Miss L. and her assistants were ladies of resource and indomitable spirit. It was a small thing to them to find the canteen suddenly plunged into total darkness while a crowd of men was clamouring for food and drink at the counter. A supply of candles was kept ready to hand. They were placed in mugs (candlesticks were lacking of course) and set on the counter. By the aid of their feeble gleam the ladies groped their way into the kitchen for tea, filled cups, and counted out change. The scene always reminded me of Gideon’s attack on the Midianites when his soldiers carried lamps in pitchers. Occasionally some one knocked over a mug. There was a crash and a blaze, a very fair imitation of the battle in the Book of Judges.
It was worse when a whist drive or a singing competition in the Church Army hut was interrupted by one of these Egyptian plagues of darkness. But even then we did not allow ourselves to be seriously embarrassed. The men, responsive to theinstinct of discipline, sat quiet at the whist tables with their cards in their hands. The glow of burning cigarettes could be seen, faint spots of light; nothing else.
Miss L. hurried to the canteen for candles. They were set in pools of their own grease on the tables and the games went on. A singing competition scarcely even paused. The competitors sang on. The pianist managed to play. The audience applauded with extra vigour until candles were brought and set in rows, like footlights, in front of the stage.
Our worst experience of light failure occurred one evening when we had a visit from a very superior concert party. We had secured it only after much “wangling.” We made every possible preparation for its reception. One of Miss L.’s assistants drew out a most attractive advertisement of the performance with a picture of a beautiful lady in a red dress at the top of it. We posted this up in various parts of the camp; but we were not really anxious about the audience. It always “rolled up.”
We set up a stage in the dining-room, a large high stage made out of dining-tables, a little rickety, but considered by goodjudges to be fairly safe. We spread a carpet, or something which looked like a carpet, on it. Only Miss L. could have got a carpet in the camp, and I do not know how she did it. We hung up a large Union Jack, Miss L.’s private property, which was used on all festive occasions and served as an altar cloth on Sundays. The E.F. Canteen authorities were worried for a week beforehand, and, lest they should be worried more, promised us a new piano, “same,” so they put it, “to be delivered” in time for the concert. The promise was not kept.
That was our first misfortune. With deep misgiving we dragged our own piano out of the canteen and set it on the stage. The musical members of Miss L.’s staff assured us that it was desperately out of tune. The least musical of us could assure ourselves that several notes made no sound at all, however hard you hit them. And the concert party was a very grand one.
It arrived in two motors, and we abased ourselves before it, babbling apologies. One after another the members of the party approached our piano and poked at it with their forefingers. One after another they turned away looking depressed. The onlyone of them who remained moderately cheerful was a man who did conjuring tricks. It was, I imagine, through his good offices that the party agreed to attempt its programme.
The audience, who knew the failings of our piano as well as we did, applauded the first song rapturously. Then without the slightest warning every lamp in the place went out. A dog, a well-beloved creature called Detail, who was accustomed to sit under Miss L.’s chair at concerts, began to bark furiously. That, I think, was what finally broke the temper of the concert party. We had an oil lamp ready for emergencies. It was lit, and I saw the leader of the party beckoning to me. His face was fearfully stern. I fully expected him to say that the whole party would leave at once.
But he did nothing so drastic. He demanded the instant expulsion of Detail. There was a scuffle at the far end of the room. The audience rose to its feet and cheered tumultuously. Detail, I am sorry to say, barked again. I saw eight men staggering through the crowded room bearing a piano. It was quite new, and, I am told, almost in tune. The situation was saved.The singers were mollified and went on with their programme by the light of one lamp, two candles (on the piano), and three stable lanterns. An orderly with a screwdriver and a box of matches sought for the fused wire. Detail crept under her mistress’s chair again unrebuked. She was an animal of cultivated tastes and hated missing concerts. She usually behaved with decorum, not barking except by way of applause when the audience shouted and noise of any kind was legitimate.
The camp is, I am told, very different now. There is a new canteen, large, well furnished, and beautiful. Concerts can be held in it and church services. No one is any longer crowded out of anything. The kitchen is a spacious place in which it is possible to cook without great physical suffering. There are more flower beds, well-kept lines between the tents, an impressive entrance. No doubt even the electric light shines consistently. The days of makeshift are over and the camp is a credit to the Expeditionary Force.
But I should not like to go back there again. I should be haunted with memories of old days which were trying but pleasant. I should wish myself back at one of thecheery tea-parties in the old canteen kitchen, when we sat on packing-cases and biscuit-boxes, when we shifted our seats about to dodge the raindrops from the roof, when we drank out of three cracked cups and thick mugs borrowed from the canteen.
I should remember pay-nights when the men stood before the counter in a dense mob, all hungry, each holding in his hand a five-franc note, when we had no change, not a franc, not a sou; when, in desperation, I used to volunteer to collect change from any one who had it, giving chits in exchange for small coins. Such crises do not arise now, I suppose.
Sitting in comfort at a table in the fine new canteen I should remember sadly a wet afternoon in the Church Army hut when there was no room to move and the air was heavy with Woodbine smoke and the steam of drying cloth, when I perched on the corner of a window-sill and pitted myself against a chess player who challenged me suddenly and turned out to be a master of the game and the secretary of a chess club in Yorkshire.
