With wounds dressed and bandaged, the men went out again. They were

led across the camp to the quartermaster's stores and given clean

underclothes in place of shirts and drawers sweat soaked, muddy,

caked hard with blood. With these in their arms they went to the

bath-house, to hot water, soap, and physical cleanness. Then they

were fed, and for the moment all we could do for them was done.

These were all lightly wounded men, but, even remembering that, their

power of recuperation seemed astonishing. Some went after dinner to

their tents, lay down on their beds and slept. Even of them few

stayed asleep for very long. They got up, talked to each other,

joined groups which formed outside the tents, wandered through the

camp, eagerly curious about their new surroundings. They found their

way into the recreation huts and canteens. They shouted and cheered

the performers at concerts or grouped themselves round the piano and

sang their own songs. Those who had money bought food at the counter.

But many had no money and no prospect of getting any. They might have

gone, not hungry, but what is almost worse, yearning for dainties and

tobacco, if it were not for the generosity of their comrades. I have

seen men with twopence and no more, men who were longing for a dozen

things themselves, share what the twopence bought with comrades who

had not even a penny. I passed two young soldiers near the door of a

canteen. One of them stopped me and very shyly asked me if I would

give him a penny for an English stamp. He fished it out from the

pocket of his pay-book. It was dirty, crumpled, most of the gum gone,

but unused and not defaced. I gave him the penny. "Come on, Sam," he

said, "we'll get a packet of fags."

They say a lawyer sees the worst side of human nature. A parson

probably sees the best of it; but though I have been a parson for

many years and seen many good men and fine deeds, I have seen nothing

more splendid, I cannot imagine anything more splendid, than the

comradeship, the brotherly love of our soldiers.

The very first day of the rush of the lightly wounded into our camp

brought us men of the Ulster Division. I heard from the mouths of the

boys I talked to the Ulster speech, dear to me from all the

associations and memories of my childhood. I do not suppose that

those men fought better than any other men, or bore pain more

patiently, but there was in them a kind of fierce resentment. They

had not achieved the conquest they hoped. They had been driven back,

had been desperately cut up. They had emerged from their great battle

a mere skeleton of their division.

But I never saw men who looked less like beaten men. Those Belfast

citizens, who sign Covenants and form volunteer armies at home, have

in them the fixed belief that no one in the world is equal to them or

can subdue them. It seems an absurd and arrogant faith. But there is

this to be said. They remained just as convinced of their own

strength after their appalling experience north of the Somme as they

were when they shouted for Sir Edward Carson in the streets of

Belfast. Men who believe in their invincibility the day after they

have been driven back, with their wounds fresh and their bones aching

with weariness, are men whom it will be very difficult to conquer.

Nothing was more interesting than to note the different moods of

these wounded men. One morning, crossing the camp at about 7 o'clock,

I met a Canadian, a tall, gaunt man. I saw at once that he had just

arrived from the front. The left sleeve of his tunic was cut away.

The bandage round his forearm was soiled and stained. His face was

unshaven and very dirty. His trousers were extraordinarily tattered

and caked with yellow mud. He had somehow managed to lose one boot

and walked unevenly in consequence. I had heard the night before

something about the great and victorious fight in which this man had

been. I congratulated him. He looked at me with a slow, humorous

smile. "Well," he drawled, "they certainly did run some."

A Lancashire boy, undersized, anæmic-looking, his clothes hanging

round him in strips, got hold of me one morning outside the

dressing-station and told me in a high-pitched voice a most amazing

story. It was the best battle story I ever heard from the lips of a

soldier, and the boy who told it to me was hysterical. He had been

buried twice, he and his officer and his Lewis gun, in the course of

an advance. He had met the Prussian Guard in the open, he and his

comrades, and the famous crack corps had "certainly run some." That

was not the boy's phrase. When he reached the climax of his tale his

language was a rich mixture of blasphemy and obscenity.

There was a Munster Fusilier, an elderly, grizzled man who had been

sent back with some German prisoners. He had, by his own account,

quite a flock of them when he started. He found himself, owing to

shrapnel and other troubles, with only one left when he drew near his

destination.

But he was a provident man. He had collected all available loot from

the men who had fallen on the way down, and the unfortunate survivor

was so laden that he collapsed, sank into the mud under an immense

load of helmets, caps, belts, everything that could have been taken

from the dead. The Munster Fusilier stood over him with his rifle.

"You misfortunate b----," he said. "And them words," he said to me

confidentially, "got a move on him, though it was myself had to carry

the load for him the rest of the way."

CHAPTER XIV

A BACKWATER

I look back with great pleasure on my connection with the Emergency

Stretcher-bearers' Camp. It was one of three camps in which I worked

when I went to B. I liked all three camps and every one in them, but

I cherish a feeling of particular tenderness for the

Stretcher-bearers.

Yet my first experience there was far from encouraging. The day after

I took over from my predecessor I ventured into the men's recreation

room. I was received with silence, frosty and most discouraging. I

made a few remarks about the weather. I commented on the stagnant

condition of the war at the moment. The things I said were banal and

foolish no doubt, yet I meant well and scarcely deserved the reply

which came at last. A man who was playing billiards dropped the butt

of his cue on the ground with a bang, surveyed me with a hostile

stare and said:

"We don't want no ---- parsons here."

Somebody in a far corner of the room protested mildly.

"Language, language," he said.

I did not really object much to the language. I had heard the British

soldiers' favourite word too often to be shocked by it. What did hurt

and embarrass me was the fact that I was not welcome; and no one made

any attempt to reassure me on that point.

Indeed when the same unpleasant fact that I really was not welcome

was conveyed to me without obscenity in the next camp and with

careful politeness in the third I found it even more disagreeable

than it was when the stretcher-bearer called me a ---- parson. The

officers in the convalescent camp, the centre camp in my charge, were

all kindness in their welcome, but the sergeant-major ----. We became

fast friends afterwards, but the day we first met he looked me over

and decided that I was an inefficient simpleton. Without speaking a

word he made his opinion plain to me. He was appallingly efficient

himself and I do not think he ever altered his perfectly just opinion

of me. But in the end, and long before the end, he did all he could

to help me.

The worst of all the snubs waited me in Marlborough Camp, and came

from a lady worker, afterwards the dearest and most valued of the

many friends I made in France. I shall not soon forget the day I

first entered her canteen. She and her fellow-worker, also a valued

friend now, did not call me a "---- parson"; but they left me under

the impression that I was not wanted there. Her snub, delivered as a

lady delivers such things, was the worst of the three.

For my reception in the Stretcher-bearers' Camp I was prepared.

"You'll find those fellows a pretty tough crowd," so some one warned

me.

"Those old boys are bad lots," said some one else. "You'll not do any

good with them."

I agree with the "tough." I totally disagree with the "bad." Even if,

after eight months, I had been bidden farewell in the same phrase

with which I was greeted, I should still refuse to say "bad lot"

about those men. I hope that in such a case I should have the grace

to recognise the failure as my fault, not theirs, and to take the

"bad lot" as a description of myself.

The Emergency Stretcher-bearers when I first knew them were no man's

children. The Red Cross flag flew over the entrance of their camp,

but the Red Cross people accepted no responsibility for them. Their

recreation room, which was not a room at all, but one end of their

gaunt dining-room, was ill supplied with books and games, and had no

papers. There were no lady workers in or near the camp, and only

those who have seen the work which our ladies do in canteens in

France can realise how great the loss was. There was no kind of unity

in the camp.

It was a small place. There were not more than three hundred men

altogether. But they were men from all sorts of regiments. I think

that when I knew the camp first, nearly every one in it belonged to

the old army. They were gathered there, the salvage of the Mons

retreat, of the Marne, of the glorious first battle of Ypres, broken

men every one of them, debris tossed by the swirling currents of war

into this backwater.

Their work was heavy, thankless, and uninspiring. They were camped on

a hill. Day after day they marched down through the streets of the

town to the railway station or the quay. They carried the wounded on

stretchers from the hospital trains to the Red Cross ambulances; or

afterwards from the ambulance cars up steep gangways to the decks

and cabins of hospital ships. They were summoned by telephone at all

hours. They toiled in the grey light of early dawn. They sweated at

noonday. Soaked and dripping they bent their backs to their burdens

in storm and rain. They went long hours without food. They lived

under conditions of great discomfort. It was everybody's business to

curse and "strafe" them. I do not remember that any one ever gave

them a word of praise.

It was the camp, of all that I was ever in, which seemed to offer the

richest yield to the gleaner of war stories. I have always wanted to

know what that retreat from Mons felt like to the men who went

through it. We are assured, and I do not doubt it, that our men never

thought of themselves as beaten. What did they think when day after

day they retreated at top speed? Of what they suffered we know

something. How they took their suffering we only guess. I hoped when

I made friends with those men to hear all this and many strange tales

of personal adventures.

But the British soldier, even of the new army, is strangely

inarticulate. The men of the old army, so far as concerns their

fighting, are almost dumb. They would talk about anything rather

than their battles. There was a man in the Life Guards who had

received three wounds in one of the early cavalry skirmishes. He

wanted to talk about cricket, and told me stories about a church

choir in which he sang when he was a boy.

There was a Coldstream Guardsman. I never succeeded in finding out

whether he was in the famous Landrecies fight or not. The most he

would do in the way of military talk was to complain, privately, to

me of the lax discipline in the camp, and to compare the going of his

comrades from the camp to the quay with the marching of the

Coldstreamers on their way to relieve guard at Buckingham Palace.

There was an old sergeant from County Down who was more interested in

growing vegetables--we had a garden--than anything else, and a

Munster Fusilier who came from Derry, of all places, and exulted in

the fact that his sons had taken his place in the regiment.

At first this curious reticence was a disappointment to me. It is

still a wonder. I am sure that if I had been one of the "Old

Contemptibles" I should talk of nothing else all my life. But I came

to see afterwards that if I had heard battle stories I should never

have known the men. The centre of interest of their lives was at

home. They, even those professional soldiers, were men of peace

rather than war. The soldiers' trade was no delight to them.

I dare say the Germans, who took pains to learn so much about us

beforehand, knew this, and drew, as Germans so often do, a wrong

inference from facts patiently gathered. They thought that men who do

not like fighting fight badly. It may be so sometimes. It was

certainly not so with our old army. We know now that it is not so

with the men of our new army either.

After a while the stretcher-bearers and I began to know each other.

The first sign of friendliness was a request that I should umpire at

a cricket match on a Sunday afternoon. I am not sure that the

invitation was not also a test. Some parsons, the "----" kind, who

are not wanted, object to cricket on Sundays. My own conscience is

more accommodating. I would gladly have umpired at Monte Carlo on

Good Friday, Easter, Advent Sunday, and Christmas, all rolled into

one, if those men had asked me.

