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+ <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> <title>
Living Bayonets, by Coningsby Dawson
</title>
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+ <head>
+ <title>
+ Living Bayonets, by Coningsby Dawson
+ </title>
+ <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
+ <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+ body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+ P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
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+ .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+ .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;}
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Living Bayonets, by Coningsby Dawson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+Title: Living Bayonets
+ A Record of The Last Push
+
+Author: Coningsby Dawson
+
+Release Date: June 30, 2016 [EBook #52451]
+Last Updated: March 12, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVING BAYONETS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger from page images generously
+provided by the Internet Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+ <div style="height: 8em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h1>
+ LIVING BAYONETS
+ </h1>
+ <h3>
+ A Record of The Last Push
+ </h3>
+ <h2>
+ By Coningsby Dawson
+ </h2>
+ <h4>
+ London: John Lane, The Bodley Head New York:
+ </h4>
+ <h3>
+ 1919
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+ <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h5>
+ <a href="images/0001.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+ </h5>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+ <img src="images/0009.jpg" alt="0009 " width="100%" /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h5>
+ <a href="images/0009.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+ </h5>
+ <blockquote>
+ <p>
+ <i>"Our spirits are living bayonets. The ideals which we carry in our
+ hearts are more deadly to the enemy than any man-made weapons.</i>”
+ </p>
+ </blockquote>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <b>CONTENTS</b>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2H_FORE"> FOREWORD </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> LIVING BAYONETS </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> GERMANY PLEADS FOR PEACE </a>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2H_FORE" id="link2H_FORE"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ FOREWORD
+ </h2>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HESE selections
+ from collected letters of Coningsby Dawson have been edited by his sister,
+ Muriel Dawson, and are published in response to hundreds of requests.
+ Readers of his first volume of correspondence from the Front, issued under
+ the title of “Khaki Courage,” have written from all over the
+ country asking that a further series be given them. The generous
+ appreciation and personal interest expressed by these readers have induced
+ Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson's family to publish these letters. They
+ take up his story at the point where “Khaki Courage” laid it
+ down, at the time when America entered the war.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ LIVING BAYONETS
+ </h2>
+ <h3>
+ A RECORD OF THE LAST PUSH
+ </h3>
+ <h3>
+ I
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>April</i> 14, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE other night at
+ twelve your letters came to me just as I was climbing into my bunk, so
+ recently tenanted by a Hun. I immediately lit another candle, stuck it on
+ the wall in a manner peculiar to myself, and started on a feast of genuine
+ home gossip.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ What a difference it must make to you to know that the United States are
+ at last confessedly our Ally. Their financial and industrial support will
+ be invaluable to us and will make a difference at once. And the moral
+ advantage of having them on our side is the greatest wound to the spirit
+ of Germany that she has received since the war started. It will be real
+ fun to be able to come back to New York in khaki, won't it?—instead
+ of slinking in as a civilian. Besides, if I get wounded, I'll be
+ able to come home to visit you on leave now.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This big decision has made me almost gay ever since it happened. I have
+ such a new affection for everything across the Atlantic—almost as if
+ New York and the Hudson were just across the lawn from England, the
+ nearest of near neighbours. I wish with all my heart that I could drop in
+ on you for a day and just sit down on the sunny verandah and talk and
+ talk. There's so much I want to hear and so much I want to
+ understand in the changed attitude of America. I'm sure everyone
+ must be much more happy now that the cloud of reproach has lifted and the
+ brightness of heroism is in the air. It shines in my imagination like the
+ clear blueness above the white towers of New York. There's one thing
+ certain; now that the President has made up his mind, the country will go
+ as baldheadedly for war as it has for everything else it ever set out to
+ attain. The real momentousness of this happening hasn't been
+ appreciated by the fighting men out here yet. With a sublime arrogance
+ they feel themselves quite capable of licking Germany without the
+ assistance of anyone.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ II
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>April</i> 17, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ast night I was
+ out on a working party—a moonlight night with sleet falling, and did
+ not get back till past two. The first thing my flash-light fell on as I
+ entered my dug-out was a pile of letters from home. At past 3 a.m. I was
+ still reading them, when H. and B. woke up and asked if there was anything
+ for them. There was. So there we were all lying in our bunks and reading
+ our love-letters till nearly 4 a.m.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Yesterday I had a very exciting time. I was doing some reconnoitring along
+ the front when a bullet whizzed by and almost scorched the ear of my
+ sergeant. We hopped into a trench about two feet full of water. But
+ whenever we showed ourselves the sniping started up again. At last we got
+ tired of wading, so climbed out and made a dash across the open. None of
+ us was caught, but by pure bad luck another sergeant of mine, who was
+ waiting quite 300 yards away, got it in the back. He was a big, heavy
+ chap, and we had quite a slippery time carrying him out on a stretcher to
+ the dressing-station. That's the second N.C.O. who's been hit
+ with me in the last ten days. The other chap got it in his side.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Either of these wounds would have been nice to get for anyone who wanted a
+ rest. But I don't want to get out yet; all the really sporting part
+ of this war will be this summer. We are praying that we may come into
+ action at the gallop, “Halt, action front!” bang off our
+ rounds and follow up again.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ For some reason, to-day my memory has been full of pictures of that
+ wonderful leave we had together in London. Things have come back that I'd
+ forgotten—visits to theatres, to restaurants, rides in taxis, so
+ many things—all the time there's that extraordinary atmosphere
+ of intense love. I suppose I must have spent the night dreaming of you.
+ Living in the daylight hours in this deep dug-out makes spring seem like
+ winter; I expect that helps me to remember. How I wish I could have those
+ ten days again. Perhaps our next will be in New York, when I come back in
+ khaki for an odd week. The thought of such a happening in the future and
+ the recollection of the meeting that is past are like coming to a fire out
+ of a dark, cold night. This war is so monstrously impersonal; the
+ attachments one forms with those among whom he lives are so few, that the
+ passionately personal affections of the old days shine out like beacon
+ fires. It will be wonderful when the war ends and one can sit still in a
+ great hush.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Yesterday I had a day off for a bath behind the lines—I hadn't
+ tubbed for well over a month and hadn't been back of the guns; also
+ I had slept in my clothes—so you may judge that warm water and soap
+ were a necessity. Afterwards I had great fun shopping for the mess, but I
+ didn't manage to buy much, as the country is all eaten up. All that
+ is beautiful in the way of landscape lies ahead, so we're very
+ anxious to capture it from the Hun. One looks out over his back country,
+ so green and beautiful and untouched, and feels like an Old Testament spy
+ having a peep at the Promised Land. Without doubt it will be ours in the
+ ordained time. When I went out this morning it was to see a blue, blue
+ sky, a battery pulling into action and behind it a desolated town. But the
+ feature that caught my attention was the spring sky. I stared and stared
+ at it and thought of when the war is ended. To-day I had to go to another
+ town which is in process of being battered. On my way back I passed
+ through a wood—most of the trees were levelled to the ground. In the
+ wood I found a hawk wounded by shrapnel, and pressing close behind a
+ fallen trunk. And I found my first spring flower—a daffodil—which
+ I am enclosing to you. I've sent you many flowers, but none which
+ carries with it more love than this little withered daffodil—my
+ first token of spring—gathered from a fought-over woodland of
+ France.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Since writing thus far it has been raining cats and dogs, and I've
+ been catching the mud, which leaks through my roof, in a soup-plate.
+ Little things like mud and rain don't damp our ardour, however; we
+ press on and on to certain victory.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ One of our officers came back from leave to-day—he'd spent his
+ freedom in Devon, and was full of the beauty of the spring-time there.
+ Happy Devon! War has changed the seasons in France. Winter started in
+ October; it's the middle of April and winter has not yet ended. Oh,
+ to wake up again with the splendid assurance of a summer day with nothing
+ but beauty—such a peaceful day as we have so often spent at
+ Kootenay. That wounded hawk, crouching among the daffodils, is a symbol—we're
+ like that: beasts of prey for our country's sake, maimed in mind and
+ spirit, and waiting till our wings grow strong again. And yet—who
+ would be anywhere else but here so long as the war lasts? Oh, the fine
+ clean courage of the men in the face of danger and their brave endurance
+ in the presence of privation! It passes understanding. I saw a chap with a
+ mortal wound the other day thinking nothing of himself—only of his
+ pal, who was but slightly wounded. The most unendurable people act like
+ heroes in the face of death. There's a fundamental nobility in all
+ men which comes to the surface when life is most despairing.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ III
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>April</i> 19, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> sit in a hole in
+ a recent battlefield. Over my head is some tattered canvas, upheld by
+ Fritzie shovels. In a battered bucket wood splutters, and the rain it
+ raineth every day. To make my appearance more gipsy-like I may add that my
+ hands are cracked with the mud. When the war is ended I shall lie in bed
+ for a month.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ We've come through some very lively times of late, and I shall have
+ plenty of local colour to impart to you when the war is ended. My mind is
+ packed with vivid pictures which I cannot tell. This huge silence which
+ rests between individuals is the most terrific thing about the war. You
+ get the terror made concrete for you when you creep to your Observation
+ Post and spy upon the Hun country. In the foreground is a long stretch of
+ barbed wire, shell-holes and mud. Behind that a ruined town; then
+ gradually, greenness growing more vivid as it recedes to the horizon.
+ Nothing stirs. You may look through your telescope all day, but nothing
+ stirs.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Yet you know that in every hole the hidden death lurks; should you for a
+ moment forget and raise your head unwarily, you are reminded of your folly
+ by the crack of a rifle. I've always made the mistake of believing
+ the best of everyone—and, as a soldier, I've never been able
+ to credit the fact that anyone of a big nation would count himself happy
+ to get my scalp. The actual passes belief. I recall so vividly that story
+ of the final war, written by a German, <i>The Human Slaughter-house</i>.
+ The chap never realizes the awfulness of his job until for the first time
+ he comes face to face with the young boy he's called upon to kill.
+ We kill by hundreds from a distance, but the destroyed and the destroyers
+ rarely have a hint of each other's identity. I came to a dug-out the
+ other day in a battered trench. Even the water in the shell-holes was dyed
+ by explosives to the colour of blood. Outside lay a German, face downwards
+ in the mud—an old man with grizzled hair. I shoved my revolver round
+ the mouth of the dug-out and called to anyone who was there to come out. A
+ Cockney voice answered; then followed a scrambling; two huge feet came up
+ through the dark; they belonged to a dead German; two of his comrades
+ grinned cheerfully at me from behind the corpse and propelled it none too
+ reverently into the mud. Behind the party I discovered my
+ Cockney-adventurer—a machine-gunner who, having lost his company,
+ made amends by capturing three Fritzes and killing two others with the aid
+ of a pal with a shattered leg. I told him to bring his pal up. Under his
+ directions the Fritzes trotted back into the hole and brought out the
+ wounded fellow. They were extraordinarily meek-looking and quite
+ surprisingly gentle; when I'd told them where the dressing-station
+ was, they made a bandy-chair of their hands, placed our fellow's
+ arms about their necks and staggered away through the barrage—or
+ curtain of fire, as the papers like to call it—back to safety with
+ their wounded enemy. And yet within the hour all these people had been
+ chucking bombs at one another.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A few days ago I was detailed for a novel experience—to follow up
+ the infantry attack across No Man's Land to the Hun Front line and
+ as far as his support trenches. I called for volunteers to accompany me
+ and had a splendid lot of chaps. My party got away with the adventure
+ without a scratch—which was extraordinarily lucky. Moreover, we
+ accomplished the particular job that we were called upon to do.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ To-night I'm out from dusk to daylight poking through the darkness
+ in a country where one dare not use a flash-light. Between two ruined
+ towns I have to pass a battered Calvary.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The Christ upon His Cross is still untouched, though the shrine and
+ surrounding trees are smashed to atoms. I think He means more to me like
+ that—stripped of His gorgeousness—than ever. He seems so like
+ ourselves in His lonely and unhallowed suffering. The road which leads to
+ and from Him is symbolic—shell-torn, scattered with dead horses and
+ men, while ahead the snarl of shrapnel darts across the sky and spends
+ itself in little fleecy puffs. All this desolation will be re-created one
+ day, the country will grow green and, in another country, greener than any
+ upon earth, those dead men will walk and laugh—and in that other
+ country the Christ will no longer hang alone and aloofly. I like to think
+ of that—of the beauty in the future, if not in this, then in some
+ other world. One grows tired, just like that image on the Cross. How
+ little the body counts! War teaches us that.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ IV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>April</i> 22, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> had a letter from
+ each one of you the day before last, and they reached me within three
+ weeks of being written—it made you all seem very near.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I am writing this to you from a mercifully deep dug-out, which was the
+ home of Huns considerably less than a fortnight ago. I'm sure it was
+ very obliging of them to think ahead and provide us with such safe
+ hiding-places from their villainous shells. They have knocked the house
+ down overhead. In the yard is a broken bird-cage—the owner must have
+ set the captive free before he made good his own escape. Hanging at the
+ head of my bunk is an iron crucifix and on the wall is a beautiful woman's
+ portrait. One hardly thinks of his enemy as being human these days—he
+ seems only an impersonal devastating force; but it was a man with
+ affections who lately tenanted my dug-out.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In a recent attack I saw a curious happening. I was up with the infantry
+ as liaison officer when one of our planes was shot down. The pilot made an
+ effort to land behind our trenches, but his machine was unmanageable and
+ he came down in Boche territory—or what had been Boche territory a
+ quarter of an hour before. Through my glasses I saw the pilot and observer
+ get out and start to creep cautiously back. We ourselves didn't know
+ for certain where the Huns were—all we knew was that they were
+ supposed to be withdrawing. When the airmen arrived at our battalion
+ headquarters they were still scarcely convinced that our chaps were not
+ Huns in khaki. When we gave them a meal of bully-beef they knew that wc
+ were British. So very much I could tell you which is thrilling and heroic
+ if only I were allowed.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Do you know, sometimes I marvel at my contented loneliness? It isn't
+ like me. I ought to be homesick and—but I'm not. I'm too
+ much consumed with the frenzy of an ideal to care for anything but to see
+ the principle for which we fight established. What one man can do isn't
+ much—only a Jesus can save the world singlehanded; the real
+ satisfaction is in one's own soul, that softness and success had not
+ made him deaf to the voice of duty when she called to him. For me this
+ undertaking is as holy as a crusade; if it were not I could not endure the
+ sights. As it is I keep quiet in my soul, feeling humbly glad that I am
+ allowed to fulfil the dreams of my boyhood. I always wanted to do
+ something to save the world, you remember. First I was going to be a
+ missionary; then a reformer; then a preacher; then a poet. Instead of any
+ of these I “struck luck” as a novelist—and I can see now
+ how success was corroding to one's ideals. Success in America is so
+ inevitably measured in terms of praise and money. I wanted to save the
+ world; never in my wildest dreams did it occur to me that I should get my
+ chance as a soldier. I remember when I was studying history at Oxford how
+ I used to shudder at the descriptions of battles, especially mediaeval
+ battles waged by mailed Titans. I don't know what change has taken
+ place in me; this is a more damnable war in its possibilities for
+ suffering than any of a bygone age; in comparison, those old wars seem
+ chivalrous and humane. And yet because of the spiritual goal for which we
+ fight I no longer shudder. Yes, that is the reason for the change. A man
+ doesn't often get the chance in these commercial times to risk all
+ that he holds most dear for humanity's sake. I think of the morning
+ family prayers of childhood in the old panelled room in Highbury and the
+ petitions you used to make for us—everything has shaped towards this
+ great moment in our lives; the past was a straight road leading to this
+ crisis. I don't forget the share you three contribute—the
+ share of your brave loneliness and waiting. Your share is the greatest.
+ God bless you.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Our major was twice wounded in the recent offensives and has now left us
+ for a higher position. I was terribly sorry to lose him.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ V
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>April</i> 30,1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he mud has gone.
+ Spring is here and the sun shines all the time. Oh, a most enjoyable war,
+ I do assure you. When I wakened this morning I wandered up the thirty
+ stairs from my dug-out into the former garden, which is now a scene of the
+ utmost desolation. A row was going on as though the Celestial housemaid
+ had lost her temper and given notice, and was tumbling all the plates from
+ the pantry through the clouds. Above the clatter I heard a sound which was
+ almost alarming: the clear, brave note of a thrush, piping, piping,
+ piping. He didn't seem to care a rap how often the guns blew their
+ noses or how often the Hun shrapnel clashed like cymbals overhead; he had
+ his song to sing in the sunshine, and was determined to sing it, no matter
+ that the song might go unheard. So there I stood and listened to him among
+ the ruins, as one might listen to a faithful priest in a fallen church. I
+ re-created in imagination the people who had lived here for generations,
+ their tragedies, kindnesses, love-affairs. It must have been a beautiful
+ place once, for everywhere there are stumps of fruit-trees, hedges of box
+ trodden almost underground, circular patches which were flower-beds. I can
+ picture the exiles' joy when they hear that their village has been
+ recaptured. Presently they'll come back, these old women and men—for
+ their sons are fighting—and they'll look in vain for even the
+ landmarks of the little house which once sheltered their affections. The
+ thrush in the tree is all that the Huns have left of past history. We
+ British lose our men in the fight, but the sacrifice of the French is
+ immeasurable, for when their sons are dead they have no quiet place of
+ recollections. They can't say, “Do you remember how he walked
+ here two years back?” or “These hollyhocks he planted,”
+ or “How he waved us goodbye as we watched him from the gate!”
+ The same cyclone of passion which has taken their sons' fives, has
+ robbed them of everything tangible which would remind them of him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As regards the U.S.A. joining with us, I have spoken with several Huns.
+ They one and all seem very dejected about it, and seem to consider the
+ loss of America's friendship one of the greatest blows of the war.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ VI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>May</i> 10, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t's just
+ back at the guns from a two days' rest at the wagon-fines. It's
+ the first time I've been back since March. I rose early on a blazing
+ morning and started down to the point where I was to meet my horses. I say
+ “rose early,” but as a matter of fact I had only had four
+ hours' sleep in forty-eight, and hadn't had my clothes off for
+ nearly three weeks. As I drew away, the low thunder that we make grew less
+ and less, the indescribable smell of bursting explosives fainter; soon I
+ realized that a lark was singing overhead; then another—then
+ another. Brave little birds to come so near to danger to sing for us. At
+ the edge of a wood I found my chestnut mare, Kitty, and my groom—the
+ chap who used to work at the Silver King mine, which overlooks our ranch
+ at Kootenay. That we should share that memory always forms a bond of
+ kindness between us. We didn't stop long at the wagon-line, but soon
+ started out to get farther back for lunch. I had it in the shack of an
+ officer who was with me at Petewawa. Then off I went at a gallop for green
+ trees and clean country. I hadn't gone far before I came to a God's
+ Acre full of crowded little white crosses and newly turned earth. Our
+ captain was with me, and he learnt that an old friend from one of our
+ batteries was on the way down with a Union Jack spread over him. We went
+ into the brown field where the men who have “gone west” lie so
+ closely and snugly side by side, and came to a place where six shallow
+ holes were dug like clay coffins. Presently, winding through the forest of
+ crosses, the hard blue sky overhead, we saw the little band advancing, the
+ stretcher carried high on the shoulders of four officers. The burden was
+ set down and the flag lifted, showing the mummy-like form sewn up in the
+ blanket in which the living man had slept. The chaplain began tremulously,
+ “I am the Resurrection and the life; he who believeth in Me,”
+ etc., and while he recited I watched the faces of the gunners drawn up at
+ attention in the strong sunlight. To them, whatever else the ceremony
+ meant, it at least meant this—a day away from the guns. Suddenly I
+ discovered that the Lord's Prayer was being said. Then heads were
+ again covered and the word of command was given. “Right turn. Quick
+ march.” The stretcher was gathered up and the little crowd
+ dispersed. I suppose there is a woman somewhere who would have given ten'
+ years of life to have stood in my shoes beside that narrow grave. For
+ myself I thought, “Well, the chap's got what we long for most
+ out here—rest. He won't have to stand in the mud any more,
+ when his feet are like stones and eyes like lead, watching and watching
+ the rockets go up along the front. And he won't have to guide his
+ guns in at night, or wonder what life will do to him when the war is
+ ended. He longed for sleep and now he sleeps endlessly.” It didn't
+ impress me as at all sad. He'd played his part like a man and was at
+ last rewarded. But we—we were alive, and we hadn't had a bath
+ for a month—so we jumped on our horses and trotted off to the
+ nearest shower.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was five in the afternoon when we again took to the highway. We wanted
+ to sponge out our minds by looking at something beautiful, just as we had
+ sponged down our bodies. We, I should explain, were myself and the captain
+ of my battery. Soon we found ourselves among fields from which all the
+ wrinkles of trenches and pit-marks of shell-holes had been smoothed out.
+ There was a river winding between tall trees unblasted by the curtain of
+ fire. Peasants were at work on their little patches—women and either
+ very old men or boys. We came to a town as quiet and unspoiled as those we
+ used to visit in pre-war days. In a courtyard we tethered our horses and
+ then sat down to one of those incomparable French meals. It was splendid
+ after canned stuff, and you couldn't hear the boom of a single gun.
+ The peace of the place got hold of us—we didn't want to go
+ back too hurriedly, and kept postponing and postponing. A blue and gold
+ haze with a touch of silver shining through it was blurring all the sky,
+ when we remounted. We travelled slowly, singing—thinking up the
+ twilight songs of other times. My thoughts went back to Scotch holidays at
+ Arran and Loch Katrine—the daringly late evenings of childhood.
+ Reluctantly we came back and saw the frantic city of Very lights grow up,
+ which indicate the Hun front. The air began to be shaken again by the
+ prolonged agony of rushing shells and stamping guns. It was only after
+ midnight, when we had reached our hut, that I remembered the need of
+ sleep. But when I struck a match on entering, I found letters from each
+ one of you awaiting—so lay late in bed reading them by candlelight
+ for another hour. One snatches at small pleasures and magnifies them into
+ intensity.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Your letters told me about <i>Khaki Courage</i>, and seeing “Colonel
+ Newcome,” and about the Highlanders in New York. What a very much
+ more homely place America must be to you now. I must say I am keen to see
+ the book. It's not mine at all—it's you dear home people's—you
+ called it out and you put it together.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Here I sit in the underground place which I have to call “home”
+ at present. You go through all kinds of contortions to enter. Stephen
+ Leacock could be very funny at my expense.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ VII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 2, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is 11 a.m., and
+ I'm sitting at the bottom of a dug-out waiting for the Hun to finish
+ his morning hate before I go upstairs. He seems very angry, and has just
+ caved in one of our walls.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Mother seemed most awfully sorry for me in her last letter. But you know I'm
+ really having rather a good time, despite having a minimum amount of
+ washing and having our mess kitchen blown in every few days. The only time
+ that one gets melancholy is when nothing is doing. An attack or the
+ preparations for an attack are real fun. Everybody is on his toes, and
+ there's no time to think.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's four hours later. Just as I had reached this point news came
+ that some of our chaps were buried, so I had a little brisk spade-work,
+ then a wriggling voyage through a hole, and then a lot of messy work
+ pouring iodine into wounds and binding up. I'm afraid my hands are
+ still rather like a murderer's. Incidentally our kitchen is entirely
+ done for this time. We've got the wounded fellows on their way to
+ Blighty, and are fairly confident that they're not going west this
+ time.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I am so glad that the coming of America into the game has made so much
+ difference to you. I wish I could come back for a fortnight and share the
+ excitement with you. It's difficult to picture New York as a
+ military pageant in khaki. Tell me all about the young fellows I know and
+ what they are doing. I wonder how many are in the Field Artillery—which
+ is about the most interesting part of the game.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You remember that Calvary I told you about. I saw it under another guise
+ after writing. Something happened and, instead of the spring peace, it was
+ a shamble with horses and men dying. In such cases one can't do
+ anything—he has to go on about his own errand.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm so very dirty that I'll leave off now while there's
+ a chance to have a wash. I'm awfully muddy, and my hair is just
+ ready for growing potatoes—there's about a pound of the real
+ estate of France in it.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ VIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 6,1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>ou certainly are
+ owed a whole lot of letters, but it is very difficult to find the time
+ under present conditions—I didn't get my breakfast until 7.30
+ p.m. yesterday. And to-day I was up at 4 a.m., and didn't come back
+ from up front till dusk. So you see I really have some excuse for being
+ temporarily a bad correspondent. You don't need to be sorry for me,
+ though, or anything like that, for I'm having quite a good time.
+ After the mud this hard white sunlight is a godsend. Do you remember———
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>June</i> 7.—Thus far I got when I was interrupted, and another
+ day has gone by. I'm just back again from up front. I went there at
+ dawn to do some reconnaissance work. By eight the heat was sweltering—just
+ the way it was when we made our memorable trip down the Loire valley—only
+ now there are no estaminets at which to drink Ciro Citron. The only
+ inhabitants of the place where I am now are the mayor and his daughter,
+ who returned the moment the town was captured. Rather fine of them.
+ Yesterday a French soldier looked in (on special leave) to claim what was
+ left of his cottage; just as much, I should imagine, as you could make
+ into a road. And yet, despite the fallen houses, the fruit-trees are green
+ and not so long ago were white with bloom and nodding.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm feeling extraordinarily lazy and comfortable. I've taken
+ two hours over shaving and washing. My basin was the brass case of a big
+ eight-inch naval shell which was formerly the property of the Hun. I wish
+ I could send you one back. Two mornings ago I had a dive and swim in a
+ shell-hole filled with rain-water, which gives you some idea of the sized
+ crater a big shell can make. From henceforth, however, I shall have to
+ eschew this pleasure, as I understand that the ground is so poisoned with
+ corpses, etc., that the water is likely to bring on skin disease. I have
+ that to a slight extent already. Most of us have—it comes from
+ eating no vegetables and nothing but tinned stuff.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ How interested you'd be if you could just go for a couple of hours'
+ walk with me. Coming back to-day I marvelled that we had ever managed to
+ make our advance; the Hun machine-gun emplacements were so strongly
+ fortified and well chosen. It speaks volumes for the impetuosity of our
+ infantry.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ IX
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 17, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> believe it must
+ be nearly a week since I wrote. The reason is that I'm down at the
+ wagon-lines, supposed to be resting, which is when we work the hardest.
+ First of all, we had a grand inspection of the Brigade, which kept one
+ going from 5 a.m. to 10.30 p.m., cleaning harness. Then we had Brigade
+ sports, which are not yet over, and which don't leave an officer
+ with any leisure. The best time for letter-writing is when one is in
+ action, since you sit in a dug-out for interminable hours with nothing
+ much to keep you busy.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm looking forward very much to the receipt of <i>Khaki Courage</i>;
+ it hasn't come yet. It will be like reading something absolutely
+ beyond my knowledge.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It is now evening. This has been a mixed day. I've been orderly
+ officer. This morning I heard Canon Scott preach—he was the father I
+ wrote to you about whom I met going up front in the winter to look for the
+ body of his son. He's a fine old chap, and fully believes that he's
+ fated to leave his bones in France. This afternoon was spent in
+ harness-cleaning and this evening in watching a Brigade display of boxing.
