“ ENGLAND, THE SLACKER.”

Hokitika Guardian, 24 April 1929, Page 3

“ ENGLAND, THE SLACKER.”

ft WHO WON’ THE WAR?

AMERICAN AUTHOR’S ANSWER

For years the flippant question has •been bandied about—“ Who won the war?” 'l'oo often the reply lias been a mere matter of geography. Hut it has been left to an American to fur nish the answer, and in, the glowing, burning words that follow, Mr. Owen , Wister not only gives an inspirijig reply, but silences for all time the.traduce rs of the Old hand. The f o'lowing article is a chapter from a recent book by Mr'Wister, and. a para from its vivid portrayal of the .self-sacrific-ing herpism of the British people from 1914 to 1918, it is of interest in view of the tendency that lias recently developed to discuss the possibility of war between the two great Anglo-Saxon nations of the. world:--What did England do in the war, anyhow? Let us have these distorted facts also. From the shelves of history 1 have pulled down and displayed the facts which our school text books have suppressed; I have told the events wherein England has stood our timely friend throughout a century; events which our inplanted prejudice lends us to ignore or to forget: events which show that any one who says England is our hereditary enemy might just about ns well say twice two is five. What did England do in the war, anyhow ? They go on asking it. The- propagandists, the -prompted puppets, the paid parrots of the press, go on saying these senseless words because they are easy to say, since the man who can answer them is generally not there; to every man who is a responsible master of facts we have—-well, how many?—irresponsible shouters in this country. What is your experience? How often is it your luck—as it was mine in front of the bulletin board—

to see a fraud or a fool promptly and satisfactorily put in his place? Makeup your mind that wherever you hear any person whntsever, male nr female, chan or unclean, dressed in jeans, or dressed in silks and laces, inquire, what- England “did in the war, anyhow?” such person cither shi.rks knowledge or else is a fraud or a fool. Tell them what the man laid in the street about the Kaiser ond our front yard, but. don’t stop there. Tell them that in May, 1918. England was sending men of 50 and ooys of I.BJ to the front; that in August, 1918, every third male available oetween these years was fighting, hat 8,500,000 men for army and navy vere raised by the British Empire, if which Ireland’s share was 2 3-10 7er cent, Wales’s 3 7-10. Scotland’s i 5 3-30, and England’s more than 00

per cent; and that this, taken pro- ' portionajtely to our greater population, would have amounted to about 13,000,000 Americans. When the war started, the British Empire maintained three soldiers out of every 2600 of the population; her entire army, regular establishment, reserve, and

territorial forces, amounted to 700,000

men. Our casualties were 322,186. The casualties in the British Army were 3,-190,071 —a million more than we sent—and of these 658,704 were killed. Of her navy, 33,361 were killed, 6405 wounded and missing; of her merchant marine, 14,651 were killed; a total of 48,000 killed—or 10 per cent of all in active service. Some of those of the merchant marine who escaped drowning through torpedoes and mines went back to sea after lw?ing torpedoed five, six, and seven times. What did England do in the war, anvhow ?

Through four frightful years she fought with splendour, she suffered with splendour, she held on with splendour. The second battle of Ypres is but one drop in the sea for her epic courage; yet it would fill full a canto of a poem. So spent was Britain’s single line, so worn and thin, that, after all the men available were brought, gaps remained. No more ammunition was coming to these men, the last rounds had been served. Wet through, heavy with mud, they were shelled for three days to prevent sleep. Many came at last to sleep standingj and being jogged awake when officers of the line passed down the trench, would salute and instantly he asleep again. On the fourth ilay, with the Kaiser come to watch them crumble, three lines of Huns, wave after wave of Germany’s picked troops, fell and broke upon this single line of British —and it held. The Kaiser, had lie known of the exhausted ammunition and the mounded dead, could have walked unarmed to the Channel. But he never knew. Surgeons being scantier than men at Ypres, one. with a compound fracture of the thigh had himself

propped up, and th'us all day worked /on the wounded at the front. He X knew it meant death for him. The

day over, he let them carry him to t the rear, and there, from blood-pois-oning, he died, Thus through four frightful years the British met their duty and- their d&tli. There is the great, story of the little penny steamers of the. Thames—a story lost amid the gigantic whole. Who will tell it right ? Who will make this drop of perfect valour shine in prose or verse for future eyes to see? Imagine a Hoi token ferry boat, because her country needed her. starting for San Fran-

cisco around Cape Horn and getting

there. Some 10 or 11 penny steamunder their own. steam started from the Thames down the Channel, across the Bay of Biscay, past Gibraltar, and through the submarined Mediterranean for the river Tigris.

