February 4th, 1917.
Dear Mr. B.:
I have been intending to write to you for a very long time, but as most
of one's writing is done when one ought to be asleep, and sleep next to
eating is one of our few remaining pleasures, my intended letter has
remained in my head up to now. On returning from a nine days' leave to
London the other day, however, I found two letters from you awaiting me
and was reproached into effort.
War's a queer game--not at all what one's civilian mind imagined; it's
far more horrible and less exciting. The horrors which the civilian mind
dreads most are mutilation and death. Out here we rarely think about
them; the thing which wears on one most and calls out his gravest
courage is the endless sequence of physical discomfort. Not to be able
to wash, not to be able to sleep, to have to be wet and cold for long
periods at a stretch, to find mud on your person, in your food, to have
to stand in mud, see mud, sleep in mud and to continue to smile--that's
what tests courage. Our chaps are splendid. They're not the hair-brained
idiots that some war-correspondents depict from day to day. They're
perfectly sane people who know to a fraction what they're up against,
but who carry on with a grim good-nature and a determination to win with
a smile. I never before appreciated as I do to-day the latent capacity
for big-hearted endurance that is in the heart of every man. Here are
apparently quite ordinary chaps--chaps who washed, liked theatres, loved
kiddies and sweethearts, had a zest for life--they're bankrupt of all
pleasures except the supreme pleasure of knowing that they're doing the
ordinary and finest thing of which they are capable. There are millions
to whom the mere consciousness of doing their duty has brought an
heretofore unexperienced peace of mind. For myself I was never happier
than I am at present; there's a novel zip added to life by the daily
risks and the knowledge that at last you're doing something into which
no trace of selfishness enters. One can only die once; the chief concern
that matters is _how_ and not _when_ you die. I don't pity the weary men
who have attained eternal leisure in the corruption of our
shell-furrowed battles; they "went West" in their supreme moment. The
men I pity are those who could not hear the call of duty and whose
consciences will grow more flabby every day. With the brutal roar of the
first Prussian gun the cry came to the civilised world, "Follow thou
me," just as truly as it did in Palestine. Men went to their Calvary
singing Tipperary, rubbish, rhymed doggerel, but their spirit was equal
to that of any Christian martyr in a Roman amphitheatre. "Greater love
hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend." Our
chaps are doing that consciously, willingly, almost without bitterness
towards their enemies; for the rest it doesn't matter whether they sing
hymns or ragtime. They've followed their ideal--freedom--and died for
it. A former age expressed itself in Gregorian chants; ours, no less
sincerely, disguises its feelings in ragtime.
Since September I have been less than a month out of action. The game
doesn't pall as time goes on--it fascinates. We've got to win so that
men may never again be tortured by the ingenious inquisition of modern
warfare. The winning of the war becomes a personal affair to the chaps
who are fighting. The world which sits behind the lines, buys extra
specials of the daily papers and eats three square meals a day, will
never know what this other world has endured for its safety, for no man
of this other world will have the vocabulary in which to tell. But don't
for a moment mistake me--we're grimly happy.
What a serial I'll write for you if I emerge from this turmoil! Thank
God, my outlook is all altered. I don't want to live any longer--only to
live well.
Good-bye and good luck.
Yours,
Coningsby Dawson.