that to beat off an attack it is absolutely necessary to emplov superior rifle-power, whether this b<- obtained from rifles or machine-guns. . Trenches Craters *^ U. G, Emplacements Small Shelters Large Shelters Strong & Deep Shelters Pillbox Supports Batteries Line of advance of \ cuunler.altacks PLAN OF GERMAN DEFENSIVE ORGANIZATION As carried out in Flanders. The assailant to win must drive the enemy ou of his position and hold it. This can only be done by infantry. No matter how great the effect of the artillery fire is, there alwavs comes a time when the infantry must crown the fire-engagement by its own power. Tliis can only be done by superior numbers. I'Yoiu first 1" l.i-t in all fighting it is, in the larguage of Sii Charles Nupicr, " the stern determination to Hose with the. bayonet" which finally settles the issue of the liuht. The theory of the Clenuiins sounds plausible because if it were successful it, would have been, less cosily in life. Jt was, however, a failure because men are men and not automata, and when our troops obtained their initial success, the counter-attacks were rarely strong enough to stop them. The assaulting troops had the advantage of first blood and were, to use a colloquialism, '' bucked up " by it ; the counter-attacking troops had to retrieve a defeat and were therefore not so eager in the fray and were often employed too late to do much good. It requires a very wise Commander to feel the pulse of battle so accu- rately as to be able to seize the exact psycho- logical moment to pass from the defensive to the offensive.* The sketch given herewith shows the arrange- ment of the position for defence theoreticallv. It will be observed that not all the shell craters were garrisoned. When unoccupied they were usually girdled with entanglements of barbed wire to render it impossible for the attacking troops to find shelter in them. Local supports were kept close up, available at once to deal with the on-coming assailants. Other reserves (not shown on the map) were kept farther back. Briefly put, the organization was in depth to allow of repeated counter-attacks, on which the main strength of the defence was to rest. It was also intended to hide as much as possible from our aviators the position held by distin- guishing its front elements as little as possible from the aspect of No Man's Land. The " pill-box," of which mention has already been made in Chapters CCIX. and ( '( 'XXIV., was destined to play a much larger part in Flanders than it had in previous opera- tions. In a country where water was found so elos" to the surface, deep trenches were very often impossible, and the flanking constructions which were so constantly seen on the ridges near the Ancre could not be constructed. Recourse was therefore had to the so-called pill-box, a structure of concrete (some of reinforced concrete), with wide-horizontal loop- holes, which swept the ground to the front and to the sides. Of considerable thickness on the sides liable to attack, and with soil drawn up almost to the level of the loopholes, they formed scarcely visible objects which were dillicult for the artillery to hit. Their domed root's would dellect. many shells, and although it was true that a direct hit from a large shell would demolish them or sometimes overturn them \\heu smi'll, still shells of small calibre had very little effect on the larger structures. * Tho greatest exponent of this difficult tactical oprraiion \v;v> undoubtedly tho Duke of Wellington. THE TIMER HISTORY OF THE WAR. 831 GERMAN CONCRETE "PILL-BOX" IN FLANDERS, WITH NARROW HORIZONTAL LOOP-HOLE GIVING A WIDE FIELD OF FIRE. But another point militated against these erections viz., that even the garrisons of the larger, when exposed to really heavy artillery, were, when still alive, often terribly demoralized by the heavy concussions of the impinging shells. In the smaller struc- tures they suffered more than in the bigger. The high explosive shells inflicted such terrible blows that the garrisons were, after a prolonged period of successive hits, so unnerved that they could no longer work their machine-guns and were often found lying about with expressionless faces, bleeding from nose and ears. The plan of one of the larger structures is given below. In practice the pill -boxes wore not found to be so impregnable as the Germans hoped. They were often put out of action by artillery fire and were not very difficult to capture by parties of good marksmen, stalking them and keeping up an accurate and rapid rifle-fire on the loopholes, while others worked round to the rear and bombed through the bolt holes provided in them. But they had to be taken when so placed that they flanked the British lines of approach as they stopped the advance till this was done. Or; the other hand, when the Elevation. PLAN AND ELEVATION OF A GERMAN "PILL-BOX" OF THE TYPE REPRE- SENTED ABOVE. *ofe r^v^:' Oosthoek te^TS**,**?