A STUDENT IN ARMS
 
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 Student 
 In Arms 
 
 Br 
 DONALD HANKEY 
 
 ]$f 
 
 SIXTEENTH EDITION 
 
 LONDON: ANDREW MELROSE, LTD 
 3 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C 
 
 1917
 
 First edition April igi6 ; 
 Reprinted June, September, 
 October; twice in 
 November ; three times in 
 December; twice in 
 January igiy ; again in 
 March ; twice in May 
 1917, and in July 1917.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 In Memory of "A Student in Arms," 
 
 DONALD HANKEY. 
 
 Second Lieutenant (1st Royal Warwickshire Regiment. 
 Killed in Action on the Somme, October 12, 1916). 
 
 "His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest, 
 
 His name a great example stands, to show 
 How strangely high endeavours may be blest 
 When piety and valour jointly go." * 
 
 Readers of the Spectator will hear with deep 
 regret of the death of Lieutenant Donald Han- 
 key. In the papers written by him over the 
 signature of " A Student in Arms " they found 
 consolation, interest, and delight during the 
 autumn and winter of 1915 and the spring of this 
 year. He proved an inspired interpreter of the 
 private soldier. He was worthy to be named 
 liaison officer between the nation and its Army. 
 " A Student in Arms " died as he wished to die — 
 in action, on the Somme. 
 
 * Dryden, lines on the death of Cromwell. 
 
 5
 
 PREFACE 
 
 It is seldom desirable that an editor should 
 break away from that anonymity which is the 
 antiseptic of journalism, and strike a personal 
 note in regard either to himself or his contribu- 
 tors. I feel, however, that in this case my 
 readers will pardon me if I speak directly of this 
 brilliant member of my staff and own in plain 
 terms what I and they have lost. Though I am 
 sure it is wise that a rigid reticence in the region 
 of personal emotion should be the journalist's 
 rule, there are occasions when that rule must be 
 abandoned. Certainly it cannot be maintained 
 if I am to write of " A Student in Arms," for 
 towards him I had come to entertain the feelings 
 of a brother. 
 
 I looked with love and admiration on his 
 genius, for genius it was in the true sense — an 
 inspiring spirit, an invisible flame that burnt in 
 the man like a lamp, a lamp lit by the hand of 
 God. In spite of a certain fierceness of soul, and 
 a disposition to an occasional outbreak of some- 
 thing which one might almost call waywardness 
 of judgment, he was at heart one of the most 
 reasonable, and indeed humble-minded men I 
 have ever known. I used sometimes, though 
 sharing to the full his admiration of the private 
 soldier, to be amused at the way in which he 
 looked upon his friends in the ranks. It was 
 almost a case of a tigress and her cubs. Yet, 
 in spite of that, when I sent him back some 
 articles in which I thought he went too far in his 
 
 6
 
 PREFACE 
 
 chastening of the bad or indifferent type of 
 officer, and had given an impression — or shall I 
 say was in danger of giving an impression ? — 
 which would have been unfair to our officers as 
 a whole, he took my point at once and generously 
 and openly admitted that he was wrong. The 
 result was the admirable article on " The Good 
 Side of * Militarism ' "—published on September 
 2 — which was perhaps one of the best things he 
 ever wrote. 
 
 Only ten or twelve days ago, and so only 
 a few days before his death, he returned me 
 a proof of the article on the soldier's atti- 
 tude towards religion, " Don't Worry." Surely 
 a nobler sermon was never preached. Read 
 in the light of his death on the Somme, every 
 word has a special meaning. It is a per- 
 sonal message. In his letter to me he spoke of 
 the pleasure which he felt at going back to the 
 trenches, and the opportunity he would have, as 
 he said, of testing once more in practice his 
 theories as to the fear of death, theories which he 
 had set forth in another article (soon to be 
 printed in these pages). When I read his words 
 I felt something of what the Quaker diarist felt 
 when he met Cromwell just before his end. The 
 Quaker tells us that " a waft of death went out 
 from him to me." Though I suppressed the 
 feeling as superstitious, as perhaps after all it 
 was, a waft of death seemed to come out to me 
 from the Student's letter. In any case, there
 
 PREFACE 
 
 was nothing in it but what was brave and chival- 
 rous, and what should quiet us in as noble an 
 expectation of death as ever soldier felt. 
 
 I shall cherish and keep green his memory as 
 long as I live, and, I hope, pass it on to those who 
 are most dear to me, for in this war he is one of 
 the men who have made an indelible impression 
 upon my mind. I do not believe the readers of 
 the Spectator will think me a pedant, or mis- 
 understand me, or wonder when I say that one 
 of the things I should like most to do, and shall 
 do if I live, is to put up in some place near my 
 home, on some spot facing a wide horizon of 
 English country, a memorial stone telling, with 
 the emblems of art and with a suitable inscrip- 
 tion, his name, his mission, and his death. It 
 should tell what he stood for, and what his life, 
 his teachings, and his death in the field meant to 
 one honoured by the opportunity of linking the 
 memory of a great-hearted soldier with the wav- 
 ing branches of the oak and ash, the blue dis- 
 tances of the hills, and the sweet airs of Heaven. 
 " A Student in Arms " was one of a family in 
 whom the roots of patriotism struck deep. His 
 eldest brother gave up his life for his country at 
 Paardeberg. Another brother is Colonel Sir 
 Maurice Hankey, Secretary of the War Council. 
 A third is an officer in a Territorial battalion. 
 These two, a married sister, and the sister who 
 was his constant adviser and sustainer in all his 
 work, have the priceless consolation of knowing 
 
 8
 
 PREFACE 
 
 that their brother laid down his life just as he had 
 always desired to lay it down. 
 
 Perhaps the best epitaph is that he was never 
 happy but in making other people happy. Cer- 
 tainly that was the effect of the book, A Student 
 in Arms, on all who took the trouble to under- 
 stand its meaning. There was a radiance of 
 happiness that came from it which I can only call 
 glorious. And yet no man sought to parade an 
 easy optimism less than he did. The notion of 
 his trying to write " an encouraging book " was, 
 I know, never in his mind. He wrote because of 
 the overmastering spirit within him, and thus his 
 work was happy and made for happiness. It 
 was " blessed," and so was he who wrote it, in 
 what I am sure is the true meaning of the Sermon 
 on the Mount : " Blessed are the pure in heart, 
 for thev shall see God." To see God, to realize 
 God, must be the supreme happiness, and some- 
 thing of this he possessed because he was pure in 
 heart. By " pure in heart " who can doubt that 
 our Lord meant single-minded — the man who has 
 one clear purpose, who is not, like so many of us, 
 of mixed purposes ? Most of us in the abstract 
 want to do what is right, but we want to do it in 
 such a way that it will dovetail nicely in with the 
 mosaic of our lives, with our worldly and selfish 
 or purely utilitarian aims. We want to mix a 
 little or a good deal of this world with our other- 
 worldliness. Only the man who truly is " pure 
 in heart " is free from this taint of mixed motives. 
 
 9
 
 PREFACE 
 
 His one desire is the seeing of the Good and 
 following it. While he follows the Good in the 
 light of Truth, he— 
 
 " Is happy as a Lover ; and attired 
 With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired." 
 
 Assuredly "A Student in Arms" was the 
 " Happy Warrior " if ever there was one. He 
 did not seek the glory of arms, though he ob- 
 tained it. Still less did he seek the glory of 
 letters, though it is plain for all who have eyes to 
 see that it was his. He did seek the glory of 
 God, and it is his. He is now God's soldier. 
 
 I shall leave it to another hand at a future date 
 to tell the short and simple story of Lieutenant 
 Hankey's life. In one sense to have lived and 
 died a good man and a gallant soldier was all his 
 history. It might indeed be memorial enough 
 for him to say that " virtue filled the space be- 
 tween " and say no more. And yet his life was 
 eminently characteristic of the man, of his loving 
 heart, of his great independence of mind and 
 character, of his immeasurable kindliness, and 
 also of that desire to walk alone and untram- 
 melled which was almost stoical. The cry of his 
 soul, like that of the Stoic, was for liberty and for 
 light. But he had nothing in him of the Stoic's 
 aloofness or of his contracted heart. It was no 
 dinted scimitar that our gallant warrior wielded, 
 but a falchion bright and clear-shining like him- 
 self. " A Student in Arms " wanted the light 
 
 10
 
 PREFACE 
 
 and the liberty he sought, not for himself, not for 
 the selfish cultivation of his own soul, not to 
 create, like another Marcus Aurelius, a lonely, 
 secluded, cloistered, almost secret perfection of 
 the mind, but only that he might bring help and 
 freedom to those that sit in darkness. 
 
 Those who loved him will not regret that, in the 
 homely phrase of the soldiers he loved, he has 
 " gone over the top " never to return. Though 
 they have lost so much, they cannot deny that 
 there was something natural, almost inevitable, 
 in the end when it came. He had given the 
 message he was chaiged to deliver, and he wanted 
 to go forward again. Waiting behind the lines 
 at the Somme had become, as he told me, irk- 
 some to him, and I think, though he would not 
 have said so himself, for he had all the sensitive- 
 ness and perfect good breeding of the soldier- 
 saint, waiting behind the lines of life had also 
 begun to weary him. He was not only ready to 
 go, but was hastening to be gone. It is as selfish 
 to regret him or to wish him back as to try to 
 stop a friend from taking a well-earned holiday 
 merely because we desire to see more of him — 
 want him to wait while we work, and till we are 
 ready to go ourselves. We had no right to keep 
 him militant below when he had so fully earned 
 not merely his furlough but a full discharge. 
 The Editor of the ' w Spectator." 
 
 11
 
 AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 
 
 The articles which follow owe their exist- 
 ence mainly to two persons, of whom one 
 is the Editor of the Spectator and the other 
 is — not myself, at any rate. It was the 
 second who made me write them in the 
 beginning, and it was Mr. Strachey who, by 
 his constant encouragement and kindness, 
 constrained me to continue them. If there 
 is, as he says, any freshness and originality 
 in them, it is the result, not of literary 
 genius or care, but of an unusual point of 
 view, due to an unusual combination of 
 circumstances. So let them stand or 
 fall — not as the whole truth, but as an 
 aspect of the truth. In them fact and 
 fiction are mingled ; but to the writer 
 the fiction appears as true as the fact, for it 
 is typical of fact — at least in intention. 
 
 13
 
 AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 
 
 My thanks are due, not only to the 
 Editor of the Spectator who is godfather 
 to the whole collectively and to nearly 
 every article individually, but also to the 
 proprietors of the Westminster Gazette, to 
 whose courtesy I am obliged for permis- 
 sion to include " Kitchener's Army " and 
 " The Cockney Warrior." 
 
 14
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 In Memoriam .... 5 
 
 Author's Foreword . . .13 
 
 I " Kitchener's Army " . . .19 
 
 II An Experiment in Democracy . 25 
 
 III Discipline and Leadership . . 39 
 
 IV The Beloved Captain ... 59 
 V The Indignity of Labour . . 73 
 
 VI "The Cockney Warrior" . . 91 
 
 VII The Religion of the Inarticu- 
 late ..... 101 
 
 VIII Of Some who were Lost, and after- 
 ward were Found . . .119 
 
 IX An Englishman Philosophizes . 133 
 
 X An Englishman Prays. . . 149 
 
 XI The Army and the Universities : 
 
 A Study of Educational Values 159 
 15
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XII A Sense of the Dramatic . . 173 
 
 XIII A Book of Wisdom . . .185 
 
 XIV A Mobilization of the Church . 199 
 
 XV A Student, his Comrades, and his 
 
 Church 213 
 
 XVI Marching through France . . 225 
 
 XVII Flowers of Flanders . . . 241 
 
 XVIII The Honour of the Brigade . 251 
 
 XIX The Making of a Man . . 269 
 
 XX Heroes and Heroics . . . 283 
 
 XXI Appendix 297 
 
 16
 
 "KITCHENER'S ARMY 
 
 it 
 
 B
 
 "KITCHENER'S ARMY" 
 
 9? 
 
 " The New Army," " Kitchener's Army, 
 we go by many names. The older ser- 
 geants — men who have served in regular 
 battalions — sometimes call us " Kitch- 
 ener's Mob," and swear that to take us 
 to war would be another " Massacre of the 
 Innocents." At other times they affirm 
 that we are a credit to our instructors 
 (themselves) ; but such affirmations have 
 become rarer since beer went up to three- 
 pence a pint. 
 
 We are a mixed lot — a triumph of 
 democracy, like the Tubes. Some of us 
 have fifty years to our credit and only 
 own to thirty ; others are sixteen and 
 claim to be eighteen. Some of us enlisted 
 for glory, and some for fun, and a few 
 
 19
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 for fear of starvation. Some of us began 
 by being stout, and have lost weight ; 
 others were seedy and are filling out. 
 Some of us grumble, and go sick to escape 
 parades ; but for the most part we are 
 aggressively cheerful, and were never 
 fitter in our lives. Some miss their glass 
 of claret, others their fish-and-chips ; 
 but as we all sleep on the floor, and have 
 only one suit, which is rapidly becoming 
 very disreputable, you would never tell 
 t'other from which. 
 
 We sing as we march. Such songs 
 we sing ! All about coons and girls, 
 parodies of hymns, parodies about Kaiser 
 Bill, and sheer unadulterated nonsense. 
 We shall sing 
 
 " Where's yer girl ? 
 Ain't yer got none ? " 
 
 as we march into battle. 
 
 Battle ! Battle, murder and sudden 
 death ! Maiming, slaughter, blood, ex- 
 
 20
 
 KITCHENER'S ARMY" 
 
 tremities of fear and discomfort and 
 pain ! How incredibly remote all that 
 seems ! We don't believe in it really. 
 It is just a great game we are learning. 
 It is part of the game to make little 
 short rushes in extended order, to lie 
 on our bellies and keep our heads down, 
 snap our rifles and fix our bayonets. 
 Just a game, that's all, and then home 
 to tea. 
 
 Some of us think that these young 
 officers take the game a jolly sight too 
 seriously. Twice this week we have been 
 late for dinner, and once they routed us 
 out to play it at night. That was a bit 
 too thick ! The canteen was shut when 
 we got back and we missed our pint. 
 
 Anyhow we are Kitchener's Army, and 
 we are quite sure it will be all right. 
 Just send us to Flanders, and see if it 
 ain't. We're Kitchener's Army, and we 
 don't care if it snows ink ! 
 
 21
 
 AN EXPERIMENT IN 
 DEMOCRACY
 
 II 
 
 AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 The unprecedented had occurred. For 
 once a national ideal had proved stronger 
 than class prejudice. In this matter of 
 the war all classes were at one — at one 
 not only in sentiment but in practical 
 resolve. The crowd that surged outside 
 the central recruiting offices in Great 
 Scotland Yard was the proof of it. All 
 classes were there, struggling for the 
 privilege of enlisting in the new citizen 
 Army, conscious of their unity, and deter- 
 mined to give effect to it in the common 
 life of service. It was an extraordinary 
 crowd. Workmen were there in cord 
 breeches and subfusc coats ; boys from 
 the East End in the latest fashions from 
 Petticoat Lane ; clerks and shop-assis- 
 
 25
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 tants in sober black ; mechanics in blue 
 serge and bowler hats ; travellers in the 
 garments of prosperity ; and most con- 
 spicuously well dressed of all, gentlemen 
 in their oldest clothes. It was like a 
 section cut out of the nation. 
 
 Men and boys of the working class 
 formed the majority. They were in their 
 element, shouting, singing, cheeking the 
 " coppers " with as much ribald good 
 humour as if the recruiting office had 
 been a music-hall. But some of the 
 other classes were far less at their ease. 
 They had been brought up from earliest 
 youth to thank God that they were not 
 as other men, to set store by the innumer- 
 able little marks that distinguished them 
 from " the lower classes." All these they 
 were now sacrificing to an idea, and they 
 felt horribly embarrassed. Even the 
 gentleman, who had prided himself on 
 his freedom from " the snobbishness of 
 the suburbs," felt ill at ease. Of course 
 
 26
 
 AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 he had been to working men's clubs ; 
 but there he had been " Mr. Thingumy." 
 Here he was " mate." He told himself 
 that he did not mind being " mate," in 
 fact he rather liked it ; but he fervently- 
 wished that he looked the part. He felt 
 as self-conscious as if he had arrived at 
 a dinner party in a Norfolk jacket. A 
 little later on, when he sat, one of four 
 nude men, in a cubicle awaiting medical 
 inspection, he did feel that for the moment 
 they had all been reduced to the common 
 denominator of their sheer humanity ; 
 but embarrassment returned with his 
 clothes and stayed with him all through 
 the march to the station and the journey 
 to the depot. 
 
 . At the depot he fought for the prize of 
 a verminous blanket, and six foot of 
 floor to lie on. When he awoke the next 
 morning his clothes were creased and 
 dirty, his collar so filthy that it had to 
 be discarded, and his chin unshaven, 
 
 27
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 He perceived with something of a shock 
 that he was no longer conspicuous. He 
 was no more than the seedy unit of 
 a seedy crowd. In any other circum- 
 stances he would have been disgusted. 
 As it was, he sought the canteen at the 
 earliest opportunity and toasted the Unity 
 of the Classes in a pint ! 
 
 All emerged from the depot clothed 
 exactly alike, and meditated on the sym- 
 bolism of clothes. They donned the grey 
 shirt and ready-made khaki of the new 
 era, and deposited the emblems of class 
 distinction on a common rag-heap. Even 
 the perfunctory manner of the Q.M.S. 
 could not rob the occasion of an almost 
 religious solemnity. It was the formal 
 beginning of a new life, in which men 
 of all classes, starting with something 
 like equality of opportunity, should gain 
 what pre-eminence they might by the 
 merit of their inherent manhood or the 
 seduction of their native tact. Hence- 
 
 28
 
 AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 forward all fared alike. All ate the same 
 food, slept on the same floor in similar 
 blankets, and in their shirts. Even the 
 pyjama no longer divided them ! All 
 took their share in scrubbing floors and 
 washing dixies ; and until the novelty- 
 wore off even these menial and dirty jobs 
 caught a certain glamour from the great 
 ideal which they symbolized. Gradually 
 all found their level. The plausible were 
 promoted, found wanting, reduced, and 
 replaced by the men of real grit and 
 force of character. Mechanics joined the 
 machine-gun section, clerks became order- 
 lies, signallers, or telephonists. The dirtiest 
 and most drunken of the old soldiers 
 were relegated to the cookhouse. Equality 
 of opportunity had been granted, and 
 the inequality of man had been demon- 
 strated. It was found that the best 
 formula, after all, was that of St. Paul : 
 " Diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." 
 Of course it was not a perfect democracy 
 
 29
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 because of the existence of the super-class, 
 the officer. He is really an offence against 
 democracy. He is what he is by Divine 
 right, whether of property or of family 
 influence. He is above the democratic 
 law of the promotion of the fittest and 
 the reduction of the incompetent. His 
 position is, from the point of view of 
 this article, an anomaly, and is only 
 rendered possible by the survival in the 
 army of democracy of the ancient religion 
 of the army of aristocracy. 
 
 This ancient religion is called " Military 
 Discipline." Like other religions, it has 
 its mysteries, its hierarchy, its dogmas 
 and its ritual. We are only concerned 
 with the last two. Both relate to the 
 status of the officer. The dogmas define 
 his position, and the ritual symbolizes 
 it. As in other religions of authority, 
 the dogmas are not required to square 
 absolutely with facts, nor is more than a 
 formal acquiescence demanded from the 
 
 30
 
 AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 faithful. For example, it is a dogma 
 that the officer alone possesses common 
 sense. But it has happened that an 
 individual officer has been lacking in 
 this gift, whereas the sergeant has pos- 
 sessed it. In such circumstances an 
 officer may borrow his sergeant's common 
 sense, and religion is satisfied so long as 
 only the officer exercises it. An officer 
 may even borrow common sense from a 
 private provided that it is done through 
 the medium of an N.C.O. Another dogma 
 is that only officers can think. To safe- 
 guard this dogma from ridicule it is 
 necessary that the men should be pre- 
 vented from thinking. Their attention is 
 to be fully occupied with such mechani- 
 cal operations as the polishing of their 
 buttons, in order that the officer may 
 think without fear of contradiction. In 
 war, however, if all the officers are killed, 
 the sergeants may think, and if they are 
 killed the corporals may think, and so 
 
 31
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 on ; but this is a relaxation of strict 
 orthodoxy, a concession to the logic of 
 facts which must only be permitted in 
 extreme circumstances. The ritual of 
 this religion will be found in the official 
 manuals. This account of the super- 
 class may sound a little bitter. It is not 
 intended to be so. Most ^officers of the 
 citizen Army have had an education in 
 scepticism, and possess a sense of humour. 
 They are such good sportsmen that no 
 one minds performing the ritual for their 
 benefit ; and as often as not they accept 
 it in the spirit in which it is given. 
 
 In due course the citizen Army reached 
 the front. Now the front may be divided 
 into two parts, the trenches and the rest 
 camps. In the trenches the real white 
 man finally and conclusively comes to 
 his own. The worm, no matter how 
 exalted his rank, automatically ceases 
 to count. The explanation of this pheno- 
 menon is very simple. In the moment 
 
 32
 
 AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 of crisis the white man is always on the 
 spot, while the worm is always in his 
 dug-out. The rest camp, on the other 
 hand, exists for the restoration of the 
 status quo ante. It is the trench failure's 
 opportunity to reassert himself. There 
 the officer or N.C.O. who has lost prestige 
 by his devotion to his dug-out regains 
 it by the repetition of the ritual ; and 
 the private who has done ten men's 
 work in repairing the trenches under 
 fire is awarded an hour's extra drill for 
 failing to cut away the left hand smartly. 
 So is the damaged religion of the Army 
 restored. In the rest camp, too, the 
 shirker among the men raises again his 
 diminished head, and comes out strong 
 as a grumbler and, until his mates be- 
 come unpleasantly reminiscent, a boaster. 
 On the whole, though, actual experi- 
 ence of war brings the best men to the 
 fore, and the best qualities of the average 
 man. Officers and men are welded into 
 
 83 c
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 a closer comradeship by dangers and 
 discomforts shared. They learn to trust 
 each other, and to look for the essential 
 qualities rather than for the accidental 
 graces. One learns to love men for their 
 great hearts, their pluck, their indomit- 
 able spirits, their irrepressible humour, 
 their readiness to shoulder a weaker 
 brother's burden in addition to their 
 own. One sees men as God sees them, 
 apart from externals such as manner 
 and intonation. A night in a bombing 
 party shows you Jim Smith as a man 
 of splendid courage. A shortage of rations 
 reveals his wonderful unselfishness. One 
 danger and discomfort after another you 
 share in common till you love him as a 
 brother. Out there, if any one dared to 
 remind you that Jim was only a fireman 
 while you were a bank clerk, you would 
 give him one in the eye to go on with. 
 You have learnt to know a man when you 
 see one, and to value him. 
 
 34
 
 AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 When the war is over, and the men of 
 the citizen Army return to their homes 
 and their civil occupations, will they, I 
 wonder, remember the things that they 
 have learnt ? If so, there will be a new 
 and better England for our children. 
 One would like to prophesy great things. 
 In those days great talkers and boasters 
 shall be of no account, for men shall 
 remember that in the hour of danger 
 they were wanting. In those days there 
 shall be no more petty strife between 
 class and class, for all shall have learnt 
 that they are one nation, and that they 
 must seek the nation's good before their 
 own. In those days men shall no longer 
 pride themselves on their riches, or on 
 the material possessions which distinguish 
 them from their brethren, for they shall 
 have learnt that it is the qualities of the 
 heart which are of real value. Men shall 
 be prized for their courage, their honesty, 
 their charity, their practical ability. In 
 
 35
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 those days there shall be no false pride, 
 for all have lived hardly, all have done 
 dirty and menial work, all have wielded 
 pick and spade, and have counted it no 
 dishonour but rather glory to do so. In 
 those days charity and brotherly love 
 shall prevail mightily, for all shall have 
 learnt mutual understanding and respect. 
 Would that it might be so ! But perhaps 
 it is more likely that the lessons will be 
 forgotten, and that men will slip back 
 into the old grooves. Much depends on 
 the women of England. If they carefully 
 guard the ancient ruts against our return, 
 and if their gentle ringers press us back 
 into them, we shall acquiesce ; but if at 
 this hour of crisis they too have seen a 
 wider vision of national unity, and learnt 
 a more catholic charity, the future is 
 indeed radiant with hope. 
 
 36
 
 DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP
 
 Ill 
 
 DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 
 
 I once met, in an obscure corner of the 
 world, a young priest of the Roman 
 Church who confessed to me quite openly 
 that he was a complete sceptic. He 
 thought, it seemed, that, though the 
 Church had played a necessary and useful 
 part in the development of mankind, 
 the time was very near when its function 
 in history would have been fulfilled, and 
 that it would then share the fate of all 
 obsolete institutions. It was obviously 
 a great relief to him to say this to any 
 one who mattered as little as myself, 
 and whom he was never likely to meet 
 again ; but my reception of his confession 
 astonished him almost as much as his 
 confession had startled me. Of course 
 
 39
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 what shocked me was that, holding the 
 opinions that he did, he should remain 
 a priest. I felt that his position must 
 be an intolerable and humiliating one, 
 and I immediately offered to help him to 
 make a fresh start in some other profes- 
 sion, where he could regain his self-respect. 
 He thanked me, but coolly informed 
 me that the training which a clergyman 
 received in the Roman Church and the 
 mechanism which he had to use were 
 so perfect that the individual views of 
 the priest did not matter in the least. 
 He himself was perfectly able and content 
 to carry on his work without believing 
 in it, and in many ways it was work that 
 suited him. He understood my amaze- 
 ment. He agreed that in the Reformed 
 Churches such a course would be impos- 
 sible. There the training of the clergy 
 was so inadequate, and the science of 
 souls so little systematized, that every- 
 thing depended on the sincerity of the 
 
 40
 
 DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 
 
 individual minister ; but he assured me 
 that in the Roman Church it was not so. 
 
 I do not for one moment suggest that 
 this young priest was in the smallest 
 degree typical of the Roman priesthood ; 
 but I can see his point — that where the 
 discipline is strong and procedure stereo- 
 typed the strain on the individual leader 
 is very greatly reduced. I have often 
 thought of this point since I enlisted in 
 " Kitchener's Army." Indeed, the dif- 
 ference between the old and new Armies 
 is not at all unlike the difference between 
 the Roman and Reformed Churches. 
 
