THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
 
PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
PAPERS 
 FROM PICARDY 
 
 BY TWO CHAPLAINS 
 
 THE REV. T. W. PYM, C.F. 
 
 CHAPLAIN OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 AND 
 
 THE REV. GEOFFREY GORDON, C.F. 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' AN INTERPRETER OF WAR ' 
 
 SECOND IMPRESSION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD 
 1917 
 
Printed in Great Britain 
 
TO 
 
 CERTAIN OF OUR FRIENDS 
 
 WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR ENGLAND 
 
 IN REVERENT AFFECTION 
 
 AND TO 
 
 THE PROSPECT OF THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 FOR THE HOPE OF WHICH 
 
 THEY DIED 
 
TZ4T1 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THESE papers owe their title to the fact that 
 they were written, for the most part, during 
 the fighting on the Somme in the summer and 
 autumn of 1916. They are, however, the result 
 of experience gained not only there but in other 
 parts of France, in Flanders, and in a soldiers' 
 hospital at home. 
 
 We do not pretend to have written without 
 preconceived ideas. No one who has any settled 
 opinions can seriously make that claim. We 
 write as commissioned officers in the Church of 
 Christ, and are to this extent prejudiced that 
 we have an unshakeable conviction that Christ 
 alone holds the key to the social and individual 
 problems which the war is forcing on our notice. 
 We have, however, sincerely tried to see facts 
 as they really are, and to record them without 
 
 b ^ 
 
viii PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 any effort to twist them to suit our theories. 
 If anywhere in these pages we have seemed to 
 state our deductions as though they were incon- 
 testable, let the difficulties of writing and revising 
 under the conditions of active service be our 
 explanation and excuse. That such is not our 
 object the many question marks with which 
 these pages are so plentifully besprinkled should 
 afford sufficient evidence. Our purpose through- 
 out has been at all costs to state the truth so far 
 as we have been able to see it, and not so much 
 to offer clear-cut answers and ready-made solu- 
 tions as to enlist your sympathy and to stir your 
 thought. 
 
 T. W. P. 
 
 G. G. 
 
 B. E. F., November 1916. 
 
CONTENTS 
 PART I 
 
 BY 
 
 T. W. PYM 
 
 PAPER PAGE 
 
 I. SOME CONSIDERATIONS AS TO THE VARYING 
 
 EFFECTS OF WAR ON THE INDIVIDUAL . 3 
 
 II. A COMMENTARY ON THE SOLDIER'S ATTITUDE 
 
 TO WAR ...... 18 
 
 III. A STUDY IN CONTRASTS AND IN THE INFLUENCE 
 
 OF REACTION ..... $2 
 
 IV. DISCIPLINE AND AFTER? . . . 58 
 V. SOMETHING DEFINITE . . . .82 
 
 VI. POSTSCRIPT: AN EPITOME OF WAR IOI 
 
 PART II 
 
 BY 
 
 GEOFFREY GORDON 
 
 VII. THE CHAPLAIN'S DILEMMA . . . . IO7 
 
 VIII. SOME PRISONERS . ' . Il6 
 
 IX. ACTIVE SERVICE . . . . .123 
 
x PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 FAPER PAGE 
 
 X. HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE . . 136 
 
 XI. A NIGHT IN THE CRATERS . . .159 
 
 XII. IN A REGIMENTAL AID POST . . . l66 
 
 XIII. WHAT IS TRUTH? . . . . .174 
 
 XIV. WASTE . . . . . .180 
 
 XV. THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER : I. ITS FOUNDATIONS 183 
 
 XVI. THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER : II. HOW ARE 
 THESE FOUNDATIONS TO BE PRESERVED AND 
 STRENGTHENED? . . . .196 
 
 XVII. A CONFESSION AND A CLAIM . . .223 
 
PART I 
 
 BY 
 
 T. W. PYM 
 
FIRST PAPER 
 
 SOME CONSIDERATIONS AS TO THE VARYING 
 EFFECTS OF WAR ON THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 PICARDY and the Somme will stand for all time 
 in the history of England as symbols of her 
 children's valour. My admiration and affection 
 for our men is unending, but others have told and 
 are telling, better than I can hope to unfold, the 
 tale of their glory. Will you, for once, read a 
 book which nearly takes all this for granted ? 
 There are doubtless others besides myself who 
 care for them enough to be willing to go deeper 
 than the surface brightness of their great achieve- 
 ments and their long endurance to consider 
 those of their virtues not popularly acclaimed. 
 And more than this. For their sake, for the sake 
 of the England of the future, their England as it 
 should be by right, some of us want to examine 
 dispassionately and bring to general notice 
 tendencies and influences of the times which, if 
 
4 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 disregarded, will not make for our men's truest 
 happiness when they return, nor for the highest 
 welfare of the England that is to be. 
 
 By going to the wars, by the offer of themselves 
 in life or death, these men have surrendered 
 themselves to the powerful and, as many hold, 
 evil forces which war brings in its train of which 
 death may well be considered the least. Some of 
 these influences it is the purpose of these papers 
 to define and estimate in their effect on char- 
 acter and life ; but there are reasons why such 
 a definition and such an estimate are beset with 
 difficulties, for the war has produced a rare crop 
 of amateur psychologists. People who before 
 had no particular reason to study the effect, upon 
 themselves or others, of the varied experiences 
 of ordinary life, now meditate and prophesy upon 
 the mental and moral ' effects ' of the world's 
 chaos on classes or on individuals. If the war 
 has served no other useful purpose, it has at any 
 rate harvested the common-sense of Daylight 
 Saving and has stimulated torpid imaginations. 
 So far so good ; that people who did not think 
 much have started to think more is satisfactory, 
 but the result of their reflections is sometimes 
 
THE VARYING EFFECTS OF WAR 5 
 
 of little practical use in assessing the amount of 
 change that has been wrought. Men and women, 
 of whatever class, have been drawn together ; 
 common motives have linked them in work, vital 
 needs have stripped them of reserve. The newly 
 fledged psychologist, blinking his newly opened 
 eyes, sees in his fellows qualities and tendencies, 
 virtues or vices which he had not hitherto 
 observed : the roue is brave, the mechanic is 
 intelligent, the duchess is human, and the 
 Socialist patriotic ; the private soldier is heroic 
 and yet cute he can die or he can lie. The 
 man whose eyes have up till now been always 
 closed thinks that all these facts are new and, 
 staggered by the transformations, as he thinks, 
 which war has evolved, he lumps his observations 
 together, classifies his ' effects/ and breaks into 
 song about the future of the State, of politics, 
 or of the Church. He might just as well go to 
 Vesuvius after an eruption and comment on the 
 alterations in the crater, which hitherto he had 
 only known by photographs taken before the 
 eruption from the other side and studied by him 
 upside down ; as to change, any correct infer- 
 ences that he might draw from a subsequent 
 
6 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 visit to the actual spot would arise from good 
 fortune rather than good sense. There is little 
 of fortune, and still less of sense, in the observa- 
 tions of some of those who have lately gone into 
 the prophesying business, and this is particularly 
 true of their deductions from what they think 
 they see in the soldier. They forget that what 
 is strangely new to the observer is not of neces- 
 sity a new growth in the observed ; they have 
 never read the back numbers of the book they 
 are now studying. 
 
 It is not only by those who now open their 
 eyes for the first time that we are in danger of 
 being misled, but also by those who, having for 
 long used their eyesight in one direction only, and 
 perhaps too well, have developed a permanent 
 squint. Many people look to the war to confirm 
 all their pre-war ideas and do not in the least 
 realise that they are doing so. The Socialist has 
 this mental squint ' I told you so,' he mutters : 
 ' State Control.' The agnostic squints Jbadly 
 1 1 've never met a man who 'd been in trenches 
 and remained a believer.' Many a devoted 
 priest can only see ' the immense revival of the 
 religious sense in the face of suffering,' ' the 
 
THE VARYING EFFECTS OF WAR 7 
 
 recognition of God's wrath/ and so forth. They 
 are like the young man who, from boyhood's 
 breakfasts onwards, has heard his father crump- 
 ling the pages of the same newspaper, wallowing 
 in the shallows of its political bias, and splutter- 
 ing out over toast and marmalade that such and 
 such a Cabinet Minister ought to be shot. In 
 nine cases out of ten the son goes out into the 
 world unconsciously eager to accept, as true 
 evidence, only those occurrences which coincide 
 with prejudices thus inherited or developed. 
 A severe jolt may be the means of preserving to 
 him intellectual honesty and an open mind ; but 
 if there is no jolt, the more intelligent he is the 
 more will he employ his brains to explain and 
 justify rationally that which by no process of 
 reasoning he has already accepted as part of his 
 mental equipment. This habit of mind is, I 
 believe, scientifically termed ' dissociation,' and 
 it operates, we are told, to a greater or less degree 
 in all human thought, not excepting that of 
 philosophers ; even where consciously detected 
 by its victim it cannot be wholly counteracted. 
 
 These then are the two difficulties that beset 
 any one who attempts to convey an impression 
 
8 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 of the marks that Active Service is leaving 
 upon his friends : (i) To avoid jumping to the 
 conclusion that others are really changing or de- 
 veloping, when perhaps only his own previous mis- 
 understanding of them is being removed. (2) To 
 remember that by guarding against prejudice 
 and bias in his own case, and denouncing it in 
 others, he does not automatically become himself 
 impartial. Nor does the writer of these papers 
 admit these difficulties in order to display his 
 own immunity from the taint, but rather, pain- 
 fully aware of his infection with the disease, to 
 disarm criticism in advance. If there is any- 
 thing about which I thought I knew something 
 before the war, it was the character, mode of 
 thought, the capacity for both good and evil in 
 the young man of the day. It had been my joy 
 to use such knowledge as I thought I had in the 
 attempt to help him in more than one class of 
 life. Much that I have seen in him during the 
 past two years, much that might be due to his 
 experience at the front, has seemed to me to be 
 merely normal. It would be impossible to say 
 exactly how much of change in him is due to the 
 war. I do not know. In particular cases can 
 
THE VARYING EFFECTS OF WAR 9 
 
 be noted undoubted changes, and these may 
 indicate a more widespread effect than one could 
 dare assume. Where I have been tempted in 
 the following pages to say that ' such and such 
 an impression has been stamped/ that ' so and 
 so will follow,* I do not mean to dogmatise. 
 Always I have this reservation my own limita- 
 tions in mind. Let the reader form his own 
 conclusions. For again I admit that I have the 
 mental squint of my kind. I wanted to see the 
 war as a purging influence. I believed, and still 
 believe, that suffering should raise and not lower. 
 I hoped that no man would ' live through ' and 
 return home anything but a better citizen 
 better not only by reason of past achievement, 
 but in potentiality for the future. Yet I have 
 tried to free these pages from the bias of this 
 desire, this faith and hope ; not because of an 
 excessive fear that these emotions may not find 
 fulfilment, but simply that they should not 
 influence the faithful recorder. Religion, if it 
 be true, does not need to be bolstered up with 
 specially selected material. I believe that good 
 will triumph over evil. My experience in these 
 months of war has strengthened, not lessened, my 
 
io PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 faith in the reality and power of the Spirit of 
 God, but I have honestly tried here not to press 
 an argument to support such beliefs. We are 
 concerned with a statement, not an argument. 
 In token of sincerity in this respect we will start 
 with an incident of some weeks ago, which I have 
 leave to repeat in outline ; it could so easily be 
 twisted, with a little imagination, to serve as evi- 
 dence in a court of special pleading, but we will 
 try and assess it at its probable value in fact. 
 
 ' I 'd never thought of that word before, sir ; 
 it had never struck me. But as I marched along 
 that road I couldn't get it out of my mind ; it 
 kept coming back. It 's there now.' 
 
 The road was that described elsewhere ending 
 in the ' Coin de Mort,' flanked by its blaz- 
 ing poppies ' Dead man's Corner ' Flower of 
 Sleep. The speaker was a sergeant in a certain 
 city battalion. In the early days he had thrown 
 up a very good position, left his mother alone, and 
 joined after making over to her his bank-balance 
 and savings, so that she might not be compelled 
 in any way to change her mode of living. The 
 word which he had mentioned was ' Anguish.' 
 
THE VARYING EFFECTS OF WAR u 
 
 'Yes,' I said, 'one doesn't often hear it. In 
 fact, in my mind it has only one connection.' I 
 pointed to a small unframed picture on my wall, 
 ' Head of the Christ ' after Leonardo da Vinci. 
 It came to me originally as a Christmas card, 
 and since then in this wandering life is always 
 the first thing to go up in a new billet and the last 
 thing to be taken down on leaving. It goes with 
 me sometimes to the various places where hastily 
 arranged services are held, and helps to form a 
 chancel. It brings there, to me at any rate, 
 something of the atmosphere which it is not 
 always easy to find in barn or cellar. The 
 sergeant went over to it and studied it. ' Yes, 
 I thought just the same ; now that 's funny, 
 isn't it ! ' 
 
 He was not a church-goer at home or here, 
 ' not religious ' as he put it. He happened to be 
 in my room because a friend of mine had found 
 him in a distracted frame of mind and had 
 managed to persuade him that I might be of use. 
 And so I was in the one r61e which is always 
 possible, the r61e of listener. Like countless 
 others in this life, he wanted an outlet ; discipline 
 kept him from his officers, as shy pride would 
 
12 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 have kept him from me unless he had been 
 brought ; he couldn't unburden himself to his 
 comrades, for that, he felt, would be bad for 
 moral ; he was suffering too much. His great 
 friend, a mere boy much younger than himself, 
 whom he loved devotedly, had last been seen 
 hanging limp on the German wire like fly on 
 string. For the company had had two ' shows ' 
 while the sergeant was on leave, one defensive 
 and the other in attack, and had come out of 
 them no company at all. And he had not been 
 with them there was pain. Why live when 
 they had gone, the men with whom he had 
 shared enlistment, training, and exile ? Why 
 had he ever served with them at all if he might 
 not serve to the end ? And while in England 
 he had visited that other home and learned how 
 great was the love there for the boy. He had 
 promised to be father and brother to him and to 
 do much for him too late ; if he had been on 
 the spot things might have gone differently. 
 Here was anguish ! How could he write home ? 
 What could he say ? 
 
 No one could have heard him talk and doubted 
 that in the cry of his soul ' This is what anguish 
 
THE VARYING EFFECTS OF WAR 13 
 
 means ' he was suffering the acutest heartache 
 he had ever known, and was realising it as such. 
 There was nothing of the dumb unrecognising 
 suffering which is even more pathetic ; his hurt 
 was so intense as to startle him into self-con- 
 sciousness. And just because he could see him- 
 self as a suffering being, he saw for a time the 
 suffering Christ as well. An understanding of 
 the Passion and the Atonement, the Great Love 
 and the Great Sacrifice, flashed upon him ; for 
 a time only, because such impressions are not 
 lasting out here and such sorrows pass away. 
 Other anxieties will distract, other suffering will 
 be felt, there will be other people to care for. 
 The scar will of course remain the remembrance 
 of what anguish was ; and if all this had happened 
 during his first month in the country, and then 
 he had been wounded and gone home for good, 
 Active Service would for ever after have meant just 
 that one grief for him and nothing else. 
 
 If any one who has received at regular intervals 
 intimate and perfectly honest letters from any 
 one near the front line will take the trouble now 
 to re-read them in the order in which they were 
 sent, he will see how great is the difference. First 
 
14 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 impressions, here more even than elsewhere, go 
 deepest. Horrors shock a man because they are 
 unusual, rather than because they are horrible ; 
 when they become a common experience they do 
 not necessarily become less horrid, but they no 
 longer shock ; this is to say, they do not, by a 
 merciful providence, create as deep a consciously 
 felt impression the hundredth time as they did 
 the first. I have seen much horror and met 
 much tragedy in this country, but I could not 
 write about it, I do not feel about it now as I did 
 at first. It is not necessarily that people become 
 callous ; it is rather that what first outraged their 
 emotions has had to be accepted as ordinary life ; 
 those upon whose emotions, through fear or 
 anxiety, too great a strain has been placed have 
 broken down and gone away ; the vast majority 
 who remain accept, as normal, conditions and 
 experiences which they know at bottom to be 
 grotesquely unnatural. 
 
 So it may be with that which we call Religious 
 Experience under war conditions. Abnormal 
 occurrences set a man adrift from the ordinary 
 channels of explanation and consolement. He 
 discovers in religion something which he never 
 
THE VARYING EFFECTS OF WAR 15 
 
 before felt conscious of needing or capable of 
 understanding. In that state of mind religion 
 steadies and comforts him. Had he in the middle 
 of a normal life at home experienced a similar 
 shock of sorrow as an isolated event, the effect 
 of the remedy afforded by religion would live on 
 just as if not just because the experience 
 which had called it forth stood out in the memory 
 as unique. But in warfare so protracted as this 
 human nature has time to adapt itself to such an 
 extent that the once abnormal becomes, in time, 
 the ordinary. Such an adaptation is ' natural,' 
 unconscious, automatic ; no remedy produces 
 it ; it just happens ; and, generally speaking, 
 the religious sense or the Christian Faith have no 
 part in it ; and, after many months of active 
 service, a religion which was once a welcome 
 refuge to outraged emotions may come to be 
 regarded as an intrusion which cannot now be 
 justified. It may even be treated more slight- 
 ingly much as a man will despise himself for 
 ducking at the sound of his first bullet nine 
 months ago. That is to put the case at its worst, 
 from the point of view of those who have sincerely 
 at heart the coming of the Kingdom of God in the 
 
16 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 world. It is not pessimistic, but we must be 
 disillusioned. There are far too many flam- 
 boyant assertions that war has turned man to 
 God ; such assumptions become blasphemous 
 when they add that the Almighty stage-managed 
 the war with this particular end in view. Our 
 ground for hopefulness should be rather the 
 opportunity which will remain after the war. 
 To real enthusiasm such opportunity ahead is an 
 infinitely keener spur than past achievement 
 the thought of what the war may enable us to 
 do rather than of what the war has done for us 
 already. 
 
 The opinion of ' effect ' as stated, even sup- 
 posing it to be well formed, is a view of the least 
 hopeful aspect and is not intended as a general 
 prophecy. No man can look even once and 
 briefly to the Anguish of Christ as an explanation 
 or palliation of his own, and remain the same ; 
 the old indifference must be weakened in its 
 fortifications. Any man must be, however un- 
 conscious of the fact, a better man for having, 
 even once, turned to God in an agony of fear, 
 remorse, or sorrow. And with many this is not 
 unconscious ; often it underlies the utterance of 
 
THE VARYING EFFECTS OF WAR 17 
 
 that password into any soldier's conversation 
 1 It makes a man think, this here.* He does not 
 understand God s any more than he understands 
 himself ; he could not work it all out here and 
 now even if he had some one to help him to do so. 
 But there is a possibility there which did not 
 exist before. And in some cases they are, I 
 believe, comparatively few a man has so found 
 God. 
 
 But the unreasoning optimists on the Christian 
 side had best remember that for all of these 
 people the expected revival of religion will not 
 be automatic ; good will not slide out of evil like 
 mince out of a machine. 
 
SECOND PAPER 
 
 A COMMENTARY ON THE SOLDIER'S 
 ATTITUDE TO WAR 
 
 A PECULIARLY loathsome day in November was 
 drawing to a close ; the weather, of course, was 
 bad, the cold bitter, the trenches deep in muddy 
 glue. German shelling and sniping had added a 
 mental discomfort, and there had been casualties. 
 Somewhere about tea-time a setting sun, cold 
 and grim, flickered for a few minutes over a black 
 sky and a scene of desolation that only Bairns- 
 father's pencil could reproduce. A malicious 
 wind heralded the approach of night as two 
 private soldiers sat down on the fire-step over 
 the remains of what had once been a brazier. 
 They were too tired to say much, and then 
 suddenly from one of them came the remark : 
 ' All points to 'appiness, don't it, Jim ? ' 
 
 The cheerfulness which in this form is such a 
 peculiar characteristic of the British soldier that 
 
 18 
 
THE SOLDIER'S ATTITUDE TO WAR 19 
 
 it has become proverbial, and needs to-day no 
 further illustration, yet never ceases to amaze. 
 The unconsciousness of it is the really heroic 
 thing ; they do not know, they do not even think 
 how patient they are ; they do not in the least 
 realise, as they ' stick it out ' month after month, 
 that their cheerful persistence is, in this pro- 
 tracted form, not only foreign to their previous 
 character, but indeed a miracle, to this extent, 
 in human nature at all. This persistence is the 
 same, only more self-conscious, with the young 
 officer self-conscious because it is in a sense 
 conventional ; class- training demands it of him, 
 and Army form requires him to set an example of 
 optimistic equanimity. But there is often much 
 more behind ; living under the conditions de- 
 scribed above they often say : ' You Ve abso- 
 lutely got to be cheery or you 'd go under. You 
 simply can't afford to be anything else.' Even 
 when winter is doing its very worst the cheerful 
 attitude is only more marked amongst officers, 
 and with the men there is in bad times less 
 grousing in the trenches and always more song on 
 the march. 
 
 Wonderful though this has been, there has 
 
20 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 appeared, many think, one disadvantage arising 
 out of the courageous cheerfulness of all ranks ; 
 that has been the effect of their letters home. 
 Any one who has done much censoring of letters 
 knows how most of the men conceal the discom- 
 fort of their lives, the unspeakable sights around 
 them, and the risks they run referring to the 
 latter in a sufficiently flippant manner to suggest 
 that they are but a distant concern of their own. 
 There are, of course, exceptions : when a man is 
 having a fairly easy time he will be more likely 
 to grouse in his letters, and the terrifying effect 
 of shell-fire and the scenes of carnage in and 
 around Rouen or Havre have produced the most 
 highly descriptive correspondence of the war. 
 With officers the same effort at concealment is 
 absolutely universal. Wife and mother simply 
 must not be allowed to be worried and anxious 
 about their loved ones more than can be avoided. 
 1 Going home on leave ? If you see my people 
 tell them I 'm first-rate, having the time of my 
 life.' It is also one of the rules of convention 
 and refinement that nasty things must be kept 
 from the women ; they must not know what a 
 battle is really like ; they must be saved from 
 
THE SOLDIER'S ATTITUDE TO WAR 21 
 
 any appreciation of the worst horrors of war. A 
 Territorial private whom I know went home after 
 nine months of very active service. ' And do 
 you mean to say you have really seen a trench ? ' 
 said his aunt. A devoted mother under similar 
 circumstances said to her officer-son : ' Fancy 
 that you 've heard enough bullets close enough 
 to be able to describe what they sound like ! ' 
 Often, of course, the opposite occurs, and people 
 at home picture their friends in the midst of 
 hardship and pressing dangers when they are 
 having, if anything, rather a pleasant time. But 
 on the whole such remarks as those which I have 
 quoted, incredibly foolish though they sound, 
 are fairly typical and not really so foolish when 
 you come to consider the epistolary pap on which 
 the speakers had been fed. While such ignor- 
 ance among friends and relations redounds ever- 
 lastingly to the honour of the soldier who has 
 fostered it, it is nevertheless a disadvantage. In 
 the first year of the war it had its share in blind- 
 ing the public to the immensity of the struggle, 
 to the horrors of war as it would be in England if it 
 came there, and to the strength and determina- 
 tion of the enemy. It also disguised the true 
 
22 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 nature of war itself. Humility, consideration 
 for others, good-humoured belittlement of suffer- 
 ing or horror are admirable in their way, but war 
 must not be allowed to masquerade as tolerable, 
 enjoyable, and glorious when it is chiefly cruel 
 and degrading. In spite of letters from the front 
 war's true aspect is gradually being laid bare in all 
 its ghastliness, but one wonders when the Press of 
 the country will give it its right emphasis ; per- 
 haps not until war-correspondents are chosen 
 from the ranks of serving soldiers and putting 
 wife or mother out of consideration permit 
 themselves in the interests of humanity to describe 
 things whole. Meanwhile the unfailing cheer- 
 fulness of our soldiers remains in itself a thing of 
 joy and is, one may be certain, a war develop- 
 ment that will live on. In itself patient endur- 
 ance of hardship and adversity was not created 
 by the war ; that has merely trained and stiffened 
 what was always there and brought it to a higher 
 pitch. 
 
 The same light-heartedness affects the soldier's 
 attitude to the enemy. Speaking of the English 
 non-commissioned officer and man, I am prepared 
 to maintain against any one that they bear little 
 
THE SOLDIER'S ATTITUDE TO WAR 23 
 
 ill-will. Certainly the hardest veteran could not 
 accuse them of lack of keenness to win the war 
 and to win it by killing Germans ; that is the 
 business they are out for, their whole lives for 
 months have been concentrated on nothing else ; 
 it has become their natural existence. But 
 there it ends, and after they get home again they 
 will be found to hate a German, as such, less than 
 they will hate war itself and the people in all 
 countries who make for war and make out of 
 war. Their attitude on the subject is indicated 
 in many ways, chiefly by such remarks as these, 
 made often enough within a hundred yards of 
 the enemy : ' Well, I 'spect Fritz wants to get 
 back to blighty and 'is wife and kiddies as much 
 as us chaps,' or ' It 's queer-like trying to knock 
 out a chap as you 've never seen.' Their treat- 
 ment of prisoners points the same way ; when 
 un wounded they are regarded as objects of merri- 
 ment quite free from malice ; our men stand 
 round the cage and toss over cigarettes, partly 
 out of kindness of heart, partly as they would 
 throw buns to bears at the Zoo for the sheer fun 
 of it, to see whether the prize will be caught or 
 dropped and who will get it. I once passed some 
 
24 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 Germans being marched down the road ; an 
 infantryman, formerly a mechanic, was with me ; 
 his only comment was : ' They 're glad enough 
 to be getting out of it, and I don't blame them.' 
 There are, of course, many exceptions, and that 
 spirit is not universal, though common enough 
 to be quite typical. No one finds it easy to love 
 his enemies, but people at home who empurple 
 fatly with hatred against the Germans while 
 calling themselves Christians should blush, if 
 they can still produce a blush, at the example set 
 them by men fighting cleanly and dying bravely 
 on their behalf. With the officers the attitude 
 varies ; but in their mouths the German is 
 rarely described as * Fritz ' the Christian name 
 but usually as ' the Hun ' or ' the Boche.' 
 This again is partly conventional ; it 's not ex- 
 actly good form to stand up for the Boche, 
 especially if the speaker or any one else present is 
 known to have lost brother or father at German 
 hands. In part, too, such a designation is an 
 attempt, by artificial means, to stimulate keen- 
 ness in the speaker or others for a business that 
 nobody likes, which however, to be brought to 
 a successful issue, must be carried on with 
 
THE SOLDIER'S ATTITUDE TO WAR 25 
 
 enthusiasm. All the same, I don't believe that 
 the General who is ' dying to get within range 
 of Cologne Cathedral ' would really choose it as 
 a target except for proved military necessity. 
 The attitude of personal antagonism to the 
 enemy is, of course, more noticeable in the senior 
 officers, and age and rank often tell nearly as 
 much in the conversation of the mess-room as 
 they do on the parade-ground. 
 
 As for the men, they do not for the most 
 part think out their feelings on the subject, but 
 one who did so made such an impression on my 
 mind that it may be worth repeating (with his 
 full consent) what he said, as far as I can re- 
 member it, almost word for word. He was a 
 young private of the new armies, well-educated, 
 and had certainly no apparent cause to love his 
 enemies. * Oh, sir ! I know I Ve killed one of 
 them ! It was so funny. I was on guard in the 
 front line the other night ; and, you know, it 's 
 a big strain when it 's just beginning to get light, 
 and you 're sleepy and tired, and you Ve got 
 your eyes fixed so hard on their wife till all their 
 posts look to be moving about and dancing up 
 and down, and you can't tell whether it 's men 
 
26 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 out or not, and fellows sometimes loose off round 
 after round and it 's only the posts. Well, that 
 morning there was a mist, but all the same I felt 
 certain it was a man I saw moving about and 
 bending down as if he was mending the wire or 
 picking things up ; but I wasn't certain enough 
 to let go, and it seemed a pity to risk frightening 
 him off. But I daren't wait too long I was so 
 afraid some one else would see him and get him 
 first, and I wanted him all to myself. And then 
 suddenly the mist kind of drifted away just 
 where he was and I had a shot. I was so excited 
 to get in first that I must have missed him, for 
 he just raised himself up a little and looked round 
 and then went down again ; so I had another go, 
 but I took more care this time and he dropped 
 forward a little on to the wire. I don't know if 
 that killed him, but I fired off round after round 
 into his body seven or eight I should think ; 
 I was so excited I couldn't stop. And he was 
 still there some hours later just as I left him. 
 Well, you know, sir, I never thought at the time, I 
 was as pleased as Punch to think I 'd got one my- 
 self. And then after a few minutes while I was 
 having breakfast I cooled down and I suddenly 
 
THE SOLDIER'S ATTITUDE TO WAR 27 
 
 wondered why I 'd done it ; I don't mean why 
 I 'd killed him I wasn't sorry about that but 
 why I 'd felt like that about it. It wasn't as if 
 I 'd any grudge against him, and it was taking 
 him unprepared though he 'd have done the 
 same to me, I know, if he 'd had the chance. I 
 suppose it was the sport of it, but it was funny 
 being like that.' 
 
