Front matter (continued 4)

We turned to the right round the end of the spur, about thirty of us, ascending diagonally up the side, with a parallel valley receding below us. I had been given directions as to how we were to take advantage of the natural cover, and in places where we should have been more exposed to observation from heights or airmen this cover had been very ingeniously supplemented.

The firing from the greater plateau towards Craonne grew more distinct, but even so it seemed to be none too vigorously prosecuted. The cautious approach along the wet green slope towards a real, if distant, enemy, revived the feelings of keen excitement of our man-hunting game in the Lake Fells. But in the valley bottom, and occasionally on our slope, there were harsh reminders of reality in the pits of shells, broken trees, the litter in abandoned trenches, and here and there the unburied German dead. A number of peasants were engaged in removing these last traces, in the more sheltered depressions. But, as the corporal explained with a shrug, "What would you? If they see where we are, they fire. We cannot risk the good living for those!"

All too soon, as it seemed, we reached the advanced point where on an upward slope, the work of pushing forward diagonal trenches was going on. On our left the hill hid the view; but across the valley, on the right, the same active, methodical work was just visible in the slight stir and occasional glint of mattock or red trouser. With a gesture my attention was drawn to a carefully concealed battery. I doubt if I should have seen it for myself. "They haven't marked that down yet; that's for a surprise when they begin again!"

We crossed a system of narrow man-deep galleries, well-covered, and which had evidently been heavily shelled. I was hurried forward through this, now with even more caution. "They've got the range of this; but we're out there now":—and the "brother" indicated a point a third of a mile ahead, where, it seemed, a sap was being carried forward, on a zigzag towards the crest. Just as we were advancing, the unmistakable moan of an aeroplane sent us to cover, under the old entrenchment. I failed to see it; but a sudden outburst of firing on our left, that died away again, gave the line of its passage. "You may expect something here, after that——has been over," was the remark, made to me, I think, with half malicious intention.

In a small pit or field-quarry on the slope, of innocent appearance, but in reality converted into a very adequate straw-lined shelter or base for the men engaged in digging beyond, I was left; while the section moved forward to take the places of others. These, when they came down, would see me back again. I saw the "brother" leave me with regret. My companions were four men and a corporal, rather glum and tired, but not unfriendly. Two had been slightly wounded, but had refused to go down.

We had barely got on to terms, with grateful cigarettes, when a single growl echoed across the slope in front; and the unmistakable crescendo whine of a shell passed high and to one side above us. It was followed by another, which shrilled its menace more directly overhead; and the flat, quaking explosion, hitting the ear like a blow, could be heard further down over the slope. The men paid scarcely any attention. "It will not go on; we shall not reply," said one. "Reassure yourself: it is at our old trenches," added one of the wounded men, with half a grin. The sensation of being shelled over is denied to the civilian; and in my own case the opportunity was probably unique. I risked the reputation for unconcern of the race, and crept out and up under the higher lip of the depression; from here, well sheltered, I could look backward and down the slope.

Four more shells passed in quick succession. The roar of the discharges rolled in a continuous echo back and across the little valley; through this the singing scream of the shells stabbed venomously. One fell beyond the old trenches, and exploded in the ground—I saw the huge shattered cavity as I returned. Two burst accurately, man high, over the earthworks, faced with sods, of the abandoned gallery; the sight and sound were indescribably shocking to the unaccustomed eye and ear. The last did not explode, but, from the spurt of earth, buried itself deeply twenty yards nearer me up the slope.

As I had been told, no reply was made in this quarter, and no more followed the six. A quarter of an hour later the returning section came back; and again, with an escort of twenty dumb, earth-stained, and hungry blue-coats, the cautious return was begun. As we got down the caution was dropped. "They don't want it to-day any more than we do"—and we clustered in a quick walk back to the base.

As an impression of the futility of warfare, the sight of this useful manhood, designed to dig a fruitful soil for profitable living, now burrowing for life in barren trenches, was sufficient. As an impression of its hideous trespass, the intrusion of those discordant shells, shrieking over the sunlit hill with a sort of murderous absurdity, splitting the still air into shreds of hateful noise, and vanishing against the motionless trees in drifting clots of sickly green vapour, was all complete. If further proof were needed, it lay about me in the melancholy accidents of destruction, scattered over the "no man's land" that I recrossed on my return. The whole suggestion was of some recent, sordid violent orgy, by a party of criminal tramps, in a peaceful garden.

