What is a coward? Is there any such thing as absolute bravery or
absolute cowardice? When we characterize a particular person as a
coward for failing to do, or refraining from doing, some specific
thing are we quite sure that in the circumstances we would have acted
differently? These are questions that suggest themselves when one
reads what purport to be excerpts from the diary and letters of a
confessed—or rather self-stigmatized coward, one Jan R——, a Hollander.
He had lived in France some years, and soon after the outbreak of war
became a naturalized citizen in order that he might join the French
Army as a volunteer—not because he wanted to, but because he was
ashamed to stay out.
The _Atlantic Monthly_ published all that was suitable of the available
material in a long and intensely interesting article which is a curious
record of psychological study and introspection. It is highly probable
that the experience was by no means unique. A candid statement by the
most daring of our heroes possibly would contain the admission that
there were moments when the reflections of the Hollander were similar
to his own.
Jan R—— tells of morning awakenings from troubled sleep with “the
oppression that something horrible was about to enter into his
existence.” He felt a pang in his breast that he “should have to take
part in the fighting. There was no escape.” He suffered a fear, a
shifting fear that he “could sometimes suppress but never drive out.”
The life in the training camp somewhat eased his emotions as he mingled
with so many others, and at times he even got “flickerings of a desire
to fight,” but it was not the real thing, he assumed; it was “more in
the nature of artistic imagination.” In the distance was the rumbling
and thudding of heavy gun fire, and as he heard it he felt “a strange
respect and admiration, mingled with fear for the men in the first line
of trenches.”
[Illustration:
© _Kadel & Herbert._