incident. Straggling across Trafalgar Square in mufti and commanded by
a sergeant came a little procession of recruits. They were roughly
dressed men of the navy and the coster class. All save one carried
under his arm his worldly possessions, wrapped in cloth, brown-paper
or anything that had come handy. The sergeant kept on giving them the
step and angrily imploring them to pick it up. At the tail of the
procession followed a woman; she also carried a package.
They turned into the Strand, passed by Charing Cross and branched off
to the right down a lane to the Embankment. At the point where they
left the Strand, the man without a parcel spoke to the sergeant and
fell out of the ranks. He laid his clumsy hand on the woman's arm; she
set down on the pavement the parcel she had been carrying. There they
stood for a full minute gazing at each other dumbly, oblivious to the
passing crowds. She wasn't pleasing to look at--just a slum woman with
draggled skirts, a shawl gathered tightly round her and a mildewed
kind of bonnet. He was no more attractive--a hulking Samson, perhaps a
day-labourer, who whilst he had loved her, had probably beaten her.
They had come to the hour of parting, and there they stood in the
London sunshine inarticulate after life together. He glanced after the
procession; it was two hundred yards away by now. Stooping awkwardly
for the burden which she had carried for him, in a shame-faced kind of
way he kissed her; then broke from her to follow his companions. She
watched him forlornly, her hands hanging empty. Never once did he look
back as he departed. Catching up, he took his place in the ranks; they
rounded a corner and were lost. Her eyes were quite dry; her jaw
sagged stupidly. For some seconds she stared after the way he had
gone--_her man_! Then she wandered off as one who had no purpose.
Wounded men commenced to appear in the streets. You saw them in
restaurants, looking happy and embarrassed, being paraded by proud
families. One day I met two in my tailor's shop--one had an arm in a
sling, the other's head had been seared by a bullet. It was whispered
that they were officers who had “got it” at Mons. A thrill ran through
me--a thrill of hero-worship.
At the Empire Music Hall in Leicester Square, tragedy bared its broken
teeth and mouthed at me. We had reached the stage at which we had
become intensely patriotic by the singing of songs. A beautiful
actress, who had no thought of doing “her bit” herself, attired as
Britannia, with a colossal Union Jack for background, came before the
footlights and sang the recruiting song of the moment,
“We don't want to lose you
But we think you ought to go.”
Some one else recited a poem calculated to shame men into immediate
enlistment, two lines of which I remember:
“I wasn't among the first to go
But I went, thank God, I went.”
The effect of such urging was to make me angry. I wasn't going to be
rushed into khaki on the spur of an emotion picked up in a music-hall.
I pictured the comfortable gentlemen, beyond the military age, who had
written these heroic taunts, had gained reputation by so doing, and
all the time sat at home in suburban security. The people who recited
or sung their effusions, made me equally angry; they were making
sham-patriotism a means of livelihood and had no intention of doing
their part. All the world that by reason of age or sex was exempt from
the ordeal of battle, was shoving behind all the rest of the world
that was not exempt, using the younger men as a shield against his own
terror and at the same time calling them cowards. That was how I felt.
I told myself that if I went--and the _if_ seemed very remote--I
should go on a conviction and not because of shoving. They could hand
me as many white feathers as they liked, I wasn't going to be swept
away by the general hysteria. Besides, where would be the sense in
joining? Everybody said that our fellows would be home for Christmas.
Our chaps who were out there ought to know; in writing home they
promised it themselves.
The next part of the music-hall performance was moving pictures of the
Germans' march into Brussels. I was in the Promenade and had noticed a
Belgian soldier being made much of by a group of Tommies. He was a
queer looking fellow, with a dazed expression and eyes that seemed to
focus on some distant horror; his uniform was faded and
torn--evidently it had seen active service. I wondered by what strange
fortune he had been conveyed from the brutalities of invasion to this
gilded, plush-seated sensation-palace in Leicester Square.
