Kipling and war, p.20
Kipling and War, page 20
‘And what happens after Second Camp?’
‘It’s hard to explain. Our system is so illogical. Theoretically, the boys needn’t show up for the next three or four years after Second Camp. They are supposed to be making their way in life. Actually, the young doctor or lawyer or engineer joins a Volunteer battalion that sticks to the minimum of camp – ten days per annum. That gives him a holiday in the open air, and now that men have taken to endowing their Volunteer drill-halls with baths and libraries he finds, if he can’t run to a Club, that his own drill-hall is an efficient substitute. He meets men there who’ll be useful to him later, and he keeps himself in touch with what’s going on while he’s studying for his profession. The town-birds – such as the chemist’s assistant, clerk, plumber, mechanic, electrician, and so forth – generally put in for their town Volunteer corps as soon as they begin to walk out with the girls. They like takin’ their true-loves to our restaurants. Look yonder!’ I followed his gaze, and saw across the room a man and a maid at a far table, forgetting in each other’s eyes the good food on their plates.
‘So it is,’ said I. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Then, too, we have some town Volunteer corps that lay themselves out to attract promising youths of nineteen or twenty, and make much of ’em on condition that they join their Line battalion and play for their county. Under the new county qualifications – birth or three years’ residence – that means a great deal in League matches, and the same in County cricket.’
‘By Jove, that’s a good notion,’ I cried. ‘Who invented it?’
‘C.B. Fry – long ago. He said, in his paper, that County cricket and County volunteering ought to be on the same footing – unpaid and genuine. “No cricketer no corps. No corps no cricketer” was his watchword. There was a row among the pros at first, but C.B. won, and later the League had to come in. They said at first it would ruin the gate; but when County matches began to be pukka county, plus inter-regimental, affairs the gate trebled, and as two-thirds of the gate goes to the regiments supplying the teams some Volunteer corps fairly wallow in cash. It’s all unofficial, of course, but League Corps, as they call ’em, can take their pick of the Second Camper. Some corps ask ten guineas entrance-fee, and get it too, from the young bloods that want to shine in the arena. I told you we catered for all tastes. Now, as regards the Line proper, I believe the young artisan and mechanic puts in for that before he marries. He likes the two months’ “heef” in his first year, and five bob a week is something to go on with between times.’
‘Do they follow their trade while they’re in the Line?’ I demanded.
‘Why not? How many well-paid artisans work more than four days a week anyhow? Remember a Linesman hasn’t to be drilled in your sense of the word. He must have had at least eight years’ grounding in that, as well as two or three years in his Volunteer battalion. He can sleep where he pleases. He can’t leave town-limits without reporting himself, of course, but he can get leave if he wants it. He’s on duty two days in the week as a rule, and he’s liable to be invited out for garrison duty down the Mediterranean, but his benefit societies will insure him against that. I’ll tell you about that later. If it’s a hard winter and trade’s slack, a lot of the bachelors are taken into the I.G. barracks (while the I.G. is out on the “heef”) for theoretical instruction. Oh, I assure you the Line hasn’t half a bad time of it.’
‘Amazing!’ I murmured. ‘And what about the others?’
‘The Volunteers? Observe the beauty of our system. We’re a free people. We get up and slay the man who says we aren’t. But as a little detail we never mention, if we don’t volunteer in some corps or another – as combatants if we’re fit, as non-combatants if we ain’t – till we’re thirty-five – we don’t vote, and we don’t get poor-relief, and the women don’t love us.’
‘Oh, that’s the compulsion of it?’ said I.
Bayley inclined his head gravely. ‘That, Sir, is the compulsion. We voted the legal part of it ourselves in a fit of panic, and we have not yet rescinded our resolution! The women attend to the unofficial penalties. But being free British citizens—’
‘And snobs,’ put in Pigeon.
