Ww1

From ‘The fall of Combles and Thiepval’, The Spectator, 30 September 1916: The trench — ugly, dirty, dull, untidy serpent of mud and sandbags — will always have the advantage of the most artful fortress. In the last resort, the reason for this seeming miracle is the fact that the trench has something of mobility in it, and mobility is the vital essence of war. You can prolong a trench line to infinity, or to the sea or a neutral frontier, which is even better than infinity. A fortress has a finality about it which is fatal. The moment mobility is abandoned, as in an invested fortress, putrefaction, physical and spiritual, seems to

From ‘The Battle of the Somme’, The Spectator, 23 September 1916: It may prove to be the fact that the battle of last week was, indeed, the most important fought by British troops in the whole war. For it is possible that just as our men advanced on to the forward slope of the ridge the German moral slipped backwards down the slope, there and then, with the final, if secret, conviction that it could never recover itself… Our losses, of course, have been heavy, but there is not a shadow of evidence that they have been disproportionate to the ends accomplished.  

From ‘The burning of the Zeppelin’, The Spectator, 9 September 1916: Half London formed the vast proscenium for this tragedy of the air, and saw on the aerial stage the triumph of right over might — saw with their natural eyes David smite Goliath and hurl him in flaming ruin to the ground. Never before in human history had men sat in such a theatre and seen such a curtain rung down from the starry heights above them. But what made this drama of the open Heaven memorable above all record was the cheer that greeted its close. Those who had the inexpressible good fortune to hear that soul-shaking sound

From ‘Mr Churchill’s misfire’, The Spectator, 2 September 1916: There is nothing that democracy so much hates as unfair privilege, and Mr Churchill has enjoyed and has utilised an unfair privilege in getting himself in and out of the Army at his arbitrary will… The public now fully understands that his influence on our political life is almost wholly bad because it is wholly dissociated from any motive except that of personal advancement. He would, indeed, now be powerless either for good or for evil, were it not for the fact — or what appears to be the fact — that he still retains useful friends within the Cabinet who afford to him

From ‘The bed-rock of war’, The Spectator, 26 August 1916: As a rule in war the bowling has a great advantage over the batting, but it happens that the newest fashion in combat has given a great temporary advantage to the defence. To break a trench line which rests like that of the Germans on the sea and on a neutral country is a task demanding almost superhuman efforts, and yet it must be attempted and accomplished unless we wish the war to drag on for another three years, drag on until attrition has done its dire work, and done it, alas, on us and our allies almost as much as on our enemies.

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 19 August 1916: The Parliamentary Air Committee having recently inhaled much ozone at giddy heights, during their visits to a R.F.C. park, have breathed some of it forth in a brilliant idea. They propose that the present clumsy and ugly system of designating aircraft by numbers and letters should be replaced by the names of birds. The machines would be grouped in classes, and each class would have a distinctive name. The names of seabirds would be given to seaplanes and the names of land birds to Army aeroplanes. Just as ships of war are grouped in the ‘county’ class, the ‘river’ class, and

From ‘Armour of offence’, The Spectator, 5 August 1916: The soldier must never forget that it is his business to stand upon the offensive, not upon the defensive, and that for the offensive the power of rapid movement is essential. That is why, as the Germans are finding, and as the Austrians certainly found in Poland, you may make your trenches too defensible, too deep, too narrow, and generally too good. Deeply dug and laboriously protected trenches are splendid if judged only by their power to save people’s lives, so long as there is no in-fighting, but they may become veritable death-traps. In order to drive your enemy back you

From ‘Terms of peace’, The Spectator, 15 July 1916: As the man in the street might say, ‘The Allies are not going to give the Germans a chance to come at us a second time. Never again! is our motto.’ And if this is the object of the war, it will also be the object of the peace. We shall not dictate peace terms which will lead to the destruction of the German people or any section of them, or to any annexations of true German provinces; but we shall, as far as lies in our power, see to it that such a structure of government as that presented by militarist

From ‘News of the week’, The Spectator, 8 July 1916: On the surface of London life there is hardly a ripple, and yet not a hundred and fifty miles from our shores is being waged the first stage of what in all probability will prove not only one of the greatest and momentous battles in all history, but a battle fraught with consequences that must make or mar us as a nation. All that we hold dear as men and women and as a race, all that makes life worth living, all that goes with home and liberty and independence, all the things that matter, depend upon the issue of the