I was in the theatre last night, just to have a look at you again, and
I saw you when you came out of the stage door. Saw the toff and the
taxi waiting to take you to supper. Wonder if you can call my name to
mind any more? Alf. Alf that was your sweetheart when you were in the
fancy department at Skinner and Mopham's. Loved you true, I did.
Remember the early closing days when we used to go to the theatre
together, Nelly? Remember _me_ taking you to supper at the ham and beef
shop four years ago? Wouldn't set foot in the ham and beef shop now,
would you? No class. But I've been fair sick with longing for the sight
of it, myself, since the day I joined up, and you cried in the City
Road, with your arms round my neck. Bright as heaven it looked, the
gas shining on all the sausages, when I was all over lice in the line,
with my jaws chattering. Thought of it just as I was going over the top
once. Saw the chap in his white jacket, cutting a sandwich and smearing
the mustard on. Saw him plain.
Bit I read in a London paper over there said the "pre-war time, now it
had passed away, seemed like an evil dream." It didn't seem like that
to _me_. The "bad old days of peace," the paper called it. Said all us
boys would "find it painful to go back to business, after the great
romance and glory of war." I _don't_ think. I know one of them that
would have given something to be back, calling "Sign," in the bad old
days of peace, while he was sticking that great romance. Made me feel
funny all over to see London again at last, and look at the "civilian
population that was bearing their trials with such heroic fortitude."
Too good to be true it felt, till I got a mouthful of what they call
beer in this better world I hear we've made, and found the lord duke
behind the bar treating me as if I was dirt. Made me wonder if paying
sixpence for half a pint was asking for charity. Seem to have forgotten
how to be civil, all the publicans, now it's the law for them to loaf
the best part of the day, and make you pay so that they do as well in
one week as they used to do in three. That's what I'm told by a chap,
whose uncle has got a pub--the profit on one week's loafing is about
the same as it was on three weeks' work. Done too well in the shops
to be civil, too, I notice, while I've been freezing and bleeding in
that there great romance. It's "Hope the war lasts for ever," isn't
it? Mother couldn't bear to go out, because of what the neighbours are
saying. People with sons of their own, too. It makes me wonder who I've
been doing it for. There's mother--and there used to be you. Makes me
wonder about lots of things, religion and that. At church, on Sunday,
the collection was for teaching our Christianity to the heathen, the
peaceful heathen that aren't busy bombing one another. And nobody
laughed.
Don't make any mistake. I'm not saying England hadn't got to fight.
England had got to fight, right enough, because it ain't a civilised
world. But the parsons, and the priests, and the rabbis, and the papers
could have said how horrible it was, our not having learnt any way
to settle things, ever since we took to wearing clothes, except new
ways of slaughtering one another. They hadn't got to pretend war was
something fine, and splendid, and improving. They hadn't got to pretend
war had changed every woman in England to a holy angel, and Englishmen
were "finding their souls" by driving bayonets through other men's
bellies. England couldn't help going to war, but England could have
helped praising war. We were told, at the start, as how Armageddon had
been led up to by those German writers that had "preached the devilish
doctrine" that war did good. They must have had a rare job, if they
preached it more than our own newspapers were preaching it before a
month was up. Those of them that _I_ saw, anyhow. If the war has been
such an "ennobling influence," if it has "purified" us all half, or a
quarter as much as they keep on saying, the Kaiser must be the best
benefactor England ever had. Then why don't they put up a monument to
him in Trafalgar Square?
And what did they want to put the "Great War" for on the shrines I
see? I should have thought they might have found a better word for it
than "great." Ain't "great" bringing up the kids to hold with the lie
that war is an ennobling influence, like the savages do? If I had _my_
way, I'd put the "Crudest War," or the "Worst War" on all the shrines.
Remember how I used to hate Gus Hooper for his conscientious objector
lay? Well, I'm not keen on him now--Hooper may have been a swine--but
I've come to see that, if war is ever done away with, it will be just
because the real conscientious objectors are top dog. I expect by
then they won't be called conscientious objectors, and it will sound
strange to read how, in our time, there weren't more than a few men
or women that didn't think it a virtue to commit murder if you put on
khaki. Even ladies you can't say too much for--I mean, real ladies, not
our disgraceful sort, them that _have_ been heroines, a lot of them,
and worked themselves to shadows--I've heard more than one of _them_
put in a good word for war, with "They say war brings out men's best
qualities." You could hear that, under their pity for us, they approved
of war. It did come on me as a shock. I used to think we were all so
up-to-date, all the finished article, if you know what I mean. I don't
think anybody will look the same to me again, quite, no matter how
smart they are dressed. When you look at people in the streets now, you
can often fancy them as Ancient Britons, coming along naked. There's
nothing that looks quite the same. Not sunshine in the parks. You
cheer up wonderful, for a minute, and then you feel as if the sunshine
was _camouflage_, too. War won't ever be done away with because kaisers
and governments leave off wishing they could grab something that
somebody else has grabbed first--it isn't in human nature--but only
because they can't get men willing to kill, and be mangled for it.
"Civilised warfare?" Might as well talk about Peaceful massacre. Why,
if this bloody world of ours was civilised, there'd have been no need
for England to go to war, or Belgium to go to war, or anybody else to
go to war. No need for Fritz to go to war. We shouldn't have had the
Worst War at all. Bill, and his war gang would have been seized by
the Germans themselves, and clapped into gaol, or a lunatic asylum,
according to what the doctors said about them.
Went over to Skinner and Mopham's, hoping to find you. They haven't
done so bad, neither, with their heroic fortitude. I'm told the girls
that used to run in for six-three-farthing quills for their hats have
been buying separation allowance coats at thirty guineas as fast as
hands could pick them off the hooks. Still, Mopham passed the time of
day with me quite familiar, considering. "Proud thought for a young
fellow that he's done his duty to his country," he says. "Only wish I'd
been of military age, myself," he says. "See our Roll of Honour in the
window? Framed very stylish, I think. Spared no expense to make it a
handsome article. What for you, miss? Furs, forward!"
It was there that I heard you had gone wrong. "The women are splendid!"
What price the rest? Made me feel queer last night, being so close to
you again, Nelly, though you didn't recognise the bit of my face that
the bandages let you see. I was the cripple by the door of the taxi,
when you and the toff got in.