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•   EXPLAINING  * 
THE  BRITISHERS 

FREDERIC  WILLIAM  WILE 


I 


EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 
FREDERIC  WILLIAM  WILE 


"GETTING  TOGETHER" 

HOISTING  THE  STARS  AND  STRIPES  AND  UNION  JACK  FROM  THE  SAME 

FLAGSTAFF    OVER    THE    HOUSES    OF    PARLIAMENT,    LONDON,  APRIL 

1917. 


EXPLAINING  THE 
BRITISHERS 

TEE  STORY  OF  ENGLAND'S  MIGHTY 

EFFORT  IN  LIBERTY'S  CAUSE,  AS 

SEEN  BY  AN  AMERICAN 


BY 

FREDERIC  WILLIAM  WILE 

AUTHOR  OF  "MEN  AROUND  THE  KAISER" 
AND  "THE  ASSAULT" 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 


NEW  ^SJr  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1919, 
By  George  H.  Doran  Company 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


FOREWORD 

Our  country  has  sent  millions  of  her  sons  to 
fight  in  the  International  Army  of  Civilisation. 

Our  object  is  to  win  a  complete  victory  as  soon 
as  possible  and  return  to  our  homes. 

We  therefore  wish  our  help  to  be  of  the  max- 
imum efficiency. 

The  better  we  know  the  Allies,  the  more  efec- 
tive  our  co-operation  will  be. 

All  of  us  know  in  a  general  way  the  splendid 
fortitude  and  glorious  deeds  of  the  soldiers  and 
sailors  of  Great  Britain,  France,  and  Italy.  But 
how  much  do  we  know  of  their  tremendous  losses 
in  lives  or  of  the  labours  and  suffering  of  their 
civil  populations? 

This  book  was  written  by  an  American  who 
lived  in  England  before  and  throughout  the  war. 
His  purpose  is  to  explain  exactly  what  sort  of  a 
chap  the  Britisher  is  and  what  the  Army,  Navy, 
and  people  of  Great  Britain  and  her  Colonies  have 
done  in  Freedom's  cause.  Mr.  Wile  shows  how 
the  Britishers  bore  the  brunt  of  the  onslaught 
of  an  enemy  which  had  been  preparing  for  this 
war  for  nearly  half  a  century. 

Any  American  soldier,  sailor,  or  civilian  who 
takes  the  trouble  to  read  these  pages  will  find  that 


vi  FOREWORD 

both  the  men  and  women  of  the  British  nation 
have  to  their  credit  a  truly  wonderful  record  of 
courage  and  accomplishment.  Nearly  a  million 
of  their  fighting  men  have  been  killed  in  battle, 
and  twice  as  many  wounded,  but  there  was  never 
any  sign  of  weakening. 

I  am  sure  that  a  clear  understanding  of  the  ex- 
tent of  the  Britishers'  sacrifices,  both  on  the  firing- 
line  and  at  home,  will  inspire  all  Americans  to  put 
forth  their  best  efforts  to  bring  this  distressing  war 
to  a  satisfactory  end. 


Commanding  U.  S.  Naval  Forces 
Operating  in  European  Waters. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

FOREWORD v 

CHAPTER 

I  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 9 

II  "PLAYING  THE  GAME" 19 

III  THE  BRITISH  NAVY 29 

IV  THE  BRITISH  ARMY 43 

V  THE  HOME  ARMY 55 

VI  IRELAND  AND  THE  COLONIES       ....  69 

VII  How  THE  BRITISHERS  ARE  GOVERNED     .  84 

VIII  THE  BULLDOG  BREED 99 

IX  THE  REAL  BRITISHER  116 


vii 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

"Getting  Together" Frontispiece 

Hoisting  the  Stars  and  Stripes  and  the  Union 
Jack  from  the  same  flagstaff,  over  the  Houses 

of  Parliament,  London,  April,  1917. 

PAGE 
General  John  J.  Pershing 20 

Admiral  Wm.  S.  Sims 34 

London's  Mighty  Welcome  to  the  American  Van- 
guard, Trafalgar  Square,  August  15,  1917  .  56 

King  George  and  Queen  Alexandra  reviewing  the 
Americans  march  past  Buckingham  Palace, 
May  25,  1918 56 

Major-General  John  Biddle 86 

Ambassador  and  Mrs.  Page,  with  American 
Bluejackets,  at  "Eagle  Hut,"  London,  April  6, 
1918,  the  first  anniversary  of  the  entry  of  the 
United  States  into  the  War IOO 

"The  Stuff  to  Give  'Em"  (American  Gunners  at 
Chateau-Thierry) IOO 


EXPLAINING  THE 
BRITISHERS 

CHAPTER  I 

ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

How  many  of  you  fellows,  I  wonder,  landed  on 
the  shores  of  England  with  the  same  ideas  about 
her  that  I  had  when  I  first  came?  Two  things 
were  uppermost  in  my  thoughts — first,  that  we 
once  fought  her  in  order  to  win  our  independence, 
and,  secondly,  that  every  Englishman  hated  us  as 
the  Devil  hates  holy  water.  I  arrived  in  England 
with  a  chip  on  my  shoulder,  and  I  expected  to 
have  it  knocked  off.  With  my  primary-school 
United  States  history  deep  and  patriotically  in- 
grained in  me,  I  felt  sure  that  I  had  come  to  a 
country  with  which  America  was  no  longer  at  war 
but  which  was  still  our  "enemy"  all  the  same. 

Now  I  venture  to  think  that  each  and  every  one 
of  you  who  has  already  arrived  on  British  soil  has 
been  here  just  long  enough  to  realise  that  our  boy- 
hood-schoolday  notions  about  England  are  woe- 

9 


10        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

fully  out  of  date.  I  do  not  mean  that  we  should 
forsake  George  Washington  and  the  Fourth  of 
July,  and  all  the  glorious  traditions  that  enshrine 
them  in  our  hearts.  They  are  immortally  dear  to 
us.  I  do  not  mean  that  we  should  forget  about 
that  King  of  England,  George  III.,  against  whom 
the  American  Colonies  rebelled,  or  Lord  North, 
his  Prime  Minister,  on  whose  misguided  counsel 
he  acted.  I  do  not  mean  that  we  should  erase 
from  our  memories  the  fundamental  fact  that  the 
Americans  arranged  the  Boston  Tea  Party  in 
1773  because  they  objected  to  Taxation  Without 
Representation.  I  do  not  mean  that  Bunker  Hill 
and  Brandywine,  Ticonderoga  and  Valley  Forge, 
Yorktown,  Lafayette  and  Rochambeau,  are  names 
that  American  boys  should  no  longer  mention.  All 
these  things  are  precious  to  us,  for  they  are  the 
concrete  upon  which  our  skyscraper  Republic  is 
firmly  imbedded. 

But  the  Declaration  of  Independence  is  a  vener- 
able document.  John  Hancock,  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin, Thomas  Jefferson  and  our  other  sainted  na- 
tional heroes  signed  it  142  years  ago.  Five  gen- 
erations of  Americans  have  come  and  gone  since 
1776,  and  as  many  generations  of  English  men 
and  women  have  been  making  history  in  the  seven 
score  years  and  two  that  have  intervened.  The 
England  of  to-day — the  England  in  which  you 
have  arrived  on  the  final  stage  of  your  trip  to  the 
battlefield — is  no  more  the  England  of  George 


ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA  11 

III.  and  Lord  North  than  our  own  United  States 
is  the  America  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Any 
Englishman  who  cherished  about  us  in  1918  the 
Tory  notions  of  1750-1780  would  be  just  as  ludi- 
crous a  figure  as  an  Englishman  in  satin  knicker- 
bockers, powdered  wig  and  a  cocked  hat.  He 
would  be  a  joke.  He  would  not  dare  to  show  him- 
self in  public.  He  would  be  laughed  to  scorn. 
The  times  have  changed. 

I  have  never  looked  through  an  English  pri- 
mary-school history  book  to  see  what  English  boys 
and  girls  are  taught  about  the  American  War  of 
Independence.  I  don't  suppose  they  get  a  great 
deal  of  it — indeed  there  is  far  too  little  taught  in 
England,  even  in  the  great  Universities,  about  the 
United  States  and  United  States  institutions.  The 
war  ought  to,  and  probably  will,  remedy  that  state 
of  affairs. 

At  any  rate,  one  of  the  results  of  our  comrade- 
ship-in-arms  with  the  Britishers  in  this  war  ought 
to  be  a  new  American  school  history  of  the  War 
of  Independence.  Such  a  history,  as  I  have  al- 
ready suggested,  need  not  and  should  not  omit  the 
vital  fact  that  the  Colonies  rebelled  in  a  just  cause 
and  won  an  independence  to  which  they  were  en- 
titled. But  it  ought  also  to  teach  that  England's 
leading  statesmen  were  on  America's  side;  that 
George  III.  and  his  official  advisers  were  acting 
against  the  views  of  large  sections  of  the  British 
people;  that  these  views  could  not  be  enforced 


12        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

because  only  200,000  Britishers  out  of  a  popula- 
tion of  8,000,000  had  a  vote;  that  several  British 
generals  resigned  their  commissions  rather  than 
fight  against  the  American  Colonists;  that  George 
III.  had  to  adopt  the  expedient  of  hiring  30,000 
German  mercenaries  (Hessians)  to  fight  for  him 
in  America;  that  Pitt,  Fox  and  Burke,  the  three 
outstanding  political  leaders  of  the  day,  all  op- 
posed George  III.'s  obstinate  policy  toward  the 
Americans,  and  that  Pitt  (later  Lord  Chatham) 
withdrew  his  own  sons  from  the  Regular  Army  in 
order  that  they  might  not  have  to  fight  against  the 
Colonies.  These  are  historical  facts.  As  American 
schoolboys,  you  and  I  did  not  get  them,  except  in 
rare  instances.  That  is  why,  to  a  large  extent,  we 
were  brought  up  and  grew  up  on  anti-British  dope. 
I  have  mixed  with,  lived  among  and  worked  for 
Englishmen  for  twelve  years.  It  is  my  privilege 
to  know  cooks'  sons  and  Dukes'  sons,  as  they  say- 
hereabouts,  and  even  a  Duke  or  two,  and  I  have 
enjoyed  friendly  contact,  without  feeling  the  need 
of  wearing  smoked  glasses,  with  Sirs  and  Lords  of 
high  degree.  I  am  acquainted  with  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  English  folk,  from  commoners  to 
nobles.  I  belong  to  their  clubs,  I  eat  at  their 
tables,  I  am  the  recipient  of  their  confidences,  and 
they  receive  my  own  in  a  spirit  of  patience  and 
generosity.  On  the  evidence  of  my  own  observa- 
tions— and  my  journalistic  occupation  makes  them 
intimate  to  a  degree  far  beyond  the  opportunities 


ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA  13 

enjoyed  by  the  average  American  resident  in  the 
British  Isles — I  say  without  hesitation  that  no 
Englishman  whose  opinion  is  worth  a  tinker's  cuss 
has  anything  to-day  except  boundless  contempt  for 
the  policies  which  tore  the  American  Colonies 
from  the  British  crown  a  century  and  a  half  ago. 
He  is  ashamed  of  them.  He  pities  the  short- 
sightedness of  the  statesmen  who  carried  them  out 
to  England's  eternal  disadvantage.  He  will  tell 
you,  as  hundreds  of  Englishmen  have  told  me, 
that  a  George  III.  who  tried  in  this  age  and  day 
to  govern  British  Colonies  as  our  Original  Thir- 
teen were  governed  would  wake  up  one  fine  morn- 
ing— as  an  Irishman  might  put  it — and  find  him- 
self beheaded.  That  is  what  Englishmen  of  at 
least  one  era  did  with  a  King  who,  in  their  opinion, 
was  not  running  his  job  properly.  Some  day, 
perhaps,  wou  will  come  to  London  on  leave.  In 
Whitehall,  the  famous  street  on  which  the  great 
Government  offices  stand,  you  will  see  a  grey  old 
building,  celebrated  as  the  scene  of  the  execution 
of  Charles  I.  He  was  the  monarch  who  played 
fast  and  loose  with  the  liberties  of  the  people  and 
lost  his  head  for  it. 

The  plain  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  present-day 
Englishmen — the  kind  who  are  giving  you  the  glad 
hand  at  this  very  hour,  wherever  you  are — dis- 
avow the  policy  that  "lost  America  to  England," 
because  they  love  Liberty  just  as  much  as  we 
Americans  do.  And — this  is  something  you  may 


14        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

not  fully  comprehend — they  have  just  as  much  Lib- 
erty as  we  have,  in  every  respect.  They  are  in  the 
war  because  they  want  to  retain  their  Liberty — as 
we  do.  England  is  a  Republic  with  a  King  instead 
of  a  President.  That  is  the  difference  between  our 
respective  forms  of  Government  in  a  nutshell. 
The  English  have  a  hereditary  instead  of  an 
elected  Ruler.  They  respect  and  venerate  their 
monarch  just  as  we  respect  and  venerate  our  Pres- 
idents. They  stand  at  the  salute  when  "God  save 
the  King"  is  sung  or  played  because  the  King  is 
the  accepted  guardian,  protector  and  embodiment 
of  English  liberties.  His  crown — which  he  only 
wears,  by  the  way,  once  or  twice  a  year  for  some 
traditional  ceremonial  at  Court  or  in  Parliament 
— is  not  a  symbol  of  despotic  power  like  the  crown 
that  the  Kaiser  wears.  It  is  the  emblem  of  the 
majesty  of  British  freedom,  of  which  the  reigning 
Sovereign  is  the  figurehead.  That  is  the  long  and 
short  of  "the  King  business"  in  England.  When 
the  occupant  of  the  throne  happens  to  be  a  regular 
fellow  like  King  George — a  real  he-man,  a  good 
sportsman,  Democratic  to  the  core,  a  hard  worker, 
and  a  100  per  cent,  gentleman — "the  King  busi- 
ness" is  safe  and  sound.  We  prefer  a  President 
because,  as  the  boy  who  had  red  hair  said,  we 
were  born  that  way.  But  the  liberty-loving  Eng- 
lish are  perfectly  satisfied  with  their  system  of  a 
President  who  is  called  a  King. 
Get  that,  and  you  will  understand  why  the  Eng- 


ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA  15 

lish  and  ourselves  are  now  fighting  shoulder  to 
shoulder  to  destroy  Autocracy.  We  are  fellow- 
Democrats.  Both  of  us  believe,  as  Abraham  Lin- 
coln believed,  that  the  only  just  Government  is 
Government  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  and  for 
the  people.  England  has  been  fighting  for  four 
years,  and  will  go  on  fighting  for  forty  more,  if 
necessary,  in  order  that  Government  of  that  sort 
shall  not  (in  Lincoln's  words  at  Gettysburg) 
"perish  from  the  face  of  the  earth." 

I  guess  we  are  all  agreed  that  a  friend  in  need 
is  a  friend  indeed.  England,  in  your  lifetime  and 
mine,  proved  herself  to  be  precisely  that  kind  of 
a  friend  of  the  United  States.  I  refer  to  the 
Spanish-American  War.  Nearly  all  of  you  boys 
were  babes  in  arms  in  1898,  or  at  least  kids.  So 
it  may  be  new  to  many  of  you  that  England  played 
an  important  part  in  our  short  and  snappy  conflict 
with  the  Spaniards.  You  all  know  who  Admiral 
George  Dewey  was — the  man  whom  President 
McKinley  sent  to  the  Philippine  Islands  with  in- 
structions to  destroy  the  Spanish  Fleet.  He  made 
a  clean  job  of  it  bright  and  early  on  the  morning 
of  May  i,  and,  after  sending  Admiral  Montojo's 
squadron  to  the  bottom,  Dewey  established  a 
blockade  of  Manila  Bay.  Besides  the  victorious 
American  fleet,  there  were  two  other  squadrons  in 
Philippine  waters — a  British  squadron,  commanded 
by  Admiral  Chichester,  and  a  German  squadron, 
commanded  by  Admiral  von  Diederichs.  The  Brit- 


16        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

ish,  with  centuries  of  Naval  traditions  and  experL 
ence,  respected  Admiral  Dewey's  blockade  un» 
qualifiedly.  The  Germans,  being  people  who  butt 
in  where  angels  fear  to  tread,  were  surly.  They 
questioned  Dewey's  rights  and  set  up  some  chesty 
pretensions  of  their  own.  Courteous  protests  by 
Dewey  having  failed  to  convince  the  Germans  that 
he  meant  business  when  he  told  them  that  he  was 
boss  in  the  Bay  and  intended  to  remain  so,  the 
American  Admiral  trained  his  guns  on  the  German 
Fleet.  Then  he  notified  Admiral  von  Diederichs 
that  the  guns  might  go  off  if  the  Germans  con- 
tinued to  be  ugly.  This  made  von  Diederichs  sit 
up.  He  sent  his  flag-lieutenant  (von  Hintze,  who 
was  German  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  for  a  few 
minutes  this  year)  to  talk  matters  over  with  Dewey 
and  the  British  Admiral.  Dewey's  reply  was 
straight  to  the  point.  "Tell  your  Admiral,"  he 
said,  "that  if  Germany  wants  war  with  the  United 
States,  she  can  have  it  in  five  minutes !" 

The  interview  which  von  Diederichs'  flag-lieu- 
tenant had  with  Admiral  Chichester,  the  British 
commander,  was  also  very  pointed.  "I  have  come 
to  you,"  said  von  Hintze,  "to  ask  what  the  British 
squadron  will  do  in  case  there  is  trouble  between 
the  Germans  and  the  Americans." 

"Tell  Admiral  von  Diederichs,  with  my  compli- 
ments," replied  Chichester,  "that  that  is  a  matter 
known  only  to  Admiral  Dewey  and  myself." 

It  was  not  long  after  that,  to  Admiral  von  Die- 


17 

derichs'  astonishment,  that  the  British  squad- 
ron manoeuvred  into  a  position  that  would  have 
brought  the  German  ships,  had  they  dared  to  fire 
a  shot,  in  conflict  not  only  with  the  American 
squadron  but  with  the  British  as  well.  Diederichs 
gave  Dewey  no  more  trouble  after  that. 

That  was  the  first,  but  not  the  last,  great  proof 
of  friendship  which  England  showed  us  during  the 
Spanish-American  War.  The  Dewey-Diederichs 
episode  angered  the  Kaiser  and  his  fellow  War 
Lords  in  Germany  beyond  words.  They  had  just 
launched  their  famous  Naval  programme,  and 
nothing  would  have  proved  more  useful  for  their 
purposes  than  a  victory,  bloodless  or  otherwise, 
over  the  "arrogant  Yankees"  in  Manila  Bay.  The 
Kaiser  swore  to  be  revenged  for  the  "insult" 
Dewey  had  put  upon  the  German  Admiral.  He 
vowed  that  Spain  by  hook  or  by  crook  must  be 
spared  the  ignominy  of  defeat  by  the  United 
States.  Germany  decided  to  form  a  league  of 
European  .Governments,  which  should  go  to  the 
American  Government  and  say  that  they  did  not 
propose  to  let  "the  upstart  of  the  Western  World" 
crush  an  ancient  and  proud  European  nation.  The 
German  Ambassador  at  Washington,  Baron  von 
Holleben,  laid  the  Kaiser's  scheme  before  the  Brit- 
ish Ambassador,  Sir  Julian  Pauncefote.  It  got  no 
further.  England  put  her  big  foot  down,  and  once 
again  Germany's  plot  to  embarrass  and  humiliate 
Uncle  Sam  was  kiboshed.  The  German  Fleet  was 


18        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

nearly  as  strong  as  ours  in  1898,  if  not  stronger, 
but  the  Kaiser  knew  that  if  he  dared  to  interfere  in 
the  settlement  of  our  quarrel  with  Spain,  Germany 
would  probably  have  to  reckon  with  the  British 
Navy,  too.  So  he  concluded  not  to  burn  his  fingers. 

The  Government  archives  at  Washington  con- 
tain plenty  of  evidence  that  England  and  the 
United  States  have  marched  shoulder  to  shoulder, 
as  friends  and  mutual  well-wishers,  on  numerous 
other  occasions.  But  as  fighting-men  I  think  the 
Philippines  episode,  and  what  followed,  will  make 
the  strongest  appeal  to  you.  For  my  own  part,  I 
have  always  thought  that  if  John  Bull  had  never 
done  anything  else  to  deserve  our  help  when  he 
was  in  a  tight  corner,  his  action  at  Manila  in  May, 
1898,  was  enough  to  entitle  England  to  our  undy- 
ing gratitude. 

In  the  opening  chapter  of  this  story  it  has  merely 
been  my  aim  to  refresh  your  memories  on  modern 
Anglo-American  history.  And  now  I  want  to  tell 
you,  as  best  as  I  can,  how  mother  Britain,  hope- 
lessly unprepared,  rolled  up  her  sleeves  in  August, 
1914 — slowly,  as  is  her  way — but  gritting  her 
teeth  more  resolutely  all  the  time,  until  to-day  she 
stands  forth  a  giantess  in  arms,  her  world-wide 
territories  uninvaded,  her  flag  supreme  on  the  high 
seas,  her  will  unbroken,  and  all  her  hundreds  of 
millions  of  people,  white  and  black,  united  in  one 
fierce,  firm  determination — to  "carry  on"  till  vic- 
tory, complete  and  final,  is  achieved. 


CHAPTER  II 
"PLAYING  THE  GAME" 

CRICKET  is  England's  national  game.  It  is  to 
her  what  baseball  is  to  us.  Every  English  kid 
grows  up  on  cricket,  just  as  you  and  I  were  raised 
on  baseball.  Though  there  are  professional  crick- 
eters, cricket  has  always  been  an  essentially 
amateur,  or  "gentleman's,"  game.  English  boys 
have  their  great  cricket  heroes  like  C.  B.  Fry,  just 
as  we  have  our  Ty  Cobbs.  To  be  the  best  bowler 
at  your  school,  college  or  university  in  England,  or 
to  play  for  your  County,  is  to  win  one  of  the  finest 
honours  you  can  possibly  achieve.  The  distinction 
is  more  than  likely  to  cling  to  you  through  life.  It 
may  be  mentioned  in  "Who's  Who,"  and  perhaps 
help  you  to  get  elected  to  Parliament — provided, 
first  and  always,  that  you  have  "played  the  game." 

It  is  with  that  feature  of  cricket — "playing  the 
game,"  v,  hich  means  playing  it  not  only  well  but 
honourably,  fairly  and  squarely  all  the  time — that 
I  want  to  deal,  briefly.  It  means  everything  in 
England.  It  means  so  much  that  when  a  man 
doesn't  deal  honestly  with  his  fellow-men,  or  stoops 
to  anything  low  or  underhanded,  people  say,  "It 

19 


20        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

isn't  cricket."  He  has  not  "played  the  game." 
Baseball  became  immensely  popular  in  England 
this  year,  thanks  to  the  presence  of  so  many  Amer- 
ican soldiers  and  sailors  on  British  soil.  But  it  will 
never  take  the  place  of  cricket  in  Englishmen's 
affections.  It  can  no  more  do  that  than  the  Amer- 
ican temperament  can  be  grafted  on  to  the  English 
character.  Cricket  is  English  temperament  and 
character  in  composite.  To  our  way  of  thinking, 
of  course,  the  game  isn't  in  the  same  street  with 
baseball.  I  never  met  a  Yankee  who  could  keep 
awake  during  a  whole  cricket  game,  which  isn't  so 
surprising,  seeing  that  a  real  cricket  match  can  last 
three  whole  days;  and  Englishmen  have  fallen 
asleep  at  a  World's  Championship  match  between 
the  Giants  and  the  White  Sox.  Cricket  to  us  is 
slow,  old-fashioned  and  unexciting.  Baseball,  in 
Englishmen's  eyes,  is  noisy,  nerve-wracking  and 
upsetting.  In  the  fact  that  cricket  is  deliberate 
and  baseball  spontaneous,  we  get,  in  my  opinion, 
very  close  to  the  main  difference  in  the  English 
and  American  make-ups. 

I  took  an  English  pal  to  the  Army  and  Navy 
baseball  game  in  London  on  the  Fourth  of  July, 
when  the  King  and  Queen  and  other  Royal  person- 
ages were  present.  I  wanted  to  convert  my  friend 
from  cricket  to  baseball.  I  wanted  to  show  him 
what  a  sure-enough  outdoor  game  was  like — where 
victory  goes  to  the  team  that  thinks  fastest,  acts 
quickest,  and  is  up  on  its  toes  and  moving  every 


GENERAL   JOHN    J.    PERSHING 


"PLAYING  THE  GAME"  21 

second  of  the  time.  It  was  a  red-hot  contest  and 
as  it  progressed  I  rejoiced  that  my  English  friend 
was  seeing  such  a  splendid  exhibition.  The  pitch- 
ing was  superfine,  a  lot  of  men  were  fanned  out,  the 
base-running  and  fielding  were  almost  perfect,  and 
the  Army  nearly  tied  the  score  in  the  last  inning — 
if  they  had,  I  would  have  been  five  plunks  to  the 
good!  At  any  rate,  it  was  a  hair-raising  finish. 
Although  my  English  comrade  had  not  yelled  him- 
self hoarse,  or  joined  with  me  in  abusing  the  um- 
pire, or  "stretched"  at  the  seventh,  I  felt  pretty 
sure  he  had  been  deeply  impressed.  I  couldn't 
wait  for  him  to  volunteer  his  joy,  so,  while  walking 
home,  I  tried  to  extort  it.  You  have  to  pry  enthu- 
siasm out  of  an  Englishman  with  a  jemmy. 

