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The Prayer of the Men of Daleswood

He said: ``There were only twenty houses in Daleswood. A place youwould scarcely have heard of. A village up top of the hills. 

``When the war came there was no more than thirty men there betweensixteen and forty-five. They all went. 

``They all kept together; same battalion, same platoon. They was likethat in Daleswood. Used to call the hop pickers foreigners, the onesthat come from London. They used to go past Daleswood, some of them, every year, on their way down to the hop fields. Foreigners they usedto call them. Kept very much to themselves, did the Daleswood people. Big woods all round them. 

``Very lucky they was, the Daleswood men. They'd lost no more thanfive killed and a good sprinkling of wounded. But all the wounded wasback again with the platoon. This was up to March when the bigoffensive started. 

``It came very sudden. No bombardment to speak of. Just a burst of TokEmmas going off all together and lifting the front trench clean out ofit; then a barrage behind, and the Boche pouring over in thousands. `Our luck is holding good, ' the Daleswood men said, for their trenchwasn't getting it at all. But the platoon on their right got it. Andit sounded bad too a long way beyond that. No one could be quite sure. But the platoon on their right was getting it: that was sure enough. 

``And then the Boche got through them altogether. A message came tosay so. `How are things on the right?' they said to the runner. `Bad, 'said the runner, and he went back, though Lord knows what he went backto. The Boche was through right enough. `We'll have to make adefensive flank, ' said the platoon commander. He was a Daleswood mantoo. Came from the big farm. He slipped down a communication trenchwith a few men, mostly bombers. And they reckoned they wouldn't seeany of them any more, for the Boche was on the right, thick asstarlings. 

``The bullets were snapping over thick to keep them down while theBoche went on, on the right: machine guns, of course. The barrage wasscreaming well over and dropping far back, and their wire was stillall right just in front of them, when they put up a head to look. There was the left platoon of the battalion. One doesn't bother, somehow, so much about another battalion as one's own. One's own getssort of homely. And there they were wondering how their own officerwas getting on, and the few fellows with them, on his defensive flank. The bombs were going off thick. All the Daleswood men were firing halfright. It sounded from the noise as if it couldn't last long, as if itwould soon be decisive, and the battle be won, or lost, just there onthe right, and perhaps the war ended. They didn't notice the left. Nothing to speak of. 

``Then a runner came from the left. `Hullo!' they said, `How arethings over there?'

```The Boche is through, ' he said. `Where's the officer?' `Through!'they said. It didn't seem possible. However did he do that? theythought. And the runner went on to the right to look for the officer. 

``And then the barrage shifted further back. The shells still screamedover them, but the bursts were further away. That is always a relief. Probably they felt it. But it was bad for all that. Very bad. It meantthe Boche was well past them. They realized it after a while. 

``They and their bit of wire were somehow just between two waves ofattack. Like a bit of stone on the beach with the sea coming in. Aplatoon was nothing to the Boche; nothing much perhaps just then toanybody. But it was the whole of Daleswood for one long generation. 

``The youngest full-grown man they had left behind was fifty, and someone had heard that he had died since the war. There was no one else inDaleswood but women and children, and boys up to seventeen. 

``The bombing had stopped on their right; everything was quieter, andthe barrage further away. When they began to realize what that meantthey began to talk of Daleswood. And then they thought that when allof them were gone there would be nobody who would remember Daleswoodjust as it used to be. For places alter a little, woods grow, andchanges come, trees get cut down, old people die; new houses are builtnow and then in place of a yew tree, or any old thing, that used to bethere before; and one way or another the old things go; and all thetime you have people thinking that the old times were best, and theold ways when they were young. And the Daleswood men were beginning tosay, `Who would there be to remember it just as it was?'

``There was no gas, the wind being wrong for it, so they were able totalk, that is if they shouted, for the bullets alone made as muchnoise as breaking up an old shed, crisper like, more like new timberbreaking; and the shells of course was howling all the time, that isthe barrage that was bursting far back. The trench still stank ofthem. 

``They said that one of them must go over and put his hands up, or runaway if he could, whichever he liked, and when the war was over hewould go to some writing fellow, one of those what makes a living byit, and tell him all about Daleswood, just as it used to be, and hewould write it out proper and there it would be for always. They allagreed to that. And then they talked a bit, as well as they couldabove that awful screeching, to try and decide who it should be. Theeldest, they said, would know Daleswood best. But he said, and theycame to agree with him, that it would be a sort of waste to save thelife of a man what had had his good time, and they ought to send theyoungest, and they would tell him all they knew of Daleswood beforehis time, and everything would be written down just the same and theold time remembered. 

``They had the idea somehow that the women thought more of their ownman and their children and the washing and what-not; and that the deepwoods and the great hills beyond, and the plowing and the harvest andsnaring rabbits in winter and the sports in the village in summer, andthe hundred things that pass the time of one generation in an old, oldplace like Daleswood, meant less to them than the men. Anyhow they didnot quite seem to trust them with the past. 

``The youngest of them was only just eighteen. That was Dick. Theytold him to get out and put his hands up and be quick getting across, as soon as they had told him one or two things about the old time inDaleswood that a youngster like him wouldn't know. 

``Well, Dick said he wasn't going, and was making trouble about it, sothey told Fred to go. Back, they told him, was best, and come upbehind the Boche with his hands up; they would be less likely to shootwhen it was back towards their own supports. 

``Fred wouldn't go, and so on with the rest. Well, they didn't wastetime quarrelling, time being scarce, and they said what was to bedone? There was chalk where they were, low down in the trench, alittle brown clay on the top of it. There was a great block of itloose near a shelter. They said they would carve with their knives onthe big bowlder of chalk all that they knew about Daleswood. Theywould write where it was and just what it was like, and they wouldwrite something of all those little things that pass with ageneration. They reckoned on having the time for it. It would take adirect hit with something large, what they call big stuff, to do anyharm to that bowlder. They had no confidence in paper, it got somessed up when you were hit; besides, the Boche had been usingthermite. Burns, that does. 

``They'd one or two men that were handy at carving chalk; used to dothe regimental crest and pictures of Hindenburg, and all that. Theydecided they'd do it in reliefs. 

``They started smoothing the chalk. They had nothing more to do butjust to think what to write. It was a great big bowlder with plenty ofroom on it. The Boche seemed not to know that they hadn't killed theDaleswood men, just as the sea mightn't know that one stone stayed dryat the coming in of the tide. A gap between two divisions probably. 

``Harry wanted to tell of the woods more than anything. He was afraidthey might cut them down because of the war, and no one would know ofthe larks they had had there as boys. Wonderful old woods they were, with a lot of Spanish chestnut growing low, and tall old oaks over it. Harry wanted them to write down what the foxgloves were like in thewood at the end of summer, standing there in the evening, `Greatsolemn rows, ' he said, `all odd in the dusk. All odd in the evening, going there after work; and makes you think of fairies. ' There waslots of things about those woods, he said, that ought to be put downif people were to remember Daleswood as it used to be when they knewit. What were the good old days without those woods? he said. 

``But another wanted to tell of the time when they cut the hay withscythes, working all those long days at the end of June; there wouldbe no more of that, he said, with machines come in and all. 

``There was room to tell of all that and the woods too, said theothers, so long as they put it short like. 

``And another wanted to tell of the valleys beyond the wood, farafield where the men went working; the women would remember the hay. The great valleys he'd tell of. It was they that made Daleswood. Thevalleys beyond the wood and the twilight on them in summer. Slopescovered with mint and thyme, all solemn at evening. A hare on themperhaps, sitting as though they were his, then lolloping slowly away. It didn't seem from the way he told of those old valleys that hethought they could ever be to other folk what they were to theDaleswood men in the days he remembered. He spoke of them as thoughthere were something in them, besides the mint and the thyme and thetwilight and hares, that would not stay after these men were gone, though he did not say what it was. Scarcely hinted it even. 

``And still the Boche did nothing to the Daleswood men. The bulletshad ceased altogether. That made it much quieter. The shells stillsnarled over, bursting far, far away. 

``And Bob said tell of Daleswood itself, the old village, with queerchimneys, of red brick, in the wood. There weren't houses like thatnowadays. They'd be building new ones and spoiling it, likely, afterthe war. And that was all he had to say. 

``And nobody was for not putting down anything any one said. It wasall to go in on the chalk, as much as would go in the time. For theyall sort of understood that the Daleswood of what they called the goodold time was just the memories that those few men had of the days theyhad spent there together. And that was the Daleswood they loved, andwanted folks to remember. They were all agreed as to that. And thenthey said how was they to write it down. And when it came to writingthere was so much to be said, not spread over a lot of paper I don'tmean, but going down so deep like, that it seemed to them how theirown talk wouldn't be good enough to say it. And they knew no other, and didn't know what to do. I reckon they'd been reading magazines andthought that writing had to be like that muck. Anyway, they didn'tknow what to do. I reckon their talk would be good enough forDaleswood when they loved Daleswood like that. But they didn't, andthey were puzzled. 

``The Boche was miles away behind them now, and his barrage with him. Still in front he did nothing. 

``They talked it all over and over, did the Daleswood men. They triedeverything. But somehow or other they couldn't get near what theywanted to say about old summer evenings. Time wore on. The bowlder wassmooth and ready, and that whole generation of Daleswood men couldfind no words to say what was in their hearts about Daleswood. Therewasn't time to waste. And the only thing they thought of in the endwas `Please, God, remember Daleswood just like it used to be. ' AndBill and Harry carved that on the chalk between them. 

``What happened to the Daleswood men? Why, nothing. There come one ofthem counter-attacks, a regular bastard for Jerry. The French made itand did the Boche in proper. I got the story from a man with a hell ofa great big hammer, long afterwards when that trench was well behindour line. He was smashing up a huge great chunk of chalk because hesaid they all felt it was so damn silly. ''

The Road

The battery Sergeant-Major was practically asleep. He was all worn outby the continuous roar of bombardments that had been shaking thedugouts and dazing his brains for weeks. He was pretty well fed up. 

The officer commanding the battery, a young man in a very neat uniformand of particularly high birth, came up and spat in his face. TheSergeant-Major sprang to attention, received an order, and took astick at once and beat up the tired men. For a message had come to thebattery that some English (God punish them!) were making a road at X. 

The gun was fired. It was one of those unlucky shots that come on dayswhen our luck is out. The shell, a 5. 9, lit in the midst of the Britishworking party. It did the Germans little good. It did not stop thedeluge of shells that was breaking up their guns and was drivingmisery down like a wedge into their spirits. It did not improve thetemper of the officer commanding the battery, so that the men sufferedas acutely as ever under the Sergeant-Major. But it stopped the roadfor that day. 

I seemed to see that road going on in a dream. 

Another working party came along next day, with clay pipes and got towork; and next day and the day after. Shells came, but went short orover; the shell holes were neatly patched up; the road went on. Hereand there a tree had to be cut, but not often, not many of them wereleft; it was mostly digging and grubbing up roots, and pushingwheelbarrows along planks and duck-boards, and filling up with stones. Sometimes the engineers would come: that was when streams werecrossed. The engineers made their bridges, and the infantry workingparty went on with the digging and laying down stones. It wasmonotonous work. Contours altered, soil altered, even the rock beneathit, but the desolation never; they always worked in desolation andthunder. And so the road went on. 

They came to a wide river. They went through a great forest. Theypassed the ruins of what must have been quite fine towns, bigprosperous towns with universities in them. I saw the infantry workingparty with their stumpy clay pipes, in my dream, a long way on fromwhere that shell had lit, which stopped the road for a day. And behindthem curious changes came over the road at X. You saw the infantrygoing up to the trenches, and going back along it into reserve. Theymarched at first, but in a few days they were going up in motors, greybusses with shuttered windows. And then the guns came along it, milesand miles of guns, following after the thunder which was further offover the hills. And then one day the cavalry came by. Then stores inwagons, the thunder muttering further and further away. I sawfarm-carts going down the road at X. And then one day all manner ofhorses and traps and laughing people, farmers and women and boys allgoing by to X. There was going to be a fair. 

And far away the road was growing longer and longer amidst, as always, desolation and thunder. And one day far away from X the road grew veryfine indeed. It was going proudly through a mighty city, sweeping inlike a river; you would not think that it ever remembered duck-boards. There were great palaces there, with huge armorial eagles blazoned instone, and all along each side of the road was a row of statues ofkings. And going down the road towards the palace, past the statues ofthe kings, a tired procession was riding, full of the flags of theAllies. And I looked at the flags in my dream, out of national prideto see whether we led, or whether France or America. America wentbefore us, but I could not see the Union Jack in the van nor theTricolour either, nor the Stars and Stripes: Belgium led and thenSerbia, they that had suffered most. 

And before the flags, and before the generals, I saw marching along onfoot the ghosts of the working party that were killed at X, gazingabout them in admiration as they went, at the great city and at thepalaces. And one man, wondering at the Sičges Allée, turned round tothe Lance Corporal in charge of the party: ``That is a fine road thatwe made, Frank, '' he said. 

An Imperial Monument

It is an early summer's morning: the dew is all over France: the trainis going eastwards. They are quite slow, those troop trains, and thereare few embankments or cuttings in those flat plains, so that you seemto be meandering along through the very life of the people. The roadscome right down to the railways, and the sun is shining brightly overthe farms and the people going to work along the roads, so that youcan see their faces clearly as the slow train passes them by. 

They are all women and boys that work on the farms; sometimes perhapsyou see a very old man, but nearly always women and boys; they are outworking early. They straighten up from their work as we go by and lifttheir hands to bless us. 

We pass by long rows of the tall French poplars, their branches cutaway all up the trunk, leaving only an odd round tuft at the top ofthe tree; but little branches are growing all up the trunk now, andthe poplars are looking unkempt. It would be the young men who wouldcut the branches of the poplars. They would cut them for some usefulthrifty purpose that I do not know; and then they would cut thembecause they were always cut that way, as long ago as the times of theold men's tales about France; but chiefly, I expect, because youthlikes to climb difficult trees; that is why they are clipped so veryhigh. And the trunks are all unkempt now. 

We go on by many farms with their shapely red-roofed houses; theystand there, having the air of the homes of an ancient people; theywould not be out of keeping with any romance that might come, or anyromance that has come in the long story of France, and the girls ofthose red-roofed houses work all alone in the fields. 

