And there is only one way to produce that character—only one. It may succeed and it may fail; the shrewdest judges of human character make mistakes, the best leaders err sometimes. But—give him responsibility, and help him to understand that responsibility, with the help that only a good leader can give. Help him to grasp that phrase—Mymen; help him to realise that their worries are his worries, their amusements his amusements; help him to understand the value of cheerfulness when everything is damnable—utterly damnable. Then watch him. He may fail; well, you've made a mistake; but he may succeed, and then you've made a man. Which is always a thing worth doing. . . .
And so it came about that three months later Reginald Simpkins—lance-corporal—and Shorty Bill—private—were seated on the fire-step of a trench side by side. With one continuous droning roar the shells passed over their heads and crumped into the German lines opposite. The days of peace for the battalion were over; in a quarter of an hour they were going over the top. Thousands like them sat on similar fire-steps and realised that same fact, for it was no little show this time: it was one where divisions and corps were involved. But to the pawns in the game, the horizon is limited: it is just their own destination, their own life, their own fate that looms up big and blots out the rest. It's not the other hundred thousand who matter at the moment—it's the pawn himself who wonders, and laughs, and sings, and prays. . . .
Shorty, smoking his pipe imperturbably, was feeling the edge of his own particular weapon, with critical finger, and every now and then stealing a look at the boy beside him. Apparently satisfied at last with its sharpness he laid it down on the step and turned to our friend.
"You done well, son," he remarked at length, thoughtfully removing his pipe. "I'm pleased with you. I was afraid at one time—just after you took the stripe—when some of 'em was ragging you, as you would turn out a quitter. But you got guts. You're twice the man you was when you took it; and as for what you was when you joined us, you wasn't nothing at all save a walking disease."
"I'm glad you think I've made good, Shorty." Reginald was swallowing a little hard. "I—er—I—Good God! Shorty, I'm just sick with funk—that's straight." It was out at last, and Shorty Bill smiled gently and nodded his head.
"Son," he remarked, "it's one good sign that you ain't afraid o' saying so. Now personally I'm not—though it ain't no credit to me. It's how we're made, I reckon. When my time comes, it comes, and there's no blamed use worrying."
"I know all that, but—somehow—it ain't much comfort that idea, when it comes to the point. I tell you, Shorty, I don't want to be killed; I——" His voice died away, and he looked shamefacedly at the sandbags in front of him.
"No more don't I, son; no more don't I. An' no more don't your men—your six boys you are responsible for. They're your men, that little bunch: they're looking to you, they're relying on you." He put his hand on the other's knee. "Are you a'-goin' to let 'em down, that six?"
Once again the great doctrine—the third great lesson—the doctrine that laughs at life and death, the doctrine of thinking for others—of responsibility.
"It's better, I reckon, to die a man than live a worm. So long, son; time's up."
The last words were shouted, and even then they could not be heard. Five minutes previously it would have seemed impossible that there could have been more noise; then suddenly it seemed to double and treble in intensity. The ground shook; and over the German trenches there hung a choking cloud of fumes which drifted slowly across the front with the wind. As if by clockwork, the men got out of their trenches and walked slowly over No Man's Land behind the creeping barrage towards the reeking caldron. A great long line of men—thousands and thousands of men; but do not think of them as the men of "some of our county regiments who did well, whom we are now allowed to mention"; as some "kilted battalions and Canadians who greatly distinguished themselves"; do not think of them in the mass, rather think of the individual.
The farm-hand, until two years ago just a clod-hopping countryman, was there; and the local lawyer's articled clerk. The gillie from a Scotch stream, and the bar-tender from a Yukon saloon walked side by side; and close to them a High Church curate in a captain's uniform grinned pleasantly and strolled on. The sheep-rancher, the poacher, the fifth son of an impecunious earl, and the man from the chorus were all there—leaving their respective lives behind them, the things which they had done, good and bad, the successes and the failures. For the moment nothing mattered save that seething volcano in front: it might be the end—it might not.
And some were quiet, and some were green; some were shouting, and some were red; some laughed, and some cursed. But whatever they did, however they took it, the leaders of whom I have spoken, each in his own sphere, big or little as the case might be, kept 'em, held 'em, looked after 'em, cheered 'em. Though their own stomachs were turning, though their own throats were dry, they had a job to do: a responsibility rested on their shoulders. And until death relieved them of that responsibility they could not lay it down. They were the leaders; to them much had been given; of them much was expected. . . .
