Read Ebook: Experiences of a Dug-out 1914-1918 by Callwell C E Charles Edward Sir

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THE OUTBREAK OF WAR....................................... 1

Unfair disparagement of the War Office during the war -- Difficulties under which it suffered owing to pre-war misconduct of the Government -- The army prepared, the Government and the country unprepared -- My visit to German districts on the Belgian and Luxemburg frontiers in June 1914 -- The German railway preparations -- The plan of the Great General Staff indicated by these -- The Aldershot Command at exercise -- I am summoned to London by General H. Wilson -- Informed of contemplated appointment to be D.M.O. -- The unsatisfactory organization of the Military Operations Directorate -- An illustration of this from pre-war days -- G.H.Q. rather a nuisance till they proceeded to France -- The scare about a hostile maritime descent -- Conference at the Admiralty -- The depletion of my Directorate to build up G.H.Q. -- Inconvenience of this in the case of the section dealing with special Intelligence services -- An example of the trouble that arose at the very start -- This points to a misunderstanding of the relative importance of the War Office and of G.H.Q. -- Sir J. French's responsibility for this, Sir C. Douglas not really responsible -- Colonel Dallas enumerates the great numerical resources of Germany -- Lord Kitchener's immediate recognition of the realities of the situation -- Sir J. French's suggestion that Lord Kitchener should be commander-in-chief of the Expeditionary Force indicated misconception of the position of affairs.

EARLY DAYS AT THE WAR OFFICE............................. 18

LORD KITCHENER'S START................................... 42

A first meeting with Lord Kitchener -- Sent up to see him in Pretoria by his brother under unpromising conditions -- The interview -- The Chief's pleasant reception -- A story of Lord K. from the Sudan -- An unpleasant interview with him in August 1914 -- Rare meetings with him during the first two or three months -- His ignorance of War Office organization -- His lack of acquaintance with many matters in connection with the existing organization of the army -- His indisposition to listen to advice on such subjects -- Lord K. shy of strangers -- His treatment of the Territorial Forces -- Their weak point at the outset of hostilities, not having the necessary strength to mobilize at war establishment -- Effect of this on the general plans -- The way the Territorials dwindled after taking the field -- Lord K. inclined at first to pile up divisions without providing them with the requisite reservoirs of reserves -- His feat in organizing five regular divisions in addition to those in the Expeditionary Force -- His immediate recognition of the magnitude of the contest -- He makes things hum in the War Office -- His differences of opinion with G.H.Q. -- The inability of G.H.Q. to realize that a vast expansion of the military forces was the matter of primary importance -- Lord K.'s relations with Sir J. French -- The despatch of Sir H. Smith-Dorrien to command the Second Corps -- Sir J. French not well treated at the time of the Antwerp affair -- The relegation of the General Staff at the War Office to the background in the early days -- Question whether this was entirely due to its having suffered in efficiency by the withdrawals which took place on mobilization -- The General Staff only eliminated in respect to operations.

LORD KITCHENER'S LATER RECORD............................ 60

THE DARDANELLES.......................................... 86

SOME EXPERIENCES IN THE WAR OFFICE...................... 107

A reversion to earlier dates -- The statisticians in the winter of 1914-15 -- The efforts to prove that German man-power would shortly give out -- Lack of the necessary premises upon which to found such calculations -- Views on the maritime blockade -- The projects for operations against the Belgian coast district in the winter of 1914-15 -- Nature of my staff -- The "dug-outs" -- The services of one of them, "Z" -- His care of me in foreign parts -- His activities in other Departments of State -- An alarming discovery -- How "Z" grappled with a threatening situation -- He hears about the Admiralty working on the Tanks -- The cold-shouldering of Colonel Swinton when he raised this question at the War Office in January 1915 -- Lord Fisher proposes to construct large numbers of motor-lighters, and I am told off to go into the matter with him -- The Baltic project -- The way it was approached -- Meetings with Lord Fisher -- The "beetles" -- Visits from the First Sea Lord -- The question of secrecy in connection with war operations -- A parable -- The land service behind the sea service in this matter -- Interviews with Mr. Asquith -- His ways on such occasions.

