I. The Swan at Ypres
II. The Roadmakers
III. The Glamour of the Front
IV. A White Handkerchief
V. The Songs Our Soldiers Sing
VI. Easter Sunday
VII. "Now the Day is Over"
VIII. Sons of the Motherland
IX. The Terror by Night
X. "Eton Boys Never Duck!"
XI. "Missing"
XII. "It Must be Sunday"
XIII. Our Tommies Never Fail Us
XIV. The Cross at Neuve Chapelle
XV. The Children of Our Dead
XVI. A Funeral under Fire
XVII. A Soldier's Calvary
XVIII. The Hospital Train
XIX. After Winter, Spring
*I*
*THE SWAN AT YPRES*
For three years the storm center of the British battle front has been at
Ypres. Every day and night it has been the standing target of thousands
of guns. Yet, amid all the havoc and thunder of the artillery, the
graceful white form of a swan had been seen gliding over the water of
the moat. It never lacked food, and was always welcome to a share of
Tommy's rations. In the Battle of Messines--I had the story first-hand
from a lieutenant of artillery whose battery was hidden close by, and
who was an eye-witness of the incident--a shell burst near the swan, and
it was mortally wounded. For three long years it had spread its white
wings as gallantly as the white sails of Drake's flagship when he sailed
out of Plymouth Sound to pluck the beard of the Spaniard. But now its
adventurous voyaging was over. Another beautiful and innocent thing had
been destroyed by the war and had passed beyond recall. There was no
dying swan-song heard on the waters, but all who saw its passing felt
that the war had taken on a deeper shade of tragedy.
Many a "white man" had been slain near the spot but somehow the swan
seemed a mystical being, and invulnerable. It was a relic of the days
of peace, and a sign of the survival of purity and grace amid the
horrors and cruelties of war. It spoke of the sacred things that yet
remain--the beautiful things of the soul upon which war can lay no
defiling finger. Now it had gone from the water and Ypres seems more
charred than ever, and the war more terrible. The death of the swan
revealed against its white wings the peculiar inhumanity of the present
war. It is a war in which the enemy spares nothing and no one. He is
more blind and merciless than the Angel of Death which swept over Egypt,
for the angel had regard to the blood which the Israelites had sprinkled
over the lintels of their doors and he passed by in mercy. To the
German Eagle every living creature is legitimate prey. No blood upon
the lintel can save the inmate; not even the cross of blood on the
hospital tent or ship. Wounded or whole, combatant or non-combatant,
its beak and talons tear the tender flesh of all and its lust is not
sated.
In Belgium and Serbia it is believed that more women and children
perished than men. Things too hideous for words were done publicly in
the market-squares. Neither age nor sex escaped fire and sword. The
innocent babe was left to suck the breast of its dead mother or was
dandled on the point of the bayonet. What resistance can the Belgian
swan make to the German eagle? It needs must lie torn and bleeding
beneath its talons. The German Emperor has waded deeper in blood than
Macbeth, and has slain the innocent in their sleep. Even the sea is
full of the women, children, and non-combatant men he has drowned. His
crown is cemented together with innocent blood and its jewels are the
eyes of murdered men and women. The wretched man has made rivers of
blood to flow yet not a drop in them is from his own veins or the veins
of his many sons. Napoleon risked his life with his men in every battle
but this man never once. While sending millions to their death he yet
consents to live, and protects his life with the anxious care a miser
bestows on his gold. Alone among large families in Germany his
household is without a casualty. Though a nation be white and innocent
as the Belgian swan it will not escape his sword, and he will swoop upon
it the more readily because it is unarmed. The swan cannot live where
the eagle flies, and one or the other must die.
But the stricken swan of Ypres is not merely the symbol of Belgium and
her fate. There are other innocents who have perished or been sorely
wounded. The whole creation is groaning and travailing in pain. The
neutral nations are suffering with the belligerent, and the lower
creatures are suffering with mankind.
Next to seeing wounded men on the roads at the front, I think the
saddest sight is that of dying horses and mules. Last winter they had
to stand, with little cover, exposed to the bitter blasts. It was
impossible to keep them clean or dry, for the roads were churned into
liquid mud and both mules and drivers were plastered with it from head
to foot. To make things worse there was a shortage of fodder; and
horses waste away rapidly under ill-feeding. Before the fine weather had
given them a chance to recover weight and strength, the Battle of Arras
began, and every living beast of burden, as well as every motor-engine,
was strained to its utmost. The mule is magnificent for war, and our
battles have been won as much by mules as men. Haig could rely on one
as much as on the other. The mule will eat anything, endure anything,
and, when understood and humored by its driver, will do anything. It
works until it falls dead by the roadside. In the spring, hundreds died
in harness. In fact, few die except in harness. They die facing the
foe, dragging rations along shell-swept roads to the men in the
trenches.
On two miles of road I have counted a dozen dead mules; and burial
parties are sent out to put them out of sight. One night, alone, I got
three dying mules shot. The road was crowded with traffic, yet it was
difficult to find either an officer with a revolver or a
transport-driver with a rifle. I had to approach scores before I could
find a man who had the means to put a mule out of its misery; and we
were within two miles of our Front. So rigid is our line of defense
that those behind it do not trouble to take arms. Even when I found a
rifleman he hesitated to shoot a mule. There is a rule that no horse or
mule must be shot without proper authority, and when you consider the
enormous cost of one the necessity for the rule is obvious. I had
therefore to assure a rifleman that I would take full responsibility for
his action. He then loaded up, put the nozzle against the mule's
forehead and pulled the trigger. A tremor passed through the poor
thing's body and its troubles were over. It had come all the way from
South America to wear itself out carrying food to fighting men, and it
died by the road when its last ounce of strength was spent.
