February 2d.
The gramophone is playing an air from _La Tosca_ to which the guns beat
out a bass accompaniment. I close my eyes and picture the many times
I have heard the (probably) German orchestras of Broadway Joy Palaces
play that same music. How incongruous that I should be listening to
it here and under these circumstances! It must have been listened to
so often by gay crowds in the beauty places of the world. A romantic
picture grows up in my mind of a blue night, the laughter of youth
in evening dress, lamps twinkling through trees, far off the velvety
shadow of water and mountains, and as a voice to it all, that air
from _La Tosca_. I can believe that the silent people near by raise
themselves up in their snow-beds to listen, each one recalling some
ecstatic moment before the dream of life was shattered.
There's a picture in the Pantheon at Paris, I remember; I believe
it's called _To Glory_. One sees all the armies of the ages charging
out of the middle distance with Death riding at their head. The only
glory that I have discovered in this war is in men's hearts--it's not
external. Were one to paint the spirit of this war he would depict a
mud landscape, blasted trees, an iron sky; wading through the slush and
shell-holes would come a file of bowed figures, more like outcasts from
the Embankment than soldiers. They're loaded down like pack animals,
their shoulders are rounded, they're wearied to death, but they go
on and go on. There's no "To Glory" about what we're doing out here;
there's no flash of swords or splendor of uniforms. There are only
very tired men determined to carry on. The war will be won by tired
men who could never again pass an insurance test, a mob of broken
counter-jumpers, ragged ex-plumbers and quite unheroic persons. We're
civilians in khaki, but because of the ideals for which we fight we've
managed to acquire soldiers' hearts.
My flow of thought was interrupted by a burst of song in which I
was compelled to join. We're all writing letters around one candle;
suddenly the O. C. looked up and began, "God Be with You Till We Meet
Again." We sang it in parts. It was in Southport, when I was about nine
years old, that I first heard that sung. You had gone for your first
trip to America, leaving a very lonely family behind you. We children
were scared to death that you'd be drowned. One evening, coming back
from a walk on the sand-hills, we heard voices singing in a garden,
"God Be with You Till We Meet Again." The words and the soft dusk, and
the vague figures in the English summer garden, seemed to typify the
terror of all partings. We've said good-bye so often since, and God has
been with us. I don't think any parting was more hard than our last
at the prosaic dock-gates with the cold wind of duty blowing, and the
sentry barring your entrance, and your path leading back to America
while mine led on to France. But you three were regular soldiers--just
as much soldiers as we chaps who were embarking. One talks of our
armies in the field, but there are the other armies, millions strong,
of mothers and fathers and sisters, who keep their eyes dry, treasure
muddy letters beneath their pillows, offer up prayers and wait, wait,
wait so eternally for God to open another door.
To-morrow I again go forward, which means rising early and taking a
long plod through the snows; that's one reason for not writing any
more, and another is that our one poor candle is literally on its last
legs.
Your poem, written years ago when the poor were marching in London, is
often in my mind:
"Yesterday and to-day
Have been heavy with labor and sorrow;
I should faint if I did not see
The day that is after to-morrow."
And there's that last verse which prophesied utterly the spirit in
which we men at the Front are fighting to-day:
"And for me, with spirit elate
The mire and the fog I press through,
For Heaven shines under the cloud
Of the day that is after to-morrow."
We civilians who have been taught so long to love our enemies and do
good to them who hate us--much too long ever to make professional
soldiers--are watching with our hearts in our eyes for that day which
comes after to-morrow. Meanwhile we plod on determinedly, hoping for
the hidden glory.
Yours very lovingly,
CON.