III
Then I got leave to go and see Harry. He was in his billet, in a small bedroom on the ground floor. There was a sentry standing at the window, fixed bayonet and all, so that he should neither escape nor make away with himself.
He was surprised and, I think, really pleased to see me, for before me, as he said, or any one who knew his history, he was not ashamed.... It was only when the ignorant, the Wallaces, were near that he was filled with humiliation, because of the things he knew they were thinking. 'That sentry out there,' he told me, 'was in my platoon at Gallipoli—one of my old men; just before you came in he tapped on the window and wished me luck; he said that all the "old lads" did the same.... It bucked me up no end.'
Not that he needed much 'bucking up.' For he was strangely quiet and resigned—more nearly at peace with everything than I had seen him for many months. 'Only,' he said, 'I wish to God that I was a single man, and I wish to God they would get on with it....' He had been under arrest for six weeks, six solid weeks ... carted about from place to place like some animal waiting for slaughter; while the Summaries of Evidence and the Memos and the Secret Envelopes went backwards and forwards through 'Units' and through 'Formations,' from mandarin to mandarin, from big-wig to big-wig; while generals, and legal advisers, and judge advocates, and twopenny-halfpenny clerks wrote their miserable initials on the dirty forms, and wondered what the devil they should decide—and decided—nothing at all. All this terrible time Harry had been writing to his wife, pretending that all was well with him, describing route marches and scenery, and all the usual stuff about weather and clothes and food.... Now at least somebody had decided, and Harry was almost happy. For it was an end of suspense.... 'Once they settled on a court-martial,' he said, 'I knew I was done ... and except for Peggy, I don't care.... I don't know what they've told you, but I'd like you to know what really happened. I found the battalion at Monval (the same old part), and got there feeling pretty rotten. Old Philpott, of course, sent me off with a working-party like a shot out of a gun—before I'd been there an hour. I picked up some wiring stuff at the Brigade Dump—it was a long way up the road then, not far from Hellfire Corner. Fritz was shelling the road like hell, going up and down, dropping them in pairs, fifty yards further every time, you know the game.... I had the wind-up pretty badly, and so had the men, poor devils ... but what was worse, they seemed to know that I had.... We had a lot of shells very close to us, and some of the men kept rushing towards the bank when they heard one coming.... Well, you don't get on very fast at that rate, and it's damned hard to keep hold of them when they're like that.... And knowing they were like that made me even worse. When we got to Dead Mule Tree about ten of them were missing ... just stayed under the bank in the holes.... I don't say this to excuse myself ... I just tell you what happened. Then we got to that high bit where the bank stops and the valley goes up on the left.... You know the awful exposed feeling one has there, and they had a regular barrage just at the corner.... I got the men under the bank, and waited till a shell burst ... and then tried to dash them past before the next. But the next one came too fast, and fell plunk into the middle of the column—behind me.... Three men were killed outright, and those of us who hadn't flung themselves down were knocked over. I fell in a kind of narrow ditch by the road. When I put my head up and looked back I saw some of the men vanishing back under the bank. Then another one came—8-inch I should think they were—and I grovelled in the ditch again.... It was just like my awful dreams.... I must have been there about ten minutes. After every one I started to get up and go back to the men under the bank, meaning to get them together again. Every time the next one came too quick, and I was pinned, simply pinned in that ditch. Then Fritz stopped for a minute or two—altering the programme, I suppose—and I got up and ran like hell for the bank. The four or five men lying near me got up and ran too.
'When we got under the bank we lay down and I looked round ... there was not a man to be seen. I shouted, but at first nothing happened. And, I tell you, I was glad.... Some of the men who had gone back, not seeing me anywhere, had melted away home.... I don't blame them.... Then a few drifted along from further down the bank.... By degrees most of the party turned up ... there must have been between thirty and forty of them in the end....
