George Tomkyns Chesney

“ Ireland independent and in perpetual anarchy and revolution. When I look at my country as it is now—its trade gone, its factories silent, its harbours empty, a prey to pauperism and decay—when I see all this, and think what Great Britain was in my youth, I ask myself whether I have really a heart or any sense of patriotism that I should have witnessed such degradation and still care to live! ”

“ Even you, who have never known what it is to live otherwise than on sufferance, even your cheeks burn when we talk of these days; think, then, what those endured who, like your grandfather, had been citizens of the proudest nation on earth, which had never known disgrace or defeat, and whose boast it used to be that they bore a flag on which the sun never set! ”

“ Our unconquered fleet, after the tradition of four centuries, is still “looking for the enemy.” [Pg xvi] All around us, as we write, is evidence that this nation is bracing herself for a new and stupendous effort of courage, perhaps of imaginative strategy, and even Weltpolitik which will in startling fashion bring the forces of half the world to meet and crush a world-menacing peril, and place our England, the mistress of the seas, on a pinnacle where she will be justified of all her patriotic children, counsellors, critics and heroes alike. ”

“ It is scarcely necessary to urge in reply that France, if not the one great continental nation, is the one great people of parallel and contemporary development to our own, our comrade, our rival, our nearest social (if not racial) kin, and that, spite of all her decadence and even degradation, upon the arena of Europe she stands for Humanity and Civilization against Absolutism and Brute Force. ”

“ To be at war with the countrymen of Schumann and Beethoven, of Goethe and Ranke, is not that an affliction to the very soul of England, an outrage to feelings and instincts tangled up with the very core of our civilization? ”

“ And yet, if ever a nation had a plain warning, we had. If we were the greatest trading country, our neighbours were the leading military power in Europe. They were driving a good trade, too, for this was before their foolish communism (about which you will hear when you are older) had ruined the rich without benefiting the poor, and they were in many respects the first nation in Europe; but it was on their army that they prided themselves most. ”

“ True the handicaps of the invasion of August, 1871, are heavily piled upon the losing combatant. Not only the eternal Anglo-Irish trouble (so easily mistaken by the foreigner for such a difference as might be found separating two other countries) but complications with America, as well as the common form seduction of the British fleet to the Dardanelles, a general unreadiness of all administrative departments, and a deep distrust of the “volunteer” movement, involve the whole drama in an atmosphere of profound pessimism. ”

“ If only an inhuman pride could be free from uneasiness at such a moment, at least warm encouragement comes to us ab extra. Whatever our weaknesses now, our sins or blunders in the past, no historian will question the motive, nay, the severe moral effort with which the English nation enters upon this war of the ages.
It is scarcely conceivable that any people could be called upon to make a greater or more sudden exhibition of—their peculiar qualities. ”

“ There were plenty of waggons of all sorts, but hardly any horses to draw them, and the whole place was blocked up; while, to add to the confusion, a regular exodus had taken place of the people from the town, who had been warned that it was likely to be the scene of fighting. Ladies and women of all sorts and ages, and children, some with bundles, some empty-handed, were seeking places in the train, but there appeared no one on the spot authorized to grant them, and these poor creatures were pushing their way up and down, vainly asking for information and permission to get away. ”

“ A nation too selfish to defend its liberty, could not have been fit to retain it. To you, my grandchildren, who are now going to seek a new home in a more prosperous land, let not this bitter lesson be lost upon you in the country of your adoption. ”

“ Apparently the enemy had received a check, for we were here exhorted to resistance. An impregnable position was to be taken up along the Downs, a force was concentrating there far outnumbering the rash invaders, who, with an invincible line before them, and the sea behind, had no choice between destruction or surrender. Let there be no pusillanimous talk of negotiation, the fight must be fought out; and there could be but one issue. England, expectant but calm, awaited with confidence the result of the attack on its unconquerable volunteers. ”

“ But an impulsive nation egged on the Government who, confident that our old luck would pull us through, at once declare war. The fleet, trying to close with the enemy, is destroyed in “a few minutes” by the “deadly engines” left behind by the evasive enemy; our amateurish armies are defeated on our own soil, and voilà tout. ”

“ I remember feeling something like a blow just when we lost the lane, but the wound passed unnoticed till now, when the bleeding had stopped and the shirt was sticking to the wound.
This half-hour seemed an age, and while we stood on this knoll the endless tramp of men and rumbling of carts along the downs beside us told their own tale. The whole army was falling back. At last we could discern the adjutant riding up to us out of the dark. The army was to retreat and take up a position on Epsom Downs, he said; we should join in the march, and try and find our brigade in the morning ”

“ But now your wounds must be cared for; how pale and faint you look!—rest here a moment,”—and, descending to the dining-room, she returned with some wine, which I gratefully drank, and then, making me sit down on the top step of the stairs, she brought water and linen, and, cutting off the sleeve of my coat, bathed and bandaged my wounds. ’Twas I who felt selfish for thus adding to her troubles; but in truth I was too weak to have much will left, and stood in need of the help which she forced me to accept; and the dressing of my wounds afforded indescribable relief. ”

