Marlborough, and Other Poems

by Charles Hamilton Sorley

IV

GERMANY ([p. 56])

In the evening I am generally to be found avoiding a certain insincere type of German student, who hunts me down ostensibly to “tie a bond of good-comradeship,” but really to work up facts about what “England” thinks. Such people of undeveloped individuality tell me in return what “wir Deutschen” think, in a touching national spirit, which would have charmed Plato. But they don’t charm me. Indeed I see in them the very worst result of 1871. They have no idea beyond the “State,” and have put me off Socialism for the rest of my life. They are not the kind of people, as [the Irish R.M.] puts it, “you could borrow half-a-crown to get drunk with.” But such is only a small proportion and come from the north and west; they just show how Sedan has ruined one type of German, for I’m sure the German nature is the nicest in the world, as far as it is not warped by the German Empire. I like their lack of reserve and self-consciousness, our two national virtues. They all write poetry and recite it with gusto to any three hours’ old acquaintance. We all write poetry too in England, but we write it on the bedroom wash-stand and lock the bedroom door, and disclaim it vehemently in public. (2 June 1914.)

The two great sins people impute to Germany are that she says that might is right and bullies the little dogs. But I don’t think she means that might qua might is right, but that confidence of superiority is right, and by superiority she means spiritual superiority. She said to Belgium, “We enlightened thinkers see that it is necessary to the world that all opposition to Deutsche Kultur should be crushed. As citizens of the world you must assist us in our object and assert those higher ideas of world citizenship which are not bound by treaties. But if you oppose us, we have only one alternative.” That, at least, is what the best of them would have said; only the diplomats put it rather more brusquely, She was going on a missionary voyage with all the zest of Faust—

Er wandle so den Erdentag entlang;
Wenn Geister spuken, geh’ er seinen Gang;
Im Weiterschreiten find’ er Qual und Glück,
Er, unbefriedigt jeden Augenblick![4]

—and missionaries know no law....

So it seems to me that Germany’s only fault (and I think you often commented on it in those you met) is a lack of real insight and sympathy with those who differ from her. We are not fighting a bully, but a bigot. They are a young nation and don’t yet see that what they consider is being done for the good of the world may be really being done for self-gratification—like X. who, under pretence of informing the form, dropped into the habit of parading his own knowledge. X. incidentally did the form a service by creating great amusement for it, and so is Germany incidentally doing the world a service (though not in the way it meant) by giving them something to live and die for, which no country but Germany had before. If the bigot conquers he will learn in time his mistaken methods (for it is only of the methods and not of the goal of Germany that one can disapprove)—just as the early Christian bigots conquered by bigotry and grew larger in sympathy and tolerance after conquest. I regard the war as one between sisters, between Martha and Mary, the efficient and intolerant against the casual and sympathetic. Each side has a virtue for which it is fighting, and each that virtue’s supplementary vice. And I hope that whatever the material result of the conflict, it will purge these two virtues of their vices, and efficiency and tolerance will no longer be incompatible.

But I think that tolerance is the larger virtue of the two, and efficiency must be her servant. So I am quite glad to fight against this rebellious servant. In fact I look at it this way. Suppose my platoon were the world. Then my platoon sergeant would represent efficiency and I would represent tolerance. And I always take the sternest measures to keep my platoon sergeant in check! I fully appreciate the wisdom of the War Office when they put inefficient officers to rule sergeants. Adsit omen.

Now you know what Sorley thinks about it. And do excuse all his gassing. I know I already overdosed you on those five splendid days between Coblenz and Neumagen. But I’ve seen the Fatherland (I like to call it the Fatherland, for in many families Papa represents efficiency and Mamma tolerance ... but don’t think I’m W.S.P.U.) so horribly misrepresented that I’ve been burning to put in my case for them to a sympathetic ear. Wir sind gewiss Hamburger Jungen, as that lieber besoffener Österreicher told us. And so we must stand up for them, even while trying to knock them down. (October 1914.)

On return to England, by the way, I renewed my acquaintance with Robert Browning. The last line of Mr Sludge the Medium—“yet there is something in it, tricks and all”—converted me, and since then I have used no other. I wish we could recall him from the stars and get him to write a Dramatic Idyll or something, giving a soliloquy of the feelings and motives and quick changes of heat and cold that must be going through the poor Kaiser’s mind at present. He would really show that impartial sympathy for him, which the British press and public so doltishly deny him, when in talk and comment they deny him even the rights of a human being. R. B. could do it perfectly—or Shakespeare. I think the Kaiser not unlike Macbeth, with the military clique in Prussia as his Lady Macbeth, and the court flatterers as the three weird sisters. He’ll be a splendid field for dramatists and writers in days to come. (October 1914.)

