Talking of horses, I hear that to-day is the slaughtering day for numbers of them. This is good-bye to any possibility of debouch, for there will be insufficient horses to move the guns. It will eke out our corn and barley that can be made into bread; but what is wanted is sugar or jam for the body, and tea for the spirit.
"You are," says Townshend, "making a page of history."
"I would rather," thinks Tommy, "make some stew."
March 11th.—We have all been made acquainted with Sir Percy Lake's condolences on our misfortune, but also promising us relief; but the floods are gradually increasing, and we fear it will be a case of Lake v. Lake, and there will be no appeal.
Sir Percy Lake is the Army Commander in place of Sir John Nixon, and General Aylmer is Army Corps Commander. Before going to bed last night we told fortunes by cards. The results in short were these: Firstly, a climax is to be reached shortly. (I quite agree.) Secondly, March 27th, my birthday, will seal my matrimonial affairs, the marriage to take place before the following March 27th. (Doubtful, unless I marry an Arab or Turk, or get freed for the event.) Thirdly, the star of the Fortune-God is in the ascendant, and his horoscope is wreathed with smiles. Which we two subalterns, and Cockie (a junior married captain), devoutly pray may come true.
Personally, I hold with that excellent fellow Horace that "the gods only laugh if they behold mortals showing an unseemly interest in their destiny." It is essentially a plebeian instinct, a relic from barbaric days when the world was brimful of curiosities for the twilight intelligence of recently-born man. But many decades taught him that unbridled curiosity ended in burnt fingers. Then he avoided with a fearful dread all that he did not know, and not the least of his tortures was occasioned by the Inexplicable straying upon him across the border from the Great Unknown. Later on he gets more nerve and he pioneers—still later he becomes scientific and investigates. And when the facts are more or less all in, his curiosity instead of his investigativity once again gets the better of him, and he fortune-tells and goes table-rapping, and tries to lassoo his astral body and to open up direct communication with those "not lost but gone before." It is, one might say with some truth, a mark of spiritual breeding to know how to acquiesce. Somehow one cannot picture the greatest of the gods tremendously excited. Equanimity is at least more dignified and always useful.
Nor should prophecy be confused with fortune-telling, for it is to the latter what investigation is to inquisitiveness. And inquisitiveness was always bad form. The personal factor looms too large.
Ah! how infinitely colossal and strangely beautiful is that great thing the Future, that ever bears down upon us from across the seas of Time. That dark tidal wave bearing great histories in its bosom and pregnant with joys and sorrows for us all. The gymnastics of living philosophers teach us that Time does not exist—but to me here in Kut it is almost the only real thing. O Futura Divina Ignota! thou mighty engulfing wave advancing from horizon to horizon upon us, with Change and Hope lightly treading thy combing crest—how pricelessly excellent a thing art thou, and what could we do without thee? Whence art thou? From what distant regions of Eternity art thou sped, on what strange shores do thy billows break! We know not. It is beautiful not to know. And thus is Faith born. Thou art a beautiful stranger. We dread thee not. We trust thee—for thou art God.
Truly it is a great and wonderful world, and considerably reflected upon before patented. Some day a great man will write a book on "Some Attitudes to the Future"—wherefrom it will be gathered that the happiest is he who trusts but does not seek to know. "If," writes the prospective Plato, "it were permitted me of God to be the only mortal in the history of the human race to discover the lever that raises the curtain between us and the next world, and even if by so doing we might at once behold the flight of angels, the life of the spirit world, the procedure of heaven, yet would I certainly refuse to reveal the secret or to use it. Because to behold that Ultramontane would be to remove from life the two essential factors of discipline and hope. Moreover, if likewise I only were accorded the power of turning the searchlight on that land of mists we know as the Future so that all might see what is ahead of each, yet again would I not do so." And on second thoughts, who would? It would indeed be a dreadful ordeal to have to live. And if you don't believe this, then go and ask a certain gunner subaltern in Kut.
9 p.m.—My hospital acquaintance, Square-Peg of the Oxfords, came along this afternoon for a game of chess, and asked if he might join our mess, as he is convalescent. Square-Peg and we talked 'Varsity gossip by the pipe-dozen. He is at present doing light duty on patrol of the gardens, technically known as "C.O. Cabbages."