Charles
Edward Montague, the son of Francis Montague and Rosa McCabe was born
on the 1st January, 1867. His father had been a Catholic
priest but after falling in love with his future wife, the daughter
of a successful merchant from Drogheda, he left the Church and in
1863 moved to England. Charles was educated at the City of London
School and Balliol College, Oxford
While at university Montague wrote several literary reviews for the
Manchester Guardian. In February,
1890, the editor,C. P. Scott, invited him
to Manchester him a month's trial.
Scott was impressed by Montague and soon gave him a full-time post.
Montague shared Scott's political views and together they turned the
Manchester Guardian into a campaigning
newspaper. The both believed that the main tenet was "to bring
all political action to the same tests as personal conduct".
This led the men to support Home Rule
for Ireland and opposed the Boer War. Montague
also wrote about the theatre and by the early 1900s was acknowledged
as one of Britain's leading drama critics.
C. P. Montague eventually became assistant editor and played an important
role in the development of the newspaper when C.
P. Scott was a member of the House of Commons
between 1895 and 1906. The bond between the two men was reinforced
in 1898 by Montague marrying the editor's only daughter, Madeline
Scott, at the Unitarian Chapel in Manchester.
Like C. P. Scott, Montague argued in the
summer of 1914 against Britain becoming involved in a war with Germany.
However, once war had been declared, Montague believed that it was
important to give full support to the British government in its attempts
to achieve victory. Although forty-seven with a wife and seven children,
Montague volunteered to join the British
Army. Grey since his early twenties, Montague died his hair in
an attempt to persuade the army to take him. On 23rd December, 1914,
the Royal Fusiliers accepted him and he joined the Sportsman's Battalion.
After receiving military training at Climpson Camp in Nottingham,
Montague went to France in November, 1915. When he arrived at the
Western Front, his commanding officer
questioned the wisdom of having a man in his late forties in the trenches.
Montague was sent before the Medical Board and had to wait until the
end of January, 1916, before being allowed to return to the trenches.
However, three months later, a new ruling banned all men over forty-four
from trench work.
Montague was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant and transferred
to Military Intelligence. For the next two years he had the task of
writing propaganda for the British Army
and censoring articles written by the five authorized English journalists
on the Western Front (Perry
Robinson, Philip Gibbs, Percival
Phillips, Herbert Russell and Bleach
Thomas). He also took important visitors for tours of the trenches.
This included David Lloyd George, Georges
Clemenceau, George Bernard Shaw and H.
G. Wells.
After the war Montague returned to the Manchester
Guardian and stayed there until he retired in 1925. He also
wrote several books including the novels A
Hind Let Loose and Rough Justice,
and a collection of essays, Disenchantment
(1922) about the First World War. Charles Edward
Montague died in 1928.
C.
E. Montague and Captain Cadge as army censors.
C.
E. Montague, Disenchantment (1922)
(1)
Charles Montague, letter to his father (27th October, 1914)
At
the office we begin to hear of colleagues who departed as second lieutenants
in August now blossoming into captains and what not. One of our dramatic
critics has got to the war as an interpreter, another man is driving
a motor ambulance, several have enlisted, and all the rest want to
be war correspondents. My own slender chance of ever seeing any of
the fun depends on the remote possibility of Kitchener's accepting
a battalion of 1000 fit and hardy old cocks of 45 or more, of whom
I am one.
(2)
Charles Montague,
letter to C. P. Scott (24th November, 1914)
I
have felt for some time, and especially since I have been writing
leaders urging people to enlist, a strong wish to do the same myself.
I wrote last week to the War Office to ask if there was any chance
of getting over the difficulty of my few years over the limit of age,
and I was told that although the War Office could not directly break
the rule itself, it did not veto exceptions made by those responsible
for the raising of new battalions locally.
