They are making a Road of Liberty along which all nations may pass to universal peace and brotherhood, and where the weak will be as safe from oppression as the strong. "It's a long, long way to go," but they have seen their goal on the horizon, and will either reach it or die on the way to it. They have made up their minds that never again shall the shadow of the Kaiser's mailed fist, or that any other tyrant fall across their path. These men never sing of war. They hate war. It is a brutal necessity forced on them by the ambition of a tyrant. Their songs are all of peace and none of war. Of the future and not the present they sing:
"Tiddley-iddley-ighty,
Hurry me home to Blighty;
Blighty is the place for me."
Whether they sing with levity or seriousness (and levity of manner often veils their seriousness of feeling), it is of a future of peace and goodwill they sing. To them the war is a hard road leading to a better life for mankind. It is to them what the desert was to the Israelites, when they left the bondage of Egypt for the liberty of the Land of Promise. Therefore they must tread it without faltering even as Christ trod the way of the Cross. "There's a long, long trail awinding into the Land of their dreams" and they will not lose faith in their dreams however wearisome the way. Elderly navvies and laborers have come to smooth the roads for them, and nurses are tending those who have fallen broken by the way; while across the sundering sea are mothers and wives whose prayers make flowers spring up at their feet and blossoms break out on every tree that fringes the side of the road.
III
THE GLAMOUR OF THE FRONT
There is an undoubted glamour about the Front, which when at home, in England, cannot be explained. In the army or out of it, the wine of life is white and still, but at the Front it runs red and sparkling. One day I got a lift in a motor-wagon and sat on a box by the side of one of the servants of the officer's mess at the Aerodrome near by. He was going into Doullens, a market town, to buy food and some little luxuries. Captain Ball, V.C., the prince of English flyers, was, up to the time of his death in the air, a member of the mess, and the servant was telling me how comfortable all the officers make their quarters. In a phrase he defined the glamour of the Front.
"One day," he said, "when we were helping him to make his room comfortable, Captain Ball burst out into a merry laugh and chuckled, 'We haven't long to live, but we live well while we do live.'"
There you have it. Life is concentrated. Death is near--just round the corner--so the men make the most of their time and "live well." It has the same quality as "leave" at home. Leave is short and uncertain, so we "live well." Our friends know it may be the last sight of us, and we know it may be our last sight of them. They are kind and generous to us, as we are to them; and so, the ten days of "leave" are just glorious. Ruskin says that the full splendor of the sunset lasts but a second, and that Turner went out early in the evening and watched with rapt attention for that one second of supreme splendor and delight. He lived for sunsets and while others were balancing their accounts, or taking tea, he went out to see the daily miracle. The one second in which he saw God pass by in the glory of the sunset was to him worth all the twenty-four hours. For one second in each day he caught the glamour of earth and heaven, and went back to his untidy studios blind to all but the splendor he had seen.
That second each day was life, indeed, and the glamour of the Front is like unto it. It is the place where life sets, and the darkness of death draws on. The commonest soldier feels it and with true instinct, not less true because unconscious, he describes death at the Front as "going West." It is the presence of death that gives the Front its glamour, and life its concentrated joy and fascination. Captain Ball saw it with the intuition of genius when he said: "We haven't long to live, but we live well while we do live."
The immediate presence of death at the Front gives tone to every expression of life, and makes it the kindest place in the world. No one feels he can do too much for you, and there is nothing you would not do for another. Whether you are an officer or a private, you can get a lift on any road, in any vehicle, that has an inch of room in it. How often have I seen a dozen tired Tommies clambering up the back of an empty motor-lorry which has stopped, or slowed down, to let them get in. It is one of the merriest sights of the war and redounds to the credit of human nature. Cigarettes are passed round by those who have, to those who have not, with a generosity that reminds one of nothing so much as that of the early Christians who "had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." You need never go hungry while others have food. Officers are welcome at every mess they go near, and privates will get food in the servants' kitchen or may go shares with the men in any billet. It may be a man's own fault that he took no food on the march, and his comrades may tell him so in plain strong language, but they will compel him to share what they have just the same.