but the War Office expected it. The natural result followed: recruiting offices were simply "snowed under" with men, and for weeks we saw the most amazing chaos. The flood of men could neither be equipped nor housed, nor trained, and confusion reigned supreme. We had an endless series of scandals at camps, into which I do not propose to enter: probably, with all the goodwill in the world, they were unavoidable. Still the flood of men poured in. The War Office grew desperate. It was, clearly, beyond the capacity of the organisation to handle the mass of recruits, and then the War Office committed perhaps its greatest blunder. Unable to accept more men, it raised the physical standard for recruits. No one seems to have conceived the idea that it would have been better to take the names of the men and call them up as they were needed. Naturally the public seized upon the idea that enough men had been obtained, and there was an instant slump in recruiting which, despite the most strenuous of advertising campaigns—carried out on the methods of a vendor of patent medicines—has, unfortunately, not yet been overcome.
Following, came a period of unexampled chaos at the training-centres. Badly lodged, badly fed, clothed in ragged odds and ends of "uniforms," without rifles or bayonets, it is simply a marvel that the men stuck to their duty, and it is surely a glowing testimony to their genuine patriotism. I do not wish to rake up old scandals, and I am not going to indulge in carping criticism of the authorities because they were not able to handle matters with absolute smoothness when, each week, they were getting very nearly a year's normal supply of recruits. Confusion and chaos were bound to be, and I think the men—on the whole—realised the difficulties, and made the best of a very trying situation. But they were Britons! My object is simply to show how serious was our peril through our unpreparedness. If our enemy, in that time of preparation, could have struck a blow directly at us, we must, inevitably, have gone under in utter ruin. Happily, our star was in the ascendant. The magnificent heroism of Belgium, the noble recovery of the French nation after their first disastrous surprise, the unexampled valour of our Army, and the silent pressure of the Navy, saved us from the peril that encompassed us. Once again we had "muddled through" perhaps the worst part of our task.
No one can yet say that we are safe. This war is very far indeed from being won, for there is yet much to do, and many grave perils still threaten us. It is, perhaps, small consolation to know that most of the perils we brought upon ourselves by our persistent and foolish refusal to face plain and obvious facts: by our toleration of so-called statesmen who, fascinated by the Kaiser's glib talk, came very near to betraying England by their refusal to tell the country the truth, or even, without telling the country, to make adequate preparations to meet a danger which had been foreseen by every Chancellory in Europe for years past. It can never be said that we were not warned, plainly and unmistakably. The report of the amazing speech of the Kaiser, which I have recorded elsewhere, I placed in the hands of the British Secret Service as early as 1908, and the fact that it had been delivered was soon abundantly verified by confidential inquiries in official circles in Berlin. Yet, with the knowledge of that speech before them, Ministers could still be found to assure us that Germany was our firm and devoted friend!
The Kaiser, in the course of the secret speech in question, openly outlined his policy and said:
"Our plans have been most carefully laid and prepared by our General Staff. Preparations have been made to convey at a word a German army of invasion of a strength able to cope with any and all the troops that Great Britain can muster against us. It is too early yet to fix the exact date when the blow shall be struck, but I will say this: that we shall strike as soon as I have a sufficiently large fleet of Zeppelins at my disposal. I have given orders for the hurried construction of more airships of the improved Zeppelin type, and when these are ready we shall destroy England's North Sea, Channel, and Atlantic fleets, after which nothing on earth can prevent the landing of our army on British soil and its triumphal march to London.
"You will desire to know how the outbreak of hostilities will be brought about. I can assure you on this point. Certainly we shall not have to go far to find a just cause for war. My army of spies, scattered over Great Britain and France, as it is over North and South America, as well as all the other parts of the world where German interests may come to a clash with a foreign Power, will take good care of that. I have issued already some time since secret orders that will at the proper moment accomplish what we desire.
"I shall not rest and be satisfied until all the countries and territories that once were German, or where greater numbers of my former subjects now live, have become a part of the great mother country, acknowledging me as their supreme lord in war and peace. Even now I rule supreme in the United States, where almost one-half of the population is either of German birth or of German descent, and where three million German voters do my bidding at the Presidential elections. No American Administration could remain in power against the will of the German voters, who … control the destinies of the vast Republic beyond the sea.
"I have secured a strong foothold for Germany in the Near East, and when the Turkish 'pilaf' pie will be partitioned, Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine—in short, the overland route to India—will become our property. But to obtain this we must first crush England and France."
And, in the face of those words, we still went on money-grubbing and pleasure-seeking!
If ever the British Empire, following other great Empires of the past, plunges downward to rack and ruin, we may rest assured that the reason will be our reliance on our ancient and stereotyped policy of "muddling through."
I am glad to think that in the conduct of the present campaign we have been spared those scandals of the baser type which, in the past, have been such an unsavoury feature of almost every great war in which we have been engaged. Minor instances of fraud and peculation, of supplying doubtful food, etc., have no doubt occurred. Human nature being what it is, it could hardly be expected that we could raise, train, equip, and supply an army numbered by millions without some unscrupulous and unpatriotic individuals seizing the opportunity to line their pockets by unlawful means. We hear occasional stories of huts unfit for human habitation, of food in camp hardly fit for human consumption. On the whole, however, it is cordially agreed—and it is only fair to say—that there has been an entire absence of the shocking scandals of the type which revolted the nation during the Crimean campaign. Much has been said about the War Office arrangement with Mr. Meyer for the purchase of timber. But the main allegation, even in this case, is that the War Office made an exceedingly bad and foolish bargain, and Mr. Meyer an exceedingly good one. Indeed it is not even suggested that the transaction involved anything in the nature of fraud. It seems rather to be a plea that the purely commercial side of war would be infinitely better conducted by committees of able business men than by permanent officials of the War Office, who are, after all, not very commercial.
Undoubtedly this is true. We should be spared a good deal of the muddling and waste involved in our wars if, on the outbreak of hostilities, the War Office promptly asked the leading business men of the community to form committees and take over and manage for the benefit of the nation the purely commercial branches of the work. Yet I suppose, under our system of government, such an obvious common-sense procedure as this could hardly be hoped for. We continue to leave vast commercial undertakings in the hands of the men who are not bred in business, with the result that money is wasted by millions, and so are lucky if we are not swindled on a gigantic scale by the unscrupulous contractors. It is usually in an army's food and clothing that scandals of this nature are revealed, and it is only just to the War Office to say that in this campaign, for once, food has been good and clothing fair.
Most of our muddling, so far, has been of a nature tending to prolong the duration of the war. Our persistent policy of unreadiness has simply meant that for four, five, or six long months we have not been ready to take the field with the forces imperatively necessary if the Germans are to be hurled, neck and crop, out of Belgium and France across the Rhine, and their country finally occupied and subjugated.
Already another new and graver peril is threatening us—the peril of a premature
