increased its own food supply, and some 4,000,000 acres of pasture were brought under tillage. The whole nation was rationed, so that rich and poor alike shared in the sacrifice. Schoolboys spent their holidays working on the land, and the women of Britain, in munition factories, in land work, and in a thousand other employments, made noble contribution to the common cause. In 1918 there were at least 1,500,000 more women working than before the war, and the tasks on which they were engaged were those which had hitherto been regarded as work which could only be performed by men.
PART VI.
VICTORY.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE LAST DAY.
By the first days of November 1918 the war was won. In October both Turkey and Bulgaria had been beaten to the ground. On the 4th of November Austria capitulated. Ludendorff had resigned, the German Emperor had sought refuge at Army Headquarters from the troubles of his capital, the German navy had mutinied, and a revolution was beginning in Berlin. Foch was on the eve of his last step in the West. The Americans were moving on Sedan. Haig was in the position of Wellington on the eve of Waterloo, when he raised his hat as a signal for "Everything to go in."
On 1st November Valenciennes fell. On 4th November Haig attacked on the 30 miles between that city and the Sambre. Twenty British divisions scattered thirty-two German divisions, taking 19,000 prisoners and more than 450 guns. That day broke the enemy's resistance. Henceforth he was not in retreat but in flight, and the two wings of his armies were separated for ever. There remained only the 50 miles between Avesnes and Mezières as an avenue of escape for all the German forces of the south, and Foch was preparing to swing his right wing north of Metz to close the last bolt-hole. If a negotiated armistice did not come within a week there would be a compulsory armistice of complete collapse and universal surrender. That day Germany appointed delegates to sue for peace.
On the 8th, Rawlinson occupied Avesnes and Byng reached the skirts of Maubeuge. The first week of that month of November the weather was wet and chilly, very different from the bright August when British troops had last fought in that region. The old regular forces which in 1914 had then borne the shock of Germany's first fury had mostly disappeared. Many were dead, or prisoners, or crippled for life, and the rest had been dispersed through the whole British army. The famous first five divisions, which had made the Retreat from Mons, were in the main composed of new men. But there were some who had fought steadily from the Sambre to the Marne and back again to the Aisne, and then for four years in bitter trench battles, and had now returned, after our patient fashion, to their old campaigning ground. Even the slow imagination of the British soldier must have been stirred by that strange revisiting. Then he had been marching south in stout-hearted bewilderment, with the German cavalry pricking at his flanks. Now he was sweeping to the north-east on the road to Germany, and far ahead his own cavalry and cyclists were harassing the enemy rout, while on all the eastern roads his aircraft were scattering death.
On the 7th the line of the Scheldt broke. On the 8th Condé fell, and on the 9th the British Guards entered Maubeuge. On the 7th Pershing and the Americans had reached Sedan. On the 10th the British left was approaching Mons, and the centre was close on the Belgian frontier. These were feverish days both for victors and vanquished. Surrender hung in the air, and there was a generous rivalry among the Allies to get as far forward as possible before it came. Take, for example, the 8th Division of the British First Army. On the 10th November one of its battalions, the 2nd Middlesex, travelled for seven hours in buses, and then marched 27 miles, pushing the enemy before them. They wanted to reach the spot near Mons where some of them had fired some of the first British shots in the war; and it is pleasant to record that they succeeded.
The Front in July on the eve of the Allied Offensive, and on the day
of the Armistice, November 11, 1918.
Meantime, in Germany, the revolution had begun. On Saturday the 9th, a republic was declared in Berlin, and throughout the country, in every State, the dynasties fell. On Sunday the 10th, the Emperor left the Army Headquarters at Spa, crossed the Dutch frontier, and sought refuge in a friend's house at Amerongen. The Imperial Crown Prince, like his father, found sanctuary in Holland. The German delegates left Berlin on the afternoon of Wednesday the 6th, and on the 8th met Foch and petitioned for an armistice. They received his terms, and communicated them to Spa and Berlin. On the night of Sunday, 10th November, the terms were accepted, and at 5 o'clock on the morning of Monday, 11th November, the armistice was signed. The acceptance of the terms meant the surrender of Germany to the will of the Allies, for they stripped from her the power of continuing or renewing the war. It was an admission of her utter defeat in the field.
The morning of Monday, 11th November, was cold and foggy, such weather as the year before had been seen at Cambrai. The Allied front was for the most part quiet, only cavalry patrols moving eastwards in touch with the retreat. But at two points there was some activity. The Americans on the Meuse were advancing, and the day opened for them with all the accompaniment of a field action. At Mons, on the Sunday night, the Canadians were in position round the place, fighting continued during the night, and at dawn the 3rd Canadian Division entered the streets and established a line east of the town, while the carillons of the belfries played "Tipperary." For Britain the circle was now complete. In three months her armies had gained seven victories, each greater than any in her old wars; they had taken some 190,000 prisoners and 3,000 guns, and they had broken the heart of their enemy. To their great sweep from Amiens to Mons was due especially the triumph which Foch had won, and on that grey November morning their worn ranks could await the final hour with thankfulness and pride.
The minutes passed slowly along the front. An occasional shell, an occasional burst of fire, told that peace was not yet, but there were long spells of quiet, save in the American area. Officers had their watches in their hands, and the troops waited with the same grave composure with which they had fought. Men were too weary for their imaginations to rise to the great moment, for it is not at the time of a crisis, but long afterwards, that the human mind grasps the drama. Suddenly, as the watch-hands touched 11, there came a second of expectant silence, and then a curious rippling sound which observers, far behind the front, likened to the noise of a great wind. It was the sound of men cheering from the Vosges to the sea.
CHAPTER XXXII.
LOOKING BACKWARD.
The greatness of the contest is not easy to realize, for it was so much the hugest war ever fought in the history of humanity that comparative tests fail us. During its four years it took from the world a far heavier toll of life and wealth than a century of the old Barbarian invasions had done. More than 8,000,000 men died in battle, and the casualties on all fronts were over 30,000,000. If we add deaths from disease and famine it cannot have cost the population of the globe less than 20,000,000 dead, and as many more maimed and weakened for life. At least 40,000 millions sterling of money were spent by the nations in the direct business of war. Let it be remembered that this devastation was wrought not in the loose society of an elder world, but in one where each state was a highly-developed thing, and depended for some necessaries upon its neighbour, and where myriads of human souls could only support life so
