[Illustration: DONALD HANKEY]

A

STUDENT IN ARMS

SECOND SERIES

BY

DONALD HANKEY

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY J. ST. LOE STRACHEY

EDITOR OF _THE SPECTATOR_

NEW YORK

B. P. DUTTON & CO. 

681 FIFTH AVENUE

Published 1917 BY E. P. DUTTON & CO. 

CONTENTS

 PAGE

 SOMETHING ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 1

 AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 33

 I. --THE POTENTATE 37

 II. --THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE 51

 III. --THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM" 65

 IV. --A MONTH'S REFLECTIONS 79

 V. --ROMANCE 93

 VI. --IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS (I) 109

 VII. --THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR 115

 VIII. --IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS (II) 127

 IX. --THE WISDOM OF "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 139

 X. --IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS (III) 145

 XI. --LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN 153

 XII. --"DON'T WORRY" 165

 XIII. --IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS (IV) 175

 XIV. --A PASSING IN JUNE, 1915 181

 XV. --MY HOME AND SCHOOL:

 I MY HOME 199

 II SCHOOL 216

 SOME NOTES ON THE FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY "HILDA" 237

SOMETHING ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS"

BY H. M. A. H. 

"His life was a Romance of the most noble and beautiful kind. " So saysone who has known him from childhood, and into how many dull, hardand narrow lives has he not been the first to bring the element ofRomance?

He carried it about with him; it breathes through his writings, and this inevitable expression of it gives the saying of one of hisfriends, that "it is as an artist that we shall miss him most, " themore significance. 

And does not the artist as well as the poet live forever in his works?Is not the breath of inspiration that such alone can breathe into thedull clods of their generation bound to be immortal?

Meanwhile, his "Romance" is to be written and his biographer will beone whose good fortune it has been to see much of the "Student" inBermondsey, the place that was the forcing-house of his development. In the following pages it is proposed only to give an outline of hislife, and particularly the earlier and therefore to the public unknownparts. 

Donald Hankey was born at Brighton in 1884; he was the seventh childof his parents, and was welcomed with excitement and delight by aready-made family of three brothers and two sisters living on hisarrival amongst them. He was the youngest of them by seven years, andall had their plans for his education and future, and waited jealouslyfor the time when he should be old enough to be removed from theloving shelter of his mother's arms and be "brought up. "

His education did, as a matter of fact, begin at a very early age; forone day, when he was perhaps about three years old, dressed in a whitewoolly cap and coat, and out for his morning walk, a neighbouring babystepped across from his nurse's side and with one well-directed blowfelled Donald to the ground! Donald was too much astonished and hurtat the sheer injustice of the assault to dream of retaliation, butwhen they reached home and his indignant nurse told the story, he wastaken aside by his brothers and made to understand that by his failureto resist the assault, and give the other fellow back as good as hegave, "the honour of the family" was impugned! He was then and thereput through a systematic course of "the noble art of self-defence. ""And I think, " said one of his brothers only the other day, "that hewas prepared to act upon his instructions should occasion arise. "It will be seen from this incident that his bringing-up was of adecidedly strenuous character and likely to make Donald's outlook onlife a serious one!

He was naturally a peace-loving and philosophical little boy, verylovable and attractive with his large clear eyes with their curiousdistribution of colour--the one entirely blue and the other threeparts a decided brown--the big head set proudly on the slender littlebody, and the radiant illuminating smile, that no one who knew himwell at any time of his life can ever forget. It spoke of a lightwithin, "that mysterious light which is of course not physical, " aswas said by one who met him only once, but was quick to note thischaracteristic. 

Donald's more strenuous times were in the boys' holidays--thosetumultuous of seasons so well known to the members of all bigfamilies! His eldest brother, Hugh, was bent on making an all-roundathlete of him; another brother saw in him an embryo county cricketer, while a third was most particular about his music, giving him lessonson the violoncello with clockwork regularity. The games were terriblythrilling and dangerous, especially when the schoolroom was turnedinto a miniature battlefield, with opposing armies of tiny leadsoldiers. But Donald never turned a hair if Hugh were present, even atthe most terrific explosions of gun-powder. His confidence in Hugh wascomplete. Nor did he mind personal injuries. When on one occasion hewas hurled against the sharp edge of a chair, cutting his head openbadly, and his mother came to the rescue with indignation, sympathyand bandages, whilst accepting the latter he deprecated the twoformer, explaining apologetically, "It's only because my head's sobig. "

He admitted in after years to having felt most terribly swamped by thepersonalities of two of his brothers. The third he had more in commonwith, for he was more peace-loving, and he seemed to have more timeto listen to the small boy's confidences and stories, which Donaldstarted to write at the age of six. 

Hugh, however, was his hero--a kind of demi-god. And truly therewas something Greek about the boy--in his singular beauty of person, coupled with his brilliant mental equipment, and above all in thenothing less than Spartan methods with which, in spite of a highlysensitive temperament, he set himself to overcome his handicap ofa naturally delicate physique and a bad head for heights. He turnedhimself out quite an athlete, and actually cured his bad head by acourse of walking on giddy heights, preferably roofs--the parapet ofthe tall four-storied house the children lived in being a favouritetraining ground. 

Donald was the apple of his eye, and he was quick to note a certainlack of vitality about the little boy--especially when he was growingfast--and a certain natural timidity. His letters from school are fullof messages to and instructions concerning Donald's physical training, and from Sandhurst he would long to "run over and see after hisboxing. " He called him Don Diego, a name that suited the ratherstately little fellow, and he used to fear sometimes that Donaldwas "getting too polite" and say he must "knock it out of him inthe holidays. " Needless to say, his handling of him was always verygentle. 

The other over-vital brother, if a prime amuser, was also a primetease, and being nearer Donald in age was also much less gentle. 

Before very long these great personages took themselves off "zum neuentaten. " But their Odysseys came home in the shape of letters, which, with their descriptions of strange countries and peoples and recordsof adventures--often the realization of boyish dreams--and also ofdifficulties overcome, were well calculated to appeal to Donald'schildish imagination, and to increase his admiration for thewriters--and also his feeling of impotence, and of the impossibilityof being able to follow in the tracks of such giants among men!

His mother, however, was his never-failing confidante and friend. His love and admiration for her were unbounded, as for her courage, unselfishness and constant thought for others, more especially forthe poor and insignificant among her neighbours. Though the humblestminded of women, she could, when occasion demanded, administer arebuke with a decision and a fire that must have won the heartfeltadmiration of her diffident little son. 

He was not easily roused himself, but there is one instance of hisbeing so that is eminently characteristic. He had come back fromschool evidently very perturbed, and at first his sister could getnothing out of him. But at last he flared up. His face reddened, hiseyes burned like coals and, in a voice trembling with rage, he said, "---- (naming a school-fellow) talks about things that I won't even_think_!"

At the age of about 14 he, too, went to Rugby, and there is aninteresting prophecy about him by his brother Hugh belonging to thistime. Hugh had by now earned a certain right to pronounce judgment, having already started to fulfil his early promise by making some markas a soldier and a linguist. He had been invited to join the EgyptianArmy at a critical time in the campaign of 1897-98, thanks to hisproficiency in Arabic. His work was cut short by serious illness, thelong period of convalescence after which he had utilized in workingfor and passing the Army Interpreter's examination in Turkish aswell as the higher one in Arabic and his promotion exam. All of whichachievements had been of use in helping him to wring out of the WarOffice a promise of certain distinguished service in China. In aletter home he writes:--

 2ND BATT. THE ROYAL WARWICKSHIRE, REGT. , THE CAMP, COLCHESTER. 28th Sept. , 1899. 

 MY DEAR MAMMA, --

 I packed Donald off to school to-day in good time and cold-less. .. . He was wonderfully calm and collected. He was more at his ease in our mess than I should have been in a strange mess, and made himself agreeable to his neighbours without being forward. Also he looked very clean and smart, and was altogether quite a success. 

 That child has a future before him if his energy is up to form, which I hope. His philosophy is most amazing. He looks remarkably healthy, and is growing nicely. .. . 

Shortly after this letter was written the South African War broke out, and before six months were over the writer was killed in action, atthe age of 27, whilst serving with the Mounted Infantry at Paardeberg. 

It was the first sorrow of Donald's life, but six months later he wasto suffer a yet more crushing blow in the loss of his dearly lovedmother. The loss of his best confidante and his ideal seemed at firstto stun the boy completely, and to cast him in upon himself entirely. Later on he remembered that he had felt at that time that he hadnothing to say to any one. He had wondered what the others could havethought of him, and had thought how dreadfully unresponsive they mustbe finding him. His sister should have been of some use. But shecan only think of herself then as of some strange figure, veiledand petrified with grief--grief _not_ for her mother, but for theyoung hero whose magnetism had thrilled through every moment of herlife--yet pointing onwards, with mutely insistent finger, to thepath that her hero had trodden. And Donald, dazed also himself bygrief--though from another cause--of his own accord, placed his firstuncertain steps on the road that leads to military glory. No "voice"warned him as yet, and he had no other decisive leading. 

If his sister failed him then, his father did not. Of him Donald wroterecently to an aunt, "Papa's letters to me are a heritage whose valuecan never diminish. His was indeed the pen of a ready writer, andin his case, as in the case of many rather reserved people, the pendid more justice to the man than the tongue. I never knew him untilMamma's death, when the weekly letter from him took the place of hers, and never stopped till I came home. "

At Rugby, Donald was accounted a dreamer. Without the outlet hehad hitherto had for his confidences and his thoughts no doubt thetendency to dream grew upon him. "Behold this dreamer cometh, " wasactually said of him by one of his masters. 

Nevertheless there were happy times when youth asserted itself andboyish friendships were made. In work he did well, for he entered thesixth form at the early age of 16½, and was thereby enabled, though heleft young, to have his name painted up "in hall" below those of histhree brothers, and also on his "study" door which belonged to each ofthe four in turn. 

He entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, straight fromRugby, and before he was seventeen. We have his word for it thathe was spiritually very unhappy there, finding evils with which hewas impotent to grapple, going up as he did so young from schooland before he had had time to acquire a "games" reputation--thatall-important qualification for a boy if he wishes to influencehis fellows. Nevertheless youthful spirits were bound to triumphsometimes. He was a perfectly sound and healthy, well-grown boy and afriend who was with him at "the Shop" says he can remember no apparenttrace of unhappiness, and is full of tales of his jokes and his fun, his quaint caricatures and doggerel rhymes, his love of flowers andnature, his hospitalities, and his joy in getting his friends to meetand know and like each other. Though he made no mark at Woolwich hedid carry off the prize for the best essay on the South African War. With it he made his first appearance in print, for it was printed inthe R. M. A. Magazine. While he was at Woolwich the family circle wasenlarged by the arrival of a cousin from Australia, and she and Donaldbecame the greatest of friends. She reminded him in some way of hismother, and this made all the difference. 

The Island of Mauritius, to which he was sent at the age of twenty, not so very long after having received his commission in the RoyalGarrison Artillery, stood for him later on, he has told us, as"Revelation"--"for there it was that I was first a sceptic, and wasfirst shown that I could not remain one. " Also towards the end of hisstay there, when he was doubting as to what course he should take, a sentence came to him insistently, "Would you know Christ? Lo, Heis working in His vineyard. " It was these things that decided himeventually to resign his commission, but of them his letters homemake little or no mention. They are full, on the other hand, ofdescriptions of the beauties of the Island which, curious, odd, freakish and unexpected, held him as did those of no other place. Thecurious inconsistencies of the Creole nature also interested him, andhe spent much of his spare time sketching and studying the people. Twofriendships he made there were diverse and lasting, but he complainsvery much of feeling the lack of a woman friend--no one to tease andpick flowers for!

While he was still there, there appeared at home a babynephew--another "Hugh"--"trailing clouds of glory, " but to return alltoo soon to his "Eternal Home. " Some years previously, when his eldestsister had told him of her engagement, he congratulated her warmly, and said he "had always longed for a nephew"! He never saw the child, but wrote after his death that he had heard so much about him thathe seemed to know him, and "I think I must have played with him inmy dreams. " Possibly the baby nephew, in his short ten months oflife, did more for his uncle than either knew, for no frozen heartscould do otherwise than melt in the presence of the insistent needsof that gallant little spirit and fragile little body, and a morewhole-hearted sister was awaiting him on his return home, which tookplace at the end of two years, after he had fallen a victim to theprevalent complaint in the R. G. A--abscess on the liver. It was causedby the shocking conditions under which the R. G. A. Had to live inMauritius during that hot summer when the Russian Fleet sojournedin Madagascan waters, and in Donald's case it necessitated a severeoperation. 

His joy in his homecoming was quickly clouded over, for his fatherdied only a month or two after his return; not, however, before hehad given a delighted acquiescence to Donald's proposal to resignhis commission and go to Oxford in order to study theology--his ownfavourite pursuit--with the object of eventually taking Holy Orders. 

In the spring of 1907 Donald took a trip to Italy with his sister anda Rhodes Scholar cousin from Australia. It was the young men's firstvisit, and each brought back a special trophy: Donald's, a largephotograph of a fine virile "Portrait of a man" by Giorgione in blackand white, and his cousin, a sweet Madonna head by Luini. 

Donald gave his sister her trophy on their return home, in remembranceof the lectures she had given the two of them on the pre-Raphaelitepainters in Florence. It took the form of a water-colour caricature ofherself, sitting enthroned in a Loggia as a sort of Sybil Saint witha halo and a book (Baedeker). Behind her, and outlined against a palesky as seen through an archway of the Loggia in the typical Florentinefashion, are the blue mountains near Florence, some tall cypresses, a campanile and a castle perched on the top of a hill--all featuresof the landscapes through which they had passed together. In theforeground are himself and his cousin as monks adoring, also withhaloes, and expressions of mock ecstasy!

On his return Donald went for a few months to Rugby House, the RugbySchool Mission, in order to cram for Oxford. He thereby made a friend, and learned to love Browning. 

After living so long at Brighton, and then in barracks, the beauty ofOxford was in itself alone a revelation to him. The work there, too, was entirely congenial. As a gunner subaltern he had been a square pegin a round hole. As regards the work there had been far too much tobe accepted on authority for one of his fundamental type of mind; therelations existing between an officer and his men--in peace time, at any rate--seemed to him hardly human, and the making of quickdecisions, which an officer is continually called upon to do, wasthen as always very difficult to him. His tastes, too, unusual in asubaltern, had made him rather lonely. He found much more in commonwith the undergraduate than with the subaltern. Going up as an"oldster" (22) was to him an advantage rather than otherwise, for hissix years in the Army had given him a certain prestige which was ahelp to his natural diffidence, and helped to open more doors to him, so that he was not limited to any set. 

He gained some reputation as a host, for he had the born host's giftof getting the right people together and making them feel at theirease. There was also, as a rule, some little individual touch abouthis entertainments that made them stand out. His manner, thoughnaturally boyish and shy, could be both gay and debonair, quiteirresistible in fact, when he was surrounded by congenial spirits! Heplayed hockey, and was made a member of several clubs, sketched andmade beautiful photographs. His time he divided strictly between thestudy of man and the study of theology, and though he did much hard, thorough and careful work in connexion with the latter, he alwaysmaintained that for a man who was going to be a parson the former wasthe more important study of the two. 

He used, however, to complain much at this time of feeling himselfincapable of any very strong emotion, even that of sorrow. 

No doubt there is more stimulation to the brain than to the heart inthe highly critical atmosphere of all phases of the intellectual lifeat Oxford; also Donald had hardly yet got over the shocks of his youthand the loneliness of his life abroad. He was, too, essentially andcuriously the son of his father--even to his minor tastes, such as hisconnoisseur's palate for a good wine and his judgment in "smokes"--andthis feeling of a certain detachment from the larger emotions of lifewas always his father's pose--the philosopher's. In his father's caseit was perhaps engendered, if not necessitated, by his poor health andwretched nerves. 

But can we not trace his dissatisfaction at this time in what he feltto be his cold philosophical attitude towards life to the same causeas much of the misery he suffered as a boy! In the paper he calls"School, " which follows with that entitled "Home, " he tells us how hewould have liked to have chastised a school-fellow "had he dared, "and his failure to dare was evidently what reduced him to the state ofimpotent rage described on page 9 of this sketch. Again at Woolwich, what made him unhappy was not so much the evils which he saw buthis impotence to deal with them. So now again at Oxford he feels"impotent, " impotent this time to feel and sympathize as he wouldhave wished with suffering humanity. But within him was the light, "the light which is, of course, not physical, " which betrayed itselfthrough his wonderful smile--the same now as in babyhood; and fromhis mother, and perhaps also from the young country that gave herbirth, he had inherited, as well as her great heart and broad humansympathies, the vigour that was to carry him through the experiencesby means of which, in the fullness of time, that light, no longerdormant, was to break into a flame of infinite possibilities. 

Donald's one complaint against Oxford was that the ideas that are bornand generated there so often evaporate in talk and smoke. He left withthe determination to "do, " but before going on to a Clergy School hedecided to accept a friend's invitation to visit him in savage Africaso that he might think things over, and put to the test, far away fromthe artificialities of Modern Life, the ideas he had assimilated inthe highly sophisticated atmosphere of Oxford. As he quaintly put it:"Since Paul went into Arabia for three years, I don't see why I shouldnot go to British East Africa for six months!" He did not, however, stay the whole time there, but re-visited his beloved Mauritius, andalso stayed in Madagascar. 