We pass by many willows and come to a great marsh. In a punt on someopen water an old man is angling. We come to fields again, and then toa deep wood. France smiles about us in the open sunlight. 

But towards evening we pass over the border of this pleasant countryinto a tragical land of destruction and gloom. It is not only thatmurder has walked here to and fro for years, until all the fields areominous with it, but the very fields themselves have been mutilateduntil they are unlike fields, the woods have been shattered right downto the anemones, and the houses have been piled in heaps of rubbish, and the heaps of rubbish have been scattered by shells. We see no moretrees, no more houses, no more women, no cattle even now. We have cometo the abomination of desolation. And over it broods, and willprobably brood for ever, accursed by men and accursed by the veryfields, the hyena-like memory of the Kaiser, who has whitened so manybones. 

It may be some satisfaction to his selfishness to know that themonument to it cannot pass away, to know that the shell holes go toodeep to be washed away by the healing rains of years, to know that thewasted German generations will not in centuries gather up what hasbeen spilt on the Somme, or France recover in the sunshine of manysummers from all the misery that his devilish folly has caused. It islikely to be to such as him a source of satisfaction, for the trulyvain care only to be talked of in many mouths; they hysterically loveto be thought of, and the notice of mankind is to them a mirror whichreflects their futile postures. The admiration of fools they love, andthe praise of a slavelike people, but they would sooner be hated bymankind than be ignored and forgotten as is their due. And the trulyselfish care only for their imperial selves. 

Let us leave him to pass in thought from ruin to ruin, from wastedfield to field, from crater to crater; let us leave his fancy hauntingcemeteries in the stricken lands of the world, to find what glee hecan in this huge manifestation of his imperial will. 

We neither know to what punishment he moves nor can even guess whatfitting one is decreed. But the time is surely appointed and theplace. Poor trifler with Destiny, who ever had so much to dread?

A Walk to the Trenches

To stand at the beginning of a road is always wonderful; for on allroads before they end experience lies, sometimes adventure. And atrench, even as a road, has its beginnings somewhere. In the heart ofa very strange country you find them suddenly. A trench may begin inthe ruins of a house, may run up out of a ditch; may be cut into arise of ground sheltered under a hill, and is built in many ways bymany men. As to who is the best builder of trenches there can belittle doubt, and any British soldier would probably admit that forpainstaking work and excellence of construction there are few to rivalVon Hindenburg. His Hindenburg line is a model of neatness andcomfort, and it would be only a very ungrateful British soldier whowould deny it. 

You come to the trenches out of strangely wasted lands, you comeperhaps to a wood in an agony of contortions, black, branchless, sepulchral trees, and then no more trees at all. The country afterthat is still called Picardy or Belgium, still has its old name on themap as though it smiled there yet, sheltering cities and hamlet andradiant with orchards and gardens, but the country named Belgium -- orwhatever it be -- is all gone away, and there stretches for milesinstead one of the world's great deserts, a thing to take its place nolonger with smiling lands, but with Sahara, Gobi, Kalahari, and theKaroo; not to be thought of as Picardy, but more suitably to be namedthe Desert of Wilhelm. Through these sad lands one goes to come to thetrenches. Overhead floats until it is chased away an aėroplane withlittle black crosses, that you can scarcely see at his respectfulheight, peering to see what more harm may be done in the desolationand ruin. Little flashes sparkle near him, white puffs spread outround the flashes: and he goes, and our airmen go away after him;black puffs break out round our airmen. Up in the sky you hear a fainttap-tapping. They have got their machine guns working. 

You see many things there that are unusual in deserts: a good road, arailway, perhaps a motor bus; you see what was obviously once avillage, and hear English songs, but no one who has not seen it canimagine the country in which the trenches lie, unless he bear a desertclearly in mind, a desert that has moved from its place on the map bysome enchantment of wizardry, and come down on a smiling country. Would it not be glorious to be a Kaiser and be able to do things likethat?

Past all manner of men, past no trees, no hedges, no fields, but onlyone field from skyline to skyline that has been harrowed by war, onegoes with companions that this event in our history has drawn from allparts of the earth. On that road you may hear all in one walk where isthe best place to get lunch in the City; you may hear how they laid adrag for some Irish pack, and what the Master said; you may hear afarmer lamenting over the harm that rhinoceroses do to his coffeecrop; you may hear Shakespeare quoted and La vie Parisienne. 

In the village you see a lot of German orders, with their silly notesof exclamation after them, written up on notice boards among theruins. Ruins and German orders. That turning movement of Von Kluck'snear Paris in 1914 was a mistake. Had he not done it we might have hadruins and German orders everywhere. And yet Von Kluck may comforthimself with the thought that it is not by his mistakes that Destinyshapes the world: such a nightmare as a world-wide German dominationcan have had no place amongst the scheme of things. 

Beyond the village the batteries are thick. A great howitzer near theroad lifts its huge muzzle slowly, fires and goes down again, andlifts again and fires. It is as though Polyphemus had lifted his hugeshape slowly, leisurely, from the hillside where he was sitting, andhurled the mountain top, and sat down again. If he is firing prettyregularly you are sure to get the blast of one of them as you go by, and it can be a very strong wind indeed. One's horse, if one isriding, does not very much like it, but I have seen horses far morefrightened by a puddle on the road when coming home from hunting inthe evening: one 12-inch howitzer more or less in France calls for nogreat attention from man or beast. 

And so we come in sight of the support trenches where we are to dwellfor a week before we go on for another mile over the hills, where theblack fountains are rising. 

A Walk in Picardy

Picture any village you know. In such a village as that the trenchbegins. That is to say, there are duck-boards along a ditch, and theditch runs into a trench. Only the village is no longer there. It waslike some village you know, though perhaps a little merrier, becauseit was further south and nearer the sun; but it is all gone now. Andthe trench runs out of the ruins, and is called Windmill Avenue. Theremust have been a windmill standing there once. 

When you come from the ditch to the trench you leave the weeds andsoil and trunks of willows and see the bare chalk. At the top of thosetwo white walls is a foot or so of brown clay. The brown clay growsdeeper as you come to the hills, until the chalk has disappearedaltogether. Our alliance with France is new in the history of man, butit is an old, old union in the history of the hills. White chalk withbrown clay on top has dipped and gone under the sea; and the hills ofSussex and Kent are one with the hills of Picardy. 

And so you may pass through the chalk that lies in that desolate lanewith memories of more silent and happier hills; it all depends on whatthe chalk means to you: you may be unfamiliar with it and in that caseyou will not notice it; or you may have been born among thosethyme-scented hills and yet have no errant fancies, so that you willnot think of the hills that watched you as a child, but only keep yourmind on the business in hand; that is probably best. 

You come after a while to other trenches: notice boards guide you, andyou keep to Windmill Avenue. You go by Pear Lane, Cherry Lane, andPlum Lane. Pear trees, cherry trees and plum trees must have grownthere. You are passing through either wild lanes banked with briar, over which these various trees peered one by one and showered theirblossoms down at the end of spring, and girls would have gathered thefruit when it ripened, with the help of tall young men; or else youare passing through an old walled garden, and the pear and the cherryand plum were growing against the wall, looking southwards all throughthe summer. There is no way whatever of telling which it was; it isall one in war; whatever was there is gone; there remain to-day, andsurvive, the names of those three trees only. We come next to AppleLane. You must not think that an apple tree ever grew there, for wetrace here the hand of the wit, who by naming Plum Lane's neighbour``Apple Lane'' merely commemorates the inseparable connection thatplum has with apple forever in the minds of all who go to modern war. For by mixing apple with plum the manufacturer sees the opportunity ofconcealing more turnip in the jam, as it were, at the junction of thetwo forces, than he might be able to do without this unholy alliance. 

We come presently to the dens of those who trouble us (but only forour own good), the dugouts of the trench mortar batteries. It is noisywhen they push up close to the front line and play for half an hour orso with their rivals: the enemy sends stuff back, our artillery joinin; it is as though, while you were playing a game of croquet, giantshundreds of feet high, some of them friendly, some unfriendly, carnivorous and hungry, came and played football on your croquet lawn. 

We go on past Battalion Headquarters, and past the dugouts andshelters of various people having business with History, past storesof bombs and the many other ingredients with which history is made, past men coming down who are very hard to pass, for the width of twomen and two packs is the width of a communication trench and sometimesan inch over; past two men carrying a flying pig slung on a polebetween them; by many turnings; and Windmill Avenue brings you at lastto Company Headquarters in a dugout that Hindenburg made with hisGerman thoroughness. 

And there, after a while, descends the Tok Emma man, the officercommanding a trench mortar battery, and is given perchance a whiskeyand water, and sits on the best empty box that we have to offer, andlights one of our cigarettes. 

``There's going to be a bit of a strafe at 5. 30, '' he says. 

What Happened on the Night of the Twenty-Seventh

The night of the twenty-seventh was Dick Cheeser's first night onsentry. The night was far gone when he went on duty; in another hourthey would stand to. Dick Cheeser had camouflaged his age when heenlisted: he was barely eighteen. A wonderfully short time ago he wasquite a little boy; now he was in a frontline trench. It hadn't seemedthat things were going to alter like that. Dick Cheeser was a plowboy:long brown furrows over haughty, magnificent downs seemed to stretchaway into the future as far as his mind could see. No narrow outlookeither, for the life of nations depends upon those brown furrows. Butthere are the bigger furrows that Mars makes, the long brown trenchesof war; the life of nations depends on these too; Dick Cheeser hadnever pictured these. He had heard talk about a big navy and a lot ofDreadnoughts; silly nonsense he called it. What did one want a bignavy for? To keep the Germans out, some people said. But the Germansweren't coming. If they wanted to come, why didn't they come? Anybodycould see that they never did come. Some of Dick Cheeser's pals hadvotes. 

And so he had never pictured any change from plowing the great downs;and here was war at last, and here was he. The Corporal showed himwhere to stand, told him to keep a good lookout and left him. 

And there was Dick Cheeser alone in the dark with an army in front ofhim, eighty yards away: and, if all tales were true, a pretty horriblearmy. 

The night was awfully still. I use the adverb not as Dick Cheeserwould have used it. The stillness awed him. There had not been a shellall night. He put his head up over the parapet and waited. Nobodyfired at him. He felt that the night was waiting for him. He heardvoices going along the trench: some one said it was a black night: thevoices died away. A mere phrase; the night wasn't black at all, it wasgrey. Dick Cheeser was staring at it, and the night was staring backat him, and seemed to be threatening him; it was grey, grey as an oldcat that they used to have at home, and as artful. Yes, thought DickCheeser, it was an artful night; that was what was wrong with it. Ifshells had come or the Germans, or anything at all, you would know howto take it; but that quiet mist over huge valleys, and stillness!Anything might happen. Dick waited and waited, and the night waitedtoo. He felt they were watching each other, the night and he. He feltthat each was crouching. His mind slipped back to the woods on hillshe knew. He was watching with eyes and ears and imagination to seewhat would happen in No Man's Land under that ominous mist: but hismind took a peep for all that at the old woods that he knew. Hepictured himself, he and a band of boys, chasing squirrels again inthe summer. They used to chase a squirrel from tree to tree, throwingstones, till they tired it: and then they might hit it with a stone:usually not. Sometimes the squirrel would hide, and a boy would haveto climb after it. It was great sport, thought Dick Cheeser. What apity he hadn't had a catapult in those days, he thought. Somehow theyears when he had not had a catapult seemed all to be wasted years. With a catapult one might get the squirrel almost at once, with luck:and what a great thing that would be. All the other boys would comeround to look at the squirrel, and to look at the catapult, and askhim how he did it. He wouldn't have to say much, there would be thesquirrel; no boasting would be necessary with the squirrel lying dead. It might spread to other things, even rabbits; almost anything, infact. He would certainly get a catapult first thing when he got home. A little wind blew in the night, too cold for summer. It blew away, asit were, the summer of Dick's memories; blew away hills and woods andsquirrel. It made for a moment a lane in the mist over No Man's Land. Dick Cheeser peered down it, but it closed again. ``No, '' Night seemedto say, ``you don't guess my secret. '' And the awful hush intensified. ``What would they do?'' thought the sentry. ``What were they planningin all those miles of silence?'' Even the Verys were few. When onewent up, far hills seemed to sit and brood over the valley: theirblack shapes seemed to know what would happen in the mist and seemedsworn not to say. The rocket faded, and the hills went back intomystery again, and Dick Cheeser peered level again over the ominousvalley. 

All the dangers and sinister shapes and evil destinies, lurkingbetween the armies in that mist, that the sentry faced that nightcannot be told until the history of the war is written by a historianwho can see the mind of the soldier. Not a shell fell all night, noGerman stirred; Dick Cheeser was relieved at ``Stand to'' and hiscomrades stood to beside him, and soon it was wide, golden, welcomedawn. 

And for all the threats of night the thing that happened was one thatthe lonely sentry had never foreseen: in the hour of his watching DickCheeser, though scarcely eighteen, became a full-grown man. 

Standing To

One cannot say that one time in the trenches is any more tense thananother. One cannot take any one particular hour and call it, inmodern nonsensical talk, ``typical hour in the trenches. '' The routineof the trenches has gone on too long for that. The tensest hour oughtto be half an hour before dawn, the hour when attacks are expected andmen stand to. It is an old convention of war that that is thedangerous hour, the hour when defenders are weakest and attack most tobe feared. For darkness favours the attackers then as night favoursthe lion, and then dawn comes and they can hold their gains in thelight. Therefore in every trench in every war the garrison is preparedin that menacing hour, watching in greater numbers than they do thewhole night through. As the first lark lifts from meadows they standthere in the dark. Whenever there is any war in any part of the worldyou may be sure that at that hour men crowd to their parapets: whensleep is deepest in cities they are watching there. 

When the dawn shimmers a little, and a grey light comes, and widens, and all of a sudden figures become distinct, and the hour of theattack that is always expected is gone, then perhaps some faintfeeling of gladness stirs the newest of the recruits; but chiefly thehour passes like all the other hours there, an unnoticed fragment ofthe long, long routine that is taken with resignation mingled withjokes. 