 In the old Regular Army it has always 
 been recognized that all officers and 
 N.C.O.'s could not be expected to be born 
 leaders of men. The whole system of 
 military discipline has been built up with 
 a view to relieving the strain on the 
 individual. The officer's authority is 
 carefully guarded by an elaborate system 
 designed to give him prestige. He is a 
 
 41
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 man apart. He does not mix with the 
 men under his command. They may not 
 even approach him directly, but only 
 through the medium of an N.C.O. He 
 is always something of an unknown 
 quantity to them, and omne ignotum 
 pro magnifico. The N.C.O. is protected 
 by the machinery of discipline. His 
 authority is made to depend as little as 
 possible on his own force of character. 
 He exercises an authority which is vested 
 in the whole body of officers and N.C.O. 's 
 throughout the Army. The smallest piece 
 of impertinence offered to the most junior 
 lance-corporal is, if he likes to make it 
 so, an offence against the discipline of 
 the whole battalion, even of the whole 
 Army, and is punishable as such. He too 
 has to be as far as possible a man apart. 
 He must not have friends among the 
 private soldiers, nor be seen in their com- 
 pany. When he receives his promotion 
 first, he is generally transferred from one 
 
 42
 
 DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 
 
 company to another. In fact the Regular 
 Army is a magnificent example of the 
 efficiency of discipline. 
 
 Theoretically the " New Army " is 
 under the same law as the old, the 
 standard of discipline as high, and the 
 method of enforcing it identical. But 
 as a matter of fact it is quite impossible 
 to enforce such a system in practice. 
 In a Regular battalion the tradition, 
 when once established and accepted, is 
 handed down automatically. The re- 
 cruits arrive in small batches, and have 
 to adapt themselves to the conditions 
 which they find to be already in existence. 
 If a recruit fails to adapt himself, he is 
 heavily punished, and his life made a 
 burden to him. He has sold himself 
 to his country for a term of years, and 
 his feelings do not have to be considered. 
 He is either "made or broken"— and 
 that is the very phrase which my priest 
 used to describe his training at the 
 
 43
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 seminary. Discipline can be enforced 
 because there is always a majority which 
 has already been inured to it, and an 
 executive of N.C.O.'s who have it bred in 
 the bone. But in a battalion of the New 
 Army the conditions are w r holly different. 
 The vast majority both of the N.C.O.'s 
 and men are, at the time of formation, 
 recruits. They are quite new to dis- 
 cipline, and full of pernicious civilian 
 ideas about " liberty " and " the rights 
 of man." Even if it were possible to 
 enforce discipline by rigorous punishment, 
 such a course would be inadvisable. 
 Recruiting depends for its success very 
 largely on the reports of men newly 
 enlisted as to how they are treated. As 
 long as we have to obtain the largest 
 possible number of recruits in the shortest 
 possible time, the goodwill of the men 
 already enlisted is a primary consideration, 
 and discipline must be tempered with tact. 
 The net result is that a greatly increased 
 
 44
 
 DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 
 
 strain is thrown on the individual leader. 
 To some extent this applies to all ranks ; 
 but it is more especially true of the section 
 leader. The commissioned officer, even 
 in the citizen Army, has a good deal of 
 prestige as long as he does not give it 
 away. He appears, by virtue of his 
 immunity from manual work and com- 
 petition, his superior dress and standard 
 of living, to be a higher sort of being 
 altogether. The senior N.C.O. also has 
 a prestige of his own, due to the fact that 
 he is usually an ex- Regular, and has an 
 intimate knowledge of his job, and the 
 manner of one who is accustomed to be 
 obeyed. But the young lance-corporal 
 who is put in charge of a section has 
 absolutely no prestige. A few weeks since 
 he was a recruit himself. Of the work 
 he knows little more than the men. He 
 lives and sleeps and messes with them. 
 They know all his faults and weaknesses 
 a great deal better than he does himself. 
 
 45
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 They are inclined to be jealous of him, 
 and have no respect for him except what 
 he can inspire by his inherent force of 
 character. To a great extent he is depen- 
 dent on their goodwill. They can cover 
 his deficiencies or emphasize them as they 
 like. If he tries to establish his authority 
 by reporting them, he can by no means 
 count on the sure support of his superiors. 
 Unless they have a very high opinion of 
 him, they will be quite likely to conclude 
 that he is more bother than he is worth, 
 and reduce him to the ranks. In fact, 
 if one wants to study the conditions of 
 sheer natural leadership, one can hardly 
 choose a better subject than the average 
 section leader in a " service battalion." 
 
 Of course the types vary enormously. 
 At first it is generally the men who want 
 promotion that obtain the stripe, and 
 they mostly belong to one of two classes. 
 They are either ambitious youngsters or 
 blustering bullies. The youngster who 
 
 46
 
 DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 
 
 wants promotion has probably been a 
 clerk and lived in a suburb. He is better 
 educated and has a smarter appearance 
 than the general run of the men. He 
 covets the stripe because he wants to 
 get out of the many menial and dirty 
 jobs incidental to barrack life ; because 
 he thinks himself " a cut above " his 
 fellows and wants the fact to be recog- 
 nized ; because, in short, he thinks that 
 as a lance-corporal he will find life easier 
 and more flattering to his self-esteem. 
 He soon finds his mistake. He annoys 
 the sergeant-major by his incompetence 
 and the men by his superior airs. Soon 
 he gets into a panic and begins to nag at 
 the men. That is just what they hate. 
 The whole situation reminds one of no- 
 thing so much as of a terrier barking at a 
 herd of cows. As soon as the cows turn 
 on him the terrier begins to waver, and, 
 after trying to maintain his dignity by 
 continuing to bark, ends by fleeing for 
 
 47
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 dear life with his tail between his legs. 
 So the young lance-corporal begins by 
 hectoring the men, and, having roused 
 them to a fury of irritation, ends by abject 
 entreaty. Finally he is reduced to the 
 ranks. The career of the bully is dif- 
 ferent. He is generally a vulgar, pushing 
 fellow, who likes boasting and threaten- 
 ing, likes to feel that men are afraid of 
 him, likes to be flattered by toadies, and 
 likes getting men punished. The men 
 hate him ; but he sometimes manages 
 to bluff the officers and sergeants into 
 thinking that he is a " smart N.C.O." 
 Usually he comes to a bad end, either 
 through drink or gambling. When he 
 is reduced to the ranks his lot is not an 
 enviable one. 
 
 A deplorable number of those who are 
 first promoted finish by forfeiting their 
 stripe. Then comes the turn of the man 
 who does not covet rank for its own sake, 
 but accepts it because he thinks that it 
 
 48
 
 DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 
 
 is "up to him " to do so. Generally he 
 is a man of few words and much character. 
 He gives an order. The man who receives 
 it begins to argue : it is not his turn, 
 he has only just finished another job, 
 and so on. The N.C.O. looks at him, 
 and repeats : " Git on and do it." The 
 man " curls up," and does as he is told. 
 An N.C.O. of this sort is popular. He 
 saves any amount of wear and tear, and 
 this is appreciated by the men. He gets 
 things done, and that is appreciated by 
 the sergeants and officers. 
 
 Finally, there is the gentleman, who 
 is the most interesting of all from our 
 point of view. He is generally a thor- 
 oughly bad disciplinarian in the official 
 sense, and at the same time he is often 
 a magnificent leader of men. He is fair 
 and disinterested. He has a certain pres- 
 tige through being rather incomprehen- 
 sible to the average private. He does 
 not care a scrap for his rank. He is 
 
 49 D
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 impervious to the fear of losing it. He 
 takes it from a sense of duty, and his one 
 idea is to get things done with as little 
 friction as possible. He often succeeds 
 in gaining the confidence of his men, so 
 that they will work for him as for no 
 one else. But, on the other hand, his 
 methods are apt to be quite unorthodox, 
 and highly prejudicial to the cause of 
 discipline as a whole. His authority is 
 so personal that it is very hard for an 
 ordinary N.C.O. to take his place. 
 
 A man of this sort was given the stripe 
 while his battalion was in a rest camp in 
 Flanders, and was put in charge of a 
 section which was quite new to him. It 
 was a very uncomfortable camp, and 
 there were endless tiresome fatigues to 
 be done. The men, who had just come 
 out of the trenches, and had been looking 
 forward to a comparatively easy and 
 luxurious time, were in the worst of 
 tempers. The lance-corporal did his best. 
 
 50
 
 DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 
 
 He tried to be scrupulously fair, and to 
 put each man on fatigue in his turn ; 
 but the men were " out for a row." In 
 the afternoon he entered the hut, and 
 detailed one of the worst grumblers for 
 a fatigue. The man started to grumble, 
 and made no sign of moving. The cor- 
 poral took out his watch and announced 
 that if he did not go in two minutes he 
 would " put him on the peg," which 
 means report him to the captain for 
 refusing to obey an order. The man was 
 defiant, and remarked that that was all 
 ' lance- jacks " were for, to get men into 
 trouble, and that they could not stand 
 up to a fellow as man to man. This was 
 a peculiarly subtle taunt, because of 
 course it would mean instant reduction 
 if an N.C.O. were found fighting with a 
 man. In the interests of discipline, the 
 offender ought to have been made a 
 prisoner at once. This course, however, 
 did not commend itself to the corporal. 
 
 51
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 He was the sort of man who, if he could 
 only maintain his authority by such 
 means, would rather resign it. He put 
 back his watch ; explained for the benefit 
 of the audience that it was this man's 
 turn, that he was not an N.C.O. for his 
 own amusement, and that it gave him no 
 pleasure to get men into trouble ; and 
 finally ended up by inviting the man to 
 step outside there and then and see 
 whether or no he would stand up to him. 
 The man collapsed and did as he was 
 ordered, and the lance-corporal was well 
 on his way to winning the respect of his 
 section ; but of course he had committed 
 a dire offence against military discipline. 
 If I am not mistaken, it was the same 
 N.C.O. who, a few days later, was guilty 
 of a similar neglect of duty in the trenches. 
 It was at night, and the trench had been 
 badly damaged by shell-fire during the 
 afternoon. It was necessary to build up 
 the parapet, and owing to the sodden 
 
 52
 
 DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 
 
 nature of the ground it was not possible 
 to take any more earth from the floor 
 of the trench. In order to fill the sand- 
 bags required, some one had to get out of 
 the trench at the back and dig in the 
 open field. The corporal detailed a man 
 for the job, and the man flatly refused to 
 go. He had not been out long ; his 
 nerves had been shaken by the shell-fire 
 that afternoon ; he did not like the idea 
 of going out into the open ; he was 
 afraid that when the flares went up the 
 Germans would see him ; he was afraid 
 of the rain of random bullets which always 
 falls at night. Of course he ought to 
 have been put under arrest, and tried 
 for (1) cowardice in the face of the enemy, 
 and (2) refusing to obey an order. His 
 punishment might have been " death " 
 or " any less penalty." The corporal 
 knew that there was very little real 
 danger. He looked at the man con- 
 temptuously, and went and did the job 
 
 53
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 himself. He had not been at it more 
 than two minutes when the boy — for he 
 was little more — came and joined him. 
 
 This N.C.O. certainly gained the respect 
 and confidence of his men, and there is 
 no possession better worth having from 
 the point of view of the individual ; but 
 his authority was purely personal, and 
 on the whole bad for discipline. He was 
 to realize it a little later. An officer, who 
 was in charge of a big working party, 
 called for two volunteers to accompany 
 a corporal in stalking a German sniper. 
 Not a man volunteered. After some 
 minutes, during which the officer appealed 
 and rated in vain, a boy came up to this 
 N.C.O. and asked : " Who's the corporal 
 that's going ? " The N.C.O. replied that 
 he didn't know. " Oh," said the boy, 
 with obvious disappointment, "if it had 
 been you I would have volunteered." 
 For the corporal it was at once his reward 
 and his condemnation. He realized then 
 
 54
 
 DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 
 
 that though it is a fine thing when men 
 trust their leader and will follow him 
 anywhere, it is a still finer thing when 
 they will stand by any leader, whether 
 they know him or not ; and this last is 
 the fruit of perfect discipline. 
 
 55
 
 THE BELOVED CAPTAIN
 
 IV 
 
 THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 
 
 He came in the early days, when we 
 were still at recruit drills under the hot 
 September sun. Tall, erect, smiling : so 
 we first saw him, and so he remained to 
 the end. At the start he knew as little 
 of soldiering as we did. He used to 
 watch us being drilled by the sergeant ; 
 but his manner of watching was peculiarly 
 his own. He never looked bored. He 
 was learning just as much as we were, 
 in fact more. He was learning his job, 
 and from the first he saw that his job 
 was more than to give the correct orders. 
 His job was to lead us. So he watched, 
 and noted many things, and never found 
 the time hang heavy on his hands. He 
 watched our evolutions, so as to learn 
 
 59
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 the correct orders ; he watched for the 
 right manner of command, the manner 
 which secured the most prompt response 
 to an order ; and he watched every one 
 of us for our individual characteristics. 
 We were his men. Already he took an 
 almost paternal interest in us. He noted 
 the men who tried hard, but were natur- 
 ally slow and awkward. He distin- 
 guished them from those who were in- 
 attentive and bored. He marked down 
 the keen and efficient amongst us. Most 
 of all he studied those who were subject 
 to moods, who were sulky one day and 
 willing the next. These were the ones 
 who were to turn the scale. If only he 
 could get these on his side, the battle 
 would be won. 
 
 For a few days he just watched. Then 
 he started work. He picked out some 
 of the most awkward ones, and, accom- 
 panied by a corporal, marched them 
 away by themselves. Ingenuously he 
 
 60
 
 THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 
 
 explained that he did not know much 
 himself yet ; but he thought that they 
 might get on better if they drilled by 
 themselves a bit, and that if he helped 
 them, and they helped him, they would 
 soon learn. His confidence was infectious. 
 He looked at them, and they looked at 
 him, and the men pulled themselves to- 
 gether and determined to do their best. 
 Their best surprised themselves. His 
 patience was inexhaustible. His simpli- 
 city could not fail to be understood. His 
 keenness and optimism carried all with 
 them. Very soon the awkward squad 
 found themselves awkward no longer ; 
 and soon after that they ceased to 
 be a squad, and went back to the pla- 
 toon. 
 
 Then he started to drill the platoon, 
 with the sergeant standing by to point 
 out his mistakes. Of course he made 
 mistakes, and when that happened he 
 never minded admitting it. He would 
 
 61
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 explain what mistakes he had made, and 
 try again. The result was that we began 
 to take almost as much interest and pride 
 in Ms progress as he did in ours. We 
 were his men, and he was our leader. We 
 felt that he was a credit to us, and we 
 resolved to be a credit to him. There 
 was a bond of mutual confidence and 
 affection between us, which grew stronger 
 and stronger as the months passed. He 
 had a smile for almost every one ; but we 
 thought that he had a different smile for 
 us. We looked for it, and were never 
 disappointed. On parade, as long as we 
 were trying, his smile encouraged us. 
 Off parade, if we passed him and saluted, 
 his eyes looked straight into our own, and 
 his smile greeted us. It was a wonderful 
 thing, that smile of Ms. It was sometMng 
 worth living for, and worth working for. 
 It bucked one up when one was bored or 
 tired. It seemed to make one look at 
 things from a different point of view, a 
 
 62
 
 THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 
 
 finer point of view, his point of view. 
 There was nothing feeble or weak about 
 it. It was not monotonous like the smile 
 of " Sunny Jim." It meant something. 
 It meant that we were his men, and that 
 he was proud of us, and sure that we were 
 going to do jolly well — better than any 
 of the other platoons. And it made us 
 determine that we would. When we 
 failed him, when he was disappointed in 
 us, he did not smile. He did not rage or 
 curse. He just looked disappointed, and 
 that made us feel far more savage with 
 ourselves than any amount of swearing 
 would have done. He made us feel that 
 we were not playing the game by him. It 
 was not what he said. He was never 
 very good at talking. It was just how 
 he looked. And his look of displeasure 
 and disappointment was a thing that we 
 would do anything to avoid. The fact 
 was that he had won his way into our 
 affections. We loved him. And there 
 
 63
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 isn't anything stronger than love, when 
 all's said and done. 
 
 He was good to look on. He was big 
 and tall, and held himself upright. His 
 eyes looked his own height. He moved 
 with the grace of an athlete. His skin 
 was tanned by a wholesome outdoor life, 
 and his eyes were clear and wide open. 
 Physically he was a prince among men. 
 We used to notice, as we marched along 
 the road and passed other officers, that 
 they always looked pleased to see him. 
 They greeted him with a cordiality which 
 was reserved for him. Even the general 
 seemed to have singled him out, and cast 
 an eye of special approval upon him. 
 Somehow, gentle though he was, he was 
 never familiar. He had a kind of innate 
 nobility which marked him out as above 
 us. He was not democratic. He was 
 rather the justification for aristocracy. 
 We all knew instinctively that he was 
 our superior — a man of finer temper than 
 
 64
 
 THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 
 
 ourselves, a " toff " in his own right. I 
 suppose that that was why he could be so 
 humble without loss of dignity. For he 
 was humble, too, if that is the right word, 
 and I think it is. No trouble of ours was 
 too small for him to attend to. When we 
 started route marches, for instance, and 
 our feet were blistered and sore, as they 
 often were at first, you would have thought 
 that they were his own feet from the 
 trouble he took. Of course after the 
 march [there was always an inspection of 
 feet. That is the routine. But with him 
 it was no mere routine. He came into 
 our rooms, and if any one had a sore foot 
 he would kneel down on the floor and look 
 at it as carefully as if he had been a 
 doctor. Then he would prescribe, and 
 the remedies were ready at hand, being 
 borne by the sergeant. If a blister had 
 to be lanced he would very likely lance it 
 himself there and then, so as to make 
 sure that it was done with a clean needle 
 
 65 e
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 and that no dirt was allowed to get in. 
 There was no affectation about this, no 
 striving after effect. It was simply that 
 he felt that our feet were pretty important, 
 and that he knew that we were pretty 
 careless. So he thought it best at the 
 start to see to the matter himself. Never- 
 theless, there was in our eyes something 
 almost religious about this care for our 
 feet. It seemed to have a touch of the 
 Christ about it, and we loved and hon- 
 oured him the more. 
 
 We knew that we should lose him. For 
 one thing, we knew that he would be 
 promoted. It was our great hope that 
 some day he would command the com- 
 pany. Also we knew that he would be 
 killed. He was so amazingly unself -con- 
 scious. For that reason we knew that 
 he would be absolutely fearless. He would 
 be so keen on the job in hand, and so 
 anxious for his men, that he would forget 
 about his own danger. So it proved. He 
 
 66
 
 THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 
 
 was a captain when we went out to the 
 
 front. Whenever there [was a tiresome job 
 
 to be done, he was there in charge. If 
 
 ever there were a moment of danger, he 
 
 was on the spot. If there were any 
 
 particular part of the line where the shells 
 
 were falling faster or the bombs dropping 
 
 more thickly than in other parts, he was 
 
 in it. It was not that he was conceited 
 
 and imagined himself indispensable. It 
 
 was just that he was so keen that the 
 
 men should do their best, and act worthily 
 
 of the regiment. He knew that fellows 
 
 hated turning out at night for fatigue, 
 
 when they were in a " rest camp." He 
 
 knew how tiresome the long march there 
 
 and back and the digging in the dark 
 
 for an unknown purpose were. He knew 
 
 that fellows would be inclined to grouse 
 
 and shirk, so he thought that it was up 
 
 to him to go and show them that he 
 
 thought it was a job worth doing. And 
 
 the fact that he was there put a new 
 
 67
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 complexion on the matter altogether. No 
 one would shirk if he were there. No 
 one would grumble so much, either. What 
 was good enough for him was good enough 
 for us. If it were not too much trouble 
 for him to turn out, it was not too much 
 trouble for us. He knew, too, how trying 
 to the nerves it is to sit in a trench and 
 be shelled. He knew what a temptation 
 there is to move a bit farther down the 
 trench and herd together in a bunch at 
 what seems the safest end. He knew, too, 
 the folly of it, and that it was not the 
 thing to do — not done in the best regi- 
 ments. So he went along to see that it 
 did not happen, to see that the men stuck 
 to their posts, and conquered their nerves. 
 And as soon as we saw him we forgot 
 our own anxiety. It was : " Move a bit 
 farther down, sir. We are all right here ; 
 but don't you go exposing of yourself." 
 We didn't matter. We knew it then. 
 We were just the rank and file, bound to 
 
 68
 
 THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 
 
 take risks. The company would get along 
 all right without us. But the captain, 
 how was the company to get on without 
 him ? To see him was to catch his point 
 of view, to forget our personal anxieties, 
 and only to think of the company, and 
 the regiment, and honour. 
 
 There was not one of us but would 
 gladly have died for him. We longed 
 for the chance to show him that. We 
 weren't heroes. We never dreamed about 
 the V.C. But to save the captain we 
 would have earned it ten times over, and 
 never have cared a button whether we 
 got it or not. We never got the chance, 
 worse luck. It was all the other way. 
 We were holding some trenches which 
 were about as unhealthy as trenches 
 could be. The Bosches were only a few 
 yards away, and were well supplied with 
 trench mortars. We hadn't got any at 
 that time. Bombs and air torpedoes were 
 dropping round us all day. Of course 
 
 |69
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 the captain was there. It seemed as if 
 he could not keep away. A torpedo fell 
 into the trench, and buried some of our 
 chaps. The fellows next to them ran to 
 dig them out. Of course he was one of 
 the first. Then came another torpedo 
 in the same place. That was the end. 
 
 But he lives. Somehow he lives. And 
 we who knew him do not forget. We 
 feel his eyes on us. We still work for 
 that wonderful smile of his. There are 
 not many of the old lot left now ; but I 
 think that those who went West have 
 seen him. When they got to the other 
 side I think they were met. Some One 
 said :' " Well done, good and faithful 
 servant." And as they knelt before that 
 gracious pierced Figure, I reckon they saw 
 near by the captain's smile. Anyway, in 
 that faith let me die, if death should come 
 my way ; and so, I think, shall I die 
 content. 
 
 70
 
 THE INDIGNITY OF LABOUR
 
 V 
 
 THE INDIGNITY OF LABOUR 
 
 I once heard Mr. Ramsay MacDonald 
 hold forth on the glories of the ideal 
 socialistic state. In a spirit of exalted 
 prophecy he told how in that state there 
 would be no tyranny, no strife, no crime, 
 no private property. Men would no longer 
 work for sordid gain, but for the sheer joy 
 of labour. " Do vou believe that ? " 
 shouted a man in the audience. " Of 
 course he does ! " cried a little old [man 
 just in front of me. " Haven't I done it 
 all my life ? " But the majority of the 
 audience were with the doubter. To them 
 the idea of working for sheer joy was incom- 
 prehensible. They worked because they 
 had to ; because they would starve if 
 they did not. If you examine the speeches 
 
 73
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 and writings of men more truly representa- 
 tive of labour than Mr. MacDonald you 
 will find that this is their idea too. They 
 have little to say of the dignity of labour, 
 and much about its indignity. Their 
 ideal is not the apotheosis of work, but 
 its reduction and more even distribution. 
 All men must share the burden, that all 
 may taste the joy of relaxation. A mini- 
 mum of work and a maximum of leisure, 
 that is the ideal of the labourer. 
 
 This is a point of view which one can 
 very easily understand ; yet I venture to 
 think that there is nothing inherently 
 bad in labour — and by labour I mean 
 manual labour. To a man who has 
 suffered from an excess of leisure, and who 
 knows the terrors of boredom, manual 
 labour performed under wholesome condi- 
 tions is a delight. I once went for six 
 months to the Australian bush. To rise 
 early, to spend the day in the open air 
 wielding an axe, or to spend it at the 
 
 74
 
 THE INDIGNITY OF LABOUR 
 
 bottom of a forty-foot well with a bar and 
 shovel, to come back in the evening 
 hungry and thirsty and tired, was one of 
 the best experiences that have ever come 
 my way. I not only felt fit in body and 
 wholesome in mind, I had a feeling of self- 
 respect such as has never come from the 
 manipulation of a typewriter. I felt that 
 I had justified my manhood, and experi- 
 enced the dignity of labour. Personally 
 I feel convinced that labour is good, and 
 that a working day of less than eight 
 hours would be bad for the nation, and 
 would only increase discontent. 
 
 If I am right we must seek the root of 
 the indignity of labour, not in labour itself, 
 but in the conditions under which it is 
 performed. These conditions are, one must 
 admit, often very bad. However much 
 improvement there may have been in the 
 last few years, hours are still often too 
 long, the atmosphere tainted, and the rela- 
 tions between employers and employed, 
 
 75
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 and between the workers themselves, per- 
 meated with mutual suspicion and dis- 
 like. It is this last aspect of the problem 
 that I want to discuss in the present 
 article, because it is one which at first 
 sight seems capable of improvement as a 
 result of the war. At the present moment 
 I suppose that nearly all employers of 
 labour who are of military age and bodily 
 fitness are holding commissions in the 
 Army. Similarly nearly all their em- 
 ployees who are eligible are in the ranks of 
 the Army. Yet in their new roles as 
 officer and private none of the old sus- 
 picion and dislike appears to survive. 
 In the Army the relations between officers 
 and men are, as a rule, excellent. Is it 
 too much to hope that when the war is 
 over, and both go back to their former 
 positions, these good relations may in 
 many cases survive ? 
 
