The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward Part 20

Ward's first visit, some other ladies, reading _England's Effort_, had been clamorous for the same privileges, so that the much-tried War Office had been obliged to lay down a rigid rule against the admission of "any more ladies," as Sir Edward Grey wrote, "within the military zone of the British Armies." Sir Edward did not think that any exception could be made, but not so General Charteris. On November 9, Lord Onslow, then serving in the War Office, wrote to Mrs. Ward that:

"General Charteris fully recognizes the valuable effect which your first book produced upon the public, and would consequently expect similar results from a further work of yours. He is, therefore, disposed to do everything in his power to a.s.sist you, and he thinks it possible that perhaps an exception to the general rule might be made on public grounds. But it would have to be clearly understood that in the event of your being allowed to go, it would not const.i.tute a precedent as regards any other ladies."

Permits, in the form of "Adjutant-General's Pa.s.ses," were therefore issued to Mrs. Ward and her daughter for a visit to the British Military Zone from February 28 to March 4, 1917. They crossed direct to Boulogne, and were the guests of General Headquarters from the moment that they set foot in France.

Since their last visit, the Battle of the Somme had come and gone, and the German Army was in the act of retreating across that tortured belt of territory to the safe shelter of the Hindenburg Line, there to resist our pressure for another year. But, in these weeks of early spring, the elation of movement had gripped our Army; the Boche was in retreat; this must, this _should_ be the deciding year! Mrs. Ward's letters from the war zone are full of this spirit of hopefulness; not yet had Russia crumbled in pieces, not yet had the strength of the shortened German line revealed itself. Once more she was sent on two memorable days, from the Visitors' Chateau at Agincourt, to points of vital interest on our line, first through St. Pol, Divion and Ranchicourt, to the wooded slope of the Bois de Bouvigny, whence she could gaze across at the Vimy Ridge, not yet stormed by the Canadians; then, on the second day, to the very centre of the Somme battlefield, where she stood in the midst of the world's uttermost scene of desolation. Of the Bois de Bouvigny, Dorothy's narrative, written down the same night, gives the following picture:

"The car b.u.mped slowly along a very rough track into the heart of the wood, and stopped when it could go no farther. We got out and walked on till soon we came to an open piece of gra.s.s-land, a rectangular wedge, as it were, driven from the eastern edge of the hill into the heart of the wood. We walked across it, facing east, and saw it was pitted with sh.e.l.l-holes, mostly old--but not all.

In particular, one very large one had fresh moist earth cast up all round it. Captain Fowler [their guide] asked Captain Bell a question about it, lightly, yet with a significant _appui_ in his tone--but the young man laughed off the question and implied that the Boches had grown tired of troubling that particular place.

Meanwhile, the firing of our own guns behind and to the side of us was becoming more frequent, the noise greater. Just ahead, and to the right, the ground sloped to a valley, which we could not see, and where we were told lay Ablain St. Nazaire and Carency. From this direction came the short, abrupt, but quite formidable reports of trench-mortars. Over against us, and slightly to the right, three or four ridges and folds of hill lay clearly distinguishable--of which the middle back was the famous _Vimy Ridge_, partly held to this day by the Germans. Captain Bell, however, would not let us advance quite to the edge of the plateau, so that we never saw exactly how the ground dropped to the lower ground, neither did we see the crucifix of Notre Dame de Lorette at the end of the spur. All this bit had been the scene of terrific fighting in 1915, when it still formed part of the French line; it had been a fight at close quarters in the beautiful wood that closed in the open ground on which we stood, and we were told that many bodies of poor French soldiers still lay unburied in the wood.

We turned soon to recross the bare s.p.a.ce again, and as we did so, fresh guns of our own opened fire, and once more I heard that long-drawn scream of the sh.e.l.ls over our heads that I got to know last year."

On both these days, the "things seen," unforgettable as they were, were filled out by most interesting conversations with two of our Army Commanders--first with General Horne and then with Sir Henry Rawlinson, who entertained Mrs. Ward and her daughter with a kindness that had in it an element of pathos. Not often, in those stern days, did anyone of the gentler s.e.x make and pour out their tea! And in the Chauffeurs'

Mess, the Scotch chauffeur, Sloan, who for the second time was in charge of Mrs. Ward, found himself the object of universal curiosity. "He told Captain Fowler," wrote Mrs. Ward to her husband, "that they asked him innumerable questions about the two ladies--no one having ever seen such a phenomenon in these parts before. 'They were varra puzzled,' said Sloan, 'they couldna mak' it out. But I didna tell them. I left them thinkin'!'"

