_THE ARMISTICE_
1
The battery, commanded by I know not whom, went on to the bitter end
in that sweeping advance which broke the Hindenburg line and brought
the enemy to his knees. Their luck held good, for occasional letters
from the subalterns told me that no one else had been killed. The
last I heard of them they were at Tréport, enjoying life with the
hope of demobilization dangling in front of their eyes. May it not
dangle too long.
For me the war was over. I have never fired a gun again, nor, please
God, will I ever do so.
In saying the war was over I was wrong. I should have said the
fighting. There were other and equally terrible sides of this
world-tragedy which I was destined to see and feel.
Let me sketch briefly the facts which led to my return to duty.
The Medical Authorities sent me to a place called The Funkhole
of England, a seaside town where never a bomb from airships or
raiding Gothas disturbed the sunny calm, a community of convalescent
hospitals with a list of rules as long as your arm, hotels full of
moneyed Hebrews, who only journeyed to London by day to make more
money, and retired by night to the security of their wives in the
Funkhole, shop-keepers who rejoiced in the war because it enabled
them to put up their prices two hundred per cent., and indecent
flappers always ready to be picked up by any subaltern.
The War Office authorities hastened to notify me that I was now
reduced to subaltern, but somehow I was “off” flappers. Another
department begged me to get well quickly, because, being no longer
fit to command a battery, I was wanted for that long-forgotten
liaison job.
The explanation of degrading from Major to subaltern is not
forthcoming. Perhaps the Government were thinking of the rate payers.
The difference in pay is about two shillings and sixpence a day, and
there were many thousands of us thus reduced.--But it does not make
for an exuberant patriotism. My reply was that if I didn’t go out as
a Major, I should not hurry to get well. This drew a telegram which
stated that I was re-appointed acting-Major while employed as liaison
officer, but what they gave with one hand they took back with the
other, for the telegram ordered me to France again three weeks before
the end of my sick leave.
It was a curious return. But for the fact that I was still in uniform
I might have been a mere tourist, a spectator. The job was more
“cushy” even than that of R.T.O. or M.L.O. Was I glad? Enormously.
Was I sorry? Yes, for out there in the thick of it were those men of
mine, in a sense my children, who had looked to me for the food they
ate, the clothes they wore, the pay they drew, the punishments they
received, whose lives had been in my keeping so long, who, for two
years, had constituted all my life, with whom I had shared good days
and bad, short rations and full, hardships innumerable, suffering
indescribable. It was impossible to live softly and be driven in a
big Vauxhall car, while they were still out there, without a twinge
of conscience, even though one was not fit to go back to them. I
slept in a bed with sheets, and now and again a hot bath, receiving
letters from home in four days instead of eight, and generally
enjoying all the creature comforts which console the back-area
officer for the lack of excitement only found in the firing line. It
was a period of doing little, observing much and thinking a great
deal among those lucky ones of the earth, whose lines had been cast
in peaceful waters far behind even the backwash of that cataclysmic
tidal wave in which so many less fortunate millions had been sucked
under.
My first job was to accompany a party of French war correspondents to
the occupied territory which the enemy had recently been forced to
evacuate,--Dunkerque, Ostend, Bruges, Courtrai, Denain, Lille. There
one marvelled at the courage of those citizens who for four years had
had to bow the neck to the invader. From their own mouths we heard
stories of the systematic, thought-out cruelty of the Germans who
hurt not only the bodies of their victims, but their self-respect,
their decency, their honour, their souls. How they survived that
interminable hopeless four years of exaggerated brutality and
pillage, cut off from all communication with the outside world; fed
with stories of ghastly defeats inflicted upon their countrymen and
allies, of distrust and revolt between England and France; fined
and imprisoned for uncommitted offences against military law, not
infrequently shot in cold blood without trial; their women submitted
to the last indignities of the “_Inspection sanitaire_,” irrespective
of age or class, wrenched from their homes and deported into the
unknown interior, sent to work for the hated enemy behind the
firing line, unprotected from the assault of any German soldier or
officer,--for those women there were worse things than the firing
trenches.
We saw the results of the German Official Department of
Demobilization, which had its headquarters in Alsace-Lorraine at
Metz, under a General, by whose direct orders all the factories in
the occupied regions were dismantled and sent back piecemeal to
Germany, the shells of the plant then being dynamited under pretence
of military necessity. We saw a country stripped of its resources,
gutted, sacked, rendered sterile.
What is the Kultur, the philosophy which not only renders such
conduct thinkable, but puts it into the most thorough execution? Are
we mad to think that such people can be admitted into a League of
Nations until after hundreds of years of repentance and expiation
in sackcloth and ashes? They should be made the slaves of Europe,
the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the road-sweepers and
offal-burners, deprived of a voice in their own government, without
standing in the eyes of all peoples.
2
French General Headquarters, to which I was then sent as liaison
officer, was established in a little old-world town, not far from
Paris, whose walls had been battered by the English centuries ago.
