Our common conscience : addresses delivered in America during the great war ...

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ADDRESSKS DELIVERED IN AMERICA

SIR GEORGE ADAM SMITH

KT., D.D., LL.D., LITT. D.

Introduction

In the first of the following addresses I have explained the origins of the mission on which they were delivered. That mission was begun in New York on the 2nd of April, 191 8, and with two brief intervals was continued daily till the middle of July, after which I had a few further engagements before my return from America in the end of August. The programme of the necessary tours was drawn up by the executive of the National Committee (of the United States) on the Churches and Moral Aims of the War — of which Mr. Holt is chairman, and ex-President Taft, the Hon. Alton B. Parker, and other representative Americans are members, and by their secretary, Mr. Henry A. Atkinson, to whom, with his assistant, Mr. L. Gordon, and Dr. Frederick Lynch of the "League to Enforce Peace" by winning the war, I have many reasons to be very grateful. Their admirable plans were carried out in co-operation with local committees, chambers of viii INTRODUCTION

commerce, mercantile clubs, universities, and federations of ministers of religion, in the thirty-nine or so large cities and other places visited. Sometimes I spoke alone, but usually along with another speaker, an American. We addressed in all 127 meetings, for the most part of two kinds — either "Conferences" with business men or ministers or with both, varying in size from 80 or 100 to 600 or 700, at which after the speeches questions were put and answered; or, in the evening, "Mass Meetings," from 1000 up to 3500 and 4000, to hear addresses interspersed with patriotic music. To reach all these, scattered over the States as they were from New York to San Francisco and San Diego and from Detroit to New Orleans, I had to cover over 22,000 miles by rail. The excellence of the arrangements made is proved by the fact that no engagement was missed and only one had to be postponed.

Before delivery I had written out only three of the ten addresses given in this volume. The other seven, starting from a few notes, grew as we went along. They have been reproduced from these notes and from shorthand reports of some of them, with the help of my daughter who accompanied me as my secretary. Some further re-

INTRODUCTION ix

marks seem necessary. In speaking in America I used in part the materials of addresses given in my own country since the war broke out. Again, the subjects of the addresses being closely related, they contain not a few repetitions of the same thoughts expressed sometimes in the same terms. In this volume I have left these repetitions standing just as they were spoken. Again, it must be kept in mind that my mission began with the close of America's first year at war, at a time when in result of the last German offensive in France the fortunes of the Allies — in spite of British successes in Asia and Africa — appeared at as low an ebb as they had reached at any point, and when — though the American Navy and Army Medical Corps had been at work with the British for several months — only the first considerable detachments of American troops had arrived in Europe. On those dark days there followed nearly three months during which our anxiety was but gradually relieved, first by the fortunate union of the Allied Armies under a single supreme command, then by the check to the German advance in Picardy and Flanders, and — most potentially — ^by the increased speed of the despatch of American soldiers to France in far greater numbers than either our

X INTRODUCTION

enemies or ourselves had deemed possible. Since these fruitful months of anxious strain, events, both in the East and In the West, have moved very rapidly in favour of the Allies. That their sufferings and sacrifices shall not be In vain is now becoming as clear to our sight as It has always been sure to our faith. By the time these addresses are published much of their appeal will seem belated. Still, they may stand as a record, why we Allies went to war, what were the sources of our courage under our unparalleled sufferings and despite our sense of our unfitness — what was the faith which sustained us and the grounds on which we pled before God, to our own and each other's hearts, the justice of our Cause.

To His Grace the Chancellor, and to my colleagues, of this University my warmest thanks are here given, for their cordial acquiescence in my mission to America, and their generous discharge of such additional duties as fell to them through my absence.

GEORGE ADAM SMITH.

University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER

I The Moral Aims of the Allies , II Britain's Part in the War

II

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, friends, allies, and comrades in the great war! — Before proceeding with my address, I must thank you for the heartiness with which you have just sung the National Anthem of my people along with your own. These are the first times I have heard American audiences do so. I want to tell you what good grounds you have for joining in that prayer for our King and Queen. They have both of them been a great moral asset to us during this war; by their simple lives, their courage, and their hard and cheerful work they have proved true leaders of our democracy, setting us an example of service in loyalty to the Word of Christ, "Let him that is chief amoiig you be as he that doth serve."

