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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Waiting for Daylight, by Henry Major Tomlinson
+
+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: Waiting for Daylight
+
+Author: Henry Major Tomlinson
+
+Release Date: November 12, 2008 [EBook #27246]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAITING FOR DAYLIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan Skinner, Peter Vachuska, Chuck Greif and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WAITING FOR
+DAYLIGHT
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_BOOKS BY H. M. TOMLINSON_
+
+THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
+OLD JUNK
+LONDON RIVER
+WAITING FOR DAYLIGHT
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  THE FIRST PRINTING OF THIS BOOK CONSISTS
+       OF TWENTY-ONE HUNDRED COPIES,
+    OF WHICH TWO THOUSAND ARE FOR SALE.
+
+               THIS IS NUMBER
+
+                    669
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+WAITING FOR
+DAYLIGHT
+
+By H. M. TOMLINSON
+
+
+NEW YORK · ALFRED · A · KNOPF · MCMXXII
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
+ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.
+
+_Published May, 1922_
+
+
+_Set up, electrotyped and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y._
+_Paper furnished by Henry Lindenmeyr & Sons, New York, N. Y._
+_Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York, N. Y._
+
+
+MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      To
+   MY WIFE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     I. IN YPRES                                              3
+
+    II. A RAID NIGHT                                         12
+
+   III. ISLANDS                                              24
+
+    IV. TRAVEL BOOKS                                         28
+
+     V. SIGNS OF SPRING                                      31
+
+    VI. PROSE WRITING                                        36
+
+   VII. THE MODERN MIND                                      40
+
+  VIII. MAGAZINES                                            44
+
+    IX. THE MARNE                                            49
+
+     X. CARLYLE                                              56
+
+    XI. HOLIDAY READING                                      58
+
+   XII. AN AUTUMN MORNING                                    65
+
+  XIII. NEWS FROM THE FRONT                                  74
+
+   XIV. AUTHORS AND SOLDIERS                                 80
+
+    XV. WAITING FOR DAYLIGHT                                 88
+
+   XVI. THE NOBODIES                                         96
+
+  XVII. BOOKWORMS                                           112
+
+ XVIII. SAILOR LANGUAGE                                     115
+
+   XIX. ILLUSIONS                                           120
+
+    XX. FIGURE-HEADS                                        127
+
+   XXI. ECONOMICS                                           133
+
+  XXII. OLD SUNLIGHT                                        135
+
+ XXIII. RUSKIN                                              140
+
+  XXIV. THE REWARD OF VIRTUE                                147
+
+   XXV. GREAT STATESMEN                                     149
+
+  XXVI. JOY                                                 152
+
+ XXVII. THE REAL THING                                      162
+
+XXVIII. LITERARY CRITICS                                    170
+
+  XXIX. THE SOUTH DOWNS                                     175
+
+   XXX. KIPLING                                             182
+
+  XXXI. A DEVON ESTUARY                                     188
+
+ XXXII. BARBELLION                                          194
+
+XXXIII. BREAKING THE SPELL                                  200
+
+
+
+WAITING FOR
+DAYLIGHT
+
+
+
+
+I. In Ypres
+
+
+JULY, 1915. My mouth does not get so dry as once it did, I notice, when
+walking in from Suicide Corner to the Cloth Hall. There I was this summer
+day, in Ypres again, in a silence like a threat, amid ruins which might
+have been in Central Asia, and I, the last man on earth, contemplating
+them. There was something bumping somewhere, but it was not in Ypres, and
+no notice is taken in Flanders of what does not bump near you. So I sat
+on the disrupted pedestal of a forgotten building and smoked, and
+wondered why I was in the city of Ypres, and why there was a war, and why
+I was a fool.
+
+It was a lovely day, and looking up at the sky over what used to be a
+school dedicated to the gentle Jesus, which is just by the place where
+one of the seventeen-inchers has blown a forty-foot hole, I saw a little
+round cloud shape in the blue, and then another, and then a cluster of
+them; the kind of soft little cloudlets on which Renaissance cherubs
+rest their chubby elbows and with fat faces inclined on their hands
+consider mortals from cemetery monuments. Then dull concussions arrived
+from heaven, and right overhead I made out two German 'planes. A
+shell-case banged the _pavé_ and went on to make a white scar on a wall.
+Some invisible things were whizzing about. One's own shrapnel can be
+tactless.
+
+There was a cellar near and I got into it, and while the intruders were
+overhead I smoked and gazed at the contents of the cellar--the wreckage
+of a bicycle, a child's chemise, one old boot, a jam-pot, and a dead cat.
+Owing to an unsatisfactory smell of many things I climbed out as soon as
+possible and sat on the pedestal again.
+
+A figure in khaki came straight at me across the Square, its boots
+sounding like the deliberate approach of Fate in solitude. It stopped and
+saluted, and said: "I shouldn't stay 'ere, sir. They gen'ally begin about
+now. Sure to drop some 'ere."
+
+At that moment a mournful cry went over us, followed by a crash in
+Sinister Street. My way home! Some masonry fell in sympathy from the
+Cloth Hall.
+
+"Better come with me till it blows over, sir. I've got a dug-out near."
+
+We turned off into a part of the city unknown to me. There were some
+unsettling noises, worse, no doubt, because of the echoes behind us; but
+it is not dignified to hurry when one looks like an officer. One ought to
+fill a pipe. I did so, and stopped to light it. I paused while drawing at
+it, checked by the splitting open of the earth in the first turning to
+the right and the second to the left, or thereabouts.
+
+"That's a big 'un, sir," said my soldier, taking half a cigarette from
+behind his ear and a light from my match; we then resumed our little
+promenade. By an old motor 'bus having boards for windows, and War Office
+neuter for its colour, but bearing for memory's sake on its brow the
+legend "Liverpool Street," my soldier hurried slightly, and was then
+swallowed up. I was alone. While looking about for possible openings I
+heard his voice under the road, and then saw a dark cavity, low in a
+broken wall, and crawled in. Feeling my way by knocking on the dark with
+my forehead and my shins, I descended to a lower smell of graves which
+was hollowed by a lighted candle in a bottle. And there was the soldier,
+who provided me with an empty box, and himself with another, and we had
+the candle between us. On the table were some official documents under a
+shell-nose, and a tin of condensed milk suffering from shock. Pictures of
+partly clad ladies began to appear on the walls through the gloom. Now
+and then the cellar trembled.
+
+"Where's that old 'bus come from?" I asked.
+
+"Ah! The pore old bitch, sir," said the soldier sadly.
+
+"Yes, of course, but what's the matter with her?"
+
+"She's done in, sir. But she's done her bit, she has," said my soldier,
+changing the crossing of his legs. "Ah! little did she think when I used
+to take 'er acrorse Ludget Circus what a 'ell of a time I'd 'ave to give
+'er some day. She's a good ole thing. She's done 'er bit. She won't see
+Liverpool Street no more. If medals wasn't so cheap she ought to 'ave
+one, she ought."
+
+The cellar had a fit of the palsy, and the candle-light shuddered and
+flattened.
+
+"The ruddy swine are ruddy wild to-day. Suthin's upset 'em. 'Ow long will
+this ruddy war last, sir?" asked the soldier, slightly plaintive.
+
+"I know," I said. "It's filthy. But what about your old 'bus?"
+
+"Ah! what about 'er. She ain't 'arf 'ad a time. She's seen enough war to
+make a general want to go home and shell _peas_. What she knows about it
+would make them clever fellers in London who reckon they know all about
+it turn green if they heard a door slam. Learned it all in one jolly old
+day, too. Learned it sudden, like you gen'ally learn things you don't
+forget. And I reckon I 'adn't anything to find out, either, not after
+Antwerp. Don't tell me, sir, war teaches you a lot. It only shows fools
+what they didn't know but might 'ave guessed.
+
+"You know Poperinghe? Well, my trip was between there an' Wipers,
+gen'ally. The stones on the road was enough to make 'er shed nuts and
+bolts by the pint. But it was a quiet journey, take it all round, and
+after a cup o' tea at Wipers I used to roll home to the park. It was
+easier than the Putney route. Wipers was full of civilians. Shops all
+open. Estaminets and nice young things. I used to like war better than a
+school-boy likes Sat'd'y afternoons. It wasn't work and it wasn't play.
+And there was no law you couldn't break if you 'ad sense enough to come
+to attention smart and answer quick. Yes, sir.
+
+"I knew so little about war then that I'm sorry I never tried to be a
+military expert. But my education was neglected. I can only write picture
+postcards. It's a pity. Well, one day it wasn't like that. It dropped on
+Wipers, and it wasn't like that. It was bloody different. I wasn't
+frightened, but my little inside was.
+
+"First thing was the gassed soldiers coming through. Their faces were
+green and blue, and their uniform a funny colour. I didn't know what was
+the matter with 'em, and that put the wind up, for I didn't want to look
+like that. We could hear a gaudy rumpus in the Salient. The civvies were
+frightened, but they stuck to their homes. Nothing was happening there
+then, and while nothing is happening it's hard to believe it's going to.
+After seeing a Zouave crawl by with his tongue hanging out, and his face
+the colour of a mottled cucumber, I said good-bye to the little girl
+where I was. It was time to see about it.
+
+"And fact is, I didn't 'ave much time to think about it, what with
+gettin' men out and gettin' reinforcements in. Trip after trip.
+
+"But I shall never have a night again like that one. Believe me, it was
+a howler. I steered the old 'bus, but it was done right by accident. It
+was certainly touch and go. I shouldn't 'ave thought a country town, even
+in war, could look like Wipers did that night.
+
+"It was gettin' dark on my last trip, and we barged into all the world
+gettin' out. And the guns and reinforcements were comin' up behind me.
+There's no other road out or in, as you know. I forgot to tell you that
+night comin' on didn't matter much, because the place was alight. The sky
+was full of shrapnel, and the high-explosives were falling in the houses
+on fire, and spreading the red stuff like fireworks. The gun ahead of me
+went over a child, but only its mother and me saw that, and a house in
+flames ahead of the gun got a shell inside it, and fell on the crowd that
+was mixed up with the army traffic.
+
+"When I got to a side turning I 'opped off to see how my little lady was
+getting on. A shell had got 'er estaminet. The curtains were flying in
+little flames through the place where the windows used to be. Inside, the
+counter was upside down, and she was laying with glass and bottles on the
+floor. I couldn't do anything for her. And further up the street my
+headquarters was a heap of bricks, and the houses on both sides of it on
+fire. No good looking there for any more orders.
+
+"Being left to myself, I began to take notice. While you're on the job
+you just do it, and don't see much of anything else except out of the
+corner of the eye. I've never 'eard such a row--shells bursting, houses
+falling, and the place was foggy with smoke, and men you couldn't see
+were shouting, and the women and children, wherever they were, turning
+you cold to hear 'em.
+
+"It was like the end of the world. Time for me to 'op it. I backed the
+old 'bus and turned 'er, and started off--shells in front and behind and
+overhead, and, thinks I, next time you're bound to get caught in this
+shower. Then I found my officer. 'E was smoking a cigarette, and 'e told
+me my job. 'E gave me my cargo. I just 'ad to take 'em out and dump 'em.
+
+"'Where shall I take 'em, sir?'
+
+"'Take 'em out of this,' says he. 'Take 'em anywhere, take 'em where you
+like, Jones, take 'em to hell, but take 'em away,' says he.
+
+"So I loaded up. Wounded Tommies, gassed Arabs, some women and children,
+and a few lunatics, genuine cock-eyed loonies from the asylum. The
+shells chased us out. One biffed us over on to the two rear wheels, but
+we dropped back on four on the top speed. Several times I bumped over
+soft things in the road and felt rather sick. We got out o' the town with
+the shrapnel a bit in front all the way. Then the old 'bus jibbed for a
+bit. Every time a shell burst near us the lunatics screamed and laughed
+and clapped their hands, and trod on the wounded, but I got 'er goin'
+again. I got 'er to Poperinghe. Two soldiers died on the way, and a
+lunatic had fallen out somewhere, and a baby was born in the 'bus; and me
+with no conductor and no midwife.
+
+"I met our chaplain and says he: 'Jones, you want a drink. Come with me
+and have a Scotch.' That was a good drink. I 'ad the best part of 'arf a
+bottle without water, and it done me no 'arm. Next morning I found I'd
+put in the night on the parson's bed in me boots, and 'e was asleep on
+the floor."
+
+
+
+
+II. A Raid Night
+
+
+SEPTEMBER 17, 1915. I had crossed from France to Fleet Street, and was
+thankful at first to have about me the things I had proved, with their
+suggestion of intimacy, their look of security; but I found the once
+familiar editorial rooms of that daily paper a little more than
+estranged. I thought them worse, if anything, than Ypres. Ypres is within
+the region where, when soldiers enter it, they abandon hope, because they
+have become sane at last, and their minds have a temperature a little
+below normal. In Ypres, whatever may have been their heroic and exalted
+dreams, they awake, see the world is mad, and surrender to the doom from
+which they know a world bereft will give them no reprieve.
+
+There was a way in which the office of that daily paper was familiar. I
+had not expected it, and it came with a shock. Not only the compulsion,
+but the bewildering inconsequence of war was suggested by its activities.
+Reason was not there. It was ruled by a blind and fixed idea. The
+glaring artificial light, the headlong haste of the telegraph
+instruments, the wild litter on the floor, the rapt attention of the men
+scanning the news, their abrupt movements and speed when they had to
+cross the room, still with their gaze fixed, their expression that of
+those who dreaded something worse to happen; the suggestion of tension,
+as though the Last Trump were expected at any moment, filled me with
+vague alarm. The only place where that incipient panic is not usual is
+the front line, because there the enemy is within hail, and is known to
+be another unlucky fool. But I allayed my anxiety. I leaned over one of
+the still figures and scanned the fateful document which had given its
+reader the aspect of one who was staring at what the Moving Finger had
+done. Its message was no more than the excited whisper of a witness who
+had just left a keyhole. But I realized in that moment of surprise that
+this office was an essential feature of the War; without it, the War
+might become Peace. It provoked the emotions which assembled civilians in
+ecstatic support of the sacrifices, just as the staff of a corps
+headquarters, at some comfortable leagues behind the trenches, maintains
+its fighting men in the place where gas and shells tend to engender
+common sense and irresolution.
+
+I left the glare of that office, its heat and half-hysterical activity,
+and went into the coolness and quiet of the darkened street, and there
+the dread left me that it could be a duty of mine to keep hot pace with
+patriots in full stampede. The stars were wonderful. It is such a
+tranquillizing surprise to discover there are stars over London. Until
+this War, when the street illuminations were doused, we never knew it. It
+strengthens one's faith to discover the Pleiades over London; it is not
+true that their delicate glimmer has been put out by the remarkable
+incandescent energy of our power stations. There they are still. As I
+crossed London Bridge the City was as silent as though it had come to the
+end of its days, and the shapes I could just make out under the stars
+were no more substantial than the shadows of its past. Even the Thames
+was a noiseless ghost. London at night gave me the illusion that I was
+really hidden from the monstrous trouble of Europe, and, at least for one
+sleep, had got out of the War. I felt that my suburban street, secluded
+in trees and unimportance, was as remote from the evil I knew of as
+though it were in Alaska. When I came to that street I could not see my
+neighbours' homes. It was with some doubt that I found my own. And there,
+with three hours to go to midnight, and a book, and some circumstances
+that certainly had not changed, I had retired thankfully into a fragment
+of that world I had feared we had completely lost.
+
+"What a strange moaning the birds in the shrubbery are making!" my
+companion said once. I listened to it, and thought it was strange. There
+was a long silence, and then she looked up sharply. "What's that?" she
+asked. "Listen!"
+
+I listened. My hearing is not good.
+
+"Nothing!" I assured her.
+
+"There it is again." She put down her book with decision, and rose, I
+thought, in some alarm.
+
+"Trains," I suggested. "The gas bubbling. The dog next door. Your
+imagination." Then I listened to the dogs. It was curious, but they all
+seemed awake and excited.
+
+"What is the noise like?" I asked, surrendering my book on the antiquity
+of man.
+
+She twisted her mouth in a comical way most seriously, and tried to mimic
+a deep and solemn note.
+
+"Guns," I said to myself, and went to the front door.
+
+Beyond the vague opposite shadows of some elms lights twinkled in the
+sky, incontinent sparks, as though glow lamps on an invisible pattern of
+wires were being switched on and off by an idle child. That was shrapnel.
+I walked along the empty street a little to get a view between and beyond
+the villas. I turned to say something to my companion, and saw then my
+silent neighbours, shadowy groups about me, as though they had not
+approached but had materialized where they stood. We watched those
+infernal sparks. A shadow lit its pipe and offered me its match. I heard
+the guns easily enough now, but they were miles away.
+
+A slender finger of brilliant light moved slowly across the sky, checked,
+and remained pointing, firmly accusatory, at something it had found in
+the heavens. A Zeppelin!
+
+There it was, at first a wraith, a suggestion on the point of vanishing,
+and then illuminated and embodied, a celestial maggot stuck to the round
+of a cloud like a caterpillar to the edge of a leaf. We gazed at it
+silently, I cannot say for how long. The beam of light might have pinned
+the bright larva to the sky for the inspection of interested Londoners.
+Then somebody spoke. "I think it is coming our way."
+
+I thought so too. I went indoors, calling out to the boy as I passed his
+room upstairs, and went to where the girls were asleep. Three miles,
+three minutes! It appears to be harder to waken children when a Zeppelin
+is coming your way. I got the elder girl awake, lifted her, and sat her
+on the bed, for she had become heavier, I noticed. Then I put her small
+sister over my shoulder, as limp and indifferent as a half-filled bag. By
+this time the elder one had snuggled into the foot of her bed, resigned
+to that place if the other end were disputed, and was asleep again. I
+think I became annoyed, and spoke sharply. We were in a hurry. The boy
+was waiting for us at the top of the stairs.
+
+"What's up?" he asked with merry interest, hoisting his slacks.
+
+"Come on down," I said.
+
+We went into a central room, put coats round them, answering eager and
+innocent questions with inconsequence, had the cellar door and a light
+ready, and then went out to inspect affairs. There were more searchlights
+at work. Bright diagonals made a living network on the overhead dark. It
+was remarkable that those rigid beams should not rest on the roof of
+night, but that their ends should glide noiselessly about the invisible
+dome. The nearest of them was followed, when in the zenith, by a faint
+oval of light. Sometimes it discovered and broke on delicate films of
+high fair-weather clouds. The shells were still twinkling brilliantly,
+and the guns were making a rhythmless baying in the distance, like a
+number of alert and indignant hounds. But the Zeppelin had gone. The
+firing diminished and stopped.
+
+They went to bed again, and as I had become acutely depressed, and the
+book now had no value, I turned in myself, assuring everyone, with the
+usual confidence of the military expert, that the affair was over for the
+night. But once in bed I found I could see there only the progress
+humanity had made in its movement heavenwards. That is the way with us;
+never to be concerned with the newest clever trick of our enterprising
+fellow-men till a sudden turn of affairs shows us, by the immediate
+threat to our own existence, that that cleverness has added to the peril
+of civilized society, whose house has been built on the verge of the pit.
+War now would be not only between soldiers. In future wars the place of
+honour would be occupied by the infants, in their cradles. For war is not
+murder. Starving children is war, and it is not murder. What treacherous
+lying is all the heroic poetry of battle! Men will now creep up after
+dark, ambushed in safety behind the celestial curtains, and drop bombs on
+sleepers beneath for the greater glory of some fine figment or other. It
+filled me, not with wrath at the work of Kaisers and Kings, for we know
+what is possible with them, but with dismay at the discovery that one's
+fellows are so docile and credulous that they will obey any order,
+however abominable. The very heavens had been fouled by this obscene and
+pallid worm, crawling over those eternal verities to which eyes had been
+lifted for light when night and trouble were over dark. God was dethroned
+by science. One looked startled at humanity, seeing not the accustomed
+countenance, but, for a moment, glimpsing instead the baleful lidless
+stare of the evil of the slime, the unmentionable of a nightmare....
+
+A deafening crash brought us out of bed in one movement. I must have been
+dozing. Someone cried, "My children!" Another rending uproar interrupted
+my effort to shepherd the flock to a lower floor. There was a raucous
+avalanche of glass. We muddled down somehow--I forget how. I could not
+find the matches. Then in the dark we lost the youngest for some eternal
+seconds while yet another explosion shook the house. We got to the
+cellar stairs, and at last there they all were, their backs to the coals,
+sitting on lumber.
+
+A candle was on the floor. There were more explosions, somewhat muffled.
+The candle-flame showed a little tremulous excitement, as if it were one
+of the party. It reached upwards curiously in a long intent flame, and
+then shrank flat with what it had learned. We were accompanied by
+grotesque shadows. They stood about us on the white and unfamiliar walls.
+We waited. Even the shadows seemed to listen with us; they hardly moved,
+except when the candle-flame was nervous. Then the shadows wavered
+slightly. We waited. I caught the boy's eye, and winked. He winked back.
+The youngest, still with sleepy eyes, was trembling, though not with
+cold, and this her sister noticed, and put her arms about her. His mother
+had her hand on her boy's shoulder.
+
+There was no more noise outside. It was time, perhaps, to go up to see
+what had happened. I put a raincoat over my pyjamas, and went into the
+street. Some of my neighbours, who were special constables, hurried by.
+The enigmatic night, for a time, for five minutes, or five seconds (I do
+not know how long it was), was remarkably still and usual. It might have
+been pretending that we were all mistaken. It was as though we had been
+merely dreaming our recent excitements. Then, across a field, a villa
+began to blaze. Perhaps it had been stunned till then, and had suddenly
+jumped into a panic of flames. It was wholly involved in one roll of fire
+and smoke, a sudden furnace so consuming that, when it as suddenly
+ceased, giving one or two dying spasms, I had but an impression of flames
+rolling out of windows and doors to persuade me that what I had seen was
+real. The night engulfed what may have been an illusion, for till then I
+had never noticed a house at that point.
+
+Whispers began to pass of tragedies that were incredible in their
+incidence and craziness. Three children were dead in the rubble of one
+near villa. The ambulance that was passing was taking their father to the
+hospital. A woman had been blown from her bed into the street. She was
+unhurt, but she was insane. A long row of humbler dwellings, over which
+the dust was still hanging in a faint mist, had been demolished, and one
+could only hope the stories about that place were far from true. We were
+turned away when we would have assisted; all the help that was wanted
+was there. A stranger offered me his tobacco pouch, and it was then I
+found my rainproof was a lady's, and therefore had no pipe in its
+pocket.
+
+The sky was suspect, and we watched it, but saw only vacuity till one
+long beam shot into it, searching slowly and deliberately the whole
+mysterious ceiling, yet hesitating sometimes, and going back on its path
+as though intelligently suspicious of a matter which it had passed over
+too quickly. It peered into the immense caverns of a cloud to which it
+had returned, illuminating to us unsuspected and horrifying possibilities
+of hiding-places above us. We expected to see the discovered enemy boldly
+emerge then. Nothing came out. Other beams by now had joined the pioneer,
+and the night became bewildering with a dazzling mesh of light. Shells
+joined the wandering beams, those sparks of orange and red. A world of
+fantastic chimney-pots and black rounds of trees leaped into being
+between us and the sudden expansion of a fan of yellow flame. A bomb! We
+just felt, but hardly heard, the shock of it. A furious succession of
+such bursts of light followed, a convulsive opening and shutting of
+night. We saw that when midnight is cleft asunder it has a fiery inside.
+
+The eruptions ceased. Idle and questioning, not knowing we had heard the
+last gun and bomb of the affair, a little stunned by the maniacal
+rapidity and violence of this attack, we found ourselves gazing at the
+familiar and shadowy peace of our suburb as we have always known it. It
+had returned to that aspect. But something had gone from it for ever. It
+was not, and never could be again, as once we had known it. The security
+of our own place had been based on the goodwill or indifference of our
+fellow-creatures everywhere. To-night, over that obscure and unimportant
+street, we had seen a celestial portent illuminate briefly a little of
+the future of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+III. Islands
+
+
+JANUARY 5, 1918. The editor of the _Hibbert Journal_ betrays a secret and
+lawless passion for islands. They must be small sanctuaries, of course,
+far and isolated; for he shows quite rightly that places like the British
+Isles are not islands in any just and poetic sense. Our kingdom is earth,
+sour and worm-riddled earth, with all its aboriginal lustre trampled out.
+By islands he means those surprising landfalls, Kerguelen, the Antarctic
+Shetlands, Timor, Amboyna, the Carolines, the Marquesas, and the
+Galapagos. An island with a splendid name, which I am sure he would have
+mentioned had he thought of it, is Fernando de Noronha.
+
+There must be a fair number of people to-day who cherish that ridiculous
+dream of an oceanic solitude. We remember that whenever a storyteller
+wishes to make enchantment seem thoroughly genuine, he begins upon an
+island. One might say, if in a hurry, that Defoe began it, but in leisure
+recall the fearful spell of islands in the Greek legends. It is easily
+understood. If you have watched at sea an island shape, and pass,
+forlorn in the waste, apparently lifeless, and with no movement to be
+seen but the silent fountains of the combers, then you know where the
+Sirens were born, and why awful shapes grew in the minds of the simple
+Greeks out of the wonders in Crete devised by the wise and mysterious
+Minoans, who took yearly the tribute of Greek youth--youth which never
+returned to tell.
+
+How easily the picture of one's first island in foreign seas comes back!
+I had not expected mine, and was surprised one morning, when
+eastward-bound in the Mediterranean, to see a pallid mass of rock two
+miles to port, when I had imagined I knew the charts of that sea well
+enough. It was a frail ghost of land on that hard blue plain, and had a
+light of its own; but it looked arid and forbidding, a place of seamen's
+bones. Turning quickly to the mate I asked for its name. "Alboran," he
+said, very quietly, without looking at it, as though keeping something
+back. He said no more. But while that strange glimmer was on the sea I
+watched it; I have learned nothing since of Alboran; and so the memory of
+that brief sight of a strange rock is as though once I had blundered on a
+dreadful secret which the men who knew it preferred to keep.
+
+But there is a West Indian Island which for me is the best in the seas,
+because the memory of it is but a reflection of my last glimpse of the
+tropics. That landfall in the Spanish Main was as soundless as a dream.
+It was but an apparition of land. It might have been no more than an
+unusually vivid recollection of a desire which had once stirred the
+imagination of a boy. Looking at it, I felt sceptical, quite unprepared
+to believe that what once was a dream could be coming true by any chance
+of my drift through the years. Yet there it remained, right in our
+course, on a floor of malachite which had stains of orange drift-weed. It
+could have been a mirage. It appeared diaphanous, something so frail that
+a wind could have stirred it. Did it belong to this earth? It grew
+higher, and the waves could be seen exploding against its lower rocks. It
+_was_ a dream come true. Yet even now, as I shall not have that landfall
+again, I have a doubt that waters could be of the colours which were
+radiant about that island, that rocks could be of rose and white, that
+trees could be so green and aromatic, and light--except of the
+Hesperides, which are lost--so like the exhilarating life and breath of
+the prime. A doubt indeed! For every whisper one hears to-day deepens the
+loom of a gigantic German attack.
+
+
+
+
+IV. Travel Books
+
+
+JANUARY 19, 1918. What long hours at night we wait for sleep! Sleep will
+not come. A friend, who grows more like a sallow congestion of scorn than
+a comfortable companion, warned me yesterday, when I spoke of the end of
+the War, that it might have no end. He said that we could not escape our
+fate. Our star, I gathered, was to receive a celestial spring-cleaning.
+There would be bonfires of litter. We had become impeded with the rubbish
+of centuries of wise and experienced statecraft, and we had hardly more
+than begun to get rid of it. A renaissance with a vengeance! Youth was in
+revolt against the aged and the dead.
+
+But what an idea to look at when waiting for sleep! I turned over with
+another sigh, and recalled that William James has advised us that a
+deleterious thought may be exorcised by willing another that is sunny. I
+tried to command a more enjoyable picture for eyes that were closed but
+intent. Yet you never know where the most promising image will transport
+you through some inconsequential association. I recalled a pleasing day
+in the Eastern Mediterranean, and that brought _Eothen_ into my mind, by
+chance. And instantly, instead of seeing Sfax in Tunis, I was looking
+down from a window on a black-edged day of rain, watching an unending
+procession of moribund figures jolting over the _pavé_ of a street in
+Flanders, in every kind of conveyance, from the Yser. There I was, back
+at the War, at two in the morning, and all because I had read _Eothen_
+desperately in odd moments while waiting for the signs which would warn
+me that the enemy was about to enter that village.
+
+No escape yet! I could hear the old clock slowly making its way towards
+another day. I heard a belated wayfarer going home, his feet muffled in
+snow. Anyhow, I never had much of an opinion of _Eothen_, a book over
+which the cymbals have been banged too loudly. Compare it, as a travel
+book, for substance and style, with _A Week on the Concord_; though that
+is a silly thing to ask, if no sillier than literary criticism usually
+is. But though all the lists the critics make of our best travel books
+invariably give Kinglake's a principal place, I have not once seen
+Thoreau's narrative included.
+
+What is the test for such a book? I should ask it to be a trustworthy
+confidence of a kingdom where the marches may be foreign to our cheap and
+usual experience, though familiar enough to our dreams. It may not offer,
+but it must promise that Golden City which drew Raleigh to the Orinoco,
+Thoreau to Walden Pond, Doughty to Arabia, Livingstone to Tanganyika, and
+Hudson to the Arctic. The fountain of life is there. We hope to come to
+our own.
+
+We never notice whether that country has good corn-land, or whether it is
+rich enough in minerals to arouse an interest in its future. But its
+prospects are lovely and of good report. It is always a surprise to find
+the earth can look so good, and behave so handsomely, on the quiet, to a
+vagabond traveller like Thoreau, who has no valid excuse for not being at
+honest work, as though it reserved its finest mornings to show to
+favoured children when really good people are not about. The Sphinx has a
+secret only for those who do not see her wink.
+
+
+
+
+V. Signs of Spring
+
+
+FEBRUARY 16, 1918. A catalogue of second-hand books was sent to me
+yesterday. A raid warning, news of the destruction of Parliament House,
+or a whisper of the authentic ascent of Mr. Lloyd George in a fiery
+chariot and of the flight of God, would do no more to us than another
+kick does to the dead. But that catalogue had to be handled to be
+believed. It was an incredible survival from the days before the light
+went out. Those minor gratifications have gone. I had even forgotten they
+were ever ours. Sometimes now one wakes to a morning when the window is a
+golden square, a fine greeting to a good earth, and the whistle of a
+starling in the apple tree just outside is as tenuous as a thread of
+silver; the smell of coffee brings one up blithe as a boy about to begin
+play again. Yet something we feel to be wrong--a foggy memory of an ugly
+dream--ah, yes; the War, the War. The damned remembrance of things as
+they are drops its pall. The morning paper, too, I see, has the
+information that our men are again cheerfully waiting for the spring
+offensive.
+
+Cheerfully! But, of course, the editor knows. And the _spring_ offensive!
+I have seen that kind of vernal gladness. What an advent! When you find
+the first blue egg in the shrubbery behind your billet in Artois; when
+the G. S. O. 2 comes into the mess with a violet in his fingers, and
+shows it to every doubter, then you know the time has come for the
+testing of the gas cylinders, and you wonder whether this is the last
+time you will be noteworthy because you had the earliest news of the
+chiffchaff. The spring offensive! Guns are now converging by leagues of
+roads to a new part of the Front, to try to do there what they failed to
+do elsewhere. The men, as all important editors know, are happily waiting
+for the great brutes to begin bellowing again in infernal concert. So
+there accumulates at breakfast in these spring days all that evidence
+which makes one proud to share with one's fellows the divine gift of
+reason, instead of a blind and miserable animal instinct. No wonder the
+cuckoo has a merry note!
+
+That is the way we idle and hapless civilians now begin our day. I look
+up to the sky, and wonder whether this inopportune spell of fine weather
+means that some London children will be killed in bed to-night. As I pass
+the queues of women who have been waiting for hours for potatoes, and
+probably won't get any, though the earth doubtless is still abundant, if
+we had but the sense and opportunity to try it, I cannot help wondering
+whether it would not have been better for us to have refused the gift of
+reason from which could be devised the edifying wonders of civilization,
+and have remained in the treetops instead, so ignorant that we were
+unaware we were lucky.
+
+Another grave statement by a great statesman, and, when we are fortunate,
+a field postcard, are to-day our full literary deserts. Is it surprising
+that catalogues of old books do not come our way? We do not deserve them.
+Hope faintly revives, when the postman cheers us with an overdue field
+postcard, of a morning to dawn when the abstraction we name the "average
+intelligence" and the "great heart of the public" and the "herd mind,"
+will not only regret that it made a ruinous fool of itself the night
+before, but solemnly resolve to end all disruptive and dirty habits. This
+wild hope was born in me of such a postcard (all right so far!)
+coinciding with the arrival of the list of old books. It seemed at that
+moment that things could be different and better. Then, when closing the
+front door that morning--very gently--not slamming it on the run--I saw
+something else. The door noiselessly closed, an easy launch into a
+tranquil day, as though I had come down through the night with the
+natural process of the hours, and so had commenced the day at the right
+moment, I noticed the twig of a lilac bush had intruded into the porch.
+It directly indicated me with a black finger. What did it want? I looked
+intently, sure that an omen was here. Aha! So that was it! The twig was
+showing me that it had a green nail.
+
+Four young officers of the Flying Corps passed me, going ahead briskly,
+and I thought that an elm under which they walked had kindling in it a
+suggestion of coloured light. But it was too delicate to be more than a
+hope. It must be confessed that the men who fight in the air were more
+distinct than that light. Then the four officers parted, two to either
+side, when marching past another figure. They went beyond it swiftly,
+taking no notice of it, turned into the future, and vanished. I drew near
+the bowed and leisurely being, which had a spade over its shoulder.
+
+It stopped to light a pipe, and I caught up to it. The edge of the spade
+was like silver with use, and the big hand which grasped it was brown
+with dry earth. The lean neck of this figure was tinctured with many
+summers, and cross-hatched by the weather and mature maleness. I caught a
+smell of newly-turned earth. The figure moved as though time were
+nothing. It turned its face as I drew level, and said it was a good
+morning. The morning was better than good; and somehow this object in an
+old hat and clothes as rough as bark, with a face which probably had the
+same expression when William was momentous at Hastings, and when Pitt
+solemnly ordered the map of Europe to be rolled up, was in accord with
+the light in the elm, and the superior and convincing insolence of the
+blackbirds. They all suggested the tantalizing idea that solid ground is
+near us, in this unreasonable world of anxious change, if only we had
+intelligence enough to know where to look for it.
+
+
+
+
+VI. Prose Writing
+
+
+MARCH 16, 1918. A critic has been mourning because good prose is not
+being written to-day. This surprised him, and he asked why it was that
+when poetry, which he pictured as "primroses and violets," found
+abundance of nourishment even in the unlikely compost these latter days
+provide, yet prose, which he saw as "cabbages and potatoes," made but
+miserable growth.
+
+It is hard to explain it, for I must own that the image of the potato
+confuses me. One has seen modern verse which was, florally, very
+spud-like. If those potatoes were meant for violets then they suggest
+more than anything else a simple penny guide-book for their gardeners.
+Here we see at least the danger of using flowers of speech, when violets
+and onions get muddled in the same posy, and how ill botany is likely to
+serve the writer who flies heedlessly to it for literary symbols. Figures
+of speech are pregnant with possibilities (I myself had better be very
+careful here), and those likely to show most distress over their progeny
+are the unlucky fathers. For the first thing expected of any literary
+expression is that it should be faithful to what is in the mind, and if
+for the idea of good prose writing the image of a potato is given, then
+it can but represent the features of the earthy lumps which are common to
+the stalls of the market-place. What is prose? Sodden and lumbering
+stuff, I suppose. And what is poetry? That fortunate lighting of an idea
+which delights us with the belief that we have surprised truth, and have
+seen that it is beautiful.
+
+The difficulty with what the textbooks tell us is prose is that many of
+us make it, not naturally and unconsciously like the gentleman who
+discovered he had been doing it all his life, but professionally.
+Consider the immense output of novels--but no, do not let us consider
+anything so surprising and perplexing. The novel, that most exacting
+problem in the sublimation of the history of our kind, not to be solved
+with ease, it now appears may be handled by children as a profitable
+pastime. Children, of course, should be taught to express themselves in
+writing, and simply, lucidly, and with sincerity. Yet all editors know
+the delusion is common with beginners in journalism that the essay, a
+form in which perhaps only six writers have been successful in the
+history of English letters, is but a prelude to serious work, a holiday
+before the realities have begun. They all attempt it. Every editorial
+letter-box is loaded with essays every morning. Yet the love of learning,
+and wisdom and humour, are not usual, and the gods still more rarely give
+with these gifts the ability to express them in the written word; and how
+often may we count on learning, wisdom, and humour being not only
+reflected through a delightful and original character, but miraculously
+condensed into the controlled display of a bright and revealing beam? It
+is no wonder we have but six essayists!
+
+There is no doubt about it. If we mean by prose much more than the
+sincere and lucid written expression of our desires and opinions, it is
+because beyond that simplicity we know the thrill which is sometimes
+given by a revelation of beauty and significance in common words and
+tidings. The best writing must come of a gift for making magic out of
+what are but commodities to us, and that gift is not distributed by the
+generous gods from barrows which go the round of the neighbourhoods where
+many babies are born, as are faith, hope, and credulity, those virtues
+that cause the enormous circulations of the picture papers, and form the
+ready material for the careers of statesmen and the glory of famous
+soldiers. It is more unusual. We see it as often as we do comets and
+signs in the heavens, a John in the Wilderness again, pastors who would
+die for their lambs, women who contemn the ritual and splendour of
+man-slaying, and a politician never moved by the enticements of a
+successful career. It is therefore likely that when we see great prose
+for the first time we may not know it, and may not enjoy it. It can be so
+disrespectful to what we think is good. It may be even brightly innocent
+of it. And as in addition our smaller minds will be overborne by the
+startling activity and cool power of the prose of such a writer as Swift,
+its superiority will only enhance our complaining grief.
+
+
+
+
+VII. The Modern Mind
+
+
+JULY 6, 1918. A Symphony in Verse has just come to me from America. The
+picture on its wrapper shows a man in green tights, and whose hair is
+blue, veiling his eyes before a lady in a flame-coloured robe who stares
+from a distance in a tessellated solitude. As London two days ago
+celebrated Independence Day like an American city, and displayed the
+Stars and Stripes so deliriously that the fact that George III was ever a
+British king was lost in a common acknowledgment that he was only another
+violent fool, this Boston book invited attention. For ladies in gowns of
+flame, with arms raised in appeal, may be supposed to want more than the
+vote; and American poets wearing emerald tights who find themselves in
+abandoned temples alone with such ladies, must clearly have left Whittier
+with the nursery biscuits. Longfellow could never grow blue locks. Even
+Whitman dressed in flannel and ate oranges in public. Nor did Poe at his
+best rise to assure us:
+
+  "This is the night for murder: give us knives:
+   We have long sought for this."
+
+Well, not all of us. The truth is some of us have not sought for knives
+with any zest, being paltry and early Victorian in our murders. Yet in
+this symphony in verse, _The Jig of Forslin_, by Mr. Conrad Aiken, there
+are such lines as these:
+
+  "When the skies are pale and stars are cold,
+   Dew should rise from the grass in little bubbles,
+   And tinkle in music amid green leaves.
+   Something immortal lives in such air--
+   We breathe, we change.
+   Our bodies become as cold and bright as starlight.
+   Our hearts grow young and strange.
+   Let us extend ourselves as evening shadows
+   And learn the nocturnal secrets of these meadows."
+
+It is not all knives and murder. The Jig, in fact, dances us through a
+world of ice lighted by star gleams and Arctic streamers, where sometimes
+our chill loneliness is interrupted by a woman whose "mouth is a sly
+carnivorous flower"; where we escape the greenish light of a vampire's
+eyes to enter a tavern where men strike each other with bottles. Mermaids
+are there, and Peter and Paul, and when at last Mr. Aiken feels the
+reader may be released, it is as though we groped in the dark, bewildered
+and alarmed, for assurance that this was nothing but art.
+
+One cannot help feeling, while reading this product of the modern mind,
+that we are all a little mad, and that the cleverest of us know it, and
+indulge the vagaries and instability of insanity. In an advertisement to
+Mr. Aiken's poetry we are told that it is based on the Freudian
+psychology. We are not seldom reminded to-day of that base to the New
+Art. We are even beginning to look on each other's simplest acts with a
+new and grave suspicion. It causes a man to wonder what obscure motive,
+probably hellish, prompted his wife to brush his clothes, though when he
+caught her at it she was doing it in apparent kindness. Instead of the
+truth making us free, its dread countenance, when we glimpse it, only
+startles us into a pallid mimicry of its sinister aspect. It is like the
+sardonic grin I have seen on the face of an intelligent soldier as he
+strode over filth and corpses towards shell-fire. Soldiers, when they are
+home again, delight in watching the faces and the ways of children. They
+want to play with the youngsters, eat buns in the street, and join the
+haymakers. They do not want the truth. Without knowing anything of Freud,
+they can add to their new and dreadful knowledge of this world all they
+want of the subconscious by reading the warlike speeches of the aged, one
+of the most obscene and shocking features of the War. The soldiers who
+are home on leave turn in revolt from that to hop-scotch. Yes, the truth
+about our own day will hardly bear looking at, whether it is reflected
+from common speech, or from the minds of artists like Mr. Conrad Aiken.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. Magazines
+
+
+JULY 16, 1918. I was looking in a hurry for something to read. One
+magazine on the bookstall told me it was exactly what I wanted for a
+railway journey. It had a picture of a large gun to make its cover
+attractive. The next advertised its claims in another way. A girl's face
+was the decorative feature of its wrapper, and you could not imagine eyes
+and a simper more likely to make a man feel holier than Bernard of Cluny
+till your gaze wandered to the face of the girl smirking from the
+magazine beyond. Is it possible that nobody reads current English
+literature, as the magazines give it, except the sort of men who collect
+golf balls and eat green gooseberries? It seems like it. One wonders what
+the editors of those magazines read when they are on a railway journey.
+For it would be interesting to know whether this sort of thing is done
+purposely, like glass beads for Africa, or whether it is the gift of
+heaven, natural and unconscious, like chickweed.
+
+One would be grateful for direction in this. The matter is of some
+importance, because either the producers or the readers are in a bad
+way; and it would be disheartening to suppose it is the readers, for
+probably there are more readers than editors, and so less chance of a
+cure. I do not want to believe it is the readers. It is more
+comforting to suppose those poor people must put up with what they can
+get in a hurry ten minutes before the train starts, only to find, as
+they might have guessed, that vacuity is behind the smirk of a girl with
+a face like that. They are forced to stuff their literature behind them,
+so that ownership of it shall not openly shame them before their
+fellow-passengers.
+
+With several exceptions, the mass of English magazines and reviews may be
+dismissed in a few seconds. The exceptions usually are not out yet, or
+one has seen them. It used not to be so, and that is what makes me think
+it is the producers, and not the readers, who require skilled attention.
+It is startling to turn to the magazines of twenty or thirty years ago,
+and to compare them with what is thought good enough for us. I was
+looking through such a magazine recently, and found a poem by Swinburne,
+a prose-romance by William Morris, and much more work of a quality you
+would no more expect to find in a current magazine than you would palm
+trees in Whitechapel.
+
+Of all the periodicals which reach the British front, the two for which
+there is most competition in any officers' mess are _La Vie Parisienne_
+and New York _Life_. The impudent periodical from Paris is universal on
+our front. The work of its artists decorates every dug-out. I should say
+almost every mess subscribes for it. It is true it is usual to account
+for this as being naughty chance. Youth has been separated from the sober
+influence of its English home, is away from the mild and tranquil light
+of Oxford Street feminity, is given to death, and therefore snatches in
+abandon at amusement which otherwise would not amuse. Do not believe it.
+_La Vie Parisienne_, it is true, is certainly not a paper for the English
+family. I should be embarrassed if my respected aunts found it on my
+table, pointed to its drawings, and asked me what I saw in them. What
+makes it popular with young Englishmen in France is not the audacity of
+its abbreviated underclothing, for there are English prints which
+specialize in those in a more leering way, and they are not widely
+popular like the French print. But _La Vie_ is produced by intelligent
+men. It is not a heavy lump of stupid or snobbish photographs. It does
+not leer. There is nothing clownish and furtive about it. It is the gay
+and frank expression of artists whose humour is too broad for the
+general; but, as a rule, there is no doubt about the fine quality of
+their drawings and the deftness of their wit. That is what makes the
+French print so liked by our men.
+
+New York _Life_ proves that, it seems to me. The American periodical is
+very popular in France, and the demand for it has now reached London. The
+chemise is not its oriflamme. It properly recognizes much else in life.
+But its usual survey of the world's affairs has a merry expansiveness
+which would make the editorial mind common to London as giddy as grandma
+in an aeroplane. It is not written in a walled enclosure of ideas. It is
+not darkened and circumscribed by the dusty notions of the clubs. It does
+not draw poor people as sub-species of the human. It does not recognize
+class distinctions at all, except for comic purposes. It is brighter,
+better-informed, bolder, and more humane than anything on this side, and
+our men in France find its spirit in accord with theirs. One of the
+results of the War will be that they will want something like it when
+they come back, though I don't see how they are to get it unless it is
+imported, or unless they emigrate to a country where to feel that way
+about things is normal and not peculiar.
+
+
+
+
+IX. The Marne
+
+
+AUGUST 3, 1918. The holy angels were at Mons; British soldiers saw them
+there. A Russian army was in England in 1914; everybody knew someone who
+had seen it. And Joan of Arc, in shining armour, has returned to the aid
+of the French. These and even graver symptoms warn us that we may not be
+in that state of equanimity which is useful when examining evidence. Only
+this week, in the significant absence of the house-dog, a mysterious hand
+thrust through my letter-box a document which proved, as only propaganda
+may, that this war was thoroughly explored in the Book of Daniel. Why
+were we not told so before? Why was Lord Haldane reading Hegel when there
+was Daniel? What did we pay him for? And that very same night I stood at
+the outer gate with one who asked me why, when there were stacks of jam
+in our grocer's shop, we could not buy any because the Food Controller
+had omitted to put up the price. I had no time to reason this out,
+because at that moment we heard a loud buzzing in the sky. We gazed up
+into the velvet black night, that was like a skull-cap over the world.
+The buzzing continued. "Perhaps," said my companion, "what we can hear is
+our great big Bee."
+
+That buzzing overhead did not develop. It merely waned and increased. It
+was remarkable but inconsequential. It alarmed while giving no good cause
+for alarm. In the invisible heavens there might have been One who was
+playing Bogie to frighten poor mortals for fun. I went in to continue my
+reading of Charles le Goffic's book, _General Foch at the Marne_. This
+was all in accord with the Book of Daniel, and the jam that was uneatable
+because it was not dear enough. My reading continued, as it were, the
+mysterious buzzing.
+
+I can give, as a rule, but a slack attention to military history, and my
+interest in war itself is, fundamentally, the same as for cretinism and
+bad drains. I merely wonder why it is, and wish it were not. But the
+Marne, I regret to say, holds me in wonder still; for this there is
+nothing to say excepting that, from near Meaux, I heard the guns of the
+Marne. I saw some of its pomp and circumstance. I had been hearing the
+guns of the War for some weeks then, but the guns of the Marne were
+different. They who listened knew that those foreboding sounds were of
+the crisis, with all its import. If that thundering drew nearer....
+
+The Marne holds me still, as would a ghost story which, by chance, had me
+within its weird. I want to know all that can be told of it. And if there
+is one subject of the War more than another which needs a careful sorting
+of the mixed straws in our beards, it is the Battle of the Marne. In the
+case of my own beard, one of the straws is the Russian myth. In France,
+as in England, everybody knew someone who had seen those Russians. One
+huge camp, I was told, was near Chartres, and in Paris I was shown
+Cossack caps which had come from there. That was on the day Manoury's
+soldiers went east in their historic sortie of taxicabs against von
+Kluck. I could not then go to Chartres to confirm that camp of Cossacks;
+nor--and this is my straw--could the German Intelligence Staff. I did not
+believe that the Russians were in France, but I could not prove they were
+not, nor could the German generals, who, naturally, had heard about those
+Russians. Now the rapid sweep of the German right wing under von Kluck
+had given the enemy a vulnerable flank which, in a certain situation,
+might admit disaster. The peril of his western flank must have made the
+enemy sensitive to the least draught coming from there.
+
+It is on such frailties as this that the issue of battle depends, and the
+fate of empires. War, as a means of deciding our luck, is no more
+scientific than dicing for it. The first battle of the Marne holds a
+mystery which will intrigue historians, separate friends, cause hot
+debate, spawn learned treatises, help to fill the libraries, and assist
+in keeping not a few asylums occupied, for ages. If you would measure it
+as a cause for lunacy, read Belloc's convincing exposition of the battle,
+and compare that with le Goffic's story of the fighting of the Ninth
+Army, under General Foch, by Fčre Champenoise and the Marshes of St.
+Gond. Le Goffic was there.
+
+Why did fate tip the beam in the way we know? Why, for a wonder, did the
+sound of gunfire recede from Paris, and not approach still nearer? I
+myself at the time held to an unreasonable faith that the enemy would
+never enter Paris, in spite of what Kitchener thought and the French
+Government feared. Yet when challenged I could not explain why, for I was
+ill, and the days seemed to be biassed to the German side. To have heard
+the guns of the Marne was as though once one had listened to the high
+gods contending over our destiny.
+
+Historians of the future will spell out le Goffic on the fighting round
+the Tower on the Marshes at Mondement. It was the key of the swamp of St.
+Gond, the French centre. The Tower was held by the French when, by every
+military rule, they should have given it up. At length they lost it. They
+won it again, but because of sheer unreason, so far as the evidence
+shows, for at the moment they regained it Mondement had ceased to be
+anything but a key to a door which had been burst wide open. Foch, by the
+books, was beaten. But Foch as we know was fond of quoting Joseph de
+Maistre: "A battle lost is a battle which one had expected to lose." In
+this faith, while his battalions were reduced to thin companies without
+officers, and the Prussian Guard and the Saxons were driving back his
+whole line, Foch, who had sent to borrow the 42nd Division from the
+general on his left, kept reporting to Headquarters: "The situation is
+excellent." But the 42nd had not yet arrived, and he continued to
+retire.
+
+Contradicting Belloc and the usual explanations, M. le Goffic says that
+Foch was unaware of any gap in the German line. What he did was to
+thrust in a bleak venture the borrowed division against the flank of the
+advancing Prussians, who were in superior force. The Prussians retired.
+But had they not been preparing to retire? Yet for what reason? When all
+seemed lost, Foch won on the centre.
+
+On the extreme French left, where Manoury was himself being outflanked by
+von Kluck, the fatigued and outnumbered French soldiers were resigned to
+the worst. They had done all that was possible, and it seemed of no
+avail. They did not know that at that time the locomotives in the rear of
+the German armies were reversed; were heading to the north. What happened
+in the minds of the directing German generals--for that is where the
+defeat began--is not clear; but the sudden and prolonged resistance of
+the French at the Marne may have disrupted with a violent doubt minds
+that had been taut with over-confidence. The fear to which the doubt
+increased when Manoury attacked and persisted, the baffling audacity in
+the centre of the defeated Foch, who did everything no well-bred
+militarist would expect from another gentleman, and the common fervour of
+the French soldiers who fought for a week like men possessed, at last
+caused something to give way in the brain of the enemy. He could not
+understand it. This was not according to his plan. He could not find it
+in his books. He did not know what more he could do, except to retire
+into safety and think it over afresh. The unexpected fury of the human
+spirit, outraged into desperation after it was assumed to be subdued, and
+bursting suddenly, and regardless of consequences, against the calm and
+haughty front of material science assured of its power, checked and
+deflected the processes of the German intelligence. I have seen an
+indignant rooster produce the same effect on a bull.
+
+
+
+
+X. Carlyle
+
+
+AUGUST 17, 1918. Having something on the mind may lead one to salvation,
+but it seems just as likely to lead one to the asylum. The Germans, who
+are necessarily in the power of an argument which shows them we are
+devils, are yet compelled to admit that Shakespeare is worth reasoned
+consideration, and so they avoid the implied difficulty by explaining
+that as Shakespeare was a genius therefore he was a German. What we
+should do if it could be proved a grandfather of the poet was a Prussian
+probably only our Home Secretary could tell us, after he had made quite
+sure he would not be overheard by a white and tense believer in the
+Hidden Hand. Thank God Heine was a Jew, though even so there are rumours
+that a London memorial to him is to be removed. And last night I heard it
+expounded very seriously, by a clever man of letters, that Carlyle's day
+is done. Few people read Carlyle to-day--and it may be supposed that as
+they read they hold his volumes with a Hidden Hand--and fewer still love
+him, for at heart he was a Prussian. He was, indeed, slain in our
+affections by Frederick the Great. His shrine at Chelsea is no longer
+visited. It is all for the best, because in any case he wrote only a
+gnarled and involved bastard stuff of partly Teutonic origin. While this
+appeal was being made to me, I watched the face of a cat, which got up
+and stretched itself during the discourse, with some hope; but that
+animal looked as though it were thinking of its drowned kittens. It was
+the last chance, and the cat did not laugh. On my way home, thinking of
+that grave man of letters and of his serious and attentive listeners, I
+noticed even the street lights were lowered or doused, and remembered
+that every wine-shop was shut. London is enough to break one's heart. If
+only by some carelessness one of the angels failed to smother his great
+laughter over us, and we heard it, we might, in awakening embarrassment,
+the first streak of dawn, put a stop to what had been until that moment
+an unconscious performance.
+
+
+
+
+XI. Holiday Reading
+
+
+AUGUST 31, 1918. I make the same mistake whenever the chance of a holiday
+broadens and brightens. A small library, reduced by a process of natural
+selection, helps to make weighty the bag. But I do not at once close the
+bag; a doubt keeps it open; I take out the books again and consider them.
+When the problem of carrying those volumes about faces me, it is a relief
+to discover how many of them lose their vital importance. Yet a depraved
+sense of duty, perhaps the residue of what such writers as Marcus
+Aurelius have done for me, refuses to allow every volume to be
+jettisoned. It imposes, as a hair shirt, several new and serious books
+which there has been no time to examine. They are books that require a
+close focus, a long and steady concentration, a silent immobility hardly
+distinguishable from sleep. This year for instance I notice Jung's
+_Analytical Psychology_ confidently expecting to go for a holiday with
+me. I feel I ought to take some such stern reminder of mortality, and, in
+addition, out of a sentimental regard for the past, a few old books, for
+my faith is not dead that they may put a new light on the wonderful
+strangeness of these latter days. I take these, too.
+
+And that is why I find them at the journey's end. But why did I bring
+them? For now they seem to be exactly what I would avoid--they look like
+toil. And work, as these years have taught the observant, is but for
+slaves and the conscripted. It is never admired, except with a distant
+and haughty sententiousness, by the best people.
+
+Nor is it easy, by this west-country quay, to profit by a conscience
+which is willing to allow some shameless idleness. I began talking,
+before the books were even unpacked, with some old acquaintances by the
+water-side. Most disquieting souls! But I cannot blame them. They have
+been obliged to add gunnery to their knowledge of seamanship and
+navigation. They were silent, they shook their heads, following some
+thoughtless enquiries of mine after the wellbeing of other men I used to
+meet here. Worse than all, I was forced to listen to the quiet recitals
+of stranded cripples, once good craftsmen in the place, and these dimmed
+the blessed sun even where in other years it was unusually bright. That
+is what put holiday thoughts and literature away. I felt I had been very
+unfairly treated, especially as the mutilated, being young men, were
+unpleasantly noticeable in so small a village on fine mornings. It is not
+right that the calm of our well-earned leisure should be so savagely
+ruined. There was one morning on the quay when, watching the incoming
+tide, two of us were discussing Mametz Wood and some matters relating to
+it which will never be published, and the young man who was instructing
+me was approached by an older man, who beamed, and held in his hand a
+news-sheet. "Splendid news this morning," said the elderly man to the
+young soldier. He wanted the opinion of one who had fought on that
+ground, and I regret to say he got it. The soldier indifferently handed
+back the glorious news, without inspecting it, with words which youth
+should never address to age.
+
+So how can I stay by the quay all the golden day long? I have not come
+here prepared to endure the sudden Arctic shadows which fall, even in
+summer, from such clouds. The society of our fellows was never so
+uncertain, so likely to be stormy, as in these days. And the opinions of
+none of our fellow-men can be so disturbing as those of the rebel from
+the trenches, who appears, too, to expect us to agree with him at once,
+as though he had a special claim on our sympathetic attention. While
+considering him and his views of society, of peace and war, I see what
+might come upon us as the logical consequence of such a philosophy, and
+the dread vision does not accord with the high serenity of this Atlantic
+coast, where the wind, like the hilarious vivacity of a luminous globe
+spinning through the blue, is mocking these very sheets as I write them,
+and is trying to blow them, a little before their time, into vacuity.
+
+It is not easy, and perhaps this summer it would not be right, to find
+the exact mood for a holiday. In the frame of mind which is more usual
+with us, I put Ecclesiastes--forsaken by a previous visitor, and used to
+lengthen a short leg of the dressing-table--in my pocket, and leave the
+quay to its harsh new thoughts, and to the devices by which it gets a
+bare sustenance out of the tides, the seasons, and the winds, complicated
+now with high explosives in cunning ambush; and go out to the headland,
+where wild goats among the rocks which litter the steep are the only life
+to blatter critical comment to high heaven. I left that holiday quay and
+its folk, and took with me a prayer which might go far to brace me to
+support the blattering of goats, if that, too, should be my luck even
+when in solitude. I passed at the hill-top the last whitewashed wall of
+the village, where the open Atlantic is sighted, and stopped to glance at
+the latest official poster on the wall. That explained to me, while the
+west wind blew, what the penalties are for young men who are in the wrong
+because they are young, not having attained the middle-age which brings
+with it immunity for the holding of heroic notions. Yet how if those
+young men are not bellicose like their wise seniors? Why should they get
+the evil which their elders, who will it, take so much care to avoid?
+
+The dust of official lorries in a hurry no longer made the wayside hedges
+appear aged. The wind was newly arrived from mid-ocean. I met it coming
+ashore. It knew nothing about us, so far. In the distance, the village
+with its shipping was a faint blur, already a faded impress on earth, as
+though more than half forgotten in spite of its important problems. It
+was hardly more than a discoloration, and suggested nothing of
+consequence. The sun on the grey rocks was giving a hint that, should
+ever it be required, there was heat enough left to begin things anew. I
+realized in alarm that such a morning of re-birth might be beautiful; for
+I might not be there to sing _Laus Deo_. I might miss that fine morning.
+There was a suggestion of leisure in the pattern of the lichen on the
+granite; it gave the idea of prolonged yet still merely tentative efforts
+at design. The lichen seemed to have complete assurance that there was
+time enough for new work. The tough stems of the heather, into which I
+put my hand, felt like the sinews of a body that was as ancient as the
+other stars, but still so young that it was tranquilly fixed in the joy
+of its first awakening, knowing very little yet, guessing nothing of its
+beginning nor of its end; still infantile, with all life before it, its
+voice merely the tiny shrilling of a grasshopper. The rocks were poised
+so precariously above the quivering plain of the sea that they appeared
+to tremble in mid-air, being things of no weight, in the rush of the
+planet. The distant headlands and moors dilated under the generating sun.
+It was then that I pulled Ecclesiastes out of my pocket, leaned against
+the granite, and began:
+
+"Vanity of vanities..."
+
+I looked up again. There was a voice above me. An old goat, the
+venerable image of all-knowledge, of sneering and bearded sin, was
+contemplating me. It was a critical comment of his that I had heard.
+Embarrassed, I put away my book.
+
+
+
+
+XII. An Autumn Morning
+
+
+SEPTEMBER 28, 1918. The way to my suburban station and the morning train
+admonishes me sadly with its stream of season-ticket holders carrying
+dispatch-cases, and all of them anxious, their resolute pace makes it
+evident, for work. This morning two aeroplanes were over us in the blue,
+in mimic combat; they were, of course, getting into trim for the raid
+to-night, because the barometer is beautifully high and steady. But the
+people on their way to the 9.30 did not look up at the flight. Life is
+real, life is earnest. When I doubt that humanity knows what it is doing,
+I get comfort from watching our local brigadiers and Whitehall ladies on
+their way these tranquil Autumn mornings to give our planet another good
+shove towards the millennium. Progress, progress! I hear their feet
+overtaking me, brisk and resolute, as though a revelation had come to
+them overnight, and so now they know what to do, undiverted by any doubt.
+There is a brief glimpse of a downcast face looking as though it had just
+chanted the Dies Irć through the mouthfuls of a hurried breakfast; and
+once more this laggard is passed in the day's race towards the higher
+peak. The reproof goes home. It justly humiliates. But the weather is
+only a little west of south for one of the last fair days of the year;
+and the gloom of the yew in the churchyard--which stands over the obscure
+headstone of a man named Puplett--that yew which seems the residue of the
+dark past, has its antiquity full of little smouldering embers of new
+life again; and so a lazy man has reasons to doubt whether the millennium
+is worth all this hurry. As it is, we seem to have as much trouble as
+there is time to classify before supper; by which time, from the look of
+the weather, there will be more. Then why hurry over it? The tombstone
+says Puplett was a "thrifty and industrious parent," and I can see what
+happened to him in 1727. What would I not give, I ask myself, as I pause
+by the yew, and listen to the aeroplanes overhead, for a few words from
+this Puplett on thrift, industry, and progress! Does he now know more
+than brigadiers?
+
+It may be that what Europe is suffering from in our time is the
+consequence of having worked too hard, since that unlucky day when Watt
+gave too much thought to a boiling kettle. We have worked too hard
+without knowing why we were doing it, or what our work would do with us.
+We were never wise enough to loaf properly, to stop and glance casually
+around for our bearings. We went blindly on. Consider the newspapers, as
+they are now! A casual inspection of the mixture of their hard and
+congested sentences is enough to show that what is wanted by our writers
+famous for their virility, their power of "graphic description" as their
+outpour is called by their disciples, and their knowledge of what
+everybody ought to be doing, is perhaps no more than an occasional
+bromide. They would feel better for a long sleep. This direction by them
+of our destiny is an intoxicating pursuit, but it is as exhausting as
+would be any other indulgence. We might do quite well if they would only
+leave it to us. But they will never believe it. Ah! the Great Men of
+Action! What the world has suffered from their inspired efforts to
+shepherd humanity into worried flocks hurrying nobody knew whither, every
+schoolboy reads; and our strong men to-day, without whose names and
+portraits no periodical is considered attractive, would surely have been
+of greater benefit to us if they had remained absorbed in their earlier
+skittles. If the famous magician, who, with several others, is winning
+the war by suggestion, and that true soldier, General FitzChutney, and
+that earnest and eloquent publicist, Mr. Blufflerlow, had been persuaded
+to stick to marbles, what misleading excitement and unprofitable anxiety
+would have been spared to the commonweal! Boys should be warned against
+and protected from Great Careers. Better still if embryologists could
+discover something which would enable midwives unfailingly to recognize
+Strong Men at birth. It would be easy then to issue to those ladies
+secret but specific instructions.
+
+There is a street which turns abruptly from my straight road to the
+station. It goes like a sudden resolution to get out of this daily hurry
+and excitement. It is a pre-war street. It is an ancient thoroughfare of
+ours, a rambling and unfrequented by-way. It is more than four years
+since it was a habit of mine to loiter through it, with a man with whom I
+shall do no more pleasant idling. We enjoyed its old and ruinous shops
+and its stalls, where all things could be bought at second-hand,
+excepting young doves, ferrets, and dogs. I saw it again this morning,
+and felt, somehow, that it was the first time I had noticed it since the
+world suddenly changed. Where had it been in the meantime? It was empty
+this morning, it was still, it was luminous. It might have been waiting,
+a place that was, for the return of what can never return. Its sunlight
+was different from the glare in the hurrying road to the station. It was
+the apparition of a light which has gone out. I stopped, and was a little
+fearful. Was that street really there? I thought its illumination might
+be a ghostly sunlight haunting an avenue leading only to the nowhere of
+the memory. Did the others who were passing see that by-way? I do not
+think so. They never paused. They did not glance sideways in surprise,
+stare in an expectancy which changed almost at once into regret for what
+was good, but is not.
+
+Who would not retire into the near past, and stay there, if it were
+possible? (What a weakness!) Retrospection was once a way of escape for
+those who had not the vitality to face their own fine day with its
+exacting demands. Yet who now can look squarely at the present, except
+officials, armament shareholders, and those in perambulators? This
+side-turning offered me a chance to dodge the calendar and enter the
+light of day not ours. The morning train of the day I saw in that street
+went before the War. I decided to lose it, and visit the shop at the top
+of the street, where once you could buy anything from a toddy glass to
+an emu's egg having a cameo on it of a ship in full sail. It was also a
+second-hand bookshop. Most lovers of such books would have despised it.
+It was of little use to go there for valuable editions, or even for such
+works as Sowerby's _Botany_. But when last the other man and myself
+rummaged in it we found the first volume of the _Boy's Own Paper_, and an
+excellent lens for our landscape camera. An alligator, sadly in need of
+upholstering, stood at the door, holding old umbrellas and walking-sticks
+in its arms. The proprietor, with a sombre nature and a black beard so
+like the established shadows of his lumbered premises that he could have
+been overlooked for part of the unsalable stock, read Swedenborg, Plato,
+Plutarch, and Young's _Night Thoughts_--the latter an edition of the
+eighteenth century in which an Edinburgh parson had made frail marginal
+comments, yellow and barely discernible, such as: "How True!" This dealer
+in lumber read through large goggles, and when he had decided to admit he
+knew you were in his shop he bent his head, and questioned you steadily
+but without a word over the top of his spectacles. If you showed no real
+interest in what you proposed to buy he would refuse to sell it.
+
+There I found him again, still reading--Swedenborg this time--with most
+of the old things about him, including the Duck-billed Platypus; for
+nobody, apparently, had shown sufficient interest in them. The shop,
+therefore, was as I have always known it. There was a spark of a summer's
+day of 1914 still burning in the heart of a necromancer's crystal ball on
+the upper shelf by the window.
+
+The curio there which was really animated put down his book after I had
+been in the shop for some minutes, regarded me deliberately as though
+looking to see what change had come to me in four such years, and then
+glanced up and nodded to the soothsayer's crystal. "It's a pity," he
+said, "that those things won't really work." He asked no questions. He
+did not inquire after my friend. He did not refer to those problems which
+the crowds in the morning trains were eagerly discussing at that moment.
+He sat on a heap of forgotten magazines, and remained apart with
+Swedenborg. I loafed in the fertile dust and quiet among old prints,
+geological specimens, antlers, pewter, bed-warmers, amphorć, and books.
+The proprietor presided over the dim litter of his world, bowed, pensive,
+and silent, suggesting in his aloofness not indifference but a retired
+sadness for those for whom the mysteries could be made plain, but who are
+wilful in their blindness, and so cannot be helped.
+
+I came upon a copy of _Walden_, in its earliest Camelot dress (price
+sixpence), and remembered that one who was not there had once said he was
+looking for it in that edition. I turned to the last page and read: "Only
+that day dawns to which we are awake..."
+
+I reserved the book for him at once, though knowing I could not give it
+to him. But what is the good of cold reason? Are we awake in such dawns
+as we now witness? Or has there been no dawn yet because we are only
+restless in our sleep? It might be either way, and in such a perplexity
+reason cannot help us. I thought that perhaps I might now be stirring, on
+the point of actually rousing. There, in any case, was the evidence of
+that fugitive spark of the early summer of 1914 still imprisoned in its
+crystal, proof that the world had experienced a dawn or two. An entirely
+unreasonable serenity possessed me--perhaps because I was not fully
+roused--because of the indestructibility of those few voiceless hopes we
+cherish that seem as fugitive as the glint in the crystal ball, hopes
+without which our existence would have no meaning, for if we lost them we
+should know the universe was a witless jest, with nobody to laugh at it.
+
+"I want this book," I said to the shopman.
+
+"I know," he answered, without looking up. "I've kept it for you."
+
+
+
+
+XIII. News from the Front
+
+
+OCTOBER 12, 1918. My remembrance of the man, when I got his letter from
+France--and it was approved, apparently, by one of his regimental
+officers, for a censorial signature, was upon its envelope--was a
+regrettable and embarrassing check to my impulse to cry Victory. I found
+it hard, nevertheless, in the moment when victory was near, to forgive
+the curious lapse that letter betrayed in a fellow who did not try for
+exemption but volunteered for the infantry, and afterwards declined a
+post which would have saved him from the trenches. He was the sort of
+curious soldier that we civilians will never understand. He aided the
+enemy he was fighting. His platoon officer reported that fact as
+characteristic and admirable. He had gone out under fire to hold up a
+wounded German and give him water. He did not die then, but soon after,
+on the Hindenburg Line, because, chosen as a good man who was expert in
+killing others with a deadly mechanism, he was leading in an attack. This
+last letter of his, which arrived after the telegram warning us, in
+effect, that there could be no more correspondence with him, alluded in
+contempt to his noble profession and task, and ended with a quotation
+from Drum Taps which he prayed I would understand.
+
+His prayer was in vain. I did not understand. I read that quotation at
+breakfast, just after finishing my fierce and terrible _Daily Dustpan_,
+and the quotation, therefore, was at once repugnant and unfortunate. For
+clearly the leader-writer of the _Dustpan_ was a bolder and more martial
+man. It is but fair to assume, however, that as that journalist in the
+normal routine of a day devoted to his country had not had the good
+fortune to run up against the machine guns of the Hindenburg trenches,
+naturally he was better able to speak than a soldier who was idly
+swinging in the wire there. The quotation, strange for a Guardsman to
+make, is worth examining as an example of the baleful influence war has
+upon those who must do the fighting which journalists have the hard fate
+merely to indicate is the duty of others. The verse actually is called
+Reconciliation. After a partial recovery from the shame of the revelation
+of my correspondent's unsoldierly spirit, a shame which was a little
+softened by the thought that anyhow he was dead, I went to _Leaves of
+Grass_ for the first time for some years, to see whether Drum Taps
+accorded with war as we know it.
+
+And now I am forced to confess that we may no longer accuse the Americans
+of coming late into the War. They appear to have been in it, if the date
+of Drum Taps is ignored, longer even than Fleet Street. I cannot see that
+we have contributed anything out of our experiences of battle which can
+compare with Whitman's poems. He appears to have known of war in
+essential episodes and incidents, as well as from a high vision of it, in
+a measure which the literature of our own tragedy does not compass.
+
+A minor poet told me once that he could not read Whitman. He declared it
+was like chewing glass. When we criticize others, the instant penalty is
+that we unwittingly confess what we are ourselves. We know the reception
+of _Leaves of Grass_ was of the kind which not seldom greets the
+appearance of an exceptional book, though Emerson recognized its worth.
+So when occasionally we admit, shyly and apologetically, as is our habit
+(in the way we confess that once we enjoyed sugar candy), that long ago
+we used to read Emerson, it would do our superior culture no harm to
+remember that Emerson was at least the first of the world of letters to
+tell the new poet that his _Leaves_ was "the most extraordinary piece of
+wit and wisdom America has yet produced." Nothing in all his writing
+proves the quality of Emerson's mind so well as his instant and full
+knowledge of Whitman, when others felt that what Whitman was really
+inviting was laughter and abuse. I suppose what the young poet meant when
+he said reading Whitman was like a mouthful of glass was that Whitman has
+no music, and so cannot be read aloud. There is always a fair quantity of
+any poet's work which would do much to make this world a cold and
+unfriendly place if we persevered in reading it aloud. In some
+circumstances even Shakespeare might cause blasphemy. Perhaps he has. And
+Whitman, like summer-time, and all of us, is not always at his best. But
+I think it is possible that many people to-day will know the music and
+the solace of the great dirge beginning "When lilacs last in the dooryard
+bloom'd." And again, if capturing with words those surmises which
+intermittently and faintly show in the darkness of our speculations and
+are at once gone, if the making of a fixed star of such wayward glints is
+the mark of a poet, then Whitman gave us "On the beach at night."
+
+I had never thought Whitman so good till that soldier's letter
+accidentally discovered it to me. If Whitman had been through the
+campaign across the narrow straits, if Ypres, Vimy, and Cambrai had been
+in his own experience, he could have added little to Drum Taps. For there
+is nothing that is new in war. It is only the campaign that is new, and
+the men who are young. Yet all has happened before. But each young
+soldier in a new campaign feels that his experience is strangely
+personal. He will have the truth revealed to him, and will think that it
+is an intimacy for his soul alone; yet others, too, have seen it, but are
+dead. The survivors of this War will imagine their experiences unique,
+admonitory, terrible, and that if they had the words to tell us their
+knowledge they would not be believed or understood. That is why the
+succeeding generation, too, gets caught. Yet there is enough of this War
+in Drum Taps to have stopped it more than two years ago if only one
+European in ten had had so much imagination and enterprise as would take
+a man through a strange field gate when he was convinced it was in that
+direction he should go, and enough of charity in his heart to stay him
+from throwing stones at the sheep while on his way.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. Authors and Soldiers
+
+
+OCTOBER 26, 1918. If a man who knew no books, but who became serious when
+told of his emptiness, and showed eagerness to begin to fill it, were
+confronted with the awful strata in the library of the British Museum,
+and were told that that was his task, he might fall unconscious. But what
+cruelty! He could be warned that the threat has little in it; that the
+massed legions of books could do him no harm, if he did not disturb them.