+ A strange world! But you'll judge that we're having quite good
+ times. Last night we had an open-air concert—“Silver Threads
+ among the Gold,” “The Long, Long Trail,” etc. Trenches
+ lay behind us and ahead of us—not so long ago Huns could have
+ reached us with a revolver shot, where we were all sitting. Overhead, like
+ rooks through the twilight, our fighting planes sailed home to bed. Far
+ away on the horizon, observers in the Hun balloons must have been watching
+ us. It was almost possible to forget that a war existed; almost, until'
+ a reminder came with a roar and column of black smoke to a distant flank.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Monday.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This letter gets scribbled in pieces. I'm now waiting for the
+ afternoon parade to fall in. The gramophone is strumming out a banjo song,
+ and in my galvanized hut it's as hot as———. Most
+ of the men strip off everything but their breeches and go about their
+ horses dripping like stokers. The place isn't so unlike Petewawa in
+ some respects, except that there is no water. You look for miles across a
+ landscape of sage-green and chalk, with straight French roads running
+ without a waver from sky-line to sky-line. There's nothing habitable
+ in sight—only grey piles and splintered trees. But in spite of the
+ wholesale destruction one finds beauty. You'd smile if you could see
+ our camp—it looks like a collection of gipsy bivouacs made of
+ lean-tos of wood with canvas and sand-bags for roofs. The rats are getting
+ bold, and coming out of the trenches—rather a nuisance. It's
+ strange to be here playing football on the very ground over which not so
+ long ago I followed the infantry within half an hour of the commencement
+ of the attack. Our wounded chaps were crawling back, trying to drag
+ themselves out of the Hun barrage, which was ploughing up the ground all
+ around, and the Huns were lying like piled-up wheatsacks in their battered
+ front line. One learns to have a very short memory and to be glad of the
+ present.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Within sight a little trench tramway runs just like the Welsh toy-railway
+ of our childhood. It leads all the way to Blighty and New York and
+ Kootenay. One can see the wounded coming out on it, and sometimes sees
+ them with a little envy.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ X
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 23,1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ast night <i>Khaki
+ Courage</i> arrived. I found the Officers' Mess assembled round my
+ mail—they'd guessed what was in the package. I had intended
+ smuggling the book away, and did actually succeed in getting it into my
+ trench-coat pocket. A free fight ensued and, since there were four against
+ one, I was soon conquered. Then one of them, having taken possession of
+ the little volume, danced about our tin tabernacle reading extracts. I had
+ planned to ride into a neighbouring city for dinner that night, but sat
+ reading till nearly twelve. I can't thank you all enough for your
+ loving work. I think the proof of how well you have done it is, that my
+ brother officers are quite uncynically keen about it. If they, who have
+ shared the atmosphere which I have unconsciously set down in its pages,
+ can read with eagerness and without ridicule, I think the book, as
+ compiled by you, dear people, should stand the test.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Do you remember a description I gave you some months back of seeing Huns
+ brought up from a captured dug-out? That's long enough ago now for
+ me to be able to give you a few details. A fortnight before the show
+ commenced it was planned that an officer from each battery with a party of
+ volunteers should follow up the infantry attack and build a road through
+ the Hun Front line over which our artillery should advance. The initial
+ work was carried on at night, and the road was built right up to our own
+ front-line. On the morning of the attack I took my volunteers forward and
+ hid with the rest of the party in one of our support trenches. We judged
+ that we should escape the Hun barrage there, and should have advanced
+ before his retaliation on our back country commenced. Soon after midnight,
+ on a cold morning when the sleet was falling, we set out. The sky was
+ faintly tinged with a grey dawn when our offensive opened. Suddenly the
+ intense and almost spiritual quiet was changed into frantic chaos. The sky
+ was vividly lit with every kind of ingeniously contrived destruction. In
+ addition to his other shells, the Hun flung back gas and liquid fire. It
+ looked as though no infantry could live in it. Within an hour of the
+ offensive starting, each officer crept out of his trench and went forward
+ to reconnoitre the ground, taking with him one N.C.O. and a runner. My
+ runner carried with him a lot of stakes with white rags attached for
+ marking out our route. We wound our way carefully through the shells until
+ we reached our own Front line. Here the Hun barrage was falling briskly,
+ and gas-shells were coming over to beat the band. The bursting of
+ explosives was for all the world like corn popping in a pan. We ran across
+ what had been No Man's Land and entered the Hun wire. My job was to
+ build from here to his support-trenches. His frontline trench was piled
+ high with dead. The whole spectacle was unreal as something that had been
+ staged; the corpses looked like wax-works. One didn't have time to
+ observe much, for flames seemed to be going off beneath one's feet
+ almost every second, and it seemed marvellous that we contrived to live
+ where there was so much death. As we went farther back we began to find
+ our own khaki-clad dead. I don't think the Huns had got them; it was
+ our own barrage, which they had followed too quickly in the eagerness of
+ the attack. Then we came to where the liquid fire had descended, for the
+ poor fellows had thrown themselves into the pools in the shell-holes and
+ only the faces and arms were sticking out. Then I recognised the
+ support-trench, which was the end of my journey, and planted my Union Jack
+ as a signal for the other officers who were to build ahead of me. With my
+ runner and N.C.O. I started to reconnoitre my road back, planting my
+ stakes to mark the route. When I was again at what had been our Front
+ line, I sent my runner back to guide in my volunteers. What a day it was!
+ For a good part of the time the men had to dig, wearing their gas-helmets.
+ You never saw such a mess—sleet driving in our faces, the ground
+ hissing and boiling as shells descended, dead men everywhere, the wounded
+ crawling desperately, dragging themselves to safety. I saw sights of pity
+ and bravery that it is best not to mention, and all the time my brave
+ chaps dug on, making the road for the guns. Soon through the smoke
+ grey-clad figures came in tottering droves, scorched, battered, absolutely
+ stunned. They looked more like beasts in their pathetic dumbness. One
+ hardly recognized them as enemies. All day we worked, not stopping to eat,
+ and by the evening we saw the first of our guns advancing. It's a
+ great game, this war, and searches the soul out. That night I slept in the
+ mud, clothes and all, the dreamless sleep of the dog-tired.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Note.—<i>Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson was wounded in the right arm at
+ Vimy on 26th June. He was evacuated with a serious case of gas-gangrene,
+ and after being in, first, a Casualty Clearing Hospital and then a Base
+ Hospital, was sent back to England on 8th July, where he was in a hospital
+ at Wandsworth, London, till the end of August. His arm was in such a
+ serious condition that at first it was thought necessary to amputate it.
+ Fortunately after days of ceaseless care this was avoided.</i>
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ Hospital
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ London <i>July</i> 8, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> fortnight ago
+ to-day I got wounded. The place was stitched up and didn't look bad
+ enough to go out with. Three days later there was an attack and I was to
+ be observer. My arm got poisoned while I was on the job, and when I came
+ back I was sent out. Blood-poisoning started, and they had to operate
+ three times; for a little while there was a talk of amputation. But you're
+ not to worry at all about me now, for I'm getting on splendidly and
+ there's no cause for anxiety. They tell me it will take about two
+ months before I get the full use of my arm back. Reggie was in London on
+ leave and got his leave extended—I missed him by an hour. J. L. was
+ round to see me this morning and is cabling to you. I don't think
+ you ought to cross while the risk is so great and there's a
+ difficulty in obtaining passports—though you know how I'd love
+ to have you.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I've missed all my letters for the past fortnight. Please excuse me,
+ for my arm gets very tired, and I'm not supposed to use it.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London July 25, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m going on
+ all right, but can't use my arm much for writing just at present, so
+ you won't mind short letters, will you? I got the first written by
+ you since I was hurt, yesterday. I am so glad that America is so
+ patriotic.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Yesterday, to my great surprise, I was called up by the High Commissioner
+ of Canada, and on going to see him found he wanted me to start at once on
+ preparing an important government statement. Since I'm forbidden to
+ use my arm for writing, I'm to have a stenographer and dictate my
+ stuff after doing the interviewing. This job is only temporary. And I
+ think it is possible after I have finished it, if they refuse to allow me
+ to return to the Front at once, that I may get a leave to America. I
+ wouldn't want to get a long one, as I am so anxious to get back to
+ France.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Don't worry at all about me. I feel quite well now, and go about
+ with my arm in a sling and am allowed out of hospital to do this work all
+ day. As soon as my ann grows stronger I'll write you a good long
+ letter, but while it is as it is at present I have to restrict myself to
+ bare essentials.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Oh, did I tell you? I wouldn't have missed coming through London on
+ a stretcher for pounds. The flower-girls climbed into the ambulance and
+ showered us with roses. All the way as we passed people waved and shouted.
+ It was a kind of royal procession, and, like a baby, I cried.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London <i>August</i> 3,1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve just
+ come back to my office in Oxford Circus from lunching at the Rendezvous.
+ Next to my table during lunch were two typical Wardour Street dealers,
+ rubbing their hands and chortling over a cheap buy.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I wonder how long this different way of life is going to last. Someone
+ will snap his fingers and heigh-ho, presto! I shall be back in France.
+ This little taste of the old life gives me a very vivid idea of the sheer
+ glee with which I shall greet the end of the war. How jolly comfortable it
+ will be to be your own master—not that one ever is his own master
+ while there are other people to live for. But I mean, what an
+ extraordinary miracle it will seem to be allowed to reckon one's
+ life in years and not in weeks—to be able to look forward and plan
+ and build. And yet—this is a confession—I can see myself
+ getting up from my easy-chair and going out again quite gladly directly
+ there is another war, if my help is needed. There was a time, long ago,
+ when I used to regard a soldier with horror, and wondered how decent folk
+ could admire him; the red of his coat always seemed to me the blood-red of
+ murder. But it isn't the killing that counts—you find that out
+ when you've become a soldier; it's the power to endure and
+ walk bravely, and the opportunity for dying in a noble way. One doesn't
+ hate his enemy if he's a good soldier, and doesn't even want
+ to kill him from any personal motive—he may even regret killing him
+ while in the act. I think it's just this attitude that makes our
+ Canadians so terrible—they kill from principle and not from malice.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm seeing all my old friends again, lunching with one and dining
+ with another, and have been to some matinees. But I can go to no evening
+ performances, because I have to be in the hospital at 10 p.m.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I really am hoping to get a week in New York after this piece of work is
+ done, after which back to France till the war is ended.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XIV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London <i>August</i> 30, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve just
+ left hospital and am staying at this hotel. You keep saying in your
+ letters that you never heard how I got my injury. I described it—but
+ that letter must have gone astray. On 26th June I was wounded not by a
+ shell, but by a piece of an iron chimney which was knocked down on to my
+ right arm. I had it sewn up and for two days it was all right. The third I
+ went up for an attack and it started to swell—by the time I came
+ back I had gas-gangrene. The arm is better now and I'm on sick
+ leave, though still working. They've made me an offer of a job here
+ in London, but I should break my heart if I could not go back to the
+ Front. But I think when I've finished here that I may get a special
+ leave, with permission to call in at New York. Wouldn't that be
+ grand?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I don't want to raise your hopes too high, but it seems extremely
+ likely that I shall see you shortly. I was to-day before my medical board,
+ and they gave me two months' home service. I have been promised that
+ as soon as a new Canadian ruling on home leave is confirmed, my
+ application for leave will go through.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ If that happens, I shall cable you at once that I am coming. It doesn't
+ seem at all possible or true that this can be so, and I'm making
+ myself no promises till I'm really on the boat. It would be better
+ that you should not, also. I'm taking a gamble and am going to order
+ a new tunic for the occasion this afternoon.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's a golden afternoon outside—the kind that turns the leaves
+ red at Kootenay, with the tang of iced wine in the air. The sound of
+ London is like the tumming of a thousand banjos. It's good to be
+ alive, and very wonderful after all that has happened.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Note.—<i>Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson arrived at Quebec on 26th
+ September and came home on the following day. He was at home for a month.
+ During that time he spoke in public on several occasions, and wrote the
+ book which was brought out the following spring, entitled “The Glory
+ of the Trenches</i>.”
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XIV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ Somewhere on the Atlantic <i>November</i> 11, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere's the
+ first letter since I left New York, coming to you. It's seven in the
+ morning; I'm lying in my bunk, expecting any minute to be called to
+ my bath.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ So far it's been a pleasant voyage, with rolling seas and no
+ submarines. There are scarcely a hundred passengers, of whom only four are
+ ladies, in the first class. The men are Government officials, Army and
+ Navy officers going on Cook's Tours, and Naval attachés. The
+ American naval men are an especially fine type. We do all the usual things—play
+ cards, deck-golf and sleep immoderately, but always at the wrong times.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm going back for the second time, and going back in the most
+ placid frame of mind. I compare this trip with my first trip over as a
+ soldier. I was awfully anxious then, and kept saying good-bye to things
+ for the last time. Now I live day by day in a manner which is so
+ take-it-for-granted as to be almost commonplace. I've locked my
+ imagination away in some garret of my mind and the house of my thoughts is
+ very quiet.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ What bricks you all were in the parting—there wasn't any
+ whining—you were a real soldier's family, and I felt proud of
+ you. It was just a kind of “Good luck, old chap”—with
+ all the rest of the speaking left to the eyes and hands. That's the
+ way it should be in a world that's so full of surprises.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This trip has done a tremendous lot for me—I shall always know now
+ that the trenches are not the whole of the horizon. Before, when I landed
+ in France, it seemed as though a sound-and sight-proof curtain had dropped
+ behind and everything I had known and loved was at an end. One collects a
+ little bit of shrapnel and, heigho, presto! one's home again. On my
+ second trip, the war won't seem such a world without end.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ To-night I have to pack—that's wonderful, too. I'm
+ wondering whether Reggie will be on the station. I shall send a telegram
+ to warn him.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XVI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ The Ritz Hotel, London <i>November</i> 11, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his was the date
+ at which I had to report back at Headquarters. Actually I reported back
+ yesterday, because to-day is Sunday. I found that I had been detailed not
+ for France, but for work under the High Commissioner. You know what such
+ news means to me. I at once did my best to fight the order, but was told
+ that it was a military order in which I had no choice. I start work
+ to-morrow at Oxford Circus House, but shall put in an urgent request to go
+ to France.-I shall at least try to get some limitations to the period of
+ my stay in England. Even when I was in hospital I used to feel that the
+ last stretcher-case out of the fighting was someone to be worshipped—he
+ was nearer to the sacrifice than I. And now I'm not to go back for
+ months, perhaps—I shall eat my heart out in England.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Reggie fell asleep and has just wakened. He was dreaming, he said, the
+ best dream in the world. It was that he might land back in New York on
+ 20th December and spend Christmas with you—then go up to Kootenay to
+ get a glimpse of his little green home among the snow and apple trees and——
+ “And then what?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I asked. He made a wry face. “Go back to hunting submarines,”
+ he said quickly. <i>Go back!</i> We all want to go back. Why? Because it's
+ so easy to find reasons for not going back probably. I shall raise heaven
+ and earth to be sent back—and you'll be glad of it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There's something that I shouldn't tell you were I going back
+ to-morrow. Last week I met one of my gunners on leave. He was standing on
+ the island in Piccadilly Circus. I learnt from him that every officer who
+ was with me at the battery when I was wounded has since been wiped out.
+ Even some who joined since have been done for. Three have been killed, the
+ rest wounded, gassed, and the major has gone out with concussion. Among
+ the killed is poor S., the one who was my best friend in France, You
+ remember he had a young wife, and his first baby was born in February. He
+ used to carry the list of all the people I wanted written to if I were
+ killed, and I had promised to do the same for him. In addition to the
+ officers, many of the men whom I admired have “gone west.” All
+ this was told me casually in the heart of London's pleasure, with
+ the taxis and buses streaming by.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A few days ago a pitiful derelict of the streets crossed my path. I'd
+ been dining out in the West End with L. and P. and was on my way back,
+ when a girl stopped me. She stopped me for the usual reason, and I suppose
+ I refused her rudely. The next thing I knew she was crying. She said she
+ had been walking for twelve hours, and was cold and tired, and ready to
+ fall from weariness. It was very late, and I scarcely knew where to take
+ her, but we found a little French restaurant open in Gerrard Street. On
+ coming into the light, I discovered that she had a little toy dog under
+ her arm, just as tired of life as herself. It was significant that she
+ attended to the dog's before her own needs. We had to tempt it with
+ milk before it would eat—then she set to work herself ravenously. I
+ learnt her story by bits. She was a discharged munition worker, had
+ strained herself lifting shells, and hadn't the brains or strength
+ for anything but the streets. When she left the restaurant the lap-dog was
+ again tucked beneath her arm. It was nearly midnight when she disappeared
+ in the raw chilliness of the scant electric light. People die worse deaths
+ than on battle-fields.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Wednesday</i>.—I've been working for the last three days at
+ the Minister's, and still have no inkling of what is to happen to
+ me. My major walked in to-day; he wants me to wait till his sick-leave is
+ over, after which we can return together. He'll put in a strong
+ personal request for me to be allowed to return. He got concussion of the
+ brain eight weeks ago through a shell bursting in his dug-out. S. was
+ wounded at the same time, but didn't go out till next day. He had
+ got one hundred yards from the battery when he and his batman were killed
+ instantly by the same shell.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Reggie wasn't in town when I arrived. He didn't meet me till
+ Friday. What with playing with him and working here I don't get much
+ time for writing. But you'll hear from me again quite soon.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XVII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ The Ritz, London <i>November</i> 15, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his hanging round
+ London seems a very poor way to help win a war. I couldn't stand
+ very much of it, however invaluable they pretended I was, when my pals are
+ dying out there. Poor old S.! He's in my thoughts every hour of the
+ day. He was always getting new photos of his little daughter. He longed
+ for a Blighty that he might see her again. He was wounded, but stopped on
+ duty for two days. At last, only one hundred yards down the trench on his
+ way to the dressing-station a shell caught him. He was dead in an instant.
+ Before the Vimy show two of our chaps in the mess had peculiar dreams: one
+ saw D.'. grave and the other S.'.. Both S. and D. are dead.
+ The effect that all this has on me is not what might be expected—makes
+ me the more anxious to get back. I hate to think that others are going
+ sleepless and cold and are in danger, and that I am not there. When the
+ memory comes at meal-times I feel like leaving the table.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was ripping to hear from you last night. Your letter greeted me as I
+ returned from the theatre. We'd been out with my major. At the
+ theatre we picked up with a plucky chap, named K., who belonged to the
+ same battery as B., to whom, you remember, I was carrying a present from
+ some girl in New York. The present which she was so keen should reach him
+ by Christmas turned out to be a neck-tie which she had knitted for him. On
+ asking K., I found out that B. was killed on October 31st. It's the
+ same story all the time so far as the 18-pounders are concerned.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When Reggie leaves me I'm going to start on another book, <i>Out to
+ Win</i>, which is to be an interpretation for England of the new spirit
+ which is animating America, and a plea for a closer sense of kinship
+ between my two nations.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Don't worry about me, you'll get a cabled warning before I go
+ to France. My major expects to go back in a month or two, and we've
+ arranged to return together if possible. But you needn't get worried—I'm
+ afraid I shall probably spend Christmas in London.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XVIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ The Ritz, London <i>November</i> 17, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>our minds can be
+ at rest as regards my safety for a few weeks at least. I've been
+ collared for fair, but I think I'll manage to get free again
+ presently. I suppose you'll say that I'm a donkey to want so
+ much to get back to the Front; perhaps I am—the war will last quite
+ long enough for every man in khaki to get very much more of it than he can
+ comfortably stomach. The proper soldierly attitude is to take every
+ respite as it turns up and be grateful for it. But then I'm not a
+ professional soldier. I think in saying that I've laid my finger on
+ the entire reason for the splendour of our troops—that they're
+ not professional soldiers, but civilian idealists. Your professional
+ soldier isn't particularly keen on death—his game is to live
+ that he may fight another day. Our game is to fight and fight and fight so
+ long as we have an ounce of strength left. My major and myself are all
+ that are left of the officers in my battery. A great many of our best men
+ are gone. They need us back to help them out.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Here's a story of stories—one which answers all the questions
+ one hears asked as to whether the Army doesn't lower a man's
+ morals and turn saints into blackguards.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When we were on the Somme, a batch of very worthless-appearing remounts
+ arrived at our wagon-lines direct from England. When they were paraded
+ before us, they made the rottenest impression—they looked like
+ molly-coddles whom the Army had cowed. Among them was a particularly
+ inoffensive-looking young man who had been a dental student, whom, if the
+ Huns could have seen him as a sample of the kind of reinforcements we were
+ getting, they would certainly have taken new courage to win the war. All
+ the officers growled and prayed God for a consignment of the old
+ rough-and-tumble knockabout chaps who came out of gaols, from under
+ freight-trains, and from lumber-camps to die like gentlemen—the only
+ gentlemanly thing some of them ever did, I expect—with the Canadian
+ First Contingent.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A few weeks later we sent back to the wagonlines for a servant to be sent
+ up to the guns, two of our batmen having been killed and a third having
+ been returned to duty. The wagon-line officer sent us up this fellow with
+ the following note: “I'm sending you X. He's the most
+ useless chap I have—not bad, but a ninny. I hope he'll suit
+ you.” He didn't. He could never carry out an order correctly,
+ and seemed scared stiff: by any N.C.O. or officer. We got rid of him
+ promptly. When he returned to the wagon-lines, he was put on to all the
+ fatigues and dirty jobs.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The first time we got any hint that the chap had guts was when we were out
+ at rest at Christmas. He'd been shifted from one section to another,
+ because no one wanted him.. Each new Number One as he received him put him
+ on to his worst horses, so as to get rid of him the more quickly. The chap
+ was grooming a very ticklish mare, when she up with her hind-legs and
+ caught him in the chest, throwing him about twenty yards into the mud. He
+ lay stunned for a full minute; we thought he was done. Then, in a dazed
+ kind of way, he got upon his feet. He was told he could fall out, but he
+ insisted upon finishing the grooming of his horse. When the stable parade
+ was dismissed, much against his will he was sent to be inspected by the
+ Brigade doctor.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The doctor looked him over and said, “I ought to send you out to a
+ hospital, but I'll see how you are to-morrow. You must go back to
+ your billets and keep quiet. The kick has chipped the point of your
+ breast-bone.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “It didn't,” said Driver X., “and I'm not
+ going to lie down.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The doctor, who is very small, looked as much like the Last Judgment as
+ his size would allow. “You'll do what you're told,”
+ he said sharply. “You'll find yourself up for office if you
+ speak to me like that. If I told you that both your legs were broken, they
+ would be broken. You don't know very much about the Army, my lad.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “But my breast-bone isn't chipped,” he insisted.
+ Contrary to orders he was out on the afternoon parade and was up to
+ morning stables next day at six o'clock. When strafed for his
+ disobedience, he looked mild and inoffensive and obstinate. He refused to
+ be considered, and won out. You can punish chaps for things like that; but
+ you don't.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The next thing we noticed about him was that he was learning to swear.
+ Then he began to look rough, so that no one would have guessed that he
+ came from a social grade different from that of the other men. And this
+ was the stage he had arrived at when I got wounded last summer and left
+ the battery. The story of his further progress was completed for me this
+ week when I met my major in town.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Who's the latest hero, do you think?", he questioned. “You'd
+ never guess—the dental student. He did one of the most splendid bits
+ of work that was ever done by an Artillery driver.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Here's what he did. He was sent along a heavily shelled road at
+ nightfall to collect material from blown-in dug-outs for building our new
+ battery position. He was wheel-driver on a G.S. wagon which had three
+ teams hooked into it. There was a party of men with him to scout up the
+ material and an N.C.O. in charge. As they were halted, backed up against
+ an embankment, a shell landed plumb into the wagon, crippling it badly,
+ wounding all the horses and every man except the ex-dental student. The
+ teams bolted, and it was mainly due to the efforts of the wheel-driver
+ that the stampede was checked. He must have used quite a lot of language
+ which really polite people would not have approved. He then bound up all
+ the wounds of his comrades—there was no one to help him—and
+ took them back to the field dressing-station two at a time, mounted on two
+ of the least wounded horses. When he had carried them all to safety, he
+ removed their puttees and went back alone along the shelled road to the
+ wounded horses and used the puttees to stop their flow of blood. He
+ managed to get the wagon clear, so that it could be pulled. He tied four
+ of the horses on behind; hooked in the two that were strongest, and
+ brought the lot back to the wagonlines single-handed.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And here's the end of the story. The O.C. put in a strong
+ recommendation that he be decorated for his humanity and courage. The
+ award came through in the record time of fourteen days, with about a yard
+ of Military Medal ribbon and congratulations from high officers all along
+ the line. The morning of the day it came through thieving had been
+ discovered in the battery, and a warning had been read out that the
+ culprit was suspected, and that it would go hard with him when he was
+ arrested. The decoration was received in the afternoon while
+ harness-cleaning was in progress. Without loss of time the O.C. went out,
+ a very stern look on his face, and had the battery formed up in a hollow
+ square. There was only one thought in the men's heads—that the
+ thief had been found. There was a kind of “Is it I” look in
+ their faces. Without explanation, the O.C. called upon the ex-dental
+ student to fall out. He fell out with his knees knocking and his chin
+ wobbling, looking quite the guilty party. Then the O.C. commenced to read
+ all the praise from officers at Brigade, Division, Corps, Army, of the
+ gallant wheel-driver who had not only risked his life to save his pals,
+ but had even had the fineness of forethought to bind up the horses'
+ wounds with the puttees. Then came the yard of Military Medal ribbon, a
+ piece of which was snipped off and pinned on to the lad's worn
+ tunic. The battery yelled itself crimson. The dental student had learnt to
+ swear, but he'd won his spurs. He's been promoted to the most
+ dangerous and coveted job for a gunner or driver in the artillery; he's
+ been put on to the B.C. party, which has to go forward into all the warm
+ spots to observe the enemy and to lay in wire with the infantry when a
+ “show” is in progress. Can you wonder that I get weary of
+ seeing the London buses trundle along the well-swept asphalt of Oxford
+ Street and long to take my chance once more with such chaps?
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XIX
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>November</i> 29, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere's such a
+ November London day as no American ever imagines. A feeling of spring and
+ greenness is in the air, and a glint of subdued gold. This morning as I
+ came across Battersea Bridge it seemed as though war could not be—that,
+ at worst, it was only an incident. The river lay below me so old and
+ good-humoured—in front Cheyne Walk comfortably ancient and asleep.
+ Through the chimneys and spires of the distant city blue scarfs of mist
+ twisted and floated. Everything looked very happy. Boys—juvenile
+ cannon-fodder—went whistling along the streets; housemaids leant
+ shyly out of upstairs windows, shaking dusters to attract their attention.
+ In the square by the Chelsea Pensioners, soldiers, all spit and polish,
+ were going through their foot-drill; they didn't look too earnest
+ about it—not at all as if in two months they would be in the
+ trenches. It's the same with the men on leave—they live their
+ fourteen days with cheery common sense as though they were going to live
+ for ever. It's impossible, even when you meet the wounded, to
+ discover any signs of tragedy in London. The war is referred to as “good
+ old war,” “a bean-feast,” “a pretty little scrap,”
+ but never as an undertaking of blood and torture. Last night there was
+ strong moonlight, very favourable to an air raid. When I bought my paper
+ this morning, the fat woman, all burst out and tied in at the most
+ unexpected places, remarked to me with an air of disappointment: “They
+ fergot h'us.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Who forgot us?” I asked.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The bloomin' 'Uns. I wus h'expecting them lawst
+ night.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ She spoke as though she'd had tea ready and the kettle boiling for a
+ dear friend who had mis-remembered his engagement. England has set out to
+ behave as if there was no death; she's jolly nearly succeeded in
+ eliminating it from her thoughts. She's learnt the lesson of the
+ chaps in the front-line trenches, and she's like a mother—like
+ our mother—who has sons at the war—she's going to keep
+ on smiling so as not to let her fellows down.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ All the streets are full of girls in khaki—girls with the neatest,
+ trimmest little ankles. The smartest of all are the Flying Corps girls,
+ many of whom drive the army cars in the most daring manner. When you think
+ of what they are and were, the war hasn't done so badly for them.
+ They were purposeless before. Their whole aim was to get married. They
+ felt that they weren't wanted in the world. They broke windows with
+ Mother Pankhurst. Now they've learnt discipline and duty and
+ courage. They'd man the trenches if we'd let them. They used
+ to sneer at our sex; whether they married or remained single, quite a
+ number of them became man-haters. But now—that kind of civil war is
+ ended. Ask the young subaltern back on leave how much he is disliked by
+ the girls. Babies and home have become the fashion. I received quite a
+ shock last Sunday when I was saluted by one of these girls—saluted
+ in a perfectly correct and soldierly fashion. The idea is right; if they
+ outwardly acknowledge that they are a part of the Army, military
+ discipline becomes their protection. But what a queer, changed world from
+ the world of sloppy blouses, cheap and much-too-frequent jewellery, and
+ silly sentimental ogling! England's become more alert and
+ forthright; despite the war, she's happier. This isn't meant
+ for a glorification of war; it's simply a statement of fact. The
+ time had to come when women would become men; they've become men in
+ this most noble and womanly fashion—through service. They're
+ doing men's jobs with women's alacrity.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There is only one thing that will keep me from rejoining my battery in
+ January, and that's this American book. We have come to the
+ conclusion that to complete the picture of American determination to win
+ out, I ought to go on a tour of inspection in France. The Government is
+ interested in the book for propaganda work. The extreme worthwhileness of
+ such an undertaking would reconcile me to a postponement of my return to
+ the Front—nothing else will. All the papers here are full of the
+ details of the advance at Cambrai. I want to be “out there” so
+ badly. What does it matter that there's mud in the trenches, and
+ death round every traverse, and danger in each step? It's the hour
+ of glorious life I long for; for such an hour I would exchange all the
+ sheeted beds and running bath-taps, not to mention the æons of Cathay. I
+ can see those gunners forcing up their guns through the mire, and can hear
+ the machine guns clicking away like infuriated typewriters. The whole
+ gigantic pageant of death and endeavour moves before me—and I'm
+ sick of clubs and safety. People say to me, “You're of more
+ use here—you can serve your country better by being in England.”
+ But when chaps are dying I want to take my chance with them. Don't
+ be afraid I'll be kept here. <i>I won't</i>. I didn't
+ know till I was held back against my will what a grip that curious
+ existence at the Front had got on me. It isn't the horror one
+ remembers—it's the exhilaration of the glory.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Cheer up, I'll be home some Christmas to fill your Christmas
+ stocking. It won't be this Christmas—perhaps not the next; but
+ perhaps the next after that. The young gentlemen from the Navy will be
+ there too to help me. It's a promise.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was present at the opening of the American Officers' Club by the
+ Duke of Connaught. This club is the private house of Lord Leconfield.
