June, 1915
_June 11th--Cumberland._ Speaking to a gathering of village folk on
work in France, I invited debate. "If King George 'as got wot Kaiser
Bill wants, why don't they go and fight it out themselves?" asked one
man. "Wot difference would it make to us if the country is ruled by
Germans or Englishmen?" said another, a lazy fellow whose fields had
remained fallow for years, quite oblivious of the fact that under
German regime _he_ would have been in the firing-line months ago. The
rest of the audience shivered with the helpless indecision as to what
their right course should be: which shows the little faith felt in the
present Government, half hoping for, half fearing the conscription of
labour that seems imminent.
That there should exist men who openly confess that from their point of
view the end of the war will be disastrous is almost incredible. Yet
I have come across a clergyman, working in a Midland manufacturing
centre, who has many instances of this indifference to recount.
Is it not useless to hope that this war will be the last? So long as
men are actuated by motives of commercial profit and agrarian gain,
the dream of Universal Peace must remain a chimæra; and the present
upheaval, essential to the checking and wiping out of Germany's
abnormal line of development, is destined to be only the first step
towards the Ideal of Progress which Europe (the Central Powers
included) had flattered herself to be following.
Most astounding of all is the utter obliviousness on the part of all
at home to the seriousness of the shell campaign, illustrated by the
ridicule hurled at those of us who uphold the Northcliffe Press.
As I settled into the corner of the railway carriage, after a
delightful week-end with a dear friend in Surrey, a batch of
illustrated journals and the _Morning Post_ were pressed upon me.
No one can be a more devout devotee of the _Morning Post_ Court
Circular than my humble self, knowing full well that to miss that
interesting document means a gradual drifting without the pale of
one's many acquaintances. Nevertheless, I asked meekly for "The _Daily
Mail_, please!"
"That you, with your love of literature, should read such stuff!" she
groaned.
Then, confidently:
"My dear, at any other time I should have _cut you dead_ for such a
thing."
There was no time to explain, as the train steamed out, that I go to my
newspaper for news and not for literature.
Yet I could not refrain from marvelling at the contumely showered on
the only organ strong enough to bring the truth before the public and
combat the weaknesses of a desultory Government.
The second astounding thing at home is the fact that no one seems to
realise the difference between the Front and the Base.
Anywhere in France--Paris excepted--seems to be "the Front," and no one
who has not been privileged to peep behind the scenes seems to realise
the gap that intervenes between the fighting line and the back of the
Front, as one might call the Base.
And one is introduced to a strange medley of people, all "going to the
Front."
Not only veteran soldiers and raw recruits and nurses, but charming
women of leisure who contemplate migrating with their retinue somewhere
abroad and earning fame "at a canteen or anything that is wanted--just
behind the lines!"
Now, although I can claim to have worked longer at our Base than
any other British woman (with one exception), to have withstood
the inclemency of its climate and its laws successfully for eight
consecutive months, and might therefore pretend to be an authority
as to where it really _is_, not a single friend have I succeeded in
convincing that I am not a true heroine--risking my life daily with
shells bursting all around and the Huns a few yards away. What they
want are descriptions of weeping gas victims and death-bed scenes (that
in reality are far better forgotten--if it is possible) and incidents
such as a youthful convalescent sapper confided to me recently--of the
man who, though his head was blown clean off at midday, was found to be
convulsively clawing the earth with fingers that seemed yet alive at
sundown!
For such yarns there seems to be a great demand, and if I told
them that heroism at the Base consisted of maintaining continual
cheerfulness in face of odds like bursting boilers which, for want
of men, cannot be repaired; if I hinted at the dullness of buttering
endless loaves, of wheedling Primus stoves into working order, of
changing French money for English at a varying rate of exchange, of
living amongst a strange, heterogeneous crowd of people, far away from
one's own friends, and stifling longings for one's _lares et penates_,
of the dreadful monotony and various other details of barmaiding,
amateur and otherwise, I should not be believed.
Therefore, with many a wiser, I seek shelter behind a discreet
silence, except when the insistence of the "Do-tell-me-all-about-it!
Have-you-seen-lots-of-horrors?" girl elicits an ironical reply to
the effect that most of our time is spent in champagne lunches and
moonlight picnics.
_June 12th._ I must not omit to note the very interesting meeting with
Mr. Henry James--the American author--who has so enthusiastically cast
in his lot with the Allies. It was at a tea at the American Embassy. On
being introduced, having heard of our work in France, he made no secret
of his views.
