may 25, 1918
War pictures by Mr Orpen and Mr Nash
Mr William Orpen, ARA, has been to the war, and many will go to Messrs Agnew’s Gallery to see how he has adjusted himself to it. As a matter of fact, he has adjusted the war to himself. He can always find a formula for anything; and even for the war he has found formulae such as he used to find for Irish scenes, for fashionable ladies, for anything he chose to paint. He has merely applied an old formulae to a new subject. There is the falling bomb, with a Goya formula. It was real when Goya used it; but it is not real in Mr Orpen’s hands. He gives us horror, in his “Dead Germans in a Trench”. The Censor has passed this, though he would not pass a picture by Mr Nevinson of a dead Englishman, his aim being apparently to persuade us that only Germans die in this war. On the whole we feel that Mr Orpen has remained too much a master of himself and his theme. We wish the theme had sometimes mastered him.
Mr Paul Nash, who has also been to the war, and whose war pictures are at the Leicester Galleries, has adjusted himself to it much more. He is usually a romantic artist: in these works his romance has turned to irony. This is a beautiful and wonderful world, he seems to say; and see what man has made of it. See also how even man’s insanity cannot rob the tortured and battered earth of its beauty. In many of his drawings he has been struck by the strange, unaccountable beauty of the meaningless shapes of things so tortured and battered. They make an abstract music of their own, like that abstract music of form that the cubist tries to make for himself. Mr Nash has not had to make it; it was there for him to see; utter chaos, as of a world dead for a million years, frozen and without atmosphere, and yet beautiful to frightened human eyes. You feel that it has been seen with frightened eyes, frightened at the inhumanity of it. It is waste — the waste of worlds, of ages, which looks as if it had been made by some indifferent will of Nature. Then we remember that it has been made by man in his babyish will to power. That is the effect these drawings have on us. Like all good drawings of the war, they might be used in the propaganda of a league of peace. They might appal even a Junker, if he were not too stupid to think of anything but the word of command.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-outrage-on-the-hospitals-d8tqvgz33
Today our airmen report a great amount of movement behind the enemy’s lines, and they are clearly straining all resources to maintain their numerical superiority. They might, by turning westwards from Soissons in the direction of Compiegne, once more threaten a march towards Paris. But at present their object seems to resolve itself into an attempt to win as much ground as they can without special regard to its military value. From that point of view, their success has been considerable.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-outrage-on-the-hospitals-d8tqvgz33
may 26, 1918
The outrage on the hospitals
To the Editor of The Times
Sir, I am in full agreement with Lord Denbigh that it is our own nerveless policy which exposes us to the outrages of the Huns. They will do what they think they can do with impunity, and they will avoid that which entails punishment. When Miss Cavell was shot we should at once have shot our three leading prisoners. When Captain Fryatt was murdered we should have executed two submarine captains. These are the arguments which the German mentality can understand. Two years ago you allowed me to plead in your columns for the bombing of the Rhine towns, and now, when at last it is partly done, we at once hear the cry for a truce in such warfare — the very result which I had predicted. But alas for the two wasted years! Now we have to deal with the bombing of hospitals. German prisoners should at once be picketed among the tents, and the airman captured should be shot, with a notice that such will be the fate of all airmen who are captured in such attempts. We have law and justice on our side. If they attempt a reprisal, then our own counter-reprisals must be sharp, stern, and relentless. If we are to have war to the knife, then let it at least be equal for both parties.
Yours faithfully,
Arthur Conan Doyle,
Windlesham, Crowborough, Sussex.
Sir, Living as I do amongst men wounded for their country in the noblest cause for which a nation has ever been called upon to take up arms, many of whom are totally incapacitated by spinal injuries, I cannot but realize the full horror of the outrage on hospitals in France. I suggest that a full list of casualties be published as speedily as possible, giving the numbers of patients, nurses, doctors, and other hospital staff killed and wounded in this dastardly attack by scientific savages, so that our pacifists, conscientous objectors, strikers, shirkers, and all those misguided by sweet reason, may realize at last the awful moral obliquity of an enemy whom it is the first duty of all civilized races to render innocuous in the future by a total and merciless defeat, both in the field and round the council table.
Your obedient servant,
Herbert Samuelson, Chairman of the Empire Hospital for Officers, Vincent Square, SW.