Later on, after many cricket matches, we agreed that it was

desirable to get up entertainments in the camp. There was no local

talent, or none available at first, but I had the good luck to meet

one day a very amiable lady who undertook to run a whole

entertainment herself. She also promised not to turn round and walk

away when she saw the piano.

We stirred ourselves, determined to rise to the occasion. We made a

platform at the end of the dining-room. I took care not to ask, and I

do not know, where the wood for that platform came from. We

discovered among us a man who said he had been a theatrical scene

painter before he joined the R.E. He can never, I fancy, have had

much chance of rising to the top of his old profession, but he

painted a back scene for our stage. It represented a country cottage

standing in a field, and approached by an immensely long, winding,

brown path. The perspective of that path was wonderful. He also

painted and set up two wings on the stage which were easily

recognisable as leafy trees. For many Sundays afterwards I stood in

front of that cottage with a green tree on each side of me during

morning service.

Another artist volunteered to do our programmes. His work lay in the

orderly-room and he had at command various coloured inks, black,

violet, blue, and red. He produced a programme like a rainbow on

which he described our lady visitor as the "Famous Favourite of the

Music Hall Stage." She had, in fact, delighted theatre goers before

her marriage, but not on the music hall stage. I showed her the

programme nervously, but I need not have been nervous. She entered

into the spirit of the thing.

A thoughtful sergeant, without consulting me, prepared for her a

dressing-room at the back of the stage. A modest man himself, he

insisted upon my leading her to it. We found there a shelf, covered

with newspaper. On it was a shaving mirror, a large galvanised-iron

tub half full of cold water, a cake of brown soap, a tattered towel,

and a comb. Also there was a tumbler, a siphon of soda water, and a

bottle of port.

"The dears," she said. "But I can't change my frock; I've nothing but

what I stand up in. What shall I do?"

I glanced at the bottle of port; but she shrank from that.

"I must do something," she said. "I'll powder my nose." The shaving

mirror, at least, was some use.

The entertainment began stiffly. We were not accustomed to

entertainments and felt that we ought to behave with propriety. We

clapped at the end of each song, but we displayed no enthusiasm. I

began to fear for our success. But our lady--she did the whole thing

herself--conquered us. We were laughing and cheering in half an hour.

In the end we rocked in our seats and howled tumultuously when the

sergeant-major, a portly man of great dignity, was dragged over the

footlights. Our lady pirouetted across the stage and back again, her

arm round the sergeant-major's waist, her cheek on his shoulder,

singing, "If I were the only girl in the world and you were the only

boy."

We believed in doing what we could for those who came to entertain

us. When we secured the services of a "Lena Ashwell" Concert Party we

painted a large sign and hung it up in front of the stage: "Welcome

to the Concert Party." We forgot the second "e" in Welcome and it had

to be crammed in at the last moment above the "m" with a "^"

underneath it.

We made two dressing-rooms, one for ladies and one for gentlemen.

The fittings were the same--brown soap, cold water, shaving mirror,

tumbler and siphon. But in the gentlemen's room we put whisky, in the

ladies' port. The whole party had tea afterwards in the sergeants'

mess--strong tea and tinned tongue. A corporal stood at the door as

we left holding a tray covered with cigarettes.

I learned to play cribbage while I was in that camp. I was pitted, by

common consent, against an expert, a man who had been wounded at Le

Cateau and had his teeth knocked out as he lay on the ground by a

passing German, who used the butt of his rifle. Round me were a dozen

men, who gave me advice and explained in whispers the finesse of the

game. It was hot work, for the men sat close and we all smoked.

I also learned that the British soldier, when he gives his mind to

it, plays a masterly game of draughts. There was a man--in civil life

he sailed a Thames barge--who insulted me deeply over draughts. He

used to allow me to win one game in three, and he managed so well

that it was weeks before I found out what he was doing.

We had whist drives, and once a billiard tournament, run on what I

believe is a novel principle. We had only one table, half sized and

very dilapidated. We had about thirty entries. We gave each player

five minutes and let him score as much as he could in the time, no

opponent interfering with him. The highest score took the prize.

But all entertainments and games in that camp were liable to untimely

interruption. Messages used to come through from some remote

authority demanding stretcher-bearers. Then, though it were in the

midst of a game of whist, every man present had to get up and go

away.

There was one occasion on which such a summons arrived just as the

men had assembled to welcome a concert party. The dining-room was

empty in five minutes. We who remained were faced with the prospect

of a concert without an audience. But our sergeant-major met the

emergency. He hurried to a neighbouring camp and somehow managed to

borrow two hundred men. The concert party was greatly pleased, but

said that the Emergency Stretcher-bearers did not look as old and

dilapidated as they had been led to expect.

There came a time when the camp changed and many old friends

disappeared. At the beginning of the Somme battle there was a sudden

demand for stretcher-bearers to serve at the advanced

dressing-stations. Almost every day we were bidden to send men.

Little parties assembled on the parade ground and marched off to

entrain for the front. I used to see them lined up on the parade

ground, war-battered men, who looked old though they were young, with

their kits spread out for inspection. The least unfit went first; but

indeed there was little choice among them. Not a man of them but had

been wounded grievously or mourned a constitution broken by hardship.

Yet they went cheerfully, patient in their dumb devotion to duty,

hopeful that the final victory for which they had striven in vain was

near at hand at last.

"We'll have peace before Christmas." So they said to me as they went.

That "Peace before Christmas"! It has fluttered, a delusive vision,

before our men since the start. "Is it true that the cavalry are

through?" I suppose that was another delusion, that riding down of a

flying foe by horsemen. But it was not only the stretcher-bearers who

clung to it.

We saw our friends no more after they disappeared into the smoking

furnace of the front. They were scattered here and there among the

dressing-stations in the fighting area. Many of them, I suppose,

stayed there, struck down at last, ending their days in France as

they began them, with the sound of the guns in their ears. Others,

perhaps, drifted back to England more hopelessly broken than ever.

They must be walking our streets now with silver badges on the lapels

of their coats, and we, who are much meaner men, should take our hats

off to them. A few may be toiling still, where the fighting is

thickest, the last remnants of the "Old Contemptibles."

Their places in the camp and their work on the quays were taken by

others, men disabled or broken in the later fights when the new

armies won their glory. The character of the camp changed. We became

more respectable than we were in the old days. No one any longer

spoke of us as a "bad lot," or called us "a tough crowd." Perhaps we

were not so tough. Certainly we cannot have been tougher than the men

who made good in those first terrific days, who continued to make

good long after they could fight no more, staggering through the

Somme mud with laden stretchers. They grumbled and groused. They

blasphemed constantly. They drank when they could. They wanted no

"---- parson" among them. But they were men, unconquered and

unconquerable.

CHAPTER XV

MY THIRD CAMP

At the front, the actual front where the fighting is, imagination

runs riot in devising place names, and military maps recognise woods,

hills, and roads by their new titles. At the bases a severer spirit

holds sway. I recollect one curious and disagreeable camp which was

called, colloquially and officially, Cinder City. Otherwise camps

were known by numbers or at best by the French names of the districts

in which they were situated. I thought I had hit on another exception

to this rule when I first heard of this camp. It seemed natural to

have called a camp after one of our generals. In fact nothing of the

sort occurred. It was the French name for the place. We took over the

name when we pitched our tents.

Indeed the camp was not the sort of place which gets a name given to

it. It is only places which somebody loves or hates, in which

somebody is one way or other interested, which get new names given

them. Nobody, or nobody in high authority, took an interest in this

camp. It was a stepchild among camps, neither attractive enough to be

loved nor disagreeable enough to be hated and reviled.

With a string of other dull camps, it was under the command of a

colonel who, having much on his mind besides the care of this camp,

lived elsewhere. Only one officer slept in the camp. He had a bedroom

which was half office, decorated--he several times assured me that

his predecessor was responsible for the decoration--with pictures

from _La Vie Parisienne_. The proprietors of that journal must have

profited enormously by the coming of the British military force. If

there is any form of taxation of excess profits in France that editor

must be paying heavily. Yet the paper is sufficiently monotonous, and

it is difficult to imagine that any one wants to take it in

regularly.

Except this bedroom, the officer in command had no habitation in the

camp. He messed elsewhere and, as was natural, spent his spare time

elsewhere. He did all he could for the camp, but he could not do

very much. He was of subordinate rank and of no great military

importance. It was very difficult to stir the authorities to any

great interest in the camp. There was a certain amount of excuse for

them. It never seemed worth while to take much trouble for the men

there. The function of the camp was peculiar. Men were drafted into

it from convalescent camps and hospitals when they were passed "fit,"

and were ready to rejoin their units. The business of the camp

authorities was to sort the men out, divide them into parties, and

dispatch them to the depots of their regiments.

Every day men came into camp and were for the moment "details." They

belonged to all possible regiments and branches of the service. Every

day parties of men left the camp for the different base depots. At 10

a.m. the H. party for H., at 12 noon the E. party for E., no longer

"details," but drafts consigned to their proper depots at H., E., or

elsewhere. Their stay in the camp was usually very brief. It was

scarcely worth while trying to make them comfortable or doing

anything to make life pleasant for them.

It was, I think, rather hard on men to be sent straight from the

comfort and warmth of a hospital or convalescent camp to a place as

Spartan as this. Instead of having a bed to sleep on, the unfortunate

"detail" found himself condemned to the floor boards of a bell tent,

with a very meagre allowance of well-worn blankets. In cold weather

the change was abrupt and trying, but of course it had to be made

sooner or later, and I suppose the men had no reasonable excuse for

grumbling.

Very much harder on them was the lack of accommodation in the camp.

Things are much better now in this respect; but when I knew the camp

first, there was no recreation room except a small and inconvenient

E.F. Canteen.

The Y.M.C.A. never established itself there. The Church Army put up a

small hut, but sent no worker to look after it; and even that hut was

not opened till the early summer of 1916. By a curious chance the

E.F. Canteen was worked by ladies instead of the usual orderlies. The

ladies were in fact there, running a small independent canteen,

before the E.F. Canteen took over the place. Rather unwillingly, I

think, the E.F. Canteen people took over these ladies. It was a most

fortunate thing that they did so.

Miss L., the head of this little band of workers, was a lady of

unusual ability, energy, and sympathy. I have said that no one in

authority cared for the camp. Miss L., who had no military authority,

not only cared for it--she loved it. It was to her and her assistants

that the camp owed most of what was done for it. I have seen much

splendid work done by our voluntary ladies in France, but I have

never seen better work done under more difficult circumstances than

was done by these ladies.

