it was a slumbrous afternoon in september. my wound had healed up a month ago, and i was lazily convalescent at my aunt’s house in one of the most beautiful parts of kent. the six soldiers who were also convalescent there were down in the hop-garden. for hop-picking was in full swing. i was sitting in a deck-chair with don quixote on my knees; but i was not reading. i had apparently broken the offensive power of the army of midges by making a brilliant counter-attack with a pipe of chairman. the sun blazed mercilessly on the croquet-lawn; the balls were lying all together round one hoop: for there was a golf-croquet tournament in progress, and the mallets stood about against various hoops; one very tidy and proper mallet was standing primly in the stand at one corner. my chair was well sited under the cool shade of a large mulberry tree, in whose thick lofty branches the wind rustled with a delicious little sigh; sometimes a regular little gust would send the boughs swishing, and then a little rain of red and white mulberries would plop on to the grass, and 295 strike the summer-house roof with a smart patter. on the grass-bank at the side of the lawn, by a blazing border of orange and red nasturtiums, a black cat was squatting with tail slowly waving to and fro, watching a fine large tabby that was sniffing at the nasturtiums in a nonchalant manner. they were the best of friends, playing that most interesting of all games, war.
i was not reading: i was listening to the incessant murmur that came from far away across the medway, across the garden of england, and across the channel and the flats of flanders. that sound came from picardy. all day the insistent throb had been in the air; sometimes faint bumps were clearly distinguishable, at other times it was nothing but one steady vibration. but always it was there, that distant growl, that insistent mutter. even in this perfect peace, i could not escape the war.
to-day i felt completely well; the lassitude and inertness of convalescence were gone—at any rate, for the moment. my mind was very clear, and i could think surely and rapidly. the cats reminded me of the lusty family that lived in the cellar in the cuinchy trenches, and the murmur of the guns drew my thoughts across the channel. i tried to imagine trenches running across the lawn, with communication trenches running back to a support line through the meadow; a few feet of brick wall would be all that would be left of the house, and this would conceal my snipers; the mulberry tree would long 296 ago have been razed to the ground, and every scrap of it used as firewood in our dug-outs; this deck chair of mine might possibly be in use in company headquarters in one of the cellars. no, it was not easy to imagine war without seeing it.
i picked up the paper that had fallen at my side. there had been more terrible fighting on the somme, and it had seemed very marvellous to a journalist as he lay on a hill some two miles back, and watched through his field-glasses: it was wonderful that the men advancing (if indeed he could really see them at all in the smoke of a heavy artillery barrage) still went on, although their comrades dropped all round them. yet i wondered what else anyone could do but go on? run back, with just as much likelihood of being shot in doing so? or, even if he did get back, to certain death as a deserter? everyone knows the safest place is in a trench; and it is a trench you are making for. lower down on the page came a description of the wounded; he had talked to so many of them, and they were all smiling, all so cheerful; smoking cigarettes and laughing. they shook their fists, and shouted that the only thing they wanted to do was to get back into it! pah! i threw the paper down in disgust. surely no one wants to read such stuff, i thought. of course the men who were not silent, in a dull stupefied agony, were smiling: what need to say that a man with a slight wound was laughing at his luck, just as i had smiled that early morning when the trolley took me 297 down from maple redoubt? and who does not volunteer for an unpleasant task, when he knows he cannot possibly get it? want to get back into it, indeed! ask tommy ten years hence whether he wants to be back in the middle of it again!
i wondered why people endured such cheap journalism. what right had men who have never seen war at all, who creep up on bicycles to get a glimpse of it through telescopes, who pester wounded men, and then out of their pictorial imagination work up a vivid description—what right have they to insult heroes by saying that “their wonderful spirit makes up for it all,” that “the paramount impression is one of glory”? are not our people able to bear the truth, that war is utterly hellish, that we do not enjoy it, that we hate it, hate it, hate it all? and then it struck me how ignorant people still were; how uncertainly they spoke, these people at home: it was as though they dared not think things out, lest what they held most dear should be an image shattered by another point of view.