The mule knows neither love nor offspring. Apart from a few gambols in
the field, or while tethered to the horse-lines, it knows nothing but
work. It is the supreme type of the drudge. It is one of the greatest
factors in the war, and yet it receives scarcely any recognition and
more of whipping than of praise. Only too often I have seen their poor
shell-mangled bodies lying by the roadside waiting till the battle
allowed time for their burial. Yet what could be more innocent of any
responsibility for the war? They are as innocent as the swan on the
moat at Ypres.
Yet the greatest suffering among innocents is not found at the Front at
all. It is found at home. At the Front there is suffering of body and
mind, but at home there is the suffering of the heart. Every soldier
knows that his mother and wife suffer more than he does, and he pities
them from his soul. War is a cross on which Woman is crucified. The
soldier dies of his wounds in the morning of life, but his wife lingers
on in pain through the long garish day until the evening shadows fall.
There is no laughter at home such as you hear at the Front, or even in
the hospitals. One finds a gayety among the regiments in France such as
is unknown among the people left at home. It is the sunshine of the
street as compared with the light in a shaded room. There is a youth
and buoyancy at the Front that one misses sadly in the homeland.
To a true woman with a son or husband at the Front, life becomes a
nightmare. To her distorted imagination the most important man in the
country is not the Prime Minister but the postman. She cannot get on
with her breakfast for listening for his footsteps. There is no need
for him to knock at the door, she has heard him open the gate and walk
up the gravel path. Her heart is tossed like a bubble on the winds of
hope and fear. She finds herself behind the door without knowing how
she got there, and her hand trembles as she picks up the letter to see
if the address is in "his" handwriting or an official's. The words, "On
His Majesty's Service," she dreads like a witch's incantation. They may
be innocent enough, and cover nothing more than belated Commission
Papers, but she trembles lest they should be but the fair face of a
dark-hearted messenger, who is to blot out the light of her life
forever. If she goes out shopping and sees a telegraph-boy go in the
direction of her home she forgets her purchases and hurries back to see
if he is going to knock at her door. The rosy-faced messenger has
become a sinister figure, an imp from the nether world. He may be
bringing news of her loved one's arrival "on leave," but so many evil
faces of fear and doubt peer through the windows of her heart that she
cannot believe in the innocence and good-will of the whistling boy. Her
whole world is wrapped up in his little orange-colored envelope.
The boys at the Front know of the anxiety and suspense that darken their
homes, and they do all they can to lighten them. There were times on
the Somme when the men were utterly exhausted with fighting and long
vigils in the trenches. Water was scarce, and a mild dysentery came
into evidence. No fire could be lighted to cook food or make hot tea.
The ranks had been thinned, and only two officers were left to each
company. The weather was bad and the captured trench uncomfortable. Any
moment word might come for another attack. The campaign was near its
close, and the work must be completed despite the prevalent exhaustion.
The officers were too tired, depressed and preoccupied to censor
hundreds of letters. In front of him each could see a gaping grave.
The sun was rapidly "going west" and leaving them to the cold and dark.
Nothing seemed to matter in comparison with _that_. To hold services
were impossible and I felt that the best I could do was to walk through
the trench, chat with the officers and men, gather up the men's letters
and take them back and censor in my tent. This gave the officers times
to write their own, and an opportunity to post them.
But note, I pray you, the nobility of these gallant fellows. All of
them were exhausted and depressed. The shadows of death were thick
about them, yet when I opened their letters, I found myself--with two
exceptions out of three or four hundred--in an entirely different
atmosphere. It was a sunny atmosphere in which birds were singing. The
men said nothing of their suffering, their depression, their fears for
the future. The black wings of death cast no shadow over their pages.
They said they were "all right," "merry and bright" and "soon going back
for a long rest." They told their mothers what kind of cigarettes to
send, and gave them details how to make up the next parcel. They talked
as if death were out of sight--a sinister fellow with whom they had
nothing to do.
The officers, of course, censor their own letters, so I did not see how
they wrote. But I know. They wrote as the men wrote, and probably with
a still lighter touch. Their homes were dark enough with anxiety, yet
not by any word of theirs would the shadows be deepened. They could not
shield themselves from war's horrors but they would do their best to
shield their white swans at home. They could not keep their women folk
out of the war, but they would deliver them from its worst horrors. Not
till they had fallen would they let the shafts pass them to their
mothers and wives; rather would they gather them in their own breasts.
In the hour of the world's supreme tragedy there was a woman standing by
the cross, and the august Sufferer, with dying breath, bade His closest
friend take her, when the last beam faded, to his own home and be in His
place, a son to her. I know no scene that better represents the
feelings of our soldiers towards their loved ones at home.
Their women gave them inspiration and joy in the days of peace, and they
still float before their vision amid the blackened ruins of war, as
beautiful and stainless in their purity as the white swan on the moat of
Ypres.
*II*
*THE ROADMAKERS*
We had just marched from one part of the Front to another and by a
round-about way. Each morning the Quartermaster and "the billeting
party" went on before, and each evening we slept in a village that was
strange to us. Each of the men carried on his back a pack and equipment
weighing about eighty or ninety pounds. Through sleet and blizzard and,
for the most part, through open, exposed country, we continued our march
without a day of rest. By the fifth evening we reached the village
where we were to have three or four weeks of rest and training before
entering the trenches for the spring offensive. We had unpacked and
were sitting at dinner when a telegram came announcing that all previous
plans were canceled, and that at dawn we must take to the road again.
