Symptoms of restless impatience which had appeared almost as soon as
the signing of the Armistice began to grow with intensity among all
soldiers who had been long in the zone of war. Their patience, so
enduring through the bad years, broke at last. They wanted to go home,
desperately. They wanted to get back to civil life, in civil clothes.
With the Armistice all meaning had gone out of their khaki uniform, out
of military discipline, out of distinctions of rank, and out of the
whole system of their soldiers’ life. They had done the dirty job, they
had faced all its risks, and they had gained what glory there might be
in human courage. Now they desired to get back to their own people, and
their own places, and the old ways of life and liberty.
They remembered the terms of their service--these amateurs who had
answered the call in early days. “For the duration of the war.” Well,
the war was finished. There was to be no more fighting--and the wife
wanted her man, and the mother her son. “Demobilisation” became the
word of hope, and many men were sullen at the delays which kept them in
exile and in servitude. The men sent deputations to their officers. The
officers pulled wires for themselves which tinkled little bells as far
away as the War Office, Whitehall, if they had a strong enough pull.
One by one, friends of mine slipped away after a word of farewell and a
cheerful grin.
“Demobbed!... Back to civvies!... Home!”
Harding was one of those who agonised for civil liberty, and release
from military restraint, and the reason of it lay in his pocket-book,
where there was the photograph of a pretty girl--his wife.
We had become good friends, and he confided to me many things about
his state of mind with a simplicity and a sincerity which made me
like him. I never met a man more English in all his characteristics,
or more typical of the quality which belongs to our strength and our
weakness. As a Harrow boy, his manners were perfect, according to the
English code--quiet, unemotional, easy, unobtrusively thoughtful of
other people’s comfort in little things. According to the French Code,
he would have been considered cold, arrogant, conceited and stupid.
Certainly he had that touch of arrogance which is in all Englishmen
of the old tradition. All his education and environment had taught
him to believe that English civilisation--especially in the hunting
set--was perfect and supreme. He had a pity rather than contempt for
those unlucky enough to be born Frenchmen, Italians, or of any other
race. He was not stupid by nature--on the contrary, he had sound
judgment on matters within his range of knowledge and a rapid grasp of
detail, but his vision was shut in by those frontiers of thought which
limit public-school life in England and certain sets at Oxford who do
not break free, and do not wish to break free, from the conventional
formula of “good form,” which regulates every movement of their brain
as well as every action of their lives. It is, in its way, a noble
formula, and makes for aristocracy. My country, right or wrong; loyalty
to King and State; the divine right of the British race to rule
uncivilised peoples for their own good; the undoubted fact that an
English gentleman is the noblest work of God; the duties of “_noblesse
oblige_,” in courage, in sacrifice, in good manners, and in playing the
game, whatever the game may be, in a sporting spirit.
When I was in Harding’s company I knew that it was ridiculous to
discuss any subject which lay beyond that formula. It was impossible
to suggest that England had ever been guilty of the slightest
injustice, a touch of greed, or a tinge of hypocrisy, or something
less than wisdom. To him that was just traitor’s talk. A plea for
the better understanding of Ireland, for a generous measure of
“self-determination” would have roused him to a hot outburst of anger.
The Irish to him were all treacherous, disloyal blackguards, and the
only remedy of the Irish problem was, he thought, martial law and
machine-gun demonstrations, stern and, if need be, terrible. I did not
argue with him, or chaff him as some of his comrades did, and, keeping
within the prescribed limits of conversation set by his code, we got on
together admirably. Once only in those days on the Rhine did Harding
show an emotion which would have been condemned by his code. It was
due, no doubt, to that nervous fever which made some wag change the
word “demobilisation” into “demoralisation.”
He had a room in the Domhof Hotel, and invited me to drink a whiskey
with him there one evening. When I sat on the edge of the bed while he
dispensed the drink, I noticed on his dressing-table a large photograph
of a girl in evening dress--a wonderfully pretty girl, I thought.
He caught my glance, and after a moment’s hesitation and a visible
blush, said:
“My wife.... We were married before I came out, two years ago exactly.”
He put his hand into the breast-pocket of his tunic and pulling out a
pocket-book, opened it with a snap, and showed me another photograph.
“That’s a better one of her.”
I congratulated him, but without listening to my words he asked me
rather awkwardly whether I could pull any strings for him to get
“demobbed.”
“It’s all a question of ‘pull,’” he said, “and I’m not good at that
kind of thing. But I want to get home.”
“Everybody does,” I said.
“Yes, I know, and of course I want to play the game, and all that. But
the fact is, my wife--she’s only a kid, you know--is rather hipped with
my long absence. She’s been trying to keep herself merry and bright,
and all that, with the usual kind of war-work. You know--charity
bazaars, fancy-dress balls for the wounded, Red Cross work, and all
that. Very plucky, too. But the fact is, some of her letters lately
have been rather--well--rather below par,--you know--rather chippy and
all that. The fact is, old man, she’s been too much alone, and anything
you can do in the way of a pull at the War Office----”
I told him bluntly that I had as much influence at the War Office as
the charwoman in Room M.I.8, or any other old room--not so much--and
he was damped, and apologised for troubling me. However, I promised to
write to the one High Bird with whom I had a slight acquaintance, and
this cheered him up considerably.