Sir, I am in full agreement with Lord Denbigh that it is our own nerveless policy which exposes us to the outrages of the Huns. They will do what they think they can do with impunity, and they will avoid that which entails punishment. When Miss Cavell was shot we should at once have shot our three leading prisoners. When Captain Fryatt was murdered we should have executed two submarine captains. These are the arguments which the German mentality can understand. Two years ago you allowed me to plead in your columns for the bombing of the Rhine towns, and now, when at last it is partly done, we at once hear the cry for a truce in such warfare — the very result which I had predicted. But alas for the two wasted years! Now we have to deal with the bombing of hospitals. German prisoners should at once be picketed among the tents, and the airman captured should be shot, with a notice that such will be the fate of all airmen who are captured in such attempts. We have law and justice on our side. If they attempt a reprisal, then our own counter-reprisals must be sharp, stern, and relentless. If we are to have war to the knife, then let it at least be equal for both parties.
Yours faithfully,
Arthur Conan Doyle,
Windlesham, Crowborough, Sussex.
Sir, Living as I do amongst men wounded for their country in the noblest cause for which a nation has ever been called upon to take up arms, many of whom are totally incapacitated by spinal injuries, I cannot but realize the full horror of the outrage on hospitals in France. I suggest that a full list of casualties be published as speedily as possible, giving the numbers of patients, nurses, doctors, and other hospital staff killed and wounded in this dastardly attack by scientific savages, so that our pacifists, conscientous objectors, strikers, shirkers, and all those misguided by sweet reason, may realize at last the awful moral obliquity of an enemy whom it is the first duty of all civilized races to render innocuous in the future by a total and merciless defeat, both in the field and round the council table.
Your obedient servant,
Herbert Samuelson, Chairman of the Empire Hospital for Officers, Vincent Square, SW.
MAY 30, 1918
The fight for Soissons
There was another big advance last night on our right, to the north-west of Reims. Today Soissons, which was hotly shelled all yesterday, and in some places set on fire, has been taken by the enemy, then won back by the French, and finally taken a second time. The Germans moved forward in alternate rushes of four companies in line, each company carrying four light machine-guns, and a fifth in reserve, besides which each regiment had three machine-gun companies armed with 12 machine-guns each, and three companies of Minenwerfer. But, formidable as that undoubtedly is as an armament of portable weapons, it was not the cause of the German success. We were beaten by excess of numbers and by nothing else.Today our airmen report a great amount of movement behind the enemy’s lines, and they are clearly straining all resources to maintain their numerical superiority. They might, by turning westwards from Soissons in the direction of Compiegne, once more threaten a march towards Paris. But at present their object seems to resolve itself into an attempt to win as much ground as they can without special regard to its military value. From that point of view, their success has been considerable.
Today, some way west of Reims and south of the battlefield, it was a day of gorgeous sunlight and rich spring beauty. On either side the endless, hedgeless fields, golden with buttercups and white with swaying marguerites, rose and fell. Far below the glittering Maine shone like a ribbon of silver laid on a cloth of green. And through it all, along the white road for miles with hardly ever an interval, passed a slowly-moving stream of humanity, old men and women and children and babies fleeing from the destruction to come. They came in carts and wagons; they pushed perambulators and rustic go-carts; they stumbled wearily on foot. Every vehicle was piled high with their poor earthly belongings. There seemed no end to the procession, which was mixed up every now and then with French and British troops on the march, horse and foot and guns and ambulance men and flying corps and engineers. I have seen many of these long straggling trains of fugitives since the war began, here and in Belgium and in Italy, but never one so big or so moving.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-06-01/register/enemy-on-the-marne-hgssvvfrr
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-06-01/register/enemy-on-the-marne-hgssvvfrr
june 1, 1918
Enemy on the Marne
According to official statements yesterday afternoon the enemy had reached the Marne, and was holding the north bank of the river for about 10 miles from a point slightly west of Chateau Thierry east to Dormans. The gravity of the situation needs no emphasis, though Allied reserves are being moved up with rapidity, and the machinery for flinging them across the path of the enemy is responding excellently to the heavy calls being made upon it. There is thus reason to hope that the enemy will make no considerable farther progress, but it is plain enough that the tense anxiety of the moment must be prolonged for some time. The German troops are nominally commanded by the Crown Prince. We now know that the attack on the Aisne front on May 27 was made with about 30 divisions and covered about 35 miles. The lines of the Allies were held on the left by four French divisions and on the right by three British. Thus outnumbered, the Allies were rapidly overrun, and by the evening of May 27 the German right had crossed the Aisne with little difficulty, and was 12 miles forward. The German Command quickly exploited this initial success. The main enemy stroke south to the Marne has been accompanied by attacks on both flanks. On neither has there been such marked success as in the centre, but it seems clear that both Soissons on the right and Reims on the left are now German.