I suppose it is foolish to be surprised at any evidence of the

blatant vulgarity of the men who earn their living by the horrid

trade of politics. They speak and act after their kind; and it is

probably true that silk purses cannot be made out of sows' ears. Yet

I own to having experienced a shock when Mr. Macpherson in the House

of Commons described our lady workers as "camp followers." Even for a

politician, even in the House of Commons, that was bad.

Miss L. and her assistants had no great organisation behind them to

which they could appeal, which would take their part and fight their

battles. Like the men they worked for, they were "details." The E.F.

Canteen authorities, who employed but did not pay them, looked upon

those ladies with suspicion. They were allowed to work. They were not

welcomed. I think the E.F. Canteen people would have got rid of them

if they could. Yet they did work which in quantity was at least equal

to that of the orderlies usually employed, and in quality enormously

superior.

The room which served as a canteen was singularly inconvenient. The

part of it used by the men was far too small, and used to be

disagreeably crowded in the evenings and on wet days. The space

behind the counter was narrow, gloomy, and ill ventilated. A worker

serving there had the choice of being half choked or blown about by

furious draughts. Miss L. preferred the draughts, which she called

"fresh air." I sometimes found myself inclined to regard suffocation

as the pleasanter alternative.

I have never seen a more inconvenient kitchen than that in which

those ladies worked. It was small, low, and very gloomy. It had an

uneven floor, on which it was quite possible to trip. The roof leaked

badly in half a dozen places, and on wet days an incautious person

splashed about. In summer with two fires burning that kitchen became

fiercely hot. Even an electric fan, presented by a sympathetic

visitor, did little to help. No self-respecting English kitchen maid

would have stayed two hours in a house where she was given such a

kitchen to work in.

Yet wonderful hot suppers were cooked there in long succession. Huge

puddings and deep crocks of stewed fruit were prepared. A constant

supply of tea, coffee, and cocoa was kept ready to replenish

exhausted kettles on the counter outside, and all the washing up for

hundreds of men was done in a very small sink.

The cooking and bar serving were the smallest part of the work those

ladies did. Miss L. was active as a gardener. In most camps in France

men take to gardening willingly, and require little help or

encouragement. In this camp it was different. No one stayed there

long enough to be interested in the garden. I have seen photographs

of the camp before I knew it, as it was in 1915, a desolate stretch

of trampled mud. I saw recently a photograph of the camp in 1917. It

was then gay with flowers. I knew it in 1916, when Miss L. had begun

her gardening and was gradually extending her flower-beds, creating

new borders and fencing off small spaces of waste ground with wooden

palings.

Her enthusiasm stimulated men, who could never hope to see any result

of their labours, to do something for the camp. One man, a miner from

Northumberland, set out the name of the camp in large letters done in

white stones on a green bank behind the canteen. He gave all his

spare time for two days to the work, and when he had finished we

discovered that he had left out a letter in the first syllable of the

name. He was a patient as well as an enthusiastic man. He began all

over again.

Miss L. went to great trouble in providing amusements for the men.

Here she worked against great difficulties. An organisation like the

Y.M.C.A. has control of concert parties and lecturers who are sent

round to various huts, thus greatly lightening the labour of the

local workers. The camp canteen had no organisation behind it, and

could command no ready-made entertainments. In the sweat of our brows

we earned such concerts as we had, and any one who has ever got up a

concert, even at home, knows how much sweating such activities

involve. In the end, moved by pity at our plight, the Y.M.C.A. people

used to lend us concert parties, especially "Lena Ashwell" parties,

the best of their kind. I have always found the Y.M.C.A. generous in

sharing their good things with those outside their organisation.

Another difficulty which faced Miss L. was the want of any suitable

place for entertainments. The canteen was far too small. The Church

Army hut, when we had got it opened, was a little better, but still

not nearly large enough for the audience which a good concert party

drew. We had to use the dining-hall. It was not always available and

was seldom available at the exact time we wanted it. It had no stage

and no piano. Each time a concert was held there, a stage had to be

erected for the occasion, the piano hauled over from the canteen, and

some kind of decoration arranged.

One of the minor inconveniences of the camp was the extraordinary

uncertainty of the lighting. Other camps, even the Con. Camp

occasionally, suffered from failure of the supply of electricity. For

some reason the thing happened more often in this camp than

elsewhere; and even when the current was running strongly we found

ourselves in darkness because our wires fused in places difficult to

get at, or branches fell from trees and broke wires. We got

accustomed to these disasters when they happened at ordinary times.

Miss L. and her assistants were ladies of resource and indomitable

spirit. It was a small thing to them to find the canteen suddenly

plunged into total darkness while a crowd of men was clamouring for

food and drink at the counter. A supply of candles was kept ready to

hand. They were placed in mugs (candlesticks were lacking of course)

and set on the counter. By the aid of their feeble gleam the ladies

groped their way into the kitchen for tea, filled cups, and counted

out change. The scene always reminded me of Gideon's attack on the

Midianites when his soldiers carried lamps in pitchers. Occasionally

some one knocked over a mug. There was a crash and a blaze, a very

fair imitation of the battle in the Book of Judges.

It was worse when a whist drive or a singing competition in the

Church Army hut was interrupted by one of these Egyptian plagues of

darkness. But even then we did not allow ourselves to be seriously

embarrassed. The men, responsive to the instinct of discipline, sat

quiet at the whist tables with their cards in their hands. The glow

of burning cigarettes could be seen, faint spots of light; nothing

else.

Miss L. hurried to the canteen for candles. They were set in pools of

their own grease on the tables and the games went on. A singing

competition scarcely even paused. The competitors sang on. The

pianist managed to play. The audience applauded with extra vigour

until candles were brought and set in rows, like footlights, in front

of the stage.

Our worst experience of light failure occurred one evening when we

had a visit from a very superior concert party. We had secured it

only after much "wangling." We made every possible preparation for

its reception. One of Miss L.'s assistants drew out a most attractive

advertisement of the performance with a picture of a beautiful lady

in a red dress at the top of it. We posted this up in various parts

of the camp; but we were not really anxious about the audience. It

always "rolled up."

We set up a stage in the dining-room, a large high stage made out of

dining-tables, a little rickety, but considered by good judges to be

fairly safe. We spread a carpet, or something which looked like a

carpet, on it. Only Miss L. could have got a carpet in the camp, and

I do not know how she did it. We hung up a large Union Jack, Miss

L.'s private property, which was used on all festive occasions and

served as an altar cloth on Sundays. The E.F. Canteen authorities

were worried for a week beforehand, and, lest they should be worried

more, promised us a new piano, "same," so they put it, "to be

delivered" in time for the concert. The promise was not kept.

That was our first misfortune. With deep misgiving we dragged our own

piano out of the canteen and set it on the stage. The musical members

of Miss L.'s staff assured us that it was desperately out of tune.

The least musical of us could assure ourselves that several notes

made no sound at all, however hard you hit them. And the concert

party was a very grand one.

It arrived in two motors, and we abased ourselves before it, babbling

apologies. One after another the members of the party approached our

piano and poked at it with their forefingers. One after another they

turned away looking depressed. The only one of them who remained

moderately cheerful was a man who did conjuring tricks. It was, I

imagine, through his good offices that the party agreed to attempt

its programme.

The audience, who knew the failings of our piano as well as we did,

applauded the first song rapturously. Then without the slightest

warning every lamp in the place went out. A dog, a well-beloved

creature called Detail, who was accustomed to sit under Miss L.'s

chair at concerts, began to bark furiously. That, I think, was what

finally broke the temper of the concert party. We had an oil lamp

ready for emergencies. It was lit, and I saw the leader of the party

beckoning to me. His face was fearfully stern. I fully expected him

to say that the whole party would leave at once.

But he did nothing so drastic. He demanded the instant expulsion of

Detail. There was a scuffle at the far end of the room. The audience

rose to its feet and cheered tumultuously. Detail, I am sorry to say,

barked again. I saw eight men staggering through the crowded room

bearing a piano. It was quite new, and, I am told, almost in tune.

The situation was saved. The singers were mollified and went on with

their programme by the light of one lamp, two candles (on the piano),

and three stable lanterns. An orderly with a screwdriver and a box of

matches sought for the fused wire. Detail crept under her mistress's

chair again unrebuked. She was an animal of cultivated tastes and

hated missing concerts. She usually behaved with decorum, not barking

except by way of applause when the audience shouted and noise of any

kind was legitimate.

The camp is, I am told, very different now. There is a new canteen,

large, well furnished, and beautiful. Concerts can be held in it and

church services. No one is any longer crowded out of anything. The

kitchen is a spacious place in which it is possible to cook without

great physical suffering. There are more flower beds, well-kept lines

between the tents, an impressive entrance. No doubt even the electric

light shines consistently. The days of makeshift are over and the

camp is a credit to the Expeditionary Force.

But I should not like to go back there again. I should be haunted

with memories of old days which were trying but pleasant. I should

wish myself back at one of the cheery tea-parties in the old canteen

kitchen, when we sat on packing-cases and biscuit-boxes, when we

shifted our seats about to dodge the raindrops from the roof, when we

drank out of three cracked cups and thick mugs borrowed from the

canteen.

I should remember pay-nights when the men stood before the counter in

a dense mob, all hungry, each holding in his hand a five-franc note,

when we had no change, not a franc, not a sou; when, in desperation,

I used to volunteer to collect change from any one who had it, giving

chits in exchange for small coins. Such crises do not arise now, I

suppose.

Sitting in comfort at a table in the fine new canteen I should

remember sadly a wet afternoon in the Church Army hut when there was

no room to move and the air was heavy with Woodbine smoke and the

steam of drying cloth, when I perched on the corner of a window-sill

and pitted myself against a chess player who challenged me suddenly

and turned out to be a master of the game and the secretary of a

chess club in Yorkshire.

I should remember, with how great regret! how, evening after evening,

Miss S. left her pots and pans, smoothed her tousled overall, and

came over to the Church Army hut to play a hymn for us at evening

prayers; how the men, an ever-changing congregation, chose the same

hymns night after night till we came to hate the sound of their

tunes; how we, reserving Sunday evenings for our property, chose the

hymn then and always chose the same one--which I shall never sing

again without remembering Miss S. at the piano, smelling the air of

that hut, and being troubled by a vision of the faces of the men who

sang.

I should not find Miss S. there if I went back, or Captain L., or any

one, almost, whom I knew. No doubt their successors are doing well,

mine better than ever I did, which would be no difficult thing; but I

could not bear to see them at their work. Ghosts of old days would

haunt me.

And worst of all, Miss L. is gone. The rest of us have passed and no

one misses us much, I suppose. Our places are easily filled. Her

place in that camp no one will ever quite fill. "Many daughters have

done virtuously, but thou excellest them all."