+It could be whispered to the illiterate man--whose wisdom, it might
+chance, was better than much scholarship--that it is possible to read the
+best of the world's drama in a few months, and that in the remainder of
+the year he could read its finest poetry, history, and philosophy. I am
+but paraphrasing what was said recently by an Oxford professor. I would
+not dare to give it as my own opinion, within hearing of the high
+priests.
+
+Yet the professor's declaration may be not only outrageous, but right.
+It is a terrible thought, except to those who are merely bibliophiles
+just as some little boys are lovers of old postage stamps. I think he may
+be right, for I have a catalogue of all the books and documents prompted
+by the War and published before June, 1916. It runs to 180 pages of small
+type. It contains the names of about 3500 books and pamphlets. Now, let
+us suppose a student wished to know the truth about the War, for perhaps
+a very youthful student could imagine it was possible to get the truth
+about it. The truth may be somewhere in that catalogue; but I know, for I
+have tried, that it has no significant name to betray its pure gold, no
+strange brilliance to make the type dance on that page as one turns the
+leaves with a hopeless eye. There are, however, two certainties about the
+catalogue. One is that it would require a long life, a buoyant
+disposition, and a freedom from domestic cares, to read every book in it.
+And the other is that there are no more books in it--which we ought to
+count as books--than one evening would see us through, interruptions and
+all. The books in that mass are as dead as the leaves of their June of
+the War.
+
+I must confess, though, that I am a bibliophile with War books. Any book
+about the Great War is good enough for me. I am to that class of
+literature what little boys are to stamps. Yes; I know well the dread
+implication. I am aware of the worm in the mind; that I probe a wound;
+that I surrender to an impulse to peer into the darkness of the pit; that
+I encourage a thought which steals in with the quiet of midnight, and
+that it keeps me awake while the household sleeps. I know I consort with
+ghosts in a region of evil. I get the horrors, and I do not repel them.
+For some reason I like those ghosts. Most of them have no names for me,
+but I count them as old friends of mine; and where should I meet them
+again, at night, but amid the scenes we knew?
+
+And what do I look for in these War books? It is not easy to say. It is a
+private matter. Songs the soldiers used to sing on French roads are often
+in my head. I am like the man who was once bewitched, and saw and heard
+things in another place which nobody will believe, and who goes aside,
+therefore, unsociable and morose, to brood on what is not of this world.
+I am confessing this but to those who themselves have been lost in the
+dark, and are now awake again. The others will not know. They will only
+answer something about "Cheering up," or--and this is the strangest thing
+to hear--"to forget it." I don't want to forget it. So if in a book I see
+names like Château Thierry, Crépy-en-Valois, Dickebusch, Hooge,
+Vermelles, Hulluch, Festubert, Notre Dame de Lorette, Ligny-Tilloy,
+Sailly-Saillisel, Croiselles, Thiepval, Contalmaison, Dompierre, then I
+am caught. I do not try to escape.
+
+Yet these books rarely satisfy me. Is it not remarkable that soldiers who
+could face the shells with an excellent imitation of indifference should
+falter in their books, intimidated by the opinions of those who stayed at
+home? They rarely summon the courage to attack those heroic dummies which
+are not soldiers but idols set up in a glorious battlefield that never
+existed except as a romance among the unimaginative; the fine figures and
+the splendid war that were air-built of a rapture. These authors who were
+soldiers faced the real War, but they dare not deride the noble and
+popular figments which lived but in the transports of the exalted. They
+write in whispers, as it were, embarrassed by a knowledge which they
+would communicate, but fear they may not. To shatter a cherished
+illusion, to expose the truth to a proud memory, that, I will confess,
+is always a task before which a sensitive man will hesitate. Yet it is
+also part of the test of a writer's courage; by his hesitation a
+soldier-author may know that he is in danger of failing in his duty. Yet
+the opinion of the public, which intimidates us, is no mere bugbear. It
+is very serious. People do not enjoy the destruction of their cherished
+illusions. They do not crown the defamers of their idols. What is it that
+balks a soldier's judgment when he begins to write about the War? He is
+astonished by the reflection that if he were to reproduce with enjoyment
+the talk of the heroes which was usual in France, then many excellent
+ladies might denounce it indignantly as unmanly. Unmanly! But he is
+right. They not only might, but they would. How often have I listened to
+the cool and haughty contralto of ladies of education and refinement who
+were clearly unaware that what they were encouraging, what to them
+afforded so much pride, what deepened their conviction of righteous
+sacrifice, was but an obscene outrage on the souls and bodies of young
+men. How is one to convey that to ladies? All that a timid writer may do
+is to regret the awful need to challenge the pious assurance of
+Christians which is sure to be turned to anger by the realities.
+
+I have read in very few books anything that was as good as the gossip one
+could hear by chance in France. The intimate yarn of the observant
+soldier home on leave, who could trust his listener, is superior to much
+one sees in print. In that way I heard the best story of the War. If it
+could be put down as it was given to me it would be a masterpiece. But it
+cannot be reproduced. It came as I heard it because, remembering his
+incredible experience, the narrator found himself in secure and familiar
+circumstances again, was confident of his audience, and was thinking only
+of his story. His mind was released, he was comfortable, and he was
+looking backward in a grim humour which did not quite disguise his
+sadness. His smile was comical, but it could move no answering smile.
+These intelligent soldiers, who tell us the stories we never see in
+print, are not thinking about their style, or of the way the other men
+have told such tales, but only of what happened to themselves. They are
+as artless as the child who at breakfast so tells its dream of the night
+before that one wants to listen, and Tolstoy says that is art. The child
+has heard nothing of the apocalyptic visions, and does not know Poe,
+Ambrose Bierce, or Kipling. He is concerned only with his own sensations,
+and you listen to him because you have had such dreams, and he recalls a
+dark adventure you had forgotten.
+
+But the difficulty in the writing of such stories is that the narrator,
+as soon as he begins, becomes conscious of the successful methods of
+other men. I have been reading a number of War stories published
+recently, and it was painful to see how many were ruined by Kipling
+before this War began. Kipling was original, and his tricks of manner,
+often irritating, and his deplorable views of human society, were usually
+carried off by his genius for observation, and the spontaneity of the
+drama of his stories. But when his story was thin, and he was wandering
+in an excursion with his childish philosophy, he was usually facetious.
+As an obvious and easily imitable trick for dull evenings, this elaborate
+jocularity seems to have been more enjoyed by his disciples than his
+genius for narrative when he was happy, and his material was full and
+sound. Yet his false and vulgar fun has spoiled many of these volumes
+pollinated from India. They have another defect, too, though it would be
+unfair to blame Kipling for that when it may be seen blossoming with the
+unassuming modesty of a tulip in any number of _Punch_. I mean that
+amusing gravity of the snob who is sure of the exclusive superiority of
+his caste mark, with not the trace of a smile on his face, and at a time
+when all Europe is awakening to the fact that it sentenced itself to ruin
+when it gave great privileges to his kind of folk in return for the
+guidance of what it thought was a finer culture, but was no more than a
+different accent. It was, we are now aware, the mere Nobodies who won the
+War for us; and yet we still meekly accept as the artistic representation
+of the British soldier or sailor an embarrassing guy that would disgrace
+pantomime. And how the men who won must enjoy it!
+
+
+
+
+XV. Waiting for Daylight
+
+
+NOVEMBER 9, 1918. I read again my friend's last field service postcard,
+brief and enigmatic, and now six weeks old. I could find in it no more
+than when it first came. Midnight struck, and I went to the outer gate.
+The midnight had nothing to tell me. Not that it was silent; we would not
+call it mere silence, that brooding and impenetrable darkness charged
+with doom unrevealed, which is now our silent night, unrelenting to
+lonely watchers.
+
+Near my gate is a laburnum tree. Once upon a time, on nights of rain such
+as this, the shower caught in it would turn to stars, and somehow from
+the brightness of that transient constellation I could get my bearings. I
+knew where I was. One noticed those small matters in the past, and was
+innocently thankful for them. Those lights sufficed us. There was
+something companionable even in the street lamp. But what is it now? You
+see it, when you are accustomed to the midnight gloom of war, shrouded, a
+funeral smear of purple in a black world. No bearing can be got from it
+now. What one looks into is the lightless unknown. I peer into the night
+and rain for some familiar and reasonable shape to loom--I am permitted
+to do this, for so far the police do not object to a citizen cherishing a
+hopeful though fatuous disposition--but my usual reward is but the sound
+of unseen drainage, as though I were listening to my old landmarks in
+dissolution. I feel I should not be surprised, when daylight came, to
+find that the appearance of my neighbourhood had become like
+Spitzbergen's.
+
+That is why I soon retreat now from my gate, no wiser, bringing in with
+me on these nights of rain little more than the certainty that we need
+expect no maroons or bombs; and then, because the act is most unpatriotic
+in a time of shortage, put on more coal with my fingers, as this makes
+less noise than a shovel. I choose a pipe, the one I bought in a hurry at
+Amiens. I choose it for that reason, and because it holds more tobacco
+than the others; watch the flames, and take stock.
+
+In the winter, as we know, it never rains. It is merely wet weather.
+Still, that means only a retirement into winter quarters, into those long
+evenings against which we have hoarded our books, light and warmth in
+store. Perhaps in the case of the more idle there may be the
+consideration, pleasant and prolonged, of that other book, known to no
+other man, not yet written, and perhaps destined to perish, a secret
+dream. But what are now these books? What now is even that book which is
+perfect and unwritten? It, too, has lost its light. I am left staring
+into the fire. The newspapers tell us of a common joy at the coming of
+Peace. Peace? If she is coming, then we are much obliged to her. I
+remember during an earlier and wasted joy at a word in France of the
+coming of Peace agreeing with several young soldiers that Brussels would
+be the place to meet, to hail there with flagons the arrival of the Dove.
+But I do not want to be reminded of what has happened since that day.
+That festival could now have but one celebrant. Then, in another year of
+the War, in a mood of contrition and dismay, some people began to feel
+that on the day Peace arrived it would be seemly if she found them on
+their knees in church. Since that day, too, much has happened; and when
+Peace does come I suppose most of us will make reasonably certain the
+bird resembles a dove, and go to bed early--taking another look at the
+long-lost creature next morning, in the presence of a competent witness,
+to confirm that we have not been deceived again by another turkey
+buzzard; and, if that is certain, then let the matter drop.
+
+For in these years, when heavy weather obscures the fixed lights, and we
+are not certain about our bearings, it is useless to pretend that the
+darkness which once made us content with a book is now a worse kind of
+darkness only because intensified by a private shadow. The shadow of a
+personal grief does not wholly explain its sinister intensity. The night
+itself is different. It hides a world unknown. If a sun is to rise on
+that world, then not even a false dawn yet shows. When we stand peering
+into our night, where the sound of rain and wind is like nothing the
+memory knows, and may be even the dark tumult portending a day of wrath,
+we may turn again in solitude to what is left to us, to our books; but
+not with quiet content. To-morrow we may pull ourselves together.
+Curiosity about our new world may awaken. We may become adventurous, and
+make an effort towards greeting the unknown with a cheer, to show it
+there is no settled ill-feeling. But it has been my experience that when
+leaving port in dark weather, though the voyage to come was to be novel
+and interesting, one heard very little cheering from the glum figures
+working about the deck. The ship is sea-worthy, but she is bleak and
+foreign. In a week all will be well. We shall have cleared these icy
+latitudes. The sky will be fairer. We shall have more sun. We shall have
+become accustomed to our shipmates' unfamiliar faces and ways. It is only
+the start that is sullen and unpropitious.
+
+And here is Peace coming, and a new world, and there are my books; yet
+though this pipe after midnight is nearly done, and the fire too, I have
+not been able to settle on a book. The books are like the ashes on the
+hearth. And listen to the wind, with its unpromising sounds from the wide
+and empty desert places! What does any of these old books know about me,
+in the midst of those portents of a new age? We are all outward bound,
+and this is the first night of a long voyage, its port unknown.
+
+Even my bookshelves seem strange to-night. They look remarkably like a
+library I saw once in a house in Richbourg S. Vaast, which, you may
+remember, was a village near Neuve Chapelle. Those French volumes also
+survived from circumstances that had passed. They were litter. They had
+been left behind. I doubted whether, if I tried, I could touch them. They
+were not within my time. That was on a day more than three years ago--it
+was July, 1915--and Richbourg had then only just left this world. There
+was a road without a sign of life; not a movement, except in one house.
+The front of that house had gone, exposing the hollow inside, the
+collapsed floors and hanging beams, and showing also a doll with a
+foolish smirk caught in a wire and dangling from a rafter. The doll
+danced in hysteric merriment whenever hidden guns were fired. That was
+the only movement in Richbourg S. Vaast, and the guns made the only
+sound. I was a survivor from the past, venturing at peril among the
+wreckage and hardly remembered relics of what used to be familiar.
+Richbourg was possessed by the power which had overwhelmed it, and which
+was re-forming it in a changing world. To what was the world changing?
+There was no clue, except the oppression of my mind, the shock of the
+guns, and the ecstatic mockery of mirth over ruin by that little idiot
+doll.
+
+Beyond the sloughing and leprous tower of Richbourg Church, where the
+ancient dead in the graveyard had been brought to light again, there was
+a house which seemed in being. I entered it, for I was told by a soldier
+companion that from a displaced tile in its roof I might see La Bassée. I
+looked through that gap, and saw La Bassée. It was very near. It was a
+terracotta smudge. It might have been a brickfield. But it was the
+Enemy.
+
+What I chiefly remember to-day is only the floor of that upper room from
+which, through a gap in its wall, I saw the ambush of the enemy. On the
+floor were scattered, mixed with lumps of plaster, a child's alphabetical
+blocks. A shoe of the child was among them. There was a window where we
+dared not show ourselves, though the day was fair without, and by it was
+an old bureau, open, with its pad of blotting-paper, and some letters,
+all smothered with fragments of glass and new dust. A few drawers of the
+desk were open, and the contents had been spilled. Round the walls of the
+room were bookcases with leaded diamond panes. Whoever was last in the
+room had left sections of the bookcases open, and there were gaps in the
+rows of books. Volumes had been taken out, had been dropped on the floor,
+put on the mantelpiece, or, as I had noticed when coming up to the room,
+left on the stairs. One volume, still open face upwards, was on the
+bureau.
+
+I barely glanced at those books. What could they tell me? What did they
+know about it? Just as they were, open on the floor, tumbled on the
+stairs, they were telling me all they could. Was there more to be said?
+Sitting on a bracket in the shadow of a corner, a little bust of Rousseau
+overlooked the scene with me. In such a place, at such a time, you must
+make your own interpretation of the change, receiving out of the silence,
+which is not altered in nature by occasional abominable noises, just
+whatever your mind wishes to take. There the books are, and the dust on
+them is of an era which abruptly fell; is still falling.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. The Nobodies
+
+
+NOVEMBER 11, 1918. The newspapers tell us that to-day the signal to
+"cease fire" will be given. This news is called "Official," to give us
+assurance in the fog of myth. Maroons will explode above the City. Then
+we shall know it is the end of the War. We ought to believe it, because
+They tell us this; They who do everything for us--who order us what to
+think and how to act, arrange for our potatoes, settle the coming up and
+the going down of the sun, and who for years have been taking away our
+friends to make heroes of them, and worse. They have kept the War going,
+but now They are going to stop it. We shall know it is stopped when the
+rockets burst.
+
+Yet "The War" has become a lethargic state of mind for us. We accepted it
+from the beginning with green-fly, influenza, margarine, calling-up
+notices, and death. It is as much outside our control as the precession
+of the equinoxes. We believed confidently in the tumultuous first weeks
+of the affair that mankind could not stand that strain for more than a
+few months; but we have learned it is possible to habituate humanity to
+the long elaboration of any folly, and for men to endure uncomplainingly
+racking by any cruelty that is devised by society, and for women to
+support any grief, however senselessly caused. Folly and cruelty become
+accepted as normal conditions of human existence. They continue superior
+to criticism, which is frequent enough though seldom overheard. The
+bitter mockery of the satirists, and even the groans of the victims, are
+unnoticed by genuine patriots. There seems no reason why those signal
+rockets should ever burst, no reason why the mornings which waken us to
+face an old dread, and the nights which contract about us like the
+strangle of despair, should ever end. We remember the friends we have
+lost, and cannot see why we should not share with them, in our turn, the
+punishment imposed by solemn and approved dementia. Why should not the
+War go on till the earth in final victory turns to the moon the
+pock-scarred and pallid mask which the moon turns to us?
+
+I was looking, later this morning, at Charing Cross Bridge. It was, as
+usual, going south to the War. More than four years ago I crossed it on a
+memorable journey to France. It seemed no different to-day. It was still
+a Via Dolorosa projecting straight and black over a chasm. While I gazed
+at it, my mind in the past, a rocket exploded above it. Yes, I saw a
+burst of black smoke. The guns had ceased?
+
+A tug passing under the bridge began a continuous hooting. Locomotives
+began to answer the tug deliriously. I could hear a low muttering, the
+beginning of a tempest, the distant but increasing shouting of a great
+storm. Two men met in the thoroughfare below my outlook, waved their
+hats, and each cheered into the face of the other.
+
+Out in the street a stream of men and women poured from every door, and
+went to swell the main cataract which had risen suddenly in full flood in
+the Strand. The donkey-barrow of a costermonger passed me, loaded with a
+bluejacket, a flower-girl, several soldiers, and a Staff captain whose
+spurred boots wagged joyously over the stern of the barrow. A motor cab
+followed, two Australian troopers on the roof of that, with a hospital
+nurse, her cap awry, sitting across the knees of one of them. A girl on
+the kerb, continuously springing a rattle in a sort of trance, shrieked
+with laughter at the nurse. Lines of people with linked arms chanted and
+surged along, bare-headed, or with hats turned into jokes. A private car,
+a beautiful little saloon in which a lady was solitary, stopped near me,
+and the lady beckoned with a smile to a Canadian soldier who was close.
+He first stared in surprise at this fashionable stranger, and then got in
+beside her with obviously genuine alacrity. The hubbub swelled and rolled
+in increasing delirium. Out of the upper windows of the Hotel Cecil, a
+headquarters of the Air Force, a confetti of official forms fell in
+spasmodic clouds. I returned soon to the empty room of an office where I
+was likely to be alone; because, now the War was over, while listening to
+the jollity of Peace which had just arrived, I could not get my thoughts
+home from France, and what they were I cannot tell.
+
+But there were some other memories, more easily borne. There was that
+night, for instance, late in the August of 1914, when three of us were
+getting away from Creil. It was time to go. We were not soldiers. Lying
+on the floor of a railway carriage I tried to sleep, pillowed
+involuntarily on someone's boot. I never knew to whom that foot
+belonged, for the compartment was chaos, like the world. The carriage
+light was feeble, and the faces I saw above me drooped under the glim,
+wilted and dingy. The eyes of the dishevelled were shut, and this
+traveller, counting the pulse of the wheels beneath, presently forgot
+everything ... there was a crash, and my heart bounded me to my feet.
+There had been a fortnight of excitements of this kind. A bag fell and
+struck me back to the floor. Unseen people trampled over me, shouting.
+Somebody cried: "Here they are!" A cascade of passengers and luggage
+tumbled over to a station platform.
+
+It was a chilly morning. And where were we? A clock in a tower said it
+was five. People hurried without apparent reason in all directions. So
+the world may appear to us if some day we find, to our surprise, that we
+have returned from the dead. I leaned against a lamppost, my mind
+gravel-rashed, and waited for something that could be understood. The
+Germans would do. We heard the enemy was close, and that the railway
+officials would get us away if they could. The morning became no warmer,
+there was no coffee, and our tobacco pouches were empty. But at least we
+were favoured with the chance of watching the French railwaymen at work.
+This was a junction, and the men moved about as though they were only
+busy on holiday traffic. They were easy and deliberate. I could see they
+would hold that line to the last pull of cotton-waste, and would run
+their trains while there was a mile of track. So we learned gradually
+that confident invaders are baffled by railwaymen and other common
+people, such as old women insistent on their cows, almost as much as they
+are by bayonets. A country's readiness for war may be slight, yet the
+settled habits of the peaceful Nobodies, which are not reckoned by
+Imperialists when they are calculating the length of the road to
+conquest, are strangely tough and obstinate. You could go to a girl at
+the pigeon-hole of a booking-office in France, demand a ticket for a
+place which by all the signs might then have fallen behind the van of the
+German Army, and she would hand the ticket to you as though she had never
+heard of the War. Then the engine-driver would go on towards the sound of
+the guns till you wondered, made uneasy by the signs without, whether he
+was phrenetic and intended to run the enemy down. The train would stop,
+and while the passengers were listening to the shells the guard would
+come along and give some advice as to the best thing to do.
+
+A little ahead of the Germans, a train came into that junction and took
+us away. I fell asleep again, and presently awoke to see a sombre orchard
+outside my window of our stationary train. It was a group of trees
+entranced, like a scene before the stage is occupied. The grass in the
+twilight beneath the trees was rank. My sight fell drowsily to an
+abandoned _képi_, and, while wondering what had become of the man who
+used to wear it, I saw a bright eye slyly shut at me. A wink in the
+grass! A bearded face was laughing up at me from under the _képi_. A
+rifle with a fixed bayonet slid forward. Then I saw the orchard had a
+secret crop of eyes, which smiled at us from the ground. We moved on, and
+farewell kisses were blown to us.
+
+Among the laurels of a garden beyond field batteries were in position. We
+crossed a bridge over a lower road and a stream. Infantry were waiting
+below for something, and from their attitudes seemed to expect it soon.
+My fellow-passengers were now awake to these omens. Broad streams of
+cattle undulated past our train going south, but west. "My poor Paris!"
+exclaimed a French lady. It was not for themselves these people were
+sorry. The common sort of people in the train were sorry for Paris, for
+all their unlucky fellows. The train moved with hesitancy for hours.
+During one long pause we listened to a cannonade. One burst of sound
+seemed very close. A young English girl, sitting in a corner with her
+infant, abruptly handed the child to her husband. She rummaged in a
+travelling case with the haste of incipient panic. She produced a
+spirit-lamp, a bowl, and a tin. She had suddenly remembered it was past
+her baby's feeding time.
+
+Who won the War for us? It was such folk. They turned in docility, with
+no more than a pause, a pause of ignorance and wonder, of dismay they
+could hardly conceal, from the accustomed order of their days to form
+vast armies, to populate innumerable factories for the making of
+munitions of war, and, while their households came everywhere to ruin,
+they held stubbornly to the task fate had thrust upon them; yet their
+august governors and popular guides, frantic and afraid through the dire
+retribution which had fallen on that monstrous European society which so
+many of us had thought eternal, abjured and abused the common sort whose
+efforts were all that could save us. What did they call the Nobodies?
+Slackers, cowards, rabbits, and field vermin; mean creatures unable to
+leave their football and their drink. I recall one sombre winter's day of
+the first November of the War, when a column of wounded Belgian soldiers
+shambled by me, coming out of the Yser line, on the way to succour which
+I knew they would not find. The doctors and the hospitals were few. These
+fellows were in rags which were plastered to their limbs with mud. Their
+eyes had the vacant look of men who had returned from the grave and who
+had forgotten this world. The bare feet of some of them left bloody
+trails on the road. Others clutched their bodies, and the blood drained
+between their fingers. One dropped dead at my feet. I came home with that
+in my mind; and the next sunrise, hearing unusual sounds outside, I
+lifted the blind to a dawn which was cold and ominously scarlet behind
+skeleton trees. I saw beneath the trees a company of my young neighbours,
+already in khaki, getting used to the harshness of sergeants, and to the
+routine of those implacable circumstances which would take them to Neuve
+Chapelle, to Gallipoli, to Loos, to the Somme; names that had no meaning
+for us then.
+
+That serious company of young Englishmen making soldiers of themselves
+in a day with so unpropitious an opening light did not look like national
+indifference. Those innocents getting used to rifles were as affecting as
+that single line of bodies I saw across a mile of stubble near Compiegne,
+where a rearguard of the "Contemptibles" had sacrificed themselves to
+their comrades. But one could not be sure. I went to find one who could
+tell me whether England was awake to what confronted it. I remembered he
+was a quiet observer, that he knew what allowance to make for those
+patriotic newspapers which so early were holding up in ruinous caricature
+their country and their countrymen for the world to see and to scorn. He
+was a scholar, he was a Socialist and a pacifist, he had a sense of
+humour to keep him balanced. But he had gone. He had enlisted; and he is
+dead.
+
+It was a common experience. From the day the Germans entered Belgium a
+dumb resolution settled on our Nobodies. They did not demonstrate. They
+made long silent queues at the recruiting offices. It is true those
+offices were not ready for them and turned them away; and when by sheer
+obstinacy they got into the Army they were put into concentration camps
+that were as deadly as battle. That did not daunt them, nor turn them
+from their purpose, whatever that was, for they never said; and the
+newspapers, by tradition, had no time to find out, being devoted to the
+words and activities of the Highly Important. We therefore knew nothing
+of the munition factories that were springing up magically, as in a
+night, like toadstools, all over the country, and were barely aware that
+for some mysterious reason the hosts of the enemy were stopped dead on
+the road to Calais. Whose work was all this? But how should we know? Who
+can chronicle what Nobody does?
+
+Sometimes there was a hint. Once again, when I returned from France in
+1916, unhappy with a guess at what the future would be like, I learned
+that our workers were not working. They were drinking. They had been
+passionately denounced by the Great and Popular, and our Press was forced
+to admit this disastrous crime to the world, for fidelity to the truth is
+a national quality. I went to an engineer who would know the worst, and
+would not be afraid to tell me what it was. I found him asleep in his
+overalls, where he had dropped after thirty-six hours of continuous duty.
+Afterwards, when his blasphemous indignation over profiteers,
+politicians, and newspapers had worn itself out, he told me. His men,
+using dimmed lights while working on the decks of urgent ships, often
+forced to work in cramped positions and in all weathers, and while the
+ship was under way to a loading berth, with no refreshment provided
+aboard, and dropped at any hour long distances from home, were still
+regarded by employers in the old way, not as defenders of their country's
+life, but as a means to quick profits, against whom the usual debasing
+tricks of economy could be devised. A battleship in the north had been
+completed five months under contract time. Working girls, determined to
+make a record output of ammunition, persisted twenty-two hours at a
+stretch, topped their machines with Union Jacks, and fainted next morning
+while waiting for the factory gates to open. The spirit of the English!
+What virtue there is in bread and tea! Yet we might have guessed it. And
+again we might have remembered, as a corrective, how many grave speeches,
+which have surprised, shocked, and directed the nation, have been made by
+Great Men too soon after a noble dinner, words winged by the Press
+without an accompanying and explanatory wine list.
+
+But the Nobodies are light-minded, casual, and good-hearted. Their great
+labour over, and their sacrifices buried, they have come out this day to
+celebrate the occasion with hilarious and ironic gaiety. They have won
+the Greatest of Wars, so they ride in motor-lorries and make delirious
+noises with comic instruments. Their heroic thoughts are blattering
+through penny trumpets. They have accomplished what had been declared
+impossible, and now they rejoice with an inconsequential clatter on
+tea-trays and tin cans.
+
+Yet some of us who watched their behaviour saw the fantastic brightness
+in the streets on Armistice Day only as a momentary veiling of the
+spectres of a shadow land which now will never pass. Who that heard
+"Tipperary" sung by careless men marching in France in a summer which
+seems a century gone will hear that foolish tune again without a sudden
+fear that he will be unable to control his emotion? And those Nobodies of
+Mons, the Marne, and the Aisne, what were they? The "hungry squad," the
+men shut outside the factory gates, the useless surplus of the labour
+market so necessary for a great nation's commercial prosperity. Their
+need kept the wages of their neighbours at an economic level. The men of
+Mons were of that other old rearguard, the hope of the captains of
+industry when there are revolts against the common lot of our industrial
+cities where the death-rates of young Nobodies, casualty lists of those
+who fall to keep us prosperous, are as ruinous as open war; a mutilation
+of life, a drainage of the nation's body that is easily borne by
+Christian folk who are moved to grief and action at the thought of
+Polynesians without Bibles.
+
+Yet the Nobodies stood to it at Mons. They bore us no resentment. We will
+say they fought for an England that is not us, an England that is nobler
+than common report and common speech. Think of the contempt and anger of
+the better end of London just before the War, when, at the other end, the
+people of Dockland revolted and defied their masters! I knew one mother
+in that obscure host of ignorant humanity in revolt. Two of her infants
+were slowly fading, and she herself was dying of starvation, yet she
+refused the entrance of charity at her door, and dared her man to
+surrender. He died later at Ypres. He died because of that very quality
+of his which moved his masters and superiors to anger; he refused at
+Ypres, as he did in Dockland, like those who were with him and were of
+his kind, to do more than mock defeat when it faced him.
+
+That figure of Nobody in sodden khaki, cumbered with ugly gear, its
+precious rifle wrapped in rags, no brightness anywhere about it except
+the light of its eyes (did those eyes mock us, did they reproach us, when
+they looked into ours in Flanders?), its face seamed with lines which
+might have been dolorous, which might have been ironic, with the sweat
+running from under its steel casque, looms now in the memory, huge,
+statuesque, silent but questioning, like an overshadowing challenge, like
+a gigantic legendary form charged with tragedy and drama; and its eyes,
+seen in memory again, search us in privacy. Yet that figure was the
+"Cuthbert." It was derided by those onlookers who were not fit to kneel
+and touch its muddy boots. It broke the Hindenburg Line. Its body was
+thrown to fill the trenches it had won, and was the bridge across which
+our impatient guns drove in pursuit of the enemy.
+
+What is that figure now? An unspoken thought, which charges such names as
+Bullecourt, Cambrai, Bapaume, Croiselles, Hooge, and a hundred more, with
+the sound and premonition of a vision of midnight and all unutterable
+things. We see it in a desolation of the mind, a shape forlorn against
+the alien light of the setting of a day of dread, the ghost of what was
+fair, but was broken, and is lost.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. Bookworms
+
+
+JANUARY 18, 1919. In Fleet Street yesterday there was at lunch with us an
+American Army officer who discoursed heartily about a certain literary
+public-house. He quoted a long passage from Dickens showing how somebody
+took various turnings near Fetter Lane, easily to be recognized, till
+they arrived at this very tavern. Such enthusiasm is admirable, yet
+embarrassing. In return, I inquired after several young American poets,
+whose work, seldom seen here, interests me, and I named their books. He
+had never heard of them. This enthusiast did not even appear to have the
+beginning of an idea that his was unforgivable ignorance seeing that he
+knew more than a native ought to know about some of our taverns. Had he
+been an Englishman and a friend of mine I should have told him that I
+thought his love of letters was as spurious as the morality of the curate
+who speaks in a trembling baritone about changes in the divorce laws,
+but who accepts murder without altering the statutory smile of
+benediction.
+
+Literature would be lighter without that scroll work and top hamper. It
+has nothing to do with its life. It is as helpful to us as wall-texts and
+those wonders we know as works of Pure Thought. Let us remember all the
+noble volumes of philosophy and metaphysics we ought to have read, to
+learn how wonderfully far our brains have taken us beyond the relic of
+Piltdown; and then recall what Ypres was like, and buy a teetotum
+instead. That much is saved. Now we need not read them. If we feel
+ourselves weakening towards such idleness, let us spin tops. If we had to
+choose between Garvice and say Hegel or Locke for a niche in the Temple
+of Letters, we should make an unintelligible blunder if we did not elect
+Mr. Garvice without discussion. He is human, he is ingenuous and funny,
+and the philosophers are only loosening with the insinuations of moth and
+rust. The philosophers are like the great statesmen and the great
+soldiers--we should be happier without them. If we are not happy and
+enjoying life, then we have missed the only reason for it. If books do
+not help us to this, if they even devise our thoughts into knots and put
+straws in our hair, then they ought to be burned. It is true that some
+of us may get pleasure from searching novels for solecisms and collecting
+evidence by which shall be guessed the originals of the novelist's
+characters, just as others extract amusement from puzzle pictures. But
+book-worming has the same relation to literature, even when it is done by
+a learned doctor in the Bodleian, as flies in a dairy with our milk
+supply. If most of the books in the British Museum were destroyed, we
+might still have a friend who would go with us to Amiens to get one more
+dinner in a well-remembered room, and drink to the shades; we might
+still, from the top of Lundy at dusk, watch the dim seas break into lilac
+around the Shutter Rock, while the unseen kittiwakes were voices from the
+past; and we might still see Miss Muffet tiptoe on a June morning to
+smell the first rose. That is what we look for in books, or something
+like it, and when it is not there they are not books to us.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. Sailor Language
+
+
+FEBRUARY 1, 1919. "What's in a word?" asks Admiral W. H. Smyth, with
+ironic intent, in his _Sailors' Word Book_. There are people who are
+derided because they are inclined to hesitate over that unimportant
+doubt, selecting their words with a waste of time which is grievous, when
+the real value of the sovereign is but nine and ninepence, in an
+uneconomic desire to be as right as their knowledge will allow. There is
+something to be said for them. There is a case to be made for getting a
+task finished as well as one knows how, if interest in it was sufficient
+to prompt a beginning. A friend of mine, who could write a thousand
+interesting and popular words about an event, or even about nothing in
+particular, while I was still wondering what I ought to do with it, once
+exclaimed in indignation and contempt when I put in a plea for Roget and
+his _Thesaurus_. He declared that a writer who used such a reference-book
+ought to be deprived of his paper and ink. _He_ never used even a
+dictionary. His argument and the force of it humbled me, for I gathered
+that when he wrote he had but to put his hand in his pocket and pull out
+all the words he wanted by the fistful. I envy him. I wish I could do it,
+but there are times when every word I try seems opaque. It is useless to
+pretend that Roget is of material assistance then; for what remedy is
+there under heaven for the slow and heavy mind? But to me Roget is full
+of amusing suggestions, which would really have been very helpful to me
+had I wanted to use his words for any other purpose than the one in hand.
+It is true he rarely gives you the word you think you want, but not
+seldom in his assorted heaps of unused ornaments you are surprised by a
+glance of colour from an unsuspected facet of a common word.
+
+The _Sailor's Word Book_ is no pamphlet; not in the least the kind of
+pocket book which once helped hurried British soldiers in a French shop
+to get fried eggs. It weighs, I should think, seven pounds, and it is
+packed with the vocabulary which has been built into the British ship
+during the thousand years and more of her growth. The origin of very many
+of the words retires, often beyond exact definition, into the cold mists
+of the prehistoric Baltic, and to the Greek Islands, among the shadows
+of the men who first found the courage to lose sight of the hills.
+Commonly they are short words, smoothed by constant use till they might
+be imagined to be born of the circumstances in which they are known, like
+the gulls and the foam of the wake. They carry like detonations in a
+gale. Yet quite often such words, when they are verbs, were once of the
+common stock of the language, as in the case of "belay," and it has
+happened that the sailor alone has been left to keep them alive. Dr.
+Johnson seems not to have known the meaning of the verb "to belay" among
+the other things he did not know but was very violent about. He thought
+it was a sea-phrase for splicing a rope, just as he supposed "main-sheet"
+was the largest sail of a ship.
+
+The _Sailors' Word Book_ would be much more interesting than it is,
+though greatly heavier, if the derivation of the words were given, or
+even guessed at, a method which frequently makes the livelier story. We
+begin to understand what a long voyage our ship has come when we are told
+that "starboard" is steer-board, the side to which the steering-paddle
+was made fast before the modern rudder was invented in the fourteenth
+century. Skeat informs us that both steor and bord are Anglo-Saxon; in
+fact, the latter word is the same in all the Celtic and Teutonic
+languages, so was used by those who first cut trees in Western Europe,
+and perhaps was here before they arrived to make our civilization what we
+know it. The opposite to starboard was larboard; but for good reason the
+Admiralty substituted port for larboard in 1844. Why was the left side of
+a ship called the port side? That term was in use before the Admiralty
+adopted it. It has been suggested that, as the steering-paddle was on the
+right side of a ship, it was good seamanship to have the harbour or port
+on the left hand when piloting inwards. But it is doubtful if that reason
+was devised by a sailor.
+
+A few words in sea life--as fish, mere, and row--are said to be so old
+that the philologists refer them to the Aryans, or, as others might say,
+give them up as a bad job. These words appear to be common to all the
+sons of Adam who preferred adventurous change to security in monotony,
+and so signed on as slaves to a galley. Anchor we imported from the
+Greeks--it is declared to be the oldest word from the Mediterranean in
+the language of our ships; admiral from the Arabs, and hammock and
+hurricane from the Caribs, through the Spaniards. But other words of our
+seamen are as native to us as our grey weather, for we brought them with
+other habits overseas from the North--words like hail, storm, sea, ship,
+sail, strand, cliff, shower, mast, and flood.
+
+To examine words in this manner is simply to invite trouble, as did the
+man who assumed that "bending a sail" was done as one would bend a cane,
+not knowing that the sailor uses that word in the original sense of
+"fastening." Once, in my ignorance, I imagined "schooner" was of Dutch
+origin, but was careful to refer to the invaluable Skeat. Only just in
+time, though. And he says that the word was born on the Clyde, grew up in
+New England, migrated to Holland, and then came back to us again. Once
+upon a time (1713) at Gloucester, Massachusetts, a man was witnessing a
+new fore-and-aft rigged vessel glide away on a trial trip, and exclaimed
+"She scoons!" So all her kind were christened. Science of that kind is
+almost as good as romance.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. Illusions
+
+
+FEBRUARY 15, 1919. Southwark Street is warehouses and railway bridges,
+and at its best is not beautiful; but when at night it is a deep chasm
+through which whirl cataracts of snow, and the paving is sludge, then, if
+you are at one end of it, the other end is as far away as joy. I was at
+one end of it, and at the other was my train, due to leave in ten
+minutes. Yet as there was a strike, there might be no train, and so I
+could not lose it; I had that consolation while judging that, with more
+than half a mile of snow and squall intervening from the north-east, I
+could not do the length of the street in ten minutes. So I surrendered
+the train which might not run to whoever was able to catch it, and in
+that instant of renunciation the dark body of a motor lorry skidded to
+the kerb and stopped beside me. A voice that was as passionless as
+destiny told me to hop up, if I were going towards the station. The
+headlong lorry, the sombre masses of the buildings which were now
+looming through the diminishing snow, and the winter's night, roused a
+vision of another place, much like it, or else the snow and the night
+made it seem like it, and so my uppermost thought became too personal,
+unimportant, and curious for converse. All I said, as I took my place
+beside the steering wheel, was: "It's a wretched night." (But I might
+have been alone in the lorry. There was no immediate answer.) I communed
+secretly with my memory. Then the voice returned out of the darkness. It
+startled me. "This corner," it remarked, "always reminds me of a bit of
+Armentičres." The voice had answered my thought, and not my words.
+
+The lorry stopped and I got down. I never saw the driver. I do not know
+whose voice it was; if, indeed, there was with me in that lorry more than
+a shadow and an impersonal voice.
+
+Yet now the night could do its worst. I had the illusion that I had seen
+through it. Were these bleak and obdurate circumstances an imposture?
+They appeared to have me imprisoned helplessly in time and snow; yet I
+had seen them shaken, and by a mere thought. Did their appearance depend
+on the way we looked at them? Perhaps it was that. We are compelled by
+outside things to their mould, and are mortified; but occasionally they
+fail to hide the joke. The laugh becomes ours, and circumstance must
+submit to the way we see it. If Time playfully imprisons us in a century
+we would rather have missed, where only the stars are left undisturbed to
+wink above the doings and noises of Bedlam, and where to miss the last
+train--supposing it runs at all--is the right end to a perfect day of
+blizzards and social squalls, what does it matter when we find that the
+whole of it is shaken by a single idea? Might it not vanish altogether if
+enough of us could be found to laugh at it? This dream assisted me to
+some warmth of mind through the rest of the cold night till I arrived on
+the station platform, after the train had left.
+
+To help further in destroying my faith in the permanence of our affairs
+and institutions, it then appeared the platform was vacant because my
+train was not yet in. It was coming in at that moment--or so a porter
+told me. Our protean enemy took his most fearful form in the War when he
+became a Hidden Hand. Was this porter an agent of the gods for whose
+eternal leisure our daily confusion and bad temper make an amusing
+diversion? Was he one of the malicious familiars who are at work amongst
+us, disguised, and who playfully set us by the ears with divine traps
+for boobies? This porter was grinning. He went away with his hand over
+his mouth, and at that moment a train stopped at the platform. The engine
+was at the wrong end of it.
+
+One official told me its proper locomotive was at East Grinstead, and
+that we might not get it. Perhaps its home was there. And yet another
+official whose face was as mysterious as that of the station clock, which
+was wearing a paper mask, said that the engine of my train had, in fact,
+gone. It had gone to Brighton. He did not know why. It had gone alone. I
+turned vacantly from this bewilderment and saw a man with the sort of
+golden beard an immortal might have worn standing under a station lamp,
+and breaking now and then into peals of merriment, occasioned, it seemed
+to me, by what the first porter was telling him. Then both of them looked
+towards me, and stopped. If in one more gust of hearty laughter that
+hollow wilderness of a station had vanished, gloom and dreary echoes and
+frozen lights, and I had found myself blinking in a surprising sunlight
+at that fellow in the golden beard, while he continued to laugh at me in
+another world than this, where he was revealed for what he was, I was in
+the mind for placid acceptance. Well, the miraculous transformation was
+as likely as an engine for that train.
+
+The bearded one approached me. I did not run away. I waited for the next
+thing. He had a book under his arm, and it is likely that the gods, who
+have no need to learn the truth, never read books. "If," he told me, "you
+want to get to Sheepwash, you had better take this other train. It is
+going half the way. The engine for the train for Sheepwash can't be
+found."
+
+We both boarded the train for half the journey, and it did not appear to
+have any other passengers. Yet, reckless of the risks I was taking in
+travelling alone with a suspected being at such a time--for where might
+not he and the train go?--I accepted the chance; and as I took my seat
+and regarded that bright beard, the shadow of my awful doubt became
+really serious, for it was only this week that I have been reading _The
+Twilight of the Gods_. There was the disintegrating recollection of that
+book, with its stories of homeless immortals in search of new and more
+profitable employ; and there had been a bodiless voice in a motor lorry
+which ignored what I said but spoke instead to an inconsequential memory
+of mine that was strictly private; and there was the levity with which
+uniformed officials treated the essential institutions of civilization.
+All this gave me the sensation that even the fixed policy of our strong
+government might, at any moment now, roll up as a scroll.
+
+Off we went. My fellow-traveller was silent, though he was smiling at
+something which was not in the carriage, to my knowledge. When he spoke,
+his eyes were not fixed on me. He looked into the air, and talked to
+whatever it was he saw. He pointed a finger at the light of the city
+lying beyond and below our carriage window. "All they've built," he said,
+"stands only on a few odd notions. Now they're changing their notions, so
+down comes everything with a run. And don't they look surprised and
+pained!" (I felt like an eavesdropper, and thought I'd better show him I
+was present.) I apologized for overhearing him. He nodded shortly, a
+little condescendingly. "We've accepted _that_"--he poked his stick
+towards where stood our Imperial city in the night--"as if it came by
+itself. We never knew our city was like that just because we never saw it
+in any other light. Now we're upset to find the magic-lantern picture is
+fading. Got to put up with it, though." His book had been on the seat.
+It fell to the floor, and I picked it up and handed it to him. It was
+_The Twilight of the Gods_.
+
+If I could have remembered at that moment one of the simple dodges for
+averting the evil eye I should have used it. The laughing malice of that
+book had so confused me for some days that I had begun to feel that even
+St. Paul's, a blue bubble floating over London on the stream of Time,
+might vanish, as bubbles will. The Hidden Hand, I began to believe, had
+something in it.
+
+I intrigued a serious interview with my fellow-passenger, hoping to find
+evidence; and then the train stopped finally, six miles from home. At
+that very instant of time the train which we had previously rejected
+because it had no engine chose to run express through the station where
+we stood.
+
+
+
+
+XX. Figure-Heads
+
+
+MARCH 1, 1919. When the car got to the Board of Trade Office, which is
+opposite the old chapel of ease where the crews of John Company's ships
+"used to worship," as a local history tells us, I saw Uncle Dave by the
+kerb, with time apparently on his hands. I got down.
+
+He told me old Jackson is dead. Jackson was a mast and block maker, but
+his fame was the excellence of his figure-heads. It is many years since
+old Jackson made one, but if it is doubted that he was an artist, there
+is a shop near where he once lived which still displays three of his
+images, the size of life, reputed to have been conjured from baulks of
+timber with an ax. I remember Jackson. He rarely answered you when you
+questioned him about those ships to which he had given personality and
+eyes that looked sleeplessly overseas from their prows. He regarded you,
+and only his whiskers moved in silent indifference (he chewed), as
+though you were wasting the time of a man and an artist. Those images of
+his were all of women. He would make no figure-head for a ship bearing
+the name of a man, though it were that of a Greek hero. And, of course,
+you dare not even think of the trousered legs of a modern man stuck each
+side of a ship's prow, boots and all; but the drapery of a woman flows
+with grace there. She would look indeed its vigilant guardian spirit. It
+would be pleasing to write of some of the more famous of those idols, as
+I remember them in repose, above the quays of the docks.
+
+Here we were joined by some young men who knew Uncle Dave. They were
+looking for a ship. But Uncle continued to tell me of the merits of his
+friend the maker of figure-heads. A stoker became a trifle irritated.
+"Well, what's the good of 'em, anyway?" he interjected. "Lumber, I call
+'em. They can't be carried on straight stems, and clipper-bows aren't
+wanted these days, wasting good metal. Why, even Thompson's White Star
+liners have chucked that sort of truck. They're not built like it now.
+What's the good of figger-'eds?"
+
+This youth's casual blasphemy in the presence of Uncle Dave (who once
+was bo'sun of a China clipper), extolling as he did his age of mere
+machines against the virtues of an age when ships were expected to look
+good as well as do good things, made us shrink in anticipation of the
+storm. For Uncle Dave has a habit of listening to a talk about ships in a
+deliberate and contemptuous silence, with nothing to show of his inward
+heat but a baleful light in the eye. He does not like steamers. He does
+not think steamer-men are seamen. He declares they can never be seamen.
+And now we waited, dreading that his anger, when it burst, would be quite
+incoherent with force. There was really something of hatred in his look
+as he gazed at the youngster, his mouth a little open, his hand holding
+his trembling pipe just away from his mouth, which had forgotten it. The
+old sailor bent forward, screwing his eyes at this young man as though
+trying to believe it was real.
+
+An older hand interposed. "Ah, come away now! I've heard chaps make game
+of figger-'eds, an' call 'em superstition. But I say let such things
+alone. I know things that's happened to funny fellows through making game
+of figger-'eds. There was the _Barbadian Lass_. She was a brigantine.
+She used to run to Trinidad. There was something queer about her
+figger-'ed. It was a half-breed woman. She was smiling. She had bare
+breasts, and she used to wear earrings. Her chaps used to keep a spare
+pair for her in a box. She was always fresh and bright, but I've heard
+say she was never painted--no, not since the day the ship was launched.
+She kept like that. And one day young Belfast MacCormick slipped a
+tar-brush over her dial. Said it was idolatry. And what happened to him?
+You answer me that!"
+
+"Yes, I know," broke in one of us. "But you can't say it was along of
+that tar-brush..."
+
+"You young chaps ain't got no sense," here interrupted Uncle, his voice
+evidently under control, but shaky. "I'd like to know where you were
+brought up. You learn it all wrong at them schools of yours, and you
+never get it right afterwards. You learn about the guts of engines and
+'lectricity, and you mix it up with the tales your grandmothers told you,
+and you get nothing straight. What you've got is all science and
+superstition. And then you wonder why you make a mess of it. Listen! It
+don't matter what you do to a figger-'ed, if you're fool enough to spoil
+it. It's having it that matters. It's something to go by, and a ship
+you're glad to work in."
+
+He turned on the stoker. There was astonishment and pity in his glance.
+"Look at you. In and out of a ship, and you forget her name when you've
+signed off. You don't care the leavings in a Dago's mess-kit for any ship
+you work in, if you can get a bit out of her and skip early."
+
+"That's me, Uncle," muttered the stoker.
+
+"Can you remember names, like some of us remember the _Mermus_, the
+_Blackadder_, and the _Titania_? Not you. Your ships haven't got names,
+properly speaking. They're just a run out and home again for you, and a
+row about the money and the grub."
+
+"Sure to be a row about the grub," murmured the stoker.
+
+"What are ships nowadays?" he went on, raising a shaking index finger.
+"Are they ships at all? They're run by companies on the make, and worked
+by factory hands who curse their own house-flags. It's a dirty game, I
+call it. Things are all wrong. I can't make them out. You fellers take no
+pride in your work, and you've got no work to take pride in. You don't
+know who you work for or what, and your ships got no names. They might
+be damned goods vans. No good in a figger-'ed! Then I'll tell you this.
+Then I'll tell you this. _You'll_ get no good till you learn better, my
+lad."
+
+
+
+
+XXI. Economics
+
+
+MARCH 22, 1919. There is an astonishing number of books on what is called
+Reconstruction in the new publications of this spring. Reconstruction
+seems to be as easy as conscription or destruction. We have only to
+change our mind, and there we are, as though nothing had happened. It is
+the greatest wonder of the human brain that its own accommodating
+ratiocination never affords it any amusement. We use reason only to make
+convincing disguises for our desires and appetites. Perhaps it is fear of
+the wrath to come that is partly responsible for the clamour of the
+economists and sociologists in the publishers' announcements, almost
+drowning there the drone of the cataract of new novels. But it is too
+late now. The wrath will come. After mischievously bungling with the
+magic which imprisoned the Djinn, we may wish we had not done it; but
+once he is out there is nothing for it but to be surprised and sorry.
+The lid is off; and it is useless for the clever reconstructionists to
+press in upon us with their little screw-drivers, chattering eagerly
+about locks and hinges. When the crafty but ignorant Russian generals and
+courtiers got from the Czar the order for mobilizing the armies, and
+issued it, they did not know it, but that was when they released Lenin.
+And who on earth can now inveigle that terrific portent safely under lid
+and lock again?
+
+
+
+
+XXII. Old Sunlight
+
+
+APRIL 5, 1919. I find the first signs of this spring, now the War is
+over, almost unbelievable. I have watched this advent with astonishment,
+as though it were a phantom. The feeling is the same as when waking from
+an ugly dream, and seeing in doubt the familiar objects in a morning
+light. They seem steadfast. Are they real, or is the dream? The morning
+works slowly through the mind to take the place of the night. Its
+brightness and tranquillity do not seem right. And is it not surprising
+to find the spring has come again to this world? The almond tree might be
+an untimely, thoughtless, and happy stranger. What does it want with us?
+That spiritual and tinted fire with which its life burns touches and
+kindles no responsive and volatile essence in us. I passed a hedge-bank
+which looked south and was reviving. There were crumbs and nuggets of
+chalk in it, and they were as remarkable to me this year as though I had
+once seen those flecks of white showing through the herbage of another
+planet. That crumbling earth with the grey matting of old grass was as
+warm to the touch as though some inner virtue had grown, all unsuspected
+by us, in the heart of this glacial ball. I picked up a lump of chalk
+with its cold greenish shadows, and powdered it in my fingers, wondering
+why it looked so suddenly bright. It confirmed my existence. Its smell
+was better than any news I have heard of late.
+
+I saw suddenly the gleaming coast of a continent of dark cloud, and the
+blue ocean into which it jutted its headlands; memory had suddenly
+returned. At that moment the sun touched my hand. All this was what we
+used to know in a previous life. When I got home I took down _Selborne_.
+Two photographs fell out of it, and when I picked them up--they were
+those of a young amateur and were yellow with age--spring really began to
+penetrate the bark. But it was not the spring of this year.
+
+How often, like another tortoise, has the mind come out of its winter to
+sun itself in the new warmth of a long-gone Selborne April? Did Gilbert
+White imagine he was bequeathing light to us? Of course not. He lived
+quietly in the obscure place where he was born, and did not try to
+improve or influence anybody. It seems he had no wish to be a great
+leader, or a great thinker, or a great orator. The example of Chatham did
+not fire him. He was friendly with his neighbours, but went about his
+business. When he died there did not appear to be any reason whatever to
+keep him in memory. He had harmed no man. He left us without having
+improved gunpowder. Could a man have done less?
+
+Think of the events which were stirring men while he was noting the
+coming and going of swallows. While he lived, Clive began the conquest of
+India, and Canada was taken from the French. White heard the news that
+our American colonists had turned Bolshevik because of the traditional
+skill of the administrators of other people's affairs at Whitehall. The
+world appears to have been as full then of important uproar as it is
+to-day. I suppose the younger Pitt, "the youngest man ever appointed
+Prime Minister," had never heard of White. But Gilbert does not seem to
+have heard of _him_; nor of Hargreaves' spinning jenny, nor of the
+inventor of the steam engine. "But I can show you some specimens of my
+new mice," he remarks on March 30, 1768. That was the year in which the
+great Pitt resigned. His new mice!
+
+Yet for all the stirring affairs and inventions of his exciting time,
+with war making and breaking empires, and the foundations of this
+country's wealth and power being nobly laid, it would not be easy to show
+that we to-day are any the happier. Our own War was inherent in the
+inventions of mechanical cotton-spinning and the steam-engine--the need
+to compel foreign markets to buy the goods we made beyond our own needs.
+We know now what were the seeds the active and clever fellows of
+Gilbert's day were sowing for us. We were present at the harvesting. Why
+did not those august people, absorbed in the momentous deeds which have
+made history so sonorous, the powder shaking out of their wigs with the
+awful gravity of their labours (while all the world wondered), just stop
+doing such consequential things, and accept Gilbert's invitation to go
+and listen to him about those new mice? The mice might have saved us, and
+the opportunity was lost.
+
+Looking back at those times, of all the thunderous events which then
+loosened excited tongues, caused by high-minded men of action expertly
+conjuring crisis after crisis while their docile followers scrambled out
+of one sublime trouble into another, heated and exhausted, but still
+gaping with obedience and respect, we can see that nothing remains but
+the burial parties, whose work is yet uncompleted in France. What good
+does persist out of those days is the light in which Gilbert's tortoise
+sunned itself. It is a light which has not gone out. And it makes us
+wonder, not how much of our work in these years will survive to win the
+gratitude of those who will follow us, but just what it is they will be
+grateful for. Where is it, and what happy man is doing it? And what are
+we thinking of him? Do we even know his name?
+
+
+
+
+XXIII. Ruskin
+
+
+APRIL 19, 1919. Some good people have been celebrating Ruskin, whose
+centenary it is. And to-day a little friend of mine left her school books
+so that I might wonder what they were when I saw them on my table. One of
+them was _The Crown of Wild Olive_. It put me in a reminiscent mood. I
+looked at Ruskin's works on my shelves, and tried to recall how long it
+was since they interested me. Nevertheless, I would not part with them.
+In my youth Ruskin's works were only for the wealthy, and I remember that
+my purchase of those volumes was an act of temerity, and even of
+sacrifice. And who but an ingrate would find fault with Ruskin, or would
+treat him lightly? With courage and eloquence he denounced dishonesty in
+the days when it was not supposed that cheating could be wrong if it were
+successful. He did that when minds were so dark that people blinked with
+surprise at a light which showed as a social iniquity naked children
+crawling with chains about them in the galleries of coal-mines. Was it
+really wrong to make children do that? Or was Ruskin only an impossible
+idealist? They were the happy years, radiant with the certain knowledge
+of the British that the Holy Grail would be recognized immediately it was
+seen, for over it would be proudly floating the confirmatory Union Jack.
+We had not even begun to suspect that our morals, manners, and laws were
+fairly poor compared with the standards of the Mohawks and Mohicans whom
+our settlers had displaced in America a century before. And Ruskin told
+that Victorian society it had an ugly mind, and did ugly things. When
+Ruskin said so, with considerable emotion, Thackeray was so hurt that he
+answered as would any clever editor to-day about a contribution which
+convinced him that it would make readers angry; he told Ruskin it would
+never do. Thackeray's readers, of course, were assured they were the best
+people, and that worldly cynic did well to reject Ruskin, and preserve
+the _Cornhill Magazine_.
+
+"Ruskin," it says in the introduction to _The Crown of Wild Olive_ which
+my little friend reads at school, "is certainly one of the greatest
+masters of English prose." That has often been declared. But is he? Or
+is our tribute to Ruskin only a show of gratitude to one who revealed to
+us the unpleasant character of our national habits when contrasted with a
+standard for gentlemen? It ought not to have required much eloquence to
+convince us that Widnes is unlovely; the smell of it should have been
+enough. It is curious that we needed festoons of chromatic sentences to
+warn us that cruelty to children, even when profit can be made of it, is
+not right. But I fear some people really enjoy remorseful sobbing. It is
+half the fun of doing wrong. Yet I would ask in humility--for it is a
+fearful thing to doubt Ruskin, the literary divinity of so many
+right-thinking people--whether English children who are learning the
+right way to use their language, and the noblest ideas to express, should
+run the risk of having Ruskin's example set before them by softhearted
+teachers? I think that a parent who knew a child of his, on a certain
+day, was to take the example of Ruskin as a prose stylist on the subject
+of war, would do well, on moral and ćsthetic grounds, to keep his child
+away from school on that day to practise a little roller-skating. For
+humility and gratitude should not blind us to the fact that few writers
+in English of Ruskin's reputation have ever considered such a rosy cloud
+of rhetoric as is his lecture on war, in which a reasonable shape no
+sooner looms than it is lost again, to be worth preserving. The subject
+of war is of importance, inflammable humanity being what it is, and the
+results of war being what we know; and the quality of the critical
+attention we give to so great a matter is unfortunately clear when we
+regard the list of distinguished critics of letters who have accepted,
+apparently without difficulty, as great prose, Ruskin's heedless rush of
+words upon it. Perhaps his language appears noble because the rhythmic
+pour of its sentences lulls reason into a comfortable and benignant
+sleepiness.
+
+I remember the solemn voice of a lecturer on English literature, years
+ago, moving me to buy _The Crown of Wild Olive_. Such obvious ignorance
+as I knew mine to be could not be tolerated. Whatever I went without, it
+could not be that book. I put it in my hold-all when, as was my duty, I
+went for my training with the artillery volunteers. I read in camp the
+essay on war, when bombardiers no longer claimed my attention, and the
+knightly words of sergeant instructors were taking a needed rest. I
+pondered over that essay, and concluded that though plainly I was very
+young and very wrong to feel puzzled and even derisive over English
+prose which fascinated a learned lecturer into solemnity, yet I would
+sooner learn to make imitation flowers of wool than read that essay to a
+critical audience, especially if I had written it myself.
+
+Ruskin, in fact, with no more experience of war than a bishop's wife, did
+not know what he was talking about. Throughout the essay, too, he is in
+two minds. One is that of a gentleman who knows that war is the same
+phenomenon, artistically, ethically, and socially, as a public-house riot
+with broken bottles caused by a dispute over one of those fundamental
+principles which are often challenged in such a place. Those riots are
+natural enough. They are caused by the nature of man. They continue to
+happen, for it has taken the Church longer to improve our manners than it
+has taken stock-raisers to improve the milking qualities of kine. And
+Ruskin's other mind is still in the comical Tennysonian stage about war,
+dwelling with awe on swords and shields, glory, honour, patriotism,
+courage, spurs, pennants, and tearful but resolute ladies who wave their
+handkerchiefs in the intervals of sobbing over their "loved ones."
+
+He calls war "noble play." He scorns cricket. As for his "style" and his
+"thought": "I use," says Ruskin, "in such a question, the test which I
+have adopted, of the connexion of war with other arts, and I reflect how,
+as a sculptor, I should feel if I were asked to design a monument for
+Westminster Abbey, with a carving of a bat at one end and a ball at the
+other. It may be there remains in me only a savage Gothic prejudice; but
+I had rather carve it with a shield at one end and a sword at the
+other."
+
+I cannot tell whether Ruskin reflected so because of a savage Gothic
+prejudice, but I am certain he wrote like that moved by what we feel--the
+feeling goes deeper into time even than the Goths--about the victim for
+sacrifice. We must justify that sacrifice, and so we give it a ceremonial
+ritual and dignity. Otherwise, I think, Ruskin would not have suggested
+the shield and sword as the symbolic decorations. He felt instinctively
+and because of a long-accepted tradition that those antique symbols were
+the only way to hide the ugly look of the truth. For certainly he could
+have used a ball at one end--a cannon-ball--and a mortar at the other.
+Just as we might use an aerial torpedo at one end, and the image of a
+mutilated child at the other; or a gas cylinder at one end, and a
+gas-mask at the other. But the artist is not going to be deprived of his
+romance through a touch of the actual, any more than the lady with the
+handkerchief can be expected to forego her anguished sob over her hero as
+he goes forth to battle.
+
+We saw that in our Great War. The ancient appeal of the patriots rushed
+us away from reason with "last stands," and the shot-riddled banners
+wavering in the engulfing waves of barbarians, till an irresistible
+cavalry charge scattered the hordes. All this replaced the plumes, the
+shining armour, and the chivalrous knights. Ruskin, however, was a subtle
+improvement even on the last stand with the shot-riddled banner. He
+anticipated those who have been most popular because they made our War
+entrancing and endurable. He went to the heart of the matter. He knew
+that the audience which would the more readily agree with him when he
+made an emotional case for the ennobling nature of war would be mainly of
+reclused women. He addressed them. So did, of late, some of our most
+successful writers on war. They, like Ruskin, made their appeal to that
+type of mind which obtains a real satisfaction, a sensuous pleasure, from
+contemplating the unseen sufferings of the young and vicarious victim
+sobbing, and feeling noble and enduring.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV. The Reward of Virtue
+
+
+MAY 9, 1919. The Treaty of Peace is published. Compared with what the
+innocent in 1915 called the "objects of the War," this treaty is as the
+aims of Captain Morgan's ruffians to those of the Twelve Apostles. The
+truth is, some time ago the Versailles drama fell to the level of an
+overworked newspaper story which shrewd editors saw was past its day.
+Those headlines, Humiliate the Hun, Hang the Kaiser, and Make Germany
+Pay, had become no more interesting than a copy of last week's _Morning
+Mischief_ in a horse-pond. The subject was old and wet. Because five
+months ago we thoughtfully elected men of the counting-house to the work
+of governing the State, of late we have been too indignant over the cost
+and difficulty of living to spare a thought for the beauty of Peace; that
+is why we are now examining the clauses of the famous Treaty with about
+as much care for what they may mean to us as if they concerned the
+movements of the Asteroids. A year ago the German attacks seemed near to
+making guns the deciding voice in the affairs of unhappy humanity. On the
+chill and overcast spring morning when the Treaty was published, it was
+significant that those very few men to whom we could go for courage a
+year ago were the only people dismayed by the terms of the Peace Treaty.
+And the timid, who once went to those stout hearts for assurance--to
+have, as the soldiers used to say, their cold feet massaged--were the
+bright and cheerful souls. It was ominous. Yet those careless and happy
+hearts are not so trying to me as the amiable but otherwise sensible men
+who were sure our statesmen would not betray the dead, and who are
+incredulous over the Treaty now they see what it clearly intends to
+convey. They cannot believe that the War, which they thought began as a
+war of liberation, a struggle of Europe to free itself from the
+intolerable bonds of its past, continues in the Peace Treaty as a force
+malignantly deflected to the support of the very evils out of which
+August, 1914, arose. Then did they imagine the well-meaning leopard would
+oblige by changing his spots if spoken to kindly while he was eating the
+baby?
+
+
+
+
+XXV. Great Statesmen
+
+
+MAY, 31, 1919. What is wrong with our statesmen? I think the answer is
+simple. Success in a political career can be understood by all of us. It
+attracts the attention which applauds the owner of a Derby winner, or the
+Bishop who began as a poor, industrious, but tactful child. John the
+Baptist failed to attract the publicity he desired; and Christ drew it as
+a criminal, for the religious and political leaders of his day recognized
+what his teaching would lead to as easily as would any magistrate to-day
+who had before him a carpenter accused of persuading soldiers that
+killing is murder. Politicians move on the level of the common
+intelligence, and compete there with each other in charging the ignorance
+of the commonalty with emotion. A politician need be no more than
+something between a curate and a card-sharper. If he knows anything of
+the arts, of history, of economics, or of science, he had better forget
+it, or else use it as a forestaller would a knowledge of the time when
+prices should be raised. A confident man with a blood-shot voice and a
+gift for repartee is sure to make a success of politics, especially if he
+is not too particular. This did not matter once, perhaps, when politics
+merely afforded excitement for taverns and a career for the avid and
+meddlesome. The country was prosperous, and so it was difficult to do it
+serious harm.
+
+But to-day, just when we must have the leading of moral, judicious, and
+well-informed minds, or perish, we have only our statesmen. It never
+occurs to the crowd that its business would be more successfully
+transacted by a chance group, say of headmasters of elementary schools,
+than by the statesmen who, at Versailles recently, dared not face the
+shocking realities because these could not be squared with a Treaty which
+had to frame the figments of the hustings. The trouble with our statesmen
+is that they have been concerned hitherto merely to attend to the
+machinery, running freely and with little friction, of industrial
+society. They did not create that machinery. They but took it over. They
+knew nothing of the principles which motived it. Our statesmen were only
+practical politicians and business men. They held in contempt the fine
+abstract theories of physics, mechanics, and dynamics. It was safe for
+them to do so. The machinery went on running, apparently of its own
+volition. All went well until the War. Now the propeller-shaft of
+industrial society is fractured, our ship is wallowing in the trough of
+the seas, and the men who should put things right for us do not even know
+that it is the main shaft on which they should concentrate. They are
+irritating the passengers by changing the cabins, confiscating luggage,
+insisting on higher fares, cutting down the rations, and instructing the
+sailors in the goose-step; but the ship has no way on her, and the sound
+of breakers grows louder from a sombre, precipitous, and unknown coast.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI. Joy
+
+
+JULY 19, 1919. It has come. This is the great day of the English. Many
+have doubted whether we should ever have it, for faith had been weak and
+the mind weary while the enemy was still fixed in his fanatic resolution.
+But here it is, half my window-blind already bright with its first light.
+To-day we celebrate our return to peace, to an earth made the fairer for
+children, fit for the habitation of free men, safe for quiet folk ... the
+day that once had seemed as remote as truth, as inaccessible as good
+fortune; a day, so we used to think in France, more distant even than
+those incredible years of the past that were undervalued by us, when we
+were happy in our ignorance of the glory men could distil from misery and
+filth; when we had not guessed what wealth could be got from the needs of
+a public anxious for its life; nor that sleeping children could be bombed
+in a noble cause. Yes, it had seemed to us even farther off than our
+memories of the happy past. Yet here it is, its coffee-cups tinkling
+below, and I welcome its early shafts of gold like the fortune they are.
+The fortune seems innocent and unaware of its nature. It does not know
+what it means to us. I had often been with soldier friends across the
+water when with mock rapture they had planned an itinerary for this day.
+They spoke of it where their surroundings made the thought of secure
+leisure or unremarkable toil only a painful reminder of what was
+beatific, but might never be. This day had not come to them. But it had
+come to me.
+
+I was luckier than they. Yet when luck comes to us, does it ever look
+quite as we had imagined it when it was not ours? I lift the curtain on
+this luck, and look out. From an upper window of the house opposite the
+national emblem of the American Republic is hanging like an apron. Next
+door to it a man is decorating his windowsills with fairy lamps, and from
+his demeanour he might be devising a taboo against evil. I see no other
+sign that the new and better place of our planet was being acknowledged.
+The street is as the milkman and the postman have always known it on a
+quiet morning.
+
+A cock crowed. It was then I knew that, though the morning was like all
+good sunrises, which are the same for the unjust and the righteous, I,
+somehow, was different. Chanticleer was quite near, but his confident and
+defiant voice, I recognized with a start, was a call from some other
+morning. It was the remembered voice of life at sunrise, as old as the
+jungle, alert, glad, and brave. Then why did it not sound as if it were
+meant for me? Why did it not accord, as once it did, with the coming of a
+new day, when the renewed and waiting earth was veritably waiting for us?
+Yet the morning seemed the same, its sounds the familiar confidences, its
+light the virgin innocence of a right beginning. Was this new light ours?
+While looking at it I thought that perhaps there is another light, an
+aura of something early and rare, which, once it is doused, cannot be
+re-kindled, even by the sun which rises to shine on a great victory.
+
+I began to feel that this early confusion of thought, over even so plain
+a cause for joy as morning, might be a private hint that it would be as
+hard to tell the truth about peace as it used to be about battle. And how
+difficult it is to tell the truth about war, and even how improper, some
+of us know. For what a base traitor even truth may be to good patriots,
+when she insists that her mirror cannot help reflecting what is there!
+Why should the best instincts of loyal folk be thus embarrassed? If they
+do not wish to know what is there, when that is what it is like, is it
+right, is it gentlemanly, to show them?
+
+How easy it would be to write of peace in the Capital, where the old
+highways have been decorated for many kings, marshals, and admirals, and
+the flags have been hung for victories since England first bore arms. So
+why should one be dubious of a few unimportant suburban byways, where the
+truth is plain, and is not charged with many emotions through the
+presence of an emperor and his statesmen and soldiers, all of them great,
+all of them ready for our superlatives to add to their splendour?
+
+But perhaps the more you know of a place, the greater is your perplexity.
+That old vicarage wall, lower down my street, is merely attractive in the
+sun of Peace Day. A stranger, if he noticed it, might at the most admire
+its warm tones, and the tufts of hawkweed and snapdragon which are
+scattered on its ledges. But from this same window, on a winter morning,
+when affairs were urgent in France, I have seen youth assembled by that
+wall. Youth was silent. There was only a sergeant's voice in all the
+street. I think I hear now the diminishing trampling of quick feet
+marching away; and see a boy's face as he turned near the top of the rise
+to wave his hand. But look now, and say where are the shades on a bright
+morning!
+
+I went out, a dutiful citizen, to celebrate. No joy can be truthfully
+reported till just this side of the High Street, where there were three
+girls with linked arms dancing in lax and cheerful oblivion, one of them
+quite drunk. Near them stood a cart with a man, a woman, and a monkey in
+it. The superior animals were clothed in red, white, and blue, and the
+monkey was wearing a Union Jack for a ruff. The ape was humping himself
+on the tail-board, and from his expression he might have been wondering
+how long all this would last. His gay companions were rosily chanting
+that if they caught some one bending it would be of no advantage to him.
+The main thoroughfare was sanded, and was waiting for the official
+procession. Quiet citizens were strolling about with their children, and
+what they were thinking is as great a mystery as what the populace at
+Memphis thought when the completion of the Great Pyramid was celebrated
+by the order of Cheops. In a room of an upper storey near the town hall a
+choir was singing the Hallelujah Chorus, and below, on the pavement, a
+hospital nurse, in a red wig, stood gravely listening, swaying to and
+fro, holding her skirts high, so that we saw beneath the broad slacks of
+an able seaman.
+
+The chorus ceased, and in gratitude for the music the nurse embraced a
+Highland soldier, who was standing near and who was secretly amused, I
+believe, by the nurse's trousers. Then we heard the bands of the military
+procession in the distance, and it was in that moment I saw a young
+officer I knew, who was out as early as Neuve Chapelle, gazing, like
+everybody else, in the direction of the martial sounds. Before I could
+reach him through the press he had turned, and was walking hurriedly down
+a side street, as though in flight. I could not follow him. I wanted to
+see the soldiers. My reason was no better than some sentimental emotion;
+for I saw the original Contemptibles march off for Mons; and was with a
+battalion of the 9th Division, the first of Kitchener's men to go into
+the line; and saw the Derby men come out and begin; and at the last
+discovered that the conscripts were as good as the rest. Some of the
+survivors were marching towards me.
+
+But I did not recognize them. Many were elderly men who were displaying
+proud tunics of volunteer regiments as old as Hyde Park Parades by Queen
+Victoria. One looked then for the sections from the local lodges of the
+Druids, Oddfellows, Buffaloes, and the He-Goats. There was the band of
+the local cadets, spontaneous in its enthusiasm, its zest for martial
+music no different, of course. Just behind these lads a strange figure
+walked in the procession, a bent and misshapen old man, whose face had no
+expression but a fixed and hypnotic stare. He was keeping time to the
+measure of the boys' music by snapping the spring of a mouse-trap which
+he held aloft. I could not find him in the program. Was he also drunk? Or
+was he a terrible jest? Most of our triumphant display followed this
+figure. If our illusions go, what is left to us? Ah, our memories of the
+Somme! That young officer who turned away when he saw Triumph approaching
+acted on a right instinct.
+
+There is a hilltop near us. It looks to other hills over a great space of
+southern England, and at night on the far promontories of the Downs
+bonfires were to be lighted. I have no doubt signals flared from them
+when the Romans were baffled. Again to-night they would signal that the
+latest enemy had been vanquished.
+
+It was raining gently, and from our own crest the lower and outer night
+was void. A touch of distant phosphorescence that waned, and intensified
+again to a strong white glow, presently gave the void one far and lonely
+hilltop. A cloud elsewhere appeared out of nothing, and persisted, a
+lenticular spectre of dull fire. These aerial spectres became a host;
+some were so far away that they were faint smears of orange, and others
+so near and great that they pulsed and revealed the shapes of the clouds.
+It was all impersonal, it was England itself that was reflected, the
+hills that had awakened. It was the emanation of a worthy tradition,
+older than ourselves, that was re-kindled and was glowing, and that would
+be here when we are not. It was so receptive, it was so spacious, that
+our gravest memories could abide there, as if night were kind to the
+secrets we dare not voice, and understood folly and remorse, and could
+protect our better visions, and had sanctuary and consolation for that
+grief which looks to what might have been, but now can never be.
+
+A spark glittered near, a spark that towered and hovered overhead, and
+burst into coiling volumes of lurid smoke with a moving heart of flame.
