Class ^U4(3 Book. M± CoipgM?_ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. A STUDENT IN ARMS DONALD HAN KEY in A Student In Arms SECOND SERIES By DONALD HANKEY & LONDON : ANDREW MELROSE, LTD 3 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1917 JUN 13 1917 ©CUUtt.2960^ CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE Something about " A Student in Arms " ..... 7 Author's Foreword ... 41 I The Potentate .... 47 II The Bad Side of Military Service 59 III The Good Side of " Militarism " . 7a IV A Month's Experiences . . .87 V Romance ..... 101 VI Imaginary Conversations (I) . . 117 VII The Fear of Death in War . . 123 VIII Imaginary Conversations (II) . 135 IX The Wisdom of "A Student in Arms'" 147 X Imaginary Conversations (III) . 155 5 CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE XI Letter to an Army Chaplain . 163 XII " Don't Worry " . . . .175 XIII Imaginary Conversations (IV) . 185 XIV Idylls of the War . . .191 XV A Passing in June, 1915 . . 207 XVI My Home and School : — 223 II School 241 Notes on the Fragment of Auto- biography by " Hilda" . 263 SOMETHING ABOUT «A STUDENT IN ARMS" By H. M. A. H. " His life was a Romance of the most noble and beautiful kind." So says one who has known him from childhood, and into how many dull, hard and narrow lives has he not been the first to bring the element of Romance ? He carried it about with him ; it breathes through his writings, and this inevitable expression of it gives the saying of one of his friends, that " it is as an artist that we shall miss him most," the more significance. And does not the artist as well as the poet live on in his works, and is not ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" the breath of inspiration that such alone can breathe into the dull clods of their generation bound to be immortal ? Meanwhile, his " Romance " is to be written, and his biographer will be one whose good fortune it has been to see much of the " Student " in Bermondsey, the place that was the forcing-house of his development. In the following pages it is proposed only to give an outline of his life, and particularly the earlier and therefore to the public unknown parts. Donald Hankey was born at Brighton in 1884 ; he was the seventh child of his parents, and was welcomed with excite- ment and delight by a ready-made family of three brothers and two sisters living on his arrival amongst them. He was the youngest of them by seven years, and all had their plans for his education and future, and waited jealously for the time when he should be old enough to be re- 8 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" moved from the loving shelter of his mother's arms and be " brought up." His education did, as a matter of fact, begin at a very early age ; for one day, when he was perhaps about three years old, dressed in a white woolly cap and coat, and out for his morning walk, a neighbouring baby stepped across from his nurse's side and with one well-directed blow felled Donald to the ground ! Donald was too much astonished and hurt at the sheer injustice of the assault to dream of retaliation, but when they reached home and his indignant nurse told the story, he was taken aside by his brothers and made to understand that by his failure to resist the assault, and give the other fellow back as good as he gave, " the honour of the family " was im- pugned ! He was then and there put through a systematic course of " the noble art of self-defence." " And I think," said one of his brothers only the other 9 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" day, " that he was prepared to act upon his instructions should occasion arise." It will be seen from this incident that his bringing-up was of a decidedly strenuous character and likely to make Donald's outlook on life a serious one ! He was naturally a peace-loving and philosophical little boy, very lovable and attractive with his large clear eyes with their curious distribution of colour — the one entirely blue and the other three parts a decided brown — the big head set proudly on the slender little body, and the radiant illuminating smile, that no one who knew him well at any time of his life can ever forget. It spoke of a light within, " that mysterious light which is of course not physical," as was said by one who met him only once, but was quick to note this characteristic. Donald's more strenuous times were in the boys' holidays — those tumultuous of seasons so well known to the members of 10 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" all big families. His eldest brother, Hugh, was bent on making an all-round athlete of him; another brother saw in him an embryo county cricketer, while a third was most particular about his music, giving him lessons on the violoncello with clockwork regularity. The games were terribly thrilling and dangerous, especi- ally when the schoolroom was turned into a miniature battlefield, with opposing armies of tiny lead soldiers. But Donald never turned a hair if Hugh were present, even at the most terrific explosions of gun- powder. His confidence in Hugh was complete. Nor did he mind personal injuries. When on one occasion he was hurled against the sharp edge of a chair, cutting his head open badly, and his mother came to the rescue with indigna- tion, sympathy and bandages, whilst accepting the latter he deprecated the two former, explaining apologetically, " It's only because my head's so big." 11 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" He admitted in after years to having felt most terribly swamped by the per- sonalities of two of his brothers. The third he had more in common with, for he was more peace-loving, and he seemed to have more time to listen to the small boy's confidences and stories, which Donald started to write at the age of six. Hugh, however, was his hero — a kind of demi-god. And truly there was some- thing Greek about the boy — in his singular beauty of person, coupled with his brilliant mental equipment, and above all in the nothing less than Spartan methods with which, in spite of a highly sensitive tem- perament, he set himself to overcome his handicap of a naturally delicate physique and a bad head for heights. He turned himself out quite an athlete, and actually cured his bad head by a course of walking on giddy heights, preferably roofs — the parapet of the tall four-storied house the children 12 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" lived in being a favourite training ground. Donald was the apple of his eye, and he was quick to note a slight lack of vitality about the little boy — especially when he was growing fast — and a certain natural timidity. His letters from school are full of messages to and instructions concerning Donald's physical training, and from Sandhurst he would long to " run over and see after his boxing." He called him Don Diego, a name that suited the rather stately little fellow, and he used to fear sometimes that Donald was " getting too polite " and say he must " knock it out of him in the holidays." Needless to say, his handling of him was always very gentle. The other over- vital brother, if a prime amuser, was also a prime tease, and being nearer Donald in age was also much less gentle. Before very long these great personages ABOUT A "STUDENT IN ARMS" took themselves off " zum neuen taten." But their Odysses came home in the shape of letters, which, with their descriptions of strange countries and peoples and records of adventures — often the realiza- tion of boyish dreams — and also of diffi- culties overcome, were well calculated to appeal to Donald's childish imagina- tion, and to increase his admiration for the writers — and also his feeling of impo- tence, and of the impossibility of being able to follow in the tracks of such giants among men ! His mother, however, was his never- failing confidante and friend. His love and admiration for her were unbounded, as for her courage, unselfishness and con- stant thought for others, more especially for the poor and insignificant among her neighbours. Though the humblest minded of women, she could, when occasion demanded, administer a rebuke with a decision and a fire that must have won 14 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" the heartfelt admiration of her diffident little son. He was not easily roused himself, but there is one instance of his being so that is eminently characteristic. He had come back from school evidently very perturbed, and at first his sister could get nothing out of him. But at last he flared up. His face reddened, his eyes burned like coals and, in a voice trembling with rage, he said, " (naming a school-fellow) talks about things that I won't even think ! " At the age of about 14 he, too, went to Rugby, and there is an interesting prophecy about him by his brother Hugh, belonging to this time. Hugh had by now earned a certain right to pronounce judg- ment, having already started to fulfil his early promise by making some mark as a soldier and a linguist. He had been invited to join the Egyptian Army at a critical time in the campaign of 1897-98, thanks to his proficiency in Arabic. His 15 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" work was cut short by serious illness, the long period of convalescence after which he had utilized in working for and passing the Army Interpreter's examination in Turkish as well as the higher one in Arabic and his promotion exam. All of which achieve- ments had been of use in helping him to wring out of the War Office a promise of certain distinguished service in China. In a letter home he writes : — 2nd Batt. the Royal Warwickshire Regt., The Camp, Colchester. 28th Sept., 1899. My dear Mamma, — I packed Donald off to school to-day in good time and cold-less. . . . He was wonderfully calm and collected. He was more at his ease in our mess than I should have been in a strange mess, and made himself agreeable to his neighbours without being forward. Also he looked very clean and smart, and was altogether quite a success. That child has a future before him if his energy is up to form, which I hope. His philosophy is most amazing. He looks remarkably healthy, and is growing nicely. . . . 16 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" Shortly after this letter was written the South African War broke out, and before six months were over the writer was killed in action, at the age of 27, whilst serving with the Mounted Infantry at Paardeburg. It was the first sorrow of Donald's life, but six months later he was to suffer a yet more crushing blow in the loss of his dearly loved mother. The loss of his best confidante and his ideal seemed at first to stun the boy completely, and to cast him in upon himself entirely. Later on he remembered that he had felt at that time that he had nothing to say to any one. He had wondered what the others could have thought of him, and had thought how dreadfully unresponsive they must be finding him. His sister should have been of some use. But she can only think of herself then as of some strange figure, veiled and petrified with grief — grief not for her mother, but for the young 17 B ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" hero whose magnetism had thrilled through every moment of her life — yet pointing onwards, with mutely insistent finger, to the path that her hero had trodden. And Donald, dazed also himself by grief — though from another cause — of his own accord, placed his first uncertain steps on the road that leads to military glory. No " voice " warned him as yet, and he had no other decisive leading. If his sister failed him then, his father did not. Of him Donald wrote recently t® an aunt, " Papa's letters to me are a heritage whose value can never diminish. His was indeed the pen of a ready writer, and in his case, as in the case of many rather reserved people, the pen did more justice to the man than the tongue. I never knew him until Mamma's death, when the weekly letter from him took the place of hers, and never stopped till I came home." At Rugby Donald was accounted a 18 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" dreamer. Without the outlet he had hitherto had for his confidences and his thoughts no doubt the tendency to dream grew upon him. " Behold this dreamer cometh," was actually said of him by one of his masters. Nevertheless there were happy times when youth asserted itself and boyish friendships were made. In work he did well, for he entered the sixth form at the early age of 16 J, and was thereby enabled, though he left young, to have his name painted up "in hall " below those of his three brothers, and also on his " study " door which belonged to each of the four in turn. He entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, straight from Rugby, and before he was seventeen. We have his word for it that he was spiritually very unhappy there, finding evils with which he was impotent to grapple, going up as he did so young from school and before 19 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" he had had time to acquire a " games " reputation — that all-important qualifica- tion for a boy if he wishes to influence his fellows. Nevertheless youthful spirits were bound to triumph sometimes. He was a perfectly sound and healthy, well- grown boy, and a friend who was with him at " the Shop " says he can remember no apparent trace of unhappiness, and is full of tales of his jokes and his fun, his quaint caricatures and doggerel rhymes, his love of flowers and nature, his hospital- ities, and his joy in getting his friends to meet and know and like each other. Though he made no mark at Woolwich he did carry off the prize for the best essay on the South African War. With it he made his first appearance in print, for it was printed in the R.M.A. Magazine. While he was at Woolwich the family circle was enlarged by the arrival of a cousin from Australia, and she and Donald became the greatest of friends. She 20 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" reminded him in some way of his mother, and this made all the difference. The Island of Mauritius, to which he was sent at the age of twenty, not so very long after having received his commission in the Royal Garrison Artillery, stood for him later on, he has told us, as " Reve- lation " — "for there it was that I was first a sceptic, ,and was first shown that I could not remain one." Also towards the end of his stay there, when he was doubting as to what course he should take, a sentence came to him insistently, " Would you know Christ ? Lo, He is working in His vineyard." It was these things that decided him eventually to resign his commission, but of them his letters home make little or no mention. They are full, on the other hand, of descrip- tions of the beauties of the Island which, curious, odd, freakish and unexpected, held him as did those of no other place. The curious inconsistencies of the Creole 21 ABOUT A "STUDENT IN ARMS" nature also interested him, and he spent much of his spare time sketching and studying the people. Two friendships he made there were diverse and lasting, but he complains very much of feeling the lack of a woman friend — no one to tease and pick flowers for ! While he was still there, there appeared at home a baby nephew — another " Hugh " — " trailing clouds of glory," but to return all too soon to his " Eternal Home." Some years previously, when his eldest sister had told him of her engagement, he congratulated her warmly, and said he iC had always longed for a nephew " ! He never saw the child, but wrote after his death that he had heard so much about him that he seemed to know him, and " I think I must have played with him in my dreams." Possibly the baby nephew, in his short ten months of life, did more for his uncle than either knew, for no frozen hearts could do otherwise than melt in \ - 3 