CHAPTER XVI

LEAVE

At last! I have the precious paper safe in my hand, in my pocket with

a button fastened tight to keep it there: my leave warrant, passport

to ten days' liberty, rest, and--other things much more desirable

than liberty or rest. It is issued to me late on Sunday night for a

start on Monday morning.

The authorities are desperately suspicious. They trust no man's

honour. They treat even a padre as if he were a fraudulent cashier,

bent on cheating them if he can. I do not blame them. In this matter

of leave every man is a potential swindler. A bishop would cheat if

he could. If I had got that leave warrant an hour or two sooner than

I did, I should have made a push for the boat which left on Sunday

evening. Thereby I should have deprived the army of my services

during the night, a form of swindling not to be tolerated, though

what use I am to the army or any one else when I am in bed and

asleep it would be very difficult to say.

All that night the wind shrieked, rattling windows to the discomfort

of those who were lucky enough to have roofs over their heads,

threatening the dwellers in tents with the utter destruction of their

shelters. Very early, before the dawn of the winter morning, the rain

began, not to fall--the rain in a full gale of wind does not

fall--but to sweep furiously across the town.

I heard it, but I did not care. I turned and snuggled close under my

blankets. In an hour or two it would be time to get up. My day would

begin, the glorious first day of leave. What does rain matter? or

what do gales matter? unless--a horrid fear assailed me. Was it

possible that in such a gale the steamer would fail to start. I

turned and twisted, tortured by the thought. Every time the windows

rattled and the house shook I sweated hot and cold.

In the end, tormented beyond endurance, I got up and dressed some

time between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. I did more. Without the coffee which

Madame had promised me I sallied forth and tramped through the

deserted streets of the town, fording gutters which were brooks,

skirting close by walls which promised what sailors call a "lee."

The long stretch of the quay was desolate. Water lay in deep pools

between the railway lines among the sleepers. Water trickled from

deserted waggons and fell in small cascades from the roofs of sheds.

The roadway, crossed and recrossed by the railway, had little muddy

lakes on it and broad stretches of mud rather thicker than the water

of the lakes.

Far down the quay lay a steamer with two raking funnels--the leave

boat, the ship of heart's desire for many men. Clouds of smoke,

issuing defiantly from her funnels, were immediately swept sideways

by the wind and beaten down by the rain. The smoke ceased to be

smoke, became a duller greyness added to the greyness of the air,

dissolved into smuts and was carried to earth--or to the faces and

hands of wayfarers--by the rain.

Already at 7 o'clock there were men going along the quay--a steady

stream of them, tramping, splashing, stumbling towards the steamer.

In the matter of the sailing of leave boats rumour is the sole

informant, and rumour had it that this boat would start at 10 a.m.

Leave is a precious thing. He takes no risks who has secured the

coveted pass to Blighty. It is a small matter to wait three hours on

a rain-swept quay. It would be a disaster beyond imagining to miss

the boat.

Officers make for the boat in twos or threes, their trench coats,

buttoned tightly, flap round putteed or gaitered legs. Drenched

haversacks hang from their shoulders.

Parties of men, fully burdened with rifles and kit, march down from

the rest camp where they have spent the night. The mud of the

trenches is still thick on them. One here and there wears his steel

helmet. They carry all sorts of strange packages, sacks tied at the

mouth, parcels sewed up in sacking, German helmets slung on

knapsacks, valueless trophies of battlefields, loot from captured

dug-outs, pathetically foolish souvenirs bought in French shops, all

to be presented to the wives, mothers, sweethearts who wait at home.

A couple of army sisters, lugging suit-cases, clinging to the flying

folds of their grey cloaks, walk, bent forward against the wind and

rain. A blue-coated Canadian nurse, brass stars on her shoulder

straps, has given an arm to a V.A.D. girl, a creature already

terrified at the prospect of crossing the sea on such a day. The

rain streams down their faces, but perhaps Canadians are accustomed

to worse rain in their own country. Certainly this young woman does

not seem to mind it. She is smiling and walks jauntily. Like many of

our cousins from overseas she is rich in splendid vitality.

A heavy grey motor rushes along, splashing the walkers. Beside the

driver is a pile of luggage. Inside, secure behind plate glass from

any weather, sits a general. Another motor follows and still others.

British staff officers and military attachés from allied nations, the

privileged classes of the war, sweep by while humbler men splash and

stumble.

But in front of the gangway of the leave boat, as at the gates of

Paradise, there is no distinction of persons. The mean man and the

mighty find the same treatment there. There comes a moment when the

car must be left, when crossed sword and baton on the shoulder straps

avail their wearer no more than a single star.

A sailor, relentless as Rhadamanthus, stands on the gangway and bars

the way to the shelter of the ship. No one--so the order has gone

forth--is to be allowed on board before 9 o'clock. There is shelter a

few yards behind, a shed. A few seek it. I prefer to stand, with

other early comers, in a cluster round the end of the gangway,

determined, though we wait hours, to be among the first on board.

The crowd grows denser as time goes on. The Canadian sister, alert

and competent, secures a seat on the rail of a disused gangway and

plants two neat feet on the rail opposite. An Australian captain,

gallant amid extreme adversity, offers the spare waterproof he

carries to the shivering V.A.D. I find myself wedged tight against a

general. He is elderly, grizzled, and looks fierce; but he accepts a

light for his cigarette from the bowl of my pipe. It was his only

chance of getting a light then and there. Now and then some one asks

a neighbour whether it is likely that the boat will start on such a

day.

A depressed major on the outskirts of the crowd says that he has it

on the best authority that the port is closed and that there will be

no sailings for a week. The news travels from mouth to mouth, but no

one stirs. There is a horrid possibility that it may be true;

but--well, most men know the reputation of that "best authority." He

is the kind of liar of whose fate St. John speaks vigorously in the

last chapter but one of his Apocalypse.

The ship rises slowly higher and higher, for the tide is flowing. The

gangway grows steeper. From time to time two sailors shift it

slightly, retying the ropes which fasten it to the ship's rail. The

men on the quay watch the manoeuvre hopefully.

At 9 o'clock an officer appears on the outside fringe of the crowd.

With a civility which barely cloaks his air of patronage he demands

way for himself to the ship. His brassard wins him all he asks at

once. On it are the letters "A.M.L.O." He is the Assistant Military

Landing Officer, and for the moment is lord of all, the arbiter of

things more important than life and death. In private life he is

perhaps a banker's clerk or an insurance agent. On the battlefield

his rank entitles him to such consideration only as is due to a

captain. Here he may ignore colonels, may say to a brigadier, "Stop

pushing." He has what all desire, the "Open Sesame" which clears the

way to the ship.

He goes on board, acknowledging with careless grace the salute of one

of the ship's officers. He stands on the shelter deck.

With calm dignity he surveys the swaying crowd beneath him. "There's

no hurry, gentlemen," he says. There is no hurry for him. He has

risen from his bed at a reasonable hour, has washed, shaved, bathed,

breakfasted. He has not stood for hours in drenching rain. The look

of him is too much for the general who is wedged beside me in the

crowd. He speaks:

"What the----? Why the----? When the----? Where the----?" He is a man

of fluent speech, this general. I thought as much when I first looked

at him. Now it seems that his command of language is a great gift,

more valuable than the eloquence of statesmen or the music of poets.

The Canadian sister leads the applause of the crowd. The general

turns to me with a deprecating smile.

"Excuse me, padre, but really----"

The army respects the Church, knows that certain necessary forms of

speech are not suited to clerical ears. But the Church is human and

can sympathise with men's infirmities.

"If I were a general," I said, "I should say a lot more."

The general, encouraged by this absolution, does say more. He

mentions the fact that he is going straight to the War Office when

he reaches London. Once there he will--the threat vaporises into

jets of language so terrific that the air round us grows sensibly

warmer. I notice that the V.A.D. is holding tight to the hand of the

Canadian sister.

The A.M.L.O., peering through the rain from the shelter deck of the

steamer, recognises the rank of his assailant. The mention of the War

Office reaches him. He wilts visibly. The stiffness goes out of him

before the delighted eyes of the crowd. He admits us to the ship.

Another gangway is lowered. In two thin streams the damp men and

draggled women struggle on board. Certain officers, the more helpless

subalterns among us, are detailed for duty on the voyage. They parade

on the upper deck. To them at least the A.M.L.O. can still speak with

authority. He explains to the bewildered youths what their duties

are. Each passenger, so it appears, must wear a life-belt. It is the

business of the subalterns to see that every one ties round his chest

one of those bandoliers of cork.

On the leave boat the spirit of democracy is triumphant. Sergeants

jostle commissioned officers. Subalterns seize deck chairs desired by

colonels of terrific dignity. Privates with muddy trousers crowd the

sofas of the first-class saloon. Discipline we may suppose survives.

If peril threatened, men would fall into their proper places and

words of command would be obeyed. But the outward forms of discipline

are for a time in abeyance. The spirit of goodfellowship prevails.

The common joy--an intensified form of the feeling of the schoolboy

on the first day of the Christmas holidays--makes one family of all

ranks and ages.

No doubt also the sea insists on the recognition of new standards of

worth. The humblest private who is not seasick is visibly and

unmistakably a better man than a field-marshal with his head over the

bulwarks. Curious and ill-assorted groups are formed. Men who at

other times would not speak to each other are drawn and even squeezed

together by the pressure of circumstance.

Between two of the deckhouses on the lower deck of this steamer is a

narrow passage. Porters have packed valises and other luggage into

it. It is sheltered from the rain and will be secure from showers of

flying spray. Careless and inexperienced travellers, searching along

the crowded decks for somewhere to sit down, pass this place by

unnoticed. Others, accustomed in old days to luxurious travelling,

scorn it and seek for comfort which they never find.

I come on this nook by accident; and at once perceive its value as a

place of shelter and refuge. I sit down on the deck with my haversack

beside me. I wedge myself securely, my feet against one side of the

passage, my back against the other. I tuck my waterproof round me and

feel that I may defy fate to do its worst.

A few others drift into the refuge, or are pressed in by the crowd

outside. The Canadian sister, a competent young woman, has found her

way here and settled down her helpless V.A.D. on a valise--a lumpy,

uncomfortable seat. A private from a Scottish regiment is here, two

Belgians and a Russian staff officer struggle in a narrow space to

adjust their life-belts. A brigadier, a keen-eyed, eager-faced young

man, one of those to whom the war has given opportunity and

advancement, joins the group. He speaks in French to the Belgians and

the Russian. He helps to make the V.A.D. less utterly uncomfortable.

He offers me his flask and then a cigar.