 I have no right to lay down the law 
 about the relations of employers or em- 
 
 76
 
 THE INDIGNITY OF LABOUR 
 
 ployed. I belong to neither category. I 
 have no experience of the inner workings 
 of an industrial concern. I have no idea 
 of apportioning praise and blame. I only 
 judge from what my friends — and I have 
 friends among both classes — tell me. Often 
 and often I have heard my employer 
 friends denounce the working man. They 
 say that he has no sense of honour, no 
 conception of the meaning of a contract, 
 no gratitude, no loyalty. If an employer 
 arranged to give his men, in addition to 
 their wages, a share in the profits of the 
 business, they will pocket their bonus 
 without a " thank you " in the fat years, 
 and in the lean years they will desert him 
 without a thought. No matter how gener- 
 ously an employer treats his workmen, if 
 there is a strike they will not be left out 
 of it. It does not pay to treat men well. 
 If there is any chance of shirking, de- 
 frauding, or doing shoddy work without 
 being brought to book, the workman 
 
 77
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 will take it. So say the employers. I 
 know nothing but what I am told. On 
 the other hand, workmen always seem to 
 suspect their employer of trying to get 
 more out of them than he is paying for. 
 If he can get work done for less than the 
 standard wage, he will. If he can make 
 one man do two men's work for one man's 
 money, he will. If in a bumper year he 
 makes big profits, the workers see nothing 
 of them except what they earn by over- 
 time. If a lean year follows hands are 
 dismissed ruthlessly without any regard 
 to the length or fidelity of their service, 
 or their chance of obtaining work else- 
 where ; and the whole business is re- 
 organized with a view to extracting yet 
 more work out of those whose services are 
 retained. So say my workmen friends. 
 Moreover, so far as I can judge, the rela- 
 tions between the workers themselves 
 seem to be tainted with the same poison. 
 They eye each other with suspicion, accuse 
 
 78
 
 THE INDIGNITY OF LABOUR 
 
 each other on the slightest provocation 
 with trying to curry favour with the fore- 
 man or the " boss " at the expense of 
 their mates, and of prejudicing the interests 
 of the latter by accepting less than a fair 
 wage, or by doing more than a fair day's 
 work. It is only when the workmen 
 are banded together in a defensive alliance 
 against their masters, and the wages to 
 be accepted and the amount of work to 
 be done by each man strictly laid down, 
 that there is even the appearance of 
 cordiality between man and man ; and 
 even then the league is always on the 
 look out for treachery. I may be quite 
 wrong, but such are my impressions of 
 the spirit obtaining in industrial life. 
 And if these impressions are correct, and 
 if this atmosphere of mutual suspicion 
 and mistrust does exist, it seems quite 
 adequate to account for the workman's 
 hatred of labour, and his denial of its 
 inherent dignity. 
 
 79
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 In speaking of the Army I feel far more 
 confident, for I have known it both as a 
 private and N.C.O. and as an officer. 
 I have no hesitation in saying that in the 
 vast majority of cases the relations be- 
 tween officers and men are quite extra- 
 ordinarily good. In the average com- 
 pany or platoon the officer is proud of 
 his men, and the men reciprocate the 
 feeling. The men do their work cheerfully, 
 and are content. Of course they grumble. 
 Who doesn't ? But there is no bitterness 
 or mistrust. The men trust their officers 
 and the officers trust their men, to an 
 extent which I fancy has no parallel in 
 civil life. 
 
 It is not easy to say why this should be 
 so. The work of the soldier is not inter- 
 esting. For the most part his training 
 consists of long monotonous hours of drill 
 and physical training, varied by spells 
 of menial drudgery and hard, unskilled 
 nawying. His pay, though not so little as 
 
 so
 
 THE INDIGNITY OF LABOUR 
 
 it sounds, is considerably less than he would 
 be likely to earn in civil life. The accom- 
 modation and food are of the roughest. 
 Although the work is healthy and there 
 is no anxiety in the life, these facts do not 
 in themselves account for the good spirit 
 that prevails, for in cases where officers 
 fail to gain the confidence of their men 
 the men hate the life with a bitter loathing, 
 and will take big risks to escape from it. 
 I feel pretty sure that as a matter of fact 
 the comparative contentment of most 
 soldiers is mainly due to the persistence 
 of a traditional good feeling between 
 officers and men, just as with less confi- 
 dence I believe that the discontent that 
 seems to prevail in industrial life is due 
 to the survival of a bad tradition. 
 
 When one comes to study the subject 
 more deeply one is immediately struck 
 by the fact that it is not easy-going 
 laxity on the part of an officer that pro- 
 duces a spirit of contentment among the 
 
 81 F
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 men. Rather the reverse is the case. 
 It is more often the strict officer, who 
 knows his work and sets a high standard, 
 that is the popular commander of a self- 
 satisfied unit. Under a slack officer the 
 men never know quite what is expected 
 of them. One day on parade they will 
 pass muster. On the next, for no greater 
 slovenliness, they will be dropped on. 
 Unconsciously their aim becomes, not to 
 do their best, but to do the least that 
 will save them from punishment. In such 
 a unit as this there is no self-respect, no 
 confidence. The men work unwillingly, 
 despise and dislike their officer, and quarrel 
 among themselves. On the other hand, 
 where an officer is strict the men know 
 exactly where they are. They know what 
 is expected of them, and they know the 
 results of negligence. They aim high, 
 and the knowledge that they are doing 
 so increases their self-respect and content- 
 ment. They are pleased with their officer 
 
 82
 
 THE INDIGNITY OF LABOUR 
 
 and pleased with themselves. There is 
 esprit de corps. In such a unit you will 
 find the nearest approach that I know to 
 Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's ideal of work 
 well done for the sheer joy and pride 
 of it. 
 
 Of course when I speak of a strict 
 officer I do not mean a mere meticulous 
 martinet. There are officers whose strict- 
 ness amounts to positive hostility towards 
 their men, and what a man sows that shall 
 he reap. The sort of strictness that I 
 mean is that of the officer who believes in 
 himself and his men, and who for that 
 reason will be content with nothing but 
 the highest efficiency. Such an officer 
 is never hostile to his men. Even when 
 he is most severe it is only because he 
 cannot bear that his men should do them- 
 selves less than justice. The men know 
 it. They recognize that it is not his own 
 credit that he is seeking, but their common 
 glory. It is his company, but it is also 
 
 83
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 theirs, of whose honour he is so jealous. 
 Such officers are common in the British 
 Army ; in fact I think it would be true to 
 say that the average officer sets a high 
 standard both for his men and for him- 
 self, and that he seldom fails to secure 
 their loyal co-operation in attaining to 
 it. 
 
 These are the facts, or what appear to 
 me to be the facts. Now we come back 
 to our question. Is there any chance 
 that, when the war is over and officers 
 become employers, and privates employed, 
 these good relations between them will be 
 reproduced in industrial life ? I know 
 what Mr. MacDonald would say. He 
 would point out that in the Army there 
 is no competition, only emulation ; that 
 officers are salaried officials of the State, 
 and privates the employees of the State ; 
 that all work in the Army is done for the 
 common weal, and that the scale of 
 remuneration is fixed ; that no man can 
 
 84
 
 THE INDIGNITY OF LABOUR 
 
 be discharged (this is almost literally true 
 now), and that all punishment is due to 
 the law of the State. Reproduce these 
 conditions in industrial life, and you have 
 Socialism, and, according to Mr. Mac- 
 Donald, the Utopian era dawns. Regret- 
 fully I dissent. I doubt whether it would 
 be possible to run the socialistic State on 
 aristocratic lines, or to reproduce the 
 " public school tradition," which what- 
 ever its limitations does place honour, 
 discipline and public spirit in the fore- 
 front of the virtues. Without this tradi- 
 tion I very much question whether it 
 would be possible to eliminate corruption 
 to anything like the same extent as has 
 been done in the Army. Moreover, I 
 very much question whether the average 
 man would consent to give up his indi- 
 viduality permanently to the extent that 
 he has done in this national crisis. In the 
 bull times of peace his sense of the dramatic 
 would fail him. 
 
 85
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 I fear that we must face the fact that 
 when the war is over competition will 
 continue to exert its ruthless pressure 
 on employers, and through them on the 
 employed. Labour will still have to com- 
 bine against capital for self-defence. But 
 it is legitimate to hope that here and there 
 a better spirit will prevail. Here and 
 there an employer will have learnt a 
 better way of handling men, and will be 
 able to inspire them with respect and 
 loyalty, and to make them feel that they 
 are more than servants of the firm — 
 rather partners, jointly responsible for 
 its credit, and participating in its suc- 
 cesses. And he will succeed where others 
 before him have failed, because the workers, 
 too, will have learnt a better day of work. 
 They mil have learnt that loyalty does 
 not demean a man, and that not every 
 olive branch need be mistrusted. And 
 finally, in the firms where these good 
 relations between master and men are 
 
 86
 
 THE INDIGNITY OF LABOUR 
 
 realized, there will also be comradeship 
 between man and man, such as we have 
 known in the Army, and the indignity 
 of labour shall have been done away 
 with. 
 
 87
 
 THE COCKNEY WARRIOR"
 
 VI 
 
 " THE COCKNEY WARRIOR " 
 
 When war broke out the public-school 
 man applied for his commission in the 
 firm conviction that war was a glorified 
 form of big-game hunting — the highest 
 form of sport. His whole training, the 
 traditions of his kind, had prepared him 
 for that hour. From his earliest school 
 days he had been taught that it was the 
 mark of a gentleman to welcome danger, 
 and to regard the risk of death as the 
 most piquant sauce to life. At school 
 he had learnt, too, to sleep on a hard bed, 
 to endure plenty of fresh air, and a cold 
 bath on even the coldest mornings, and 
 generally speaking to — 
 
 " Welcome each rebuff 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough." 
 
 91
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 While in his holidays the joys of shooting, 
 and fishing, and perhaps even hunting, 
 had accustomed him to the idea of taking 
 life, so that if the odds were even, it 
 would even be a recognized form of sport 
 to hunt, and to be hunted by, his fellow- 
 man. 
 
 We who knew him had no doubt about 
 the public-school boy ; and when we 
 read of his spirit, his courage, his smiling 
 contempt of death, we told ourselves 
 with pride that we knew it would be so 
 with him. But with the Cockney it was 
 different. When on all hands we heard 
 praise of his bravery, his cheerfulness, 
 his patience, his discipline, even we who 
 knew him best were relieved, and very 
 glad. For in every respect where the 
 traditions of the public school make for 
 soldierly qualities, the traditions of the 
 East End seem to be against their forma- 
 tion. Tell a public-school boy a thrilling 
 tale of adventure and the tradition dic- 
 
 92
 
 "THE COCKNEY WARRIOR" 
 
 tates that he should say, " Oh, how jolly ! ' 
 Tell the same story to a boy in an East 
 End club and convention demands that 
 he shall say, " Ow, I'm glad I wern't 
 there ! " The Cockney is not brought 
 up to see anything good in danger. He 
 is brought up to fear it and avoid it. Nor 
 is he taught to welcome hardship. For 
 him and his kin life is so hard already 
 that he naturally embraces any mitigation 
 of its rigours. He sleeps on a feather 
 bed if possible, with the tiny windows of 
 the tiny room tight shut, and with his 
 brothers nestling close to him for greater 
 warmth. Even when he " changes " for 
 football he generally only takes off his 
 coat, and puts on his jersey over his 
 waistcoat. Well might those who knew 
 him mistrust his power to endure bravely 
 the constant exposure to the elements 
 inseparable from a campaign. Moreover^ 
 the Cockney is over- sensitive to pain. 
 About hurt he is fearfully sentimental. 
 
 93
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 He is a thoroughly kind-hearted little 
 fellow, who not only doesn't want to hurt 
 anything, but doesn't want himself or 
 any one else to be hurt. True, the dan- 
 gers of the boxing ring have an enormous 
 attraction for him, but as a rule it is a 
 fearful fascination far removed from the 
 idea of emulation. In his quarrels with 
 his mates he often boasts great things ; 
 but his anger nearly always evaporates 
 in wordiness. He was, in fact, the last 
 person in the world that we could imagine 
 going out with set teeth to hurt and slay 
 the enemies of his country. To all this 
 we had to add that he was an intense 
 lover of home. The sights, the sounds, 
 and smells of his native London are 
 infinitely dear to him. Transplant him 
 even to the glories of a Kentish spring, 
 and in a fortnight he will begin to pine 
 for home. Exile Mm to the Australian 
 bush, and no matter how high the pay, 
 or rosy the prospects, he will drift inevit- 
 
 94
 
 "THE COCKNEY WARRIOR" 
 
 ably to Sydney or Melbourne, the nearest 
 available imitation of his beloved London. 
 And so we couldn't help wondering how 
 he would endure month after month of 
 exile, subject to every discomfort and 
 danger that he would be most likely to 
 dread, and committed to the very sort 
 of action from which he would be most 
 likely to shrink. 
 
 Well, he surprised us all, as we have 
 said, and has given to the world the 
 amazing picture of a soldier who is infi- 
 nitely brave without vindictiveness, ter- 
 rible without hate, all-enduring and 
 yet remaining his simple, kindly, jaunty 
 self. For the Cockney warrior does not 
 hate the Hun. Often and often you will 
 hear him tell his mate that " the Bosches 
 is just like us, they wants to get 'ome 
 as much as we do ; but they can't 'elp 
 theirselves." At times he has regretful 
 suspicions of the humanity of the Prussians 
 and Bavarians ; but they are not long- 
 
 95
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 lived, and even while they endure he 
 consoles himself with the proved good 
 fellowship of the Saxon. Did not such 
 and such a regiment walk out of their 
 trenches and talk to them as man to 
 man ? The Cockney reckons that when 
 peace is declared both sides will run out 
 of their trenches and shake hands, and 
 be the best of pals. " They can't 'elp 
 theirselves." This is the burden of the 
 Cockney's philosophy of war — a phrase 
 that seems like the echo of a statelier 
 word of charity, " Father, forgive them, 
 they know not what they do." Caught 
 up from his civilian life by a wave of 
 tremendous enthusiasm that completely 
 overwhelmed his emotional nature, he 
 found himself swimming in a mighty 
 current, the plaything of forces he could 
 neither understand nor control. But in 
 splendid faith in the righteousness of 
 those forces he is content to give up his 
 will completely, and by swimming his 
 
 96
 
 "THE COCKNEY WARRIOR" 
 
 best to do his bit to help them to attain 
 their appointed end. In a dim way he 
 feels the conflict of world forces, and is 
 certain that he is on the side of Michael 
 and the Angels, and that the Kaiser is 
 Lucifer and Antichrist. 
 
 The Cockney's sacrifice of his per- 
 sonality is for all practical purposes com- 
 plete, and sublimely heroic. He only 
 makes one reservation — the right so dear 
 to all Englishmen — the right to grumble. 
 To his tongue he allows full licence, because 
 he knows that in such liberty there is no 
 real disloyalty because there is no efficacy. 
 He curses the war, the Kaiser, the weather, 
 the food, and everything indiscriminately 
 with relish and eloquence that is some- 
 times lacking in good taste. But let it 
 pass. In view of his real heroism we 
 cannot grudge him this one prized luxury. 
 
 97
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE 
 INARTICULATE
 
 VII 
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE INARTI- 
 CULATE 
 
 There has been a great deal of talk 
 since the war began of " the Church's 
 opportunity." It is one of those vague 
 phrases which are the delight of the man 
 who has no responsibility in the matter, 
 and the despair of those who have. It 
 suggests that " somebody ought to do 
 something," and in this case the " some- 
 body " darkly hinted at is obviously the 
 unfortunate chaplain. I have seen letters 
 from chaplains complaining bitterly of 
 the phrase. What did it mean ? Did it 
 mean that there was an opportunity of 
 providing soldiers with free notepaper and 
 cheap suppers ? If so, they agreed. There 
 was an opportunity, and the Church had 
 
 101
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 risen to the occasion. But if it meant 
 that there was an opportunity of bringing 
 the erring back to the fold, they wished 
 some one would come and show them 
 how it ought to be done. They had 
 tried their hardest, and it seemed to them 
 that men were as inaccessible as ever. 
 They admitted that they had hoped that 
 the war would make men more serious 
 and that when confronted daily by the 
 mysteries of death and pain they would 
 naturally turn to the Church of their 
 baptism for comfort and ghostly strength. 
 But this had not happened to any marked 
 extent. The men still appeared to be the 
 same careless, indifferent heathen that 
 they had always been. 
 
 To sit at a typewriter and tell a man 
 how to do his job is a despicable proceed- 
 ing, and yet I suppose that it is more or 
 less what I am attempting in writing this 
 article. To avoid being offensive, it seems 
 best to begin by explaining how I came to 
 
 102
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE 
 
 think that I ought to be able to shed some 
 light on the subject. 
 
 It all began with a Quest. It is quite 
 legitimate to call it a quest. It was 
 the Romance of the Unknown that enticed 
 us, just as it enticed necromancers and 
 alchemists and explorers in former days. 
 Only our Unknown was quite close to our 
 hand. It looked up at us from the faces 
 that we passed in the street. As we stood 
 on the Embankment it frowned at us from 
 across the river, from that black mass 
 of factories and tenements and narrow, 
 dismal streets that crowns the Thames' 
 southern bank. The very air that we 
 breathed was pungent with it. It was 
 simply humanity that was our Unknown — 
 the part of humanity which earns its 
 daily bread hardly, which knows what it 
 is to be cold and hungry and ill, and to 
 have to go on working in spite of it. Just 
 as the Buddha left the sheltered life of 
 his father's palace to become a vagabond 
 
 108
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 in the quest of truth, so we, who had been 
 guarded from hardship, and who were 
 confused by the endless argument " about 
 it and about," thought that we might 
 gain a truer perspective by mingling with 
 men whose minds had not been confused 
 by artificial complications, and whose 
 philosophy must have grown naturally 
 from their naked struggle with the ele- 
 mental realities. We thought that we 
 could learn from them what were the 
 truths which really mattered, what really 
 was the relative value of the material, 
 the mental, and the spiritual. 
 
 To cut a long story short, we went and 
 lived in a mean street, opened clubs where 
 we could meet the working man or boy, 
 enticed him to our rooms and regaled him 
 with buns and Egyptian cigarettes, and 
 did our level best to understand his 
 point of view. The venture was not a 
 complete success. We did get some value 
 out of our experiences. We did sometimes 
 
 104
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE 
 
 see our vague ideals reappear as consum- 
 mated heroism, while what had been 
 termed pardonable weakness in a milder 
 atmosphere was seen to be but an early- 
 stage of sheer bestiality. This was cer- 
 tainly stimulating. But all the time we 
 had an uncomfortable feeling that we 
 only knew a very small part of the lives 
 and characters of the men whom we were 
 studying. They came to our clubs and 
 played games with us, until suddenly the 
 more vital matter of sex took them else- 
 where, and they were lost to us. They 
 came to our rooms and talked football, 
 but when we got on to philosophy they 
 merely listened. I think that we mysti- 
 fied them a little, and ultimately bored 
 them. We did not seem to get any real 
 grip of them. We were always starting 
 afresh with a new generation, and losing 
 touch with the older one. 
 
 Then came the war, and for a moment 
 it seemed as if the quest would have to be 
 
 105
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 abandoned. The men enlisted, and our 
 clubs became empty. Several of the fol- 
 lowers of the quest felt the imperious 
 summons of a stronger call, and applied 
 for their commissions. Suddenly to one 
 or two of us came an inspiration. The 
 war was not the end, but the beginning. 
 We had failed because we had not gone 
 deep enough. We had only touched the 
 surface. To understand the working man 
 one must know him through and through 
 —live, work, drink, sleep with him. And 
 the war gave us a unique opportunity of 
 doing this. We knew that we could 
 never become working men ; but no 
 power on earth could prevent us from 
 enlisting if we were sound of wind and 
 limb. And enlisting meant living on 
 terms of absolute equality with the very 
 men whom we wanted to understand. 
 Filled anew with the glamour of our quest, 
 we sought the nearest recruiting office. 
 In the barrack-room we certainly 
 
 106
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE 
 
 achieved intimacy ; but the elemental 
 realities were distinctly disappointing. We 
 were diappointed to find that being cold 
 and rather hungry did not conduce to 
 sound philosophizing. It was merely 
 uncomfortable. Cleaning greasy cooking- 
 pots, scrubbing floors, and drilling pro- 
 duced no thrills. They simply bored us. 
 Life was dull and prosaic, and, as we have 
 said, uncomfortable. No one ever said 
 anything interesting. We never got a 
 chance to sit down and think things out. 
 Praying was almost an impossibility. It 
 is extraordinarily hard to pray in a 
 crowd, especially when you are tired out 
 at night, and have to be up and dressed 
 in the morning before you are properly 
 awake. 
 
 These were first impressions ; but as 
 time went on, and life became easier 
 through habit, we were able to realize 
 that we had actually been experiencing 
 the very conditions which prevent the 
 
 107
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 working man from being a philosopher. 
 We grasped the fundamental fact that 
 he is inarticulate, and that he has no 
 real chance of being anything else. We 
 perceived that if you wanted to find out 
 what he believed in you must not look 
 to his words, but to his actions and the 
 objects of his admiration. And, after all, 
 it did not necessarily follow that because 
 a man was inarticulate he therefore had 
 no religion. St. James compares those 
 who state their faith apart from their 
 works with those who declare it by their 
 works, and his comparison is by no means 
 favourable to the former. Actions and 
 objects of admiration, these were the 
 things that we must watch if we would 
 discover the true religion of the inarticulate. 
 I have said that the life of the barrack- 
 room is dull and rather petty. In point 
 of fact, it bears somewhat the same 
 relation to ordinary working-class life as 
 salt-water baths do to the sea. We used 
 
 108
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE 
 
 to read that Brill's Baths were " salt as 
 the sea but safer." Well, barrack life is 
 narrow and rather sordid, like the life of 
 all working men, and it lacks the spice of 
 risk. There is no risk of losing your job 
 and starving. Your bread-and-margarine 
 are safe whatever happens. As a result 
 the more heroic qualities are not called 
 into action. The virtues of the barrack- 
 room are unselfishness in small things, 
 and its vices are meanness and selfishness 
 in small things. A few of the men were 
 frankly bestial, obsessed by two ideas — 
 beer and women. But for the most part 
 they were good fellows. They were in- 
 tensely loyal to their comrades, very ready 
 to share whatever they had with a chum, 
 extraordinarily generous and chivalrous 
 if any one was in trouble, and that quite 
 apart from his deserts. At any rate, it 
 was easy to see that they believed whole- 
 heartedly in unselfishness and in charity 
 to the unfortunate, even if they did not 
 
 109
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 always live up to their beliefs. It was 
 the same sort of quality, too, that they 
 admired in other people. They liked an 
 officer who was free with his money, took 
 trouble to understand them if they were 
 in difficulties, and considered their wel- 
 fare. They were extremely quick to see 
 through any one who pretended to be 
 better than he was. This they disliked 
 more than anything else. The man they 
 admired most was the man who, though 
 obviously a gentleman, did not trade on 
 it. That, surely, is the trait which in the 
 Gospel is called humility. They certainly 
 did believe in unselfishness, generosity, 
 charity, and humility. But it was doubt- 
 ful whether they ever connected these 
 qualities with the profession and practice 
 of Christianity. 
 
 It was when we had got out to Flanders, 
 and were on the eve of our first visit to 
 the trenches, that I heard the first definite 
 attempt to discuss religion, and then it 
 
 no
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE 
 
 was only two or three who took part. 
 The remainder just listened. It was bed- 
 time and we were all lying close together 
 on the floor of a hut. We were to go 
 into the trenches for the first time the 
 next day. I think that every one was 
 feeling a little awed. Unfortunately we 
 had just been to an open-air service, where 
 the chaplain had made desperate efforts 
 to frighten us. The result was just what 
 might have been expected. We were all 
 rather indignant. We might be a little 
 bit frightened inside ; but we were not 
 going to admit it. Above all, we were 
 not going to turn religious at the 
 last minute because we were afraid. So 
 one man began to scoff at the Old Testa- 
 ment, David and Bathsheba, Jonah and 
 the whale, and so forth. Another capped 
 him by laughing at the feeding of the five 
 thousand. A third said that in his opinion 
 any one who pretended to be a Christian 
 in the Army must be a humbug. The 
 
 ill
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 sergeant-major was fatuously apologetic 
 and shocked, and applied the closure by- 
 putting out the light and ordering silence. 
 
 It was not much, but enough to convince 
 me that the soldier, and in this case the 
 soldier means the working man, does not 
 in the least connect the things that he 
 really believes in with Christianity. He 
 thinks that Christianity consists in believ- 
 ing the Bible and setting up to be better 
 than your neighbours. By believing the 
 Bible he means believing that Jonah was 
 swallowed by the whale. By setting up 
 to be better than your neighbours he 
 means not drinking, not swearing, and 
 preferably not smoking, being close-fisted 
 with your money, avoiding the companion- 
 ship of doubtful characters, and refusing 
 to acknowledge that such have any claim 
 upon you. 
 
 This is surely nothing short of tragedy. 
 Here were men who believed absolutely 
 in the Christian virtues of unselfishness, 
 
 112
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE 
 
 generosity, charity, and humility, without 
 ever connecting them in their minds with 
 Christ ; and at the same time what they 
 did associate with Christianity was just 
 on a par with the formalism and smug 
 self-righteousness which Christ spent His 
 whole life in trying to destroy. 
 
 The chaplains as a rule failed to realize 
 this. They saw the inarticulateness, and 
 assumed a lack of any religion. They 
 remonstrated with their hearers for not 
 saying their prayers, and not coming to 
 Communion, and not being afraid to die 
 without making their peace with God. 
 They did not grasp that the men really 
 had deep-seated beliefs in goodness, and 
 that the only reason why they did not 
 pray and go to Communion was that they 
 never connected the goodness in which 
 they believed with the God in Whom the 
 chaplains said they ought to believe. If 
 they had connected Christianity with 
 unselfshness and the rest, they would 
 
 113 H
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 have been prepared to look at Christ as 
 their Master and their Saviour. As a 
 matter of fact, I believe that in a vague 
 way lots of men do regard Christ as on 
 their side. They have a dim sort of idea 
 that He is misrepresented by Christianity, 
 and that when it comes to the test He will 
 not judge them so hardly as the chaplains 
 do. They have heard that He was the 
 Friend of sinners, and severe on those 
 who set up to be religious. But however 
 that may be, I am certain that if the 
 chaplain wants to be understood and to 
 win their sympathy he must begin by 
 showing them that Christianity is the 
 explanation and the justification and the 
 triumph of all that they do now really 
 believe in. He must start by making 
 their religion articulate in a way which 
 they will recognize. He must make them 
 see that his creeds and prayers and worship 
 are the symbols of all that they admire 
 most, and most want to be. 
 
 114
 
 THE RELIGION' iOF THE INARTICULATE 
 
 In doing this perhaps he will find a 
 stronger faith his own. It is certainly 
 arguable that we educated Christians are 
 in our way almost as inarticulate as the 
 uneducated whom we always want to 
 instruct. If we apply this test of actions 
 and objects of admiration to our own 
 beliefs, we shall often find that our pro- 
 fessed creeds have very little bearing on 
 them. In the hour of danger and wounds 
 and death many a man has realized with 
 a shock that the articles of his creed 
 about which he was most contentious 
 mattered very, very little, and that he had 
 somewhat overlooked the articles that 
 proved to be vital. If the working man's 
 religion is often wholly inarticulate, the 
 real religion of the educated man is often 
 quite wrongly articulated. 
 
