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diff --git a/old/14086.txt b/old/14086.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e7332d5 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14086.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3506 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Carry On, by Coningsby Dawson + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Carry On + +Author: Coningsby Dawson + +Release Date: November 18, 2004 [EBook #14086] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARRY ON *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + +Carry On + +By Lieutenant +Coningsby +Dawson + +CARRY ON + +[Illustration: Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson +Canadian Field Artillery] + + + + +CARRY ON + +LETTERS IN WAR TIME + +BY + +CONINGSBY DAWSON + +NOVELIST AND SOLDIER + +WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES + +BY HIS FATHER, W.J. DAWSON + +FRONTISPIECE + +1917 + + + + WHEN THE WAR'S AT AN END + + + At length when the war's at an end + And we're just ourselves,--you and I, + And we gather our lives up to mend, + We, who've learned how to live and to die: + + Shall we think of the old ambition + For riches, or how to grow wise, + When, like Lazarus freshly arisen, + We've the presence of Death in our eyes? + + Shall we dream of our old life's passion,-- + To toil for our heart's desire, + Whose souls War has taken to fashion + With molten death and with fire? + + I think we shall crave the laughter + Of the wind through trees gold with the sun, + When our strife is all finished,--after + The carnage of War is done. + + Just these things will then seem worth while:-- + How to make Life more wondrously sweet; + How to live with a song and a smile, + How to lay our lives at Love's feet. + + ERIC P. DAWSON, + _Sub. Lieut_. R.N.V.R. + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +The letters in this volume were not written for publication. They are +intimate and personal in a high degree. They would not now be published +by those to whom they are addressed, had they not come to feel that the +spirit and temper of the writer might do something to strengthen and +invigorate those who, like himself, are called on to make great +sacrifices for high causes and solemn duties. + +They do not profess to give any new information about the military +operations of the Allies; this is the task of the publicist, and at all +times is forbidden to the soldier in the field. Here and there some +striking or significant fact has been allowed to pass the censor; but +the value of the letters does not lie in these things. It is found +rather in the record of how the dreadful yet heroic realities of war +affect an unusually sensitive mind, long trained in moral and romantic +idealism; the process by which this mind adapts itself to unanticipated +and incredible conditions, to acts and duties which lie close to horror, +and are only saved from being horrible by the efficacy of the spiritual +effort which they evoke. Hating the brutalities of War, clearly +perceiving the wide range of its cruelties, yet the heart of the writer +is never hardened by its daily commerce with death; it is purified by +pity and terror, by heroism and sacrifice, until the whole nature seems +fresh annealed into a finer strength. + +The intimate nature of these letters makes it necessary to say something +about the writer. + +Coningsby Dawson graduated with honours in history from Oxford in 1905, +and in the same year came to the United States with the intention of +taking a theological course at Union Seminary. After a year at the +Seminary he reached the conclusion that his true lifework lay in +literature, and he at once began to fit himself for his vocation. In the +meantime his family left England, and we had made our home in Taunton, +Massachusetts. Here, in a quiet house, amid lawns and leafy elms, he +gave himself with indefatigable ardour to the art of writing. He wrote +from seven to ten hours a day, producing many poems, short stories, and +three novels. Few writers have ever worked harder to attain literary +excellence, or have practised a more austere devotion to their art. I +often marvelled how a young man, fresh from a brilliant career at the +greatest of English Universities, could be content with a life that was +so widely separated from association with men and affairs. I wondered +still more at the patience with which he endured the rebuffs that always +await the beginner in literature, and the humility with which he was +willing to learn the hard lessons of his apprenticeship in literary +form. The secret lay, no doubt, in his secure sense of a vocation, and +his belief that good work could not fail in the end to justify itself. +But, not the less, these four years of obscure drudgery wore upon his +spirit, and hence some of the references in these letters to his days of +self-despising. The period of waiting came to an end at last with the +publication in 1913 of his _Garden Without Walls_, which attained +immediate success. When he speaks in these letters of his brief burst of +fame, he refers to those crowded months in the Fall of 1913, when his +novel was being discussed on every hand, and, for the first time, he met +many writers of established reputation as an equal. + +Another novel, _The Raft_, followed _The Garden Without Walls_. The +nature of his life now seemed fixed. To the task of novel-writing he had +brought a temperament highly idealistic and romantic, a fresh and vivid +imagination, and a thorough literary equipment. His life, as he planned +it, held but one purpose for him, outside the warmth and tenacity of +its affections--the triumph of the efficient purpose in the adequate +expression of his mind in literature. The austerity of his long years of +preparation had left him relatively indifferent to the common prizes of +life, though they had done nothing to lessen his intense joy in life. +His whole mind was concentrated on his art. His adventures would be the +adventures of the mind in search of ampler modes of expression. His +crusades would be the crusades of the spirit in search of the realities +of truth. He had received the public recognition which gave him faith in +himself and faith in his ability to achieve the reputation of the true +artist, whose work is not cheapened but dignified and broadened by +success. So he read the future, and so his critics read it for him. And +then, sudden and unheralded, there broke on this quiet life of +intellectual devotion the great storm of 1914. The guns that roared +along the Marne shattered all his purposes, and left him face to face +with a solemn spiritual exigency which admitted no equivocation. + +At first, in common with multitudes more experienced than himself, he +did not fully comprehend the true measure of the cataclysm which had +overwhelmed the world. There had been wars before, and they had been +fought out by standing armies. It was incredible that any war should +last more than a few months. Again and again the world had been assured +that war would break down with its own weight, that no war could be +financed beyond a certain brief period, that the very nature of modern +warfare, with its terrible engines of destruction, made swift decisions +a necessity. The conception of a British War which involved the entire +manhood of the nation was new, and unparalleled in past history. And the +further conception of a war so vast in its issues that it really +threatened the very existence of the nation was new too. Alarmists had +sometimes predicted these things, but they had been disbelieved. +Historians had used such phrases of long past struggles, but often as a +mode of rhetoric rather than as the expression of exact truth. Yet, in a +very few weeks, it became evident that not alone England, but the entire +fabric of liberal civilisation was threatened by a power that knew no +honour, no restraints of either caution or magnanimity, no ethic but the +armed might that trampled under blood-stained feet all the things which +the common sanction of centuries held dearest and fairest. + +Perhaps, if Coningsby had been resident in England, these realities of +the situation would have been immediately apparent. Residing in +America, the real outlines of the struggle were a little dimmed by +distance. Nevertheless, from the very first he saw clearly where his +duty lay. He could not enlist immediately. He was bound in honour to +fulfil various literary obligations. His latest book, _Slaves of +Freedom_, was in process of being adapted for serial use, and its +publication would follow. He set the completion of this work as the +period when he must enlist; working on with difficult self-restraint +toward the appointed hour. If he had regrets for a career broken at the +very point where it had reached success and was assured of more than +competence, he never expressed them. His one regret was the effect of +his enlistment on those most closely bound to him by affections which +had been deepened and made more tender by the sense of common exile. At +last the hour came when he was free to follow the imperative call of +patriotic duty. He went to Ottawa, saw Sir Sam Hughes, and was offered a +commission in the Canadian Field Artillery on the completion of his +training at the Royal Military College, at Kingston, Ontario. The last +weeks of his training were passed at the military camp of Petewawa on +the Ottawa River. There his family was able to meet him in the July of +1916. While we were with him he was selected, with twenty-four other +officers, for immediate service in France; and at the same time his two +younger brothers enlisted in the Naval Patrol, then being recruited in +Canada by Commander Armstrong. + +The letters in this volume commence with his departure from Ottawa. Week +by week they have come, with occasional interruptions; mud stained +epistles, written in pencil, in dug-outs by the light of a single +candle, in the brief moments snatched from hard and perilous duties. +They give no hint of where he was on the far-flung battle-line. We know +now that he was at Albert, at Thiepval, at Courcelette, and at the +taking of the Regina trench, where, unknown to him, one of his cousins +fell in the heroic charge of the Canadian infantry. His constant +thoughtfulness for those who were left at home is manifest in all he +writes. It has been expressed also in other ways, dear and precious to +remember: in flowers delivered by his order from the battlefield each +Sabbath morning at our house in Newark, in cables of birthday +congratulations, which arrived on the exact date. Nothing has been +forgotten that could alleviate the loneliness of our separation, or +stimulate our courage, or make us conscious of the unbroken bond of +love. + +The general point of view in these letters is, I think, adequately +expressed in the phrase "_Carry On_," which I have used as the title of +this book. It was our happy lot to meet Coningsby in London in the +January of the present year, when he was granted ten days' leave. In the +course of conversation one night he laid emphasis on the fact that he, +and those who served with him, were, after all, not professional +soldiers, but civilians at war. They did not love war, and when the war +was ended not five per cent of them would remain in the army. They were +men who had left professions and vocations which still engaged the best +parts of their minds, and would return to them when the hour came. War +was for them an occupation, not a vocation. Yet they had proved +themselves, one and all, splendid soldiers, bearing the greatest +hardships without complaint, and facing wounds and death with a gay +courage which had made the Canadian forces famous even among a host of +men, equally brave and heroic. The secret of their fortitude lay in the +one brief phrase, "Carry On." Their fortitude was of the spirit rather +than the nerves. They were aware of the solemn ideals of justice, +liberty, and righteousness for which they fought, and would never give +up till they were won. In the completeness of their surrender to a great +cause they had been lifted out of themselves to a new plane of living +by the transformation of their spirit. It was the dogged indomitable +drive of spiritual forces controlling bodily forces. Living or dying +those forces would prevail. They would carry on to the end, however long +the war, and would count no sacrifice too great to assure its triumph. + +This is the spirit which breathes through these letters. The splendour +of war, as my son puts it, is in nothing external; it is all in the +souls of the men. "There's a marvellous grandeur about all this carnage +and desolation--men's souls rise above the distress--they have to, in +order to survive." "Every man I have met out here has the amazing guts +to wear his crown of thorns as though it were a cap-and-bells." They +have shredded off their weaknesses, and attained that "corporate +stout-heartedness" which is "the acme of what Aristotle meant by +virtue." For himself, he discovers that the plague of his former modes +of life lay in self-distrust. It was the disease of the age. The doubt +of many things which it were wisdom to believe had ended in the doubt of +one's own capacity for heroism. All those doubts and self-despisings had +vanished in the supreme surrender to sacrificial duty. The doors of the +Kingdom of Heroism were flung so wide that the meanest might enter in, +and in that act the humblest became comrades of Drake's men, who could +jest as they died. No one knows his real strength till it is put to the +test; the highest joy of life is to discover that the soul can meet the +test, and survive it. + +The Somme battlefield, from which all these letters were despatched, is +an Inferno much more terrible than any Dante pictured. It is a vast sea +of mud, full of the unburied dead, pitted and pock-marked by +shell-holes, treeless and horseless, "the abomination of desolation." +And the men who toil across it look more like outcasts of the London +Embankment than soldiers. "They're loaded down like pack-animals, their +shoulders are rounded, they're wearied to death, but they go on and go +on.... There's no flash of sword or splendour of uniforms. They're only +very tired men determined to carry on. The war will be won by tired men +who can never again pass an insurance test." Yet they carry on--the +"broken counter-jumper, the ragged ex-plumber," the clerk from the +office, the man from the farm; Londoner, Canadian, Australian, New +Zealander, men drawn from every quarter of the Empire, who daily justify +their manhood by devotion to an ideal and by contempt of death. And in +the heart of each there is a settled conviction that the cause for which +they have sacrificed so much must triumph. They have no illusions about +an early peace. They see their comrades fall, and say quietly, "He's +gone West." They do heroic things daily, which in a lesser war would +have won the Victoria Cross, but in this war are commonplaces. They know +themselves re-born in soul, and are dimly aware that the world is +travailing toward new birth with them. They are still very human, men +who end their letters with a row of crosses which stand for kisses. They +are not dehumanised by war; the kindliness and tenderness of their +natures are unspoiled by all their daily traffic in horror. But they +have won their souls; and when the days of peace return these men will +take with them to the civilian life a tonic strength and nobleness which +will arrest and extirpate the decadence of society with the saving salt +of valour and of faith. + +It may be said also that they do not hate their foe, although they hate +the things for which he fights. They are fighting a clean fight, with +men whose courage they respect. A German prisoner who comes into the +British camp is sure of good treatment. He is neither starved nor +insulted. His captors share with him cheerfully their rations and their +little luxuries. Sometimes a sullen brute will spit in the face of his +captor when he offers him a cigarette; he is always an officer, never a +private. And occasionally between these fighting hosts there are acts of +magnanimity which stand out illumined against the dark background of +death and suffering. One of the stories told me by my son illustrates +this. During one fierce engagement a British officer saw a German +officer impaled on the barbed wire, writhing in anguish. The fire was +dreadful, yet he still hung there unscathed. At length the British +officer could stand it no longer. He said quietly, "I can't bear to look +at that poor chap any longer." So he went out under the hail of shell, +released him, took him on his shoulders and carried him to the German +trench. The firing ceased. Both sides watched the act with wonder. Then +the Commander in the German trench came forward, took from his own bosom +the Iron Cross, and pinned it on the breast of the British officer. Such +an episode is true to the holiest ideals of chivalry; and it is all the +more welcome because the German record is stained by so many acts of +barbarism, which the world cannot forgive. + +This magnanimous attitude toward the enemy is very apparent in these +letters. The man whose mind is filled with great ideals of sacrifice and +duty has no room for the narrowness of hate. He can pity a foe whose +sufferings exceed his own, and the more so because he knows that his +foe is doomed. The British troops do know this to-day by many infallible +signs. In the early days of the war untrained men, poorly equipped with +guns, were pitted against the best trained troops in Europe. The first +Canadian armies were sacrificed, as was that immortal army of Imperial +troops who saved the day at Mons. The Canadians often perished in that +early fighting by the excess of their own reckless bravery. They are +still the most daring fighters in the British army, but they have +profited by the hard discipline of the past. They know now that they +have not only the will to conquer, but the means of conquest. Their, +artillery has become conspicuous for its efficiency. It is the ceaseless +artillery fire which has turned the issue of the war for the British +forces. The work of the infantry is beyond praise. They "go over the +top" with superb courage, and all who have seen them are ready to say +with my son, "I'm hats off to the infantry." And in this final +efficiency, surpassing all that could have been thought possible in the +earlier stages of the war, the