It cannot be said that Londoners were unprepared for Tuesday night’s air raid. The sorties towards the coast on previous nights showed that the Germans had realized the possibility of raids during the full moon. During the evening there was talk in trains and tubes of a raid, and people on the way home from the theatres discussed the subject. Indeed, when the theatregoers were on their way home the first sounds of firing came from the outskirts of London. Watched from a high point in Hampstead, which overlooks the whole city as far as the Tower Bridge and the Crystal Palace, the raid was spectacular and particularly noisy.
The first intimation was given by the sound of distant gunfire. At about 11.30pm the droning of enemy aeroplane engines could be heard. Many people thought that Zeppelins were approaching, for the raiders were big machines, probably Gothas. The Gotha’s twin engines, with cylinders firing twice as many to the minute as a single-engine machine, make a droning sound quite unlike the machine-gun effect of a single rotary or vertical motor.
When the first plane showed up anti-aircraft guns came into action. That the targets were very high was evident, for it was possible to count five or six seconds between the report of the gun and the time when the flash of the bursting shells could be seen. British aeroplanes went up in large numbers, but with little success, for one of the chief guides as to the locality of the bombing machines is denied a defending pilot, in that he cannot hear the enemy engine over the noise of his own.
At the first sound of gunfire many people rushed for shelter. Those nearer the tubes went to the stations in all stages of undress and were conveyed in the lifts to the underground platforms. Others, infinitely more foolish, stood in clusters in the open streets and watched the bombardment. Guests in evening dress just returned from the theatres, others in scanty attire with dressing gowns and overcoats over their night clothes, streamed downstairs, where they waited until the last raider had disappeared.
Many theatre-goers on their way home, noticing the pathetic crowds of women and children on the stations underground, wisely waited below. Stations on the Hampstead line were very congested.
The incontinent abandonment by the Russian Army of the great city and port of Riga and of the Dvina front is of grave significance to the Allied cause. General Korniloff’s prediction at Moscow has been fulfilled in a week. He said that “if our Army does not help us to hold the Gulf of Riga the road to Petrograd will be opened wide.”
As on previous occasions, portions of the Army failed when the enemy struck. Some of the regiments bolted without orders, the rest had to fall back to avoid destruction or capture. The further intentions of the enemy can only be surmised. They may have entered Riga merely in order to winter there, instead of shivering on the other side of the marshes as in the last two winters. They will hardly be checked by troops whose constancy has been undermined by “committees”, who will neither fight nor obey, and who attend “political classes” for three hours daily.
In the West there has been far too much expectation of a miraculous restoration of Russia’s fighting capacity. We have been told that Russia has a resilience under adversity which we Western nations do not possess. No experienced soldier has lately shared these rosy hopes, for armies which have sunk to the depths of degradation reached by the Russian troops take a long time and iron discipline to recover their manhood.
The true cause of Russia’s military failure is the baneful activity of the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Councils, composed of soldiers who are unwilling to fight and of “workmen” who have never worked in their lives. There can be little hope of the regeneration of Russia while the Soviet usurps the authority of the Provisional Government and while “committees and commissaries” flourish in what from courtesy must still be called “the fighting line”.
The blackest feature of the situation is that over the whole of Russia broods the shadow of imminent famine, due less to lack of food than to the breakdown of transport and to the absence of an organized system of distribution. The Allies must frankly face the effect of the Russian collapse upon the general military situation. There is still time for Russia to atone for the folly and the slackness of the last six months, but meanwhile the military consequences are immediate. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-09-04/register/gallantry-in-a-morass-mud-throat-deep-00h9rfk5j
september 4, 1917
Gallantry in a morass. Mud throat deep
In proportion to their numbers no troops in the Army have earned a finer reputation than the Newfoundlanders. Nothing could have exceeded the splendour of their sacrifice on July 1 last year on the Somme. Once more they have done superbly, in the advance beyond Steenbeek, when their task was to cross 500 yards of “Floating Swamp” to attack a fortified position with concrete defences on the farther side. Floating Swamp is the name for a quaking morass which gives no foothold anywhere, but heaves and oozes and bubbles to unknown depths as you wade through it. The depth varied from the height of a man’s waist to his chest or throat. When a man sank much above his waist he had to stay there to be pulled out, if fortune favoured, later. Those who were only waist-high or less than up to the armpits went on. There was no time to stay to pull a comrade out, for the barrage moved on before, and they must follow as close as might be behind it.
The swamp itself was a fearsome thing to breast, and it was swept by machine-gun fire. Among the Newfoundlanders are men of the hardy fishing class, and especially trappers and lumbermen from the woods, accustomed to fight with Nature in all her moods, whom nothing in the way of floods or swamps or man can appal. Behind our barrage they went doggedly on in the grey of the early morning, wading, stumbling, forcing a way as best they could. Those who were badly hit sank into the dreadful ooze. Some lightly wounded went on after their comrades or made their painful way back. But the rest went on and, mud from head to toe, with only their rifles held above their heads still dry, panting and almost worn out, on the heels of the barrage they rushed the German fort. There was a short burst of wild fighting. and the fort was theirs. Then they turned to help their comrades who were still embedded in the slime, and in bodies of three or four, pulled them out and got them safely to shore.
While the Newfoundlanders breasted the morass English troops worked round the south side of the swamp and stormed the fortified positions there. They had drier going, but were even more exposed to the machine-gun fire which swept their advance, and they, too, behaved with the greatest dash and gallantry.