 115
 
 OF SOME WHO WERE LOST, 
 
 AND AFTERWARD WERE 
 
 FOUND
 
 VIII 
 
 OF SOME WHO WERE LOST, AND 
 AFTERWARD WERE FOUND 
 
 I sometimes wonder whether our Lord 
 is altogether pleased at the sense in 
 which we use that phrase of His — " lost 
 sheep." Disciples who have " found sal- 
 vation " so often say " lost " when they 
 mean " damned," and " sheep " when they 
 mean " goats." Ask the average Christian 
 to differentiate between " damnation " 
 and " perdition," and ten to one he will 
 tell you that the words are synonymous ; 
 and yet if derivations count for anything 
 " damnation " means a state of being 
 condemned, and " perdition " means a 
 state of being lost. Are these words 
 synonymous ? Personally I doubt it. For 
 myself I am unable to believe that the 
 
 119
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 condemns any one simply because he 
 has lost his way. After all, so often it is 
 not his fault if he has. 
 
 One can't help being sorry for people 
 who have lost themselves. I am sure 
 that the Good Shepherd is sorry for the 
 lost sheep. Did He not go and seek 
 them with much pain and labour ? But 
 if there are any damned souls I doubt if 
 one could pity them. I fancy that they 
 would prove to be so loathsome, so 
 poisonous, so unclean, so utterly corrupt, 
 that even the great Physician of souls 
 diseased Himself could do nothing for 
 them, and that one could only feel relief 
 at seeing them burnt up in the unquench- 
 able fire. And by the way, surely they 
 are destroyed. The idea of imperishable 
 beastliness writhing for ever in unquench- 
 able fire were enough to disturb the 
 serenity of an archangel. Surely it is 
 more biblical (not to mention common 
 
 120
 
 SOME WHO WERE LOST AND FOUND 
 
 sense) to suppose that fire is an instrument 
 of purification and destruction rather than 
 of torture. Gehenna in the neighbourhood 
 of Jerusalem was, if I mistake not, a place 
 where garbage was destroyed by fire, and 
 surely if there is a Gehenna for the New 
 Jerusalem we may conclude that its 
 function is similar. But all this is a 
 digression. In this article we would speak 
 of some who were lost, and afterward 
 were found. 
 
 They were lost ; but not necessarily 
 damned. They were lost ; but they were 
 not poisonous. That was the trouble. 
 They were so lovable. We could not help 
 loving them, however little we felt that they 
 deserved it. They gave us endless trouble. 
 They would not fit into any respectable 
 niche in our social edifice. They were 
 incurably disreputable, always in scrapes, 
 always impecunious, always improvident. 
 When they were out of sight we hardened 
 our hearts and said that we had done 
 
 121
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 with them ; but all the time we knew 
 that when it came to the point we should 
 forgive them. They were such good fel- 
 lows, the rascals ! If they did fly in the 
 face of the conventions, well, we sometimes 
 felt that the conventions deserved it. 
 It is not good for anybody or anything 
 to be always taken seriously, whether 
 an archbishop or a convention. If they 
 offended us one day, we forgave them the 
 next for the way in which they shocked 
 uncle Adolphus. They were extravagant 
 and ran up debts. It was most repre- 
 hensible. Yet somehow even their credi- 
 tors could never impute intention to 
 defraud. And their very recklessness in 
 spending what they had not got seemed 
 in a way but the balance against our 
 careful reluctance to spend what we had 
 got. They were drunken and loose in 
 morals, so we heard. Yet we could never 
 believe that they deliberately harmed any 
 one. Even in their amours there was 
 
 122
 
 SOME WHO WERE LOST AND FOUND 
 
 always a touch of romance, and never 
 the taint of sheer bestiality. They had 
 their code, and though God forbid that 
 it should ever be ours, it did somehow 
 seem to be a natural set off to the some- 
 what sordidly prudent morality of the 
 marriage market. 
 
 They were perplexing. We could not 
 but condemn them. Indeed they con- 
 demned themselves with the utmost good- 
 humour. Yet we could never altogether 
 feel that we should like them to be exactly 
 as we were. Their humility disarmed 
 our self-satisfied judgments. They had 
 the elusive charm of youth, irresponsibility, 
 and vagabondage. "We could not fit them 
 in, and somehow we felt that this inability 
 of ours was a slur on society. We felt 
 that there ought to be a place for them 
 in the scheme of things. It made us 
 angry when they cast their pearls before 
 swine ; yet somehow there didn't seem 
 to be anywhere else for them to throw 
 
 123
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 them. We had a feeling that they ought 
 to have been able to lay their pearls at 
 the feet of the great Pearl Merchant, and 
 yet His Church seemed to have no use 
 for them, and that we felt was a slur on 
 the Church. As we read the Gospel story 
 we thought that there must have been 
 men very like them among the "lost 
 sheep " whom the Lord Jesus came to 
 seek. Some of those Publicans and sin- 
 ners with whom the Lord feasted to the 
 great scandal of the worthy Pharisees 
 must have been very like these wayward 
 vagabonds of ours. That woman taken 
 in adultery, and that other harlot, they 
 had their pearls and alabaster cruse of 
 ointment very precious. They had not 
 known what to do with them. Society 
 in those days had found no legitimate 
 use for their gifts. They were lost, sure 
 enough. And then came the Lord, and 
 they were found. The swine no longer 
 got their pearls. They were bought by 
 
 124
 
 SOME WHO WERE LOST AND FOUND 
 
 the great Pearl Merchant, and full value 
 given. And be sure that those women 
 had their male counterparts in the crowd 
 of sinners who followed the Lord, and 
 resolved to sin no more. 
 
 Once more the Lord has walked our 
 streets. Once more He has called to the 
 lost sheep to follow the Good Shepherd 
 along the thorny path of suffering and 
 death. As of old He has demanded of 
 them their all. And as of old He has not 
 called in vain. Whatever their faults 
 these beloved lost sheep do not lack 
 courage. When they give they give reck- 
 lessly, not staying to count the cost. 
 They never bargain, estimate the odds, 
 calculate profit and loss. With them it 
 is a plunge, a blind headlong plunge. 
 They venture " neck or nothing ; Heaven's 
 success found, or earth's failure." When 
 the call came to face hardship and risk 
 life itself in the cause of freedom, we 
 stolid respectable folk paused. We waited 
 
 125
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 to be convinced of the necessity. We 
 calculated the loss and gain. We sounded 
 our employers about the keeping open of 
 our job. Not so they. They plunged 
 headlong. It was their chance. For this, 
 they felt, they had been born. Their 
 hearts were afire. They had a craving 
 to give their lives for the great cause. 
 They had a hunger for danger. And 
 what a nuisance they were in that first 
 weary year of training ! 
 
 They plunged headlong down the stony 
 path of glory ; but in their haste they 
 stumbled over every stone ! And when 
 they did that they put us all out of 
 our stride, so crowded was the path. 
 Were they promoted ? They promptly 
 celebrated the fact in a fashion that 
 secured their immediate reduction. Were 
 they reduced to the ranks ? Then they 
 were in hot water from early morn to 
 dewy eve, and such was their irrepressible 
 charm that hot water lost its terrors. 
 
 126
 
 SOME WHO WERE LOST AND FOUND 
 
 To be a defaulter in such merry company 
 was a privilege rather than a disgrace. 
 So in despair we promoted them again, 
 hoping that by giving them a little re- 
 sponsibility we should enlist them on the 
 side of good order and discipline. Vain 
 hope ! There are things that cannot be 
 overlooked, even in a Kitchener battalion. 
 Then at last we " got out." We were 
 confronted with dearth, danger, and death. 
 And then they came to their own. We 
 could no longer compete with them. We 
 stolid respectable folk were not in our 
 element. We knew it. W T e felt it. We 
 were determined to go through with it. 
 We succeeded ; but it was not without 
 much internal wrestling, much self-con- 
 scious effort. Yet they, who had formerly 
 been our despair, were now our glory. 
 Their spirits effervesced. Their wit 
 sparkled. Hunger and thirst could not 
 depress them. Rain could not damp them. 
 Cold could not chill them. Every hard- 
 
 127
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 ship became a joke. They did not endure 
 hardship, they derided it. And somehow 
 it seemed at the moment as if derision 
 was all that hardship existed for ! Never 
 was such a triumph of spirit over matter. 
 As for death, it was, in a way, the greatest 
 joke of all. In a way, for if it was another 
 fellow that was hit it was an occasion for 
 tenderness and grief. But if one of them 
 was hit, O Death, where is thy sting ? O 
 Grave, where is thy victory ? Portentous, 
 solemn Death, you looked a fool when you 
 tackled one of them ! Life ? They did 
 not value life ! They had never been 
 able to make much of a fist of it. 
 But if they lived amiss they died glori- 
 ously, with a smile for the pain and the 
 dread of it. What else had they been 
 born for ? It was their chance. With a 
 gay heart they gave their greatest gift, 
 and with a smile to think that after all 
 they had anything to give which was of 
 value. One by one Death challenged 
 
 128
 
 SOME WHO WERE LOST AND FOUND 
 
 them. One by one they smiled in his 
 grim visage, and refused to be dismayed. 
 They had been lost, but they had found 
 the path that led them home ; and when 
 at last they laid their lives at the feet of 
 the Good Shepherd, what could they do 
 but smile ? 
 
 129
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN PHILO- 
 SOPHIZES
 
 IX 
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 
 
 Of course one cannot mention his name. 
 He always disliked publicity. It was a 
 source of pride with him that his name 
 had never appeared in the papers. Unless 
 it appears in the " Roll of Honour," it 
 probably never will. Let us call him 
 " the Average Englishman." It is what 
 he used to aim at being, and if such a 
 being can be said to exist, surely he was 
 it. 
 
 As regards philosophizing — well, he 
 simply didn't. He had not read philosophy 
 at a University, and he never would think 
 things out. He disapproved of men in 
 his position attempting anything of the 
 sort. He considered it a waste of time 
 and rather unwholesome. To talk about 
 
 133
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 one's innermost convictions he regarded 
 as indecent. " The young curate from 
 Oxford, who talks best about God after 
 a bottle of champagne, shocked him badly. 
 He said that it was blasphemous. His 
 own point of view was a modest one. 
 Where the learned differed so widely, he 
 argued, it was hardly likely that his 
 inadequate mental equipment would help 
 him to a sound conclusion. The nearest 
 approach to a philosophy that he pos- 
 sessed was wholly practical, empirical, 
 even opportunist. It was not a philosophy 
 at all, but a code of honour and morals, 
 based partly on tradition and partly on 
 his own shrewd observation of the law of 
 cause and effect as illustrated in the lives 
 of his neighbours. As a philosophy it 
 remained unformulated. He refused even 
 to discuss its philosophical and theological 
 implications. In fact, his was " the reli- 
 gion of all sensible men," and " sensible 
 men don't tell " what that is. 
 
 134
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 
 
 It suited him to be outwardly orthodox. 
 His mother liked him to take her to church 
 on Sunday. To see him doing so increased 
 the confidence of his professional clientele. 
 Also, the vicar was a friend of his, and 
 played a capital game of golf. So he was 
 orthodox ; but abstract truth was not 
 his joy. He left that to the parsons and 
 professors. 
 
 That this was the standpoint which he 
 adopted is not altogether surprising. It 
 worked. It enabled him to meet quite 
 adequately all the mild exigencies of his 
 uneventful life and unexciting personality. 
 For his life was dull and his personality 
 far too habitually restrained to offer any 
 sensations. If hidden fires had ever 
 burned beneath his somewhat conventional 
 exterior, they had received no encourage- 
 ment, and had soon died out for want of 
 air. 
 
 Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, he found 
 himself lifted out of his office chair, and 
 
 135
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 after a short interval deposited " some- 
 where in France." Here he found himself 
 leading a ridiculously uncivilized and un- 
 comfortable life, and standing in constant 
 danger of being blown to pieces. Naturally 
 the transition was a little bewildering. 
 Outwardly he remained calm ; but below 
 the surface strange things were happening 
 — nothing less than a complete readjust- 
 ment of his mental perspective. Some- 
 how his code, hitherto so unsatisfactory, 
 failed to suffice for the new situation in 
 which he found himself. The vaguely 
 good-natured selfishness which had earned 
 for him the title of " good fellow " in the 
 quiet days of peace did not quite fit 
 in with the new demands made on his 
 personality. Much against his will, he 
 had to try to think things out. 
 
 It was an unmitigated nuisance. His 
 equipment was so poor. He had read 
 so little that was of any use to him. All 
 that he could remember were some phrases 
 
 136
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 
 
 from the Bible, some verses from Omar 
 Khayyam, and a sentence or two from 
 the Latin Syntax. And then his brain 
 was so unaccustomed to this sort of effort. 
 It made him quite tired ; but it had to 
 be done. A man couldn't sit in a trench 
 hour after hour and day after day with 
 shells whizzing through the air over his 
 head, or bursting thunderously ten yards 
 from him, without trying to get some 
 grip of his mental attitude towards them. 
 He could not see his comrades killed and 
 maimed and mutilated without in some 
 way defining his views on life and death 
 and duty and fate. He could not shoot 
 and bayonet his fellow-men without trying 
 to formulate some justification for such 
 an unprecedented course of action. 
 His mind was compelled to react to the 
 new and extraordinary situations with 
 which it was confronted. And, oddly 
 enough, in the course of these successive 
 reactions he passed, without knowing it, 
 
 137
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 very close to the path trodden before him 
 by some of the greatest teachers of the 
 world. 
 
 To begin with, it came as something of 
 a shock to discover that the Rubdiydt, 
 hitherto his most fruitful source of quota- 
 tions, was quite useless to him. It was 
 futile to talk about the cup when one had 
 nothing to put in it, and as for refusing 
 to take life seriously — well, Omar lived 
 before the days of high explosives. The 
 Latin Syntax was a little better. It at 
 any rate provided him with Dulce et 
 decorum est pro patria mori, but even 
 that seemed to be framed more for the 
 comfort of his sorrowing relatives in the 
 event of his " stopping a bullet " than for 
 himself. As for the Bible — well, there 
 were some jolly things in that, but he was 
 rather shy about the Bible. It didn't 
 seem quite playing the game to go to it 
 now when he had neglected it so long ; 
 besides, these higher critics — well, he 
 
 138
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 
 
 hadn't gone into the matter, but he had 
 a pretty shrewd idea that the Bible was 
 a bit discredited. No, he would just go 
 by facts and their effect on himself, and 
 do his best out of his own head. 
 
 One afternoon he was in a support 
 trench, and the Germans had got the 
 direction pretty right, and were enfilading 
 it at a long range with their heavy guns. 
 The shells began by dropping at the far 
 end of the trench, which they blew to 
 pieces most successfully. They then began 
 to creep up in his direction, the range 
 lengthening about twenty-five yards after 
 each half-dozen shells. Would they reach 
 him ? Would he be at the end or in the 
 middle of this beastly interval of twenty- 
 five yards ? In short, would the shells 
 drop on top of him or about ten yards 
 short or ten yards over ? It was an 
 agonizing half-hour, and in the course of it 
 he very nearly became a Mohammedan. 
 He didn't call it that. But he tried to 
 
 139
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 read a comic paper, and told himself that 
 it was simply a question of fate. ' I 
 can't do anything about it," he said to 
 himself. " If the damned thing drops, it 
 drops ; I can't stop it by worrying." 
 Fate, that was the solution. " Kismet ! ' 
 he repeated to himself, thinking, in a 
 moment of inspiration, of Oscar Asche. 
 As a matter of fact, the enfilade was not 
 perfect, and as the shells crept up the 
 exact direction was lost, and they burst 
 harmlessly about fifteen yards behind the 
 trench instead of in it. The Average 
 Englishman murmured " Praise be to 
 Allah ! " and relit his pipe, which had 
 gone out. 
 
 Then a day or two later his company 
 was moved up to the firing trench. Some- 
 how the " Kismet " formula did not seem 
 so effective there. The Germans were 
 only about twenty-five yards away, the 
 barbed wire had been badly knocked 
 about, and the beasts had an unpleasant 
 
 140
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 
 
 habit of creeping up at night through the 
 long grass and throwing bombs into the 
 trench. It was no longer a question of 
 sitting tight and waiting ; one had to 
 watch very carefully, and the element of 
 retaliation came in, too. He found himself 
 sitting up half the night with a pile of 
 bombs on the sandbags in front of him, 
 watching the grass with straining eyes. 
 It was nervous work. He had never 
 thrown a bomb. Of course it was quite 
 simple. You just pulled a pin out, counted 
 four, and let fly. But supposing you 
 dropped the beastly thing ! Though it 
 was a cold night, he sweated at the thought. 
 Self-confidence was what he wanted now — 
 self-confidence and the will to conquer. 
 Where that last phrase came from he was 
 not sure. He luckily did not realize how 
 near he was to becoming a disciple of 
 the Hunnish Nietzsche ! " The will to 
 prevail," that was the phrase which pleased 
 him ; and he thought to himself that it 
 
 141
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 would suit a charge, too, if one came his 
 way. 
 
 But the next morning it rained. The 
 trench being a brand-new one, there were 
 no dug-outs, and he had to stand in water 
 and get wet. It was horrible. " Kismet " 
 irritated him ; " the will to prevail " did 
 not help. Yet it was no use grousing. 
 It only made matters worse for himself 
 and the other fellows. Then he remem- 
 bered a phrase from a boys' club in poorer 
 London ; " Keep smiling " was the legend 
 written over the door, and he remembered 
 that the motto on the club button was 
 " Fratres." By God, those kids had a 
 pretty thin time of it ! But yet, somehow, 
 when all the " Fratres " had made a deter- 
 mined effort to keep smiling, the result 
 was rather wonderful. Yes, "Keep smil- 
 ing " was the best motto he could find 
 for a wet day, and he tried hard to live up 
 to it. 
 
 At last the battalion went into reserve, 
 
 142
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 
 
 and was unutterably bored for a week. 
 By night they acted as ration carriers, and 
 improved communication trenches. By 
 day they endured endless inspections, 
 slept a little, and grumbled much. Our 
 Average Englishman tried hard to keep 
 smiling, but failed miserably. This made 
 him wonder whether, on his return to 
 the trenches, his other formulae would 
 also fail him. But on the day before 
 they went back into support one of the 
 corporals fell sick, and much to his surprise 
 he was hurriedly given one stripe and put 
 in command of a section. 
 
 This promotion pleased him. He took 
 the responsibility with extreme serious- 
 ness, and became quite fatherly in his 
 attitude towards his " command." This 
 was all the easier because that particular 
 section had lost heavily during the preced- 
 ing spell in the trenches, and its ranks 
 had been largely made up from the mem- 
 bers of a draft fresh from home. 
 
 143
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 We do not propose to describe his 
 experiences minutely. Much the same 
 thing happened as happened before. They 
 were shelled while in support, and he 
 walked up and down his section encourag- 
 ing them and calming them down. In 
 the firing trench the same bombs were in 
 readiness, and he spent most of the night 
 with the sentry to give him confidence." 
 A bomb from a trench mortar actually 
 fell into his part of the trench, killing 
 one lad and wounding two more, and 
 for the moment his hands were full steady- 
 ing the others, applying field dressings to 
 the wounded, and seeing to their removal 
 from the trench. 
 
 At length the battalion was relieved, 
 and marched back to a rest camp, where 
 it spent three weeks of comparative peace. 
 In the intervals of presenting arms and 
 acting as orderly corporal the Average 
 Englishman thought over his experiences, 
 and it suddenly struck him that during 
 
 144
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 
 
 his fortnight as a section commander he 
 had actually forgotten to be afraid, or 
 even nervous ! It was really astounding. 
 Moreover, his mind rose to the occasion, 
 and pointed out the reason. He had been 
 so anxious for his section that he had 
 never once thought of himself ! With a 
 feeling of utter astonishment, he realized 
 that he had stumbled upon the very roots 
 of courage — unselfishness. He, the Aver- 
 age Englishman, had made an epoch- 
 making philosophical discovery ! 
 
 Of course he did not know that the 
 Buddha had discovered this great truth 
 some thousands of years before him. Still 
 less did he guess that the solution of all 
 these problems with which war had con- 
 fronted him was contained in the religion 
 in which he was supposed to have been 
 educated : that trust in the all-knowing 
 Father was Christ's loftier substitute for 
 submission to fate ; that faith was the 
 higher form of self-confidence ; and that 
 
 145 K
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 the love that Christ taught was the Bud- 
 dha's selflessness without the incubus of 
 his artificial philosophy. Nevertheless, he 
 had made great strides, and war has still 
 fresh experiences in store for him, and 
 no doubt experience will continue to in- 
 struct. And after all, how seldom does a 
 " Christian education " teach one anything 
 worth knowing about Christianity ! 
 
 146
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN PRAYS
 
 X 
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN PRAYS 
 
 In civil life he had always said his prayers. 
 They had done him good, too, in a way. 
 They had been a sort of squaring of his 
 accounts morally. He had tried to see 
 where he had failed, made resolutions 
 to amend, and acknowledged to himself 
 at any rate, that he had failed. He had 
 remembered his relations and friends 
 before God, and it had helped him to do 
 his duty by them. At the same time, 
 he was not in the least degree a mystic. 
 Even in his prayers he had never felt 
 the reality of God. " God " to him was 
 rather the name for the principle of good- 
 ness than a Being of infinite power and 
 intimate importance. His greatest re- 
 ligious " experience " had been a spas- 
 
 149
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 modic loyalty to the Christ-man, stimu- 
 lating him at rare intervals to sudden acts 
 of quixotism. 
 
 When he first enlisted he continued the 
 habit of saying his prayers, more because 
 it was inconvenient than for an other 
 reason, perhaps. The other fellows in the 
 barrack-room did not say their prayers, 
 and he was too English not to feel the 
 more resolved to say his. He was not 
 going to be afraid. So he said them, 
 deliberately and very self-consciously, 
 half expecting to be laughed at. It was 
 very difficult. He could not concentrate 
 his mind. He whispered the words me- 
 chanically, his head full of other thoughts. 
 The other fellows paused in their talk the 
 first night, and then went on as if nothing 
 had happened. After that no notice was 
 taken at all. No one followed his example. 
 No one commented, or interfered with 
 him. A little persecution would have 
 hardened his resolve. Being ignored weak- 
 
 150
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN PRAYS 
 
 ened it. He could not bring his mind to 
 bear on his words, and there seemed to 
 be no point in going on. He tried saying 
 them in bed, in the privacy of his blanket. 
 Then one day he forgot ; and after that 
 he just omitted to say them ever. 
 
 After all it made very little difference. 
 And yet at times he felt that there was a 
 difference. It was a , little like a man 
 sitting in a room with a frosted window 
 that only opened at the top. He under- 
 stood that it gave on to a garden, but he 
 had never seen the garden. He used to 
 sit with the top of the window pulled 
 open, and then somehow one day he for- 
 got to open it, and after that he never 
 bothered. It made so little difference. 
 At times he did notice that the air was a 
 little less fresh, but he was too lazy, or 
 too busy about other matters to bother. 
 
 This Englishman's religion had always 
 been a bit like that, like a window opening 
 on to the unknown and unexplored. He 
 
 151
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 liked to think that his window gave on to 
 a garden, and to think that he sometimes 
 caught the scent of the flowers. But he 
 had never had the energy or the faith to 
 test his belief. Suppose he were to find 
 that after all his garden was only a paved 
 yard ! Anyhow he had left the window 
 shut now. At times he regretted it ; but 
 a kind of inertia possessed him, and he 
 did not do anything about it. 
 
 When he first got to the front he prayed, 
 half ashamed. He was not quite sure of 
 himself, and he prayed that he might 
 not be found wanting. But when it came 
 to the point everything was very prosaic. 
 It was boring, and uncomfortable, and at 
 times terrifying. Yet he felt no inclina- 
 tion to shirk. He just drifted on, doing 
 his bit like the others, and with not too 
 good a grace. He was asked to take the 
 stripe, and refused. It meant more 
 trouble and responsibility. His conscience 
 told him that he was shirking. He grew 
 
 152
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN PRAYS 
 
 angry with it. " Well," he demanded 
 of it, " why have I responsibilities more 
 than any one else ? Haven't I failed ? " 
 He put the question defiantly, ostensibly 
 to his conscience, but with an eye to the 
 " Christ-man " in Whom he had almost 
 ceased to believe. To his astonishment 
 he got an answer. It was a contingency 
 with which he had not reckoned. Like a 
 flash this sentence wrote itself across his 
 mind — " Strengthen My brethren." It 
 staggered him. He felt that he knew 
 what it meant. " Don't whine about 
 failure. If you are willing to serve, here 
 is your job, and the sign of your forgive- 
 ness—Strengthen My brethren." He took 
 the stripe after all, and fathered the boys 
 of his section. 
 
 The final stage came later. There had 
 been a charge, a hopeless affair from the 
 start, undertaken in broad daylight. He 
 had fallen between the lines, and had seen 
 the battered remnant of his company 
 
 153
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 retire past him to their own trench before 
 a hail of bullets. He lay in the long grass 
 between the lines, unable to move, and 
 with an unceasing throbbing pain in his 
 left leg and arm. A whizz-bang had 
 caught him in both places. All the after- 
 noon he lay still, his mind obsessed by one 
 thought — Would any one find him when 
 it was dark, or would he be left to die ? 
 He kept on wondering the same thing, 
 with the same maddening persistence. 
 At last he must have lost consciousness, 
 for he woke to find that the sun had set, 
 and all was still but for an occasional 
 flare or a random shot. He had lost a lot 
 of blood ; but the throbbing had ceased, 
 and if he kept still he felt no pain. He 
 just lay there, feeling strangely peaceful. 
 Above him he could see the stars, and the 
 moon, though low in the heavens, gave a 
 clear light. 
 
