THE BEGINNING OF THE END
"All the way talking of Russia, which, he says, is a
sad place."--Pepys (Sept. 16th, 1664).
For three days our soldiers had been advancing over the devastated
plain of the Somme. The crests of the innumerable shell-holes gave
the country the appearance of a sort of frozen angry sea. The
victors were advancing light-heartedly, as though preceded by
invisible drums.
It was just at the time when the German army was swaying and
tottering like a spent boxer awaiting the inevitable knock-out.
The Division had suffered heavily. All along the roads they had seen
for the second time the sinister spectacle of villagers in flight
and furniture-laden carts drawn by bowed women.
General Bramble had looked at the map with painful astonishment. He
had been ordered to resist at all costs along the trenches on the
green line; but when he reached the green line he had found no
trenches; the Chinamen who were to dig them were still at sea
somewhere near Suez.
Then, in a corner of a ruined village, they had come across a green
felt hat and a fearsome moustache, which turned out reassuringly to
belong to a rocking, tottering old man; and the Tommies--who are a
primitive and adventurous race--were glad of the protection of this
wild old totem of the Frankish tribe.
Then came motor-lorries to take the whole Division to the North,
and through all the bustle and disorder they were conscious of
a giant hand trying with prudent and skilful movements to
rebuild the line.
"What can a general do?" the doctor had asked. "This war is too vast
to be affected by human volition. Victory will come through tiny,
decisive forces that have been at work since the beginning of the
world. Tolstoy's Kutusoff used to go to sleep in Council--yet he beat
Napoleon."
"However vast the scale of circumstance may be," said the colonel, "a
man can change everything. A child cannot push a railway engine; yet
he can start it if he opens the right throttle. A man has only to
apply his will at the right place, and he will be master of the
world. Your determinism is nothing more than a paradox. You build a
cage round yourself and then are astonished you are a prisoner."
They were going forward rapidly. Aurelle, mounted on his old white
Arab, trotted between the doctor and Colonel Parker.
"Don't hold your horse in so tightly, Messiou; give him the rein."
"But the road's full of holes, sir."
"My dear chap, when a man is on a horse, the horse is always the more
intelligent of the pair."
He slackened his mare's rein to pass by a huge shell-hole, and began
to talk of the peace that was at hand.
"The most difficult thing of all," he said, "will be to preserve in
our victory the virtues that won it for us. Germany and Russia will
do their best to corrupt us. A dishonoured nation always tries to
bury its shame under the ruins of the victor's civilization. It's the
device of Samson; it's as old as history itself. Rome, surrounded by
vanquished and humbled nations, witnessed the lightning speed of
Judaic preaching, which was so much like the Bolshevism of our day.
The Russian ghettos of our capitals had their counterpart then in
the Syrian dens that swarmed in the large ports; that is where the
apostles of mystical communism preached most successfully. And
Juvenal and Tacitus, who were gentlemen, had good reason to detest
those anarchists, who condemned Roman civilization with the fanatical
fury of a Trotsky."
"Yes," said the doctor, "the danger of these prolonged wars is that
they end by making the most unusual habits generally acceptable. They
require courage; and courage is a dangerous virtue, the mother of
revolutions. And it is not easy to accustom a nation of warriors to
render due obedience once more to second-rate politicians and
profiteers. The oligarchy of _parvenus_ which arose after the Punic
wars could not be respected as the Roman senate had been. They
possessed neither its hardihood nor its heroic parsimony. Bent only
on beautiful slaves, perfumes and luxuries, they sacrificed their
nascent influence to their passion for pleasure. They did not last
long."
"It is quite certain," the colonel continued, "that in order to
survive, an aristocracy must be hard upon itself. Moral discipline is
indispensable to any class that wants to govern. If the industrial
middle class is to take our place, it will have to be austere and
hard. What sealed once and for all the doom of the Roman Senators was
the decadent Greek culture of their sons. Those young noblemen
affected an elegant dilettantism and toyed pleasantly with cultured
demagogy. Caesar in his youth, Aurelle, was rather like one of your
comfortable cultured French middle-class Socialists. His lifelong
dream was to lead a moderate reform party, but he was embittered by
the attacks of the Roman patricians. He is a type against whom our
Public Schools protect us pretty well. We also have our decadent
young lords, but the contempt of their own generation keeps them from
doing much harm."