British forces read the clear augury of +victory. The war will be won by the Allied armies; not only because they +fight for the better cause, which counts for much, in spite of +Napoleon's cynical saying that "God is on the side of the strongest +battalions"; but because at last they have superiority in equipment, +discipline and efficiency. Upon that shell-torn Western front, amid the +mud and carnage of the Somme, there has been slowly forged the weapon +which will drive the Teuton enemy across the Rhine, and give back to +Europe and the world unhindered liberty and enduring peace. + +W.J. DAWSON. + +March, 1917. + + + + +THE LETTERS + + +In order to make some of the allusions in these letters clear I will set +down briefly the circumstances which explain them, and supply a +narrative link where it may be required. + +I have already mentioned the Military Camp at Petewawa, on the Ottawa +river. The Camp is situated about seven miles from Pembroke. The Ottawa +river is at this point a beautiful lake. Immediately opposite the Camp +is a little summer hotel of the simplest description. It was at this +hotel that my wife, my daughter, and myself stayed in the early days of +July, 1916. + +The hotel was full of the wives of the officers stationed in the Camp. +During the daytime I was the only man among the guests. About five +o'clock in the afternoon the officers from the Camp began to arrive on a +primitive motor ferryboat. My son came over each day, and we often +visited him at the Camp. His long training at Kingston had been very +severe. It included besides the various classes which he attended a +great deal of hard exercise, long rides or foot marches over frozen +roads before breakfast, and so forth. After this strenuous winter the +Camp at Petewawa was a delightful change. His tent stood on a bluff, +commanding an exquisite view of the broad stretch of water, diversified +by many small islands. We had a great deal of swimming in the lake, and +several motor-boat excursions to its beautiful upper reaches. One +afternoon when we went over in our launch to meet him at the Camp wharf, +he told us that that day a General had come from Ottawa to ask for +twenty-five picked officers to supply the casualties among the Canadian +Field Artillery at the front. He had immediately volunteered and been +accepted. + +At this time my two younger sons, who had joined us at Petewawa in order +to see their brother, enrolled themselves in the Royal Naval Motor +Patrol Service, and had to return to Nelson, British Columbia, to settle +their affairs. Near Nelson, on the Kootenay Lake, we have a large fruit +ranch, managed by my second son, Reginald. My youngest son, Eric, was +with a law-firm in Nelson, and had just passed his final examinations as +solicitor and barrister. + +This ranch had played a great part in our lives. The scenery is among +the finest in British Columbia. We usually spent our summers there, +finding not only continual interest in the development of our orchards, +but a great deal of pleasure in riding, swimming, and boating. We had +often talked of building a modern house there, but had never done so. +The original "little shack" was the work of Reginald's own hands, in the +days when most of the ranch was primeval forest. It had been added to, +but was still of the simplest description. One reason why we had not +built a modern house was that this "little shack" had become much +endeared to us by association and memory. We were all together there +more than once, and Coningsby had written a great deal there. We built +later on a sort of summer library--a big room on the edge of a beautiful +ravine--to which reference is made in later letters. Some of the +happiest days of our lives were spent in these lovely surroundings, and +the memory of those blue summer days, amid the fragrance of miles of +pine-forest, often recurs to Coningsby as he writes from the mud-wastes +of the Somme. + +We left Petewawa to go to the ranch before Coningsby sailed for England, +that we might get our other two sons ready for their journey to England. +They left us on August 21st, and the ranch was sub-let to Chinamen in +the end of September, when we returned to Newark, New Jersey. + + + + +CARRY ON + +I + +OTTAWA, July 16th, 1916. + +DEAREST ALL: + +So much has happened since last I saw you that it's difficult to know +where to start. On Thursday, after lunch, I got the news that we were to +entrain from Petewawa next Friday morning. I at once put in for leave to +go to Ottawa the next day until the following Thursday at reveille. We +came here with a lot of the other officers who are going over and have +been having a very full time. + +I am sailing from a port unknown on board the _Olympic_ with 6,000 +troops--there is to be a big convoy. I feel more than ever I did--and +I'm sure it's a feeling that you share since visiting the camp--that I +am setting out on a Crusade from which it would have been impossible to +withhold myself with honour. I go quite gladly and contentedly, and pray +that in God's good time we may all sit again in the little shack at +Kootenay and listen to the rustling of the orchard outside. It will be +of those summer days that I shall be thinking all the time. + + Yours, with very much love, + + CON. + + + + +II + +HALIFAX, July 23rd. + +MY DEAR ONES: + +We've spent all morning on the dock, seeing to our baggage, and have +just got leave ashore for two hours. We have had letters handed to us +saying that on no account are we to mention anything concerning our +passage overseas, neither are we allowed to cable our arrival from the +other side until four clear days have elapsed. + +You are thinking of me this quiet Sunday morning at the ranch, and I of +you. And I am wishing--As I wish, I stop and ask myself, "Would I be +there if I could have my choice?" And I remember those lines of +Emerson's which you quoted: + + "Though love repine and reason chafe, + There comes a voice without reply, + 'Twere man's perdition to be safe, + When for the Truth he ought to die." + +I wouldn't turn back if I could, but my heart cries out against "the +voice which speaks without reply." + +Things are growing deeper with me in all sorts of ways. Family +affections stand out so desirably and vivid, like meadows green after +rain. And religion means more. The love of a few dear human people and +the love of the divine people out of sight, are all that one has to lean +on in the graver hours of life. I hope I come back again--I very much +hope I come back again; there are so many finer things that I could do +with the rest of my days--bigger things. But if by any chance I should +cross the seas to stay, you'll know that that also will be right and as +big as anything that I could do with life, and something that you'll be +able to be just as proud about as if I had lived to fulfil all your +other dear hopes for me. I don't suppose I shall talk of this again. But +I wanted you to know that underneath all the lightness and ambition +there's something that I learnt years ago in Highbury[1]. I've become a +little child again in God's hands, with full confidence in His love and +wisdom, and a growing trust that whatever He decides for me will be best +and kindest. + +[Footnote 1: We resided over thirteen years at Highbury, London, N., +during my pastorate of the Highbury Quadrant Congregational Church.] + +This is the last letter I shall be able to send to you before the other +boys follow me. Keep brave, dear ones, for all our sakes; don't let any +of us turn cowards whatever ultimately happens. We've a tradition to +live up to now that we have become a family of soldiers and sailors. + +I shall long for the time when you come over to England. Where will our +meeting be and when? Perhaps the war may be ended and then won't you be +glad that we dared all this sorrow of good-byes? + + God bless and keep you, + CON. + + + + +III + + +ON BOARD, July 27th, 1916. + +My VERY DEAR PEOPLE: + +Here we are scooting along across the same old Atlantic we've crossed so +many times on journeys of pleasure. I'm at a loss to make my letters +interesting, as we are allowed to say little concerning the voyage and +everything is censored. + +There are men on board who are going back to the trenches for the second +time. One of them is a captain in the Princess Pat's, who is badly +scarred in his neck and cheek and thighs, and has been in Canada +recuperating. There is also a young flying chap who has also seen +service. They are all such boys and so plucky in the face of certain +knowledge. + +This morning I woke up thinking of our motor-tour of two years ago in +England, and especially of our first evening at The Three Cups in +Dorset. I feel like running down there to see it all again if I get any +leave on landing. How strange it will be to go back to Highbury again +like this! The little boy who ran back and forth to school down Paradise +Row little thought of the person who to-day masquerades as his elder +self. + +Heigho! I wish I could tell you a lot of things that I'm not allowed to. +This letter would be much more interesting then. + +In seventeen days the boys will also have left you--so this will arrive +when you're horribly lonely. I'm so sorry for you dear people--but I'd +be sorrier for you if we were all with you. If I were a father or +mother, I'd rather have my sons dead than see them failing when the +supreme sacrifice was called for. I marvel all the time at the prosaic +and even coarse types of men who have risen to the greatness of the +occasion. And there's not a man aboard who would have chosen the job +ahead of him. One man here used to pay other people to kill his pigs +because he couldn't endure the cruelty of doing it himself. And now +he's going to kill men. And he's a sample. I wonder if there is a Lord +God of Battles--or is he only an invention of man and an excuse for +man's own actions. + +Monday. + +We are just in--safely arrived in spite of everything. I hope you had no +scare reports of our having been sunk--such reports often get about when +a big troop ship is on the way. + +I'm baggage master for my draft, and have to get on deck now. You'll +have a long letter from me soon. + + Good-bye, + Yours ever, + Con. + + + + +IV + + +SHORNCLIFF, August 19th, 1916. + +MY DEARESTS: + +We haven't had any hint of what is going to happen to us--whether Field +Artillery, the Heavies or trench mortars. There seems little doubt that +we are to be in England for a little while taking special courses. + +I read father's letter yesterday. You are very brave--you never thought +that you would be the father of a soldier and sailors; and, as you say, +there's a kind of tradition about the way in which the fathers of +soldiers and sailors should act. Confess--aren't you more honestly happy +to be our father as we are now than as we were? I know quite well you +are, in spite of the loneliness and heartache. We've all been forced +into a heroism of which we did not think ourselves capable. We've been +carried up to the Calvary of the world where it is expedient that a few +men should suffer that all the generations to come may be better. + +I understand in a dim way all that you suffer--the sudden divorce of all +that we had hoped for from the present--the ceaseless questionings as to +what lies ahead. Your end of the business is the worse. For me, I can go +forward steadily because of the greatness of the glory. I never thought +to have the chance to suffer in my body for other men. The insufficiency +of merely setting nobilities down on paper is finished. How unreal I +seem to myself! Can it be true that I am here and you are in the still +aloofness of the Rockies? I think the multitude of my changes has +blunted my perceptions. I trudge along like a traveller between high +hedgerows; my heart is blinkered so that I am scarcely aware of +landscapes. My thoughts are always with you--I make calculations for the +differences of time that I may follow more accurately your doings. I'd +love to come down to the study summer-house and watch the blueness of +the lake with you--I love those scenes and memories more than any in the +world. + + Good-bye for the present. Be brave. + + Yours, + Con. + + + + +V + + +SHORNCLIFF, August 19th, 1916. + +MY DEARS: + +It's not quite three weeks to-day since I came to England, and it seems +ages. The first week was spent on leave, the second I passed my exams in +gun drill and gun-laying, and this week I have finished my riding. Next +Monday I start on my gunnery. + +Do you remember Captain S. at the Camp? I had his young brother to +dinner with me last night-he's just back from France minus an eye. He +lasted three and a half weeks, and was buried four feet deep by a shell. +He's a jolly boy, as cheerful as you could want and is very good +company. He gave me a vivid description. He had a great boy-friend. At +the start of the war they both joined, S. in the Artillery, his friend +in the Mounted Rifles. At parting they exchanged identification tokens. +S.'s bore his initials and the one word "Violets"--which meant that they +were his favourite flower and he would like to have some scattered over +him when he was buried. His friend wore his initials and the words "No +flowers by request." It was S.'s first week out--they were advancing, +having driven back the enemy, and were taking up a covered position in a +wood from which to renew their offensive. It was night, black as pitch, +but they knew that the wood must have been the scene of fighting by the +scuttling of the rats. Suddenly the moon came out, and from beneath a +bush S. saw a face--or rather half a face--which he thought he +recognised, gazing up at him. He corrects himself when he tells the +story, and says that it wasn't so much the disfigured features as the +profile that struck him as familiar. He bent down and searched beneath +the shirt, and drew out a little metal disc with "No flowers by request" +written on it. + +I don't know whether I ought to repeat things like that to you, but the +description was so graphic. I have met many who have returned from the +Front, and what puzzles me in all of them is their unawed acceptance of +death. I don't think I could ever accept it as natural; it's too +discourteous in its interruption of many dreams and plans and loves. + + Yours with very much love, + Con. + + + + +VI + +SHORNCLIFF, August 30th, 1916. + +MY DEARESTS: + +I have just returned from sending you a cable to let you know that I'm +off to France. The word came out in orders yesterday, and I shall leave +before the end of the week with a draft of officers--I have been in +England just a day over four weeks. My only regret is that I shall miss +the boys who should be travelling up to London about the same time as I +am setting out for the Front. After I have been there for three months I +am supposed to get a leave--this should be due to me about the beginning +of December, and you can judge how I shall count on it. Think of the +meeting with R. and E., and the immensity of the joy. + +Selfishly I wish that you were here at this moment--actually I'm glad +that you are away. Everybody goes out quite unemotionally and with very +few good-byes--we made far more fuss in the old days about a week-end +visit. + +Now that at last it has come--this privileged moment for which I have +worked and waited--my heart is very quiet. It's the test of a character +which I have often doubted. I shall be glad not to have to doubt it +again. Whatever happens, I know you will be glad to remember that at a +great crisis I tried to play the man, however small my qualifications. +We have always lived so near to one another's affections that this going +out alone is more lonely to me than to most men. I have always had some +one near at hand with love-blinded eyes to see my faults as springing +from higher motives. Now I reach out my hands across six thousand miles +and only touch yours with my imagination to say good-bye. What queer +sights these eyes, which have been almost your eyes, will witness! If my +hands do anything respectable, remember that it is your hands that are +doing it. It is your influence as a family that has made me ready for +the part I have to play, and where I go, you follow me. + +Poor little circle of three loving persons, please be tremendously +brave. Don't let anything turn you into cowards--we've all got to be +worthy of each other's sacrifice; the greater the sacrifice may prove to +be for the one the greater the nobility demanded of the remainder. How +idle the words sound, and yet they will take deep meanings when time has +given them graver sanctions. I think gallant is the word I've been +trying to find--we must be gallant English women and gentlemen. + +It's been raining all day and I got very wet this morning. Don't you +wish I had caught some quite harmless sickness? When I didn't want to go +back to school, I used to wet my socks purposely in order to catch cold, +but the cold always avoided me when I wanted it badly. How far away the +childish past seems--almost as though it never happened. And was I +really the budding novelist in New York? Life has become so stern and +scarlet--and so brave. From my window I look out on the English Channel, +a cold, grey-green sea, with rain driving across it and a fleet of small +craft taking shelter. Over there beyond the curtain of mist lies +France--and everything that awaits me. + +News has just come that I have to start. Will continue from France. + + Yours ever lovingly, + Con. + + + + +VII + + +Friday, September 1st, 1916, 11 am. + +DEAREST FATHER AND MOTHER: + +I embark at 12.30--so this is the last line before I reach France. I +expect the boys are now within sight of English shores--I wish I could +have had an hour with them. + +I'm going to do my best to bring you honour--remember that--I shall do +things for your sake out there, living up to the standards you have +taught me. + + Yours with a heart full of love, + Con. + + + + +VIII + +FRANCE, September 1st, 1916. + +DEAREST M.: + +Here I am in France with the same strange smells and street cries, and +almost the same little boys bowling hoops over the very cobbly cobble +stones. I had afternoon tea at a patisserie and ate a great many gateaux +for the sake of old times. We had a very choppy crossing, and you would +most certainly have been sick had you been on board. It seemed to me +that I must be coming on one of those romantic holidays to see churches +and dead history--only the khaki-clad figures reminded me that I was +coming to see history in