CHAPTER VIII
AT THE LIBERAL GRAVE-SIDE
" ... 'I am no goatherd,' said Faiz Ullah. 'It is against izzat [my honour].'
'When we cross the Bias River again we will talk of izzat,' Scott replied. 'Till that day thou and the policeman shall be sweepers to the camp, if I give the order.'
'Thus, then, it is done,' grunted Faiz Ullah, 'if the Sahib will have it so'...."
Rudyard Kipling: William the Conqueror.
I
Those who left London for a rare, short holiday between 1914 and 1918 were liable to find that the war followed them into the country with agitated headlines and with the daily rolls of honour, inevitable and inexorable, with gloomy letters and with vast departmental files bursting through their official envelopes. Those who were drawn to America at any time before the end of 1917 found there a people which seemed to realise the war as little as the English had realised it in 1914: the bitterness of death was not yet come. The excitement and preparation of her first entry into world-politics sent hardly a shiver through that warm atmosphere of peace and plenty; only the hard-bought experience of disorganisation and want, of jealousy and mistrust, of disappointment and impatience could bring home to America the suffering and losses, the occasional hopelessness, the recriminations and intrigues, the decline and abandonment of ideals which had overtaken one after another of the belligerents.
It was only two and a half years since idealists in England had talked of a "war to end war," of international justice and the rights of small nations, of self-effacement and sacrifice, of a crusade and a new way of life. For a few weeks England displayed a great religious enthusiasm: the futility and squalor of the old world was sloughed off; a wave of disinterested pity swept over the country; there was a rush to arms and to work; old feuds were forgotten in a magnanimous handshake. How and why did the change come?
Perhaps the conversion was too abrupt; perhaps long uncertainty and fear, long expectation and sudden knowledge of loss impose too heavy a strain on tender, unhardy greatness of soul. Death had hitherto been, for most, a release from suffering or the gentle termination of old age; for very few the mutilating rape of youth. At one moment, every one in England was clamouring to serve up to and beyond the limits of his capacity: in the race to the recruiting-stations, the old and the halt disguised their age and hid their infirmities; at another, each man inclined to see first what his neighbour was doing. Why should A fight while B shirked? Why should C give all he had, while D amassed riches? Why should E's husband be left alive when F's had been killed?