The beginning of 1911 found him at the Clergy School. But what hewanted he did not find there. During his Oxford vacations he had mademany expeditions to poorer London, at first to Notting Dale wherewas the Rugby School Mission, and afterwards to Bermondsey. But theseexpeditions had not been entirely satisfactory. He had then gone asa "visitor. " The lessons he wanted to learn now from "the People"could only be learned by becoming as far as possible one of them. Thestory of his struggles to do so in his life in Bermondsey, and ofhis journey to Australia in the steerage of a German liner and of hisroughing it there, always with the same object in view, cannot be toldhere. The first outcome of it all was the writing of his book, _TheLord of All Good Life_. Of this book he says, in a letter to hisfriend Tom Allen of the Oxford and Bermondsey Mission:

"The book I regard as my child. I feel quite absurdly about it; to meit is the sudden vision of what lots of obscure things really meant. It is coming out of dark shadows into--moonlight . .. I would have youto realize that it was written spontaneously in a burst, in six weeks, without any consultation of authorities or any revision to speak of. I had tried and tried, but without success. Then suddenly everythingcleared up. To myself, the writing of it was an illumination. I didnot write it laboriously and with calculation or because I wanted towrite a book and be an author. I wrote it because problems that hadbeen troubling me suddenly cleared up and because writing down theresult was to me the natural way of getting everything straight in myown mind. "

The book was written not away in the peace of the country, nor in thecomparative quiet of a certain sunny little sitting-room I know of, looking on to a leafy back garden in Kensington, where Donald oftensat and smoked and wrote, but in a little flat in a dull tenementhouse in a grey street in Bermondsey, where I remember visiting himwith a cousin of his. 

Here the Student lived like a lord--for Bermondsey! For he possessedtwo flats, one for his "butler"--a sick-looking young man in listslippers, and his wife and family--and the other for himself. 

The little sitting-room in which he entertained us was very pleasant, with light walls, a bright table-cloth, a gleam of something brassthat had come from Ceylon, one or two gaily painted dancing shieldsfrom Africa, and two barbaric looking dolls, about a foot high, dressed chiefly in beads and paint, that he had picked up in anAntananarivo shop in Madagascar. They came in usefully when he waslecturing on Missions!

His bedroom he did not want us to see. It struck cold and appeared tobe reeking with damp!

The weather had been rather dull when we arrived, but suddenly therewas a glint of sunshine, and a grind-organ that had wandered up thestreet started playing just opposite. Two couple of children beganto dance. A girl with a jug stopped to watch them, and mothers withbabies came to their doors. A window was thrown open opposite and awhole family of children leaned out to see the fun. 

Bermondsey was gay, and after we had gone the "Student" perpetuatedthe fact in a water-colour drawing which he sent to his cousinafterwards. 

In the evening, however, the sounds would be more discordant, alsothe Student was running a Boys' Club, taking several Sunday servicesat the Mission, visiting some very sick people, and attending to amultifarious list of duties which left me breathless when I saw it, knowing too how many casual appeals always came to him and that henever was known to refuse a helping hand to any one! Neverthelessit was there, and in six weeks, that the _Lord of All Good Life_ waswritten!

"Then came the war, " and the Student shall tell us in his own wordswhat it meant to him. Writing still to Tom Allen, who had alsoenlisted, and afterwards also gave his life in the war, he says:

"For myself the war was, in a sense, a heaven-sent opportunity. Eversince I left Leeds I have been trying to follow out the theory thatthe proper subject of study for the theologian was man, and hadincreasingly been made to feel that nothing but violent measures couldovercome my own shyness sufficiently to enable me to study outsidemy own class. Enlistment had always appealed to me as one of the fewfeasible methods of ensuring the desired results. .. . 

"I was interested to hear that you found the ---- so illuminating asregards human potentialities for bestiality. I think that I plumbedthe depths between sixteen and a half and twenty-two. I have learnednothing more since then about bestiality. In fact I am hardened, and, I am afraid, take it for granted. Since then I have been discoveringhuman goodness, which is far more satisfactory. And oh, I have foundit! In Bermondsey, in the stinking hold of the _Zieten_, in the wide, thirsty desert of Western Australia, and in the ranks of the 7thBattalion of the Rifle Brigade. I enlisted very largely to find outhow far I really believed in the brotherhood of man when it comes tothe point--and I do believe in it more and more. "

Donald Hankey enlisted in August, 1914, and after a period oftraining, part of which was certainly the happiest time of his life, he went to the front in May, 1915, coming home wounded in August, whenhe wrote for the _Spectator_ most of the articles that were publishedanonymously the following spring under the title of _A Student inArms_. Before he left hospital he received a commission in his oldregiment, the R. G. A. , but still finding himself with no love forbig guns, he transferred to his eldest brother's regiment, the RoyalWarwickshire, hoping that by doing so he might get back to the frontthe sooner. He did not, however, leave until May, 1916, after he hadwritten his contribution to _Faith or Fear_. 

Most of the numbers of the present volume were written in or nearthe trenches, and a fellow-officer gave his sister an interestingdescription of how it was done. "Your brother, " said he, "will sitdown in a corner of a trench, with his pipe, and write an article forthe _Spectator_, or make funny sketches for his nephews and nieces, when none of the rest of us could concentrate sufficiently even towrite a letter. "

On October 6th, Donald Hankey wrote home: "We shall probably befighting by the time you get this letter, but one has a far betterchance of getting through now than in July. I shall be very glad if wedo have a scrap, as we have been resting quite long enough. Of courseone always has to face possibilities on such occasions; but we havefaced them in advance, haven't we? I believe with all my soul thatwhatever will be, will be for the best. As I said before, I shouldhate to slide meanly into winter without a scrap. .. . I have a top-holeplatoon--nearly all young, and nearly all have been out here eighteenmonths--thoroughly good sporting fellows; so if I don't do well itwill be my fault. "

Six days after this the Student knelt down for a few seconds with hismen--we have it on the testimony of one of them--and he told them alittle of what was before them: "If wounded, 'Blighty'; if killed, theResurrection. " Then "over the top. " He was last seen alive rallyinghis men, who had wavered for a moment under the heavy machine gun andrifle fire. He carried the waverers along with him, and was found thatnight close to the trench, the winning of which had cost him his life, with his platoon sergeant and a few of his men by his side. 

What wonder that his cousin and best friend, when asked a short timepreviously what he was like, had replied, "He is the most beautifulthing that ever happened. "

AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

(BEING EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS TO HIS SISTER)

"I am very much wondering whether you will receive 'A Diary' in fourparts. It is very much founded on fact, though altered in parts. Youwill probably be surprised at a certain change in tone, but rememberthat my previous articles were written in England, while this waswritten on the spot. .. . The Diary was not my diary, though it wasso very nearly what mine might have been that it is difficult tosay what is fiction and what is actuality in it. With regard to the'conversation' during the bombardment, it represents in its totalitywhat I believe the ordinary soldier feels. He loathes the war, and thegrandiloquent speeches of politicians irritate him by their failure torealize how loathesome war is. At the same time he knows he has got togo through with it, and only longs for the chance to hurry up. In the'Diary, ' again, I quite deliberately emphasized the depression of theman who thought he was being left out, and the mental effect of theclearing-up process because I thought that it would be a good thingfor people to realize this side, and also partly because I felt thatin previous articles I had glossed over it too much. .. . If I get achance of publishing another book I shall certainly include them. "

 _Note_. --Not only "A Diary" and "Imaginary Conversations, " but every paper in the present collection, with the exception of "The Wisdom, " "The Potentate, " and "A Passing in June, " were written in France in 1916, and many of them actually in the trenches. The rough sketch for "A Passing in June" was written in France in 1915, but was completed when the author was in hospital at home. 

 "The Potentate" was written for the original volume of _A Student in Arms_, but was not published on account of its likeness in subject to Barrie's play, _Der Tag_, which, however, Donald had not seen or even heard of when he wrote his own. 

I

THE POTENTATE[1]

 SCENE. _A tent (interior). The_ POTENTATE _is sitting at a table listening to his_ COURT CHAPLAIN. 

[Footnote 1: It is necessary to state that _The Potentate_ was writtenbefore Sir James Barrie's play _Der Tag_ appeared. ]

COURT CHAPLAIN (_concluding his remarks_). Where can we look for theKingdom of God, Sire, if not among the German people? Consider yourfoes. The English are Pharisees, hypocrites. Woe to them, saiththe Lord. The French are atheists. The Belgians are ignorant andpriest-ridden. The Russians are sunk in mediæval superstition. As forthe Italians, half are atheists and the other half idolators. Onlyin Germany do you find a reasonable and progressive faith, devoidof superstition, abreast of scientific thought, and of the highestethical value. Germany then, Sire, is the Kingdom of God on earth. TheGermans are the chosen people, the heirs of the promise, and let theirenemies be scattered!

 (_The_ POTENTATE _rises, leans forward with his hands on the table, and an expression of extreme gratification, while the_ CHAPLAIN _stands with a smug and respectful smile on his white face. _)

POTENTATE. You are right, my dear Clericus, abundantly right. Verywell put indeed! Yes, Germany is the Kingdom of God, and I (_drawinghimself up to his full height_)--I am Germany! The strength of theLord is in my right arm, and He teaches it terrible things for theunbeliever and the hypocrite. With God I conquer! Good-night, my dearClericus, good-night. 

 (CLERICUS _departs with a low bow, and_ _the_ POTENTATE _sinks into his chair with a gesture of fatigue. Enter a_ GENERAL _of the Headquarters Staff with telegrams. _)

POTENTATE (_brightening_). Ha, my dear General, you have news?

GENERAL. Excellent news, Sire! On the Eastern front the Russianscontinue to give way. In the West a French attack has been repulsedwith heavy loss, and our gallant Prussians have driven the British outof half a mile of trenches. 

 (_At this last bit of news the_ POTENTATE _springs to his feet with a look of joy. _)

POTENTATE. A sign! My God, a sign! Pardon, General, I was thinking ofa conversation that I have just had with Dr. Clericus. Come now, showme where these trenches are. 

 (_The_ GENERAL _produces a map, over which they pore together. _)

POTENTATE. Excellent, excellent! A most valuable capture. Our losseswere . .. ?

GENERAL. Slight, Sire. 

POTENTATE. Better and better. I cannot afford to lose my goodPrussians, my heroic, my invincible Prussians. To what do youattribute the success?

GENERAL. The success was due in a large measure to the perfectionof the apparatus suggested a week ago by your Majesty's scientificadviser. 

POTENTATE (_blanching a little_). Ah, then it was not a charge, eh?

GENERAL. The charge followed, Sire; but the work was already done. Thedefenders of the trench were already dead or dying before our heroesreached it. 

POTENTATE (_sinking back in his chair with his finger to his lips, and a slight frown_). Thank you, General, your news is of the best. I will detain you no longer. (_The_ GENERAL _bows. _) Stay! Has acounterattack been launched yet?

GENERAL. Not yet, Sire. No doubt one will be attempted to-night. Ourmen are prepared. 

POTENTATE. Good. Bring me fresh news as soon as it arrives. Good-night, General, good-night. 

 (_Exit_ GENERAL. )

 (_The_ POTENTATE _sits musing for a considerable time. A slight cough is heard, and he raises his head. _)

POTENTATE (_slowly_). Enter!

 (_Enter a tall figure in a long black academic gown and black clothes. _)

POTENTATE (_with an attempt at gaiety_). Come in, my dear Sage, comein. You are welcome. (_A little anxiously_) You have the crystal?Good. How is the Master? Still busy devising new means of victory?

THE SAGE. My master's poor skill is always at your service, Sire. Youhave only to command. 

POTENTATE. I know it. Now let me have the crystal. I would see ifpossible the scene of to-day's victory in Flanders. 

 (_The_ SAGE _hands him the crystal with a low bow. The_ POTENTATE _seizes it eagerly, and gazes into it. A pause. _)

POTENTATE (_raising his head suddenly_). Horrible, horrible!

SAGE. Sire?

POTENTATE. This last invention of your master's is inhuman!

SAGE. War is inhuman, Sire. Where a speedy end is desired, is it notkindest to be cruel?

 (_The_ POTENTATE _gazes again into the crystal, _ _but starts up immediately with a gasp of horror. _)

POTENTATE. Again the same vision! Always after my victories the visionof the Crucified, with the stern reproachful eyes! Am I not the Lord'sappointed instrument? What means it? Tell your master that I will haveno more of his inventions. They are too diabolical! They imperil mycause!

SAGE (_pointing to the crystal_). Look again, Sire. 

POTENTATE (_gazing into the crystal, and in a low and agonizedvoice_). Time with his scythe raised menacingly against me. (_Abruptly_) This is a trickery, Sirrah! Have a care! But I will notbe tricked. Are my troops not brave? Are they not invincible? Can theynot win by their proven valour? Who can stand against them, for thestrength of the Lord is in their right hands?

 (_Enter GENERAL hastily_)

GENERAL. Sire. .. . (_He starts, and stops short_). 

POTENTATE (_testily_). Go on, go on. What is it?

GENERAL. Sire, the English counterattack has for the moment succeeded. Infuriated by their defeat they fought so that no man could resistthem. They have regained the trenches they had lost, but we hope toattack again to-morrow, when--

POTENTATE. Enough! Leave me!

 (_The_ GENERAL _withdraws, and the_ POTENTATE _leans forward with his head on his hands. _)

SAGE (_commiseratingly_). Apparently other troops are brave besidesyour own, Sire!

POTENTATE (_brokenly_). The cowards! The cowards! Five nations againstthree! Alas, my poor Prussians!

SAGE. If you will look once more into the crystal, Sire, I think youwill see something that will interest you. 

 (_The_ POTENTATE _takes the crystal again, but without confidence. _)

POTENTATE (_in a slow recitative_). A stricken field by night. Thedead lie everywhere, German and English, side by side. But all are notdead. Some are but wounded. They help one another. Prussian and Britonhelp one another, with painful smiles on their white faces. What? Havethey forgotten their hate? My Prussians! Can you so soon forget? Imourn for you! But who are these? White figures, vague, elusive! See, they seem to come down from above. They are carrying away the soulsof my Prussians! And of the accursed English! What! One Paradise forboth! Impossible! And who is that watching? He who with a smile soloving, and yet so stern . .. Ah!. .. My God . .. No!. .. Not I. .. . 

 (_The_ POTENTATE _rises with a strangled cry, and sinks into his chair a nerveless wreck. The_ SAGE _watches coolly, with a cynical smile. _)

SAGE. So, Sire, you must find room for the English in that kingdom ofyours and God's! Perchance it is more catholic than we had thought!

 (_The_ POTENTATE _groans. _)

SAGE. Sire, you have seen some truth to-night. Is courage, is God, allon your side? Is Time on your side? Shall I go back to my master andtell him that you need no more of his inventions?

 (_He pauses, and glances at the_ POTENTATE _with a look of contempt, and then turns to go. The_ POTENTATE _looks round him with a ghastly stare. _)

POTENTATE (_feebly_). No . .. The Crucified . .. Time . .. Stay, stay!

 (_The_ SAGE _turns with a gesture of triumph. _)

 (_Curtain. _)

II

THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE

A Padre who has earned the right to talk about the "average Tommy, "writes to me that _A Student in Arms_ gives a very one-sided pictureof him. While cordially admitting his unselfishness, his goodcomradeship, his patience, and his pluck, my friend challenges meto deny that military, and especially active, service often has abrutalizing effect on the soldier, weakening his moral fibres, andcausing him to sink to a low animal level. 

Those who are in the habit of reading between the lines will, Ithink, often have seen the shadow of this darker side of army lifeon the pages of _A Student in Arms_; but I have not written of itspecifically for several reasons. It will suffice if I mention two. First, I was writing mainly of the private and the N. C. O. Rightlyor wrongly, I imagined that those for whom I was writing were in thehabit of taking for granted this darker side of life in the ranks. Iimagined that they thought of the "lower classes" as being naturallycoarser and more animal than the "upper classes. " I wanted then, and Iwant now, to contradict that belief with all the vehemence of which Iam capable. Officers and men necessarily develop different qualities, different forms of expression, different mental attitudes. But I amconfident that I speak the truth when I say that essentially, and inthe eyes of God there is nothing to choose between them. 

If I must write of the brutalizing effect of war on the soldier, letit be clearly understood that I am speaking, not of officers only, nor of privates only, but of fighting men of every class and rank. As a matter of fact I have never, whether before or during the war, belonged to a mess where the tone was cleaner or more wholesome thanit was in the Sergeants' Mess of my old battalion. 

My second reason for not writing about the bad side of Army life wasthat mere condemnation is so futile. I have listened to countlesssermons in which the "lusts of the flesh" were denounced, and haveknown for certain that their power for good was _nil_. If I writeabout it now, it is only because I hope that I may be able to makeclearer the causes and processes of such moral deterioration asexists, and thus to help those who are trying to combat it, to do sowith greater understanding and sympathy. 

Even in England most officers, and all privates, are cut off fromtheir womenfolk. Mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts areinaccessible. All have a certain amount of leisure, and very littleto do with it. All are physically fit and mentally rather unoccupied. All are living under an unnatural discipline from which, when thelast parade of the day is over, there is a natural reaction. Finally, wherever there are troops, and especially in war time, there are "bad"women and weak women. The result is inevitable. A certain number ofboth officers and men "go wrong. "

Fifteen months ago I was a private quartered in a camp near Aldershot. After tea it began to get dark. The tent was damp, gloomy, and cold. The Y. M. C. A. Tent and the Canteen tent were crowded. One wandered offto the town. The various soldiers' clubs were filled and overflowing. The bars required more cash than one possessed. The result was thatone spent a large part of one's evenings wandering aimlessly aboutthe streets. Fortunately I discovered an upper room in a Wesleyansoldiers' home, where there was generally quiet, and an empty chair. I shall always be grateful to that "home, " for the many hours which Iwhiled away there with a book and a pipe. But most of us spent a greatdeal of our leisure, bored and impecunious, "on the streets"; and ifa fellow ran up against "a bit of skirt, " he was generally just in themood to follow it wherever it might lead. The moral of this is, doubleyour subscriptions to the Y. M. C. A. , Church huts, soldiers' clubs, orwhatever organization you fancy! You will be helping to combat vice inthe only sensible way. 

I don't suppose that the officers were much better off than we were. Their tents may have been a little lighter and less crowded than ours. They had a late dinner to occupy part of the long evening. They hadmore money to spend, and perhaps more to occupy their minds. But Ifancy that as great a proportion of them as of us took the false step;and though perhaps when they compared notes their language may havebeen less blunt than ours, I am not sure that, for this very reason, it may not have been more poisonous. But mind you, we did not allgo wrong, by any means, though I believe that some fellows did, bothofficers and men, who would not have done so if they had stayed athome with their mothers, sisters, sweethearts, or wives. 

