the great story was still in the making, while the foundations were
still being laid, it was impossible to correct all the annoying
underestimates, all the ignorant or careless judgments, of people who
took a point for the whole. The men at the heart of things could only
set their teeth, keep silence and give no information that could help
the enemy. The battle of the Somme, last July, was the first real
testing of their work. The Hindenburg retreat, the successes in
Mesopotamia, the marvellous spectacle of the Armies in France--and
before this letter could be sent to Press, the glorious news from the
Arras front!--are the present fruits of it.

Like you, we had, at the outbreak of war, some 500,000 men, all told, of
whom not half were fully trained. None of us British folk will ever
forget the Rally of the First Hundred Thousand! On the 8th of August,
four days after the Declaration of War, Lord Kitchener asked for them.
He got them in a fortnight. But the stream rushed on--in the fifth week
of the war alone 250,000 men enlisted; 30,000 recruits--the yearly
number enlisted before the war--joined in one day. Within six or seven
weeks the half-million available at the beginning of the war had been
_more than doubled._

Then came a pause. The War Office, snowed under, not knowing where to
turn for clothes, boots, huts, rifles, guns, ammunition, tried to check
the stream by raising the recruits' standards. A mistake!--but soon
recognised. In another month, under the influence of the victory on the
Marne, and while the Germans were preparing the attacks on the British
Line so miraculously beaten off in the first battle of Ypres, the
momentary check had been lost in a fresh outburst of national energy.
You will remember how the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee came into
being, that first autumn?--how the Prime Minister took the lead, and the