Many of the bridges were broken down, and, after rejoining the car, we had to make a wide sweep to the west. The roads were blocked by the wagons and columns of the French westward movement. I passed again through Crepy and Senlis, and round west of Clermont, which was obviously in the agitated condition peculiar to a military occupation. The distinctness with which the guns could be heard from the St. Just road, suggested that the Germans had advanced considerably to the west, since I had last heard them from the south of Lassigny. From Montdidier we turned east, hoping to get to Roye; but it was getting late and the road became hopelessly congested. An aviator whose machine had been injured and to whom I was able to give a lift, told me that he had seen the German reinforcements pouring up in very great numbers behind the Oise; and it was clear that, for the moment, their possession of the inner lines had given them the advantage in forming on the new front.

Through by-lanes west of Roye we made towards Rosières in the dark, hoping to hit a main road back towards Amiens. We were stopped again by the sound of firing in front and a little to the east. Before turning back we determined, if possible, to discover its meaning. Leaving the car in a field, the driver and I walked forward cautiously through the woods in the direction of the sound. We were in one of the big hangars of large forest trees that crown the crests of the rolling uplands in this district. As we came out of the wood, and just across the crest, there came a sudden crackle of rifle firing from the trees on the opposite crest, about a mile and a half, so far as I could calculate in the dark, to the east. For the moment it was difficult to account for it; but the driver suddenly called my attention to some little sparks of flame in the dark sky. They seemed to be dropping on to the far wood. The reason at once suggested itself:—a daring German airman, making a night flight, had located a detachment of the French in the wood, probably by their camp fires, and was dropping little balls of flame to give the range to his associated battery. A few minutes later the dull boom of heavier guns, firing from a greater distance, which continued for some fifteen minutes, and then ceased, made our speculation a certainty. It was a curiously suggestive glimpse; the darkness lit and broken for a moment, declaring the presence of the unceasing, sleepless strife.

It was clearly not possible to force our way further north; and, as it was now too late to gain entry into any town of shelter, we spent a not uncomfortable night, sleeping in and beside the car. With the first light we turned west and south, and regained Paris almost as soon as the gates were opened.

CHAPTER XIII

The Shadow of the War

There could be no object in making further visits to the deadlock along the Aisne. The German advance, which I had followed across Belgium in the beginning of the war, and met again where it shattered upon the Allied position east of Paris, had failed. Their rapid consequent retreat on to the heights of the Aisne, and the reassembling of their armies, had been successfully accomplished. Both sides had been unable to convert the end of the first great move into decisive victory or defeat, and had dug themselves, after desperate initial efforts, into impregnable entrenched positions. The serpents of war were dragging their slow coils west and north, seeking more open ground for a fresh grapple.

The new development had to be looked for in the north. Time must elapse before it could take definite shape. The first phase of the war was ended.

In the interval, before the next began, like a foiled snake drawing in its head and thickening its coils, back in Belgium the huge length of the German army was beginning slowly to swell itself out, forcing the last of the unhappy population out of town and village, to the coast, and to the sea itself. For "military reasons," doubtless. No difficulty in assigning them. Only, if there has been one happening more than any other which has revealed to those outside the war atmosphere, the utter negation of personal life and moral law that is covered by our easy talk of "strategy," "tactics," and "moves," it has been this further persecution of the Belgian people. We may discuss it, as critics, as an excusable part of a defensive campaign. We feel in our hearts, that it is no other than the instinctive ferocity of the beast of prey, headed off its next kill, and recoiling to savage its last victim.

War, the war of Ilium, of Agincourt, of Waterloo, used to be a brilliant affair. Death harnessed to a glittering car of Juggernaut. Men went under the wheels in the rush and flame of colours, and to the sound of bands and the applause of multitudes. The car is now hidden in a dull, deadly rolling cloud. We can only hear the rumour of the hidden wheels. Our sons and friends move into the darkness. Of many of them, all we shall ever know is that they have not returned. The greater heroes, that they go as gladly as ever did a chosen knight into crowded lists. The finer men, that they fight as stoutly with no record of their gallantry, no mark even of their death-place.