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" the presence of the insistent needs of that gallant little spirit and fragile little body, and a more whole-hearted sister was awaiting him on his return home, which took place at the end of two years, after he had fallen a victim to the prevalent complaint in the R.G.A. — abscess on the liver. It was caused by the shocking conditions under which the R.G.A. had to live in Mauritius during that hot sum- mer when the Russian Fleet sojourned in Madagascan waters, and in Donald's case it necessitated a severe operation. His joy in his homecoming was quickly clouded over, for his father died only a month or two after his return ; not, how- ever, before he had given a delighted acquiescence to Donald's proposal to resign his commission and go to Oxford in order to study theology — his own favourite pursuit — with the object of eventually taking Holy Orders. In the spring of 1907 Donald took a 23 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" trip to Italy with his sister and a Rhodes Scholar cousin from Australia. It was the young men's first visit, and each brought back a special trophy : Donald's a large photograph of a fine virile " Por- trait of a man " by Giorgione in black and white, and his cousin a sweet Madonna head by Luini. Donald gave his sister her trophy on their return home, in remembrance of the lectures she had given the two of them on the pre-Raphaelite painters in Florence. It took the form of a water-colour carica- ture of herself, sitting enthroned in a Loggia as a sort of Sybil Saint with a halo and a book (Baedecker). Behind her, and outlined against a pale sky as seen through an archway of the Loggia in the typical Florentine fashion, are the blue mountains near Florence, some tall cypresses, a campanile and a castle perched on the top of a hill — all features of the landscapes through which they had passed 24 ABOUT " A STUDENT IN ARMS " together. In the foreground are him- self and his cousins as monks adoring, also with haloes, and expressions of mock ecstasy. On his return Donald went for a few months to Rugby House, the Rugby School Mission, in order to cram for Oxford. He thereby made a friend, and learned to love Browning. After living so long at Brighton, and then in barracks, the beauty of Oxford was in itself alone a revelation to him. The work there, too, was entirely con- genial. As a gunner subaltern he had been a square peg in a round hole. As regards the work there had been far too much to be accepted on authority for one of his fundamental type of mind ; the rela- tions existing between an officer and his men — in peace time, at any rate — seemed to him hardly human, and the making of quick decisions, which an officer is con- tinually called upon to do, was then as 25 ABOUT " A STUDENT IN ARMS " always very difficult to him. His tastes, too, unusual in a subaltern, had made him rather lonely. He found much more in common with the undergraduate than with the subaltern. Going up as an " oldster " (22) was to him an advantage rather than otherwise, for his six years in the Army had given him a certain pres- tige which was a help to his natural diffi- dence, and helped to open more doors to him, so that he was not limited to any set. He gained some reputation as a host, for he had the born host's gift of getting the right people together and making them feel at their ease. There was also, as a rule, some little individual touch about his entertainments that made them stand out. His manner, though natur- ally boyish and shy, could be both gay and debonair, quite irresistible in fact, when he was surrounded by congenial spirits. He played hockey, and was made a member of several clubs, sketched 26 ABOUT " A STUDENT IN ARMS " and made beautiful photographs. His time he divided strictly between the study of man and the study of theology, and though he did much hard, thorough and careful work in connexion with the latter, he always maintained that for a man who was going to be a parson the former was the more important study of the two. He used, however, to complain much at this time of feeling himself incapable of any very strong emotion, even that of sorrow. No doubt there is more stimulation to the brain than to the heart in the highly critical atmosphere of all phases of the intellectual life at Oxford, also Donald had hardly yet got over the shocks of his youth and the loneliness of his life abroad. He was, too, essentially and curiously the son of his father — even to his minor tastes, such as his connoisseur's , palate for a good wine and his judgment in "smokes" — and this feeling of a certain detachment from the larger emotions of 27 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" life was always his father's pose — the philosopher's. In his father's case it was perhaps engendered, if not necessitated, by his poor health and wretched nerves. But can we not trace his dissatisfac- tion at this time in what he felt to be his cold philosophical attitude towards life to the same cause as much of the misery he suffered as a boy ? In the paper he calls " School," which follows with that entitled " Home," he tells us how he would have liked to have chastised a schoolfellow " had he dared," and his failure to dare was evidently what reduced him to the state of impotent rage de- scribed on page 15 of this sketch. Again at Woolwich, what made him unhappy was not so much the evils which he sa , w but his impotence to deal with them. So now again at Oxford he feels " impo- tent," impotent this time to feel and sympathize as he would have wished with suffering humanity. But within 28 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" him was the light, " the light which is, of course, not physical," which betrayed itself through his wonderful smile, the same now as in babyhood ; and from his mother, and perhaps also from the young country that gave her birth, he had n- herited, as well as her great heart and broad human sympathies, the vigour that was to carry him through the experiences by means of which, in the fullness of time, that light, no longer dormant, was to break into a flame of infinite possibilities. Donald's one complaint against Oxford was that the ideas that are born and gener- ated there so often evaporate in talk and smoke. He left with the determination to " do," but before going on to a Clergy School he decided to accept a friend's invi- tation to visit him in savage Africa so that he might think things over, and put to the test, far away from the artificiali- ties of Modern Life, the ideas he had assimilated in the highly sophisticated 29 ABOUT " A STUDENT IN ARMS " atmosphere of Oxford. As he quaintly put it : " Since Paul went into Arabia for three years, I don't see why I should not go to British East Africa for six months ! " He did not, however, stay the whole time there, but re-visited his beloved Mauritius, and also stayed in Madagascar. The beginning of 1911 found him at the Clergy School. But what he wanted he did not find there. During his Oxford vacs he had made many expeditions to poorer London, at first to Notting Dale where was the Rugby School Mission, and afterwards to Bermondsey. But these expeditions had not been entirely satisfac- tory. He had then gone as a " visitor." The lessons he wanted to learn now from "the People" could only be learned by becoming as far as possible one of them. The story of his struggles to do so in his life in Bermondsey, and of his journey to Australia in the steerage of a German 30 ABOUT " A STUDENT IN ARMS " liner and of his roughing it there, always with the same object in view, cannot be told here. The first outcome of it all was the writing of his book, The Lord of All Good Life. Of this book he says, in a letter to his friend Tom Allen of the Oxford and Bermondsey Mission : — " The book I regard as my child. I feel quite absurdly about it ; to me it is the sudden vision of what lots of obscure things really meant. It is coming out of dark shadows into — moonlight. . . . I would have you to realize that it was written spontaneously in a burst, in six weeks, without any consultation of authorities or any revision to speak of. I had tried and tried, but without success. Then suddenly everything cleared up. To myself the writing of it was an illumi- nation. I did not write it laboriously and with calculation, or because I wanted to write a book and be an author. I wrote it because problems that had been troub- 31 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" ling me suddenly cleared up and because writing down the result was to me the natural way of getting everything straight in my own mind." The book was written not away in the peace of the country, nor in the compara- tive quiet of a certain sunny little sit- ting-room I know of, looking on to a leafy back garden in Kensington, where Donald often sat and smoked and wrote, but in a little flat in a dull tenement house in a grey street in Bermondsey, where I re- member visiting him with a cousin of his. Here the Student lived like a lord — for Bermondsey ! For he possessed two flats, one for his " butler " — a sick-looking young man in list slippers — and his wife and family, and the other for him- self. The little sitting-room in which he entertained us was very pleasant, with light walls, a bright table cloth, a gleam of something brass that had come from 32 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" Ceylon, one or two gaily painted dancing shields from Africa, and two barbaric looking dolls, about a foot high, dressed chiefly in beads and paint, that he had picked up in a shop in Tananarive^ Madagascar. They came in usefully when he was lecturing on Missions. His bedroom he did not want us to see. It struck cold and appeared to be reeking with damp. The weather had been rather dull when we arrived, but suddenly there was a glint of sunshine, and a grind-organ that had wandered up the street started playing just opposite. Two couple of children began to dance. A girl with a jug stopped to watch them, and mothers with babies came to their doors. A win- dow was thrown open opposite and a whole family of children leaned out to see the fun. Bermondsey was gay, and after we had gone the " Student " perpetuated the fact 33 c ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" in a water-colour drawing which he sent to his cousin afterwards. In the evening, however, the sounds would be more discordant, also the Student was running a Boys' Club, taking several Sunday services at the Mission, visiting some very sick people, and attending to a multifarious list of duties which left me breathless when I saw it, knowing too how many casual appeals always came to him and that he never was known to refuse a helping hand to any one. Never- theless it was there, and in six weeks, that the Lord of All Good Life was written. " Then came the war," and the Student shall tell us in his own words what it meant to him. Writing still to Tom Allen, who had also enlisted, and after- wards also gave his life in the war, he says — " For myself the war was, in a sense, a heaven-sent opportunity. Ever since I left Leeds I have been trying to follow 34 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" out the theory that the proper subject of study for the theologian was man, and had increasingly been made to feel that nothing but violent measures could over- come my own shyness sufficiently to enable me to study outside my own class. Enlistment had always appealed to me as one of the few feasible methods of ensuring the desired results. . . . " I was interested to hear that you found the so illuminating as regards human potentialities for bestiality. I think that I plumbed the depths between sixteen and a half and twenty- two. I have learned nothing more since then about bestiality. In fact I am hardened, and, I am afraid, take it for granted. Since then I have been discovering human goodness, which is far more satisfactory. And oh, I have found it ! In Ber- mondsey, in the stinking hold of the Zieten, in the wide, thirsty desert of Wes- tern Australia, and in the ranks of the 35 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 7th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade. I enlisted very largely to find out how far I really believed in the brotherhood of man when it comes to the point — and I do believe in it more and more." Donald Hankey enlisted in August, 1914, and after a period of training, part of which was certainly the happiest time of his life, he went to the front in May, 1915, coming home wounded in August, when he wrote for the Spectator most of the articles that were published anony- mously the following spring under the title of " A Student in Arms." Before he left hospital he received a commission in his old regiment, the R.G.A., but still finding himself with no love for big guns, he transferred to his eldest brother's regi- ment, the Royal Warwickshire, hoping that by doing so he might get back to the Front the sooner. He did not,- however, leave until May, 1916, after he had written his contribution to "Faith or Fear." 3G ABOUT " A STUDENT IN ARMS " Most of the numbers of the present volume were written in or near the trenches, and a fellow-officer gave his sister an in- teresting description of how it was done. " Your brother," said he, " will sit down in a corner of a trench, with his pipe, and write an article for the Spectator, or make funny sketches for his nephews and nieces, when none of the rest of us could concen- trate sufficiently even to write a letter." On October 6, Donald Hankey wrote home, " We shall probably be fighting by the time you get this letter, but one has a far better chance of getting through now than in July. I shall be very glad if we do have a scrap as we have been resting quite, long enough. Of course one always has to face possibilities on such occasions ; but we have faced them in advance, haven't we ? I believe with all my soul that whatever will be will be for the best. As I said before, I should hate to slide meanly into winter without a scrap. . . . 37 ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" I have a top-hole platoon — nearly all young, and nearly all have been out here eighteen months — thoroughly good sport- ing fellows ; so if I don't do well it will be my fault." Six days after this the Student knelt down for a few seconds with his men— we have it on the testimony of three of them — andjhe told them briefly what was before them : " If wounded, ' Blighty ' ; if killed, the Resurrection." Then " over the top." When he was last seen alive he was rallying his men, who had wavered for a moment under the heavy machine gun and rifle fire. He carried the waverers along with him, and was found that night close to the trench the winning of which had cost him his life, with his platoon sergeant and a few of his men by his side. What wonder that his cousin and best friend, when asked a short time previously what he was like, had replied, " He is the most beautiful thing that ever happened." 