+ Other people have presented furniture, pictures, and money. It costs an
+ American officer next to nothing, and is the best attempt that has been
+ made to give a welcome to the U.S.A. in London. It's the most
+ luxurious club in the West End at present.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XX
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>December</i> 10, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> got a letter from
+ the Foreign Office, asking me to go back to America to do writing and
+ lecturing for the British Mission. I'm sure you'll appreciate
+ why I refused it, and be glad. I couldn't come back to U.S.A. to
+ talk about nobilities when their sons and brothers are getting their first
+ baptism of fire in the trenches. If I'd got anything worth saying I
+ ought to be out there in the mud—saying it in deeds. But I've
+ told Colonel B. that if ever I come out again wounded I will join the
+ British Mission for a time. So now you have something to look forward to.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I hear though that permission will probably be granted to me within the
+ next few days to start for France to go through the American lines and
+ activities. You can guess how interesting that will be to me. I only hope
+ they have a fight on while I'm in the American lines. I suppose the
+ tour will take me the best part of a month, so I'll be away from
+ England for Christmas. I rather hope I'll be in Paris—ever
+ since reading <i>Trilby</i> I've longed to go to the Madeleine for
+ Noël—which reminds me that I must get <i>Trilby</i> to read on the
+ journey. It's rather a romantic life that I'm having nowadays,
+ don't you think? I romp all over the globe and, in the intervals,
+ have a crack at the Germans.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After I have finished writing this book on the American activities in
+ France I shan't be content a moment till I've rejoined my
+ battery. I feel a terrible shyster stopping away from the fighting a day
+ longer than can be helped. This book, which I intend to be a spiritual
+ interpretation of the soul of America, ought to do good to Anglo-American
+ relations; so it seems of sufficiently vital importance. I can't
+ think of anything that would do more to justify the blotting out of so
+ many young lives than that, when the war is ended, England and America
+ should have reason to forget the last hundred and thirty years of history,
+ joining hands in a worldwide Anglo-Saxon alliance against the future
+ murdering of nations. If I can contribute anything towards bringing that
+ about, the missing of two months in the trenches will be worth it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I went to a “good luck” dinner the other night, which we gave
+ to my major on the occasion of his setting sail for Canada. Two others of
+ the officers who used to be with me in the battery are to be on the same
+ ship. A year ago in the Somme we used to pray for a Blighty—to-day,
+ every officer in our mess has either got a Blighty or is dead. It gives
+ one some idea of the brevity of our glory.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You'd love the West End shops were you here. I've just drawn
+ down my blinds on Oxford Street; I walked back by way of Regent Street
+ after lunch—all the windows are gay and full. Men in khaki are
+ punting their girls through the crowds, doing their Christmas shopping.
+ You can see the excited faces of little children everywhere. There doesn't
+ seem to be much hint of war. One wonders whether people are brave to smile
+ so much or only careless. You hear of tremendous lists of casualties, but
+ there are just as many men. It looks as though we had man-power and
+ resources to carry on the war interminably. There's only one class
+ of person who is fed-up—and that's the person who has done
+ least sacrificing. The person who has done none at all is a nervous wreck
+ and can't stand the strain much longer. But ask the fighting men—they're
+ perfectly happy and contented. Curious! When you've given
+ everything, you can always give some more.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This may reach you before Christmas, though I doubt it. If it does, be as
+ merry as we shall be, though absent.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>December</i> 10, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> hope you feel as
+ I do about my refusal of Colonel B.'. offer to send me back to
+ America on the British Mission. I was also approached to-day to do press
+ work for the Canadians. It seems as though everyone was conspiring to
+ throw tempting plums in my way to keep me from returning to the Front. I
+ don't know that I'm much good as a soldier; probably I'm
+ very much better as a writer; but it's as though my soul, my
+ decency, my honour were at stake—I must get back to the Front. The
+ war is going to be won by men who go back to the trenches in the face of
+ reason and common sense. If I had a leg off I should try for the Flying
+ Corps. I may be a fool in the Front line, but I won't be finished as
+ a fighting man till I'm done. They can keep all their cushy jobs for
+ other chaps—I want the mud and the pounding of the guns. It doesn't
+ really matter if one does get killed, provided he's set a good
+ example. Do you remember that sermon we heard Dr. Jowett give about St.
+ Paul at Lystra, going back after they had stoned him? “Back to the
+ stones”—that expresses me exactly. I hate shell-fire and
+ discomfort and death as much as any other man. But I'd rather lose
+ everything than have to say good-bye to my standard of heroism. I don't
+ want to kill Huns particularly, but I do want to prove to them that we're
+ the better men. I can't do that by going through oratorical
+ gymnastics in America or by writing racy descriptions of the Canadians'
+ bravery for the international press. I shall be less than nothing when I
+ return to France—merely subaltern whose life isn't very highly
+ valued. But in my heart I shall know myself a man. There's no one
+ understands my motive but you three, who have most to lose by my
+ cripplement or death. All my friends over here think me an ass to throw
+ away such chances—they say I'm economically squandering myself
+ in the place where I'm least trained to do the best work. I know
+ they talk sense; but they don't talk chivalry. If every man took the
+ first chance offered him to get out of the catastrophe, where would the
+ Huns' offensive end?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You've probably been writing hard at <i>The Father of a Soldier</i>,
+ and saying all that you would like to say to me in that. I'm most
+ anxious to see the manuscript of it. If you please, how could the son of
+ the man who wrote that book accept a cushy job?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I wonder if you've reached the point yet where you don't think
+ that dying matters? I suspect you have. You remember what Roosevelt said
+ after seeing his last son off, “If he comes back he'll have to
+ explain to me the why and how.” That's the Japanese spirit—honour
+ demands when a man returns from battle that he can give good reasons why
+ he is not dead. Others, his friends and comrades, are dead; how does he
+ happen to be living? In that connection I think of Charlie S., lying
+ somewhere in the mud of Ypres, with an insignificant cross above his head.
+ He won a dozen decorations which were not given him. He had a baby whom he
+ had only seen once. He was my pal. Why should I live, while he is dead? I
+ can always hear him singing in the mess in a pleasant tenor voice. We used
+ to share our affections and our troubles. He was what the Canadians call
+ “a white man.” I can't see myself living in comfort
+ while he is dead. It's odd the things one remembers about a man. We
+ got the idea in the Somme that oil on the feet would prevent them from
+ becoming frozen. One time when Charlie was going up forward we hadn't
+ any oil, so he used brilliantine. It smelt of violets, and we made the
+ highest of game of him. Poor old Charlie, he doesn't feel the cold
+ now!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm afraid I've written a lot of rot in this letter—I've
+ talked far too much of a host of things which are better left unsaid. But
+ I had to—I wanted to make quite certain that you wouldn't
+ blame me for refusing safety. I've relieved myself immensely by
+ getting all of this off my chest.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>December</i> 17, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m waiting
+ for Eric, and, while waiting, propose to tell you the story of my past few
+ days. I think when you've come to the end of my account you'll
+ agree that I've been mixing my drinks considerably with regard to
+ the personalities whose acquaintance I have made.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On Friday evening I was invited to dinner by Lieutenant C., the American
+ Navy man with whom I crossed in November. I met—whom do you think?—George
+ Grossmith, Leslie Henson, Julia James, Madge Saunders, and Lord C————.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I may say that Lord C————is not a member of the
+ Gaiety Company, though I seem to have included him. The occasion was
+ really the weekly dinner given by the American Officers' Club; the
+ Gaiety Company was there to entertain. I think it is typical of England's
+ attitude towards the American Army that people from such different walks
+ of life should have been present to do the U.S.A. honour. Lord C————is
+ a splendid type of old-fashioned courtier, with a great, kindly,
+ bloodhound face. He had ensigns and officers of whatsoever rank brought to
+ him, and spoke to them with the fine manly equality of the true-bred
+ aristocrat. It was amusing to see the breezy American boys quite
+ unembarrassed, most of them unaware of Lord C————'s
+ political eminence, exchanging views in the friendliest of fashions, while
+ the old gentleman, keeping seated, leaning forward on his stick with one
+ hand resting attentively on a young fellow's arm, expressed his warm
+ appreciation of America's eagerness.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Grossmith was in the uniform our boys wear—that of a lieutenant in
+ the R.N.V.R. Leslie Henson is now a mechanic in the motor-transport by day
+ and a Gaiety star in the evenings. He says that it costs him much money to
+ cure the ache which the Army gives to his back—but he continues to
+ do his “bit” by day and to amuse Tommies home on leave in the
+ evenings.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Next day, Saturday, I went down to Bath to meet Raemaekers, the Dutch
+ cartoonist. Mr. Lane was our host. Raemaekers is a great man. On the
+ journey I tried to picture him. I saw him as a pale-faced man, with lank
+ black hair and a touch of the Jew about him. I rather expected to find him
+ worn and slightly more than middle-aged, with nervous hands and hollow
+ eyes. I reminded myself that of the world's artists, he was the only
+ one who had risen to the sheerness of the occasion. He expresses the
+ conscience of the aloof cosmopolitan as regards Germany's
+ war-methods. England, incurably good-humoured, has only Bairnsfather's
+ comic portrayals of Old Bill to place beside this indignant Dutchman's
+ moral hatred of Hun cruelty. From the station I went to the Bath Club;
+ there I met not at all what I had imagined. He looks like a Frans Hals
+ burgher, comfortable, with a high complexion, a small pointed beard,
+ chestnut hair, and searching grey eyes. His charity of appearance belies
+ him, for his eyes and mouth have a terrific purpose. His hands are the
+ hands of a fighting man which crush. You would pass him in the street as
+ unremarkable unless he looked at you—his eyes are daggers which stop
+ you dead.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There were four of us at lunch—he sat at my right and we talked like
+ a river in flood. He's just back from America, thrilled by the
+ Americans' unimpassioned, lawful thoroughness. He had found
+ something akin to his own temperament in the nation's genius—the
+ same capacity to brush aside facetiousness in a crisis, and to attain a
+ Hebrew prophet's faculty for hatred. One doesn't want to laugh
+ when women lie dead in the ash-pits of Belgium. I have been with him many
+ hours and have scarcely seen him smile, and yet his face is kindly. As you
+ know, the Kaiser had set a price upon his head. His death would mean more
+ to the Hun than the destruction of many British Divisions. He has
+ pilloried the Kaiser's beastliness for all time. When future ages
+ want to know what the Kaiser said to Christ, they will find it all in the
+ thousand Raemaekers' sketches. Traps have been laid for his capture
+ from time to time. Submarines have been dispatched with orders to take him
+ alive. He knows what awaits him if such plans should meet with success—a
+ lingering, tortured death; consequently he travels armed, and has promised
+ his wife to blow his brains out the moment he is captured. We talked of
+ many things—of the Hague and H. among other things. He knew the P.'.,
+ and drew a sketch of Mr. P. on the tablecloth with his pencil. I tried to
+ purchase the tablecloth that I might send it to America, but the club
+ secretary was before me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In the afternoon I went to the railway-station and spoke with a porter who
+ was pushing a barrow—Henry Chappell, who wrote “The Day”—the
+ first war-poet of 1914. As luck would have it, it was Saturday, the day
+ upon which John Lane had brought out his volume of poems; it was rather
+ pathetic to find him carrying on with his humble task on the proudest
+ afternoon of his life. I told him how I had seen his poem pasted up in
+ prominent places all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He smiled
+ in a patient fashion, and said that he had heard about it. I understand
+ that he made one hundred pounds out of this poem and gave it all to the
+ Red Cross. A gentleman, if you want to find one! I asked him if he didn't
+ look forward to promotion now. He shook his head gravely—he liked
+ portering. At parting I shook his hand, but, when I had dropped it, he
+ touched his cap—and touched my heart in the doing of it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On Sunday I was back in town. Eric turned up this morning, looking gallant
+ and smiling, with an exceedingly glad eye. He's just the same as he
+ always was, discontented with his job because he thinks it's too
+ safe and trying to find one more dangerous. We're going to have a
+ great time together, unless I get my marching orders from the Foreign
+ Office.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I lunched with Raemaekers at Claridge's today and have just come
+ back. He's an elemental moralist, encased in a burgher's
+ exterior. He affects me with a sense of restrained power. One is surprised
+ to see him eating like other men. How I wish that I could detest as he
+ detests! And yet he has heart in plenty. He told me a story of a French
+ battalion going out to die. The last soldier stepped out of the ranks
+ towards his colonel, who was weeping for his men who would not come back.
+ Flinging his arms about his commanding officer, he kissed him and said,
+ “Do not fear, my Colonel; we shall not disgrace you.” He has
+ an eye for magnanimity, that man.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>December</i> 31, 1917
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his foggy London
+ morning early your three letters from 5th to 18th December arrived. I
+ jumped out of bed, lit the gas, retreated under the blankets, and devoured
+ them, leaning on my elbow.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This is the last day of the old year—a quaint old year it has been
+ for all of us. I commenced it quite reconciled to the thought that it
+ would be my last; and here I am, while poor Charlie S. and so many other
+ fellows whom I loved are dead. It only shows how very foolish it is to
+ anticipate trouble, for the last twelve months have been the very best and
+ richest of my life. If I were to die now, I should feel that I had at
+ least done something with my handful of years.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'd like to have another glimpse of America now that in the face of
+ reverses she has grown sterner. It's certain at last that there'll
+ be a lot of American boys who won't come back. They're going
+ to be real soldiers, going to go over the top and to endure all the fierce
+ heroisms of an attack. It's cruel to say so, but it's better
+ for America's soul that she should have her taste of battle after
+ all the shouting.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On Saturday F. R. came to see us. He's home on leave. He and P. and
+ I sitting down together after all the years that have intervened since we
+ were at Oxford together! As F. expressed it, blinking through his
+ spectacles, “Doesn't it seem silly that I should be dressed up
+ like this and that you should be dressed like that?” He went out in
+ January as a second lieutenant, and returned commanding his battalion. God
+ moves in a mysterious way, doesn't He? One can't help
+ wondering why some should “go west” at once and others should
+ be spared. Bob H., who was also with us at Oxford, as you will remember,
+ lasted exactly six days. The first day in the trenches he was wounded, but
+ not sufficiently to go out. The sixth day he was killed.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Did I tell you that there's a nerve hospital near here crowded with
+ nerve-shattered babies on one floor and nerve-shattered Tommies on the
+ next? The babies are all dressed in red and the Tommies in the usual
+ hospital blue. Each day the shell-shocked chaps go up to visit the
+ children; the moment the door opens and the blue figures appear, the
+ little red crowd stretch out their arms and cry, “My soldier! My
+ soldier!” for each Tommy has his own particular pet. When a child
+ gets a nervous attack, it is often only the one particular soldier who can
+ do the soothing. Who'd think that men fresh from the carnage could
+ be so tender! And people say that war makes men brutal. Humph!
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXIV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ A French Port
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>January</i> 3, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am again in
+ France and extraordinarily glad to be here. I feel that I'm again a
+ part of the game—I couldn't feel that while I was in London. I
+ landed here this morning and arrive in Paris to-night. The crossing was
+ one of the quietest. I know a lot of people didn't lie down at all,
+ and still others slept with their clothes on. Like a sensible fellow I
+ crept into my berth at 9 p.m., and slept like a top till morning. If we'd
+ been submarined I shouldn't have known it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I feel tremendously elated by the thought of this new adventure, and
+ intend to make the most of it. As you know, nothing would have persuaded
+ me to delay my return to the Front except an opportunity for doing work of
+ these dimensions. I really do believe that I have the chance of a lifetime
+ to do work of international importance. I want to make the Americans feel
+ that they have become our kinsmen through the magnitude of their
+ endeavour. And I want to make the British shake off their reticence in
+ applauding the magnanimity of America's enthusiasm.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's been snowing here; but I don't feel cold because of the
+ warmth inside me. The place where I am now is one of the pleasure-haunts
+ which Eric and I visited together in that golden summer of long ago.
+ Little did I think that I should be here next time in such belligerent
+ attire and on such an errand. Life's a queer kaleidoscope. But, oh,
+ for such another summer, with the long secure peace of July days, and the
+ whole green world to wander! One doubts whether El Dorado will ever come
+ again.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I see the girl-soldiers of England everywhere nowadays. A reinforcing
+ draft crossed over with me on the steamer—high complexions and
+ laughing faces, trim uniforms and tiny ankles. They're brave! It's
+ a pity we can't give them a chance of just one crack at the Huns.
+ But they have to stop behind the lines and drive lorries, and be good
+ girls, and beat typewriters. Their little girl-officers are mighty
+ dignified. What a gallant world! I wouldn't have it otherwise.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ For me the New Year is starting well. I face it in higher spirits than any
+ of its predecessors. And well I may, for I didn't expect to be alive
+ to greet 1918. I hope you are all just as much on the crest of the wave in
+ your hopes and anticipations. Nothing can be worse than some of the
+ experiences that lie behind—and that's some comfort. Nothing
+ can be more chivalrous than the opportunities which lie before us.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ So here's good-bye to you from France once again.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ Paris <i>January</i> 8, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am in Paris,
+ starting on my new adventure of writing the story of what the Americans
+ are doing in the war. I left England on 2nd January, which was a
+ Wednesday, and arrived here Thursday evening. As you know, while I was in
+ the Front line I had very little idea of what France at war was like. One
+ crossed from England, clambered on a military train with all the windows
+ smashed, had a cold night journey, and found himself at once among the
+ shell-holes. I was very keen on seeing what Paris was like; now that I've
+ seen it, it's very difficult to describe. It's very much the
+ same as it always was—only while its atmosphere was once champagne,
+ now it is a strong, still wine. As in England, only to a greater extent,
+ women are doing the work of men. The streets are full of the wounded—not
+ the wounded with well-fitted artificial limbs that you see in London, but
+ with ordinary wooden stumps, etc. Our English wounded are always gay and
+ laughing—determined to treat the war as a humorous episode to the
+ end. The French wounded are grave, afflicted, and ordinary. I think the
+ Frenchman, with an emotional honesty of which we are incapable, has from
+ the first viewed the war as a colossal Calvary, and has seen it against
+ the historic skyline of a travailing world. Never by speech or gesture has
+ he disguised the fact that he, as an individual, is engaged in a
+ fore-ordained and unparalleled adventure of sacrifice. The Englishman,
+ self-conscious of his own heroic gallantry, cloaks his fineness with
+ pretended indifference and has succeeded in deceiving the world. Our
+ sportsmanship in the face of death impresses more complex nations as
+ irreligion. So while London is outwardly gayer than ever, Paris has a
+ stiff upper lip, a look of sternness in its eyes, and very little laughter
+ on its mouth. By nine-thirty in the evening every restaurant is closed,
+ and the streets are empty till the soldiers on leave troop out from the
+ theatres.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As for the food, I have seen no shortage in France as yet. You can get
+ plenty of butter and sugar, whereas in London margarine is rare and sugar
+ is doled out. The talk of France being ex hausted is all rubbish; you can
+ feel the muscles of a great nation struggling the moment you land.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I have had a most kindly and helpful reception from the American Press
+ Division. They have realized with the usual American quickness of mind the
+ importance of what I propose to do. One of their officers starts out with
+ me to-night on my first tour of military activities. It will take about
+ five days. I then return to Paris to write up what I have seen, and
+ afterwards set out again in a new direction. If I take the proper
+ advantage of my opportunities, I ought to get an amazingly interesting lot
+ of material.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Saturday I was lucky enough to secure a car, and went the round of my
+ introductions, to the British Embassy and your friends from Newark.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I've been to two theatres. The audiences were composed for the most
+ part of soldiers on leave—American, British, Canadian, Australian,
+ Belgian, French, with the merest sprinkling of civilians. Sunday I walked
+ through the Luxembourg, most of the galleries of which are closed.
+ Afterwards I walked in the Gardens and watched the Parisians sliding on
+ the ice. For the moment they forgot they were at war, and became children.
+ There were little boys and girls, soldiers with their sweethearts, fat old
+ men and women, all running and pushing and sliding and falling and
+ chattering. I thought of Trilby with her grave, kind eyes. Then I walked
+ down the Boule Miche to Notre Dame, where women were praying for their
+ dead.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ To-day Paris is under snow, and again the child spirit has asserted
+ itself. Soldiers and sailors are pelting one another with snowballs in the
+ streets, and Jupiter continues to pluck his geese and send their feathers
+ drifting down the sky.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This time last year I was marching into action with temperature of 104
+ degrees, and you were reaching London, wondering whether I was truly
+ coming on leave. A queer year it has been; in spite of all our
+ anticipations to the contrary, we're still alive. I wish we were to
+ meet again this year, and we may. We know so little. As Whitcomb Riley
+ says in complete acceptance of human fortuitousness, “No child knows
+ when it goes to sleep.”
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXVI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ Paris
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>January</i> 13, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>bout an hour ago I
+ got into Paris from my first trip. I've been where M. and I spent
+ our splendid summer so many years ago, only now the river is spanned with
+ ice and the country is a grey-sage colour. From what I can see the
+ Americans are preparing as if for a war that is going to last for thirty
+ years. America is in the war literally to her last man and her last
+ dollar; when her hour comes to strike, she will be like a second England
+ in the fight.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I made my tour with an officer who was with Hoover three years in Belgium,
+ and who before that was a student in Paris. As a consequence, he speaks
+ French like a native. Every detail of my trip was arranged ahead by
+ telephone and telegram; automobiles were waiting. There is no pretence
+ about the American Army. My rank as lieutenant is, of course, quite
+ inadequate to the task I have undertaken. But the American high officer
+ carries no side or swank. Having produced my credentials, I am seated at
+ the mess beside generals and allowed to ask any questions, however
+ searching. Everyone I have met as yet is hats off to the English and the
+ French—they go out of their way to make comparisons which are in
+ their own disfavour and unjust to themselves. I have been making a
+ particular study of their transport facilities and their artillery
+ training. Both are being carried out on a magnificently thorough scale. I
+ undertake to assert that they will have as fine artillery as can be found
+ on the Western Front by the time they are ready. I certainly never saw
+ such painstaking and methodical training.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As you know, the phase of the war that I am particularly interested in is
+ the closeness of international relations that will result when the war is
+ ended. The tightening of bonds between the French, Americans and English
+ can be daily witnessed and felt. The Americans are loud in their praise of
+ their French and British instructors—the instructors are equally
+ proud of their pupils. On the street, in hotels and trains, the three
+ races hobnob together.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I came back to-day with a French artillery and cavalry officer—splendid
+ fellows. We had fought together on the Somme, we discovered, and had
+ occupied the same Front, though at separate times, at Vimy. The
+ artilleryman was a young French noble, and, as only noblemen can these
+ days, had a car waiting for him at the station He insisted on taking me to
+ my hotel, and we parted the most excellent friends.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I have two days in which to write up my experiences, and on Tuesday I
+ shall set out on a tour in a new direction. So much I am able to tell you;
+ the rest will be in my book when it is published.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This time last year we were together in London—how long ago it seems
+ and sounds! Years are longer and of more value than they once were. This
+ year I'm here. Next year where? This time next year the war will not
+ be ended, I'm certain, nor even the year after that, perhaps. The
+ more we feel our strength, the more we are called upon to suffer, the
+ sterner will become our terms.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's nearly eleven, my dear ones, and time that I was asleep. I have
+ Henri Bordeaux's story of <i>The Last Days of Fort Vaux</i> beside
+ me—it's most heroic reading. What shall we do when the gates
+ of heroism grow narrow and peace has been declared? Something spiritual
+ will have gone out of life when the challenge of the horrible is ended.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXVII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ Paris
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>January</i> 19, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m expecting
+ to go to American Headquarters on Tuesday and to see something of work
+ immediately behind the lines. I find what I am doing exceptionally
+ interesting, and hope to do a good book on it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Wherever one goes the best men one meets are Hoover's disciples from
+ Belgium. They tell extraordinary stories of the heroism of the patriots
+ whom they knew there—people by the score who duplicated Miss Cavell's
+ courage and paid the penalty. Their experience of Hun brutality has
+ somehow dulled their sense of horror—they speak of it as something
+ quite commonplace and to be expected.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On Friday I saw Miss Holt's work for the blind. She bears out for
+ France all that I have said about the amazing sharing of the wounded in
+ England. One man in her care was not only totally blind, but he had also
+ lost both arms. In the hospital there were men less grievously mutilated
+ than himself, who hardly knew how to endure their loss. For the sake of
+ the cheeriness of his example, he used to go round the ward with gifts of
+ cigarettes, which he almost thought he lit for the men himself, for he
+ used to say to Miss Holt before undertaking such a journey, “You are
+ my hands.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ We, in England, and still less in America, have never approached the
+ loathing which is felt for the Boche in France. Men spit as they utter his
+ name, as though the very word was foul in the mouth. Wherever you go
+ lonely men or women are pointed out to you; all of his or her family are
+ behind the German lines. We think we have suffered, but we have not
+ sounded one fathom of this depth of agony. On every hand I hear that the
+ French Army is stronger than ever, better equipped and more firm in its <i>moral</i>.
+ As an impassioned Frenchman said to me yesterday, his eyes blazing as he
+ banged the table, “They shall not pass. I say so—and I am
+ France.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In the face of all this I do not wonder that the French misunderstand the
+ easy good-humour with which we English go out to die. In their eyes and
+ with the throbbing of their wounds, this war is a matter for neither
+ good-humour nor sportsmanship, but only for the indignant, inarticulate
+ wrath of a Hebrew god. If every weapon was taken from their hands and all
+ the young men were gone, with clenched fists those who were left would
+ smite and smite to the last. It is fitting that they should feel this way,
+ but I'm glad that our English boys can still laugh while they die.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And now I'm going out on the Boulevards to get lunch.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXVIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ Paris
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>January</i> 30, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>esterday on my
+ return to Paris I found all your letters awaiting me—a real big pile
+ which took me over an hour to read. The latest was written on New Year's
+ Day in the throes of coal shortage and intense cold. Really it seems
+ absurd that you should be starved for warmth in America. Last week I was
+ within eighteen kilometres of the Front line staying in a hotel as
+ luxurious as the Astor, with plenty of heat and a hot bath at midnight in
+ a private bathroom. All the appointments and comforts were perfect;
+ booming through the night came the perpetual muttering of the guns. There
+ were troops of all kinds marching up for an attack; the villages were
+ packed, but there was no disorganization.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Well, I've had a great trip this last time. I went to see refugee
+ work—and saw it. There were barracks full of babies—the
+ youngest only six days' old. There were very many children who have
+ been re-captured from the Huns.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ To-morrow I start off for the borders of Switzerland to see the
+ repatriated French civilians arrive. Then I go with the head of the Red
+ Cross for a tour to see the reconstruction work in the devastated
+ districts. When that is finished, I return to London to put my book
+ together. I hope to get back to my battery about the end of March.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ What a time I have had. A year ago it would have seemed impossible. I've
+ motored, gone by speeders and trains to all kinds of quiet and ancient
+ places which it would never have entered my head to visit in peace times.
+ The American soldier is everywhere, striking a strange note of modernity
+ and contrast. He sits on fences through the country-side, swinging his
+ legs and smoking Bull Durham, when he isn't charging a swinging sack
+ with a bayonet. He is the particular pal of all the French children.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm now due for a day of interviews and shall have to ring off. I
+ rose at seven this morning so as to write this letter. At the moment I'm
+ sitting in a deep arm-chair, with an electric lamp at my elbow. It's
+ an awful war! In less than two months I'll be sitting in clothes
+ that I haven't taken off for a fortnight—the mud will be my
+ couch and the flash of the guns my reading lamp. It's funny, but up
+ there in the discomfort I shall be ten times more happy.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXIX
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ Paris
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>February</i> 13, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve not
+ heard from you for two weeks—which is no fault of yours. There was a
+ delay in getting passports—so I'm only just back from the
+ devastated districts and get on board the train for London to-night. It's
+ exactly six weeks today since I left England on this adventure.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I've done a good many things since last I wrote you. Did I tell you
+ that among others I visited Miss Holt's work for the blind? I can
+ think of nothing which does more to call out one's sympathy than to
+ sit among those sightless eyes. I have talked about courage, but these men
+ leave me appalled and silent. They are covered with decorations—the
+ Legion d'.onneur, etc. They all have their stories. One, after he
+ had been wounded and while there was still a chance of saving his sight,
+ insisted on being taken to his General that he might give information
+ about a German mine. When his mission was completed his chance of ever
+ seeing again was ended.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On the way back I saw Joffre walking. I now know why they call him Papa
+ Joffre. He is huge, ungainly, and white and kind. Somehow he made me think
+ of a puppy—he had such an air of surprise. There was a premature
+ touch of spring in the tree-tops. The grand old man of France was aware of
+ it—he looked as though it were his first spring, so young in an
+ ancient sort of way. He was stopping all the time to watch the sparrows
+ flying and the shrubs growing misty with greenness. For all his braid and
+ decorations he looked like an amiable boy of splendid size.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And then I went to Amiens. When I was in the line, it was always my dream
+ to get there. Our senior officers used to play hooky in Amiens and come
+ back with wonderful tales of sheeted beds and perpetual baths. I got there
+ toward evening and was met by a British Staff officer with a car. After
+ dinner I escaped him and wandered through the crooked streets,
+ encountering everywhere my dearly beloved British Tommy, straight out of
+ the trenches for a few hours' respite. As I passed estaminets I
+ could hear concertinas being played and voices singing. It was London and
+ heroism and home-sickness all muddled up together that these voices sang.