But we must make no confusion. It is the men who are to be praised: for their sacrifice of all they know to be better in life, for their acceptance of the fantastic chance which is forced upon them by their devotion to an ideal. War itself, fighting, is a mad anachronism. We can judge of its folly the better, because we are now allowed to know so little of its secret noise and flame. We are not dazzled by its incidents; but its shadow falls on us all.

But then, afterwards, there must be no sentimentalising over the glitter of a splendour we have not seen; no wilful blindness when, the cloud cleared away, the light of sanity falls again upon the nakedness of its inhuman mechanism, the hideous squalor and vulgarity of its monstrous destructiveness.

A few days ago I was waiting with a crowd outside a Bureau in Paris. Anxious, resigned faces passed me going in or out. No tragedy, no moving emotion. The families of the soldiers in the front were making their weekly inquiry for the little numbered disc each soldier wears for identification. The best they could hope for was to receive nothing, to have to come and ask again, and again, till the end of the war. The only break would come when the little disc at last might be handed them, and they would know that son or husband, somewhere, somehow, had vanished in the shadow of war for all time.

In Wavre, where I used to pass continually on the way to the Belgian lines, was a small welcome restaurant, kept by a cheerful pretty girl, her young husband, and a baby. There was laugh and joke as to "what would happen if the Prussians came!" On the morning of the day of evacuation I passed again. Still only quiet anxiety and less ready smiles. Three hours later I returned. The Uhlans were entering the edges of the town. A peasant rushed into the swarming square, waving a Uhlan helmet. There was a savage rush; and a woman shrieked: "It's the head of the devil who wore it I want!" It was the young wife. A fury, raging at her husband; for the men had been told to disarm. "Take it," she screamed furiously, thrusting his rifle at him, "never see me again, if our house is entered without one brute shot." Blanched, shaking with passion, and speechless, the young man walked out. I saw her again on the road to Brussels, aged, scarcely sane. The man had not come back. She had lost her child.

In west Flanders, on the day that the Prussian columns were pouring across Belgium, I passed in the morning a remote, picturesque little crossing. A very old peasant, in a smock, deaf and almost blind, acting as a Civil Guard, gave me great difficulty. He had blocked the road with harrows, and threatened viciously with an old muzzle-loader and rusty bayonet of the time of Waterloo. In the evening, carrying some wounded soldiers, we passed again. He was still hugging the bayonet. We persuaded him to let us bury it, his useless death-warrant, for the Uhlans were flooding behind us. With that, realisation at last came to him. He walked deliberately back towards the cottage. "All that I had left, for my son is dead. But I will destroy this too. The Prussians shall not shelter there."

The same night I was driving on the long dark roads back to the coast. Occasionally the lights flashed on lines of women, in widows' black, returning in silence from the shrines. Now and again a blaze of light startled us from the roadside. The shrines of saints, bright with votive candles all this night of terror. And remote from their homesteads, and from the war, the heads of crowds of small children showed black on the steps against the altar lights; while in a semicircle on the road outside knelt the shadows of women, enclosing their children, the last possession left to them. I stopped the car before one shrine, and a high woman's voice, in which all emotion was dead, called out from the darkness: "Is that death?"

South of Peronne, hardly a week ago, we gave a lift to four refugee peasant-women, trudging heavily back to their homes. Two weeks before some German cavalry had swept suddenly into their small village. Ten men had been ordered to go with them, the husbands of two of the women, the sons of two others. They had disappeared in the shadow, and not one had returned. We reached the outlying cottage of the first. Some small skirmish had raged there. The house was half destroyed, and three or four dead horses lay grotesquely rotting on the field. The woman stood for a moment unmoved, and then turned to a neighbour: "War has taken my sons, and has left me these."

Four days ago a French soldier of the line stopped me just south of Vic-sur-Aisnes. He was hobbling back from the trenches, wounded in the knee. He was clearly half stupid with fatigue and the detonation of the days of firing. He kept repeating to himself, over and over again: "I cannot remember: there were five, all killed near me; and three said to tell somebody a message, before they died. I cannot remember what it was, or who they were. I cannot remember: there were five——" and so over again. These were the last messages out of the edge of the shadow, and they were lost. But there would always be the discs. Better that the details should not come. There would then be still the chance of imagining some heroic setting of death.