It little face was lit with a wild uncertain excitement he had not known since 1870, and he advanced towards us waving his stick and yelling at us “Der Krieg ist los, Junge,” just as we might be running to watch a football match and he was come to tell us we must hurry up for the game had begun. And then the next night on the platform at Trier, train after train passing crowded with soldiers bound for Metz: varied once or twice by a truck-load of “swarthier alien crews,” thin old women like wineskins, with beautiful and piercing faces, and big heavy men and tiny aged-looking children: Italian colonists exiled to their country again. Occasionally one of the men would jump out to fetch a glass of water to relieve their thirst in all that heat and crowding. The heat of the night is worse than the heat of the day, and geistige Getränke were verboten. Then the train would slowly move out into the darkness that led to Metz and an exact reproduction of it would steam in and fill its place: and we watched the signal on the southward side of Trier, till the lights should give a jump and the finger drop and let in the train which was to carry us out of that highly-strung and thrilling land.

At Cologne I saw a herd of some thirty American school-pmarms whom I had assisted to entertain at Eucken’s just a fortnight before. I shouted out to them, but they were far too upset to take any notice, but went bobbing into one compartment and out again and into another like people in a cinematograph. Their haste anxiety and topsyturviness were caused by thoughts of their own safety and escape, and though perfectly natural contrasted so strangely with all the many other signs of haste perturbation and distress that I had seen, which were much quieter and stronger and more full-bodied than that of those Americans, because it was the Vaterland and not the individual that was darting about and looking for the way and was in need: and the silent submissive unquestioning faces of the dark uprooted Italians peering from the squeaking trucks formed a fitting background—Cassandra from the backmost car looking steadily down on Agamemnon as he stepped from his triumphal purple chariot and Clytemnestra offered him her hand. (23 November 1914.)

It is surprising how very little difference a total change of circumstances and prospects makes in the individual. The German (I know from the 48 hours of the war that I spent there) is radically changed, and until he is sent to the front, his one dream and thought will be how quickest to die for his country. He is able more clearly to see the tremendous issues, and changes accordingly. I don’t know whether it is because the English are more phlegmatic or more shortsighted or more egoistic or what, that makes them inwardly and outwardly so far less shaken by the war than at first seemed probable. The German, I am sure, during the period of training “dies daily” until he is allowed to die. We go there with our eyes shut. (28 November 1914.)

We had a very swinging Christmas—one that makes one realize (in common with other incidents of the war) how near savages we are and how much the stomach (which Nietzsche calls the Father of Melancholy) is also the best procurer of enjoyment. We gave the men a good church—plenty of loud hymns—, a good dinner—plenty of beer—, and the rest of the day was spent in sleep. I saw then very clearly that whereas for the upper classes Christmas is a spiritual debauch in which one remembers for a day to be generous and cheerful and open-handed, it is only a more or less physical debauch for the poorer classes, who need no reminder, since they are generous and cheerful and open-handed all the year round. One has fairly good chances of observing the life of the barrack-room, and what a contrast to the life of a house in a public school! The system is roughly the same: the house-master or platoon-commander entrusts the discipline of his charge to prefects or corporals, as the case may be. They never open their mouths in the barrack-room without the introduction of the unprintable swear-words and epithets: they have absolutely no “morality” (in the narrower, generally accepted sense): yet the public school boy should live among them to learn a little Christianity: for they are so extraordinarily nice to one another. They live in and for the present: we in and for the future. So they are cheerful and charitable always: and we often niggardly and unkind and spiteful. In the gymnasium at Marlborough, how the few clumsy specimens are ragged and despised and jeered at by the rest of the squad; in the gymnasium here you should hear the sounding cheer given to the man who has tried for eight weeks to make a long-jump of eight feet and at last by the advice and assistance of others has succeeded. They seem instinctively to regard a man singly, at his own rate, by his own standards and possibilities, not in comparison with themselves or others: that’s why they are so far ahead of us in their treatment and sizing up of others.

It’s very interesting, what you say about Athens and Sparta, and England and Germany. Curious, isn’t it, that in old days a nation fought another for land or money: now we are fighting Germany for her spiritual qualities—thoroughness, and fearlessness of effort, and effacement of the individual. I think that Germany, in spite of her vast bigotry and blindness, is in a kind of way living up to the motto that Goethe left her in the closing words of Faust, before he died.

Ay, in this thought is my whole life’s persistence.
This is the whole conclusion of the true:
He only earns his Freedom, owns Existence,
Who every day must conquer her anew!
So let him journey through his earthly day,
Mid hustling spirits, go his self-found way,
Find torture, bliss, in every forward stride,
He, every moment still unsatisfied![5]

A very close parallel may be drawn between Faust and present history (with Belgium as Gretchen). And Faust found spiritual salvation in the end! (27 December 1914.)