but the idea of a hutment in that district never came off. As, however, I hold that nobody can know a district se well as a master of hounds, I wired to the M.F.H. of the Bedale to meet me and some representatives of the General and Medical Staffs at Ripon, and we spent a few days examining the country between that little cathedral town and Richmond. I had the plans ready for Lord Kitchener in a few days, and he agreed to our trying "an Aldershot in the north," near Richmond, at the camp now called Catteriok, where the huts are all built of concrete, and the whole town of 40,000 men (2 divisions) is self-contained, i.e., with its own water supply, sewage soheme, electric light, hospital, railway, roads, and two churches (subsoribed for by the Yorkshire people). At Ripon, a little town normally of some 8000, the presence of a military camp of 40,000 must have been rather startling; but the problem there was not so complex as at Richmond, for many of the accessories, e.g., roads and water supply, already existed. The cost of the latter was little more than the former. Meantime in France our troops were badly in need of engineer stores and of labour. We sent over during the winter 1914-15 about 40,000 pumps of sorts to help to keep the trenches reasonably dry, and the vast quantity of loopholed plates, barbed wire, timber, steel joists, corrugated - iron sheets, and a host of other things, is beyond the power of my pen to describe. There was no executive control, however, and soon this want had to be remedied. Lord Kitchener's proposals of 1911, which were modest beginnings of the solution, were carried into effect, and proper system of superintendence was inaugurated. Pioneer battalions, on the system adopted in India, were authorised for each division, and proved most valuable. Field engineers and assistant field engineers, also an Indian arrangement, were appointed. These were officers of praotioal experience, either civil or military engineers, who were not attached to units, but had the task of executing works-roads, water supplies, defences, &c.-by civil labour. Most valuable work was done by these officers in all parts of the theatre of war. A proper system of Was also supply of stores worked out, and was working admirably when I was in France in the autumn of of 1915. In the summer 1915, labour battalions were recruited in England from navvies employed on our These large public works. were men too old to be enlisted in the fighting units, They were not supposed to be taken over fifty-five (I quote from memory and may be wrong), but there were certainly many over sixty. were civil All the officers engineers, architects, surveyor in some ers, cognate profession, These also did More danadmirable work. gerous work, however, was was both of local resources and done by the miners, or Tun- those which were sent out nelling Companies, as they from home. Lord Kitchener were called, raised first by asked me te name some special the energy of Colonel Sir officer of energy, and experiJohn Norton Griffiths, M.P. ence in fighting, who could go These were all officered by to the Dardanelles and advise mining engineers, and the as to their field defences there. men were miners, from our coal I named one who was then in districts chiefly. Then there France, but who at the outwere quarrying companies for break of the war was in the working the French quarries, Sudan, and had special experiland drainage companies from enoe among Eastern peoplesthe Fen districts, who, in the an experience which at once second winter of the war, took appealed to Kitchener. He in hand the drainage all round told me to see that orders Armentières and Givenchy, and were sent to this officer, and forestry companies, whe tackled he also directed that I should the difficult problem of supply- arrange for a depot for all ing timber. These, and many engineer stores at Alexandria, other specialists, gradually so that any demands from came into being as the war forces operating in the Eastprogressed, during Lord Kit- ern Mediterranean, or even in chener's rule. East Africa, might be supplied from there. This was a very useful move, and it bore fruit for the rest of the war. The Dardanelles work presented very special difficulty, both because it could not be foreseen what the nature of the operations would be, and also because few if any of the engineers employed some coming from India, some from other colonies, and some from England-had any experience of modern warfare as it had developed in France. Lord Kitchener at once put his finger on this weak spot, and before he left for his memorable visit to Gallipoli, he sent for me to discuss the matter. I had just returned from some weeks in France, where I had gone, at the time of the battle of Loos, to consider the whole question of engineering in the field, and where I found that our people were making most thorough and excellent use The officer sent to the Dardanelles never landed there, for by the time he was due Lord Kitchener had decided to withdraw, and to have a defensive line made about six miles to the east of the Suez Canal, so this officer's services were retained for that task. Meantime a telegram was sent to us at home to send out engineer stores for a complete line of redoubts, &c., in the desert, covering the Canal, a demand which we were able to work out and comply with at once, except in two important particulars-viz., light railways and water-supply pipes. As regards the former, the material W88 already in Egypt by a curious combina Sir George Arthur tells us that the large water - main which was subsequently laid across the desert to the borders of Palestine was Lord Kitchener's scheme also. It may be so, and is quite in accordance with the far-reaching nature of his great mind. But it was not until after his death-I think about August 1916that the matter was first referred to me, in a private letter from the G.O.C., Egypt, asking if I thought we could possibly get the pipes-12 inches in diameter, and some ninety miles of them-and the pumps. We were able to get them from America, and the whole colossal scheme was successfully carried out, so that in February 1917 the Nile water flowed into Palestine. This, however, belongs to that part of the war history which came later. tion of circumstances. Early Persia about that time, posin the war a Siege Com- sibly by mistake. The conmittee sat at the War Office signment arrived all right; (as related in Lord Kitchener's and the whole line of defences Life, when dealing with the was rapidly complete early in question of siege artillery). 