Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

had a depressing effect on men who knew they were doomed to die, in the law of averages, if the war went on. "Damn their optimism!" said some of our officers. "It's too easy for those behind the lines. It is only we who have the right of optimism. It's we who have to do the dirty work! They seem to think we like the job! What are they doing to bring the end nearer?"

The frightful suspicion entered the heads of some of our men (some of those I knew) that at home people liked the war and were not anxious to end it, and did not care a jot for the sufferings of the soldiers. Many of them came back from seven days' leave fuming and sullen. Everybody was having a good time. Munition-workers were earning wonderful wages and spending them on gramophones, pianos, furs, and the "pictures." Everybody was gadding about in a state of joyous exultation. The painted flapper was making herself sick with the sweets of life after office hours in government employ, where she did little work for a lot of pocket-money. The society girl was dancing bare-legged for "war charities," pushing into bazaars for the "poor, dear wounded," getting her pictures into the papers as a "notable warworker," married for the third time in three years; the middle-class cousin was driving staff-officers to Whitehall, young gentlemen of the Air Service to Hendon, junior secretaries to their luncheon. Millions of girls were in some kind of fancy dress with buttons and shoulder-straps, breeches and puttees, and they seemed to be making a game of the war and enjoying it thoroughly. Oxford dons were harvesting, and proud of their prowess with the pitchfork-behold their patriotism!-while the boys were being blown to bits on the Yser Canal. Miners were striking for more wages, factory hands were downing tools for fewer hours at higher pay, the government was paying any price for any labor-while Tommy Atkins drew his one-and-twopence and made a little go a long way in a wayside estaminet before jogging up the Menin

road to have his head blown off. The government had created a world of parasites and placemen housed in enormous hotels, where they were engaged at large salaries upon mysterious unproductive labors which seemed to have no result in front-line trenches. Government contractors were growing fat on the life of war, amassing vast fortunes, juggling with excess profits, battening upon the flesh and blood of boyhood in the fighting-lines. These old men, these fat men, were breathing out fire and fury against the Hun, and vowing by all their gods that they would see their last son die in the last ditch rather than agree to any peace except that of destruction. There were "fug committees" (it was Lord Kitchener's word) at the War Office, the Board of Trade, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the Ministry of Munitions, the Ministry of Information, where officials on enormous salaries smoked cigars of costly brands and decided how to spend vast sums of public money on "organization" which made no difference to the man stifling his cough below the parapet in a wet fog of Flanders, staring across No Man's Land for the beginning of a German attack.

In all classes of people there was an epidemic of dancing, jazzing, card-playing, theater-going. They were keeping their spirits up wonderfully. Too well for men slouching about the streets of London on leave, and wondering at all this gaiety, and thinking back to the things they had seen and forward to the things they would have to do. People at home, it seemed, were not much interested in the life of the trenches; anyhow, they could not understand. The soldier listened to excited tales of air raids. A bomb had fallen in the next street. The windows had been broken. Many people had been killed in a house somewhere in Hackney. It was frightful. The Germans were devils. They ought to be torn to pieces, every one of them. The soldier on leave saw crowds of people taking shelter in underground railways, working-men among them, sturdy lads,

panic-stricken. But for his own wife and children he had an evil sense of satisfac

tion in these sights. good. They would meant-just a little.

It would do them. know what war They would not be They would not be so easy in their damned optimism. An air raid? Lord God, did they know what a German barrage was like? Did they guess how men walked day after day through harassing fire to the trenches? Did they have any faint idea of life in a sector where where men stood, slept, ate, worked, under the fire of eight-inch shells, five-point-nines, trench-mortars, rifle-grenades, machine-gun bullets, snipers, to say nothing of poison-gas, longrange fire on the billets in small farmsteads, and on every moonlight night air raids above wooden hutments so closely crowded into a small space that hardly a bomb could fall without killing a group of men.

"Oh, but you have your dugouts!" said a careless little lady.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

The British soldier was gay and careless of death-always. Shell-fire meant nothing to him. If he were killedwell, after all, what else could he expect? Wasn't that what he was out for? The twice-married girl knew a charming boy in the air force. He had made love to her even before Charlie was "done in.” These dear boys were so greedy for love. She could not refuse them, poor darlings! Of course they had all got to die for liberty, and that sort of thing. It was very

sad. A terrible thing-war! Perhaps she had better give up dancing for a week, until Charlie had been put into the casualty lists.

"What are we fighting for?" asked officers back from leave, turning over the pages of the Sketch and Tatler, with pictures of race-meetings, strike-meetings, bare-backed beauties at war bazaars, and

portraits of profiteers in the latest honors list. "Are we going to die for these swine? These parasites and prostitutes? Is this the war for noble ideals, liberty, Christianity, and civilization? To hell with all this filth! The world has gone mad and we are the victims of insanity."