I watched the screen. Through ghastly photographic boulevards the
spectre conquerors marched. They came on endlessly, as though
somewhere out of sight a human dam had burst, whose deluge would never
be stopped. I tried to catch the expressions of the men, wondering
whether this or that or the next had contributed his toll of violated
women and butchered children to the list of Hun atrocities. Suddenly
the silence of the theatre was startled by a low, infuriated growl,
followed by a shriek which was hardly human. I have since heard the
same kind of sounds when the stumps of the mutilated are being dressed
and the pain has become intolerable. Everybody turned in their
seats--gazing through the dimness to a point in the Promenade near to
where I was. The ghosts on the screen were forgotten. The faked
patriotism of the songs we had listened to had become a thing of
naught. Through the welter of bombast, excitement and emotion we had
grounded on reality.
The Belgian soldier, in his tattered uniform, was leaning out, as
though to bridge the space that divided him from his ghostly
tormentors. The dazed look was gone from his expression and his eyes
were focussed in the fixity of a cruel purpose--to kill, and kill, and
kill the smoke-grey hordes of tyrants so long as his life should
last. He shrieked imprecations at them, calling upon God and snatching
epithets from the gutter in his furious endeavour to curse them. He
was dragged away by friends in khaki, overpowered, struggling,
smothered but still cursing.
I learnt afterwards that he, with his mother and two brothers, had
been the proprietors of one of the best hotels in Brussels. Both his
brothers had been called to arms and were dead. Anything might have
happened to his mother--he had not heard from her. He himself had
escaped in the general retreat and was going back to France as
interpreter with an English regiment. He had lost everything; it was
the sight of his ruined hotel, flung by chance on the screen, that had
provoked his demonstration. He was dead to every emotion except
revenge--to accomplish which he was returning.
The moving-pictures still went on; nobody had the heart to see more of
them. The house rose, fumbling for its coats and hats; the place was
soon empty.
Just as I was leaving a recruiting sergeant touched my elbow, “Going
to enlist, sonny?”
I shook my head. “Not to-night. Want to think it over.”
“You will,” he said. “Don't wait too long. We can make a man of
you. If I get you in my squad I'll give you hell.”
I didn't doubt it.
I don't know that I'm telling these events in their proper sequence as
they led up to the growing of the vision. That doesn't matter--the
point is that the conviction was daily strengthening that I was needed
out there. The thought was grotesque that I could ever make a
soldier--I whose life from the day of leaving college had been almost
wholly sedentary. In fights at school I could never hurt the other boy
until by pain he had stung me into madness. Moreover, my idea of war
was grimly graphic; I thought it consisted of a choice between
inserting a bayonet into some one else's stomach or being yourself the
recipient. I had no conception of the long-distance, anonymous killing
that marks our modern methods, and is in many respects more truly
awful. It's a fact that there are hosts of combatants who have never
once identified the bodies of those for whose death they are
personally responsible. My ideas of fighting were all of hand-to-hand
encounters--the kind of bloody fighting that rejoiced the hearts of
pirates. I considered that it took a brutal kind of man to do such
work. For myself I felt certain that, though I got the upper-hand of a
fellow who had tried to murder me, I should never have the callousness
to return the compliment. The thought of shedding blood was
nauseating.
It was partly to escape from this atmosphere of tension that we left
London, and set out on a motor-trip through England. This trip had
figured largely in our original plans before there had been any
thought of war. We wanted to re-visit the old places that had been the
scenes of our family-life and childhood. Months before sailing out of
Quebec we had studied guidebooks, mapping out routes and hotels. With
about half a ton of gasolene on the roof to guard against
contingencies, we started.
Everywhere we went, from Cornwall to the North, men were training and
marching. All the bridges and reservoirs were guarded. Every tiniest
village had its recruiting posters for Kitchener's Army. It was a trip
utterly different from the one we had expected.
At Stratford in the tap-room of Shakespeare's favourite tavern I met
an exceptional person--a man who was afraid, and had the courage to
speak the truth as millions at that time felt it. An American was
present--a vast and fleshy man: a transatlantic version of Falstaff.
He had just escaped from Paris and was giving us an account of how he
had hired a car, had driven as near the fighting-line as he could get
and had seen the wounded coming out. He had risked the driver's life
and expended large sums of money merely to gratify his curiosity. He
mopped his brow and told us that he had aged ten years--folks in
Philadelphia would hardly know him; but it was all worth it. The
details which he embroidered and dwelt upon were ghastly. He was
particularly impressed with having seen a man with his nose off. His
description held us horrified and spell-bound.