the making. It's a funny world that batters us +about so. It's three years since I was in France--the last time was with +Arthur in Provence. It's five years since you and I did our famous trip +together. + +I wish you were here--there are heaps of English nurses in the streets. +I expect to sleep in this place and proceed to my destination to-morrow. +How I wish I could send you a really descriptive letter! If I did, I +fear you would not get it--so I have to write in generalities. None of +this seems real--it's a kind of wild pretence from which I shall +awake-and when I tell you my dream you'll laugh and say, "How absurd of +you, dreaming that you were a soldier. I must say you look like it." + + Good-bye, my dearest girl, + God bless you, + Con. + + + +IX + + +September 8th, 1916. + +MY DEAREST ONES: + +I'm sending this to meet you on your return from Kootenay. I left +England on September 1st and had a night at my point of disembarkation, +and then set off on a wandering adventure in search of my division. I'm +sure you'll understand that I cannot enter into any details--I can only +give you general and purely personal impressions. There were two other +officers with me, both from Montreal. We had to picnic on chocolate and +wine for twenty-four hours through our lack of forethought in not +supplying ourselves with food for the trip. I shaved the first morning +with water from the exhaust of a railroad engine, having first balanced +my mirror on the step. The engineer was fascinated with my safety razor. +There were Tommies from the trenches in another train, muddied to the +eyes--who showed themselves much more resourceful. They cooked +themselves quite admirable meals as they squatted on the rails, over +little fires on which they perched tomato cans. Sunday evening we saw +our first German prisoners--a young and degenerate-looking lot. Sunday +evening we got off at a station in the rain, and shouldered our own +luggage. Our luggage, by the way, consists of a sleeping bag, in which +much of our stuff is packed, and a kit sack--for an immediate change and +toilet articles one carries a haversack hung across the shoulder. Well, +as I say, we alighted and coaxed a military wagon to come to our rescue. +As we set off through a drizzling rain, trudging behind the cart, a +double rainbow shone, which I took for an omen. Presently we came to a +rest camp, where we told our sad story of empty tummies, and were put up +for the night. A Jock--all Highlanders are called Jock--looked after us. +Next morning we started out afresh in a motor lorry and finished at a +Y.M.C.A. tent, where we stayed two nights. On Wednesday we met the +General in Command of our Division, who posted me to the battery, which +is said to be the best in the best brigade in the best division--so you +may see I'm in luck. I found the battery just having come out of +action--we expect to go back again in a day or two. Major B. is the +O.C.--a fine man. The lieutenant who shares my tent won the Military +Cross at Ypres last Spring. I'm very happy--which will make you +happy--and longing for my first taste of real war. + +How strangely far away I am from you--all the experiences so unshared +and different. Long before this reaches you I shall have been in action +several times. This time three years ago my streak of luck came to me +and I was prancing round New York. To-day I am much more genuinely happy +in mind, for I feel, as I never felt when I was only writing, that I am +doing something difficult which has no element of self in it. If I come +back, life will be a much less restless affair. + +This letter! I can imagine it being delivered and the shout from whoever +takes it and the comments. I make the contrast in my mind--this little +lean-to spread of canvas about four feet high, the horse-lines, guns, +sentries going up and down--and then the dear home and the well-loved +faces. + + Good-bye. Don't be at all nervous. + Yours lovingly, + Con. + + + +X + + +September 12th, Tuesday. + +DEAREST M.: + +You will already have received my first letters giving you my address +over here. The wagon has just come up to our position, but it has +brought me only one letter since I've been across. I'm sitting in my +dug-out with shells passing over my head with the sound of ripping +linen. I've already had the novel experience of firing a battery, and +to-morrow I go up to the first line trenches. + +It's extraordinary how commonplace war becomes to a man who is thrust +among others who consider it commonplace. Not fifty yards away from me a +dead German lies rotting and uncovered--I daresay he was buried once and +then blown out by a shell. + +Wednesday, 7 p.m. + +Your letters came two hours ago--the first to reach me here--and I have +done little else but read and re-read them. How they bring the old ways +of life back with their love and longing! Dear mother's tie will be worn +to-morrow, and it will be ripping to feel that it was made by her hands. +Your cross has not arrived yet, dear. Your mittens will be jolly for the +winter. I've heard nothing from the boys yet. + +To-day I took a trip into No-Man's Land--when the war is ended I'll be +able to tell you all about it. I think the picture is photographed upon +my memory forever. There's so much you would like to hear and so little +I'm allowed to tell. Ask G.M.'C. if he was at Princeton with a man named +Price--an instructor there. + +You ought to see the excitement when the water-cart brings us our mail +and the letters are handed out. Some of the gunners have evidently told +their Canadian girls that they are officers, and so they are addressed +on their letters as lieutenants. I have to censor some of their replies, +and I can tell you they are as often funny as pathetic. The ones to +their mothers are childish, too, and have rows of kisses. I think men +are always kiddies if you look beneath the surface. The snapshots did +fill me with a wanting to be with you in Kootenay. But that's not where +you'll receive this. There'll probably be a fire in the sitting-room at +home, and a strong aroma of coffee and tobacco. You'll be sitting in a +low chair before the fire and your fingers rubbing the hair above your +left ear as you read this aloud. I'd like to walk in on you and say, "No +more need for letters now." Some day soon, I pray and expect. + +Tell dear Papa and Mother that their answers come next. What a lot of +love you each one manage to put into your written pages! I'm afraid if I +let myself go that way I might make you unhappy. + +Since writing this far I have had supper. I'm now sleeping in a new +dug-out and get a shower of mould on my sleeping-kit each time the guns +are fired. One doesn't mind that particularly, especially when you know +that the earth walls make you safe. I have a candle in an old petrol tin +and dodge the shadows as I write. You know, this artillery game is good +sport and one takes everything as it comes with a joke. The men are +splendid--their cheeriness comes up bubbling whenever the occasion calls +for the dumps. Certainly there are fine qualities which war, despite its +unnaturalness, develops. I'm hats off to every infantry private I meet +nowadays. + +God bless you and all of you. + Yours lovingly, Con. + +The reference in the previous letter to a cross is to a little bronze +cross of Francis of Assisi. + +Many years ago I visited Assisi, and, on leaving, the monks gave me four +of these small bronze crosses, assuring me that those who wore them were +securely defended in all peril by the efficacious prayers of St. +Francis. Just before Coningsby left Shorncliff to go to France he wrote +to us and asked if we couldn't send him something to hang round his neck +for luck. We fortunately had one of these crosses of St. Francis at the +ranch, and his sister--the M. of these letters-sent it to him. It +arrived safely, and he has worn it ever since. + + + + +XI + +September 15th, 1916. + +DEAR FATHER: + +Your last letter to me was written on a quiet morning in August--in the +summer house at Kootenay. It came up yesterday evening on a water-cart +from the wagon-lines to a scene a little in contrast. + +It's a fortnight to-day since I left England, and already I've seen +action. Things move quickly in this game, and it is a game--one which +brings out both the best and the worst qualities in a man. If +unconscious heroism is the virtue most to be desired, and heroism spiced +with a strong sense of humour at that, then pretty well every man I have +met out here has the amazing guts to wear his crown of thorns as though +it were a cap-and-bells. To do that for the sake of corporate +stout-heartedness is, I think, the acme of what Aristotle meant by +virtue. A strong man, or a good man or a brainless man, can walk to meet +pain with a smile on his mouth because he knows that he is strong enough +to bear it, or worthy enough to defy it, or because he is such a fool +that he has no imagination. But these chaps are neither particularly +strong, good, nor brainless; they're more like children, utterly casual +with regard to trouble, and quite aware that it is useless to struggle +against their elders. So they have the merriest of times while they can, +and when the governess, Death, summons them to bed, they obey her with +unsurprised quietness. It sends the mercury of one's optimism rising to +see the way they do it. I search my mind to find the bigness of motive +which supports them, but it forever evades me. These lads are not the +kind who philosophise about life; they're the sort, many of them, who +would ordinarily wear corduroys and smoke a cutty pipe. I suppose the +Christian martyrs would have done the same had corduroys been the +fashion in that day, and if a Roman Raleigh had discovered tobacco. + +I wrote this about midnight and didn't get any further, as I was up till +six carrying on and firing the battery. After adding another page or two +I want to get some sleep, as I shall probably have to go up to the +observation station to watch the effect of fire to-night. But before I +turn in I want to tell you that I had the most gorgeous mail from +everybody. Now that I'm in touch with you all again, it's almost like +saying "How-do?" every night and morning. + +I daresay you'll wonder how it feels to be under shell-fire. This is how +it feels--you don't realise your danger until you come to think about it +afterwards--at the time it's like playing coconut shies at a coon's +head--only you're the coon's head. You take too much interest in the +sport of dodging to be afraid. You'll hear the Tommies saying if one +bursts nearly on them, "Line, you blighter, line. Five minutes more +left," just as though they were reprimanding the unseen Hun battery for +rotten shooting. + +The great word of the Tommies here is "No bloody bon"--a strange mixture +of French and English, which means that a thing is no good. If it +pleases them it's _Jake_--though where Jake comes from nobody knows. + +Now I must get a wink or two, as I don't know when I may have to start +off. + + Ever yours, with love, + CON. + + + + +XII + +September 19th, 1916. + +Dearest Mother: + +I've been in France 19 days, and it hasn't taken me long to go into +action. Soon I shall be quite an old hand. I'm just back from 24 hours +in the Observation Post, from which one watches the effect of fire. I +understand now and forgive the one phrase which the French children have +picked up from our Tommies on account of its frequent +occurrence--"bl---- mud." I never knew that mud could be so thick and +treacly. All my fear that I might be afraid under shell-fire is +over--you get to believe that if you're going to be hit you're going to +be. But David's phrase keeps repeating itself in my mind, "Ten thousand +shall fall at thy side, etc., but it shall not come nigh unto thee." +It's a curious thing that the men who are most afraid are those who get +most easily struck. A friend of G.M.C.'s was hit the other day within +thirty yards of me--he was a Princeton chap. I mentioned him in one of +my previous letters. Our right section commander got a blighty two days +ago and is probably now in England. He went off on a firing battery +wagon, grinning all over his face, saying he wouldn't sell that bit of +blood and shrapnel for a thousand pounds. I'm wearing your tie--it's the +envy of the battery. All the officers wanted me to give them the name of +my girl. It never occurs to men that mothers will do things like that. + +Thank the powers it has stopped raining and we'll be able to get dry. I +came in plastered from head to foot with lying in the rain on my tummy +and peering over the top of a trench. Isn't it a funny change from +comfortable breakfasts, press notices and a blazing fire? + +Do you want any German souvenirs? Just at present I can get plenty. I +have a splendid bayonet and a belt with Kaiser Bill's arms on it--but +you can't forward these things from France. The Germans swear that +they're not using bayonets with saw-edges, but you can buy them for five +francs from the Tommies--ones they've taken from the prisoners or else +picked up. + +You needn't be nervous about me. I'm a great little dodger of +whizz-bangs. Besides I have a superstition that there's something in +the power of M.'s cross to bless. It came with the mittens, and is at +present round my neck. + +You know what it sounds like when they're shooting coals down an iron +run-way into a cellar-well, imagine a thousand of them. That's what I'm +hearing while I write. + +God bless you; I'm very happy. + + Yours ever, + Con. + + + +XIII + +September 19th, 1916. + +Dearest Father: + +I'm writing you your birthday letter early, as I don't know how busy I +may be in the next week, nor how long this may take to reach you. You +know how much love I send you and how I would like to be with you. D'you +remember the birthday three years ago when we set the victrola going +outside your room door? Those were my high-jinks days when very many +things seemed possible. I'd rather be the person I am now than the +person I was then. Life was selfish though glorious. + +Well, I've seen my first modern battlefield and am quite disillusioned +about the splendour of war. The splendour is all in the souls of the +men who creep through the squalor like vermin--it's in nothing +external. There was a chap here the other day who deserved the V.C. four +times over by running back through the Hun shell fire to bring news that +the infantry wanted more artillery support. I was observing for my +brigade in the forward station at the time. How he managed to live +through the ordeal nobody knows. But men laugh while they do these +things. It's fine. + +A modern battlefield is the abomination of abominations. Imagine a vast +stretch of dead country, pitted with shell-holes as though it had been +mutilated with small-pox. There's not a leaf or a blade of grass in +sight. Every house has either been leveled or is in ruins. No bird +sings. Nothing stirs. The only live sound is at night--the scurry of +rats. You enter a kind of ditch, called a trench; it leads on to another +and another in an unjoyful maze. From the sides feet stick out, and arms +and faces--the dead of previous encounters. "One of our chaps," you say +casually, recognising him by his boots or khaki, or "Poor blighter--a +Hun!" One can afford to forget enmity in the presence of the dead. It is +horribly difficult sometimes to distinguish between the living and the +slaughtered--they both lie so silently in their little kennels in the +earthen bank. You push on--especially if you are doing observation work, +till you are past your own front line and out in No Man's Land. You have +to crouch and move warily now. Zing! A bullet from a German sniper. You +laugh and whisper, "A near one, that." My first trip to the trenches was +up to No Man's Land. I went in the early dawn and came to a Madame +Tussaud's show of the dead, frozen into immobility in the most +extraordinary attitudes. Some of them were part way out of the ground, +one hand pressed to the wound, the other pointing, the head sunken and +the hair plastered over the forehead by repeated rains. I kept on +wondering what my companions would look like had they been three weeks +dead. My imagination became ingeniously and vividly morbid. When I had +to step over them to pass, it seemed as though they must clutch at my +trench coat and ask me to help. Poor lonely people, so brave and so +anonymous in their death! Somewhere there is a woman who loved each one +of them and would give her life for my opportunity to touch the poor +clay that had been kind to her. It's like walking through the day of +resurrection to visit No Man's Land. Then the Huns see you and the +shrapnel begins to fall--you crouch like a dog and run for it. + +One gets used to shell-fire up to a point, but there's not a man who +doesn't want to duck when he hears one coming. The worst of all is the +whizz-bang, because it doesn't give you a chance--it pounces and is on +you the same moment that it bangs. There's so much I wish that I could +tell you. I can only say this, at the moment we're making history. + +What a curious birthday letter! I think of all your other birthdays--the +ones before I met these silent men with the green and yellow faces, and +the blackened lips which will never speak again. What happy times we +have had as a family--what happy jaunts when you took me in those early +days, dressed in a sailor suit, when you went hunting pictures. Yet, for +all the damnability of what I now witness, I was never quieter in my +heart. To have surrendered to an imperative self-denial brings a peace +which self-seeking never brought. + +So don't let this birthday be less gay for my absence. It ought to be +the proudest in your life--proud because your example has taught each of +your sons to do the difficult things which seem right. It would have +been a condemnation of you if any one of us had been a shirker. + + "I want to buy fine things for you + And be a soldier if I can." + +The lines come back to me now. You read them to me first in the dark +little study from a green oblong book. You little thought that I would +be a soldier--even now I can hardly realise the fact. It seems a dream +from which I shall wake up. Am I really killing men day by day? Am I +really in jeopardy myself? + +Whatever happens I'm not afraid, and I'll give you reason to be glad of +me. + Very much love, + CON. + +The poem referred to in this letter was actually written for Coningsby +when he was between five and six years old. The dark little study which +he describes was in the old house at Wesley's Chapel, in the City Road, +London--and it was very dark, with only one window, looking out upon a +dingy yard. The green oblong book in which I used to write my poems I +still have; and it is an illustration of the tenacity of a child's +memory that he should recall it. The poem was called _A Little Boy's +Programme_, and ran thus: + + I am so very young and small, + That, when big people pass me by, + I sometimes think they are so high + I'll never be a man at all. + + And yet I want to be a man + Because so much I want to do; + I want to buy fine things for you, + And be a soldier, if I can. + + * * * * * + + When I'm a man I will not let + Poor little children starve, or be + Ill-used, or stand and beg of me + With naked feet out in the wet. + + * * * * * + + Now, don't you laugh!