+Light broke on a neighbouring hill that had been unseen and forgotten;
+the hill was crowned with fantastic trees that danced, and a wavering
+tower. From our own valley below there came a vicious tearing that gave
+me a momentary chill (so sounds a stream of machine-gun lead, going
+over), and a group of coloured stars expanded over us. Their bright light
+showed the night reticulated with thin lines of smoke, like veins of
+calcite in a canopy of black marble. Our immediate country, pallid and
+tremulous, faded again, but in that brief prospect of a shadow land I
+glimpsed a road, the presentment of the long road to Bapaume. So the
+Bapaume road showed at night by inconsequential and unexpected lights.
+That hill-crest of leaping trees could be the ridge of Loupart with its
+wood, and Achete in flames beyond. The notion gave me enough of our hill
+top. I descended from it.
+
+There is a public-house at the foot of the hill, and a lane of harsh
+noises and a beam of light projected together from its open door across
+the road. Beyond it I turned into a house, for I knew I should find there
+an aged and solitary man who would have his own thoughts on such a night
+as this; for he had a son, and the spectre of the Bapaume road had
+reminded me where that boy was celebrating whatever peace he knew. His
+father was not communicative; and what could I say? He sat, answering me
+distantly and austerely, and he might have been a bearded sage seeing in
+retrospect a world he had long known, and who at last had made up his
+mind about it, though he would not tell me what that was. Outside we
+could hear revellers approaching. They paused at our door; their feet
+began to shuffle, and they sang:
+
+  "If I catch you bending,
+   I'll turn you upside down,
+     Knees up, knees up,
+     Knees up, knees up,
+   Knees up, Father Brown."
+
+
+
+
+XXVII. The Real Thing
+
+
+JANUARY 9, 1920. There was a country town of which we heard wonderful
+tales as children. But it was as far as Cathay. It had many of the
+qualities that once made Cathay desirable and almost unbelievable. We
+heard of it at the time when we heard of the cities of Vanity Fair and
+Baghdad, and all from a man with a beard, who once sat by a London fire,
+just before bedtime, smoking a pipe and telling those who were below him
+on the rug about the past, and of more fortunate times, and of cities
+that were fair and far. Nothing was easier for us then than to believe
+fair reports. Good dreams must be true, for they are good. Some day, he
+said, he would take us to Torhaven; but he did not, for his luck was not
+like that.
+
+Nothing like that; so instead we used to look westward to where Torhaven
+would be, whenever the sunset appeared the right splendour for the sky
+that was over what was delectable and elsewhere. We made that do for
+years. Torhaven existed, there was no doubt, for once we made a journey
+to Paddington Station--a long walk--and saw the very name on a railway
+carriage. It was a surprising and a happy thought that that carriage
+would go into such a town that very day. What is more confident than the
+innocence of youth? Where, if not with youth, could be found such willing
+and generous reliance in noble legend?
+
+And how enduring is its faith! Long after, but not too long after, for
+fine appearances to us still meant fine prospects, we arrived one morning
+bodily in the haven of good report. Its genius was as bright as we
+expected. It had a shining face. It was the equal of the morning. Its
+folk could not be the same as those who lived within dark walls under a
+heaven that was usually but murk. It lost nothing because we could
+examine its streets. We went from it with a memory even warmer and more
+comforting. What would happen to us if youth did not more than merely
+believe the pleasant tales that are told, if it did not loyally desire to
+believe that things are what they are said to be?
+
+This country town is of the Southern kind which, with satisfaction, we
+show to strangers as something peculiarly of our country. It is ancient
+and luminous in an amphitheatre of hills, and schooners and barques come
+right among its gables. It is wealthy, but it is not of the common sort,
+for it never shows haste. It knows, of course, that wealth is cheap,
+until it has matured and has attained that dignity which only leisure and
+the indifference of usage can confer. The country around has a long
+history of well-sounding family names as native as its hills--they
+arrived together, or thereabouts--and the lodge gates on its highways,
+with their weathered and mossy heraldic devices, have a way of
+acquainting you with the measure of your inconsequence as you pass them
+when walking. Torhaven has no poverty. It tolerates some clean and
+obscure but very profitable manufactures. But its shipping is venerable,
+and is really not an industry at all, being as proper as the owning of
+deer-parks. On market day you would think you were in a French town, so
+many are the agriculturists, and so quiet and solid the evidence of their
+wellbeing. They own their farms, they love good horses, their wagons are
+built like ships, and their cattle, as aboriginal as the county families,
+might be the embodiment of the sleek genius of those hills and meadows,
+so famous are they for cream. The people of that country live well. They
+know their worth and the substance which they add to the strength of the
+British community. And they pride themselves on the legends, peculiarly
+theirs, which tell of their independence of mind, of their love of
+freedom, of their liberal opinions and the nonconformity of their
+religious views. They are stout folk, kind and companionable, and they do
+not love masters.
+
+It was the summer following the end of the War, and we were back again in
+Torhaven. The recollection of its ancient peace, of its stillness and
+light, of the refuge it offered, had enticed us there. Its very name had
+been the hope of escape. Where should we find people more likely to be
+quick and responsive? They would be among the first to understand the
+nature of the calamity which had overtaken us. They would know, long
+before amorphous and alien London, what that new world should be like
+which we owed to the young, a world in which might grow a garden for the
+bruised souls of the disillusioned.
+
+Its light was the same. It was not only untarnished by such knowledge as
+we brought with us, it was radiant. Yet it was not without its memory of
+the disaster. We went into the church, whose porch had been restored;
+symbolical, perhaps, of our entry into a world from which, happily, the
+old things had passed. The church was empty, for this was market day.
+Through its gloom, as through the penumbra of antiquity, shone faintly
+the pale forms of a few recumbent knights, and the permanent appeal of
+their upturned hands and faces kept the roof aware of human contrition.
+Above one of the figures was a new Union Jack, crowned with laurels. The
+sun made too vivid a scarlet patch of one of its folds.
+
+Just below the church was the theatre, now a cinema hall. This was market
+day, and the house was full. A poster outside pictured a bridge blowing
+up, and a motor-car falling into space. The midday sun was looking full
+at Torhaven's High Street, which runs south and downhill steeply to the
+quay; a schooner filled the bottom of the street that day. Anything a not
+too unreasonable man could desire was offered in the shops of that
+thoroughfare. This being a time of change, when our thoughts are all
+unfixed and we have had rumours of the New Jerusalem, the side window of
+a fashionable jeweller's was devoted to tiny jade pigs, minute dolls,
+silver acorns, and other propitiators of luck which time and experience
+have tested. Next door to the jeweller's was a studio supporting the
+arts, with local pottery shaped as etiolated blue cats and yellow
+puppies; and there one could get picture postcards of the London
+favourites in revue, and some water-colour paintings of the local coast
+which an advertisement affirmed were real.
+
+That was not all. Opposite was the one bookshop of the town. Its famous
+bay front and old diamond panes frankly presented the new day with
+ladies' handbags, ludo and other games, fountain pens, mounted texts from
+Ella Wilcox, local guide books, and apparently a complete series--as much
+as the length of the window would hold, at least--of Hall Caine's works;
+and in one corner prayer-books in a variety of bindings.
+
+Down on the quay, sitting on a bollard, with one leg stretched stiffly
+before him, was a young native I had not met since one day on the Menin
+Road. I had known him, before that strange occasion, as an ardent student
+of life and letters. He had entered a profession in which sound learning
+is essential, though the reward is slight, just when the War began. Then
+he believed, in high seriousness, as young and enthusiastic students
+did, all he was told in that August; and his professional career is now
+over.
+
+He pointed out to me mildly, and with a little reproach, that I was wrong
+in supposing Torhaven had not changed. I learned that the War had made a
+great change there. Motor-cars were now as commonly owned as bicycles
+used to be, though he admitted that it did not seem that the queue
+waiting to buy books, our sort of books, was in need of control by the
+police. But farmers who had been tenants when Germany violated the
+independence of Belgium were now freeholders. Men who were in essential
+industries, and so could not be spared for the guns, were now shipowners.
+We could see for ourselves how free and encouraging was the new wealth in
+this new world; true, the size of his pension did not fairly reflect the
+new and more liberal ideas of a better world, but we must admit he had no
+need to travel to Bond Street to spend it. "Why fear," he asked me,
+pointing with his crutch up the busy High Street behind us, "that what
+our pals in France learned was wrong with that old Europe which made the
+War, will not be known there? Have you seen," he said, "our bookshop,
+our cinema, and the new memorial porch of our church?"
+
+Near us was waiting a resplendent motor-car, in which reposed a young
+lady whose face decorates the covers of the popular magazines every
+month, and as the wounded soldier finished speaking it moved away with a
+raucous hoot.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII. Literary Critics
+
+
+MARCH 27, 1920. The last number of the _Chapbook_, containing "Three
+Critical Essays on Modern English Poetry," by three well-known critics of
+literature, I read with suspiciously eager attention, for I will confess
+that I have no handy rule, not one that I can describe, which can be run
+over new work in poetry or prose with unfailing confidence. My
+credentials as a literary critic would not, I fear, bear five minutes'
+scrutiny; but I never cease to look for that defined and adequate
+equipment, such as even a carpenter calls his tool-chest, full of cryptic
+instruments, each designed for some particular task, and every implement
+named. It is sad to have to admit it, but I know I possess only a
+home-made gimlet to test for dry-rot, and another implement, a very
+ancient heirloom, snatched at only on blind instinct, a stone ax. But
+these are poor tools, and sooner or later I shall be found out.
+
+There was a time when I was very hopeful about discovering a book on
+literary criticism which would make the rough places plain for me, and
+encourage me to feel less embarrassed when present where literary folk
+were estimating poetry and prose. I am such a simple on these occasions.
+If one could only discover the means to attain to that rather easy
+assurance and emphasis when making literary comparisons! Yet though this
+interesting number of the _Chapbook_ said much that I could agree with at
+once, it left me as isolated and as helpless as before. One writer said:
+"There is but one art of writing, and that is the art of poetry. The test
+of poetry is sincerity. The test of sincerity is style; and the test of
+style is personality." Excellent, I exclaimed immediately; and then
+slowly I began to suspect a trap somewhere in it. Of course, does not the
+test for sunlight distinguish it at once from insincere limelight? But
+what is the test, and would it be of any use to those likely to mistake
+limelight for daylight?
+
+I cannot say I have ever been greatly helped by what I have read
+concerning the standards for literary criticism. Of the many wise and
+learned critics to whose works I have gone for light, I can remember only
+Aristotle, Longinus, Tolstoy, and Anatole France--probably because it is
+easy for the innocent to agree with dominating men. Of the moderns I
+enjoy reading anything "Q" has to say about books; useless pleasure
+again, for what does one get but "Q's" full, friendly, ironic, and
+humorous mind? Lately, too, the critics have been unanimously
+recommending to us--and that shows the genuine value to the community of
+mere book reviewers--the _Letters of Tchehov_, as noble a document as we
+have had for a very long time. But I thought they did not praise Tchehov
+enough as a critic, for that wise and lovable author, among his letters,
+made many casual asides about art that were pleasing and therefore right
+to me. I begin to fear that most of the good things said about literature
+are said in casual asides.
+
+If I were asked to say why I preferred Christabel or Keats's odes to
+Tennyson's Revenge or the _Barrack-Room Ballads_, I should find it hard
+to explain satisfactorily to anyone who preferred to read Tennyson or
+Kipling. Where are the criteria? Can a Chinaman talk to an Arab? The
+difference, we see at once, is even deeper than that of language. It is a
+difference in nature; and we may set up any criterion of literature we
+like, but it will never carry across such a chasm. Our only consolation
+is that we may tell the other man he is on the wrong side of it, but he
+will not care, because he will not see it. The means by which we are able
+to separate what is precious in books from the matrix is not a process,
+and is nothing measurable. It is instinctive, and not only differs from
+age to age, but changes in the life of each of us. It is as indefinable
+as beauty itself. An artist may know how to create a beautiful thing, but
+he cannot communicate his knowledge except by that creation. That is all
+he can tell us of beauty, and, indeed, he may be innocent of the measure
+of his effort; and the next generation may ridicule the very thing which
+gave us so much pleasure, pleasure we proved to our own satisfaction to
+be legitimate and well founded by many sound generalizations about art.
+The canons of criticism are no more than the apology for our personal
+preferences, no matter how gravely we back them. Sometimes it has
+happened that a book or a poem has succeeded in winning the approval of
+many generations, and so we may call it a classic. Yet what is the virtue
+of a classic, or of the deliberate and stately billows going with the
+wind when the world has sweep and is fair, or of a child with a flower,
+or of the little smile on the face of the dead boy in the muck when the
+guns were filling us with fear and horror of mankind? I don't know; but
+something in us appears to save us from the punishing comet of Zeus.
+
+
+
+
+XXI. The South Downs
+
+
+MAY 22, 1920. The southern face of the hill fell, an abrupt promontory,
+to the woods of the plain. Its face was scored by the weather, and the
+dry drainage channels were headlong cascades of grey pebbles. Clumps of
+heather, sparse oak scrub with young leaves of bronze, contorted birch,
+and this year's croziers of the bracken (heaven knows their secret for
+getting lush aromatic sap out of such stony poverty), all made a tough
+life which held up the hill, steep as it was; though the hill was going,
+for the roots of some of the oaks were exposed, empty coils of rope from
+which the burden had slipped. In that sea of trees whose billows came to
+the foot of our headland, and out of sight beneath its waves, children
+were walking, gathering bluebells. We knew they were there, for we could
+hear their voices. But there was no other sign of our form of life except
+a neolithic flint scraper one of us had picked up on the hilltop. The
+marks of the man who made it were as clear as the voices below. It had
+been lost since yesterday, it might be--anyhow, about the day the first
+Pyramid was finished. It depends on how one looks at the almanac. For you
+could feel the sun fire was young. It had not been long kindled. Its heat
+in the herbage was moist. One of the youngsters with me, bruising the
+bracken and snuffing it, said it smelt of almond and cucumber. Another
+said the crushed birch leaves smelt of sour apples. We could not say what
+the oak leaves smelt like. Then another grabbed a handful of leafmould,
+damp and brown and full of fibre. What did that smell of? They were not
+sure that they liked it. Perhaps it was the smell of the hill. They
+admitted that it wasn't a bad smell. They seemed a little afraid of that
+odour.
+
+But I was trying to read, and neolithic times and the bluebell gatherers
+had run together. They were in the same day. My book had made of that May
+morning in Surrey an apparition without time and place. We hear ourselves
+laughing now, intent, for instance, on confirming the almond and cucumber
+in bruised bracken, or catch the sound of our serious voices raised in a
+dispute over literature or politics. But these things are not really in
+our minds. We would not betray our secret thoughts to bluebell gatherers
+and boys snuffing the bracken. This book I was reading, and a fancied
+resemblance in that hill and its prospect, moved the shadows again--they
+are so readily moved--and I saw two of us in France on such a hill,
+gazing intently and innocently over just such a prospect, in the summer
+of 1915, without in the least guessing what, in that landscape before us,
+was latent for us both. Those downs across the way would be Beaumont
+Hamel and Thiepval. Bluebells! The publishers may send out what advice
+they choose to authors concerning the unpopularity of books about the
+War--always excepting, of course, the important reminiscences, the soft
+and heavy masses of words of the great leaders of the nations in the War,
+which merely reveal that they never knew what they were doing. Certainly
+we could spare that kind of war book, though it continues to arrive in
+abundance; a volume by a famous soldier explaining why affairs went
+strangely wrong is about the last place where we should look for anything
+but folly solemnly pondering unrealities. But whatever the publishers may
+say, we do want books about the War by men who were in it. Some of us
+have learned by now that France is a memory of such a nature that, though
+it is not often we dare stop to look directly at it, for the day's work
+must be done, yet it looms through the importance of each of these latter
+days as though the event of our lives were past, and we were at present
+merely watching the clock. The shadow of what once was in France is an
+abiding presence for us. We know nothing can happen again which will
+release us from it. And yet how much has been written of it? That is the
+measure of its vastness and its mystery--it possesses the minds of many
+men, but they are silent on what they know. They rarely speak of it,
+except to one of the fraternity. But where are their thoughts? Wandering,
+viewless and uneasy wraiths, over Flanders, in Artois and Picardy. Those
+thoughts will never come home again to stay.
+
+It is strange to me that publishers should suppose that books, intimate
+about the invisible but abiding shadow which is often more potent than
+present May sunshine, should not be wanted. Take for example this book I
+was reading, _The Squadroon_, by Ardern Beaman. To induce readers to buy
+it it has a picture on its dust-cover which kept me from reading it for
+weeks. This wrapper shows a ghostly knight in armour leading a charge of
+British cavalry in this War. I should have thought we had had enough of
+that romantic nonsense during the actual events. The War was written for
+the benefit of readers who made a luxury of the sigh, and who were told
+and no doubt preferred to believe that the young soldier went into battle
+with the look we so admire in the picture called The Soul's Awakening. He
+was going to glory. There are no dead. There are only memorial crosses
+for heroes and the Last Post. The opinions of most civilians on the War
+were as agreeable as stained-glass windows. The thought of a tangle of a
+boy's inside festooned on rusty wire would naturally have spoiled the
+soul's awakening and the luxury of the sigh. I heard of a civilian
+official, on his way to Paris after the Armistice, who was just saved by
+rapid explanations from the drastic attention of a crowd of Tommies who
+mistook him for a War Correspondent.
+
+But Mr. Beaman's book is not like war correspondence. It can be commended
+to those who were not there, but who wish to hear a true word or two. Mr.
+Beaman as a good-natured man remembers how squeamish we are, and being
+also shy and dainty indicates some matters but briefly. I wish, for one
+thing, that when describing the doings of his cavalry squadron after the
+disaster on the Fifth Army front--the author enables you to feel how
+slender was the line of resolute men which then saved the Army from
+downfall--he had ventured to record with more courage the things which it
+shamed him to see. Why should only such as he know of those shocks to
+affability? But all he says about some unpleasant matters is: "During
+those days we saw things of which it is not good to speak--of which
+afterwards we never did speak, except late at nights, in the privacy of
+our own mess."
+
+Mr. Beaman's simple narrative, however, with its humanity and easy
+humour, often lets in light on strange affairs, as though he had
+forgotten what had been locked up, and had carelessly opened a forbidden
+door. He shuts it again at once, like a gentlemen, and we follow him
+round hoping that presently he will do the same again. Ambrose Bierce
+could have made something of what is suggested in such a passage as
+this:
+
+  "On the borders of this horrid desolation (the Somme) we met a
+  Salvage Company at work. That warren of trenches and dugouts
+  extended for untold miles.... They warned us, if we insisted on
+  going further in, not to let any man go singly, but only in strong
+  parties, as the Golgotha was peopled with wild men, British,
+  French, Australian, German deserters, who lived there underground,
+  like ghouls among the mouldering dead, and who came out at nights
+  to plunder and kill. In the night, an officer said, mingled with
+  the snarling of carrion dogs, they often heard inhuman cries and
+  rifle-shots coming from that awful wilderness. Once they (the
+  Salvage Company) had put out, as a trap, a basket containing food,
+  tobacco, and a bottle of whisky. But the following morning they
+  found the bait untouched, and a note in the basket, 'Nothing
+  doing!'"
+
+
+
+
+XXX. Kipling
+
+
+JUNE 5, 1920. One day, when I did not know Kipling's name, I found in a
+cabin of a ship from Rangoon two paper-covered books, with a Calcutta
+imprint, smelling of something, whatever it was, that did not exist in
+England. The books were _Plain Tales from the Hills_ and _Soldiers
+Three_. It was high summer, and in that cabin of a ship in the Albert
+Dock, with its mixed odour of tea, teak, and cheroots, I read through
+all. The force in those stories went nearer to capturing me completely
+than anything I have read since. I can believe now that I just escaped
+taking a path which would have given me a world totally different from
+the one I know, and the narrowness of the escape makes me feel tolerant
+towards the young people who give up typewriting and book-keeping, and go
+out into an unfriendly world determined to be Mary Pickfords and Charlie
+Chaplins. A boy boards a ship merely to get a parrot, and his friend, who
+brought it from Burma, has gone to Leadenhall Street; there is a long
+interval, with those books lying in a bunk. Such a trivial
+incident--something like it happening every week to everybody--and to-day
+that boy, but for the Grace of God, might be reading the leaders of the
+_Morning Post_ as the sole relief to a congested mind, going every week
+to the cartoon of _Punch_ as to barley water for chronic prickly heat,
+and talking of dealing with the heterodox as the Holy Office used to deal
+with unbaptized Indian babies for the good of their little souls.
+
+I have recovered from those astonishing adventures with Kipling. I may
+read him to-day with enjoyment, but safe from excitation. This is due,
+perhaps, to a stringy constitution, subject to bilious doubts, which
+loves to see lusty Youth cock its hat when most nervous, swagger with
+merry insolence to hide the uncertainty which comes of self-conscious
+inexperience, assume a cynical shrewdness to protect its credulity, and
+imitate the abandon of the hard fellow who has been to Hong Kong, Tal
+Tal, and Delagoa Bay. We enjoy seeing Youth act thus; but one learns in
+time that a visit to Rhodesia, worse luck, makes one no more intelligent
+than a week-end at Brighton. Well, it doesn't matter. What ingrates we
+should be now to turn on Kipling because we disagree with the politics he
+prefers, those loud opinions of his which, when we get too much of them,
+remain in the ears for a while like the echoes of a brass tray which a
+hearty child banged for a drum. Though we hold the British Constitution
+as sacred as the family vault we do not think the less of Dickens because
+the awful spectacle of our assembled legislators made him laugh, nor do
+we leave the room when Beethoven is played because his careless regard
+for a monarch's divine right is painful to us. If Kipling had not given
+us _My Sunday at Home_ and _The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney_, how
+should we have got them?
+
+I have just read Kipling's book, _Letters of Travel_. Its attractive
+title drew me to it, and is to blame. Kipling has an uncanny gift of
+sight. It prompts no divination in him, but its curiosity misses nothing
+that is superficial. If he had watched the Crucifixion, and had been its
+sole recorder, we should have had a perfect representation of the
+soldiers, the crowds, the weather, the smells, the colours, and the three
+uplifted figures; so lively a record that it would be immortal for the
+fidelity and commonness of its physical experience. But we should never
+have known more about the central figure than that He was a cool and
+courageous rebel. Kipling can make a picture of an indifferent huddle of
+fishing boats in a stagnant harbour which is more enjoyable than being
+there. Letters from such a traveller would attract one directly across
+the bookshop. But these letters of his were addressed to his friends the
+Imperialists before the War, and one may guess the rest. Such an exposure
+moves one to sorrow over a writer whose omniscience used to make the
+timorous believe that arrogance, if lively enough, had some advantage
+over reason.
+
+Yet there is in a few of the letters enough to show what we missed
+because they were not addressed to himself, or to anybody but a Composite
+Portrait of The Breed. There are passages in the chapter called "Half a
+Dozen Pictures" which clear all irritation from the mind (for many of the
+author's insults are studied and gratuitous) and leave nothing but
+respect for the artist. These come when the artist sees only a riot of
+Oriental deck passengers, bears, and macaws, in the tropics; or a steamer
+coming round, exposed by a clarity like crystal in the trough of immense
+seas somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Auckland Islands at dayfall.
+We get such impressions when Kipling has, for the moment, forgotten the
+need to make a genuflection towards the Absolute and Everlasting
+Chutney, and is a man and brother delighting in his craft.
+
+The rest of the book has, one must admit, a value, but it is an
+undesigned value; indeed, its value is that it was designed to prove, at
+the time it was written, something quite different. From this book, with
+its recurring contempt for England, you may see what value we need have
+attached to much that the assured and the violent ever had to tell us
+about our Empire. If this publication is, indeed, an act of contrition
+for words unwisely written, then it should be read as a warning by all
+who write. Materialists naturally attach to transient circumstances a
+value which the less patriotic of us might think not really material. "We
+discussed, first of all, under the lee of a wet deck-house in
+mid-Atlantic; man after man cutting in and out of the talk as he sucked
+at his damp tobacco." There is no doubt Kipling supposes that the wet
+deck-house adds a value to the words spoken under its lee-side. Yet the
+words he reports are what one may hear, with grief, any day in any tavern
+in the hurry and excitement of ten minutes before closing time. But
+Kipling always thought an opinion gained in value if expressed elsewhere
+than in England. His ideal government would be a polo-player from Simla
+leading the crew of the _Bolivar_.
+
+Every horror in the world, the author of these letters tells us, has its
+fitting ritual. How easily, too, one realizes it, when feeling again the
+fanatic heat and force of this maker of old magic with the tom-tom; the
+vicious mockery, certain of popular applause, of ideas that are not
+marketable; the abrupt rancour whenever the common folk must be
+mentioned; the spite felt for England--"in England ... you see where the
+rot starts"; the sly suspicion of other countries, and the consequent
+jealousy and fear; here it all is, convulsive, uncertain, inflammable.
+The prophet of Empire! But the prophecy was wrong. England, "where the
+rot starts," bore most of the heat and burden of the day, and saved the
+Empire for the money-mongers. And what of the British youngsters who did
+that, who were not materialists in the least, but many of them the
+idealists for whom no abuse once could be too vicious? The corruption of
+the Somme! That faceless and nameless horror was the apotheosis of the
+Imperialist.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI. A Devon Estuary
+
+
+SEPTEMBER 11, 1920. "This dreary expanse," the guide-book explains, "will
+not attract the tourist." The guide was right. I was alone to that degree
+beyond mere solitude when you feel you are not alone, but that the place
+itself is observing you. Yet only five miles away long lines of
+motor-cars were waiting to take tourists, at ruinous prices, to the
+authentic and admitted beauty spots. There was not, as the polite
+convention would put it, a soul about. It was certainly a dreary expanse,
+but the sunlight there seemed strangely brilliant, I thought, and, what
+was more curious, appeared to be alive. It was quivering. The transient
+glittering of some seagulls remote in the blue was as if you could
+glimpse, now and then, fleeting hints of what is immaculate in heaven.
+Nothing of our business was in sight anywhere except the white stalk of a
+lighthouse, and that, I knew, was miles away across the estuary whose
+waters were then invisible, for it was not only low tide, but I was
+descending to the saltings, having left the turf of the upper salt
+marshes.
+
+You felt that here in the saltings you were beyond human associations.
+The very vegetation was unfamiliar. The thrift, sea lavender, rocket, sea
+campion, and maritime spurge did not descend so low as this. They came no
+nearer than where the highest tidal marks left lines of driftwood and
+bleached shells, just below the break of the upper marshes. Here it was
+another kingdom, neither sea nor land, but each alternately during the
+spring tides. At first the sandy mud was reticulated with sun-cracks, not
+being daily touched by the sea, and the crevasses gave a refuge for algć.
+There was a smell, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, which reminded you of
+something so deep in the memory that you could not give it a name. But it
+was sound and good. Beyond that dry flat the smooth mud glistened as if
+earth were growing a new skin, which yet was very tender. It was spongy,
+but it did not break when I trod on it, though the earth complained as I
+went. It was thinly sprinkled with a plant like little fingers of green
+glass, the maritime samphire, and in the distance this samphire gave the
+marsh a sheen of continuous and vivid emerald.
+
+The saltings looked level and unbroken. But on walking seaward I was
+continually surprised by drainage channels. These channels serpentined
+everywhere, and were deep and wide. Sometimes they contained nothing but
+silt, and sometimes they were salt-water rivers. I came upon each canyon
+unexpectedly. The first warning was a sudden eruption from it, a flock of
+dunlin, a flock which then passed seawards in a regimented flight that
+was an alternate flash of light and a swift shadow. Dunlin, curlew,
+oyster-catchers, or gulls, left a gully just before I knew I was headed
+off again. In one of these creeks, however, the birds left me more than
+their delicate footprints to examine. They left there a small craft whose
+mast I had long taken to be a stump projecting from the mud. A young man
+in a brown beard, a brown shirt, and a pair of khaki trousers was sitting
+on its skylight. He hailed, and showed me how I could get to him without
+sinking up to more than the knees in this dreary spot.
+
+"Stay here if you like," he said, when I was with him. "When the tide is
+full I'll pull you round to the village." It was a little cutter of about
+fifteen tons, moored to the last huge links of a cable, the rest of which
+had long been covered up. I thought he was making holiday in a novel
+way. "No," he replied, "I'm living here."
+
+It seems (I am but paraphrasing his apology) that he returned from
+Cambrai, bringing back from France, as a young officer, some wounds and
+other decorations, but also his youthful credulity and a remembrance of
+society's noble promises to its young saviours. But not long after his
+return to us the sight of us made him feel disappointed. He "stuck it,"
+he said, as long as he could. But the more he observed us the worse he
+felt. That was why he gave up a good position a second time on our
+account. "What was the good of the money? The profiteers took most of it.
+I worked hard, and had to give up what I earned to every kind of
+parasite. London was more disagreeable than ever was Flanders. Yet I
+think I would not object to sweep the roads for a community of good
+people. Yes, I thought nothing could be worse than the dead in the mud.
+But I found something worse. The minds of the living who did not know
+what I knew in France were worse to me. I couldn't remember the friends
+I'd lost and remain where I was with those people about me. It was more
+awful than that German--did you ever meet him?--who lay just the other
+side of the parapet for weeks and weeks."
+
+His only companion now is a paraffin stove, which does not, perhaps,
+require a gas-mask to aid in its companionship, though about that I won't
+be sure. The only conversation he hears is that of the curlews; subdued,
+cheerful, and very intimate voices, having just that touch of melancholy
+which intimacy, when it is secure and genuine, is sure to give, however
+jolly the intimacy may be. He said that at first he was afraid he could
+not live on what little money he had, and must earn casually, after
+buying the boat, but "it's easier to live than I thought. There's not
+nearly as much worry needed as I used to suppose. It is surprising how
+much one can do without. I was rather scared at first when I got rid of
+my sense of duty. But, after all, it is not so hard to be free. Perhaps
+the world already has more soft and easy people than is good for it. I
+find one benefit of this life is that, being free of the crowd, I feel
+indifferent about the way the crowd chooses to go. I don't care now what
+the public does--that's its own affair, and I hope it will enjoy it."
+After a silence he said: "That sounds selfish, I know. And I'm not sure
+yet that it isn't. Anyhow, if one could help one's fellows one would.
+But is it possible to help them? When did they last listen to reason? The
+only guides they will listen to are frauds obvious enough to make an ass
+lay back his ears. Well, I think I'll wait here till the crowd knows
+enough to stop before it gets to the edge of the steep place--if it can
+stop now."
+
+I asked him what he read. "Very little. I fish more than I read. You'd
+think it would take only a week to learn all there is here. I should have
+thought so once. I see now that I shall never thoroughly know this
+estuary. It's a wonderful place. Every tide is a new experience. I am
+beginning to feel right again." In the boat, going round to the village,
+he learned I was a writer, rested on his oars, and drifted with the tide.
+"I'll give you a job," he said. "Write a book that will make people hate
+the idea that the State is God as Moloch was at last hated. Turn the
+young against it. The latest priest is the politician. No ritual in any
+religion was worse than this new worship of the State. If men don't wake
+up to that then they are doomed." He began then to pull me towards
+humanity again.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII. Barbellion
+
+
+DECEMBER 18, 1920. When posterity feels curious to discover what may have
+caused the disaster to our community it will get a little light from the
+merry confessions of our contemporary great folk. Let it read Colonel
+Repington's _Diary_, Mrs. Asquith's book, and the memoirs of General
+French. The general, of course, implies that he was so puzzled by the
+neutrality of time and space, and by the fact that the treacherous enemy
+was in trenches and used big guns. Our descendants may learn from these
+innocent revelations what quality of knowledge and temper, to be found
+only in a superior caste, guided the poor and lowly, and shaped our fate
+for us. They will know why wars and famines were inevitable for us, and
+why nothing could avert doom from the youth of our Europe. There is no
+disputing the importance of these confessions. But their relationship to
+literature? For that matter they might be linoleum. Yet there has been a
+book of confessions published recently which may be read as literature
+when the important gossip with the vast sales is merely curious evidence
+for historians equipped for psychological analysis. I mean Barbellion's
+_Journal of a Disappointed Man_.
+
+It will interest our descendants to learn that outside the circle which
+Colonel Repington reports at its dinner-tables where the ladies were so
+diverting, the fare usually excellent, and the gentlemen discussed the
+"combing out" of mere men for places like Ypres, there was genuine
+knowledge and warm understanding. Beyond those cheerful dinner-tables,
+and in that outer darkness of which the best people knew nothing except
+that it was possible to rake it fruitfully with a comb, there was a host
+of young men from which could be manifested the courageous intellectual
+curiosity, the ardour for truth, the gusto for life, and the love of
+earth, which we see in Keeling's letters and Barbellion's diary. All is
+shown in these two books in an exceptional degree, and, in Barbellion's
+diary, is expressed with a remarkable wit and acuteness, and not seldom,
+as in the description of a quarry, of a Beethoven Symphony, of a
+rock-pool of the Devon coast, with a beauty that is startling.
+
+Keeling was killed in the War. Barbellion (who, as we know now, was Bruce
+Cummings) never went to France, for he was dying, though he did not know
+it, when he presented himself for medical examination. But it is clear
+that though secluded from the turmoil in a country cottage, paralyzed,
+and his trunk already dead, Barbellion's sensitive mind and imaginative
+sympathy knew more of what was happening to his fellows in France, and
+what it meant for us all, than the combined Cabinet in Downing Street.
+That spark of dying light was aware when the luminaries on whom we
+depended were blind and ignorant. In his _Last Diary_, and within a day
+or two of his death, he wrote of the Peace Treaty (May, 1919): "After all
+the bright hopes of last autumn, justice will be done only when all the
+power is vested in the people. Every liberal-minded man must feel the
+shame of it." But did such men feel the shame of it? Refer to what the
+popular writers, often liberal-minded, said about the shame they felt at
+the time, and compare. To Barbellion, by the light of his expiring lamp,
+was revealed what was hidden from nearly all experienced and active
+publicists. Is there any doubt still of the superiority of imagination
+over hard-headedness?
+
+Imagination instantly responds. Percolation is a slow process in the hard
+head of the worldly-wise. When we know that in the elderly, the shrewd,
+and the practical, the desire for material power and safety, qualified
+only by fear, served as their substitute for the City of God during the
+War, it is heartening to remember that there were select though unknown
+young men, mere subjects for "combing" like Barbellion, who made
+articulate an immense rebellious protest that was in the best of our
+boys; who showed a mocking intuition into us and our motives, as though
+we were a species apart; a scorn of the world we had made for them, a
+cruel knowledge of the cowardice and meanness at the back of our warlike
+minds, and a yearning for that world of beauty which might have been, but
+which the acts of the clever and the practical have turned into carrion
+among the ruins. Would it matter now if we were bankrupt, and our Empire
+among the things that were, if only we were turning to sackcloth and
+ashes because of that dousing of the glim in the heart of the young?
+
+This last diary of Bruce Cummings is sad enough, for he could but lie
+inert, listen to the last news of the War, and wonder incidentally who
+would come to him first--the postman bringing the reviews of his first
+book, or the bony old gentleman bringing the scythe. He felt, of course,
+the mockery of this frustration of his powers. He thought--and, it
+seemed, with good reason--that he was a tragic failure. But was he? Read
+his books, and admit that he accomplished a little that is beautiful and
+enduring, and that he did it obscurely at a time when they who held most
+of the fearful attention of the world were but working gravely on what
+their children would execrate.
+
+Some critics find in the diary of Barbellion's last days evidence that he
+remembered he was writing for an audience. It may be there, but it is not
+plain to me. It is likely that if we were writing a paragraph while
+doubtful whether the hair which held the sword over us would last till we
+had finished, we might find we were not so joyously abandoned to pure art
+as we used to be. The interest of the book is that it is some more of
+Bruce Cummings when we could not have expected another line from him.
+Apart even from their literary value, it seems to me that some day his
+three volumes may prove to bear historic witness as important as that of
+Colonel Repington's diary. It was just such minds as Barbellion's, not
+uncommon in the youth of our war time--though in his case the unusual
+intuitions and adventurous aspirations were defined by genius--it was
+such minds that the war-mongers condemned and destroyed. Those men were
+selected for sacrifice because they had the very qualities which, when
+lost to the community, then it dies in its soul. They were candid with
+themselves, and questioned our warranty with the same candour, but were
+modest and reticent; they were kindly to us when they knew we were wooden
+and wrong, and did our bidding, judging it was evil. In France they
+subdued their insurgent thoughts--and what that sacrifice meant to them
+in the lonely night watches I have been privileged to learn--and
+surrendered, often in terrible derision, to our will; and then in cool
+and calculated audacity devised the very tasks in which the bravest and
+most intelligent would be the first to die.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII. Breaking the Spell
+
+
+APRIL 8, 1921. My seat by the Serpentine was under a small and almost
+impalpable cloud of almond petals. The babbling of ducks somewhere in the
+place where the water seemed a pale and wavering fire was like the sound
+of the upwelling of the hidden spring of life. This was the spot where I
+could sit and there quietly match the darker shades of trouble in the
+afternoon papers, the time being April in England, and the sky ineffable.
+There was not a trace of mourning in the sky; not a black-edged cloud.
+But human life, being an urgent and serious affair, and not a bright blue
+emptiness like Heaven; human life being a state of trial in which, as
+favoured beings, we are "heated hot with burning fears and dipped in
+baths of hissing tears" for our own good, could not be expected to look
+as pleasant, during so severe a necessary process, as almond trees in
+blossom. So I sat down and prepared to measure, from the news in the
+papers, the depth of the present border on our daily memorial card.
+
+The black border was rather a deep one, when measured. The fears were
+fairly hot. There were no noticeable signs of any tears in the papers, so
+far, but one could guess there would be a deep extinguishing bath of them
+ready to hiss presently, if all went well, and our affairs had
+uninterrupted development under the usual clever guides. And we had the
+guides. I could see that. The papers were loud with the inspirations of
+friends of ours who had not missed a single lesson of the War for those
+who were not in it; who were still resolute in that last and
+indispensable ditch which no foe is ever likely to reach. But by now the
+almond's cloud had vanished. I no longer heard the bubbling of the well
+of life.
+
+I finished reading the papers. Now I knew our current fate, and felt as
+if I heard again the gas gong going continuously. I had the feeling in
+April, unknown to any snail on the thorn, that the park was deafening
+with the clangour of pallid, tense, and contending lunatics. The
+Serpentine had receded from this tumult. Its tranquil shimmering was now
+fatuous and unbelievable. It was but half seen; its glittering was a
+distant grimacing and mockery at my troubled human intelligence. It was
+nothing to do with me, and showed it in that impertinent way. Two ducks,
+two absurd ducks, suddenly appeared before me on the polished water. They
+were bowing politely to each other--only I was looking at them--and were
+making soothing noises in imbecile ignorance of the fate overhanging us
+all. There was a boy not far away. He stood as still as a thought
+entranced. He was watching a boat with a paper sail. He was as intent as
+if he were God observing the progress of Columbus, knowing now that
+America is about to be found.
+
+If that boy had but guessed what I knew! But he had not read the latest
+news. It is the privilege of knowledge to be superior and grave; to be
+able to smile sadly at the dream of a Golden Galleon which childhood sees
+in April by the Serpentine; for knowledge is aware of the truth, the
+tumult surrounding us of contentious lunatics, endless, inexplicable; the
+noise of mankind in its upward journey towards the eclipse, or some other
+heavenly mystery.
+
+Presently that tinted mist which was a tree in flower began to shine
+again through the dark noise which the papers had made. The uproar
+cleared a little. The water came nearer, its glittering growing
+stronger, its fire burning towards me. I saw in surprise through the
+gloom in my mind that the fire had touched the elms; their dark masses
+were faintly luminous. And the mallard drake, riding on the outer pulses
+of that radiation, was purple and emerald. But would the beauty of the
+spring surprise us, I wonder; would it still give the mind a twinge,
+sadden us with a nameless disquiet, shoot through us so keen an anguish
+when the almond tree is there again on a bright day, if we were decent,
+healthy, and happy creatures? Perhaps not. It is hard to say. It is a
+great while since our skinless and touchy crowds of the wonderful
+industrial era, moving as one man to the words of the daily papers, were
+such creatures. Perhaps we should merely yawn and stretch ourselves, feel
+revived with the sun a little warmer on our backs, and snuff up a
+pleasant smell which we remembered; begin to whistle, and grope for an
+adze.
+
+But we cannot have it so. The spring is not for us. We have been so
+inventive. We have desired other things, and we have got them. We have
+cleverly made a way of life that exacts so close an attention, if we
+would save it from disaster, that we are now its prisoners. Peace and
+freedom have become but a vision which the imprisoned view through the
+bars they themselves have made. The spring we see now is in a world not
+ours, a world we have left, which is still close to us, but is
+unapproachable. The children are in it, and even, apparently, the ducks.
+It is a world we see sometimes, as a reminder--once a year or so--of what
+we could have made of life, and what we have.
+
+Which is the real world? I worried over that as I was leaving the park. I
+seemed to be getting nearer to reality near Rotten Row. A reassuring
+policeman was in sight. Motor-cars that were humiliating with their
+enamel and crystal were threading about. The fashionable ladies and their
+consorts seemed to be in no doubt about the world they were in. I began
+to feel mean and actual. While thus composing my mind I chanced to look
+backwards. A miniature glade was there, where the tree-trunks were the
+columns in an aisle. Was it a sward between them? I doubt whether we
+could walk it. I call it green. I know of no other word. Perhaps the sun
+was playing tricks with it. It may not have been there. As I kept my eye
+on it, disbelieving that light--desirous to believe it, but unable to,
+faith being weak--a rabbit moved into the aisle. I call it a rabbit, for
+I know no other word. But I declare now that I do not accept that
+creature. It sat up, and watched me. I don't say it was there. As far as
+I know, any rabbit would have been terrified with all those people about.
+But not this apparition, its back to the sunset, with an aura and radiant
+whiskers of gold. It regarded me steadfastly. I looked around to see if I
+were alone in this.
+
+The policeman was unconscious of it. The lady who sat on the chair
+opposite, the lady with the noticeable yellow legs, was talking in
+animation, but I doubt it was about this rabbit. The saunterers were
+passing without a sign. But one little girl stood, her hands behind her,
+oblivious of all but that admonitory creature in an unearthly light, and
+was smiling at it. It was the only confirmation I had. I have no
+recollection now of what I saw in the day's paper. I have later and
+better news.
+
+                               THE END
+
+Transcriber's Note: The following words were inconsistently hyphenated in
+the original text: hill-top, hilltop; school-boy, schoolboy.
+
+The following corrections have been made to the original text:
+
+Page 12: Septemer to September
+
+Page 103: foward to forward
+
+Page 146: irresistable to irresistible
+
+Page 199: sarcifice to sacrifice
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Waiting for Daylight, by Henry Major Tomlinson
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<title>
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Waiting for Daylight, by H. M. Tomlinson.
+</title>
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Waiting for Daylight, by Henry Major Tomlinson
+
+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: Waiting for Daylight
+
+Author: Henry Major Tomlinson
+
+Release Date: November 12, 2008 [EBook #27246]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAITING FOR DAYLIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan Skinner, Peter Vachuska, Chuck Greif and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1 style="text-align: right;">WAITING FOR<br />
+DAYLIGHT</h1>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div style="width: 40%; padding: 1em; border: solid; 1px;"><h3><i>BOOKS BY H. M. TOMLINSON</i></h3>
+
+<ul style="list-style-type: none;"><li>THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE</li>
+<li>OLD JUNK</li>
+<li>LONDON RIVER</li>
+<li>WAITING FOR DAYLIGHT</li></ul></div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>THE FIRST PRINTING OF THIS BOOK CONSISTS</p>
+<p>OF TWENTY-ONE HUNDRED COPIES,</p>
+<p>OF WHICH TWO THOUSAND ARE FOR SALE.</p>
+<div style='margin-top:1em'></div>
+<p>THIS IS NUMBER</p>
+<div style='margin-top:1em'></div>
+<p>669</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:2em;'>WAITING FOR</p>
+<p style=' font-size:2em;'>DAYLIGHT</p>
+<div style='margin-top:1em'></div>
+<p style=' font-size:1.6em;'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>By</span> H. M. TOMLINSON</p>
+<div style='margin-top:1em'></div>
+<div style='margin-top:1em'></div>
+<p style=' margin-top:4em;'>NEW YORK · ALFRED · A · KNOPF · MCMXXII</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY</p>
+<p>ALFRED A. KNOPF, <span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Inc.</span></p>
+<div style='margin-top:1em'></div>
+<p><i>Published May, 1922</i></p>
+<div style='margin-top:1em'></div>
+<div style='margin-top:1em'></div>
+<p style=' margin-top:6em;'><i>Set up, electrotyped and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y.</i></p>
+<p><i>Paper furnished by Henry Lindenmeyr &amp; Sons, New York, N. Y.</i></p>
+<p><i>Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York, N. Y.</i></p>
+<div style='margin-top:1em'></div>
+<div style='margin-top:1em'></div>
+<p>MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p><i>To</i></p>
+<p><i>MY WIFE</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='right'>I.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>In Ypres</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_3">3</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>II.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>A Raid Night</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_12">12</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>III. </td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Islands</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_24">24</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IV.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Travel Books</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_28">28</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>V.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Signs of Spring</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_31">31</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VI. </td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Prose Writing</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_36">36</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VII. </td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The Modern Mind</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_40">40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VIII. </td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Magazines</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_44">44</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IX. </td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The Marne</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_49">49</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>X.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Carlyle</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_56">56</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XI.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Holiday Reading</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_58">58</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XII.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>An Autumn Morning</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_65">65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIII.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>News from the Front</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_74">74</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIV.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Authors and Soldiers</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_80">80</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XV.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Waiting for Daylight</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_88">88</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XVI.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The Nobodies</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_96">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XVII.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Bookworms</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_112">112</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'> XVIII.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Sailor Language</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_115">115</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIX.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Illusions</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_120">120</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XX.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Figure-heads</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_127">127</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXI.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Economics</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXII.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Old Sunlight</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_135">135</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'> XXIII.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Ruskin</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_140">140</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXIV.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The Reward of Virtue</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_147">147</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXV.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Great Statesmen</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_149">149</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXVI.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Joy</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_152">152</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'> XXVII.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The Real Thing</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_162">162</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXVIII.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Literary Critics</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_170">170</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXIX.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The South Downs</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_175">175</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXX.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Kipling</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_182">182</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXXI.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>A Devon Estuary</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_188">188</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'> XXXII.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Barbellion</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_194">194</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXXIII.</td><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Breaking the Spell</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#page_200">200</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<h1 style="text-align: right;">WAITING FOR<br />
+DAYLIGHT</h1>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3' name='page_3'></a>3</span>
+<h2>I. In Ypres</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>JULY, 1915. My mouth does not get so
+dry as once it did, I notice, when walking
+in from Suicide Corner to the Cloth Hall.
+There I was this summer day, in Ypres again, in
+a silence like a threat, amid ruins which might
+have been in Central Asia, and I, the last man
+on earth, contemplating them. There was something
+bumping somewhere, but it was not in
+Ypres, and no notice is taken in Flanders of what
+does not bump near you. So I sat on the disrupted
+pedestal of a forgotten building and
+smoked, and wondered why I was in the city of
+Ypres, and why there was a war, and why I was
+a fool.</p>
+<p>It was a lovely day, and looking up at the sky
+over what used to be a school dedicated to the
+gentle Jesus, which is just by the place where
+one of the seventeen-inchers has blown a forty-foot
+hole, I saw a little round cloud shape in the
+blue, and then another, and then a cluster of
+them; the kind of soft little cloudlets on which
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4' name='page_4'></a>4</span>
+Renaissance cherubs rest their chubby elbows
+and with fat faces inclined on their hands consider
+mortals from cemetery monuments. Then
+dull concussions arrived from heaven, and right
+overhead I made out two German &#8217;planes. A
+shell-case banged the <i>pavé</i> and went on to make
+a white scar on a wall. Some invisible things
+were whizzing about. One&#8217;s own shrapnel can
+be tactless.</p>
+<p>There was a cellar near and I got into it, and
+while the intruders were overhead I smoked and
+gazed at the contents of the cellar&mdash;the wreckage
+of a bicycle, a child&#8217;s chemise, one old boot,
+a jam-pot, and a dead cat. Owing to an unsatisfactory
+smell of many things I climbed out as
+soon as possible and sat on the pedestal again.</p>
+<p>A figure in khaki came straight at me across
+the Square, its boots sounding like the deliberate
+approach of Fate in solitude. It stopped
+and saluted, and said: &#8220;I shouldn&#8217;t stay &#8217;ere,
+sir. They gen&#8217;ally begin about now. Sure to
+drop some &#8217;ere.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At that moment a mournful cry went over us,
+followed by a crash in Sinister Street. My way
+home! Some masonry fell in sympathy from
+the Cloth Hall.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5' name='page_5'></a>5</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Better come with me till it blows over, sir.
+I&#8217;ve got a dug-out near.&#8221;</p>
+<p>We turned off into a part of the city unknown
+to me. There were some unsettling noises,
+worse, no doubt, because of the echoes behind us;
+but it is not dignified to hurry when one looks
+like an officer. One ought to fill a pipe. I
+did so, and stopped to light it. I paused
+while drawing at it, checked by the splitting open
+of the earth in the first turning to the right and
+the second to the left, or thereabouts.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s a big &#8217;un, sir,&#8221; said my soldier, taking
+half a cigarette from behind his ear and a light
+from my match; we then resumed our little
+promenade. By an old motor &#8217;bus having boards
+for windows, and War Office neuter for its colour,
+but bearing for memory&#8217;s sake on its brow the
+legend &#8220;Liverpool Street,&#8221; my soldier hurried
+slightly, and was then swallowed up. I was
+alone. While looking about for possible openings
+I heard his voice under the road, and then
+saw a dark cavity, low in a broken wall, and
+crawled in. Feeling my way by knocking on the
+dark with my forehead and my shins, I descended
+to a lower smell of graves which was hollowed by
+a lighted candle in a bottle. And there was the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6' name='page_6'></a>6</span>
+soldier, who provided me with an empty box, and
+himself with another, and we had the candle between
+us. On the table were some official documents
+under a shell-nose, and a tin of condensed
+milk suffering from shock. Pictures of partly clad
+ladies began to appear on the walls through the
+gloom. Now and then the cellar trembled.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where&#8217;s that old &#8217;bus come from?&#8221; I asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah! The pore old bitch, sir,&#8221; said the soldier
+sadly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, of course, but what&#8217;s the matter with
+her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s done in, sir. But she&#8217;s done her bit,
+she has,&#8221; said my soldier, changing the crossing
+of his legs. &#8220;Ah! little did she think when I
+used to take &#8217;er acrorse Ludget Circus what a &#8217;ell
+of a time I&#8217;d &#8217;ave to give &#8217;er some day. She&#8217;s a
+good ole thing. She&#8217;s done &#8217;er bit. She won&#8217;t
+see Liverpool Street no more. If medals wasn&#8217;t
+so cheap she ought to &#8217;ave one, she ought.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The cellar had a fit of the palsy, and the candle-light
+shuddered and flattened.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The ruddy swine are ruddy wild to-day.
+Suthin&#8217;s upset &#8217;em. &#8217;Ow long will this ruddy
+war last, sir?&#8221; asked the soldier, slightly plaintive.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7' name='page_7'></a>7</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I know,&#8221; I said. &#8220;It&#8217;s filthy. But what
+about your old &#8217;bus?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah! what about &#8217;er. She ain&#8217;t &#8217;arf &#8217;ad a
+time. She&#8217;s seen enough war to make a general
+want to go home and shell <i>peas</i>. What she
+knows about it would make them clever fellers in
+London who reckon they know all about it turn
+green if they heard a door slam. Learned it all
+in one jolly old day, too. Learned it sudden,
+like you gen&#8217;ally learn things you don&#8217;t forget.
+And I reckon I &#8217;adn&#8217;t anything to find out, either,
+not after Antwerp. Don&#8217;t tell me, sir, war
+teaches you a lot. It only shows fools what they
+didn&#8217;t know but might &#8217;ave guessed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You know Poperinghe? Well, my trip was
+between there an&#8217; Wipers, gen&#8217;ally. The stones
+on the road was enough to make &#8217;er shed nuts
+and bolts by the pint. But it was a quiet
+journey, take it all round, and after a cup o&#8217; tea
+at Wipers I used to roll home to the park.
+It was easier than the Putney route. Wipers
+was full of civilians. Shops all open. Estaminets
+and nice young things. I used to like war
+better than a school-boy likes Sat&#8217;d&#8217;y afternoons.
+It wasn&#8217;t work and it wasn&#8217;t play.
+And there was no law you couldn&#8217;t break if you
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8' name='page_8'></a>8</span>
+&#8217;ad sense enough to come to attention smart and
+answer quick. Yes, sir.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I knew so little about war then that I&#8217;m
+sorry I never tried to be a military expert. But
+my education was neglected. I can only write
+picture postcards. It&#8217;s a pity. Well, one day
+it wasn&#8217;t like that. It dropped on Wipers, and
+it wasn&#8217;t like that. It was bloody different. I
+wasn&#8217;t frightened, but my little inside was.</p>
+<p>&#8220;First thing was the gassed soldiers coming
+through. Their faces were green and blue, and
+their uniform a funny colour. I didn&#8217;t know
+what was the matter with &#8217;em, and that put the
+wind up, for I didn&#8217;t want to look like that. We
+could hear a gaudy rumpus in the Salient. The
+civvies were frightened, but they stuck to their
+homes. Nothing was happening there then,
+and while nothing is happening it&#8217;s hard to believe
+it&#8217;s going to. After seeing a Zouave crawl
+by with his tongue hanging out, and his face the
+colour of a mottled cucumber, I said good-bye to
+the little girl where I was. It was time to see
+about it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And fact is, I didn&#8217;t &#8217;ave much time to think
+about it, what with gettin&#8217; men out and gettin&#8217;
+reinforcements in. Trip after trip.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I shall never have a night again like that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9' name='page_9'></a>9</span>
+one. Believe me, it was a howler. I steered
+the old &#8217;bus, but it was done right by accident.
+It was certainly touch and go. I shouldn&#8217;t &#8217;ave
+thought a country town, even in war, could look
+like Wipers did that night.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was gettin&#8217; dark on my last trip, and we
+barged into all the world gettin&#8217; out. And the
+guns and reinforcements were comin&#8217; up behind
+me. There&#8217;s no other road out or in, as you
+know. I forgot to tell you that night comin&#8217;
+on didn&#8217;t matter much, because the place was
+alight. The sky was full of shrapnel, and the
+high-explosives were falling in the houses on fire,
+and spreading the red stuff like fireworks. The
+gun ahead of me went over a child, but only its
+mother and me saw that, and a house in flames
+ahead of the gun got a shell inside it, and fell
+on the crowd that was mixed up with the army
+traffic.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When I got to a side turning I &#8217;opped off to
+see how my little lady was getting on. A shell
+had got &#8217;er estaminet. The curtains were flying
+in little flames through the place where the windows
+used to be. Inside, the counter was upside
+down, and she was laying with glass and bottles
+on the floor. I couldn&#8217;t do anything for her.
+And further up the street my headquarters was a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10' name='page_10'></a>10</span>
+heap of bricks, and the houses on both sides of it
+on fire. No good looking there for any more
+orders.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Being left to myself, I began to take notice.
+While you&#8217;re on the job you just do it, and don&#8217;t
+see much of anything else except out of the
+corner of the eye. I&#8217;ve never &#8217;eard such a
+row&mdash;shells bursting, houses falling, and the
+place was foggy with smoke, and men you
+couldn&#8217;t see were shouting, and the women and
+children, wherever they were, turning you cold
+to hear &#8217;em.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was like the end of the world. Time for
+me to &#8217;op it. I backed the old &#8217;bus and turned
+&#8217;er, and started off&mdash;shells in front and behind
+and overhead, and, thinks I, next time you&#8217;re
+bound to get caught in this shower. Then I
+found my officer. &#8217;E was smoking a cigarette,
+and &#8217;e told me my job. &#8217;E gave me my cargo.
+I just &#8217;ad to take &#8217;em out and dump &#8217;em.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Where shall I take &#8217;em, sir?&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Take &#8217;em out of this,&#8217; says he. &#8216;Take &#8217;em
+anywhere, take &#8217;em where you like, Jones, take
+&#8217;em to hell, but take &#8217;em away,&#8217; says he.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So I loaded up. Wounded Tommies, gassed
+Arabs, some women and children, and a few
+lunatics, genuine cock-eyed loonies from the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span>
+asylum. The shells chased us out. One biffed
+us over on to the two rear wheels, but we dropped
+back on four on the top speed. Several times I
+bumped over soft things in the road and felt
+rather sick. We got out o&#8217; the town with the
+shrapnel a bit in front all the way. Then the
+old &#8217;bus jibbed for a bit. Every time a shell
+burst near us the lunatics screamed and laughed
+and clapped their hands, and trod on the
+wounded, but I got &#8217;er goin&#8217; again. I got &#8217;er
+to Poperinghe. Two soldiers died on the way,
+and a lunatic had fallen out somewhere, and a
+baby was born in the &#8217;bus; and me with no conductor
+and no midwife.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I met our chaplain and says he: &#8216;Jones, you
+want a drink. Come with me and have a
+Scotch.&#8217; That was a good drink. I &#8217;ad the
+best part of &#8217;arf a bottle without water, and it
+done me no &#8217;arm. Next morning I found I&#8217;d
+put in the night on the parson&#8217;s bed in me boots,
+and &#8217;e was asleep on the floor.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span>
+<h2>II. A Raid Night</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>SEPTEMBER 17, 1915. I had crossed
+from France to Fleet Street, and was
+thankful at first to have about me the things
+I had proved, with their suggestion of intimacy,
+their look of security; but I found the once
+familiar editorial rooms of that daily paper a
+little more than estranged. I thought them
+worse, if anything, than Ypres. Ypres is within
+the region where, when soldiers enter it, they
+abandon hope, because they have become sane at
+last, and their minds have a temperature a little
+below normal. In Ypres, whatever may have
+been their heroic and exalted dreams, they awake,
+see the world is mad, and surrender to the doom
+from which they know a world bereft will give
+them no reprieve.</p>
+<p>There was a way in which the office of that
+daily paper was familiar. I had not expected
+it, and it came with a shock. Not only the compulsion,
+but the bewildering inconsequence of
+war was suggested by its activities. Reason was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span>
+not there. It was ruled by a blind and fixed
+idea. The glaring artificial light, the headlong
+haste of the telegraph instruments, the wild
+litter on the floor, the rapt attention of the men
+scanning the news, their abrupt movements and
+speed when they had to cross the room, still
+with their gaze fixed, their expression that of
+those who dreaded something worse to happen;
+the suggestion of tension, as though the Last
+Trump were expected at any moment, filled me
+with vague alarm. The only place where that
+incipient panic is not usual is the front line, because
+there the enemy is within hail, and is known
+to be another unlucky fool. But I allayed my
+anxiety. I leaned over one of the still figures
+and scanned the fateful document which had
+given its reader the aspect of one who was staring
+at what the Moving Finger had done. Its
+message was no more than the excited whisper
+of a witness who had just left a keyhole. But
+I realized in that moment of surprise that this
+office was an essential feature of the War; without
+it, the War might become Peace. It provoked
+the emotions which assembled civilians in
+ecstatic support of the sacrifices, just as the staff
+of a corps headquarters, at some comfortable
+leagues behind the trenches, maintains its fighting
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span>
+men in the place where gas and shells tend to
+engender common sense and irresolution.</p>
+<p>I left the glare of that office, its heat and
+half-hysterical activity, and went into the coolness
+and quiet of the darkened street, and there
+the dread left me that it could be a duty of mine
+to keep hot pace with patriots in full stampede.
+The stars were wonderful. It is such a tranquillizing
+surprise to discover there are stars
+over London. Until this War, when the street
+illuminations were doused, we never knew it. It
+strengthens one&#8217;s faith to discover the Pleiades
+over London; it is not true that their delicate
+glimmer has been put out by the remarkable incandescent
+energy of our power stations. There
+they are still. As I crossed London Bridge the
+City was as silent as though it had come to the
+end of its days, and the shapes I could just make
+out under the stars were no more substantial
+than the shadows of its past. Even the Thames
+was a noiseless ghost. London at night gave me
+the illusion that I was really hidden from the
+monstrous trouble of Europe, and, at least for
+one sleep, had got out of the War. I felt that
+my suburban street, secluded in trees and unimportance,
+was as remote from the evil I knew
+of as though it were in Alaska. When I came
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span>
+to that street I could not see my neighbours&#8217;
+homes. It was with some doubt that I found
+my own. And there, with three hours to go to
+midnight, and a book, and some circumstances
+that certainly had not changed, I had retired
+thankfully into a fragment of that world I had
+feared we had completely lost.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What a strange moaning the birds in the
+shrubbery are making!&#8221; my companion said once.
+I listened to it, and thought it was strange.
+There was a long silence, and then she looked up
+sharply. &#8220;What&#8217;s that?&#8221; she asked. &#8220;Listen!&#8221;</p>
+<p>I listened. My hearing is not good.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing!&#8221; I assured her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There it is again.&#8221; She put down her book
+with decision, and rose, I thought, in some alarm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Trains,&#8221; I suggested. &#8220;The gas bubbling.
+The dog next door. Your imagination.&#8221; Then
+I listened to the dogs. It was curious, but they
+all seemed awake and excited.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is the noise like?&#8221; I asked, surrendering
+my book on the antiquity of man.</p>
+<p>She twisted her mouth in a comical way most
+seriously, and tried to mimic a deep and solemn
+note.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Guns,&#8221; I said to myself, and went to the
+front door.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span></p>
+<p>Beyond the vague opposite shadows of some
+elms lights twinkled in the sky, incontinent
+sparks, as though glow lamps on an invisible
+pattern of wires were being switched on and
+off by an idle child. That was shrapnel. I
+walked along the empty street a little to get a
+view between and beyond the villas. I turned
+to say something to my companion, and saw then
+my silent neighbours, shadowy groups about me,
+as though they had not approached but had
+materialized where they stood. We watched
+those infernal sparks. A shadow lit its pipe
+and offered me its match. I heard the guns
+easily enough now, but they were miles away.</p>
+<p>A slender finger of brilliant light moved
+slowly across the sky, checked, and remained
+pointing, firmly accusatory, at something it had
+found in the heavens. A Zeppelin!</p>
+<p>There it was, at first a wraith, a suggestion
+on the point of vanishing, and then illuminated
+and embodied, a celestial maggot stuck to the
+round of a cloud like a caterpillar to the edge
+of a leaf. We gazed at it silently, I cannot say
+for how long. The beam of light might have
+pinned the bright larva to the sky for the inspection
+of interested Londoners. Then somebody
+spoke. &#8220;I think it is coming our way.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17' name='page_17'></a>17</span></p>
+<p>I thought so too. I went indoors, calling out
+to the boy as I passed his room upstairs, and
+went to where the girls were asleep. Three
+miles, three minutes! It appears to be harder
+to waken children when a Zeppelin is coming
+your way. I got the elder girl awake, lifted her,
+and sat her on the bed, for she had become
+heavier, I noticed. Then I put her small sister
+over my shoulder, as limp and indifferent as a
+half-filled bag. By this time the elder one had
+snuggled into the foot of her bed, resigned to
+that place if the other end were disputed, and
+was asleep again. I think I became annoyed,
+and spoke sharply. We were in a hurry. The
+boy was waiting for us at the top of the stairs.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s up?&#8221; he asked with merry interest,
+hoisting his slacks.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come on down,&#8221; I said.</p>
+<p>We went into a central room, put coats round
+them, answering eager and innocent questions
+with inconsequence, had the cellar door and a
+light ready, and then went out to inspect affairs.
+There were more searchlights at work. Bright
+diagonals made a living network on the overhead
+dark. It was remarkable that those rigid
+beams should not rest on the roof of night, but
+that their ends should glide noiselessly about the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span>
+invisible dome. The nearest of them was followed,
+when in the zenith, by a faint oval of
+light. Sometimes it discovered and broke on
+delicate films of high fair-weather clouds. The
+shells were still twinkling brilliantly, and the
+guns were making a rhythmless baying in the
+distance, like a number of alert and indignant
+hounds. But the Zeppelin had gone. The
+firing diminished and stopped.</p>
+<p>They went to bed again, and as I had become
+acutely depressed, and the book now had no
+value, I turned in myself, assuring everyone,
+with the usual confidence of the military expert,
+that the affair was over for the night. But once
+in bed I found I could see there only the progress
+humanity had made in its movement heavenwards.
+That is the way with us; never to be concerned
+with the newest clever trick of our enterprising
+fellow-men till a sudden turn of affairs
+shows us, by the immediate threat to our own
+existence, that that cleverness has added to the
+peril of civilized society, whose house has been
+built on the verge of the pit. War now would be
+not only between soldiers. In future wars the
+place of honour would be occupied by the infants,
+in their cradles. For war is not murder. Starving
+children is war, and it is not murder. What
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span>
+treacherous lying is all the heroic poetry of
+battle! Men will now creep up after dark, ambushed
+in safety behind the celestial curtains,
+and drop bombs on sleepers beneath for the
+greater glory of some fine figment or other. It
+filled me, not with wrath at the work of Kaisers
+and Kings, for we know what is possible with
+them, but with dismay at the discovery that
+one&#8217;s fellows are so docile and credulous that
+they will obey any order, however abominable.
+The very heavens had been fouled by this obscene
+and pallid worm, crawling over those
+eternal verities to which eyes had been lifted for
+light when night and trouble were over dark.
+God was dethroned by science. One looked
+startled at humanity, seeing not the accustomed
+countenance, but, for a moment, glimpsing instead
+the baleful lidless stare of the evil of the
+slime, the unmentionable of a nightmare....</p>
+<p>A deafening crash brought us out of bed in
+one movement. I must have been dozing. Someone
+cried, &#8220;My children!&#8221; Another rending uproar
+interrupted my effort to shepherd the flock
+to a lower floor. There was a raucous avalanche
+of glass. We muddled down somehow&mdash;I forget
+how. I could not find the matches. Then in
+the dark we lost the youngest for some eternal
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span>
+seconds while yet another explosion shook the
+house. We got to the cellar stairs, and at last
+there they all were, their backs to the coals, sitting
+on lumber.</p>
+<p>A candle was on the floor. There were more
+explosions, somewhat muffled. The candle-flame
+showed a little tremulous excitement, as if it
+were one of the party. It reached upwards
+curiously in a long intent flame, and then shrank
+flat with what it had learned. We were accompanied
+by grotesque shadows. They stood about
+us on the white and unfamiliar walls. We
+waited. Even the shadows seemed to listen with
+us; they hardly moved, except when the candle-flame
+was nervous. Then the shadows wavered
+slightly. We waited. I caught the boy&#8217;s eye,
+and winked. He winked back. The youngest,
+still with sleepy eyes, was trembling, though not
+with cold, and this her sister noticed, and put her
+arms about her. His mother had her hand on
+her boy&#8217;s shoulder.</p>
+<p>There was no more noise outside. It was
+time, perhaps, to go up to see what had happened.
+I put a raincoat over my pyjamas, and
+went into the street. Some of my neighbours,
+who were special constables, hurried by. The
+enigmatic night, for a time, for five minutes, or
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span>
+five seconds (I do not know how long it was),
+was remarkably still and usual. It might have
+been pretending that we were all mistaken. It
+was as though we had been merely dreaming our
+recent excitements. Then, across a field, a villa
+began to blaze. Perhaps it had been stunned
+till then, and had suddenly jumped into a panic
+of flames. It was wholly involved in one roll
+of fire and smoke, a sudden furnace so consuming
+that, when it as suddenly ceased, giving one or
+two dying spasms, I had but an impression of
+flames rolling out of windows and doors to persuade
+me that what I had seen was real. The
+night engulfed what may have been an illusion, for
+till then I had never noticed a house at that point.</p>
+<p>Whispers began to pass of tragedies that
+were incredible in their incidence and craziness.
+Three children were dead in the rubble of one
+near villa. The ambulance that was passing was
+taking their father to the hospital. A woman
+had been blown from her bed into the street.
+She was unhurt, but she was insane. A long
+row of humbler dwellings, over which the dust
+was still hanging in a faint mist, had been demolished,
+and one could only hope the stories
+about that place were far from true. We were
+turned away when we would have assisted; all
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span>
+the help that was wanted was there. A stranger
+offered me his tobacco pouch, and it was then I
+found my rainproof was a lady&#8217;s, and therefore
+had no pipe in its pocket.</p>
+<p>The sky was suspect, and we watched it, but
+saw only vacuity till one long beam shot into it,
+searching slowly and deliberately the whole
+mysterious ceiling, yet hesitating sometimes, and
+going back on its path as though intelligently
+suspicious of a matter which it had passed over
+too quickly. It peered into the immense caverns
+of a cloud to which it had returned, illuminating
+to us unsuspected and horrifying possibilities of
+hiding-places above us. We expected to see the
+discovered enemy boldly emerge then. Nothing
+came out. Other beams by now had joined the
+pioneer, and the night became bewildering with
+a dazzling mesh of light. Shells joined the wandering
+beams, those sparks of orange and red.
+A world of fantastic chimney-pots and black
+rounds of trees leaped into being between us and
+the sudden expansion of a fan of yellow flame.
+A bomb! We just felt, but hardly heard, the
+shock of it. A furious succession of such bursts
+of light followed, a convulsive opening and shutting
+of night. We saw that when midnight is
+cleft asunder it has a fiery inside.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span></p>
+<p>The eruptions ceased. Idle and questioning,
+not knowing we had heard the last gun and
+bomb of the affair, a little stunned by the maniacal
+rapidity and violence of this attack, we found
+ourselves gazing at the familiar and shadowy
+peace of our suburb as we have always known it.
+It had returned to that aspect. But something
+had gone from it for ever. It was not, and
+never could be again, as once we had known it.
+The security of our own place had been based
+on the goodwill or indifference of our fellow-creatures
+everywhere. To-night, over that obscure
+and unimportant street, we had seen a
+celestial portent illuminate briefly a little of the
+future of mankind.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span>
+<h2>III. Islands</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>JANUARY 5, 1918. The editor of the
+<i>Hibbert Journal</i> betrays a secret and
+lawless passion for islands. They must be
+small sanctuaries, of course, far and isolated; for
+he shows quite rightly that places like the British
+Isles are not islands in any just and poetic sense.
+Our kingdom is earth, sour and worm-riddled
+earth, with all its aboriginal lustre trampled out.
+By islands he means those surprising landfalls,
+Kerguelen, the Antarctic Shetlands, Timor, Amboyna,
+the Carolines, the Marquesas, and the
+Galapagos. An island with a splendid name,
+which I am sure he would have mentioned had
+he thought of it, is Fernando de Noronha.</p>
+<p>There must be a fair number of people to-day
+who cherish that ridiculous dream of an oceanic
+solitude. We remember that whenever a storyteller
+wishes to make enchantment seem thoroughly
+genuine, he begins upon an island. One
+might say, if in a hurry, that Defoe began it, but
+in leisure recall the fearful spell of islands in
+the Greek legends. It is easily understood. If
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span>
+you have watched at sea an island shape, and
+pass, forlorn in the waste, apparently lifeless,
+and with no movement to be seen but the silent
+fountains of the combers, then you know where
+the Sirens were born, and why awful shapes grew
+in the minds of the simple Greeks out of the
+wonders in Crete devised by the wise and mysterious
+Minoans, who took yearly the tribute of
+Greek youth&mdash;youth which never returned to
+tell.</p>
+<p>How easily the picture of one&#8217;s first island in
+foreign seas comes back! I had not expected
+mine, and was surprised one morning, when
+eastward-bound in the Mediterranean, to see a
+pallid mass of rock two miles to port, when I
+had imagined I knew the charts of that sea well
+enough. It was a frail ghost of land on that
+hard blue plain, and had a light of its own; but
+it looked arid and forbidding, a place of seamen&#8217;s
+bones. Turning quickly to the mate I asked
+for its name. &#8220;Alboran,&#8221; he said, very quietly,
+without looking at it, as though keeping something
+back. He said no more. But while that
+strange glimmer was on the sea I watched it; I
+have learned nothing since of Alboran; and so
+the memory of that brief sight of a strange rock
+is as though once I had blundered on a dreadful
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span>
+secret which the men who knew it preferred to
+keep.</p>
+<p>But there is a West Indian Island which for
+me is the best in the seas, because the memory of
+it is but a reflection of my last glimpse of the
+tropics. That landfall in the Spanish Main
+was as soundless as a dream. It was but an
+apparition of land. It might have been no more
+than an unusually vivid recollection of a desire
+which had once stirred the imagination of a boy.
+Looking at it, I felt sceptical, quite unprepared
+to believe that what once was a dream could be
+coming true by any chance of my drift through
+the years. Yet there it remained, right in our
+course, on a floor of malachite which had stains
+of orange drift-weed. It could have been a
+mirage. It appeared diaphanous, something so
+frail that a wind could have stirred it. Did it
+belong to this earth? It grew higher, and the
+waves could be seen exploding against its lower
+rocks. It <i>was</i> a dream come true. Yet even
+now, as I shall not have that landfall again, I
+have a doubt that waters could be of the colours
+which were radiant about that island, that rocks
+could be of rose and white, that trees could be
+so green and aromatic, and light&mdash;except of the
+Hesperides, which are lost&mdash;so like the exhilarating
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span>
+life and breath of the prime. A doubt
+indeed! For every whisper one hears to-day
+deepens the loom of a gigantic German attack.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span>
+<h2>IV. Travel Books</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>JANUARY 19, 1918. What long hours
+at night we wait for sleep! Sleep will
+not come. A friend, who grows more
+like a sallow congestion of scorn than a comfortable
+companion, warned me yesterday, when I
+spoke of the end of the War, that it might have
+no end. He said that we could not escape our
+fate. Our star, I gathered, was to receive a celestial
+spring-cleaning. There would be bonfires
+of litter. We had become impeded with the
+rubbish of centuries of wise and experienced
+statecraft, and we had hardly more than begun
+to get rid of it. A renaissance with a vengeance!