 Volumes of commentary could be written on 
 that story. It is worth noticing just where the 
 self-analysis stopped ; there was nothing un- 
 soldierly about it, he did not regret killing ; he 
 did not allow himself to picture a stricken family 
 on the Rhine, with himself as the wrecker of 
 homes. It was a merciful thing that this boy, 
 of less than eighteen, who had never been away 
 from home till he enlisted, was spared the twinges 
 of self-accusation which I have known others to 
 suffer. But it was an ugly incident ; it cannot 
 be a pleasant thought for those middle-aged 
 men of all nations who make wars, and ' only 
 wish they were young enough,' etc. etc., that 
 they send out the youth of Europe to such an 
 experience as this and worse. And it speaks 
 much for the refinement of an English home 
 
28 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 that he could still talk about such things even as 
 he did. 
 
 People will tell you of this or that battalion 
 which ' will take no more prisoners,' and they 
 argue from it an intense and lasting hatred. 
 Intense at the moment, perhaps. Blood is up ; 
 mercy has not been shown, so mercy shall not be 
 given. But the English clerk and the English 
 working-man, generally speaking, will not after 
 the war harbour the enmity that some of the 
 officer-class profess to be laying in store. Their 
 sense of humour is much too sure. Also they 
 have, so to speak, ' been there before ' ; they 
 know from civil life, much better than most 
 officers know, that marionettes dance because 
 people with brains are manipulating wires. 
 They know that the presence of any particular 
 batch of Germans on the battlefield is in itself 
 no proof of the affection of those individual men 
 for war, or of their responsibility for producing it 
 and running it by atrociously barbarous methods. 
 They feel that Germans, like themselves, are in 
 the field under compulsion actual or moral 
 and, though they hold with intense conviction 
 that the German is wrong, and that that is why 
 
THE SOLDIER'S ATTITUDE TO WAR 29 
 
 they mean to beat him, they do not pile fuel on 
 the fires of hate. Many people who have had a 
 better education not so much officers in the 
 field who have learnt to admire as well as to 
 dislike, but rather middle-aged men and women 
 at home who ' are prepared to fight to the last 
 drop of blood ' (i.e. other men's blood, while they 
 hate from armchairs) these people ' will never 
 trust a Hun again,' ' can never forgive,' and so 
 forth. ' The whole Prussian race,' they say, ' is 
 obsessed ' ; to such men and women they are 
 all ' stinking Germans.' But the private soldier's 
 sense of smell is more discriminating ; he knows 
 what kind of German stinks and why. 
 
 Nor would the committal of atrocities by our 
 Army be convincing evidence of a vindictive or 
 unforgiving spirit ; a great deal of nonsense has 
 been talked and more thought about atrocities. 
 Such a view was well summed up to me by a 
 Colonel whose battalion a pattern of discipline 
 had at one time or another suffered most things 
 at the enemy's hands, including gas, in the days 
 when gas was considered an outrage of cruelty. 
 ' People talk about German atrocities,' he said. 
 ' Well, I don't know. I 've seen my own men 
 
30 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 commit atrocities, and should expect to see it 
 again. You can't stimulate and let loose the 
 animal in man and then expect to be able to 
 cage it up again at a moment's notice.' These 
 words had been spoken to me many months 
 before, but they came back to me as the boy 
 told his tale. Performing his duty as a soldier, 
 trained to regard the shedding of human blood 
 as a necessity rather than as a survival of elemen- 
 tary savagery, he had lost control of himself ; 
 what he called sport was blood-lust, and in a 
 trifling way what he experienced is a sample of 
 the force in human nature which may make a 
 soldier of any nationality bayonet an old man 
 or rape a woman. Any doctor would explain 
 the connection between the two. I am not in 
 the least concerned to defend the Germans 
 themselves from the charges made against them 
 of cold-blooded and calculated rapine and murder 
 in the early stages of the war by land, and through- 
 out by sea and air. I am not arguing that or 
 indeed any other point, but am simply concerned 
 with the effect on our own manhood of a long 
 period of this kind of warfare. The effect will 
 certainly be great ; are we right in assuming 
 
THE SOLDIER'S ATTITUDE TO WAR 31 
 
 that it will be wholly good ? I do not think so, 
 though I do not agree with those who prophesy, 
 as a result, a quicker recourse to force in settle- 
 ment of future disputes economic, social, poli- 
 tical than there has been in the past ; men 
 and, let us suppose, women too will be less and 
 not more inclined towards physical violence of 
 that kind ; some would say even too little 
 inclined. And though it seems that such strife, 
 if it arises, will be more widespread and bloodier 
 than it could have been before the war, yet the 
 moral effect of war upon the fighter is not chiefly 
 to be feared in that direction. But the reaction 
 upon general morality, and particularly upon 
 sexual problems, will be in some respects quite 
 definitely harmful. Some study of this prob- 
 ability will occupy the next paper. 
 
THIRD PAPER 
 
 A STUDY IN CONTRASTS AND IN THE 
 INFLUENCE OF REACTION 
 
 NOT only the imperturbable good spirits and 
 kindliness, but also the gallantry and heroism of 
 our soldiers, have been placed on record in de- 
 spatches and in the many unofficial accounts of 
 battles which all may read. Further illustration 
 of either is unnecessary ; nothing that has been 
 said or written could exaggerate the wonder of 
 it. In theory many of us knew before how they 
 might be expected to behave ; in practice we are 
 still surprised into fresh admiration. 
 
 To some the most heroic feature will always 
 appear the unflinching persistence shown month 
 after month in ordinary trench-warfare ; sitting 
 cold and lousy over a German mine, waiting for 
 the next * sausage ' or the next fatigue, living a 
 life of acute discomfort and of continued and 
 probable risk of death, with no glory of battle 
 
 81 
 
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 33 
 
 nothing apparently to make life worth living or 
 death worth dying. It is this very splendour of 
 their devotion that throws into stronger relief 
 the damage that these times have done in draw- 
 ing out or deepening in them other qualities and 
 characteristics of which it is impossible to speak 
 with pride. But the men themselves would not 
 wish to be described as saints. Many of them 
 admit freely that in some respects they are worse 
 as well as better men for their months of service, 
 though they would not always express it in terms 
 of ' better ' or ' worse.' Having very different 
 ideas on the subject they would in many cases 
 be almost proud of some of the failings a chap- 
 lain might think he detected amongst them. 
 The blend of good and evil that the facts present 
 almost defy any satisfactory explanation ; we 
 are accustomed to the contrast of good and evil 
 in the complexity of human character, but ordi- 
 narily we skim over it as a disquieting fact which 
 does not bear close investigation. It provokes 
 so many disturbing and perplexing questions, 
 it involves such nasty probing into motives 
 and assumptions ; it is awkwardly upsetting 
 to theories and prejudices,- and does not even 
 
 c 
 
34 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 promise any ultimate satisfaction. Thus we leave 
 it to theologians or philosophers, or perhaps to 
 fanatic reformers with their one eye glued on to 
 their patent receipt for all ills. And we are the 
 more inclined to let the matter rest in the case of 
 the soldier, not only because gratitude should 
 make us blind, but also because, as we have 
 noticed, ' the good ' in him is so gloriously good 
 that the explanation of its blend with evil will 
 be more than usually difficult. But gratitude is 
 the very reason for which the attempt must be 
 made, and there is one very obvious explanation 
 of the contrasts ; it does not perhaps cover all 
 the ground, but it reaches far. 
 
 There can be no temperament so equable, no 
 life so smooth in its course that physical and 
 moral reaction plays no part in it. We may 
 take ' reaction ' as the technical or scientific 
 word for that experience which in our own char- 
 acters we welcome or excuse as ' mood,' and in 
 others condemn as ' inconsistency.' What is 
 noticeable to some extent even in lives of quiet 
 passage we should expect to find a much more 
 forceful factor in the lives of men subjected to 
 violent emotions or continual strain. The con- 
 
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 35 
 
 tinual strain, mental and physical, of ordinary 
 trench-life should be by now sufficiently within 
 the reach even of meagre imaginations to need 
 but little further description here. It falls 
 heaviest on the commander of the company and 
 platoon ; indeed, victory, when attained, will 
 be due more to the steadfastness and heroism of 
 these people than to the work of any other rank. 
 These officers are the nearest to the enemy ; 
 they are the last connecting link between the 
 organising brain of the Army and the man with 
 the bomb or the rifle ; they are the leaders of 
 their men in a sense more actual than any Colonel 
 or General. Theirs is a ceaseless responsibility, 
 in most cases beyond their years, and it is borne 
 in the face of work which in its technicalities is 
 out of all proportion to the length and detail of 
 such training as it has been possible to give them. 
 They are literally holding the line of the Empire 
 or of Civilisation or what you will, at a distance 
 of perhaps fifty or one hundred yards from the 
 most expert fighter that the science of warfare has 
 ever produced. Meals and sleep may be taken 
 when they can, for not only must almost every 
 detail of their men's personal comfort and 
 
36 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 fighting efficiency be superintended, but reports 
 on these and other matters must be compiled 
 and rendered at any and every time of day and 
 night. (See ' The things that matter ' in Frag- 
 ments from France.) These conditions of daily 
 life are worth mentioning, because they are not 
 such obvious claimants upon our attention as 
 the fact that the officer's trench has a German 
 mine under it, that he must go and see what 
 damage the last shell did while the next is coming, 
 or take out a patrol or wiring party and watch 
 the wind for gas. I am not forgetting the 
 pseudo-happiness of some trench-life, the com- 
 parative relief of some ' cushy spot/ 1 or the 
 light-heartedness which would, in the very 
 officers themselves, disclaim the foregoing de- 
 scription as ' piling it on too thick/ I maintain 
 it is almost impossible to exaggerate the strain of 
 average trench-life, exercised at any rate on the 
 subconsciousness of any one taking part in it for 
 long ; it has no glory of battle ; it is known as 
 
 1 I am not sure of the right spelling of this word which has 
 become so common in our spoken language. There seem to be 
 two different lines of derivation by which it has come into its 
 present common use as descriptive of anything that is soft or 
 easy ; one is from a Hindustani word, the other from the French 
 * coucher.' 
 
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 37 
 
 peace warfare (' We 've had no fighting for 
 seven months'), but it is a strain which the 
 mind and body of man were not designed to 
 undergo. 
 
 Even more severe is the shock of what I have 
 referred to as the violent emotions of a battle 
 as affecting officer or man : the anticipation in 
 eager excitement and expectancy, or the per- 
 fectly justifiable instinct of natural fear the 
 fear of being afraid, both increased by the 
 noises of the factories of death. Then the start, 
 the anticipation turned into the vehement 
 exercise of one or both of the most elementary 
 animal instincts desperate self-preservation and 
 the lust of blood ; and then perhaps inaction 
 with scant protection under a devastating bar- 
 rage of shell-fire, the most searching nerve test 
 which perhaps alone has power to distinguish 
 the old regular soldier from ' Kitchener's man/ 
 
 Against a background of such memories, vice, 
 selfishness, intemperance, do not look as unlovely 
 as once perhaps they did ; the morally and 
 physically revolting side of sin is so infinitely 
 more easy to minimise or disregard through 
 steady inurement to things which superficially 
 
38 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 seem uglier. Meanwhile the pleasure and re- 
 laxation of vice are to be had for the asking, with 
 the added zeal of contrast to the rough living, 
 the fear, cruelty, and pain of what has gone 
 before. Many officers and men are at no pains 
 to disguise their opinion that a good time is due 
 to them, and that they mean to have it whenever 
 they get the chance. Their intention will not, 
 I believe, be carried out universally, not at any 
 rate in the sense in which they mean ' having a 
 good time/ using this phrase with regard to 
 immorality in the narrow implication of the word 
 alone. But let us take it in its wider applica- 
 tion the vice of self-centredness, self-pleasing in 
 its most comprehensive range as the negation 
 of duty and service. To those who have been 
 privileged to witness the wonderful perseverance 
 and self-sacrifice of our soldiers in the field such 
 an attitude is pathetically excusable ; mostly 
 unexpressed, it could be worded in some such 
 way as this : ' I Ve done my bit : I Ve lived 
 in Hell ; I Ve given the best of everything ; I Ve 
 crammed into the war the sacrifices or discomforts 
 of a thousand lifetimes. I 'm going to look after 
 myself now that I've served my country well 
 
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 39 
 
 enough. How can I manage to be the first to 
 get home and, having a start, pick the best job ? 
 How can I make a pile quickly ? How best can 
 I spend it on myself and family ? Where shall I 
 live most comfortably ? How many pigs can I 
 keep ? When shall I be able to afford a second 
 car ? Where can one get the best dinner in 
 town ? ' If this were universal, and if the in- 
 tention were permanently carried out bang 
 goes brotherhood, bang go all the so-called 
 lessons of the war except militarist lessons, and 
 back we are in the old state of things and worse. 
 Close acquaintance with death has much to do 
 with this attitude ; escape suggests to the re- 
 flective mood regret for lost opportunities in the 
 past opportunities of good or evil. A man 
 of one kind thanks God for deliverance and 
 leaps at the fresh lease of life in which he may use 
 such time as is left to him in order to fit himself 
 better for service in this world and beyond. 
 Another man merely laments that he has allowed 
 himself so nearly to pan out with many of the 
 1 joys of life ' un tasted, and determines to make 
 up for lost time on his next leave or after the 
 war ; such a theory as this is often not argued 
 
40 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 out, but exercises its reactionary influence with- 
 out passing through the conscious mind of the 
 person in question. And this second class is far 
 more numerous than are those who react from 
 Hell to penitence, especially if we include men 
 and women at home undergoing a war strain, 
 different in character but the same in its possible 
 effect on them. An opinion that I have heard 
 expressed more than once and expressed un- 
 emotionally, that is to say without any moral 
 or religious interest attaching to it in the mind 
 of the speakers is that the general standard of 
 personal conduct in England has fallen decidedly 
 during the two years of war. This opinion 
 presents an impasse which I do not propose at 
 the moment to face, but if it is at all true it strikes 
 another blow at the optimism of those who speak 
 of the regeneration wrought by war. Indeed, it 
 would be the saddest paradox that the period of 
 most self-sacrificing and united service on all 
 hands in the nation should yet coincide with a 
 lowering of the moral standard in the individuals 
 who compose the nation. 
 
 The reason why the release from strain or 
 horror reacts in a larger number of cases towards 
 
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 41 
 
 evil than it does towards good for a time, and 
 only for a time as I believe is less a matter 
 of opinion than of logical deduction. Let us 
 exclude from consideration the large number of 
 men who live by a definite moral system which 
 is based on no actual religious belief ; and let us 
 suppose to clear the ground that the reaction 
 in their cases would be half in one direction, half 
 in the other. The remainder who constitute 
 the majority either believe in the Christian 
 faith or have no code of morality beyond con- 
 vention, which may include for our purpose 
 instinct, interest, prejudice, and all the other 
 things which serve as motives to action. Now 
 if our estimate of reactionary force in this ques- 
 tion is anything like being a just estimate, nearly 
 all the men who come under the last heading 
 that is to say all except those who really believe 
 in the Christian faith or have a definite alterna- 
 tive system of thought may be expected to 
 react, temporarily at any rate, towards evil 
 rather than towards good ; and by evil, let us 
 remember, we mean at least self-interest, the 
 negation of service, of brotherhood and sister- 
 hood. And they will so react towards evil 
 
42 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 because they have, admittedly, no underlying 
 principle or motive of sufficient strength to 
 counteract demoralising influences. 
 
 Christian believers remain and they are of 
 course the smallest class numerically ; it is 
 always amazing that any one can succeed in per- 
 suading himself that English men and women 
 who believe in Jesus as their Saviour and try to 
 follow Him are in anything but a minority. But 
 even all the Christians there are will not return 
 home pining to use the remainder of their days 
 in the better service of their Master. The re- 
 ligious motive* if it is to be strong enough in men 
 to resist other forces, must spring from a grati- 
 tude, most intensely felt, that God has delivered 
 them from the snare of the fowler and from the 
 noisome pestilence ; that he has heard their 
 prayer ' Spare me a little that I may recover my 
 strength before I go hence and be no more seen.' 
 It is probably true to say that thankfulness is 
 the surest foundation upon which virtue and 
 service can rest ; it is certainly the bedrock 
 of Christian motive : ' Simon, son of Jonas, 
 lovest thou Me ? ... Feed My sheep.' ' In 
 this was manifested the love of God towards us, 
 
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 43 
 
 because that God sent His only begotten Son into 
 the world, that we might live through Him. . . . 
 If God so loved us we ought also to love one 
 another.' As sense of gratitude to an employer 
 makes good workmen, and gratitude to parents 
 makes a good son, so thankfulness for the Cross 
 a realisation of what Christ has done for 
 and is still suffering with us can alone make 
 us good Christians. Now in the case of many 
 out here, who really believe in Christ and in the 
 power of prayer through His Name, this sense 
 of thankfulness is difficult to secure. So many 
 men, without losing their faith, find it difficult 
 to pray ; ' I can't say my prayers in the trenches ' 
 is a very common remark in letters or conversa- 
 tion. It is no more proof of a rejection of re- 
 ligious faith than is the spontaneous prayer of the 
 careless in time of suffering or of acute peril a 
 proof of their conversion to God. Deliverance 
 therefore from special danger is not attributed 
 by these men to prayer, partly because they do 
 not realise or imagine the intercessions being 
 offered for them at home. With no sense of 
 special dependence on God through prayer they 
 cannot fail to be affected by the spirit of fatalism 
 
44 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 which alone makes endurable the lives of many. 
 It was easy enough to argue from an armchair in 
 the year 1913 against fatalism ; it is neither easy 
 nor reasonable out here to contest the one com- 
 fortable doctrine which is the support of an in- 
 numerable host : 1 1 'm not for it till one comes 
 along with my number on/ ' If I 've got to go 
 I Ve got to go ; it 's no good worrying. I 'm 
 what 'ud be called a fatalist, I am.' The accumu- 
 lation of evidence before them preaches the same 
 gospel ; the law of chances seems to work in- 
 exorably ; if a man is in the firing line long 
 enough, sooner or later he will be killed or 
 wounded ; if wounded and returned to duty 
 often enough he '11 find a grave all right in 
 Picardy or Flanders in the end good and bad 
 alike ; it makes no difference, so it seems. That 
 is how the men feel, and small wonder ! 
 
 To the officer-class and man of good education 
 there is a further difficulty, one acutely felt at 
 the present moment. We have recently been 
 engaged in very heavy fighting and have lost a 
 large number of our friends ; those who have 
 survived do undoubtedly feel a relief which is 
 akin to thankfulness, a sense of ' being spared 
 
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 45 
 
 for a purpose/ but at present it is very hard for 
 them to return thanks for deliverance to God. 
 Better men, they feel, have been killed. The 
 shell which just missed A and B, blew C and D 
 to the four winds. How can a man thank God 
 that he has been spared while his best pal has 
 been taken ? How can he attribute his own 
 safety to God's protection and return thanks for 
 it without at the same time attributing Harry's 
 death to the same Agency and resenting it ? If 
 he were thoroughly selfish it would be simple 
 enough, but his difficulty in the matter is in 
 exact proportion to his ^^selfishness and his love 
 for the friend he has lost. In a sense the greater 
 Christian he is the harder it will be for him at 
 any rate just now to return thanks like a 
 Christian. This is because gratitude springs 
 from instinct or training rather than from 
 reason. There is often little enough of reason 
 for the gratitude which we expect to find as a 
 natural quality in a child towards bad or in- 
 different parents : in fact, the whole business 
 of filial gratitude is illogical. But the grateful 
 person does not stop to examine the motives or 
 intentions of the man or woman who perhaps has 
 
46 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 only happened to be of use to him, or has given 
 him pleasure or happiness by accident. He feels 
 that he owes a personal debt to the music-hall 
 artiste for making his sides ache with laughter, 
 irrespective of the fact that the performer draws 
 two hundred pounds a week for so doing. Either 
 the man has by nature what is called a grateful 
 disposition, or he has been brought up to under- 
 stand that he must take nothing for granted : 
 that good manners, humility, consideration for 
 others, require of him always the remembrance 
 that no money on earth has the power to buy any 
 man's service as by right ; and so on and so 
 forth. Where such training has been absent, 
 and the conditions of life have not been such as 
 to give a grateful instinct a fair chance, a man 
 thinks much before he brings himself to thank, 
 and the place of gratitude is taken to a large 
 extent but not entirely by reason, and this 
 is assisted by pride : ' Have a packet of fags, 
 mate ? ' ' I don't mind if I do,' or ' I don't 
 mind.' Such an answer often conceals real 
 gratitude for little or big things, but there is a 
 reserve of pride ; reason has not proved the 
 benefactor disinterested in his gift ; the instinct 
 
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 47 
 
 of gratitude is much weaker than the natural 
 dislike of being laid under an obligation. Such 
 men unconsciously apply the same cold logic to 
 God's dealings with them, and thankfulness comes 
 with halting steps. God's motives are harder to 
 fathom, His methods more difficult to under- 
 stand. Even the believing Christian may forget 
 that he is wrong in attempting to apply to In- 
 finite Wisdom and Love the same process of 
 cautious examination that he is accustomed to 
 employ in his dealings with human character. 
 Sincere as he is, to the point of ungraciousness 
 in his dealings with men, his reverence for God 
 demands of him an even more diligent honesty, 
 and a proud humility hinders him from supposing 
 that God can have made a special intention of 
 saving him as an individual out of a multitude 
 of ' better men.' So it is that thankfulness for 
 mercies bestowed cannot always be at first a 
 really sharp spur to a determination for renewed 
 service and obedience to God in the future. 
 
 Up to this point we have studied the blend of 
 good and evil possibilities in human nature, as 
 displayed in the soldier of to-day, under one 
 heading the reaction of experience upon mind 
 
48 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 and character. That force explains many con- 
 trasts which would otherwise appear grotesque 
 or impossible, and we have tried to forecast the 
 direction that it may be expected to take. It 
 remains to take notice of the same blend at closer 
 range where it cannot be explained away on the 
 same grounds, but leaves us to the consolement 
 of the Lancashire proverb : ' There 's nowt so 
 queer as folk.' The private soldier combines a 
 self-protecting astuteness (' You can't tell the 
 truth in the Army, sir ; a man 's got to look after 
 hisself ') with the directness and simplicity of 
 a child. The most valued proof of friendship I 
 ever received from a soldier was a reply to me on 
 questioning a private as to the accuracy of a 
 certain statement he had made. He said, * I 
 never tell a lie to you, sir.' The emphasis on 
 the last word but one made me aware that I 
 was being honoured with exceptional treatment. 
 Generally speaking, taken en masse the men are 
 difficult really to know well and to understand, 
 owing to this habit of guarded reserve and eva- 
 sion ; once this is broken down by trouble or 
 suffering of any kind they display a childlike- 
 ness, quite unsuspected, which, because it is 
 
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 49 
 
 unstudied, is much more truly a part of their 
 fundamental character than the shrewd and 
 hardened exterior they present on ordinary 
 occasions. Contrast their humorously tolerant 
 treatment of German prisoners with their 
 willingness to harbour a grudge and the un- 
 forgiving spirit so often to be found amongst 
 themselves ; the foulness of their language and 
 conversation with their wonderful sense of 
 decency and their perfect courtesy ; their 
 acknowledged disregard of truth with their 
 genuine hatred of all humbug ; their rough 
 scheming selfishness in a hundred ways with 
 their devoted self-sacrifice and amazing tender- 
 ness. To see a badly wounded man, barely able 
 to limp out of battle, stop under fire, help another 
 man to his feet and support him along the road 
 is a sight as common as it is unforgettable. The 
 strange blend of hardness and tenderness, selfish- 
 ness and self-sacrifice common to humanity, but 
 strikingly apparent in the soldier can best be 
 illustrated by two instances that have come 
 within my knowledge ; I do not wish in any case 
 to argue from particular and perhaps exceptional 
 incidents to any general principle, yet to my own 
 
 D 
 
50 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 mind these examples represent fairly the com- 
 plexities of the private soldier, and bring us face 
 to face with a solution of the difficulties which 
 this paper suggests. 
 
 A friend of mine had his blanket taken, so he 
 watched his opportunity and took another man's. 
 The weather was bitterly cold. He was not the 
 least ashamed of his action, nor was he sorry for 
 the man he had robbed even when he found that 
 the loser was sufficiently scrupulous or clumsy 
 not to replace his loss in a similar fashion. He 
 would never have stolen the man's money, yet 
 he could see no inconsistency in taking what was 
 at the time worth much more to either of them 
 than a fistful of five-franc notes. Later he 
 risked his life in a gallant attempt to save the 
 man he had previously despoiled not, I feel 
 sure, in any spirit of remorse (that may have 
 come later) , but for the simple fact that, whereas 
 it would be unreasonable to suffer cold and dis- 
 comfort instead of another man, it was perfectly 
 reasonable and indeed necessary to risk wounds 
 and death itself in order to save the same man's 
 life. Apart from the intricacies of individual 
 character, influenced by convention and en- 
 
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 51 
 
 vironment, an explanation of this incident may 
 be found under the heading of discipline which 
 forms the subject of another paper. The fine 
 courage of the last act was in accordance with the 
 discipline and training and the traditions of the 
 British Army : the theft of a blanket was outside 
 the scope of discipline ; it came under the in- 
 fluence of no tradition, save the oldest in the 
 world's history Getting 's keeping. 
 
 Here is another instance similar in character, 
 but on a larger scale. A battalion goes over the 
 parapet to the attack leaving packs behind. 
 Another battalion comes up into the same trench 
 in reserve, and, while waiting, rifle the other 
 men's packs, razors being in chief demand. 
 Later in the same engagement the men fight 
 desperately in relief of the very people whose 
 razors have come so strangely into their posses- 
 sion. Such an occurrence not typical of general 
 conduct by any means is worth quoting, be- 
 cause it opens the door to a question of great 
 interest. We see a prodigal offering of human 
 life ; the sacrifice is as courageous as it is un- 
 conditional and whole-hearted, Indeed, the 
 willingness to give life itself appears greater than 
 
52 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 the willingness to live without those things 
 commonly accounted to make life worth living. 
 In one case it is a razor, or a blanket or the best 
 billet ; in another case it is a motor-car, a yacht 
 or a savoury. Years before this war the pene- 
 trating writer of an ' Open Letter to English 
 Gentlemen,' published in the Hibbert Journal, 
 maintained that it was a far harder thing to live 
 for one's country than to die for it obviously 
 so, as he said, since so many more were found 
 eager to do the latter than to do the former. 
 Many a man of ease and independence, who in 
 days of peace could not spare from his amuse- 
 ments the time to acquire first-hand knowledge 
 of the social conditions of the masses in an 
 attempt to better them, has for many months 
 on end denied himself both ease and indepen- 
 dence in order to learn how to fight and, fighting, 
 if necessary to die. Many a man, who would 
 not have given up a shooting-box for one year in 
 order to give a hundred families on the border- 
 land of destitution the chance of a fresh start in 
 the colonies, has since laid down his life in 
 defence of shooting-box and slum-dwelling alike. 
 Hundreds of working-class men who three years 
 
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 53 
 
 ago would not have missed the final of the cup-tie 
 in order to set another man free to go and see it 
 instead, have since made the supreme sacrifice 
 of all. And there is really, humanly speaking, 
 no reason to suppose that in these respects when 
 peace comes again we shall whether rich or poor 
 behave any differently ; England and English- 
 men and Englishwomen will still be less worth 
 living for than dying for, unless the lesson is 
 brought home to us ; we shall not even deserve 
 the epitaph that might be printed over the graves 
 of many ' civilian soldiers ' : ' I lived for myself ; 
 for England I died.' The forces of reaction 
 already defined will tend to set on fixed 
 lines a selfishness that before was hardly self- 
 conscious. 
 
 The contrast in character presented to view 
 by this probability is no fair instance of the com- 
 mingling of good and evil in human nature ; it is 
 evidence rather of the good, and the good alone, 
 but lying fallow or misemployed. Surely no one 
 save the militarist fanatic (' We come of a 
 fighting stock ') would pretend that the high 
 devotion which war calls forth in men could not 
 be better employed than for mutual destruction. 
 