+ And they sang just one song. It is the first song I heard in France, when
+ the war was very much younger. When the war is ended, I expect it will be
+ the last. If the war goes on for another thirty years, our Tommies will be
+ singing it—wheezing it out on concertinas and mouth-organs, in rain
+ and sunshine, on the line of march, on leave or in their cramped billets.
+ Invincible optimists that they are—so ordinary, so extraordinary, so
+ good-humoured and mild! I peered in through the estaminets' windows
+ of Amiens—there they sat with their equipment off, their elbows on
+ the table and their small beer before them. And here's what they
+ sang, as so many who are dead have sung before them:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ “Après la guerre fini
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ Tous les soldats parti,
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ Mademoiselle 'ave a souvenir—
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ Après la guerre fini.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After all my wandering along French and American fronts, I was back among
+ my own people.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My final night in Amiens was equally typical. I went to the officers'
+ club and found a sing-song in progress. There was a cavalry major there
+ who had been in the show at Cambrai. He was evidently a hunting-man, for
+ he kept on getting off his hunting calls whenever things threatened to
+ become dull. Most of the music was rag-time, which offended him very much.
+ “Let's sing something English,” he kept on saying. So we
+ gave him “John Peel,” “Hearts of Oak,” “Drink
+ to me only with thine Eyes”—and he went to bed happy.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I had a good fast car, so using Amiens as our base we struck into the
+ Aisne, Oise, and Somme, covering a good many kilometres a day. In these
+ districts the Huns were masters a year ago—and now we are ploughing.
+ The enemy withdrew from these districts last March. Nearly all the
+ demolition is wilful, and very little of it is due to shell-fire. In town
+ after town scarcely a house is left standing—everything is gutted.
+ The American Red Cross is trying to do something to alleviate this
+ distress. It was in a ruined château I found the Smith College Unit and,
+ much to my surprise, Miss W. from Newark, who had just received a letter
+ from M. She was wanting to go to Amiens, so we put her in the car and took
+ her back with us.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm longing to get to England to read all your letters. I feel quite
+ out of touch. To-morrow I shall be in London.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was in Paris when the Huns were overhead, and saw one of them come down.
+ The calmness of the people was amazing. There was no dashing for the Métro
+ or other funk holes; only a contemptuous cheeriness. The French are great.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXX
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>February</i> 18, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>o-day I have made
+ a start on my book Out to Win, and miss you very much. It's quite a
+ difficult thing, I find, to really concentrate on literary work in a
+ strange environment. I wish I could take a magic powder and find myself
+ back in my own little study, with my own little family, till the book is
+ written.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Heaps of people I met in France were returning to America, and promised to
+ telephone you to say they had seen me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I stumbled across a most inspiring conversation which I overheard the
+ other day, and which, if I had time, I would work into a story, entitled
+ “His Bit.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was sitting in front of two women on a bus.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Well,” said one, “when they told me that Phil was
+ married, you could 'ave knocked me darn wiv a feather.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It transpired that Phil was a C3 class man, no good for active service. He
+ had met a girl, turned out into the streets by her parents because she was
+ about to have a child by a soldier now dead, whom she had not married.
+ Phil, without asking her any questions, did his “bit”—led
+ her off and married her right away because he was sorry for her.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “And she ain't a wicked girl,” said one of the good
+ ladies on the bus. “She didn't mean no harm. She was just
+ soft-like to a Tommy on leave, I expect. It was 'ard lines on
+ 'er. But that Phil—my goodness, he'll make 'er a
+ good 'usband. Is the child born? I should just fink so. 'E's
+ that proud, she might be 'is own dawter. 'E carries 'er
+ raund all over the plaice, Lord bless yer. And 'is wife's
+ people, they can't make too much of 'im. No, 'e's
+ not strong—a C 3 man. I thought I told yer. She 'as ter work
+ to 'elp 'im along. But between 'em——There! I'm
+ 'ats h'orf to Phil. They're a bloomin' pair of
+ love-birds.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I like to think of Phil, don't you? I like to know that chaps like
+ him are in the world. He couldn't fight the Germans; but he could
+ play the man by a dead soldier.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ That's a little bit of real life to help you along. Now I'm
+ going to knock off and rest.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXXI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>February</i> 24, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m not
+ spending much time on letter-writing just at present. From morning till
+ night, just as I did when I was writing <i>The Glory of the Trenches</i>,
+ I shove away at my new book. I am most anxious to get it creditably
+ finished and soon. The weather is getting quite ripping for the Front and
+ I'm keen to be back in time for the spring offensive.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You'll be pleased to know that, under my encouragement, your
+ youngest son has broken out into literature. He did it while I was away in
+ France. And the result is extraordinarily fine. He's managed to
+ fling the spirit of his job on paper—it lives and gets you. When
+ they are asked at the end of a patrol what they have been doing, they
+ answer, “Pushing Water”—so that he's made that
+ answer his title.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When I took the manuscript to W., he said: “But haven't you
+ another brother? What's he doing? Where's his manuscript? And
+ what about your mother and sister in America, and your sister in Holland?
+ Don't tell me that they're not all writing?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ At that moment I felt a deep sympathy for Solomon, who I'm sure must
+ have been a publisher. Only a publisher would say so tiredly: “Of
+ making many books there is no end.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On Tuesday another beastly birthday is due me—but I shan't say
+ anything about it. I shall commence my new lease of life with a meat-card
+ in my hand and no prospect of being really fully fed till I get back to
+ France. For the first time England is feeling a genuine shortage. She isn't
+ particularly annoyed at being rationed, but the worry you have over
+ finding out how much you are allowed to eat and where and when, causes
+ people a good deal of trouble. My own impression is that there is plenty
+ of food in England at present, but that we want to conserve it in order to
+ be able to lend America our tonnage.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXXII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London <i>March</i> 31, 1919
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>elow my window, as
+ I write, I can hear the stirring of the Strand. Newsboys are calling the
+ latest papers, motor-horns hoot, and the million feet of London, each pair
+ with their own separate story, clatter against the pavement. What a world!
+ How do we ever get tired of living! Every day there are new faces,
+ bringing new affections and adventure, new demands for tenderness and
+ strength. These footsteps will go on. They will never grow quiet. A
+ thousand years hence they will clatter along these pavements through the
+ miracle of re-creation. Why do we talk of death and old age? It is not
+ true that we terminate. Even in this world the river in whose movement we
+ have our part still goes on—the river of opinions, of effort, of
+ habitation. The sound of us dies faint up the road to the listener who
+ stands stationary; but the fact that at last he ceases to hear us does not
+ mean that we have ceased to exist—only that we have gone farther.
+ How arbitrary we are in our petty prejudices against immortality! God
+ hears more distinctly the travellers to whom men have ceased to listen.
+ Nothing to me is more certain than that we go on and on, drawing nearer to
+ the source of our creation through the ages. Just as I came home to you
+ after so many risks, such suffering, elation, bloodshed, so through the
+ unthinkable adventure of time we journey home to our Maker. Going out of
+ sight is sad, as are all partings. But I can bear to part now in a way
+ that I could not before I saw the heavens open in the horror of war. I
+ have ceased to be afraid of the unguess-able, and better still, I have
+ lost my desire to guess. Not to stand still—to press onwards like
+ soldiers—that is all that is required of us. I have heard men talk
+ about world-sorrows, but if you trace them back, our sorrows are all for
+ ourselves—they are a personal equation. To develop one's
+ personality in the remembering of others seems to me to be the only road
+ to happiness. All this talk—why? Because of the footsteps beneath my
+ window!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The leave train has just arrived at Charing Cross from France. It steamed
+ across the Thames with the men singing “The Land where the Bluebells
+ grow.” There was laughter and longing in their singing.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXXIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ Bath
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>March</i> 24, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am with Mr.
+ Lane, spending the weekend. It's a wonderful spring Sunday—no
+ hint of war or anything but flowers and sunshine. An hour ago I halted
+ outside the newspaper office and read the latest telegrams of the great
+ German offensive. It seemed like the autumn of 1914, reading of death and
+ not being a part of it. They'll not take very long in letting me get
+ back to my battery now. One's curiously egotistic—I feel, if
+ only I were out there, that with my little bit of extra help everything
+ would go well.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Yesterday we went to Batheaston Manor, a fine old Jacobean house, to tea—the
+ kind of house that one has dreamt of possessing. There were high elms with
+ rooks cawing and green lawns with immaculately gravelled paths. Inside
+ there were broken landings and rooms with little stairs descending, and
+ panelling, and pictures—everything for which one used to care. The
+ late Belgian Minister to England, Count de la Laing, was there—a
+ sad, courteous man. As we walked back with him to Bath along the canal, he
+ remarked casually that all the art treasures in his château outside of
+ Brussels had been shipped to Germany.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ We spent the afternoon seeing the King's pictures—mostly
+ Gainsboroughs—which have been brought to Bath from Buckingham
+ Palace. From here we went to tea with an old lady, Miss Tanner, who rode
+ on her lonesome through Persia many years ago and consequently has gained
+ a Lady Hester Stanhope reputation and, what is more important, a splendid
+ selection of Eastern rugs and silverwork. After that we walked home by way
+ of the great crescent which forms the scene in <i>The School for Scandal</i>.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ An odd day to dodge in between experiences of European war! I have to
+ pinch myself awake to remember what is happening at this moment in the
+ Front-line trenches. Probably within a few weeks I shall be there—and
+ feeling very much more contented with myself than I do now.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXXIV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London <i>March</i> 31, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>ric is with me. I
+ am very glad to have him for my last days in England, and I do hope that
+ Reggie may get here in time to see me. He's ordered south in two
+ weeks' time, but I may be in France by then. I report at Canadian
+ Headquarters to-morrow, and will probably be sent straight down to camp,
+ and from there to France within two weeks.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Have you seen General Currie's stirring message to the Canadians,
+ saying that he expects them to die to a man if, by so doing, they can push
+ the Huns back? This summer will see the biggest of all the battles. I'm
+ wildly excited and longing to get back. There'll be some of the old
+ glamour about this new fighting—it's all in the open. We've
+ got away from trench warfare at last. The beasts are all over the country
+ which we fought for and have recaptured since 1916. They've
+ destroyed for a second time all the reconstruction work that I saw in the
+ devastated areas. I'm wondering if all the girls got out in time.
+ There were so many American girls there.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Don't you dear people get down in the mouth when I'm again at
+ the Front. It's where I've wanted to be for a great many
+ months—ever since I recovered. To be able to go back now, when there's
+ really something doing, is very fitting. I should have been wasting my
+ time, perhaps, during the inactivity of the winter, if I'd been
+ sitting in dug-outs when I might have been writing <i>Out to Win</i>. But
+ no man, whatever his capacities, is wasting his time in fighting at this
+ hour of crisis. I've been made ashamed by the excuses I've
+ heard put up for various quitters who have taken bomb-proof jobs. I'm
+ in terror lest I should be confused with such. Heaven knows, I'm no
+ fonder of killing or of being killed than anyone else, but there are times
+ when everything decent responds to the demand of duty. I shall absolutely
+ be immensely happy to be a man again, taking my chances. I know that you
+ will be glad for me. If you hadn't known for certain that I was
+ going back, you'd have been making excuses for me in your hearts
+ during these last five months. So smile and be proud. And whatever
+ happens, go on being proud and smiling. Your job is to set an example.
+ That's your contribution towards winning the war.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's past midnight, and I go to camp to-morrow. I'll let you
+ have a cable when I go to the Front—so you needn't be nervous.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXXV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ In Camp. England <i>April</i> 4, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> got down here
+ last night and reported back this morning. I found the General of my
+ Division had already applied for me, so I am going back to my old Brigade
+ at the beginning of this week—on the Sunday, I think. To-day is
+ Wednesday, so I haven't lost much time in getting into action.
+ Probably I shall go up to London to-morrow for a two days' leave and
+ meet Eric.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There's just a chance that Reggie may be with us as well, for I've
+ sent him a telegram to say that I'm going to France.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And now, as you may imagine, I am at last happy and self-respecting. I'm
+ going to be a part of the game again and not a pretence-soldier. What's
+ more, I'm going to go straight into a real battle—the biggest
+ of the war. It's really splendid and I feel childishly elated.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Well, I've had a run for my money if any man ever had. The good
+ times in England, France, and America will be worth remembering when I'm
+ again in the fighting. I contrast in my mind my present mood with that of
+ the first time when I went out—I was very much afraid then; now I'm
+ extraordinarily happy. I've learnt to appreciate the privilege of
+ being in the glory and the heroism. I'm more pleased than if I had
+ won a decoration, that my Colonel should have asked for my return at the
+ first possible moment. It proves to me something which one often doubts—that
+ I really am some good out there.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Keep your tails up, my dear ones, and don't get worried. This line
+ is only to let you know the good news.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXXVI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London <i>April</i> 6, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m the
+ happiest person in London to-day at the thought of my return. This is
+ quite unreasonable, when I sit down to calculate the certain discomfort
+ and danger. I can't explain it, unless it is that only by being at
+ the Front can I feel that I am living honourably. I've been
+ self-contemptuous every minute that I've been out of the line. I
+ began to doubt myself and to wonder whether all my protestations of
+ wanting to get back, were not a camouflage for cowardice. I can prove to
+ myself that they weren't now. “The Canadians will advance or
+ die to a man,” were the words that General Currie sent to his
+ troops. Isn't it magnificent to be included in such a chivalrous
+ adventure? I don't think you'll read about the Canadians
+ retiring.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Whatever happens I've had a grand romance out of life—there's
+ nothing of which to complain. I owe destiny no grudge. The world has been
+ kind. I don't think I shall get killed; I never have thought that.
+ But if I am, it will be as fine an ending to a full day's work as
+ heart could desire.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I think I'm younger than I ever was. I no longer know satiety. The
+ job in front of me fills all my soul and mind. I'm going to prove to
+ myself and others that my books are not mere heroic sentiment. Going out a
+ second time, despite the chances to hang back, will give a sincerity to
+ what I've been trying to say to America. Heaps of people would think
+ it brutal to want so much to go where men are being slaughtered—but
+ it isn't the slaughtering that attracts, it's the winning of
+ the ideal that calls me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ C. has command of my battery now. He's a fine chap. You remember how
+ he left London before his leave was up, “because he wanted to be
+ among men.” That's the sort he is, and I admire him.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXXVII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London <i>April</i> 14, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e're sitting
+ together in the little flat at Battersea, and Reggie is with us. It's
+ Sunday afternoon. To-morrow morning early I set out for France. The little
+ party wanted me to sleep here to-night so that they could get up about 6
+ a.m. and see me off. I wouldn't have that. So we're going to
+ say good-bye comfortably to-night and the boys will sleep with me at a
+ hotel just outside the station.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You can't guess how glad I am at the thought of going back. I was
+ afraid I should never be a fighting man again. Now that I'm once
+ more to be allowed to do my bit I feel extraordinarily grateful. I have
+ the silly feeling that just one more man might make all the difference at
+ such a crisis, and I'm jealous lest, when so many are being called
+ upon for an exaggerated display of heroism, I should lose my chance. I
+ know now why soldiers sing when they go out to war—they're so
+ proud that they have been chosen for the sacrifice.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The boys came down to camp with me and lived near to the camp. I took an
+ anti-gas defence course before re-joining in France. Friday night we came
+ up to town and we've had a very jolly time.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Well, dears, we've lived a happy crowded life since I was wounded,
+ and we've each one of us learnt more about the glory of this
+ undertaking.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXXVIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>April</i> 21, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve been
+ back at the Front six days. This is the first opportunity I have had to
+ write. I left England last Monday, having spent Saturday and Sunday in
+ London with the boys. Major H. came up to give me a send-off and we had a
+ very gay time. Saturday evening, after dinner and a theatre, we returned
+ to Battersea and all found beds in one or other of the flats. On Sunday
+ evening we slept at a hotel next to the station so that I might be sure of
+ catching the early morning train. We managed to get a room with three beds
+ in it, and so kept all together as in the old days. By 5 a.m. we were up
+ and stirring. P. and L. walked in on us as we were having breakfast, and
+ S. met us on the platform. They all seemed quite assured that they would
+ never, never see me again—which makes me smile. I suppose they all
+ had visions of grey waves of Germans deluging our infantry by force of
+ numbers, while the gunners were left far in front, trying to stem the
+ tide. That is what we all hope for. It's the kind of chance we dream
+ about; but it hasn't happened yet.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Monday afternoon I was in France and slept at the Base that night. Early
+ Tuesday morning I was on the move again, passing Red Cross trains packed
+ with wounded and trucks crammed with ordnance. I couldn't help
+ comparing this return to the Front with my first trip up. We had a good
+ time playing cards and recalling the old fights—we were like
+ schoolboys coming back for the holidays. There wasn't one of us who
+ wasn't wildly excited at the thought of being a part of the game
+ again. This was rather strange, if you come to consider it, for each of us
+ had been wounded at least once and knew the worst of what war could do to
+ us—yet fear was the emotion most remote from us. We were simply and
+ sheerly glad to be going into the thick of it; our great fear had been
+ that our fighting days were ended.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ By 2 p.m. we were dumped out at a town through which I used to ride last
+ summer. Here we had to report to the Provost Marshal for further transport
+ orders. He told me that I should have to go to the Corps Reinforcement
+ Camp. I didn't intend to do that, so waited till he was engaged on
+ the phone and then made my escape. Taking the baggage I could carry, I
+ beat my way back to my old battery on foot and in lorries. I was just
+ coming into the wagonlines when I met Major C., who now commands us. I
+ think he had been lonely for some of the old faces; he went wild with
+ delight. I had a magnificent welcome back. On the spur of the moment he
+ made me a present of his own charger and took me up to the guns with him,
+ where we arrived in time for a very late tea, within thirty-six hours of
+ my leaving England.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The day after that I went forward to do my 24-hour spell at the observing
+ station. When I saw my first Hun after so long an absence, I felt more
+ like hugging him than trying to kill him. Of course I had to do the
+ latter, and had a very nice little strafe. I wrote you a fine long letter
+ up there and somehow lost it. So this is my second attempt.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Don't get nervous about me. Everything is quite all right with us
+ and I'm having a real holiday after my feverish literary spasms. But
+ a lot of familiar faces are absent.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XXXIX
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>April</i> 22, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>ou would hardly
+ believe our peaceful state of mind unless you could drop in on us for an
+ hour. You, in America, are evidently very worked up about us, and picture
+ us as in desperate conditions. Don't worry, we've got our
+ tails up and are happy as sand-boys. There's nothing of the grimly
+ set faces about our attitude such as you imagine. We're too
+ confident to be grim; war is actually, from our point of view, a gigantic
+ lark. It must sound silly to you, I know, but I love to hear the screaming
+ of the shells in the darkness and the baying of the guns. It's like
+ a pack of wolves being chased through the night by bloodhounds.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I hadn't been back two days before they got the rumour at the
+ wagon-lines that I was wounded—a little previous, I thought it. I
+ call that wishing a blighty on me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I've just come back from a trip across one of our old battlefields.
+ We're in the Hun support-trenches, behind us is his Front line, then
+ No Man's Land with its craters and graves, and behind that the Front
+ line from which we jumped off. You can trace everything plainly and follow
+ the entire attack by the broken wire and blown-in dug-outs. We're
+ still filled with amused contempt for the Hun on our part of the Front.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ We were discussing chaplains the other day—the way some of them have
+ failed us in this war. One of the officers told a story of Grannie M., one
+ of our First Division majors. A chaplain, who never went farther than the
+ wagon-lines, was always saying how much he'd like to see the Front.
+ Grannie called his bluff and took him for a trip into one of the warmest
+ spots. The chaplain kept dodging and crouching every time a shell fell
+ within a hundred yards. Each time Grannie, standing quietly silent, waited
+ for him to get up and renew the journey. At last the chaplain flopped into
+ a shell-hole and refused to come out. Grannie, who is a big man and well
+ over six foot, grinned down at him despisingly. “Priest,” he
+ said, “if I thought I had half the pull with Christ that you say you
+ have, not all the shells in France would make me lie as flat as that.”
+ Later another chaplain came to that brigade. No one would give him
+ house-room. He went off and slept where he could; he never came near the
+ officers, but he haunted the men at the forward guns. When the brigade
+ moved out to another sector, he procured an old skate of a horse and
+ trailed along at the rear of the line of march like a hungry dog. The new
+ Front proved to be a warm one; there were many casualties, but the
+ chaplain was always on his job, especially when the shells were falling.
+ From somewhere he got the money to start a canteen for the men, which he
+ ran himself. When no one else had cigarettes, he could supply them. At
+ last even the officers had to come to him. He finished up by being the
+ most popular chaplain the brigade had ever had, honoured by everyone from
+ the colonel down. There are your two types of army chaplains: the one who
+ plays the game, the other who issues season tickets to heaven, but is
+ afraid of travelling on them himself.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XL
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>April</i> 26, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> It is now over a
+ week since I have been back with my battery, and it seems as though all
+ that trip along the American line and the rush back to New York had never
+ happened. I'm sitting in a little “house” in a deep
+ chalk trench. The house is made of half-circles of corrugated iron; there's
+ an anti-gas blanket hanging at one end and at the other a window made of
+ oiled calico. Up one corner are the maps, scales, and office papers;
+ pinned on boards is a four-foot map of the entire English front. My
+ sleeping bag is stretched on an old French spring mattress, which was
+ brought here some time ago by the Huns. From the walls hang a
+ higgledy-piggledy of trench coats, breeches, tunics. This is the place in
+ which we work out our ranges, play cards, have our meals, and rest when we're
+ back from doing forward work.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You can walk for miles where we are without ever being seen, if you follow
+ the various systems of Hun and British trenches, for we're plumb in
+ the heart of an old battlefield. The only landmarks left to guide one are
+ the craters as big as churches—records of mines that have been
+ sprung—and little rows of lonely graves. At night when the moon is
+ up, this country creates the curious ghostly illusion of being an endless
+ alkali desert, beaten into billows by the wind. The shells go shrieking
+ over it and wreaths of mist wander here and there like phantoms.
+ Destruction can create a terrible pretence and caricature of beauty. I
+ wish you might visit such a place just once so as to get an idea of where
+ our lives are spent.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Your letters apropos of the latest German offensive bring home to me very
+ vividly the emotional terror which war excites in the minds of civilians.
+ You picture us as standing with our backs to the wall, desperately pushing
+ death from off our breasts with naked hands. The truth is so immensely
+ different. We're having a thoroughly bang-up time, and we're
+ as amused by the Hun as ever. He may force us to fall back; but while we
+ fall back we laugh at him. That is the attitude of every British soldier
+ that I've met. We're as happy and unconcerned as children.
+ There's one chap here who's typical of this spirit of treating
+ war as an immensely sporting event. He's the raiding officer of a
+ certain battalion, and is known as “Battling Brown”—though
+ Brown is not his real name. He has a little company of his own, consisting
+ of seventy men. He's been in over a hundred raids on the Hun Front
+ line and has only had two of his men killed in a year. A short while ago
+ he went across with his raiders and captured three Germans; on the return
+ journey across No Man's Land something happened, and he lined up his
+ prisoners and shot them. He led his men safely back to our lines and then
+ set out again alone on a private excursion into the Boche territory. By
+ dawn he once more returned, bringing back four prisoners single-handed.
+ You might picture such a man as a kind of Hercules, but he isn't. He's
+ thin, and tall, and fair, and high strung. His age, I should guess, is
+ about twenty-two.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Far away in the distance I can hear the pipers playing. It always makes me
+ think of Loch Lomond and when we were little tads. How green and quiet and
+ cool those days seem now—the long rides across the moors and down
+ the glens, the bathing in little mountain streams, the walks in the sad
+ twilights. There are so many happy memories I have to thank you for. You
+ were very wise and generous in the way you planned my childhood. I'm
+ less than a fortnight back at the Front, but I'm already falling
+ into the old habit of happy retrospect. We don't live here really.
+ Our souls are in France only for brief and glorious and intense intervals—during
+ the moments of attack and repulse. The rest of the time we're away
+ in the green valleys of remembered places, watching the ghosts who are the
+ shadows of what we were.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My groom is a boy named Gilpin. The name has proved his downfall. He
+ galloped my horse on the hard road the other day, which is forbidden. A
+ colonel caught him going full tilt, stopped him and took his name. When
+ the severities seemed ended this innocent young party asked the colonel to
+ hold his horse while he mounted—so now he's up on an extra
+ charge of insolence.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Army discipline is in many ways silly and old maidish. Here's a chap
+ who's faithful, well conducted, and honest. He's likely to get
+ a heavier punishment for asking a superior officer to hold his horse than
+ if he'd been drunk and uproarious.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XLI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>April</i> 28, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t's funny to
+ recall the different graveyards among the shell-holes that I've
+ learnt to call home. Once life was so definitely focused—much too
+ definitely for my patience. It seemed as though I was rooted and planted
+ for all eternity. It never seemed to me then that I should ever find the
+ sacrificial opportunity or be stirred to any prophetic exaltations. It's
+ wonderful the way the angel of Death, as discovered in war, can give one
+ visions of limitless nobilities, each one of which is attainable and
+ accessible.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm by myself at the Battery. It's late afternoon, and a
+ thunderstorm is brewing. The room is dark (I mean the dug-out); I feel as
+ though it were November instead of April. What a queer life this is. In
+ one way I have not had so much idleness since I was in hospital—then
+ comes a burst of physical strenuosity out of all proportion to one's
+ strength. Things happen by fits and starts; you never know what is going
+ to happen next.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's intensely still. The stillness is made more noticeable by the
+ booming of an occasional gun.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The whole hope and talk of our chaps is the Americans—what they're
+ going to do, when they're going to start doing it, and what kind of
+ a <i>moral</i> they will have. I hear the wildest rumours of the numbers
+ they have in France—rumours which I know to be untrue since my tour
+ along the American lines. You will have read the manuscript of <i>Out to
+ Win</i> long before this letter reaches you. I wonder what you all think
+ of it and whether you like it. It was written in a breathless, racing sort
+ of fashion. I sat at it from morning till last thing at night. All my
+ desire was to do my duty as regards the Americans and then to get out here
+ before the big show started. I managed things just in time. I don't
+ remember much of what I wrote—only a picture of Domremy and another
+ of Evian and Nancy. I hope it was as good as you expected.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There are things one lives through and sees now which seem ordinary but
+ which to future ages will figure as stupendous. If one can record them now
+ in just that spirit of ordinariness which constitutes their real wonder,
+ they will together give an accurate portrait of Armageddon. My nine months
+ out of the line began to give me a little perspective—I began to see
+ the awful marvellousness of some of the scenes that I had lived through.
+ Now, like the mist which I see hanging above the Hun Front line, a curtain
+ of normality is blotting out the sharp abnormal edges of my landscape.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This war, at the distance which removes you from it, must seem a filthy
+ and brutal kind of game. It is all of that. But it's more than that.
