mouth. Rubbing my eyes, I consult my watch. Half-past five! Rather
early! Raising myself stealthily, I catch a glimpse of a neat little
sister darting down the ward from bed to bed, tent-pegging every
sleeping face with a fresh thermometer. Having made the round, back
she comes to take possession of my hand while she counts my pulse. I
try to speak, but she won't let me remove the accursed thermometer;
when she has removed it herself, off she goes to the next bed. I
notice that she has auburn hair, merry blue eyes and a ripping Irish
accent. I learn later that she's a Sinn Feiner, a sworn enemy to
England who sings “Dark Rosaleen” and other rebel songs in the secret
watches of the night. It seems to me that in taking care of England's
wounded she's solving the Irish problem pretty well.
Heavens, she's back again, this time with a bowl of water and a towel!
Very severely and thoroughly, as though I were a dirty urchin, she
scrubs my face and hands. She even brushes my hair. I watch her do the
same for other patients, some of whom are Colonels and old enough to
be her father. She's evidently in no mood for proposals of marriage at
this early hour, for her technique is impartially severe to everybody,
though her blue eyes are unfailingly laughing.
It is at this point that somebody crawls out of bed, slips into a
dressing-gown, passes through the swing door at the end of the ward
and sets the bath-water running. The sound of it is ecstatic.
Very soon others follow his example. They're chaps without legs, with
an arm gone, a hand gone, back wounds, stomach wounds, holes in the
head. They start chaffing one another. There's no hint of tragedy. A
gale of laughter sweeps the ward from end to end. An Anzac captain is
called on for a speech. I discover that he is our professional comic
man and is called on to make speeches twenty times a day. They always
start with, “Gentlemen, I will say this--” and end with a flourish in
praise of Australia. Soon the ward is made perilous by wheel-chairs,
in which unskilful pilots steer themselves out into the green
adventure of the garden. Birds are singing out there; the guns had
done for the birds in the places where we came from. Through open
doors we can see the glow of flowers, dew-laden and sparkling, lazily
unfolding their petals in the early sun.
When the sister's back is turned, a one-legged officer nips out of bed
and hops like a crow to the gramophone. The song that follows is a
favourite. Curious that it should be, for it paints a dream which to
many of these mutilated men--Canadians, Australians, South Africans,
Imperials--will have to remain only a dream, so long as life
lasts. Girls don't marry fellows without arms and legs--at least they
didn't in peace days before the world became heroic. As the gramophone
commences to sing, heads on pillows hum the air and fingers tap in
time on the sheets. It's a peculiarly childish song for men who have
seen what they have seen and done what they have done, to be so fond
of. Here's the way it runs:--
“We'll have a little cottage in a little town
And well have a little mistress in a dainty gown,
A little doggie, a little cat,
A little doorstep with WELCOME on the mat;
And we'll have a little trouble and a little strife,
But none of these things matter when you've got a little wife.
We shall be as happy as the angels up above
With a little patience and a lot of love.”
A little patience and a lot of love! I suppose that's the line that's
caught the chaps. Behind all their smiling and their boyish gaiety
they know that they'll need both patience and love to meet the balance
of existence with sweetness and soldierly courage. It won't be so easy
to be soldiers when they get back into mufti and go out into the world
cripples. Here in their pyjamas in the summer sun, they're making a
first class effort. I take another look at them. No, there'll never be
any whining from men such as these.
Some of us will soon be back in the fighting--and jolly glad of
it. Others are doomed to remain in the trenches for the rest of their
lives--not the trenches of the front-line where they've been strafed
by the Hun, but the trenches of physical curtailment where self-pity
will launch wave after wave of attack against them. It won't be easy
not to get the “wind up.” It'll be difficult to maintain normal
cheerfulness. But they're not the men they were before they went to
war--out there they've learnt something. They're game. They'll remain
soldiers, whatever happens.
THE LADS AWAY
All the lads have gone out to play
At being soldiers, far away;
They won't be back for many a day,
And some won't be back any morning.