hour or five reached their destination. Where are the rest? What did England do in the way, anyhow ? During 1917-1918 Britain’s armies held the enemy in three continents, and on six fronts, and co-operated with her Allies on two more fronts. Her dead, those 658,000 dead, lie by the Tigris, the Zambesi, the -Egean, .and across the world to Flanders’ fields. Between March 21 and April 17, 1918, the Huns in their drive used 127 divisions, and of these 102 were concentrated against the British. Hint was in Flanders. Britain, at t!ie sarnie time she was fighting in Flanders, had also at various times shared in the fighting in Russia, Kiaoehau. New Guinea, Samoa, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, the Sudan. Cameroons, Togo-land. East Africa. South-west Africa, Saloniki, Aden. Persia, and the north-west frontier of India. Britain cleared 12,000 square ■miles of the enemy in -German colonies. While fighting in Mesopotamia, her soldiers were re-constructing at the same time. They reclaimed and cultivated -more than 1100 square miles of land there, whieh produced in consequence enough food to save 2,000,000 tons -of shipping annually for the Allies. In Palestine and 'Mesopotamia alone. British troops in 1917 took 23,590 prisoners. Tn 1918, in Palestine, from September 18 to October 7, they took 79,000 prisoners. What- did England do in the war. anyhow ?

With “French’s contemptible little army” she saved Franco at tlie start hut T’ll skip that—except to men.tion that one division lost 10.000 out of 12,000 men, and 350 out of 100 officers. At Zoobrugge and Ostcnd—do not forget the “Vindictive”—she dealt with .submarines in April and May 1918—hut I’ll skip that: I cannot set down all that she did, either at the start, or nearing the finish, nr at any particular moment during those four years and three months that she was helping to hold Germany off from the throat of the world; it would make a very thick hook. But I am giving enough, T think, wherewith to answer the ignorant, and the frauds and the fools. Tel! them that from 1916 to 1918 Great Britain Increased her tillage area by 4,000,009 acres: wheat 39 per cent., barley 11, oats 35, potatoes 50—in spite of the shortage of labour. -She used wounded soldiers, college hoys and girls. Boy Scouts, refugees, and she produced the biggest grain crop in 5 n years. She started 1.400,000 new war gardens; most of those winworked them had worked already a long day in a munition factory. These devoted workers increased the potato crop in 1917 by 3,000.000 tons— and this released British provision ships to carry our soldiers across. Tn the Boston speech which one of my correspondents referred to. our Secretary of the Navy did not mention this. Mention it yourself. And tell them about the Boy Scouts and the women. Fifteen thousand of the Boy Scouts joined the Colours,

j and over 50.000 of the younger menu I bars served in various ways at home,

j Of England's women 7,000,000 were | engaged-’on -munitions and other nej cessities and apparatus of war. The , terrible test of that second battle of ! Ypres, to which I have made brief vllusion above, wrought an industrial

revolution in the manufacture of

shells. The energy of production rose at a rate which may lie indicated by two or three comparisons; In 19.17 as

