XII
The Court-Martial was held in an old farm lying just outside the village. There was a large courtyard where the chickens clucked all day, and children and cattle roamed unchecked in the spacious midden. The court-room was unusually suitable to its purpose, being panelled all round in some dark wood with great black beams under a white-washed ceiling, high and vaulted, and an open hearth where the dry wood crackled heartlessly all day. Usually these trials are conducted in the best bedroom of some estaminet, and the Court sits defensively with a vast white bed at their backs. But this room was strangely dignified and legal: only at first Madame persisted in marching through it with saucepans to the kitchen—all these curious English functions were the same to her, a Christmas dinner, or a mess-meeting, or the trial of a soldier for his life.
The Court impressed me rather favourably—a Major-General, and four others. The Major-General, who was President of the Court, was a square, fatherly-looking person, with a good moustache, and rather hard blue eyes. He had many rows of ribbons, so many that as I looked at them from a dark corner at the back, they seemed like some regiment of coloured beetles, paraded in close column of companies. All these men were very excellently groomed: 'groomed' is the right word, for indeed they suggested a number of well-fed horses; all their skins were bright, and shiny, and well kept, and the leather of their Sam Brownes, and their field boots, and jingling spurs, and all their harness were beautiful and glistening in the firelight. I once went over the royal stables at Madrid. And when all these glossy creatures jingled heavily up to their table I was reminded of that. They sat down and pawed the floor restively with their well-polished hoofs, cursing in their hearts because they had been brought so far 'to do some damned court-martial.' But all their faces said, 'Thank God, at least I have had my oats to-day.'
And there was an atmosphere of greyness about them. The hair of some of them was splashed with grey; the faces of most of them were weathered and grey; and one felt that the opinions of all of them were grey, but not weathered.
For they were just men, according to their views. They would do the thing conscientiously, and I could not have hoped for a better Court. But as judges they held the fatal military heresy, that the forms and procedure of Military Law are the best conceivable machinery for the discovery of truth. It was not their fault; they had lived with it from their youth. And since it is really a form of conceit, the heresy had this extension, that they themselves, and men like them, blunt, honest, straightforward men, were the best conceivable ministers for the discovery of truth—and they needed no assistance. Any of them would have told you, 'Damn it, sir, there's nothing fairer to the prisoner than a Field General Court-Martial'; and if you read the books or witness the trial of a soldier for some simple 'crime,' you will agree. But given a complex case, where testimony is at all doubtful, where there are cross-currents and hidden animosities, the 'blunt, honest' men are lost.
To begin with, being in their own view all-seeing and all-just, they consider the Prisoner's Friend to be superfluous: and if he attempts any genuine advocacy they cannot stomach the sight of him. 'Prisoner's Friend be damned!' they will tell you, 'the Prosecutor does all that! and anything he doesn't find out the Court will.' Now the Prosecutor is indeed charged with the duty of 'bringing out anything in the favour of the Accused': that is to say, if Private Smith after looting his neighbour becomes afterwards remorseful and returns his loot to its owner, the Prosecutor will ask questions to establish the fact. In a case like Harry's it means practically nothing. The Prosecutor will not cross-examine a shifty or suspicious witness—dive into his motives—get at the secret history of the business, first, because it is not his job, and secondly, because being as a rule only the adjutant of his battalion, he does not know how.
The Court will not do this, because they do not know anything about the secret history, and they are incapable of imagining any; because they believe implicitly that any witness, officer or man (except perhaps the accused), is a blunt, honest, straightforward man like themselves, and incapable of deception or concealment.
This is the job of the Prisoner's Friend. Now 'The Book' lays down very fairly that if he be an officer, or otherwise qualified, Prisoner's Friend shall have all the rights of defending counsel in a civil court. In practice, the 'blunt men' often make nothing of this safeguard. Many courts I have been before had never heard of the provision; many, having heard of it, refused flatly to recognize it, or insisted that all questions should be put through them. When they do recognize the right, they are immediately prejudiced against the prisoner if that right is exercised. Any attempt to discredit or genuinely cross-examine a witness is regarded as a rather sinister piece of 'cleverness'; and if the Prisoner's Friend ventures to sum up the evidence in the accused's favour at the end—it is too often 'that damned lawyer-stuff.' Usually it is safer for a prisoner to abandon his rights altogether in that respect.
But that should not be in a case like Harry's. The question of counsel was vital in his case. I make no definite charges against Philpott and Burnett. All I say is that it was unfortunate that the two men most instrumental in bringing Harry to trial should have been the only two men with whom he had ever had any bitterness during his whole military career. It was specially unfortunate that Burnett should be the first and principal accuser, when you remembered that almost the last time Harry had seen Burnett he had shown courage where Burnett had shown cowardice, and thus humiliated him. This case could have been passed over; hundreds such have been passed over, and on their merits, from any human standpoint, rightly. Why was this one dragged up and sent stinking to the mandarins? Well, one possible answer was—'Look at the history of these three men.' And in the light of that history I say that Philpott and Burnett should have been ruthlessly cross-examined by a really able man, till the very heart of them both lay bare. Whether the issue would have been different I don't know, but at least there would have been some justice on both sides. And it may even be that a trained lawyer could not only have got at the heart of the matter, but also prevailed upon the Court not to be prejudiced against him by his getting at it. For that brings you back to the real trouble. I could have done it myself and gladly; if any one knew anything about these men, I did. But if I, acting for Harry, had really cross-examined Burnett, asked him suddenly what he was doing in that dug-out, and when he hesitated, suggested that he too was sheltering, and quite rightly, because the fire was so heavy; or if I brought out the history of that night at Gallipoli, and suggested that the animosity between the two men might both explain Harry's conduct in the dug-out, and account for Burnett having made the charge in the first place, thus throwing some doubt on the value of his evidence—all that would have been 'cleverness.' And if I had suggested that Philpott himself, my C.O., might have some slight spite against the accused, or asked him why he had applied for a Court-Martial on this case after hushing up so many worse ones, I think the Court would have become apoplectic with horror at the sacrilege.