Читать книгу The Times Great War Letters: Correspondence during the First World War - James Owen - Страница 56

After fighting desperately day and night for days and weeks, with frightful losses, the men who are left are dog tired and need a rest. When they are “pulled out” to get this rest, and after three days are sent back into the firing line again, the only conclusion they can draw is that there are not enough troops available to take their places. When battalion after battalion of infantry—and, as was recently the case in the Ypres salient, regiment after regiment of cavalry, too—have to sit in trenches day after day and night after night, being pounded by high explosives from enemy guns, with no guns behind them capable of keeping down the enemy’s fire, then the conclusion they draw is obvious—namely, that the nation has failed to provide sufficient guns of ammunition to meet those of the enemy. When night after night and day after day, the men in the trenches know that for every one hand grenade or rifle grenade or trench mortar bomb which they throw at the enemy they will get back in answer anything from five to 10, then the conclusion they draw is also obvious—namely, that the nation does not somehow realize the situation, or, if it does, has not made it its business to supply what is necessary. Man for man they know that they have nothing to fear either from German infantry or cavalry; they have proved it again and again. But they know also that it is little short of murder for a nation to ask men, however full of the right spirit, to face an enemy amply equipped with big guns and the right kind of ammunition, unless they are at last equipped with equally effective munitions of war.

There can be only one impression left on the minds of men in such a case, and that is, that somehow or other the nation does not know the truth, does not understand, and is not backing them, for, knowing the old country as they do, they have no doubt that if Germany can produce these things we can, if we will. And yet, in spite of it all, they carry on, they keep cheery, they do their best, they die gaily. The fact is that as a nation we are just gambling on this spirit. We know it to be there; we recognize it as the finest thing in the world; we believe it is unconquerable, whatever happens. So it is; but it will not win the war alone. It is this spirit, backed by guns and high explosives—legitimate munitions of war—which is going to smash this enemy of ours, and nothing else. Let no one think that we are going to do it by descending to the level of the German Imperial Staff and using any sort of gas. This talk of reprisals by gas (perhaps next we shall near of reprisals by poisoning water supplies!) is simply another method of chloroforming the nation and blinding its eyes to the real issue—the adequate supply of big guns and high explosive shells and other legitimate munitions of war.