So much for the Army at home. When we cross the Channel every featureis a hundred times intensified. Consider the fighting man in thetrenches--and I am still speaking of both officers and men--the mostordinary refinements of life are conspicuously absent. There is nowater to wash in. Vermin abound, sleeping and eating accommodationsare frankly disgusting. One is obliged for the time to live like apig. Added to this one is all the time in a state of nervous tension. One gets very little sleep. Every night has its anxieties andresponsibilities. Danger or death may come at any moment. So for aweek or a fortnight or a month, as the case may be. Then comes thereturn to billets, to comparative safety and comfort--the latternothing to boast about though! Tension is relaxed. There is aninevitable reaction. Officers and men alike determine to "gatherrosebuds" while they may. Their bodies are fit, their wills arerelaxed. If they are built that way, and an opportunity offers, theywill "satisfy the lusts of the flesh. "

When there is real fighting to be done the dangers of theafter-reaction are intensified. You who sit at home and read ofglorious bayonet charges do not realize what it means to the manbehind the bayonet. You don't realize the repugnance for the firstthrust--a repugnance which has got to be overcome. You don't realizethe change that comes over a man when his bayonet is wet with theblood of his first enemy. He "sees red. " The primitive "blood-lust, "kept under all his life by the laws and principles of peacefulsociety, surges through his being, transforming him, maddening himwith the desire to kill, kill, kill! Ask any one who has been throughit if this is not true. And that letting loose of a primitive lust isnot going to be without its effect on a man's character. 

At the same time, of course, not all of us become animals out here. There are other influences at work. Caring for the wounded, buryingthe mutilated dead, cause one to hate war, and to value ten times morethe ways of peace. Many are saved from sinking in the scale, by a loveof home which is able to bridge the gulf which separates themfrom their beloved. The letters of my platoon are largely loveletters--often the love letters of married men to their wives. 

There is immorality in the Army; when there is opportunity immoralityis rife. Possibly there is more abroad than there is at home. If so itis because there is far greater temptation. Nevertheless, I fancy thatmy correspondent, who is a padre, a don, and at least the beginning ofa saint, is perhaps inclined to exaggerate the extent of the evil inthe Army as compared with civil life. I imagine that very few padres, especially if they are dons, and most of all if they are saints, realize that in civil life as in Army life, the average man isimmoral, both in thought and deed. Let us be frank about this. Whata doctor might call the "appetites" and a padre the "lusts" of thebody, hold dominion over the average man, whether civilian or soldier, unless they are counteracted by a stronger power. The only men whoare pure are those who are absorbed in some pursuit, or possessed by agreat love; be it the love of clean, wholesome life which is religion, or the love of a noble man which is hero-worship, or the love of atrue woman. These are the four powers which are stronger than "theflesh"--the zest of a quest, religion, hero-worship, and the love ofa good woman. If a man is not possessed by one of these he will beimmoral. 

Probably most men are immoral. The conditions of military, andespecially of active service merely intensify the temptation. Unlessa soldier is wholly devoted to the cause, or powerfully affected byreligion, or by hero-worship, or by pure love, he is immoral. 

Perhaps most men are immoral if they get the chance. Most soldiersare immoral if they get the chance. But those who are trying to helpthe soldier can do so with a good heart if they realize that inhim they have a foundation on which to build. Already he is half ahero-worshipper. Already he half believes in the beauty of sacrificeand in the life immortal. Already he is predisposed to valueexceedingly all that savours of clean, wholesome home life. On thatfoundation it should be possible to build a strong idealism whichshall prevail against the flesh. And this is my last word--it is bybuilding up, and not by casting down, that the soldier can be savedfrom degradation. The devil that possesses so many can only be castout by an angel that is stronger than he. 

III

THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM"

I had a letter the other day from an Oxford friend. In it was thisphrase: "I loathe militarism in all its forms. " Somehow it took meback quite suddenly to the days before the war, to ideas that I hadalmost completely forgotten. I suppose that in those days the greatfeature of those of us who tried to be "in the forefront of modernthought" was their riotous egotism, their anarchical insistence on theclaims of the individual at the expense even of law, order, society, and convention. "Self-realization" we considered to be the primaryduty of every man and woman. 

The wife who left her husband, children, and home because of herpassion for another man was a heroine, braving the hypocriticaljudgments of society to assert the claims of the individual soul. The woman who refused to abandon all for love's sake, was not onlya coward but a criminal, guilty of the deadly sin of sacrificing hersoul, committing it to a prison where it would languish and neverblossom to its full perfection. The man who was bound to uncongenialdrudgery by the chains of an early marriage or aged parents dependenton him, was the victim of a tragedy which drew tears from our eyes. The woman who neglected her home because she needed a "wider sphere"in which to develop her personality was a champion of women's rights, a pioneer of enlightenment. And, on the other hand, the peoplewho went on making the best of uncongenial drudgery, or in any waysubjected their individualities to what old-fashioned people calledduty, were in our eyes contemptible poltroons. 

It was the same in politics and religion. To be loyal to a partyor obedient to a Church was to stand self-confessed a fool or ahypocrite. Self-realization, that was in our eyes the whole duty ofman. 

And then I thought of what I had seen only a few days before. First, of battalions of men marching in the darkness, steadily and in step, towards the roar of the guns; destined in the next twelve hours tocharge as one man, without hesitation or doubt, through barragesof cruel shell and storms of murderous bullets. Then, the followingafternoon, of a handful of men, all that was left of about threebattalions after ten hours of fighting, a handful of men exhausted, parched, strained, holding on with grim determination to the last bitof German trench, until they should receive the order to retire. Andlastly, on the days and nights following, of the constant streamsof wounded and dead being carried down the trench; of the unceasingsearch that for three or four days was never fruitless. 

Self-realization! How far we have travelled from the ideals of thosepre-war days. And as I thought things over I wondered at how faint aresponse that phrase, "I loathe militarism in all its forms, " found inmy own mind. 

Before the war I too hated "militarism. " I despised soldiers as menwho had sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. The sight ofthe Guards drilling in Wellington Barracks, moving as one man to thecommand of their drill instructor, stirred me to bitter mirth. Theywere not men but manikins. When I first enlisted, and for many monthsafterwards, the "mummeries of military discipline, " the saluting, themeticulous uniformity, the rigid suppression of individual exuberance, chafed and infuriated me. I compared it to a ritualistic religion, areligion of authority only, which depended not on individual assentbut on tradition for its sanctions. I loathed militarism in all itsforms. Now . .. Well, I am inclined to reconsider my judgment. Seeingthe end of military discipline, has shown me something of its ethicalmeaning--more than that, of its spiritual meaning. 

For though the part of the "great push" that it fell to my lot to seewas not a successful part, it was none the less a triumph--a spiritualtriumph. From the accounts of the ordinary war correspondent I thinkone hardly realizes how great a spiritual triumph it was. For the warcorrespondent only sees the outside, and can only describe the outsideof things. We who are in the Army, who know the men as individuals, who have talked with them, joked with them, censored their letters, worked with them, lived with them we see below the surface. 

The war correspondent sees the faces of the men as they march towardsthe Valley of the Shadow, sees the steadiness of eye and mouth, hears the cheery jest. He sees them advance into the Valley withoutflinching. He sees some of them return, tired, dirty, strained, butstill with a quip for the passer-by. He gives us a picture of menwithout nerves, without sensitiveness, without imagination, schooledto face death as they would face rain or any trivial incident ofeveryday life. The "Tommy" of the war correspondent is not a humanbeing, but a lay figure with a gift for repartee, little more thanthe manikin that we thought him in those far-off days before the war, when we watched him drilling on the barrack square. We soldiers knowbetter. We know that each one of those men is an individual, full ofhuman affections, many of them writing tender letters home everyweek, each one longing with all his soul for the end of this hatefulbusiness of war which divides him from all that he loves best inlife. We know that every one of these men has a healthy individual'srepugnance to being maimed, and a human shrinking from hurt and fromthe Valley of the Shadow of Death. 

The knowledge of all this does not do away with the even tread of thetroops as they pass, the steady eye and mouth, the cheery jest; butit makes these a hundred times more significant. For we know that whatthese things signify is not lack of human affection, or weakness, orwant of imagination, but something superimposed on these, to whichthey are wholly subordinated. Over and above the individuality ofeach man, his personal desires and fears and hopes, there is thecorporate personality of the soldier which knows no fear and only oneambition--to defeat the enemy, and so to further the righteous causefor which he is fighting. In each of those men there is this dualpersonality: the ordinary human ego that hates danger and shrinks fromhurt and death, that longs for home, and would welcome the end of thewar on any terms; and also the stronger personality of the soldier whocan tolerate but one end to this war, cost what that may--the victoryof liberty and justice, and the utter abasement of brute force. 

And when one looks back over the months of training that the soldierhas had, one recognizes how every feature of it, though at the timeit often seemed trivial and senseless and irritating, was in realitydirected to this end. For from the moment that a man becomes asoldier his dual personality begins. Henceforth he is both a man anda soldier. Before his training is complete the order must be reversed, and he must be a soldier and a man. As a soldier he must obey andsalute those whom, as a man, he very likely dislikes and despises. Inhis conduct he no longer only has to consider his reputation as a man, but still more his honour as a soldier. In all the conditions of hislife, his dress, appearance, food, drink, accommodation, and work, hisindividual preferences count for nothing, his efficiency as a soldiercounts for everything. At first he "hates" this, and "can't seethe point of" that. But by the time his training is complete he hasrealized that whether he hates a thing or not, sees the point of athing or not, is a matter of the uttermost unimportance. If he iswise, he keeps his likes and dislikes to himself. 

All through his training he is learning the unimportance of hisindividuality, realizing that in a national, a world crisis, it countsfor nothing. On the other hand, he is equally learning that as a unitin a fighting force his every action is of the utmost importance. Thehumility which the Army inculcates is not an abject self-depreciationthat leads to loss of self-respect and effort. Substituted for the oldindividualism is a new self-consciousness. The man has become humble, but in proportion the soldier has become exceeding proud. The oldpersonal whims and ambitions give place to a corporate ambitionand purpose, and this unity of will is symbolized in action by thesimultaneous exactitude of drill, and in dress by the rigid identityof uniform. Anything which calls attention to the individual, whetherin drill or in dress, is a crime, because it is essential that thesoldier's individuality should be wholly subordinated to the corporatepersonality of the regiment. 

As I said before, the personal humility of the soldier has nothing init of abject self-depreciation or slackness. On the contrary, everydetail of his appearance, and every most trivial feature of his dutyassumes an immense significance. Slackness in his dress and negligencein his work are military crimes. In a good regiment the soldier isstriving after perfection all the time. 

And it is when he comes to the supreme test of battle that the fruitsof his training appear. The good soldier has learnt the hardestlesson of all--the lesson of self-subordination to a higher and biggerpersonality. He has learnt to sacrifice everything which belongs tohim individually to a cause that is far greater than any personalambitions of his own can ever be. He has learnt to do this sothoroughly that he knows no fear--for fear is personal. He has learntto "hate" father and mother and life itself for the sake of--though hemay not call it that--the Kingdom of God on earth. 

It is a far cry from the old days when one talked of self-realization, isn't it? I make no claim to be a good soldier; but I think thatperhaps I may be beginning to be one; for if I am asked now whether I"loathe militarism in all its forms, " I think that "the answer is inthe negative, " I will even go farther, and say that I hope that someof the discipline and self-subordination that have availed to send mencalmly to their death in war, will survive in the days of peace, andmake of those who are left better citizens, better workmen, betterservants of the State, better Church men. 

IV

A MONTH'S REFLECTIONS

Timothy and I are on detachment. We are billeted with M. Le Curé, andwe mess at the schoolmaster's. Hence we are on good terms with allparties, for of course a good schoolmaster shrugs his shoulders ata priest, and a good priest returns the compliment. In war time, however, the hatchet seems to be buried pretty deep. We have not seenit sticking out anywhere. 

M. Le Curé has a beautiful rose garden, a cask of excellent cider, apassable Sauterne, and a charming pony. He is a good fellow, I shouldthink, though without much education. His house--or what I have seenof it--is the exact opposite of what an English country vicar'swould be. The only sitting-room that I have seen is as neat as an oldmaid's. There is a polished floor, an oval polished table on whichrepose four large albums at regular intervals, each on its own littlemat. There is a mantelpiece with gilt candlesticks and an ornate clockunder a glass dome. Round the walls are photographs of brother clergy, the place of honour being assigned to a stout _Chanoine_. The chairsare stiff and uncomfortable. One of them, which is more imposingand uncomfortable than the rest, is obviously for the Bishop when hecomes. There are no papers, no books, no ash-trays, no confusion. Ihave never seen M. Le Curé sit there. I fancy he lives in the kitchenand in his garden. 

Timothy sleeps in the bed which the Bishop uses, and is told he oughtto feel _très saint_. 

The wife of the schoolmaster cooks for us. She is an excellent soul. We give her full marks. She has a smile and an omelette for everyemergency, and waves aside all Timothy's vagaries with "Ah, monsieur, la jeunesse!" I am not sure that Timothy quite likes it!

Timothy is immense. He is that rarest of birds, a wholly delightfulegotist. He is the sun, but we all bask and shine with reflectedglory. The men are splendid, because they are his men. I am a greatsuccess because I am his subaltern. Fortunately we all have a sense ofhumour and so are highly pleased with ourselves and each other. Afterall, if one is a Captain at twenty-two . .. ! But he's a good soldier, too, and we all believe in him. Timothy's all right, in spite of _lajeunesse_!

 * * * * *

Rain! The men are fifteen in a tent in a sea of mud. Poor beggars!They are having a thin time. Working parties in the trenches day andnight; every one soaked to the skin; and then a return to a damp, crowded, muddy tent. No pay, no smokes, and yet they are wonderfullycheery, and all think that the "Push" is going to end the war. I wishI thought so!

 * * * * *

These rats are the limit! The dugout swarms with them. Last night theyate half my biscuits and a good part of Timothy's clean socks, andwhenever I began to get to sleep one of them would run across my face, or some other sensitive part of my anatomy, and wake me up. I shallleave the candle alight to-night, to see if that keeps them away. 

 * * * * *

Last night the rats tried to eat the candle, and very nearly set me onfire. If it were not for the rain I would try the firestep. 

The men are having a rotten time again--no proper shelter from therain, and short rations, to say nothing of remarkably good practice bythe Boche artillery. C----, just out from England, got scuppered thisafternoon. A good boy--made his communion just before we came in. Isuppose he didn't know much about it, and that he is really better offnow; but at the same time it makes one angry. 

 * * * * *

The rain has lifted, so last night I tried the firestep, and got agood sleep. The absurd thing was that I couldn't wake up properly. Icame on duty at midnight, was roused, got to my feet, and started towalk along the trench. And then the Nameless Terror, that lurks indark corners when one is a small boy, gripped me. I was frightened ofthe dark, filled with a sense of impending disaster! It took aboutten minutes to wake properly and shake it off. I must try to get moresleep somehow; but it is jolly difficult. 

 * * * * *

The great bombardment has begun, the long-promised strafing of theBoche. According to the gunners they will all be dead, buried, ordazed when the time comes for us to go over the top. I doubt it! Ifthey have enough deep dug-outs I don't fancy that the bombardment willworry them very much. 

 * * * * *

Now we are at rest for a day or two before the Push. I am to be leftout--in charge of carriers. Damn! I might as well be A. S. C. I seemyself counting ration bags while the battalion is charging withfixed bayonets; and in the evening sending up parties of weary ladencarriers over shell-swept areas, while I myself stay behind atthe Dump. Damn! Damn!! Damn!!! Then I shall receive ironicalcongratulations on my "cushy" job. 

 * * * * *

Have just seen the battalion off. I don't start for another fivehours. I loathe war. It is futile, idiotic. I would gladly be outof the Army to-morrow. Glory is a painted idol, honour a phantasy, religion a delusion. We wallow in blood and torture to pleasea creature of our imagination. We are no better than South SeaIslanders. 

 * * * * *

Just here the attack was a failure. When I got to the Dump I found thebattalion still there. By an irony of fate I was the only officer ofmy company to set foot in the German lines. After a day of idlenessand depression I had to detail a party to carry bombs at top speed tosome relics of the leading battalions, who were still clinging to theextremest corner of the enemy's front line some distance to our left. Being fed up with inaction, I took the party myself. It was a longway. The trenches were choked with wounded and stragglers and troopswho had never been ordered to advance. In many places they were brokendown by shell-fire, in others they were waist-deep in water. By dintof much shouting and shoving and cursing I managed to get throughwith about ten of my men, but had to leave the others to follow with asergeant. 

At last we sighted our objective, a cluster of chalk mounds surroundedwith broken wire, shell craters, corpses, wreathed in smoke, dottedwith men. I think we all ran across the ground between our frontline and our objective, though it must have been more or less deadground. Anyhow, only one man was hit. When we got close the scenewas absurdly like a conventional battle picture--the sort of picturethat one never believes in for a minute. There was a wild mixture ofregiments--Jocks, Irishmen, Territorials, etc. , etc. There was noproper trench left. There were rifles, a machine gun, a Lewis rifle, and bombs all going at the same time. There were wounded men sittingin a kind of helpless stupor; there were wounded trying to dragthemselves back to our own lines; there were the dead of whom no onetook any notice. But the prevailing note was one of utter wearinesscoupled with dogged tenacity. 

Here and there were men who were self-conscious, wondering what wouldbecome of themselves. I was one of them, and we were none the betterfor it. Most of the fellows, though, had forgotten themselves. They nolonger flinched, or feared. They had got beyond that. They were justset on clinging to that mound and keeping the Huns at bay until theirofficer gave the word to retire. Their spirit was the spirit of theoarsman, the runner, or the footballer, who has strained himself tothe utmost, who if he stopped to wonder whether he could go on or notwould collapse; but who, because he does not stop to wonder, goes onmiraculously long after he should, by all the laws of nature, havesuccumbed to sheer exhaustion. 