‘The point is well taken, Pij – we have supplied ourselves with every sort and shape and make of Volunteer corps that you can imagine, and we’ve mixed the whole show up with our Oddfellows and our I.O.G.T.s and our Buffaloes, and our Burkes and our Debretts, not to mention Leagues and Athletic Clubs, till you can’t tell t’other from which. You remember the young pup who used to look on soldiering as a favour done to his ungrateful country – the gun-poking, ferret-pettin’, landed gentleman’s offspring – the suckin’ Facey Romford? Well, he generally joins a Foreign Service Corps when he leaves college.’
‘Can Volunteers go foreign then?’
‘Can’t they just, if their C.O. or his wife has influence! The Armity will always send a well-connected F.S. corps out to help a Guard battalion in a small campaign. Otherwise F.S. corps make their own arrangements about camps. You see, the Military Areas are always open. They can “heef” there (and gamble on head-money) as long as their finances run to it; or they can apply to do sea-time in the ships. It’s a cheap way for a young man to see the world, and if he’s any good he can try to get into the Guard later.’
‘The main point,’ said Pigeon, ‘is that F.S. corps are “swagger” – the correct thing. It ’ud never do to be drawn for the Militia, don’t you know,’ he drawled, trying to render the English voice.
‘That’s what happens to a chap who doesn’t volunteer,’ said Bayley. ‘Well, after the F.S. corps (we’ve about forty of ’em) come our territorial Volunteer battalions, and a man who can’t suit himself somewhere among ’em must be a shade difficult. We’ve got those “League” corps I was talking about; and those studious corps that just scrape through their ten days’ camp; and we’ve crack corps of highly-paid mechanics who can afford a two months’ “heef” in an interesting Area every other year; and we’ve senior and junior scientific corps of earnest boilermakers and fitters and engineers who read papers on high explosives, and do their “heefing” in a wet picket-boat – mine-droppin’ – at the ports. Then we’ve heavy artillery – recruited from the big manufacturing towns and ship-building yards – and ferocious hard-ridin’ Yeomanry (they can ride – now), genteel, semi-genteel, and Hooligan corps, and so on and so forth till you come to the Home Defence Establishment – the young chaps knocked out under medical certificate at the Second Camp, but good enough to sit behind hedges or clean up camp, and the old was-birds who’ve served their time but don’t care to drop out of the fun of the yearly camps and the halls. They call ’emselves veterans and do fancy shooting at Bisley, but, between you and me, they’re mostly Fresh Air Benefit Clubs. They contribute to the Volunteer journals and tell the Guard that it’s no good. But I like ’em. I shall be one of ’em some day – a copper-nosed was-bird … So you see we’re mixed to a degree on the Volunteer side.’
‘It sounds that way,’ I ventured.
‘You’ve overdone it, Bayley,’ said Devine. ‘You’ve missed our one strong point.’ He turned to me and continued: ‘It’s embarkation. The Volunteers may be as mixed as the Colonel says, but they are trained to go down to the sea in ships. You ought to see a big Bank Holiday roll-out! We suspend most of the usual railway traffic and turn on the military time-table – say on Friday at midnight. By 4 a.m. the trains are running from every big centre in England to the nearest port at two-minute intervals. As a rule, the Armity meets us at the other end with shipping of sorts – Fleet Reserves or regular men-of-war or hulks – anything you can stick a gang-plank to. We pile the men on to the troop-decks, stack the rifles in the racks, send down the sea-kit, steam about for a few hours, and land ’em somewhere. It’s a good notion, because our army to be any use must be an army of embarkation. Why, last Whit Monday we had – how many were down at the dock-edge in the first eight hours? Kyd, you’re the Volunteer enthusiast last from school.’
‘In the first ten hours over a hundred and eighteen thousand,’ said Kyd across the table, ‘with thirty-six thousand actually put in and taken out of ship. In the whole thirty-six hours we had close on ninety thousand men on the water and a hundred and thirty-three thousand on the quays fallen in with their sea-kit.’
‘That must have been a sight,’ I said.
‘One didn’t notice it much. It was scattered between Chatham, Dover, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol, Liverpool, and so on, merely to give the inland men a chance to get rid of their breakfasts. We don’t like to concentrate and try a big embarkation at any one point. It makes the Continent jumpy. Otherwise,’ said Kyd, ‘I believe we could get two hundred thousand men, with their kits, away on one tide.’