"Baseball  is  very  exciting  and  requires  skilful 
playing — I  can  see  that,"  he  said.  "But  I  prefer 
cricket.  It  is  better  suited  to  the  English  nature. 
We  could  never  learn  to  play  baseball  well  because 
we  are  not  made  for  it.  It  is  too  impulsive.  It 
requires  things  to  be  done  in  too  much  of  a  hurry. 
There  is  no  time  to  think  them  over.  And  then, 
you  see,  cricket  means  much  more  to  us  than  just 
two  or  three  hours'  sport  in  the  open  air.  It  is  our 
way  of  building  and  training  character.  Welling- 
ton, who  defeated  Napoleon,  said  that  Waterloo 
was  won  on  the  playing-fields  of  Eton — our  famous 
public  school.  Do  you  know  what  Wellington 
meant  by  that?  He  meant  that  the  tenacity,  the 
sticking-to-it,  the  honourable  fighting,  the  never- 


22        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

say-die  spirit,  that  enabled  the  British  Army  at 
Waterloo  to  conquer,  were  the  fruits  of  the  lessons 
the  lads  of  England  learn  on  the  cricket-field.  They 
learn  there  to  'play  the  game,'  calmly,  coolly,  un- 
excitedly.  They  are  taught  to  play  hardest  when 
the  luck  seems  to  be  running  against  them  the  most. 
'Play  up,  and  play  the  game,'  says  one  of  our 
schoolboy  recitations,  as  familiar  to  English  youths 
as  'Paul  Revere's  Ride,'  or  'The  Village  Black- 
smith,'or 'Barbara  Frietchie'  is  to  American  boys." 

"No,"  continued  my  English  pal,  "we'll  stick 
to  cricket.  It  is  slow  and  methodical  and  old- 
fashioned.  The  rules  are  very  strict  and  never 
changed  for  the  purpose  of  speeding  up  the  game 
or  making  it  more  thrilling.  We  play  it  as  our 
grandfathers  played  it,  because  it  breeds  in  us  the 
conservatism  and  caution  which,  we  like  to  think, 
are  the  bedrock  on  which  the  British  Empire  has 
been  built  up.  Cricket  shows  us  how  to  'play  the 
game' — how  to  rejoice  reasonably  when  we  win, 
how  to  take  defeat  and  punishment  without  whim- 
pering when  we  lose." 

I  have  told  you  all  this  not  for  the  purpose  of 
weaning  you  from  baseball  to  cricket — it  would  be 
a  national  calamity  if  the  United  States  Army  and 
Navy  went  home  and  turned  their  back  on  baseball. 
I  just  want  to  make  you  understand,  if  I  can,  how 
cricket,  as  the  traditional  athletic  pursuit  of  Young 
England,  inspired  the  Britishers  to  "play  the 
game"  in  August,  1914,  when  the  British  Empire 


"PLAYING  THE  GAME"  23 

and  Civilisation  in  general  were  confronted  by  the 
supreme  crisis  in  human  history.  The  German 
propaganda  in  the  United  States  tried  to  make  us 
believe  that  England  declared  war  on  Germany 
because  John  Bull  was  jealous  of  Germany's  trade 
successes  in  the  markets  of  the  world.  Even  the 
Germans  know  now  that  that  was  a  lie.  They  have 
heard  from  the  Kaiser's  own  Ambassador  in  Lon- 
don, Prince  Lichnowsky,  that  the  British  Govern- 
ment worked  tooth  and  nail  till  the  last  minute  to 
preserve  peace.  England  proposed  to  settle  the 
quarrel  between  Austria,  Serbia  and  Russia  by 
arbitration.  But  the  Kaiser  was  all  dressed  up 
and  had  nowhere  to  go.  So  he  went  to  war. 

England  went  to  war  because  her  name  was 
signed  to  a  treaty  which  guaranteed  the  neutrality 
of  Belgium.  When  you  keep  to  your  treaty  obliga- 
tions— when  you  look  upon  a  solemn  international 
agreement  as  a  bond  of  honour  and  not  as  a  "scrap 
of  paper" — you  play  the  game.  It  would  not  be 
"cricket"  to  do  anything  else.  So  Sir  Edward  Grey 
and  Mr.  Lloyd  George  and  the  other  statesmen 
who  were  at  the  helm  of  British  affairs  in  August, 
1914,  remembered  the  first  maxim  of  life  which 
cricket  teaches  to  Englishmen — to  stick  to  the 
rules,  to  fight  when  an  honourable  cause  requires 
you  to  fight,  and  to  keep  on  fighting,  hard  but 
cleanly,  till  you  have  the  other  fellow  underneath 
or  are  knocked  out  yourself.  England  did  not  rush 
into  war.  She  thought  it  over  a  long  time — so 


24        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

long  that  right  up  to  the  eleventh  hour  there  was 
still  considerable  doubt  whether  she  would  "go  in." 
Cricket,  you  see,  taught  her  statesmen  the  impor- 
tance of  never  going  off  half-cocked.  But  when 
they  had  weighed  all  the  pros  and  cons  of  the 
situation — slowly,  deliberately,  thoroughly — Old 
England  took  the  leap,  for  better  or  for  worse. 
She  decided  to  play  the  game.  She  determined  to 
avenge  Germany's  violation  of  Belgium.  It  was 
cricket. 

The  British  Navy,  of  course,  was  ready.  If  it 
hadn't  been,  you  and  I  might  not  be  here  to-day — 
you  to  read,  or  I  to  tell,  the  story.  But  England's 
decision  to  fight — to  help  France,  to  protect  Bel- 
gium— meant  that  she  had  to  go  up  against  not 
only  the  Naval  forces  of  Germany,  but  to  jump  in 
on  land  and  face  the  mightiest  Military  Power  that 
then  existed  anywhere  in  the  world.  England  as  a 
factor  in  a  land  war  in  which  armies  of  millions 
were  already  engaged  looked  like  a  flea-bite.  No 
wonder  that  the  Kaiser  spoke  of  "the  contemptible 
little  British  army."  Germany  had  anywhere  from 
4,000,000  to  6,000,000  trained  soldiers  to  call  up- 
on. England  had  ready  for  fighting  overseas 
about  4  per  cent,  of  the  number  of  troops  actually 
mobilised  in  Germany.  Yet  on  August  17,  less 
than  two  weeks  after  England  made  up  her  mind  to 
play  the  game,  the  "First  Seven  Divisions"  had  ar- 
rived in  France,  fully  equipped  with  horses,  guns, 
ammunition  and  all  the  other  vast  trappings  of  an 


"PLAYING  THE  GAME"  25 

Expeditionary  Force.  It  was  a  record  in  transport 
which  was  never  approached  even  in  our  own  land 
of  Hustle.  A  week  later  the  British  Army  was  in 
battle  position  before  the  German  hordes  at  Mons, 
in  Belgium,  fiercely  engaged  in  a  struggle  to  stem 
the  progress  of  overwhelmingly  superior  forces. 

Here  and  there  in  England  to-day  you  will  en- 
counter Tommies  and  officers  who  wear  a  rainbow- 
like  strip  of  ribbon  on  their  breasts.  It  is  a  simple 
combination  of  red,  white  and  blue,  fading  one  into 
another.  Tommy  Atkins  calls  it  the  "Go'-bli'  me" 
ribbon — the  Cockney  for  a  swear-phrase  which  in 
plain  English  says,  "God  blind  me."  Every  time 
I  pass  a  man  adorned  with  the  Mons  Ribbon — for 
that  is  what  the  "Go'-bli'  me"  strip  is  officially 
called — I  feel  like  taking  off  my  hat  to  him.  For 
the  British  Expeditionary  Force  at  Mons  with- 
stood as  ferocious  an  onslaught  as  any  army  in  the 
annals  of  war  ever  had  to  face.  The  Kaiser  had 
ordered  "the  British  Contemptibles"  to  be  wiped 
off  the  earth.  Two  full  German  Army  Corps  and 
two  Cavalry  Divisions  were  hurled  against  the 
troops  of  General  Sir  John  French.  The  terrific 
battle  grew  in  fury  and  bloodiness  from  minute  to 
minute.  Within  twenty-four  hours  of  taking  the 
field,  the  British  were  locked  in  a  grapple  for  life 
or  death  with  the  crack  regiments  of  the  most 
highly-trained  army  in  Europe.  The  British  did 
not  yield.  They  died  but  did  not  surrender.  They 
took  frightful  punishment,  giving  it,  too,  in  such 


26        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

kind  as  their  inferior  strength  permitted,  but  on 
the  third  day  of  the  battle,  so  magnificent  had  been 
their  resistance,  the  Germans  threw  in  three  more 
Army  Corps,  making  five  altogether,  besides  a  re- 
serve corps.  With  these  tremendous  odds  against 
them,  sole  salvation  for  the  British  lay  in  retreat, 
and,  fighting  tenaciously,  General  French  decided 
to  extricate  what  was  left  of  his  little  Army.  The 
fields  around  Mons  were  by  this  time  richly 
drenched  with  the  best  blood  of  England,  for  it 
had  cost  the  "Contemptibles"  dearly  to  "play  the 
game."  It  was  due  to  nothing  but  the  superhuman 
heroism  of  General  French's  remaining  forces  that 
they  were  not  crushed  by  the  masses  of  Germans 
hurled  against  them.  It  became  known  afterwards 
that  the  Kaiser's  legions  practically  staked  their 
all  on  wiping  out  the  British  Army.  So  the  escape 
of  its  gallant  remnant  from  Mons  was  a  military 
feat  of  skill  and  glory. 

Thus  before  the  great  war  for  Liberty  was  a 
month  old  England  lived  up  splendidly  to  its  cen- 
tury-old tradition  of  playing  the  game.  Without 
any  obligation,  save  the  greatest  and  most  sacred 
of  all — that  of  honour  and  of  loyalty  to  friends  in 
need — England  not  only  flung  all  she  had  into  the 
furnace  of  war,  but  prepared  forthwith  to  fling 
more  and  more,  and  if  need  be  all  she  had,  into 
its  consuming  fires.  Every  man  and  every  gun  lost 
at  Mons  was  replaced  practically  while  the  retreat 
was  still  in  progress. 


"PLAYING  THE  GAME"  27 

In  the  knapsack  of  each  soldier  who  now  went 
forward  to  the  fray  was  a  message  from  Lord 
Kitchener,  the  new  Minister  of  War,  with  instruc- 
tions that  it  should  be  kept  in  the  active-service 
pay-book.  The  message  was  as  follows: — 

"You  are  ordered  abroad  as  a  soldier  of 
the  King  to  help  our  French  comrades  against 
the  invasion  of  a  common  enemy.  You  have 
to  perform  a  task  which  will  need  your  cour- 
age, your  energy,  your  patience.  Remember 
that  the  honour  of  the  British  Army  depends 
on  your  individual  conduct. 

"It  will  be  your  duty  not  only  to  set  an 
example  of  discipline  and  perfect  steadiness 
under  fire,  but  also  to  maintain  the  most 
friendly  relations  with  those  whom  you  are 
helping  in  the  struggle.  The  operations  in 
which  you  are  engaged  will,  for  the  most  part, 
take  place  in  a  friendly  country,  and  you  can 
do  your  own  country  no  better  service  than 
in  showing  yourself  in  France  and  Belgium 
in  the  true  character  of  a  British  soldier. 

"Be  invariably  courteous,  considerate,  and 
kind.  Never  do  anything  likely  to  injure  or 
destroy  property,  and  always  look  upon  loot- 
ing as  a  disgraceful  act.  You  are  sure  to 
meet  with  a  welcome  and  to  be  trusted.  Your 
conduct  must  justify  that  welcome  and  that 
trust. 

"Your  duty  cannot  be  done  unless  your 
health  is  sound.  So  keep  constantly  on  your 


28        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

guard  against  any  excesses.  In  this  new  ex- 
perience you  may  find  temptations  in  both 
wine  and  women.  You  must  entirely  resist 
both  temptations,  and,  while  treating  all 
women  with  perfect  courtesy,  you  should 
avoid  any  intimacy. 

"Do  your  duty  bravely, 

"Fear  God, 

"Honour  the  King." 

It  was  in  this  spirit,  with  these  orders,  that  the 
boys  of  England  went  forth  in  1914,  as  you  are 
now  going  forth — as  Crusaders  for  the  Right,  each 
remembering  what  he  had  learned  on  the  cricket- 
field:  that  come  victory,  come  defeat,  men  must 
always  "play  the  game,"  giving  hard,  taking  man- 
fully, and  battling  with  clean  hands,  in  order  that 
when  triumph  comes  it  may  be  deserved. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   BRITISH   NAVY 

WHEN  Sir  Edward  Grey,  the  British  Foreign 
Secretary,  declared  in  his  memorable  speech  in 
the  House  of  Commons  on  August  3,  1914,  that 
England  had  no  intention  of  "running  away  from 
the  obligations  of  honour"  toward  Belgium  and 
France,  he  added: 

"We  are  prepared.  We  are  prepared  for 
the  consequences  that  may  arise  from  the  atti- 
tude we  have  adopted.  We  are  ready  to  take 
our  part." 

What  Grey  meant  was  that  "Our  sure  shield," 
as  the  Britishers  call  their  Navy,  was  ready.  It's 
a  way  they've  had  in  the  Navy  for  900  years,  for 
since  William  the  Conqueror  came  from  Nor- 
mandy in  1066,  British  soil  has  never  been  trodden 
by  an  invader.  The  geographical  date  which  you 
and  I,  as  American  schoolboys,  best  remembered 
was  1492,  when  Christopher  Columbus  hiked 
across  the  Atlantic  to  an  unimagined  destination 
and  made  the  most  important  discovery  in  the 

29 


30        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

world's  history.  The  date  that  every  British 
schoolboy  knows  by  heart  is  1066.  It  is  well  that 
he  does,  for  it  marks  the  historical  fact  that  for 
nearly  nine  centuries  this  little  bunch  of  islands  in 
the  North  Sea — whose  total  area  of  121,000  odd 
square  miles  is  smaller  than  that  of  our  State  of 
New  Mexico — has  not  only  been  preserved  from 
the  ignominy  and  horrors  of  invasion,  but  has  be- 
come the  centre  of  a  Commonwealth  of  great  Na- 
tions. On  its  vast  territories  in  two  hemispheres 
the  sun  never  sets.  Its  13,150,000  square  miles 
girdle  the  globe  and  450,000,000  souls  acknowl- 
edge the  Democratic  sovereignty  of  the  British 
Crown.  Millions  of  them  have  been  killed  and 
maimed  in  the  defence  of  their  gigantic  realm  dur- 
ing the  past  four  years  of  bloodshed  and  tears. 
But  not  one  solitary  inch  of  it  has  ever  been  soiled 
by  German  invasion.  Do  you  know  the  reason 
why?  The  answer  is,  the  British  Navy. 

I  have  set  myself  the  task  of  sketching  in  a  short 
chapter  a  subject  to  which  some  day  an  entire  ency- 
clopaedia will  be  devoted — the  story  of  the  British 
Navy  since  1914.  But  we  Yanks  have  a  gift  for 
grasping  the  essentials  of  a  thing  if  its  outstand- 
ing features  are  put  before  us.  That  is  all  I  intend 
to  try.  Do  you  realise,  for  example,  that  nearly 
two  million  American  troops  have  been  safely 
landed  "Over  There"  mainly  because  Great  Britain 
commands  the  seas? 

Up  to  October,  1918,  1,766,160  United  States 


THE  BRITISH  NAVY  31 

soldiers  crossed  the  ocean,  bound  for  France. 
During  the  summer  and  autumn  of  this  year  they 
came  at  the  average  rate  of  300,000  a  month,  or 
10,000  a  day.  With  the  exception  of  the  291  lives 
we  lost  when  the  Germans  torpedoed  the  Tuscania, 
that  gigantic  feat  of  transport,  like  which  there 
has  been  nothing  in  history,  was  accomplished  as 
serenely  as  if  those  footpads  of  the  sea,  U-boats, 
had  never  been  invented.  More  than  half  of  our 
troops  have  been  transported  in  vessels  of  the  Brit- 
ish Mercantile  Marine,  but  sixty  per  cent,  of  the 
total  number  were  escorted  across  the  Atlantic  by 
the  United  States  Navy.  I  know  with  what  joy 
and  pride  you  have  seen  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
flapping  from  our  own  warships  which  have  con- 
voyed you  to  Europe,  or  through  the  danger  zone 
around  the  British  Isles.  I  know  the  sense  of 
security  their  proximity  inspired  in  you.  Yet  even 
the  United  States  Navy  could  not  have  played  its 
great  part  if  the  British  Fleet  had  not  cinched  its 
command  of  the  sea  at  the  outset  of  the  war  and 
held  it  unchallenged  from  that  hour  to  this.  Ad- 
miral Sims  and  the  United  States  naval  forces  now 
operating  in  European  waters — an  Armada  of 
more  than  250  vessels  and  45,000  officers  and  men 
^— 'Would  have  had  urgent  business  nearer  home. 
You  and  I  and  General  Pershing's  army  are  safe 
and  sound  in  Europe  to-day  because  Britannia  still 
"rules  the  waves."  Only  once  during  the  entire  war 
— at  the  Battle  of  Jutland  on  May  31,  1916 — has 


32        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

the  Kaiser's  Fleet  made  a  serious  attempt  to  break 
out  of  the  iron  ring  which  the  British  Navy  so 
relentlessly  keeps  drawn  around  the  German 
coasts.  The  Germans  object  on  that  occasion — 
the  "enterprise,"  as  they  described  it,  on  which 
they  set  out — was  to  contest  and  demolish  British 
supremacy  at  sea.  If  the  Germans  had  accom- 
plished their  purpose,  the  war  would  have  come 
to  a  sudden  and  disastrous  end  for  Liberty's  cause. 
There  would  have  been  no  occasion  for  America  to 
"come  in."  There  would  have  been  nothing  to 
"come  in"  for.  We  should  have  had  to  face  single- 
handed  and  alone  a  Europe  of  which  Germany  was 
the  indisputable  master.  But  her  "enterprise"  was 
wrecked.  Admiral  Beatty  gave  the  German  Fleet, 
though  at  cruelly  heavy  cost  to  his  own  in  ships 
and  men,  such  a  frightful  mauling  that  the  Ger- 
mans have  never  once  since  then  dared  to  show 
their  nose  in  any  way  that  would  enable  the  British 
to  take  a  second  crack  at  them.  Now  and  then 
their  destroyers  have  dashed  into  the  North  Sea 
on  raids,  always  turning  tail  as  soon  as  danger 
was  scented.  But  their  so-called  High  Seas  Fleet 
has  not  looked  for  a  stand-up  fight  for  the  last 
two  years.  Whenever  the  Germans  are  ready  to 
repeat  their  "enterprise,"  they  will  find  Beatty 
(and  Sims)  ready,  too.  To  date  they  have 
evinced  no  taste  for  another  dose  of  the  medicine 
they  got  at  Jutland. 

Every  once  in  a  while  I  hear  Britishers  asking, 


THE  BRITISH  NAVY  33 

"What  is  the  Navy  doing?"  Americans  frequently 
ask  the  same  thoughtless  question.  People  know 
what  the  British  Army  is  doing  because  its  heroic 
deeds  are  recorded  in  the  open,  day  by  day,  by 
men  who  are  given  that  special  task.  The  lime- 
light is  on  the  Army  all  the  time.  But  the  Navy 
has  to  work  in  silence  and  out  of  sight.  Only  on 
those  rare  occasions  when  German  men-of-war 
appear  on  the  surface  of  the  sea,  are  we  reminded 
that  the  British  Navy  is  on  the  job.  Yet  it  is  on 
the  job  day  and  night,  in  sunshine  and  storm,  sum- 
mer and  winter,  always  and  everywhere.  Lord 
Nelson,  England's  immortal  sailor,  whose  one- 
armed  effigy  stands  eternal  sentinel  on  the  tall 
column  which  bears  his  name  in  London's  Trafal- 
gar Square,  said  that  in  Naval  warfare  "Time  is 
everything;  five  minutes  make  the  difference  be- 
tween a  victory  and  a  defeat."  So  while  the 
European  storm-clouds  were  gathering,  on  July 
29,  1914,  the  British  Navy  took  time  by  the  fore- 
lock, moved  silently  from  its  moorings  on  the 
West  coast  and  assembled  at  strategic  anchorages 
in  the  East  and  North.  Henceforward  the  Navy 
became  known  as  "The  Grand  Fleet,"  an  unexam- 
pled organisation  of  fighting  strength;  and  from 
that  moment  every  possibility  of  Germany's  win- 
ning the  war  vanished.  She  had  lost  her  one 
conceivable  chance  of  securing  the  command  of  the 
sea.  It  is  our  own  celebrated  naval  expert,  Ad- 
miral Mahan,  you  know,  who  has  shown  that  Sea 


34        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

Power  is  the  decisive  factor  in  war.  When 
Britain,  without  firing  a  shot,  took  action  that 
assured  Allied  supremacy  at  sea,  Germany's  hope 
of  enslaving  civilisation  and  imposing  upon  it  the 
rule  of  Brute  Force  was  shattered  and  wrecked. 
What  has  the  British  Navy  done  in  the  four 
years  that  have  intervened? 

To  begin  with,  first  and  foremost,  it  has  effectually 
baffled  the  hopes  and  plans  of  Germany  to  win  the  war 
with  U-boats. 

Let  me  say  right  here  that  the  Britishers  are 
the  first  to  acknowledge  that  the  American  Navy 
has  proved  itself  a  friend  in  need,  and  a  very 
efficient  one.  It  has  had  an  important  hand  in 
smashing  up  the  U-boat  campaign.  When  Ad- 
miral Sims  and  our  first  destroyer  flotilla  came 
to  England  in  the  Spring  of  1917,  the  submarine 
war  was  in  full  blast.  More  than  1,000,000 
tons  of  Allied  shipping  were  sunk  in  April  of  that 
year.  Well  one  thing  is  dead  sure — the  sinkings 
"curve"  has  been  bending  even  more  markedly  in 
the  wrong  direction  for  Germany  since  American 
naval  forces  have  co-operated  in  fighting  the  sub- 
marine. Some  day  we'll  know  just  how  many 
U-boats  that  never  got  back  home  had  Sims's 
chasers  and  depth-charges  and  mine-barrage  to 
thank  for  their  fate.  We  shall  be  proud  of  the 
figures  and  of  the  deeds  of  heroism  and  skill 
which  they  represent.  Submarines  have  contin- 


ADMIRAL    WM.  S.   SIMS 


THE  BRITISH  NAVY  35 

ued  to  cause  enormous  damage  to  British  and  Al- 
lied shipping.  They  are  not  yet  killed  off,  but  they 
have  failed  in  their  main  object,  which  was  to 
starve  England,  destroy  British  sea  power,  and 
keep  American  troops  from  reaching  France.  As 
the  British  Prime  Minister  puts  it,  "the  U-boat 
has  ceased  to  be  a  peril  and  is  now  only  a  nui- 
sance!' 

In  addition  to  defeating  the  submarine  cam- 
paign, the  British  Navy  has: 

Blockaded  Germany  and  bottled  up  the  German  Navy. 

Driven  German  commerce  from  the  sea. 

Preserved  the  British  Empire  from  invasion. 

Brought  Germany  to  the  verge  of  starvation. 

Enabled  the  British  Empire  to  wage  war  in  ten  dif- 
ferent parts  of  the  world. 

Kept  the  high  seas  open  for  the  legitimate  service  of 
mankind. 

Made  ultimate  defeat  of  Germany  absolutely  certain, 
no  matter  how  long  delayed. 

These  are  the  facts  about  the  British  Navy. 
Now  let  me  give  you  a  few  figures.  "Figures 
talk,"  we  Americans  say.  None  ever  talked  more 
eloquently  than  these.  The  British  Navy  has : 

Increased  its  total  tonnage  from  2,500,000  to  8,000,- 

ooo. 
Patrolled  incessantly  the  140,000  square  nautical  miles 

of  the  North  Sea. 
Steamed  in  one  month  alone  (June,  1918)  8,000,000 

miles. 


36        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

Sunk,  destroyed  or  captured  more  than  150  German 
submarines. 

Raised  its  personnel  from  145,000  to  450,000. 

Enabled  the  safe  transport  of  20,000,000  men, 
2,000,000  horses  and  mules,  500,000  vehicles, 
25,000,000  tons  of  war  munitions  and  stores  to 
British  fronts  throughout  the  world,  51,000,000 
tons  of  oil  and  fuel,  and  130,000,000  tons  of 
food  and  other  material. 

Armed  and  maintained  3,500  auxiliary  patrol  boats,  as 
against  less  than  20  when  war  began. 

Enabled  food  for  the  46,000,000  inhabitants  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland  to  be  brought  from  oversea, 
despite  the  furious  German  U-boat  campaign 
whose  principal  object  was  to  "choke"  them  into 
submission. 