Having delivered my bombs into eager hands, I reported to the officerwho seemed to be in charge, and asked if I could do anything. I mustfrankly admit that my one hope was that he would not want me to stay. He began to say how that morning he had reached his objective, and howfor lack of support on his flank, for lack of bombs, for lack of men, he had been forced back; and how for eight hours he had disputed everyinch of ground till now his men could only cling to these mounds withthe dumb mechanical tenacity of utter exhaustion. "You might go toH. Q. , " he said at last, "and tell them where I am, and that I can'thold on without ammunition and a barrage. "

I am afraid that I went with joy on that errand. I did not want tostay on those chalk mounds. 

 * * * * *

I only saw a very little bit of the battle. Thank God it has gone wellelsewhere; but here we are where we started. Day and night we havedone nothing but bring in the wounded and the dead. When one sees thedead, their limbs crushed and mangled, their features distorted andblackened, one can only have repulsion for war. It is easy to talk ofglory and heroism when one is away from it, when memory has softenedthe gruesome details. But here, in the presence of the mutilated andtortured dead, one can only feel the horror and wickedness of war. Indeed it is an evil harvest, sown of pride and arrogance and lust ofpower. Maybe through all this evil and pain we shall be purged of manysins. God grant it! If ever there were martyrs, some of these weremartyrs, facing death and torture as ghastly as any that confrontedthe saints of old, and facing it with but little of that fiercefanatical exaltation of faith that the early Christians had to helpthem. 

For these were mostly quiet souls, loving their wives and childrenand the little comforts of home life most of all, little stirred bygreat emotions or passions. Yet they had some love for liberty, somefaith in God, --not a high and flaming passion, but a quiet insistentconviction. It was enough to send them out to face martyrdom, thoughtheir lack of imagination left them mercifully ignorant of theextremity of its terrors. It was enough, when they saw their danger inits true perspective, to keep them steadfast and tenacious. 

For them "it is finished. " _R. I. P. _

V

ROMANCE

I suppose that there are very few officers or men who have been at thefront for any length of time who would not be secretly, if not openly, relieved and delighted if they "got a cushy one" and found themselves_en route_ for "Blighty"; yet in many ways soldiering at the frontis infinitely preferable to soldiering at home. One of the factorswhich count most heavily in favour of the front, is the extraordinaryaffection of officers for their men. 

In England, officers hardly know their men. They live apart, only meeton parade, and their intercourse is carried on through the prescribedchannels. Even if you do get keen on a particular squad of recruits, or a particular class of would-be bombers, you lose them so soon thatyour enthusiasm never ripens into anything like intimacy. But at thefront you have your own platoon; and week after week, month aftermonth, you are living in the closest proximity; you see them all day, you get to know the character of each individual man and boy, and theresult in nearly every case is this extraordinary affection of which Ihave spoken. 

You will find it in the most unlikely subjects. I have heard a Major, a Regular with, as I thought, a good deal of regimental stiffness, talk about his men with a voice almost choked with emotion. "Whenyou see what they have to put up with, and how amazingly cheery theyare through it all, you feel that you can't do enough for them. Theymake you feel that you're not fit to black their boots. " And then hewent on to tell how it was often the fellows whom in England you haddespaired of, fellows who were always "up at orders, " who out at thefront became your right-hand men, the men on whom you found yourselfrelying. 

I had a letter not long ago from a gunner Captain, also a Regular, whohas been out almost since the beginning of the war. He wrote: "One ofmy best friends has just been killed"; and the "best friend" was notthe fellow he had known at "the shop, " or played polo with in India, or hunted with in Ireland, but a scamp of a telephonist, who hadstolen his whisky and owned up; who had risked his life for him, whohad been a fellow-sportsman who could be relied on in a tight cornerin the most risky of all games. 

There is indeed a glamour and a pathos about the private soldier, especially when, as so often happens, he is really only a boy. Whenyou meet him in the trenches, wet, covered with mud, with tired eyesspeaking of long watches and hours of risky work, he never fails togreet you with a smile, and you love him for it, and feel that nothingyou can do can make up to him for it. For you have slept in a muchmore comfortable place than he has. You have had unlimited tobaccoand cigarettes. You have had a servant to cook for you. You have faredsumptuously compared with him. You don't feel his superior. You don'twant to be "gracious without undue familiarity. " Exactly what you wantto do is a bit doubtful--the Major said he wanted to black his bootsfor him, and that is perhaps the best way of expressing it. 

When he goes over the top and works away in front of the parapet withthe moon shining full and the machine guns busy all along; when hegets back to billets, and throws off his cares and bathes and playsgames like any irresponsible schoolboy; even when he breaks bounds andis found by the M. P. Skylarking in ----, you can't help loving him. Most of all, when he lies still and white with a red stream tricklingfrom where the sniper's bullet has made a hole through his head, therecomes a lump in your throat that you can't swallow; and you turn awayso that you shan't have to wipe the tears from your eyes. 

Gallant souls, those boys, and all the more gallant because they hatewar so much. Their nerves quiver when a shell or a "Minnie" falls intothe trench near them, and then they smile to hide their weakness. Theyhate going over the parapet when the machine guns are playing; sothey don't hesitate, but plunge over with a smile to hide their fears. Their cure for every mental worry is a smile, their answer to everyprompting of fear is a plunge. They have no philosophy or fanaticismto help them--only the sporting instinct which is in every healthyBritish boy. 

Then there are "the old men, " less attractive, less stirring to theimagination, less sensitive, but who grow upon you more and more asyou get to know them. Any one over twenty-three or so is an "oldman. " They have lost the grace, the irresponsibility, the sensibilityof youth. Their eyes and mouths are steadier, their movements moredeliberate. But they are the fellows whom you would choose for apatrol, or a raid, where a cool head and a stout heart are what iswanted. It takes you longer to know these. They are less responsive toyour advances. But when you have tested them and they have tested you, you know that you have that which is stronger than any terror of nightor day, a loyalty which nothing can shake. 

And then when he thinks how little he deserves all this love andloyalty, the subaltern's heart aches with a feeling that can find noexpression either in word or deed. 

This is a tale that has often been told, and that people in Englandknow by heart. It cannot be told too often. It cannot be learnt toowell. For the time will come when we shall need to remember it, andwhen it will be easy to forget. Will you remember it, O ye people, when the boy has become a man, and the soldier has become a workman?But there are other tales to tell. There are the tales of thesergeant-major and the sergeants, the corporals and the "lance-jacks. "Sergeant-majors, sergeants, and corporals are not romantic figures. Ifyou think of them at all, you probably think of rumjars and profanity. Yet they are the very backbone of the Army. I have been a sergeant andI have been a private soldier, and I know that the latter has muchthe better time of the two. He at least has the kind of libertywhich belongs to utter irresponsibility. If he breaks bounds in theexuberance of his spirits, no one thinks much worse of him as long ashe does not make a song about paying the penalty!

Of course he has to be punished. So many days of sleeping in the guardtent, extra fatigues, pack-drill, and perhaps a couple of hours tiedup, as an example to evil-doers. But if he has counted the cost, andpays the price with a grin, we just say "Young scamp!" and dismissthe matter. But if a sergeant or a corporal does the same, that's avery different matter. He has shown himself unfit for his job. Hehas betrayed a trust. We cannot forgive him. Responsibility has itsdisadvantages. The senior N. C. O. Gets no relaxation from discipline. In the line and out of it he must always be watchful, self-controlled, orderly. He must never wink. These men have not the glamour of the boyprivate; but their high sense of duty and discipline, their keennessand efficiency, merit all the honour that we can give them. 

Finally--for it would not do for a subaltern to discuss hissuperiors--we come to the junior officer. Somehow I fancy that in thepublic eye he too is a less romantic figure than the private. One doesnot associate him with privations and hardships, but with parcels fromhome. Well, it is quite right. He has such a much less uncomfortabletime than his men that he does not deserve or want sympathy on thatscore. He is better off in every way. He has better quarters, betterfood, more kit, a servant, and in billets far greater liberty. And yetthere is many a man who is now an officer who looks back on his daysas a private with regret. Could he have his time over again . .. Yes, he would take a commission; but he would do so, not with any thoughtfor the less hardship of it, but from a stern sense of duty--the senseof duty which does not allow a man with any self-respect to refuse toshoulder a heavier burden when called upon to do so. 

Those apparently irresponsible subalterns whom you see entertainingtheir lady friends at the Canton or Ciro's do, when they are at thefront, have very heavy responsibilities. Even in the ordinary routineof trench life, so many decisions have to be made, with the chance ofa "telling off" whichever way you choose, and the lives of other menhanging in the balance. Suppose you are detailed for a wiring party, and you arrive to find a full moon beaming sardonically down at you. What are you to do? If you go out you may be seen. Half a dozen ofyour men may be mown down by a machine gun. You will be blamed andwill blame yourself for not having decided to remain behind theparapet. If you do not go out you may set a precedent, and night afternight the work will be postponed, till at last it is too late, andthe Hun has got through, and raided the trench. If you hesitate or askadvice you are lost. You have to make up your mind in an instant, andto stand by it. If you waver your men will never have confidence inyou again. 

Still more in a push; a junior subaltern is quite likely to findhimself at any time in command of a company, while he may for a dayeven have to command the relics of a battalion. I have seen boysalmost fresh from a Public School in whose faces there were twopersonalities expressed: the one full of the lighthearted, reckless, irresponsible vitality of boyhood, and the other scarred withthe anxious lines of one to whom a couple of hundred exhaustedand nerve-shattered men have looked, and not looked in vain, forleadership and strength in their grim extremity. From a boy in sucha position is required something far more difficult than personalcourage. If we praise the boy soldier for his smile in the face ofshells and machine guns, don't let us forget to praise still more theboy officer who, in addition to facing death on his own account, hasto bear the responsibility of the lives of a hundred other men. Thereis many a man of undoubted courage whose nerve would fail to bear thatstrain. 

A day or two ago I was reading _Romance_, by Joseph Conrad and FordMadox Hueffer. It is a glorious tale of piracy and adventure in theWest Indies; but for the moment I wondered how it came about thatConrad, the master of psychology, should have helped to write sucha book. And then I understood. For these boys who hate the war, andsuffer and endure with the smile that is sometimes so difficult, andlong with a great longing for home and peace--some day some of themwill look back on these days and will tell themselves that after allit was Romance, the adventure, which made their lives worth while. Andthey will long to feel once again the stirring of the old comradeshipand love and loyalty, to dip their clasp-knives into the same pot ofjam, and lie in the same dug-out, and work on the same bit of wirewith the same machine gun striking secret terror into their hearts, and look into each other's eyes for the same courageous smile. ForRomance, after all, is woven of the emotions, especially the elementalones of love and loyalty and fear and pain. 

We men are never content! In the dull routine of normal life we sighfor Romance, and sometimes seek to create it artificially, stimulatingspurious passions, plunging into muddy depths in search of it. Now wehave got it we sigh for a quiet life. But some day those who have notdied will say: "Thank God I have lived! I have loved, and endured, andtrembled, and trembling, dared. I have had my Romance. "

VI

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS

I

 SCENE. _A field in Flanders. All round the edge are bivouacs, built of sticks and waterproof sheets. Three men are squatting round a small fire, waiting for a couple of mess-tins of water to boil_. 

BILL (_gloomily_). The last three of the old lot! Oo's turn next?

FRED. Wot's the bleedin' good of bein' dahn in the mahf abaht it? Giveme the bleedin' 'ump, you do. 

JIM. Are we dahn-'earted? Not 'alf, we ain't!

BILL. I don't know as I cares. Git it over, I sez. 'Ave done wiv it!I dessay as them wot's gone West is better off nor wot we are, arterall. 

JIM. Orlright, old sport, you go an' look for the V. C. , and we'll pickup the bits an' bury 'em nice an' deep!

BILL. If this 'ere bleedin' war don't finish soon that's wot Ibleedin' well will go an' do. Wish they'd get a move on an' finish it. 

FRED. If ever I gets 'ome agin, I'll never do another stroke inmy natural. The old woman can keep me, ---- 'er, an' if she don'tI'll--well--'er ---- ----. 

JIM (_indignantly_). Nice sort o' bloke you are! Arter creatin' abahtole Bill makin' you miserable, you goes on to plan 'ow you'll makeother folks miserable! Wot's the bleedin' good o' that? Keep smilin', I sez, an' keep other folks smilin' too, if you can. If ever I gets'ome I'll go dahn on my bended, I will, and I'll be a different sorto' bloke to wot I been afore. Swelp me, Bob, I will! My missus won't'ave no cause to wish as I've been done in. 

BILL. Ah well, it don't much matter. We're all most like to go aforethis war's finished. 

JIM. If yer goes yer goes, and that's all abaht it. A bloke's got togo some day, and fer myself I'd as soon get done in doin' my dooty asI would die in my bed. I ain't struck on dyin' afore my time, and Idon't know as I'm greatly struck on livin', but, whichever it is, yougot ter make the best on it. 

BILL (_meditatively_). I woulden mind stoppin' a bullet fair an'square; but I woulden like one of them 'orrible lingerin' deaths. "Died o' wounds" arter six munfs' mortal hagony--that's wot gets atme. Git it over an' done wiv, I sez. 

FRED (_querulously_). Ow, chuck it, Bill. You gives me the creeps, youdo. 

JIM. I knowed a bloke onest in civil life wot died a lingerin' death. Lived in the second-floor back in the same 'ouse as me an' my missus, 'e did. Suffered somefink' 'orrible, 'e did, an' lingered more norfive year. Yet I reckon 'e was one o' the best blokes as ever I comeacrost. Went to 'eaven straight, 'e did, if ever any one did. Wasn't'alf glad ter go, neither. "I done my bit of 'ell, Jim, " 'e sez tome, an' looked that 'appy you'd a' thought as 'e was well agin. Shan'tnever forget 'is face, I shan't. An' I'd sooner be that bloke, for all'is sufferin's, than I'd be old Fred 'ere, an' live to a 'undred. 

BILL (_philosophically_). You'm right, matey. This is a wale o' tears, as the 'ymn sez, and them as is out on it is best off, if so be asthey done their dooty in that state o' life. .. . Where's the corfee, Jim? The water's on the bile. 

VII

THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR

I am not a psychologist, and I have not seen many people die in theirbeds; but I think it is established that very few people are afraid ofa natural death when it comes to the test. Often they are so weak thatthey are incapable of emotion. Sometimes they are in such physicalpain that death seems a welcome deliverer. 

But a violent death such as death in battle is obviously a differentmatter. It comes to a man when he is in the full possession of hishealth and vigour, and when every physical instinct is urging himto self-preservation. If a man feared death in such circumstancesone could not be surprised, and yet in the present war hundreds ofthousands of men have gone to meet practically certain destructionwithout giving a sign of terror. 

The fact is that at the moment of a charge men are in an absolutelyabnormal condition. 

I do not know how to describe their condition in scientific terms;but there is a sensation of tense excitement combined with a sort ofuncanny calm. Their emotions seem to be numbed. Noises, sights, andsensations which would ordinarily produce intense pity, horror, ordread, have no effect on them at all, and yet never was their mindclearer, their sight, hearing, etc. , more acute. They notice all sortsof little details which would ordinarily pass them by, but which nowthrust themselves on their attention with absurd definiteness--absurdbecause so utterly incongruous and meaningless. Or they suddenlyremember with extraordinary clearness some trivial incident of theirpast life, hitherto unremembered, and not a bit worth remembering! Butwith the issue before them, with victory or death or the prospect ofeternity, their minds blankly refuse to come to grips. 

No; it is not at the moment of a charge that men fear death. As inthe case of those who die in bed, Nature has an anesthetic ready forthe emergency. It is before an attack that a man is more liable tofear--before his blood is hot, and while he still has leisure tothink. The trouble may begin a day or two in advance, when he is firsttold of the attack which is likely to mean death to himself and somany of his chums. This part is comparatively easy. It is fairly easyto be philosophic if one has plenty of time. One indulges in regretsabout the home one may never see again. One is rather sorry foroneself; but such self-pity is not wholly unpleasant. One feels mildlyheroic, which is not wholly disagreeable either. Very few men areafraid of death in the abstract. Very few men believe in hell, or aretortured by their consciences. They are doubtful about after-death, hesitating between a belief in eternal oblivion and a belief in a newlife under the same management as the present; and neither prospectfills them with terror. If only one's "people" would be sensible, onewould not mind. 

But as the hour approaches when the attack is due to be launched thestrain becomes more tense. The men are probably cooped up in a verysmall space. Movement is very restricted. Matches must not be struck. Voices must be hushed to a whisper. Shells bursting and machine gunsrattling bring home the grim reality of the affair. It is then morethan at any other time in an attack that a man has to "face thespectres of the mind, " and lay them if he can. Few men care for thosehours of waiting. 

Of all the hours of dismay that come to a soldier there are really fewmore trying to the nerves than when he is sitting in a trench underheavy fire from high-explosive shells or bombs from trench mortars. You can watch these bombs lobbed up into the air. You see them slowlywobble down to earth, there to explode with a terrific detonationthat sets every nerve in your body a-jangling. You can do nothing. Youcannot retaliate in any way. You simply have to sit tight and hopefor the best. Some men joke and smile; but their mirth is forced. Somefeign stoical indifference, and sit with a paper and a pipe; but as arule their pipes are out and their reading a pretence. There are fewmen, indeed, whose hearts are not beating faster, and whose nerves arenot on edge. 

But you can't call this "the fear of death"; it is a purely physicalreaction of danger and detonation. It is not fear of death as death. It is not fear of hurt as hurt. It is an infinitely intensifieddislike of suspense and uncertainty, sudden noise and shock. Itbelongs wholly to the physical organism, and the only cure that Iknow is to make an act of personal dissociation from the behaviour ofone's flesh. Your teeth may chatter and your knees quake, but as longas the real you disapproves and derides this absurdity of the flesh, the composite you can carry on. Closely allied to the sensation ofnameless dread caused by high explosives is that caused by gas. No onecan carry out a relief in the trenches without a certain anxiety anddread if he knows that the enemy has gas cylinders in position andthat the wind is in the east. But this, again, is not exactly thefear of death; but much more a physical reaction to uncertainty andsuspense combined with the threat of physical suffering. 

Personally, I believe that very few men indeed fear death. The vastmajority experience a more or less violent physical shrinking fromthe pain of death and wounds, especially when they are obliged to bephysically inactive, and when they have nothing else to think about. This kind of dread is, in the case of a good many men, intensifiedby darkness and suspense, and by the deafening noise and shock thataccompany the detonation of high explosives. But it cannot properly becalled the fear of death, and it is a purely physical reaction whichcan be, and nearly always is, controlled by the mind. 