* ...v.ii.'xsw .^*- WBlte "^ rfi ",^X C ''v U IlollolM MAP OF THE COUNTRY AROUND YPRES. 332 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 338 BBBM .1 & CtftffrrtCT*; - YPRES IN 1917. [Official photograph. German counter-attacks came up, the accurate fire of the British infantry constantly told with such effect that their formations were dissolved and beaten back before they were able to close, and this, too, often without the ivid of an artillery barrage. The German artillery was also reorganized to meet the new methods. Numbers of emplace- ments wore constructed in addition to those primarily occupied by the guns, to which the latter could be moved during the fighting, or which served for batteries brought up from the rear. The proportions of the various guns employed were approximately as follows : HORSE OB TRACTOR BATTERIES. Per cent. 15 cm. howitzers ... ... ... ... 53 21 cm. mortars ... ... ... ... 20 10 cm. guns ... ... ... ... ... 17 12cm 13cm. 15 cm. ... POSITION BATTERIES. 15 cm. howitzers 21 ran. mortars 3 4 3 53 20 10 cm. guns ... ... ... ... ... 8 8 .' .............. 3 ... 10 12cm 13cm. ,, .' 15cm LONG RANGE BATTERIES. HowitZ3rs or mortars 25 Guns ......... . ......... 75 It will be observed how large a proportion of the first two categories consists of 15 cm. (5'9 in.) howitzers, which have so often come into notice. It fires combined shell, i.e., one which, to some extent, plays the part of both shrapnel and high explosive common shell. Of the long range batteries no such precise details can be given ; they were composed of many descriptions of heavy weapons up to those of 16-in. calibre. For each 1,000 yards of front to be defended the High Command should have had at its dis- posal an average of between five and seven batteries for barrage purposes, several of those-. if possible, being composed of huavy guns, and between four and six heavy batteries (one or two of which, at least, were to be long-range gun batterifc*), for purposes other than that of the barrage. T^iis worked out at about one gun to every 20 yards. The front given to the infantry division (roughly 10,000 men) was one of 2,500 to 3,500 yards, or between three and four men per yard for active defensive purposes. The duties of German artillery were defined as follows when an attack was anticipated : (1) Counter-battery work throughout the period of tho artillery preparation. (2) Sniping fire every night during the same period on roads, railways, camps, etc. (3) On the last night but one before the supposed day of the attack heavy fire of gas shells on certain groups of batteries. (4) On the morning of the attack very heavy counter- preparation fire for half an hour on the trenches where the attacking troops were assembled. In the case of the fighting in Flanders the German practice did not come up to German theory ; they failed to hold our batteries, which obtained a distinct superiority and kept down by their fire that of their opponents. In the following pages the descriptions given will show the German system under the test of action. Tho total front to be attacked by the Allies measured some 1 5 miles, and stretched from the River Lys opposite Deulement northwards to Steenstraat. But the whole of this line was not equally strongly attacked ; the main assault was the task allotted to the Fifth Army along the line from the Zillebeke-Zandvoorde road to Boesinghe inclusive. This front measured seven and a half miles, and to deal with it General Sir Hubert Gough, who com- manded the Fifth Army, was given four Army Corps viz., the XlVth, tho XVIIIth. tne XlXth and' the Ilnd. THE Tl.MKti HISTORY OF THE WAR. Born on August 12, 1870, Sir Hubert was turning 47 years of age. He came of a fighting family, tin- most illustrious member of whom had been Field-Marshal Viscount Gough, the IVniiisuliu 1 veteran and conqueror of the Punjab. Ho himself was the eldest son of (Official photograph. THE KING OF THE BELGIANS AND GENERAL GOUGH At the entrance of an old German