FURTHER EXPERIENCES IN THE WAR OFFICE................... 127

THE NEAR EAST........................................... 152

OTHER SIDE-SHOWS........................................ 170

Three categories of side-shows -- The Jackson Committee -- The Admiralty's attitude -- The Pacific, Duala, Tanga, Dar-es-Salaam, Oceania, the Wireless Stations -- Kiao Chao -- The Shatt-el-Arab -- Egypt -- Question whether the Australasian forces ought to have been kept for the East -- The East African operations -- Our lack of preparation for a campaign in this quarter -- Something wrong -- My own visit to Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam in 1908 -- The bad start of the campaign -- Question of utilizing South African troops to restore the situation -- How this was managed -- Reasons why this was a justifiable side-show -- Mesopotamia -- The War Office ought to have interfered -- The question of an advance on Baghdad by General Townshend suddenly referred to the General Staff -- Our mistake -- The question of Egyptian defence in the latter part of 1915 -- The Alexandretta project -- A later Alexandretta project propounded by the War Cabinet in 1917 -- Its absurdity -- The amateur strategist on the war-path -- The Palestine campaign of 1918 carried out almost entirely by troops not required on the Western Front, and therefore a legitimate side-show -- The same principle to some extent holds good with regard to the conquest of Mesopotamia -- The Downing Street project to substitute Sir W. Robertson for Sir C. Monro, a miss-fire.

THE MUNITIONS QUESTION.................................. 190

COUNCILS, COMMITTEES, AND CABINETS...................... 208

SOME INTER-ALLIES CONFERENCES........................... 222

The Conference with the Italians in Paris in April-May 1915 -- Its constitution -- Italians anxious that Allies should deliver big offensive simultaneously with advance of Italian army -- Impossibility of giving a guarantee -- Difficulties over the naval proposals -- Banquet given by M. Millerand at the War Office -- A visit to the front -- Impressions -- Mr. Churchill turns up unexpectedly -- A conference with General Joffre at Chantilly on Salonika -- Its unsatisfactory character -- Admiral Gamble races "Grandp?re" and suffers discomfiture -- A distinguished party proceed to Paris -- A formal conference with the French Government -- Messrs. Asquith, Grey and Lloyd George as linguists -- The French attitude over Salonika -- Sir W. Robertson gives his views -- The decision -- Dinner at the ?lys?e -- Return to London -- Mr. Lloyd George and the soldiers on the Boulogne jetty -- Points of the destroyer as a yacht -- Mr. Balfour and Sir W. Robertson afloat -- A chatty dinner on our side of the Channel -- Difficulty over Russian munitions owing to a Chantilly conference -- A conference at the War Office -- Mr. Lloyd George as chairman -- M. Mantoux.

A FIRST MISSION TO RUSSIA............................... 237

A SECOND MISSION TO RUSSIA.............................. 253

THE RUSSIAN BUNGLE...................................... 280

The Russian Revolution the worst disaster which befell the Entente during the Great War -- The political situation in Russia before that event much less difficult to deal with than had been the political situation in the Near East in 1915 -- The Allies' over-estimate of Russian strength in the early months of the war -- We hear about the ammunition shortage first from Japan -- Presumable cause of the breakdown -- The Grand Duke Nicholas' difficulties in the early months -- Great improvement effected in respect to munitions subsequent to the summer of 1915 -- Figures -- Satisfactory outlook for the campaign of 1917 -- Political situation goes from bad to worse -- Russian mission to London; no steps taken by our Government -- Our representatives in Russia -- Situation at the end of 1916 -- A private letter to Mr. Lloyd George -- The Milner Mission to Russia -- Its failure to interpret the portents -- Had Lord Kitchener got out it might have made all the difference -- Some excuse for our blundering subsequent to the Revolution -- The delay in respect to action in Siberia and at Vladivostok.

