The Battle of Dorking

PREFACE.
The warnings and prophecies addressed to one generation must prove very ineffective if they are equally applicable to the next. But in the eloquent appeal published forty-three years ago, by General Chesney, with its vivid description and harrowing pathos, few readers will not recognize parallel features to those of our own situation in September, 1914.
True the handicaps of the invasion of August, 1871, are heavily piled upon the losing combatant.
Not only the eternal Anglo-Irish trouble, so easily mistaken by the foreigner for such a difference as might be found separating two other countries, but complications with America, as well as the common form seduction of the British fleet to the Dardanelles, a general unreadiness of all administrative departments, and a deep distrust of the "volunteer" movement, involve the whole drama in an atmosphere of profound pessimism.
But there are scores of other details, counsels, and reflections, of which we will not spoil the reader's enjoyment by anticipation, which, as the common saying is of history when it repeats itself, "might have been written yesterday." The desperate condition of things is all the more remarkable as Englishmen had just witnessed the crushing defeat of their great ally, supposed to be the first military power of Europe, by the enemy they are supposed to despise. The story is otherwise simple enough. The secret annexation of Holland and Denmark is disclosed. People said we might have kept out of the trouble.
But an impulsive nation egged on the Government who, confident that our old luck would pull us through, at once declare war. The fleet, trying to close with the enemy, is destroyed in "a few minutes" by the "deadly engines" left behind by the evasive enemy; our amateurish armies are defeated on our own soil, and voila tout.
Remarkable must have been the national insouciance, or despondent the eye which viewed it, to explain the impassioned actuality of such a reveillematin.
For one thing it may be remarked that The Battle of Dorking, Contributed by General Sir George T Chesney, 1830 to 1895, to Blackwood's Magazine in May of 1871. It created a great sensation and appeared in pamphlet form the same year, though in a sense the "history" of the pamphlet is already "ancient," is really the first of its kind. The topic, then of such inspiring freshness, has since become well worn.

Mutatis mutandis, doubtless, much of General Chesney's advice and warning might have been repeated on the occasion of the Boer War. If that were not a practical "alarum to the patriotic Briton," we ask ourselves what could be so called. Perhaps it combined the maximum of alarm with the minimum of national risk, but its beneficent influence can scarcely be questioned.
At the date of the republication of this pamphlet we face a peril immeasurably greater than that, if not equal to the Napoleonic terror of 1803; and we face it, as concerns the mass of our population, with a calmness which, to critical eyes and in view of the appeal made by the Government to the country, is at least susceptible of an unsatisfactory explanation.
If surprise, misunderstanding, may in a measure account for that, it would be idle to pretend that the national mood and temper, and the moods and tempers of nations will vary, were altogether, if they could ever be, such as encouraged the most sanguine hopes of our success when exposed to an ordeal of suddenness, extent, and severity unknown in the world's history.
In estimating the risks of our situation, thoughtful criticism may be said to run naturally into two channels.
Firstly, in the political world, for reasons which cannot here be considered, the past decade has seen a predominance of idealist activity and ratiocination scarcely known before.
Hence the State has exhibited, to some extent, a Utopiste attitude likely to mislead foreign nations, it may be said with mild brevity, alike as to our real views of their conduct, and as to our national belief in the right or duty of self-assertion.
If, in 1871, we were represented as the helpless dupes of foreign diplomacy, in 1914 we rather appear to have deceived the enemy to our own hurt. A humane aversion to War, though, for that matter, it is only by a philanthropic "illusion" that the extreme stage of self-assertion can be morally differentiated from those that precede it, may tempt politicians by a too sedulous avoidance of the unpleasing phrase to invite the dreadful reality. But, again, in the private life of the nation, other traits, some noted in the pamphlet of 71, have given cause for critical reflection.
Besides Luxury, remarkable enough in its novel and fantastic forms, though a commonplace complaint of tractarians in all ages, a generally increased relaxation of all old-established ties of religion, convention or tradition, a tendency noticeable in general conduct, art and letters alike, a sort of orgy of intellectual and literary Erastianism, a blasé craving for sensational novelty, encouraged perhaps if not sated by the startling novelties of the age, have given scope for anxiety as to the conservation in the English nature of that solid morale, that "gesundes und sicheres Gefuhl", the “feeling of health and safety”, defined by an eminent thinker as the source of all worthy activity.

These words can but very crudely sketch a complex sense of uneasiness and dissatisfaction familiar to most of us. Mister Kipling has sung long since of athletic excesses and indolence. More recent critics have dwelt on the extravagant time and expense devoted to golf. General Chesney would have branded the sensationalist effeminacy of our football-gloating crowds of thousands who might be recruits. Reviewers laugh wearily over the horrors or absurdities of the latest poetic monstrosity or "futurist" nightmare. But in one phase or another the consciousness is present to all, and not unnoticed by our enemies.
And it adds a sting to our inevitable anxiety if we cannot yet feel sure how far we can "recollect" our true best selves in the very moment of action, how far there has been given to us that saving grace of a storm-tost nation, “L’art de porter en soi le remede de ses proyres defauts", or “The art of carrying within oneself the remedy for one's own shortcomings.”
Every race, doubtless, has its own special weaknesses and delusions, the "idols" of its patriotic "cave," and it is a commonplace of history that the moral, physical, or intellectual "decadence" of one age is revived and actualized by the material cataclysm of another.
And the readiness, spiritual and material, of the nation in utrumque paratus is the index of its harmony with its environment.
On the other hand there are wars to be fully prepared for which would almost mean to be a partner in their criminality. There is an attitude of defence which, if successful, would lose all dignity were it allied with a permanent distrust in the morality and humanity of other nations.
If only an inhuman pride could be free from uneasiness at such a moment, at least warm encouragement comes to us ab extra. Whatever our weaknesses now, our sins or blunders in the past, no historian will question the motive, nay, the severe moral effort with which the English nation enters upon this war of the ages.
It is scarcely conceivable that any people could be called upon to make a greater or more sudden exhibition of, their peculiar qualities. What will be the verdict upon our own? That we are willfully misunderstood, misrepresented, must matter little to us, if we have the moral support of a public opinion which will, if we triumph, be more powerful for good than ever before.