+Youth was in revolt against the aged and the
+dead.</p>
+<p>But what an idea to look at when waiting
+for sleep! I turned over with another sigh, and
+recalled that William James has advised us that
+a deleterious thought may be exorcised by
+willing another that is sunny. I tried to command
+a more enjoyable picture for eyes that were
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span>
+closed but intent. Yet you never know where
+the most promising image will transport you
+through some inconsequential association. I
+recalled a pleasing day in the Eastern Mediterranean,
+and that brought <i>Eothen</i> into my mind,
+by chance. And instantly, instead of seeing
+Sfax in Tunis, I was looking down from a window
+on a black-edged day of rain, watching an
+unending procession of moribund figures jolting
+over the <i>pavé</i> of a street in Flanders, in every
+kind of conveyance, from the Yser. There I was,
+back at the War, at two in the morning, and all
+because I had read <i>Eothen</i> desperately in odd
+moments while waiting for the signs which would
+warn me that the enemy was about to enter that
+village.</p>
+<p>No escape yet! I could hear the old clock
+slowly making its way towards another day. I
+heard a belated wayfarer going home, his feet
+muffled in snow. Anyhow, I never had much of
+an opinion of <i>Eothen</i>, a book over which the
+cymbals have been banged too loudly. Compare
+it, as a travel book, for substance and style, with
+<i>A Week on the Concord</i>; though that is a silly
+thing to ask, if no sillier than literary criticism
+usually is. But though all the lists the critics
+make of our best travel books invariably give
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span>
+Kinglake&#8217;s a principal place, I have not once
+seen Thoreau&#8217;s narrative included.</p>
+<p>What is the test for such a book? I should
+ask it to be a trustworthy confidence of a kingdom
+where the marches may be foreign to our
+cheap and usual experience, though familiar
+enough to our dreams. It may not offer, but it
+must promise that Golden City which drew
+Raleigh to the Orinoco, Thoreau to Walden
+Pond, Doughty to Arabia, Livingstone to Tanganyika,
+and Hudson to the Arctic. The fountain
+of life is there. We hope to come to our own.</p>
+<p>We never notice whether that country has good
+corn-land, or whether it is rich enough in minerals
+to arouse an interest in its future. But its
+prospects are lovely and of good report. It
+is always a surprise to find the earth can look so
+good, and behave so handsomely, on the quiet,
+to a vagabond traveller like Thoreau, who has
+no valid excuse for not being at honest work, as
+though it reserved its finest mornings to show
+to favoured children when really good people are
+not about. The Sphinx has a secret only for
+those who do not see her wink.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span>
+<h2>V. Signs of Spring</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>FEBRUARY 16, 1918. A catalogue of
+second-hand books was sent to me yesterday.
+A raid warning, news of the
+destruction of Parliament House, or a whisper
+of the authentic ascent of Mr. Lloyd George in a
+fiery chariot and of the flight of God, would do
+no more to us than another kick does to the dead.
+But that catalogue had to be handled to be believed.
+It was an incredible survival from the
+days before the light went out. Those minor
+gratifications have gone. I had even forgotten
+they were ever ours. Sometimes now one
+wakes to a morning when the window is a golden
+square, a fine greeting to a good earth, and the
+whistle of a starling in the apple tree just outside
+is as tenuous as a thread of silver; the smell of
+coffee brings one up blithe as a boy about to begin
+play again. Yet something we feel to be wrong&mdash;a
+foggy memory of an ugly dream&mdash;ah, yes;
+the War, the War. The damned remembrance
+of things as they are drops its pall. The morning
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span>
+paper, too, I see, has the information that our
+men are again cheerfully waiting for the spring
+offensive.</p>
+<p>Cheerfully! But, of course, the editor knows.
+And the <i>spring</i> offensive! I have seen that kind
+of vernal gladness. What an advent! When
+you find the first blue egg in the shrubbery behind
+your billet in Artois; when the G. S. O. 2 comes
+into the mess with a violet in his fingers, and
+shows it to every doubter, then you know the
+time has come for the testing of the gas cylinders,
+and you wonder whether this is the last
+time you will be noteworthy because you had the
+earliest news of the chiffchaff. The spring offensive!
+Guns are now converging by leagues
+of roads to a new part of the Front, to try to
+do there what they failed to do elsewhere.
+The men, as all important editors know, are
+happily waiting for the great brutes to begin
+bellowing again in infernal concert. So there
+accumulates at breakfast in these spring days all
+that evidence which makes one proud to share
+with one&#8217;s fellows the divine gift of reason, instead
+of a blind and miserable animal instinct.
+No wonder the cuckoo has a merry note!</p>
+<p>That is the way we idle and hapless civilians
+now begin our day. I look up to the sky, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span>
+wonder whether this inopportune spell of fine
+weather means that some London children will
+be killed in bed to-night. As I pass the queues
+of women who have been waiting for hours for
+potatoes, and probably won&#8217;t get any, though
+the earth doubtless is still abundant, if we had
+but the sense and opportunity to try it, I cannot
+help wondering whether it would not have
+been better for us to have refused the gift of
+reason from which could be devised the edifying
+wonders of civilization, and have remained
+in the treetops instead, so ignorant that we were
+unaware we were lucky.</p>
+<p>Another grave statement by a great statesman,
+and, when we are fortunate, a field postcard,
+are to-day our full literary deserts. Is it
+surprising that catalogues of old books do not
+come our way? We do not deserve them.
+Hope faintly revives, when the postman cheers
+us with an overdue field postcard, of a morning
+to dawn when the abstraction we name the &#8220;average
+intelligence&#8221; and the &#8220;great heart of the
+public&#8221; and the &#8220;herd mind,&#8221; will not only regret
+that it made a ruinous fool of itself the night
+before, but solemnly resolve to end all disruptive
+and dirty habits. This wild hope was
+born in me of such a postcard (all right so far!)
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34' name='page_34'></a>34</span>
+coinciding with the arrival of the list of old books.
+It seemed at that moment that things could
+be different and better. Then, when closing the
+front door that morning&mdash;very gently&mdash;not
+slamming it on the run&mdash;I saw something else.
+The door noiselessly closed, an easy launch into a
+tranquil day, as though I had come down through
+the night with the natural process of the hours,
+and so had commenced the day at the right moment,
+I noticed the twig of a lilac bush had
+intruded into the porch. It directly indicated
+me with a black finger. What did it want? I
+looked intently, sure that an omen was here.
+Aha! So that was it! The twig was showing
+me that it had a green nail.</p>
+<p>Four young officers of the Flying Corps
+passed me, going ahead briskly, and I thought
+that an elm under which they walked had kindling
+in it a suggestion of coloured light. But it
+was too delicate to be more than a hope. It
+must be confessed that the men who fight in the
+air were more distinct than that light. Then the
+four officers parted, two to either side, when
+marching past another figure. They went beyond
+it swiftly, taking no notice of it, turned
+into the future, and vanished. I drew near the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span>
+bowed and leisurely being, which had a spade
+over its shoulder.</p>
+<p>It stopped to light a pipe, and I caught up to
+it. The edge of the spade was like silver with
+use, and the big hand which grasped it was
+brown with dry earth. The lean neck of this
+figure was tinctured with many summers, and
+cross-hatched by the weather and mature maleness.
+I caught a smell of newly-turned earth.
+The figure moved as though time were nothing.
+It turned its face as I drew level, and said it was
+a good morning. The morning was better
+than good; and somehow this object in an old hat
+and clothes as rough as bark, with a face which
+probably had the same expression when William
+was momentous at Hastings, and when Pitt
+solemnly ordered the map of Europe to be rolled
+up, was in accord with the light in the elm, and
+the superior and convincing insolence of the
+blackbirds. They all suggested the tantalizing
+idea that solid ground is near us, in this unreasonable
+world of anxious change, if only we
+had intelligence enough to know where to look
+for it.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span>
+<h2>VI. Prose Writing</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>MARCH 16, 1918. A critic has been
+mourning because good prose is not
+being written to-day. This surprised
+him, and he asked why it was that when poetry,
+which he pictured as &#8220;primroses and violets,&#8221;
+found abundance of nourishment even in the unlikely
+compost these latter days provide, yet
+prose, which he saw as &#8220;cabbages and potatoes,&#8221;
+made but miserable growth.</p>
+<p>It is hard to explain it, for I must own that the
+image of the potato confuses me. One has seen
+modern verse which was, florally, very spud-like.
+If those potatoes were meant for violets then
+they suggest more than anything else a simple
+penny guide-book for their gardeners. Here we
+see at least the danger of using flowers of speech,
+when violets and onions get muddled in the same
+posy, and how ill botany is likely to serve the
+writer who flies heedlessly to it for literary
+symbols. Figures of speech are pregnant with
+possibilities (I myself had better be very careful
+here), and those likely to show most distress over
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span>
+their progeny are the unlucky fathers. For the
+first thing expected of any literary expression is
+that it should be faithful to what is in the mind,
+and if for the idea of good prose writing the
+image of a potato is given, then it can but represent
+the features of the earthy lumps which are
+common to the stalls of the market-place. What
+is prose? Sodden and lumbering stuff, I suppose.
+And what is poetry? That fortunate lighting of
+an idea which delights us with the belief that we
+have surprised truth, and have seen that it is
+beautiful.</p>
+<p>The difficulty with what the textbooks tell us
+is prose is that many of us make it, not naturally
+and unconsciously like the gentleman who discovered
+he had been doing it all his life, but
+professionally. Consider the immense output of
+novels&mdash;but no, do not let us consider anything so
+surprising and perplexing. The novel, that most
+exacting problem in the sublimation of the history
+of our kind, not to be solved with ease, it now
+appears may be handled by children as a profitable
+pastime. Children, of course, should be
+taught to express themselves in writing, and
+simply, lucidly, and with sincerity. Yet all editors
+know the delusion is common with beginners
+in journalism that the essay, a form in which perhaps
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span>
+only six writers have been successful in the
+history of English letters, is but a prelude to
+serious work, a holiday before the realities have
+begun. They all attempt it. Every editorial
+letter-box is loaded with essays every morning.
+Yet the love of learning, and wisdom and humour,
+are not usual, and the gods still more rarely
+give with these gifts the ability to express them
+in the written word; and how often may we count
+on learning, wisdom, and humour being not only
+reflected through a delightful and original character,
+but miraculously condensed into the controlled
+display of a bright and revealing beam?
+It is no wonder we have but six essayists!</p>
+<p>There is no doubt about it. If we mean by
+prose much more than the sincere and lucid
+written expression of our desires and opinions,
+it is because beyond that simplicity we know the
+thrill which is sometimes given by a revelation of
+beauty and significance in common words and
+tidings. The best writing must come of a
+gift for making magic out of what are but commodities
+to us, and that gift is not distributed by
+the generous gods from barrows which go
+the round of the neighbourhoods where many
+babies are born, as are faith, hope, and credulity,
+those virtues that cause the enormous circulations
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span>
+of the picture papers, and form the ready
+material for the careers of statesmen and the
+glory of famous soldiers. It is more unusual.
+We see it as often as we do comets and signs in
+the heavens, a John in the Wilderness again,
+pastors who would die for their lambs, women
+who contemn the ritual and splendour of man-slaying,
+and a politician never moved by the enticements
+of a successful career. It is therefore
+likely that when we see great prose for the first
+time we may not know it, and may not enjoy it.
+It can be so disrespectful to what we think is good.
+It may be even brightly innocent of it. And as
+in addition our smaller minds will be overborne by
+the startling activity and cool power of the prose
+of such a writer as Swift, its superiority will only
+enhance our complaining grief.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span>
+<h2>VII. The Modern Mind</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>JULY 6, 1918. A Symphony in Verse has
+just come to me from America. The
+picture on its wrapper shows a man in
+green tights, and whose hair is blue, veiling his
+eyes before a lady in a flame-coloured robe who
+stares from a distance in a tessellated solitude.
+As London two days ago celebrated Independence
+Day like an American city, and displayed the
+Stars and Stripes so deliriously that the fact that
+George III was ever a British king was lost in
+a common acknowledgment that he was only another
+violent fool, this Boston book invited attention.
+For ladies in gowns of flame, with arms
+raised in appeal, may be supposed to want more
+than the vote; and American poets wearing
+emerald tights who find themselves in abandoned
+temples alone with such ladies, must clearly have
+left Whittier with the nursery biscuits. Longfellow
+could never grow blue locks. Even Whitman
+dressed in flannel and ate oranges in public.
+Nor did Poe at his best rise to assure us:</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class='i2' style="text-indent: -3.5em;">&ldquo;This is the night for murder: give us knives:<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>We have long sought for this.&rdquo;</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span></div>
+<p>Well, not all of us. The truth is some of us
+have not sought for knives with any zest, being
+paltry and early Victorian in our murders. Yet
+in this symphony in verse, <i>The Jig of Forslin</i>, by
+Mr. Conrad Aiken, there are such lines as these:</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class='i2' style="text-indent: -3.5em;">&ldquo;When the skies are pale and stars are cold,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Dew should rise from the grass in little bubbles,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And tinkle in music amid green leaves.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Something immortal lives in such air&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>We breathe, we change.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Our bodies become as cold and bright as starlight.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Our hearts grow young and strange.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Let us extend ourselves as evening shadows<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And learn the nocturnal secrets of these meadows.&rdquo;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is not all knives and murder. The Jig, in
+fact, dances us through a world of ice lighted by
+star gleams and Arctic streamers, where sometimes
+our chill loneliness is interrupted by a
+woman whose &#8220;mouth is a sly carnivorous
+flower&#8221;; where we escape the greenish light of a
+vampire&#8217;s eyes to enter a tavern where men strike
+each other with bottles. Mermaids are there,
+and Peter and Paul, and when at last Mr. Aiken
+feels the reader may be released, it is as though
+we groped in the dark, bewildered and alarmed,
+for assurance that this was nothing but art.</p>
+<p>One cannot help feeling, while reading this
+product of the modern mind, that we are all a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42' name='page_42'></a>42</span>
+little mad, and that the cleverest of us know it,
+and indulge the vagaries and instability of insanity.
+In an advertisement to Mr. Aiken&#8217;s
+poetry we are told that it is based on the Freudian
+psychology. We are not seldom reminded to-day
+of that base to the New Art. We are even
+beginning to look on each other&#8217;s simplest acts
+with a new and grave suspicion. It causes a man
+to wonder what obscure motive, probably hellish,
+prompted his wife to brush his clothes, though
+when he caught her at it she was doing it
+in apparent kindness. Instead of the truth making
+us free, its dread countenance, when we
+glimpse it, only startles us into a pallid mimicry of
+its sinister aspect. It is like the sardonic grin I
+have seen on the face of an intelligent soldier as
+he strode over filth and corpses towards shell-fire.
+Soldiers, when they are home again, delight in
+watching the faces and the ways of children.
+They want to play with the youngsters, eat buns
+in the street, and join the haymakers. They do
+not want the truth. Without knowing anything
+of Freud, they can add to their new and dreadful
+knowledge of this world all they want of the subconscious
+by reading the warlike speeches of the
+aged, one of the most obscene and shocking
+features of the War. The soldiers who are home
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span>
+on leave turn in revolt from that to hop-scotch.
+Yes, the truth about our own day will hardly bear
+looking at, whether it is reflected from common
+speech, or from the minds of artists like Mr.
+Conrad Aiken.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span>
+<h2>VIII. Magazines</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>JULY 16, 1918. I was looking in a hurry
+for something to read. One magazine on
+the bookstall told me it was exactly what I
+wanted for a railway journey. It had a picture
+of a large gun to make its cover attractive. The
+next advertised its claims in another way. A
+girl&#8217;s face was the decorative feature of its wrapper,
+and you could not imagine eyes and a simper
+more likely to make a man feel holier than
+Bernard of Cluny till your gaze wandered to the
+face of the girl smirking from the magazine beyond.
+Is it possible that nobody reads current
+English literature, as the magazines give it, except
+the sort of men who collect golf balls and eat
+green gooseberries? It seems like it. One
+wonders what the editors of those magazines
+read when they are on a railway journey. For it
+would be interesting to know whether this sort of
+thing is done purposely, like glass beads for
+Africa, or whether it is the gift of heaven,
+natural and unconscious, like chickweed.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span></p>
+<p>One would be grateful for direction in this.
+The matter is of some importance, because either
+the producers or the readers are in a bad way;
+and it would be disheartening to suppose it is the
+readers, for probably there are more readers
+than editors, and so less chance of a cure. I do
+not want to believe it is the readers. It is more
+comforting to suppose those poor people must put
+up with what they can get in a hurry ten minutes
+before the train starts, only to find, as they might
+have guessed, that vacuity is behind the smirk of
+a girl with a face like that. They are forced to
+stuff their literature behind them, so that ownership
+of it shall not openly shame them before
+their fellow-passengers.</p>
+<p>With several exceptions, the mass of English
+magazines and reviews may be dismissed in a
+few seconds. The exceptions usually are not out
+yet, or one has seen them. It used not to be
+so, and that is what makes me think it is the producers,
+and not the readers, who require skilled
+attention. It is startling to turn to the magazines
+of twenty or thirty years ago, and to compare
+them with what is thought good enough for
+us. I was looking through such a magazine recently,
+and found a poem by Swinburne, a prose-romance
+by William Morris, and much more work
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span>
+of a quality you would no more expect to find in
+a current magazine than you would palm trees in
+Whitechapel.</p>
+<p>Of all the periodicals which reach the British
+front, the two for which there is most competition
+in any officers&#8217; mess are <i>La Vie Parisienne</i>
+and New York <i>Life</i>. The impudent periodical
+from Paris is universal on our front. The work
+of its artists decorates every dug-out. I should
+say almost every mess subscribes for it. It is true
+it is usual to account for this as being naughty
+chance. Youth has been separated from the
+sober influence of its English home, is away
+from the mild and tranquil light of Oxford Street
+feminity, is given to death, and therefore snatches
+in abandon at amusement which otherwise
+would not amuse. Do not believe it. <i>La Vie
+Parisienne</i>, it is true, is certainly not a paper for
+the English family. I should be embarrassed if my
+respected aunts found it on my table, pointed to
+its drawings, and asked me what I saw in them.
+What makes it popular with young Englishmen
+in France is not the audacity of its abbreviated
+underclothing, for there are English prints which
+specialize in those in a more leering way, and
+they are not widely popular like the French print.
+But <i>La Vie</i> is produced by intelligent men. It is
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span>
+not a heavy lump of stupid or snobbish photographs.
+It does not leer. There is nothing
+clownish and furtive about it. It is the gay and
+frank expression of artists whose humour is too
+broad for the general; but, as a rule, there is no
+doubt about the fine quality of their drawings and
+the deftness of their wit. That is what makes
+the French print so liked by our men.</p>
+<p>New York <i>Life</i> proves that, it seems to me.
+The American periodical is very popular in
+France, and the demand for it has now reached
+London. The chemise is not its oriflamme. It
+properly recognizes much else in life. But its
+usual survey of the world&#8217;s affairs has a merry
+expansiveness which would make the editorial
+mind common to London as giddy as grandma
+in an aeroplane. It is not written in a walled
+enclosure of ideas. It is not darkened and circumscribed
+by the dusty notions of the clubs. It
+does not draw poor people as sub-species of the
+human. It does not recognize class distinctions
+at all, except for comic purposes. It is brighter,
+better-informed, bolder, and more humane than
+anything on this side, and our men in France find
+its spirit in accord with theirs. One of the results
+of the War will be that they will want something
+like it when they come back, though I don&#8217;t see
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span>
+how they are to get it unless it is imported, or
+unless they emigrate to a country where to feel
+that way about things is normal and not peculiar.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span>
+<h2>IX. The Marne</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>AUGUST 3, 1918. The holy angels
+were at Mons; British soldiers saw
+them there. A Russian army was in
+England in 1914; everybody knew someone who
+had seen it. And Joan of Arc, in shining armour,
+has returned to the aid of the French. These
+and even graver symptoms warn us that we may
+not be in that state of equanimity which is useful
+when examining evidence. Only this week, in the
+significant absence of the house-dog, a mysterious
+hand thrust through my letter-box a document
+which proved, as only propaganda may, that this
+war was thoroughly explored in the Book of
+Daniel. Why were we not told so before?
+Why was Lord Haldane reading Hegel when
+there was Daniel? What did we pay him for?
+And that very same night I stood at the outer
+gate with one who asked me why, when there
+were stacks of jam in our grocer&#8217;s shop, we could
+not buy any because the Food Controller had
+omitted to put up the price. I had no time to
+reason this out, because at that moment we heard
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span>
+a loud buzzing in the sky. We gazed up into the
+velvet black night, that was like a skull-cap over
+the world. The buzzing continued. &#8220;Perhaps,&#8221;
+said my companion, &#8220;what we can hear is our
+great big Bee.&#8221;</p>
+<p>That buzzing overhead did not develop. It
+merely waned and increased. It was remarkable
+but inconsequential. It alarmed while giving no
+good cause for alarm. In the invisible heavens
+there might have been One who was playing
+Bogie to frighten poor mortals for fun. I went
+in to continue my reading of Charles le Goffic&#8217;s
+book, <i>General Foch at the Marne</i>. This was all
+in accord with the Book of Daniel, and the jam
+that was uneatable because it was not dear enough.
+My reading continued, as it were, the mysterious
+buzzing.</p>
+<p>I can give, as a rule, but a slack attention to
+military history, and my interest in war itself is,
+fundamentally, the same as for cretinism and bad
+drains. I merely wonder why it is, and wish it
+were not. But the Marne, I regret to say, holds
+me in wonder still; for this there is nothing to
+say excepting that, from near Meaux, I heard
+the guns of the Marne. I saw some of its pomp
+and circumstance. I had been hearing the guns
+of the War for some weeks then, but the guns
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span>
+of the Marne were different. They who listened
+knew that those foreboding sounds were of the
+crisis, with all its import. If that thundering
+drew nearer....</p>
+<p>The Marne holds me still, as would a ghost
+story which, by chance, had me within its weird.
+I want to know all that can be told of it. And
+if there is one subject of the War more than
+another which needs a careful sorting of the
+mixed straws in our beards, it is the Battle of the
+Marne. In the case of my own beard, one of
+the straws is the Russian myth. In France, as
+in England, everybody knew someone who had
+seen those Russians. One huge camp, I was told,
+was near Chartres, and in Paris I was shown
+Cossack caps which had come from there. That
+was on the day Manoury&#8217;s soldiers went east
+in their historic sortie of taxicabs against von
+Kluck. I could not then go to Chartres to confirm
+that camp of Cossacks; nor&mdash;and this is my
+straw&mdash;could the German Intelligence Staff. I
+did not believe that the Russians were in France,
+but I could not prove they were not, nor could
+the German generals, who, naturally, had heard
+about those Russians. Now the rapid sweep of
+the German right wing under von Kluck had
+given the enemy a vulnerable flank which, in a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span>
+certain situation, might admit disaster. The
+peril of his western flank must have made the
+enemy sensitive to the least draught coming from
+there.</p>
+<p>It is on such frailties as this that the issue of
+battle depends, and the fate of empires. War,
+as a means of deciding our luck, is no more scientific
+than dicing for it. The first battle of the
+Marne holds a mystery which will intrigue
+historians, separate friends, cause hot debate,
+spawn learned treatises, help to fill the libraries,
+and assist in keeping not a few asylums occupied,
+for ages. If you would measure it as a cause
+for lunacy, read Belloc&#8217;s convincing exposition
+of the battle, and compare that with le Goffic&#8217;s
+story of the fighting of the Ninth Army, under
+General Foch, by Fčre Champenoise and the
+Marshes of St. Gond. Le Goffic was there.</p>
+<p>Why did fate tip the beam in the way we
+know? Why, for a wonder, did the sound of
+gunfire recede from Paris, and not approach still
+nearer? I myself at the time held to an unreasonable
+faith that the enemy would never enter
+Paris, in spite of what Kitchener thought and
+the French Government feared. Yet when
+challenged I could not explain why, for I was
+ill, and the days seemed to be biassed to the German
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span>
+side. To have heard the guns of the Marne
+was as though once one had listened to the high
+gods contending over our destiny.</p>
+<p>Historians of the future will spell out le Goffic
+on the fighting round the Tower on the Marshes
+at Mondement. It was the key of the swamp of
+St. Gond, the French centre. The Tower was
+held by the French when, by every military rule,
+they should have given it up. At length they
+lost it. They won it again, but because of sheer
+unreason, so far as the evidence shows, for at
+the moment they regained it Mondement had
+ceased to be anything but a key to a door which
+had been burst wide open. Foch, by the books,
+was beaten. But Foch as we know was fond
+of quoting Joseph de Maistre: &#8220;A battle lost
+is a battle which one had expected to lose.&#8221; In
+this faith, while his battalions were reduced to
+thin companies without officers, and the Prussian
+Guard and the Saxons were driving back his whole
+line, Foch, who had sent to borrow the 42nd Division
+from the general on his left, kept reporting
+to Headquarters: &#8220;The situation is excellent.&#8221;
+But the 42nd had not yet arrived, and he continued
+to retire.</p>
+<p>Contradicting Belloc and the usual explanations,
+M. le Goffic says that Foch was unaware
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span>
+of any gap in the German line. What he did
+was to thrust in a bleak venture the borrowed
+division against the flank of the advancing Prussians,
+who were in superior force. The Prussians
+retired. But had they not been preparing
+to retire? Yet for what reason? When all
+seemed lost, Foch won on the centre.</p>
+<p>On the extreme French left, where Manoury
+was himself being outflanked by von Kluck, the
+fatigued and outnumbered French soldiers were
+resigned to the worst. They had done all that
+was possible, and it seemed of no avail. They
+did not know that at that time the locomotives
+in the rear of the German armies were reversed;
+were heading to the north. What happened
+in the minds of the directing German generals&mdash;for
+that is where the defeat began&mdash;is not clear;
+but the sudden and prolonged resistance of the
+French at the Marne may have disrupted with
+a violent doubt minds that had been taut with
+over-confidence. The fear to which the doubt increased
+when Manoury attacked and persisted,
+the baffling audacity in the centre of the defeated
+Foch, who did everything no well-bred militarist
+would expect from another gentleman, and the
+common fervour of the French soldiers who
+fought for a week like men possessed, at last
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span>
+caused something to give way in the brain of the
+enemy. He could not understand it. This was
+not according to his plan. He could not find it
+in his books. He did not know what more he
+could do, except to retire into safety and think
+it over afresh. The unexpected fury of the
+human spirit, outraged into desperation after it
+was assumed to be subdued, and bursting suddenly,
+and regardless of consequences, against the
+calm and haughty front of material science
+assured of its power, checked and deflected the
+processes of the German intelligence. I have
+seen an indignant rooster produce the same effect
+on a bull.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span>
+<h2>X. Carlyle</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>AUGUST 17, 1918. Having something
+on the mind may lead one to salvation,
+but it seems just as likely to lead
+one to the asylum. The Germans, who are necessarily
+in the power of an argument which shows
+them we are devils, are yet compelled to admit
+that Shakespeare is worth reasoned consideration,
+and so they avoid the implied difficulty by explaining
+that as Shakespeare was a genius therefore
+he was a German. What we should do if it could
+be proved a grandfather of the poet was a
+Prussian probably only our Home Secretary
+could tell us, after he had made quite sure
+he would not be overheard by a white and tense
+believer in the Hidden Hand. Thank God
+Heine was a Jew, though even so there are
+rumours that a London memorial to him is to
+be removed. And last night I heard it expounded
+very seriously, by a clever man of letters, that
+Carlyle&#8217;s day is done. Few people read Carlyle
+to-day&mdash;and it may be supposed that as they read
+they hold his volumes with a Hidden Hand&mdash;and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span>
+fewer still love him, for at heart he was a
+Prussian. He was, indeed, slain in our affections
+by Frederick the Great. His shrine at Chelsea is
+no longer visited. It is all for the best, because
+in any case he wrote only a gnarled and involved
+bastard stuff of partly Teutonic origin. While
+this appeal was being made to me, I watched the
+face of a cat, which got up and stretched itself
+during the discourse, with some hope; but that
+animal looked as though it were thinking of its
+drowned kittens. It was the last chance, and the
+cat did not laugh. On my way home, thinking
+of that grave man of letters and of his serious
+and attentive listeners, I noticed even the street
+lights were lowered or doused, and remembered
+that every wine-shop was shut. London
+is enough to break one&#8217;s heart. If only by some
+carelessness one of the angels failed to smother
+his great laughter over us, and we heard it,
+we might, in awakening embarrassment, the first
+streak of dawn, put a stop to what had been until
+that moment an unconscious performance.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span>
+<h2>XI. Holiday Reading</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>AUGUST 31, 1918. I make the same
+mistake whenever the chance of a holiday
+broadens and brightens. A small
+library, reduced by a process of natural selection,
+helps to make weighty the bag. But I do not at
+once close the bag; a doubt keeps it open; I take
+out the books again and consider them. When
+the problem of carrying those volumes about faces
+me, it is a relief to discover how many of them
+lose their vital importance. Yet a depraved
+sense of duty, perhaps the residue of what such
+writers as Marcus Aurelius have done for me,
+refuses to allow every volume to be jettisoned.
+It imposes, as a hair shirt, several new and serious
+books which there has been no time to examine.
+They are books that require a close focus, a long
+and steady concentration, a silent immobility
+hardly distinguishable from sleep. This year
+for instance I notice Jung&#8217;s <i>Analytical Psychology</i>
+confidently expecting to go for a holiday with
+me. I feel I ought to take some such stern reminder
+of mortality, and, in addition, out of a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span>
+sentimental regard for the past, a few old books,
+for my faith is not dead that they may put a new
+light on the wonderful strangeness of these latter
+days. I take these, too.</p>
+<p>And that is why I find them at the journey&#8217;s
+end. But why did I bring them? For now they
+seem to be exactly what I would avoid&mdash;they look
+like toil. And work, as these years have taught
+the observant, is but for slaves and the conscripted.
+It is never admired, except with a distant
+and haughty sententiousness, by the best
+people.</p>
+<p>Nor is it easy, by this west-country quay, to
+profit by a conscience which is willing to allow
+some shameless idleness. I began talking, before
+the books were even unpacked, with some old acquaintances
+by the water-side. Most disquieting
+souls! But I cannot blame them. They
+have been obliged to add gunnery to their knowledge
+of seamanship and navigation. They were
+silent, they shook their heads, following some
+thoughtless enquiries of mine after the wellbeing
+of other men I used to meet here. Worse than
+all, I was forced to listen to the quiet recitals of
+stranded cripples, once good craftsmen in the
+place, and these dimmed the blessed sun even
+where in other years it was unusually bright.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span>
+That is what put holiday thoughts and literature
+away. I felt I had been very unfairly treated,
+especially as the mutilated, being young men, were
+unpleasantly noticeable in so small a village on
+fine mornings. It is not right that the calm of
+our well-earned leisure should be so savagely
+ruined. There was one morning on the quay
+when, watching the incoming tide, two of us were
+discussing Mametz Wood and some matters relating
+to it which will never be published, and the
+young man who was instructing me was approached
+by an older man, who beamed, and held
+in his hand a news-sheet. &#8220;Splendid news this
+morning,&#8221; said the elderly man to the young soldier.
+He wanted the opinion of one who had
+fought on that ground, and I regret to say he got
+it. The soldier indifferently handed back the
+glorious news, without inspecting it, with words
+which youth should never address to age.</p>
+<p>So how can I stay by the quay all the golden
+day long? I have not come here prepared to
+endure the sudden Arctic shadows which fall, even
+in summer, from such clouds. The society of
+our fellows was never so uncertain, so likely to be
+stormy, as in these days. And the opinions of
+none of our fellow-men can be so disturbing as
+those of the rebel from the trenches, who appears,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span>
+too, to expect us to agree with him at once, as
+though he had a special claim on our sympathetic
+attention. While considering him and his
+views of society, of peace and war, I see what
+might come upon us as the logical consequence of
+such a philosophy, and the dread vision does not
+accord with the high serenity of this Atlantic
+coast, where the wind, like the hilarious vivacity
+of a luminous globe spinning through the blue,
+is mocking these very sheets as I write them,
+and is trying to blow them, a little before their
+time, into vacuity.</p>
+<p>It is not easy, and perhaps this summer it would
+not be right, to find the exact mood for a holiday.
+In the frame of mind which is more usual
+with us, I put Ecclesiastes&mdash;forsaken by a previous
+visitor, and used to lengthen a short leg
+of the dressing-table&mdash;in my pocket, and leave
+the quay to its harsh new thoughts, and to the
+devices by which it gets a bare sustenance out
+of the tides, the seasons, and the winds, complicated
+now with high explosives in cunning ambush;
+and go out to the headland, where wild
+goats among the rocks which litter the steep are
+the only life to blatter critical comment to high
+heaven. I left that holiday quay and its folk,
+and took with me a prayer which might go far
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span>
+to brace me to support the blattering of goats,
+if that, too, should be my luck even when in solitude.
+I passed at the hill-top the last whitewashed
+wall of the village, where the open Atlantic
+is sighted, and stopped to glance at the
+latest official poster on the wall. That explained
+to me, while the west wind blew, what the penalties
+are for young men who are in the wrong
+because they are young, not having attained the
+middle-age which brings with it immunity for
+the holding of heroic notions. Yet how if
+those young men are not bellicose like their wise
+seniors? Why should they get the evil which
+their elders, who will it, take so much care to
+avoid?</p>
+<p>The dust of official lorries in a hurry no longer
+made the wayside hedges appear aged. The
+wind was newly arrived from mid-ocean. I met
+it coming ashore. It knew nothing about us, so
+far. In the distance, the village with its shipping
+was a faint blur, already a faded impress on
+earth, as though more than half forgotten in
+spite of its important problems. It was hardly
+more than a discoloration, and suggested nothing
+of consequence. The sun on the grey rocks
+was giving a hint that, should ever it be required,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span>
+there was heat enough left to begin things anew.
+I realized in alarm that such a morning of re-birth
+might be beautiful; for I might not be there to
+sing <i>Laus Deo</i>. I might miss that fine morning.
+There was a suggestion of leisure in the
+pattern of the lichen on the granite; it gave the
+idea of prolonged yet still merely tentative efforts
+at design. The lichen seemed to have complete
+assurance that there was time enough for new
+work. The tough stems of the heather, into
+which I put my hand, felt like the sinews of a
+body that was as ancient as the other stars, but
+still so young that it was tranquilly fixed in the
+joy of its first awakening, knowing very little yet,
+guessing nothing of its beginning nor of its end;
+still infantile, with all life before it, its voice
+merely the tiny shrilling of a grasshopper. The
+rocks were poised so precariously above the quivering
+plain of the sea that they appeared to tremble
+in mid-air, being things of no weight, in the
+rush of the planet. The distant headlands and
+moors dilated under the generating sun. It was
+then that I pulled Ecclesiastes out of my pocket,
+leaned against the granite, and began:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Vanity of vanities...&#8221;</p>
+<p>I looked up again. There was a voice above
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span>
+me. An old goat, the venerable image of all-knowledge,
+of sneering and bearded sin, was contemplating
+me. It was a critical comment of his
+that I had heard. Embarrassed, I put away my
+book.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span>
+<h2>XII. An Autumn Morning</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>SEPTEMBER 28, 1918. The way to my
+suburban station and the morning train
+admonishes me sadly with its stream of
+season-ticket holders carrying dispatch-cases, and
+all of them anxious, their resolute pace makes it
+evident, for work. This morning two aeroplanes
+were over us in the blue, in mimic combat;
+they were, of course, getting into trim for
+the raid to-night, because the barometer is beautifully
+high and steady. But the people on their
+way to the 9.30 did not look up at the flight.
+Life is real, life is earnest. When I doubt that
+humanity knows what it is doing, I get comfort
+from watching our local brigadiers and Whitehall
+ladies on their way these tranquil Autumn
+mornings to give our planet another good shove
+towards the millennium. Progress, progress!
+I hear their feet overtaking me, brisk and resolute,
+as though a revelation had come to them
+overnight, and so now they know what to do, undiverted
+by any doubt. There is a brief glimpse
+of a downcast face looking as though it had just
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span>
+chanted the Dies Irć through the mouthfuls of
+a hurried breakfast; and once more this laggard
+is passed in the day&#8217;s race towards the higher
+peak. The reproof goes home. It justly humiliates.
+But the weather is only a little west of
+south for one of the last fair days of the year;
+and the gloom of the yew in the churchyard&mdash;which
+stands over the obscure headstone of a
+man named Puplett&mdash;that yew which seems the
+residue of the dark past, has its antiquity full
+of little smouldering embers of new life
+again; and so a lazy man has reasons to doubt
+whether the millennium is worth all this hurry.
+As it is, we seem to have as much trouble as there
+is time to classify before supper; by which time,
+from the look of the weather, there will be more.
+Then why hurry over it? The tombstone says
+Puplett was a &#8220;thrifty and industrious parent,&#8221;
+and I can see what happened to him in 1727.
+What would I not give, I ask myself, as I pause
+by the yew, and listen to the aeroplanes overhead,
+for a few words from this Puplett on thrift, industry,
+and progress! Does he now know more
+than brigadiers?</p>
+<p>It may be that what Europe is suffering from
+in our time is the consequence of having worked
+too hard, since that unlucky day when Watt gave
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span>
+too much thought to a boiling kettle. We have
+worked too hard without knowing why we were
+doing it, or what our work would do with us. We
+were never wise enough to loaf properly, to stop
+and glance casually around for our bearings. We
+went blindly on. Consider the newspapers, as
+they are now! A casual inspection of the mixture
+of their hard and congested sentences is
+enough to show that what is wanted by our writers
+famous for their virility, their power of
+&#8220;graphic description&#8221; as their outpour is called
+by their disciples, and their knowledge of what
+everybody ought to be doing, is perhaps no more
+than an occasional bromide. They would feel
+better for a long sleep. This direction by them
+of our destiny is an intoxicating pursuit, but it is
+as exhausting as would be any other indulgence.
+We might do quite well if they would only leave
+it to us. But they will never believe it. Ah! the
+Great Men of Action! What the world has
+suffered from their inspired efforts to shepherd
+humanity into worried flocks hurrying nobody
+knew whither, every schoolboy reads; and our
+strong men to-day, without whose names and portraits
+no periodical is considered attractive,
+would surely have been of greater benefit to us if
+they had remained absorbed in their earlier
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span>
+skittles. If the famous magician, who, with several
+others, is winning the war by suggestion, and
+that true soldier, General FitzChutney, and that
+earnest and eloquent publicist, Mr. Blufflerlow,
+had been persuaded to stick to marbles, what misleading
+excitement and unprofitable anxiety
+would have been spared to the commonweal!
+Boys should be warned against and protected from
+Great Careers. Better still if embryologists
+could discover something which would enable midwives
+unfailingly to recognize Strong Men at
+birth. It would be easy then to issue to those
+ladies secret but specific instructions.</p>
+<p>There is a street which turns abruptly from
+my straight road to the station. It goes like a
+sudden resolution to get out of this daily hurry
+and excitement. It is a pre-war street. It is an
+ancient thoroughfare of ours, a rambling and unfrequented
+by-way. It is more than four years
+since it was a habit of mine to loiter through it,
+with a man with whom I shall do no more pleasant
+idling. We enjoyed its old and ruinous shops
+and its stalls, where all things could be bought at
+second-hand, excepting young doves, ferrets, and
+dogs. I saw it again this morning, and felt, somehow,
+that it was the first time I had noticed it
+since the world suddenly changed. Where had it
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span>
+been in the meantime? It was empty this morning,
+it was still, it was luminous. It might have
+been waiting, a place that was, for the return of
+what can never return. Its sunlight was different
+from the glare in the hurrying road to the station.
+It was the apparition of a light which has gone
+out. I stopped, and was a little fearful. Was
+that street really there? I thought its illumination
+might be a ghostly sunlight haunting an avenue
+leading only to the nowhere of the memory.
+Did the others who were passing see that by-way?
+I do not think so. They never paused. They
+did not glance sideways in surprise, stare in an
+expectancy which changed almost at once into
+regret for what was good, but is not.</p>
+<p>Who would not retire into the near past, and
+stay there, if it were possible? (What a weakness!)
+Retrospection was once a way of escape
+for those who had not the vitality to face their
+own fine day with its exacting demands. Yet
+who now can look squarely at the present, except
+officials, armament shareholders, and those in perambulators?
+This side-turning offered me a
+chance to dodge the calendar and enter the light
+of day not ours. The morning train of the day I
+saw in that street went before the War. I
+decided to lose it, and visit the shop at the top
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span>
+of the street, where once you could buy anything
+from a toddy glass to an emu&#8217;s egg having a
+cameo on it of a ship in full sail. It was also a
+second-hand bookshop. Most lovers of such
+books would have despised it. It was of little
+use to go there for valuable editions, or even for
+such works as Sowerby&#8217;s <i>Botany</i>. But when last
+the other man and myself rummaged in it we
+found the first volume of the <i>Boy&#8217;s Own Paper</i>,
+and an excellent lens for our landscape camera.
+An alligator, sadly in need of upholstering, stood
+at the door, holding old umbrellas and walking-sticks
+in its arms. The proprietor, with a sombre
+nature and a black beard so like the established
+shadows of his lumbered premises that he could
+have been overlooked for part of the unsalable
+stock, read Swedenborg, Plato, Plutarch, and
+Young&#8217;s <i>Night Thoughts</i>&mdash;the latter an edition
+of the eighteenth century in which an Edinburgh
+parson had made frail marginal comments,
+yellow and barely discernible, such as: &#8220;How
+True!&#8221; This dealer in lumber read through
+large goggles, and when he had decided to admit
+he knew you were in his shop he bent his head,
+and questioned you steadily but without a word
+over the top of his spectacles. If you showed no
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span>
+real interest in what you proposed to buy he
+would refuse to sell it.</p>
+<p>There I found him again, still reading&mdash;Swedenborg
+this time&mdash;with most of the old things
+about him, including the Duck-billed Platypus; for
+nobody, apparently, had shown sufficient interest
+in them. The shop, therefore, was as I
+have always known it. There was a spark of a
+summer&#8217;s day of 1914 still burning in the heart of
+a necromancer&#8217;s crystal ball on the upper shelf
+by the window.</p>
+<p>The curio there which was really animated
+put down his book after I had been in the shop
+for some minutes, regarded me deliberately as
+though looking to see what change had come to
+me in four such years, and then glanced up and
+nodded to the soothsayer&#8217;s crystal. &#8220;It&#8217;s a pity,&#8221;
+he said, &#8220;that those things won&#8217;t really work.&#8221;
+He asked no questions. He did not inquire after
+my friend. He did not refer to those problems
+which the crowds in the morning trains were
+eagerly discussing at that moment. He sat on a
+heap of forgotten magazines, and remained apart
+with Swedenborg. I loafed in the fertile dust and
+quiet among old prints, geological specimens,
+antlers, pewter, bed-warmers, amphorć, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span>
+books. The proprietor presided over the dim
+litter of his world, bowed, pensive, and silent,
+suggesting in his aloofness not indifference but a
+retired sadness for those for whom the mysteries
+could be made plain, but who are wilful in their
+blindness, and so cannot be helped.</p>
+<p>I came upon a copy of <i>Walden</i>, in its earliest
+Camelot dress (price sixpence), and remembered
+that one who was not there had once said he was
+looking for it in that edition. I turned to the last
+page and read: &#8220;Only that day dawns to which
+we are awake...&#8221;</p>
+<p>I reserved the book for him at once, though
+knowing I could not give it to him. But what is
+the good of cold reason? Are we awake in such
+dawns as we now witness? Or has there been
+no dawn yet because we are only restless in our
+sleep? It might be either way, and in such a perplexity
+reason cannot help us. I thought that
+perhaps I might now be stirring, on the point
+of actually rousing. There, in any case, was the
+evidence of that fugitive spark of the early summer
+of 1914 still imprisoned in its crystal, proof
+that the world had experienced a dawn or two.
+An entirely unreasonable serenity possessed me&mdash;perhaps
+because I was not fully roused&mdash;because
+of the indestructibility of those few voiceless
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73' name='page_73'></a>73</span>
+hopes we cherish that seem as fugitive as the
+glint in the crystal ball, hopes without which our
+existence would have no meaning, for if we lost
+them we should know the universe was a witless
+jest, with nobody to laugh at it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want this book,&#8221; I said to the shopman.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know,&#8221; he answered, without looking up.
+&#8220;I&#8217;ve kept it for you.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span>
+<h2>XIII. News from the Front</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>OCTOBER 12, 1918. My remembrance
+of the man, when I got his letter from
+France&mdash;and it was approved, apparently,
+by one of his regimental officers, for a censorial
+signature, was upon its envelope&mdash;was a
+regrettable and embarrassing check to my impulse
+to cry Victory. I found it hard, nevertheless,
+in the moment when victory was near, to forgive
+the curious lapse that letter betrayed in a
+fellow who did not try for exemption but volunteered
+for the infantry, and afterwards declined
+a post which would have saved him from the
+trenches. He was the sort of curious soldier
+that we civilians will never understand. He
+aided the enemy he was fighting. His platoon
+officer reported that fact as characteristic and admirable.
+He had gone out under fire to hold up
+a wounded German and give him water. He did
+not die then, but soon after, on the Hindenburg
+Line, because, chosen as a good man who was expert
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span>
+in killing others with a deadly mechanism, he
+was leading in an attack. This last letter of his,
+which arrived after the telegram warning us, in
+effect, that there could be no more correspondence
+with him, alluded in contempt to his noble profession
+and task, and ended with a quotation from
+Drum Taps which he prayed I would understand.</p>
+<p>His prayer was in vain. I did not understand.
+I read that quotation at breakfast, just after
+finishing my fierce and terrible <i>Daily Dustpan</i>,
+and the quotation, therefore, was at once repugnant
+and unfortunate. For clearly the leader-writer
+of the <i>Dustpan</i> was a bolder and more
+martial man. It is but fair to assume, however,
+that as that journalist in the normal routine of a
+day devoted to his country had not had the good
+fortune to run up against the machine guns of the
+Hindenburg trenches, naturally he was better
+able to speak than a soldier who was idly swinging
+in the wire there. The quotation, strange for
+a Guardsman to make, is worth examining as an
+example of the baleful influence war has upon
+those who must do the fighting which journalists
+have the hard fate merely to indicate is the duty
+of others. The verse actually is called Reconciliation.
+After a partial recovery from the
+shame of the revelation of my correspondent&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span>
+unsoldierly spirit, a shame which was a little
+softened by the thought that anyhow he was dead,
+I went to <i>Leaves of Grass</i> for the first time for
+some years, to see whether Drum Taps accorded
+with war as we know it.</p>
+<p>And now I am forced to confess that we may
+no longer accuse the Americans of coming late
+into the War. They appear to have been in it,
+if the date of Drum Taps is ignored, longer even
+than Fleet Street. I cannot see that we have
+contributed anything out of our experiences of
+battle which can compare with Whitman&#8217;s poems.
+He appears to have known of war in essential
+episodes and incidents, as well as from a high
+vision of it, in a measure which the literature of
+our own tragedy does not compass.</p>
+<p>A minor poet told me once that he could not
+read Whitman. He declared it was like chewing
+glass. When we criticize others, the instant penalty
+is that we unwittingly confess what we are
+ourselves. We know the reception of <i>Leaves of
+Grass</i> was of the kind which not seldom greets
+the appearance of an exceptional book, though
+Emerson recognized its worth. So when occasionally
+we admit, shyly and apologetically, as
+is our habit (in the way we confess that once we
+enjoyed sugar candy), that long ago we used to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span>
+read Emerson, it would do our superior culture
+no harm to remember that Emerson was at least
+the first of the world of letters to tell the new poet
+that his <i>Leaves</i> was &#8220;the most extraordinary piece
+of wit and wisdom America has yet produced.&#8221;
+Nothing in all his writing proves the quality of
+Emerson&#8217;s mind so well as his instant and full
+knowledge of Whitman, when others felt that
+what Whitman was really inviting was laughter
+and abuse. I suppose what the young poet meant
+when he said reading Whitman was like a mouthful
+of glass was that Whitman has no music, and
+so cannot be read aloud. There is always a fair
+quantity of any poet&#8217;s work which would do much
+to make this world a cold and unfriendly place
+if we persevered in reading it aloud. In some
+circumstances even Shakespeare might cause
+blasphemy. Perhaps he has. And Whitman,
+like summer-time, and all of us, is not always at
+his best. But I think it is possible that many
+people to-day will know the music and the solace
+of the great dirge beginning &#8220;When lilacs last in
+the dooryard bloom&#8217;d.&#8221; And again, if capturing
+with words those surmises which intermittently
+and faintly show in the darkness of our speculations
+and are at once gone, if the making of a
+fixed star of such wayward glints is the mark of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span>
+a poet, then Whitman gave us &#8220;On the beach at
+night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I had never thought Whitman so good till that
+soldier&#8217;s letter accidentally discovered it to me.
+If Whitman had been through the campaign
+across the narrow straits, if Ypres, Vimy, and
+Cambrai had been in his own experience, he could
+have added little to Drum Taps. For there is
+nothing that is new in war. It is only the campaign
+that is new, and the men who are young.
+Yet all has happened before. But each young
+soldier in a new campaign feels that his experience
+is strangely personal. He will have the truth revealed
+to him, and will think that it is an intimacy
+for his soul alone; yet others, too, have seen it,
+but are dead. The survivors of this War will
+imagine their experiences unique, admonitory,
+terrible, and that if they had the words to tell
+us their knowledge they would not be believed or
+understood. That is why the succeeding generation,
+too, gets caught. Yet there is enough of
+this War in Drum Taps to have stopped it more
+than two years ago if only one European in ten
+had had so much imagination and enterprise as
+would take a man through a strange field gate
+when he was convinced it was in that direction he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span>
+should go, and enough of charity in his heart to
+stay him from throwing stones at the sheep while
+on his way.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span>
+<h2>XIV. Authors and Soldiers</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>OCTOBER 26, 1918. If a man who
+knew no books, but who became serious
+when told of his emptiness, and showed
+eagerness to begin to fill it, were confronted with
+the awful strata in the library of the British
+Museum, and were told that that was his task,
+he might fall unconscious. But what cruelty!
+He could be warned that the threat has little in
+it; that the massed legions of books could do him
+no harm, if he did not disturb them. It could
+be whispered to the illiterate man&mdash;whose wisdom,
+it might chance, was better than much scholarship&mdash;that
+it is possible to read the best of
+the world&#8217;s drama in a few months, and that in
+the remainder of the year he could read its finest
+poetry, history, and philosophy. I am but paraphrasing
+what was said recently by an Oxford
+professor. I would not dare to give it as my
+own opinion, within hearing of the high priests.</p>
+<p>Yet the professor&#8217;s declaration may be not only
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span>
+outrageous, but right. It is a terrible thought,
+except to those who are merely bibliophiles just as
+some little boys are lovers of old postage stamps.
+I think he may be right, for I have a catalogue
+of all the books and documents prompted by the
+War and published before June, 1916. It runs
+to 180 pages of small type. It contains the
+names of about 3500 books and pamphlets.
+Now, let us suppose a student wished to know
+the truth about the War, for perhaps a very
+youthful student could imagine it was possible to
+get the truth about it. The truth may be somewhere
+in that catalogue; but I know, for I have
+tried, that it has no significant name to betray its
+pure gold, no strange brilliance to make the type
+dance on that page as one turns the leaves with
+a hopeless eye. There are, however, two certainties
+about the catalogue. One is that it would
+require a long life, a buoyant disposition, and a
+freedom from domestic cares, to read every book
+in it. And the other is that there are no more
+books in it&mdash;which we ought to count as books&mdash;than
+one evening would see us through,
+interruptions and all. The books in that mass
+are as dead as the leaves of their June of the
+War.</p>
+<p>I must confess, though, that I am a bibliophile
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span>
+with War books. Any book about the
+Great War is good enough for me. I am to
+that class of literature what little boys are to
+stamps. Yes; I know well the dread implication.
+I am aware of the worm in the mind;
+that I probe a wound; that I surrender to an
+impulse to peer into the darkness of the pit;
+that I encourage a thought which steals in with
+the quiet of midnight, and that it keeps me
+awake while the household sleeps. I know
+I consort with ghosts in a region of evil. I get
+the horrors, and I do not repel them. For
+some reason I like those ghosts. Most of
+them have no names for me, but I count them
+as old friends of mine; and where should I
+meet them again, at night, but amid the scenes
+we knew?</p>
+<p>And what do I look for in these War books?
+It is not easy to say. It is a private matter.
+Songs the soldiers used to sing on French
+roads are often in my head. I am like the
+man who was once bewitched, and saw and heard
+things in another place which nobody will believe,
+and who goes aside, therefore, unsociable
+and morose, to brood on what is not of this
+world. I am confessing this but to those who
+themselves have been lost in the dark, and are
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span>
+now awake again. The others will not know.
+They will only answer something about &#8220;Cheering
+up,&#8221; or&mdash;and this is the strangest thing to
+hear&mdash;&#8220;to forget it.&#8221; I don&#8217;t want to forget
+it. So if in a book I see names like Château
+Thierry, Crépy-en-Valois, Dickebusch, Hooge,
+Vermelles, Hulluch, Festubert, Notre Dame de
+Lorette, Ligny-Tilloy, Sailly-Saillisel, Croiselles,
+Thiepval, Contalmaison, Dompierre, then I am
+caught. I do not try to escape.</p>
+<p>Yet these books rarely satisfy me. Is it not
+remarkable that soldiers who could face the
+shells with an excellent imitation of indifference
+should falter in their books, intimidated by the
+opinions of those who stayed at home? They
+rarely summon the courage to attack those heroic
+dummies which are not soldiers but idols set up
+in a glorious battlefield that never existed except
+as a romance among the unimaginative; the
+fine figures and the splendid war that were air-built
+of a rapture. These authors who were
+soldiers faced the real War, but they dare not
+deride the noble and popular figments which
+lived but in the transports of the exalted. They
+write in whispers, as it were, embarrassed by a
+knowledge which they would communicate, but
+fear they may not. To shatter a cherished illusion,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span>
+to expose the truth to a proud memory,
+that, I will confess, is always a task before
+which a sensitive man will hesitate. Yet it is
+also part of the test of a writer&#8217;s courage; by
+his hesitation a soldier-author may know that he
+is in danger of failing in his duty. Yet the
+opinion of the public, which intimidates us, is
+no mere bugbear. It is very serious. People
+do not enjoy the destruction of their cherished
+illusions. They do not crown the defamers of
+their idols. What is it that balks a soldier&#8217;s
+judgment when he begins to write about the
+War? He is astonished by the reflection that
+if he were to reproduce with enjoyment the talk
+of the heroes which was usual in France, then
+many excellent ladies might denounce it indignantly
+as unmanly. Unmanly! But he is
+right. They not only might, but they would.
+How often have I listened to the cool and haughty
+contralto of ladies of education and refinement
+who were clearly unaware that what they were
+encouraging, what to them afforded so much
+pride, what deepened their conviction of
+righteous sacrifice, was but an obscene outrage
+on the souls and bodies of young men. How is
+one to convey that to ladies? All that a timid
+writer may do is to regret the awful need to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span>
+challenge the pious assurance of Christians which
+is sure to be turned to anger by the realities.</p>
+<p>I have read in very few books anything that was
+as good as the gossip one could hear by chance
+in France. The intimate yarn of the observant
+soldier home on leave, who could trust his
+listener, is superior to much one sees in print.
+In that way I heard the best story of the War.
+If it could be put down as it was given to me it
+would be a masterpiece. But it cannot be
+reproduced. It came as I heard it because, remembering
+his incredible experience, the narrator
+found himself in secure and familiar circumstances
+again, was confident of his audience, and was
+thinking only of his story. His mind was released,
+he was comfortable, and he was looking
+backward in a grim humour which did not quite
+disguise his sadness. His smile was comical,
+but it could move no answering smile. These
+intelligent soldiers, who tell us the stories we
+never see in print, are not thinking about their
+style, or of the way the other men have told
+such tales, but only of what happened to themselves.
+They are as artless as the child who at
+breakfast so tells its dream of the night before
+that one wants to listen, and Tolstoy says that
+is art. The child has heard nothing of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span>
+apocalyptic visions, and does not know Poe,
+Ambrose Bierce, or Kipling. He is concerned
+only with his own sensations, and you listen to
+him because you have had such dreams, and he
+recalls a dark adventure you had forgotten.</p>
+<p>But the difficulty in the writing of such stories
+is that the narrator, as soon as he begins, becomes
+conscious of the successful methods of
+other men. I have been reading a number of
+War stories published recently, and it was painful
+to see how many were ruined by Kipling before
+this War began. Kipling was original,
+and his tricks of manner, often irritating, and his
+deplorable views of human society, were usually
+carried off by his genius for observation, and the
+spontaneity of the drama of his stories. But
+when his story was thin, and he was wandering
+in an excursion with his childish philosophy, he
+was usually facetious. As an obvious and easily
+imitable trick for dull evenings, this elaborate
+jocularity seems to have been more enjoyed by
+his disciples than his genius for narrative when
+he was happy, and his material was full and
+sound. Yet his false and vulgar fun has spoiled
+many of these volumes pollinated from India.
+They have another defect, too, though it would
+be unfair to blame Kipling for that when it may
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span>
+be seen blossoming with the unassuming modesty
+of a tulip in any number of <i>Punch</i>. I mean that
+amusing gravity of the snob who is sure of the
+exclusive superiority of his caste mark, with not
+the trace of a smile on his face, and at a time
+when all Europe is awakening to the fact that it
+sentenced itself to ruin when it gave great
+privileges to his kind of folk in return for the
+guidance of what it thought was a finer culture,
+but was no more than a different accent. It was,
+we are now aware, the mere Nobodies who won
+the War for us; and yet we still meekly accept
+as the artistic representation of the British
+soldier or sailor an embarrassing guy that would
+disgrace pantomime. And how the men who
+won must enjoy it!</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span>
+<h2>XV. Waiting for Daylight</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>NOVEMBER 9, 1918. I read again my
+friend&#8217;s last field service postcard, brief
+and enigmatic, and now six weeks old.
+I could find in it no more than when it first came.
+Midnight struck, and I went to the outer gate.
+The midnight had nothing to tell me. Not that
+it was silent; we would not call it mere silence,
+that brooding and impenetrable darkness
+charged with doom unrevealed, which is now
+our silent night, unrelenting to lonely watchers.</p>
+<p>Near my gate is a laburnum tree. Once upon
+a time, on nights of rain such as this, the shower
+caught in it would turn to stars, and somehow
+from the brightness of that transient constellation
+I could get my bearings. I knew where I
+was. One noticed those small matters in the
+past, and was innocently thankful for them.
+Those lights sufficed us. There was something
+companionable even in the street lamp. But
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span>
+what is it now? You see it, when you are accustomed
+to the midnight gloom of war,
+shrouded, a funeral smear of purple in a black
+world. No bearing can be got from it now.
+What one looks into is the lightless unknown.
+I peer into the night and rain for some familiar
+and reasonable shape to loom&mdash;I am permitted
+to do this, for so far the police do not object to
+a citizen cherishing a hopeful though fatuous
+disposition&mdash;but my usual reward is but the
+sound of unseen drainage, as though I were
+listening to my old landmarks in dissolution.
+I feel I should not be surprised, when daylight
+came, to find that the appearance of my neighbourhood
+had become like Spitzbergen&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>That is why I soon retreat now from my gate,
+no wiser, bringing in with me on these nights of
+rain little more than the certainty that we need
+expect no maroons or bombs; and then, because
+the act is most unpatriotic in a time of shortage,
+put on more coal with my fingers, as this makes
+less noise than a shovel. I choose a pipe, the
+one I bought in a hurry at Amiens. I choose
+it for that reason, and because it holds more tobacco
+than the others; watch the flames, and take
+stock.</p>
+<p>In the winter, as we know, it never rains.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span>
+It is merely wet weather. Still, that means only
+a retirement into winter quarters, into those long
+evenings against which we have hoarded our
+books, light and warmth in store. Perhaps in
+the case of the more idle there may be the consideration,
+pleasant and prolonged, of that other
+book, known to no other man, not yet written,
+and perhaps destined to perish, a secret dream.
+But what are now these books? What now is
+even that book which is perfect and unwritten?
+It, too, has lost its light. I am left staring into
+the fire. The newspapers tell us of a common
+joy at the coming of Peace. Peace? If she is
+coming, then we are much obliged to her. I remember
+during an earlier and wasted joy at a
+word in France of the coming of Peace agreeing
+with several young soldiers that Brussels would
+be the place to meet, to hail there with flagons
+the arrival of the Dove. But I do not want to
+be reminded of what has happened since that
+day. That festival could now have but one
+celebrant. Then, in another year of the War, in
+a mood of contrition and dismay, some people
+began to feel that on the day Peace arrived it
+would be seemly if she found them on their knees
+in church. Since that day, too, much has happened;
+and when Peace does come I suppose most
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span>
+of us will make reasonably certain the bird resembles
+a dove, and go to bed early&mdash;taking
+another look at the long-lost creature next morning,
+in the presence of a competent witness, to
+confirm that we have not been deceived again by
+another turkey buzzard; and, if that is certain,
+then let the matter drop.</p>
+<p>For in these years, when heavy weather obscures
+the fixed lights, and we are not certain
+about our bearings, it is useless to pretend that
+the darkness which once made us content with
+a book is now a worse kind of darkness only because
+intensified by a private shadow. The
+shadow of a personal grief does not wholly explain
+its sinister intensity. The night itself is
+different. It hides a world unknown. If a sun
+is to rise on that world, then not even a false
+dawn yet shows. When we stand peering into
+our night, where the sound of rain and wind is
+like nothing the memory knows, and may be even
+the dark tumult portending a day of wrath, we
+may turn again in solitude to what is left to us,
+to our books; but not with quiet content. To-morrow
+we may pull ourselves together. Curiosity
+about our new world may awaken. We
+may become adventurous, and make an effort towards
+greeting the unknown with a cheer, to show
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span>
+it there is no settled ill-feeling. But it has been
+my experience that when leaving port in dark
+weather, though the voyage to come was to be
+novel and interesting, one heard very little cheering
+from the glum figures working about the
+deck. The ship is sea-worthy, but she is bleak
+and foreign. In a week all will be well. We
+shall have cleared these icy latitudes. The sky
+will be fairer. We shall have more sun. We
+shall have become accustomed to our shipmates&#8217;
+unfamiliar faces and ways. It is only the start
+that is sullen and unpropitious.</p>
+<p>And here is Peace coming, and a new world,
+and there are my books; yet though this pipe after
+midnight is nearly done, and the fire too, I have
+not been able to settle on a book. The books are
+like the ashes on the hearth. And listen to the
+wind, with its unpromising sounds from the wide
+and empty desert places! What does any of
+these old books know about me, in the midst of
+those portents of a new age? We are all outward
+bound, and this is the first night of a long
+voyage, its port unknown.</p>
+<p>Even my bookshelves seem strange to-night.
+They look remarkably like a library I saw once
+in a house in Richbourg S. Vaast, which, you may
+remember, was a village near Neuve Chapelle.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span>
+Those French volumes also survived from circumstances
+that had passed. They were litter.
+They had been left behind. I doubted whether,
+if I tried, I could touch them. They were not
+within my time. That was on a day more than
+three years ago&mdash;it was July, 1915&mdash;and Richbourg
+had then only just left this world. There
+was a road without a sign of life; not a movement,
+except in one house. The front of that
+house had gone, exposing the hollow inside, the
+collapsed floors and hanging beams, and showing
+also a doll with a foolish smirk caught in a wire
+and dangling from a rafter. The doll danced in
+hysteric merriment whenever hidden guns were
+fired. That was the only movement in Richbourg
+S. Vaast, and the guns made the only sound.
+I was a survivor from the past, venturing at peril
+among the wreckage and hardly remembered
+relics of what used to be familiar. Richbourg
+was possessed by the power which had overwhelmed
+it, and which was re-forming it in a
+changing world. To what was the world changing?
+There was no clue, except the oppression of
+my mind, the shock of the guns, and the ecstatic
+mockery of mirth over ruin by that little idiot
+doll.</p>
+<p>Beyond the sloughing and leprous tower of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span>
+Richbourg Church, where the ancient dead in
+the graveyard had been brought to light again,
+there was a house which seemed in being. I
+entered it, for I was told by a soldier companion
+that from a displaced tile in its roof I might see
+La Bassée. I looked through that gap, and saw
+La Bassée. It was very near. It was a terracotta
+smudge. It might have been a brickfield.
+But it was the Enemy.</p>
+<p>What I chiefly remember to-day is only the
+floor of that upper room from which, through a
+gap in its wall, I saw the ambush of the enemy.
+On the floor were scattered, mixed with lumps of
+plaster, a child&#8217;s alphabetical blocks. A shoe
+of the child was among them. There was a
+window where we dared not show ourselves,
+though the day was fair without, and by it was
+an old bureau, open, with its pad of blotting-paper,
+and some letters, all smothered with fragments
+of glass and new dust. A few drawers
+of the desk were open, and the contents had been
+spilled. Round the walls of the room were bookcases
+with leaded diamond panes. Whoever was
+last in the room had left sections of the bookcases
+open, and there were gaps in the rows of
+books. Volumes had been taken out, had been
+dropped on the floor, put on the mantelpiece, or,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span>
+as I had noticed when coming up to the room,
+left on the stairs. One volume, still open face
+upwards, was on the bureau.</p>
+<p>I barely glanced at those books. What could
+they tell me? What did they know about it?
+Just as they were, open on the floor, tumbled on
+the stairs, they were telling me all they could.
+Was there more to be said? Sitting on a bracket
+in the shadow of a corner, a little bust of
+Rousseau overlooked the scene with me. In such
+a place, at such a time, you must make your own
+interpretation of the change, receiving out of the
+silence, which is not altered in nature by occasional
+abominable noises, just whatever your mind
+wishes to take. There the books are, and the
+dust on them is of an era which abruptly fell;
+is still falling.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span>
+<h2>XVI. The Nobodies</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>NOVEMBER 11, 1918. The newspapers
+tell us that to-day the signal to &#8220;cease
+fire&#8221; will be given. This news is called
+&#8220;Official,&#8221; to give us assurance in the fog of myth.
+Maroons will explode above the City. Then we
+shall know it is the end of the War. We ought
+to believe it, because They tell us this; They who
+do everything for us&mdash;who order us what to think
+and how to act, arrange for our potatoes, settle
+the coming up and the going down of the sun,
+and who for years have been taking away our
+friends to make heroes of them, and worse.
+They have kept the War going, but now They are
+going to stop it. We shall know it is stopped
+when the rockets burst.</p>
+<p>Yet &#8220;The War&#8221; has become a lethargic state
+of mind for us. We accepted it from the beginning
+with green-fly, influenza, margarine, calling-up
+notices, and death. It is as much outside
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span>
+our control as the precession of the equinoxes.
+We believed confidently in the tumultuous
+first weeks of the affair that mankind could
+not stand that strain for more than a few months;
+but we have learned it is possible to habituate
+humanity to the long elaboration of any folly,
+and for men to endure uncomplainingly racking by
+any cruelty that is devised by society, and for
+women to support any grief, however senselessly
+caused. Folly and cruelty become accepted as
+normal conditions of human existence. They
+continue superior to criticism, which is frequent
+enough though seldom overheard. The bitter
+mockery of the satirists, and even the groans of
+the victims, are unnoticed by genuine patriots.
+There seems no reason why those signal rockets
+should ever burst, no reason why the mornings
+which waken us to face an old dread, and the
+nights which contract about us like the strangle of
+despair, should ever end. We remember the
+friends we have lost, and cannot see why we
+should not share with them, in our turn, the punishment
+imposed by solemn and approved dementia.
+Why should not the War go on till the
+earth in final victory turns to the moon the pock-scarred
+and pallid mask which the moon turns
+to us?
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span></p>
+<p>I was looking, later this morning, at Charing
+Cross Bridge. It was, as usual, going south to
+the War. More than four years ago I crossed
+it on a memorable journey to France. It seemed
+no different to-day. It was still a Via Dolorosa
+projecting straight and black over a chasm.
+While I gazed at it, my mind in the past, a
+rocket exploded above it. Yes, I saw a burst
+of black smoke. The guns had ceased?</p>
+<p>A tug passing under the bridge began a continuous
+hooting. Locomotives began to answer
+the tug deliriously. I could hear a low muttering,
+the beginning of a tempest, the distant but
+increasing shouting of a great storm. Two men
+met in the thoroughfare below my outlook, waved
+their hats, and each cheered into the face of the
+other.</p>
+<p>Out in the street a stream of men and women
+poured from every door, and went to swell the
+main cataract which had risen suddenly in full
+flood in the Strand. The donkey-barrow of a
+costermonger passed me, loaded with a bluejacket,
+a flower-girl, several soldiers, and a Staff
+captain whose spurred boots wagged joyously
+over the stern of the barrow. A motor cab followed,
+two Australian troopers on the roof of
+that, with a hospital nurse, her cap awry, sitting
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span>
+across the knees of one of them. A girl on the
+kerb, continuously springing a rattle in a sort of
+trance, shrieked with laughter at the nurse.
+Lines of people with linked arms chanted and
+surged along, bare-headed, or with hats turned
+into jokes. A private car, a beautiful little
+saloon in which a lady was solitary, stopped near
+me, and the lady beckoned with a smile to a
+Canadian soldier who was close. He first stared
+in surprise at this fashionable stranger, and then
+got in beside her with obviously genuine alacrity.
+The hubbub swelled and rolled in increasing delirium.
+Out of the upper windows of the Hotel
+Cecil, a headquarters of the Air Force, a confetti
+of official forms fell in spasmodic clouds.
+I returned soon to the empty room of an office
+where I was likely to be alone; because, now the
+War was over, while listening to the jollity of
+Peace which had just arrived, I could not get
+my thoughts home from France, and what they
+were I cannot tell.</p>
+<p>But there were some other memories, more
+easily borne. There was that night, for instance,
+late in the August of 1914, when three of us were
+getting away from Creil. It was time to go.
+We were not soldiers. Lying on the floor of a
+railway carriage I tried to sleep, pillowed involuntarily
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100' name='page_100'></a>100</span>
+on someone&#8217;s boot. I never knew to
+whom that foot belonged, for the compartment
+was chaos, like the world. The carriage light
+was feeble, and the faces I saw above me drooped
+under the glim, wilted and dingy. The eyes of
+the dishevelled were shut, and this traveller,
+counting the pulse of the wheels beneath, presently
+forgot everything ... there was a crash,
+and my heart bounded me to my feet. There
+had been a fortnight of excitements of this kind.
+A bag fell and struck me back to the floor. Unseen
+people trampled over me, shouting. Somebody
+cried: &#8220;Here they are!&#8221; A cascade of
+passengers and luggage tumbled over to a station
+platform.</p>
+<p>It was a chilly morning. And where were
+we? A clock in a tower said it was five. People
+hurried without apparent reason in all directions.
+So the world may appear to us if some
+day we find, to our surprise, that we have returned
+from the dead. I leaned against a lamppost,
+my mind gravel-rashed, and waited for
+something that could be understood. The Germans
+would do. We heard the enemy was close,
+and that the railway officials would get us away
+if they could. The morning became no warmer,
+there was no coffee, and our tobacco pouches were
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span>
+empty. But at least we were favoured with the
+chance of watching the French railwaymen at
+work. This was a junction, and the men moved
+about as though they were only busy on holiday
+traffic. They were easy and deliberate. I could
+see they would hold that line to the last pull of
+cotton-waste, and would run their trains while
+there was a mile of track. So we learned gradually
+that confident invaders are baffled by railwaymen
+and other common people, such as old
+women insistent on their cows, almost as much
+as they are by bayonets. A country&#8217;s readiness
+for war may be slight, yet the settled habits of
+the peaceful Nobodies, which are not reckoned
+by Imperialists when they are calculating the
+length of the road to conquest, are strangely
+tough and obstinate. You could go to a girl at
+the pigeon-hole of a booking-office in France,
+demand a ticket for a place which by all the signs
+might then have fallen behind the van of the
+German Army, and she would hand the ticket
+to you as though she had never heard of the War.
+Then the engine-driver would go on towards the
+sound of the guns till you wondered, made uneasy
+by the signs without, whether he was phrenetic
+and intended to run the enemy down. The
+train would stop, and while the passengers
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span>
+were listening to the shells the guard would come
+along and give some advice as to the best thing
+to do.</p>
+<p>A little ahead of the Germans, a train came
+into that junction and took us away. I fell asleep
+again, and presently awoke to see a sombre orchard
+outside my window of our stationary train.
+It was a group of trees entranced, like a scene
+before the stage is occupied. The grass in the
+twilight beneath the trees was rank. My sight
+fell drowsily to an abandoned <i>képi</i>, and, while
+wondering what had become of the man who used
+to wear it, I saw a bright eye slyly shut at me.