All the lassies who laughing were
When hearts were light and lads were here,
Go sad-eyed, wandering hither and there--
They pray and they watch for the morning.
Every house has its vacant bed
And every night, when sounds are dead,
Some woman yearns for the pillowed head
Of him who marched out in the morning.
Of all the lads who've gone out to play
There's some'll return and some who'll stay;
There's some will be back 'most any day--
But some won't wake up in the morning.
II
THE GROWING OF THE VISION
I'm continuing in America the book which I thought out during the
golden July and August days when I lay in the hospital in London. I've
been here a fortnight; everything that's happened seems unbelievably
wonderful, as though it had happened to some one other than
myself. It'll seem still more wonderful in a few weeks' time when I'm
where I hope I shall be--back in the mud at the Front.
Here's how this miraculous turn of events occurred. When I went
before my medical board I was declared unfit for active service for at
least two months. A few days later I went in to General Headquarters
to see what were the chances of a trip to New York. The officer whom I
consulted pulled out his watch, “It's noon now. There's a boat-train
leaving Euston in two and a half hours. Do you think you can pack up
and make it?”
_Did I think_!
“You watch me,” I cried.
Dashing out into Regent Street I rounded up a taxi and raced about
London like one possessed, collecting kit, visiting tailors,
withdrawing money, telephoning friends with whom I had dinner and
theatre engagements. It's an extraordinary characteristic of the Army,
but however hurried an officer may be, he can always spare time to
visit his tailor. The fare I paid my taxi-driver was too monstrous for
words; but then he'd missed his lunch, and one has to miss so many
things in war-times that when a new straw of inconvenience is piled on
the camel, the camel expects to be compensated. Anyway, I was on that
boat-train when it pulled out of London.
I was in uniform when I arrived in New York, for I didn't possess any
mufti. You can't guess what a difference that made to one's
home-coming--not the being in uniform, but the knowing that it wasn't
an offence to wear it. On my last leave, some time ago before I went
overseas, if I'd tried to cross the border from Canada in uniform I'd
have been turned back; if by any chance I'd got across and worn
regimentals I'd have been arrested by the first Irish policeman. A
place isn't home where you get turned back or locked up for wearing
the things of which you're proudest. If America hadn't come into the
war none of us who have loved her and since been to the trenches,
would ever have wanted to return.
But she's home now as she never was before and never could have been
under any other circumstances--now that khaki strides unabashed down
Broadway and the skirl of the pipers has been heard on Fifth
Avenue. We men “over there” will have to find a new name for
America. It won't be exactly Blighty, but a kind of very wealthy first
cousin to Blighty--a word meaning something generous and affectionate
and steam-heated, waiting for us on the other side of the Atlantic.
Two weeks here already--two weeks more to go; then back to the glory
of the trenches!
There's one person I've missed since my return to New York. I've
caught glimpses of him disappearing around corners, but he dodges. I
think he's a bit ashamed to meet me. That person is my old civilian
self. What a full-blown egoist he used to be! How full of golden plans
for his own advancement! How terrified of failure, of disease, of
money losses, of death--of all the temporary, external, non-essential
things that have nothing to do with the spirit! War is in itself
damnable--a profligate misuse of the accumulated brain-stuff of
centuries. Nevertheless, there's many a man who has no love of war,
who previous to the war had cramped his soul with littleness and was
chased by the bayonet of duty into the blood-stained largeness of the
trenches, who has learnt to say, “Thank God for this war.” He thanks
God not because of the carnage, but because when the wine-press of new
ideals was being trodden, he was born in an age when he could do his
share.
America's going through just about the same experience as
myself. She's feeling broader in the chest, bigger in the heart and
her eyes are clearer. When she catches sight of the America that she
was, she's filled with doubt--she can't believe that that person with
the Stars and Stripes wrapped round her and a money-bag in either hand
ever was herself. Home, clean and honourable for every man who ever
loved her and has pledged his life for an ideal with the
Allies--that's what she's become now.