I should remember, with how great regret! how, evening after evening, Miss S. left herpots and pans, smoothed her tousled overall, and came over to the Church Army hut to play a hymn for us at evening prayers; how the men, an ever-changing congregation, chose the same hymns night after night till we came to hate the sound of their tunes; how we, reserving Sunday evenings for our property, chose the hymn then and always chose the same one—which I shall never sing again without remembering Miss S. at the piano, smelling the air of that hut, and being troubled by a vision of the faces of the men who sang.
I should not find Miss S. there if I went back, or Captain L., or any one, almost, whom I knew. No doubt their successors are doing well, mine better than ever I did, which would be no difficult thing; but I could not bear to see them at their work. Ghosts of old days would haunt me.
And worst of all, Miss L. is gone. The rest of us have passed and no one misses us much, I suppose. Our places are easily filled. Her place in that camp no one will ever quite fill. “Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.”
At last! I have the precious paper safe in my hand, in my pocket with a button fastened tight to keep it there: my leave warrant, passport to ten days’ liberty, rest, and—other things much more desirable than liberty or rest. It is issued to me late on Sunday night for a start on Monday morning.
The authorities are desperately suspicious. They trust no man’s honour. They treat even a padre as if he were a fraudulent cashier, bent on cheating them if he can. I do not blame them. In this matter of leave every man is a potential swindler. A bishop would cheat if he could. If I had got that leave warrant an hour or two sooner than I did, I should have made a push for the boat which left on Sunday evening. Thereby I should have deprived the army of my services during the night, a form of swindling not to be tolerated, though whatuse I am to the army or any one else when I am in bed and asleep it would be very difficult to say.
All that night the wind shrieked, rattling windows to the discomfort of those who were lucky enough to have roofs over their heads, threatening the dwellers in tents with the utter destruction of their shelters. Very early, before the dawn of the winter morning, the rain began, not to fall—the rain in a full gale of wind does not fall—but to sweep furiously across the town.
I heard it, but I did not care. I turned and snuggled close under my blankets. In an hour or two it would be time to get up. My day would begin, the glorious first day of leave. What does rain matter? or what do gales matter? unless—a horrid fear assailed me. Was it possible that in such a gale the steamer would fail to start. I turned and twisted, tortured by the thought. Every time the windows rattled and the house shook I sweated hot and cold.
In the end, tormented beyond endurance, I got up and dressed some time between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. I did more. Without the coffee which Madame had promised me I sallied forth and tramped through the deserted streets of the town, fording gutterswhich were brooks, skirting close by walls which promised what sailors call a “lee.”
The long stretch of the quay was desolate. Water lay in deep pools between the railway lines among the sleepers. Water trickled from deserted waggons and fell in small cascades from the roofs of sheds. The roadway, crossed and recrossed by the railway, had little muddy lakes on it and broad stretches of mud rather thicker than the water of the lakes.
Far down the quay lay a steamer with two raking funnels—the leave boat, the ship of heart’s desire for many men. Clouds of smoke, issuing defiantly from her funnels, were immediately swept sideways by the wind and beaten down by the rain. The smoke ceased to be smoke, became a duller greyness added to the greyness of the air, dissolved into smuts and was carried to earth—or to the faces and hands of wayfarers—by the rain.
Already at 7 o’clock there were men going along the quay—a steady stream of them, tramping, splashing, stumbling towards the steamer. In the matter of the sailing of leave boats rumour is the sole informant, and rumour had it that this boat would start at 10 a.m. Leave is a preciousthing. He takes no risks who has secured the coveted pass to Blighty. It is a small matter to wait three hours on a rain-swept quay. It would be a disaster beyond imagining to miss the boat.
Officers make for the boat in twos or threes, their trench coats, buttoned tightly, flap round putteed or gaitered legs. Drenched haversacks hang from their shoulders.
Parties of men, fully burdened with rifles and kit, march down from the rest camp where they have spent the night. The mud of the trenches is still thick on them. One here and there wears his steel helmet. They carry all sorts of strange packages, sacks tied at the mouth, parcels sewed up in sacking, German helmets slung on knapsacks, valueless trophies of battlefields, loot from captured dug-outs, pathetically foolish souvenirs bought in French shops, all to be presented to the wives, mothers, sweethearts who wait at home.
A couple of army sisters, lugging suit-cases, clinging to the flying folds of their grey cloaks, walk, bent forward against the wind and rain. A blue-coated Canadian nurse, brass stars on her shoulder straps, has given an arm to a V.A.D. girl, a creature already terrified at the prospect of crossingthe sea on such a day. The rain streams down their faces, but perhaps Canadians are accustomed to worse rain in their own country. Certainly this young woman does not seem to mind it. She is smiling and walks jauntily. Like many of our cousins from overseas she is rich in splendid vitality.
A heavy grey motor rushes along, splashing the walkers. Beside the driver is a pile of luggage. Inside, secure behind plate glass from any weather, sits a general. Another motor follows and still others. British staff officers and military attachés from allied nations, the privileged classes of the war, sweep by while humbler men splash and stumble.