many heavy howitzer shells were turned out in a single day as in the whole first year of the war. as many medium shells in five days, and as many field gun shells in eight days. Or, in other words, 45 times as many field gun shells. 73 times as many medium, and 365 times as many heavy howitzer shells, were turned out in 1917 as in the first year of the war. These shells were manufactured in buildings totalling 15 miles in length, 40 feet in breadth, with more than 10,000 machine tools driven by 1< miles oT shafting, with an energy of 25,009 horse-power and a weekly output of over 10.000 tons’ weight of projectiles—all this largely worked by the women of England. Mhile the fleet had increased iLs personnel from 136.000 to about -100.000, and 2.000.000 men by .July. 1915, had voluntarily enlisted in t.hc army before England gave mi her birthright, and accepted compulsory service, the women of England left their ordinary lives to fabricate the necessaries of war. They worked at home while their husbands, brothers, and suns fought and died on six battle fronts abroad— 658.000 died, remember: do you remember the number of Americans killed m action? Boss than 30.000—these English women worked on, 7.000,000 of them at least, on milk carts, motor buses, elevators, steam engines, and in making ammunition. Never before had anv women worked on more than 150 of the 500 different processes that „o to the making of munitions. They now handled T.N.T.. and fulminate of mercury, mure deadly still: he pod build guns, gun carriages, and thiee and a half ton army cannons; worked overhead travelling cranes for moving the boilers of battleships: turned lal.es, made every part ol an aeiuplane. \nd who were these 7,000,000 women ? The eldest daughter of a duke and the daughter of a general won distinction in advanced mun.t.on work. The only daughter of an old army familv broke down after a year’s work in a base hospital in France, was ordered s.x months’ rest at home, but alter two months, entered a munition lactory as a„ ordinary employee and alter nine months’ work had lost hut five minutes working time. The mother ol seven enlisted sons went into munitions not •in he behind them in serving England, a,,d one of them wrote her she was nrobablv killing more Germans than any of the family. The stewardess or a torpedoed passenger ship was among the f,-w survivors. Reaching land, she got job at a -imstnn lathe. Those were the 7,000,000 women of England—-

(laughters of dukes, torpedoed steward, esses, and everything between. Seven hundred thousand ot these were engaged on munition work proper. They, did from 60 to 70 percent, of ill I the machine work on shells, fuses, and trench warfare, supplies’;" and’ 1450 of them were trained mechanics to the Royal Flying Corps. Thoye were employed upon practically every operation in lactory, in foundry, in laboratory, and chemical works,'••Mif which tliev were . • v ./ * plivsicially capable; in making of gauges, forging billets, 1 making fuses, cartridges Indicts. ‘Look • what they •rail do,’’ said a foreman. “Ladies from homes where they sat about and were waited upon.” They also made optical glass; drilled and tapped in the shipyards; renewed electric wires and fittings, wound armatures; lacquered guards for lamps and radiator fronts; repaired junction and section boxes, fire-control instruments, automatic searchlights. “We can hardly believe •our eves.”’ said another foreman, “when we see the heavy stuff brought to and In.in the shops in motor lorries dri.cn by girls. Before the war it was all carted by horses and men. The girls do the job all right, though, and the only thing they even complain abuit is that their toes get cold.” They worked without, hesitation from 12 to 14 hours a day. or a night, for seven days a week, and with the voluntary sacrifice of public holidays. That is not all, or nearly all, that the women of Knglnd did—l skip their welfare work, recreation work, nursing —but it. is enough wherewith to answer the ignorant, or the fraud, or the fool. What did England do in the war anyhow? On Augusts, 1914, Lord Kitchener asked for 100,000 volunteers. He had them within 14 days. In the first week of September 175,000 men enrolled, 30,009 in a single day. Eleven months later 2,000,000 had enlisted. Ten months later 5.041,000 had voluntarily enrolled in the army and navy. In 191-1 Britain had in her Royal Naval Air Service 64 aeroplanes and 800 airmen. In 1917 she had many thousand aeroplanes and 41,C0.) airmen. In her Royal Flying Corps she had in 1914 66 planes and 100 men; in 1917. several thousand planes and men by tens of thousands. In the first nine months of 1917 British airmen brought down 876 enemy machines and drove down 759 out of control. From July, 1917. to June, 1918. '4102 enemy machines were destroyed or brought down with a loss of 1213 machines. Besides financing her own war costs, she had by October 1917 loaned 800.000,000 dollars to the dominions and 5.5- 0.000.0fi0 to the Allies. She raised 5,000,000.0i'0 in 30 days. In the first eight months of 1918 she contributed to the various forms of war loan at the average rate of £121,800,0:0 a week. Is that enough? Enough to know what England did in the war? No; it is not enough for such people as coni iline to ask what she did. Nothing would suffice these persons. During the earlier stages of the war it was possible that the question could he asked honestly though never intelligently—because

the facts and figures were not at that time always accessible. They were still piling up, they were scattered about, mention of them was incidental and fugitive, they could lie missed by anybody who was not diligently alert to find them. To-day it i.s quite otherwise. The facts and figures have been compiled, .arranged, published in accessible and convenient form; therefore to-day,j the man or woman who persists in asking what England did in the war is not honest hut dishonest or mentally spotted-, and does not want to be answered. They do not want to know. The question i.s merely a camouflage of their spite, and were every item given of the gigantic and.

magnificent contri -uition that England

made to the defeat‘of thy-Kaiser and all his w ms, it would hot stop their evil mouths. Not for them am 1 ,setting forth a part of what England did ;

it i.s for the convenience-of the honest American, who wants to know, that niv collection of facts is made from the various scourcos which he may not have the time or the means to look up for himself. For his benefit 1 add some particulars concerning the British Navy which kept the Kaiser out of our front yard.

