These remarkable words have a remarkable effect on the new War
Correspondent. It is as if the coolness and the courage and the strength
of a hundred War Correspondents and of fifty Red Cross Ambulances had
been suddenly discharged into my soul. This absurd accession of power
and valour[4] is accompanied by a sudden immense lucidity. It is as if
my soul had never really belonged to me until now, as if it had been
either drugged or drunk and had never known what it was to be sober
until now. The sensation is distinctly agreeable. And on the top of it
all there is a peace which I distinctly recognize as the peace of God.
So, while the Commandant talks to the War Correspondents as if nothing
had happened, I go upstairs and unlock my suit-case and take from it the
leather purse-belt with the Ambulance funds in it, and I bring it to the
Commandant and lay it before him and compel him to put it on. As I do
this I feel considerable compunction, as if I were launching a
three-year-old child in a cockle-shell on the perilous ocean of finance.
I remind him that fifteen pounds of the money in the belt is his (he
would be as likely as not to forget it). As for the accounts, they are
so clear that a three-year-old child could understand them. I notice
with a diabolical satisfaction which persists through the all-pervading
peace by no means as incongruously as you might imagine--I notice
particularly that the Commandant doesn't like this part of it a bit.
There is not anybody in the Corps who wants to be responsible for its
funds or enjoys wearing that belt. But it is obvious that if the Ambulance
can bear to be separated from its Treasurer-Secretary-Reporter, in the
flight from Ghent, it cannot possibly bear to be separated from its funds.
I am alone with the Commandant while this happens, standing by one of
the writing-tables in the lounge. Ursula Dearmer (she grows more mature
every day) and the War Correspondents and a few Generals have melted
somewhere into the background. The long, lithe pigskin belt lies between
us on the table--between my friend and me--like a pale snake. It exerts
some malign and poisonous influence. It makes me say things, things
that I should not have thought it possible to say. And it is all about
the shells at Alost.
He is astonished.
And I do not care.
I am sustained, exalted by that sense of righteousness you feel when you
are insanely pounding somebody who thinks that in perfect sanity and
integrity he has pounded you.
[_Saturday, 3rd._]
Mr. L. asked me to breakfast. He has told me more about the Corps in
five minutes than the Corps has been able to tell me in as many days. He
has seen it at Alost and Termonde. You gather that he has seen other
heroic enterprises also and that he would perjure himself if he swore
that they were indispensable. Every Correspondent is besieged by the
leaders of heroic enterprises, and I imagine that Mr. L. has been "had"
before now by amateurs of the Red Cross, and his heart must have sunk
when he heard of an English Field Ambulance in Ghent. And he owns to
positive terror when he saw it, with its girls in breeches, its
Commandant in Norfolk jacket, grey knickerbockers, heather-mixture
stockings and deer-stalker; its Chaplain in khaki, and its Surgeon a
mark for bullets in his Belgian officer's cap. I suggest that this
absence of uniform only proves our passionate eagerness to be off and
get to work. But it is right. Our ambulance is the real thing, and Mr.
L. is going to be an angel and help it all he can. He will write about
it in the _Illustrated London News_ and the _Westminster_. When he hears
that I came out here to write about the War and make a little money for
the Field Ambulance, and that I haven't seen anything of the War and
that my invasion of his hotel is simply a last despairing effort to at
least hear something, he is more angelic than ever. He causes a whole
cinema of war-scenes to pass before my eyes. When I ask if there is
anything left for me to "do," he evokes a long procession of
articles--pure, virgin copy on which no journalist has ever laid his
hands--and assures me that it is mine, that the things that have been
done are nothing to the things that are left to do. I tell him that I
have no business on his pitch, and that I am horribly afraid of getting
in the regular Correspondents' way and spoiling their game; as I am
likely to play it, there isn't any pitch. Of course, I suppose, there is
the "scoop," but that's another matter. It is the War Correspondent's
crown of cunning and of valour, and nobody can take from him that
crown. But in the psychology of the thing, every Correspondent is his
own pitch. He has told me very nearly all the things I want to know,
among them what the Belgian General said to the Commandant when he saw
Ursula Dearmer at Alost:
"What the devil is the lady doing there?"
I gather that Mr. L. shares the General's wonder and my own anxiety. I
am not far wrong in regarding Alost and Termonde as no fit place for
Ursula Dearmer or any other woman.
Answered the Commandant's letters for him. Wrote to Ezra Pound. Wrote
out the report for the last three days' ambulance work and sent it to
the British Red Cross; also a letter to Mr. Rogers about a light
scouting-car. The British Red Cross has written that it cannot spare any
more motor ambulances, but it may possibly send out a small car. (The
Commandant has cabled to Mr. Gould, of Gould Bros., Exeter, accepting
his offer of his own car and services.)
Went down to the "Flandria" for news of the Ambulance. The car that was
sent out yesterday evening got through all right to Antwerp and returned
safely. It has brought very bad news. Two of the outer forts are said to
have fallen. The position is critical, and grave anxiety is felt for
the safety of the English in Antwerp. Mrs. St. Clair Stobart has asked
us for one of our ambulances. But even if we could spare it we cannot
give it up without an order from the military authority at Ghent. We
hear that Dr. ----, one of Mrs. Stobart's women, is to leave Antwerp and
work at our hospital. She is engaged to be married to Dr. ----, and the
poor boy is somewhat concerned for her safety. I'm very glad I have left
the "Flandria," for she can have my room.