I read again the words that I wrote about those chaps in the London
hospital, men who had journeyed to their Calvary glad-hearted from the
farthest corners of the world. From this distance I see them in truer
perspective than when we lay companions side by side in that long line
of neat, white cots. I used to grope after ways to explain them--to
explain the courage which in their utter heroism they did not realise
they possessed. They had grown so accustomed to a brave way of living
that they sincerely believed they were quite ordinary persons. That's
courage at its finest--when it becomes unconscious and instinctive.
At first I said, “I know why they're so cheerful--it's because they're
all here in one ward together. They're all mutilated more or less, so
they don't feel that they're exceptional. It's as though the whole
world woke up with toothache one morning. At breakfast every one would
be feeling very sorry for himself; by lunch-time, when it had become
common knowledge that the entire world had the same kind of ache,
toothache would have ceased to exist. It's the loneliness of being
abnormal in your suffering that hurts.”
But it wasn't that. Even while I was confined to the hospital, in
hourly contact with the chaps, I felt that it wasn't that. When I was
allowed to dress and go down West for a few hours everyday, I knew
that I was wrong most certainly. In Piccadilly, Hyde Park, theatres,
restaurants, river-places on the Thames you'd see them, these men who
were maimed for life, climbing up and down buses, hobbling on their
crutches independently through crowds, hailing one another cheerily
from taxis, drinking life joyously in big gulps without complaint or
sense of martyrdom, and getting none of the dregs. A part of their
secret was that through their experience in the trenches they had
learnt to be self-forgetful. The only time I ever saw a wounded man
lose his temper was when some one out of kindness made him remember
himself. A sudden down-pour of rain had commenced; it was towards
evening and all the employees of the West End shopping centre were
making haste to get home to the suburbs. A young Highland officer who
had lost a leg scrambled into a bus going to Wandsworth. The inside of
the bus was jammed, so he had to stand up clutching on to a strap. A
middle-aged gentleman rose from his seat and offered it to the
Highlander. The Highlander smiled his thanks and shook his head. The
middle-aged gentleman in his sympathy became pressing, attracting
attention to the officer's infirmity. It was then that the officer
lost his temper. I saw him flush.
“I don't want it,” he said sharply. “There's nothing the matter with
me. Thanks all the same. I'll stand.”
This habit of being self-forgetful gives one time to be remindful of
others. Last January, during a brief and glorious ten days' leave, I
went to a matinée at the Coliseum. Vesta Tilley was doing an
extraordinarily funny impersonation of a Tommy just home from the
comfort of the trenches; her sketch depicted the terrible discomforts
of a fighting man on leave in Blighty. If I remember rightly the
refrain of her song ran somewhat in this fashion:
“Next time they want to give me six days' leave
Let 'em make it six months' 'ard.”
There were two officers, a major and a captain, behind us; judging by
the sounds they made, they were getting their full money's worth of
enjoyment. In the interval, when the lights went up, I turned and saw
the captain putting a cigarette between the major's lips; then, having
gripped a match-box between his knees so that he might strike the
match, he lit the cigarette for his friend very awkwardly. I looked
closer and discovered that the laughing captain had only one hand and
the equally happy major had none at all.
Men forget their own infirmities in their endeavour to help each
other. Before the war we had a phrase which has taken on a new meaning
now; we used to talk about “lending a hand.” To-day we lend not only
hands, but arms and eyes and legs. The wonderful comradeship learnt in
the trenches has taught men to lend their bodies to each other--out of
two maimed bodies to make up one which is whole, and sound, and
shared. You saw this all the time in hospital. A man who had only one
leg would pal up with a man who had only one arm. The one-armed man
would wheel the one-legged man about the garden in a chair; at
meal-times the one-legged man would cut up the one-armed man's food
for him. They had both lost something, but by pooling what was left
they managed to own a complete body. By the time the war is ended
there'll be great hosts of helpless men who by combining will have
learnt how to become helpful. They'll establish a new standard of
very simple and cheerful socialism.
