I walked up and down the lawn, my eyes glowing, my brain working hard. Here around me was all the beauty of an old garden, its long borders full of phloxes, delphiniums, stocks, and all the old familiar flowers; the apples glowed red in the trees; the swallows were skimming across the lawn. In the distance I could hear the rumble of the waggon bringing up the afternoon load of hop-pokes to the oasthouse. Yet what I had seen of war was as true, had as really happened, as all this. It would be so easy to forget, after the war. And yet to forget might mean a seed of war. I must never forget Lance-Corporal Allan.
There is only one sure way, I said at last. And again a clear conviction filled me. There is only one way to put an end to the arena. Pledges and treaties have failed; and force will fail. These things may bring peace for a time, but they cannot crush those glittering eyes. There is only one Man whose eyes have never glittered. Look at the palms of your hands, you, who have had a bullet through the middle of it! Did they not give you morphia to ease the pain? And did you not often cry out alone in the darkness in the terrible agony, that you did not care who won the war if only the pain would cease? Yet one Man there was who held out His hand upon the wood, while they knocked, knocked, knocked in the nail, every knock bringing a jarring, excruciating pain, every bit as bad as yours. And any moment His will-power could have weakened, and He could have saved Himself that awful pain. And then they nailed through the other hand: and then the feet. And as they lifted the Cross, all the weight came upon the pierced hands. And when He had tasted the vinegar He would not drink. And any moment He could have come down from the Cross: yet He so cared that love should win the war against evil, that He never wavered, His eyes never glittered. Do you want to put an end to the arena? Here is a Man to follow. In hoc signo vinces.
I stood up again, and stretched out my hands. And as I did so a memory came back vivid and strong. I remembered the night when I stood out on the hillside by Trafalgar Square, under the moon. And I remembered how I had felt a strength out of the pain, and even as the strength came a more unutterable weakness, the weakness of a man battering against a wall of steel. The sound of the relentless guns had mocked at me. Now as I stood on the lawn, I heard the long continuous vibration of the guns upon the Somme.
“You are War,” I said aloud. “This is your hour, the power of darkness. But the time will come when we shall follow the Man who has conquered your last weapon, death: and then your walls of steel will waver, cringe, and fall, melted away before the fire of LOVE.”
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Transcriber’s Note:
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.