Mrs. Ward left the British zone for Paris on March 4, and after three days of comparative rest there--renewing old acquaintance under strange new conditions--she put herself under the charge of a kind and energetic official of the "Maison de la Presse," M. Ponsot, for her long-planned visit to the devastated regions of the Centre and East. Soissons, Reims and Verdun were p.r.o.nounced too dangerous for her, but she went north to the ruins of Senlis, and heard from the lips of the old cure the horrible tale of the German panic there, in the early days of September, 1914, the burning of the town, the murder of the Maire and the other hostages, and of the frantic, insane excitement under which many of the German officers seemed to be labouring. Then it was the battlefield of the Ourcq, the scene of Maunoury's fateful flank attack, which forced Von Kluck to halt and give battle at the Marne; a string of famous villages--Marcilly, Barcy, Etrepilly, Vareddes--seen, alas, under a blinding snow-storm, and at length the vision of the Marne itself, "winding, steely-grey, through the white landscape." Mrs. Ward has described it all, in inimitable fas.h.i.+on, in the seventh and eighth Letters of _Towards the Goal_, and has there told also the ghastly tale of the Hostages of Vareddes, which burnt itself upon her mind with the sharpness that only the sight of the actual scene could give. Then, leaving Paris by train for Nancy, she spent two days--seeing much of the stout-hearted Prefet, M. Mirman--in visiting the regions overwhelmed by the German invasion between August 20 and September 10, 1914--a period and a theatre of the War of which we English usually have but the dimmest idea. From the ruined farm of Leaumont she was shown, by a French staff officer, the whole scene of these operations, spread like a map before her, and became absorbed in the thrilling tale of the driving back of the Bavarians by General Castelnau and the First French Army.

Then southward through the region from which the German wave had receded, but which still bore indelible marks of the invaders' savage fear and hatred. In _Towards the Goal_ Mrs. Ward has told the tale of Gerbevillers and of the heroic Sur Julie, who saved her "gros blesses" in the teeth of some demoralized German officers, who forced their way into the hospital. Here we can but give her general impressions of the scene, as she recorded them in a letter to Miss Arnold, written from Paris immediately afterwards:

"Lorraine was in some ways a spectacle to wring one's heart, the ruined villages, the _refugies_ everywhere, and the faces of men and women who had lost their all and seen the worst horrors of human nature face to face. But there were many beautiful and consoling things. The marvellous view from a point near Luneville of the eastern frontier, the French lines and the German, near the Foret de Paroy--a group of some hundreds of French soldiers, near another point of the frontier, who, finding out that we were two English ladies, cheered us vigorously as we pa.s.sed through them--the already famous Sur Julie, of Gerbevillers, who had been a witness of all the German crimes there, and told the story inimitably, with native wit and Christian feeling--the beautiful return from Nancy on a spring day across France, from East to West, pa.s.sing the great rivers, Meurthe, Meuse, Moselle, Marne--the warm welcome of the Lorrainers--these things we shall never forget."

A rapid return to England and then, in order that her impressions of the Fleet might not be behindhand, she was sent by special arrangement to see Commodore Tyrwhitt, at Harwich, there to realize the immense development of the smaller craft of the Navy, and to go "creeping and climbing," as she describes it in _Towards the Goal_, about a submarine.

Returning to Stocks to write her second series of "Letters"--now addressed without disguise to Mr. Roosevelt--it was not long before the news of America's Declaration of War came in to cheer her, with an eager telephone-message from a daughter, left in London, that "Old Glory" was to be seen waving side by side with the Union Jack from the tower of the House of Lords. Now surely, the happy prophecies of her soldier-friends in France would be fulfilled: this _must_ be the deciding year! But the months pa.s.sed on; Vimy and Messines were ours, yet nothing followed, and in August, September, October, the agonizing struggle in the mud of Pa.s.schendaele sapped the endurance of the watchers at home more miserably than any other three months of the War. And there, on October 11, perished a lad of twenty, bearing a name that was heart of her heart to Mrs. Ward, Tom Arnold, the elder son of her brother, Dr. F. S.