Last of all there is the repulsion and loathing for the whole businessof war, with its bloody ruthlessness, its fiendish ingenuity, andits insensate cruelty, that comes to a man after a battle, when thetortured and dismembered dead lie strewn about the trench, and thewounded groan from No-Man's-Land. But neither is that the fear ofdeath. It is a repulsion which breeds hot anger more often than coldfear, reckless hatred of life more often than abject clinging to it. 

The cases where any sort of fear, even for a moment, obtains themastery of a man are very rare. Sometimes in the case of a boy, whose nerves are more sensitive than a man's, and whose habit ofself-control is less formed, a sudden shock will upset his mentalbalance. Sometimes a very egotistical man will succumb to danger longdrawn out. The same applies to men who are very introspective. I haveseen a man of obviously low intelligence break down on the eve of anattack. The anticipation of danger makes many men "windy, " especiallyofficers who are responsible for other lives than their own. But evenwhere men are afraid it is generally not death that they fear. Theirfear is a physical and instinctive shrinking from hurt, shock, and theunknown, which instinct obtains the mastery only through surprise, orthrough the exhaustion of the mind and will, or through a man beingexcessively self-centred. It is not the fear of death rationallyconsidered; but an irrational physical instinct which all men possess, but which almost all can control. 

VIII

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS

II

 SCENE. _A dug-out in a wood somewhere in Flanders. Officers at tea. _

HANCOCK. Damned glad to be out of that infernal firing trench, anyway. (_A dull report is heard in the distance. _) There goes anothertorpedo! Wonder who's copt it this time!

SMITH. For Christ's sake talk about something else!

HANCOCK (_ignoring him_). Are we coming back to the same trenches, sir?

CAPTAIN DODD. 'Spect so. 

HANCOCK. At the present rate we shall last another two spells. I hatethis sort of bisnay. You go on month after month losing fellows thewhole time, and at the end of it you're exactly where you started. Iwish they'd get a move on. 

WHISTON. Tired of life?

HANCOCK. If you call this life, yes! If this damned war is going onanother two years, I hope to God I don't live to see the end of it. 

SMITH. If ever I get home . .. !

WHISTON. Well?

SMITH. Won't I paint the town red, that's all!

WHISTON. If ever I get home . .. Well, I guess I'll go home. No morerazzle-dazzle for master! No, there's a little girl awaiting, and Iknow she thinks of me. Shan't wait any longer. 

HANCOCK (_heavily_). Don't think a chap's got any right to marry agirl under present circs. It's ten to one she's a widow before she'sa mother. 

SMITH. Oh, shut up!

CAPTAIN DODD (_gently_). To some women the kid would be just the onething that made life bearable. 

HANCOCK (_reddening_). Sorry, sir; forgot you'd just done it. Courseyou're right. Depends absolutely on the girl. 

CAPTAIN DODD. Thanks. I say, Whiston, I'm going to B. H. Q. Care to comealong?

 (_They go out together. _)

 SCENE. _A path through a wood_. CAPTAIN DODD _and_ WHISTON _walking together, followed by a_ LANCE-CORPORAL. 

DODD. D'you believe in presentiments, Whiston?

WHISTON (_doubtfully_). A year ago I should have laughed at you forasking. Now . .. 

DODD. More things in heaven and earth . .. ?

WHISTON. My rationalism is always being upset!

DODD. How exactly?

WHISTON. For instance, I simply can't believe that old John isfinished. Can you?

DODD (_quietly_). No. 

WHISTON. Funny thing. As far as I'm concerned I can quite imaginemyself just snuffing out. You can put one word on my grave, if I haveone--"Napu. " But as for John, no. I want something else. Somethingabout Death being scored off after all. 

DODD. I know. "O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thyvictory?"

WHISTON. Just that. Mind you, I don't think I'm afraid of Death. Idon't want to get killed. But if I saw him coming I think I couldsmile, and feel that after all he wasn't getting much of a bargain. But the idea of his getting old John sticks in my gullet. I believe inall sorts of things for him. Resurrection and life and Heaven, and allthat. 

DODD. What do you think about it, Corporal?

LANCE-CORPORAL. Same as Mr. Whiston, sir. 

WHISTON. But what about presentiments?

DODD. Oh, I don't know. Funny thing; but all through this fortnightI've been absolutely certain that I was not for it. 

LANCE-CORPORAL. Beg pardon, sir, we noticed that, sir!

WHISTON. Well, it's practically over now. 

DODD. I'm not so sure. I'm not in a funk, you know. It's simply that Idon't feel so sure. 

WHISTON. Oh, rot, sir! I don't believe in that sort of presentiment. 

DODD. What do you think, Corporal?

LANCE-CORPORAL. I think you goes when your time comes, sir. But itwon't come to-night, sir. Not after all we been through this spell, and the spell just finished. 

DODD. I believe you're right, Corporal. We shall go when our timecomes, and not before. I like that idea, you know. It means one hasn'tgot to worry. 

WHISTON. If it means that you go on as you've done the last fortnight, it's a damnable doctrine, sir. You've no business to go takingunnecessary risks simply because you've got bitten by Mohammedanism. 

DODD (_thoughtfully_). You're right, too, Whiston. "Thou shalt nottempt the Lord thy God. " One shouldn't take unnecessary risks. Mindyou, I don't admit that I have. It just enables one to do one's jobwith a quiet mind, that's all. 

TWO DAYS LATER

 SCENE. _A billet. _ HANCOCK _and_ SMITH. 

HANCOCK. Damn!

SMITH. What's up? Aren't you satisfied? The brigade's bound to go backand re-form now, and that means that we shan't be in the trenches fora couple of months at least. We may even go where there's a prettygirl or two. My word!

HANCOCK. Damnation!

SMITH (_genuinely astonished_). What the hell's wrong? Any one wouldthink you liked the trenches! Personally, I don't care if I never seethem again. England's full of nice young, bright young things cryingto get out. Let 'em all come! They can have my job and welcome!

HANCOCK (_to himself_). God! Why Dodd and Whiston? Why, why, why? Whynot me? Why just the fellows we can't afford to lose?

SMITH. Oh, for God's sake stow it! What the hell's the good of goingon like that? Of course I'm sorry for them and all that. But I don'tsee that it's going to help them to make oneself miserable about it. 

HANCOCK (_fiercely_). Sorry for them! It's not them I'm sorry for!They . .. They're the lucky ones! God! I suppose that's the answer!They'd earned it!

SMITH (_satirically_). Have you turned pi? We shall have you sayingthe prayers that you learnt at your mother's knee next, I suppose!I shall have to tell the Padre, and he'll preach a sermon about it!I should never have thought you would have been _frightened_ intoreligion!

HANCOCK. Frightened! You little swine! _You_ talk about beingfrightened after last night! I tell you I'd rather be lying out therewith Dodd and Whiston than be sitting here with you. Frightened intoreligion!

SMITH. Oh, I suppose you're the next candidate for death or glory!Good luck to you! I'm not competing. I'll do my job; but I'm not goingto make a fool of myself. Dodd and Whiston deserved all they got. You're right there. You'll get what you deserve some day, I expect!Don't look at me like that. I've said I'm sorry, and all that. Butit's the truth I'm speaking, all the same. 

HANCOCK. And you'll get what you deserve too, I suppose, which is tolive in your own company till the end of your miserable existence. Iwon't deprive you of your reward more than I can help, I promise you!

 (HANCOCK _goes out. _)

IX

THE WISDOM OF "A STUDENT IN ARMS"

It is no good trying to fathom "things" to the bottom; they have notgot one. 

Knowledge is always descriptive, and never fundamental. We candescribe the appearance and conditions of a process; but not the wayof it. 

Agnosticism is a fundamental fact. It is the starting-point of thewise man who has discovered that it needs eternity to study infinity. 

Agnosticism, however, is no excuse for indolence. Because we cannotknow all, we need not therefore be totally ignorant. 

The true wisdom is that in which all knowledge is subordinate topractical aims, and blended into a working philosophy of life. 

The true wisdom is that it is not what a man does, or has, or says, that matters; but what he is. 

This must be the aim of practical philosophy--to make a man be_something_. 

The world judges a man by his station, inherited or acquired. Godjudges by his character. To be our best we must share God's viewpoint. 

To the world death is always a tragedy; to the Christian it is never atragedy unless a man has been a contemptible character. 

Religion is the widening of a man's horizon so as to include God. 

It is in the nature of a speculation, but its returns are immediate. 

True religion means betting one's life that there is a God. 

Its immediate fruits are courage, stability, calm, unselfishness, friendship, generosity, humility, and hope. 

Religion is the only possible basis of optimism. 

Optimism is the essential condition of progress. 

One is what one believes oneself to be. If one believes oneself to bean animal one becomes bestial; if one believes oneself spiritual onebecomes Divine. 

Faith is an effective force whose measure has never yet been taken. 

Man is the creature of heredity and environment. He can only risesuperior to circumstances by bringing God into environment of which heis conscious. 

The recognition of God's presence upsets the balance of a man'senvironment, and means a new birth into a new life. 

The faculties which perceive God increase with use like any otherperceptive faculties. 

Belief in God may be an illusion; but it is an illusion that pays. 

If belief in God is illusion, happy is he who is deluded! He gainsthis world and thinks he will gain the next. 

The disbeliever loses this world, and risks losing the next. 

To be the centre of one's universe is misery. To have one's universecentred in God is the peace that passeth understanding. 

Greatness is founded on inward peace. 

Energy is only effective when it springs from deep calm. 

The pleasure of life lies in contrasts; the fear of contrasts is achain that binds most men. 

In the hour of danger a man is proven. The boaster hides, and theegotist trembles. He whose care is for others forgets to be afraid. 

Men live for eating and drinking, passion and wealth. They die forhonour. 

Blessed is he of whom it has been said that he so loved giving that heeven gave his own life. 

X

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS

III

 SCENE. _A trench unpleasantly near the firing line. There has been an hour's intense bombardment by the British, with suitable retaliation by the Boches. The retaliation is just dying down. _

 CHARACTERS. ALBERT--_Round-eyed, rotund, red-cheeked, yellow-haired, and deliberate; in civil life probably a drayman. _ JIM--_Small, lean, sallow, grey-eyed, with a kind of quiet restlessness; in civil life probably a mechanic with leanings towards Socialism. _ POZZIE--_A thick-set, low-browed, impassive, silent_ _country youth, with a face the colour of the soil. _ JINKS--_An old soldier, red, lean, wrinkled, with very blue eyes. His face is rough-hewn, almost grotesque like a gargoyle. In his eyes there is a perpetual glint of humour, and in the poise of his head a certain irrepressible jauntiness. _

ALBERT (_whose eyes are more staring than ever, his cheeks pendulousand crimson, his general air that of a partly deflated air-cushion_). Gawd's truth!

JINKS (_wagging his head_). Well, my old sprig o' mint, what's wrongwi' you?

ALBERT. It ain't right. (_Sententiously_) It's agin natur'. Flesh an'blood weren't made for this sort o' think. 

JIM. It ain't flesh an' blood that can't stand it. It's Mind. Look atold Pozzie. 'E's flesh an' blood, and don't turn an 'air! For myselfI'll go potty one o' these days. 

JINKS (_slapping POZZIE on the back_). You don't take no notice, doyou, old lump o' duff?

POZZIE. Oi woulden moind if I got moy rations; but a chap can't keep agood 'eart if 'e's got an empty stummick. 

JIM (_sarcastically_). You keep yer 'eart in yer stomach, don't yer?You ain't got no mind, you ain't. Jinks was born potty, an' the restof us'll all go potty except you. It's you an' yer Ally Sloper'sCavalry what'll win the war, I don't think!

ALBERT. What I wants ter know is 'ow long the bleedin' war's a-goin'ter last. If it goes on much longer I'll be potty if I ain't a gone'un. 

JIM. There's only one way of ending it as I knows on. 

ALBERT. What's that, matey?

JIM. Put all the bleedin' politicians on both sides in the bleedin'trenches. Give 'em a week's bombardment, an' send 'em away for a weekto make peace, with a promise of a fortnight's intense at the end ofit if they've failed. They'd find a way, sure enough. 

ALBERT (admiringly). Ah, that they would an' all. If old "Waitand See" 'ad been 'ere these last four days 'e wouldn't talk aboutfightin' to the last man!

JINKS. Don't talk stoopid. 'Oo began the bloomin' war? Don't yer knowwhat you're fightin' for? D'you want ter leave the 'Uns in France an'Belgium an' Serbia an' all? It ain't fer us to make peace. It's ferthe 'Uns. An' if you are done in, you got to go under some day. Iain't sure as they ain't the lucky ones what's got it over and donewith. And arter all, it's not us what's not proper. The 'Uns 'ave 'adtwo fer our one. 

ALBERT. They got dug-outs as deep as 'ell, it don't touch 'em. 

JINKS. (_but without conviction_). Don't talk silly. 

POZZIE. Oi reckon we got to go through with it. But they didn't oughtto give a chap short rations. That's what takes the 'eart out of achap. 

XI

LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN[2]

_April 17, 1916. _

Thank you very much for your letter of a week ago, which I shouldhave tried to answer before if I had had time. I am afraid that yourconfidence in me as an oracle will be severely shaken when I confessthat I was once on the eve of being ordained, and that in the endI funked it because it seemed such an awfully difficult job, and Icouldn't see my way to going through with it. 

[Footnote 2: This chapter is the actual text of a letter from "AStudent in Arms, " and like the most of the other chapters appearedoriginally in the _Spectator_. ]

However, I must try to answer your letter as best I can, and I hopethat you will not mind my speaking plainly what I think, and willremember that I do so in no spirit of superiority, but very humbly, asone who has funked the great work that you have had the pluck to takeup, and who has even failed in the little bit of work that he himselfdid try and do. This last means that I have no business to be anofficer. It was the biggest mistake in my life, for my position in theranks did give me a hold on the fellows, the strength of which I haveonly realized since I left. 

Now then to the point. As I understand you, your difficulty is thatyou feel that you must devote yourself to strengthening a very few menwho are already Churchmen, and to whom you can talk in the languageof the Church of things which you know they want to hear about, oryou must appeal to the crowd of those who are merely good fellows andoften sad scamps too, who must be caught with buns and cinemas and whoare very difficult to get any farther. 

I fancy that you, like me, when you see a fine dashing young fellow, with a touch of honesty and recklessness and wonderful mystery ofyouth in his eyes, love him as a brother, and long to do something tokeep him clean, and to keep him from the sordid things to which youand I know well enough he will descend in the long run if one cannotput the love of clean, wholesome life into his heart. But how to getat him? If you talk to him about his soul you disgust him, and youfeel a sort of sneaking sympathy with him too. It does not seem thething to make a chap self-conscious and a bit of a prig when he isnot one to start with. On the other hand, if you just keep to buns andcinemas you never get any farther. Well, it is a big difficulty. Theonly experience that I have had which counts at all is experience thatI gained while trying to run a boys' club in South London, and youmust not think me egotistical if I tell you what seems to me to havebeen the secret of any power that I seem to have had over fellows. 

At first I used to have a short service at the close of the club everyevening, to which most of the boys used to stay. I also had a serviceon Sunday afternoon. Something of the same sort might perhaps bepossible in the Y. M. C. A. Tent if there is one where you are. When Iwas talking to them at these services I always used to try and makethem feel that Christ was the fulfilment of all the best things thatthey admired, that He was their natural hero. I would tell them somestory of heroism and meanness contrasted, of courage and cowardice, ofnoble forgiveness and vile cruelty, and so get them on the side of theangels. Then I would try and spring it upon them that Christ was theLord of the heroes and the brave men and the noble men, and that Hewas fighting against all that was mean and cruel and cowardly, andthat it was up to them to take their stand by His side if they wantedto make the world a little better instead of a little worse, and Iwould try to show them how in little practical ways in their homes andat their work and in the club they could do a bit for Christ. 

Well, they listened pretty well, and I think that they agreed ina general sort of way, only 'they knew that I was a richish man incomparison with them, and that I didn't have their difficulties tocontend with, and that all tended to undo the effect of what I hadsaid. And then accident gave me a sort of clue to the way to get themto take one seriously. For some idiotic reason--I really couldn't sayjust what it was--I dressed up as a tramp one day, and spent a nightin a casual ward. I didn't do it for any very worthy motive, and Ididn't mean any one to know about it; but it got round, and I suddenlyfound that it had caught the imaginations of some of the fellows, andI realized that if one was to have any power over them one must dosymbolic things to show them that one meant what one said about lovebeing really better than money, and all that sort of thing. So inrather a half-hearted way I did try to do things which would showthem that I was in earnest. I took a couple of rooms in a littlecottage in a funny little bug-ridden court, instead of living at themission-house. I went out to Australia steerage to see why emigrationof London boys was not a success, and when war broke out I enlisted, although I had previously held a commission. And all these littlethings, though on reasonable grounds often rather indefensible, undoubtedly had the effect of making my South London boys take memore seriously than they did at first. Well, I am quite sure that withTommies, if ever you get a chance of doing something in the way ofsharing their privations and dangers when you aren't obliged to, or ofshowing in practical ways humility and unselfishness, that will endearyou to them, and give you weight with them more than anything else. Inmy time in the ranks I had that proved over and over again. If onceI was able to do even a small kindness for a fellow which involved abit of unnecessary trouble, he would never forget it, and would repayme a thousand times over. I was a sergeant for about nine months inEngland, and had one or two chances. Then I reverted to the ranks, and for that the men could not do enough to show me kindness. (It wasmy not valuing rank and comparative comfort for its own sake thatappealed to them. ) Continually I have reaped a most gigantic reward ofgoodwill for actions which cost very little, and which were not alwaysdone from the motives imputed. 