But in this great advance, which has already been ably portrayed by the powers of the journalistic world, we are only concerned with the fortunes of two individuals. To them those flowery phrases, those magnificent "dashes carried out in faultless style," those wonderful "lines which went into the jaws of hell as if on parade," would have conveyed a peculiarly inept description of their feelings. Not that the descriptions in many cases are not wonderfully good! They are—but they represent the point of view of the spectator in a pageant; not the point of view of one of the actors. To him they are meaningless: he only knows the intense vital part he plays himself. The shell that burst next door to him and killed his sergeant is only one of similar thousands to the looker-on behind. . . .
And so, in a dazed world of his own, Reginald Simpkins, Lance-Corporal and sometime pride of Mogg's, walked over No Man's Land. Every now and then he looked mechanically to his left and right, and grinned. At least he made a contortion with his facial muscles, which experience told him used to produce a grin. He did it to encourage the six. Whether he succeeded or not is immaterial: the intention was good, even if the peculiar tightness of his skin spoiled the result. Occasionally he spoke. No one could have heard what he said, but once again the intention was good.
"Steady, boys—come on." He said it four or five times and punctuated it with grins. Then he tripped over a body and cursed.
He wondered if he was doing all right; he wondered if Shorty was pleased with him. The funk seemed to have gone: in its place had come a kind of dazed doggedness, while a fury of impatience to justify himself and his powers of leadership shook him at times. Surely to God they could go faster than this cursed crawl. Why was the barrage lifting so slowly? It seemed interminable that walk over the torn-up earth; and yet the German trenches were still some way off.
He grinned again, and turned round just in time to see the garage assistant next to him fall forward into a shell hole, and lie with his head stuck in the slimy ooze at the bottom. He frowned, and then almost uncomprehendingly he saw the back of the fallen man's head. Of course—he was shot, that's what it was: his six were reduced to five.
"Steady, boys—come on." As he spoke he felt something catch his coat, and he looked down irritably on feeling the material tear. It was a strand of barbed wire that stuck up from the ground, with its free end loose. They had come to the wire. . . .
In all directions—twisted and torn, with ends that stuck up, and stray strands uncut—was wire: thick and rusty it coiled in and out between the screw pickets—cut to pieces, but still there. Men picked their way over it gingerly, stepping with care and walking round the little ridges that separated the shell holes. Festoons of it lay in these holes, and in one large crater a dead Hun lay sprawled on a mattress of it. To the spectator behind, it was one dead Hun—one of thousands. To the man who happened to see him as he passed, it was an individual whose chalky face had been ripped by one of the barbs as he fell.
And there is a difference. . . .
Then they came to the trenches—the front line, or what was left of it. Just facing them a man with his hands above his head opened and shut his mouth. He appeared to be saying something, but no voice could be heard above the din. Reginald grinned again: the Hun who was trying to imitate a fish struck him as a humorous spectacle; moreover, in a flash of memory, he reminded him very much of Mr. Mogg's ample wife. He grinned again as he thought of Mogg's.
Once more they were advancing again over the other side of the trench: the moppers-up would attend to the piscatorial gentleman. Our friend was better now—very much better; he felt more sure of himself; in fact, absolutely sure of himself. In addition he was beginning to get excited. And then a machine gun opened fire.
Hundreds of other machine guns opened fire too; but this one was Reginald's machine gun—the one that concerned his limited horizon. For a moment it did not strike him that way, though he saw the gun quite clearly. He looked round for help, and in looking round for help, he found that his five and three others who were close to him were looking to him for help. And he realised his responsibility: he had learned the lesson. . . .
It was a masterly little piece of work: an excellent piece of subordinate leadership. With his arm he directed those eight—he had not been trained as a scout in vain—and with the loss of only two he got them out of the direct zone of fire. A few minutes later he, with the six remaining, fell upon that gun's team from a flank. In five seconds it was over, and the little group passed on.
It was just after this that he saw Shorty. At the moment that worthy was lying in a shell hole drawing a bead on some target with the utmost care. Reggie saw the kick of the gun, but failed to see what he had been firing at until the firer stood up and screamed in his ear.
"Machine gunner—nest of them over there. Hanging up the ruddy advance."
"We're doing well, Shorty." He howled back the answer.
