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diff --git a/5713-h/5713-h.htm b/5713-h/5713-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9a539c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/5713-h/5713-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3720 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> + <title> + Tales of War, by Lord Dunsany + </title> + <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; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of War, by Lord Dunsany + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Tales of War + +Author: Lord Dunsany + +Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5713] +Last Updated: November 4, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF WAR *** + + + + +Produced by William McClain and David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + <div style="height: 8em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h1> + TALES OF WAR + </h1> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <h2> + By Lord Dunsany + </h2> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h5> + 1918 + </h5> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> The Prayer of the Men of Daleswood </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> The Road </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> An Imperial Monument </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> A Walk to the Trenches </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> A Walk in Picardy </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> What Happened on the Night of the Twenty-Seventh + </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> Standing To </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> The Splendid Traveller </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> Shells </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> Two Degrees of Envy </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> The Master of No Man’s Land </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> Weeds and Wire </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> Spring in England and Flanders </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> The Nightmare Countries </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> Spring and the Kaiser </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> Two Songs </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> The Punishment </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> The English Spirit </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> The Last Mirage </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> A Famous Man </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> The Oases of Death </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> Anglo-Saxon Tyranny </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> Memories </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> The Movement </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> Nature’s Cad </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> The Home of Herr Schnitzelhaaser </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> A Deed of Mercy </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> Last Scene of All </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> Old England </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + The Prayer of the Men of Daleswood + </h2> + <p> + He said: “There were only twenty houses in Daleswood. A place you would + scarcely have heard of. A village up top of the hills. + </p> + <p> + “When the war came there was no more than thirty men there between sixteen + and forty-five. They all went. + </p> + <p> + “They all kept together; same battalion, same platoon. They was like that + in Daleswood. Used to call the hop pickers foreigners, the ones that come + from London. They used to go past Daleswood, some of them, every year, on + their way down to the hop fields. Foreigners they used to call them. Kept + very much to themselves, did the Daleswood people. Big woods all round + them. + </p> + <p> + “Very lucky they was, the Daleswood men. They’d lost no more than five + killed and a good sprinkling of wounded. But all the wounded was back + again with the platoon. This was up to March when the big offensive + started. + </p> + <p> + “It came very sudden. No bombardment to speak of. Just a burst of Tok + Emmas going off all together and lifting the front trench clean out of it; + then a barrage behind, and the Boche pouring over in thousands. ‘Our luck + is holding good,’ the Daleswood men said, for their trench wasn’t getting + it at all. But the platoon on their right got it. And it sounded bad too a + long way beyond that. No one could be quite sure. But the platoon on their + right was getting it: that was sure enough. + </p> + <p> + “And then the Boche got through them altogether. A message came to say so. + ‘How are things on the right?’ they said to the runner. ‘Bad,’ said the + runner, and he went back, though Lord knows what he went back to. The + Boche was through right enough. ‘We’ll have to make a defensive flank,’ + said the platoon commander. He was a Daleswood man too. Came from the big + farm. He slipped down a communication trench with a few men, mostly + bombers. And they reckoned they wouldn’t see any of them any more, for the + Boche was on the right, thick as starlings. + </p> + <p> + “The bullets were snapping over thick to keep them down while the Boche + went on, on the right: machine guns, of course. The barrage was screaming + well over and dropping far back, and their wire was still all right just + in front of them, when they put up a head to look. There was the left + platoon of the battalion. One doesn’t bother, somehow, so much about + another battalion as one’s own. One’s own gets sort of homely. And there + they were wondering how their own officer was getting on, and the few + fellows with them, on his defensive flank. The bombs were going off thick. + All the Daleswood men were firing half right. It sounded from the noise as + if it couldn’t last long, as if it would soon be decisive, and the battle + be won, or lost, just there on the right, and perhaps the war ended. They + didn’t notice the left. Nothing to speak of. + </p> + <p> + “Then a runner came from the left. ‘Hullo!’ they said, ‘How are things + over there?’ + </p> + <p> + “‘The Boche is through,’ he said. ‘Where’s the officer?’ ‘Through!’ they + said. It didn’t seem possible. However did he do that? they thought. And + the runner went on to the right to look for the officer. + </p> + <p> + “And then the barrage shifted further back. The shells still screamed over + them, but the bursts were further away. That is always a relief. Probably + they felt it. But it was bad for all that. Very bad. It meant the Boche + was well past them. They realized it after a while. + </p> + <p> + “They and their bit of wire were somehow just between two waves of attack. + Like a bit of stone on the beach with the sea coming in. A platoon was + nothing to the Boche; nothing much perhaps just then to anybody. But it + was the whole of Daleswood for one long generation. + </p> + <p> + “The youngest full-grown man they had left behind was fifty, and some one + had heard that he had died since the war. There was no one else in + Daleswood but women and children, and boys up to seventeen. + </p> + <p> + “The bombing had stopped on their right; everything was quieter, and the + barrage further away. When they began to realize what that meant they + began to talk of Daleswood. And then they thought that when all of them + were gone there would be nobody who would remember Daleswood just as it + used to be. For places alter a little, woods grow, and changes come, trees + get cut down, old people die; new houses are built now and then in place + of a yew tree, or any old thing, that used to be there before; and one way + or another the old things go; and all the time you have people thinking + that the old times were best, and the old ways when they were young. And + the Daleswood men were beginning to say, ‘Who would there be to remember + it just as it was?’ + </p> + <p> + “There was no gas, the wind being wrong for it, so they were able to talk, + that is if they shouted, for the bullets alone made as much noise as + breaking up an old shed, crisper like, more like new timber breaking; and + the shells of course was howling all the time, that is the barrage that + was bursting far back. The trench still stank of them. + </p> + <p> + “They said that one of them must go over and put his hands up, or run away + if he could, whichever he liked, and when the war was over he would go to + some writing fellow, one of those what makes a living by it, and tell him + all about Daleswood, just as it used to be, and he would write it out + proper and there it would be for always. They all agreed to that. And then + they talked a bit, as well as they could above that awful screeching, to + try and decide who it should be. The eldest, they said, would know + Daleswood best. But he said, and they came to agree with him, that it + would be a sort of waste to save the life of a man what had had his good + time, and they ought to send the youngest, and they would tell him all + they knew of Daleswood before his time, and everything would be written + down just the same and the old time remembered. + </p> + <p> + “They had the idea somehow that the women thought more of their own man + and their children and the washing and what-not; and that the deep woods + and the great hills beyond, and the plowing and the harvest and snaring + rabbits in winter and the sports in the village in summer, and the hundred + things that pass the time of one generation in an old, old place like + Daleswood, meant less to them than the men. Anyhow they did not quite seem + to trust them with the past. + </p> + <p> + “The youngest of them was only just eighteen. That was Dick. They told him + to get out and put his hands up and be quick getting across, as soon as + they had told him one or two things about the old time in Daleswood that a + youngster like him wouldn’t know. + </p> + <p> + “Well, Dick said he wasn’t going, and was making trouble about it, so they + told Fred to go. Back, they told him, was best, and come up behind the + Boche with his hands up; they would be less likely to shoot when it was + back towards their own supports. + </p> + <p> + “Fred wouldn’t go, and so on with the rest. Well, they didn’t waste time + quarrelling, time being scarce, and they said what was to be done? There + was chalk where they were, low down in the trench, a little brown clay on + the top of it. There was a great block of it loose near a shelter. They + said they would carve with their knives on the big bowlder of chalk all + that they knew about Daleswood. They would write where it was and just + what it was like, and they would write something of all those little + things that pass with a generation. They reckoned on having the time for + it. It would take a direct hit with something large, what they call big + stuff, to do any harm to that bowlder. They had no confidence in paper, it + got so messed up when you were hit; besides, the Boche had been using + thermite. Burns, that does. + </p> + <p> + “They’d one or two men that were handy at carving chalk; used to do the + regimental crest and pictures of Hindenburg, and all that. They decided + they’d do it in reliefs. + </p> + <p> + “They started smoothing the chalk. They had nothing more to do but just to + think what to write. It was a great big bowlder with plenty of room on it. + The Boche seemed not to know that they hadn’t killed the Daleswood men, + just as the sea mightn’t know that one stone stayed dry at the coming in + of the tide. A gap between two divisions probably. + </p> + <p> + “Harry wanted to tell of the woods more than anything. He was afraid they + might cut them down because of the war, and no one would know of the larks + they had had there as boys. Wonderful old woods they were, with a lot of + Spanish chestnut growing low, and tall old oaks over it. Harry wanted them + to write down what the foxgloves were like in the wood at the end of + summer, standing there in the evening, ‘Great solemn rows,’ he said, ‘all + odd in the dusk. All odd in the evening, going there after work; and makes + you think of fairies.’ There was lots of things about those woods, he + said, that ought to be put down if people were to remember Daleswood as it + used to be when they knew it. What were the good old days without those + woods? he said. + </p> + <p> + “But another wanted to tell of the time when they cut the hay with + scythes, working all those long days at the end of June; there would be no + more of that, he said, with machines come in and all. + </p> + <p> + “There was room to tell of all that and the woods too, said the others, so + long as they put it short like. + </p> + <p> + “And another wanted to tell of the valleys beyond the wood, far afield + where the men went working; the women would remember the hay. The great + valleys he’d tell of. It was they that made Daleswood. The valleys beyond + the wood and the twilight on them in summer. Slopes covered with mint and + thyme, all solemn at evening. A hare on them perhaps, sitting as though + they were his, then lolloping slowly away. It didn’t seem from the way he + told of those old valleys that he thought they could ever be to other folk + what they were to the Daleswood men in the days he remembered. He spoke of + them as though there were something in them, besides the mint and the + thyme and the twilight and hares, that would not stay after these men were + gone, though he did not say what it was. Scarcely hinted it even. + </p> + <p> + “And still the Boche did nothing to the Daleswood men. The bullets had + ceased altogether. That made it much quieter. The shells still snarled + over, bursting far, far away. + </p> + <p> + “And Bob said tell of Daleswood itself, the old village, with queer + chimneys, of red brick, in the wood. There weren’t houses like that + nowadays. They’d be building new ones and spoiling it, likely, after the + war. And that was all he had to say. + </p> + <p> + “And nobody was for not putting down anything any one said. It was all to + go in on the chalk, as much as would go in the time. For they all sort of + understood that the Daleswood of what they called the good old time was + just the memories that those few men had of the days they had spent there + together. And that was the Daleswood they loved, and wanted folks to + remember. They were all agreed as to that. And then they said how was they + to write it down. And when it came to writing there was so much to be + said, not spread over a lot of paper I don’t mean, but going down so deep + like, that it seemed to them how their own talk wouldn’t be good enough to + say it. And they knew no other, and didn’t know what to do. I reckon + they’d been reading magazines and thought that writing had to be like that + muck. Anyway, they didn’t know what to do. I reckon their talk would be + good enough for Daleswood when they loved Daleswood like that. But they + didn’t, and they were puzzled. + </p> + <p> + “The Boche was miles away behind them now, and his barrage with him. Still + in front he did nothing. + </p> + <p> + “They talked it all over and over, did the Daleswood men. They tried + everything. But somehow or other they couldn’t get near what they wanted + to say about old summer evenings. Time wore on. The bowlder was smooth and + ready, and that whole generation of Daleswood men could find no words to + say what was in their hearts about Daleswood. There wasn’t time to waste. + And the only thing they thought of in the end was ‘Please, God, remember + Daleswood just like it used to be.’ And Bill and Harry carved that on the + chalk between them. + </p> + <p> + “What happened to the Daleswood men? Why, nothing. There come one of them + counter-attacks, a regular bastard for Jerry. The French made it and did + the Boche in proper. I got the story from a man with a hell of a great big + hammer, long afterwards when that trench was well behind our line. He was + smashing up a huge great chunk of chalk because he said they all felt it + was so damn silly.” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + The Road + </h2> + <p> + The battery Sergeant-Major was practically asleep. He was all worn out by + the continuous roar of bombardments that had been shaking the dugouts and + dazing his brains for weeks. He was pretty well fed up. + </p> + <p> + The officer commanding the battery, a young man in a very neat uniform and + of particularly high birth, came up and spat in his face. The + Sergeant-Major sprang to attention, received an order, and took a stick at + once and beat up the tired men. For a message had come to the battery that + some English (God punish them!) were making a road at X. + </p> + <p> + The gun was fired. It was one of those unlucky shots that come on days + when our luck is out. The shell, a 5.9, lit in the midst of the British + working party. It did the Germans little good. It did not stop the deluge + of shells that was breaking up their guns and was driving misery down like + a wedge into their spirits. It did not improve the temper of the officer + commanding the battery, so that the men suffered as acutely as ever under + the Sergeant-Major. But it stopped the road for that day. + </p> + <p> + I seemed to see that road going on in a dream. + </p> + <p> + Another working party came along next day, with clay pipes and got to + work; and next day and the day after. Shells came, but went short or over; + the shell holes were neatly patched up; the road went on. Here and there a + tree had to be cut, but not often, not many of them were left; it was + mostly digging and grubbing up roots, and pushing wheelbarrows along + planks and duck-boards, and filling up with stones. Sometimes the + engineers would come: that was when streams were crossed. The engineers + made their bridges, and the infantry working party went on with the + digging and laying down stones. It was monotonous work. Contours altered, + soil altered, even the rock beneath it, but the desolation never; they + always worked in desolation and thunder. And so the road went on. + </p> + <p> + They came to a wide river. They went through a great forest. They passed + the ruins of what must have been quite fine towns, big prosperous towns + with universities in them. I saw the infantry working party with their + stumpy clay pipes, in my dream, a long way on from where that shell had + lit, which stopped the road for a day. And behind them curious changes + came over the road at X. You saw the infantry going up to the trenches, + and going back along it into reserve. They marched at first, but in a few + days they were going up in motors, grey busses with shuttered windows. And + then the guns came along it, miles and miles of guns, following after the + thunder which was further off over the hills. And then one day the cavalry + came by. Then stores in wagons, the thunder muttering further and further + away. I saw farm-carts going down the road at X. And then one day all + manner of horses and traps and laughing people, farmers and women and boys + all going by to X. There was going to be a fair. + </p> + <p> + And far away the road was growing longer and longer amidst, as always, + desolation and thunder. And one day far away from X the road grew very + fine indeed. It was going proudly through a mighty city, sweeping in like + a river; you would not think that it ever remembered duck-boards. There + were great palaces there, with huge armorial eagles blazoned in stone, and + all along each side of the road was a row of statues of kings. And going + down the road towards the palace, past the statues of the kings, a tired + procession was riding, full of the flags of the Allies. And I looked at + the flags in my dream, out of national pride to see whether we led, or + whether France or America. America went before us, but I could not see the + Union Jack in the van nor the Tricolour either, nor the Stars and Stripes: + Belgium led and then Serbia, they that had suffered most. + </p> + <p> + And before the flags, and before the generals, I saw marching along on + foot the ghosts of the working party that were killed at X, gazing about + them in admiration as they went, at the great city and at the palaces. And + one man, wondering at the Sièges Allée, turned round to the Lance Corporal + in charge of the party: “That is a fine road that we made, Frank,” he + said. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + An Imperial Monument + </h2> + <p> + It is an early summer’s morning: the dew is all over France: the train is + going eastwards. They are quite slow, those troop trains, and there are + few embankments or cuttings in those flat plains, so that you seem to be + meandering along through the very life of the people. The roads come right + down to the railways, and the sun is shining brightly over the farms and + the people going to work along the roads, so that you can see their faces + clearly as the slow train passes them by. + </p> + <p> + They are all women and boys that work on the farms; sometimes perhaps you + see a very old man, but nearly always women and boys; they are out working + early. They straighten up from their work as we go by and lift their hands + to bless us. + </p> + <p> + We pass by long rows of the tall French poplars, their branches cut away + all up the trunk, leaving only an odd round tuft at the top of the tree; + but little branches are growing all up the trunk now, and the poplars are + looking unkempt. It would be the young men who would cut the branches of + the poplars. They would cut them for some useful thrifty purpose that I do + not know; and then they would cut them because they were always cut that + way, as long ago as the times of the old men’s tales about France; but + chiefly, I expect, because youth likes to climb difficult trees; that is + why they are clipped so very high. And the trunks are all unkempt now. + </p> + <p> + We go on by many farms with their shapely red-roofed houses; they stand + there, having the air of the homes of an ancient people; they would not be + out of keeping with any romance that might come, or any romance that has + come in the long story of France, and the girls of those red-roofed houses + work all alone in the fields. + </p> + <p> + We pass by many willows and come to a great marsh. In a punt on some open + water an old man is angling. We come to fields again, and then to a deep + wood. France smiles about us in the open sunlight. + </p> + <p> + But towards evening we pass over the border of this pleasant country into + a tragical land of destruction and gloom. It is not only that murder has + walked here to and fro for years, until all the fields are ominous with + it, but the very fields themselves have been mutilated until they are + unlike fields, the woods have been shattered right down to the anemones, + and the houses have been piled in heaps of rubbish, and the heaps of + rubbish have been scattered by shells. We see no more trees, no more + houses, no more women, no cattle even now. We have come to the abomination + of desolation. And over it broods, and will probably brood for ever, + accursed by men and accursed by the very fields, the hyena-like memory of + the Kaiser, who has whitened so many bones. + </p> + <p> + It may be some satisfaction to his selfishness to know that the monument + to it cannot pass away, to know that the shell holes go too deep to be + washed away by the healing rains of years, to know that the wasted German + generations will not in centuries gather up what has been spilt on the + Somme, or France recover in the sunshine of many summers from all the + misery that his devilish folly has caused. It is likely to be to such as + him a source of satisfaction, for the truly vain care only to be talked of + in many mouths; they hysterically love to be thought of, and the notice of + mankind is to them a mirror which reflects their futile postures. The + admiration of fools they love, and the praise of a slavelike people, but + they would sooner be hated by mankind than be ignored and forgotten as is + their due. And the truly selfish care only for their imperial selves. + </p> + <p> + Let us leave him to pass in thought from ruin to ruin, from wasted field + to field, from crater to crater; let us leave his fancy haunting + cemeteries in the stricken lands of the world, to find what glee he can in + this huge manifestation of his imperial will. + </p> + <p> + We neither know to what punishment he moves nor can even guess what + fitting one is decreed. But the time is surely appointed and the place. + Poor trifler with Destiny, who ever had so much to dread? + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A Walk to the Trenches + </h2> + <p> + To stand at the beginning of a road is always wonderful; for on all roads + before they end experience lies, sometimes adventure. And a trench, even + as a road, has its beginnings somewhere. In the heart of a very strange + country you find them suddenly. A trench may begin in the ruins of a + house, may run up out of a ditch; may be cut into a rise of ground + sheltered under a hill, and is built in many ways by many men. As to who + is the best builder of trenches there can be little doubt, and any British + soldier would probably admit that for painstaking work and excellence of + construction there are few to rival Von Hindenburg. His Hindenburg line is + a model of neatness and comfort, and it would be only a very ungrateful + British soldier who would deny it. + </p> + <p> + You come to the trenches out of strangely wasted lands, you come perhaps + to a wood in an agony of contortions, black, branchless, sepulchral trees, + and then no more trees at all. The country after that is still called + Picardy or Belgium, still has its old name on the map as though it smiled + there yet, sheltering cities and hamlet and radiant with orchards and + gardens, but the country named Belgium—or whatever it be—is + all gone away, and there stretches for miles instead one of the world’s + great deserts, a thing to take its place no longer with smiling lands, but + with Sahara, Gobi, Kalahari, and the Karoo; not to be thought of as + Picardy, but more suitably to be named the Desert of Wilhelm. Through + these sad lands one goes to come to the trenches. Overhead floats until it + is chased away an aëroplane with little black crosses, that you can + scarcely see at his respectful height, peering to see what more harm may + be done in the desolation and ruin. Little flashes sparkle near him, white + puffs spread out round the flashes: and he goes, and our airmen go away + after him; black puffs break out round our airmen. Up in the sky you hear + a faint tap-tapping. They have got their machine guns working. + </p> + <p> + You see many things there that are unusual in deserts: a good road, a + railway, perhaps a motor bus; you see what was obviously once a village, + and hear English songs, but no one who has not seen it can imagine the + country in which the trenches lie, unless he bear a desert clearly in + mind, a desert that has moved from its place on the map by some + enchantment of wizardry, and come down on a smiling country. Would it not + be glorious to be a Kaiser and be able to do things like that? + </p> + <p> + Past all manner of men, past no trees, no hedges, no fields, but only one + field from skyline to skyline that has been harrowed by war, one goes with + companions that this event in our history has drawn from all parts of the + earth. On that road you may hear all in one walk where is the best place + to get lunch in the City; you may hear how they laid a drag for some Irish + pack, and what the Master said; you may hear a farmer lamenting over the + harm that rhinoceroses do to his coffee crop; you may hear Shakespeare + quoted and La vie Parisienne. + </p> + <p> + In the village you see a lot of German orders, with their silly notes of + exclamation after them, written up on notice boards among the ruins. Ruins + and German orders. That turning movement of Von Kluck’s near Paris in 1914 + was a mistake. Had he not done it we might have had ruins and German + orders everywhere. And yet Von Kluck may comfort himself with the thought + that it is not by his mistakes that Destiny shapes the world: such a + nightmare as a world-wide German domination can have had no place amongst + the scheme of things. + </p> + <p> + Beyond the village the batteries are thick. A great howitzer near the road + lifts its huge muzzle slowly, fires and goes down again, and lifts again + and fires. It is as though Polyphemus had lifted his huge shape slowly, + leisurely, from the hillside where he was sitting, and hurled the mountain + top, and sat down again. If he is firing pretty regularly you are sure to + get the blast of one of them as you go by, and it can be a very strong + wind indeed. One’s horse, if one is riding, does not very much like it, + but I have seen horses far more frightened by a puddle on the road when + coming home from hunting in the evening: one 12-inch howitzer more or less + in France calls for no great attention from man or beast. + </p> + <p> + And so we come in sight of the support trenches where we are to dwell for + a week before we go on for another mile over the hills, where the black + fountains are rising. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A Walk in Picardy + </h2> + <p> + Picture any village you know. In such a village as that the trench begins. + That is to say, there are duck-boards along a ditch, and the ditch runs + into a trench. Only the village is no longer there. It was like some + village you know, though perhaps a little merrier, because it was further + south and nearer the sun; but it is all gone now. And the trench runs out + of the ruins, and is called Windmill Avenue. There must have been a + windmill standing there once. + </p> + <p> + When you come from the ditch to the trench you leave the weeds and soil + and trunks of willows and see the bare chalk. At the top of those two + white walls is a foot or so of brown clay. The brown clay grows deeper as + you come to the hills, until the chalk has disappeared altogether. Our + alliance with France is new in the history of man, but it is an old, old + union in the history of the hills. White chalk with brown clay on top has + dipped and gone under the sea; and the hills of Sussex and Kent are one + with the hills of Picardy. + </p> + <p> + And so you may pass through the chalk that lies in that desolate lane with + memories of more silent and happier hills; it all depends on what the + chalk means to you: you may be unfamiliar with it and in that case you + will not notice it; or you may have been born among those thyme-scented + hills and yet have no errant fancies, so that you will not think of the + hills that watched you as a child, but only keep your mind on the business + in hand; that is probably best. + </p> + <p> + You come after a while to other trenches: notice boards guide you, and you + keep to Windmill Avenue. You go by Pear Lane, Cherry Lane, and Plum Lane. + Pear trees, cherry trees and plum trees must have grown there. You are + passing through either wild lanes banked with briar, over which these + various trees peered one by one and showered their blossoms down at the + end of spring, and girls would have gathered the fruit when it ripened, + with the help of tall young men; or else you are passing through an old + walled garden, and the pear and the cherry and plum were growing against + the wall, looking southwards all through the summer. There is no way + whatever of telling which it was; it is all one in war; whatever was there + is gone; there remain to-day, and survive, the names of those three trees + only. We come next to Apple Lane. You must not think that an apple tree + ever grew there, for we trace here the hand of the wit, who by naming Plum + Lane’s neighbour “Apple Lane” merely commemorates the inseparable + connection that plum has with apple forever in the minds of all who go to + modern war. For by mixing apple with plum the manufacturer sees the + opportunity of concealing more turnip in the jam, as it were, at the + junction of the two forces, than he might be able to do without this + unholy alliance. + </p> + <p> + We come presently to the dens of those who trouble us (but only for our + own good), the dugouts of the trench mortar batteries. It is noisy when + they push up close to the front line and play for half an hour or so with + their rivals: the enemy sends stuff back, our artillery join in; it is as + though, while you were playing a game of croquet, giants hundreds of feet + high, some of them friendly, some unfriendly, carnivorous and hungry, came + and played football on your croquet lawn. + </p> + <p> + We go on past Battalion Headquarters, and past the dugouts and shelters of + various people having business with History, past stores of bombs and the + many other ingredients with which history is made, past men coming down + who are very hard to pass, for the width of two men and two packs is the + width of a communication trench and sometimes an inch over; past two men + carrying a flying pig slung on a pole between them; by many turnings; and + Windmill Avenue brings you at last to Company Headquarters in a dugout + that Hindenburg made with his German thoroughness. + </p> + <p> + And there, after a while, descends the Tok Emma man, the officer + commanding a trench mortar battery, and is given perchance a whiskey and + water, and sits on the best empty box that we have to offer, and lights + one of our cigarettes. + </p> + <p> + “There’s going to be a bit of a strafe at 5.30,” he says. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + What Happened on the Night of the Twenty-Seventh + </h2> + <p> + The night of the twenty-seventh was Dick Cheeser’s first night on sentry. + The night was far gone when he went on duty; in another hour they would + stand to. Dick Cheeser had camouflaged his age when he enlisted: he was + barely eighteen. A wonderfully short time ago he was quite a little boy; + now he was in a frontline trench. It hadn’t seemed that things were going + to alter like that. Dick Cheeser was a plowboy: long brown furrows over + haughty, magnificent downs seemed to stretch away into the future as far + as his mind could see. No narrow outlook either, for the life of nations + depends upon those brown furrows. But there are the bigger furrows that + Mars makes, the long brown trenches of war; the life of nations depends on + these too; Dick Cheeser had never pictured these. He had heard talk about + a big navy and a lot of Dreadnoughts; silly nonsense he called it. What + did one want a big navy for? To keep the Germans out, some people said. + But the Germans weren’t coming. If they wanted to come, why didn’t they + come? Anybody could see that they never did come. Some of Dick Cheeser’s + pals had votes. + </p> + <p> + And so he had never pictured any change from plowing the great downs; and + here was war at last, and here was he. The Corporal showed him where to + stand, told him to keep a good lookout and left him. + </p> + <p> + And there was Dick Cheeser alone in the dark with an army in front of him, + eighty yards away: and, if all tales were true, a pretty horrible army. + </p> + <p> + The night was awfully still. I use the adverb not as Dick Cheeser would + have used it. The stillness awed him. There had not been a shell all + night. He put his head up over the parapet and waited. Nobody fired at + him. He felt that the night was waiting for him. He heard voices going + along the trench: some one said it was a black night: the voices died + away. A mere phrase; the night wasn’t black at all, it was grey. Dick + Cheeser was staring at it, and the night was staring back at him, and + seemed to be threatening him; it was grey, grey as an old cat that they + used to have at home, and as artful. Yes, thought Dick Cheeser, it was an + artful night; that was what was wrong with it. If shells had come or the + Germans, or anything at all, you would know how to take it; but that quiet + mist over huge valleys, and stillness! Anything might happen. Dick waited + and waited, and the night waited too. He felt they were watching each + other, the night and he. He felt that each was crouching. His mind slipped + back to the woods on hills he knew. He was watching with eyes and ears and + imagination to see what would happen in No Man’s Land under that ominous + mist: but his mind took a peep for all that at the old woods that he knew. + He pictured himself, he and a band of boys, chasing squirrels again in the + summer. They used to chase a squirrel from tree to tree, throwing stones, + till they tired it: and then they might hit it with a stone: usually not. + Sometimes the squirrel would hide, and a boy would have to climb after it. + It was great sport, thought Dick Cheeser. What a pity he hadn’t had a + catapult in those days, he thought. Somehow the years when he had not had + a catapult seemed all to be wasted years. With a catapult one might get + the squirrel almost at once, with luck: and what a great thing that would + be. All the other boys would come round to look at the squirrel, and to + look at the catapult, and ask him how he did it. He wouldn’t have to say + much, there would be the squirrel; no boasting would be necessary with the + squirrel lying dead. It might spread to other things, even rabbits; almost + anything, in fact. He would certainly get a catapult first thing when he + got home. A little wind blew in the night, too cold for summer. It blew + away, as it were, the summer of Dick’s memories; blew away hills and woods + and squirrel. It made for a moment a lane in the mist over No Man’s Land. + Dick Cheeser peered down it, but it closed again. “No,” Night seemed to + say, “you don’t guess my secret.” And the awful hush intensified. “What + would they do?” thought the sentry. “What were they planning in all those + miles of silence?” Even the Verys were few. When one went up, far hills + seemed to sit and brood over the valley: their black shapes seemed to know + what would happen in the mist and seemed sworn not to say. The rocket + faded, and the hills went back into mystery again, and Dick Cheeser peered + level again over the ominous valley. + </p> + <p> + All the dangers and sinister shapes and evil destinies, lurking between + the armies in that mist, that the sentry faced that night cannot be told + until the history of the war is written by a historian who can see the + mind of the soldier. Not a shell fell all night, no German stirred; Dick + Cheeser was relieved at “Stand to” and his comrades stood to beside him, + and soon it was wide, golden, welcome dawn. + </p> + <p> + And for all the threats of night the thing that happened was one that the + lonely sentry had never foreseen: in the hour of his watching Dick + Cheeser, though scarcely eighteen, became a full-grown man. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Standing To + </h2> + <p> + One cannot say that one time in the trenches is any more tense than + another. One cannot take any one particular hour and call it, in modern + nonsensical talk, “typical hour in the trenches.” The routine of the + trenches has gone on too long for that. The tensest hour ought to be half + an hour before dawn, the hour when attacks are expected and men stand to. + It is an old convention of war that that is the dangerous hour, the hour + when defenders are weakest and attack most to be feared. For darkness + favours the attackers then as night favours the lion, and then dawn comes + and they can hold their gains in the light. Therefore in every trench in + every war the garrison is prepared in that menacing hour, watching in + greater numbers than they do the whole night through. As the first lark + lifts from meadows they stand there in the dark. Whenever there is any war + in any part of the world you may be sure that at that hour men crowd to + their parapets: when sleep is deepest in cities they are watching there. + </p> + <p> + When the dawn shimmers a little, and a grey light comes, and widens, and + all of a sudden figures become distinct, and the hour of the attack that + is always expected is gone, then perhaps some faint feeling of gladness + stirs the newest of the recruits; but chiefly the hour passes like all the + other hours there, an unnoticed fragment of the long, long routine that is + taken with resignation mingled with jokes. + </p> + <p> + Dawn comes shy with a wind scarce felt, dawn faint and strangely + perceptible, feeble and faint in the east while men still watch the + darkness. When did the darkness go? When did the dawn grow golden? It + happened as in a moment, a moment you did not see. Guns flash no longer: + the sky is gold and serene; dawn stands there like Victory that will + shine, on one of these years when the Kaiser goes the way of the older + curses of earth. Dawn, and the men unfix bayonets as they step down from + the fire-step and clean their rifles with pull-throughs. Not all together, + but section by section, for it would not do for a whole company to be + caught cleaning their rifles at dawn, or at any other time. + </p> + <p> + They rub off the mud or the rain that has come at night on their rifles, + they detach the magazine and see that its spring is working, they take out + the breechblock and oil it, and put back everything clean: and another + night is gone; it is one day nearer victory. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + The Splendid Traveller + </h2> + <p> + A traveller threw his cloak over his shoulder and came down slopes of gold + in El Dorado. From incredible heights he came. He came from where the + peaks of the pure gold mountain shone a little red with the sunset; from + crag to crag of gold he stepped down slowly. Sheer out of romance he came + through the golden evening. + </p> + <p> + It was only an incident of every day; the sun had set or was setting, the + air turned chill, and a battalion’s bugles were playing “Retreat” when + this knightly stranger, a British aëroplane, dipped, and went homeward + over the infantry. That beautiful evening call, and the golden cloud bank + towering, and that adventurer coming home in the cold, happening all + together, revealed in a flash the fact (which hours of thinking sometimes + will not bring) that we live in such a period of romance as the + troubadours would have envied. + </p> + <p> + He came, that British airman, over the border, sheer over No Man’s Land + and the heads of the enemy and the mysterious land behind, snatching the + secrets that the enemy would conceal. Either he had defeated the German + airmen who would have stopped his going, or they had not dared to try. Who + knows what he had done? He had been abroad and was coming home in the + evening, as he did every day. + </p> + <p> + Even when all its romance has been sifted from an age (as the centuries + sift) and set apart from the trivial, and when all has been stored by the + poets; even then what has any of them more romantic than these adventurers + in the evening air, coming home in the twilight with the black shells + bursting below? + </p> + <p> + The infantry look up with the same vague wonder with which children look + at dragon flies; sometimes they do not look at all, for all that comes in + France has its part with the wonder of a terrible story as well as with + the incidents of the day, incidents that recur year in and year out, too + often for us to notice them. If a part of the moon were to fall off in the + sky and come tumbling to earth, the comment on the lips of the + imperturbable British watchers that have seen so much would be, “Hullo, + what is Jerry up to now?” + </p> + <p> + And so the British aëroplane glides home in the evening, and the light + fades from the air, and what is left of the poplars grows dark against the + sky, and what is left of the houses grows more mournful in the gloaming, + and night comes, and with it the sounds of thunder, for the airman has + given his message to the artillery. It is as though Hermes had gone abroad + sailing upon his sandals, and had found some bad land below those winged + feet wherein men did evil and kept not the laws of gods or men; and he had + brought this message back and the gods were angry. + </p> + <p> + For the wars we fight to-day are not like other wars, and the wonders of + them are unlike other wonders. If we do not see in them the saga and epic, + how shall we tell of them? + </p> + <p> + England + </p> + <p> + “And then we used to have sausages,” said the Sergeant. + </p> + <p> + “And mashed?” said the Private. + </p> + <p> + “Yes,” said the Sergeant, “and beer. And then we used to go home. It was + grand in the evenings. We used to go along a lane that was full of them + wild roses. And then we come to the road where the houses were. They all + had their bit of a garden, every house.” + </p> + <p> + “Nice, I calls it, a garden,” the Private said. + </p> + <p> + “Yes,” said the Sergeant, “they all had their garden. It came right down + to the road. Wooden palings: none of that there wire.” + </p> + <p> + “I hates wire,” said the Private. + </p> + <p> + “They didn’t have none of it,” the N. C. O. went on. “The gardens came + right down to the road, looking lovely. Old Billy Weeks he had them tall + pale-blue flowers in his garden nearly as high as a man.” + </p> + <p> + “Hollyhocks?” said the Private. + </p> + <p> + “No, they wasn’t hollyhocks. Lovely they were. We used to stop and look at + them, going by every evening. He had a path up the middle of his garden + paved with red tiles, Billy Weeks had; and these tall blue flowers growing + the whole way along it, both sides like. They was a wonder. Twenty gardens + there must have been, counting them all; but none to touch Billy Weeks + with his pale-blue flowers. There was an old windmill away to the left. + Then there were the swifts sailing by overhead and screeching: just about + as high again as the houses. Lord, how them birds did fly. And there was + the other young fellows, what were not out walking, standing about by the + roadside, just doing nothing at all. One of them had a flute: Jim Booker, + he was. Those were great days. The bats used to come out, flutter, + flutter, flutter; and then there’d be a star or two; and the smoke from + the chimneys going all grey; and a little cold wind going up and down like + the bats; and all the colour going out of things; and the woods looking + all strange, and a wonderful quiet in them, and a mist coming up from the + stream. It’s a queer time that. It’s always about that time, the way I see + it: the end of the evening in the long days, and a star or two, and me and + my girl going home. + </p> + <p> + “Wouldn’t you like to talk about things for a bit the way you remember + them?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, no, Sergeant,” said the other, “you go on. You do bring it all back + so.” + </p> + <p> + “I used to bring her home,” the Sergeant said, “to her father’s house. Her + father was keeper there, and they had a house in the wood. A fine house + with queer old tiles on it, and a lot of large friendly dogs. I knew them + all by name, same as they knew me. I used to walk home then along the side + of the wood. The owls would be about; you could hear them yelling. They’d + float out of the wood like, sometimes: all large and white.” + </p> + <p> + “I knows them,” said the Private. + </p> + <p> + “I saw a fox once so close I could nearly touch him, walking like he was + on velvet. He just slipped out of the wood.” + </p> + <p> + “Cunning old brute,” said the Private. + </p> + <p> + “That’s the time to be out,” said the Sergeant. “Ten o’clock on a summer’s + night, and the night full of noises, not many of them, but what there is, + strange, and coming from a great way off, through the quiet, with nothing + to stop them. Dogs barking, owls hooting, an old cart; and then just once + a sound that you couldn’t account for at all, not anyhow. I’ve heard + sounds on nights like that that nobody ‘ud think you’d heard, nothing like + the flute that young Booker had, nothing like anything on earth.” + </p> + <p> + “I know,” said the Private. + </p> + <p> + “I never told any one before, because they wouldn’t believe you. But it + doesn’t matter now. There’d be a light in the window to guide me when I + got home. I’d walk up through the flowers of our garden. We had a lovely + garden. Wonderful white and strange the flowers looked of a nighttime.” + </p> + <p> + “You bring it all back wonderful,” said the Private. + </p> + <p> + “It’s a great thing to have lived,” said the Sergeant. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, Sergeant,” said the other, “I wouldn’t have missed it, not for + anything.” + </p> + <p> + For five days the barrage had rained down behind them: they were utterly + cut off and had no hope of rescue: their food was done, and they did not + know where they were. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Shells + </h2> + <p> + When the aëroplanes are home and the sunset has flared away, and it is + cold, and night comes down over France, you notice the guns more than you + do by day, or else they are actually more active then, I do not know which + it is. + </p> + <p> + It is then as though a herd of giants, things of enormous height, came out + from lairs in the earth and began to play with the hills. It is as though + they picked up the tops of the hills in their hands and then let them drop + rather slowly. It is exactly like hills falling. You see the flashes all + along the sky, and then that lumping thump as though the top of the hill + had been let drop, not all in one piece, but crumbled a little as it would + drop from your hands if you were three hundred feet high and were fooling + about in the night, spoiling what it had taken so long to make. That is + heavy stuff bursting, a little way off. + </p> + <p> + If you are anywhere near a shell that is bursting, you can hear in it a + curious metallic ring. That applies to the shells of either side, provided + that you are near enough, though usually of course it is the hostile shell + and not your own that you are nearest to, and so one distinguishes them. + It is curious, after such a colossal event as this explosion must be in + the life of a bar of steel, that anything should remain at all of the old + bell-like voice of the metal, but it appears to, if you listen + attentively; it is perhaps its last remonstrance before leaving its shape + and going back to rust in the earth again for ages. + </p> + <p> + Another of the voices of the night is the whine the shell makes in coming; + it is not unlike the cry the hyena utters as soon as it’s dark in Africa: + “How nice traveller would taste,” the hyena seems to say, and “I want dead + White Man.” It is the rising note of the shell as it comes nearer, and its + dying away when it has gone over, that make it reminiscent of the hyena’s + method of diction. If it is not going over then it has something quite + different to say. It begins the same as the other, it comes up, talking of + the back areas with the same long whine as the other. I have heard old + hands say “That one is going well over.” “Whee-oo,” says the shell; but + just where the “oo” should be long drawn out and turn into the hyena’s + final syllable, it says something quite different. “Zarp,” it says. That + is bad. Those are the shells that are looking for you. + </p> + <p> + And then of course there is the whizz-bang coming from close, along his + flat trajectory: he has little to say, but comes like a sudden wind, and + all that he has to do is done and over at once. + </p> + <p> + And then there is the gas shell, who goes over gurgling gluttonously, + probably in big herds, putting down a barrage. It is the liquid inside + that gurgles before it is turned to gas by the mild explosion; that is the + explanation of it; yet that does not prevent one picturing a tribe of + cannibals who have winded some nice juicy men and are smacking their chops + and dribbling in anticipation. + </p> + <p> + And a wonderful thing to see, even in those wonderful nights, is our + thermite bursting over the heads of the Germans. The shell breaks into a + shower of golden rain; one cannot judge easily at night how high from the + ground it breaks, but about as high as the tops of trees seen at a hundred + yards. It spreads out evenly all round and rains down slowly; it is a bad + shower to be out in, and for a long time after it has fallen, the sodden + grass of winter, and the mud and old bones beneath it, burn quietly in a + circle. On such a night as this, and in such showers, the flying pigs will + go over, which take two men to carry each of them; they go over and root + right down to the German dugout, where the German has come in out of the + golden rain, and they fling it all up in the air. + </p> + <p> + These are such nights as Scheherazade with all her versatility never + dreamed of; or if such nightmares came she certainly never told of them, + or her august master, the Sultan, light of the age, would have had her at + once beheaded; and his people would have deemed that he did well. It has + been reserved for a modern autocrat to dream such a nightmare, driven to + it perhaps by the tales of a white-whiskered Scheherazade, the Lord of the + Kiel Canal; and being an autocrat he has made the nightmare a reality for + the world. But the nightmare is stronger than its master, and grows + mightier every night; and the All-Highest War Lord learns that there are + powers in Hell that are easily summoned by the rulers of earth, but that + go not easily home. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Two Degrees of Envy + </h2> + <p> + It was night in the front line and no moon, or the moon was hidden. There + was a strafe going on. The Tok Emmas were angry. And the artillery on both + sides were looking for the Tok Emmas. + </p> + <p> + Tok Emma, I may explain for the blessed dwellers in whatever far happy + island there be that has not heard of these things, is the crude language + of Mars. He has not time to speak of a trunk mortar battery, for he is + always in a hurry, and so he calls them T. M.‘s. But Bellona might not + hear him saying T. M., for all the din that she makes: might think that he + said D. N; and so he calls it Tok Emma. Ak, Beer, C, Don: this is the + alphabet of Mars. + </p> + <p> + And the huge minnies were throwing old limbs out of No Man’s Land into the + frontline trench, and shells were rasping down through the air that seemed + to resist them until it was torn to pieces: they burst and showers of mud + came down from heaven. Aimlessly, as it seemed, shells were bursting now + and then in the air, with a flash intensely red: the smell of them was + drifting down the trenches. + </p> + <p> + In the middle of all this Bert Butterworth was hit. “Only in the foot,” + his pals said. “Only!” said Bert. They put him on a stretcher and carried + him down the trench. They passed Bill Britterling, standing in the mud, an + old friend of Bert’s. Bert’s face, twisted with pain, looked up to Bill + for some sympathy. + </p> + <p> + “Lucky devil,” said Bill. + </p> + <p> + Across the way on the other side of No Man’s Land there was mud the same + as on Bill’s side: only the mud over there stank; it didn’t seem to have + been kept clean somehow. And the parapet was sliding away in places, for + working parties had not had much of a chance. They had three Tok Emmas + working in that battalion front line, and the British batteries did not + quite know where they were, and there were eight of them looking. + </p> + <p> + Fritz Groedenschasser, standing in that unseemly mud, greatly yearned for + them to find soon what they were looking for. Eight batteries searching + for something they can’t find, along a trench in which you have to be, + leaves the elephant hunter’s most desperate tale a little dull and + insipid. Not that Fritz Groedenschasser knew anything about elephant + hunting: he hated all things sporting, and cordially approved of the + execution of Nurse Cavell. And there was thermite too. Flammenwerfer was + all very well, a good German weapon: it could burn a man alive at twenty + yards. But this accursed flaming English thermite could catch you at four + miles. It wasn’t fair. + </p> + <p> + The three German trench mortars were all still firing. When would the + English batteries find what they were looking for, and this awful thing + stop? The night was cold and smelly. + </p> + <p> + Fritz shifted his feet in the foul mud, but no warmth came to him that + way. + </p> + <p> + A gust of shells was coming along the trench. Still they had not found the + minnewerfer! Fritz moved from his place altogether to see if he could find + some place where the parapet was not broken. And as he moved along the + sewerlike trench he came on a wooden cross that marked the grave of a man + he once had known, now buried some days in the parapet, old Ritz + Handelscheiner. + </p> + <p> + “Lucky devil,” said Fritz. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + The Master of No Man’s Land + </h2> + <p> + When the last dynasty has fallen and the last empire passed away, when man + himself has gone, there will probably still remain the swede. [The + rutabaga or Swedish turnip.] + </p> + <p> + There grew a swede in No Man’s Land by Croisille near the Somme, and it + had grown there for a long while free from man. + </p> + <p> + It grew as you never saw a swede grow before. It grew tall and strong and + weedy. It lifted its green head and gazed round over No Man’s Land. Yes, + man was gone, and it was the day of the swede. + </p> + <p> + The storms were tremendous. Sometimes pieces of iron sang through its + leaves. But man was gone and it was the day of the swede. + </p> + <p> + A man used to come there once, a great French farmer, an oppressor of + swedes. Legends were told of him and his herd of cattle, dark traditions + that passed down vegetable generations. It was somehow known in those + fields that the man ate swedes. + </p> + <p> + And now his house was gone and he would come no more. + </p> + <p> + The storms were terrible, but they were better than man. The swede nodded + to his companions: the years of freedom had come. + </p> + <p> + They had always known among them that these years would come. Man had not + been there always, but there had always been swedes. He would go some day, + suddenly, as he came. That was the faith of the swedes. And when the trees + went the swede believed that the day was come. When hundreds of little + weeds arrived that were never allowed before, and grew unchecked, he knew + it. + </p> + <p> + After that he grew without any care, in sunlight, moonlight and rain; grew + abundantly and luxuriantly in the freedom, and increased in arrogance till + he felt himself greater than man. And indeed in those leaden storms that + sang often over his foliage all living things seemed equal. + </p> + <p> + There was little that the Germans left when they retreated from the Somme + that was higher than this swede. He grew the tallest thing for miles and + miles. He dominated the waste. Two cats slunk by him from a shattered + farm: he towered above them contemptuously. + </p> + <p> + A partridge ran by him once, far, far below his lofty leaves. The night + winds mourning in No Man’s Land seemed to sing for him alone. + </p> + <p> + It was surely the hour of the swede. For him, it seemed, was No Man’s + Land. And there I met him one night by the light of a German rocket and + brought him back to our company to cook. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Weeds and Wire + </h2> + <p> + Things had been happening. Divisions were moving. There had been, there + was going to be, a stunt. A battalion marched over the hill and sat down + by the road. They had left the trenches three days march to the north and + had come to a new country. The officers pulled their maps out; a mild + breeze fluttered them; yesterday had been winter and to-day was spring; + but spring in a desolation so complete and far-reaching that you only knew + of it by that little wind. It was early March by the calendar, but the + wind was blowing out of the gates of April. A platoon commander, feeling + that mild wind blowing, forgot his map and began to whistle a tune that + suddenly came to him out of the past with the wind. Out of the past it + blew and out of the South, a merry vernal tune of a Southern people. + Perhaps only one of those that noticed the tune had ever heard it before. + An officer sitting near had heard it sung; it reminded him of a holiday + long ago in the South. + </p> + <p> + “Where did you hear that tune?” he asked the platoon commander. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, the hell of a long way from here,” the platoon commander said. + </p> + <p> + He did not remember quite where it was he had heard it, but he remembered + a sunny day in France and a hill all dark with pine woods, and a man + coming down at evening out of the woods, and down the slope to the + village, singing this song. Between the village and the slope there were + orchards in blossom. So that he came with his song for hundreds of yards + through orchards. “The hell of a way from here,” he said. + </p> + <p> + For a long while then they sat silent. + </p> + <p> + “It mightn’t have been so very far from here,” said the platoon commander. + “It was in France, now I come to think of it. But it was a lovely part of + France, all woods and orchards. Nothing like this, thank God.” And he + glanced with a tired look at the unutterable desolation. + </p> + <p> + “Where was it?” said the other. + </p> + <p> + “In Picardy,” he said. + </p> + <p> + “Aren’t we in Picardy now?” said his friend. + </p> + <p> + “Are we?” he said. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know. The maps don’t call it Picardy.” + </p> + <p> + “It was a fine place, anyway,” the platoon commander said. “There seemed + always to be a wonderful light on the hills. A kind of short grass grew on + them, and it shone in the sun at evening. There were black woods above + them. A man used to come out of them singing at evening.” + </p> + <p> + He looked wearily round at the brown desolation of weeds. As far as the + two officers could see there was nothing but brown weeds and bits of brown + barbed wire. He turned from the desolate scene back to his reminiscences. + </p> + <p> + “He came singing through the orchards into the village,” he said. “A + quaint old place with queer gables, called Ville-en-Bois.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you know where we are?” said the other. + </p> + <p> + “No, said the platoon commander.” + </p> + <p> + “I thought not,” he said. “Hadn’t you better take a look at the map?” + </p> + <p> + “I suppose so,” said the platoon commander, and he smoothed out his map + and wearily got to the business of finding out where he was. + </p> + <p> + “Good Lord!” he said. “Ville-en-Bois!” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Spring in England and Flanders + </h2> + <p> + Very soon the earliest primroses will be coming out in woods wherever they + have been sheltered from the north. They will grow bolder as the days go + by, and spread and come all down the slopes of sunny hills. Then the + anemones will come, like a shy pale people, one of the tribes of the + elves, who dare not leave the innermost deeps of the wood: in those days + all the trees will be in leaf, the bluebells will follow, and certain + fortunate woods will shelter such myriads of them that the bright fresh + green of the beech trees will flash between two blues, the blue of the sky + and the deeper blue of the bluebells. Later the violets come, and such a + time as this is the perfect time to see England: when the cuckoo is heard + and he surprises his hearers; when evenings are lengthening out and the + bat is abroad again; and all the flowers are out and all the birds sing. + At such a time not only Nature smiles but our quiet villages and grave old + spires wake up from winter in the mellow air and wear their centuries + lightly. At such a time you might come just at evening on one of those old + villages in a valley and find it in the mood to tell you the secret of the + ages that it hid and treasured there before the Normans came. Who knows? + For they are very old, very wise, very friendly; they might speak to you + one warm evening. If you went to them after great suffering they might + speak to you; after nights and nights of shelling over in France, they + might speak to you and you might hear them clearly. + </p> + <p> + It would be a long, long story that they would tell, all about the ages; + and it would vary wonderfully little, much less perhaps than we think; and + the repetitions rambling on and on in the evening, as the old belfry spoke + and the cottages gathered below it, might sound so soothing after the boom + of shells that perhaps you would nearly sleep. And then with one’s memory + tired out by the war one might never remember the long story they told, + when the belfry and the brown-roofed houses all murmured at evening, might + never remember even that they had spoken all through that warm spring and + evening. We may have heard them speak and forgotten that they have spoken. + Who knows? We are at war, and see so many strange things: some we must + forget, some we must remember; and we cannot choose which. + </p> + <p> + To turn from Kent to Flanders is to turn to a time of mourning through all + seasons alike. Spring there brings out no leaf on myriad oaks, nor the + haze of green that floats like a halo above the heads of the birch trees, + that stand with their fairylike trunks haunting the deeps of the woods. + For miles and miles and miles summer ripens no crops, leads out no maidens + laughing in the moonlight, and brings no harvest home. When Autumn looks + on orchards in all that region of mourning he looks upon barren trees that + will never blossom again. Winter drives in no sturdy farmers at evening to + sit before cheery fires, families meet not at Christmas, and the bells are + dumb in belfries; for all by which a man might remember his home has been + utterly swept away: has been swept away to make a maniacal dancing ground + on which a murderous people dance to their death led by a shallow, clever, + callous, imperial clown. + </p> + <p> + There they dance to their doom till their feet shall find the precipice + that was prepared for them on the day that they planned the evil things + they have done. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + The Nightmare Countries + </h2> + <p> + There are certain lands in the darker dreams of poetry that stand out in + the memory of generations. There is for instance Poe’s “Dark tarn of + Auber, the ghoul-haunted region of Weir”; there are some queer twists in + the river Alph as imagined by Coleridge; two lines of Swinburne: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + By the tideless dolorous inland sea + In a land of sand and ruin and gold +</pre> + <p> + are as haunting as any. There are in literature certain regions of gloom, + so splendid that whenever you come on them they leave in the mind a sort + of nightmare country which one’s thoughts revisit on hearing the lines + quoted. + </p> + <p> + It is pleasant to picture such countries sometimes when sitting before the + fire. It is pleasant because you can banish them by the closing of a book; + a puff of smoke from a pipe will hide them altogether, and back come the + pleasant, wholesome, familiar things. But in France they are there always. + In France the nightmare countries stand all night in the starlight; dawn + comes and they still are there. The dead are buried out of sight and + others take their places among men; but the lost lands lie unburied gazing + up at the winds; and the lost woods stand like skeletons all grotesque in + the solitude; the very seasons have fled from them. The very seasons have + fled; so that if you look up to see whether summer has turned to autumn, + or if autumn has turned to winter yet, nothing remains to show you. It is + like the eccentric dream of some strange man, very arresting and + mysterious, but lacking certain things that should be there before you can + recognize it as earthly. It is a mad, mad landscape. There are miles and + miles and miles of it. It is the biggest thing man has done. It looks as + though man in his pride, with all his clever inventions, had made for + himself a sorry attempt at creation. + </p> + <p> + Indeed when we trace it all back to its origin we find at the beginning of + this unhappy story a man who was only an emperor and wished to be + something more. He would have ruled the world but has only meddled with + it; and his folly has brought misery to millions, and there lies his + broken dream on the broken earth. He will never take Paris now. He will + never be crowned at Versailles as Emperor of Europe; and after that, most + secret dream of all, did not the Cæsars proclaim themselves divine? Was it + not whispered among Macedonian courtiers that Alexander was the child of + God? And was the Hohenzollern less than these? + </p> + <p> + What might not force accomplish? All gone now, that dream and the + Hohenzollern line broken. A maniacal dream and broken farms all mixed up + together: they make a pretty nightmare and the clouds still gleam at night + with the flashes of shells, and the sky is still troubled by day with + uncouth balloons and the black bursts of the German shells and the white + of our anti-aircraft. + </p> + <p> + And below there lies this wonderful waste land where no girls sing, and + where no birds come but starlings; where no hedgerows stand, and no lanes + with wild roses, and where no pathways run through fields of wheat, and + there are no fields at all and no farms and no farmers; and two haystacks + stand on a hill I know, undestroyed in the desolation, and nobody touches + them for they know the Germans too well; and the tops have been blown off + hills down to the chalk. And men say of this place that it is Pozières and + of that place that it is Ginchy; nothing remains to show that hamlets + stood there at all, and a brown, brown weed grows over it all for ever; + and a mighty spirit has arisen in man, and no one bows to the War Lord + though many die. And Liberty is she who sang her songs of old, and is fair + as she ever was, when men see her in visions, at night in No Man’s Land + when they have the strength to crawl in: still she walks of a night in + Pozières and in Ginchy. + </p> + <p> + A fanciful man once called himself the Emperor of the Sahara: the German + Kaiser has stolen into a fair land and holds with weakening hands a land + of craters and weed, and wire and wild cabbages and old German bones. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Spring and the Kaiser + </h2> + <p> + While all the world is waiting for Spring there lie great spaces in one of + the pleasantest lands to which Spring cannot come. + </p> + <p> + Pear trees and cherry and orchards flash over other lands, blossoming as + abundantly as though their wonder were new, with a beauty as fresh and + surprising as though nothing like it before had ever adorned countless + centuries. Now with the larch and soon with the beech trees and hazel, a + bright green blazes forth to illumine the year. The slopes are covered + with violets. Those who have gardens are beginning to be proud of them and + to point them out to their neighbours. Almond and peach in blossom peep + over old brick walls. The land dreams of summer all in the youth of the + year. + </p> + <p> + But better than all this the Germans have found war. The simple content of + a people at peace in pleasant countries counted for nothing with them. + Their Kaiser prepared for war, made speeches about war, and, when he was + ready, made war. And now the hills that should be covered with violets are + full of murderous holes, and the holes are half full of empty meat tins, + and the garden walls have gone and the gardens with them, and there are no + woods left to shelter anemones. Boundless masses of brown barbed wire + straggle over the landscape. All the orchards there are cut down out of + ruthless spite to hurt France whom they cannot conquer. All the little + trees that grow near gardens are gone, aspen, laburnum and lilac. It is + like this for hundreds of miles. Hundreds of ruined towns gaze at it with + vacant windows and see a land from which even Spring is banished. And not + a ruined house in all the hundred towns but mourns for some one, man, + woman or child; for the Germans make war equally on all in the land where + Spring comes no more. + </p> + <p> + Some day Spring will come back; some day she will shine all April in + Picardy again, for Nature is never driven utterly forth, but comes back + with her seasons to cover up even the vilest things. + </p> + <p> + She shall hide the raw earth of the shell holes till the violets come + again; she shall bring back even the orchards for Spring to walk in once + more; the woods will grow tall again above the southern anemones; and the + great abandoned guns of the Germans will rust by the rivers of France. + Forgotten like them, the memory of the War Lord will pass with his evil + deeds. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Two Songs + </h2> + <p> + Over slopes of English hills looking south in the time of violets, evening + was falling. + </p> + <p> + Shadows at edges of woods moved, and then merged in the gloaming. + </p> + <p> + The bat, like a shadow himself, finding that spring was come, slipped from + the dark of the wood as far as a clump of beech trees and fluttered back + again on his wonderful quiet wings. + </p> + <p> + Pairing pigeons were home. + </p> + <p> + Very young rabbits stole out to gaze at the calm still world. They came + out as the stars come. At one time they were not there, and then you saw + them, but you did not see them come. + </p> + <p> + Towering clouds to the west built palaces, cities and mountains; bastions + of rose and precipices of gold; giants went home over them draped in mauve + by steep rose-pink ravines into emerald-green empires. Turbulences of + colour broke out above the departed sun; giants merged into mountains, and + cities became seas, and new processions of other fantastic things sailed + by. But the chalk slopes facing south smiled on with the same calm light, + as though every blade of grass gathered a ray from the gloaming. All the + hills faced the evening with that same quiet glow, which faded softly as + the air grew colder; and the first star appeared. + </p> + <p> + Voices came up in the hush, clear from the valley, and ceased. A light was + lit, like a spark, in a distant window: more stars appeared and the woods + were all dark now, and shapes even on the hill slopes began to grow + indistinct. + </p> + <p> + Home by a laneway in the dim, still evening a girl was going, singing the + Marseillaise. + </p> + <p> + In France where the downs in the north roll away without hedges, as though + they were great free giants that man had never confined, as though they + were stretching their vast free limbs in the evening, the same light was + smiling and glimmering softly away. + </p> + <p> + A road wound over the downs and away round one of their shoulders. A hush + lay over them as though the giants slept, or as though they guarded in + silence their ancient, wonderful history. + </p> + <p> + The stillness deepened and the dimness of twilight; and just before + colours fade, while shapes can still be distinguished, there came by the + road a farmer leading his Norman horse. High over the horse’s withers his + collar pointed with brass made him fantastic and huge and strange to see + in the evening. + </p> + <p> + They moved together through that mellow light towards where unseen among + the clustered downs the old French farmer’s house was sheltered away. + </p> + <p> + He was going home at evening humming “God Save the King.” