Just outside Mons, at one minute to eleven o’clock, there was a little desultory firing. Then a bugle blew, somewhere in a distant field, one long note. It was the “Cease fire”! A cheer coming faintly over the fields followed the bugle-call. Then there was no other sound where I stood but the scrunching of wheels of gun limbers and transport wagons, the squelch of mud in which horses and mules trudged, and the hard breathing of tired men marching by under their packs. So, with a curious lack of drama, the Great Adventure ended! That bugle had blown the “Cease fire” of a strife which had filled the world with agony and massacre; destroyed millions of men; broken millions of lives; ruined many great cities and thousands of hamlets, and left a long wide belt of country across Europe where no tree remained alive and all the earth was ravaged; crowded the world with maimed men, blind men, mad men, diseased men; flung Empires into anarchy, where hunger killed the children and women had no milk to feed their babies; and bequeathed to all fighting nations a heritage of debt beneath which many would stagger and fall. It was the “Cease fire” of all that reign of death, but sounded very faintly across the fields of France.
In Mons Canadian soldiers were being kissed by French girls. Women were giving them wine in the doorways, and these hard-bitten fellows, tough as leather, reckless of all risk, plastered with mud which had worn into their skins and souls, drank the wine and kissed the women, and lurched laughing down the streets. There would be no strict discipline in Mons that night. They had had enough of discipline in the dirty days. Let it go on the night of Armistice! Already at mid-day some of these soldiers were unable to walk except with an arm round a comrade’s neck, or round the neck of strong peasant girls who screeched with laughter when they side-slipped or staggered. They had been through hell, those men. They had lain in ditches, under frightful fire, among dead men and bleeding men. Who would grudge them their bit of fun on Armistice night? Who would expect saintship of men who had been taught in the school of war, taught to kill quick lest they be killed, to see the worst horrors of the battlefield without going weak, to educate themselves out of the refinements of peaceful life where Christian virtues are easy and not meant for war?
“Come here, lassie. None of your French tricks for me. I’m Canadian-born. It’s a kiss or a clout from me.”
The man grabbed the girl by the arm and drew her into a barn.
On the night of Armistice in Mons, where, at the beginning of the war, the Old Contemptibles had first withstood the shock of German arms (I saw their ghosts there in the market place), there would be the devil to pay—the devil of war, who plays on the passions of men, and sets his trap for women’s souls. But I went away from Mons before nightfall, and travelled back to Lille, in the little old car which had gone to many strange places with me.
How quiet it was in the open countryside when darkness fell! The guns were quiet at last, after four years and more of labour. There were no fires in the sky, no ruddy glow of death. I listened to the silence which followed the going down of the sun, and heard the rustling of the russet leaves and the little sounds of night in peace, and it seemed as though God gave a benediction to the wounded soul of the world. ‘Other sounds rose from the towns and fields in the deepening shadow-world of the day of Armistice. They were sounds of human joy. Men were singing somewhere on the roads, and their voices rang out gladly. Bugles were playing. In villages from which the enemy had gone out that morning round about Mons crowds of figures surged in the narrow streets, and English laughter rose above the chatter of women and children.
XVII
When I came into Lille rockets were rising above the city. English soldiers were firing off Verey lights. Above the houses of the city in darkness rose also gusts of cheering. It is strange that when I heard them I felt like weeping. They sounded rather ghostly, like the voices of all the dead who had fallen before this night of Armistice.