"I reckon so. The swine are running all along the line; only one or two of 'em holdin' us up. Look out." He pulled Reginald to one side, and pointed behind him.
Majestically, squelching through the mud, came Tiny Tim, or the Tired Tank. It was pitching and rolling like a squat old tramp making heavy weather beating up Channel. They waved at it as it passed by, lurching ominously but going straight for the machine-gun nest. Once it almost seemed to disappear as it waddled down an extra large hole with its two stern wheels waving foolishly in the air; but a moment later it squirmed solemnly up the far side, and rolled on to its chosen target. The wire was uncut; but it trod on the wire, and the wire was not.
"Look at the perishers running," howled Shorty, as he watched some men doubling back from the death-trap. Their arms were waving foolishly: one could imagine their faces grey-green with terror, their hoarse shouts of fear, their desperate hurry to avoid the thing that was coming. "Lumme! I must draw a bead on that bunch," muttered Shorty eagerly. "Now then, son, you can hit one of that lot." He turned from the scene in front, and the next instant he was down on his knees. "What is it, boy, what is it?"
The man lying stiffly on the ground grinned yet once again, and shook his head. Thus does it come—suddenly, in a second. To the spectator behind—"our losses were not as great as had been anticipated." To the man—journey's end.
"I've got it this time, Shorty," he remarked, and he seemed to speak with difficulty. The roar of the guns was passing onwards, the din was not quite so deafening. "My bally old back seems all numb."
Just a stray bullet; just a broken back; just a finish. With the eye of knowledge Shorty looked at the grey tinge already spreading over the boy's face, and the mystery of death struck him forcibly: something of the strangeness of it all. In five minutes—four—ten—what matter?—the lips now capable of speech would close for ever: the man whom he had known and lived alongside of for months would be gone for good. The desperate finality of it; the utter futility of the onlooker. . . .
"Is the Tank clearing 'em out, Shorty?" The dying man interrupted his thoughts, and he looked up to see what was happening.
"It is that, son; it's doing fine. The old thing is sittin' there like a broody hen spittin' at 'em, and the swine are running like hell."
"God! Shorty, could one hit 'em with a gun?" The glazing eyes brightened; the lolling head straightened with a jerk.
"Sure thing." Shorty looked at him, and understood. "Like to try, boy; you'd get the cocoa-nut, I'll bet."
"That's it, Shorty; that's it. Turn me over, an' prop me up. I'd like to. . . . Lord! man, I can see 'em there, hundreds of 'em running to beat the band. Give me the gun, Bill, quick; I must just get one; I. . . ."
With powerless hands he took the rifle for the last time, and looked along the sights. "God!" he whimpered, "I can't hold it steady—I can't. . . . Shorty, Shorty, I'm wobbling all over the target."
But Shorty did not come to him. He was lying on the ground two or three feet away, with his own rifle hugged to his shoulder. "If there be anything in religion," he muttered fiercely, "let me shoot straight this time, God."
"That's all right," he shouted; "you've got him covered fine. Fire, son, fire—an' hit the perisher. You ain't wobbling."
And so Reginald Simpkins, lance-corporal and man, fired his last shot. Heaven knows where it went; all that matters is that a running grey-green figure two hundred yards away suddenly threw his hands above his head and pitched forward on his face.
"Great shooting, son, great shooting." Shorty Bill was beside him, turning him over once again on his back. "You plugged him clean as a whistle. Good boy."
The grey had spread; the end was very near. "I thought I heard—another shot—close by." The tired eyelids closed. "I've made good, Shorty, ain't I? . . . Honourable Jimmy . . . Regiment great thing . . . responsibility . . . greater. . . ." And so he died.
Shorty Bill thoughtfully ejected a spent cartridge case from his magazine and pulled back the safety catch. "I'm glad I hit him. It'll be something for the boy to take away with him. I suppose he'll remember it." Shorty's brow wrinkled with the strain of this abstruse theological problem. Then he shrugged his shoulders and gave it up. "So long, son; you made good—you did well. But the old Tank has cleared 'em out, an' I must be toddling on." Then he remembered something, and produced his own patent weapon. It was only as he actually started to cut another nick in the long row which adorned the stock of his rifle that he paused: paused and looked up.
"Lumme! I'd better wait a bit; it wouldn't never do for the boy to know it was me what hit that Hun. I'll just go on a little, I'll . . . Good-bye, boy; I'm sorry—dam sorry."