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + The Punishment + </h2> + <p> + An exhalation arose, drawn up by the moon, from an old battlefield after + the passing of years. It came out of very old craters and gathered from + trenches, smoked up from No Man’s Land, and the ruins of farms; it rose + from the rottenness of dead brigades, and lay for half the night over two + armies; but at midnight the moon drew it up all into one phantom and it + rose and trailed away eastwards. + </p> + <p> + It passed over men in grey that were weary of war; it passed over a land + once prosperous, happy and mighty, in which were a people that were + gradually starving; it passed by ancient belfries in which there were no + bells now; it passed over fear and misery and weeping, and so came to the + palace at Potsdam. It was the dead of the night between midnight and dawn, + and the palace was very still that the Emperor might sleep, and sentries + guarded it who made no noise and relieved others in silence. Yet it was + not so easy to sleep. Picture to yourself a murderer who had killed a man. + Would you sleep? Picture yourself the man that planned this war! Yes, you + sleep, but nightmares come. + </p> + <p> + The phantom entered the chamber. “Come,” it said. + </p> + <p> + The Kaiser leaped up at once as obediently as when he came to attention on + parade, years ago, as a subaltern in the Prussian Guard, a man whom no + woman or child as yet had ever cursed; he leaped up and followed. They + passed the silent sentries; none challenged and none saluted; they were + moving swiftly over the town as the felon Gothas go; they came to a + cottage in the country. They drifted over a little garden gate, and there + in a neat little garden the phantom halted like a wind that has suddenly + ceased. “Look,” it said. + </p> + <p> + Should he look? Yet he must look. The Kaiser looked; and saw a window + shining and a neat room in the cottage: there was nothing dreadful there; + thank the good German God for that; it was all right, after all. The + Kaiser had had a fright, but it was all right; there was only a woman with + a baby sitting before the fire, and two small children and a man. And it + was quite a jolly room. And the man was a young soldier; and, why, he was + a Prussian Guardsman,—there was his helmet hanging on the wall,—so + everything was all right. They were jolly German children; that was well. + How nice and homely the room was. There shone before him, and showed far + off in the night, the visible reward of German thrift and industry. It was + all so tidy and neat, and yet they were quite poor people. The man had + done his work for the Fatherland, and yet beyond all that had been able to + afford all those little knickknacks that make a home so pleasant and that + in their humble little way were luxury. And while the Kaiser looked the + two young children laughed as they played on the floor, not seeing that + face at the window. + </p> + <p> + Why! Look at the helmet. That was lucky. A bullet hole right through the + front of it. That must have gone very close to the man’s head. How ever + did it get through? It must have glanced upwards as bullets sometimes do. + The hole was quite low in the helmet. It would be dreadful to have bullets + coming by close like that. The firelight flickered, and the lamp shone on, + and the children played on the floor, and the man was smoking out of a + china pipe; he was strong and able and young, one of the wealth-winners of + Germany. + </p> + <p> + “Have you seen?” said the phantom. + </p> + <p> + “Yes,” said the Kaiser. It was well, he thought, that a Kaiser should see + how his people lived. + </p> + <p> + At once the fire went out and the lamp faded away, the room fell sombrely + into neglect and squalor, and the soldier and the children faded away with + the room; all disappeared phantasmally, and nothing remained but the + helmet in a kind of glow on the wall, and the woman sitting all by herself + in the darkness. + </p> + <p> + “It has all gone,” said the Kaiser. + </p> + <p> + “It has never been,” said the phantom. + </p> + <p> + The Kaiser looked again. Yes, there was nothing there, it was just a + vision. There were the grey walls all damp and uncared for, and that + helmet standing out solid and round, like the only real thing among + fancies. No, it had never been. It was just a vision. + </p> + <p> + “It might have been,” said the phantom. + </p> + <p> + Might have been? How might it have been? + </p> + <p> + “Come,” said the phantom. + </p> + <p> + They drifted away down a little lane that in summer would have had roses, + and came to an Uhlan’s house; in times of peace a small farmer. Farm + buildings in good repair showed even in the night, and the black shapes of + haystacks; again a well-kept garden lay by the house. The phantom and the + Kaiser stood in the garden; before them a window glowed in a lamplit room. + </p> + <p> + “Look,” said the phantom. + </p> + <p> + The Kaiser looked again and saw a young couple; the woman played with a + baby, and all was prosperous in the merry room. Again the hard-won wealth + of Germany shone out for all to see, the cosy comfortable furniture spoke + of acres well cared for, spoke of victory in the struggle with the seasons + on which wealth of nations depends. + </p> + <p> + “It might have been,” said the phantom. Again the fire died out and the + merry scene faded away, leaving a melancholy, ill-kept room, with poverty + and mourning haunting dusty corners and the woman sitting alone. + </p> + <p> + “Why do you show me this?” said the Kaiser. “Why do you show me these + visions?” + </p> + <p> + “Come,” said the phantom. + </p> + <p> + “What is it?” said the Kaiser. “Where are you bringing me?” + </p> + <p> + “Come,” said the phantom. + </p> + <p> + They went from window to window, from land to land. You had seen, had you + been out that night in Germany, and able to see visions, an imperious + figure passing from place to place, looking on many scenes. He looked on + them, and families withered away, and happy scenes faded, and the phantom + said to him “Come.” He expostulated but obeyed; and so they went from + window to window of hundreds of farms in Prussia, till they came to the + Prussian border and went on into Saxony; and always you would have heard, + could you hear spirits speak, “It might have been,” “It might have been,” + repeated from window to window. + </p> + <p> + They went down through Saxony, heading for Austria. And for long the + Kaiser kept that callous, imperious look. But at last he, even he, at last + he nearly wept. And the phantom turned then and swept him back over + Saxony, and into Prussia again and over the sentries’ heads, back to his + comfortable bed where it was so hard to sleep. + </p> + <p> + And though they had seen thousands of merry homes, homes that can never be + merry now, shrines of perpetual mourning; though they had seen thousands + of smiling German children, who will never be born now, but were only the + visions of hopes blasted by him; for all the leagues over which he had + been so ruthlessly hurried, dawn was yet barely breaking. + </p> + <p> + He had looked on the first few thousand homes of which he had robbed all + time, and which he must see with his eyes before he may go hence. The + first night of the Kaiser’s punishment was accomplished. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + The English Spirit + </h2> + <p> + By the end of the South African war Sergeant Cane had got one thing very + well fixed in his mind, and that was that war was an overrated amusement. + He said he “was fed up with it,” partly because that misused metaphor was + then new, partly because every one was saying it: he felt it right down in + his bones, and he had a long memory. So when wonderful rumours came to the + East Anglian village where he lived, on August 1, 1914, Sergeant Cane + said: “That means war,” and decided then and there to have nothing to do + with it: it was somebody else’s turn; he felt he had done enough. Then + came August 4th, and England true to her destiny, and then Lord + Kitchener’s appeal for men. Sergeant Cane had a family to look after and a + nice little house: he had left the army ten years. + </p> + <p> + In the next week all the men went who had been in the army before, all + that were young enough, and a good sprinkling of the young men too who had + never been in the army. Men asked Cane if he was going, and he said + straight out “No.” + </p> + <p> + By the middle of August Cane was affecting the situation. He was a little + rallying point for men who did not want to go. “He knows what it’s like,” + they said. + </p> + <p> + In the smoking room of the Big House sat the Squire and his son, Arthur + Smith; and Sir Munion Boomer-Platt, the Member for the division. The + Squire’s son had been in the last war as a boy, and like Sergeant Cane had + left the army since. All the morning he had been cursing an imaginary + general, seated in the War Office at an imaginary desk with Smith’s own + letter before him, in full view but unopened. Why on earth didn’t he + answer it, Smith thought. But he was calmer now, and the Squire and Sir + Munion were talking of Sergeant Cane. + </p> + <p> + “Leave him to me,” said Sir Munion. + </p> + <p> + “Very well,” said the Squire. So Sir Munion Boomer-Platt went off and + called on Sergeant Cane. + </p> + <p> + Mrs Cane knew what he had come for. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t let him talk you over, Bill,” she said. + </p> + <p> + “Not he,” said Sergeant Cane. + </p> + <p> + Sir Munion came on Sergeant Cane in his garden. + </p> + <p> + “A fine day,” said Sir Munion. And from that he went on to the war. “If + you enlist,” he said, “they will make you a sergeant again at once. You + will get a sergeant’s pay, and your wife will get the new separation + allowance.” + </p> + <p> + “Sooner have Cane,” said Mrs Cane. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, yes, of course,” said Sir Munion. “But then there is the medal, + probably two or three medals, and the glory of it, and it is such a + splendid life.” + </p> + <p> + Sir Munion did warm to a thing whenever he began to hear his own words. He + painted war as it has always been painted, one of the most beautiful + things you could imagine. And then it mustn’t be supposed that it was like + those wars that there used to be, a long way off. There would be houses + where you would be billeted, and good food, and shady trees and villages + wherever you went. And it was such an opportunity of seeing the Continent + (“the Continent as it really is,” Sir Munion called it) as would never + come again, and he only wished he were younger. Sir Munion really did wish + it, as he spoke, for his own words stirred him profoundly; but somehow or + other they did not stir Sergeant Cane. No, he had done his share, and he + had a family to look after. + </p> + <p> + Sir Munion could not understand him: he went back to the Big House and + said so. He had told him all the advantages he could think of that were + there to be had for the asking, and Sergeant Cane merely neglected them. + </p> + <p> + “Let me have a try,” said Arthur Smith. “He soldiered with me before.” + </p> + <p> + Sir Munion shrugged his shoulders. He had all the advantages at his + fingers’ ends, from pay to billeting: there was nothing more to be said. + Nevertheless young Smith went. + </p> + <p> + “Hullo, Sergeant Cane,” said Smith. + </p> + <p> + “Hello, sir,” said the sergeant. + </p> + <p> + “Do you remember that night at Reit River?” + </p> + <p> + “Don’t I, sir,” said Cane. + </p> + <p> + “One blanket each and no ground sheet?” + </p> + <p> + “I remember, sir,” said Cane. + </p> + <p> + “Didn’t it rain,” said Smith. + </p> + <p> + “It rained that night, proper.” + </p> + <p> + “Drowned a few of the lice, I suppose.” + </p> + <p> + “Not many,” said Cane. + </p> + <p> + “No, not many,” Smith reflected. “The Boers had the range all right that + time.” + </p> + <p> + “Gave it us proper,” said Cane. + </p> + <p> + “We were hungry that night,” said Smith. “I could have eaten biltong.” + </p> + <p> + “I did eat some of it,” said Cane. “Not bad stuff, what there was of it, + only not enough.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t think,” said Smith, “that I’ve ever slept on the bare earth + since.” + </p> + <p> + “No, sir?” said Cane. “It’s hard. You get used to it. But it will always + be hard.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, it will always be hard,” said Smith. “Do you remember the time we + were thirsty?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, yes, sir,” said Cane, “I remember that. One doesn’t forget that.” + </p> + <p> + “No. I still dream of it sometimes,” said Smith. “It makes a nasty dream. + I wake with my mouth all dry too, when I dream that.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes,” said Cane, “one doesn’t forget being thirsty.” + </p> + <p> + “Well,” said Smith, “I suppose we’re for it all over again?” + </p> + <p> + “I suppose so, sir,” said Cane. + </p> + <p> + An Investigation Into the Causes and Origin of the War + </p> + <p> + The German imperial barber has been called up. He must have been called up + quite early in the war. I have seen photographs in papers that leave no + doubt of that. Who he is I do not know: I once read his name in an article + but have forgotten it; few even know if he still lives. And yet what harm + he has done! What vast evils he has unwittingly originated! Many years ago + he invented a frivolity, a jeu d’esprit easily forgivable to an artist in + the heyday of his youth, to whom his art was new and even perhaps + wonderful. A craft, of course, rather than an art, and a humble craft at + that; but then, the man was young, and what will not seem wonderful to + youth? + </p> + <p> + He must have taken the craft very seriously, but as youth takes things + seriously, fantastically and with laughter. He must have determined to + outshine rivals: he must have gone away and thought, burning candles late + perhaps, when all the palace was still. But how can youth think seriously? + And there had come to him this absurd, this fantastical conceit. What else + would have come? The more seriously he took the tonsorial art, the more he + studied its tricks and phrases and heard old barbers lecture, the more + sure were the imps of youth to prompt him to laughter and urge him to + something outrageous and ridiculous. The background of the dull pomp of + Potsdam must have made all this more certain. It was bound to come. + </p> + <p> + And so one day, or, as I have suggested, suddenly late one night, there + came to the young artist bending over tonsorial books that quaint, mad, + odd, preposterous inspiration. Ah, what pleasure there is in the madness + of youth; it is not like the madness of age, clinging to outworn formulæ; + it is the madness of breaking away, of galloping among precipices, of + dallying with the impossible, of courting the absurd. And this + inspiration, it was in none of the books; the lecturer barbers had not + lectured on it, could not dream of it and did not dare to; there was no + tradition for it, no precedent; it was mad; and to introduce it into the + pomp of Potsdam, that was the daring of madness. And this preposterous + inspiration of the absurd young barber-madman was nothing less than a + moustache that without any curve at all, or any suggestion of sanity, + should go suddenly up at the ends very nearly as high as the eyes! + </p> + <p> + He must have told his young fellow craftsmen first, for youth goes first + to youth with its hallucinations. And they, what could they have said? You + cannot say of madness that it is mad, you cannot call absurdity absurd. To + have criticized would have revealed jealousy; and as for praise you could + not praise a thing like that. They probably shrugged, made gestures; and + perhaps one friend warned him. But you cannot warn a man against a + madness; if the madness is in possession it will not be warned away: why + should it? And then perhaps he went to the old barbers of the Court. You + can picture their anger. Age does not learn from youth in any case. But + there was the insult to their ancient craft, bad enough if only imagined, + but here openly spoken of. And what would come of it? They must have + feared, on the one hand, dishonour to their craft if this young barber + were treated as his levity deserved; and, on the other hand, could they + have feared his success? I think they could not have guessed it. + </p> + <p> + And then the young idiot with his preposterous inspiration must have + looked about to see where he could practise his new absurdity. It should + have been enough to have talked about it among his fellow barbers; they + would have gone with new zest to their work next day for this delirious + interlude, and no harm would have been done. “Fritz,” (or Hans) they would + have said, “was a bit on last night, a bit full up,” or whatever phrase + they use to touch on drunkenness; and the thing would have been forgotten. + We all have our fancies. But this young fool wanted to get his fancy mixed + up with practice: that’s where he was mad. And in Potsdam, of all places. + </p> + <p> + He probably tried his friends first, young barbers at the Court and others + of his own standing. None of them were fools enough to be seen going about + like that. They had jobs to lose. A Court barber is one thing, a man who + cuts ordinary hair is quite another. Why should they become outcasts + because their friend chose to be mad? + </p> + <p> + He probably tried his inferiors then, but they would have been timid folk; + they must have seen the thing was absurd, and of course daren’t risk it. + Again, why should they? + </p> + <p> + Did he try to get some noble then to patronize his invention? Probably the + first refusals he had soon inflamed his madness more, and he threw caution + insanely to the winds, and went straight to the Emperor. + </p> + <p> + It was probably about the time that the Emperor dismissed Bismarck; + certainly the drawings of that time show him still with a sane moustache. + </p> + <p> + The young barber probably chanced on him in this period, finding him + bereft of an adviser, and ready