"Vanity induces men, more than reason, to act against inclination."
THE DUKE DE LA ROCHEFOUCALD: _Maxims_.
1
I sailed for America in December, 1915, on perhaps the most difficult
mission that I have ever undertaken. It was not expected, of course,
that the United States would enter the war against us or upset the
diplomatic equilibrium in our favour without provocation and until the
result of the elections had been seen. I went, as I have suggested, to
counteract the German propaganda, which sought to make all at least
equally responsible for the war, and also to remove some part of the bad
impression which had been left by our more unbridled journalists and our
less imaginative statesmen. The moral approbation of America was too
precious an asset to fritter away, and the purchase of material depended
on the goodwill of American financiers, the supply of munitions could be
stopped as a diplomatic reprisal.
It was perhaps unfortunate that my arrival coincided with an outburst of
new interest in the Blockade, ending with the creation of a Blockade
Ministry and the appointment of a Blockade Minister. (Harry Merefield
used to shake his head over any new interest in the Blockade. "_We_
always say that Germany must be defeated in the field, and I'm
apprehensive when the soldiers tell me that they're counting on our
starving the brutes out.") I was asked, too, at more than one meeting
how the Government of Great Britain reconciled its passionate crusade in
defence of small nationalities with its no less passionate refusal to
allow the Irish to control their own destinies. The dreary tale of the
unchecked Ulster gun-running and the appeal to Germany was rehearsed for
my benefit; and my more law-abiding Irish audiences generated
considerable heat over the presence of "the rebel Carson" in the
Cabinet.
But, if I found the work difficult, it gave me a respite from England,
where I felt that I had been watching the machine at too close quarters.
Since the day when I helped George Oakleigh to divide the world and
secure a lasting peace, our nerves had worn thin; we devoted too much
time to seeing that other people went promptly about their duties; and a
deadly personal bitterness--embodied for me in Grayle, though I do not
single him out for attack--poisoned our confidence in our own leaders. I
was glad to feel the icy wind of the Atlantic lashing my face, blowing
the cobwebs from my brain and the sour taste from my mouth, as we
rounded the last Irish headland.
During the week that I had to myself on board, sailing without lights
and zig-zagging out of reach of submarines, I put together the notes for
some of my speeches. It was extraordinarily difficult to say anything
definite. After eighteen months of hostilities and mid-way through a
second winter, there was a confident expectation that the great spring
offensive would end the war. The Austrian losses were known to be
gigantic, and it was believed that the old emperor was flirting with
peace; Germany was starving, and the moral of the German army had
notoriously broken. (Our avowedly humorous publications demonstrated
that a British soldier had still only to call "Waiter!" or to exhibit a
sausage at the end of his bayonet to have a swarm of German prisoners on
their knees to him.)
Yet, beneath all our confidence ran a chilling current of doubt. The
spring offensive would be launched in Belgium or France, but the clubs
and dinner tables, the military correspondents--it was whispered, the
Cabinet itself--were divided into "westerners" and "easterners."
"If _we_ could hold up the Huns at Ypres," George had said to me
gloomily on my last day in England, "_they_ can hold us up equally well,
when the proportion of fighting strength has been reversed. I hoped in
the early days of the Dardanelles that we were going to knock away the
buttresses and bring down the whole structure of the Central Empires,
detach Turkey and Bulgaria, you know, carve a way into the Hungarian
plains. Now I'm by no means comfortable...."
George, with many others, was not destined to think of the Dardanelles
with an easy mind until news reached the Eclectic Club one day at
luncheon that Gallipoli had been miraculously evacuated, and a sigh of
relief rose over London, to be followed by a feeling that, though we had
escaped once, our luck might desert us at the second tempting. More and
more I was hearing the criticism that there were too many amateur
strategists in the Cabinet with no one to check the careless inspiration
which led them to fling their armies to Sulva Bay or Salonica, while the
thinning reserves on the western front impelled the Government inch by
reluctant inch to conscription.