 He found himself vaguely wondering 
 about the meaning of everything. The 
 
 154
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN PRAYS 
 
 stars seemed to make it all seem so small 
 and petty. All this bloodshed — what 
 was the good of it ? It was all so ephe- 
 meral, so trivial, so meaningless in the 
 presence of eternity and infinity. It was 
 just a strife of pygmies. He suddenly 
 felt terribly small and lonely, and he was 
 so very, very weak. He was cut off from 
 his fellow-men as surely as if he had been 
 on a desert island, and he felt somehow 
 as if he had got out of his element, and 
 was launched, a tiny pygmy soul, on the 
 sea of immensity, where he could find no 
 bearings. Eternity and infinity were so 
 pitiless and uncomprehending. The stars 
 gazed at him imperturbably. There was 
 no sympathy there, but only cold unsee- 
 ing tolerance. Yet after all, he had the 
 advantage of them. For all his pygmy 
 ineffectiveness he was of finer stuff than 
 they. At least he could feel — suffer. 
 He had only to try to move to verify that. 
 At least he was aware of his own exist- 
 
 155
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 ence, and could even gauge his own insig- 
 nificance. There was that in him which 
 was not in them, unless — unless it 
 was in everything. " God ! " he whis- 
 pered softly. " God everywhere ! " Then 
 into his tired brain came a new phrase — 
 " Underneath are the everlasting arms." 
 He sighed contentedly, as a tired child, 
 and the phrase went on repeating itself in 
 his brain in a kind of chant — " Underneath 
 are the everlasting arms." 
 
 The moon went down behind the hori- 
 zon, and it was dark. They fetched him 
 in at last. He will never again be sound 
 of limb ; but there is in his memory and 
 in his heart that which may make him a 
 staunch fighter in other fields. He has 
 learnt a new way of prayer, and the 
 courage that is born of faith well founded . 
 
 156
 
 THE ARMY AND THE 
 
 UNIVERSITIES: A STUDY OF 
 
 EDUCATIONAL VALUES
 
 XI 
 
 THE ARMY AND THE UNIVERSI- 
 TIES : A STUDY OF EDUCATIONAL 
 
 VALUES 
 
 An undergraduate once received a simul- 
 taneous visit from a subaltern and a 
 High Church Socialist curate. Unfor- 
 tunately he was unable to entertain them 
 in the afternoon, so he sent them out 
 together in a canoe on the " Char." The 
 canoe returned in safety. As soon as he 
 had a chance, the host asked the curate 
 privately how he liked the subaltern. 
 ' Oh," said the curate, " a very nice 
 chap ; but awfully young, and knows 
 very little about life." A little later the 
 host asked the subaltern how he got on 
 with the curate. " Quite a decent 
 
 159
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 little man," said the subaltern ; " but it 
 would do him a lot of good to mix more 
 in society and broaden his views ; and, of 
 course, he is very young ! " Probably 
 they were both right. Both were good 
 fellows ; but they had looked at life from 
 an utterly different angle, and their views 
 on what they saw were diametrically 
 opposite. Neither was old enough to be 
 very tolerant, and so it is rather a wonder 
 that the canoe did return in safety. 
 
 Of course the curate was a University 
 man, and the subaltern had been at " the 
 Shop ' ' or Sandhurst, and the implication 
 is that each was typical of his schooling. 
 That is as unfair as most generalizations. 
 All University men are not Socialist 
 curates, and all soldiers are not Tories ; 
 but at the same time the lack of sympathy 
 between these two individuals is paralleled 
 in most cases where representatives of 
 the two types meet. In some outlandish 
 Colony you will sometimes find a soldier 
 
 160
 
 THE ARMY AND THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 and a University man collaborating in 
 the government of a district. If you ask 
 the soldier how he likes his assistant, he 
 will probably answer : "A damned good 
 chap when you know him " ; and then 
 he will add, with a somewhat rueful 
 smile : ' but, by Jove, that Oxford manner 
 of his took a bit of getting over at the 
 start ! ' If you ask the University man 
 how he gets on with his chief, he will 
 answer : " A 1 now ; but, by gad, his 
 manner was a bit sticky at first ! " You 
 will also find the same state of affairs in 
 many battalions of the New Army. The 
 fact is that the University, or Sandhurst, 
 or ' the Shop " receives a boy at his 
 most plastic age, and sets its mark on him 
 indelibly ; and the mark of each is wholly 
 different. Two boys may come from the 
 same public school and the same home ; 
 but if one goes to Oxford and the 
 other to Woolwich, they will be utterly 
 different men. As one who has been to 
 
 161 l
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 both, I think I understand just why it is. 
 It is twelve years since I was at ' ' the 
 Shop " ; but from all I hear and see the 
 place has not altered so very much. It 
 was run on Spartan lines. The motto 
 was, and is, " Unhasting yet unresting 
 work," and the curriculum was almost 
 exclusively utilitarian. The chief subjects 
 were mathematics, gunnery, fortification, 
 mechanics, electricity, physical training, 
 riding, and drill. None of these is cal- 
 culated to widen the sympathies or cul- 
 tivate the imagination. They are calcu- 
 lated to produce competent gunners and 
 sappers. Our day was fully occupied, and 
 in the two hours of leisure between dinner 
 and lights out one had no inclination to 
 embark on fresh subjects of study. The 
 discipline was strict, and ethically the 
 value of the life was that it inculcated 
 the ideas of alertness, duty, and honour. 
 To do one's job thoroughly and quickly, 
 and to be quite straightforward about it 
 
 162
 
 THE ARMY AND THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 if one had omitted any duty, was the code 
 to winch we were expected to conform. 
 Religion was represented by a parade- 
 service on Sundays. In so far as it meant 
 anything, it was the recognition that God 
 was King of kings, and, as such, deserved 
 His weekly meed of homage. Here is a 
 story which illustrates rather well the 
 military view of religion. A certain devout 
 major had promised to attend a prayer 
 meeting, and on that account refused an 
 invitation to dine with a member of the 
 Army Council. When some one expressed 
 astonishment at his refusal, he replied 
 shortly that he had an engagement with 
 the Lord God, Who was senior to the 
 member of the Army Council ! If there 
 was little opportunity for the study of the 
 "^humanities," and little inducement to 
 mysticism in religion, there was no en- 
 couragement at all to the development 
 of the aesthetic faculties. Our rooms were 
 hopelessly bare and hideous. My first 
 
 163
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 room I shared with three others. The 
 walls were of whitewashed brick. The 
 floor was bare. The beds folded up against 
 the wall, under print curtains of an uncom- 
 promising pattern. The furniture con- 
 sisted of a deal table, four Windsor chairs, 
 a shelf with four basins, and a locker 
 divided into four compartments and 
 painted khaki. One could do nothing 
 with such a room. It crushed indivi- 
 duality of taste most effectually. Finally, 
 one learnt not to show physical fear or 
 nervousness. The plank bridge across the 
 roof of the " gym." ensured an appearance 
 of courage, while the " snookers' concert," 
 where one had to sing a song in front of a 
 hall full of yelling seniors, was the cure for 
 a display of nerves. 
 
 The result of such a schooling is dis- 
 tinctive. The average officer is a man 
 with a good deal of simplicity. His code 
 is simple. He sees life as a series of 
 incidents with which he has to deal 
 
 164
 
 THE ARMY AND THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 practically. It is not his job to ask why. 
 He has to get on and do something about 
 it. If he does his work well, that is all 
 that is required of him. His interests are 
 practical. They relate to his profession, 
 his men, and his recreations. His plea- 
 sures are simple. They are the pleasures 
 of the body rather than the mind — sport, 
 games, sex. His relations with his fellow- 
 men are simple and defined. To his 
 superiors in rank he must be respectful, 
 at all events outwardly. He must sup- 
 port them even when he thinks they are 
 mistaken. To his equals he must be a 
 good comrade. To his men he must be a 
 sort of father, encouraging, correcting, 
 stimulating, restraining, as the occasion 
 demands. They are quite definitely his 
 inferiors. It is not surprising if he lacks 
 sympathy with Socialism, Idealism, Mys- 
 ticism, and all the other " isms." Like 
 every one else, he has the limitations of 
 his virtues. 
 
 165
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 The life at Oxford, which I experienced 
 some four years later, was the most 
 complete contrast imaginable to what I 
 have been trying to describe, and, as is 
 only natural, the product is absolutely 
 different from the product of " the Shop." 
 At Oxford we were the masters of our 
 time. We read what we liked and when 
 we liked. We went to bed when we liked, 
 and, in the main, got up when we liked. 
 We had beautiful rooms, which offered 
 every inducement to the exercise of indi- 
 vidual taste. Our reading was the reverse 
 of utilitarian ; it was calculated not to 
 make us competent craftsmen, but to 
 widen our sympathies and stimulate our 
 imaginations. We read history, philo- 
 sophy, theology, literature, psychology — 
 all subjects which incite one to dream 
 rather than to act. Our religion tended 
 to be mystical. In creed and ethics we 
 were inclined to be critical, to take nothing 
 for granted. In politics our sympathies
 
 THE ARMY AND THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 were too wide and our scepticism too 
 pronounced to be compatible with definite 
 views. Socially we were theoretically 
 democratic ; but our inherited and aesthe- 
 tic prejudices kept most of us from putting 
 our theories into practice. When we left 
 our Alma Mater we were full of vague 
 ideals, unpractical dreams, and ineffective 
 goodwill. Those of us who then went 
 to work took little, practical enthusiasm 
 with them at the first ; and it was many 
 months before they were able to relegate 
 to its proper place in the dim background 
 the land of dreams which was their king- 
 dom of the mind. 
 
 All stories end in the same way now : 
 " then came the war." Most University 
 men took commissions, and found them- 
 selves working side by side with their 
 opposites — the men from Sandhurst and 
 Woolwich. In the end both types found 
 that they had something to learn from 
 the other. In the routine of the barrack 
 
 167
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 and the trench the University man learnt 
 the value of punctuality and a high sense 
 of duty. He found it very hard to work 
 when he felt inclined to meditate, to 
 perform punctiliously duties of which he 
 did not see the necessity but only the 
 inconvenience. Yet time showed that the 
 military code was not simply arbitrary 
 and irritating, as it appeared at first, but 
 essential to efficiency. So, too, the pro- 
 fessional soldier saw that the psychological 
 interests and broad human sympathies 
 of the University man had their uses in 
 helping to maintain a good spirit, and to 
 get the best work out of men who were 
 experiencing hardships of a kind that 
 they had never known before. And in 
 the days of danger and death a good 
 many officers felt the need of an articulate 
 philosophy of life and death, and recog- 
 nized that Oxford and Cambridge had 
 given their sons the power to evolve one, 
 while Sandhurst and Woolwich had not. 
 
 168
 
 THE ARMY AND THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 Other University men there are who 
 have preferred to remain in the ranks of 
 the Army. Who shall say that they are 
 shirking their responsibilities ? The men 
 also need the wisdom that they have 
 gathered, for they, too, have to face death 
 and wounds with the poorest mental 
 equipment for doing so. And in the 
 ranks the student will find that his philo- 
 sophy is becoming practical, that his 
 dreams are being fulfilled, and that he is 
 the interpreter of a wider experience of 
 life than even he ever imagined. 
 
 169
 
 A SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC
 
 XII 
 
 A SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC 
 
 Englishmen have a horror of being 
 thought " theatrical " or " poseurs." If a 
 man is described as " theatrical," they 
 immediately picture a person of inordinate 
 vanity and no real character striving 
 after outward effect. He may be a petty 
 criminal of weak intellect, glorying because 
 he is the centre of a Police Court sensation, 
 and because his case and his photo are in 
 all the evening papers. He may be a 
 mediocre and not too honest politician 
 trying to exploit some imaginary scandal 
 to increase his own notoriety. These are 
 the types that the Englishman associates 
 with being " theatrical " or a " poseur" 
 ' and he hates and despises them. But by 
 " a sense of the dramatic " I mean some- 
 
 173
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 thing absolutely different. I mean getting 
 outside yourself and seeing yourself and 
 other people as the characters of a story. 
 You watch them and criticize them from a 
 wholly detached point of view. You just 
 want to see what sort of a story you are 
 helping to make, and what points of 
 interest it would be likely to offer to an 
 outside observer. There is no vanity or 
 superficiality or egoism about this. It is 
 simply realizing the interest in your own 
 life, and it will often enable you to see 
 things in their proper perspective, and so 
 to avoid being bored or oppressed by 
 circumstances which you cannot alter. 
 
 After all, every life has a certain amount 
 of interest and romance attached to it if 
 looked at from the right angle. Every 
 one can see something interesting in 
 another fellow's life. We all experience 
 at times a curiosity to know what it feels 
 like to be something quite different from 
 what we are. It is a relic of our childhood, 
 
 174
 
 A SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC 
 
 when we used to play at being anything, 
 from the Pope of Rome to a tram-conduc- 
 tor. But it is nearly always the other 
 fellow's job that is interesting, and hardly 
 ever our own. There is romance in dining 
 at the Carlton, except to the habitues of 
 the place. There is romance in dining for 
 a shilling in Soho, unless you are one of 
 the folk who can never afford to dine 
 anywhere else. If you are rich there is 
 romance in poverty, in wresting a living 
 from a society which seems to grudge it 
 you. If you are poor there is romance in 
 opulence and luxury. There is romance 
 in being grown up if you are a child, and 
 there is romance in youth if you are old or 
 middle-aged. 
 
 Now a sense of the dramatic means that 
 you see the romance in your own life. If 
 you are rich, it will enable you to see the 
 munificent possibilities in your wealth, as 
 the poor man sees them. You will catch 
 at an ideal, and try to live up to it. Every 
 
 175
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 now and then you will get outside- yourself, 
 and compare yourself with your ideal, and 
 see how you have failed. If you are a 
 workman it will enable you to understand 
 the glory of work well done, of strong 
 muscles and deft fingers, of a home which 
 you have built up by your own exertions. 
 Without this sense the rich man is bored 
 by the easiness of his existence, and will 
 always be striving after new sensations, 
 probably unwholesome ones, in order to 
 stimulate his waning interest in life ; 
 while the poor man will become oppressed 
 by the grinding monotony of his existence, 
 and will become a waster and a drunkard. 
 Suppose you are an uncle. If you have 
 no sense of the dramatic you will miss all 
 the fun in tipping your small nephew. 
 You will do it with no air at all. You 
 will do it in a mean and grudging spirit. 
 You will wonder how little you can with 
 decency give the young rascal, and will 
 dispense it with a forced smile like the one 
 
 176
 
 A SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC 
 
 which you reserve for your dentist. The 
 urchin will probably make a long nose at 
 you when your back is turned. But if 
 you have a sense of the dramatic, you will 
 see the possibilities of the incident from 
 the nephew's point of view. You will 
 understand the romance of being an uncle. 
 You will disburse your largess with an 
 air of genial patronage and bonhomie 
 which will endear you to the boy for ever. 
 You will go away feeling that you have 
 both been a huge success in your respective 
 parts. 
 
 A sense of the dramatic is, of course, 
 closely connected with a sense of humour. 
 If you have this faculty for getting outside 
 yourself and criticizing yourself, you will 
 be pretty sure to see whether you look 
 ridiculous. If you are a real artist in 
 the exercise of the gift, you will also see 
 yourself in your right perspective with 
 regard to other people. The artist must 
 not be an egoist. He must not allow the 
 
 177 M
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 limelight to be centred on himself. He 
 will see himself, not as the hero of the 
 story, but as one of the characters — the 
 hero, perhaps, of one chapter, but equally 
 a minor character in the others. The 
 greatest artist of all, probably, is the man 
 who prays, and tries to see the story as the 
 Author designed it. He will have the 
 truest sense of proportion, the most ade- 
 quate sense of humour of all. Undoubtedly 
 prayer is the highest form of exercising 
 this sense of the dramatic. 
 
 Probably there is no one to whom this 
 saving grace is more essential than to the 
 fighting soldier, especially in winter. Every 
 detail of his life is sordid and uncomfort- 
 able. His feet are always damp and cold. 
 He is plastered with mud from head to 
 foot. His clothes cling to him like a wet 
 blanket. He is filthy and cannot get clean. 
 His food is beastly. He has no prospect 
 of anything that a civilian would call 
 decent comfort unless he gets ill or 
 
 178
 
 A SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC 
 
 wounded. There is no one to sympathize 
 with his plight or call him a hero. If he 
 has no sense of the dramatic, if his horizon 
 is bounded by the sheer material discom- 
 fort and filth which surround him, he will 
 sink to the level of the beast, lose his 
 discipline and self-respect, and spend his 
 days and nights making himself and every 
 one else as miserable as possible by his 
 incessant grumbling and ill-humour. On 
 the other hand, if he has any sense of the 
 dramatic, he will feel that he is doing his 
 bit for the regeneration of the world, that 
 history will speak of him as a hero, and, 
 like Mark Tapley, he will see in his 
 hardships and discomforts a splendid 
 chance of being cheerful with credit. He 
 will know that God has given him a man's 
 part to play, and he will determine to 
 play it as a man should. There are many 
 men of this kidney in the army of the 
 trenches, and they are the very salt of the 
 earth. They have been salted with fire. 
 
 179
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 They are the living proof that pain and 
 suffering are something more than sheer 
 cruelty — rather the conditions which turn 
 human animals into men, and men into 
 saints and heroes fit for the Kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 Imagination has its disadvantages ; but 
 on the whole, and when well under control, 
 it is a good quality in a leader. Often in 
 war, when the men are tired and dejected, 
 and seemingly incapable of further effort, 
 a few words of cheer from a leader whom 
 they trust will revive their spirits, and 
 transform them into strong and deter- 
 mined men once more. The touch of 
 imagination in their leader's words re- 
 stores their sense of the dramatic. They 
 see the possibilities in the part which they 
 are called upon to play, and they resolve 
 to make the most of it. The appeal so 
 made is generally not one to individual 
 vanity. In the picture of the situation 
 which his sense of the dramatic conjures 
 
 180
 
 A SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC 
 
 up it is not himself that the soldier sees 
 as the central figure. Probably it is his 
 leader. He sees himself, not as an in- 
 dividual hero, but as a loyal follower, who 
 is content to endure all and to brave all 
 under a trusted captain. He looks for no 
 reward but his leader's smile of approval 
 and confidence. His highest ambition is 
 to be trusted and not to fail. Happy is 
 the leader who can command such loyalty 
 as this ! And there are many such in the 
 army of the trenches. 
 
 Here, again, religion gives the highest, 
 the universal example of the particular 
 virtue. The most perfect form of Christi- 
 anity is just the abiding sense of loyalty 
 to a divine Master — the abiding sense of 
 the dramatic which never loses sight of 
 the Master's figure, and which continually 
 enables a man to see himself in the r61e of 
 the trusted and faithful disciple, so that 
 he is always trying to live up to his part. 
 
 No, a sense of the dramatic is not 
 
 181
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 theatrical, not conducive to, or even com- 
 patible with, egoism. It is a faculty 
 which gives zest to life : putting boredom 
 and oppression to flight ; stimulating 
 humour, humility and idealism. It is of 
 all faculties the most desirable, being very 
 agreeable to honour and to true religion. 
 
 182
 
 A BOOK OF WISDOM
 
 XIII 
 
 A BOOK OF WISDOM 
 
 It is said that a certain eminent Doctor 
 of Divinity once summed up a debate on 
 some knotty theological problem in the 
 following terms : " Well, gentlemen, speak- 
 ing for myself, I think I may venture to 
 say that I should feel inclined to favour 
 a tendency in a positive direction, with 
 reservations." It is easy to sneer at such 
 an attitude ; but in reality it is rather 
 splendid. Here was an old man, who had 
 spent the greater part of his life in studying 
 the fundamental problems of metaphysics 
 and history, and at the end of it all he had 
 the courage to confess that he was still 
 only at the threshold of the house of 
 Knowledge. At least he had realized the 
 magnitude of his subject, and if we com- 
 
 185
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 pare him with the narrow dogmatists of 
 other ages, we shall be forced to allow that 
 in his exceeding humility there was some 
 greatness, nobility of mind, and dignity. 
 At the same time it must be confessed that 
 such an attitude does not lend itself to 
 expression in a terse, definite form ; and 
 that, unfortunately, is what is needed by 
 the men who are busy doing the hard work 
 of the world. The ordinary man wants 
 something simple and applicable to the 
 problems with which he has to deal. He 
 wants a right point of view, so that he can 
 see the hard facts which crowd his life in 
 their proper perspective. He wants Power, 
 that he may be able to master the cir- 
 cumstances which threaten to swamp him. 
 For the nebulous views of modern theology 
 he has little use. 
 
 Of course, theoretically the pastor should 
 mediate between theology and life, having 
 a working knowledge of both. Unfor- 
 tunately, but not altogether unnaturally, 
 
 186
 
 A BOOK OF WISDOM 
 
 the hierarchy is timid. Ordinands are 
 discouraged from learning too much about 
 life, lest they err in strange paths and lose 
 their way. Equally they are discouraged 
 from penetrating too far into modern 
 theology, lest they get lost in the fog. 
 They are advised to be content with the 
 official guides to both ; and the official 
 guides are somewhat out of date, and in 
 them accuracy and adequacy are apt to be 
 sacrificed to simplicity. The net result 
 is that the ordinary man does not re- 
 ceive much help from the Church in his 
 attempts to get a mental grip of life and 
 death. 
 
 Indications are not wanting that the 
 present crisis may evolve teachers of a 
 new kind in the ranks of the clergy and the 
 professors. Many clergy have enlisted 
 in non-combatant corps, and must there 
 have gained a much deeper sense of the 
 needs of ordinary men than they ever 
 acquired in the University, the clergy 
 
 187
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 school, and the parish. Some of the 
 younger dons have also plunged into life, 
 and they may be expected to produce 
 literature of a new type when they return 
 to their studies. Perhaps we shall see 
 again something analogous to the old books 
 of wisdom ; shrewd commentaries on life 
 couched in short, pithy sentences. If so, 
 they will be refreshing reading after the 
 turgid inconclusiveness of most modern 
 theology. In this article will be found 
 what may prove the first fruits of the crisis. 
 It is, in its way, a little book of wisdom. 
 The writer, though not yet entirely emanci- 
 pated from the traditions of his type, 
 seems nevertheless to be feeling after 
 greater clearness of expression and more 
 definite views. Here is a short history of 
 how he came to write it. 
 
 He wished to be a clergyman ; but he 
 rejected the advice of his elders, and lost 
 himself in the mists of modern theology. 
 There he wandered contentedly for some 
 
 188
 
 A BOOK OF WISDOM 
 
 years, until one day he discovered that 
 his nation had gone to war in what he 
 conceived to be a righteous cause. To the 
 astonishment of his friends, he immediately 
 came out of the cloud, and announced 
 his intention of taking part in the struggle. 
 Being of gentle birth, he was urged to 
 apply for a commission ; but, laughingly 
 dubbing himself " a mere dreamer," he 
 preferred the humbler lot of a private 
 soldier. What follows is taken from his 
 notebook. In it he jotted down from 
 time to time what he considered the chief 
 truths which his study and his experience 
 of life had impressed upon his mind. 
 There is no conscious connexion between 
 the various groups ; but the dates give one 
 a clue which enables one to see how each 
 group is connected with a particular phase 
 of his experience, and to trace the develop- 
 ment of his mind due to the reaction 
 of these successive phases. Thus June, 
 
 1914, sees him preoccupied with abstract 
 
 189
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 problems, trying to mark his tracks as 
 he wanders through the mists. August 
 sees him turning from his mind to his 
 conscience, and nerving himself to decisive 
 action. In September he was already 
 becoming an empirical rather than an 
 abstract philosopher. In October and 
 December the barrack-room had com- 
 pelled him to try to define the place of 
 religion in practical life. In February, 
 1915, he is contrasting religion with theo- 
 logy, to the disadvantage of the latter. 
 In May and June death is teaching him 
 the supreme truths. But let his words 
 tell their own story — 
 
 " June 20, '14. — Do not think to ' get to the 
 bottom of things ' : most likely they have not got 
 one. 
 
 Agnosticism is a fact : it is the starting-point of 
 the man who has realized that to study Infinity 
 requires Etemitj'". 
 
 Only he who has failed to perceive the immensity 
 of the universe and the insignificance of man will 
 dare to say ' I know ' : ignorance is always dog- 
 matic. 
 
 190
 
 A BOOK OF WISDOM 
 
 Where knowledge is exact it is merely descriptive : 
 it tells the how, but not the why, of a process. 
 
 Agnosticism is no excuse for idleness : because 
 we cannot know all, it does not follow that we should 
 remain wholly ignorant." 
 
 " August 5, '14. — Knowledge is not a right end 
 in itself : the aim of the philosopher must not be 
 to know, but to be somewhat. 
 
 The philosopher who is a bad citizen has studied 
 in vain. 
 
 The law said : ' Thou shalt not kill ' ; the Gospel 
 says : ' Thou shalt not hate.' It is possible to kill 
 without hatred. 
 
 The Gospel says : ' Love your enemies.' That 
 means : ' Try to make them your friends.' It may 
 be necessary to kick one's enemy in order to make 
 friendship possible. A nation may be in the same 
 predicament, and be forced to fight in order to 
 make friendship possible." 
 
 " August 10, '14. — Rank in itself is one of the 
 false gods which it is the business of religion and 
 philosophy to dethrone. 
 
 Outward rank deserves outward respect : genuine 
 respect is only accorded to real usefulness. 
 
 Rank is only valued by the wise when it offers 
 opportunity for greater usefulness. 
 
 To know one's limitations is a mark of wisdom : 
 to rest content with them merits contempt. 
 
 191
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 There is no dishonour in a humble lot — unless 
 one is shirking the responsibilities of one more 
 exalted. 
 
 The wise man will take the lowest room ; but 
 only the shirker will refuse to go up higher. 
 
 To fear a change in one's manner of life is to be 
 the slave of habit : freedom is a chief object both of 
 religion and philosophy. 
 
 Here are two contemptible fellows : a philosopher 
 without courage, and a Christian without faith." 
 
 " September 1, '14. — The interest of life lies 
 largely in its contrasts : if a man finds life dull it is 
 probably because he has lacked the courage to 
 widen his environment. 
 
 To have a wide experience is to inherit the earth : 
 with a narrow horizon a man cannot be a sound 
 thinker. 
 
 Experience is the raw material of the philosopher : 
 the wider his experience, whether personal or bor- 
 rowed, the more sure the basis of his philosophy." 
 
 " October 15, '14. — Man is the creature of heredity 
 and circumstance : he is only the master of his fate 
 in so far as he can select his environment. 
 
 Sordid surroundings make man a brute : friend- 
 ship makes him human : religion begins to make 
 him divine. 
 
