That, then, is the second point. I knew that war was vile, before I went into it. I have seen it: I do not alter my opinion. I went into this war prepared to sacrifice my life to prove that right is stronger than wrong; I have stood again and again with a traverse between me and death; I have faced the possibility of madness. I foresaw all this before I went into this war. What difference does it make that I have experienced it? It makes no difference. Let no one fear that our sacrifice has been in vain. We have already won what we are fighting for. The will for war, that aggressive power, with all the cards on its side prepared, striking at its own moment, has already failed against a spirit, weaker, unprepared, taken unawares. And so I am clear on my second point. We are fighting from just motives, and we have already baulked injustice. Aggressive force, the power that took up the cruel weapon of war, has failed. No one can ever say that his countrymen have laid down their lives in vain.
I got up from the chair, and started walking about the garden. Everything was so clear. Before going out to the war I had thought these things; but the thoughts were fluid, they ran about in mazy patterns, they were elusive, and always I was frightened of meeting unanswerable contradictions to my theorising from men who had actually seen war. Now my conclusions seemed crystallised by irrefutable experience into solid truth.
After a while I sat down again and resumed my train of thought:
War is evil. Justice is stronger than Force. Yet, was there need of all this bloodshed to prove this? For this war is not as past wars; this is every man’s war, a war of civilians, a war of men who hate war, of men who fight for a cause, who are compelled to kill and hate it. That is another thing that people will not face. Men whisper that Tommy does not hate Fritz. Again I say, away with this whispering. Let us speak it out plain and bold. Private Davies, my orderly, formerly a shepherd of Blaenau Festiniog, has no quarrel with one Fritz Schneider of Hamburg who is sitting in the trench opposite the Matterhorn sap; yet he will bayonet him certainly if he comes over the top, or if we go over into the German trenches; ay, he will perform this action with a certain amount of brutality too, for I have watched him jabbing at rats with a bayonet through the wires of a rat trap, and I know that he has in him a savage vein of cruelty. But when peace is declared, he and Fritz will light a bonfire of trench stores in No Man’s Land, and there will be the end of their quarrel. I say boldly, I know. For indeed I know Davies very well indeed.
Again I say, was there need of all this bloodshed? Who is responsible? Who is responsible for Lance-Corporal Allan lying in the trench in Maple Redoubt? Again I see yon glittering eyes looking down upon me in the arena. And Davies, too, in his slow simple way, is beginning to take you in, and to ask you why he is put there to fight? Is it for your pleasure? Is it for your expediency? Is it a necessary part of your great game? Necessary? Necessary for whom? Davies and Fritz alike are awaiting your answer.
It is hard to trace ultimate causes. It is hard to fix absolute responsibility. There were many seeds sown, scattered, and secretly fostered before they produced this harvest of blood. The seeds of cruelty, selfishness, ambition, avarice, and indifference, are always liable to swell, grow, and bud, and blossom suddenly into the red flower of war. Let every man look into his heart, and if the seeds are there let him make quick to root them out while there is time; unless he wishes to join those glittering eyes that look down upon the arena.
These are the seeds of war. And it is because they know that we, too, are not free from them, that certain men have stood out from the arena as a protest against war. These men are real heroes, who for their conscience’s sake are enduring taunts, ignominy, misunderstanding, and worse. Most men and women in the arena are cursing them, and, as they struggle in agony and anguish, they beat their hands at them and cry “You do not care.” I, too, have cursed them, when I was mad with pain. But I know them, and I know that they are true men. I would not have one less. They are witnesses against war. And I, too, am fighting war. Men do not understand them now, but one day they will.
I know that there are among us, too, the seeds of war: no cause has yet been perfect. But I look at the facts. We did not start, we did not want this war. We have gone into it, fighting for the better cause. Whether, had we been more Christian, we might have prevented the war, is not the point. We did not want this war: we are fighting against it. It was the seeds of war in Germany that were responsible. And so history will judge.
But what of the future? How are we to save future generations from going down into the arena? We will rearrange the map of Europe: we will secure the independence of small states: we will give the power to the people: there shall be an end of tyrannies. So men speak easily of an international spirit, of a world conference for peace. There is so great a will-power against war, they say, that we will secure the world for the future. Millions of men know the vileness of war; they will devise ways and means to prevent its recurrence. I agree. Let us try all ways. Yet I see no guarantee in all this against the glittering eyes: I see no power in all this knowledge against a new generation fostering and harvesting the seeds of war. Men have long known that war is evil. Did that knowledge prevent this war? Will that knowledge secure India or China from the power of the glittering eyes?