'And then, you see, I knew I should have to go on again ... get past the corner somehow.... And——
'And I couldn't.... I simply couldn't face it.... Peters (the N.C.O.) said something about "Going to have another shot, sir?" He was pretty shaken himself—they all were ... but he'd have gone.... We ought to have gone on.... I know that.... But.... Anyhow, I told him I didn't think we should ever get by at present, and said we'd better go back a bit and wait under cover ... some yarn or other.... So we started back down the road.... The Boche was still doing the up and down game on the road, only about twice as much.... By this time I can tell you there was no shame between those men and me ... we understood each other ... every time we heard that damned shriek we fell into shell-holes and prayed.... They were following us down the road, getting nearer and nearer.... You know that dug-out in the bank where Headquarters used to be. Well, just when it looked as if the next lot must come right on top of us, I saw a light coming from the dug-out, and most of us ran hell for leather for the door. Some one was standing at the entrance as we dashed in ... just in time ... we nearly knocked him over.... And guess who it was,' said Harry, with a horrible kind of hysterical laugh, 'guess who it was ... it was Burnett—Burnett of all people.... He had been sent up to find out what had happened. Well, he asked what the hell I was doing, and said I was to go on at once.... I said I was going to wait a bit, there was too much of a barrage.... Then he said, very offensively, he couldn't help that ... my orders were to go on at once.... That annoyed me, and I said I'd see him damned first, and told him if it was so urgent he could take the party up himself if he liked.... But he didn't, naturally ... no reason why he should.... Then he rang up Philpott and told him that he had seen the officer in charge and some of the party running down the road—demoralized. So he had, of course,—he saw me running for the dug-out ... though the joke of it is—the joke of it is ... he was sheltering there himself!' And at the enormity of that joke Harry went off into that hideous laughter again. 'He said I refused to obey orders, and asked for instructions. Philpott said it was too late now, the stuff had been wanted by midnight.... He told Burnett to put me under arrest ... and come back.
'That's what happened,' he went on, 'and I don't care—only I wish it had been anybody but Burnett—though I suppose he was quite right; but it makes no odds ... I had got the wind-up, and I had failed with the party, and I don't deny it ... even if I wasn't really running when he saw me.... One thing I can say—if I did have the wind-up I've never had cold feet—till that night.... I'm glad I came out this time if I did fail at the pinch.... Burnett wouldn't have.... I knew I was done when I came ... and I know I'm done now.
'But I wish you'd just explain it all to Peggy and the people who don't know.'
And that is what I am trying to do.
XII
The Court-Martial was held in an old farm lying just outside the village. There was a large courtyard where the chickens clucked all day, and children and cattle roamed unchecked in the spacious midden. The court-room was unusually suitable to its purpose, being panelled all round in some dark wood with great black beams under a white-washed ceiling, high and vaulted, and an open hearth where the dry wood crackled heartlessly all day. Usually these trials are conducted in the best bedroom of some estaminet, and the Court sits defensively with a vast white bed at their backs. But this room was strangely dignified and legal: only at first Madame persisted in marching through it with saucepans to the kitchen—all these curious English functions were the same to her, a Christmas dinner, or a mess-meeting, or the trial of a soldier for his life.
The Court impressed me rather favourably—a Major-General, and four others. The Major-General, who was President of the Court, was a square, fatherly-looking person, with a good moustache, and rather hard blue eyes. He had many rows of ribbons, so many that as I looked at them from a dark corner at the back, they seemed like some regiment of coloured beetles, paraded in close column of companies. All these men were very excellently groomed: 'groomed' is the right word, for indeed they suggested a number of well-fed horses; all their skins were bright, and shiny, and well kept, and the leather of their Sam Brownes, and their field boots, and jingling spurs, and all their harness were beautiful and glistening in the firelight. I once went over the royal stables at Madrid. And when all these glossy creatures jingled heavily up to their table I was reminded of that. They sat down and pawed the floor restively with their well-polished hoofs, cursing in their hearts because they had been brought so far 'to do some damned court-martial.' But all their faces said, 'Thank God, at least I have had my oats to-day.'
And there was an atmosphere of greyness about them. The hair of some of them was splashed with grey; the faces of most of them were weathered and grey; and one felt that the opinions of all of them were grey, but not weathered.
For they were just men, according to their views. They would do the thing conscientiously, and I could not have hoped for a better Court. But as judges they held the fatal military heresy, that the forms and procedure of Military Law are the best conceivable machinery for the discovery of truth. It was not their fault; they had lived with it from their youth. And since it is really a form of conceit, the heresy had this extension, that they themselves, and men like them, blunt, honest, straightforward men, were the best conceivable ministers for the discovery of truth—and they needed no assistance. Any of them would have told you, 'Damn it, sir, there's nothing fairer to the prisoner than a Field General Court-Martial'; and if you read the books or witness the trial of a soldier for some simple 'crime,' you will agree. But given a complex case, where testimony is at all doubtful, where there are cross-currents and hidden animosities, the 'blunt, honest' men are lost.