(3)
Soon after arriving at the Western Front,
Montague wrote to his friend Francis Dodd
(30th December, 1915)
The one thing
of which no description given in England any true measure is the universal,
ubiquitous muckiness of the whole front. One could hardly have imagined
anybody as muddy as everybody is. The rats are pretty well unimaginable
too, and, wherever you are, if you have any grub about you that they
like, they eat straight through your clothes or haversack to get at
it as soon as you are asleep. I had some crumbs of army biscuit in
a little calico bag in a greatcoat pocket, and when I awoke they had
eaten a big hole through the coat from outside and pulled the bag
through it, as if they thought the bag would be useful to carry away
the stuff in. But they don't actually try to eat live humans.
(4)
In December 1915 Montague was judged to be too old to be in the front-line.
Montague appealed against this decision and on 28th January 1916 had
to appear before the Army Medical Board.
I went in and found the Colonel-Surgeon,
who barred me a month ago on the ground of my age, again presiding.
He looked up at me genially, when I came to the table, and said, "So
I hear you want to have another whack of the Germans". I admitted
that I did. "How old are you - I mean, your real age?" "Forty-nine,
Sir", said I, "but only just". "Sure you're fit?"
I said yes. Another doctor at the table said something about my having
been there before. "Yes, yes", said the Colonel, "I
remember him perfectly. Well, Sergeant, all right", and he marked
me a big 'A' on his report. I grinned and saluted and made off. He
called after me as I was making for the door, "Sergeant, I believe
you'll do better up there than some of the young uns".
(5)
Charles Montague,
diary entry (December, 1917)
To
take part in war cannot, I think, be squared with Christianity. So
far the Quakers are right. But I am more sure of my duty of trying
to win the war than I am that Christ was right in every part of all
that he said, though no one has ever said so much that was right as
he did. Therefore I will try, as far as my part goes, to win the war,
not pretending meanwhile that I am obeying Christ, and after the war
I will try harder than I did before to obey him in all the things
in which I am sure he was right. Meanwhile may God give me credit
for not seeking to be deceived.
(6)
Philip Gibbs, The
Pageant of the Years (1946)
One of the censors was C. E. Montague, the most
brilliant leader writer and essayist on the Manchester Guardian
before the war. Prematurely white-haired, he had dyed it when the
war began and had enlisted in the ranks. He became a sergeant and
then was dragged out of his battalion, made a captain, and appointed
as censor to our little group. Extremely courteous, abominably brave
- he liked being under shell fire - and a ready smile in his very
blue eyes, he seemed unguarded and open.
Once he told me that he had declared a kind of moratorium on Christian
ethics during the war. It was impossible, he said, to reconcile war
with the Christian ideal, but it was necessary to get on with its
killing. One could get back to first principles afterwards, and resume
one's ideals when the job had been done.
(7)
Charles Montague took George Bernard Shaw
on a tour of the Western Front in January, 1917. Later, he wrote about
the experience.
At
the chateau where the Army entertained the rather mixed lot who were
classified as Distinguished Visitors, I met Montague. Finding him
just the sort of man I like and get on with, I was glad to learn that
he was to be my leader on my excursions. The standing joke about Montague
was his craze for being under fire, and his tendency to lead the distinguished
visitors, who did not necessarily share this taste into warm corners.
Like most standing jokes it was inaccurate, but had something in it.
Neither of us ever asked the other "And what the devil are you
doing in this gallery?" Both of us felt that, being there, we
were wasting our time when we were not within range of the guns. We
had come to the theatre to see the play, not to enjoy the intervals
between the acts like fashionable people at the opera.
(8)
Sir Beach Thomas, representing the Daily
Mirror and Daily Mail, was
one of the five authorized journalist on the Western
Front. He later described the role of C. E. Montague during the
war.
Montague
once said that shell-fire gave him a mental stimulus that nothing
else did. He also said, and he would not say a thing without meaning
it, that he thought it would be a fine thing to be killed in this
war. There can be no doubt that he definitely liked shell-fire at
one time, though his nerves were a little frayed towards the end,
largely because he was responsible for other people's safety. One
particular journey with him, illustrating this side of his character,
will always abide in my mind's eye.