--The father kissed + The little serious mouth and said + "You've almost made me cry instead, + You blessed little optimist." + + + + +XIV + + +September 21st, 1916. + +My Very Dear M.: + +I am wearing your talisman while I write and have a strong superstition +in its efficacy. The efficacy of your socks is also very noticeable--I +wore them the first time on a trip to the Forward Observation Station. I +had to lie on my tummy in the mud, my nose just showing above the +parapet, for the best part of twenty-four hours. Your socks little +thought I would take them into such horrid places when you made them. + +Last night both the King and Sir Sam sent us congratulations--I popped +in just at the right time. I daresay you know far more about our doings +than I do. Only this morning I picked up the _London Times_ and read a +full account of everything I have witnessed. The account is likely to be +still fuller in the New York papers. + +"Home for Christmas"--that's what the Tommies are promising their +mothers and sweethearts in all their letters that I censor. Yesterday I +was offered an Imperial commission in the army of occupation. But home +for Christmas, will be Christmas, 1917--I can't think that it will be +earlier. + Very much love, + CON. + + + + +XV + +Sunday, September 24th, 1916. + +DEAREST MOTHER: + +Your locket has just reached me, and I have strung it round my neck with +M.'s cross. Was it M.'s cross the other night that accounted for my +luck? I was in a gun-pit when a shell landed, killing a man only a foot +away from me and wounding three others--I and the sergeant were the only +two to get out all right. Men who have been out here some time have a +dozen stories of similar near squeaks. And talking of squeaks, it was a +mouse that saved one man. It kept him awake to such an extent that he +determined to move to another place. Just as he got outside the dug-out +a shell fell on the roof. + +You'll be pleased to know that we have a ripping chaplain or Padre, as +they call chaplains, with us. He plays the game, and I've struck up a +great friendship with him. We discuss literature and religion when we're +feeling a bit fed up. We talk at home of our faith being tested--one +begins to ask strange questions here when he sees what men are allowed +by the Almighty to do to one another, and so it's a fine thing to be in +constant touch with a great-hearted chap who can risk his life daily to +speak of the life hereafter to dying Tommies. + +I wish I could tell you of my doings, but it's strictly against orders. +You may read in the papers of actions in which I've taken part and never +know that I was there. + +We live for the most part on tinned stuff, but our appetites make +anything taste palatable. Living and sleeping in the open air keeps one +ravenous. And one learns to sleep the sleep of the just despite the +roaring of the guns. + +God bless you each one and give us peaceful hearts. + + Yours ever, + Con. + + + + +XVI + +September 28th, 1916. + +My Dears: + +We're in the midst of a fine old show, so I don't get much opportunity +for writing. Suffice it to say that I've seen the big side of war by now +and the extraordinary uncalculating courage of it. Men run out of a +trench to an attack with as much eagerness as they would display in +overtaking a late bus. If you want to get an idea of what meals are like +when a row is on, order the McAlpin to spread you a table where 34th +crosses Broadway--and wait for the uptown traffic on the Elevated. It's +wonderful to see the waiters dodging with dishes through the +shell-holes. + +It's a wonderful autumn day, golden and mellow; I picture to myself what +this country must have looked like before the desolation of war struck +it. + +I was Brigade observation officer on September 26th, and wouldn't have +missed what I saw for a thousand dollars. It was a touch and go +business, with shells falling everywhere and machine-gun fire--but +something glorious to remember. I had the great joy of being useful in +setting a Hun position on fire. I think the war will be over in a +twelvemonth. + +Our great joy is composing menus of the meals we'll eat when we get +home. Good-bye for the present. + CON. + + + + +XVII + +October 1st, 1916. + +MY DEAREST M.: + +Sunday morning, your first back in Newark. You're not up yet owing to +the difference in time--I can imagine the quiet house with the first of +the morning stealing greyly in. You'll be presently going to church to +sit in your old-fashioned mahogany pew. There's not much of Sunday in +our atmosphere--only the little one can manage to keep in his heart. I +shall share the echo of yours by remembering. + +I'm waiting orders at the present moment to go forward with the Colonel +and pick out a new gun position. You know I'm very happy-satisfied for +the first time I'm doing something big enough to make me forget all +failures and self-contempts. I know at last that I can measure up to the +standard I have always coveted for myself. So don't worry yourselves +about any note of hardship that you may interpret into my letters, for +the deprivation is fully compensated for by the winged sense of +exaltation one has. + +Things have been a little warm round us lately. A gun to our right, +another to our rear and another to our front were knocked out with +direct hits. We've got some of the chaps taking their meals with us now +because their mess was all shot to blazes. There was an officer who was +with me at the 53rd blown thirty feet into the air while I was watching. +He picked himself up and insisted on carrying on, although his face was +a mass of bruises. I walked in on the biggest engagement of the entire +war the moment I came out here. There was no gradual breaking-in for me. +My first trip to the front line was into a trench full of dead. + +Have you seen Lloyd George's great speech? I'm all with him. No matter +what the cost and how many of us have to give our lives, this War must +be so finished that war may be forever at an end. If the devils who plan +wars could only see the abysmal result of their handiwork! Give them one +day in the trenches under shell-fire when their lives aren't worth a +five minutes' purchase--or one day carrying back the wounded through +this tortured country, or one day in a Red Cross train. No one can +imagine the damnable waste and Christlessness of this battering of +human flesh. The only way that this War can be made holy is by making it +so thorough that war will be finished for all time. + +Papa at least will be awake by now. How familiar the old house seems to +me--I can think of the place of every picture. Do you set the victrola +going now-a-days? I bet you play Boys in Khaki, Boys in Blue. + +Please send me anything in the way of eatables that the goodness of your +hearts can imagine--also smokes. + +Later. + +I came back from the front-line all right and have since been hard at it +firing. Your letters reached me in the midst of a bombardment--I read +them in a kind of London fog of gun-powder smoke, with my steel helmet +tilted back, in the interval of commanding my section through a +megaphone. + +Don't suppose that I'm in any way unhappy--I'm as cheerful as a cricket +and do twice as much hopping--I have to. There's something +extraordinarily bracing about taking risks and getting away with +it--especially when you know that you're contributing your share to a +far-reaching result. My mother is the mother of a soldier now, and +soldiers' mothers don't lie awake at night imagining--they just say a +prayer for their sons and leave everything in God's hands. I'm sure +you'd far rather I died than not play the man to the fullest of my +strength. It isn't when you die that matters--it's how. Not but what I +intend to return to Newark and make the house reek of tobacco smoke +before I've done. + +We're continually in action now, and the casualty to B. has left us +short-handed--moreover we're helping out another battery which has lost +two officers. As you've seen by the papers, we've at last got the Hun on +the run. Three hundred passed me the other day unescorted, coming in to +give themselves up as prisoners. They're the dirtiest lot you ever set +eyes on, and looked as though they hadn't eaten for months. I wish I +could send you some souvenirs. But we can't send them out of France. + +I'm scribbling by candlelight and everything's jumping with the stamping +of the guns. I wear the locket and cross all the time. + + Yours with much love, + Con. + + + + +XVIII + +October 13th, 1916. + +DEAR ONES: + +I have only time to write and assure you that I am safe. We're living in +trenches at present--I have my sleeping bag placed on a stretcher to +keep it fairly dry. By the time you get this we expect to be having a +rest, as we've been hard at it now for an unusually long time. How I +wish that I could tell you so many things that are big and vivid in my +mind-but the censor--! + +Yesterday I had an exciting day. I was up forward when word came through +that an officer still further forward was wounded and he'd been caught +in a heavy enemy fire. I had only a kid telephonist with me, but we +found a stretcher, went forward and got him out. The earth was hopping +up and down like pop-corn in a frying pan. The unfortunate thing was +that the poor chap died on the way out. It was only the evening before +that we had dined together and he had told me what he was going to do +with his next leave. + + God bless you all, + CON. + + + + +XIX + +October 14th, 1916. + +DEAREST MOTHER: + +I'm still all right and well. To-day I had the funniest experience of my +life--got caught in a Hun curtain of fire and had to lie on my tummy +for two hours in a trench with the shells bursting five yards from +me--and never a scratch. You know how I used to wonder what I'd do under +such circumstances. Well, I laughed. All I could think of was the sleek +people walking down Fifth Avenue, and the equally sleek crowds taking +tea at the Waldorf. It struck me as ludicrous that I, who had been one +of them, should be lying there lunchless. For a little while I was +slightly deaf with the concussions. + +That poem keeps on going through my head, + + Oh, to come home once more, when the dusk is falling, + To see the nursery lighted and the children's table spread; + "Mother, mother, mother!" the eager voices calling, + "The baby was so sleepy that he had to go to bed!" + +Wouldn't it be good, instead of sitting in a Hun dug-out? + + Yours lovingly, + CON. + + + + +XX + +October 15th, 1916. + +Dear Ones: + +We're still in action, but are in hopes that soon we may be moved to +winter quarters. We've had our taste of mud, and are anxious to move +into better quarters before we get our next. I think I told you that +our O.C. had got wounded in the feet, and our right section commander +got it in the shoulder a little earlier--so we're a bit short-handed and +find ourselves with plenty of work. + +I have curiously lucid moments when recent happenings focus themselves +in what seems to be their true perspective. The other night I was +Forward Observation officer on one of our recent battlefields. I had to +watch the front all night for signals, etc. There was a full white moon +sailing serenely overhead, and when I looked at it I could almost fancy +myself back in the old melancholy pomp of autumn woodlands where the +leaves were red, not with the colour of men's blood. My mind went back +to so many by-gone days-especially to three years ago. I seemed so +vastly young then, upon reflection. For a little while I was full of +regrets for many things wasted, and then I looked at the battlefield +with its scattered kits and broken rifles. Nothing seemed to matter very +much. A rat came out-then other rats. I stood there feeling +extraordinarily aloof from all things that can hurt, and--you'll +smile--I planned a novel. O, if I get back, how differently I shall +write! When you've faced the worst in so many forms, you lose your fear +and arrive at peace. There's a marvellous grandeur about all this +carnage and desolation--men's souls rise above the distress--they have +to in order to survive. When you see how cheap men's bodies are you +cannot help but know that the body is the least part of personality. + +You can let up on your nervousness when you get this, for I shall almost +certainly be in a safer zone. We've done more than our share and must be +withdrawn soon. There's hardly a battery which does not deserve a dozen +D.S.O.'s with a V.C. or two thrown in. + +It's 4.30 now--you'll be in church and, I hope, wearing my flowers. Wait +till I come back and you shall go to church with the biggest bunch of +roses that ever were pinned to a feminine chest. I wonder when that will +be. + +We have heaps of humour out here. You should have seen me this morning, +sitting on the gun-seat while my batman cut my hair. A sand-bag was +spread over my shoulders in place of a towel and the gun-detachment +stood round and gave advice. I don't know what I look like, for I +haven't dared to gaze into my shaving mirror. + + Good luck to us all, + CON + + + + +XXI + +October 18th, 1910 + +Dearest M.: + +I've come down to the lines to-day; to-morrow I go back again. I'm +sitting alone in a deep chalk dug-out--it is 10 p.m. and I have lit a +fire by splitting wood with a bayonet. Your letters from Montreal +reached me yesterday. They came up in the water-cart when we'd all begun +to despair of mail. It was wonderful the silence that followed while +every one went back home for a little while, and most of them met their +best girls. We've fallen into the habit of singing in parts. Jerusalem +the Golden is a great favourite as we wait for our breakfast--we go +through all our favourite songs, including Poor Old Adam Was My Father. +Our greatest favourite is one which is symbolising the hopes that are in +so many hearts on this greatest battlefield in history. We sing it under +shell-fire as a kind of prayer, we sing it as we struggle knee-deep in +the appalling mud, we sing it as we sit by a candle in our deep captured +German dug-outs. It runs like this: + + "There's a long, long trail a-winding + Into the land of my dreams, + Where the nightingales are singing + And a white moon beams: + + There's a long, long night of waiting + Until my dreams all come true; + Till the day when I'll be going down + That long, long trail with you." + +You ought to be able to get it, and then you will be singing it when I'm +doing it. + +No, I don't know what to ask from you for Christmas--unless a plum +pudding and a general surprise box of sweets and food stuffs. If you +don't mind my suggesting it, I wouldn't a bit mind a Christmas box at +once--a schoolboy's tuck box. I wear the locket, cross, and tie all the +time as kind of charms against danger--they give me the feeling of +loving hands going with me everywhere. + + God bless you. + Yours ever, + CON. + + + + +XXII + +October 23, 1916 + +Dearest All: + +As you know I have been in action ever since I left England and am +still. I've lived in various extemporised dwellings and am at present +writing from an eight foot deep hole dug in the ground and covered over +with galvanised iron and sand-bags. We have made ourselves very +comfortable, and a fire is burning--I correct that--comfortable until it +rains, I should say, when the water finds its own level. We have just +finished with two days of penetrating rain and mist--in the trenches the +mud was up to my knees, so you can imagine the joy of wading down these +shell-torn tunnels. Good thick socks have been priceless. + +You'll be pleased to hear that two days ago I was made Right Section +Commander--which is fairly rapid promotion. It means a good deal more +work and responsibility, but it gives me a contact with the men which I +like. + +I don't know when I'll get leave--not for another two months anyway. It +would be ripping if I had word in time for you to run over to England +for the brief nine days. + +I plan novels galore and wonder whether I shall ever write them the way +I see them now. My imagination is to an extent crushed by the +stupendousness of reality. I think I am changed in some stern spiritual +way--stripped of flabbiness. I am perhaps harder--I can't say. That I +should be a novelist seems unreasonable--it's so long since I had my own +way in the world and met any one on artistic terms. But I have enough +ego left to be very interested in my book. And by the way, when we're +out at the front and the battery wants us to come in they simply phone +up the password, "Slaves of Freedom," the meaning of which we all +understand. + +You are ever in my thoughts, and I pray the day may not be far distant +when we meet again. + + CON. + + + + +XXIII + +October 27th, 1916. + +Dearest Family: + +All to-day I've been busy registering our guns. There is little chance +of rest--one would suppose that we intended to end the war by spring. + +Two new officers joined our battery from England, which makes the work +lighter. One of them brings the news that D., one of the two officers +who crossed over from England with me and wandered through France with +me in search of our Division, is already dead. He was a corking fellow, +and I'm very sorry. He was caught by a shell in the head and legs. + +I am still living in a sand-bagged shell-hole eight feet beneath the +level of the ground. I have a sleeping bag with an eider-down inside it, +for my bed; it is laid on a stretcher, which is placed in a roofed-in +trench. For meals, when there isn't a block on the roads, we do very +well; we subscribe pretty heavily to the mess, and have an officer back +at the wagon-lines to do our purchasing. When we move forward into a new +position, however, we