somehow people were amazed at the cheerfulness, the doggedness, the endurance under pain, the indifference to death, shown every minute during this war. i thought of the men whom i had seen in hospital. one man had had his right foot amputated; it used to give me agony to see his stump dressed every day. another man had both legs amputated above the knees. yet they were so wonderfully cheerful, so apparently content with 298 life! as though alone in the blackness of night they did not long for the activity denied them for the rest of their life. as though their cheerfulness—(do not think i belittle its heroism)—as though their cheerfulness justified the thing!
another thing i had noticed. an old man told me he was so struck with the heroism, the courage, the indifference to death, shown by the ordinary unromantic man. some men had been converted, too, their whole lives changed, their vices eradicated, by this war. so much good was coming from it. people, too, at home were so changed, so sobered; they were looking into the selfishness of their lives at last. again i thought, as though all that justified the thing!
oh! you men and women who did not know before the capabilities of human nature, i thought, please take note of it now; and after the war do not underestimate the quality of mankind. did it need a war to tell you that a man can be heroic, resolute, courageous, cheerful, and capable of sacrifice? there were those who could have told you that before this war.
there was a lull in the vibration. i turned in my chair, and listened. then it began again.
“people are afraid to think it out,” i said. “i have not seen the somme fighting, but i know what war is. its quality is not altered by multiplication or intensity. the colour of life-blood is a constant red. let us look into this business; let us face all 299 the facts. let us not flinch from any aspect of the truth.”
and my thoughts ran somewhat as follows:
first of all, war is evil—utterly evil. let us be sure of that first. it is an evil instrument, even if it be used for motives that are good. i, who have been through war and know it, say that it is evil. i knew it before the war; instinct, reason, religion told me that war was evil; now experience has told me also.
it is a strange synthesis, this war: it is a synthesis of adventure, dulness, good spirits, and tragedy; but none of these things are new to human experience; nor is human nature altered by war. it is at war as a whole that we must look in order to appreciate its quality. and what is war seen as a whole, or rather seen in the light of my eight months’ experience? for no one man can truly appraise war.
i have seen and felt the adventure of war, its deadly fascination and excitement: it is the greatest game on earth: that is its terrible power: there is such a wild temptation to paint up its interest and glamour: it gives such scope to daring, to physical courage, to high spirits: it makes so many prove themselves heroic, that were it not for the fall of the arrow men would call the drawing of the bow good. i have seen the dulness, the endless monotony, the dogged labour, the sheer power of will conquering the body and “carrying on”: there is good in that, 300 too. in the jollity, the humour, the good-fellowship, is nothing but good also. there is good in all these things; for these are qualities of human nature triumphing in spite of war. these things are not war; they are the good in man prostituted to a vile thing.
for i have seen the real face of war: i have seen men killed, mutilated, blown to little pieces; i have seen men crippled for life; i have looked in the face of madness, and i know that many have gone mad under its grip. i have seen fine natures break and crumble under the strain. i have seen men grow brutalised, and coarsened in this war. (god will judge justly in the end; meanwhile, there are thousands among us—yes, and among our enemy too—brutalised through no fault of theirs.) i have lost friends killed (and shall lose more yet), friends with whom i have lived and suffered so long.
who is for war now? its adventure, its heroism? bah! yet this is not all.
for war spares none. it desecrates the beauty of the earth; it ruins, it destroys, it wastes; it starves children; it drives out old men, and women, homeless. and most terrible of all, it brings agony to every household: it is like a plague of the firstborn. do not think i have forgotten you, o women, and old men. you, too, have to endure the agony of the arena; you are compelled to sit and watch us fight the beasts. every mother is there in agony, watching her baby, and unable to stretch a finger to help. this, too, is 301 war—the anguish of mothers whose sons perish, of wives who lose their husbands, of girls robbed for all time of marriage and motherhood.
and this vile thing is still perpetrated upon the earth among peoples who have long ago declared human sacrifice impossible and barbaric.