+A wink in the grass! A bearded face was laughing
+up at me from under the <i>képi</i>. A rifle with
+a fixed bayonet slid forward. Then I saw the
+orchard had a secret crop of eyes, which smiled
+at us from the ground. We moved on, and farewell
+kisses were blown to us.</p>
+<p>Among the laurels of a garden beyond field
+batteries were in position. We crossed a bridge
+over a lower road and a stream. Infantry were
+waiting below for something, and from their attitudes
+seemed to expect it soon. My fellow-passengers
+were now awake to these omens. Broad
+streams of cattle undulated past our train going
+south, but west. &#8220;My poor Paris!&#8221; exclaimed a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span>
+French lady. It was not for themselves these
+people were sorry. The common sort of people
+in the train were sorry for Paris, for all their
+unlucky fellows. The train moved with hesitancy
+for hours. During one long pause we listened
+to a cannonade. One burst of sound seemed
+very close. A young English girl, sitting in a
+corner with her infant, abruptly handed the child
+to her husband. She rummaged in a travelling
+case with the haste of incipient panic. She produced
+a spirit-lamp, a bowl, and a tin. She had
+suddenly remembered it was past her baby&#8217;s feeding
+time.</p>
+<p>Who won the War for us? It was such folk.
+They turned in docility, with no more than a
+pause, a pause of ignorance and wonder, of dismay
+they could hardly conceal, from the accustomed
+order of their days to form vast armies,
+to populate innumerable factories for the making
+of munitions of war, and, while their households
+came everywhere to ruin, they held stubbornly
+to the task fate had thrust upon them; yet their
+august governors and popular guides, frantic and
+afraid through the dire retribution which had
+fallen on that monstrous European society which
+so many of us had thought eternal, abjured and
+abused the common sort whose efforts were all
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span>
+that could save us. What did they call the Nobodies?
+Slackers, cowards, rabbits, and field
+vermin; mean creatures unable to leave their football
+and their drink. I recall one sombre winter&#8217;s
+day of the first November of the War, when
+a column of wounded Belgian soldiers shambled
+by me, coming out of the Yser line, on the way to
+succour which I knew they would not find. The
+doctors and the hospitals were few. These fellows
+were in rags which were plastered to their
+limbs with mud. Their eyes had the vacant look
+of men who had returned from the grave and who
+had forgotten this world. The bare feet of some
+of them left bloody trails on the road. Others
+clutched their bodies, and the blood drained between
+their fingers. One dropped dead at my
+feet. I came home with that in my mind; and the
+next sunrise, hearing unusual sounds outside, I
+lifted the blind to a dawn which was cold and
+ominously scarlet behind skeleton trees. I saw
+beneath the trees a company of my young neighbours,
+already in khaki, getting used to the harshness
+of sergeants, and to the routine of those
+implacable circumstances which would take them
+to Neuve Chapelle, to Gallipoli, to Loos, to the
+Somme; names that had no meaning for us then.</p>
+<p>That serious company of young Englishmen
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span>
+making soldiers of themselves in a day with so
+unpropitious an opening light did not look like
+national indifference. Those innocents getting
+used to rifles were as affecting as that single line
+of bodies I saw across a mile of stubble near
+Compiegne, where a rearguard of the &#8220;Contemptibles&#8221;
+had sacrificed themselves to their comrades.
+But one could not be sure. I went to
+find one who could tell me whether England
+was awake to what confronted it. I remembered
+he was a quiet observer, that he knew what allowance
+to make for those patriotic newspapers
+which so early were holding up in ruinous caricature
+their country and their countrymen for the
+world to see and to scorn. He was a scholar,
+he was a Socialist and a pacifist, he had a sense
+of humour to keep him balanced. But he had
+gone. He had enlisted; and he is dead.</p>
+<p>It was a common experience. From the day
+the Germans entered Belgium a dumb resolution
+settled on our Nobodies. They did not demonstrate.
+They made long silent queues at the
+recruiting offices. It is true those offices were
+not ready for them and turned them away; and
+when by sheer obstinacy they got into the Army
+they were put into concentration camps that were
+as deadly as battle. That did not daunt them,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span>
+nor turn them from their purpose, whatever that
+was, for they never said; and the newspapers, by
+tradition, had no time to find out, being devoted
+to the words and activities of the Highly Important.
+We therefore knew nothing of the munition
+factories that were springing up magically, as
+in a night, like toadstools, all over the country,
+and were barely aware that for some mysterious
+reason the hosts of the enemy were stopped dead
+on the road to Calais. Whose work was all
+this? But how should we know? Who can
+chronicle what Nobody does?</p>
+<p>Sometimes there was a hint. Once again,
+when I returned from France in 1916, unhappy
+with a guess at what the future would be like, I
+learned that our workers were not working.
+They were drinking. They had been passionately
+denounced by the Great and Popular, and
+our Press was forced to admit this disastrous
+crime to the world, for fidelity to the truth is a
+national quality. I went to an engineer who
+would know the worst, and would not be afraid
+to tell me what it was. I found him asleep in
+his overalls, where he had dropped after thirty-six
+hours of continuous duty. Afterwards, when
+his blasphemous indignation over profiteers,
+politicians, and newspapers had worn itself out,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span>
+he told me. His men, using dimmed lights while
+working on the decks of urgent ships, often
+forced to work in cramped positions and in all
+weathers, and while the ship was under way to a
+loading berth, with no refreshment provided
+aboard, and dropped at any hour long distances
+from home, were still regarded by employers in
+the old way, not as defenders of their country&#8217;s
+life, but as a means to quick profits, against
+whom the usual debasing tricks of economy could
+be devised. A battleship in the north had been
+completed five months under contract time.
+Working girls, determined to make a record output
+of ammunition, persisted twenty-two hours
+at a stretch, topped their machines with Union
+Jacks, and fainted next morning while waiting
+for the factory gates to open. The spirit of
+the English! What virtue there is in bread and
+tea! Yet we might have guessed it. And again
+we might have remembered, as a corrective, how
+many grave speeches, which have surprised,
+shocked, and directed the nation, have been made
+by Great Men too soon after a noble dinner,
+words winged by the Press without an accompanying
+and explanatory wine list.</p>
+<p>But the Nobodies are light-minded, casual,
+and good-hearted. Their great labour over,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span>
+and their sacrifices buried, they have come out
+this day to celebrate the occasion with hilarious
+and ironic gaiety. They have won the Greatest
+of Wars, so they ride in motor-lorries and make
+delirious noises with comic instruments. Their
+heroic thoughts are blattering through penny
+trumpets. They have accomplished what had
+been declared impossible, and now they rejoice
+with an inconsequential clatter on tea-trays and
+tin cans.</p>
+<p>Yet some of us who watched their behaviour
+saw the fantastic brightness in the streets on Armistice
+Day only as a momentary veiling of the
+spectres of a shadow land which now will never
+pass. Who that heard &#8220;Tipperary&#8221; sung by
+careless men marching in France in a summer
+which seems a century gone will hear that foolish
+tune again without a sudden fear that he will
+be unable to control his emotion? And those
+Nobodies of Mons, the Marne, and the Aisne,
+what were they? The &#8220;hungry squad,&#8221; the men
+shut outside the factory gates, the useless surplus
+of the labour market so necessary for a great
+nation&#8217;s commercial prosperity. Their need kept
+the wages of their neighbours at an economic
+level. The men of Mons were of that other old
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span>
+rearguard, the hope of the captains of industry
+when there are revolts against the common lot
+of our industrial cities where the death-rates of
+young Nobodies, casualty lists of those who fall
+to keep us prosperous, are as ruinous as open
+war; a mutilation of life, a drainage of the
+nation&#8217;s body that is easily borne by Christian
+folk who are moved to grief and action at the
+thought of Polynesians without Bibles.</p>
+<p>Yet the Nobodies stood to it at Mons. They
+bore us no resentment. We will say they fought
+for an England that is not us, an England that
+is nobler than common report and common
+speech. Think of the contempt and anger of the
+better end of London just before the War, when,
+at the other end, the people of Dockland revolted
+and defied their masters! I knew one
+mother in that obscure host of ignorant humanity
+in revolt. Two of her infants were slowly fading,
+and she herself was dying of starvation, yet
+she refused the entrance of charity at her door,
+and dared her man to surrender. He died later
+at Ypres. He died because of that very quality
+of his which moved his masters and superiors to
+anger; he refused at Ypres, as he did in Dockland,
+like those who were with him and were of his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span>
+kind, to do more than mock defeat when it
+faced him.</p>
+<p>That figure of Nobody in sodden khaki, cumbered
+with ugly gear, its precious rifle wrapped in
+rags, no brightness anywhere about it except the
+light of its eyes (did those eyes mock us, did they
+reproach us, when they looked into ours in Flanders?),
+its face seamed with lines which might
+have been dolorous, which might have been ironic,
+with the sweat running from under its steel
+casque, looms now in the memory, huge, statuesque,
+silent but questioning, like an overshadowing
+challenge, like a gigantic legendary form
+charged with tragedy and drama; and its eyes,
+seen in memory again, search us in privacy. Yet
+that figure was the &#8220;Cuthbert.&#8221; It was derided
+by those onlookers who were not fit to kneel and
+touch its muddy boots. It broke the Hindenburg
+Line. Its body was thrown to fill the trenches it
+had won, and was the bridge across which our
+impatient guns drove in pursuit of the enemy.</p>
+<p>What is that figure now? An unspoken
+thought, which charges such names as Bullecourt,
+Cambrai, Bapaume, Croiselles, Hooge, and a
+hundred more, with the sound and premonition
+of a vision of midnight and all unutterable things.
+We see it in a desolation of the mind, a shape
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span>
+forlorn against the alien light of the setting of a
+day of dread, the ghost of what was fair, but was
+broken, and is lost.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span>
+<h2>XVII. Bookworms</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>JANUARY 18, 1919. In Fleet Street yesterday
+there was at lunch with us an American
+Army officer who discoursed heartily
+about a certain literary public-house. He quoted
+a long passage from Dickens showing how somebody
+took various turnings near Fetter Lane, easily
+to be recognized, till they arrived at this very
+tavern. Such enthusiasm is admirable, yet embarrassing.
+In return, I inquired after several
+young American poets, whose work, seldom seen
+here, interests me, and I named their books. He
+had never heard of them. This enthusiast did
+not even appear to have the beginning of an idea
+that his was unforgivable ignorance seeing that he
+knew more than a native ought to know about
+some of our taverns. Had he been an Englishman
+and a friend of mine I should have told him
+that I thought his love of letters was as spurious
+as the morality of the curate who speaks in a trembling
+baritone about changes in the divorce laws,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span>
+but who accepts murder without altering the statutory
+smile of benediction.</p>
+<p>Literature would be lighter without that scroll
+work and top hamper. It has nothing to do with
+its life. It is as helpful to us as wall-texts and
+those wonders we know as works of Pure
+Thought. Let us remember all the noble volumes
+of philosophy and metaphysics we ought to
+have read, to learn how wonderfully far our
+brains have taken us beyond the relic of Piltdown;
+and then recall what Ypres was like, and buy a
+teetotum instead. That much is saved. Now
+we need not read them. If we feel ourselves
+weakening towards such idleness, let us spin tops.
+If we had to choose between Garvice and say
+Hegel or Locke for a niche in the Temple of
+Letters, we should make an unintelligible blunder
+if we did not elect Mr. Garvice without discussion.
+He is human, he is ingenuous and funny,
+and the philosophers are only loosening with
+the insinuations of moth and rust. The philosophers
+are like the great statesmen and the great
+soldiers&mdash;we should be happier without them. If
+we are not happy and enjoying life, then we have
+missed the only reason for it. If books do not
+help us to this, if they even devise our thoughts
+into knots and put straws in our hair, then they
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span>
+ought to be burned. It is true that some of us
+may get pleasure from searching novels for solecisms
+and collecting evidence by which shall be
+guessed the originals of the novelist&#8217;s characters,
+just as others extract amusement from puzzle
+pictures. But book-worming has the same relation
+to literature, even when it is done by a
+learned doctor in the Bodleian, as flies in a dairy
+with our milk supply. If most of the books in the
+British Museum were destroyed, we might still
+have a friend who would go with us to Amiens to
+get one more dinner in a well-remembered room,
+and drink to the shades; we might still, from the
+top of Lundy at dusk, watch the dim seas break
+into lilac around the Shutter Rock, while the unseen
+kittiwakes were voices from the past; and we
+might still see Miss Muffet tiptoe on a June morning
+to smell the first rose. That is what we look
+for in books, or something like it, and when it
+is not there they are not books to us.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span>
+<h2>XVIII. Sailor Language</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>FEBRUARY 1, 1919. &#8220;What&#8217;s in a
+word?&#8221; asks Admiral W. H. Smyth, with
+ironic intent, in his <i>Sailors&#8217; Word Book</i>.
+There are people who are derided because they
+are inclined to hesitate over that unimportant
+doubt, selecting their words with a waste of time
+which is grievous, when the real value of the sovereign
+is but nine and ninepence, in an uneconomic
+desire to be as right as their knowledge will
+allow. There is something to be said for them.
+There is a case to be made for getting a task
+finished as well as one knows how, if interest in
+it was sufficient to prompt a beginning. A friend
+of mine, who could write a thousand interesting
+and popular words about an event, or even
+about nothing in particular, while I was still wondering
+what I ought to do with it, once exclaimed
+in indignation and contempt when I put in a plea
+for Roget and his <i>Thesaurus</i>. He declared that
+a writer who used such a reference-book ought to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span>
+be deprived of his paper and ink. <i>He</i> never used
+even a dictionary. His argument and the force
+of it humbled me, for I gathered that when he
+wrote he had but to put his hand in his pocket
+and pull out all the words he wanted by the fistful.
+I envy him. I wish I could do it, but there
+are times when every word I try seems opaque.
+It is useless to pretend that Roget is of material
+assistance then; for what remedy is there under
+heaven for the slow and heavy mind? But to
+me Roget is full of amusing suggestions, which
+would really have been very helpful to me had I
+wanted to use his words for any other purpose
+than the one in hand. It is true he rarely gives
+you the word you think you want, but not seldom
+in his assorted heaps of unused ornaments you
+are surprised by a glance of colour from an unsuspected
+facet of a common word.</p>
+<p>The <i>Sailor&#8217;s Word Book</i> is no pamphlet; not
+in the least the kind of pocket book which once
+helped hurried British soldiers in a French shop
+to get fried eggs. It weighs, I should think, seven
+pounds, and it is packed with the vocabulary
+which has been built into the British ship during
+the thousand years and more of her growth. The
+origin of very many of the words retires, often
+beyond exact definition, into the cold mists of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span>
+prehistoric Baltic, and to the Greek Islands,
+among the shadows of the men who first found
+the courage to lose sight of the hills. Commonly
+they are short words, smoothed by constant use
+till they might be imagined to be born of the circumstances
+in which they are known, like the gulls
+and the foam of the wake. They carry like detonations
+in a gale. Yet quite often such words,
+when they are verbs, were once of the common
+stock of the language, as in the case of &#8220;belay,&#8221;
+and it has happened that the sailor alone has been
+left to keep them alive. Dr. Johnson seems not
+to have known the meaning of the verb &#8220;to belay&#8221;
+among the other things he did not know but was
+very violent about. He thought it was a sea-phrase
+for splicing a rope, just as he supposed
+&#8220;main-sheet&#8221; was the largest sail of a ship.</p>
+<p>The <i>Sailors&#8217; Word Book</i> would be much more
+interesting than it is, though greatly heavier, if
+the derivation of the words were given, or even
+guessed at, a method which frequently makes the
+livelier story. We begin to understand what a
+long voyage our ship has come when we are told
+that &#8220;starboard&#8221; is steer-board, the side to which
+the steering-paddle was made fast before the modern
+rudder was invented in the fourteenth century.
+Skeat informs us that both steor and bord are
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span>
+Anglo-Saxon; in fact, the latter word is the same
+in all the Celtic and Teutonic languages, so was
+used by those who first cut trees in Western
+Europe, and perhaps was here before they arrived
+to make our civilization what we know it. The
+opposite to starboard was larboard; but for good
+reason the Admiralty substituted port for larboard
+in 1844. Why was the left side of a ship
+called the port side? That term was in use before
+the Admiralty adopted it. It has been suggested
+that, as the steering-paddle was on the right side
+of a ship, it was good seamanship to have the harbour
+or port on the left hand when piloting
+inwards. But it is doubtful if that reason was
+devised by a sailor.</p>
+<p>A few words in sea life&mdash;as fish, mere, and
+row&mdash;are said to be so old that the philologists
+refer them to the Aryans, or, as others might say,
+give them up as a bad job. These words appear
+to be common to all the sons of Adam who preferred
+adventurous change to security in monotony,
+and so signed on as slaves to a galley. Anchor
+we imported from the Greeks&mdash;it is declared
+to be the oldest word from the Mediterranean
+in the language of our ships; admiral
+from the Arabs, and hammock and hurricane from
+the Caribs, through the Spaniards. But other
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span>
+words of our seamen are as native to us as our
+grey weather, for we brought them with other
+habits overseas from the North&mdash;words like hail,
+storm, sea, ship, sail, strand, cliff, shower, mast,
+and flood.</p>
+<p>To examine words in this manner is simply to
+invite trouble, as did the man who assumed that
+&#8220;bending a sail&#8221; was done as one would bend a
+cane, not knowing that the sailor uses that word
+in the original sense of &#8220;fastening.&#8221; Once, in
+my ignorance, I imagined &#8220;schooner&#8221; was of
+Dutch origin, but was careful to refer to the invaluable
+Skeat. Only just in time, though. And
+he says that the word was born on the Clyde,
+grew up in New England, migrated to Holland,
+and then came back to us again. Once upon a
+time (1713) at Gloucester, Massachusetts, a man
+was witnessing a new fore-and-aft rigged vessel
+glide away on a trial trip, and exclaimed &#8220;She
+scoons!&#8221; So all her kind were christened. Science
+of that kind is almost as good as romance.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span>
+<h2>XIX. Illusions</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>FEBRUARY 15, 1919. Southwark Street
+is warehouses and railway bridges, and
+at its best is not beautiful; but when at
+night it is a deep chasm through which whirl cataracts
+of snow, and the paving is sludge, then, if
+you are at one end of it, the other end is as far
+away as joy. I was at one end of it, and at the
+other was my train, due to leave in ten minutes.
+Yet as there was a strike, there might be no train,
+and so I could not lose it; I had that consolation
+while judging that, with more than half a mile of
+snow and squall intervening from the north-east, I
+could not do the length of the street in ten minutes.
+So I surrendered the train which might not
+run to whoever was able to catch it, and in that
+instant of renunciation the dark body of a motor
+lorry skidded to the kerb and stopped beside me.
+A voice that was as passionless as destiny told me
+to hop up, if I were going towards the station.
+The headlong lorry, the sombre masses of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span>
+buildings which were now looming through the
+diminishing snow, and the winter&#8217;s night, roused
+a vision of another place, much like it, or else the
+snow and the night made it seem like it, and so
+my uppermost thought became too personal, unimportant,
+and curious for converse. All I said,
+as I took my place beside the steering wheel, was:
+&#8220;It&#8217;s a wretched night.&#8221; (But I might have
+been alone in the lorry. There was no immediate
+answer.) I communed secretly with my
+memory. Then the voice returned out of the
+darkness. It startled me. &#8220;This corner,&#8221; it remarked,
+&#8220;always reminds me of a bit of Armentičres.&#8221;
+The voice had answered my thought,
+and not my words.</p>
+<p>The lorry stopped and I got down. I never
+saw the driver. I do not know whose voice it
+was; if, indeed, there was with me in that lorry
+more than a shadow and an impersonal voice.</p>
+<p>Yet now the night could do its worst. I had
+the illusion that I had seen through it. Were
+these bleak and obdurate circumstances an imposture?
+They appeared to have me imprisoned
+helplessly in time and snow; yet I had seen them
+shaken, and by a mere thought. Did their appearance
+depend on the way we looked at them?
+Perhaps it was that. We are compelled by outside
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span>
+things to their mould, and are mortified;
+but occasionally they fail to hide the joke. The
+laugh becomes ours, and circumstance must submit
+to the way we see it. If Time playfully imprisons
+us in a century we would rather have
+missed, where only the stars are left undisturbed
+to wink above the doings and noises of Bedlam,
+and where to miss the last train&mdash;supposing it
+runs at all&mdash;is the right end to a perfect day of
+blizzards and social squalls, what does it matter
+when we find that the whole of it is shaken by a
+single idea? Might it not vanish altogether if
+enough of us could be found to laugh at it? This
+dream assisted me to some warmth of mind
+through the rest of the cold night till I arrived
+on the station platform, after the train had left.</p>
+<p>To help further in destroying my faith in the
+permanence of our affairs and institutions, it then
+appeared the platform was vacant because my
+train was not yet in. It was coming in at that
+moment&mdash;or so a porter told me. Our protean
+enemy took his most fearful form in the War
+when he became a Hidden Hand. Was this porter
+an agent of the gods for whose eternal leisure
+our daily confusion and bad temper make an
+amusing diversion? Was he one of the malicious
+familiars who are at work amongst us,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span>
+disguised, and who playfully set us by the ears
+with divine traps for boobies? This porter was
+grinning. He went away with his hand over his
+mouth, and at that moment a train stopped at
+the platform. The engine was at the wrong end
+of it.</p>
+<p>One official told me its proper locomotive
+was at East Grinstead, and that we might not get
+it. Perhaps its home was there. And yet
+another official whose face was as mysterious as
+that of the station clock, which was wearing a
+paper mask, said that the engine of my train had,
+in fact, gone. It had gone to Brighton. He did
+not know why. It had gone alone. I turned
+vacantly from this bewilderment and saw a man
+with the sort of golden beard an immortal might
+have worn standing under a station lamp, and
+breaking now and then into peals of merriment,
+occasioned, it seemed to me, by what the first
+porter was telling him. Then both of them
+looked towards me, and stopped. If in one more
+gust of hearty laughter that hollow wilderness
+of a station had vanished, gloom and dreary
+echoes and frozen lights, and I had found myself
+blinking in a surprising sunlight at that fellow
+in the golden beard, while he continued to
+laugh at me in another world than this, where he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span>
+was revealed for what he was, I was in the mind
+for placid acceptance. Well, the miraculous
+transformation was as likely as an engine for that
+train.</p>
+<p>The bearded one approached me. I did not
+run away. I waited for the next thing. He had
+a book under his arm, and it is likely that the
+gods, who have no need to learn the truth, never
+read books. &#8220;If,&#8221; he told me, &#8220;you want to get
+to Sheepwash, you had better take this other
+train. It is going half the way. The engine for
+the train for Sheepwash can&#8217;t be found.&#8221;</p>
+<p>We both boarded the train for half the journey,
+and it did not appear to have any other passengers.
+Yet, reckless of the risks I was taking in
+travelling alone with a suspected being at such a
+time&mdash;for where might not he and the train go?&mdash;I
+accepted the chance; and as I took my seat
+and regarded that bright beard, the shadow of
+my awful doubt became really serious, for it was
+only this week that I have been reading <i>The
+Twilight of the Gods</i>. There was the disintegrating
+recollection of that book, with its stories
+of homeless immortals in search of new and more
+profitable employ; and there had been a bodiless
+voice in a motor lorry which ignored what I said
+but spoke instead to an inconsequential memory
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span>
+of mine that was strictly private; and there was
+the levity with which uniformed officials treated
+the essential institutions of civilization. All this
+gave me the sensation that even the fixed policy
+of our strong government might, at any moment
+now, roll up as a scroll.</p>
+<p>Off we went. My fellow-traveller was silent,
+though he was smiling at something which was
+not in the carriage, to my knowledge. When he
+spoke, his eyes were not fixed on me. He looked
+into the air, and talked to whatever it was he saw.
+He pointed a finger at the light of the city lying
+beyond and below our carriage window. &#8220;All
+they&#8217;ve built,&#8221; he said, &#8220;stands only on a few
+odd notions. Now they&#8217;re changing their notions,
+so down comes everything with a run. And
+don&#8217;t they look surprised and pained!&#8221; (I felt
+like an eavesdropper, and thought I&#8217;d better show
+him I was present.) I apologized for overhearing
+him. He nodded shortly, a little condescendingly.
+&#8220;We&#8217;ve accepted <i>that</i>&#8221;&mdash;he poked his stick
+towards where stood our Imperial city in the
+night&mdash;&#8220;as if it came by itself. We never knew
+our city was like that just because we never
+saw it in any other light. Now we&#8217;re upset to
+find the magic-lantern picture is fading. Got to
+put up with it, though.&#8221; His book had been on
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span>
+the seat. It fell to the floor, and I picked it up
+and handed it to him. It was <i>The Twilight of
+the Gods</i>.</p>
+<p>If I could have remembered at that moment
+one of the simple dodges for averting the evil
+eye I should have used it. The laughing malice
+of that book had so confused me for some days
+that I had begun to feel that even St. Paul&#8217;s, a
+blue bubble floating over London on the stream
+of Time, might vanish, as bubbles will. The
+Hidden Hand, I began to believe, had something
+in it.</p>
+<p>I intrigued a serious interview with my fellow-passenger,
+hoping to find evidence; and then the
+train stopped finally, six miles from home. At
+that very instant of time the train which we had
+previously rejected because it had no engine chose
+to run express through the station where we stood.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span>
+<h2>XX. Figure-Heads</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>MARCH 1, 1919. When the car got to
+the Board of Trade Office, which is
+opposite the old chapel of ease where
+the crews of John Company&#8217;s ships &#8220;used to worship,&#8221;
+as a local history tells us, I saw Uncle
+Dave by the kerb, with time apparently on his
+hands. I got down.</p>
+<p>He told me old Jackson is dead. Jackson
+was a mast and block maker, but his fame was the
+excellence of his figure-heads. It is many years
+since old Jackson made one, but if it is doubted
+that he was an artist, there is a shop near
+where he once lived which still displays three of
+his images, the size of life, reputed to have been
+conjured from baulks of timber with an ax. I
+remember Jackson. He rarely answered you
+when you questioned him about those ships to
+which he had given personality and eyes that
+looked sleeplessly overseas from their prows.
+He regarded you, and only his whiskers moved in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span>
+silent indifference (he chewed), as though you
+were wasting the time of a man and an artist.
+Those images of his were all of women. He
+would make no figure-head for a ship bearing the
+name of a man, though it were that of a Greek
+hero. And, of course, you dare not even think of
+the trousered legs of a modern man stuck each
+side of a ship&#8217;s prow, boots and all; but the drapery
+of a woman flows with grace there. She
+would look indeed its vigilant guardian spirit. It
+would be pleasing to write of some of the more
+famous of those idols, as I remember them in repose,
+above the quays of the docks.</p>
+<p>Here we were joined by some young men who
+knew Uncle Dave. They were looking for a ship.
+But Uncle continued to tell me of the merits
+of his friend the maker of figure-heads. A stoker
+became a trifle irritated. &#8220;Well, what&#8217;s the good
+of &#8217;em, anyway?&#8221; he interjected. &#8220;Lumber, I
+call &#8217;em. They can&#8217;t be carried on straight
+stems, and clipper-bows aren&#8217;t wanted these days,
+wasting good metal. Why, even Thompson&#8217;s
+White Star liners have chucked that sort of truck.
+They&#8217;re not built like it now. What&#8217;s the good
+of figger-&#8217;eds?&#8221;</p>
+<p>This youth&#8217;s casual blasphemy in the presence
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span>
+of Uncle Dave (who once was bo&#8217;sun of a China
+clipper), extolling as he did his age of mere machines
+against the virtues of an age when ships
+were expected to look good as well as do good
+things, made us shrink in anticipation of the
+storm. For Uncle Dave has a habit of listening
+to a talk about ships in a deliberate and contemptuous
+silence, with nothing to show of his inward
+heat but a baleful light in the eye. He does not
+like steamers. He does not think steamer-men
+are seamen. He declares they can never be
+seamen. And now we waited, dreading that his
+anger, when it burst, would be quite incoherent
+with force. There was really something of
+hatred in his look as he gazed at the youngster,
+his mouth a little open, his hand holding his
+trembling pipe just away from his mouth, which
+had forgotten it. The old sailor bent forward,
+screwing his eyes at this young man as though
+trying to believe it was real.</p>
+<p>An older hand interposed. &#8220;Ah, come away
+now! I&#8217;ve heard chaps make game of figger-&#8217;eds,
+an&#8217; call &#8217;em superstition. But I say let such
+things alone. I know things that&#8217;s happened to
+funny fellows through making game of figger-&#8217;eds.
+There was the <i>Barbadian Lass</i>. She was a brigantine.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span>
+She used to run to Trinidad. There
+was something queer about her figger-&#8217;ed. It was
+a half-breed woman. She was smiling. She had
+bare breasts, and she used to wear earrings.
+Her chaps used to keep a spare pair for her in a
+box. She was always fresh and bright, but
+I&#8217;ve heard say she was never painted&mdash;no, not
+since the day the ship was launched. She kept
+like that. And one day young Belfast MacCormick
+slipped a tar-brush over her dial. Said it
+was idolatry. And what happened to him?
+You answer me that!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I know,&#8221; broke in one of us. &#8220;But
+you can&#8217;t say it was along of that tar-brush...&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You young chaps ain&#8217;t got no sense,&#8221; here
+interrupted Uncle, his voice evidently under control,
+but shaky. &#8220;I&#8217;d like to know where you
+were brought up. You learn it all wrong at them
+schools of yours, and you never get it right afterwards.
+You learn about the guts of engines and
+&#8217;lectricity, and you mix it up with the tales
+your grandmothers told you, and you get nothing
+straight. What you&#8217;ve got is all science and
+superstition. And then you wonder why you
+make a mess of it. Listen! It don&#8217;t matter
+what you do to a figger-&#8217;ed, if you&#8217;re fool enough
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span>
+to spoil it. It&#8217;s having it that matters. It&#8217;s
+something to go by, and a ship you&#8217;re glad to
+work in.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He turned on the stoker. There was astonishment
+and pity in his glance. &#8220;Look at you. In
+and out of a ship, and you forget her name when
+you&#8217;ve signed off. You don&#8217;t care the leavings
+in a Dago&#8217;s mess-kit for any ship you work in, if
+you can get a bit out of her and skip early.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s me, Uncle,&#8221; muttered the stoker.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can you remember names, like some of us remember
+the <i>Mermus</i>, the <i>Blackadder</i>, and the
+<i>Titania</i>? Not you. Your ships haven&#8217;t got
+names, properly speaking. They&#8217;re just a run
+out and home again for you, and a row about the
+money and the grub.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure to be a row about the grub,&#8221; murmured
+the stoker.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are ships nowadays?&#8221; he went on,
+raising a shaking index finger. &#8220;Are they ships
+at all? They&#8217;re run by companies on the make,
+and worked by factory hands who curse their
+own house-flags. It&#8217;s a dirty game, I call it.
+Things are all wrong. I can&#8217;t make them out.
+You fellers take no pride in your work, and you&#8217;ve
+got no work to take pride in. You don&#8217;t know
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span>
+who you work for or what, and your ships got no
+names. They might be damned goods vans.
+No good in a figger-&#8217;ed! Then I&#8217;ll tell you this.
+Then I&#8217;ll tell you this. <i>You&#8217;ll</i> get no good till
+you learn better, my lad.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span>
+<h2>XXI. Economics</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>MARCH 22, 1919. There is an astonishing
+number of books on what is
+called Reconstruction in the new publications
+of this spring. Reconstruction seems to
+be as easy as conscription or destruction. We
+have only to change our mind, and there we are,
+as though nothing had happened. It is the
+greatest wonder of the human brain that its
+own accommodating ratiocination never affords
+it any amusement. We use reason only to
+make convincing disguises for our desires and
+appetites. Perhaps it is fear of the wrath
+to come that is partly responsible for the clamour
+of the economists and sociologists in the
+publishers&#8217; announcements, almost drowning
+there the drone of the cataract of new novels.
+But it is too late now. The wrath will come.
+After mischievously bungling with the magic
+which imprisoned the Djinn, we may wish we had
+not done it; but once he is out there is
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span>
+nothing for it but to be surprised and sorry.
+The lid is off; and it is useless for the clever reconstructionists
+to press in upon us with their
+little screw-drivers, chattering eagerly about locks
+and hinges. When the crafty but ignorant Russian
+generals and courtiers got from the Czar the
+order for mobilizing the armies, and issued it,
+they did not know it, but that was when they released
+Lenin. And who on earth can now inveigle
+that terrific portent safely under lid and lock
+again?</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span>
+<h2>XXII. Old Sunlight</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>APRIL 5, 1919. I find the first signs of
+this spring, now the War is over, almost
+unbelievable. I have watched
+this advent with astonishment, as though it were
+a phantom. The feeling is the same as when
+waking from an ugly dream, and seeing in doubt
+the familiar objects in a morning light. They
+seem steadfast. Are they real, or is the dream?
+The morning works slowly through the mind to
+take the place of the night. Its brightness and
+tranquillity do not seem right. And is it not
+surprising to find the spring has come again to
+this world? The almond tree might be an untimely,
+thoughtless, and happy stranger. What
+does it want with us? That spiritual and tinted
+fire with which its life burns touches and kindles
+no responsive and volatile essence in us. I passed
+a hedge-bank which looked south and was reviving.
+There were crumbs and nuggets of chalk in
+it, and they were as remarkable to me this year
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span>
+as though I had once seen those flecks of white
+showing through the herbage of another planet.
+That crumbling earth with the grey matting
+of old grass was as warm to the touch as
+though some inner virtue had grown, all unsuspected
+by us, in the heart of this glacial ball.
+I picked up a lump of chalk with its cold greenish
+shadows, and powdered it in my fingers, wondering
+why it looked so suddenly bright. It confirmed
+my existence. Its smell was better than
+any news I have heard of late.</p>
+<p>I saw suddenly the gleaming coast of a continent
+of dark cloud, and the blue ocean into which
+it jutted its headlands; memory had suddenly returned.
+At that moment the sun touched my
+hand. All this was what we used to know in a
+previous life. When I got home I took down
+<i>Selborne</i>. Two photographs fell out of it, and
+when I picked them up&mdash;they were those of a
+young amateur and were yellow with age&mdash;spring
+really began to penetrate the bark. But it
+was not the spring of this year.</p>
+<p>How often, like another tortoise, has the mind
+come out of its winter to sun itself in the new
+warmth of a long-gone Selborne April? Did
+Gilbert White imagine he was bequeathing light
+to us? Of course not. He lived quietly in the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137' name='page_137'></a>137</span>
+obscure place where he was born, and did not
+try to improve or influence anybody. It seems
+he had no wish to be a great leader, or a great
+thinker, or a great orator. The example of
+Chatham did not fire him. He was friendly
+with his neighbours, but went about his business.
+When he died there did not appear to be any
+reason whatever to keep him in memory. He
+had harmed no man. He left us without having
+improved gunpowder. Could a man have done
+less?</p>
+<p>Think of the events which were stirring men
+while he was noting the coming and going of
+swallows. While he lived, Clive began the conquest
+of India, and Canada was taken from the
+French. White heard the news that our American
+colonists had turned Bolshevik because of the
+traditional skill of the administrators of other
+people&#8217;s affairs at Whitehall. The world appears
+to have been as full then of important uproar as
+it is to-day. I suppose the younger Pitt, &#8220;the
+youngest man ever appointed Prime Minister,&#8221;
+had never heard of White. But Gilbert does not
+seem to have heard of <i>him</i>; nor of Hargreaves&#8217;
+spinning jenny, nor of the inventor of the steam
+engine. &#8220;But I can show you some specimens
+of my new mice,&#8221; he remarks on March 30, 1768.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span>
+That was the year in which the great Pitt resigned.
+His new mice!</p>
+<p>Yet for all the stirring affairs and inventions
+of his exciting time, with war making and breaking
+empires, and the foundations of this country&#8217;s
+wealth and power being nobly laid, it would not
+be easy to show that we to-day are any the happier.
+Our own War was inherent in the inventions
+of mechanical cotton-spinning and the steam-engine&mdash;the
+need to compel foreign markets to
+buy the goods we made beyond our own needs.
+We know now what were the seeds the active and
+clever fellows of Gilbert&#8217;s day were sowing for
+us. We were present at the harvesting. Why
+did not those august people, absorbed in the momentous
+deeds which have made history so
+sonorous, the powder shaking out of their wigs
+with the awful gravity of their labours (while all
+the world wondered), just stop doing such consequential
+things, and accept Gilbert&#8217;s invitation
+to go and listen to him about those new mice?
+The mice might have saved us, and the opportunity
+was lost.</p>
+<p>Looking back at those times, of all the thunderous
+events which then loosened excited tongues,
+caused by high-minded men of action expertly conjuring
+crisis after crisis while their docile followers
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span>
+scrambled out of one sublime trouble into
+another, heated and exhausted, but still gaping
+with obedience and respect, we can see that
+nothing remains but the burial parties, whose
+work is yet uncompleted in France. What good
+does persist out of those days is the light in which
+Gilbert&#8217;s tortoise sunned itself. It is a light
+which has not gone out. And it makes us wonder,
+not how much of our work in these years will
+survive to win the gratitude of those who will
+follow us, but just what it is they will be grateful
+for. Where is it, and what happy man is doing
+it? And what are we thinking of him? Do we
+even know his name?</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span>
+<h2>XXIII. Ruskin</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>APRIL 19, 1919. Some good people
+have been celebrating Ruskin, whose
+centenary it is. And to-day a little
+friend of mine left her school books so that I
+might wonder what they were when I saw them
+on my table. One of them was <i>The Crown of
+Wild Olive</i>. It put me in a reminiscent mood.
+I looked at Ruskin&#8217;s works on my shelves, and
+tried to recall how long it was since they interested
+me. Nevertheless, I would not part with
+them. In my youth Ruskin&#8217;s works were only for
+the wealthy, and I remember that my purchase of
+those volumes was an act of temerity, and even
+of sacrifice. And who but an ingrate would find
+fault with Ruskin, or would treat him lightly?
+With courage and eloquence he denounced dishonesty
+in the days when it was not supposed that
+cheating could be wrong if it were successful.
+He did that when minds were so dark that people
+blinked with surprise at a light which showed as
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span>
+a social iniquity naked children crawling with
+chains about them in the galleries of coal-mines.
+Was it really wrong to make children do that?
+Or was Ruskin only an impossible idealist? They
+were the happy years, radiant with the certain
+knowledge of the British that the Holy Grail
+would be recognized immediately it was seen,
+for over it would be proudly floating the confirmatory
+Union Jack. We had not even begun
+to suspect that our morals, manners, and laws
+were fairly poor compared with the standards
+of the Mohawks and Mohicans whom our settlers
+had displaced in America a century before.
+And Ruskin told that Victorian society it had an
+ugly mind, and did ugly things. When Ruskin
+said so, with considerable emotion, Thackeray
+was so hurt that he answered as would any clever
+editor to-day about a contribution which convinced
+him that it would make readers angry; he told
+Ruskin it would never do. Thackeray&#8217;s readers,
+of course, were assured they were the best people,
+and that worldly cynic did well to reject Ruskin,
+and preserve the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ruskin,&#8221; it says in the introduction to <i>The
+Crown of Wild Olive</i> which my little friend reads
+at school, &#8220;is certainly one of the greatest masters
+of English prose.&#8221; That has often been declared.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span>
+But is he? Or is our tribute to Ruskin only a
+show of gratitude to one who revealed to us the
+unpleasant character of our national habits
+when contrasted with a standard for gentlemen?
+It ought not to have required much eloquence to
+convince us that Widnes is unlovely; the smell of
+it should have been enough. It is curious that
+we needed festoons of chromatic sentences to
+warn us that cruelty to children, even when profit
+can be made of it, is not right. But I fear some
+people really enjoy remorseful sobbing. It is half
+the fun of doing wrong. Yet I would ask in humility&mdash;for
+it is a fearful thing to doubt Ruskin,
+the literary divinity of so many right-thinking
+people&mdash;whether English children who are learning
+the right way to use their language, and the
+noblest ideas to express, should run the risk of
+having Ruskin&#8217;s example set before them by softhearted
+teachers? I think that a parent who
+knew a child of his, on a certain day, was to take
+the example of Ruskin as a prose stylist on the
+subject of war, would do well, on moral and ćsthetic
+grounds, to keep his child away from school
+on that day to practise a little roller-skating. For
+humility and gratitude should not blind us to the
+fact that few writers in English of Ruskin&#8217;s reputation
+have ever considered such a rosy cloud of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span>
+rhetoric as is his lecture on war, in which a
+reasonable shape no sooner looms than it is lost
+again, to be worth preserving. The subject of
+war is of importance, inflammable humanity being
+what it is, and the results of war being what
+we know; and the quality of the critical attention
+we give to so great a matter is unfortunately
+clear when we regard the list of distinguished
+critics of letters who have accepted, apparently
+without difficulty, as great prose, Ruskin&#8217;s heedless
+rush of words upon it. Perhaps his language
+appears noble because the rhythmic pour of
+its sentences lulls reason into a comfortable and
+benignant sleepiness.</p>
+<p>I remember the solemn voice of a lecturer on
+English literature, years ago, moving me to buy
+<i>The Crown of Wild Olive</i>. Such obvious ignorance
+as I knew mine to be could not be tolerated.
+Whatever I went without, it could not be that
+book. I put it in my hold-all when, as was my
+duty, I went for my training with the artillery
+volunteers. I read in camp the essay on war,
+when bombardiers no longer claimed my attention,
+and the knightly words of sergeant instructors
+were taking a needed rest. I pondered
+over that essay, and concluded that though plainly
+I was very young and very wrong to feel puzzled
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span>
+and even derisive over English prose which fascinated
+a learned lecturer into solemnity, yet I
+would sooner learn to make imitation flowers of
+wool than read that essay to a critical audience,
+especially if I had written it myself.</p>
+<p>Ruskin, in fact, with no more experience of
+war than a bishop&#8217;s wife, did not know what he
+was talking about. Throughout the essay, too,
+he is in two minds. One is that of a gentleman
+who knows that war is the same phenomenon, artistically,
+ethically, and socially, as a public-house
+riot with broken bottles caused by a dispute over
+one of those fundamental principles which are
+often challenged in such a place. Those riots are
+natural enough. They are caused by the nature of
+man. They continue to happen, for it has taken
+the Church longer to improve our manners than
+it has taken stock-raisers to improve the milking
+qualities of kine. And Ruskin&#8217;s other mind is
+still in the comical Tennysonian stage about war,
+dwelling with awe on swords and shields, glory,
+honour, patriotism, courage, spurs, pennants, and
+tearful but resolute ladies who wave their handkerchiefs
+in the intervals of sobbing over their
+&#8220;loved ones.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He calls war &#8220;noble play.&#8221; He scorns cricket.
+As for his &#8220;style&#8221; and his &#8220;thought&#8221;: &#8220;I use,&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span>
+says Ruskin, &#8220;in such a question, the test which I
+have adopted, of the connexion of war with other
+arts, and I reflect how, as a sculptor, I should feel
+if I were asked to design a monument for Westminster
+Abbey, with a carving of a bat at one end
+and a ball at the other. It may be there remains
+in me only a savage Gothic prejudice; but I had
+rather carve it with a shield at one end and a
+sword at the other.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I cannot tell whether Ruskin reflected so because
+of a savage Gothic prejudice, but I am certain
+he wrote like that moved by what we feel&mdash;the
+feeling goes deeper into time even than the
+Goths&mdash;about the victim for sacrifice. We must
+justify that sacrifice, and so we give it a ceremonial
+ritual and dignity. Otherwise, I think, Ruskin
+would not have suggested the shield and
+sword as the symbolic decorations. He felt instinctively
+and because of a long-accepted tradition
+that those antique symbols were the only way
+to hide the ugly look of the truth. For certainly
+he could have used a ball at one end&mdash;a cannon-ball&mdash;and
+a mortar at the other. Just as we
+might use an aerial torpedo at one end, and the
+image of a mutilated child at the other; or a gas
+cylinder at one end, and a gas-mask at the other.
+But the artist is not going to be deprived of his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span>
+romance through a touch of the actual, any more
+than the lady with the handkerchief can be expected
+to forego her anguished sob over her hero
+as he goes forth to battle.</p>
+<p>We saw that in our Great War. The ancient
+appeal of the patriots rushed us away from reason
+with &#8220;last stands,&#8221; and the shot-riddled banners
+wavering in the engulfing waves of barbarians,
+till an irresistible cavalry charge scattered the
+hordes. All this replaced the plumes, the shining
+armour, and the chivalrous knights. Ruskin,
+however, was a subtle improvement even on the
+last stand with the shot-riddled banner. He anticipated
+those who have been most popular because
+they made our War entrancing and endurable.
+He went to the heart of the matter. He
+knew that the audience which would the more
+readily agree with him when he made an emotional
+case for the ennobling nature of war would
+be mainly of reclused women. He addressed
+them. So did, of late, some of our most successful
+writers on war. They, like Ruskin, made
+their appeal to that type of mind which obtains a
+real satisfaction, a sensuous pleasure, from contemplating
+the unseen sufferings of the young and
+vicarious victim sobbing, and feeling noble and
+enduring.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span>
+<h2>XXIV. The Reward of Virtue</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>MAY 9, 1919. The Treaty of Peace is
+published. Compared with what the
+innocent in 1915 called the &#8220;objects of
+the War,&#8221; this treaty is as the aims of Captain
+Morgan&#8217;s ruffians to those of the Twelve Apostles.
+The truth is, some time ago the Versailles
+drama fell to the level of an overworked newspaper
+story which shrewd editors saw was past
+its day. Those headlines, Humiliate the Hun,
+Hang the Kaiser, and Make Germany Pay, had
+become no more interesting than a copy of last
+week&#8217;s <i>Morning Mischief</i> in a horse-pond. The
+subject was old and wet. Because five months
+ago we thoughtfully elected men of the counting-house
+to the work of governing the State, of late
+we have been too indignant over the cost and difficulty
+of living to spare a thought for the beauty
+of Peace; that is why we are now examining the
+clauses of the famous Treaty with about as much
+care for what they may mean to us as if they concerned
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span>
+the movements of the Asteroids. A year
+ago the German attacks seemed near to making
+guns the deciding voice in the affairs of unhappy
+humanity. On the chill and overcast spring
+morning when the Treaty was published, it was
+significant that those very few men to whom we
+could go for courage a year ago were the only
+people dismayed by the terms of the Peace
+Treaty. And the timid, who once went to those
+stout hearts for assurance&mdash;to have, as the soldiers
+used to say, their cold feet massaged&mdash;were
+the bright and cheerful souls. It was ominous.
+Yet those careless and happy hearts are not so
+trying to me as the amiable but otherwise sensible
+men who were sure our statesmen would not betray
+the dead, and who are incredulous over the
+Treaty now they see what it clearly intends to
+convey. They cannot believe that the War,
+which they thought began as a war of liberation,
+a struggle of Europe to free itself from the intolerable
+bonds of its past, continues in the Peace
+Treaty as a force malignantly deflected to the
+support of the very evils out of which August,
+1914, arose. Then did they imagine the well-meaning
+leopard would oblige by changing his
+spots if spoken to kindly while he was eating the
+baby?</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span>
+<h2>XXV. Great Statesmen</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>MAY, 31, 1919. What is wrong with our
+statesmen? I think the answer is
+simple. Success in a political career
+can be understood by all of us. It attracts the
+attention which applauds the owner of a Derby
+winner, or the Bishop who began as a poor, industrious,
+but tactful child. John the Baptist failed
+to attract the publicity he desired; and Christ
+drew it as a criminal, for the religious and political
+leaders of his day recognized what his teaching
+would lead to as easily as would any magistrate
+to-day who had before him a carpenter accused
+of persuading soldiers that killing is murder.
+Politicians move on the level of the common
+intelligence, and compete there with each
+other in charging the ignorance of the commonalty
+with emotion. A politician need be no more
+than something between a curate and a card-sharper.
+If he knows anything of the arts, of
+history, of economics, or of science, he had better
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span>
+forget it, or else use it as a forestaller would a
+knowledge of the time when prices should be
+raised. A confident man with a blood-shot voice
+and a gift for repartee is sure to make a success of
+politics, especially if he is not too particular.
+This did not matter once, perhaps, when politics
+merely afforded excitement for taverns and a career
+for the avid and meddlesome. The
+country was prosperous, and so it was difficult to
+do it serious harm.</p>
+<p>But to-day, just when we must have the leading
+of moral, judicious, and well-informed minds, or
+perish, we have only our statesmen. It never
+occurs to the crowd that its business would be
+more successfully transacted by a chance group,
+say of headmasters of elementary schools, than
+by the statesmen who, at Versailles recently,
+dared not face the shocking realities because
+these could not be squared with a Treaty which
+had to frame the figments of the hustings. The
+trouble with our statesmen is that they have been
+concerned hitherto merely to attend to the machinery,
+running freely and with little friction, of
+industrial society. They did not create that machinery.
+They but took it over. They knew
+nothing of the principles which motived it. Our
+statesmen were only practical politicians and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span>
+business men. They held in contempt the fine
+abstract theories of physics, mechanics, and dynamics.
+It was safe for them to do so. The machinery
+went on running, apparently of its own
+volition. All went well until the War. Now
+the propeller-shaft of industrial society is fractured,
+our ship is wallowing in the trough of the
+seas, and the men who should put things right for
+us do not even know that it is the main shaft on
+which they should concentrate. They are irritating
+the passengers by changing the cabins, confiscating
+luggage, insisting on higher fares, cutting
+down the rations, and instructing the sailors in
+the goose-step; but the ship has no way on her,
+and the sound of breakers grows louder from a
+sombre, precipitous, and unknown coast.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span>
+<h2>XXVI. Joy</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>JULY 19, 1919. It has come. This is the
+great day of the English. Many have
+doubted whether we should ever have it,
+for faith had been weak and the mind weary
+while the enemy was still fixed in his fanatic resolution.
+But here it is, half my window-blind
+already bright with its first light. To-day we
+celebrate our return to peace, to an earth made
+the fairer for children, fit for the habitation of
+free men, safe for quiet folk ... the day that
+once had seemed as remote as truth, as inaccessible
+as good fortune; a day, so we used to
+think in France, more distant even than those incredible
+years of the past that were undervalued
+by us, when we were happy in our ignorance of
+the glory men could distil from misery and filth;
+when we had not guessed what wealth could be
+got from the needs of a public anxious for its
+life; nor that sleeping children could be bombed
+in a noble cause. Yes, it had seemed to us even
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span>
+farther off than our memories of the happy past.
+Yet here it is, its coffee-cups tinkling below, and I
+welcome its early shafts of gold like the fortune
+they are. The fortune seems innocent and unaware
+of its nature. It does not know what it
+means to us. I had often been with soldier
+friends across the water when with mock rapture
+they had planned an itinerary for this day.
+They spoke of it where their surroundings made
+the thought of secure leisure or unremarkable
+toil only a painful reminder of what was beatific,
+but might never be. This day had not come to
+them. But it had come to me.</p>
+<p>I was luckier than they. Yet when luck comes
+to us, does it ever look quite as we had imagined
+it when it was not ours? I lift the curtain on this
+luck, and look out. From an upper window of
+the house opposite the national emblem of the
+American Republic is hanging like an apron.
+Next door to it a man is decorating his windowsills
+with fairy lamps, and from his demeanour he
+might be devising a taboo against evil. I see no
+other sign that the new and better place of our
+planet was being acknowledged. The street is as
+the milkman and the postman have always known
+it on a quiet morning.</p>
+<p>A cock crowed. It was then I knew that,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span>
+though the morning was like all good sunrises,
+which are the same for the unjust and the righteous,
+I, somehow, was different. Chanticleer
+was quite near, but his confident and defiant voice,
+I recognized with a start, was a call from some
+other morning. It was the remembered voice of
+life at sunrise, as old as the jungle, alert, glad,
+and brave. Then why did it not sound as if it
+were meant for me? Why did it not accord, as
+once it did, with the coming of a new day, when
+the renewed and waiting earth was veritably
+waiting for us? Yet the morning seemed the
+same, its sounds the familiar confidences, its light
+the virgin innocence of a right beginning. Was
+this new light ours? While looking at it I
+thought that perhaps there is another light, an
+aura of something early and rare, which, once it
+is doused, cannot be re-kindled, even by the sun
+which rises to shine on a great victory.</p>
+<p>I began to feel that this early confusion of
+thought, over even so plain a cause for joy as
+morning, might be a private hint that it would be
+as hard to tell the truth about peace as it used to
+be about battle. And how difficult it is to
+tell the truth about war, and even how improper,
+some of us know. For what a base traitor even
+truth may be to good patriots, when she insists
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span>
+that her mirror cannot help reflecting what is
+there! Why should the best instincts of loyal
+folk be thus embarrassed? If they do not wish
+to know what is there, when that is what it is like,
+is it right, is it gentlemanly, to show them?</p>
+<p>How easy it would be to write of peace in the
+Capital, where the old highways have been decorated
+for many kings, marshals, and admirals,
+and the flags have been hung for victories since
+England first bore arms. So why should one be
+dubious of a few unimportant suburban byways,
+where the truth is plain, and is not charged with
+many emotions through the presence of an emperor
+and his statesmen and soldiers, all of them
+great, all of them ready for our superlatives to
+add to their splendour?</p>
+<p>But perhaps the more you know of a place, the
+greater is your perplexity. That old vicarage
+wall, lower down my street, is merely attractive
+in the sun of Peace Day. A stranger, if he
+noticed it, might at the most admire its warm
+tones, and the tufts of hawkweed and snapdragon
+which are scattered on its ledges. But from this
+same window, on a winter morning, when affairs
+were urgent in France, I have seen youth assembled
+by that wall. Youth was silent. There
+was only a sergeant&#8217;s voice in all the street. I
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span>
+think I hear now the diminishing trampling of
+quick feet marching away; and see a boy&#8217;s face
+as he turned near the top of the rise to wave his
+hand. But look now, and say where are the
+shades on a bright morning!</p>
+<p>I went out, a dutiful citizen, to celebrate. No
+joy can be truthfully reported till just this side of
+the High Street, where there were three girls with
+linked arms dancing in lax and cheerful oblivion,
+one of them quite drunk. Near them stood a
+cart with a man, a woman, and a monkey in it.
+The superior animals were clothed in red, white,
+and blue, and the monkey was wearing a Union
+Jack for a ruff. The ape was humping himself
+on the tail-board, and from his expression he
+might have been wondering how long all this
+would last. His gay companions were rosily
+chanting that if they caught some one bending it
+would be of no advantage to him. The main
+thoroughfare was sanded, and was waiting for
+the official procession. Quiet citizens were strolling
+about with their children, and what they were
+thinking is as great a mystery as what the populace
+at Memphis thought when the completion of
+the Great Pyramid was celebrated by the order of
+Cheops. In a room of an upper storey near the
+town hall a choir was singing the Hallelujah
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span>
+Chorus, and below, on the pavement, a hospital
+nurse, in a red wig, stood gravely listening, swaying
+to and fro, holding her skirts high, so that we
+saw beneath the broad slacks of an able seaman.</p>
+<p>The chorus ceased, and in gratitude for the
+music the nurse embraced a Highland soldier,
+who was standing near and who was secretly
+amused, I believe, by the nurse&#8217;s trousers. Then
+we heard the bands of the military procession in
+the distance, and it was in that moment I saw a
+young officer I knew, who was out as early as
+Neuve Chapelle, gazing, like everybody else, in
+the direction of the martial sounds. Before I
+could reach him through the press he had turned,
+and was walking hurriedly down a side street, as
+though in flight. I could not follow him. I
+wanted to see the soldiers. My reason was no
+better than some sentimental emotion; for I saw
+the original Contemptibles march off for Mons;
+and was with a battalion of the 9th Division, the
+first of Kitchener&#8217;s men to go into the line; and
+saw the Derby men come out and begin; and at
+the last discovered that the conscripts were as
+good as the rest. Some of the survivors were
+marching towards me.</p>
+<p>But I did not recognize them. Many were
+elderly men who were displaying proud tunics of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span>
+volunteer regiments as old as Hyde Park Parades
+by Queen Victoria. One looked then for the
+sections from the local lodges of the Druids,
+Oddfellows, Buffaloes, and the He-Goats.
+There was the band of the local cadets, spontaneous
+in its enthusiasm, its zest for martial music
+no different, of course. Just behind these lads a
+strange figure walked in the procession, a bent
+and misshapen old man, whose face had no expression
+but a fixed and hypnotic stare. He was
+keeping time to the measure of the boys&#8217; music
+by snapping the spring of a mouse-trap which he
+held aloft. I could not find him in the program.
+Was he also drunk? Or was he a terrible jest?
+Most of our triumphant display followed this
+figure. If our illusions go, what is left to us?
+Ah, our memories of the Somme! That young
+officer who turned away when he saw Triumph
+approaching acted on a right instinct.</p>
+<p>There is a hilltop near us. It looks to other
+hills over a great space of southern England, and
+at night on the far promontories of the Downs
+bonfires were to be lighted. I have no doubt
+signals flared from them when the Romans were
+baffled. Again to-night they would signal that
+the latest enemy had been vanquished.</p>
+<p>It was raining gently, and from our own crest
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span>
+the lower and outer night was void. A touch of
+distant phosphorescence that waned, and intensified
+again to a strong white glow, presently gave
+the void one far and lonely hilltop. A cloud elsewhere
+appeared out of nothing, and persisted, a
+lenticular spectre of dull fire. These aerial
+spectres became a host; some were so far away
+that they were faint smears of orange, and others
+so near and great that they pulsed and revealed
+the shapes of the clouds. It was all impersonal,
+it was England itself that was reflected, the hills
+that had awakened. It was the emanation of a
+worthy tradition, older than ourselves, that was
+re-kindled and was glowing, and that would be
+here when we are not. It was so receptive, it
+was so spacious, that our gravest memories could
+abide there, as if night were kind to the secrets
+we dare not voice, and understood folly and remorse,
+and could protect our better visions, and
+had sanctuary and consolation for that grief
+which looks to what might have been, but now
+can never be.</p>
+<p>A spark glittered near, a spark that towered
+and hovered overhead, and burst into coiling volumes
+of lurid smoke with a moving heart of flame.
+Light broke on a neighbouring hill that had been
+unseen and forgotten; the hill was crowned with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span>
+fantastic trees that danced, and a wavering tower.
+From our own valley below there came a vicious
+tearing that gave me a momentary chill (so
+sounds a stream of machine-gun lead, going
+over), and a group of coloured stars expanded
+over us. Their bright light showed the night reticulated
+with thin lines of smoke, like veins of
+calcite in a canopy of black marble. Our immediate
+country, pallid and tremulous, faded again,
+but in that brief prospect of a shadow land I
+glimpsed a road, the presentment of the long
+road to Bapaume. So the Bapaume road showed
+at night by inconsequential and unexpected lights.
+That hill-crest of leaping trees could be the ridge
+of Loupart with its wood, and Achete in flames
+beyond. The notion gave me enough of our hill
+top. I descended from it.</p>
+<p>There is a public-house at the foot of the hill,
+and a lane of harsh noises and a beam of light
+projected together from its open door across the
+road. Beyond it I turned into a house, for I
+knew I should find there an aged and solitary man
+who would have his own thoughts on such a night
+as this; for he had a son, and the spectre of the
+Bapaume road had reminded me where that boy
+was celebrating whatever peace he knew. His
+father was not communicative; and what could I
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span>
+say? He sat, answering me distantly and austerely,
+and he might have been a bearded sage seeing
+in retrospect a world he had long known, and
+who at last had made up his mind about it, though
+he would not tell me what that was. Outside we
+could hear revellers approaching. They paused
+at our door; their feet began to shuffle, and they
+sang:</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class='i2' style="text-indent: -3.5em">&ldquo;If I catch you bending,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>I'll turn you upside down,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Knees up, knees up,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Knees up, knees up,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Knees up, Father Brown.&rdquo;</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span>
+<h2>XXVII. The Real Thing</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>JANUARY 9, 1920. There was a country
+town of which we heard wonderful tales
+as children. But it was as far as Cathay.
+It had many of the qualities that once made Cathay
+desirable and almost unbelievable. We
+heard of it at the time when we heard of the cities
+of Vanity Fair and Baghdad, and all from a man
+with a beard, who once sat by a London fire, just
+before bedtime, smoking a pipe and telling those
+who were below him on the rug about the past,
+and of more fortunate times, and of cities that
+were fair and far. Nothing was easier for us
+then than to believe fair reports. Good dreams
+must be true, for they are good. Some day, he
+said, he would take us to Torhaven; but he did
+not, for his luck was not like that.</p>
+<p>Nothing like that; so instead we used to look
+westward to where Torhaven would be, whenever
+the sunset appeared the right splendour for the
+sky that was over what was delectable and elsewhere.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span>
+We made that do for years. Torhaven
+existed, there was no doubt, for once we made a
+journey to Paddington Station&mdash;a long walk&mdash;and
+saw the very name on a railway carriage. It
+was a surprising and a happy thought that that
+carriage would go into such a town that very day.
+What is more confident than the innocence of
+youth? Where, if not with youth, could be
+found such willing and generous reliance in noble
+legend?</p>
+<p>And how enduring is its faith! Long after,
+but not too long after, for fine appearances to us
+still meant fine prospects, we arrived one morning
+bodily in the haven of good report. Its genius
+was as bright as we expected. It had a shining
+face. It was the equal of the morning. Its folk
+could not be the same as those who lived within
+dark walls under a heaven that was usually but
+murk. It lost nothing because we could examine
+its streets. We went from it with a memory
+even warmer and more comforting. What
+would happen to us if youth did not more than
+merely believe the pleasant tales that are told, if
+it did not loyally desire to believe that things are
+what they are said to be?</p>
+<p>This country town is of the Southern kind
+which, with satisfaction, we show to strangers as
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span>
+something peculiarly of our country. It is ancient
+and luminous in an amphitheatre of hills,
+and schooners and barques come right among its
+gables. It is wealthy, but it is not of the common
+sort, for it never shows haste. It knows, of
+course, that wealth is cheap, until it has matured
+and has attained that dignity which only leisure
+and the indifference of usage can confer. The
+country around has a long history of well-sounding
+family names as native as its hills&mdash;they arrived
+together, or thereabouts&mdash;and the lodge
+gates on its highways, with their weathered and
+mossy heraldic devices, have a way of acquainting
+you with the measure of your inconsequence
+as you pass them when walking. Torhaven has
+no poverty. It tolerates some clean and obscure
+but very profitable manufactures. But its shipping
+is venerable, and is really not an industry
+at all, being as proper as the owning of deer-parks.
+On market day you would think you were
+in a French town, so many are the agriculturists,
+and so quiet and solid the evidence of their wellbeing.
+They own their farms, they love good
+horses, their wagons are built like ships, and their
+cattle, as aboriginal as the county families, might
+be the embodiment of the sleek genius of those
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span>
+hills and meadows, so famous are they for cream.
+The people of that country live well. They
+know their worth and the substance which they
+add to the strength of the British community.
+And they pride themselves on the legends, peculiarly
+theirs, which tell of their independence of
+mind, of their love of freedom, of their liberal
+opinions and the nonconformity of their religious
+views. They are stout folk, kind and companionable,
+and they do not love masters.</p>
+<p>It was the summer following the end of the
+War, and we were back again in Torhaven. The
+recollection of its ancient peace, of its stillness
+and light, of the refuge it offered, had enticed us
+there. Its very name had been the hope of
+escape. Where should we find people more
+likely to be quick and responsive? They would
+be among the first to understand the nature of the
+calamity which had overtaken us. They would
+know, long before amorphous and alien London,
+what that new world should be like which we
+owed to the young, a world in which might grow
+a garden for the bruised souls of the disillusioned.</p>
+<p>Its light was the same. It was not only untarnished
+by such knowledge as we brought with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span>
+us, it was radiant. Yet it was not without its
+memory of the disaster. We went into the
+church, whose porch had been restored; symbolical,
+perhaps, of our entry into a world from
+which, happily, the old things had passed. The
+church was empty, for this was market day.
+Through its gloom, as through the penumbra of
+antiquity, shone faintly the pale forms of a few
+recumbent knights, and the permanent appeal of
+their upturned hands and faces kept the roof
+aware of human contrition. Above one of the
+figures was a new Union Jack, crowned with
+laurels. The sun made too vivid a scarlet patch
+of one of its folds.</p>
+<p>Just below the church was the theatre, now a
+cinema hall. This was market day, and the
+house was full. A poster outside pictured a
+bridge blowing up, and a motor-car falling into
+space. The midday sun was looking full at Torhaven&#8217;s
+High Street, which runs south and downhill
+steeply to the quay; a schooner filled the bottom
+of the street that day. Anything a not too
+unreasonable man could desire was offered in
+the shops of that thoroughfare. This being a
+time of change, when our thoughts are all unfixed
+and we have had rumours of the New Jerusalem,
+the side window of a fashionable jeweller&#8217;s was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span>
+devoted to tiny jade pigs, minute dolls, silver
+acorns, and other propitiators of luck which time
+and experience have tested. Next door to the
+jeweller&#8217;s was a studio supporting the arts, with
+local pottery shaped as etiolated blue cats and
+yellow puppies; and there one could get picture
+postcards of the London favourites in revue, and
+some water-colour paintings of the local coast
+which an advertisement affirmed were real.</p>
+<p>That was not all. Opposite was the one bookshop
+of the town. Its famous bay front and old
+diamond panes frankly presented the new day
+with ladies&#8217; handbags, ludo and other games,
+fountain pens, mounted texts from Ella Wilcox,
+local guide books, and apparently a complete
+series&mdash;as much as the length of the window
+would hold, at least&mdash;of Hall Caine&#8217;s works; and
+in one corner prayer-books in a variety of bindings.</p>
+<p>Down on the quay, sitting on a bollard, with
+one leg stretched stiffly before him, was a young
+native I had not met since one day on the Menin
+Road. I had known him, before that strange
+occasion, as an ardent student of life and letters.
+He had entered a profession in which sound
+learning is essential, though the reward is slight,
+just when the War began. Then he believed, in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span>
+high seriousness, as young and enthusiastic students
+did, all he was told in that August; and his
+professional career is now over.</p>
+<p>He pointed out to me mildly, and with a little
+reproach, that I was wrong in supposing Torhaven
+had not changed. I learned that the War
+had made a great change there. Motor-cars
+were now as commonly owned as bicycles used to
+be, though he admitted that it did not seem that
+the queue waiting to buy books, our sort of books,
+was in need of control by the police. But farmers
+who had been tenants when Germany violated
+the independence of Belgium were now freeholders.
+Men who were in essential industries, and
+so could not be spared for the guns, were now
+shipowners. We could see for ourselves how
+free and encouraging was the new wealth in this
+new world; true, the size of his pension did not
+fairly reflect the new and more liberal ideas of a
+better world, but we must admit he had no need
+to travel to Bond Street to spend it. &#8220;Why
+fear,&#8221; he asked me, pointing with his crutch up
+the busy High Street behind us, &#8220;that what our
+pals in France learned was wrong with that old
+Europe which made the War, will not be known
+there? Have you seen,&#8221; he said,
+&#8220;our bookshop,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span>
+our cinema, and the new memorial porch
+of our church?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Near us was waiting a resplendent motor-car,
+in which reposed a young lady whose face decorates
+the covers of the popular magazines every
+month, and as the wounded soldier finished
+speaking it moved away with a raucous hoot.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span>
+<h2>XXVIII. Literary Critics</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>MARCH 27, 1920. The last number of
+the <i>Chapbook</i>, containing &#8220;Three Critical
+Essays on Modern English Poetry,&#8221;
+by three well-known critics of literature, I
+read with suspiciously eager attention, for I will
+confess that I have no handy rule, not one that I
+can describe, which can be run over new work in
+poetry or prose with unfailing confidence. My
+credentials as a literary critic would not, I fear,
+bear five minutes&#8217; scrutiny; but I never cease to
+look for that defined and adequate equipment,
+such as even a carpenter calls his tool-chest, full
+of cryptic instruments, each designed for some
+particular task, and every implement named. It
+is sad to have to admit it, but I know I possess
+only a home-made gimlet to test for dry-rot, and
+another implement, a very ancient heirloom,
+snatched at only on blind instinct, a stone ax.
+But these are poor tools, and sooner or later I
+shall be found out.</p>
+<p>There was a time when I was very hopeful
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span>
+about discovering a book on literary criticism
+which would make the rough places plain for me,
+and encourage me to feel less embarrassed when
+present where literary folk were estimating
+poetry and prose. I am such a simple on these
+occasions. If one could only discover the means
+to attain to that rather easy assurance and
+emphasis when making literary comparisons!
+Yet though this interesting number of the <i>Chapbook</i>
+said much that I could agree with at once,
+it left me as isolated and as helpless as before.
+One writer said: &#8220;There is but one art of writing,
+and that is the art of poetry. The test of poetry
+is sincerity. The test of sincerity is style; and
+the test of style is personality.&#8221; Excellent, I
+exclaimed immediately; and then slowly I began
+to suspect a trap somewhere in it. Of course,
+does not the test for sunlight distinguish it at
+once from insincere limelight? But what is the
+test, and would it be of any use to those likely
+to mistake limelight for daylight?</p>
+<p>I cannot say I have ever been greatly helped
+by what I have read concerning the standards
+for literary criticism. Of the many wise and
+learned critics to whose works I have gone for
+light, I can remember only Aristotle, Longinus,
+Tolstoy, and Anatole France&mdash;probably because
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span>
+it is easy for the innocent to agree with dominating
+men. Of the moderns I enjoy reading anything
+&#8220;Q&#8221; has to say about books; useless
+pleasure again, for what does one get but &#8220;Q&#8217;s&#8221;
+full, friendly, ironic, and humorous mind?
+Lately, too, the critics have been unanimously
+recommending to us&mdash;and that shows the genuine
+value to the community of mere book reviewers&mdash;the
+<i>Letters of Tchehov</i>, as noble a document as
+we have had for a very long time. But I thought
+they did not praise Tchehov enough as a critic,
+for that wise and lovable author, among his letters,
+made many casual asides about art that were
+pleasing and therefore right to me. I begin to
+fear that most of the good things said about
+literature are said in casual asides.</p>
+<p>If I were asked to say why I preferred Christabel
+or Keats&#8217;s odes to Tennyson&#8217;s Revenge or
+the <i>Barrack-Room Ballads</i>, I should find it hard
+to explain satisfactorily to anyone who preferred
+to read Tennyson or Kipling. Where are the
+criteria? Can a Chinaman talk to an Arab?
+The difference, we see at once, is even deeper
+than that of language. It is a difference in nature;
+and we may set up any criterion of literature
+we like, but it will never carry across such a
+chasm. Our only consolation is that we may tell
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span>
+the other man he is on the wrong side of it, but
+he will not care, because he will not see it. The
+means by which we are able to separate what is
+precious in books from the matrix is not a process,
+and is nothing measurable. It is instinctive,
+and not only differs from age to age, but changes
+in the life of each of us. It is as indefinable as
+beauty itself. An artist may know how to create
+a beautiful thing, but he cannot communicate his
+knowledge except by that creation. That is all
+he can tell us of beauty, and, indeed, he may be
+innocent of the measure of his effort; and the
+next generation may ridicule the very thing which
+gave us so much pleasure, pleasure we proved to
+our own satisfaction to be legitimate and well
+founded by many sound generalizations about
+art. The canons of criticism are no more than
+the apology for our personal preferences, no matter
+how gravely we back them. Sometimes it
+has happened that a book or a poem has succeeded
+in winning the approval of many generations,
+and so we may call it a classic. Yet what
+is the virtue of a classic, or of the deliberate and
+stately billows going with the wind when the
+world has sweep and is fair, or of a child with a
+flower, or of the little smile on the face of the
+dead boy in the muck when the guns were filling
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span>
+us with fear and horror of mankind? I don&#8217;t
+know; but something in us appears to save us
+from the punishing comet of Zeus.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span>
+<h2>XXI. The South Downs</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>MAY 22, 1920. The southern face of
+the hill fell, an abrupt promontory, to
+the woods of the plain. Its face was
+scored by the weather, and the dry drainage channels
+were headlong cascades of grey pebbles.
+Clumps of heather, sparse oak scrub with young
+leaves of bronze, contorted birch, and this year&#8217;s
+croziers of the bracken (heaven knows their
+secret for getting lush aromatic sap out of such
+stony poverty), all made a tough life which held
+up the hill, steep as it was; though the hill was
+going, for the roots of some of the oaks were
+exposed, empty coils of rope from which the burden
+had slipped. In that sea of trees whose billows
+came to the foot of our headland, and out
+of sight beneath its waves, children were walking,
+gathering bluebells. We knew they were there,
+for we could hear their voices. But there was
+no other sign of our form of life except a neolithic
+flint scraper one of us had picked up on the hilltop.
+The marks of the man who made it were
+as clear as the voices below. It had been lost
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span>
+since yesterday, it might be&mdash;anyhow, about the
+day the first Pyramid was finished. It depends
+on how one looks at the almanac. For you could
+feel the sun fire was young. It had not been
+long kindled. Its heat in the herbage was moist.
+One of the youngsters with me, bruising the
+bracken and snuffing it, said it smelt of almond
+and cucumber. Another said the crushed birch
+leaves smelt of sour apples. We could not say
+what the oak leaves smelt like. Then another
+grabbed a handful of leafmould, damp and brown
+and full of fibre. What did that smell of?
+They were not sure that they liked it. Perhaps
+it was the smell of the hill. They admitted that
+it wasn&#8217;t a bad smell. They seemed a little
+afraid of that odour.</p>
+<p>But I was trying to read, and neolithic times
+and the bluebell gatherers had run together.
+They were in the same day. My book had made
+of that May morning in Surrey an apparition
+without time and place. We hear ourselves
+laughing now, intent, for instance, on confirming
+the almond and cucumber in bruised bracken, or
+catch the sound of our serious voices raised in a
+dispute over literature or politics. But these
+things are not really in our minds. We would
+not betray our secret thoughts to bluebell gatherers
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span>
+and boys snuffing the bracken. This book
+I was reading, and a fancied resemblance in that
+hill and its prospect, moved the shadows again&mdash;they
+are so readily moved&mdash;and I saw two of us
+in France on such a hill, gazing intently and innocently
+over just such a prospect, in the summer
+of 1915, without in the least guessing what, in
+that landscape before us, was latent for us both.