Kept  Britain's  8,000,000  odd  soldiers  and  sailors  well 
fed  and  well  armed,  no  matter  how  distant  the 
field  in  which  they  were  fighting. 

Made  possible  the  uninterrupted  supply  of  munitions, 
food  and  coal  needed  by  the  armies,  navies,  and 
75,000,000  inhabitants  of  France  and  Italy. 

This  is  what  the  British  Navy  has  done.  Think 
over  it  carefully,  and  you  will  rightly  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  but  for  the  British  Fleet  the  war 
might  have  been  over  and  won  by  Germany 
months,  even  years,  ago.  Truly  the  Prime  Min- 
ister, Lloyd  George,  has  said:  "Unless  the  Allies 
had  been  completely  triumphant  at  the  outset  of 
the  war  at  sea,  no  efforts  on  land  would  have  saved 
them.  The  British  Fleet  is  mainly  responsible  for 
that  complete  triumph." 

The  symbol  of  the  British  Navy  is  a  bulldog.  It 
has  fought  like  a  bulldog  every  time  it  had  a 


THE  BRITISH  NAVY  37 

chance  to  show  its  teeth.  I  would  need  a  whole 
chapter  of  this  booklet  merely  to  catalogue  the 
names  of  the  British  men  and  boys  of  "the  bulldog 
breed"  who  have  won  heroes'  laurels  in  the  long 
and  grim  struggle  at  sea.  The  fights  put  up  by 
destroyer  crews,  in  desperate  melees  with  German 
submarines  and  torpedo-boats,  will  supply  mate- 
rial some  day  for  thrilling  and  glorious  tales. 
Whether  opportunity  comes  to  him  to  distinguish 
himself  or  not,  every  mother's  son  in  the  British 
Navy  has  perpetually  in  his  mind's  eye  the  signal 
that  Nelson  flew  at  the  battle  of  Trafalgar  in 
1805  :  "England  expects  this  day  that  every  man 
will  do  his  duty."  Admiral  Hood  and  the  gallant 
6,000  or  7,000  officers  and  men  who  went  down 
with  their  ships  in  the  Battle  of  Jutland  did  their 
duty.  "Jack"  Cornwell,  a  ship's  boy,  who  lost  his 
life  in  that  same  glorious  scrap,  sticking  to  his  post 
to  the  last  second,  showed  the  stuff  that  British 
sailor-lads  are  made  of.  Nineteen-year-old  mid- 
shipman Donald  Gyles,  of  the  destroyer  Broke, 
who  single-handed  drove  off  six  burly  Germans 
who  attempted  to  board  his  ship,  was  a  chip  of  the 
old  block.  Captain  Fryatt,  of  the  North  Sea  mer- 
cantile service,  whom  the  Germans  captured,  tor- 
tured and  murdered,  will  be  for  all  time  a  token  of 
the  bravery  that  inspires  the  sea-dogs  of  the  Brit- 
ish race.  The  thousands  of  fishermen  of  Britain 
who  are  sweeping  mines  throughout  the  vast 
stretch  of  sea  from  Shetland  to  Greenland,  from 


38        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

Greenland  to  Iceland,  from  Iceland  to  the  coast  of 
Norway — "the  most  savage  waters  in  the  world, 
always  angry,  resenting  the  intrusion  of  Man  by 
every  device  known  to  Nature" — do  their  duty, 
unseen,  unsung,  unknown.  The  brawny  sailors, 
thanks  to  whose  competent  care  and  indifference  to 
danger  so  many  of  you  were  brought  in  safety  to 
this  side  of  the  world — the  tars  who  man  the  pas- 
senger and  food  ships,  the  munition-carrying 
freighters,  the  huge  troop-transports — these,  too, 
as  none  knows  better  than  yourselves,  are  doing 
their  duty. 

The  U-boat  campaign  is  aimed  principally,  as 
you  know,  at  the  British  Mercantile  Marine. 
Among  that  splendid  service  the  German  pirates 
have  claimed  many  victims.  When  I  recall  the 
names  of  the  Lusltania,  and  the  Sussex,  and  the 
Arabic,  and  all  the  other  vessels  which  have  been 
torpedoed,  you  will  know  what  I  mean  when  I  re- 
fer to  the  terrors  which  the  British  merchant  serv- 
ice has  so  bravely  faced.  But  the  Germans  made 
another  of  their  bad  guesses  about  British  charac- 
ter when  they  thought  that  their  murderous  torpe- 
does would  scare  the  British  sailor  from  the  sea. 
It  has  had  only  one  effect  on  that  bluff  and  hardy 
manner.  It  has  made  him  hate  the  word  German 
with  a  fury  that  the  authors  of  U-boat  warfare 
will  rue  for  the  rest  of  their  damnable  lives.  I 
should  not  like  to  be  a  member  of  the  crew  of  the 
first  German  ship  that  pokes  its  nose  into  a  British 


THE  BRITISH  NAVY  39 

harbour  after  the  war.    Some  welcome  is  in  pickle 
for  that  bunch,  believe  me. 

When  danger  calls,  the  British  Navy  is  always 
there.  In  April,  1 9 1 8,  it  was  decided  to  sink  some 
old  ships,  partly  laden  with  concrete,  in  order  to 
seal  up  the  Germans'  principal  U-boat  nests,  the 
Belgian  harbours  of  Zeebrugge  and  Ostend.  It 
was  a  certain  chance  for  glory — and  death,  and 
everybody  realised  that  the  men  chosen  to  carry 
out  the  expedition  had  a  through  ticket  to  Davy 
Jones's  locker.  Yet  three  times  as  many  British 
sailors  volunteered  for  the  job  as  were  needed. 
The  Hobson  tradition,  established  by  American 
sailors  in  Santiago  harbour  in  1898,  prevails 
throughout  the  British  sea  service.  Though  U- 
boats  make  life  at  sea  as  dangerous  as  the  front- 
line trenches,  the  Mercantile  Marine  has  more 
boys  than  it  can  use  for  eighteen  months!  So 
much  for  the  effect  of  submarines  on  Young  Brit- 
ain's nerve. 

And  then  there  is  the  aviation  branch,  the  sleep- 
less eye,  of  the  Grand  Fleet.  German  aircraft, 
both  Zeppelins  and  aeroplanes,  have  shown  truly 
enough  that  England  "is  no  longer  an  island." 
But  the  impunity  with  which  German  sky  pirates 
used  to  visit  and  harass  these  shores  is  a  thing  of 
the  past.  They  cannot,  of  course,  be  kept  away 
altogether.  Yet  on  the  occasion  of  their  last  at- 
tempt to  murder  sleeping  women  and  babes  on 


40        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

British  soil — it  was  in  August  of  this  year — the 
Germans  discovered  to  their  cost  and  chagrin  that 
the  British  Navy  has  a  punch  in  the  air  as  well  as 
on  the  sea.  A  Zeppelin  squadron,  commanded  by 
the  enemy's  most  skilful  airship  pilot,  Captain 
Strasser,  who  had  raided  England  often  before, 
was  driven  from  the  East  coast  when  it  tried  to 
approach  and  sent  scurrying  back  across  the 
North  Sea  battered  and  burning.  The  squadron's 
flagship,  with  Strasser  and  his  crew,  was  pursued 
40  miles  out  to  sea,  then  attacked  at  close-range  by 
airmen  of  the  Grand  Fleet's  air  force,  and  finally 
sent  crashing  into  the  sea,  a  flaming  wreck.  It 
was  a  Jutland  in  the  sky.  Another  German  "en- 
terprise" had  been  nipped  in  the  bud. 

The  German  propaganda  has  dinned  incessantly 
into  the  world's  ears  that  the  Kaiser  is  fighting  to 
secure  and  assure  "the  freedom  of  the  seas."  The 
Germans  try  to  excuse  the  tyranny  of  Militarism 
and  its  menace  to  Civilisation  by  shrieking  that 
"Prussian  Militarism"  is  no  worse  than  "British 
Navalism."  It  has  only  been  since  1914  that  the 
Germans  have  discovered  that  the  seas  are  not 
"free."  Prior  to  then  they  were  as  "free"  to  Ger- 
man ships  and  as  open  to  their  peaceful  activities 
as  they  were  to  the  ships  of  the  rest  of  the  world. 
The  leviathans  of  Hamburg  and  Bremen  entered 
the  ports  of  Liverpool,  Dover,  Plymouth  and 
Southampton,  Cape  Town  and  Sydney,  Montreal 


THE  BRITISH  NAVY  41 

and  Vancouver,  Bombay,  Singapore,  and  King- 
ston— wherever  the  Union  Jack  flew — as  "freely" 
as  British  ships  themselves.  German  shipping, 
indeed,  grew  fat  and  prosperous  because  of  the 
complete  freedom  of  the  seas. 

It  was  Admiral  Mahan,  the  American  whom  I 
have  already  quoted,  who  pointed  out  that  "con- 
ceptions of  representative  government,  law  and 
liberty  prevail  in  North  America  from  the  Arctic 
Circle  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  from  the  Atlantic  to 
the  Pacific,  because  the  command  of  the  sea  at  the 
decisive  era  belonged  to  Great  Britain."  If  it  had 
not,  Napoleon's  sway  might  have  been  established 
over  what  is  now  Democratic  North  and  South 
America ;  and  if  the  same  command  of  the  sea  did 
not  belong  to  the  same  Great  Britain  at  this  hour, 
that  imitation  Napoleon,  that  would-be  but  now 
sorely-chastened  world-conqueror,  William  II.  of 
Potsdam,  would  even  now  be  stretching  his  blood- 
smeared  tentacles  across  the  hemisphere  which 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  stakes  out  as  American  for 
all  time. 

"I  shall  stand  no  nonsense  from  America  after 
the  war,"  said  the  Kaiser  to  Mr.  Gerard  at  Berlin. 

Which  means,  if  it  means  anything,  that  the 
guns  of  the  Grand  Fleet,  the  bulldogs  which  bark 
when  Beatty  gives  the  word,  have  stood  during 
the  past  four  years  not  only  between  German  ag- 
gression and  the  British  Isles,  but  between  that 


42        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

hideous  tyranny  and  the  security  of  our  own  be- 
loved United  States. 

That  is  something  else,  that  the  British  Navy 
has  done. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   BRITISH   ARMY 

WHEN  the  Britishers  declared  war  on  Germany 
in  August,  1914,  their  standing  army — the  troops 
they  had  ready  to  send  abroad  as  an  Expedition- 
ary Force — numbered  roundly  about  160,000.  It 
was  a  small  army,  measured  by  modern  stand- 
ards, but  as  the  British  barrack-yard  ditty  puts  it, 
"A  Little  British  Army  Goes  a  Dam  Long  Way." 

Meantime  more  than  7,500,000  men  have  been  enrolled. 
Of  that  mighty  total  there  have  been  lost  in  killed  alone 
more  than  five  times  the  number  of  the  original  Expedi- 
tionary Force,  or  800,000.  Some  estimates  place  the  total 
of  killed  even  higher  and  assert  that  goo,OOO  Britishers 
have  "gone  West" 

I  can  almost  hear  you  gasp  when  you  read  these 
figures;  and  well  you  may,  for  there  is  not  one 
American  out  of  a  hundred  who  realises  how  lav- 
ishly British  blood  has  been  poured  out  in  the  com- 
mon cause.  What  Americans  have  been  told  in- 
cessantly during  the  past  four  years  is  that  Eng- 
land was  prepared  to  fight  "to  the  last  French- 
man." As  soon  as  Uncle  Sam  waded  into  the 
fray,  the  German  propaganda  varied  its  deceitful 

43 


44        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

tune  and  said  that  England  would  fight  "to  the 
last  American." 

Sometimes  the  German  hot-air  merchants  put  it 
this  way:  "England  is  playing  safe.  She  always 
does.  It's  her  game  to  let  the  other  fellows  get 
killed  and  save  her  own  skin."  A  lot  of  us  believed 
these  tales.  Some  Americans  believe  them  yet. 

What  are  the  facts?  British  casualties  in  officers  and 
men  have  been  as  follows: — 

August,  1914,  to  the  end  of  1915 550,000 

In  the  year  1916 650,000 

In  the  year  1917 800,000 

In  six  months  of  1918   (estimated) 500,000 


2,500,000 

In  other  words,  far  from  "playing  safe,"  the 
Britishers'  casualties  have  amounted  during  the 
first  four  years  of  the  war  to  roundly  one-third  of 
their  entire  army. 

America  is  properly  proud  of  the  great  army  she  has 
despatched  to  France.  By  July  4,  1918,  it  was  a  million 
in  round  numbers.  But  Britain  had  by  then  already 
LOST  nearly  a  million  in  dead.  I  have  not  exaggerated 
these  figures.  They  are  not  official,  but  have  been  com- 
puted by  competent  authorities.  We  know  some  of  the 
details.  During  one  month  in  France  in  1917  the  Brit- 
ishers had  27,000  men  KILLED.  In  the  first  twelve 
months  of  the  war  they  had  6,660  officers  and  95,000  men 
KILLED.  During  the  month  of  April  this  year,  as  the 
result  of  the  great  battles  which  began  on  March  21, 


THE  BRITISH  ARMY  45 

1918,  they  had  more  than  10,000  casualties  among  officers 
alone. 

In  all  candour,  it  is  not  our  fault  that  we  be- 
lieved for  so  long  that  the  Britishers  were  not  "do- 
ing their  bit."  It  was  their  fault.  They  didn't  tell 
us.  They  were  themselves  aware  that  they  were 
doing  their  full  duty,  but  they  didn't  think  it  worth 
while  to  say  anything  about  it.  For  months  and 
months  after  the  war  began  the  Britishers  fought 
it  in  the  dark,  as  far  as  the  outside  world  was  con- 
cerned. The  Britishers  are  long  on  self-deprecia- 
tion. When  I  lived  in  Berlin  an  English-owned 
Luna  Park  Company  had  a  red-blooded  American 
advertising-man.  He  considered  that  it  was  his 
duty  to  make  the  Park  known  far  and  wide  by 
every  means  available.  One  day  he  rushed  into 
the  manager's  office,  bubbling  with  enthusiasm,  and 
announced  that  after  weeks  of  effort  he  had  se- 
cured permission  to  put  up  an  electric  flash  sign  50 
feet  high  and  150  feet  across  in  Potsdamer-Platz 
— a  district  like  42nd  and  Broadway.  The  Amer- 
ican expected  his  English  manager  to  explode  with 
joy.  He  did  nothing  of  the  sort.  He  lit  a  fresh 
cigarette,  thought  for  a  minute  or  two,  and  then 
said:  "But  don't  you  think  a  sign  of  that  kind 
will  be  a  bit  conspicuous?" 

Now,  that  is  exactly  the  British  point  of  view 
where  their  own  deeds  and  virtues  are  concerned. 
They  do  not  believe  in  making  them  conspicuous. 


46        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

They  expect  people  to  take  them  for  granted.  So 
it  has  been  with  their  war  achievements.  Though 
the  little  British  Army  that  fought  at  Mons  won 
glory  enough  to  last  the  nation  for  all  time,  little 
more  was  said  about  it  than  if  Mons  had  been  a 
sham  battle  on  Salisbury  Plain.  Britishers  from 
Canada,  Australia,  New  Zealand,  South  Africa, 
Newfoundland,  from  all  the  Dominions  oversea, 
were  pouring  across  the  seven  seas  by  the  shipload 
to  fight  for  King,  Liberty,  and  Motherland.  From 
the  great  Empire  of  India  native  troops  led  by  ra- 
jahs rushed  to  arms  and  to  the  strange  and  far-off 
battlefields  of  France  because  the  issues  at  stake 
meant  as  much  for  Calcutta,  Bombay,  or  Delhi  as 
they  did  for  London,  Liverpool,  Toronto,  Mel- 
bourne, or  Capetown.  From  the  cities,  towns  and 
hamlets  of  England,  Scotland,  Wales,  and  Ire- 
land the  Britishers  who  inhabited  their  own  Isles 
flocked  to  the  colours  in  myriads.  But  the  Brit- 
ishers didn't  advertise  this  glorious  news. 

Meantime,  while  "Kitchener's  Army"  of  volun- 
teers was  being  hurriedly  recruited  and  trained,  the 
British  Expeditionary  Force  in  France  and  Bel- 
gium was  fighting  for  its  very  life.  Not  only  was 
it  handicapped  by  inferior  numbers,  but  it  was 
compelled  to  face  the  crack  divisions  of  the  Kai- 
ser's Army  so  short  of  guns  and  shells  that  it  will 
for  ever  remain  a  miracle  that  it  was  not  wiped 
out  of  existence  in  the  first  ninety  days  of  the  war. 


THE  BRITISH  ARMY  47 

It  was  well  supplied  with  only  one  thing — unbreak- 
able courage.  In  October  around  Ypres  (in  Bel- 
gium) the  British  Army,  still  hopelessly  outnum- 
bered, outgunned  and  outshelled,  was  engaged  in 
as  ferocious  a  struggle  with  the  Germans  as  the 
history  of  war  records.  The  Germans  were  mak- 
ing their  first  desperate  bid  for  Calais  and  the 
coast  of  the  English  Channel,  in  the  hope  of  at- 
tacking by  land,  sea  and  air  their  "grimmest  and 
most  stubborn  foe — England."  Ypres  was  pound- 
ed into  a  shell.  The  countryside  for  miles  in  every 
direction  was  fertilised  red  by  the  blood  of  Brit- 
ish soldiers,  who  fell  in  thousands.  But  Ypres  did 
not  fall.  Above  its  shattered  fragments  the  Union 
Jack  still  flies.  The  road  to  Calais  remains 
barred.  Again  and  again  the  Germans  have  tried 
to  gain  it,  but  never  so  fiercely  or  at  such  terrible 
cost  to  the  defenders  as  in  those  soul-trying  days 
of  October  and  November,  1914. 

How  many  Americans  know  the  story  of  Mons 
and  Ypres?  In  battle  glory  they  reduce  to  insig- 
nificance anything  that  happened  at  Waterloo.  Yet 
the  Britishers  did  not  shout  about  them.  It  was 
not  their  way.  They  had  helped  to  save  Civilisa- 
tion— that  was  all.  But  nobody  in  England 
thought  it  important  enough  to  bluster  about  for 
the  benefit  of  foreign  countries.  Nobody  saw  any 
use  in  letting  the  outside  world  know  the  glorious 
news  that  from  every  nook  and  corner  of  the  Em- 


48        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

pire  the  British  clans  were  gathering.  Nobody 
considered  it  worth  his  while  to  make  known  the 
fact  that  the  British  Lion  was  rousing  himself 
slowly,  but  determinedly,  for  a  fight  to  the  finish. 
Nobody  found  it  advisable  to  let  people  know 
that  the  British  Fleet  had  already  won  the  war  at 
sea.  Nobody  said  one  solitary  word  about  any  of 
these  things.  To  a  large  extent  the  British  Cen- 
sor wouldn't  allow  anything  to  be  said.  But  to  a 
still  larger  extent  nothing  was  said  because  the 
British,  as  Kipling  remarked  of  Lord  Roberts, 
"don't  advertise."  I  visited  the  United  States  in 
February  and  March,  1915.  The  war  had  been 
on  for  nearly  eight  months.  The  British  casualty 
lists  were  already  enormous.  John  Bull  was  in  it 
up  to  his  neck — in  blood  and  tears — but  not  grum- 
bling. What  was  it  Americans  asked  me  when  I 
got  home  ?  They  wanted  to  know  "When  is  Eng- 
land going  to  do  something?"  It  is  the  Britisher's 
passion  for  self-depreciation  that  caused  us  to 
think  they  were  asleep  at  the  switch. 

Now  I  am  going  to  tell  you,  in  the  eloquent 
language  of  figures,  just  what  the  Britishers  have 
done  in  the  way  of  raising  an  army. 

They  began  the  war  with  an  Expeditionary  Force,  as 
I  have  already  explained,  of  160,000.  By  the  end  of 
1917,  after  three  and  a  quarter  years,  the  British  Army 
had  grown  to  almost  fifty  times  that  size,  or  7,500,000. 
The  Germans  tried  to  make  the  world  believe  that 
England  was  fighting  not  only  "to  the  last  Frenchman" 
but  "to  the  last  Colonial."  The  figures  show  up  this 


THE  BRITISH  ARMY  49 

libel,  too,  in  its  true  colours.  Out  of  the  7,500,000  men 
provided  by  the  Empire  up  to  the  end  of  1917,  5,600,000 
or  74.7  per  cent. — about  three-quarters — came  from  Eng- 
land, Scotland,  Wales  and  Ireland.  The  proportions 
were  as  follows: 

Per  Cent, 
of  Total. 

England 4,530,000 60.4 

Scotland 620,000 8.3 

Wales 280,000 3.7 

Ireland 170,000 2.3 

Australia 
New  Zealand 
Canada 
Newfoundland 
South  Africa 


>   900,000 12.O 


India  and  other  Over- 
sea dominions 1,000,000 13.3 


Total    7,500,000 loo.o 

That  is  to  say,  the  British  Isles  themselves — 
this  little  country  that  Texas  could  swallow  up 
twice  over  and  whose  population  isn't  half  as  large 
as  that  of  the  United  States — have  raised  even  a 
bigger  army  than  the  5,ooo,ooo-men  establish- 
ment planned  by  us  Americans  ourselves.  By  July, 
1918,  Great  Britain  had  raised  more  than  8,000,- 
ooo  men  for  all  the  purposes  of  war.  Reviewing 
the  Britishers'  achievement,  their  Prime  Minister 
truly  said  that  if  the  United  States  of  America 
were  to  call  to  the  Colours  the  same  number  in 
proportion  to  population  it  would  mean  very  near- 
ly 15,000,000  men. 


50        EXPLAINING  THfe  BRITISHERS 

Before  I  leave  the  statistical  side  of  the  British 
Army,  I  want  to  nail  another  German  campaign 
lie.  Since  the  war  began  the  world  has  been  fa- 
miliar with  three  kinds  of  fakes — plain  lies, 
damned  lies,  and  German  propaganda.  One  of 
the  propaganda  lies  that  the  Swindle  Department 
of  the  Kaiser's  Government  loves  to  keep  in  circu- 
lation is  that  the  Britishers  systematically  spare 
the  hides  of  English  soldiers  and  let  the  "Coloni- 
als" (Australians,  Canadians,  New  Zealanders 
and  other  Dominion  troops)  do  the  dirty  work 
and  get  killed.  Once  again  there  are  figures  which 
show  at  a  glance  what  the  facts  are.  Study  this 
little  table: — 

Percentage  of  Population  of  British  Empire  and  Per- 
centage of  Troops  supplied  by  Countries  named: 

Population.       Troops  Raised.      Casualties. 
Per  Cent.  Per  Cent.          Per  Cent. 

England 62  70  ] 

Scotland 8  g  \          86 

Ireland 7  6  J 

Overseas 23  16  14 

(This  table  does  not  include  India.) 

You  see  that  England,  Scotland  and  Ireland 
contributed  85  per  cent,  of  the  troops  raised,  and 
suffered  a  fraction  more  than  a  corresponding 
quota  of  the  losses.  The  Colonies  furnished  16 
per  cent,  of  the  men,  and  suffered  2  per  cent,  less 
of  the  casualties.  Australian  casualties  to  mid- 
summer, 1918,  worked  out  at  about  7%  Per  cent- 


THE  BRITISH  ARMY  51 

of  the  total  British  losses ;  Canada's  casualties,  at 
about  6*/6  per  cent.  The  proportion  of  British 
casualties  to  Colonial  casualties  during  the  last 
half  of  1917  per  Division  was  7  to  6. 

By  the  time  this  booklet  reaches  the  hands  of 
the  men  for  whose  information  it  was  originally 
written — the  American  soldiers  and  sailors  bound 
for  or  already  in  Europe — many  of  them  will  have 
made  the  acquaintance,  face  to  face,  of  British 
soldiers  and  sailors.  Other  Yanks,  to  whose  at- 
tention I  fondly  hope  the  booklet  may  come,  will 
have  brushed  shoulders  with  Tommies  in  the  fight- 
ing-line. I  shall  not  need  to  tell  those  Americans 
what  sort  of  scrappers  the  Britishers  are.  The 
best  witnesses  on  that  point  would  be  German 
prisoners.  Any  Huns  who  have  fought  on  the 
Western  front  could  say  things  about  Tommy  At- 
kins far  more  eloquent  and  convincing  than  any- 
thing my  faithful  Waterman  could  put  on  paper. 

On  August  8  and  9,  1918,  when  Haig's  army 
smashed  the  crack  corps  of  Hindenburg's  forces 
and  liberated  Amiens,  the  Britishers  delivered  a 
blow  that  the  Germans  themselves  described  as 
"the  first  reverse  we  had  suffered  during  the  war." 
That  is  not  quite  true,  for  when  the  French  and 
British  won  the  first  battle  of  the  Marne  in  Sep- 
tember, 1914,  the  Germans  sustained  a  "reverse" 
from  which  they  never  entirely  recovered.  But 
the  punch  in  the  jaw  that  Tommy  gave  Fritz  in 


52        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

August  of  this  year  was  the  first  dose  of  the  real 
stuff  that  the  Britishers  handed  the  Germans.  It 
was  the  goods,  because  it  represented  the  British 
Army  at  last  in  its  full  stride,  fortified  by  four 
years'  experience  with  every  device  of  warfare, 
however  devilish,  that  the  German  method  of 
fighting  had  taught  it  to  employ. 