We may well remember that such death is heroic, whatever its loneliness or its revolting circumstances. But let us borrow no false colour from an imaginary pomp and circumstance in war itself. It is dissolution and the end of hope that is hidden in the cloud. In England we are happily still free to interpret the obscurity according to our fancy, to picture death in battle as somehow not death. For those who have moved by the edge of the shadow there is no illusion left. The cloud shifts from village to village, from week to week, only to let us see in its track nature outraged, emotion degraded, humanity defaced.

We have chosen war, and must follow it to its undiscriminating end. Let us see to it that it is for the last time.

CHAPTER XIV

Arms and the Man

There must be no misunderstanding. We may condemn the futility of the appeal to arms as the ultimate method of arbitriment between civilised beings; we can have nothing but whole-hearted admiration for the man who has answered the appeal.

Civilisation, if it means anything, has meant the development of the sense of humour. It was the gradual realisation of an absurd disconnection between seeing a man scowling, and clubbing the life out of him so that he should see no more, and between hearing his insults, and depriving him for all time of hearing, that brought primitive man out of savagery. The same discovery, of its incongruity put an end to the duel among us. Our German opponents have always been behind us in this, in civilisation, in the sense of humour. It is with a feeling of disgust as much as of anger that we find our civilisation cannot save us from being dragged down to the level of savage brawling.

But the appeal to arms once made, and our national and personal ideals once involved in the hazard, we may well be proud of the sane, temperate spirit with which the men of our race assert their superiority, even in the whirlpool of elemental passions that is war. Actual fighting, the killing of men, cannot be done well except by men in the rage of the fighting fever, in the passion that "sees red."—It is no surprise to us that the British soldier can still charge like seven demons. To lie for hours passive under fire, with death close round in the trenches, calls for a still rarer emotional concentration, the white animosity that flares steadily but does not flicker.—To those who know our history, it is no news that the Briton, for cold unshaken courage, can still out-last all other men. But what, in a Briton, who has seen the soldiers of several nations reacting under the war-fever, touches a deeper chord of pride, is to see that our countrymen can pass in and out of the "fighting state" with the mental detachment of civilised beings. Even in the "red rage" they become neither blind nor deaf to the call of humanity or reason. They maintain personality against the overwhelming war atmosphere of animal fury and suspicion. When the fighting shadow passes, they are still their natural selves, kindly or surly, or intelligent, knowing what they like or dislike, with no collective infection from a false pride, a simulated enthusiasm or hatred.

Of this power of maintaining mental balance, through all the flux and reflux of the "fighting state," military record gives us little idea. But it is the deciding factor in racial wars. The degree of its possession by the several races in the end decides for victory or failure. The nation that has the strongest vital stock survives longest. As between two such vital races in conflict, that must prevail which is the better "civilised"; which can maintain its characteristic strength, its individual consciousness, against all the assaults of violent physical or mental emotion.

A captured Prussian lieutenant, with whom I had a quick talk beside the road near Rheims a few days ago, was pleased to express surprise at the courage and doggedness of our British "mercenaries," as he called them. He thought I was insulting him, when I told him that the conditions under which our volunteer private served were very similar to those of the German officer!

It has been always a new surprise to find how many Germans, even those who know military history and are well acquainted with England, have allowed their sense of national rivalry with us, of jealousy rather than hatred, to blind their judgment, otherwise expert in military matters. They have continued to make three elementary blunders about our army; and they are now paying dearly for the miscalculation.

The first blunder has been to confuse a man who volunteers to fight for his own country, as his profession, with a "mercenary"; by which we mean a man who hires himself out to fight for any country which offers him enough pay. The second has been in some way to reason that a man who voluntarily makes himself efficient to defend his own country, and receives an allowance for it, must be inferior, as fighting material, to a man who compulsorily so serves his country, and receives an allowance for it. And the third has been the astounding ignorance of the teaching of military history, which proves conclusively that, from the time when the Spartans beat the Athenians down to the present day, the professional-soldier army has always beaten the amateur or conscript army, even at great disadvantage of numbers.