The immediate question is what the German High Command will attempt next. Strategically, their position has clear advantages over that of the Allies. The map shows the Allied line drawn in a wide segment of a circle from south of Reims, through Dormans and Chateau Thierry, up to about Noyon, and thence north in front of Amiens. The enemy holds the interior of this segment, with reserves concentrated in the area of Cambrai, St Quentin, Laon. Since Monday the divisions under the command of the Crown Prince have all been used, but the army on his right, under Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, still commands a formidable body of reserves which can be flung south to back up the Crown Prince, or west to attack Amiens. That is the problem which General Foch has to solve, and the Allied nations will wait with unabated confidence till the moment comes when he can show his hand.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-06-02/register/the-birthday-honours-tq3sl9wm5
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-06-04/register/american-infantry-soldier-rxtmjzpcg
“What is the fighting line really like now?” I asked him. “We had hand-to-hand skirmishes pretty frequently. The Boches thought we should not stand up to them, being new troops. They came over pretty often, hoping to down our good spirits, but they got poor change for their trouble. Our division is a regular rainbow crowd. There are boys from Illinois in the gunners — lots of those in the ranks being sons of millionaires from Chicago and elsewhere — infantry battalions from Louisiana, Washington, and other districts. We’re all mixed up, but the spirit is just the same.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-06-02/register/the-birthday-honours-tq3sl9wm5
june 2, 1918
The Birthday Honours
We live in days when the “Birthday Honours” can no longer be printed on one morning or in a single list. The instalment which is sent to us for publication today is only the first of a series which already threatens to outlast the week — quite apart from the gigantic new Order of the British Empire — and it may prevent both boredom and disappointment if this fact is known in advance. The naval and military decorations and promotions are rightly predominant at such a time. We note that one result of recent discussions has been to establish the practice of specifying the services for which each new distinction is professedly conferred. It is a certain improvement, though the broad label of “public, local, and Parliamentary services” may cover a multitude of sins.
One other, and perhaps the most notable, feature in the new list is the creation of two special Orders and Medals for Flying — an appropriate and welcome recognition of the Royal Air Force, and one, moreover, which rightly marks the difference between danger and duty. For the rest, we have commented on this topic of honours so often that we would only add a warning on one or two new points which are appearing as the largesse grows ever larger. The first is that more care should be taken to avoid the bestowal of decorations on young men who are exempted from military service for no other reason than to carry on their civilian work. Their services may be invaluable, but the privilege of rendering them should be sufficient. The second point is the risk of doing injustice to the regular servants of the Crown by preferring those who are temporarily doing the same work to which they themselves have devoted a lifetime. Obviously there are countless cases of exceptional men who have rendered unprecedented service; but there should be no suspicion that the newcomer fares better.
As for the bigger question of hereditary titles, which has produced some very plain speaking from the Dominions, the sooner we get nearer to that robust overseas sentiment the better. An extension of the system of life peerages, conferred wholly for personal eminence, would do more than satisfy the growing dislike of privilege. It might solve the whole problem of the Upper Chamber in an Imperial Constitution.
As for the bigger question of hereditary titles, which has produced some very plain speaking from the Dominions, the sooner we get nearer to that robust overseas sentiment the better. An extension of the system of life peerages, conferred wholly for personal eminence, would do more than satisfy the growing dislike of privilege. It might solve the whole problem of the Upper Chamber in an Imperial Constitution.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-06-04/register/american-infantry-soldier-rxtmjzpcg
june 4, 1918
American infantry soldier
The same spirit, the “right spirit”, prevails in the New Army of the United States as we have in our own forces. A young American whom I have just chanced to meet after he had spent six months in the Army shows what the Germans have to face from their new enemy“What is the fighting line really like now?” I asked him. “We had hand-to-hand skirmishes pretty frequently. The Boches thought we should not stand up to them, being new troops. They came over pretty often, hoping to down our good spirits, but they got poor change for their trouble. Our division is a regular rainbow crowd. There are boys from Illinois in the gunners — lots of those in the ranks being sons of millionaires from Chicago and elsewhere — infantry battalions from Louisiana, Washington, and other districts. We’re all mixed up, but the spirit is just the same.
“There is a keen desire to get into the artillery, which is not looked on as a soft job, but rather as the more intellectual wing of the forces. All the batteries have a wireless, and so we pick up the German and French messages. I was mainly used on observation work, although from time to time I took my turn at manning a gun.”
He went on to tell me the origin of “doughboy”, the name used by other branches of the service for the “foot slogger”. “In the Civil War a number of Federal troops were waiting for uniforms which were made, but lacked buttons. So great was the hurry that eventually the men went round the houses in the town and collected buttons off the women’s clothing. These were, for the most part, huge buttons from overcoats. Naturally the infantry looked funny with their uniforms fastened by great overcoat buttons. These resembled hard tack (large, round, dry biscuits made of dough), and hence sprang the word ‘doughboy’, which has been kept in the United States army as a slang name for the infantry soldier.”