The  army  that  Haig  sent  into  battle  to  relieve 
Amiens  took,  in  the  single  month  of  August, 

57,318  prisoners,  including  1,283  officers; 

657  guns,  including  over  150  "Heavies"; 
5,750  machine-guns; 
1,000  trench-mortars; 

3  complete  railway  trains; 
9  locomotives; 

Numerous  complete  ammunition  and  en- 
gineering dumps,  including  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  rounds  of  artillery  and  rifle 
ammunition,  and  war  materials  of  all  sorts. 

The  British  Army  that  gave  the  Germans  that 
stinging  uppercut  was  no  longer  the  outnumbered, 
outgunned,  outshelled  Army  that  fought  a  forlorn 
hope  at  Mons  in  August,  1914.  This  August, 
superiority  of  strength  and  skill  was  on  the  British 
side. 

Thanks  very  larely  to  their  magnificent  equip- 
ment with  aircraft  and  with  that  exclusively  Brit- 
ish invention,  the  tank — I  think  the  tank  is  charac- 
teristically British  because  it  is  big,  cumbersome, 


THE  BRITISH  ARMY  53 

slow-moving  and  deadly  once  it  gets  started — the 
Tommies  simply  waded  through  the  Germans. 
American  troops  fought  with  Haig,  too,  and  there 
must  be  plenty  of  Yank  eye-witnesses  who  can  con- 
firm every  word  I  am  now  setting  down,  viz.,  that 
on  August  8  and  9  of  1918  A.D.  the  British  Army 
showed  once  and  for  all  that  it  is  the  equal  of  any 
fighting  organisation  that  ever  went  into  battle. 
It  took  the  Britishers  four  years  to  get  going,  but 
"by  the  splendour  of  God,"  as  their  King  Hal  used 
to  vow,  they  have  done  it. 

The  British  Army  (supported  and  succoured  al- 
ways by  the  British  Navy,  don't  forget)  has  not 
been  playing  a  merely  defensive  role  on  the  blood- 
soaked  plains  of  France  and  Belgium.  It  has 
fought  in  a  dozen  different  places — in  various 
parts  of  Europe,  Africa  and  Asia.  It  has  con- 
quered all  the  German  Colonies  overseas.  To- 
day, with  the  Russians  out  of  the  war,  the  British- 
ers have  to  fight  the  Turkish  army  single-handed 
in  Mesopotamia  and  Palestine.  They  helped  to 
knock  out  the  Bulgarians  in  Macedonia.  They 
are  rounding  up  the  remnants  of  the  German 
Army  still  at  large  in  East  Africa  and  the  Came- 
roons.  They  rushed  to  the  help  of  Italy  last  win- 
ter when  the  Austrians  broke  the  Italian  front. 
They  sent  troops  across  north-western  Persia  to 
occupy  the  great  Russian  oil-city  of  Baku,  on  the 
Caspian  Sea,  in  order  that  a  Germanised  Russia, 
betrayed  by  the  traitor-Bolsheviks,  might  not  be 


54        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

the  stepping-stone  for  a  German  lunge  at  the 
heart  of  India.  In  the  far  north  of  Russia,  at  Arch- 
angel, British  troops  were  landed,  to  prevent 
Germany's  seizure  of  Russia's  one  gateway  to  the 
Atlantic.  At  Vladivostok,  on  the  Pacific  Coast, 
British  troops  are  in  line  alongside  American, 
Japanese  and  gallant  Czecho-Slovak  contingents 
to  preserve  Siberia  from  the  rapacious  designs  of 
Germany  in  that  direction.  In  all  theatres  of  war 
British  armies  up  to  August  19,  1918,  had  taken 
224,787  prisoners,  including  159,787  in  France. 

The  spoils  of  Napoleonic  victory  have  not  yet 
fallen  to  the  Britishers'  lot.  But  when  the  full 
story  of  the  Great  War  is  written,  I  believe  its 
chroniclers  will  say  that  Britain  bit  off  far  more 
than  Napoleon  ever  tried  to  chew — and  chewed  it. 

By  backing  France  for  four  long  years,  the  Brit- 
ish Army  saved  Europe.  While  we  were  getting 
ready,  the  Britishers  held  the  fort — the  fort  from 
which  you  and  they,  marching  shoulder  to  shoulder 
with  our  glorious  and  invincible  French  Allies, 
are  now  sallying  forth  to  victory. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   HOME   ARMY 

MODERN  war  is  not  merely  a  matter  of  soldiers, 
guns  and  ships.  It  has  to  be  waged  on  two  fronts, 
one  just  as  important  as  the  other — the  fighting 
line  and  at  home.  The  folks  you  khaki  chaps  left 
behind  you — the  tens  of  millions  who  don't  wear 
uniforms,  obtain  commissions  or  reap  any  of  the 
spectacular  glory  of  war — are  just  as  essential  to 
conducting  and  winning  the  war  as  soldiers  in  the 
trenches  or  sailors  in  battleships.  They  make  up 
the  Home  Army,  without  whose  loyalty  and  indus- 
try the  real  army  "Over  There"  would  soon  be- 
come useless. 

In  previous  chapters  I  have  dealt  with  the  regu- 
lar Army  and  Navy  of  Great  Britain.  I  would 
now  like  to  tell  you  what  the  Home  Army  has 
done,  for  the  achievements  of  the  civilian  popula- 
tion of  these  islands  are  as  splendid  and  vital  a 
contribution  to  Liberty's  Cause  as  anything  their 
fighting  lads  have  accomplished.  It  is  solely  be- 
cause this  class  of  Britishers — men,  women  and 
children — have  "carried  on"  patiently,  stubbornly, 
for  four  hard  years  that  the  British  Army  and 

55 


56        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

Navy  are  not  only  still  intact,  despite  heavy  losses, 
but  are  in  every  way  stronger  than  ever.  It  is  the 
devotion  of  the  Home  Army  that  has  enabled  the 
Government  to  build  up  a  gigantic  munition  indus- 
try. British  civilians  have  given  freely  of  their 
money,  subscribing  incessantly  from  their  savings 
for  War  Loans  and  submitting  without  a  whimper 
to  heavy  taxes  on  their  incomes  and  on  some  of  the 
principal  necessities  of  life.  They  have  tolerated 
uncomplainingly  the  rationing  of  their  food.  They 
have  accepted  rigid  control  of  their  drink.  In- 
deed, they  have  almost  been  put  on  the  water- 
wagon.  They  have  not  objected  to  interference 
with  the  commonest  everyday  liberties.  They 
have  put  up,  in  short,  with  any  and  every  thing 
deemed  necessary  to  victory.  The  Germans  have 
done  all  these  things  because  they  had  to,  and 
whined  about  it.  The  Britishers  have  done  them 
because  they  wanted  to,  and  took  pride  in  doing  so. 
I  don't  mean  for  a  minute  that  Great  Britain  has 
transferred  from  the  easy-going  standards  of  peace 
to  the  grim  conditions  of  war  without  kicking. 
They  call  it  "grousing"  over  here,  and  there  are 
just  as  many  "grousers"  to  the  square  inch  in  these 
islands  as  there  are  kickers  in  other  countries. 
When  I  say  that  the  Britishers  have  "carried  on" 
in  a  spirit  of  high-minded  patriotism,  I  mean  the 
great  broad  masses  of  the  country,  the  over- 
whelming majority.  I  mean  particularly  the 
working  classes,  and  I  mean  quite  particularly  the 


KING    GEORGE     AND    (JTKKX     ALEXANDRA     HEVIK  \VI  XG 
AT    BUCKINGHAM    PALACE,    MAY    25,    1918. 


IE     AMERICAN"     MARCH     1'AST 


LOXDOJf's    MIGHTY    WELCOME    TO    THE    AMERICAX    VAXGUARD    TRAFALGAR    SQUARE, 
AUGUST   15,    1917. 


THE  HOME  ARMY  57 

women-folk.  British  workers  and  British  women 
have  been  splendid.  They  have  borne  the  brunt 
magnificently. 

In  your  meanderings  up  and  down  England  and 
Scotland  and  Wales  you  are  meeting,  I  guess, 
many  a  Britisher  who  tells  you  he  is  "fed  up"  with 
the  war.  The  chances  are  you'll  hear  Tommies 
home  on  leave  say  the  same  thing,  especially  lads 
with  the  Mons  ribbon  or  chevrons,  which  indicate 
that  they've  been  in  the  game  going  on  four  years 
or  more.  Yes,  the  Britishers  are  "fed  up"  with 
the  war.  Good  Lord,  who  wouldn't  be,  after  what 
they  have  gone  through  ?  Do  you  suppose  that  we 
Yanks  will  be  as  eager,  as  "keen"  (as  the  English 
say),  about  the  war  as  we  are  now  if  Providence 
inflicts  four  years  of  it  on  us?  We  shall  be  more 
than  human  if  we  are.  But  don't  make  the 
mistake  of  imagining  that  "fed  up"  means  despair. 
It  may  mean  that  the  Britishers  are  tired.  War- 
worn they  certainly  are.  Heaven  knows,  a  rest  is 
coming  to  them.  But  that  does  not  mean  they  are 
ready  to  throw  up  the  sponge.  The  piece  of  war 
slang  that  summarises  the  Britishers  best  is  this 
bit  of  doggerel:  "Are  We  Downhearted?  NO!" 

As  the  war  drags  on  from  month  to  month,  and 
from  year  to  year,  I  often  think  of  John  Bull  as  a 
champion  heavyweight  pugilist,  like  our  "John 
L.,"  of  immortal  memory.  "John  L."  faced  many 
a  tough  antagonist  in  his  day.  Usually  he  knocked 


58        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

them  out  in  the  early  rounds,  but  every  once  in  a 
while  he  met  a  man  who  made  him  fight  like  Hell 
for  a  dozen  rounds  or  more.  The  champion  on 
these  occasions  had  to  stretch  himself  to  the  limit 
of  his  powers.  One  of  his  eyes  was  blackened. 
Good  red  blood  oozed  from  his  battered  nose. 
He  was  black  and  blue  at  half  a  dozen  places,  but 
his  wind  was  all  right,  his  vision  was  not  impaired, 
his  arms  could  still  shoot  out  rights,  lefts  and  up- 
percuts,  and  he  was  firmly  on  his  legs.  To  rattle 
John  L.,  the  other  fellow's  seconds  would  call  out: 
"Why  don't  you  quit — you're  groggy!"  And  then 
the  champion,  by  way  of  contemptuous  retort, 
would  hand  his  opponent  a  stiffer  punch  than  any 
"John  L."  had  yet  delivered.  The  British— "ex- 
hausted," so  the  German  Government  told  the 
German  people — handed  Hindenburg  this  Autumn 
the  nastiest  smacks  in  the  eye  that  he  has  had  for 
many  a  day.  John  Bull  gave  Heinie  a  little  of  the 
John  L.  stuff. 

The  Britishers'  attitude  toward  the  war — the 
attitude  of  the  Home  Army — reminds  me,  too,  of 
the  American  Admiral  in  our  1812  war  with  Eng- 
land. When  the  Admiral  was  asked  to  surrender 
because  his  inferior  squadron  was  badly  mauled, 
he  replied:  "Surrender?  By  God,  I've  only  be- 
gun to  fight !"  Yes,  the  Britishers  have  been  bad- 
ly mauled.  But  now  that  at  last  they  face  on 
something  like  equal  terms,  instead  of  bare-breast- 


THE  HOME  ARMY  59 

ed,  a  foe  which  had  been  dolling  up  for  war  for 
half  a  century,  they  have  "only  begun  to  fight." 

The  Britishers  face  the  Germans  on  approxi- 
mately equal  terms  because  they  are  to-day  pro- 
vided with  the  principal  sinews  of  war — arms  and 
ammunition — on  a  gigantic  scale.  While  the 
Army  and  Navy  were  holding  the  foe  at  bay  on 
land  and  sea,  the  Home  Army  created  an  indus- 
trial plant  that  has  been  well  described  as  "the 
miracle  of  munitions."  John  Bull  opposed  the 
Mailed  Fist  of  the  Kaiser  in  1914  with  practically 
an  ungloved  hand.  The  original  Expeditionary 
Force  went  into  battle  at  Mons,  I  suppose,  with 
about  as  many  machine-guns  per  division  as  the 
German  Army  had  per  company.  It  was  May, 
1915 — ten  months  after  the  war  started — before 
the  Britishers  discovered  that  they  were  fighting 
Germany's  high-explosive  shells  with  almost  use- 
less shrapnel.  Our  comrades-in-arms  had  paid 
dearly  in  life  and  treasure  before  they  found  that 
out,  but  it  proved  to  be  the  turning-point  of  the 
war.  Thereupon  the  British  Government  created 
a  "Ministry  of  Munitions,"  which  set  itself  the 
task  not  only  of  making  up  the  deficiency  from 
which  the  Army  suffered,  but  of  outstripping  the 
superiority  which  the  Germans  so  long  enjoyed. 

The  Britishers  have  done  the  trick.  They  have 
out-Krupped  Krupps.  To-day  Britain  is  one  im- 
mense arsenal,  her  man  and  woman  power  mobil- 


60        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

ised,  her  industries  placed  upon  a  war  footing,  her 
every  thought  and  energy  concentrated  upon  the 
single  task  of  supplying  her  fighting  forces  with 
their  essential  needs.  About  2,500,000  men  and 
1,000,000  women  are  now  at  work  on  munition- 
making — big  guns,  shells,  rifles,  small  arms  am- 
munition, aeroplanes,  machine-guns,  tanks,  gas, 
and  all  the  other  junk  required  for  "kanning  the 
Kaiser."  National  arsenals  (Government-owned 
munition  works)  have  increased  from  three  in 
1914  to  more  than  180  in  1918.  Private  manu- 
facturing firms  engaged  on  munitions  num- 
ber over  10,000.  "Controlled  Establishments" 
(firms  which  give  precedence  to  Government  work 
and  employ  labour  under  conditions  fixed  by  the 
Ministry  of  Munitions)  total  more  than  5,000. 
The  following  table  shows  the  comparative  rate 
of  output  in  the  first  four  years  of  the  war,  with 
the  figure  i  as  a  basis  : 

AMMUNITION:            1914-15  1915-16  1916-17  1917-18 

For  light  guns i               5  19  5 

For  medium  guns ..        I               5  25  22 

For  heavy  guns             i               6  70  400 

For  very  heavy  guns       i             21  220  280 

GUNS: 

Machine-guns  I  12  39  70 

Heavy     guns     and 

Howitzers I  5  27  40 

Very  heavy  ditto.          i  5  13  16 

STEEL  (million  tons)       7  9  10  10 


THE  HOME  ARMY  61 

To  give  you  an  idea  of  the  rate  at  which  the 
Home  Army  has  turned  out  munitions,  let  me  tell 
you  that  during  the  Somme  offensive  in  1916  Brit- 
ain was  issuing  to  her  armies  on  the  Western 
Front  an  amount  of  ammunition  equal  to  the  entire 
stock  available  for  her  land  service  at  the  outbreak 
of  the  war.  During  the  battles  of  this  year 
(1918)  the  British  Army  is  firing  more  than  dou- 
ble the  volume  of  shells  it  used  up  on  the  Somme  in 
1916.  The  present  rate  of  output,  moreover,  al- 
lows for  the  production  next  year  of  enough  guns 
and  shells  to  make  the  British  artillery  even 
stronger  still  in  weight,  intensity  and  striking 
power. 

During  the  first  five  weeks  of  the  German  offen- 
sive which  compelled  the  British  to  retreat  in 
March  and  April,  1918,  from  their  hard-won  posi- 
tions on  the  Somme,  the  British  lost  nearly  1,000 
field-guns  and  between  4,000  and  5,000  machine- 
guns — including  captured  and  destroyed.  The 
amount  of  ammunition  lost  in  dumps  amounted  to 
something  between  a  week's  and  three  weeks'  total 
manufacture.  These  admissions  are  official. 
None  the  less,  by  the  end  of  April  all  of  these 
losses  were  more  than  made  good,  and  there  were 
actually  more  serviceable  guns  and  ammunition 
available  than  when  the  battle  opened. 

In  aeroplane  construction,  too,  the  British  have 
accomplished  wonders.  British  factories  are  to- 


62        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

day  building  in  a  single  week  more  flying-machines 
than  they  made  during  the  whole  of  1914;  in  a 
single  month,  more  than  were  made  in  the  whole 
of  1915;  and  in  three  months  more  than  in  the 
whole  of  1916.  The  output  for  the  whole  of  1918 
will  be  several  times  what  it  was  during  1917. 

These  colossal  achievements — there  is  no  other 
description  for  them — are  the  result  of  two  things : 
the  Britishers'  talent  for  organisation,  mistakenly 
thought  to  be  a  German  monopoly,  and  the  zeal 
and  patriotism  of  British  workers,  especially  wom- 
en. Nine-tenths  of  the  whole  manufacture  of 
shells  are  the  result  of  the  labour  of  women  and 
girls  who  before  the  war  had  never  even  seen  a 
lathe!  I  feel  like  taking  off  my  hat  to  every  Brit- 
ish lass  I  see  in  the  brown  or  blue  "kit"  of  a  muni- 
tion worker,  or  in  the  uniform  of  a  'bus-conductor, 
or  driving  an  Army  or  Navy  or  Air  Force  motor- 
car, or  doing  any  of  the  many  other  jobs  that  girls 
and  women  are  holding  down  in  order  to  liberate 
men  for  the  fighting  services.  If  you  could  see,  as 
I  have  seen,  British  girls  of  18,  20,  or  23  at  work 
in  the  great  steel  mills  of  Sheffield — at  Hadfield's 
or  Firth's — swinging  no-lb.  red-hot  steel  ingots 
into  the  hydraulic  presses,  unafraid,  skilled,  veri- 
table daughters  of  Titan,  you,  too,  would  feel  like 
saluting  them;  for  it  is  they  who  are  mainly  re- 
sponsible for  the  fact  that  British  heavy  artillery 
is  now  able  to  pound  the  German  line  to  a  frazzle 


THE  HOME  ARMY  63 

every  time  the  guns  bark.  And  remember  that 
American  artillery,  too,  is  to  a  large  extent  sup- 
plied with  shells  which  these  British  women  and 
girls  are  making. 

Germany  hoped  to  choke  the  life  out  of  England 
by  means  of  the  U-boat,  that  is  to  say  by  destroy- 
ing so  many  ships  that  the  British  Isles  could  no 
longer  import  food  or  the  other  vital  sinews  of 
war.  Thus  the  question  of  ships  was  the  British- 
ers' chief  problem,  and  here,  too,  the  Home  Army 
has  worked  wonders.  The  submarines  have,  in- 
deed, played  frightful  havoc  with  the  world's  ton- 
nage. Up  to  August  i,  1918,  according  to  Ger- 
man official  claims,  the  pirates  had  sunk  18,800,- 
ooo  tons  of  shipping — Allied  and  neutral.  That 
is  rather  more  than  the  tonnage  of  the  entire  Brit- 
ish Mercantile  Marine  when  war  broke  out.  The 
large  majority  of  vessels  sunk  by  U-boats  has,  of 
course,  been  British  shipping.  The  Britishers 
tackled  with  characteristic  tenacity  the  question 
of  making  good  these  serious  losses.  In  1917, 
1,163,000  gross  tons  of  merchant  shipping  were 
launched  from  British  yards,  as  compared  with 
542,000  tons  in  the  previous  year,  and  1,919,000 
tons  during  the  last  year  of  peace.  Since  1917 
British  shipbuilding  has  been  speeded  up  even  still 
more.  In  the  quarter  ended  June  30  there  was 
an  increase  of  78  per  cent,  over  the  figures  for 
the  corresponding  three  months  of  1917. 


64        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

Hog  Island  and  Seattle  aren't  the  only  places 
where  shipbuilders  know  how  to  hustle.  At  the 
great  Harland  and  Wolff  yard  at  Belfast  (Ire- 
land) the  other  day  an  8,ooo-ton  "standard"  ship 
was  made  ready  for  sea  six  days  after  launching, 
the  usual  time  being  six  weeks.  Remember  that  in 
addition  to  replenishing  their  Mercantile  Marine, 
the  Britishers  have  had  to  keep  up  their  warship 
construction.  Repair  work  alone,  on  Naval  and 
Mercantile  craft,  has  been  a  gigantic  job.  Dam- 
aged craft  of  all  nations  limps  to  British  dry  docks 
for  overhauling.  It  is  no  wonder  that  the  British- 
ers look  to  us  to  concentrate  on  new  shipbuilding. 
They  are  confident  that  "Charlie"  Schwab  will 
deliver  the  goods,  too. 

The  primary  necessities  of  war  nowadays  are 
"the  two  M's" — munitions  and  money.  If  you 
have  to  produce  tons  of  munitions,  you  must  put  up 
tons  of  money.  The  Britishers  have  not  failed  in 
that  direction.  The  figures  are  so  fantastic  as  al- 
most to  baffle  ordinary  comprehension.  They  run 
not  into  mere  millions,  but  into  tens  of  billions. 
The  war  is  now  costing  them  about  $40,000,000  a 
day.  Up  to  April,  1918,  it  had  cost  them  about 
$35,070,000,000.  By  April,  1919,  it  is  estimated 
that  the  war  bill  will  have  reached  fifty  billion  dol- 
lars! The  Britishers  are  not  only  financing  them- 
selves but  their  European  Allies  as  well.  The  Old 
Country  (England,  Scotland  and  Wales)  is,  as 


THE  HOME  ARMY  65 

usual,  bearing  the  burden  for  the  whole  Empire. 
Up  to  the  end  of  July,  1918,  Great  Britain  had 
advanced  to  her  various  Allies  in  Europe  the  fabu- 
lous sum  of  $7,010,000,000 — that  is  to  say,  more 
than  seven  billion  dollars.  To  her  Colonies 
(Australia,  Canada,  New  Zealand,  South  Africa 
and  the  rest)  the  Motherland  had  loaned  another 
billion — $1,042,500,000.  The  statement  of  her 
help  to  her  Allies  shows  advances  to 

Russia  $2,840,000,000 

France    2,010,000,000 

Italy    1,565,000,000 

Belgium  1 

Serbia        L 595,000,000 

Greece 


Total $7,010,000,000 

The  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  (the  Secre- 
tary of  the  Treasury)  explained  the  other  day 
what  "a  thousand  million  pounds"  (five  billion 
dollars  )  really  means.  "It  represents,"  he  said, 
"the  labour  of  ten  million  men  for  a  whole  year." 
That  conveys  some  impression  of  what  the  British 
Home  Army  is  doing  in  the  way  of  providing 
money  for  the  war.  Never  forget  that  it  has  been 
doing  so  not  for  a  year  and  a  half,  like  the  United 
States,  but  for  four  years.  It  continues  to  "Pay, 
Pay,  Pay,"  without  a  murmur.  It  puts  up  and 
shuts  up. 


66        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

In  the  Summer  of  1918  the  British  broke  all 
their  previous  financial  war  records,  indeed  estab- 
lished a  world's  record,  by  purchasing  more  than 
$5,000,000,000  in  National  War  Bonds.  They 
did  it  in  exactly  ten  months.  No  previous  loan  in 
any  country  ever  placed  so  much  actually  new 
money  at  the  disposal  of  the  State.  It  beat  even 
the  best  Liberty  Loan  record  in  the  United  States. 
Before  that  the  world's  record  was  held  by 
the  British  War  Loan  of  1917,  which  yielded 
$4,742,295,000  in  actual  cash  received.  The  Na- 
tional War  Bond  drive,  which  lasted  from  Octo- 
ber, 1917,  to  August,  1918,  surpassed  that  bumper 
figure  by  some  $250,000,000.  It  was  not  a  hip- 
hip-hurrah  job  of  a  week  or  a  fortnight,  mind  you, 
with  enthusiasm  whipped  up  by  all  sorts  of  stunts. 
It  represented  regular,  plugging,  week-by-week 
investment.  It  meant  money  given  by  the  plain 
people — by  the  men,  women,  and  even  the  children 
of  the  Home  Army,  who  dug  up  their  pounds, 
shillings  and  pence  in  order  to  let  Germany  know 
that  Britain,  far  from  being  downhearted,  is  pre- 
pared to  "carry  on,"  whatever  the  cost. 

A  nation  raises  money  for  war  by  two  methods 
— loans  and  taxation.  By  loan  the  Britishers  have 
raised  since  1914  the  colossal  sum  of  $25,850,- 
000,000.  In  addition  they  have  imposed  upon 
themselves  special  war  taxation  more  drastic  than 
anybody  would  ever  have  thought  possible, 


THE  HOME  ARMY  67 

amounting  thus  far  to  $9,220,000,000.  The  Brit- 
ishers are  paying  income-tax  at  from  56  cents  to 
$2.65  on  every  five  dollars  they  earn  above  the 
exemption  limit.  Think  of  that.  The  very  rich 
man  is  paying  over  one-half  of  his  income  in  in- 
come-tax and  super-tax  alone.  Tax  must  be  paid 
on  war  profits  to  the  extent  of  80  per  cent,  of  the 
total.  The  cost  of  railway  travelling  has  been 
raised  by  50  per  cent.  Britishers  are  now  about  to 
tax  themselves  four  cents  on  every  25  cents  spent 
on  luxury  articles. 