But in front of the gangway of the leave boat, as at the gates of Paradise, there is no distinction of persons. The mean man and the mighty find the same treatment there. There comes a moment when the car must be left, when crossed sword and baton on the shoulder straps avail their wearer no more than a single star.
A sailor, relentless as Rhadamanthus, stands on the gangway and bars the way to the shelter of the ship. No one—so the order has gone forth—is to be allowed on board before 9 o’clock. There is shelter a fewyards behind, a shed. A few seek it. I prefer to stand, with other early comers, in a cluster round the end of the gangway, determined, though we wait hours, to be among the first on board.
The crowd grows denser as time goes on. The Canadian sister, alert and competent, secures a seat on the rail of a disused gangway and plants two neat feet on the rail opposite. An Australian captain, gallant amid extreme adversity, offers the spare waterproof he carries to the shivering V.A.D. I find myself wedged tight against a general. He is elderly, grizzled, and looks fierce; but he accepts a light for his cigarette from the bowl of my pipe. It was his only chance of getting a light then and there. Now and then some one asks a neighbour whether it is likely that the boat will start on such a day.
A depressed major on the outskirts of the crowd says that he has it on the best authority that the port is closed and that there will be no sailings for a week. The news travels from mouth to mouth, but no one stirs. There is a horrid possibility that it may be true; but—well, most men know the reputation of that “best authority.” He is the kind of liar of whose fate St. Johnspeaks vigorously in the last chapter but one of his Apocalypse.
The ship rises slowly higher and higher, for the tide is flowing. The gangway grows steeper. From time to time two sailors shift it slightly, retying the ropes which fasten it to the ship’s rail. The men on the quay watch the manœuvre hopefully.
At 9 o’clock an officer appears on the outside fringe of the crowd. With a civility which barely cloaks his air of patronage he demands way for himself to the ship. His brassard wins him all he asks at once. On it are the letters “A.M.L.O.” He is the Assistant Military Landing Officer, and for the moment is lord of all, the arbiter of things more important than life and death. In private life he is perhaps a banker’s clerk or an insurance agent. On the battlefield his rank entitles him to such consideration only as is due to a captain. Here he may ignore colonels, may say to a brigadier, “Stop pushing.” He has what all desire, the “Open Sesame” which clears the way to the ship.
He goes on board, acknowledging with careless grace the salute of one of the ship’s officers. He stands on the shelter deck.
With calm dignity he surveys the swayingcrowd beneath him. “There’s no hurry, gentlemen,” he says. There is no hurry for him. He has risen from his bed at a reasonable hour, has washed, shaved, bathed, breakfasted. He has not stood for hours in drenching rain. The look of him is too much for the general who is wedged beside me in the crowd. He speaks:
“What the——? Why the——? When the——? Where the——?” He is a man of fluent speech, this general. I thought as much when I first looked at him. Now it seems that his command of language is a great gift, more valuable than the eloquence of statesmen or the music of poets. The Canadian sister leads the applause of the crowd. The general turns to me with a deprecating smile.
“Excuse me, padre, but really——”
The army respects the Church, knows that certain necessary forms of speech are not suited to clerical ears. But the Church is human and can sympathise with men’s infirmities.
“If I were a general,” I said, “I should say a lot more.”
The general, encouraged by this absolution, does say more. He mentions the fact that he is going straight to the War Office whenhe reaches London. Once there he will—the threat vaporises into jets of language so terrific that the air round us grows sensibly warmer. I notice that the V.A.D. is holding tight to the hand of the Canadian sister.
The A.M.L.O., peering through the rain from the shelter deck of the steamer, recognises the rank of his assailant. The mention of the War Office reaches him. He wilts visibly. The stiffness goes out of him before the delighted eyes of the crowd. He admits us to the ship. Another gangway is lowered. In two thin streams the damp men and draggled women struggle on board. Certain officers, the more helpless subalterns among us, are detailed for duty on the voyage. They parade on the upper deck. To them at least the A.M.L.O. can still speak with authority. He explains to the bewildered youths what their duties are. Each passenger, so it appears, must wear a life-belt. It is the business of the subalterns to see that every one ties round his chest one of those bandoliers of cork.
On the leave boat the spirit of democracy is triumphant. Sergeants jostle commissioned officers. Subalterns seize deck chairs desired by colonels of terrific dignity. Privateswith muddy trousers crowd the sofas of the first-class saloon. Discipline we may suppose survives. If peril threatened, men would fall into their proper places and words of command would be obeyed. But the outward forms of discipline are for a time in abeyance. The spirit of goodfellowship prevails. The common joy—an intensified form of the feeling of the schoolboy on the first day of the Christmas holidays—makes one family of all ranks and ages.
No doubt also the sea insists on the recognition of new standards of worth. The humblest private who is not seasick is visibly and unmistakably a better man than a field-marshal with his head over the bulwarks. Curious and ill-assorted groups are formed. Men who at other times would not speak to each other are drawn and even squeezed together by the pressure of circumstance.