In the midst of his oratory an officer entered, bringing with him five
nervous young fellows. They were self-conscious, excited,
over-wrought and belonged to the class of the lawyer's clerk. The
officer had evidently been working them up to the point of enlistment,
and hoped to complete the job that evening over a sociable glass. As
his audience swelled, the fat man from Philadelphia grew exceedingly
vivid. When appealed to by the recruiting officer, he confirmed the
opinion that every Englishman of fighting age should be in France;
that's where the boys of America would be if their country were in the
same predicament. Four out of the five intended victims applauded this
sentiment--they applauded too boisterously for complete sincerity,
because they felt that they could do no less. The fifth, a scholarly,
pale-faced fellow, drew attention to himself by his silence.
“You're going to join, too, aren't you?” the recruiting officer asked.
The pale-faced man swallowed. There was no doubt that he was
scared. The American's morbid details had been enough to frighten
anybody. He was so frightened that he had the pluck to tell the
truth.
“I'd like to,” he hesitated, “but----. I've got an imagination. I
should see things as twice as horrible. I should live through every
beastliness before it occurred. When it did happen, I should turn
coward. I should run away, and you'd shoot me as a deserter. I'd
like--not yet, I can't.”
He was the bravest man in the tap-room that night. If he's still
alive, he probably wears decorations. He was afraid, just as every one
else was afraid; but he wasn't sufficiently a coward to lie about his
terror. His voice was the voice of millions at that hour.
A day came when England's jeopardy was brought home to her. I don't
remember the date, but I remember it was a Sabbath. We had pulled up
before a village post office to get the news; it was pasted behind the
window against the glass. We read, “_Boulogne has fallen_.” The news
was false; but it wasn't contradicted till next day. Meanwhile, in
that quiet village, over and above the purring of the engine, we heard
the beat of Death's wings across the Channel--a gigantic vulture
approaching which would pick clean of vileness the bones of both the
actually and the spiritually dead. I knew then for certain that it was
only a matter of time till I, too, should be out there among the
carnage, “somewhere in France.” I felt like a rabbit in the last of
the standing corn, when a field is in the harvesting. There was no
escape--I could hear the scythes of an inexorable duty cutting closer.
After about six weeks in England, I travelled back to New York with my
family to complete certain financial obligations and to set about the
winding up of my affairs. I said nothing to any one as to my
purpose. The reason for my silence is now obvious: I didn't want to
commit myself to other people and wished to leave myself a loop-hole
for retracting the promises I had made my conscience. There were times
when my heart seemed to stop beating, appalled by the future which I
was rapidly approaching. My vivid imagination--which from childhood
has been as much a hindrance as a help--made me foresee myself in
every situation of horror--gassed, broken, distributed over the
landscape. Luckily it made me foresee the worst horror--the ignominy
of living perhaps fifty years with a self who was dishonoured and had
sunk beneath his own best standards. Of course there were also moments
of exaltation when the boy-spirit of adventure loomed large; it seemed
splendidly absurd that I was going to be a soldier, a companion-in-arms
of those lordly chaps who had fought at Senlac, sailed with Drake and
saved the day for freedom at Mons. Whether I was exalted or depressed,
a power stronger than myself urged me to work feverishly to the end
that, at the first opportunity, I might lay aside my occupation, with
all my civilian obligations discharged.
When that time came, my first difficulty was in communicating my
decision to my family; my second, in getting accepted in Canada. I was
perhaps more ignorant than most people about things military. I had
not the slightest knowledge as to the functions of the different arms
of the service; infantry, artillery, engineers, A.S.C.--they all
connoted just as much and as little. I had no qualifications. I had
never handled fire-arms. My solitary useful accomplishment was that I
could ride a horse. It seemed to me that no man ever was less fitted
for the profession of killing. I was painfully conscious of
self-ridicule whenever I offered myself for the job. I offered myself
several times and in different quarters; when at last I was granted a
commission in the Canadian Field Artillery it was by pure
good-fortune. I didn't even know what guns were used and, if informed,
shouldn't have had the least idea what an eighteen-pounder
was. Nevertheless, within seven months I was out in France, taking
part in an offensive which, up to that time, was the most ambitious of
the entire war.
