'I have changed,' I said. He looked at me hopefully. He hadn't
seen me since I had come back from the war. 'So the holy war's
all right?' he asked. 'And the acolyte to the altar of freedom
and all that sort of thing? I attach some importance to your
opinion, remember, so don't say more than you mean. Having seen
war, which do you plump for? Tolstoy, Saint Telemachus, or the
Superintendent? Speak now, and kiss the Book on it.'
I would have liked to laugh, but I did not dare. He was in such
desperate earnest. I answered: 'I have changed for the worse from
the Superintendent's point of view. I am not the same as I was. I
am more so.'
He went to the war. But he went with a share of Reuben's curse
upon him. He wrote to me quite frankly from his East African
camps about the things that appealed to him, and the other
things. His experience seemed to bear out my own, for the most
part. He considered that some deplorable things had been done on
both sides, and also some very fine things. But as to the
efficacy of the machine guns he ministered to, in promoting the
Kingdom of God, he was under no illusions. He was possibly
disposed to exaggerate things, e.g., the vitiating influence of
war upon life about one. He was certainly disposed, I think, to
exaggerate his own coarsening, as a not very reputable campaign
proceeded. He harped somewhat morbidly on one particular strain
in his letters. How much better, he surmised, it would be for
Christianity and civilization if he and others like him should
never return to resume their places in Christian society! Some
verses that he sent me when he was under orders to join a rather
hazardous expedition, have, I believe, a certain sincerity in
their ruggedness. They are not very cheerful, are they?
They have a note attached to them. N.B. We had Church parade this
morning, and the lesson was about Nebuchadnezzar's going into
retreat.