Nor need we fear its ultimate perversion by interested slander. The hostile demonstrations of the German intellect during the early stages of this war have scarcely been on a par with those of its material force.
One of the latest of sophistical Imperialist ebullitions complains with somewhat forced pathos of our waging war with our former allies of Waterloo!
But we did not fight the French then because they were French, nor ally ourselves with Prussians because they spoke a guttural tongue.
We fought then, as now, against the erection of an impossible and unbearable European tyranny, the local origin and nationality of which would have been quite immaterial to the main question.
Can we believe for a moment that the great German intellect has ever been under the slightest misapprehension of so very simple a matter?
War, honest war, may be Hell, as General Sherman described it. It is, at least, a form of Purgatory in which personality, nationality, are forces that count but little, while principle and motive (as was tragically exhibited in the great
American struggle) are everything. Did not Christianity itself preach this kind of sanctified discord in which a novel sense of right, or the perception of higher ideal, should divide even the nearest and dearest, and set them at war not, as in old days, by reason of any "family compact," or mere racial tie, but for the sake of "Right," and, so far as ordinary friendly or neighbourly relations were concerned, in utter "scorn of consequence."
There, indeed, is the poignant tragedy of the case. To be at war with the countrymen of Schumann and Beethoven, of Goethe and Ranke, is not that an affliction to the very soul of England, an outrage to feelings and instincts tangled up with the very core of our civilization?
Terrible, indeed, is it that there should be amities which, at such crises, we must "tear from our bosom Though our heart be at the root." No man or nation expects perfection in his friends.
Honestly we have loved and respected the German. We have not wormed ourselves into his confidence, nursing through long years secret stores of explosive jealousy. His art, his learning, have had their full meed of admiration from his kindred here.
But we recognize, dull, indeed, would they be who needed a more striking reminder that beneath the defective "manner" of the Teuton lurks an element of crude barbarity with which we cannot pretend to fraternize. The violence of the Goths and Huns had its place in history; but that would be a strange international morality which would give the rein now to mediaeval instincts of egoistic tyranny and perfectly organized brute force, as against the gentler instincts, the higher social civilization largely associated with the Latin and Celtic races.
In these matters the Balance of Power is no less vital to international life and the evolution of true cosmopolitan ideals than in mere Politics. And if we stand up in battle for the smaller races it is not merely because they are small and need defence, but because an element of the right, a share in the civilization which we mean to prevail, is with them and a part of their heritage.
The technical bond may be, as the scoffing enemy remarks (in words which will surely, as curses, return some day to roost), a mere “scrap of paper" signed with England's name.
But the civilized world will recognize that it is only by the increased sanctity of such ties that Europe advances towards intelligent cosmopolitanism, and leaves behind the vandal wild beast den after which woe to those who still hanker!
There were critics, even English critics, who have taken so superficial a view of history and humanity as to ask why we should support France, with our blood and treasure, when in morale and intellect it is perhaps the candid truth that we are more on the side of her enemy.
It is scarcely necessary to urge in reply that France, if not the one great continental nation, is the one great people of parallel and contemporary development to our own, our comrade, our rival, our nearest social (if not racial) kin, and that, spite of all her decadence and even degradation, upon the arena of Europe she stands for Humanity and Civilization against Absolutism and Brute Force.
And as we raised the world against her, when dominated by the tyrannous egoism of Bonaparte, the monstrous fungoid growth that overlaid her great Revolution and obscured her services to freedom, so now we stand as foes, not, we would fain believe, of the German people, but of the militarist clique, the Napoleonic nightmare that overpowers her moral instincts and clouds her honesty and intelligence. But here, again, let us not deceive ourselves as to the extent, perhaps to be all too fatally revealed, of "the force behind the Kaiser." Germany of to-day stands for a compact mass of highly energized, though not yet politically conscious, material and intellectual vigour. That a group of principalities, obsessed by militarist and petty-aristocratic traditions, should within half a century of their amalgamation form a politically great and united people, could scarcely be expected.
But if not fully organized on the representative lines to which we attach so much importance, Germany presents a united front of intelligence, commercial industry and ambition with which her rapidly increasing population pushes on, eager for new worlds to conquer.
That she demands an "Elizabethan age" of her own is the tragic platitude of our time.
That she is aggrieved that we have had one, while we can only imperfectly, in her estimation, utilize its modern fruits, is her true theoretical casus belli against us. The immorality of the position consists in her belief that the Sun of Civilization must stand still, the currents of Law and Order run backwards to satisfy her entetee and unscrupulous jealousy.
Englishmen have been so innocent as to believe she would be satisfied by a share, nay an extensive monopoly of the trade we once thought our own.
They have urged that the German has all the advantages enjoyed by a native throughout the British Empire, that in spite of a constant agitation by a large and powerful party, no English Government has ever used its power to impose any artificial restraints upon German trade; that the fullest hospitality of these Islands has been extended to our Teuton brethren; while they were invited to successfully compete on their merits with one English industry after another.
That they would not rest content with these advantages, this political and commercial equality, that they would want to organize secret treachery, to spy out our weaknesses and hide bombs in their bedrooms, that, to the simple Briton of a few weeks ago, would have seemed impossible.
He now knows what primitive passions may lurk behind a plausible commercialism secretly disappointed in its immoderate greed.
It is in the alliance of despotic militarism with bureaucratic intellectual sophistry that has lain a new peril for the world, and one yet to be fully realized by the German people, when many of the hasty and speculative structures of herself conscious and academic Protectionism are discovered to be as unsound as the quasi-religious aphorisms of the Kaiser.
In spite of these confident assurances it may be the fate of that arrogant leader to find himself at war with "things," stony facts, economic laws that crush the transgressor, as well as with an indignant world.
Meanwhile, our armies have fought bravely and held their own in the greatest battle, the most ferocious conflict the world ever dreamed of.
Our unconquered fleet, after the tradition of four centuries, is still "looking for the enemy."
All around us, as we write, is evidence that the nation is bracing herself for a new and stupendous effort of courage, perhaps of imaginative strategy and even Weltpolitik which will in startling fashion bring the forces of half the world to meet and crush a world-menacing peril, and place our England, the mistress of the seas, on a pinnacle where she will be justified of all her patriotic children, counsellors, critics and heroes alike.