And every time that the Blockade bit deeper into the puffy German flesh,
every time that the mark exchange fell, every time that the numbers of
enemy killed, wounded, missing and prisoners satisfied our military
ready-reckoners that the last reserves were under fire and that the
inevitable collapse would ring and echo through the world within so many
days or weeks, the enemy retaliated with the wriggle of a Japanese
wrestler, flung his adversary away and surmounted him. Servia had been
overrun by the effete, vanquished Austrians in October, Montenegro
followed in January; we had sent troops to Gallipoli, because the
western front was impregnable, we had withdrawn them because the eastern
front was no less impregnable. Amateur strategy or political intrigue
was now mysteriously dissipating more troops in Greece, and I was
required later to square the allied landing in Salonica with the allied
resistance to the German incursion into Belgium. To say that King
Constantine had defaulted on his treaty obligations to Servia was
venturesome but inadequate, for the terms of the treaty were unknown; it
was common knowledge, on the other hand, that Great Britain had
guaranteed the Greek constitution, by which foreign troops might only
land at the invitation of king and parliament.
The public temper in England led me to expect one thing, crystallised by
Vincent Grayle in a bet that, if we had not broken the German line by
September, the Government and the Higher Command would have passed into
ineffectual history.
"It's their last chance," were his parting words to me. "After all, you
find a leak in your cistern, you get a plumber; if he can't mend it,
God's truth, you get another plumber. You're likely to find considerable
changes by the time you get back."
I think it was the taste left in my mouth by Vincent Grayle that I was
most glad to have blown away by the north-east Atlantic wind.
I landed in New York to find that I had lost one false perspective of
the war to acquire another. In the eastern states there was indeed an
"American Rights" party, flamingly incensed that the President had not
broken off diplomatic relations on the sinking of the "Lusitania," but
as unprepared as I had been on my return to England after a year of war
for the resolution and effort, the suffering and bereavement, the social
upheaval and snapping nerves which I had met. New England, to my pity,
talked of participation and still fancied, as we had once done, that it
would be someone else's son or brother, someone of academic interest,
who would appear day after day in the casualty lists. Yet what else
could I expect? As I walked up and down the unfamiliarly lighted streets
to see men still employed on work which was being done by women in
England, as I met abundance on every hand and heard of war as an
intellectual conception in the middle distance, I had only to shut my
eyes and imagine that it was a fantastic nightmare of my own.
For three months I spoke and wrote; for three months, as I was flung
from end to end of the continent on journeys of incredible length and
intolerable discomfort, interviewers boarded my train and invaded my
car. The daily news of the war had long been relegated to some corner of
a back page, and my interviewers were clamorous as children to be told a
story.
I am content to be judged by results; in the south there were men who
responded to my eloquence by crossing the border and enlisting in a
Canadian regiment, and the War Charities Fund has its record of the
subscriptions which I collected. My audiences reacted on me until I am
afraid I came to idealise unpardonably. I remember describing to a
Boston audience the spontaneous uprising of England as I had found it
after a year abroad; I remember, too, returning to my hotel and finding
a handful of letters and a batch of month-old papers.... England was
agitated by the question whether a married man, who had volunteered for
service, should be taken into the army until an unmarried man, who had
not so volunteered, had been coerced. It was not an ennobling
controversy for one who had been describing crusades....
"It serves the married men right for calling the single men shirkers,"
George Oakleigh wrote. "Now that they've screwed themselves up to the
point of attesting, they're trying to shirk in their turn.... Psychology
is revealing itself curiously. Men who despise a Catholic for
surrendering the right of private judgement are praying for the
Government to order them about and relieve them of the responsibility of
making up their own minds.... A thriving trade is being driven in
rejection certificates. Your enterprising patriot with some physical
defect gets himself duly turned down for the army; he then personates
his more robust friends for a suitable fee, attending at their local
recruiting offices under their names and pocketing any solatium that may
be handed out at such times. It was hardly this spirit which sent Jim
Loring and Raney out.... The whole wrangle is a great opportunity for
our friend Beresford, but he is at least honest and intelligible; if
conscription comes, he'll refuse to serve and the Government can shoot
him. He was committed to a war without being consulted and he's not
going to die of malaria in Salonica to please a House of Commons which
he helped to return five years ago to carry the Parliament Bill."
