"We haven't long to live," said Captain Ball joyfully, "but we live well while we do live," and in those words he expressed the glamour of the Front. Ball found, as thousands of his comrades-in-arms had found, that
"One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."
IV
A WHITE HANDKERCHIEF
In his History of the Somme Campaign John Buchan quotes, from an official report, an incident which, though I have tried, I cannot get my imagination to believe. Probably the incident is a true one but, unfortunately for me, my mind will not let it in. I cannot visualize it and the report is turned from the door as an impostor. The report states that in a certain attack our aeroplanes fired on the Germans in their trenches and that the enemy waved white handkerchiefs in token of surrender. Without the slightest difficulty I can imagine all except the white handkerchiefs. Where did they get them to wave? Men in the firing trenches don't carry anything so conspicuous as white handkerchiefs. To draw one out in a thoughtless moment might bring a sniper's bullet, and there are risks enough without inviting more. I doubt if in any English regiment two white handkerchiefs could be found: and I have little expectation that more could be found among the enemy. Furthermore, it is questionable, at this stage of the war, if a white handkerchief would be regarded as a sign, of surrender. It might be taken as a taunt.
There is nothing more remarkable in the war than the psychological change that has been wrought in white. A white feather used to be the badge of cowardice and a white flag the token of surrender. It is not so now. White has taken on a peculiar sacredness. If a new medal were to be struck of the same high value as the Victoria Cross it would probably be given a white ribbon, as the other has a red or (for the navy) blue. This change in the moral significance of white was brought home to me by an incident in a billet. I had gone to a barn to give the men some shirts and socks that had been sent to me. I stood on the steps, and like an auctioneer, offered my goods for acceptance. "Who wants a shirt? Who a scarf? Who wants this pair of mittens? Who a pair of socks?" Hands shot up at each question, and the fun grew fast and furious. Then I drew out and held up a white handkerchief. "A-ah! A-ah!" they cried wistfully in chorus. For a moment they stood gazing at it and forgot to raise their hands towards it; then, with a single movement, every hand shot up. Unwittingly I had stirred them to the depths; and I felt sorry for them.
The Magic Carpet of Baghdad is not a fiction after all. In the twinkling of an eye my white handkerchief had carried every boy and man to his home, and placed him by the fireside. I saw it in their eyes and heard it in the sadness and wistfulness of their voices as they ejaculated "A-ah!" They had not seen a white handkerchief for months. The last they saw was at home. A vision of home flashed before their minds and they were back in the dear old days of peace when they used white handkerchiefs and khaki ones were unknown to them. If in battle they were to see Germans waving white handkerchiefs, I think it would make them savage and unwilling to give quarter. They would think the enemy was taunting them with all they had lost. And they would be maddened by the thought that here were the very men who, by their war-lust, had caused them to lose it. For a German to wave a white handkerchief before a British soldier would be as dangerous as flaunting a red flag before a bull. It would bring death rather than pity. Anything of pure white is rare at the front, and it has gradually taken on a meaning it never held before. About the only white thing we have is the paper we write home on, and that use of the color helps to sanctify it in the shrine of the heart.
In the army it is a term of supreme praise to call a man white. When you say a comrade is a "white man" there is no more to be said. It is worth more than the Victoria Cross with its red ribbon, for it includes gallantry, and adds to it goodness. A man must be brave to be called white and he must be generous, noble and good. To reach whiteness is a great achievement. To be dubbed white is, in the army, like being dubbed knight at King Arthur's Court or canonized saint in the Church. He stands out among a soldier's comrades distinct as a white handkerchief among khaki ones.
I don't know where the term came from, but, wherever it may have tarried on the way, I think its footprints could be traced back to the Book of Revelation for its starting place. In the first chapter we have a picture of Christ as the first "White Man"--"His Head and His Hairs were white like wool, as white as snow." In the second chapter His faithful followers are given "a white stone, and in the stone a new name written." Is not the new name "White man"? In the third chapter we read of "a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white; for they are worthy." There, too, the Laodiceans are counseled to buy "white raiment." In the fourth chapter we see the four and twenty elders, sitting around the throne under the rainbow arch, "clothed in white raiment." In the sixth chapter we have the crowned King going "forth conquering, and to conquer" and He is sitting on "a white horse," that is, He uses "white" instruments to carry out His conquests. Death, in the same chapter, rides on a "pale" horse, but not a "white" one. Under the altar were the souls of the martyrs, "And white robes were given unto every one of them." And surely the climax is reached when we read in the seventh chapter that "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes." So striking was the scene that one of the elders asked, "What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?" And the answer is given, "These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God." In the army white has come back to its ancient significance. The brave and noble martyrs of the early Church were given "white robes" and in the army to-day the brave and pure wear "white robes" in the eyes of their comrades. When Clifford Reed was killed by a shell at his Regimental Aid Post his colonel wrote of him that he was the "whitest man" he had ever known. He had done more than wear "the white flower of a blameless life." His virtues were positive, not merely negative. He wore a "white robe"; not a mere speck of white such as a white flower in a buttonhole would appear. White is a positive color, not a negative. Reed was more than "blameless," he was "white and all white." To our soldiers a white handkerchief speaks of home, and a "white man" speaks of honor and heroism and heaven.
V