G. H. Powell.

THE BATTLE OF DORKING.

You ask me to tell you, my grandchildren, something about my own share in the great events that happened fifty years ago. 'Tis sad work turning back to that bitter page in our history, but you may perhaps take profit in your new homes from the lesson it teaches. For us in England it came too late. And yet we had plenty of warnings, if we had only made use of them. The danger did not come on us unawares. It burst on us suddenly, 'tis true; but it’s coming was foreshadowed plainly enough to open our eyes, if we had not been willfully blind. We English have only ourselves to blame for the humiliation which has been brought on the land. Venerable old age! Dishonourable old age, I say, when it follows a manhood dishonoured as ours has been. I declare, even now, though fifty years have passed, I can hardly look a young man in the face when I think I am one of those in whose youth happened this degradation of Old England, one of those who betrayed the trust handed down to us unstained by our forefathers.
What a proud and happy country was this fifty years ago! Free-trade had been working for more than a quarter of a century, and there seemed to be no end to the riches it was bringing us. London was growing bigger and bigger; you, could not build houses fast enough for the rich people who wanted to live in them, the merchants who made the money and came from all parts of the world to settle there, and the lawyers and doctors and engineers and others, and tradespeople who got their share out of the profits. The streets reached down to Croydon and Wimbledon, which my father could remember quite country-places; and people used to say that Kingston and Reigate would soon be joined to London. We thought we could go on building and multiplying forever. 'Tis true that even then there was no lack of poverty; the people who had no money went on increasing as fast as the rich, and pauperism was already beginning to be a difficulty; but if the rates were high, there was plenty of money to pay them with; and as for what were called the middle classes, there really seemed no limit to their increase and prosperity. People in those days thought it quite a matter of course to bring a dozen children into the world, or, as it used to be said, Providence sent them that number of babies; and if they couldn't always marry off all the daughters, they used to manage to provide for the sons, for there were new openings to be found in all the professions, or in the Government offices, which went on steadily getting larger.

Besides, in those days young men could be sent out to India, or into the army or navy; and even then emigration was not uncommon, although not the regular custom it is now. Schoolmasters, like all other professional classes, drove a capital trade. They did not teach very much, to be sure, but new schools with their four or five hundred boys were springing up all over the country.
Fools that we were! We thought that all this wealth and prosperity were sent us by Providence, and could not stop coming. In our blindness we did not see that we were merely a big workshop, making up the things which came from all parts of the world; and that if other nations stopped sending us raw goods to work up, we could not produce them ourselves. True, we had in those days an advantage in our cheap coal and iron; and had we taken care not to waste the fuel, it might have lasted us longer. But even then there were signs that coal and iron would soon become cheaper in foreign parts; while as to food and other things, England was not better off than it is now. We were so rich simply because other nations from all parts of the world were in the habit of sending their goods to us to be sold or manufactured; and we thought that this would last for ever. And so, perhaps, it might have lasted, if we had only taken proper means to keep it; but, in our folly, we were too careless even to insure our prosperity, and after the course of trade was turned away it would not come back again.

And yet, if ever a nation had a plain warning, we had. If we were the greatest trading country, our neighbours were the leading military power in Europe. They were driving a good trade, too, for this was before their foolish communism (about which you will hear when you are older) had ruined the rich without benefiting the poor, and they were in many respects the first nation in Europe; but it was on their army that they prided themselves most. And with reason. They had beaten the Russians and the Austrians, and the Prussians too, in bygone years, and they thought they were invincible. Well do I remember the great review held at Paris by the Emperor Napoleon during the great Exhibition, and how proud he looked showing off his splendid Guards to the assembled kings and princes. Yet, three years afterwards, the force so long deemed the first in Europe was ignominiously beaten, and the whole army taken prisoners. Such a defeat had never happened before in the world's history; and with this proof before us of the folly of disbelieving in the possibility of disaster merely because it had never fallen upon us, it might have been supposed that we should have the sense to take the lesson to heart. And the country was certainly roused for a time, and a cry was raised that the army ought to be reorganized, and our defences strengthened against the enormous power for sudden attacks which it was seen other nations were able to put forth. And a scheme of army reform was brought forward by the Government.
It was a half-and-half affair at best; and unfortunately, instead of being taken up in Parliament as a national scheme, it was made a party matter of, and so fell through. There was a Radical section of the House, too, whose votes had to be secured by conciliation, and which blindly demanded a reduction of armaments as the price of allegiance. This party always decried military establishments as part of a fixed policy for reducing the influence of the Crown and the aristocracy. They could not understand that the times had altogether changed, that the Crown had really no power, and that the Government merely existed at the pleasure of the House of Commons, and that even Parliament-rule was beginning to give way to mob-law. At any rate, the Ministry, baffled on all sides, gave up by degrees all the strong points of a scheme which they were not heartily in earnest about. It was not that there was any lack of money, if only it had been spent in the right way. The army cost enough, and more than enough, to give us a proper defence, and there were armed men of sorts in plenty and to spare, if only they had been decently organized.
It was in organization and forethought that we fell short, because our rulers did not heartily believe in the need for preparation. The fleet and the Channel, they said, were sufficient protection.
So army reform was put off to some more convenient season, and the militia and volunteers were left untrained as before, because to call them out for drill would "interfere with the industry of the country." We could have given up some of the industry of those days, forsooth, and yet be busier than we are now. But why tell you a tale you have so often heard already? The nation, although uneasy, was misled by the false security its leaders professed to feel; and the warning given by the disasters that overtook France was allowed to pass by unheeded. We would not even be at the trouble of putting our arsenals in a safe place, or of guarding the capital against a surprise, although the cost of doing so would not have been so much as missed from the national wealth. The French trusted in their army and its great reputation, we in our fleet; and in each case the result of this blind confidence was disaster, such as our forefathers in their hardest struggles could not have even imagined.
