The Angel of Peace, watching the slow folding back of this darkness,
will look on an earth of cripples. The field of the world is strewn with
half-living men. That loveliness which is the creation of the æsthetic
human spirit; that flowering of directed energy which we know as
civilisation; that manifold and mutual service which we call
progress--all stand mutilated and faltering. As though, on a pilgrimage
to the dreamed-of Mecca, water had failed, and by the wayside countless
muffled forms sat waiting for rain; so will the long road of mankind
look to-morrow.
In every township and village of our countries men stricken by the war
will dwell for the next half-century. The figure of Youth must go
one-footed, one-armed, blind of an eye, lesioned and stunned, in the
home where it once danced. The half of a generation can never again step
into the sunlight of full health and the priceless freedom of unharmed
limbs.
_So comes the sacred work._
Can there be limit to the effort of gratitude? Niggardliness and delay
in restoring all of life that can be given back is sin against the
human spirit, a smear on the face of honour.
Love of country, which, like some little secret lamp, glows in every
heart, hardly to be seen of our eyes when the world is at peace--love of
the old, close things, the sights, sounds, scents we have known from
birth; loyalty to our fathers' deeds and our fathers' hopes; the clutch
of Motherland--this love sent our soldiers and sailors forth to the long
endurance, to the doing of such deeds, and the bearing of so great and
evil pain as can never be told. The countries for which they have dared
and suffered have now to play their part.
The conscience of to-day is burdened with a load well-nigh unbearable.
Each hour of the sacred work unloads a little of this burden.
To lift up the man who has been stricken on the battlefield, restore him
to the utmost of health and agility, give him an adequate pension, and
re-equip him with an occupation suited to the forces left him--that is a
process which does not cease till the sufferer fronts the future keen,
hopeful, and secure. And such restoration is at least as much a matter
of spirit as of body. Consider what it means to fall suddenly out of
full vigour into the dark certainty that you can never have full
strength again, though you live on twenty, forty, sixty years. The flag
of your courage may well be down half-mast! Apathy--that creeping nerve
disease--is soon your bed-fellow and the companion of your walks. A
curtain has fallen before your vision; your eyes no longer range. The
Russian "Nichevo"--the "what-does-it-matter?" mood--besets you. Fate
seems to say to you: "Take the line of least resistance, friend--you are
done for!" But the sacred work says to Fate: "_Retro, Satanas!_ This our
comrade is not your puppet. He shall yet live as happy and as useful--if
not as active--a life as he ever lived before. You shall not crush him!
We shall tend him from clearing station till his discharge better than
wounded soldier has ever yet been tended. In special hospitals,
orthopædic, paraplegic, phthisic, neurasthenic, we shall give him back
functional ability, solidity of nerve or lung. The flesh torn away, the
lost sight, the broken ear-drum, the destroyed nerve, it is true, we
cannot give back; but we shall so re-create and fortify the rest of him
that he shall leave hospital ready for a new career. Then we shall teach
him how to tread the road of it, so that he fits again into the national
life, becomes once more a workman with pride in his work, a stake in the
country, and the consciousness that, handicapped though he be, he runs
the race level with his fellows, and is by that so much the better man
than they. And beneath the feet of this new workman we shall put the
firm plank of a pension."
The sacred work fights the creeping dejections which lie in wait for
each soul and body, for the moment stricken and thrown. It says to Fate:
"You shall not pass!"
And the greatest obstacle with which it meets is the very stoicism and
nonchalance of the sufferer! To the Anglo-Saxon, especially, those
precious qualities are dangerous. That horse, taken to the water, will
too seldom drink. Indifference to the future has a certain loveability,
but is hardly a virtue when it makes of its owner a weary drone, eking
out a pension with odd jobs. The sacred work is vitally concerned to
defeat this hand-to-mouth philosophy. Side by side in man, and
especially in Anglo-Saxon, there live two creatures. One of them lies on
his back and smokes; the other runs a race; now one, now the other,
seems to be the whole man. The sacred work has for its end to keep the
runner on his feet; to proclaim the nobility of running. A man will do
for mankind or for his country what he will not do for himself; but
mankind marches on, and countries live and grow, and need our services
in peace no less than in war. Drums do not beat, the flags hang furled,
in time of peace; but a quiet music is ever raising its call to service.
He who in war has flung himself, without thought of self, on the bayonet
and braved a hail of bullets often does not hear that quiet music. It is
the business of the sacred work to quicken his ear to it. Of little use
to man or nation would be the mere patching-up of bodies, so that, like
a row of old gossips against a sunlit wall, our disabled might sit and
weary out their days. If that were all we could do for them, gratitude
is proven fraudulent, device bankrupt; and the future of our countries
must drag with a lame foot.