1916, the first step towards This committee recommended the great defeat of the enemy the immediate purchase of on that front. many engineering stores and plant-among other things, 100 miles of light railway, many petrol-driven locomotives, and other rolling stockand these were purchased at once. However, for some reason best known to himself, the Q.M.G. would not use this light railway in France, and so we sent it out with all its rolling stook to Egypt, where we felt sure that, sooner or later, it would come in useful. And undoubtedly it saved the situation there. The supply of water-pipes and pumps was not so easy. We needed over 100 miles of pipes 4 inches in diameter, and they had to be of steel with special joints, for the ordinary cast-iron pipes which we use in England would be too brittle and take far too long to put down. Now at that time all the available steel pipes in England were being sent to France (where in the Somme battlefield alone 120 miles were put down), and the supply for Egypt was a serious problem. We got some from Karachi and Bombay, some from Rotter dam; I saw very little of Lord Kitchener after his return from the East, for I was much away from the War Office in the early months of 1916-partly in France, looking into questions of bridges for the hoped-for advance, and also into matters connected with the huge water-supply problems which were expected in the Somme fighting. I was also at Paris, discussing with some of my colleagues and with the French authorities ques tions about quarries and forests, at the French War Office. On return home, the progress of the East Coast defences was such that I was necessarily often at the Humber and the Forth, though by that time the chances of hostile naval attack were becoming less and less. It was, therefore, not in London that the terrible, the incredible, news came to me that he, the great leader, had fallen. We were fain to comfort ourselves with the thought that he had done his work, and that it could now be safely left to others. But looking back, one sees that the calamity was far worse than we then imagined. The New Armies that he had created came brilliantly into action at the Somme, as indeed some of them had done before at Loos. News from Egypt counterbalanced the serious reverses at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia. And so the autumn passed, and then with October came the wettest season and coldest winter-the dark and sorrowful winter of 1916-17. Then we began to realise our loss. He had come like a wind from the east, keen, sharp, and penetrating, but wholesome and invigorating, among fogs and miasma, And in that winter the fog began to creep over us again. Readers of Queen Victoria's letters will remember how she insisted on the plans and schemes of large important works being submitted to her, how she chafed at Lord Palmerston for his delay about Netley Hospital, and how she urged Lord Herbert to bring her plans of the cavalry barracks at Aldershot. I have seen plans of even minor forts bearing Her Majesty's signature. Such centralisation is of course to be deprecated, and no one would now think of adding this task to the huge burden already borne by the sovereign. But it seems as if we have now gone to the other extreme. Except to Lord Kitchener, I have never had to show or explain to any Secretary of State any of the large works or plans carried out under my orders, nor have I been ordered to attend for this purpose any meeting of the Army Council. Some seventy years ago Professor Tyndall seriously recom. mended that every candidate for Parliament should pass a qualifying examination in natural science. As we all know, our legislators, our budding Cabinet Ministers, our future Secretaries of State and guardians of the public purse, pass no such examination— their sole qualification being their ability to talk, vox et præterea nihil. Why this should be a preliminary requisite to administrative power is one of the anomalies of our constitution, and is a tribute to our national power of "muddling through.' But when we do get a man of deeds and science, not of words, his worth is incalculable. Of the six Seoretaries of of Great Diana of the Ephesians-the political party in power. State for War under whom I its value in votes in the House, served, one was Lord Kitchener, and its effect on the fortunes one was the genial nobleman afterwards in charge of British interests in Paris, and the remaining four were lawyers, very distinguished statesmen no doubt, but imbued with the legal frame of mind which, in administrative affairs, is so apt to regard each question not on its intrinsic merits, but in the light of its effect upon the judge and jury; in other words, When one has to serve under a man like Lord Kitchener, after experience of the others, it is all the difference between light and darkness, between clear strong guidance from above, and wild extravagant ventures like those which came to light at Loch Doon and Chippenham. |