To-day has the complete autumn touch; we begin to think of the coming winter with its drenched and sullen melancholy—its days and nights of chill and damp, telescoping one into another in a grey monotony of grimness. Each summer the troops have told themselves, “We have spent our last winter in France,” but always and always there has been another.
Yet rain and mud and melancholy have their romance—they lend a blurred appearance of timelessness to a landscape and to life itself. A few nights ago I was forward observing for a raid which we put on. The usual panic of flares went up as the enemy became aware that our chaps were through his wire. Then machine guns started ticking like ten thousand lunatic clocks and of a sudden the S.O.S. barrage came down. One watched and waited, sending back orders and messages, trying to judge by signs how affairs were going. Gradually the clamour died away, and night became as silent and dark as ever. One waited anxiously for definite word; had our chaps gained what they were after, or had they walked into a baited trap?
Two hours elapsed; then through the loneliness one heard the lagging tramp of tired men, which came nearer and drew level. You saw them snowed on by the waning moon as they passed. You saw their rounded shoulders and the fatness of their heads—you knew that they were German prisoners. Limping in the rear, one arm flung about a comrade's neck, came our wounded. Just towards dawn the dead went by, lying with an air of complete rest upon their stretchers. It was like a Greek procession, frescoed on the mournful streak of vagueness which divides eternal darkness from the land of living men. Just so, patiently and uncomplainingly has all the world since Adam followed its appointed fate into the fold of unknowingness. We climb the hill and are lost to sight in the dawn. There's majesty in our departure after so much puny violence.
And God—He says nothing, though we all pray to Him. He alone among monarchs has taken no sides in this war. I like to think that the Union Jack waves above His palace and that His angels are dressed in khaki—which is quite absurd. I think of the irresistible British Tommies who have “gone west,” as whistling “Tipperary” in the streets of the New Jerusalem. They have haloes round their steel helmets and they've thrown away their gas-masks. But God gives me no licence for such imaginings, for He hasn't said a word since the first cannon boomed. In some moods one gets the idea that He's contemptuous; in others, that He takes no sides because His children are on both sides of No Man's Land. But in the darkest moments we know beyond dispute that it is His hands that make our hands strong and His heart that makes our hearts compassionate to endure. I have tried to inflame my heart with hatred, but I cannot. Hunnishness I would give my life to exterminate, but for the individual German I am sorry—sorry as for a murderer who has to be executed. I am determined, however, that he shall be executed. They are all apologists for the crimes that have been committed; the civilians, who have not actually murdered, are guilty of thieving life to the extent of having received and applauded the stolen goods.
We had a heated discussion to-day as to when the war would be ended; we were all of the opinion, “Not soon. Not in less than two years, anyway. After that it will take another twelve months to ship us home.” I believe that, and yet I hope. Along all the roads of France, in all the trenches, in every gun-pit you can hear one song being sung by poilus and Tommies. They sing it while they load their guns, they whistle it as they march up the line, they hum it while they munch their bully-beef and hard-tack. You hear it on the regimental bands and grinding out from gramophones in hidden dug-outs:
“Over there. Over there.
Send the word, send the word over there,
That the Yanks are coming——”
Men repeat that rag-time promise as though it were a prayer, “The Yanks are coming.” We could have won without the Yanks—we're sure of that. Still, we're glad they're coming and we walk jauntily. We may die before the promise is sufficiently fulfilled to tell. What does that matter? The Yanks are coming. We shall not have died in vain. They will reap the peace for the world which our blood has sown.
To-night you are in that high mountain place. It's three in the afternoon with you. I wish I could project myself across the world and stand beside you. Life's running away and there is so much to do besides killing people. But all those things, however splendid they were in achievement, would be shameful in the attempting until the war is ended.