‘What d’you want with so many?’ I asked.
‘We don’t want one of ’em; but the Continent used to point out, every time relations were strained, that nothing would be easier than to raid England if they got command of the sea for a week. After a few years some genius discovered that it cut both ways, an’ there was no reason why we, who are supposed to command the sea and own a few ships, should not organise our little raids in case of need. The notion caught on among the Volunteers – they were getting rather sick of manœuvres on dry land – and since then we haven’t heard so much about raids from the Continent,’ said Bayley.
‘It’s the offensive-defensive,’ said Verschoyle, ‘that they talk so much about. We learned it all from the Continent – bless ’em! They insisted on it so.’
‘No, we learned it from the Fleet,’ said Devine. ‘The Mediterranean Fleet landed ten thousand marines and sailors, with guns, in twenty minutes once at manœuvres. That was long ago. I’ve seen the Fleet Reserve, and a few paddle-steamers hired for the day, land twenty-five thousand Volunteers at Bantry in four hours – half the men sea-sick too. You’ve no notion what a difference that sort of manœuvre makes in the calculations of our friends on the mainland. The Continent knows what invasion means. It’s like dealing with a man whose nerve has been shaken. It doesn’t cost much after all, and it makes us better friends with the great European family. We’re as thick as thieves now.’
‘Where does the Imperial Guard come in in all this gorgeousness?’ I asked. ‘You’re unusual modest about yourselves.’
‘As a matter of fact, we’re supposed to go out and stay out. We’re the permanently mobilised lot. I don’t think there are more than eight I.G. battalions in England now. We’re a hundred battalions all told. Mostly on the “heef” in India, Africa, and so forth.’
‘A hundred thousand. Isn’t that small allowance?’ I suggested.
‘You think so? One hundred thousand men, without a single case of venereal, and an average sick list of two per cent, permanently on a war footing? Well, perhaps you’re right, but it’s a useful little force to begin with while the others are getting ready. There’s the native Indian Army also, which isn’t a broken reed, and, since “no Volunteer no Vote” is the rule throughout the Empire, you will find a few men in Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, that are fairly hefty in their class.’
‘But a hundred thousand isn’t enough for garrison duty,’ I persisted.
‘A hundred thousand sound men, not sick boys, go quite a way,’ said Pigeon.
‘We expect the Line to garrison the Mediterranean Ports and thereabouts,’ said Bayley. ‘Don’t sneer at the mechanic. He’s deuced good stuff. He isn’t rudely ordered out, because this ain’t a military despotism, and we have to consider people’s feelings. The Armity usually brackets three Line regiments together, and calls for men for six months or a year for Malta, Gib, or elsewhere, at a bob a day. Three battalions will give you nearly a whole battalion of bachelors between ’em. You fill up deficiencies with a call on the territorial Volunteer battalion, and away you go with what we call a Ports battalion. What’s astonishing in that? Remember that in this country, where fifty per cent of the able-bodied males have got a pretty fair notion of soldiering, and, which is more, have all camped out in the open, you wake up the spirit of adventure in the young.’
‘Not much adventure at Malta, Gib, or Cyprus,’ I retorted. ‘Don’t they get sick of it?’
‘But you don’t realise that we treat ’em rather differently from the soldier of the past. You ought to go and see a Ports battalion drawn from a manufacturing centre growin’ vines in Cyprus in its shirt sleeves; and at Gib, and Malta, of course, the battalions are working with the Fleet half the time.’
‘It seems to me,’ I said angrily, ‘you are knocking esprit de corps on the head with all this Army–Navy fumble. It’s as bad as—’
‘I know what you’re going to say. As bad as what Kitchener used to do when he believed that a thousand details picked up on the veldt were as good as a column of two regiments. In the old days, when drill was a sort of holy sacred art learned in old age, you’d be quite right. But remember our chaps are broke to drill from childhood, and the theory we work on is that a thousand trained Englishmen ought to be about as good as another thousand trained Englishmen. We’ve enlarged our horizon, that’s all. Some day the Army and the Navy will be interchangeable.’