dug-out. General Sir Charles John Stanley Gough, an eminent Anglo-Indian soldier who had fought in the Sikh War of 1848 9 at the desperately contested Battles of ChillianwallahandGoojerat, ml who in the Indian Mutiny had gained the V.C., served in the trenches before Delhi and toasted at the capture of Lucknow. Subse- quently Sir Charles Gough had distinguished himself in the Bhootan Expedition of 1864-5 i:.nd the Afghan Ww of 1878-80. Educated at Eton. Sir Hubert, like his brother .lolni. ;"l<>|)ted his father's profession. Having passed through Sandhurst, he joined the 16th Lancers in 1889. it was natural th.it lie should be a cavalryman. H's father in the Indian Mutiny had won the V.C. for leading two daring cavalry charges and engaging in personal combat with the leaders of the rebel horsemen. Appropriately enough, Sir Hubert first sau service in the field in India. Promoted Captain in 1894 lie was attached to Brigadier- General Gaselee, commanding the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Division of the Tira.li Field Force during the campaign of 1897-8. He was present at the capture of the Sampagha. mid Arhanga Passes and in the operations against the Khani Khel Chamkanis and the Afridis of the Bazar Valley. When the South African War broke out, Gough, still a captain, proceeded to the seat of war as a Special Service Officer. He took part in the actions of Colenso and Spion Kop. A few days after Buller's failure at the last- named position, Gough was given the com- mand of a regiment of Mounted Infantry. He fought in the actions of Vaal Kranz, the Tugela Heights, and Pieter's Hill. Scouting ahead of Dundonald he was one of the first to enter Ladysmith when it was relieved. Sub- sequently he accompanied Sutler in his advance through Natal. He and his mounted infantry were engaged in the actions of Laing's Nek (June 6-9, 1900), and of Alleman's Nek two days later, which led to our forces from Natal entering the Transvaal a week after Roberts had occupied Pretoria. At the beginning of 1901 Gough's mounted infantry, 280 strong, formed part of Brigadier-General Dartnell's column, one of the five columns operating under French against Botha an the Eastern Transvaal. Increased to 600, his regiment in the summer was attached to Colonel Bullock's column. During September he was brought back by General Lyttelton from Kronstad to the Natal frontier at De Jager's Drift. At this moment Botha was threatening to make an incursion into Natal. On September 17, 1901, Gough attempted to surprise a body of Boers at Blood River Poort. AY hen the. surprise seemed certain to succeed, he was suddenly attacked by 500 Boers who had lain concealed. They galloped across the British front, gained open ground, wheeled and charged down upon the flank and rear of Gough's right -hand company. Gough lost his guns. Six officers and 38 men were killed or wounded; and six other officers and 235 men were taken prisoners. " This," observes Mr. Amery in The Times History of the War >n South Africa,* "was the first occasion *Vol. V.. pp. 340-1. THE TIMES HISTORY OP THE WAE. 335 [Official photograph. AMMUNITION GOING UP TO THE GUNS THROUGH THE OLD GERMAN LINES IN FLANDERS. on which the Boers of the Eastern Transvaal used their new charging tactics with decisive effect." Gough, who had been severely wounded in the course of the campaign, was mentioned four times in dispatches for his services anil received the Queen's medal with five and King's medal with two clasps. On returning home he was appointed Brigade-Major of the 1st Cavalry Brigade of the 1st Army Corps at Aldershot. In 1904 he became an Instructor at the Staff College. Two years later (1907) he succeeded to the command of the 16th Lancers. In 1911 (January 1) he received the command of the 3rd Cavalry Biigade at the Curragh, where he diligently trained his troopers for the exigencies of European warfare. His name was prominently before the public during the Home Rule crisis immediately preceding the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914. When the Expeditionary Force landed in France Gough was at the head of his Brigade. During the retreat from Mons he routed a column of German cavalry led by the Unlans of the Prussian Guard. Before the Battle of the Marne he was given the command of the 3rd and oth Cavalry Brigades. Thencefor- ward his promotion was rapid. At the Battle of Loos the 1st Corps was under him and at the Battle of the Somme he directed