The next, and the next to the last, illusion to go is a masterpiece
of simple-mindedness, and yet nearly all who take up war-work are
found at first to be under its sway. It is the illusion that war-work,
being a fine and noble thing, ought to change people’s natures
and dispositions, in such a manner as to produce the maximum of
co-operating effort with the minimum of friction.
Now the very heart of all war-work is the grand and awe-inspiring
institution of the Committee. If you are engaged on war-work you
are bound to sit on a Committee; or, in default of a Committee, a
Sub-Committee (which usually has more real power than the bumptious
and unwieldy body that overlords it). And, if you are on neither a
Committee nor a Sub-Committee, then you are bound sooner or later to
be called up before a Committee or a Sub-Committee, and to be in a
position to give the Committee or Sub-Committee a piece of your mind.
Thus your legitimate ambition will somehow be satisfied.
But let us suppose that you are at once elected to a Committee. Well,
among the members of the Committee are three persons you know--Miss X,
Mr. Y, and Mrs. Z. Miss X used to be a mannish and reckless and cheeky
young maid. Mr. Y used to be an interfering and narrow-minded old maid.
Mrs. Z used to be nothing in particular. You enter the Committee-room,
and you see these three, together with a few others who have not a
very promising air. (Probably no sight is more depressing than the
cordon of faces round a Committee-room table.) You, however, are not
downcast. You feel in yourself the uplifting power of a great ideal.
You are determined to make the best of yourself and of everybody. And
you are convinced that everybody is determined to do the same. But in
less than five minutes Miss X, despite her obvious lack of experience,
is offering the most absurd proposals; she has put her elbows on the
table; and she is calmly teaching all her grandmothers to suck eggs.
Mr. Y is objecting to the ruling of the Chairman, and obstinately
arguing against a resolution that has been carried, and indeed implying
that the Committee ought not to do anything at all. As for Mrs. Z she
has scarcely opened her mouth; when the Chairman asked her for her
opinion she blushed and said she rather agreed, and she voted both for
and against the first resolution.
‘Is it conceivable,’ you exclaim in your soul, ‘is it conceivable
that these individuals can behave so in such a supreme crisis of
the nation’s history, at a moment when the nation has need of every
citizen’s loyal goodwill, of every--?’ etc. etc. ‘No! They cannot have
realised that we are at war!’
And sundry other members of the Committee are not much better than
the ignoble three. Indeed, your faith in Committees is practically
destroyed. You say to yourself, with your blunt, vigorous common
sense: ‘If only the Committee would adjourn and leave the whole matter
to me, I am sure I could manage it much better than they are doing.’
You consider that a Committee is a device for wasting time and for
flattering the conceit of opinionated fools.... Then Mr. Y becomes
absolutely impossible. You feel that you are prepared to stand a lot,
but that there is a limit and that Mr. Y has gone beyond it. You are
ready to work, and to work hard, but you cannot be expected to work
with people who are impossible. You decide to send in your resignation
to the Chairman at once.
I hope you will not send it in. For at least half the Committee are
thinking just as you are thinking. And one or two of them are thinking
these things, not apropos of Miss X, Mr. Y, or Mrs. Z, but apropos of
you! And if you are startled at the spectacle of people persisting in
being just themselves in war-work, then the fault is yours, and you
should be gently ashamed. You ought to have known that people are never
more themselves than in a great crisis, especially when the crisis is
prolonged. You ought to be thankful that the Committee has unscaled
your eyes to so fundamental a truth. You have realised that we are
at war,--you ought also to realise that it takes all sorts to make a
world, even a world at war. You ought to imagine what would happen if
every member of the Committee, like you, resigned because Mr. Y was
impossible, and thus left the impossible Mr. Y in possession of the
table and the secretary.
Axiom: The most valorous and morally valuable war-work is the work of
working with impossible people.
And may I warn you that you will later on, if you succeed as a
war-worker, encounter more terrible phenomena than Mr. Y, who at the
worst can always be out-voted? You will encounter, for example, the
famous and fashionable lady who, justifiably relying on human nature’s
profound and incurable snobbishness, will give all the hard work to you
and those like you, while appropriating all the glory and advertisement
for herself. And, more terrible even than the famous and fashionable
lady, you will run up against the Official Mind. The Official Mind is
the worst of all obstacles to getting things done. And the gravest
danger of the war-worker, particularly if he attains high rank on
Committees, is the danger of becoming official-minded himself.
V
When you have proved that in war-work you are a decent human being--and
you will prove this by sticking to the work long after you are weary of
it, and by refusing to fly off to something else because it promises
to be more diverting and less annoying than your present job--then you
will part company with the war-workers’ last illusion. Namely, the
illusion that her efforts will meet with gratitude. Gratitude is going
to be an extremely rare commodity, and it is not a very good thing to
receive, anyhow. You see, there will be so few people with leisure to
devote to gratitude. Everybody is or will be war-working. Even soldiers
and sailors are doing something for the war, though to listen to some
civilians one would suppose the military side of war to be relatively
quite unimportant. No! Gratitude will not choke the market. On the
contrary, criticism will be rife, for we are all experts in war-work.
The highest hope of the average war-worker must be to escape censure.
Official food-controllers, who are possibly the supreme type of
war-worker, are thankful if they escape with their heads. And herein is
a great lesson.
Axiom: The reward of war-work will be in the treaty of peace.