38 AUTHOR'S FOREWORD AUTHOR'S FOREWORD (Being Extracts from Letters to his Sister) " 1 am very much wondering whether you will receive ' A Diary ' in four parts. It is very much founded on fact, though altered in parts. You will probably be surprised at a certain change in tone, but remember that my previous articles were written in England, while this was written on the spot. . . . The Diary was not my diary, though it was so very nearly what mine might have been that it is difficult to say what is fiction and what is actuality in it. With regard to the ' conversation ' during the bombard- ment, it represents in its totality what I believe the ordinary soldier feels. He loathes the war, and the grandiloquent 41 AUTHOR'S FOREWORD speeches of politicians irritate him by their failure to realize how loathesome war is. At the same time he knows he has got to go through with it, and only longs for the chance to hurry up In the 1 Diary,' again, I quite deliberately empha- sized the depression of the man who thought he was being left out, and the mental effect of the clearing-up process because I thought that it would be a good thing for people to realize this side, and also partly because I felt that in previous articles I had glossed over it too much. ... If I get a chance of publishing another book I shall certainly include them." Note. — Not only " A Diary " and " Imaginary Conversations," but every paper in the present collection, with the exception of " The Wisdom," " A Potentate," and " A Passing in June," were written in France in 1916, and many of them actually in the trenches. The rough sketch for " A Passing in June " was written in France in 1915, 42 AUTHOR'S FOREWORD but was completed when the author was in hospital at home. " A Potentate" was written for the original volume of A Student in Arms, but was not published on account of its likeness in subject to Barrie's play, Der Tag, which, however, Donald had not seen or even heard of when he wrote his own. 43 THE POTENTATE THE POTENTATE 1 Scene. A tent (interior). The Poten- tate is sitting at a table listening t§ his Court Chaplain. Court Chaplain (concluding his re- marks). Where can we look for the King- dom of God, Sire, if not among the Ger- man people ? Consider your foes. The English are Pharisees, hypocrites. Woe to them, saith the Lord. The French are atheists. The Belgians are ignorant and priest-ridden. The Russians are sunk in mediaeval superstition. As for the Italians, half are atheists and the other half idolaters. Only in Germany do you 1 It is necessary to state that The Potentate was written before Sir James Barrie's play Der Tag appeared. 47 A STUDENT IN ARMS find a reasonable and progressive faith, devoid of superstition, abreast of scien- tific thought, and of the highest ethical value. Germany then, Sire, is the King- dom of God on earth. The Germans are the chosen people, the heirs of the promise, and let their enemies be scattered ! (The Potentate rises, leans forward with his hands on the table, and an ex- pression of extreme gratification, while the Chaplain stands with a smug and respectful smile on his white face.) Potentate. You are right, my dear Clericus, abundantly right. Very well put indeed ! Yes, Germany is the King- dom of God, and I (drawing himself up to his full height) — I am Germany ! The strength of the Lord is in my right arm, and He teaches it terrible things for the unbeliever and the hypocrite. With God I conquer ! Good night, my dear Cleri- cus, good night. 48 THE POTENTATE (Clericus departs with a low bow, and the Potentate sinks into his chair with a gesture of fatigue. Enter a General of the Headquarters Staff with telegrams.) Potentate (brightening). Ha, my dear General, you have news ? General. Excellent news, Sire ! On the Eastern front the Russians continue to give way. In the West a French attack has been repulsed with heavy loss, and our gallant Prussians have driven the British out of half a mile of trenches. (At this last bit of news the Potentate springs to his feet with a look of joy.) Potentate. A sign ! My God, a sign ! Pardon, General, I was thinking of a con- versation that I have just had with Dr. Clericus. Come now, show me where these trenches are. (The General produces a map, over which they pore together.) 49 d A STUDENT IN ARMS Potentate. Excellent, excellent ! A most valuable capture. Our losses were . ? General. Slight, Sire. Potentate. Better and better. I cannot afford to lose my good Prussians, my heroic, my invincible Prussians. To what do you attribute the success ? General. The success was due in a large measure to the perfection of the apparatus suggested a week ago by your Majesty's scientific adviser. Potentate (blanching a little). Ah, then it was not a charge, eh ? General. The charge followed, Sire ; but the work was already done. The defenders of the trench were already dead or dying before our heroes reached it. Potentate (sinking back in his chair with his finger to his lips, and a slight frown). Thank you, General, your news is of the best. I will detain you no longer. 50 THE POTENTATE (The General bows.) Stay ! Has a counter-attack been launched yet ? General. Not yet, Sire. No doubt one will be attempted to-night. Our men are prepared. Potentate. Good. Bring me fresh news as soon as it arrives. Good night, General, good night. (Exit General.) ( The Potentate sits musing for a consider- able time. A slight cough is heard, and he raises his head.) Potentate (slowly). Enter ! (Enter a tall -figure in a long black academic gown and black clothes.) Potentate (with an attempt at gaiety). Come in, my dear Sage, come in. You are welcome. (A little anxiously) You have the crystal ? Good. How is the Master ? Still busy devising new means of victory ? The Sage. My master's poor skill is 51 A STUDENT IN ARMS always at your service, Sire. You have only to command. Potentate. I know it. Now let me have the crystal. I would see if possible the scene of to-day's victory in Flanders. (The Sage hands him the crystal with a low bow. The Potentate seizes it eagerly, and gazes into it. A pause.) Potentate (raising his head suddenly). Horrible, horrible ! Sage. Sire ? Potentate. This last invention of your master's is inhuman ! Sage. War is inhuman, Sire. Where a speedy end is desired, is it not kindest to be cruel ? ( The Potentate gazes again into the crys- tal, but starts up immediately with a gasp of horror.) Potentate. Again the same vision ! Always after my victories the vision of the Crucified, with the stern reproachful 52 THE POTENTATE eyes ! Am I not the Lord's appointed instrument ? What means it ? Tell your master that I will have no more of his inventions. They are too diabolical ! They imperil my cause ! Sage {pointing to the crystal). Look again, Sire. Potentate (gazing into the crystal, and in a low and agonized voice). Time with his scythe raised menacingly against me. (Abruptly) This is a trickery, Sirrah ! Have a care ! But I will not be tricked. Are my troops not brave ? Are they not invincible ? Can they not win by their proven valour ? Who can stand against them, for the strength of the Lord is in their right hands ? (Enter General hastily.) General. Sire . . . (He starts, and stops short.) Potentate (testily). Go on, go on. What is it ? 53 A STUDENT IN ARMS General. Sire, the English counter- attack has for the moment succeeded. Infuriated by their defeat they fought so that no man could resist them. They have regained the trenches they had lost, but we hope to attack again to- morrow, when Potentate. Enough ! Leave me ! (The General withdraws, and the Poten- tate leans forward with his head on his hands.) Sage (commiseratingly). Apparently other troops are brave besides your own, Sire ! Potentate (brokenly). The cowards ! The cowards ! Five nations against three ! Alas, my poor Prussians ! Sage. If you will look once more into the crystal, Sire, I think you will see something that will interest you. {The Potentate takes the crystal again 9 but without confidence.) 54 THE POTENTATE Potentate (in a slow recitative). A stricken field by night. The dead lie everywhere, German and English, side by side. But all are not dead. Some are but wounded. They help one another. Prussian and Briton help one another, with painful smiles on their white faces. What ? Have they forgotten their hate ? My Prussians ! Can you so soon forget ? I mourn for you ! But who are these ? White figures, vague, elusive ! See, they seem to come down from above. They are carrying away the souls of my Prus- sians ! And of the accursed English ! What ! One Paradise for both ! Im- possible ! And who is that watching ? He who with a smile so loving, and yet so stern ... Ah ! ... My God . . . no ! . . . not I . . . (The Potentate rises with a strangled cry, and sinks into his chair a nerveless wreck. The Sage watches coolly, with a cynical smile.) 55 A STUDENT IN ARMS Sage. So, Sire, you must find room for the English in that kingdom of yours and God's ! Perchance it is more catho- lic than we had thought ! {The Potentate groans.) Sage. Sire, you have seen some truth to-night. Is courage, is God, all on your side ? Is Time on your side ? Shall I go back to my master and tell him that you need no more of his inventions ? {He pauses, and glances at the Potentate with a look of contempt, and then turns to go. The Potentate looks round him with a ghastly stare.) Potentate {feebly). No . . . the Cru- cified . . . Time . . . Stay, stay ! {The Sage turns with a gesture of triumph.) {Curtain.) 56 THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE II THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE A padre who has earned the right to talk about the " average Tommy," writes to me that A Student in Arms gives a very one-sided picture of him. While cordially admitting his unselfishness, his good com- radeship, his patience, and his pluck, my friend challenges me to deny that military, and especially active, service often has a brutalizing effect on the soldier, weakening his moral fibres, and causing him to sink to a low animal level. Those who are in the habit of reading between the lines will, I think, often have seen the shadow of this darker side of army life on the pages of A Student in Arms ; but I have not written of it speci- 59 A STUDENT IN ARMS fically for several reasons. It will suffice if I mention two. First, I was writing mainly of the private and the N.C.O. Rightly or wrongly, I imagined that those for whom I was writing were in the habit of taking for granted this darker side of life in the ranks. I imagined that they thought of the " lower classes " as being naturally coarser and more animal than the " upper classes." I wanted then, and I want now, to contradict that belief with all the vehemence of which I am capable. Officers and men necessarily de- velop different qualities, different forms of expression, different mental attitudes. But I am confident that I speak the truth when I say that essentially, and in the eyes of God there is nothing to choose between them. If I must write of the brutalizing effect of war on the soldier, let it be clearly understood that I am speaking, not of officers only, nor of privates only, but of 60 THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE fighting men of every class and rank. As a matter of fact I have never, whether before or during the war, belonged to a mess where the tone was cleaner or more wholesome than it was in the Sergeants' Mess of my old battalion. My second reason for not writing about the bad side of Army life was that mere condemnation is so futile. I have listened to countless sermons in which the " lusts of the flesh " were de- nounced, and have known for certain that their power for good was nil. If I write about it now, it is only because I hope that I may be able to make clearer the causes and processes of such moral deterioration as exists, and thus to help those who are trying to combat it, to do so with greater understanding and sympathy. Even in England most officers, and all privates, are cut off from their womenfolk. Mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts are inaccessible. All have a certain 61 A STUDENT IN ARMS amount of leisure, and very little to do with it. All are physically fit and ment- ally rather unoccupied. All are living under an unnatural discipline from which, when the last parade of the day is over, there is a natural reaction. Finally, wherever there are troops, and especially in war time, there are " bad " women and weak women. The result is inevitable. A certain number of both officers and men " go wrong." Fifteen months ago I was a private quartered in a camp near Aldershot. After tea it began to get dark. The tent was damp, gloomy, and cold. The Y.M.C.A. tent and the Canteen tent were crowded. One wandered off to the town. The various soldiers' clubs were filled and overflowing. The bars required more cash than one possessed. The result was that one spent a large part of one's even- ings wandering aimlessly about the streets. Fortunately I discovered an upper room in 62 THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE a Wesleyan soldiers' home, where there was generally quiet, and an empty chair. I shall always be grateful to that " home," for the many hours which I whiled away there with a book and a pipe. But most of us spent a great deal of our leisure, bored and impecunious, " on the streets " ; and if a fellow ran up against " a bit of skirt," he was generally just in the mood to follow it wherever it might lead. The moral of this is, double your subscriptions to the Y.M.C.A., Church huts, soldiers' clubs, or whatever organization you fancy ! You will be helping to combat vice in the only sensible way. I don't suppose that the officers were much better off than we were. Their tents may have been a little lighter and less crowded than ours. They had a late dinner to occupy part of the long evening. They had more money to spend, and perhaps more to occupy their minds. But I fancy that as great a proportion of them 63 A STUDENT IN ARMS as of us took the false step ; and though perhaps when they compared notes their language may have been less blunt than ours, I am not sure that, for this very reason, it may not have been more poison- ous. But mind you, we did not all go wrong, by any means, though I believe that some fellows did, both officers and men, who would not have done so if they had stayed at home with their mothers, sisters, sweethearts, or wives. So much for the Army at home. When we cross the Channel every feature is a hundred times intensified. Consider the fighting man in the trenches — and I am still speaking of both officers and men — the most ordinary refinements of life are conspicuously absent. There is no water to wash in. Vermin abound, sleeping and eating accommodation are frankly disgusting. One is obliged for the time to live like a pig. Added to this one is all the time in a state of nervous tension. 64 THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE One gets very little sleep. Every night has its anxieties and responsibilities. Danger or death may come at any moment. So for a week or a fortnight or a month, as the case may be. Then comes the return to billets, to comparative safety and comfort — the latter nothing to boast about though ! Tension is relaxed. There is an inevitable reaction. Officers and men alike determine to " gather rosebuds " while they may. Their bodies are fit, their wills are relaxed. If they are built that way, and an opportunity offers, they will " satisfy the lusts of the flesh." When there is real fighting to be done the dangers of the after-reaction are in- tensified. You who sit at home and read of glorious bayonet charges do not realize what it means to the man behind the bayonet. You don't realize the re- pugnance for the first thrust — a repug- nance which has got to ;be overcome. You don't realize the change that comes 65 e A STUDENT IN ARMS over a man when his bayonet is wet with the blood of his first enemy. He " sees red." The primitive " blood-lust," kept under all his life by the laws and principles of peaceful society, surges through his being, transforming him, maddening him with the desire to kill, kill, kill ! Ask any one who has been through it if this is not true. And that letting loose of a primitive lust is not going to be without its effect on a man's character. At the same time, of course, not all of us become animals out here. There are other influences at work. Caring for the wounded, burying the mutilated dead, cause one to hate war, and to value ten times more the ways of peace. Many are saved from sinking in the scale, by a love of home which is able to bridge the gulf which separates them from their beloved. The letters of my platoon are largely love letters — often the love letters of [married men to their wives. 