Meantime  the  cost  of  living  in  Great  Britain  has 
gone  up  enormously.  The  purchasing  value  of  the 
sovereign  ($5)  for  the  necessaries  of  life  has  been 
reduced  to  about  $3.  The  ordinary  middle-class 
Briton,  whose  income  has  not  gone  up  since  1914, 
is  to-day  practically  in  the  position  of  having  had 
it  cut  in  half,  so  much  has  its  buying-power  de- 
creased. Yet  the  nation  continues  to  come  for- 
ward with  its  earnings  and  savings  more  lavishly, 
more  freely,  more  confidently  than  ever. 

But  even  more  splendid  than  the  manner  in 
which  they  are  giving  of  their  toil  and  treasure  is 
the  uncomplaining  spirit  in  which  the  Britishers 
give  of  their  life-blood.  That's  where  their  amaz- 
ing "reserve"  and  composure  stand  them  in  good 
stead.  Parents  lose  their  second,  third,  fourth 
sons ;  wives,  their  husbands ;  children,  their  bread- 
winners. But  nobody  whimpers.  Lips  are  only 
stiffened.  It  is  Sparta  reborn. 


68        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

The  beginning  of  the  fifth  year  of  the  war  finds 
the  Britishers  going  to  it  with  bulldog  determina- 
tion to  "stick  it"  until  they  get  the  only  kind  of  a 
peace  they  or  we  will  ever  accept — a  peace  that 
leaves  the  Allies  completely  victorious  and  Ger- 
many at  our  mercy. 


CHAPTER  VI 

IRELAND  AND  THE  COLONIES 

IT  will  probably  be  a  long  time  before  the  world 
decides  upon  the  most  appropriate  name  for  the 
war.  I  still  think  that  General  Sherman's  descrip- 
tion was  the  best  for  all  wars.  He  called  them 
"Hell."  But  as  far  as  Germany  is  concerned,  the 
best  name  would  be  "The  War  of  Miscalcula- 
tions," or  "The  War  of  Bad  Guesses."  When  he 
cranked  his  mighty  war-machine  in  1914,  the 
Kaiser  miscalculated  right  and  left.  His  biggest 
miscalculation  was  the  pipe-dream  that  the  British- 
ers wouldn't  fight.  But  even  if  they  would  some 
day  be  compelled  to  fight — to  ward  off  the  attack 
which  Germany  was  so  long  preparing  to  launch — 
the  Germans  persistently  led  themselves  to  believe 
that  the  war  would  only  be  with  England,  Scotland 
and  Ireland.  This  is  the  way  they  doped  it  out: — 

"The  British  Empire  will  collapse  like  a  house 
of  cards  the  moment  the  old  country  finds  itself 
mixed  up  in  a  serious  European  war.  Ireland  will 
secede.  India  will  revolt.  Egypt  will  break  away. 
Australia,  Canada  and  New  Zealand  will  immedi- 
ately declare  their  independence.  South  Africa, 

69 


70        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

still  sore  from  the  effects  of  the  Boer  War,  will 
seize  the  opportunity  for  revenge.  England  the 
tyrant  will  find  herself  stranded  and  forsaken  by 
her  oppressed  Colonies  and  Oversea  Dominions, 
and  one  day  they  will  fall  into  Germany's  lap  like 
ripe  fruit.  Germany  is  the  rightful  heir  to  the 
British  Empire." 

Yes,  that  was  the  dope  in  Germany  for  years.  I 
was  there,  and  I  know  it.  I  heard  it  and  I  wrote 
about  it.  The  people  of  Germany  believed  it. 
They  read  it  day  after  day  in  their  newspapers  and 
political  literature.  If  they  were  university  stu- 
dents, they  got  it  direct  from  their  professors,  who 
taught  the  youth  of  the  Fatherland  war  and  the 
glory  of  war  just  as  thoroughly  as  they  taught 
them  philosophy,  or  zoology,  or  mathematics. 
The  Germans  are  a  very  systematic  nation.  They 
plan  out  things  carefully  in  advance.  So  one  of 
their  long-distance  arrangements  for  "The  Day" 
on  which  they  hoped  to  smash  the  British  Empire 
was  the  sowing  of  discord  throughout  the  British 
territories  oversea.  German  spies  and  German  in- 
triguers infested  Ireland,  India,  Egypt  and  South 
Africa.  Whenever  there  was  a  chance  of  stirring 
up  old-time  hatreds  of  England,  these  spies  and 
intriguers  got  busy.  It  has  been  proved  that  wher- 
ever serious  unrest  has  manifested  itself  in  the 
British  Empire  during  the  war,  Germans  liberally 
supplied  with  German  money  were  the  niggers  in 
the  woodpile.  But  the  funds  were  badly  invested. 


IRELAND  AND  THE  COLONIES         71 

They  produced  no  results  of  corresponding  value. 
Germany  backed  the  wrong  horse  when  she  put 
her  money  on  "British  Empire  Revolution"  in  the 
World-War  Race. 

Take  Ireland.  Tens  of  thousands  of  Pershing's 
great  army  are  Irish  by  birth  or  ancestry.  I  saw  a 
statement  the  other  day  that  25  per  cent,  of  the 
American  troops  are  Roman  Catholic.  The  vast 
majority  of  that  number  must  be  "Oirish  lads." 
Ireland  is  not  a  happy  land.  It  never  has  been.  It 
is  troublous  by  nature  because,  as  a  witty  Irishman 
himself  has  said,  "An  Irishman  doesn't  know  what 
he  wants,  and,  be-jabers,  he  won't  be  happy  till  he 
gets  it."  Thanks  mainly  to  the  activities  of  Sinn 
Fein  agitators  during  the  war,  certain  misguided 
patriots  have  kept  the  spirit  of  unrest  alive  in  Ire- 
land. But  how  insignificant  is  their  number,  and 
how  miserable  the  service  they  rendered  their 
country,  compared  to  the  thousands  of  splendid 
Irish  troops  who  have  fought  on  the  British  side  in 
France  and  elsewhere  since  the  hour  of  the  war's 
beginning!  The  great  Irish  leader — taken  away, 
unfortunately,  in  the  midst  of  the  war — John 
Redmond,  made  a  memorable  speech  in  Parlia- 
ment on  the  eve  of  the  war.  He  pledged  his  word 
that  Ireland  would  remain  loyal  to  Liberty's  cause 
and  do  nothing  to  prevent  Great  Britain  from 
fighting  at  full  strength.  Ireland  would  not  se- 
cede, Redmond  declared.  Last  year  Redmond's 
own  brother,  Major  Willie  Redmond,  fell  in  bat- 


tie  on  the  Western  front,  fighting  for  England 
and  for  Ireland.  Long  before  that  a  typical 
young  Irishman,  a  poor  boy  named  Mike  O'Leary, 
won  the  Victoria  Cross  for  conspicuous  bravery  in 
the  field.  There  have  been  thousands  of  Willie 
Redmonds  and  Mike  O'Learys,  all  Irish  to  the 
core,  who  have  done  their  "bit"  gallantly  and  are 
still  doing  it.  They  are  imbued  with  the  spirit 
that  tore  Tom  Kettle,  a  brilliant  young  Irish  law- 
yer, from  a  promising  career  in  politics,  and  fired 
him  with  the  determination  to  fight  and  die  for 
Freedom's  cause.  Kettle  was  a  deep-dyed  Irish 
patriot.  He  was  looked  upon  by  many  people  as 
the  future  chieftain  of  the  Nationalist  party.  But 
he  was  filled  with  the  solemn  conviction  that  no 
true  Irishman  could  keep  out  of  a  fight  against 
the  nation  branded  by  President  Wilson  as  "the 
natural  foe  to  liberty."  So  Tom  Kettle  got  a  com- 
mission in  the  Dublin  Fusiliers  and  eventually 
died  a  hero's  death  in  France.  Irishmen  like  Red- 
mond and  Kettle  know  that  a  Hun  victory  in  this 
war  would  mean  the  occupation  of  Ireland  by 
Germany  and  the  enslavement  of  the  Irish  people 
for  all  time  under  the  heel  of  Prussian  militarism. 
In  1914  and  1915  many  Irish  soldiers  fell  into 
German  hands  as  prisoners  of  war.  The  Kaiser 
soon  found  out  the  kind  of  stuff  these  brawny  sons 
of  Erin  are  made  of.  He  tried  to  jolly  them  into 
forming  an  "Irish  Legion"  of  the  German  Army. 
He  promised  them  swell  green  uniforms,  with 


IRELAND  AND  THE  COLONIES         73 

shamrocks  embroidered  on  the  collars  and  harps 
on  the  caps.  He  said  they  might  all  get  drunk  on 
St.  Patrick's  Day  at  Germany's  expense  and  other- 
wise maintain  the  glorious  traditions  of  the  Seven- 
teenth of  March.  He  told  them  they  would  be 
sent  back  to  Ireland  when  the  war  was  over,  with 
their  pockets  lined  with  captured  English  gold. 
He  held  out  all  kinds  of  baits  designed  to  induce 
Mike  and  Pat  to  be  traitors.  But  the  boys  from 
Cork  and  Kilkenny,  from  Killarney  and  Tipper- 
ary,  would  stand  for  no  bunk  of  that  kind,  however 
alluring.  The  Irish  Guards,  Irish  Fusiliers,  Con- 
naught  Rangers,  Royal  Dublins,  Royal  Munsters, 
Irish  Rifles,  Inniskillings,  or  men  of  other  famous 
Irish  regiments,  whom  Germany  wanted  to  seduce, 
simply  howled  down  the  treacherous  comrades 
who  tried  to  make  speeches  to  them  in  favour  of 
the  Kaiser.  Those  whom  they  couldn't  howl  down 
they  beat  up.  The  "Irish  Legion"  is  still  languish- 
ing in  those  abodes  of  horror  known  as  German 
prison  camps.  Mike  and  Pat  prefer  the  terrors  of 
German  captivity  to  the  glory  of  fighting  for  the 
Kaiser. 

I  have  told  you  about  Ireland  at  this  length  be- 
cause many  of  you  are  Irish  by  origin  and  because 
all  Americans  love  the  Irish.  I  was  educated  by 
Irish  Catholic  priests  and  one  of  the  best  friends  I 
have  in  the  world  is  Father  John  Cavanaugh, 
C.S.C.,  President  of  my  Alma  Mater  of  Notre 
Dame  University,  Indiana.  I  played  baseball  with 


74        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

"Jim"  Burns  and  "Mike"  Quinlan,  who,  like 
Cavanaugh,  became  priests  and  eminent  figures  in 
the  Americal  educational  world.  The  Very  Rev. 
"Jim"  Burns  made  a  speech  at  a  Catholic  Con- 
vention in  'Frisco  the  other  day.  He  said  that  the 
khaki  uniform  which  British  and  American  sol- 
diers are  now  wearing  "is  the  livery  of  God,  and 
makes  our  sons  and  brothers  soldiers  of  the  Lord." 
At  the  same  convention  another  Irish-American, 
John  J.  Barrett,  speaking  on  Catholic  loyalty,  said : 

"We  pledge  our  country  our  single-hearted 
allegiance.  We  entertain  no  scruples  about 
the  justice  of  her  participation  in  the  conflict. 
We  approve  the  course  she  has  taken  in  the 
crisis,  and  we  would  have  had  her  take  no 
other.  We  stand  ready  to  promote  our  coun- 
try's fortunes  at  the  sacrifice  of  all  our  re- 
sources of  human  life  and  earthly  possessions. 
With  all  our  strength  and  mind  and  heart  we 
pray  for  victory  to  the  arms  of  our  country 
and  her  gallant  Allies.  We  hold  no  alle- 
giance that  conflicts  with  our  love  of  the 
flag,  and  wherever  it  leads  we  are  prepared 
to  follow." 

When  I  read  such  things,  I  cannot  help  thinking 
that  Irish-Americans  to  a  man  must  profoundly  re- 
gret that  the  Emerald  Isle — that  "Little  Bit  of 
Heaven" — has  not  played  more  of  a  man's-sized 
part  in  this  struggle  for  civilisation  and  liberty. 


IRELAND  AND  THE  COLONIES         75 

Where  shall  I  begin  to  tell  the  story  of  the  mag- 
nificent role  which  the  great  self-governing  Do- 
minions of  Australia,  New  Zealand,  Canada  and 
South  Africa  have  played  as  members  of  the  Brit- 
ish Empire  ?  Again,  for  lack  of  space,  I  shall  have 
to  confine  myself  to  a  few  mere  facts  and  figures. 
I  would  like  to  have  devoted  the  whole  book  to 
them,  for  I  know  how  fond  you  Yanks  are  of  the 
husky  boys  from  the  Colonies.  You  rightly  dis- 
cern that  they  are  very  much  like  yourselves,  in 
physique  and  temperament.  They  are  wide-shoul- 
dered and  muscular,  tall,  lanky  and  breezy,  and 
they  almost  speak  our  language !  Brought  up,  as  we 
were,  on  vast  continents,  their  point  of  view  about 
life  is  broad-gauged.  Like  us,  they  find  many 
things  in  England  small,  cramped  and  insular.  But 
they  have  learned,  as  you  will  learn,  that  size 
isn't  everything,  and  that  even  islands,  if  inhabited 
by  men  and  women  of  red  blood,  cut  ice  too. 
The  Anzacs  from  "down  under,"  the  Canucks 
from  our  side  of  the  pond,  and  the  big  fellows 
from  South  Africa  will  all  go  home  with  very  dif- 
ferent ideas  about  the  Old  Country;  and,  judging 
by  the  skylarking  that  is  going  on,  I  guess  a  good 
many  of  them  will  take  back  English  wives,  too. 

The  significant  fact  about  Colonial  participation 
in  the  war  is  the  evidence  it  supplies  that  the 
Colonies  believe  in  the  justice  of  the  English  cause. 
The  Australians  and  New  Zealanders  would  not 
have  come  14,000  miles  to  fight  if  they  didn't  think 


76        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

the  English  case  was  absolutely  on  the  square. 
The  lads  of  Dutch  extraction  who  drove  the  Ger- 
mans out  of  South-West  Africa  would  not  have 
left  the  veldt  and  crossed  10,000  miles  of  sea  to 
fight  in  Europe,  as  they  are  doing,  if  they  weren't 
dead  sure  that  England  deserved  their  help.  The 
Canadians  would  not  have  abandoned  their  farms 
and  businesses  to  hurry  across  the  Atlantic  and 
bleed  for  the  Motherland  if  they  were  not  con- 
vinced that  England  was  right.  By  the  enthusiasm 
with  which  the  British  clans  have  gathered  from 
the  four  quarters  of  the  Empire,  they  have  ex- 
posed the  German  propaganda  claim  that  British 
rule  is  "tyrannical,"  that  British  foreign  policy  is 
"deceitful  and  aggressive,"  and  that  England 
went  to  war  for  gain  and  out  of  greed.  The  Colo- 
nials rushed  to  arms  because  the  complete  inde- 
pendence which  they  enjoy  within  the  British  Em- 
pire was  just  as  much  threatened  by  Germany  as 
the  liberties  of  England,  Scotland,  Wales  and  Ire- 
land. 

Australia's  population  is  smaller  than  that  of 
New  York  City,  yet  426,000  Australian  soldiers 
have  been  enlisted,  every  one  of  them  volunteers. 
Up  to  August  i,  1918,  321,000  of  them  had  been 
embarked  for  various  Allied  fields  of  battle. 
That  is  more  men  than  the  whole  British  Empire 
sent  to  the  South  African  war  eighteen  years  ago ! 
Considerably  over  8  per  cent,  of  Australia's  popu- 
lation has  "joined  up."  Already  52,385  Austra- 


IRELAND  AND  THE  COLONIES         77 

Hans  have  been  killed  in  action;  135,245  have  been 
wounded,  and  only  3,353  have  surrendered  to  the' 
enemy,  most  of  these  because  wounds  had  put 
them  out  of  action.  The  total  war  expenditure  of 
Australia  exceeds  a  billion  dollars — the  exact  total 
is  $1,100,000,000.  In  1918  her  war  bill  will 
amount  to  $500,000,000.  Alone  and  single- 
handed  the  5,000,000  inhabitants  of  Australia 
have  organised  and  paid  for  the  equipment,  trans- 
port and  upkeep  of  their  great  army.  For  the  past 
two  years  Australia  has  maintained  five  divisions 
in  France,  the  equivalent  of  one  cavalry  division 
in  Egypt  and  Palestine,  and  kept  all  battalions  to 
strength  by  constant  reinforcements  from  volun- 
tary enlistment.  The  personnel  of  the  Royal  Aus- 
tralian Navy  exceeds  9,000  officers  and  men.  This 
is  the  young  Fleet  which  distinguished  itself  in  the 
first  three  months  of  the  war  by  hunting  down  and 
destroying  the  famous  raider,  Emden.  The  Aus- 
tralians have  their  own  independent  army  or- 
ganisation— hospitals,  medical  services,  aviation 
branch,  training  camps,  and  everything.  Their 
Corps  in  France,  commanded  by  a  self-made  Mel- 
bourne business-man  (General  Sir  John  Monash), 
greatly  distinguished  itself  in  this  summer's  victori- 
ous Allied  fighting  in  France.  The  Australians 
lived  up  splendidly  to  the  brilliant  record  made  by 
their  earliest  comrades,  the  heroes  of  the  Allies' 
ill-starred  venture  at  Gallipoli  in  1915.  The 
bravery  of  the  Australian  soldier  is  now  prover- 


78        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

bial.  There  are  hardly  any  troops  that  the  Ger- 
mans so  hate  to  go  up  against  as  the  boys  from 
the  bush  country.  Somebody  told  me  that  the 
Yanks  on  the  Western  front  underwent  their  bap- 
tism of  fire  alongside  Australian  troops.  Our 
army  could  have  had  no  better  model.  Australia, 
having  sent  her  boys  to  the  war,  intends  seeing  that 
they  are  well  taken  care  of  when  they  come  back. 
She  purposes  repatriating  all  of  them  and  re-es- 
tablishing them  in  civil  life  at  an  estimated  cost  of 
$150,000,000. 

Canada's  record  is  no  less  glorious  than  that  of 
Australia.  She  has  enlisted  552,000  men,  and 
sent  383,500  overseas.  I  guess  that  total  includes 
the  thousands  of  Yanks  who  enlisted  in  the 
Canadian  Army  before  we  came  into  the  war. 
The  Canadians  have  fought  in  many  of  the 
bloodiest  engagements  in  which  the  British  Army 
has  taken  part  in  France  and  Flanders.  Up  to  the 
middle  of  this  year  Canadian  casualties  amounted 
to  159,084,  including  43,279  killed  in  action,  or 
died  of  wounds  or  disease.  Thirty  Canadians 
have  won  the  Victoria  Cross.  Over  200  Cana- 
dian officers  have  been  on  duty  in  the  United 
States  as  instructors.  Like  the  Australians,  the 
Canadians  maintain  a  completely  independent  mil- 
itary organisation.  They  have  a  wonderful  Air 
Service  of  their  own,  including  champions  like 
Lieut.-Colonel  Bishop,  V.C.  (72  Hun  machines 
brought  to  earth),  and  during  the  past  3^2  years 


IRELAND  AND  THE  COLONIES         79 

have  sent  into  aviation  a  total  of  14,000  men. 
Canada  is  becoming  an  important  factor  in  ship- 
building. Her  output  of  munitions  is  of  the  great- 
est importance.  She  has  produced  nearly  a  billion 
dollars'  worth  altogether.  Of  some  particular 
varieties  of  shells  Canadian  munition  works  turned 
out  during  1917  and  1918  40  per  cent,  of  the  en- 
tire needs  of  the  British  Army. 

Canada  has  come  across  with  her  money  as  well 
as  with  her  men  and  munitions.  Her  war  bill  will 
total  $1,200,000,000  by  the  end  of  this  year. 
The  Dominion  Treasury  has  loaned  to  the  Mother 
Country  the  sum  of  $460,000,000  to  assist  in  pay- 
ing for  munitions,  and  Canadian  banks  have 
loaned  still  another  $100,000,000  for  the  same 
purpose.  These  are  colossal  achievements  for  a 
country  whose  population  in  1911  (7,206,643) 
was  not  as  large  as  Pennsylvania's  (7,665,111). 
We  of  the  United  States  are  proud  of  our  great 
neighbour  on  the  North.  Her  sons  and  daughters 
live  on  the  same  sort  of  soil  that  we  inhabit  and 
breathe  the  same  invigorating  air.  The  coasts  of 
their  vast  continent  are  washed  by  the  identical 
waters  that  lash  the  shores  of  the  United  States. 
The  Canadians  have  added  fresh  lustre  to  the 
North  American  name.  Yanks  in  England  are 
often  mistaken  for  Canadians,  and  Canadians  for 
Americans.  Both  of  us  chew  gum,  play  base- 
ball, and  have  other  tastes  in  common.  The  Brit- 
ishers say  that  we  do  the  same  things  to  the  Eng- 


80        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

lish  language  too.  Well,  I  don't  know  how  the 
Canucks  feel  about  it;  but  if  I  were  an  American 
soldier  I  would  be  mighty  glad  if  anybody  thought 
I  belonged  to  the  army  that  made  itself  immortal 
at  Vimy  Ridge  in  1917,  and  this  year,  in  the  great 
battle  of  Amiens,  accomplished  even  greater  deeds. 
Read  how  the  proud  Commander-in-Chief  of  the 
Canadian  Corps,  Lieutenant-General  Sir  Arthur 
Currie — a  43-year-old  giant — summarised  the 
work  of  his  men  in  front  of  Amiens : — 

"On  August  8  the  Canadian  Corps,  to 
which  was  attached  the  3rd  Cavalry  Division, 
the  4th  Tank  Brigade,  the  5th  Squadron 
R.A.F.,  attacked  on  a  front  of  7,500  yards. 
After  a  penetration  of  22,000  yards  the  line 
to-night  rests  on  a  io,ooo-yard  frontage.  Six- 
teen German  divisions  have  been  identified, 
of  which  four  have  been  completely  routed. 
Nearly  150  guns  have  been  captured,  while 
over  1,000  machine-guns  have  fallen  into  our 
hands.  Ten  thousand  prisoners  have  passed 
through  our  cages  and  casualty  clearing  sta- 
tions, a  number  greatly  in  excess  of  our  total 
casualties.  Twenty-five  towns  and  villages 
have  been  rescued  from  the  clutch  of  the  in- 
vaders, the  Paris-Amiens  railway  has  been 
freed  from  interference  and  the  danger  of 
dividing  the  French  and  British  Army  has 
been  dissipated." 


IRELAND  AND  THE  COLONIES         81' 

That's  glory  enough,  to  my  way  of  thinking,  to 
last  Toronto  and  Winnipeg,  Alberta  and  Saskatch- 
ewan, Vancouver  and  Ottawa,  till  the  crack  of 
doom. 

I  wish  I  had  the  space  to  continue  the  story,  in 
detail,  of  what  the  other  British  clans  have  done 
in  the  hour  of  the  Motherland's  peril.  But  it  would 
only  be  a  repetition  on  a  proportionate  scale  of 
what  Australia  and  Canada  are  doing.  New  Zea- 
land, with  a  population  of  just  over  a  million,  has 
sent  about  100,000  troops,  white  and  coloured,  to 
Freedom's  battlefields.  Together  with  the  Aus- 
tralians, the  New  Zealanders  formed  the  famous 
"Anzac"  Corps  at  Gallipoli.  They  are  mighty 
warriors,  of  the  grim  type  of  American  plainsmen, 
and  are  feared  and  deeply  respected  on  the  Ger- 
man front.  Many  Maori  tribesmen — the  same 
fighting  stuff  as  our  black  men — are  in  the  N.Z. 
bunch. 

South  Africa  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war  gave 
the  Germans  one  of  their  cruellest  disappointments 
by  raising  a  volunteer  army  of  58,000  under  the 
leadership  of  General  Louis  Botha — the  Dutch- 
man who  less  than  fifteen  years  previous  was  in 
arms  against  England  on  the  same  soil.  Botha's 
army  conquered  the  Kaiser's  finest  oversea  col- 
ony, German  South-West  Africa,  an  area  of 
322,500  square  miles.  Since  then  the  South 
African  army  under  another  old  Boer  War  enemy 
of  England,  General  Smuts,  has  conquered  Ger- 


82        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

man  East  Africa.  In  addition  to  kiboshing  the 
Kaiser  in  Africa,  the  South  Africans  have  sent 
nearly  10,000  men  to  Europe,  including  some  of 
the  finest  fighting  material  which  the  British  Em- 
pire affords.  Little  Newfoundland,  the  smallest 
British  colony,  has  done  her  full  bit,  too,  and  con- 
tributed far  more  in  men  and  money  than  might 
have  been  expected  from  a  country  of  only  250,000 
inhabitants.  From  wherever  the  Union  Jack  flies, 
Britannia's  sons  have  rallied  to  fight  and  die  for 
her — from  Malta,  Fiji,  Jamaica,  Ceylon,  Shang- 
hai, the  Bahamas,  Barbados,  British  Guiana,  Do- 
minica, Trinidad,  Bermuda. 