‘You’ve enlarged it enough to fall out of, I think. Now where in all this mess of compulsory Volunteers—?’
‘My dear boy, there’s no compulsion. You’ve got to be drilled when you’re a child, same as you’ve got to learn to read; and if you don’t pretend to serve in some corps or other till you’re thirty-five or medically chucked, you rank with lunatics, women, and minors. That’s fair enough.’
‘Compulsory conscripts,’ I continued. ‘Where, as I was going to say, does the Militia come in?’
‘As I have said – for the men who can’t afford volunteering. The Militia is recruited by ballot – pretty comprehensively too. Volunteers are exempt, but most men not otherwise accounted for are bagged by the Militia. They have to put in a minimum three weeks’ camp every other year, and they get fifteen bob a week and their keep when they’re at it, and some sort of a yearly fee, I’ve forgotten how much. ’Tisn’t a showy service, but it’s very useful. It keeps the mass of the men between twenty-five, say, and thirty-five moderately fit, and gives the Armity an excuse for having more equipment ready – in case of emergencies.’
‘I don’t think you’re quite fair on the Militia,’ drawled Verschoyle. ‘They’re better than we give ’em credit for. Don’t you remember the Middle Moor Collieries strike?’
‘Tell me,’ I said quickly. Evidently the others knew.
‘We-ell, it was no end of a pitmen’s strike about eight years ago. There were twenty-five thousand men involved – Militia, of course. At the end of the first month – October – when things were looking rather blue, one of those clever Labour leaders got hold of the Militia Act and discovered that any Militia regiment could, by a two-thirds vote, go on “heef” in a Military Area in addition to its usual biennial camp. Two-and-twenty battalions of Geordies solemnly applied, and they were turned loose into the Irish and Scotch Areas under an I.G. Brigadier who had private instructions to knock clinkers out of ’em. But the pitman is a strong and agile bird. He throve on snowdrifts and entrenching and draggin’ guns through heather. He was being fed and clothed for nothing, besides having a chance of making head-money, and his strike-pay was going clear to his wife and family. You see? Wily man. But wachtabittje! When that “heef” finished in December the strike was still on. Then that same Labour leader found out, from the same Act, that if at any time more than thirty or forty men of a Militia regiment wished to volunteer to do sea-time and study big guns in the Fleet they were in no wise to be discouraged, but were to be taken on as opportunity offered and paid a bob a day. Accordingly, about January, Geordie began volunteering for sea-time – seven and eight hundred men out of each regiment. Anyhow it made up seventeen thousand men! It was a splendid chance and the Armity jumped at it. The Home and Channel Fleets and the North Sea and Cruiser Squadrons were strengthened with lame ducks from the Fleet Reserve, and between ’em with a little stretching and pushing they accommodated all of that young division.’
‘Yes, but you’ve forgotten how we lied to the Continent about it. All Europe wanted to know what the dooce we were at,’ said Boy Bayley, ‘and the wretched Cabinet had to stump the country in the depths of winter explaining our new system of poor-relief. I beg your pardon, Verschoyle.’
‘The Armity improvised naval manœuvres between Gib and Land’s End, with frequent coalings and landings; ending in a cruise round England that fairly paralysed the pitmen. The first day out they wanted the Fleet stopped while they went ashore and killed their Labour leader, but they couldn’t be obliged. Then they wanted to mutiny over the coaling – it was too like their own job. Oh, they had a lordly time! They came back – the combined Fleets anchored off Hull – with a nautical hitch to their breeches. They’d had a free fight at Gib with the Ports battalion there; they cleared out the town of Lagos; and they’d fought a pitched battle with the dockyard-mateys at Devonport. So they’d done ’emselves well, but they didn’t want any more military life for a bit.’
‘And the strike?’
‘That ended, all right enough, when the strike-money came to an end. The pit-owners were furious. They said the Armity had wilfully prolonged the strike, and asked questions in the House. The Armity said that they had taken advantage of the crisis to put a six months’ polish on fifteen thousand fine young men, and if the masters cared to come out on the same terms they’d be happy to do the same by them.’
