It was early in November about eighteen months later that Vera Dalton,
returning from her self-imposed task at a Military Convalescent Home,
found a letter awaiting her which bore the heading that will cast its
unique spell over us and our children for generations to
come--"Somewhere in France."
Sorrow had come into her home, as it had into so many hundreds of
others, but it had mellowed, not marred her womanliness.
Into the vortex of the nations she had seen the young men of Canada
flinging themselves with laughing voices and sturdy courage. With the
other women of the city she had watched the endless stream of youth as
though, across the seas, some Hamelin Piper were playing an
irresistible, compelling melody.... And still the cry was for
more--more sons, more brothers, more fathers! Month after month the
ceaseless crusade went on--month after month new battalions sprang into
being, trained a short time, and then made for the sea.... Always the
sea, waiting with its foaming restlessness to carry its human cargo to
the slaughter.
The sea ... the sea....
It became the symbol of sacrifice to her. Across its turbulent expanse,
youth was forfeiting its life for the blindness of the past. The hungry
fire of war was being fed with human hearts.... But such is the nature
of fire that what lives through it is imperishable.
A year ago Montague had gone with his battalion--without even a
good-bye. She had never heard of him, but the ordeal of the flames had
left him stripped of his artificiality as a tree stricken by a sudden
frost is robbed in a moment of its foliage. It is not only the best in
men that lives through war--vile passions vie with courage and great
sacrifice.... But artificial things succumb and crumple with the
scorching heat, and are blown into space by the breath of passions,
base or noble--it matters not--they are _real_.
With trembling hands she opened the letter.
"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE.
"MY DEAR GIRL,--In a couple of hours we are going over the parapet
to reach the German lines or gain oblivion--or worse. All around me
the men I have worked with, slept with, fought with, are writing
to, or thinking of, some loved one at home. I do not know whether
the love you once felt for me has died or not, but it was once
strong enough to hurt me as no one had ever done before--to tear my
soul out to where I could see its rottenness with my own eyes. I
could not live with myself after that, and as you must have heard,
for I believe it was a drawing-room jest for some time, I joined a
battalion composed almost entirely of men from the factories, the
workshops, and the streets.
"It was partly a spirit of bravado made me do it, and partly a
desire to wrestle with truth. I cannot say how hard it was at first
to endure their company, their incessant, meaningless profanity. I
hated every one of them. To salute an officer in the street caused
me such humiliation that I thought of desertion a dozen times. From
my contempt of my fellow-soldiers to an understanding of their
nobility has been a hard, cruel road to travel; but I have traveled
it, and I think that somewhere on the road there is a cross whereon
my pride was crucified. Vera, my prayer is no longer that of the
Pharisee, but of the Publican. I was offered a commission; I was
urged to join the signalers or the machine-gun section, because
there I should find men more after my own stamp; but I refused--the
memory of your words made me stick with the men I started with.
"I have found them crude, uneducated, unambitious, but true as
steel, and asking no better reward for their heroism than that
their 'missus and kids' will be looked after at home. I tell you,
Vera, that when the war is over we shall have to realize that it is
not only the consumptive and the imbecile that deserve care and
thought. There is a grandeur, a manhood, in the ordinary, unlovely,
unkempt man of the streets that our civilization has failed to
bring out, but war has done it. So much has war given to us; so
much has peace failed to give.
"Life has become a riddle to me, still fascinating, but
fascinatingly puzzling. Perhaps I shall find the answer in No Man's
Land.
"Good-bye, dear girl. Don't think from the tone of my letter that I
have forgotten how to smile (this is where real humor is found, for
humor was always a twin to tragedy). But I am forgetting how to
scoff. I suppose, though, that I haven't changed beyond
recognition, for I believe behind my back I am called 'The Duke.'
"Like my comrades, I have written to a loved one at home.
"I trust, Vera, that it is _au revoir_.
"DENNIS.
"D. O. Montague, Pte. No. 67,895,
"Brindle's Battalion, C.E.F."