The ore, the furnace and the hammer are all that is needed for a
sword.—_Native proverb._
This was a cantonment one had never seen before, and the grey-haired
military policeman could give no help.
‘My experience,’ he spoke detachedly, ‘is that you’ll find everything
everywhere. Is it any particular corps you’re looking for?’
‘Not in the least,’ I said.
‘Then you’re all right. You can’t miss getting something.’ He pointed
generally to the North Camp. ‘It’s like floods in a town, isn’t it?’
He had hit the just word. All known marks in the place were submerged by
troops. Parade-grounds to their utmost limits were crowded with them;
rises and sky-lines were furred with them, and the length of the roads
heaved and rippled like bicycle-chains with blocks of men on the move.
The voice of a sergeant in the torment reserved for sergeants at
roll-call boomed across a bunker. He was calling over recruits to a
specialist corps.
‘But I’ve called you once!’ he snapped at a man in leggings.
‘But I’m Clarke Two,’ was the virtuous reply.
‘Oh, you are, are you?’ He pencilled the correction with a scornful
mouth, out of one corner of which he added, ‘“Sloppy” Clarke! You’re all
Clarkes or Watsons to-day. You don’t know your own names. You don’t know
what corps you’re in. (This was bitterly unjust, for they were squinting
up at a biplane.) You don’t know anything.’
‘Mm!’ said the military policeman. ‘The more a man has in his head, the
harder it is for him to manage his carcass—at first. I’m glad I never
was a sergeant. Listen to the instructors! Like rooks, ain’t it?’
There was a mile of sergeants and instructors, varied by company
officers, all at work on the ready material under their hands. They
grunted, barked, yapped, expostulated, and, in rare cases, purred, as
the lines broke and formed and wheeled over the vast maidan. When
companies numbered off one could hear the tone and accent of every walk
in life, and maybe half the counties of England, from the deep-throated
‘Woon’ of the north to the sharp, half-whistled Devonshire ‘Tu.’ And as
the instructors laboured, so did the men, with a passion to learn as
passionately as they were taught.
Presently, in the drift of the foot-traffic down the road, there came
another grey-haired man, one foot in a bright slipper, which showed he
was an old soldier cherishing a sore toe. He drew alongside and
considered these zealous myriads.
‘Good?’ said I, deferentially.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Very good’—then, half to himself: ‘Quite different,
though.’ A pivot-man near us had shifted a little, instead of marking
time, on the wheel. His face clouded, his lips moved. Obviously he was
cursing his own clumsiness.
‘That’s what I meant,’ said the veteran. ‘Innocent! Innocent! Mark you,
they ain’t doin’ it to be done with it and get off. They’re doin’ it
because—because they want to do it.’
‘Wake up! Wake _up_ there, Isherwood!’ This was a young subaltern’s
reminder flung at a back which straightened itself. That one human name
coming up out of all that maze of impersonal manœuvring stuck in the
memory like wreckage on the ocean.
‘An’ it wasn’t ‘ardly even necessary to caution Mister Isherwood,’ my
companion commented. ‘Prob’ly he’s bitterly ashamed of ‘imself.’
I asked a leading question because the old soldier told me that when his
toe was sound, he, too, was a military policeman.
‘Crime? Crime?’ said he. ‘They don’t know what crime is—that lot
don’t—none of ‘em!’ He mourned over them like a benevolent old Satan
looking into a busy Eden, and his last word was ‘Innocent!’
The car worked her way through miles of men—men route-marching, going to
dig or build bridges, or wrestle with stores and transport—four or five
miles of men, and every man with eager eyes. There was no music—not even
drums and fifes. I heard nothing but a distant skirl of the pipes. Trust
a Scot to get his national weapon as long as there is a chief in the
North! Admitting that war is a serious business, specially to the man
who is being fought for, and that it may be right to carry a long face
and contribute to relief funds which should be laid on the National
Debt, it surely could do no harm to cheer the men with a few bands. Half
the money that has been spent in treating, for example....