WHAT GREAT BRITAIN IS DOING 



207 



war, has triumphantly fulfilled its main 

 purpose, that of preventing the publica- 

 tion of any news which might be of use 

 to the enemy; and if Americans will 

 quietly sit down and imagine the entire 

 American press muzzled into a similar 

 innocuousness they will begin to appre- 

 ciate at least one of the many hundred 

 problems that the British Government has 

 had to solve. The censorship of the mails 

 is another masterpiece of organization. 



Certainly the civilian, English or Amer- 

 ican, who visits the British front these 

 days and who realizes that every man and 

 every ounce of stores and every pound 

 of equipment, and, indeed, the whole 

 army and all it eats and wears and uses, 

 and the weapons wherewith it fights, have 

 been brought there after two railway 

 journeys and one sea journey, involving 

 at least four and possibly six changes 

 and transshipments, becomes just a little 

 tired when he hears the British accused 

 of inefficiency. And the longer he ex- 

 plores the bases and takes in the perfec- 

 tion of all the arrangements for feeding, 

 supplying, and nursing these tremendous 

 hosts and for making good the casualties 

 to material, the more he perceives that 

 Great Britain is winning this war by the 

 rapidity and completeness with which 

 she has thrown overboard all the slouchy 

 standards of peace. 



"everything we have is yours" 



And when I say Great Britain I mean, 

 of course, not the men and women of the 

 United Kingdom only, but all British sub- 

 jects everywhere. The rally of the Em- 

 pire to the side of the motherland has, 

 indeed, been one of the most marvelous 

 and one of the most momentous episodes 

 of the war. 



Wherever the British flag waves, in 

 places the ordinary Englishman has 

 barely heard of, among peoples of whom 

 he knows next to nothing there is today, 

 as there has been since the war began, 

 but one impulse and one resolve. From 

 the 450,000,000 British subjects, infinitely 

 varied in speech and creed and color, in 

 habits and geographical distribution, in 

 economic circumstances and pursuits, 

 there breathes the single intense determi- 



nation to persist in this struggle till vic- 

 tory has crowned our united arms. 



The world has never seen anything like 

 it. The Crusades bore but the faintest 

 resemblance to this spontaneous rising of 

 the free communities, scattered over the 

 seven seas, on behalf of a cause that pas- 

 sionately appeals to their sense of right. 

 The poet's prayer has been answered. 

 "In the day of Armageddon, at the last 

 great fight of all," it has been proved that 

 "our house stands together and the pillars 

 do not fall." The Prussians always knew 

 that at the touch of war the British Em- 

 pire would rise. They were quite right. 

 It has risen. But not precisely in the way 

 they expected. 



When the storm gathered, the Domin- 

 ions said with one voice : "Whatever hap- 

 pens, we are with you." When it burst, 

 they said : "Everything we have is yours." 



Canada proposed sending an expedi- 

 tionary force two days before war was 

 declared. Australia put the Australian 

 navy and 20,000 men at the complete dis- 

 posal of the home government. New 

 Zealand, five days before the war broke 

 out, declared her intention to send her 

 utmost quota of help in support of the 

 Empire. South Africa at once assumed, 

 and very brilliantly carried out, full re- 

 sponsibility for her own defense. New- 

 foundland engaged on the spot to meet 

 all the local expenses of raising 1,000 

 men for the naval reserve. 



MARVELOUS GIFTS EROM INDIA 



As for India, a veritable tidal wave of 

 loyalty and sacrifice swept from the Him- 

 alayas to Cape Comorin. The rulers of 

 the native States, nearly 700 in all, of- 

 fered the King-Emperor their personal 

 services and their local resources. There 

 are 27 States in India that maintain Im- 

 perial service troops. One and all of 

 these corps were literally flung at the 

 head of the Viceroy. 



Money, jewelry, horses and camels and 

 men poured in upon the government. 

 The Dalai Lama of Tibet offered 1,000 

 troops. The chiefs of the frontier tribes 

 pressed their services. Sir Pertab Singh, 

 though in his seventieth year, would take 

 no denial, and his spirit was the spirit of 

 all the diverse millions in the dependency. 