CATERING FOR THE ALLIES................................. 293

The appointment of Colonel Ellershaw to look after Russian munition supplies -- His remarkable success -- I take over his branch after his death -- Gradual alteration of its functions -- The Commission Internationale de Ravitaillement -- Its efficiency -- The despatch of goods to Russia -- Russian technical abilities in advance of their organizing power -- The flame projector and the Stokes mortar -- Drawings and specifications of Tanks -- An early contretemps in dealing with a Russian military delegate -- Misadventure in connection with a 9.2-inch howitzer -- Difficulties at the northern Russian ports -- The American contracts -- The Russian Revolution -- This transforms the whole position as to supplies -- Roumania -- Statesmen in conflict -- Dealings with the Allies' delegates in general -- Occasional difficulties -- Helpfulness of the United States representatives -- The Greek muddle -- Getting it disentangled -- Great delays in this country and in France in fitting out the Greeks, and their consequences -- Serbian supplies -- The command in Macedonia ought on administrative grounds to have been in British hands.

THE PRESS............................................... 310

The constant newspaper attacks upon the War Office -- Often arise from misunderstandings or sheer ignorance -- The mistake made with regard to war correspondents at the start -- The pre-war intentions of the General Staff -- How they were set on one side -- Inconvenience of this from the War Office point of view -- A breach of faith -- The mischievous optimism of newspapers in the early days -- Tendency of the military authorities to conceal bad news -- Experts at fault in the Press -- Tendency to take the Press too seriously in this country -- Some of its blunders during the war -- A proposal to put German officer prisoners on board transports as a protection -- A silly mistake over the promotion of general-officers -- Why were Tanks not adopted before the war! -- A paean about Sukhomlinoff -- A gross misstatement -- Temporary officers and high positions in the field -- A suggestion that the Press should censor itself in time of war; its absurdity -- The Press Bureau -- Some of its mistakes -- Information allowed to appear which should have been censored -- Difficulties of the censors -- The case of the shell shortage -- Difficulty of laying down rules for the guidance of censors -- The Press and air-raids -- A newspaper proprietor placed at the head of the Air Service -- The result -- The question of announcing the names of units that have distinguished themselves -- Conclusion.

SOME CRITICISMS, SUGGESTIONS, AND GENERALITIES.......... 328

Post-war extravagance -- The Office of Works lavish all through -- The Treasury -- Its unpopularity in the spending departments -- The Finance Branch of the War Office -- Suggestions -- The change with regard to saluting -- Red tabs and red cap-bands -- A Staff dandy in the West -- The age of general-officers -- Position of the General Staff in the War Office -- The project of a Defence Ministry -- No excuse for it except with regard to the air services, and that not a sufficient excuse -- Confusion between the question of a Defence Ministry and that of the Imperial General Staff -- The time which must elapse before newly constituted units can be fully depended upon, one of the most important lessons for the public to realize -- This proved to be the case in almost every theatre and in the military forces of almost every belligerent -- Misapprehensions about South Africa -- Improvised units could not have done what the "Old Contemptibles" did -- Conclusion.

THE OUTBREAK OF WAR

Unfair disparagement of the War Office during the war -- Difficulties under which it suffered owing to pre-war misconduct of the Government -- The army prepared, the Government and the country unprepared -- My visit to German districts on the Belgian and Luxemburg frontiers in June 1914 -- The German railway preparations -- The plan of the Great General Staff indicated by these -- The Aldershot Command at exercise -- I am summoned to London by General H. Wilson -- Informed of contemplated appointment to be D.M.O. -- The unsatisfactory organization of the Military Operations Directorate -- An illustration of this from pre-war days -- G.H.Q. rather a nuisance until they proceeded to France -- The scare about a hostile maritime descent -- Conference at the Admiralty -- The depletion of my Directorate to build up G.H.Q. -- Inconvenience of this in the case of the section dealing with special Intelligence services -- An example of the trouble that arose at the very start -- This points to a misunderstanding of the relative importance of the War Office and of G.H.Q. -- Sir J. French's responsibility for this, Sir C. Douglas not really responsible -- Colonel Dallas enumerates the great numerical resources of Germany -- Lord Kitchener's immediate recognition of the realities of the situation -- Sir J. French's suggestion that Lord Kitchener should be Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force indicated misconception of the position of affairs.