Admiral Mahan said in his book—and ho was an American of whose knowledge and wisdom Congress seems to have known nothing and cared less;

“Why do English innate political conceptions of popular representative Government, of the balance of law and liberty, pro.ail in North America from the Atlantufto the Pacific? Because the c.-nunaiid of the sea at the decisiveera belonged to Great .Britain.” We have seen that the detii.si.ye era was when Napoleon’s mouth . watered fur Louisiania, aiul when England took, her stand behind the Monroe Doctrine.

Admiral Sims said in the second instalment of his narrative., “The Victory at Sea,” published in the World’s Work for October, 1010, at page (319: . . Let us suppose for a moment that an earthquake or some other natural disturbance had engulfed the British Fleet at Scapa Flow. The world would then have been at Germany’s mercy, and all the destroyers the Allies could have put upon the sea would have availed them nothing, for the German battleships and battle cruisers could have sunk them or driven them into their ports. The Allied commerce would have been the prey, not only of the submarines, which could have operated with the utmost freedom, but of the German surface craft as well. In a few weeks the British food supplies would have been exhausted. There would have been an early end to the soldiers and munitions which Britain was constantly sending to France. The United States could have sent no forces to the Western Front, and the result would have been the surrender which the Allies themselves, in the spring of 1917, regarded as a not remote possibility. America would then have been compelled to' face the German power alone and to face it long before wT? had had an opportunity to assemble our resources and equip our armies. The world was preserved from all these calamities because the destroyer and the convoy solved the problem of the submarines, and because back of these agencies of victory lay Admiral Beatty’s squadrons, holding at arm’s length the German surface ships while these eoinpartively fragile craft were saving the liberties of the world", r

Yes. Tlit> High Sens Fleet of Germany, costing lier 1,5(10,000,000,000 dollars, was bottled up. Five million five hundred thousand tons of German shipping and 1.000,000 tons of Austrian shipping were driven off the seas or captured overseas trade, and oversea colonies were cut off. Two million oversea Huns of fighting age wore hindered from joining the enemy. Ocean commerce and communication were stopped for the Huns and secured to the Allies. Tn 1916, 2100 mines were swept up and 89 mine-sweepers lost. These mine-sweepers and patrol boats numbered 12 in 19T1, and .1300 by 191.8. To patrol the seas British ships had to steam 8.000,0710 miles in a month. During the four years of the war they transported more than ]3.~ Oxu.OOO men (losing but 2700) through enemy action as well as transporting 2.000.000 horses and mules, 500,000 vehicles. 25.000,000 tons of explosives, 51,000,000 tons of oil and fuel. 130,000,000 tons of food and other materials for the use of the Allies. In one month 355.000 men were carried from England to France.

It was after our present Secretary of the Xavv, in his speech in Boston to which allusion has been made, had given our navy all and the British Navy none of the credit of conveying our soldiers overseas, that Admiral Sims repaired the singular oblivion to the secretary. We Americans should know the truth, he said. We have not been too accurately informed. We did not foem to have been' told by anybody, for instance, that of the 5000 anti-sub-marine. craft operating day and night in infested waters, we had 160. or 3 nor cent.; that of the 1,500,000 troops which had gone over from here in a few months. Groat Britain brought over two-thirds and escorted half. “J would like American papers to pay particular attention to the fact that there are about 5000 anti-submarine craft ill the ocean to-day cutting out mines, escorting troopships, and making it possible for us to go ahead and win this war. They can do this because the British Grand Fleet is so powerful that the German High Seas Fleet has to stay at home. The British Grand Fleet is the foundation stone of the cause of the whole of the Allies.” Thus \dmiral Sims. That is part of what England did in the war.