To begin with, being in their own view all-seeing and all-just, they consider the Prisoner's Friend to be superfluous: and if he attempts any genuine advocacy they cannot stomach the sight of him. 'Prisoner's Friend be damned!' they will tell you, 'the Prosecutor does all that! and anything he doesn't find out the Court will.' Now the Prosecutor is indeed charged with the duty of 'bringing out anything in the favour of the Accused': that is to say, if Private Smith after looting his neighbour becomes afterwards remorseful and returns his loot to its owner, the Prosecutor will ask questions to establish the fact. In a case like Harry's it means practically nothing. The Prosecutor will not cross-examine a shifty or suspicious witness—dive into his motives—get at the secret history of the business, first, because it is not his job, and secondly, because being as a rule only the adjutant of his battalion, he does not know how.
The Court will not do this, because they do not know anything about the secret history, and they are incapable of imagining any; because they believe implicitly that any witness, officer or man (except perhaps the accused), is a blunt, honest, straightforward man like themselves, and incapable of deception or concealment.
This is the job of the Prisoner's Friend. Now 'The Book' lays down very fairly that if he be an officer, or otherwise qualified, Prisoner's Friend shall have all the rights of defending counsel in a civil court. In practice, the 'blunt men' often make nothing of this safeguard. Many courts I have been before had never heard of the provision; many, having heard of it, refused flatly to recognize it, or insisted that all questions should be put through them. When they do recognize the right, they are immediately prejudiced against the prisoner if that right is exercised. Any attempt to discredit or genuinely cross-examine a witness is regarded as a rather sinister piece of 'cleverness'; and if the Prisoner's Friend ventures to sum up the evidence in the accused's favour at the end—it is too often 'that damned lawyer-stuff.' Usually it is safer for a prisoner to abandon his rights altogether in that respect.
But that should not be in a case like Harry's. The question of counsel was vital in his case. I make no definite charges against Philpott and Burnett. All I say is that it was unfortunate that the two men most instrumental in bringing Harry to trial should have been the only two men with whom he had ever had any bitterness during his whole military career. It was specially unfortunate that Burnett should be the first and principal accuser, when you remembered that almost the last time Harry had seen Burnett he had shown courage where Burnett had shown cowardice, and thus humiliated him. This case could have been passed over; hundreds such have been passed over, and on their merits, from any human standpoint, rightly. Why was this one dragged up and sent stinking to the mandarins? Well, one possible answer was—'Look at the history of these three men.' And in the light of that history I say that Philpott and Burnett should have been ruthlessly cross-examined by a really able man, till the very heart of them both lay bare. Whether the issue would have been different I don't know, but at least there would have been some justice on both sides. And it may even be that a trained lawyer could not only have got at the heart of the matter, but also prevailed upon the Court not to be prejudiced against him by his getting at it. For that brings you back to the real trouble. I could have done it myself and gladly; if any one knew anything about these men, I did. But if I, acting for Harry, had really cross-examined Burnett, asked him suddenly what he was doing in that dug-out, and when he hesitated, suggested that he too was sheltering, and quite rightly, because the fire was so heavy; or if I brought out the history of that night at Gallipoli, and suggested that the animosity between the two men might both explain Harry's conduct in the dug-out, and account for Burnett having made the charge in the first place, thus throwing some doubt on the value of his evidence—all that would have been 'cleverness.' And if I had suggested that Philpott himself, my C.O., might have some slight spite against the accused, or asked him why he had applied for a Court-Martial on this case after hushing up so many worse ones, I think the Court would have become apoplectic with horror at the sacrilege.
Then again it had been fixed that Travers should be Prisoner's Friend; he knew more about the Papers and the Summary of Evidence, and so on, than any one (though as the papers had only been sent down the morning before, he did not know a great deal). So we left it at that. Travers was a young law student in private life, but constitutionally timid of authority, and he made no great show, in spite of the efforts of the Deputy Judge Advocate, a person supposed to assist everybody. But, as I have said, perhaps it was as well.
For what they thought of as the 'hard facts of the case' were all that mattered to the Court, and as related by Philpott and Burnett and Peters, they were pretty damning. That bit about the 'running' was fatal. It made a great impression. Both the Prosecutor and two of the Court asked Burnett, 'Are you sure he was running?' If he had only been walking away from the enemy it would have made so much difference!