In a record of experiences during the Great War that were for the most part undergone within the War Office itself, it is impossible to overcome the temptation to draw attention at the start to the unreasonably disparaging attitude towards that institution which has been adopted so generally throughout the country. Nobody will contend that hideous blunders were not committed by some departments of the central administration of the Army in Whitehall during the progress of the struggle. It has to be admitted that considerable sums of money were from time to time wasted--it could hardly be otherwise in such strenuous times. A regrettable lack of foresight was undoubtedly displayed in some particulars. But tremendous difficulties, difficulties for the existence of which the military authorities were nowise to blame, had on the other hand to be overcome--and they were overcome. Nor can the War Office be robbed of its claim to have borne the chief share in performing what was the greatest miracle of all the miracles performed during the course of the contest. Within the space of less than two years the United Kingdom was, mainly by the exertions of the War Office, transformed into a Great Military Power. That achievement covers up many transgressions.

It has to be remembered that in this matter the detractors had it all their own way during the struggle. Anybody harbouring a grievance, real or imaginary, was at liberty to air his wrongs, whereas the mouths of soldiers in a position to reply had perforce to remain closed and have to a great extent still to remain closed. The disgruntled had the field pretty well to themselves. Ridiculous stories for which there was not one atom of foundation have gained currency, either because those who knew the truth were precluded by their official status from revealing the facts or because no one took the trouble to contradict the absurdities. Some of these yarns saw the light in the newspapers, and the credulity of the public in accepting everything that happens to appear in the Press is one of the curiosities of the age. Not, however, that many of the criticisms of which the War Office was the subject during the protracted broil were not fully warranted. Some of them were indeed most helpful. But others were based on a positively grovelling ignorance of the circumstances governing the subject at issue. Surely it is an odd thing that, whereas your layman will shy at committing himself in regard to legal problems, will not dream of debating medical questions, will shrink from expressing opinions on matters involving acquaintance with technical science, will even be somewhat guarded in his utterances concerning the organization and handling of fleets, everybody is eager to lay the law down respecting the conduct of war on land.

A reference has been made above to the extraordinary difficulties under which the War Office laboured during the war. The greatest of these, at all events during the early days, was the total misconception of the international situation of which H.M. Government had been guilty--or had apparently been guilty--during the years immediately preceding the outbreak of hostilities. No intelligible and satisfactory explanation of this has ever been put forward. Their conduct in this connection had been the conduct of fools, or of knaves, or of liars. They had been acting as fools if they had failed to interpret auguries which presented no difficulty whatever to people of ordinary intelligence who took the trouble to watch events. They had been acting as knaves if they had been drawing their salaries and had not earned them by making themselves acquainted with facts which it was their bounden duty to know. They had been acting as liars if, when fully aware of the German preparations for aggressive war and of what these portended, they had deliberately deceived and hoodwinked the countrymen who trusted them. Several Ministers had indeed deliberately stated in their places in Parliament that the nation's military arrangements were not framed to meet anything beyond the despatch to an oversea theatre of war of four out of the six divisions of our Expeditionary Force! One of the gang had even been unable "to conceive circumstances in which continental operations by our troops would not be a crime against the people of this country."

Much has been said and written since 1914 concerning the unpreparedness of the army for war. But the truth is that the army was not unprepared for that limited-liability, pill-to-stop-an-earthquake theory of making war which represented the programme of Mr. Asquith and his colleagues before the blow fell. Take it all round, the Expeditionary Force was as efficient as any allied or hostile army which took the field. It was almost as well prepared for the supreme test in respect to equipment as it was in respect to leadership and training. The country and the Government, not the army, were unprepared. There was little wrong with the military forces except that they represented merely a drop in the ocean, that they constituted no more than an advanced guard to legions which did not exist. Still one must acknowledge that even some of our highest military authorities did not realize what an insignificant asset our splendid little Expeditionary Force would stand for in a great European war, nor to have grasped when the crash came that the matter of paramount importance in connection with the conduct of the struggle on land was the creation of a host of fighting men reaching such dimensions as to render it competent to play a really vital r?le in achieving victory for the Entente.