I feel that I must have addressed my audiences with less conviction
after a letter of this kind, yet it was but the occasional snapping of
overstrained human nerves. Yolande, I remember, wrote in great concern
to tell me that her husband and George--two of the kindest, mildest and
most level-headed men I know--had quarrelled and parted in anger. A
successful raid into the German lines was magnified into at least a
second-class victory; George in a mood of depression minimised it
unduly; Felix thereat raked up his opponent's record of eight years
before as a champion of disarmament and international peace, charging
him with being a pro-German. "I wanted to bang their heads together,
uncle darling," my niece confided. "Will you believe it? They weren't on
speaking terms for a week, until I made each apologise to the other. So
ridiculous!..."
The unrest and dissatisfaction ran through public and private life
equally.
"There's a perfect crop of what my young cousin Laurie calls
'stunt-artists' of late," George wrote a week later. "Every third man in
the House feels called on to do a 'stunt' of his own. There's a 'Ginger
Stunt,' to keep the Government up to the mark, and an 'Air Stunt' to
protect us from Zepps, and a 'Civil Liberties Stunt' to resist
conscription, and a 'Conscription Stunt' to resist civil liberties, and
a 'Press Stunt' to quash the Press Bureau, and a sort of 'Standing
Stunt' to quash Northcliffe. Men of imaginative bent are turning their
eyes to Mesopotamia and the Dardanelles, ready to start stunts there at
the earliest opportunity and on the smallest provocation. Bertrand says
that in all his experience he's never known the House so neurotic and
out of hand. The cumulative effect is exceedingly bad. Whether the
stunts do any good or not I can't say, but they destroy confidence in
the Government, depress people at home and at the front, not to mention
the allies, and ultimately they'll bring the Government down. Now, with
the exception of Grayle, that's what no one wants to do. Asquith's the
only man who can hold the country together, but he's so anxious--and
rightly--to keep his team working harmoniously and to avoid any
possibility of a split anywhere that I don't think he asserts himself
enough. A party truce can be overdone, and a good many Liberals are
saying that they are always sacrificed to conciliate someone else and
never the other way about; as with Ireland--but I've no doubt your
Irish-Americans have delicately hinted in the same sense.... By the way,
I forgot to mention the 'Stop the War Stunt.' Since last I wrote
Beresford has been had up and fined; at least he was ordered to pay the
fine, but he refused; so they kept him in prison for a bit, and he
hunger-struck and now he's at large again...."
George's next letter made no reference to anything of public interest.
"Do you remember saying that Sonia was a whole-time job for a man?" he
began. "She's too much for me; I'm going to retire from the fray. When
Raney came home for the Christmas holidays, he and Sonia talked things
over--Melton and the House and work of various kinds. Bertrand was
dragged in to keep the peace and advise generally, and they reached this
amount of agreement: Raney consented to throw up his appointment at the
school, provided he found work at least equally remunerative to pay his
debts and keep the household going and provided that it was work of some
public utility. He wasn't prepared simply to make money, if his services
could be of any use to anyone for the war. Well, as you know, almost
every kind of public work involves the use of your eyes, and it would
have taken him some time to find the right kind of job. In fact, he and
Bertrand had not begun to discuss it when Sonia went on to the next
question with a very definite statement that, if he was going to live at
'The Sanctuary', she claimed equal rights with him to decide who was
invited to the house--in other words (and very reasonably, from her
point of view) the house was their home and she might just as well be
living in the street as in that menagerie. I confess I sympathise. I
_knew_ she wouldn't stand it for more than a very few weeks. You don't
know the place as I do, you've probably never seen anyone but Beresford
dossing on a sofa, but Raney with the best intentions in the world
sometimes turns that place into a casual ward. Sonia stood it at first,
because it was a new experience and she's got a passionate enjoyment of
life which would carry her through everything. But, when the novelty had
worn off, it must have been singularly uncomfortable; even Raney's
friends would only smile pityingly, and you may be sure that all the
Dainton influence was thrown into the scale against him. I know for a
fact that Lady Dainton's done all the mischief she can in the way of
sneering, criticising, setting Sonia against Raney. The important new
development was that Sonia was beginning to echo her mother. I happened
to drop in about this time. I expect you've noticed that moral
undressing is always conducted publicly in that house; I heard Raney
defend himself by pointing out that Bertrand's house had been turned
into a hospital, that Crowley Court was a hospital and that he was not
asking Sonia to do anything very different from what Lady Dainton was
doing. 'Ever since I came back from the front,' he told her, 'I've been
trying to get this war into perspective. Everyone's doing his best to
save this country and all that it stands for, but it's got to stand for
a good deal more than it did before the war; we owe it to the fellows
who have died and the fellows who are dying now and the numberless
fellows who've still got to die, we've got to shew that they died for
something that we can look at without shame. It'll be a long time before
we can be really proud of this country, but we can make a beginning, and
the time to begin is when we've stood sweating with fear and remorse
with a halter round our necks and the hangman comes to say we've been
reprieved.'