the 5th Army, which in May 1917 had the onerous task of assaulting, in company with Allenby's right wing, the enemy's positions round Bullecourt. Cough's Fifth Army was, in the operations now under consideration, to be supported by General Plumer's Second Army, composed of the Xth, the IXth and the Ilnd Anzac Corps. Its task was limited ; it was only to advance a short distance, but by doing so it would shield the right flank of the Fifth Army, and by lengthening the lino attacked by the British, would render it more difficult for the enemy to determine where the main blow was to be delivered. It would weaken the artillery fin- against the Fifth Army by causing the Germans to divert part of it to deal with the Second Army. The objective of the opening attack was intended to be the crest of the high ground east of Ypres, which would form a strong position for Ihe flank in subsequent operations and would cover the bridges over the Steenbeek. The French First Army was to advance ou the left of the British Fifth Army, and in close 1923 330 THE TIMES 'HISTOPY OF THE WAS. contact with it, thus protecting it from counter- attack from the north. This operation in- volved a prolonged movement ever difficult country and would involve the capture of the whole peninsula lying between the Yser Canal and the flooded country of the St. Jansbeek and Martje Vaart. The advance of the British Fifth and the French First Armies was to be by ;i series of bounds from one defined line to aiother, having regard to the lines of German defences and the configuration of the ground. The front held by the French before the attack only extended some five miles from the north of Nordschoote to Boesiiighe. The ground to the north of this formed an impassable morass which had been made by the Belgians as described in Volume III., Chapter LXIII. The paved chausseo of Reninghe-Nordschoote- Drie Grachten ran on a bank which kept above the water level. Into this marsh ran the Kemmelbeek, the Yperlee, and the Martje Vaart. Betwwn Nordschoote and Maison du Panseiir the hostile lines were a considerable distance apart, being separated from one another by ground which was mostly under water. At the Maison du Passeur there was an outpost on the oast side of the Yser 'Canal connected with the west bonk bv a footbridge. From this point to Steenstraat the hostile trenches were about 200 to 300 yards apart. From Steenstraat to Boesiiighe the canalized Yser, running from Ypres, formed the dividing line. Here the German trenches, although constructed on fairly dry ground, were but little above the water level. Hence the parapets had had to bo constructed entirely as epaulcments. Nor was it possible to con- struct the shot-proof observation stations from which to regulate the fire to the front. The position was, therefore, one which was peculiarly liable to surprise. Facing the British attack the Crown Prince Rupprecht had the 4th, 6th Reserve, the 10th and the Kith Bavarian Divisions, the 3rd Guard, the 23rd Division, and seven others, including the 25th (Hessian) Division and the 235th. During July 30 the weather, which had liitherto been fine, broke. After heavy thunderstorms in the morning, rain fell almost continuously during the day, and at night there was still a slight drizzle at intervals.* When the troops advanced there was a thick mist and an overcast sky which obscured the landscape. At the appointed moment the artillery, which had died down somewhat, redoubled its fury, and a continuous bombard - ment was carried on over a long stretch of country by no means limited to the actual length attacked. The incessant flashes and the fire-light from the bursting shells, the coloured rockets and flares thrown up by the * There was only one fine day between July 30 and August 6, and that was misty. " BURSTING SHELLS, ROCKETS, AND FLARES." THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 337 BRITISH TROOPS CROSSING enemy feverishly demanding reinforcements, gave a pale and flickering illumination over the scene. The attack was timed to commence at ten minutes to four on the morning of July 31, but before the troops started a volley of oildrums and thermit to set them on fire was discharged against the first German line, while an accurate artillery barrage covered the assaulting infantry. Little difficulty was met with in carrying the defended craters, which presented no great obstacle to a determined attack. Occasionally it was found that some