+Those downs across the way would be Beaumont
+Hamel and Thiepval. Bluebells! The publishers
+may send out what advice they choose to
+authors concerning the unpopularity of books
+about the War&mdash;always excepting, of course, the
+important reminiscences, the soft and heavy
+masses of words of the great leaders of the nations
+in the War, which merely reveal that they
+never knew what they were doing. Certainly we
+could spare that kind of war book, though it continues
+to arrive in abundance; a volume by a
+famous soldier explaining why affairs went
+strangely wrong is about the last place where we
+should look for anything but folly solemnly pondering
+unrealities. But whatever the publishers
+may say, we do want books about the War
+by men who were in it. Some of us have learned
+by now that France is a memory of such a nature
+that, though it is not often we dare stop to look
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span>
+directly at it, for the day&#8217;s work must be done, yet
+it looms through the importance of each of these
+latter days as though the event of our lives were
+past, and we were at present merely watching the
+clock. The shadow of what once was in France
+is an abiding presence for us. We know nothing
+can happen again which will release us from it.
+And yet how much has been written of it? That
+is the measure of its vastness and its mystery&mdash;it
+possesses the minds of many men, but they are
+silent on what they know. They rarely speak of
+it, except to one of the fraternity. But where are
+their thoughts? Wandering, viewless and uneasy
+wraiths, over Flanders, in Artois and
+Picardy. Those thoughts will never come home
+again to stay.</p>
+<p>It is strange to me that publishers should suppose
+that books, intimate about the invisible but
+abiding shadow which is often more potent than
+present May sunshine, should not be wanted.
+Take for example this book I was reading, <i>The
+Squadroon</i>, by Ardern Beaman. To induce
+readers to buy it it has a picture on its dust-cover
+which kept me from reading it for weeks. This
+wrapper shows a ghostly knight in armour leading
+a charge of British cavalry in this War. I
+should have thought we had had enough of that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span>
+romantic nonsense during the actual events. The
+War was written for the benefit of readers who
+made a luxury of the sigh, and who were told
+and no doubt preferred to believe that the young
+soldier went into battle with the look we so admire
+in the picture called The Soul&#8217;s Awakening.
+He was going to glory. There are no dead.
+There are only memorial crosses for heroes and
+the Last Post. The opinions of most civilians on
+the War were as agreeable as stained-glass windows.
+The thought of a tangle of a boy&#8217;s inside
+festooned on rusty wire would naturally have
+spoiled the soul&#8217;s awakening and the luxury of the
+sigh. I heard of a civilian official, on his way to
+Paris after the Armistice, who was just saved by
+rapid explanations from the drastic attention of a
+crowd of Tommies who mistook him for a War
+Correspondent.</p>
+<p>But Mr. Beaman&#8217;s book is not like war correspondence.
+It can be commended to those who
+were not there, but who wish to hear a true word
+or two. Mr. Beaman as a good-natured man remembers
+how squeamish we are, and being also
+shy and dainty indicates some matters but briefly.
+I wish, for one thing, that when describing the
+doings of his cavalry squadron after the disaster
+on the Fifth Army front&mdash;the author enables you
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span>
+to feel how slender was the line of resolute men
+which then saved the Army from downfall&mdash;he
+had ventured to record with more courage the
+things which it shamed him to see. Why should
+only such as he know of those shocks to affability?
+But all he says about some unpleasant matters is:
+&#8220;During those days we saw things of which it is
+not good to speak&mdash;of which afterwards we
+never did speak, except late at nights, in the
+privacy of our own mess.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mr. Beaman&#8217;s simple narrative, however, with
+its humanity and easy humour, often lets in light
+on strange affairs, as though he had forgotten
+what had been locked up, and had carelessly
+opened a forbidden door. He shuts it again at
+once, like a gentlemen, and we follow him round
+hoping that presently he will do the same again.
+Ambrose Bierce could have made something of
+what is suggested in such a passage as this:</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p>&#8220;On the borders of this horrid desolation (the Somme)
+we met a Salvage Company at work. That warren of
+trenches and dugouts extended for untold miles....
+They warned us, if we insisted on going further in, not
+to let any man go singly, but only in strong parties, as
+the Golgotha was peopled with wild men, British,
+French, Australian, German deserters, who lived there
+underground, like ghouls among the mouldering dead,
+and who came out at nights to plunder and kill. In
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span>
+the night, an officer said, mingled with the snarling of
+carrion dogs, they often heard inhuman cries and rifle-shots
+coming from that awful wilderness. Once they
+(the Salvage Company) had put out, as a trap, a basket
+containing food, tobacco, and a bottle of whisky. But
+the following morning they found the bait untouched,
+and a note in the basket, &#8216;Nothing doing!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+</div>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span>
+<h2>XXX. Kipling</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>JUNE 5, 1920. One day, when I did not
+know Kipling&#8217;s name, I found in a cabin
+of a ship from Rangoon two paper-covered
+books, with a Calcutta imprint, smelling of
+something, whatever it was, that did not exist in
+England. The books were <i>Plain Tales from the
+Hills</i> and <i>Soldiers Three</i>. It was high summer,
+and in that cabin of a ship in the Albert Dock,
+with its mixed odour of tea, teak, and cheroots, I
+read through all. The force in those stories
+went nearer to capturing me completely than anything
+I have read since. I can believe now that
+I just escaped taking a path which would have
+given me a world totally different from the one I
+know, and the narrowness of the escape makes
+me feel tolerant towards the young people who
+give up typewriting and book-keeping, and go out
+into an unfriendly world determined to be Mary
+Pickfords and Charlie Chaplins. A boy boards
+a ship merely to get a parrot, and his friend, who
+brought it from Burma, has gone to Leadenhall
+Street; there is a long interval, with those books
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span>
+lying in a bunk. Such a trivial incident&mdash;something
+like it happening every week to everybody&mdash;and
+to-day that boy, but for the Grace of God,
+might be reading the leaders of the <i>Morning
+Post</i> as the sole relief to a congested mind, going
+every week to the cartoon of <i>Punch</i> as to barley
+water for chronic prickly heat, and talking of
+dealing with the heterodox as the Holy Office
+used to deal with unbaptized Indian babies for
+the good of their little souls.</p>
+<p>I have recovered from those astonishing adventures
+with Kipling. I may read him to-day
+with enjoyment, but safe from excitation. This
+is due, perhaps, to a stringy constitution, subject
+to bilious doubts, which loves to see lusty Youth
+cock its hat when most nervous, swagger with
+merry insolence to hide the uncertainty which
+comes of self-conscious inexperience, assume a
+cynical shrewdness to protect its credulity, and
+imitate the abandon of the hard fellow who has
+been to Hong Kong, Tal Tal, and Delagoa Bay.
+We enjoy seeing Youth act thus; but one learns
+in time that a visit to Rhodesia, worse luck, makes
+one no more intelligent than a week-end at
+Brighton. Well, it doesn&#8217;t matter. What ingrates
+we should be now to turn on Kipling because
+we disagree with the politics he prefers,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span>
+those loud opinions of his which, when we get too
+much of them, remain in the ears for a while like
+the echoes of a brass tray which a hearty child
+banged for a drum. Though we hold the British
+Constitution as sacred as the family vault we do
+not think the less of Dickens because the awful
+spectacle of our assembled legislators made him
+laugh, nor do we leave the room when Beethoven
+is played because his careless regard for a monarch&#8217;s
+divine right is painful to us. If Kipling
+had not given us <i>My Sunday at Home</i> and <i>The
+Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney</i>, how should
+we have got them?</p>
+<p>I have just read Kipling&#8217;s book, <i>Letters of
+Travel</i>. Its attractive title drew me to it, and is
+to blame. Kipling has an uncanny gift of sight.
+It prompts no divination in him, but its curiosity
+misses nothing that is superficial. If he had
+watched the Crucifixion, and had been its sole
+recorder, we should have had a perfect representation
+of the soldiers, the crowds, the weather,
+the smells, the colours, and the three uplifted
+figures; so lively a record that it would be immortal
+for the fidelity and commonness of its
+physical experience. But we should never have
+known more about the central figure than that
+He was a cool and courageous rebel. Kipling
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span>
+can make a picture of an indifferent huddle of
+fishing boats in a stagnant harbour which is more
+enjoyable than being there. Letters from such a
+traveller would attract one directly across the
+bookshop. But these letters of his were addressed
+to his friends the Imperialists before the
+War, and one may guess the rest. Such an exposure
+moves one to sorrow over a writer whose
+omniscience used to make the timorous believe
+that arrogance, if lively enough, had some advantage
+over reason.</p>
+<p>Yet there is in a few of the letters enough to
+show what we missed because they were not addressed
+to himself, or to anybody but a Composite
+Portrait of The Breed. There are passages
+in the chapter called &#8220;Half a Dozen Pictures&#8221;
+which clear all irritation from the mind
+(for many of the author&#8217;s insults are studied and
+gratuitous) and leave nothing but respect for the
+artist. These come when the artist sees only a
+riot of Oriental deck passengers, bears, and macaws,
+in the tropics; or a steamer coming round,
+exposed by a clarity like crystal in the trough of
+immense seas somewhere in the neighbourhood
+of the Auckland Islands at dayfall. We get
+such impressions when Kipling has, for the moment,
+forgotten the need to make a genuflection
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span>
+towards the Absolute and Everlasting Chutney,
+and is a man and brother delighting in his craft.</p>
+<p>The rest of the book has, one must admit, a
+value, but it is an undesigned value; indeed, its
+value is that it was designed to prove, at the time
+it was written, something quite different. From
+this book, with its recurring contempt for England,
+you may see what value we need have attached
+to much that the assured and the violent
+ever had to tell us about our Empire. If this
+publication is, indeed, an act of contrition for
+words unwisely written, then it should be read as
+a warning by all who write. Materialists naturally
+attach to transient circumstances a value
+which the less patriotic of us might think not
+really material. &#8220;We discussed, first of all, under
+the lee of a wet deck-house in mid-Atlantic;
+man after man cutting in and out of the talk as
+he sucked at his damp tobacco.&#8221; There is no
+doubt Kipling supposes that the wet deck-house
+adds a value to the words spoken under its lee-side.
+Yet the words he reports are what one
+may hear, with grief, any day in any tavern in the
+hurry and excitement of ten minutes before closing
+time. But Kipling always thought an opinion
+gained in value if expressed elsewhere than in
+England. His ideal government would be a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span>
+polo-player from Simla leading the crew of the
+<i>Bolivar</i>.</p>
+<p>Every horror in the world, the author of these
+letters tells us, has its fitting ritual. How
+easily, too, one realizes it, when feeling again the
+fanatic heat and force of this maker of old magic
+with the tom-tom; the vicious mockery, certain of
+popular applause, of ideas that are not marketable;
+the abrupt rancour whenever the common
+folk must be mentioned; the spite felt for England&mdash;&#8220;in
+England ... you see where the
+rot starts&#8221;; the sly suspicion of other countries,
+and the consequent jealousy and fear; here it all
+is, convulsive, uncertain, inflammable. The
+prophet of Empire! But the prophecy was
+wrong. England, &#8220;where the rot starts,&#8221; bore
+most of the heat and burden of the day, and
+saved the Empire for the money-mongers. And
+what of the British youngsters who did that, who
+were not materialists in the least, but many of
+them the idealists for whom no abuse once could
+be too vicious? The corruption of the Somme!
+That faceless and nameless horror was the apotheosis
+of the Imperialist.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span>
+<h2>XXXI. A Devon Estuary</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>SEPTEMBER 11, 1920. &#8220;This dreary expanse,&#8221;
+the guide-book explains, &#8220;will not
+attract the tourist.&#8221; The guide was
+right. I was alone to that degree beyond mere
+solitude when you feel you are not alone,
+but that the place itself is observing you. Yet
+only five miles away long lines of motor-cars
+were waiting to take tourists, at ruinous prices,
+to the authentic and admitted beauty spots.
+There was not, as the polite convention would
+put it, a soul about. It was certainly a dreary
+expanse, but the sunlight there seemed strangely
+brilliant, I thought, and, what was more curious,
+appeared to be alive. It was quivering. The
+transient glittering of some seagulls remote in
+the blue was as if you could glimpse, now and
+then, fleeting hints of what is immaculate in
+heaven. Nothing of our business was in sight
+anywhere except the white stalk of a lighthouse,
+and that, I knew, was miles away across the estuary
+whose waters were then invisible, for it
+was not only low tide, but I was descending to the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span>
+saltings, having left the turf of the upper salt
+marshes.</p>
+<p>You felt that here in the saltings you were beyond
+human associations. The very vegetation
+was unfamiliar. The thrift, sea lavender,
+rocket, sea campion, and maritime spurge did not
+descend so low as this. They came no nearer
+than where the highest tidal marks left lines of
+driftwood and bleached shells, just below the
+break of the upper marshes. Here it was another
+kingdom, neither sea nor land, but each alternately
+during the spring tides. At first the
+sandy mud was reticulated with sun-cracks, not
+being daily touched by the sea, and the crevasses
+gave a refuge for algć. There was a smell,
+neither pleasant nor unpleasant, which reminded
+you of something so deep in the memory that you
+could not give it a name. But it was sound and
+good. Beyond that dry flat the smooth mud
+glistened as if earth were growing a new skin,
+which yet was very tender. It was spongy, but
+it did not break when I trod on it, though the
+earth complained as I went. It was thinly sprinkled
+with a plant like little fingers of green glass,
+the maritime samphire, and in the distance this
+samphire gave the marsh a sheen of continuous
+and vivid emerald.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span></p>
+<p>The saltings looked level and unbroken. But
+on walking seaward I was continually surprised
+by drainage channels. These channels serpentined
+everywhere, and were deep and wide.
+Sometimes they contained nothing but silt, and
+sometimes they were salt-water rivers. I came
+upon each canyon unexpectedly. The first warning
+was a sudden eruption from it, a flock of dunlin,
+a flock which then passed seawards in a regimented
+flight that was an alternate flash of light
+and a swift shadow. Dunlin, curlew, oyster-catchers,
+or gulls, left a gully just before I knew
+I was headed off again. In one of these creeks,
+however, the birds left me more than their delicate
+footprints to examine. They left there a
+small craft whose mast I had long taken to be a
+stump projecting from the mud. A young man
+in a brown beard, a brown shirt, and a pair of
+khaki trousers was sitting on its skylight. He
+hailed, and showed me how I could get to him
+without sinking up to more than the knees in this
+dreary spot.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Stay here if you like,&#8221; he said, when I was
+with him. &#8220;When the tide is full I&#8217;ll pull you
+round to the village.&#8221; It was a little cutter of
+about fifteen tons, moored to the last huge links
+of a cable, the rest of which had long been covered
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span>
+up. I thought he was making holiday in
+a novel way. &#8220;No,&#8221; he replied, &#8220;I&#8217;m living
+here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It seems (I am but paraphrasing his apology)
+that he returned from Cambrai, bringing back
+from France, as a young officer, some wounds and
+other decorations, but also his youthful credulity
+and a remembrance of society&#8217;s noble promises to
+its young saviours. But not long after his return
+to us the sight of us made him feel disappointed.
+He &#8220;stuck it,&#8221; he said, as long as he
+could. But the more he observed us the worse he
+felt. That was why he gave up a good position
+a second time on our account. &#8220;What was the
+good of the money? The profiteers took most
+of it. I worked hard, and had to give up what I
+earned to every kind of parasite. London was
+more disagreeable than ever was Flanders. Yet
+I think I would not object to sweep the roads for
+a community of good people. Yes, I thought
+nothing could be worse than the dead in the mud.
+But I found something worse. The minds of the
+living who did not know what I knew in France
+were worse to me. I couldn&#8217;t remember the
+friends I&#8217;d lost and remain where I was with
+those people about me. It was more awful than
+that German&mdash;did you ever meet him?&mdash;who lay
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span>
+just the other side of the parapet for weeks and
+weeks.&#8221;</p>
+<p>His only companion now is a paraffin stove,
+which does not, perhaps, require a gas-mask to
+aid in its companionship, though about that I
+won&#8217;t be sure. The only conversation he hears
+is that of the curlews; subdued, cheerful, and very
+intimate voices, having just that touch of melancholy
+which intimacy, when it is secure and genuine,
+is sure to give, however jolly the intimacy
+may be. He said that at first he was afraid he
+could not live on what little money he had, and
+must earn casually, after buying the boat, but &#8220;it&#8217;s
+easier to live than I thought. There&#8217;s not nearly
+as much worry needed as I used to suppose. It is
+surprising how much one can do without. I was
+rather scared at first when I got rid of my sense
+of duty. But, after all, it is not so hard to be
+free. Perhaps the world already has more soft
+and easy people than is good for it. I find one
+benefit of this life is that, being free of the crowd,
+I feel indifferent about the way the crowd chooses
+to go. I don&#8217;t care now what the public does&mdash;that&#8217;s
+its own affair, and I hope it will enjoy it.&#8221;
+After a silence he said: &#8220;That sounds selfish, I
+know. And I&#8217;m not sure yet that it isn&#8217;t. Anyhow,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span>
+if one could help one&#8217;s fellows one would.
+But is it possible to help them? When did they
+last listen to reason? The only guides they will
+listen to are frauds obvious enough to make an ass
+lay back his ears. Well, I think I&#8217;ll wait here
+till the crowd knows enough to stop before it gets
+to the edge of the steep place&mdash;if it can stop now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I asked him what he read. &#8220;Very little. I
+fish more than I read. You&#8217;d think it would take
+only a week to learn all there is here. I should
+have thought so once. I see now that I shall
+never thoroughly know this estuary. It&#8217;s a wonderful
+place. Every tide is a new experience. I
+am beginning to feel right again.&#8221; In the boat,
+going round to the village, he learned I was a
+writer, rested on his oars, and drifted with the
+tide. &#8220;I&#8217;ll give you a job,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Write a
+book that will make people hate the idea that the
+State is God as Moloch was at last hated. Turn
+the young against it. The latest priest is the
+politician. No ritual in any religion was worse
+than this new worship of the State. If men don&#8217;t
+wake up to that then they are doomed.&#8221; He began
+then to pull me towards humanity again.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span>
+<h2>XXXII. Barbellion</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>DECEMBER 18, 1920. When posterity
+feels curious to discover what may have
+caused the disaster to our community it
+will get a little light from the merry confessions
+of our contemporary great folk. Let it read
+Colonel Repington&#8217;s <i>Diary</i>, Mrs. Asquith&#8217;s book,
+and the memoirs of General French. The general,
+of course, implies that he was so puzzled by
+the neutrality of time and space, and by the fact
+that the treacherous enemy was in trenches and
+used big guns. Our descendants may learn from
+these innocent revelations what quality of knowledge
+and temper, to be found only in a superior
+caste, guided the poor and lowly, and shaped our
+fate for us. They will know why wars and famines
+were inevitable for us, and why nothing could
+avert doom from the youth of our Europe.
+There is no disputing the importance of these
+confessions. But their relationship to literature?
+For that matter they might be linoleum. Yet
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span>
+there has been a book of confessions published
+recently which may be read as literature when the
+important gossip with the vast sales is merely
+curious evidence for historians equipped for psychological
+analysis. I mean Barbellion&#8217;s <i>Journal
+of a Disappointed Man</i>.</p>
+<p>It will interest our descendants to learn that
+outside the circle which Colonel Repington reports
+at its dinner-tables where the ladies were so
+diverting, the fare usually excellent, and the gentlemen
+discussed the &#8220;combing out&#8221; of mere men
+for places like Ypres, there was genuine knowledge
+and warm understanding. Beyond those
+cheerful dinner-tables, and in that outer darkness
+of which the best people knew nothing except that
+it was possible to rake it fruitfully with a comb,
+there was a host of young men from which could
+be manifested the courageous intellectual curiosity,
+the ardour for truth, the gusto for life, and
+the love of earth, which we see in Keeling&#8217;s letters
+and Barbellion&#8217;s diary. All is shown in these
+two books in an exceptional degree, and, in Barbellion&#8217;s
+diary, is expressed with a remarkable
+wit and acuteness, and not seldom, as in the
+description of a quarry, of a Beethoven Symphony,
+of a rock-pool of the Devon coast, with a
+beauty that is startling.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196' name='page_196'></a>196</span></p>
+<p>Keeling was killed in the War. Barbellion
+(who, as we know now, was Bruce Cummings)
+never went to France, for he was dying, though
+he did not know it, when he presented himself for
+medical examination. But it is clear that though
+secluded from the turmoil in a country cottage,
+paralyzed, and his trunk already dead, Barbellion&#8217;s
+sensitive mind and imaginative sympathy
+knew more of what was happening to his fellows
+in France, and what it meant for us all, than the
+combined Cabinet in Downing Street. That
+spark of dying light was aware when the luminaries
+on whom we depended were blind and ignorant.
+In his <i>Last Diary</i>, and within a day or two
+of his death, he wrote of the Peace Treaty (May,
+1919): &#8220;After all the bright hopes of last autumn,
+justice will be done only when all the power
+is vested in the people. Every liberal-minded
+man must feel the shame of it.&#8221; But did such
+men feel the shame of it? Refer to what the
+popular writers, often liberal-minded, said about
+the shame they felt at the time, and compare.
+To Barbellion, by the light of his expiring lamp,
+was revealed what was hidden from nearly all experienced
+and active publicists. Is there any
+doubt still of the superiority of imagination over
+hard-headedness?
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span></p>
+<p>Imagination instantly responds. Percolation
+is a slow process in the hard head of the worldly-wise.
+When we know that in the elderly, the
+shrewd, and the practical, the desire for material
+power and safety, qualified only by fear, served
+as their substitute for the City of God during the
+War, it is heartening to remember that there were
+select though unknown young men, mere subjects
+for &#8220;combing&#8221; like Barbellion, who made articulate
+an immense rebellious protest that was in the
+best of our boys; who showed a mocking intuition
+into us and our motives, as though we were
+a species apart; a scorn of the world we had made
+for them, a cruel knowledge of the cowardice and
+meanness at the back of our warlike minds, and a
+yearning for that world of beauty which might
+have been, but which the acts of the clever and the
+practical have turned into carrion among the
+ruins. Would it matter now if we were bankrupt,
+and our Empire among the things that were,
+if only we were turning to sackcloth and ashes because
+of that dousing of the glim in the heart of
+the young?</p>
+<p>This last diary of Bruce Cummings is sad
+enough, for he could but lie inert, listen to the last
+news of the War, and wonder incidentally who
+would come to him first&mdash;the postman bringing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span>
+the reviews of his first book, or the bony old gentleman
+bringing the scythe. He felt, of course,
+the mockery of this frustration of his powers.
+He thought&mdash;and, it seemed, with good reason&mdash;that
+he was a tragic failure. But was he? Read
+his books, and admit that he accomplished a little
+that is beautiful and enduring, and that he did it
+obscurely at a time when they who held most of
+the fearful attention of the world were but working
+gravely on what their children would execrate.</p>
+<p>Some critics find in the diary of Barbellion&#8217;s
+last days evidence that he remembered he was
+writing for an audience. It may be there, but it
+is not plain to me. It is likely that if we were
+writing a paragraph while doubtful whether the
+hair which held the sword over us would last till
+we had finished, we might find we were not so joyously
+abandoned to pure art as we used to be.
+The interest of the book is that it is some more of
+Bruce Cummings when we could not have expected
+another line from him. Apart even from
+their literary value, it seems to me that some day
+his three volumes may prove to bear historic
+witness as important as that of Colonel Repington&#8217;s
+diary. It was just such minds as Barbellion&#8217;s,
+not uncommon in the youth of our war
+time&mdash;though in his case the unusual intuitions
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span>
+and adventurous aspirations were defined by
+genius&mdash;it was such minds that the war-mongers
+condemned and destroyed. Those men were
+selected for sacrifice because they had the very
+qualities which, when lost to the community, then
+it dies in its soul. They were candid with themselves,
+and questioned our warranty with the
+same candour, but were modest and reticent;
+they were kindly to us when they knew we were
+wooden and wrong, and did our bidding, judging
+it was evil. In France they subdued their insurgent
+thoughts&mdash;and what that sacrifice meant
+to them in the lonely night watches I have been
+privileged to learn&mdash;and surrendered, often in
+terrible derision, to our will; and then in
+cool and calculated audacity devised the very
+tasks in which the bravest and most intelligent
+would be the first to die.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span>
+<h2>XXXIII. Breaking the Spell</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>APRIL 8, 1921. My seat by the Serpentine
+was under a small and almost impalpable
+cloud of almond petals. The
+babbling of ducks somewhere in the place where
+the water seemed a pale and wavering fire was
+like the sound of the upwelling of the hidden
+spring of life. This was the spot where I could
+sit and there quietly match the darker shades of
+trouble in the afternoon papers, the time being
+April in England, and the sky ineffable. There
+was not a trace of mourning in the sky; not a
+black-edged cloud. But human life, being an urgent
+and serious affair, and not a bright blue emptiness
+like Heaven; human life being a state of
+trial in which, as favoured beings, we are &#8220;heated
+hot with burning fears and dipped in baths of hissing
+tears&#8221; for our own good, could not be expected
+to look as pleasant, during so severe a
+necessary process, as almond trees in blossom.
+So I sat down and prepared to measure, from the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span>
+news in the papers, the depth of the present border
+on our daily memorial card.</p>
+<p>The black border was rather a deep one, when
+measured. The fears were fairly hot. There
+were no noticeable signs of any tears in the
+papers, so far, but one could guess there would be
+a deep extinguishing bath of them ready to hiss
+presently, if all went well, and our affairs had uninterrupted
+development under the usual clever
+guides. And we had the guides. I could see
+that. The papers were loud with the inspirations
+of friends of ours who had not missed a
+single lesson of the War for those who were not
+in it; who were still resolute in that last and indispensable
+ditch which no foe is ever likely to
+reach. But by now the almond&#8217;s cloud had vanished.
+I no longer heard the bubbling of the
+well of life.</p>
+<p>I finished reading the papers. Now I knew
+our current fate, and felt as if I heard again the
+gas gong going continuously. I had the feeling
+in April, unknown to any snail on the thorn, that
+the park was deafening with the clangour of pallid,
+tense, and contending lunatics. The Serpentine
+had receded from this tumult. Its tranquil
+shimmering was now fatuous and unbelievable.
+It was but half seen; its glittering was a distant
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span>
+grimacing and mockery at my troubled human intelligence.
+It was nothing to do with me, and
+showed it in that impertinent way. Two ducks,
+two absurd ducks, suddenly appeared before me
+on the polished water. They were bowing
+politely to each other&mdash;only I was looking at
+them&mdash;and were making soothing noises in imbecile
+ignorance of the fate overhanging us all.
+There was a boy not far away. He stood as still
+as a thought entranced. He was watching a boat
+with a paper sail. He was as intent as if he were
+God observing the progress of Columbus, knowing
+now that America is about to be found.</p>
+<p>If that boy had but guessed what I knew!
+But he had not read the latest news. It is the
+privilege of knowledge to be superior and grave;
+to be able to smile sadly at the dream of a Golden
+Galleon which childhood sees in April by the
+Serpentine; for knowledge is aware of the truth,
+the tumult surrounding us of contentious lunatics,
+endless, inexplicable; the noise of mankind in its
+upward journey towards the eclipse, or some
+other heavenly mystery.</p>
+<p>Presently that tinted mist which was a tree in
+flower began to shine again through the dark
+noise which the papers had made. The uproar
+cleared a little. The water came nearer, its
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span>
+glittering growing stronger, its fire burning towards
+me. I saw in surprise through the gloom
+in my mind that the fire had touched the elms;
+their dark masses were faintly luminous. And
+the mallard drake, riding on the outer pulses of
+that radiation, was purple and emerald. But
+would the beauty of the spring surprise us, I
+wonder; would it still give the mind a twinge,
+sadden us with a nameless disquiet, shoot through
+us so keen an anguish when the almond tree is
+there again on a bright day, if we were decent,
+healthy, and happy creatures? Perhaps not. It
+is hard to say. It is a great while since our skinless
+and touchy crowds of the wonderful industrial
+era, moving as one man to the words of the
+daily papers, were such creatures. Perhaps we
+should merely yawn and stretch ourselves, feel revived
+with the sun a little warmer on our backs,
+and snuff up a pleasant smell which we remembered;
+begin to whistle, and grope for an adze.</p>
+<p>But we cannot have it so. The spring is not
+for us. We have been so inventive. We have
+desired other things, and we have got them. We
+have cleverly made a way of life that exacts so
+close an attention, if we would save it from disaster,
+that we are now its prisoners. Peace and
+freedom have become but a vision which the imprisoned
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204' name='page_204'></a>204</span>
+view through the bars they themselves
+have made. The spring we see now is in a world
+not ours, a world we have left, which is still close
+to us, but is unapproachable. The children are
+in it, and even, apparently, the ducks. It is a
+world we see sometimes, as a reminder&mdash;once a
+year or so&mdash;of what we could have made of life,
+and what we have.</p>
+<p>Which is the real world? I worried over that
+as I was leaving the park. I seemed to be getting
+nearer to reality near Rotten Row. A reassuring
+policeman was in sight. Motor-cars that were
+humiliating with their enamel and crystal were
+threading about. The fashionable ladies and
+their consorts seemed to be in no doubt about the
+world they were in. I began to feel mean and
+actual. While thus composing my mind I chanced
+to look backwards. A miniature glade was
+there, where the tree-trunks were the columns in
+an aisle. Was it a sward between them? I
+doubt whether we could walk it. I call it green.
+I know of no other word. Perhaps the sun was
+playing tricks with it. It may not have been
+there. As I kept my eye on it, disbelieving that
+light&mdash;desirous to believe it, but unable to, faith
+being weak&mdash;a rabbit moved into the aisle. I
+call it a rabbit, for I know no other word. But I
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span>
+declare now that I do not accept that creature.
+It sat up, and watched me. I don&#8217;t say it was
+there. As far as I know, any rabbit would have
+been terrified with all those people about. But
+not this apparition, its back to the sunset, with an
+aura and radiant whiskers of gold. It regarded
+me steadfastly. I looked around to see if I were
+alone in this.</p>
+<p>The policeman was unconscious of it. The
+lady who sat on the chair opposite, the lady with
+the noticeable yellow legs, was talking in animation,
+but I doubt it was about this rabbit. The
+saunterers were passing without a sign. But one
+little girl stood, her hands behind her, oblivious of
+all but that admonitory creature in an unearthly
+light, and was smiling at it. It was the only confirmation
+I had. I have no recollection now of
+what I saw in the day&#8217;s paper. I have later and
+better news.</p>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>THE END</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Transcriber&#8217;s Note: The following words were inconsistently hyphenated
+in the original text: hill-top, hilltop; school-boy, schoolboy.</p>
+<p>The following corrections have been made to the original text:</p>
+<p>Page 12: Septemer to September</p>
+<p>Page 103: foward to forward</p>
+<p>Page 146: irresistable to irresistible</p>
+<p>Page 199: sarcifice to sacrifice</p>
+<!-- generated by ppgen.rb version: 2.46 -->
+<!-- timestamp: Tue Nov 11 21:05:48 +0000 2008 -->
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Waiting for Daylight, by Henry Major Tomlinson
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Waiting for Daylight, by Henry Major Tomlinson
+
+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: Waiting for Daylight
+
+Author: Henry Major Tomlinson
+
+Release Date: November 12, 2008 [EBook #27246]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAITING FOR DAYLIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan Skinner, Peter Vachuska, Chuck Greif and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WAITING FOR
+DAYLIGHT
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_BOOKS BY H. M. TOMLINSON_
+
+THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
+OLD JUNK
+LONDON RIVER
+WAITING FOR DAYLIGHT
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  THE FIRST PRINTING OF THIS BOOK CONSISTS
+       OF TWENTY-ONE HUNDRED COPIES,
+    OF WHICH TWO THOUSAND ARE FOR SALE.
+
+               THIS IS NUMBER
+
+                    669
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+WAITING FOR
+DAYLIGHT
+
+By H. M. TOMLINSON
+
+
+NEW YORK . ALFRED . A . KNOPF . MCMXXII
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
+ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.
+
+_Published May, 1922_
+
+
+_Set up, electrotyped and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y._
+_Paper furnished by Henry Lindenmeyr & Sons, New York, N. Y._
+_Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York, N. Y._
+
+
+MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      To
+   MY WIFE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     I. IN YPRES                                              3
+
+    II. A RAID NIGHT                                         12
+
+   III. ISLANDS                                              24
+
+    IV. TRAVEL BOOKS                                         28
+
+     V. SIGNS OF SPRING                                      31
+
+    VI. PROSE WRITING                                        36
+
+   VII. THE MODERN MIND                                      40
+
+  VIII. MAGAZINES                                            44
+
+    IX. THE MARNE                                            49
+
+     X. CARLYLE                                              56
+
+    XI. HOLIDAY READING                                      58
+
+   XII. AN AUTUMN MORNING                                    65
+
+  XIII. NEWS FROM THE FRONT                                  74
+
+   XIV. AUTHORS AND SOLDIERS                                 80
+
+    XV. WAITING FOR DAYLIGHT                                 88
+
+   XVI. THE NOBODIES                                         96
+
+  XVII. BOOKWORMS                                           112
+
+ XVIII. SAILOR LANGUAGE                                     115
+
+   XIX. ILLUSIONS                                           120
+
+    XX. FIGURE-HEADS                                        127
+
+   XXI. ECONOMICS                                           133
+
+  XXII. OLD SUNLIGHT                                        135
+
+ XXIII. RUSKIN                                              140
+
+  XXIV. THE REWARD OF VIRTUE                                147
+
+   XXV. GREAT STATESMEN                                     149
+
+  XXVI. JOY                                                 152
+
+ XXVII. THE REAL THING                                      162
+
+XXVIII. LITERARY CRITICS                                    170
+
+  XXIX. THE SOUTH DOWNS                                     175
+
+   XXX. KIPLING                                             182
+
+  XXXI. A DEVON ESTUARY                                     188
+
+ XXXII. BARBELLION                                          194
+
+XXXIII. BREAKING THE SPELL                                  200
+
+
+
+WAITING FOR
+DAYLIGHT
+
+
+
+
+I. In Ypres
+
+
+JULY, 1915. My mouth does not get so dry as once it did, I notice, when
+walking in from Suicide Corner to the Cloth Hall. There I was this summer
+day, in Ypres again, in a silence like a threat, amid ruins which might
+have been in Central Asia, and I, the last man on earth, contemplating
+them. There was something bumping somewhere, but it was not in Ypres, and
+no notice is taken in Flanders of what does not bump near you. So I sat
+on the disrupted pedestal of a forgotten building and smoked, and
+wondered why I was in the city of Ypres, and why there was a war, and why
+I was a fool.
+
+It was a lovely day, and looking up at the sky over what used to be a
+school dedicated to the gentle Jesus, which is just by the place where
+one of the seventeen-inchers has blown a forty-foot hole, I saw a little
+round cloud shape in the blue, and then another, and then a cluster of
+them; the kind of soft little cloudlets on which Renaissance cherubs
+rest their chubby elbows and with fat faces inclined on their hands
+consider mortals from cemetery monuments. Then dull concussions arrived
+from heaven, and right overhead I made out two German 'planes. A
+shell-case banged the _pave_ and went on to make a white scar on a wall.
+Some invisible things were whizzing about. One's own shrapnel can be
+tactless.
+
+There was a cellar near and I got into it, and while the intruders were
+overhead I smoked and gazed at the contents of the cellar--the wreckage
+of a bicycle, a child's chemise, one old boot, a jam-pot, and a dead cat.
+Owing to an unsatisfactory smell of many things I climbed out as soon as
+possible and sat on the pedestal again.
+
+A figure in khaki came straight at me across the Square, its boots
+sounding like the deliberate approach of Fate in solitude. It stopped and
+saluted, and said: "I shouldn't stay 'ere, sir. They gen'ally begin about
+now. Sure to drop some 'ere."
+
+At that moment a mournful cry went over us, followed by a crash in
+Sinister Street. My way home! Some masonry fell in sympathy from the
+Cloth Hall.
+
+"Better come with me till it blows over, sir. I've got a dug-out near."
+
+We turned off into a part of the city unknown to me. There were some
+unsettling noises, worse, no doubt, because of the echoes behind us; but
+it is not dignified to hurry when one looks like an officer. One ought to
+fill a pipe. I did so, and stopped to light it. I paused while drawing at
+it, checked by the splitting open of the earth in the first turning to
+the right and the second to the left, or thereabouts.
+
+"That's a big 'un, sir," said my soldier, taking half a cigarette from
+behind his ear and a light from my match; we then resumed our little
+promenade. By an old motor 'bus having boards for windows, and War Office
+neuter for its colour, but bearing for memory's sake on its brow the
+legend "Liverpool Street," my soldier hurried slightly, and was then
+swallowed up. I was alone. While looking about for possible openings I
+heard his voice under the road, and then saw a dark cavity, low in a
+broken wall, and crawled in. Feeling my way by knocking on the dark with
+my forehead and my shins, I descended to a lower smell of graves which
+was hollowed by a lighted candle in a bottle. And there was the soldier,
+who provided me with an empty box, and himself with another, and we had
+the candle between us. On the table were some official documents under a
+shell-nose, and a tin of condensed milk suffering from shock. Pictures of
+partly clad ladies began to appear on the walls through the gloom. Now
+and then the cellar trembled.
+
+"Where's that old 'bus come from?" I asked.
+
+"Ah! The pore old bitch, sir," said the soldier sadly.
+
+"Yes, of course, but what's the matter with her?"
+
+"She's done in, sir. But she's done her bit, she has," said my soldier,
+changing the crossing of his legs. "Ah! little did she think when I used
+to take 'er acrorse Ludget Circus what a 'ell of a time I'd 'ave to give
+'er some day. She's a good ole thing. She's done 'er bit. She won't see
+Liverpool Street no more. If medals wasn't so cheap she ought to 'ave
+one, she ought."
+
+The cellar had a fit of the palsy, and the candle-light shuddered and
+flattened.
+
+"The ruddy swine are ruddy wild to-day. Suthin's upset 'em. 'Ow long will
+this ruddy war last, sir?" asked the soldier, slightly plaintive.
+
+"I know," I said. "It's filthy. But what about your old 'bus?"
+
+"Ah! what about 'er. She ain't 'arf 'ad a time. She's seen enough war to
+make a general want to go home and shell _peas_. What she knows about it
+would make them clever fellers in London who reckon they know all about
+it turn green if they heard a door slam. Learned it all in one jolly old
+day, too. Learned it sudden, like you gen'ally learn things you don't
+forget. And I reckon I 'adn't anything to find out, either, not after
+Antwerp. Don't tell me, sir, war teaches you a lot. It only shows fools
+what they didn't know but might 'ave guessed.
+
+"You know Poperinghe? Well, my trip was between there an' Wipers,
+gen'ally. The stones on the road was enough to make 'er shed nuts and
+bolts by the pint. But it was a quiet journey, take it all round, and
+after a cup o' tea at Wipers I used to roll home to the park. It was
+easier than the Putney route. Wipers was full of civilians. Shops all
+open. Estaminets and nice young things. I used to like war better than a
+school-boy likes Sat'd'y afternoons. It wasn't work and it wasn't play.
+And there was no law you couldn't break if you 'ad sense enough to come
+to attention smart and answer quick. Yes, sir.
+
+"I knew so little about war then that I'm sorry I never tried to be a
+military expert. But my education was neglected. I can only write picture
+postcards. It's a pity. Well, one day it wasn't like that. It dropped on
+Wipers, and it wasn't like that. It was bloody different. I wasn't
+frightened, but my little inside was.
+
+"First thing was the gassed soldiers coming through. Their faces were
+green and blue, and their uniform a funny colour. I didn't know what was
+the matter with 'em, and that put the wind up, for I didn't want to look
+like that. We could hear a gaudy rumpus in the Salient. The civvies were
+frightened, but they stuck to their homes. Nothing was happening there
+then, and while nothing is happening it's hard to believe it's going to.
+After seeing a Zouave crawl by with his tongue hanging out, and his face
+the colour of a mottled cucumber, I said good-bye to the little girl
+where I was. It was time to see about it.
+
+"And fact is, I didn't 'ave much time to think about it, what with
+gettin' men out and gettin' reinforcements in. Trip after trip.
+
+"But I shall never have a night again like that one. Believe me, it was
+a howler. I steered the old 'bus, but it was done right by accident. It
+was certainly touch and go. I shouldn't 'ave thought a country town, even
+in war, could look like Wipers did that night.
+
+"It was gettin' dark on my last trip, and we barged into all the world
+gettin' out. And the guns and reinforcements were comin' up behind me.
+There's no other road out or in, as you know. I forgot to tell you that
+night comin' on didn't matter much, because the place was alight. The sky
+was full of shrapnel, and the high-explosives were falling in the houses
+on fire, and spreading the red stuff like fireworks. The gun ahead of me
+went over a child, but only its mother and me saw that, and a house in
+flames ahead of the gun got a shell inside it, and fell on the crowd that
+was mixed up with the army traffic.
+
+"When I got to a side turning I 'opped off to see how my little lady was
+getting on. A shell had got 'er estaminet. The curtains were flying in
+little flames through the place where the windows used to be. Inside, the
+counter was upside down, and she was laying with glass and bottles on the
+floor. I couldn't do anything for her. And further up the street my
+headquarters was a heap of bricks, and the houses on both sides of it on
+fire. No good looking there for any more orders.
+
+"Being left to myself, I began to take notice. While you're on the job
+you just do it, and don't see much of anything else except out of the
+corner of the eye. I've never 'eard such a row--shells bursting, houses
+falling, and the place was foggy with smoke, and men you couldn't see
+were shouting, and the women and children, wherever they were, turning
+you cold to hear 'em.
+
+"It was like the end of the world. Time for me to 'op it. I backed the
+old 'bus and turned 'er, and started off--shells in front and behind and
+overhead, and, thinks I, next time you're bound to get caught in this
+shower. Then I found my officer. 'E was smoking a cigarette, and 'e told
+me my job. 'E gave me my cargo. I just 'ad to take 'em out and dump 'em.
+
+"'Where shall I take 'em, sir?'
+
+"'Take 'em out of this,' says he. 'Take 'em anywhere, take 'em where you
+like, Jones, take 'em to hell, but take 'em away,' says he.
+
+"So I loaded up. Wounded Tommies, gassed Arabs, some women and children,
+and a few lunatics, genuine cock-eyed loonies from the asylum. The
+shells chased us out. One biffed us over on to the two rear wheels, but
+we dropped back on four on the top speed. Several times I bumped over
+soft things in the road and felt rather sick. We got out o' the town with
+the shrapnel a bit in front all the way. Then the old 'bus jibbed for a
+bit. Every time a shell burst near us the lunatics screamed and laughed
+and clapped their hands, and trod on the wounded, but I got 'er goin'
+again. I got 'er to Poperinghe. Two soldiers died on the way, and a
+lunatic had fallen out somewhere, and a baby was born in the 'bus; and me
+with no conductor and no midwife.
+
+"I met our chaplain and says he: 'Jones, you want a drink. Come with me
+and have a Scotch.' That was a good drink. I 'ad the best part of 'arf a
+bottle without water, and it done me no 'arm. Next morning I found I'd
+put in the night on the parson's bed in me boots, and 'e was asleep on
+the floor."
+
+
+
+
+II. A Raid Night
+
+
+SEPTEMBER 17, 1915. I had crossed from France to Fleet Street, and was
+thankful at first to have about me the things I had proved, with their
+suggestion of intimacy, their look of security; but I found the once
+familiar editorial rooms of that daily paper a little more than
+estranged. I thought them worse, if anything, than Ypres. Ypres is within
+the region where, when soldiers enter it, they abandon hope, because they
+have become sane at last, and their minds have a temperature a little
+below normal. In Ypres, whatever may have been their heroic and exalted
+dreams, they awake, see the world is mad, and surrender to the doom from
+which they know a world bereft will give them no reprieve.
+
+There was a way in which the office of that daily paper was familiar. I
+had not expected it, and it came with a shock. Not only the compulsion,
+but the bewildering inconsequence of war was suggested by its activities.
+Reason was not there. It was ruled by a blind and fixed idea. The
+glaring artificial light, the headlong haste of the telegraph
+instruments, the wild litter on the floor, the rapt attention of the men
+scanning the news, their abrupt movements and speed when they had to
+cross the room, still with their gaze fixed, their expression that of
+those who dreaded something worse to happen; the suggestion of tension,
+as though the Last Trump were expected at any moment, filled me with
+vague alarm. The only place where that incipient panic is not usual is
+the front line, because there the enemy is within hail, and is known to
+be another unlucky fool. But I allayed my anxiety. I leaned over one of
+the still figures and scanned the fateful document which had given its
+reader the aspect of one who was staring at what the Moving Finger had
+done. Its message was no more than the excited whisper of a witness who
+had just left a keyhole. But I realized in that moment of surprise that
+this office was an essential feature of the War; without it, the War
+might become Peace. It provoked the emotions which assembled civilians in
+ecstatic support of the sacrifices, just as the staff of a corps
+headquarters, at some comfortable leagues behind the trenches, maintains
+its fighting men in the place where gas and shells tend to engender
+common sense and irresolution.
+
+I left the glare of that office, its heat and half-hysterical activity,
+and went into the coolness and quiet of the darkened street, and there
+the dread left me that it could be a duty of mine to keep hot pace with
+patriots in full stampede. The stars were wonderful. It is such a
+tranquillizing surprise to discover there are stars over London. Until
+this War, when the street illuminations were doused, we never knew it. It
+strengthens one's faith to discover the Pleiades over London; it is not
+true that their delicate glimmer has been put out by the remarkable
+incandescent energy of our power stations. There they are still. As I
+crossed London Bridge the City was as silent as though it had come to the
+end of its days, and the shapes I could just make out under the stars
+were no more substantial than the shadows of its past. Even the Thames
+was a noiseless ghost. London at night gave me the illusion that I was
+really hidden from the monstrous trouble of Europe, and, at least for one
+sleep, had got out of the War. I felt that my suburban street, secluded
+in trees and unimportance, was as remote from the evil I knew of as
+though it were in Alaska. When I came to that street I could not see my
+neighbours' homes. It was with some doubt that I found my own. And there,
+with three hours to go to midnight, and a book, and some circumstances
+that certainly had not changed, I had retired thankfully into a fragment
+of that world I had feared we had completely lost.
+
+"What a strange moaning the birds in the shrubbery are making!" my
+companion said once. I listened to it, and thought it was strange. There
+was a long silence, and then she looked up sharply. "What's that?" she
+asked. "Listen!"
+
+I listened. My hearing is not good.
+
+"Nothing!" I assured her.
+
+"There it is again." She put down her book with decision, and rose, I
+thought, in some alarm.
+
+"Trains," I suggested. "The gas bubbling. The dog next door. Your
+imagination." Then I listened to the dogs. It was curious, but they all
+seemed awake and excited.
+
+"What is the noise like?" I asked, surrendering my book on the antiquity
+of man.
+
+She twisted her mouth in a comical way most seriously, and tried to mimic
+a deep and solemn note.
+
+"Guns," I said to myself, and went to the front door.
+
+Beyond the vague opposite shadows of some elms lights twinkled in the
+sky, incontinent sparks, as though glow lamps on an invisible pattern of
+wires were being switched on and off by an idle child. That was shrapnel.
+I walked along the empty street a little to get a view between and beyond
+the villas. I turned to say something to my companion, and saw then my
+silent neighbours, shadowy groups about me, as though they had not
+approached but had materialized where they stood. We watched those
+infernal sparks. A shadow lit its pipe and offered me its match. I heard
+the guns easily enough now, but they were miles away.
+
+A slender finger of brilliant light moved slowly across the sky, checked,
+and remained pointing, firmly accusatory, at something it had found in
+the heavens. A Zeppelin!
+
+There it was, at first a wraith, a suggestion on the point of vanishing,
+and then illuminated and embodied, a celestial maggot stuck to the round
+of a cloud like a caterpillar to the edge of a leaf. We gazed at it
+silently, I cannot say for how long. The beam of light might have pinned
+the bright larva to the sky for the inspection of interested Londoners.
+Then somebody spoke. "I think it is coming our way."
+
+I thought so too. I went indoors, calling out to the boy as I passed his
+room upstairs, and went to where the girls were asleep. Three miles,
+three minutes! It appears to be harder to waken children when a Zeppelin
+is coming your way. I got the elder girl awake, lifted her, and sat her
+on the bed, for she had become heavier, I noticed. Then I put her small
+sister over my shoulder, as limp and indifferent as a half-filled bag. By
+this time the elder one had snuggled into the foot of her bed, resigned
+to that place if the other end were disputed, and was asleep again. I
+think I became annoyed, and spoke sharply. We were in a hurry. The boy
+was waiting for us at the top of the stairs.
+
+"What's up?" he asked with merry interest, hoisting his slacks.
+
+"Come on down," I said.
+
+We went into a central room, put coats round them, answering eager and
+innocent questions with inconsequence, had the cellar door and a light
+ready, and then went out to inspect affairs. There were more searchlights
+at work. Bright diagonals made a living network on the overhead dark. It
+was remarkable that those rigid beams should not rest on the roof of
+night, but that their ends should glide noiselessly about the invisible
+dome. The nearest of them was followed, when in the zenith, by a faint
+oval of light. Sometimes it discovered and broke on delicate films of
+high fair-weather clouds. The shells were still twinkling brilliantly,
+and the guns were making a rhythmless baying in the distance, like a
+number of alert and indignant hounds. But the Zeppelin had gone. The
+firing diminished and stopped.
+
+They went to bed again, and as I had become acutely depressed, and the
+book now had no value, I turned in myself, assuring everyone, with the
+usual confidence of the military expert, that the affair was over for the
+night. But once in bed I found I could see there only the progress
+humanity had made in its movement heavenwards. That is the way with us;
+never to be concerned with the newest clever trick of our enterprising
+fellow-men till a sudden turn of affairs shows us, by the immediate
+threat to our own existence, that that cleverness has added to the peril
+of civilized society, whose house has been built on the verge of the pit.
+War now would be not only between soldiers. In future wars the place of
+honour would be occupied by the infants, in their cradles. For war is not
+murder. Starving children is war, and it is not murder. What treacherous
+lying is all the heroic poetry of battle! Men will now creep up after
+dark, ambushed in safety behind the celestial curtains, and drop bombs on
+sleepers beneath for the greater glory of some fine figment or other. It
+filled me, not with wrath at the work of Kaisers and Kings, for we know
+what is possible with them, but with dismay at the discovery that one's
+fellows are so docile and credulous that they will obey any order,
+however abominable. The very heavens had been fouled by this obscene and
+pallid worm, crawling over those eternal verities to which eyes had been
+lifted for light when night and trouble were over dark. God was dethroned
+by science. One looked startled at humanity, seeing not the accustomed
+countenance, but, for a moment, glimpsing instead the baleful lidless
+stare of the evil of the slime, the unmentionable of a nightmare....
+
+A deafening crash brought us out of bed in one movement. I must have been
+dozing. Someone cried, "My children!" Another rending uproar interrupted
+my effort to shepherd the flock to a lower floor. There was a raucous
+avalanche of glass. We muddled down somehow--I forget how. I could not
+find the matches. Then in the dark we lost the youngest for some eternal
+seconds while yet another explosion shook the house. We got to the
+cellar stairs, and at last there they all were, their backs to the coals,
+sitting on lumber.
+
+A candle was on the floor. There were more explosions, somewhat muffled.
+The candle-flame showed a little tremulous excitement, as if it were one
+of the party. It reached upwards curiously in a long intent flame, and
+then shrank flat with what it had learned. We were accompanied by
+grotesque shadows. They stood about us on the white and unfamiliar walls.
+We waited. Even the shadows seemed to listen with us; they hardly moved,
+except when the candle-flame was nervous. Then the shadows wavered
+slightly. We waited. I caught the boy's eye, and winked. He winked back.
+The youngest, still with sleepy eyes, was trembling, though not with
+cold, and this her sister noticed, and put her arms about her. His mother
+had her hand on her boy's shoulder.
+
+There was no more noise outside. It was time, perhaps, to go up to see
+what had happened. I put a raincoat over my pyjamas, and went into the
+street. Some of my neighbours, who were special constables, hurried by.
+The enigmatic night, for a time, for five minutes, or five seconds (I do
+not know how long it was), was remarkably still and usual. It might have
+been pretending that we were all mistaken. It was as though we had been
+merely dreaming our recent excitements. Then, across a field, a villa
+began to blaze. Perhaps it had been stunned till then, and had suddenly
+jumped into a panic of flames. It was wholly involved in one roll of fire
+and smoke, a sudden furnace so consuming that, when it as suddenly
+ceased, giving one or two dying spasms, I had but an impression of flames
+rolling out of windows and doors to persuade me that what I had seen was
+real. The night engulfed what may have been an illusion, for till then I
+had never noticed a house at that point.
+
+Whispers began to pass of tragedies that were incredible in their
+incidence and craziness. Three children were dead in the rubble of one
+near villa. The ambulance that was passing was taking their father to the
+hospital. A woman had been blown from her bed into the street. She was
+unhurt, but she was insane. A long row of humbler dwellings, over which
+the dust was still hanging in a faint mist, had been demolished, and one
+could only hope the stories about that place were far from true. We were
+turned away when we would have assisted; all the help that was wanted
+was there. A stranger offered me his tobacco pouch, and it was then I
+found my rainproof was a lady's, and therefore had no pipe in its
+pocket.
+
+The sky was suspect, and we watched it, but saw only vacuity till one
+long beam shot into it, searching slowly and deliberately the whole
+mysterious ceiling, yet hesitating sometimes, and going back on its path
+as though intelligently suspicious of a matter which it had passed over
+too quickly. It peered into the immense caverns of a cloud to which it
+had returned, illuminating to us unsuspected and horrifying possibilities
+of hiding-places above us. We expected to see the discovered enemy boldly
+emerge then. Nothing came out. Other beams by now had joined the pioneer,
+and the night became bewildering with a dazzling mesh of light. Shells
+joined the wandering beams, those sparks of orange and red. A world of
+fantastic chimney-pots and black rounds of trees leaped into being
+between us and the sudden expansion of a fan of yellow flame. A bomb! We
+just felt, but hardly heard, the shock of it. A furious succession of
+such bursts of light followed, a convulsive opening and shutting of
+night. We saw that when midnight is cleft asunder it has a fiery inside.
+
+The eruptions ceased. Idle and questioning, not knowing we had heard the
+last gun and bomb of the affair, a little stunned by the maniacal
+rapidity and violence of this attack, we found ourselves gazing at the
+familiar and shadowy peace of our suburb as we have always known it. It
+had returned to that aspect. But something had gone from it for ever. It
+was not, and never could be again, as once we had known it. The security
+of our own place had been based on the goodwill or indifference of our
+fellow-creatures everywhere. To-night, over that obscure and unimportant
+street, we had seen a celestial portent illuminate briefly a little of
+the future of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+III. Islands
+
+
+JANUARY 5, 1918. The editor of the _Hibbert Journal_ betrays a secret and
+lawless passion for islands. They must be small sanctuaries, of course,
+far and isolated; for he shows quite rightly that places like the British
+Isles are not islands in any just and poetic sense. Our kingdom is earth,
+sour and worm-riddled earth, with all its aboriginal lustre trampled out.
+By islands he means those surprising landfalls, Kerguelen, the Antarctic
+Shetlands, Timor, Amboyna, the Carolines, the Marquesas, and the
+Galapagos. An island with a splendid name, which I am sure he would have
+mentioned had he thought of it, is Fernando de Noronha.
+
+There must be a fair number of people to-day who cherish that ridiculous
+dream of an oceanic solitude. We remember that whenever a storyteller
+wishes to make enchantment seem thoroughly genuine, he begins upon an
+island. One might say, if in a hurry, that Defoe began it, but in leisure
+recall the fearful spell of islands in the Greek legends. It is easily
+understood. If you have watched at sea an island shape, and pass,
+forlorn in the waste, apparently lifeless, and with no movement to be
+seen but the silent fountains of the combers, then you know where the
+Sirens were born, and why awful shapes grew in the minds of the simple
+Greeks out of the wonders in Crete devised by the wise and mysterious
+Minoans, who took yearly the tribute of Greek youth--youth which never
+returned to tell.
+
+How easily the picture of one's first island in foreign seas comes back!
+I had not expected mine, and was surprised one morning, when
+eastward-bound in the Mediterranean, to see a pallid mass of rock two
+miles to port, when I had imagined I knew the charts of that sea well
+enough. It was a frail ghost of land on that hard blue plain, and had a
+light of its own; but it looked arid and forbidding, a place of seamen's
+bones. Turning quickly to the mate I asked for its name. "Alboran," he
+said, very quietly, without looking at it, as though keeping something
+back. He said no more. But while that strange glimmer was on the sea I
+watched it; I have learned nothing since of Alboran; and so the memory of
+that brief sight of a strange rock is as though once I had blundered on a
+dreadful secret which the men who knew it preferred to keep.
+
+But there is a West Indian Island which for me is the best in the seas,
+because the memory of it is but a reflection of my last glimpse of the
+tropics. That landfall in the Spanish Main was as soundless as a dream.
+It was but an apparition of land. It might have been no more than an
+unusually vivid recollection of a desire which had once stirred the
+imagination of a boy. Looking at it, I felt sceptical, quite unprepared
+to believe that what once was a dream could be coming true by any chance
+of my drift through the years. Yet there it remained, right in our
+course, on a floor of malachite which had stains of orange drift-weed. It
+could have been a mirage. It appeared diaphanous, something so frail that
+a wind could have stirred it. Did it belong to this earth? It grew
+higher, and the waves could be seen exploding against its lower rocks. It
+_was_ a dream come true. Yet even now, as I shall not have that landfall
+again, I have a doubt that waters could be of the colours which were
+radiant about that island, that rocks could be of rose and white, that
+trees could be so green and aromatic, and light--except of the
+Hesperides, which are lost--so like the exhilarating life and breath of
+the prime. A doubt indeed! For every whisper one hears to-day deepens the
+loom of a gigantic German attack.
+
+
+
+
+IV. Travel Books
+
+
+JANUARY 19, 1918. What long hours at night we wait for sleep! Sleep will
+not come. A friend, who grows more like a sallow congestion of scorn than
+a comfortable companion, warned me yesterday, when I spoke of the end of
+the War, that it might have no end. He said that we could not escape our
+fate. Our star, I gathered, was to receive a celestial spring-cleaning.
+There would be bonfires of litter. We had become impeded with the rubbish
+of centuries of wise and experienced statecraft, and we had hardly more
+than begun to get rid of it. A renaissance with a vengeance! Youth was in
+revolt against the aged and the dead.
+
+But what an idea to look at when waiting for sleep! I turned over with
+another sigh, and recalled that William James has advised us that a
+deleterious thought may be exorcised by willing another that is sunny. I
+tried to command a more enjoyable picture for eyes that were closed but
+intent. Yet you never know where the most promising image will transport
+you through some inconsequential association. I recalled a pleasing day
+in the Eastern Mediterranean, and that brought _Eothen_ into my mind, by
+chance. And instantly, instead of seeing Sfax in Tunis, I was looking
+down from a window on a black-edged day of rain, watching an unending
+procession of moribund figures jolting over the _pave_ of a street in
+Flanders, in every kind of conveyance, from the Yser. There I was, back
+at the War, at two in the morning, and all because I had read _Eothen_
+desperately in odd moments while waiting for the signs which would warn
+me that the enemy was about to enter that village.
+
+No escape yet! I could hear the old clock slowly making its way towards
+another day. I heard a belated wayfarer going home, his feet muffled in
+snow. Anyhow, I never had much of an opinion of _Eothen_, a book over
+which the cymbals have been banged too loudly. Compare it, as a travel
+book, for substance and style, with _A Week on the Concord_; though that
+is a silly thing to ask, if no sillier than literary criticism usually
+is. But though all the lists the critics make of our best travel books
+invariably give Kinglake's a principal place, I have not once seen
+Thoreau's narrative included.
+
+What is the test for such a book? I should ask it to be a trustworthy
+confidence of a kingdom where the marches may be foreign to our cheap and
+usual experience, though familiar enough to our dreams. It may not offer,
+but it must promise that Golden City which drew Raleigh to the Orinoco,
+Thoreau to Walden Pond, Doughty to Arabia, Livingstone to Tanganyika, and
+Hudson to the Arctic. The fountain of life is there. We hope to come to
+our own.
+
+We never notice whether that country has good corn-land, or whether it is
+rich enough in minerals to arouse an interest in its future. But its
+prospects are lovely and of good report. It is always a surprise to find
+the earth can look so good, and behave so handsomely, on the quiet, to a
+vagabond traveller like Thoreau, who has no valid excuse for not being at
+honest work, as though it reserved its finest mornings to show to
+favoured children when really good people are not about. The Sphinx has a
+secret only for those who do not see her wink.
+
+
+
+
+V. Signs of Spring
+
+
+FEBRUARY 16, 1918. A catalogue of second-hand books was sent to me
+yesterday. A raid warning, news of the destruction of Parliament House,
+or a whisper of the authentic ascent of Mr. Lloyd George in a fiery
+chariot and of the flight of God, would do no more to us than another
+kick does to the dead. But that catalogue had to be handled to be
+believed. It was an incredible survival from the days before the light
+went out. Those minor gratifications have gone. I had even forgotten they
+were ever ours. Sometimes now one wakes to a morning when the window is a
+golden square, a fine greeting to a good earth, and the whistle of a
+starling in the apple tree just outside is as tenuous as a thread of
+silver; the smell of coffee brings one up blithe as a boy about to begin
+play again. Yet something we feel to be wrong--a foggy memory of an ugly
+dream--ah, yes; the War, the War. The damned remembrance of things as
+they are drops its pall. The morning paper, too, I see, has the
+information that our men are again cheerfully waiting for the spring
+offensive.
+
+Cheerfully! But, of course, the editor knows. And the _spring_ offensive!
+I have seen that kind of vernal gladness. What an advent! When you find
+the first blue egg in the shrubbery behind your billet in Artois; when
+the G. S. O. 2 comes into the mess with a violet in his fingers, and
+shows it to every doubter, then you know the time has come for the
+testing of the gas cylinders, and you wonder whether this is the last
+time you will be noteworthy because you had the earliest news of the
+chiffchaff. The spring offensive! Guns are now converging by leagues of
+roads to a new part of the Front, to try to do there what they failed to
+do elsewhere. The men, as all important editors know, are happily waiting
+for the great brutes to begin bellowing again in infernal concert. So
+there accumulates at breakfast in these spring days all that evidence
+which makes one proud to share with one's fellows the divine gift of
+reason, instead of a blind and miserable animal instinct. No wonder the
+cuckoo has a merry note!
+
+That is the way we idle and hapless civilians now begin our day. I look
+up to the sky, and wonder whether this inopportune spell of fine weather
+means that some London children will be killed in bed to-night. As I pass
+the queues of women who have been waiting for hours for potatoes, and
+probably won't get any, though the earth doubtless is still abundant, if
+we had but the sense and opportunity to try it, I cannot help wondering
+whether it would not have been better for us to have refused the gift of
+reason from which could be devised the edifying wonders of civilization,
+and have remained in the treetops instead, so ignorant that we were
+unaware we were lucky.
+
+Another grave statement by a great statesman, and, when we are fortunate,
+a field postcard, are to-day our full literary deserts. Is it surprising
+that catalogues of old books do not come our way? We do not deserve them.
+Hope faintly revives, when the postman cheers us with an overdue field
+postcard, of a morning to dawn when the abstraction we name the "average
+intelligence" and the "great heart of the public" and the "herd mind,"
+will not only regret that it made a ruinous fool of itself the night
+before, but solemnly resolve to end all disruptive and dirty habits. This
+wild hope was born in me of such a postcard (all right so far!)
+coinciding with the arrival of the list of old books. It seemed at that
+moment that things could be different and better. Then, when closing the
+front door that morning--very gently--not slamming it on the run--I saw
+something else. The door noiselessly closed, an easy launch into a
+tranquil day, as though I had come down through the night with the
+natural process of the hours, and so had commenced the day at the right
+moment, I noticed the twig of a lilac bush had intruded into the porch.
+It directly indicated me with a black finger. What did it want? I looked
+intently, sure that an omen was here. Aha! So that was it! The twig was
+showing me that it had a green nail.
+
+Four young officers of the Flying Corps passed me, going ahead briskly,
+and I thought that an elm under which they walked had kindling in it a
+suggestion of coloured light. But it was too delicate to be more than a
+hope. It must be confessed that the men who fight in the air were more
+distinct than that light. Then the four officers parted, two to either
+side, when marching past another figure. They went beyond it swiftly,
+taking no notice of it, turned into the future, and vanished. I drew near
+the bowed and leisurely being, which had a spade over its shoulder.
+
+It stopped to light a pipe, and I caught up to it. The edge of the spade
+was like silver with use, and the big hand which grasped it was brown
+with dry earth. The lean neck of this figure was tinctured with many
+summers, and cross-hatched by the weather and mature maleness. I caught a
+smell of newly-turned earth. The figure moved as though time were
+nothing. It turned its face as I drew level, and said it was a good
+morning. The morning was better than good; and somehow this object in an
+old hat and clothes as rough as bark, with a face which probably had the
+same expression when William was momentous at Hastings, and when Pitt
+solemnly ordered the map of Europe to be rolled up, was in accord with
+the light in the elm, and the superior and convincing insolence of the
+blackbirds. They all suggested the tantalizing idea that solid ground is
+near us, in this unreasonable world of anxious change, if only we had
+intelligence enough to know where to look for it.
+
+
+
+
+VI. Prose Writing
+
+
+MARCH 16, 1918. A critic has been mourning because good prose is not
+being written to-day. This surprised him, and he asked why it was that
+when poetry, which he pictured as "primroses and violets," found
+abundance of nourishment even in the unlikely compost these latter days
+provide, yet prose, which he saw as "cabbages and potatoes," made but
+miserable growth.
+
+It is hard to explain it, for I must own that the image of the potato
+confuses me. One has seen modern verse which was, florally, very
+spud-like. If those potatoes were meant for violets then they suggest
+more than anything else a simple penny guide-book for their gardeners.
+Here we see at least the danger of using flowers of speech, when violets
+and onions get muddled in the same posy, and how ill botany is likely to
+serve the writer who flies heedlessly to it for literary symbols. Figures
+of speech are pregnant with possibilities (I myself had better be very
+careful here), and those likely to show most distress over their progeny
+are the unlucky fathers. For the first thing expected of any literary
+expression is that it should be faithful to what is in the mind, and if
+for the idea of good prose writing the image of a potato is given, then
+it can but represent the features of the earthy lumps which are common to
+the stalls of the market-place. What is prose? Sodden and lumbering
+stuff, I suppose. And what is poetry? That fortunate lighting of an idea
+which delights us with the belief that we have surprised truth, and have
+seen that it is beautiful.
+
+The difficulty with what the textbooks tell us is prose is that many of
+us make it, not naturally and unconsciously like the gentleman who
+discovered he had been doing it all his life, but professionally.
+Consider the immense output of novels--but no, do not let us consider
+anything so surprising and perplexing. The novel, that most exacting
+problem in the sublimation of the history of our kind, not to be solved
+with ease, it now appears may be handled by children as a profitable
+pastime. Children, of course, should be taught to express themselves in
+writing, and simply, lucidly, and with sincerity. Yet all editors know
+the delusion is common with beginners in journalism that the essay, a
+form in which perhaps only six writers have been successful in the
+history of English letters, is but a prelude to serious work, a holiday
+before the realities have begun. They all attempt it. Every editorial
+letter-box is loaded with essays every morning. Yet the love of learning,
+and wisdom and humour, are not usual, and the gods still more rarely give
+with these gifts the ability to express them in the written word; and how
+often may we count on learning, wisdom, and humour being not only
+reflected through a delightful and original character, but miraculously
+condensed into the controlled display of a bright and revealing beam? It
+is no wonder we have but six essayists!
+
+There is no doubt about it. If we mean by prose much more than the
+sincere and lucid written expression of our desires and opinions, it is
+because beyond that simplicity we know the thrill which is sometimes
+given by a revelation of beauty and significance in common words and
+tidings. The best writing must come of a gift for making magic out of
+what are but commodities to us, and that gift is not distributed by the
+generous gods from barrows which go the round of the neighbourhoods where
+many babies are born, as are faith, hope, and credulity, those virtues
+that cause the enormous circulations of the picture papers, and form the
+ready material for the careers of statesmen and the glory of famous
+soldiers. It is more unusual. We see it as often as we do comets and
+signs in the heavens, a John in the Wilderness again, pastors who would
+die for their lambs, women who contemn the ritual and splendour of
+man-slaying, and a politician never moved by the enticements of a
+successful career. It is therefore likely that when we see great prose
+for the first time we may not know it, and may not enjoy it. It can be so
+disrespectful to what we think is good. It may be even brightly innocent
+of it. And as in addition our smaller minds will be overborne by the
+startling activity and cool power of the prose of such a writer as Swift,
+its superiority will only enhance our complaining grief.
+
+
+
+
+VII. The Modern Mind
+
+
+JULY 6, 1918. A Symphony in Verse has just come to me from America. The
+picture on its wrapper shows a man in green tights, and whose hair is
+blue, veiling his eyes before a lady in a flame-coloured robe who stares
+from a distance in a tessellated solitude. As London two days ago
+celebrated Independence Day like an American city, and displayed the
+Stars and Stripes so deliriously that the fact that George III was ever a
+British king was lost in a common acknowledgment that he was only another
+violent fool, this Boston book invited attention. For ladies in gowns of
+flame, with arms raised in appeal, may be supposed to want more than the
+vote; and American poets wearing emerald tights who find themselves in
+abandoned temples alone with such ladies, must clearly have left Whittier
+with the nursery biscuits. Longfellow could never grow blue locks. Even
+Whitman dressed in flannel and ate oranges in public. Nor did Poe at his
+best rise to assure us:
+
+  "This is the night for murder: give us knives:
+   We have long sought for this."
+
+Well, not all of us. The truth is some of us have not sought for knives
+with any zest, being paltry and early Victorian in our murders. Yet in
+this symphony in verse, _The Jig of Forslin_, by Mr. Conrad Aiken, there
+are such lines as these:
+
+  "When the skies are pale and stars are cold,
+   Dew should rise from the grass in little bubbles,
+   And tinkle in music amid green leaves.
+   Something immortal lives in such air--
+   We breathe, we change.
+   Our bodies become as cold and bright as starlight.
+   Our hearts grow young and strange.
+   Let us extend ourselves as evening shadows
+   And learn the nocturnal secrets of these meadows."
+
+It is not all knives and murder. The Jig, in fact, dances us through a
+world of ice lighted by star gleams and Arctic streamers, where sometimes
+our chill loneliness is interrupted by a woman whose "mouth is a sly
+carnivorous flower"; where we escape the greenish light of a vampire's
+eyes to enter a tavern where men strike each other with bottles. Mermaids
+are there, and Peter and Paul, and when at last Mr. Aiken feels the
+reader may be released, it is as though we groped in the dark, bewildered
+and alarmed, for assurance that this was nothing but art.
+
+One cannot help feeling, while reading this product of the modern mind,
+that we are all a little mad, and that the cleverest of us know it, and
+indulge the vagaries and instability of insanity. In an advertisement to
+Mr. Aiken's poetry we are told that it is based on the Freudian
+psychology. We are not seldom reminded to-day of that base to the New
+Art. We are even beginning to look on each other's simplest acts with a
+new and grave suspicion. It causes a man to wonder what obscure motive,
+probably hellish, prompted his wife to brush his clothes, though when he
+caught her at it she was doing it in apparent kindness. Instead of the
+truth making us free, its dread countenance, when we glimpse it, only
+startles us into a pallid mimicry of its sinister aspect. It is like the
+sardonic grin I have seen on the face of an intelligent soldier as he
+strode over filth and corpses towards shell-fire. Soldiers, when they are
+home again, delight in watching the faces and the ways of children. They
+want to play with the youngsters, eat buns in the street, and join the
+haymakers. They do not want the truth. Without knowing anything of Freud,
+they can add to their new and dreadful knowledge of this world all they
+want of the subconscious by reading the warlike speeches of the aged, one
+of the most obscene and shocking features of the War. The soldiers who
+are home on leave turn in revolt from that to hop-scotch. Yes, the truth
+about our own day will hardly bear looking at, whether it is reflected
+from common speech, or from the minds of artists like Mr. Conrad Aiken.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. Magazines
+
+
+JULY 16, 1918. I was looking in a hurry for something to read. One
+magazine on the bookstall told me it was exactly what I wanted for a
+railway journey. It had a picture of a large gun to make its cover
+attractive. The next advertised its claims in another way. A girl's face
+was the decorative feature of its wrapper, and you could not imagine eyes
+and a simper more likely to make a man feel holier than Bernard of Cluny
+till your gaze wandered to the face of the girl smirking from the
+magazine beyond. Is it possible that nobody reads current English
+literature, as the magazines give it, except the sort of men who collect
+golf balls and eat green gooseberries? It seems like it. One wonders what
+the editors of those magazines read when they are on a railway journey.
+For it would be interesting to know whether this sort of thing is done
+purposely, like glass beads for Africa, or whether it is the gift of
+heaven, natural and unconscious, like chickweed.
+
+One would be grateful for direction in this. The matter is of some
+importance, because either the producers or the readers are in a bad
+way; and it would be disheartening to suppose it is the readers, for
+probably there are more readers than editors, and so less chance of a
+cure. I do not want to believe it is the readers. It is more
+comforting to suppose those poor people must put up with what they can
+get in a hurry ten minutes before the train starts, only to find, as
+they might have guessed, that vacuity is behind the smirk of a girl with
+a face like that. They are forced to stuff their literature behind them,
+so that ownership of it shall not openly shame them before their
+fellow-passengers.