"You young people are wonderful. You are achieving what no other
generation could ever, will ever, achieve! After all, this is a young
people's war!"
I went home with a heart throbbing with pride at belonging to a
generation that, swept by the great driving spirit (maybe something
analogous to Maeterlinck's "Spirit of the Hive") from little ruts in
life into the great vortex of war, has already proved its metal.
Over and over again one is struck by the extraordinary altruism that is
displayed by those taking part in what, after all, is but a tremendous
life-and-death struggle.
Everywhere _esprit de corps_ prevails amongst the men. Take the
private. Maybe he reared poultry in some out-of-the-way farm in
Somerset. Maybe his pathetically wizened face tells of a childhood in
the slums. Whatever his life was before, he is Private Tommy Atkins
now, of the Blankshires--the finest regiment, the finest company, the
finest platoon in the British Army; a V.C. regiment he will announce
with pride, as he sits down by the dusty roadside to enjoy the ten
minutes' halt in what seems an interminable route march.
And the very Temporary Lieutenant whom one knew only a year ago as
the "knut," as, in the newest check trousers _à l'Américain_, he
lounged bemonocled in the Park, what of him? Was he not correct--very
correct and always correct, as he patronised every function of the
season--blasé, bored and boring, always ready to criticise every affair
with an amusing cynicism?
He, too, chameleon-like, has taken on the tone of his surroundings.
Behold him in khaki, a born leader of men! His boredom has become
sangfroid, his cynicism has blossomed into a brisk humour that keeps
the mess alive, his subservience to the law of the "correct thing" has
taught him to face every undreamt-of tight corner with a nonchalance
wonderful to behold.
Yes, Henry James is right. "It is a Young People's War." It may be an
ironical fate that designs the younger generation to lay down their
lives for the political blunders of the older--but the true tragedy
is not in the youths cut down in the flower of their manhood, nor the
girls broken in health by the magnitude of the task they have tackled;
the true tragedy is in the derelict "dug-outs" vainly hunting for jobs,
the aged women wringing their hands, with the cry, "We are too old to
help!"
And when our American friend, speaking of his countrymen's work and
schemes for ameliorating the lot of starving Belgium, remarked that
our work will not have finished with the cessation of hostilities,
for then alone will the full pinch and hardships of war be felt, the
destitution shorn of the gilding of excitement and uncertainty, I knew
he spoke truly.
The end of the last month all eyes were focused on Italy's rupture with
Austria (we note that diplomatic relations with Germany are not broken
off, no doubt for reasons commercial). To all who have travelled much
in that land of sunshine it was apparent that, whichever way politics
might trend, public feeling (barring that section of the proletariat
under strong Papal influence) would always be with the Allies; nor was
it possible to imagine any alliance between Italy and her hereditary
foe, the Hun, other than an alliance of convenience. The Italian's
contempt for Teuton boorishness is as ineradicable as the Italian's
confidence in the brilliant future awaiting his own kingdom.
_June 14th._ Two days later the Coalition Ministry, which we pray
fervently may remedy our shortage of war materials, was formed. Now,
attention is turned towards the East, the Cameroons, the Dardanelles.
Mr. Winston Churchill has raised our hopes to the tiptop of expectation
with his mysterious promises of some unparalleled and crushing success
in Gallipoli. So much so, that everyone speaks with confidence of the
termination of the war within a few months.
Yesterday some were only restrained from hoisting flags by the desire
to see the rumours confirmed. Alas! on opening the morning papers we
were but greeted with the news of fresh Austrian successes.
_June 20th._ With the receipt of "Marching Orders" this morning,
England and Home seemed suddenly very dear. Like a dream they come
back, those places I have visited--the peaceful Lakes; the cheerful
Felixstowe hotel, where one could revel in the soft, subdued lights and
pretty frocks; Bedford, which with all its khaki seems to be playing
at war more than any other city, and where one or two people are
still extant who saw the Russians come through from Archangel at the
beginning of operations, and even touched the snow on their caps! And
the different country houses, the different friends, how little touched
they seem by it all! True, in one or two once over-pretentious houses
the food is less lavish, the staff less numerous, the clothes less
exaggerated; which seemed a great improvement.
Only I seem changed, and all the things we once accepted as necessities
of life are become luxuries, from books and baths to the once despised
draught of clear cold water!
Yes, as to the sound of the soft-toned grand we sat by the fire
enjoying the ever sweet smell of burning logs, whilst, with the
inscrutable smile of one to whom the mysteries of Life and Death are
revealed, the death mask of the woman who was found in the Seine looked
down from her oak beam, and the hour-glass speeded its atoms along the
road to eternity, for the first time France and work seemed anything
but attractive.
