A BLACKSMITH’S OFFER
5 June 1915
SIR,—I HAVE BEEN a subscriber for a daily copy of your valuable paper since the price came within the limits of a working man’s weekly wage. Being blacksmith to trade, I am deeply concerned about how I can be made use of at the present time. For 20 years I was employed between two of the largest locomotive engine builders in Glasgow as angle iron smith, dome maker, flanging and piecing plates, also welding boiler barrels, and lately for a number of years I have been doing all kinds of general smith work and repairs. Although in my 50th year I am quite able for a good day’s work. Surely I can be of some use in serving my country in this great national crisis. I am willing to do anything or go anywhere if only I can serve and feel that I am of use. I hope some scheme of national service will be put in operation which will include working men like myself, who would be quite able to do their bit and relieve younger men for more active service.
A WORKING BLACKSMITH
AN ILLUSTRATION
8 June 1915
SIR,—WITHIN THE LAST week the foreman on a farm adjoining mine in Perthshire, who is married and has five children, of which the eldest is eight, has been induced by the recruiting agent and the Government allowances to enlist. It is impossible to replace a man in such a responsible position under present circumstances except by bribing away another farmer’s servant. On his judgment the ingathering of the crops in proper condition largely depends, as well as other work. His enlistment undoubtedly will mean a reduction in the value of the produce of the farm this year and a reduced area under cultivation next year. I ask what is the good of appeals from the Board of Agriculture to farmers to increase the area of land under cultivation if the recruiting authorities are permitted to act in this way. From a national point of view the want of organization of which this incident is an illustration is folly, and if persisted in may be properly described as madness.
Yours faithfully,
ERNEST MOON
BASIL MOON
9 June 1915
SIR,—IT MAY INTEREST many to know that the example of superb bravery, described in the enclosed extract in a letter in The Times of to-day, under the heading “An Officer’s Courage,” was displayed by an officer, the late Sec. Lieutenant Basil Moon (son of Mr. Ernest Moon, K.C., Counsel to the Speaker), who only joined the Army last August.
Yours truly,
ROBSON
The following is the passage to which Lord Robson refers:—
“During the attack, I am sorry to say, I lost two out of my three subalterns (the fourth has not yet returned). Poor old Roy was shot through the body after we had got about half-way, and though we quickly got his wound dressed and moved him back on a stretcher, he died in hospital the same night. Basil was simply magnificent all through; as soon as Roy (who was bomb officer) was wounded, Basil went up to the front and by his coolness and courage helped materially towards the success of the affair, and at last, when all our bombers had been killed and there was just the chance that the Germans might bomb us back again before we could block the trench, he picked up a rifle and ran along their parapet, picking off the German bombers until an exploding bomb blew the lower half of his face off. Even then he had sufficient strength left and sufficient thoughtfulness to write me a note and send it by messenger saying that he was sorry he was ‘out of action.’ Poor old chap, he was full of pluck right to the end.”
THE MOBILIZATION OF INVENTION
11 June 1915
SIR,—WE HAVE RECONSTRUCTED our Government and it is not for an innocent Englishman outside the world of politicians to estimate the advantages and disadvantages of the rearrangement of the House of Commons. But there is a matter beyond the range of party politics which does still seem to need attention and which has been extraordinarily disregarded in all the discussion that has led to the present Coalition, and that is the very small part we are still giving the scientific man and the small respect we are showing scientific method in the conduct of this war. I submit that there is urgent need to bring imaginative enterprise and our utmost resources of scientific knowledge to the assistance of the new-born energies of the Coalition; that this is not being done and that until it is done this war is likely to drag on and be infinitely more costly and infinitely less conclusive than it could and should be.
Modern war is essentially a struggle of gear and invention. It is not war under permanent conditions. In that respect it differs completely from pre-Napoleonic wars. Each side must be perpetually producing new devices, surprising and outwitting its opponent. Since this war began the German methods of fighting have been changed again and again. They have produced novelty after novelty, and each novelty has more or less saved their men and unexpectedly destroyed ours. On our side we have so far produced hardly any novelty at all, except in the field of recruiting posters. It is high time that our rulers and our people came to recognize that the mere accumulation of great masses of young men in khaki is a mere preliminary to the prosecution of this war. These masses make the body of an army, but neither its neck, head, nor hands, nor feet. In the field of aviation, for which the English and French temperaments are far better adapted than the German, there has been no energy of organization at all. There has been great individual gallantry and a magnificent use of the sparse material available, but no great development. We have produced an insufficient number of aviators and dribbled out an inadequate supply of machines. Insufficient and inadequate, that is to say, in relation to such a war as this. We have taken no steps to produce a larger and more powerful aeroplane capable of overtaking, fighting, and destroying a Zeppelin, and we are as far as ever from making any systematic attacks in force through the air. Our utmost achievements have been made by flights of a dozen or so machines. In the matter of artillery the want of intellectual and imaginative enterprise in our directors has prevented our keeping pace with the German improvements in trench construction; our shortness of high explosives has been notorious, and it has led to the sacrifice of thousands of lives. Our Dardanelles exploit has been throughout unforeseeing and uninventive; we have produced no counterstroke to the enemy’s submarine, and no efficient protection against his improved torpedoes. We have still to make an efficient use of poison gas and of armoured protection in advances against machine-guns in trench warfare. And so throughout almost the entire range of our belligerent activities we are to this day being conservative, imitative, and amateurish when victory can fall only to the most vigorous employment of the best scientific knowledge of all conceivable needs and material.
One instance of many will serve to show what I am driving at. Since this war began we have been piling up infantry recruits by the million and making strenuous efforts to equip them with rifles. In the meantime the actual experiences of the war have been fully verifying the speculations of imaginative theorists, and the Germans have been learning the lesson of their experiences. The idea that for defensive purpose one well-protected skilled man with a small machine-gun is better than a row of riflemen is a very obvious one indeed, but we have disregarded