The subject on which I have been asked to speak is no less than the part that my country has taken, for now nearly four years, in the present awful war. That is a large subject, and In the time at our disposal can be treated only in outline, with the addition, perhaps, of a few particular sections of its contents. I am not now to detail why we are in this war. You who have followed us into it, with the same conscience, hardly need to be told that; and I have dealt with the question in other addresses. It is enough to say that, suddenly as the call came to us, it came in a very clear and signal form. As I have described elsewhere, we were in no little confusion and darkness. War always darkens the heavens, and this war especially raised heavy clouds between the faith of many and the sovereignty of God. We were humbled by the disruption of Christendom. We were dismayed by the apparent failure of the spiritual forces which make for the peace of the world, by the rupture of those mutual ministries of mankind on which the progress of the race depends. We were haunted by the sense of our unpreparedness for a great war, and we knew how equipped and ready to the moment were our powerful adversaries. There was the deeper sense of our national sins; before such a crisis a people must feel their guilty weakness. But through it all our duty was clear. Our enemies left us in no doubt of that. And the conscience of our people at home and across the seas rose to It like the conscience of one man. We have had now nearly four years of war, and there is nothing during all that time that our foes have done or said, and nothing that we have bitterly learned or suffered, but has strengthened and articulated those first instincts of our duty and confirmed our faith in the justice of our cause and our resolution to fight for it till the end. In that original conscience we have waited for you and are waiting,* and you will find us determined, at whatever further cost to ourselves, not to yield nor flinch till you and we with all our Allies have won a righteous and a stable peace.

Now to my present subject! I have first of all to emphasise what is undoubtedly the greatest fact of our warfare, and most significant of the moral forces which have moved us — what posterity will regard as the most wonderful event in the history of modern Europe. It is this. When we

^ This was spoken at the beginning of my mission, before the American troops had reached France in any great number.

entered the war our army did not number more than a few hundreds of thousands, of which about 160,000 were all that we were ready to send to the help of Belgium and France. Yet in about two years that army, without conscription or compulsion, had grown to about 5,000,000. Every man was a volunteer. That, sir, is a fact unprecedented in the history of Europe, and it could not have happened except under the influence of a great, a profound moral inspiration. That is one of the many manifestations of the justice of our cause, one of the many proofs that, in forcing war upon the world, Germany had challenged the moral instincts of the race.

Some of us, sir, were sorry at the time that conscription had at last to be enforced. We had hoped to see the whole available manhood of the nation sweep freely into the ranks of so sacred a cause. But that could not be, and at last we had to adopt conscription for the same reasons as you have more immediately done. Only I must add to what I have said about the rise of that magnificent volunteer army, the largest ever raised in history, that the spirit which has distinguished their successors who have come in under conscription has been not less gallant, not less willing, and not less resolute than that of the volunteers themselves.

Sir, it is sometimes said by pacifists on our side of the water — and I saw an echo of this from the mouth of one of your pacifists quoted in a newspaper the other day — ^that this war, and the recruiting to which it has compelled us, is the conspiracy of old and elderly men, the effort of my own generation to push forward, with safety to themselves, the youth of their nation to bear the brunt and the agony. It has been asserted that the war has been due to the greed and the blunders of aged diplomats, and that its spirit has been fostered mainly by elderly bellicose parsons like myself — a set of selfish Abrahams driving their Isaacs to the altar. I have seen these very terms iised in a certain journal more than once. Sir, that is a sheer falsehood. I can say so from my own experience as a father and as Principal of a large University. Our young men, whether they went to war under our voluntary system of enlistment for the first two years or later under conscription, went deliberately and with clear consciences, not ignorant of the solemn possibilities that lay before each of them, but convinced also of the moral issues that were at stake, and resolved at whatever sacrifice to do their duty in carrying those issues to victory.

If there were any regrets, misgivings and withholdings, these were not in the hearts of our sons but in those of the parents who saw them go forth. Every war is a young men's war, but this has been the war not only of the physical strength of our youth, but of their conscience, their moral resolution, and their faith.

Nor has this temper been confined to our youth, but has been shared by the older men as well. Before the age of service was raised I suppose that more members of my sex than ever before in history perjured themselves with regard to their years. You have heard, I daresay, of the French lady who celebrated the seventeenth anniversary of her thirty-fifth birthday. Well, there were many of my countrymen who made a similar pretence, and who said they were thirty-five when they were forty-two and fifty-two and even up to sixty. And the rest of us could only regret that we were not thirty years younger. In fact, the whole of our population, with very few and negligible exceptions, were stirred by the call to war, and united in the determination to prosecute it as the British people never have been stirred or united in their history before. And that was just because of the common conscience which possessed us. Nothing else could have eJFfected so universal a result.