54 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 It is the idlest pessimism to say that only war 
 can teach us self-sacrifice and that this fact 
 forms its moral justification. Such pessimism 
 becomes desperation if we allow ourselves to be 
 persuaded that the spirit of service thus evoked 
 may be expected to last only ' for three years or 
 the duration of the war.' The real truth of the 
 matter is that it needs a great cause and a great 
 appeal to bring men to a sense of their respon- 
 sibilities, and those who argue gloomily, as above, 
 are unanswerable unless we can point to causes 
 which shall be at least as powerful in inspiring 
 men again in peace time to give of their best as 
 the spirit of patriotism has proved to be in time 
 of war. Then pettinesses will disappear and 
 they will again respond. And such causes in 
 abundance there are. If justice, morality, faith 
 and honour, the defence of the weak are accounted 
 things worth fighting and dying for in interna- 
 tional relationships, the same principles should 
 appear worth living for and living out in the lives 
 of individuals. And this in all the manifold 
 relationships of peace time : industrial justice, 
 commercial morality, the faithfulness of man 
 and the honour of woman, the care of the 
 
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 55 
 
 Borstal boy, the prostitute, the slum child. 
 There are causes enough and to spare in the world 
 as it was and as it will be yet again to provoke 
 an indignation as keen, an enthusiasm as devoted 
 as that which roused us first in the behalf of 
 Belgium and later on in defence of all of our own 
 that we hold dear. War, once we are committed 
 to it, unites us and frees us from the political 
 morass into which we plunge all our ordinary 
 problems ; cannot there be afterwards some 
 other cause found worthy of a public enthusiasm 
 strong enough to disregard ' party ' alike in 
 Church and State ? But more than that 
 war tears aside the cover of ignorance and con- 
 vention, of so-called good taste which always 
 cloaks the world's worst misery and injustice ; 
 men at last see the need for their helping hand ; 
 the facts are forced upon them ; they can no 
 longer, in full view of their country's stress, trot 
 out the selfish old : ' Personally, I believe all 
 these things to be very much exaggerated ; in 
 any case we can do no good by talking about 
 them.' They can no longer say that, for seeing 
 they began to care and, so caring, they have 
 served. Will peace once more thrust into the 
 
56 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 background, behind the walls of hospitals and 
 asylums, in prisons and mean streets, in brothels 
 and doss-houses, in factories and ledgers the evils 
 and injustices which always have existed and 
 are in type as scandalous and wasteful as the 
 ravages of war itself ? At any rate such causes 
 should be no less capable of inspiring and suc- 
 cessful in claiming the self-sacrifice and devo- 
 tion which the events of the last two years have 
 proved to exist. Why should peace obliterate 
 the thought of them, descending upon us like the 
 asbestos curtain at a theatre with its recommen- 
 dation by convention, its pleasing security, its 
 advertisements of good things to be enjoyed, 
 and its obscuring of the confusion and burning 
 waste that lie behind ? It is our own fault if we 
 let this be. 
 
 Many of those who have given their lives for 
 England gave them, not for the England of 1913 
 and 1914, but for England as she might be, as 
 one day she shall please God ! become. For 
 that ideal they have gladly died. In their hope 
 and faith those of us who survive must live and 
 work. Their sacrifice must be made worth 
 while. 
 
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 57 
 
 We mourn though pride is mingled with our tears 
 
 Our best and bravest, some had made a name 
 
 In other fields, and some were new to fame, 
 
 But none had passed the springtime of their years. 
 
 A tragic waste ? To these the vision came 
 
 That they should lay their lives down for their friends ; 
 
 And shall not we, surviving, do the same 
 
 For selfishness and malice make amends 
 
 And live for others, when peace comes again, 
 
 As these men diedl Or have they died in vain ? 1 
 
 1 C. F. A. in Cambridge Magazine. 
 
FOURTH PAPER 
 
 DISCIPLINE AND AFTER? 
 
 IN reviewing two pamphlets issued by the 
 Liverpool Fabian Society a writer in the Spectator 
 lately said : ' The Collectivist authors seem to 
 think that the millions of soldiers who have sub- 
 mitted themselves to military authority for a 
 period in order to fight for civilisation, liberty, 
 and all the amenities, graces, and fair things of 
 life will wish to continue after the war under an 
 authority different in form but every bit as strict 
 and peremptory. We can assure them that they 
 are wrong. The Englishman accepts discipline 
 for an exceptional reason. He will not accept it 
 as a desirable thing for its own sweet sake. In 
 spite of the imperishable glory which his uniform 
 has brought to him, the soldier at the front 
 desires nothing more than to discard it ; in other 
 words, he wants to return to his own individual 
 
 58 
 
DISCIPLINE AND AFTER ? 59 
 
 life ; he wants to go his way, unhindered and 
 uncontrolled, and make his own choice of good 
 and evil/ We have yet to consider this whole 
 question of the use and effect of discipline ; 
 so far we have been thinking of the fighting 
 man only, and most of the circumstances that 
 have been passed under review are such as 
 affect him alone. In turning to the subject 
 of discipline and Army life in general, we 
 come for the first time to an influence bear- 
 ing on every man or boy who wears khaki 
 whether at the front or the base, in Tidworth 
 or Peshawar. 
 
 In the calculation of future tendencies in the 
 social, political, or religious spheres after the 
 war, it is the easiest thing in the world to forget 
 that ' when the boys come home ' it is only a 
 bare majority of them to whom most of what 
 we have been saying will apply. When we 
 include the necessary garrisons of the Empire, 
 the reserves of men in training at home, the large 
 numbers on lines of communication and at bases 
 behind the various fronts, we can see that the 
 war has brought broadly speaking only two 
 influences in chief to bear on the whole soldier- 
 
6o PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 manhood of our country : (a) The demand for 
 self-sacrifice in a righteous cause ; (b) Army life 
 and discipline. 
 
 With certain notable, but comparatively rare 
 exceptions special enlistment of men and special 
 selection of soft jobs amongst officers the man- 
 hood of the country has shown itself willing to 
 make any sacrifice required. Countless men at 
 bases or depots, or in some branch of the service 
 where the supreme sacrifice was not demanded 
 of them were anxious enough, when they joined, 
 not to be spared their full share of risk. And 
 more than this they have continued to bear, 
 month after month, the burden of routine, doing 
 work in which the irksomeness of discipline and 
 separation from home has borne sometimes more 
 hardly upon them just because these troubles 
 cannot have always the obvious point for the 
 man behind the lines that they have for the man 
 at the real front. The point I wish to make now 
 is that, in estimating the future character of 
 England, we must not assume in days to come 
 that every ex-soldier we meet in the street has 
 faced death on the battlefield, has learned the 
 lessons of and reaction from trench-life, and can 
 
DISCIPLINE AND AFTER ? 61 
 
 therefore be estimated in the light of those 
 considerations. 
 
 All those who have worn the King's uniform 
 have however come equally under an influence 
 hardly less mighty than the experiences we have 
 been trying to weigh ; they have been plunged 
 into the common life of the Army and have lived 
 together under the Army system of discipline. 
 Before going further I would clear the ground on 
 one point ; should any old Army officer read the 
 following views on Army life and discipline its 
 uses and effects he will in all probability dis- 
 agree with them violently, as they have met on 
 occasions with opposition almost worthy of that 
 description when I have stated them out here. 
 But I still hold to my opinions as against theirs, 
 and submit with the greatest deference that their 
 experience of discipline is chiefly drawn from 
 their knowledge of the professional soldier, the 
 main feature of whose life is discipline for seven 
 years or for much longer ; patriotism often was 
 one of his motives ; the prospect of possible war 
 was always a consideration ; but the circum- 
 stances of his immediate future, his motives for 
 submitting himself to discipline and therefore 
 
62 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 the processes of his mind in undergoing it were 
 entirely different to the same things in the 
 1 duration ' soldier. For he, as already quoted, 
 has submitted himself to military authority for 
 a period only ; he has accepted discipline for an 
 exceptional reason and a particular purpose to 
 fight for civilisation and liberty. The regular 
 soldiers, those of them that are left, generally 
 speaking, want the war to be over and nothing 
 more, both officers and men ; if they do not 
 actually love the Service, as the majority of them 
 do, they are at any rate content to remain in it ; 
 it is their working home, their means of liveli- 
 hood ; apart from war they have no fault to 
 find with it, rather the reverse. But with the 
 majority of our present Army all over the world 
 it is entirely different ; Army conditions do not 
 touch their life apart from the present time of 
 war ; ' the Service ' is not their livelihood so 
 much as their inconvenience ; they have no 
 cause to love Army life as such and why should 
 they ? They did not choose it as a recreation or 
 even as their profession. They look forward to 
 the end of the war not only because war is even 
 more distasteful to them than to the regular 
 
DISCIPLINE AND AFTER ? 63 
 
 soldier, but chiefly because they want to return 
 each to his own individual life ; to ' go their way 
 unhindered and uncontrolled and to make their 
 own choice of good and evil.' 
 
 I have every reason to know and to rejoice 
 at the benefit that thousands of men, including 
 myself, have gained, mentally and physically, 
 from the comradeship and discipline of the Army. 
 Many a milksop has been made a man ; many a 
 weakling has found health ; wastrels have re- 
 formed ; selfish brutes have learned brotherhood 
 and self-sacrifice ; shy, exclusive people have 
 learned to ' muck in ' and share a common life ; 
 narrow-sighted men have felt compelled to unglue 
 the other eye ; pride has been humbled, obstinacy 
 broken, barriers removed. All these benefits are 
 glorious in the present and will be far-reaching in 
 effect, but in these papers I am not concerned 
 with them, though most thankfully acknowledg- 
 ing their existence. They are passed over here 
 because they are so obvious ; they leap at us 
 from the eyes of the professional optimists ; they 
 shout at us from print, and it is not because I 
 forget them or belittle them that I do not try 
 to develop the thought of their probable trend 
 
64 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 after the war. But there are already enough 
 and to spare of apostles of the ' regeneration 
 wrought by war,' who think of little else but the 
 virility of the fighting man ; who deploy the 
 lessons we have learned in tribulation, no matter 
 whether we have really learned them or not ; 
 who assume a New England because they hope 
 for it. Some others of us desire a New England 
 and believe in it, no less keenly than they, but 
 have less in mind what has already been done 
 than what remains to do and to avoid. 
 
 With such an end in view let us examine certain 
 disadvantages that appear likely to emerge from 
 the imposition of Army life and discipline upon 
 the nation for a certain definite purpose and for 
 a limited length of time only, and let us start 
 with the consideration of discipline. When a man 
 joins the Army he surrenders his personal liberty, 
 and to a large extent his power of choice ; at any 
 rate the field in which he can exercise such choice 
 is largely curtailed fundamentally, perhaps, 
 not curtailed, but for all practical purposes and 
 appearances very definitely so. A recruit learns 
 that he is less an individual than a part of a 
 machine ; for hours a day he is trained to do 
 
DISCIPLINE AND AFTER ? 65 
 
 exactly what the man does right and left of him. 
 This induces the habit of mind by which a man 
 will ' do as others do ' when off duty as well. 
 On duty it is discipline which suppresses indi- 
 vidual choice ; off duty the influence of the habit 
 induced by the previous hours of discipline 
 remains, and individual choice is affected by the 
 thought of the machine. Now to do as others 
 do under a system of rigid rule is excellent for 
 the individual and for the body of which he is a 
 member, especially when there is a great purpose 
 behind the system such as the service of a 
 righteous cause in time of war ; but for each man 
 to ' follow the crowd ' (when that discipline has 
 been removed and there is left no guiding prin- 
 ciple), for each man to take his standards of life 
 from the common practice of ' the majority ' 
 around him, has never been the maxim of any 
 great moral or social teacher, and, it is to be 
 hoped, never will be. There is no doubt a ready 
 answer to this argument ; we shall be told that 
 the whole virtue of external discipline is that it 
 trains the victim to self-discipline. It is true 
 that this may be and often is the case, but to 
 apply such a generalisation in the present instance 
 
66 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 is wholly fallacious. The ' duration ' soldier has 
 not accepted this state of things as his life ; it 
 is a role assumed for a special purpose. Take 
 away the special purpose, give him his freedom 
 suddenly on leave in England or after the war. 
 What happens ? Artificial restraint has gone ; 
 it has not been long enough imposed to mould 
 or alter character for life ; but it has been long 
 enough endured to supplant to a great extent 
 any conscious habit of self-imposed restraint 
 and to cause the man, when newly freed, to 
 rebound. And rebound he does. This force, 
 where combined with the reaction from plain 
 living, discomfort, fear or horror already con- 
 sidered in these papers exerts a demoralising 
 influence whose range extends far beyond the 
 life and character of the man through whom it 
 is begotten. In Picardy we open our English 
 papers and read about the temptations to which 
 munition workers and soldiers' wives are ex- 
 posed ; the ' Increase of Juvenile Crime ' is 
 discussed like the discovery of a new star or of a 
 substitute for petrol ; ' men of the world ' return- 
 ing from leave aver that they never before saw 
 the streets of London so stream with prostitutes ; 
 

 DISCIPLINE AND AFTER ? 67 
 
 a famous General finds it necessary to initiate a 
 campaign against the increasing suggestiveness 
 of certain public entertainments. If these and 
 other marks of deterioration about which you 
 seem so concerned at home are true signs of 
 the times you may have many explanations to 
 offer for the state of affairs, but you will surely 
 not rule out for sentimental reasons the possi- 
 bility of the explanation just given as contribut- 
 ing its share to the general effect. If any one 
 doubts the usual influence on us (with, of course, 
 exceptions) of our life out here, he can ask the 
 honest opinion of any one home on leave ; at the 
 best, we are extravagant and self-indulgent to 
 a degree never before attained ; at the worst, 
 temperance and self-control have gone, and 
 virtue, jealously guarded, has fallen. Numbers 
 of the best and finest of our youth of all ranks 
 have, during leave, made their first real step 
 down, experienced their first loss of self-respect 
 directly owing to one or both of two causes : 
 (a) the relaxation from a temporary discipline 
 imposed from without ; (b) the excitement of 
 rebound from discomfort, sorrow, ugliness. And 
 for all such lapses, whether in rest-billets or in 
 
68 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 England the war is the ready pretext : ' Things 
 are all so different now ; it 's only for a time ; I 
 shall settle down again some day/ or ' I 've never 
 done it before, sir, and I should be ashamed of 
 myself at home, but it 's different like out here.' 
 There are further points in which all cannot 
 agree with those who see in any and every system 
 of rigid discipline an unqualified blessing. It 
 seems to me I shall be only too glad to be 
 shown my mistake that discipline imposed 
 from without lays, unintentionally of course, 
 but no less surely, an undue emphasis on appear- 
 ances. A newly enlisted volunteer in the Army, 
 with the ardour of novelty upon him, tries his 
 hardest to keep all the rules and abide by all 
 the principles laid down for his observance. But 
 it needs a very stolid character to persist in so 
 doing. * The Army has the machinery by which 
 it can force me to obey ; anything that I can do 
 to evade that machinery is perfectly legitimate. 
 It is the Army's concern to make a soldier of me ; 
 it is my concern to endure the process with as 
 little discomfort to myself as I can manage. All 's 
 fair in love and war. I take my risks and do my 
 best not to be found out/ That is an attitude 
 
DISCIPLINE AND AFTER ? 69 
 
 which very soon comes, consciously or not, to 
 many men, and it is almost inevitable. When 
 we are our own masters and live by our own rules 
 such an evasion would be impossible save to the 
 grossest of self-deceivers ; but an iron discipline, 
 not of our own manufacture, cannot demand the 
 same inward respect of us, nor can our consciences 
 trouble us so much in any attempts we may make 
 to escape its disabilities. If all this is true 
 (and it is only guess-work) it probably affects 
 the soldier's military efficiency little or nothing, 
 but it has a vast influence on his moral character, 
 and with the latter no military system seems to 
 have much concern. Take one obvious example : 
 admitted that drunkenness is an offence against 
 discipline and punishable as such ; all agree. 
 But whether it matters or not apart from a man's 
 physical fitness and his ability to discharge his 
 duties to all appearance satisfactorily that is a 
 question solely for the private opinion of each 
 officer and man. Why should any Army, as a 
 system (I mean apart from the personal influence 
 of its leaders, which may be exercised in either 
 direction) concern itself with morals ? It is 
 chiefly no, only concerned with making men 
 
70 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 good fighters, and it has yet to be proved that the 
 man who is at his best on the field of battle is the 
 man of the highest moral character. There is 
 much evidence to show that the hardest fighters 
 are often not patterns of self-control or of moral 
 excellence. That is not their business ; we do 
 not require it of them. We cannot be such 
 hypocrites as to pretend even to ourselves that 
 we put any consideration before the defeat of the 
 enemy. We ask of our men that they should be 
 patient and gallant and should hit hard, and we 
 are as a nation and quite rightly too grateful 
 for their valour to consider their religion or morals 
 as essential points, unless we can trace or prove 
 a vital and convincing connection between the 
 two. Such a connection cannot be satisfactorily 
 established as a general working principle ; the 
 Army system admits it as a possibility, but does 
 not rely on it any more than the nation does. 
 As chaplains we recognise with profoundest 
 gratitude that our armies in the field are led in 
 the higher command by men who for the most 
 part value religious influences and moral virtues 
 not only for their probable connection with 
 fighting efficiency but also for their own intrinsic 
 
DISCIPLINE AND AFTER? 71 
 
 importance. But where that view is held it can 
 only be personal, not official ; the Army system 
 of discipline gives it a magnificent channel for 
 exercising a widespread influence, but, apart 
 from such leaders, the Army would appear to 
 have no very definite moral colour at all. The 
 fault of course does not lie with the Army, but 
 with war itself ; the fact of war forces a nation 
 to submit to artificial restraint, to exalt physical 
 courage at the expense of moral courage, to 
 develop and extend many of the most magnificent 
 Christian virtues to the grave detriment of many 
 others. 
 
 This temporary discipline will have its more 
 reasoned rebound as well. These soldiers in 
 days to come will have their eyes about them to 
 see that they are not driven ; they will not wish 
 to continue after the war ' under an authority 
 different in form but every bit as strict and 
 peremptory,' unless they choose it once more of 
 their own accord and for some particular pur- 
 pose. Having once submitted themselves to the 
 strictest rules, suppressing all political and per- 
 sonal prejudice, they will naturally resent lack 
 of discipline in others who did not serve with 
 
72 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 them during these times, especially when dis- 
 played in causes such as Home Rule or Female 
 Suffrage, which may seem to them to be 
 less worthy of support than the cause of 
 England against Germany. It may be, how- 
 ever, that with grand inconsistency they will 
 assert their own independence, moral, industrial, 
 and social, and people will surfer a rude shock 
 who think that they can be hectored. We 
 churchmen and clergy need most of all to take 
 this lesson to heart. It is our business to try 
 and build up in the nation the quality of self- 
 discipline. Where we affect to take discipline 
 into our own hands we must be, like the Roman 
 Church, much stricter and more consistent. 
 The Church, like the Army, is a system or 
 organisation, though it was called into being for 
 an infinitely higher purpose than any human 
 institution. We have therefore in the Church 
 those very features of systematic discipline, 
 imposed for a great cause, which appeal to the 
 soldier. But we cannot expect him to recognise 
 the discipline of the Church unless its own officers 
 respect that discipline more than in the past we 
 have given any appearance of doing. We must 
 
DISCIPLINE AND AFTER ? 73 
 
 start at home and must begin with ourselves. 
 We shall do well to remember that the discipline 
 of the Church, while strict and consistent, must 
 not take the place of sense of responsibility, self- 
 discipline in the individual member ; unbending 
 in certain definite things, persuasive in all else ; 
 preaching less of the law of God demanding 
 obedience than the love of God claiming recog- 
 nition and response. If we would impose rules 
 on its members we must let them in turn have a 
 larger and more rational share in its administra- 
 tion. There is a truly appalling possibility of 
 the Church of the future being run on Army lines 
 in this respect ; once let the soldier suspect this 
 and he will fight shy at once ; he may grouse 
 behind our backs, but he will not help us reset 
 our house in order ; he will never even realise 
 that we cannot even attempt to do so without his 
 criticism and his help. If we consider attendance 
 at services essential to individual religion we 
 must not forget that we are dealing with men 
 to whom mainly Church attendance has been a 
 matter of compulsion from which, because of its 
 association with the bondage of Army life, they 
 will be thankful to be free. That many of them 
 
74 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 will welcome entire liberty of action in their re- 
 ligious observances in order to use it to come 
 back to Church as free men, is certain ; but 
 services as held at the front form a very indifferent 
 training ground for the Book of Common Prayer 
 as it stands and is used at home. 
 
 There is only one other influence of Army life 
 to which reference can be made in this paper, 
 and it is perhaps the most important. Social 
 reformers, politicians of all persuasions, and 
 cranks of all colours foretell with joy the results 
 that will obtain in the body politic from the ming- 
 ling of the classes on Active Service. Over a 
 certain field the crop will come to harvest as they 
 hope ; shopkeepers and miners, ploughboys and 
 city clerks, bird fanciers and tramps, costers 
 and commercial travellers have learned to know 
 and to respect one another. They are more 
 likely to pull together in politics, or at any rate 
 to lay much less store by political antagonisms 
 than in the past ; it will be difficult for any one to 
 work them off against each other as class against 
 class. But it is not so sure that the war has 
 really bridged the gulf between the masses and 
 the upper classes meaning by the latter phrase 
 
DISCIPLINEAND AFTER ? 75 
 
 the public school or University type of man. 
 Mutual respect, admiration, affection that has 
 all come wherever it was lacking before, but 
 knowledge has not come to the degree that it was 
 needed ; the prospect of it has even receded. 
 The class barrier here is stronger than before ; 
 how could it well be otherwise ? Before the war 
 the working-man was gradually struggling to a 
 necessary independence ; only in out-of-the-way 
 manorial regions did he touch his hat ' to the 
 gentleman,' or the latter expect such attention 
 from him. The years of bridge-building by 
 school and college settlements had been pro- 
 ducing in the last few years a larger increase in 
 results ; through their agency, assisted by such 
 means as the Cavendish Club and Association, 
 the members of the so-called ' governing class ' 
 were in increasingly large numbers getting to 
 know the working-man, and he them, as man to 
 man. 
 
 Has the war set all that back a generation or 
 more ? Is the Army from the social point of view 
 inevitably reactionary ? Young men have gone 
 in thousands from their public school or Univer- 
 sity to learn afresh in the Army that ' the masses 
 
76 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 are made of different stuff J to themselves. May 
 not many of them forget, on a return to civil life, 
 that it was the uniform and the badges, since 
 discarded, which for disciplinary purposes alone 
 gave them a position of superiority which is no 
 longer theirs ? So long as there be wars there 
 must be this discipline and rank, the outward 
 marks of respect, the rigid barriers ; all this is 
 excellent for the purposes intended, and where 
 it is most carefully observed there will always be 
 found the flower and perfection of any army. 
 This truth has been proved time out of number 
 in this war. Thus, for wholly admirable reasons 
 (admirable, that is to say, if we pass over the 
 question of the fact and necessity of war itself) 
 the young officer has been obliged to treat 
 his men as people who mustn't argue with him 
 or contradict him ; who must say * Sir ' and 
 salute, may never become ' familiar/ must make 
 way for him, stand at attention and perform the 
 rest of the very necessary formality of Army 
 discipline. Many instances could be given of 
 this artificial inequality, which, until he has 
 hardened himself to the idea of it for practical 
 purposes, the newly commissioned officer, to 
 
DISCIPLINE AND AFTER ? 77 
 
 his credit, often regards with healthy resentment. 
 But willingly or unwillingly, consciously or un- 
 consciously, it comes at last natural to him ; 
 its advantages for the great Service of which he 
 is proud to be a member are so obvious that he 
 may not remember, in civilian days to come, 
 that he has acquired a habit of mind which is 
 once away from the Army unnecessary and, 
 because no longer necessary, neither just nor 
 wise. The splendid spirit existing between 
 officers and men, the devotion of men to officers, 
 the care of officers for their men these facts 
 hardly affect the position I am trying to make 
 clear ; they do not constitute knowledge. Officers 
 and men understand each other thoroughly ; 
 know each other through and through as soldiers, 
 but under present conditions the one cannot 
 get the real personal knowledge of the other as 
 citizen to citizen. This ignorance is probably 
 much greater on the man's side than on the 
 officer's. At the risk of repetition I would at- 
 tempt to make my opinion here still plainer ; 
 on joining the Army the officer forces himself to 
 subordinate his own point of view whatever it 
 may be about ' the classes ' to the Army 
 
78 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 requirements of rank ; he must from the very 
 first be less concerned to study the point of view 
 of his men as citizens than to drill into them the 
 official Army attitude towards them as soldiers ; 
 and the two are entirely different. 
 
 There is one great hope. In this war more 
 than ever before in the English Army men of all 
 classes have served together in nearly all ranks. 
 That fact so obvious has already been men- 
 tioned but not in this definite connection. I 
 am thinking now primarily of the very large 
 number of public school men who whether 
 they have later on taken commissions or not 
 have served for months on end side by side with 
 the weaver, the clerk, the tram conductor, the 
 coal heaver, and the artisan. The men who 
 have had that experience should come out of the 
 war with an intimate first-hand knowledge of the 
 minds and modes of thought, the prejudices and 
 their causes, the misunderstandings and their 
 justifications, the aims and ideals, the character 
 and philosophy of life of fellow-citizens of in- 
 finitely different education and environment to 
 their own. To what use will they put this unique 
 store of experience ? They may speak with an 
 
DISCIPLINE AND AFTER ? 79 
 
 authority which cannot be gainsaid. There is 
 nothing that we might not learn if they will 
 teach us, and teach us quite honestly without 
 prejudice or loss of memory. Above all, there is 
 one truth if it be truth and not merely the blind 
 hope of my own prejudice that they must 
 surely make known from their store of great 
 discoveries ; and that is, that wars in Europe 
 will one day be impossible, because Europe's 
 working-classes will insist that it be so. The tie 
 of common humanity, common brotherhood, 
 common advantage will be at last stronger than 
 the tie of any nationality. The governing 
 classes will in this respect one day be governed 
 unless they too, for whatever reason, determine 
 that wars must cease and join hand in hand with 
 those they lately led in war and lead them so in 
 peace. And this must be done in the next ten 
 years if it is to be done at all done while all 
 men still dwell on the horrors of war and the 
 bestialities of war, before passing time has 
 reflected a glow of sentiment and glamour on to 
 it, and medals and ribbons and the coloured 
 reminiscences of forgetful men alone are left to 
 give a vastly misleading opinion of war to the 
 
80 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 children of generations to come. It must be 
 done too while the classes still respect each other 
 for what each has done for his country in the 
 time of her greatest need ; while no class can 
 sling mud at any other class for its lack of 
 patriotism. The men of the upper classes have 
 proved their capacity for self-sacrifice. The 
 rally of working-men to the flag is an unimpeach- 
 able guarantee that their known objection to 
 war as such, their reiterated belief that war can 
 be eliminated from the world's future, does not 
 spring as so often suspected by others merely 
 from a consideration of their own purses and 
 their own skins. When peace comes again they 
 can speak freely without fear that any man will 
 dub them coward or traitor. Those too who 
 have learned their point of view, its eminent 
 reasonableness, its large humanity, can bring 
 others to meet them half-way in the great 
 endeavour, saying ' They have mingled their 
 blood with yours ; they have done great service 
 for England's name. Join them in a common 
 cause greater even than any to which England 
 has yet bidden you.' For a time such voices 
 will be heard with respect and consideration if 
 
DISCIPLINE AND AFTER ? 81 
 
 raised without delay but not for long. In the 
 welter of our peace-time prejudice and party 
 passion such claims on our attention, claims 
 bought with sweat and blood, may so quickly 
 be forgotten, and many good men who gave 
 their lives in a war to end war will then have 
 died in vain. 
 
FIFTH PAPER 
 
 SOMETHING DEFINITE 
 
 1 You are a pessimist, you cannot even see the 
 humorous side of the things of which you speak. 
 You rob of its due emphasis the natural good- 
 ness of mankind. Your omissions are glaring. 
 You propound problems with but the barest 
 hint of a solution. It 's all very well in its way, 
 but isn't it all unnecessarily grim ? ' 
 
 That is a fair composite summary of the 
 criticisms of some who have heard the fore- 
 going opinions expressed or have glanced through 
 these papers. I would attempt to answer them 
 here. 
 
 The natural goodness, and the evidence of 
 ' natural religion/ as displayed in the lives of 
 our soldiers, receives its proper emphasis in the 
 papers written by Mr. Gordon in this book. I 
 am in almost entire agreement with a great deal, 
 though not all, that he says on that and other 
 
SOMETHING DEFINITE 83 
 
 subjects ; we are not concerned to repeat each 
 other ; we have, save for occasional overlapping, 
 confined ourselves as far as possible each to his 
 own chosen line, nor have we separately or 
 together attempted to cover all the ground. 
 We have not, for instance, tried to deal directly 
 with the effect on our Army of a closer acquaint- 
 ance with religious observances on the con- 
 tinent and with the habits and national character 
 of our great and gallant Ally. 
 
