Leaves in the Wind

by A. G. Gardiner

"D'ye mean ole Fritz?" said the soldier.

"I mean those Huns," said the other.

"Oh, there's nothing wrong with ole Fritz," replied the soldier. "He can't help hisself. He's shoved out there in the mud to fight same as we are, and he does the job same as we do. But he'd jolly well like to chuck the business and go home. Course he would. Stands to reason. Anybody would."

It was a disappointing reply to the man in the corner, who obviously felt that the other was wanting in the first essential of a soldier—a personal hatred of the individual enemy. This man clearly did not hate the enemy. Yet if anyone was entitled to hate him he had abundant reason. He had been out since August, 1914, had been wounded four times, buried by shell explosion three times, and gassed twice. It was two years since he had been home on leave, and now he was on his way to see his people in the West of England. He talked about his experiences with the calm dispassionateness of one describing commonplace things, quite uncomplainingly, very sensibly, and without the least trace of egotism. He'd been in a horrible spot lately, "reg'lar death-trap," at G——. "Nobody can hold it," he said. "We take it when we like, and Fritz, he takes it when he likes. That's all there is about it." It was noticeable that he always spoke of the enemy as "Fritz," and always without any appearance of personal animus.

I do not record the incident as unusual. I record it as usual. No one who has had much intercourse with soldiers at the front, whether rank or file, will dispute this. In any circumstances, it is hard to nurse a passion at white heat over a term of years, and it is impossible to do so when you see the ugly business of war at close quarters. You have to be comfortably at home to really enjoy the luxury of hate. I have heard more bitter things from the lips of clergymen and seen more bitter things from the pen of so-called comic journalists than I have heard from the lips of soldiers, and in that admirable collection of utterances of hate in Germany, made by Mr. William Archer, it will be found that the barbaric things generally come from the pulpits or the studies of be-spectacled professors.

The soldier is too near the foul business, sees all the misery and suffering too close, to be consumed with hate. If he could envy the other fellow he would stand a better chance of hating him. But he sees that Fritz is in no better plight than himself. He is living in the mud among the rats too, and is just as helpless an atom in the machine of war as himself. He sees his body, torn and disgusting, cumbering the battlefield, or hanging limp and horrible on the barbed wire in No Man's Land. It is Fritz's turn to-day; it may be his own to-morrow. And the baser feeling gives place to a general compassion. The chord of a common humanity is struck, and if he does not actually love his enemy he ceases to hate him.

But the man in the corner of the carriage need have no fear that this means that the soldier opposite is a less valuable fighting man in consequence. The idea that you must grind your teeth all the time is an infantile delusion. I should have much more confidence in that quiet, sane, undemonstrative soldier in the face of the enemy than I should have in the people who kill the enemy with their mouth, and prove their patriotism by the violence of their language. I have known many brave men who have given their lives heroically in this war, but I cannot recall one—not one—who stained his heroism with vulgar hate.

The gospel of hate as the instrument of victory, indeed, is not the soldier's gospel at all. There have been few greater soldiers in history than General Lee, and probably no more saintly man. He fought literally to the last ditch, but he never ceased to repudiate the doctrine of hate. When the minister in the course of a sermon had expressed himself bitterly about the enemy, Lee said to him: "Doctor, there is a good old Book which says, 'Love your enemies.' Do you think that your remarks this evening were quite in the spirit of that teaching?" And when one of his generals exclaimed of the enemy, "I wish these people were all dead," Lee answered, "How can you say so? Now, I wish they were all at home attending to their business and leaving us to do the same." And Lee stated his attitude generally when he said: "I have fought against the people of the North because I believed they were seeking to wrest from the South dearest rights. But I have never cherished bitter or vindictive feelings and have never seen the day when I did not pray for them."

There was a striking illustration of the contrast between the soldier's and the civilian's attitude towards the enemy the other day. In the current issue of Punch I saw a poem by Sir Owen Seaman (the author of that heroic line, "I hate all Huns"), addressed to the "Huns," in which he said:

But where you have met your equals,
Gun for gun and man for man,
We have noticed other sequels,
It was always you that ran.