He stopped in order to salute a magpie--for he was very
superstitious--pointed with his cane to a tank that lay buried on its
back in the sand like a defeated tortoise, and went on:
"Do you think you will have a revolution in France after the war? If
you do, I shall be very much surprised. Up till now the remembrance
of 1793 has kept us looking with apprehension towards France as the
danger-spot of Europe. To-day we realize our mistake.
"1793 made your country more conservative than any other, by giving
your peasants the possession of the soil. It will probably be seen
some years hence that the Russian Revolution has also had the same
effect. The revolution will end when the Red armies return to Moscow
and some unemployed Bonapartsky has the Soviets dispersed by his
grenadiers. Then the _moujiks_ who have acquired the national
property will form the first layer of a respectable liberal bourgeois
republic."
"Unless," said Aurelle, "Bonapartsky, having tasted the sweets of
victory, sets out to conquer Europe with the help of his trusty
grenadiers. Between the Terror and 'the respectable republic' there
were twenty years of war, sir."
"The most terrible of all revolutions," began the doctor, "will be
the English one. In France the intellectual is popular; the tribune
of the people is a bearded professor with the kindest of hearts. In
England the people's commissary will be a hard, clean-shaven, silent,
cruel man."
"That may be," said the colonel; "but he will find more silent and
still harder men up against him. If you think we are going to lie
down and submit like the fatalist nobles of Petrograd, you are
mistaken."
"You, sir? And why the devil should _you_ defend business men and
profiteers whom you are never tired of sending to perdition?"
"I shall not be defending profiteers, but a form of society which I
hold to be necessary. The institutions which our ancestors have
adopted after six thousand years' experience are worth ten times more
than the systems of foolish and boastful hotheads. I stand always for
what is."
With a sweeping gesture the doctor pointed to the twisted, rusty
wire, the shattered walls, the mangled trees and the dense harvest of
wooden crosses that rose from the barren soil.
"Allow me," he said, "to express the heartfelt admiration I feel
for this venerable civilization of yours, and let me contemplate the
fruits of these wise institutions which six thousand years have
consecrated for you. Six thousand years of war, six thousand years of
murder, six thousand years of misery, six thousand years of
prostitution; one half of mankind busy asphyxiating the other half;
famine in Europe, slavery in Asia, women sold in the streets of Paris
or London like matches or boot-laces--there is the glorious
achievement of our ancestors. It is well worth dying to defend, I
must confess!"
"Yes, doctor," replied Aurelle; "but there are two sides to the
question: six thousand years of reform, six thousand years of revolt,
six thousand years of science, six thousand years of philosophy----"
"Now don't you run away with the idea that I'm a revolutionary. As
far as I am concerned, the movements of men interest me no more than
those of the spiders or the dogs I am so fond of observing. I know
that all the speeches in the world will not prevent men from being
jealous monkeys always greedy for food, females and bright stones. It
is true that they know how to deck out their desires with a somewhat
brilliant and delusive ideology, but it is easy for an expert to
recognize the instinct beneath the thought. Every doctrine is an
autobiography. Every philosophy demands a diagnosis. Tell me the
state of your digestion, and I shall tell you the state of your
mind."
"Oh, doctor, if that is so, life is not worth living."
"That, my boy, depends entirely upon the liver, as they say."
Young Dundas, who had just reined up level with them, interposed:
"My God, my God," he said, "how you chaps do love talking! Why, I
once had a discussion myself at Oxford with one of those johnnies in
a bowler hat and ready-made tie who go round and make speeches in
public squares on Saturday afternoons. I had stopped to listen to him
on my way back from a bathe. He was cursing the aristocracy, the
universities, and the world in general. Well, after about five
minutes' talking, I went right up to him and said, 'Off with your
coat, my friend; let's go into the matter thoroughly.'"
"And did you convince him, Dundas?"
"It wasn't very difficult, Messiou, because, honestly, I could use
my left better than he could."