go pretty short, as roads have to be built for the +throng of traffic. Most of what we eat is tinned--and I never want to +see tinned salmon again when this war is ended. I have a personal +servant, a groom and two horses--but haven't been on a horse for seven +weeks on account of being in action. We're all pretty fed up with +continuous firing and living so many hours in the trenches. The way +artillery is run to-day an artillery lieutenant is more in the trenches +than an infantryman--the only thing he doesn't do is to go over the +parapet in an attack. And one of our chaps did that the other day, +charging the Huns with a bar of chocolate in one hand and a revolver in +the other. I believe he set a fashion which will be imitated. Three +times in my experience I have seen the infantry jump out of their +trenches and go across. It's a sight never to be forgotten. One time +there were machine guns behind me and they sent a message to me, asking +me to lie down and take cover. That was impossible, as I was observing +for my brigade, so I lay on the parapet till the bullets began to fall +too close for comfort, then I dodged out into a shell-hole with the +German barrage bursting all around me, and had a most gorgeous view of +a modern attack. That was some time ago, so you needn't be nervous. + +Have I mentioned rum to you? I never tasted it to my knowledge until I +came out here. We get it served us whenever we're wet. It's the one +thing which keeps a man alive in the winter--you can sleep when you're +drenched through and never get a cold if you take it. + +At night, by a fire, eight feet underground, we sing all the dear old +songs. We manage a kind of glee--Clementina, The Long, Long Trail, Three +Blind Mice, Long, Long Ago, Rock of Ages. Hymns are quite favourites. + +Don't worry about me; your prayers weave round me a mantle of defence. + +Yours with more love than I can write, + + CON. + + + + +XXIV + +October 31st, 1916. +Hallowe'en. + +Dearest People: + +Once more I'm taking the night-firing and so have a chance to write to +you. I got letters from you all, and they each deserve answers, but I +have so little time to write. We've been having beastly weather--drowned +out of our little houses below ground, with rivers running through our +beds. The mud is once more up to our knees and gets into whatever we +eat. The wonder is that we keep healthy--I suppose it's the open air. My +throat never troubles me and I'm free from colds in spite of wet feet. +The main disadvantage is that we rarely get a chance to wash or change +our clothes. Your ideas of an army with its buttons all shining is quite +erroneous; we look like drunk and disorderlies who have spent the night +in the gutter--and we have the same instinct for fighting. + +In the trenches the other day I heard mother's Suffolk tongue and had a +jolly talk with a chap who shared many of my memories. It was his first +trip in and the Huns were shelling badly, but he didn't seem at all +upset. + +We're still hard at it and have given up all idea of a rest--the only +way we'll get one is with a blighty. You say how often you tell +yourselves that the same moon looks down on me; it does, but on a scene +how different! We advance over old battlefields--everything is blasted. +If you start digging, you turn up what's left of something human. If +there were any grounds for superstition, surely the places in which I +have been should be ghost-haunted. One never thinks about it. For myself +I have increasingly the feeling that I am protected by your prayers; I +tell myself so when I am in danger. + +Here I sit in an old sweater and muddy breeches, the very reverse of +your picture of a soldier, and I imagine to myself your receipt of this. +Our chief interest is to enquire whether milk, jam and mail have come up +from the wagon-lines; it seems a faery-tale that there are places where +milk and jam can be had for the buying. See how simple we become. + +Poor little house at Kootenay! I hate to think of it empty. We had such +good times there twelve months ago. They have a song here to a nursery +rhyme lilt, Apres le Guerre Finis; it goes on to tell of all the good +times we'll have when the war is ended. Every night I invent a new story +of my own celebration of the event, usually, as when I was a kiddie, +just before I fall asleep--only it doesn't seem possible that the war +will ever end. + +I hear from the boys very regularly. There's just the chance that I may +get leave to London in the New Year and meet them before they set out. I +always picture you with your heads high in the air. I'm glad to think of +you as proud because of the pain we've made you suffer. + +Once again I shall think of you on Papa's birthday. I don't think this +will be the saddest he will have to remember. It might have been if we +three boys had still all been with him. If I were a father, I would +prefer at all costs that my sons should be men. What good comrades we've +always been, and what long years of happy times we have in memory--all +the way down from a little boy in a sailor-suit to Kootenay! + +I fell asleep in the midst of this. I've now got to go out and start the +other gun firing. With very much love. + + Yours, + CON. + + + + +XXV + +November 1st, 1916. + +My Dearest M.: + +Peace after a storm! Your letter was not brought up by the water-wagon +this evening, but by an orderly--the mud prevented wheel-traffic. I was +just sitting down to read it when Fritz began to pay us too much +attention. I put down your letter, grabbed my steel helmet, rushed out +to see where the shells were falling, and then cleared my men to a safer +area. (By the way, did I tell you that I had been made Right Section +Commander?) After about half an hour I came back and settled down by a +fire made of smashed ammunition boxes in a stove borrowed from a ruined +cottage. I'm always ashamed that my letters contain so little news and +are so uninteresting. This thing is so big and dreadful that it does not +bear putting down on paper. I read the papers with the accounts of +singing soldiers and other rubbish; they depict us as though we were a +lot of hair-brained idiots instead of men fully realising our danger, +who plod on because it's our duty. I've seen a good many men killed by +now--we all have--consequently the singing soldier story makes us smile. +We've got a big job; we know that we've got to "Carry On" whatever +happens--so we wear a stern grin and go to it. There's far more heroism +in the attitude of men out here than in the footlight attitude that +journalists paint for the public. It isn't a singing matter to go on +firing a gun when gun-pits are going up in smoke within sight of you. + +What a terrible desecration war is! You go out one week and look through +your glasses at a green, smiling country-little churches, villages +nestling among woods, white roads running across a green carpet; next +week you see nothing but ruins and a country-side pitted with +shell-holes. All night the machine guns tap like rivet-ting machines +when a New York sky-scraper is in the building. Then suddenly in the +night a bombing attack will start, and the sky grows white with signal +rockets. Orders come in for artillery retaliation, and your guns begin +to stamp the ground like stallions; in the darkness on every side you +can see them snorting fire. Then stillness again, while Death counts his +harvest; the white rockets grow fainter and less hysterical. For an hour +there is blackness. + +My batman consoles himself with singing, + + "Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag, + And smile, smile, smile." + +There's a lot in his philosophy--it's best to go on smiling even when +some one who was once your pal lies forever silent in his blanket on a +stretcher. + +The great uplifting thought is that we have proved ourselves men. In our +death we set a standard which in ordinary life we could never have +followed. Inevitably we should have sunk below our highest self. Here we +know that the world will remember us and that our loved ones, in spite +of tears, will be proud of us. What God will say to us we cannot +guess--but He can't be too hard on men who did their duty. I think we +all feel that trivial former failures are washed out by this final +sacrifice. When little M. used to recite "Breathes there a man with soul +so dead, who never to himself had said, 'This is my own, my native +land,'" I never thought that I should have the chance that has now been +given to me. I feel a great and solemn gratitude that I have been +thought worthy. Life has suddenly become effective and worthy by reason +of its carelessness of death. + +By the way, that Princeton man I mentioned so long ago was killed forty +yards away from me on my first trip into the trenches. Probably G. M'C. +and his other friends know by now. He was the first man I ever saw +snuffed out. + +I'm wearing your mittens and find them a great comfort. I'll look +forward to some more of your socks--I can do with plenty of them. If any +of your friends are making things for soldiers, I wish you'd get them to +send them to this battery, as they would be gratefully accepted by the +men. + +I wish I could come to _The Music Master_ with you. I wonder how long +till we do all those intimately family things together again. + +Good-bye, my dearest M. I live for home letters and am rarely +disappointed. + +God bless you, and love to you all. + + Yours ever, + CON. + + + + +XXVI + +November 4th, 1916. + + +My Dearest Mother: + +This morning I was wakened up in the gunpit where I was sleeping by the +arrival of the most wonderful parcel of mail. It was really a kind of +Christmas morning for me. My servant had lit a fire in a punctured +petrol can and the place looked very cheery. First of all entered an +enormous affair, which turned out to be a stove which C. had sent. Then +there was a sand-bag containing all your gifts. You may bet I made for +that first, and as each knot was undone remembered the loving hands that +had done it up. I am now going up to a twenty-four-hour shift of +observing, and shall take up the malted milk and some blocks of +chocolate for a hot drink. It somehow makes you seem very near to me to +receive things packed with your hands. When I go forward I shall also +take candles and a copy of _Anne Veronica_ with me, so that if I get a +chance I can forget time. + +Always when I write to you odds and ends come to mind, smacking of local +colour. After an attack some months ago I met a solitary private +wandering across a shell-torn field, I watched him and thought something +was wrong by the aimlessness of his progress. When I spoke to him, he +looked at me mistily and said, "Dead men. Moonlit road." He kept on +repeating the phrase, and it was all that one could get out of him. +Probably the dead men and the moonlit road were the last sights he had +seen before he went insane. + +Another touching thing happened two days ago. A Major turned up who had +travelled fifty miles by motor lorries and any conveyance he could pick +up on the road. He had left his unit to come to have a glimpse of our +front-line trench where his son was buried. The boy had died there some +days ago in going over the parapet. I persuaded him that he ought not to +go alone, and that in any case it wasn't a healthy spot. At last he +consented to let me take him to a point from which he could see the +ground over which his son had attacked and led his men. The sun was +sinking behind us. He stood there very straightly, peering through my +glasses--and then forgot all about me and began speaking to his son in +childish love-words. "Gone West," they call dying out here--we rarely +say that a man is dead. I found out afterwards that it was the boy's +mother the Major was thinking of when he pledged himself to visit the +grave in the front-line. + +But there are happier things than that. For instance, you should hear +us singing at night in our dug-out--every tune we ever learnt, I +believe. Silver Threads Among the Gold, In the Gloaming, The Star of +Bethlehem, I Hear You Calling Me, interspersed with Everybody Works but +Father, and Poor Old Adam, etc. + +I wish I could know in time when I get my leave for you to come over and +meet me. I'm going to spend my nine days in the most glorious ways +imaginable. To start with I won't eat anything that's canned and, to go +on, I won't get out of bed till I feel inclined. And if you're there--! + +Dreams and nonsense! God bless you all and keep us near and safe though +absent. Alive or "Gone West" I shall never be far from you; you may +depend on that--and I shall always hope to feel you brave and happy. +This is a great game--cheese-mites pitting themselves against all the +splendours of Death. Please, please write well ahead, so that I may not +miss your Christmas letters. + + Yours lovingly, + CON. + + + + +XXVII + +November 6th, 1916. + + +My Dear Ones: + +Such a wonderful day it has been--I scarcely know where to start. I came +down last night from twenty-four hours in the mud, where I had been +observing. I'd spent the night in a hole dug in the side of the trench +and a dead Hun forming part of the roof. I'd sat there re-living so many +things--the ecstatic moments of my life when I first touched fame--and +my feet were so cold that I could not feel them, so I thought all the +harder of the pleasant things of the past. Then, as I say, I came back +to the gun position to learn that I was to have one day off at the back +of the lines. You can't imagine what that meant to me--one day in a +country that is green, one day where there is no shell-fire, one day +where you don't turn up corpses with your tread! For two months I have +never left the guns except to go forward and I have never been from +under shell-fire. All night long as I have slept the ground had been +shaken by the stamping of the guns--and now after two months, to come +back to comparative normality! The reason for this privilege being +granted was that the powers that he had come to the conclusion that it +was time I had a bath. Since I sleep in my clothes and water is too +valuable for washing anything but the face and hands, they were probably +right in their guess at my condition. + +So with the greatest holiday of my life in prospect I went to the empty +gunpit in which I sleep, and turned in. This morning I set out early +with my servant, tramping back across the long, long battlefields which +our boys have won. The mud was knee-deep in places, but we floundered on +till we came to our old and deserted gun-position where my horses waited +for me. From there I rode to the wagon-lines--the first time I've sat a +horse since I came into action. Far behind me the thunder of winged +murder grew more faint. The country became greener; trees even had +leaves upon them which fluttered against the grey-blue sky. It was +wonderful--like awaking from an appalling nightmare. My little beast was +fresh and seemed to share my joy, for she stepped out bravely. + +When I arrived at the wagon-lines I would not wait--I longed to see +something even greener and quieter. My groom packed up some oats and +away we went again. My first objective was the military baths; I lay in +hot water for half-an-hour and read the advertisements of my book. As I +lay there, for the first time since I've been out, I began to get a +half-way true perspective of myself. What's left of the egotism of the +author came to life, and--now laugh--I planned my next novel--planned it +to the sound of men singing, because they were clean for the first time +in months. I left my towels and soap with a military policeman, by the +roadside, and went prancing off along country roads in search of the +almost forgotten places where people don't kill one another. Was it +imagination? There seemed to me to be a different look in the faces of +the men I met--for the time being they were neither hunters nor hunted. +There were actually cows in the fields. At one point, where pollarded +trees stand like a Hobbema sketch against the sky, a group of officers +were coursing a hare, following a big black hound on horseback. We lost +our way. A drenching rainstorm fell over us--we didn't care; and we saw +as we looked back a most beautiful thing--a rainbow over green fields. +It was as romantic as the first rainbow in childhood. + +All day I have been seeing lovely and familiar things as though for the +first time. I've been a sort of Lazarus, rising out of his tomb and +praising God at the sound of a divine voice. You don't know how +exquisite a ploughed field can look, especially after rain, unless you +have feared that you might never see one again. + +I came to a grey little village, where civilians were still living, and +then to a gate and a garden. In the cottage was a French peasant woman +who smiled, patted my hair because it was curly, and chattered +interminably. The result was a huge omelette and a bottle of champagne. +Then came a touch of naughtiness--a lady visitor with a copy of _La Vie +Parisienne_, which she promptly bestowed on the English soldier. I read +it, and dreamt of the time when I should walk the Champs Elysees again. +It was growing dusk when I turned back to the noise of battle. There was +a white moon in a milky sky. Motor-bikes fled by me, great lorries +driven by Jehus from London buses, and automobiles which too poignantly +had been Strand taxis and had taken lovers home from the Gaiety. I +jogged along thinking very little, but supremely happy. Now I'm back at +the wagon-line; to-morrow I go back to the guns. Meanwhile I write to +you by a guttering candle. + +Life, how I love you! What a wonderful kindly thing I could make of you +to-night. Strangely the vision has come to me of all that you mean. Now +I could write. So soon you may go from me or be changed into a form of +existence which all my training has taught me to dread. After death is +there only nothingness? I think that for those who have missed love in +this life there must be compensations--the little children whom they +ought to have had, perhaps. To-day, after so many weeks, I have seen +little children again. + +And yet, so strange a havoc does this war work that, if I have to "Go +West," I shall go _proudly_ and quietly. I have seen too many men die +bravely to make a fuss if my turn comes. A mixed passenger list old +Father Charon must have each night--Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Huns. +To-morrow I shall have another sight of the greenness and then--the +guns. + +I don't know whether I have