Dawn comes shy with a wind scarce felt, dawn faint and strangelyperceptible, feeble and faint in the east while men still watch thedarkness. When did the darkness go? When did the dawn grow golden? Ithappened as in a moment, a moment you did not see. Guns flash nolonger: the sky is gold and serene; dawn stands there like Victorythat will shine, on one of these years when the Kaiser goes the way ofthe older curses of earth. Dawn, and the men unfix bayonets as theystep down from the fire-step and clean their rifles withpull-throughs. Not all together, but section by section, for it wouldnot do for a whole company to be caught cleaning their rifles at dawn, or at any other time. 

They rub off the mud or the rain that has come at night on theirrifles, they detach the magazine and see that its spring is working, they take out the breechblock and oil it, and put back everythingclean: and another night is gone; it is one day nearer victory. 

The Splendid Traveller

A traveller threw his cloak over his shoulder and came down slopes ofgold in El Dorado. From incredible heights he came. He came from wherethe peaks of the pure gold mountain shone a little red with thesunset; from crag to crag of gold he stepped down slowly. Sheer out ofromance he came through the golden evening. 

It was only an incident of every day; the sun had set or was setting, the air turned chill, and a battalion's bugles were playing``Retreat'' when this knightly stranger, a British aėroplane, dipped, and went homeward over the infantry. That beautiful evening call, andthe golden cloud bank towering, and that adventurer coming home in thecold, happening all together, revealed in a flash the fact (whichhours of thinking sometimes will not bring) that we live in such aperiod of romance as the troubadours would have envied. 

He came, that British airman, over the border, sheer over No Man'sLand and the heads of the enemy and the mysterious land behind, snatching the secrets that the enemy would conceal. Either he haddefeated the German airmen who would have stopped his going, or theyhad not dared to try. Who knows what he had done? He had been abroadand was coming home in the evening, as he did every day. 

Even when all its romance has been sifted from an age (as thecenturies sift) and set apart from the trivial, and when all has beenstored by the poets; even then what has any of them more romantic thanthese adventurers in the evening air, coming home in the twilight withthe black shells bursting below?

The infantry look up with the same vague wonder with which childrenlook at dragon flies; sometimes they do not look at all, for all thatcomes in France has its part with the wonder of a terrible story aswell as with the incidents of the day, incidents that recur year inand year out, too often for us to notice them. If a part of the moonwere to fall off in the sky and come tumbling to earth, the comment onthe lips of the imperturbable British watchers that have seen so muchwould be, ``Hullo, what is Jerry up to now?''

And so the British aėroplane glides home in the evening, and the lightfades from the air, and what is left of the poplars grows dark againstthe sky, and what is left of the houses grows more mournful in thegloaming, and night comes, and with it the sounds of thunder, for theairman has given his message to the artillery. It is as though Hermeshad gone abroad sailing upon his sandals, and had found some bad landbelow those winged feet wherein men did evil and kept not the laws ofgods or men; and he had brought this message back and the gods wereangry. 

For the wars we fight to-day are not like other wars, and the wondersof them are unlike other wonders. If we do not see in them the sagaand epic, how shall we tell of them?

England

``And then we used to have sausages, '' said the Sergeant. 

``And mashed?'' said the Private. 

``Yes, '' said the Sergeant, ``and beer. And then we used to go home. It was grand in the evenings. We used to go along a lane that was fullof them wild roses. And then we come to the road where the houseswere. They all had their bit of a garden, every house. ''

``Nice, I calls it, a garden, '' the Private said. 

``Yes, '' said the Sergeant, ``they all had their garden. It came rightdown to the road. Wooden palings: none of that there wire. ''

``I hates wire, '' said the Private. 

``They didn't have none of it, '' the N. C. O. Went on. ``The gardenscame right down to the road, looking lovely. Old Billy Weeks he hadthem tall pale-blue flowers in his garden nearly as high as a man. ''

``Hollyhocks?'' said the Private. 

``No, they wasn't hollyhocks. Lovely they were. We used to stop andlook at them, going by every evening. He had a path up the middle ofhis garden paved with red tiles, Billy Weeks had; and these tall blueflowers growing the whole way along it, both sides like. They was awonder. Twenty gardens there must have been, counting them all; butnone to touch Billy Weeks with his pale-blue flowers. There was an oldwindmill away to the left. Then there were the swifts sailing byoverhead and screeching: just about as high again as the houses. Lord, how them birds did fly. And there was the other young fellows, whatwere not out walking, standing about by the roadside, just doingnothing at all. One of them had a flute: Jim Booker, he was. Thosewere great days. The bats used to come out, flutter, flutter, flutter;and then there'd be a star or two; and the smoke from the chimneysgoing all grey; and a little cold wind going up and down like thebats; and all the colour going out of things; and the woods lookingall strange, and a wonderful quiet in them, and a mist coming up fromthe stream. It's a queer time that. It's always about that time, theway I see it: the end of the evening in the long days, and a star ortwo, and me and my girl going home. 

``Wouldn't you like to talk about things for a bit the way youremember them?''

``Oh, no, Sergeant, '' said the other, ``you go on. You do bring it allback so. ''

``I used to bring her home, '' the Sergeant said, ``to her father'shouse. Her father was keeper there, and they had a house in the wood. A fine house with queer old tiles on it, and a lot of large friendlydogs. I knew them all by name, same as they knew me. I used to walkhome then along the side of the wood. The owls would be about; youcould hear them yelling. They'd float out of the wood like, sometimes:all large and white. ''

``I knows them, '' said the Private. 

``I saw a fox once so close I could nearly touch him, walking like hewas on velvet. He just slipped out of the wood. ''

``Cunning old brute, '' said the Private. 

``That's the time to be out, '' said the Sergeant. ``Ten o'clock on asummer's night, and the night full of noises, not many of them, butwhat there is, strange, and coming from a great way off, through thequiet, with nothing to stop them. Dogs barking, owls hooting, an oldcart; and then just once a sound that you couldn't account for at all, not anyhow. I've heard sounds on nights like that that nobody 'udthink you'd heard, nothing like the flute that young Booker had, nothing like anything on earth. ''

``I know, '' said the Private. 

``I never told any one before, because they wouldn't believe you. Butit doesn't matter now. There'd be a light in the window to guide mewhen I got home. I'd walk up through the flowers of our garden. We hada lovely garden. Wonderful white and strange the flowers looked of anighttime. ''

``You bring it all back wonderful, '' said the Private. 

``It's a great thing to have lived, '' said the Sergeant. 

``Yes, Sergeant, '' said the other, ``I wouldn't have missed it, notfor anything. ''

For five days the barrage had rained down behind them: they wereutterly cut off and had no hope of rescue: their food was done, andthey did not know where they were. 

Shells

When the aėroplanes are home and the sunset has flared away, and it iscold, and night comes down over France, you notice the guns more thanyou do by day, or else they are actually more active then, I do notknow which it is. 

It is then as though a herd of giants, things of enormous height, cameout from lairs in the earth and began to play with the hills. It is asthough they picked up the tops of the hills in their hands and thenlet them drop rather slowly. It is exactly like hills falling. You seethe flashes all along the sky, and then that lumping thump as thoughthe top of the hill had been let drop, not all in one piece, butcrumbled a little as it would drop from your hands if you were threehundred feet high and were fooling about in the night, spoiling whatit had taken so long to make. That is heavy stuff bursting, a littleway off. 

If you are anywhere near a shell that is bursting, you can hear in ita curious metallic ring. That applies to the shells of either side, provided that you are near enough, though usually of course it is thehostile shell and not your own that you are nearest to, and so onedistinguishes them. It is curious, after such a colossal event as thisexplosion must be in the life of a bar of steel, that anything shouldremain at all of the old bell-like voice of the metal, but it appearsto, if you listen attentively; it is perhaps its last remonstrancebefore leaving its shape and going back to rust in the earth again forages. 

Another of the voices of the night is the whine the shell makes incoming; it is not unlike the cry the hyena utters as soon as it's darkin Africa: ``How nice traveller would taste, '' the hyena seems to say, and ``I want dead White Man. '' It is the rising note of the shell asit comes nearer, and its dying away when it has gone over, that makeit reminiscent of the hyena's method of diction. If it is not goingover then it has something quite different to say. It begins the sameas the other, it comes up, talking of the back areas with the samelong whine as the other. I have heard old hands say ``That one isgoing well over. '' ``Whee-oo, '' says the shell; but just where the``oo'' should be long drawn out and turn into the hyena's finalsyllable, it says something quite different. ``Zarp, '' it says. Thatis bad. Those are the shells that are looking for you. 

And then of course there is the whizz-bang coming from close, alonghis flat trajectory: he has little to say, but comes like a suddenwind, and all that he has to do is done and over at once. 

And then there is the gas shell, who goes over gurgling gluttonously, probably in big herds, putting down a barrage. It is the liquid insidethat gurgles before it is turned to gas by the mild explosion; that isthe explanation of it; yet that does not prevent one picturing a tribeof cannibals who have winded some nice juicy men and are smackingtheir chops and dribbling in anticipation. 

And a wonderful thing to see, even in those wonderful nights, is ourthermite bursting over the heads of the Germans. The shell breaks intoa shower of golden rain; one cannot judge easily at night how highfrom the ground it breaks, but about as high as the tops of trees seenat a hundred yards. It spreads out evenly all round and rains downslowly; it is a bad shower to be out in, and for a long time after ithas fallen, the sodden grass of winter, and the mud and old bonesbeneath it, burn quietly in a circle. On such a night as this, and insuch showers, the flying pigs will go over, which take two men tocarry each of them; they go over and root right down to the Germandugout, where the German has come in out of the golden rain, and theyfling it all up in the air. 

These are such nights as Scheherazade with all her versatility neverdreamed of; or if such nightmares came she certainly never told ofthem, or her august master, the Sultan, light of the age, would havehad her at once beheaded; and his people would have deemed that he didwell. It has been reserved for a modern autocrat to dream such anightmare, driven to it perhaps by the tales of a white-whiskeredScheherazade, the Lord of the Kiel Canal; and being an autocrat he hasmade the nightmare a reality for the world. But the nightmare isstronger than its master, and grows mightier every night; and theAll-Highest War Lord learns that there are powers in Hell that areeasily summoned by the rulers of earth, but that go not easily home. 

Two Degrees of Envy

It was night in the front line and no moon, or the moon was hidden. There was a strafe going on. The Tok Emmas were angry. And theartillery on both sides were looking for the Tok Emmas. 

Tok Emma, I may explain for the blessed dwellers in whatever far happyisland there be that has not heard of these things, is the crudelanguage of Mars. He has not time to speak of a trunk mortar battery, for he is always in a hurry, and so he calls them T. M. 's. But Bellonamight not hear him saying T. M. , for all the din that she makes: mightthink that he said D. N; and so he calls it Tok Emma. Ak, Beer, C, Don: this is the alphabet of Mars. 

And the huge minnies were throwing old limbs out of No Man's Land intothe frontline trench, and shells were rasping down through the airthat seemed to resist them until it was torn to pieces: they burst andshowers of mud came down from heaven. Aimlessly, as it seemed, shellswere bursting now and then in the air, with a flash intensely red: thesmell of them was drifting down the trenches. 

In the middle of all this Bert Butterworth was hit. ``Only in thefoot, '' his pals said. ``Only!'' said Bert. They put him on astretcher and carried him down the trench. They passed BillBritterling, standing in the mud, an old friend of Bert's. Bert'sface, twisted with pain, looked up to Bill for some sympathy. 

``Lucky devil, '' said Bill. 

Across the way on the other side of No Man's Land there was mud thesame as on Bill's side: only the mud over there stank; it didn't seemto have been kept clean somehow. And the parapet was sliding away inplaces, for working parties had not had much of a chance. They hadthree Tok Emmas working in that battalion front line, and the Britishbatteries did not quite know where they were, and there were eight ofthem looking. 

Fritz Groedenschasser, standing in that unseemly mud, greatly yearnedfor them to find soon what they were looking for. Eight batteriessearching for something they can't find, along a trench in which youhave to be, leaves the elephant hunter's most desperate tale a littledull and insipid. Not that Fritz Groedenschasser knew anything aboutelephant hunting: he hated all things sporting, and cordially approvedof the execution of Nurse Cavell. And there was thermite too. Flammenwerfer was all very well, a good German weapon: it could burn aman alive at twenty yards. But this accursed flaming English thermitecould catch you at four miles. It wasn't fair. 

The three German trench mortars were all still firing. When would theEnglish batteries find what they were looking for, and this awfulthing stop? The night was cold and smelly. 

Fritz shifted his feet in the foul mud, but no warmth came to him thatway. 

A gust of shells was coming along the trench. Still they had not foundthe minnewerfer! Fritz moved from his place altogether to see if hecould find some place where the parapet was not broken. And as hemoved along the sewerlike trench he came on a wooden cross that markedthe grave of a man he once had known, now buried some days in theparapet, old Ritz Handelscheiner. 

``Lucky devil, '' said Fritz. 

The Master of No Man's Land

When the last dynasty has fallen and the last empire passed away, whenman himself has gone, there will probably still remain the swede. [Therutabaga or Swedish turnip. ]

There grew a swede in No Man's Land by Croisille near the Somme, andit had grown there for a long while free from man. 

It grew as you never saw a swede grow before. It grew tall and strongand weedy. It lifted its green head and gazed round over No Man'sLand. Yes, man was gone, and it was the day of the swede. 

The storms were tremendous. Sometimes pieces of iron sang through itsleaves. But man was gone and it was the day of the swede. 

A man used to come there once, a great French farmer, an oppressor ofswedes. Legends were told of him and his herd of cattle, darktraditions that passed down vegetable generations. It was somehowknown in those fields that the man ate swedes. 

And now his house was gone and he would come no more. 

The storms were terrible, but they were better than man. The swedenodded to his companions: the years of freedom had come. 

They had always known among them that these years would come. Man hadnot been there always, but there had always been swedes. He would gosome day, suddenly, as he came. That was the faith of the swedes. Andwhen the trees went the swede believed that the day was come. Whenhundreds of little weeds arrived that were never allowed before, andgrew unchecked, he knew it. 

After that he grew without any care, in sunlight, moonlight and rain;grew abundantly and luxuriantly in the freedom, and increased inarrogance till he felt himself greater than man. And indeed in thoseleaden storms that sang often over his foliage all living thingsseemed equal. 

