THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE
A Padre who has earned the right to talk about the "average Tommy," writes to me that A Student in Arms gives a very one-sided picture of him. While cordially admitting his unselfishness, his good comradeship, his patience, and his pluck, my friend challenges me to deny that military, and especially active, service often has a brutalizing effect on the soldier, weakening his moral fibres, and causing him to sink to a low animal level.
Those who are in the habit of reading between the lines will, I think, often have seen the shadow of this darker side of army life on the pages of A Student in Arms; but I have not written of it specifically for several reasons. It will suffice if I mention two. First, I was writing mainly of the private and the N.C.O. Rightly or wrongly, I imagined that those for whom I was writing were in the habit of taking for granted this darker side of life in the ranks. I imagined that they thought of the "lower classes" as being naturally coarser and more animal than the "upper classes." I wanted then, and I want now, to contradict that belief with all the vehemence of which I am capable. Officers and men necessarily develop different qualities, different forms of expression, different mental attitudes. But I am confident that I speak the truth when I say that essentially, and in the eyes of God there is nothing to choose between them.
If I must write of the brutalizing effect of war on the soldier, let it be clearly understood that I am speaking, not of officers only, nor of privates only, but of fighting men of every class and rank. As a matter of fact I have never, whether before or during the war, belonged to a mess where the tone was cleaner or more wholesome than it was in the Sergeants' Mess of my old battalion.
My second reason for not writing about the bad side of Army life was that mere condemnation is so futile. I have listened to countless sermons in which the "lusts of the flesh" were denounced, and have known for certain that their power for good was nil. If I write about it now, it is only because I hope that I may be able to make clearer the causes and processes of such moral deterioration as exists, and thus to help those who are trying to combat it, to do so with greater understanding and sympathy.
Even in England most officers, and all privates, are cut off from their womenfolk. Mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts are inaccessible. All have a certain amount of leisure, and very little to do with it. All are physically fit and mentally rather unoccupied. All are living under an unnatural discipline from which, when the last parade of the day is over, there is a natural reaction. Finally, wherever there are troops, and especially in war time, there are "bad" women and weak women. The result is inevitable. A certain number of both officers and men "go wrong."
Fifteen months ago I was a private quartered in a camp near Aldershot. After tea it began to get dark. The tent was damp, gloomy, and cold. The Y.M.C.A. tent and the Canteen tent were crowded. One wandered off to the town. The various soldiers' clubs were filled and overflowing. The bars required more cash than one possessed. The result was that one spent a large part of one's evenings wandering aimlessly about the streets. Fortunately I discovered an upper room in a Wesleyan soldiers' home, where there was generally quiet, and an empty chair. I shall always be grateful to that "home," for the many hours which I whiled away there with a book and a pipe. But most of us spent a great deal of our leisure, bored and impecunious, "on the streets"; and if a fellow ran up against "a bit of skirt," he was generally just in the mood to follow it wherever it might lead. The moral of this is, double your subscriptions to the Y.M.C.A., Church huts, soldiers' clubs, or whatever organization you fancy! You will be helping to combat vice in the only sensible way.
I don't suppose that the officers were much better off than we were. Their tents may have been a little lighter and less crowded than ours. They had a late dinner to occupy part of the long evening. They had more money to spend, and perhaps more to occupy their minds. But I fancy that as great a proportion of them as of us took the false step; and though perhaps when they compared notes their language may have been less blunt than ours, I am not sure that, for this very reason, it may not have been more poisonous. But mind you, we did not all go wrong, by any means, though I believe that some fellows did, both officers and men, who would not have done so if they had stayed at home with their mothers, sisters, sweethearts, or wives.
So much for the Army at home. When we cross the Channel every feature is a hundred times intensified. Consider the fighting man in the trenches—and I am still speaking of both officers and men—the most ordinary refinements of life are conspicuously absent. There is no water to wash in. Vermin abound, sleeping and eating accommodations are frankly disgusting. One is obliged for the time to live like a pig. Added to this one is all the time in a state of nervous tension. One gets very little sleep. Every night has its anxieties and responsibilities. Danger or death may come at any moment. So for a week or a fortnight or a month, as the case may be. Then comes the return to billets, to comparative safety and comfort—the latter nothing to boast about though! Tension is relaxed. There is an inevitable reaction. Officers and men alike determine to "gather rosebuds" while they may. Their bodies are fit, their wills are relaxed. If they are built that way, and an opportunity offers, they will "satisfy the lusts of the flesh."
When there is real fighting to be done the dangers of the after-reaction are intensified. You who sit at home and read of glorious bayonet charges do not realize what it means to the man behind the bayonet. You don't realize the repugnance for the first thrust—a repugnance which has got to be overcome. You don't realize the change that comes over a man when his bayonet is wet with the blood of his first enemy. He "sees red." The primitive "blood-lust," kept under all his life by the laws and principles of peaceful society, surges through his being, transforming him, maddening him with the desire to kill, kill, kill! Ask any one who has been through it if this is not true. And that letting loose of a primitive lust is not going to be without its effect on a man's character.
At the same time, of course, not all of us become animals out here. There are other influences at work. Caring for the wounded, burying the mutilated dead, cause one to hate war, and to value ten times more the ways of peace. Many are saved from sinking in the scale, by a love of home which is able to bridge the gulf which separates them from their beloved. The letters of my platoon are largely love letters—often the love letters of married men to their wives.
There is immorality in the Army; when there is opportunity immorality is rife. Possibly there is more abroad than there is at home. If so it is because there is far greater temptation. Nevertheless, I fancy that my correspondent, who is a padre, a don, and at least the beginning of a saint, is perhaps inclined to exaggerate the extent of the evil in the Army as compared with civil life. I imagine that very few padres, especially if they are dons, and most of all if they are saints, realize that in civil life as in Army life, the average man is immoral, both in thought and deed. Let us be frank about this. What a doctor might call the "appetites" and a padre the "lusts" of the body, hold dominion over the average man, whether civilian or soldier, unless they are counteracted by a stronger power. The only men who are pure are those who are absorbed in some pursuit, or possessed by a great love; be it the love of clean, wholesome life which is religion, or the love of a noble man which is hero-worship, or the love of a true woman. These are the four powers which are stronger than "the flesh"—the zest of a quest, religion, hero-worship, and the love of a good woman. If a man is not possessed by one of these he will be immoral.
Probably most men are immoral. The conditions of military, and especially of active service merely intensify the temptation. Unless a soldier is wholly devoted to the cause, or powerfully affected by religion, or by hero-worship, or by pure love, he is immoral.
Perhaps most men are immoral if they get the chance. Most soldiers are immoral if they get the chance. But those who are trying to help the soldier can do so with a good heart if they realize that in him they have a foundation on which to build. Already he is half a hero-worshipper. Already he half believes in the beauty of sacrifice and in the life immortal. Already he is predisposed to value exceedingly all that savours of clean, wholesome home life. On that foundation it should be possible to build a strong idealism which shall prevail against the flesh. And this is my last word—it is by building up, and not by casting down, that the soldier can be saved from degradation. The devil that possesses so many can only be cast out by an angel that is stronger than he.