Arnold. He had lain wounded all night in a sh.e.l.l-hole, and when at length they bore him back to the Casualty Clearing-station, the little flame of life, though it flickered and shot upwards in hope, sank again into darkness. Tom was a lad to whose gentle soul all war was utterly abhorrent, yet he had "joined up" without question on the earliest possible day. Already Christopher and Arthur Selwyn, the splendid twins, were gone, and the sons of so many friends and neighbours, gentle and simple! About this time General Horne had invited her to come once more to France. "But it is not at all likely I shall go (she wrote)--though, perhaps, in the spring it might be, if the War goes on. Horrible, horrible thought! I am more and more conscious of its horror and hideousness every day. And yet after so much--after all these lives laid down--not to achieve the end, and a real 'peace upon Israel'--would not that be worst of all?"

CHAPTER XV

LAST YEARS: 1917-1920

a?t?? ?e? s?ed??e? ???? ?stata? ?? ?fe??? ?e ?e?? f???? t?? s?? ?e??a ?a??sa ?a?e??.[35]

DAMAGETUS.

Those who visited Mrs. Ward at Stocks during the later years of the War were wont to fasten upon any younger members of the family who happened to be there, to declare that Mrs. Ward was working herself to death and to plead that something must be done to stop her. And even as they said it they knew that their words were vain, for besides the perennial need to make a living, was not her country at war and were not the young men dying every day? Mrs. Ward was not of the temperament that forgot such things; hence her desire to throw her very best work into her "War books"--which owing to their low price and the special terms on which she allowed the Government to use them could never bring her anything like the same return as her novels.[36] She regarded them therefore almost as an extra on her ordinary work, so that the pressure on her time was increased rather than diminished as the War years went on and her own age advanced. And the last of the series, _Fields of Victory_, was to make on her time and strength the greatest demands of all.

But the lighter side of her War labours was the intense and meticulous interest she took in the "War economies" devised by herself and Dorothy at Stocks. How they schemed and planned about the cutting of timber, the growing of potatoes, the making of jam and the sharing of the garden fruit with the village! Labour in the garden was reduced to a minimum, so that all the family must take their turn at planting out violas and verbenas, if the poor things were to be saved for use at all, while Mr.

Wilkin, the well-beloved butler who had been with us for twenty years, mowed the lawn and split wood and performed many other unorthodox tasks until he too was called up, at 47, in the summer of 1918. Mrs. Ward could not plant verbenas, but she armed herself with a spud and might often be seen of an afternoon valiantly attacking the weeds in the rose-beds and paths. The links between her and the little estate seemed to grow ever stronger as she came to depend more and more directly on the produce of the soil, and when, in 1918, she established a cow on what had once been the cricket-ground her joy and pride in the productiveness of her new creature were a delight to all beholders. Her daughter Dorothy was at this time deep in the organisation of "Women on the Land"--a movement of considerable importance in Hertfords.h.i.+re--, so that Mrs. Ward could study it at first hand and had many an absorbing conversation with one of the "gang-leaders," Mrs. Bentwich, who made Stocks her headquarters for a time and delighted her hostess by her many-sided ability and by the picturesqueness of her attire. All this gave her many ideas for her four War novels--_Missing_, _The War and Elizabeth_, _Cousin Philip_ and _Harvest_, the last of which was to close the long list of her books. _Missing_ had a considerable popular success, for it sold 21,000 in America in the first two months of its appearance, but _Elizabeth_ and _Cousin Philip_ were, I think, felt to be the most interesting of this series, owing to the admirable studies they presented of the type of young woman thrown up and moulded by the War. Mrs. Ward was by no means ashamed of her hard work as a novelist in these days.

"I have just finished a book," she wrote to her nephew, Julian Huxley, in April 1918, "and am beginning another--as usual! But I should be lost without it, and it is what my betters, George Sand and Balzac--and Scott!--did before me. Literature is an honourable profession, and I am no ways ashamed of it--as a profession. And indeed I feel that novels have a special function nowadays--when one sees the great demand for them as a _dela.s.s.e.m.e.nt_ and refreshment. I wish with all my heart I could write a good detective--or mystery--novel! That is what the wounded and the tired love."

