MY DEAR CHARLES,--Here is a war, producing great men, and here am I
writing to you from time to time about it and never mentioning one of
them. I have touched upon Commanding Officers, Brigadiers, Divisional,
Corps, even Army Commanders; I have gone so far as to mention the
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF once and I have mentioned myself very many times.
But the really great men I have omitted. I mean the really, really
great men, without whom the War could not possibly go on, and with
whom, I am often led to suppose, the decision remains as to what day
Peace shall be declared. Take the A.M.L.O. at ---- for example.
Now, Charles, be it understood that I am not saying anything for or
against the trade of Assisting Military Landing Officers; I have no
feeling with regard to it one way or the other. For all I know it may
require a technical knowledge so profound that any man who can master
it is already half-way on the road to greatness. On the other hand,
it may require no technical knowledge at all, and, the whole of a
Military Landing Officer's duties being limited to watching other
people working, the Assistant Military Landing Officer's task may
consist of nothing more complicated than watching the Military Landing
Officer watching the military land. If this is so, the work may be so
simple that, once a man has satisfied the very rigid social test to be
passed by all aspirants to so distinguished a position, he must simply
be a silly ass if he doesn't automatically become a great man, after
a walk or two up and down the quay. I repeat, I know nothing whatever
of the calling of A.M.L.O., and I could not tell you without inquiry
whether it is an ancient and honourable profession or an unscrupulous
trade very jealously watched by the Law. I have some friends in it and
I have many friends out of it, and the former should not be inflated
with conceit nor the latter unduly depressed when I pronounce the
deliberate opinion that the best known and greatest thing in the
B.E.F. is without doubt the A.M.L.O. at ----.
Though it is months since I cast eyes on him, I can see him now,
standing self-confidently on his own private quay, with the most chic
of Virginian cigarettes smouldering between his aristocratic lips
and the very latest and most elegant of Bond Street Khaki Neckwear
distinguishing him from the mixed crowd about him. Every one else
is distraught; even matured Generals, used to the simple and
irresponsible task of commanding troops in action, are a little
unnerved by the difficulties and intricacies of embarking oneself
militarily. He on whom all the responsibility rests remains aloof.
A smile, half cynical, plays across his proud face. He knows he has
but to flick the ash from his cigarette and the Army will spring to
attention and the Navy will get feverishly to work. He has but to
express consent by the inclination of his head and sirens will blow,
turbine engines will operate as they would never operate for anybody
else, thousands of tons of shipping will rearrange itself, and even
the sea will become less obstreperous and more circumspect in its
demeanour, adjusting, if need be, its tides to suit his wishes.
I take it my condition is typical when I am "proceeding" (one will
never come and go again in our time; one will always proceed)--when
I am proceeding to the U.K. The whole thing is too good to believe,
and I don't believe it till I have some written and omnipotent
instructions, in my pocket and am actually moving towards the sea.
The youngest and keenest schoolboy returning home for his holidays
is a calm, collected, impassionate and even dismal man of the world
compared to me. I see little and am impressed by nothing; all things
and men are assumed to be good, and none of them is given the
opportunity of proving itself to be the contrary. As for the A.M.L.O.
at any other port but this one, I remark nothing about him except
his princely generosity in letting me have an embarcation card. He
is just one more good fellow in the long series of good fellows who
have authorised my move. I am borne out to sea in a dream--a dream
of England and all that England means to us, be that a wife or a
reasonable breakfast at a reasonable hour. Not until I am on my way
back does it occur to me that landing and transport officers have
identities, and by that time I have lost all interest in transport
and landing and officers and identities and everything else.
At the port of ----, however, it is very different. I may arrive on
the quay in a dream, but I'm at once out of it when I have caught
sight of Greatness sitting in its little hut with the ticket window
firmly closed until the arrival of the hour before which he has
disposed that it shall not open. Thoughts of home are gone; I can
think of nothing but Him. When at last I have obtained his gracious,
if reluctant, consent to my obeying the instructions I have, and have
got on to the boat, I deposit my goods hurriedly, anywhere, and fight
for a position by the bulwark nearest the quay, from which I may gaze
at his august Excellency for the few remaining hours during which it
is given us to linger in or near our well-beloved France.
How came it about, I ask myself, that the Right Man got to be in
the Right Place? It cannot have been merely fortuitous that he was
not thrust away into some such obscure job as the command of an
Expeditionary Force or the control of the counsels of the Imperial
General Staff. It must have been the deliberate choice of a wise
chooser; Major-General Military Landing himself, the SECRETARY OF
STATE FOR WAR on his own, even His MAJESTY in person? Or was a
plebiscite taken through the length and breadth of the British Isles
when I was elsewhere, and did Britain, thrilled to the core, clamour
for him unanimously?
I watch him keep a perturbed and restless Major from the line waiting
while he finishes his light-hearted badinage with a subordinate. It is
altogether magnificent in its sheer _sangfroid_. Why is it that such
a one is labelled merely A.M.L.O., when he should obviously be the
M.L.O.? He has his subordinate, happily insignificant and obsequiously
proud to serve. Let the subordinate be the a.m.l.o., and let It,
Itself, be openly acknowledged to be It, Itself.
By the way, where _is_ his M.L.O.? Has anybody ever seen him? I
haven't. Does he exist?... Has he been got rid of?
There is a convenient crevice between the quay and the boat with a
convenient number of feet of water at the bottom of it. Is the M.L.O.
down there, and is the "A.M.L.O." brassard but the modesty of true
greatness?
If the M.L.O. has been thrown down there, who threw him?
Was it my idol, the A.M.L.O., in a moment of exasperation with his
M.L.O.?
Or was it the M.L.O., in a moment of exasperation with my idol, the
A.M.L.O.? Yours ever, HENRY.
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[Illustration: _Old Lady_. "IS THIS THE RESULT OF A BOMB, CONSTABLE?"
_Constable (fed up)_. "BLESS YOU, NO, MA'AM. THE GENT THAT LIVES
HERE'S GOT HAY FEVER."]
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"Naval Officer's (Minesweeping) Wife would be grateful for the
opportunity of purchasing a Baby's Layette of good quality at a
very reasonable price."--_Morning Post_.
Our congratulations to the mine sweeping wife upon having captured a
Baby Mine.
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