Let me now give you a few sections through this national movement. In Scotland we have a population under 5,000,000. I am informed that out of that population over 900,000 have already been enlisted. The nearest part of Scotland to America is, I think, the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. The population of that island all told is some 30,000 — men, women, and children. How many men do you think passed into the ranks of His Majesty's forces, either into the Navy or into the Army, within the first two years of the war, out of that population of 30,000? — 6000 men.

Again take these facts. When the war was about two years old a roll was drawn up of the sons of ministers of the Church of Scotland of military age, and it was found that no less than ninety per cent, of them had enlisted or held commissions in the forces. The ten per cent, who are over may well be accounted for by physical and other disabilities. Approximately the same figures hold good of ministers' sons in my own Church, the United Free Church of Scotland, and the other Scottish Churches. That is to say, practically all the "sons of the manse" in Scotland, who were available, volunteered for service with the colours. There are no statistics for our other Christian homes, but If there were they would show similar results.

Or take the Universities of Great Britain.^ I have the figures for most of them up to the spring of 19 17, and I find that the number of male students then left was in no case more than oneihird of what it had been In the year before the war, that In most cases It was down to one-fourth, and that In Oxford and Cambridge, whose students on the whole are a little older than those of other Universities, some of the colleges had only one-tenth of their former numbers. Of the four Universities of Scotland, taking them 'according to their seniority, St. Andrews has now about 800, graduates and students, on Its Roll of Service; Glasgow over 3200; Aberdeen over 2600; and Edinburgh over 5100. Let me give you some details of my own University oi Aberdeen. The only men students we have left are

^ See further Address VI, "The Universities and the War."

either under military age or otherwise ineligible for service, or have returned from service wounded, or are completing their medical studies. Their numbers are about one-fourth of what they used to be. When conscription came in, and all our students above eighteen were called up in the middle of the spring term of last year, the local recruiting authorities agreed to allow them to remain at their studies till the close of the term, on condition that they would not then apply to the military tribunals for exemption. I called them together and put the question before them, and I need hardly say that they repudiated the idea that any of them would claim exemption. They went to the colours as eagerly as their purely volunteer predecessors in previous years. The register of our graduates, men and women, of all ages from twenty-one to eighty and ninety, numbers barely over 5000. Of these, no fewer than 1759 have gone on naval or military service, while a large number more whom we have not yet exactly counted are engaged in Government offices connected with the war, in munition-work, in research for the purposes of the war, or in indispensable medical or educational service. I know the register well, and can assure you that there are not many upon it of suitable age who are not engaged in war-work of some kind or other. And this is even true of many above military age. Among professional men our schoolmasters distinguished themselves from the first by their eagerness to serve, and I know several cases where their wives, being themselves certificated teachers, have taken up the duties of their husbands in order to let these off to the war.

Take another section in illustration. The other day I asked the Colonel of the reserve battalion of a famous Highland regiment how many men his battalion had supplied since the beginning of the war to the two regular battalions of his regiment. He replied between 14,000 and 16,000 men. A battalion, as you know, consists of from 850 to 1000 men — ^that is to say, each of these battalions has had to be refilled from seven to eight times over. I believe the same to have been true of many other British regiments.

Two years ago, when I was out on the front in the Somme valley, our motor-car was stopped in its place in the endless columns of regiments and ammunition trains marching up and down, and I got out upon a great muddy field sloping under the cold sky and swept by a bitter wind, where the fragments of a Manchester regiment, one of the New Army raised by Lord Kitchener, was resting, after some days on the front line of our advance. I found them mustered for the roll-call, I think one of the most pathetic scenes I have ever witnessed. The regiment had gone to the front some days before between 800 and 900 strong, and I now saw them mustered in a total strength of 256, on this field of mud where their only shelters were shallow pits hastily dug and roofed with waterproof sheets. When they broke up I spoke to a group of four of them. I said to one, "What were you before the war?" He said, "I was a ticket-collector, sir." "And what were you?" "I was a conductor." "And what were you ?" "I was a lawyer's clerk." I forget what the fourth said he was. But here were four ordinary civilians who had never expected to handle a gun in their lives, and yet they were out there doing their duty on the front of the war, and among its dangers and privations as cheery and as resolute as could be. That was the spirit which inspired our volunteer armies from first to last. Scenes like this could Le multiplied Indefinitely.