Travers did ask Burnett why was he in the dug-out entrance; and it showed you what a mockery any kind of cross-examination would have been. In the absence of short-hand writers every question and almost every answer was written down, word for word, by the Deputy Judge Advocate. After a question was put there was a lengthy pause while the officer wrote; then there was some uncertainty and some questions about the exact form of the question. Had Travers said, 'Why were you in the dug-out?' or 'Why did you go to the dug-out?' Finally, all being satisfactorily settled and written down, the witness was allowed to answer. But by then the shiftiest witness had had time to invent a dozen suitable answers. No liar could possibly be caught out—no deceiver ever be detected—under this system. That was 'being fair to the witness.'
Burnett answered, of course, that he had gone there to inquire if the working-party had been seen.
To do Burnett justice, he did not seem at all happy at having to tell his tale again. If his original report had really been made under a sudden impulse of spite and revenge (and, however that may be, he could certainly have made a very different report), I think perhaps he had not realized how far the matter would go—had not imagined that it would come to a Court-Martial, and now regretted it. But it was too late. He could not eat his words. And that was the devil of it. Burnett might have made a different report; Philpott could have 'arranged things' with the Brigade—could have had Harry sent to the Base on the ground of his record and medical condition, and not have applied for a Court-Martial. But once those 'hard facts' came before the Court, to be examined under that procedure, simply as 'hard facts'—an officer ordered up with a party and important stores; some of the party scattered; officer seen running, running, mind you—in the wrong direction; officer 'shaken' on the evidence of his men, and refusing to obey an order—it was too late to wonder whether the case should ever have come there. That was Philpott's business. He did not seem disturbed. He even mentioned—casually—that 'there had been a similar incident with this officer once before, when his conduct with a working-party by no means satisfied me.' Quite apart from the monstrous misrepresentation of the thing, the statement was wholly inadmissible at that stage, and the President stopped him. But that also was too late. It had sunk in....
And so the evidence went slowly on, unshaken—not that it was all unshakable; no one tried to shake it.
After Philpott came Peters, the N.C.O., a good fellow.
He told the Court what Harry had said about 'going back to wait a bit,' instead of going straight on when the party collected again.
They asked him, 'Was there any reason why the party should not have gone on then?'
'Well, sir,' he said, 'the shelling was bad, and we should have had some casualties, but I daresay we should have got through. I've seen as bad before.'
Then there was one of the men who had been with Harry, a good fellow, who hated being there. He told the story of the movements of the party with the usual broken irrelevances, but by his too obvious wish to help Harry did him no good. When asked 'in what condition' the officer was, he said, 'Well, sir, he seemed to have lost his nerve, like ... we all of us had as far as that goes, the shelling was that 'eavy.' But that was no defence for Harry.
Harry could either 'make a statement' not on oath, or give evidence on oath and be cross-examined. He chose the latter—related simply the movements of the party and himself, and did not deny any of the facts of which evidence had already been given.
'When you had collected the party under the bank by this corner you speak of,' said the President, 'why did you not then proceed with the party?'
'I thought the shelling was too heavy, sir, just then; I thought it would be better to go back and wait a bit where there was more cover till the shelling got less....'
'But Sergeant Peters says the party would probably have got through?'
'Yes, sir.'
'In view of the orders you had received, wouldn't it have been better to go straight on?'
'I don't know, sir—perhaps it would.'
'Then why didn't you do that?'
'At the time, sir, I thought it best to go back and wait.'
'And that was what you were doing when you were seen—er, running to the dug-out?'
'Yes, sir.'
Well, the Court did not believe it, and I cannot blame them. For I knew that Harry was not being perfectly ingenuous. I knew that he could not have gone on....
Yet it was a reasonable story. And if the Court had been able to imagine themselves in Harry's condition of mind and body, crouching in the wet dark under that bank, faint with weariness and fear, shaken with those blinding, tearing concussions, not knowing what they should do, or what they could do, perhaps they would have said in their hearts, 'I will believe that story.' But they could not imagine it. For they were naturally stout-hearted men, and they had not seen too much war. They were not young enough.
And, indeed, it was not their business to imagine that....
Another of the Court asked: 'Is it true to say, as Private Mallins said, that you had—ah—lost your nerve?'
'Well, sir, I had the wind-up pretty badly; one usually does at that corner—and I've had too much of it.'
'I see.'
I wondered if he did see—if he had ever had 'too much of it.'
Harry said nothing about Burnett; nothing about Philpott; probably it would have done no good. And as he told me afterwards, 'The real charge was that I'd lost my nerve—and so I had. And I don't want to wangle out of it like that.'
That was the end of it. They were kind enough, those grey men; they did not like the job, and they wanted only to do their duty. But they conceived that their duty was 'laid down in The Book,' to look at the 'hard facts,' and no further. And the 'hard facts' were very hard....