I am not swanking--at least, I don't mean to--but that is just myexperience, that with Tommy it is actions, and specially actions thatimply and symbolize humility, courage, unselfishness, etc. , thatcount ten thousand times more than the best sermons in the world. I amafraid that all this is not much good because you are an officer, andyour course of action is very clearly marked out for you by authority. But I do say that if ever you have a chance of showing that you arewilling to share the often hard and sometimes humiliating lot of themen it is that which above all things will give you power with them;just as it is the Cross of Christ, and the spitting and the mockingand the scourging, and the degradation of His exposure in dying, thatgives Him His power far more than even the Sermon on the Mount. Afterall, it is always what costs most that is best worth having, and ifyou only see Tommy in his easiest moments, when he is at the Y. M. C. A. Or the club, you see him at the time when he is least impressionablein a permanent manner. 

Well, I must apologize for writing such an egotistical and intimatesort of letter on so slight a provocation. But this that I have saidis all that my experience has taught me about influencing the Tommy. 

No doubt there are other ways; but I have not been able to strikethem. 

Yours very truly, DONALD HANKEY, 2nd Lieut. 

P. S. --Of course in becoming a Second Lieutenant I have dished my owninfluence most effectually. It has often appeared to me that amongordinary working men humility was considered the Christian virtue _parexcellence_. Humility combined with love is so rare, I suppose, andthat is why it is marvelled at. 

XII

"DON'T WORRY"

This is at present the soldier's favourite chorus at the front--

 "What's the use of worrying? It never was worth while! Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag And Smile, Smile, Smile!"

Not a bad chorus, either, for the trenches! You can't stop a shellfrom bursting in your trench, even if Mr. Rawson can! You can't stopthe rain, or prevent a light from going up just as you are half-wayover the parapet . .. So what on earth is the use of worrying? If youcan't alter things, you must accept them, and make the best of them. 

Yet some men do worry, and by so doing effectually destroy their peaceof mind without doing any one any good. What is worse, it is often thereligious man who worries. I have even heard those whose care was forthe soldier's soul, deplore the fact that he did not worry! I haveheard it said that the soldier is so careless, realizes his positionso little, is so hard to touch! And, on the other hand, I have heardthe soldier say that he did not want religion, because it would makehim worry. Strange, isn't it, if Christianity means worry and anxiety, and if it is only the heathen who is cheerful and free from care? Yetthe feeling that this is so undoubtedly exists, and it must have somefoundation. Perhaps it is one of the subjects which ought to engagethe attention of Churchmen in these days of "repentance and hope. "

Of course, worrying is about as un-Christian as anything canbe. [Greek: "mê merimnate tê psychê umôn"]--"Don't worry about yourlife"--is the Master's express command. In fact, the call of Christ isa call to something very like the cheerfulness of the soldier in thetrenches. It is a call to a life of external turmoil and internalpeace. "I came not to bring peace, but a sword"; "take up yourcross and follow Me"; "ye shall be hated"; "he that would save hislife shall lose it. " It is a call to take risks, to risk poverty, unpopularity, humiliation, death. It is a call to follow the way ofthe Cross. But the way of the Cross is also the way of peace, thepeace of God that passeth understanding. It is a way of freedom fromall cares, and anxieties, and fears; but not a way of escape from them. 

Yet worrying is often a feature of the actual Churchman. The actualChurchman is often a man whose conscience is an incubus. He can donothing without weighing motives and calculating results. It makeshim introspective to an extent that is positively morbid. He iscontinually probing himself to discover whether his motives are reallypure and disinterested, continually trying to decide whether he is"worthy" or "fit" to undertake this or that responsibility, or toface this or that eventuality. He is full of suspicion of himself, of self-distrust. In the trenches he is always wondering whether heis fit to die, whether he will acquit himself worthily in a crisis, whether he has done anything that he ought not to have done, or leftundone anything that he ought to have done. Especially if he is anofficer, his responsibility weighs on him terribly, and I have knownmore than one good fellow and conscientious Churchman worry himselfinto thinking that he was unfit for his responsibilities as anofficer, and ask to be relieved of them. 

There must be something wrong about the Christianity of such men. Their over-conscientiousness seems to create a wholly wrong senseof proportion, an exaggerated sense of the significance of their ownactions and characters which is as far removed as can be from thechildlike humility which Christ taught. The truth seems to be that welay far too much stress on conscience, self-examination, and personalsalvation, and that we trust the Holy Spirit far too little. 

If we look to the teaching of Christ, we do not find anyrecommendation to meticulous self-analysis, but rather we are taughta kind of spiritual recklessness, an unquestioning confidence in whatseem to be right impulses, and that quite regardless of results. Weare not told to be careful to spend each penny to the best advantage;but we are told that if our money is preventing us from entering theKingdom, we had better give it all away. We are not told to set a highvalue on our lives, and to spend them with care for the good of theKingdom. On the contrary, we are told to risk our lives recklesslyif we would preserve them. A sense of anxious responsibility isdiscouraged. If our limbs cause us to offend, we are advised to cutthem off. 

The whole teaching of the Gospels is that we have got to find freedomand peace in trusting ourselves implicitly to the care of God. Wehave got to follow what we think right quite recklessly, and leave theissue to God; and in judging between right and wrong we are only giventwo rules for our guidance. Everything which shows love for God andlove for man is right, and everything which shows personal ambitionand anxiety is wrong. 

What all this means as far as the trenches are concerned isextraordinarily clear. The Christian is advised not to be toopushing or ambitious. He is advised to "take the lowest room. " Butif he is told to move up higher, he has got to go. If he is givenresponsibility, there is no question of refusing it. He has got to dohis best and leave the issue to God. If he does well, he will be givenmore responsibility. But there is no need to worry. The same formulaholds good for the new sphere. Let him do his best and leave the issueto God. If he does badly, well, if he did his best, that means thathe was not fit for the job, and he must be perfectly willing to take ahumbler job, and do his best at that. 

As for personal danger, he must not think of it. If he is killed, thatis a sign that he is no longer indispensable. Perhaps he is wantedelsewhere. The enemy can only kill the body, and the body is not theimportant thing about him. Every man who goes to war must, if he is tobe happy, give his body, a living sacrifice, to God and his country. It is no longer his. He need not worry about it. The peace of Godwhich passeth all understanding simply comes from not worrying aboutresults because they are God's business and not ours, and in trustingimplicitly all impulses that make for love of God and man. Few of usperhaps will ever attain to a full measure of such faith; but at leastwe can make sure that our "Christianity" brings us nearer to it. 

XIII

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS

IV

_AU COIFFEUR_

 SCENE. _A barber's shop in a small French town about thirty miles from the front. A_ SUBALTERN _and a stout_ BOURGEOIS _are waiting their turn_. 

BOURGEOIS. Is it that it is the mud of the trenches on the boots ofMonsieur?

SUBALTERN. Ah! but no, Monsieur, for then it would reach to my waist!

BOURGEOIS. Nevertheless, Monsieur is but recently come from thetrenches, is it not so?

SUBALTERN. Yes, I am arrived from the trenches yesterday. 

BOURGEOIS. Then Monsieur has assisted at the great attack!

SUBALTERN. Oh, yes, I helped a very little bit. 

BOURGEOIS. There have been immense losses, is it not so?

SUBALTERN (_vaguely_). There are always great losses when one attacks. 

BOURGEOIS. Ah! but much greater than one expected--I have seen, I, thewounded coming down the river. 

SUBALTERN. I--I have always expected great losses. 

BOURGEOIS. 'Tis true. There are always great losses when one attacks. But all goes well, Monsieur, is it not so?

SUBALTERN. It is difficult to estimate the success of an attack untilafter several weeks. But I think that all goes well. 

BOURGEOIS. But yes, the French, they have had a great success, andalso the English. The English are wonderful. Their equipment! It isthat which astonishes me. Everything is complete. They say thatthe English have saved France; but the French also, they have savedEngland, is it not so, Monsieur?

SUBALTERN. But we are saving each other!

BOURGEOIS. Good! We are saving each other! Very good! But after thewar, Monsieur, England will fight against France, _hein_?

SUBALTERN. Never!

BOURGEOIS. Never?

SUBALTERN. Never in life!

BOURGEOIS. You think so?

SUBALTERN. We do not love war. We do not seek war. It is only when anation is so execrable that one is compelled to fight, as have beenthe Germans, that we make war. 

BOURGEOIS. You do not love war, eh? Before the war you had a verysmall Army, about three hundred thousand, is it not so? And now youhave about three million. You do not love war, you others. 

SUBALTERN. The Germans thought that they loved war, but I do notbelieve that they will love it very much longer!

BOURGEOIS. No! The war will give them the stomach-ache. They will loveit no longer!

COIFFEUR. But these English, whom did they fight before? The Boers, was it not?

SUBALTERN. Yes, but a great many English think now that it was a_bêtise_. There was also great provocation. And nevertheless, whoknows if there was not in that affair also a German plot?

BOURGEOIS. It is very likely. Then Monsieur thinks that we are truefriends, the English and the French?

SUBALTERN. But yes, Monsieur, because we love, both of us, liberty andpeace. 

XIV

A PASSING IN JUNE, 1915

PROLOGUE

 SCENE. _The parlour of an Auberge. _

 PERSONS. _A stoist motherly_ MADAME, _a wrinkled fatherly_ MONSIEUR, _and a plain but pleasant_ MA'MSELLE. _Some English soldiers drinking_. CECIL _is talking in French to_ MONSIEUR, _and they are all very friendly_. 

MADAME. Alors, vous n'avez pas encore été aux tranchées?

CECIL. Mais non, Madame, peut-être ce soir. 

(MONSIEUR _and_ MADAME _exchange glances_. CECIL _rises to go. _)

CECIL. À Jeudi, Monsieur, Madame, Ma'mselle. 

MONSIEUR, MADAME, AND MA'MSELLE (_in chorus_). À Jeudi, Monsieur. 

MADAME (_earnestly_). Bon courage, Monsieur!

 (_Curtain_)

ACT I. DAWN

 CECIL _is discovered lying behind a wall of sandbags. On one side are the sandbags, and on the other an idyllic spring scene, with flowers and orchards seen in the half-light of a spring morning. The dawn breaks gently, and soon bullets begin to ping through the air, flattening themselves against the sandbags, or passing over_ CECIL's _head. He wakes and yawns, and then composes himself with his eyes open. _

 _Enter Allegorical personages_: FATHER SUN, MOTHER EARTH, _and a chorus of_ GRASSES, POPPIES, CORNFLOWERS, RAGGED ROBINS, DAISIES, BEETLES, BEES, FLIES, _and insects of all kinds. _

FATHER SUN. 

 Wake, children, rub your eyes, Up and dance and sing and play, Not a cloud is in the skies; This is going to be _my_ day. See the tiny dew-drop glisten In my glancing golden ray; See the shadows dancing, listen To the lark so blithe and gay. Up, children, dance and play, This is my own festal day. 

FLOWERS, BEETLES, ETC. 

 Dance and sing In a ring, Naughty clouds are chased away; Oh what fun, Father Sun Is going to shine the whole long day. 

MOTHER EARTH. That's right, children. This is the day to grow in; butdon't forget to come home to dinner; I've got such a nice dinner foryou. 

 (_The children dance away delightedly, while CECIL watches them, fascinated. _)

MOTHER EARTH. What's this absurd young man doing, sitting behind thatugly wall? Why don't he sit under a tree if he must sit?

FATHER SUN. Oh, he's a lunatic! Must be. 

 (RANDOM BULLET _jumps over the sandbags into the dug-out, and jibbers impotently at_ CECIL, _who glances up at him with a look of disgust. _)

RANDOM BULLET. Ping! Ping. It's me he's afraid of. He daren't stir ayard from this wall, or I'd tear his brains out. Ping! Ping!

MOTHER EARTH. Who are you, Monster?

RANDOM BULLET. I'm Random Bullet. I _am_ a monster, I am! Ping!

MOTHER EARTH. Who sent you, anyway?

RANDOM BULLET. Why, the idiots behind the other wall, over there!Sometimes I jump at them, and sometimes I jump over here. I don't carewhich way it is; but I like tearing their brains out, I do. I don'tcare which lot it is. 

MOTHER EARTH. What madness!

FATHER SUN (_indignantly_). On my day too!

RANDOM BULLET. Mad! I should think they were! Never mind, they give mesome fun! Ping! So long, I'm off, going to jump at the other fellows, back in a second if you like to wait. 

 (RANDOM BULLET _jumps out of sight, and_ MOTHER EARTH _and_ FATHER SUN _move disgustedly away. _)

CECIL (_getting up_). Mad! By God, we are mad! Curse the war! Cursethe fools who started it! Why did I ever come out here? What a way tospend a morning in June!

 (_Curtain. _)

ACT II. MIDDAY

 SCENE. _The same. _ CECIL _as before, but sweltering in the sun. Enter the_ SPIRIT OF THIRST. 

THIRST. Oh for a drink! Water, anything! I could drink a bath full. What a place to spend a June day in! When one thinks of all the drinksone might be having, it is really infuriating. Gad! The very thoughtof 'em makes me feel quite poetic! Think of the great barrels of stillcider in cool Devonshire cellars! Think of the sour refreshing winewe used to get in Italy! And the iced cocktails of Colombo! And Pimm'sNo. 1 in the City. Anywhere but here it's a pleasure to be a Thirst;but here! Good Lord, it will send me off my head. How would a bathgo now, old chap? By God, don't you wish you were back in your canoe, drawn up among the rushes near Islip, and you just going to plungeinto the cool waters of the Char? Or think of that day you bathed inthe deep still pool at the foot of the Tamarin Falls, with the watercrashing down above you, into the deep shady chasm. Even a dip in thesea at Mount Lavinia wouldn't be bad now, --or, better still, a diveinto Como from a rowboat; you remember that hot summer we went toComo? I'll tell you another thing that wouldn't go down badly either. Do you remember a great bowl of strawberries and cream with a hugeice in it, that you had the day before you left school, after that hotbike ride to Leamington? Not bad, was it?

CECIL (_fiercely_). Shut up, you beast! Oh, curse this idiotic war!Why are we such fools?

 (_Curtain. _)

ACT III. LATE AFTERNOON

 SCENE. _As before. _ CECIL _is discovered reading a letter from home. _

CECIL (_to himself_). Tom dead. Good Lord! What times we have hadtogether! Where are all the good fellows I used to know? Half of themdead, and the rest condemned to die! No more yachting on the broads!No more convivial evenings at the Troc. ! No more long nights spinningyarns in Tom's old rooms in the Temple! Curse this blasted war thatrobs one of everything worth having, that dulls every sense of decencyand kills all feeling for beauty, destroys the joy of life, andmutilates one's dearest friends. Curse it!

 (_A sound as of an express train is heard, followed by the roar of an explosion, while a dense cloud of smoke and dust rises immediately in view of the trench. _)

PORTENTOUS VOICE. Prepare to face eternity!

CECIL (_clenching his fists_). Beast, loathsome beast! Don't think Iam afraid of you. 

 (_The sounds are repeated as a second shell drops, rather nearer. A Shadow appears round the dug-out, and hesitates. _)

CECIL (_to the Shadow_). Who is that? Is that the Shadow of Fear?

A THIN, QUAVERING VOICE. Yes, shall I come in?

CECIL (_furiously_). Out of my sight, vile, cringing wretch! Not evenyour shadow will I tolerate in my presence!

 (_A third shell bursts nearer still. _)

PORTENTOUS VOICE (_thunderously_). Set not your affections on thingsbelow. 

 (CECIL _pauses in a listening attitude_). 

CECIL (_more quietly, and with a new look in his eyes_). I think Ihave forgotten something, --something rather important. 

 (_Enter the twin Spirits of_ HONOUR _and_ DUTY, _Spirits of a very noble and courtly mien. _)

CECIL (_simply and humbly_). Gentlemen, to my sorrow and loss I hadforgotten you. You are doubly welcome. 

THE SPIRIT OF DUTY. Young sir, we thank you. After all, it is butright that in this hour of danger and dismay we should be with you. 

THE SPIRIT OF HONOUR. I am so old a friend of you and yours, Cecil, that you may surely trust me. I was your father's friend. Side byside we stood in every crisis of his varied life. Together faced theDervish rush at Abu Klea, and afterwards in India took our partin many a desperate unnamed frontier tussle. I helped him woo yourmother, spoke for him when he put up for Parliament, advised him whenhe visited the city. In fact, I was his companion all through life, and I stood beside his bed at death. 

THE SPIRIT OF DUTY. I too may claim to have been as much your father'sfriend as was my brother. Indeed, where one is, the other is never faraway. We do agree most wonderfully, and since our birth, no quarrelhas ever disturbed the harmony of our ways. 

CECIL. Gentlemen, you have recalled me to myself. I had forgotten thatI was no more a child. I wanted to dance in the sun with the flowers, and sing with the birds, to swim in the pool with yonder newt, andlie down to dry in the long meadow grass among the poppies. Because Imight not do this and other things as fond and foolish, I was petulantand peevish, like a spoilt child. I look to you, gentlemen, to help meto be a man, and play a man's part in the world. 

HONOUR. We will remain at hand, call us when you need us, we shall notfail you. 

 (_The bombardment increases in intensity. Shrapnel bursts overhead. Shells with increasing rapidity and accuracy explode both short and over the trench. The hail of bullets is continuous. An N. C. O. Rushes by shouting "Stand to"; men rush from the dug-outs and seize their rifles_; CECIL, _like the others, grasps his rifle and sees that it is fully loaded. _)

 (_Curtain. _)

ACT IV. SUNSET

 SCENE. _The same, but the wall of sand-bags_ _bags is broken in many places. The dead lie half-buried beneath them. _ CECIL _lies, badly wounded, against a gap in the wall, his rifle by his side. _ HONOUR _and_ DUTY _kneel beside him tenderly. The last rays of the sun light up his painful smile. _ THIRST _stands gloomily over him, and the wild flowers are peeping at him with sleepy eyes through the gap, while_ MOTHER EARTH _calls to them to go to bed. _ FATHER SUN _leans sadly over the broken parapet. _

CECIL (_slowly and with difficulty_). Honour, Duty, I thank you. Youdid not fail me. 

HONOUR. You played the man, Cecil, as your father did before you. 

DUTY. Your example it was that steadied your comrades, and kept cravenfear at a distance. You saved the trench. 

HONOUR. This is the beauty of manhood, to die for a good cause. Thereis no fairer thing in all God's world. 

