It is this failure of war, when considered as a physical thing, to measure up to its traditional Impressiveness, that fills with despair the soul of the writing man, who craves to put down on paper an adequate conception of it in its entirety. Finally he comes to this: That either he must throw away the delusions he himself nourished and content himself by building together little mosaics with scraps gleaned from the big, untellable, untranslatable enigma that it is, or for the reader's sake must try to conjure up a counterfeit conception, which will correspond with what he knows the average reader's mental vision of the thing to be. In one event he is honest—but disappointing. In the other he is guilty of a willful deceit, but probably turns out copy that is satisfying to his audience. In either event, in his heart he is bound to realise the utter impossibility of depicting war as it is.
It is one of the cumulating paradoxes of the entire paradoxical procedure that the best place to get a reasonably clear and intelligible idea of the swing and scope of a battle is not upon the site of the battle itself, but in a place anywhere from ten to twenty miles behind the battle. Directly at the front the onlooker observes only those small segments of the prevalent hostilities that lie directly under his eyes. He is hedged in and hampered by obstacles; his vision is circumscribed and confined to what may be presented in his immediate vicinity.
Of course there are exceptions to this rule. I am speaking not of every case but of the average case.
A fairish distance back, though, he may to an extent grasp the immensity of the operation. He sees the hammered troops coming out and the fresh troops going in; beholds the movements of munitions and supplies and reserves; observes the handling of the wounded; notes the provisions that are made for a possible advance and the preparations that have been made for a possible retreat. Even so, to the uninitiated eye the scheme appears jumbled, haphazard and altogether confused. It requires a mind acquainted with more than the rudiments of military science to discern purpose in what primarily appears to be so absolutely purposeless. There is nothing of the checkerboard about it; the orderliness of a chess game is lacking. The suggestion is more that of a whirlpool. So it follows that the novice watches only the maelstrom on the surface and rarely can he fathom out the guiding influences that ordain that each twistiwise current moves in its proper channel without impairment or impediment lor any one of the myriad of related activities.
Being a novice he is astonished to note that only infrequently do wounded men act as his fictional reading has led him to believe they would act. To me the most astounding thing about this has been not that wounded men shriek and moan, but that nearly always they are so terribly silent. At the moment of receiving his hurt a man may cry out; often he does. But oftener than not he comes, mute and composed, to the dressing station. The example of certain men who lock their lips and refuse to murmur, no matter how great is their pain, inspires the rest to do likewise. A man who in civil life would make a great pother over a trivial mishap, in service will endure an infinitely worse one without complaint. If war brings out all the vices in some nations it most surely brings out the virtues in others. I hate to think back on the number of freshly wounded men I have seen, but when I do think back on it I am struck by the fact that barring a few who were delirious and some few more who were just emerging into agonised consciousness following the coma shock of a bad injury, I can count upon the fingers of my two hands the total of those who screamed or loudly groaned. Men well along the road to recovery frequently make more troublesome patients than those who have just been brought to the field hospitals; and a man who perhaps has lain for hours with a great hole in his flesh, stoically awaiting his turn under the surgeon's hands, will sometimes, as a convalescent, worry and fret over the prospect of having his hurts redressed.
Among certain races the newly stricken trooper is more apt to be concerned by the fear that he may be incapacitated from getting back into the game than he is about the extent of his wound or the possibility that he may die of it. As an American I am proud to be able to say, speaking as a first-hand witness, that our own race should be notably included in this category. The Irishman who had been shot five times but was morally certain he would recover and return to the war because he thought he knew the fellow who had plugged him has his counterpart without number among the valorous lads from this side of the ocean whose names have appeared on the casualty lists.
CHAPTER XXI. PARADOXES BEHIND THE LINES
WHILE I am on the subject of unusual phases of modern warfare I should like to include just one more thing in the list—and that thing is the suddenness with which in France, and likewise in Belgium, one in going forward passes out of an area of peacefulness into an area of devastation and destruction. Almost invariably the transition is accomplished with a startling abruptness. It is as though a mighty finger had scored a line across the face of the land and said; “On this side of the line life shall go on as it always has gone on. Here men shall plough, and women shall weave, and children shall play, and the ordinary affairs of mankind shall progress with the seasons. On that side there shall be only death and the proofs of death and the promises of yet more deaths. There the fields shall be given over to the raven and the rat; the homes shall be blasted flat, the towns shall be razed and the earth shall be made a charnelhouse and a lazar pit of all that is foul and loathsome and abominable in the sight of God and man.”