Between two of the deckhouses on the lower deck of this steamer is a narrow passage. Porters have packed valises and other luggage into it. It is sheltered from the rain and will be secure from showers of flying spray. Careless and inexperienced travellers, searching along the crowded decks for somewhere to sit down, pass this place by unnoticed. Others, accustomed in olddays to luxurious travelling, scorn it and seek for comfort which they never find.
I come on this nook by accident; and at once perceive its value as a place of shelter and refuge. I sit down on the deck with my haversack beside me. I wedge myself securely, my feet against one side of the passage, my back against the other. I tuck my waterproof round me and feel that I may defy fate to do its worst.
A few others drift into the refuge, or are pressed in by the crowd outside. The Canadian sister, a competent young woman, has found her way here and settled down her helpless V.A.D. on a valise—a lumpy, uncomfortable seat. A private from a Scottish regiment is here, two Belgians and a Russian staff officer struggle in a narrow space to adjust their life-belts. A brigadier, a keen-eyed, eager-faced young man, one of those to whom the war has given opportunity and advancement, joins the group. He speaks in French to the Belgians and the Russian. He helps to make the V.A.D. less utterly uncomfortable. He offers me his flask and then a cigar.
There is one subject of conversation. Will the boat start? The Russian is hopeful. Is not England mistress of the seas?The V.A.D. is despondent. Once before in a long-ago time of leave the boat did not start. The passengers, and she among them, were disembarked. The Scottish private has heard from a friend of his in “the Signals” that German submarines are abroad in the Channel. The brigadier is openly contemptuous of all information from men in “the Signals.” The Canadian sister is cheerful. If she were captain of the ship, she says, she would start, and, what is more, fetch up at the other side.
The captain, it appears, shares her spirit. The ship does start. The harbour is cleared and at once the tossing begins. The party between the deckhouses sways and reels. It becomes clear very soon that it will be impossible to stand. But sitting down is difficult. I have to change my attitude. It is not possible for any one else to sit down if I keep my legs stretched out, and the others must sit down or else fall. The brigadier warns the Russian to be careful how he bestows himself.
“Don’t put your feet on my haversack,” he says. “There’s a bottle of hair-wash in it.”
The Russian shifts his feet.
“There’ll be a worse spill if you trampleon mine,” I murmur. “There’s a bottle of Benedictine in it.”
“Padre!” said the brigadier. “I’m ashamed of you.Ihad the decency to call it hair-wash.”
The Canadian sister laughs loud and joyously.
It is noticed that the Scottish private is becoming white. Soon his face is worse than white. It is greyish green. The Canadian sister tucks her skirts under her. The prospect is horrible. There is no room for the final catastrophe of seasickness. The brigadier is a man of prompt decision.
“Out you go,” he says to the man. “Off with you and put your head over the side.”
I feel that I must bestir myself for the good of the little party, though I do not want to move. I seize the helpless Scot by the arm and push him out. The next to succumb is the Russian staff officer. His face is pallid and his lips blue. The V.A.D. is past caring what happens. The two Belgians are indifferent. The Canadian sister, the brigadier, and I take silent counsel. Our eyes meet.
“I can’t talk French,” I say.
“I can,” said the Brigadier.
He does. He explains politely to theRussian the indecency of being seasick in that crowded space. He points out that there is one course only open to the sufferer—to go away and bear the worst elsewhere. Honour calls for the sacrifice. The Russian opens his eyes feebly and looks at the deck beyond the narrow limits of his refuge. It is swept at the moment by a shower of spray. He shudders and closes his eyes again. The brigadier persuades, exhorts, commands. The Russian shakes his head and intimates that he neither speaks nor understands French. He is a brave and gallant gentleman. Shells cannot terrify him, nor the fiercest stuttering of the field guns make him hesitate in advance, but in a certain stage of seasickness the ears of very heroes are deaf to duty’s call.
A little later I take the cigar from my mouth and crush the glowing end on the deck. I am not seasick, but there are times when tobacco loses its attractiveness. The brigadier becomes strangely silent. His head shrinks down into the broad upturned collar of his coat. Only the Canadian sister remains cheerfully buoyant, her complexion as fresh, her cheeks as pink as when the rain washed them on the quay.
The throbbing of the engines ceases. Fora brief time the ship wallows in the rolling seas. Then she begins to move backwards towards the breakwater of the harbour. The brigadier struggles to his feet and peers out.
“England at last,” he says. “Thank goodness.”
Women, officers, and men fling off the life-belts they have worn and crowd to the gangways. With shameless eagerness they push their way ashore. The voyage is over.
Along the pier long trains are drawn up waiting for us. We crowd into them; lucky men, or foreseeing men with seats engaged beforehand, fill the Pullman cars of the train which starts first. It runs through the sweet familiar English country incredibly swiftly and smoothly. Luncheon is served to us. On this train, at least, there still are restaurant cars. We eat familiar food and wonder that we ever in the old days grumbled at railway fare. We lie back, satisfied, and smoke.
But there is in us an excitement which even tobacco will not soothe. The train goes swiftly, but not half swiftly enough. We pass town and hamlet. Advertisement hoardings, grotesque flat images of cows, outrageous commendations of whisky orpills, appear in the fields. We are getting near London. Pipes are laid by. We fidget and fret. The houses we pass are closer together, get closer still, merge into a sea of grey-slated roofs. The air is thick, smoke-laden. The train slows down, stops, starts again, draws up finally by the long platform.
