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From The Spectator, 3 October 1914: We do not suggest that the voluntary principle should be abandoned during this war. The system is being worked for all it is worth ; it is answering well, thanks to the splendid spirit of the country ; and it would be absurd to change it mid-way for another system. But we cannot help reflecting that if we had had the scheme of National Service—of compulsory training for home defence, which is a different thing from conscription—recommended so earnestly and powerfully by Lord Roberts we should not now be in the throes of painfully improvising an Army….When the war is over there will be

From The Spectator, 3 October 1914: There has been a good deal of speculation of late as to the total sum of German casualties. It is clear that they are very much greater than the official returns acknowledge. The best way to estimate them is by our own. These, since the beginning of the war, have been about thirty per cent of the men engaged. But the Germans have in the western theatre had at least one million two hundred thousand men in the field. It is difficult, then, to put their losses in killed, wounded, prisoners, and missing much below four hundred thousand, and they are probably heavier. To

From The Spectator, 26 September 1914: One knew, of course, perfectly well that there was a very good feeling between men and officers in the British Army, and that there was a great deal of mutual respect and liking and good fellowship. What is very moving, however, is the belief that every soldier seems to have that his particular officer is the ablest, bravest, most careful, and most con- siderate man in the Army. Half the stories are prefaced by such remarks as: “You see, we had the luck to have a wonderful good officer. He knew exactly what ought to be done. We’d have followed him anywhere ” —and

From The Spectator, 26 September 1914: Excellent use is made of captured documents, and we are treated to excerpts from a letter by a German private which deals with the fighting capacity of the British soldier:— “With the English troops we have great difficulties. They have a queer way of causing losses to the enemy. They make good trenches, in which they wait patiently. They carefully measure the ranges for their rifle fire, and they then open a truly hellish fire on the unsuspecting cavalry. This was the reason that we had such heavy losses. . . . According to our officers, the English striking forces are exhausted. The English

From The Spectator, 26 September 1914: The early afternoon papers of Friday publish a Reuter telegram to the effect that a Zeppelin flew over Ostend at eleven o’clock on Thursday evening, dropped three bombs, and flew away again. The damage was one office wrecked and one dog killed. If that is the bag of one Zeppelin in Ostend, what, after all, would be the bag of one hundred Zeppelins in London?

From The Spectator, 26 September 1914: On Thursday the Press Bureau issued a very striking descriptive account of the situation at the front, written by “an eyewitness present with General Headquarters.” It supplements the spirited narrative issued in the earlier part of the week, and shows that under pressure the War Office has discovered a very efficient military journalist among its combatant officers. “Todgers’s can do it when it likes.” It states that we are face to face with siege warfare, and that the Germans are in effect employing material which they had collected for the siege of Paris. The official war correspondent summarizes operations from September 18th to 20th by borrowing

From The Spectator, 19 September 1914: WE have no war correspondents present with the forces, to our great loss; and we are now in the quaintly topsy-turvy position of reading accounts of battles and of fighting in the letters sent home by individual officers and men—letters which might just as well have been written by the trained correspondents who have been forbidden to take the field. It is a contrary enough state of affairs; here we have hundreds of soldiers’ accounts of fights to choose from, and hundreds of wounded at home in our hospitals with their stories to tell their friends, and yet the men who could have made the

From ‘A review of the war’, The Spectator, 19 September 1914: It is the duty of all English publicists to make people here understand the splendid heroism with which the Servians have fought. They have contributed very greatly to the overthrow of Austria, and their brave Army and nation deserve all the help and encouragement that the Allies can give. We and the French very properly guaranteed a loan to Belgium. We, France, and the Russians ought to do the same by Servia, for the little nation’s finances must by this time be very nearly exhausted. If twenty or thirty millions were put at the disposal of Servia, she would

From The Spectator, 19 September 1914: WHAT a nefarious little person is the captious critic! His watchword is caution, and he goes about damping down the fires of enthusiasm, only happy when be can hear some aspiring little flame fizzling out. At present he is enjoying himself hugely. All good people are registering rash vows to be of some use at a supreme crisis, and he is busy explaining to them in detail that it is of no sort of good for them to try. All their attempts, he would have them believe, are defeating themselves. They had better do nothing than what they are doing, he persuades them. Their

From The Spectator, 12 September 1914: The King’s message addressed “To the Governments and Peoples of My Self-Governing Dominions,” published to the world on Wednesday, is noble in its sincerity of word and thought. What could be said better or with a truer dignity than the following: ‘Had I stood aside when, in defiance of pledges to which my kingdom was a party, the soil of Belgium was violated and her cities laid desolate, when the very life of the French nation was threatened with extinction I should have sacrificed my honour and given to destruction the liberties of my Empire and of man- kind. I rejoice that every part

The papers of Monday published the welcome news that Britain, France, and Russia have agreed ‘not to conclude peace separately during the present war.’ Of course, it was quite unthinkable that Britain, France, or Russia should be so base as to make terms at the expense of her friends. Nevertheless, a signed pledge is an excellent thing to have, if only because it puts the matter beyond the possibility of doubt, and because it spikes the guns of German intrigue, which, if report speaks truly, had already began. It is, indeed, a pitiable situation when allies think of their own interests more than of the common cause, as William III. discovered when