+
+With several exceptions, the mass of English magazines and reviews may be
+dismissed in a few seconds. The exceptions usually are not out yet, or
+one has seen them. It used not to be so, and that is what makes me think
+it is the producers, and not the readers, who require skilled attention.
+It is startling to turn to the magazines of twenty or thirty years ago,
+and to compare them with what is thought good enough for us. I was
+looking through such a magazine recently, and found a poem by Swinburne,
+a prose-romance by William Morris, and much more work of a quality you
+would no more expect to find in a current magazine than you would palm
+trees in Whitechapel.
+
+Of all the periodicals which reach the British front, the two for which
+there is most competition in any officers' mess are _La Vie Parisienne_
+and New York _Life_. The impudent periodical from Paris is universal on
+our front. The work of its artists decorates every dug-out. I should say
+almost every mess subscribes for it. It is true it is usual to account
+for this as being naughty chance. Youth has been separated from the sober
+influence of its English home, is away from the mild and tranquil light
+of Oxford Street feminity, is given to death, and therefore snatches in
+abandon at amusement which otherwise would not amuse. Do not believe it.
+_La Vie Parisienne_, it is true, is certainly not a paper for the English
+family. I should be embarrassed if my respected aunts found it on my
+table, pointed to its drawings, and asked me what I saw in them. What
+makes it popular with young Englishmen in France is not the audacity of
+its abbreviated underclothing, for there are English prints which
+specialize in those in a more leering way, and they are not widely
+popular like the French print. But _La Vie_ is produced by intelligent
+men. It is not a heavy lump of stupid or snobbish photographs. It does
+not leer. There is nothing clownish and furtive about it. It is the gay
+and frank expression of artists whose humour is too broad for the
+general; but, as a rule, there is no doubt about the fine quality of
+their drawings and the deftness of their wit. That is what makes the
+French print so liked by our men.
+
+New York _Life_ proves that, it seems to me. The American periodical is
+very popular in France, and the demand for it has now reached London. The
+chemise is not its oriflamme. It properly recognizes much else in life.
+But its usual survey of the world's affairs has a merry expansiveness
+which would make the editorial mind common to London as giddy as grandma
+in an aeroplane. It is not written in a walled enclosure of ideas. It is
+not darkened and circumscribed by the dusty notions of the clubs. It does
+not draw poor people as sub-species of the human. It does not recognize
+class distinctions at all, except for comic purposes. It is brighter,
+better-informed, bolder, and more humane than anything on this side, and
+our men in France find its spirit in accord with theirs. One of the
+results of the War will be that they will want something like it when
+they come back, though I don't see how they are to get it unless it is
+imported, or unless they emigrate to a country where to feel that way
+about things is normal and not peculiar.
+
+
+
+
+IX. The Marne
+
+
+AUGUST 3, 1918. The holy angels were at Mons; British soldiers saw them
+there. A Russian army was in England in 1914; everybody knew someone who
+had seen it. And Joan of Arc, in shining armour, has returned to the aid
+of the French. These and even graver symptoms warn us that we may not be
+in that state of equanimity which is useful when examining evidence. Only
+this week, in the significant absence of the house-dog, a mysterious hand
+thrust through my letter-box a document which proved, as only propaganda
+may, that this war was thoroughly explored in the Book of Daniel. Why
+were we not told so before? Why was Lord Haldane reading Hegel when there
+was Daniel? What did we pay him for? And that very same night I stood at
+the outer gate with one who asked me why, when there were stacks of jam
+in our grocer's shop, we could not buy any because the Food Controller
+had omitted to put up the price. I had no time to reason this out,
+because at that moment we heard a loud buzzing in the sky. We gazed up
+into the velvet black night, that was like a skull-cap over the world.
+The buzzing continued. "Perhaps," said my companion, "what we can hear is
+our great big Bee."
+
+That buzzing overhead did not develop. It merely waned and increased. It
+was remarkable but inconsequential. It alarmed while giving no good cause
+for alarm. In the invisible heavens there might have been One who was
+playing Bogie to frighten poor mortals for fun. I went in to continue my
+reading of Charles le Goffic's book, _General Foch at the Marne_. This
+was all in accord with the Book of Daniel, and the jam that was uneatable
+because it was not dear enough. My reading continued, as it were, the
+mysterious buzzing.
+
+I can give, as a rule, but a slack attention to military history, and my
+interest in war itself is, fundamentally, the same as for cretinism and
+bad drains. I merely wonder why it is, and wish it were not. But the
+Marne, I regret to say, holds me in wonder still; for this there is
+nothing to say excepting that, from near Meaux, I heard the guns of the
+Marne. I saw some of its pomp and circumstance. I had been hearing the
+guns of the War for some weeks then, but the guns of the Marne were
+different. They who listened knew that those foreboding sounds were of
+the crisis, with all its import. If that thundering drew nearer....
+
+The Marne holds me still, as would a ghost story which, by chance, had me
+within its weird. I want to know all that can be told of it. And if there
+is one subject of the War more than another which needs a careful sorting
+of the mixed straws in our beards, it is the Battle of the Marne. In the
+case of my own beard, one of the straws is the Russian myth. In France,
+as in England, everybody knew someone who had seen those Russians. One
+huge camp, I was told, was near Chartres, and in Paris I was shown
+Cossack caps which had come from there. That was on the day Manoury's
+soldiers went east in their historic sortie of taxicabs against von
+Kluck. I could not then go to Chartres to confirm that camp of Cossacks;
+nor--and this is my straw--could the German Intelligence Staff. I did not
+believe that the Russians were in France, but I could not prove they were
+not, nor could the German generals, who, naturally, had heard about those
+Russians. Now the rapid sweep of the German right wing under von Kluck
+had given the enemy a vulnerable flank which, in a certain situation,
+might admit disaster. The peril of his western flank must have made the
+enemy sensitive to the least draught coming from there.
+
+It is on such frailties as this that the issue of battle depends, and the
+fate of empires. War, as a means of deciding our luck, is no more
+scientific than dicing for it. The first battle of the Marne holds a
+mystery which will intrigue historians, separate friends, cause hot
+debate, spawn learned treatises, help to fill the libraries, and assist
+in keeping not a few asylums occupied, for ages. If you would measure it
+as a cause for lunacy, read Belloc's convincing exposition of the battle,
+and compare that with le Goffic's story of the fighting of the Ninth
+Army, under General Foch, by Fere Champenoise and the Marshes of St.
+Gond. Le Goffic was there.
+
+Why did fate tip the beam in the way we know? Why, for a wonder, did the
+sound of gunfire recede from Paris, and not approach still nearer? I
+myself at the time held to an unreasonable faith that the enemy would
+never enter Paris, in spite of what Kitchener thought and the French
+Government feared. Yet when challenged I could not explain why, for I was
+ill, and the days seemed to be biassed to the German side. To have heard
+the guns of the Marne was as though once one had listened to the high
+gods contending over our destiny.
+
+Historians of the future will spell out le Goffic on the fighting round
+the Tower on the Marshes at Mondement. It was the key of the swamp of St.
+Gond, the French centre. The Tower was held by the French when, by every
+military rule, they should have given it up. At length they lost it. They
+won it again, but because of sheer unreason, so far as the evidence
+shows, for at the moment they regained it Mondement had ceased to be
+anything but a key to a door which had been burst wide open. Foch, by the
+books, was beaten. But Foch as we know was fond of quoting Joseph de
+Maistre: "A battle lost is a battle which one had expected to lose." In
+this faith, while his battalions were reduced to thin companies without
+officers, and the Prussian Guard and the Saxons were driving back his
+whole line, Foch, who had sent to borrow the 42nd Division from the
+general on his left, kept reporting to Headquarters: "The situation is
+excellent." But the 42nd had not yet arrived, and he continued to
+retire.
+
+Contradicting Belloc and the usual explanations, M. le Goffic says that
+Foch was unaware of any gap in the German line. What he did was to
+thrust in a bleak venture the borrowed division against the flank of the
+advancing Prussians, who were in superior force. The Prussians retired.
+But had they not been preparing to retire? Yet for what reason? When all
+seemed lost, Foch won on the centre.
+
+On the extreme French left, where Manoury was himself being outflanked by
+von Kluck, the fatigued and outnumbered French soldiers were resigned to
+the worst. They had done all that was possible, and it seemed of no
+avail. They did not know that at that time the locomotives in the rear of
+the German armies were reversed; were heading to the north. What happened
+in the minds of the directing German generals--for that is where the
+defeat began--is not clear; but the sudden and prolonged resistance of
+the French at the Marne may have disrupted with a violent doubt minds
+that had been taut with over-confidence. The fear to which the doubt
+increased when Manoury attacked and persisted, the baffling audacity in
+the centre of the defeated Foch, who did everything no well-bred
+militarist would expect from another gentleman, and the common fervour of
+the French soldiers who fought for a week like men possessed, at last
+caused something to give way in the brain of the enemy. He could not
+understand it. This was not according to his plan. He could not find it
+in his books. He did not know what more he could do, except to retire
+into safety and think it over afresh. The unexpected fury of the human
+spirit, outraged into desperation after it was assumed to be subdued, and
+bursting suddenly, and regardless of consequences, against the calm and
+haughty front of material science assured of its power, checked and
+deflected the processes of the German intelligence. I have seen an
+indignant rooster produce the same effect on a bull.
+
+
+
+
+X. Carlyle
+
+
+AUGUST 17, 1918. Having something on the mind may lead one to salvation,
+but it seems just as likely to lead one to the asylum. The Germans, who
+are necessarily in the power of an argument which shows them we are
+devils, are yet compelled to admit that Shakespeare is worth reasoned
+consideration, and so they avoid the implied difficulty by explaining
+that as Shakespeare was a genius therefore he was a German. What we
+should do if it could be proved a grandfather of the poet was a Prussian
+probably only our Home Secretary could tell us, after he had made quite
+sure he would not be overheard by a white and tense believer in the
+Hidden Hand. Thank God Heine was a Jew, though even so there are rumours
+that a London memorial to him is to be removed. And last night I heard it
+expounded very seriously, by a clever man of letters, that Carlyle's day
+is done. Few people read Carlyle to-day--and it may be supposed that as
+they read they hold his volumes with a Hidden Hand--and fewer still love
+him, for at heart he was a Prussian. He was, indeed, slain in our
+affections by Frederick the Great. His shrine at Chelsea is no longer
+visited. It is all for the best, because in any case he wrote only a
+gnarled and involved bastard stuff of partly Teutonic origin. While this
+appeal was being made to me, I watched the face of a cat, which got up
+and stretched itself during the discourse, with some hope; but that
+animal looked as though it were thinking of its drowned kittens. It was
+the last chance, and the cat did not laugh. On my way home, thinking of
+that grave man of letters and of his serious and attentive listeners, I
+noticed even the street lights were lowered or doused, and remembered
+that every wine-shop was shut. London is enough to break one's heart. If
+only by some carelessness one of the angels failed to smother his great
+laughter over us, and we heard it, we might, in awakening embarrassment,
+the first streak of dawn, put a stop to what had been until that moment
+an unconscious performance.
+
+
+
+
+XI. Holiday Reading
+
+
+AUGUST 31, 1918. I make the same mistake whenever the chance of a holiday
+broadens and brightens. A small library, reduced by a process of natural
+selection, helps to make weighty the bag. But I do not at once close the
+bag; a doubt keeps it open; I take out the books again and consider them.
+When the problem of carrying those volumes about faces me, it is a relief
+to discover how many of them lose their vital importance. Yet a depraved
+sense of duty, perhaps the residue of what such writers as Marcus
+Aurelius have done for me, refuses to allow every volume to be
+jettisoned. It imposes, as a hair shirt, several new and serious books
+which there has been no time to examine. They are books that require a
+close focus, a long and steady concentration, a silent immobility hardly
+distinguishable from sleep. This year for instance I notice Jung's
+_Analytical Psychology_ confidently expecting to go for a holiday with
+me. I feel I ought to take some such stern reminder of mortality, and, in
+addition, out of a sentimental regard for the past, a few old books, for
+my faith is not dead that they may put a new light on the wonderful
+strangeness of these latter days. I take these, too.
+
+And that is why I find them at the journey's end. But why did I bring
+them? For now they seem to be exactly what I would avoid--they look like
+toil. And work, as these years have taught the observant, is but for
+slaves and the conscripted. It is never admired, except with a distant
+and haughty sententiousness, by the best people.
+
+Nor is it easy, by this west-country quay, to profit by a conscience
+which is willing to allow some shameless idleness. I began talking,
+before the books were even unpacked, with some old acquaintances by the
+water-side. Most disquieting souls! But I cannot blame them. They have
+been obliged to add gunnery to their knowledge of seamanship and
+navigation. They were silent, they shook their heads, following some
+thoughtless enquiries of mine after the wellbeing of other men I used to
+meet here. Worse than all, I was forced to listen to the quiet recitals
+of stranded cripples, once good craftsmen in the place, and these dimmed
+the blessed sun even where in other years it was unusually bright. That
+is what put holiday thoughts and literature away. I felt I had been very
+unfairly treated, especially as the mutilated, being young men, were
+unpleasantly noticeable in so small a village on fine mornings. It is not
+right that the calm of our well-earned leisure should be so savagely
+ruined. There was one morning on the quay when, watching the incoming
+tide, two of us were discussing Mametz Wood and some matters relating to
+it which will never be published, and the young man who was instructing
+me was approached by an older man, who beamed, and held in his hand a
+news-sheet. "Splendid news this morning," said the elderly man to the
+young soldier. He wanted the opinion of one who had fought on that
+ground, and I regret to say he got it. The soldier indifferently handed
+back the glorious news, without inspecting it, with words which youth
+should never address to age.
+
+So how can I stay by the quay all the golden day long? I have not come
+here prepared to endure the sudden Arctic shadows which fall, even in
+summer, from such clouds. The society of our fellows was never so
+uncertain, so likely to be stormy, as in these days. And the opinions of
+none of our fellow-men can be so disturbing as those of the rebel from
+the trenches, who appears, too, to expect us to agree with him at once,
+as though he had a special claim on our sympathetic attention. While
+considering him and his views of society, of peace and war, I see what
+might come upon us as the logical consequence of such a philosophy, and
+the dread vision does not accord with the high serenity of this Atlantic
+coast, where the wind, like the hilarious vivacity of a luminous globe
+spinning through the blue, is mocking these very sheets as I write them,
+and is trying to blow them, a little before their time, into vacuity.
+
+It is not easy, and perhaps this summer it would not be right, to find
+the exact mood for a holiday. In the frame of mind which is more usual
+with us, I put Ecclesiastes--forsaken by a previous visitor, and used to
+lengthen a short leg of the dressing-table--in my pocket, and leave the
+quay to its harsh new thoughts, and to the devices by which it gets a
+bare sustenance out of the tides, the seasons, and the winds, complicated
+now with high explosives in cunning ambush; and go out to the headland,
+where wild goats among the rocks which litter the steep are the only life
+to blatter critical comment to high heaven. I left that holiday quay and
+its folk, and took with me a prayer which might go far to brace me to
+support the blattering of goats, if that, too, should be my luck even
+when in solitude. I passed at the hill-top the last whitewashed wall of
+the village, where the open Atlantic is sighted, and stopped to glance at
+the latest official poster on the wall. That explained to me, while the
+west wind blew, what the penalties are for young men who are in the wrong
+because they are young, not having attained the middle-age which brings
+with it immunity for the holding of heroic notions. Yet how if those
+young men are not bellicose like their wise seniors? Why should they get
+the evil which their elders, who will it, take so much care to avoid?
+
+The dust of official lorries in a hurry no longer made the wayside hedges
+appear aged. The wind was newly arrived from mid-ocean. I met it coming
+ashore. It knew nothing about us, so far. In the distance, the village
+with its shipping was a faint blur, already a faded impress on earth, as
+though more than half forgotten in spite of its important problems. It
+was hardly more than a discoloration, and suggested nothing of
+consequence. The sun on the grey rocks was giving a hint that, should
+ever it be required, there was heat enough left to begin things anew. I
+realized in alarm that such a morning of re-birth might be beautiful; for
+I might not be there to sing _Laus Deo_. I might miss that fine morning.
+There was a suggestion of leisure in the pattern of the lichen on the
+granite; it gave the idea of prolonged yet still merely tentative efforts
+at design. The lichen seemed to have complete assurance that there was
+time enough for new work. The tough stems of the heather, into which I
+put my hand, felt like the sinews of a body that was as ancient as the
+other stars, but still so young that it was tranquilly fixed in the joy
+of its first awakening, knowing very little yet, guessing nothing of its
+beginning nor of its end; still infantile, with all life before it, its
+voice merely the tiny shrilling of a grasshopper. The rocks were poised
+so precariously above the quivering plain of the sea that they appeared
+to tremble in mid-air, being things of no weight, in the rush of the
+planet. The distant headlands and moors dilated under the generating sun.
+It was then that I pulled Ecclesiastes out of my pocket, leaned against
+the granite, and began:
+
+"Vanity of vanities..."
+
+I looked up again. There was a voice above me. An old goat, the
+venerable image of all-knowledge, of sneering and bearded sin, was
+contemplating me. It was a critical comment of his that I had heard.
+Embarrassed, I put away my book.
+
+
+
+
+XII. An Autumn Morning
+
+
+SEPTEMBER 28, 1918. The way to my suburban station and the morning train
+admonishes me sadly with its stream of season-ticket holders carrying
+dispatch-cases, and all of them anxious, their resolute pace makes it
+evident, for work. This morning two aeroplanes were over us in the blue,
+in mimic combat; they were, of course, getting into trim for the raid
+to-night, because the barometer is beautifully high and steady. But the
+people on their way to the 9.30 did not look up at the flight. Life is
+real, life is earnest. When I doubt that humanity knows what it is doing,
+I get comfort from watching our local brigadiers and Whitehall ladies on
+their way these tranquil Autumn mornings to give our planet another good
+shove towards the millennium. Progress, progress! I hear their feet
+overtaking me, brisk and resolute, as though a revelation had come to
+them overnight, and so now they know what to do, undiverted by any doubt.
+There is a brief glimpse of a downcast face looking as though it had just
+chanted the Dies Irae through the mouthfuls of a hurried breakfast; and
+once more this laggard is passed in the day's race towards the higher
+peak. The reproof goes home. It justly humiliates. But the weather is
+only a little west of south for one of the last fair days of the year;
+and the gloom of the yew in the churchyard--which stands over the obscure
+headstone of a man named Puplett--that yew which seems the residue of the
+dark past, has its antiquity full of little smouldering embers of new
+life again; and so a lazy man has reasons to doubt whether the millennium
+is worth all this hurry. As it is, we seem to have as much trouble as
+there is time to classify before supper; by which time, from the look of
+the weather, there will be more. Then why hurry over it? The tombstone
+says Puplett was a "thrifty and industrious parent," and I can see what
+happened to him in 1727. What would I not give, I ask myself, as I pause
+by the yew, and listen to the aeroplanes overhead, for a few words from
+this Puplett on thrift, industry, and progress! Does he now know more
+than brigadiers?
+
+It may be that what Europe is suffering from in our time is the
+consequence of having worked too hard, since that unlucky day when Watt
+gave too much thought to a boiling kettle. We have worked too hard
+without knowing why we were doing it, or what our work would do with us.
+We were never wise enough to loaf properly, to stop and glance casually
+around for our bearings. We went blindly on. Consider the newspapers, as
+they are now! A casual inspection of the mixture of their hard and
+congested sentences is enough to show that what is wanted by our writers
+famous for their virility, their power of "graphic description" as their
+outpour is called by their disciples, and their knowledge of what
+everybody ought to be doing, is perhaps no more than an occasional
+bromide. They would feel better for a long sleep. This direction by them
+of our destiny is an intoxicating pursuit, but it is as exhausting as
+would be any other indulgence. We might do quite well if they would only
+leave it to us. But they will never believe it. Ah! the Great Men of
+Action! What the world has suffered from their inspired efforts to
+shepherd humanity into worried flocks hurrying nobody knew whither, every
+schoolboy reads; and our strong men to-day, without whose names and
+portraits no periodical is considered attractive, would surely have been
+of greater benefit to us if they had remained absorbed in their earlier
+skittles. If the famous magician, who, with several others, is winning
+the war by suggestion, and that true soldier, General FitzChutney, and
+that earnest and eloquent publicist, Mr. Blufflerlow, had been persuaded
+to stick to marbles, what misleading excitement and unprofitable anxiety
+would have been spared to the commonweal! Boys should be warned against
+and protected from Great Careers. Better still if embryologists could
+discover something which would enable midwives unfailingly to recognize
+Strong Men at birth. It would be easy then to issue to those ladies
+secret but specific instructions.
+
+There is a street which turns abruptly from my straight road to the
+station. It goes like a sudden resolution to get out of this daily hurry
+and excitement. It is a pre-war street. It is an ancient thoroughfare of
+ours, a rambling and unfrequented by-way. It is more than four years
+since it was a habit of mine to loiter through it, with a man with whom I
+shall do no more pleasant idling. We enjoyed its old and ruinous shops
+and its stalls, where all things could be bought at second-hand,
+excepting young doves, ferrets, and dogs. I saw it again this morning,
+and felt, somehow, that it was the first time I had noticed it since the
+world suddenly changed. Where had it been in the meantime? It was empty
+this morning, it was still, it was luminous. It might have been waiting,
+a place that was, for the return of what can never return. Its sunlight
+was different from the glare in the hurrying road to the station. It was
+the apparition of a light which has gone out. I stopped, and was a little
+fearful. Was that street really there? I thought its illumination might
+be a ghostly sunlight haunting an avenue leading only to the nowhere of
+the memory. Did the others who were passing see that by-way? I do not
+think so. They never paused. They did not glance sideways in surprise,
+stare in an expectancy which changed almost at once into regret for what
+was good, but is not.
+
+Who would not retire into the near past, and stay there, if it were
+possible? (What a weakness!) Retrospection was once a way of escape for
+those who had not the vitality to face their own fine day with its
+exacting demands. Yet who now can look squarely at the present, except
+officials, armament shareholders, and those in perambulators? This
+side-turning offered me a chance to dodge the calendar and enter the
+light of day not ours. The morning train of the day I saw in that street
+went before the War. I decided to lose it, and visit the shop at the top
+of the street, where once you could buy anything from a toddy glass to
+an emu's egg having a cameo on it of a ship in full sail. It was also a
+second-hand bookshop. Most lovers of such books would have despised it.
+It was of little use to go there for valuable editions, or even for such
+works as Sowerby's _Botany_. But when last the other man and myself
+rummaged in it we found the first volume of the _Boy's Own Paper_, and an
+excellent lens for our landscape camera. An alligator, sadly in need of
+upholstering, stood at the door, holding old umbrellas and walking-sticks
+in its arms. The proprietor, with a sombre nature and a black beard so
+like the established shadows of his lumbered premises that he could have
+been overlooked for part of the unsalable stock, read Swedenborg, Plato,
+Plutarch, and Young's _Night Thoughts_--the latter an edition of the
+eighteenth century in which an Edinburgh parson had made frail marginal
+comments, yellow and barely discernible, such as: "How True!" This dealer
+in lumber read through large goggles, and when he had decided to admit he
+knew you were in his shop he bent his head, and questioned you steadily
+but without a word over the top of his spectacles. If you showed no real
+interest in what you proposed to buy he would refuse to sell it.
+
+There I found him again, still reading--Swedenborg this time--with most
+of the old things about him, including the Duck-billed Platypus; for
+nobody, apparently, had shown sufficient interest in them. The shop,
+therefore, was as I have always known it. There was a spark of a summer's
+day of 1914 still burning in the heart of a necromancer's crystal ball on
+the upper shelf by the window.
+
+The curio there which was really animated put down his book after I had
+been in the shop for some minutes, regarded me deliberately as though
+looking to see what change had come to me in four such years, and then
+glanced up and nodded to the soothsayer's crystal. "It's a pity," he
+said, "that those things won't really work." He asked no questions. He
+did not inquire after my friend. He did not refer to those problems which
+the crowds in the morning trains were eagerly discussing at that moment.
+He sat on a heap of forgotten magazines, and remained apart with
+Swedenborg. I loafed in the fertile dust and quiet among old prints,
+geological specimens, antlers, pewter, bed-warmers, amphorae, and books.
+The proprietor presided over the dim litter of his world, bowed, pensive,
+and silent, suggesting in his aloofness not indifference but a retired
+sadness for those for whom the mysteries could be made plain, but who are
+wilful in their blindness, and so cannot be helped.
+
+I came upon a copy of _Walden_, in its earliest Camelot dress (price
+sixpence), and remembered that one who was not there had once said he was
+looking for it in that edition. I turned to the last page and read: "Only
+that day dawns to which we are awake..."
+
+I reserved the book for him at once, though knowing I could not give it
+to him. But what is the good of cold reason? Are we awake in such dawns
+as we now witness? Or has there been no dawn yet because we are only
+restless in our sleep? It might be either way, and in such a perplexity
+reason cannot help us. I thought that perhaps I might now be stirring, on
+the point of actually rousing. There, in any case, was the evidence of
+that fugitive spark of the early summer of 1914 still imprisoned in its
+crystal, proof that the world had experienced a dawn or two. An entirely
+unreasonable serenity possessed me--perhaps because I was not fully
+roused--because of the indestructibility of those few voiceless hopes we
+cherish that seem as fugitive as the glint in the crystal ball, hopes
+without which our existence would have no meaning, for if we lost them we
+should know the universe was a witless jest, with nobody to laugh at it.
+
+"I want this book," I said to the shopman.
+
+"I know," he answered, without looking up. "I've kept it for you."
+
+
+
+
+XIII. News from the Front
+
+
+OCTOBER 12, 1918. My remembrance of the man, when I got his letter from
+France--and it was approved, apparently, by one of his regimental
+officers, for a censorial signature, was upon its envelope--was a
+regrettable and embarrassing check to my impulse to cry Victory. I found
+it hard, nevertheless, in the moment when victory was near, to forgive
+the curious lapse that letter betrayed in a fellow who did not try for
+exemption but volunteered for the infantry, and afterwards declined a
+post which would have saved him from the trenches. He was the sort of
+curious soldier that we civilians will never understand. He aided the
+enemy he was fighting. His platoon officer reported that fact as
+characteristic and admirable. He had gone out under fire to hold up a
+wounded German and give him water. He did not die then, but soon after,
+on the Hindenburg Line, because, chosen as a good man who was expert in
+killing others with a deadly mechanism, he was leading in an attack. This
+last letter of his, which arrived after the telegram warning us, in
+effect, that there could be no more correspondence with him, alluded in
+contempt to his noble profession and task, and ended with a quotation
+from Drum Taps which he prayed I would understand.
+
+His prayer was in vain. I did not understand. I read that quotation at
+breakfast, just after finishing my fierce and terrible _Daily Dustpan_,
+and the quotation, therefore, was at once repugnant and unfortunate. For
+clearly the leader-writer of the _Dustpan_ was a bolder and more martial
+man. It is but fair to assume, however, that as that journalist in the
+normal routine of a day devoted to his country had not had the good
+fortune to run up against the machine guns of the Hindenburg trenches,
+naturally he was better able to speak than a soldier who was idly
+swinging in the wire there. The quotation, strange for a Guardsman to
+make, is worth examining as an example of the baleful influence war has
+upon those who must do the fighting which journalists have the hard fate
+merely to indicate is the duty of others. The verse actually is called
+Reconciliation. After a partial recovery from the shame of the revelation
+of my correspondent's unsoldierly spirit, a shame which was a little
+softened by the thought that anyhow he was dead, I went to _Leaves of
+Grass_ for the first time for some years, to see whether Drum Taps
+accorded with war as we know it.
+
+And now I am forced to confess that we may no longer accuse the Americans
+of coming late into the War. They appear to have been in it, if the date
+of Drum Taps is ignored, longer even than Fleet Street. I cannot see that
+we have contributed anything out of our experiences of battle which can
+compare with Whitman's poems. He appears to have known of war in
+essential episodes and incidents, as well as from a high vision of it, in
+a measure which the literature of our own tragedy does not compass.
+
+A minor poet told me once that he could not read Whitman. He declared it
+was like chewing glass. When we criticize others, the instant penalty is
+that we unwittingly confess what we are ourselves. We know the reception
+of _Leaves of Grass_ was of the kind which not seldom greets the
+appearance of an exceptional book, though Emerson recognized its worth.
+So when occasionally we admit, shyly and apologetically, as is our habit
+(in the way we confess that once we enjoyed sugar candy), that long ago
+we used to read Emerson, it would do our superior culture no harm to
+remember that Emerson was at least the first of the world of letters to
+tell the new poet that his _Leaves_ was "the most extraordinary piece of
+wit and wisdom America has yet produced." Nothing in all his writing
+proves the quality of Emerson's mind so well as his instant and full
+knowledge of Whitman, when others felt that what Whitman was really
+inviting was laughter and abuse. I suppose what the young poet meant when
+he said reading Whitman was like a mouthful of glass was that Whitman has
+no music, and so cannot be read aloud. There is always a fair quantity of
+any poet's work which would do much to make this world a cold and
+unfriendly place if we persevered in reading it aloud. In some
+circumstances even Shakespeare might cause blasphemy. Perhaps he has. And
+Whitman, like summer-time, and all of us, is not always at his best. But
+I think it is possible that many people to-day will know the music and
+the solace of the great dirge beginning "When lilacs last in the dooryard
+bloom'd." And again, if capturing with words those surmises which
+intermittently and faintly show in the darkness of our speculations and
+are at once gone, if the making of a fixed star of such wayward glints is
+the mark of a poet, then Whitman gave us "On the beach at night."
+
+I had never thought Whitman so good till that soldier's letter
+accidentally discovered it to me. If Whitman had been through the
+campaign across the narrow straits, if Ypres, Vimy, and Cambrai had been
+in his own experience, he could have added little to Drum Taps. For there
+is nothing that is new in war. It is only the campaign that is new, and
+the men who are young. Yet all has happened before. But each young
+soldier in a new campaign feels that his experience is strangely
+personal. He will have the truth revealed to him, and will think that it
+is an intimacy for his soul alone; yet others, too, have seen it, but are
+dead. The survivors of this War will imagine their experiences unique,
+admonitory, terrible, and that if they had the words to tell us their
+knowledge they would not be believed or understood. That is why the
+succeeding generation, too, gets caught. Yet there is enough of this War
+in Drum Taps to have stopped it more than two years ago if only one
+European in ten had had so much imagination and enterprise as would take
+a man through a strange field gate when he was convinced it was in that
+direction he should go, and enough of charity in his heart to stay him
+from throwing stones at the sheep while on his way.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. Authors and Soldiers
+
+
+OCTOBER 26, 1918. If a man who knew no books, but who became serious when
+told of his emptiness, and showed eagerness to begin to fill it, were
+confronted with the awful strata in the library of the British Museum,
+and were told that that was his task, he might fall unconscious. But what
+cruelty! He could be warned that the threat has little in it; that the
+massed legions of books could do him no harm, if he did not disturb them.
+It could be whispered to the illiterate man--whose wisdom, it might
+chance, was better than much scholarship--that it is possible to read the
+best of the world's drama in a few months, and that in the remainder of
+the year he could read its finest poetry, history, and philosophy. I am
+but paraphrasing what was said recently by an Oxford professor. I would
+not dare to give it as my own opinion, within hearing of the high
+priests.
+
+Yet the professor's declaration may be not only outrageous, but right.
+It is a terrible thought, except to those who are merely bibliophiles
+just as some little boys are lovers of old postage stamps. I think he may
+be right, for I have a catalogue of all the books and documents prompted
+by the War and published before June, 1916. It runs to 180 pages of small
+type. It contains the names of about 3500 books and pamphlets. Now, let
+us suppose a student wished to know the truth about the War, for perhaps
+a very youthful student could imagine it was possible to get the truth
+about it. The truth may be somewhere in that catalogue; but I know, for I
+have tried, that it has no significant name to betray its pure gold, no
+strange brilliance to make the type dance on that page as one turns the
+leaves with a hopeless eye. There are, however, two certainties about the
+catalogue. One is that it would require a long life, a buoyant
+disposition, and a freedom from domestic cares, to read every book in it.
+And the other is that there are no more books in it--which we ought to
+count as books--than one evening would see us through, interruptions and
+all. The books in that mass are as dead as the leaves of their June of
+the War.
+
+I must confess, though, that I am a bibliophile with War books. Any book
+about the Great War is good enough for me. I am to that class of
+literature what little boys are to stamps. Yes; I know well the dread
+implication. I am aware of the worm in the mind; that I probe a wound;
+that I surrender to an impulse to peer into the darkness of the pit; that
+I encourage a thought which steals in with the quiet of midnight, and
+that it keeps me awake while the household sleeps. I know I consort with
+ghosts in a region of evil. I get the horrors, and I do not repel them.
+For some reason I like those ghosts. Most of them have no names for me,
+but I count them as old friends of mine; and where should I meet them
+again, at night, but amid the scenes we knew?
+
+And what do I look for in these War books? It is not easy to say. It is a
+private matter. Songs the soldiers used to sing on French roads are often
+in my head. I am like the man who was once bewitched, and saw and heard
+things in another place which nobody will believe, and who goes aside,
+therefore, unsociable and morose, to brood on what is not of this world.
+I am confessing this but to those who themselves have been lost in the
+dark, and are now awake again. The others will not know. They will only
+answer something about "Cheering up," or--and this is the strangest thing
+to hear--"to forget it." I don't want to forget it. So if in a book I see
+names like Chateau Thierry, Crepy-en-Valois, Dickebusch, Hooge,
+Vermelles, Hulluch, Festubert, Notre Dame de Lorette, Ligny-Tilloy,
+Sailly-Saillisel, Croiselles, Thiepval, Contalmaison, Dompierre, then I
+am caught. I do not try to escape.
+
+Yet these books rarely satisfy me. Is it not remarkable that soldiers who
+could face the shells with an excellent imitation of indifference should
+falter in their books, intimidated by the opinions of those who stayed at
+home? They rarely summon the courage to attack those heroic dummies which
+are not soldiers but idols set up in a glorious battlefield that never
+existed except as a romance among the unimaginative; the fine figures and
+the splendid war that were air-built of a rapture. These authors who were
+soldiers faced the real War, but they dare not deride the noble and
+popular figments which lived but in the transports of the exalted. They
+write in whispers, as it were, embarrassed by a knowledge which they
+would communicate, but fear they may not. To shatter a cherished
+illusion, to expose the truth to a proud memory, that, I will confess,
+is always a task before which a sensitive man will hesitate. Yet it is
+also part of the test of a writer's courage; by his hesitation a
+soldier-author may know that he is in danger of failing in his duty. Yet
+the opinion of the public, which intimidates us, is no mere bugbear. It
+is very serious. People do not enjoy the destruction of their cherished
+illusions. They do not crown the defamers of their idols. What is it that
+balks a soldier's judgment when he begins to write about the War? He is
+astonished by the reflection that if he were to reproduce with enjoyment
+the talk of the heroes which was usual in France, then many excellent
+ladies might denounce it indignantly as unmanly. Unmanly! But he is
+right. They not only might, but they would. How often have I listened to
+the cool and haughty contralto of ladies of education and refinement who
+were clearly unaware that what they were encouraging, what to them
+afforded so much pride, what deepened their conviction of righteous
+sacrifice, was but an obscene outrage on the souls and bodies of young
+men. How is one to convey that to ladies? All that a timid writer may do
+is to regret the awful need to challenge the pious assurance of
+Christians which is sure to be turned to anger by the realities.
+
+I have read in very few books anything that was as good as the gossip one
+could hear by chance in France. The intimate yarn of the observant
+soldier home on leave, who could trust his listener, is superior to much
+one sees in print. In that way I heard the best story of the War. If it
+could be put down as it was given to me it would be a masterpiece. But it
+cannot be reproduced. It came as I heard it because, remembering his
+incredible experience, the narrator found himself in secure and familiar
+circumstances again, was confident of his audience, and was thinking only
+of his story. His mind was released, he was comfortable, and he was
+looking backward in a grim humour which did not quite disguise his
+sadness. His smile was comical, but it could move no answering smile.
+These intelligent soldiers, who tell us the stories we never see in
+print, are not thinking about their style, or of the way the other men
+have told such tales, but only of what happened to themselves. They are
+as artless as the child who at breakfast so tells its dream of the night
+before that one wants to listen, and Tolstoy says that is art. The child
+has heard nothing of the apocalyptic visions, and does not know Poe,
+Ambrose Bierce, or Kipling. He is concerned only with his own sensations,
+and you listen to him because you have had such dreams, and he recalls a
+dark adventure you had forgotten.
+
+But the difficulty in the writing of such stories is that the narrator,
+as soon as he begins, becomes conscious of the successful methods of
+other men. I have been reading a number of War stories published
+recently, and it was painful to see how many were ruined by Kipling
+before this War began. Kipling was original, and his tricks of manner,
+often irritating, and his deplorable views of human society, were usually
+carried off by his genius for observation, and the spontaneity of the
+drama of his stories. But when his story was thin, and he was wandering
+in an excursion with his childish philosophy, he was usually facetious.
+As an obvious and easily imitable trick for dull evenings, this elaborate
+jocularity seems to have been more enjoyed by his disciples than his
+genius for narrative when he was happy, and his material was full and
+sound. Yet his false and vulgar fun has spoiled many of these volumes
+pollinated from India. They have another defect, too, though it would be
+unfair to blame Kipling for that when it may be seen blossoming with the
+unassuming modesty of a tulip in any number of _Punch_. I mean that
+amusing gravity of the snob who is sure of the exclusive superiority of
+his caste mark, with not the trace of a smile on his face, and at a time
+when all Europe is awakening to the fact that it sentenced itself to ruin
+when it gave great privileges to his kind of folk in return for the
+guidance of what it thought was a finer culture, but was no more than a
+different accent. It was, we are now aware, the mere Nobodies who won the
+War for us; and yet we still meekly accept as the artistic representation
+of the British soldier or sailor an embarrassing guy that would disgrace
+pantomime. And how the men who won must enjoy it!
+
+
+
+
+XV. Waiting for Daylight
+
+
+NOVEMBER 9, 1918. I read again my friend's last field service postcard,
+brief and enigmatic, and now six weeks old. I could find in it no more
+than when it first came. Midnight struck, and I went to the outer gate.
+The midnight had nothing to tell me. Not that it was silent; we would not
+call it mere silence, that brooding and impenetrable darkness charged
+with doom unrevealed, which is now our silent night, unrelenting to
+lonely watchers.
+
+Near my gate is a laburnum tree. Once upon a time, on nights of rain such
+as this, the shower caught in it would turn to stars, and somehow from
+the brightness of that transient constellation I could get my bearings. I
+knew where I was. One noticed those small matters in the past, and was
+innocently thankful for them. Those lights sufficed us. There was
+something companionable even in the street lamp. But what is it now? You
+see it, when you are accustomed to the midnight gloom of war, shrouded, a
+funeral smear of purple in a black world. No bearing can be got from it
+now. What one looks into is the lightless unknown. I peer into the night
+and rain for some familiar and reasonable shape to loom--I am permitted
+to do this, for so far the police do not object to a citizen cherishing a
+hopeful though fatuous disposition--but my usual reward is but the sound
+of unseen drainage, as though I were listening to my old landmarks in
+dissolution. I feel I should not be surprised, when daylight came, to
+find that the appearance of my neighbourhood had become like
+Spitzbergen's.
+
+That is why I soon retreat now from my gate, no wiser, bringing in with
+me on these nights of rain little more than the certainty that we need
+expect no maroons or bombs; and then, because the act is most unpatriotic
+in a time of shortage, put on more coal with my fingers, as this makes
+less noise than a shovel. I choose a pipe, the one I bought in a hurry at
+Amiens. I choose it for that reason, and because it holds more tobacco
+than the others; watch the flames, and take stock.
+
+In the winter, as we know, it never rains. It is merely wet weather.
+Still, that means only a retirement into winter quarters, into those long
+evenings against which we have hoarded our books, light and warmth in
+store. Perhaps in the case of the more idle there may be the
+consideration, pleasant and prolonged, of that other book, known to no
+other man, not yet written, and perhaps destined to perish, a secret
+dream. But what are now these books? What now is even that book which is
+perfect and unwritten? It, too, has lost its light. I am left staring
+into the fire. The newspapers tell us of a common joy at the coming of
+Peace. Peace? If she is coming, then we are much obliged to her. I
+remember during an earlier and wasted joy at a word in France of the
+coming of Peace agreeing with several young soldiers that Brussels would
+be the place to meet, to hail there with flagons the arrival of the Dove.
+But I do not want to be reminded of what has happened since that day.
+That festival could now have but one celebrant. Then, in another year of
+the War, in a mood of contrition and dismay, some people began to feel
+that on the day Peace arrived it would be seemly if she found them on
+their knees in church. Since that day, too, much has happened; and when
+Peace does come I suppose most of us will make reasonably certain the
+bird resembles a dove, and go to bed early--taking another look at the
+long-lost creature next morning, in the presence of a competent witness,
+to confirm that we have not been deceived again by another turkey
+buzzard; and, if that is certain, then let the matter drop.
+
+For in these years, when heavy weather obscures the fixed lights, and we
+are not certain about our bearings, it is useless to pretend that the
+darkness which once made us content with a book is now a worse kind of
+darkness only because intensified by a private shadow. The shadow of a
+personal grief does not wholly explain its sinister intensity. The night
+itself is different. It hides a world unknown. If a sun is to rise on
+that world, then not even a false dawn yet shows. When we stand peering
+into our night, where the sound of rain and wind is like nothing the
+memory knows, and may be even the dark tumult portending a day of wrath,
+we may turn again in solitude to what is left to us, to our books; but
+not with quiet content. To-morrow we may pull ourselves together.
+Curiosity about our new world may awaken. We may become adventurous, and
+make an effort towards greeting the unknown with a cheer, to show it
+there is no settled ill-feeling. But it has been my experience that when
+leaving port in dark weather, though the voyage to come was to be novel
+and interesting, one heard very little cheering from the glum figures
+working about the deck. The ship is sea-worthy, but she is bleak and
+foreign. In a week all will be well. We shall have cleared these icy
+latitudes. The sky will be fairer. We shall have more sun. We shall have
+become accustomed to our shipmates' unfamiliar faces and ways. It is only
+the start that is sullen and unpropitious.
+
+And here is Peace coming, and a new world, and there are my books; yet
+though this pipe after midnight is nearly done, and the fire too, I have
+not been able to settle on a book. The books are like the ashes on the
+hearth. And listen to the wind, with its unpromising sounds from the wide
+and empty desert places! What does any of these old books know about me,
+in the midst of those portents of a new age? We are all outward bound,
+and this is the first night of a long voyage, its port unknown.
+
+Even my bookshelves seem strange to-night. They look remarkably like a
+library I saw once in a house in Richbourg S. Vaast, which, you may
+remember, was a village near Neuve Chapelle. Those French volumes also
+survived from circumstances that had passed. They were litter. They had
+been left behind. I doubted whether, if I tried, I could touch them. They
+were not within my time. That was on a day more than three years ago--it
+was July, 1915--and Richbourg had then only just left this world. There
+was a road without a sign of life; not a movement, except in one house.
+The front of that house had gone, exposing the hollow inside, the
+collapsed floors and hanging beams, and showing also a doll with a
+foolish smirk caught in a wire and dangling from a rafter. The doll
+danced in hysteric merriment whenever hidden guns were fired. That was
+the only movement in Richbourg S. Vaast, and the guns made the only
+sound. I was a survivor from the past, venturing at peril among the
+wreckage and hardly remembered relics of what used to be familiar.
+Richbourg was possessed by the power which had overwhelmed it, and which
+was re-forming it in a changing world. To what was the world changing?
+There was no clue, except the oppression of my mind, the shock of the
+guns, and the ecstatic mockery of mirth over ruin by that little idiot
+doll.
+
+Beyond the sloughing and leprous tower of Richbourg Church, where the
+ancient dead in the graveyard had been brought to light again, there was
+a house which seemed in being. I entered it, for I was told by a soldier
+companion that from a displaced tile in its roof I might see La Bassee. I
+looked through that gap, and saw La Bassee. It was very near. It was a
+terracotta smudge. It might have been a brickfield. But it was the
+Enemy.
+
+What I chiefly remember to-day is only the floor of that upper room from
+which, through a gap in its wall, I saw the ambush of the enemy. On the
+floor were scattered, mixed with lumps of plaster, a child's alphabetical
+blocks. A shoe of the child was among them. There was a window where we
+dared not show ourselves, though the day was fair without, and by it was
+an old bureau, open, with its pad of blotting-paper, and some letters,
+all smothered with fragments of glass and new dust. A few drawers of the
+desk were open, and the contents had been spilled. Round the walls of the
+room were bookcases with leaded diamond panes. Whoever was last in the
+room had left sections of the bookcases open, and there were gaps in the
+rows of books. Volumes had been taken out, had been dropped on the floor,
+put on the mantelpiece, or, as I had noticed when coming up to the room,
+left on the stairs. One volume, still open face upwards, was on the
+bureau.
+
+I barely glanced at those books. What could they tell me? What did they
+know about it? Just as they were, open on the floor, tumbled on the
+stairs, they were telling me all they could. Was there more to be said?
+Sitting on a bracket in the shadow of a corner, a little bust of Rousseau
+overlooked the scene with me. In such a place, at such a time, you must
+make your own interpretation of the change, receiving out of the silence,
+which is not altered in nature by occasional abominable noises, just
+whatever your mind wishes to take. There the books are, and the dust on
+them is of an era which abruptly fell; is still falling.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. The Nobodies
+
+
+NOVEMBER 11, 1918. The newspapers tell us that to-day the signal to
+"cease fire" will be given. This news is called "Official," to give us
+assurance in the fog of myth. Maroons will explode above the City. Then
+we shall know it is the end of the War. We ought to believe it, because
+They tell us this; They who do everything for us--who order us what to
+think and how to act, arrange for our potatoes, settle the coming up and
+the going down of the sun, and who for years have been taking away our
+friends to make heroes of them, and worse. They have kept the War going,
+but now They are going to stop it. We shall know it is stopped when the
+rockets burst.
+
+Yet "The War" has become a lethargic state of mind for us. We accepted it
+from the beginning with green-fly, influenza, margarine, calling-up
+notices, and death. It is as much outside our control as the precession
+of the equinoxes. We believed confidently in the tumultuous first weeks
+of the affair that mankind could not stand that strain for more than a
+few months; but we have learned it is possible to habituate humanity to
+the long elaboration of any folly, and for men to endure uncomplainingly
+racking by any cruelty that is devised by society, and for women to
+support any grief, however senselessly caused. Folly and cruelty become
+accepted as normal conditions of human existence. They continue superior
+to criticism, which is frequent enough though seldom overheard. The
+bitter mockery of the satirists, and even the groans of the victims, are
+unnoticed by genuine patriots. There seems no reason why those signal
+rockets should ever burst, no reason why the mornings which waken us to
+face an old dread, and the nights which contract about us like the
+strangle of despair, should ever end. We remember the friends we have
+lost, and cannot see why we should not share with them, in our turn, the
+punishment imposed by solemn and approved dementia. Why should not the
+War go on till the earth in final victory turns to the moon the
+pock-scarred and pallid mask which the moon turns to us?
+
+I was looking, later this morning, at Charing Cross Bridge. It was, as
+usual, going south to the War. More than four years ago I crossed it on a
+memorable journey to France. It seemed no different to-day. It was still
+a Via Dolorosa projecting straight and black over a chasm. While I gazed
+at it, my mind in the past, a rocket exploded above it. Yes, I saw a
+burst of black smoke. The guns had ceased?
+
+A tug passing under the bridge began a continuous hooting. Locomotives
+began to answer the tug deliriously. I could hear a low muttering, the
+beginning of a tempest, the distant but increasing shouting of a great
+storm. Two men met in the thoroughfare below my outlook, waved their
+hats, and each cheered into the face of the other.
+
+Out in the street a stream of men and women poured from every door, and
+went to swell the main cataract which had risen suddenly in full flood in
+the Strand. The donkey-barrow of a costermonger passed me, loaded with a
+bluejacket, a flower-girl, several soldiers, and a Staff captain whose
+spurred boots wagged joyously over the stern of the barrow. A motor cab
+followed, two Australian troopers on the roof of that, with a hospital
+nurse, her cap awry, sitting across the knees of one of them. A girl on
+the kerb, continuously springing a rattle in a sort of trance, shrieked
+with laughter at the nurse. Lines of people with linked arms chanted and
+surged along, bare-headed, or with hats turned into jokes. A private car,
+a beautiful little saloon in which a lady was solitary, stopped near me,
+and the lady beckoned with a smile to a Canadian soldier who was close.
+He first stared in surprise at this fashionable stranger, and then got in
+beside her with obviously genuine alacrity. The hubbub swelled and rolled
+in increasing delirium. Out of the upper windows of the Hotel Cecil, a
+headquarters of the Air Force, a confetti of official forms fell in
+spasmodic clouds. I returned soon to the empty room of an office where I
+was likely to be alone; because, now the War was over, while listening to
+the jollity of Peace which had just arrived, I could not get my thoughts
+home from France, and what they were I cannot tell.
+
+But there were some other memories, more easily borne. There was that
+night, for instance, late in the August of 1914, when three of us were
+getting away from Creil. It was time to go. We were not soldiers. Lying
+on the floor of a railway carriage I tried to sleep, pillowed
+involuntarily on someone's boot. I never knew to whom that foot
+belonged, for the compartment was chaos, like the world. The carriage
+light was feeble, and the faces I saw above me drooped under the glim,
+wilted and dingy. The eyes of the dishevelled were shut, and this
+traveller, counting the pulse of the wheels beneath, presently forgot
+everything ... there was a crash, and my heart bounded me to my feet.
+There had been a fortnight of excitements of this kind. A bag fell and
+struck me back to the floor. Unseen people trampled over me, shouting.
+Somebody cried: "Here they are!" A cascade of passengers and luggage
+tumbled over to a station platform.
+
+It was a chilly morning. And where were we? A clock in a tower said it
+was five. People hurried without apparent reason in all directions. So
+the world may appear to us if some day we find, to our surprise, that we
+have returned from the dead. I leaned against a lamppost, my mind
+gravel-rashed, and waited for something that could be understood. The
+Germans would do. We heard the enemy was close, and that the railway
+officials would get us away if they could. The morning became no warmer,
+there was no coffee, and our tobacco pouches were empty. But at least we
+were favoured with the chance of watching the French railwaymen at work.
+This was a junction, and the men moved about as though they were only
+busy on holiday traffic. They were easy and deliberate. I could see they
+would hold that line to the last pull of cotton-waste, and would run
+their trains while there was a mile of track. So we learned gradually
+that confident invaders are baffled by railwaymen and other common
+people, such as old women insistent on their cows, almost as much as they
+are by bayonets. A country's readiness for war may be slight, yet the
+settled habits of the peaceful Nobodies, which are not reckoned by
+Imperialists when they are calculating the length of the road to
+conquest, are strangely tough and obstinate. You could go to a girl at
+the pigeon-hole of a booking-office in France, demand a ticket for a
+place which by all the signs might then have fallen behind the van of the
+German Army, and she would hand the ticket to you as though she had never
+heard of the War. Then the engine-driver would go on towards the sound of
+the guns till you wondered, made uneasy by the signs without, whether he
+was phrenetic and intended to run the enemy down. The train would stop,
+and while the passengers were listening to the shells the guard would
+come along and give some advice as to the best thing to do.
+
+A little ahead of the Germans, a train came into that junction and took
+us away. I fell asleep again, and presently awoke to see a sombre orchard
+outside my window of our stationary train. It was a group of trees
+entranced, like a scene before the stage is occupied. The grass in the
+twilight beneath the trees was rank. My sight fell drowsily to an
+abandoned _kepi_, and, while wondering what had become of the man who
+used to wear it, I saw a bright eye slyly shut at me. A wink in the
+grass! A bearded face was laughing up at me from under the _kepi_. A
+rifle with a fixed bayonet slid forward. Then I saw the orchard had a
+secret crop of eyes, which smiled at us from the ground. We moved on, and
+farewell kisses were blown to us.
+
+Among the laurels of a garden beyond field batteries were in position. We
+crossed a bridge over a lower road and a stream. Infantry were waiting
+below for something, and from their attitudes seemed to expect it soon.
+My fellow-passengers were now awake to these omens. Broad streams of
+cattle undulated past our train going south, but west. "My poor Paris!"
+exclaimed a French lady. It was not for themselves these people were
+sorry. The common sort of people in the train were sorry for Paris, for
+all their unlucky fellows. The train moved with hesitancy for hours.
+During one long pause we listened to a cannonade. One burst of sound
+seemed very close. A young English girl, sitting in a corner with her
+infant, abruptly handed the child to her husband. She rummaged in a
+travelling case with the haste of incipient panic. She produced a
+spirit-lamp, a bowl, and a tin. She had suddenly remembered it was past
+her baby's feeding time.
+
+Who won the War for us? It was such folk. They turned in docility, with
+no more than a pause, a pause of ignorance and wonder, of dismay they
+could hardly conceal, from the accustomed order of their days to form
+vast armies, to populate innumerable factories for the making of
+munitions of war, and, while their households came everywhere to ruin,
+they held stubbornly to the task fate had thrust upon them; yet their
+august governors and popular guides, frantic and afraid through the dire
+retribution which had fallen on that monstrous European society which so
+many of us had thought eternal, abjured and abused the common sort whose
+efforts were all that could save us. What did they call the Nobodies?
+Slackers, cowards, rabbits, and field vermin; mean creatures unable to
+leave their football and their drink. I recall one sombre winter's day of
+the first November of the War, when a column of wounded Belgian soldiers
+shambled by me, coming out of the Yser line, on the way to succour which
+I knew they would not find. The doctors and the hospitals were few. These
+fellows were in rags which were plastered to their limbs with mud. Their
+eyes had the vacant look of men who had returned from the grave and who
+had forgotten this world. The bare feet of some of them left bloody
+trails on the road. Others clutched their bodies, and the blood drained
+between their fingers. One dropped dead at my feet. I came home with that
+in my mind; and the next sunrise, hearing unusual sounds outside, I
+lifted the blind to a dawn which was cold and ominously scarlet behind
+skeleton trees. I saw beneath the trees a company of my young neighbours,
+already in khaki, getting used to the harshness of sergeants, and to the
+routine of those implacable circumstances which would take them to Neuve
+Chapelle, to Gallipoli, to Loos, to the Somme; names that had no meaning
+for us then.
+
+That serious company of young Englishmen making soldiers of themselves
+in a day with so unpropitious an opening light did not look like national
+indifference. Those innocents getting used to rifles were as affecting as
+that single line of bodies I saw across a mile of stubble near Compiegne,
+where a rearguard of the "Contemptibles" had sacrificed themselves to
+their comrades. But one could not be sure. I went to find one who could
+tell me whether England was awake to what confronted it. I remembered he
+was a quiet observer, that he knew what allowance to make for those
+patriotic newspapers which so early were holding up in ruinous caricature
+their country and their countrymen for the world to see and to scorn. He
+was a scholar, he was a Socialist and a pacifist, he had a sense of
+humour to keep him balanced. But he had gone. He had enlisted; and he is
+dead.
+
+It was a common experience. From the day the Germans entered Belgium a
+dumb resolution settled on our Nobodies. They did not demonstrate. They
+made long silent queues at the recruiting offices. It is true those
+offices were not ready for them and turned them away; and when by sheer
+obstinacy they got into the Army they were put into concentration camps
+that were as deadly as battle. That did not daunt them, nor turn them
+from their purpose, whatever that was, for they never said; and the
+newspapers, by tradition, had no time to find out, being devoted to the
+words and activities of the Highly Important. We therefore knew nothing
+of the munition factories that were springing up magically, as in a
+night, like toadstools, all over the country, and were barely aware that
+for some mysterious reason the hosts of the enemy were stopped dead on
+the road to Calais. Whose work was all this? But how should we know? Who
+can chronicle what Nobody does?
+
+Sometimes there was a hint. Once again, when I returned from France in
+1916, unhappy with a guess at what the future would be like, I learned
+that our workers were not working. They were drinking. They had been
+passionately denounced by the Great and Popular, and our Press was forced
+to admit this disastrous crime to the world, for fidelity to the truth is
+a national quality. I went to an engineer who would know the worst, and
+would not be afraid to tell me what it was. I found him asleep in his
+overalls, where he had dropped after thirty-six hours of continuous duty.
+Afterwards, when his blasphemous indignation over profiteers,
+politicians, and newspapers had worn itself out, he told me. His men,
+using dimmed lights while working on the decks of urgent ships, often
+forced to work in cramped positions and in all weathers, and while the
+ship was under way to a loading berth, with no refreshment provided
+aboard, and dropped at any hour long distances from home, were still
+regarded by employers in the old way, not as defenders of their country's
+life, but as a means to quick profits, against whom the usual debasing
+tricks of economy could be devised. A battleship in the north had been
+completed five months under contract time. Working girls, determined to
+make a record output of ammunition, persisted twenty-two hours at a
+stretch, topped their machines with Union Jacks, and fainted next morning
+while waiting for the factory gates to open. The spirit of the English!
+What virtue there is in bread and tea! Yet we might have guessed it. And
+again we might have remembered, as a corrective, how many grave speeches,
+which have surprised, shocked, and directed the nation, have been made by
+Great Men too soon after a noble dinner, words winged by the Press
+without an accompanying and explanatory wine list.
+
+But the Nobodies are light-minded, casual, and good-hearted. Their great
+labour over, and their sacrifices buried, they have come out this day to
+celebrate the occasion with hilarious and ironic gaiety. They have won
+the Greatest of Wars, so they ride in motor-lorries and make delirious
+noises with comic instruments. Their heroic thoughts are blattering
+through penny trumpets. They have accomplished what had been declared
+impossible, and now they rejoice with an inconsequential clatter on
+tea-trays and tin cans.
+
+Yet some of us who watched their behaviour saw the fantastic brightness
+in the streets on Armistice Day only as a momentary veiling of the
+spectres of a shadow land which now will never pass. Who that heard
+"Tipperary" sung by careless men marching in France in a summer which
+seems a century gone will hear that foolish tune again without a sudden
+fear that he will be unable to control his emotion? And those Nobodies of
+Mons, the Marne, and the Aisne, what were they? The "hungry squad," the
+men shut outside the factory gates, the useless surplus of the labour
+market so necessary for a great nation's commercial prosperity. Their
+need kept the wages of their neighbours at an economic level. The men of
+Mons were of that other old rearguard, the hope of the captains of
+industry when there are revolts against the common lot of our industrial
+cities where the death-rates of young Nobodies, casualty lists of those
+who fall to keep us prosperous, are as ruinous as open war; a mutilation
+of life, a drainage of the nation's body that is easily borne by
+Christian folk who are moved to grief and action at the thought of
+Polynesians without Bibles.
+
+Yet the Nobodies stood to it at Mons. They bore us no resentment. We will
+say they fought for an England that is not us, an England that is nobler
+than common report and common speech. Think of the contempt and anger of
+the better end of London just before the War, when, at the other end, the
+people of Dockland revolted and defied their masters! I knew one mother
+in that obscure host of ignorant humanity in revolt. Two of her infants
+were slowly fading, and she herself was dying of starvation, yet she
+refused the entrance of charity at her door, and dared her man to
+surrender. He died later at Ypres. He died because of that very quality
+of his which moved his masters and superiors to anger; he refused at
+Ypres, as he did in Dockland, like those who were with him and were of
+his kind, to do more than mock defeat when it faced him.
+
+That figure of Nobody in sodden khaki, cumbered with ugly gear, its
+precious rifle wrapped in rags, no brightness anywhere about it except
+the light of its eyes (did those eyes mock us, did they reproach us, when
+they looked into ours in Flanders?), its face seamed with lines which
+might have been dolorous, which might have been ironic, with the sweat
+running from under its steel casque, looms now in the memory, huge,
+statuesque, silent but questioning, like an overshadowing challenge, like
+a gigantic legendary form charged with tragedy and drama; and its eyes,
+seen in memory again, search us in privacy. Yet that figure was the
+"Cuthbert." It was derided by those onlookers who were not fit to kneel
+and touch its muddy boots. It broke the Hindenburg Line. Its body was
+thrown to fill the trenches it had won, and was the bridge across which
+our impatient guns drove in pursuit of the enemy.
+
+What is that figure now? An unspoken thought, which charges such names as
+Bullecourt, Cambrai, Bapaume, Croiselles, Hooge, and a hundred more, with
+the sound and premonition of a vision of midnight and all unutterable
+things. We see it in a desolation of the mind, a shape forlorn against
+the alien light of the setting of a day of dread, the ghost of what was
+fair, but was broken, and is lost.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. Bookworms
+
+
+JANUARY 18, 1919. In Fleet Street yesterday there was at lunch with us an
+American Army officer who discoursed heartily about a certain literary
+public-house. He quoted a long passage from Dickens showing how somebody
+took various turnings near Fetter Lane, easily to be recognized, till
+they arrived at this very tavern. Such enthusiasm is admirable, yet
+embarrassing. In return, I inquired after several young American poets,
+whose work, seldom seen here, interests me, and I named their books. He
+had never heard of them. This enthusiast did not even appear to have the
+beginning of an idea that his was unforgivable ignorance seeing that he
+knew more than a native ought to know about some of our taverns. Had he
+been an Englishman and a friend of mine I should have told him that I
+thought his love of letters was as spurious as the morality of the curate
+who speaks in a trembling baritone about changes in the divorce laws,
+but who accepts murder without altering the statutory smile of
+benediction.
+
+Literature would be lighter without that scroll work and top hamper. It
+has nothing to do with its life. It is as helpful to us as wall-texts and
+those wonders we know as works of Pure Thought. Let us remember all the
+noble volumes of philosophy and metaphysics we ought to have read, to
+learn how wonderfully far our brains have taken us beyond the relic of
+Piltdown; and then recall what Ypres was like, and buy a teetotum
+instead. That much is saved. Now we need not read them. If we feel
+ourselves weakening towards such idleness, let us spin tops. If we had to
+choose between Garvice and say Hegel or Locke for a niche in the Temple
+of Letters, we should make an unintelligible blunder if we did not elect
+Mr. Garvice without discussion. He is human, he is ingenuous and funny,
+and the philosophers are only loosening with the insinuations of moth and
+rust. The philosophers are like the great statesmen and the great
+soldiers--we should be happier without them. If we are not happy and
+enjoying life, then we have missed the only reason for it. If books do
+not help us to this, if they even devise our thoughts into knots and put
+straws in our hair, then they ought to be burned. It is true that some
+of us may get pleasure from searching novels for solecisms and collecting
+evidence by which shall be guessed the originals of the novelist's
+characters, just as others extract amusement from puzzle pictures. But
+book-worming has the same relation to literature, even when it is done by
+a learned doctor in the Bodleian, as flies in a dairy with our milk
+supply. If most of the books in the British Museum were destroyed, we
+might still have a friend who would go with us to Amiens to get one more
+dinner in a well-remembered room, and drink to the shades; we might
+still, from the top of Lundy at dusk, watch the dim seas break into lilac
+around the Shutter Rock, while the unseen kittiwakes were voices from the
+past; and we might still see Miss Muffet tiptoe on a June morning to
+smell the first rose. That is what we look for in books, or something
+like it, and when it is not there they are not books to us.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. Sailor Language
+
+
+FEBRUARY 1, 1919. "What's in a word?" asks Admiral W. H. Smyth, with
+ironic intent, in his _Sailors' Word Book_. There are people who are
+derided because they are inclined to hesitate over that unimportant
+doubt, selecting their words with a waste of time which is grievous, when
+the real value of the sovereign is but nine and ninepence, in an
+uneconomic desire to be as right as their knowledge will allow. There is
+something to be said for them. There is a case to be made for getting a
+task finished as well as one knows how, if interest in it was sufficient
+to prompt a beginning. A friend of mine, who could write a thousand
+interesting and popular words about an event, or even about nothing in
+particular, while I was still wondering what I ought to do with it, once
+exclaimed in indignation and contempt when I put in a plea for Roget and
+his _Thesaurus_. He declared that a writer who used such a reference-book
+ought to be deprived of his paper and ink. _He_ never used even a
+dictionary. His argument and the force of it humbled me, for I gathered
+that when he wrote he had but to put his hand in his pocket and pull out
+all the words he wanted by the fistful. I envy him. I wish I could do it,
+but there are times when every word I try seems opaque. It is useless to
+pretend that Roget is of material assistance then; for what remedy is
+there under heaven for the slow and heavy mind? But to me Roget is full
+of amusing suggestions, which would really have been very helpful to me
+had I wanted to use his words for any other purpose than the one in hand.
+It is true he rarely gives you the word you think you want, but not
+seldom in his assorted heaps of unused ornaments you are surprised by a
+glance of colour from an unsuspected facet of a common word.
+
+The _Sailor's Word Book_ is no pamphlet; not in the least the kind of
+pocket book which once helped hurried British soldiers in a French shop
+to get fried eggs. It weighs, I should think, seven pounds, and it is
+packed with the vocabulary which has been built into the British ship
+during the thousand years and more of her growth. The origin of very many
+of the words retires, often beyond exact definition, into the cold mists
+of the prehistoric Baltic, and to the Greek Islands, among the shadows
+of the men who first found the courage to lose sight of the hills.
+Commonly they are short words, smoothed by constant use till they might
+be imagined to be born of the circumstances in which they are known, like
+the gulls and the foam of the wake. They carry like detonations in a
+gale. Yet quite often such words, when they are verbs, were once of the
+common stock of the language, as in the case of "belay," and it has
+happened that the sailor alone has been left to keep them alive. Dr.
+Johnson seems not to have known the meaning of the verb "to belay" among
+the other things he did not know but was very violent about. He thought
+it was a sea-phrase for splicing a rope, just as he supposed "main-sheet"
+was the largest sail of a ship.
+
+The _Sailors' Word Book_ would be much more interesting than it is,
+though greatly heavier, if the derivation of the words were given, or
+even guessed at, a method which frequently makes the livelier story. We
+begin to understand what a long voyage our ship has come when we are told
+that "starboard" is steer-board, the side to which the steering-paddle
+was made fast before the modern rudder was invented in the fourteenth
+century. Skeat informs us that both steor and bord are Anglo-Saxon; in
+fact, the latter word is the same in all the Celtic and Teutonic
+languages, so was used by those who first cut trees in Western Europe,
+and perhaps was here before they arrived to make our civilization what we
+know it. The opposite to starboard was larboard; but for good reason the
+Admiralty substituted port for larboard in 1844. Why was the left side of
+a ship called the port side? That term was in use before the Admiralty
+adopted it. It has been suggested that, as the steering-paddle was on the
+right side of a ship, it was good seamanship to have the harbour or port
+on the left hand when piloting inwards. But it is doubtful if that reason
+was devised by a sailor.
+
+A few words in sea life--as fish, mere, and row--are said to be so old
+that the philologists refer them to the Aryans, or, as others might say,
+give them up as a bad job. These words appear to be common to all the
+sons of Adam who preferred adventurous change to security in monotony,
+and so signed on as slaves to a galley. Anchor we imported from the
+Greeks--it is declared to be the oldest word from the Mediterranean in
+the language of our ships; admiral from the Arabs, and hammock and
+hurricane from the Caribs, through the Spaniards. But other words of our
+seamen are as native to us as our grey weather, for we brought them with
+other habits overseas from the North--words like hail, storm, sea, ship,
+sail, strand, cliff, shower, mast, and flood.
+
+To examine words in this manner is simply to invite trouble, as did the
+man who assumed that "bending a sail" was done as one would bend a cane,
+not knowing that the sailor uses that word in the original sense of
+"fastening." Once, in my ignorance, I imagined "schooner" was of Dutch
+origin, but was careful to refer to the invaluable Skeat. Only just in
+time, though. And he says that the word was born on the Clyde, grew up in
+New England, migrated to Holland, and then came back to us again. Once
+upon a time (1713) at Gloucester, Massachusetts, a man was witnessing a
+new fore-and-aft rigged vessel glide away on a trial trip, and exclaimed
+"She scoons!" So all her kind were christened. Science of that kind is
+almost as good as romance.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. Illusions
+
+
+FEBRUARY 15, 1919. Southwark Street is warehouses and railway bridges,
+and at its best is not beautiful; but when at night it is a deep chasm
+through which whirl cataracts of snow, and the paving is sludge, then, if
+you are at one end of it, the other end is as far away as joy. I was at
+one end of it, and at the other was my train, due to leave in ten
+minutes. Yet as there was a strike, there might be no train, and so I
+could not lose it; I had that consolation while judging that, with more
+than half a mile of snow and squall intervening from the north-east, I
+could not do the length of the street in ten minutes. So I surrendered
+the train which might not run to whoever was able to catch it, and in
+that instant of renunciation the dark body of a motor lorry skidded to
+the kerb and stopped beside me. A voice that was as passionless as
+destiny told me to hop up, if I were going towards the station. The
+headlong lorry, the sombre masses of the buildings which were now
+looming through the diminishing snow, and the winter's night, roused a
+vision of another place, much like it, or else the snow and the night
+made it seem like it, and so my uppermost thought became too personal,
+unimportant, and curious for converse. All I said, as I took my place
+beside the steering wheel, was: "It's a wretched night." (But I might
+have been alone in the lorry. There was no immediate answer.) I communed
+secretly with my memory. Then the voice returned out of the darkness. It
+startled me. "This corner," it remarked, "always reminds me of a bit of
+Armentieres." The voice had answered my thought, and not my words.
+
+The lorry stopped and I got down. I never saw the driver. I do not know
+whose voice it was; if, indeed, there was with me in that lorry more than
+a shadow and an impersonal voice.
+
+Yet now the night could do its worst. I had the illusion that I had seen
+through it. Were these bleak and obdurate circumstances an imposture?
+They appeared to have me imprisoned helplessly in time and snow; yet I
+had seen them shaken, and by a mere thought. Did their appearance depend
+on the way we looked at them? Perhaps it was that. We are compelled by
+outside things to their mould, and are mortified; but occasionally they
+fail to hide the joke. The laugh becomes ours, and circumstance must
+submit to the way we see it. If Time playfully imprisons us in a century
+we would rather have missed, where only the stars are left undisturbed to
+wink above the doings and noises of Bedlam, and where to miss the last
+train--supposing it runs at all--is the right end to a perfect day of
+blizzards and social squalls, what does it matter when we find that the
+whole of it is shaken by a single idea? Might it not vanish altogether if
+enough of us could be found to laugh at it? This dream assisted me to
+some warmth of mind through the rest of the cold night till I arrived on
+the station platform, after the train had left.
+
+To help further in destroying my faith in the permanence of our affairs
+and institutions, it then appeared the platform was vacant because my
+train was not yet in. It was coming in at that moment--or so a porter
+told me. Our protean enemy took his most fearful form in the War when he
+became a Hidden Hand. Was this porter an agent of the gods for whose
+eternal leisure our daily confusion and bad temper make an amusing
+diversion? Was he one of the malicious familiars who are at work amongst
+us, disguised, and who playfully set us by the ears with divine traps
+for boobies? This porter was grinning. He went away with his hand over
+his mouth, and at that moment a train stopped at the platform. The engine
+was at the wrong end of it.
+
+One official told me its proper locomotive was at East Grinstead, and
+that we might not get it. Perhaps its home was there. And yet another
+official whose face was as mysterious as that of the station clock, which
+was wearing a paper mask, said that the engine of my train had, in fact,
+gone. It had gone to Brighton. He did not know why. It had gone alone. I
+turned vacantly from this bewilderment and saw a man with the sort of
+golden beard an immortal might have worn standing under a station lamp,
+and breaking now and then into peals of merriment, occasioned, it seemed
+to me, by what the first porter was telling him. Then both of them looked
+towards me, and stopped. If in one more gust of hearty laughter that
+hollow wilderness of a station had vanished, gloom and dreary echoes and
+frozen lights, and I had found myself blinking in a surprising sunlight
+at that fellow in the golden beard, while he continued to laugh at me in
+another world than this, where he was revealed for what he was, I was in
+the mind for placid acceptance. Well, the miraculous transformation was
+as likely as an engine for that train.
+
+The bearded one approached me. I did not run away. I waited for the next
+thing. He had a book under his arm, and it is likely that the gods, who
+have no need to learn the truth, never read books. "If," he told me, "you
+want to get to Sheepwash, you had better take this other train. It is
+going half the way. The engine for the train for Sheepwash can't be
+found."
+
+We both boarded the train for half the journey, and it did not appear to
+have any other passengers. Yet, reckless of the risks I was taking in
+travelling alone with a suspected being at such a time--for where might
+not he and the train go?--I accepted the chance; and as I took my seat
+and regarded that bright beard, the shadow of my awful doubt became
+really serious, for it was only this week that I have been reading _The
+Twilight of the Gods_. There was the disintegrating recollection of that
+book, with its stories of homeless immortals in search of new and more
+profitable employ; and there had been a bodiless voice in a motor lorry
+which ignored what I said but spoke instead to an inconsequential memory
+of mine that was strictly private; and there was the levity with which
+uniformed officials treated the essential institutions of civilization.
+All this gave me the sensation that even the fixed policy of our strong
+government might, at any moment now, roll up as a scroll.
+
+Off we went. My fellow-traveller was silent, though he was smiling at
+something which was not in the carriage, to my knowledge. When he spoke,
+his eyes were not fixed on me. He looked into the air, and talked to
+whatever it was he saw. He pointed a finger at the light of the city
+lying beyond and below our carriage window. "All they've built," he said,
+"stands only on a few odd notions. Now they're changing their notions, so
+down comes everything with a run. And don't they look surprised and
+pained!" (I felt like an eavesdropper, and thought I'd better show him I
+was present.) I apologized for overhearing him. He nodded shortly, a
+little condescendingly. "We've accepted _that_"--he poked his stick
+towards where stood our Imperial city in the night--"as if it came by
+itself. We never knew our city was like that just because we never saw it
+in any other light. Now we're upset to find the magic-lantern picture is
+fading. Got to put up with it, though." His book had been on the seat.