 As to humour, life at the front, as anywhere 
 where Englishmen collect, is full of it, conscious 
 or unconscious. The nation has quite rightly 
 made the most of it during the past two years. 
 The Press, comic or would-be-serious, and the 
 revue writers have sometimes made more of it 
 than occasion demanded or good taste should 
 have allowed ; but if mistakes have been made, 
 perhaps they have been made on the right side. 
 True it is that laughter ripples through France 
 and Flanders, laughter in which even the writer 
 of these ' dolorous pages ' has been known to 
 join. For the purpose, however, which I had in 
 attempting to express myself in this book I am 
 well content to plead guilty to the charge of 
 
84 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 presenting war and its aftermath as vastly 
 humourless subjects. Long may they be con- 
 sidered so ! 
 
 The omissions are, I am afraid, very glaring. 
 So little has been said about the dominant note 
 of Army life at the front, its good comradeship, 
 the gospel of ' standing in with your mates,' of 
 ' never letting down a pal ' ; or the same thing 
 as seen amongst officers the hospitality, the 
 open friendliness, the free brotherhood of arms, 
 so conspicuously noticeable for instance in the 
 officers of the Royal Regiment of Artillery. 
 Again, there has been no attempt to make any 
 definite distinction between the old regular 
 private soldier (the ' working-class ' man) on the 
 one hand, and on the other the more educated 
 citizen who has served by the thousand in the 
 ranks. The two classes do not really admit of 
 separate treatment within the scope of this 
 book ; distinctions have been pointed out where 
 it has seemed necessary, but there is a much 
 larger common element than is generally supposed 
 in which the two are merged. Nor has any 
 allusion been made to the mental effects of 
 wounds the mark left on the wounded by 
 
SOMETHING DEFINITE 85 
 
 weeks of suffering and by the opportunity for 
 interminable reflection ; let those who know 
 speak of the effect of these things on mind and 
 spirit. 
 
 It is sufficient to admit these and other omis- 
 sions in passing, but the failure to suggest solu- 
 tions to difficulties raised raised, it may seem 
 to some, quite unnecessarily is a more serious 
 matter. ' It is all very well to make criticisms, 
 but any child can point out difficulties. What 
 we want to find is a way out/ I would answer 
 that in the present case possible problems have 
 not been presented in any capricious mood ; 
 any one may be justified in attempting to attract 
 attention to certain facts and considerations of 
 importance which in his opinion might otherwise 
 escape notice, while leaving it to more competent 
 people to deal with the situation when it arises. 
 Nor is it pessimistic to have a ready eye for 
 obstacles, provided there is an inward conviction 
 that such obstacles can be surmounted. But 
 recognising a certain element of justice in such 
 criticisms, I am proposing in this paper to present 
 certain possibilities in the form of an appeal. 
 Certain ways of facing those dangerous contin- 
 
86 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 gencies may here be indicated with considerable 
 hesitation ; they are possibly all wrong ; if so, 
 their faulty construction, their lack of insight 
 and wisdom constitute the appeal to others to 
 provide something more practical and offering 
 a better hope of ultimate satisfaction. 
 
 It has been implied in these papers that a re- 
 action may be expected towards intemperance 
 and immorality when the army is disbanded. 
 The former of these might well be expected quite 
 apart from any connection with reaction ; men 
 who have for months been accustomed to swill 
 French beer in unlimited amounts will attempt 
 the same performance on English ale with truly 
 surprising results. Virtue enforced by legisla- 
 tion may appeal to some, though it is not desir- 
 able from most people's point of view ; but all 
 the same the absolute extinction of bad spirits, 
 and of beer of over a certain percentage of alcohol, 
 would be surely a legitimate protection of a man 
 from himself. I know that ' good old English 
 beer ' is supposed to be the sturdy bulwark of 
 the English national character, but it has not been 
 shown in the present war that the French or 
 German national character is less sturdy without 
 
SOMETHING DEFINITE 87 
 
 it ; it has yet to be proved that a future genera- 
 tion of Englishmen, who never having tasted 
 would not miss it, would be lacking in either 
 sturdiness or contentment through its absence. 
 1 We can't do without our old English beer/ Is 
 that going to be the cry from men who were pre- 
 pared a few months before to sacrifice not only 
 comfort and, if need be, life but even beer itself ? 
 That suggestion is a matter for action, if any 
 one be found to advance its cause. There is a 
 further suggestion on a matter of attitude for 
 each individual citizen to consider. The attitude 
 suggested is merely one of common sense ; 
 whether the no-treating order continue for a 
 time or not he might remember that the per- 
 petual ' Have a drink ? ' is a merely conven- 
 tional and largely selfish method of displaying 
 gratitude and offering a welcome home. It is 
 selfish because ninety-nine out of every hundred 
 men who stand another man a drink do so be- 
 cause of the opportunity thereby presented of 
 having a drink themselves. It is also largely a 
 matter of convention which seems to require 
 that the grateful recipient should return the 
 favour within ten minutes ; and so the farce 
 
88 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 runs on, the only time-limit set to it being an 
 engagement to be kept by either party or a meal 
 to be eaten by both. Thus early in life many a 
 young man reaches a state of permanent disten- 
 tion, a stage in which the liquid refreshment, 
 once taken in flabby obedience to a convention, 
 becomes a permanent necessity with bodily 
 space thus artificially created for its accommoda- 
 tion. Even where the generous distribution of 
 drinks is not half-selfishly inspired it is almost 
 equally grotesque ; it is appalling to contem- 
 plate the lives that have been twisted out of the 
 straight and the homes rendered unhappy through 
 the agency in the first place of the kind fool with 
 his everlasting iteration of ' What '11 you have ? ' 
 Why is it that the average Englishman's main 
 idea of friendliness and good fellowship should 
 consist chiefly in the proffer of liquid refresh- 
 ment with an insistence that it must be alcoholic ? 
 This insistence, largely conventional, is just as 
 unreasonably silly and narrow in one direction 
 as for instance is, in the other direction, the 
 anxiety of a fanatic temperance advocate to 
 enforce sobriety by abolishing port wine ! 
 
 So too with sexual immorality we may be 
 
SOMETHING DEFINITE 89 
 
 prepared for an orgy of unrestrained promis- 
 cuity. Pent-up forces will be loosed ; money 
 for a time will be abundant and women will be 
 complacent. The risk of contracting syphilis 
 is not likely under the circumstances to be a 
 sufficient deterrent ; gonorrhoea is a minor dis- 
 comfort compared to wounds or death cheerfully 
 faced in battle, and is much more pleasurably 
 obtained. 1 Education is the cry to remedy 
 everything, but it is confined in this matter too 
 exclusively to the removal of ignorance on the 
 physical side alone. By all means let our boys 
 and girls, in or out of school, be taught the 
 mysteries of body and birth ; but also let every 
 boy and man be drilled into a knowledge of 
 certain other truths that no woman can become 
 a prostitute at all save through the action origi- 
 nally of some one individual man through whom 
 she first ceases to be an honest woman ' ; that 
 economic pressure has infinitely more to do with 
 prostitution than has feminine passion ; that the 
 whole question of social inequality takes on a 
 
 1 The much questioned connection between alcoholic in- 
 dulgence and venereal diseases is firmly established in the 
 Report of the Royal Commission on the latter subject, page 65, 
 paragraph 235. 
 
90 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 fresh colour when the man who has money or 
 some money buys the woman who would other- 
 wise have little or no money, and then makes her 
 dependence on her miserable trade his justifica- 
 tion for giving her his custom. Such action is 
 the result of blind or wilful ignorance ; ignorance 
 should never be advanced as an excuse for this by 
 any intelligent man, and anyhow it is almost 
 inexcusable wherever the man draws his live- 
 lihood and his spare cash from any trade or 
 business concern connected, however indirectly, 
 with the gross underpayment of women workers. 
 There are many other things that need to be 
 taught, but principally that the risks a man runs 
 in sinning are risks in which the happiness of 
 others, living and yet unborn, is intimately and 
 unavoidably entangled. Yet all this and much 
 more, about which there is a simply stupefying 
 ignorance or indifference amongst eighty out of 
 every hundred men of all classes, may not be 
 always sufficient to restrain a man of strong 
 passions and to make our country what it 
 should be. The one thing needed as well is an 
 understanding of the spiritual war between evil 
 and good which is more permanent and im- 
 
SOMETHING DEFINITE 91 
 
 portant than any worldly campaign, and a belief 
 in the power that Christ gives to those who are 
 willing to stand by His side. 
 
 On the purely material or physical side of the 
 question the work of the Royal Commission on 
 Venereal Diseases is a long step in the right 
 direction. In this connection I have leave to 
 mention a suggestion made by a friend of mine. 1 
 I quote it more or less as he made it to me, 
 slightly extended, but without comment. It is 
 ' that the Church of England should take the 
 lead by refusing to " solemnize " syphilitic 
 marriages ; that this is no real hardship or in- 
 justice on any man ; that a man who rates God's 
 blessing through the Church on his married life 
 sufficiently high will consider it well worth the 
 inconvenience of troubling to obtain a doctor's 
 certificate for a clean bill of health ; that even 
 if he is not pronounced fit he can avail himself 
 of the means provided to effect a cure a step 
 which otherwise a false and selfish modesty 
 might have prevented him from taking ; that 
 there can be no blessing of God on a tainted 
 union, for, whether or not either of the parties 
 
 1 The Rev. Harry Blackburne. 
 
92 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 are guiltily responsible for the taint, it is one 
 that may affect the children yet unborn, and 
 therefore the marriage at that time is not such as 
 to win God's approval ; that the Church in so 
 insisting would be taking a perfectly reasonable 
 and legitimate course in removing the mockery 
 of many * Christian marriages ' of to-day : that 
 a marriage in Church is meant to be and should 
 be a sincere act of Prayer by people who believe 
 in God for His Blessing on them at the time of 
 the most important change of their whole lives ; 
 that people to whom these conditions for any 
 reason do not apply should only be thankful 
 that the Church at last does not allow them to 
 make humbugs of themselves, even for an hour, 
 nor a mockery of a religion in which they do not 
 believe ; and that they should seek legal union 
 elsewhere ; finally, that it is no wild prophecy 
 to say that eventually the State will insist on a 
 clean bill of health in those who propose to beget 
 children, and that those who love their Church 
 would like to see her take the lead in this instead 
 of being compelled, years hence and faintly 
 approving, to adopt a Christian principle from a 
 secular authority for purely material reasons.' 
 
SOMETHING DEFINITE 93 
 
 To return to our main subject the whole 
 question, so vitally important to the nation's 
 and the world's future, as to what will happen 
 the year after the war. The method by which 
 the discharged soldier is ' paid out ' will have no 
 small bearing. Is the accumulated surplus of 
 his pay to be flung into his hand while he is 
 reeling with the excitement of a renewed and 
 unaccustomed freedom, to be spent perhaps 
 before he has even reached the door of his own 
 home, or at any rate before he has steadied down 
 to the realisation that he will need all his savings 
 for himself and family in the years that lie 
 ahead ? 
 
 The requirements of the whole situation seem 
 then to be chiefly an application of practical 
 common sense to the treatment of our soldiers on 
 their return, and any campaign of common sense 
 to be successful must be led by the women ; 
 they must not underrate nor allow to be under- 
 rated their enormous influence ; they must 
 remember that the re-dominance of man over 
 woman which war so often brings in its train is 
 due less to the conceit or self-assertion of the 
 fighting man than to woman's unnecessary self- 
 
94 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 depreciation and to her faculty for hero-worship. 
 Our women must above all keep their heads and 
 help the men to keep theirs. They cannot com- 
 plain of our lack of chivalry towards them in 
 some respects if they ever lower their woman- 
 hood in any way so that it cannot command our 
 reverence. However he may appear to treat her, 
 man idealises woman ; if she allows herself to 
 lose his respect, if she robs him of his ideal she 
 is doing herself and him the greatest disservice. 
 Above all, through the first months of riot and 
 reaction those who love Christ had better see to 
 it that they have a Church on her knees. And 
 when things settle down again, what then ? The 
 orgy will not last. The Churches will then have 
 their opportunity. Men will be once more 
 gaining their poise ; regret will come for any 
 selfish plunge into dissipation. ' Was it worth 
 it ' ? Many will be asking themselves, as they 
 look back to the struggle in which they lately 
 took part. ' Did we offer our best, did we bury 
 our friends by the score, did we take human 
 lives beyond count simply for this ? Is there 
 not happiness to be found as well as pain and 
 pleasure ? Is there no purpose in life after all ? 
 
SOMETHING DEFINITE 95 
 
 Is all waste ? ' The religion of Christ alone has 
 a satisfying answer to such questions, and the 
 Churches have certain foundations upon which 
 to rest in offering a solution. I am not thinking 
 of the foundations existing in the character, in 
 the natural goodness of men themselves: the 
 subject of those foundations and how to build 
 upon them is dealt with in another part of this 
 book. Rather I am referring to that spirit of 
 comradeship and brotherhood which has been 
 developed by service in the Army. No appeal 
 to that spirit will ever be made quite in vain. 
 The rebound from the thraldom of ' the Services ' 
 will not be permanent. The reaction from hard- 
 ship and suffering will not for ever turn to mere 
 amusement and self-interest. The call, stifled in 
 men's hearts for a time perhaps, will break forth 
 again. They have learnt what Service and 
 Brotherhood mean ; they will chiefly need to 
 be shown in what direction and with what pur- 
 pose those lessons can be applied. Hitherto 
 they were applied to Defend, but, in Defending, 
 to waste and to destroy : ' Show us instead how 
 to create and to build up. What can I do now 
 that others may not suffer in that way in the 
 
96 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 world again, that the flow of blood that has been 
 shed may not be waste ? Do all these other 
 things you talk about commercial morality, 
 industrial justice, religious reunion, personal 
 purity really make a difference ? How is it 
 that war is in truth a harvest of the world's 
 greed, injustice, or deceit ? If my personal, 
 individual life as a private citizen contributes 
 towards it one way or the other, show me what 
 to do or what not to do. I am ready to try.' 
 
 There can be little doubt that the hoped-for 
 revival of Christianity will come through some 
 such appeal as that to its possibilities. There 
 will be one preliminary objection to be overcome 
 in their minds, and that is that Christianity has 
 been tried already and found wanting ; this must 
 be strenuously denied ; the charge must be 
 answered before it is made. Unspoken, not 
 consciously thought out, that suspicion is work- 
 ing silently in the minds of thousands, and it is 
 a lie. In the modern world the principles of 
 Jesus Christ are simply untried in the daily lives 
 of the majority of us ; and this largely for two 
 reasons, reasons which are stumbling-blocks to 
 many who would otherwise here and now give 
 
SOMETHING DEFINITE 97 
 
 Christianity a trial. It is supposed that to 
 become a Christian means to say ' Good-bye ' 
 to joy and vivaciousness and to become incur- 
 ably dull. Dullness that most unforgiveable of 
 social failures is attached as a stigma to the 
 name of Christian. Whether or not the accusa- 
 tion is justifiable we do not need to incur it. The 
 Christian course is a great adventure from start 
 to finish ; it demands the best of wits and heart 
 and humour that man or woman has to give. It 
 should inspire the ordinary work and amuse- 
 ments of everyday life with a joy that nothing 
 else can bring. So many shrink from starting 
 out on it because they think they are happy now, 
 and think that they will court unhappiness if- 
 if what ? if they ask Christ to take possession 
 of them ! Rather that joy springs partly, though 
 not entirely, from the conviction that if one is for 
 Christ one is, in spite of all outward appearances 
 to the contrary, upon the winning side. This 
 is the other difficulty of those who have not yet 
 made trial ; it is not only that we are often un- 
 satisfactory advertisements for the ideals we 
 profess, but that those ideals seem to the common 
 run of men to be in any case impossible of 
 
 G 
 
98 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 achievement. The man who would not retire 
 in battle without orders to do so even if he 
 thought which he never would allow himself for 
 one moment to think that he was fighting for a 
 beaten country, or that reinforcements would 
 never come up, that is surely not the man 
 who will reject a trial of an even greater cause 
 solely on the ground that it represents an im- 
 possible ideal ? The aims for which we stand 
 are practical aims ; we are not bound to explain 
 to the last detail how exactly in politics or the 
 social order they will come to be realised. Evils 
 disappear from the world only when a sufficient 
 number of individual people are passionately 
 convinced that they must remain no more ; 
 then a way is found. That is why each separate 
 man or woman who will believe in the possibility 
 of these aims and work for them is an addition 
 of priceless importance towards the achievement 
 of the end. The present attitude towards what 
 we represent has been expressed to me often out 
 here and is held, I am sure, widely amongst 
 officers and men : ' All that you say about all 
 these things is, of course, perfectly right in its 
 way, Padre, and we expect you to live for these 
 
SOMETHING DEFINITE 99 
 
 ideals and respect you when you do. After all 
 that 's your job, your profession. And I think 
 there are lots of people made like that. But I 'm 
 different ; after all there 's a lot in human nature, 
 isn't there ? Yet I 'd try to do what you say 
 myself, only you see I 'm only one and that 
 would make no difference/ Or again, from 
 older men : ' You may take it from me, speak- 
 ing as a man of the world, you are out after 
 impossibilities. The world will never become 
 as you wish it to become. War, immorality, 
 greed human nature ! You can't change it. 
 When I was quite a young man I used to have 
 
 my ideals. When you get to my age ' 
 
 There are three answers : 
 
 (1) ' Your view of human nature is, though 
 unconsciously so, an insult to mankind. Seeing 
 the evil it ignores any possibility of there being 
 a divine nature in man as well. You ought to 
 know that you are wrong. You have proved it 
 in your own life/ 
 
 (2) ' The world's history is a long chain of 
 fulfilled ideals moral, social, scientific. One 
 century's impossibility has been the next age's 
 achievement. So it will be again/ 
 
ioo PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 (3) ' The only things worth anything that 
 endure in the world were started or urged or 
 attempted by men or women who were aiming 
 at an ideal pronounced to be impossible by those 
 around them. They may not have reached it, 
 but they got further than they ever could have 
 risen if they had taken any lower aim. 
 
 Meanwhile the present war must be fought 
 and won. Nothing that is written in these pages 
 is intended to divert any energies from the 
 immediate objective. Yet some have time to 
 prepare for the ultimate goal, and all have time 
 to think about it. 
 
 1 Hullo, Padre, writing that beastly old book 
 of yours ? Come and . . .' 
 
SIXTH PAPER 
 
 POSTSCRIPT: AN EPITOME OF WAR 
 
 THE boy who was to die at five in the morning 
 lay asleep on the floor. He had been convicted 
 of desertion deliberate and flagrant. Every con- 
 sideration had been given by the court which 
 tried him and by the higher authority which 
 confirmed his sentence to the defence which 
 had been put up ; to his youth he was only 
 nineteen and to any other factor which might 
 weigh in the balance against the execution of the 
 extreme penalty. That absolute fairness which 
 is gloriously characteristic of the Army in dealing 
 with such a case had been exercised towards him, 
 and had decided against him, for t no man liveth 
 to himself.' His example, if followed the 
 failure of an Army always to fight hard and never 
 to look back this would mean in the end more 
 suffering and bloodshed than need be before 
 
 victory were won. So he must suffer, and in a 
 
 101 
 
102 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 sense lose his life for other men, since ' no man ' 
 not even a deserter' dieth to himself.' 
 
 For the last time he has faced his battalion on 
 parade the afternoon before with a moral courage, 
 untouched by bravado, which must for ever 
 free his memory of the charge of cowardice. 
 Then the men of his old regiment, bearing the 
 old regimental badge, are marched straight off 
 to their spell in the trenches ; he alone badgeless 
 and degraded is turned away to his last billet in 
 France. 
 
 And now on the floor of an estaminet back 
 room he sleeps. He has willed away his dirty 
 old purse and his ring, he has dictated his last 
 letter and sent his last message. ' What 's the 
 time now, sir ? ' ' How 's the time going, sir ? ' 
 So every half- hour or less until 3 A.M. when sleep 
 overtakes him. The guard shuffle about wearily 
 next door, and a faint light creeps slowly into the 
 room. 
 
 He has to all intents and purposes already 
 passed over, and we commit him now into the 
 hands of the Faithful Creator and most Merciful 
 Saviour. He will be roused at the last possible 
 moment and, ten minutes later, before he is fully 
 
POSTSCRIPT : AN EPITOME OF WAR 103 
 
 awake to the world, he will have left it for good 
 and all. For others into those minutes may be 
 crowded a lifetime of anxiety and pain ; for him 
 darkness and some confusion imperfectly ap- 
 prehended, and then unexpectedly and instan- 
 taneously the end. 
 
 ' We give Thee hearty thanks that it hath 
 pleased Thee to deliver this our brother out of 
 the miseries of this sinful world.' 
 
 Finally beyond the reach of it thanks indeed. 
 
 In a world of war such things must be. Given 
 war conditions, conditions which every soldier 
 understands, this is human justice. Nor is it 
 (comparatively speaking only) waste. There is 
 no doubt that the possibility of the death penalty, 
 and the example of its actual fulfilment have 
 saved more human lives than those that have 
 been so destroyed. This is fully understood by 
 the man himself ; he has no sense of injustice. 
 He realises sometimes the way in which he can 
 make atonement in a double sense voluntary 
 and involuntary ; voluntary in that the fortitude 
 and manliness he has the chance of displaying in 
 
104 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 his last twelve hours will more than balance the 
 hesitation, the lack of fibre or nerve, the selfish 
 love of his own amusement, convenience, or 
 safety which have helped to place him where 
 he is. 
 
 And in a sense he can, perhaps, be brought to 
 understand that, though he has not chosen his 
 end, he can, by an act of will, accept his fate as 
 the sacrifice of his own life for the lives of other 
 men. He can go out satisfied that what little 
 he has still to give is still worth the giving. Even 
 he is dying for his country. Even at the very end 
 he may live and die for an Ideal. 
 
PART II 
 
 BY 
 
 GEOFFREY GORDON 
 
FOREWORD TO PART II 
 
 IN the papers that follow I am conscious of a dis- 
 tinct debt to the 'Student in Arms,' which I am 
 anxious at once to acknowledge. In the subject of 
 the ' Dilemma,' with which Paper vn. is concerned, 
 I was in correspondence with him as long ago as 
 last April, and his letter to me on this subject has, 
 since his death, been published in the Spectator of 
 December 2nd. Some of the essays which he wrote 
 in the early part of 1916 had impressed me so 
 strongly that, when I was at work on these papers, 
 I deliberately refrained from reading him any 
 further, lest I should become unwillingly guilty of 
 plagiarisation. 
 
 Since despatching my own papers to the printers, 
 I have read and re-read the volume of his collected 
 essays, and I can only say that, recognising my own 
 debt to him, I should be more than proud if these 
 papers should be judged as in any way reflecting 
 the same spirit. G. G. 
 
 January 1917. 
 
SEVENTH PAPER 
 
 THE CHAPLAIN'S DILEMMA 
 
 SOMEWHERE in England : A young curate is 
 passing down a mean street of the town. Two 
 children are playing in the gutter : one is a mere 
 babe, one is old enough to come to Sunday 
 School. As he passes, the curate overhears their 
 conversation. ' D' you know 'oo that is ? ' 
 says the elder to the younger. ' I knows 'im ; 
 that 's Mr. Gawd, that is.' Mr. God a burden- 
 some title, and a heavy responsibility, but at the 
 same time it is a real encouragement to the young 
 curate to know that there are some people to 
 whom he is indeed the representative of God. 
 
 Somewhere in France : The chaplain is walk- 
 ing down the narrow streets of a town which for 
 many months has been one of the bases for the 
 British Army. A crowd of children of all ages 
 leave their play and run to him as he comes. 
 1 M. Cinema, M. Cinema ! ' * Cinema ce soir ? ' 
 
 107 
 
io8 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 4 Laissez-moi venir.' ' Non, M. Cinema, pas lui 
 mais moi, moi c'est ma mere qui fait votre 
 linge.' ' Au revoir, M. Cinema.' * A ce soir, 
 M. Charlie Chaplin/ 
 
 Mr. God or M. Cinema for which does the 
 chaplain stand ? Does the soldier think of his 
 Padre in the main as the representative of God, 
 or chiefly as the provider of canteens, cinemas, 
 and creature comforts ? 
 
 When a battalion is constantly in action and 
 engaged in fierce fighting such as has taken place 
 in the long battle of the Somme, the chaplain is 
 busy enough with the wounded, with funerals, 
 and with letters to the anxious and bereaved at 
 home ; but when once his unit is settled down, 
 whether they are at a base or in some quiet sector 
 of the trenches, he is faced with a very real 
 dilemma. Either he will elect to stand strongly, 
 definitely, and exclusively for spiritual things, in 
 which case he will have to be content to come in 
 contact with only a very few men ; or, in order to 
 get to know the battalion as a whole, he will have 
 to throw himself into a number of minor activi- 
 ties, and run the risk of getting but rarely on to 
 a higher spiritual level. The Roman Catholic 
 
THE CHAPLAIN'S DILEMMA 109 
 
 chaplains have chosen definitely the former al- 
 ternative ; they are frankly sectarian, and have 
 dealt with their own particular flock alone. In 
 peace-time warfare, as we who have been in 
 Picardy describe rest billets or ordinary trenches, 
 they refuse steadily to have anything to do with 
 canteens and the like ; and even during a battle 
 you see the results of their deliberate choice, for 
 they always try to deal with their flock almost 
 exclusively on spiritual levels. The methods of 
 Anglican chaplains, of course, vary widely. 
 There is less uniformity among us than among 
 Roman Catholics here, as at home. But for the 
 most part, we have chosen the other alternative. 
 Many of us have become more or less expert in 
 the business of canteens, we organise concerts 
 and arrange cinema shows. At dressing stations 
 we are busy with water and with blankets or 
 helping with the stretchers, and we seize what 
 opportunities we can of doing our more definitely 
 pastoral work. 
 
 To the casual reader it will seem almost the 
 obvious thing that the chaplain should give 
 what help he can for the men's comfort and 
 pleasure, and especially that he should minister 
 
i io PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 to the needs of wounded men who are primarily 
 conscious of being thirsty and tired. For my 
 own part, I agree with that view, and not only 
 have I run canteens, but at advanced dressing 
 stations I have been content for hours together 
 to busy myself with blankets and hot soup for 
 their needs, happy if just once or twice in a night 
 I could put in a word of more articulate religion ; 
 but in fairness I would say that there is a strong 
 case to be made for the more specialist plan. 
 The argument, as I have heard it put, is much as 
 follows : * Nearly all our men are apt to think 
 much more of their bodily needs than of the 
 requirements of the spirit. This is intensified 
 when a wound has made the bodily needs more 
 than ever insistent. We chaplains are here to 
 remind men constantly of the spiritual side of 
 their nature. Moreover, at such places there are 
 plenty of doctors and orderlies to deal with the 
 wants of the body. The real justification for 
 our presence, as chaplains, is not that we may 
 be extra orderlies, but that we may supply just 
 that other element, the spiritual, which, without 
 our presence, might so easily be forgotten.' 
 It is a real dilemma with which the chaplain 
 
THE CHAPLAIN'S DILEMMA in 
 
 in battle time is faced. Either he must suppress 
 the natural and Christian instincts of his heart, 
 which prompt him to supply, so far as he can, 
 the obvious and pressing need : or, if he busies 
 himself with such things he must run the risk of 
 obscuring his witness, and of doing little else but 
 work which would be done not less effectively 
 by the least trained orderly. The same dilemma, 
 in a less acute form, faces him behind the lines. 
 Either he must take up a narrowly religious 
 attitude ; or, he must be in danger of seeming to 
 be nothing more than a caterer and amusement 
 provider. At bottom, the alternatives before 
 him are not different from those which face a 
 parish priest at home, who is in danger either of 
 becoming so much occupied with organisations, 
 institutes, clubs, etc., that the spiritual in him is 
 altogether swamped, or of wasting many hours 
 of his time over the wholly unimportant devo- 
 tional eccentricities of pietistic ladies. The 
 solution of course is compromise. He has to 
 concern himself with many lesser things, but not 
 only must he not be tied to them too closely, but 
 also, in the doing of them he has to be alert for 
 opportunities of a more important kind. 
 