On the whole, England and Scotland have sent to the war one man to every seven and a half of the population; Wales one man In every ten and a fifth; Ireland one man in every twenty-six; and our kinsmen overseas one man in every fifteen.^ In all, Great Britain and her Dominions overseas have raised 7,500,000 of soldiers for this war.

This huge and rapidly raised army has been sent not to the single front of the war on which so far your American eyes still rest,^ but to many fronts all round the world.

First of all, there was the battle-line through France and Flanders. There, with the French and Belgian armies, British troops, on a line frequently over 100 miles in length, have repelled sometimes far larger and better equipped German armies. They assisted in turning them on the Marne and the Aisne, they kept them from getting to the Channel ports. At and around Ypres especially, against enormous odds, they held their untrenched lines, sometimes sacrificing themselves almost to the last man. And that long critical line they will continue to hold till your soldiers In their millions have joined them.

^ These figures are brought down to July, 19 18, and have been supplied by the British Office in New York.

2 This was spoken in April, but of course is no longer true.

BRITAIN'S PART IN THE WAR 5S

Another part of the British Army, as you know, has helped to stay the disastrous Italian retreat as well as support the fresh Italian advance on the banks of the Piave.

We have another large army, beside a French one, defending, on a long line above Salonika, Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean from Germans, Austrians, Bulgarians, and Turks.

We have had another army garrisoning Egypt, repelling from its western borders the attacks of the Libyan Arabs tempted by German gold, defending the Suez Canal, and now advancing slowly but surely through Palestine. Whatever the end of that campaign may be. General Allenby's troops, English, Scottish, French, Australian, and Indian, have established themselves in an impregnable position upon the hill-country of Judea and have secured the coast well to the north of Jaffa.^ There is every prospect of the deliverance of Palestine from the Turks, who have no right to it, either natural or moral; but who for four centuries have wasted its fertility, neglected its com-

^ By the beginning of October they have captured Damascus and dispersed the Turkish forces on both sides of the Jordan.

mercial and industrial possibilities and oppressed its hard-working peasantry.

Another smaller force at Aden holds back the Turks and their Arab vassals from interfering with our water-way to India down the Red Sea. And there is that great host both of combatant forces and many labour battalions, with its base in India, which has reached Mesopotamia by the Persian Gulf and has already, under the brilliant leadership of General Maude, taken Bagdad, as General AUenby has taken Jerusalem, and has victoriously advanced far beyond that up both the Tigris and the Euphrates. But our Mesopotamian campaign has not been one of conquest only. Behind the combatant forces, the labour battalions, recruited in India, have been busily at work; and the country has been organised and is being irrigated and cultivated with the near prospect of the full restoration of its marvellous fertility. The Arabs, delivered from that Turkish neglect and oppression which has for so many centuries devastated the country, have been assured of our good will, and promised their independence and the secure practice both of their religion and the immense economic possibilities of their wonderful soil.

We have another army garrisoning India, not so much for the purpose of controlling the populations who throughout the war have exhibited a remarkable loyalty to the cause of the AUIes, but in order to repel Invasions by the half-savage tribes of the North-Western frontier, excited by German gold and equipped with German munitions. Let me give you here a Hindu testimony to the justice of our cause. Dr. Sarvadhlkarl, a Hindu gentleman of the Hindu religion and vice- Chancellor of the University of Calcutta, In addressing Convocation in 191 5, spoke as follows: "Thanks to the strong arm which protects us in our seats of learning we are free to follow congenial pursuits. There Is reason for abundant gratitude for the ability and means to continue our work. England and India have been long working together in the fields of peace. They have now been called side by side in the common cause. It was Great Britain's singular triumph to encircle the world with steel. To-day she has achieved a greater glory, and is able to summon and receive prompt and willing assistance in defence of the Empire from all parts of the globe. It is still more glorious to be able to encircle the world with a girdle of united prayer from all races and creeds In the cause of righteousness." Now we come to Africa. In Africa we have had several other armies at work since the beginning of the war till, as you know, Germany has lost all the vast colonies which she used to possess in that continent. What are the troops which have been fighting for us there? Only some of them have been British. The rest are South African Dutch, our foes less than eighteen years ago In the Boer War. We came to terms with them, bringing them into the Commonwealth of the British Empire. We promised them the same freedom which other parts of that Commonwealth have always enjoyed. And we kept our word. What was the result? The Boers, In spite of their close kinship to the Germans, have from the beginning of this war not only proved loyal to the British cause in South Africa, but have fought the Germans out of South-west and East Africa with a skill and determination equal to our own. We have had no more able generals on our side than our two former enemies, General Botha and General Smuts. General Smuts is a member of the inner circle of our Government, and there Is none of our Councillors or Statesmen whom all of us, whether Irish or Scottish or English, trust more than we trust himself. Would these Dutch, so recently our enemies, have thus planned and fought had they not realised in our Empire something essential to their freedom and prosperity, and had they not seen in the German power and form of culture something that menaced justice and freedom all the world over?