Curious to think that after hundreds of years of racial antagonism
we should at last have our eyes opened to the fact that our one-time
enemies have the same qualities of courage and endurance, a far truer
patriotism and a code of honour which nothing can break. No longer do
we think of them as flippant and decadent. We know them for a nation
of big-hearted men, loyal to the death, of lion-like courage, with
the capacity for hanging on, which in our pride we ascribed only to
the British bull dog. We have seen Verdun. We have stood side by side
with them in mud and blood, in fat days and lean, and know it to be
true.
In this little town, where the bells chimed the swift hours, and
market day drew a concourse of peasant women, we sat breathless at
the ’phone, hourly marking the map that liberated each time a little
more of France. Days of wild hope that the end was at hand, the end
which such a short time back had seemed so infinitely remote, days
when the future began to be a possibility, that future which for four
years one had not dared to dream about. Will the rose colours ever
come back? Or will the memory of those million dead go down with one
to the grave?
The Armistice was signed. The guns had stopped. For a breathless
moment the world stood still. The price was paid. The youth of
England and France lay upturned to the sky. Three thousand miles
across the ocean American mothers wept their unburied sons. Did
Germany shed tears of sorrow or rage?
The world travail was over, and even at that sacred moment when
humanity should have been purged of all pettiness and meanness,
should have bowed down in humility and thankfulness, forces were
astir to try and raise up jealousy, hatred and enmity between
England, France and America.
Have we learnt _nothing_? Are these million dead in vain? Are we to
let the pendulum swing back to the old rut of dishonest hypocritical
self-seeking, disguised under the title of that misunderstood
word “patriotism?” Have we not yet looked into the eyes of Truth
and seen ourselves as we are? Is all this talk of world peace and
league of nations mere newspaper cant, to disguise the fear of being
out-grabbed at the peace conference? Shall we return to lying, hatred
and all malice and re-crucify Christ? What is the world travail for?
To produce stillborn through our own negligence the hope of Peace?
The leopard cannot change his spots, you say. My answer is that the
leopard does not want to. What does the present hold out to us who
have been through the Valley of the Shadow? What does it look like
to us who gaze down upon it from the pinnacle of four years upon the
edge of eternity?
Your old men shall see visions and your young men shall dream dreams.
The vision of the old men has been realized. In the orgy of effort
for world domination they have dug up a world unrest fertilized by
the sightless faces of youth upturned to the sky. Their working
hypothesis was false. The result is failure. They have destroyed
themselves also in the conflagration which they started. It has burnt
up the ancient fetishes, consumed their shibboleths. Their day is
done. They stand among the still-smoking ruins, naked and very ugly.
The era of the young men has begun. Bent under the Atlas-like burden
loaded upon their shoulders, they have stood daily for five years
upon the edge of eternity. They have stared across into the eyes of
Truth, some unrecognizing, others with disdain, but many there are in
whose returning faces is the dawn of wisdom. They are coming back,
the burden exchanged. On them rests the fate of the unborn. Already
their feet are set upon the new way. But are they strong enough
unaided to keep the pendulum from swinging back? No. It is too heavy.
Every one of us must let ourselves hear the new note in their voices,
calling us to the recognition of the ideal. For five years all the
science, philosophy and energy of mankind has been concentrated on
the art of dealing death. The young men ask that mankind should
now concentrate on the art of giving life. We have proved the
power within us because the routine of the world’s great sin has
established this surprising paradox, that we daily gave evidence of
heroism, tolerance, kindliness, brotherhood.
Shall we, like Peter who denied Christ, refuse to recognize the
greatness within ourselves? We found truth while we practised war.
Let us carry it to the practice of peace.
THE END
PRINTED AT
THE CHAPEL RIVER PRESS,
KINGSTON, SURREY.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg 40: ‘unforgetable hell’ replaced by ‘unforgettable hell’.
Pg 40: ‘set out faces’ replaced by ‘set our faces’.
Pg 78: ‘by 9 P.M.’ replaced by ‘by 9 p.m.’.
Pg 97: ‘Just as were were’ replaced by ‘Just as we were’.
Pg 108: ‘were not wanted’ replaced by ‘were not wanting’.
Pg 125: ‘to-towards the end’ replaced by ‘towards the end’.
Pg 144: ‘the 106 fuze’ replaced by ‘the 106 fuse’.
Pg 169: ‘causalties slight’ replaced by ‘casualties slight’.
Pg 175: ‘all extremly happy’ replaced by ‘all extremely happy’.
Pg 179: ‘they dind’t come’ replaced by ‘they didn’t come’.
Pg 183: ‘who, on rcovering’ replaced by ‘who, on recovering’.
Pg 185: ‘in all my live’ replaced by ‘in all my life’.
Pg 186: ‘near he river’ replaced by ‘near the river’.
Pg 186: ‘had ea and dinner’ replaced by ‘had tea and dinner’.