+ The game was not of our inventing—it was thrust on us. We are not
+ responsible for the game; but we are responsible for the spirit in which
+ we play it. The fine, clear, visionary attitude of our chaps redeems for
+ us the horror and pathos of the undertaking.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It will be towards the end of May when this arrives and you'll be
+ off to the lakes and the mountains. I wonder where. I suppose we'll
+ still be plugging along, sending death over into Fritz's lines and
+ receiving it back.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XLII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>May</i> 2, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am up
+ forward again on my shift. I'm sitting in a hole sunk beneath the
+ level of the ground, with a slit that just peeps out across the dandelions
+ to the Hun Front line. From here I can catch any movement in the enemy
+ back-country without being seen myself. Below my O.P. there is a deep
+ dug-out to which I can retire in the event of enemy shelling; if one exit
+ gets blown in, there's a second from which I can make good my
+ escape. On each fresh trip to this place I find a new gem of literature
+ left behind by one or other of the telephonists. Last time it was a
+ priceless kitchen masterpiece by Charles Garvice, entitled <i>The
+ Triumphant Lover</i>; this time it's an exceedingly purple effort by
+ Victoria Cross, entitled <i>Five Nights</i>. So you see I do not allow my
+ interest in matters intellectual to rust.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There are many things of interest that I should like to tell you, but the
+ consciousness that the censor is for ever at my elbow prevents. Did I ever
+ tell you the story of the censor whom I met on the train from Boulogne,
+ when I was returning to the line in January 1917? If I happened to tell it
+ to you, the gentleman who uninvited shares all my letters with you hasn't
+ heard it, and I'm sure his curiosity must be pricked by this time—so
+ here goes.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was after that splendid leave in London which you came over from
+ America to share with me. The train from Boulogne to the Front was the
+ usual draughty affair, half the windows out, no heating system, no means
+ of getting anything to eat for goodness knows how many hours. I picked out
+ the least disreputable carriage and found that a gunner colonel was
+ snuggled up in one corner and a pile of rugs, pillows, hot-water bottles,
+ eatables, etc., in another. Just as the train was starting the owner of
+ all these effeminate luxuries hopped in and commenced to make himself
+ comfortable. He was nearer fifty than forty. His nose was inflamed and
+ heavily veined, either from drink, dyspepsia, or both. His rank was that
+ of a lieutenant. His social grade that of a post-office assistant, I
+ should fancy. His uniform fitted abominably, and his appearance was as
+ unsoldierly as can well be imagined. He looked like a loose-living spider.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ We hadn't been moving very long when he started to unwrap his
+ packages and to gorge himself. He ate steadily like one whose life
+ depended on it. The colonel and I had forgotten to bring anything, so we
+ had the joy of watching.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In our chilly misery we became human and began to talk. The conversation
+ became reminiscent of the numerous offensives. The sloppy lieutenant with
+ the drooping walrus moustaches who sat opposite to us, persistently laid
+ claim to a more thorough knowledge of attacks that we had been in than we
+ did ourselves. He puzzled us; we couldn't picture him as a
+ combatant. Quite haphazard one of us—I think it was the colonel—commenced
+ to damn censors as chaps who sat safely behind the lines and spied on
+ fighting-men's private affairs. The lieutenant became very hot in
+ the censors' defence. He tried to prove the necessity for them by
+ quoting the case of a lieutenant named N., who had sent back captured
+ aeroplane photos to his friends. I happened to know N. and that he was
+ going to be tried by court-martial for his indiscretion, so grew loud in
+ proclaiming my contempt for the fellow safely behind the lines who had
+ caught him. We were particularly annoyed, because N. was a plucky soldier.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Our friend in the corner took my remarks extremely personally. To show his
+ resentment of me, he pointedly offered the colonel some of his fodder. At
+ last he said very haughtily, “It may interest you to know that I am
+ the censor and am at present going up the line to give evidence against
+ Lieutenant N. at his trial.” Just at that moment the train stopped
+ at a station. He blinked through the window with his shortsighted eyes,
+ trying to read the name “This is M., I think,” he said;
+ “if it is, we stop here ten minutes and get time to stretch our
+ legs.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I looked out of the window helpfully. “It is M.,” I told him.
+ It wasn't. He got out and commenced to walk up the platform. Almost
+ immediately the train started to pull out. He made a wild crab-wise dash
+ for the carriage-door, but the colonel and I were hanging to it on the
+ inside. When we were safely on our journey, we shared up his pillows,
+ rugs, hot-water bottles, and eatables between us, and had a comparatively
+ pleasant journey. For once we thanked God for the censor.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's tea-time at home. You've probably come in from a walk and
+ are smoking a cigar at the family oak-table. I wish I could pop in on you.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Oh, our latest excitement! We received our new gramophone last night with
+ about thirty of the latest records!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You'll be glad to know that I now have my old batman back. He's
+ the man who took me out when I was wounded and was so tender to me on the
+ way to the hospital. That memory of his tenderness is rather embarrassing,
+ for I can't bring myself to strafe him the way I ought to. I can
+ always see the fellow's concern when he thought that I was done for.
+ Now that he's got me back he acts as though I were still a very weak
+ and indiscreet person who had to be coaxed and managed. I have the feeling
+ in his presence of being perpetually in pyjamas and in bed. He has the
+ advantage of me, to put it in a nutshell.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XLIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>May</i> 3, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t's early
+ morning. I'm still sitting in the little dug-out with the slit that
+ looks towards the Hun Front line. Everything but the immediate foreground
+ is blanketed in heavy mist at present. I can hear bombing going on
+ somewhere—but I can also hear a lark singing near to the sun, high
+ overhead. The clumps of dandelions are still sleeping. They haven't
+ opened—they're green instead of yellow. The grass sparkles
+ with little drops of dew, more beautiful than the most costly diamonds.
+ With the first of the dawn I read a story by Tolstoy; since then I've
+ been sitting thinking—thinking of you and of the sleeping house in
+ Newark, which will soon be disturbed by your bath-water running, if you
+ still rise early; and thinking how strange it is that I should be here in
+ the greatest war in history. We planned to do such different things with
+ our lives. My first dream was to become extremely wise. At Oxford there
+ seemed no limit to the amount of knowledge I could acquire; it seemed only
+ a matter of patience and perseverance. Then that dream went, and I wanted
+ to save the world. I'm afraid one has to be a little aristocratic
+ towards the world before he can conceive of himself as capable of saving
+ it or of the world as requiring saving. The aristocratic touch grew on me
+ and I decided to do my saving not by touching people, but by writing
+ poetry for the few who would understand. It wasn't half such good
+ poetry as I thought it was at the time, and it never could have re-made
+ anything. Disappointed in that and because I had now committed myself to a
+ literary way of life, I took to writing novels, which nobody wanted to
+ publish, read, or buy. Then, because I had to live somehow, I entered into
+ the commercial end of publishing. There was always the shadow of a dream
+ which I pursued even then in my spare hours; it was the dream that saved
+ me and led me on to write <i>The Garden Without Walls</i>. But the shadow
+ was growing fainter when this war commenced. And here I am, human at last,
+ all touch of false aristocracy gone, peeping out across the grass wet with
+ the dew of May, beneath which lie the common clay heroes who have died for
+ democracy. How noiselessly these men gave up their lives and with how
+ little consciousness of self-appreciation. They rather put us to shame—we
+ privileged dawdlers in our haunted minds. They recognized the one straight
+ thing to do when the opportunity presented itself; they did it swiftly and
+ unreasoningly with their might. They didn't write about what they
+ did; for them the doing was sufficient. I think I shall always be a humble
+ man after such companionship, if I survive. I see life in courageous
+ vistas of actions now; formerly I was like Hamlet—I thought myself
+ into a green sickness. Marriage and children, a home and family love are
+ the best that anyone can extract from life. There have been years when I
+ didn't like my kind.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Out of the many things that have come to me in the past six months I am
+ particularly glad of little Tinker's friendship—P.'.
+ baby. She's not two yet, but we were real pals. She would never go
+ to sleep until I had kissed her in her cot “Good-night.” First
+ thing in the morning she would be beside my bed, tugging at the clothes
+ and ordering me to “Det up.” Since I've been gone they've
+ had to ring the bell and pretend that I'm just entering the hall, so
+ that they may make her go to sleep contented. When they ask her, “Where's
+ Con?” she reaches up to the window and points. “Dorn walk in
+ park,” she says. They talk about the love of a woman keeping a man
+ straight, but I don't think it's to be compared with the love
+ of a little child. You can't lie to them.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The sharp rat-a-tat of the machine guns has started; but the mist is too
+ thick for me to see what is happening——It's nothing; it's
+ died down.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In an hour I shall be relieved, and shall return to the guns and post this
+ letter. It will reach you when? Sometime in June, I expect, when the
+ summer is really come and you're wearing your cool dresses. I can
+ see you going out in the early morning to do your shopping.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XLIV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>May</i> 7, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> am sitting in my
+ bed—my sleeping-sack, I mean—which is spread out on the
+ red-tiled floor of a funny little cottage. There isn't much of the
+ floor left, as four of the other officers are sharing the room with me.
+ Coming in through the window is the smell of sweet myrtle, old-fashioned
+ and quiet; from far away drifts in the continual pounding of the guns and,
+ strangely muddled up with the gunfire, the multitudinous croaking of
+ frogs. I'm having an extraordinary May month of it in lovely
+ country, marching through the showers, getting drenched and drying when
+ the sun deigns to make an appearance. After being off a horse for so long,
+ I'm in the saddle for many hours every day.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I am glad that you all feel the way you do about my returning to the
+ Front. I was sure you wouldn't want me to be out of these great
+ happenings. My fear, when I was in England this spring, was the same as I
+ had when I first joined—that fighting would all-be ended before I
+ got into the line. No fear of that; I think we're in for another two
+ years of it. There's hot work ahead—the hottest of the entire
+ war. Oddly enough my spirits rise as the struggle promises to grow
+ fiercer. I don't know why, unless it is that as the action quickens
+ one has a chance of giving more. There's nothing sad about being
+ wounded or dying for one's country. In this war one does so much
+ more than that—he dies for the whole of humanity.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Outside my window a stretch of hedges runs down to a little brook. Ducks,
+ geese, cocks and hens make farmyard noises from dawn till last thing at
+ night. Above all the peace and quiet, the distant guns keep up their
+ incessant murmur. What a variety of places are likely to shelter me before
+ the summer is ended—woods, ditches, open fields, trenches. It's
+ all in the game and is romance of a sort. I'm sunburnt and hard. I
+ feel tremendously alive.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Once again all the striving and ambition of literary success has vanished.
+ I'm only a subaltern—and far prouder to be that than a writer.
+ I'm estimated by none but my soldiering qualities and power to show
+ guts. We were lawyers, engineers, business-men—now we're
+ soldiers and inquire nothing of each other's past.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A thrush has started singing; he's in the willows that stand by the
+ brookside. The planes go purring overhead, but he doesn't care. He
+ goes on singing towards the evening sun as though his heart knew nothing
+ but joy. He will be here singing long after we have passed upon our way.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Don't get worrying about my safety. You're sure to be feeling
+ nervous at the wrong times, when I'm perfectly safe. Just feel glad
+ that I'm allowed to be here, and don't look ahead.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XLV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>May</i> 14, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m afraid
+ you'll be feeling that I've neglected you. Whenever I miss a
+ mail I have the reproachful picture of the disappointed faces of you three
+ at the early morning breakfast—so it isn't wilful neglect. I've
+ had no time, for reasons which I can't explain. In this way of life
+ one has to snatch the odd moments for those he loves best and to break off
+ when the sterner obligations intrude themselves.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm in a beautiful part of the country at present—it must be
+ beautiful, for it is providing us with three ducks for dinner to-night. I
+ doubt whether you could get three all at once in Newark. Moreover, we can
+ get all the fresh cream and butter that we like. Of course this won't
+ last. Any morning we may wake up to find ourselves back on iron rations—bully-beef
+ and hard tack. But while it lasts we make the most of it. The most ripping
+ attraction to me is something that you'll scarcely credit. The
+ willow-groves are full of nightingales. As you go back to your billets
+ after midnight and the guns make lightning through the grill-work of the
+ trees, you see the little brown fellows with their throats quivering,
+ pouring out their song of love and spring. When you've crept into
+ your sleeping-sack, you lie awake listening—thinking of another
+ world where love and life were once so certain.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XLVI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>May</i> 18, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his is the third
+ day that I have planned to write you. Perhaps I may be able to do so this
+ time.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I have just been reading a letter from a nurse out in Palestine describing
+ the little wooden crosses above fallen British soldiers which now star the
+ Mount of Olives. The poetry of the ordinary crops out everywhere to-day;
+ we are living on higher levels than we realize. For hundreds of years the
+ future generations will weave legends round us, making us appear titanic
+ spirit-people, just as we have clothed with almost unearthly splendour the
+ Crusaders of the Dark Ages.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This is a pleasant May evening. The fields are golden with buttercups.
+ Above the singing of the birds I can hear a low droning as of bees among
+ flowers; but the droning is of homing aeroplanes. This is the kind of
+ weather and country in which it would not be unbeautiful to die.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When I went down this morning to the barn in which my section is
+ stationed, I found notice printed on the door, on either side a British
+ and American flag-and underneath a luridly illustrated Sunday magazine
+ selection of extracts from <i>The Glory of the Trenches</i>. A small
+ world, isn't it?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I have been reading a book lately that would interest you; it's by
+ Ford Madox Hueffer and is called <i>On Heaven</i>. It consists of a number
+ of poems written while on active service. He's managed to put down
+ in a rough and tumble of words a good many of our hungers and adorations.
+ I hadn't realized before I read him how very much of the
+ conversation of our soldiers is an exchange of confidences about the women
+ they love or have loved. I believe every man at the Front has a hope of
+ the girl he will be true to some day, and a fear lest——
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ One of Hueffer's poems on the subject is very beautiful. It starts
+ this way:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ “In Chepstow stands a castle;
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ My love and I went there;
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ The foxgloves on the wall all heard
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ Her footsteps on the stair.
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ The sun was high in heaven
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ And the perfume in the air
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ Came from purple cat's valerian—
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ But her footsteps on the stair
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ Made a sound like silver music
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ Thro' the perfume in the air.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The last verse sums up the dread of many a fighting-man—that all his
+ dreams are only dreams, and that a return to reality may disappoint him:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ “And another soldier fellow
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ Shall come courting of my dear.
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ And it's I shall not be with her
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ With my lip beside her ear.
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ For it's he shall walk beside her
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ In the perfume of the air
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ To the silver, silver music
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ Of her footstep on the stair.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ All the world's idealists are in the trenches by now. What a shining
+ cloud of imaginings must rise up to the Soul which lies behind the world.
+ God must be amazed to find that horror can make His obstinate creations so
+ simple and childlike. Here are millions of us who once thought only of our
+ social and individual bellies, now thinking only of the unborn children
+ and the things of the spirit. All the fond and dear accepted affections
+ have become a kind of heaven that lies in the past instead of the future.
+ If we die we don't want any heaven that isn't a re-living of
+ the old happy memories.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I find that Hueffer expresses a feeling that many of us have secretly, but
+ which I have never heard any man acknowledge—the feeling that all
+ the remainder of his days he will have to be explaining if he comes to the
+ end of the war alive—almost the feeling that he will have lost his
+ great chance of nobility by not dying. Hueffer's poem is called <i>One
+ Day's List</i>; it's a list of three officers and 270 other
+ ranks of his regiment who were killed in action. It commences:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ “My dears,
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ The rain drips down on Rouen Town,
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ The leaves drip down
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ And so the mud
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ Turns orange brown.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And it has for its refrain
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ “But you—at least—are out of it.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It goes on to tell of the officers who fell, and repeats the reflection
+ which we all have when we gaze on the dead at the end of an attack and
+ know that we ourselves have escaped:
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ “One wonders why you died.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And then,
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ “We never talked of glory,
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ And each thought a lot of one girl
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ And waited most days for hours in the rain
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ Till she came:
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ But we never talked of Fame——”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And lastly, addressing the dead,
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ “But we who remain shall grow old,
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent20">
+ We shall know the cold
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ Of cheerless
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ Winter and the rain of Autumn and the sting
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ Of poverty, of love despised and of disgraces,
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ And mirrors showing stained and ageing faces,
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ And the long ranges of comfortless years
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ And the long gamut of human fears—
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ But, for you, it shall be for ever Spring,
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ And only you shall be for ever fearless,
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ And only you have white, straight, tireless limbs,
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ And only you, where the water-lily swims
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ Shall walk along the pathways, thro' the willows
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ Of your west.
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ You who went west,
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ And only you on silvery twilight pillows
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ Shall take your rest
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ In the soft sweet glooms,
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ Of twilight rooms——”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There's the whole of our one and only cowardice in a nut-shell—that
+ we, who have posed as conquerors for a while, will, if we survive, return
+ to the normal things of life to find our spirits unexalted and the
+ commonplace still commonplace.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Out here, where there are corpses in the thistles and “the
+ gas-shells burst like snow,” we can talk of “the silver,
+ silver music of her footsteps on the stair,” but we're
+ mortally afraid that in less exultant moments, when the heart is not so
+ starved for affection, we shall discover that the “silver music”
+ is only the irritating sound of squeaky shoes.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I can't hear from you again for at least six days—a long time
+ to wait! I can't be bothered nowadays to let the mail-clerk sort out
+ the letters: I grab the bag and go through it myself.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There may be an interval between this letter and those that follow. If
+ there is, don't worry yourselves. It is not possible to find the
+ time or place to write under all circumstances.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XLVII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 1, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> can't
+ remember when last I wrote you. It isn't always easy to get the
+ time. Recently I've spent a good many hours in the saddle and have
+ been up early in the morning; when work is done the fresh air leaves one
+ too tired for anything but sleep. But you mustn't worry about me. I'm
+ stronger than I've been for months, and tanned to the colour of an
+ Indian.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I have recently met the doctor who did so much to pull me through at the
+ Casualty Clearing Station when I was wounded last June. He's still
+ the same tall, thin, silent man, with the kindest and sternest of faces.
+ His brother, he tells me, is in America on the British Mission, and had
+ informed him of America's immense preparations. Like all the men out
+ here, I found him keenly eager to see the U.S.A. proportionately
+ represented in the Front line. We are holding, and counting on the States
+ to turn the tide dramatically in our favour. Our chaps are to calm and
+ confident of success—out here there's none of the strain and
+ nervousness which are felt by civilians. Our chaps are as philosophical
+ and cheery as ever. “Good old Fritz,” they say, “so he's
+ taken another fifteen miles! Well, it'll be our turn next.”
+ Through defeat and success we carry on quite normally and unperturbed,
+ confident of ultimate victory. The general opinion is that the Hun by his
+ advances is only causing himself a lot of unnecessary trouble, as he'll
+ have a longer distance to run back to Germany.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Here's the first of June and mid-summer approaching when so many
+ pleasant things used to happen—flights to the country, the
+ purchasing of bathing-suits, fishing-nets, maps—the planning of such
+ quantities of family adventures. It would be happy to think that some of
+ these old pleasures might return one day. The longer the war goes on the
+ more impossible it is to conjure up the picture of civilian ways of life
+ or to see oneself as again in the picture. Everything grows blurred except
+ the present, with the early risings, routine, orders, marches, and
+ attacks. To be given our freedom would leave us dazed.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This will probably reach you after you have left New York and settled down
+ for the holidays in some quiet country place. There's only one spot
+ which seems permanent in our family life—the little grey shack among
+ the orchards in the Rockies. My thoughts fly to it very often these hot
+ summer days. I see the lake like a blue mirror, reflecting the mountains
+ and the clouds. I hear the throbbing of the launch. Bruce is barking on
+ the wharf. Figures are moving about the boat-house. We climb the hill
+ together where the brook sings through the flowers and the evening meal
+ awaits us. And afterwards those long sleepy evenings when the dusk comes
+ down and the flowers shine more vaguely, and we talk so endlessly,
+ planning books, retraversing the past, mapping out a road to so many
+ future El Dorados. I can remember these former happinesses without
+ self-torture or regret. The present is so splendid that it outshines all
+ former beauties. I go forward happily, believing that any bend of the
+ future may bring the old kindnesses into view again.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The old haunting dream of Blighty is growing up in me once again—the
+ Blighty we speak of, think of, worship and imagine every hour of the day.
+ It's worth being wounded if only to wake up the first morning in the
+ long white English ward, with the gold-green sunlight dripping in from the
+ leaves through the open windows. These are the exquisite moments of peace
+ and rest which come to one in the midst of warfare. Of such moments within
+ the last year I have had my share; they are happy to remember.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And the war goes on and on. I was so afraid that it would be ended before
+ ever I got back. The fear was needless. I shall be out here at least
+ another year before peace is declared. There are times when I think that
+ the Americans are not so far wrong in their guess when they give
+ themselves “four years to do this job.” The Hun may be
+ desperate; his very energy may be a proof of his exhaustion. But his death
+ struggle is too vigorously successful to promise any very rapid end. Our
+ hope is in America, with her high courage, her sacrifice, and her millions
+ of men. If she had not joined us, we would still stand here chaffingly and
+ be battered till not one of us was left. The last one would die with the
+ smile of victory on his mouth. Whatever happens, they'll never catch
+ any British fighting-man owning that his tail is down. But the thought of
+ the American millions gives us confidence that, though we are wiped out,
+ we shall not have lost. Like runners in a relay race, though we are spent,
+ the pace we have set will enable those who come after us to win in the
+ last lap.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But don't worry about me. I'm having a splendid run for my
+ money, and am far more happy than I deserve.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XLVIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 1, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>s per usual when I
+ write to you, I have my nose up against a solitary candle, am hedged in by
+ shadows, and have the stump of a cigarette in my mouth. For days I have
+ been waiting for letters from home, but none has arrived as yet. Either
+ the ship has gone down or some other calamity has happened. I now promise
+ myself that to-morrow there will be a huge package of belated mail for me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ We're travelling very light at present. The first thing I did on my
+ return was to cut down my kit to the barest necessities and send all the
+ balance back to England. It's better to have it safe in London, if
+ out of immediate reach, than to have to abandon it in a ditch or
+ shell-hole. While the summer lasts there are a great number of things that
+ one can do without.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ What an unsportsmanly crowd the Germans are! I think more than anything
+ else it will be their lack of fair play that we shall hold against them
+ when war is ended. Yesterday at the Pope's request we were foolish
+ enough to refrain from bombing Cologne, so the Hun took the opportunity to
+ both bomb and shell the Catholics of Paris. It makes one itch to grab a
+ bayonet and go over the top to do him as much damage as opportunity will
+ allow. The Hun is educating us out of our good-humoured contempt into a
+ very deep-seated hatred of him. The other day I was in a forward town
+ recently evacuated by its population. You walked through silent, torn
+ streets, the windows all broken by shells, the doors sagging from their
+ hinges and open. You peered across the thresholds into the houses. In many
+ cases meals were still on the tables, partly eaten and hastily left. A
+ stray cat scurried out into the yard; nothing else stirred. Over the
+ entire death-like silence the summer sun shone down and far away a cuckoo
+ was calling. One gets accustomed to the outward symbols of such tragedies—the
+ broken homes, abandoned security and foregone happiness. The people
+ themselves get used to it. To-day I met a farm-wagon piled high with the
+ household gods, while a peasant woman walked beside with her best hat
+ carried in a paper-bag in her hand. That was very typical—in all the
+ ruin that had befallen a home to still cling to the best hat.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm very happy and well, living almost entirely in the open and in
+ the saddle a good part of the day. The part of France I have lived in
+ since my return is by far the cleanest and most beautiful that I have seen
+ on active service. The weather has been golden and glorious. There is none
+ of that fear in our hearts that you must experience for us. We're as
+ certain of victory as we were during the days of the big Vimy advance.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The Army is a nursery organization, full of annoying pomposities and
+ amusing class distinctions. Just at present we're being pestered
+ with continual inspections, when each battery tries to invent some new
+ trick for making itself look smarter. Soldiers, on such occasions, are
+ like a lot of old women at a spring cleaning. The men much prefer killing
+ Boches to being inspected. Burnishing steel, chasing all over the country
+ to buy Brasso, spending fortunes on polish for the harness all seem such a
+ fruitless waste of time when the Huns are hammering our line. But, of
+ course, cleanliness has a moral effect on men who have been long under
+ shell-fire.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This is a discursive sort of letter, and doesn't contain much real
+ news. It's just for remembrance.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ XLIX
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 4, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve just
+ left the gramophone shrilly declaring that “When he fancies he is
+ past love, it is then he meets his last love and he loves her as he never
+ loved before.” London comes with us to the Front. We hum the tunes
+ of Piccadilly and Leicester Square, and we scheme such splendid times for
+ our return. Leave has opened up again, but by a careful calculation I have
+ discovered that it will take twenty-one years four months and three days
+ till my turn comes round at the present rate of allotments.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Some New York papers have just arrived and an exceedingly ancient cake,
+ but no letters. In the midst of a great offensive it is wonderful that
+ anything gets to us at all. We're as far away from you both in
+ reality and imagination as though we lived in a different world. Our
+ standards of conduct, normality, right living are not your standards—our
+ hopes and fears are all different. Again, as when I first came to the
+ Front, everything civilian seems a tale I have read about. I cannot
+ believe that that person who was in New York last October was really
+ myself. I rather wonder at him and at his capacity for writing about the
+ commonplace events of the present life. Now I couldn't write a line
+ about the war if my life depended on it. I see nothing in perspective
+ except the endless path of duty which leads on ahead as each day
+ introduces itself. To what goal that path leads I sometimes try to guess—to
+ something wonderful and unforeseen, I have no doubt.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I judge from what I read that the entire world which is not at the Front
+ is anxious and depressed. We're just the same as ever—cheery
+ and waiting whatever may befall with a stoicism born of confidence. Our
+ belief in ourselves, our cause, and our ability to win, never wavers. How
+ extraordinarily normal we are you could hardly imagine. The moment our men
+ get out of the trenches they begin to play baseball, football, cricket,
+ etc. There's a big lake near to where we are with red cliffs around
+ it. Here every evening you can see the poised white figures of soldiermen.
+ Last Sunday we held aquatic sports there, and had a fine display of
+ swimming. It's wonderful to see the chaps so happy when you remember
+ that nine-tenths of their companions of this time last year are either
+ wounded or dead. As you may guess, we never in our conversation call
+ attention to this fact, though there can be few, if any, who forget.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There are children where we are at present. It's amusing to see them
+ making friends with our boys. They slip their little paws into the big
+ brown hands and toddle along quite proudly.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I don't see how anyone could help loving our men—they're
+ so simple. Their faults, when you know the hearts which they hide, become
+ endearing. I think, especially when I see them with the French kiddies,
+ “Of such are the Kingdom of Heaven.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Please thank the donor of the cake which arrived to-day. We're
+ eating it—don't tell her it was dry.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ L
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 7,1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere's a
+ glorious summer evening—the end of a perfect day, during which I
+ have done my share in capturing two German spies, who now repose
+ unrestfully in our guard-room.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This morning, when I was leading a hundred mounted men along a road, a
+ terrible thing happened. The road was narrow and on one side of it
+ motor-lorries were standing; on the other side was a little unfenced
+ river. Suddenly and without warning, tearing down the hill ahead of us,
+ came the enemy. The enemy consisted of a pair of mules harnessed to a
+ heavy iron roller. The roller caught my lead-driver and threw him and his
+ two horses to the ground, then it charged on into the mass behind us.
+ Miraculously no bones were broken; we all have nine lives. Those mokes
+ have put us up to a new trick for dispersing enemy cavalry which ought to
+ be effective. Believe me, two mad mules, going thirty miles an hour with
+ an iron roller behind them, are utterly demoralizing. It is impossible for
+ any cavalry in the world to withstand them.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You don't know, can't guess, how letters from home buck me up
+ and keep the lamp of my ideals still burning. There are moments when the
+ mere mechanical side of warfare fills one's mind with an infinite
+ depression. One sees men doing splendid acts, day in day out, like
+ automatons animated by the spring of duty. One almost forgets that there
+ is any human element of choice in the matter, or a difference between
+ fighting and fighting well. When your pages come, I remember—remember
+ that just such affections and human ties bind the hearts of all who are
+ out here to life. I begin to see my chaps as personalities again and not
+ as only soldiers.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Outside the chaps are singing “O my, I don't want to die; I
+ want to go home.” Now they've changed to “Take me Over
+ to Blighty.”
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 8, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ast night I saw
+ the old lady who nursed me up so that I was fit to come and meet you in
+ London when you all came in 1917 from America. Seeing her again brought
+ back all sorts of memories of the depressions and exaltations of other
+ days. I think I have been both sadder and more happy since the war began
+ than in all the other years of my life. And I used to write about the
+ world not as it is, but about the world as I would have made it, had I
+ been God. Now I'm trying to see things as they are, with the
+ inevitable God shining through them. Here, at the Front, God is everywhere
+ apparent—but not the cathedral God I had imagined—not the
+ majestic God with sublime uplifted eyes which know nothing of finite
+ terror. The God of the Front has brave eyes which have suffered; His mouth
+ is a human mouth, which has known the pain of parting and kisses; His
+ hands are roughened and burnt and bloody; there is the stoop of agony in
+ His shoulders and the hint of a valiant jest in His splendid bearing of
+ defiance. He is one of us. He is us entirely. He is no longer remote and
+ eternal. For us He has again become flesh—He is our comrade; He is
+ the man upon our left and our right hand, who goes into battle with us; He
+ is our dead. We cannot escape Him; the pettinesses of our sins are
+ forgotten in the resemblance of our neighbours to His majesty. Nowadays I
+ cannot think of the poet's Christ, wandering through Galilean lilies
+ in a woman's robes. It's His manly death, His white timeless
+ body on the Cross that I remember. Without Calvary all His words would
+ have been unconvincing and He Himself a dreamer's fancy. It was only
+ on the Cross that Christ became flesh—all that went before is like a
+ lovely legend gradually materializing in the atmosphere of tragedy. God
+ save us from being always happy. It's the chance of being always
+ happy that I dread most after the war. There's a terrible corpulence
+ about happiness which borders very closely on physical grossness. To
+ strive and keep on striving—that is what I want for the world when
+ war is ended, and to have to pay with sacrifice for each advance. I don't
+ think any of us who come back will covet virtue as our goal, save in as
+ far as virtue embraces everything that is meant by manliness. To be
+ virtuous in the original sense was just that—to be physically
+ perfect.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Ah, how greedy I become out here to see some of the sudden qualities which
+ war has called out, transplanted into the civilian world. I so fear that
+ with peace those qualities may be debased and lost.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ More than anything else the gramophone makes me remember the old days and
+ the old aims and desires. It's the greatest miracle of the century
+ that Caruso and Harry Lauder and George Robey, with all the best of music
+ and laughter-makers, can step into our dug-out from the point of a needle.