But, side by side with this immense output of writing, Mrs. Ward never allowed the springs of thought to grow dry for lack of reading. The one advantage that she gained from her short nights--for her hours of sleep were rarely more and often less than six--was that the long hours of wakefulness in the early morning gave her time for the reading of many books and of poetry. "There is nothing like it for keeping the streams of life fresh," she wrote to one of us. "At least that is my feeling now that I am beginning to grow old. All things pa.s.s, but thought and feeling! And to grow cold to poetry is to let that which is most vital in our being decay. I seem to trace in the men and women I see whether they keep their ideals and whether they still turn to imagination, whether through art or poetry. And I believe for thousands it is the difference between being happy and unhappy--between being 'dans l'ordre'

or at variance with the world."

In addition to her novels and her two first War books, Mrs. Ward had been writing at intervals, ever since the summer of 1916, her _Recollections_, and brought them out at length in October 1918. They covered the period of her life down to the year 1900, giving a picture of things seen and heard, of friends loved and enjoyed and lost, of long-past Oxford days, of London, Rome, and the Alban Hills, such as only a woman of her manifold experience could offer to a tired generation. The reception given to the book touched her profoundly, for it showed her, beyond the possibility of doubt, that her long life's work had earned her not only the admiration but the love of her fellow-countrymen. As an old friend, Mrs. Halsey, wrote to Dorothy, "I remember Mlle Souvestre saying more than thirty years ago, 'Ah! the books I admire--but it's the woman Mary Ward that I love.'" "Mrs. Ward's Recollections are of priceless value," said the _Contemporary Review_; "all the famous names are here, but that is nothing; the people themselves are here moving about and veritably alive--great men and women of whom posterity will long to hear." And another reviewer dwelt on a different aspect: "She has lived to see the first social studies and efforts of her Oxford days grow into the Pa.s.smore Edwards Settlement, the Schools for the Physically Defective, the Play Centres and a great deal else in which she has reaped a harvest for the England of to-day or sown a seed for the England of to-morrow." The reviews generally ended on a note of hope for a second volume, to complete the story--, but the story remained, and will always remain, uncompleted.

Perhaps part of the affectionate admiration with which her _Recollections_ were received was due to the wider knowledge which the public at last possessed of all that she had been able to accomplish, through twenty years of toil, for the children of England. For it so happened that during the two years that preceded the appearance of her _Recollections_--years of war and difficulty of all kinds as they were--Mrs. Ward had seen her labours for the play-time of London's children crowned by that State recognition towards which she had always worked, and her hopes for the extension of Special Schools for crippled children to the provinces as well as London very largely realised. After an immensely up-hill struggle to maintain the funds for her Play Centres during the first two years of the War, it was at length the War conditions themselves that convinced the authorities that all was not well with the child-population of our big cities and that such efforts as Mrs. Ward's must be encouraged and a.s.sisted in the fullest possible way. "Juvenile crime"--that comprehensive phrase that covers everything from pilfering at street corners to the formation of "Black-Hand-Gangs"

under some adventurous spirit of ten or eleven, gloriously devoted to terrorising the back streets after dark--was the portent that convinced Whitehall, that set the Home Office complaining to the Board of Education and the Board of Education consulting Mrs. Ward. The result of these consultations, carried on in the winter of 1916-17 between Mrs.

Ward, Sir Amherst Selby-Bigge (the Permanent Secretary), Mr. Pease the outgoing and Mr. Fisher the incoming President of the Board, was that on Jan. 26, 1917, an official announcement appeared in _The Times_ to the effect that "Grants from the Board of Education will shortly be available in aid of the cost of carrying on Play Centres.... Hitherto Centres have been established only by voluntary bodies, mostly in London, where the Local Education Authority has granted the free use of school buildings. It is hoped that the powers which education authorities already possess of establis.h.i.+ng and aiding such centres will be more freely exercised in future."

To which _The Times_ added the following note:--"The announcement that the Treasury has approved the principle of play centres and will signify its approval in the usual manner, forms a fitting and characteristic climax to twenty years of voluntary effort on the part of Mrs. Humphry Ward and a devoted circle of workers."

There was general rejoicing among the higher officials of the Board, who had watched Mrs. Ward's work for so long, when the Treasury at length announced its consent to the Grant. Sir Amherst Selby-Bigge wrote to her in the following terms:

"Allow me to congratulate you most heartily on having induced the State to take under its wing and aid the enterprise of which you have been the pioneer and which you have carried on unaided for so many years with such admirable results.