There is one subject of conversation. Will the boat start? The

Russian is hopeful. Is not England mistress of the seas? The V.A.D.

is despondent. Once before in a long-ago time of leave the boat did

not start. The passengers, and she among them, were disembarked. The

Scottish private has heard from a friend of his in "the Signals" that

German submarines are abroad in the Channel. The brigadier is openly

contemptuous of all information from men in "the Signals." The

Canadian sister is cheerful. If she were captain of the ship, she

says, she would start, and, what is more, fetch up at the other side.

The captain, it appears, shares her spirit. The ship does start. The

harbour is cleared and at once the tossing begins. The party between

the deckhouses sways and reels. It becomes clear very soon that it

will be impossible to stand. But sitting down is difficult. I have to

change my attitude. It is not possible for any one else to sit down

if I keep my legs stretched out, and the others must sit down or else

fall. The brigadier warns the Russian to be careful how he bestows

himself.

"Don't put your feet on my haversack," he says. "There's a bottle of

hair-wash in it."

The Russian shifts his feet.

"There'll be a worse spill if you trample on mine," I murmur.

"There's a bottle of Benedictine in it."

"Padre!" said the brigadier. "I'm ashamed of you. _I_ had the decency

to call it hair-wash."

The Canadian sister laughs loud and joyously.

It is noticed that the Scottish private is becoming white. Soon his

face is worse than white. It is greyish green. The Canadian sister

tucks her skirts under her. The prospect is horrible. There is no

room for the final catastrophe of seasickness. The brigadier is a man

of prompt decision.

"Out you go," he says to the man. "Off with you and put your head

over the side."

I feel that I must bestir myself for the good of the little party,

though I do not want to move. I seize the helpless Scot by the arm

and push him out. The next to succumb is the Russian staff officer.

His face is pallid and his lips blue. The V.A.D. is past caring what

happens. The two Belgians are indifferent. The Canadian sister, the

brigadier, and I take silent counsel. Our eyes meet.

"I can't talk French," I say.

"I can," said the Brigadier.

He does. He explains politely to the Russian the indecency of being

seasick in that crowded space. He points out that there is one course

only open to the sufferer--to go away and bear the worst elsewhere.

Honour calls for the sacrifice. The Russian opens his eyes feebly and

looks at the deck beyond the narrow limits of his refuge. It is swept

at the moment by a shower of spray. He shudders and closes his eyes

again. The brigadier persuades, exhorts, commands. The Russian shakes

his head and intimates that he neither speaks nor understands French.

He is a brave and gallant gentleman. Shells cannot terrify him, nor

the fiercest stuttering of the field guns make him hesitate in

advance, but in a certain stage of seasickness the ears of very

heroes are deaf to duty's call.

A little later I take the cigar from my mouth and crush the glowing

end on the deck. I am not seasick, but there are times when tobacco

loses its attractiveness. The brigadier becomes strangely silent. His

head shrinks down into the broad upturned collar of his coat. Only

the Canadian sister remains cheerfully buoyant, her complexion as

fresh, her cheeks as pink as when the rain washed them on the quay.

The throbbing of the engines ceases. For a brief time the ship

wallows in the rolling seas. Then she begins to move backwards

towards the breakwater of the harbour. The brigadier struggles to his

feet and peers out.

"England at last," he says. "Thank goodness."

Women, officers, and men fling off the life-belts they have worn and

crowd to the gangways. With shameless eagerness they push their way

ashore. The voyage is over.

Along the pier long trains are drawn up waiting for us. We crowd into

them; lucky men, or foreseeing men with seats engaged beforehand,

fill the Pullman cars of the train which starts first. It runs

through the sweet familiar English country incredibly swiftly and

smoothly. Luncheon is served to us. On this train, at least, there

still are restaurant cars. We eat familiar food and wonder that we

ever in the old days grumbled at railway fare. We lie back,

satisfied, and smoke.

But there is in us an excitement which even tobacco will not soothe.

The train goes swiftly, but not half swiftly enough. We pass town and

hamlet. Advertisement hoardings, grotesque flat images of cows,

outrageous commendations of whisky or pills, appear in the fields.

We are getting near London. Pipes are laid by. We fidget and fret.

The houses we pass are closer together, get closer still, merge into

a sea of grey-slated roofs. The air is thick, smoke-laden. The train

slows down, stops, starts again, draws up finally by the long

platform.

Then----! To every man his own dreams of heaven hereafter. To every

man his own way of spending his leave.

CHAPTER XVII

A HOLIDAY

Holidays, common enough in civil life, are rare joys in the B.E.F.

Leave is obtainable occasionally. But nobody speaks of leave as

"holidays." It is a thing altogether apart. It is almost sacred. It

is too thrilling, too rapturous to be compared to anything we knew

before the war. We should be guilty of a kind of profanity if we

spoke of leave as "holidays." It ought to have a picturesque and

impressive name of its own; but no one has found or even attempted to

find an adequate name for it. If we were pagans instead of professing

to be Christians, if we danced round fountains and set up statues of

Pan for our worship and knew nothing of the Hebrew spirit, we might

get a name for "leave" out of the vocabulary of our religious life.

Being what we are we cannot do that, but we rightly decline to

compare leave with ordinary holidays.

Only a few men in the army succeed in getting what is properly

called a holiday, a day or two off work with a change of scene. I got

one, thanks to M. It is one of the many things, perhaps the least of

them, for which I have to thank his friendship.

M. had formed an exaggerated, I fear a totally erroneous, idea of my

powers of entertaining men. It occurred to him that it would be a

good thing if I gave lectures to the men of the cavalry brigade to

which he was attached. What he said to the general who commanded the

division I do not know, but somehow, between the general and M., the

thing was worked. I found myself with a permit to travel on railways

otherwise barred to me and three golden days before me.

No one can say that life in my three camps was dull. Life is never

dull or monotonous for a man who has plenty of pleasant work to do

and a party of good friends as fellow-workers. But a change is always

agreeable, and I looked forward to my trip with impatient excitement.

It was like being a schoolboy again and going forth to the Crystal

Palace with money in my pocket, an entire half-crown, to be dribbled

away in pennyworths of sherbet and visits to curious side-shows. That

party was an annual affair for us that came in June as a celebration

of the Queen's birthday. My visit to M. was in August, but the

weather was still full summer.

As a lecturing tour that expedition was a flat failure. M.'s cavalry,

officers and men, were frankly bored and I realised from the very

start that I was not going to justify whatever M. said to the general

about me.

In every other respect the holiday was a success. I enjoyed it

enormously and I gained some very interesting experience. I saw

French rural life, a glimpse of it. Cavalry cannot be concentrated in

large camps as infantry are. When they are not wanted for fighting

they are scattered in small parties over some country district where

they can get water and proper accommodation for their horses. The men

are billeted in farm-houses. The officers live in châteaux and mess

in the dining-halls of French country gentlemen if such accommodation

is available, or take over two or three houses in a village, sleep

where they can and mess in the best room which the interpreter and

the billeting officer can find.

M. slept in a farm-house and secured a room adjoining his for my use.

I slept on the softest and most billowy feather bed I have ever come

across, with another feather bed, also very soft and billowy, over me

by way of covering. My room had an earthen floor, a window which

would not open, a broken chair and no other furniture of any kind. I

do not think that our landlady, the wife of a farmer who was with the

colours, had removed her furniture from the room to keep it out of my

way. That almost bare room was just her idea of what a bedroom ought

to be. Her kitchen and such other rooms as I saw in her house were

equally bare.

Unlike the French women whom I met in towns, this farmer's wife was a

slattern. She cared neither about her own appearance nor the look of

her house. She did not wash her children. But she worked. The land

was well tilled and her cattle well tended. There was no sign of

neglect in the fields. Things might have been a little better,

perhaps, the place more efficiently worked, if her husband had been

at home, but there was not room for much improvement. Yet that woman

had no one to help her except a very old man, her father-in-law, I

think, who was infirm and almost imbecile.

She had four children, but they were hindrances rather than helps.

The eldest of them was about eight years old. She did the whole work

of the farm herself. I used to hear her getting up at 4 a.m.,

lighting a fire and opening doors. Peeping through the

half-transparent pane of glass in my tiny window, I saw her tending

her horse and cows before 5 a.m. She worked on, and worked hard, all

day.

The French have not had to face the difficulty of the "one-man

business" as we have, because the women of the minor bourgeoisie are

willing and able to step straight into their husbands' places and

carry on. I learnt that when I lived in towns. The French can go

farther in calling up the men who work the land, because their

peasant women can do the work of men. The land suffers, I suppose,

and the harvests are poorer than in peace time. But if farms in

England were left manless as those French farms are, the result would

be much more serious in spite of the gallant efforts of the girls who

"go on the land."

M. and I tramped about that country a great deal while I was with

him. We saw the same things everywhere, cattle well cared for and

land well worked by a few old men and women who looked old long

before their time.

Our landlady cannot have been an old woman. Her youngest child was a

baby in a cradle, but she looked fifty or more. Loss of youth and

beauty is a heavy price for a woman to pay for anything. I wonder if

she resented having to pay it. At least she has the satisfaction of

knowing that she bought something worth while though she paid dearly.

She kept her home. She fed her children. As surely as her husband in

the trenches she helped to save her country.

I have been assured that the French women have not been so successful

as English women in the conduct of war charities. They have not

rushed into the hospitals to nurse the wounded with anything like the

enthusiasm and devotion of our V.A.D.'s. In the organisation of War

Work Depots and the dispatching of parcels to prisoners of war the

French women have proved themselves on the whole less efficient than

English women. They have not shone in the management of public

business, where Englishwomen have been unexpectedly able and devoted.

On the other hand French women seem to have done better than English

women in the conduct of their private affairs. This, I think, is true

both of the bourgeois and peasant classes. In England the earning

power on which the house depends is the man's. When he is taken away

he is very badly missed and the home suffers or even collapses. In

France the women are more independent economically. They can carry on

the business or the farm sufficiently well without the man.

But I did not get permission to visit M.'s cavalry division that I

might observe the French peasantry. I went to give lectures to the

men. I did that, faithfully exerting myself to the uttermost, but I

did it very badly. I suppose I am not adaptable. Certainly the

conditions under which I lectured destroyed any faint chance of my

succeeding, before I began.

It has been my lot to lecture under various circumstances to widely

different kinds of audiences. I have been set up at the end of a

drawing-room in a house of culture in the middle west of the U.S.A. I

have stood beside a chairman on a platform in an English hall. Never

before had I been called upon to lecture in a large open field,

standing in the sunlight, while my audience reclined peacefully on

the grass under a grove of trees. Never before had I watched my

audience marched up to me by squadrons, halted in front of me by the

stern voices of sergeants, and sitting down, or lying down, only

after I had invited them to do so. It was a very hot afternoon. I do

not wonder that half the men went to sleep. I should have liked to

sleep too.