+ When we move, whatever else is left behind, the gramophone always goes. It
+ travels in G.S. wagons, on the foot-board of limbers—in all sorts of
+ ways. We're feeling sentimental; we crank up the canned music. Above
+ the roar of the guns we hear, “All that I want is someone to love
+ me, and to love me well.” We're feeling merry, so we dance to
+ “Arizona.” All the world of forgotten pleasures can come to us
+ through that needle-point. And I—whenever it starts—I see home
+ pictures——
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Then in an extraordinarily poignant way I feel earnest to have lived,
+ loved, done something big before I die. Everything already done seems
+ insignificant and worthless. It's the feeling which you once called
+ “divine discontent.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's evening, as it always is when I write to you. Next door a
+ little refugee child is chanting his prayers under the direction of his
+ father. One can hear the humming of planes overhead. A funny world! How
+ persistent the religious instinct is, that men should still credit God
+ when their hearts are bankrupt!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Good-night, I'm going to bed now.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 12, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ith me it's
+ 6.30 in the evening. I'm sitting in a farmhouse overlooking the
+ usual French farmyard. The chickens fly in at the window—also the
+ cats. The window is my own mode of entrance; I feel like a burglar when I
+ enter my “bedroom” in this fashion after midnight. Two other
+ officers share the floor with me—literally the floor, for we use our
+ sleeping-sacks.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There's a little boy about three, with long hair, so that at first
+ we mistook him for a girl, who has become the temporary mascot of the
+ battery. He carries the broken remains of a toy rifle and falls in with
+ the men on parades, holding one of the fellows' hands. He's
+ picked up the detail for “'Shun!” and “Stand at
+ Ease!” and carries out the orders as smartly as anyone, looking
+ terrifically serious about it. The men call him “little sister”
+ on account of his appearance, and make him a great pet. I left him sobbing
+ his heart out to-day when I had to leave him behind after he had fallen in
+ with a squad of riflemen.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There's a genuine little girl who is our friend, of whom I am even
+ fonder. She's a refugee kiddy of about thirteen—slim and
+ pretty as a fairy, with a long corn-gold plait of hair down her back.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As soon as we start the gramophone going she peeps noiselessly as a spirit
+ through the window; then one of us lifts her across the sill and she sits
+ on our knees with her face hidden shyly against our shoulders.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm at present reading <i>Gulliver's Travels</i>. That I
+ should be reading them in such different circumstances from any that Swift
+ could have imagined, kindles the art of writing books into a new romance.
+ To be remembered years after you yourself have forgotten, to have men
+ prying into the workings of a brain which has been dust in a shell for two
+ centuries, is a very definite kind of immortality. To be forgotten—that
+ is what we most dread. Never to have happened would not matter; but to
+ have happened, to have walked the world, laughed, loved, created, and then
+ to be treated as though we had not happened, there lies the sting of
+ death. The thought of extinction offends our vanity; we had thought that
+ we were of more consequence to the universe. It doesn't comfort us
+ to be recalled impersonally in the mass, as the men who captured Vimy or
+ thrust the Hun back from some dangerous objective. In the mass we shall go
+ down through history, no doubt, but not as human beings—only as
+ heroes. We would rather be recalled by our weaknesses—as so-and-so
+ who loved a certain girl, who played a good hand of poker, who overdrew
+ his bank-account. Out here, from the moment a man places foot in France,
+ the anonymity of death commences. No one cares who he was in a previous
+ world, what he did for a living, whether he was a failure or a success.
+ None of his former virtues stand to his credit except as they contribute
+ to his soldier-life of the present. None of us talk about our past; if we
+ did, our company would yawn at us. Only the mail arriving at irregular
+ intervals keeps us in knowledge that we once had other personalities.
+ Letters are like ghosts of a world abandoned, tiptoeing through the dream
+ of a sleeper. Between you and us there is a great gulf fixed——Not
+ that we resent it. Someone has to pay a price for the future safety of the
+ world; out of all the ages we have been chosen as the persons. There is
+ nothing to resent,—quite the contrary. Only, now and then creeps in
+ the selfish longing that we may be remembered not as soldiers, but as what
+ we were—in our weakness as well as in our strength.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You're in a country place where I have not been and which I cannot
+ picture. I hope you're all enjoying yourselves. There's no
+ need to worry on my account.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 20,1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am in the
+ kind of place that William Morris wrote about. My room is in a monastery,
+ from which all but two of the monks have long since fled. The nunnery, in
+ which the rest of the officers are billeted, was long since vacated. A
+ saint was born here, and there used to be pilgrimages to his shrine; now
+ only the two monks remain to toll the bell, play the organ, and to go
+ through all the religious observances. The walls of the room in which I am
+ writing are covered with illuminated prayers. Pinned on the door outside
+ is the list of all the duties for the day. From my window I can see the
+ two faithful ones pacing in the overgrown garden, counting their beads,
+ murmuring their prayers, and behaving in every way as though the war had
+ not commenced. Such despising of external happenings, even though it be
+ mistaken, calls for admiration of sorts.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The country is lovely and green now, all except the immediate battle-line.
+ Birds sing, flowers bloom, and fleecy white clouds go drifting overhead.
+ One takes chance baths in chance-found brooks, and the men spread their
+ tents in the meadows. There's everything that life can offer to
+ tempt us to go on living at present. There are moments so happy that I
+ almost wish that you could be here to share them.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ To-day I'm out of touch—no letters have arrived. Perhaps they
+ will overtake us tomorrow. A thrush is singing in the monastery garden and
+ the slow blue twilight is falling. Mingling as an accompaniment to the
+ song of the thrush is the slow continual droning of a plane. The reminders
+ of war are persistent and incessant. Nevertheless, in spite of war, I
+ found a strawberry patch this afternoon and glutted myself.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I see by to-day's paper that a racket has started on the Italian
+ front. The Central Powers are declaring their weakness by striking out in
+ too many directions. We give and we give, but we never break. We're
+ waiting for America and her millions. How long before we can count on them
+ to help us to attack?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's extraordinary how the belief in America has grown. First of all
+ we said, “She has come in too late"; then, “She'll help
+ us to win more quickly"; and now, “We need her.” If America
+ has done nothing else, she has strengthened our <i>moral</i> all along the
+ line; we fight better because we know that she is behind us.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You're somewhere where the world is intensely quiet. I shall think
+ of you where the world is happy.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LIV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 20, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve just
+ finished reading a big batch of mail, and have had dinner and now sit
+ looking out on the drenched country which is covered with a shabby evening
+ sky. In the church, which adjoins the monastery in which I stay, monks are
+ chanting. They are always chanting. One wonders for what it is that they
+ pray; deeds at any moment, let alone the present, are so much better. I
+ can picture what would happen here if the Germans came. I have caught
+ myself thinking of Marie Odelle; our scenery is similar to that pictured
+ in the play. Strange how one goes to imagination in search of
+ illustrations of reality!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You, at your end, seem to have been having some wildly exciting times with
+ your processions in which the Kaiser has been publicly done away with. It's
+ a phase which all countries go through, I suppose. England did at the
+ beginning of the war. But now we entrain for the Front without bands
+ playing, and do our best not to attract attention. We're a little
+ ashamed of arousing other people's emotions on our behalf. All we
+ want is a “Cheerio and God bless You,” for our good-bye. If we
+ come back, it will be “jolly fine"; and if we don't, “C'est
+ la guerre”—we shrug our shoulders. In either event we see no
+ reason why the feelings should be harrowed of those who stop behind.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After a series of very early morning rises, I have been picturing to
+ myself the day when I once again wake up at the Ritz, with a camouflaged
+ foreigner to bring my breakfast to my pillow and then leave me in peace
+ till twelve o'clock. I wonder now why I ever left my bed in peace
+ times and find myself marvelling at my unnecessary energy. The French
+ patriot who held receptions and did the business of the day while sitting
+ in a bath of milk, had mastered the art of life. Unfortunately, if I
+ remember rightly, he was made a glaring example of sloth by being “done
+ in” while thus pleasurably occupied.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm off to do my rounds as orderly officer now. My sergeant is
+ waiting, so, as the men say, “I must ring off.”
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 23, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I sit on a
+ summer's evening in the red-tiled kitchen of an old farmhouse.
+ Immediately under the open window to my right is the inevitable
+ manure-heap—the size of which, they say, denotes the extent of the
+ farmer's wealth. Barn-roofs, ochre-red, shine vividly in the pale
+ gold of the sunset; at the end of the yard the walls fall away, giving the
+ glimpse of an orchard with gnarled, lichen-covered fruit-trees. All kinds
+ of birds are twittering and singing; house-swallows dart and dive across
+ open spaces. In the distance the guns are booming. War affords one strange
+ contrasts of sight and sound. Not many of the peasants have moved away;
+ they have great faith in the Canadians. Every now and then a forlorn group
+ will come trailing down the road between the hedges: an old tumbledown
+ cart, drawn by an old tumble-down horse, piled and pyramided dangerously
+ high with old tumble-down furniture. The people who accompany the vehicle
+ are usually ancient and tumbledown as well. They make me recall someone's
+ description of the Irish emigrants on the St. Lawrence, travelling with
+ “ragged poverty on their backs.” In contrast with these few
+ straggling fugitives, hounded by avaricious fear, is the calm of a country
+ billowy with grain and sociable with the grinning contentment of
+ quite-at-home British Tommies. Everything in their attitude seems to
+ assure the French peasant, “Don't worry, old dear. We're
+ here. Everything's all right.” From barns and houses and
+ bivouacs come the sounds of gramophones, playing selections from quite the
+ latest musical comedies. If you wander back into the fields you will find
+ horsemen going over the jumps, men playing baseball and cricket, officers
+ getting excited over tennis. We even held our Divisional Sports the other
+ day—and this in the midst of the war's greatest offensive.
+ This “'Arf a mo', Kaiser,” attitude of the
+ Canadians would give you some idea of the esteem in which we hold the Hun.
+ Our backs are not against the wall. We still have both the time and the
+ inclination to be sportsmen and to laugh. I'm sure the enemy, grimly
+ obsessed by the idea of breaking our line, never allows himself a moment
+ for recreation, and I should think his balloon-observers, spying on us
+ from the baskets of his distant sausages, must be very chagrined by our
+ frivolity. The papers say, and very probably they're right, that
+ German strategists are far ahead of those possessed by the Allies; but our
+ men have learnt a trick worth all the strategy—they have learnt to
+ laugh both in success and adversity. In this war, I believe we shall find
+ that he who has acquired the habit of a light heart will do the laughing
+ last. I should very much like to know how many gramophones travel with the
+ German Tommies; hardly any, I'll bet. They have their bands with
+ their patriotic music, keeping always before the men the singleness of
+ their purpose. The singleness of their purpose tires them out. On our side
+ of the line patriotism is the last thing you hear about. Thank God, we've
+ got time to forget it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Whenever I start trying to explain to you the psychology of our
+ fighting-men I'm always conscious that, even while I'm telling
+ you the absolute truth, with the same words I'm creating a wrong
+ impression. Fighting-men aren't magnificent most of the time; they're
+ not idealists; they're not heroic. Very often they're petty
+ and cynical and cowards. They're only magnificent and idealistic and
+ heroic in the decision that brought them here, and in the last supreme
+ moment when they bring their decision to fulfilment.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In a letter I received from Paris the other day the puzzle of the modern
+ soldier was very well expressed. “I don't believe,” it
+ said, “I will ever get used to the courage of the men who go on and
+ on with this terrible game. I'm thinking more now of the French and
+ the British soldiers, who are mended up only to go at it again. I never
+ can get used to it or take it as a matter of course. When I think for a
+ minute how it hurts to have a tooth filled, I wonder that all the armies
+ of the world don't get up and run away from each other of one accord—every
+ one who isn't a hero or a fool, that's to say.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When I think over the problem calmly I have the same wonder. The problem
+ was so neatly expressed that I read the passage out to the mess. They
+ stopped in a round of poker to listen. “Well, which are we,” I
+ asked; “heroes or fools?” “Fools,” they said
+ unanimously, and then went on playing their hands again. They're
+ right; we are fools. We're certainly not heroes. We're fools
+ for a kind of kingdom of heaven's sake—but we don't act
+ like the heaven part of it any more than we talk about our patriotism. Any
+ mention of either would make us shudder.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I wonder what motive brought the heathen Chinee to the Western Front. I've
+ been told that he came that he might buy food for his family, because
+ there's a famine in China. Maybe. His bronze face stares up into
+ ours from out the green-gold of the standing wheat—stares up into
+ ours with the inscrutable gaze of an age-old Buddha. He's the one
+ human being on the Western Front who neither by acts nor words explains
+ his nobility. Nobility there must have been to induce him to come; no
+ reasoning creature would have jeopardized his body out of lust.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Last night I rode beneath a full white moon for miles through the standing
+ crops. I only struck a road to cross it and say good-bye to it—then
+ on and on with the soft swish of the swelling stalks against my stirrups.
+ Shall we recall our old panics and delights if we live to reach normality
+ again? Will normality satisfy? Shall we be content to know that all the
+ hoard of the future years is ours? In a word, shall we ever again desire
+ to be safe? Questions which none of us can answer!
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LVI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>June</i> 27, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere's a
+ glorious June morning with a touch of chill in the air and a jolly gold
+ sun shooting arrows into the wheatfields. The chief sound I hear is the
+ rattling of head-chains, for the drivers are hard at work shining up their
+ harness. These summer days go by very pleasantly, but they throw one's
+ thoughts back a little wistfully to the Junes of other years—especially
+ those in which the train came skidding down the mountains from Spokane to
+ the ranch and the lake. All day, from first waking in the morning, we
+ begin to gamble on our chances with the mail. It arrives any time between
+ two and five o'clock; the evening passes in reading and re-reading
+ our letters and concocting replies. I think some letters from you are
+ nearly due again and I'm hoping for one this afternoon.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I think I mentioned that our battery has a French baby boy of three for
+ its mascot, just at present. He has been christened Bully Beef, but for
+ what reason I don't know. Bully Beef falls in beside the
+ Sergeant-Major on all parades. During stables he inspects the horses,
+ toddling round the lines and hanging on to the finger of an officer. The
+ other day he fell into the river while the horses were watering. No one
+ noticed his disappearance for a minute or two; then he was discovered
+ standing nearly chin-deep, doing a very quiet cry. He was consoled with
+ pennies, and I undertook to lead him up to his mother. There are many
+ stories about Bully Beef's origin. Some say that his father is a
+ rich Frenchman already married; others, a dead poilu; others, a sergeant
+ of a Highland Division which was encamped in this neighbourhood. His
+ mother is an exceedingly pretty French girl and she is not married. I can't
+ help feeling that Bully Beef must be half British, for he isn't
+ timid like a French child. On the contrary, he hides in the hedges and
+ throws stones at us when he is offended, and has a finely exaggerated
+ sense of his childish dignity. What memories he'll have when he's
+ become a man.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There was another character I mentioned in a previous letter—I
+ called him “Battling Brown “—the chap has D.S.O.'.
+ and Military Crosses with bars to them and delights in putting on raids. I've
+ since found that he cuts a notch in his revolver for every Hun he has
+ killed with it. His present weapon has eighteen notches and the wooden
+ handle of the first is notched to pieces.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's refreshing to find a man on our side of the line who knows how
+ to hate. If we had hated more at the first, the war would be ended.
+ Personally I can only hate ideas and nations—not persons; I
+ acknowledge this as a weakness in myself.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I don't think any of us realize quite how much war has changed us,
+ particularly in our relations to sex. Women had grown discontented with
+ being wives and mothers, and had proved that in many departments they
+ could compete with men. This competition was responsible for a growing
+ disrespect. Men were beginning to treat women in a way they demanded—as
+ though they were men. Women were beginning to regard men with a quiet
+ sex-contempt. It looked as if chivalry and all that made for knighthood
+ were at an end. Then came war, calling men to a sacrifice in which women
+ had no share—could not share because they were physically incapable
+ of fighting—and women to the only contribution they could make,
+ mercy and motherhood. We've been flung back on our primal
+ differences and virtues. War has cut the knotted sex-emancipation; we
+ stand up to-day as elementally male and female as when the Garden of Eden
+ was depopulated. Amongst our fighting-men, women actually hold the place
+ which was allotted to them by idealists in troubadour times.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Mothers and sisters and sweethearts, remembered at this distance, have
+ made all women sacred. A new medievalism and asceticism have sprung out of
+ our modern tragedy, enacted beneath the sea, on the land and in the
+ clouds. The tragedy, while modern to us, is actually the oldest in the
+ world—merely death.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's evening now. No letter from home came this afternoon.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LVII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>July</i> 4, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> am now attached
+ with two guns to the infantry on a special job. I live with the battalion—speak
+ about “our battalion,” in fact—and share quarters with
+ the Trench Mortar officer. The country is green and fragrant with
+ dog-roses. The dead have been gathered up and lie in little scattered
+ graveyards. Our living men spread their blankets between the mounds and at
+ night hang their equipment on the crosses. War robs men of all fear of the
+ supernatural—or is it that the dead have become our brothers?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ One writes a description of battlefields to-day and it is untrue
+ to-morrow. Everything has changed in the past year. Siege warfare, with
+ deep trenches and guns in positions of observation, is becoming more rare;
+ we are more mobile now and see more of the country. I believe, before many
+ months are out, the dream of every gunner along the Western Front will
+ have come true, and we shall be firing at the enemy over open sights and
+ coming into action on the gallop. It will be far more sporting and
+ exciting. The Trench Mortar officer with whom I am living remembers that
+ kind of work in the early days, when my battery was still firing on the
+ enemy while the Hun was bayoneting the batteries behind. He has a great
+ tale of how he came right through the enemy without knowing, bringing up
+ with him a precious load of small-arms ammunition to his General, who was
+ cut off by the enemy. He and his five men were given rifles, and together
+ with the waifs and strays of many broken regiments held the line against
+ the advance on Calais. Experiences such as that are worth living for; I'm
+ hopeful that before I take off khaki I may be in something of the kind.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You needn't think of me any more—at least for the present—as
+ living in beastliness and corruption. I daresay the country where I am is
+ almost as beautiful as where you are spending your holidays. The Hun did
+ the Allies a good turn when he advanced, for he shoved us back out of the
+ filth of three years' fighting into cleanness. One can see deserted
+ cottages with their gardens full of flowers, and green woods shaking their
+ plumes against blue skies. At one of our halts the men did themselves very
+ well with baskets of trout; they caught the trout by the simple expedient
+ of flinging bombs into the river. The concussion killed the fish and they
+ floated to the surface.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ For the present that is all my news.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LVIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>July</i> 10, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> am delighted to
+ see that every day the prophecies I made in <i>Out to Win</i> are coming
+ true. The attack that the Americans put on on 4th July is, to my mind, one
+ of the most significant things that has happened yet. Their battle-cry,
+ “Lusitania,” says everything in one word concerning their
+ purpose in coming to France. If I were a Hun I should find it more
+ terrifying than the most astounding statements of armaments and men. I can
+ picture the enemy in those old shell-holes of the Somme that I know so
+ well. It's early morning, and a low white mist steals ghost-like
+ over that vast graveyard, where crumbling trenches and broken
+ entanglements mark the resting-places of the dead. The enemy would be
+ sleepy-eyed with his long vigil, but with the vanishing of night he would
+ fancy himself safe. Suddenly, hurled through the dawn, comes the cry,
+ “Lusitania!” It must have sounded like the voice of conscience—the
+ old and boasted sin for which medals were struck, the infamy of which was
+ worn as a decoration, rising out of the past to exact suffering for
+ suffering, panic for panic, blood for blood. Whoever chose that battle-cry
+ was a poet—he said everything in the shortest and most rememberable
+ way. America is in France to act as the revenge of God. She has suffered
+ in the spirit what France has suffered in the flesh; through being in
+ France she has learnt from the French the justice of passionate, punishing
+ hate. I can think that somewhere beneath the Atlantic the bodies of
+ murdered children sat up at that cry; I can believe that the souls of
+ their mothers went over the top with those American boys. “Lusitania!”
+ The white-hot anger of chivalry was in the cry.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Yes, and we, too, are learning to hate. For years we have hesitated to
+ dogmatize as to which side God favours; but now, since hospitals have been
+ bombed and the women who came to nurse us have been slaughtered, Cromwell's
+ religious arrogance has taken possession of our hearts—“Let
+ God arise, and let His enemies be scattered.” When it was only we
+ men who were wounded and killed by the Hun we could afford to regard him
+ with an amused tolerance, but now——This is how we have
+ changed: we should welcome our chance to kill at close quarters and to
+ forget mercy. This time last year we were proud to say that we had no
+ personal animosity for the individual German; it sounded so strong and
+ impartial. We don't feel that way now; can't feel that way. At
+ last, because of our women who are dead, we have learnt the magnanimity of
+ hatred. Germany has entered a new phase of the war—a phase which her
+ persistent brutality has created. She will find no more smiling faces on
+ our side of No Man's Land when she lifts up her hands, shouting
+ “Kamerad!” We are not her comrades; we never shall be again so
+ long as our race-memory lasts. Like Cain, the brand of murder is on her
+ forehead and the hand of every living creature is against her. When she
+ pleads with us her common humanity, we will answer “Lusitania!”
+ and charge across the Golgotlias and the mists of the dawn, driving her
+ into oblivion with the bayonet. No truth of the spirit which her voice
+ utters will ever be truth for us again. It has taken four years to teach
+ us our lesson; we were slow; we gave quarter; but we have learnt.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LIX
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>July 11</i>, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve returned
+ from being with the infantry and am back with my battery now. For the next
+ few days I shall probably be out of touch with my incoming mail.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I have spoken several times to you about the test of war; how it
+ acknowledges one chief virtue—courage. A man may be a poet, painter,
+ may speak with the tongue of angels; but, if he has not courage, he is as
+ sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The other day I was accidentally the
+ witness to the promulgation of a court-martial. The man was an officer; he
+ had been sentenced to be shot, but the order had been changed to
+ cashiering. There, in the sunlight, all his brother officers were drawn up
+ at attention. Across the fields the men whom he had commanded were playing
+ baseball. He was led out bareheaded. The sentence and the crime for which
+ he had been sentenced were read aloud to him in an unsteady voice. When
+ that was ended, an officer stepped forward and stripped the buttons and
+ the badges of rank from his uniform. It was like a funeral at which his
+ honour was buried. Under an escort, he was given “Right turn,”
+ and marched away to meet the balance of life that remained. In peace times
+ he'd have been reckoned a decent-looking chap, a little smart, but
+ handsome—the kind of fellow of whom some mother must have been proud
+ and whom probably at least one girl loved. A tall chap, too—six foot
+ at least. I see him standing in the strong sunlight, white-faced and dumb—better
+ dead—despised. His fate was the fate which many of us feared before
+ we put on khaki when the call first came. We had feared that we might not
+ be able to stand the test and might be shot behind the lines. How and why
+ we can stand it we ourselves cannot say. It was all a gamble at the start.
+ Here was one man who had failed. The arithmetic of his spiritual values
+ was at fault: he had chosen bitter life when death would have been
+ splendid.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This must all sound very strange to you in your environment, where your
+ honour and life are safe. Perhaps I should not intrude such scenes upon
+ you.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LX
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>July</i> 15, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he mail has just
+ come up to us. The runner stuck his head into the hole in the trench where
+ I live and shoved in a pile of letters. “How many for me?” I
+ asked. “All of them,” he said.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm all alone at the battery, the major having gone forward to
+ reconnoitre a position and all the other subalterns being away on duties—so
+ I've had a quiet time browsing through my correspondence. A Hun cat
+ sits at the top of the dug-out across the trench and blinks at me. We
+ found him on the position. He's fat and sleek and plausible-looking.
+ I can't get it out of my mind that he's kept up his strength
+ by battening on the corpses of his former owners. Between the guns there
+ are two graves; one to an unknown British and the other to an unknown
+ German soldier.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The battlefield itself stretches away all billowy with hay for miles and
+ miles. When a puff of wind blows across it, it rustles like fire. The
+ sides of the trenches are gay with poppies and cornflowers. The larks sing
+ industriously overhead, and above them, like the hum of a swarm of bees,
+ pass the fighting planes. Miles to the rear I can hear the strife of
+ bands, playing their battalions up to the fine. A brave, queer, battling
+ world! If one lives to be old, he will talk about these days and persuade
+ himself that he longs to be back, if the time ever comes when life has
+ lost its challenge.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The Hun doesn't seem to be so frisky as he was in March and April.
+ Now that he's quieting down, we begin to lose our hatred and to
+ speak of him more tolerantly again. But whatever may be said in his
+ defence, he's a nasty fellow.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Since I started this letter I've dined, done a lot of work, watched
+ a marvellous sunset, and received orders to push up forward very early in
+ the morning. I shall probably send you a line from the O.P. The mystery of
+ night has settled down. Round the western rim of the horizon there is
+ still a stain of red. Under the dusk, limbers and pack horses crawl along
+ mud trails and sunken roads. We become populous when night has fallen.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>July</i> 17, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>o-night brought a
+ great wad of American papers. What a time America is having—all
+ shouting and anticipation of glory without any suspicion of the cost. War's
+ fine when it's khaki and drums on Fifth Avenue—if it wasn't
+ tortured bodies, broken hearts, and blinded eyes. Where I am the dead lie
+ thick beneath the sod; poppies pour like blood across the landscape, and
+ cornflowers stand tall in sockets empty of eyes. The inscription “Unknown
+ Soldier” is written on many crosses that grow like weeds from the
+ shell-holes. All the feet that marched away with shouting now lie silent;
+ their owners have even lost their names. Could death do more? Where I live
+ at present everything is blasted, stagnant, decayed, morose. War's a
+ fine spectacle for those who only cheer from the pavement.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It isn't that I'm angry with people for seizing life and being
+ gay. We're gay out here—but we've earned the right. Many
+ of us are happier than we ever were in our lives. Why not? For the first
+ time we're quite sure every minute of the day that we're doing
+ right. And that certainty is the only excuse for being happy while the
+ Front line is suffering the tortures of the damned.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I came down this morning from doing forward work; it had been raining in
+ torrents and the trenches were awash. I sleep to-night at the battery and
+ to-morrow I go forward again. It's really great fun forward when it's
+ fine. All day you watch the Hun country for signs of movement and snipe
+ his support-trenches and back-country. Far away on the horizon you watch
+ plumes of smoke trail from the chimneys of his towns, and try to guess his
+ intentions and plans. War's the greatest game of the intellect yet
+ invented; very little of its success to-day is due to brute strength.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's night now. I'm sitting in my shirt-sleeves, writing by
+ the light of a candle in an empty bottle. A row is going on outside as of
+ “armed men falling downstairs,” to borrow Stevenson's
+ phrase. It's really more like a dozen celestial cats with kettles
+ tied to their tails. I wonder what God thinks of it all; of all the kings,
+ He alone is silent and takes no sides, notwithstanding the Kaiser's
+ “Me und Gott.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My jolly little major has just looked up to suggest that the war won't
+ be ended until all the world is under arms. He's an optimist.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>July</i> 18, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m up
+ forward, sitting on a bank, looking at the Hun country through a hedge. I
+ know you'd give anything to be with me. In front there's a big
+ curtain of sea-grey sky, against which planes crawl like flies. A
+ beautiful half-moon looks down at me with the tragic face of Harlequin.