112 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 In the Army, the problem is further compli- 
 cated by one of the most deep-rooted prejudices 
 of military religion. The soldier almost invari- 
 ably looks at religion as a thing apart, a depart- 
 ment of life, reserved and separate. That is true 
 both of those who ' go in for it ' and of those who 
 1 don't hold with it.' Many a man who believes 
 in God and leads a Christian life will tell you 
 frankly that he 's not one to go in for religion, 
 when all he means is that the sub-section of 
 religion which is concerned with churchgoing 
 does not happen to appeal to him. Some of our 
 most faithful communicants will, in the same 
 way, take a not less narrow and departmental 
 view of religion. Those of us chaplains who feel 
 ourselves pressed by our dilemma are occupying 
 much of our time with things which the soldier 
 would describe as non-religious, but on every 
 opportunity we are preaching constantly and 
 insistently the all-inclusiveness of Christianity. 
 Christianity in terms of ordinary duty. Duty 
 in terms of Christianity. Christ the Lord of all 
 life. Such are the themes of many of our sermons ; 
 but the prejudice that Christianity and the 
 Church are, or should be, something outside and 
 
THE CHAPLAIN'S DILEMMA 113 
 
 beyond ordinary life is so deep-rooted that it 
 is difficult to dislodge. To illustrate the two 
 different views of chaplain's work, I contrasted 
 just now the attitude of the Roman Catholic 
 priest with that of the average Anglican. The 
 larger difference may similarly be brought into 
 clear relief if we compare for a moment the 
 attitude of the Roman Church and of our own 
 Church of England to the war as a whole. 
 There has lately been published a collection of 
 the utterances of the Pope on the present war. 
 They contain, as we should expect, a strong 
 appeal for peace. There are in these speeches 
 remarkable omissions, but there is none more 
 striking that the entire absence of any note of 
 penitence. ' The Pope sits upon his Apostolic 
 throne ' (and here I quote from a recent number 
 of The Challenge) l and looks out over a warring 
 world, and thinks it very sad that it should be 
 a warring world/ Not one word is said to sug- 
 gest that the Church is in any way responsible 
 for the condition in which the world finds itself. 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury has claimed no 
 such detached superiority. He sees that the 
 collapse of a civilisation in the midst of which 
 
 H 
 
H4 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 the Church has been at work for two thousand 
 years is a challenge and a scandal not only to the 
 world, but also to the Church, and he has called 
 the Church as well as the nation to repentance. 
 
 Whatever accusations of self-satisfaction might, 
 in the past, have been brought against the 
 English Church, there is no doubt that to-day 
 she is a Church, humbled and penitent. Such a 
 condition is full of hope for the future, but in the 
 present it makes our work extremely difficult. 
 We Anglican chaplains are hampered at every 
 turn because our message is so apt to shade off 
 into the vague and the indefinite. The heart 
 and kernel of our Gospel remains unchanged : 
 the Love of God and Hope for the World. God 
 has sent us, as he sent His Son ' to preach good 
 tidings unto the meek, to bind up the broken- 
 hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives,' 
 but we are conscious, with penitence and shame, 
 of our failure to actualise our message. We 
 cannot stand detached and cry aloud that if 
 only the world would come to us all would be 
 well. In theory, in ideal, we know that a Church, 
 a common allegiance to One Divine Master, can 
 alone heal the world's divisions, but in practice 
 
THE CHAPLAIN'S DILEMMA 115 
 
 and in fact, we know that we are not ourselves, 
 as a Church, as yet near enough to the Master 
 to accomplish His work. And so we cannot 
 speak to the people with that clear ringing 
 note of authority which all would recognise as 
 coming from the representative of God ; but, 
 on the other hand, we have now a unique 
 opportunity of sharing with men a hundred 
 intimate occupations of daily life, in a far 
 closer and more natural way than was possible 
 in peace time ; and though we cannot yet 
 speak to men with clear authority it may be 
 that in being privileged to live and suffer with 
 them we are learning a truer sympathy which 
 may fit us better in the coming days to supply 
 their deeper needs. 
 
EIGHTH PAPER 
 
 SOME PRISONERS 
 
 1 WHAT are you in for ? ' 
 
 It is a somewhat ambiguous question. The 
 prison chaplain wanted to know the charge, 
 but the prisoner with a keener eye for the 
 things that matter takes a more practical view. 
 ' Twenty-one days, sir. Ten more to go/ 
 
 The chaplain repeats his question in a different 
 form. 
 
 ' What have they sent you here for ? ' 
 
 * Well, sir, you see, it was this way. The 
 sergeant-major . . .' Then follows a long and 
 quite obviously untrue story of victimisation. 
 It is obviously untrue, on the face of it, but 
 in the dreary prison days the victim has had 
 nothing else to think of, and turning it over in 
 his mind, adding here a little and there a little, 
 as he tells the story again and again, for the 
 benefit of the corporal of the guard and each 
 
 116 
 
SOME PRISONERS 117 
 
 successive prisoner in turn, he has come almost 
 to believe it. 
 
 So the chaplain has to re-form his question 
 yet again : 
 
 * What do they say you are in for ? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! they say as I was drunk, but I asks 
 you, sir, could you get drunk on this 'ere French 
 beer ? ' 
 
 The chaplain is unprepared with any answer 
 on this knotty point, and the conversation be- 
 comes general upon the one subject on which all 
 are agreed, the hopless inferiority of French beer 
 to honest English ale. ' It 's cheap enough 
 certainly, but if you 'ad a sovereign's worth you 
 couldn't get drunk on it, not nohow. To tell 
 you the truth, sir, I 've thought about it a lot, 
 and I 've decided that it ain't worth belly-room/ 
 
 Presently the chaplain is able to break off 
 from the general conversation and to get a little 
 quiet talk with individuals in a corner. Many 
 want to talk about themselves and their case, 
 but it is noteworthy that the majority have no 
 sense of grievance, except perhaps against the 
 N.C.O. who gave evidence against them. The 
 prevalent ideas of evidence are strange enough. 
 
u8 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 Some men who practically admit their guilt will 
 yet wax righteously indignant over a trifling 
 discrepancy between the evidence of two wit- 
 nesses for the prosecution. As to their punish- 
 ment, it is the ' tying up ' which goes with field 
 punishment that is most resented. Once, after 
 a service at which we had sung one of the Passion 
 hymns, I overheard one prisoner remark bitterly 
 to another : ' And now they 're going to crucify 
 us/ But for the most part, there is little or no 
 sense of injustice, which is in marked contrast 
 to the attitude of civil prisoners, and a striking 
 tribute to the rough fairness of military law. 
 The men know quite well that they have over- 
 stepped the mark and now they have got to pay 
 for it. ' And that f s all about it.' 
 
 Some of the men are obviously old offenders, 
 and it is improbable that the chaplain will find 
 in their stories any vestige of truth. Others are 
 clean-limbed, open-faced lads whom it is a tragedy 
 to meet within the barred doors of a prison. 
 One is a mere child. His offence : sleeping on 
 sentry. It was his second offence, and so the 
 court martial and the heavy sentence had been 
 of course inevitable, but he looked as though he 
 
SOME PRISONERS 119 
 
 ought to have been in bed, tucked up by his 
 mother instead of standing sentry in the Flanders 
 mud. Others are wild, over- vital lads under 
 sentence for some disciplinary offence. Most 
 of these, however, will go back to duty under 
 the ' deferred sentence ' scheme, that admirable 
 arrangement which not only avoids the removal 
 of the men from their units, but gives them the 
 opportunity to recover their self-respect. 
 
 There was one especially, a lively Cockney, 
 whose sheet was marked with a whole string of 
 boyish offences, the last of which had landed him 
 in prison. He was bored rather at being 
 where he was, but not, I think, in the least 
 ashamed. I met him again some months later. 
 His battalion was moving to a new area, march- 
 ing by one of the long unvarying main roads of 
 France. 
 
 They were a strange untidy crowd, very 
 different from the same battalion at a parade 
 march at home. Most of the men carried some 
 sort of parcel or sandbags full of odds and ends 
 in addition to their official equipment. They 
 were followed by five or six dogs, for when a 
 battalion is on the march the village dogs nearly 
 
120 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 always attach themselves and remain some- 
 times for many weeks. The men are for the 
 most part convinced that all French people 
 neglect or maltreat their household dogs, and so 
 gladly share their own rations with such animals 
 as care to attach themselves to them. The 
 transport followed close behind, and in the place 
 of honour, on the leading wagon, sits the pride 
 of the regiment. To all appearances he is a very 
 ordinary magpie, differing from others only in 
 that his feathers are more untidy and disreput- 
 able than those of less privileged birds ; indeed 
 his bedraggled looks have always reminded me 
 of the jackdaw of Rheims after the great 
 cardinal's curse had fallen upon him. But he is 
 no ordinary bird, this magpie. Twice already 
 he has been * over the top/ Twice sitting on his 
 master's shoulder he has gone with raiding parties 
 into the German trenches, and returned safe. 
 He is an honoured veteran now, and so he rides 
 behind the regiment, careless of his appearance, 
 swelling with conscious pride. The rain fell in 
 torrents. Three of the four companies were 
 trudging along, weary, depressed, and silent, 
 without even the energy to swear. The last 
 
SOME PRISONERS 121 
 
 company offered a marked contrast to the 
 others. They marched full of spirits and with 
 light and springing step, jesting and singing as 
 they went. My friend of the prison was there in 
 the leading four, and whenever the rain became 
 more heavy and unbearable, or the silence of 
 depression began to fall, he broke in with some 
 music-hall catch or some apt jest. 
 
 His walk showed no signs of weariness, and 
 though, like all the others he was heavily laden 
 with pack and full kit, he was giving a lift for 
 many miles to one of the newly attached dogs 
 who showed some signs of lameness. At last 
 the battalion arrived at its muddy destination 
 and we could not but notice that his company 
 was the only one that was not utterly exhausted. 
 
 Next morning, I happened to be in the doctor's 
 improvised dressing station, a disused cow-byre, 
 when my friend came to report himself. He was 
 limping rather badly, but still wore the same 
 inextinguishable smile. 
 
 ' Sorry sir, but I 'm afraid I 've damaged my 
 foot.' 
 
 The doctor, well used to ' scrimshanking,' 
 was not sympathetic, but as soon as he had seen 
 
122 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 the injury he realised that it was a genuine case. 
 ' That 's bad. When did you do it ? ' 
 
 ' Well, sir, I 'd a nail in my boot two days ago, 
 and the march yesterday finished it.' 
 
 The doctor expressed himself forcibly to the 
 effect that the man was a fool not to have come 
 to him before. 
 
 ' Well, you see, sir, it was this way. I couldn't 
 leave the boys just when we were going to be on 
 the move, could I, sir ? ' 
 
 Of such mixed stuff is human nature. 
 
NINTH PAPER 
 
 ACTIVE SERVICE 
 
 IN the rooms of a certain studious undergraduate 
 of Cambridge a Missionary meeting was in pro- 
 gress. The visiting speaker was a little dis- 
 appointed. Though the meeting had been well 
 advertised, there were barely a dozen men to 
 hear him. Comforting himself with the reflec- 
 tion that his hearers, however few, were earnest 
 and religious men, he began to give them of his 
 best. He spoke eloquently and well of the perils 
 and anxieties of his far-away mission field, and 
 his voice grew vibrant with enthusiasm, as he 
 told of the childlike natives to whom, in love, 
 he had given his life. Quite suddenly his elo- 
 quence was cut short by the most infernal clatter 
 on the stairs outside. The indignant student to 
 whom the rooms belonged opened the door to 
 find out the cause. A number of young under- 
 graduates, headed by a notorious ragger, had 
 
 128 
 
124 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 collected most of the College baths and with 
 infinite noise were tobogganing down the stairs 
 with the sole purpose and intent of interrupting 
 the pious and admirable meeting which was 
 being conducted in the student's room. There 
 could of course be no excuse for such conduct ; 
 apart from anything else it was disgraceful 
 manners towards a visiting stranger. But what 
 of the sequel ? Some years later I met the 
 missionary again, and heard from him that his 
 former interrupter had become his most trusted 
 lieutenant. The missionary was a man of dis- 
 cernment and common sense. He had taken the 
 opportunity of the somewhat informal introduc- 
 tion, bided his time, and then found an occasion 
 to put the claims of his work in such a way as 
 appealed to the adventurous mind of his would-be 
 opponent. ' But what of the student and the 
 eleven other faithful and earnest men who came 
 to your interrupted meeting ? ' I asked. The 
 missionary's face clouded. ' I have seen little 
 or nothing of any of these fellows since/ he an- 
 swered, and obviously he was unwilling to 
 follow up the subject. 
 
 That is a story and a memory which has come 
 
ACTIVE SERVICE 125 
 
 often to my mind out here in France. We 
 chaplains are faced with two chief obstacles to 
 our work both among officers and men. First 
 (and to avoid any risk of being regarded as a 
 facile optimist, I would state it without qualifi- 
 cation), there is, among very many, a definite 
 preference for certain acts and habits known to 
 be wrong, and a consequent refusal to submit to 
 the exacting claims of Christ. That is the age- 
 long struggle between Light and Darkness. It is 
 not tragedy but spiritual war, and it was to be 
 leaders and helpers in this warfare that we were 
 ordained. It is in the second obstacle to our 
 work rather than in the first that the elements of 
 real tragedy are found, the conflict not of right 
 with wrong, but of right with right. 
 
 Christianity, as the soldier all too often con- 
 ceives it, is a negative thing. He has but rarely 
 any idea of a positive religion. To him to be 
 religious means not swearing, not drinking, and 
 probably not smoking, and almost the only posi- 
 tive action which he regards it as involving, is 
 attendance at Church. The result is, that re- 
 ligion so conceived does not appeal to the most 
 vigorous type of men. There are, of course, to 
 
126 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 be found in the Army splendid Christians, men 
 with a really active religion, and these are the 
 very pick, but, broadly speaking, most officers 
 and N.C.O.'s would agree that the ordinary 
 churchgoing religious Christians are not among 
 their best. If that is true (and my own ex- 
 perience, for what it is worth, reluctantly compels 
 me to endorse it), it is of course a fact of the 
 utmost seriousness, for men are attracted to 
 religion for the most part, not by doctrine, nor 
 by preaching, but by example. If they see that 
 the professing Christians among their comrades 
 are not more but less effective as men, that they 
 are not conspicuously more kindly and helpful 
 and not at all more humble than others, they will 
 not be attracted to the religion which such men 
 profess, and so it comes about that men often 
 reject Christianity (or what they conceive to be 
 Christianity), not by reason of what is worst in 
 them, but by reason of what is best. 
 
 The outstanding need, therefore, is to find 
 some method of presenting the claims of Chris- 
 tianity in a way which will appeal to the more 
 alive and vigorous men. At the University, so 
 long as religion was thought to mean merely the 
 
ACTIVE SERVICE 127 
 
 avoidance of certain pleasant things, and the 
 attendance at stuffy meetings, its influence was 
 almost nil, but whenever a man of strong per- 
 sonality was able to break down these deeply 
 engrained prejudices and put it before men in a 
 positive, claimful way as an appeal to join in a 
 great adventure, it attracted an entirely different 
 type of mind, and things began to happen. 
 
 In the Army, the assumption that religion is a 
 negative thing is a prejudice incredibly strong. 
 There will be no chance of undermining it, unless 
 in Christian teaching there is a large shifting 
 of emphasis from the negative to the positive. 
 Such a change will involve first and foremost a 
 greatly increased charity in judgment, for it can 
 not be denied that the Christian has come to be 
 thought of, as one who is likely to disapprove. 
 The chaplain has constantly to repudiate the 
 charge of being shocked, an accusation at which 
 in nine cases out of ten he ought to be indignant. 
 For surely it is better to be shocked at being 
 thought shocked than to be shocked at almost 
 anything else. The wonderful record of the 
 Y.M.C.A. during this war, and its well-earned fame 
 afford a useful illustration of the needed change 
 
128 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 of emphasis. Before the war, whether fairly or 
 not, men were apt to associate it with milk and 
 water. The Christian young man was one who 
 gave no trouble to his mother, one in whom his 
 aunts rejoiced. The Y.M.C.A. itself had found 
 its place in comic literature and in popular songs 
 as a symbol of harmlessness, a place where it 
 was ' safe ' to be. In most men's minds Y.M.C.A. 
 stood for something purely negative and rather 
 soft. Since the war, the Association has shown 
 its youth, its manhood, and its Christianity by 
 rising to a great opportunity, and there are 
 literally millions of young soldiers who will be 
 eternally grateful to it, not negatively for what 
 it is not, but positively for what it is and for what 
 it has done for them. 
 
 So, on more important levels, if we are to appeal 
 to what is strongest and best, it is essential that 
 we should constantly put before men the positive 
 claims and the active ideals of our religion, and 
 we have, perhaps more than anything else, to 
 disabuse their minds of the impression that we 
 are always disapproving. 
 
 Nothing is more likely to help us in this direc- 
 tion than trying to attain a better understanding 
 
ACTIVE SERVICE 129 
 
 of the religion of our Russian allies. There is no 
 command which the Russian seems more con- 
 spicuously to obey than the precept of the 
 Sermon on the Mount which bids us not to 
 judge. Compare, for illustration, the literature 
 of the two countries. Our English books are 
 full of judgments. Starting at the bottom of 
 the scale with publications, which perhaps have 
 no right to be described as literature at all, the 
 Sunday School story-book or the child's prize. 
 They tell of wicked George and virtuous Tommy. 
 You may, and probably do, disagree profoundly 
 with the author's judgments. Virtuous Tommy 
 may seem to you even more intolerable than 
 wicked George, but you are left in no doubt as to 
 the author's opinion ; she is judging all the time. 
 Even in real literature, the element of judgment 
 is conspicuous. There is usually no difficulty in 
 seeing who is the hero whom the author judges 
 worthy of admiration, who the villain whom he 
 judges and condemns. The canons of Russian 
 literary art seem quite different. There is little 
 or no judgment. Instead there is infinite com- 
 passion and a wide-hearted desire to understand. 
 The reader is confronted with large slices of 
 
 i 
 
130 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 life, selected apparently quite uncritically. The 
 author offers no judgment himself, nor is the 
 reader asked to judge, only to try to understand. 
 Such an attitude to life is the very antithesis of 
 the disapproving habit, which is so engrained in 
 English religion, and it seems much nearer the 
 mind of the Master. There are signs of it in 
 some of the modern school of English writers, 
 whether influenced by Russian literature or not 
 I do not know, but I doubt if any one uninfluenced 
 by the thoughts of Russia could have ended a 
 book as Mr. Patrick M'Gill ended his Children 
 of the Dead End with Gourock Ellen's prayer. 
 
 It is just this power of uncensorious sympathy 
 which is so delightfully characteristic of the 
 British soldier, but which is unfortunately so 
 lacking in much of our Christianity. In trying 
 to avoid censoriousness, the chaplain is faced 
 with another danger. The uncritical temper is 
 profoundly Christian, but there are in the world, 
 and conspicuously in the Army, two travesties 
 of it, two counterfeits which sometimes take its 
 place, and these, the chaplain, if he is to retain 
 respect as well as popularity, needs most carefully 
 to avoid. 
 
ACTIVE SERVICE 131 
 
 There is the uncritical habit of mind which 
 comes from not thinking, which takes things as 
 they come. Thoughtless people do often obey 
 the letter of the command ' Judge not,' but most 
 certainly this idle drifting is very far from its 
 spirit. Out here we are all in danger of becoming 
 somewhat thoughtless, for the pressure of new 
 experiences constantly piling themselves upon us 
 is apt to make for a mere acceptance of them 
 without any attempt to appraise their value. 
 
 There is also a falsely uncritical habit of mind 
 which is the result of not caring. Many people 
 are tolerant merely because they do not care. 
 To them good and evil are indifferent. That, 
 even more surely, is not according to the mind 
 of Christ, that is not following the example of 
 the Master who blazed out against sin and wicked- 
 ness, of the Lamb whose wrath was terrible. It 
 incurs the condemnation meted out by the 
 Psalmist to the man who did not abhor that 
 which is evil. 
 
 Christ would not judge because He loved too 
 much, Gallio would not judge because he cared 
 too little. The open-hearted tolerance of the 
 young soldier, and the friendliness of the parson 
 
132 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 who is a good sort, are often nearer to the 
 indifference of Gallio than to the generosity of 
 Christ. 
 
 In spite, however, of the danger of slipping 
 into one or other of these counterfeits of the 
 uncritical temper, true obedience to the spirit of 
 the command ' Judge not ' remains one of our 
 greatest needs. Self-satisfaction and contempt 
 of others nearly always go hand in hand, and it 
 cannot be denied that in the past these two traits 
 have been conspicuous in the English national 
 character, and have accounted for our European 
 unpopularity. The South African War made an 
 enormous difference in this respect. The nine- 
 teenth-century Englishman believed, more or 
 less vociferously, that he was worth five wretched 
 foreigners. The three years' struggle against 
 two small republics shook our complacency, and 
 with the weakening of our self-satisfaction has 
 come also a less critical, more respectful attitude 
 of mind towards men of other nations. 
 
 The present war is making even more difference 
 in this direction. Living in a foreign country is 
 widening men's sympathies. There is no direc- 
 tion in which change has more forced itself upon 
 
ACTIVE SERVICE 133 
 
 my notice than in the men's attitude towards 
 our French allies. In the early months of the 
 war I heard constantly from wounded soldiers 
 at home the most foolish depreciation of the 
 efforts and fighting efficiency of the French. 
 Even the reminder that they were then holding 
 nearly nine- tenths of the line, without any assist- 
 ance from us, was unavailing to shake the en- 
 grained prejudice as to their inferiority. 
 
 To-day, with the memory of Verdun and the 
 spectacle of the present French successes on the 
 Somme fresh in our minds, such depreciation is 
 no longer possible. But it is not only the valour 
 and efficiency of our Allies that has undermined 
 British self-complacency and criticalness. Men 
 out here have learned in a marked degree respect 
 for the enemy. We are not less determined to 
 beat him than are comfortable and contemptuous 
 editors at home, or those who collect subscrip- 
 tions for the various anti-German, hate-preserv- 
 ing societies in England, but we can not withhold 
 a tribute of respect from men who have with- 
 stood such terrific bombardments as we have 
 witnessed in Flanders and in Picardy. 
 
 We have learnt too, from what we have seen, 
 
134 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 something of the ugliness of national com- 
 placency. There is, I suppose, no doubt that 
 the Germans are the most self-satisfied people 
 on the earth. They are satisfied the typical 
 Prussian is complacent with his Kultur, his 
 industry, and all that is his. Side by side with 
 this self-satisfaction goes a complete contempt 
 for the ideals of all other nations. It is of these 
 two parents self-satisfaction and critical con- 
 tempt of others that has been born the dread 
 child of war, a war to impose the German ideal 
 on the despised races of the earth. 
 
 National self-complacency and over-criticalness 
 of others are perhaps breaking down. Unfor- 
 tunately, whereas Christians should be leading 
 the way, this markedly English characteristic 
 has reappeared in English religion. The em- 
 phasis in our teaching on the purely negative 
 precepts of the Ten Commandments is of course 
 a legacy from Puritanism. Puritanism is, in 
 these days, out of fashion, but it has left an 
 extraordinarily deep mark upon our national 
 religion. The result of such emphasis upon 
 ' Thou shalt not * has been an inevitable tendency 
 to produce a negative type of character. It 
 
ACTIVE SERVICE 135 
 
 appeals to those whose minds find it easier pas- 
 sively to abstain from evil, and to disapprove 
 of evil-doers, than to be energetic in the pursuit 
 of good. 
 
 Out here, it is in active service that men have 
 found themselves ; and it is religion, thought of 
 not as a road to safety, but as active service 
 towards God and man, that is most likely to 
 appeal to them in the coming days. 
 
TENTH PAPER 
 
 HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE 
 
 WAR, with all its myriad evils, is admitted to 
 have one attendant compensation, in the char- 
 acter results which it sometimes produces. In 
 those who are taking part in it, it has evoked 
 splendid qualities of endurance and heroism. 
 But it is not only the characters of those who 
 play an active part that are enlarged and 
 strengthened. In those who, by reason of age 
 or sex or occupation are compelled to be more 
 or less passive spectators, it has stirred to a 
 flame the quality of admiration that quality, 
 which, when rightly directed, is perhaps the 
 most rejuvenating and ennobling of spiritual 
 forces. 
 
 The purpose of this paper is most certainly not 
 to diminish the volume of admiration and honour 
 which you at home so generously accord to the 
 men at the front. It is, rather, a study in 
 
 186 
 
HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE 137 
 
 prejudices, an attempt to suggest certain direc- 
 tions in which there is a lack of proportion and 
 a certain capriciousness in the lavish bestowal of 
 your admiration ; and it seeks to establish the 
 claim of one class of men in particular to the 
 principal place in your honour and regard. 
 
 You in England pay no honour at all to Ger- 
 many and the German soldiers. We in Picardy 
 have, I think, a truer view. We know, as well 
 as you, that vile and cruel things have been, and 
 still are done by the German Army, but we 
 cannot withhold some measure of respect from its 
 soldiers. We have seen bombardments such as 
 you at home cannot possibly conceive. We have 
 seen trenches battered out of all recognition. 
 We have seen places where there are no longer 
 fields marked with many shell holes, but holes 
 with bare scraps of field between them. Some- 
 times indeed the bombardment has been so intense 
 that the shell holes are no longer separable one 
 from the other, but the whole area is one churned 
 mass of destruction. And yet, after it all, in 
 spite of it all, these iron men are still there with 
 their machine guns and their unconquerable 
 courage. Honour where honour is due. 
 
138 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 We know, as well as you, that many, perhaps 
 most, Germans are blinded by hate and pre- 
 judice and pride. But we have seen the heroic 
 work done by some captured stretcher bearers 
 and medical orderlies. We have seen them, 
 working all day long, under heavy fire, helping 
 to rescue our wounded. Such work is done of 
 course under compulsion, but when we see the 
 devoted and energetic way in which it is carried 
 out, we cannot but feel that to the men who do it 
 some measure of respect and honour is due. 
 
 You at home pay an unstinted tribute of 
 admiration to Anzacs, Canadians, and South 
 Africans. And surely you are right. Nothing 
 can excel their valour nor detract from the 
 splendour of the loyalty which has brought them 
 to the service of the Commonwealth, their Com- 
 monwealth as well as ours. Irish Brigades and 
 kilted regiments appeal to your imagination. 
 The Guards recall memories of the ancient pride 
 of Britain, while the new Armies stir in you a 
 new pride and a new thankfulness. Most truly 
 are all these worthy of your admiration. But 
 do you sometimes forget the honest stolid English 
 
HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE 139 
 
 county regiments, the regiments of the Line, who 
 bear perhaps most of the burden ? Honour 
 where honour is due. 
 
 At home, you wax noisily enthusiastic over 
 airmen who save you and your homes from 
 Zeppelins. You lavish upon them honours and 
 huge money rewards. You are right, for the 
 deeds of these men are great and gallant deeds, 
 but are you sure that it is their gallantry, and 
 not your selfishness and fears, that accounts for 
 the greatness of your gifts ? Do you remember 
 with equal generosity and gratitude the men 
 who, not just once or twice, on the exceptional 
 occasion of a raid, but, day after day, over the 
 enemy's lines, take far greater risks, and accom- 
 plish not less important tasks ? Do you realise 
 the magnificent work that airmen in Picardy 
 are daily doing ? Flying over hostile guns, 
 carrying news, directing the artillery, descending 
 right down to use their own machine guns, coming 
 so low, that, as a letter found on a dead German 
 put it, l you would almost think that they were 
 going to pull you out of the trenches ' ? Do you 
 pay to these men as much honour as to those 
 
140 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 who, with less risk, but a little more conspicuously, 
 have saved your own skins ? 
 
 You honour heroic doctors, stretcher bearers, 
 and all the varied representatives of the Royal 
 Army Medical Corps. You are very right to do 
 so. Theirs is the glorious work of trying to 
 lighten a little the calamity which human wicked- 
 ness has brought upon the world. Like every one 
 else in the Army they have their long periods of 
 idleness and inaction. More often than most, 
 their work is in safe places, far behind the lines 
 at clearing stations or base hospitals. Some- 
 times, however, they are called upon to cope with 
 a huge inrush of work, operating or dressing 
 wounds for long hours at a stretch, sometimes 
 they have to face danger to the full, and nobly 
 have they risen to the call. To take one instance 
 alone, it would be difficult to exaggerate the strain 
 which is sometimes placed on squads of stretcher 
 bearers, already, perhaps, tired out by many 
 journeys. Very tenderly they lift the heavy 
 burden to their shoulders. Slowly and carefully 
 they march. The physical strain of the long 
 ' carry/ often through deep and clinging mud is 
 
HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE 141 
 
 heavy enough, but a fuller measure of honour is 
 due when you remember that very often they 
 have to pursue their slow, even course along a 
 shell-swept road. The unburdened messenger 
 can run past dangerous corners, or take hurried 
 shelter in a convenient shell hole. The carrying 
 party must go on, though shells burst very near. 
 Often and often a whole party has been simply 
 blown to pieces, and nothing left of stretcher 
 or of bearers or of borne. All honour to the 
 men of the R.A.M.C. and to battalion stretcher 
 bearers. 
 
 Honour the gunners. Their work is very 
 heavy. Hour after hour, day after day, week 
 after week, they strain at the great shells and 
 labour at the great guns. It is they who with 
 unresting but untiring diligence are preparing 
 victory in the only possible way. A dreadful 
 and unlovely way it is, but experience, dearly 
 bought, has shown that there is no other way than 
 this blighting and blasting of the road along 
 which our infantry are to advance. 
 