Some of them said that below all that froth there were deep and quiet waters in England. They thought of the anguish of their own wives and mothers, their noble patience, their uncomplaining courage, their spiritual faith in the purpose of the war. Perhaps at the heart England was true and clean and pitiful. Perhaps, after all, many people at home were suffering more than the fightingmen, in agony of spirit. It was unwise to let bitterness poison their brains. Anyhow, they had to go on. How long, how long, O Lord?

"How long is it going to last?" asked the London Rangers of their chaplain. He lied to them and said another three months. Always he had absolute knowledge that the war would end three months later. That was certain. "Courage!" he said. "Courage to the end of the last lap!"

Most of the long-service men were dead and gone long before the last lap came. It was only the new boys who went as far as victory. He asked permission of the general to withdraw nineteen of them from the line to instruct them for Communion. They were among the best soldiers, and not afraid of the ridicule of their fellows because of their religious zeal. The chaplain's main purpose was to save their lives, for a while, and give them a good time and spiritual comfort. They had their good time. Three weeks later came the German attack on Arras and they were all killed. Every man of them.

The chaplain, an Anglican, found it hard to reconcile Christianity with such a war as this, but he did not camouflage the teachings of the Master he tried to serve. He preached to his men the gospel of love and forgiveness of enemies.

It was reported to the general, who sent for him.

"Look here, I can't let you go preaching 'soft stuff' to my men. I can't allow all that nonsense about love. My job is to teach them to hate. You must either coöperate with me or go."

The chaplain refused to change his faith or his teaching, and the general thought better of his intervention.

For all chaplains it was difficult. Simple souls were bewildered by the conflict between the spirit of Christianity and the spirit of war. Many of them-officers as well as men-were blasphemous in their scorn of "parson stuff," some of them frightfully ironical.

A friend of mine watched two chaplains passing by. One of them was a tall man with a crown and star on his shoulder-strap.

"I wonder," said my friend, with false simplicity, "whether Jesus Christ would have been a lieutenant-colonel?"

On the other hand, many men found help in religion, and sought its comfort with a spiritual craving. They did not argue about Christian ethics and modern warfare. Close to death in the midst of tragedy, conscious in a strange way of their own spiritual being and of a spirituality present among masses of men above the muck of war, the stench of corruption, and fear of bodily extinction, they groped out toward God. They searched for some divine wisdom greater than the folly of the world, for a divine aid which would help them to greater courage. The spirit of God seemed to come to them across No Man's Land with pity and comradeship. Catholic soldiers had a simpler, stronger faith than men of Protestant denominations, whose faith depended more on ethical arguments and intellectual reasonings. Catholic chaplains had an easier task. Leaving aside all argument, they heard the confessions of the soldiers, gave them absolution for their sins, said mass for them in wayside barns, administered the sacraments, held the cross to their lips when they fell mortally wounded, anointed them when

ears.

the surgeon's knife was at work, called the names of Jesus and Mary into dying There was no need of argument here. The old faith which has survived many wars, many plagues, and the old wickedness of men was still full of conIsolation to those who accepted it as little children, and by their own agony hoped for favor from the Man of Sorrows who was hanged upon a cross, and found a mother-love in the vision of Mary, which came to them when they were in fear and pain and the struggle of death. The padre had a definite job to do in the trenches and for that reason was allowed more liberty in the line than other chaplains. Battalion officers, surgeons, and nurses were patient with mysterious rites which they did not understand, but which gave comfort, as they saw, to wounded men; and the heroism with which many of those priests worked under fire, careless of their own lives, exalted by spiritual fervor, yet for the most part human and humble and large-hearted and tolerant, aroused a general admiration throughout the army. Many of the Protestant clergy were equally devoted, but they were handicapped by having to rely more upon providing physical comforts for the men than upon spiritual acts, such as anointing and absolution, which were accepted without question by Catholic soldiers.

Yet the Catholic Church, certain of its faith, and all other churches claiming that they teach the gospel of Christ, have been challenged to explain their attitude during the war and the relation of their teaching to the world-tragedy, the Great Crime, which has happened. It will not be easy for them to do so. They will have to explain how it is that German bishops, priests, pastors, and flocks, undoubtedly sincere in their professions of faith, deeply pious, as our soldiers saw in Cologne, and fervent in their devotion to the sacraments on their side of the fighting-line, as the Irish Catholics on our side, were able to reconcile this piety with their war of aggression. The faith of the Austrian Catholics must be explained in relation to their crimes, if they

were criminal, as we say they were, in leading the way to this war by their ultimatum to Serbia. If Christianity has no restraining influence upon the brutal instincts of those who profess and follow its faith, then surely it is time the world abandoned so ineffective a creed and turned to other laws likely to have more influence on human relationships. That, brutally, is the argument of the thinking world against the clergy of all nations who all claimed to be acting according to the justice of God and the spirit of Christ. It is a powerful argument, for the simple mind, rejecting casuistry, cuts straight to the appalling contrast between Christian profession and Christian practice, and says: "Here, in this war, there was no conflict between one faith and another, but a murderous death-struggle between many nations holding the same faith, preaching the same gospel, and claiming the same God as their protector.