Something unexpected had happened, good or ill, we knew not which, and
we had to enter the line in front of Arras. For three days more we
marched. Daily the sound of the guns came nearer, and the men were
tired and footsore. They were also deeply disappointed of the long rest
to which they had been looking forward after a winter in the trenches at
Neuve Chapelle. Yet they marched cheerily enough. "It's the War!" they
said one to another and, true to their own philosophy, "packed up their
troubles in their old kit bags and smiled." When any man faltered a
bit, as if about to fall out by the way, the others cheered him on by
singing "Old Soldiers never die" to the tune of the old Sunday school
hymn, "Kind words can never die." Sometimes an officer would shoulder a
man's rifle to the end of the march, or until he felt better. In eight
unbroken days of marching we covered ninety-eight miles and finally
arrived at a camp of huts within a day's march of the trenches we are to
occupy. Here, where our huts stand like islands in a sea of mud, we
are, unless suddenly needed, to take a few days' rest.
On the ninety-eight miles of road over which we tramped, we passed
company after company of British roadmakers. In some parts they were
widening the road, in other parts repairing it. The roads of
Northeastern France are handed over to our care as completely as if they
were in England. Our road-makers are everywhere, and as we pass they
stand, pick or shovel in hand, to salute the colonel and shout some
humorous remark to the laughing riflemen--only to get back as much as
they give.
This morning I visited the neighboring village to arrange for a Sunday
service. The roads are hopeless for bicycles at this time of the year,
so I fell back on Adam's method of getting about. The road to the
village was torn and broken, and "thaw precautions" were being observed.
Everywhere it was ankle-deep in mud and, in the holes, knee-deep.
Innumerable motor-wagons had crushed it beneath their ponderous weight,
and my feet had need of my eyes to guide them. In skirting the holes
and rough places, I added quite a mile to the journey.
It was annoying to get along so slowly, and I called the road "rotten"
and blamed the War for its destructive work. Then I saw that I had been
unjust in judgment. The War had constructed more than it had destroyed.
The road had been a little muddy country lane, but the soldiers had made
it wide as Fleet Street, and it was bearing a mightier traffic than that
famous thoroughfare night and day. The little road with its mean
perfections and imperfections had gone, and the large road with big
faults and big virtues had come. This soldiers' road has faults the
farmers' road knew not, but then it has burdens and duties unknown
before, and it has had no time to prepare for them. Like our
boy-officers who are bearing grown men's burdens of responsibility and
bearing them well, the road has had no time to harden. To strengthen
itself for its duties, it eats up stones as a giant eats up food. I had
no right to look for the smoothness of Oxford Street or the Strand.
Such avenues represent the work of centuries, this of days. They have
grown with their burdens, but this has had vast burdens thrown upon it
suddenly, and while it was immature. Oxford Street and Fleet Street are
the roads of peace, and laden with wealth and luxury, law and
literature--things that can wait. But on this road of the soldiers'
making, nothing is allowed except it be concerned with matters of life
and death. It is the road of war, and there is a terrible urgency about
it. Over it pass ammunition to the guns, rations to the soldiers in the
trenches, ambulances bearing back the wounded to the hospital. Whatever
its conditions the work must be done, and there is no room for a halting
prudence or the pride of appearance. Rough though it is and muddy, over
it is passing, for all who have eyes to see, a new and better
civilization and a wider liberty. I had grumbled at the worn-out road
when I ought to have praised it. I was as an ingrate who finds fault
with his father's hands because they are rough and horny.
It was a group of soldier-roadmakers who brought me to my senses. They
were making a new road through the fields, and it branched off from the
one I was on. I saw its crude beginning and considered the burdens it
would soon have to bear. As I stood watching these English roadmakers
my mind wandered down the avenues of time, and I saw the Roman soldiers
building their immortal roads through England. They were joining town
to town and country to country. They were introducing the people of the
North to those of the South, and bringing the East into fellowship with
the West. I saw come along their roads the union of all England
followed at, some distance, by that of England, Scotland and Wales; and
I regretted that there was no foundation on which they could build a
road to Ireland. I saw on those soldier-built roads, also, Christianity
and Civilization marching, and in the villages and towns by the wayside
they found a home whence they have sent out missionaries and teachers to
the ends of the earth.
"The captains and the kings depart." The Roman Empire is no more, but
the Roman roads remain. They direct our modern life and business with
an inevitability the Roman soldiers never exercised. In two thousand
years the Empire may have fallen apart and become a thing of the past;
but the roads her sons have built in France, these two-and-a-half years,
will abide forever and be a perpetual blessing; for, of things made by
hands, there is, after the church and the home, nothing more sacred than
the road. The roadmaker does more for the brotherhood of man and the
federation of the world than the most eloquent orator. The roadmaker
has his dreams and visions as well as the poet, and he expresses them in
broken stones. He uses stones as artists use colors, and orators words.
He touches them--transient as they are--with immortality. A little of
his soul sticks to each stone he uses, and though the stone perishes the
road remains. His body may perish more quickly than the stones and be
laid in some quiet churchyard by the wayside, but his soul will never
utterly forsake the road he helped to make. In man's nature, and in all
his works, there is a strange blending of the temporal and the eternal,
and in nothing is it more marked than in the roads he builds.
The roadmaker is the pioneer among men and without him there would be
neither artist nor orator. He goes before civilization as John the
Baptist went before Christ, and he is as rough and elemental. Hard as
his own stones, without him mankind would have remained savage and
suspicious as beasts of prey; and art, science and literature would have
had no beginning. His road may begin in war, but it ends in peace.