"As you know, my uncle's a tough old cynic, but, when Raney talks with
that cold, vibrant passion of his, you have to be very tough not to feel
at least a little uncomfortable. I've had to stand it ever since we were
at Oxford together. Sonia was about as much impressed as if he'd been
talking to a brick wall. He wasn't discouraged, but he turned to
Bertrand--'You remember when I got back, sir?' (God! I'm not likely to
forget the night when we found he was blind!) 'You were in a furnished
flat, and I had awful difficulty in finding you, but I came straight to
you, and you and George took me in without a murmur.' (I suppose he
thought that after sixteen years we were going to refer him to the
nearest Rowton House.) 'That was--symbolical, sir,' he went on. 'D'you
remember that you came in very late, when I was in bed, and we had a
talk? After you'd gone, I got out of bed and lifted up both hands and
swore that I'd not give in, that I'd do what I could with what was left.
I swore that, as I'd been taken in--not only by you; a hundred other
people had done the same,--I'd try very humbly and patiently never to
say "no" to anyone else that wanted to be taken in, anyone else that I
could help. That's what I'm trying to do now.' Then he stopped and left
them to digest it, with the result which you can imagine when two people
take up wholly irreconcilable positions. Sonia said that charity should
begin at home, that he talked about not being unkind to anyone, but he
was being unkind to his own wife--you can imagine the dialogue. Bertrand
raised _his_ two hands that night and swore that he'd clear out into
quarters of his own, and Sonia's parting words were that she regarded
her marriage as at an end, which is a pretty sentiment after five
months."
A week later George wrote again on the same subject.
"How you must enjoy the sight of my hand!" he began. "I'm sorry, but I
want to blow off steam. The other night I took Raney out to dinner and
talked to him for his soul's good. I saw a good deal of the tragi-comedy
when Sonia was engaged to Jim Loring and I told Raney that he was
courting disaster by the way he was treating her. He was in one of his
most smiling, most obstinate moods--steel and india-rubber. He said he
couldn't slam his door in the face of anyone who wanted help. 'Very
well!' I said; 'keep it open. You say "yes," she says "no," and there's
not a square inch of ground for compromise. One of you has to climb
down, and you won't?' 'If you like to put it like that,' says Raney, 'I
won't.' 'Then make _her_,' I said. 'She'll do it, if you make her; she
won't love you any the less and she'll respect you all the more, if you
force her to obey you.' Raney was really upset. 'Old man! you mustn't
talk to me about _forcing_ my wife to do things!' My dear Stornaway,
that's the kind of imbecile we've got to deal with! I warned him that,
if he kept his door open against her will, she would walk out of it.
