A Short History of the Great WarPollard, A. F. (Albert Frederick)
History
A Short History of the Great War
Pollard, A. F. (Albert Frederick)
World War, 1914-1918
There were thus compensations for the Germans if they could merely
hold what they had taken from other people; and the Entente on its
side had its reasons for quiescence. French reserves, which were too
late at Charleroi and Sedan, were in time at Arras and Ypres, but our
own were still in the making. A dreadful toll had been taken of the
heroes of Mons, and the original Expeditionary Force had been sadly
depleted. It was a difficulty which time would remedy, for Great
Britain was teeming with recruits in training from every quarter of
the Empire. The response to its need had been almost overwhelming, and
the Government was hard pressed to embody the hundreds of thousands of
volunteers at home and to provide transport for those overseas. At one
moment in September the War Office took the extraordinary step of
checking the rush by refusing all recruits, however fit, who were less
than 5 ft. 6 in. in height; and to arm and equip and train the
accepted was a task which required time and a vast readjustment of
industry. It was not assisted by a business community which took as
its early motto "business as usual," and was mainly alarmed by the
fear of unemployment. But the traditions of peace were potent in other
than Government circles, and history afforded no precedent for the
crisis, nor for the spirit in which it was met by the youth of the
Empire, who feared less for their lives than most of their elders did
for their profits.
The first source from which the regular forces could be recruited was
the Territorials. They had been formed before the war on the idea that
they were required merely for home defence, and no one had yet thought
of the equivocation that home defence included that of India, Egypt,
Belgium, and France, or offence in Mesopotamia and the Dardanelles.
There was no need for the Government to rely on that quibble, for the
Territorials volunteered almost in mass for foreign service, and the
difficulty was to impress Lord Kitchener with the value of a force
with which his absence in the East had made him unfamiliar. As it was,
some of the best of the regiments, like the London Scottish, put in an
appearance at Ypres, while numbers were sent to Egypt and India to
release for service in Europe the regular forces there. With them came
native Indian regiments, Sikhs, Gurkhas, and Bhopals, whose voluntary
service provided the most touching testimonial to its character that
the British Empire has ever received; for they did not govern
themselves, and it is no small thing to govern others in such a way as
to provoke loyalty unto death. No less moving was the response from
Dominions which were thought by the ill-informed to be straining at
the leash of Imperial domination. The Canadians, having the shortest
route, were the first to come, and on 16 October the advance guard
disembarked at Liverpool. They were followed by scores and then
hundreds of thousands from Australia and New Zealand, and finally from
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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