KITCHENER'S GREAT ARMY.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 28 October 1915, Page 3

KITCHENER'S GREAT ARMY.

WAT IS ITS REAL SIZE?

BY HERBERT DUCKWORTH

[Mr Duckworth is an Englishman, belonging to a family of well-known London and Liverpool journalists. For the past ten ye ars he has been connected with the New York Press. This article was specially written for the July " American Magazine."]

How Kitchener's Army was secretly increased from one million to four million men right under the very noses of the übiquitous German spies is one of the most amazing stories of the war. .

The fact of clothing, arming, and training this mighty host, and of then smuggling it out of a supposedly submarine-blockaded island to France, has no parallel in history. As an exhibition of high strategy alone it surpassed the finest peformances in the field, of either Joffre or General von Hindenburg.

It completely deceived the German General Staff as to England's military strength, and confounded the Teutonic theorists who had always maintained that it was impossible to make a soldier in less than three years.

This grim joke on the Kaiser was concocted by Lord Kitchener himself He commandeered the services of the press to assist him to carry out the great bluff' and there can be no harm in telling how it was done.

When the British Secretary of State for War first conceived the idea of putting into the field four million men, he realised that it would be a brave strategic blunder to allow the enemy to know what was really afoot. Bather the game should be to call for a million men, • and then press-agent the world with stories lamenting the fact that, at last, the Biitish Empire was about to crumble up because the men of England had not the pluck to defend it. All the German stories tha-t the modern Englishman had become effete and anaemic ) were, indeed, too true. The scheme worked out admirably. Recruiting was phenomenally brisk from the first. Yet the Germans eagerly swallowed the skilfully phrased yarns that were scattered broadcast, - that told how only conscription could save the British from utter disaster. While the cartoonists and funny verse writers of the rest of the world were holding up ridicule the sport-loving Englishman, who was supposed to be refusing to shoulder a gun in defence of his hearth and home, Great Britain was rapidly and thoroughly builing up her own big " steam roller." Last winter in London I was privileged to meet Lieut.-Colonel Sir H. C. Schlater Adjutant-General to the Forces, at an informal luncheon. War was not discussed. But as the party was about to break up somebody asked the Adjutant, the one man, mind you, who could have answered the question: " How many men are there in Kitchener's army?" Looking squarely into the eyes of his questioner, Sir H. C. Schlater replied : " I don't know." The campaign of silence was conducted on strictly scientific lines. The newspaper editors were first warned that any indiscretion would mean a court-martial, under the Defence of the Realm Act, on charges of having " spread reports likely to interfere with the success of His Majesty's Forces." They were instructed to publish only the recruiting returns sent out by the War Office. Independent census-taking was strictly forbidden. All articles on the new army and even pictures of soldiers, had first to be submitted to the censor. One London editor refused to stay " put." He published the picture of some soldier without the permission of the censor. Lord Kitchener sent for the offender. " A second indiscretion," he explained, " will mean a court-martial and gaol." "On what charges ?" stuttered the astonished editor. " Never mind," answered Kitchener, "we will clap you into prison first, an d find the charges after the war is over." Tricks, subterfuges, and cunning were adopted in order to hoodwink the enemy as to the size and disposition of the new army. Battalions of the same regiment were trained in different parts of the country. Instead of creating new corps, old ones were increased to colossal proportions. The Manchester Regiment, for instance, grew from four to thirty battalions —to thirty-six thousand men. Of course it was obvious to the most casual observer that Great Britain was getting together a tremendous army. But who could say whether it numbered two million or four million men ?