CONCLUSION
It was a slumbrous afternoon in September. My wound had healed up a
month ago, and I was lazily convalescent at my aunt’s house in one
of the most beautiful parts of Kent. The six soldiers who were also
convalescent there were down in the hop-garden. For hop-picking was
in full swing. I was sitting in a deck-chair with _Don Quixote_ on my
knees; but I was not reading. I had apparently broken the offensive
power of the army of midges by making a brilliant counter-attack with
a pipe of Chairman. The sun blazed mercilessly on the croquet-lawn;
the balls were lying all together round one hoop: for there was a
golf-croquet tournament in progress, and the mallets stood about
against various hoops; one very tidy and proper mallet was standing
primly in the stand at one corner. My chair was well sited under the
cool shade of a large mulberry tree, in whose thick lofty branches
the wind rustled with a delicious little sigh; sometimes a regular
little gust would send the boughs swishing, and then a little rain of
red and white mulberries would plop on to the grass, and strike the
summer-house roof with a smart patter. On the grass-bank at the side
of the lawn, by a blazing border of orange and red nasturtiums, a
black cat was squatting with tail slowly waving to and fro, watching a
fine large tabby that was sniffing at the nasturtiums in a nonchalant
manner. They were the best of friends, playing that most interesting of
all games, war.
I was not reading: I was listening to the incessant murmur that came
from far away across the Medway, across the garden of England, and
across the Channel and the flats of Flanders. That sound came from
Picardy. All day the insistent throb had been in the air; sometimes
faint bumps were clearly distinguishable, at other times it was nothing
but one steady vibration. But always it was there, that distant growl,
that insistent mutter. Even in this perfect peace, I could not escape
the War.
To-day I felt completely well; the lassitude and inertness of
convalescence were gone--at any rate, for the moment. My mind was very
clear, and I could think surely and rapidly. The cats reminded me of
the lusty family that lived in the cellar in the Cuinchy trenches,
and the murmur of the guns drew my thoughts across the Channel. I
tried to imagine trenches running across the lawn, with communication
trenches running back to a support line through the meadow; a few feet
of brick wall would be all that would be left of the house, and this
would conceal my snipers; the mulberry tree would long ago have been
razed to the ground, and every scrap of it used as firewood in our
dug-outs; this deck chair of mine might possibly be in use in Company
Headquarters in one of the cellars. No, it was not easy to imagine war
without seeing it.
I picked up the paper that had fallen at my side. There had been more
terrible fighting on the Somme, and it had seemed very marvellous to a
journalist as he lay on a hill some two miles back, and watched through
his field-glasses: it was wonderful that the men advancing (if indeed
he could really see them at all in the smoke of a heavy artillery
barrage) still went on, although their comrades dropped all round them.
Yet I wondered what else anyone could do but go on? Run back, with just
as much likelihood of being shot in doing so? Or, even if he did get
back, to certain death as a deserter? Everyone knows the safest place
is in a trench; and it is a trench you are making for. Lower down on
the page came a description of the wounded; he had talked to so many of
them, and they were all smiling, all so cheerful; smoking cigarettes
and laughing. They shook their fists, and shouted that the only thing
they wanted to do was to get back into it! Pah! I threw the paper down
in disgust. Surely no one wants to read such stuff, I thought. Of
course the men who were not silent, in a dull stupefied agony, were
smiling: what need to say that a man with a slight wound was laughing
at his luck, just as I had smiled that early morning when the trolley
took me down from Maple Redoubt? And who does not volunteer for an
unpleasant task, when he knows he cannot possibly get it? Want to get
back into it, indeed! Ask Tommy ten years hence whether he wants to be
back in the middle of it again!
I wondered why people endured such cheap journalism. What right had
men who have never seen war at all, who creep up on bicycles to get a
glimpse of it through telescopes, who pester wounded men, and then out
of their pictorial imagination work up a vivid description--what right
have they to insult heroes by saying that “their wonderful spirit makes
up for it all,” that “the paramount impression is one of glory”? Are
not our people able to bear the truth, that war is utterly hellish,
that we do _not_ enjoy it, that we hate it, hate it, hate it all? And
then it struck me how ignorant people still were; how uncertainly they
spoke, these people at home: it was as though they dared not think
things out, lest what they held most dear should be an image shattered
by another point of view.
