Mr. Britling Sees It Through

lot of blame coming; there’s bound to be a day of reckoning, and I suppose we’ve all got an instinctive disposition to find a scapegoat for our common sins. The Tory press is pretty rotten, and there’s a strong element of mere personal spite⁠—in the Churchill attacks for example. Personal jealousy probably. Our ‘old families’ seem to have got vulgar-spirited imperceptibly⁠—in a generation or so. They quarrel and shirk and lay blame exactly as bad servants do⁠—and things are still far too much in their hands. Things are getting muffed, there can be no doubt about that⁠—not fatally, but still rather seriously. And the government⁠—it was human before the war, and we’ve added no archangels. There’s muddle. There’s mutual suspicion. You never know what newspaper office Lloyd George won’t be in touch with next. He’s honest and patriotic and energetic, but he’s mortally afraid of old women and class intrigues. He doesn’t know where to get his backing. He’s got all a labour member’s terror of the dagger at his back. There’s a lack of nerve, too, in getting rid of prominent officers⁠—who have friends.”

The staff officer nodded.

“Northcliffe seems to me to have a case,” said Mr. Britling. “Everyone abuses him.”

“I’d stop his Daily Mail,” said Raeburn. “I’d leave The Times, but I’d stop the Daily Mail on the score of its placards alone. It overdoes Northcliffe. It translates him into the shrieks and yells of underlings. The plain fact is that Northcliffe is scared out of his wits by German efficiency⁠—and in war time when a man is scared out of his wits, whether he is honest or not, you put his head in a bag or hold a pistol to it to calm him.⁠ ⁠… What is the good of all this clamouring for a change of government? We haven’t a change of government. It’s like telling a tramp to get a change of linen. Our men, all our public men, are second-rate men, with the habits of advocates. There is nothing masterful in their minds. How can you expect the system to produce anything else? But they are doing as well as they can, and there is no way of putting in anyone else now, and there you are.”

“Meanwhile,” said Mr. Britling, “our boys⁠—get killed.”

“They’d get killed all the more if you had⁠—let us say⁠—Carson and Lloyd George and Northcliffe and Lady Frensham, with, I suppose, Austin Harrison and Horatio Bottomley thrown in⁠—as a Strong Silent Government.⁠ ⁠… I’d rather have Northcliffe as dictator than that.⁠ ⁠… We can’t suddenly go back on the past and alter our type. We didn’t listen to Matthew Arnold. We’ve never thoroughly turned out and cleaned up our higher schools. We’ve resisted instruction. We’ve preferred to maintain our national luxuries of a bench of bishops and party politics. And compulsory Greek and the university sneer. And Lady Frensham. And all that sort of thing. And here we are!⁠ ⁠… Well, damn it, we’re in for it now; we’ve got to plough through with it⁠—with what we have⁠—as what we are.”

The young staff officer nodded. He thought that was “about it.”

“You’ve got no sons,” said Mr. Britling.

“I’m not even married,” said Raeburn, as though he thanked God.

The little well-informed lady remarked abruptly that she had two sons; one was just home wounded from Suvla Bay. What her son told her made her feel very grave. She said that the public was still quite in the dark about the battle of Anafarta. It had been a hideous muddle, and we had been badly beaten. The staff work had been awful. Nothing joined up, nothing was on the spot and in time. The water supply, for example, had gone wrong; the men had been mad with thirst. One regiment which she named had not been supported by another; when at last the first came back the two battalions fought in the trenches regardless of the enemy. There had been no leading, no correlation, no plan. Some of the guns, she declared, had been left behind in Egypt. Some of the train was untraceable to this day. It was mislaid somewhere in the Levant. At the beginning Sir Ian Hamilton had not even been present. He had failed to get there in time. It had been the reckless throwing away of an army. And so hopeful an army! Her son declared it meant the complete failure of the Dardanelles project.⁠ ⁠…

“And when one hears how near we came to victory!” she cried, and left it at that.

“Three times this year,” said Raeburn, “we have missed victories because of the badness of our staff work. It’s no good picking out scapegoats. It’s a question of national habit. It’s because the sort of man we turn out from our public schools has never learnt how to catch trains, get to an office on the minute, pack a knapsack properly, or do anything smartly and quickly⁠—anything whatever that he can possibly get done for him. You can’t expect men who are habitually easygoing to keep bucked up to a high pitch of efficiency for any length of time. All their training is against it. All their tradition. They hate being prigs. An Englishman will be any sort of stupid failure rather than appear a prig. That’s why we’ve lost three good fights that we ought to have won⁠—and thousands and thousands of men⁠—and material and time, precious beyond reckoning. We’ve lost a year. We’ve dashed the spirit of our people.”

“My boy in Flanders,” said Mr. Britling, “says about the same thing. He says our officers have never learnt to count beyond ten, and that they are scared at the sight of a map.⁠ ⁠…”

“And the war goes on,” said the little woman.

“How long, oh Lord! how long?” cried Mr. Britling.

“I’d give them another year,” said the staff officer. “Just going as we are going. Then something must give way. There will be no money anywhere. There’ll be no more men.⁠ ⁠… I suppose they’ll feel that shortage first anyhow. Russia alone has