The pioneers I saw roadmaking were, for the greater part, over military
age, and such as I had often seen leaning heavily on the bar of some
miserable beer-house. In those days they seemed of the earth, earthy,
and the stars that lure to high thoughts and noble endeavors seemed to
shine on them in vain. But one never knows what is passing in the heart
of another. Of all things human nature is the most mysterious and
deceptive. God seems to play at hide-and-seek with men. He hides
pearls in oysters lying in the ooze of the sea; and gold under the
everlasting snows of the Arctic regions. Diamonds he buries deep down
in the dirt beneath the African veldt. He places Christ in a
carpenter's shop, Joan of Arc in a peasant's dwelling, Lincoln in a
settler's cabin, and Burns in a crude cottage built by his father's own
hands. He hides generous impulses and heroic traits in types of men
that in our mean imaginations we can only associate with the saw-dust
sprinkled bar-room. Only when war or pestilence have kindled their
fierce and lurid flames do we find the hidden nobility that God has
stored away in strange places--places often as foul and unlikely as
those where a miser stores his gold.
When Diogenes went about with a candle in search of an honest man did he
think to look in the taverns and slums? I fancy not. Not Diogenes'
candle but the "Light of the World" was needed to reveal the treasure
God has hidden in men. Christ alone knew where His Father had hidden
His wealth and could guide us to it. In this time of peril when every
man with any nobility in him is needed to stand in the deadly breach,
and with body and soul hold back the brutality and tyranny that would
enslave the world we have, like the woman in the parable, lit a candle
and searched every corner of our kingdom diligently. In the dust of
unswept corners we have found many a coin of value that, but for our
exceeding need, would have remained hidden. To me, the wealth and wonder
of the war have been found in its sweepings. Time and again we have
found those who were lost, and a new happiness has come into life. To
the end of my days I shall walk the earth with reverent feet. I did not
know men were so great. I have looked at life without seeing the gold
through the dust, and have been no better than a Kaffir child playing
marbles with diamonds, unaware of their value. I have gone among my
fellows with proud step where I ought to have walked humbly, and have
rushed in where angels feared to tread.
Life at the Front has made me feel mean among mankind. My comrades have
been so great. In days long past, I have trodden on the hem of Christ's
garment without knowing it. I have not seen its jewels because I, and
others, have so often trodden it in the mire. Yet, through the mire of
slum and tavern, the jewels have emerged pearl-white and ruby-red. And I
feel that I owe to a large part of mankind an apology for having been
before the war so blind, callous and superficial. But for the agony and
bloody sweat in which I have seen my fellows, I should never have known
them for what they are, and the darkness of death would have covered me
before I had realized what made the death of Christ and the sufferings
of all the martyrs well worth while. Now there is a new light upon my
path and I shall see the features of an angel through the dirt on a
slum-child's face. Words of Christ that once lay in the shadow now
stand out clearly, for whenever we get below the surface of life we come
to _Him_. He is there before us, and awaiting our coming.
I also understand, now, something of the meaning of the words which the
Unemployed scrawled upon their banner before the war--"Damn your
charity. Give us work." It was a deep and true saying, and taught them
by a stern teacher. When the war came we _did_ "damn our charity" and
gave them "work." Many a man got his first chance of doing "a man's
job," and rose to the full height of his manhood. Many hitherto idle
and drunken, were touched in their finer parts. They saw their
country's need, and though their country had done little to merit their
gratitude, they responded to her call before some of the more prudent
and sober. Those who were young went out to fight, and every officer
can tell stories about their behavior in the hours of danger and
suffering which bring tears to the eyes and penitence to the heart.
Those above military age went out to make roads over which their younger
brothers and sons could march, and get food, ammunition, or an ambulance
according to their needs. Among the group of middle-aged roadmakers
that I saw there were, I doubt not, some who had been counted wastrels
and who had made but a poor show of life. Now they had got work that
made them feel that they were men and not mendicants, and they were
"making good."
While I watched them a lark rose from a neighboring field and sang over
them a song of the coming spring. It was the first lark I had heard
this year, and I was glad it mingled its notes with the sounds of the
roadmakers' shovels. Nature is not so indifferent to human struggles as
it sometimes seems. The man who stands steadfastly by the right and
true and bids tyranny and wrong give place will find, at last, that he
is in league with the stones of the field and the birds of the air, and
that the stars in their courses fight for him. The roadmaker and the
lark are born friends. Both are heralds of coming gladness, and while
one works, the other sings. True work and pure song are never far
apart. They are both born of hope and seek to body forth the immortal.
A man works while he has faith. Would he sow if he did not believe the
promise, made under the rainbow, that seed-time and harvest shall never
fail? Or could he sing with despair choking his heart? Yet he can sing
with death choking it. In the very act of dying Wesley sang the hymn,
"I'll praise my Maker while I've breath." He sang because of the hope
of immortality. He was not turning his face to the blank wall of death
and oblivion but to the opening gate of a fuller life. He was soaring
sunwards like the lark, and soaring sang,
"And when my voice is lost in death
Praise shall employ my nobler powers;
My days of praise shall ne'er be past."
Joy can sing and Sorrow can sing, but Despair is dumb. It has not even
a cry, for a cry is a call for help as every mother knows, and Despair
knows no helper. Even the saddest song has hope in it, as the dreariest
desert has a well. The loved one is dead but Love lives on and whispers
of a trysting place beyond this bourne of time, where loved and lover
meet again. The patriot's life may be pouring from a dozen wounds on
the muddy field of battle, but his fast-emptying heart is singing with
each heavy beat, "Who dies, if my country live?"
Roadmakers have prepared the way for missionaries in every land.