66 THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE There is immorality in the Army ; when there is opportunity immorality is rife. Possibly there is more abroad than there is at home. If so it is because there is far greater temptation. Nevertheless, I fancy that my correspondent, who is a padre, a don, and at least the beginning of a saint, is perhaps inclined to exaggerate the extent of the evil in the Army as compared with civil life. I imagine that very few padres, especially if they are dons, and most of all if they are saints, realize that in civil life as in Army life, the average man is immoral, both in thought and deed. Let us be frank about this. What a doctor might call the " appetites " and a padre the " lusts " of the body, hold dominion over the average man, whether civilian or soldier, unless they are counteracted by a stronger power. The only men who are pure are those who are absorbed in some pursuit, or possessed by a great love; whether it be the love of clean, wholesome 67 A STUDENT IN ARMS life which is religion, or the love of a noble man which is hero-worship, or the love of a true woman. These are the four powers which are stronger than " the flesh " — the zest of a quest, religion, hero-worship, and the love of a good woman. If a man is not possessed by one of these he will be immoral. Probably most men are immoral. The conditions of military, and especially of active service merely intensify the tempt- ation. Unless a soldier is wholly devoted to the cause, or powerfully affected by religion, or by hero-worship, or by pure love, he is immoral. Perhaps most men are immoral if they get the chance. Most soldiers are im- moral if they get the chance. But those who are trying to help the soldier can do so with a good heart if they realize that in him they have a foundation on which to build. Already he is half a hero-wor- shipper. Already he half believes in the 68 THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY \ SERVICE beauty of sacrifice and in the life immortal. Already he is predisposed to value ex- ceedingly all that savours of clean, whole- some home life. On that foundation it should be possible to build a strong idealism which shall prevail against the flesh. And this is my last word — it is by building up, and not by casting down, that the soldier can be saved from de- gradation. The devil that possesses so many can only be cast out by an angel that is stronger than he. THE GOOD SIDE OF " MILITARISM" Ill THE GOOD SIDE OF " MILITARISM " I had a letter the other day from an Oxford friend. In it was this phrase : " I loathe militarism in all its forms." Somehow it took me back quite suddenly to the days before the war, to ideas that I had almost completely forgotten. I suppose that in those days the great feature of those of us who tried to be " in the forefront of modern thought " was their riotous egotism, their anarchical insistence on the claims of the individual at the expense even of law, order, society, and conven- tion. " Self-realization " we considered to be the primary duty of every man and woman. The wife who left her husband, chil- 73 A STUDENT IN ARMS dren, and home because of her passion for another man was a heroine, brav- ing the hypocritical judgments of society to assert the claims of the individual soul. The woman who refused to abandon all for love's sake, was not only a coward but a criminal, guilty of the deadly sin of sacrificing her soul, committing it to a prison where it would languish and never blossom to its full perfection. The man who was bound to uncongenial drudgery by the chains of an early mar- riage or aged parents dependent on him, was the victim of a tragedy which drew tears from our eyes. The woman who neglected her home because she needed a " wider sphere " in which to develop her personality was a champion of women's rights, a pioneer of enlightenment. And, on the other hand, the people who went on making the best of uncongenial drudgery, or in any way subjected their individu- alities to what old-fashioned people called 74 THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM" duty, were in our eyes contemptible pol- troons. It was the same in politics and reli- gion. To be loyal to a party or obedient to a Church was to stand self-confessed a fool or a hypocrite. Self-realization, that was in our eyes the whole duty of man. And then I thought of what I had seen only a few days before. First, of bat- talions of men marching in the darkness, steadily and in step, towards the roar of the guns ; destined in the next twelve hours to charge as one man, without hesi- tation or doubt, through barrages of cruel shell and storms of murderous bullets. Then, the following afternoon, of a handful of men, all that was left of about three battalions after ten hours of fighting, a handful of men exhausted, parched, strained, holding on with grim determina- tion to the last bit of German trench, until they should receive the order to 75 A STUDENT IN ARMS retire. And lastly, on the days and nights following, oi the constant streams of wounded and dead being carried down the trench ; of the unceasing search that for three or four days was never fruitless. Self-realization ! How far we have travelled from the ideals of those pre- war days. And as I thought things over I wondered at how faint a response that phrase, " I loathe militarism in all its forms," found in my own mind. Before the war I too hated " militarism." I despised soldiers as men who had sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. The sight of the Guards drilling in Wel- lington Barracks, moving as one man to the command of their drill instructor, stirred me to bitter mirth. They were not men but manikins. When I first enlisted, and for many months after- wards, the " mummeries of military dis- cipline," the saluting, the meticulous uniformity, the rigid suppression of indi- 76 THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM" vidual exuberance, chafed and infuriated me. I compared it to a ritualistic re- ligion, a religion of authority only, which depended not on individual assent but on tradition for its sanctions. I loathed militarism in all its forms. Now . . . well, I am inclined to reconsider my judgment. Seeing the end of military discipline, has shown me something of its ethical meaning — more than that, of its spiritual meaning. For though the part of the " great push " that it fell to my lot to see was not a successful part, it was none the less a triumph — a spiritual triumph. ^From the accounts of the ordinary war corre- spondent I think one hardly realizes how great a spiritual triumph it was. For the war correspondent only sees the outside, and can only describe the out- side of things. We who are in the Army, who know the men as individuals, who have talked with them, joked with them, 77 A STUDENT IN ARMS censored their letters, worked with them, lived with them we see below the surface. The war correspondent sees the faces of the men as they march towards the Valley of the Shadow, sees the steadiness of eye and mouth, hears the cheery jest. He sees them advance into the Valley with- out flinching. He sees some of them return, tired, dirty, strained, but still with a quip for the passer-by. He gives us a picture of men without nerves, with- out sensitiveness, without imagination, schooled to face death as they would face rain or any trivial incident of everyday life. The " Tommy " of the war corre- spondent is not a human being, but a lay figure with a gift for repartee, little more than the manikin that we thought him in those far-off days before the war, when we watched him drilling on the barrack square. We soldiers know better. We know that each one of those men is an individual, full of human affections, many 78 THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM" of them writing tender letters home every week, each one longing with all his soul for the end of this hateful business of war which divides him from all that he loves best in life. We know that every one of these men has a healthy in- dividual's repugnance to being maimed, and a human shrinking from hurt and from the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The knowledge of all this does not do away with the even tread of the troops as they pass, the steady eye and mouth, the cheery jest ; but it makes these a hundred times more significant. For we know that what these things signify is not lack of human affection, or weak- ness, or want of imagination, but some- thing superimposed on these, to which they are wholly subordinated. Over and above the individuality of each man, his personal desires and fears and hopes, there is the corporate personality of the soldier which knows no fear and only one 79 A STUDENT IN ARMS ambition — to defeat the enemy, and so to further the righteous cause for which he is righting. In each of those men there is this dual personality : the ordinary human ego that hates danger and shrinks from hurt and death, that longs for home, and would welcome the end of the war on any terms ; and also the stronger personality of the soldier who can tol- erate but one end to this war, cost what that may — the victory of liberty and jus- tice, and the utter abasement of brute force. And when one looks back over the months of training that the soldier has had, one recognizes how every feature of it, though at the time it often seemed trivial and senseless and irritating, was in reality directed to this end. For ifrom the moment that a man becomes a soldier his dual personality begins. Henceforth he is both a man and a soldier. Before his training is complete the order must 80 THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM" be reversed, and he must be a soldier and a man. As a soldier he must obey and salute those whom, as a man, he very likely dislikes and despises. In his con- duct he no longer only has to consider his reputation as a man, but still more his honour as a soldier. In all the condi- tions of his life, his dress, appearance^ food, drink, accommodation, and work,, his individual preferences count for no- thing, his efficiency as a soldier counts for everything. At first he " hates " this, and " can't see the point of " that. But by the time his training is complete he has realized that whether he hates a thing or not, sees the point of a thing or not, is a matter of the uttermost unim- portance. If he is wise, he keeps his likes and dislikes to himself. All through his training he is learn- ing the unimportance of his individual- ity, realizing that in a national, a world crisis, it counts for nothing*. 81 F A STUDENT IN ARMS On the other hand, he is equally learning that as a unit in a fighting force his every action is of the utmost import- ance. The humility which the Army inculcates is not an abject self-deprecia- tion that leads to loss of self-respect and effort. Substituted for the old indivi- dualism is a new self-consciousness. The man has become humble, but in proportion the soldier has become exceeding proud. The old personal whims and ambitions give place to a corporate ambition and purpose, and this unity of will is symbol- ized in action by the simultaneous exacti- tude of drill, and in dress by the rigid identity of uniform. Anything which calls attention to the individual, whether in drill or in dress, is a crime, because it is essential that the soldier's individuality should be wholly subordinated to the corporate personality of the regiment. As I said before, the personal humility of the soldier has nothing in it of abject 82 THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM" self- depreciation or slackness. On the contrary, every detail of his appearance, and every most trivial feature of his duty assumes an immense significance. Slack- ness in his dress and negligence in his work are military crimes. In a good regi- ment the soldier is striving after perfection all the time. And it is when he comes to the supreme test of battle that the fruits of his train- ing appear. The good soldier has learnt the hardest lesson of all — the lesson of self-subordination to a higher and bigger personality. He has learnt to sacrifice everything which belongs to him individu- ally to a cause that is far greater than any personal ambitions of his own can ever be. He has learnt to do this so thoroughly that he knows no fear — for fear is personal. He has learnt to " hate " father and mother and life itself for the sake of — though he may not call it that — the Kingdom of God on earth. 83 A STUDENT IN ARMS It is a far cry from the old days when one talked of self-realization, isn't it ? I make no claim to be a good soldier ; but I think that perhaps I may be beginning to be one ; for if I am asked now whether I " loathe militarism in all its forms," I think that " the answer is in the negative." I will even go farther, and say that I hope that some of the discipline and self-sub- ordination that have availed to send men calmly to their death in war, will survive in the days of peace, and make of those who are left better citizens, better workmen, better servants of the State, better Churchmen. 84 A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES IV A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES Timothy and I are on detachment. We are billeted with M. le Cure, and we mess at the schoolmaster's. Hence we are on good terms with all parties, for of course a good schoolmaster shrugs his shoulders at a priest, and a good priest returns the compliment. In war time, however, the hatchet seems to be buried pretty deep. We have not seen it stick- ing out anywhere. M. le Cure has a beautiful rose garden, a cask of excellent cider, a passable Sauterne, and a charming pony. He is a good fellow, I should think, though with- out much education. His house — or what I have seen of it — is the exact opposite of what an English country vicar's would 87 A STUDENT IN ARMS be. The only sitting-room that I have seen is as neat as an old maid's. There is a polished floor, an oval polished table on which repose four large albums at regular intervals, each on its own little mat. There is a mantelpiece with gilt candlesticks and an ornate clock under a glass dome. Round the walls are photographs of brother clergy, the place of honour being assigned to a stout Chanoine. The chairs are stiff and un- comfortable. One of them, which is more imposing and uncomfortable than the rest, is obviously for the Bishop when he comes. There are no papers, no books, no ash-trays, no confusion. I have never seen M. le Cure sit there. I fancy he lives in the kitchen and in his garden. Timothy sleeps in the bed which the Bishop uses, and is told he ought to feel tres saint. The wife of the schoolmaster cooks for us. She is an excellent soul. We give 88 A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES her full marks. She has a smile and an omelette for every emergency, and waves aside all Timothy's vagaries with " Ah, monsieur, la jeunesse ! " I am not sure that Timothy quite likes it ! Timothy is immense. He is that rarest of birds, a wholly delightful egotist. He is the sun, but we all bask and shine with reflected glory. The men are splendid, because they are his men. I am a great success because I am his subaltern. For- tunately we all have a sense of humour and so are highly pleased with ourselves and each other. After all, if one is a Captain at twenty-two . . . ! But he's a good soldier, too, and we all believe in him. Timothy's all right, in spite of la jeunesse ! Rain ! The men are fifteen in a tent in a sea of mud. Poor beggars ! They are having a thin time. Working parties in the trenches day and night ; every one 89 A STUDENT IN ARMS soaked to the skin ; and then a return to a damp, crowded, muddy tent. No pay, no smokes, and yet they are won- derfully cheery, and all think that the " Push " is going to end the war. I wish I thought so ! These rats are the limit ! The dug- out swarms with them. Last night they ate half my biscuits and a good part of Timothy's clean socks, and whenever I began to get to sleep one of them would run across my face, or some other sensitive part of my anatomy, and wake me up. I shall leave the candle alight to-night, to see if that keeps them away. Last night the rats tried to eat the candle, and very nearly set me on fire. If it were not for the rain I would try the firestep. The men are having a rotten time again — no proper shelter from the rain, and short rations, to say nothing of remarkably 90 A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES good practice by the Boche artillery. C , just out from England, got scup- pered this afternoon. A good boy — made his communion just before we came in. I suppose he didn't know much about it, and that he is really better off now ; but at the same time it makes one angry. The rain has lifted, so last night I tried the firestep, and got a good sleep. The absurd thing was that I couldn't wake up properly. I came on duty at midnight, was roused, got to my feet, and started to walk along the trench. And then the Nameless Terror, that lurks in dark corners when one is a small boy, gripped me. I was frightened of the dark, filled with a sense of impending disaster ! It took about ten minutes to wake pro- perly and shake it off. I must try to get more sleep somehow ; but it is jolly difficult. 