 Religion means being aware of God as a factor in 
 
 192
 
 A BOOK OF WISDOM 
 
 one's environment : perfect religion is perceiving 
 the true relative importance of God and the rest. 
 Some men are brutes : most are human : very 
 few begin to be divine." 
 
 " December 5, '14. — Almost all men are slaves : 
 they are mastered by foolish ambitions, vile appe- 
 tites, jealousies, prejudices, the conventions and 
 opinions of other men. These things obsess them, 
 so that they cannot see anything in its right per- 
 spective. 
 
 For most men the world is centred in self, which is 
 misery : to have one's world centred in God is the 
 peace that passeth understanding. 
 
 This is liberty : to know that God alone 
 matters." 
 
 " February 2, '15. — Optimism is the condition of 
 successful effort : belief in God is the only rational 
 basis of optimism. 
 
 To offer a sound basis for optimism, religion must 
 take count of facts : the hardest fact is the existence 
 of unmerited suffering. 
 
 Religion is feeling and aspiration : theology is 
 the statement of its theoretical implications. 
 
 Religion is tested by experience : theology by 
 logic and history. 
 
 Christianity survives because the Cross symbo- 
 lizes the problem of pain, and because its meta- 
 
 193 N
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 physical implications have never been finally 
 settled. 
 
 Christianity is a way, and not an explanation of 
 life : it implies Power, and not dogma." 
 
 " May 25, '15. — In the hour of danger a man is 
 proven : the boaster hides, the egotist trembles, 
 only he whose care is for honour and for others for- 
 gets to be afraid. 
 
 It is blessed to give : blessed is he of whom it is 
 said that he so loved giving that he was glad to 
 give his life. 
 
 Death is a great teacher : from him men learn 
 what are the things they really value. 
 
 Men live for eating and drinking, position and 
 wealth : they die for honour and for friendship. 
 
 True religion is betting one's life that there is a 
 God. 
 
 In the hour of danger all good men are believers : 
 they choose the spiritual, and reject the material. 
 
 The death of a hero convinces all of eternal life : 
 they are unable to call it a tragedy." 
 
 " June 1, '15. — I have seen with the eyes of God. 
 I have seen the naked souls of men, stripped of 
 circumstance. Rank and reputation, wealth and 
 poverty, knowledge and ignorance, manners and 
 uncouthness, these I saw not. I saw the naked souls 
 of men. I saw who were slaves and who were free : 
 
 194
 
 A BOOK OF WISDOM 
 
 who were beasts and who men : who were con- 
 temptible and who honourable. I have seen with 
 the eyes of God. I have seen the vanity of the 
 temporal and the glory of the eternal. I have 
 despised comfort and honoured pain. I have 
 understood the victory of the Cross. O Death, 
 where is thy sting ? Nunc dimittis, Domine. . . ." 
 
 195
 
 A MOBILIZATION OF THE 
 CHURCH
 
 XIV 
 
 A MOBILIZATION OF THE CHURCH > 
 
 I have recently read two books, both 
 dealing with the probable effect of the 
 war on the Churches. One of them was 
 by a clergyman of the Church of England, 
 and the other by a Nonconformist lay- 
 man. Both agreed that the Churches 
 were hopelessly out of touch with the 
 
 1 As a matter of fact, nearly all ordinands of the 
 Church of England, being of the right age and 
 sound of limb, have enlisted or been granted com- 
 missions in the Army. In addition many of the 
 younger clergy have found their way into the ranks 
 of the R.A.M.C., and even of combatant units. 
 The writer has, however, retained the article 
 because he is convinced that the present crisis is, 
 for the Church of England, an unprecedented 
 opportunity for either making a fresh start or 
 committing suicide. 
 
 199
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 average laity, and both were concerned 
 with the problem which will confront the 
 Churches when the war is over, and the 
 fighting men return to their civilian occu- 
 pations. These men will return from 
 their experience of hardship and danger, 
 pain and death, in a far more serious 
 frame of mind than that in which they 
 set out. Then, if ever, will they be willing 
 to listen if the Churches have any vital 
 message for them, any interpretation to 
 offer of their experiences, any ideal of a 
 practical and inspiring kind to point to. 
 If the Churches miss that opportunity, 
 woe betide them ! It may be centuries 
 before they get such another. So far 
 both writers were agreed, and also in their 
 anxiety, that the Churches were not fit 
 to grapple with that opportunity, that 
 they were too remote in their methods 
 and doctrines from real life to be able to 
 give a lead to men whose minds were full 
 of real problems. But in their remedies 
 
 200
 
 A MOBILIZATION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 for that unfitness the two writers were 
 wholly at variance. The clergyman looked 
 to his colleagues for help. They must cut 
 themselves loose from the business of 
 parochial and philanthropic organization 
 on which at present so much of their 
 energy is expended, but which is not 
 really their proper work. Instead they 
 must devote themselves to cultivating a 
 deeper spirituality, repair more diligently 
 to the Mount of God, there to receive 
 enlightenment and revelation. The lay- 
 man, on the other hand, abandoned the 
 clergy as hopeless. They did not know 
 enough about life to be of any use in this 
 work. It was laymen, men who had 
 shared the experiences of " the lads," 
 who would have to be their prophets and 
 interpreters. It was not in the ordinary 
 services of Church or Chapel that the 
 returning soldiers would find the sort of 
 religious teaching and worship which they 
 needed, but in Adult Schools and P.S.A.'s 
 
 201
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 organized by their fellow-laymen — men 
 who had struggled and suffered at their 
 side, and had found and tested in their 
 own experience how communion with 
 God can raise a man, and make him con- 
 tented and clean and useful. 
 
 Personally, my sympathies are much 
 more with the Nonconformist than with 
 the clergyman. The clergy are out of 
 touch with the laity. They do not as a 
 rule understand the real difficulties and 
 temptations of the ordinary man. The 
 sin against which they preach is sin as 
 defined in the Theological College, a sort 
 of pale, lifeless shadow of the real thing. 
 The virtue which they extol is equally a 
 ghost of the real, generous, vital love of 
 good which is the only thing that is of 
 any use in the everyday working life of 
 actual men. Although there are brilliant 
 exceptions, this is almost bound to be the 
 case as long as the majority of ordinands 
 are segregated in the artificial atmosphere 
 
 202
 
 A MOBILIZATION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 of the clergy school before they have 
 any experience of life ; as long as the 
 work of the younger clergy is so largely 
 concerned with suffering women's gossip, 
 ministering to the amusement of children, 
 and trying to help the hopeless, so that 
 they have no time or opportunity for free 
 intercourse with the adult male inhabi- 
 tants of their parishes ; as long as the old 
 traditional mistrust exists between clergy 
 and laity, due in no small measure to the 
 refusal of the Church as a whole to face 
 the facts of modern science and research, 
 and breeding as it does misconception on 
 the one side and reticence on the other ; 
 as long as the teaching and worship of 
 the Church continue to be a compromise 
 between the two historic parties to an 
 outworn ecclesiastical controversy rather 
 than the interpretation of the real needs 
 and aspirations of living men, as long 
 as these are the outstanding features of 
 clerical training and life and method it 
 
 203
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 is difficult to see how any one can expect 
 the average clergyman to be able to help 
 or lead his brethren of the laity. It is 
 useless for him to go to Horeb until he 
 has understood the life in the streets of 
 Samaria. It is useless for him to spend 
 more time in praying until he has more to 
 pray about. And the situation is not 
 going to improve one bit if the younger 
 clergy are kept back from taking their 
 share in the nation's present struggle. 
 If, while men of every class and every 
 profession are uniting in the common life 
 of service, the ordinands and younger 
 clergy are alone withheld, at the end of 
 the war they will be more out of touch 
 with the laity than ever. In such cir- 
 cumstances one could only agree with the 
 Nonconformist writer that after the war 
 it is laymen who must minister to lay- 
 men, while the clergy are left to attend 
 to the women and children. But since the 
 Bishop of Carlisle has had the courage 
 * 204
 
 A MOBILIZATION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 to declare that he can find no reason 
 either in the New Testament or in the 
 Canons of the Reformed Church why 
 clergy should not be combatants, one 
 is emboldened to ask whether there is 
 not opened up a yet more excellent 
 way. 
 
 Suppose the Church were mobilized so 
 that the majority of the younger clergy 
 and all the ordinands were set free for 
 service in the Army, the situation at the 
 end of the war might be very different 
 from that which we have been anticipat- 
 ing. There is no life more intimate than 
 that of the barrack-room. There is no 
 life where the essential characters of men 
 are so fully revealed as the life of the 
 trench. Those of the combatant clergy 
 who returned from the war would know 
 all that was worth knowing of the char- 
 acters of ordinary men. They would 
 have seen their weaknesses in the barrack- 
 life at home, in the public-house and the 
 
 205
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 street. They would have appreciated their 
 greatness in the life of the trenches. They 
 would know their potentialities and under- 
 stand their limitations. They would be 
 able to link the doctrines of religion to 
 the lives of men, and to express them in 
 language which no one could fail to 
 understand. With such men as clergy 
 a new era might dawn for the Church in 
 this land, and the Kingdom of Heaven 
 be brought very nigh. 
 
 The Church could be mobilized so as 
 to set free a large number of the younger 
 clergy, if only her leaders could see that 
 the greatness of the opportunity made 
 the sacrifice worth while. To begin with, 
 an enormous amount of ordinary parochial 
 work could be discontinued for the dura- 
 tion of the war with very little loss. A 
 large amount of relief work could be 
 dispensed with, men's clubs could be 
 shut, men's services suspended. Visiting 
 could be confined to the sick, and a good 
 
 206
 
 A MOBILIZATION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 deal of the work among women and chil- 
 dren handed over entirely to lady helpers. 
 A large number of older men could, if they 
 were public-spirited enough to consent, 
 be set free to take the place of younger 
 men. It is being done in almost every 
 other profession, so why not in the Church ? 
 The majority of the city churches could 
 be temporarily shut down, and in almost 
 all large towns quite a third of the churches 
 could be closed. Of course, parochial 
 work at home would suffer ; but that is 
 a sacrifice from which we should not 
 shrink — in view of the unique nature of 
 the opportunity. 
 
 The chief fear of the Bishops seems to 
 be that there might be a dearth of clergy 
 at the end of the war. Personally, I 
 believe that the reverse would be the case. 
 There are in the ranks of the Army many 
 men who at one time have contemplated 
 being ordained, but who have been greatly 
 discouraged during the past year by 
 
 207
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 realizing more intimately the conditions 
 with which the Church has to deal, and 
 perceiving more acutely than ever before 
 her inability to deal with them satis- 
 factorily. Such men, if they knew that 
 the Church was resolved to learn, was 
 resolved to make sacrifices in order to 
 establish a new contact between herself 
 and the laity, would be confirmed afresh 
 in their determination to help her, If 
 ordinands are scarce, it is simply because 
 the relations between the clergy and the 
 laity are so lacking in cordiality, and the 
 obvious way to secure a larger number 
 of ordinands is to cultivate better rela- 
 tions with laymen. 
 
 The opportunity is indeed great. All 
 that is wanted is faith from the leaders 
 of the Church, and loyalty from the other 
 incumbents. The younger clergy will need 
 no pressing. They are splendid fellows, 
 most of them, fully alive to the disadvan- 
 tages of their position, full of enthusiasm 
 
 208
 
 A MOBILIZATION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 for any scheme which could enable them 
 to restore cordial relations between them- 
 selves and their brethren, and would give 
 them the intimate knowledge which they 
 need before they can preach a living 
 Gospel. Mobilize the older clergy, and 
 mobilize the noble and efficient army of 
 women helpers, and parishes at home 
 will not suffer very much ; while the 
 mission to men will be prosecuted under 
 conditions more favourable than have 
 ever occurred before, or are ever likely to 
 occur again. 
 
 209
 
 A STUDENT, HIS COMRADES, 
 AND HIS CHURCH
 
 , XV 
 
 A STUDENT, HIS COMRADES, AND 
 HIS CHURCH 
 
 It is with many misgivings that " A 
 Student in Arms " offers the present 
 article to his readers. It is so horribly- 
 egotistical, being frankly a record of 
 personal experiences and resultant per- 
 sonal beliefs, that it can only be written 
 in the third person. He has no right 
 to imagine that any one is interested 
 in his personal opinions or history, 
 and yet he has a feeling that a certain 
 number of his readers are inclined to 
 class him as a bit of a fraud, and that is 
 a state of affairs which he does not want 
 to continue. " Who is this fellow ? Some 
 of his articles aren't bad ; but why this 
 bitter and prejudiced attack on the Church, 
 
 213
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 and this hasty and unjust condemnation 
 of the clergy, when a few weeks ago he 
 was pretending to be a Churchman him- 
 self ? Probably he is one of these modern 
 sentimentalists who are full of sloppy 
 ideals, and empty of sound principles : 
 whose beliefs are nebulous, and their 
 ideals impracticable." That is the sort 
 of judgment that he wants to appeal 
 against. 
 
 In order to render what follows intelli- 
 gible it is unfortunately necessary to go 
 into a little bald personal history. The 
 Student was in a Service Battalion, and 
 very early in the proceedings was made 
 a sergeant. He remained a platoon ser- 
 geant for about nine months, with " the 
 beloved Captain " as his subaltern. Then, 
 for reasons which only concern himself, 
 he descended with a bump to the rank of 
 private, and was transferred to a different 
 company. He is now a temporary second 
 lieutenant^on probation — for his sins. 
 
 214
 
 A STUDENT, HIS COMRADES, AND CHURCH 
 
 So much for that. Now one Sunday 
 morning the Student, who is now trans- 
 ferred to the home establishment, went, 
 as his custom is, to Holy Communion, 
 where he took the Bread and Wine in the 
 visible company of the sergeant-major's 
 wife and daughter. But when he shut 
 his eyes he saw a whole host of figures 
 that he knew and loved kneeling, as he 
 thought, at his side. Yet this was the 
 perplexing part, that so far as he knew, 
 a great many of them had never been to 
 Communion in their lives, or even to 
 Church, unless they were marched there. 
 They were his old comrades. Then after- 
 wards, when he ought to have been at 
 Matins, he was wandering through the 
 woods like any heathen, and the same 
 throng accompanied him. In fact all 
 that day he had only to shut his eyes, 
 and there they were. 
 
 There was Fred, who had been his 
 assistant sergeant in the old platoon.. 
 
 215
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 There he was, with his short, stodgy- 
 figure, his red cheeks and waxed mous- 
 taches, his black eyes and truculent voice. 
 For eight long months they had slept 
 and worked and amused themselves side 
 by side, with never an angry word or a 
 misunderstanding, never a note of jealousy 
 or of pique. They had grown in mutual 
 understanding and respect and affection 
 without ever saying a word about it. 
 Then, on the last night, when the Student 
 told his chum that he was to be a private 
 the following day, Fred the inarticulate 
 spoke words that the Student will never 
 forget : words which showed a sympathy, 
 an understanding, and a generosity which 
 a man is lucky to meet with once in a 
 lifetime. 
 
 Then there were the boys of the old 
 platoon. There was Wullie, the dour 
 pessimist from Manchester way, who died 
 in England. Wullie was, I doubt not, a 
 good workman in civil life ; but he was 
 
 216
 
 A STUDENT, HIS COMRADES, AND CHURCH 
 
 sadly awkward at his drills. The Student, 
 who was his sergeant, was for ever pointing 
 out his deficiencies, as it was Ms business 
 to do ; but at last Wullie could bear it 
 no longer, and losing his temper told the 
 sergeant in the plain language of the 
 North Country that he had him set, and 
 did not give him a chance. And because 
 the Student who was his sergeant kept 
 his temper, and was able to recognize 
 the genuine grievance of a real trier, and 
 answered with soft encouraging words, 
 Wullie never forgot it, and was his staunch 
 supporter till the end. 
 
 Then there was Tommy, the Londoner 
 with the big nose and the lively tempera- 
 ment. Tommy was Wullie's chum, be- 
 cause both were straight, clean-living men, 
 and faithful to their wives. And though 
 their temperaments, aye, and their class, 
 were so different, their principles were 
 the same, and both had suffered for them 
 in the rough life of the working world. 
 
 217
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 There was Dave, too. Dave was a pit 
 lad from Lancashire. His speech was 
 plain and homely, not to say pungent. 
 His humour was quaint and pithy. His 
 strength and will to work were without 
 equal. He was a faithful and loving 
 husband and father to the little woman 
 and the kiddies in the far Lancashire 
 village ; and because the Student who 
 was his sergeant was once able to help 
 him a bit to go and see a child who was 
 dying, Dave never forgot it. And when 
 the sergeant fell from his high estate 
 Dave said " nowt," but used to purloin 
 his mess tin and make it shine like silver, 
 for in that art he was mighty cunning ; 
 and the Student knew what he meant, and 
 will not forget. 
 
 Then there was little Jim from Brum, 
 aetat sixteen. He had the awkward grace 
 of a young colt, and the innocent, pathetic 
 eyes of an antelope, mischief and secret 
 mirth lurked in the corners of his mouth, 
 
 218
 
 A STUDENT, HIS COMRADES, AND CHURCH 
 
 and his heart was strong and undismayed 
 like the heart of a young lion. Jim shall 
 not be forgotten. 
 
 Besides these there were the lads of 
 the company in which the Student found 
 himself after his descent. There was Billy 
 who, when the Student was feeling rather 
 awkward and dazed after his rapid fall 
 in rank, took possession of him, and 
 constituted himself the most loyal and 
 unselfish friend that ever man had ; Billy, 
 the most modest lump of efficiency that 
 ever wore a stripe and shall wear a star. 
 
 There was D , the genial boon 
 
 companion, generous friend, and faithful 
 lover. There was Albert, the silent and 
 reserved and observant, who did not 
 quickly give his loyalty to any man, but 
 who, when he did give it, gave without 
 stint. There was Jack, the lion-hearted 
 bomber, who was always most cheery 
 when cheerfulness was at a premium. 
 
 These are but a few of the comrades 
 
 219
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 with whom the Student held silent com- 
 munion that Sunday morning ; yet only 
 one of them had ever knelt at his side in 
 the flesh to receive the Bread and Wine 
 of Life. They were the comrades of a 
 year ago. Now they are scattered. Some 
 are dead and some maimed, some are still 
 fighting, and some promoted. Never again 
 shall they meet in this world. Yet the 
 Student prays that if ever he forgets them, 
 or is ashamed of them, he may be cut off 
 from the company of honest men. Of 
 the Church in which he believes they are 
 members, whether they know it or not. 
 The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit 
 in Whom he believes are their God too, 
 whether they know it or not. For the 
 Father is the Giver, and the Son is the 
 Lord, and the Spirit is the Inspirer of all 
 good life ; and if these were not good 
 the Student is a blasphemer, and calls 
 evil good, and good evil. The Student 
 calls himself a Churchman. He believes 
 
 220
 
 A STUDENT, HIS COMRADES, AND CHURCH 
 
 in the Holy Catholic Church invisible, 
 wherein is and shall be gathered up " all 
 we have hoped and dreamed of good." 
 He also calls himself an English Church- 
 man. But he will never be satisfied or 
 cry " All's well " till the Church of Eng- 
 land is the Church of all good men and 
 women in England, and until all the good 
 thoughts and deeds in England are laid 
 at the feet of the Lord of All Good Life, 
 through the medium of His body the 
 Church. Yet when he criticizes the Church 
 of England he is not blaming any particular 
 body of men such as the clergy. Organi- 
 zation, methods, clerisy, laity, all are 
 lacking. Human nature is frail and sin- 
 ful. These things must be so. Yet he 
 accounts it damnable treachery, faithless- 
 ness and blasphemy to sit down under 
 it. To rest content with the inevitable 
 is surely the negation of faith. 
 
 221
 
 MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE
 
 XVI 
 
 MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 We were on our way to the front ; but 
 from the general attitude of the men 
 you might have thought that we were on 
 a cheap tour. The " management ' was 
 subjected to much criticism. The train 
 was very far from being a train de luxe. 
 We had boarded it in the dark. Forty 
 men with forty packs and forty rifles had 
 tumbled, no one quite knew how, into a 
 pitch-dark van, and somehow sat down. 
 At first we most of us sat on each other ; 
 but by degrees, and with much wriggling, 
 we managed to separate ourselves more 
 or less, and squatted through long hours 
 in cramped, contorted attitudes. At 
 length, in the small hours, the train 
 stopped, and we bundled out, to find 
 
 225 p
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 ourselves in a diminutive French town. 
 There was nothing very interesting or 
 sensational about it as far as we could 
 see. The houses were modern, and of a 
 dull red brick. The road was cobbled, 
 and uncomfortable for marching. One 
 could not quite say why, but it certainly 
 had an unfamiliar air about it. It was 
 somehow different to any English town. 
 There was an indefinable something about 
 the architecture of the jerry-built villas 
 which betrayed the workings of a foreign 
 mind. We were cold and tired and stiff, 
 and we decided then and there that 
 France was a failure, and that we should 
 have done better to stay at home. We 
 marched through a dull flat country 
 with occasional farms, and avenues of 
 trees appearing in ghostly fashion through 
 the eariv morning mist. Thev did not 
 plant trees in avenues like that in Eng- 
 land, and we condemned the practice as 
 inartistic. 
 
 226
 
 MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 Very, very tired, we at last arrived at 
 a large barn, and entering lay down in 
 the thick straw, and were soon fast 
 asleep. A short sleep accomplished won- 
 ders. We woke to find the May sunlight 
 streaming in through the chinks of our 
 barn. We felt a good deal less critical 
 than we had ; in fact we were prepared 
 to be rather excited at the novelties that 
 life was offering. The barn was big and 
 airy, and the straw clean and sweet. We 
 felt encouraged to investigate farther. 
 Outside we found a meadow clothed in 
 long green grass, dotted with one or two 
 big trees, and full of wild flowers. In a 
 corner was a pond of clear water. We 
 stripped, found a bucket, and poured 
 water over ourselves, and then lay down 
 in the long grass and basked in the sun. 
 We were tasting the joys of the simple 
 life — the life of the tramp, for instance ; 
 and we thought that if it were always 
 May, and if the sun always shone, there 
 
 227
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 might be a good deal to be said in its 
 favour. We felt our British respectabil- 
 ity slipping away from us. The glamour 
 of vagabondage caught us. When we 
 returned to our office in the City or 
 our shop in the suburbs we would take 
 another holiday after this fashion, and 
 wander down English lanes one spring 
 morning, with a rucksack on our back. 
 We would sleep in an English barn, or 
 under an English hedge, and bathe in the 
 water of an English pool. What would 
 Aunt Maria say ? A fig for Aunt Maria ! 
 We were losing our prejudices, and becom- 
 ing Bohemian in our tastes. We knew 
 then, as we had never known before, what 
 it is to be young in the sweet springtime. 
 We had never felt like this, even at 
 Brighton or Southend ! There was some- 
 thing exquisitely clean and wholesome 
 about this picnic life. 
 
 We stayed at the village for several 
 days. In the morning we would go for 
 
 228
 
 MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 a walk round the country. It was rather 
 amusing, except that the " management " 
 insisted on our carrying all our luggage 
 on our backs wherever we went. In the 
 afternoon we would go and bathe in a 
 canal half a mile away. In the evening 
 we were free to roam about the village. 
 It was not a bit like an English village. 
 There didn't seem to be any proper 
 shops, and nearly every cottage had 
 something for sale. Large, flat, round 
 loaves, lovely fresh butter and milk and 
 eggs, delicious coffee, weak beer, and 
 cognac — these were obtainable almost 
 anywhere, at the farms and cottages 
 alike. And these French villagers had 
 a wonderful way with them. Somehow 
 you never felt like a customer. You were 
 made to feel like an old and valued friend 
 of the family. You went into a cottage 
 marked " Estaminet," and you ordered 
 your glass of beer. You sat and sipped it 
 en jamille, with Madame making coffee 
 
 229
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 or cooking supper on the big stove, Mam- 
 selle sewing in the corner, and Bebe play- 
 ing on the floor. Sometimes there was 
 a Monsieur too, but if so he was an old 
 gentleman who smoked his pipe, and 
 smiled genially at you. If you could 
 talk any French, tant mieux. There was 
 plenty to talk about, and every one joined 
 in with an easy, well-bred courtesy worthy 
 of the finest gentleman. Ah, they were 
 wonderful people, these good villagers 
 of ! 
 
 Somehow they had the faculty of being 
 sociable and friendly without any ad- 
 ventitious aids. The Englishman cannot 
 be quite at his ease with a stranger unless 
 he has stood him a drink, or eaten with 
 him. The English cannot sell you any- 
 thing and at the same time make you 
 feel that you are a guest rather than a 
 customer. We felt that there was some- 
 thing to be said for the French, after all. 
 
 Of course there were no young or even 
 
 230
 
 MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 middle-aged men in the village. They 
 were all — well, making a tour in Belgium 
 and Eastern France. That evidently 
 made a difference. Imagine an English 
 village visited by a number of young 
 Frenchmen. If there were no young 
 Englishmen about, but only women and 
 old men, no doubt they would be received 
 with open arms. The young women would 
 mildly flirt with them, the older women 
 would mother them, and the old men 
 would be quite paternal. But imagine 
 the effect if the English youths suddenly 
 returned. Then there would be jealous 
 lovers, jealous sons, jealous husbands. 
 The women would have to curb their 
 hospitable inclinations. The youths of 
 the two nations would look down their 
 noses at each other, and find each other 
 " gesticulating monkeys " or " mannerless 
 boors." Each would try to feel the better 
 race, and would turn to the women as 
 judges of their quarrel. No, perhaps it 
 
 231
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 was just as well that at there were 
 
 no young Frenchmen. As it was we were 
 regularly feted, and being on our best 
 behaviour felt that we were a suc- 
 cess. What could be more pleasant or 
 gratifying ? 
 
 We did not stay at l very long. 
 