to be swayed by whatever whim should come. + Perhaps he was attracted by the barber’s hardihood, perhaps the absurdity + of his inspiration had some fascination for him, perhaps he merely saw + that the thing was new and, feeling jaded, let the barber have his way. + And so the frivolity became a fact, the absurdity became visible, and + honour and riches came the way of the barber. + </p> + <p> + A small thing, you might say, however fantastical. And yet I believe the + absurdity of that barber to be among the great evils that have brought + death nearer to man; whimsical and farcical as it was, yet a thing + deadlier than Helen’s beauty or Tamerlane’s love of skulls. For just as + character is outwardly shown so outward things react upon the character; + and who, with that daring barber’s ludicrous fancy visible always on his + face, could quite go the sober way of beneficent monarchs? The fantasy + must be mitigated here, set off there; had you such a figure to dress, say + for amateur theatricals, you would realize the difficulty. The heavy + silver eagle to balance it; the glittering cuirass lower down, preventing + the eye from dwelling too long on the barber’s absurdity. And then the + pose to go with the cuirass and to carry off the wild conceit of that mad, + mad barber. He has much to answer for, that eccentric man whose name so + few remember. For pose led to actions; and just when Europe most needed a + man of wise counsels, restraining the passions of great empires, just then + she had ruling over Germany and, unhappily, dominating Austria, a man who + every year grew more akin to the folly of that silly barber’s youthful + inspiration. + </p> + <p> + Let us forgive the barber. For long I have known from pictures that I have + seen of the Kaiser that he has gone to the trenches. Probably he is dead. + Let us forgive the barber. But let us bear in mind that the futile fancies + of youth may be deadly things, and that one of them falling on a fickle + mind may so stir its shallows as to urge it to disturb and set in motion + the avalanches of illimitable grief. + </p> + <p> + Lost + </p> + <p> + Describing a visit, say the papers of March 28th, which the Kaiser paid + incognito to Cologne Cathedral on March 18th before the great battle, the + Cologne correspondent of the Tyd says: + </p> + <p> + There were only a few persons in the building. Under high arches and in + spacious solitude the Kaiser sat, as if in deep thought, before the + priests’ choir. Behind him his military staff stood respectfully at a + distance. Still musing as he rose, the monarch resting both hands on his + walking-stick remains standing immovable for some minutes... I shall never + forget this picture of the musing monarch praying in Cologne Cathedral on + the eve of the great battle. + </p> + <p> + Probably he won’t forget it. The German casualty lists will help to remind + him. But what is more to the point is that this expert propagandist has + presumably received orders that we are not to forget it, and that the + sinister originator of the then impending holocaust should be toned down a + little in the eyes at least of the Tyd to something a little more amiable. + </p> + <p> + And no doubt the little piece of propaganda gave every satisfaction to + those who ordered it, or they would not have passed it out to the Tyd, and + the touching little scene would never have reached our eyes. At the same + time the little tale would have been better suited to the psychology of + other countries if he had made the War Lord kneel when he prayed in + Cologne Cathedral, and if he had represented the Military Staff as + standing out of respect to One who, outside Germany, is held in greater + respect than the All Highest. + </p> + <p> + And had the War Lord really knelt is it not possible that he might have + found pity, humility, or even contrition? Things easily overlooked in so + large a cathedral when sitting erect, as a War Lord, before the priests’ + choir, but to be noticed perhaps with one’s eyes turned to the ground. + </p> + <p> + Perhaps he nearly found one of those things. Perhaps he felt (who knows?) + just for a moment, that in the dimness of those enormous aisles was + something he had lost a long, long while ago. + </p> + <p> + One is not mistaken to credit the very bad with feeling far, faint appeals + from things of glory like Cologne Cathedral; it is that the appeals come + to them too far and faint on their headlong descent to ruin. + </p> + <p> + For what was the War Lord seeking? Did he know that pity for his poor + slaughtered people, huddled by him on to our ceaseless machine guns, might + be found by seeking there? Or was it only that the lost thing, whatever it + was, made that faint appeal to him, passing the door by chance, and drew + him in, as the scent of some herb or flower in a moment draws us back + years to look for something lost in our youth; we gaze back, wondering, + and do not find it. + </p> + <p> + And to think that perhaps he lost it by very little! That, but for that + proud attitude and the respectful staff, he might have seen what was lost, + and have come out bringing pity for his people. Might have said to the + crowd that gave him that ovation, as we read, outside the door: “My pride + has driven you to this needless war, my ambition has made a sacrifice of + millions, but it is over, and it shall be no more; I will make no more + conquests.” + </p> + <p> + They would have killed him. But for that renunciation, perhaps, however + late, the curses of the widows of his people might have kept away from his + grave. + </p> + <p> + But he did not find it. He sat at prayer. Then he stood. Then he marched + out: and his staff marched out behind him. And in the gloom of the floor + of the vast Cologne Cathedral lie the things that the Kaiser did not find + and never will find now. Unnoticed thus, and in some silent moment, passes + a man’s last chance. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + The Last Mirage + </h2> + <p> + The desolation that the German offensive has added to the dominions of the + Kaiser cannot easily be imagined by any one who has never seen a desert. + Look at it on the map and it is full of the names of towns and villages; + it is in Europe, where there are no deserts; it is a fertile province + among places of famous names. Surely it is a proud addition to an + ambitious monarch’s possessions. Surely there is something there that it + is worth while to have conquered at the cost of army corps. No, nothing. + They are mirage towns. The farms grow Dead Sea fruit. France recedes + before the imperial clutch. France smiles, but not for him. His new towns + seem to be his because their names have not yet been removed from any map, + but they crumble at his approach because France is not for him. His deadly + ambition makes a waste before it as it goes, clutching for cities. It + comes to them and the cities are not there. + </p> + <p> + I have seen mirages and have heard others told of, but the best mirages of + all we never hear described; the mirage that waterless travellers see at + the last. Those fountains rising out of onyx basins, blue and straight + into incredible heights, and falling and flooding cool white marble; the + haze of spray above their feathery heads through which the pale green + domes of weathered copper shimmer and shake a little; mysterious temples, + the tombs of unknown kings; the cataracts coming down from rose-quartz + cliffs, far off but seen quite clearly, growing to rivers bearing curious + barges to the golden courts of Sahara. These things we never see; they are + seen at the last by men who die of thirst. + </p> + <p> + Even so has the Kaiser looked at the smiling plains of France. Even so has + he looked on her famous ancient cities and the farms and the fertile + fields and the woods and orchards of Picardy. With effort and trouble he + has moved towards them. As he comes near to them the cities crumble, the + woods shrivel and fall, the farms fade out of Picardy, even the hedgerows + go; it is bare, bare desert. He had been sure of Paris, he had dreamed of + Versailles and some monstrous coronation, he had thought his insatiable + avarice would be sated. For he had plotted for conquest of the world, that + boundless greed of his goading him on as a man in the grip of thirst + broods upon lakes. + </p> + <p> + He sees victory near him now. That also will fade in the desert of old + barbed wire and weeds. When will he see that a doom is over all his + ambitions? For his dreams of victory are like those last dreams that come + in deceptive deserts to dying men. + </p> + <p> + There is nothing good for him in the desert of the Somme. Bapaume is not + really there, though it be marked on his maps; it is only a wilderness of + slates and brick. Peronne looks like a city a long way off, but when you + come near it is only the shells of houses. Pozière, Le Sars, Sapigny, are + gone altogether. + </p> + <p> + And all is Dead Sea fruit in a visible desert. The reports of German + victories there are mirage like all the rest; they too will fade into + weeds and old barbed wire. + </p> + <p> + And the advances that look like victories, and the ruins that look like + cities, and the shell-beaten broken fields that look like farms,—they + and the dreams of conquest and all the plots and ambitions, they are all + the mirage of a dying dynasty in a desert it made for its doom. + </p> + <p> + Bones lead up to the desert, bones are scattered about it, it is the most + menacing and calamitous waste of all the deadly places that have been + inclement to man. It flatters the Hohenzollerns with visions of victory + now because they are doomed by it and are about to die. When their race + has died the earth shall smile again, for their deadly mirage shall + oppress us no more. The cities shall rise again and the farms come back; + hedgerows and orchards shall be seen again; the woods shall slowly lift + their heads from the dust; and gardens shall come again where the desert + was, to bloom in happier ages that forget the Hohenzollerns. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A Famous Man + </h2> + <p> + Last winter a famous figure walked in Behagnies. Soldiers came to see him + from their billets all down the Arras road, from Ervillers and from + Sapigny, and from the ghosts of villages back from the road, places that + once were villages but are only names now. They would walk three or four + miles, those who could not get lorries, for his was one of those names + that all men know, not such a name as a soldier or poet may win, but a + name that all men know. They used to go there at evening. + </p> + <p> + Four miles away on the left as you went from Ervillers, the guns mumbled + over the hills, low hills over which the Verys from the trenches put up + their heads and peered around,—greeny, yellowy heads that turned the + sky sickly, and the clouds lit up and went grey again all the night long. + As you got near to Behagnies you lost sight of the Verys, but the guns + mumbled on. A silly little train used to run on one’s left, which used to + whistle loudly, as though it asked to be shelled, but I never saw a shell + coming its way; perhaps it knew that the German gunners could not + calculate how slow it went. It crossed the road as you got down to + Behagnies. + </p> + <p> + You passed the graves of two or three German soldiers with their names on + white wooden crosses,—men killed in 1914; and then a little cemetery + of a French cavalry regiment, where a big cross stood in the middle with a + wreath and a tricolor badge, and the names of the men. And then one saw + trees. That was always a wonder, whether one saw their dark shapes in the + evening, or whether one saw them by day, and knew from the look of their + leaves whether autumn had come yet, or gone. In winter at evening one just + saw the black bulk of them, but that was no less marvellous than seeing + them green in summer; trees by the side of the Arras-Bapaume road, trees + in mid-desert in the awful region of Somme. There were not many of them, + just a cluster, fewer than the date palms in an oasis in Sahara, but an + oasis is an oasis wherever you find it, and a few trees make it. There are + little places here and there, few enough as the Arabs know, that the + Sahara’s deadly sand has never been able to devastate; and there are + places even in the Somme that German malice, obeying the Kaiser as the + sand of Sahara obeys the accursed sirocco, has not been able to destroy + quite to the uttermost. That little cluster of trees at Behagnies is one + of these; Divisional Headquarters used to shelter beneath them; and near + them was a statue on a lawn which probably stood by the windows of some + fine house, though there is no trace of the house but the lawn and that + statue now. + </p> + <p> + And over the way on the left a little further on, just past the officers’ + club, a large hall stood where one saw that famous figure, whom officers + and men alike would come so far to see. + </p> + <p> + The hall would hold perhaps four or five hundred seats in front of a stage + fitted up very simply with red, white and blue cloths, but fitted up by + some one that understood the job; and at the back of that stage on those + winter evenings walked on his flat and world-renowned feet the figure of + Charlie Chaplin. + </p> + <p> + When aëroplanes came over bombing, the dynamos used to stop for they + supplied light to other places besides the cinema, and the shade of + Charlie Chaplin would fade away. But the men would wait till the + aëroplanes had gone and that famous figure came waddling back to the + screen. There he amused tired men newly come from the trenches, there he + brought laughter to most of the twelve days that they had out of the line. + </p> + <p> + He is gone from Behagnies now. He did not march in the retreat a little + apart from the troops, with head bent forward and hand thrust in jacket, a + flat-footed Napoleon: yet he is gone; for no one would have left behind + for the enemy so precious a thing as a Charlie Chaplin film. He is gone + but he will return. He will come with his cane one day along that Arras + road to the old hut in Behagnies; and men dressed in brown will welcome + him there again. + </p> + <p> + He will pass beyond it through those desolate plains, and over the hills + beyond them, beyond Bapaume. Far hamlets to the east will know his antics. + </p> + <p> + And one day surely, in old familiar garb, without court dress, without + removing his hat, armed with that flexible cane, he will walk over the + faces of the Prussian Guard and, picking up the Kaiser by the collar, with + infinite nonchalance in finger and thumb, will place him neatly in a prone + position and solemnly sit on his chest. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + The Oases of Death + </h2> + <p> + While the German guns were pounding Amiens and the battle of dull + Prussianism against Liberty raged on, they buried Richthofen in the + British lines. + </p> + <p> + They had laid him in a large tent with his broken machine outside it. + Thence British airmen carried him to the quiet cemetery, and he was buried + among the cypresses in this old resting place of French generations just + as though he had come there bringing no harm to France. + </p> + <p> + Five wreaths were on his coffin, placed there by those who had fought + against him up in the air. And under the wreaths on the coffin was spread + the German flag. + </p> + <p> + When the funeral service was over three volleys were fired by the escort, + and a hundred aviators paid their last respects to the grave of their + greatest enemy; for the chivalry that the Prussians have driven from earth + and sea lives on in the blue spaces of the air. + </p> + <p> + They buried Richthofen at evening, and the planes came droning home as + they buried him, and the German guns roared on and guns answered, + defending Amiens. And in spite of all, the cemetery had the air of quiet, + remaining calm and aloof, as all French graveyards are. For they seem to + have no part in the cataclysm that shakes all the world but them; they + seem to withdraw amongst memories and to be aloof from time, and, above + all, to be quite untroubled by the war that rages to-day, upon which they + appear to look out listlessly from among their cypress and yew, and dimly, + down a vista of centuries. They are very strange, these little oases of + death that remain unmoved and green with their trees still growing, in the + midst of a desolation as far as the eye can see, in which cities and + villages and trees and hedges and farms and fields and churches are all + gone, and where hugely broods a desert. It is as though Death, stalking up + and down through France for four years, sparing nothing, had recognized + for his own his little gardens, and had spared only them. