John Masefield’s Great War: Collected Works

by Philip Errington

  These things made the obtaining of accurate knowledge of the events very difficult. The events of all wars are obscure; history is only roughly right at the best. The events of this last war will be more obscure than those of most, because of the power of silencing opinion and hiding facts possessed by those who waged it.

  When I began to write this book, the war had imposed a military censorship upon all the countries engaged.

  This censorship was submitted to by the public in every country, in the belief that it would be a sword in the hands of their skilful generals. No doubt in some cases it proved to be so; but far more frequently it served as a shield to hide the incompetence of generals, staffs, War Offices and the politicians who set them moving, or checked them (or set them moving and then checked them), as their ambitions or their cliques dictated. Early in 1916, this censorship was not, in this country, such a power as it afterwards came to be, but, as a matter of course, it barred out the two most important sources of possible information, the Admiralty and the War Office.

  Besides this suppression of fact, the censorship suppressed comment, on the ground that criticism of certain measures or men “gave comfort to the enemy,” even if the men and measures criticized were giving the utmost comfort to the enemy by their results. The campaign in Gallipoli was brilliant and bold in idea, and generous in intention. It was designed as a way out of the mud of Flanders, and as a help to Russia, who had saved us and France at the Masurian Lakes, and was now herself hard-pressed. It was opposed from its inception by many people with power, who believed that our share in the war should be fought on the Western Front. These many people with power were overruled in council, but never controlled outside it. They were against the campaign throughout; they were able to decry, thwart, starve and wreck it. The campaign was lost by their decrying, thwarting and starving the brilliant, bold and generous. These things were vital to the story of the campaign, yet the censorship forbade them to be printed: they would have given “comfort to the enemy.” These were some of the drawbacks to writing history under a censorship.

  Besides all these drawbacks there was another, that the book was needed in a hurry. It was necessary that our enemies and critics in Russia and America should be answered soon. Though their statements were clumsy and false, they were accepted, because they were the only statements offered. Great events have made that time most distant and dim, but it must be remembered that the sympathy of the United States was vital to the Allied Cause throughout the war. Generally speaking, the sympathy of the United States was with the Allied Cause throughout the war. But within the United States, at all times, there is what is called a “body of opinion” hostile to this country for religious, political, historical or pseudo-historical reasons. The members of this hatred are seldom American by birth, and perhaps never American by nature. They control newspapers, pulpits and other means of making public their prejudice, which they do from policy, sometimes in the name of religion, at all times. During the war events caused by the war gave them opportunities of making their prejudice not only popular but dangerous. This campaign of Gallipoli gave them one such opportunity. In the very days on which I began to write this book other opportunities occurred; nor had I written far beyond the Landings before another opportunity, perhaps more pleasing to them, came to make them rejoice.

  Though in any time of calm the mind of America estimates this body of hatred truly, in a time of passion, when the mind is not calm, it may be misled by it. The time of passion was then with us, and the events of that time were giving to that body of hatred a power of damaging our cause not easily understood by statesmen three thousand miles away. To myself, who know America well (for an Englishman), it seemed a dangerous power, made the more dangerous from the want of contradiction. The statements of our haters were made loudly, from the malice of their invention; no statement of our case was made in reply. When I began to write this book the thought of that organized hatred ever at work against us, and of that criticism, weighty in nothing save the hate behind it, was a prompting to be swift to answer.

  But with all this prompting to be swift, it was not easy to decide what could be done. A history was plainly impossible: the information was not there; and even if it had been, the passions raised by the campaign were running too high, among those concerned, for calm statement. Plainly, something of the nature of a history was needed. And yet, how could I decide, on the spur of the moment, how much of a history would be possible, when I did not know what information could be had or would be permitted to be used?