 Soon we were en route for Belgium. This 
 time we marched, which wouM have been 
 very pleasant if we had not had to carry 
 all our own luggage. As it was the 
 marches proved very tiring. The only 
 advantage of a pack is that it makes a 
 very comfortable pillow if you do get 
 a chance to lie down. Every hour we 
 had a short halt, and lay flat on our 
 backs by the side of the road, with our 
 packs under our heads, and were happy. 
 We marched through several nice little 
 French towns, with fine old churches and 
 hotels de rille, and generally a pleasant 
 square in the centre, full of seductive- 
 looking auberges and cafes. Unfortu- 
 
 232
 
 MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 nately the " management " did not elect 
 to let us linger in these jolly little towns, 
 but hurried us on to some sequestered 
 farm on the confines of a small village, 
 and billeted us in a barn. We got to 
 know quite a lot about barns. They 
 are very nice if they are clean ; but when 
 they have been slept in by about fifty 
 successive parties in a few months they 
 begin to lose their charm. The straw 
 loses its sweetness, and the water of the 
 pond its crystal clearness. Often we 
 would crowd into a barn in the semi- 
 darkness, and, having with difficulty 
 found six foot of floor space for ourselves 
 and our belongings, discover beneath our 
 heads a little trove of decaying bully, or 
 damp, mouldy biscuits. We got used to 
 it ; but it was objectionable at first. On 
 the whole, though, we did not fare too 
 badly. There was generally a hospitable 
 little estaminet to visit in the evening, 
 and a cup of lovely hot coffee to be had 
 
 233
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 at the farm in the morning. The sun was 
 always shining, the grass green, and the 
 wild flowers blooming. We said that 
 France was not a bad place to be in in 
 the springtime. 
 
 To our destination we gave never a 
 thought. Such is the way of youth. 
 What was the good *>f worrying ? We 
 would take things as we found them. 
 But when we got into Belgium the stern 
 realities of war began to obtrude them- 
 selves. The towns which we passed 
 through were half empty. Broken win- 
 dows, holes in the roof, and here and 
 there the whole front of a house missing, 
 told their story of when the war had 
 swept that way. The people in the 
 villages were no longer genially hospitable. 
 They wore an anxious look, and were 
 obviously out to make money if they 
 could. Our beer was badly watered, and 
 our chocolate cost us more. We did not 
 like Belgium very much. 
 
 234
 
 MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 Finally we came to the trenches them- 
 selves, and all around was desolation 
 and ruin. There are few more mournful 
 spectacles than a town or village lately 
 reduced to ruins. The ruins of antiquity 
 leave one cold. The life that they once 
 harboured is too remote to excite our 
 sympathies. But a modern ruin is full 
 of tragedy. You see the remains of the 
 furniture, the family portraits on the wall, 
 a child's doll seated forlornly on a chair, 
 a little figure of the Virgin under a glass 
 case. In the middle of the little square 
 is a little iron bandstand, and you can 
 almost see the ghosts of the inhabitants 
 walking up and down, laughing, chatting 
 and quarrelling, with no sense of the 
 disaster overshadowing them. You won- 
 der what became of them. The girl 
 whose rosary lies on yonder dressing- 
 table, and who doubtless prayed every 
 night before that little figure of the Virgin, 
 was she raped by some blood-stained 
 
 235
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 Uhlan ? Or did she escape in time to 
 relations or friends at a safe distance ? 
 And to what purpose were all these 
 homes sacrificed ? Why are all these 
 good people scattered and beggared and 
 fugitive ? Cui bono ? On the Day of 
 Judgment some one will have to answer. 
 As we thought of the pleasant towns and 
 villages that we had left behind, with 
 their honest, kindly inhabitants, we set 
 our teeth and resolved that, if we could 
 prevent it, the receding tide should never 
 return over the fair lands of France. 
 
 So long we stayed in these scenes of 
 desolation that we almost forgot what 
 a live town looked like. It is hard to 
 describe the delights of the journey home, 
 made in far other fashion than the journey 
 out. As we sat in the corner of our 
 carriage in the train de luxe, and watched 
 the busy life of the towns through which 
 we passed, we felt as if we had awakened 
 from a nightmare. But that was many 
 
 236
 
 MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 months ago, and now that we are sound 
 of limb again we hear the call of desolate 
 Belgium and threatened France, and long 
 to do our bit once more to hasten that 
 slowly receding tide of devastation. 
 
 237
 
 FLOWERS OF FLANDERS
 
 XVII 
 
 FLOWERS OF FLANDERS 
 
 Every one knows that war means to the 
 soldier a big measure of deprivation. 
 Every week the recognition is made by 
 thousands of womenfolk at home, when 
 they dispatch the parcel of little luxuries 
 to their " boy " at the front. And at 
 the front we could onlv marvel at the 
 aptness of the contents which love had 
 unerringly chosen. Generally the parcel 
 contained eatables — a home-made cake, 
 fruit, chocolate, and what not. Often, 
 too, it contained vermin-killers, carbolic 
 soap, or clean underlinen. And the sen- 
 ders were right. They remembered our 
 love of good food, and they remembered 
 our cold tubs and extravagant laundry 
 bills ; and as a matter of fact these were, 
 
 241 q
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 for most of us, the luxuries which we had 
 most prized, and the loss of which we 
 chiefly mourned. 
 
 Every week, however, there used to 
 come to the writer an envelope containing 
 a gift more exquisitely subtle — a soft 
 handkerchief wrapped round a sprig of 
 verbena or of lavender. It was so out of 
 keeping with every circumstance of one's 
 life, so like a breath of fragrance from 
 another world, that its preciousness was 
 infinite, unspeakable. It brought with it 
 memories of the deep quiet of old gardens, 
 the prim brightness of herbaceous borders, 
 and all things dainty and most utterly 
 remote from the sordid business of trench 
 warfare. It was the source of the most 
 intimate personal delight ; but at the 
 same time it must be confessed that it did 
 also arouse and point that feeling of 
 deprivation which is never quite absent 
 from life in the trenches. It revived the 
 finer perceptions which had become dulled 
 
 242
 
 FLOWERS OF FLANDERS 
 
 by constant contact with the squalid 
 makeshifts of an artificially primitive 
 life — perceptions which one had perhaps 
 been content to see atrophied, feeling that 
 if one had to live like a savage it were best 
 to become like one. It was, paradoxically 
 enough, at once a consolation and an 
 irritant ; a narcotic bringing sweet dreams 
 of the unattainable, and a tonic stimulat- 
 ing inconvenient faculties into a new and 
 insistent life. 
 
 The laziness which made one content 
 to ' sink i' the scale " and become a 
 brute was checkmated. The aesthetic 
 faculties, once roused, refused to die of 
 inanition, and found food even in the 
 rest camp and the trenches. One suddenly 
 realized that one was living very close to 
 Nature, far closer perhaps than ever in 
 one's life before, and that Nature in June 
 is wondrous kind to her lovers. To sleep 
 in the long grass, to be woken by the pale 
 spreading gold of dawn, to bathe in the 
 
 243
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 clear waters of a pool, and to lie down 
 after among the ragged robins and forget- 
 me-nots while the sun grows warmer and 
 warmer in a joy that does not come to 
 those who live in stout dwellings of brick 
 and stone ; but it is the daily experience 
 of soldiers in some rest camps. The 
 trouble is that they do not always realize 
 the joy of it. They bury their heads in 
 their blankets and curse at being woken 
 so early. But to the man who has had 
 his aesthetic faculties aroused it is an 
 experience pregnant with exhilaration and 
 delight. And even when he leaves the 
 rest camp for the firing line he finds that 
 in some ways man's calamity has been 
 Nature's opportunity. Villages are wrecked, 
 crops ungathered ; but Nature has rioted 
 unchecked. Never were such meadows, 
 deep, thick with mingled grass, and oats, 
 and barley, full of cornflowers, poppies, 
 campions, marguerites, and other delights. 
 Many a man, glancing back over the rich 
 
 244
 
 FLOWERS OF FLANDERS 
 
 meadows m the early dawn, after a night 
 of sleepless anxiety, must have felt as he 
 never felt before the compelling charm 
 of Nature run wild. But it is then that 
 the trouble becomes acute. The contrast 
 between the full joyous harmony of spring 
 and the sordid strife of men is too great 
 to be borne with a quiet mind. It makes 
 a man restless and discontented. It fills 
 him with a love of life and a loathing for 
 the days of danger and discomfort to 
 which he stands by honour committed. 
 War is an exacting trade, demanding 
 stern courage and endurance, and perhaps 
 life itself, and it does not make a man a 
 better soldier to rail against it and con- 
 demn it. The aesthetic does not make a 
 good fighter. 
 
 Some men faced with this dilemma, 
 find it best to turn their backs resolutely 
 on the meadows behind the trench, and 
 to account Nature a traitress and a 
 temptress. They can find no synthesis 
 
 245
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 between the joy of life and its destruction, 
 no bridge between honour and duty on 
 the one side and red ragged robins, pro- 
 vokingly lovely, on the other. Like St. 
 Paul, they are careful to sow only spirit- 
 ual things, that they may gain eternal 
 life. 
 
 Well, it is better to be a Puritan than 
 a beast, and it may be that even Paul 
 would have found no room for flowers in 
 the hour of life and death. But if we 
 go to a greater than Paul, He will show 
 us a more excellent way. The Puritan 
 fails to see the Spirit in the beauty of the 
 flowers, and the aesthetic sees only the 
 sordidness in pain and death. But Paul's 
 Master showed the beauty of both. He 
 saw in the lilies of Galilee the tokens of a 
 Father's love, an assurance of the beauty 
 of the life which is eternal, while the Cross, 
 with its tradition of sordid degradation, 
 He raised to be the symbol of love divinely 
 
 246
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 beautiful, and of life triumphant over 
 death. 
 
 And if the Master was right — if beauty 
 is one and life eternal — is not the problem 
 solved ? Then we see with new eyes. 
 Scarlet poppy, blue cornflower, red ragged 
 robins, and all that company of gaily- 
 dressed fellows are not the pagans we 
 thought them, but good Churchmen after 
 all. To be gay and debonair just for a 
 day is the work that the good Father has 
 given them. It is their beauty and His 
 glory, and therefore it is our pure joy- 
 to have them nodding at our feet. On 
 the other hand, the same good Father 
 has laid it on men to offer their life for an 
 ideal. If we fought from blood-lust or 
 hate, war would be sordid. But if we 
 fight, as only a Christian may, that friend- 
 ship and peace with our foes may become- 
 possible, then fighting is our duty, and 
 our fasting and dirt, our wounds and our 
 death, are our beauty and God's glory, 
 
 247
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 The glory of the flowers is one and the 
 glory of the man is another, but both 
 alike belong to the One Father and 
 Creator of all. 
 
 248
 
 THE HONOUR OF THE 
 BRIGADE
 
 XVIII 
 
 THE HONOUR OF THE BRIGADE 
 
 The battalion had had a fortnight of it, 
 a fortnight of hard work and short rations, 
 of sleepless vigil and continual danger. 
 They had been holding trenches newly 
 won from the Germans. AMien they took 
 them over they were utterly unsafe. They 
 had been battered to pieces by artillery ; 
 they were choked with burst sandbags 
 and dead men ; there was no barbed 
 wire ; they faced the wrong way ; there 
 were still communication trenches leading 
 straight to the enemy. The battalion 
 had had to remake the trenches under 
 fire. They had had to push out barbed 
 wire and build barriers across the com- 
 munication trenches. All the time they 
 had had to be on the watch. The Ger- 
 
 251
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 mans were sore at having lost the trenches, 
 and had given them no rest. Their mor- 
 tars had rained bombs night and day. 
 Parties of bombers had made contin- 
 ual rushes down the old communication 
 trenches, or crept silently up through 
 the long grass, and dropped bombs among 
 the workers. Sleep had been impossible. 
 All night the men had had to stand to 
 their arms ready to repel an attack, or 
 to work at the more dangerous jobs 
 such as the barbed wire, which could only 
 be attempted under cover of darkness. 
 All day they had been dodging bombs, 
 and doing the safer work of making 
 latrines, filling sandbags for the night, 
 thickening the parapet, burying the dead, 
 and building dug-outs. At first they 
 had hardly received any rations at all, 
 the communication with the rear had 
 been so precarious. Later the rations 
 had arrived with greater regularity ; but 
 even so the shortage, especially of water, 
 
 252
 
 THE HONOUR OF THE BRIGADE 
 
 had been terrible. For several days one 
 mess tin of water had had to satisfy half a 
 dozen men for a whole day. They had 
 not grumbled. They had realized that 
 it was inevitable, and that the post was 
 a post of honour. They had set their 
 teeth and toiled grimly, doggedly, suck- 
 ing the pebble which alone can help to 
 keep at bay the demon Thirst. They 
 had done well, and they knew it. The 
 colonel had said as much, and he was not 
 a man to waste words. They had left 
 the trench as safe as it could be made. 
 And now they had been relieved. They 
 were out of danger, slogging wearily 
 along the road to the rest camp. They 
 were sick with sleepiness. Their shoulders 
 ached under their heavy packs. Their 
 feet were sore. Their clothes, which thev 
 had not changed for a fortnight, were 
 filthy and lousy. They no longer at- 
 tempted to march in step or to hold 
 themselves erect. Each man limped along 
 
 253
 
 THE HONOUR OF THE BRIGADE 
 
 as best he could. They were dead tired ; 
 but they were not dejected. They were 
 going to rest ; they were going to sleep 
 long and soundly, undisturbed by bombs. 
 They were going to drink their fill of good 
 hot tea and thin Belgian beer. They 
 were going to get stews of fresh meat 
 instead of the eternal Chicago bully. 
 They were going to have a hot bath, and 
 be served out with clean shirts and socks. 
 They were far from dejected. The thought 
 of all these good things to come gleamed 
 in their eyes as they marched, and also 
 the thought that they had done well and 
 had upheld the honour of the New Army, 
 the brigade, and the proud regiment whose 
 name they bore. 
 
 A few even began to talk. " Say, 
 mate," remarked one, " 'ow'd a good ole 
 feather bed do now ? " " Ah, and a 
 nice steak and chips when you got up 
 in the morning." " Ah, and what's wrong 
 wiv a pint o' good British beer to wash 
 
 254
 
 THE HONOUR OF THE BRIGADE 
 
 it dahn wiv ? " " And the old woman 
 a-bringing yer a cup o' tea in the morning 
 to your bed ? " " And a nice fire in the 
 kitchen while you reads your paper." 
 " Gahn ! Wot's the good of talking silly ? 
 'Ow many of us d'yer think'll ever see 
 'ome agin ? " " Well, mate, there's no 
 'arm in wishing, and they do say as we 
 shall 'ave a week's 'oliday arter the 
 brigade's come aht of the trenches the 
 next time." 
 
 Soon the talk died down. The chill 
 air of the hour before dawn began to 
 exert its proverbial power of depression. 
 The men felt cold and clammy, they had 
 an acrid taste in their mouths, their spirits 
 seemed to fall to zero. They dragged 
 their feet along the cobbled road with 
 a savage, sullen look on their faces. 
 The last stage of exhaustion was almost 
 reached. A young subaltern, who had 
 been taught that the time to enforce 
 discipline is when the men are tired, 
 
 255
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 started to shout at them : " Keep up 
 there ! Pick up the step ! Left — left — 
 left, right, left." The men's faces dark- 
 ened a shade. A few muttered curses 
 were heard. For the most part they 
 ignored him. The captain, an old cam- 
 paigner, called Mm off curtly. 
 
 At last they reached the field where 
 they were to bivouac. The dawn was 
 already breaking, and the air beginning 
 to warm. The battalion formed up in 
 column of companies, four long double 
 lines. Arms were piled, and the men 
 marched clear. Then they lay down as 
 they were in rows upon the grass, and the 
 sun rose over a field of sleeping men. 
 
 Two hours passed. Away in the dis- 
 tance could be heard the incessant rattle 
 of musketry, mingled with the roar of 
 the big guns. No one heeded it. A 
 motor-cycle appeared at express speed. 
 The colonel was roused, the company 
 commanders sent for. The men were 
 
 256
 
 THE HONOUR OF THE BRIGADE 
 
 wakened up. Down the lines the message 
 passed : " Stack valises by platoons, and 
 get ready to march off in fighting order ; 
 the Germans have broken through." The 
 men were too dazed to talk. Mechanically 
 they packed their greatcoats into their 
 valises, and stacked them. The Germans 
 broken through ! All their work wasted ! 
 It was incredible. Water bottles were 
 filled, extra ammunition served out, in 
 silence. The battalion fell in, and marched 
 off along the same weary road by which 
 they had come. Two hours' sleep, no 
 breakfast, no wash, no drink. The men 
 were dejected now. 
 
 The road was full of troops. Columns 
 of infantry slogged along at the side. 
 Guns and ammunition-wagons thundered 
 down the paved centre. Motor dispatch 
 riders flew past with fresh orders for 
 those in rear. The men sucked their 
 pebbles in grim silence. It was no time 
 for grumbling. This meant business. 
 
 257 r
 
 THE HONOUR OF THE BRIGADE 
 
 They forgot their fatigue, their thirst, 
 their hunger. Their minds were full of 
 the folk at home whom they might not 
 see again, and of the struggle that lay 
 before them. So they marched, silently, 
 and with frequent halts, most of the 
 morning. At length they left the road 
 and took to the fields. They were going 
 back whence they had come, by a cir- 
 cuitous route. Shrapnel burst overhead. 
 As they neared the firing line they met 
 streams of wounded returning from the 
 scene of action. The company comman- 
 ders took charge. One company rested 
 to let another pass, and the men exchanged 
 greetings. Men spoke to each other who 
 only knew each other by sight. An 
 officer caught the eye of a corporal and 
 they both smiled, and felt that there 
 was some curious link between them, 
 hitherto unguessed. 
 
 A captain said a few words to his 
 men during a halt. Some trenches had 
 
 258
 
 THE HONOUR OF THE BRIGADE 
 
 been lost. It was their brigade that 
 had lost them. For the honour of the 
 brigade, of the New Army, they must 
 try to retake them. The men listened 
 in silence ; but their faces were set. They 
 were content. The honour of the brigade 
 demanded it. The captain had said so, 
 and they trusted him. They set off again, 
 in single file. There was a cry. Some 
 one had stopped a bullet. Don't look 
 round ; he will be looked after. It may 
 be vour turn next. 
 
 They lay down behind a bank in a 
 wood. Before them raged a storm. Bul- 
 lets fell like hail. Shells shrieked through 
 the air, and burst in all directions. The 
 storm raged without any abatement. The 
 whistle would blow, then the first platoon 
 would advance, in extended order. Half 
 a minute later the second would go for- 
 ward, followed at the same interval by 
 the third and fourth. A man went into 
 hysterics, a pitiable object. His neigh- 
 
 259
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 bour regarded him with a sort of uncom- 
 prehending wonder. He was perfectly, 
 fatuously cool. Something had stopped 
 
 inside him. 
 
 A whistle blew. The first platoon 
 scrambled to their feet and advanced at 
 the double. What happened no one could 
 see. They disappeared. The second line 
 followed, and the third and fourth. Surely 
 no one could live in that hell. No one 
 hesitated. They went forward mechani- 
 cally, as men in a dream. It was so mad, 
 so unreal. Soonjhey would awake. . . . 
 It appeared that there was a trench 
 at the edge of the wood. It had been 
 unoccupied. A couple of hundred yards 
 in front, across the open ground, was 
 the trench which they were attacking. 
 Half a dozen men found themselves alone 
 in the open ground before the German 
 wire. They lay down. No one was com- 
 ing on. Where was every one ? They 
 crawled cautiously back to the trench 
 
 260
 
 THE HONOUR OF THE BRIGADE 
 
 at the edge of the wood, and climbed in. 
 One or two were there already. Two or 
 three wounded men limped in from the 
 rear, and sank on the floor of the trench. 
 The storm raged on ; but the attack was 
 over. These were what was left of two 
 companies. All stain on the honour of 
 the brigade had been wiped out — in blood. 
 There were three men in a bay of the 
 trench. One was hit in the leg, and sat 
 on the floor cutting away his trousers 
 so as to apply a field dressing. One 
 knelt down behind the parapet with a 
 look of dumb stupor on his face. The 
 third, a boy of about seventeen from a 
 London slum, peered over the parapet 
 at intervals. Suddenly he disappeared 
 over the top. He had discovered two 
 wounded men in a shell hole just in 
 front, and was hoisting them into the 
 shelter of the trench. By a miracle not 
 one of the three was hit. A message 
 was passed up the trench : " Hold on 
 
 261
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 at all costs till relieved." A council of 
 war was held. Should they fire or lie 
 low ? Better lie low, and only fire in 
 case of attack. They were safe from 
 attack as long as the Bosches kept on 
 firing. Some one produced a tin of meat, 
 some biscuits, and a full water-bottle. 
 The food was divided up, and a shell 
 bursting just in rear covered everything 
 with dirt and made it uneatable. The 
 water was reserved for the wounded. 
 The rest sucked their pebbles in stoical 
 silence. 
 
 Supports began to trickle in, and the 
 wounded who could not stand were labori- 
 ously removed from the narrow trench to 
 some dug-outs in the rear. Two of them 
 were badly hit, and crying out incessantly 
 for water, or to shift their position. One 
 was unconscious and groaning. From the 
 wood came frenzied shouts from a man 
 in delirium. The more slightly wounded 
 tried to look after the others ; but soon 
 
 262
 
 THE HONOUR OF THE BRIGADE 
 
 the water was exhausted, and all they 
 could do was to promise that as soon as 
 darkness fell help would come. 
 
 Darkness fell. The battalion had been 
 relieved ; but the better part of it lay- 
 out in the wood, or in the open before 
 the wood, dead or dying. The wood was 
 full of groaning. Four stretcher-bearers 
 came and took away one man, an officer. 
 The rest waited in vain. An hour passed, 
 and no one else came. Two were mortally 
 hit, and began to despair. They would 
 die before help came. For Christ's sake 
 get some water. There was none to be 
 had. 
 
 A man wounded in the leg found that 
 he could crawl on all fours. He started 
 to look for help. He crawled laboriously 
 along the path through the wood. It was 
 choked with corpses. He crawled over 
 them as best he could. Once he found a 
 full water-bottle, which he gave to a 
 sentry to send back to his mates. At 
 
 263
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 last he was picked up, and taken to the 
 doctor, while others went to look for his 
 
 mates. 
 
 The doctor was in a field. Rows of 
 wounded lay there waiting for stretcher- 
 bearers to come and take them to the 
 ambulances. As many as could went on, 
 those wounded in the leg with their arms 
 on the shoulders of those whose legs 
 were whole. They limped painfully along 
 the interminable road till they came to 
 the ambulance. Then their troubles were 
 over. A rapid drive brought them to 
 the dressing station. There they were 
 given cocoa, inoculated for tetanus, their 
 wounds washed and bound up. Another 
 drive took them to the camp by the rail- 
 way. Next morning they were put in 
 the train, and at length reached the hos- 
 pital. There at last they got the longed- 
 for bath and the clean clothes and— joy 
 f joys— were put to sleep, unlimited 
 sleep, in a real bed with clean white 
 
 264
 
 THE HONOUR OF THE BRIGADE 
 
 sheets. They were at peace. But out 
 in the open space between the trenches 
 lay some they had known and loved, 
 unburied. And others lay beneath wooden 
 crosses behind the wood. Yet it was 
 well. The brigade was saved. Its honour 
 was vindicated. Though its men might 
 be fresh from home and untried in war, 
 they would not fail. The brigade had 
 had its baptism in blood, and its self- 
 confidence was established for all time. 
 
 Note. — The action described in the 
 above article has been identified by corre- 
 spondents at the front, and so it is neces- 
 sary to state that although based in the 
 main on an actual experience, features 
 have been freely borrowed from other 
 occasions, and the writer has no authority 
 for placing the construction that he has 
 on the main event. 
 
 265
 
 THE MAKING OF A MAN
 
 XIX 
 
 THE MAKING OF A MAN 
 
 On the barrack square of a Special 
 Reserve battalion you may see both the 
 raw material and the finished product 
 — the recruit but newly arrived from 
 the depot, and the war-worn veteran, 
 with anything over one year's service, 
 just discharged from hospital. The 
 change wrought in one year is remark- 
 able. It " sticks out all over." It is 
 seen in their physique, their bearing, the 
 poise of their head, their expression, and 
 most of all in their eyes. The recruit is 
 not set. He stands loosely. He is never 
 still. His expression is always changing. 
 His eyes are restless. Now he is inter- 
 ested, and his pose is alert, his eyes fixed 
 on the instructor. Now his attention is 
 
 269
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 distracted elsewhere, his attitude becomes 
 less tense, his eyes wander. Now he is 
 frankly bored, his head and shoulders 
 droop forward, he stands on one leg, his 
 eyes are fixed on the ground. His move- 
 ments reflect every passing mood. His 
 will is untrained, his character unformed, 
 his muscles undeveloped. He has no 
 control over his mind or his limbs. He 
 is just a boy. The fascination about him 
 lies in his potentialities, in the uncertainty 
 as to how he will turn out. There are 
 so many pitfalls ahead of him. . . . The 
 trained soldier, who has fought, seen 
 death, suffered wounds, endured hardness, 
 offers a complete contrast. He is thicker. 
 His limbs are quiet and under control. 
 He stands solidly motionless and upright. 
 His mouth is firmly shut. His eyes are 
 steady, and their expression unvarying. 
 His whole attitude and his expression 
 suggest quiet expectancy. He is still ; 
 but he is ready to move at a second's 
 
 270
 
 THE MAKING OF A MAN 
 
 notice. He is intensely self-controlled. 
 Of course all generalizations are untrue. 
 But probably this is how the contrast 
 between the recruit and the trained sol- 
 dier would present itself to any one who 
 watched a number of them as they paraded 
 on the barrack square. 
 