91 A STUDENT IN ARMS The great bombardment has begun, the long-promised strafing of the Boche. According to the gunners they will all be dead, buried, or dazed when the time comes for us to go over the top. I doubt it ! If they have enough deep dug-outs I don't fancy that the bombardment will worry them very much. Now we are at rest for a day or two before the Push. I am to be left out — in charge of carriers. Damn ! I might as well be A.S.C. I see myself counting ration bags while the battalion is charging with fixed bayonets ; and in the evening sending up parties of weary laden carriers over shell-swept areas, while I myself stay behind at the Dump. Damn ! Damn ! ! Damn ! ! ! Then I shall receive ironical congratulations on my " cushy " job. Have just seen the battalion off. I 92 A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES don't start for another five hours. I loathe war. It is futile, idiotic. I would gladly be out of the Army to-morrow. Glory is a painted idol, honour a phan- tasy, religion a delusion. We wallow in blood and torture to please a creature of our imagination. We are no better than South Sea Islanders. Just here the attack was a failure. Wlien I got to the Dump I found the battalion still there. By an irony of fate I was the only officer of my com- pany to set foot in the German lines. After a day of idleness and depression I had to detail a party to carry bombs at top speed to some relics of the leading battalions, who were still clinging to the extremest corner of the enemy's front line some distance to our left. Being fed up with inaction, I took the party myself. It was a long way. The trenches were choked with wounded and stragglers and 93 A STUDENT IN ARMS troops who had never been ordered to advance. In many places they were broken down by shell-fire. In others they were waist-deep in water. By dint of much shouting and shoving and cursing I managed to get through with about ten of my men, but had to leave the others to follow with a sergeant. At last we sighted our objective, a cluster of chalk mounds surrounded with broken wire, shell craters, corpses, wreathed in smoke, dotted with men. I think we all ran across the ground between our front line and our objective, though it must have been more or less dead ground. Anyhow, only one man was hit. When we got close the scene was absurdly like a con- ventional battle picture — the sort of pic- ture that one never believes in for a minute. There was a wild mixture of regiments — Jocks, Irishmen, Territorials, etc., etc. There was no proper trench left. There were rifles, a machine gun, a Lewis 94 A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES rifle, and bombs all going at the same time. There were wounded men sitting in a kino! of helpless stupor ; there were wounded trying to drag themselves back to our own lines ; there were the dead of whom no one took any notice. But the prevailing note was one of utter weariness coupled with dogged tenacity. Here and there were men who were self-conscious, wondering what would become of themselves. I was one of them, and we were none the better for it. Most of the fellows, though, had forgotten themselves. They no longer flinched, or feared. They had got beyond that. They were just set on clinging to that mound and keeping the Huns at bay until their officer gave the word to retire. Their spirit was the spirit of the oarsman, the runner, or the footballer, who has strained himself to the utmost, who if he stopped to wonder whether he could go on or not would collapse ; but who, 95 A STUDENT IN ARMS because he does not stop to wonder, goes on miraculously long after he should, by all the laws of nature, have succumbed to sheer exhaustion. Having delivered my bombs into eager hands, I reported to the officer who seemed to be in charge, and asked if I could do anything. I must frankly admit that my one hope was that he would not want me to stay. He began to say how that morning he had reached his objective, and how for lack of support on his flank, for lack of bombs, for lack of men, he had been forced back ; and how for eight hours he had disputed every inch of ground till now his men could only cling to these mounds with the dumb mechani- cal tenacity of utter exhaustion. " You might go to H.Q.," he said at last, " and tell them where I am, and that I can't hold on without ammunition and a bar- rage." I am afraid that I went with joy on 96 A MONTH'S EXPERIENCES that errand. I did not want to stay on those chalk mounds. I only saw a very little bit of the battle. Thank God it has gone well: elsewhere ; but here we are where we started. Day and night we have done nothing but bring in the wounded and the dead. When one sees the dead, their limbs crushed and mangled, their features distorted and blackened, one can only have repulsion for war. It is easy to talk of glory and heroism when one is away from it, when memory has softened the gruesome details. But here, in the presence of the mutilated and tortured dead, one can only feel the horror and wickedness of war. Indeed it is an evil harvest, sown of pride and arrogance and lust of power. Maybe through all this, evil and pain we shall be purged of many sins. God grant it ! If ever there were martyrs, some of these were m rtyrs^ 97 G A STUDENT IN ARMS facing death and torture as ghastly as any that confronted the saints of old, and facing it with but little of that fierce fanatical exaltation of faith that the early Christians had to help them. For these were mostly quiet souls, loving their wives and children and the little com- forts of home life most of all, little stirred by great emotions or passions. Yet they had some love for liberty, some faith in God — not a high and flaming passion, but a quiet insistent conviction. It was enough to send them out to face martyrdom, though their lack of imagination left them merci- fully ignorant of the extremity of its terrors. It was enough, when they saw their danger in its true perspective, to keep them steadfast and tenacious. For them "it is finished." R.I.P. 98 ROMANCE V ROMANCE I suppose that there are very few officers or men who have been at the front for any length of time who would not be secretly, if not openly, relieved and de- lighted if they " got a cushy one " and found themselves en route for " Blighty " ; yet in many ways soldiering at the front is infinitely preferable to soldiering at home. One of the factors which count most heavily in favour of the front, is the extraordinary affection of officers for their men. In England officers hardly know their men. They live apart, only meet on parade, and their intercourse is carried on through the prescribed channels. Even if you do get keen on a par- 101 A STUDENT IN ARMS ticular squad of recruits, or a particular class of would-be bombers, you lose them so soon that your enthusiasm never ripens into anything like intimacy. But at the front you have your own platoon ; and week after week, month after month, you are living in the closest proximity ; you see them all day, you get to know the character of each individual man and boy, and the result in nearly every case is this extraordinary affection of which I have spoken. You will find it in the most unlikely subjects. I have heard a Major, a Regular with, as I thought, a good deal of regimental stiffness, talk about his men with a voice almost choked with emotion. " When you see what they have to put up with, and how amazingly cheery they are through it all, you feel that you can't do enough for them. They make you feel that you're not fit to black their boots." And then he went on to tell how 102 ROMANCE it was often the fellows whom in England you had despaired of, fellows who were always "up at orders," who out at the front became your right-hand men, the men on whom you found yourself relying. I had a letter not long ago from a gunner Captain, also a Regular, who has been out almost since the beginning of the war. He wrote : " One of my best friends has just been killed " ; and the " best friend " was not the fellow he had known at " the shop," or played polo with in India, or hunted with in Ireland, but a scamp of a telephonist, who had stolen his whisky and owned up ; who had risked his life for him, who had been a fellow-sportsman who could be relied on in a tight corner in the most risky of all games. There is indeed a glamour and a pathos about the private soldier, especially when, as so often happens, he is really only a boy. When you meet him in the trenches, wet, covered with mud, with tired eyes 103 A STUDENT IN ARMS speaking of long watches and hours of risky work, he never fails to greet you with a smile, and you love him for it, and feel that nothing you can do can make up to him for it. For you have slept in a much more comfortable place than he has. You have had unlimited tobacco and cigarettes. You have had a servant to cook for you. You have fared sumptuously compared with him. You don't feel his superior. You don't want to be " gracious without undue familiarity." Exactly what you want to do is a bit doubtful — the Major said he wanted to black his boots for him, and that is perhaps the best way of expressing it. When he goes over the top and works away in front of the parapet with the moon shining full and the machine guns busy all along ; when he gets back to billets, and throws off his cares and bathes and plays games like any irresponsible 104 ROMANCE schoolboy ; even when he breaks bounds and is found by the M.P. skylarking in , you can't help loving him. Most of all, when he lies still and white with a red stream trickling from where the sniper's bullet has made a hole through his head, there comes a lump in your throat that you can't swallow, and you turn away so that you shan't have to wipe the tears from your eyes. Gallant souls, those boys, and all the more gallant because they hate war so much. Their nerves quiver when a shell or a " Minnie " falls into the trench near them, and then they smile to hide their weak- ness. They hate going over the parapet when the machine guns are playing ; so they don't hesitate, but plunge over with a smile to hide their fears. Their cure for every mental worry is a smile, their answer to every prompting of fear is a plunge. They have no philosophy or fanaticism to help them — only the sport- 105 A STUDENT IN ARMS ing instinct which is in every healthy British boy. Then there are " the old men," less attractive, less stirring to the imagination, less sensitive, but who grow upon you more and more as you get to know them. Any one over twenty-three or so is an " old man." They have lost the grace, the irresponsibility, the sensibility of youth. Their eyes and mouths are steadier, their movements more deliberate. But they are the fellows whom you would choose for a patrol, or a raid, where a cool head and a stout heart are what is wanted. It takes you longer to know these. They are less responsive to your advances. But when you have tested them and they have tested you, you know that you have that which is stronger than any terror of night or day, a loyalty which nothing can shake. And then when he thinks how little he deserves all this love and loyalty, the 106 ROMANCE subaltern's heart aches with a feeling that can find no expression either in word or deed. This is a tale that has often been told, and that people in England know by heart. It cannot be told too often. It cannot be learnt too well. For the time will come when we shall need to remember it, and when it will be easy to forget. Will you remember it, O ye people, when the boy has become a man, and the soldier has become a workman ? But there are other tales to tell. There are the tales of the sergeant-major and the sergeants, the corporals and the " lance- jacks." Sergeant-majors, sergeants, and corporals are not romantic figures. If you think of them at all, you probably think of rum- jars and profanity. Yet they are the very backbone of the Army. I have been a sergeant and I have been a private sol- dier, and I know that the latter has much the better time of the two. He at least has 107 A STUDENT IN ARMS the kind of liberty which belongs to utter irresponsibility. If he breaks bounds in the exuberance of his spirits, no one thinks much worse of him as long as he does not make a song about paying the penalty I Of course he has to be punished. So many days of sleeping in the guard tent, extra fatigues, pack-drill, and perhaps a couple of hours tied up, as an example to evildoers. But if he has counted the cost, and pays the price with a grin, we just say " Young scamp ! " and dismiss the matter. But if a sergeant or a corporal does the same, that's a very, different matter. He has shown himself unfit for his job. He has betrayed a trust. We cannot forgive him. Responsibility has its disadvantages. The senior N.C.O. gets no relaxation from discipline. In the line and out of it he must always be watch- ful, self-controlled, orderly. He must never wink. These men have not the glamour of the boy private ; but their high 103 ROMANCE sense of duty and discipline, their keenness and efficiency, merit all the honour that we can give them. Finally — for it would not do for a sub- altern to discuss his superiors — we come to the junior officer. Somehow I fancy that in the public eye he too is a less romantic figure than the private. One does not associate him with privations and hardships, but with parcels from home. Well, it is quite right. He has such a much less uncomfortable time than his men that he does not deserve or want sympathy on that score. He is better off in every way. He has better quarters, better food, more kit, a servant, and in billets far greater liberty. And yet there is many a man who is now an officer who looks back on his days as a private with regret. Could he have his time over again . . . yes, he would take a commis- sion ; but he would do so, not with any thought for the less hardship of it, but 109 A STUDENT IN ARMS from a stern sense of duty — the sense of duty which does not allow a man with any self-respect to refuse to shoulder a heavier burden when called upon to do so. Those apparently irresponsible subalterns whom you see entertaining their lady friends at the Carlton or Ciro's do, when they are at