 Honour the men behind the gunners. At one 
 
142 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 time, we out here never spoke of the munition 
 workers except in slighting terms, and many of 
 us still feel that it is wrong that those who work in 
 safety should receive wages so disproportionately 
 greater than those of the infantryman in the 
 daily danger of the line. But in these grim 
 days in Picardy we have learnt to place so much 
 reliance upon the overwhelming supplies which 
 their industry is producing that our feeling 
 towards them is daily changing. 
 
 You honour the men of the various special 
 branches of the Army. The galloping ammuni- 
 tion wagon, the recklessly driven transport car, 
 the undefeated despatch-carrying motor-cycle, 
 all these figure largely in the illustrated papers. 
 You do well to honour the men who drive them, 
 for though they have the tremendous moral help 
 which comes from movement and action, and 
 though their stay in the shell area is of limited 
 duration, they are brave and gallant men whose 
 work is vital to our success. Honour the brave. 
 
 You in England, or some of you, have even 
 gone so far as to forgo your traditional right to 
 
HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE 143 
 
 crab the clergy. You pay us some honour for 
 the work which we are doing as chaplains, for 
 the ordinary dangers which all of us are running, 
 for the special risks ' outside the scope of their 
 ordinary work and duty ' which some few 
 adventurous spirits have incurred. And I think 
 you are right, for though our risks are infinitely 
 less than those of the infantry, we have this one 
 added burden from which they are free. The 
 soldier is sent, under clear orders, to a trench, 
 and he must hold it till he is relieved. He has 
 no doubt as to what it is his duty to do. In 
 times of emergency the chaplain can refer to 
 no superior and he has no orders. Each moment 
 he must choose for himself between conflicting 
 claims, resisting alike the temptation to do con- 
 spicuous things simply because they are con- 
 spicuous, and the other temptation to stay too 
 far behind when his friends and companions are 
 in the place of danger. 
 
 You honour the wounded. You strew their 
 returning carriages with roses and with green. 
 Your newspapers agitate to mark them with 
 strips of gold. You are lavish in your hospitality. 
 
144 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 ' The men in blue/ so conspicuous in your streets, 
 you have made your special charge. You do 
 well to pay them every honour. Many of those 
 who laugh and jest at your concerts will never 
 know a day's real health again. Many who are 
 so gay and bright in your daytime visits to the 
 wards pass the long nights in wakefulness and 
 pain. Honour the wounded. You, who see 
 them only in the trim wards of a home hospital, 
 can have no real conception of all that they went 
 through between the coming of the bullet and the 
 blessed, longed-for rest of the comfortable wards 
 in which you see them. 
 
 There are many stages of suffering through 
 which they must pass. An advance is made. 
 Slowly and quietly, like soldiers on parade, the 
 men are crossing the No-Man's-Land, unhurrying, 
 though they pass through a fierce enemy fire, 
 always with the haunting fear that if they press 
 on too far they will come into our own, as yet, 
 unlifted barrage. Several shells fall harmless, 
 and then one lands right in the middle of an ad- 
 vancing platoon. Some of the men do not move 
 again ; others, wounded perhaps in arm or leg, 
 walk or crawl back into our own lines, though 
 
HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE 145 
 
 many a man thus slightly wounded has been hit 
 again and killed before ever he reached a dressing 
 station to have his lesser hurt attended to. 
 Some have but the strength to crawl or roll to 
 such protection as is afforded by the nearest 
 shell hole, and lie there for hours, perhaps for 
 days, before help comes. And then, when the 
 wound has become stiff and sore, there is the long 
 tedious ' carry ' down a winding trench to the 
 regimental aid post, and on again, after the 
 shortest of delays, to a horse ambulance which 
 takes them over the last piece of roadless track 
 to the nearest advanced dressing station. There 
 they are dressed again and transferred to motor 
 ambulances which bump and jolt them along 
 makeshift roads to a casualty clearing station 
 their first place of real rest. Thence after a 
 short stay, by rail and steamer and rail again 
 to the longed-for hospital at home. Honour the 
 wounded. 
 
 Honour the dead. You must honour those 
 who have given all they had to give. We who 
 have lived with them up to the last, we who have 
 gone in and out with them in the fullness of their 
 
 K 
 
I 4 6 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 vitality and strength, and then have knelt in 
 mute prayer beside their broken bodies, we are 
 too near to sorrow. The bereaved at home, 
 whose hopes are shattered, but whose pride 
 remains ; theirs is the overwhelming sadness. 
 It is you who must teach us the value and the 
 worth-whileness of their gift. It is you who by 
 the honour that you pay them must help us 
 so to live, for them, that the England of the 
 future may be worthy of the sacrifice which they 
 have made. 
 
 I have spoken of various classes and sub- 
 divisions of men. All of these are deserving of 
 honour, all of these and many more besides : 
 the waiting cavalry, the crews of the mirth- 
 provoking tanks, the watchful staff, and all the 
 various branches of army administration which 
 are designated by indecipherable initials ; for 
 all are working and suffering in the same cause. 
 From none of these would I withdraw one frag- 
 ment of the praise which they receive, but there 
 is one class for which I wish to claim supreme 
 honour, one class to which I do not feel that 
 sufficient attention is paid, one class to which 
 
HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE 147 
 
 praise and gratitude most pre-eminently is due. 
 The un wounded infantryman. There are some 
 few still who have been out since the very be- 
 ginning. ' Mons 'eroes ' we call them, but to-day 
 they are very few in number. There are more 
 who have endured the hardships of two winters, 
 and very many who have ' stuck it ' for a year 
 or more. It is to such as these that most of all 
 our gratitude is due, for it is they who bear the 
 long burden of the war unbroken save by short, 
 uncertain, and precarious leaves. A wound is a 
 serious thing, but so great is the strain that the 
 desire for a ' Blighty one ' is a most commonly 
 expressed wish. Nine-tenths of such talk, no 
 doubt, is talk and nothing more, but there are 
 times when, in nearly all of us, the sight of a 
 homeward-bound hospital train stirs feelings, 
 not of pity, but of real jealousy. 
 
 Let me try, by selecting one or two incidents, 
 to bring before you something of what the daily 
 life of the infantryman means, that you may 
 understand why it is to him, as he ' sticks it ' 
 here, that your special honour and your special 
 gratitude is due. I will not write of winter 
 in the trenches, for it has been so often described 
 
148 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 before, only be sure, as you read this book before 
 your study fire, that mere imagination cannot 
 conceive the depths of either its misery or its 
 mud ; and if you were to come out here now 
 you would cry with the Queen of Sheba that the 
 ' half had not been told you ' ; perhaps also 
 like the same royal lady ' there would be no 
 more spirit left in you.' Even in the trenches, 
 though the change seems slower in coming, winter 
 gives place to spring. The welcome sun brings 
 alleviation from some of the worst miseries, of 
 cold and slush, but it brings no relief from the 
 unending dreariness of the daily round of trench 
 monotony. 
 
 After many months of the unchanging trench 
 life came the long-expected summons to the 
 Somme. There were long, hot, dusty marches, 
 and then one evening, just as the sun was setting 
 we came up over the crest of the hill and had our 
 first view of the famous tower of Albert. It was 
 a memorable moment, for the tower was already 
 familiar to us from pictures and photographs in 
 the illustrated papers sent to us from home. It 
 symbolised for us the Great Offensive in which 
 we were at last to take our share. Presently 
 
HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE 149 
 
 we passed right under the church, and the 
 wonderful statue, undamaged in itself, but 
 bending over at more than a right angle from 
 its original position, seemed to be extending its 
 arms as though in benediction over the stricken 
 country. That night it was difficult to sleep. 
 We, who for months had seen only the troops 
 holding the trenches on our immediate left and 
 right, and not much of them, were now in the 
 most crowded area of all, where a bare field was 
 considered ample billeting accommodation for a 
 whole brigade. We had grown accustomed to 
 noise, but not yet to the unceasing roar of such 
 an accumulation of guns as the world had never 
 even contemplated before. And so we lay wake- 
 ful under the cold light of a perfect moon, and as 
 we looked backwards towards Albert, and forward 
 to woods already named in history, there came, 
 I think to all of us, a sense of greatness as we 
 realised that we were at last on that spot where 
 the fate of the world was being decided. To 
 some of us too there came another thought, that 
 this was just the corner of God's earth upon which 
 the prayers and intercessions of millions of faith- 
 ful Christians were being concentrated, that this 
 
150 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 was the picture which many a wakeful woman at 
 home was trying to bring before her anxious eyes. 
 Then there followed a fortnight, a summer 
 fortnight on the Somme, when the troops were 
 tried to the very limit of human endurance. It 
 was not a time of great attacks or of conspicuous 
 advances, but the men had the harder task of 
 holding on under a ceaseless hurricane of shells. 
 When there is no advance to be made and nothing 
 active to be done there is nothing more nerve- 
 racking than the long waiting when you can 
 only sit and wonder whether the next shell will 
 come just that much nearer and end it all. The 
 ration-carrying parties worked bravely and well, 
 but the enemy barrage was so terrific that the 
 arrival of food was inevitably uncertain and 
 irregular. The water too, carried in petrol tins, 
 was nauseous and disgusting. And so the long 
 days and longer nights wore on, till at last the 
 relief came and we were taken out to rest and 
 refit. A short march took us to the train which 
 was to bring us to our rest area. It was no 
 railway journey such as you at home enjoy and 
 grumble at, but incredibly slow and unbelievably 
 uncomfortable, stopping every few yards and 
 
HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE 151 
 
 jerking on again, taking many hours to cover a 
 few miles. All of us were on the bare floor of 
 cattle trucks ; the officers were not so crowded 
 as the men, but even they, middle-aged colonels 
 included, lay close together on the wooden floor. 
 The men travel forty-five in a truck, and their 
 full packs make them yet more crowded. They 
 are restless too, for almost every one is suffering 
 from the soldier's most indestructible enemy. 
 Unpleasant to think of ! Yes, but these are 
 not polite paragraphs from Piccadilly but papers 
 from Picardy, earth's facsimile of hell, and you 
 must expect the minor unpleasantness as well 
 as the great sadness. 
 
 Then there followed a few weeks of rest and 
 quiet while new drafts were trained and the old 
 refreshed. It was a time spent in the pleasant 
 companionship which supplies whatever there is 
 of joy and happiness in the grim life of war. For 
 many of us, perhaps for most, these weeks were 
 the happiest which we spent in France, indeed 
 their happiness was the material out of which the 
 sorrow of the coming days was formed, * As the 
 memory of a dream which now is sad because 
 it has been sweet.' 
 
152 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 The good time could not last for ever, and soon, 
 all too soon, the order * Back to the Somme ' was 
 received. The newspapers would have you be- 
 lieve that such an order comes like a message 
 of freedom to hounds straining at the leash, but 
 it is not so. The infantryman goes, when the 
 order comes, without hesitation, because he 
 knows that it is his duty, because he knows that 
 he must, but the joy of battle and the eagerness 
 to be in the middle of it all again is but rarely 
 found outside the mind of a newspaper corre- 
 spondent. Another weary train journey and 
 another march brought us back nearly to the 
 same place as that in which we had fought before, 
 but there were two great differences. A glorious 
 summer had given way to a too early autumn ; 
 during our first ' time up f we had known nothing 
 but sun and heat, now we were to experience the 
 rain and the wind and the pitiless mud. Also, 
 whatever of spice the novelty of our first period 
 had supplied, was gone now. We knew what 
 lay before us, and we knew that it was hell. 
 
 This time, our period in Picardy lasted five 
 weeks, sometimes in the front line, sometimes in 
 support, sometimes in reserve, but never entirely 
 
HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE 153 
 
 out of range of the enemy's guns, never free from 
 the roar of our own. During this time, though 
 we took part in one great and successful battle, 
 and though we were almost constantly in contact 
 with the Germans, our losses were not, until the 
 very end, particularly heavy, though, all the time, 
 there was a steady drain of sick and wounded 
 and killed. Then, just a week before the end, 
 we were taken right back, almost out of range, 
 for a few days' rest, and we began to hope that 
 our work in Picardy was finished, but once again 
 the order came to move up into the line. If 
 there are among my readers those who still 
 believe the rose-coloured stories of the war, I 
 would ask them to read carefully the description 
 of that day's advance. The battalion formed 
 up in the dark at four in the morning (summer 
 time). The rain came down with a violence 
 that I never remember before or since, and very 
 soon every man was soaked to the skin. We 
 had not very far to go for our first halt, when we 
 reached a camp of tents in time for a late break- 
 fast. Here, under such shelter as we could find, 
 we stayed most of the day, and in the afternoon 
 moved off again for a long tedious march along 
 
154 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 crowded muddy roads down which the water 
 streamed as in the bed of a shallow river. So 
 far we had been on roads all the time and the 
 ' cookers ' had followed us, so at the next halt 
 the men were able to have hot tea and a meal. 
 Then, a little before eight in the evening, we left 
 the road and began to move forward up into the 
 line. We had been wet through since four in the 
 morning. You too have been wet through out 
 shooting, or on country walks, and, though you 
 have grumbled, you have really rather enjoyed 
 it. You have kept before your eyes the pros- 
 pects of the hot bath, the dry clothes, the study 
 fire, and an egg with your tea. But for these 
 men there were no such prospects. It was 
 midnight before they reached their destination, 
 and then for them there was no warmth or change 
 only the muddy shelter of a battered front line 
 trench. Our march was very slow. Picture to 
 yourself the load that each man carries. Pack, 
 rifle, and full equipment for all. Most carry in 
 addition other loads which it is perhaps not 
 permissible to describe. Every man has his 
 dripping waterproof sheet wrapped round him, 
 and all wear heavy steel hats. In sketches, 
 
HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE 155 
 
 supposed to be made at the front, more often 
 than not the men are wearing their old cloth 
 caps, but gladly though we return to them when 
 we are in rest or in reserve, I have never seen a 
 man at the real front in Picardy without his 
 protecting helmet. They are heavy and cumber- 
 some, but most of us have seen too many cases 
 where they have saved men's lives to be willing 
 to part with them whatever their weight. With 
 his many burdens, marching in mud is no easy 
 task for the infantryman. You talk at home of 
 being up to your knees in mud, you mean really 
 that it is sometimes up to your ankles, and very 
 occasionally splashes to your knees. Here it is 
 an understatement. At almost every step the 
 men had, with a definite effort, to pull their 
 tired legs out of the deep sucking mud, and there 
 was scarcely a man but fell time and again flat 
 on the greasy mess. And so, at midnight, they 
 arrived, and for five comparatively quiet days 
 they held the line. Once more they came out, 
 only a little way back this time, for thirty-six 
 hours of rest. Fortunately it was fine, and the 
 men were able to get dry and warm and to scrape 
 some of the mud from their clothes. It was a 
 
156 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 Sunday, and we had a service there in God's 
 temple of the open-air, which was to be for many 
 a last communion, a viaticum for the last long 
 journey. On Sunday night they moved up 
 again. 
 
 Next day came the great achievement, a 
 success with which all England rang, a victory 
 which will be written in letters of gold in the 
 regimental records for all time, and which, while 
 this life lasts, will be remembered with tears in 
 many an English home. 
 
 So our work in Picardy is for the present over, 
 and we go back a weakened battalion to the 
 comparative quiet of ordinary trench-life. Honour 
 where honour is due. The infantryman does not 
 complain. The work has to be done and he 
 knows that he has to do it, but it is a very heavy 
 burden that he is bearing. The newspapers give, 
 I think, quite a wrong impression of his attitude. 
 Special correspondents would have you believe 
 that the infantry soldier invariably goes both in 
 and out of action with song and jest and merry 
 laughter. Perhaps that was true at the very 
 first. Many of those who enlisted in the summer 
 of 1914 went in the spirit of men expecting an 
 
HONOUR WHERE HONOUR IS DUE 157 
 
 open-air holiday. With the wounded, cheeriness 
 has become almost a convention. They read 
 the papers and they know what is expected of 
 them. Also, by the time you talk with them, 
 they are far away from the strain and pressure. 
 Here, on the spot, that light-hearted gaiety has 
 almost gone. The men are bright enough in 
 rest billets or at the base, but there is no longer 
 any pretence that they are yearning to be back 
 in the fight, there is no longer any attempt to 
 deny that they hate and dread their turn in the 
 line. You are told that we go in and out of 
 action with song and laughter. You expect such 
 stuff as that, and so, of course, you are supplied 
 with what you want. But it is not true. How 
 could we go into action in such a spirit when we 
 know the horrors that lie before us ? Still less 
 could we come out with laughter. We are not 
 such callous brutes as that. Great victories 
 mean a great price, and we pay it in our friends. 
 For you, apart from an individual here and there 
 whom you knew and loved, the casualty lists 
 are just numbers. It is not so for us. After a 
 battle in which the regiment has been engaged 
 there is no group of men sitting round an evening 
 
158 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 fire but is conscious of tragic gaps. For us they 
 are not just numbers of killed, of wounded and 
 of missing. It is Harry whom we shall not see 
 on earth again. Jack whose days of active life 
 are over. Old Bill who always kept things 
 lively poor old Bill. Tom, ' What 's become 
 of Tom ? ' no one seems to know. And a host 
 of others who were our friends and our daily 
 companions. 
 
 So through the long months, the infantryman 
 who remains bears the heaviest burden, his load 
 of discomfort, dirt, and danger, the loss of friends 
 and of happy companionship. Have I justified 
 my claim that it is to him that our highest honour 
 and our deepest gratitude is due ? Still he holds 
 on, for our sakes and for the England of our sons, 
 carrying to a final end the work which his dead 
 friends began. 
 
 Honour where honour is due. 
 
ELEVENTH PAPER 
 
 A NIGHT IN THE CRATERS 1 
 
 WE are to meet at the cross roads. ' Oxford 
 Circus,' the noticeboard calls it. Sloane Street, 
 Park Lane, and High Street run into it, with 
 disconcerting inconsistency. There are no motor 
 buses nor busy taxis in this Oxford Circus of 
 ours. A shell- torn tree stands in the middle 
 of it and all is silence. 
 
 The last glimmer of a June sunset is fading 
 in the west as the men arrive. They come in 
 small parties, for their road lies along an exposed 
 corner which is not healthy to pass in large 
 bodies Dead Man's Corner, we call it, with 
 an unreal smile. It is a place in full view of the 
 German artillery. Last week twenty men were 
 killed there by a single shell. The week before 
 
 1 This paper is the only one written before our brigade had 
 taken its turn in the Somme offensive. Much of it would have 
 been different had it been written later, but I have left it 
 unaltered as a record of an early impression. 
 
 169 
 
160 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 the wreck of a transport wagon and the blood of 
 horses lay for some time by the roadside, till the 
 workers of the night cleared it all away. When 
 we can, we go by another road, and when duty 
 forces us to pass it we make a jest of it, but 
 unconsciqusly the step quickens, and when we 
 are past we breathe a sigh of relief from a 
 strain which we had hardly acknowledged even 
 to ourselves. Now the order has gone forth 
 that men going that way must proceed in 
 small parties. 
 
 1 Oxford Circus ' is the arranged place, where 
 the company is to be re-formed. ' All present, 
 sir ! ' The sergeant' swords mean more to the wait- 
 ing captain than he would like to admit. Rifles 
 are loaded, and the company begins to move off 
 towards the long communication trench which 
 leads to our destination. It is dark now and 
 difficult to distinguish clearly, but there is a 
 martial sound ; the tramp of armed men and 
 a military jingle. The sound conjures up for- 
 gotten pictures of the pomp of war, of spurs and 
 rattling scabbards, but as the men come closer 
 the illusion fades, and the facts emerge out of the 
 deceptive darkness. The sound we heard is but 
 
A NIGHT IN THE CRATERS 161 
 
 the clink of pick on shovel, for we are all navvies 
 now. These men, drawn from all classes, many 
 of them quite unaccustomed to manual labour, 
 are content now to lay down their rifles by their 
 side and to work all the night through with spade 
 and pick. 
 
 Two days ago the sector to which we are going 
 was a model of perfectly constructed trenches. 
 The front line had been sandbagged with months 
 of labour, the dug-outs were furnished and estab- 
 lished residences, some of them even being fitted 
 with electric light. Last night the enemy's 
 mines ruined the work of months. To-night we 
 are going to begin it all again. And so the futile 
 round goes on. 
 
 They are not our trenches, we are merely a 
 working party from the next sector of the line. 
 We are coming to help, but our welcome is not 
 encouraging. The battalion who are holding 
 the trenches, or what is left of them, are expect- 
 ing their relief to-night, and the arrival of our 
 party raises their hopes : ' Are you the A's ? ' 
 a voice asks out of the darkness. ' No, only 
 a working party of the B's.' No darkness is 
 thick enough, no silence deep enough to conceal 
 
 L 
 
162 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 the disappointment and disgust of the waiting 
 men. 
 
 Guides direct us to our places. The men are 
 allotted to different sections of the great craters 
 and begin to work in the silence and the darkness. 
 From time to time great shells burst near us. 
 There are no trenches left in which to shelter, 
 and at frequent intervals we lie flat upon the 
 ground, to get up sticky with chalk, wet and 
 dirty. ' Any one hurt ? ' ' All well, sir.' ' Carry 
 on/ 
 
 All through the night we move from party 
 to party, admiring the men's work, promising 
 a rum ration when it is over, and trying to en- 
 courage them. There is much to admire. Men 
 work hard and need little urging when they are 
 working on the surface and digging cover for 
 themselves. 
 
 Sometimes a great flare light glows in the sky. 
 We stand rigid and immovable, looking out over 
 the great heaps of chalk, glistening white in the 
 unnatural glare and over the wide yawning 
 craters. It is strangely like a photograph of the 
 mountains of the moon. 
 
 One party is a little worried. Theirs is an 
 
A NIGHT IN THE CRATERS 163 
 
 ' insanitary spot/ Too many big shells have 
 burst near them. But a young officer, a boy 
 almost, strolls about, unconcernedly on the top 
 above the digging men. Fear in his heart sick 
 and deadly fear but not a sign on his face, and 
 the men turn to again with a new courage. 
 
 Presently the soft rain turns into a heavy down- 
 pour. The new turned chalk begins to fall back 
 into the fresh dug trench. The men swear softly 
 as they continue to work in silence. But now, a 
 quickening of the breeze and the first lightening 
 of the sky heralds the dawning of the day the 
 day when, in this topsy-turvy world of ours, no 
 man can work and the men gather up their tools 
 and file quickly out. There is no delay now and 
 no hesitation. This work on the craters is work 
 at the mouth of hell, and we hurry from it the 
 moment the order for release is given. 
 
 Covered with chalk and clay, wet to the skin, 
 laden with rifles and tools, we trudge back in the 
 opening day. Once out on the road, silence is 
 broken and cigarettes are lighted. Thrice blessed 
 cigarette ! Often it is the one thing that stands 
 between the soldier and utter misery. The 
 cigarette out here plays many parts, and fills 
 
164 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 many voids. It has often to take the place of 
 food or drink, to be a substitute for sleep, and 
 to be our only fire. 
 
 We do not laugh or jest much on the way out. 
 It is only in the newspapers that the soldier is 
 always bright. We are too tired and perhaps too 
 full of unexpressed thankfulness to God, but we 
 talk a little, disjointedly, and with many pauses. 
 Mostly we talk about the rain and the Boche 
 and the general beastliness of it all. One old 
 soldier indulges in a sardonic jest. He is aching 
 with rheumatism, overburdened with tools and 
 equipment, and can barely move his soaked and 
 mud-caked body even at the slow pace at which 
 we march. ' Remember that picture, sir/ and 
 he reminds me of the portrait of a clean and 
 smiling youth with which the recruiting authorities 
 at one time covered the walls of London. * 'Appy 
 and satisfied looks like it, don't it, sir ? ' But 
 it is all grousing, not grumbling. No one doubts 
 the necessity of it all. Not till next day did I 
 hear a note of bitterness, and then it was the 
 expression of a thought which is uppermost in 
 many men's minds to-day. ' It 's got to be done, 
 and we 'as to do it. But the infantryman as 
 
A NIGHT IN THE CRATERS 165 
 
 'as all the danger 'as all the 'eavy work as well 
 and none of the pay. Them fellows down at the 
 
 base as never sees a shell are getting their 
 
 three and four bob a day, and at 'ome they 're 
 making enough money to sink yer in liquor and 
 strikes for more.' 
 
 What about the solidarity of labour after the 
 war ? Will the old division into workers and 
 capitalists be complicated by a more acutely felt 
 division between those who suffered and those 
 who made profit from the war ? 
 
TWELFTH PAPER 
 
 IN A REGIMENTAL AID POST 
 
 MOST of these papers have been written during 
 periods of rest ' behind the lines/ This Somme 
 fighting is so terrific that long unbroken spells of 
 it would be beyond human endurance, and so 
 we go back, at intervals, for short periods of rest, 
 and, in the case of some battalions, very literally, 
 of re-creation. It is at such times, in the comfort 
 and comparative luxury that is afforded by the 
 fourth part of a tent, or one corner of a farm- 
 house room, that these papers have been, for the 
 most part, put together. I want, however, to 
 write just one here, in the thick of it, on some 
 dirty scraps of paper, torn from a damp and 
 dog-eared book. 
 
 This paper is going to be dull. Those who 
 look for thrilling adventures, for tales of heroism 
 and hairbreadth escapes, must leave it unread. 
 It is my purpose to give a faithful record of three 
 
 166 
 
IN A REGIMENTAL AID POST 167 
 
 days in a regimental aid post, during a period 
 when I happen to have the time to write it down. 
 There have been, of course, other days when every 
 moment has been fully occupied, but this record 
 of dullness relieved by occasional horror is more 
 truly typical than would be the account of 
 pressure and of rush. 
 
 We are sitting on the westward slope of a long 
 shallow valley. Our home is a surface dug-out. 
 It shields us from flying l pieces,' but we owe 
 our safety less to that, than to the slope of the 
 friendly hill behind us ; on the eastward slope 
 neither trench nor dug-out can ensure protection. 
 All along the valley are many guns. The more 
 distant keep up a never ceasing roll, with occa- 
 sional deeper thuds. Almost exactly in front of 
 us, stretching across both slopes, are two batteries 
 of field artillery. There is no thud or roll here, 
 but a sharp, ear-deafening bark. They are very 
 close, and the flame of them blows hot to the very 
 mouth of our dug-out. Immediately outside 
 the entrance is a rubbish heap. It is not an 
 official ' dump ' or collecting place, but one that 
 has just happened. Wounded men, coming here 
 to be dressed, have thrown down their equipment, 
 
i68 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 and other things have been added to the pile. 
 There are tins of all shapes and sizes, blood- 
 soaked rags, live bombs, belts, bayonets, sand- 
 bags, and a hundred other cast-off possessions. 
 Also there are flies. It is a very kingdom of 
 Beelzebub. His myriad subjects blacken half 
 the pile. Our battalion is further on, and we wait 
 here and hope unfeignedly for idleness. Fortun- 
 ately, they are for the present in an easy place, 
 and we have little work to do ; and so we wait. 
 
 We arrived in the dark, and all night long the 
 near guns barked and the far guns thundered ; 
 while every now and then we heard one of the 
 really heavy shells travelling high over our 
 heads. When you are living close to the harsh 
 clap of field guns, the passing of a great shell has 
 an extraordinary air of dignity and serenity, 
 almost of peace. You do not hear the explosion 
 of the gun, nor of the arriving shell, only the quiet 
 unhurrying progress of the invisible death far up 
 in the skies. 
 
 The first morning broke clear and bright, and 
 for a little space a German observation balloon 
 hung in the sky, and then for two hours the 
 valley was shelled without cessation. Shell after 
 
IN A REGIMENTAL AID POST 169 
 
 shell came, searching, searching for the batteries 
 which all night long had been pouring death into 
 the German lines. Crouched in the entrance of 
 our dug-out we sat and watched. They fell on the 
 ridge behind us and they plastered all the valley 
 and the eastward slope. Flying mud and a few 
 pieces reached us where we sat and made us take 
 a personal interest in the spectacle we were 
 watching ; but thanks to our sheltering hill we 
 came through it safe and unharmed. Time after 
 time the shells burst almost in the gun pits or the 
 trench, but twice only or rather, three times 
 did they take effect. By one shell, two gunners 
 on the opposite slope were killed. In the trench 
 behind us, one man was half buried by a fall of 
 earth from a collapsing trench. They dug him 
 out of the loosened soil, and a stretcher bearer 
 was helping him away (for he was badly shaken) 
 when yet another shell burst quite near and 
 finished him. It seemed a strange chance that 
 with hundreds of shells falling harmless two 
 should come to a single man ; but that is just 
 the unevenness of war. Sometimes hundreds of 
 shells will do no harm, another time a single 
 shell will kill a dozen men. Sometimes one will 
 
170 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 burst near a group standing close together, and 
 leaving the nearer men untouched, a piece will 
 kill just one man in the very middle of the group. 
 By 10.30 the storm was over. Three graves in 
 the valley are its only record here. Later in the 
 day I buried the bodies just as they were, wrapped 
 in their soldier's coats, and, as I write, I can see 
 three new crosses facing us down there in the 
 valley. 
 
