War: a tedious nuisance

Journals of Arnold Bennett - Saturday, June 9^th. 1917 Comarques – Siegfried Sassoon lunched with me at the Reform, yesterday. He expected some decoration for admittedly fine bombing work. Colonel had applied for it three times, but was finally told that as that particular push was a failure, it  He is evidently one of the reckless ones. He said his pals said he always gave the Germans every chance to pot him. He said he would like to go out once more and give them another chance to get him, and come home unscathed. He seemed jealous of the military reputation of poets. He said most of war was a tedious nuisance, but there were great moments, and he would like them again.

Gas attack in Burslem

Arnold Bennett's Journal - Wednesday, February 14^th, 1917 London, Yacht Club – I met Dr Shufflebotham (Stoke) and went with him to the Palladium (where the entertainment was awful). He told me one of the principal poison-gas factories was in Burslem. He said they had gradually learned the effect of the gases on the Germans by the effect of gases on their own workpeople, over half of whom had been on compensation during the past year. He told a funny tale of how in the early days there was a massed band Sunday fête (semi-religious) in Burslem Park, to which all the children in white came after Sunday School. Children began to cry. People said it was symptoms of whooping cough. Then  to cough. Further symptoms. Then adults began to cry and cough. Word went round at once, gas escaping from a factory. Every one fled from the park. Bandsmen dropped their instruments. Two of them met at gate. ‘Bill, where’s tha bloody drum?’ ‘It’s where tha bloody cornet is, lad.’

A seance

Arnold Bennett's Journal - Thursday, February 8^th , 1917 - London, Yacht Club – Dined at Mme. Van der Velde’s and sat at a spiritualistic séance with a clairvoyant named Peters, who brought his son, a youth in R.A.M.C., home for a few hours on leave. This son said there were 500 professional spiritualist soldiers at Aldershot. Theosophist. Peters (pére), man of 45 or so. Short. Good forehead. Bald on top, dark hair at sides. Quick and nervous. Son of a barge owner. Present: Yeats [W. B. Yeats the poet], Mr and Mrs Jowett (barrister – she very beautiful), Roger Fry, hostess, and me. Peters handled objects brought by each of us. His greatest success, quite startling, was with the glass stopper of a bottle brought by Jowett. He described a man throwing himself out of something, down, with machinery behind him, and a big hotel or big building behind him. Something to do with water, across water. He kept repeating these phrases, with variations. The stopper had belonged to the baronet (I forget his name) who threw himself off a launch, in response to a challenge from X., at 3 a.m., into the Thames, after a debauched party up river. All the passengers were more or less drunk. He was drowned.

Guns on the golf course

Arnold Bennett's war diaries - Wednesday, December 13^th 1915 – Lieut. R., of a mobile Anti-Aircraft unit stationed at Thorpe, came for tea. He said he carried £15,000 worth of stores. He said that after big raid at Hull, end of last year about, when mayor of Hull had been assured that Hull was one of the most heavily defended places, and a Zepp dropped 15 bombs in the town, the population afterwards mobbed officers, and A.A. officers coming into the town had to put on Tommies’ clothes. Also that Naval Unit was telegraphed for ad that when it came with full authorised special lights, the population, angry at the lights, assaulted it with stones and bottles and put half of it in hospital, and had ultimately to be kept off by the military. He outlined complex administrative system of unit, and showed how utterly and needlessly idiotic it was. He told me how he had been sent to some golf links with a big mobile gun and had put gun into a good spot where it interfered with play on first hole, the officially indicated position being a bad one. The affair was urgent, as a raid was expected that night. He successfully repulsed various complainants from gold club; but next morning an infantry officer came specially down from War Office, with instructions (positive orders) that gun must me moved. R. gave reasons against. Infantry officer: ‘I don’t know anything about artillery, but that gun has got to be moved. It is my order to you.’ In order to fix gun in inferior official position, R. intented for railway sleepers to the tune of £127, and got them. Meanwhile the gold club professional had told him that it would be quite easy to modify the course.

Going 'Over the Top'

Arnold Bennett's war journal - Monday, October 9^th 1917– Clegg [A British officer] brought a Capt. B. (of his battery) to lunch. Had been out at Ypres ten months and then wounded in the head, in front of right ear. He carries a good scar. He talked well, and said he should like to write if he could. I told him he could.

   He said the newspaper correspondents’ descriptions of men eager to go up over the parapet made him laugh. They never were eager. He related how he had seen a whole company of men pale with apprehension and shaking so that they could hardly load their rifles. Then he said that nevertheless men who did go  over in that state were really brave. He told us how his battery saw hundreds, thousands of grey figures coming alone only 1000 yards off, and every man thought he would be a prisoner in ten minutes, when suddenly thousands of Canadians appeared from nowhere, and the Boches fled. The cheering was delirious. He told this very dramatically, but without any effort to be effective, He said he really wanted to be back with the battery. For a long time the fellows wrote to him regularly once a fortnight, and every letter ended with ‘When are you coming back?’ He said they had had glorious times now and then glorious. He said that to sit on a factory chimney and see the Boches going over was better than big game shooting. He said the Boches had any amount of pluck and grit. And Clegg said that even in hospital they would stand thigs that an Englishman probably wouldn’t. Both Clegg and B. facetiously contrasted the rough, anyhow, bumping treatment the wounded get on their way from the firing line (when they really are ill) with the hushed, tender, worshipping treatment they get on arriving in London when many of them are dong pretty well.

How could Britain lose?

Arnold Bennett's war journal, Thursday August 17^th 1916– Yesterday I cycled to Frinton to see the shooting of the R.F.A. The target was the Frinton lifeboat, about 300 yards out. The guns were at Coldharbour, north of Frinton. Range of about 2500 yards. L. seems to know nothing about artillery, and he was made Observation Officer so as to save him from having to shoot. He could not observe. He had no notion of observing, beyond marking a plus or a minus. Half the shooting being over, a policeman was clearing people off the beach because of the danger. Last night at dinner I had the account of the shooting itself from one who had to do some of it. He said the Observation officer was supposed always to be a fist-class gunner, as everything depended on him, but that an Observation Officer was not really necessary in this case. The generals were kidded accordingly. There were three generals. One of them knew little or nothing about gunnery. He made a great noise, and wanted a great noise made – explosions, and to see shells dropping in the sea. He told the gunners to fire quickly, and to remember this was not manoeuvres but war (which happily it was not). He constantly deranged Gen. X.Y., but Gen. X.Y., being a thorough expert, and not to be ruffled, went ahead and gave quiet orders to the gunners, ignoring Gen Z.’s notions Z. wanted rapid firing. X.Y. said, ‘What is the your firing the next shot until you know exactly what was wrong with the last and why?’ X.Y. was evidently the bright spot in the proceedings.

Hostile unions

Arnold Bennett's Journals - Friday, July 14^th 1916 – London yesterday. [Gordon] Selfridge [founder of the great department store] was extraordinarily eloquent and sane in the matter of the relations between employer and employee. But he was very jealous on politics. He said whenever politics came near their store they trembled. Asked by me what he considered the sphere of politics, he said politics was to govern. Apparently the immense difficulty of defining politics had not occurred to him. He has no trades unions to deal with. He said he gave a lecture at Leeds University and that the atmosphere was clearly hostile to employers. There can be little doubt that the condition of affairs in his store is just about ideal.