been able to make any of my emotions clear +to you in my letters. Terror has a terrible fascination. Up to now I +have always been afraid--afraid of small fears. At last I meet fear +itself and it stings my pride into an unpremeditated courage. + +I've just had a pile of letters from you all. How ripping it is to be +remembered! Letters keep one civilised. + +It's late and I'm very tired. God bless you each and all. + + CON. + + + + +XXVIII + +November 15th, 1916. + + +Dear Father: + +I've owed you a letter for some time, but I've been getting very little +leisure. You can't send steel messages to the Kaiser and love-notes to +your family in the same breath. + +I am amazed at the spirit you three are showing and almighty proud that +you can muster such courage. I suppose none of us quite realised our +strength till it came to the test. There was a time when we all doubted +our own heroism. I think we were typical of our age. Every novel of the +past ten years has been more or less a study in sentiment and +self-distrust. We used to wonder what kind of stuff Drake's men were +made of that they could jest while they died. We used to contrast +ourselves with them to our own disfavour. Well, we know now that when +there's a New World to be discovered we can still rise up reincarnated +into spiritual pirates. It wasn't the men of our age who were at fault, +but the New World that was lacking. Our New World is the Kingdom of +Heroism, the doors of which are flung so wide that the meanest of us may +enter. I know men out here who are the dependable daredevils of their +brigades, who in peace times were nuisances and as soon as peace is +declared will become nuisances again. At the moment they're fine, +laughing at Death and smiling at the chance of agony. There's a man I +know of who had a record sheet of crimes. When he was out of action he +was always drunk and up for office. To get rid of him, they put him into +the trench mortars and within a month he had won his D.C.M. He came out +and went on the spree--this particular spree consisted in stripping a +Highland officer of his kilts on a moonlight night. For this he was +sentenced to several months in a military prison, but asked to be +allowed to serve his sentence in the trenches. He came out from his +punishment a King's sergeant--which means that whatever he did nobody +could degrade him. He got this for lifting his trench mortar over the +parapet when all the detachment were killed. Carrying it out into a +shell-hole, he held back the Hun attack and saved the situation. He got +drunk again, and again chose to be returned to the trenches. This time +his head was blown off while he was engaged in a special feat of +gallantry. What are you to say to such men? Ordinarily they'd be +blackguards, but war lifts them into splendour. In the same way you see +mild men, timid men, almost girlish men, carrying out duties which in +other wars would have won V.C.'s. I don't think the soul of courage +ever dies out of the race any more than the capacity for love. All it +means is that the occasion is not present. For myself I try to analyse +my emotions; am I simply numb, or do I imitate other people's coolness +and shall I fear life again when the war is ended? There is no +explanation save the great army phrase "Carry on." We "carry on" +because, if we don't, we shall let other men down and put their lives in +danger. And there's more than that--we all want to live up to the +standard that prompted us to come. + +One talks about splendour--but war isn't splendid except in the +individual sense. A man by his own self-conquest can make it splendid +for himself, but in the massed sense it's squalid. There's nothing +splendid about a battlefield when the fight is ended--shreds of what +once were men, tortured, levelled landscapes--the barbaric loneliness of +Hell. I shall never forget my first dead man. He was a signalling +officer, lying in the dawn on a muddy hill. I thought he was asleep at +first, but when I looked more closely, I saw that his shoulder blade was +showing white through his tunic. He was wearing black boots. It's odd, +but the sight of black boots have the same effect on me now that black +and white stripes had in childhood. I have the superstitious feeling +that to wear them would bring me bad luck. + +Tonight we've been singing in parts, Back in the Dear Dead Days Beyond +Recall--a mournful kind of ditty to sing under the circumstances--so +mournful that we had to have a game of five hundred to cheer us up. + +It's now nearly 2 a.m., and I have to go out to the guns again before I +go to bed. I carry your letters about in my pockets and read them at odd +intervals in all kinds of places that you can't imagine. + +Cheer up and remember that I'm quite happy. I wish you could be with me +for just one day to understand. + + Yours, + CON. + + + + +XXIX + +December 3rd, 1916. + +Dear Boys: + +By this time you will be all through your exams and I hope have both +passed. It'll be splendid if you can go together to the same station. +You envy me, you say; well, I rather envy you. I'd like to be with you. +You, at least, don't have Napoleon's fourth antagonist with which to +contend--mud. But at present I'm clean and billeted in an estaminet, in +a not too bad little village. There's an old mill and still older +church, and the usual farmhouses with the indispensable pile of manure +under the front windows. We shall have plenty of hard work here, licking +our men into shape and re-fitting. + +You know how I've longed to sleep between sheets; I can now, but find +them so cold that I still use my sleeping bag--such is human +inconsistency. But yesterday I had a boiling bath--as good a bath as +could be found in a New York hotel--and I am CLEAN. + +I woke up this morning to hear some one singing Casey +Jones--consequently I thought of former Christmases. My mind has been +travelling back very much of late. Suddenly I see something here which +reminds me of the time when E. and I were at Lisieux, or even of our +Saturday excursions to Nelson when we were all together at the ranch. + +Did I tell you that B., our officer who was wounded two months ago, has +just returned to us. This morning he got news that his young brother has +been killed in the place which we have left. I wonder when we shall grow +tired of stabbing and shooting and killing. It seems to me that the war +cannot end in less than two years. + +I have made myself nice to the Brigade interpreter and he has found me +a delightful room with electric light and a fire. It's in an old +farmhouse with a brick terrace in front. My room is on the ground floor +and tile-paved. The chairs are rush-bottomed and there are old quaint +china plates on the shelves. There is also a quite charming +mademoiselle. So you see, you don't need to pity me any more. + +Just at present I'm busy getting up the Brigade Christmas Entertainment. +The Colonel asked me to do it, otherwise I should have said _no_, as I +want all the time I can get to myself. You can't think how jolly it is +to sit again in a room which is temporarily yours after living in +dug-outs, herded side by side with other men. I can be _me_ now, and not +a soldier of thousands when I write. You shall hear from me again soon. +Hope you're having a ripping time in London. + + Yours ever, + CON. + + + + +XXX + +December 5th, 1916. + +DEAREST M.: + +I've just come in from my last tour of inspection as orderly officer, +and it's close on midnight. I'm getting this line off to you to let you +know that I expect to get my nine days' leave about the beginning of +January. How I wish it were possible to have you in London when I +arrive, or, failing that, to spend my leave in New York! + +To-morrow I make an early start on horseback for a market of the +old-fashioned sort which is held at a town near by. Can you dimly +picture me with my groom, followed by a mess-cart, going from stall to +stall and bartering with the peasants? It'll be rather good fun and +something quite out of my experience. + +Christmas will be over by the time you get this, and I do hope that you +had a good one. I paused to talk to the other officers; they say that +they are sure that you are very beautiful and have a warm heart, and +would like to send them a five-storey layer cake, half a dozen bottles +of port and one Paris chef. At present I am the Dives of the mess and +dole out luxuries to these Lazaruses. + +Good-bye for the present. + + Yours ever lovingly, + CON. + + + + +XXXI + +December 6th, 1916. + + +Dearest M.: + +I've just undone your Christmas parcels, and already I am wearing the +waistcoat and socks, and my mouth is hot with the ginger. + +I expect to get leave for England on January 10th. I do wish it might be +possible for some of you to cross the ocean and be in London with +me--and I don't see what there is to prevent you. Unless the war ends +sooner than any of us expect, it is not likely that I shall get another +leave in less than nine months. So, if you want to come and if there's +time when you receive this letter, just hop on a boat and let's see what +London looks like together. + +I wonder what kind of a Christmas you'll have. I shall picture it all. +You may hear me tiptoeing up the stairs if you listen very hard. Where +does the soul go in sleep? Surely mine flies back to where all of you +dear people are. + +I came back to my farm yesterday to find a bouquet of paper flowers at +the head of my bed with a note pinned on it. Over my fire-place was hung +a pathetic pair of farm-girls' heavy Sunday boots, all brightly +polished, with two other notes pinned on them. The Feast of St. Nicholas +on December 7th is an opportunity for unmarried men to be reminded that +there are unmarried girls in the world--wherefore the flowers. I enclose +the notes. Keep them,--they may be useful for a book some day. + +I'm having a pretty good rest, and am still in my old farmhouse. + + Love to all. + CON. + + + + +XXXII + +December 15th, 1916. + +Dearest All: + +At the present I'm just where mother hoped I'd be--in a deep dug-out +about twenty feet down--we're trying to get a fire lighted, and +consequently the place is smoked out. Where I'll be for Christmas I +don't know, but I hope by then to be in billets. I've just come back +from the trenches, where I've been observing. The mud is not nearly so +bad where I am now, and with a few days' more work, we should be quite +comfortable. You'll have received my cable about my getting leave +soon--I'm wondering whether the Atlantic is sufficiently quiet for any +of you to risk a crossing. + +Poor Basil! Your letter was the first news I got of his death. I must +have watched the attack in which he lost his life. One wonders now how +it was that some instinct did not warn me that one of those khaki dots +jumping out of the trenches was the cousin who stayed with us in London. + +I'm wondering what this mystery of the German Chancellor is all +about--some peace proposals, I suppose--which are sure to prove +bombastic and unacceptable. It seems to us out here as though the war +must go on forever. Like a boy's dream of the far-off freedom of +manhood, the day appears when we shall step out into the old liberty of +owning our own lives. What a celebration we'll have when I come home! I +can't quite grasp the joy of it. + +I've got to get this letter off quite soon if it's to go to-day. It +ought to reach, you by January 12th or thereabouts. You may be sure my +thoughts will have been with you on Christmas day. I shall look back and +remember all the by-gone good times and then plan for Christmas, 1917. +God keep us all. + + Ever yours, + CON. + + + + +XXXIII + +December 18th, 1916. + +My Dearest M.: + +I always feel when I write a joint letter to the family that I'm +cheating each one of you, but it's so very difficult to get time to +write as often as I'd like. It's a week to Christmas and I picture the +beginnings of the preparations. I can look back and remember so many +such preparations, especially when we were kiddies in London. What good +times one has in a life! I've been sitting with my groom by the fire +to-night while he dried my clothes. I've mentioned him to you before as +having lived in Nelson, and worked at the Silver King mine. We both grew +ecstatic over British Columbia. + +I am hoping all the time that the boys may be in England at the time I +get my leave--I hardly dare hope that any of you will be there. But it +would he grand if you could manage it--I long very much to see you all +again. I can just imagine my first month home again. I shan't let any of +you work. I shall be the incurable boy. I've spent the best part of +to-day out in No Man's Land, within seventy yards of the Huns. Quite an +experience, I assure you, and one that I wouldn't have missed for +worlds. I'll have heaps to write into novels one day--the vividest kind +of local colour. Just at present I have nothing to read but the +Christmas number of the _Strand_. It makes me remember the time when we +children raced for the latest development of _The Hound of the +Baskervilles_, and so many occasions when I had one of "those sniffy +colds" and sat by the Highbury fire with a book. Good days, those! + +I'm just off to bed now, and will finish this to-morrow. Bed is my +greatest luxury nowadays. + +December 19th. + +The book and chocolate just came, and a bunch of New York papers. All +were most welcome. I was longing for something to read. To-morrow I have +to go forward to observe. Two of our officers are on leave, so it makes +the rest of us work pretty hard. What do you think of the Kaiser's +absurd peace proposals? The man must be mad. + + The best of love, + CON. + + + + +XXXIV + +December 20th, 1916. + +Dear Mr. T.: + +Just back from a successful argument with Fritz, to find your kind good +wishes. It's rather a lark out here, though a lark which may turn +against you any time. I laugh a good deal more than I mope. Anything +really horrible has a ludicrous side--it's like Mark Twain's humour--a +gross exaggeration. The maddest thing of all to me is that a person so +willing to be amiable as I am should be out here killing people for +principle's sake. There's no rhyme or reason--it can't be argued. Dimly +one thinks he sees what is right and leaves father and mother and home, +as though it were for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. Perhaps it is. If +one didn't pin his faith to that "perhaps"--. One can't explain. + +A merry Christmas to you. + Yours very sincerely, + CONINGSBY DAWSON. + + + + +XXXV + +December 20th, 1916. + +Dear Mr. A.D.: + +I've just come in from an argument with Fritz when your chocolate formed +my meal. You were very kind to think of me and to send it, and you were +extraordinarily understanding in the letter that you sent me. One's life +out here is like a pollarded tree--all the lower branches are gone--one +gazes on great nobilities, on the fascinating horror of Eternity +sometimes--I said horror, but it's often fine in its spaciousness--one +gazes on many inverted splendours of Titans, but it's giddy work being +so high and rarefied, and all the gentle past seems gone. That's why it +is pleasant in this grimy anonymity of death and courage to get +reminders, such as your letter, that one was once localised and had a +familiar history. If I come back, I shall be like Rip Van Winkle, or a +Robinson Crusoe--like any and all of the creatures of legend and history +to whom abnormality has grown to seem normal. If you can imagine +yourself living in a world in which every day is a demonstration of a +Puritan's conception of what happens when the last trump sounds, then +you have some idea of my queer situation. One has come to a point when +death seems very inconsiderable and only failure to do one's duty is an +utter loss. Love and the future, and all the sweet and tender dreams of +by-gone days are like a house in which the blinds are lowered and from +which the sight has gone. Landscapes have lost their beauty, everything +God-made and man-made is destroyed except man's power to endure with a +smile the things he once most dreaded, because he believes that only so +may he be righteous in his own eyes. How one has longed for that sure +confidence in the petty failings of little living--the confidence to +believe that he can stand up and suffer for principle! God has given all +men who are out here that opportunity--the supremest that can be hoped +for--so, in spite of exile, Christmas for most of us will be a happy +day. Does one see more truly life's worth on a battlefield? I often ask +myself that question. Is the contempt that is hourly shown for life the +real standard of life's worth? I shrug my shoulders at my own +unanswerable questions--all I know is that I move daily with men who +have everything to live for who, nevertheless, are urged by an +unconscious magnanimity to die. I don't think any of our dead pity +themselves--but they would have done so if they had faltered in their +choice. One lives only from sunrise to sunrise, but there's a more real +happiness in this brief living than I ever knew before, because it is so +exactingly worth while. + +Thank you again for your kindness. + Very sincerely yours, + C.D. + +The suggestion that we might all meet in London in January, 1917, was a +hope rather than an expectation. We received a cable from France on +Sunday, December 17th, 1916, and left New York on December 30th. We were +met in London by the two sailor-sons, who were expecting appointments at +any moment, and Coningsby arrived late in the evening of January 13th. +He was unwell when he arrived, having had a near touch of pneumonia. The +day before he left the front he had been in action, with a temperature +of 104. There were difficulties about getting his leave at the exact +time appointed, but these he overcame by exchanging leave with a +brother-officer. He travelled from the Front all night in a windowless +train, and at Calais was delayed by a draft of infantry which he had to +take over to England. The consequence of this delay was that the meeting +at the railway station, of which he had so long dreamed, did not come +off. We spent a long day, going from station to station, misled by +imperfect information as to the arrival of troop trains. At Victoria +Station we saw two thousand troops arrive on leave, men caked with +trench-mud, but he was not among them. We reluctantly returned to our +hotel in the late afternoon and gave up expecting him. There was all the +time a telegram at the hotel from him, giving the exact