Somehow people were amazed at the cheerfulness, the doggedness, the
endurance under pain, the indifference to death, shown every minute
during this war. I thought of the men whom I had seen in hospital. One
man had had his right foot amputated; it used to give me agony to see
his stump dressed every day. Another man had both legs amputated above
the knees. Yet they were so wonderfully cheerful, so apparently content
with life! As though alone in the blackness of night they did not long
for the activity denied them for the rest of their life. As though
their cheerfulness--(do not think I belittle its heroism)--_as though
their cheerfulness justified the thing_!
Another thing I had noticed. An old man told me he was so struck with
the heroism, the courage, the indifference to death, shown by the
ordinary unromantic man. Some men had been converted, too, their whole
lives changed, their vices eradicated, by this war. So much good was
coming from it. People, too, at home were so changed, so sobered; they
were looking into the selfishness of their lives at last. Again I
thought, _as though all that justified the thing_!
Oh! you men and women who did not know before the capabilities of human
nature, I thought, please take note of it now; and after the war do not
underestimate the quality of mankind. Did it need a war to tell you
that a man can be heroic, resolute, courageous, cheerful, and capable
of sacrifice? There were those who could have told you that before this
war.
There was a lull in the vibration. I turned in my chair, and listened.
Then it began again.
“People are afraid to think it out,” I said. “I have not seen the
Somme fighting, but I know what war is. Its quality is not altered by
multiplication or intensity. The colour of life-blood is a constant
red. Let us look into this business; let us face all the facts. Let us
not flinch from any aspect of the truth.”
And my thoughts ran somewhat as follows:
First of all, War is evil--utterly evil. Let us be sure of that first.
It is an evil instrument, even if it be used for motives that are good.
I, who have been through war and know it, say that it is evil. I knew
it before the war; instinct, reason, religion told me that war was
evil; now experience has told me also.
It is a strange synthesis, this war: it is a synthesis of adventure,
dulness, good spirits, and tragedy; but none of these things are new to
human experience; nor is human nature altered by war. It is at war as
a whole that we must look in order to appreciate its quality. And what
is war seen as a whole, or rather seen in the light of my eight months’
experience? For no one man can truly appraise war.
I have seen and felt the adventure of war, its deadly fascination and
excitement: it is the greatest game on earth: that is its terrible
power: there is such a wild temptation to paint up its interest and
glamour: it gives such scope to daring, to physical courage, to high
spirits: it makes so many prove themselves heroic, that were it not
for the fall of the arrow men would call the drawing of the bow good.
I have seen the dulness, the endless monotony, the dogged labour, the
sheer power of will conquering the body and “carrying on”: there is
good in that, too. In the jollity, the humour, the good-fellowship, is
nothing but good also. There is good in all these things; for these are
qualities of human nature triumphing in spite of war. These things are
not war; they are the good in man prostituted to a vile thing.
For I have seen the real face of war: I have seen men killed,
mutilated, blown to little pieces; I have seen men crippled for life;
I have looked in the face of madness, and I know that many have gone
mad under its grip. I have seen fine natures break and crumble under
the strain. I have seen men grow brutalised, and coarsened in this
war. (God will judge justly in the end; meanwhile, there are thousands
among us--yes, and among our enemy too--brutalised through no fault of
theirs.) I have lost friends killed (and shall lose more yet), friends
with whom I have lived and suffered so long.
Who is for war now? Its adventure, its heroism? Bah! Yet this is not
all.
For war spares none. It desecrates the beauty of the earth; it ruins,
it destroys, it wastes; it starves children; it drives out old men,
and women, homeless. And most terrible of all, it brings agony to
every household: it is like a plague of the firstborn. Do not think I
have forgotten you, O women, and old men. You, too, have to endure the
agony of the arena; you are compelled to sit and watch us fight the
beasts. Every mother is there in agony, watching her baby, and unable
to stretch a finger to help. This, too, is war--the anguish of mothers
whose sons perish, of wives who lose their husbands, of girls robbed
for all time of marriage and motherhood.
And this vile thing is still perpetrated upon the earth among peoples
who have long ago declared human sacrifice impossible and barbaric.
This then is a basal fact. We have faced it fairly. The instrument is
vile. What then of the motive? What is the motive which drives us to
use this evil instrument? And I see you fathers and mothers waiting to
hear what I shall say. For there are people who whisper that we who are
fighting are vindictive, that we lust for the blood of our enemies,
that we are coarse and brutal, that we are unholy champions of what we
call a just cause. Again let us face the facts. And to these whisperers
I answer boldly: “Yes! we are coarse, some of us; we are vindictive;
we hate; we do not deny it.” For war in its vileness taints its human
instruments too. When Davidson died I cried death upon his murderers.