"God knows, I never wanted to be a Cassandra, but I know that child so
well! Two days later Raney bumped into a young officer staggering along
Victoria Street in an advanced state of intoxication; Raney just had
time to find out that the fellow was due to catch the leave-train at
about seven next morning, when his new friend collapsed on the steps of
the Army and Navy Stores and settled himself to a comfortable slumber. I
don't suppose any of us would have left him there with a fair prospect
of being robbed or run in or discovered by the Provost-Marshal, to say
nothing of losing the train and perhaps being court-martialled. Raney
must needs put him in a cab, take him home and expend time, ingenuity
and hard-bought experience in making him sober. It must have been a
gruesome night, but the fellow caught his train. It was the last straw
for Sonia. The next day she wired from Northamptonshire, asking me to
tell Raney that she was staying with the Pentyres. That was a week ago;
Raney has asked her--_asked_, mark you--to come back, and she won't
budge. I deliberately cadged an invitation from Pentyre last week-end,
we spent Sunday with one scene after another, and her final message on
Monday morning was that she would come back when he agreed to do what
she asked; otherwise she would be compelled to think that he, too,
regarded the marriage as over. I spent most of Monday night storming at
Raney, and the present position is that neither will yield an inch and
Raney won't exercise his authority.
"You are probably sick and tired of them both by now, but you cannot be
anything like as sick or tired as I am...."
2
This was the last letter which I received before my return to England in
the spring of 1916. The country, when I landed, reminded me strongly of
a theatre before a first night; everyone was waiting for the full
deployment of the new armies, everyone expected the summer campaign to
be the supreme test; by now, too, almost everyone had son or brother
under arms waiting in the line or rehearsing his share in the coming
offensive. The tension produced a nervous irritability which manifested
itself, so far as the House of Commons was concerned, in a mutinous
demand for enlightenment, and one of my earliest duties was to be
present, with fine parade of mystery and importance, at the first secret
session of the war. The one unvarying rule which I have been able to
frame for the House of Commons is that it never fulfils expectations.
Though the Press Gallery was conscientiously cleared, we were given
neither fact nor figure that was not already in the possession of any
well-informed journalist; twenty-four hours later the speeches were
common property in every club, and the one thing new was the change in
psychology. The show of blind loyalty to the Government had broken down
until the Government itself felt that something must be tried to restore
confidence. I found that a man of Bertrand's temperamental independence
was using Grayle's currency of speech.
"Much good it's done!" he growled, as we left the House together. "It's
no use pointing to the number of men you've raised or the output of
shells. The country's outgrown the phase of being content with good
endeavours, it wants _results_, it's in the mood to say, 'You haven't
beaten the Germans, and, if you don't do it pretty quickly, someone must
be found who will.' Stroll home with me, if you've nothing better to
do."
"You're in your old quarters still?" I asked.
Bertrand laughed and then sighed.
"When David asked me to come here, I accepted on an impulse," he
confessed. "It was a phase of the early enthusiasm; I felt we'd got no
business to go on living so extravagantly, when the boys out there were
going through Hell's agonies and every penny was wanted to carry on this
war and to reduce the load of human suffering. I suppose this dog's too
old to be taught new tricks. If you find me staying on now, it's only to
keep the peace." He stopped to re-light his cigar, and, as he sheltered
the match with his hands, I saw that his heavy, powerful face was morose
and dissatisfied. "I've got a considerable love for David. He was a fool
to marry the girl, of course, but a man doesn't marry or keep a mistress
because it's _wise_, but because he wants to, because he can't help
himself.... When she married him, I thought that the war had sobered her
down, but these _soupers fraternels_ have made her restive, and she's
reverted to type. I'm standing by to break up tête-à-têtes and prevent
her doing anything irrevocable before they've patched up their present
quarrel and agreed on some possible way of life. If he weren't blind,
she'd have left him three months ago. You know they've not met since
Christmas?"
"Where are they?" I asked.
"Oh, she's here--with the usual tame cats to carry her off to lunch and
dinner. She came back the day after David returned to Melton.... You can
see it's a pleasant house to live in!... Before the war I sat on a
committee with her mother. Do you remember a phase when young men tried
to grow side-whiskers? Well, the drawing-room was always full of these
hairy youths, immaculately dressed and simpering round her with boxes of
sweets and flowers, which she very graciously accepted. Since the war
these fellows have shaved and got into uniform, but it's the same old
gang. I used to think nobody was injured; she liked racketing about at
restaurants and theatres, they were puffed up to be with her. The only
man I drew the line at was Grayle; he's much heavier metal." Bertrand
paused to laugh with his old cynical relish. "I'm deuced old, but I've
still got a very retentive memory, and everybody's always told me
things. Well, I went through the mental rag-bag, I talked to a few
people, I made a few enquiries--particularly on the American chapter of
his life--and the next time we met I became biographical at his expense.