the front, have very heavy responsibilities. Even in the ordinary routine of trench life, so many decisions have to be made, with the chance of a " telling off " whichever way you choose, and the lives of other men hanging in the balance. Suppose you are detailed for a wiring party, and you arrive to find a full moon beaming sardonically down at you. What are you to do ? If you go out you may be seen. Half a dozen of your men may be mown down by a machine gun. You will be blamed and will blame your- self for not having decided to remain behind the parapet. If you do not go 110 ROMANCE out you may set a precedent, and night after night the work will be postponed, till at last it is too late, and the Hun has got through, and raided the trench. If you hesitate or ask advice you are lost. You have to make up your mind in an instant, and to stand by it. If you waver your men will never have confidence in you again. Still more in a push ; a junior subaltern is quite likely to find himself at any time in command of a company, while he may for a day even have to com- mand the relics of a battalion. I have seen boys almost fresh from a Public School in whose faces there were two personalities expressed : the one full of the lighthearted, reckless, irresponsible vitality of boyhood, and the other scarred with the anxious lines of one to whom a couple of hundred exhausted and nerve- shattered men have looked, and not looked in vain, for leadership and strength in ill A STUDENT IN ARMS their grim extremity. From a boy in such a position is required something far more difficult than personal courage. If we praise the boy soldier for his smile in the face of shells and machine guns, don't let us forget to praise still more the boy officer who, in addition to facing death on his own account, has to bear the respon- sibility of the lives of a hundred other men. There is many a man of undoubted courage whose nerve would fail to bear that strain. A day or two ago I was reading Romance, by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Hueffer. It is a glorious tale of piracy and adventure in the West Indies ; but for the moment I wondered how it came about that Con- rad, the master of psychology, should have helped to write such a book. And then I understood. For these boys who hate the war, and suffer and endure with the smile that is sometimes so difficult, and long with a great longing for home and 112 ROMANCE peace — some day some of them will look back on these days and will tell them- selves that after all it was " Romance," the adventure, which made their lives worth while. And they will long to feel once again the stirring of the old comrade- ship and love and loyalty, to dip their clasp-knives into the same pot of jam, and lie in the same dug-out, and work on the same bit of wire with the same machine gun striking secret terror into their hearts, and look into each other's eyes for the same courageous smile. For Romance, after all, is woven of the emotions, especi- ally the elemental ones of love and loyalty and fear and pain. We men are never content ! In the dull routine of normal life we sigh for Romance, and sometimes seek to create it artificially, stimulating spurious pas- sions, plunging into muddy depths in search of it. Now we have got it we sigh for a quiet life. But some day 113 H A STUDENT IN ARMS those who have not died will say : " Thank God I have lived ! I have loved, and endured, and trembled, and trembling, dared. I have had my romance." 114 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS VI IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS I Scene. A field in Flanders. All round the edge are bivouacs, built of sticks and waterproof sheets. Three men are squatting round a small fire, waiting for a couple of mess-tins of water to boil. Bill (gloomily). The last three of the old lot ! Oo's turn next ? Fred. Wot's the bleedin' good of bein' dahn in the mahf abaht it ? Give me the bleedin' 'ump, you do. Jim. Are we dahn-'earted ? Not 'alf, we ain't ! Bill. I don't know as I cares. Git it over, I sez. 'Ave done wiv it ! I dessay 117 A STUDENT IN ARMS as them wot's gone West is better off nor wot we are, arter all. Jim. Orlright, old sport, you go an' look for the V.C., and we'll pick up the bits an' bury 'em nice an' deep ! Bill. If this 'ere bleedin' war don't finish soon that's wot I bleedin' well will go an' do. Wish they'd get a move on an' finish it. Fred. If ever I gets 'ome agin, I'll never do another stroke in my natural. The old woman can keep me, 'er, an' if she don't I'll well 'er Jim (indignantly). Nice sort o' bloke you are ! Arter creatin' abaht ole Bill makin' you miserable, you goes on to plan 'ow you'll make other folks miser- able ! Wot's the bleedin' good o' that ? Keep smilin', I sez, an' keep other folks smilin' too, if you can. If ever I gets 'ome I'll go dahn on my bended, I will, and I'll be a different sort o' bloke to 118 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS wot I been afore. Swelp me, Bob, I will ! My missus won't 'ave no cause to wish as I'd been done in. Bill. Ah well, it don't much matter. We're all most like to go afore this war's finished. Jim. If yer goes yer goes, and that's all abaht it. A bloke's got to go some day, and fer myself I'd as soon get done in doin' my dooty as I would die in my bed. I ain't struck on dyin' afore my time, and I don't know as I'm greatly struck on livin', but, whichever it is, you got ter make the best on it. Bill (meditatively). I woulden mind stoppin' a bullet fair an' square ; bur I woulden like one of them 'orrible lingerin' deaths. "Died o' wounds " arter six munfs' mortal hagony — that's wot gets at me. Git it over an' done wiv, I sez. Fred (querulously). Ow, chuck it, Bill. You gives me the creeps, you do. Jim. I knowed a bloke onest in civil 119 A STUDENT IN ARMS life wot died a lingerin' death. Lived in the second-floor back in the same 'ouse as me an' my missus, 'e did. Suffered somefink' 'orrible, 'e did, an' lingered more nor five year. Yet I reckon 'e was one o' the best blokes as ever I come acrost. Went to 'eaven straight, 'e did, if ever any one did. Wasn't 'alf glad ter go, neither. " I done my bit of 'ell, Jim," 'e sez to me, an' looked that 'appy you'd a' thought as 'e was well agin. Shan't never forget 'is face, I shan't. An' I'd sooner be that bloke, for all 'is sufferin's, than I'd be ole Fred 'ere, an' live to a 'undred. Bill (philosophically). You'm right, matey. This is a wale o' tears, as the 'ymn sez, and them as is out on it is best off, if so be as they done their dooty in that state o' life . . . Where's the corfee, Jim ? The water's on the bile. THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR VII THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR I am not a psychologist, and I have not seen many people die in their beds ; but I think it is established that very few people are afraid of a natural death when it comes to the test. Often they are so weak that they are incapable of emotion. Sometimes they are in such physical pain that death seems a welcome deliverer. But a violent death such as death in battle is obviously a different matter. It comes to a man when he is in the full possession of his health and vigour, and when every physical instinct is urging him to self-preservation. If a man feared death in such circumstances one could not be surprised, and yet in the present war hundreds of thousands of men have gone 123 A STUDENT IN ARMS to meet practically certain destruction without giving a sign of terror. The fact is that at the moment of a charge men are in an absolutely abnormal condi- tion. I do not know how to describe their condition in scientific terms ; but there is a sensation of tense excitement com- bined with a sort of uncanny calm. Their emotions seem to be numbed. Noises, sights, and sensations which would ordin- arily produce intense pity, horror, or dread, have no effect on them at all, and yet never was their mind clearer, their sight, hearing, etc., more acute. They notice all sorts of little details which would ordinarily pass them by, but which now thrust themselves on their attention with absurd definiteness — absurd because so utterly incongruous and meaningless. Or they suddenly remember with extra- ordinary clearness some trivial incident of their past life, hitherto unremembered, and not a bit worth remembering ! But 124 THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR with the issue before them, with victory or death or the prospect of eternity, their minds blankly refuse to come to grips. No ; it is not at the moment of a charge that men fear death. As in the case of those who die in bed, Nature has an anaesthetic ready for the emergency. It is before an attack that a man is more liable to fear — before his blood is hot, and while he still has leisure to think. The trouble may begin a day or two in advance, when he is first told of the attack which is likely to mean death to himself and so many of his chums. This part is comparatively easy. It is fairly easy to be philosophic if one has plenty of time. One indulges in regrets about the home one may never see again. One is rather sorry for oneself ; but such self-pity is not wholly unpleasant. One feels mildly heroic, which is not wholly disagreeable either. Very few men are afraid of death in the abstract. Very few men believe in 125 A STUDENT IN ARMS hell, or are tortured by their consciences. They are doubtful about after death, hesitating between a belief in eternal oblivion and a belief in a new life under the same management as the present ; and neither prospect fills them with terror. If only one's " people " would be sensible, one would not mind. But as the hour approaches when the attack is due to be launched the strain becomes more tense. The men are pro- bably cooped up in a very small space. Movement is very restricted. Matches must not be struck. Voices must be hushed to a whisper. Shells bursting and machine guns rattling bring home the grim reality of the affair. It is then more than at any other time in an attack that a man has to " face the spectres of the mind," and lay them if he can. Few men care for those hours of waiting. Of all the hours of dismay that come to a soldier there are really few more trying to 126 THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR the-nerves than when he is sitting in a trench under heavy fire from high-explosive shells or bombs from trench mortars. You can watch these bombs lobbed up into the air. You see them slowly wobble down to earth, there to explode with a terrific detonation that sets every nerve in your body a- jangling. You can do nothing. You cannot retaliate in any way. You simply have to sit tight and hope for the best. Some men joke and smile ; but their mirth is forced. Some feign stoical indifference, and sit with a paper and a pipe ; but as a rule their pipes are out and their reading a pretence. There are few men, indeed, whose hearts are not beating faster, and whose nerves are not on edge. But you can't call this " the fear of death " ; it is a purely physical reaction of danger and detonation. It is not fear of death as death. It is not fear of hurt as hurt. It is an infinitely intensified dislike of suspense and uncertainty, sud- 127 A STUDENT IN ARMS den noise and shock. It belongs wholly to the physical organism, and the only cure that I know is to make an act of personal dissociation from the behaviour of one's flesh. Your teeth may chatter and your knees quake, but as long as the real you disapproves and derides this absurdity of the flesh, the composite you can carry on. Closely allied to the sensation of nameless dread caused by high explosives is that caused by gas. No one can carry out a relief in the trenches without a certain anxiety and dread if he knows that the enemy has gas cylinders in position and that the wind is in the east. But this, again, is not exactly the fear of death ; but much more a physical reaction to uncertainty and suspense combined with the threat of physical suffering. Personally, I believe that very few men indeed fear death. The vast majority experience a more or less violent physical shrinking from the pain of death and 128 THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR wounds, especially when they are obliged to be physically inactive, and when they have nothing else to think about. This kind of dread is, in the case of a good many men, intensified by darkness and suspense, and by the deafening noise and shock that accompany the detonation of high explosives. But it cannot properly be called the fear of death, and it is a purely physical reaction which can be, and nearly always is, controlled by the mind. Last of all there is the repulsion and loathing for the whole business of war, with its bloody ruthlessness, its fiend- ish ingenuity, and its insensate cruelty, that comes to a man after a battle, when the tortured and dismembered dead lie strewn about the trench, and the wounded groan from No-Man's-Land. But neither is that the fear of death. It is a repulsion which breeds hot anger more often than cold fear, reckless hatred of life 129 i A STUDENT IN ARMS more often than abject clinging to it. jThe cases where any sort of fear, even for a moment, obtains the mastery of a man are very rare. [Sometimes in the case of a boy, whose nerves are more sensitive than a man's, and whose habit of self- control is less formed, a sudden shock will upset his mental balance. Sometimes a very egotistical man will succumb to danger long drawn out. The same applies to men who are very introspective. I have seen a man of obviously low intelli- gence break down on the eve of an attack. The anticipation of danger makes many men " windy," especially officers who are responsible for other lives than their own. But even where men are afraid it is generally not death that they fear. Their fear is a physical and instinctive shrinking from hurt, shock, and the unknown, which instinct obtains the mastery only through surprise, or through the exhaustion of the mind and will, or through a man being 130 THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR excessively self-centred. It is not the fear of death rationally considered ; but an irrational physical instinct which '; all men possess, but which almost all can control. 131 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS VIII IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS II Scene. A dug-out in a wood somewhere in Flanders. Officers at tea. Hancock. Damned glad to be out of that infernal firing trench, anyway. (A dull report is heard in the distance.) There goes another torpedo ! Wonder who's copt it this time ! Smith. For Christ's sake talk about something else ! Hancock (ignoring him). Are we com- ing back to the same trenches, sir ? Captain Dodd. 'Spect so. Hancock. At the present rate we shall last another two spells. I hate this sort of bisnay. You go on month after month 135 A STUDENT IN ARMS losing fellows the whole time, and at the end of it you're exactly where you started. I wish they'd get a move on. Whiston. Tired of life ? Hancock. If you call this life, yes ! If this damned war is going on another two years, I hope to God I don't live to see the end of it. Smith. If ever I get home . . . ! Whiston. Well ? Smith. Won't I paint the town red, that's all ! Whiston. If ever I get home . . . well, I guess I'll go home. No more razzle-dazzle for master ! No, there's a little girl awaiting, and I know she thinks of me. Shan't wait any longer. Hancock (heavily). Don't think a chap's got any right to marry a girl under present circs. It's ten to one she's a widow before she's a mother. Smith. Oh, shut up ! Captain Dodd (gently). To some wo- 136 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS men the kid would be just the one thing that made life bearable. Hancock (reddening). Sorry, sir ; for- got you'd just done it. Course you're right. Depends absolutely on the girl. Captain Dodd. Thanks. I say, Whis- ton, I'm going down to B.H.Q. Care to come along ? (They go out together.) Scene. A path through a wood. Cap- tain Dodd and Whiston walking together, followed by a Lance-Cor- poral. Dodd. D'you believe in presentiments, Whiston ? Whiston (doubtfully). A year ago I should have laughed at you for asking. Now . . . Dodd. More things in heaven and earth . . . ? Whiston. My rationalism is always being upset '. 