We went to to see the Colonel of a battalion whose time was largely
spent on repairing paths and duckboard paths, continually shelled
to ribbons. The Colonel was one of those who so hated things, and
the enemy, that he actually wished to be killed. His mind sank further
and further into a slough of disgust as he worked day after day in
the stinking mud of that continuous cemetery. He took us to the crown
of the ridge: his Major, Montague, and me.
As we reached the top he pointed towards a hidden and distant German
battery, and said, "If we stand here a minute they will begin
to shell us." To his obvious delight they did, and very accurately.
The Major, whose nerves were on edge, wisely retired to a shell-hole;
and I followed with what deliberation I could muster.
The Colonel and Montague continued to stand talking on the ridge,
stiff, obstinate silhouettes against a grey sky. The second shell
fell short, half-way between us, and one great piece flew low, straight
at the shell-hole. Montague did not stir. He was ideally happy, enjoying
his mental stimulus; but, being very careful of other people, he induced
the Colonel to retire slowly. The poor Colonel had to wait another
month before the desired shell struck him.
(9)
De Witt Mackenzie represented the Associated Press of America at the
Western Front. He also commented on C.
E. Montague's bravery under fire.
One finds difficulty in summing up Montague's complex characteristics.
Had our friend lived a few hundred years ago he most certainly would
have been a great explorer and discoverer. The times and circumstances
made him an outstanding scholar and writer, but in his heart he was
an adventurer. Never have I known another man who so loved to thrust
himself into danger for the sake of the thrill he got from it. He
was known as 'fire-eater' throughout the length of the British Front.
I shall remember to the end one trip with him into the zone of death
during the never-to-be-forgotten Passchendaele push. The Germans had
been driven back along the Roulers railway, and Montague and I decided
that we would look the battlefield over. For hours we pushed forward
through the frightful mud, making our perilously way between the huge,
water-filled shell-holes which in many places almost interlocked.
The German 5.9s were coming down about us like peas off a hot skillet.
Everywhere was death and destruction. There was not a moment when
we were not in danger of being blown to atoms. Frankly, I didn't like
it, but Montague glorified in it. I had troubles of my own, but I
watched him in fascination. His shoulders were squared, his head was
thrown back, and his eyes were blazing with a strange fire. He was
in the state of ecstasy - a man in a trance.
The real Montague didn't come to earth until we encountered a crisis.
We finally reached a ridge, just back of the British advanced line,
and so exposed to the enemy that we were shooting at our troops from
shrapnel guns with open sights. We paused for a moment, and then Montague
tossed his head like a charger and said: "Let's push on."
We had barely resumed our journey when a piece of shrapnel hit my
steel helmet. The metal rang like a church bell. For a bit I rocked
about on my feet, wondering what had happened to me. Then I looked
over at Montague. He was gazing at me with troubled eyes; he had come
to earth again at last. "I think perhaps we have come a bit too
far, Mackenzie," he said in his quiet way. 'Let's get under cover."
He was thinking entirely of me. Shrapnel never worried him personally.
However, we went over and sat down among the dead behind a concrete
pill-box and rested. Then we started back home.
(10)
Charles Montague, Disenchantment
(1922)
Soldiers
would serve a divisional tour of sixteen days' duty in the line. For
four days the men would be in reserve under enemy fire, but not in
trenches; probably in the cellars of ruined houses. But these were
not times of rest. Each day or night every man would make one or more
journeys back to the trenches that they had left carrying some load
of food, water, or munitions up to the three companies in trenches,
or perhaps leading a pack-mule over land to some point near the front
line, under cover of night. Even to lead an laden mule in the dark
over waste ground confusingly wired and trenched is work; to get him
back on to his feet when fallen and wriggling, in wild consternation,
among a tangle of old barbed wire may be quite hard work.
After four days of their labours as sumpter mules, or muleteers, the
company would plod back for another four days of duty in trenches,
come out yet more universally tired at their end, and drift back to
rest-billets, out of ordinary shell-fire, for their sixteen days or
so of 'divisional rest'.