From New York I went to Kingston in Ontario to present myself for
training; an officers' class had just started, in which I had been
ordered to enrol myself. It was the depth of winter--an unusually hard
winter even for that part of Canada. My first glimpse of the Tête du
Pont Barracks was of a square of low buildings, very much like the
square of a Hudson Bay Fort. The parade ground was ankle-deep in
trampled snow and mud. A bleak wind was blowing from off the
river. Squads of embryo officers were being drilled by hoarse-voiced
sergeants. The officers looked cold, and cowed, and foolish; the
sergeants employed ruthlessly the age-old army sarcasms and made no
effort to disguise their disgust for these officers and “temporary
gentlemen.”
I was directed to an office where a captain sat writing at a desk,
while an orderly waited rigidly at attention. The captain looked up as
I entered, took in my spats and velour hat with an impatient glance,
and continued with his writing. When I got an opportunity I presented
my letter; he read it through irritably.
“Any previous military experience?”
“None at all.”
“Then how d'you expect to pass out with this class? It's been going
for nearly two weeks already?”
Again, as though he had dismissed me from his mind, he returned to his
writing. From a military standpoint I knew that I was justly a figure
of naught; but I also felt that he was rubbing it in a trifle hard. I
was too recent a recruit to have lost my civilian self-respect. At
last, after a period of embarrassed silence, I asked, “What am I to
do? To whom do I report?”
Without looking up he told me to report on the parade ground at six
o'clock the following morning. When I got back to my hotel, I
reflected on the chilliness of my reception. I had taken no credit to
myself for enlisting--I knew that I ought to have joined months
before. But six o'clock! I glanced across at the station, where trains
were pulling out for New York; for a moment I was tempted. But not for
long; I couldn't trust the hotel people to wake me, so I went out and
purchased an alarm clock.
That night I didn't sleep much. I was up and dressed by five-thirty. I
hid beneath the shadow of a wall near the barracks and struck matches
to look at my watch. At ten minutes to six the street was full of
unseen, hurrying feet which sounded ghostly in the darkness. I
followed them into the parade-ground. The parade was falling in, rolls
were being called by the aid of flash-lamps. I caught hold of an
officer; for all I knew he might have been a General or Colonel. I
asked his advice, when I had blundered out my story. He laughed and
said I had better return to my hotel; the class was going to stables
and there was no one at that hour to whom I could report.
The words of the sergeant at the Empire came back to me, “And I'll
give you hell if I get you in my squad.” I understood then: this was
the first attempt of the Army to break my heart--an attempt often
repeated and an attempt for which, from my present point of vantage, I
am intensely grateful. In those days the Canadian Overseas Forces were
comprised of volunteers; it wasn't sufficient to express a tepid
willingness to die for your country--you had to prove yourself
determined and eligible for death through your power to endure
hardship.
When I had been medically examined, passed as fit, had donned a
uniform and commenced my training, I learnt what the enduring of
hardship was. No experience on active service has equalled the
humiliation and severity of those first months of soldiering. We were
sneered at, cleaned stables, groomed horses, rode stripped saddle for
twelve miles at the trot, attended lectures, studied till past
midnight and were up on first parade at six o'clock. No previous
civilian efficiency or prominence stood us in any stead. We started
robbed of all importance, and only gained a new importance by our
power to hang on and to develop a new efficiency as soldiers. When
men “went sick” they were labelled scrimshankers and struck off the
course. It was an offence to let your body interfere with your duty;
if it tried to, you must ignore it. If a man caught cold in Kingston,
what would he not catch in the trenches? Very many went down under the
physical ordeal; of the class that started, I don't think more than a
third passed. The lukewarm soldier and the pink-tea hero, who simply
wanted to swank in a uniform, were effectually choked off. It was a
test of pluck, even more than of strength or intelligence--the same
test that a man would be subjected to all the time at the Front. In a
word it sorted out the fellows who had “guts.”