Then——! To every man his own dreams of heaven hereafter. To every man his own way of spending his leave.
Holidays, common enough in civil life, are rare joys in the B.E.F. Leave is obtainable occasionally. But nobody speaks of leave as “holidays.” It is a thing altogether apart. It is almost sacred. It is too thrilling, too rapturous to be compared to anything we knew before the war. We should be guilty of a kind of profanity if we spoke of leave as “holidays.” It ought to have a picturesque and impressive name of its own; but no one has found or even attempted to find an adequate name for it. If we were pagans instead of professing to be Christians, if we danced round fountains and set up statues of Pan for our worship and knew nothing of the Hebrew spirit, we might get a name for “leave” out of the vocabulary of our religious life. Being what we are we cannot do that, but we rightly decline to compare leave with ordinary holidays.
Only a few men in the army succeed ingetting what is properly called a holiday, a day or two off work with a change of scene. I got one, thanks to M. It is one of the many things, perhaps the least of them, for which I have to thank his friendship.
M. had formed an exaggerated, I fear a totally erroneous, idea of my powers of entertaining men. It occurred to him that it would be a good thing if I gave lectures to the men of the cavalry brigade to which he was attached. What he said to the general who commanded the division I do not know, but somehow, between the general and M., the thing was worked. I found myself with a permit to travel on railways otherwise barred to me and three golden days before me.
No one can say that life in my three camps was dull. Life is never dull or monotonous for a man who has plenty of pleasant work to do and a party of good friends as fellow-workers. But a change is always agreeable, and I looked forward to my trip with impatient excitement.
It was like being a schoolboy again and going forth to the Crystal Palace with money in my pocket, an entire half-crown, to be dribbled away in pennyworths of sherbet and visits to curious side-shows. That partywas an annual affair for us that came in June as a celebration of the Queen’s birthday. My visit to M. was in August, but the weather was still full summer.
As a lecturing tour that expedition was a flat failure. M.’s cavalry, officers and men, were frankly bored and I realised from the very start that I was not going to justify whatever M. said to the general about me.
In every other respect the holiday was a success. I enjoyed it enormously and I gained some very interesting experience. I saw French rural life, a glimpse of it. Cavalry cannot be concentrated in large camps as infantry are. When they are not wanted for fighting they are scattered in small parties over some country district where they can get water and proper accommodation for their horses. The men are billeted in farm-houses. The officers live in châteaux and mess in the dining-halls of French country gentlemen if such accommodation is available, or take over two or three houses in a village, sleep where they can and mess in the best room which the interpreter and the billeting officer can find.
M. slept in a farm-house and secured a room adjoining his for my use. I slept on the softest and most billowy feather bed Ihave ever come across, with another feather bed, also very soft and billowy, over me by way of covering. My room had an earthen floor, a window which would not open, a broken chair and no other furniture of any kind. I do not think that our landlady, the wife of a farmer who was with the colours, had removed her furniture from the room to keep it out of my way. That almost bare room was just her idea of what a bedroom ought to be. Her kitchen and such other rooms as I saw in her house were equally bare.
Unlike the French women whom I met in towns, this farmer’s wife was a slattern. She cared neither about her own appearance nor the look of her house. She did not wash her children. But she worked. The land was well tilled and her cattle well tended. There was no sign of neglect in the fields. Things might have been a little better, perhaps, the place more efficiently worked, if her husband had been at home, but there was not room for much improvement. Yet that woman had no one to help her except a very old man, her father-in-law, I think, who was infirm and almost imbecile.
She had four children, but they were hindrances rather than helps. The eldestof them was about eight years old. She did the whole work of the farm herself. I used to hear her getting up at 4 a.m., lighting a fire and opening doors. Peeping through the half-transparent pane of glass in my tiny window, I saw her tending her horse and cows before 5 a.m. She worked on, and worked hard, all day.
The French have not had to face the difficulty of the “one-man business” as we have, because the women of the minor bourgeoisie are willing and able to step straight into their husbands’ places and carry on. I learnt that when I lived in towns. The French can go farther in calling up the men who work the land, because their peasant women can do the work of men. The land suffers, I suppose, and the harvests are poorer than in peace time. But if farms in England were left manless as those French farms are, the result would be much more serious in spite of the gallant efforts of the girls who “go on the land.”
M. and I tramped about that country a great deal while I was with him. We saw the same things everywhere, cattle well cared for and land well worked by a few old men and women who looked old long before their time.
Our landlady cannot have been an old woman. Her youngest child was a baby in a cradle, but she looked fifty or more. Loss of youth and beauty is a heavy price for a woman to pay for anything. I wonder if she resented having to pay it. At least she has the satisfaction of knowing that she bought something worth while though she paid dearly. She kept her home. She fed her children. As surely as her husband in the trenches she helped to save her country.
