THE WAR OFFICE IN WAR TIME. BY MAJOR-GENERAL SIR C. E. CALLWELL, K.C.B. SOME day, no doubt, an illuminating record of what the War Office achieved in transforming this country into a great military Power under the inspired, if unorthodox, leadership of Lord Kitchener, will make its appearance. The time has not arrived for divulging many matters in connection with its methods and its procedure. But a few tales of the lighter kind, and some experiences undergone in early days by an official who spent four years within its precincts and under its shadow, may perhaps be told even now without impropriety. Called up-most unexpectedly-to preside over a very large and not unimportant military department in Whitehall when the mobilisation summonses were issued, I found myself confronted at the very outset by an unexpected diffioulty. Working on rollers on the walls of my spacious office there were huge maps of the prospective scenes of operations, and in particular there was one of vast dimensions portraying what even then was called the Western Front. The Headquarters Staff of the Expeditionary Force thought fit to spend their time in my apartment, clambering on and off a table facing this map, discussing strategical problems in penetrating whispers, and occasionally expressing an earnest hope that they were not a nuisance. They were an in tolerable nuisance, but one had to lie. What else could one do? Moreover, as hour to hour passed, and His Majesty's Government could not make up its mind to give the word "Go" to the Expeditionary Force, the language of its Headquarters Staff becamewell, the less that is said about that language the better. It was not easy to concentrate one's attention upon questions arising in the performance of novel duties in a time of emergeney under such distraoting conditions, and it was a genuine relief when the party took itself off to France. My responsibilities turned out to be of a most varied nature, covering pretty well the whole field of endeavour, from drafting documents bearing upon operations-subjects for the information of the very elect, down to returning to him by King's Messenger the teeth which a well-known staff officer had inadvertently left behind him at his club when returning to the front from short leave. The Intelligence Department was under my control, and this caused me to be much sought after in the early days-to be almost snowed under indeed with applications and recommendations for the post of "Intelligence Officer." Qualifications for this particular class of employment turned out to be of a most varied kind. One gentleman, who was declared to be a veritable jewel, was described as a pianist, fitted out with "technique almost equal to a professional." The leading characteristic of another candidate appeared to be his liability to fits. Algy, "a dear boy and so good-looking," had spent a couple of months in Paris after leaving Eton a year or two back. This sounds terribly like petticoat influence; but resisting petticoat influence is, I can assure you, child's play compared to resisting Parliamentary influenee. For good, straightforward, unblushing, ing, and were at large, heading without escort or orders for a water-area known to be mined by both sides, and where enemy destroyers and similar pests were apt unexpectedly to make their appearance. Fortunately the panic was of short duration, because on returning to the office after dinner one learnt that the straying vessels had both fetched up on the Goodwins-luckily about low-water and were under control again. It was about that junoture that an eminent British statesman appeared like a bolt from the blue in a historio Continental city that was imperilled shan't-take-no-for-an-answer by the approach of the devasjobbery, give me the M.P. They are magnificent in their hardihood. During the earlier months of the great conflict, duties were not carried out at the War Office exactly on the lines contemplated by the Esher Committee as mellowed by later experience, and it was somewhat disconcerting for the Director of Military Operations to learn quite by accident one day that a force was to be despatched to the Western Theatre of War, War, which was not to be under Sir J. French's orders-at least for the time being. What turned out to be a somewhat tragio episode was not without some little comic relief. There was consternation in Whitehall one evening just before the dinner hour, when tidings arrived that a couple of the transports conveying this force to its destination had passed the rendezvous where the convoy was muster tating Hun. There was encouragement in his gestures, victory in his pose, fire in his eye. "Que veut done dire cette uniforme qu'il porte, monsieur le ministre?" inquired an inexpressibly interested oitizen of a British staff officer, who enjoyed the good fortune to be present on this great occasion. "C'est, vous savez," rejoined the staff officer, puffed up with patriotic pride at the spectacle and knowing the language, "le frère ainé de la Trinité." "Mais quelle position extraordinaire," murmured the citizen, more impressed than ever. I was occasionally called upon to attend meetings of the War Council after the first two or three months, and fairly often when the Cabinet grew in numbers up to twentythree, and when the War Council expanded, more or less pari passu, into the "Dardanelles Committee." Pretty well the whole lot of them belonged to that. The impression carried away from meetings of this body was one of a great number of exceedingly intelligent civilians, who discussed at inordinate length matters that they did not understand, and who arrived at the wrong, or else at no, conclusion. There was a shocking scene occasionally when Mr Lloyd George was attacked by one of those paroxysms of strategical percipience to which the Right Honourable Gentleman was was, as Mr Asquith plaintively observed, "like a hen laying eggs." An excellent innovation at the War Office synchronising with mobilisation was the introduction of a large number of boy scouts within its portals. They proved most reliable and useful, and did the utmost credit to the fine institution for which we have to thank Sir Robert Baden-Powell. A day or two after joining I wanted to make the acquaintance of a colonel, who I found was under me in charge of a branch-a new hand like myself, but whose apartment nobody in the place could indicate. A War Office messenger despatched to find him came back empty-handed. Another War Office messenger sent on the same errand on the morrow proved no more successful. On the third day I summoned a boy scout into martyr, and which are understood not to have yielded to treatment even to this day. Mr Churchill also was as busy as a bee about that time, evolving a series of most masterly memoranda, each advocating an entirely new war policy, or urging the claims to attention of some theatre of suggested operations to which nobody previously had turned his mind. These of that all or a very small one Lom were charming. After almost