There was little that the Germans left when they retreated from theSomme that was higher than this swede. He grew the tallest thing formiles and miles. He dominated the waste. Two cats slunk by him from ashattered farm: he towered above them contemptuously. 

A partridge ran by him once, far, far below his lofty leaves. Thenight winds mourning in No Man's Land seemed to sing for him alone. 

It was surely the hour of the swede. For him, it seemed, was No Man'sLand. And there I met him one night by the light of a German rocketand brought him back to our company to cook. 

Weeds and Wire

Things had been happening. Divisions were moving. There had been, there was going to be, a stunt. A battalion marched over the hill andsat down by the road. They had left the trenches three days march tothe north and had come to a new country. The officers pulled theirmaps out; a mild breeze fluttered them; yesterday had been winter andto-day was spring; but spring in a desolation so complete andfar-reaching that you only knew of it by that little wind. It wasearly March by the calendar, but the wind was blowing out of the gatesof April. A platoon commander, feeling that mild wind blowing, forgothis map and began to whistle a tune that suddenly came to him out ofthe past with the wind. Out of the past it blew and out of the South, a merry vernal tune of a Southern people. Perhaps only one of thosethat noticed the tune had ever heard it before. An officer sittingnear had heard it sung; it reminded him of a holiday long ago in theSouth. 

``Where did you hear that tune?'' he asked the platoon commander. 

``Oh, the hell of a long way from here, '' the platoon commander said. 

He did not remember quite where it was he had heard it, but heremembered a sunny day in France and a hill all dark with pine woods, and a man coming down at evening out of the woods, and down the slopeto the village, singing this song. Between the village and the slopethere were orchards in blossom. So that he came with his song forhundreds of yards through orchards. ``The hell of a way from here, ''he said. 

For a long while then they sat silent. 

``It mightn't have been so very far from here, '' said the platooncommander. ``It was in France, now I come to think of it. But it was alovely part of France, all woods and orchards. Nothing like this, thank God. '' And he glanced with a tired look at the unutterabledesolation. 

``Where was it?'' said the other. 

``In Picardy, '' he said. 

``Aren't we in Picardy now?'' said his friend. 

``Are we?'' he said. 

``I don't know. The maps don't call it Picardy. ''

``It was a fine place, anyway, '' the platoon commander said. ``Thereseemed always to be a wonderful light on the hills. A kind of shortgrass grew on them, and it shone in the sun at evening. There wereblack woods above them. A man used to come out of them singing atevening. ''

He looked wearily round at the brown desolation of weeds. As far asthe two officers could see there was nothing but brown weeds and bitsof brown barbed wire. He turned from the desolate scene back to hisreminiscences. 

``He came singing through the orchards into the village, '' he said. ``A quaint old place with queer gables, called Ville-en-Bois. ''

``Do you know where we are?'' said the other. 

``No, said the platoon commander. ''

``I thought not, '' he said. ``Hadn't you better take a look at themap?''

``I suppose so, '' said the platoon commander, and he smoothed out hismap and wearily got to the business of finding out where he was. 

``Good Lord!'' he said. ``Ville-en-Bois!''

Spring in England and Flanders

Very soon the earliest primroses will be coming out in woods whereverthey have been sheltered from the north. They will grow bolder as thedays go by, and spread and come all down the slopes of sunny hills. Then the anemones will come, like a shy pale people, one of the tribesof the elves, who dare not leave the innermost deeps of the wood: inthose days all the trees will be in leaf, the bluebells will follow, and certain fortunate woods will shelter such myriads of them that thebright fresh green of the beech trees will flash between two blues, the blue of the sky and the deeper blue of the bluebells. Later theviolets come, and such a time as this is the perfect time to seeEngland: when the cuckoo is heard and he surprises his hearers; whenevenings are lengthening out and the bat is abroad again; and all theflowers are out and all the birds sing. At such a time not only Naturesmiles but our quiet villages and grave old spires wake up from winterin the mellow air and wear their centuries lightly. At such a time youmight come just at evening on one of those old villages in a valleyand find it in the mood to tell you the secret of the ages that it hidand treasured there before the Normans came. Who knows? For they arevery old, very wise, very friendly; they might speak to you one warmevening. If you went to them after great suffering they might speak toyou; after nights and nights of shelling over in France, they mightspeak to you and you might hear them clearly. 

It would be a long, long story that they would tell, all about theages; and it would vary wonderfully little, much less perhaps than wethink; and the repetitions rambling on and on in the evening, as theold belfry spoke and the cottages gathered below it, might sound sosoothing after the boom of shells that perhaps you would nearly sleep. And then with one's memory tired out by the war one might neverremember the long story they told, when the belfry and thebrown-roofed houses all murmured at evening, might never remember eventhat they had spoken all through that warm spring and evening. We mayhave heard them speak and forgotten that they have spoken. Who knows?We are at war, and see so many strange things: some we must forget, some we must remember; and we cannot choose which. 

To turn from Kent to Flanders is to turn to a time of mourning throughall seasons alike. Spring there brings out no leaf on myriad oaks, northe haze of green that floats like a halo above the heads of the birchtrees, that stand with their fairylike trunks haunting the deeps ofthe woods. For miles and miles and miles summer ripens no crops, leadsout no maidens laughing in the moonlight, and brings no harvest home. When Autumn looks on orchards in all that region of mourning he looksupon barren trees that will never blossom again. Winter drives in nosturdy farmers at evening to sit before cheery fires, families meetnot at Christmas, and the bells are dumb in belfries; for all by whicha man might remember his home has been utterly swept away: has beenswept away to make a maniacal dancing ground on which a murderouspeople dance to their death led by a shallow, clever, callous, imperial clown. 

There they dance to their doom till their feet shall find theprecipice that was prepared for them on the day that they planned theevil things they have done. 

The Nightmare Countries

There are certain lands in the darker dreams of poetry that stand outin the memory of generations. There is for instance Poe's ``Dark tarnof Auber, the ghoul-haunted region of Weir''; there are some queertwists in the river Alph as imagined by Coleridge; two lines ofSwinburne:

By the tideless dolorous inland seaIn a land of sand and ruin and gold

are as haunting as any. There are in literature certain regions ofgloom, so splendid that whenever you come on them they leave in themind a sort of nightmare country which one's thoughts revisit onhearing the lines quoted. 

It is pleasant to picture such countries sometimes when sitting beforethe fire. It is pleasant because you can banish them by the closing ofa book; a puff of smoke from a pipe will hide them altogether, andback come the pleasant, wholesome, familiar things. But in France theyare there always. In France the nightmare countries stand all night inthe starlight; dawn comes and they still are there. The dead areburied out of sight and others take their places among men; but thelost lands lie unburied gazing up at the winds; and the lost woodsstand like skeletons all grotesque in the solitude; the very seasonshave fled from them. The very seasons have fled; so that if you lookup to see whether summer has turned to autumn, or if autumn has turnedto winter yet, nothing remains to show you. It is like the eccentricdream of some strange man, very arresting and mysterious, but lackingcertain things that should be there before you can recognize it asearthly. It is a mad, mad landscape. There are miles and miles andmiles of it. It is the biggest thing man has done. It looks as thoughman in his pride, with all his clever inventions, had made for himselfa sorry attempt at creation. 

Indeed when we trace it all back to its origin we find at thebeginning of this unhappy story a man who was only an emperor andwished to be something more. He would have ruled the world but hasonly meddled with it; and his folly has brought misery to millions, and there lies his broken dream on the broken earth. He will nevertake Paris now. He will never be crowned at Versailles as Emperor ofEurope; and after that, most secret dream of all, did not the Cęsarsproclaim themselves divine? Was it not whispered among Macedoniancourtiers that Alexander was the child of God? And was theHohenzollern less than these?

What might not force accomplish? All gone now, that dream and theHohenzollern line broken. A maniacal dream and broken farms all mixedup together: they make a pretty nightmare and the clouds still gleamat night with the flashes of shells, and the sky is still troubled byday with uncouth balloons and the black bursts of the German shellsand the white of our anti-aircraft. 

And below there lies this wonderful waste land where no girls sing, and where no birds come but starlings; where no hedgerows stand, andno lanes with wild roses, and where no pathways run through fields ofwheat, and there are no fields at all and no farms and no farmers; andtwo haystacks stand on a hill I know, undestroyed in the desolation, and nobody touches them for they know the Germans too well; and thetops have been blown off hills down to the chalk. And men say of thisplace that it is Pozičres and of that place that it is Ginchy; nothingremains to show that hamlets stood there at all, and a brown, brownweed grows over it all for ever; and a mighty spirit has arisen inman, and no one bows to the War Lord though many die. And Liberty isshe who sang her songs of old, and is fair as she ever was, when mensee her in visions, at night in No Man's Land when they have thestrength to crawl in: still she walks of a night in Pozičres and inGinchy. 

A fanciful man once called himself the Emperor of the Sahara: theGerman Kaiser has stolen into a fair land and holds with weakeninghands a land of craters and weed, and wire and wild cabbages and oldGerman bones. 

Spring and the Kaiser

While all the world is waiting for Spring there lie great spaces inone of the pleasantest lands to which Spring cannot come. 

Pear trees and cherry and orchards flash over other lands, blossomingas abundantly as though their wonder were new, with a beauty as freshand surprising as though nothing like it before had ever adornedcountless centuries. Now with the larch and soon with the beech treesand hazel, a bright green blazes forth to illumine the year. Theslopes are covered with violets. Those who have gardens are beginningto be proud of them and to point them out to their neighbours. Almondand peach in blossom peep over old brick walls. The land dreams ofsummer all in the youth of the year. 

But better than all this the Germans have found war. The simplecontent of a people at peace in pleasant countries counted for nothingwith them. Their Kaiser prepared for war, made speeches about war, and, when he was ready, made war. And now the hills that should becovered with violets are full of murderous holes, and the holes arehalf full of empty meat tins, and the garden walls have gone and thegardens with them, and there are no woods left to shelter anemones. Boundless masses of brown barbed wire straggle over the landscape. Allthe orchards there are cut down out of ruthless spite to hurt Francewhom they cannot conquer. All the little trees that grow near gardensare gone, aspen, laburnum and lilac. It is like this for hundreds ofmiles. Hundreds of ruined towns gaze at it with vacant windows and seea land from which even Spring is banished. And not a ruined house inall the hundred towns but mourns for some one, man, woman or child;for the Germans make war equally on all in the land where Spring comesno more. 

Some day Spring will come back; some day she will shine all April inPicardy again, for Nature is never driven utterly forth, but comesback with her seasons to cover up even the vilest things. 

She shall hide the raw earth of the shell holes till the violets comeagain; she shall bring back even the orchards for Spring to walk inonce more; the woods will grow tall again above the southern anemones;and the great abandoned guns of the Germans will rust by the rivers ofFrance. Forgotten like them, the memory of the War Lord will pass withhis evil deeds. 

Two Songs

Over slopes of English hills looking south in the time of violets, evening was falling. 

Shadows at edges of woods moved, and then merged in the gloaming. 

The bat, like a shadow himself, finding that spring was come, slippedfrom the dark of the wood as far as a clump of beech trees andfluttered back again on his wonderful quiet wings. 

Pairing pigeons were home. 

Very young rabbits stole out to gaze at the calm still world. Theycame out as the stars come. At one time they were not there, and thenyou saw them, but you did not see them come. 

Towering clouds to the west built palaces, cities and mountains;bastions of rose and precipices of gold; giants went home over themdraped in mauve by steep rose-pink ravines into emerald-green empires. Turbulences of colour broke out above the departed sun; giants mergedinto mountains, and cities became seas, and new processions of otherfantastic things sailed by. But the chalk slopes facing south smiledon with the same calm light, as though every blade of grass gathered aray from the gloaming. All the hills faced the evening with that samequiet glow, which faded softly as the air grew colder; and the firststar appeared. 

Voices came up in the hush, clear from the valley, and ceased. A lightwas lit, like a spark, in a distant window: more stars appeared andthe woods were all dark now, and shapes even on the hill slopes beganto grow indistinct. 

Home by a laneway in the dim, still evening a girl was going, singingthe Marseillaise. 

In France where the downs in the north roll away without hedges, asthough they were great free giants that man had never confined, asthough they were stretching their vast free limbs in the evening, thesame light was smiling and glimmering softly away. 

A road wound over the downs and away round one of their shoulders. Ahush lay over them as though the giants slept, or as though theyguarded in silence their ancient, wonderful history. 

The stillness deepened and the dimness of twilight; and just beforecolours fade, while shapes can still be distinguished, there came bythe road a farmer leading his Norman horse. High over the horse'swithers his collar pointed with brass made him fantastic and huge andstrange to see in the evening. 

They moved together through that mellow light towards where unseenamong the clustered downs the old French farmer's house was shelteredaway. 

He was going home at evening humming ``God Save the King. ''

The Punishment

An exhalation arose, drawn up by the moon, from an old battlefieldafter the passing of years. It came out of very old craters andgathered from trenches, smoked up from No Man's Land, and the ruins offarms; it rose from the rottenness of dead brigades, and lay for halfthe night over two armies; but at midnight the moon drew it up allinto one phantom and it rose and trailed away eastwards. 

It passed over men in grey that were weary of war; it passed over aland once prosperous, happy and mighty, in which were a people thatwere gradually starving; it passed by ancient belfries in which therewere no bells now; it passed over fear and misery and weeping, and socame to the palace at Potsdam. It was the dead of the night betweenmidnight and dawn, and the palace was very still that the Emperormight sleep, and sentries guarded it who made no noise and relievedothers in silence. Yet it was not so easy to sleep. Picture toyourself a murderer who had killed a man. Would you sleep? Pictureyourself the man that planned this war! Yes, you sleep, but nightmarescome. 

The phantom entered the chamber. ``Come, '' it said. 

The Kaiser leaped up at once as obediently as when he came toattention on parade, years ago, as a subaltern in the Prussian Guard, a man whom no woman or child as yet had ever cursed; he leaped up andfollowed. They passed the silent sentries; none challenged and nonesaluted; they were moving swiftly over the town as the felon Gothasgo; they came to a cottage in the country. They drifted over a littlegarden gate, and there in a neat little garden the phantom halted likea wind that has suddenly ceased. ``Look, '' it said. 