There's a point I want to make clear before I forget it. All these
men, whether they're capturing Hun dug-outs at the Front or taking
prisoner their own despair in English hospitals, are perfectly
ordinary and normal. Before the war they were shop-assistants,
cab-drivers, plumbers, lawyers, vaudeville artists. They were men of
no heroic training. Their civilian callings and their previous social
status were too various for any one to suppose that they were heroes
ready-made at birth. Something has happened to them since they marched
away in khaki--something that has changed them. They're as completely
re-made as St. Paul was after he had had his vision of the opening
heavens on the road to Damascus. They've brought their vision back
with them to civilian life, despite the lost arms and legs which they
scarcely seem to regret; their souls still triumph over the body and
the temporal. As they hobble through the streets of London, they
display the same gay courage that was theirs when at zero hour, with a
fifty-fifty chance of death, they hopped over the top for the attack.
Often at the Front I have thought of Christ's explanation of his own
unassailable peace--an explanation given to his disciples at the Last
Supper, immediately before the walk to Gethsemane: “Be of good cheer,
I have overcome the world.” Overcoming the world, as I understand it,
is overcoming self. Fear, in its final analysis, is nothing but
selfishness. A man who is afraid in an attack, isn't thinking of his
pals and how quickly terror spreads; he isn't thinking of the glory
which will accrue to his regiment or division if the attack is a
success; he isn't thinking of what he can do to contribute to that
success; he isn't thinking of the splendour of forcing his spirit to
triumph over weariness and nerves and the abominations that the Huns
are chucking at him. He's thinking merely of how he can save his
worthless skin and conduct his entirely unimportant body to a place
where there aren't any shells.
In London as I saw the work-a-day, unconscious nobility of the maimed
and wounded, the words, “I have overcome the world,” took an added
depth. All these men have an “I-have-overcome-the-world” look in their
faces. It's comparatively easy for a soldier with traditions and
ideals at his back to face death calmly; to be calm in the face of
life, as these chaps are, takes a graver courage.
What has happened to change them? These disabilities, had they
happened before the war, would have crushed and embittered them. They
would have been woes utterly and inconsolably unbearable.
Intrinsically their physical disablements spell the same loss to-day
that they would have in 1912. The attitude of mind in which they are
accepted alone makes them seem less. This attitude of mind or
greatness of soul--whatever you like to call it--was learnt in the
trenches where everything outward is polluted and damnable. Their
experience at the Front has given them what in the Army language is
known as “guts.” “Guts” or courage is an attitude of mind towards
calamity--an attitude of mind which makes the honourable accomplishing
of duty more permanently satisfying than the preservation of self. But
how did this vision come to these men? How did they rid themselves of
their civilian flabbiness and acquire it? These questions are best
answered autobiographically. Here briefly, is the story of the growth
of the vision within myself.
In August, 1914, three days after war had been declared, I sailed from
Quebec for England on the first ship that put out from Canada. The
trip had been long planned--it was not undertaken from any patriotic
motive. My family, which included my father, mother, sister and
brother, had been living in America for eight years and had never
returned to England together. It was the accomplishing of a dream
long cherished, which favourable circumstances and a sudden influx of
money had at last made possible. We had travelled three thousand miles
from our ranch in the Rockies before the war-cloud burst; obstinacy
and curiosity combined made us go on, plus an entirely British feeling
that by crossing the Atlantic during the crisis we'd be showing our
contempt for the Germans.
We were only informed that the ship was going to sail at the very last
moment, and went aboard in the evening. The word spread quickly among
the crews of other vessels lying in harbour; their firemen, keen to
get back to England and have a whack at the Huns, tried to board our
ship, sometimes by a ruse, more often by fighting. One saw some very
pretty fist work that night as he leant across the rail, wondering
whether he'd ever reach the other side. There were rumours of German
warships waiting to catch us in mid-ocean. Somewhere towards midnight
the would-be stowaways gave up their attempt to force a passage; they
squatted with their backs against the sheds along the quayside,
singing patriotic songs to the accompaniment of mouth-organs,
confidently asserting that they were sons of the bull-dog breed and
never, never would be slaves. It was all very amusing; war seemed to
be the finest of excuses for an outburst of high spirits.