(11)
Charles Montague, Disenchantment (1922)
The war had more obvious disagreeables, too, you have heard all about
them: the quelling coldness of frosty nights spent in soaked clothes
- for no blankets were brought up to the trenches; the ubiquitous
dust and stench of corpses and buzzing of millions of corpse-fed flies
on summer battlefields; and so on, and so on.
(12)
Charles Montague, letter to his wife (5th November, 1917)
After the war I believe there will be less ill-will against Germans
in general among our returning soldiers than among any other equal
number of men at home, just because hard fighting, man against man,
tends to let off bitterness and make you regard your opponent as a
kind of other side in an athletic contest. In intervals in some of
our recent battles there have been quite exemplary spectacles of honourable
fighting - stretcher-bearers of both sides, out in No Man's Land in
crowds, sorting out their respective wounded, and nobody firing a
shot at them.
(13)
Charles Montague, diary entry (29th March, 1918)
With
Philip Gibbs and Hamilton Fyfe to No. 3 Canadian C.C.S. in the Vauban
Citadel, Doullens. Great smell of blood everywhere. Casualties coming
in freely. 2,500 evacuated yesterday. 20,000 dealt with in last 8
days. Some of the cases mere bundles of cloth, mud, blood, and torn
meat. Unpacked carefully by nurses, who despair of nothing still warm.
While Gibbs and Fyfe circulate and question and take notes among walking
wounded, an ambulance driver and a wounded Australian sergeant successively
draw my attention to them as possible spies.
(14)
De Witt Mackenzie, an America newspaper reporter, recalled an incident
that took place during the First World War.
Several of us, including Montague, were seated at a table one day.
Fierce fighting was going on at the time, and everybody's nerves were
on the ragged edge. Because of this there was a good deal of pessimism
in the air. Somebody remarked:
"The whole world's gone crazy with the war lust." Nobody
answered except Montague, who looked up with a whimsical smile and
a questioning "Yes?"
"Yes", affirmed the other. "Mankind has sunk below
the level of swine and is glorying as it wallows in the mire. Christianity
is as dead as a door nail, and men are going out to slaughter one
another for the pure joy of killing. There isn't a spark of mercy
left in the human breast."
"I saw an incident up at the front today that might interest
you", responded Montague. "While I was standing at an emergency
in to receive attention. He was leading a German prisoner, who also
was wounded - just a boy, of seventeen or so. I was interested in
the queer pair and inquired about them. Tommy had been in a hot fight,
and had already accounted for three or four of the enemy when he came
upon the youngster. The boy was frightened, but he managed to shoot
Tommy through an arm, and then prepared to use his bayonet as Tommy
charged."
"Tommy undoubtedly was seeing red by this time, and was as near
to the brute stage as he ever would get. He had been fighting hand-to-hand;
he had killed, and now he was facing another who was trying to kill
him. But instead of using his own rifle or bayonet, he closed on the
German lad and disarmed him. Somebody asked Tommy why he hadn't killed
the German.
"You see, sir," apologized Tommy, "he was such a little
begger I didn't have the heart to do it."
That was all; there was no further argument at the table; indeed,
there was nothing more to argue about. It was Montague's way of handling
a situation. And it revealed again the bigness of his heart and the
breadth of his understanding.
(15)
Charles Montague, diary entry (2nd October, 1918)
Lovely, these days, to see Amiens taking
life again. They are said to be 10,000 people back, out of about 120,000.
Everywhere windows are being mended, and in some places brickwork;
a few more shops and restaurants are opened every day and one notices
more people in the streets; the shell-hole in my old bedroom in the
Ecu de France is mended already, and one passenger train a day goes
through the station each way. There are no police, no gas no electric
light. In the slums, where I took a walk last night, there is a grim
gloom such as I imagine at night in mediaeval cities. On the shutters
of some of the closed shops are notices, "Any British soldier
looting will be shot", and in many of the deserted shops one
can see wares of some value through the windows. But there is an exhilaration
about the beginning of revival, like the renewal of youth that one
feels when recovering from illness.