I lectured that same day in another field to a different body of men.

There I was even more uncomfortable. Two thoughtful sergeants

borrowed a table from a neighbouring house and I stood on it. That

audience stayed awake, perhaps in hope of seeing me fall off the

table, but made no pretence of enjoying the lecture.

Yet it was not altogether the strange conditions of the performance

which worried me. I should, I think, have come to grief just as badly

with those audiences if they had been collected into rooms or halls.

I was out of touch with the men I was talking to. I did not

understand them or how to address them. I had some experience,

experience of six months or so, of soldiers; but that was no help to

me. These were soldiers of a kind quite new to me. They belonged to

the old army. Officers and men alike were professionals, not amateurs

soldiering by chance like the rest of us.

The cavalry is, with the possible exception of the Guards, the only

part of our force in which the spirit of the old army survives. Every

infantry battalion has been destroyed and renewed so often since the

war began that the original personality of the thing, the sense of

memory, the link with the past and all its traditions, no longer

survives. An infantry regiment bears an old name; but it is a new

thing. Its resemblance to the regiment which bore the name before the

war is superficial, a thin veneer. In spirit, outlook, tone,

interest, tradition, in all but courage and patriotism, it is

different. In the cavalry this great change has not taken place.

The cavalry suffered heavily in the early days of the war and has

lost many men since. Large numbers of recruits have come in to make

good the losses. But the number of new men has never been so great as

to destroy the old regiment's power of absorption. Recruits have been

digested by the original body. They have grown up in the tradition of

the regiment and have been formed by its spirit. The difference

between the cavalry troopers and the infantry privates of the army of

to-day is difficult to define; but it is very easily felt and plain

to recognise.

Perhaps it is most clearly seen in the attitude of men towards their

officers. In the old army officers were a class apart. Everything

that could be done was done to emphasise the distinction between

officers and men. And the distinction was a real, not an artificial

thing. The officer was different from the men he commanded. He

belonged to a different class. He had been educated in a different

way. He was accustomed before he joined the army and after he left it

to live a life utterly unlike the life of the men he commanded. It

can scarcely have been necessary to deepen by disciplinary means the

strong, clear line between officers and men.

In the new army all that can be done by regulations is done to keep

up the idea of the officer super class. But the distinction now is an

artificial one, not a real one. Neither in education, social class,

manner of life, wealth, nor any other accident are our new officers

distinct from the men they command.

For the men of the old army the officer was a leader because he was

recognisably in some sense a superior. He might be a good officer or

a poor one, brave and efficient or the reverse. Whatever his personal

qualities he was an officer, a natural leader.

For the men of the new army an officer is an officer more or less by

accident. No one recognises any kind of divine right to leadership.

Discipline may insist, does quite rightly insist, on due respect to

officers as such; but everybody feels and knows that this is a mere

question of expediency. Men cannot act together unless some one

commands; but it does not follow that the man who gives the orders is

in any permanent way the superior of the men who receive them.

What has really happened during the war is that the army has changed

in the essential spirit of its organisation. It is no longer built on

the aristocratic principle like the army of Louis XIV. It has been

democratised and is approximating to the type of Napoleon's armies or

Cromwell's Ironsides. The shell of the old organisation is there

still. The life within the shell is different.

I do not know how the men of the old army regarded their generals and

officers in high command. If we may trust Kipling they had, sometimes

at least, a feeling of strong personal affection and admiration for

certain commanders.

"He's little, but he's wise,

And he does not advertise,

Do you, Bobs?"

Very likely the cavalry men still have this kind of feeling for their

generals. The men of the brigade I visited certainly ought to have

loved their general. He did a great deal for them. But the new army

does not seem to have any feeling either of respect or contempt for

its generals.

Nothing surprised me more when I became intimate with the men than

their attitude towards their commanding officers. I had read of the

devotion of armies to their leaders. We are told how Napoleon's

soldiers idolised him; how Wellington's men believed in him so that

they were prepared to follow him anywhere, confident in his genius.

Misled by newspaper correspondents, I supposed that I should find

this sort of thing common in France. I had often read of this general

and that as beloved or trusted by his men.

In fact no such spirit exists. Very often the men do not know the

name of the commander of the particular army, or even the brigade, to

which they belong; so little has the personality of the general

impressed itself on the men. Very often I used to meet evidences of

personal loyalty to a junior officer, a company commander, or a

subaltern. Occasionally men have the same feeling about a colonel.

They never seem to go beyond that. There was not a trace of

admiration for or confidence in any one in high command. It was not

that the men distrusted their generals or disliked them. Their

attitude was generally neutral. They knew nothing and cared very

little about generals.

Perhaps men never did idolise generals, and historians, like

newspaper correspondents, are simply inventing pretty myths when they

tell us about the hero worship paid to Napoleon, Wellington, and the

rest.

Perhaps the fact is that the conditions of modern warfare tend to

obscure the glory of a general. He can no longer prance about on a

horse in front of lines of gaping men, proudly contemptuous of the

cannon balls which come bounding across the field of battle from the

enemy's artillery. His men are inclined to forget his existence,

usually do remain ignorant of his name because they do not see him.

One is tempted to wonder whether the formal--and very

wearisome--inspections which are held from time to time behind the

lines, generally on cold and rainy days, are not really pathetic

efforts of kings and generals to assert themselves, to get somehow

into the line of vision of the fighting men.

Perhaps it may be that generals, through no fault of their own, have

lost that "plaguy trick of winning victories" which bound the heart

of Dugald Dalgetty to Gustavus Adolphus. Victories, so far as we can

see, are things which do not occur in modern warfare, or, at all

events, do not occur on the western front. If any one did win a

victory of the old-fashioned kind it is quite possible that he might

become the hero of the soldier.

It would be very interesting to know what the feelings of soldiers of

other armies are towards their generals. The German people seem to

idolise von Hindenburg. Have the German soldiers any kind of

confidence in his star? Von Mackensen has some brilliant exploits to

his credit. Does Fritz, drafted into a regiment commanded by him,

march forward serenely confident of victory?

Our men do no such thing. They have unshaken confidence in

themselves. They are sure that their company commanders will not fail

them or their colonels let them down. But they have no kind of

feeling, good or bad, about their generals.

CHAPTER XVIII

PADRES

The name "padre" as used in the army describes every kind of

commissioned chaplain, Church of England, Roman Catholic,

Presbyterian, or Nonconformist. The men lump them all together. I

have heard a distinction made between "pukka" padres and those who

have not enjoyed the advantages of episcopal ordination. But such

denominational feeling is extremely rare. As a rule a padre is a

padre, an officially recognised representative of religion, whatever

church he belongs to. The same kind of character, the same general

line of conduct, are expected in all padres. We shall get a side

light, if no more, on the much-discussed question of the religion of

the army if we can arrive at an understanding of the way in which the

padre strikes the average man.

The statistical method of arriving at knowledge is chiefly useful for

purposes of controversy. Any one with access to official records

might set out for admiration the hierarchy of padres, ranging from

the Chaplain-General to the humble C.F. Fourth Class, might enumerate

the confirmations held, the candidates presented, the buildings

erected, perhaps the sermons preached. It would then be possible to

prove that the Church is doing her duty by the soldiers or that the

Church is failing badly, whichever seemed desirable to prove at the

moment.

That is the great advantage of the statistical method. It establishes

beyond all possibility of contradiction the thing you want to

establish. But if you do not want to establish anything, if you

merely want to find out something, statistics are no use at all. You

are driven to other ways of getting at the truth, ways much less

definite and accurate.

I wish there were more pictures of army chaplains. There are a few. I

do not recollect that Bairnsfather ever gave us one, but they turn up

from time to time in the pages of _Punch_. There was one in which a

senior curate in uniform--the story is told in France of a much more

august person--is represented waving a farewell to a party of French

soldiers, expressing the hope _que_ _le bon Dieu vous blesserait

toujours_. We need not concern ourselves with his French. Staff

officers and even generals have made less excusable blunders.

What is interesting is the figure and face of the young man. He is

alert and plainly very energetic. He is full of the spirit of

comradeship. One glance at him convinces you that he means to be

helpful in every possible way to every human being he comes across.

He is not going to shirk. He is certainly not going to funk. You feel

sure as you look at him that he will keep things going at a

sing-song, that a canteen under his management will be efficiently

run. He is a very different man indeed from that pre-war curate of

_Punch's_ whose egg has become proverbial, or that other who confided

to an admiring lady that, when preaching, he liked every fold of his

surplice to tell. He is not intellectual, but he is not, in practical

matters, by any means a fool.

His sermons will be commonplace, but--you congratulate yourself on

this--they will certainly be short, and he will neither be surprised

nor hurt if nobody listens to them. There will be nothing mawkish

about his religion and he will not obtrude it over much, but when he

starts the men singing "Fight the good fight," that hymn will go with

a swing. In the officers' mess, when the shyness of the first few

days has worn off, he will be recognised as "a good sort." The men's

judgment, expressed in the canteen after a football match, will

differ from the officers' by one letter only. The padre will be

classed as "a good sport."

There are other sketches of padres, and they do not always represent

men of the senior-curate age. There is one, for instance, which

serves as an advertisement of a tobacco, in which the chaplain is a

man of forty or forty-five. Before the war he must have been vicar of

a fair-sized parish, very well organised. And it is not always the

"good sort" qualities which the artist emphasises. There is a

suggestion occasionally of a certain stiffness, a moral rigidity as

of a man not inclined to look with tolerant eyes on the "cakes and

ale" of life.

Sometimes we get a hint of a consciousness of official position. It

is not that the padre of these pictures is inclined to say "I'm an

officer and don't you forget it." He is not apparently suspected of

that. But he is a man who might conceivably say "I'm a priest and it

won't do for me to let any one forget that."

Yet, even in these pictures, we are left with the feeling that the

men who sat for them were competent and in their way effective. There

is no suggestion of feebleness, the characteristic of the pre-war

cleric which most commonly struck the artist. And we recognise that

the clergy have discarded pose and affectation along with the dog

collars which most of them have left behind in England. Freed from

the society of elderly women, the British cleric has without

difficulty made himself very much at home in the company of men.

That is the impression we get of the padre from the artists who have

drawn pictures of him. But there are not nearly enough of these

pictures to make us sure that it is in just this way that the men in

France regard the clergy who have gone on active service. The fact is

that the artists who have sketched generals and staff officers in

hundreds, subalterns in thousands, and men of the ranks in

uncountable numbers, have not taken very much notice of the padres.

They felt perhaps that the clergy did not really count for much in

army life.

