LONDON AND THE WAR. LONDON AND THE WAR. T HE march
of the London Territorial veterans on Saturday last from Buckingham Palace to the Mansion House was a great event for the greatest city in the world. Londoners are diffident by nature and affect a kindly cynicism in all possible circumstances. But in the reception of their own men, representatives of the mighty host which volunteered readily for the war, our people were not afraid to display their real feelings of gladness and pride. Londoners have not claimed any special merit for their part in the war. Probably a million men went from London into the Navy and Army, and they fought hard and well in every campaign. But the Londoner, with his incurable habit of taking things for granted, did not complain that the presence of London men on the battlefield was never mentioned for years in the official despatches. He was told a good deal about the admirable fighting qualities of the Scottish troops, of the Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, and the South Africans, but nothing at all about the -London troops. Yet it did not occur to him to be impatient or jealous, because he assumed as a matter of course. that the London men were doing their duty and fighting as valiantly as any corps in the British Army. Now that the irritating veil of secrecy has been lifted, it is plain to all that the Londoner's belief in his younger fellow-citizens was justified. A record of the aohievements of London troops would include many of the finest deeds of the war. The Honourable Artillery Company's first battalion was almost cut to pieces in the early battles round Ypres, but it held the line, side by side with the Regular battalions, and the enemy did not pass. London troops on September 15th, 1916, in the battle of the Somme, took that seemingly impregnable position, High Wood, of evil memory, despite the machine-guns which lurked everywhere amid the barbed wire in its horrible thickets. London troops of the 2nd. Division stemmed the German counter-offensive at Cambrai at the' end of 1917. London troops of the 58th Division stubbornly fought their way back, step by step, when the enemy broke through near St. Quentin in March, 1918, while the 56th (London) Division broke the enemy's onrush near Arras. In the final battles of last summer and autumn, when the mighty German war machine was pounded into ruin, London men were in the thick of the fighting. The Londoners took a hand also in the Eastern campaigns. At Gallipoli, in Macedonia, Egypt, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, London troops were to be found wherever there was hard work to be done. London infantry and yeomanry distinguished themselves greatly in the capture of Jerusalem, and in the brilliant operations in Samaria and Galilee which destroyed the last Turkish armies. No part of the Empire has done more to win the war than London.
Before the war we used to hear much about the physical deterioration of town-dwellers. It was, unhappily, true enough, but it led some authorities to infer, quite wrongly, that townspeople would be unable to endure the strain of war. There were grave doubts as to the staying-power of the vast conscript armies of our day. Haw, it was asked, could we expect young men who had been reared in slums, who had worked in factories or offices, and who knew nothing of country sports, to undergo the physical fatigue of a campaign in which the soldier has to live the simple life in a ditch or a cave for days or weeks together ? Experience has shown that these fears were unfounded. The young men of the towns and industrial districts have fought as strenuously as their ancestors, and, though better fed, have suffered greater hardships without a murmur. The Londoners have stood the test of modern war with exceptional success. In physique they may not equal some of our more robust countryfolk or the tall Australians. But a man's fighting-power is not to be measured by his stature or his weight. It is a spiritual rather than a physical quality. The undersized Cockney, brave as a lion, has proved himself more than a match for the biggest and best-trained soldiers that Germany could pit against him. Moreover, he has borne the discomforts of trench life and the horrors of continual bombardment with unconquerable patience and gaiety. We have often been told by experienced officers that the Londoner's humour, even under the most trying conditions, seemed to make him impervious to fear, and s?.t all his companions at their ease. London soldiers, accustomed from their childhood to the excitement of a great city, have, we believe, shown themselves less susceptible than most troops to the " shell-shock " caused by the horrible din of high explosives and the gruesome sights of the battlefield. They have always displayed a. certain magnanimity towards the enemy, whom they did not fear, but inclined, perhaps unduly, to despise. They have not observed the niceties of discipline, such as the old sergeant-majors would require, but they have treated their officers as friends and counsellors rather than as despots who were to be feared. Nothing could be better than the spirit of comradeship which pervaded the London. Divisions throughout the war. Officers and men were on the best of terms, and worked together for the one great end. All this is to say that the young Londoner, though most peacefully inclined, is a born soldier. The London 'prentices were always notorious for. their love of a fight, and the London citizens in their trainbands formed a force that, even in the days of mailed knights, was not to be despised. Londoners fought for Simon de Montfort at Lewes, where Henry III. was beaten and captured. They took part at Towton in the most sanguinary battle of the Wars of the Roses. When the London trainbands, mustered on Turnham Green, compelled Charles I. to abandon his attack on Brentford and retire discomfited to Oxford, they may be said to have decided the Civil War, in the sense that Marshal Joffre decided the Great War at the Marne. The laurel wreaths which the London troops bore on their colours last Saturday reminded us how the triumphant Londoners, returning home on that November day in 1612, picked leaves from the trees round Holland House and placed them in their caps as symbols of victory. We must not pursue these historical reminiscences, but we may point out that that splendid volunteer force, the Honourable Artillery Company, with its charter from Henry VIII., is unquestionably the oldest military body in England, and that it was already venerable when it served the Parliamentary cause as a kind of Officers' Training Corps in the Civil War. With such a military tradition, London might be expected to turn out good fighting men, but in the late war she surpassed herself.
We may be pardoned, while we are on this topic, for remarking that the six million people who remained in London when their men had gone to the front stood the strain of war with remarkable fortitude. London, although at the outset an open town in the military sense, was foully attacked from the air in defiance of the Hague Conventions. Yet there was never any panic, such as the enemy anticipated, except among some of the foreign colonies from Eastern Europe. Nor was there any serious rioting directed against enemy aliens, though they were suspected, possibly with reason, of giving information for the benefit of the Zeppelin commanders. London as a whole kept its temper wonderfully well, and showed its resentment only in the press of volunteers round the recruiting offices. When the enemy Gothas began to come frequently, London speedily adjusted itself to the new situation, so that towards the end an air raid warning was regarded as one of the annoying but inevitable incidents of city life, like a breakdown in the Tube or an omnibus-drivers' strike. We all knew that, compared with the men in France, we were suffering very little, although no place in England, except the military areas on the coast, had half so much to endure as London. Moreover, the capital did not profit by the war. Wealth was poured into the great industrial cities of the North, but comparatively little of the money spent on the war came to London. We know, of course, that some large and many small factories in or near London produced munitions ; but, speaking generally, London did not share in the immense industrial prosperity of the Clyde, the Tyne, Lancashire, and the Black Country. Hotel-keepers and theatre managers doubtless profited by the influx of many thousands of soldiers on leave and of officials in the new Departments. But for the ordinary Londoner the war meant much dearer living, much greater Congestion of traffic on his familiar routes, a scarcity of food and coal that was not known in the North, and many other inconveniences. We can honestly say that, though the Londoner, as a typical Englishman, cherishes the right to grumble, we have never heard less grumbling than there was in London during the war. The spirit of the people was splendid. Nowhere in Great Britain was there less of the unpatriotic and perhaps treasonable propaganda which raised its head from time to time in South Wales and on the Clyde. The strikes that occurred were few, unimportant, and brief. We do not believe that Bolshevism is rooted in any part of Great Britain, but we are quite sure that it will not find a congenial soil in London. The patriotism, good sense, and patience of Londoners, manifested more clearly than ever during these past five trying years of war, may be trusted to help the country through the difficulties which attend the restoration of Peace.
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