affectionately indeed, he two or three months he dis- makes it plain to you what an appeared, and only then did ass you in reality are, and he it occur to me to ask what looks so wise the while that these intimate transactions you are hardly able to bear it. were on which he had been en- He handles his arguments with gaged. It transpired that he such petrifying precision, he was acting vicariously on my marshals his facts so mercilessbehalf, that he was selecting ly, he becomes so elusive when a staff for censorship duties, you approach the real point, or some such dull occupation, and he grows so bewildering if in my place. If good looks he detects the slightest sympwere a qualification for such toms of your having discovered employment, that civilian must what he is driving at, that he have been troubled with an will transform an elementary embarras de richesses. military question, which you in your folly have presumed to think that you understood, into a problem which a very Moltke would ignominiously fail to elucidate. Contact with the Eminent K.C. under such con Amongst the many privileges and responsibilities which my position in the early months of the war thrust upon me was that of finding myself in more or less official relations with velop in its members. Оце оf the greatest worries to which War Office officials have been exposed during these anxious times has been a bent on the part of individuals, whom they have not the slightest wish to see, for demanding — and obtaining interviews. The soouts tumbled to this (if one may use so vulgar an expression) almost from the first day, and they acted with rare judgment and determination. They ohose Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate for their motto, and adopted the method of herding the intruders into an unattractive apartment on the ground floor, as tube attendants herd subterranean travellers into the lifts, and of keeping the intruders there until they verged on a condition of mutiny. They then enlarged them in big parties, each of which was taken charge of by a scout he led his charges round and round and in and out along the corridors, and up and down between floors, carefully avoiding the elevators, until the victims were in a state of physical and mental collapse. If one of the party quitted the ranks while on the trek, to read the name marked up on some door that he was passing, the scout called a halt and withered the culprit with a scowl,-it would never have done to permit that sort of thing, because the visitor might conceivably have noticed the name of the very official whom he had come to see. Anybody who came again after undergoing this experience onoe, probably had just cause for demanding an interview; but one bout of it satisfied most people. It may be suggested that the scouts were acting under instructions from Sir Reginald Brade, Secretary and Grand Master of the Ceremonies, in this matter; but, if asked, he will own up and admit that in the pressure of his duties he overlooked the point, and that the entire credit belongs to the boys. Still, perambulation of those furlongs of corridor in the big building in Whitehall might have offered points of interest to a visitor not too exhausted to take notice. By one window was usually to be seen a posse of parsons, of furtive aspect, each nervously twiddling a lissom hat, a love-your-neighbour-as-yourself look frozen on their countenances, and not quite conveying for the time being an impression of the ohurch militant: they were candidates for the post of army chaplain, about to ba inspected by the genial prelate who presides over the department responsible for the spiritual welfare of the troops. A day or two later might be seen in the same place some of these very candidates, decked out in khaki raiment, hung about with contrivances into which combatant comrades introduce implements for slaying their fellow-men, erect, martial, terrifying, the very embodiment of the church triumphant, having been aocepted for the job and awaiting orders-and no men have done finer service in the Great Adventure. At another point one encountered a very wellknown cricketer, who was doling out commissions. How he did it one had no time to ask; but one suspected that, if one of the young gentlemen whom he took in hand had been in a school eleven or even house eleven (or said he had), orooked ways somehow became straight. Just outside my own door an attractivelooking civilian had devised a sort of wigwam within which he took cover-one of those arrangements with sereens which second lieutenants prepare when there is a regimental dance, and which they designate, until called to order, as "hugging booths." There he was to be seen at any hour of the day in close communion with a charming lady, heads close together, murmuring confidences, an idyll in a vestibule-or rather a succession of idylls, because there was succession of ladies, all of them different except in that all of them were charming. After two or three months he disappeared, and only then did it occur to me to ask what these intimate transactions were on which he had been engaged. It transpired that he was acting vicariously on my behalf, that he was selecting a staff for censorship duties, or some such dull occupation, in my place. If good looks were a qualification for such employment, that civilian must have been troubled with an embarras de richesses. Amongst the many privileges and responsibilities which my position in the early months of the war thrust upon me was that of finding myself in more or less official relations with the Eminent K.C. and with the Self-Appointed Spy-Catcher. One may have had the good fortune in pre-war times to meet the former, when disguised 88 & mere human being-on the links, say, or at the dinner table. The latter one came into contact with for the first time. At a later stage of the proceedings I saw something of another interesting typethe "Man of Business" when pitchforked into a Department of State. The average soldier seldom finds himself associated with the Eminent K.C. on parade, so to speak, in the piping times of peace. When performing, and on the war-path as you might say, this successful limb of the law is a portentous personage. Persuasive, masterful, clean-shaven, he fixes you with his eye as the boa-constriotor fascinates the rabbit. Pontifically, compassionately, almost affectionately indeed, he makes it plain to you what an ass you in reality are, and he looks so wise the while that you are hardly able to bear it. He handles his arguments with such petrifying precision, he marshals his facts so mercilessly, he becomes so elusive when you approach the real point, and he grows so bewildering if he detects the slightest symptoms of your having discovered what he is driving at, that he will transform an elementary military question, which you in your folly have presumed to think that you understood, into a problem which a very Moltke would ignominiously fail to elucidate. Contact with the Eminent K.C. under such con |