Should he look? Yet he must look. The Kaiser looked; and saw a windowshining and a neat room in the cottage: there was nothing dreadfulthere; thank the good German God for that; it was all right, afterall. The Kaiser had had a fright, but it was all right; there was onlya woman with a baby sitting before the fire, and two small childrenand a man. And it was quite a jolly room. And the man was a youngsoldier; and, why, he was a Prussian Guardsman, -- there was hishelmet hanging on the wall, -- so everything was all right. They werejolly German children; that was well. How nice and homely the roomwas. There shone before him, and showed far off in the night, thevisible reward of German thrift and industry. It was all so tidy andneat, and yet they were quite poor people. The man had done his workfor the Fatherland, and yet beyond all that had been able to affordall those little knickknacks that make a home so pleasant and that intheir humble little way were luxury. And while the Kaiser looked thetwo young children laughed as they played on the floor, not seeingthat face at the window. 

Why! Look at the helmet. That was lucky. A bullet hole right throughthe front of it. That must have gone very close to the man's head. However did it get through? It must have glanced upwards as bulletssometimes do. The hole was quite low in the helmet. It would bedreadful to have bullets coming by close like that. The firelightflickered, and the lamp shone on, and the children played on thefloor, and the man was smoking out of a china pipe; he was strong andable and young, one of the wealth-winners of Germany. 

``Have you seen?'' said the phantom. 

``Yes, '' said the Kaiser. It was well, he thought, that a Kaisershould see how his people lived. 

At once the fire went out and the lamp faded away, the room fellsombrely into neglect and squalor, and the soldier and the childrenfaded away with the room; all disappeared phantasmally, and nothingremained but the helmet in a kind of glow on the wall, and the womansitting all by herself in the darkness. 

``It has all gone, '' said the Kaiser. 

``It has never been, '' said the phantom. 

The Kaiser looked again. Yes, there was nothing there, it was just avision. There were the grey walls all damp and uncared for, and thathelmet standing out solid and round, like the only real thing amongfancies. No, it had never been. It was just a vision. 

``It might have been, '' said the phantom. 

Might have been? How might it have been?

``Come, '' said the phantom. 

They drifted away down a little lane that in summer would have hadroses, and came to an Uhlan's house; in times of peace a small farmer. Farm buildings in good repair showed even in the night, and the blackshapes of haystacks; again a well-kept garden lay by the house. Thephantom and the Kaiser stood in the garden; before them a windowglowed in a lamplit room. 

``Look, '' said the phantom. 

The Kaiser looked again and saw a young couple; the woman played witha baby, and all was prosperous in the merry room. Again the hard-wonwealth of Germany shone out for all to see, the cosy comfortablefurniture spoke of acres well cared for, spoke of victory in thestruggle with the seasons on which wealth of nations depends. 

``It might have been, '' said the phantom. Again the fire died out andthe merry scene faded away, leaving a melancholy, ill-kept room, withpoverty and mourning haunting dusty corners and the woman sittingalone. 

``Why do you show me this?'' said the Kaiser. ``Why do you show methese visions?''

``Come, '' said the phantom. 

``What is it?'' said the Kaiser. ``Where are you bringing me?''

``Come, '' said the phantom. 

They went from window to window, from land to land. You had seen, hadyou been out that night in Germany, and able to see visions, animperious figure passing from place to place, looking on many scenes. He looked on them, and families withered away, and happy scenes faded, and the phantom said to him ``Come. '' He expostulated but obeyed; andso they went from window to window of hundreds of farms in Prussia, till they came to the Prussian border and went on into Saxony; andalways you would have heard, could you hear spirits speak, ``It mighthave been, '' ``It might have been, '' repeated from window to window. 

They went down through Saxony, heading for Austria. And for long theKaiser kept that callous, imperious look. But at last he, even he, atlast he nearly wept. And the phantom turned then and swept him backover Saxony, and into Prussia again and over the sentries' heads, backto his comfortable bed where it was so hard to sleep. 

And though they had seen thousands of merry homes, homes that cannever be merry now, shrines of perpetual mourning; though they hadseen thousands of smiling German children, who will never be born now, but were only the visions of hopes blasted by him; for all the leaguesover which he had been so ruthlessly hurried, dawn was yet barelybreaking. 

He had looked on the first few thousand homes of which he had robbedall time, and which he must see with his eyes before he may go hence. The first night of the Kaiser's punishment was accomplished. 

The English Spirit

By the end of the South African war Sergeant Cane had got one thingvery well fixed in his mind, and that was that war was an overratedamusement. He said he ``was fed up with it, '' partly because thatmisused metaphor was then new, partly because every one was saying it:he felt it right down in his bones, and he had a long memory. So whenwonderful rumours came to the East Anglian village where he lived, onAugust 1, 1914, Sergeant Cane said: ``That means war, '' and decidedthen and there to have nothing to do with it: it was somebody else'sturn; he felt he had done enough. Then came August 4th, and Englandtrue to her destiny, and then Lord Kitchener's appeal for men. Sergeant Cane had a family to look after and a nice little house: hehad left the army ten years. 

In the next week all the men went who had been in the army before, allthat were young enough, and a good sprinkling of the young men too whohad never been in the army. Men asked Cane if he was going, and hesaid straight out ``No. ''

By the middle of August Cane was affecting the situation. He was alittle rallying point for men who did not want to go. ``He knows whatit's like, '' they said. 

In the smoking room of the Big House sat the Squire and his son, ArthurSmith; and Sir Munion Boomer-Platt, the Member for the division. TheSquire's son had been in the last war as a boy, and like Sergeant Canehad left the army since. All the morning he had been cursing animaginary general, seated in the War Office at an imaginary desk withSmith's own letter before him, in full view but unopened. Why on earthdidn't he answer it, Smith thought. But he was calmer now, and theSquire and Sir Munion were talking of Sergeant Cane. 

``Leave him to me, '' said Sir Munion. 

``Very well, '' said the Squire. So Sir Munion Boomer-Platt went offand called on Sergeant Cane. 

Mrs Cane knew what he had come for. 

``Don't let him talk you over, Bill, '' she said. 

``Not he, '' said Sergeant Cane. 

Sir Munion came on Sergeant Cane in his garden. 

``A fine day, '' said Sir Munion. And from that he went on to the war. ``If you enlist, '' he said, ``they will make you a sergeant again atonce. You will get a sergeant's pay, and your wife will get the newseparation allowance. ''

``Sooner have Cane, '' said Mrs Cane. 

``Yes, yes, of course, '' said Sir Munion. ``But then there is themedal, probably two or three medals, and the glory of it, and it issuch a splendid life. ''

Sir Munion did warm to a thing whenever he began to hear his ownwords. He painted war as it has always been painted, one of the mostbeautiful things you could imagine. And then it mustn't be supposedthat it was like those wars that there used to be, a long way off. There would be houses where you would be billeted, and good food, andshady trees and villages wherever you went. And it was such anopportunity of seeing the Continent (``the Continent as it reallyis, '' Sir Munion called it) as would never come again, and he onlywished he were younger. Sir Munion really did wish it, as he spoke, for his own words stirred him profoundly; but somehow or other theydid not stir Sergeant Cane. No, he had done his share, and he had afamily to look after. 

Sir Munion could not understand him: he went back to the Big House andsaid so. He had told him all the advantages he could think of thatwere there to be had for the asking, and Sergeant Cane merelyneglected them. 

``Let me have a try, '' said Arthur Smith. ``He soldiered with mebefore. ''

Sir Munion shrugged his shoulders. He had all the advantages at hisfingers' ends, from pay to billeting: there was nothing more to besaid. Nevertheless young Smith went. 

``Hullo, Sergeant Cane, '' said Smith. 

``Hello, sir, '' said the sergeant. 

``Do you remember that night at Reit River?''

``Don't I, sir, '' said Cane. 

``One blanket each and no ground sheet?''

``I remember, sir, '' said Cane. 

``Didn't it rain, '' said Smith. 

``It rained that night, proper. ''

``Drowned a few of the lice, I suppose. ''

``Not many, '' said Cane. 

``No, not many, '' Smith reflected. ``The Boers had the range all rightthat time. ''

``Gave it us proper, '' said Cane. 

``We were hungry that night, '' said Smith. ``I could have eatenbiltong. ''

``I did eat some of it, '' said Cane. ``Not bad stuff, what there wasof it, only not enough. ''

``I don't think, '' said Smith, ``that I've ever slept on the bareearth since. ''

``No, sir?'' said Cane. ``It's hard. You get used to it. But it willalways be hard. ''

``Yes, it will always be hard, '' said Smith. ``Do you remember thetime we were thirsty?''

``Oh, yes, sir, '' said Cane, ``I remember that. One doesn't forgetthat. ''

``No. I still dream of it sometimes, '' said Smith. ``It makes a nastydream. I wake with my mouth all dry too, when I dream that. ''

``Yes, '' said Cane, ``one doesn't forget being thirsty. ''

``Well, '' said Smith, ``I suppose we're for it all over again?''

``I suppose so, sir, '' said Cane. 

An Investigation Into the Causes and Origin of the War

The German imperial barber has been called up. He must have beencalled up quite early in the war. I have seen photographs in papersthat leave no doubt of that. Who he is I do not know: I once read hisname in an article but have forgotten it; few even know if he stilllives. And yet what harm he has done! What vast evils he hasunwittingly originated! Many years ago he invented a frivolity, a jeud'esprit easily forgivable to an artist in the heyday of his youth, towhom his art was new and even perhaps wonderful. A craft, of course, rather than an art, and a humble craft at that; but then, the man wasyoung, and what will not seem wonderful to youth?

He must have taken the craft very seriously, but as youth takes thingsseriously, fantastically and with laughter. He must have determined tooutshine rivals: he must have gone away and thought, burning candleslate perhaps, when all the palace was still. But how can youth thinkseriously? And there had come to him this absurd, this fantasticalconceit. What else would have come? The more seriously he took thetonsorial art, the more he studied its tricks and phrases and heardold barbers lecture, the more sure were the imps of youth to prompthim to laughter and urge him to something outrageous and ridiculous. The background of the dull pomp of Potsdam must have made all thismore certain. It was bound to come. 

And so one day, or, as I have suggested, suddenly late one night, there came to the young artist bending over tonsorial books thatquaint, mad, odd, preposterous inspiration. Ah, what pleasure there isin the madness of youth; it is not like the madness of age, clingingto outworn formulę; it is the madness of breaking away, of gallopingamong precipices, of dallying with the impossible, of courting theabsurd. And this inspiration, it was in none of the books; thelecturer barbers had not lectured on it, could not dream of it and didnot dare to; there was no tradition for it, no precedent; it was mad;and to introduce it into the pomp of Potsdam, that was the daring ofmadness. And this preposterous inspiration of the absurd youngbarber-madman was nothing less than a moustache that without any curveat all, or any suggestion of sanity, should go suddenly up at the endsvery nearly as high as the eyes!

He must have told his young fellow craftsmen first, for youth goesfirst to youth with its hallucinations. And they, what could they havesaid? You cannot say of madness that it is mad, you cannot callabsurdity absurd. To have criticized would have revealed jealousy; andas for praise you could not praise a thing like that. They probablyshrugged, made gestures; and perhaps one friend warned him. But youcannot warn a man against a madness; if the madness is in possessionit will not be warned away: why should it? And then perhaps he went tothe old barbers of the Court. You can picture their anger. Age doesnot learn from youth in any case. But there was the insult to theirancient craft, bad enough if only imagined, but here openly spoken of. And what would come of it? They must have feared, on the one hand, dishonour to their craft if this young barber were treated as hislevity deserved; and, on the other hand, could they have feared hissuccess? I think they could not have guessed it. 

And then the young idiot with his preposterous inspiration must havelooked about to see where he could practise his new absurdity. Itshould have been enough to have talked about it among his fellowbarbers; they would have gone with new zest to their work next day forthis delirious interlude, and no harm would have been done. ``Fritz, ''(or Hans) they would have said, ``was a bit on last night, a bit fullup, '' or whatever phrase they use to touch on drunkenness; and thething would have been forgotten. We all have our fancies. But thisyoung fool wanted to get his fancy mixed up with practice: that'swhere he was mad. And in Potsdam, of all places. 

He probably tried his friends first, young barbers at the Court andothers of his own standing. None of them were fools enough to be seengoing about like that. They had jobs to lose. A Court barber is onething, a man who cuts ordinary hair is quite another. Why should theybecome outcasts because their friend chose to be mad?

He probably tried his inferiors then, but they would have been timidfolk; they must have seen the thing was absurd, and of course daren'trisk it. Again, why should they?

Did he try to get some noble then to patronize his invention? Probablythe first refusals he had soon inflamed his madness more, and he threwcaution insanely to the winds, and went straight to the Emperor. 

It was probably about the time that the Emperor dismissed Bismarck;certainly the drawings of that time show him still with a sanemoustache. 

The young barber probably chanced on him in this period, finding himbereft of an adviser, and ready to be swayed by whatever whim shouldcome. Perhaps he was attracted by the barber's hardihood, perhaps theabsurdity of his inspiration had some fascination for him, perhaps hemerely saw that the thing was new and, feeling jaded, let the barberhave his way. And so the frivolity became a fact, the absurdity becamevisible, and honour and riches came the way of the barber. 

A small thing, you might say, however fantastical. And yet I believethe absurdity of that barber to be among the great evils that havebrought death nearer to man; whimsical and farcical as it was, yet athing deadlier than Helen's beauty or Tamerlane's love of skulls. Forjust as character is outwardly shown so outward things react upon thecharacter; and who, with that daring barber's ludicrous fancy visiblealways on his face, could quite go the sober way of beneficentmonarchs? The fantasy must be mitigated here, set off there; had yousuch a figure to dress, say for amateur theatricals, you would realizethe difficulty. The heavy silver eagle to balance it; the glitteringcuirass lower down, preventing the eye from dwelling too long on thebarber's absurdity. And then the pose to go with the cuirass and tocarry off the wild conceit of that mad, mad barber. He has much toanswer for, that eccentric man whose name so few remember. For poseled to actions; and just when Europe most needed a man of wisecounsels, restraining the passions of great empires, just then she hadruling over Germany and, unhappily, dominating Austria, a man whoevery year grew more akin to the folly of that silly barber's youthfulinspiration. 