place and time +of his arrival, but it was not delivered until it was too late to meet +him. He arrived at ten o'clock, and at the same time his two brothers, +who had been summoned in the morning to Southampton, entered the hotel, +having been granted special leave to return to London. A night's rest +did wonders for Coningsby, and the next day his spirits were as high as +in the old days of joyous holiday. During the next eight days we lived +at a tense pitch of excitement. We went to theatres, dined in +restaurants, met friends, and heard from his lips a hundred details of +his life which could not be communicated in letters. We were all +thrilled by the darkened heroic London through which we moved, the +London which bore its sorrows so proudly, and went about its daily life +with such silent courage. We visited old friends to whom the war had +brought irreparable bereavements, but never once heard the voice of +self-pity, of murmur or complaint. To me it was an incredible England; +an England purged of all weakness, stripped of flabbiness, regenerated +by sacrifice. I had dreamed of no such transformation by anything I had +read in American newspapers and magazines. I think no one can imagine +the completeness of this rebirth of the soul of England who has not +dwelt, if only for a few days, among its people. + +Coningsby's brief leave expired all too soon. We saw him off from +Folkestone, and while we were saying good-bye to him, his two brothers +were on their way to their distant appointments with the Royal Naval +Motor Patrol in the North of Scotland. We left Liverpool for New York on +January 27th, and while at sea heard of the diplomatic break between +America and Germany. The news was received on board the _S.S. St. Paul_ +with rejoicing. It was Sunday, and the religious service on board +concluded with the Star-Spangled Banner. + + + + +XXXVI + +December 28th, 1916. + +Dearest All: + +I'm writing you this letter because I expect to-night is a busy-packing +one with you. The picture is in my mind of you all. How splendid it is +of you to come! I never thought you would really, not even in my wildest +dream of optimism. There have been so many times when I scarcely thought +that I would ever see you again--now the unexpected and hoped-for +happens. It's ripping! + +I've put in an application for special leave in case the ordinary leave +should be cut off. I think I'm almost certain to arrive by the 11th. +Won't we have a time? I wonder what we'll want to do most--sit quiet or +go to theatres? The nine days of freedom--the wonderful nine days--will +pass with most tragic quickness. But they'll be days to remember as long +as life lasts. + +Shall I see you standing on the station when I puff into London--or will +it be Folkestone where we meet--or shall I arrive before you? I somehow +think it will be you who will meet me at the barrier at Charing Cross, +and we'll taxi through the darkened streets down the Strand, and back to +our privacy. How impossible it sounds--like a vision of heart's desire +in the night. + +Far, far away I see the fine home-coming, like a lamp burning in a dark +night. I expect we shall all go off our heads with joy and be madder +than ever. Who in the old London days would have imagined such a nine +days of happiness in the old places as we are to have together. + + God bless you, till we meet, + CON. + + + + +XXXVII + +January 4th, 1917. + +10.30 p.m. + +MY DEAREST ONES: + +This letter is written to welcome you to England, but I may be with you +when it is opened. It was glorious news to hear that you were coming--I +was only playing a forlorn bluff when I sent those cables. You're on the +sea at present and should be half way over. Our last trip over together +you marvelled at the apparent indifference of the soldiers on board, and +now you're coming to meet one of your own fresh from the Front. A +change! + +O what a nine days we're going to have together--the most wonderful that +were ever spent. I dream of them, tell myself tales about them, live +them over many times in imagination before they are realised. Sometimes +I'm going to have no end of sleep, sometimes I'm going to keep awake +every second, sometimes I'm going to sit quietly by a fire, and +sometimes I'm going to taxi all the time. I can't fit your faces into +the picture--it seems too unbelievable that we are to be together once +again. To-day I've been staging our meeting--if you arrive first, and +then if I arrive before you, and lastly if we both hit London on the +same day. You mustn't expect me to be a sane person. You're three +rippers to do this--and I hope you'll have an easy journey. The only +ghost is the last day, when the leave train pulls out of Charing Cross. +But we'll do that smiling, too; C'est la guerre. + + Yours always and ever, CON. + + + + +XXXVIII + +January 6th, 1917. + +MY DEAR ONES: + +I have just seen a brother officer aboard the ex-London bus en route for +Blighty. How I wished I could have stepped on board that ex-London +perambulator to-night! "Pickerdilly Cirkuss, 'Ighbury, 'Ighgate, Welsh +'Arp--all the wye." O my, what a time I'll have when I meet you! I shall +feel as though if anything happens to me after my return you'll be able +to understand so much more bravely. These blinkered letters, with only +writing and no touch of live hands, convey so little. When we've had a +good time together and sat round the fire and talked interminably you'll +be able to read so much more between the lines of my future letters. +To-morrow you ought to land in England, and to-morrow night you should +sleep in London. I am trying to swop my leave with another man, +otherwise it won't come till the 15th. I am looking forward every hour +to those miraculous nine days which we are to have together. You can't +imagine with your vividest imagination the contrast between nine days +with you in London and my days where I am now. A battalion went by +yesterday, marching into action, and its band was playing I've a +Sneakin' Feelin' in My Heart That I Want to Settle Down. We all have +that sneaking feeling from time to time. I tell myself wonderful stories +in the early dark mornings and become the architect of the most +wonderful futures. + +I'm coming to join you just as soon as I know how--at the worst I'll be +in London on the 16th of this month. + + Ever yours, + CON. + + +_The following letters were written after Coningsby had met his family +in London._ + + + + +XXXIX + +January 24th, 1917. + +MY DEAR ONES: + +I have had a chance to write you sooner than I expected, as I stopped +the night where I disembarked, and am catching my train to-day. + +It's strange to be back and under orders after nine days' freedom. +Directly I landed I was detailed to march a party--it was that that made +me lose my train--not that I objected, for I got one more sleep between +sheets. I picked up on the boat in the casual way one does, with three +other officers, so on landing we made a party to dine together, and had +a very decent evening. I wasn't wanting to remember too much then, so +that was why I didn't write letters. + +What good times we have to look back on and how much to be thankful for, +that we met altogether. Now we must look forward to the summer and, +perhaps, the end of the war. What a mad joy will sweep across the world +on the day that peace is declared! + +This visit will have made you feel that you have a share in all that's +happening over here and are as real a part of it as any of us. I'm +awfully proud of you for your courage. + + Yours lovingly, + CON. + + + + +XL + +January 26th, 1917. + +MY VERY DEAR ONES: + +Here I am back--my nine days' leave a dream. I got into our wagon-lines +last night after midnight, having had a cold ride along frozen roads +through white wintry country. I was only half-expected, so my +sleeping-bag hadn't been unpacked. I had to wake my batman and tramp +about a mile to the billet; by the time I got there every one was +asleep, so I spread out my sleeping-sack and crept in very quietly. For +the few minutes before my eyes closed I pictured London, the taxis, the +gay parties, the mystery of lights. I was roused this morning with the +news that I had to go up to the gun-position at once. I stole just +sufficient time to pick up a part of my accumulated mail, then got on my +horse and set out. At the guns, I found that I was due to report as +liaison officer, so here I am in the trenches again writing to you by +candle-light. How wonderfully we have bridged the distance in spending +those nine whole days together. And now it is over, and I am back in the +trenches, and to-morrow you're sailing for New York. + +I can't tell you what the respite has meant to me. There have been times +when my whole past life has seemed a myth and the future an endless +prospect of carrying on. Now I can distantly hope that the old days will +return. + +When I was in London half my mind was at the Front; now that I'm back in +the trenches half my mind is in London. I re-live our gay times +together; I go to cosy little dinners; I sit with you in the stalls, +listening to the music; then I tumble off to sleep, and dream, and wake +up to find the dream a delusion. It's a fine and manly contrast, +however, between the game one plays out here and the fretful +trivialities of civilian life. + + + + +XLI + +January 27th. + + +I got as far as this and then "something" happened. Twenty-four hours +have gone by and once more it's nearly midnight and I write to you by +candle-light. Since last night I've been with these infantry +boy-officers who are doing such great work in such a careless spirit of +jolliness. Any softness which had crept into me during my nine days of +happiness has gone. I'm glad to be out here and wouldn't wish to be +anywhere else till the war is ended. + +It's a week to-day since we were at _Charlie's Aunt_--such a cheerful +little party! I expect the boys are doing their share of remembering too +somewhere on the sea at present. I know you are, as you round the coast +of Ireland and set out for the Atlantic. + +I've not been out of my clothes for three days and I've another day to +go yet. I brought my haversack into the trenches with me; on opening it +I found that some kind hands had slipped into it some clean socks and a +bottle of Horlick's Malted Milk tablets. + +The signallers in a near-by dug-out are singing Keep the Home-Fires +Burning Till the Boys Come Home. That's what we're all doing, isn't +it--you at your end and we at ours? The brief few days of possessing +myself are over and once more stern duty lies ahead. But I thank God for +the chance I've had to see again those whom I love, and to be able to +tell them with my own lips some of the bigness of our life at the Front. +No personal aims count beside the great privilege which is ours to carry +on until the war is over. + +All my thoughts are with you--so many memories of kindness. I keep on +picturing things I ought to have done--things I ought to have told you. +Always I can see, Oh, so vividly, the two sailor brothers waving +good-bye as the train moved off through the London dusk, and then that +other and forlorner group of three, standing outside the dock gates with +the sentry like the angel in Eden, turning them back from happiness. +With an extraordinary aloofness I watched myself moving like a puppet +away from you whom I love most dearly in all the world--going away as if +going were a thing so usual. + +I'm asking myself again if there isn't some new fineness of spirit which +will develop from this war and survive it. In London, at a distance +from all this tragedy of courage, I felt that I had slipped back to a +lower plane; a kind of flabbiness was creeping into my blood--the old +selfish fear of life and love of comfort. It's odd that out here, where +the fear of death should supplant the fear of life, one somehow rises +into a contempt for everything which is not bravest. There's no doubt +that the call for sacrifice, and perhaps the supreme sacrifice, can +transform men into a nobility of which they themselves are unconscious. +That's the most splendid thing of all, that they themselves are unaware +of their fineness. + +I'm now waiting to be relieved and am hurrying to finish this so that I +may mail it as soon as I get back to the battery. There's a whole sack +of letters and parcels waiting for me there, and I'm as eager to get to +them as a kiddy to inspect his Christmas stocking. I always undo the +string and wrappings with a kind of reverence, trying to picture the +dear kneeling figures who did them up. In London I didn't dare to let +myself go with you--I couldn't say all that was in my heart--it wouldn't +have been wise. Don't ever doubt that the tenderness was there. Even +though one is only a civilian in khaki, some of the soldier's sternness +becomes second nature. + +All the country is covered with snow--it's brilliant clear weather, +more like America than Europe. I'm feeling strong as a horse, ever so +much better than I felt when on leave. Life is really tremendously worth +living, in spite of the war. + + + + +XLII + +January 28th. + +I'm back at the battery, sitting by a cosy fire. I might be up at +Kootenay by the look of my surroundings. I'm in a shack with a really +truly floor, and a window looking out on moonlit whiteness. If it wasn't +for the tapping of the distant machine guns--tapping that always sounds +to me like the nailing up of coffins--I might be here for pleasure. In +imagination I can see your great ship, with all its portholes aglare, +ploughing across the darkness to America. The dear sailor brothers I +can't quite visualise; I can only see them looking so upright and pale +when we said good-bye. It's getting late and the fire's dying. I'm half +asleep; I've not been out of my clothes for three nights. I shall tell +myself a story of the end of the war and our next meeting--it'll last +from the time that I creep into my sack until I close my eyes. It's a +glorious life. + + Yours very lovingly, + CON + + + + +XLIII + +January 31st, 1917. + +DEAR MR. AND MRS. M.: + +It was extremely good of you to remember me. I got back from leave in +London on the 26th and found the cigarettes waiting for me. One hasn't +got an awful lot of pleasures left, but smoking is one of them. I feel +particularly doggy when I open my case and find my initials on them. + +I expect you'll have heard all the news of my leave long before this +reaches you. We had a splendid time and the greatest of luck. My sailor +brothers were with me all but two days, and my people were in England +only a few days before I arrived. + +This is a queer adventure for a peaceable person like myself--it blots +out all the past and reduces the future to a speck. One hardly hopes +that things will ever be different, but looks forward to interminable +years of carrying on. My leave rather corrected that frame of mind; it +came as a surprise to be forced to realise that not all the world was +living under orders on woman less, childless battlefields. But we don't +need any pity--we manage our good times, and are sorry for the men who +aren't here, for it's a wonderful thing to have been chosen to +sacrifice and perhaps to die that the world of the future may be happier +and kinder. + +This letter is rather disjointed; I'm in charge of the battery for the +time, and messages keep on coming in, and one has to rush out to give +the order to fire. + +It's an American night--snow-white and piercing, with a frigid moon +sailing quietly. I think the quiet beauty of the sky is about the only +thing in Nature that we do not scar and destroy with our fighting. + +Good-bye, and thank you ever so much. + + Yours very sincerely, + CONINGSBY DAWSON. + + + + +XLIV + +February 1st, 1917. + +11 p.m. + +DEAR FATHER: + +Your picture of the black days when no letter comes from me sets me off +scribbling to you at this late hour. All to-day I've been having a cold +but amusing time at the O.P. (Forward Observation Post). It seems brutal +to say it, but taking potshots at the enemy when they present themselves +is rather fun. When you watch them scattering like ants before the +shell whose direction you have ordered, you somehow forget to think of +them as individuals, any more than the bear-hunter thinks of the cubs +that will be left motherless. You watch your victims through your +glasses as God might watch his mad universe. Your skill in directing +fire makes you what in peace times would be called a murderer. Curious! +You're glad, and yet at close quarters only in hot blood would you hurt +a man. + +I'd been back for a little over an hour when I had to go forward again +to guide in some guns. The country was dazzlingly white in the +moonlight. As far as eye could see every yard was an old battlefield; +beneath the soft white fleece of snow lay countless unburied bodies. +Like frantic fingers tearing at the sky, all along the horizon, Hun +lights were shooting up and drifting across our front. Tap-tap-tappity +went the machine-guns; whoo-oo went the heavies, and they always stamp +like angry bulls. I had to come back by myself across the heroic +corruption which the snow had covered. All the way I asked myself why +was I not frightened. What has happened to me? Ghosts should walk here +if anywhere. Moreover, I know that I shall be frightened again when the +war is ended. Do you remember how you once offered me money to walk +through the Forest of Dean after dark, and I wouldn't? I wouldn't if +you offered it to me now. You remember Meredith's lines in "The Woods of +Westermain": + + "All the eyeballs under hoods + Shroud you in their glare; + Enter these enchanted woods + You who dare." + +Maybe what re-creates one for the moment is the British officer's +uniform, and even more the fact that you are not asked, but expected, to +do your duty. So I came back quite unruffled across battered trenches +and silent mounds to write this letter to you. + +My dear father, I'm over thirty, and yet just as much a little boy as +ever. I still feel overwhelmingly dependent on your good opinion and +love. I'm glad that they are black days when you have no letters from +me. I love to think of the rush to the door when the postman rings and +the excited shouting up the stairs, "Quick, one from Con." + + +February 2nd. + +You see by the writing how tired I was when I reached this point. It's +nearly twenty-four hours later and again night. The gramophone is +playing an air from _La Tosca_ to which the guns beat out a bass +accompaniment. I close my eyes and picture the