137 A STUDENT IN ARMS Dodd. How exactly ? Whiston. For instance, I simply can't believe that old John is finished. Can you? Dodd (quietly). No. Whiston. Funny thing. As far as I'm concerned I can quite imagine myself just snuffing out. You can put one word on my grave, if I have one — '* Napu." But as for John, no. I want something else. Something about Death being scored off after all. Dodd. I know. " O Death, where is thy sting ? O Grave, where is thy vic- tory ? " Whiston. Just that. Mind you, I don't think I'm afraid of Death. I don't want to get killed. But if I saw him coming I think I could smile, and feel that after all he wasn't getting much of a bargain. But the idea of his getting old John sticks in my gullet. I believe in all sorts of things for him. Resurrec- 138 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS tion and life and Heaven, and all that. Dodd. What do you think about it, Corporal ? Lance-Corporal. Same as Mr. Whis- ton, sir. Whiston. But what about presenti- ments ? Dodd. Oh, I don't know. Funny thing ; but all through this fortnight I've been absolutely certain that I was not for it. Lance-Corporal. Beg pardon, sir, we noticed that, sir ! Whiston. Well, it's practically over now. Dodd. I'm not so sure. I'm not in a funk, you know. It's simply that I don't feel so sure. Whiston. Oh, rot, sir ! I don't be- lieve in that sort of presentiment. Dodd. What do you think, Corporal ? Lance-Corporal. I think you goes when your time comes, sir. But it won't 139 A STUDENT IN ARMS come to-night, sir. Not after all we been through this spell, and the spell just finished. Dodd. I believe you're right, Cor- poral. We shall go when our time comes, and not before. I like that idea, you know. It means one hasn't got to worry. Whiston. If it means that you go on as you've done the last fortnight, it's a damnable doctrine, sir. You've no busi- ness to go taking unnecessary risks simply because you've got bitten by Mohamme- danism. Dodd (thoughtfully). You're right, too, Whiston. " Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." One shouldn't take un- necessary risks. Mind you, I don't admit that I have. It just enables one to do one's job with a quiet mind, that's all. Two Days Later Scene. A billet. Hancock and Smith. Hancock. Damn ! 140 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS Smith. What's up ? Aren't you satis- fied ? The brigade's bound to go back and re-form now, and that means that we shan't be in the trenches for a couple of months at least. We may even go where there's a pretty girl or two. My word ! Hancock. Damnation ! Smith (genuinely astonished). What the hell's wrong ? Any one would think you liked the trenches ! Personally, I don't care if I never see them again. England's full of nice young, bright young things crying to get out. Let 'em all come ! They can have my job and wel- come ! Hancock (to himself). God ! Why Dodd and Whiston ? Why, why, why ? Why not me ? Why just the fellows we can't afford to lose ? Smith. Oh, for God's sake stow it t What the hell's the good of going on like that ? Of course I'm sorry for them and all that. But I don't see that it's going 141 A STUDENT IN ARMS to help them to make oneself miserable about it. Hancock (fiercely). Sorry for them ! It's not them I'm sorry for ! They . . . they're the lucky ones ! God ! I suppose that's the answer ! They'd earned it ! Smith (satirically). Have you turned pi ? We shall have you saying the prayers that you learnt at your mother's knee next, I suppose ! I shall have to tell the Padre, and he'll preach a sermon about it ! I should never have thought you would have been frightened into religion ! Hancock. Frightened ! You little swine ! You talk about being frightened after last night ! I tell you I'd rather be lying out there with Dodd and Whiston than be sitting here with you. Fright- ened into religion ! Smith. Oh, I suppose you're the next candidate for death or glory ! Good luck to you ! I'm not competing. I'll do my 142 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS job ; but I'm not going to make a fool of myself. Dodd and Whiston deserved all they got. You're right there. You'll get what you deserve some day, I expect ! Don't look at me like that. I've said I'm sorry, and all that. But it's the truth I'm speaking, all the same. Hancock. And you'll get what you deserve too, I suppose, which is to live in your own company till the end of your miserable existence. I won't deprive you of your reward more than I can help, promise you 1 (Hancock goes out.) 143 THE WISDOM OF "A STUDENT IN ARMS" K IX THE WISDOM OF " A STUDENT IN ARMS " It is no good trying to fathom " things " to the bottom ; they have not got one. Knowledge is always descriptive, and never fundamental. We can describe the appearance and conditions of a process ; but not the way of it. Agnosticism is a fundamental fact. It is the starting-point of the wise man who has discovered that it needs eternity to study infinity. Agnosticism, however, is no excuse for indolence. Because we cannot know all, we need not therefore be totally ignorant. 147 A STUDENT IN ARMS The true wisdom is that in which all knowledge is subordinate to practical aims, and blended into a working philo- sophy of life. The true wisdom is that it is not what a man does, or has, or says, that matters ; but what he is. This must be the aim of practical philo- sophy — to make a man be somewhat. The world judges a man by his station, inherited or acquired. God judges by his character. To be our best we must share God's viewpoint. To the world death is always a tragedy ; to the Christian it is never a tragedy unless a man has been a contemptible character. Religion is the widening of a man's horizon so as to include God. It is in the nature of a speculation, but its returns are immediate. True religion means betting one's life that there is a God. 148 THE WISDOM OF " A STUDENT IN ARMS " Its immediate fruits are courage, sta- bility, calm, unselfishness, friendship, generosity, humility, and hope. Religion is the only possible basis of optimism. Optimism is the essential condition of progress. One is what one believes oneself to be. If one believes oneself to be an animal one becomes bestial ; if one believes one- self spiritual one becomes Divine. Faith is an effective force whose meas- ure has never yet been taken. Man is the creature of heredity and environment. He can only rise superior to circumstances by bringing God into environment of which he is conscious. The recognition of God's presence upsets the balance of a man's environment, and means a new birth into a new life. The faculties which perceive God in- crease with use like any other perceptive faculties. 149 A STUDENT IN ARMS Belief in God may be an illusion ; but it is an illusion that pays. If belief in God is illusion, happy is he who is deluded ! He gains this world and thinks he will gain the next. The disbeliever loses this world, and risks losing the next. To be the centre of one's universe is misery. To have one's universe centred in God is the peace that passeth under- standing. Greatness is founded on inward peace. Energy is only effective when it springs from deep calm. The pleasure of life lies in contrasts ; the fear of contrasts is a chain that binds most men. In the hour of danger a man is proven. The boaster hides, and the egotist trem- bles. He whose care is for others forgets to be afraid. Men live for eating and drinking, passion and wealth. They die for honour. 150 THE WISDOM OF " A STUDENT IN ARMS " Blessed is he of whom it has been said that he so loved giving that he even gave his own life. 151 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS X IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS III Scene. A trench unpleasantly near the firing line. There has been an hour's intense bombardment by the British, with suitable retaliation by the Boches. The retaliation is just dying down. Characters. A.lbert — Round-eyed, ro- tund, red-cheeked, yellow-haired, and, deliberate ; in civil life probably a drayman. Jim — Small, lean, sallow, grey-eyed, with a kind of quiet restless- ness ; in civil life probably a mechanic with leanings towards Socialism. Pozzie — A thick-set, low-browed, im- passive, silent country youth, with a 155 A STUDENT IN ARMS face the colour of the soil. Jinks — An old soldier, red, lean, wrinkled, with very blue eyes. His face is rough- Jiewn, almost grotesque like a gargoyle. In his eyes there is a perpetual glint of humour, and in the poise of his head a certain irrepressible jauntiness. Albert (whose eyes are more staring than ever, his cheeks pendulous and crim- son, his general air thai of a partly deflated air-cushion). Gawd's truth ! Jinks (wagging his head). Well, my old sprig o' mint, what's wrong wi' you ? Albert. It ain't right. (Senteniiously) It's agin natur'. Flesh an' blood weren't made for this sort o' think. Jim. It ain't flesh an' blood that can't stand it. It's Mind. Look at old Pozzie. *E's flesh an' blood, and don't turn an 'air ! For myself I'll go potty one o' these days. Jinks (slapping Pozzie on the back). 156 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS You don't take no notice, do you, old lump o' duff ? Pozzie. Oi woulden moind if I got moy rations ; but a chap can't keep a good 'eart if 'e's got an empty stum- mick. Jim (sarcastically). You keep yer 'eart in yer stomach, don't yer ? You ain't got no mind, you ain't. Jinks was born potty, an' the rest of us'll all go potty except you. It's you an' yer Ally Sloper's Cavalry what'll win the war, I don't think ! Albert. What I wants ter know is 'ow long the bleedin' war's a-goin' ter last. If it goes on much longer I'll be potty if I ain't a gone 'un. Jim. There's only one way of ending it as I knows on. Albert. What's that, matey ? Jim. Put all the bleedin' politicians on both sides in the bleedin' trenches. Give 'em a week's bombardment, an' 157 A STUDENT IN ARMS send 'em away for a week to make peace, with a promise of a fortnight's intense at the end of it if they've failed. They'd find a way, sure enough. Albert (admiringly). Ah, that they would an' all. If old " Wait and See " 'ad been 'ere these last four days 'e wouldn't talk about fightin' to the last man ! Jinks. Don't talk stoopid. 'Oo be- gan the bloomin' war ? Don't yer know what you're fightin' for ? D'you want ter leave the 'Uns in France an' Belgium an' Serbia an' all ? It ain't fer us to make peace. It's fer the 'Uns. An' if you are done in, you got to go under some day. I ain't sure as they ain't the lucky ones what's got it over and done with. And arter all, it's not us what's not proper. The 'Uns 'ave 'ad two fer our one. Albert. They got dug-outs as deep as 'ell, it don't touch 'em. 158 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS Jinks (but without conviction). Don't talk silly. Pozzie. Oi reckon we got to go through with it. But they didn't ought to give a chap short rations. That's what takes the 'eart out of a chap. 159 LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN XI LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN 1 April 17, 1916. Thank you very much for your letter of a week ago, which I should have tried to answer before if I had had time. I am afraid that your confidence in me as an oracle will be severely shaken when I confess that I was once on the eve of being ordained, and that in the end I funked it because it seemed such an awfully diffi- cult job, and I couldn't see my way to going through with it. However, I must try to answer your letter as best I can, and I hope that you will not mind my speaking plainly what a This chapter is the actual text of a letter from " A Student in Arms," and like the most of the other chapters appeared originally in the Spectator. 163 A STUDENT IN ARMS I think, and will remember that I do so in no spirit of superiority, but very humbly, as one who has funked the great work that you have had the pluck to take up, and who has even failed in the little bit of work that he himself did try and do. This last means that I have no business to be an officer. It was the biggest mis- take in my life, for my position in the ranks did give me a hold on the fellows, the strength of which I have only realized since I left. Now then to the point. As I under- stand you, your difficulty is that you feel that you must devote yourself to strengthening a very few men who are already Churchmen, and to whom you can talk in the language of the Church of things which you know they want to hear about, or you must appeal to the crowd of those who are merely good fellows and often sad scamps too, who must be caught with buns and cinemas 164 LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN and who are very difficult to get any farther. I fancy that you, like me, when you see a fine dashing young fellow, with a touch of honesty and recklessness and wonderful mystery of youth in his eyes, love him as a brother, and long to do something to keep him clean, and to keep him from the sordid things to which you and I know well enough he will descend in the long run if one cannot put the love of clean, wholesome life into his heart. But how to get at him ? If you talk to him about his soul you disgust him, and you feel a sort of sneaking sympathy with him too. It does not seem the thing to make a chap self-conscious and a bit of a prig when he is not one to start with. On the other hand, if you just keep to buns and cinemas you never get any farther. Well, it is a big difficulty. The only experience that I have had which counts at all is experi- ence that I gained while trying to run a 165 A STUDENT IN ARMS boys' club in South London, and you must not think me egotistical if I tell you what seems to me to have been the secret of any power that I seem to have had over fellows. At first I used to have a short service at the close of the club every evening, to which most of the boys used to stay. I also had a service on Sunday afternoon. Something of the same sort might perhaps be possible in the Y.M.C.A. tent if there is one where you are. When I was talking to them at these services I always used to try and make them feel that Christ was the fulfilment of all the best things that they admired, that He was their natural hero. I would tell them some story of heroism and meanness contrasted, of courage and cowardice, of noble for- giveness and vile cruelty, and so get them on the side of the angels. Then I would try and spring it upon them that Christ was the Lord of the heroes and the brave 166 LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN men and the noble men, and that He was fighting against all that was mean and cruel and cowardly, and that it was up to them to take their stand by His side if they wanted to make the world a little better instead of a little worse, and I would try to show them how in little practical ways in their homes and at their work and in the club they could do a bit for Christ. Well, they listened pretty well, and I think that they agreed in a general sort of way, only they knew that I was a richish man in comparison with them, and that I didn't have their difficulties to contend with, and that all tended to undo the effect of what I had said. And then accident gave me a sort of clue to the way to get them to take one seriously. For some idiotic reason — I really