"I do not think you are one of those who are nervous about State intervention or share the apprehension which is sometimes expressed that a free spirit of voluntary enterprise may be hampered or circ.u.mscribed by the existence of State aid. However this may be, I think you may feel sure that our grants and regulations will be administered in a sympathetic spirit and with full recognition that it is necessary to secure and retain the willing co-operation of people of all kinds who are anxious to devote their time and energy to public service. It is a source of great pleasure to me that I have been the humble instrument of furthering the enterprise of which you have been the guiding spirit."

As a matter of fact, the Board's regulations were largely drawn up by Mrs. Ward herself, and her relations with both officials and President continued close and cordial--nay, almost affectionate!--down to the last day of her life. Nor was the London County Council left long behindhand.

The Treasury Grant amounted to 50 per cent. of the "approved expenditure" of any voluntary committee or Education Authority which carried on Play Centres according to the Board's regulations, so that it was not long before some fifty great towns all over England were opening Play Centres of their own, under the Act of 1907, and London was in danger of being left behind. In the summer of 1919, however, Mrs. Ward's edifice was crowned by the Council's deciding to take over another quarter of the cost of her Centres, so that she was left with only one quarter to raise in voluntary funds. The whole of the organisation, however--which had long been perfected by the contriving brain of Miss Churcher--was left in Mrs. Ward's hands, subject only to inspection by the Council, for the Education Committee knew better than to disturb the result of so many years of specialised care and study. The additional funds available made it possible for Mrs. Ward, in the last three years of her life, to add ten new Centres in London to the twenty-two that she was maintaining before the advent of the Grant. It may be imagined what joy this gave to her, and how, in the winter of 1917-18, in spite of the cruelly-darkened streets and the danger of air-raids, she managed to make her way to many of these new Centres, lingering there in complete content to watch her singing children. The last phase of the Play Centre movement, as far as Mrs. Ward was concerned, was the publication by her daughter, in February 1920, of a little book describing their origin and growth,[37] with a preface written by Mrs. Ward herself. This she sent to Mr. Fisher, and received from him, a month before her death, a letter which deserves to be quoted here as a fitting epitaph on her work. Mr.

Fisher and she had recently visited Oxford together, to speak at the opening of the "Arlosh Hall" at Manchester College.

"Albert Dicey spoke to us, as you will remember," wrote Mr. Fisher, "of the abolition of religious tests in the Universities as belonging to that small category of reforms to which no discernible disadvantages attach and I am convinced that the same high and unusual compliment may be paid without a suspicion of extravagance to the Evening Play Centres. Here there are no drawbacks, nothing but positive and far-reaching good."

In the same way Mrs. Ward succeeded, in the spring of 1918, in persuading the House of Commons to add a clause to Mr. Fisher's great Education Bill, making it compulsory for Education Authorities throughout the country to "make arrangements" for the education of their physically defective children. She used for this purpose the machinery of the "Joint Parliamentary Advisory Council" which she had founded in 1913,[38] but the bulk of the work--involving as it did the sending out of circular letters to ninety-five Education Authorities, the sifting and printing of the replies and the forwarding of these to every Member of Parliament--was carried out from Stocks, causing a heavy strain--long remembered!--on the secretarial resources of the house. It may be noted too, that all this took place during those agonising weeks when the British Armies were being hurled back in France and Flanders, and when Mrs. Ward, of all people, realised only too clearly the peril we were in. But the task was accomplished and the clause added to the Bill, so that a new charter was thus provided for the 30,000 or so of crippled and invalid children who still remained throughout the country uneducated and uncared for.[39] A little later, the movement initiated by Sir Robert Jones and the Central Committee for the Care of Cripples, for converting some of the War Hospitals into Homes for the scientific treatment of crippled children received Mrs. Ward's warm support, her special contribution to the movement being a successful campaign for the provision of educational facilities for the children lying for many months within the hospital walls. The beautiful War-hospital at Calgarth on Lake Windermere (the Ethel Hedley Hospital) was converted to this use in the spring of 1920, and one of the last pleasures which Mrs. Ward enjoyed was her correspondence with the Governors of the hospital, who described to her their plan for the conversion and invoked her blessing upon it. Mrs. Ward was never able to visit Calgarth, but the love she bore to the fells and waters of the North which surrounded it have linked her memory very specially with this delightful place, where children who, even ten years before, would have been deemed hopeless cases, recover straightness and strength. Her connection with this enterprise made a gentle ending to her long labour for these waifs of our educational system.

