A Visit to Three Fronts, June 1916 - Arthur Conan Doyle (best novels in english .TXT) 📗

first breach

at Verdun, what chance was there for Paris? Those few weeks of warning

and preparation saved France, and left Germany as she now is, like a

weary and furious bull, tethered fast in the place of trespass and

waiting for the inevitable pole-axe.

 

We were glad to get out of the place, for the gloom of it lay as heavy

upon our hearts as the shrapnel helmets did upon our heads. Both were

lightened as we sped back past empty and shattered villas to where,

just behind the danger line, the normal life of rural Flanders was

carrying on as usual. A merry sight helped to cheer us, for scudding

down wind above our heads came a Boche aeroplane, with two British at

her tail barking away with their machine guns, like two swift terriers

after a cat. They shot rat-tat-tatting across the sky until we lost

sight of them in the heat haze over the German line.

 

*

 

The afternoon saw us on the Sharpenburg, from which many a million will

gaze in days to come, for from no other point can so much be seen. It

is a spot forbid, but a special permit took us up, and the sentry on

duty, having satisfied himself of our bona fides, proceeded to tell us

tales of the war in a pure Hull dialect which might have been Chinese

for all that I could understand. That he was a ‘terrier’ and had nine

children were the only facts I could lay hold of. But I wished to be

silent and to think—even, perhaps, to pray. Here, just below my feet,

were the spots which our dear lads, three of them my own kith, have

sanctified with their blood. Here, fighting for the freedom of the

world, they cheerily gave their all. On that sloping meadow to the left

of the row of houses on the opposite ridge the London Scottish fought

to the death on that grim November morning when the Bavarians reeled

back from their shot-torn line. That plain away on the other side of

Ypres was the place where the three grand Canadian brigades, first of

all men, stood up to the damnable cowardly gases of the Hun. Down

yonder is Hill 60, that blood-soaked kopje. The ridge over the fields

was held by the cavalry against two army corps, and there where the sun

strikes the red roof among the trees I can just see Gheluveld, a name

for ever to be associated with Haig and the most vital battle of the

war. As I turn away I am faced by my Hull Territorial, who still says

incomprehensible things. I look at him with other eyes. He has fought

on yonder plain. He has slain Huns, and he has nine children. Could any

one better epitomise the duties of a good citizen? I could have found

it in my heart to salute him had I not known that it would have shocked

him and made him unhappy.

 

It has been a full day, and the next is even fuller, for it is my

privilege to lunch at Headquarters, and to make the acquaintance of the

Commander-in-chief and of his staff. It would be an invasion of private

hospitality if I were to give the public the impressions which I

carried from that charming ch�teau. I am the more sorry, since they

were very vivid and strong. This much I will say—and any man who is a

face reader will not need to have it said—that if the Army stands

still it is not by the will of its commander. There will, I swear, be

no happier man in Europe when the day has come and the hour. It is

human to err, but never possibly can some types err by being backward.

We have a superb army in France. It needs the right leader to handle

it. I came away happier and more confident than ever as to the future.

 

Extraordinary are the contrasts of war. Within three hours of leaving

the quiet atmosphere of the Headquarters Ch�teau I was present at what

in any other war would have been looked upon as a brisk engagement. As

it was it would certainly figure in one of our desiccated reports as an

activity of the artillery. The noise as we struck the line at this new

point showed that the matter was serious, and, indeed, we had chosen

the spot because it had been the storm centre of the last week. The

method of approach chosen by our experienced guide was in itself a

tribute to the gravity of the affair. As one comes from the settled

order of Flanders into the actual scene of war, the first sign of it is

one of the stationary, sausage-shaped balloons, a chain of which marks

the ring in which the great wrestlers are locked. We pass under this,

ascend a hill, and find ourselves in a garden where for a year no feet

save those of wanderers like ourselves have stood. There is a wild,

confused luxuriance of growth more beautiful to my eye than anything

which the care of man can produce. One old shell-hole of vast diameter

has filled itself with forget-me-nots, and appears as a graceful basin

of light blue flowers, held up as an atonement to heaven for the

brutalities of man. Through the tangled bushes we creep, then across a

yard—‘Please stoop and run as you pass this point’—and finally to a

small opening in a wall, whence the battle lies not so much before as

beside us. For a moment we have a front seat at the great world-drama,

God’s own problem play, working surely to its magnificent end. One

feels a sort of shame to crouch here in comfort, a useless spectator,

while brave men down yonder are facing that pelting shower of iron.