Trail-blazers are not always religious men--often they are wild,
reckless fellows whom few would allow a place in the Kingdom of God--but
is not their work religious in its final upshot? Do they not, however
unconsciously, "prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert
a highway for our God?" Close on their heels go the missionaries, urged
on faster by the pure love of souls than the trader by love of lucre.
The greatest among the roadmakers was a missionary himself--David
Livingstone. And for such an one the name Living-stone is perfect. It
has the touch of destiny. Through swamp and forest he went where white
feet had never trod, and blazed a trail for the messengers of Christ,
until, worn out with fever and hardship, he fell asleep at his prayers,
to wake no more to toil and suffering.
But while the roadmaker bestows benefits on us he also lays obligations,
for there can be no enlargement of privilege without a corresponding
increase of responsibility. The roads the men are making here in France
will be good for trade. They will open up the country as did the
military roads of Caesar and Napoleon; and along them soldiers are
marching who, at tremendous cost to themselves, are buying for posterity
great benefits, and laying upon posterity great obligations. Posterity
must hold and enlarge the liberties won for them, and prove worthy of
their citizenship by resisting tyranny "even unto blood." We are here
because our fathers were heroes and lovers of liberty. Had they been
cowards and slaves there would have been no war for us. As we follow
our fathers our sons must be ready to follow us. The present springs
out of the past, and the future will spring out of the present.
Inheritance implies defense on the part of the inheritors.
The very names they give to their roads show that our soldiers have
grasped this fact. The cold canvas hut in which I am writing is
officially described as No. 1 Hut, _Oxford Street_. A little farther
off, and running parallel with it, is _Cambridge_ Road. There is also
an _Eton_ Road, _Harrow_ Road, and _Marlborough_ Road. Students of the
universities and schools after which these roads are named are out here
to defend what these institutions have stood for through the hoary
centuries. They are out to preserve the true conception of Liberty and
Fair-play, and to build roads along which all peoples who desire it can
travel unmolested by attacks from either tyrants or anarchists.
Right from the beginning of the war, the idea of a Road has taken hold
of the imagination of our soldiers. The first divisions came out
singing, "It's a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart's right
there." Nowadays the popular song is "There's a long, long trail
awinding into the Land of my dreams."
They are making a Road of Liberty along which all nations may pass to
universal peace and brotherhood, and where the weak will be as safe from
oppression as the strong. "It's a long, long way to go," but they have
seen their goal on the horizon, and will either reach it or die on the
way to it. They have made up their minds that never again shall the
shadow of the Kaiser's mailed fist, or that any other tyrant fall across
their path. These men never sing of war. They hate war. It is a
brutal necessity forced on them by the ambition of a tyrant. Their
songs are all of peace and none of war. Of the future and not the
present they sing:
"Tiddley-iddley-ighty,
Hurry me home to Blighty;
Blighty is the place for me."
Whether they sing with levity or seriousness (and levity of manner often
veils their seriousness of feeling), it is of a future of peace and
goodwill they sing. To them the war is a hard road leading to a better
life for mankind. It is to them what the desert was to the Israelites,
when they left the bondage of Egypt for the liberty of the Land of
Promise. Therefore they must tread it without faltering even as Christ
trod the way of the Cross. "There's a long, long trail awinding into the
Land of their dreams" and they will not lose faith in their dreams
however wearisome the way. Elderly navvies and laborers have come to
smooth the roads for them, and nurses are tending those who have fallen
broken by the way; while across the sundering sea are mothers and wives
whose prayers make flowers spring up at their feet and blossoms break
out on every tree that fringes the side of the road.
*III*
*THE GLAMOUR OF THE FRONT*
There is an undoubted glamour about the Front, which when at home, in
England, cannot be explained. In the army or out of it, the wine of
life is white and still, but at the Front it runs red and sparkling. One
day I got a lift in a motor-wagon and sat on a box by the side of one of
the servants of the officer's mess at the Aerodrome near by. He was
going into Doullens, a market town, to buy food and some little
luxuries. Captain Ball, V.C., the prince of English flyers, was, up to
the time of his death in the air, a member of the mess, and the servant
was telling me how comfortable all the officers make their quarters. In
a phrase he defined the glamour of the Front.
"One day," he said, "when we were helping him to make his room
comfortable, Captain Ball burst out into a merry laugh and chuckled, 'We
haven't long to live, but we live well while we do live.'"
There you have it. Life is concentrated. Death is near--just round the
corner--so the men make the most of their time and "live well." It has
the same quality as "leave" at home. Leave is short and uncertain, so
we "live well." Our friends know it may be the last sight of us, and we
know it may be our last sight of them. They are kind and generous to
us, as we are to them; and so, the ten days of "leave" are just
glorious. Ruskin says that the full splendor of the sunset lasts but a
second, and that Turner went out early in the evening and watched with
rapt attention for that one second of supreme splendor and delight. He
lived for sunsets and while others were balancing their accounts, or
taking tea, he went out to see the daily miracle. The one second in
which he saw God pass by in the glory of the sunset was to him worth all
the twenty-four hours. For one second in each day he caught the glamour
of earth and heaven, and went back to his untidy studios blind to all
but the splendor he had seen.
That second each day was life, indeed, and the glamour of the Front is
like unto it. It is the place where life sets, and the darkness of
death draws on. The commonest soldier feels it and with true instinct,
not less true because unconscious, he describes death at the Front as
"going West." It is the presence of death that gives the Front its
glamour, and life its concentrated joy and fascination. Captain Ball
saw it with the intuition of genius when he said: "We haven't long to
live, but we live well while we _do_ live."
