WHAT GREAT BRITAIN IS DOING 



209 



was going on. And before conscription 

 came into force in May of last year — 

 that is, before the war was two years 

 old — 5,000,000 men, or more than 11 per 

 cent of the total population of the British 

 Isles, had volunteered. 



If Americans will imagine themselves 

 raising a volunteer army of 11,500,000 

 men — which is what they would have to 

 do to parallel the British achievement — 

 they will get some idea of the magnitude 

 of what has been accomplished. Alto- 

 gether it seems probable that at least 

 6,500,000, and possibly 7,000,000, men of 

 the United Kingdom will have served 

 with the colors before the war is over. 



Our old army that formed the expedi- 

 tionary force to France ; that covered it- 

 self with credit during the retreat from 

 Mons; that helped to save the French 

 forces from being outflanked, and that 

 "barred the way to Calais against a Ger- 

 man army that outnumbered it by more 

 than four to one, was, I suppose, one of 

 the most wonderful military instruments 

 that has ever been fashioned. 



A DEMOCRATIC ARMY 



But it was a profession, a caste, apart. 

 The new armies, however, are not a caste ; 

 they are the nation itself. They are 

 •drawn from every class and trade and 

 profession in the Kingdom, and they 

 proved conclusively on the Somme that 

 they could beat the Germans at their own 

 game. 



They gave the German army such a 

 mauling as seldom any army has ever re- 

 ceived since warfare first began. The 

 hattle of the Somme was not only by far 

 the biggest battle of the war ; in duration, 

 in the numbers engaged, and in the in- 

 tensity of the artillery fire it was the big- 

 gest battle the world has yet seen. Some 

 750,000 of the enemy were put out of 

 action before it ended. Our troops cap- 

 tured position after position, each one 

 stronger than any the Germans have 

 taken since the beginning of the war. 



They made "the blood bath of the 

 Somme" a name of terror throughout the 

 fatherland, charged with horror no less 

 -deep than that of Verdun. They com- 

 pelled the greatest retreat that it has so 

 far fallen upon the German troops to 



execute. They pounded the heart out of 

 them, and they have followed the enemy 

 to his new lines with a definite conviction 

 that they have at last the upper hand. 



But our men who are thus helping to 

 wear down the most formidable foe that 

 has ever assaulted the freedom of Eu- 

 rope, who have captured Bagdad, and are 

 contributing to end Turkish rule in Asia 

 Minor ; who have mopped up the German 

 colonies, while preserving intact the in- 

 tegrity of all British possessions, and who 

 are holding up their end in the difficult 

 warfare of the Balkans — these men are 

 something more than the backbone of 

 Britain during the struggle. They will 

 be its backbone also in the hardly less 

 anxious years of peace. They will be the 

 pivot of the new England that is being 

 forged in the furnace of the war. 



LESSONS OE THE WAR 



And that new England is a very dif- 

 ferent country from the old one. A po- 

 litical democracy we have long been. A 

 social democracy before the war we were 

 not. But we are now. Some six or seven 

 million men, as I have said, have mingled 

 with one another ; have learned to under- 

 stand and sympathize with one another 

 in the new armies ; have been trained into 

 an equal brotherhood in the severest 

 school of courage, efficiency, and disci- 

 pline ; have had most of the nonsense of 

 social distinctions knocked out of them. 



Gone is the vicious consideration that 

 wealth has always claimed and received 

 in the plump security of the British Isles. 

 Duke's son and cook's son are fighting 

 shoulder to shoulder; great ladies do the 

 waiting in the soldiers' refreshment buf- 

 fets ; work like sewing maids in the Red 

 Cross arsenals ; like factory hands in the 

 munition works ; a shop walker and a 

 grocer's assistant wear the Victoria 

 Cross — the new patent of nobility ; for 

 the convalescent wounded there is a 

 boundless outpouring of hospitality and 

 affection, free from the remotest tinge of 

 condescension ; the impulse to succor, to 

 link hands, to know and understand one 

 another, is universal. 



We have learned from this war, and 

 perhaps nothing else could have taught 

 us, the nobility of sacrifice and of work. 