Who that lived through the year 1918 will ever lose the memory of its gigantic vicissitudes? Mrs. Ward, with her actual knowledge of so much of the ground over which the battles of March and April raged, was certainly not among those who could shut their eyes to the national danger they involved. She tried to maintain her characteristic optimism throughout the blackest times, and was in the end justified. But I remember one afternoon at Grosvenor Place when a friend who thought that he was much "in the know" informed us confidentially that we were "out of Ypres--been out for the last two days, but they don't want to tell us," and hope sank very low. When the battle rolled up to the foot of her own Scherpenberg Hill she longed, I believe, to be there with a pike, but victory was ours that day and she felt a special lifting of the heart at the news. As the terrible pageant of the year unrolled itself, her heart went out to France in her losing struggle north of the Marne; to Italy in those anxious days of June, when after a first recoil she swept the Austrians permanently back over the Piave; to France again in the first great return towards Soissons and the Aisne. Was it the real turn of the tide? Hardly could we dare to believe it, but in the light of later events it became evident that the Italian stand on the Piave had indeed marked the turn for the whole Allied front. Mrs. Ward always thought of this with peculiar satisfaction, for she was kept in constant touch with the situation out there by her son-in-law, George Trevelyan, who was in command of a British Red Cross Unit on the Italian front, and the disaster of Caporetto had very sadly affected her. Now all was well once more and Mrs. Ward, who had been no fair-weather friend to Italy, rejoiced with all her heart. There was much talk during the summer of a possible visit of hers, that autumn, to the Italian front, but events were destined to move too fast, and Mrs. Ward never again beheld the Lombard Plain.

But when the incredible hope had at last become solid fact--when the British Armies had stormed the Hindenburg Line and how much else beside, when the Americans had won through the forest of the Argonne and the French had pressed on to their ancient frontier; when Stocks had been illuminated on Armistice Night and we had all settled down to speculation, more or less sober, on the remaking of the world, Mrs. Ward began to enquire from the authorities as to the possibility of a third and final journey to France. For she wished with almost pa.s.sionate eagerness to write a third and final book on the last phase of "England's Effort." She was met once more with the greatest cordiality.

Sir Douglas Haig expressed a desire to see her; General Horne promised to send her over the battlefield of Vimy; Lille, Lens and Cambrai were to reveal to her the tale of their four years of servitude. And, on their part, the French promised to convey her to Metz and Strasburg and to show her Verdun and Rheims on her return, while Paris was to be made easy for her by the hospitality of a delightful young couple, her cousins, Arnold Whitridge and his wife, who had the good fortune to possess a house there amid the rush and pressure of all the nations of the world.

So everything was planned and settled during the month of December 1918, but before she left England on her last mission Mrs. Ward was able to enjoy that strange Peace Christmas which, in spite of its superficial note of thanksgiving, seemed to ring for so many the final knell of joy.

Just two months before, Mrs. Ward had lost, from the influenza scourge, yet another soldier-nephew, the youngest Selwyn boy, while sorrow had come to the house itself in the death at a training camp of her butler's only son--a lad of 17 who had been the playmate of her grandchildren on many a golden afternoon in the days gone by. But if the elders could not forget these things, the children at least could be made an excuse for rejoicing! And so her two grandchildren, Mary and Humphry, came once more to Stocks as they had come for every Christmas since they entered this world; they mounted the big bed as of old and played the egg-game with solemn attention to detail, and then on the last day of the year Stocks opened its doors to the children from far and near, coming in fancy dress to dance out the Year of Miracles. Mrs. Ward, who had that very morning finished the writing of a novel, moved among the groups with a face the pallor of which, though we did not know it, was already a premonition of the end. She drank in the beauty of the scene in deep draughts of refreshment. That little boy attired as feathered Mercury--that slender Rosalind with the glorious bush of hair--they caught at her heart! From certain fragments of talk that she let fall during the evening one gathered that the sight had meant more to her than a mere joyous spectacle. To these would be the new world: let the elders leave it them in faith. "Green earth forgets."

