In a letter I received from Paris the other day the puzzle of the modern soldier was very well expressed. “I don't believe,” it said, “I will ever get used to the courage of the men who go on and on with this terrible game. I'm thinking more now of the French and the British soldiers, who are mended up only to go at it again. I never can get used to it or take it as a matter of course. When I think for a minute how it hurts to have a tooth filled, I wonder that all the armies of the world don't get up and run away from each other of one accord—every one who isn't a hero or a fool, that's to say.”
When I think over the problem calmly I have the same wonder. The problem was so neatly expressed that I read the passage out to the mess. They stopped in a round of poker to listen. “Well, which are we,” I asked; “heroes or fools?” “Fools,” they said unanimously, and then went on playing their hands again. They're right; we are fools. We're certainly not heroes. We're fools for a kind of kingdom of heaven's sake—but we don't act like the heaven part of it any more than we talk about our patriotism. Any mention of either would make us shudder.
I wonder what motive brought the heathen Chinee to the Western Front. I've been told that he came that he might buy food for his family, because there's a famine in China. Maybe. His bronze face stares up into ours from out the green-gold of the standing wheat—stares up into ours with the inscrutable gaze of an age-old Buddha. He's the one human being on the Western Front who neither by acts nor words explains his nobility. Nobility there must have been to induce him to come; no reasoning creature would have jeopardized his body out of lust.
Last night I rode beneath a full white moon for miles through the standing crops. I only struck a road to cross it and say good-bye to it—then on and on with the soft swish of the swelling stalks against my stirrups. Shall we recall our old panics and delights if we live to reach normality again? Will normality satisfy? Shall we be content to know that all the hoard of the future years is ours? In a word, shall we ever again desire to be safe? Questions which none of us can answer!
LVI
France June 27, 1918
Here's a glorious June morning with a touch of chill in the air and a jolly gold sun shooting arrows into the wheatfields. The chief sound I hear is the rattling of head-chains, for the drivers are hard at work shining up their harness. These summer days go by very pleasantly, but they throw one's thoughts back a little wistfully to the Junes of other years—especially those in which the train came skidding down the mountains from Spokane to the ranch and the lake. All day, from first waking in the morning, we begin to gamble on our chances with the mail. It arrives any time between two and five o'clock; the evening passes in reading and re-reading our letters and concocting replies. I think some letters from you are nearly due again and I'm hoping for one this afternoon.
I think I mentioned that our battery has a French baby boy of three for its mascot, just at present. He has been christened Bully Beef, but for what reason I don't know. Bully Beef falls in beside the Sergeant-Major on all parades. During stables he inspects the horses, toddling round the lines and hanging on to the finger of an officer. The other day he fell into the river while the horses were watering. No one noticed his disappearance for a minute or two; then he was discovered standing nearly chin-deep, doing a very quiet cry. He was consoled with pennies, and I undertook to lead him up to his mother. There are many stories about Bully Beef's origin. Some say that his father is a rich Frenchman already married; others, a dead poilu; others, a sergeant of a Highland Division which was encamped in this neighbourhood. His mother is an exceedingly pretty French girl and she is not married. I can't help feeling that Bully Beef must be half British, for he isn't timid like a French child. On the contrary, he hides in the hedges and throws stones at us when he is offended, and has a finely exaggerated sense of his childish dignity. What memories he'll have when he's become a man.
There was another character I mentioned in a previous letter—I called him “Battling Brown “—the chap has D.S.O.'. and Military Crosses with bars to them and delights in putting on raids. I've since found that he cuts a notch in his revolver for every Hun he has killed with it. His present weapon has eighteen notches and the wooden handle of the first is notched to pieces.
It's refreshing to find a man on our side of the line who knows how to hate. If we had hated more at the first, the war would be ended. Personally I can only hate ideas and nations—not persons; I acknowledge this as a weakness in myself.