CECIL. I thank you. Good-night, Sun; good-night, Mother Earth. Thinkkindly of me. I don't think I was mad after all. 

SUN. Good-night, brave lad. (_To_ MOTHER EARTH) I can hardly bear tolook on so sad a sight. 

CECIL. Good-night, Ragged Robins; good-night, Poppies. You haveplayed your game, and I mine. Only they are different because we aredifferent. 

CHORUS OF FLOWERS. Good-night, dear Cecil. We are so very sorry thatyou are hurt. 

 (_Enter the_ MASTER, _flowers shyly following him. _ HONOUR _and_ DUTY _raise_ CECIL _gently to a standing position. _)

THE MASTER (_extending his arms with a loving smile_). "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. "

 (CECIL, _with a look of wonder and joy, is borne forward. _)

 (_Curtain. _)

XV

MY HOME AND SCHOOL[3]

A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I

MY HOME

What is one to say of home? It is difficult to know. I find thatbiographers are particular about the date of birth, the exact addressof the babe, the social position and ancestry of the parent. I supposethat it is all that they can learn. But as an autobiographer I wantto do something better; to give a picture of the home where, as Ican now see, ideals, tastes, prejudices and habits were formed whichhave persisted through all the internal revolutions that have sinceupheaved my being. 

[Footnote 3: "A Student" left a great deal of manuscript, among whichthis fragment of autobiography is not the least interesting. ]

I try to form the picture in my mind, and a crowd of detail rushesin which completely destroys its simplicity and harmony. How hard itis to judge, even at this distance, what are the salient features. I must try, but I know that from the point of view of psychologicaldevelopment I may easily miss out the very factors which were reallymost important. 

I remember a big house, in a row of other big houses, in a side streetleading from the East Cliff at Brighton right up to the edge of thebare rolling downs. It was exactly like almost every other housein that part of Brighton--stucco fronted, with four stories and abasement, three windows in front on each of the upper stories, and twowindows and a door on the ground floor and basement. At the back wasa small garden, with flower beds surrounding a square of gravel, anda tricycle house in one corner. There was a back door in this garden, which gave on to a street of cottages. This back door was a point ofstrategic importance. 

But I need not describe the house in detail. It was exactly likethousands of other houses built in the beginning of the nineteenthcentury. High, respectable, ugly and rather inconvenient, with manystairs, two or three big rooms, a lot of small ones and no bathroom. It was essentially a family house, intended for people of moderatemeans and large families. Nowadays they build houses which areprettier, and have bathrooms; but they are not meant for largefamilies. 

We were a large family, and a fairly noisy one. Moreover, we weresingularly self-sufficing. We hadn't many friends, we didn't entertainmuch, we had dinner in the middle of the day, and supper in theevening. 

There was my father who was a recluse, my mother who was essentiallyour mother, the two girls and four boys. I was an afterthought, beingseven years younger than my next brother, who for seven years hadbeen called B. (for baby), and couldn't escape from it even after myappearance. 

In addition to these, B. And I both had inseparable friends, who livedwithin a stone's throw. Ronnie was my _alter ego_ till I was fourteen:so much so that I had no other friend. Even now, though our wayshave kept us apart, and our interests and opinions are fundamentallydifferent, we can sit in each other's rooms with perfect content. Weknow too much of each other for it to be possible to pretend to bewhat we are not. We sit and are ourselves, naked and unashamed so tospeak, and it is very restful. 

Pictures float before my mind. Let me select a few. I see a ratherfat, stolid little boy in a big airy nursery at the top of the house, sitting in the middle of the floor playing with bricks. Outside it isgusty and wet, and the small boy hopes that he will be allowed to stayin all the afternoon, and play with bricks. But that is not to be. Asmall thin man, with gentle grey eyes, short curly beard, an old blackgreatcoat and a black square felt hat, comes in. The child must havesome air. The child is resentful, but resigned, is wrapped up well, put in his pram and wheeled up and down the Madeira Road. 

"Pa" didn't appear very much except on some such errand; but "Ma" wasin and out all the time. "Ma" was everything, the only woman who hasever had my whole love, my whole trust and has made my heart ache withthe desire to show my love. 

A later picture. The boy is bigger, and not so fat. He no longer hasa nurse. He has vacated the nursery, which is now tenanted by his bigsisters. He has a little room all his own: a very small room, lookingwest. The south-west gales beat upon the window in the winter, and notso far away is the roar of the sea. It is good to curl up in a nicewarm little bed, and listen to the howling of the wind and the waves. 

In the morning come lessons from his eldest sister G. The schoolroomhas rings and a trapeze, a bookshelf full of boys' books, andcupboards full of stone bricks, cannon and soldiers. The boy's mindis set on bricks and soldiers. Lessons and walks with "Ma" and hissisters or Ronnie and his nurse down the town are a nuisance. Theyinterfere with the building of cathedrals and the settling of thedestinies of nations by the arbitrament of war. 

It was a stolid, placid boy, intensely wrapt up in his cathedrals andhis generals, intensely devoted to "Ma, " and regarding all else asrather a nuisance. Ronnie he liked. He liked going to tea with him, and going walks with him and his nurse; but they didn't have muchin common except cricket. Ronnie had big soldiers which could not beknocked down by cannon balls, and which couldn't make history becausethey were few in number, and nearly all English. Mine were of everyEuropean power, and many Asiatic ones. They were diminutive andnumerous, could take shelter in a forest of pine cones and wereadmirably suited to be mown down at the cannon's mouth. The King ofEngland was a person with a fine figure. He had one leg and one arm, and the plume of his dragoon's helmet was shorn off; but his slight, erect figure still looked noble on a stately white palfrey. The Frencharmies were usually commanded by Marshal Petit, a gay fellow withhis full complement of limbs, who sat a horse well. He had a youngerbrother almost equally distinguished. I have no recollection of a Kingof France. He must have been a poor fellow. The Sultan of Turkey, the Khedive, and Li Hung Chang still live in my memory as persons ofdistinction; but I have no personal recollection of the Tsar, or theEmperors of Germany or Austria, or of the King of Italy, though I knowthey existed. 

Into this placid existence turmoil would enter three times a year. Theelder brothers, Hugh, Tommy and B. , would come home for the holidaysfrom Sandhurst and Rugby, and R. Would appear, and become almost oneof the family. Then would occur troublous times, with a few advantagesand many disadvantages. 

"Tommy" was a curiously solitary youth as I remember him, who playedthe 'cello with great perseverance and considerable success. Atsoldiers he was something of a genius, though his games were of anintricacy which failed to commend itself to me altogether. In hisgreat soldier days he not only made history, but wrote it--a height towhich I never attained. 

In the holidays, cricket in the back garden became a great feature, and Tommy was a demon bowler. I fancy, too, that the very elaboratebut highly satisfactory form of the game must have originated withhim. In the back garden we not merely played cricket, but madehistory--cricket history. Two county sides were written out, andwe batted alternately for the various cricketers, doing our bestto imitate their styles. We bowled also in a rough imitation of thestyles of the county bowlers whom we represented. This arrangementsecured us against personal rivalry, kept up a tremendous interest infirst-class cricket and enabled matches to continue, if necessary, for weeks at a time. It encouraged, too, a fair, impersonal andunprejudiced view of outside events. 

In cricket, war and music we undoubtedly benefited by the holidays, especially in the summer, when we used to go to the country, oftenoccupying a school-house with gym, cricket nets and a fair-sizedgarden. Ecclesiastical architecture suffered, however. .. . 

Hugh was a great and glorious person, a towering beneficent despotwhen he did appear. .. . As for me I adored him with whole-heartedhero-worship. He was the "protector of the poor, " who kept the rest ofus in order. He was a magnificent person who revolutionized the artof war by the introduction of explosives. He was a tremendous walker, and first taught me to love great tramps over the downs, to sniffappreciatively the glorious air and to love their bare, storm-sweptoutlines. Hugh stood for all that is wholesome, strenuous, out ofdoors in my life. Without him I should have been a mere sedentary. Among other things he was an enthusiastic boxer and gymnast. For thesepursuits I sturdily feigned enthusiasm and suppressed timidity. 

A few more pictures. First, Sunday morning. Gertrude goes off toSunday School. She likes teaching and bossing. Hilda and Hugh, whoare greater pals than brother and sister can often be, go off to St. James', where there will be good music and an interesting sermon. Tommy goes to St. Mark's, a good Protestant place, or to the beach, where curious and recondite doctrines are weekly disputed. B. Goes toSt. George's, protesting. There is plenty of room for his hat, thereis a congenially aggressive spirit against Rome and it slightlyirritates Ma. Pa is not up yet. Ma and I go to All Souls', because itis the nearest poor church, and Ma finds it easier to worship wherethere are no pew rents, and the seats are uncushioned, and there arefew rich people. I am ever loyal to Ma. 

I often wonder whether the reason why my family are all Churchgoersnow is not that at that time we could choose our church. 

The next picture is Sunday night. "Pa" and I, and perhaps some ofthe other boys, set out for St. Paul's, at the other end of the town. Then, after the service, follows an immense walk all through the slumsof the town. We talk of Australia, where Pa once had a sheep run; oftheology, of the past and the future. This weekly walk is something ofa privilege, and rather solemn. It makes me feel older. 

It is spring. I am at Rugby, and in the "San" with ophthalmia. TheSouth African war is raging. Hugh is there. I am told that Hugh isdead. He has been shot in a glorious but futile charge at Paardeberg. I can't realize it. I am an object of interest, of envy almost, to thewhole school. The flag is half-mast because my brother is dead. Everyone is kind, touched. I put on an air as of a martyr. 

I get a heartbroken letter from my mother. Will I come home? Or hadn'tI better go to Uncle Jack's? If I go home we shall make each otherworse. It is better for me than for Maurice, who is with the fleet inthe Mediterranean with no one to comfort him. 

Ma has had a great shock. She feels it desperately. She thinks allthe others feel it as much. Except Hilda, we don't. There is a hugepiece taken out of Ma's life and Hilda's life, because they were sounselfishly devoted to Hugh. Pa, also, has lost much, but he is aphilosopher. 

I go to Uncle Jack's and shoot rabbits. The holidays come and go. Tommy is at Oxford; I am at Rugby. Pa is immersed in theologicalspeculation about the next world; B. Is in the Mediterranean. Ma sendsGertrude and Hilda away for a long change. They go, and come back. Something about Ma frightens them. She and Pa come near Rugby and staywith Uncle Jack. The holidays come. I learn that for the first timefor about twenty years Ma is to go away without Pa. I am to meet herat Hereford, and we are to go to Wales. Ma forgets things. She is moreloving than ever, but her memory is going. We go to communion togetherin the little village church. 

A few weeks later. We are back in Brighton. An Australian uncle andfamily are staying with us. Ma is ill in bed. I get up at 6 A. M. , tramp over the downs and in a place I wot of, some five miles away, I gather heather for Ma. I run. I get back by 8. 30. I find my uncleand cousins getting into a cab. Some one says, "How lovely! Are thesefor me?" I grip them in despair. They are for Ma. "Quite right, " sayssomeone. A day or two later my heather was placed, still blooming, onMa's grave. 

I was sixteen then. Six years later I return home from abroad. Withina few weeks of my return I am sitting in Pa's room in agony, listeningto him fight for breath. The fight at last weakens. I hear himwhisper, "Help! help!" I set my teeth. The others come in. Thereis silence. All is over. I am given my father's ring. It is my mosttreasured possession. 

Henceforth all I have left of home is Hilda, for she alone isunmarried. Ever since my mother's death she has been my confidante. As far as was possible she has taken Ma's place in my life, and I havetaken Hugh's place in hers. We are substitutes. For that reason aswe get older we get to know each other better, and to know better howmuch we can give to each other. There is more criticism between usthan there would have been between Ma and me, and Hilda and Hugh. Butit has its advantages. We live apart, but we correspond weekly, andholiday together. It is all that is left of home, and it is infinitelyprecious. 

Now that I have written these pages I can see as I have never seenbefore how much the child was father of the man. Since those home daysI have had more variety of experience perhaps than falls to the lotof most men, and I would almost say more varied and more epoch-makingfriendships. Yet in these pages that I have written I seem to see allthe essential and salient features of my character already mirroredand formed. 

I am still by nature lethargic and placid. I could still occupy myselfcontentedly With bricks and soldiers, art and history, and troubleno one. But there is still that other element, instilled by Hugh--alove of the open air, of struggle with the elements, in lonely desertplaces. 

I have never lost the craving for true religion, which induced mymother to go to a poor church to worship, and to visit the drunkenand helpless in their slums. I have never lost the desire for hersingleness of mind, and simple loyalty to Christ and His Church. Atthe same time I have never lost my father's inquiring spirit, broadview, love of doctrine tempered by reason and founded on history andtested by human experience. When these two beloved ones passed fromthis world I learnt the meaning of the text, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. " My heart has never been wholly in thisworld. 

So, too, I have always been a man of few friends. Ronnie has had manysuccessors; but seldom more than one at a time. I have never caredmuch for society. My father and mother neither of them attached muchimportance to conventions, or to the fictitious values which societyputs on clothes or money or position. I have always looked ratherfor some one to admire, some one whose ideals and personality werecongenial, whatever their position or occupation. I have also, on thewhole, always preferred comfort to show, simple to elaborate living. This I trace to the simple comfort and naturalness of my old home. 

II

SCHOOL

I went to a day school kept by Ronnie's father when I was nine. At least, it was a day school for me; but nearly all the boyswere boarders. I worked fairly hard, and got prizes. I was fairlygood at cricket, and not much good at football. I had only onefriend--Ronnie--and about two enemies, both of whom were day boys, andwhom I should have liked to have fought if I had dared. My memoriesof the school are few. I best remember leaving home, and goingback, and also playing cricket. Ronnie's father lives as a just andstraightforward gentleman, who never caned a boy except for what wasmean or dirty, and whom we all loved and respected. But then I haveknown and loved him and his wife all my life. If our house was asecond home to Ronnie, theirs has always been a second home to me. 

There was one master whom I liked, and who perhaps did something todevelop my character. He was fond of poetry and history, and from himI learnt--an easy lesson for me--to love history; but what is more, hefirst gave me a glimmering idea, which was to develop long after, thatthe classics are literature, and not torture. 

I left there to go to Rugby. 

Never did a boy enter Rugby with better chances. The memory ofmy three brothers still lived in the house. They had all achieveddistinction in games, and been leading prefects (or sixths as theyare called at Rugby) in the house. Many masters remembered them forgood, particularly Jacky, the housemaster, who had loved them all, especially Hugh. 

In addition to this, one of the leading fellows in the house, who wasafterwards to be captain of the school fifteen and cricket eleven, lieutenant in the corps, and one of the racquet pair, had been at myprivate school. I shared a study with another fellow who had been atmy private school. Two boys accompanied me from there, one of whom wasmy next best friend to Ronnie. His parents were in India, and he hadspent some of his holidays with Ronnie and me. 

But though I loved Rugby and was happy there, I can't say I was asuccess. I made few friends, who have since, with one exception, drifted out of my life. I was too timid to enjoy Rugger. I neverachieved distinction at cricket. I got into the sixth my last term, but hadn't the force of character to enjoy the prefectural powerswhich that fact conferred upon me. The fact is that I left when I was16, and it is between 16 and 18 that the full enjoyment of school lifecomes and boys reap the harvest they have sown. Had I stayed anotheryear I should have belonged to the leading generation, strengthenedmy friendships and developed what was latent in my character. As itwas, I left at an unfortunate age. I was pushed into the sixth a yearbefore my contemporaries. My friendships were only half formed, andI had only just begun to feel strength of body and mind developing inme. 

As a junior I was too conscientious, and not light-hearted enough. I hardly had any adventures at Rugby, because I had an incurableinstinct for keeping rules. I worked hard at mathematics and French, and my report generally read, "Good ability. Might exert himselfmore. " At classics and chemistry I did as little work as possible, and any report generally read, "Hard-working but not bright. "

On the whole I think I was pretty happy at Rugby; but I never lookback to my school days as the happiest part of my life. I have hadmany happier times since. But still, my house was a good one. Jacky, the housemaster, was wonderfully kind and wise. He hardly everinterfered with the affairs of the house, but left it all--inappearance--to the "Sixths. " Actually, nothing escaped him. The toneof the house was on the whole extraordinarily clean and wholesome, and the fellows who had dirty minds were a small minority, and easilyavoided. At all events, very little of that sort of thing reached me. 

At sixteen and a half I went to the Royal Military Academy atWoolwich, commonly known as "the Shop. " There I spent the twomost miserable years of my life, and made the second of my greatfriendships. In these days the Shop was still a pretty rough place, and at the moment it was unusually full. I think there were over 300fellows there altogether, and there were about 70 in my term. My firstexperience was unfortunate. I was interviewing the Adjutant, a keensportsman and a bit of a tartar. He eyed me unfavourably, asked whatgames I could play, and when I replied that I had no great proficiencyin any he commented, "Humph, a good-for-nothing!" and dismissed me. 

I am by nature slow, stolid and clumsy. I was bad at being "smart";I was slow and clumsy at drill; map making and geometrical drawingwere physical impossibilities to me; I was incredibly slow and stupidat machinery, mechanism and electricity. The only subject whichinterested me was military history. In my first term I dropped fromabout forty-fourth to about seventieth in my class, and I kept nearthe bottom until my fourth term, when I failed in my electricityexam. , and had to stay one term more. In the same term I received aprize for the best essay on the lessons of the South African War. 

Oh, the misery of those terms at Woolwich! I hated the work, thedrill, the gym and even the riding school. I hated the officers, andabove all I hated the spirit of the place. As far as I remember, the one eternal topic of conversation and subject of "wit" was thesexual relation. Of course the boys had never been taught sensiblyanything about it. Consequently the place was continually circulatedwith filthy books, pictures, stories, etc. When I went there I wasextraordinarily innocent, and devoid of curiosity. I had been recentlythe more disposed to purity through the death of my mother. AtWoolwich I remained extraordinarily innocent and uncurious, lettingthe poisonous stream flow continually by me, shrinking from itsstench, and finding more and more relief in my own company. I musthave been a very unpleasant person at that time. 