Let us forgive the barber. For long I have known from pictures that Ihave seen of the Kaiser that he has gone to the trenches. Probably heis dead. Let us forgive the barber. But let us bear in mind that thefutile fancies of youth may be deadly things, and that one of themfalling on a fickle mind may so stir its shallows as to urge it todisturb and set in motion the avalanches of illimitable grief. 

Lost

Describing a visit, say the papers of March 28th, which the Kaiserpaid incognito to Cologne Cathedral on March 18th before the greatbattle, the Cologne correspondent of the Tyd says:

There were only a few persons in the building. Under high archesand in spacious solitude the Kaiser sat, as if in deep thought, before the priests' choir. Behind him his military staff stoodrespectfully at a distance. Still musing as he rose, the monarchresting both hands on his walking-stick remains standing immovablefor some minutes. . . I shall never forget this picture of the musingmonarch praying in Cologne Cathedral on the eve of the greatbattle. 

Probably he won't forget it. The German casualty lists will help toremind him. But what is more to the point is that this expertpropagandist has presumably received orders that we are not to forgetit, and that the sinister originator of the then impending holocaustshould be toned down a little in the eyes at least of the Tyd tosomething a little more amiable. 

And no doubt the little piece of propaganda gave every satisfaction tothose who ordered it, or they would not have passed it out to the Tyd, and the touching little scene would never have reached our eyes. Atthe same time the little tale would have been better suited to thepsychology of other countries if he had made the War Lord kneel whenhe prayed in Cologne Cathedral, and if he had represented the MilitaryStaff as standing out of respect to One who, outside Germany, is heldin greater respect than the All Highest. 

And had the War Lord really knelt is it not possible that he mighthave found pity, humility, or even contrition? Things easilyoverlooked in so large a cathedral when sitting erect, as a War Lord, before the priests' choir, but to be noticed perhaps with one's eyesturned to the ground. 

Perhaps he nearly found one of those things. Perhaps he felt (whoknows?) just for a moment, that in the dimness of those enormousaisles was something he had lost a long, long while ago. 

One is not mistaken to credit the very bad with feeling far, faintappeals from things of glory like Cologne Cathedral; it is that theappeals come to them too far and faint on their headlong descent toruin. 

For what was the War Lord seeking? Did he know that pity for his poorslaughtered people, huddled by him on to our ceaseless machine guns, might be found by seeking there? Or was it only that the lost thing, whatever it was, made that faint appeal to him, passing the door bychance, and drew him in, as the scent of some herb or flower in amoment draws us back years to look for something lost in our youth; wegaze back, wondering, and do not find it. 

And to think that perhaps he lost it by very little! That, but forthat proud attitude and the respectful staff, he might have seen whatwas lost, and have come out bringing pity for his people. Might havesaid to the crowd that gave him that ovation, as we read, outside thedoor: ``My pride has driven you to this needless war, my ambition hasmade a sacrifice of millions, but it is over, and it shall be no more;I will make no more conquests. ''

They would have killed him. But for that renunciation, perhaps, however late, the curses of the widows of his people might have keptaway from his grave. 

But he did not find it. He sat at prayer. Then he stood. Then hemarched out: and his staff marched out behind him. And in the gloom ofthe floor of the vast Cologne Cathedral lie the things that the Kaiserdid not find and never will find now. Unnoticed thus, and in somesilent moment, passes a man's last chance. 

The Last Mirage

The desolation that the German offensive has added to the dominions ofthe Kaiser cannot easily be imagined by any one who has never seen adesert. Look at it on the map and it is full of the names of towns andvillages; it is in Europe, where there are no deserts; it is a fertileprovince among places of famous names. Surely it is a proud additionto an ambitious monarch's possessions. Surely there is something therethat it is worth while to have conquered at the cost of army corps. No, nothing. They are mirage towns. The farms grow Dead Sea fruit. France recedes before the imperial clutch. France smiles, but not forhim. His new towns seem to be his because their names have not yetbeen removed from any map, but they crumble at his approach becauseFrance is not for him. His deadly ambition makes a waste before it asit goes, clutching for cities. It comes to them and the cities are notthere. 

I have seen mirages and have heard others told of, but the bestmirages of all we never hear described; the mirage that waterlesstravellers see at the last. Those fountains rising out of onyx basins, blue and straight into incredible heights, and falling and floodingcool white marble; the haze of spray above their feathery headsthrough which the pale green domes of weathered copper shimmer andshake a little; mysterious temples, the tombs of unknown kings; thecataracts coming down from rose-quartz cliffs, far off but seen quiteclearly, growing to rivers bearing curious barges to the golden courtsof Sahara. These things we never see; they are seen at the last by menwho die of thirst. 

Even so has the Kaiser looked at the smiling plains of France. Even sohas he looked on her famous ancient cities and the farms and thefertile fields and the woods and orchards of Picardy. With effort andtrouble he has moved towards them. As he comes near to them the citiescrumble, the woods shrivel and fall, the farms fade out of Picardy, even the hedgerows go; it is bare, bare desert. He had been sure ofParis, he had dreamed of Versailles and some monstrous coronation, hehad thought his insatiable avarice would be sated. For he had plottedfor conquest of the world, that boundless greed of his goading him onas a man in the grip of thirst broods upon lakes. 

He sees victory near him now. That also will fade in the desert of oldbarbed wire and weeds. When will he see that a doom is over all hisambitions? For his dreams of victory are like those last dreams thatcome in deceptive deserts to dying men. 

There is nothing good for him in the desert of the Somme. Bapaume isnot really there, though it be marked on his maps; it is only awilderness of slates and brick. Peronne looks like a city a long wayoff, but when you come near it is only the shells of houses. Pozičre, Le Sars, Sapigny, are gone altogether. 

And all is Dead Sea fruit in a visible desert. The reports of Germanvictories there are mirage like all the rest; they too will fade intoweeds and old barbed wire. 

And the advances that look like victories, and the ruins that looklike cities, and the shell-beaten broken fields that look like farms, -- they and the dreams of conquest and all the plots and ambitions, they are all the mirage of a dying dynasty in a desert it made for itsdoom. 

Bones lead up to the desert, bones are scattered about it, it is themost menacing and calamitous waste of all the deadly places that havebeen inclement to man. It flatters the Hohenzollerns with visions ofvictory now because they are doomed by it and are about to die. Whentheir race has died the earth shall smile again, for their deadlymirage shall oppress us no more. The cities shall rise again and thefarms come back; hedgerows and orchards shall be seen again; the woodsshall slowly lift their heads from the dust; and gardens shall comeagain where the desert was, to bloom in happier ages that forget theHohenzollerns. 

A Famous Man

Last winter a famous figure walked in Behagnies. Soldiers came to seehim from their billets all down the Arras road, from Ervillers andfrom Sapigny, and from the ghosts of villages back from the road, places that once were villages but are only names now. They would walkthree or four miles, those who could not get lorries, for his was oneof those names that all men know, not such a name as a soldier or poetmay win, but a name that all men know. They used to go there atevening. 

Four miles away on the left as you went from Ervillers, the gunsmumbled over the hills, low hills over which the Verys from thetrenches put up their heads and peered around, -- greeny, yellowyheads that turned the sky sickly, and the clouds lit up and went greyagain all the night long. As you got near to Behagnies you lost sightof the Verys, but the guns mumbled on. A silly little train used torun on one's left, which used to whistle loudly, as though it asked tobe shelled, but I never saw a shell coming its way; perhaps it knewthat the German gunners could not calculate how slow it went. Itcrossed the road as you got down to Behagnies. 

You passed the graves of two or three German soldiers with their nameson white wooden crosses, -- men killed in 1914; and then a littlecemetery of a French cavalry regiment, where a big cross stood in themiddle with a wreath and a tricolor badge, and the names of the men. And then one saw trees. That was always a wonder, whether one sawtheir dark shapes in the evening, or whether one saw them by day, andknew from the look of their leaves whether autumn had come yet, orgone. In winter at evening one just saw the black bulk of them, butthat was no less marvellous than seeing them green in summer; trees bythe side of the Arras-Bapaume road, trees in mid-desert in the awfulregion of Somme. There were not many of them, just a cluster, fewerthan the date palms in an oasis in Sahara, but an oasis is an oasiswherever you find it, and a few trees make it. There are little placeshere and there, few enough as the Arabs know, that the Sahara's deadlysand has never been able to devastate; and there are places even inthe Somme that German malice, obeying the Kaiser as the sand of Saharaobeys the accursed sirocco, has not been able to destroy quite to theuttermost. That little cluster of trees at Behagnies is one of these;Divisional Headquarters used to shelter beneath them; and near themwas a statue on a lawn which probably stood by the windows of somefine house, though there is no trace of the house but the lawn andthat statue now. 

And over the way on the left a little further on, just past theofficers' club, a large hall stood where one saw that famous figure, whom officers and men alike would come so far to see. 

The hall would hold perhaps four or five hundred seats in front of astage fitted up very simply with red, white and blue cloths, butfitted up by some one that understood the job; and at the back of thatstage on those winter evenings walked on his flat and world-renownedfeet the figure of Charlie Chaplin. 

When aėroplanes came over bombing, the dynamos used to stop for theysupplied light to other places besides the cinema, and the shade ofCharlie Chaplin would fade away. But the men would wait till theaėroplanes had gone and that famous figure came waddling back to thescreen. There he amused tired men newly come from the trenches, therehe brought laughter to most of the twelve days that they had out ofthe line. 

He is gone from Behagnies now. He did not march in the retreat alittle apart from the troops, with head bent forward and hand thrustin jacket, a flat-footed Napoleon: yet he is gone; for no one wouldhave left behind for the enemy so precious a thing as a CharlieChaplin film. He is gone but he will return. He will come with hiscane one day along that Arras road to the old hut in Behagnies; andmen dressed in brown will welcome him there again. 

He will pass beyond it through those desolate plains, and over thehills beyond them, beyond Bapaume. Far hamlets to the east will knowhis antics. 

And one day surely, in old familiar garb, without court dress, withoutremoving his hat, armed with that flexible cane, he will walk over thefaces of the Prussian Guard and, picking up the Kaiser by the collar, with infinite nonchalance in finger and thumb, will place him neatlyin a prone position and solemnly sit on his chest. 

The Oases of Death

While the German guns were pounding Amiens and the battle of dullPrussianism against Liberty raged on, they buried Richthofen in theBritish lines. 

They had laid him in a large tent with his broken machine outside it. Thence British airmen carried him to the quiet cemetery, and he wasburied among the cypresses in this old resting place of Frenchgenerations just as though he had come there bringing no harm toFrance. 

Five wreaths were on his coffin, placed there by those who had foughtagainst him up in the air. And under the wreaths on the coffin wasspread the German flag. 

When the funeral service was over three volleys were fired by theescort, and a hundred aviators paid their last respects to the graveof their greatest enemy; for the chivalry that the Prussians havedriven from earth and sea lives on in the blue spaces of the air. 

They buried Richthofen at evening, and the planes came droning home asthey buried him, and the German guns roared on and guns answered, defending Amiens. And in spite of all, the cemetery had the air ofquiet, remaining calm and aloof, as all French graveyards are. Forthey seem to have no part in the cataclysm that shakes all the worldbut them; they seem to withdraw amongst memories and to be aloof fromtime, and, above all, to be quite untroubled by the war that ragesto-day, upon which they appear to look out listlessly from among theircypress and yew, and dimly, down a vista of centuries. They are verystrange, these little oases of death that remain unmoved and greenwith their trees still growing, in the midst of a desolation as far asthe eye can see, in which cities and villages and trees and hedges andfarms and fields and churches are all gone, and where hugely broods adesert. It is as though Death, stalking up and down through France forfour years, sparing nothing, had recognized for his own his littlegardens, and had spared only them. 

Anglo-Saxon Tyranny

``We need a sea, '' says Big-Admiral von Tirpitz, ``freed ofAnglo-Saxon tyranny. '' Unfortunately neither the British Admiralty northe American Navy permit us to know how much of the Anglo-Saxontyranny is done by American destroyers and how much by British shipsand even trawler. It would interest both countries to know, if itcould be known. But the Big-Admiral is unjust to France, for theFrench navy exerts a tyranny at sea that can by no means beoverlooked, although naturally from her position in front of the mouthof the Elbe England practises the culminating insupportable tyranny ofkeeping the High Seas Fleet in the Kiel Canal. 

It is not I, but the Big-Admiral, who chose the word tyranny asdescriptive of the activities of the Anglo-Saxon navies. He was makinga speech at Dusseldorf on May 25th and was reported in theDusseldorfer Nachrichten on May 27th. 

Naturally it does not seem like tyranny to us, even the contrary; butfor an admiral, ein Grosse-Admiral, lately commanding a High SeasFleet, it must have been more galling than we perhaps can credit to beconfined in a canal. There was he, who should have been breasting theblue, or at any rate doing something salty and nautical, far out inthe storms of that sea that the Germans call an Ocean, with thehurricane raging angrily in his whiskers and now and then waftingtufts of them aloft to white the halyards; there was he constrained toa command the duties of which however nobly he did them could beequally well carried out by any respectable bargee. He hoped for apiracy of which the Lusitania was merely a beginning; he looked forthe bombardment of innumerable towns; he pictured slaughter in many ahamlet of fishermen; he planned more than all those things of whichU-boat commanders are guilty; he saw himself a murderous old man, terrible to seafarers, and a scourge of the coasts, and fanciedhimself chronicled in after years by such as told dark tales ofCaptain Kidd or the awful buccaneers; but he followed in the end nomore desperate courses than to sit and watch his ships on a wharf nearKiel like one of Jacob's night watchmen. 

