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diff --git a/27246.txt b/27246.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..900625d --- /dev/null +++ b/27246.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4240 @@ +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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAITING FOR DAYLIGHT *** + +***** This file should be named 27246.txt or 27246.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/7/2/4/27246/ + +Produced by Susan Skinner, Peter Vachuska, Chuck Greif and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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