 Recruits come from all sorts of classes 
 in these days, and so it is not easy to 
 describe a " typical case " which would 
 not offend quite a number of them. Yet 
 this, I think, is a fair specimen of perhaps 
 the commonest type : All his life he 
 had lived in a stuffy little home in a big 
 town with a mother and father, and a 
 swarm of brothers and sisters. He had 
 lived there, but he had not spent much 
 time there, and it had not been by any 
 means a determining factor in his life. 
 In the early morning he had tumbled out 
 of bed in the semi-darkness, pitched on 
 such clothes as he had discarded for the 
 night, swallowed a cup of strong tea and 
 
 271
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 a slice of bread-and-dripping, and without 
 the ceremony of a wash or brush-up dashed 
 off to work. There he had carried on a 
 sort of guerrilla warfare on his own account 
 against any one and every one who seemed 
 inclined to " put it on him.' ' It was rather 
 amusing, and distinctly helped to make 
 life interesting. He and his mates all 
 played the same game of trying to do 
 less than their share of the day's work, 
 while appearing to do more. He did what 
 he was told— when he could not help it. 
 In his warfare with the foreman each had 
 a trump card. The foreman's trump was 
 " the sack," and the boy's was the right 
 to " chuck the job." The boy had played 
 his trump two or three times, without 
 suffering from it overmuch, and two or 
 three times the foreman had played his. 
 But on the whole " work " had been much 
 less of a discipline than one might expect. 
 It had taught him one idea, which is 
 somewhat less than a truth, that a man's 
 
 272
 
 THE MAKING OF A MAN 
 
 first duty is to stick up for himself, and 
 avoid being put upon. In the evening 
 he used to dash off home, indulge in a 
 good wash of the exposed portions of his 
 anatomy, brush his hair, eat a hurried 
 tea, and go off to meet his pals, male and 
 female, in the street. Though he hadn't 
 got much money to spend there was always 
 a certain amount of amusement to be got 
 out of the street, and by the time he 
 reached home he was glad to get to bed. 
 It was an odd existence, with much more 
 interest and variety than you would 
 think. But it was not a particularly 
 wholesome one. It developed no fixity 
 of purpose, and there was no real discipline 
 in it. His father occasionally asserted 
 his authority with sudden spasmodic vio- 
 lence, usually ill-timed. Otherwise there 
 was practically no authority in it at all. 
 
 Then came the time when his mates 
 began to disappear. Posters stared at 
 him from the hoardings telling him that 
 
 273 s
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 his King and country needed him. Re- 
 cruiting sergeants eyed him doubtfully. 
 He did not look much more than sixteen. 
 Here was a chance of variety. His restless 
 temperament responded to the suggestion 
 with enthusiasm. He loved change, and 
 feared monotony above all things. Be- 
 sides, he would be on his own. Even the 
 shadow of parental control would be 
 removed. He would be a man, and his 
 own master. So he reckoned ! "Mother" 
 noticed his excitement, and with a sure 
 instinct guessed what was the matter. 
 " Our George is going for a soldier," she 
 remarked to her husband. 'I can see 
 it in 'is eyes." "Father" taxed him 
 with it, and waxed indignant. " Ain't yer 
 satisfied with yer 'ome ? " he demanded 
 " Ain't yer got no gratitood to yer mother ? 
 Don't know when yer well off, you young 
 fool." This clinched matters. The boy 
 said nothing. He could afford not to. 
 His answer was to enlist next day. W hen 
 
 274
 
 THE MAKING OF A MAN 
 
 it was done " Mother " shed a surreptitious 
 tear, and " Father " grunted ; but both 
 were secretly proud of Mm, though it 
 meant seven shillings a week less in the 
 family exchequer. He went away feeling 
 a little lost and young, and with a lump 
 in his throat for the sake of the home that 
 he had valued so cheaply. 
 
 Freedom ! He didn't find much of that 
 after all ! The barracks were full of autho- 
 rities far more peremptory and potent 
 than foreman or father. There was the 
 corporal of his room, who unsympathe- 
 tically kicked him out of bed in the 
 morning — bed being a mattress on the 
 floor — and made him wash, and do his 
 share of cleaning up the room. There 
 was the sergeant who made him march 
 up and down the square all the morning, 
 doing what he was told, and in the inter- 
 vals lectured him on his duties, his morals, 
 and his personal cleanliness. There was 
 the sergeant-major, a terribly awe-inspir- 
 
 275
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 ing person, to whom even the sergeant 
 was deferential, and to whom the corporal 
 was positively sycophantic. There were 
 subalterns and a captain, mysterious be- 
 ings from another world, whose business 
 in life seemed to be to preserve an attitude 
 of silent omniscience, and to criticize his 
 personal appearance. Instead of freedom, 
 he found discipline. His uprisings and his 
 outgoings, and all the smallest details of 
 his being, even to the length of his hair 
 and the cleanliness of his toes, were ordered 
 by Powers against whom there was no 
 appeal. They held all the trump cards. 
 He could not even " chuck the job " in 
 the old lordly way, without becoming a 
 criminal, and having all the resources of 
 the police enlisted to bring him back. 
 
 Yet the despotism, though complete, 
 was not brutal. Even the sergeant-major 
 was genially abusive, while the subaltern 
 was almost paternal. But these were 
 only signs of the plenitude of their power. 
 
 276
 
 THE MAKING OF A MAN 
 
 They could afford to be jovial ! Indeed, 
 he soon noticed that urbanity of manner 
 was apt to increase in a direct ratio to an 
 individual's rank. It was the corporal, 
 the least of all his masters, whose manner 
 was least conciliatory. Submission was 
 obviously the only course ; and by degrees 
 he learnt to do more than submit. He 
 learnt the pride of submission. He came 
 to believe in the discipline. He gained 
 self-respect from his subordination to it, 
 and when he went home on furlough, 
 wearing the uniform of it, he boasted of it, 
 to the evident envy of his civilian chums. 
 He was learning one of the great truths 
 of life, a truth that so many fail to learn — 
 that it is not in isolation but as a member 
 of a body that a man finds his fullest 
 self-expression : that it is not in self- 
 assertion but in self -subordination, not 
 as an individual but as one of many 
 brethren, sons of one Father, that a 
 man finds the complete satisfaction of 
 
 277
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 his instincts, and the highest form of 
 
 liberty. 
 
 Our recruit has not learnt quite all 
 this ; but he has made a beginning. He 
 has learnt a certain pride in his company, 
 in his regiment, in his N.C.O.'s even, and 
 in his officers. He is learning to be proud 
 that he is English. He has given up his 
 personal freedom, which was not really 
 of much use to him, and in return he has 
 received what is infinitely more precious— 
 his share of the common heritage of the 
 regiment, its glorious past, its present 
 prowess, its honour and good name, its 
 high resolves. His self-respect has in- 
 creased enormously. His bearing has 
 altered completely. It is not the fear of 
 punishment that makes him so smart 
 and clean ; but his care for the honour 
 of his regiment. It is not the fear of 
 punishment that makes him sweep and 
 scrub and tidy his part of the barrack- 
 room so scrupulously; but his care for 
 
 278
 
 THE MAKING OF A MAN 
 
 the reputation of the company, his desire 
 to please his officer, his loyalty to his 
 corporal. Besides this, he is learning to 
 share with his mates instead of to grab. 
 He is learning to "play the game" by 
 them, and to think more of fairness all 
 round than of his own personal benefit. 
 He does his bit and takes his share, and 
 as long as the other fellows do ditto, he 
 is content. It is impressed on his mind 
 that for the honour of the company they 
 must all be tolerant, and pull together. 
 Also he has a " chum." In the Army 
 every one has a " chum." As far as his 
 chum is concerned the good soldier obeys 
 the " golden rule " in its literal sense. 
 He shares with him. He divides with 
 him his parcel from home, he helps him 
 to clean his rifle and equipment, he is 
 a friend in the Baconian sense, who halves 
 sorrows and doubles joys. The recruit is 
 all the better for observing the golden 
 rule even towards one person. 
 
 279
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 The recruit is developing rapidly. His 
 perspective is altering hourly. Old pre- 
 judices are vanishing, and new ones 
 forming. His old selfishness is giving 
 way to good comradeship, his individuality 
 is being merged in a bigger corporate 
 personality. As he becomes less of an 
 individualist, he becomes quieter, and 
 more contented. In a few months he 
 will be drafted out to the front, there to 
 learn harder lessons still, and lessons even 
 better worth learning. He will learn to 
 endure without complaint, to be unselfish 
 without " making a song about it," to 
 risk life itself for the good of the world, 
 the honour of the regiment, and the 
 safety of his comrades. A man does not 
 rise much above that. Perhaps he will 
 make the supreme sacrifice, and so be 
 taken hence at his best. Perhaps he 
 will return to " Blighty." If he does 
 the latter he will be no longer a boy, but a 
 man. 
 
 280
 
 HEROES AND HEROICS
 
 XX 
 
 HEROES AND HEROICS 
 
 " Facilis descensus Averni," and the 
 Avernus of the journalist in war time is 
 a fatal facility for writing heroics. Every- 
 one who has handled the pen of a scribe 
 knows how the descent comes about. A 
 man sees or experiences something which 
 cries out for expression. He puts pen to 
 paper, and the result is acclaimed as a 
 little masterpiece. " Write more," say 
 his friends, and he casts about for another 
 theme which will bear the same heroic 
 treatment. He tries to reproduce the 
 dramatic staccato which came so natur- 
 ally before ; but this time the inspiration 
 is lacking, the heroics are spurious, and 
 the result is " journalese." His heroics 
 don't ring true. What cant is to religion, 
 
 283
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 they are to heroism. They take what is 
 fine and rare and make it cheap. 
 
 The typical Englishman hates heroics. 
 He regards them as un-English. If he 
 has done a fine action the last thing that 
 he wants is for the fact to be exploited, 
 advertised. It is not exactly modesty 
 that prompts his instinct for reticence ; 
 it is something nearer akin to reverence. He 
 does not want his pearls cast before swine. 
 He knows that the beauty of a fine action 
 is like the bloom of the wild flower, elusive, 
 mystical. It will not survive the touch of 
 the hot, greasy hands that would pluck 
 the flower from its root and hawk it in 
 the street. So when the " serious " jour- 
 nalist takes to heroics the typical English- 
 man takes refuge in satire, on exactly the 
 same principle as when false sentiment 
 invades the drama he abandons it for 
 musical comedy. 
 
 The satirist always claims to be a real- 
 ist, though not every one will admit his 
 
 284
 
 HEROES AND HEROICS 
 
 title. He mocks at the heroic, and says 
 that he will show you the real thing. In 
 war time no one can afford to be a satirist 
 who has not done his bit, a fact which 
 gives him an additional weight. Men 
 like Captain Bairnsfather of the Bystander 
 and " Henry " of Punch have earned the 
 right to mock, and in their mockery they 
 often get closer to the portrayal of authen- 
 tic heroism than to their more idealistic 
 brethren. Take Bairnsfather's picture 
 of two Tommies sitting in a dug-out, 
 while their parapet is being blown to 
 smithereens about a yard away. It bears 
 the legend, " There goes our blinkin' 
 parapet again ! " The 'eroes in the dug- 
 out are about as unheroic in appearance 
 as it is possible to imagine. They are 
 simply a pair of stolid, unimaginative, 
 intensely prosaic Tommies of the British 
 workman type. They have low foreheads 
 and bulgy eyes, " tooth-brush " mous- 
 taches and double chins ; their hair is 
 
 285
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 untidy, and one of them is smoking a clay 
 pipe. It is obvious that they are blas- 
 phemously fed-up. Of course they are 
 not really typical at all. They are much 
 too prosaic and unimaginative. But the 
 picture does bring home to you that the 
 fellows in the trenches are very ordinary 
 people after all, which is a fact that folk 
 at home are very apt to overlook. And 
 at the same time, though the realism is too 
 sordid to be quite true to life, it cannot 
 hide the fact that the stoicism of the two 
 'eroes is rather heroic, in spite of their 
 obvious lack of any sense of the dramatic. 
 Baimsfather's sketches represent the 
 extreme reaction from the heroic. His 
 trench 'eroes are so animal in type and 
 expression as to be positively repulsive. 
 As the editor says in his introduction, 
 " the book will be a standing reminder 
 of the ingloriousness of war, its prepos- 
 terous absurdity, and of its futility as a 
 means of settling the affairs of nations." 
 
 286
 
 HEROES AND HEROICS 
 
 Yet for that very reason it is an incom- 
 plete picture of war. It is perfectly true, 
 and it is a good thing that we should 
 realize it, that the majority of men go 
 through the most terrific experiences 
 without ever becoming articulate. For 
 every Englishman who philosophizes there 
 are a hundred who don't. For every 
 soldier who prays there are a thousand 
 who don't. But there is hardly a man 
 who will not return from the war bigger 
 than when he left home. His language 
 may have deteriorated. His " views " 
 on religion and morals may have remained 
 unchanged. He may be rougher in man- 
 ner. But it will not be for nothing that 
 he has learnt to endure hardship without 
 making a song about it, that he has risked 
 his life for righteousness' sake, that he 
 has bound up the wounds of his mates, 
 and shared with them his meagre rations. 
 We who have served in the ranks of 
 ' the first hundred thousand " will want 
 
 287
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 to remember something more than the 
 ingloriousness of war. We shall want to 
 remember how adversity made men unsel- 
 fish, and pain found them tender, and 
 danger found them brave, and loyalty 
 made them heroic. The fighting man is 
 a very ordinary person, that's granted ; 
 but he has shown that the ordinary person 
 can rise to unexpected heights of generosity 
 and self-sacrifice. 
 
 The fact is that neither heroics nor 
 satire are a completely satisfactory record 
 of what we shall want to remember of this 
 war. Least of all does the third type of 
 war journalism satisfy— that of the lady 
 who writes in the society paper of her 
 " sweet ickle tempies with the curly eye- 
 brows," and her " darling soldier-lad with 
 the brave, merry smile." 
 
 Whether the Press forms or reflects 
 public opinion is a moot point ; but there 
 is certainly an intimate correspondence 
 between the two, as the soldier who is 
 
 288
 
 HEROES AND HEROICS 
 
 sent to " Blighty " finds to his cost. The 
 society journalist pets him, the " serious " 
 journalist writes heroics about him, and 
 the satirist makes fun of the heroics. He 
 looks in vain for a sane recognition that 
 he has earned the right to be taken seri- 
 ously as a man. So, too, the society lady 
 of a certain sort pets him, has him to tea 
 at the " Cri," or invites him to Berkeley 
 Square. The larger public lionizes him, 
 gives him concerts and lusty cheers, takes 
 his photo at every possible opportunity, 
 and provides him with unlimited tobacco 
 and gramophones. While the authori- 
 ties satirize the lionizers by treating him 
 exactly as if he really was the creature 
 in Baimsfather's sketches — a gross, brain- 
 less, animal fool, who cannot be trusted. 
 This is all very well. I suppose that 
 most men like to be petted by a pretty 
 woman, especially if she has a handle to 
 her name, though the charm soon wears 
 off. Being lionized is boring, but has 
 
 289 T
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 solid advantages. Satire is amusing on 
 paper, though infuriating when trans- 
 lated into action. Very soon, however, 
 the wounded soldier begins to long to be 
 less petted, less lionized, and instead to 
 be treated as a rational being who is 
 entitled to a certain elementary respect. 
 
 One can only speak from personal obser- 
 vation. One place differs from another. 
 But from what the writer has seen and 
 experienced he judges that the one thing 
 which a wounded soldier cannot expect 
 is to be treated as a man. He is sent to 
 " Blighty." He arrives at a hospital. 
 His chief pleasure, oddly enough, lies in 
 the prospect of seeing something of his 
 relations and friends. He is surprised 
 and indignant when he finds that he is 
 only allowed to see visitors of his own 
 choice two at a time, for two hours, twice 
 a week. On the other five days he has 
 to put up with the licensed visitors of the 
 hospital. They may be very elevating 
 
 290
 
 HEROES AND HEROICS 
 
 and amiable people ; but he feels no con- 
 ceivable interest in them. He is still 
 further dismayed when he discovers that 
 under no circumstances may he visit his 
 home while he is a patient. He may go 
 to tea with Lady Snooks, or the Duchess 
 of Downshire ; but not with his wife or 
 his mother. The writer's neighbour in 
 the hospital ward was a case in point. He 
 was a man of about thirty who, at the 
 outbreak of war, was holding a responsible 
 position in Sydney. He had all the self- 
 respect which is typical of the colonial 
 of even a few years' standing. He was 
 receiving ten minutes' electrical treatment 
 per diem, with a view to restoring sensa- 
 tion to one of his hands. Otherwise he 
 was able-bodied. His father lived within 
 twenty minutes' walk of the hospital ; 
 but not only was he not allowed to live 
 at home and attend as an out-patient, 
 he was not even allowed to visit his home. 
 He was told that the treatment would 
 
 291
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 have to be continued for some six months, 
 and meanwhile he must be a prisoner in 
 the hospital. At the V.A.D. convalescent 
 home to which the writer was subse- 
 quently transferred, and which was regu- 
 lated from the hospital, there were several 
 married men whose homes were within 
 reach. They were absolutely forbidden 
 to visit them. One man, who had been 
 in hospital for nine months without ever 
 going home, was so disgusted that he 
 eventually took French leave for a couple 
 of days. On his return he was put in 
 the punishment ward of the main hos- 
 pital, where he was deprived of tobacco 
 and visitors, and was informed that when 
 he was discharged he would be sent to 
 his battalion for punishment ! His com- 
 ment was, " You'll see ; when this war 
 is over it will be just as it was after South 
 Africa. We shall be so much dirt." 
 When we did leave the grounds it had 
 to be in the conspicuous garb of a mili- 
 
 292
 
 HEROES AND HEROICS 
 
 tary convalescent, that all men might 
 stare, and under the escort of a nurse. 
 Many a quiet, sensible fellow preferred 
 not to go out at all. 
 
 Another example of the humiliation 
 to which wounded soldiers are subject 
 refers to their difficulty in obtaining their 
 arrears of pay. One man, who had got 
 the eight days' furlough to which a soldier 
 is entitled on leaving hospital, could 
 only obtain twenty-four shillings " ad- 
 vance of pay," though entitled to many 
 pounds. It barely covered his train fare, 
 and left him nothing for paying his living 
 expenses (and his relations were very 
 poor) or for pocket money. The Army 
 is the only profession which I know in 
 which a man receives, not the money to 
 which he is entitled, but such proportion 
 of it as the authorities like to disburse. 
 
 This is how the authorities satirize 
 the lionizers, and not all the petting and 
 the lionizing in the world will compen- 
 
 293
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 sate for the denial of the elementary 
 rights of a man, the right to choose his 
 own visitors, to visit his own home, and 
 to receive the money which he has earned. 
 A man soon tires of being petted and 
 lionized, and craves in vain for the sane 
 respect which is a man's due. 
 
 I am aware that there are many hos- 
 pitals where soldiers are treated much 
 more rationally, and I have never heard 
 that they have abused their reasonable 
 liberty. Nevertheless I feel that it is 
 worth while to utter a protest against 
 the state of affairs described above be- 
 cause it is, after all, so typical of the 
 general failure of the Press, the public, 
 and the powers that be to recognize that 
 the soldier who has fought for his country 
 has earned the right to be regarded as a 
 man. He doesn't want to be petted. 
 Heroics nauseate him. He is not a child 
 or a hero. He is just a man who has 
 done his duty, and he wants a man's due. 
 
 294
 
 HEROES AND HEROICS 
 
 It is desirable that soldiers should re- 
 ceive their due now ; but it is much more 
 vitally important that when the war is 
 over, and the craze for petting and lion- 
 izing has died down, it should be recognized 
 that the soldier who has fought for his 
 country is something more than a pet 
 that has lost his popularity, and a lion 
 that has ceased to roar. There is grave 
 danger that all that will survive of the 
 present mixed attitude towards the soldier 
 will be the attitude of authority, which 
 regards him as an irresponsible animal. 
 For after all, this attitude is just that 
 which before the war poisoned the whole 
 administration of charity, and the whole 
 direction of philanthropy. Before the 
 war a cry was heard, " We don't want 
 charity, we want the right to live a whole- 
 some life." Too often the reply of the 
 " upper classes " was to denounce the 
 " ingratitude " of the poor. The cry 
 that we hear now — " We are not pets or 
 
 295
 
 A STUDENT IN ARMS 
 
 lions, but men" — is the same cry in a 
 new guise. It is the cry of the working 
 classes for a sane respect. Be sure that 
 when the war is over that cry will he heard 
 no less strongly, for the working classes 
 have proved their manhood on the field 
 of honour. In this time of trouble and 
 goodwill we have the chance to redeem 
 the error of the past, and to lay the founda- 
 tion of a nobler policy by adopting a 
 saner, a wider, a more generous outlook ; 
 but we seem to be in a fair way to inten- 
 sifying our error, and laying up endless 
 difficulties in the days that are to come. 
 
 296
 
 XXI 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 There is nothing in literature rarer as 
 there is nothing more attractive than 
 the note of originality. We can all of us 
 now make fairly good copies, but unfor- 
 tunately a copy, however accomplished, 
 is always a copy. In literature, more- 
 over, we do not merely have first-hand 
 copies of great models, but copies of copies 
 of copies. Smith does not model himself 
 on Stevenson direct, but upon Jones, 
 who again copies from Robinson, who 
 derives through Brown, White, Black, 
 Green, Thompson, and Jackson. What 
 the reader of these Essays, if he has any 
 instinct for letters, will at once observe is 
 the absence of the imitative vein, not only 
 in the presentation of the thoughts but 
 in the thoughts themselves. The Student 
 
 297
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 in Arms cannot, of course, find essentially 
 new subjects for his pen. It is far too 
 late to be ambitious in that respect. 
 Besides, in dealing with war and the men 
 who go forth to battle, he must necessarily 
 treat of the great fundamental and eternal 
 realities— of life, death, the love of man 
 for his fellows, sacrifice, honour, courage, 
 discipline, and of all their effects upon 
 human conduct. It is in his handling 
 of his themes, in the standpoint from 
 which he views them, that the Student 
 shows the originality of which I speak. 
 The way in which he manages to escape 
 the conventional in word and thought is 
 specially noteworthy. Most men nowa- 
 days can only achieve freedom here at 
 a great price— the price of persistent 
 effort. The Student in Arms, like the 
 Apostle, iiad the felicity to be born free. 
 Nature appears to have endowed him with 
 the gift of seeing all things new. He 
 perpetually puts things in a fresh light, 
 
 298
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 and yet this light is not some ingenious 
 pantomime effect. It has nothing forced 
 or theatrical or fantastic about it. It is 
 the light of a common day, but shed some- 
 how with a difference. 
 
 I would rather leave it at that, but if 
 I must try and push my analysis farther, 
 I should say that the special quality of 
 mind that the Student in Arms has 
 brought to his anatomy of the mind and 
 soul of the British soldier — the Elizabe- 
 thans would have called his book The 
 Soldier Anatomized — is his sense of justice. 
 That is the keynote, the ruling passion, 
 of all his writing. There is plenty of 
 sternness in his attitude. He by no 
 means sinks to the crude antinomianism 
 of " to understand all is to pardon all." 
 His ideal of justice is, however, clearly 
 governed by the definition that justice 
 is a finer knowledge through love. He 
 loves his fellow-man, and especially his 
 fellow-soldier, even while he judges him. 
 
 299
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 That is why his judgments, though they 
 are meant to^ be and are practical reports 
 on the mind of the soldier, are in the best 
 sense works of art. They have in them 
 the essential of all art — passion. It is 
 not enough to say there is no art where 
 there is no passion. Wherever there is 
 passion there is art. 
 
 Beyond this originality of view, this 
 finely tempered sense of justice through 
 love, and this passion and so creative 
 force, there is a genial sense of humour 
 and a scholarly feeling for words, which 
 sent the Student in Arms forth wonder- 
 fully equipped for the task he has chosen. 
 He is the critic in shining armour who 
 stands guardant regardant beside the 
 soldier in the field. 
 
 What is his task ? Consciously or 
 unconsciously, I know not which it is, to 
 interpret the British soldier to the nation 
 in whose service he has laid down his 
 life, and dared and done deeds to which the 
 
 300
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 history of war affords no parallel. One 
 rises from the Student's book with a sense 
 that man is, after all, a noble animal, and 
 that though war may blight and burn, 
 it reveals the best side of human nature, 
 and sanctifies as well as destroys. A 
 passage from one of the articles will show 
 what I mean better than any attempt 
 to anatomize the anatomizer. Here is a 
 picture, full of humour, friendliness and 
 power, of how the " lost sheep " in a 
 Kitchener battalion, what the uninspired 
 and unseeing man would call " the was- 
 trels," take their training — 
 
 They plunged headlong down the stony path of 
 glory, but in their haste they stumbled over every 
 stone ! And when they did that they put us all 
 out of our stride, so crowded was the path. Were 
 they promoted ? They promptly celebrated the 
 fact in a fashion that secured their immediate 
 reduction. Were they reduced to the ranks ? 
 Then they were in hot water from early morn to 
 dewy eve, and such was their irrepressible charm 
 that hot water lost its terrors. To be a defaulter 
 in such merry company was a privilege rather than 
 
 301
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 a disgrace. So in despair we promoted them again, 
 hoping that by giving them a little responsibility 
 we should enlist them on the side of good order and 
 discipline. Vain hope! There are things that 
 cannot be overlooked, even in a "Kitchener 
 battalion." 
 
 We see the men before our very eyes 
 in the light of the camp. Now see the 
 Student's revelation of them as they 
 stand in the glory of battle — 
 
 Then at last we " got out." We were confronted 
 with dearth, danger and death. And then they 
 came to their own. We could no longer compete 
 with them. We stolid respectable folk were not 
 in our element. We knew it. We felt it. We 
 were determined to go through with it. We 
 succeeded ; but it was not without much internal 
 wrestling, much self-conscious effort. Yet they, who 
 had formerly been our despair, were now our glory. 
 Their spirits effervesced. Their wit sparkled. Hun- 
 ger and thirst could not depress them. Rain 
 could not damp them. Cold could not chill them. 
 Every hardship became a joke. They did not 
 endure hardship, they derided it. And somehow it 
 seemed at the moment as if derision was all that 
 hardship existed for ! Never was such a triumph 
 of spirit over matter. As for death, it was, in a 
 
 302
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 way, the greatest joke of all. In a way, for if it was 
 another fellow that was hit it was an occasion for 
 tenderness and grief. But if one of them was hit, 
 O Death, where is thy sting ? O Grave, where 
 is thy victory ? Portentous, solemn Death, you 
 looked a fool when you tackled one of them ! Life ? 
 They did not value life ! They had never been able 
 to make much of a fist of it. But if they lived amiss 
 they died gloriously, with a smile for the pain and 
 the dread of it. What else had they been born for ? 
 It was their chance. With a gay heart they gave 
 their greatest gift, and with a smile to think that 
 after all they had anything to give which was of 
 value. One by one Death challenged them. One 
 by one they smiled in his grim visage, and refused 
 to be dismayed. They had been lost ; but they 
 had found the path that led them home ; and when 
 at last they laid their lives at the feet of the Good 
 Shepherd, what could they do but smile ? 
 
 With all sincerity a Commander of 
 to,-day might parody Wolfe and declare 
 that he would rather have written that 
 passage than win a general action. 
 
 J. ST. LOE STRACHEY. 
 
 The Spectator Office. 
 
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