I need hardly tell you how the crash came about. First, the rising in India drew away a part of our small army; then came the difficulty with America, which had been threatening for years, and we sent off ten thousand men to defend Canada, a handful which did not go far to strengthen the real defences of that country, but formed an irresistible temptation to the Americans to try and take them prisoners, especially as the contingent included three battalions of the Guards. Thus the regular army at home was even smaller than usual, and nearly half of it was in Ireland to check the talked-of Fenian invasion fitting out in the West. Worse still, though I do not know it would really have mattered as things turned out, the fleet was scattered abroad: some ships to guard the West Indies, others to check privateering in the China seas, and a large part to try and protect our colonies on the Northern Pacific shore of America, where, with incredible folly, we continued to retain possessions which we could not possibly defend. America was not the great power forty years ago that it is now; but for us to try and hold territory on her shores which could only be reached by sailing round the Horn, was as absurd as if she had attempted to take the Isle of Man before the independence of Ireland.

We see this plainly enough now, but we were all blind then.
It was while we were in this state, with our ships all over the world, and our little bit of an army cut up into detachments, that the Secret Treaty was published, and Holland and Denmark were annexed. People say now that we might have escaped the troubles which came on us if we had at any rate kept quiet till our other difficulties were settled; but the English were always an impulsive lot: the whole country was boiling over with indignation, and the Government, egged on by the Press, and going with the stream, declared war. We had always got out of scrapes before, and we believed our old luck and pluck would somehow pull us through.

Then, of course, there was bustle and hurry all over the land. Not that the calling up of the army reserves caused much stir, for I think there were only about five thousand altogether, and a good many of these were not to be found when the time came; but recruiting was going on all over the country, with a tremendous high bounty, fifty thousand more men having been voted for the army. Then there was a Ballot Bill passed for adding fifty five thousand, five hundred men to the militia; why a round number was not fixed on I don't know, but the Prime Minister said that this was the exact quota wanted to put the defences of the country on a sound footing. Then the shipbuilding that began! Ironclads, despatch-boats, gunboats, monitors, every building-yard in the country got its job, and they were offering ten shillings a day wages for anybody who could drive a rivet. This didn't improve the recruiting, you may suppose. I remember, too, there was a squabble in the House of Commons about whether artisans should be drawn for the ballot, as they were so much wanted, and I think they got an exemption.
This sent numbers to the yards; and if we had had a couple of years to prepare instead of a couple of weeks, I daresay we should have done very well. It was on a Monday that the declaration of war was announced, and in a few hours we got our first inkling of the sort of preparation the enemy had made for the event which they had really brought about, although the actual declaration was made by us. A pious appeal to the God of battles, whom it was said we had aroused, was telegraphed back; and from that moment all communication with the north of Europe was cut off. Our embassies and legations were packed off at an hour's notice, and it was as if we had suddenly come back to the middle ages. The dumb astonishment visible all over London the next morning, when the papers came out void of news, merely hinting at what had happened, was one of the most startling things in this war of surprises.
But everything had been arranged beforehand; nor ought we to have been surprised, for we had seen the same Power, only a few months before, move down half a million of men on a few days' notice, to conquer the greatest military nation in Europe, with no more fuss than our War Office used to make over the transport of a brigade from Aldershot to Brighton, and this, too, without the allies it had now. What happened now was not a bit more wonderful in reality; but people of this country could not bring themselves to believe that what had never occurred before to England could ever possibly happen. Like our neighbours, we became wise when it was too late.
Of course the papers were not long in getting news, even the mighty organization set at work could not shut out a special correspondent; and in a very few days, although the telegraphs and railways were intercepted right across Europe, the main facts oozed out. An embargo had been laid on all the shipping in every port from the Baltic to Ostend; the fleets of the two great Powers had moved out, and it was supposed were assembled in the great northern harbour, and troops were heaving on board all the steamers detained in these places, most of which were British vessels.
It was clear that invasion was intended. Even then we might have been saved, if the fleet had been ready. The forts which guarded the flotilla were perhaps too strong for slipping to attempt; but an ironclad or two, handled as British sailors knew how to use them, might have destroyed or damaged a part of the transports, and delayed the expedition, giving us what we wanted, time. But then the best part of the fleet had been decoyed down to the Dardanelles, and what remained of the Channel squadron was looking after Fenian filibusters off the west of Ireland; so it was ten days before the fleet was got together, and by that time it was plain the enemy's preparations were too far advanced to be stopped by a coup-de-main, Information, which came chiefly through Italy, came slowly, and was more or less vague and uncertain; but this much was known, that at least a couple of hundred thousand men were embarked or ready to be put on board ships, and that the flotilla, was guarded by more ironclads than we could then muster. I suppose it was the uncertainty as to the point the enemy would aim at for landing, and the fear lest he should give us the go-by, that kept the fleet for several days in the Downs; but it was not until the Tuesday fortnight after the declaration of war that it weighed anchor and steamed away for the North Sea. Of course you have read about the Queen's visit to the fleet the day before, and how she sailed round the ships in her yacht, and went on board the flag-ship to take leave of the admiral; how, overcome with emotion, she told him that the safety of the country was committed to his keeping. You remember, too, the gallant old officer's reply, and how all the ships' yards were manned, and how lustily the tars cheered as her Majesty was rowed off. The account was of course telegraphed to London, and the high spirits of the fleet infected the whole town. I was outside the Charring Cross station when the Queen's special train from Dover arrived, and from the cheering and shouting which greeted her Majesty as she drove away, you might have supposed we had already won a great victory. The leading journal, which had gone in strongly for the army reduction carried out during the session, and had been nervous and desponding in tone during the past fortnight, suggesting all sorts of compromises as a way of getting out of the war, came out in a very jubilant form next morning.
"Panic-stricken inquirers,'' it said, "ask now, where are the means of meeting the invasion? We reply that the invasion will never take place. A British fleet manned by British sailors, whose courage and enthusiasm are reflected in the people of this country, is already on the way to meet the presumptuous foe. The issue of a contest between British ships and those of any other country, under anything like equal odds, can never be doubtful. England awaits with calm confidence the issue of the impending action."
Such were the words of the leading article, and so we all felt. It was on Tuesday, the 10th of August, that the fleet sailed from the Downs. It took with it a submarine cable to lay down as it advanced, so that continuous communication was kept up, and the papers were publishing special editions every few minutes with the latest news.