No wonder that what appears to us no more than the necessaryprotection of women and children in seacoast towns from murder shouldbe to him an intolerable tyranny. No wonder that the guarding oftravellers of the allied countries at sea, and even those of theneutrals, should be a most galling thing to the Big-Admiral's thwartedambition, looking at it from the point of view of one who towhite-whiskered age has retained the schoolboy's natural love of theblack and yellow flag. A pirate, he would say, has as much right tolive as wasps or tigers. The Anglo-Saxon navies, he might argue, havea certain code of rules for use at sea; they let women get first intothe boats, for instance, when ships are sinking, and they rescuedrowning mariners when they can: no actual harm in all this, he wouldfeel, though it would weaken you, as Hindenburg said of poetry; but ifall these little rules are tyrannously enforced on those who may thinkthem silly, what is to become of the pirate? Where, if people likeBeattie and Sims had always had their way, would be those rollickingtales of the jolly Spanish Main, and men walking the plank into thebig blue sea, and long, low, rakish craft putting in to Indianharbours with a cargo of men and women all hung from the yard-arm? Amelancholy has come over the spirit of Big-Admiral von Tirpitz in theyears he has spent in the marshes between the Elbe and Kiel, and inthat melancholy he sees romance crushed; he sees no more pearlearrings and little gold rings in the hold, he sees Britishbattleships spoiling the Spanish Main, and hateful American cruisersin the old Sargasso Sea; he sees himself, alas, the last of all thepirates. 

Let him take comfort. There were always pirates. And in spite of thetyranny of England and America, and of France, which the poor old manperplexed with his troubles forgot, there will be pirates still. Notmany perhaps, but enough U-boats will always be able to slip throughthat tyrannous blockade to spread indiscriminate slaughter amongst thetravellers of any nation, enough to hand on the old traditions ofmurder at sea. And one day Captain Kidd, with such a bow as they usedto make in ports of the Spanish Main, will take off his ancient hat, sweeping it low in Hell, and be proud to clasp the hand of the Lord ofthe Kiel Canal. 

Memories

. . . Far-off thingsAnd battles long ago. 

Those who live in an old house are necessarily more concerned withpaying the plumber, should his art be required, or choosing wall paperthat does not clash with the chintzes, than with the traditions thatmay haunt its corridors. In Ireland, -- and no one knows how old thatis, for the gods that lived there before the Red Branch came wrote fewchronicles on the old grey Irish stones and wrote in their ownlanguage, -- in Ireland we are more concerned with working it so thatTim Flanagan gets the job he does be looking for. 

But in America those who remember Ireland remember her, very often, from old generations; maybe their grandfather migrated, perhaps hisgrandfather, and Ireland is remembered by old tales treasured amongthem. Now Tim Flanagan will not be remembered in a year's time when hehas the job for which he has got us to agitate, and the jobberies thatstir us move not the pen of History. 

But the tales that Irish generations hand down beyond the Atlantichave to be tales that are worth remembering. They are tales that haveto stand the supreme test, tales that a child will listen to by thefireside of an evening, so that they go down with those earlyremembered evenings that are last of all to go of the memories of alifetime. A tale that a child will listen to must have much grandeur. Any cheap stuff will do for us, bad journalism, and novels by girlsthat could get no other jobs; but a child looks for those things in atale that are simple and noble and epic, the things that Earthremembers. And so they tell, over there, tales of Sarsfield and of theold Irish Brigade; they tell, of an evening, of Owen Roe O'Neill. Andinto those tales come the plains of Flanders again and the ancienttowns of France, towns famous long ago and famous yet: let us ratherthink of them as famous names and not as the sad ruins we have seen, melancholy by day and monstrous in the moonlight. 

Many an Irishman who sails from America for those historic lands knowsthat the old trees that stand there have their roots far down in soilonce richened by Irish blood. When the Boyne was lost and won, andIreland had lost her King, many an Irishman with all his wealth in ascabbard looked upon exile as his sovereign's court. And so they cameto the lands of foreign kings, with nothing to offer for thehospitality that was given them but a sword; and it usually was asword with which kings were well content. Louis XV had many of them, and was glad to have them at Fontenoy; the Spanish King admitted themto the Golden Fleece; they defended Maria Theresa. Landen in Flandersand Cremona knew them. A volume were needed to tell of all thoseswords; more than one Muse has remembered them. It was not disloyaltythat drove them forth; their King was gone, they followed, the oak wassmitten and brown were the leaves of the tree. 

But no such mournful metaphor applies to the men who march to-daytowards the plains where the ``Wild Geese'' were driven. They go withno country mourning them, but their whole land cheers them on; they goto the inherited battlefields. And there is this difference in theirattitude to kings, that those knightly Irishmen of old, drivenhomeless over-sea, appeared as exiles suppliant for shelter before theface of the Grand Monarch, and he, no doubt with exquisite Frenchgrace, gave back to them all they had lost except what was lostforever, salving so far as he could the injustice suffered by each. But to-day when might, for its turn, is in the hands of democracies, the men whose fathers built the Statue of Liberty have left theircountry to bring back an exiled king to his home, and to right whatcan be righted of the ghastly wrongs of Flanders. 

And if men's prayers are heard, as many say, old saints will hear oldsupplications going up by starlight with a certain wistful, musicalintonation that has linked the towns of Limerick and Cork with thefields of Flanders before. 

The Movement

For many years Eliphaz Griggs was comparatively silent. Not that hedid not talk on all occasions whenever he could find hearers, he didthat at great length; but for many years he addressed no publicmeeting, and was no part of the normal life of the northeast end ofHyde Park or Trafalgar Square. And then one day he was talking in apublic house where he had gone to talk on the only subject that wasdear to him. He waited, as was his custom, until five or six men werepresent, and then he began. ``Ye're all damned, I'm saying, damnedfrom the day you were born. Your portion is Tophet. ''

And on that day there happened what had never happened in hisexperience before. Men used to listen in a tolerant way, and saylittle over their beer, for that is the English custom; and that wouldbe all. But to-day a man rose up with flashing eyes and went over toEliphaz and gripped him by the hand: ``They're all damned, '' said thestranger. 

That was the turning point in the life of Eliphaz. Up to that momenthe had been a lonely crank, and men thought he was queer; but nowthere were two of them and he became a Movement. A Movement in Englandmay do what it likes: there was a Movement, before the War, forspoiling tulips in Kew Gardens and breaking church windows; it had itsrun like the rest. 

The name of Eliphaz's new friend was Ezekiel Pim: and they drew uprules for their Movement almost at once; and very soon country innsknew Eliphaz no more. And for some while they missed him where he usedto drop in of an evening to tell them they were all damned: and then aman proved one day that the earth was flat, and they all forgotEliphaz. 

But Eliphaz went to Hyde Park and Ezekiel Pim went with him, and thereyou would see them close to the Marble Arch on any fine Sundayafternoon, preaching their Movement to the people of London. ``You areall damned, '' said Eliphaz. ``Your portion shall be damnation foreverlasting. ''

``All damned, '' added Ezekiel. 

Eliphaz was the orator. He would picture Hell to you as it really is. He made you see pretty much what it will be like to wriggle and turnand squirm, and never escape from burning. But Ezekiel Pim, though heseldom said more than three words, uttered those words with suchalarming sincerity and had such a sure conviction shining in his eyesthat searched right in your face as he said them, and his long hairwaved so weirdly as his head shot forward when he said ``You're alldamned, '' that Ezekiel Pim brought home to you that the vividdescriptions of Eliphaz really applied to you. 

People who lead bad lives get their sensibilities hardened. These didnot care very much what Eliphaz said. But girls at school, and severalgovernesses, and even some young clergy, were very much affected. Eliphaz Griggs and Ezekiel Pim seemed to bring Hell so near to you. You could almost feel it baking the Marble Arch from two to four onSundays. And at four o'clock the Surbiton Branch of the InternationalAnarchists used to come along, and Eliphaz Griggs and Ezekiel Pimwould pack up their flag and go, for the pitch belonged to theSurbiton people till six; and the crank Movements punctiliouslyrecognize each other's rights. If they fought among themselves, whichis quite unthinkable, the police would run them in; it is the onething that an anarchist in England may never do. 

When the War came the two speakers doubled their efforts. The way theylooked at it was that here was a counter-attraction taking people'sminds off the subject of their own damnation just as they had got themto think about it. Eliphaz worked as he had never worked before; hespared nobody; but it was still Ezekiel Pim who somehow brought itmost home to them. 

One fine spring afternoon Eliphaz Griggs was speaking at his usualplace and time; he had wound himself up wonderfully. ``You aredamned, '' he was saying, ``for ever and ever and ever. Your sins havefound you out. Your filthy lives will be as fuel round you and shallburn for ever and ever. ''

``Look here, '' said a Canadian soldier in the crowd, ``we shouldn'tallow that in Ottawa. ''

``What?'' asked an English girl. 

``Why, telling us we're all damned like that, '' he said. 

``Oh, this is England, '' she said. ``They may all say what they likehere. ''

``You are all damned, '' said Ezekiel, jerking forward his head andshoulders till his hair flapped out behind. ``All, all, all damned. ''

``I'm damned if I am, '' said the Canadian soldier. 

``Ah, '' said Ezekiel, and a sly look came into his face. 

Eliphaz flamed on. ``Your sins are remembered. Satan shall grin atyou. He shall heap cinders on you for ever and ever. Woe to you, filthy livers. Woe to you, sinners. Hell is your portion. There shallbe none to grieve for you. You shall dwell in torment for ages. Noneshall be spared, not one. Woe everlasting. . . Oh, I beg pardon, gentlemen, I'm sure. '' For the Pacifists' League had been kept waitingthree minutes. It was their turn to-day at four. 

Nature's Cad

The claim of Professor Grotius Jan Beek to have discovered, orlearned, the language of the greater apes has been demonstratedclearly enough. He is not the original discoverer of the fact thatthey have what may be said to correspond with a language; nor is hethe first man to have lived for some while in the jungle protected bywooden bars, with a view to acquiring some knowledge of the meaning ofthe various syllables that gorillas appear to utter. If so crude acollection of sounds, amounting to less than a hundred words, if wordsthey are, may be called a language, it may be admitted that theProfessor has learned it, as his recent experiments show. What he hasnot proved is his assertion that he has actually conversed with agorilla, or by signs, or grunts, or any means whatever obtained aninsight, as he put it, into its mentality, or, as we should put it, its point of view. This Professor Beek claims to have done; and thoughhe gives us a certain plausible corroboration of a kind which makeshis story appear likely, it should be borne in mind that it is not ofthe nature of proof. 

The Professor's story is briefly that having acquired this language, which nobody that has witnessed his experiments will call in question, he went back to the jungle for a week, living all the time in theordinary explorer's cage of the Blik pattern. Towards the very end ofthe week a big male gorilla came by, and the Professor attracted it bythe one word ``Food. '' It came, he says, close to the cage, and seemedprepared to talk but became very angry on seeing a man there, and beatthe cage and would say nothing. The Professor says that he asked itwhy it was angry. He admits that he had learned no more than fortywords of this language, but believes that there are perhaps thirtymore. Much however is expressed, as he says, by mere intonation. Anger, for instance; and scores of allied words, such as terrible, frightful, kill, whether noun, verb or adjective, are expressed, hesays, by a mere growl. Nor is there any word for ``Why, '' but queriesare signified by the inflexion of the voice. 

When he asked it why it was angry the gorilla said that men killedhim, and added a noise that the professor said was evidently meant toallude to guns. The only word used, he says, in this remark of thegorilla's was the word that signified ``man. '' The sentence asunderstood by the professor amounted to ``Man kill me. Guns. '' But theword ``kill'' was represented simply by a snarl, ``me'' by slappingits chest, and ``guns'' as I have explained was only represented by anoise. The Professor believes that ultimately a word for guns may beevolved out of that noise, but thinks that it will take manycenturies, and that if during that time guns should cease to be inuse, this stimulus being withdrawn, the word will never be evolved atall, nor of course will it be needed. 

The Professor tried, by evincing interest, ignorance, and incredulity, and even indignation, to encourage the gorilla to say more; but to hisdisappointment, all the more intense after having exchanged that oneword of conversation with one of the beasts, the gorilla only repeatedwhat it had said, and beat on the cage again. For half an hour thiswent on, the Professor showing every sign of sympathy, the gorillaraging and beating upon the cage. 

It was half an hour of the most intense excitement to the Professor, during which time he saw the realization of dreams that manyconsidered crazy, glittering as it were within his grasp, and all thewhile this ridiculous gorilla would do nothing but repeat the mereshred of a sentence and beat the cage with its great hands; and theheat of course was intense. And by the end of the half hour theexcitement and the heat seem to have got the better of the Professor'stemper, and he waved the disgusting brute angrily away with a gesturethat probably was not much less impatient than the gorilla's own. Andat that the animal suddenly became voluble. He beat more furiouslythan ever upon the cage and slipped his great fingers through thebars, trying to reach the Professor, and poured out volumes ofape-chatter. 

Why, why did men shoot at him, he asked. He made himself terrible, therefore men ought to love him. That was the whole burden of what theProfessor calls its argument. ``Me, me terrible, '' two slaps on thechest and then a growl. ``Man love me. '' And then the emphaticnegative word, and the sound that meant guns, and sudden furiousrushes at the cage to try to get at the Professor. 

The gorilla, Professor Beek explains, evidently admired only strength;whenever he said ``I make myself terrible to Man, '' a sentence heoften repeated, he drew himself up and thrust out his huge chest andbared his frightful teeth; and certainly, the Professor says, therewas something terribly grand about the menacing brute. ``Meterrible, '' he repeated again and again, ``Me terrible. Sky, sun, stars with me. Man love me. Man love me. No?'' It meant that all thegreat forces of nature assisted him and his terrible teeth, which hegnashed repeatedly, and that therefore man should love him, and heopened his great jaws wide as he said this, showing all the brutalforce of them. 

There was to my mind a genuine ring in Professor Beek's story, becausehe was obviously so much more concerned, and really troubled, by thedreadful depravity of this animal's point of view, or mentality as hecalled it, than he was concerned with whether or not we believed whathe had said. 

And I mentioned that there was a circumstance in his story of aplausible and even corroborative nature. It is this. Professor Beek, who noticed at the time a bullet wound in the tip of the gorilla'sleft ear, by means of which it was luckily identified, put hisanalysis of its mentality in writing and showed it to several others, before he had any way of accounting for the beast having such a mind. 

Long afterwards it was definitely ascertained that this animal hadbeen caught when young on the slopes of Kilimanjaro and trained andeven educated, so far as such things are possible, by an eminentGerman Professor, a persona grata at the Court of Berlin. 

The Home of Herr Schnitzelhaaser

The guns in the town of Greinstein were faintly audible. The family ofSchnitzelhaaser lived alone there in mourning, an old man and oldwoman. They never went out or saw any one, for they knew they couldnot speak as though they did not mourn. They feared that their secretwould escape them. They had never cared for the war that the War Lordmade. They no longer cared what he did with it. They never read hisspeeches; they never hung out flags when he ordered flags: they hadn'tthe heart to. 