One friend I had. He was a small, compact, keen, and capable littleRugbian named F----. He was like me in that he had recently lost hisparents, and was interested in religion and philosophy in a boyishway. Unlike me he rather enjoyed Woolwich. He had a lot of friends, was keen on riding and on a good deal of the work, and generallyspeaking plunged into life, taking the rough with the smooth, andboth in good part. Although we have drifted far apart in ideals andsympathies, and though misunderstanding has come in and destroyed ourfriendship, I shall never cease to be grateful for all that F----did for me in those days. He routed me out when I was in the blues, laughed at me, cheered me up and made me look at life with new eyes. Moreover he did this, as I know, in defiance of the set with whom hewas friendly, who despised me for a milksop, and were at no pains toconceal the fact. But for F----, my life at the Shop would have beenintolerable. 

Besides him, I had a few associates, boys with whom I naturallyassociated for the simple reason that they, too, were left out of themain current of the life of the place. But they were not particularlycongenial. One or two were hard workers. One was a great slacker, andmore timid, physically and morally, than even I. He was a boy with afatal facility for doing useless things moderately well, especially inthe musical line. He was even more frightened of gym and horses thanI was, and unlike me was not ashamed to show it. If the Shop waspurgatory to me, it must have been hell to him. 

My happiest times were week-ends spent at home. I used to arrive onSaturday evening and leave on Sunday evening. About now I began toget to know my father much better, and to develop my theological bentunder his advice. In my disillusionment as to my capacity for militarylife I began to wish I had chosen the clerical profession. I think myfather had the shrewdness to see that failure in one profession wasnot necessarily the sign of a "call" in another direction. Anyway, hedid not discourage me; but spoke of five years in the Army as the besttraining for a parson. 

I remember avowing my intention of becoming a parson to one of my morefriendly acquaintances at the Shop, and he replied that I wouldn't setthe Thames on fire, because I had such a monotonous voice. 

In spite of seeking relief from my uncongenial surroundings inreligion and theology, I did not join myself to any one else. Therewas a so-called "Pi Squad, " or Bible class, held weekly, but I onlywent once, and didn't like it. I was always peculiarly sensitive aboutpriggishness in those who professed themselves to be religious openly, and generally thought I detected priggishness in any "Bible circle"or similar institution that I came across. I think my theologymainly consisted in speculations about the future state--I rememberI emphatically declined to believe in hell--and my religion consistedmainly in fairly regular attendance at Matins and Communion. 

Another effect of the intensity with which I hated my surroundings wasthat I read a lot of good novels--George Eliot, the Brontës, Scott, Dickens, Jane Austen, Thackeray, Besant, etc. A book which I readover and over again was Arthur Benson's _Hill of Trouble, and otherStories_. Those legends, with their imaginative setting, charm oflanguage and beautiful religious ideas were more restful to my unquietspirit than anything else I read. 

The actual conditions of life at the Shop were pretty barbaric. Theaim was to make it as much like barracks as possible. Each term washoused in a different side of the square of buildings which form theAcademy, and the fourth term were spread among the houses of the otherterms as corporals. My first term I shared a room with three otherfellows. I think it was the ugliest room I have ever lived in, withoutexception. It had high whitewashed brick walls. In each corner wasa bed which folded up against the wall in the day time, and wasconcealed by a square of print curtains. There were a deal table, fourwindsor chairs, a shelf with four basins, and a cupboard with fourlockers. All the woodwork was painted khaki. The contrast with thelittle study at Rugby, with its diamond-paned window, its matchboardpanelling surmounted by a paper of one's own choosing, its ledgefor photos and ornaments ("bim ledge" so called), its eggshell bluecupboards, baize curtains and window box, was striking. 

It used to be the custom to go to and from the bathroom attired in asponge, in connexion with which an amusing incident once happened. 

A cadet in his second year was on the bathroom landing, when heperceived that the mother and sisters of another cadet were comingupstairs. From sounds in the bathroom he realized that they wouldmeet a naked corporal just as they reached the landing. The door ofthe bathroom opened outwards, and with admirable presence of mindhe rushed back, and putting his back against the door and his feetagainst the wall, imprisoned the corporal. The corporal, in theapproved Shop version of Billingsgate, began to blaspheme at the topof his voice, so when the ladies reached the top of the stairs theysaw a vision of a cadet with his feet to the wall and his back to adoor singing at the top of his voice to drown a Commotion within!

On another occasion in my second year, when I was sharing a roomwith one other fellow, I had a sister to tea. On arriving in my roomI found that my stablemate had been playing hockey, and was at themoment in the bathroom, having thoughtlessly left all his clothes inthe room--mostly on the floor. 

On the last day of my first term the corporals and officers were allabsent at a farewell dinner to the former, and we received informationthat the third term were going to raid our house, with a view to"toshing" us in a cold bath. We therefore prepared for action. Everyreceptacle which would hold water was taken to the upper landing, full. Then all the chairs in the house were roped together, andplaced on the stairs as an obstacle. The defenders then took up theirposition at the windows and at the top of the stairs. In due coursethe enemy's forces arrived, and stormed the stairs, under a heavy fireof water. The obstacle was at length destroyed, and a solid phalanxof wet bodies swarmed up the stairs. We formed a similar phalanxand charged to meet them. I happened to be first, and much to mydiscomfiture the enemy's phalanx parted in the middle, and I wasrapidly passed down the stairs--a prisoner! Fortunately at the bottomI found a relieving party from the next house, making a diversion onthe enemy's rear. With great valour we dragged down a foe, and toshedhim in the bath that had been made ready for us. "The tosher toshed!"

The next day we surveyed the damage. All the chairs and banisters werebroken, the whitewash was rubbed off the bricks by wet shouldersand nearly all the basins were broken. That day was the day of LordRoberts's half-yearly inspection!

There was not such another battle until my third term, when wewere the aggressors. This time the damage was even greater, for thedefenders let down tables across the stairs as an obstacle, and webattered our way through with scaffolding poles. There were somecasualties that day, owing to an indiscriminate use of mop handles. 

On the day of Lord Roberts's inspection we had to change from paradedress to gym dress, and it was during the change that Lord Robertsinspected our quarters. He went into one room and found a fellow justhalf-way through his change--with nothing at all on! The room wascalled to attention, and with great presence of mind the boy dashedinto the bed curtains and stood to attention there, while Lord Robertshad an animated conversation with him!

There were jolly moments in the life at the Shop. On Saturdays, afterdinner, the unfortunates who had not got away for the week-end used tohave "stodges" after dinner. Having put away a substantial dinner, wechanged into flannels, and used to crowd into some one's room, and eatmuffins and smoke cigars. I remember one night there were eighteen ofus in one small room. 

In order to go away for a week-end one had to obtain (1) aninvitation, (2) permission from parent or guardian to accept theinvitation. One week my brother, who was working at the Admiralty, offered his flat to myself and F----, as he was going to Brightonhimself. Fleming wrote to his guardian--a Scotsman--for permissionto stay with Captain Hankey. The guardian wrote back for moreinformation. He saw by the Army List that Captain Hankey existed, butwho were the Hankeys? etc. , etc. F---- wrote back a furious letter, saying that he expected to have his friends accepted without question, and received the permission. We went. The awkward thing was thatCaptain Hankey was not there, and we shuddered to think of the rage ofF----'s guardian if he should find out. Worse still, the guardian wassupposed to be staying at the Oriental Club in Hanover Square, and mybrother's flat was in Oxford Street! However, we didn't meet. 

F---- and I neither of us knew London, and had the time of our lives. We dined at Frascati's--a palace of splendour in our eyes--and went toHis Majesty's to see Beerbohm Tree in Ulysses. When it came to Hades, we held each other's hands! On Sunday we went to St. Peter's, VereStreet, but were so furious at being kept waiting for pew holderslong after service had commenced, that we went on to the Audley StreetChapel, a most queer little place. It was full of monuments to thedependents of peers, in which the peers figured very largely andthe dependents fared humbly--the epitome of flunkeydom. Among thesetablets was one inscribed--

 "To John Wilkes, Friend of Liberty. "

Truly refreshing!

We finished the day at some old friends of mine, and voted theweek-end a huge success. 

When I went to Woolwich I was just on the verge of getting keenon games and beginning to feel self-confident, and to enjoy thefellowship of my comrades. Woolwich nipped this in the bud. I leftwith no self-confidence, having renounced games, and with a senseof solitariness among my comrades. I was a misanthrope, and theunhappiest sort of egotist--the kind that dislikes himself. To saythe truth, too, I was then, and always have been, a bit of a funk, physically, which didn't make me happier. On the other hand, I was anomnivorous reader of everything which did not concern my profession, and a dabbler in military history. 

I have sometimes thought that I was unconsciously a bit of a hero atWoolwich, standing out for purity and religion in an atmosphere offilth and blasphemy. I have come to the conclusion, however, thatthere was nothing in this. As to the general atmosphere, there isno doubt that it was singularly pernicious; even the officers andinstructors contributed their quota of filthy jokes, and there was noreligious instruction or influence at all except the parade service atthe garrison church on Sunday, if one happened not to be on leave. Butas to my heroism I am reluctantly compelled to be sceptical. I wentas far as I felt my inclination, and stopped after a time becauseinstinct was too strong the other way. 

As I have said before, I have always had an insurmountable instinctfor keeping rules. At school I could never bring myself to transgress, although I knew that transgression was the road to adventure. Soat the Shop, however much I may have wished to be in the swim, myinstinct for the moral and religious code of home was too strong forme. It required no self-control to prevent myself from slipping intoblasphemy and filth. On the contrary, in order to do so I should havehad to violate my strongest instincts, and exercised a will to evilmuch stronger than any will power that I possessed at that time. If, when I left Woolwich, I was comparatively pure, it was because naturedid not allow me to be anything else. 

To say the truth, I have never felt the sway of passions to anythinglike the same extent as most men seem to. I have never cared for thesociety of women for its sexual attraction. Consequently all my womenfriends have been just the same to me as my men friends--friends whomI could talk to about the things that interested me. 

I don't boast of this, I only state the fact. I am not proud of itbecause I know that some passion is necessary to make heroes and evensaints. 

SOME NOTES ON THE FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY "HILDA"

I have before me as I write a pencil sketch, limned with considerablecare, of a rather disagreeable looking young man, and beneath it iswritten--

 "D. W. A. H. , by Himself. "

It is a profile. The eye has almost disappeared under the brow, themouth is tightly closed to a degree that is quite unpleasant and thereis a deliberate exaggeration of a slight defect he actually had--atendency for the lower jaw to protrude a little. This little defecthardly any of his friends seem to have noticed, for most of themexecrate it as a libel in the otherwise admittedly beautifulphotograph at the beginning of this volume. The expression in thesketch is above all--dubious. 

So did Donald see himself. 

For the rest of us no doubt the lessons Mr. Haselden has for us in hiscaricatures, "ourselves as we see ourselves" and "as others see us, "are necessary. But not for Donald. The drawing is pasted into an albumwhich contains mainly Oxford College groups, and there is a certainunpleasant resemblance between it and his full face presentment in oneof the groups--in which he has "the group expression" rather badly. Assuming it to have been drawn at Oxford, or not very long after heleft, I think it must belong very nearly to a time when he was goingoff abroad on one of his long trips, and I had the sympathy of adear old lady friend of ours on having to part with him. I rememberreplying, "Yes, it always seems as if peace and happiness, truth andjustice, religion and piety went with him when he goes!" She laugheda good deal, and then said, seriously, repeating over to herself thestately mounting sixteenth century phrases, "But it's quite true, youknow!" I hardly think, though, that I should have said it of the youngman in the sketch!

I am now going to make a comment or two on my brother's word-picturesas I should if he were by my side. But first I should like his readersto know and realize that both were written before the period of whatI may call Donald's "Renaissance, " a period that can be roughly markedby the publication of his first book, _The Lord of all Good Life_. 

Up to then he had been struggling in vain for self-expression. How hehad worked the amount of MSS. He has left alone proves--for we have iton a friend's testimony that "he tore up much of what he wrote"; andhe also had experienced and suffered, violating his natural "timidity"and his in some ways, precarious health, for he had never got overcertain weaknesses engendered by his illness in Mauritius--in hisstruggle to get a true basis for a solution of the meaning of lifeand of religion. What cost him most was the knowledge that hewas frequently doubted and misunderstood by many of those whoseapprobation would have been very dear to him. This is proved by hisconstantly expressed gratitude to the one or two who never doubted himfor one moment. 

With the writing of this book, as we know, all his difficulties beganto clear away, and at the same time he began to reap the harvest oflove and admiration that he had sown in his toils to produce it. And the result was he opened out like a flower to the sun! No onecan doubt this for a moment who has read his book of a year later, _The Student in Arms_, and rejoiced in the radiant happiness of itsinspiration. 

He had more than once said to me during the past two years, "You knowit makes a _tremendous_ difference to me when people really _like_me. " No longer was it a case of "one friend at a time. " The period forthat was over and done with. He had come into his own. He was readyfor a universal brotherhood, and no hand would ever be held out to himin vain. 

It is impossible to believe that he does not now know of andappreciate all the beautiful tributes that have come to him sincehis "passing"--from the perfect wreath of immortelles weaved by Mr. Strachey to the sweet pansy of thought dropped by a little fellowV. A. D. Of mine who said beautifully and courageously--though knowinghim solely through his book--"We feel since he gave us his thoughtthat he belongs a tiny bit to us, too, " thus voicing the feeling ofmany. 

I believe the paper entitled "My Home" to have been written at Oxford, and "School" not so very long after. In any case, I have definiteproof of their both belonging to Donald's pre-"Renaissance" period, for the friendship with F----, that began at "the Shop" and went undera cloud for a time, was renewed with fresh vigour in 1914, and hasburned brightly ever since. Only last July was I sent by him a letterof F----'s from the trenches, with the injunction, "Please put thisamong my treasures, " and there is an allusion to a story told in thisletter in the article entitled "Romance" of the present volume. 

To return to "My Home, " I question whether the love and devotion of"Hilda" and "Ma" for Hugh was so entirely unselfish. For my mother Ifully believe, as for "Hilda, " Hugh was the epitome of all that wasfine, splendid and joyous in life. He was the glorious knight, the"preux chevalier" "sans peur et sans reproche, " who rode forth at dawnwith clean sword and shining armour, and all the world before him, yetkeeping his heart for ever in his home. He was the child of her youthas Donald was the child of her maturity. Deep down in her wonderfullyvaried nature there were certain bottomless springs of courage, daringand enterprise which she herself had little chance of expressing andof which Hugh alone was the personification. 

As long as I can remember Hugh had been my ideal and made all theinterest and joy of life for me. Whether he were at home or abroad Inever had a thought I did not share with him. When he died, the bestpart of me died too, or was paralysed rather, and Heaven knows whatsort of a "substitute" I should have been for "Ma" to Donald, had notthe baby Hugh come, just in time, with healing in his wings to restorelife to the best part of me!

I am glad to think that Donald's "Autobiography" was written before1914, for I know that even before that I was becoming more to him thana "substitute. " I too have my memories and pictures!

It is May, 1915. I am in the country-house--cleaning is going on athome. 

I get a letter to say that the Rifle Brigade may leave for Franceat any time, and that Donald _may_ get some "leave" on Saturday orSunday. 

I make a dash for town. 

There I find a telegram of reckless and unconscionable length, runninginto two pages. He cannot come up--they may leave at any moment. Itseems hardly worth while my bothering to come to Aldershot on thechance--he may be unable to leave barracks. 

I write a return telegram--also of reckless and unconscionable length, and reply paid--it is a relief to do so--asking for a place of meetingat Aldershot to be suggested. 

I get no answer at all, and on Sunday morning, in despair, I goover to see my aunt and cousin. My aunt is my mother's sister and asportswoman. She counsels, "Go at all costs. " Dorothy will come withme: Dorothy is Donald's best woman pal--she reminds him of his mother. She is all that is wholesome and comportable. 

The element of enjoyment comes in, and I go home and pack a nicelunch. 

We arrive at Aldershot. 

There is no one on the platform to meet us, and we push our waythrough the turnstile. 

There is Donald, on the outskirts of the waiting crowd--a tall, soldierly figure in the uniform of a private--for he has resigned hissergeant's stripes by now. 

His face is very boyish--not the face of the photograph at thebeginning of this book: that was taken after he had been to France, and had been wounded, and had written "A Passing in June, " and "TheHonour of the Brigade"--but a much younger face, really boyish. 

He glances quickly and anxiously at every face that passes, and eachtime he is a little more disappointed--but he tries not to show it. 

I am not tall and cannot catch his eye. It is like being at a play, watching him! All at once he sees me! Involuntarily a sudden quickspasm of joy passes across his face, absolutely transfiguring it. 

He smooths it away quickly, for he is a Briton and does not like toshow his feelings--but he has given himself away!

Dorothy and I shall never forget that look. And it was for _me_--atfirst he does not see Dorothy. When he does it is an added pleasure. 

With _two_ ladies to escort he assumes a lordly air. 

He had thought of everything. We would like some tea? Yes, all the bigplaces are shut as it is Sunday, but he has marked down a little placeon his way to the station. 

It is a lovely day, and we are very happy!

The girl who waits upon us at the little tea place likes us, and so dothe other Tommies and their friends who are having tea there. 

We sit at little tables, but at very close quarters with each other, and we smile at them and they at us. 

I have brought Donald some letters, which pleases him, and Dorothy hasbrought him some splendid socks, knitted by herself. 

After tea we walk across an arid plain to a little wood, and sit downunder the trees. 

Donald changes to the new socks--those he had on were wringing wet!

He picks us little bunches of violets, hyacinths and wild strawberryflowers--we have them still. 

We are very happy the whole of the day, and have my sandwiches andcake and fruit for supper, there under the trees. And here in thoughtlet me leave "The Student in Arms, " who was to me part son, best pal, brother, comrade, and counsellor on all subjects--and more than alittle bit of grandpapa!

He could be so many different things because, as another friend andcousin said, "he seemed to know everything about everybody. "

I like to think of those two fine spirits--Hugh and Donald--each witha hand to the tiny baby nephew, and a word of greeting for me when Igo over the top. 

THE END