As it happened, I had proceeded as a private individual in the month of June 1914 to inspect the German railway developments directed towards the frontiers of Belgium and of Luxemburg. This was an illuminating, indeed an ominous, experience. Entering the Kaiser's dominions by the route from the town of Luxemburg to Tr?ves, one came of a sudden upon a colossal detraining station that was not quite completed, fulfilling no conceivable peaceful object and dumped down on the very frontier--anything more barefaced it would be difficult to conceive. Tr?ves itself, three or four miles on, constituted a vast railway centre, and three miles or so yet farther along there was its counterpart in another great railway centre where there was no town at all. You got Euston, Liverpool Street, and Waterloo--only the lines and sidings, of course--grown up like mushrooms in a non-populous and non-industrial region, and at the very gates of a little State of which Germany had guaranteed the neutrality.

Traversing the region to the north of the Moselle along the western German border-line, this proved to be a somewhat barren, partly woodland, partly moorland, tract, sparsely inhabited as Radnor and Strathspey; and yet this unproductive district had become a network of railway communications. Elaborate detraining stations were passed every few miles. One constantly came upon those costly overhead cross-over places, where one set of lines is carried right over the top of another set at a junction, so that continuous traffic going one way shall not be checked by traffic coming in from the side and proceeding in the opposite direction--a plan seldom adopted at our most important railway centres. On one stretch of perhaps half-a-dozen miles connecting two insignificant townships were to be seen eight lines running parallel to each other. Twopenny-halfpenny little trains doddered along, occasionally taking up or putting down a single passenger at some halting-place that was large enough to serve a Coventry or a Croydon. The slopes of the cuttings and sidings were destitute of herbage; the bricks of the culverts and bridges showed them by the colour to be brand-new; all this construction had taken place within the previous half-dozen years. Everything seemed to be absolutely ready except that one place on the Luxemburg frontier mentioned above, and that obviously could be completed in a few hours of smart work, if required.

I ought to mention here that this appointment to the post of Director of Military Operations came as a complete surprise--my not having been warned well in advance had been due to an oversight; up to within a few months earlier, when I had ceased to belong to the Reserve of Officers, having passed the age-limit for colonels, my fate in the event of general mobilization was to have been something high up on the staff of the Home Defence Army. One could entertain no illusions. Heavy responsibilities were involved in taking up such an appointment on the eve of war. After five years of civil life it was a large order to find myself suddenly thrust into such a job and to be called upon to take up charge of a War Office Directorate which I knew was overloaded. Ever since 1904, ever since the date when this Directorate had been set up by the Esher Committee as one item in the reconstitution of the office as a whole and when my section of the old Intelligence Division had been absorbed into it, I had insisted that this composite branch was an overburdened and improperly constituted one.

The earliest experiences in the War Office in August 1914 amounted, it must be confessed, almost to a nightmare. There were huge maps working on rollers in my spacious office, and in particular there was one of vast dimensions portraying what even then was coming to be called the Western Front. During the week or so that elapsed before G.H.Q. of the Expeditionary Force proceeded to the theatre of war, its cream thought fit to spend the hours of suspense in creeping on tiptoe in and out of my apartment, clambering on and off a table which fronted this portentous map, discussing strategical problems in blood-curdling whispers, and every now and then expressing an earnest hope that this sort of thing was not a nuisance. It was a most intolerable nuisance, but they were persons of light and leading who could not be addressed in appropriate terms. As hour to hour passed, and H.M. Government could not make up its mind to give the word "go" to the Expeditionary Force, G.H.Q.'s language grew stronger and stronger until the walls resounded with expletives. It was not easy to concentrate one's attention upon questions arising in the performance of novel duties in a time of grave emergency under such conditions, and it was a genuine relief when the party took itself off to France.

It will not be out of place to refer here to one aspect of the virtual emasculation of the General Staff at the War Office on mobilization that has not perhaps quite received the attention that it deserves. That, in spite of his being Director of Military Operations in Whitehall, General Wilson very properly accompanied the Expeditionary Force will hardly be disputed. He had established close and cordial relations with the French higher military authorities, he could talk French like a Parisian, he had worked out the details of the concentration of our troops on the farther side of the Channel months before, and he probably knew more about the theatre where our contingent was expected to operate than any man in the army. But he was not the only member of the Military Operations Directorate staff who disappeared; he took his right-hand man and his left-hand man in respect to actual operations with him. Nevertheless, as I was pretty familiar with the working of the War Office, and as the planting down of the Expeditionary Force beyond Le Cateau was effected, practically automatically, by the Movements branch under the Quartermaster-General, operations question in respect to the war in the West gave no great trouble until my Directorate had had time to settle down after a fashion in its new conditions.