With his strange, loping walk the poacher and jailbird walked off in the wake of the Tank, which was now ploughing merrily forward again. Fifty yards away he stopped, and cut another nick. "Ninety-three," he muttered; "not bad. But it wouldn't never have done for the boy to have known." Undoubtedly theology was not his strong point.
Slowly, an inch or two at a time, Reginald Simpkins slithered down the sloping side of the shell hole till he reached the bottom. To the batches of prisoners coming back—just a casualty; to the reinforcements coming up—just a casualty. To the boy himself—the great price.
And so, in the shell-ploughed, gun-furrowed No Man's Land is the seed of Britain sown. And the harvest——?
"Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn."
MATTHEW xiii. 30.
"For shoulders curved with the counter stoop will be carriederect and square;And faces white from the office light will be bronzed by theopen air;And we'll walk with the stride of a new-born pride, with anew-found joy in our eyes;Scornful men who have diced with death under the naked skies.
"For some of us smirk in a chiffon shop, and some of us teachin a school;Some of us help with the seat of our pants to polish anoffice stool;The merits of somebody's soap or jam some of us seek to explain;But all of us wonder what we'll do when we have to go backagain."—R. W. SERVICE.
What of the harvest? It is coming, perhaps sooner than we expect, perhaps not for many weary months. But the reaper is even now sharpening his sickle in readiness, and—what of the crops?
Into No Man's Land have gone alike, the wheat of honest endeavour and hardship well borne, and the tares of class hatred and selfishness. Had ever reaper nobler task in front of him than the burning of those tares and the gathering of that wheat into the nation's barn? . . .
In the Château at Boesinghe, where the moss is growing round the broken doors and the rank weeds fill the garden, with the stagnant Yser hard by; in Ypres, where the rooks nest in the crumbling Cloth Hall and a man's footsteps ring loud and hollow on the silent square; in Vermelles, where the chalky plains stretch bare towards the east, and the bloody Hohenzollern redoubt, with the great squat slag heap beside it, lies silent and ominous; in Guillemont and Guinchy, where the sunken road was stiff with German dead and no two bricks remain on top of one another; on Vimy Ridge, in Bullecourt and Croisilles, in all these places, in all the hundred others, the seed has been sown. What of the harvest?
If I have made of war a hideous thing—unredeemed, repulsive—the picture is not consciously exaggerated. As far as in me lies I have drawn the thing as I have seen it.
But after the lean years, the fat; after the hideous sowing, the glorious aftermath.
The more one thinks of it, the more amazing does the paradox become—the paradox of cause and effect. To fit these civilians of Britain for all the dirty details which go to make winning or losing, to fit them for the business of killing in the most efficient manner, the tuition must include the inculcation of ideals—more, the assimilation of ideals—which are immeasurably superior to any they learned in their civilian life. At least so it seems to one who makes their acquaintance when they first join up. In their civilian life self ruled; there, each individual pawn scrambled and snarled as he pushed the next pawn to him under—or went under himself as the case might be—in his frenzied endeavour to better himself, to win a little brief authority! The community was composed of a mass of struggling, fighting units, each one all out for himself and only himself.
But from the tuition which the manhood of Britain is now undergoing, there must surely be a very different result. Self no longer rules; self is sunk for the good of the cause—for the good of the community. And the community, realising that fact, endeavours, by every means in its power, to develop that self to the very maximum of which it is capable, knowing that, in due course, it will reap the benefit. No longer do individual pawns struggle one against the other, but each—developing his own particular gift to the maximum—places it at the disposal of the community who helped him in his development. And that is the result of so-called militarism—Britishmilitarism.
Surely what has been accomplished in the Army can be carried into other matters in the fullness of time. I am no prophet; I am no social reformer to speak of ways and means. All I can say with certainty is that I have seen them come in by hundreds, by thousands—these men of our country now fighting in every corner of the globe—resentful, suspicious, intolerant of authority. I have seen them in training; I have seen the finished article. And the result is good: the change for the better wonderful.
It cannot be that one must presuppose such a hideous thing as this war to be necessary, in order to attain such results. I cannot believe it. There must be some other method of teaching the lessons of playing for the side and unselfishness. The spurred culprits of Mr. Wells' imagination have given a lead over the fence; surely all the rest of the field is not going to jib.
