IV
There was "Mac," a North of England man. Before the war he was a typical English sportsman; he lived for hunting, and polo was his hobby. Like the rest of his class he pushed his way into the fighting line as soon as possible, as a private in the First Hundred Thousand. But eventually his genius expressed itself and leaving the known walks of man he became a master of the newly conquered element. Mac's mind was not limited by science, his soul was not dwarfed by religious prejudice, he held no political position, and he had no personal military ambition. He fought to defeat a threat to the civilization he believed in, to preserve a form of government that his ancestors had bled and died for, and to secure a future for his tiny son free from the hell of war. Mac, like every other man who had the courage to fight, and if necessary, die for his beliefs, hoped that the fighting man would be allowed to fight on until these ends had been achieved so that those who had died should not have made the great sacrifice in vain. He hoped, like all other fighting men, that politicians would not be given the power to render valueless to posterity the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives; but Mac was merely a man, of fearless integrity, honesty of purpose, with humanitarian ideals, and a believer in Democracy; he could not realize that a large majority, because of selfishness, ignorance, and a lack of the spirit of self-sacrifice, do not deserve the right to vote. But Mac was a sportsman and a gentleman, the descendant of generations of men who faced death willingly in a cause they knew was honorable and who died happily in the thought that their death made life easier for future generations. So Mac did not worry about the selfish ambitions of men; he did all he could to win the World War.
I first met Mac a few months after he flew a Handley-Page machine from London to Constantinople and back to Salonica, a distance of over two thousand miles. Mac was a Captain then, he is a Captain now, but no living man has done more damage to the Hun than Mac has done. A far greater leader of men than his great uncle, who was a General in our Civil War, Mac gave a soul to the Bedouin Squadron. To Mac's leadership is due the first bombings of Mannheim, Coblenz, Thionville, Frankfort, and Cologne.
It was Mac who flew a German aeroplane to Sedan, followed a "spotted" train to a near-by station, swooped down as the German High Command left the train and opened on them with his machine gun. It was Mac who landed over ten times near Karlsruhe at night and returned with invaluable information. But it is not because of the innumerable suicidal adventures of which Mac is the hero that every Bedouin, no matter in what part of the world he may be, always drinks a silent toast to Mac whenever possible; it is because every Bedouin realizes that a great man carried out a small man's job in a great way.