Let us

seek some better truth than that hypocrisy! Let us, if need be, in honesty, get back to the savage worship of national gods, the Ju-ju of the tribe."

My own belief is that the war was no proof against the Christian faith, but rather is a revelation that we are as desperately in need of the spirit of Christ as

at any time in the history of mankind. But I think the clergy of all nations, apart from a heroic and saintly few, subordinated their faith, which is a gospel of charity, to national limitations. They were patriots before they were priests, and their patriotism was sometimes as limited, as narrow, as fierce, and as bloodthirsty as that of the people who looked to them for truth and light. They were often fiercer, narrower, and more desirous of vengeance than the soldiers who fought, because it is now a known truth that the soldiers, German and Austrian, French and Italian and British, were sick of the unending slaughter long before the ending of the war, and would have made a peace more fair than that which now prevails if it had been put to the common vote in the trenches; whereas the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Cologne, and the clergy who spoke from many pulpits in many nations, under the Cross of Christ, still stoked up the fires of hate and urged the armies to go on fighting "in the cause of justice," "for the defense of the Fatherland," "for Christian righteousness," to the bitter end. Those words are painful to write, but as I am writing this book for truth's sake, at all cost, I let them stand.

[ocr errors]

B. THE FAMILIAR ESSAY

THE distinction between that type of expository writing which appeals to the intellect and that which appeals to the imagination has already been established. The Familiar Essay is a conscious effort on the part of the writer to capture the reader's interest by stimulating his sense of beauty in sound, sense, and proportion, and by quickening his perceptions of the innate harmonies and the innate contrasts that exist between certain sets of ideas. Whether appreciative or satiric, it pays special attention to the medium of its expression and to the form of the whole. Consequently, the Essay, un

like Informative Prose, has a perennial charm independent of the ideas which it may contain; and furthermore those very ideas are of such a nature that the mind finds an indefinable pleasure in their contemplation.

The purpose of the Familiar Essay is, then, entertainment. Let us consider the means by which the essayist fulfills his obligation, by observing briefly the content and form of this literary type.

Instead of dealing with some subject of serious importance, the Essay tends to treat of the trivial, to exalt the trifling, while at the same time it illuminates the

motives of men and offers comment, direct or indirect, upon the follies and foibles men exhibit in contact with their environment. T. T.'s "Of Painting the Face," Charles Lamb's "Poor Relations," and Leigh Hunt's "On Getting up Cold Mornings" illustrate these tendencies, and "The Contributors' Club" of The Atlantic Monthly contains many modern examples true to type. Naturally in the treatment of such subjects brevity is an essential.

In spite of the implications of the foregoing paragraph, the Familiar Essay is very apt to deal with the general; or at least to find in the specific, traits common to mankind. Either the general is profusely exemplified by the specific, or else the specific is infused with a sense of larger values. Witness, for example, Robert Louis Stevenson's "Apology for Idlers," Samuel McChord Crothers' "The Toryism of Travelers," and Robert Cortes Holiday's "Caun't Speak the Language."

Nor must we accept too seriously all the judgments we may find set down in the Familiar Essay. This form is too closely related in spirit to poetry to be held responsible for its vagaries. It is too susceptible to the mood of the moment. Even the most optimistic of poets will have his "stanzas written in dejection," and Stevenson, that most industrious of workers, may be pardoned his "Apology for Idlers." Indeed it is this very mobility which is half the charm of the Essay. It is as flexible as emotion itself.

The charm of the Essay depends not

alone on its content, but on its form as well, for a familiar style is one of the distinguishing characteristics of this type. Style in its general sense is the total of all the qualities attached to a writer's diction, and depends upon variety and vividness of expression, appropriate connotation of words, proper agreement of sound and sense, and an indefinable individuality of the whole. Stevenson is always Stevenson just as Chesterton must be Chesterton. Both enjoy the incongruities of life; but Stevenson reveals the natural contrasts of our existence in a pleasingly whimsical style, while Chesterton hunts the pouting paradox with all the self-conscious diction of his vigorous satire.

1

Individuality is thus the keynote of the Familiar Essay. Subjectivity is its mark just as objectivity is the outstanding feature of Informative Prose. The writer reveals his personality in the choice of his theme, in the turns of his phrasing, and in the mood in which he writes. If he has a keen sense of the subtle ironies of life, a lively sympathy with struggling human beings, and can give appropriate expression to the humor and pathos which he finds, he will be able to employ effectively that form of Exposition called the Familiar Essay.

There is a tendency among some critics to substitute for the original meaning of "style," characteristic expression, a more limited definition. To them style is an absolute quality which a writer either has or has not. This makes the phrase "bad style" a contradiction of terms. See Clayton Hamilton, A Manual of the Art of Fiction, Chap. XII.

« AnteriorContinuar »