Next morning, when we came on deck for a breath of air the vessel was
under way; all hands were hard at work disguising her with paint of a
sombre colour. Here and there you saw an officer in uniform, who had
not yet had time to unpack his mufti. The next night, and for the rest
of the voyage, all port-holes were darkened and we ran without
lights. An atmosphere of suspense became omnipresent. Rumours spread
like wild-fire of sinkings, victories, defeats, marching and
countermarchings, engagements on land and water. With the uncanny and
unaccustomed sense of danger we began to realise that we, as
individuals, were involved in a European war.
As we got about among the passengers we found that the usual spirit of
comradeship which marks an Atlantic voyage, was noticeably lacking.
Every person regarded every other person with distrust, as though he
might be a spy. People were secretive as to their calling and the
purpose of their voyage; little by little we discovered that many of
them were government officials, but that most were professional
soldiers rushing back in the hope that they might be in time to join
the British Expeditionary Force. Long before we had guessed that a
world tragedy was impending, they had judged war's advent certain from
its shadow, and had come from the most distant parts of Canada that
they might be ready to embark the moment the cloud burst. Some of
them were travelling with their wives and children. What struck me as
wholly unreasonable was that these professional soldiers and their
families were the least disturbed people on board. I used to watch
them as one might watch condemned prisoners in their cells. Their
apparent indifference was unintelligible to me. They lived their
daily present, contented and unruffled, just as if it were going to be
their present always. I accused them of being lacking in imagination.
I saw them lying dead on battlefields. I saw them dragging on into old
age, with the spine of life broken, mutilated and mauled. I saw them
in desperately tight corners, fighting in ruined villages with sword
and bayonet. But they joked, laughed, played with their kiddies and
seemed to have no realisation of the horrors to which they were
going. There was a world-famous aviator, who had gone back on his
marriage promise that he would abandon his aerial adventures. He was
hurrying to join the French Flying Corps. He and his young wife used
to play deck-tennis every morning as lightheartedly as if they were
travelling to Europe for a lark. In my many accusations of these men's
indifference I never accused them of courage. Courage, as I had
thought of it up to that time, was a grim affair of teeth set, sad
eyes and clenched hands--the kind of “My head is bloody but unbowed”
determination described in Henley's poem.
When we had arrived safe in port we were held up for some time. A tug
came out, bringing a lot of artificers who at once set to work tearing
out the fittings of the ship that she might be converted into a
transport. Here again I witnessed a contrast between the soldierly and
the civilian attitude. The civilians, with their easily postponed
engagements, fumed and fretted at the delay in getting ashore. The
officers took the inconvenience with philosophical good-humour. While
the panelling and electric-light fittings were being ripped out, they
sat among the debris and played cards. There was heaps of time for
their appointment--it was only with wounds and Death. To me, as a
civilian, their coolness was almost irritating and totally
incomprehensible. I found a new explanation by saying that, after
all, war was their professional chance--in fact, exactly what a
shortage in the flour-market was to a man who had quantities of wheat
on hand.
That night we travelled to London, arriving about two o'clock in the
morning. There was little to denote that a European war was on, except
that people were a trifle more animated and cheerful. The next day was
Sunday, and we motored round Hampstead Heath. The Heath was as usual,
gay with pleasure-seekers and the streets sedate with church-goers. On
Monday, when we tried to transact business and exchange money, we
found that there were hitches and difficulties; it was more as though
a window had been left open and a certain untidiness had resulted. “It
will be all right tomorrow,” everybody said. “Business as usual,” and
they nodded.
But as the days passed it wasn't all right. Kitchener began to call
for his army. Belgium was invaded. We began to hear about atrocities.
There were rumours of defeat, which ceased to be rumours, and of grey
hordes pressing towards Paris. It began to dawn on the most optimistic
of us that the little British Army--the Old Contemptibles--hadn't gone
to France on a holiday jaunt.