From all parts of the Empire the old Mother Country saw her homing
birds. From Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa came bronzed
and hardy men who were the uncles or the cousins or the brothers of the
boys who were still storming the recruiting stations at home. After
them came wave after wave of young manhood from the far Dominions, and
for the first time in history the British Empire, so loosely linked,
so scattered, so jealous of restraint or control from the British
Government, was seen to be a federation of English-speaking peoples
more strongly bound by links of sentiment and kinship in time of peril
than any Imperialist of the old school could have forged by autocratic
power. They were free peoples enlisting for service, as they believed
also, in the cause of civilisation and in the chivalrous defence of
peace-loving peoples wantonly attacked by a brutal enemy.
Looking back now with disgust of war and all its filthiness and death
in our inmost souls, after years of disillusion with the results of
that war, with a more complicated knowledge of its causes back in
history; with a legacy of debt; unsettled problems; with new causes of
hate, revenge, conflict; with justice no longer all on one side, nor
injustice, one must still acknowledge the splendour of that spiritual
comradeship which made all classes offer themselves for service and
sacrifice to the uttermost, which was death. Not in England, nor in
France, nor later in the United States, was there any love of this
war for war’s sake. It did not appeal to the imagination of youth
as a great adventure. Here and there its call might have come as a
liberation from dull existence, or as an escape from private tragedy,
or as a primitive blood lust. In very rare cases it appealed to
old fighting instincts as a better thing than peace. To most it was
hateful. Our young men loved life and loathed the thought of death.
They did not want to kill or be killed. They disliked military
discipline, dirt, lice, the thought of shell-fire, the foreboding of
wounds, blindness, mutilation, and horror. They were the heirs of
a civilisation in which there had been a high standard of decency,
refinement, comfort, and individual liberty. Each young man when he
went to the recruiting office knew in his heart that he was saying
good-bye, perhaps for ever, to the things and folk he loved, to all
familiar decent things, to the joy of life itself. Yet in millions
they went, tide after tide ... and the women hid their tears and their
agony as best they could, and found out work to do. In great houses
and little homes there was the same spirit. Out of the foulest slums
as well as out of fine houses came the heroic soul of a people proud
of its history, impelled unconsciously by old loyalties which had been
stunted but never killed by social injustice.
That was the passion of England and her sister peoples when war began.
Difficult to imagine, impossible to feel again—now!... So much has
happened since.