The Court was closed while they considered their verdict; it was closed for forty minutes, and when it reopened they asked for evidence of character. And that meant that the verdict was 'Guilty.' On the only facts they had succeeded in discovering it could hardly have been anything else.
The Adjutant put in formal evidence of Harry's service, age, record, and so on; and I was allowed to give evidence of character.
I told them simply the sort of fighting record he had, about Gallipoli, and the scouting, and the job he had refused in England.
I am glad to believe that I did him a little good; for that evening it got about somehow that he was recommended to mercy.
And perhaps they remembered that he was twenty-three.
XIII
That evening I sat in C Company mess for an hour and talked with them about the trial. They were very sad and upset at this thing happening in the regiment, but they were reasonable and generous, not like those D Company pups, Wallace and the other. For they were older men, and had nearly all been out a long time. Only one of them annoyed me, a fellow in the thirties, making a good income in the City, who had only joined up just before he had to under the Derby scheme, and had been out a month. This fellow was very strong on 'the honour of the regiment'; and seemed to think it desirable for that 'honour' that Harry should be shot. Though how the honour of the regiment would be thereby advanced, or what right he had to speak for it, I could not discover.
But the others were sensible, balanced men, and as perplexed and troubled as I. I had been thinking over a thing that Harry had said in his talk with me—'If I did have the wind-up I've never had cold feet.' It is a pity one cannot avoid these horrible terms, but one cannot. I take it that 'wind-up'—whatever the origin of that extraordinary expression may be—signifies simply 'fear.' 'Cold feet' also signifies fear, but, as I understand it, has an added implication in it of base yielding to that fear. I told them about this distinction of Harry's, and asked them what they thought.
'That's it,' said Smith, 'that's just the damned shame of the whole thing. There are lots of men who are simply terrified the whole time they're out, but just go on sticking it by sheer guts—will-power, or whatever you like—that's having the wind-up, and you can't prevent it. It just depends how you're made. I suppose there really are some people who don't feel fear at all—that fellow Drake, for example—though I'm not sure that there are many. Anyhow, if there are any they don't deserve much credit though they do get the V.C.'s. Then there are the people who feel fear like the rest of us and don't make any effort to resist it, don't join up or come out, and when they have to, go back after three months with a blighty one, and get a job, and stay there——'
'And when they are here wangle out of all the dirty jobs,' put in Foster.
'Well, they're the people with "cold feet" if you like,' Smith went on, 'and as you say, Penrose has never been like that. Fellows like him keep on coming out time after time, getting worse wind-up every time, but simply kicking themselves out until they come out once too often, and stop one, or break up suddenly like Penrose, and——'
'And the question is—ought any man like that to be shot?' asked Foster.
'Ought any one who volunteers to fight for his —— country be shot?' said another.
'Damn it, yes,' said Constable; he was a square, hard-looking old boy, a promoted N.C.O., and a very useful officer. 'You must have some sort of standard—or where would the army be?'
'I don't know,' said Foster, 'look at the Australians—they don't have a death-penalty, and I reckon they're as good as us.'
'Yes, my son, perhaps that's the reason'—this was old Constable again—'the average Australian is naturally a sight stouter-hearted than the average Englishman—they don't need it.'
'Then why the hell do they punish Englishmen worse than Australians, if they can't even be expected to do so well?' retorted Foster; but this piece of dialectics was lost on Constable.
'Anyhow, I don't see that it need be such an absolute standard,' Smith began again, thoughtfully; he was a thoughtful young fellow. 'They don't expect everybody to have equally strong arms or equally good brains; and if a chap's legs or arms aren't strong enough for him to go on living in the trenches they take him out of it (if he's lucky). But every man's expected to have equally strong nerves in all circumstances, and to go on having them till he goes under; and when he goes under they don't consider how far his nerves, or guts, or whatever you call it, were as good as other people's. Even if he had nerves like a chicken to begin with he's expected to behave as a man with nerves like a lion or a Drake would do....'
'A man with nerves like a chicken is a damned fool to go into the infantry at all,' put in Williams—'the honour of the regiment' person.
'Yes, but he may have had a will-power like a lion, and simply made himself do it.'
'You'd be all right, Smith,' somebody said, 'if you didn't use such long words; what the hell do you mean by an absolute standard?'