Fortunately it is not only in the drawing of artists that the

general opinion finds expression. The average man, a very sure and

sane judge of worth, cannot use pencil, brush, or paint; but he has

other ways of expressing himself. For instance he labels whole

classes with nicknames.

Consider the various names for the enemy which are current in the

trenches. "Hun" was not the invention of the army. It came from the

newspapers. The soldier uses it, but not with delight. He prefers

"Boche"; but that was not his own word either. It originated with the

French. And there is a noticeable difference between the way a

Frenchman and an Englishman say "Boche." The Frenchman hisses it. In

his mouth it is eloquent of a bitter hatred for something vile. An

Englishman says "Boche" quite differently. You feel as you listen to

him that he regards his enemy as brutal and abominable, but also as

swollen, flatulent, and somewhat ridiculous.

"Fritz" and not "Boche" is our own invention in the way of a name for

the enemy. It expresses just what the men feel. "Fritz" whom we

"strafe" continually is in the main a ridiculous person, and any

healthy-minded man wants to rag him. There is an inflated pomposity

about Fritz; but given the necessary hammering he may turn out to be

a human being like ourselves. He wants to get home just as we do. He

likes beer, which is very hard to come by for any of us, and he

enjoys tobacco.

Or take another nickname. Generals and staff officers are called

"Brass Hats." The name was fastened on them early in the war and it

still sticks. Perhaps if we were starting fresh now we should give

them another name, a kindlier one. For a "Brass Hat," if such a thing

existed, would be more ornamental than useful. It would occupy a

man's time in polishing it, would shine, no doubt agreeably, on

ceremonial occasions, but would be singularly uncomfortable for daily

wear. Is that the sort of way the fighting men thought of the staff

after Neuve Chapelle? The name suggests some such general opinion and

the name passed into general use.

"Padre" is another nickname; but a friendly one. I should much rather

be called a padre than a Brass Hat. I should much rather be called a

padre than a parson. It is an achievement, something they may well be

proud of, that the old regular chaplains were spoken of by officers

and men alike as padres. I, who had no part in winning the name,

feel a real satisfaction when I open a letter from man or officer and

find that it begins "Dear Padre."

And yet--there is a certain playfulness in the name. A padre is not

one of the serious things in army life. No such nickname attaches or

could attach to a C.O. or a sergeant-major. They matter. A padre does

not matter much. Religion, his proper business, is an extra, like

music lessons at a public school. Music is a great art, of course. No

one denies it, chiefly because no normal boy thinks about it at all.

The real affairs of life are the Latin grammar and the cricket bat.

There is a master who gives music lessons to those who want such

things. He may be an amiable and estimable man; but compared to a

form master or the ex-blue who is capable of making his century

against first-class bowling, he is nobody.

Some feeling of that kind finds expression in the nickname "padre."

It is not contempt. There is not room for real contempt alongside of

the affection which the name implies. It's just a sense that, neither

for good nor evil, is the padre of much importance. It is impossible

to imagine King Henry speaking of Thomas à Becket as the padre. He

hated that archbishop, and he also feared him, so he called him, not

a padre, but a turbulent priest.

Is the kingdom of heaven best advanced by men who strike the world as

being "padres" or by "turbulent priests"? It is a very nice question.

There is yet another way in which we get at that most elusive thing,

popular opinion. Stories are told and jokes passed from mouth to

mouth. It is not the least necessary that the stories should be true,

literally. They are indeed much more likely to give us what we want,

a glimpse into the mind of the average man, if they are cheerily

unconnected with sordid facts. No one supposes that any colonial

colonel ever begged his men not to address him as "Sam" in the

presence of an English general. But the story gives us a true idea of

the impression made on the minds of the home army by the democratic

spirit of the men from overseas.

I only know one padre story which has become universally popular. It

takes the form of a dialogue.

Sentry: "Who goes there?"

Padre: "Chaplain."

Sentry: "Pass, Charlie Chaplin, and all's well."

It is not a very instructive story, though the pun is only fully

appreciated when we realise that it depends for its value on the

contrast between a man whose business is the comedy of grimace and

one who is concerned with very serious things. That in itself is a

popular judgment. Religion is a solemn business, and the church

stands against the picture house in sharp contrast; the resemblance

between chaplain and Chaplin being no more than an accident of sound.

There are other stories--not "best sellers," but with a respectable

circulation--which throw more light on the way the padre is regarded.

For instance, a certain fledgling curate was sent to visit a

detention camp. He returned to his senior officer and gave a glowing

account of his reception. The prisoners, no hardened scoundrels as he

supposed, had gathered round him, had listened eagerly while he read

and expounded a chapter of St. John's Gospel, had shown every sign of

pious penitence. Thrusting his hand in his pocket while relating his

experience, this poor man found that his cigarette case, his pipe,

his tobacco pouch, his knife, his pencil, and some loose change had

been taken from him while he discoursed on the Gospel of St. John.

I like to think that men will tell a story like that about their

clergy. The padre, an ideal figure, who is the hero of it, will fail

to win respect perhaps. He will, if he preserve his innocence, win

love. There will come a day when even those prisoners will----. See

Book I of _Les Misérables_ and the Gospel generally.

A chaplain, this time no mere boy, but a senior man of great

experience, was called on to hold a service for a battalion which was

to go next day into the firing-line. This particular battalion was

fresh from England and had never been under fire. It wanted a

religious service. The chaplain preached to it on tithes considered

as a divine institution.

I am sure that story is not true. It cannot be. No human being is

capable of so grotesque an action. But consider the fact that such a

story has been invented and is told. It seems that men--in this case

hungry sheep who look up--actually find that the sermons preached to

them have no conceivable connection with reality. About to die, they

ask for words of life--they are given disquisitions on tithes.

"Well, sir"--I have had this said to me a hundred times--"I am not a

religious man." If religion is really presented to the ordinary man

as "tithes," or for that matter as a "scheme of salvation," or "sound

church teaching," it is no wonder that he stands a bit away from it.

I in no way mean to suggest that all religion in the army is of this

kind. But the broadly indisputable result of the preaching to which

our men have been subjected is this: They have come to regard

religion as an obscure and difficult subject in which a few people

with eccentric tastes are interested, but which simple men had better

leave alone. And the tragedy lies in the fact that the very men who

think and speak thus about religion have in them something very like

the spirit of Christ.

The padres themselves, the best and most earnest of them, are

painfully aware that the ordinary pulpit sermon is remote, utterly

and hopelessly, from the lives of the men, is in fact a so many times

repeated essay on tithes. And the padres, again the best of them, are

not content to be just padres. They feel that they ought to have a

message to deliver, that they have one if only they can disentangle

it from the unrealities which have somehow got coiled up with it.

All the odd little eccentricities in the form of service and the

recent fashion of spicing sermons with unexpected swear-words are

just pathetic efforts to wriggle out of the clothes of ecclesiastical

propriety.

But something more is wanted. It is of little avail to hand round

cigarettes before reading the first lesson, or to say that God isn't

a bloody fool, unless some connection can be established between the

religion which the men have and the religion which Christ taught.

There is another story which should be told for the sake of the light

it gives on the way men regard the padres, or used to regard them.

They are less inclined to this view now.

A chaplain, wandering about behind the lines, found a group of men

and sat down among them. He chatted for a while. Then one of the men

said "Beg pardon, sir, but do you know who we are?" The chaplain did

not. "I thought not, sir," said the man. "If you did you wouldn't

stay. We're prisoners, sir, waiting to be sent off for Field

Punishment No. 1."

The story often finishes at that point, leaving it to be supposed

that the padre was unpleasantly surprised at finding himself on

friendly terms with sinners, but there is a version sometimes told

which gives the padre's answer. "It's where I ought to be."

I am not, I hope, over-sanguine, but I think that men are beginning

to realise that the padre is not a supernumerary member of the

officers' mess, nor concerned only with the small number of men who

make a profession of religion; that he is neither a member of the

upper, officer, class, nor a mild admirer of the goody-goody,

but--shall we say?--a friend of publicans and sinners.

It is a confusing question, this one of the religion of the soldier,

who is nowadays the ordinary man, and his relation to the Church or

the churches. But we do get a glimpse of his mind when we understand

how he thinks of the clergy. He knows them better out in France than

he ever did at home, and they know him better. He has recognised the

"---- parson" as a padre and a good sport. That is something. Will

the padre, before this abominable war is over and his opportunity

past, be able to establish his position as something more, as perhaps

the minister and steward of God's mysteries?

CHAPTER XIX

CITIZEN SOLDIERS

I stood, with my friend M. beside me, on the top of a hill and looked

down at a large camp spread out along the valley beneath us. It was

growing dark. The lines of lights along the roads shone bright and

clear. Lights twinkled from the windows of busy orderly-rooms and

offices. Lights shone, browny red, through the canvas of the tents.

The noise of thousands of men, talking, laughing, singing, rose to

us, a confused murmur of sound. As we stood there, looking,

listening, a bugle sounded from one corner of the great camp, blowing

the "Last Post." One after another, from all directions, many bugles

took up the sound. Lights were extinguished. Silence followed by

degrees. We scrambled down a steep path to our quarters.

"This," I said, "is not an army. It is an empire in arms."

M. would never have made a remark of that kind. He has too much

common sense to allow himself to talk big. He is, of all men known to

me, least inclined to sentimentality. He did not even answer me. If

he had he would probably have pointed out to me that I was wrong.

What lay below us, a small part of the B.E.F., was an army, if

discipline, skill, valour, and unity are what distinguish an army

from a mob.

Yet what I said meant something. I had seen enough of the

professional soldiers of the old army, officers and N.C.O.'s, to know

that the men who are now fighting are soldiers with a difference.

They do not conform to the type which we knew as the soldier type

before the war. Neither officers nor men are the same. Only in the

cavalry, and perhaps in the Guards, do we now find the spirit, or, if

spirit is the wrong word, the flavour of the old army. The

professional soldier, save among field officers and the older

N.C.O.'s, is becoming rare. The citizen soldier has taken his place.

To say this is to repeat a commonplace. My remark was a commonplace,

stale with reiteration. But it is the nature of commonplaces and

truisms that they only become real to us when we discover them for

ourselves. I was familiar with the idea of the citizen soldier, with

the very phrase "an empire in arms," long before I went to France.

Yet my earliest experiences were a surprise to me. I had believed,

but I had not realised, that our ranks indeed contain "all sorts and

conditions of men."

I remember very well the first time that the truism began to assert

itself as a truth to me. I was in a soldiers' club, one of those

excellent places of refreshment and recreation run by societies and

individuals for the benefit of our men. It was an abominable evening.

Snow, that was half sleet, was driven across the camp by a strong

wind. Melting snow lay an inch deep on the ground. The club,

naturally under the circumstances, was crammed. Men sat at every

table, reading papers, writing letters, playing draughts and

dominoes. They stood about with cups of tea and cocoa in their hands.