_June 29th._ It is worth the journey to be amongst our men again, to be
welcomed as they alone welcome one, with hearty handshakes and hopes
that one has "come back to stay."
Things have progressed a good deal, too, in our small world. In
the beginning, were one only rich enough, or endowed with a title
sufficiently illustrious or notorious (it mattered not which), one
might rent an hotel or a château, turn it into a French or Belgian Red
Cross Hospital, and resort to a little harmless hospital work in France
whenever London became boring.
True, the authorities never encouraged these little pleasure trips, but
now that Boulogne has been definitely declared within the War Zone,
entrance and egress are a very different matter, and it requires quite
an amount of strategy for anyone not affiliated to some recognised
society, and armed to the teeth with permits, to get here at all.
There seems also to have been a systematic "rounding up" of
undesirables, and one by one the so-called "officers," who, in the
beginning, had made the nights hideous with their champagne suppers,
have disappeared.
Naturally, we too have progressed.
In place of skeleton buildings, well-planned camps lie along the
shore, complete even to their Imperial red letter-boxes. Once swampy
convalescent camps display smart flower gardens, whilst Thomas Atkins
moves about less molested by demands for souvenirs, and somewhat
solaced for his enforced absence from home by the welcome accorded to
him by his Allies. If the average man's vocabulary does not run much
beyond the five phrases, "_Bong jour!_" "_Compris?_" "_No bon!_" "_Nar
poo!_" ("_Je ne peux pas!_") "_Promenade ce soir?_" the few exceptions
have made remarkable progress.
One wonders what the residents of Brighton would say if a number
of friendly French workmen erected all along the Downs a miniature
village of asbestos and corrugated iron huts, interspersed with
tents and planted with trim little gardens of bright flowers and
evergreens; installed pillar-boxes bearing French arms, their electric
power-station, their orderly-and mess-rooms, surrounded the whole by
a mass of barbed wire, and having notified everywhere that this was
Hospital No. ----, to which there is "No Admittance," proceeded to
explain smilingly to the bewildered Brightonians that the huts are
stable enough to last for seven years.
If one could fathom the conflicting feelings of Brighton under these
conditions, one might have some small understanding of the astonishment
with which our Allies, already hard stricken by war, contemplate the
problem of this little Britain in France.
And there certainly _are_ problems. Take, for instance, the guarding of
the roads. Naturally enough, even in the British War Zone the French
are loath to give up command of the road. One cannot expect them to
forget completely that only one hundred years ago we were on a hostile
and not on a friendly mission! And so until recently they guarded the
barriers with fixed bayonets. Alas! the valiant men whose zealous watch
was apt to prove irksome have now been called up to the firing-line. We
shall no longer be tempted (those of us who are facetiously inclined)
to play pranks.
There was a certain art in producing, instead of one's military pass,
a card of membership of some long-forgotten club or any legal-looking
document, providing it bore a portrait affixed, and, brandishing it in
the watchful guard's face with a loud "_Laissez-passer militaire_,"
dash on to one's destination. An old Hippodrome ticket has been known
to act as well. Ten chances to one, being unable to read English, the
guard would let one through, and the delay would be amply repaid by the
good laugh.
But as I said, the many minor barriers have disappeared, and there is
no bluffing the men who guard the entrance and egress to the town.
_June 30th._ Since the German introduction of methods of warfare
that would shame a savage--the poison gas, the sinking of the
_Lusitania_--the whole attitude of our men towards the enemy has
changed, and one can safely predict that next Christmas there will be
no exchange of civilities and cigarettes with the Huns as there was
last.
Even at home the sluggards seem to be rousing; and the "Frightfulness"
whereby the Germans hope to scare Britain into a compromise is, on the
contrary, acting as a much-needed tonic.
One is struck out here by the psychology of the youthful subalterns.
The high anticipation of "getting out," the silent horror of which they
say so little when they are brought face to face with the "Real Thing,"
and which, once conquered, leads to a resigned fatalism.
It's the same with all of them. "_Che sarà, sarà_, and if we _are_ to
be hit, well, the sooner it's over the better, only it would be nice
to know if it's to be an arm, or sight or--the other thing. No matter,
anyhow. We shall know it soon enough, and in the meantime there is that
long-delayed ninety-six hours' leave in the future to dream of----"
Aye, that leave that many of them will never get!