The first phase of Italy’s greatest offensive now seems to be closed, but heavy fighting continues in many parts of the long battle line. The enemy has managed for the moment to stem the advance though at first the halt was due more to the impossibility of making guns, stores, and water keep pace with the infantry than to actual resistance. The slowness with which a modern army moves gave time for reserves to arrive — and bring wire with them. Wire and machine-guns can hold up any advance until the defensive positions are flattened out by artillery fire.
Monte San Gabriele is closely beset. Yesterday afternoon I watched the Italian grip tightening from a rocky perch 1,500ft above the Isonzo, a desolate crag that a golden eagle might have chosen for her nest before the war came. When I arrived the troops that were to attack were crouching in dead ground while our shells pounded the Austrian positions and the enemy sprayed a shrapnel barrage on the slopes where they judged the supports would be coming up. Suddenly the men went forward with a rush, dashed into the Austrian trench and out again over broken ground to the east. Machine-guns protested furiously, and there was a quick, sharp struggle with bombs, and men fell. Then little figures rose from their hiding places and ran forward with their hands up. A very important part of the ridge had been torn from the enemy. There was a pause in the fight, and the eye turned to the prisoners. They were running for life from their own artillery, which doubled its shrapnel barrage and bumped big shells along the slopes as the position was lost. The wretched men came down the steep, broken slopes like goats. They must have run three miles before they came to safety and food and drink. A number of them were caught by their comrades’ fire.
In due course the counter-attack came. A strong body of Austrians suddenly appeared over the crest from the eastern slope, where their caverns are, and drove head down at the new Italian line. In one minute field and mountain guns were on them. The attack was crushed before it was even near the Italian line. As the smoke cleared some figures could be seen running wildly back over the ridge.
At Bow Street Police Court, before Mr Garrett, Walter Edward Griffin, Old North Street, Theobald’s Road, WC, was summoned for having by word of mouth spread a false report to the effect that an air raid was taking place on August 16. Police-sergeant Goldie said that he was on duty at 10.30pm on the date in question when the searchlights and anti-aircraft guns began exercising. He saw the defendant leave his own house and knock at the doors of several other houses in Old North Street, at the same time shouting, “Come on! The Germans are here! That noise is not guns — it’s bombs. Come on down to the tube!”
As a result a number of women ran from their houses half-dressed and children were dragged from their beds. The witness went up to the defendant and told him there was no raid in progress — that it was only practice — but the defendant continued shouting. “There’s a raid!” and went in the direction of the Underground Railway station, followed by a crowd of frightened women and children. Later the witness told him he would be reported for a summons, and he replied, “I did not spread a false report. I was looking after my home.”
The defendant now denied having created any disturbance. He said he simply accompanied his wife, who was frightened by the firing, to the Tube station. There were two or three dozen people there, but they did not come from Old North Street.
Mr Garrett was satisfied that the defendant had behaved in such a manner as to cause unnecessary alarm, and ordered him to pay 40s. Conscientious objector dressed as a woman
At Bristol Alfred Goodman Dunn, 40, and Lilian Fletcher, 45, were remanded on a charge of failing to produce their registration cards. A detective said he called at a house in Bristol and saw Fletcher, who stated that the only other person in the lodging was her sister, who could not be seen because she was ill. On entering a room the witness found Dunn in woman’s clothes. Dunn stated that he was Fletcher’s sister, but the witness became suspicious and pulled his (Dunn’s) “hair”. It proved to be a wig, and the defendant then admitted that he had been going about in woman’s clothes to evade military service as he was a conscientious objector.
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The response to the appeal in The Times of Tuesday for Lady Smith-Dorrien’s Hospital Bag Fund (headquarters, 26 Pont Street, SW1) has been very satisfactory. Owing to the holidays there was a shortage of 30,000 bags when a demand for an extra 10,000 a month came from the Assistant-Director of Medical Services in France, bringing the number in arrear up to 40,000. Promises to meet the greater part of this shortage have been received within three days. Many contained donations, but most were orders, and all day long Lady Smith-Dorrien and her voluntary helpers have been trying to cope with them. “People are helping us splendidly,” said Lady Smith-Dorrien last evening as she cut up bales of bright chintz in lengths to meet the day’s orders, “and if they will only keep it up, we shall be able to meet all the shortages. The stuff is the big difficulty; we want it in thousands of yards and it is difficult to get enough and to get it quickly. Some ladies have been using chintz curtains which they did not require after changing house, washing them first, of course, as everything for the wounded must be scrupulously clean. Some very big promises have come and everyone seems to realize that we are coping with the needs of the wounded on every front.”
Amongst the letters was an appeal from a lady belonging to a well-known county family to farmers’ families and cottagers to help her with work and promising to supply a portion of the material; another was from a man whose health and age did not allow him to go to the front and who spent part of his time in munitions work and in what was left of his day wished to make bags. He is not the only man on Lady Smith-Dorrien’s working list. There is one old gentleman who has already made thousands, cutting them out on the billiard table. The letters from mothers are the most moving. Many send their orders or donations with some little personal touch telling where and when their boys fought and were wounded. Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien pointed out that one great advantage of the bags was that pay-sheets (the loss of which meant delay in getting pay) were far less frequently lost when the wounded man had a bag for his possessions.
A pattern bag and directions will be sent on application.
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