I have been assured that the French women have not been so successful as English women in the conduct of war charities. They have not rushed into the hospitals to nurse the wounded with anything like the enthusiasm and devotion of our V.A.D.’s. In the organisation of War Work Depots and the dispatching of parcels to prisoners of war the French women have proved themselves on the whole less efficient than English women. They have not shone in the management of public business, where Englishwomen have been unexpectedly able and devoted.
On the other hand French women seem to have done better than English women in the conduct of their private affairs. This, I think, is true both of the bourgeois andpeasant classes. In England the earning power on which the house depends is the man’s. When he is taken away he is very badly missed and the home suffers or even collapses. In France the women are more independent economically. They can carry on the business or the farm sufficiently well without the man.
But I did not get permission to visit M.’s cavalry division that I might observe the French peasantry. I went to give lectures to the men. I did that, faithfully exerting myself to the uttermost, but I did it very badly. I suppose I am not adaptable. Certainly the conditions under which I lectured destroyed any faint chance of my succeeding, before I began.
It has been my lot to lecture under various circumstances to widely different kinds of audiences. I have been set up at the end of a drawing-room in a house of culture in the middle west of the U.S.A. I have stood beside a chairman on a platform in an English hall. Never before had I been called upon to lecture in a large open field, standing in the sunlight, while my audience reclined peacefully on the grass under a grove of trees. Never before had I watched my audience marched up to me by squadrons,halted in front of me by the stern voices of sergeants, and sitting down, or lying down, only after I had invited them to do so. It was a very hot afternoon. I do not wonder that half the men went to sleep. I should have liked to sleep too.
I lectured that same day in another field to a different body of men. There I was even more uncomfortable. Two thoughtful sergeants borrowed a table from a neighbouring house and I stood on it. That audience stayed awake, perhaps in hope of seeing me fall off the table, but made no pretence of enjoying the lecture.
Yet it was not altogether the strange conditions of the performance which worried me. I should, I think, have come to grief just as badly with those audiences if they had been collected into rooms or halls. I was out of touch with the men I was talking to. I did not understand them or how to address them. I had some experience, experience of six months or so, of soldiers; but that was no help to me. These were soldiers of a kind quite new to me. They belonged to the old army. Officers and men alike were professionals, not amateurs soldiering by chance like the rest of us.
The cavalry is, with the possible exceptionof the Guards, the only part of our force in which the spirit of the old army survives. Every infantry battalion has been destroyed and renewed so often since the war began that the original personality of the thing, the sense of memory, the link with the past and all its traditions, no longer survives. An infantry regiment bears an old name; but it is a new thing. Its resemblance to the regiment which bore the name before the war is superficial, a thin veneer. In spirit, outlook, tone, interest, tradition, in all but courage and patriotism, it is different. In the cavalry this great change has not taken place.
The cavalry suffered heavily in the early days of the war and has lost many men since. Large numbers of recruits have come in to make good the losses. But the number of new men has never been so great as to destroy the old regiment’s power of absorption. Recruits have been digested by the original body. They have grown up in the tradition of the regiment and have been formed by its spirit. The difference between the cavalry troopers and the infantry privates of the army of to-day is difficult to define; but it is very easily felt and plain to recognise.
Perhaps it is most clearly seen in theattitude of men towards their officers. In the old army officers were a class apart. Everything that could be done was done to emphasise the distinction between officers and men. And the distinction was a real, not an artificial thing. The officer was different from the men he commanded. He belonged to a different class. He had been educated in a different way. He was accustomed before he joined the army and after he left it to live a life utterly unlike the life of the men he commanded. It can scarcely have been necessary to deepen by disciplinary means the strong, clear line between officers and men.
In the new army all that can be done by regulations is done to keep up the idea of the officer super class. But the distinction now is an artificial one, not a real one. Neither in education, social class, manner of life, wealth, nor any other accident are our new officers distinct from the men they command.
For the men of the old army the officer was a leader because he was recognisably in some sense a superior. He might be a good officer or a poor one, brave and efficient or the reverse. Whatever his personal qualities he was an officer, a natural leader.
For the men of the new army an officeris an officer more or less by accident. No one recognises any kind of divine right to leadership. Discipline may insist, does quite rightly insist, on due respect to officers as such; but everybody feels and knows that this is a mere question of expediency. Men cannot act together unless some one commands; but it does not follow that the man who gives the orders is in any permanent way the superior of the men who receive them.
What has really happened during the war is that the army has changed in the essential spirit of its organisation. It is no longer built on the aristocratic principle like the army of Louis XIV. It has been democratised and is approximating to the type of Napoleon’s armies or Cromwell’s Ironsides. The shell of the old organisation is there still. The life within the shell is different.
I do not know how the men of the old army regarded their generals and officers in high command. If we may trust Kipling they had, sometimes at least, a feeling of strong personal affection and admiration for certain commanders.
“He’s little, but he’s wise,And he does not advertise,Do you, Bobs?”
“He’s little, but he’s wise,And he does not advertise,Do you, Bobs?”
Very likely the cavalry men still have this kind of feeling for their generals. The men of the brigade I visited certainly ought to have loved their general. He did a great deal for them. But the new army does not seem to have any feeling either of respect or contempt for its generals.