Mrs. Ward's third journey to France was of longer duration (it lasted over three weeks, Jan. 7-30) than either of the others, and save that the conditions of danger created by the actual fighting were eliminated it was of a still more arduous nature, while it afforded her even greater opportunities than the others had done of realising and summing up the proportionate achievements of the three great armies--French, American and British. For the object of this final pilgrimage was no less than to bring out, by a careful a.n.a.lysis of all the available facts, the overwhelming part played by the British Armies in France in the last year of the War, and so to do her part in silencing the extraordinary misconceptions that were still current, especially in America, as to the share that the British Armies had had in the final breaking of the German resistance. A Canadian girl working at an American Y.M.C.A. in France had written to her in the previous August, imploring her to bring _England's Effort_ up to date and to distribute it by the thousand among the American troops.

"I see hundreds of the finest remaining white men on earth every week," continued this witness. "They are wonderful military material and _very_ attractive and lovable boys, but it discourages all one's hopes for future unity and friends.h.i.+p between us all to realize, as I have done the last few months, that the majority of these men are entering the fight firmly believing that 'England has not done her share,' 'the colonials have done all the hard fighting'--'France has borne all,' etc. This from not one or two, but _hundreds_. The men I speak of come princ.i.p.ally from Kansas, Illinois, Iowa--that wonderful Valley of Democracy that I sometimes compare in my mind (with its safety and isolation from the outside world) to those words of Kipling--'Ringed by your careful seas, long have you waked in quiet and long lain down at ease'--To these boys away from the sheltered country for the first time in _generations_, England is a foreign and a somewhat mistrusted country, and four or five days rush through it gives them neither opportunity nor a fair chance of judging the people--beyond the fact that war-time restrictions annoy them. It is a crying shame that the _only_ knowledge these splendid men have of England's share in the war is drawn from the belittling reports of pro-German papers. This att.i.tude will mar all attempts at friends.h.i.+p between the troops, and, I believe, seriously jeopardise future friends.h.i.+p between the countries."

This first-hand evidence has recently received a very striking corroboration in Mr. Walter Page's Letters, and was amply borne out at the time by our Ministry of Information at home. Moreover, since August, Great Britain had indeed added another chapter to her previous record!

So Mrs. Ward was received by Sir Douglas Haig, at his little chateau near Montreuil, on January 8, 1919, and there had a most illuminating talk with him, ill.u.s.trated by his wonderful series of charts and maps; she went through the desolation of Ypres, and Lens, and Arras; she visited General Birdwood at Lille and General Horne at Valenciennes, renewing her friends.h.i.+p with the latter and making the aquaintance of his Chief of Staff, General Hastings Anderson, "a delightful, witty person, full of fun," who told her many things. She climbed the Vimy Ridge, "scrambling up over trenches and barbed wire and other _debris_ to the top," a.s.sisted by Dorothy and Lieut. Farrer, their guide; she crossed the Hindenburg Line in both directions, the second time at the Ca.n.a.l du Nord, where she got out in the January twilight to study the marvellous German trench system and the tracks of two tanks that had led the attack of the First Army on September 27; she saw the area of open fighting beyond Cambrai, and, returning by the Cambrai-Bapaume road to Amiens, pa.s.sed through a heap of shapeless ruins "where only a signboard told us that this had once been Bapaume." From Amiens she pa.s.sed on to Paris, and thence to Metz and Strasburg, realising something, at Metz, of the difficulty confronting the French Government in the large German population, and at Strasburg pa.s.sing a wholly delightful evening with General Gouraud--hero both of Gallipoli and of Champagne. Armed with General Gouraud's maps and pa.s.ses she then returned via Nancy to Verdun and spent an unforgettable afternoon, first in inspecting the subterranean labyrinth under the old fortress which had given sleep to so many weary soldiers during the siege, and then in motoring slowly through the battlefield itself. It may be imagined how such names as Vaux, Douaumont, the Mort Homme, the Mont des Corbeils and the rest made her heart leap, how they stirred the vivid historic imagination in her which always enabled her to visualise, beyond her fellows, the actual movement of events and of the men who played their part in them. The sight of Verdun certainly affected her more deeply than anything, I think, save the Salient with its hundred thousand British graves. Then, sleeping at Chalons, she moved on to Rheims, arriving in the _Place_ before what had once been the Cathedral in time to see the Prime Minister of England--a Sunday visitor from the Conference--standing before the battered facade in animated talk with Cardinal Lucon. Mrs.