'Sorry, George, I forgot you were so ignorant. What I mean is this. Take a case like Penrose's: All they ask is, was he seen running the wrong way, or not going the right way? If the answer is Yes—the punishment is death, et cetera, et cetera. To begin with, as I said, they don't consider whether he was capable physically or mentally—I don't know which it is—of doing the right thing. And then there are lots of other things which we know make one man more "windy" than another, or windier to-day than he was yesterday—things like being a married man, or having boils, or a bad cold, or being just physically weak, so that you get so exhausted you haven't got any strength left to resist your fears (I've had that feeling myself)—none of those things are considered at all at a court-martial—and I think they ought to be.'
'No,' said Foster, 'they ought to be considered before they decide to have a court-martial at all. A case like Penrose's never ought to have got so far.'
'You're right—I don't know why the devil it did.'
'After all,' said Williams, 'you've got to consider the name of the regiment. What would happen——'
But I could not stand any more of that. 'I think Smith's on the right line,' I said, 'though I don't know if it would ever be workable. There are, of course, lots of fellows who feel things far more than most of us, sensitive, imaginative fellows, like poor Penrose—and it must be hell for them. Of course there are some men like that with enormously strong wills who manage to stick it out as well as anybody, and do awfully well—I should think young Aston, for instance—and those I call the really brave men. Anyhow, if a man like that really does stick it as long as he can, I think something ought to be done for him, though I'm damned if I know what. He oughtn't....'
'He oughtn't to be allowed to go on too long—that's what it comes to,' said Smith.
'Well, what do you want,' Foster asked, 'a kind of periodical Wind-up Examination?'
'That's the kind of thing, I suppose. It is a medical question, really. Only the doctors don't seem to recognize—or else they aren't allowed to—any stage between absolute shell-shock, with your legs flying in all directions, and just ordinary skrim-shanking.'
'But damn it, man,' Constable exploded, 'look at the skrim-shanking you'll get if you have that sort of thing. You'd have all the mothers' darlings in the kingdom saying they'd had enough when they got to the Base.'
'Perhaps—no, I think that's silly. I don't know what it is that gives you bad wind-up after a long time out here, nerves or imagination or emotion or what, but it seems to me the doctors ought to be able to test when a man's really had enough; just as they tell whether a man's knee or a man's heart are really bad or not. You'd have to take his record into account, of course....'
'And you'd have to make it a compulsory test,' said Smith, 'because nowadays no one's going to go into a Board and say, "Look here, doctor, I've been out so long and I can't stand any more." They'd send you out in the next draft!'
'Compulsory both ways,' added Foster: 'when they'd decided he'd done enough, and wasn't safe any longer, he oughtn't to be allowed to do any more—because he's dangerous to himself and everybody else.'[1]
'As a matter of fact,' said Williams, 'that's what usually does happen, doesn't it? When a chap gets down and out like that after a decent spell of it, he usually gets a job at home—instructor at the Depot, or something.'
'Yes, and then you get a fellow with the devil of a conscience like Penrose—and you have a nasty mess like this.'
'And what about the men?' asked Constable. 'Are you going to have the same thing for them?'
'Certainly—only, thank God, there are not so many of them who need it. All that chat you read about the "wonderful fatalism" of the British soldier is so much bunkum. It simply means that most of them are not cursed with an imagination, and so don't worry about what's coming.'
'That's true; you don't see many fatalists in the middle of a big strafe.'
'Of course there are lots of them who are made like Penrose, and with a record like his, something——'
'And it's damned lucky for the British Army there are not more of them,' put in Constable.
'Certainly, but it's damned unlucky for them to be in the British Army—in the infantry, anyhow.'
'And what does that matter?'
'Oh, well, you can take that line if you like—but it's a bit Prussian, isn't it?'
'Prussia's winning this dirty war, anyhow, at present.'
So the talk rambled on, and we got no further, only most of us were in troubled agreement that something—perhaps many things—were wrong about the System, if this young volunteer, after long fighting and suffering, was indeed to be shot like a traitor in the cold dawn.
Nine times out of ten, as Williams had said, we knew that it would not have happened, simply because nine men out of ten surrender in time. But ought the tenth case to be even remotely possible? That was our doubt.
What exactly was wrong we could not pretend to say. It was not our business. But if this was the best the old men could do, we felt that we could help them a little. I give you this scrap of conversation only to show the kind of feeling there was in the regiment—because that is the surest test of the rightness of these things.
They were still at it when I left. And as I went out wearily into the cold drizzle I heard Foster summing up his views with: 'Well, the whole thing's damned awful. They've recommended him to mercy, haven't they? and I hope to God he gets it.'