This was the first time such a thing had been done and the feat was accepted as a good omen. Whether it is true that the Admiralty made use of the cable to keep on sending contradictory orders, which took the command out of the admiral's hands, I can't say; but all that the admiral sent in return was a few messages of the briefest kind, which neither the Admiralty nor anyone else could have made any use of. Such a ship had gone off reconnoitering; such another had rejoined, fleet was in latitude so and so. This went on till the Thursday morning. I had just come up to town by train as usual, and was walking to my office, when the newsboys began to cry, "New edition, enemy's fleet in sight!" You may imagine the scene in London! Business still went on at the banks, for bills matured although the independence of the country was being fought out under our own eyes, so to say, and the speculators were active enough. But even with the people who were making and losing their fortunes, the interest in the fleet overcame everything else; men who went to pay in or draw out their money stopped to show the last bulletin to the cashier.
As for the street, you could hardly get along for the crowd stopping to buy and read the papers; while at every house or office the members sat restlessly in the common room, as if to keep together for company, sending out some one of their number every few minutes to get the latest edition.
At least this is what happened at our office; but to sit still was as impossible as to do anything, and most of us went out and wandered about among the crowd, under a sort of feeling that the news was got quicker at in this way. Bad as were the times coming, I think the sickening suspense of that day, and the shock which followed, was almost the worst that we underwent. It was about ten o'clock that the first telegram came; an hour later the wire announced that the admiral had signaled to form line of battle, and shortly afterwards that the order was given to bear down on the enemy and engage.
At twelve came the announcement, "Fleet opened fire about three miles to leeward of us", that is, the ship with the cable. So far all had been expectancy, then came the first token of calamity." An ironclad has been blown up", "the enemy's torpedoes are doing great damage", "the flagship is laid aboard the enemy", "the flag-ship appears to be sinking", "the vice-admiral has signaled to", there the cable became silent, and, as you know, we heard no more till, two days afterwards, the solitary ironclad which escaped the disaster steamed into Portsmouth.
Then the whole story came out, how our sailors gallant as ever, had tried to close with the enemy; how the latter evaded the conflict at close quarters, and, sheering off, left behind them the fatal engines which sent our ships, one after the other, to the bottom; how all this happened almost in a few minutes. The Government, it appears, had received warnings of this invention; but to the nation this stunning blow was utterly unexpected.
That Thursday I had to go home early for regimental drill, but it was impossible to remain doing nothing, so when that was over I went up to town again, and after waiting in expectation of news which never came, and missing the midnight train, I walked home. It was a hot sultry night, and I did not arrive till near sunrise. The whole town was quite still, the lull before the storm; and as I let myself in with my latch-key, and went softly upstairs to my room to avoid waking the sleeping household, I could not but contrast the peacefulness of the morning, no sound breaking the silence but the singing of the birds in the garden, with the passionate remorse and indignation that would break out with the day. Perhaps the inmates of the rooms were as wakeful as myself but the house in its stillness was just as it used to be when I came home alone from balls or parties in the happy days gone by. Tired though I was, I could not sleep, so I went down to the river and had a swim; and on returning found the household was assembling for early breakfast. A sorrowful household it was, although the burden pressing on each was partly an unseen one. My father, doubting whether his firm could last through the day; my mother, her distress about my brother, now with his regiment on the coast, already exceeding that which she felt for the public misfortune, had come down, although hardly fit to leave her room.
My sister Clara was worst of all, for she could not but try to disguise her special interest in the fleet; and though we had all guessed that her heart was given to the young lieutenant in the flag-ship, the first vessel to go down, a love unclaimed could not be told, nor could we express the sympathy we felt for the poor girl. That breakfast, the last meal we ever had together, was soon ended, and my father and I went up to town by an early train, and got there just as the fatal announcement of the loss of the fleet was telegraphed from Portsmouth.
The panic and excitement of that day, how the funds went down to 35; the run upon the bank and its stoppage; the fall of half the houses in the city; how the Government issued a notification suspending specie payment and the tendering of bills, this last precaution too late for most firms.
Graham and Company among the number, which stopped payment as soon as my father got to the office; the call to arms and the unanimous response of the country, all this is history which I need not repeat. You wish to hear about my own share in the business of the time. Well, volunteering had increased immensely from the day war was proclaimed, and our regiment went up in a day or two from its usual strength of 600 to nearly 1,000. But the stock of rifles was deficient. We were promised a further supply in a few days, which however, we never received; and while waiting for them the regiment had to be divided into two parts, the recruits drilling with the rifles in the morning, and we old hands in the evening. The failures and stoppage of work on this black Friday threw an immense number of young men out of employment, and we recruited up to 1,400 strong by the next day; but what was the use of all these men without arms? On the Saturday it was announced that a lot of smooth-bore muskets in store at the Tower would be served out to regiments applying for them, and a regular scramble took place among the volunteers for them, and our people got hold of a couple of hundred. But you might almost as well have tried to learn rifle-drill with a broom-stick as with old brown bess; besides, there was no smooth-bore ammunition in the country. A national subscription was opened for the manufacture of rifles at Birmingham, which ran up to a couple of millions in two days, but, like everything else, this came too late.
To return to the volunteers: camps had been formed a fortnight before at Dover, Brighton, Harwich, and other places, of regulars and militia, and the headquarters of most of the volunteer regiments were attached to one or other of them, and the volunteers themselves used to go down for drill from day to day, as they could spare time, and on Friday an order went out that they should be permanently embodied; but the metropolitan volunteers were still kept about London as a sort of reserve, till it could be seen at what point the invasion would take place. We were all told off to brigades and divisions. Our brigade consisted of the fourth Royal Surrey Militia, the first Surrey Administrative Battalion, as it was called, at Chapham, the seventh Surrey Volunteers at Southwark, and ourselves; but only our battalion and the militia were quartered in the same place, and the whole brigade had merely two or three afternoons together at brigade exercise in Bushey Park before the march took place. Our brigadier belonged to a line regiment in Ireland, and did not join till the very morning the order came. Meanwhile, during the preliminary fortnight, the militia colonel commanded. But though we volunteers were busy with our drill and preparations, those of us who, like myself, belonged to Government offices, had more than enough of office work to do, as you may suppose. The volunteer clerks were allowed to leave office at four o'clock, but the rest were kept hard at the desk far into the night.