(16) Charles Montague,
diary entry (3rd October, 1918)
German cemetery with between
1300 and 1400 graves. Of those of 1914-16 are massive stone blocks
and crosses. On those of 1917, heavy wooden crosses. On those of 1918,
scraggy wood crosses, and they are huddled closer. The graves recede
from the road, in order of date, and that the graduation is solidly
clear and expressive.
(17)
Charles Montague, letter to Francis Dodd
(18th November, 1918)
It has been a wonderful progress eastwards, always coming into new
towns and villages where the people rushed out, and shook hands and
kissed us and sometimes offered us pieces of bread, thinking we must
be half-starved like themselves and the German troops.
When the war ended I had the luck to be at our front at the very place
from which the old army was forced to retreat in 1914, and it was
great when eleven o'clock went and the Belgian civilians and we crowded
together into the village square to rejoice. They played 'Tripperay'
on the parish church bells and we all sang the two National Anthems
and cheered King Albert and felt it had all been worthwhile.
The day after the fighting ended I met hundreds of men who had been
prisoners and broken out just before the armistice. They were coming
back into our lines, almost starving, and some of them had died of
hunger and exhaustion on the way; but they came along splendidly,
marching in little groups under the command of the oldest soldier
in each, with their horrible black uniforms as clean and neat as hard
trying could make them, marching along very steady and smart and taking
no notice of anybody. I thought I had never seen the British soldier
to greater advantage.
(18)
Charles Montague, Disenchantment (1922)
Soldiers have endless occasions for talk.
Being seldom alone, and having to hold their tongues sometimes, they
talk all the time with that they can. And most of their talk was sour
and scornful.
Most of the N.C.O.'s and men in the field had come to feel that it
was left to them and to the soundest regimental officers to pull the
foundered rulers of England and heads of the army through the scrape.
They assumed now that while they were doing this job they must expect
to be crawled upon by all the vermin bred in the dark places of a
rich country vulgarly governed.
They were well on their guard by this time against expressing any
thoroughgoing faith in anything or anybody, or incurring any suspicion
of dreaming that such a faith was likely to animate others; a man
was a fool if he imagined that anyone set over him was not looking
after number one; the patriotism of the press was bunkum, screening
all sorts of queer games; the eloquence of patriotic orators was just
a smoke barrage to cover their little manoeuvres against one another.
The lions felt they had found out the asses. They would not try to
throw off the lead of the asses just then; you cannot reorganize a
fire-brigade in the midst of a fire. They had to wait.
(19)
Charles Montague, Disenchantment (1922)
"The freedom of Europe," "The
war to end war," "The overthrow of militarism," "The
cause of civilization" - most people believe so little now in
anything or anyone that they would find it hard to understand the
simplicity and intensity of faith with which these phrases were once
taken among our troops, or the certitude felt by hundreds of thousands
of men who are now dead that if they were killed their monument would
be a new Europe not soured or soiled with the hates and greeds of
the old.
So we had failed - had won the fight and lost the prize; the garland
of war was withered before it was gained. The lost years, the broken
youth, the dead friends, the women's overshadowed lives at home, the
agony and bloody sweat - all had gone to darken the stains which most
of us had thought to scour out of the world that our children would
live in. Many men felt, and said to each other, that they had been
fooled.
(20)
In his book Father Figures, Kingsley
Martin, a fellow leader writer at the Manchester
Guardian, wrote about working with C. E. Montague.
In spite of my great admiration for him I could not get to know him
much. He was the most shy of men; he vainly went to football matches
hoping to get in touch with the common herd. He wrote a revealing
essay about the art of writing, one good novel, A Hind Let Loose,
about the press, some fine dramatic criticism, leading articles that
might bear republishing, and one of the best of all war books, Disenchantment.
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