I stayed chatting for some time--the usual small-talk--and it was
only when I said good-night that he broached another subject which
interested me a good deal.
“I’m getting a bit worried about Wickham Brand,” he remarked in a
casual kind of way.
“How’s that?”
I gathered from Harding’s vague, disjointed sentences that Brand was
falling into the clutches of a German hussy. He had seen them together
at the Opera--they had met as if by accident--and one evening he had
seen them together down by the Rhine outside Cologne. He was bound
to admit the girl was remarkably good-looking, and that made her
all the more dangerous. He hated to mention this, as it seemed like
scandal-mongering about “one of the best,” but he was frightfully
disturbed by the thought that Brand, of all men, should fall a victim
to the wiles of a “lady Hun.” He knew Brand’s people at home--Sir Amyas
Brand, the Member of Parliament, and his mother, who was a daughter of
the Harringtons. They would be enormously “hipped” if Wickham were to
do anything foolish. It was only because he knew that I was Wickham’s
best chum that he told me these things, in the strictest confidence.
A word of warning from me might save old Brand from getting into a
horrible mess--“and all that.”
I pooh-poohed Harding’s fears, but when I left him to go to my own
billet I pondered over his words, and knew that there was truth in them.
There was no doubt to my mind that Brand was in love with Elsa von
Kreuzenach. At least, he was going through some queer emotional phase
connected with her entry into his life, and he was not happy about
it, though it excited him. The very day after Harding spoke to me on
the subject I was, involuntarily, a spy upon Brand and Fräulein Elsa
on a journey when we were fellow-travellers, though they were utterly
unaware of my presence. It was in one of the long electric trams which
go without a stop from Cologne to Bonn. I did not see Brand until
I had taken my seat in the small first-class smoking-car. Several
middle-class Germans were there, and I was wedged between two of them
in a corner. Brand and a girl whom I guessed to be Elsa von Kreuzenach
were on the opposite seat, but farthest away from me, and screened a
little by a German lady with a large feathered hat. If Brand had looked
round the compartment he would have seen me at once, and I waited to
nod to him, but never once did he glance my way, but turned slightly
sideways towards the girl, so that I only saw his profile. Her face was
in the same way turned a little to him, and I could see every shade
of expression which revealed her moods as she talked, and the varying
light in her eyes. She was certainly a pretty thing, exquisite, even,
in delicacy of colour and fineness of feature, with that “spun-gold”
hair of hers; though I thought (remembering Dr. Small’s words) that
she had a worn and fragile look which robbed her of the final touch of
beauty. For some time they exchanged only a few words now and then,
which I could not hear, and I was reading a book when I heard Brand say
in his clear, rather harsh voice:
“Will your people be anxious about you?”
The girl answered in a low voice. I glanced up and saw that she was
smiling, not at Brand, but at the countryside which seemed to travel
past us as the tram went on its way. It was the smile of a girl to whom
life meant something good just then.
Brand spoke again.
“I should hate to let your mother think that I have been disloyal to
her confidence. Don’t let this friendship of ours be spoilt by secrecy.
I am not afraid of it!”
He laughed in a way that was strange to me. There was a note of joy
in it. It was a boy’s laugh, and Brand had gone beyond boyhood in the
war. I saw one or two of the Germans look up at him curiously, and then
stare at the girl, not in a friendly way. She was unconscious of their
gaze, though a wave of colour swept her face. For a second she laid her
hand on Brand’s brown fist, and it was a quick caress.
“Our friendship is good!” she said.
She spoke these words very softly, in almost a whisper, but I heard
them in spite of the rattle of the tramcar and the guttural argument
of two Germans next to me. Those were the only words I heard her say on
that journey to Bonn, and after that Brand talked very little, and then
only commonplace remarks about the time and the scenery. But what I had
heard was revealing, and I was disturbed, for Brand’s sake.
His eyes met mine as I passed out of the car, but they were unseeing
eyes. He stared straight through me to some vision beyond. He gave
his hand to Elsa von Kreuzenach and they walked slowly up from
the station and then went inside the Cathedral. I had business in
Bonn with officers at our headquarters in the hotel, “Die Goldene
Stern.” Afterwards I had lunch with them, and then, with one, went to
Beethoven’s house--a little shrine in which the spirit of the master
still lives, with his old instruments, his manuscript sheets of music
and many relics of his life and work.
It was at about four o’clock in the afternoon that I saw Brand and the
German girl again. There was a beautiful dusk in the gardens beyond the
University, with a ruddy glow through the trees when the sun went down,
and then a purple twilight. Some German boys were playing leap-frog
there, watched by British soldiers, and townsfolk passed on their way
home. I strolled the length of the gardens and at the end which is near
the old front of the University buildings I saw Brand and Elsa von
Kreuzenach together on a wooden seat. It was almost dark where they
sat under the trees, but I knew Brand by his figure and by the tilt of
his field-cap, and the girl by the white fur round her neck. They were
holding hands like lovers in a London park, and when I passed them I
heard Brand speak.