I called them devils, and worse. I am not ashamed.
That is not the point. What I or Tommy may be at a given moment is
not the point. The question is, with what motives did we enter this
war, agree to take up this vile instrument? We cannot help if it soils
our hands. What is our motive in fighting in the arena? What provokes
the dumb heroism of our soldiers? Why did men flock to the colours,
volunteer in millions for the arena? You know. I who have lived with
them eight months in France, I also know. It was because a people took
up this vile instrument and used it from desire of power. Because they
trampled on justice, and challenged us to thwart them. Because they
willed war for the sake of wrong; because they said that force was
master of the world, and they set out to prove it.
Yet, it is sometimes said, war is unchristian. If men were Christian
there would be no war. You cannot conquer evil by evil. I agree, if men
were Christian there would be no war. I agree that you cannot conquer
evil by evil; but it is war that is evil, not our motive in going to
war. We are conquering an evil spirit by a good spirit, even if we are
using an evil instrument. And if you say that Christ would not fight, I
say that none of us would fight if the world had attained the Christian
plane towards which we are slowly rising: but we are still on a lower
plane, and in it there is a big war raging; and in the arena there are
many who have felt Christ by their side.
That, then, is the second point. I knew that war was vile, before I
went into it. I have seen it: I do not alter my opinion. I went into
this war prepared to sacrifice my life to prove that right is stronger
than wrong; I have stood again and again with a traverse between me
and death; I have faced the possibility of madness. I foresaw all this
before I went into this war. What difference does it make that I have
experienced it? It makes no difference. Let no one fear that our
sacrifice has been in vain. We have already won what we are fighting
for. The will for war, that aggressive power, with all the cards on its
side prepared, striking at its own moment, has already failed against
a spirit, weaker, unprepared, taken unawares. And so I am clear on my
second point. We are fighting from just motives, and we have already
baulked injustice. Aggressive force, the power that took up the cruel
weapon of war, has failed. No one can ever say that his countrymen have
laid down their lives in vain.
* * * * *
I got up from the chair, and started walking about the garden.
Everything was so clear. Before going out to the war I had thought
these things; but the thoughts were fluid, they ran about in mazy
patterns, they were elusive, and always I was frightened of meeting
unanswerable contradictions to my theorising from men who had actually
seen war. Now my conclusions seemed crystallised by irrefutable
experience into solid truth.
After a while I sat down again and resumed my train of thought:
War is evil. Justice is stronger than Force. Yet, was there need of all
this bloodshed to prove this? For this war is not as past wars; this
is every man’s war, a war of civilians, a war of men who hate war, of
men who fight for a cause, who are compelled to kill and hate it. That
is another thing that people will not face. Men whisper that Tommy
does not hate Fritz. Again I say, away with this whispering. Let us
speak it out plain and bold. Private Davies, my orderly, formerly a
shepherd of Blaenau Festiniog, has no quarrel with one Fritz Schneider
of Hamburg who is sitting in the trench opposite the Matterhorn sap;
yet he will bayonet him certainly if he comes over the top, or if we
go over into the German trenches; ay, he will perform this action with
a certain amount of brutality too, for I have watched him jabbing at
rats with a bayonet through the wires of a rat trap, and I know that he
has in him a savage vein of cruelty. But when peace is declared, he and
Fritz will light a bonfire of trench stores in No Man’s Land, and there
will be the end of their quarrel. I say boldly, I know. For indeed I
know Davies very well indeed.
Again I say, was there need of all this bloodshed? Who is responsible?
Who is responsible for Lance-Corporal Allan lying in the trench in
Maple Redoubt? Again I see yon glittering eyes looking down upon me in
the arena. And Davies, too, in his slow simple way, is beginning to
take you in, and to ask you why he is put there to fight? Is it for
your pleasure? Is it for your expediency? Is it a necessary part of
your great game? Necessary? Necessary for whom? Davies and Fritz alike
are awaiting your answer.