This corporal, whom I had known last December as a well-groomed member of an official bureau in Paris, is good evidence of what military training is doing for the young manhood of America. Before he went he was certainly well built, but now, after six months of training and work in the open air, he is broader and bigger — the right stuff to put against the German barricade.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/the-westward-thrust-n038qt9lq
The interest of this part of the battlefield is that in the old battle of the Aisne the French lines all ran east and west, facing the Germans on the Aisne heights to the north. Practically the whole way from Soissons to Compiegne the old trenches run along the sides of the Soissons-Compiegne road and the heights south of it, with the rusty old wire entanglements still standing, buried in vegetation, between the road and the river. There are even decayed stretches of the old brushwood camouflage left along some parts of the road. In the valley, where road, river, and railway run for over 20 miles alongside each other, the attack is at right angles to the old direction, coming from the east, so these trenches have not much value now as defensive works. On the north of the river — still comparing the old battlefield with the new— the enemy are farther off than they were in the days of trench warfare. South of the heights on the left bank there is a high, treeless plateaux, six or seven miles wide. It is towards this that the enemy are making their westward push, and trying to break into or get round Villers-Cotterets forest. Here, for the time being, their advance appears to be checked. They have made two efforts — one to penetrate the forest by the valley of the Saviere, a tributary of the Ourcq; the other to get round its southern edge to the town of Villers-Cotterets along the Ourcq itself. On both lines they have met with stubborn resistance, which has cost them heavy losses. The importance of Villers-Cotterets to the enemy is that both the road and railway from Soissons to Paris pass through it. It lies on the west side of the forest, in an angle between two spurs, which together constitute a huge and formidable bastion.
He went on to tell me the origin of “doughboy”, the name used by other branches of the service for the “foot slogger”. “In the Civil War a number of Federal troops were waiting for uniforms which were made, but lacked buttons. So great was the hurry that eventually the men went round the houses in the town and collected buttons off the women’s clothing. These were, for the most part, huge buttons from overcoats. Naturally the infantry looked funny with their uniforms fastened by great overcoat buttons. These resembled hard tack (large, round, dry biscuits made of dough), and hence sprang the word ‘doughboy’, which has been kept in the United States army as a slang name for the infantry soldier.”
This corporal, whom I had known last December as a well-groomed member of an official bureau in Paris, is good evidence of what military training is doing for the young manhood of America. Before he went he was certainly well built, but now, after six months of training and work in the open air, he is broader and bigger — the right stuff to put against the German barricade.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/the-westward-thrust-n038qt9lq
june 5, 1918
The westward thrust
The chief three scenes of violent fighting of last night and today are the sectors of the battlefront between the Oise and the Aisne; midway between the Aisne and the Marne, both west of Soissons and north and south of the Ourcq; and, thirdly, on the Marne between Verneuil and Reims. In the northern of the two sectors south of the Aisne and the Soissons-Compiegne road the enemy have made a determined effort to push their line forward into the gap between their two salients. Today they were stopped on a line three miles west of Soissons.The interest of this part of the battlefield is that in the old battle of the Aisne the French lines all ran east and west, facing the Germans on the Aisne heights to the north. Practically the whole way from Soissons to Compiegne the old trenches run along the sides of the Soissons-Compiegne road and the heights south of it, with the rusty old wire entanglements still standing, buried in vegetation, between the road and the river. There are even decayed stretches of the old brushwood camouflage left along some parts of the road. In the valley, where road, river, and railway run for over 20 miles alongside each other, the attack is at right angles to the old direction, coming from the east, so these trenches have not much value now as defensive works. On the north of the river — still comparing the old battlefield with the new— the enemy are farther off than they were in the days of trench warfare. South of the heights on the left bank there is a high, treeless plateaux, six or seven miles wide. It is towards this that the enemy are making their westward push, and trying to break into or get round Villers-Cotterets forest. Here, for the time being, their advance appears to be checked. They have made two efforts — one to penetrate the forest by the valley of the Saviere, a tributary of the Ourcq; the other to get round its southern edge to the town of Villers-Cotterets along the Ourcq itself. On both lines they have met with stubborn resistance, which has cost them heavy losses. The importance of Villers-Cotterets to the enemy is that both the road and railway from Soissons to Paris pass through it. It lies on the west side of the forest, in an angle between two spurs, which together constitute a huge and formidable bastion.
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