many times I have heard +the (probably) German orchestras of Broadway Joy Palaces play that same +music. How incongruous that I should be listening to it here and under +these circumstances! It must have been listened to so often by gay +crowds in the beauty places of the world. A romantic picture grows up in +my mind of a blue night, the laughter of youth in evening dress, lamps +twinkling through trees, far off the velvety shadow of water and +mountains, and as a voice to it all, that air from _La Tosca_. I can +believe that the silent people near by raise themselves up in their +snow-beds to listen, each one recalling some ecstatic moment before the +dream of life was shattered. + +There's a picture in the Pantheon at Paris, I remember; I believe it's +called _To Glory_. One sees all the armies of the ages charging out of +the middle distance with Death riding at their head. The only glory that +I have discovered in this war is in men's hearts--it's not external. +Were one to paint the spirit of this war he would depict a mud +landscape, blasted trees, an iron sky; wading through the slush and +shell-holes would come a file of bowed figures, more like outcasts from +the Embankment than soldiers. They're loaded down like pack animals, +their shoulders are rounded, they're wearied to death, but they go on +and go on. There's no "To Glory" about what we're doing out here; +there's no flash of swords or splendour of uniforms. There are only very +tired men determined to carry on. The war will be won by tired men who +could never again pass an insurance test, a mob of broken +counter-jumpers, ragged ex-plumbers and quite unheroic persons. We're +civilians in khaki, but because of the ideals for which we fight we've +managed to acquire soldiers' hearts. + +My flow of thought was interrupted by a burst of song in which I was +compelled to join. We're all writing letters around one candle; suddenly +the O.C. looked up and began, God Be With You Till We Meet Again. We +sang it in parts. It was in Southport, when I was about nine years old, +that I first heard that sung. You had gone for your first trip to +America, leaving a very lonely family behind you. We children were +scared to death that you'd be drowned. One evening, coming back from a +walk on the sand-hills, we heard voices singing in a garden, God Be With +You Till We Meet Again. The words and the soft dusk, and the vague +figures in the English summer garden, seemed to typify the terror of all +partings. We've said good-bye so often since, and God has been with us. +I don't think any parting was more hard than our last at the prosaic +dock-gates with the cold wind of duty blowing, and the sentry barring +your entrance, and your path leading back to America while mine led on +to France. But you three were regular soldiers--just as much soldiers as +we chaps who were embarking. One talks of our armies in the field, but +there are the other armies, millions strong, of mothers and fathers and +sisters, who keep their eyes dry, treasure muddy letters beneath their +pillows, offer up prayers and wait, wait, wait so eternally for God to +open another door. + +To-morrow I again go forward, which means rising early and taking a long +plod through the snows; that's one reason for not writing any more, and +another is that our one poor candle is literally on its last legs. + +Your poem, written years ago when the poor were marching in London, is +often in my mind: + + "Yesterday and to-day + Have been heavy with labour and sorrow; + I should faint if I did not see + The day that is after to-morrow." + +And there's that last verse which prophesied utterly the spirit in which +we men at the Front are fighting to-day: + + "And for me, with spirit elate + The mire and the fog I press thorough, + For Heaven shines under the cloud + Of the day that is after to-morrow." + +We civilians who have been taught so long to love our enemies and do +good to them who hate us--much too long ever to make professional +soldiers--are watching with our hearts in our eyes for that day which +conies after to-morrow. Meanwhile we plod on determinedly, hoping for +the hidden glory. + + Yours very lovingly, + Con. + + + +XLV + + +February 3rd, 1917. + +Dear Misses W.: + +You were very kind to remember me at Christmas. _Seventeen_ was read +with all kinds of gusto by all my brother officers. It's still being +borrowed. + +I've been back from leave a few days now and am settling back to +business again. It was a trifle hard after over-eating and undersleeping +myself for nine days, and riding everywhere with my feet up in taxis. I +was the wildest little boy. Here it's snowy and bitter. We wear scarves +round our ears to keep the frost away and dream of fires a mile high. +All I ask, when the war is ended, is to be allowed to sit asleep in a +big armchair and to be left there absolutely quiet. Sleep, which we +crave so much at times, is only death done up in sample bottles. Perhaps +some of these very weary men who strew our battlefields are glad to lie +at last at endless leisure. + +Good-bye, and thank you. + + Yours very sincerely, + Con. + + + + +XLVI + +February 4th, 1917. + +My Dearest Mother: + +Somewhere in the distance I can hear a piano going and men's voices +singing A Perfect Day. It's queer how music creates a world for you in +which you are not, and makes you dreamy. I've been sitting by a fire and +thinking of all the happy times when the total of desire seemed almost +within one's grasp. It never is--one always, always misses it and has to +rub the dust from the eyes, recover one's breath and set out on the +search afresh. I suppose when you grow very old you learn the lesson of +sitting quiet, and the heart stops beating and the total of desire comes +to you. And yet I can remember so many happy days, when I was a child in +the summer and later at Kootenay. One almost thought he had caught the +secret of carrying heaven in his heart. + +By the time this reaches you I'll be in the line again, but for the +present I'm undergoing a special course of training. You can't hear the +most distant sound of guns, and if it wasn't for the pressure of study, +similar to that at _Kingston_, one would be very rested. + +Sunday of all days is the one when I remember you most. You're just +sitting down to mid-day dinner,--I've made the calculation for +difference of time. You're probably saying how less than a month ago we +were in London. That doesn't sound true even when I write it. I wonder +how your old familiar surroundings strike you. It's terrible to come +down from the mountain heights of a great elation like our ten days in +London. I often think of that with regard to myself when the war is +ended. There'll be a sense of dissatisfaction when the old lost comforts +are regained. There'll be a sense of lowered manhood. The stupendous +terrors of Armageddon demand less courage than the uneventful terror of +the daily commonplace. There's something splendid and exhilarating in +going forward among bursting shells--we, who have done all that, know +that when the guns have ceased to roar our blood will grow more +sluggish and we'll never be such men again. Instead of getting up in the +morning and hearing your O.C. say, "You'll run a line into trench +so-and-so to-day and shoot up such-and-such Hun wire," you'll hear +necessity saying, "You'll work from breakfast to dinner and earn your +daily bread. And you'll do it to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow +world without end. Amen." They never put that forever and forever part +into their commands out here, because the Amen for any one of us may be +only a few hours away. But the big immediate thing is so much easier to +do than the prosaic carrying on without anxiety--which is your game. I +begin to understand what you have had to suffer now that R. and E. are +really at war too. I get awfully anxious about them. I never knew before +that either of them owned so much of my heart. I get furious when I +remember that they might get hurt. I've heard of a Canadian who joined +when he learnt that his best friend had been murdered by Hun bayonets. +He came to get his own back and was the most reckless man in his +battalion. I can understand his temper now. We're all of us in danger of +slipping back into the worship of Thor. + +I'll write as often as I can while here, but I don't get much time--so +you'll understand. It's the long nights when one sits up to take the +firing in action that give one the chance to be a decent correspondent. + +My birthday comes round soon, doesn't it? Good heavens, how ancient I'm +getting and without any "grow old along with me" consolation. Well, to +grow old is all in the job of living. + +Good-bye, and God bless you all. + + Yours ever, + Con. + + + + +XLVII + + +February 4th, 1917. + +Dear Mr. B.: + +I have been intending to write to you for a very long time, but as most +of one's writing is done when one ought to be asleep, and sleep next to +eating is one of our few remaining pleasures, my intended letter has +remained in my head up to now. On returning from a nine days' leave to +London the other day, however, I found two letters from you awaiting me +and was reproached into effort. + +War's a queer game--not at all what one's civilian mind imagined; it's +far more horrible and less exciting. The horrors which the civilian mind +dreads most are mutilation and death. Out here we rarely think about +them; the thing which wears on one most and calls out his gravest +courage is the endless sequence of physical discomfort. Not to be able +to wash, not to be able to sleep, to have to be wet and cold for long +periods at a stretch, to find mud on your person, in your food, to have +to stand in mud, see mud, sleep in mud and to continue to smile--that's +what tests courage. Our chaps are splendid. They're not the hair-brained +idiots that some war-correspondents depict from day to day. They're +perfectly sane people who know to a fraction what they're up against, +but who carry on with a grim good-nature and a determination to win with +a smile. I never before appreciated as I do to-day the latent capacity +for big-hearted endurance that is in the heart of every man. Here are +apparently quite ordinary chaps--chaps who washed, liked theatres, loved +kiddies and sweethearts, had a zest for life--they're bankrupt of all +pleasures except the supreme pleasure of knowing that they're doing the +ordinary and finest thing of which they are capable. There are millions +to whom the mere consciousness of doing their duty has brought an +heretofore unexperienced peace of mind. For myself I was never happier +than I am at present; there's a novel zip added to life by the daily +risks and the knowledge that at last you're doing something into which +no trace of selfishness enters. One can only die once; the chief concern +that matters is _how_ and not _when_ you die. I don't pity the weary men +who have attained eternal leisure in the corruption of our +shell-furrowed battles; they "went West" in their supreme moment. The +men I pity are those who could not hear the call of duty and whose +consciences will grow more flabby every day. With the brutal roar of the +first Prussian gun the cry came to the civilised world, "Follow thou +me," just as truly as it did in Palestine. Men went to their Calvary +singing Tipperary, rubbish, rhymed doggerel, but their spirit was equal +to that of any Christian martyr in a Roman amphitheatre. "Greater love +hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend." Our +chaps are doing that consciously, willingly, almost without bitterness +towards their enemies; for the rest it doesn't matter whether they sing +hymns or ragtime. They've followed their ideal--freedom--and died for +it. A former age expressed itself in Gregorian chants; ours, no less +sincerely, disguises its feelings in ragtime. + +Since September I have been less than a month out of action. The game +doesn't pall as time goes on--it fascinates. We've got to win so that +men may never again be tortured by the ingenious inquisition of modern +warfare. The winning of the war becomes a personal affair to the chaps +who are fighting. The world which sits behind the lines, buys extra +specials of the daily papers and eats three square meals a day, will +never know what this other world has endured for its safety, for no man +of this other world will have the vocabulary in which to tell. But don't +for a moment mistake me--we're grimly happy. + +What a serial I'll write for you if I emerge from this turmoil! Thank +God, my outlook is all altered. I don't want to live any longer--only to +live well. + +Good-bye and good luck. + + Yours, + Coningsby Dawson. + + + + +XLVIII + + +February 5th, 1917. + +My Dearest Mother: + +Aren't the papers good reading now-a-days with nothing to record but +success? It gives us hope that at last, anyway before the year is out, +the war must end. As you know, I am at the artillery school back of the +lines for a month, taking an extra course. I have been meeting a great +many young officers from all over the world and have listened to them +discussing their program for when peace is declared. Very few of them +have any plans or prospects. Most of them had just started on some +course of professional training to which they won't have the energy to +go back after a two years' interruption. The question one asks is how +will all these men be reabsorbed into civilian life. I'm afraid the +result will be a vast host of men with promising pasts and highly +uncertain futures. We shall be a holiday world without an income. I'm +afraid the hero-worship attitude will soon change to impatience when the +soldiers beat their swords into ploughshares and then confess that they +have never been taught to plough. That's where I shall score--by beating +my sword into a pen. But what to write about--! Everything will seem so +little and inconsequential after seeing armies marching to mud and +death, and people will soon get tired of hearing about that. It seems as +though war does to the individual what it does to the landscapes it +attacks--obliterates everything personal and characteristic. A valley, +when a battle has done with it, is nothing but earth--exactly what it +was when God said, "Let there be Light;" a man just something with a +mind purged of the past and ready to observe afresh. I question whether +a return to old environments will ever restore to us the whole of our +old tastes and affections. War is, I think, utterly destructive. It +doesn't even create courage--it only finds it in the soul of a man. And +yet there is one quality which will survive the war and help us to face +the temptations of peace--that same courage which most of us have +unconsciously discovered out here. + +Well, my dear, I have little news--at least, none that I can tell. I'm +just about recovered from an attack of "flu." I want to get thoroughly +rid of it before I go back to my battery. I hope you all keep well. God +bless you all. + + Yours ever, + Con. + + + + +XLIX + +February 6th, 1917. + +My Very Dear M.: + +I read in to-day's paper that U.S.A. threatens to come over and help us. +I wish she would. The very thought of the possibility fills me with joy. +I've been light-headed all day. It would be so ripping to live among +people, when the war is ended, of whom you need not be ashamed. +Somewhere deep down in my heart I've felt a sadness ever since I've been +out here, at America's lack of gallantry--it's so easy to find excuses +for not climbing to Calvary; sacrifice was always too noble to be +sensible. I would like to see the country of our adoption become +splendidly irrational even at this eleventh hour in the game; it would +redeem her in the world's eyes. She doesn't know what she's losing. From +these carcase-strewn fields of khaki there's a cleansing wind blowing +for the nations that have died. Though there was only one Englishman +left to carry on the race when this war is victoriously ended, I would +give more for the future of England than for the future of America with +her ninety millions whose sluggish blood was not stirred by the call of +duty. It's bigness of soul that makes nations great and not population. +Money, comfort, limousines and ragtime are not the requisites of men +when heroes are dying. I hate the thought of Fifth Avenue, with its +pretty faces, its fashions, its smiling frivolity. America as a great +nation will die, as all coward civilisations have died, unless she +accepts the stigmata of sacrifice, which a divine opportunity again +offers her. + +If it were but possible to show those ninety millions one battlefield +with its sprawling dead, its pity, its marvellous forgetfulness of self, +I think then--no, they wouldn't be afraid. Fear isn't the emotion one +feels--they would experience the shame of living when so many have shed +their youth freely. This war is a prolonged moment of exultation for +most of us--we are redeeming ourselves in our own eyes. To lay down +one's life for one's friend once seemed impossible. All that is altered. +We lay down our lives that the future generations may be good and kind, +and so we can contemplate oblivion with quiet eyes. Nothing that is +noblest that the Greeks taught is unpractised by the simplest men out +here to-day. They may die childless, but their example will father the +imagination of all the coming ages. These men, in the noble indignation +of a great ideal, face a worse hell than the most ingenious of fanatics +ever planned or plotted. Men die scorched like moths in a furnace, blown +to atoms, gassed, tortured. And again other men step forward to take +their places well knowing what will be their fate. Bodies may die, but +the spirit of England grows greater as each new soul speeds upon its +way. The battened souls of America will die and be buried. I believe the +decision of the next few days will prove to be the crisis in America's +nationhood. If she refuses the pain which will save her, the cancer of +self-despising will rob her of her life. + +This feeling is strong with us. It's past midnight, but I could write +of nothing else to-night. + +God bless you. + + Yours ever, + Con. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Carry On, by Coningsby Dawson + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARRY ON *** + +***** This file should be named 14086.txt or 14086.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/0/8/14086/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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