had been inadvertently passed by, and that when our troops had moved on the machine- gunners in them would take the assaulting troops in rear. It was as a rule neither a long nor difficult matter to snuff these out, To the north of Ypres French and British troops carried the whole. German first line without a check, and then pushed on towards the enemy's second line in accordance with orders. At this part of the line the advance was complicated by the Yser Canal which had to be passed. But on the 27th, as we have seen, it had become possible to occupy the far bank of the canal, and in the next two days the Frencli threw 39 and the English 17 bridges over it, many of them under fire. Passing over these the French, with the British Guards and the Welsh re^i- mer.ti on their right, hardly hindered by the swampy low-lying ground which seriously hampered the men, carried Steenstraat and [Official pkotcgraph. A CANAL IN FLANDERS. the German first line with little difficulty and then moved forward. The Guards aimed at Pilkem and its defence to the north, the Welsh regiments advanced against the south- and south-west of the village. The village of Pilkem was a position of considerable strength. Outside it there was a trench 10 feet wide and 12 feet deep, with solid concrete shelters of a very powerful kind, while the wreckage of the village had been trans- formed by concrete into strong works which afforded considerable shelter even from heavy shells, and in which were collected large supplies of ammunition for the use of the garrison. South of the village and connected with it by trenches were two advanced posts known as Gallwitz Farm and Mackensen Farm. East of Pilkem was another called Zouave House. All these points were strongly held and heavily fortified and their capture was no light task. The garrison of Pilkem consisted of the Guard Fusilier regiment with some other units. All three battalions of the Guard Fusiliers were in the village the first in the front line, the second in support, and the third in reserve behind. They had only been in two days and were fresh, yet the two foremost battalions were completely crushed by our guns and by the Welsh attack and offered scarcely any resistance. The third did little better. Of the 630 prisoners whom the Welshmen took, over 500 were " Cockchafers," the nickname for the en Z o CO O - s- s 01 Z 03 a Z O * o < E- 01 X H X o Z M oi i, 01 Z < u at 01 u. O O Z 35 en O oi u 338 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 889 Guard Fusilier Regiment, the remainder coming chiefly from the 9th Grenadiers,, and the 3rd battalion of the Lohr Regiment, with a few from other units. Two Welsh battalions, one of the Welsh Fusiliers, attacked from the south and south- west, while another of the Welsh regiment was on the right of the Fusiliers. More to left of this attack the British i Guards moved to the attack of the defence of Pilkem, springing from the north of the village. The attack was made with -great vigour,, and being of a somewhat encircling nature, the Germans found the Welshmen spreading round their flank and roar, thus threatening their line of retreat. The artillery barrage guided the men -in the semi -darkness. At Mackensen Farm they cap- tured some prisoners and a large store of ammu- nition, rockets, Verey lights, and trench mortars.' On-the left the Welsh Fusiliers, fighting along the south side of the railway line to Thorout, found some resistance but captured the " Zouave House " and took a few prisoners. But there was no really serious check all -the way to Pilkem village, wliich was 'itself cap- tured without great difficulty. The actual number of the Guard Fusiliers in action was probably about 2,400 men or a few more -and a fifth of its * strength was taken. The losses in killed < and wounded of such -a crack corps, bent on acting up to its traditions, must have been greater, and probably not more than 500 or 600 of the whole regiment remained upright at the end of the day. It was a very .heavy defeat for the Kaiser's pets. The regimental headquarters also were captured, but the Colonel and his staff made good their escape. The British Guards engaged comprised parts of all tho five regiments composing them. They went forward, keeping touch with their countrymen on the right and with the French on their left. Their advance was continued without much hindrance, carrying point after point, including the defences north of Pilkem, and capturing