+ Far away across a plain furrowed by shell-fire the spires and domes of
+ cities in the captured territory shine. Like all forbidden lands, there
+ are times when the Hun country looks exquisitely and unreally beautiful,
+ as though it were tempting us to cross the line.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I've just left off to watch a squadron of enemy planes which have
+ been attempting to get across to our side. Everything has opened up on
+ them; machine guns are spouting their luminous trails of tracer bullets;
+ archies are bursting little cotton-wool clouds of death between them and
+ their desire. They evidently belong to a circus, for they're
+ slipping and tumbling and looping like great gulls to whom the air is
+ native. Ah, now they've given it up and are going home thwarted. I
+ wonder what the poor old moon thinks of all these antics and turmoils in
+ the domain which has been hers absolutely for so many æons of nights.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The horrible and the beautiful blending in an ecstasy, that is what war is
+ to-day. All one's senses are unnaturally sharpened for the
+ appreciation of both happiness and pain. You walk down a road where a
+ shell fell a minute ago; the question always in your mind is, “Why
+ wasn't I there?” You shrug your shoulders and smile, “I
+ may be there next time”—and bend all your energies towards
+ being merry to-day. The threat of the end is very provocative of
+ intensity.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's nearly dark now and I'm writing by the moonlight. One
+ might imagine that the angels were having pillow-fights in their bedrooms
+ by the row that's going on in the sky. And there was a time when the
+ occasional trolley beneath my windows used to keep me awake at night!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>5 a.m</i>. The letters came last night. You may imagine the place in
+ which I read them—lying on a kind of coffin-shelf in a Hun dug-out
+ with the usual buzzing of battened flies and the usual smell and snoring
+ of an unwashed B.C. party. How good it is to receive letters; they're
+ the only future we have. After I'd sent the runner down to the
+ battery I had to go forward to a Gomorrha of fallen roofs, which stands
+ almost on the edge of No Man's Land. Stagnant shell-holes, rank
+ weeds, the silence of death, lay all about me, and along the horizon the
+ Hun flares and rockets danced an impish jig of joy. When the war is ended
+ we shall miss these nights. Strange as it sounds, we shall look back on
+ them with wistfulness and regret. Our souls will never again bristle with
+ the same panic of terror and daring. We shall become calm fellows, filling
+ out our waistcoats to a contented rotundity; no one will believe that we
+ were once the first fighting troops of the European cock-pit. We shall
+ argue then, where to-day we strike. We shall have to preach to make men
+ good, whereas to-day we club vice into stupor. We shall miss these nights.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I glance up from my page and gaze out through the narrow slit from which I
+ observe. I see the dear scarlet poppies shining dewy amid the yellow
+ dandelions and wild ox-eyed daisies. I am very happy this morning. The
+ world seems a good place. For the moment I have even given over detesting
+ the Hun. With luck, I tell myself, I shall sit in old gardens again and
+ read the old volumes, and laugh with the same dear people that I used to
+ love. With luck—but when?
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France |July 19|, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e're all
+ sitting round the table studying maps of the entire Western Front and
+ prophesying the rapid downfall of the Hun. It's too early to be
+ optimistic, but things are going excellently and the American weight is
+ already beginning to be felt. It may take two years to reach the Rhine,
+ but we shall get there. Until we do get there, I don't think we
+ shall be content to stop. We may not all be above ground for the end, but
+ people who are like us will be there.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My batman has just returned to the guns from the wagon-lines, bringing me
+ two letters and a post-card. They were most welcome. After reading them I
+ went out into the moonlight to walk over to the guns, and, such is the
+ nature of this country, though the journey was only 200 yards, I lost
+ myself. Everything that was once a landmark is levelled flat—there's
+ nothing but shell-holes covered with tangled grass, barbed wire, exploded
+ shell-cases, and graves. I can quite understand how men have wandered
+ clean across No Man's Land and found themselves the guests of the
+ Hun.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I think I once mentioned the man we have cooking for our mess at present—how
+ he was no good as a cook until he got word that his wife had been drowned
+ in Canada; his grief seemed to give him a new pride in himself and since
+ his disaster our meals have been excellent. This morning I found a curious
+ document on my table, which ran as follows: “Sir, I kan't cock
+ without stuf to cock with.” I was at a loss to discover its meaning
+ for some time. Why couldn't he cock? Why should he want to cock? How
+ does one cock? And whether he could or couldn't cock, why should he
+ worry me about it?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Then the widower presented himself, standing sooty and forlorn in the
+ trench outside the mess. The mystery was cleared up.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The mess-cart is just up, and I'm going to send this off, that it
+ may reach you a day earlier.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXIV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>July 23</i>, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m sitting
+ in my “summer-house” in the trench. One side is unwalled and
+ exposed to the weather; a curtain of camouflage stretches over the front
+ and disguises the fact that I am “in residence.” For the last
+ twenty-four hours it's been raining like mad, blowing a hurricane
+ and thundering as though all the clouds had a sneezing fit at once. You
+ can imagine the state of the trenches and my own drowned condition when I
+ returned to the battery this morning from my tour of duty up front. It
+ seems hardly credible that in so short a time mud could become so muddy.
+ However, I usually manage to enjoy myself. Yesterday while at the O.P. I
+ read a ripping book by “Q.” with almost—not quite—the
+ Thomas Hardy touch. It was called <i>The Ship of Stars</i>, and was
+ published in 1899. Where it fails, when compared with Hardy, is in the
+ thinness of its story and unreality of its plot. It has all the characters
+ for a titanic drama, but having created them, “Q.” is afraid
+ to let them be the brutes they would have been. How many novelists have
+ failed through their determination to be quite gentlemanly, when merely to
+ have been men would have made them famous! If ever I have a chance again I
+ shall depict men as I have seen them out here—animals, capable of
+ animal lusts, who have angels living in their hearts.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ To-day has the complete autumn touch; we begin to think of the coming
+ winter with its drenched and sullen melancholy—its days and nights
+ of chill and damp, telescoping one into another in a grey monotony of
+ grimness. Each summer the troops have told themselves, “We have
+ spent our last winter in France,” but always and always there has
+ been another.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Yet rain and mud and melancholy have their romance—they lend a
+ blurred appearance of timelessness to a landscape and to life itself. A
+ few nights ago I was forward observing for a raid which we put on. The
+ usual panic of flares went up as the enemy became aware that our chaps
+ were through his wire. Then machine guns started ticking like ten thousand
+ lunatic clocks and of a sudden the S.O.S. barrage came down. One watched
+ and waited, sending back orders and messages, trying to judge by signs how
+ affairs were going. Gradually the clamour died away, and night became as
+ silent and dark as ever. One waited anxiously for definite word; had our
+ chaps gained what they were after, or had they walked into a baited trap?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Two hours elapsed; then through the loneliness one heard the lagging tramp
+ of tired men, which came nearer and drew level. You saw them snowed on by
+ the waning moon as they passed. You saw their rounded shoulders and the
+ fatness of their heads—you knew that they were German prisoners.
+ Limping in the rear, one arm flung about a comrade's neck, came our
+ wounded. Just towards dawn the dead went by, lying with an air of complete
+ rest upon their stretchers. It was like a Greek procession, frescoed on
+ the mournful streak of vagueness which divides eternal darkness from the
+ land of living men. Just so, patiently and uncomplainingly has all the
+ world since Adam followed its appointed fate into the fold of
+ unknowingness. We climb the hill and are lost to sight in the dawn. There's
+ majesty in our departure after so much puny violence.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And God—He says nothing, though we all pray to Him. He alone among
+ monarchs has taken no sides in this war. I like to think that the Union
+ Jack waves above His palace and that His angels are dressed in khaki—which
+ is quite absurd. I think of the irresistible British Tommies who have
+ “gone west,” as whistling “Tipperary” in the
+ streets of the New Jerusalem. They have haloes round their steel helmets
+ and they've thrown away their gas-masks. But God gives me no licence
+ for such imaginings, for He hasn't said a word since the first
+ cannon boomed. In some moods one gets the idea that He's
+ contemptuous; in others, that He takes no sides because His children are
+ on both sides of No Man's Land. But in the darkest moments we know
+ beyond dispute that it is His hands that make our hands strong and His
+ heart that makes our hearts compassionate to endure. I have tried to
+ inflame my heart with hatred, but I cannot. Hunnishness I would give my
+ life to exterminate, but for the individual German I am sorry—sorry
+ as for a murderer who has to be executed. I am determined, however, that
+ he shall be executed. They are all apologists for the crimes that have
+ been committed; the civilians, who have not actually murdered, are guilty
+ of thieving life to the extent of having received and applauded the stolen
+ goods.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ We had a heated discussion to-day as to when the war would be ended; we
+ were all of the opinion, “Not soon. Not in less than two years,
+ anyway. After that it will take another twelve months to ship us home.”
+ I believe that, and yet I hope. Along all the roads of France, in all the
+ trenches, in every gun-pit you can hear one song being sung by poilus and
+ Tommies. They sing it while they load their guns, they whistle it as they
+ march up the line, they hum it while they munch their bully-beef and
+ hard-tack. You hear it on the regimental bands and grinding out from
+ gramophones in hidden dug-outs:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ “Over there. Over there.
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ Send the word, send the word over there,
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ That the Yanks are coming——”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Men repeat that rag-time promise as though it were a prayer, “The
+ Yanks are coming.” We could have won without the Yanks—we're
+ sure of that. Still, we're glad they're coming and we walk
+ jauntily. We may die before the promise is sufficiently fulfilled to tell.
+ What does that matter? The Yanks are coming. We shall not have died in
+ vain. They will reap the peace for the world which our blood has sown.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ To-night you are in that high mountain place. It's three in the
+ afternoon with you. I wish I could project myself across the world and
+ stand beside you. Life's running away and there is so much to do
+ besides killing people. But all those things, however splendid they were
+ in achievement, would be shameful in the attempting until the war is
+ ended.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Between writing this I've been making out the lines for the guns and
+ running out to fire them—so forgive anything that is disjointed.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>July 29</i>, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> have just had a
+ very large batch of letters to read. I feel simply overwhelmed with people's
+ affection. I have to spend every moment of my leisure keeping up with my
+ mighty correspondence. The mail very rarely brings me a bag which is
+ totally empty. The American Red Cross in Paris keeps me in mind
+ continually. I had thirty gramophone records and twelve razors from them
+ the other day, together with a pressing invitation to get a French leave
+ and spend it in Paris. But your letters bulk much larger in numbers than
+ any that I receive from anywhere else. I always leave home-letters to the
+ last—bread and butter first, cake last, is my rule.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I must apologize for the slackness of my correspondence for the past few
+ days, but two of them were spent forward while taking part in a raid, and
+ the third at the observing post. It rained pretty nearly all the time and
+ sleep was not plentiful. Yesterday I spent in “pounding my ear”
+ for hours; to-day I'm as fresh as a daisy and writing reams to you
+ to make up for lost time.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You'll be sorry to hear that a favourite little chap of mine has
+ been seriously wounded and may be dead by now. A year ago, at the Vimy
+ show, he did yeoman service, and I got him recommended for the Military
+ Medal. He was my runner on the famous day. He's been in all sorts of
+ attacks for over three years, and at last a stray shell got him. It burst
+ about ten feet away, wounding him in the head, arm, and knee, besides
+ nearly cutting off a great toe. His name was Joy. He lived up to his name,
+ and was carried out on the stretcher grim, but bravely smiling. You can't
+ dodge your fate; it searches you out. You wonder—not fearfully, but
+ curiously—whose turn it will be next. For yourself you don't
+ much care; your regrets are for the others who are left. Still, don't
+ you think that I'm going west, I have an instinct that I shall last
+ to the end.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I think I mentioned the pathetic note of the mess cook, which I found
+ awaiting me one morning on the breakfast table: “I kan't cock
+ without stuf to cock with.” The history of our experiments in cooks
+ would make a novel in itself. The man before the pathetic beggar was a
+ miner in peace times; as a cook his meals were like charges of dynamite—they
+ blasted our insides. The worst of them was that they were so deceptive,
+ they looked innocent enough till it was too late to refuse them. You may
+ lay it down as final that all cooks are the dirtiest men in any unit. The
+ gentleman who couldn't “cock” earned for himself the
+ title of the “World's Champion Long Distance Dirt Accumulator.”
+ I was present when the O.C. discharged him. He sent for the man, and was
+ stooping forward, doing up his boot, when he entered. The man looked like
+ the wrath of God—as though he had been embracing all the denizens of
+ Hell. Without looking up the O.C. commenced, “Where did you learn to
+ prepare all these tasty meals you've been serving us?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I kan't cock without——”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I know you can't cock,” said the O.C. tartly; “you
+ can't even keep yourself clean. All you know how to do is to waste
+ good food. I'm sending you down to the wagon-lines, and if you're
+ not washed by guard-mounting, I've given orders to have you thrown
+ into the horse-trough.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Exit the “cock.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Your letters mean so much to me. I feel that my returns are totally
+ inadequate. Good-bye; some great news has come in and the major wants to
+ discuss it.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXVI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>July</i> 30,1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m writing
+ to you to-day, because I may be out of touch for a few days, as it looks
+ as though I was going to get my desire—the thing I came back for.
+ Any time if my letters stop temporarily, don't get nervous. Such
+ things happen when one is on active service.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It's about two years to-day since I landed in England for the first
+ time in khaki; since then how one has changed! I can scarcely recognise
+ myself at all. It's difficult to believe that I'm the same
+ person. Without exaggeration, the world has become to me a much jollier
+ place because of this martial experience. I don't know how it is
+ with you, but my heart has grown wings. One has changed in so many ways—the
+ things that once caused panic, he now welcomes. Nothing gives us more joy
+ than the news that we're to be shoved into a great offensive. It's
+ for each of us as though we had been invited to our own wedding. Danger,
+ which we used to dodge, now allures us.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I read a very true article the other day on the things which we have lost
+ through the war. We have lost our youth, many of us. We have foregone so
+ many glorious springs—all the seasons have sunk their tones into the
+ sombre brown-grey mud of the past four years. We have lost all our
+ festivals of affection and emotion. Sundays, Christmases, Easters—they
+ are all the same as other days—so many hours useful only for the
+ further killing of men. “You will say,” writes my author,
+ “that the war, after all, will not last for ever, and that the man
+ and woman of average longevity will live through threescore-and-ten years
+ of God's wonderful springs. That to a very minor extent is true. The
+ war will not last for ever; but the memory of it, the suffering of it, the
+ incalculable waste of it, will last for all that remains of our lives—which
+ is 'for ever,' after all, so far as you and I are concerned.”
+ He goes on to say that there are years and years—but the years in
+ which a man and woman may know that they are alive are few—the years
+ of love and of beauty.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I agree with all this writer says; his words voice an ache that is always
+ in our hearts. But he forgets—life, love, youth and even beauty are
+ not everything. The animals have them. What we have gained is a new
+ standard of worth, which we have won at the expense of our bodies. To me
+ that outweighs all that we have lost. I spoke to you in a previous letter
+ of the divine discontent which goads us on, so that when we have attained
+ a standard of which we never thought ourselves capable, we envy a new and
+ nobler goal, and commence to race towards it. In one of Q.'. books I
+ came across a verse which expresses this exactly:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ “Oh that I were where I would be!
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ Then would I be where I am not.
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ But where I am there I must be;
+ </p>
+ <p class="indent15">
+ And where I would be, I can not.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Discontented, ungrateful creatures we are! And yet there is nobility in
+ our discontent.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ By the way, over the doorway of my O.P. is chalked this sound advice—“Do
+ unto Fritzie as he doth unto you. But do it first.”
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXVII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>August</i> 13, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> haven't
+ seen a paper for nearly a fortnight, so don't know what news of the
+ Front has been published and can risk telling you nothing. Suffice it to
+ say that I'm having the most choice experience that I've had
+ since I took up soldiering. We are winged persons—the body is
+ nothing; to use Homer's phrase, “our souls rush out before us.”
+ This is the top-notch of life; there was nothing like it before in all the
+ ages. We triumph; we each individually contribute to the triumph, and,
+ though our bodies are tired, our hearts are elated. We'll win the
+ war for you and bring peace back; even the most dreary pessimist must
+ believe that now.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I try to keep notes of the tremendous tragedies and glories which I
+ witness hour by hour, so that one day I can paint the picture for you as
+ it happened. All day I am reminded of that motto of the Gesta Romanorum,
+ “What I spent, I had; what I saved, I lost; what I gave, I have.”
+ So many men have given in this war—given in the sense of giving all.
+ I think it must be true of them wherever they are now, that they <i>have</i>
+ in proportion to their sacrifice. It should be written on the white
+ crosses above all our soldiers, “<i>What He Gave, He Has</i>.”
+ What we are trying to give is heaven to the world; it is just that those
+ who fall should receive heaven in return.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXVIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>August</i> 14, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> am writing to you
+ in a lull—I may not have another opportunity for days. In a battle
+ one has no transport for conveying letters—only for ammunition,
+ wounded, and supplies. I'm stunningly well and bronzed. The weather
+ is royal and tropical and, best of all, the Hun's tail is down while
+ ours is pointing heavenwards. One of my gunners was complaining this
+ morning that it was “a hell of a war.” It was the smell of
+ dead cavalry horses that nauseated him. Another gunner cheered him up,
+ “Where's the use of complaining, Bill? It's the only war
+ we have.” That's the spirit of our men. It may be a hell of a
+ war, but it's the only one we have, so we may as well grin and make
+ the best of it. In the past few days I have seen more than in all my
+ former experience. I can visualize Waterloo now—and the last trump:
+ the hosts of death deploying before my eyes. That one still walks the
+ earth seems wonderful. God is very lenient.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But there is nothing to fear in death—only the thing that is left is
+ horrible—and how horrible! But the things that are left are not us—we
+ have pushed onwards to God.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXIX
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>August</i> 15, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> keep on dropping
+ you little notes to let you know that everything is all right with me. It
+ makes me very happy to hear from you; it always does, but more so than
+ ever nowadays.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You remember R.? A few days ago he was killed. He was just ahead of me,
+ riding up the road. I did not see his face, but recognized his square-set
+ figure and divisional patches. He's not had much of a run for his
+ money, poor chap. It was his first show, but he died game.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ How much longer have we got to go? It's like a long, long walk, with
+ no milestones, towards an unknown destination. If we only knew how much
+ farther our goal lay, it would be easier. I dreamed last night of
+ Kootenay, all green and cool and somnolent. It was rest, rest, rest. One
+ gazed through the apple-trees to the quiet lake and felt happy in the too
+ much beauty. But please don't worry about me.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXX
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>August</i> 17, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m in the
+ support trenches to-night carrying on with the infantry. This is my third
+ day and I am relieved to-morrow. Yesterday I had a gorgeous spree which I
+ will tell you about some day. I was out in front of our infantry in an
+ attack, scouting for the enemy. This war may be boring at times, but its
+ great moments hold thrills which you could find nowhere else. It may sound
+ mad, but it's extraordinary fun to be chased by enemy machine-gun
+ bullets. I've recently had fun of every kind.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Once again death is a familiar sight—tired bodies lying in the
+ August sunshine. In places where men once were, birds are the only
+ inhabitants remaining.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In this hole in the ground where I am sitting I found a copy of the New
+ York <i>Times</i> for 30th June, with the first advertisement of <i>Out to
+ Win</i>. Less than thirty hours ago the Hun was sitting here and making
+ himself quite comfortable. I wonder if he was the owner of the New York <i>Times</i>.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was relieved last night, and had a difficult walk back to the battery.
+ There were several letters from you all awaiting me. How tired I was you
+ may judge when I tell you that I fell asleep without reading them. For the
+ first time in a fortnight I had my breeches off last night. Up forward one
+ got drenched with sweat by day and lay sodden and itchy on the damp ground
+ by night. But don't think we weren't cheerful—we were
+ immensely happy. There's no game in the world like pushing back the
+ Hun. I had another example of how we treat our prisoners. A young officer
+ came in captive while I was shaving. “How long before we win?”
+ I asked him. “<i>We</i> are going to vin,” he replied. “If
+ not, vhy because?” Our Tommies started kidding him. “Say,
+ beau, you don't look much like winning now.” And then they
+ offered him water and food, although we were short ourselves and his whole
+ deportment was insolent.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ During an attack, while I was within 200 yards of the advanced post and
+ pinned under a barrage, a Canadian Tommy wormed his way towards me.
+ “Say, sir, are you hungry? Have some maple sugar and cake?”
+ Was I hungry! He had received a parcel from Canada the night before which
+ he had taken with him into the attack. There, amongst whizz-bangs and
+ exploding five-nines, we feasted together, washing it all down with water
+ from the bottle of a neighbouring dead Hun.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You can't beat chaps who joke, think of home, go forward, and find
+ time to love their enemies under shell-fire. They're extraordinary
+ and as normal as the air.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXXI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France <i>August</i> 20, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>o-day I have spent
+ some time in composing recommendations for decorations for two of my
+ signallers who were with me in my latest show. One of the lucky fellows
+ came straight out of the death and racket to find his Blighty
+ leave-warrant waiting for him. Not that I really envy him, for I wouldn't
+ leave the Front at this moment if there were twenty leave-warrants offered
+ to me. I suppose I'm a little mad about the war.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I'm still very tired from my last adventure and am limping about
+ with very sore feet—but I'm very happy. I begin to feel that
+ we're drawing to the end of the war. The Hun knows now that the jig
+ is up. He was going to have defeated us this summer while the Americans
+ were still preparing—instead of that we're pushing him back. I
+ don't think he will gain another square yard of France. From now on
+ he must go back and back.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This moving battle has been a grand experience; it enables you to see
+ everything unfolding like a picture—tanks, cavalry, infantry, guns.
+ The long marches were very wearying, and we were always pushing on again
+ before we were rested. Not that we minded—the game was too big. The
+ first day of the attack I sailed out into the blue alone, following up the
+ Hun. I had the huge felicity of firing at his retreating back over open
+ sights at a range of less than 1000 yards. We pushed so far that night
+ that we got in front of our infantry and were turned back by enemy
+ machine-gun fire. The Hun is a champion runner when he starts to go and
+ difficult to keep up with. However, we caught him up several times after
+ that and helped him to hurry a bit faster. I never saw anything finer in
+ my life than the clouds of cavalry mustering—the way the horses
+ showed their courage and never budged for shell-fire set an example to us
+ men. The destruction burst in the midst of them, but they stood like
+ statues till the order was given to advance. Then away they went, like a
+ whirlwind of death, with the artillery following at the trot and coming
+ into action point-blank. I came across one machine-gun emplacement that a
+ horseman had charged. The horse lay dead on top of the emplacement, having
+ smothered the machine gunner out of action. That day when I was off by
+ myself with my two guns, I fed my horses on the oats of the fallen cavalry
+ and my men on the rations in the haversacks of the dead. In the ripe wheat
+ the dying stared at us with uninterested eyes as we passed. The infantry
+ going cheering by when we were firing, waved their hands to us, shouting,
+ “That's the stuff, boys. Give 'em hell!” We gave
+ them hell, right enough.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I've come through without a scratch and now I'm off to bed.
+ Don't worry if I don't write you—it's impossible
+ sometimes, and I'll always cable through London as soon as I can.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXXII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>August</i> 22,1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> can't sleep
+ to-night. It's nearly one. The candle lights up the mud walls and
+ makes the other occupants of my dug-out look contorted and grotesque. They
+ sigh and toss in their dreams. Now an arm is thrown out and a face is
+ turned. They've been through it, all of them, in the past few days.
+ They have a haggard look. And somewhere in shell-holes, wheatfields,
+ woods, they lie to-night—those others. Pain no longer touches them—their
+ limbs have ceased to twitch and their breath is quiet. They have given
+ their all. For them the war is finished—they can give no more.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Do people at home at all realize what our men are doing and have done?
+ Coarse men, foulmouthed men—men whose best act in life is their
+ manner in saying good-bye to it. And then there are the high-principled
+ fellows from whom ideals are naturally to be expected—whatever we
+ are, we all go out in the same way and in the same rush of determined
+ glory. We climb the steep ascent of Heaven through peril, toil, and pain—and
+ at last our spirits are cleansed.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I think continually of the mothers who stand behind these armies of
+ millions. Mothers just like my mother, with the same hopes and ambitions
+ for their sons. Poor mothers, they never forget the time when the hands
+ that smite to-day were too strengthless to do more than grope at the
+ breast. They follow us like ghosts; I seem to see their thoughts like a
+ grey mist trailing behind and across our strewn battlefields. When the
+ rain descends upon our dead, it is their tears that are falling. The
+ whispering of the wheat is like the tiptoe rustling of approaching women.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Pray for us; we need your prayers—need them more than you think,
+ perhaps. Tuck us up in our scooped-out holes with your love, the way you
+ used to before we began to adventure. Above all be proud of us, whether we
+ stand or fall—so proud that you will not fret. God will let us be
+ little again for you in Heaven. We shall again reach up our arms to you,
+ relying on your strength. We shall be afraid and cry out for your comfort.
+ We're not brave—not brave naturally; we shall want you in
+ Heaven to tell us we are safe.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ So many thoughts and pictures come to me to-night. One is of a ravine I
+ was in a few days ago, all my men mounted and waiting to move forward.
+ Wounded horses of the enemy are limping through the grass. German wagons,
+ caught by our shell-fire, stand silent, the drivers frozen to the seats
+ with a terrifying look of amazement on their faces, their jaws loose and
+ their bodies sagging. Others lie twisted in the grass—some in
+ delirium, some watching. We shall need all our water before the day is
+ over, and have no time to help them. Besides, our own dead are in sight
+ and a cold anger is in our heart. The stretcher-bearers will be along
+ presently—time enough for mercy when the battle is won! We ourselves
+ may be dead before the sun has set. I know the anger of war now, the way I
+ never did in the trenches. You can see your own killing. You can also see
+ the enemy's work. And yet, through it all down come our wounded,
+ supported by the wounded Huns.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Those chaps are very good to you,” one of our officers said.
+ The Tommy grinned. “They have to be. If they weren't, I'd
+ let the daylight into them. I've a pocketful of bombs, and they know
+ it.” Well, that's one incentive to friendship, however
+ reluctant.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The Huns are brave—I know that now. They endure tests of pluck that
+ are well-nigh incredible. We are not defeating craven curs. I can think of
+ no one braver than the man who stays behind with a machine gun, fighting a
+ rearguard action and covering his comrades' road to freedom. He
+ knows that he will receive no quarter from our people and will never live
+ to be thanked by his own. His lot is to die alone, hated by the last human
+ being who watches him. They're brave men; they cease fighting only
+ when they're dead.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ What a contrast between love and hatred—dreaming of our mothers to
+ the last and smashing the sons of other mothers. That's war!
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXXIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>August</i> 22, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am lying
+ flat on my tummy in the grass and spying on the enemy 2000 yards away. I
+ shall be here for twenty-four hours. There's no sort of cover and
+ the sun is scalding. Luckily we've found water in a captured village
+ near by and I sent our linesmen to refill our bottles. There's a
+ lull for the moment and we stretch ourselves out in weary contentment The
+ body is a traitor to the spirit—it can become very tired.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I begin to see the end of the war. I can feel it coming as I never did
+ before since I struck France. The unbelievable truth begins to dawn on me
+ that we'll be coming back to you—that we shall wake up one
+ morning to find that the world has no further use for our bombs and
+ bayonets. Strange! After so much killing, to kill will be again a crime.
+ We shall begin to count our lives in years instead of in days.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ How will the pictures one's memory holds seem then? I can see, as I
+ saw the other day, a huge German lying on the edge of a wheatfield. His
+ knees were arched. He was on his back. His head rolled wearily from side
+ to side. The thing that fixed my attention was a rubber groundsheet flung
+ hastily across his stomach, whether in disgust or pity, I cannot say. I
+ had my guns drawn up in column, my men mounted, all ready to trot into
+ action—so I had no time for compassion or curiosity. But from my
+ saddle I saw an infantryman raise the ground-sheet and underneath there
+ was nothing but a scarlet gap. There were many sights like that that day.
+ There have been many since then. I have seen as many parts of the human
+ body that the beautiful white skin tents, as a student of anatomy. What
+ hatred and injustice has preceded the making possible of such acts!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But in these places where horrors have been committed, the birds still
+ flit about their nests. When the tanks and the cavalry and the guns have
+ pushed forward, Nature returns to her task of beautifying the world.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ How I would like to sit down and talk with you all. When the war is over I
+ can see us going away to some quiet place and re-living the past and
+ re-building the future with words. I may see you sooner than either of us
+ expect; there's always the chance of a Blighty. So far, beyond an
+ attack of trench-fever from which I've almost recovered, I've
+ come through scatheless.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ By the time this reaches you I shall be looking forward to leave.
+ Casualties have thinned out the numbers on the leave-list and I stand
+ fairly high now. I ought to see England again in October.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXXIV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>August</i> 30,1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his is only a
+ brief note to say that all is well with me and to ask you not to worry. It's
+ two years to-morrow since I first saw the Front—two centuries it
+ seems. I'm different inside. I don't know whether my outside
+ has changed much—but I wish sometimes that I could be back again. I
+ begin to be a little afraid that I shan't be recognizable when I
+ return.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The journalists have been very free in their descriptions of our doings—they
+ have told you everything. If I told a tithe, my letter would not reach
+ you.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXXV
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ France
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>September</i> 1, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his is just
+ another little note to let you know that I am safe and well. I am allowed
+ to say so little to you; that's one of the worst penalties of this
+ war—the silence. Yesterday your cable, sent in reply to mine and
+ forwarded from London, arrived. My only chance of relieving your suspense
+ when I have not been able to write for some time, is to get one of my
+ English friends to cable to you.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Did you see the good news concerning R. B.? He's got his V.C. for
+ saving life under shell-fire in Zeebrugge harbour. His M.L. was hit fifty
+ times. I remember the way his neighbours used to patronize him before the
+ war. They all laughed when he went to California to study for an aeroplane
+ pilot. They didn't try to join themselves, but his keenness struck
+ them as funny. What could a man who was half-blind do at the war, they
+ asked—a man who ran his launch into logs on the lake, and who
+ crashed in full daylight when approaching a wharf? When he had been
+ awarded his flying certificate at the American Air School our R.F.C.