And when the harvest does come in, when the sickle is finally put to the crop, there will be such an opportunity for statesmanship as the world has never before seen.
Winnowed by the fan of suffering and death, the wheat of the harvest will shed its tares of discord and suspicion. The duke and the labourer will have stood side by side, and will have found one another—men. No longer self the only thing; no longer a ceaseless growse against everybody and everything; no longer an instinctive suspicion of the man one rung higher up the ladder. But more self-reliant and cheery; stronger in character and bigger in outlook; with a newly acquired sense of self-control and understanding; in short, grown a little nearer to its maximum development, the manhood of the nation will be ripe for the moulder's hand. It has tasted of discipline; it has realised that only by discipline for the individual can there be true freedom for the community; and that without that discipline, chaos is inevitable. Pray heavens there be a moulder—a moulder worthy of the task.
"Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?"
He will have grand clay—that moulder: clay such as has never been known before. Its God will be the God of Reality, its devil the Devil of Pretence. Just as it has ceased to look at Death through a haze of drawn window-blinds and frock-coats redolent of moth-balls, so it will cease with scorn to look at some of the clumsy sophistries of modern life through the rose-tinted spectacles so kindly provided for the purpose by men of great vocal, and correspondingly small mental, power.
Out of the evil, good will come: surely it must be so. In the wisdom of the Infinite Power, madness has been let loose on the world. The madness was not of our seeking. It was hurled upon us by a race whose standards are based on bombing or crucifying their prisoners, and eating their own dead; on sinking unarmed liners and murdering an odd woman or two to fill in time; and finally—though perhaps last on the list of witticisms from a material point of view, almost first from that of contempt—of crucifying an emaciated cat and stuffing a cigar in its mouth. A race without an instinct of sport, without an idea of playing the game. Gross and contemptible they bluster first, and then they whine; and the rare exceptions only make the great drab mass seem even more nauseating. . . .
But the crushing of that race will have been hard, the sacrifices great. And even so will the results of those sacrifices be great. Of social problems I am, as I have said, not qualified to speak; indeed of any of the great problems of reconstruction it would be presumption on my part to hold forth.
It is not for the soldier to see visions and dream dreams: there are others more fitted, more suited to the task. It is of the individual I have written; it is to the individual I dedicate the result of my labours.
I remember meeting a Padre one day several months ago. He was conjuring at a concert for an Infantry Battalion that evening—between the forefinger and thumb of the right hand you now perceive a baby giraffe sort of business—and I told him I thought it was very good of him to take the immense amount of trouble he always did to amuse the boys.
"Good!" His face expressed genuine amazement. "Good! To these boys! I tell you, when I think of what the ordinary private soldier is doing for me—aye! and for all of us who are not in the Infantry—I just stand quite still and take off my hat."
And so I have written of the individual. Inadequately it is true, and with a due sense of my short-comings in attempting the task, I have written of the men I have met and lived with across the narrow sea. Not of armies and army corps, not of divisions and brigades, but of the units—the individual men—who form them. For it is the man we know. It is the man who has suffered and endured, the man who touches our laughter and our tears. He has given his all, unstintingly, unsparingly; and now, perchance, he lies peaceful and at rest in the land where the seed has been sown; perchance he will come back to the country he has fought for when the final reckoning is over. And whichever it is—the quiet, solitary grave with the cross above it and the wild flowers blooming freshly underneath the crumbling walls of a town that was; or the taking up again of the work so long neglected—the office or the ranch, the railway in Yukon or the rubber in Malay—whichever it is, he has played the great game well. To him the great reward. . . .
And the women? the women who have suffered and endured with their men—more than their men. To some the great reunion, the blessed feeling that it is over. Never again will he go into the great unknown; never again that clutching terror of the telegraph boy. He has come back, and there shall be no more parting. The joy bells will be ringing out: the war will be over—won.
Thus shall it be for some.
And for the others. . . .
It is not for me to comfort: there are things too deep for the written word. Only one thing I say, and I say it with a full sense of its pitiful inadequacy. When the joy bells do ring out, and in the ringing seem to mock so hideously the empty chair, the voice for ever silent, then in that bitter moment, remember one thing. Somewhere or other, in the Soldier's Valhalla, he is waiting for you—waiting with a trusty band of friends, happy, contented, proud. He was glad to pay that final price; he knows now, where all is clear, that it was necessary. He would have you know it too. . . .
For except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die. . . .