While I Remember

by Stephen McKenna

I

London during the second half of 1917 differed from London during the late months of 1916 in that, so soon as the United States abandoned neutrality, the Allies were assured of victory unless the German submarine fleet obtained the mastery of the Atlantic and prevented troops and food from reaching Europe or unless the German army, no longer menaced on the eastern frontier since the Russian Revolution, could break through on the west and capture Paris or the channel ports. The second course was tried in March, 1918, the first never ceased to be tried until the armistice; but, whereas in the winter of 1916-17 there was widespread doubt in England whether the war could end otherwise than in a stalemate, from the middle of 1917 it was evident that the war could and would be fought to a finish and that the ultimate military decision lay with the inexhausted and inexhaustible armies of the west.

It was to Washington, therefore, that the centre of interest now shifted; and those who had lately returned from America were bombarded with enquiries about the feeling and condition of the United States. The corporate life of the Balfour mission came to an end with the welcome accorded to its head at the Guildhall and at the Mansion House luncheon on July 13th; and, when its members had reported their return to their departments, they were free to study the psychology of London in what, even then, was known to be the last phase of the war. Since 1914 they had been too busy to catch more than a passing glimpse of their friends as they flashed to and from the front or from their work at home; and the novels and memoirs of this period will be an untrustworthy guide to future social historians in so far as they suggest a life of unrelieved frivolity and pleasure-seeking when the greatest war effort had yet to be made. There were certainly days and nights of epidemic excitement, which occasionally turned to sporadic insanity; now, as in every phase of the war, there were men and women who made of the public disorganisation an excuse for abandoning all recognised restraints; but the general change was little more than a universal restlessness in which the nerves that had been kept tense by the daily demands of the war refused to be relaxed in hours of leisure. If there were more distractions in 1917 than in 1915, there was also more work done, and it was better organised; the novels and memoirs, naturally enough, give little space to daily routine; but it is less true to suggest that those who lived in London were grown indolent or callous to the war than that they had accommodated their private lives to public requirements. No one was surprised if a man went from his office to dinner without dressing or if he was made late for luncheon by a daylight air-raid. Informality, first imposed by necessity, was found to be amusing in itself; and an element of impromptu picnic crept into most of the parties of that time.

This deliberate attempt to preserve as much of the old life and interests as the war would allow was in part a self-imposed discipline and a refusal to be stampeded; in part it was an effort to make London tolerable for those who were on leave from their service abroad and at home; and in part it was an instinctive struggle to retain something familiar in an unfamiliar world and to refresh the brain with a diversion in which war had no share. The years from 1915 to 1919 saw a prodigious output of new literature and music; and, if it is still too early to judge of its quality, there can be no question about the intellectual stimulus which it supplied. Every kind of book was read and discussed; every new school of painting had its followers; and love of music, ceasing to be the foible of the few, became the craving of the many. Though not yet conspicuously prompt in payment, the gratitude of thousands is due to the devotion of Sir Thomas Beecham and of his supporters for the opera which they maintained at Drury Lane with untiring enterprise and energy; without their labours, Covent Garden would be as dead as the London Opera House; no opera in English would ever get a hearing; and in 1917 and 1918 London would not have had its mixed programme of English, Russian, French, Italian and German opera.

II

Early in 1918 came the black days of the last German offensive. All the optimism and relief of 1917 evaporated before the quick, merciless rain of blows that battered Amiens and threatened Calais, shattered Rheims and overhung Paris. In the southwesterly onrush of 1914 the French declared that, if Paris fell, they would transfer their seat of government to Bordeaux (as they did) and, if need be, to the foot-hills of the Pyrenees; in 1918 any defeat was temporary, for in time the new American levies must burst by sheer weight of metal through any army that had been carded down by four years of fighting; but by 1918 many were asking themselves whether the French spirit would still be equal to this last desperate resolution, whether the British could carry on with a spear-head through their line at Amiens and whether the Americans would make headway in a country as completely overrun as Belgium had been.

To civilians, the crisis of March 1918 arose suddenly; they may be thankful that it ended no less suddenly, but the results of the crisis outlived the crisis itself. In so far as it is true to say that the English ever lost their heads, they lost them between the March offensive and the December general election of 1918. For more than four years there had been the relaxation of bonds which is natural when life is no longer secure: sexual relationships became increasingly promiscuous, marriages were contracted, abandoned and dissolved with reckless disregard of private morals or public responsibility; and the craving for such excitement as would bring forgetfulness led to the excessive indulgence of every physical appetite. While this relaxation continued at a steadily increasing pace, it was only in the final months of the war that the loss of self-control became inconsistent with a balanced mind. The sordid scandals of this last phase, born of intemperance in drink or drugs and stimulated to their climax by undisciplined passions, were occasionally dragged to light in a police-court or at a coroner's inquest; but in degeneracy, as in crime, it is usually the inexpert who is detected, and any one who lived in London during those feverish months had forced upon his notice a spectacle of debauchery which would have swelled the record of scandal if it had been made public but which is mercifully forgotten because it was incredible.

This is neither the place nor time to pass a judgement on it; and perhaps it does not deserve to be too strictly condemned. In threatening all and in fulfilling with many the unexpected fate of material ruin, physical mutilation and premature death, a war which strikes at the normal security of life must be accepted with abnormal resignation or resisted with abnormal resolution. As the instinct of self-preservation, rising sublime into pride, sinking into base fear and ranging through every spiritual state between these extremes, automatically precludes the alternative of surrender, the abnormal resistance has to be fortified by an abnormal appeal to primitive reserves of endurance and courage which modern man, inheriting from his earliest ancestors, keeps stored for rare moments of emergency. The bodily and mental tortures of an unanticipated catastrophe, be it war, earthquake, shipwreck or fire, are only made supportable by the aid of qualities so primitive as to be extraneous to the character of civilised man; and, as it would be unreasonable to expect that he should be able to unbar an ancient door and to release one potent force while keeping all others enchained, the additional fortitude by means of which the war was borne at least with general dignity had to be accompanied by the accession of qualities less conventionally admirable.

In short phrase, the restraints of modern civilisation were burst on the resurgence of primitive man. Honourable, kindly, fastidious, gentle and reserved spirits, dragged back across the ages, lied and cheated, fought and bullied in an orgy of intrigue and self-seeking, of intoxication and madness. Only in this way and at this price could those who had fared delicately and lived softly endure hardships which for generations or centuries had been removed from the average experience of civilisation; the bravery of the savage emerged hand in hand with the savage's ferocity, his licence, his superstition and his credulity.

While time and tranquillity are needed before these unruly forces can be finally subdued, the panic rush of mob-madness passed quickly.