India,  that  priceless  jewel  in  the  British  Crown, 
will  never  be  forgiven  in  Berlin.  Germany's  fond- 
est hopes  of  all  were  pinned  on  "revolution"  in 
the  vast  Empire  of  the  Maharajahs.  Incipient 
sedition  has  long  been  smouldering  in  isolated 
parts  of  India,  and  the  Kaiser  implicitly  believed 
that  the  embers  of  unrest  would  speedily  burst 
forth  into  a  furious  blaze  among  the  320,000,000 
people  of  England's  greatest  dependency.  He  and 
his  German  spies  fanned  those  embers  for  years. 
What  happened?  In  September,  1914*  a  stately 
armada  of  transports  entered  Marseilles  harbour, 
bearing  70,000  troops  from  India,  under  Indian 
officers,  to  fight  for  England  and  France  against 
Germany !  Since  then  Indians  have  been  in  action 
with  unfailing  gallantry  in  almost  every  theatre  of 
war  in  which  England  is  fighting — in  Mesopota- 


IRELAND  AND  THE  COLONIES         83 

mia,  in  Palestine,  in  Macedonia,  on  the  Suez 
Canal  and  in  East  Africa.  The  great  native 
Princes  of  India,  who  are  nominally  the  subjects 
of  the  King  of  England  in  his  capacity  as  Emperor 
of  India,  have  given  freely  of  their  vast  fortunes 
for  the  British  cause.  By  every  means  in  their 
power  they  have  urged  their  own  native  subjects 
to  go  forth  in  the  Empire's  cause.  The  Aga  Khan, 
the  head  of  the  Mahomedans,  called  on  all  of  the 
faithful  to  fight  for  England,  and  he  himself  vol- 
unteered to  serve  as  a  private  in  any  Indian  in- 
fantry regiment.  The  Grand  Old  Man  of  India, 
Lieutenant-General  Sir  Pertab  Singh,  has  com- 
manded Indian  troops  in  France. 

So  runs  the  Empire's  story  of  glory  since  1914. 
Historians  will  compile  volumes  about  it  some  day. 
Poets  will  be  inspired  to  sing  of  it  in  verse.  All 
that  concerns  us  to-day  is  to  know  that  the  British 
Empire  has  made  good  with  a  big  G.  The  demo- 
cratic system,  under  which  these  little  islands  gov- 
ern five  hundred  million  people  of  all  colours, 
creeds  and  conditions,  was  tried  and  not  found 
wanting. 


HOW  THE  BRITISHERS  ARE  GOVERNED 

THE  British  Empire  is  a  free  country.  None 
freer  exists  anywhere  on  God's  footstool.  The 
Britishers  boast  that  there  is  more  freedom  under 
their  Union  Jack  than  there  is  under  our  Stars  and 
Stripes.  We  won't  argue  that  point  with  them.  I 
merely  allude  to  it  to  make  you  understand  that 
although  they  have  a  King  and  a  House  of  Lords, 
and  Princes  and  Dukes  and  titles,  and  all  that  sort 
of  thing,  the  Britishers  look  upon  themselves  as 
being  in  all  respects  as  Democratic  and  as  free  a 
nation  as  the  United  States.  I  have  already  de- 
scribed Great  Britain  to  you  as  a  country  with  a 
President  who  is  called  a  King.  I  cannot  think  of 
any  better  or  truer  way  of  explaining  the  British 
Monarchy.  There  is  one  big  difference.  That  is, 
that  the  Britishers'  Royal  Chief  Magistrate  has 
not  got  nearly  as  much  power  as  our  American 
Presidents  have.  I  suppose  that  is  why  the  Brit- 
ishers think  that  their  little  old  country  is  freer 
than  ours.  At  any  rate,  I  guess  a  good  many  of 
you  have  been  agreeably  surprised  to  find  how  free 
the  British  atmosphere  really  is.  Have  you  found 


HOW   BRITISHERS   ARE    GOVERNED      85 

the  air  around  your  Rest  Camps  a  bit  different 
from  the  air  you  breathed  in  New  England,  the 
Mississippi  Valley,  the  South-West,  or  along  the 
Pacific  Coast?  Except  for  the  unfamiliar  kind  of 
English  you've  heard — and  the  funny  stunts  of 
the  British  climate — would  you  ever  realise  that 
you  were  in  England  instead  of  back  home  in  Con- 
necticut, Pennsylvania,  Virginia,  Indiana,  Minne- 
sota, or  California?  You  haven't  seen  any  signs 
up  reading  "The  King  forbids"  this,  that  or  the 
other  thing,  have  you?  You  haven't  seen  the 
Tommies  bowing  and  scraping  in  front  of  any 
Royal  image,  or  speaking  in  awe-struck  whispers 
about  "His  Majesty,"  have  you?  On  your  life, 
you  have  not.  That's  only  done  in  Germany.  It 
won't  be  done  very  much  by  the  time  you  get  there. 
Probably  you've  noticed  that  the  British  Army  and 
Navy  are  called  "His  Majesty's  Forces."  The 
Government,  too,  is  known  as  "His  Majesty's 
Government."  But,  like  the  Monarchy  itself, 
these  things  are  only  form.  The  Britisher  loves 
form.  In  fact,  he  worships  it.  He  knows  just 
as  well  as  you  and  I  know  that  the  Army  and 
Navy  are  not  "His  Majesty's"  forces  really. 
They  are  the  armed  forces  of  the  British  Nation — 
to-day  they  are  the  nation  itself.  But  the  Army 
and  Navy  have  been  termed  "His  Majesty's 
Forces"  for  a  thousand  years  or  more,  and  as  the 
Britishers  are  very  strong  for  the  musty  things  of 
life,  they  cling  to  that  description  of  their  military 


86        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

and  naval  establishments.  It  was  good  enough 
for  their  great-great-grandfathers  and  it's  good 
enough  for  them. 

A  lot  of  you  by  this  time  have  memorised  the 
first  verse  of  the  British  National  Anthem: 

"God  save  our  gracious  King, 
Long  live  our  noble  King, 
God  save  the  King. 
Send  him  victorious, 
Happy  and  glorious, 
Long  to  reign  over  us, 
God  save  the  King!" 

Now  that's  what  the  Britishers  sing,  and  they 
always  stand  up  when  they  sing  it.  Soldiers  and 
sailors  in  uniform  come  stiffly  to  the  salute  when 
the  anthem  is  played  or  sung.  Don't  get  the  idea 
that  they  show  these  signs  of  respect  in  any  spirit 
of  cringing  servility  to  a  crowned  monarch.  The 
King  of  England  doesn't  expect  that  kind  of  re- 
spect from  his  subjects — who  are  called  subjects, 
by  the  way,  again  out  of  sheer  form.  They  are 
in  fact  citizens,  just  like  you  and  me.  If  they  were 
really  his  "subjects,"  he  would  have  power  of  life 
and  death  over  them.  He  does  not  possess  any 
such  power.  A  Britisher  can  only  be  put  to  death 
or  deprived  of  his  liberty  after  a  fair  trial.  No, 
"God  save  the  King"  actually  means  "God  save 
Britain."  God  is  asked  to  send  the  King  "victo- 
rious," but  what  the  Britisher  means  when  he  sings 


MAJOR   GENERAL   JOHX    HIDDI  !•:. 


that  prayer  is  that  Britain  be  "sent  victorious." 
He  prays  that  the  King  may  be  kept  "happy  and 
glorious"  and  "long  to  reign  over  us"  because  the 
King  is  their  accepted,  even  if  not  elected,  Sover- 
eign. They  venerate  the  monarchal  tradition  which 
he  represents.  They  want  him  "saved"  not  be- 
cause he  happens  to  be  named  Albert  Edward  or 
George  or  something  else,  but  because  he  is  the 
physical,  personal  embodiment  of  their  rights  and 
liberties  under  the  crown  which  the  reigning  King 
wears  by  their  consent  and  with  their  approval. 

You  will  ask  me  where  the  King  "comes  in,"  if 
he  has  no  such  power  as  our  President  wields. 
Well,  there  must  be  a  head  or  a  figurehead  to 
every  great  concern,  and  a  nation  is  the  greatest 
of  all  concerns.  The  King  heads  the  British  con- 
cern. The  nearest  thing  the  Britishers  have  to 
our  President,  as  the  actual  head  of  their  national 
administration,  is  the  Prime  Minister.  Govern- 
ment in  Great  Britain  is  party  government  as  it  is 
in  the  United  States.  The  political  party  that  gets 
the  most  votes  at  a  "General  Election" — which  is 
held  about  every  five  years  for  the  purpose  of 
electing  members  to  the  House  of  Commons  (the 
British  equivalent  of  our  House  of  Representa- 
tives)— has  the  right  to  select  one  of  its  own  mem- 
bers to  be  Prime  Minister.  If  the  Liberal  Party 
gets  a  majority  in  the  House  of  Commons,  the 
Prime  Minister  will  be  a  Liberal.  If  the  Con- 
servative Party  obtains  the  majority,  a  Conserva- 


88        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

tive  is  appointed  Prime  Minister.  The  Labour 
Party  is  now  very  strong  in  Great  Britain,  and 
some  day,  perhaps,  it  will  have  a  majority  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  Then  a  Labour  leader  will 
be  called  to  the  Prime  Ministership.  Whoever 
becomes  Prime  Minister  selects  the  members  of 
his  own  administration,  just  as  the  newly-elected 
President  of  the  United  States  picks  out  his  own 
Cabinet.  The  King  nominally  asks  So-and-So  to 
be  Prime  Minister  and  to  compose  a  Government. 
But  that  is  only  a  bluff.  It  is  "form"  again.  The 
political  party  that  the  voters  of  the  country  have 
placed  in  power  in  Parliament  (the  House  of 
Commons)  decides  who  shall  be  Prime  Minister, 
and  the  King  sends  for  him  and  "appoints"  him. 
Do  you  get  that?  The  Prime  Minister  of  Great 
Britain,  in  other  words,  is  every  bit  as  much  "the 
people's  choice"  as  is  the  President  of  the  United 
States. 

But  the  Prime  Minister  does  not  become  the 
ruler  of  the  country.  Parliament  is  the  ruler.  The 
"P.M."  holds  office  only  by  the  will  and  consent  of 
Parliament.  They  vote  him  in  and  they  can  vote 
him  out.  If  he  brings  in  a  Bill  for  the  passage  of 
some  new  law,  and  the  House  of  Commons  rejects 
it — in  other  words,  turns  the  Prime  Minister  down 
— he  and  his  Government  have  to  appeal  to  the 
country.  A  new  election  is  necessary.  If  the 
country  supports  him  and  sends  back  to  Parlia- 
ment a  House  of  Commons  with  a  majority  in 


HOW   BRITISHERS   ARE    GOVERNED     89 

favour  of  the  Prime  Minister,  he  retains  office. 
Otherwise,  he  is  out  of  a  job,  and  the  leader  of  the 
party  to  which  the  country  has  given  a  majority 
succeeds  him  as  head  of  the  Government. 

There  may  be  a  newly-elected  Parliament  in 
England  before  1918  is  over,  as  there  is  a  good 
deal  of  talk  at  the  moment  of  a  General  Election. 
Then,  once  again,  according  to  tradition,  the  King 
will  formally  "open"  Parliament.  He  will  ride 
from  Buckingham  Palace  to  the  House  of  Lords 
and  there  deliver  a  so-called  "Speech  from  the 
Throne."  It  will  use  old-fashioned  expressions 
like  "My  Government,"  "My  Army,"  "My 
Navy,"  "My  People,"  and  other  similar  phrases. 
Nobody  in  Britain  will  get  angry  when  he  reads 
them  next  day  in  the  newspaper.  The  King  will 
use  those  expressions  because  they  are  part  and 
parcel  of  the  Royal  System  which  the  Britishers 
tolerate  and  venerate.  That's  all.  The  King's 
venerable  language  will  not  alter  the  fact  that 
through  their  Parliament  the  British  people  rule. 

You  will  notice  that  I  said  that  the  King  opens 
Parliament  in  the  House  of  Lords.  He  does  not 
go  to  the  House  of  Commons,  where  the  elected 
representatives  of  the  people  sit  and  rule.  The 
House  of  Lords  prior  to  1911  had  a  great  deal 
more  power  than  it  now  possesses.  It  is  made  up 
mostly  of  men  who  sit  there  by  right  of  heredity — 
because  they  are  the  sons  of  their  fathers.  When 
the  Duke  of  Norfolk  or  the  Duke  of  Sutherland 


90        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

or  the  Duke  of  Portland  dies,  his  eldest  son  be- 
comes the  Duke  of  that  name  and  takes  his  late 
father's  place  in  the  House  of  Lords,  or  Upper 
House,  as  it  is  sometimes  called.  So  with  the 
eldest  sons  (or  other  heirs)  of  Marquises,  Earls, 
Viscounts,  and  plain  Lords.  The  "Parliament  Act 
of  1911"  made  certain  changes  in  the  rights  and 
privileges  of  the  House  of  Lords.  Their  effect 
was  to  leave  the  elected  House  of  Commons  prac- 
tically the  boss  of  the  show.  The  House  of  Lords 
is  now  more  or  less  ornamental  as  far  as  the  real 
government  of  Great  Britain  is  concerned. 

Having  tried,  as  simply  as  I  could,  to  tell  you 
what  the  British  governing  system  is,  I'll  give  you 
a  little  of  the  personal  side  of  it.  The  Britishers 
couldn't  have  done  the  big  things  they  have  put 
across  during  the  past  four  years  if  they  didn't 
have  Big  Men  at  the  helm.  First  of  all,  their 
King  has  proved  himself  to  be  a  brick.  Without 
thrusting  himself  into  the  spot-light — that  would 
have  been  neither  Kingly,  according  to  British 
tradition,  nor  British  at  all,  because  it  would  not 
have  been  "reserve" — George  V.,  like  the  hum- 
blest of  his  people,  has  played  the  game.  He  sent 
his  eldest  son,  the  Prince  of  Wales,  to  the  front  as 
a  soldier,  and  the  lad,  who  is  24,  has  proved  him- 
self to  be  an  intelligent,  efficient  young  officer, 
popular  with  the  rank  and  file  and  in  every  respect 
a  fine  type  of  the  Briton  of  his  age  and  class.  The 
King's  second  and  third  sons,  Prince  Albert  and 


HOW   BRITISHERS   ARE    GOVERNED      91 

Prince  Henry,  who  are  aged  23  and  18  respective- 
ly, followed  their  father's  footsteps  and  entered 
the  Navy,  though  Prince  Albert  is  now  in  aviation. 
What  King  George  has  done  in  the  war  has  been 
to  set  his  people  a  high  example  of  patriotism  and 
hard  work.  He  (and  the  Queen  too)  has  been 
indefatigable  in  every  sort  of  activity  designed  to 
fire  the  enthusiasm  of  the  people  in  getting  on  with 
and  winning  the  war.  The  King  visits  the  wounded 
in  hospital,  mingles  with  the  workers  in  the  muni- 
tion factories,  goes  to  the  Front  in  France  period- 
ically to  sojourn  among  the  soldiers  in  the  field, 
inspect  the  Grand  Fleet  from  time  to  time — with 
the  eye  of  an  expert  sailor,  for  that  is  the  King's 
profession — and  in  every  way  associates  himself 
with  the  stirring  life  and  times  of  the  nation  at 
this  great  hour.  I  don't  suppose  there  is  a  man  in 
all  England  who  works  harder  at  his  job  than  the 
King  does.  He  has  to  see  an  enormous  number  of 
important  people,  both  British  and  foreign.  He 
has  to  sign  hundreds  of  documents  daily.  His 
advice,  under  the  British  Constitution,  has  to  be 
sought  and  secured  on  countless  occasions.  He 
himself  instituted  the  custom  of  conferring  hon- 
ours, medals,  decorations  and  titles  for  war  serv- 
ice publicly,  instead  of  privately  within  the  walls 
of  Buckingham  Palace.  He  has  tried  in  every 
way  to  be,  and  succeeded  in  being,  a  People's  King. 
He  likes  Americans — enjoys  our  breezy  way  of 
doing  and  saying  things.  Here's  a  story  the  King 


92        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

himself  tells.  Some  time  ago  he  had  an  American 
General  at  lunch.  Conversation  turned  on  the 
subject  of  what  the  world  would  be  like  after  the 
war.  "How  do  you  think  things  will  be?"  the 
King  asked  our  General.  "Well,  I  don't  know," 
replied  the  American,  "but  I'm  dead  sure  of  one 
thing — there'll  be  a  lot  of  German  talked  in  Hell!" 
The  King  loved  that.  He  liked  it  because  it  was  a 
free  and  easy  come-back.  He  doesn't  care  much 
for  side,  either  in  himself  or  in  others.  He  visited 
an  American  battleship  in  Irish  waters  last  Sum- 
mer and  shovelled  coal  into  the  furnace.  When 
the  stokers  marvelled  at  his  skill,  the  King  said: 
"Oh,  that  used  to  be  one  of  my  jobs  when  I  was 
in  the  Navy."  Ann,  of  course,  King  George  has  a 
strong  claim  on  our  affections  because  he's  a  base- 
ball fan. 

The  Prime  Minister  of  England  is  David  Lloyd 
George.  He's  a  Welshman  and  the  kind  of  man 
we  honour  in  America,  because  he  is  self-made.  He 
was  a  poor  boy,  with  none  of  the  advantages  of 
wealth,  birth,  or  position.  He  had  nerve,  ability, 
courage  and  a  silver  tongue,  and  those  qualities 
made  him  Prime  Minister  in  December,  1916. 
Lloyd  George  was  a  live  wire  in  British  politics 
long  before  that.  In  1900,  when  I  first  came  to  this 
country,  he  was  only  a  private  Member  of  Par- 
liament, but  had  already  won  a  reputation  for 
pugnacity.  He  was  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 
(Secretary  of  the  Treasury)  when  war  broke 


HOW    BRITISHERS    ARE    GOVERNED      93 

out,  and  in  that  capacity  rendered  important 
service  in  mobilising  the  finances  of  Great 
Britain.  Germany  hated  him  cordially  for  sev- 
eral years  before  1914,  because  when  the  Kai- 
ser got  gay  in  Morocco  in  191 1  and  tried  to  bully 
France,  it  was  a  speech  by  Lloyd  George  that 
brought  Germany  to  her  senses  and  prevented  war. 
In  those  critical  hours  in  August,  1914,  when  there 
were  divisions  in  the  British  Cabinet  on  the  ques- 
tion of  intervention  in  the  war,  Lloyd  George  was 
one  of  the  men  who  advocated  from  the  very  first 
that  Britain  should  go  in.  A  man  of  pacific  tend- 
encies, a  Democrat  who  believed  in  peace,  Lloyd 
George  wanted  only  peace  with  honour.  He  knew 
that  Britain  could  not  have  that  kind  of  peace  if 
she  stayed  out.  In  1915,  when  Britain  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  a  special  Ministry  of  Munitions 
had  to  be  created  for  the  production  of  guns  and 
shells  on  a  gigantic  scale,  Lloyd  George  was  put 
in  charge  of  it.  It  was  the  right  place  for  a  man 
of  his  driving  power  and  organising  skill,  and  he 
will  have  a  great  niche  in  the  history  of  the  war 
for  what  he  accomplished  as  Munitions  Minister. 
Lloyd  George  is  precisely  the  sort  of  public  man 
who  would  be  popular  in  the  United  States.  If  he 
had  been  born  there,  I  think  it  would  be  a  hard 
job  to  keep  him  out  of  the  White  House,  for  he 
is  a  natural  leader  of  wonderful  magnetism.  There 
is  a  good  deal  of  the  Teddy  Roosevelt  about  him. 


94        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

One  of  Lloyd  George's  heroes  is  Abraham  Lin- 
coln, and  his  hobby  is  golf. 

I  wish  I  had  the  space  to  tell  in  detail  of  a  lot  of 
the  other  Big  Men  of  Britain.  Lord  Kitchener, 
who  organised  the  great  Volunteer  Army  of  1914- 
15,  accomplished  a  work  that  will  have  high  place 
in  the  annals  of  war.  Fortunately,  his  task  was, 
for  the  most  part,  already  accomplished  when  he 
was  drowned  in  a  British  man-of-war  while  on  his 
way  to  Russia  in  1916.  Lord  French,  who  com- 
manded the  old  British  Army  in  France  for  the 
first  year  and  a  half  of  the  war,  and  is  now  Viceroy 
of  Ireland,  enhanced  a  military  reputation  which 
he  won  in  South  Africa  in  1899-1900-1901.  Sir 
Douglas  Haig,  the  present  British  Commander-in- 
Chief  in  France,  is  a  fine  specimen  of  the  modern 
British  soldier  and,  as  he  has  only  recently  proved, 
a  strategist  of  no  mean  calibre.  Marshal  Foch, 
our  great  French  Generalissimo,  thinks  very  highly 
of  Haig. 

In  Admiral  Beatty  the  British  Navy  has  a  Com- 
mander-in-Chief  of  the  bulldog  temperament  that 
the  hour  calls  for.  When  he  got  his  teeth  into  the 
German  Fleet  at  Jutland  in  May,  1916,  he  never 
let  go  until  the  Germans,  having  had  their  fill  of 
the  fray,  scampered  back  to  their  ports,  where 
they've  been  laid  up  for  repairs  ever  since.  Some 
people  said  Beatty  was  too  eager  on  that  occasion 
— took  too  many  risks.  Well,  he  fought  in  accord- 
ance with  the  British  Navy's  tradition,  which  is  to 


HOW   BRITISHERS   ARE    GOVERNED      95 

pound  Hell  out  of  the  enemy  whenever  the  chance 
is  given,  and  to  keep  on  pounding  as  long  as  you 
can.  Admiral  Beatty  is  only  47  years  old.  He  is 
married  to  a  charming  American  lady,  the  daugh- 
ter of  the  late  Marshall  Field,  of  Chicago. 

The  naval  service  is  rightly  a  service  in  which 
young  blood  predominates.  In  Sir  Eric  Geddes, 
First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty — or  what  we  would 
call  Secretary  of  the  Navy — Britain  has  another 
man  after  our  own  heart,  for  he  is  not  only  youth- 
ful (42),  but  entirely  self-made.  He  began  life 
as  a  railway  porter,  and  learned  the  railway  busi- 
ness— which  is  his  occupation  in  civil  life — in  our 
Southern  States,  where  he  spent  several  years  lum- 
bering and  working  for  the  B.  &  O.  Geddes  visited 
the  U.S.A.  this  autumn  to  get  acquainted  with 
Secretary  Daniels  and  our  home  Naval  estab- 
lishment. 

Winston  Churchill,  who  is  now  responsible  for 
the  colossal  work  of  the  Ministry  of  Munitions,  is 
half-American,  his  mother  having  been  a  Miss 
Jennie  Jerome,  of  New  York.  He,  too,  enjoys  the 
advantage  of  youthful  energy,  being  just  44. 
There  is  also  a  North  American  touch  about  Bonar 
Law,  who  is  Lloyd  George's  right-hand  man  in 
the  conduct  of  the  war,  and  is  now  in  charge  of 
Treasury  and  financial  matters  as  Chancellor  of 
the  Exchequer.  Law  was  born  in  Canada — in 
New  Brunswick.  Lord  Beaverbrook,  the  hustling 
young  British  Minister  of  Information  (aged  39), 


96        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

who  has  organised  hospitality  in  Britain  for  the 
American  forces  on  so  splendid  a  scale,  is  also  a 
Canadian  and  was  born  in  the  same  town  as  Bonar 
Law.  That  extraordinarily  virile  Englishman, 
Viscount  Northcliffe,  who  conducts  British  prop- 
aganda in  Enemy  Countries  and  is  Germany's  best- 
hated  Britisher,  is  well  known  in  the  U.S.A., 
which  he  admires  intensely  and  knows  more  in- 
timately, probably,  than  any  living  Britisher.  Lord 
Northcliffe,  whose  newspapers  rendered  historic 
service  in  firing  his  country  and  its  Governments 
with  Get-On-with-the-War  "pep,"  was  Britain's 
Special  Commissioner  to  the  United  States  in 
1917.  Another  prominent  member  of  Lloyd 
George's  Administration  is  Sir  Albert  Stanley, 
President  of  the  Board  of  Trade  (the  Govern- 
ment's business  department,  which  controls  rail- 
ways, mines,  shipping  and  all  industrial  affairs). 
He,  too,  may  be  described  as  "part  Yank,"  as  his 
entire  business  training,  in  electric  transportation 
affairs,  was  gained  in  the  U.S.A.  He  keeps  up 
the  youthful  tradition  of  Britain's  War  Govern- 
ment, for  he  is  only  43.  So  does  the  brilliant  young 
Attorney-General,  Sir  Frederick  E.  Smith,  who 
toured  the  United  States  in  1918.  Smith  is  46. 