Will it be believed? My assistant and I knew so little about our business that we did not fall upon that pair of pantaloons and rend them. We took them and their protestation quite seriously. We accepted their courteous, but uncompromising, rebuke like small boys caught stealing apples, whose better feelings have been appealed to. For the space of two or three hours, and until we had pulled ourselves together, we remained content, on the strength of doctrines enunciated by a couple of officials fossilized by having dwelt in a groove for years, to accept it as a principle that this tremendous conflict into which the Empire had been plunged at a moment's notice was to be a kid-glove transaction. Within three weeks the Foreign Office and the Home Office were, however, praying us in the War Office for goodness' sake to take all questions in connection with the internment and so forth of aliens entirely off their hands because they could make nothing of the business.

The above reference to my having been virtually left in the lurch with regard to these, to me, occult matters is not made by way of complaint. It is made because it illustrates with signal force how completely the relative importance of the Expeditionary Force as compared to the task which the War Office had to face had been misunderstood when framing plans in advance for the anticipated emergency. Colonel Macdonogh became head of Sir J. French's Intelligence Department in the field. That was a very important appointment and one for which he was admirably fitted, but it was one which many other experienced officers in the army could have effectually filled. The appointment at the War Office which he gave up was one which no officer in the army was so well qualified--nor nearly so well qualified--to hold as he was, and it was at the outbreak of war incomparably the more important appointment of the two. The arrangement arrived at in respect to this matter indicated, in fact, a strange lack of sense of proportion. It argued a fundamental misconception of the military problem with which the country was confronted.

It may be urged that Sir J. French was not responsible. He had--under circumstances which will not have been forgotten--ceased to be Chief of the Imperial General Staff some four months before war broke out. But Sir Charles Douglas, who had then taken his place, although a resolute, experienced soldier, equipped with an almost unique knowledge of the army, was a deliberate, cautious Scot; he was the very last man to shirk responsibility and to shelter himself behind somebody else, but, on the other hand, he was not an impatient thruster who would be panting to be--in gunner's parlance--"re-teaming the battery before the old major was out of the gate." He accepted, and he was indeed bound to accept, the ideas of a predecessor of the highest standing in the Service, who had made a special study of campaigning possibilities under the conditions which actually arose in August 1914, and under whose aegis definite plans and administrative arrangements to meet the case had been elaborated beforehand with meticulous care. Enjoying all the advantages arising from having made a close study of the subject and from having an Intelligence Department brimming over with detailed information at his beck and call, Sir J. French entirely failed to grasp the extent and nature of the war in its early days. Lord Kitchener did. Suddenly summoned to take supreme military charge, a stranger to the War Office and enjoying none of Sir J. French's advantages, the new Secretary of State mastered the realities of the position at once by some sort of instinct, perceived what a stupendous effort would have to be made, took the long view from the start, and foretold that the struggle would last some years.

EARLY DAYS AT THE WAR OFFICE

One soon learnt that Belgian resistance was being brushed aside by the enemy with comparative ease, and that such delay as the invaders had suffered before Li?ge did not very appreciably interfere with the plans of the German Great General Staff. Going one afternoon into the room occupied by the head of my Intelligence section which was charged with French and Belgian affairs, I found him on his telephone and holding up his hand to enjoin silence. He was speaking with the late General "Sandy" Du Cane, our representative with King Albert's forces in the field, who was at the moment actually on the battlefield and under fire. While I was in the room, Du Cane wound up the conversation with; "They're giving way all along the line. I'm off." A day or two after this the Boches were in Brussels, and one realized that our Expeditionary Force must very soon be in the thick of it.