“I suppose this was meant to be. Fate leads us....”
When I went back to Cologne by tram that evening I wondered whether
Brand would confide his secret to me. We had been so much together
during the last phase of the war and had talked so much in intimate
friendship that I guessed he would come one day and let me know this
new adventure of his soul.
Several weeks passed and he said no word of this, though we went for
walks together and sat smoking sometimes in cafés after dinner. It had
always been his habit to drop into deep silences, and now they lasted
longer than before. Now and then, however, he would be talkative,
argumentative, and passionate. At times there was a new light in
his eyes, as though lit by some inward fire. And he would smile
unconsciously as he blew out clouds of smoke, but more often he looked
worried, nervous, and irritable, as though passing through some new
mental crisis.
He spoke a good deal about German psychology and the German point of
view, illustrating his remarks sometimes by references to conversations
with Franz von Kreuzenach, with whom he often talked. He had come
to the conclusion that it was quite hopeless to convince even the
broadest-minded Germans that they were guilty of the war. They
admitted freely enough that their military party had used the Serbian
assassination and Austrian fury as the fuel for starting the blaze
in Europe. Even then they believed that the Chancellor and the civil
Ministry of State had struggled for peace until the Russian movements
of troops put the military party into the saddle so that they might
ride to Hell. But in any case it was, Brand said, an unalterable
conviction of most Germans that sooner or later the war had been bound
to come, as they were surrounded by a ring of enemies conspiring to
thwart their free development and to overthrow their power. They
attacked first as a means of self-defence. It was an article of faith
with them that they had fought a defensive warfare from the start.
“That is sheer lunacy!” I said. Brand laughed, and agreed.
“Idiotic in the face of plain facts, but that only shows, how strong
is the belief of people in their own righteousness. I suppose even now
most English people think the Boer war was just and holy. Certainly
at the time we stoned all who thought otherwise. Yet the verdict of
the whole world was against us. They regarded that war as the brutal
aggression of a great Power upon a small and heroic people.”
“But surely,” I said, “a man like Franz von Kreuzenach admits
the brutality of Germany in Belgium--the shooting of priests and
civilians--the forced labour of girls--the smashing of machinery--and
all the rest of it?”
Brand said that Franz von Kreuzenach deplored the “severity” of German
acts, but blamed the code of war which justified such acts. It was not
his view that Germans had behaved with exceptional brutality, but that
war itself is a brutal way of argument. “‘We must abolish war,’ he
says, ‘not pretend to make it kind.’ As far as that goes, I agree with
him.”
“How about poison gas, the _Lusitania_, the sinking of hospital ships,
submarine warfare?”
Brand shrugged his shoulders.
“The German answer is always the same. War is war, and they were
hard-pressed by our superiority in material, man-power and sea power.
We were starving them to death with our blockade. They saw their
children dying from disease, their old people carried to the grave,
their men weakened. They had to break through somehow, anyhow, to save
their race. I don’t think we should have stopped at much if England
had been ringed round with enemy ships and the kids were starving in
Mayfair and Maida Vale, and every town and hamlet.”
He laughed, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he lit his pipe for about
the fifteenth time.
“Argument is no good,” he said. “I’ve argued into the early hours of
the morning with that fellow Franz von Kreuzenach, who is a fine fellow
and the whitest man I’ve met in Germany. Nothing will convince him
that his people were more guilty than ourselves. Perhaps he’s right.
History will decide. Now we must start afresh--wipe out the black past,
confess that though the Germans started the war we were all possessed
by the devil--and exorcise ourselves. I believe the German people are
ready to turn over a new leaf and start a fresh chapter of history, if
we will help them and give them a chance. They have an immense hope
that England and America will not push them over into the bottomless
abyss, now that they have fulfilled Wilson’s demand to get rid of their
old rulers and fall into line with the world’s democracy. If that
hope fails them they will fall back to the old philosophy of hatred
with vengeance as its goal--and the Damned Thing will happen again in
fifteen--twenty--thirty years.”
Brand made one remark that evening which referred, I fancy, to his
love-affair with Elsa von Kreuzenach.
“There is so much folly in the crowd that one despairs of reaching a
higher stage of civilisation. I am falling back on individualism. The
individual must follow his own ideals, strive for his own happiness,
find friendship and a little love where he can, and stand apart from
world problems, racial rivalries, international prejudices, as far as
he may without being drawn into the vortex. Nothing that he can do
will alter human destiny, or the forces of evolution, or the cycles of
history, which make all striving futile. Let him get out of the rain
and comfort himself with any human warmth he can find. Two souls in
contact are company enough.”
“Sometimes,” I said, “mob passion tears them asunder and protests
against their union with stones or outlaw judgment. Taboo will
exist for ever in human society, and it is devilish unpleasant for
individuals who violate the rules.”
“It needs courage,” said my friend. “The risk is sometimes worth
taking.”