George tried and failed. Friend Grayle hasn't been here since. I tell
you, I was getting sick of the business. She'd give a dinner party at
eight, and Grayle would be here at half-past seven to talk to her alone,
and, by Gad! she'd be dressed and ready for him. I don't know whether
they thought I was blind _and_ deaf.... And it was the same when she
dined at his house. I used to hear her coquetting and threatening to be
late, if he wasn't 'good'--ugh!--and he'd swear he wouldn't admit her,
if she wasn't in time. It was all such poor stuff! I shouldn't have
minded so much, if there'd been any red blood in it, but she was
obviously just keeping her hand in; that woman would make sheep's eyes
at the Shakespeare monument in Leicester Square sooner than nothing....
So I spiked friend Grayle's guns, and she's had to content herself with
Beresford. He's pretty harmless, but the devil of it is that she's ready
to go wrong with any man, when she loses control of her temper. If she
weren't restrained by her husband's blindness ... Good night. I'm going
straight to my room."
As I had come to the door, I thought that I could do no harm by going in
to see who was about. I found Beresford sitting up on a sofa with a
block of paper on his lap. He looked exceedingly ill and perhaps not
best pleased to see me.
"You're back again, then?" I said. "How's the knee?"
"I'm only waiting till Sonia comes in," he answered. "My knee's much
the same as it's been all along, very much the same as it always will
be. The doctors are going to give me blood-tests or something. Of
course, I didn't do it much good when I was in prison; the doctor there
was badly scared. He used to examine me each day to see how much longer
I could hold out without food, and I used to see him looking grave every
time he came to the knee, until I'm prepared to bet he told the
authorities he wouldn't take the responsibility of keeping me there any
longer. Then they let me out." His grey lips curled into a withering
sneer. "God! the authorities in this country _deserve_ to lose their
precious war! D'you think that in Germany they'd allow me to write the
pamphlets I do here? D'you think, if they decided not to shoot me,
they'd let me out of prison because they were afraid to force food down
my throat? The blessed innocents here said I might go, if I promised to
drop my propaganda; they brought in a pen and paper. Well, I'd been
without water for four days, and my throat and mouth were so swollen
that I couldn't speak. I couldn't write very elegantly, either, but I
collected enough strength to scrawl 'I'll see you in Hell first.' And
then, if you please, I was let out. And now I'm improving the occasion."
He collected a number of loose sheets and pinned them together.
"As long as you think it does any good," I said, "the Archangel Gabriel
wouldn't be able to stop you."
"You don't think it's a good thing to keep people from slaughtering one
another? Dear man, d'you appreciate that, if Kitchener and Grey were in
Potsdam at this moment with the unconditional surrender of Germany in
their pocket, they couldn't get anything to compensate our present
losses? There's imbecile talk about security and a 'war-to-end-war,' but
you won't _have_ war when people understand what it's like. That's what
I'm trying to shew them."
He threw himself back on the sofa and began reading what he had written.
I got up to leave, only pausing to give him a message for Mrs. O'Rane.
As I closed the door behind me, a taxi stopped at the corner twenty
yards from "The Sanctuary" and a man in uniform stepped out and
stretched one hand to somebody inside, holding the door open with the
other. His size alone, without the familiar mane of yellow hair,
identified him for me as Grayle; a moment later Mrs. O'Rane emerged and
stood by him under the street lamp at the corner. Bertrand might keep
Grayle as far away as the end of the street, but I felt that he had
boasted prematurely.
"You'll come in?" I heard Mrs. O'Rane say, as her companion hesitated by
the taxi.
"Not to-night, thanks. It's rather late."