Orders to the lord-leutenants, to the magistrates, notifications, all the arrangements for cleaning out the workhouses for hospitals, these and a hundred other things had to be managed in our office, and there was as much bustle indoors as out. Fortunate we were to be so busy, the people to be pitied were those who had nothing to do. And on Sunday (that was the fifteenth August) work went on just as usual. We had an early parade and drill, and I went up to town by the nine o'clock train in my uniform, taking my rifle with me in case of accidents, and luckily too, as it turned out, a mackintosh overcoat. When I got to Waterloo there were all sorts of rumours afloat. A fleet had been seen off the Downs, and some of the dispatch boats which were hovering about the coasts brought news that there was a large flotilla off Harwich, but nothing could be seen from the shore, as the weather was hazy. The enemy's light ships had taken and sunk all the fishing boats they could catch, to prevent the news of their whereabouts reaching us; but a few escaped during the night and reported that the frigate “Inconstant “, coming home from North America without any knowledge of what had taken place, had sailed right into the enemy's fleet and been captured.
In town the troops were all getting ready for a move; the Guards in the Wellington Barracks were under arms, and their baggage-waggons packed and drawn up in the Bird-cage Walk.

The usual guard at the Horse Guards had been withdrawn, and orderlies and staff-officers were going to and fro. All this I saw on the way to my office, where I worked away till twelve o'clock, and then feeling hungry after my early breakfast, I went across Parliament Street to my club to get some luncheon. There were about half-a-dozen men in the coffee-room, none of whom I knew; but in a minute or two Danvers of the Treasury entered in a tremendous hurry. From him I got the first bit of authentic news I had had that day.
The enemy had landed in force near Harwich, and the metropolitan regiments were ordered down there to reinforce the troops already collected in that neighbourhood; his regiment was to parade at one o'clock, and he had come to get something to eat before starting. We bolted a hurried lunch, and were just leaving the club when a messenger from the Treasury came running into the hall. "Oh, Mister Danvers," said he, "I've come to look for you, sir; the secretary says that all the gentlemen are wanted at the office, and that you must please not one of you go with the regiments." "The devil!" cried Danvers. "Do you know if that order extends to all the public offices?" I asked.
"I don't know," said the man," but I believe it do. I know there's messengers gone round to all the clubs and luncheon-bars to look for the gentlemen; the secretary says it's quite impossible any one can be spared just now, there's so much work to do; there's orders just come to send off our records to Birmingham to-night."
I did not wait to condole with Danvers, but, just glancing up Whitehall to see if any of our messengers were in pursuit, I ran off as hard as I could for Westminster Bridge, and so to the Waterloo station.
The place had quite changed its aspect since the morning. The regular service of trains had ceased, and the station and approaches were full of troops, among them the Guards and artillery. Everything was very orderly: the men had piled arms, and were standing about in groups. There was no sign of high spirits or enthusiasm. Matters had become too serious. Every man's face reflected the general feeling that we had neglected the warnings given us, and that now the danger so long derided as impossible and absurd had really come and found us unprepared. But the soldiers, if grave, looked determined, like men who meant to do their duty whatever might happen. A train full of guardsmen was just starting for Guildford.
I was told it would stop at Surbiton, and, with several other volunteers, hurrying like myself to join our regiment, got a place in it. We did not arrive a moment too soon, for the regiment was marching from Kingston down to the station. The destination of our brigade was the east coast.
Empty carriages were drawn up in the siding, and our regiment was to go first. A large crowd was assembled to see it off, including the recruits who had joined during the last fortnight, and who formed by far the largest part of our strength.
They were to stay behind, and were certainly very much in the way already; for as all the officers and sergeants belonged to the active part, there was no one to keep discipline among them, and they came crowding around us, breaking the ranks and making it difficult to get into the train. Here I saw our new brigadier for the first time. He was a soldier-like man, and no doubt knew his duty, but he appeared new to volunteers, and did not seem to know how to deal with gentlemen privates.
I wanted very much to run home and get my greatcoat and knapsack, which I had bought a few days ago, but feared to be left behind; a good-natured recruit volunteered to fetch them for me, but he had not returned before we started, and I began the campaign with a kit consisting of a mackintosh and a small pouch of tobacco.
It was a tremendous squeeze in the train; for, besides the ten men sitting down, there were three or four standing up in every compartment, and the afternoon was close and sultry, and there were so many stoppages on the way that we took nearly an hour and a half crawling up to Waterloo. It was between five and six in the afternoon when we arrived there, and it was nearly seven before we marched up to the Shoreditch station. The whole place was filled up with stores and ammunition, to be sent off to the east, so we piled arms in the street and scattered about to get food and drink, of which most of us stood in need, especially the latter, for some were already feeling the worse for the heat and crush. I was just stepping into a public-house with Travers, when who should drive up but his pretty wife? Most of our friends had paid their adieus at the Surbiton station, but she had driven up by the road in his brougham, bringing their little boy to have a last look at papa. She had also brought his knapsack and greatcoat, and, what was still more acceptable, a basket containing fowls, tongue, bread-and-butter, and biscuits, and a couple of bottles of claret, which priceless luxuries they insisted on my sharing.
Meanwhile the hours went on. The fourth Surrey Militia, which had marched all the way from Kingston, had come up, as well as the other volunteer corps; the station had been partly cleared of the stores that encumbered it; some artillery, two militia regiments, and a battalion of the line, had been despatched, and our turn to start had come, and long lines of carriages were drawn up ready for us; but still we remained in the street. You may fancy the scene. There seemed to be as many people as ever in London, and we could hardly move for the crowds of spectators, fellows hawking fruits and volunteers' comforts, newsboys and so forth, to say nothing of the cabs and omnibuses; while orderlies and staff-officers were constantly riding up with messages. A good many of the militiamen, and some of our people too, had taken more than enough to drink; perhaps a hot sun had told on empty stomachs; anyhow, they became very noisy. The din, dirt, and heat were indescribable. So the evening wore on, and all the information our officers could get from the brigadier, who appeared to be acting under another general, was, that orders had come to stand fast for the present. Gradually the street became quieter and cooler. The brigadier, who, by way of setting an example, had remained for some hours without leaving his saddle, had got a chair out of a shop, and sat nodding in it; most of the men were lying down or sitting on the pavement, some sleeping, some smoking. In vain had Travers begged his wife to go home. She declared that, having come so far, she would stay and see the last of us. The brougham had been sent away to a bystreet, as it blocked up the road; so he sat on a doorstep, she by him on the knapsack.