For some reason or other those in the highest places at the War Office hesitated to allow the news that Brussels had fallen to leak out to the public--an attitude at which the newspaper editors were not unnaturally incensed--and Mr. F. E. Smith, now Lord Birkenhead, who was head of the Press Bureau, came to see me that evening, and was outspoken as to the absurdity of this sort of thing. The matter did not, however, rest in my hands. The secretiveness in connection with reverses and contretemps which prevailed at that time, and which continued to prevail during the first year and a half of the war--during the very period when I had certain responsibilities in connection with such matters myself--seemed to me then, and seems to me now, to have been a mistake. It did our cause considerable harm, it delayed the putting forth of the full fighting strength of the British nation, it created irritation in the country when it came to be detected, and it even at times caused official reports which were perfectly in accordance with the facts to be regarded with suspicion. The point will be touched upon again in later chapters.

The Topographical Section under Colonel Hedley did fine work during those troubled days before the Battle of the Marne. It was in the highest degree gratifying to find a branch, for which one found oneself suddenly after a fashion responsible, to be capable of so promptly and effectually meeting emergencies. The Expeditionary Force had taken with it generous supplies of maps portraying the regions adjacent to the Franco-Belgian frontier, where it proposed to operate; a somewhat hasty retreat to a point right away back, south-east of Paris, had formed no part of its programme. A day or two after the first clash of arms near Mons, a wire arrived demanding the instant despatch of maps of the country as far to the rear as the Seine and the Marne. Now, as all units had to be supplied on a liberal scale, this meant hundreds of copies of each of a considerable number of different large-scale sheets, besides hundreds of copies of two or three more general small-scale sheets; nevertheless, the consignment was on its way before midnight. A day or two later G.H.Q. wired for maps as far back as Orleans, a day or two later, again, for maps as far as the mouth of the Loire, and yet a day or two later, for maps down to Bordeaux--this last request representing thousands of sheets. But on each occasion the demand was met within a few hours and without the slightest hitch. It was a remarkable achievement--an achievement attributable in part to military foresight dating back to the days when Messrs. Asquith, Lloyd George, Churchill and Co., either deliberately or else as a result of sheer ignorance and ineptitude, were deceiving their countrymen as to the gravity of the German menace, an achievement attributable also in part to military administrative efficiency of a high order in a time of crisis. The Topographical Section, it should be added, was able to afford highly appreciated assistance to our French and Belgian allies in the matter of supplying them with maps of their own countries.

During the first two or three weeks after fighting started, waifs and strays who had been run over by the Boches, but who had picked themselves up somehow and had fetched up at the coast, used to turn up at the War Office and to find their way to my department. For some reason or other they always presented themselves after dinner--like the coffee. The first arrival was a young cavalry officer, knocked off his horse in the preliminary encounters by what had evidently been the detonation of a well-pitched-up high-explosive, and who was still suffering from a touch of what we now know as shell-shock. He proved to be the very embodiment of effective military training, because, although he was to the last degree vague as to how he had got back across the Channel and only seemed to know that he had had a bath at the Cavalry Club, he was able to give most useful and detailed information as to what he had noted after recovering consciousness while making his way athwart the German trains and troops in reserve as they poured along behind Von Kluck's troops in front line. One observed the same thing in the case of another cavalry officer who arrived some days later, after a prolonged succession of tramps by night from the Sambre to Ostend. "You'll sleep well to-night," I remarked when thanking him for the valuable information that he had been able to impart--and of a sudden he looked ten years older. "I couldn't sleep a wink last night at Ostend," he muttered in a bewildered sort of way, "and I don't feel as if I'd ever sleep again."

We did not wear uniform in the War Office for the first month or so, and one night about this time, on meeting a disreputable and suspicious-looking character on the stairs, garbed in the vesture affected by the foreign mechanic, I was debating whether to demand of the interloper what he was doing within the sacred precincts, when he abruptly accosted me with: "I say, d'you happen to know where in this infernal rabbit-warren a blighter called the Something of Military Operations hangs out?" His address indicated him to be a refugee officer looking for my department.

These prodigals had such interesting experiences to recount that, in a weak moment, I gave instructions for them to be brought direct to me, and about 10 P.M. one night, when there happened to be a lot of unfinished stuff to be disposed of before repairing homewards, a tarnished-looking but otherwise smart and well-set-up private soldier was let loose on me. A colloquy somewhat as follows ensued:

"What regiment?"

"The Rile Irish, sorr."

"Ah! Well, and how have you got along back here?"

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