To one who has watched, rather from outside, it seems that restoration
worthy of that word will only come if the minds of all engaged in the
sacred work are always fixed on this central truth: "Body and spirit are
inextricably conjoined; to heal the one without the other is
impossible." If a man's mind, courage and interest be enlisted in the
cause of his own salvation, healing goes on apace, the sufferer is
remade. If not, no mere surgical wonders, no careful nursing, will avail
to make a man of him again. Therefore I would say: "From the moment he
enters hospital, look after his mind and his will; give them food;
nourish them in subtle ways, increase that nourishment as his strength
increases. Give him interest in his future; light a star for him to fix
his eyes on. So that, when he steps out of hospital, you shall not have
to begin to train one who for months, perhaps years, has been living,
mindless and will-less, the life of a half-dead creature."
That this is a hard task none who knows hospital life can doubt.
That it needs special qualities and special effort quite other than the
average range of hospital devotion is obvious. But it saves time in the
end, and without it success is more than doubtful. The crucial period is
the time spent in hospital; use that period to re-create not only body,
but mind and will-power, and all shall come out right; neglect to use it
thus, and the heart of many a sufferer, and of many a would-be healer,
will break from sheer discouragement.
The sacred work is not departmental; it is one long organic process from
the moment when a man is picked up from the field of battle to the
moment when he is restored to the ranks of full civil life. Our eyes
must not be fixed merely on this stressful present, but on the world as
it will be ten years hence. I see that world gazing back, like a
repentant drunkard at his own debauch, with a sort of horrified
amazement and disgust. I see it impatient of any reminiscence of this
hurricane; hastening desperately to recover what it enjoyed before life
was wrecked and pillaged by these blasts of death. Hearts, which now
swell with pity and gratitude when our maimed soldiers pass the streets,
will, from sheer familiarity, and through natural shrinking from
reminder, be dried to a stony indifference. "Let the dead past bury its
dead" is a saying terribly true, and perhaps essential to the
preservation of mankind. The world of ten years hence will shrug its
shoulders if it sees maimed and _useless_ men crawling the streets of
its day, like winter flies on a windowpane.
It is for the sacred work to see that there shall be no winter flies. A
niche of usefulness and self-respect exists for every man, however
handicapped; but that niche must be found for him. To carry the process
of restoration to a point short of this is to leave the cathedral
without spire.
Of the men and women who have this work in hand I have seen enough--in
France and in my own country, at least--to know their worth, and the
selfless idealism which animates them. Their devotion, courage,
tenacity, and technical ability are beyond question or praise. I would
only fear that in the hard struggle they experience to carry each day's
work to its end, to perfect their own particular jobs, all so important
and so difficult, vision of the whole fabric they are helping to raise
must often be obscured. And I would venture to say: "Only by looking
upon each separate disabled soldier as the complete fabric can you
possibly keep that vision before your eyes. Only by revivifying in each
separate disabled soldier the _will to live_ can you save him from the
fate of merely continuing to exist."
There are wounded men, many, whose spirit is such that they will march
in front of any effort made for their recovery. I well remember one of
these--a Frenchman--nearly paralysed in both legs. All day long he would
work at his "macramé," and each morning, after treatment, would demand
to try and stand. I can see his straining efforts now, his eyes like the
eyes of a spirit; I can hear his daily words: "_Il me semble que j'ai un
peu plus de force dans mes jambes ce matin, Monsieur!_" though, I fear,
he never had. Men of such indomitable initiative, though not rare, are
but a fraction. The great majority have rather the happy-go-lucky soul.
For them it is only too easy to postpone self-help till sheer necessity
drives, or till some one in whom they believe inspires them. The work of
re-equipping these with initiative, with a new interest in life, with
work which they can do, is one of infinite difficulty and complexity.
Nevertheless, it must be done.
The great publics of our countries do not yet, I think, see that they
too have their part in the sacred work. So far they only seem to feel:
"Here's a wounded hero; let's take him to the movies, and give him tea!"
Instead of choking him with cheap kindness each member of the public
should seek to reinspire the disabled man with the feeling that he is no
more out of the main stream of life than they are themselves; and each,
according to his or her private chances, should help him to find that
special niche which he can best, most cheerfully, and most usefully fill
in the long future.
The more we drown the disabled in tea and lip gratitude the more we
unsteel his soul, and the harder we make it for him to win through,
when, in the years to come, the wells of our tea and gratitude have
dried up. We can do a much more real and helpful thing. I fear that
there will soon be no one of us who has not some personal friend
disabled. Let us regard that man as if he were ourselves; let us treat
him as one who demands a full place in the ranks of working life, and
try to find it for him.
In such ways alone will come a new freemasonry to rebuild this ruined
temple of our day. The ground is rubbled with stones--fallen, and still
falling. Each must be replaced; freshly shaped, cemented, and mortised
in, that the whole may once more stand firm and fair. In good time, to a
clearer sky than we are fortunate enough to look on, our temple shall
rise again. The birds shall not long build in its broken walls, nor
lichens moss it. The winds shall not long play through these now jagged
windows, nor the rain drift in, nor moonlight fill it with ghosts and
shadows. To the glory of man we will stanchion, and raise and roof it
anew.
Each comrade who for his Motherland has, for the moment, lost his future
is a miniature of that shattered temple.
To restore him, and with him the future of our countries, that is the
sacred work.