Little Arthur, who had been delighted at the bustle and the uniforms, and in high spirits, became at last very cross, and eventually cried himself to sleep in his father's arms, his golden hair and one little dimpled arm hanging over his shoulder. Thus went on the weary hours, till suddenly the assembly sounded, and we all started up. We were to return to Waterloo. The landing on the east was only a feint, so ran the rumour, the real attack was on the south. Anything seemed better than indecision and delay, and, tired though we were, the march back was gladly hailed. Missus.Travers, who made us take the remains of the luncheon with us, we left to look for her carriage; little Arthur, who was awake again, but very good and quiet, in her arms.
We did not reach Waterloo till nearly midnight, and there was some delay in starting again.
Several volunteer and militia regiments had arrived from the north; the station and all its approaches were jammed up with men, and trains were being despatched away as fast as they could be made up. All this time no news had reached us since the first announcement; but the excitement then aroused had now passed away under the influence of fatigue and want of sleep, and most of us dozed off as soon as we got under way. I did, at any rate, and was awoke by the train stopping at Leatherhead. There was an up-train returning to town, and some persons in it were bringing up news from the coast. We could not, from our part of the train, hear what they said, but the rumour was passed up from one carriage to another. The enemy had landed in force at Worthing. Their position had been attacked by the troops from the camp near Brighton, and the action would be renewed in the morning. The volunteers had behaved very well. This was all the information we could get. So, then, the invasion had come at last. It was clear, at any rate, from what was said, that the enemy had not been driven back yet, and we should be in time most likely to take a share in the defence. It was sunrise when the train crawled into Dorking, for there had been numerous stoppages on the way; and here it was pulled up for a long time, and we were told to get out and stretch ourselves, an order gladly responded to, for we had been very closely packed all night.
Most of us, too, took the opportunity to make an early breakfast off the food we had brought from Shoreditch. I had the remains of Missus Travers's fowl and some bread wrapped up in my waterproof, which I shared with one or two less provident comrades. We could see from our halting-place that the line was blocked with trains beyond and behind. It must have been about eight o'clock when we got orders to take our seats again, and the train began to move slowly on towards Horsham. Horsham Junction was the point to be occupied, so the rumour went; but about ten o'clock, when halting at a small station a few miles short of it, the order came to leave the train, and our brigade formed in column on the high road. Beyond us was some field artillery; and further on, so we were told by a staff-officer, another brigade, which was to make up a division with ours. After more delays the line began to move, but not forwards; our route was towards the north-west, and a sort of suspicion of the state of affairs flashed across my mind. Horsham was already occupied by the enemy's advance-guard, and we were to fall back on Leith Common, and take up a position threatening his flank, should he advance either to Guildford or Dorking. This was soon confirmed by what the colonel was told by the brigadier and passed down the ranks; and just now, for the first time, the boom of artillery came up on the light south breeze. In about an hour the firing ceased.
What did it mean? We could not tell. Meanwhile our march continued.
The day was very close and sultry, and the clouds of dust stirred up by our feet almost suffocated us.
I had saved a soda-water-bottleful of yesterday's claret; but this went only a short way, for there were many mouths to share it with, and the thirst soon became as bad as ever. Several of the regiment fell out from faintness, and we made frequent halts to rest and let the stragglers come up. At last we reached the top of Leith Hill. It is a striking spot, being the highest point in the south of England. The view from it is splendid, and most lovely did the country look this summer day, although the grass was brown from the long drought. It was a great relief to get from the dusty road on to the common, and at the top of the hill there was a refreshing breeze. We could see now, for the first time, the whole of our division.
Our own regiment did not muster more than 500, for it contained a large number of Government office men who had been detained, like Danvers, for duty in town, and others were not much larger; but the militia regiment was very strong, and the whole division, I was told, mustered nearly five thousand rank and file. We could see other troops also in extension of our division, and could count a couple of field-batteries of Royal Artillery, besides some heavy guns, belonging to the volunteers apparently, drawn by cart-horses. The cooler air, the sense of numbers, and the evident strength of the position we held, raised our spirits, which, I am not ashamed to say, had all the morning been depressed. It was not that we were not eager to close with the enemy, but that the counter-marching and halting ominously betokened a vacillation of purpose in those who had the guidance of affairs.
Here in two days the invaders had got more than twenty miles inland, and nothing effectual had been done to stop them. And the ignorance in which we volunteers, from the colonel downwards, were kept of their movements, filled us with uneasiness.
We could not but depict to ourselves the enemy as carrying out all the while firmly his well-considered scheme of attack, and contrasting it with our own uncertainty of purpose. The very silence with which his advance appeared to be conducted filled us with mysterious awe. Meanwhile the day wore on, and we became faint with hunger, for we had eaten nothing since daybreak. No provisions came up, and there were no signs of any commissariat officers. It seems that when we were at the Waterloo station a whole trainful of provisions was drawn up there, and our colonel proposed that one of the trucks should be taken off and attached to our train, so that we might have some food at hand; but the officer in charge an assistant-controller I think they called him, this control department was a newfangled affair which did us almost as much harm as the enemy in the long-run, said his orders were to keep all the stores together, and that he couldn't issue any without authority from the head of his department.
So we had to go without. Those who had tobacco smoked, indeed there is no solace like a pipe under such circumstances. The militia regiment, I heard afterwards, had two days' provisions in their haversacks; it was we volunteers who had no haversacks, and nothing to put in them. All this time, I should tell you, while we were lying on the grass with our arms piled, the General, with the brigadiers and staff, was riding about slowly from point to point of the edge of the common, looking out with his glass towards the south valley. Orderlies and staff-officers were constantly coming, and about three o'clock there arrived up a road that led towards Horsham a small body of lancers and a regiment of yeomanry, who had, it appears, been out in advance, and now drew up a short way in front of us in column facing to the south. Whether they could see anything in their front I could not tell, for we were behind the crest of the hill ourselves, and so could not look into the valley below; but shortly afterwards the assembly sounded. Commanding officers were called out by the General, and received some brief instructions; and the column began to march again towards London, the militia this time coming last in our brigade.