They had had four sons. 

The lonely old couple would go as far as the shop for food. Hungerstalked behind them. They just beat hunger every day, and so sawevening: but there was nothing to spare. Otherwise they did not go outat all. Hunger had been coming slowly nearer of late. They had nothingbut the ration, and the ration was growing smaller. They had one pigof their own, but the law said you might not kill it. So the pig wasno good to them. 

They used to go and look at that pig sometimes when hunger pinched. But more than that they did not dare to contemplate. 

Hunger came nearer and nearer. The war was going to end by the firstof July. The War Lord was going to take Paris on this day and thatwould end the war at once. But then the war was always going to end. It was going to end in 1914, and their four sons were to have comehome when the leaves fell. The War Lord had promised that. And even ifit did end, that would not bring their four sons home now. So what didit matter what the War Lord said. 

It was thoughts like these that they knew they had to conceal. It wasbecause of thoughts like these that they did not trust themselves togo out and see other people, for they feared that by their looks if bynothing else, or by their silence or perhaps their tears, they mightimply a blasphemy against the All Highest. And hunger made one sohasty. What might one not say? And so they stayed indoors. 

But now. What would happen now? The War Lord was coming to Greinsteinin order to hear the guns. One officer of the staff was to be billetedin their house. And what would happen now?

They talked the whole thing over. They must struggle and make aneffort. The officer would be there for one evening. He would leave inthe morning quite early in order to make things ready for the returnto Potsdam: he had charge of the imperial car. So for one evening theymust be merry. They would suppose, it was Herr Schnitzelhaaser'ssuggestion, they would think all the evening that Belgium and Franceand Luxemburg all attacked the Fatherland, and that the Kaiser, utterly unprepared, quite unprepared, called on the Germans to defendtheir land against Belgium. 

Yes, the old woman could imagine that; she could think it all theevening. 

And then, -- it was no use not being cheerful altogether, -- then onemust imagine a little more, just for the evening: it would come quiteeasy; one must think that the four boys were alive. 

Hans too? (Hans was the youngest). 

Yes, all four. Just for the evening. 

But if the officer asks?

He will not ask. What are four soldiers?

So it was all arranged; and at evening the officer came. He broughthis own rations, so hunger came no nearer. Hunger just lay downoutside the door and did not notice the officer. 

A this supper the officer began to talk. The Kaiser himself, he said, was at the Schartzhaus. 

``So, '' said Herr Schnitzelhaaser; ``just over the way. '' So close. Such an honour. 

And indeed the shadow of the Schartzhaus darkened their garden in themorning. 

It was such an honour, said Frau Schnitzelhaaser too. And they beganto praise the Kaiser. So great a War Lord, she said; the most gloriouswar there had ever been. 

Of course, said the officer, it would end on the first of July. 

Of course, said Frau Schnitzelhaaser. And so great an admiral, too. One must remember that also. And how fortunate we were to have him:one must not forget that. Had it not been for him the crafty Belgianswould have attacked the Fatherland, but they were struck down beforethey could do it. So much better to prevent a bad deed like that thanmerely to punish after. So wise. And had it not been for him, if ithad not been for him. . . 

The old man saw that she was breaking down and hastily he took up thatfeverish praise. Feverish it was, for their hunger and bitter lossaffected their minds no less than illness does, and the things theydid they did hastily and intemperately. His praise of the War Lordraced on as the officer ate. He spoke of him as of those that benefitman, as of monarchs who bring happiness to their people. And now, hesaid, he is here in the Schartzhaus beside us, listening to the gunsjust like a common soldier. 

Finally the guns, as he spoke, coughed beyond ominous hills. Contentedly the officer went on eating. He suspected nothing of thethoughts his host and hostess were hiding. At last he went upstairs tobed. 

As fierce exertion is easy to the fevered, so they had spoken; and itwears them, so they were worn. The old woman wept when the officerwent out of hearing. But old Herr Schnitzelhaaser picked up a bigbutcher's knife. ``I will bear it no more, '' he said. 

His wife watched him in silence as he went away with his knife. Out ofthe house he went and into the night. Through the open door she sawnothing; all was dark; even the Schartzhaus, where all was gayto-night, stood dark for fear of aėroplanes. The old woman waited insilence. 

When Herr Schnitzelhaaser returned there was blood on his knife. 

``What have you done?'' the old woman asked him quite calmly. ``I havekilled our pig, '' he said. 

She broke out then, all the more recklessly for the long restraint ofthe evening; the officer must have heard her. 

``We are lost! We are lost!'' she cried. ``We may not kill our pig. Hunger has made you mad. You have ruined us. ''

``I will bear it no longer, '' he said. ``I have killed our pig. ''

``But they will never let us eat it, '' she cried. ``Oh, you haveruined us!''

``If you did not dare to kill our pig, '' he said, ``why did you notstop me when you saw me go? You saw me go with the knife?''

``I thought, '' she said, ``you were going to kill the Kaiser. ''

A Deed of Mercy

As Hindenburg and the Kaiser came down, as we read, from Mont d'Hiver, during the recent offensive, they saw on the edge of a crater twowounded British soldiers. The Kaiser ordered that they should be caredfor: their wounds were bound up and they were given brandy, andbrought round from unconsciousness. That is the German account of it, and it may well be true. It was a kindly act. 

Probably had it not been for this the two men would have died amongthose desolate craters; no one would have known, and no one could havebeen blamed for it. 

The contrast of this spark of imperial kindness against the gloom ofthe background of the war that the Kaiser made is a pleasant thing tosee, even though it illuminates for only a moment the savage darknessin which our days are plunged. It was a kindness that probably willlong be remembered to him. Even we, his enemies, will remember it. Andwho knows but that when most he needs it his reward for the act willbe given him. 

For Judas, they say, once in his youth, gave his cloak, out ofcompassion, to a shivering beggar, who sat shaken with ague, in rags, in bitter need. And the years went by and Judas forgot his deed. Andlong after, in Hell, Judas they say was given one day's respite at theend of every year because of this one kindness he had done so longsince in his youth. And every year he goes, they say, for a day andcools himself among the Arctic bergs; once every year for centuryafter century. 

Perhaps some sailor on watch on a misty evening blown far out of hiscourse away to the north saw something ghostly once on an icebergfloating by, or heard some voice in the dimness that seemed like thevoice of man, and came home with this weird story. And perhaps, as thestory passed from lip to lip, men found enough justice in it tobelieve it true. So it came down the centuries. 

Will seafarers ages hence on dim October evenings, or on nights whenthe moon is ominous through mist, red and huge and uncanny, see alonely figure sometimes on the loneliest part of the sea, far north ofwhere the Lusitania sank, gathering all the cold it can? Will they seeit hugging a crag of iceberg wan as itself, helmet, cuirass and icepale-blue in the mist together? Will it look towards them withice-blue eyes through the mist, and will they question it, meeting onthose bleak seas? Will it answer -- or will the North wind howl likevoices? Will the cry of seals be heard, and ice floes grinding, andstrange birds lost upon the wind that night, or will it speak to themin those distant years and tell them how it sinned, betraying man?

It will be a grim, dark story in that lonely part of the sea, when heconfesses to sailors, blown too far north, the dreadful thing heplotted against man. The date on which he is seen will be told fromsailor to sailor. Queer taverns of distant harbours will know it well. Not many will care to be at sea that day, and few will risk beingdriven by stress of weather on the Kaiser's night to the bergs of thehaunted part of sea. 

And yet for all the grimness of the pale-blue phantom, with cuirassand helmet and eyes shimmering on deadly icebergs, and yet for all thesorrow of the wrong he did against man, the women drowned and thechildren, and all the good ships gone, yet will the horrified marinersmeeting him in the mist grudge him no moment of the day he has earned, or the coolness he gains from the bergs, because of the kindness hedid to the wounded men. For the mariners in their hearts are kindlymen, and what a soul gains from kindness will seem to them welldeserved. 

Last Scene of All

After John Calleron was hit he carried on in a kind of twilight of themind. Things grew dimmer and calmer; harsh outlines of events becameblurred; memories came to him; there was a singing in his ears likefar-off bells. Things seemed more beautiful than they had a while ago;to him it was for all the world like evening after some quiet sunset, when lawns and shrubs and woods and some old spire look lovely in thelate light, and one reflects on past days. Thus he carried on, seeingthings dimly. And what is sometimes called ``the roar of battle, ''those aėrial voices that snarl and moan and whine and rage atsoldiers, had grown dimmer too. It all seemed further away, andlittler, as far things are. He still heard the bullets: there issomething so violently and intensely sharp in the snap of passingbullets at short ranges that you hear them in deepest thought, andeven in dreams. He heard them, tearing by, above all things else. Therest seemed fainter and dimmer, and smaller and further away. 

He did not think he was very badly hit, but nothing seemed to matteras it did a while ago. Yet he carried on. 

And then he opened his eyes very wide and found he was back in Londonagain in an underground train. He knew it at once by the look of it. He had made hundreds of journeys, long ago, by those trains. He knewby the dark, outside, that it had not yet left London; but what wasodder than that, if one stopped to think of it, was that he knewexactly where it was going. It was the train that went away out intothe country where he used to live as a boy. He was sure of thatwithout thinking. 

When he began to think how he came to be there he remembered the waras a very far-off thing. He supposed he had been unconscious a verylong time. He was all right now. 

Other people were sitting beside him on the same seat. They all seemedlike people he remembered a very long time ago. In the darknessopposite, beyond the windows of the train, he could see theirreflections clearly. He looked at the reflections but could not quiteremember. 

A woman was sitting on his left. She was quite young. She was morelike some one that he most deeply remembered than all the others were. He gazed at her, and tried to clear his mind. 

He did not turn and stare at her, but he quietly watched herreflection before him in the dark. Every detail of her dress, heryoung face, her hat, the little ornaments she wore, were minutelyclear before him, looking out of the dark. So contented she looked youwould say she was untouched by war. 

As he gazed at the clear calm face and the dress that seemed neatthough old and, like all things, so faraway, his mind grew clearer andclearer. It seemed to him certain it was the face of his mother, butfrom thirty years ago, out of old memories and one picture. He feltsure it was his mother as she had been when he was very small. And yetafter thirty years how could he know? He puzzled to try and be quitesure. But how she came to be there, looking like that, out of thoseoldest memories, he did not think of at all. 

He seemed to be hugely tired by many things and did not want to think. Yet he was very happy, more happy even than tired men just come homeall new to comfort. 

He gazed and gazed at the face in the dark. And then he felt quitesure. 

He was about to speak. Was she looking at him? Was she watching him, he wondered. He glanced for the first time to his own reflection inthat clear row of faces. 

His own reflection was not there, but blank dark showed between histwo neighbours. And then he knew he was dead. 

Old England

Towards winter's end on a high, big, bare down, in the south ofEngland, John Plowman was plowing. He was plowing the brown field atthe top of the hill, good soil of the clay; a few yards lower down wasnothing but chalk, with shallow flinty soil and steep to plow; so theylet briars grow there. For generations his forbears had plowed on thetop of that hill. John did not know how many. The hills were very old;it might have been always. 

He scarcely looked to see if his furrow was going straight. The workhe was doing was so much in his blood that he could almost feel iffurrows were straight or not. Year after year they moved on the sameold landmarks; thorn trees and briars mostly guided the plow, wherethey stood on the untamed land beyond; the thorn trees grew old attheir guiding, and still the furrows varied not by the breadth of ahoof-mark. 

John, as he plowed, had leisure to meditate on much besides the crops;he knew so much of the crops that his thoughts could easily run freefrom them; he used to meditate on who they were that lived in briarand thorn tree, and danced as folk said all through midsummer night, and sometimes blessed and sometimes harmed the crops; for he knew thatin Old England were wonderful ancient things, odder and older thingsthan many folks knew. And his eyes had leisure to see much beside thefurrows, for he could almost feel the furrows going straight. 

One day at his plowing, as he watched the thorn ahead, he saw thewhole big hill besides, looking south, and the lands below it; one dayhe saw in the bright sun of late winter a horseman riding the roadthrough the wide lands below. The horseman shone as he rode, and worewhite linen over what was shining, and on the linen was a big redcross. ``One of them knights, '' John Plowman said to himself or hishorse, ``going to them crusades. '' And he went on with his plowing allthat day satisfied, and remembered what he had seen for years, andtold his son. 

For there is in England, and there always was, mixed with the needfulthings that feed or shelter the race, the wanderer-feeling forromantic causes that runs deep and strange through the other thoughts, as the Gulf Stream runs through the sea. Sometimes generations of JohnPlowman's family would go by and no high romantic cause would come tosate that feeling. They would work on just the same though a littlesombrely, as though some good thing had been grudged them. And thenthe Crusades had come, and John Plowman had seen the Red Cross knightgo by, riding towards the sea in the morning, and Jon Plowman wassatisfied. 

Some generations later a man of the same name was plowing the samehill. They still plowed the brown clay at the top and left the slopewild, though there were many changes. And the furrows were wonderfullystraight still. And half he watched a thorn tree ahead as he plowedand half he took in the whole hill sloping south and the wide landsbelow it, far beyond which was the sea. They had a railway now down inthe valley. The sunlight glittering near the end of winter shone on atrain that was marked with great white squares and red crosses onthem. 

John Plowman stopped his horses and looked at the train. ``Anambulance train, '' he said, ``coming up from the coast. '' He thoughtof the lads he knew and wondered if any were there. He pitied the menin that train and envied them. And then there came to him the thoughtof England's cause and of how those men had upheld it, at sea and incrumbling cities. He thought of the battle whose echoes reachedsometimes to that field, whispering to furrows and thorn trees thathad never heard them before. He thought of the accursed tyrant's cruelmight, and of the lads that had faced it. He saw the romanticsplendour of England's cause. He was old but had seen the glamour forwhich each generation looked. Satisfied in his heart and cheered witha new content he went on with his age-old task in the business of manwith the hills. _________________________________________________________________

A printed version of this book is available from Sattre Press, http://tow. Sattre-press. Com. It includes a new introduction andphotographs of the author.