“Guts” isn't a particularly polite word, but I have come increasingly
to appreciate its splendid significance. The possessor of this much
coveted quality is the kind of idiot who,
“When his legs are smitten off
Will fight upon his stumps.”
The Tommies, whom we were going to command, would be like that; if we
weren't like it, we wouldn't be any good as officers. This Artillery
School had a violent way of sifting out a man's moral worth; you
hadn't much conceit left by the end of it. I had not felt myself so
paltry since the day when I was left at my first boarding-school in
knickerbockers.
After one had qualified and been appointed to a battery, there was
still difficulty in getting to England. I was lucky, and went over
early with a draft of officers who had been cabled for as
reinforcements. I had been in England a bare three weeks when my name
was posted as due to go to France.
How did I feel? Nervous, of course, but also intensely eager. I may
have been afraid of wounds and death--I don't remember; I was
certainly nothing like as afraid as I had been before I wore
uniform. My chief fear was that I would be afraid and might show
it. Like the pale-faced chap in the tap-room at Stratford, I had
fleeting glimpses of myself being shot as a deserter.
At this point something happened which at least proved to me that I
had made moral progress. I'd finished my packing and was doing a last
rush round, when I caught in large lettering on a newsboard the
heading, “PEACE RUMOURED.” Before I realised what had happened I was
crying. I was furious with disappointment. If the war should end
before I got there--! On buying a paper I assured myself that such a
disaster was quite improbable. I breathed again. Then the reproachful
memory came of another occasion when I had been scared by a headline,
_“Boulogne Has Fallen.”_ I had been scared lest I might be needed at
that time; now I was panic-stricken lest I might arrive too late.
There was a change in me; something deep-rooted had happened. I got to
thinking about it. On that motor-trip through England I had considered
myself in the light of a philanthropist, who might come to the help of
the Allies and might not. Now all I asked was to be considered worthy
to do my infinitesimal “bit.” I had lost all my old conceits and
hallucinations, and had come to respect myself in a very humble
fashion not for what I was, but for the cause in which I was prepared
to fight. The knowledge that I belonged to the physically fit
contributed to this saner sense of pride; before I wore a uniform I
had had the morbid fear that I might not be up to standard. And then
the uniform! It was the outward symbol of the lost selfishness and the
cleaner honour. It hadn't been paid for; it wouldn't be paid for till
I had lived in the trenches. I was childishly anxious to earn my right
to wear it. I had said “Good-bye” to myself, and had been re-born into
willing sacrifice. I think that was the reason for the difference of
spirit in which I read the two headlines. We've all gone through the
same spiritual gradations, we men who have got to the Front. None of
us know how to express our conversion. All we know is that from being
little circumscribed egoists, we have swamped our identities in a
magnanimous crusade. The venture looked fatal at first; but in losing
the whole world we have gained our own souls.
On a beautiful day in late summer I sailed for France. England faded
out like a dream behind. Through the haze in mid-Channel a hospital
ship came racing; on her sides were blazoned the scarlet cross. The
next time I came to England I might travel on that racing ship. The
truth sounded like a lie. It seemed far more true that I was going on
my annual pleasure trip to the lazy cities of romance.
The port at which we disembarked was cheery and almost normal. One saw
a lot of khaki mingling with sky-blue tiger-men of France. Apart from
that one would scarcely have guessed that the greatest war in the
world's history was raging not more than fifty miles away. I slept the
night at a comfortable hotel on the quayside. There was no apparent
shortage; I got everything that I required. Next day I boarded a train
which, I was told, would carry me to the Front. We puffed along in a
leisurely sort of way. The engineer seemed to halt whenever he had a
mind; no matter where he halted, grubby children miraculously appeared
and ran along the bank, demanding from Monsieur Engleeshman
“ceegarettes” and “beescuits.” Towards evening we pulled up at a
little town where we had a most excellent meal. No hint of war yet.
Night came down and we found that our carriage had no lights. It must
have been nearing dawn, when I was wakened by the distant thunder of
guns. I crouched in my corner, cold and cramped, trying to visualise
the terror of it. I asked myself whether I was afraid. “Not of Death,”
I told myself. “But of being afraid--yes, most horribly.”