this then is a basal fact. we have faced it fairly. the instrument is vile. what then of the motive? what is the motive which drives us to use this evil instrument? and i see you fathers and mothers waiting to hear what i shall say. for there are people who whisper that we who are fighting are vindictive, that we lust for the blood of our enemies, that we are coarse and brutal, that we are unholy champions of what we call a just cause. again let us face the facts. and to these whisperers i answer boldly: “yes! we are coarse, some of us; we are vindictive; we hate; we do not deny it.” for war in its vileness taints its human instruments too. when davidson died i cried death upon his murderers. i called them devils, and worse. i am not ashamed.
that is not the point. what i or tommy may be at a given moment is not the point. the question is, with what motives did we enter this war, agree to take up this vile instrument? we cannot help if it soils our hands. what is our motive in fighting in the arena? what provokes the dumb heroism of our soldiers? why did men flock to the colours, volunteer in millions for the arena? you know. 302 i who have lived with them eight months in france, i also know. it was because a people took up this vile instrument and used it from desire of power. because they trampled on justice, and challenged us to thwart them. because they willed war for the sake of wrong; because they said that force was master of the world, and they set out to prove it.
yet, it is sometimes said, war is unchristian. if men were christian there would be no war. you cannot conquer evil by evil. i agree, if men were christian there would be no war. i agree that you cannot conquer evil by evil; but it is war that is evil, not our motive in going to war. we are conquering an evil spirit by a good spirit, even if we are using an evil instrument. and if you say that christ would not fight, i say that none of us would fight if the world had attained the christian plane towards which we are slowly rising: but we are still on a lower plane, and in it there is a big war raging; and in the arena there are many who have felt christ by their side.
that, then, is the second point. i knew that war was vile, before i went into it. i have seen it: i do not alter my opinion. i went into this war prepared to sacrifice my life to prove that right is stronger than wrong; i have stood again and again with a traverse between me and death; i have faced the possibility of madness. i foresaw all this before i went into this war. what difference does it make that i have experienced it? it makes no difference. 303 let no one fear that our sacrifice has been in vain. we have already won what we are fighting for. the will for war, that aggressive power, with all the cards on its side prepared, striking at its own moment, has already failed against a spirit, weaker, unprepared, taken unawares. and so i am clear on my second point. we are fighting from just motives, and we have already baulked injustice. aggressive force, the power that took up the cruel weapon of war, has failed. no one can ever say that his countrymen have laid down their lives in vain.
i got up from the chair, and started walking about the garden. everything was so clear. before going out to the war i had thought these things; but the thoughts were fluid, they ran about in mazy patterns, they were elusive, and always i was frightened of meeting unanswerable contradictions to my theorising from men who had actually seen war. now my conclusions seemed crystallised by irrefutable experience into solid truth.
after a while i sat down again and resumed my train of thought:
war is evil. justice is stronger than force. yet, was there need of all this bloodshed to prove this? for this war is not as past wars; this is every man’s war, a war of civilians, a war of men who hate war, of men who fight for a cause, who are compelled to kill and hate it. that is another thing that people will not face. men whisper that tommy does not 304 hate fritz. again i say, away with this whispering. let us speak it out plain and bold. private davies, my orderly, formerly a shepherd of blaenau festiniog, has no quarrel with one fritz schneider of hamburg who is sitting in the trench opposite the matterhorn sap; yet he will bayonet him certainly if he comes over the top, or if we go over into the german trenches; ay, he will perform this action with a certain amount of brutality too, for i have watched him jabbing at rats with a bayonet through the wires of a rat trap, and i know that he has in him a savage vein of cruelty. but when peace is declared, he and fritz will light a bonfire of trench stores in no man’s land, and there will be the end of their quarrel. i say boldly, i know. for indeed i know davies very well indeed.
again i say, was there need of all this bloodshed? who is responsible? who is responsible for lance-corporal allan lying in the trench in maple redoubt? again i see yon glittering eyes looking down upon me in the arena. and davies, too, in his slow simple way, is beginning to take you in, and to ask you why he is put there to fight? is it for your pleasure? is it for your expediency? is it a necessary part of your great game? necessary? necessary for whom? davies and fritz alike are awaiting your answer.