Nothing surprised me more when I became intimate with the men than their attitude towards their commanding officers. I had read of the devotion of armies to their leaders. We are told how Napoleon’s soldiers idolised him; how Wellington’s men believed in him so that they were prepared to follow him anywhere, confident in his genius. Misled by newspaper correspondents, I supposed that I should find this sort of thing common in France. I had often read of this general and that as beloved or trusted by his men.
In fact no such spirit exists. Very often the men do not know the name of the commander of the particular army, or even the brigade, to which they belong; so little has the personality of the general impressed itself on the men. Very often I used to meet evidences of personal loyalty to a junior officer, a company commander, or a subaltern. Occasionally men have the samefeeling about a colonel. They never seem to go beyond that. There was not a trace of admiration for or confidence in any one in high command. It was not that the men distrusted their generals or disliked them. Their attitude was generally neutral. They knew nothing and cared very little about generals.
Perhaps men never did idolise generals, and historians, like newspaper correspondents, are simply inventing pretty myths when they tell us about the hero worship paid to Napoleon, Wellington, and the rest.
Perhaps the fact is that the conditions of modern warfare tend to obscure the glory of a general. He can no longer prance about on a horse in front of lines of gaping men, proudly contemptuous of the cannon balls which come bounding across the field of battle from the enemy’s artillery. His men are inclined to forget his existence, usually do remain ignorant of his name because they do not see him. One is tempted to wonder whether the formal—and very wearisome—inspections which are held from time to time behind the lines, generally on cold and rainy days, are not really pathetic efforts of kings and generalsto assert themselves, to get somehow into the line of vision of the fighting men.
Perhaps it may be that generals, through no fault of their own, have lost that “plaguy trick of winning victories” which bound the heart of Dugald Dalgetty to Gustavus Adolphus. Victories, so far as we can see, are things which do not occur in modern warfare, or, at all events, do not occur on the western front. If any one did win a victory of the old-fashioned kind it is quite possible that he might become the hero of the soldier.
It would be very interesting to know what the feelings of soldiers of other armies are towards their generals. The German people seem to idolise von Hindenburg. Have the German soldiers any kind of confidence in his star? Von Mackensen has some brilliant exploits to his credit. Does Fritz, drafted into a regiment commanded by him, march forward serenely confident of victory?
Our men do no such thing. They have unshaken confidence in themselves. They are sure that their company commanders will not fail them or their colonels let them down. But they have no kind of feeling, good or bad, about their generals.
The name “padre” as used in the army describes every kind of commissioned chaplain, Church of England, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, or Nonconformist. The men lump them all together. I have heard a distinction made between “pukka” padres and those who have not enjoyed the advantages of episcopal ordination. But such denominational feeling is extremely rare. As a rule a padre is a padre, an officially recognised representative of religion, whatever church he belongs to. The same kind of character, the same general line of conduct, are expected in all padres. We shall get a side light, if no more, on the much-discussed question of the religion of the army if we can arrive at an understanding of the way in which the padre strikes the average man.
The statistical method of arriving at knowledge is chiefly useful for purposes ofcontroversy. Any one with access to official records might set out for admiration the hierarchy of padres, ranging from the Chaplain-General to the humble C.F. Fourth Class, might enumerate the confirmations held, the candidates presented, the buildings erected, perhaps the sermons preached. It would then be possible to prove that the Church is doing her duty by the soldiers or that the Church is failing badly, whichever seemed desirable to prove at the moment.
That is the great advantage of the statistical method. It establishes beyond all possibility of contradiction the thing you want to establish. But if you do not want to establish anything, if you merely want to find out something, statistics are no use at all. You are driven to other ways of getting at the truth, ways much less definite and accurate.
I wish there were more pictures of army chaplains. There are a few. I do not recollect that Bairnsfather ever gave us one, but they turn up from time to time in the pages ofPunch. There was one in which a senior curate in uniform—the story is told in France of a much more august person—is represented waving a farewell to a party of French soldiers, expressing the hopequele bon Dieu vous blesserait toujours. We need not concern ourselves with his French. Staff officers and even generals have made less excusable blunders.
What is interesting is the figure and face of the young man. He is alert and plainly very energetic. He is full of the spirit of comradeship. One glance at him convinces you that he means to be helpful in every possible way to every human being he comes across. He is not going to shirk. He is certainly not going to funk. You feel sure as you look at him that he will keep things going at a sing-song, that a canteen under his management will be efficiently run. He is a very different man indeed from that pre-war curate ofPunch’swhose egg has become proverbial, or that other who confided to an admiring lady that, when preaching, he liked every fold of his surplice to tell. He is not intellectual, but he is not, in practical matters, by any means a fool.
His sermons will be commonplace, but—you congratulate yourself on this—they will certainly be short, and he will neither be surprised nor hurt if nobody listens to them. There will be nothing mawkish about his religion and he will not obtrude it overmuch, but when he starts the men singing “Fight the good fight,” that hymn will go with a swing. In the officers’ mess, when the shyness of the first few days has worn off, he will be recognised as “a good sort.” The men’s judgment, expressed in the canteen after a football match, will differ from the officers’ by one letter only. The padre will be classed as “a good sport.”