A rumour regarding the object of this counter-march soon spread through the ranks. The enemy was not going to attack us here, but was trying to turn the position on both sides, one column pointing to Reigate, the other to Aldershot; and so we must fall back and take up a position at Dorking. The line of the great chalk range was to be defended. A large force was concentrating at Guildford, another at Reigate, and we should find supports at Dorking. The enemy would be awaited in these positions. Such, so far as we privates could get at the facts, was to be the plan of operations. Down the hill, therefore, we marched. From one or two points we could catch a brief sight of the railway in the valley below running from Dorking to Horsham. Men in red were working upon it here and there. They were the Royal Engineers, someone said, breaking up the line. On we marched. The dust seemed worse than ever. In one village through which we passed, I forget the name now, there was a pump on the green. Here we stopped and had a good drink; and passing by a large farm, the farmer's wife and two or three of her maids stood at the gate and handed us hunches of bread and cheese out of some baskets. I got the share of a bit, but the bottom of the good woman's baskets must soon have been reached. Not a thing else was to be had till we got to Dorking about six o'clock; indeed most of the farmhouses appeared deserted already.
On arriving there we were drawn up in the street, and just opposite was a baker's shop. Our fellows asked leave at first by twos and threes to go in and buy some loaves, but soon others began to break off and crowd into the shop, and at last a regular scramble took place. If there had been any order preserved, and a regular distribution arranged, they would no doubt have been steady enough, but hunger makes men selfish; each man felt that his stopping behind would do no good, he would simply lose his share; so it ended by almost the whole regiment joining in the scrimmage, and the shop was cleared out in a couple of minutes; while as for paying, you could not get your hand into your pocket for the crush.
The colonel tried in vain to stop the row; some of the officers were as bad as the men. Just then a staff-officer rode by; he could scarcely make way for the crowd, and was pushed against rather rudely, and in a passion he called out to us to behave properly, like soldiers, and not like a parcel of roughs. "Oh, blow it, governor," said Dick Wake, "you aren't a-going to come between a poor cove and his grub." Wake was an articled attorney, and, as we used to say in those days, a cheeky young chap, although a good-natured fellow enough. At this speech, which was followed by some more remarks of the sort from those about him, the staff-officer became angrier still. "Orderly," cried he to the lancer riding behind him," take that man to the provost-marshal. As for you, sir," he said, turning to our colonel, who sat on his horse silent with astonishment, "if you don't want some of your men shot before their time, you and your precious officers had better keep this rabble in a little better order"; and poor Dick, who looked crestfallen enough, would certainly have been led off at the tail of the sergeant's horse, if the brigadier had not come up and arranged matters, and marched us off to the hill beyond the town. This incident made us both angry and crestfallen. We were annoyed at being so roughly spoken to: at the same time we felt we had deserved it, and were ashamed of the misconduct.
Then, too, we had lost confidence in our colonel, after the poor figure he cut in the affair. He was a good fellow, the colonel, and showed himself a brave one next day; but he aimed too much at being popular, and didn't understand a bit how to command.
To resume, We had scarcely reached the hill above the town, which we were told was to be our bivouac for the night, when the welcome news came that a food-train had arrived at the station; but there were no carts to bring the things up, so a fatigue-party went down and carried back a supply to us in their arms, loaves, a barrel of rum, packets of tea, and joints of meat, abundance for all; but there was not a kettle or a cooking-pot in the regiment, and we could not eat the meat raw. The colonel and officers were no better off. They had arranged to have a regular mess, with crockery, steward, and all complete, but the establishment never turned up, and what had become of it no one knew. Some of us were sent back into the town to see what we could procure in the way of cooking utensils. We found the street full of artillery, baggage-waggons, and mounted officers, and volunteers shopping like ourselves; and all the houses appeared to be occupied by troops. We succeeded in getting a few kettles and saucepans, and I obtained for myself a leather bag, with a strap to go over the shoulder, which proved very handy afterwards; and thus laden, we trudged back to our camp on the hill, filling the kettles with dirty water from a little stream which runs between the hill and the town, for there was none to be had above. It was nearly a couple of miles each way; and, exhausted as we were with marching and want of rest, we were almost too tired to eat.
The cooking was of the roughest, as you may suppose; all we could do was to cut off slices of the meat and boil them in the saucepans, using our fingers for forks. The tea, however, was very refreshing; and, thirsty as we were, we drank it by the gallon. Just before it grew dark, the brigade-major came round, and, with the adjutant, showed our colonel how to set a picket in advance of our line a little way down the face of the hill. It was not necessary to place one, I suppose, because the town in our front was still occupied with troops; but no doubt the practice would be useful. We had also a quarter guard, and a line of sentries in front and rear of our line, communicating with those of the regiments on our flanks. Firewood was plentiful, for the hill was covered with beautiful wood; but it took some time to collect it, for we had nothing but our pocket-knives to cut down the branches with.
So we lay down to sleep.
My company had no duty, and we had the night undisturbed to ourselves; but, tired though I was, the excitement and the novelty of the situation made sleep difficult.
And although the night was still and warm, and we were sheltered by the woods, I soon found it chilly with no better covering than my thin dust-coat, the more so as my clothes, saturated with perspiration during the day, had never dried; and before daylight I woke from a short nap, shivering with cold, and was glad to get warm with others by a fire. I then noticed that the opposite hills on the south were dotted with fires; and we thought at first they must belong to the enemy, but we were told that the ground up there was still held by a strong rear-guard of regulars, and that there need be no fear of a surprise.
At the first sign of dawn the bugles of the regiments sounded the reveille, and we were ordered to fall in, and the roll was called. About twenty men were absent, who had fallen out sick the day before; they had been sent up to London by train during the night, I believe. After standing in column for about half an hour, the brigade-major came down with orders to pile arms and stand easy; and perhaps half an hour afterwards we were told to get breakfast as quickly as possible and to cook a day's food at the same time. This operation was managed pretty much in the same way as the evening before, except that we had our cooking-pots and kettles ready. Meantime there was leisure to look around, and from where we stood there was a commanding view of one of the most beautiful scenes in England. Our regiment was drawn up on the extremity of the ridge which runs from Guildford to Dorking. This is indeed merely a part of the great chalk-range which