The immediate presence of death at the Front gives tone to every
expression of life, and makes it the kindest place in the world. No one
feels he can do too much for you, and there is nothing you would not do
for another. Whether you are an officer or a private, you can get a lift
on any road, in any vehicle, that has an inch of room in it. How often
have I seen a dozen tired Tommies clambering up the back of an empty
motor-lorry which has stopped, or slowed down, to let them get in. It is
one of the merriest sights of the war and redounds to the credit of
human nature. Cigarettes are passed round by those who have, to those
who have not, with a generosity that reminds one of nothing so much as
that of the early Christians who "had all things common; and sold their
possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had
need." You need never go hungry while others have food. Officers are
welcome at every mess they go near, and privates will get food in the
servants' kitchen or may go shares with the men in any billet. It may
be a man's own fault that he took no food on the march, and his comrades
may tell him so in plain strong language, but they will compel him to
share what they have just the same.
One wet night on the Somme I got lost in "Happy Valley" and could not
find my regiment. Seeing a light in a tent, I made for it. It was a
pioneers' tent, but they invited me to come in out of the storm and stay
the night. They were at supper and had only a small supply of
bully-beef, biscuits and strong tea; but they insisted on me sharing
what they had. I was dripping with rain, and they gave me one of their
blankets. One of them gave me a box to sleep on, while he shared his
chum's. Some lost privates came in later wet to the skin, and the
pioneers gave them all the eatables left over from supper, and shared
out their blankets and clothes. It was pure Christianity--whatever
creeds they may think they believe. And it is the glamour of the Front.
England feels cold and dull after it. Kindness and comradeship pervade
the air in France. You feel that everyone is a friend and brother. It
will be pretty hard for chaplains to go back to their churches. They
have been spoiled by too much kindness. How can they go back to the
cold atmosphere of criticism and narrow judgments which prevail in so
many churches--that is, unless the war has brought changes there also?
And after preaching to dying men who listen as it their destiny depended
upon their hearing, how can they go back to pulpits where large numbers
in the congregations regard their messages as of less importance than
dinner, and as merely supplying material for an exercise in more or less
kindly criticism during the discussion of that meal?
The glamour of the services at the Front! How the scenes are
photographed on my heart! As a congregation sits in a church at home
how stolid its features often are--how dull its eyes! One glance around
and the preacher's heart sinks within him and his inspiration flies
away. Nothing is expected of him, and nothing particularly desired.
People have come by force of habit, and not of need. But how the eyes of
the soldiers in France glow and burn; how their features speak, and make
the preacher speak in reply! Who could help being eloquent there! Such
faces would make the dumb speak. One can see the effect of his words as
plainly in their expressions as he can see the effect of wind on a
cornfield. Every emotion from humor to concern leaps from the heart to
the face as the subject touches them at, first this point of their life,
then at that. The men's eyes are unforgettable. Months afterwards they
come vividly to mind, and one is back again answering the questions they
silently ask, and seeing the look of content or gratitude that takes the
place of the perplexed or troubled expression. Eyes are said to be the
windows of the soul, and as I have spoken I have seen men's souls
looking out. At home the windows are darkened and there seemed to be no
souls behind the panes. The dwellers within the houses are busy with
other matters, and will not come to the windows. The preacher feels
like an organ-grinder in the street--those who hear do not heed nor come
to the windows of the soul. In France there is a soul looking out at
every window; and the preacher sings--for his words grow rhythmic--to
his listeners of the love of God and of the love of women and children
which make sweet this vale of tears and light man on his lone way beyond
the grave.
One Sunday in hospital, when we heard the singing of a hymn in the ward
below, a young officer, in the next bed, turned to me and said: "Why
doesn't the chaplain hold a service for us? Why does he only hold them
for the Tommies? We need them and want them, just as much as the
Tommies. We are officers but we are also men." I passed the word to
the chaplain, and he was a joyful man when in the evening he gave us a
service and the officers of the next ward asked the orderlies to carry
them in.
There is the same naturalness and spirit of fellowship between members
of various churches. Many lasting friendships have been formed between
chaplains of differing communions. There has been no change of creed
but something greater, a change of spirit. They have been touched by the
common spirit, and have lived and worked in free and happy fellowship.
On my last Sunday in a hospital in France, the chaplain, a canon of the
Church of England, invited me to read the lesson at the morning parade
service, and to administer the wine at Holy Communion. This I did; and
a colonel who was present stayed behind to express to us both the
pleasure which had been given to him by the sight of Anglican and
Methodist churchmen serving together at the Lord's Table.
To a chaplain not a little of the glamour of the Front is found in this
warm fellowship between men of differing creeds and varying religious
communions. We have not knocked down our garden walls but we have taken
off the cut glass that had been cemented on them by our fathers; and now
we can lean over and talk to our neighbors. We have already found that
our neighbors are human beings, and quite normal. The chief difference
between us seems to be that while one has an obsession for roses the
other has an obsession for dahlias. On pansies, sweet peas and
chrysanthemums we seem equally keen and exchange plants. A Roman
Catholic officer who had been appointed to the Ulster Division told me
that though he was received coldly at first, he had not been with the
Division more than a few weeks when every officer in his regiment, and
every soldier in his company, accepted him as cordially as if he were a
Protestant. He was from Dublin and they from Belfast, but they did not
allow it to make any difference, and feelings of the warmest loyalty and
friendship sprang up. His Tommies would fight to the death by his side,
as readily as around any Ulsterman; and he was just as popular in the
officers' mess. When, he said, it passed the Irish Guards or any other
Roman Catholic regiment, his regiment would sing some provoking song
about "hanging the Pope with a good strong rope," and the Dublin
regiment would reply with some song equally obnoxious and defiant; but
whereas, in peace time, the songs would have caused a free fight to the
accompaniment of bloodshed, now it caused nothing worse than laughter.