 For the rest of the day things were fairly 
 quiet. Sometimes for ten minutes together a 
 parcel of mixed shells arrived, H. E., shrapnel and 
 gas, but our own guns went on, undiscouraged, 
 all the time. Their sound is the inevitable back- 
 ground of life down here in Picardy, and though 
 their noise be deafening we count things quiet 
 if the enemy is not replying. So far not one of 
 our own men has come down, and so in the after- 
 noon the doctor and two orderlies go up to 
 battalion headquarters to inquire. He comes 
 back rejoicing. All is quiet there, and there has 
 not been any shelling nor a single casualty. 
 And so, unmindful perhaps of the little crosses 
 below us, which mark the last resting-place of 
 men of other regiments, we sit down in great 
 
IN A REGIMENTAL AID POST 171 
 
 spirits to our tea. We have scarcely begun 
 when an orderly comes hurrying in to tell us that 
 just after the doctor left, one shell had fallen 
 close to battalion headquarters and taken a toll 
 of nine casualties. Two hours of shelling here in 
 the morning results in a total of three casualties, 
 one single shell there in the afternoon accounts 
 for nine. What wonder if men are apt to become 
 somewhat fatalistic. Eight out of the nine are 
 bandaged, and walk or are carried to the ambu- 
 lance, one alone needs no more help in this world. 
 After they have gone, we settle down to wait and 
 watch again, the doctor, the orderlies and I, a 
 somewhat saddened group. All day long we 
 talk. It is mostly reminiscences ; unutterably 
 wearisome, infinitely dull, but talking passes the 
 time and deadens thought, and after all nobody 
 need listen. It would be monotonous indeed, 
 except for occasional short bursts of shelling, and 
 though one hates them, they are almost welcome 
 as a relief from the dreary waiting. 
 
 The long day ends at last, and the long noisy 
 night passes to another morning. This, too, is 
 uneventful in blessed contrast to other times, 
 when all day and all night we have been busy 
 
172 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 with steady streams of wounded men. For 
 these few days the battalion is in reserve, and 
 they seem to have found a quiet place. This 
 day there has been but one incident. In the 
 morning there were men walking about every- 
 where in the valley. It seemed a rash thing to 
 do with German observation balloons ever on 
 the watch. Nemesis came, but, as so often in 
 this world, it did not come to those who seemed 
 to be courting disaster, but to those who were 
 taking right and reasonable precautions. In 
 front of the batteries and on the eastward slope 
 there runs a single trench and it is packed close 
 with men. Yesterday, dozens of shells fell near 
 it and did no harm. This morning one shell 
 came over and landed exactly in the trench. 
 Planks, earth, a sheet of corrugated iron and 
 something else flew into the air. As the smoke 
 cleared three or four figures rushed into the open. 
 One man holds his back and moans piteously as 
 he runs, another with his hand at his head calls 
 insistently for stretcher bearers, while a third 
 runs with his arm hanging limp at his side ; and 
 since even from the tragedies of war the comic 
 is never entirely absent, leading them all and 
 
IN A REGIMENTAL AID POST 173 
 
 running at a sprinter's pace is one man, almost 
 if not quite, unhurt. The wounded run across 
 the valley to our post and their needs are soon 
 attended to, but presently out of the broken 
 trench they bring the crumpled mutilated bodies 
 of six others. Later in the day six more crosses 
 stand there in the valley. My cemetery grows 
 fast these days. 
 
 The last day and night of our stay was even 
 more uneventful. No shells came our way at all, 
 but away on the right there was heavy firing and 
 all day long our valley road was a veritable Via 
 Dolorosa. Badly wounded men limped slowly 
 along or helped others worse than themselves. 
 The lightly wounded hurried on, intent only on 
 getting out of it all to some place of rest and 
 quiet, and at intervals slow moving parties 
 carried laden stretchers. Towards evening a 
 pitiless rain turned the already dirty tracks into 
 seething slush. Soon after midnight we joined 
 the battalion, who came slipping and sliding, 
 mud-covered and soaked, on their way out for 
 three days' rest. Then back again to the mud 
 and the cold, the shells and the glories of the 
 greatest battle in history. 
 
THIRTEENTH PAPER 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 DEATH has become a common sight of late. 
 Death from gas. Death from wounds. Death 
 from shock. Death. But the countless sorrows 
 of the Somme have not in the least served to 
 obliterate from my mind the memory of the 
 first time I saw a man killed by a German bullet. 
 It was just at ' stand to/ that twilight hour 
 when every one has to be on the alert against 
 surprise attacks. A tall man came out from 
 some corner where he had been snatching a short 
 period of rest, for in the trenches we get our rest 
 in bits, where and when we can. He was still 
 rubbing the sleep from his eyes. It was in a 
 trench, further north, where our lines and the 
 German drew very close. The newly awakened 
 man came into the bay where we were standing. 
 Before going to his post, he stood up on the 
 fire-step, for one moment, to look round. 
 
 174 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH ? 175 
 
 Familiarity breeds carelessness, but in his case 
 he was not out of the shelter of the trench for 
 more than a very few seconds. A German 
 sniper must have had his rifle ready trained on 
 the very spot, for with appalling suddenness, and 
 before ever we heard the report of the shot, the 
 newly awakened man fell backwards and lay 
 silent in his last sleep with a bullet in his temple. 
 
 The sight of him lying there brought vividly 
 to my mind a picture which at one time was 
 very popular at home not by resemblance but 
 by pathetic contrast. You remember the picture 
 of the Great Sacrifice which at one time was to 
 be seen in every shop window. A young lad 
 lies on the ground. A tiny bullet hole shows in 
 his temple, and from it flows the faintest streak 
 of blood. Over him hangs the shadowy figure 
 of the Crucified. ' Greater love hath no man than 
 this that a man lay down his life for his friends/ 
 
 It was contrast rather than resemblance that 
 brought the picture to my mind that night. 
 Like the young lad in the picture, the man whom 
 I saw die had a bullet wound in the temple, but 
 there the likeness ceased. Here was no calm 
 death, but a ghastly mess of blood and brains 
 
176 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 and mud, on his face and in the surrounding 
 trench ; and in the stark horror of the moment I 
 could not see the Crucified at all. Before they 
 carried him away we gathered round the body, 
 and I said a few words of prayer for him and for 
 those who loved him. There was a minute or 
 two of hushed silence, and then the men went 
 to their allotted posts. Five minutes later I 
 walked round with the company commander, 
 and on our way we found a group of men with 
 fixed bayonets gaily chasing rats behind the 
 sandbags. 
 
 What is truth ? Which is nearer to reality ? 
 The picture which ignores the material ugliness 
 and insists on the spiritual worth of the sacrifice, 
 or the muddy bloody facts, and the rat hunt 
 and forgetting ? It is easy to reject the picture 
 as unrealistic, but on the other hand the weight 
 of visible material ugliness is apt to obscure the 
 finer shades of truth. There was the rat hunt, 
 but first, there was the little time of hushed and 
 solemn silence. The dirt and ugliness of life is 
 so insistent that we have had to make a jest of 
 it. Bairnsfather cartoons are the most popular 
 adornment of every mess. He has done great 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH ? 177 
 
 service in laughing away sham heroics, and in 
 drawing ugliness simply as the ugly thing it is, 
 but I doubt if his work is wholly for good. 
 Raemakers, though less popular, is greater, not 
 only as artist, but as prophet, for while he has not 
 disguised the ugliness, he has made us feel the 
 greatness too. It is well for you at home that 
 you should realise how unbeautiful is our life 
 somewhere in France ; it is well for us out here 
 to laugh at ourselves ; but it will be a real loss 
 if we seek relief from ugliness only in seeing its 
 funny side, and forget its deeper meaning. We 
 shall not forget the tragedies, but we may forget 
 their value. Sham heroics make no appeal to 
 the sure instincts of the active soldier ; fine 
 writing in the newspapers will nearly always 
 provoke his contemptuous mirth, but at times 
 of stress or when emotion has, in any way, 
 broken through his reserve, he will show you 
 that the ideal side of war is still a reality for him. 
 It is among the officers that there is more danger 
 lest the dirt and discomfort of life should over- 
 whelm their appreciation of its deeper meaning. 
 Certainly you hear more cynicism about the 
 origin and causes and importance of the war 
 
 M 
 
1 78 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 among officers than among men, but, of course, 
 this may only mean that their reserve is stronger, 
 and that with them it is harder than with the 
 men to get behind the material pose with which 
 we English love to disguise our deeper feelings, 
 and which earns for us among our enemies the 
 designation of hypocrites. 
 
 We are often told that the men who have faced 
 death in the trenches will return to civil life with 
 a quickened spiritual outlook. It is possible, 
 and in the case of some it is certain, but on the 
 other hand the material ugliness of war is here 
 so horribly in the foreground that it is just as 
 likely that in many of us, our sense of the spiritual 
 will be, not awakened, but deadened. We know 
 now that a description of war which would have 
 us believe it all glory and grandeur is very far 
 from truth. On the other hand, its obvious ugli- 
 ness is equally far from being the whole truth, 
 though it is hard for us to see beyond it. It is 
 you at home who must help us to have con- 
 stantly before our eyes the ideal side of war. 
 You will do it best, not by blind hero worship, 
 nor by thoughtless applause, but by raising your 
 own standard of life and service, so that the 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH ? 179 
 
 England for which men have fought and died 
 may be more worthy of their sacrifice. You have 
 made heroes of your soldiers, you will serve them 
 best, and best show your gratitude by living and 
 helping them to live as men called to the service 
 of a great cause and worthy of their calling. 
 
FOURTEENTH PAPER 
 
 WASTE 
 
 HERE in Picardy desolation and death force 
 upon one's thoughts a dreadful sense of un- 
 utterable waste, but it is strange how, amid all 
 the chaos, some little thing will lie like a dead 
 weight upon the memory, making one feel the 
 waste far more than can greater and more im- 
 portant ruin. 
 
 There 's a heap of stones in Picardy. Men tell 
 us that a village stood there once, and we still 
 call it by its name. Yet, I cannot feel the waste, 
 for there 's not a house to see, nor wall for 
 shelter left ; there 's so little there to show. 
 
 There 's a field in Picardy where crops and 
 flowers grew. Many shells have ploughed it, 
 many lives have watered it. All is desolation 
 now, yet I cannot feel its past nor what is 
 wasted there. 
 
 There 's a grave in Picardy where lies the body 
 
 180 
 
WASTE 181 
 
 of my friend. We had great hopes for him, and 
 our hopes lie buried in his grave. Yet, there 's 
 a broken tomb in Jewry which in time will 
 heal my hurt, for I know that God will use my 
 friend, and that in his death there is no waste 
 at all. 
 
 But there 's a house I know outside a market 
 town, and that 's the place that rends my heart 
 and bids me weep for waste. One single shell 
 has fallen and stripped its front wall clear. All 
 the rooms stand perfect. There 's nothing there 
 of beauty, it 's a simple bourgeois home. On 
 the walls are pictures, in friendly homelike 
 frames, and in the first floor bedroom, which 
 stands open to the wind, some one's bed stands 
 ready, neatly made and turned. A book, but 
 little dusty, is on the table by its side, and three 
 photographs are on the shelf above the unlit fire. 
 A rosary and crucifix are still hanging on the wall. 
 Some one lived and loved there such a little 
 while ago. It has a garden, nothing great or 
 grand, but some one spent his evenings there and 
 some one worked there well, for still beside the 
 broken wall a patient rose tree grows, and still 
 between the fallen bricks some garden flowers 
 
182 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 peep. It was some one's resthouse, it was some 
 one's pride and joy. And now, it 's all a ruin, 
 and some one's work is wasted and some one's 
 heart is sad. And that 's the place that rends 
 my heart and bids me weep for waste. 
 
FIFTEENTH PAPER 
 
 THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 
 i. 7/s Foundations 
 
 THERE is no character which has, at the same 
 time, so puzzled and amazed the world as that 
 of the British soldier. That strange mixed 
 character, with its gaps and its unevennesses, 
 and its extraordinary loveableness. The German 
 has learnt that, as applied to it, the epithet 
 contemptible is utterly inappropriate. The 
 French civilian contemplates it with affectionate 
 bewilderment. The British nation watches it 
 with grateful and almost reverent admiration. 
 1 The men are splendid,' that verdict is now 
 almost universally endorsed, and it is not my 
 purpose to attempt any analysis of a character 
 which has become familiar to us all. We have 
 all of us seen or read of the men's unconquerable 
 cheerfulness, of their kindly generosity alike to 
 friend and foe, of their endurance for long periods 
 
 183 
 
184 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 of almost intolerable conditions, in dirt, dis- 
 comfort and in danger. 
 
 My object, rather, is in this paper to try to 
 form some estimate (so far as it is possible to 
 generalise) of the foundations upon which it rests, 
 the basis upon which it is built ; and in the next 
 to consider how these foundations can best be 
 secured and strengthened. (The metaphor of 
 building, though it is difficult to avoid, is not 
 altogether appropriate ; because this character, 
 which we are considering, is not the result of 
 conscious acts or deliberate purpose, but, like 
 Topsy, has 'just growed.') 
 
 First, it must be frankly acknowledged by 
 every impartial observer that this character of 
 theirs is not based upon any conscious allegiance 
 to the revealed religion of the Incarnate Christ. 
 There are, of course, not a few, who would admit 
 that they owe everything to their religion ; 
 nor must the influence of Christian homes and of 
 a consciously Christian environment be under- 
 rated. But, from a generalisation, which is 
 concerned with the basis of the character of the 
 majority, conscious Christianity must, however 
 regretfully, be left almost entirely out of account. 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 185 
 
 So far as I am able to analyse it, it would seem 
 that the character which, in spite of its gaps and 
 faults, we all admire to-day is based in the main 
 on four foundations : (i) A belief in God ; 
 (2) devotion to a cause which over-rides self- 
 interest ; (3) the discipline of the Army ; (4) a 
 strong sense of comradeship. 
 
 (i) Some sort of a belief in God seems almost 
 universal. The atheism of the nineteenth century 
 was a spent force even before the war, and for 
 those who, in these latter days, have gone down 
 into the deep waters of tragedy and suffering, 
 and have seen there the wonders of the Lord, it 
 has now no meaning at all. Agnosticism I have 
 met, but not very often, and then chiefly among 
 the older men who have drunk of the thin wine 
 of certain nineteenth-century writers still further 
 diluted through popular magazines. The soldier's 
 belief in God is often expressed in language which, 
 intellectually, is fatalistic. l You won't get hit 
 unless the bullet has your name on it/ ' Either 
 your number is up or it isn't so don't worry 
 yourself.' If this be fatalism, it is only so in the 
 purely intellectual sphere, and that is a sphere 
 in which the ordinary soldier soon gets out of his 
 
186 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 depth. Even for the trained intellect, the line 
 between fatalism and a trustful belief in an all- 
 protecting Providence is not easy to draw. 
 Certainly this intellectual fatalism, if fatalism 
 it be, does not have the effects upon conduct 
 which logically it should. It gives the same 
 calm and courage that comes from a reasoned 
 trust in the Fatherly providence of God, but 
 it does not give a man the recklessness of the 
 Dervish, still less does it prevent him from 
 making superhuman efforts to save or to 
 help his friends in difficulty or in danger. 
 Both these things, reasonable precautions for 
 yourself, and the attempt to help others, are, 
 of course, logically incompatible with a real 
 fatalism. 
 
 Also there is no doubt that, in the hour of 
 danger the great majority of men pray ; it is not 
 perhaps a very high type of prayer, it is purely 
 individual, self-centred and inspired by fear. 
 At one time, especially during the early stages 
 of the war, we heard a great deal about religious 
 revival and a new turning to prayer. There is 
 a story that during a lull in a heavy bombard- 
 ment, a man emerged from a dug-out and shouted 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 187 
 
 inquiries to a neighbouring shelter : ' You all 
 right in there, mate ? ' ' Yes so far, but some 
 
 of them b shells come b close/ ' What 
 
 have you been doing while it was going on ? ' 
 ' Well, as a matter of fact, we 've all been saying 
 our prayers. 1 ' So 've we we Ve been praying 
 like hell/ 
 
 For myself, I have no great admiration for this 
 emergency religion of the trenches. It is based 
 on fear, and fear is a rapidly shifting foundation. 
 Such a religion, strong in the front line, is apt to 
 grow weaker in support, almost to evaporate in 
 billets, and to vanish altogether on a week's 
 leave. A generation ago, preachers used to 
 seek to cow their hearers into virtue by lurid 
 emphasis upon the terrors of hell. Fear may 
 of course sometimes be the first motive turning 
 a man away from vice and towards God, 
 and as such, it has its value, but I cannot 
 believe that a religion in which fear plays a 
 large part can be very acceptable to God, 
 whether that fear be the fear of hell or the fear 
 of shells. 
 
 Hell fire and shell fire are alike impossible as 
 the sole or chief foundation for the religion of 
 
188 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 Love. But still, there they are, these emer- 
 gency prayers, these petitions of the trenches, 
 and for what they are worth they are some 
 evidence of the men's belief in God, some 
 proof that they are not at any rate consistent 
 fatalists. 
 
 It is all a strange medley, illogical, English ; 
 if you judge the men by their words alone, you 
 would be bound to admit that the majority are 
 purely fatalistic ; but if you form your opinion 
 on all the facts, their words, their acts, and also 
 take into account their environment and up- 
 bringing, you are justified in the conclusion that 
 one of the four foundations of their character is 
 a very real, if somewhat vague and indefinite, 
 belief in God. 
 
 (2) Devotion to a cause that outweighs and 
 overrides the claims of self-interest. This I 
 should myself put down as the main cause of the 
 great uplift that has been given to men's char- 
 acters in these last two years of war. It is 
 perhaps difficult for men of leisure and education 
 to realise how inevitably self-interest is bound to 
 dominate the lives of those for whom the struggle 
 for existence is a daily reality. And now for 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 189 
 
 two years, the service of a great cause has been 
 consciously and deliberately the dominating 
 motive of these men's lives. We do not talk 
 much of patriotism. After the first few weeks 
 we even abandoned the singing of patriotic 
 songs. The cynic tells us that the gods gave 
 to man the gift of speech that he might have 
 something wherewith to disguise his thoughts. 
 It is certainly true that the British soldier uses 
 song to hide his feelings. * A Little Bit of Heaven ' 
 is the most popular of sentimental songs out here, 
 and I myself heard Ireland twice so described 
 in the very week during which Sinn Fein was 
 making it a very passable imitation of hell. In 
 peace time, when patriotism had for us no mean- 
 ing, we shouted ourselves hoarse over the chorus 
 of Jingo lays, but nov that England has for us, 
 at last, a meaning, we sing for preference such 
 songs as ' Pack up your troubles in your old kit 
 bag, and smile, smile, smile/ or else songs which 
 have in them no sense at all. We do not sing or 
 speak of patriotism, perhaps we do not think much 
 about it, certainly we do not personify England 
 as the Frenchman with ardent devotion personifies 
 and idealises ' La Patrie ' ; but many a man has 
 
190 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 a real sense of uplift in his life from the conscious- 
 ness that all his efforts are directed not to his own 
 personal advantage, but to the welfare of some- 
 thing greater than himself, the progress of a great 
 cause the cause of England. 
 
 (3) The third really important basis of the 
 soldier's character is to be found in the discipline 
 of the Army. Many writers have commented 
 upon the lasting effects which must result from 
 having the nation for a few years in arms and 
 under discipline. If you were to ask a man of a 
 journalistic habit of mind about soldiers and 
 their religion, he would probably talk to you 
 about the Angels of Mons or about crucifixes 
 untouched in ruined houses or some such triviality, 
 but if he was concerned with lasting effects, 
 rather than with the sensation of the moment, 
 he would probably agree that the most vital 
 moral and religious effects were to be looked for 
 from the new learnt lessons of discipline and 
 order. To that opinion I should myself assent, 
 but with an important reservation. Nothing that 
 has occurred has in any way shaken the marked 
 individuality of the British character. The 
 ordinary soldier sees the necessity for war pur- 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 191 
 
 poses of the whole system of the disciplinary 
 hierarchy ; he may grumble volubly at particular 
 instances and particular exponents of Army 
 discipline, but he sees its present value. At the 
 same time he does not like it. There is no com- 
 plaint that the chaplain hears more often than 
 that there are too many bosses. There is nothing 
 that makes the man enlisted ' for the duration ' 
 more anxious for the return to civil life. And 
 so, if lasting effects are to be looked for from the 
 discipline of the Army, it will not be because the 
 soldier has learnt to recognise its abiding value 
 and importance. Its effects, which are strong 
 now, and must surely be lasting, will be for the 
 most part subconscious. 
 
 (4) The fourth foundation of the soldier's 
 character is what perhaps most strikes the casual 
 observer. The comradeship and the brotherhood 
 of the Army. Here again it is difficult for those 
 who have been brought up in the atmosphere of 
 a public school and university to realise how 
 new a thing this is, and how Ishmaelite is the 
 life of a working boy and man in England. The 
 elementary school, with some honourable excep- 
 tions, provides but little training in the idea 
 
192 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 of fellowship. Tale-bearing and other blankly 
 individualistic vices are still encouraged by 
 many school teachers ; and even such training 
 in the community life as the elementary school 
 provides comes to an end when the boy is 
 fourteen. He is launched on the individual 
 struggle for his bread and butter at the age when 
 his more fortunate brother is just beginning the 
 really important part of his education in the art 
 of fellowship, his initiation into the meaning of 
 esprit de corps and the public school spirit. It is 
 only in his trade union and in similar societies 
 that, in modern England, the workman has had 
 some foretaste of those ideals of fellowship which 
 in the Army he is so happily learning afresh. Is 
 it some heritage from man's primaeval curse 
 that even fellowship love itself can only be 
 consolidated by common hate ? The welding 
 force in the trade union movement is found 
 in common opposition to the employing class, 
 and at home, that common opposition is in the 
 foreground of men's thoughts, and it is that which 
 most binds them together. Of course it is true 
 that it is common opposition to the Germans 
 which has, quite literally, brought men together 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 193 
 
 out here. But in this case, the common opposi- 
 tion is much less in the foreground. There is 
 among Englishmen, whose homes have not been 
 invaded and whose women have not been wronged, 
 little or no sense of personal injury. It is these 
 things that lend bitterness to French and Belgian 
 feelings, just as it is the sense of personal injury 
 that stirs the mind of the underpaid workman 
 or the over-rented cottager. Out here, our oppo- 
 sition to a common foe, though it governs our 
 every act and orders the course of all our daily 
 lives, has but little effect upon our inner minds, 
 and so the tree of fellowship is able to grow and 
 flourish exceedingly. The men realise as they 
 never have realised before their mutual inter- 
 dependence. Their helpfulness and kindliness 
 to one another have become proverbial. There 
 is a real brotherhood too between officers and 
 men which must surely react on the social re- 
 lationship of the future ; after such an experience 
 we can never go back to the blind class divisions 
 and hatred of the past. The boy officer takes 
 an almost motherly interest and pride in his 
 platoon, and in most cases the men return his 
 affection. The company commander and, in a 
 
 N 
 
194 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 lesser degree, officers of higher rank share with 
 the men a common keenness for the honour of 
 the units to which they belong. But we have 
 advanced a further stage in the art of fellowship, 
 for, while at home philosophers and thinkers 
 have been wrangling as to the meaning of the 
 divine command ' Love your enemies,' out here 
 the soldier seems in practice, if not in theory, 
 to have solved the problem. If you were to 
 suggest to any individual soldier that he loved 
 Germans, he would probably get extremely 
 angry and abusive. Certainly his love, if love it 
 be, will not make him less vigorous a fighter. 
 In a ' scrap ' you will see little or no signs of 
 anything of the sort ; but watch him an hour 
 afterwards with a German who is wounded or a 
 prisoner, and you will see a kindness and a con- 
 siderateness which it is impossible to exaggerate. 
 More remarkable even than his treatment of the 
 wounded or the prisoners is the soldier's lack of 
 prejudice against those who are still fighting and 
 still trying to kill him. He shows a detached 
 power of understanding and even to some extent 
 of sympathising with ' Old Fritz ' which is 
 surely unique in the annals of war. 
 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 195 
 
 The fellowship of the Army is a real and wonder- 
 ful thing, and though, in a sense, it ought to be 
 described as a result a fruit of character yet, 
 in another sense, we are, I think, entitled to 
 claim for it a place among the four founda- 
 tions from which has grown the character of 
 the British soldier as we know and love him 
 to-day. 
 
SIXTEENTH PAPER 
 
 THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 
 
 ii. How are these Foundations to be Preserved 
 and Strengthened ? 
 
 SUCH, I believe, are the four foundations upon 
 which has grown the character of the British 
 soldier as we see and marvel at it to-day. Belief 
 in God. The sense of service to something 
 greater than self. The discipline of the Army. 
 The feeling of comradeship and brotherhood. 
 Each one of these four things is, to some extent, 
 dependent upon the special circumstances of the 
 times, and if the foundations are insecure the 
 character which has grown from them will not 
 be strong or stable enough to resist the inevit- 
 able reaction in the coming days of peace. 
 The problem, therefore, which confronts us, is 
 how are these foundations to be made secure 
 and, where necessary, strengthened. To the 
 Christian the answer is clear. We have long 
 
 190 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 197 
 
 ago abandoned the method of evangelisation 
 which ignored all natural virtues and sought to 
 begin again on new foundations. In religion, 
 as in other things, the educational principle 
 1 From the known to the unknown ' holds sway. 
 The fullness of the Christian character can only 
 be reached by deepening and strengthening that 
 which is already there, and so we want to take 
 hold of all that there is of natural goodness in 
 men's characters and show them how in Christ 
 and only in Christ is to be sought the crown 
 and completeness of all that they most admire, 
 (i) Belief in God, though it is very real, is in 
 most men's minds extraordinarily vague and in- 
 definite ; it is dependent too, in most cases, or 
 at any rate it is dependent for its activity, upon 
 the sense of need and danger. How is that belief 
 to be maintained as an active, operative influence 
 in men's lives when all obvious danger has gone 
 past ? For my own part, I do not see how in 
 this bewildering, tragic, puzzling world of ours 
 such a belief can be permanently maintained 
 unless it is crystallised and made definite in 
 Christ as the revelation of the character of God. 
 1 He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father.' 
 
198 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 Take, for instance, the sort of problems that the 
 men bring up when they have so far overcome 
 their shyness and reserve as to have a talk with 
 the ' Padre/ I am not thinking of formal dis- 
 cussions in Church huts or of regular debates, 
 but of the kind of talk one gets watching a foot- 
 ball match, outside the canteen, walking round 
 the trenches, or sitting beside a camp-fire at 
 night. Here are some samples : 
 
 (a) l Why does God allow all this suffering to 
 go on so long, when, if as you say He is Almighty, 
 He could stop it at once ; above all, why does 
 He allow such a lot of people who aren't to blame 
 to suffer most ? ' Such is the question which is 
 being asked by thousands of people in the ranks, 
 and at home. It is not perhaps surprising that 
 men, thinking perhaps for the first time, advance 
 such questions as though they were a new 
 problem raised by the war. Death and bereave- 
 ment on a vast scale have brought before even 
 the dullest and most limited imaginations the 
 age-long problem of suffering, which has exercised 
 thought since thought began. You cannot per- 
 haps expect men to see that, however different 
 it be in the realm of imagination, intellectually 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 199 
 
 it in no way differs from the problem which is 
 raised when one small child is run over in the 
 streets of London. How are such questions to 
 be effectually answered ? 
 
 Disquisitions upon free will, and the argument 
 that the failure is not the failure of God or of 
 Christianity, but due to man's misuse of God's 
 gifts may possibly convince the head, but they 
 do not satisfy. You may point out that the 
 world which God made is organised and governed 
 as though God did not exist ; that international 
 affairs are conducted with no reference at all to 
 His revealed will, that our social relationships 
 are little in accordance with His teaching, that 
 our private lives are very far from reaching to 
 His standard. You may argue that the present 
 world disaster is proof of the failure of all else 
 but God, but that in man which is more important 
 than his head will only be satisfied if you turn 
 his attention not to argument and philosophy, 
 but to the plain record of the Gospel story. The 
 world suffers, but God is no absent spectator 
 above, beyond, serene, but in it, of it, down in 
 the depths of its suffering and its woe. God 
 Himself upon the Cross. 
 