No  list  of  the  Big  Men  of  the  war  era  would  be 
complete  without  the  name  of  Lord  Reading,  Brit- 
ish Ambassador  to  the  United  States.  Earl  Read- 
ing, to  give  him  his  full  title,  is  undoubtedly  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  Englishmen  alive.  He  is 


HOW    BRITISHERS    ARE    GOVERNED      97 

a  lawyer  by  profession,  and  when  he  was  in  private 
life  and  practised  under  his  own  name  of  Rufus 
Isaacs,  he  was  the  most  skilful  man  at  the  Bar — 
the  kind  that  litigants  always  preferred  to  have  for 
them  rather  than  against  them.  Early  in  the  war 
he  was  Attorney-General  and  then  became  Lord 
Chief  Justice,  which  is  the  blue  ribbon  of  the  legal 
profession  in  this  country.  The  Government  sent 
Lord  Reading  to  the  United  States  on  several  im- 
portant war  missions,  principally  in  connection 
with  finance,  and  he  so  endeared  himself  to  the 
American  people  that  he  was  the  logical  man  for 
the  Ambassadorship  when  it  became  vacant  in 
1918.  No  man  has  done  more  during  the  war  to 
enable  Britishers  and  Americans  to  get  together. 

The  working  classes  of  Great  Britain  have  to- 
day the  largest  share  in  the  Government  that  La- 
bour in  any  country  ever  possessed.  George  N. 
Barnes  (a  mechanic  by  trade)  is  a  member  of  the 
War  Cabinet.  George  H.  Roberts,  a  printer,  is 
Minister  of  Labour.  J.  R.  Clynes,  a  cotton  oper- 
ative, is  Food  Minister.  John  Hodge,  who  began 
life  as  an  iron  puddler,  is  Minister  of  Pensions. 
William  Brace,  a  coal  miner,  is  Under-Secretary 
for  Home  Affairs  and  one  of  the  most  eloquent 
orators  in  England  besides. 

And,  before  I  forget  it,  the  Britishers  are  hence- 
forth to  be  governed,  in  part,  by  their  women.  Six 
millions  of  them — provided  they're  willing  to  'fess 


98        EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

up  that  they're  30  years  old — will  vote  in  future. 
Their  great  work  in  the  war  won  for  the  women 
the  right  to  a  hand  in  the  steering  of  the  British 
ship  of  State. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  BULLDOG  BREED 

THERE  is  one  thing  about  the  Britisher  that  the 
Germans  cannot  understand.  He  never  knows 
when  he  is  licked.  That  is  why  men  of  the  British 
race  have  come  to  be  known  as  "the  bulldog 
breed."  They  had  that  reputation  long  before 
this  war,  but  have  clinched  their  title  to  it  a  thou- 
sandfold during  the  past  four  years.  Indeed,  they 
would  have  deserved  it  on  their  record  of  the 
Spring  and  Summer  of  1918  alone.  Who  would 
have  dared  to  imagine  that  the  British  Army  that 
was  battered  back  through  the  Somme  valley  in 
March  and  April  would  so  fully  recover  its  punch 
by  September  that  it  would  be  smashing  the  "Hin- 
denburg  Line"  at  will?  Tommy  Atkins  has  done 
what  Jim  Jeffries  couldn't  do.  He  "came  back." 
One  of  Napoleon's  marshals  said  that  the  right 
kind  of  an  army  was  the  army  that  is  most  dan- 
gerous when  the  enemy  thinks  it  is  broken.  That 
is  precisely  what  the  British  Army  made  of  itself, 
after  passing  through  the  bitter  waters  of  defeat 
for  four  weary,  disheartening  years.  It's  the  bull- 
dog way. 

99 


100      EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

We  Yanks  have  for  the  most  part  formea  our 
ideas  of  the  Britisher  from  the  American  stage 
Englishman.  I  used  to  think  that  all  Britishers  were 
Cissy-like  Lords  with  monocles,  checked  trousers, 
chesty  manners,  and  a  haw-haw  attitude  toward 
their  humbler  fellow-creatures  such  as  mere  Amer- 
icans. I  imagine  that  a  good  many  of  you  may  have 
beenunderthe  impression  that  nobody  counts  in  the 
British  Army  unless  he  is  of  blue  blood,  with 
Dukes  and  Duchesses  for  his  relations,  and  a  wad 
of  money  in  the  bank.  Also,  I  suppose,  you  have 
pictured  to  yourselves  a  British  Army  bossed  and 
run  by  high  and  mighty  Englishmen  lording  it  over 
their  menial  subordinates.  Well,  I  can  clear  your 
minds  up  about  that.  I  have  been  at  the  British 
front  twice  during  the  war.  My  lasting  impression 
on  both  occasions  was  of  the  good-fellowship  exist- 
ing between  officers  and  men.  There  are,  of  course, 
"class  distinctions"  in  Britain — just  as  there  are 
in  the  United  States,  though  we  don't  like  to  admit 
it.  But  these  distinctions  are  levelled  on  the  battle- 
field. There  a  man  is  just  a  man.  What  counts 
is  what  he  is,  not  what  his  father  is  or  his  grand- 
father was.  He  has  the  same  chance  to  make  good 
that  a  Duke's  son  has.  You'll  know  the  spirit  I'm 
trying  to  describe  when  I  tell  you  that  a  Captain 
(Pollock  of  the  East  Yorks,  son  of  a  Knight  who 
is  a  rich  lawyer)  was  killed  the  other  day  while 
saving  his  soldier  servant. 

Let  me  give  you  some  more  samples  of  what  I 


AMBASSADOR  AND  MRS.  PAGE  WITH  AMERICAN  BLUEJACKETS  AT  "EAGLE  HUT," 
LONDON,  OX  APRIL  (),  1918,  THE  FIRST  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  ENTRY  OF  THE 
UNITED  STATES  INTO  THE  WAR. 


"THE  STUFF  TO  GIVE  'EM"  (AMERICAN  GUNNERS  AT  CHATEAU-THIERRY) 


THE  BULLDOG  BREED  101 

mean.  When  the  war  broke  out  400,000  coal 
miners  volunteered  from  England,  Scotland  and 
Wales.  One  of  them  was  a  man  named  Godfrey 
Jones,  who  began  life  as  a  pit-boy  at  the  Ebbw 
Vale  colliery  in  Wales.  Joining  as  a  private  in 
September,  1914,  Jones  was  speedily  promoted 
corporal,  then  sergeant-major,  and  finally  won  his 
lieutenancy.  On  the  Salonica  front  (in  Greece) 
he  conducted  himself  with  such  gallantry  that  he 
was  promoted  captain,  won  the  Distinguished  Serv- 
ice Order,  and  was  later  given  the  rank  of  lieu- 
tenant-colonel. Now  the  miner  of  1914  has  been 
recommended  for  a  Brigadier-Generalship !  Jones 
is  only  36  years  old. 

Take  the  case  of  John  Ward.  Ward  by  trade 
is  what  they  call  in  England  a  navvy — about  the 
most  humble  class  of  working-man,  the  kind  who 
digs  sewers  and  that  sort  of  thing.  He  was  a 
Labour  representative  in  Parliament  when  the  war 
began.  He  went  out  among  his  fellow-navvies, 
raised  five  battalions  of  volunteers,  and  became 
their  Colonel.  His  lads  were  in  a  torpedoed  trans- 
port, on  their  way  to  one  of  Britain's  far-off  battle- 
fields, and  faced  danger  and  imminent  drowning 
for  hours  before  relief  came  up.  Ward's  navvy- 
warriors  spent  their  time  singing  "Rule,  Britannia" 
and  "Are  we  Downhearted?  NO!" 

In  August,  1914,  a  young  man  named  James  W. 
Watkins,  son  of  a  stationmaster,  was  a  ticket- 
seller  on  the  Midland  Railway.  Having  mean- 


102      EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

time  won  the  Military  Cross  and  the  Distinguished 
Service  Order,  Watkins  is  to-day  a  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  in  the  Lancashire  Fusiliers — one  of  the 
characteristically  democratic  romances  of  the  war. 

An  equally  remarkable  career  is  that  of  J.  P. 
Pitts,  of  the  King's  Liverpool  Regiment.  A  few 
years  ago  he  was  a  band-boy  in  the  Bedfordshire 
Regiment,  of  humble  origin,  without  pull  of  any 
kind,  with  nothing  in  his  favour  except  the  bulldog 
spirit.  Pitts,  who  was  at  Mons,  won  the  Military 
Cross,  and  is  to-day,  at  25,  a  Lieutenant-Colonel. 

Major  Charles  Clark,  of  the  Royal  Field  Artil- 
lery, who  was  killed  in  action  in  April,  1918,  was 
a  farm-hand  before  the  war.  Four  cotton-mill 
lads  who  left  work  in  1914  and  1915  to  join  the 
Army  have  won  commissions  in  the  field.  An  able 
seaman  named  Robert  William  Fox,  of  the  Royal 
Naval  Division,  has  become  a  Second  Lieutenant. 
There  have,  of  course,  been  thousands  of  cases  of 
men  of  the  humblest  origin  who  have  been  given 
commissions  after  serving  in  the  ranks.  Lads  who 
were  office-boys  in  1914  are  Lieutenants  now. 

One  of  the  most  amazing  proofs  of  the  demo- 
cratic atmosphere  of  the  Army  is  Major-General 
John  Monash,  the  Commander  of  the  superb 
Australian  Army  Corps  in  France.  He  is  a  typical 
illustration  of  the  fact  that  neither  birth,  creed, 
nor  position  in  life  cuts  any  ice  whatever  as  far  as 
British  military  career  is  concerned.  When  the 
war  broke  out,  Monash,  who  is  a  Jew,  was  a  civil 


THE  BULLDOG  BREED  103 

engineer  in  Melbourne.  To-day  he  is  Commander- 
in-Chief  of  one  of  the  finest  armies  the  world  has 
ever  seen.  Perhaps  I  might  mention  in  passing 
that  Lord  Reading,  British  Ambassador  at  Wash- 
ington, is  also  a  Jew  and  Lord  Chief  Justice  of 
England  besides.  Jews  are  often  members  of  the 
British  Cabinet. 

The  Royal  Air  Force  of  Britain — the  great 
"R.A.F.,"  which  is  doing  as  much  to  win  the  war, 
I  suppose,  as  any  other  single  branch — overflows 
with  examples  of  young  fellows  who  have  come  to 
the  top  from  humble  origins.  The  British  air 
champion,  when  he  was  killed  in  an  accident  this 
Summer,  was  James  Byford  McCudden,  a  young- 
ster of  23.  Before  the  war  McCudden  was  an 
air-mechanic.  He  became  a  pilot — the  most  expert 
that  the  Army  produced — and  when  he  met  his 
fate  he  was  a  Major,  with  a  record  of  54  Huns 
brought  down.  One  of  his  last  feats  was  to  lay 
low  the  German  air  crack,  Flight  Lieutenant  Voss. 

No  less  famous  than  McCudden  was  Captain 
Albert  Ball,  a  Nottingham  boy  who  was  16  years 
old  when  war  broke  out  and  barely  20  when  he 
was  killed  in  action.  He  had  brought  down  42 
Germans  in  air  flights.  The  Captain's  brother, 
also  a  flying-man  of  rare  courage  and  skill,  is  a 
prisoner  in  Germany. 

I  have  given  you  a  few  examples,  at  random 
from  among  many,  of  how  the  so-called  common 
people  of  Britain  have  done  their  bit  and  won 


104t      EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

through  to  high  rank  on  merit.  Don't  think  that 
it  is  only  the  lower  and  middle  classes  of  Britishers 
who  have  achieved  Death  and  Glory.  I  want 
particularly  to  rid  your  mind  of  such  a  notion, 
for  it  is  one  of  the  lies  that  Germany  has  spread 
abroad  with  persistent  malevolence.  No  class  of 
Britisher  has  done  more  nobly  in  the  war  than  the 
highest  class  of  British  society.  The  first  man  to 
win  the  Victoria  Cross  was  Captain  Francis  Gren- 
fell,  of  the  9th  Lancers — a  scion  of  one  of  Eng- 
land's most  aristocratic  houses.  Grenfell  was  one 
of  the  "Old  Contemptibles,"  the  little  British 
Army  that  held  up  the  German  plunge  through 
Belgium  in  the  first  three  weeks  of  the  war.  His 
V.C.  was  granted  for  helping  to  save  the  guns  of 
a  Royal  Field  Artillery  battery.  Afterwards  Gren- 
fell and  his  brother  were  killed  in  action. 

Ten  Peers — heads  of  great  noble  families — 
have  fallen  fighting,  including  four  Earls  and  six 
Barons,  all  members  of  the  House  of  Lords.  In 
addition  to  Peers  who  have  lost  their  lives  on  the 
field  of  battle,  sixty  heirs  to  peerages  have  made 
the  Great  Sacrifice.  Through  their  deaths  twelve 
peerages  have  become  extinct,  as  there  were  no 
heirs  to  the  titles  they  held.  Thus  came  to  an 
end,  for  instance,  the  Marquisate  of  Lincolnshire, 
the  Earldom  of  St.  Aldwyn,  and  the  Viscounty  of 
Buxton. 

Many  of  the  foremost  families  of  the  country 
have  lost  sons.  Mr.  Asquith,  while  Prime  Min- 


THE  BULLDOG  BREED  105 

ister,  had  to  mourn  the  death  of  his  heir,  Raymond 
Asquith,  a  lawyer  of  talent  and  fine  promise.  Mr. 
Bonar  Law,  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  has  lost 
one  son  killed,  another  is  a  prisoner  in  the  enemy's 
hands.  The  Hon.  Neil  Primrose,  youngest  son 
of  the  Earl  of  Rosebery,  a  former  Prime  Minister, 
fell  in  this  year's  fighting  in  Palestine  alongside 
another  scion  of  the  aristocracy,  Major  Evelyn 
Rothschild,  of  the  celebrated  banking  family.  Two 
grandsons  of  the  famous  Victorian  statesman, 
William  E.  Gladstone,  met  heroes'  deaths.  The 
two  elder  sons  of  Lord  Rothermere  have  fallen. 
The  Earl  of  Denbigh  has  lost  two  sons,  one  at  sea 
and  one  in  France.  Any  number  of  British  fam- 
ilies have  lost  two  members.  Many  have  given 
three,  and  there  are  several  cases  of  four  boys 
belonging  to  the  same  family  who  have  "gone 
West."  All  were  sacrificed  in  the  spirit  in  which 
the  Widow  Bixby  of  Massachusetts  gave  her  five 
sons  for  the  Union  in  our  Civil  War — the  mother 
to  whom  our  sainted  Lincoln  wrote  that  famous 
and  beautiful  letter,  acclaiming  "the  solemn  pride 
that  must  be  yours  to  have  laid  so  costly  a  sacrifice 
upon  the  altar  of  freedom." 

No  reference  to  the  bulldog  breed  can  be  com- 
plete without  a  passing  tribute  to  the  mothers, 
wives,  daughters,  sisters  and  sweethearts  of  Brit- 
ain. How  they  face,  dry-eyed,  year  after  year, 
the  losses  of  their  men  is  one  of  the  marvels  of 
Britain's  great  era.  I  suppose  it  is  due  to  that 


106      EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

"reserve'*  and  poise  on  which  the  British  race  so 
prides  itself.  Whatever  it  is  that  enables  British 
women  to  stand  the  strain  of  war  as  they  do,  it  is 
glorious.  They  are  setting  our  mothers  and  wives, 
our  sisters  and  sweethearts,  a  great  and  inspiring 
example. 

How  can  I  begin  to  tell  in  deserving  terms  of 
the  countless  acts  of  bravery  which  the  boys  and 
men  of  the  bulldog  breed  have  performed?  The 
highest  British  distinction  for  gallantry  before  the 
foe  is  the  Victoria  Cross — "For  Valour."  It  was 
founded  by  and  named  after  Queen  Victoria  in 
1856.  It  is  a  Maltese  Cross  of  metal  made  from 
Russian  cannon  taken  during  the  Crimean  War  at 
Sebastopol.  When  awarded  to  soldiers,  the  V.C. 
has  a  crimson  ribbon;  when  given  to  sailors,  it  has 
a  dark  blue  ribbon.  In  the  four  years  up  to  Octo- 
ber, 1918,  nearly  500  Victoria  Crosses  had  been 
awarded.  They  do  not  even  remotely  begin,  of 
course,  to  exhaust  the  deeds  of  unflinching  courage 
that  the  men  of  the  British  Army  and  Navy  have 
to  their  immortal  credit.  The  thousands  who  re- 
ceived the  Military  Cross,  the  Distinguished  Serv- 
ice Order,  or  medals  of  various  grades,  were  just 
as  heroic,  just  as  ready  to  face  danger  and  death, 
as  the  gallant  500  who  won  the  Victoria  Cross. 

The  Victoria  Cross  is  a  thoroughly  democratic 
institution.  The  lowest  man  in  the  ranks  or  the 
ship  can  aspire  to  it.  An  Irish  hod-carrier  has 
just  as  much  chance  to  win  it  as  an  English  Duke's 


THE  BULLDOG  BREED  107 

son.  I've  been  skimming  over  the  V.C.  roll  of 
honour,  and  my  eye  catches  names  like  Boyle,  Ho- 
gan,  McFadzean,  O'Sullivan,  O'Meara,  and 
O'Leary.  Several  Jews  have  been  awarded  the 
prized  badge  of  British  courage.  Even  the  fact 
that  a  man  has  "done  time"  does  not  bar  him  from 
a  V.C.,  if  he  deserves  it.  One  of  the  finest  V.C. 
deeds  was  accomplished  by  an  ex-convict,  who  was 
serving  in  the  trenches  alongside  his  former  prison 
guards.  By  far  the  largest  number  of  men  in  the 
proud  list  are  (or  were — for  many  have  been 
killed  since  they  won  the  honour  or  were  awarded 
it  after  death)  privates.  All  branches — infantry, 
artillery,  cavalry,  tanks,  aircraft,  submarines,  de- 
stroyers— are  represented.  Indians,  Australians, 
Canadians  and  New  Zealanders  are  among  the 
heroes,  for  the  bulldog  breed  seems  to  manifest 
itself  regardless  of  calling,  rank,  origin  or  colour. 
Perhaps  you  would  like  to  know  exactly  the  kind 
of  stuff  that  wins  the  Victoria  Cross.  Here  are 
a  few  awards  chosen  indiscriminately: — 

Acton,  Private  Abraham,  2nd  Batt.  Bor- 
der Regiment.  For  conspicuous  bravery  at 
Cuinchy  on  December  21,  1914,  at  Rouges 
Banes,  in  voluntarily  going  from  his  trench 
and  rescuing  a  wounded  man  who  had  been 
lying  exposed  against  the  enemy's  trenches  for 
seventy-five  hours,  and  on  the  same  day  again 
leaving  his  trench  voluntarily,  under  heavy 
fire,  to  bring  into  cover  another  wounded 


108      EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

man.  He  and  Private  James  Smith,  V.C., 
were  under  fire  for  sixty  minutes  whilst  con- 
veying the  wounded  men  into  safety. 

Boyle,  Lieutenant-Commander  Edward  C., 
Royal  Navy.  For  most  conspicuous  bravery, 
in  command  of  submarine  E  14,  when  he 
dived  his  vessel  under  the  enemy's  minefields 
and  entered  the  Sea  of  Marmora  on  April  27, 
1915.  In  spite  of  great  navigational  difficul- 
ties from  strong  currents,  of  the  continual 
neighbourhood  of  hostile  patrols,  and  of  the 
hourly  danger  of  attack  from  the  enemy,  he 
continued  to  operate  in  the  narrow  waters 
of  the  Straits,  and  succeeded  in  sinking  two 
Turkish  gunboats  and  one  large  military 
transport. 

Silton,  Lance-Sergeant  Ellis  Welwood,  late 
Canadian  Infantry  Batt.  For  most  conspicu- 
ous bravery  and  devotion  to  duty.  During 
the  attack  in  enemy  trenches  Sergeant  Silton's 
company  was  held  up  by  machine-gun  fire 
which  inflicted  many  casualties.  Having  lo- 
cated the  gun,  he  charged  it  single-handed, 
killing  all  the  crew.  A  small  enemy  party 
advanced  down  the  trench,  but  he  succeeded  in 
keeping  these  off  till  our  men  had  gained  the 
position.  In  carrying  out  this  gallant  act  he 
was  killed,  but  his  conspicuous  valour  un- 
doubtedly saved  many  lives  and  contributed 
largely  to  the  success  of  the  operation. 

Mariner,     Private    William,     2nd    Batt. 
King's  Royal  Rifle  Corps.     During  a  violent 


THE  BULLDOG  BREED  109 

thunderstorm  on  the  night  of  May  22,  1915, 
he  left  his  trench  near  Cambrin,  and  crept  out 
through  the  German  wire  entanglements  till 
he  reached  the  emplacement  of  a  German 
machine-gun  which  had  been  damaging  our 
parapets  and  hindering  our  working  parties. 
After  climbing  on  the  top  of  the  German 
parapet  he  threw  a  bomb  in  under  the  roof 
of  the  gun  emplacement  and  heard  some 
groaning  and  the  enemy  running  away.  After 
about  a  quarter  of  an  hour  he  heard  some  of 
them  coming  back  again,  and  climbed  up  on 
the  other  side  of  the  emplacement  and  threw 
another  bomb  among  them  left-handed.  He 
then  lay  still  while  the  Germans  opened  a 
heavy  fire  on  the  wire  entanglements  behind 
him,  and  it  was  only  after  about  an  hour  that 
he  was  able  to  crawl  back  to  his  own  trench. 

Warneford,  Flight  Sub-Lieutenant,  late 
Royal  Flying  Corps.  For  destroying  single- 
handed  the  first  German  Zeppelin  brought  to 
grief  in  the  war.  Afterwards,  although  forced 
to  descend  on  enemy  soil,  he  succeeded  in  fly- 
ing back  safely.  (Since  killed.) 

Maling,  Temporary  Lieutenant  George  Al- 
lan, M.B.,  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps.  For 
most  conspicuous  bravery  and  devotion  to 
duty  during  the  heavy  fighting  near  Fauquis- 
sart  on  September  25,  1915.  Lieutenant  Mal- 
ing worked  incessantly  with  untiring  energy 
from  6.15  a.m.  on  the  25th  till  8  a.m.  on  the 
26th,  collecting  and  treating  in  the  open  under 


110      EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

heavy  shell  fire  more  than  300  men.  At  about 
1 1  a.m.  on  the  25th  he  was  flung  down  and 
temporarily  stunned  by  the  bursting  of  a  large 
high-explosive  shell,  which  wounded  his  only 
assistant  and  killed  several  of  his  patients.  A 
second  shell  soon  after  covered  him  and  his 
instruments  with  debris,  but  his  high  courage 
and  zeal  never  failed  him,  and  he  continued 
his  gallant  work  single-handed. 

Addison,  Rev.  W.  R.  F.,  Temporary  Chap- 
lain to  the  Forces,  4th  Cl.,  Army  Chaplains' 
Department.  He  carried  a  wounded  man  to 
the  cover  of  a  trench,  and  assisted  several 
others  to  the  same  cover,  after  binding  up 
their  wounds  under  heavy  rifle  and  machine- 
gun  fire.  In  addition  to  these  unaided  efforts, 
by  his  splendid  example  and  utter  disre- 
gard of  personal  danger,  he  encouraged  the 
stretcher-bearers  to  go  forward  under  heavy 
fire  and  collect  the  wounded. 

Bingham,  Comr.  the  Hon.  Edward  S.  B. 
'(Prisoner  of  War  in  Germany) .  For  the  ex- 
tremely gallant  way  in  which  he  led  his  divi- 
sion in  their  attack,  first  on  enemy  destroyers 
and  then  on  their  battle-cruisers.  He  finally 
sighted  the  enemy  battle-fleet,  and,  followed 
by  the  one  remaining  destroyer  of  his  division 
(Nicator),  with  dauntless  courage  he  closed 
to  within  3,000  yards  of  the  enemy  in  order 
to  attain  a  favourable  position  for  firing  his 
torpedoes.  While  making  this  attack  Nestor 
and  Nicator  were  under  concentrated  fire  of 


THE  BULLDOG  BREED  111 

the  secondary  batteries  of  the  High  Sea  Fleet. 
Nestor  was  subsequently  sunk. 

Laidlaw,  Piper  Daniel,  yth  King's  Own 
Scottish  Borderers.  For  most  conspicuous 
bravery  prior  to  an  assault  on  German 
trenches  near  Loos  and  Hill  70  on  September 
25,  1915.  During  the  worst  of  the  bombard- 
ment, when  the  attack  was  about  to  com- 
mence, Piper  Laidlaw,  seeing  that  his  com- 
pany was  somewhat  shaken  from  the  effects 
of  gas,  with  absolute  coolness  and  disregard 
of  danger  mounted  the  parapet,  marched  up 
and  down,  and  played  his  company  out  of 
the  trench.  The  effect  of  his  splendid  ex- 
ample was  immediate  and  the  company 
dashed  out  to  the  assault.  Piper  Laidlaw  con- 
tinued playing  his  pipes  till  he  was  wounded. 

Frickleton,  Lance-Corporal  Samuel,  New 
Zealand  Infantry.  For  most  conspicuous  brav- 
ery and  determination  when  with  attacking 
troops,  which  came  under  heavy  fire  and  were 
checked.  Although  slightly  wounded,  Cor- 
poral Frickleton  dashed  forward  at  the  head 
of  his  section,  pushed  into  our  barrage,  and 
personally  destroyed  with  bombs  an  enemy 
machine-gun  and  crew  which  was  causing 
heavy  casualties.  He  then  attacked  a  second 
gun,  killing  the  whole  of  the  crew  of  twelve. 
By  the  destruction  of  these  two  guns  he  un- 
doubtedly saved  his  own  and  other  units  from 
very  severe  casualties,  and  his  magnificent 
courage  and  gallantry  ensured  the  capture  of 


112      EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

the  objective.  During  the  consolidation  of 
the  position  he  received  a  second  severe 
wound.  He  set  throughout  a  great  example 
of  heroism. 