  After a day or two, I decided that I could write a rough short sketch, description, or summary, of the events, from personal knowledge, and from the books, newspaper articles and memoirs which had appeared since the Landings, and from the published despatches (these last exceedingly full, clear and vivid). At this point in my troubles I received a great encouragement. Through the kindness of some officials of the Foreign Office, and the helpful courtesy of Major (now Colonel) Daniel, and of Captain Atkinson and his assistants, I was given (beyond my hopes) access to some roughly sorted brigade and battalion diaries. These were, of course, nearly always least perfect for the weeks when the fighting was fiercest, but some (especially the Australian diaries) were full of most vivid, accurate and interesting descriptions of critical hours and days. Without such diaries the book would have been difficult to write; but having them, I felt that I could make a tale of the campaign which would perhaps be a help to those who failed, and give the lie to our enemies. I knew, as I wrote, that the book would be a sketch, faulty, full of little errors, from the difficulties in the obtaining of knowledge or criticism, but that the main lines of it would be true, as they are.

  It has often happened, in the course of my life, that in moments of difficulty an unexpected help has come, exactly suited to that difficulty. This “charity of unseen guards” was helpful to me several times as I wrote this book, by bringing me in moments of difficulty face to face with men who, having been present at obscure points in the fighting, could tell me exactly what I wished to know.

  The book was begun in April, finished in July, and published in September, 1916. I write this Preface exactly seven years after the book was brought to an end.

  Since that time this campaign in Gallipoli has been fittingly and finely chronicled by Sir Ian Hamilton himself, by Mr. H.W. Nevinson, and (lately) by Mr. C.E.W. Bean. Future histories will probably be combinations and annotations of the works of these three writers, who write from a fulness of knowledge which I had not, and with a freedom from the censorship which checked myself. Those three histories are the standard works on the campaign.

  It is to those three standards, not to this little sketch, that the reader must go for knowledge of the campaign.

  I shall be very glad if my little imperfect sketch may serve as a primer, to induce men to read them.

  As I have said, my book was written to answer certain critics. It answered them; but answering does not silence critics, it makes them change their ground and howl abuse. The kind of criticism to which my book replied was the common kind, of misunderstanding founded on antipathy. A narrow mind is a little cup easily filled with an antipathy. To such cups the antipathy is very dear, since it fills the mind. Men will give up house and home and go out and do absurd and heroic things for their antipathies. Hatred will drive wherever Love does not lead. Let men be careful, therefore, of those who stir up hatred. A wise man once said that “all nations pay sooner or later for the sins of their Press.” The payment, unfortunately, is not made by the sinners, but by poor men out in the mud somewhere, far enough from the evening edition which chronicles the receipt.

  But besides answering critics, I hoped “to change certain feelings then common in the United States of America.” That hope, like all worthy hopes, had life in it, and, therefore, prospered. The nations of men exist by what is best in man, and are destroyed by what is devilish in him; everybody knows that, yet destruction continues, because little narrow mi
nds, full of evil, in palace, pulpit, school, or newspaper, “fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness” under some damnable pretext of false knowledge or falser faith or falsest history.

  America is a great country, twenty years ahead of Europe in all mechanical contrivance, seven centuries behind her (luckily) in tradition and racial memory. During the next twenty years America will have her first great flowering time in all the arts; her marvellous energy will pass into beauty of every kind not yet attained by man. It should be the hope of every Englishman that that great country, so soon to be the greatest country in all that wisdom values, should think well of this country, whose tongue she speaks and whose sense of liberty she shares.

  This seems to be a wandering from the dead in Gallipoli, in their graves among the tamarisks; but it is not so. Wherever they lie, they call, in their mute way, to all the world to think well of this country; for they were free men who gave their lives for an idea. They lie quiet, and are done with trouble. “It is very lonely there,” a man writes to me; “hardly even a goatherd goes there.” There are thirty-eight thousand of them: the manhood of a city. Eight years ago they were the pick of a race that cares for freedom, coming as the freight of fifty ships, to fight things stronger than themselves. As the ships moved out to take them to their graves, even in the months when victory was no longer thought of, those soldiers cheered.

  They came from safety of their own free will

  To lay their young men’s beauty, strong men’s powers,

  Under the hard roots of the foreign flowers,

  Having beheld the Narrows from the Hill.

  JOHN MASEFIELD.

  [source: Gallipoli, [new edition], London: William Heinemann, 1923]

  Any Dead to Any Living

  Boast not about our score.

  Think this: – There was no need

  For such a Sack of Youth

  As burned our lives.

