[CHAPTER II]
Courage
What is courage or fortitude? There are many kinds of it, but Locke's definition covers most cases. "It is the quiet possession of a man's self, and an undisturbed doing of his duty, whatever evil beset him, or danger lie in his way."
There are those who have courage to fight, but not to wait. Where duty says, "Go forward," to halt or to go in any other direction is cowardice; where duty says, "Stand still," to go forward is cowardice. Our soldiers have shown themselves capable of both kinds of courage. At the battle of Mons they were brave enough to retreat when ordered, though they were driving the Germans before them at the point of the bayonet. They said that they could not understand why the order to retreat was given, but they trusted their leaders.
"Tommy Atkins, you're a fighter.
An' your work is clean and sweet—
When you've got a job before you,
Why you goes an' does it neat;
Tommy Atkins, you're a hero,
With your 'masterly retreat!'
"Tommy Atkins, you're a Saxon,
An' you're bloomin' hard to beat,
And you've borne the brunt o' fightin'
And you've kept upon your feet—
An' you've learned the precious lesson
Of a 'masterly retreat!'
"Tommy Atkins, you're a soldier,
An' your work is clean and sweet,
An' you've won a dozen battles
By a nicely-timed defeat—
Tommy Atkins, you're a hero,
With your 'masterly retreat'!"
"Ah," said a French officer, "we lose so heavily, we French. We haven't the patience of the English. They are fine and can wait: we must rush."
But indeed the very constancy of the courage of our soldiers may sometimes hide it. We take it for granted. We become so accustomed to read of the coolness of Mr. Thomas Atkins amidst a hail of bullets, that we begin to fancy that with a good umbrella we would be equally indifferent to the shower. Is courage then natural, and are all men brave? Quite the contrary. What is natural is an instinctive desire to save life and limb, and those who overcome this from a sense of duty ought to get credit for doing so.
How courage creates courage is told by a Connaught Ranger. Writing of a man who had carried him away through a storm of bullets when wounded he said, "He is a grand lad and afraid of nothing. He gave all who were near him courage by his brave conduct."
There are many kinds and degrees of courage. There is that which is calm, deliberate and with little or no hope of reward.
A magnificent manifestation of this courage was given by twelve Royal Engineers. A bridge on the British line of retreat had to be destroyed. A party of sappers laid a charge; but before they could light the fuse they were killed. Then one of the Engineers made a rush, alone, towards the fuse. He was killed before he had got half-way, but immediately he was down another man dashed up and ran on until he, too, fell dead, almost over the body of his comrade. A third, a fourth, a fifth attempted to run the gauntlet of the German rifle fire, and all of them met their deaths in the same way. Others dashed out after them, one by one, until the death toll numbered eleven. Then, for an instant, the German rifle fire slackened, and in that instant the bridge was blown up, for the twelfth man, racing across the space where the dead bodies of his comrades lay, lit the fuse and sent the bridge up with a roar as a German rifleman brought him down dead.