200 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 (b) Consider another question which is fre- 
 quently discussed in billets or on country walks 
 behind the lines. ' How can God hear our prayers 
 when Germans and Austrians are praying to 
 Him for their own victory ? It is the same God/ 
 4 What is the use of praying for the victory of 
 what we believe to be right when our enemies 
 are just as convinced of the Tightness of their 
 cause, and are praying to the same God for its 
 success ? ' That is a question with which, in 
 one form or another, one is constantly faced, and 
 apart from Revelation, I cannot see that there 
 can be any satisfactory answer. If the will of 
 God is merely a matter of opinion, no single 
 individual can have great confidence that his 
 own prayers are more worth while than the 
 prayers of some one else who is offering them 
 with a precisely contrary intent. But for those 
 who believe in Christianity, the will of God is no 
 longer a matter of mere guesswork, and it is in 
 no way dependent upon our imaginings. The 
 nature and character of God has been spread 
 out before us. In Christ, God is revealed as a 
 person with a will of His own, a will that is ascer- 
 tainable a will that is like Christ's will. It does 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 201 
 
 not matter that hostile nations use to Him the 
 same words and apply to Him the same titles. 
 Prayer, however worded, however addressed, is 
 not prayer in the name of Christ unless it is a 
 laying of our wills in line with God's will, as that 
 will has been revealed to us in Christ. Believing 
 in the justice of the cause in which we fight, 
 convinced that its triumph is in accordance with 
 His will, the fact that others pray to Him for its 
 defeat will disturb us not at all. Our task it is 
 to keep ourselves in line with what we believe 
 to be His purpose and His will, and therewith to 
 be content. 
 
 (c) Of comparatively little importance but 
 perhaps worth noticing are the larger numbers 
 of idle and sometimes degrading superstitions 
 which men can hold side by side with a vague 
 belief in God. How are these to be combated ? 
 The god of a man's imaginings may be affected 
 by trivial things or he may be but one of many 
 gods, powerless to control the vagaries of the 
 lord of chance. But once we realise that the 
 character of the Almighty is ascertainable, if 
 once we have a clear grasp of the truth that he 
 that hath seen Christ hath seen the Father, that 
 
202 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 God is like Christ, we shall understand that He 
 who, in character, is like Christ will not punish 
 a man for sitting down thirteen to his dinner or 
 for being the third to light his fag from the same 
 match. It is fashionable in these days to decry 
 theology, but a sound theology among other 
 advantages has the great merit of being 
 incompatible with superstition. The super- 
 stitious man must be either a polytheist or 
 a devil worshipper, or, more probably, just a 
 fool. 
 
 (d) To turn to matters more important, 
 though a mere vague belief in God may and often 
 does enable a man to face his own death bravely, 
 and to stand unmoved amid scenes of carnage 
 and bloodshed, it will not help him much by 
 the graveside of those whom he really loves. I 
 remember well in the ward of a London hospital 
 talking to a soldier who was dirty and travel- 
 stained, his clothes still caked with the mud of 
 Flanders. He had been called by telegram to 
 the bedside of his little boy who lay dying. 
 * Only yesterday/ he told me there in the peace 
 of London, ' only yesterday my mate was blown 
 to pieces alongside of me ; nearly every day I 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 203 
 
 have seen men killed and I didn't mind, I got 
 sort of used to it, though sometimes I 've seen 
 'em fall by dozens from machine-gun fire and 
 all good pals of mine too, but when I got this 
 telegram about my little Harry it fair broke me.' 
 He looked, what he said he was, a broken man, 
 and when, a few hours afterwards, the child died, 
 what could I say to him ? What use to speak 
 to him of theories of survival, of hopes and 
 dreams ? The death of his child was a fact 
 cold and grim. Theories are but flimsy things 
 with which to face hard facts. In face of such 
 a fact a man's faith, his belief in God will not 
 stand firm unless it be supported by that other 
 and stronger fact, the actual, literal resurrection 
 of the Man Christ Jesus. Academic theologians 
 live often in a world of theory ; to them no 
 doubt their theories seem real things, and so they 
 will not realise that men who are unaccustomed 
 to speculation and to theories but who are con- 
 stantly up against the hard facts of daily life, 
 can only be helped by facts. And it is fact 
 which the simple straightforward Gospel of the 
 Resurrection offers to the bereaved and to the 
 broken-hearted. It is that fact which more than 
 
204 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 anything else will help such men to maintain 
 and keep alive their belief in God. 
 
 Such are some of the problems and difficulties 
 which tend to undermine in men their belief in 
 God. If that belief be one of the four essential 
 foundations of the character which we all wish 
 to preserve and strengthen, we must find some 
 means by which that belief can be maintained 
 against all such undermining. To us Christians 
 it seems that this can best be done by crystallising 
 their vague belief in a power above them into a 
 precise and definite belief in Christ revealed as 
 God Incarnate. 
 
 (2) As the second main foundation of the 
 soldier's character I have claimed the conviction 
 that they are serving a cause, a something 
 greater than themselves. The cause of England, 
 of civilisation, of freedom, or as the soldier, with 
 his strong instinct for immediate present realities, 
 would probably put it, the cause of beating the 
 Boche. How, when the victory has been won 
 and that cause has no longer any obvious claim 
 upon his services, how is the uplifting sense of 
 living for something greater than self-interest to 
 be lastingly maintained ? 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 205 
 
 What cause can be more inspiring and en- 
 nobling than the cause of Christ ? We have got 
 to get rid of the idea of religion as concerned only 
 or primarily with a selfish individual salvation, 
 as a short cut to heaven, or a fire insurance against 
 hell. All the experience of recent years should 
 have impressed upon us the vital importance of 
 shifting the emphasis of our teaching from the 
 individual to the corporate. The strength of 
 fellowship movements in the world of labour, the 
 proved failure of individualistic sectarianism, 
 the unexpected power (even in the modern 
 commercially-linked-up world) of the claim of 
 nationality, alike tend to show that the call to 
 serve a corporate ideal evokes all that is best in 
 those to whom it is made. We have got to get 
 away from the individualistic and characteristi- 
 cally British conception of religion to the primi- 
 tive catholic teaching of Jesus Christ, who before 
 all things was One who came to found a society, 
 a kingdom. His sacraments and His verbal 
 teaching are alike essentially social. Love and 
 service of the brethren come first, individual 
 salvation is attainable only in and through such 
 love and service. To be a Christian means to be 
 
206 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 a worker for the greatest of all causes, the cause 
 of Christ and the coming of His Kingdom. It 
 is the greatest of all causes and also the most 
 enduring, for its claims upon its servants cannot 
 cease till the Lord's prayer is answered and His 
 Kingdom conies on earth as it is in heaven, till 
 the kingdoms of this world have become the 
 Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. Great 
 causes do not, however, as a rule appeal strongly 
 to men's hearts unless with loyalty to a cause 
 there is coupled personal devotion to a leader. 
 Even the best of causes lacks magnetic power 
 unless associated with personality. History 
 and politics teach the same lesson. Dynastic 
 quarrels have often plunged the world in sorrow, 
 but at the same time they have called out in men 
 some of the noblest qualities of chivalry and 
 devotion ; and even in modern politics nearly 
 every great cause has been indestructibly associ- 
 ated with the name of its champion and leader. 
 In recent history there has been no greater, 
 nor more inspiring heroism than that displayed 
 by the men of the Italian risings and wars of 
 liberation. They had a great cause the freeing 
 and reuniting of a historic nation, long enslaved 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 207 
 
 and long dismembered, but the allegiance of the 
 men of Italy to that great cause was undoubtedly 
 held firm by their personal devotion to a few 
 leaders, men of outstanding personality, Mazzini, 
 Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor Emmanuel the 
 King. 
 
 This present war has been on so vast a scale 
 that it has been almost too big for loyalties such 
 as this ; but even so, the name of Lord Kitchener 
 has been a name of magic and at any rate to the 
 new armies has supplied something of the force 
 which comes from personal devotion ; and those 
 who witnessed the reception given to the King, 
 when he visited the troops in Picardy, were 
 deeply impressed with the exuberant display of 
 personal loyalty. But for the most part in this 
 war, this necessary element has been supplied in 
 closer and more intimate ways. The battalion 
 commanders, the company officers, and, most 
 intimately of all, the platoon leaders, have in 
 countless cases been able to win from their men 
 a whole-hearted personal devotion ; a blend of 
 affection and of confidence. Whether it be on 
 a large or small scale, it is personality that 
 counts, it is personality that in most men 
 
208 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 inspires an allegiance far stronger than they would 
 accord to a mere abstract cause. The cause of 
 Belgium moved us all, but it was the presence of 
 the homeless Belgians in our midst that really 
 affected us. In almost the last essay that he 
 wrote, published in the Times Literary Supple- 
 ment after his death, Henry James told us how 
 one individual Belgian woman walking sadly 
 down the main street of Rye in Sussex, became 
 to him the symbol of all the sorrow of the war, 
 and inspired him to the heroic labours of that 
 last year of his life. The care of the wounded is 
 a cause and a responsibility of national obliga- 
 tion, but it is the sight in our streets of the 
 maimed men in blue that moves men's hearts. 
 
 If this personal element is essential in political 
 and military causes such as these, we must not 
 leave it out when appealing to men for service 
 in the greater cause. Here the Christian Church 
 should have no difficulty, for it is of the essence 
 of her message that Christianity involves personal 
 allegiance to a leader. In so great a cause Christ 
 is an ideal leader, inspiring confidence by His 
 victories over sin and death : ' Be of good cheer, 
 I have overcome the world ' : evoking love by His 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 209 
 
 sorrows and His suffering : ' I, if I be lifted up, 
 will draw all Men unto me.' The appeal of the 
 wounded men who have suffered in the great 
 cause of England is irresistible, because it is the 
 appeal of the actual living men in blue visible 
 in our streets. The appeal of the leader in the 
 Eternal Cause is the appeal of one who was 
 wounded on the battlefield of Calvary and who, 
 though invisible, still lives and, in the suffer- 
 ings of His followers, suffers still. 
 
 But it is not enough that in the Captain of our 
 Salvation we have the ideal leader ; something of 
 the personal element must be supplied by those 
 whom He has commissioned to be officers in His 
 cause. In English parochial life the clergy are, 
 as a rule, leaders in organisation and in externals ; 
 but on deeper levels there is tragic truth in the 
 caricature which always depicts the parson as 
 the soul of conservative convention. We want 
 more of the spirit of enterprise and of leadership 
 in the things of the mind. Men look for it and 
 expect it. Army life has accustomed them, more 
 than ever before, to the ideas of leadership, and 
 it is to the clergy that in the coming years 
 we must look for a spirit of adventure which 
 
 o 
 
210 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 hitherto has been so lacking in their ranks. But 
 a leader must be one who inspires confidence, and 
 that means that he must be a man of thought 
 and of independence qualities which are rare in 
 isolation, and in conjunction still more difficult 
 to find. He must also be one who inspires love 
 and it is only of self-sacrifice that love is born. 
 
 Above all, if this sense of service to a cause and 
 to leaders, which is so potent a force in men's 
 characters to-day, is to be maintained and trans- 
 ferred to the greater cause, we have got to give 
 up entirely the mean habit of appealing to selfish 
 motives. Politicians win support by the promises 
 which they make. Heroes secure allegiance by 
 their appeal for service. Peddling plans may 
 be pushed forward by lavish rewards. Great 
 causes can be advanced only by great sacrifices. 
 Little men are won by bribes ; what is best in 
 the best of men is brought out only by a great 
 claim. Christianity professes to be the religion 
 of the Cross, of utter unselfishness. Assent to it 
 is asked, all too often, from motives of fear or 
 for the sake of an individual salvation in the 
 next world. For my own part I cannot see that 
 selfishness is any the less selfish because its 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 211 
 
 profits are transferred from the balance of this 
 world to the pay sheet of the world to come. 
 The Christian preacher seeking to win men for 
 His Master may by promises of the security of 
 heaven attract the adhesion of the timid. If he 
 wishes to enlist the strong and the adventurous 
 in the great cause there is no model that would 
 be more likely to be effective than the historic 
 appeal of Garibaldi to the men of Rome : 
 
 ' Fortune who betrays us to-day will smile on 
 us to-morrow. I am going out from Rome. 
 Let those who wish to continue the war against 
 the stranger come with me. I offer neither pay, 
 nor quarters, nor provisions. I offer hunger, 
 thirst, forced marches, battles, and death. Let 
 him who loves his country in his heart and not 
 with his lips only follow me/ 
 
 (3) It is when we come to face the third main 
 foundation of the soldier's character the dis- 
 cipline of the Army that we are faced with the 
 most difficult problem for the future. There 
 can, I think, be no doubt of the value that has 
 accrued to men through their temporary sub- 
 mission to a rigid discipline. At the same time 
 
212 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 probably every one who has had at all intimate 
 relations with our troops in France would agree 
 that discipline is as little liked as ever. It is 
 quite certain that men will not, as a result of 
 what they have learnt here in war, submit gladly 
 to some similar authority in peace time at home. 1 
 Quite apart from the inevitable temporary 
 reaction (a reaction which may well set towards 
 something beyond liberty), it is certain that the 
 engrained English desire for freedom has received 
 no set-back, nor even check. The soldier's ex- 
 perience of the sergeant and the corporal has 
 not increased his love for the inspector or the 
 supervisor. What he has learnt of the value of 
 discipline may possibly affect his upbringing of 
 his family. We shall perhaps hear less of 
 children of twelve years who are beyond their 
 parents' control. The soldier will visit on his son 
 to his son's great gain what he has himself 
 suffered from the sergeant, but, for himself, he 
 will never willingly accept an external authority 
 similar in kind to that of the military hierarchy. 
 There is no danger at all that we shall break 
 German militarism in war, only to succumb to it 
 
 1 See this point more fully discussed in the Fourth Paper. 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 213 
 
 ourselves in peace. Freedom is the very object 
 of the war, but to attain it we have had to sub- 
 mit to large curtailments of our liberty. Laws 
 have been passed by acclamation, which, a little 
 while ago, would have aroused the most pas- 
 sionate opposition. To the Christian the para- 
 dox will cause no surprise. It is the law of 
 sacrifice in working. It is the surrender of the 
 less for the sake of the greater, of the present for 
 the enduring. It is the loss of temporary freedom 
 for the sake of the larger liberty of the future. 
 But quite apart from its immediate necessity, 
 there is, of course, in discipline a real character 
 value. Many a ragged life has been stiffened ; 
 many a man and many a woman has become 
 both happier and better in these years of war. 
 How can this thing of value be preserved in the 
 coming years of peace ? It is certain that except 
 for immediate and temporary ends, men will not 
 again place themselves under the authority of 
 another, will not again surrender their freedom. 
 And yet, to reach his best, a man must submit 
 to discipline. How can discipline and freedom, 
 authority and liberty be harmonised ? Here 
 surely is a great opportunity for the Church of 
 
214 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 Christ : for Christ alone holds the key. The 
 Christian is free and royal, yet before all things 
 he is a man under authority. He is ' bought with 
 a price ' the slave of his Lord. S. James, who 
 is content at the opening of his Epistle to describe 
 himself as the bond-servant of Jesus Christ, 
 speaks more than once of a royal law, a law of 
 liberty. The Christian is a servant, yet free 
 and royal, because his service is voluntary and 
 offered in the spirit of the Royal Son of Man, 
 who Himself came not to be ministered unto 
 but to minister. He is under authority, but it is 
 the authority of Him in whose service is perfect 
 freedom, of Him ' cui servire regnare est.' The 
 Christian law is law, binding and authoritative, 
 but it is a royal law because its authority is 
 within the self and in the sphere of conscience. 
 It is law, strict and all embracing, but it is a law 
 of liberty, because it is accepted of a man's own 
 free choice, a choice which is truly free, not like 
 that of the voluntary soldier, once made and 
 irrevocable, but a choice daily and hourly 
 renewed. 
 
 Freedom and discipline are both necessary to 
 human greatness. Freedom we have for the 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 215 
 
 time being surrendered, but freedom we shall 
 inevitably regain. The love of it is too deeply 
 engrained in the English nature, the price that 
 has been paid for it is too heavy, for the sur- 
 render to be permanent. Discipline we have 
 for the time being attained, but with equal cer- 
 tainty we shall lose it again unless we reach it 
 in a new form, a form which is independent of 
 the drill sergeant or of any external authority, 
 a form with which only an inner and spiritual 
 religion can provide us. 1 
 
 (4) But what of the fellowship which plays 
 so large a part in Army life, and which is so 
 important among the foundation things of the 
 soldier's character ? How can this be main- 
 tained in the coming days of peace ? Must we 
 return to the selfish individualism of the past ? 
 Is there anything which will help us to carry over 
 
 1 I have spoken here of the discipline which is the result of 
 submission of the individual will, to the authority of Christ. 
 Further questions as to the discipline and authority of Christ's 
 Church are inevitably involved. This is not the type of book in 
 which to consider such questions, but obviously, if the Church of 
 England is to use her opportunity, she must make clearer than 
 she has yet done the extent and limits of her claim to authority^ 
 and equally, if men are to attain that real freedom which can 
 only be reached through discipline, they must be prepared to 
 acknowledge and obey some form of Church authority. 
 
216 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 into civil life the lessons that we have learnt here 
 in the Army ? What bond is there strong enough 
 to give that uniting force which the regiment 
 and the common cause have hitherto supplied ? 
 
 An answer to these questions is not easy, and 
 yet to find one is of vital importance, for, un- 
 doubtedly, this brotherhood, this comradeship 
 of the Army has been an immensely important 
 factor, and is responsible for much that is of the 
 utmost value. To live in fellowship one with 
 another is no easy thing. It is a high and 
 difficult art. Our education in it proceeds nor- 
 mally in ever expanding circles. First the baby 
 has to learn that its primordial instincts have 
 to be satisfied with some reference to the con- 
 venience of other people. Then the child has 
 to learn the give and take of family life. Then 
 comes the wider world of school. The fact that 
 the only child takes longer to settle down in 
 school surroundings is due, of course, to the fact 
 that he has not had the same opportunities of 
 learning the earlier lesson. But our education 
 in the art of fellowship becomes higher grade, 
 not only by reason of the increased numbers with 
 whom we are brought into contact, but also 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 217 
 
 when we come into relationship with people of 
 different upbringing, outlook, and environment. 
 The young man at the university may seem to 
 have a genius for friendship and fellowship, but 
 he has yet to learn the harder lesson of how to 
 live in fellowship with men of a different class 
 and of a wholly different standpoint. The young 
 workman may be a zealous member of his 
 friendly society and his union, but may yet be 
 very far from having mastered the harder task 
 of how to live in fellowship with men of the 
 employing class. Out here, in France, we have 
 been learning fellowship in a very large school 
 and among men of all types. Not only in the 
 ranks, but in officers' messes men of very widely 
 differing education and upbringing have been 
 brought much together. Not only have we in 
 the Army been learning, but at home people have 
 been brought nearer to each other than ever 
 before. Shall we have profited by our training ? 
 Are we ready for a yet more advanced lesson in 
 this noblest of all arts, the art of fellowship ? 
 We want something that is wider than the 
 comradeship of the Army, wider than the brother- 
 hood of the nation. Where is the catholic ideal 
 
218 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 to be found where is the dream of a universal 
 brotherhood to be achieved ? The Church of 
 Christ should supply us with what we need, but 
 it is just here (let us humbly confess it) that we 
 have most conspicuously failed. First there are 
 the divisions between the great branches of the 
 Church. Here in a little village in Picardy, 
 where I am writing these lines, an allied nation 
 has put everything at our disposal. Houses, 
 fields, barns, are ours for the asking. Yesterday 
 I had arranged in an open field for a service of 
 commemoration for those who had given their 
 lives in the recent fighting. Yesterday it rained, 
 but I could not have the use of the village church, 
 though it was unoccupied and its cure had gone 
 to the wars. That alone was denied to me. The 
 pity of it, the pity and the shame of it ! And 
 this is the society whose ambition is to unite the 
 world. But there is a lack of fellowship every- 
 where, not only between the various branches 
 of the One Society. Within our own English 
 Church, the various schools of thought quarrel 
 and protest, and even within the limits of single 
 congregations there are squabbles, cliques, and 
 lack of friendliness. Here is the supreme need 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 219 
 
 of repentance and reform. There is much talk 
 of alterations in our Prayer Book, of brightening 
 our services, and of Church reform : with such 
 proposals I am myself in entire sympathy, but 
 there is a very real danger lest our reforming zeal 
 should be directed overmuch to things such as 
 these, which are, after all, but superficial remedies. 
 What will all these things avail, if men see that 
 the Church of Christ shows to them less, and not 
 more of brotherhood than they can see in other 
 societies outside her borders ? Men will not 
 turn to the organised Church of Christ while, 
 in her life, she gives the lie to this essential 
 principle of her being. But while our new 
 grasp of the ideal of fellowship fills us churchmen 
 with bitterness and shame for the past and also 
 for the present, at the same time it gives us ground 
 for the highest hopes for the future. We want 
 fellowship, we see its value, we want a fellowship 
 strong enough to overcome the dividing barriers 
 of sex and class and nationality, and it is only in a 
 common allegiance to the Universal Christ, the 
 One Master of us all that we can hope to find it. 
 In Him alone is there any hope of a united world. 
 We want fellowship and to-day many of us are 
 
220 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 realising with a terrible intensity that we want 
 the widest possible fellowship, one which is not 
 bounded by the confines of this earth ; we want 
 fellowship with the hundreds who have gone on 
 in the fullness of their vigour. Here again, the 
 Church and the Church alone, can supply the 
 need. Her doctrines of the endless life and of 
 the Communion of Saints assure the bereaved 
 of our common membership in the one Eternal 
 Christ, their Master there as He is ours here. 
 
 The comradeship of the Army, that is one of 
 the greatest, perhaps the greatest force in the 
 formation of the character of our soldiers, and 
 again it is only in Christ that this new-found 
 sense of fellowship can be maintained and com- 
 pleted. Some few are realising this already, as, 
 for instance, the private soldier, who, in a letter 
 home wrote these words : ' Out here,' he wrote, 
 ' we have found God, for we have given up our 
 narrow self-centred lives, and found love for one 
 another, and God is Love/ It is along the lines 
 of fellowship that I am myself most hopeful 
 of religious growth. S. John's Epistle seems 
 charged with new meaning out here, and we are 
 understanding afresh the meaning of his teaching 
 
THE SOLDIER'S CHARACTER 221 
 
 that love towards God can only be shown by 
 love towards the brethren. The letter which I 
 have just quoted shows that some men are 
 seeing a definite religious value in the companion- 
 ship and brotherhood of their life in the Army. 
 Such a letter is perhaps not typical, and it conies 
 from a man more thoughtful than most but 
 there is much evidence of the desire to find re- 
 ligious expression for the wider fellowship. No 
 services are more willingly attended, none make 
 a deeper impression than the services of com- 
 memoration which nearly all chaplains try to 
 arrange at the first available moment after their 
 battalion or brigade has been in action. Even 
 those who would not ordinarily regard themselves 
 as religious and who do not usually attend volun- 
 tary services, seem then to feel the need of a 
 religious expression for the sentiments of regret, 
 affection, and respect which can find satisfaction 
 
 in no other outlet. 
 
 
 
 What then are the prospects for the future 
 religion of England ? If we are to judge by the 
 churchgoing and professed Christianity of the 
 Army, none but a blind and wilful optimist can 
 
222 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 deny that the prospects are gloomy in the 
 extreme. If, however, we shift our emphasis a 
 little, and try to leave behind any preconceived 
 ideas, we see in the manhood of England 1 a 
 character which we all admire, and which, in 
 spite of its gaps and faults, moves many of us 
 professing Christians to penitence and shame. 
 That character has grown from four foundations : 
 Belief in God ; the sense of serving a great 
 cause ; the discipline of the Army ; the brother- 
 hood of soldiering. The Christian, when he 
 realises that all these four foundation things find 
 their crown and completion only in Christ, will, 
 if he be a man of long sight, be both glad and 
 hopeful. 
 
 1 This book deals with soldiers, but I make no apology for 
 my generalisation, for the Army represents no longer a special 
 class, Tommy Atkins, but is John Bull in khaki. 
 
SEVENTEENTH PAPER 
 
 A CONFESSION AND A CLAIM 
 
 READERS of these papers (vn-xvn) will have 
 traced in them a strong recognition of the natural 
 goodness which war has produced or evolved in 
 our soldiers. My appreciation of the deep in- 
 articulate Christianity of the men with whom 
 I have come into contact fills me with hope for 
 the future. At the same time I cannot disguise 
 from myself that the formal acceptance of 
 Christianity has sometimes results which are 
 far from satisfactory in the present. It seems 
 sometimes to brush all the fresh bloom off the 
 natural goodness and to be followed by a blight 
 of self-righteousness and criticism. These two 
 facts taken together have at times led me to 
 grave doubts as to the value of our specific work 
 as chaplains. My conviction that the Church 
 ideal, the common allegiance to the One Master, 
 is the only solution of the world's divisions, has 
 
224 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 never for an instant wavered. The tragedy and 
 chaos of these years has daily intensified it. 
 The facts of experience have however at times 
 led to doubts as to the value of work with in- 
 dividuals, a haunting fear lest we should incur 
 the condemnation uttered by the Lord upon the 
 Pharisees. ' Ye compass sea and land to make 
 one proselyte, and when ye have found him ye 
 make him tenfold more a child of hell than your- 
 selves.' Such thoughts have led to a feeling of 
 bewilderment, a doubt as to whether in the 
 present state of the Church one was really doing 
 the Lord's work in seeking to bring men into her 
 fellowship. We want them to see the Christ, 
 too often I have felt that we only stand in their 
 light. That is my confession, and as soon as it 
 is made I would withdraw it, and point out the 
 fallacy which should all along have been obvious 
 enough. It is, of course, only by drawing the 
 best into the Church that we can hope for that 
 reform and revivication which, if it is to be lasting, 
 must come from within, and it is only by Christian 
 individuals that the ideal of the corporate whole 
 can be achieved. Our work then as chaplains 
 is threefold, to provide services and spiritual 
 
A CONFESSION AND A CLAIM 225 
 
 ministrations for those who are already faithful 
 sons of the Church, to seek to bring others into 
 the great Society, and to help men in their 
 struggles against vice and temptation. It is in 
 this last that the power of definite, articulate 
 churchmanship is most evident. Young men, 
 living an unnatural life, under war conditions, 
 have one or two temptations, against which the 
 struggle is extraordinarily difficult. I do not 
 say that every definite churchman stands upright, 
 still less that every inarticulate Christian falls, 
 but I am quite sure that this is just one of the 
 things in which definite profession of allegiance 
 to Christ gives a strength which a vague in- 
 articulate Christianity is powerless to provide. 
 
 The world is in travail. The Church does not 
 stand outside critical and serene. The Church 
 is in the world and suffers with the world. She 
 suffers ; and to suffer is to learn. Most cer- 
 tainly those of her officers who have served as 
 chaplains are humbler men than they were three 
 years ago. We have seen not only our own 
 individual weaknesses and failures, but we see 
 also that the Church, as she exists to-day, does 
 not yet meet the needs of men. 
 
 p 
 
226 PAPERS FROM PICARDY 
 
 We are humbled, but also we are hopeful. 
 There has been, in these years of war, an 
 enormous shifting of values. We have come to 
 see that the things that matter are not comfort, 
 pleasure, money, or success, but courage, service, 
 sacrifice, and enterprise. We are much nearer 
 than we were to the system of values which Christ 
 taught. The gains are real, therefore we are 
 hopeful ; but they need securing, therefore we are 
 anxious. They will not consolidate themselves. 
 
 Because the world is in ruins, because all else 
 but Christ has failed, we are confident that the 
 society which has in her the spirit of the Christ 
 must succeed. Christ is the Saviour of the 
 world, not merely of the individual ; before His 
 Church, therefore, lies the great opportunity of 
 the coming years, but she needs men through 
 whom to seize it. She needs men for all branches 
 of her work, but before all things just now she 
 needs men, and the right men, as her ordained 
 officers. She needs the sort of men who have 
 shown, in this war, the gift of leadership the 
 successful young company commander and 
 platoon leader. These are the men we want. 
 They do not come in any numbers. Why ? In 
 
A CONFESSION AND A CLAIM 227 
 
 part, perhaps, because the career of an English 
 parson does not seem to offer them the oppor- 
 tunities of a man's life, or of activities worthy 
 of their best energies. The round of parochial 
 business does not attract them. It does not 
 seem worth while. Perhaps it is not. But the 
 future is tremendously worth while. 
 
 When the Apostles went out into the world 
 to gather men into the fellowship, they were 
 not thinking only of the handful of men and 
 women in Jerusalem then ; they were thinking 
 of the world-wide catholic fellowship that was 
 to be. When the makers of modern Italy called 
 men to the most heroic enterprise in history, they 
 were not thinking of the backward, broken, dis- 
 membered states that then were Italy but of the 
 freed, united, triumphant Italy of their dreams. 
 
 So we, when we call for men to serve the 
 Church to-day, we are not thinking of the 
 Church of England as we have known it in the 
 past, we are not thinking of her often trumpery 
 and trifling activities in the present ; but of the 
 glorious opportunity that lies before her of doing 
 what she alone can do for the refashioning of a 
 broken, ruined world. A man's work. 
 

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