AN AIR RAID
"I do not like seriousness. I think it is irreligious."--Chesterton.
"They'll be here soon," said Dr. O'Grady. "The moon is low, and the
shadows are long, and these oblique lights will suit them very well."
The division was in rest on the hills overlooking Abbeville, and the
doctor was walking to and fro with Colonel Parker and Aurelle along
the lime-bordered terrace, from which they could see the town that
was going to be attacked. From the wet grassy lawns near by groups of
anxious women were scanning the horizon.
"Yesterday evening, in a suburb," said Aurelle, "they killed a
baker's three children."
"I am sorry," put in the doctor, "they should be favoured with this
fine weather. The law of the storm seems to be exactly the same for
these barbarians as it is for innocent birds. It's absolutely
contradictory to the notion of a just Divinity."
"Doctor," said Aurelle, "you are an unbeliever."
"No," replied the doctor, "I am an Irishman, and I respect the bitter
wisdom of the Catholic faith. But this universe of ours, I confess,
strikes me as completely non-moral. Shells and decorations fall
haphazard from above on the just and the unjust alike; M. Poincare's
carburettor gets out of order just as often as the Kaiser's. The Gods
have thrown up their job, and handed it over to the Fates. It is true
that Apollo, who is a well-behaved person, takes out his chariot
every morning; that may satisfy the poets and the astronomers, but it
distresses the moralist. How satisfactory it would be if the
resistance of the air were relative to the virtues of the airman, and
if Archimedes' principle did not apply to pirates!"
"O'Grady," observed Colonel Parker, "you know the words of the psalm:
'As for the ungodly, it is not so with them; but they are like the
chaff which the wind scattereth away from the face of the earth.'"
"Yes, colonel; but supposing you, a good man, and I, a sinner, were
suddenly hit by a bomb----"
"But, doctor," Aurelle interrupted, "this science of yours is after
all only an act of faith."
"How so, my boy? It is obvious that there are laws in this world. If
I press the trigger of this revolver, the bullet will fly out, and
if General Webb is given an Army Corps, General Bramble will have a
bilious attack."
"Quite so, doctor; you observe a few series linked together, and you
conclude that the world is governed by laws. But the most important
facts--life, thought, love--elude your observations. You may perhaps
be sure that the sun is going to rise to-morrow morning, but you
don't know what Colonel Parker is going to say next minute. Yet you
assert that the colonel is a machine; that is because your religion
tells you to."
"So does every one else's religion," said the doctor. "Only yesterday
I read in the Bishop of Broadfield's message: 'The prayers for rain
cannot take place this week, as the barometer is too high.'"
Far away over the plain, in the direction of Amiens, the
star-sprinkled sky began to flicker with tiny, flashing points of
light.
"Here they come," said Aurelle.
"They'll be ten minutes yet," said the doctor. They resumed their
walk.
"O'Grady," Colonel Parker put in, "you're getting more crazy every
day. You claim, if I comprehend your foolish ideas aright, that a
scientist can foretell rain better than an Anglican bishop. What a
magnificent paradox! Meteorology and medicine are far less solid
sciences than theology. _You_ say that the universe is governed by
laws, don't you? Nothing is less certain. It is true that chance
seems to have established a relative balance in the tiny corner of
the universe which we inhabit, but there is nothing to show that this
balance is going to last. If you were to press the trigger of this
revolver to-morrow, it is just possible that it would not go off. It
is also possible that the German aeroplanes will cease to fly, and
that General Bramble will take a dislike to the gramophone. _I_
should not be surprised at any of these things; I should simply
recognize that supernatural forces had come into our lives."
"Doctor," said Aurelle, "you know the clock which my orderly Brommit
winds up every evening? Let us suppose that on one of the molecules
that go to make up the minute-hand of that clock there live a race of
beings who are infinitely small, and yet as intelligent as we are.
These little creatures have measured their world, and have noticed
that the speed of its motion is constant; they have discovered that
their planet covers a fixed distance in a fixed period of time, which
for us is a minute and for them a century. Amongst their people there
are two schools of thought. The scientists claim that the laws of the
universe are immutable, and that no supernatural power can intervene
to change them. The believers admit the existence of these laws, but
they also assert that there is a divine being who can interfere with
their course; and to that being they address prayers. In that tiny
world, which of them is right? The believers, of course; for there is
such a being as Private Brommit, and if he forgets one evening to
wind up the clock, the scientists and all their proud theories will
vanish away like smoke in a cataclysm which will bring whole worlds
to their doom."
"That's so," said the doctor; "but if they had prayed----"
"Listen," interrupted Aurelle.
The park had become strangely silent; and though there was no wind,
they could hear the gentle rustling of the leaves, the barking of a
dog in the valley, the crackling of a twig under a bird's weight. Up
above, in the clear sky, there was a feeling of some hostile
presence, and a disagreeable little buzzing sound, as though there
were some invisible mosquito up among the stars.
"They're here now," said the doctor.
The noise increased: a buzzing swarm of giant bees seemed to be
approaching the hill.
Suddenly there was a long hiss, and a ray of light leaped forth from
the valley and began to search the sky with a sort of superhuman
thoroughness. The women on the lawn ran away to the shelter of the
trees. The short, sharp barking of the guns, the deeper rumble of the
bombs that were beginning to fall on the town, and the earth-shaking
explosions terrified them beyond endurance.
"I'm going to shut my eyes," said one, "it's easier like that."
"My God," exclaimed another, "I can't move my legs an inch!"
"Fear," said the doctor, "shows itself in hereditary reflexes. Man,
when in danger, seeks the pack, and fright makes his flesh creep,
because his furred ancestors bristled all over when in combat, in
order to appear enormous and terrible."
A terrific explosion shook the hill, and flames arose over the town.
"They're aiming at the station," said the colonel. "Those
searchlights do more harm than good. They simply frame the target and
show it up."
"When I was at Havre," Aurelle remarked, "a gunner went to ask the
Engineers for some searchlights that were rotting away in some store
or other. 'Quite impossible,' said the engineer; 'they're the war
reserve; we're forbidden to touch them.' He could never be brought to
understand that the war we were carrying on over here was the one
that was specified in his schedule."
The great panting and throbbing of an aeroplane was coming nearer,
and the whole sky was quivering with the noise of machinery like a
huge factory.
"My God," exclaimed the doctor, "we're in for it this time!"
But the stars twinkled gently on, and above the din they heard the
clear, delicate notes of a bird's song--just as though the throbbing
motors, the whizzing shells and the frightened wailing of the women
were nothing but the harmonies devised by the divine composer of some
military-pastoral symphony to sustain the slender melody of a bird.
"Listen," whispered Colonel Parker, "listen--a nightingale!"