I have left little time to speak of the work of the British Navy, but there Is no need for me to instruct an American audience on that side of my subject. Since coming to the United States I have had many proofs of how well you realise the indispensable service rendered by the Navy and the Naval Reserves of Great Britain to the cause of the Allies. With the assistance of the smaller navies of France and Italy they have not only driven the German High Fleet into the refuge of its ports, but have swept the oceans of the world of German commerce. They have defended the coasts of Great Britain from invasion by a foe not 200 miles away. They have kept a ceaseless watch round three continents and, above all, according to my information, they have transported overseas 13,000,000 men, 2,000,000 horses and mules, 25,000,000 tons of explosives, 51,000,000 tons of oil and fuel, and 130,000,000 tons of food and other stores. Now for more than a year, in close and cordial co-operation with your fleets, they have continued their colossal task and have held and are holding in check those piratical submarine forces on which Germany has staked her conquest of the world.

Since the beginning of the war, the British Navy "has tripled its personnel and doubled its fighting armament." You must add that to what I have told you of the rise of the British Army.

If you wish to read of what our mercantile and fishing marine have done, both for our home seas and in waters as far away as the Adriatic, in mine-sweeping, in scouting and patrolling, and in fighting enemy submarines, get Professor Mac- Neile Dixon's volume "The Fleets Behind the Fleet". There you will find the record of a vigilance, endurance, and courage worthy to be placed for its splendour beside the most heroic achievements of our Navy in the past, and far exceeding them both in the variety of its details and the wide range of its operations.

I know of what I speak, for I have both visited the Grand Fleet and In a common drifter have watched the operations of mine-sweeping and patrolling among the stormy seas of our Scottish coasts. The courage and resolution of men who before the war were peaceful fishermen and sailors Is equal to those which I have described of their brothers in the armies of Flanders and the Somme. As an illustration of the ceaseless vigilance with which the widest oceans are still patrolled, let me give you the following Instance. In coming over here on an Atlantic liner, we were suddenly stopped one morning at twilight by a shot fired across our bows. It was a British cruiser which, not content with interrogating us by signal, circled round us several times before letting us continue our voyage. The reason, we were told, was this. Our ship used to carry three masts but had left one behind in the port of our departure, and the cruiser had therefore failed to recognise her. We proceeded on our way with a fresh sense of security. That cruiser, the only ship we saw upon our voyage, coming out of nowhere, was proof to us of the unseen eyes by which the vast waste of waters is ceaselessly watched.

Let me add this. I have seldom been so thrilled in my life as by the sight of American and British fleets lying side by side in one of our Scottish firths.

Those great forces, of course, have had to be fed, to be munitioned, and to be doctored. Speaking only of the Western front, the only front of which I have personal knowledge, I may say that I was in constant doubt at which to marvel most — ^the fighting-powers of our army or the wonderful organisation behind their lines by which they are fed and otherwise supported. Our troops there have the best of our beef and bacon, the finest of our wheat, and full supplies of sugar, coffee, tea, and other articles. From the great bakeries at the bases to the travelling kitchens of each unit at the front the system works with a rigorous efficiency. To effect this, we have long been rationing ourselves at home. I need not go into detail, but the following instances may interest you. Wheat had long been a stranger to our homes before I came away. In my part of the country each family's weekly supply of butcher meat had been cut down to half of what it used to be in normal times of peace. In the first week of March I took up to a friend in a good position in London a roast of beef of six pounds in weight, the first that had crossed his threshold since Christmas. The total material used in brewing beer in 19 14 was 1,500,000 tons; it has now been reduced to 500,000. The strength of beer has been largely reduced and during 19 17 no manufacture of spirits for human consumption has been permitted. No unmalted barley is now in the hands of brewers. One million acres were added in 19 1 7 to the cultivated area within Great Britain, and 850,000 tons of cereals and 5,000,000 tons of potatoes were produced in addition to the average of previous years.