The songs were just a bit of teasing such as every regiment likes to
regale another with--perhaps, too, a common memory of the dear country
they have left behind. The men of Belfast and the men of Dublin have
learned to respect and value one another. They know that in a scrap
with the enemy they can count on one another to the last drop of blood,
for, whether from North or South, the Irish are "bonnie fighters." Of
such are the miracles at the Front.
Most of all, perhaps, the glamour of the Front is found in the nobility
to which common men rise. An artillery officer told me that he had in
his battery a soldier who seemed utterly worthless. He was dirty in all
his ways, and unreliable in character. In despair they made him
sanitary orderly, that is, the scavenger whose duty it was to remove all
refuse. One night the officer wanted a man to go on a perilous errand
and there were few men available. Instantly this lad volunteered. The
officer looked at him in amazement, and with a reverence born on the
instant. "No," he thought, "I will not let him go and get killed. I'll
go myself." He told the lad so, and disappointment was plainly written
on his features.
"But, you'll let me come with you, sir?" he replied.
"Why should two risk their lives," asked the officer, "when one can do
the job?"
"But you might get wounded, sir," was the quick response; and they went
together.
An Irish officer told me of one man who seemed bad from top to toe. All
the others had some redeeming feature but this man appeared not to
possess any. He used the filthiest language and was dirty in his habits
and dress. He was drunken and stole the officers' whisky out of the
mess. He was unchaste and had been in the hospital with venereal
disease; and neither as man nor soldier was there anything good to say
of him. The regiment was sent to France, and in due time took its place
in the trenches; and then appeared in this man something that had never
risen to the surface before. Wherever there were wounded and dying men
he proved himself to be the noblest man in the regiment. When a man
fell in No Man's Land, he was over the parapet in the twinkling of an
eye to bring him in. No barrage could keep him away from the wounded.
It was a sort of passion with him that nothing could restrain. To save
others he risked his life scores of times. In rest-billets he would
revert to some of his evil ways, but in the trenches he was the
Greatheart of the regiment and, though he did not receive it, he earned
the Victoria Cross over and over again. There is a glamour at the Front
that holds the heart with an irresistible grip. In the light of War's
deathly fires the hearts of men are revealed and the black sheep often
get their chance. Life is intense and deep and men are drawn together
by a common peril. They find the things that unite and forget the things
that separate.
"We haven't long to live," said Captain Ball joyfully, "but we live well
while we _do_ live," and in those words he expressed the glamour of the
Front. Ball found, as thousands of his comrades-in-arms had found, that
"One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."
*IV*
*A WHITE HANDKERCHIEF*
In his _History of the Somme Campaign_ John Buchan quotes, from an
official report, an incident which, though I have tried, I cannot get my
imagination to believe. Probably the incident is a true one but,
unfortunately for me, my mind will not let it in. I cannot visualize it
and the report is turned from the door as an impostor. The report
states that in a certain attack our aeroplanes fired on the Germans in
their trenches and that the enemy waved white handkerchiefs in token of
surrender. Without the slightest difficulty I can imagine all except
the white handkerchiefs. Where did they get them to wave? Men in the
firing trenches don't carry anything so conspicuous as white
handkerchiefs. To draw one out in a thoughtless moment might bring a
sniper's bullet, and there are risks enough without inviting more. I
doubt if in any English regiment two white handkerchiefs could be found:
and I have little expectation that more could be found among the enemy.
Furthermore, it is questionable, at this stage of the war, if a white
handkerchief would be regarded as a sign, of surrender. It might be
taken as a taunt.
There is nothing more remarkable in the war than the psychological
change that has been wrought in white. A white feather used to be the
badge of cowardice and a white flag the token of surrender. It is not
so now. White has taken on a peculiar sacredness. If a new medal were
to be struck of the same high value as the Victoria Cross it would
probably be given a white ribbon, as the other has a red or (for the
navy) blue. This change in the moral significance of white was brought
home to me by an incident in a billet. I had gone to a barn to give the
men some shirts and socks that had been sent to me. I stood on the
steps, and like an auctioneer, offered my goods for acceptance. "Who
wants a shirt? Who a scarf? Who wants this pair of mittens? Who a
pair of socks?" Hands shot up at each question, and the fun grew fast
and furious. Then I drew out and held up a white handkerchief. "A-ah!
A-ah!" they cried wistfully in chorus. For a moment they stood gazing
at it and forgot to raise their hands towards it; then, with a single
movement, every hand shot up. Unwittingly I had stirred them to the
depths; and I felt sorry for them.
The Magic Carpet of Baghdad is not a fiction after all. In the
twinkling of an eye my white handkerchief had carried every boy and man
to his home, and placed him by the fireside. I saw it in their eyes and
heard it in the sadness and wistfulness of their voices as they
ejaculated "A-ah!" They had not seen a white handkerchief for months.
The last they saw was at home. A vision of home flashed before their
minds and they were back in the dear old days of peace when they used
white handkerchiefs and khaki ones were unknown to them. If in battle
they were to see Germans waving white handkerchiefs, I think it would
make them savage and unwilling to give quarter. They would think the
enemy was taunting them with all they had lost. And they would be
maddened by the thought that here were the very men who, by their
war-lust, had caused them to lose it. For a German to wave a white
handkerchief before a British soldier would be as dangerous as flaunting
a red flag before a bull. It would bring death rather than pity.
Anything of pure white is rare at the front, and it has gradually taken
on a meaning it never held before. About the only white thing we have
is the paper we write home on, and that use of the color helps to
sanctify it in the shrine of the heart.