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Anglo-Saxon Tyranny + </h2> + <p> + “We need a sea,” says Big-Admiral von Tirpitz, “freed of Anglo-Saxon + tyranny.” Unfortunately neither the British Admiralty nor the American + Navy permit us to know how much of the Anglo-Saxon tyranny is done by + American destroyers and how much by British ships and even trawler. It + would interest both countries to know, if it could be known. But the + Big-Admiral is unjust to France, for the French navy exerts a tyranny at + sea that can by no means be overlooked, although naturally from her + position in front of the mouth of the Elbe England practises the + culminating insupportable tyranny of keeping the High Seas Fleet in the + Kiel Canal. + </p> + <p> + It is not I, but the Big-Admiral, who chose the word tyranny as + descriptive of the activities of the Anglo-Saxon navies. He was making a + speech at Dusseldorf on May 25th and was reported in the Dusseldorfer + Nachrichten on May 27th. + </p> + <p> + Naturally it does not seem like tyranny to us, even the contrary; but for + an admiral, ein Grosse-Admiral, lately commanding a High Seas Fleet, it + must have been more galling than we perhaps can credit to be confined in a + canal. There was he, who should have been breasting the blue, or at any + rate doing something salty and nautical, far out in the storms of that sea + that the Germans call an Ocean, with the hurricane raging angrily in his + whiskers and now and then wafting tufts of them aloft to white the + halyards; there was he constrained to a command the duties of which + however nobly he did them could be equally well carried out by any + respectable bargee. He hoped for a piracy of which the Lusitania was + merely a beginning; he looked for the bombardment of innumerable towns; he + pictured slaughter in many a hamlet of fishermen; he planned more than all + those things of which U-boat commanders are guilty; he saw himself a + murderous old man, terrible to seafarers, and a scourge of the coasts, and + fancied himself chronicled in after years by such as told dark tales of + Captain Kidd or the awful buccaneers; but he followed in the end no more + desperate courses than to sit and watch his ships on a wharf near Kiel + like one of Jacob’s night watchmen. + </p> + <p> + No wonder that what appears to us no more than the necessary protection of + women and children in seacoast towns from murder should be to him an + intolerable tyranny. No wonder that the guarding of travellers of the + allied countries at sea, and even those of the neutrals, should be a most + galling thing to the Big-Admiral’s thwarted ambition, looking at it from + the point of view of one who to white-whiskered age has retained the + schoolboy’s natural love of the black and yellow flag. A pirate, he would + say, has as much right to live as wasps or tigers. The Anglo-Saxon navies, + he might argue, have a certain code of rules for use at sea; they let + women get first into the boats, for instance, when ships are sinking, and + they rescue drowning mariners when they can: no actual harm in all this, + he would feel, though it would weaken you, as Hindenburg said of poetry; + but if all these little rules are tyrannously enforced on those who may + think them silly, what is to become of the pirate? Where, if people like + Beattie and Sims had always had their way, would be those rollicking tales + of the jolly Spanish Main, and men walking the plank into the big blue + sea, and long, low, rakish craft putting in to Indian harbours with a + cargo of men and women all hung from the yard-arm? A melancholy has come + over the spirit of Big-Admiral von Tirpitz in the years he has spent in + the marshes between the Elbe and Kiel, and in that melancholy he sees + romance crushed; he sees no more pearl earrings and little gold rings in + the hold, he sees British battleships spoiling the Spanish Main, and + hateful American cruisers in the old Sargasso Sea; he sees himself, alas, + the last of all the pirates. + </p> + <p> + Let him take comfort. There were always pirates. And in spite of the + tyranny of England and America, and of France, which the poor old man + perplexed with his troubles forgot, there will be pirates still. Not many + perhaps, but enough U-boats will always be able to slip through that + tyrannous blockade to spread indiscriminate slaughter amongst the + travellers of any nation, enough to hand on the old traditions of murder + at sea. And one day Captain Kidd, with such a bow as they used to make in + ports of the Spanish Main, will take off his ancient hat, sweeping it low + in Hell, and be proud to clasp the hand of the Lord of the Kiel Canal. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Memories + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + ... far-off things + And battles long ago. +</pre> + <p> + Those who live in an old house are necessarily more concerned with paying + the plumber, should his art be required, or choosing wall paper that does + not clash with the chintzes, than with the traditions that may haunt its + corridors. In Ireland,—and no one knows how old that is, for the + gods that lived there before the Red Branch came wrote few chronicles on + the old grey Irish stones and wrote in their own language,—in + Ireland we are more concerned with working it so that Tim Flanagan gets + the job he does be looking for. + </p> + <p> + But in America those who remember Ireland remember her, very often, from + old generations; maybe their grandfather migrated, perhaps his + grandfather, and Ireland is remembered by old tales treasured among them. + Now Tim Flanagan will not be remembered in a year’s time when he has the + job for which he has got us to agitate, and the jobberies that stir us + move not the pen of History. + </p> + <p> + But the tales that Irish generations hand down beyond the Atlantic have to + be tales that are worth remembering. They are tales that have to stand the + supreme test, tales that a child will listen to by the fireside of an + evening, so that they go down with those early remembered evenings that + are last of all to go of the memories of a lifetime. A tale that a child + will listen to must have much grandeur. Any cheap stuff will do for us, + bad journalism, and novels by girls that could get no other jobs; but a + child looks for those things in a tale that are simple and noble and epic, + the things that Earth remembers. And so they tell, over there, tales of + Sarsfield and of the old Irish Brigade; they tell, of an evening, of Owen + Roe O’Neill. And into those tales come the plains of Flanders again and + the ancient towns of France, towns famous long ago and famous yet: let us + rather think of them as famous names and not as the sad ruins we have + seen, melancholy by day and monstrous in the moonlight. + </p> + <p> + Many an Irishman who sails from America for those historic lands knows + that the old trees that stand there have their roots far down in soil once + richened by Irish blood. When the Boyne was lost and won, and Ireland had + lost her King, many an Irishman with all his wealth in a scabbard looked + upon exile as his sovereign’s court. And so they came to the lands of + foreign kings, with nothing to offer for the hospitality that was given + them but a sword; and it usually was a sword with which kings were well + content. Louis XV had many of them, and was glad to have them at Fontenoy; + the Spanish King admitted them to the Golden Fleece; they defended Maria + Theresa. Landen in Flanders and Cremona knew them. A volume were needed to + tell of all those swords; more than one Muse has remembered them. It was + not disloyalty that drove them forth; their King was gone, they followed, + the oak was smitten and brown were the leaves of the tree. + </p> + <p> + But no such mournful metaphor applies to the men who march to-day towards + the plains where the “Wild Geese” were driven. They go with no country + mourning them, but their whole land cheers them on; they go to the + inherited battlefields. And there is this difference in their attitude to + kings, that those knightly Irishmen of old, driven homeless over-sea, + appeared as exiles suppliant for shelter before the face of the Grand + Monarch, and he, no doubt with exquisite French grace, gave back to them + all they had lost except what was lost forever, salving so far as he could + the injustice suffered by each. But to-day when might, for its turn, is in + the hands of democracies, the men whose fathers built the Statue of + Liberty have left their country to bring back an exiled king to his home, + and to right what can be righted of the ghastly wrongs of Flanders. + </p> + <p> + And if men’s prayers are heard, as many say, old saints will hear old + supplications going up by starlight with a certain wistful, musical + intonation that has linked the towns of Limerick and Cork with the fields + of Flanders before. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + The Movement + </h2> + <p> + For many years Eliphaz Griggs was comparatively silent. Not that he did + not talk on all occasions whenever he could find hearers, he did that at + great length; but for many years he addressed no public meeting, and was + no part of the normal life of the northeast end of Hyde Park or Trafalgar + Square. And then one day he was talking in a public house where he had + gone to talk on the only subject that was dear to him. He waited, as was + his custom, until five or six men were present, and then he began. “Ye’re + all damned, I’m saying, damned from the day you were born. Your portion is + Tophet.” + </p> + <p> + And on that day there happened what had never happened in his experience + before. Men used to listen in a tolerant way, and say little over their + beer, for that is the English custom; and that would be all. But to-day a + man rose up with flashing eyes and went over to Eliphaz and gripped him by + the hand: “They’re all damned,” said the stranger. + </p> + <p> + That was the turning point in the life of Eliphaz. Up to that moment he + had been a lonely crank, and men thought he was queer; but now there were + two of them and he became a Movement. A Movement in England may do what it + likes: there was a Movement, before the War, for spoiling tulips in Kew + Gardens and breaking church windows; it had its run like the rest. + </p> + <p> + The name of Eliphaz’s new friend was Ezekiel Pim: and they drew up rules + for their Movement almost at once; and very soon country inns knew Eliphaz + no more. And for some while they missed him where he used to drop in of an + evening to tell them they were all damned: and then a man proved one day + that the earth was flat, and they all forgot Eliphaz. + </p> + <p> + But Eliphaz went to Hyde Park and Ezekiel Pim went with him, and there you + would see them close to the Marble Arch on any fine Sunday afternoon, + preaching their Movement to the people of London. “You are all damned,” + said Eliphaz. “Your portion shall be damnation for everlasting.” + </p> + <p> + “All damned,” added Ezekiel. + </p> + <p> + Eliphaz was the orator. He would picture Hell to you as it really is. He + made you see pretty much what it will be like to wriggle and turn and + squirm, and never escape from burning. But Ezekiel Pim, though he seldom + said more than three words, uttered those words with such alarming + sincerity and had such a sure conviction shining in his eyes that searched + right in your face as he said them, and his long hair waved so weirdly as + his head shot forward when he said “You’re all damned,” that Ezekiel Pim + brought home to you that the vivid descriptions of Eliphaz really applied + to you. + </p> + <p> + People who lead bad lives get their sensibilities hardened. These did not + care very much what Eliphaz said. But girls at school, and several + governesses, and even some young clergy, were very much affected. Eliphaz + Griggs and Ezekiel Pim seemed to bring Hell so near to you. You could + almost feel it baking the Marble Arch from two to four on Sundays. And at + four o’clock the Surbiton Branch of the International Anarchists used to + come along, and Eliphaz Griggs and Ezekiel Pim would pack up their flag + and go, for the pitch belonged to the Surbiton people till six; and the + crank Movements punctiliously recognize each other’s rights. If they + fought among themselves, which is quite unthinkable, the police would run + them in; it is the one thing that an anarchist in England may never do. + </p> + <p> + When the War came the two speakers doubled their efforts. The way they + looked at it was that here was a counter-attraction taking people’s minds + off the subject of their own damnation just as they had got them to think + about it. Eliphaz worked as he had never worked before; he spared nobody; + but it was still Ezekiel Pim who somehow brought it most home to them. + </p> + <p> + One fine spring afternoon Eliphaz Griggs was speaking at his usual place + and time; he had wound himself up wonderfully. “You are damned,” he was + saying, “for ever and ever and ever. Your sins have found you out. Your + filthy lives will be as fuel round you and shall burn for ever and ever.” + </p> + <p> + “Look here,” said a Canadian soldier in the crowd, “we shouldn’t allow + that in Ottawa.” + </p> + <p> + “What?” asked an English girl. + </p> + <p> + “Why, telling us we’re all damned like that,” he said. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, this is England,” she said. “They may all say what they like here.” + </p> + <p> + “You are all damned,” said Ezekiel, jerking forward his head and shoulders + till his hair flapped out behind. “All, all, all damned.” + </p> + <p> + “I’m damned if I am,” said the Canadian soldier. + </p> + <p> + “Ah,” said Ezekiel, and a sly look came into his face. + </p> + <p> + Eliphaz flamed on. “Your sins are remembered. Satan shall grin at you. He + shall heap cinders on you for ever and ever. Woe to you, filthy livers. + Woe to you, sinners. Hell is your portion. There shall be none to grieve + for you. You shall dwell in torment for ages. None shall be spared, not + one. Woe everlasting... Oh, I beg pardon, gentlemen, I’m sure.” For the + Pacifists’ League had been kept waiting three minutes. It was their turn + to-day at four. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Nature’s Cad + </h2> + <p> + The claim of Professor Grotius Jan Beek to have discovered, or learned, + the language of the greater apes has been demonstrated clearly enough. He + is not the original discoverer of the fact that they have what may be said + to correspond with a language; nor is he the first man to have lived for + some while in the jungle protected by wooden bars, with a view to + acquiring some knowledge of the meaning of the various syllables that + gorillas appear to utter. If so crude a collection of sounds, amounting to + less than a hundred words, if words they are, may be called a language, it + may be admitted that the Professor has learned it, as his recent + experiments show. What he has not proved is his assertion that he has + actually conversed with a gorilla, or by signs, or grunts, or any means + whatever obtained an insight, as he put it, into its mentality, or, as we + should put it, its point of view. This Professor Beek claims to have done; + and though he gives us a certain plausible corroboration of a kind which + makes his story appear likely, it should be borne in mind that it is not + of the nature of proof. + </p> + <p> + The Professor’s story is briefly that having acquired this language, which + nobody that has witnessed his experiments will call in question, he went + back to the jungle for a week, living all the time in the ordinary + explorer’s cage of the Blik pattern. Towards the very end of the week a + big male gorilla came by, and the Professor attracted it by the one word + “Food.” It came, he says, close to the cage, and seemed prepared to talk + but became very angry on seeing a man there, and beat the cage and would + say nothing. The Professor says that he asked it why it was angry. He + admits that he had learned no more than forty words of this language, but + believes that there are perhaps thirty more. Much however is expressed, as + he says, by mere intonation. Anger, for instance; and scores of allied + words, such as terrible, frightful, kill, whether noun, verb or adjective, + are expressed, he says, by a mere growl. Nor is there any word for “Why,” + but queries are signified by the inflexion of the voice. + </p> + <p> + When he asked it why it was angry the gorilla said that men killed him, + and added a noise that the professor said was evidently meant to allude to + guns. The only word used, he says, in this remark of the gorilla’s was the + word that signified “man.” The sentence as understood by the professor + amounted to “Man kill me. Guns.” But the word “kill” was represented + simply by a snarl, “me” by slapping its chest, and “guns” as I have + explained was only represented by a noise. The Professor believes that + ultimately a word for guns may be evolved out of that noise, but thinks + that it will take many centuries, and that if during that time guns should + cease to be in use, this stimulus being withdrawn, the word will never be + evolved at all, nor of course will it be needed. + </p> + <p> + The Professor tried, by evincing interest, ignorance, and incredulity, and + even indignation, to encourage the gorilla to say more; but to his + disappointment, all the more intense after having exchanged that one word + of conversation with one of the beasts, the gorilla only repeated what it + had said, and beat on the cage again. For half an hour this went on, the + Professor showing every sign of sympathy, the gorilla raging and beating + upon the cage. + </p> + <p> + It was half an hour of the most intense excitement to the Professor, + during which time he saw the realization of dreams that many considered + crazy, glittering as it were within his grasp, and all the while this + ridiculous gorilla would do nothing but repeat the mere shred of a + sentence and beat the cage with its great hands; and the heat of course + was intense. And by the end of the half hour the excitement and the heat + seem to have got the better of the Professor’s temper, and he waved the + disgusting brute angrily away with a gesture that probably was not much + less impatient than the gorilla’s own. And at that the animal suddenly + became voluble. He beat more furiously than ever upon the cage and slipped + his great fingers through the bars, trying to reach the Professor, and + poured out volumes of ape-chatter. + </p> + <p> + Why, why did men shoot at him, he asked. He made himself terrible, + therefore men ought to love him. That was the whole burden of what the + Professor calls its argument. “Me, me terrible,” two slaps on the chest + and then a growl. “Man love me.” And then the emphatic negative word, and + the sound that meant guns, and sudden furious rushes at the cage to try to + get at the Professor. + </p> + <p> + The gorilla, Professor Beek explains, evidently admired only strength; + whenever he said “I make myself terrible to Man,” a sentence he often + repeated, he drew himself up and thrust out his huge chest and bared his + frightful teeth; and certainly, the Professor says, there was something + terribly grand about the menacing brute. “Me terrible,” he repeated again + and again, “Me terrible. Sky, sun, stars with me. Man love me. Man love + me. No?” It meant that all the great forces of nature assisted him and his + terrible teeth, which he gnashed repeatedly, and that therefore man should + love him, and he opened his great jaws wide as he said this, showing all + the brutal force of them. + </p> + <p> + There was to my mind a genuine ring in Professor Beek’s story, because he + was obviously so much more concerned, and really troubled, by the dreadful + depravity of this animal’s point of view, or mentality as he called it, + than he was concerned with whether or not we believed what he had said. + </p> + <p> + And I mentioned that there was a circumstance in his story of a plausible + and even corroborative nature. It is this. Professor Beek, who noticed at + the time a bullet wound in the tip of the gorilla’s left ear, by means of + which it was luckily identified, put his analysis of its mentality in + writing and showed it to several others, before he had any way of + accounting for the beast having such a mind. + </p> + <p> + Long afterwards it was definitely ascertained that this animal had been + caught when young on the slopes of Kilimanjaro and trained and even + educated, so far as such things are possible, by an eminent German + Professor, a persona grata at the Court of Berlin. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + The Home of Herr Schnitzelhaaser + </h2> + <p> + The guns in the town of Greinstein were faintly audible. The family of + Schnitzelhaaser lived alone there in mourning, an old man and old woman. + They never went out or saw any one, for they knew they could not speak as + though they did not mourn. They feared that their secret would escape + them. They had never cared for the war that the War Lord made. They no + longer cared what he did with it. They never read his speeches; they never + hung out flags when he ordered flags: they hadn’t the heart to. + </p> + <p> + They had had four sons. + </p> + <p> + The lonely old couple would go as far as the shop for food. Hunger stalked + behind them. They just beat hunger every day, and so saw evening: but + there was nothing to spare. Otherwise they did not go out at all. Hunger + had been coming slowly nearer of late. They had nothing but the ration, + and the ration was growing smaller. They had one pig of their own, but the + law said you might not kill it. So the pig was no good to them. + </p> + <p> + They used to go and look at that pig sometimes when hunger pinched. But + more than that they did not dare to contemplate. + </p> + <p> + Hunger came nearer and nearer. The war was going to end by the first of + July. The War Lord was going to take Paris on this day and that would end + the war at once. But then the war was always going to end. It was going to + end in 1914, and their four sons were to have come home when the leaves + fell. The War Lord had promised that. And even if it did end, that would + not bring their four sons home now. So what did it matter what the War + Lord said. + </p> + <p> + It was thoughts like these that they knew they had to conceal. It was + because of thoughts like these that they did not trust themselves to go + out and see other people, for they feared that by their looks if by + nothing else, or by their silence or perhaps their tears, they might imply + a blasphemy against the All Highest. And hunger made one so hasty. What + might one not say? And so they stayed indoors. + </p> + <p> + But now. What would happen now? The War Lord was coming to Greinstein in + order to hear the guns. One officer of the staff was to be billeted in + their house. And what would happen now? + </p> + <p> + They talked the whole thing over. They must struggle and make an effort. + The officer would be there for one evening. He would leave in the morning + quite early in order to make things ready for the return to Potsdam: he + had charge of the imperial car. So for one evening they must be merry. + They would suppose, it was Herr Schnitzelhaaser’s suggestion, they would + think all the evening that Belgium and France and Luxemburg all attacked + the Fatherland, and that the Kaiser, utterly unprepared, quite unprepared, + called on the Germans to defend their land against Belgium. + </p> + <p> + Yes, the old woman could imagine that; she could think it all the evening. + </p> + <p> + And then,—it was no use not being cheerful altogether,—then + one must imagine a little more, just for the evening: it would come quite + easy; one must think that the four boys were alive. + </p> + <p> + Hans too? (Hans was the youngest). + </p> + <p> + Yes, all four. Just for the evening. + </p> + <p> + But if the officer asks? + </p> + <p> + He will not ask. What are four soldiers? + </p> + <p> + So it was all arranged; and at evening the officer came. He brought his + own rations, so hunger came no nearer. Hunger just lay down outside the + door and did not notice the officer. + </p> + <p> + A this supper the officer began to talk. The Kaiser himself, he said, was + at the Schartzhaus. + </p> + <p> + “So,” said Herr Schnitzelhaaser; “just over the way.” So close. Such an + honour. + </p> + <p> + And indeed the shadow of the Schartzhaus darkened their garden in the + morning. + </p> + <p> + It was such an honour, said Frau Schnitzelhaaser too. And they began to + praise the Kaiser. So great a War Lord, she said; the most glorious war + there had ever been. + </p> + <p> + Of course, said the officer, it would end on the first of July. + </p> + <p> + Of course, said Frau Schnitzelhaaser. And so great an admiral, too. One + must remember that also. And how fortunate we were to have him: one must + not forget that. Had it not been for him the crafty Belgians would have + attacked the Fatherland, but they were struck down before they could do + it. So much better to prevent a bad deed like that than merely to punish + after. So wise. And had it not been for him, if it had not been for him... + </p> + <p> + The old man saw that she was breaking down and hastily he took up that + feverish praise. Feverish it was, for their hunger and bitter loss + affected their minds no less than illness does, and the things they did + they did hastily and intemperately. His praise of the War Lord raced on as + the officer ate. He spoke of him as of those that benefit man, as of + monarchs who bring happiness to their people. And now, he said, he is here + in the Schartzhaus beside us, listening to the guns just like a common + soldier. + </p> + <p> + Finally the guns, as he spoke, coughed beyond ominous hills. Contentedly + the officer went on eating. He suspected nothing of the thoughts his host + and hostess were hiding. At last he went upstairs to bed. + </p> + <p> + As fierce exertion is easy to the fevered, so they had spoken; and it + wears them, so they were worn. The old woman wept when the officer went + out of hearing. But old Herr Schnitzelhaaser picked up a big butcher’s + knife. “I will bear it no more,” he said. + </p> + <p> + His wife watched him in silence as he went away with his knife. Out of the + house he went and into the night. Through the open door she saw nothing; + all was dark; even the Schartzhaus, where all was gay to-night, stood dark + for fear of aëroplanes. The old woman waited in silence. + </p> + <p> + When Herr Schnitzelhaaser returned there was blood on his knife. + </p> + <p> + “What have you done?” the old woman asked him quite calmly. “I have killed + our pig,” he said. + </p> + <p> + She broke out then, all the more recklessly for the long restraint of the + evening; the officer must have heard her. + </p> + <p> + “We are lost! We are lost!” she cried. “We may not kill our pig. Hunger + has made you mad. You have ruined us.” + </p> + <p> + “I will bear it no longer,” he said. “I have killed our pig.” + </p> + <p> + “But they will never let us eat it,” she cried. “Oh, you have ruined us!” + </p> + <p> + “If you did not dare to kill our pig,” he said, “why did you not stop me + when you saw me go? You saw me go with the knife?” + </p> + <p> + “I thought,” she said, “you were going to kill the Kaiser.” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A Deed of Mercy + </h2> + <p> + As Hindenburg and the Kaiser came down, as we read, from Mont d’Hiver, + during the recent offensive, they saw on the edge of a crater two wounded + British soldiers. The Kaiser ordered that they should be cared for: their + wounds were bound up and they were given brandy, and brought round from + unconsciousness. That is the German account of it, and it may well be + true. It was a kindly act. + </p> + <p> + Probably had it not been for this the two men would have died among those + desolate craters; no one would have known, and no one could have been + blamed for it. + </p> + <p> + The contrast of this spark of imperial kindness against the gloom of the + background of the war that the Kaiser made is a pleasant thing to see, + even though it illuminates for only a moment the savage darkness in which + our days are plunged. It was a kindness that probably will long be + remembered to him. Even we, his enemies, will remember it. And who knows + but that when most he needs it his reward for the act will be given him. + </p> + <p> + For Judas, they say, once in his youth, gave his cloak, out of compassion, + to a shivering beggar, who sat shaken with ague, in rags, in bitter need. + And the years went by and Judas forgot his deed. And long after, in Hell, + Judas they say was given one day’s respite at the end of every year + because of this one kindness he had done so long since in his youth. And + every year he goes, they say, for a day and cools himself among the Arctic + bergs; once every year for century after century. + </p> + <p> + Perhaps some sailor on watch on a misty evening blown far out of his + course away to the north saw something ghostly once on an iceberg floating + by, or heard some voice in the dimness that seemed like the voice of man, + and came home with this weird story. And perhaps, as the story passed from + lip to lip, men found enough justice in it to believe it true. So it came + down the centuries. + </p> + <p> + Will seafarers ages hence on dim October evenings, or on nights when the + moon is ominous through mist, red and huge and uncanny, see a lonely + figure sometimes on the loneliest part of the sea, far north of where the + Lusitania sank, gathering all the cold it can? Will they see it hugging a + crag of iceberg wan as itself, helmet, cuirass and ice pale-blue in the + mist together? Will it look towards them with ice-blue eyes through the + mist, and will they question it, meeting on those bleak seas? Will it + answer—or will the North wind howl like voices? Will the cry of + seals be heard, and ice floes grinding, and strange birds lost upon the + wind that night, or will it speak to them in those distant years and tell + them how it sinned, betraying man? + </p> + <p> + It will be a grim, dark story in that lonely part of the sea, when he + confesses to sailors, blown too far north, the dreadful thing he plotted + against man. The date on which he is seen will be told from sailor to + sailor. Queer taverns of distant harbours will know it well. Not many will + care to be at sea that day, and few will risk being driven by stress of + weather on the Kaiser’s night to the bergs of the haunted part of sea. + </p> + <p> + And yet for all the grimness of the pale-blue phantom, with cuirass and + helmet and eyes shimmering on deadly icebergs, and yet for all the sorrow + of the wrong he did against man, the women drowned and the children, and + all the good ships gone, yet will the horrified mariners meeting him in + the mist grudge him no moment of the day he has earned, or the coolness he + gains from the bergs, because of the kindness he did to the wounded men. + For the mariners in their hearts are kindly men, and what a soul gains + from kindness will seem to them well deserved. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Last Scene of All + </h2> + <p> + After John Calleron was hit he carried on in a kind of twilight of the + mind. Things grew dimmer and calmer; harsh outlines of events became + blurred; memories came to him; there was a singing in his ears like + far-off bells. Things seemed more beautiful than they had a while ago; to + him it was for all the world like evening after some quiet sunset, when + lawns and shrubs and woods and some old spire look lovely in the late + light, and one reflects on past days. Thus he carried on, seeing things + dimly. And what is sometimes called “the roar of battle,” those aërial + voices that snarl and moan and whine and rage at soldiers, had grown + dimmer too. It all seemed further away, and littler, as far things are. He + still heard the bullets: there is something so violently and intensely + sharp in the snap of passing bullets at short ranges that you hear them in + deepest thought, and even in dreams. He heard them, tearing by, above all + things else. The rest seemed fainter and dimmer, and smaller and further + away. + </p> + <p> + He did not think he was very badly hit, but nothing seemed to matter as it + did a while ago. Yet he carried on. + </p> + <p> + And then he opened his eyes very wide and found he was back in London + again in an underground train. He knew it at once by the look of it. He + had made hundreds of journeys, long ago, by those trains. He knew by the + dark, outside, that it had not yet left London; but what was odder than + that, if one stopped to think of it, was that he knew exactly where it was + going. It was the train that went away out into the country where he used + to live as a boy. He was sure of that without thinking. + </p> + <p> + When he began to think how he came to be there he remembered the war as a + very far-off thing. He supposed he had been unconscious a very long time. + He was all right now. + </p> + <p> + Other people were sitting beside him on the same seat. They all seemed + like people he remembered a very long time ago. In the darkness opposite, + beyond the windows of the train, he could see their reflections clearly. + He looked at the reflections but could not quite remember. + </p> + <p> + A woman was sitting on his left. She was quite young. She was more like + some one that he most deeply remembered than all the others were. He gazed + at her, and tried to clear his mind. + </p> + <p> + He did not turn and stare at her, but he quietly watched her reflection + before him in the dark. Every detail of her dress, her young face, her + hat, the little ornaments she wore, were minutely clear before him, + looking out of the dark. So contented she looked you would say she was + untouched by war. + </p> + <p> + As he gazed at the clear calm face and the dress that seemed neat though + old and, like all things, so faraway, his mind grew clearer and clearer. + It seemed to him certain it was the face of his mother, but from thirty + years ago, out of old memories and one picture. He felt sure it was his + mother as she had been when he was very small. And yet after thirty years + how could he know? He puzzled to try and be quite sure. But how she came + to be there, looking like that, out of those oldest memories, he did not + think of at all. + </p> + <p> + He seemed to be hugely tired by many things and did not want to think. Yet + he was very happy, more happy even than tired men just come home all new + to comfort. + </p> + <p> + He gazed and gazed at the face in the dark. And then he felt quite sure. + </p> + <p> + He was about to speak. Was she looking at him? Was she watching him, he + wondered. He glanced for the first time to his own reflection in that + clear row of faces. + </p> + <p> + His own reflection was not there, but blank dark showed between his two + neighbours. And then he knew he was dead. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Old England + </h2> + <p> + Towards winter’s end on a high, big, bare down, in the south of England, + John Plowman was plowing. He was plowing the brown field at the top of the + hill, good soil of the clay; a few yards lower down was nothing but chalk, + with shallow flinty soil and steep to plow; so they let briars grow there. + For generations his forbears had plowed on the top of that hill. John did + not know how many. The hills were very old; it might have been always. + </p> + <p> + He scarcely looked to see if his furrow was going straight. The work he + was doing was so much in his blood that he could almost feel if furrows + were straight or not. Year after year they moved on the same old + landmarks; thorn trees and briars mostly guided the plow, where they stood + on the untamed land beyond; the thorn trees grew old at their guiding, and + still the furrows varied not by the breadth of a hoof-mark. + </p> + <p> + John, as he plowed, had leisure to meditate on much besides the crops; he + knew so much of the crops that his thoughts could easily run free from + them; he used to meditate on who they were that lived in briar and thorn + tree, and danced as folk said all through midsummer night, and sometimes + blessed and sometimes harmed the crops; for he knew that in Old England + were wonderful ancient things, odder and older things than many folks + knew. And his eyes had leisure to see much beside the furrows, for he + could almost feel the furrows going straight. + </p> + <p> + One day at his plowing, as he watched the thorn ahead, he saw the whole + big hill besides, looking south, and the lands below it; one day he saw in + the bright sun of late winter a horseman riding the road through the wide + lands below. The horseman shone as he rode, and wore white linen over what + was shining, and on the linen was a big red cross. “One of them knights,” + John Plowman said to himself or his horse, “going to them crusades.” And + he went on with his plowing all that day satisfied, and remembered what he + had seen for years, and told his son. + </p> + <p> + For there is in England, and there always was, mixed with the needful + things that feed or shelter the race, the wanderer-feeling for romantic + causes that runs deep and strange through the other thoughts, as the Gulf + Stream runs through the sea. Sometimes generations of John Plowman’s + family would go by and no high romantic cause would come to sate that + feeling. They would work on just the same though a little sombrely, as + though some good thing had been grudged them. And then the Crusades had + come, and John Plowman had seen the Red Cross knight go by, riding towards + the sea in the morning, and Jon Plowman was satisfied. + </p> + <p> + Some generations later a man of the same name was plowing the same hill. + They still plowed the brown clay at the top and left the slope wild, + though there were many changes. And the furrows were wonderfully straight + still. And half he watched a thorn tree ahead as he plowed and half he + took in the whole hill sloping south and the wide lands below it, far + beyond which was the sea. They had a railway now down in the valley. The + sunlight glittering near the end of winter shone on a train that was + marked with great white squares and red crosses on them. + </p> + <p> + John Plowman stopped his horses and looked at the train. “An ambulance + train,” he said, “coming up from the coast.” He thought of the lads he + knew and wondered if any were there. He pitied the men in that train and + envied them. And then there came to him the thought of England’s cause and + of how those men had upheld it, at sea and in crumbling cities. He thought + of the battle whose echoes reached sometimes to that field, whispering to + furrows and thorn trees that had never heard them before. He thought of + the accursed tyrant’s cruel might, and of the lads that had faced it. He + saw the romantic splendour of England’s cause. He was old but had seen the + glamour for which each generation looked. Satisfied in his heart and + cheered with a new content he went on with his age-old task in the + business of man with the hills. + </p> + <div style="height: 6em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of War, by Lord Dunsany + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF WAR *** + +***** This file should be named 5713-h.htm or 5713-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/5/7/1/5713/ + +Produced by William McClain and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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