Ward stood aside to let them pa.s.s, watching the retreating figure of Mr.

Lloyd George "with what thoughts." _This_ was Rheims; what remedy for it would the Conference find?

Nor did Mrs. Ward neglect the American battle-fields, for on her way to Verdun she had pa.s.sed through the St. Mihiel salient and studied the ground there; she had seen the Foret de l'Argonne in the winter dusk after leaving Verdun, and now on her way to Paris she spent a cheerful hour at Chateau Thierry, mingling with the American boys on the scene of their first and perhaps most memorable triumph. For actually to have helped by hard fighting, man to man, to keep the Boche from Paris, that was something for which to have crossed the Atlantic! St. Mihiel and the Argonne were all part of the great plan, but this, this was history! So at least Mrs. Ward felt as she crossed the sacred ground from Dormans to Chateau Thierry where the Germans had made their formidable push for Montmirail and Paris, and where an American regiment of marines had said them nay.

After her long pilgrimage Mrs. Ward spent a week in Paris, much absorbed in the pursuit of accurate information for the book that she had still to write. But there was also time for the seeing of many of those famous figures who, with the best intentions, filled the French stage for half a year and, at the end, gave us the world in which, _tant bien que mal_, we live. She went to consult with our amba.s.sador, Lord Derby, on certain aspects of her work; she revived her old friends.h.i.+p with M. Jusserand; she saw General Pers.h.i.+ng and Mr. Hoover, and, on the very day when the League of Nations resolution had been pa.s.sed, President Wilson himself.

Of this she has left a lively account in the first chapter of _Fields of Victory_.

Mrs. Ward should, by all the rules, have returned straight home from Paris, for she had already begun to suffer from bronchial catarrh and the weather had turned colder. But she was bent on seeing certain British officers at Amiens who had prepared some special information for her and therefore broke her journey there and also at the little "Visitors' Chateau" at Agincourt. Here, struggling against the intense cold and her own increasing illness, she exhausted herself in long conversations, though all that she heard was of deep interest to her task. But she was obliged to give up a visit to the battle-field of August 8 which her hosts had planned for her, and to return instead, while she still might, to England. When at last she reached home she was p.r.o.nounced to have tonsilitis and to be within an inch of bronchitis too, and was kept in bed for many days. But it was many weeks before the bronchial catarrh left her, nor did she ever, during this last year of her life, regain the level of health at which she had started for France in the first week of the year. Yet none the less must her articles be written, for time pressed if she was to catch the right moment for the book's appearance. She was ably and generously helped by various officers, especially by General Sir John Davidson, who brought with him to Grosvenor Place one day a reduced-scale version of the great chart at which she had gazed fascinated at Montreuil, and which she afterwards obtained leave to reproduce in her book. "It was amusing," wrote Dorothy that night, "to see Mother and Lady Selborne and Sir John Davidson all on the floor, poring over his wonderful chart of the War."

But in spite of the willingness to help of the authorities, the labour of studying and digesting the ma.s.s of material placed at her disposal--stiff and intractable stuff as it was--and of forming from it a harmonious and artistic whole was something far harder than she had expected. It required real historical method, and carried her back in memory to the days of the West Goths and the _Dictionary of Christian Biography_. But she would not be beaten, either by the difficulty of the task or by the necessity of getting it done within a certain time. One day in April, just after she had returned from Grosvenor Place to Stocks, it became necessary to send one of her articles, type-written, up to London in time to catch the Foreign Office bag for New York; the necessary train left Tring Station at 12.37. Mrs. Ward finished writing the article at 12.22; Miss Churcher, who had followed page by page with the type-writer, finished the last page at 12.30; Dorothy flew to the station with it and caught the train.

Besides the initial difficulty of the work, however, the necessity of submitting what she had written to two or three different authorities caused inevitable delays, while a printers' strike in Glasgow at the critical moment again deferred the book's publication. When, therefore, _Fields of Victory_ at length appeared, the psychological moment had pa.s.sed by, the world was far more concerned with the future than with the past, and only a moderate number of the book were sold. Mrs. Ward was of course somewhat disappointed, but there was much consolation to be had in the note of astonishment, combined with admiration, which the book called forth among those for whose opinion she really cared, whether in England, France or America. This feeling was summed up in a letter written by General Hastings Anderson--then holding a high appointment on the Staff of the Army--to Miss Ward, after her mother's death.