That is the essential difference which we have been seeing every day in the field. Our men are fighting, just as consciously, for the preservation and honour of their country, as are their conscript enemies. But, because of their race, they do not care to make a parade of that consciousness. We do not encourage in war more than in peace the "jelly-bellied flag-flappers" whom Mr. Kipling has pilloried. It takes a very special story of pluck to draw from any collection of our soldiers even a "Good old England!" or a "What will they say at home to that?" Fighting, manœuvre, fatigue, firing, wounds, death, they are all just parts of their professional job; which they like to do well for its own sake, and in which they have a technical interest.

When the fighting is done, in camp, in reserve, in intervals, it is striking to see the different look on the faces of the different races. The Briton keeps nothing of the fixed "war" look, the strained, set expression and eyes of some other races, as if the weight of a country was on their shoulders, as if death was near in thought and always being defied, as if the whole world was an object of suspicion. The moment his "job" of fighting, or whatever it may be, is done for the time, the Briton becomes himself again. Just a tired and gay, or a tired and grumbly fellow who has finished his job, according to his ordinary nature.

England and his home and family have not been saved with every shot he has fired, and when he is off duty, he is not worried about the future of the Fatherland. He has learned in a hard school that his duty is just his job; and he has learned to do his job, killing, cooking, or horse-tending, with a keen, impersonal, professional interest.

When I said something like this to a German officer in prison at Bruges, he jumped at it: "Ah, just so! He fights like a machine: he has no heart in it! He will be beaten by our Germans, inspired by the one thought of the German flag!"

Not a bit! A boxer does not do less damage because he has learned how to fight, as an art, with years of training. When he is in the ring, heart tells in the end, but it tells through the degree of skill. When you have got a soldier who fights for the love of it, as a profession, and, besides that, has become a master of the art, you have found a champion who will out-last a rank of compulsory-service amateurs inspired by all the patriotism under the sun!

Put our volunteer professionals in the firing line, leave them to fend for themselves on a terrible retreat, like that from Courtrai, and the individual grit, the racial inspiration will carry them through to the marvel of the world. Their training will stand them in all the better stead. They will know how to fight, what to do, even when their company officers have fallen, when they have lost their unit. Patriotism, personality, they are there behind the professional keenness, as a driving, reserve force. Our machine is not a barrel organ grinding out "Die Wacht am Rhein," which wants the big handle turned to keep the machinery going. Break the living organism, and each cell will remain instinct with life.

What strikes the Continental troops most is our soldiers' gaiety! It is not that the men are excitedly funny or tuneful, in trench or camp. (Our songs the French consider funereal!) But between fights they become just themselves again. The fighting job is over for the moment. It would be absurd among fellow professionals to make a fuss about it. The eternal grumbling Briton grumbles still, about his wet feet (he has just come in from fifteen hours under fire in the muddy trenches); about his food, traditional subject of caustic jest; about some old "puffing Sal," a howitzer that made a mark of his trench all day. He will talk of the mud she scattered over him, not probably of the pals hit on either side of him. Such grumbling seems to the Continental trooper a joke, a tremendous social effort. The cheery man rags as heartily as he ever would. The unsociable man sets to washing or eating imperturbably. What is there to make a fuss about?

Of course, if an outsider like myself spoke at such times of the day's fighting, the men would lighten up with the interest of professionals, anxious to explain things. "We were on in that ball-room show"; "The ---- and the —— caught it hot there"; "Nice little bit of shooting the Germans did there"; "Never knew we were hit and stood like sillies"; and then perhaps a stiff argument about the merits of "Ruddy Jim" or "Old Cough-drop," which would, as likely as not, prove to be two of the enemy's batteries that had been giving murderous trouble.

No wonder the foreign comrade, with his serious conception of the great danger and great issues that lay behind such affectionate nick-names, would listen astonished, and wonder how they "keep it up." Keep it up? It is just themselves! Unimaginative, humorous, business-like men at their work, boys in their ways of thought and speech off duty.

The letters home are on the same reserved but natural note. Professional information being barred, the soldier has had to fall back on the few conventional phrases to express personal feelings, which our tongue-tied nation allows itself. They are learned in childhood, and so come easily.

