LIV.
My Dear Charles,—What about this Peace? I suppose that, what with your nice new Governments and all, this is the very last thing you are thinking of making at the moment. I wouldn't believe that the old War was ever going to end at all if it wasn't for the last expert and authoritative opinion I hear has been expressed by our elderly barber in Fleet Street. At the end of July, 1914, he told me confidentially, as he snipped the short hairs at the back of my head, that there was going to be no war; the whole thing was just going to fizzle out. Now he says it is going to be a very, very long business, as he always thought it would.
I find it difficult to maintain consistently either the detached point of view, in which one discusses it as if it was a European hand of bridge, or the purely interested point of view, in which one regards it only as a matter affecting one's individual comfort. I know a Mess, well up in the Front where they measure the mud by feet, in which they were discussing the War raging at their front door as if it had nothing to do with them beyond being a convenient thing to criticise. Men who were then likely to be personally removed at any moment by it saw nothing in the progress of it to be depressed about. As the evening wore on and they all came to find that they knew much more about the subject than they supposed, they were prepared to increase the allowance of casualties in pressing the merits of their own pet schemes. No gloom arose from the possibility that this generous offer might well include their own health and limbs. There was no gloom; there was even no desire to change the subject. Indeed, the better to continue it they called for something to drink. There was nothing to drink, announced the Mess Orderly. Why was there nothing to drink? asked the Mess President, advocate of enormous offensives on a wide front for an indefinite period of years, if need be. The Mess Orderly explained that more drink was on order, it had not arrived because of difficulties of carriage. Why were there difficulties of carriage? Because of the War. "Confound the War," said the Mess President. "It really is the most infernal nuisance."
I know a Captain Jones, resident a cottage on the road to the trenches (he calls this cottage his "Battle Box"), whose mind was very violently moved from the impersonal to the personal point of view by a quite trifling incident. He has one upstairs room for office, bedroom, sitting, reception and dining room. His meals are brought over to him by his servant from an estaminet across the road over which his window looks. The other morning he was standing at this window waiting for his breakfast to arrive. It was a fine frosty day, made all the brighter by the sound of approaching bagpipes. Troops were about to march past, suggesting great national thoughts to Jones and reminding him of the familiar details of his own more active days. Jones prepared to enjoy himself.
Colonels on horses, thought Jones as he contemplated, are much of a muchness—always the look of the sahib about them, the slightly proud, the slightly stuffy, the slightly weather-beaten, the slightly affluent sahib. Company Commanders, also on horses, but somehow or other not quite so much on horses as the Colonels, are the same all the army through—very confident of themselves, but hoping against hope that there is nothing about their companies to catch the Adjutant's eye. The Subaltern walks as he has always done, lighthearted if purposeful, trusting that all is as it should be, but feeling that if it isn't that is some one else's trouble. Sergeants, Corporals, Lance-corporals and men have not altered. The Sergeants relax on the march into something almost bordering on friendliness towards their victims; the Corporals thank Heaven that for the moment they are but men; the Lance-corporals thank Heaven that always they are something more than men, and the men have the look of having decided that this is the last kilometre they'll ever footslog for anybody, but while they are doing it they might as well be cheerful about it. The regimental transport makes a change from the regularity of column of route, and the comic relief is provided, as it has always been and always will be provided whatever the disciplinary martinets may say or do, by the company cooks.
This was a sight, thought Jones, he could watch for ever. He was sorry when the battalion came at last to an end; he was glad when another almost immediately began. He was in luck; doubtless this was a brigade on the move. He proposed to have his breakfast at the window, when it came as come it soon must, thus refreshing his hungry body and his contemplative mind at the same time. The second battalion, as the first, were fine fellows all, suggesting the might of the Allies and the futility of the enemy's protracted resistance. Again the comic relief was provided by the travelling cuisine, reminding Jones of the oddity of human affairs and the need of his own meal, now sufficiently deferred.
The progress of the Brigade was interrupted by the intervention of a train of motor transport. Jones spent the time of its passing in consulting his watch, wondering where the devil was his breakfast and ascertaining that his servant had indeed gone across the road for it at least forty minutes ago.
It was not until there came a break, after the first company of the third battalion, that the reason of this delay became apparent. There was his servant on the far side of the road, and there was his breakfast in the servant's hand, all standing to attention, as they should do when a column of troops was passing....
The remainder of that Brigade suggested no agreeable thoughts to Captain Jones. He saw nothing magnificent in the whole and nothing attractive in any detail of it. It was in fact just a long and tiresome sequence of monotonous and sheeplike individuals who really might have chosen some other time and place for their silly walks abroad. And as for the spirit of discipline exemplified in the servant, who scrupled to defy red tape and slip through at a convenient interval, this was nothing else but the maddening ineptitude of all human conceits.
A wonderful servant is that servant of Captain Jones; but then they all are. Valet, cook, porter, boots, chambermaid, ostler, carpenter, upholsterer, mechanic, inventor, needlewoman, coal-heaver, diplomat, barber, linguist (home-made), clerk, universal provider, complete pantechnicon and infallible bodyguard, he is also a soldier, if a very old soldier, and a man of the most human kind. Jones came across him in the earlier stages of the War, not in England and not in France. The selection wasn't after the usual manner or upon the usual references. He recommended himself to Jones by the following incident:—
A new regiment had come to the station; between them and the old regiment, later to become the firmest friends, some little difference of opinion had arisen and, upon the first meeting of representative elements in the neighbouring town, there had been words. Reports, as they reached Jones at the barracks some four miles from the town, hinted at something more than words still continuing. Jones, having reason to anticipate sequels on the morrow, took the precaution of going round his company quarters then, and there, to find which of his men, if any, were not involved. "There's a fair scrap up in town," he heard a man saying. As he entered, a second man was sitting up in bed and asking, "Dost thou think it will be going on yet?" Hoping for the best, he was for rising, dressing, walking four miles and joining in.
Jones stopped his enterprise that night, but engaged him for servant next day. I don't know why, nor does he; but he was right all the same. Yours ever, HENRY.
M.O. "WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU, MY MAN?"
Private. "VALVULAR DISEASE OF THE HEART, SIR."
M.O. "MY WORD! HOW DID YOU GET THAT?"
Private. "LAST MEDICAL BOARD GIVE IT ME, SIR."
"Will anyone knowing where to obtain the game of 'Bounce' kindly inform A.T.?"—Advt. in "The Times."
"A.T." should address himself to the Imperial Palace at Potsdam.