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Table of Contents

(PLATES 1 TO 4.)

On the 26th of July, 1914, on my return from a pleasant motor excursion through the Dolomites, I arrived at Innsbruck, and found the picturesquely situated old city in a state of unsuppressed excitement owing to the proclamation of war made on that day between Austria and Serbia. The crowds in the Maria Theresien Strasse were reading and discussing the proclamation (Plate 1), and were obviously in excellent spirits, with no premonition of what would be the unhappy fate of their country when at length the fire which they had kindled should be finally extinguished. Among the mountains we had seen no newspapers for weeks, so that the news of the outbreak of war came as a complete surprise, but still as something not at all affecting ourselves. It was not until some days later (on the 30th of July) that we found ourselves in the thick of German mobilisation at the Kehl bridge, and were told that we must find our way home either by Belgium or by Switzerland, for all roads into France were closed. After some exciting days, and many interviews with high German authorities, civil, military and police, we happily succeeded in getting safely into Switzerland, and so eventually back to England by way of Genoa, Gibraltar, and the Bay of Biscay.

The École Militaire at Montreuil (Plate 2), a sufficiently uninteresting building in appearance, is notable for us as constituting, after the removal from St. Omer in March, 1916, the offices of our G.H.Q. in France. Here the schemes were prepared, and from here the orders were issued, which—after so long a time of suspense and anxiety—resulted finally in the Allied victory of 1918. It is interesting, and perhaps not uninstructive, to compare the account of the manner of life at Montreuil, as described by the author of "G.H.Q. (Montreuil)," with that which prevailed at the German headquarters in Charleville, of which Mr. Domelier (an eyewitness throughout the occupation) gives very interesting, if sometimes scandalous, particulars.[1]

Life at Montreuil is described as "serious enough … monkish in its denial of some pleasures, rigid in discipline, exacting in work. … Like a college where everyone was a 'swotter.'" The precautions for safety taken at Charleville differed as much from ours as its manner of life. We hear of cellars reinforced with concrete in walls and roof, of bombproof casemates with several exits and underground passages, of netted elastic buffer mattresses overhead to intercept bombs, of felted door joints to keep out gas. And yet the two places were about the same distance from the enemy's lines and were equally exposed to the enemy's air raids. The differences seem to be due to the same difference in mentality as that which showed itself in so many other matters.

And farther north the King—and the Queen—of the Belgians "occupied a little villa within range of the German guns, and in a district incessantly attacked by the enemy's bombing aeroplanes."[2]

It was at 3.30 a.m. on the 21st of March, 1918, that the great German attack westwards over the old Somme battlefields commenced. The events of the four following days—the days of the greatest anxiety to most of us since the commencement of the war—are remembered only too well and too painfully. Our armies, unavoidably thinned and for days out of reach of reserves, were, with the French beside them, continuously driven back, until the Germans were close to Villers Bretonneux (ten miles from Amiens), had crossed the Avre to the south, and had taken Albert and crossed the Ancre on the north, wiping out in a few days all our gains of 1917. At least one benefit, the greatest of all possible benefits, resulted from the extreme urgency of the situation. On the 26th of March a special conference was held at Doullens, which in 1914 had been General Foch's H.Q. The Hôtel de Ville of that town (Plate 3), otherwise a commonplace and uninteresting building—in which the conference met—became at once a building notable for ever in history. Lord Milner and General Sir Henry Wilson, who were fortunately in France, attended, with President Poincaré, M. Clemenceau, and M. Loucheur, as well as Sir Douglas Haig, with our four Army Commanders, and General Pétain and General Foch. As an immediate result, arrived at unanimously by the conference,[3] General Foch was made de facto—and a few days later de jure—Generalissimo of the Allied Armies in France. It was immediately after this decision (on the 28th of March) that General Pershing nobly offered to General Foch, for serving under his authority in any way which he thought most useful, every man whom he had available of the Americans who had arrived. From the moment when, under such conditions, unity of command was at length achieved, and in spite of the further set-backs in Flanders in April—Ludendorff's last despairing efforts—the ultimate issue of the war was no longer in doubt.

Just within the forest of Compiègne, about four miles from the town, is a certain little knot of railway tracks (Plate 4), close to the main Compiègne-Soissons road, on which took place, on the 8th of November, 1918, surely the most memorable conference since 1870. There were present General Foch and his Chief of Staff, General Weygand, Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, and Admiral Sims in their saloon on the rails to the left, the German representatives being brought up on the farther track and crossing over to General Foch's carriage. An account of the interview which has been published states that Herr Erzberger said in the first instance that he had come to receive proposals for an armistice, and that General Foch refused altogether to discuss matters on any such basis, and until Erzberger had admitted that he had come "to beg for an armistice."[4] The now well-known terms by which an armistice would be granted, on conditions equivalent to absolute surrender, were then given to the Germans under the obligation of their acceptance within three days. With their final acceptance hostilities ended at 11 o'clock on the forenoon of the 11th of November.

PLATE I.

THE DECLARATION OF WAR.

The principal street in Innsbruck, the capital of Southern Austria, on the 30th of July, 1914, when crowds were reading the Declaration of War between Austria and Serbia.

PLATE II.

G.H.Q.

The École Militaire at Montreuil, which was used as the offices of our G.H.Q. during the greater part of the war.

PLATE III.

DOULLENS.

The Hôtel de Ville at Doullens, where, on the 26th of March, 1918, General Foch was appointed as de facto Generalissimo of the Allied Armies in France.

PLATE IV.

THE ARMISTICE.

The sidings in the Forest of Compiègne where General Foch and Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, on behalf of the Allies, met Herr Erzberger and his colleagues on the 8th of November, 1918, and dictated to them the terms on which an armistice would be granted.