 

*

 

There is a large field on our left rear, and the German gunners have

the idea that there is a concealed battery therein. They are

systematically searching for it. A great shell explodes in the top

corner, but gets nothing more solid than a few tons of clay. You can

read the mind of Gunner Fritz. ‘Try the lower corner!’ says he, and up

goes the earth-cloud once again. ‘Perhaps it’s hid about the middle.

I’ll try.’ Earth again, and nothing more. ‘I believe I was right the

first time after all,’ says hopeful Fritz. So another shell comes into

the top corner. The field is as full of pits as a Gruy�re cheese, but

Fritz gets nothing by his perseverance. Perhaps there never was a

battery there at all. One effect he obviously did attain. He made

several other British batteries exceedingly angry. ‘Stop that tickling,

Fritz!’ was the burden of their cry. Where they were we could no more

see than Fritz could, but their constant work was very clear along the

German line. We appeared to be using more shrapnel and the Germans more

high explosives, but that may have been just the chance of the day. The

Vimy Ridge was on our right, and before us was the old French position,

with the labyrinth of terrible memories and the long hill of Lorette.

When, last year, the French, in a three weeks’ battle, fought their way

up that hill, it was an exhibition of sustained courage which even

their military annals can seldom have beaten.

 

And so I turn from the British line. Another and more distant task lies

before me. I come away with the deep sense of the difficult task which

lies before the Army, but with a deeper one of the ability of these men

to do all that soldiers can ever be asked to perform. Let the guns

clear the way for the infantry, and the rest will follow. It all lies

with the guns. But the guns, in turn, depend upon our splendid workers

at home, who, men and women, are doing so grandly. Let them not be

judged by a tiny minority, who are given, perhaps, too much attention

in our journals. We have all made sacrifices in the war, but when the

full story comes to be told, perhaps the greatest sacrifice of all is

that which Labour made when, with a sigh, she laid aside that which it

had taken so many weary years to build.

 

A GLIMPSE OF THE ITALIAN ARMY

 

One meets with such extreme kindness and consideration among the

Italians that there is a real danger lest one’s personal feeling of

obligation should warp one’s judgment or hamper one’s expression.

Making every possible allowance for this, I come away from them, after

a very wide if superficial view of all that they are doing, with a deep

feeling of admiration and a conviction that no army in the world could

have made a braver attempt to advance under conditions of extraordinary

difficulty.

 

First a word as to the Italian soldier. He is a type by himself which

differs from the earnest solidarity of the new French army, and from

the businesslike alertness of the Briton, and yet has a very special

dash and fire of its own, covered over by a very pleasing and

unassuming manner. London has not yet forgotten Durando of Marathon

fame. He was just such another easy smiling youth as I now see

everywhere around me. Yet there came a day when a hundred thousand

Londoners hung upon his every movement—when strong men gasped and

women wept at his invincible but unavailing spirit. When he had fallen

senseless in that historic race on the very threshold of his goal, so

high was the determination within him, that while he floundered on the

track like a broken-backed horse, with the senses gone out of him, his

legs still continued to drum upon the cinder path. Then when by pure

will power he staggered to his feet and drove his dazed body across the

line, it was an exhibition of pluck which put the little sunburned

baker straightway among London’s heroes. Durando’s spirit is alive

to-day, I see thousands of him all around me. A thousand such, led by a

few young gentlemen of the type who occasionally give us object lessons

in how to ride at Olympia, make no mean battalion. It has been a war

of most desperate ventures, but never once has there been a lack of

volunteers. The Tyrolese are good men—too good to be fighting in so

rotten a cause. But from first to last the Alpini have had the

ascendency in the hill fighting, as the line regiments have against the

Kaiserlics upon the plain. Caesar told how the big Germans used to

laugh at his little men until they had been at handgrips with them. The

Austrians could tell the same tale. The spirit in the ranks is

something marvellous. There have been occasions when every officer has

fallen and yet the men have pushed on, have taken a position and then

waited for official directions.

 

But if that is so, you will ask, why is it that they have not made more

impression upon the enemy’s position? The answer lies in the

strategical position of Italy, and it can be discussed without any

technicalities. A child could understand it. The Alps form such a bar

across the north that there are only two points where serious

operations are possible. One is the Trentino Salient where Austria can

always threaten and invade Italy. She lies in the mountains with the

plains beneath her. She can always invade the plain, but the Italians

cannot seriously invade the mountains, since the passes would only lead

to other mountains beyond. Therefore their only possible policy is to

hold the Austrians back. This they have most successfully done, and

though the Austrians