it is hard to trace ultimate causes. it is hard to fix absolute responsibility. there were many seeds sown, scattered, and secretly fostered before they 305 produced this harvest of blood. the seeds of cruelty, selfishness, ambition, avarice, and indifference, are always liable to swell, grow, and bud, and blossom suddenly into the red flower of war. let every man look into his heart, and if the seeds are there let him make quick to root them out while there is time; unless he wishes to join those glittering eyes that look down upon the arena.
these are the seeds of war. and it is because they know that we, too, are not free from them, that certain men have stood out from the arena as a protest against war. these men are real heroes, who for their conscience’s sake are enduring taunts, ignominy, misunderstanding, and worse. most men and women in the arena are cursing them, and, as they struggle in agony and anguish, they beat their hands at them and cry “you do not care.” i, too, have cursed them, when i was mad with pain. but i know them, and i know that they are true men. i would not have one less. they are witnesses against war. and i, too, am fighting war. men do not understand them now, but one day they will.
i know that there are among us, too, the seeds of war: no cause has yet been perfect. but i look at the facts. we did not start, we did not want this war. we have gone into it, fighting for the better cause. whether, had we been more christian, we might have prevented the war, is not the point. we did not want this war: we are fighting against it. 306 it was the seeds of war in germany that were responsible. and so history will judge.
but what of the future? how are we to save future generations from going down into the arena? we will rearrange the map of europe: we will secure the independence of small states: we will give the power to the people: there shall be an end of tyrannies. so men speak easily of an international spirit, of a world conference for peace. there is so great a will-power against war, they say, that we will secure the world for the future. millions of men know the vileness of war; they will devise ways and means to prevent its recurrence. i agree. let us try all ways. yet i see no guarantee in all this against the glittering eyes: i see no power in all this knowledge against a new generation fostering and harvesting the seeds of war. men have long known that war is evil. did that knowledge prevent this war? will that knowledge secure india or china from the power of the glittering eyes?
i walked up and down the lawn, my eyes glowing, my brain working hard. here around me was all the beauty of an old garden, its long borders full of phloxes, delphiniums, stocks, and all the old familiar flowers; the apples glowed red in the trees; the swallows were skimming across the lawn. in the distance i could hear the rumble of the waggon bringing up the afternoon load of hop-pokes to the oasthouse. yet what i had seen of war was as true, 307 had as really happened, as all this. it would be so easy to forget, after the war. and yet to forget might mean a seed of war. i must never forget lance-corporal allan.
there is only one sure way, i said at last. and again a clear conviction filled me. there is only one way to put an end to the arena. pledges and treaties have failed; and force will fail. these things may bring peace for a time, but they cannot crush those glittering eyes. there is only one man whose eyes have never glittered. look at the palms of your hands, you, who have had a bullet through the middle of it! did they not give you morphia to ease the pain? and did you not often cry out alone in the darkness in the terrible agony, that you did not care who won the war if only the pain would cease? yet one man there was who held out his hand upon the wood, while they knocked, knocked, knocked in the nail, every knock bringing a jarring, excruciating pain, every bit as bad as yours. and any moment his will-power could have weakened, and he could have saved himself that awful pain. and then they nailed through the other hand: and then the feet. and as they lifted the cross, all the weight came upon the pierced hands. and when he had tasted the vinegar he would not drink. and any moment he could have come down from the cross: yet he so cared that love should win the war against evil, that he never wavered, his eyes 308 never glittered. do you want to put an end to the arena? here is a man to follow. in hoc signo vinces.
i stood up again, and stretched out my hands. and as i did so a memory came back vivid and strong. i remembered the night when i stood out on the hillside by trafalgar square, under the moon. and i remembered how i had felt a strength out of the pain, and even as the strength came a more unutterable weakness, the weakness of a man battering against a wall of steel. the sound of the relentless guns had mocked at me. now as i stood on the lawn, i heard the long continuous vibration of the guns upon the somme.
“you are war,” i said aloud. “this is your hour, the power of darkness. but the time will come when we shall follow the man who has conquered your last weapon, death: and then your walls of steel will waver, cringe, and fall, melted away before the fire of love.”
printed by william brendon and son, ltd. plymouth, england