  We, and the millions more,

  Were Waste, from want of heed,

  From world-wide hate of truth,

  And souls in gyves.

  Let the dead bury the dead.

  Let the great graveyard be.

  Life had not health to climb,

  It loved no strength that saves.

  Furbish our million graves

  As records of a crime;

  But give our brothers bread,

  Unfetter heart and head,

  Set prisoned angels free.

  [source: Any Dead to Any Living, New Haven: The Yale Review, 1928]

  Foreword to E.J Rule, Jacka’s Mob

  During the war the English suddenly became aware of a new kind of man, unlike any usually seen here. These strangers were not Europeans; they were not Americans. They seemed to be of one race, for all of them had something the same bearing, and something the same look of humorous, swift decision. On the whole, they were taller, broader, better looking, and more graceful in their movements than other races. Yet, in spite of so much power and beauty, they were very friendly people, easy to get on with, most helpful, kindly, and hospitable. Though they were all in uniform, like the rest of Europe, they were remarkable, in that their uniform was based upon sense, not upon nonsense. Instead of an idiotic cap, that provided no shade to the eyes, nor screen for the back of the neck, that would not stay on in a wind, nor help to disguise the wearer from air observation, these men wore comfortable soft felt slouch hats, that protected in all weathers and at all times looked well. Instead of idiotic clothes designed for appearance on a parade ground, these men wore clothes in which they could do the hardest of hard work and then fight for their lives. Instead of bright buttons and badges, “without which,” as a general once said to me, “no discipline could be maintained,” these men carried in their equipment nothing that added to the worries of war. When people asked, who are those fellows, nobody, at first, knew.

  The strangers became conspicuous in England after about a year of the war. They were preceded by the legend that they had been “difficult” in Egypt, and had had to be camped in the desert to keep them from throwing Cairo down the Nile. Then came stories of their extraordinary prowess in war. Not even the vigilance of all the censors could keep down the accounts of their glory in battle. For themselves, they were a very modest company, whom sometimes one could hear singing (to the tune of “The Church’s One Foundation”):

  We are the Anzac Army,

  The A.N.Z.A.C.,

  We cannot shoot, we don’t salute,

  What ——— good are we?

  And when we get to Ber-lin

  The Kaiser he will say,

  “Hoch, Hoch! Mein Gott, what a ——— odd lot

  To get six bob a day!”

  Since that time, the Australian Army has become famous all over the world as the finest army engaged in the Great War. They did not always salute; they did not see the use of it: they did from time to time fling parts of Cairo down the Nile, and some of them kept the military police alert in most of the back areas. But in battle they were superb. When the Australians were put in, a desperate feat was expected and then done. Every great battle in the West was an honour the more upon their banners.

  As it chanced, I was often in company with members of this army. It is a pleasure to me to write these lines as a preface to the story of some of their doings here set down by Mr. Rule. The admiration that one had for them becomes deeper and more full of gratitude as time goes on and the truth of the war becomes known. No such body of free men has given so heroically since our history began.

  John Masefield

  Boars Hill,

  Oxford.

  [source: E.J. Rule, Jacka’s Mob, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1933, pp.[vii]-viii]

  Red Cross

  I remember a moonless night in a blasted town,

  And the cellar-steps with their army-blanket-screen,

  And the stretcher-bearers, groping and stumbling down

  To the Red Cross struggle with Death in the ill-lit scene.

  There, entering-in, I saw, at a table near,

  A surgeon tense by a man who struggled for breath.

  A shell, that shattered above us, rattled the gear,

  The dying one looked at me, as if I were Death.

  He died, and was borne away, and the surgeon wept;

  An elderly man, well-used, as one would have thought

  To western war and the revels that Death then kept:

  Why weep for one when a million ranked as naught?

  He said, ‘We have buried heaps since the push began.

  From now to the Peace we’ll bury a thousand more.

  It’s silly to cry, but I could have saved that man

  Had they only carried him in an hour before.’

  [source: The Queen’s Book of the Red Cross, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1939, p.29]

  a THE DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN. By H.W. Nevinson. London: Nisbet and Co. Pp. xx. 429. With Nine Maps. 18s. net.