It was often the same scene. In some deserted little village, dusty, sun-white, and shuttered, the glimpse of a khaki coat and a sun-red British face has cheered and checked us as we ran through.

Pleasant to hear the broad easy tongue; and we retire to the one little wine-shop, that still keeps open because it is near a base-camp.

The rumour of English newspapers in some unaccountable way gets abroad. Soon there are a dozen or more khaki caps crowded in the little room. The few peasants left drift in there too. The usual long handshakes, absurd French tags of talk. The soldiers are plundered of their last emblems, as mementoes. Not a village in the war area where one does not see peasant caps and peasant frocks decorated proudly with the insignia of some one of the British regiments.

Then comes talk of the chance of getting a letter home. Half of the men retire to violent wrestles with foreign pens and ink at the table in the rear of the shop: the rest stay yarning.

The letters are always read aloud or left open as a point of honour; but I had never once to suggest the omission of a line which gave place or date or regimental names. The tradition of the silent war has gone deep. Further, very few either knew or cared where they were or had been. The names meant nothing. Even the sense of time had been lost in the constant occupation and the turning of day into night.

Certainly the letters I saw at that end were far less picturesque than those published in the papers; but the latter, of course, are a selected number. The traditional "English tongue" learned in the elementary school, with its stiff conventions, held the paper. These scraps are typical of many read to me:

"Dear brother,—I hope you are well, as this leaves me. I am quite well. And I have not written before, as there has been no time. And I hope She and all are well. Please give them my love. I have seen ——, and we have seen lots of fighting. I think that is all, so must end. Love to —— and ——.—Yours affectionately, etc."

"Dear Dad,—This is the first time I have written, and I have had no letter. Please write soon, and ask Mum and sisters to write. I am quite well, as I hope this finds you. It is very hot, and it is bad for the horses. Baby Bob must be a big chap now. Give him my love. A gentleman is taking this. Tell all to write and send some cigarettes.

I will not write any more, so will end.—"

From, etc.

Sometimes the human touch breaks through the conventions, in a kiss sent to a baby or in a scrawled P.S.:

"Dear Mother,—I am very well, as I hope you are and father. And —— and ——. It has been very hot, and I have not slept in bed for four weeks. But I am all serene. Give Tom my love, and I am glad he has joined; we must all do something. Don't worry.—From your loving son, ——."

—and then a big scrawl all across the reverse sheet, and again the big scrawl across the back that brings a catch to one's throat—"Don't Worry, Mother." "Don't Worry."

I don't suppose they bothered much at home, when they got these letters, at the absence of battle news. Husband, brother, or son, the sight of his writing is enough. "I am quite well"—and for those waiting another milestone in their shadow-time has been safely passed.

In many of the Irish letters the mode is more picturesque, the expression comes easier.

"Dear ——,—We got it last night but one, and J—— and C—— went home, God send they meet no Germans there. J—— had it in for them since big Tom went. I'm as I was, with a chip off my foot that's healing fine, and I hope you're doing well in these bad times. They have a story here that the German's firing silver bullets, as the leads run low. If I got a few in me, I'll bring them home to set you up. Send all the cigarettes you can find and chocolates. This is hell, and I have no time to write, the kisses is for yourself, but I expect the girls will steal them off the paper. Keep laughing, woman.—Your affekt. boy, ——."

This, again, is from a very young north Irishman:

"Dear Wife,—I have not written before, for my time has been full up. If it's not all right about the money go to Mrs. ——. She has a good heart. Write soon, and send some cigarettes. How is little Dick? Give him a kiss. He must be a great man now in this long while. Give my love to the old lady, and write soon, soon, SOON. I am wading in blood.—Your affectionate husband, ——."

He had not actually seen any fighting; but the "neighbours" would want that battle touch for their talk, and so good manners demanded it.

Little scrawls, on scraps of paper, written on a stone or rifle-butt, they were shoved into my hands. Sometimes given by word of mouth.

"I hope you are quite well, as this leaves me," comes to have the force of a symbol, when we think of the remote homes to which the conventional phrase will mean so much. In fancy we can follow each of them, by sea, and rail, and cart, to the moment of the postman's knock, the opening door....

Wyman & Sons Ltd., Printers, London and Reading.