It is hard to trace ultimate causes. It is hard to fix absolute
responsibility. There were many seeds sown, scattered, and secretly
fostered before they produced this harvest of blood. The seeds of
cruelty, selfishness, ambition, avarice, and indifference, are always
liable to swell, grow, and bud, and blossom suddenly into the red
flower of war. Let every man look into his heart, and if the seeds are
there let him make quick to root them out while there is time; unless
he wishes to join those glittering eyes that look down upon the arena.
These are the seeds of war. And it is because they know that we, too,
are not free from them, that certain men have stood out from the arena
as a protest against war. These men are real heroes, who for their
conscience’s sake are enduring taunts, ignominy, misunderstanding, and
worse. Most men and women in the arena are cursing them, and, as they
struggle in agony and anguish, they beat their hands at them and cry
“You do not care.” I, too, have cursed them, when I was mad with pain.
But I know them, and I know that they are true men. I would not have
one less. They are witnesses against war. And I, too, am fighting war.
Men do not understand them now, but one day they will.
I know that there are among us, too, the seeds of war: no cause has yet
been perfect. But I look at the facts. We did not start, we did not
want this war. We have gone into it, fighting for the better cause.
Whether, had we been more Christian, we might have prevented the war,
is not the point. We did not want this war: we are fighting against
it. It was the seeds of war in Germany that were responsible. And so
history will judge.
But what of the future? How are we to save future generations from
going down into the arena? We will rearrange the map of Europe: we
will secure the independence of small states: we will give the power
to the people: there shall be an end of tyrannies. So men speak easily
of an international spirit, of a world conference for peace. There is
so great a will-power against war, they say, that we will secure the
world for the future. Millions of men know the vileness of war; they
will devise ways and means to prevent its recurrence. I agree. Let us
try all ways. Yet I see no guarantee in all this against the glittering
eyes: I see no power in all this knowledge against a new generation
fostering and harvesting the seeds of war. Men have long known that
war is evil. Did that knowledge prevent this war? Will that knowledge
secure India or China from the power of the glittering eyes?
* * * * *
I walked up and down the lawn, my eyes glowing, my brain working
hard. Here around me was all the beauty of an old garden, its long
borders full of phloxes, delphiniums, stocks, and all the old familiar
flowers; the apples glowed red in the trees; the swallows were skimming
across the lawn. In the distance I could hear the rumble of the waggon
bringing up the afternoon load of hop-pokes to the oasthouse. Yet what
I had seen of war was as true, had as really happened, as all this. It
would be so easy to forget, after the war. And yet to forget might mean
a seed of war. I must never forget Lance-Corporal Allan.
* * * * *
There is only one sure way, I said at last. And again a clear
conviction filled me. There is only one way to put an end to the arena.
Pledges and treaties have failed; and force will fail. These things
may bring peace for a time, but they cannot crush those glittering
eyes. There is only one Man whose eyes have never glittered. Look
at the palms of your hands, you, who have had a bullet through the
middle of it! Did they not give you morphia to ease the pain? And did
you not often cry out alone in the darkness in the terrible agony,
that you did not care who won the war if only the pain would cease?
Yet one Man there was who held out His hand upon the wood, while
they knocked, knocked, knocked in the nail, every knock bringing a
jarring, excruciating pain, every bit as bad as yours. And any moment
His will-power could have weakened, and He could have saved Himself
that awful pain. And then they nailed through the other hand: and then
the feet. And as they lifted the Cross, all the weight came upon the
pierced hands. And when He had tasted the vinegar He would not drink.
And any moment He could have come down from the Cross: yet He so cared
that love should win the war against evil, that He never wavered, His
eyes never glittered. Do you want to put an end to the arena? Here is
a Man to follow. _In hoc signo vinces._
* * * * *
I stood up again, and stretched out my hands. And as I did so a memory
came back vivid and strong. I remembered the night when I stood out on
the hillside by Trafalgar Square, under the moon. And I remembered how
I had felt a strength out of the pain, and even as the strength came a
more unutterable weakness, the weakness of a man battering against a
wall of steel. The sound of the relentless guns had mocked at me. Now
as I stood on the lawn, I heard the long continuous vibration of the
guns upon the Somme.
“You are War,” I said aloud. “This is your hour, the power of darkness.
But the time will come when we shall follow the Man who has conquered
your last weapon, death: and then your walls of steel will waver,
cringe, and fall, melted away before the fire of LOVE.”
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND
[Transcriber’s Note:
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]
End of Project Gutenberg's Nothing of Importance, by John Bernard Pye Adams