+It fell to the floor, and I picked it up and handed it to him. It was
+_The Twilight of the Gods_.
+
+If I could have remembered at that moment one of the simple dodges for
+averting the evil eye I should have used it. The laughing malice of that
+book had so confused me for some days that I had begun to feel that even
+St. Paul's, a blue bubble floating over London on the stream of Time,
+might vanish, as bubbles will. The Hidden Hand, I began to believe, had
+something in it.
+
+I intrigued a serious interview with my fellow-passenger, hoping to find
+evidence; and then the train stopped finally, six miles from home. At
+that very instant of time the train which we had previously rejected
+because it had no engine chose to run express through the station where
+we stood.
+
+
+
+
+XX. Figure-Heads
+
+
+MARCH 1, 1919. When the car got to the Board of Trade Office, which is
+opposite the old chapel of ease where the crews of John Company's ships
+"used to worship," as a local history tells us, I saw Uncle Dave by the
+kerb, with time apparently on his hands. I got down.
+
+He told me old Jackson is dead. Jackson was a mast and block maker, but
+his fame was the excellence of his figure-heads. It is many years since
+old Jackson made one, but if it is doubted that he was an artist, there
+is a shop near where he once lived which still displays three of his
+images, the size of life, reputed to have been conjured from baulks of
+timber with an ax. I remember Jackson. He rarely answered you when you
+questioned him about those ships to which he had given personality and
+eyes that looked sleeplessly overseas from their prows. He regarded you,
+and only his whiskers moved in silent indifference (he chewed), as
+though you were wasting the time of a man and an artist. Those images of
+his were all of women. He would make no figure-head for a ship bearing
+the name of a man, though it were that of a Greek hero. And, of course,
+you dare not even think of the trousered legs of a modern man stuck each
+side of a ship's prow, boots and all; but the drapery of a woman flows
+with grace there. She would look indeed its vigilant guardian spirit. It
+would be pleasing to write of some of the more famous of those idols, as
+I remember them in repose, above the quays of the docks.
+
+Here we were joined by some young men who knew Uncle Dave. They were
+looking for a ship. But Uncle continued to tell me of the merits of his
+friend the maker of figure-heads. A stoker became a trifle irritated.
+"Well, what's the good of 'em, anyway?" he interjected. "Lumber, I call
+'em. They can't be carried on straight stems, and clipper-bows aren't
+wanted these days, wasting good metal. Why, even Thompson's White Star
+liners have chucked that sort of truck. They're not built like it now.
+What's the good of figger-'eds?"
+
+This youth's casual blasphemy in the presence of Uncle Dave (who once
+was bo'sun of a China clipper), extolling as he did his age of mere
+machines against the virtues of an age when ships were expected to look
+good as well as do good things, made us shrink in anticipation of the
+storm. For Uncle Dave has a habit of listening to a talk about ships in a
+deliberate and contemptuous silence, with nothing to show of his inward
+heat but a baleful light in the eye. He does not like steamers. He does
+not think steamer-men are seamen. He declares they can never be seamen.
+And now we waited, dreading that his anger, when it burst, would be quite
+incoherent with force. There was really something of hatred in his look
+as he gazed at the youngster, his mouth a little open, his hand holding
+his trembling pipe just away from his mouth, which had forgotten it. The
+old sailor bent forward, screwing his eyes at this young man as though
+trying to believe it was real.
+
+An older hand interposed. "Ah, come away now! I've heard chaps make game
+of figger-'eds, an' call 'em superstition. But I say let such things
+alone. I know things that's happened to funny fellows through making game
+of figger-'eds. There was the _Barbadian Lass_. She was a brigantine.
+She used to run to Trinidad. There was something queer about her
+figger-'ed. It was a half-breed woman. She was smiling. She had bare
+breasts, and she used to wear earrings. Her chaps used to keep a spare
+pair for her in a box. She was always fresh and bright, but I've heard
+say she was never painted--no, not since the day the ship was launched.
+She kept like that. And one day young Belfast MacCormick slipped a
+tar-brush over her dial. Said it was idolatry. And what happened to him?
+You answer me that!"
+
+"Yes, I know," broke in one of us. "But you can't say it was along of
+that tar-brush..."
+
+"You young chaps ain't got no sense," here interrupted Uncle, his voice
+evidently under control, but shaky. "I'd like to know where you were
+brought up. You learn it all wrong at them schools of yours, and you
+never get it right afterwards. You learn about the guts of engines and
+'lectricity, and you mix it up with the tales your grandmothers told you,
+and you get nothing straight. What you've got is all science and
+superstition. And then you wonder why you make a mess of it. Listen! It
+don't matter what you do to a figger-'ed, if you're fool enough to spoil
+it. It's having it that matters. It's something to go by, and a ship
+you're glad to work in."
+
+He turned on the stoker. There was astonishment and pity in his glance.
+"Look at you. In and out of a ship, and you forget her name when you've
+signed off. You don't care the leavings in a Dago's mess-kit for any ship
+you work in, if you can get a bit out of her and skip early."
+
+"That's me, Uncle," muttered the stoker.
+
+"Can you remember names, like some of us remember the _Mermus_, the
+_Blackadder_, and the _Titania_? Not you. Your ships haven't got names,
+properly speaking. They're just a run out and home again for you, and a
+row about the money and the grub."
+
+"Sure to be a row about the grub," murmured the stoker.
+
+"What are ships nowadays?" he went on, raising a shaking index finger.
+"Are they ships at all? They're run by companies on the make, and worked
+by factory hands who curse their own house-flags. It's a dirty game, I
+call it. Things are all wrong. I can't make them out. You fellers take no
+pride in your work, and you've got no work to take pride in. You don't
+know who you work for or what, and your ships got no names. They might
+be damned goods vans. No good in a figger-'ed! Then I'll tell you this.
+Then I'll tell you this. _You'll_ get no good till you learn better, my
+lad."
+
+
+
+
+XXI. Economics
+
+
+MARCH 22, 1919. There is an astonishing number of books on what is called
+Reconstruction in the new publications of this spring. Reconstruction
+seems to be as easy as conscription or destruction. We have only to
+change our mind, and there we are, as though nothing had happened. It is
+the greatest wonder of the human brain that its own accommodating
+ratiocination never affords it any amusement. We use reason only to make
+convincing disguises for our desires and appetites. Perhaps it is fear of
+the wrath to come that is partly responsible for the clamour of the
+economists and sociologists in the publishers' announcements, almost
+drowning there the drone of the cataract of new novels. But it is too
+late now. The wrath will come. After mischievously bungling with the
+magic which imprisoned the Djinn, we may wish we had not done it; but
+once he is out there is nothing for it but to be surprised and sorry.
+The lid is off; and it is useless for the clever reconstructionists to
+press in upon us with their little screw-drivers, chattering eagerly
+about locks and hinges. When the crafty but ignorant Russian generals and
+courtiers got from the Czar the order for mobilizing the armies, and
+issued it, they did not know it, but that was when they released Lenin.
+And who on earth can now inveigle that terrific portent safely under lid
+and lock again?
+
+
+
+
+XXII. Old Sunlight
+
+
+APRIL 5, 1919. I find the first signs of this spring, now the War is
+over, almost unbelievable. I have watched this advent with astonishment,
+as though it were a phantom. The feeling is the same as when waking from
+an ugly dream, and seeing in doubt the familiar objects in a morning
+light. They seem steadfast. Are they real, or is the dream? The morning
+works slowly through the mind to take the place of the night. Its
+brightness and tranquillity do not seem right. And is it not surprising
+to find the spring has come again to this world? The almond tree might be
+an untimely, thoughtless, and happy stranger. What does it want with us?
+That spiritual and tinted fire with which its life burns touches and
+kindles no responsive and volatile essence in us. I passed a hedge-bank
+which looked south and was reviving. There were crumbs and nuggets of
+chalk in it, and they were as remarkable to me this year as though I had
+once seen those flecks of white showing through the herbage of another
+planet. That crumbling earth with the grey matting of old grass was as
+warm to the touch as though some inner virtue had grown, all unsuspected
+by us, in the heart of this glacial ball. I picked up a lump of chalk
+with its cold greenish shadows, and powdered it in my fingers, wondering
+why it looked so suddenly bright. It confirmed my existence. Its smell
+was better than any news I have heard of late.
+
+I saw suddenly the gleaming coast of a continent of dark cloud, and the
+blue ocean into which it jutted its headlands; memory had suddenly
+returned. At that moment the sun touched my hand. All this was what we
+used to know in a previous life. When I got home I took down _Selborne_.
+Two photographs fell out of it, and when I picked them up--they were
+those of a young amateur and were yellow with age--spring really began to
+penetrate the bark. But it was not the spring of this year.
+
+How often, like another tortoise, has the mind come out of its winter to
+sun itself in the new warmth of a long-gone Selborne April? Did Gilbert
+White imagine he was bequeathing light to us? Of course not. He lived
+quietly in the obscure place where he was born, and did not try to
+improve or influence anybody. It seems he had no wish to be a great
+leader, or a great thinker, or a great orator. The example of Chatham did
+not fire him. He was friendly with his neighbours, but went about his
+business. When he died there did not appear to be any reason whatever to
+keep him in memory. He had harmed no man. He left us without having
+improved gunpowder. Could a man have done less?
+
+Think of the events which were stirring men while he was noting the
+coming and going of swallows. While he lived, Clive began the conquest of
+India, and Canada was taken from the French. White heard the news that
+our American colonists had turned Bolshevik because of the traditional
+skill of the administrators of other people's affairs at Whitehall. The
+world appears to have been as full then of important uproar as it is
+to-day. I suppose the younger Pitt, "the youngest man ever appointed
+Prime Minister," had never heard of White. But Gilbert does not seem to
+have heard of _him_; nor of Hargreaves' spinning jenny, nor of the
+inventor of the steam engine. "But I can show you some specimens of my
+new mice," he remarks on March 30, 1768. That was the year in which the
+great Pitt resigned. His new mice!
+
+Yet for all the stirring affairs and inventions of his exciting time,
+with war making and breaking empires, and the foundations of this
+country's wealth and power being nobly laid, it would not be easy to show
+that we to-day are any the happier. Our own War was inherent in the
+inventions of mechanical cotton-spinning and the steam-engine--the need
+to compel foreign markets to buy the goods we made beyond our own needs.
+We know now what were the seeds the active and clever fellows of
+Gilbert's day were sowing for us. We were present at the harvesting. Why
+did not those august people, absorbed in the momentous deeds which have
+made history so sonorous, the powder shaking out of their wigs with the
+awful gravity of their labours (while all the world wondered), just stop
+doing such consequential things, and accept Gilbert's invitation to go
+and listen to him about those new mice? The mice might have saved us, and
+the opportunity was lost.
+
+Looking back at those times, of all the thunderous events which then
+loosened excited tongues, caused by high-minded men of action expertly
+conjuring crisis after crisis while their docile followers scrambled out
+of one sublime trouble into another, heated and exhausted, but still
+gaping with obedience and respect, we can see that nothing remains but
+the burial parties, whose work is yet uncompleted in France. What good
+does persist out of those days is the light in which Gilbert's tortoise
+sunned itself. It is a light which has not gone out. And it makes us
+wonder, not how much of our work in these years will survive to win the
+gratitude of those who will follow us, but just what it is they will be
+grateful for. Where is it, and what happy man is doing it? And what are
+we thinking of him? Do we even know his name?
+
+
+
+
+XXIII. Ruskin
+
+
+APRIL 19, 1919. Some good people have been celebrating Ruskin, whose
+centenary it is. And to-day a little friend of mine left her school books
+so that I might wonder what they were when I saw them on my table. One of
+them was _The Crown of Wild Olive_. It put me in a reminiscent mood. I
+looked at Ruskin's works on my shelves, and tried to recall how long it
+was since they interested me. Nevertheless, I would not part with them.
+In my youth Ruskin's works were only for the wealthy, and I remember that
+my purchase of those volumes was an act of temerity, and even of
+sacrifice. And who but an ingrate would find fault with Ruskin, or would
+treat him lightly? With courage and eloquence he denounced dishonesty in
+the days when it was not supposed that cheating could be wrong if it were
+successful. He did that when minds were so dark that people blinked with
+surprise at a light which showed as a social iniquity naked children
+crawling with chains about them in the galleries of coal-mines. Was it
+really wrong to make children do that? Or was Ruskin only an impossible
+idealist? They were the happy years, radiant with the certain knowledge
+of the British that the Holy Grail would be recognized immediately it was
+seen, for over it would be proudly floating the confirmatory Union Jack.
+We had not even begun to suspect that our morals, manners, and laws were
+fairly poor compared with the standards of the Mohawks and Mohicans whom
+our settlers had displaced in America a century before. And Ruskin told
+that Victorian society it had an ugly mind, and did ugly things. When
+Ruskin said so, with considerable emotion, Thackeray was so hurt that he
+answered as would any clever editor to-day about a contribution which
+convinced him that it would make readers angry; he told Ruskin it would
+never do. Thackeray's readers, of course, were assured they were the best
+people, and that worldly cynic did well to reject Ruskin, and preserve
+the _Cornhill Magazine_.
+
+"Ruskin," it says in the introduction to _The Crown of Wild Olive_ which
+my little friend reads at school, "is certainly one of the greatest
+masters of English prose." That has often been declared. But is he? Or
+is our tribute to Ruskin only a show of gratitude to one who revealed to
+us the unpleasant character of our national habits when contrasted with a
+standard for gentlemen? It ought not to have required much eloquence to
+convince us that Widnes is unlovely; the smell of it should have been
+enough. It is curious that we needed festoons of chromatic sentences to
+warn us that cruelty to children, even when profit can be made of it, is
+not right. But I fear some people really enjoy remorseful sobbing. It is
+half the fun of doing wrong. Yet I would ask in humility--for it is a
+fearful thing to doubt Ruskin, the literary divinity of so many
+right-thinking people--whether English children who are learning the
+right way to use their language, and the noblest ideas to express, should
+run the risk of having Ruskin's example set before them by softhearted
+teachers? I think that a parent who knew a child of his, on a certain
+day, was to take the example of Ruskin as a prose stylist on the subject
+of war, would do well, on moral and aesthetic grounds, to keep his child
+away from school on that day to practise a little roller-skating. For
+humility and gratitude should not blind us to the fact that few writers
+in English of Ruskin's reputation have ever considered such a rosy cloud
+of rhetoric as is his lecture on war, in which a reasonable shape no
+sooner looms than it is lost again, to be worth preserving. The subject
+of war is of importance, inflammable humanity being what it is, and the
+results of war being what we know; and the quality of the critical
+attention we give to so great a matter is unfortunately clear when we
+regard the list of distinguished critics of letters who have accepted,
+apparently without difficulty, as great prose, Ruskin's heedless rush of
+words upon it. Perhaps his language appears noble because the rhythmic
+pour of its sentences lulls reason into a comfortable and benignant
+sleepiness.
+
+I remember the solemn voice of a lecturer on English literature, years
+ago, moving me to buy _The Crown of Wild Olive_. Such obvious ignorance
+as I knew mine to be could not be tolerated. Whatever I went without, it
+could not be that book. I put it in my hold-all when, as was my duty, I
+went for my training with the artillery volunteers. I read in camp the
+essay on war, when bombardiers no longer claimed my attention, and the
+knightly words of sergeant instructors were taking a needed rest. I
+pondered over that essay, and concluded that though plainly I was very
+young and very wrong to feel puzzled and even derisive over English
+prose which fascinated a learned lecturer into solemnity, yet I would
+sooner learn to make imitation flowers of wool than read that essay to a
+critical audience, especially if I had written it myself.
+
+Ruskin, in fact, with no more experience of war than a bishop's wife, did
+not know what he was talking about. Throughout the essay, too, he is in
+two minds. One is that of a gentleman who knows that war is the same
+phenomenon, artistically, ethically, and socially, as a public-house riot
+with broken bottles caused by a dispute over one of those fundamental
+principles which are often challenged in such a place. Those riots are
+natural enough. They are caused by the nature of man. They continue to
+happen, for it has taken the Church longer to improve our manners than it
+has taken stock-raisers to improve the milking qualities of kine. And
+Ruskin's other mind is still in the comical Tennysonian stage about war,
+dwelling with awe on swords and shields, glory, honour, patriotism,
+courage, spurs, pennants, and tearful but resolute ladies who wave their
+handkerchiefs in the intervals of sobbing over their "loved ones."
+
+He calls war "noble play." He scorns cricket. As for his "style" and his
+"thought": "I use," says Ruskin, "in such a question, the test which I
+have adopted, of the connexion of war with other arts, and I reflect how,
+as a sculptor, I should feel if I were asked to design a monument for
+Westminster Abbey, with a carving of a bat at one end and a ball at the
+other. It may be there remains in me only a savage Gothic prejudice; but
+I had rather carve it with a shield at one end and a sword at the
+other."
+
+I cannot tell whether Ruskin reflected so because of a savage Gothic
+prejudice, but I am certain he wrote like that moved by what we feel--the
+feeling goes deeper into time even than the Goths--about the victim for
+sacrifice. We must justify that sacrifice, and so we give it a ceremonial
+ritual and dignity. Otherwise, I think, Ruskin would not have suggested
+the shield and sword as the symbolic decorations. He felt instinctively
+and because of a long-accepted tradition that those antique symbols were
+the only way to hide the ugly look of the truth. For certainly he could
+have used a ball at one end--a cannon-ball--and a mortar at the other.
+Just as we might use an aerial torpedo at one end, and the image of a
+mutilated child at the other; or a gas cylinder at one end, and a
+gas-mask at the other. But the artist is not going to be deprived of his
+romance through a touch of the actual, any more than the lady with the
+handkerchief can be expected to forego her anguished sob over her hero as
+he goes forth to battle.
+
+We saw that in our Great War. The ancient appeal of the patriots rushed
+us away from reason with "last stands," and the shot-riddled banners
+wavering in the engulfing waves of barbarians, till an irresistible
+cavalry charge scattered the hordes. All this replaced the plumes, the
+shining armour, and the chivalrous knights. Ruskin, however, was a subtle
+improvement even on the last stand with the shot-riddled banner. He
+anticipated those who have been most popular because they made our War
+entrancing and endurable. He went to the heart of the matter. He knew
+that the audience which would the more readily agree with him when he
+made an emotional case for the ennobling nature of war would be mainly of
+reclused women. He addressed them. So did, of late, some of our most
+successful writers on war. They, like Ruskin, made their appeal to that
+type of mind which obtains a real satisfaction, a sensuous pleasure, from
+contemplating the unseen sufferings of the young and vicarious victim
+sobbing, and feeling noble and enduring.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV. The Reward of Virtue
+
+
+MAY 9, 1919. The Treaty of Peace is published. Compared with what the
+innocent in 1915 called the "objects of the War," this treaty is as the
+aims of Captain Morgan's ruffians to those of the Twelve Apostles. The
+truth is, some time ago the Versailles drama fell to the level of an
+overworked newspaper story which shrewd editors saw was past its day.
+Those headlines, Humiliate the Hun, Hang the Kaiser, and Make Germany
+Pay, had become no more interesting than a copy of last week's _Morning
+Mischief_ in a horse-pond. The subject was old and wet. Because five
+months ago we thoughtfully elected men of the counting-house to the work
+of governing the State, of late we have been too indignant over the cost
+and difficulty of living to spare a thought for the beauty of Peace; that
+is why we are now examining the clauses of the famous Treaty with about
+as much care for what they may mean to us as if they concerned the
+movements of the Asteroids. A year ago the German attacks seemed near to
+making guns the deciding voice in the affairs of unhappy humanity. On the
+chill and overcast spring morning when the Treaty was published, it was
+significant that those very few men to whom we could go for courage a
+year ago were the only people dismayed by the terms of the Peace Treaty.
+And the timid, who once went to those stout hearts for assurance--to
+have, as the soldiers used to say, their cold feet massaged--were the
+bright and cheerful souls. It was ominous. Yet those careless and happy
+hearts are not so trying to me as the amiable but otherwise sensible men
+who were sure our statesmen would not betray the dead, and who are
+incredulous over the Treaty now they see what it clearly intends to
+convey. They cannot believe that the War, which they thought began as a
+war of liberation, a struggle of Europe to free itself from the
+intolerable bonds of its past, continues in the Peace Treaty as a force
+malignantly deflected to the support of the very evils out of which
+August, 1914, arose. Then did they imagine the well-meaning leopard would
+oblige by changing his spots if spoken to kindly while he was eating the
+baby?
+
+
+
+
+XXV. Great Statesmen
+
+
+MAY, 31, 1919. What is wrong with our statesmen? I think the answer is
+simple. Success in a political career can be understood by all of us. It
+attracts the attention which applauds the owner of a Derby winner, or the
+Bishop who began as a poor, industrious, but tactful child. John the
+Baptist failed to attract the publicity he desired; and Christ drew it as
+a criminal, for the religious and political leaders of his day recognized
+what his teaching would lead to as easily as would any magistrate to-day
+who had before him a carpenter accused of persuading soldiers that
+killing is murder. Politicians move on the level of the common
+intelligence, and compete there with each other in charging the ignorance
+of the commonalty with emotion. A politician need be no more than
+something between a curate and a card-sharper. If he knows anything of
+the arts, of history, of economics, or of science, he had better forget
+it, or else use it as a forestaller would a knowledge of the time when
+prices should be raised. A confident man with a blood-shot voice and a
+gift for repartee is sure to make a success of politics, especially if he
+is not too particular. This did not matter once, perhaps, when politics
+merely afforded excitement for taverns and a career for the avid and
+meddlesome. The country was prosperous, and so it was difficult to do it
+serious harm.
+
+But to-day, just when we must have the leading of moral, judicious, and
+well-informed minds, or perish, we have only our statesmen. It never
+occurs to the crowd that its business would be more successfully
+transacted by a chance group, say of headmasters of elementary schools,
+than by the statesmen who, at Versailles recently, dared not face the
+shocking realities because these could not be squared with a Treaty which
+had to frame the figments of the hustings. The trouble with our statesmen
+is that they have been concerned hitherto merely to attend to the
+machinery, running freely and with little friction, of industrial
+society. They did not create that machinery. They but took it over. They
+knew nothing of the principles which motived it. Our statesmen were only
+practical politicians and business men. They held in contempt the fine
+abstract theories of physics, mechanics, and dynamics. It was safe for
+them to do so. The machinery went on running, apparently of its own
+volition. All went well until the War. Now the propeller-shaft of
+industrial society is fractured, our ship is wallowing in the trough of
+the seas, and the men who should put things right for us do not even know
+that it is the main shaft on which they should concentrate. They are
+irritating the passengers by changing the cabins, confiscating luggage,
+insisting on higher fares, cutting down the rations, and instructing the
+sailors in the goose-step; but the ship has no way on her, and the sound
+of breakers grows louder from a sombre, precipitous, and unknown coast.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI. Joy
+
+
+JULY 19, 1919. It has come. This is the great day of the English. Many
+have doubted whether we should ever have it, for faith had been weak and
+the mind weary while the enemy was still fixed in his fanatic resolution.
+But here it is, half my window-blind already bright with its first light.
+To-day we celebrate our return to peace, to an earth made the fairer for
+children, fit for the habitation of free men, safe for quiet folk ... the
+day that once had seemed as remote as truth, as inaccessible as good
+fortune; a day, so we used to think in France, more distant even than
+those incredible years of the past that were undervalued by us, when we
+were happy in our ignorance of the glory men could distil from misery and
+filth; when we had not guessed what wealth could be got from the needs of
+a public anxious for its life; nor that sleeping children could be bombed
+in a noble cause. Yes, it had seemed to us even farther off than our
+memories of the happy past. Yet here it is, its coffee-cups tinkling
+below, and I welcome its early shafts of gold like the fortune they are.
+The fortune seems innocent and unaware of its nature. It does not know
+what it means to us. I had often been with soldier friends across the
+water when with mock rapture they had planned an itinerary for this day.
+They spoke of it where their surroundings made the thought of secure
+leisure or unremarkable toil only a painful reminder of what was
+beatific, but might never be. This day had not come to them. But it had
+come to me.
+
+I was luckier than they. Yet when luck comes to us, does it ever look
+quite as we had imagined it when it was not ours? I lift the curtain on
+this luck, and look out. From an upper window of the house opposite the
+national emblem of the American Republic is hanging like an apron. Next
+door to it a man is decorating his windowsills with fairy lamps, and from
+his demeanour he might be devising a taboo against evil. I see no other
+sign that the new and better place of our planet was being acknowledged.
+The street is as the milkman and the postman have always known it on a
+quiet morning.
+
+A cock crowed. It was then I knew that, though the morning was like all
+good sunrises, which are the same for the unjust and the righteous, I,
+somehow, was different. Chanticleer was quite near, but his confident and
+defiant voice, I recognized with a start, was a call from some other
+morning. It was the remembered voice of life at sunrise, as old as the
+jungle, alert, glad, and brave. Then why did it not sound as if it were
+meant for me? Why did it not accord, as once it did, with the coming of a
+new day, when the renewed and waiting earth was veritably waiting for us?
+Yet the morning seemed the same, its sounds the familiar confidences, its
+light the virgin innocence of a right beginning. Was this new light ours?
+While looking at it I thought that perhaps there is another light, an
+aura of something early and rare, which, once it is doused, cannot be
+re-kindled, even by the sun which rises to shine on a great victory.
+
+I began to feel that this early confusion of thought, over even so plain
+a cause for joy as morning, might be a private hint that it would be as
+hard to tell the truth about peace as it used to be about battle. And how
+difficult it is to tell the truth about war, and even how improper, some
+of us know. For what a base traitor even truth may be to good patriots,
+when she insists that her mirror cannot help reflecting what is there!
+Why should the best instincts of loyal folk be thus embarrassed? If they
+do not wish to know what is there, when that is what it is like, is it
+right, is it gentlemanly, to show them?
+
+How easy it would be to write of peace in the Capital, where the old
+highways have been decorated for many kings, marshals, and admirals, and
+the flags have been hung for victories since England first bore arms. So
+why should one be dubious of a few unimportant suburban byways, where the
+truth is plain, and is not charged with many emotions through the
+presence of an emperor and his statesmen and soldiers, all of them great,
+all of them ready for our superlatives to add to their splendour?
+
+But perhaps the more you know of a place, the greater is your perplexity.
+That old vicarage wall, lower down my street, is merely attractive in the
+sun of Peace Day. A stranger, if he noticed it, might at the most admire
+its warm tones, and the tufts of hawkweed and snapdragon which are
+scattered on its ledges. But from this same window, on a winter morning,
+when affairs were urgent in France, I have seen youth assembled by that
+wall. Youth was silent. There was only a sergeant's voice in all the
+street. I think I hear now the diminishing trampling of quick feet
+marching away; and see a boy's face as he turned near the top of the rise
+to wave his hand. But look now, and say where are the shades on a bright
+morning!
+
+I went out, a dutiful citizen, to celebrate. No joy can be truthfully
+reported till just this side of the High Street, where there were three
+girls with linked arms dancing in lax and cheerful oblivion, one of them
+quite drunk. Near them stood a cart with a man, a woman, and a monkey in
+it. The superior animals were clothed in red, white, and blue, and the
+monkey was wearing a Union Jack for a ruff. The ape was humping himself
+on the tail-board, and from his expression he might have been wondering
+how long all this would last. His gay companions were rosily chanting
+that if they caught some one bending it would be of no advantage to him.
+The main thoroughfare was sanded, and was waiting for the official
+procession. Quiet citizens were strolling about with their children, and
+what they were thinking is as great a mystery as what the populace at
+Memphis thought when the completion of the Great Pyramid was celebrated
+by the order of Cheops. In a room of an upper storey near the town hall a
+choir was singing the Hallelujah Chorus, and below, on the pavement, a
+hospital nurse, in a red wig, stood gravely listening, swaying to and
+fro, holding her skirts high, so that we saw beneath the broad slacks of
+an able seaman.
+
+The chorus ceased, and in gratitude for the music the nurse embraced a
+Highland soldier, who was standing near and who was secretly amused, I
+believe, by the nurse's trousers. Then we heard the bands of the military
+procession in the distance, and it was in that moment I saw a young
+officer I knew, who was out as early as Neuve Chapelle, gazing, like
+everybody else, in the direction of the martial sounds. Before I could
+reach him through the press he had turned, and was walking hurriedly down
+a side street, as though in flight. I could not follow him. I wanted to
+see the soldiers. My reason was no better than some sentimental emotion;
+for I saw the original Contemptibles march off for Mons; and was with a
+battalion of the 9th Division, the first of Kitchener's men to go into
+the line; and saw the Derby men come out and begin; and at the last
+discovered that the conscripts were as good as the rest. Some of the
+survivors were marching towards me.
+
+But I did not recognize them. Many were elderly men who were displaying
+proud tunics of volunteer regiments as old as Hyde Park Parades by Queen
+Victoria. One looked then for the sections from the local lodges of the
+Druids, Oddfellows, Buffaloes, and the He-Goats. There was the band of
+the local cadets, spontaneous in its enthusiasm, its zest for martial
+music no different, of course. Just behind these lads a strange figure
+walked in the procession, a bent and misshapen old man, whose face had no
+expression but a fixed and hypnotic stare. He was keeping time to the
+measure of the boys' music by snapping the spring of a mouse-trap which
+he held aloft. I could not find him in the program. Was he also drunk? Or
+was he a terrible jest? Most of our triumphant display followed this
+figure. If our illusions go, what is left to us? Ah, our memories of the
+Somme! That young officer who turned away when he saw Triumph approaching
+acted on a right instinct.
+
+There is a hilltop near us. It looks to other hills over a great space of
+southern England, and at night on the far promontories of the Downs
+bonfires were to be lighted. I have no doubt signals flared from them
+when the Romans were baffled. Again to-night they would signal that the
+latest enemy had been vanquished.
+
+It was raining gently, and from our own crest the lower and outer night
+was void. A touch of distant phosphorescence that waned, and intensified
+again to a strong white glow, presently gave the void one far and lonely
+hilltop. A cloud elsewhere appeared out of nothing, and persisted, a
+lenticular spectre of dull fire. These aerial spectres became a host;
+some were so far away that they were faint smears of orange, and others
+so near and great that they pulsed and revealed the shapes of the clouds.
+It was all impersonal, it was England itself that was reflected, the
+hills that had awakened. It was the emanation of a worthy tradition,
+older than ourselves, that was re-kindled and was glowing, and that would
+be here when we are not. It was so receptive, it was so spacious, that
+our gravest memories could abide there, as if night were kind to the
+secrets we dare not voice, and understood folly and remorse, and could
+protect our better visions, and had sanctuary and consolation for that
+grief which looks to what might have been, but now can never be.
+
+A spark glittered near, a spark that towered and hovered overhead, and
+burst into coiling volumes of lurid smoke with a moving heart of flame.
+Light broke on a neighbouring hill that had been unseen and forgotten;
+the hill was crowned with fantastic trees that danced, and a wavering
+tower. From our own valley below there came a vicious tearing that gave
+me a momentary chill (so sounds a stream of machine-gun lead, going
+over), and a group of coloured stars expanded over us. Their bright light
+showed the night reticulated with thin lines of smoke, like veins of
+calcite in a canopy of black marble. Our immediate country, pallid and
+tremulous, faded again, but in that brief prospect of a shadow land I
+glimpsed a road, the presentment of the long road to Bapaume. So the
+Bapaume road showed at night by inconsequential and unexpected lights.
+That hill-crest of leaping trees could be the ridge of Loupart with its
+wood, and Achete in flames beyond. The notion gave me enough of our hill
+top. I descended from it.
+
+There is a public-house at the foot of the hill, and a lane of harsh
+noises and a beam of light projected together from its open door across
+the road. Beyond it I turned into a house, for I knew I should find there
+an aged and solitary man who would have his own thoughts on such a night
+as this; for he had a son, and the spectre of the Bapaume road had
+reminded me where that boy was celebrating whatever peace he knew. His
+father was not communicative; and what could I say? He sat, answering me
+distantly and austerely, and he might have been a bearded sage seeing in
+retrospect a world he had long known, and who at last had made up his
+mind about it, though he would not tell me what that was. Outside we
+could hear revellers approaching. They paused at our door; their feet
+began to shuffle, and they sang:
+
+  "If I catch you bending,
+   I'll turn you upside down,
+     Knees up, knees up,
+     Knees up, knees up,
+   Knees up, Father Brown."
+
+
+
+
+XXVII. The Real Thing
+
+
+JANUARY 9, 1920. There was a country town of which we heard wonderful
+tales as children. But it was as far as Cathay. It had many of the
+qualities that once made Cathay desirable and almost unbelievable. We
+heard of it at the time when we heard of the cities of Vanity Fair and
+Baghdad, and all from a man with a beard, who once sat by a London fire,
+just before bedtime, smoking a pipe and telling those who were below him
+on the rug about the past, and of more fortunate times, and of cities
+that were fair and far. Nothing was easier for us then than to believe
+fair reports. Good dreams must be true, for they are good. Some day, he
+said, he would take us to Torhaven; but he did not, for his luck was not
+like that.
+
+Nothing like that; so instead we used to look westward to where Torhaven
+would be, whenever the sunset appeared the right splendour for the sky
+that was over what was delectable and elsewhere. We made that do for
+years. Torhaven existed, there was no doubt, for once we made a journey
+to Paddington Station--a long walk--and saw the very name on a railway
+carriage. It was a surprising and a happy thought that that carriage
+would go into such a town that very day. What is more confident than the
+innocence of youth? Where, if not with youth, could be found such willing
+and generous reliance in noble legend?
+
+And how enduring is its faith! Long after, but not too long after, for
+fine appearances to us still meant fine prospects, we arrived one morning
+bodily in the haven of good report. Its genius was as bright as we
+expected. It had a shining face. It was the equal of the morning. Its
+folk could not be the same as those who lived within dark walls under a
+heaven that was usually but murk. It lost nothing because we could
+examine its streets. We went from it with a memory even warmer and more
+comforting. What would happen to us if youth did not more than merely
+believe the pleasant tales that are told, if it did not loyally desire to
+believe that things are what they are said to be?
+
+This country town is of the Southern kind which, with satisfaction, we
+show to strangers as something peculiarly of our country. It is ancient
+and luminous in an amphitheatre of hills, and schooners and barques come
+right among its gables. It is wealthy, but it is not of the common sort,
+for it never shows haste. It knows, of course, that wealth is cheap,
+until it has matured and has attained that dignity which only leisure and
+the indifference of usage can confer. The country around has a long
+history of well-sounding family names as native as its hills--they
+arrived together, or thereabouts--and the lodge gates on its highways,
+with their weathered and mossy heraldic devices, have a way of
+acquainting you with the measure of your inconsequence as you pass them
+when walking. Torhaven has no poverty. It tolerates some clean and
+obscure but very profitable manufactures. But its shipping is venerable,
+and is really not an industry at all, being as proper as the owning of
+deer-parks. On market day you would think you were in a French town, so
+many are the agriculturists, and so quiet and solid the evidence of their
+wellbeing. They own their farms, they love good horses, their wagons are
+built like ships, and their cattle, as aboriginal as the county families,
+might be the embodiment of the sleek genius of those hills and meadows,
+so famous are they for cream. The people of that country live well. They
+know their worth and the substance which they add to the strength of the
+British community. And they pride themselves on the legends, peculiarly
+theirs, which tell of their independence of mind, of their love of
+freedom, of their liberal opinions and the nonconformity of their
+religious views. They are stout folk, kind and companionable, and they do
+not love masters.
+
+It was the summer following the end of the War, and we were back again in
+Torhaven. The recollection of its ancient peace, of its stillness and
+light, of the refuge it offered, had enticed us there. Its very name had
+been the hope of escape. Where should we find people more likely to be
+quick and responsive? They would be among the first to understand the
+nature of the calamity which had overtaken us. They would know, long
+before amorphous and alien London, what that new world should be like
+which we owed to the young, a world in which might grow a garden for the
+bruised souls of the disillusioned.
+
+Its light was the same. It was not only untarnished by such knowledge as
+we brought with us, it was radiant. Yet it was not without its memory of
+the disaster. We went into the church, whose porch had been restored;
+symbolical, perhaps, of our entry into a world from which, happily, the
+old things had passed. The church was empty, for this was market day.
+Through its gloom, as through the penumbra of antiquity, shone faintly
+the pale forms of a few recumbent knights, and the permanent appeal of
+their upturned hands and faces kept the roof aware of human contrition.
+Above one of the figures was a new Union Jack, crowned with laurels. The
+sun made too vivid a scarlet patch of one of its folds.
+
+Just below the church was the theatre, now a cinema hall. This was market
+day, and the house was full. A poster outside pictured a bridge blowing
+up, and a motor-car falling into space. The midday sun was looking full
+at Torhaven's High Street, which runs south and downhill steeply to the
+quay; a schooner filled the bottom of the street that day. Anything a not
+too unreasonable man could desire was offered in the shops of that
+thoroughfare. This being a time of change, when our thoughts are all
+unfixed and we have had rumours of the New Jerusalem, the side window of
+a fashionable jeweller's was devoted to tiny jade pigs, minute dolls,
+silver acorns, and other propitiators of luck which time and experience
+have tested. Next door to the jeweller's was a studio supporting the
+arts, with local pottery shaped as etiolated blue cats and yellow
+puppies; and there one could get picture postcards of the London
+favourites in revue, and some water-colour paintings of the local coast
+which an advertisement affirmed were real.
+
+That was not all. Opposite was the one bookshop of the town. Its famous
+bay front and old diamond panes frankly presented the new day with
+ladies' handbags, ludo and other games, fountain pens, mounted texts from
+Ella Wilcox, local guide books, and apparently a complete series--as much
+as the length of the window would hold, at least--of Hall Caine's works;
+and in one corner prayer-books in a variety of bindings.
+
+Down on the quay, sitting on a bollard, with one leg stretched stiffly
+before him, was a young native I had not met since one day on the Menin
+Road. I had known him, before that strange occasion, as an ardent student
+of life and letters. He had entered a profession in which sound learning
+is essential, though the reward is slight, just when the War began. Then
+he believed, in high seriousness, as young and enthusiastic students
+did, all he was told in that August; and his professional career is now
+over.
+
+He pointed out to me mildly, and with a little reproach, that I was wrong
+in supposing Torhaven had not changed. I learned that the War had made a
+great change there. Motor-cars were now as commonly owned as bicycles
+used to be, though he admitted that it did not seem that the queue
+waiting to buy books, our sort of books, was in need of control by the
+police. But farmers who had been tenants when Germany violated the
+independence of Belgium were now freeholders. Men who were in essential
+industries, and so could not be spared for the guns, were now shipowners.
+We could see for ourselves how free and encouraging was the new wealth in
+this new world; true, the size of his pension did not fairly reflect the
+new and more liberal ideas of a better world, but we must admit he had no
+need to travel to Bond Street to spend it. "Why fear," he asked me,
+pointing with his crutch up the busy High Street behind us, "that what
+our pals in France learned was wrong with that old Europe which made the
+War, will not be known there? Have you seen," he said, "our bookshop,
+our cinema, and the new memorial porch of our church?"
+
+Near us was waiting a resplendent motor-car, in which reposed a young
+lady whose face decorates the covers of the popular magazines every
+month, and as the wounded soldier finished speaking it moved away with a
+raucous hoot.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII. Literary Critics
+
+
+MARCH 27, 1920. The last number of the _Chapbook_, containing "Three
+Critical Essays on Modern English Poetry," by three well-known critics of
+literature, I read with suspiciously eager attention, for I will confess
+that I have no handy rule, not one that I can describe, which can be run
+over new work in poetry or prose with unfailing confidence. My
+credentials as a literary critic would not, I fear, bear five minutes'
+scrutiny; but I never cease to look for that defined and adequate
+equipment, such as even a carpenter calls his tool-chest, full of cryptic
+instruments, each designed for some particular task, and every implement
+named. It is sad to have to admit it, but I know I possess only a
+home-made gimlet to test for dry-rot, and another implement, a very
+ancient heirloom, snatched at only on blind instinct, a stone ax. But
+these are poor tools, and sooner or later I shall be found out.
+
+There was a time when I was very hopeful about discovering a book on
+literary criticism which would make the rough places plain for me, and
+encourage me to feel less embarrassed when present where literary folk
+were estimating poetry and prose. I am such a simple on these occasions.
+If one could only discover the means to attain to that rather easy
+assurance and emphasis when making literary comparisons! Yet though this
+interesting number of the _Chapbook_ said much that I could agree with at
+once, it left me as isolated and as helpless as before. One writer said:
+"There is but one art of writing, and that is the art of poetry. The test
+of poetry is sincerity. The test of sincerity is style; and the test of
+style is personality." Excellent, I exclaimed immediately; and then
+slowly I began to suspect a trap somewhere in it. Of course, does not the
+test for sunlight distinguish it at once from insincere limelight? But
+what is the test, and would it be of any use to those likely to mistake
+limelight for daylight?
+
+I cannot say I have ever been greatly helped by what I have read
+concerning the standards for literary criticism. Of the many wise and
+learned critics to whose works I have gone for light, I can remember only
+Aristotle, Longinus, Tolstoy, and Anatole France--probably because it is
+easy for the innocent to agree with dominating men. Of the moderns I
+enjoy reading anything "Q" has to say about books; useless pleasure
+again, for what does one get but "Q's" full, friendly, ironic, and
+humorous mind? Lately, too, the critics have been unanimously
+recommending to us--and that shows the genuine value to the community of
+mere book reviewers--the _Letters of Tchehov_, as noble a document as we
+have had for a very long time. But I thought they did not praise Tchehov
+enough as a critic, for that wise and lovable author, among his letters,
+made many casual asides about art that were pleasing and therefore right
+to me. I begin to fear that most of the good things said about literature
+are said in casual asides.
+
+If I were asked to say why I preferred Christabel or Keats's odes to
+Tennyson's Revenge or the _Barrack-Room Ballads_, I should find it hard
+to explain satisfactorily to anyone who preferred to read Tennyson or
+Kipling. Where are the criteria? Can a Chinaman talk to an Arab? The
+difference, we see at once, is even deeper than that of language. It is a
+difference in nature; and we may set up any criterion of literature we
+like, but it will never carry across such a chasm. Our only consolation
+is that we may tell the other man he is on the wrong side of it, but he
+will not care, because he will not see it. The means by which we are able
+to separate what is precious in books from the matrix is not a process,
+and is nothing measurable. It is instinctive, and not only differs from
+age to age, but changes in the life of each of us. It is as indefinable
+as beauty itself. An artist may know how to create a beautiful thing, but
+he cannot communicate his knowledge except by that creation. That is all
+he can tell us of beauty, and, indeed, he may be innocent of the measure
+of his effort; and the next generation may ridicule the very thing which
+gave us so much pleasure, pleasure we proved to our own satisfaction to
+be legitimate and well founded by many sound generalizations about art.
+The canons of criticism are no more than the apology for our personal
+preferences, no matter how gravely we back them. Sometimes it has
+happened that a book or a poem has succeeded in winning the approval of
+many generations, and so we may call it a classic. Yet what is the virtue
+of a classic, or of the deliberate and stately billows going with the
+wind when the world has sweep and is fair, or of a child with a flower,
+or of the little smile on the face of the dead boy in the muck when the
+guns were filling us with fear and horror of mankind? I don't know; but
+something in us appears to save us from the punishing comet of Zeus.
+
+
+
+
+XXI. The South Downs
+
+
+MAY 22, 1920. The southern face of the hill fell, an abrupt promontory,
+to the woods of the plain. Its face was scored by the weather, and the
+dry drainage channels were headlong cascades of grey pebbles. Clumps of
+heather, sparse oak scrub with young leaves of bronze, contorted birch,
+and this year's croziers of the bracken (heaven knows their secret for
+getting lush aromatic sap out of such stony poverty), all made a tough
+life which held up the hill, steep as it was; though the hill was going,
+for the roots of some of the oaks were exposed, empty coils of rope from
+which the burden had slipped. In that sea of trees whose billows came to
+the foot of our headland, and out of sight beneath its waves, children
+were walking, gathering bluebells. We knew they were there, for we could
+hear their voices. But there was no other sign of our form of life except
+a neolithic flint scraper one of us had picked up on the hilltop. The
+marks of the man who made it were as clear as the voices below. It had
+been lost since yesterday, it might be--anyhow, about the day the first
+Pyramid was finished. It depends on how one looks at the almanac. For you
+could feel the sun fire was young. It had not been long kindled. Its heat
+in the herbage was moist. One of the youngsters with me, bruising the
+bracken and snuffing it, said it smelt of almond and cucumber. Another
+said the crushed birch leaves smelt of sour apples. We could not say what
+the oak leaves smelt like. Then another grabbed a handful of leafmould,
+damp and brown and full of fibre. What did that smell of? They were not
+sure that they liked it. Perhaps it was the smell of the hill. They
+admitted that it wasn't a bad smell. They seemed a little afraid of that
+odour.
+
+But I was trying to read, and neolithic times and the bluebell gatherers
+had run together. They were in the same day. My book had made of that May
+morning in Surrey an apparition without time and place. We hear ourselves
+laughing now, intent, for instance, on confirming the almond and cucumber
+in bruised bracken, or catch the sound of our serious voices raised in a
+dispute over literature or politics. But these things are not really in
+our minds. We would not betray our secret thoughts to bluebell gatherers
+and boys snuffing the bracken. This book I was reading, and a fancied
+resemblance in that hill and its prospect, moved the shadows again--they
+are so readily moved--and I saw two of us in France on such a hill,
+gazing intently and innocently over just such a prospect, in the summer
+of 1915, without in the least guessing what, in that landscape before us,
+was latent for us both. Those downs across the way would be Beaumont
+Hamel and Thiepval. Bluebells! The publishers may send out what advice
+they choose to authors concerning the unpopularity of books about the
+War--always excepting, of course, the important reminiscences, the soft
+and heavy masses of words of the great leaders of the nations in the War,
+which merely reveal that they never knew what they were doing. Certainly
+we could spare that kind of war book, though it continues to arrive in
+abundance; a volume by a famous soldier explaining why affairs went
+strangely wrong is about the last place where we should look for anything
+but folly solemnly pondering unrealities. But whatever the publishers may
+say, we do want books about the War by men who were in it. Some of us
+have learned by now that France is a memory of such a nature that, though
+it is not often we dare stop to look directly at it, for the day's work
+must be done, yet it looms through the importance of each of these latter
+days as though the event of our lives were past, and we were at present
+merely watching the clock. The shadow of what once was in France is an
+abiding presence for us. We know nothing can happen again which will
+release us from it. And yet how much has been written of it? That is the
+measure of its vastness and its mystery--it possesses the minds of many
+men, but they are silent on what they know. They rarely speak of it,
+except to one of the fraternity. But where are their thoughts? Wandering,
+viewless and uneasy wraiths, over Flanders, in Artois and Picardy. Those
+thoughts will never come home again to stay.
+
+It is strange to me that publishers should suppose that books, intimate
+about the invisible but abiding shadow which is often more potent than
+present May sunshine, should not be wanted. Take for example this book I
+was reading, _The Squadroon_, by Ardern Beaman. To induce readers to buy
+it it has a picture on its dust-cover which kept me from reading it for
+weeks. This wrapper shows a ghostly knight in armour leading a charge of
+British cavalry in this War. I should have thought we had had enough of
+that romantic nonsense during the actual events. The War was written for
+the benefit of readers who made a luxury of the sigh, and who were told
+and no doubt preferred to believe that the young soldier went into battle
+with the look we so admire in the picture called The Soul's Awakening. He
+was going to glory. There are no dead. There are only memorial crosses
+for heroes and the Last Post. The opinions of most civilians on the War
+were as agreeable as stained-glass windows. The thought of a tangle of a
+boy's inside festooned on rusty wire would naturally have spoiled the
+soul's awakening and the luxury of the sigh. I heard of a civilian
+official, on his way to Paris after the Armistice, who was just saved by
+rapid explanations from the drastic attention of a crowd of Tommies who
+mistook him for a War Correspondent.
+
+But Mr. Beaman's book is not like war correspondence. It can be commended
+to those who were not there, but who wish to hear a true word or two. Mr.
+Beaman as a good-natured man remembers how squeamish we are, and being
+also shy and dainty indicates some matters but briefly. I wish, for one
+thing, that when describing the doings of his cavalry squadron after the
+disaster on the Fifth Army front--the author enables you to feel how
+slender was the line of resolute men which then saved the Army from
+downfall--he had ventured to record with more courage the things which it
+shamed him to see. Why should only such as he know of those shocks to
+affability? But all he says about some unpleasant matters is: "During
+those days we saw things of which it is not good to speak--of which
+afterwards we never did speak, except late at nights, in the privacy of
+our own mess."
+
+Mr. Beaman's simple narrative, however, with its humanity and easy
+humour, often lets in light on strange affairs, as though he had
+forgotten what had been locked up, and had carelessly opened a forbidden
+door. He shuts it again at once, like a gentlemen, and we follow him
+round hoping that presently he will do the same again. Ambrose Bierce
+could have made something of what is suggested in such a passage as
+this:
+
+  "On the borders of this horrid desolation (the Somme) we met a
+  Salvage Company at work. That warren of trenches and dugouts
+  extended for untold miles.... They warned us, if we insisted on
+  going further in, not to let any man go singly, but only in strong
+  parties, as the Golgotha was peopled with wild men, British,
+  French, Australian, German deserters, who lived there underground,
+  like ghouls among the mouldering dead, and who came out at nights
+  to plunder and kill. In the night, an officer said, mingled with
+  the snarling of carrion dogs, they often heard inhuman cries and
+  rifle-shots coming from that awful wilderness. Once they (the
+  Salvage Company) had put out, as a trap, a basket containing food,
+  tobacco, and a bottle of whisky. But the following morning they
+  found the bait untouched, and a note in the basket, 'Nothing
+  doing!'"
+
+
+
+
+XXX. Kipling
+
+
+JUNE 5, 1920. One day, when I did not know Kipling's name, I found in a
+cabin of a ship from Rangoon two paper-covered books, with a Calcutta
+imprint, smelling of something, whatever it was, that did not exist in
+England. The books were _Plain Tales from the Hills_ and _Soldiers
+Three_. It was high summer, and in that cabin of a ship in the Albert
+Dock, with its mixed odour of tea, teak, and cheroots, I read through
+all. The force in those stories went nearer to capturing me completely
+than anything I have read since. I can believe now that I just escaped
+taking a path which would have given me a world totally different from
+the one I know, and the narrowness of the escape makes me feel tolerant
+towards the young people who give up typewriting and book-keeping, and go
+out into an unfriendly world determined to be Mary Pickfords and Charlie
+Chaplins. A boy boards a ship merely to get a parrot, and his friend, who
+brought it from Burma, has gone to Leadenhall Street; there is a long
+interval, with those books lying in a bunk. Such a trivial
+incident--something like it happening every week to everybody--and to-day
+that boy, but for the Grace of God, might be reading the leaders of the
+_Morning Post_ as the sole relief to a congested mind, going every week
+to the cartoon of _Punch_ as to barley water for chronic prickly heat,
+and talking of dealing with the heterodox as the Holy Office used to deal
+with unbaptized Indian babies for the good of their little souls.
+
+I have recovered from those astonishing adventures with Kipling. I may
+read him to-day with enjoyment, but safe from excitation. This is due,
+perhaps, to a stringy constitution, subject to bilious doubts, which
+loves to see lusty Youth cock its hat when most nervous, swagger with
+merry insolence to hide the uncertainty which comes of self-conscious
+inexperience, assume a cynical shrewdness to protect its credulity, and
+imitate the abandon of the hard fellow who has been to Hong Kong, Tal
+Tal, and Delagoa Bay. We enjoy seeing Youth act thus; but one learns in
+time that a visit to Rhodesia, worse luck, makes one no more intelligent
+than a week-end at Brighton. Well, it doesn't matter. What ingrates we
+should be now to turn on Kipling because we disagree with the politics he
+prefers, those loud opinions of his which, when we get too much of them,
+remain in the ears for a while like the echoes of a brass tray which a
+hearty child banged for a drum. Though we hold the British Constitution
+as sacred as the family vault we do not think the less of Dickens because
+the awful spectacle of our assembled legislators made him laugh, nor do
+we leave the room when Beethoven is played because his careless regard
+for a monarch's divine right is painful to us. If Kipling had not given
+us _My Sunday at Home_ and _The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney_, how
+should we have got them?
+
+I have just read Kipling's book, _Letters of Travel_. Its attractive
+title drew me to it, and is to blame. Kipling has an uncanny gift of
+sight. It prompts no divination in him, but its curiosity misses nothing
+that is superficial. If he had watched the Crucifixion, and had been its
+sole recorder, we should have had a perfect representation of the
+soldiers, the crowds, the weather, the smells, the colours, and the three
+uplifted figures; so lively a record that it would be immortal for the
+fidelity and commonness of its physical experience. But we should never
+have known more about the central figure than that He was a cool and
+courageous rebel. Kipling can make a picture of an indifferent huddle of
+fishing boats in a stagnant harbour which is more enjoyable than being
+there. Letters from such a traveller would attract one directly across
+the bookshop. But these letters of his were addressed to his friends the
+Imperialists before the War, and one may guess the rest. Such an exposure
+moves one to sorrow over a writer whose omniscience used to make the
+timorous believe that arrogance, if lively enough, had some advantage
+over reason.
+
+Yet there is in a few of the letters enough to show what we missed
+because they were not addressed to himself, or to anybody but a Composite
+Portrait of The Breed. There are passages in the chapter called "Half a
+Dozen Pictures" which clear all irritation from the mind (for many of the
+author's insults are studied and gratuitous) and leave nothing but
+respect for the artist. These come when the artist sees only a riot of
+Oriental deck passengers, bears, and macaws, in the tropics; or a steamer
+coming round, exposed by a clarity like crystal in the trough of immense
+seas somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Auckland Islands at dayfall.
+We get such impressions when Kipling has, for the moment, forgotten the
+need to make a genuflection towards the Absolute and Everlasting
+Chutney, and is a man and brother delighting in his craft.
+
+The rest of the book has, one must admit, a value, but it is an
+undesigned value; indeed, its value is that it was designed to prove, at
+the time it was written, something quite different. From this book, with
+its recurring contempt for England, you may see what value we need have
+attached to much that the assured and the violent ever had to tell us
+about our Empire. If this publication is, indeed, an act of contrition
+for words unwisely written, then it should be read as a warning by all
+who write. Materialists naturally attach to transient circumstances a
+value which the less patriotic of us might think not really material. "We
+discussed, first of all, under the lee of a wet deck-house in
+mid-Atlantic; man after man cutting in and out of the talk as he sucked
+at his damp tobacco." There is no doubt Kipling supposes that the wet
+deck-house adds a value to the words spoken under its lee-side. Yet the
+words he reports are what one may hear, with grief, any day in any tavern
+in the hurry and excitement of ten minutes before closing time. But
+Kipling always thought an opinion gained in value if expressed elsewhere
+than in England. His ideal government would be a polo-player from Simla
+leading the crew of the _Bolivar_.
+
+Every horror in the world, the author of these letters tells us, has its
+fitting ritual. How easily, too, one realizes it, when feeling again the
+fanatic heat and force of this maker of old magic with the tom-tom; the
+vicious mockery, certain of popular applause, of ideas that are not
+marketable; the abrupt rancour whenever the common folk must be
+mentioned; the spite felt for England--"in England ... you see where the
+rot starts"; the sly suspicion of other countries, and the consequent
+jealousy and fear; here it all is, convulsive, uncertain, inflammable.
+The prophet of Empire! But the prophecy was wrong. England, "where the
+rot starts," bore most of the heat and burden of the day, and saved the
+Empire for the money-mongers. And what of the British youngsters who did
+that, who were not materialists in the least, but many of them the
+idealists for whom no abuse once could be too vicious? The corruption of
+the Somme! That faceless and nameless horror was the apotheosis of the
+Imperialist.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI. A Devon Estuary
+
+
+SEPTEMBER 11, 1920. "This dreary expanse," the guide-book explains, "will
+not attract the tourist." The guide was right. I was alone to that degree
+beyond mere solitude when you feel you are not alone, but that the place
+itself is observing you. Yet only five miles away long lines of
+motor-cars were waiting to take tourists, at ruinous prices, to the
+authentic and admitted beauty spots. There was not, as the polite
+convention would put it, a soul about. It was certainly a dreary expanse,
+but the sunlight there seemed strangely brilliant, I thought, and, what
+was more curious, appeared to be alive. It was quivering. The transient
+glittering of some seagulls remote in the blue was as if you could
+glimpse, now and then, fleeting hints of what is immaculate in heaven.
+Nothing of our business was in sight anywhere except the white stalk of a
+lighthouse, and that, I knew, was miles away across the estuary whose
+waters were then invisible, for it was not only low tide, but I was
+descending to the saltings, having left the turf of the upper salt
+marshes.
+
+You felt that here in the saltings you were beyond human associations.
+The very vegetation was unfamiliar. The thrift, sea lavender, rocket, sea
+campion, and maritime spurge did not descend so low as this. They came no
+nearer than where the highest tidal marks left lines of driftwood and
+bleached shells, just below the break of the upper marshes. Here it was
+another kingdom, neither sea nor land, but each alternately during the
+spring tides. At first the sandy mud was reticulated with sun-cracks, not
+being daily touched by the sea, and the crevasses gave a refuge for algae.
+There was a smell, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, which reminded you of
+something so deep in the memory that you could not give it a name. But it
+was sound and good. Beyond that dry flat the smooth mud glistened as if
+earth were growing a new skin, which yet was very tender. It was spongy,
+but it did not break when I trod on it, though the earth complained as I
+went. It was thinly sprinkled with a plant like little fingers of green
+glass, the maritime samphire, and in the distance this samphire gave the
+marsh a sheen of continuous and vivid emerald.
+
+The saltings looked level and unbroken. But on walking seaward I was
+continually surprised by drainage channels. These channels serpentined
+everywhere, and were deep and wide. Sometimes they contained nothing but
+silt, and sometimes they were salt-water rivers. I came upon each canyon
+unexpectedly. The first warning was a sudden eruption from it, a flock of
+dunlin, a flock which then passed seawards in a regimented flight that
+was an alternate flash of light and a swift shadow. Dunlin, curlew,
+oyster-catchers, or gulls, left a gully just before I knew I was headed
+off again. In one of these creeks, however, the birds left me more than
+their delicate footprints to examine. They left there a small craft whose
+mast I had long taken to be a stump projecting from the mud. A young man
+in a brown beard, a brown shirt, and a pair of khaki trousers was sitting
+on its skylight. He hailed, and showed me how I could get to him without
+sinking up to more than the knees in this dreary spot.
+
+"Stay here if you like," he said, when I was with him. "When the tide is
+full I'll pull you round to the village." It was a little cutter of about
+fifteen tons, moored to the last huge links of a cable, the rest of which
+had long been covered up. I thought he was making holiday in a novel
+way. "No," he replied, "I'm living here."
+
+It seems (I am but paraphrasing his apology) that he returned from
+Cambrai, bringing back from France, as a young officer, some wounds and
+other decorations, but also his youthful credulity and a remembrance of
+society's noble promises to its young saviours. But not long after his
+return to us the sight of us made him feel disappointed. He "stuck it,"
+he said, as long as he could. But the more he observed us the worse he
+felt. That was why he gave up a good position a second time on our
+account. "What was the good of the money? The profiteers took most of it.
+I worked hard, and had to give up what I earned to every kind of
+parasite. London was more disagreeable than ever was Flanders. Yet I
+think I would not object to sweep the roads for a community of good
+people. Yes, I thought nothing could be worse than the dead in the mud.
+But I found something worse. The minds of the living who did not know
+what I knew in France were worse to me. I couldn't remember the friends
+I'd lost and remain where I was with those people about me. It was more
+awful than that German--did you ever meet him?--who lay just the other
+side of the parapet for weeks and weeks."
+
+His only companion now is a paraffin stove, which does not, perhaps,
+require a gas-mask to aid in its companionship, though about that I won't
+be sure. The only conversation he hears is that of the curlews; subdued,
+cheerful, and very intimate voices, having just that touch of melancholy
+which intimacy, when it is secure and genuine, is sure to give, however
+jolly the intimacy may be. He said that at first he was afraid he could
+not live on what little money he had, and must earn casually, after
+buying the boat, but "it's easier to live than I thought. There's not
+nearly as much worry needed as I used to suppose. It is surprising how
+much one can do without. I was rather scared at first when I got rid of
+my sense of duty. But, after all, it is not so hard to be free. Perhaps
+the world already has more soft and easy people than is good for it. I
+find one benefit of this life is that, being free of the crowd, I feel
+indifferent about the way the crowd chooses to go. I don't care now what
+the public does--that's its own affair, and I hope it will enjoy it."
+After a silence he said: "That sounds selfish, I know. And I'm not sure
+yet that it isn't. Anyhow, if one could help one's fellows one would.
+But is it possible to help them? When did they last listen to reason? The
+only guides they will listen to are frauds obvious enough to make an ass
+lay back his ears. Well, I think I'll wait here till the crowd knows
+enough to stop before it gets to the edge of the steep place--if it can
+stop now."
+
+I asked him what he read. "Very little. I fish more than I read. You'd
+think it would take only a week to learn all there is here. I should have
+thought so once. I see now that I shall never thoroughly know this
+estuary. It's a wonderful place. Every tide is a new experience. I am
+beginning to feel right again." In the boat, going round to the village,
+he learned I was a writer, rested on his oars, and drifted with the tide.
+"I'll give you a job," he said. "Write a book that will make people hate
+the idea that the State is God as Moloch was at last hated. Turn the
+young against it. The latest priest is the politician. No ritual in any
+religion was worse than this new worship of the State. If men don't wake
+up to that then they are doomed." He began then to pull me towards
+humanity again.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII. Barbellion
+
+
+DECEMBER 18, 1920. When posterity feels curious to discover what may have
+caused the disaster to our community it will get a little light from the
+merry confessions of our contemporary great folk. Let it read Colonel
+Repington's _Diary_, Mrs. Asquith's book, and the memoirs of General
+French. The general, of course, implies that he was so puzzled by the
+neutrality of time and space, and by the fact that the treacherous enemy
+was in trenches and used big guns. Our descendants may learn from these
+innocent revelations what quality of knowledge and temper, to be found
+only in a superior caste, guided the poor and lowly, and shaped our fate
+for us. They will know why wars and famines were inevitable for us, and
+why nothing could avert doom from the youth of our Europe. There is no
+disputing the importance of these confessions. But their relationship to
+literature? For that matter they might be linoleum. Yet there has been a
+book of confessions published recently which may be read as literature
+when the important gossip with the vast sales is merely curious evidence
+for historians equipped for psychological analysis. I mean Barbellion's
+_Journal of a Disappointed Man_.
+
+It will interest our descendants to learn that outside the circle which
+Colonel Repington reports at its dinner-tables where the ladies were so
+diverting, the fare usually excellent, and the gentlemen discussed the
+"combing out" of mere men for places like Ypres, there was genuine
+knowledge and warm understanding. Beyond those cheerful dinner-tables,
+and in that outer darkness of which the best people knew nothing except
+that it was possible to rake it fruitfully with a comb, there was a host
+of young men from which could be manifested the courageous intellectual
+curiosity, the ardour for truth, the gusto for life, and the love of
+earth, which we see in Keeling's letters and Barbellion's diary. All is
+shown in these two books in an exceptional degree, and, in Barbellion's
+diary, is expressed with a remarkable wit and acuteness, and not seldom,
+as in the description of a quarry, of a Beethoven Symphony, of a
+rock-pool of the Devon coast, with a beauty that is startling.
+
+Keeling was killed in the War. Barbellion (who, as we know now, was Bruce
+Cummings) never went to France, for he was dying, though he did not know
+it, when he presented himself for medical examination. But it is clear
+that though secluded from the turmoil in a country cottage, paralyzed,
+and his trunk already dead, Barbellion's sensitive mind and imaginative
+sympathy knew more of what was happening to his fellows in France, and
+what it meant for us all, than the combined Cabinet in Downing Street.
+That spark of dying light was aware when the luminaries on whom we
+depended were blind and ignorant. In his _Last Diary_, and within a day
+or two of his death, he wrote of the Peace Treaty (May, 1919): "After all
+the bright hopes of last autumn, justice will be done only when all the
+power is vested in the people. Every liberal-minded man must feel the
+shame of it." But did such men feel the shame of it? Refer to what the
+popular writers, often liberal-minded, said about the shame they felt at
+the time, and compare. To Barbellion, by the light of his expiring lamp,
+was revealed what was hidden from nearly all experienced and active
+publicists. Is there any doubt still of the superiority of imagination
+over hard-headedness?
+
+Imagination instantly responds. Percolation is a slow process in the hard
+head of the worldly-wise. When we know that in the elderly, the shrewd,
+and the practical, the desire for material power and safety, qualified
+only by fear, served as their substitute for the City of God during the
+War, it is heartening to remember that there were select though unknown
+young men, mere subjects for "combing" like Barbellion, who made
+articulate an immense rebellious protest that was in the best of our
+boys; who showed a mocking intuition into us and our motives, as though
+we were a species apart; a scorn of the world we had made for them, a
+cruel knowledge of the cowardice and meanness at the back of our warlike
+minds, and a yearning for that world of beauty which might have been, but
+which the acts of the clever and the practical have turned into carrion
+among the ruins. Would it matter now if we were bankrupt, and our Empire
+among the things that were, if only we were turning to sackcloth and
+ashes because of that dousing of the glim in the heart of the young?
+
+This last diary of Bruce Cummings is sad enough, for he could but lie
+inert, listen to the last news of the War, and wonder incidentally who
+would come to him first--the postman bringing the reviews of his first
+book, or the bony old gentleman bringing the scythe. He felt, of course,
+the mockery of this frustration of his powers. He thought--and, it
+seemed, with good reason--that he was a tragic failure. But was he? Read
+his books, and admit that he accomplished a little that is beautiful and
+enduring, and that he did it obscurely at a time when they who held most
+of the fearful attention of the world were but working gravely on what
+their children would execrate.
+
+Some critics find in the diary of Barbellion's last days evidence that he
+remembered he was writing for an audience. It may be there, but it is not
+plain to me. It is likely that if we were writing a paragraph while
+doubtful whether the hair which held the sword over us would last till we
+had finished, we might find we were not so joyously abandoned to pure art
+as we used to be. The interest of the book is that it is some more of
+Bruce Cummings when we could not have expected another line from him.
+Apart even from their literary value, it seems to me that some day his
+three volumes may prove to bear historic witness as important as that of
+Colonel Repington's diary. It was just such minds as Barbellion's, not
+uncommon in the youth of our war time--though in his case the unusual
+intuitions and adventurous aspirations were defined by genius--it was
+such minds that the war-mongers condemned and destroyed. Those men were
+selected for sacrifice because they had the very qualities which, when
+lost to the community, then it dies in its soul. They were candid with
+themselves, and questioned our warranty with the same candour, but were
+modest and reticent; they were kindly to us when they knew we were wooden
+and wrong, and did our bidding, judging it was evil. In France they
+subdued their insurgent thoughts--and what that sacrifice meant to them
+in the lonely night watches I have been privileged to learn--and
+surrendered, often in terrible derision, to our will; and then in cool
+and calculated audacity devised the very tasks in which the bravest and
+most intelligent would be the first to die.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII. Breaking the Spell
+
+
+APRIL 8, 1921. My seat by the Serpentine was under a small and almost
+impalpable cloud of almond petals. The babbling of ducks somewhere in the
+place where the water seemed a pale and wavering fire was like the sound
+of the upwelling of the hidden spring of life. This was the spot where I
+could sit and there quietly match the darker shades of trouble in the
+afternoon papers, the time being April in England, and the sky ineffable.
+There was not a trace of mourning in the sky; not a black-edged cloud.
+But human life, being an urgent and serious affair, and not a bright blue
+emptiness like Heaven; human life being a state of trial in which, as
+favoured beings, we are "heated hot with burning fears and dipped in
+baths of hissing tears" for our own good, could not be expected to look
+as pleasant, during so severe a necessary process, as almond trees in
+blossom. So I sat down and prepared to measure, from the news in the
+papers, the depth of the present border on our daily memorial card.
+
+The black border was rather a deep one, when measured. The fears were
+fairly hot. There were no noticeable signs of any tears in the papers, so
+far, but one could guess there would be a deep extinguishing bath of them
+ready to hiss presently, if all went well, and our affairs had
+uninterrupted development under the usual clever guides. And we had the
+guides. I could see that. The papers were loud with the inspirations of
+friends of ours who had not missed a single lesson of the War for those
+who were not in it; who were still resolute in that last and
+indispensable ditch which no foe is ever likely to reach. But by now the
+almond's cloud had vanished. I no longer heard the bubbling of the well
+of life.
+
+I finished reading the papers. Now I knew our current fate, and felt as
+if I heard again the gas gong going continuously. I had the feeling in
+April, unknown to any snail on the thorn, that the park was deafening
+with the clangour of pallid, tense, and contending lunatics. The
+Serpentine had receded from this tumult. Its tranquil shimmering was now
+fatuous and unbelievable. It was but half seen; its glittering was a
+distant grimacing and mockery at my troubled human intelligence. It was
+nothing to do with me, and showed it in that impertinent way. Two ducks,
+two absurd ducks, suddenly appeared before me on the polished water. They
+were bowing politely to each other--only I was looking at them--and were
+making soothing noises in imbecile ignorance of the fate overhanging us
+all. There was a boy not far away. He stood as still as a thought
+entranced. He was watching a boat with a paper sail. He was as intent as
+if he were God observing the progress of Columbus, knowing now that
+America is about to be found.
+
+If that boy had but guessed what I knew! But he had not read the latest
+news. It is the privilege of knowledge to be superior and grave; to be
+able to smile sadly at the dream of a Golden Galleon which childhood sees
+in April by the Serpentine; for knowledge is aware of the truth, the
+tumult surrounding us of contentious lunatics, endless, inexplicable; the
+noise of mankind in its upward journey towards the eclipse, or some other
+heavenly mystery.
+
+Presently that tinted mist which was a tree in flower began to shine
+again through the dark noise which the papers had made. The uproar
+cleared a little. The water came nearer, its glittering growing
+stronger, its fire burning towards me. I saw in surprise through the
+gloom in my mind that the fire had touched the elms; their dark masses
+were faintly luminous. And the mallard drake, riding on the outer pulses
+of that radiation, was purple and emerald. But would the beauty of the
+spring surprise us, I wonder; would it still give the mind a twinge,
+sadden us with a nameless disquiet, shoot through us so keen an anguish
+when the almond tree is there again on a bright day, if we were decent,
+healthy, and happy creatures? Perhaps not. It is hard to say. It is a
+great while since our skinless and touchy crowds of the wonderful
+industrial era, moving as one man to the words of the daily papers, were
+such creatures. Perhaps we should merely yawn and stretch ourselves, feel
+revived with the sun a little warmer on our backs, and snuff up a
+pleasant smell which we remembered; begin to whistle, and grope for an
+adze.
+
+But we cannot have it so. The spring is not for us. We have been so
+inventive. We have desired other things, and we have got them. We have
+cleverly made a way of life that exacts so close an attention, if we
+would save it from disaster, that we are now its prisoners. Peace and
+freedom have become but a vision which the imprisoned view through the
+bars they themselves have made. The spring we see now is in a world not
+ours, a world we have left, which is still close to us, but is
+unapproachable. The children are in it, and even, apparently, the ducks.
+It is a world we see sometimes, as a reminder--once a year or so--of what
+we could have made of life, and what we have.
+
+Which is the real world? I worried over that as I was leaving the park. I
+seemed to be getting nearer to reality near Rotten Row. A reassuring
+policeman was in sight. Motor-cars that were humiliating with their
+enamel and crystal were threading about. The fashionable ladies and their
+consorts seemed to be in no doubt about the world they were in. I began
+to feel mean and actual. While thus composing my mind I chanced to look
+backwards. A miniature glade was there, where the tree-trunks were the
+columns in an aisle. Was it a sward between them? I doubt whether we
+could walk it. I call it green. I know of no other word. Perhaps the sun
+was playing tricks with it. It may not have been there. As I kept my eye
+on it, disbelieving that light--desirous to believe it, but unable to,
+faith being weak--a rabbit moved into the aisle. I call it a rabbit, for
+I know no other word. But I declare now that I do not accept that
+creature. It sat up, and watched me. I don't say it was there. As far as
+I know, any rabbit would have been terrified with all those people about.
+But not this apparition, its back to the sunset, with an aura and radiant
+whiskers of gold. It regarded me steadfastly. I looked around to see if I
+were alone in this.
+
+The policeman was unconscious of it. The lady who sat on the chair
+opposite, the lady with the noticeable yellow legs, was talking in
+animation, but I doubt it was about this rabbit. The saunterers were
+passing without a sign. But one little girl stood, her hands behind her,
+oblivious of all but that admonitory creature in an unearthly light, and
+was smiling at it. It was the only confirmation I had. I have no
+recollection now of what I saw in the day's paper. I have later and
+better news.
+
+                               THE END
+
+Transcriber's Note: The following words were inconsistently hyphenated in
+the original text: hill-top, hilltop; school-boy, schoolboy.
+
+The following corrections have been made to the original text:
+
+Page 12: Septemer to September
+
+Page 103: foward to forward
+
+Page 146: irresistable to irresistible
+
+Page 199: sarcifice to sacrifice
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Waiting for Daylight, by Henry Major Tomlinson
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