“ After the first stand in line, and when once they had got us on the march, the enemy laughed at us. Our handful of regular troops was sacrificed almost to a man in a vain conflict with numbers; our volunteers and militia, with officers who did not know their work, without ammunition or equipment, or staff to superintend, starving in the midst of plenty, we had soon become a helpless mob, fighting desperately here and there, but with whom, as a [Pg 92] manœuvring army, the disciplined invaders did just what they pleased. ”

“ And as we raised the world against her, when dominated by the tyrannous egoism of Bonaparte, the monstrous fungoid growth that overlaid her great Revolution and obscured her services to freedom, so now we stand as foes, not, we would fain believe, of the German people, but of the militarist clique, the Napoleonic nightmare that overpowers her moral instincts and clouds her honesty and intelligence. ”

“ But our people could not be got to see how artificial our prosperity was—that it all rested on foreign trade and financial credit; that the course of trade once turned away from us, even for a time, it might never return ”

“ Every man’s face reflected the general feeling that we had neglected the warnings given us, and that now the danger so long derided as impossible and absurd had really come and found us unprepared. But the soldiers, if grave, looked determined, like men who meant to do their duty whatever might happen. A train full of guardsmen was just starting for Guildford. I was told it would stop at Surbiton, and, with several other volunteers, hurrying like myself to join our regiment, got a place in it. We did not arrive a moment too soon, for the regiment was marching from Kingston down to the station. ”

“ Here in two days the invaders had got more than twenty miles inland, and nothing effectual had been done to stop them. And the ignorance in which we volunteers, from the colonel downwards, were kept of their movements, filled us with uneasiness. We could not but depict to ourselves the enemy as carrying out all the while firmly his well-considered scheme of attack, and contrasting it with our own uncertainty of purpose. ”

“ We could see other troops also in extension of our division, and could count a couple of field-batteries of Royal Artillery, besides [Pg 43] some heavy guns, belonging to the volunteers apparently, drawn by cart-horses. The cooler air, the sense of numbers, and the evident strength of the position we held, raised our spirits, which, I am not ashamed to say, had all the morning been depressed. It was not that we were not eager to close with the enemy, but that the counter-marching and halting ominously betokened a vacillation of purpose in those who had the guidance of affairs. ”

“ The warnings of the few were drowned in the voice of the multitude. Power was then passing away from the class which had been used to rule, and to face political dangers, and which had brought the nation with honour unsullied through former struggles, into the hands of the lower classes, uneducated, untrained to the use of political rights, and swayed by demagogues ”

“ First, the rising in India drew away a part of our small army; then came the difficulty with America, which had been threatening for years, and we sent off ten thousand men to defend Canada—a handful which did not go far to strengthen the real defences of that country, but formed an irresistible temptation to the Americans to try and take them prisoners, especially as the contingent included three battalions of the Guards. ”

“ Need I tell you the rest?—of the ransom we had to pay, and the taxes raised to cover it, which keep us paupers to this day?—the brutal frankness that announced we must give place to a new naval Power, and be made harmless for revenge?—the victorious troops living at free quarters, the yoke they put on us made the more galling that their requisitions had a semblance of method and legality? Better have been robbed at first hand by the soldiery themselves, than through our own magistrates made the instruments for extortion. ”

“ The destination of our brigade was the east coast. Empty carriages were drawn up in the siding, and our regiment was to go first. A large crowd was assembled to see it off, including the recruits who [Pg 37] had joined during the last fortnight, and who formed by far the largest part of our strength. They were to stay behind, and were certainly very much in the way already; for as all the officers and sergeants belonged to the active part, there was no one to keep discipline among them, and they came crowding around us, breaking the ranks and making it difficult to get into the train. ”

“ Nor would men believe that there could ever be an end to our coal and iron, or that they would get to be so much dearer than the coal and iron of America that it would no longer be worth while to work them, and that therefore we ought to insure against the loss of our artificial position as the great centre of trade, by making ourselves secure and strong and respected. ”

“ To return to the volunteers: camps had been formed a fortnight before at Dover, Brighton, Harwich, and other places, of regulars and militia, and the headquarters of most of the volunteer regiments were attached to one or other of them, and the volunteers themselves used to go down for drill from day to day, as they could spare time, and on Friday an order went out that they should be permanently embodied; but the metropolitan volunteers were still kept about London as a sort of reserve, till it could be seen at what point the invasion would take place. ”

“ And yet we had plenty of warnings, if we had only made use of them. The danger did not come on us unawares. It burst on us suddenly, ’tis true; but its coming was foreshadowed plainly enough to open our eyes, if we had not been wilfully blind. We English have only ourselves to blame for the humiliation which has been brought on the land. Venerable old age! ”

“ I cried, as loud as I could, “is this your discipline, to let unarmed prisoners be shot without orders?” The officer, thus appealed to, reined in his horse, and halted the guard till he heard what I had to say. My knowledge of other languages here stood me in good stead, for the prisoners, north-country factory hands apparently, were of course utterly unable to make themselves understood, and did not even know in what they had offended. ”