+ refused to take him. He tried to get into the infantry, into everything,
+ anything, and was universally turned down on the score of weak sight. His
+ quixotic keenness made less keen spectators smile. Then, by a careless
+ chance, he got himself accepted by the R.N.V.R. and was put on to a motor
+ launch. Everyone pictured him as colliding with everything solid that came
+ his way, and marvelled at the slipshod naval tests. But it wasn't
+ his eyesight and limitations that really counted—it was his
+ keenness. In two years he's a V.C., a D.S.O., and a
+ Lieutenant-Commander. Before the war he was the kind of chap with whom
+ girls danced out of kindness To-day he's a hero.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ We were discussing him out here the other day; he's the type of hero
+ this war has produced—a man not strong physically, a man
+ self-depreciating and shy, a man with grave limitations and very conscious
+ of his difference from other men. This was his chance to approve himself.
+ People laughed that he should offer himself as a fighter at all, but he
+ elbowed his way through their laughter to self-conquest. That's the
+ grand side of war—its test of internals, of the heart and spirit of
+ a man! bone and muscle and charm are only secondary.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The big things one sees done out here—done in the way of duty—and
+ so quietly! Whether one comes back or stays, the test has made all the
+ personal suffering worth while—for one hour of living to know that
+ you have played the man and saved a fellow-creature's life. One
+ never knows when these chances will come; they rush in on you unexpectedly
+ and expect to find you ready. In the encounter the character built up in a
+ lifetime is examined and reported on by the momentary result.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And yet how one suffers for the suffering he witnesses—the suffering
+ of horses and Huns, as well as of the men on our own side. The silent,
+ smashed forms carried past on the stretchers; the little groups of busy
+ men among whom a shell bursts, leaving those who do not rise. And overhead
+ the sky is blue and the wind blows happily through the sunshine. “Gone
+ west”—that's all, to the land of departing suns. Some of
+ us will stay to sleep among the gentlemen of France. In either event we
+ are fortunate in having been given the privilege to serve our kind.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXXVI
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ Prince of Wales Hospital, London, <i>September</i> 6, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am once
+ again in a clean white bed with the discreet feet of nurses, like those of
+ nuns, making hardly any sound as they pass up and down the corridor. There's
+ just one other officer in my room. His leg is full of machine-gun bullets,
+ and, like myself, he's just arrived from France. I've not got
+ used to this new security yet, this right to live, this ordered decency—all
+ of which seems to be summed up in the presence of women. Less than three
+ days ago I saw two of my gun-teams scuppered by shellfire and the horses
+ rolling among the wounded men. I can't get the sight out of my mind.
+ To be alive seems an unfair advantage I have taken.—And all the time
+ I want to be back in the thick of it. It was so glorious—such a bon
+ little war, as we say out there, while it lasted.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You'll want to know what happened. On 2nd September at dawn we set
+ out as the point of the attacking wedge to hammer our way to Cambrai. You
+ will have read this, and more than this, already in your papers. After we
+ had fired on the barrage for several hours, and our infantry had advanced,
+ we began to move our battery forward by sections. The major was away on
+ leave to Blighty, so the captain was acting O.C. He went forward to
+ observe and reconnoitre; I was left to move up the battery. My own section
+ was the last to move. On the road I was met by a mounted orderly who
+ handed me a written order to join another battery which was doing forward
+ work on opportunity targets. I reported to this battery and had brought my
+ two guns into position on their right flank, when the first shell burst.
+ The gun-teams had not unhooked; it burst directly under the centre team
+ and scuppered the lot, wounding all the drivers and killing one of the
+ gunners. We had got the guns into action, when another shell burst beside
+ the left-hand gun, near which I was standing, wounding all the gun-crew
+ except one man. I myself got a piece in the head, between the ear and the
+ left temple. It was a lucky chance that I wasn't killed outright.
+ The fragment of shell struck upwards and under my steel helmet, cutting
+ the chin-strap and the brass link which holds the strap to the helmet. It
+ was diverted by a rivet in the strap, so instead of going straight into my
+ head, it glanced along the skull. I was X-rayed in France and was to have
+ been operated on, but there was no time with so many casualties coming
+ down, so I was sent to England for the operation. I was in luck to escape
+ so lightly. I was so grateful to my helmet that I hid it in my trench coat
+ and smuggled it back to England with me as a curiosity—which is not
+ allowed.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But to return to my story. After the second shell had caught us and others
+ were popping all about us, I made up my mind that the enemy had a direct
+ line on us. I have since been told that he put on a strong counter-attack
+ and bent our line back for a time, so that our artillery were very near up
+ and it's likely that he could observe us. I sent back for my teams
+ after we had carried out our wounded, intending to drag the guns out
+ farther to the right flank. Another gun-team was scuppered and all my
+ gunners were knocked out but three men. The enemy now started to pay
+ attention to my ammunition wagons, putting one shell straight in among the
+ lot of them, so I had to leave the guns for the moment and get my wagons
+ away. I then rode forward to where the other guns of my battery were in
+ action and found that they had escaped casualties, so arranged to bring my
+ guns in beside them. About an hour and a half after I was hit I went to an
+ advance aid-post to have my head dressed. It was just a pile of stretchers
+ and bandages in a ditch—the living under cover in the ditch, the
+ dead lying out on top; here a doctor and four Red Cross orderlies were
+ working in silence. I was ordered to report at the next post back for an
+ anti-tetanus injection, so I got on my horse and rode. At the next post
+ they had no anti-tetanus, so I was put on a lorry and driven back to
+ Arras. From there I went to the Casualty Clearing Station, where I was
+ dressed and got two hours' sleep—from there I travelled on the
+ Red Cross train to the Base, arriving at 6 a.m., only eighteen hours from
+ the time that I was in the fighting. The hospital I went to was the Number
+ 20 General—the same one that I was in last year. That same morning I
+ was X-rayed and starved all day in preparation for an operation which did
+ not happen. In the evening I was warned for Blighty, but it was the midday
+ of 4th September before I got on the train for the port of embarkation.
+ The journey was rather long, for I did not reach Liverpool Street till two
+ in the morning. Yesterday, as soon as I woke up, I sent you a cable. In
+ the afternoon Mr. W. came to see me and is coming again to-day. I left the
+ Front without a bit of kit, so my first S.O.S. was for a pair of pyjamas.
+ Having studied the colour of my eyes and consulted with his lady-clerks,
+ W. sent me a suit of baby blue silk ones with thin white stripes in them—so
+ now I am ready to receive ladies.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>3 p.m.</i> I was X-rayed, and there is a splinter between the scalp and
+ skull. Whether the skull is fractured I don't know; I think not,
+ however, as I feel too well. What a contrast lying here in the quiet after
+ so many night marches, so much secrecy, such tiger pounces forward in the
+ dawn, such agony and courage and death. There were wounded men hobbling
+ seven miles from the Drocourt-Quéant line where I was hit, to the hospital
+ at Arras. The roads were packed with transports—ammunition,
+ pontoons, rations—streaming forward, gunners and infantry marching
+ up to the carnage with eager faces, passing the back-going traffic which
+ was a scarlet tide of blood. It was worth living for—worth doing—that
+ busting of the Hindenburg Line. I hope to be patched up in two months, so
+ that I may be in on the final rush to the Rhine. I've only been out
+ of the fighting three days and I want to be in it again.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Don't worry about me at all. I'm all right and brown and
+ strong. Thank God I'm not dead yet and shall be able to fight again.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Note.—<i>Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson was wounded on 2nd September in
+ the attack on the Quéant-Drocourt Line, when the magnificent fighting of
+ the Canadians broke the Hindenburg Line. The above letter describes that
+ attack and the manner in which he got his wound.</i>
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXXVII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>September</i> 8, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve returned
+ from this offensive with a very healthy hatred of the Hun. One of our
+ tanks, commanded by a boy of twenty, got too far ahead and was captured.
+ When the rest of the attacking line caught up, they found him stripped
+ naked and bound to his tank—dead. The brutes had bombed him to death
+ mother-naked. When I tell you that no prisoners were taken for the next
+ twenty-four hours, I think you'll applaud and wonder why the
+ twenty-four hours wasn't extended. The men said they got sick of the
+ killing.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Why we're decent to these vermin at all amazes me, until I remember
+ that I also am decent to them. I think the reason is that originally we
+ set out to be good sportsmen and are ashamed of being forced into hatred.
+ All the way down the line the German wounded received precisely the same
+ treatment as our own men—and treatment that was just as prompt. At
+ the Casualty Clearing Station, German officers sat at table with us and no
+ difference was made. On the Red Cross train they were given beds in our
+ carriage and our English sisters waited on them. I thought of how the
+ German nurses treat our chaps, spitting into the food and the cups before
+ they hand them to them. Every now and then you would see a wounded
+ Canadian hop up the carriage and offer them cigarettes. They sat stiffly
+ and insolently, with absurd yellow gloves on, looking as though every
+ kindness shown was a national tribute to their superiority. There were so
+ many of us that at night two had to lie on beds made for one. The Germans
+ refused; they wanted a bed apiece. When they were told they would have to
+ sit up if they would not share, they said they would sit up. Then the
+ sister came along to investigate the disturbance. They eyed her with their
+ obstinate pig-eyes, as though daring her to touch them. She told them that
+ if they wanted to sit up all night they would have to do it in the
+ corridor, as they prevented the bed above them from being pulled down. At
+ the end of fifteen minutes they decided to share a bed as all of us had
+ been doing, but they muttered and grumbled all night. There were a good
+ many of us who wished for a Mills bomb and an open field in which to teach
+ them manners. It seems to me that the German is incorrigible. He was born
+ a boor and he can never respond to courtesy. Kindness and mercy are lost
+ upon him; he accepts them as his right and becomes domineering. If any
+ peacemaker thinks that Christian forbearance and magnanimity will make for
+ a new brotherhood when peace terms are formulated, he is vastly mistaken.
+ The German is a bully, and the only leadership that he acknowledges and
+ the only righteousness to which he bows, is the leadership and the armed
+ force of a bully stronger than himself. Sentimental leniency on the part
+ of the Allies will only make him swell out his chest afresh.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ You may have seen the account of a booby-trap which the Huns left behind—a
+ crucified kitten. They banked on the humanity of our chaps to release the
+ little beast; but the moment the first nail was drawn it exploded a mine
+ which killed our Tommies. In contrast to this is an incident which
+ occurred the night before our attack on the Hindenburg Line. A hare,
+ frightened by shell-fire, came panting through our gun-position. Some of
+ the fellows gave chase, till at last one fell on it and caught it. It
+ started to cry like a baby in a heartrending sort of way. We hadn't
+ had very much meat, and the intention in catching it had been to put it in
+ the pot; but there was no one who could face up to killing it—so it
+ was petted and set free again in the wheat. Queer tender-heartedness on
+ the part of men who next morning were going to kill their kind! Their
+ concern when the little beast began to sob was conscience-stricken and
+ ludicrous.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXXVIII
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>September</i> 12, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve a great
+ piece of news for you. It's exceedingly likely that I shall visit
+ the States on the British Mission. This must read to you like moonshine—but
+ it's a quite plausible fact. I shall not be allowed to go back to
+ the Front for three months, as it will probably be that time before I am
+ pronounced fit for active service. It is suggested that during that time I
+ come to the States to speak on Anglo-American relations. I feel very loath
+ to postpone my return to the Front by a single day, and would only do so
+ if I were quite sure that I should not be fit for active service again
+ before the winter settles down, when the attack will end. I don't
+ want to miss an hour of the great offensive. If I agree to come to the
+ States, I shall only do it on the pledge that I am sent straight back to
+ France on my return. This would give me a right to speak to Americans as
+ nothing else would. I could not speak of the war unless I was returning to
+ it. I owe the Lord a death for every life of my men's that has been
+ taken—and I want to get back to where I can pay the debt. But wouldn't
+ it be ripping to have a few weeks all together again? Can't I
+ picture myself in my little study at the top of the house and in my old
+ bedroom! I may even manage a Christmas with you!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Having had my wound dressed and having togged myself up in my new uniform,
+ I jumped into the inevitable taxi and went to lunch at the Ritz with some
+ of the visiting American editors. It was delightfully refreshing to listen
+ to Charlie Towne's, the editor of McClure's, wild enthusiasm
+ for the courageous high spirits of England. “The streets are dark at
+ night,” he said, “but in the people's hearts there is
+ more light than ever.” Two stories were told, illuminatingly true,
+ of the way in which the average Englishman carries on. There was an
+ officer who had had an eye shot out; the cavity was filled with an
+ artificial one. Towne felt a profound pity for him, but at the same time
+ he was rather surprised to see that the chap wore a monocle in the eye
+ that was sightless. At last he plucked up courage to ask him what was the
+ object of the monocle. The chap smiled drolly. “I do it for a rag,”
+ he said; “it makes me look more funny.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A Canadian Tommy, without any legs, was being wheeled down a station
+ platform. Another wounded Tommy called out to him, “You're not
+ on the staff, Bill. Why don't yer get out and walk?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “'Cause I'm as good as a dook now,” the chap
+ replied; “for the rest of me life I'm a kerridge gent.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The thing that seems to have impressed these American visitors most of all
+ is the way in which our soldiers make adversity appear comic by their
+ triumphant capacity for mockery.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Towne, being a lover of poetry, was terrifically keen to visit Goldsmith's
+ grave. I hadn't the foggiest idea where it was, but after lunch we
+ set out in search of it. At last we found it in a shady backwater of the
+ Inner Temple—a simple slab on which the only inscription was the
+ name, “Oliver Goldsmith.” I know of only one parallel to this
+ for illustrious brevity; a gravestone in Paris, from which even the
+ Christian name is omitted and on which the solitary word “Heine”
+ is written. I liked to see the poet from Broadway bare his head as he
+ stood by the long-dead English poet's grave. Behind us in the Temple
+ chapel the confident soprano of boys' voices soared. It was a
+ grey-blue day, made tawny for brave moments by fugitive stabs of sunshine.
+ Lime trees dappled the cold courtyard with shadows; leaves drifted down
+ like gilded largesse. Old men, with dimming eyes and stooped backs,
+ shuffled from stairway to stairway, carrying heavy ledgers. The rumble of
+ Fleet Street reached us comfortingly, like the sound of distant surf on an
+ unseen shore. My thoughts wrenched themselves free from the scenes of
+ blood and struggle in which I participated less than two weeks ago. Here,
+ in that simple inscription, was the symbol of the one quality which
+ survives Time's erasures—character which loved and won love
+ intensely.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Queer letters you get from me! I write the way I feel from London or the
+ battlefield. My room-mate is lying in bed, his poor shattered leg propped
+ up on a pillow and a cheery smile about his lips. In the well of the
+ hospital someone is playing—playing love-songs as though there were
+ no war. The music, muted by distance, drifts in to me through the open
+ window. I feel that life is mine again; I can hope. At the Front to hope
+ too much was to court disappointment. To be alive is thrilling and
+ delicious.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ LXXIX
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ London <i>October</i> 6, 1918
+ </p>
+ <p class="pfirst">
+ <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is Sunday
+ morning. As I write the newsboys in the Strand are calling an
+ extra-special. Before entering the Savoy for lunch I purchased a copy,
+ which I read as I sat in the great gold and crimson lounge while I waited
+ for a table. You know what the Savoy is like, crowded with actresses,
+ would-be-taken-for actresses, officers on leave, chaps hobbling out of
+ hospitals like myself, and a sprinkling of Jews with huge noses and a
+ magnificent disregard for the fact that they are not in khaki. The
+ orchestra was being kept up to the right pitch of frenzy in their efforts
+ by a gentleman who is reported to get in more extra beats to the minute
+ than any other person of his colour in London. The feet of the girls
+ tripped into an unconscious one-step as they entered, as though they acted
+ independently of their owners. At the end of the rather pompous hall, with
+ its false air of being too respectable for naughtiness, lay the terrace
+ and beyond that the Thames, benevolent and drowsy in the October sunshine.
+ Everything was gay and normal as though nothing except the war had
+ happened or would ever happen. I should like Berlin to have seen us—Berlin
+ which waited breathless for the detonation of the latest Big Bertha which
+ she had fired on the world.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I opened my paper. Across the top of it, in one-inch type headlines, ran
+ the message:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ GERMANY PLEADS FOR PEACE
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ I am sorry to have to disappoint Germany, but the truth is I didn't
+ blink an eyelid or turn a hair. I was scarcely mildly interested. I gazed
+ round the crowd; their eyelids had not blinked and their hair had not
+ turned. The Kaiser's Big Bertha of peace had not roused them; she
+ must have fired a dud. Everyone looked quite contented and animated, as if
+ the war was going to last for ever.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My eye slipped down the two columns of close printing in which the mercy
+ of the All Highest was revealed to the world. I learnt that the All
+ Highest's new Imperial Chancellor was celebrating his new office by
+ playing a little trick on his own credulity; he was pretending that by
+ Christmas Germany would have sponged out all her debts of infamy with
+ words. Prince Max of Baden was in such a hurry to bring good-will upon
+ earth that he had cabled to President Wilson proposals for a lasting
+ peace; he had gone to this trouble and expense not because of anything
+ that was happening on the Western Front, but solely “in the
+ interests of suffering humanity.” Glancing at a parallel column I
+ read words which would have led me to doubt the sincerity of any one less
+ august: “Germans Defeated in All-day Battle. Tanks do Great
+ Execution among Hun Infantry. 1000 Prisoners Taken.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Then I turned back to see what this spokesman of a nation of humanitarians
+ had to say for himself. I learnt that Germany had always been keen on the
+ League of Nations: that she was anxious, as she had always been anxious,
+ to rehabilitate Belgium; that her armies were still invincible, and that
+ the Western Front was still unbroken; that the Kaiser was God's
+ latest revelation of His own perfection and His magnanimous shadow upon
+ earth.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Liars! Blasphemous liars! How can one treat with a nation which has not
+ even the sense to make its shamming decent and plausible? On the Western
+ Front to-day in their ignominious retreat the Germans are showing their
+ ancient ferocity for destruction. I know, for I have just come from before
+ Cambrai. Cities are being levelled before they make their exit; civilian
+ populations are being carried away captive; trains piled high with loot
+ precede their departure; they leave behind them the desolation of death.
+ While with “incomparable heroism” their armies are executing
+ these brutalities, their Chancellor recalls us to a lost humanity and
+ presupposes that we shall accept his professions at their face value.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I looked up from my paper at the Sunday crowd, chatting gaily as it passed
+ through gaudy splendours into lunch. They were amazingly unmoved by
+ anything that the German Chancellor had said. So far as their attitude
+ betrayed them, he might never have become Chancellor. If I may state the
+ case colloquially, they didn't care a damn. There were American
+ officers newly landed, men with the Mons ribbon, who had been in the game
+ from the crack of the first gun, wounded Johnnies like myself, wearing the
+ blue armlet which denotes that you are still in hospital. One and all were
+ seizing this jolly moment before they again caught sight of the trenches
+ and carried on with pounding the Hun. They weren't going to spoil
+ their leisure by discussing the perturbations of a German Chancellor.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Peace! For the Hun there shall be no peace. For him, for the next hundred
+ years, whether we fight him or guard the wall which we shall build about
+ him, there will be no peace. We, who have seen the mud of France grow red
+ with blood as if with poppy petals, will never forget. That we die is
+ nothing, provided always that two German lives pay for our death. Beyond
+ the Rhine, Germany lies intact; her towns are still snug and smiling. One
+ journeys to them through a hundred miles of rotting corpses—the
+ corpses of men who were our friends; yet the Imperial Chancellor appeals
+ to our humanity and reminds us of mercy.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Mercy! While I have been in hospital several batches of returned British
+ prisoners have arrived. I have sat at table with them, seen their
+ neglected wounds, and talked to them. One officer, in addition to his
+ battlefield wound, has a face horribly disfigured. I scarcely know how to
+ describe it. His jaw has been broken; his entire face has been pushed to
+ one side. It was done by the butt of a Hun rifle in a prison hospital in
+ Germany; an orderly woke him up by smashing his face in one morning as he
+ lay in bed. You may say that this was the act of one man and cannot justly
+ be taken as representative of a nation. The time has long gone by for such
+ generous discriminations; in four years of warfare these ferocious
+ cruelties have been too frequent and organized for their odium to be borne
+ by individual men. When Germany speaks of mercy it is as though a
+ condemned murderer on the scaffold appealed for his reprieve on the
+ grounds of Christ's commandment, “Love thy neighbour as
+ thyself.” Bullies grow fluent at quoting scripture only when they
+ feel the rope about their necks; their use of scripture phrases at the
+ eleventh hour is proof of cowardice—not of repentance.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Judas, the front-rank assassin of all times, set an example in decency
+ which it would behove Germany to follow, when he went out into the garden
+ and hanged himself.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There will be sentimentalists among the Allies who will speak of
+ forgiveness and softer judgments. Their motives will be mixed and many:
+ some will be camouflaged pacifists; some will be influenced by personal
+ advantages, such as relations, business affiliations and financial
+ investments in Germany; some will be war-weary mothers and wives who will
+ pounce on the first opportunity of regaining their remaining men. None of
+ them will be the men who have done the fighting. Germany has turned to the
+ American President as the intercessor for Peace; the men at the Front look
+ to America to back them up in exacting the final penalty—they look
+ to America above all the other Allies for firmness for the reason that she
+ is not war-weary, and because millions of her men who are in khaki have
+ yet to prove their manhood to themselves. America beyond all Germany's
+ adversaries came into the war on indisputably righteous grounds: we look
+ to her to insist on a meticulously righteous settlement. In the face of
+ the enormities which have been perpetrated by the Hun armies from the
+ first violation of Belgium's neutrality up to now, no vengeance
+ could be made adequate. The entire history of Germany's method of
+ making war is one of an increasing ingenuity in devising new methods of
+ making nations suffer while withholding the release of death. The
+ ravishing of women, the shooting of old men, the sending of the girlhood
+ of occupied territories into the shame of unwilling prostitution, the
+ wholesale destruction of all virtues that make life decent and desirable
+ cannot be exacted as part of our penalty; but the extermination of the
+ arch-culprits who have educated their human instruments out of manhood
+ into bestiality can. If the Kaiser and the herd of human minotaurs who
+ surround him escape the gallows, justice becomes a travesty and there is
+ no murderer, however diabolical his atrocities, who deserves to be
+ electrocuted.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ With the turning of the tide in the Allies' favour the voice of
+ France is already making itself heard on the side of the argument for
+ vengeance. Whoever forgets, France has her landscapes billowed into mire
+ by shells, her gallant cities converted into monstrous blots of brick and
+ dirt, always to remind her. She is demanding that for every French city
+ laid low, a German city, when the day of settlement comes, shall suffer an
+ equal nemesis. For these crimes against civilian rights and properties,
+ Germany has no martial motive. They are wanton and carried out by
+ organized incendiaries among her retreating armies, having no provocation
+ of battle to excuse them. Moreover, as Dr. Hugh Bellot, the eminent
+ International lawyer, has pointed out, Germany has condemned herself out
+ of her own mouth. In her treatment, for instance, of such a city as St.
+ Quentin, she commits three separate crimes against International law.
+ First, against the person of the civilian; second, against the rights of
+ movable property; third, against the rights of public and private
+ property. In her own military manual, known as the <i>German War Book</i>,
+ and regarded as her official guide for military conduct until this present
+ war, she lays down that “the devastation of occupied territory,
+ destruction of property, carrying away of inhabitants into bondage or
+ captivity, and the right of plundering private property, formerly
+ permitted, can no longer be entertained. The inhabitants are no longer to
+ be regarded, generally speaking, as enemies, and are not to be molested in
+ life, limb, honour or freedom.” Furthermore it states that “every
+ insult, every disturbance against the domestic peace, every attack on
+ family honour and morality, every unlawful and outrageous attack or act of
+ violence, are just as strictly punishable as though they had been
+ committed against the inhabitants of one's own land.” There is
+ not a single one of the above rulings that Germany is not violating at
+ this moment in her enforced withdrawal from France; and it is at this time
+ that her Chancellor appeals for peace in “the interests of suffering
+ humanity.” Magnanimity! It is a fine, large-sounding word and one
+ which it would be a disgrace to lose from our vocabulary; yet it is a word
+ capable of much abuse if employed in our peace dealings with the enemy.
+ The day for magnanimity has long gone by; in being magnanimous we are
+ unjust to both our future generations and our valiant dead. There are
+ deeds of such vileness and treachery that they put nations, equally with
+ individuals, outside the pale of all possible magnanimity. For four years
+ Germany has figured in history as a self-applauded assassin. While the
+ rôle seemed to pay her, she gloried in her ruthlessness. She succeeded too
+ well both on sea and land ever to persuade us that defeat has made her
+ heart more tender. The only peace terms will be a carefully audited
+ reckoning of all the happiness and innocence that she has strangled. That
+ this may be accomplished the man at the Front is willing to go on risking
+ life and sanity for twice four years, if need be: in the certainty that it
+ will be accomplished, he will die without regret.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ We British and men of the Dominions did not always feel this way. When we
+ entered the war we determined to remain gentlemen whatever happened. We
+ weren't going to be vulgar and lose our tempers; we weren't
+ going to be un-sportsmanly and learn to hate. Though dirty tricks were
+ played on us, we would still play fair. Our code of honour demanded it.
+ There should be no retaliation. Then came the Germans' employment of
+ gas, his flame attacks, his submarining of merchantmen, his bombing of
+ hospitals and civilian towns. You can't play fair with an enemy who
+ flies the flag of truce that he may shoot you in the back. Tit for tat was
+ the only code of honour which came within the comprehension of such a
+ ruffian. It took three years for us to stoop to the bombing of the Rhine
+ towns. The wisdom of the step has been proved; the children of London now
+ sleep safely in their beds. In my opinion, at least in as far as the
+ British armies are concerned, the success of the present offensive has
+ just one meaning: after four years of gallant smiling our soldiers have
+ attained a righteous anger—a determination to exact a just revenge.
+ They no longer make lenient discriminations between Germany and her
+ rulers. They know now that the breath of every individual German is
+ tainted with the odour of carnage. What makes our anger more bitter is the
+ shame that Germany should have forced us to stoop to hatred as a weapon.
+ But there is only one safe principle upon which to act in dealing with
+ Germany, whether in fighting her or making peace with her: With whatever
+ measure she metes, it should be measured to her again. Brute force is the
+ only reasoning she understands.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The Imperial Chancellor has appealed for peace “in the interest of
+ suffering humanity.” Even in his cry for mercy he speaks
+ vaingloriously, boasting of the “incomparable heroism” of his
+ mob of brutes who have made humanity suffer.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In not one line of his appeal is there a hint of polite regret. By the
+ time you read this letter, this particular peace overture will be ancient
+ history, but there will be many more of them, each one more sentimental
+ and frantic as our armies batter their way nearer to Germany's
+ complacent smiling towns. As these peace overtures arrive, as they will
+ almost daily, there is a saying of Richard Hooker's which I wish
+ every American would repeat night and morning as a vow and prayer. It is a
+ saying which was in my mind on the dawn of 8th August, when we sailed out
+ into the morning mist on the great Amiens attack. It is a saying which was
+ unconsciously in the mind of every British soldier; its stern
+ righteousness explains our altered attitude and the Cromwellian strength
+ with which we strike. “Lord, I owe thee a death,” said Richard
+ Hooker. Whether we be soldiers or civilians, we each one owe the Lord a
+ Hun death for the accumulated horror that has taken place. Such
+ blasphemies against God's handiwork cannot be wiped out with words.
+ To make peace before the Hun has paid his righteous debt, is to shorten
+ God's right arm and to make sacrifice seem trivial. We are not
+ fighting to crush individuals or nations, but against a strongly fortified
+ vileness and to prove that righteousness still triumphs in the world. If
+ at the first whimpering our hearts are touched and we allow the evil to
+ escape its punishment, it will sneak off with a cunning leer about its
+ mouth to lick its wounds into health that it may take a future generation
+ unawares. Mercy at this juncture would be spiritual slovenliness. God has
+ given the Allies a task to accomplish; He has made us His avengers that,
+ when our work is ended, He may create a new heaven upon earth.
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 6em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+ </body>
+</html>
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