There are other sketches of padres, and they do not always represent men of the senior-curate age. There is one, for instance, which serves as an advertisement of a tobacco, in which the chaplain is a man of forty or forty-five. Before the war he must have been vicar of a fair-sized parish, very well organised. And it is not always the “good sort” qualities which the artist emphasises. There is a suggestion occasionally of a certain stiffness, a moral rigidity as of a man not inclined to look with tolerant eyes on the “cakes and ale” of life.
Sometimes we get a hint of a consciousness of official position. It is not that the padre of these pictures is inclined to say “I’m an officer and don’t you forget it.” He is not apparently suspected of that. But he is a man who might conceivably say“I’m a priest and it won’t do for me to let any one forget that.”
Yet, even in these pictures, we are left with the feeling that the men who sat for them were competent and in their way effective. There is no suggestion of feebleness, the characteristic of the pre-war cleric which most commonly struck the artist. And we recognise that the clergy have discarded pose and affectation along with the dog collars which most of them have left behind in England. Freed from the society of elderly women, the British cleric has without difficulty made himself very much at home in the company of men.
That is the impression we get of the padre from the artists who have drawn pictures of him. But there are not nearly enough of these pictures to make us sure that it is in just this way that the men in France regard the clergy who have gone on active service. The fact is that the artists who have sketched generals and staff officers in hundreds, subalterns in thousands, and men of the ranks in uncountable numbers, have not taken very much notice of the padres. They felt perhaps that the clergy did not really count for much in army life.
Fortunately it is not only in the drawingof artists that the general opinion finds expression. The average man, a very sure and sane judge of worth, cannot use pencil, brush, or paint; but he has other ways of expressing himself. For instance he labels whole classes with nicknames.
Consider the various names for the enemy which are current in the trenches. “Hun” was not the invention of the army. It came from the newspapers. The soldier uses it, but not with delight. He prefers “Boche”; but that was not his own word either. It originated with the French. And there is a noticeable difference between the way a Frenchman and an Englishman say “Boche.” The Frenchman hisses it. In his mouth it is eloquent of a bitter hatred for something vile. An Englishman says “Boche” quite differently. You feel as you listen to him that he regards his enemy as brutal and abominable, but also as swollen, flatulent, and somewhat ridiculous.
“Fritz” and not “Boche” is our own invention in the way of a name for the enemy. It expresses just what the men feel. “Fritz” whom we “strafe” continually is in the main a ridiculous person, and any healthy-minded man wants to rag him. There is an inflated pomposity aboutFritz; but given the necessary hammering he may turn out to be a human being like ourselves. He wants to get home just as we do. He likes beer, which is very hard to come by for any of us, and he enjoys tobacco.
Or take another nickname. Generals and staff officers are called “Brass Hats.” The name was fastened on them early in the war and it still sticks. Perhaps if we were starting fresh now we should give them another name, a kindlier one. For a “Brass Hat,” if such a thing existed, would be more ornamental than useful. It would occupy a man’s time in polishing it, would shine, no doubt agreeably, on ceremonial occasions, but would be singularly uncomfortable for daily wear. Is that the sort of way the fighting men thought of the staff after Neuve Chapelle? The name suggests some such general opinion and the name passed into general use.
“Padre” is another nickname; but a friendly one. I should much rather be called a padre than a Brass Hat. I should much rather be called a padre than a parson. It is an achievement, something they may well be proud of, that the old regular chaplains were spoken of by officers and menalike as padres. I, who had no part in winning the name, feel a real satisfaction when I open a letter from man or officer and find that it begins “Dear Padre.”
And yet—there is a certain playfulness in the name. A padre is not one of the serious things in army life. No such nickname attaches or could attach to a C.O. or a sergeant-major. They matter. A padre does not matter much. Religion, his proper business, is an extra, like music lessons at a public school. Music is a great art, of course. No one denies it, chiefly because no normal boy thinks about it at all. The real affairs of life are the Latin grammar and the cricket bat. There is a master who gives music lessons to those who want such things. He may be an amiable and estimable man; but compared to a form master or the ex-blue who is capable of making his century against first-class bowling, he is nobody.
Some feeling of that kind finds expression in the nickname “padre.” It is not contempt. There is not room for real contempt alongside of the affection which the name implies. It’s just a sense that, neither for good nor evil, is the padre of much importance. It is impossible to imagine King Henryspeaking of Thomas à Becket as the padre. He hated that archbishop, and he also feared him, so he called him, not a padre, but a turbulent priest.
Is the kingdom of heaven best advanced by men who strike the world as being “padres” or by “turbulent priests”? It is a very nice question.
There is yet another way in which we get at that most elusive thing, popular opinion. Stories are told and jokes passed from mouth to mouth. It is not the least necessary that the stories should be true, literally. They are indeed much more likely to give us what we want, a glimpse into the mind of the average man, if they are cheerily unconnected with sordid facts. No one supposes that any colonial colonel ever begged his men not to address him as “Sam” in the presence of an English general. But the story gives us a true idea of the impression made on the minds of the home army by the democratic spirit of the men from overseas.
I only know one padre story which has become universally popular. It takes the form of a dialogue.