McFadzean,  Private  W.  F.,  late  Royal 
Irish  Rifles.  While  in  a  concentration  trench 
and  opening  a  box  of  bombs  for  distribution 
prior  to  an  attack,  the  box  slipped  down  into 
the  trench,  which  was  crowded  with  men,  and 
two  of  the  safety  pins  fell  out.  Private 
McFadzean,  instantly  realising  the  danger  to 
his  comrades,  with  heroic  courage  threw  him- 
self on  the  top  of  the  bombs.  The  bombs  ex- 
ploded, blowing  him  to  pieces,  but  only  one 
other  man  was  injured.  He  well  knew  his 
danger,  being  himself  a  bomber,  but  without 
a  moment's  hesitation  he  gave  his  life  for  his 
comrades. 

Robinson,  Lieutenant  William  Leefe,  Wor- 
cester Regiment  and  Royal  Flying  Corps.  For 
most  conspicuous  bravery.  He  attacked  an 
enemy  airship  trying  to  bomb  London  under 
circumstances  of  great  difficulty  and  danger, 
and  sent  it  crashing  to  the  ground  as  a  flam- 
ing wreck.  He  had  been  in  the  air  for  more 
than  two  hours,  and  had  previously  attacked 
another  airship  during  his  flight. 

Jackson,  Private  W.,  Australian  Infantry. 
On  the  return  from  a  successful  raid  several 
members  of  the  raiding  party  were  seriously 
wounded  in  "No  Man's  Land"  by  shell  fire. 
Private  Jackson  got  back  safely,  and,  after 


THE  BULLDOG  BREED  113 

handing  over  a  prisoner  whom  he  had 
brought  in,  immediately  went  out  again  under 
very  heavy  shell  fire  and  assisted  in  bringing 
in  a  wounded  man.  He  then  went  out  again, 
and  with  a  sergeant  was  bringing  in  another 
wounded  man,  when  his  arm  was  blown  off 
by  a  shell  and  the  sergeant  was  rendered 
unconscious. 

For  gallantry  and  devotion  to  duty  in  the  second 
blocking  operation  in  Ostend  Harbour  on  May 
9-10,  when  the  old  warship  Vindictive  was  sunk 
in  the  harbour,  the  following  awards  of  the  Vic- 
toria Cross  were  announced: — 

Lieutenant-Commander  Geoffrey  Heneage 
Drummond,  R.N.V.R.  Volunteered  for  res- 
cue work  in  command  of  M.L.  254.  Although 
severely  wounded  in  three  places,  he  re- 
mained on  the  bridge  and  navigated  his  ves- 
sel, seriously  damaged  by  shell  fire,  alongside 
Vindictive  and  took  off  two  officers  and  38 
men,  some  of  whom  were  killed  and  many 
wounded  while  embarking.  He  backed  his 
vessels  out  clear  of  the  piers  before  sinking 
exhausted  from  his  wounds. 

Lieut-Commander  Roland  Bourke, 
D.S.O.,  R.N.V.R.  After  M.L.  254  had 
backed  out  of  the  harbour  he,  in  command  of 
M.L.  276,  made  a  further  search  of  Vindic- 
tive, but  finding  no  one,  withdrew.  Hearing 
cries  in  the  water,  he  again  entered  the  har- 


114.      EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

hour,  and  after  a  prolonged  search  found 
Lieut.  Sir  John  Alleyne  and  two  men,  all 
badly  wounded,  clinging  to  an  upended  skiff, 
and  rescued  them.  All  the  time  the  motor- 
launch  was  under  heavy  fire  at  close  range, 
being  hit  in  55  places. 

Lieut.  Victor  A.  C.  Crutchley,  D.S.C.,  R.N. 
He  was  in  Brilliant  in  the  unsuccessful  at- 
tempt to  block  Ostend  on  April  22-23  and  at 
once  volunteered  for  the  second  effort.  He 
was  1st  Lieutenant  in  Vindictive,  and  when 
his  commanding  officer  was  killed  and  the  sec- 
ond in  command  severely  wounded,  he  took 
command.  He  did  not  leave  Vindictive  until 
he  had  made  a  thorough  search  with  an  elec- 
tric torch  for  survivors  under  heavy  fire.  He 
took  command  of  M.L.  254  when  Lieutenant 
Drummond  sank  exhausted  from  his  wounds. 
Only  by  dint  of  baling  with  buckets  did  Lieut. 
Crutchley  and  the  unwounded  keep  the  launch 
afloat  until  picked  up. 

The  great  stunts  that  won  these  sixteen  V.C.'s 
are  typical  of  the  bulldog  spirit.  The  other  480 
odd  differ  from  them  only  in  detail.  All  were 
deeds  of  mighty  valour.  But  they  will  afford  you 
a  graphic  idea,  I  hope,  of  the  stuff  that  the  fighting 
Britisher  is  made  of. 

Perhaps  the  remarkable  thing  about  these  out- 
standing feats  of  British  heroism  is  that  in  the 
overwhelming  majority  of  cases  they  were  per- 
formed by  the  most  ordinary  type  of  fellow,  dis- 


THE  BULLDOG  BREED  115 

tinguished  in  no  way,  as  far  as  anybody  ever  knew, 
for  courage  or  nerve.  And  the  thing  that  marks 
all  V.C.  men  is  their  invincible  modesty.  "Cut  it 
out,"  they  say,  when  you  ask  them  to  tell  you  what 
they  did  to  win  a  place  among  Britannia's  im- 
mortals. 

***** 

The  war  has  not  produced  many  great  poems.  A 
sonnet  written  by  an  Englishman,  Major  Maurice 
Baring,  Independent  Air  Force,  in  honour  of  his 
friend  and  comrade,  the  Hon.  Julian  Grenfell, 
himself  a  poet  and  who  followed  his  V.C.  cousin 
Francis  to  a  hero's  death  in  France,  is  the  best  I 
have  seen.  It  sings  of  the  bulldog  breed: 

"Because  of  you  we  will  be  glad  and  gay, 
Remembering  you,  we  will  be  brave  and  strong, 
And  hail  the  advent  of  each  dangerous  day 
And  meet  the  last  adventure  with  a  song. 
And  as  you  proudly  gave  your  jewelled  gift, 
We'll  give  our  lesser  offering  with  a  smile, 
Nor  falter  on  that  path  where,  all  too  swift, 
You  led  the  way  and  leapt  the  golden  stile. 
Whether  new  paths,  new  heights  to  climb  you  find, 
Or  gallop  through  the  unfooted  asphodel, 
We  know  you  know  we  shall  not  lag  behind 
Nor  halt  to  waste  a  moment  on  a  fear. 
And  you  will  speed  us  onward  with  a  cheer 
And  wave  beyond  the  stars  that  all  is  well."  * 

*  [Reproduced  with  the  author's  permission.] 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  REAL  BRITISHER 

THE  preceding  pages  of  this  booklet  have  been 
devoted  in  large  part  to  an  account  of  what  the 
Britishers  have  accomplished  during  the  war.  I 
would  like  to  wind  up  with  a  heart-to-heart  talk 
on  the  subject  of  the  Britisher  as  he  really  is. 

To  begin  with,  he  is  not  at  all  what  he  seems  to 
be  on  first  acquaintance,  namely,  a  chilly  proposi- 
tion. Like  a  foreign  language,  he  requires  to  be 
studied,  and  studied  carefully.  I've  been  studying 
him  for  nearly  twenty  years  and  I'm  just  commenc- 
ing to  understand  him.  He  is  dawning  on  me  for 
what  he  is — a  regular  fellow,  a  white  man,  and 
one  of  our  kind.  It  won't  take  you  twenty  years 
to  know  him.  The  war  has  made  a  lot  of  changes 
in  him  and  he  thaws  faster  than  he  used  to. 

The  Britishers  and  the  Americans  belong  to  the 
same  English-speaking  race,  even  though  we  don't 
say  "raw-ther"  when  we  mean  rather.  Both  of  us 
are  Democratic  to  the  core,  too.  That's  why  we're 
on  the  same  side  in  this  war.  Sure.  But  other- 
wise most  of  our  traits,  habits,  impulses  and  or- 
dinary views  about  things  are  as  different  as  day 

116 


THE  REAL  BRITISHER  117 

from  night.  That  is  not  quite  correct.  They  only 
seem  different,  for  it  is  my  experience  that  when 
Britishers  and  Yanks  get  together  and  thrash 
things  out,  they  find  that  their  notions  about  life 
aren't  as  far  apart  as  they  appeared  to  be.  We 
discover  that  we  only  look  at  life  through  spec- 
tacles of  different  colours.  Our  tastes  and  ideals 
are  very  similar.  All  we  do  is  to  gratify  the 
tastes  and  pursue  the  ideals  in  our  own  ways.  If 
a  Britisher  steps  on  you  by  mistake,  he  says 
"Sorry."  A  Yank  says  "Beg  your  pardon."  What 
each  means  is  that  he  wishes  he  hadn't  done  it. 
They  put  it  differently :  that's  all.  When  you  took 
your  girl  out  for  the  last  time  before  leaving  the 
U.S.A.,  she  probably  told  you  that  she  had  had  a 
"bully"  evening.  The  first  girl  you  took  out  in 
England,  I'll  bet,  assured  you  that  you  had  given 
her  a  "ripping"  time.  But  your  Yank  girl  and 
your  British  girl  meant  precisely  the  same  thing. 
The  Britishers'  English  differs  from  Yank  Eng- 
lish all  along  the  line,  but  that  doesn't  signify  that 
it  is  bad  English.  After  all,  the  language  belongs 
to  them.  They  saw  it  first.  They  do  with  it  what 
they  please;  and  we  do  to  it  what  we  please.  Take 
their  railroad  lingo.  To  begin  with,  "there  ain't 
no  such  animal"  as  a  "railroad"  in  this  country. 
They've  only  got  "railways."  They  "shunt"  their 
trains.  We  "sidetrack"  ours.  By  a  "depot"  the 
Britisher  means  a  place  where  stuff  is  stored.  By 
"depot"  we  mean  the  place  we  go  to  or  come  from 


118      EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

when  travelling  by  rail.  Britishers  "book  places." 
If  they  talked  our  language,  they'd  "reserve  ac- 
commodations." And  they  call  conductors  and 
brakesmen  "guards." 

So  it  is  with  the  thousand  and  one  things  in  which 
our  respective  characteristics  differ.  Americans, 
for  instance,  are  hail-fellow-well-met  sort  of  peo- 
ple. When  we  slap  a  man  on  the  back  as  a  welcome, 
we  mean  it.  We're  mighty  glad  to  see  him.  We 
let  him  know  it  by  the  effusiveness  of  our  greeting, 
by  the  warmth  of  our  hand-clasp — and  usually  by 
a  slap  on  the  back.  These  being  our  emotions, 
we  display  them.  We  don't  hide  them  away  as 
if  we  were  ashamed  of  them.  It's  our  way.  The 
Britisher's  way  is  different.  He  seldom  slaps  you 
on  the  back.  If  he  is  meeting  you  for  the  first 
time,  he  never  does.  His  welcome  is  polite,  but 
never  effusive.  In  the  grip  of  his  hand  there  is 
courtesy  rather  than  cordiality.  You  do  not  get 
the  glad  hand  from  a  Britisher  till  he  is  sure  that 
you  deserve  it.  Once  you've  proved  that  you  have 
a  right  to  his  friendship,  you  get  it  in  full  measure. 

I  often  wonder  what  it  is  that  makes  the  Brit- 
isher act  like  an  iceberg.  He  is  not  an  iceberg, 
but  he  likes  to  make  you  think  he  is.  You  Yanks 
in  khaki  are  talked  to,  I  guess,  in  British  railway 
trains  by  natives  who  happen  to  be  your  fellow- 
passengers.  But  American  civilians  like  myself 
might  travel  the  whole  length  of  the  British  Isles 
in  a  train  and  never  have  a  Britisher  open  his  head 


THE  REAL  BRITISHER  119 

to  us  except  to  inquire,  politely,  if  we  object  to  his 
keeping  the  window  open.  I  can  forgive  a  Brit- 
isher anything,  by  the  way,  except  his  ungovern- 
able passion  for  open  windows  in  a  railway-car, 
even  though  the  temperature  outside  be  Arctic.  I 
like  fresh  air,  all  right,  but  I  go  outdoors  when  I 
want  it.  Why  shouldn't  people  talk  to  one  another 
in  a  train?  Life  is  short  and  railroad  journeys  are 
long.  Not  all  Britishers  act  like  icebergs,  but  I 
have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  ninety-nine  out 
of  a  hundred  spend  their  lives  trying  to  be  as 
Polar  as  possible.  A  celebrated  English  General 
and  Colonial  administrator  told  me  the  other  day 
that  he  belongs  to  a  London  club  in  which  he  hasn't 
been  spoken  to  for  twenty-five  years.  He  talked 
to  a  fellow-member  once  and  the  man  nearly  died 
of  apoplexy.  A  famous  Irishman  named  Daniel 
O'Connell  said  that  the  average  Englishman  has 
all  the  qualities  of  a  poker  except  its  occasional 
warmth. 

He  was  right.  The  average  Englishman  tries 
to  keep  himself  as  stiff  as  a  poker.  He  hates  un- 
bending. He  was  taught  at  school  that  it  was  not 
"good  form"  to  appear  to  be  emotional.  I  have  a 
Yank  kid  of  my  own  at  a  typical  English  boarding- 
school  for  boys  of  from  nine  to  fourteen  years  of 
age.  I  can  see  in  him,  from  term  to  term,  the 
exact  effect  of  the  British  system  of  suppressing 
emotions.  When  parents  visit  their  boys  at  an 
English  boarding-school,  the  boys  object  to  being 


120      EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

kissed  or  embraced  in  sight  of  their  comrades. 
They  are  taught  that  such  exhibitions  of  natural 
effusiveness  are  "unmanly"  and  more  fit  for  little 
girls  than  for  English  lads  who  are  growing  into 
young  gentlemen.  The  boys  don't  object  to  being 
made  a  fuss  of  when  they're  alone  with  their 
parents,  but  they  don't  want  any  of  the  sob-stuff 
in  public. 

Thus  from  his  tenderest  years  the  Britisher  is 
brought  up  to  look  upon  "reserve"and  "poise"  as 
the  finest  of  human  qualities.  The  effect  of  this 
system  is  to  make  the  average  Britisher  shy.  When 
my  kid  started  in  at  Eastbourne  he  was  a  typical 
young  American  holy  terror.  Three  years  of 
Hold-Yourself-In  training  turned  him  from  an  un- 
tamed cub  into  a  sucking-dove.  He  is  frightfully 
shy.  He  faces  strangers  almost  in  embarrassment. 
He  never  rushes  up  and  at  them  as  if  he  were 
really  glad  to  see  them.  He  is  polite,  all  right, 
but  always  "reserved."  He's  been  taught  to  be. 
It's  the  English  way. 

If  you  will  remember  this,  you  will  be  on  the 
right  road  to  understanding  the  British  tempera- 
ment. The  Britisher's  apparent  coldness,  which 
Americans  so  often  mistake  for  rudeness,  is  noth- 
ing in  the  world  but  inborn  and  inculcated  shy- 
ness. By  that  I  mean  that  he  has  not  only  in- 
herited "reserve"  from  his  father  before  him,  but 
in  order  that  he  should  grow  up  to  be  the  right 
kind  of  a  Britisher  he  has  "reserve"  taught  to  him 


THE  REAL  BRITISHER 

when  he  goes  to  school.  He  learns  there  that  he 
must  never  wear  his  heart  on  his  sleeve.  It's 
one  of  the  explanations  of  the  phenomenal  cool- 
headedness  with  which  the  Britishers  have  weath- 
ered the  terrific  ordeal  of  the  war. 

The  proof  of  the  pudding  is  in  the  eating.  How 
has  the  system  on  which  Young  Britain  is  raised 
turned  out  in  practice?  Well,  I  think  the  answer 
to  that  can  be  found  in  this  book.  Britain  has 
made  good.  Her  system  of  rearing  her  manhood 
has  made  good.  I  have  been  talking  about  the 
"reserve"  and  "poise"  of  British  boys.  The  same 
thing  applies  to  British  girls.  They  have  made 
good  in  this  war  too.  The  very  lads,  the  very 
girls,  who  were  brought  up  on  the  non-emotional 
scheme  of  education — the  "Public  School"  youth 
of  both  sexes,  the  boys  from  Eton,  Harrow  and 
Winchester,  the  girls  from  Cheltenham,  Roedean 
and  Wycombe — are  the  ones  who  have  "carried 
on"  in  the  field  and  at  home.  The  British  Army 
to-day  is  officered  to  a  large  extent  by  "men"  who 
were  boys  in  1914,  attending  either  the  "public 
schools"  (what  we  call  "prep."  schools)  or  the 
universities.  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  the  Yale  and 
Harvard  of  England,  have  been  practically  de- 
serted for  four  years.  Their  famous  old  halls  and 
dormitories  are  Officers'  Training  Corps  head- 
quarters now,  and  have  been  ever  since  the  war 
began.  Hundreds  of  fellows  who  went  out  from 
them  as  undergraduates  have  meantime  won  glory 


122      EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

as  competent,  gallant  officers.  Hundreds  of  them, 
too,  as  you  will  see  if  you  ever  visit  Oxford  or 
Cambridge  and  look  at  the  Rolls  of  Honour  on 
the  doors  of  the  college  chapels,  have  laid  down 
their  young  lives  in  Liberty's  cause.  These  were 
the  boys  who  were  brought  up  to  be  shy  and  re- 
served and  always  to  keep  their  poise — who  didn't 
like  to  be  babied  by  their  fathers  and  mothers 
when  other  kids  were  looking,  who  were  trained 
not  to  be  effusive  when  introduced  to  strangers, 
who  grew  up  trying  to  look  and  act  as  much  like 
icebergs  as  their  fathers  did.  Yet  in  the  Great 
Test  they  were  not  found  wanting.  Nor  were  the 
girls  who  in  1914  were  at  boarding-school,  "flap- 
pers," as  their  sort  is  called,  because  they  wear 
their  hair  "flapping"  up  and  down  their  backs. 
These  girls,  many  of  whom  four  years  ago  lived 
only  for  chocolate  creams  and  sweethearts  and 
novels,  are  "W.A.A.C.'s"  [Women's  Army  Auxi- 
liary Corps],  or  "V.A.D.'s"  [Voluntary  Aid  De- 
tachment] to-day,  or  land  girls,  or  chauffeurs,  or 
hard  at  work  in  one  of  the  other  countless  war 
occupations  in  which  the  supposedly  weaker  sex  is 
distinguishing  itself  in  all  belligerent  countries. 
These  young  Britishers — boys  and  girls — are  the 
backbone  of  their  country  in  this  critical  hour. 
You  see,  it  didn't  harm  them  at  all  to  be  brought 
up  differently  from  us.  They  have  turned  out  to 
be  real  men  and  women  just  the  same. 

Americans  who  are  in  England  for  the  first  time 


THE  REAL  BRITISHER 

find  everything  old-fashioned — the  dinky  rail- 
way trains,  the  low,  grey  old  buildings  in  the  big 
cities,  the  snail-like  elevators,  the  people's  love  for 
doing  things  in  the  way  their  grandfathers  did 
them  and  because  their  grandfathers  did  them. 
We  don't  find  enough  hustle  in  the  air.  The 
Britishers  don't  seem  to  know  how  to  get  a  move 
on.  Now,  the  fact  is  that  there  is  nearly  as  much 
hustle  to  the  square  inch  in  these  islands  as  there 
is  in  the  United  States,  only  the  Britisher  doesn't 
make  such  a  fuss  about  it.  His  railway  trains  do 
look  dinky  alongside  of  ours,  but  you  will  probably 
be  surprised  to  know  that  some  of  the  fastest  pas- 
senger trains  in  the  world  (in  ordinary  time) 
are  the  expresses  which  cover  the  long-distance 
stretches  in  this  country,  like  the  London-Plymouth 
line,  a  run  of  something  like  225  miles  which  be- 
fore the  war  used  to  be  done  without  a  stop.  The 
Britisher  loves  old  things — buildings,  customs, 
habits,  traditions,  precedents.  I  heard  a  man  say 
once  that  an  Englishman  would  only  adopt  a  new 
idea  on  condition  that  it  didn't  look  new.  Being 
only  142  years  old  as  a  nation,  we're  too  young 
to  have  acquired  veneration  for  the  antique.  When 
we  have  1,000  years  and  more  of  national  history 
back  of  us,  we'll  not  want  to  pull  down  beautiful 
old  churches  that,  to  the  average  Yank's  way  of 
thinking,  obstruct  traffic — such  as  a  pair  of  musty 
piles  squatting  squarely  in  the  middle  of  London's 
busy  Strand.  We'll  love  them,  as  the  Britisher 


124      EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

loves  them,  because  they  are  old.  At  present  we're 
In  the  sky-scraper  phase  of  our  existence,  in  the 
age  when  newness,  bigness,  quickness,  seem  to  us 
the  important  things  of  life.  We  will  outgrow 
that  phase. 

An  Englishman's  home  is  his  castle — that's  one 
of  the  most  famous  of  British  sayings.  To  know 
the  real  Britisher  he  has  to  be  seen  in  his  home. 
The  homes  of  Britain  are  thrown  wide  open  to 
the  American  soldier  and  sailor,  and  I  hope  each 
and  every  one  of  you  may  have  the  opportunity  of 
enjoying  British  private  hospitality.  You  will  find 
it  to  be  the  real  thing.  There  will  be  no  chilly 
deals  or  "reserve"  within  the  four  walls  in  which 
you  will  be  asked  to  make  yourself  perfectly  at 
home.  It  will  not  make  any  difference  whether  the 
home  you're  invited  to  is  a  workman's  cottage  or 
a  Ducal  establishment.  The  Britisher  leaves  all 
"side"  outside  when  he  takes  you  inside.  You  will 
discover  very  promptly  that  his  "poise"  is  really 
not  poise  at  all,  but  pose.  He  turns  out  to  be  a 
human  being — probably  to  your  surprise,  certainly 
to  your  pleasure  and  complete  satisfaction  On  one 
or  two  occasions  I  have  been  the  guest  of  a  real, 
live  English  Duke — one  of  the  noblest  in  the 
realm.  He  was  as  Dukish  as  I  expected  him  to  be 
— till  we  reached  his  home,  which  was  a  real  castle. 
Then  he  suddenly  transformed  himself  into  a  full- 
blooded  man  and  into  one  of  Nature's  gentlemen. 
He  grabbed  my  suit-case  out  of  my  hand,  as  soon 


THE  REAL  BRITISHER  125 

as  we  crossed  the  threshold,  and  personally  es- 
corted me  to  my  bedroom.  Half  an  hour  later  he 
knocked  at  the  door  (it  was  late  at  night)  and 
inquired:  "Anything  you  want -before  you  go 
to  sleep?"  I  was  up  against  the  Britisher  as  he 
really  is. 

It  used  to  be  the  fashion  in  our  country  to  twist 
the  British  Lion's  tail.  Every  politician  after 
votes,  or  every  Fourth  of  July  orator  who  wanted 
to  make  a  hit,  roasted  the  British.  Those  days,  I 
hope,  are  gone  for  ever.  It  will  be  for  you  and 
for  me,  who  have  made  the  acquaintance  of  the 
real  Britain,  to  see  that  they  never  return.  I 
firmly  believe  that  the  keeping  of  the  world's 
peace,  when  this  war  is  over,  will  be  mainly  in  the 
hands  of  the  English-speaking  peoples.  We  shall 
not  need  to  enter  into  a  formal  "alliance"  with  the 
British  Empire.  The  alliance  that  has  been  sealed 
by  the  shedding  of  British  and  American  blood  on 
common  battlefields  is  signed  in  ink  that  will  out- 
last all  the  written  alliances  that  could  ever  be  put 
on  paper. 

And  if  I  may  indulge  in  one  parting  thought 
before  I  finish  a  work  that  has  been  for  me  a 
labour  of  love,  I  would  ask  you  to  banish  from 
your  thoughts  the  notion  that  America  came  into 
the  war  to  "save  England."  England  has  saved 
herself.  France  has  saved  herself.  We  are  in  the 
war  to  save  ourselves.  We  entered  it  because 
self-preservation  is  the  first  law  of  Nature.  We 


126      EXPLAINING  THE  BRITISHERS 

are  at  war  with  Germany  for  precisely  the  same 
reasons  that  Britain,  France  and  Italy  are  at  war 
with  her — because  her  victory  would  demolish  the 
very  foundations  on  which  American  life  rests. 
We  are  at  war  to  make  the  world  safe  for  Democ- 
racy— for  our  own  Democracy  as  well  as  for  the 
Democracy  of  the  other  nations  alongside  whose 
scarred  and  veteran  legions  it  is  our  high  privilege 
to  fight. 


THE   END 


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A     000102808 

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