They crowded round the fires. The steam of wet clothes and thick

clouds of tobacco smoke filled the air and dimmed the light from

lamps, feeble at best, which hung from ceiling and wall.

In one corner a man sat on a rickety chair. His back was turned to

the room. He faced the two walls of his corner. The position struck

me as odd until I noticed that he sat that way in order to get a

little light on the pages of the book he read. It was Oscar Wilde's

_De Profundis_. It was, I suppose, part of my business to make

friends of the men round me. I managed with some difficulty to get

into conversation with that man. He turned his chair half round and,

starting from Oscar Wilde, gave me his views on prison life. The

private soldier, coming under military discipline, is a prisoner, so

this man thought. He did not deny that it may be worth while to go to

prison for a good cause. But prison life is as galling and abominable

for a martyr as for a criminal.

There is a stir among the men. A lady, heavily cloaked and

waterproofed, made a slow progress through the room, staring round

her with curious eyes. She was a stranger, evidently a distinguished

stranger, for she was escorted by a colonel and two other officers.

My friend nodded towards her.

"Do you know her?" he asked.

I shook my head. He named a very eminent novelist.

"Doing a tour of the Expeditionary Force, I expect," he said. "I used

to review her books before the war. I'd rather like to review the

one she'll write about this. Once"--he added this reminiscence after

a pause--"I dined in her company in London."

He was a journalist before he enlisted. If he survives he will no

doubt write a book, a new _De Profundis_, and it ought to be worth

reading.

I went one afternoon to a railway station to say good-bye to some

friends of mine who were off to the firing-line. Troops usually

left the base where I was then stationed at 10 or 11 o'clock at

night and we did not go to see them off. This party--they were

Canadians--started in the afternoon and from an unusual station. The

scene was familiar enough. There was a long train, for the most part

goods waggons. There were hundreds of laughing men, and a buffet

where ladies--those ladies who somehow never fail--gave tea and cocoa

to waiting crowds. Sergeants served out rations for the journey.

Officers struggled to get their kit into compartments already

overfull.

I made my way slowly along the platform, looking for my friends. In

halting European French I answered inquiries made of me in fluent

Canadian French by a soldier of Quebec. I came on a man who must

have been a full-blooded Indian standing by himself, staring straight

in front of him with wholly emotionless eyes. On every side of me I

heard the curious Canadian intonation of English speech.

I found my friends at last. They were settling down with others whom

I did not know into a waggon labelled "_Chevaux_, 8; _Hommes_, 40." I

do not know how eight horses would have liked a two-days journey in

that waggon. The forty men were cheerfully determined to make the

best of things. I condoled and sympathised.

From a far corner of the waggon came a voice quoting a line of

Virgil. "_Forsitan et illis olim meminisse juvabit_." It is a common

tag, of course, but I did not expect to hear it then and there. The

speaker was a boy, smooth-faced, gentle-looking. In what school of

what remote province did he learn to construe and repeats bits of the

_Æneid_? With the French-Canadians, the Indian, and all the rest of

them, he, with his pathetic little scrap of Latin, was a private in

the army of the empire.

It was my exceptional good fortune to be stationed for many months in

a large convalescent camp. I might have been attached to a brigade,

in which case I should have known perhaps Irish, or Scots, or men

from some one or two parts of England; but them only. That camp in

which I worked received men from every branch of the service and from

every corner of the empire. A knowledge of the cap badges to be seen

any day in that camp would have required long study and a good

memory. From the ubiquitous gun of the artillery to the FIJI of a

South Sea Island contingent we had them all at one time or another.

And the variety of speech and accent was as great as the variety of

cap badges. It was difficult to believe--I should not have believed

beforehand--that the English language could be spoken in so many

different ways. But it was the men themselves, more than their varied

speech and far-separated homes, who made me feel how widely the net

of service has swept through society and how many different kinds of

men are fighting in the army.

I happened one day to fall into conversation with a private, a young

man in very worn and even tattered clothes. He had been "up against

it" somewhere on the Somme front, and had not yet been served out

with fresh kit. The mud of the ground over which he had been fighting

was thickly caked on most parts of his clothing, and he was

endeavouring to scrape it off with the blade of a penknife. He smiled

at me in a particularly friendly way when I greeted him, and we

dropped into a conversation which lasted for quite a long time. He

showed me, rather shyly, a pocket edition of Herodotus which he had

carried about in his pocket and had read at intervals during the time

he was fighting on the Somme.

A private who quotes Latin in the waggon of a troop train. A battered

soldier who reads Greek for his own pleasure in the trenches, is more

surprising still. The Baron Bradwardwine took Livy into battle with

him. But there must be ten men who can read Livy for every one who

can tackle Herodotus without a dictionary.

A piano is an essential part of the equipment of a recreation hut in

France. The soldier loves to make music, and it is surprising how

many soldiers can make music of a sort. Pity is wasted on inanimate

things. Otherwise one's heart's sympathy would go out to those

pianos. It would be a dreadful thing for an instrument of feeling to

have "Irish Eyes," "The Only Girl in the World," and "Home Fires,"

played on it every day and all day long. I am not, I am often

thankful for it, acutely musical. But there have been times in

Y.M.C.A. huts when I felt I should shriek if I heard the tune of

"Home Fires" again.

I was playing chess one afternoon with a man who was beating me. I

became so much absorbed in the game that I actually ceased to hear

the piano. Then, after a while I heard it again, played in quite an

unusual manner. The player had got beyond "Irish Eyes" and the rest

of those tunes. He was playing, with the tenderest feeling, one of

Chopin's Nocturnes. He asked me afterwards if I could by any means

borrow for him a volume of Beethoven, one which contained the

"Waldstein" if possible. He confessed that he could not play the

"Waldstein" without the score. He was an elderly man, elderly

compared to most of those round him. He was in the R.E., a sapper.

There must be scores of musicians of taste and culture in the army. I

wonder if there was another employed in laying out roads behind the

Somme front.

I gained a reputation, wholly undeserved, as a chess player while I

was in that camp, and I was generally able to put up some sort of

fight against my opponents even if they beat me in the end.

But I was utterly defeated by one man, a Russian. He could speak no

English and very little French. He belonged to a Canadian regiment,

but how he got into it or managed to live with his comrades I do not

know. He and I communicated with each other only by moving the pieces

on the chess board. I suppose he was a member of the Russian Church,

but on Sundays he attended the services which I conducted. He used to

sit as near me as he could and I always found his places for him. He

could not read English any more than he could speak it, so the Prayer

Book cannot have been much use to him. But there was no priest of his

own church anywhere within reach, and he was evidently a religious

man. I suppose he found the Church of England service better than

none at all.

There was always one difficulty about the Church of England services

in that camp. We had to trust to chance for a pianist who could play

chants, responses, and hymns, and for a choir who could sing them.

The choir difficulty was not serious. It was nearly always possible

to get twenty volunteers who had sung in church choirs at home. But

a pianist who was familiar with church music was a rare person to

find. When found he had a way, very annoying to me, of getting well

quickly and going back to his regiment.

I was let down rather badly once or twice by men who were anxious to

play for the service, but turned out to be capable of no more than

three or four hymns, played by ear, sometimes in impossible keys. I

became cautious and used to question volunteers carefully beforehand.

One man who offered himself seemed particularly diffident and

doubtful about his ability to play what I wanted. I asked him at last

whether he had ever played any instrument, organ or harmonium, at a

Church of England service.

"Oh yes, sir, often," he said. "Before the war I was assistant

organist at ----."

He named a great English cathedral, one justly famous for its music.

The next Sunday and for several Sundays afterwards our music was a

joy. My friend was one of those rare people who play in such a way

that every one present feels compelled to sing.

Looking back over the time I spent in France, it seems as if a long

procession of interesting and splendid men passed by me. They came

from every rank of society, from many processions and trades.

There were rich men among them, a few, and very many poor men. I have

witnessed the signature of a private in a north of England regiment

to papers concerned with the transfer of several thousand pounds from

one security to another. I have helped to cash cheques for men with

large bank balances. I have bought crumpled and very dirty penny

stamps from men who otherwise would not have been able to pay for the

cup of cocoa or the bun they wanted.

There were men in trouble who came to me with letters in their hands

containing news from home which brought tears to their eyes and mine.

There were men--wonderfully few of them--with grievances, genuine

enough very often, but impossible to remove.

There were men with all sorts of religious difficulties, with simple

questions on their lips about the problems which most of us have

given up as insoluble on this side of the grave. We met. There was a

swiftly formed friendship, a brief intimacy, and then they passed

from that camp, their temporary resting-place, and were caught again

into the intricate working of the vast machine of war.

We were "ships that pass in the night and speak one another in

passing." The quotation is hackneyed almost beyond enduring, but it

is impossible to express the feeling better. Efforts to carry on a

correspondence afterwards generally ended in failure. A letter or two

was written. Then new friends were made and new interests arose. It

became impossible to write, because--oddest of reasons--after a time

there was nothing to say. The old common interests had vanished.

From time to time we who remained in a camp--workers there--got news

of one friend or another, heard that some boy we knew had won

distinction for his gallantry. Then we rejoiced. Or, far oftener, we

found a well-known name in the casualty lists, and we sorrowed.

Sometimes our friends came back to us, wounded afresh or ground down

again to sickness by the pitiless machine. They emerged from the fog

which surrounded for us the mysterious and awful "Front," and we

welcomed them. But they told us very little. The soldier, whatever

his position or education was in civil life, is strangely

inarticulate. He will speak in general terms of "stunts" and scraps,

of being "up against it," and of "carrying on"; but of the living

details of life in the trenches or on the battlefield he has little

to say. Still less will he speak of feelings, emotions, hopes, and

fears. I suppose that life in the midst of visible death is too awful

a thing to talk of and that there is no language in which to express

the terrific waves of fear, horror, hope, and exaltation.

Perhaps we may find in the very monstrousness of this war an

explanation of the soldier's unceasing effort to treat the whole

business as a joke, to laugh at the very worst that can befall him.

With men of other nations it is different no doubt. The French fight

gloriously and seem to live in a high, heroic mood. The men of our

empire, of all parts of it, jest in the presence of terror, perhaps

because the alternative to jesting is either fear or tears. Others

may misunderstand us. Often we do not understand ourselves. It is not

easy to think of Sam Weller or Mark Tapley as the hero of a stricken

field. Yet it is by men with Sam Weller's quaint turn of wit and Mark

Tapley's unfailing cheerfulness that the great battles in France and

Belgium are being won.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors;

otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's

words and intent.

End of Project Gutenberg's A Padre in France, by George A. Birmingham