In the army it is a term of supreme praise to call a man _white_. When
you say a comrade is a "_white man_" there is no more to be said. It is
worth more than the Victoria Cross with its red ribbon, for it includes
gallantry, and adds to it goodness. A man must be brave to be called
white and he must be generous, noble and good. To reach whiteness is a
great achievement. To be dubbed white is, in the army, like being
dubbed knight at King Arthur's Court or canonized saint in the Church.
He stands out among a soldier's comrades distinct as a white
handkerchief among khaki ones.
I don't know where the term came from, but, wherever it may have tarried
on the way, I think its footprints could be traced back to the Book of
Revelation for its starting place. In the first chapter we have a
picture of Christ as the first "White Man"--"His Head and His Hairs were
white like wool, as white as snow." In the second chapter His faithful
followers are given "a white stone, and in the stone a new name
written." Is not the new name "White man"? In the third chapter we
read of "a few names even in Sardis which have _not defiled their
garments_; and they shall _walk with Me in white_; for they are worthy."
There, too, the Laodiceans are counseled to buy "white raiment." In the
fourth chapter we see the four and twenty elders, sitting around the
throne under the rainbow arch, "clothed in white raiment." In the sixth
chapter we have the crowned King going "forth conquering, and to
conquer" and He is sitting on "a white horse," that is, He uses "white"
instruments to carry out His conquests. Death, in the same chapter,
rides on a "pale" horse, but not a "white" one. Under the altar were
the souls of the martyrs, "And white robes were given unto every one of
them." And surely the climax is reached when we read in the seventh
chapter that "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all
nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues, stood before the throne,
and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes." So striking was the
scene that one of the elders asked, "What are these which are arrayed in
white robes? and whence came they?" And the answer is given, "These are
they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes,
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before
the throne of God." In the army white has come back to its ancient
significance. The brave and noble martyrs of the early Church were
given "white robes" and in the army to-day the brave and pure wear
"white robes" in the eyes of their comrades. When Clifford Reed was
killed by a shell at his Regimental Aid Post his colonel wrote of him
that he was the "whitest man" he had ever known. He had done more than
wear "the white flower of a _blameless_ life." His virtues were
positive, not merely negative. He wore a "white _robe_"; not a mere
speck of white such as a white flower in a buttonhole would appear.
White is a positive color, not a negative. Reed was more than
"blameless," he was "white and all white." To our soldiers a white
handkerchief speaks of home, and a "white man" speaks of honor and
heroism and heaven.
*V*
*THE SONGS OUR SOLDIERS SING*
The necessity for poetry and song is fully and officially recognized by
the military authorities at the Front. Every Division has its own
concert party. These men are chosen out of the ranks because they can
sing, and their one task is to furnish nightly concerts for the men.
They are provided with a good hall, or tent, or open-air position; and
they are given enough money to buy stage scenery and appropriate dress.
Everybody attends the concerts from the general to the private; and
while the entertainments last, the war is forgotten. A charge is made
at the door but the balance sheet is published for all ranks to see; and
the profits are distributed among the Divisional charities.
Among the many Divisional Concert Parties may be named "The Bow Bells,"
"The Duds," "The Follies," "The Whizz-bangs," "The Fancies" and, "The
Giddigoats." But, after all, the singing in the concert rooms is but a
small fraction of the singing one hears in the Army. On every march, in
every billet and mess, there is the sound of singing. Nor must the
singing at our religious services and in the Y.M.C.A. huts be forgotten.
Song seems to be the great renewer of hope and courage. It is the joy
bringer. Moreover, it is an expression of emotions that can find no
other voice.
There is no real difference between the songs sung by the officers, and
those sung by the men. All attend the concerts and all sing on the
march. The same songs do for both commanders and commanded, and I have
heard the same songs in the men's billets as in the officers'
mess-rooms. How real these songs are to the soldiers is indicated by
one striking omission. There are no patriotic songs at the Front.
Except the National Anthem rendered on formal occasions, I have never,
in eighteen months, heard a single patriotic song. The reason is not
far to seek. The soldiers' patriotism calls for no expression in song.
They are expressing it night and day in the endurance of hardship and
wounds--in the risking of their lives. Their hearts are satisfied with
their deeds, and songs of such a character become superfluous. In
peace-time they sing their love of the homeland, but in war-time they
suffer for her and are content. They would never think of singing a
patriotic song as they march into battle. It would be painting the lily
and gilding refined gold. Are not their deathless deeds, songs for
which they make a foil by singing some inconsequential and evanescent
song such as, "There's something in the sea-side air."
On analysis I should say that there are five subjects on which our
soldiers sing. First, there are Nonsense Songs or, if you prefer it,
songs of soldier-philosophy. They know that no theory will explain the
war; it is too big a thing for any sheet of philosophy to cover. It has
burst in on our little hum-drum life like a colliding planet. The thing
to do is not to evolve a theory as to how the planet got astray but to
clear up the mess it has made. Our soldiers show this sense of the
vastness of war-happenings, by singing of things having no real
importance at all, and keeping steadily at their duties. The path of
duty is, they find, the only path of sanity. The would-be war
philosopher they put on one side. The war is too big for him. Let him
leave his explanation of the war and lend a hand to bring it to an end.
So they sing, with laughing irony,
"We're here because we're here, because
We're here, because we're here."
Or,
"While you've got a lucifer to light your fag,
Smile, boys, that's the style.
What's the use of worrying?
It never was worth while,
So pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag
And smile, smile, smile."
Another favorite is,
"Oh, there was a little hen and she had a wooden leg,
The best little hen that ever laid an egg,
And she laid more eggs than any hen on the farm,
And another little drink wouldn't do us any harm."