couldn't say just what it was — I dressed up as a tramp one day, and spent a night in a casual ward. I didn't do it for any very worthy motive, and I didn't mean any 167 A STUDENT IN ARMS one to know about it ; but it got round, and I suddenly found that it had caught the imaginations of some of the fellows, and I realized that if one was to have any power over them one must do sym- bolic things to show them that one meant what one said about love being really better than money, and all that sort of thing. So in rather a half-hearted way I did try to do things which would show them that I was in earnest. I took a couple of rooms in a little cottage in a funny little bug- ridden court, instead of living at the mission-house. I went out to Australia steerage to see why emigration of London boys was not a success, and when war broke out I enlisted, although I had previously held a commission. And all these little things, though on reasonable grounds often rather indefensible, un- doubtedly had the effect of making my South London boys take me more seri- ously than they did at first. Well, I am 168 LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN quite sure that with Tommies, if ever you get a chance of doing something in the way of sharing their privations and dan- gers when you aren't obliged to, or of showing in practical ways humility and unselfishness, that will endear you to them, and give you weight with them more than anything else. In my time in the ranks I had that proved over and over again. If once I was able to do even a small kind- ness for a fellow which involved a bit of unnecessary trouble, he would never for- get it, and would repay me a thousand times over. I was a sergeant for about nine months in England, and had one or two chances. Then I reverted to the ranks, and for that the men could not do enough to show me kindness. (It was my not valuing rank and comparative comfort for its own sake that appealed to them.) Continually I have reaped a most gigantic reward of goodwill for actions which cost very little, and which 169 A STUDENT IN ARMS were not always done from the motives imputed. I am not swanking — at least, I don't mean to — but that is just my experience, that with Tommy it is actions, and speci- ally actions that imply and symbolize humility, courage, unselfishness, etc., that count ten thousand times more than the best sermons in the world. I am afraid that all this is not much good because you are an officer, and your course of action is very clearly marked out for you by authority. But I do say that if ever you have a chance of showing that you are willing to share the often hard and sometimes humiliating lot of the men it is that which above all things will give you power with them ; just as it is the Cross of Christ, and the spitting and the mocking and the scourging, and the de- gradation of His exposure in dying, that gives Him His power far more than even the Sermon on the Mount. After all, it 170 LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN is always what costs most that is best worth having, and if you only see Tommy in his easiest moments, when he is at the Y.M.C.A. or the club, you see him at the time when he is least impressionable in a permanent manner. Well, I must apologize for writing such an egotistical and intimate sort of letter on so slight a provocation. But this that I have said is all that my experience has taught me about influencing the Tommy. No doubt there are other ways ; but I have not been able to strike them. Yours very truly, Donald Hankey, 2nd Lieut. P.S. — Of course in becoming a Second Lieutenant I have dished my own influ- ence most effectually. It has often ap- peared to me that among ordinary work- ing men humility was considered the Christian virtue par excellence. Humility combined with love is so rare, I suppose, and that is why it is marvelled at. 171 "DON'T WORRY XII "DON'T WORRY" This is at present the soldier's favourite chorus at the front — " What's the use of worrying ? It never was worth while ! Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag, And Smile, Smile, Smile ! " Not a bad chorus, either, for the trenches ! You can't stop a shell from bursting in your trench, even if Mr . Rawson can ! You can't stop the rain, or prevent a light from going up just as you are half- way over the parapet ... so what on earth is the use of worrying ? If you can't alter things, you must accept them, and make the best of them. Yet some men do worry, and by so 175 A STUDENT IN ARMS doing effectually destroy their peace of mind without doing any one any good. What is worse, it is often the religious man who worries. I have even heard those whose care was for the soldier's soul, deplore the fact that he did not worry ! I have heard it said that the soldier is so careless, realizes his position so little, is so hard to touch ! And, on the other hand, I have heard the soldier say that he did not want religion, because it would make him worry. Strange, isn't it, if Christianity means worry and anxiety, and if it is only the heathen who is cheer- ful and free from care ? Yet the feeling that this is so undoubtedly exists, and it must have some foundation. Perhaps it is one of the subjects which ought to engage the attention of Churchmen in these days of " repentance and hope." Of course, worrying is about as un- christian as anything can be. " m fiepLfjuvare rfj ^v^r) v/xoiv " — "Don't worry 176 DON'T WORRY" about your life" — is the Master's ex- press command. In fact, the call of Christ is a call to something very like the cheerfulness of the soldier in the trenches. It is a call to a life of external turmoil and internal peace. " I came not to bring peace, but a sword ; " " take up your cross and follow Me; " " ye shall be hated;" "he that would save his life shall lose it." It is a call to take risks, to risk poverty, unpopularity, humilia- tion, death. It is a call to follow the way of the Cross. But the way of the Cross is also the way of peace, the peace of God that passeth understanding. It is a way of freedom from all cares, and anxieties, and fears ; but not a way of escape from them. Yet worrying is often a feature of the actual Churchman. The actual Church- man is often a man whose conscience is an incubus. He can do nothing without weighing motives and calculating results. 177 k A STUDENT IN ARMS It makes him introspective to an extent that is positively morbid. He is con- tinually probing himself to discover whether his motives are really pure and disinterested, continually trying to de- cide whether he is " worthy " or " fit " to undertake this or that responsibility, or to face this or that eventuality. He is full of suspicion of himself, of self- distrust. In the trenches he is always wondering whether he is fit to die, whether he will acquit himself worthily in a crisis, whether he has done anything that he ought not to have done, or left undone anything that he ought to have done. Especially if he is an officer, his responsi- bility weighs on him terribly, and I have known more than one good fellow and conscientious Churchman worry himself into thinking that he was unfit for his responsibilities as an officer, and ask to be relieved of them. There must be something wrong about 178 "DON'T WORRY" the Christianity of such men. Their over-conscientiousness seems to create a wholly wrong sense of proportion, an exaggerated sense of the significance of their own actions and characters which is as fay removed as can be from the child- like humility which Christ taught. The truth seems to be that we lay far too much stress on conscience, self-examina- tion, and personal salvation, and that we trust the Holy Spirit far too little. If we look to the teaching of Christ, we do not find any recommendation to meti- culous self-analysis, but rather we are taught a kind of spiritual recklessness, an unquestioning confidence in what seem to be right impulses, and that quite regard- less of results. We are not told to be care- ful to spend each penny to the best ad- vantage ; but we are told that if our money is preventing us from entering the Kingdom, we had better give it all away. We are not told to set a high 179 A STUDENT IN ARMS value on our lives, and to spend them with care for the good of the Kingdom. On the contrary, we are told to risk our lives recklessly if we would preserve them. A sense of anxious responsibility is discouraged. If our limbs cause us to offend, we are advised to cut them off. The whole teaching of the Gospels is that we have got to find freedom and peace in trusting ourselves implicitly to the care of God. We have got to follow what we think right quite recklessly, and leave the issue to God ; and in judg- ing between right and wrong we are only given two rules for our guidance. Every- thing which shows love for God and love for man is right, and everything which shows personal ambition and anxiety is wrong. What all this means as far as the trenches are concerned is extraordinarily clear. The Christian is advised not to be too pushing or ambitious. He is ad- 180 DON'T WORRY" vised to " take the lowest room." But if he is told to move up higher, he has got to go. If he is given responsibility, there is no question of refusing it. He has got to do his best and leave the issue to God. If he does well, he will be given more responsibility. But there is no need to worry. The same formula holds good for the new sphere. Let him do his best and leave the issue to God. If he does badly, well, if he did his best, that means that he was not fit for the job, and he must be perfectly willing to take a hum- bler job, and do his best at that. As for personal danger, he must not think of it. If he is killed, that is a sign that he is no longer indispensable. Perhaps he is wanted elsewhere. The enemy can only kill the body, and the body is not the important thing about him. Every man who goes to war must, if he is to be happy, give his body, a living sacrifice, to God and his country. 181 A STUDENT IN ARMS It is no longer his. He need not worry about it. The peace of God which passeth all understanding simply comes from not worrying about results because they are God's business and not ours, and in trusting implicitly all impulses that make for love of God and man. Few of us perhaps will ever attain to a full measure of such faith ; but at least we can make sure that our " Christianity " brings us nearer to it. 182 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS XIII IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS IV AU COIFFEUR Scene. A barber's shop in a small French town about thirty miles from the front. A Subaltern and a stout Bour- geois are waiting their turn. Bourgeois. Is it that it is the mud oi the trenches on the boots of monsieur ? Subaltern. Ah ! but no, monsieur, for then it would reach to my waist ! Bourgeois. Nevertheless, monsieur is but recently come from the trenches, is it not so ? Subaltern. Yes, I am arrived from the trenches yesterday. Bourgeois. Then monsieur has as- sisted at the great attack ! 185 A STUDENT IN ARMS Subaltern. Oh, yes, I helped a very little bit. Bourgeois. There have been immense losses, is it not so ? Subaltern (vaguely). There are al- ways great losses when one attacks. Bourgeois. Ah ! but much greater than one expected — I have seen, I, the wounded coming down the river. Subaltern. I — I have always ex- pected great losses. Bourgeois. 'Tis true. There are al- ways great losses when one attacks. But all goes well, monsieur, is it not so ? Subaltern. It is difficult to estimate the success of an attack until after several weeks. But I think that all goes well. Bourgeois. But yes, the French, they have had a great success, and also the English. The English are wonderful. Their equipment ! It is that which as- tonishes me. Everything is complete. They say that the English have saved 186 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS France ; but the French also, they have saved England, is it not so, monsieur ? Subaltern. But we are saving each other ! Bourgeois. Good ! We are saving each other ! Very good ! But after the war, monsieur, England will fight against France, hein ? Subaltern. Never ! Bourgeois. Never ? Subaltern. Never in life ! Bourgeois. You think so ? Subaltern. We do not love war. We do not seek war. It is only when a nation is so execrable that one is compelled to fight, as have been the Germans, that we make war. Bourgeois. You do not love war, eh ? Before the war you had a very small Army, about three hundred thou- sand, is it not so ? And now you have about three million. You do not love war, you others. 187 A STUDENT IN ARMS Subaltern. The Germans thought that they loved war, but I do not believe that they will love it very much longer ! Bourgeois. No ! The war will give them the stomach-ache. They will love it no longer ! Coiffeur. But these English, whom did they fight before? The Boers, was it not ? Subaltern. Yes, but a great many English think now that it was a betise. There was also great provocation. And nevertheless, who knows if there was not in that affair also a German plot ? Bourgeois. It is very likely. Then monsieur thinks that we are true friends, the English and the French ? Subaltern. But yes, monsieur, be- cause we love, both of us, liberty and peace. 188 IDYLLS OF THE WAR XIV IDYLLS OF THE WAR " June, 1916. " We have done a move, and my juvenile Captain (popularly known as Boots x ) and forty men and myself are in another village. We (Boots and I) are lodging chez M. Le Cure, and messing with the ' Town Major.' Boots finds it rather a strain to be living with three such heavy old things (myself the third). He is an awfully good fellow, a very keen and efficient soldier, and bubbling over with youthful spirits at the same time. He has been out since September, 1914. He resembles in being very much of a sport, a sound chap at bottom, and a bit spoilt by having too much money and too few relations. I am rather amused here ! 1 Since dead. 191 A STUDENT IN ARMS But I fear he is rather bored. The Town Major is a Terrier, a Birmingham chartered accountant, and interesting as well as well informed. The Cure is a cheerful person with beautiful roses and no books. How unlike an English vicar ! " "July, 1916. " I have taken a very small part in a very big battle, and am very ragged (owing to the prevalence of wire everywhere). I was in charge of the ration and ammunition carriers, and the only part of the battle that I saw was when I had to carry bombs to a party of British who were trying to hang on to a corner of the Boche front line. The scene was more like one of Caton Woodville's battle pictures than I had thought possible. An irregular mound, held by a wild mixture of men from all sorts of regiments, broken wire, dead, wounded, bombs, machine-guns, shell- holes, confusion, smoke. Unfortunately, 192 IDYLLS OF THE WAR just here the attack was a failure, though I hear it was successful elsewhere. For- tunately, the failure was assured before my battalion was called into action. Our losses were very slight ; in fact, I who was not in the fighting part, was, as a matter of fact, the only officer of my company to set foot in a German trench. Now we are clearing up, which is the worst part — bury- ing dead, trying to fetch in wounded, etc. War is bad, I agree with Jim in the enclosed ' conversation.' ... I never realized before this week what an awful thing war is. It may be good for a man and a nation, but it is none the less wholly evil in itself." " July, 1916. " As I think I told you yesterday, my ad- dress is now , B.E.F., France. A more complete contrast to my recent quarters it is difficult to imagine. We mess in a corner of an immense flamboyant chateau, in 193 n A STUDENT IN ARMS whose c extensive ' grounds I am now writing. We are far from the sound of guns. We live on the fat of the land. We