While I Remember

by Stephen McKenna

II

Early in 1918 came the black days of the last German offensive. All the optimism and relief of 1917 evaporated before the quick, merciless rain of blows that battered Amiens and threatened Calais, shattered Rheims and overhung Paris. In the southwesterly onrush of 1914 the French declared that, if Paris fell, they would transfer their seat of government to Bordeaux (as they did) and, if need be, to the foot-hills of the Pyrenees; in 1918 any defeat was temporary, for in time the new American levies must burst by sheer weight of metal through any army that had been carded down by four years of fighting; but by 1918 many were asking themselves whether the French spirit would still be equal to this last desperate resolution, whether the British could carry on with a spear-head through their line at Amiens and whether the Americans would make headway in a country as completely overrun as Belgium had been.

To civilians, the crisis of March 1918 arose suddenly; they may be thankful that it ended no less suddenly, but the results of the crisis outlived the crisis itself. In so far as it is true to say that the English ever lost their heads, they lost them between the March offensive and the December general election of 1918. For more than four years there had been the relaxation of bonds which is natural when life is no longer secure: sexual relationships became increasingly promiscuous, marriages were contracted, abandoned and dissolved with reckless disregard of private morals or public responsibility; and the craving for such excitement as would bring forgetfulness led to the excessive indulgence of every physical appetite. While this relaxation continued at a steadily increasing pace, it was only in the final months of the war that the loss of self-control became inconsistent with a balanced mind. The sordid scandals of this last phase, born of intemperance in drink or drugs and stimulated to their climax by undisciplined passions, were occasionally dragged to light in a police-court or at a coroner's inquest; but in degeneracy, as in crime, it is usually the inexpert who is detected, and any one who lived in London during those feverish months had forced upon his notice a spectacle of debauchery which would have swelled the record of scandal if it had been made public but which is mercifully forgotten because it was incredible.

This is neither the place nor time to pass a judgement on it; and perhaps it does not deserve to be too strictly condemned. In threatening all and in fulfilling with many the unexpected fate of material ruin, physical mutilation and premature death, a war which strikes at the normal security of life must be accepted with abnormal resignation or resisted with abnormal resolution. As the instinct of self-preservation, rising sublime into pride, sinking into base fear and ranging through every spiritual state between these extremes, automatically precludes the alternative of surrender, the abnormal resistance has to be fortified by an abnormal appeal to primitive reserves of endurance and courage which modern man, inheriting from his earliest ancestors, keeps stored for rare moments of emergency. The bodily and mental tortures of an unanticipated catastrophe, be it war, earthquake, shipwreck or fire, are only made supportable by the aid of qualities so primitive as to be extraneous to the character of civilised man; and, as it would be unreasonable to expect that he should be able to unbar an ancient door and to release one potent force while keeping all others enchained, the additional fortitude by means of which the war was borne at least with general dignity had to be accompanied by the accession of qualities less conventionally admirable.

In short phrase, the restraints of modern civilisation were burst on the resurgence of primitive man. Honourable, kindly, fastidious, gentle and reserved spirits, dragged back across the ages, lied and cheated, fought and bullied in an orgy of intrigue and self-seeking, of intoxication and madness. Only in this way and at this price could those who had fared delicately and lived softly endure hardships which for generations or centuries had been removed from the average experience of civilisation; the bravery of the savage emerged hand in hand with the savage's ferocity, his licence, his superstition and his credulity.

While time and tranquillity are needed before these unruly forces can be finally subdued, the panic rush of mob-madness passed quickly.

With the second battle of the Marne even a civilian knew that it was a matter of months or weeks before the Germans capitulated. Casualties would still be recorded; agony would be endured, uncertainty would continue; there might be a final berserk outburst on sea and land, but ultimately the German government would sue for peace. No one was surprised when the "fourteen points" were flashed on the sky from Washington; no one was surprised when the Germans saw in the west the grey, hopeless light which was yet the only light that they could ever hope to see. Capitulations poured in until some of the onlookers, in the spirit of Horace Walpole, searched eagerly through their papers of a morning to see which new enemy had surrendered.

And yet, when the maroons burst the stillness of London at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, all were surprised; not by the fact of peace but by the imponderable significance of peace. Did this ear-splitting salvo mean one last raid by every aeroplane in the German fleet, an auto-da-fé which should at least achieve that, when peace was negotiated, it would be elsewhere than in the smoking, brain-splashed ruins of a shattered London? In late afterthought, with an air of discovery and a dread of revealing emotion, every one decided that the Germans must have accepted the armistice terms.

Ten minutes later the government departments were belched forth on holiday. Along the Processional Avenue moved slowly a double line of cars and taxis, packed inside and out and above with atoms of a vast concourse infected by a lust for moving from any one place to any other. Beyond this, no one knew what to do. The king had already spoken from a window of Buckingham Palace. Superficially it was all a little boring; and, below the deliberately suave, unemotional surface, all knew that the day was so tremendous that none dared look at it yet. A child-typist from a Government-office hut rushed into the Mall, white-faced, bareheaded and delirious. "The war's over! Now daddy'll come home!" By her side a woman winced and looked, groping after sympathy, for someone who, like herself, knew that the armistice had come too late. Throughout the world there were houses in which the glory of peace would be turned to mourning by news of a son who had been killed in the last few hours of fighting: the roll of honour is not yet complete; and, more than two years after the armistice, there are still men in the blue jackets and trousers of their hospital.