It is, of course, too soon as yet to attempt to measure the many advantages which will flow from this visit, but one may, perhaps, be permitted to give currency to the very favourable impression created by the minimum of formality attending the King’s tour. Just as the Prince of Wales has completely and unostentatiously identified himself with the Army, so the King, too, has appeared and moved in our midst during the last few days with a true soldier’s appreciation of what is due in war time.
The following more or less detailed programme will explain, perhaps better than anything else, how complete has been tho King’s tour of inspection. Ihe King landed in France on Thursday, October 21, and spent the first few days In visiting various bases and all the great base depots, remount depots, hutted hospitals, veterinary hospitals, base supply depots, and similar institutions, which play so vital, if also so unobtrusive, a part in the organization of a modern Army. It was on Monday morning last that his Majesty moved up into the actual zone of the Armies. In company with the Commander of our Third Army, the King went on to a little crossroad only a few miles away. Here he met President Poincare and M Millerand, the French Minister of War, and with them he spent the day visiting various points of interest.
At one place a certain notable redoubt and certain second line defences were gone over: at other halting-places there were inspections of detachments from different British corps.
HONOUR FOR THE PRINCE OF WALES
After luncheon President Poincare conferred n number of decorations, of which the most striking was the bestowal of the Croix de Guerre on the Prince of Wales. General Sir H Plumer was made a Grand Officier of the Legion of Honour, and others to receive the same honour were Lieutenant-General Sir C F N Macready and Lieutenant-General Sir R C Maxwell. Major-General P E F Hobbs, Lieutenant-General Rinington, Lieutenant-General Alderson, Surgeon-General Sir A Sloggett, Lieutenant-General Sir E Locke Elliott, and Major-General Sir E R C Graham were made Commanders of the same Order. The remainder of the afternoon was then spent in further inspections of various units.
On the following day, October 26, the King again met the President, with whom on this occasion was General Joffre, and a magnificent review was held in the neighbourhood of Amiens, of the French Second Colonial Corps. The King and President drove down the whole front, and the entire corps then marched past. The review was a magnificent spectacle and showed the splendid discipline of our Allies at its best. The troops marched past with a frontage of three companies, and every military man will know how difficult such a manoeuvre is to execute well. Yet the alignment of the men was flawless and their bearing and order such as one is accustomed to see on the great ceremonial day of the French nation.
After luncheon tho remainder of the afternoon was once more spent in visiting the British Army under actual conditions of warfare, the King visiting several batteries and even going up to an artillery observation post. Today the programme has been the same happy mixture of the strictly practical with the necessary sprinkling of ceremonial. The King spent the day in the area of our Second Army and visited in turn an Australian sub-park and motor-ambulance convoy, a section of the Royal Flying Corps, a camp of huts, a casualty clearing station, and various detachments from the different corps.
But the most interesting of his engagements were two reviews which he held, one, in the morning, of certain newly-arrived units of the Canadian Corp. and the other, in the afternoon, of a mixed brigade composed of detachments from other divisions of the Second Army. The review ground was a beautiful great meadow, flanked on two sides by the poplar-lined pave road and sheltered on its other two sides by gently rising slopes of farmland.
A LANE OF CHEERING TROOPS
From just. behind the saluting point, picturesquely set up beside a solitary pollard willow tree, one looked forward upon ihe 5,000 odd soldiers who were drawn up to do the King honour. Many of the troops had actually only left the trenches overnight, and when they marched past with their great-coats on - for the first touches of winter are unmistakably in the air already - one could see here and there great blotches of thick mud which was still too recent to have been properly scraped off.
Grouped around the saluting point were all the Divisional Generals and Brigadiers, and among them occasional French or Belgian officers, the former easily distinguishable by the gay brilliance of their uniforms to which our Army is now a stranger. When the King, who was accompanied by General Plumer and the Prince of Wales, had ridden up to the saluting base, the men gave a splendid ceremonial display. Their “march discipline”, to use the technical term, was extraordinarily fine. The spacing between the battalions and platoons was kept with extreme regularity, and the rows of “fours” went past with such perfect alignment that, from where one stood 110 yards away, only the nearest man was visible.
The happiest touch of all came, very fitly, at the end. When the men had marched past the King, they doubled out of tle parade ground and took up position beside the roadside along which the King was to drive away. And thus, when the King had finished talking to the group of Generals and foreign officers, and had entered his motor-car, he drove away down a lane of cheering troops. It was the moment when the troops could really express their feeling of pride and pleasure in the King’s presence, and the surging sea of uplifted caps and. the ripple of huzzahs that rolled up the roadway as the car passed by showed the King, as nothing else could show him, with what genuine appreciation his visit is everywhere being hailed.
