v

A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

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MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

A PRIVATE
IN THE GUARDS

BY

STEPHEN GRAHAM

AUTHOR or "THE OJUEST OF THE FACE," ETC.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1919

;

o

COPYRIGHT

Copyright in America by the Macmillan Company

NOTE

THE Joy-Dance of the children at Marchiennes
appeared in the Saturday Westminster Gazette ; the
account of how we followed the pipers into Germany
was written in the Times. Part oj~ Little Sparta
was published in the Spectator. The major part
of the opening notes on Discipline appeared in the
English Review, and of the finale on Esprit de
Corps in the Red Triangle. To the Editors of these
journals the author desires to express his thanks
for their accustomed courtesy and kindness.

I thank also H. B. C. and W. E. ana A. C.
who read the proof s^ also all comrades who in one
way or another helped me to write the story.

STEPHEN GRAHAM.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. NOTES ON DISCIPLINE. i

II. LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS . . .22

III. SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN . . .82

IV. ESPRIT DE CORPS . . . .110
V. To THE FRONT . . .127

VI. THE SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION . . 149

VII. WAYS OF THINKING AND TALKING . . 181

VIII. FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD . . . 198

IX. WAR THE BRUTALISER . . .212

X. BRINGING BACK THE BODY OF MR. B . 223

XI. As TOUCHING THE DEAD . . . 238

XII. PADRES AND OFFICERS . . . 250

XIII. THE GREAT ADVANCE . . . 259

XIV. THE MARCH TO THE RHINE . . 292
XV. THE FINEST THING IN THE ARMY . . 343

INDEX . . . . . . 351

Vll

NOTES ON DISCIPLINE

THE sterner the discipline the better the soldier,
the better the army. This is not a matter of
debate at this point, for it is a well-established
military principle and all nations act on it. A
strong discipline is the foundation of heroic
exploits in the field. In time of necessity, when
a thousand men must fight to the last though
all be wounded or killed, in order that a much
larger number may march into safety, it is only
a strongly disciplined body that will not accept
prematurely the chance to surrender. When
small parties of men get cut off from the main
body or lose themselves in the enemy's lines
they can nearly always injure or kill a few of the
enemy and sometimes many before they them-
selves are put out of action. It is only men who
have been taught never to entertain the thought
of surrender who will do this. Poorly trained
troops are always ready to " hands up." When
in general action of any kind the front-line troops
frequently find themselves in face of what seems
inevitable death, and the impulse may come to
stampede and run for it, causing endless confusion

2 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i

in the rear and giving the battle to the enemy.
But sternly disciplined troops know that if they
run from the face of the enemy they will be shot
down from behind, and indeed they would them-
selves be ready to shoot down inferior troops
stampeding through their lines. They do not
entertain the hope of escape, and consequently
their minds are at rest — as the mind of the
machine - gunner voluntarily chained to his
machine may be said to be at rest. The avenue
to the rear is absolutely closed up in the mind.
Such equanimity is produced by discipline. Stern
discipline can manufacture collective heroism.

Modern warfare is predominantly one of
machines. The human element on the positive
side is valuable and perhaps indispensable for
victory, but the human element on the negative
side is dangerous and absolutely out of place.
In fact, for the private soldier in action the one
thing needful is obedience. Imagination, thought,
fear, love, and even hate are out of place, and
through stern discipline these can be excluded.
He needs to be at least as dependable as the
machines. The whole army has to work like
a machine, and the weakest bit in it will be the
first to give way. Discipline is the necessary
hardening and making dependable. The best
troops, however, have a little bit of energy and
movement over for when the machines go wrong.

A human being is naturally undisciplined.
In fact, some animals have much more discipline
in them and more obvious capabilities for dis-
cipline than a man. Because a man has thought

i NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 3

and conscience but they have not. Personal
conscience is one of the hardest things to modify
or eliminate in any training. And yet it may
be one of the most dangerous things that can
be left. For it may easily turn a man from
obedience to his superior officer at a critical
moment. It may suggest pity for a wounded
enemy or would-be-enemy prisoner with whom
the army dare not encumber itself. It may
cause the hand to waver at the moment it should
strike without hesitation. In short, it may
whisper in the soldier's ear the dreadful monition,
"Thou shalt not kill." It may give him sleepless
nights and unfit him for duty when, if he had
the simple army conscience, which is founded on
implicit obedience, he might leave all responsi-
bility on the shoulders of his superior officers
and sleep like a child and awake refreshed — to
kill and fear not.

Once a Taffy was troubled by his conscience.
The sergeant said, i:< Don't you worry, I'll go
to hell for it. You will be found innocent on
the Day of Judgment." But the sergeant re-
ceived .his orders from the platoon commander,
so he should also stand white before the Throne
and the young officer be to blame. The platoon
commander, however, had it from the captain
of the company, the captain from the C.O. of
the battalion, he from his brigadier, the brigadier-
general from ' a major-general commanding a
division, he in turn from the army corps com-
mander, and he from the Commander-in-Chief.
So if there is sin, it is the Commander-in-Chief

4 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i

who should go to the fire for it, if not otherwise
saved by his Redeemer.

But the Welshman, who was one of those who
pursue Truth ungraciously, found that ultimate
responsibility did not lie with the Army but with
the Prime Minister, who was in turn responsible
to Parliament, and Parliament was responsible
to the whole people of Great Britain. That
brought it back to the unwilling Welshman, and he
said, " You see, I should go to hell for it after all."

I am afraid it is rather a matter for a Socrates
or a Plato to decide.

It is a palpable fact, however, that an army
not founded on the responsibility of some one
else would fare disastrously in the field and
would disperse as did the Russian Army at the
Revolution. And if the army fared thus, the
nation might pass into bondage.

But the national will is toward victory, and
no one wishes to be a 'slave. Hence the un-
questioned sway of discipline in time of war.

The enforcement of this discipline, however,
is often more terrible than the ordeal by battle
itself. After what a man goes through when
he is properly trained he will suffer compara-
tively little in the face of the foe. Or, to put it
in another way — the task of the N.C.O. or officer
at the front in handling well-disciplined men is
child's play compared with the task of breaking
them in from civilised happiness and culture.

It has always to be borne in mind that the
drill-sergeant is training men, not so much to drill
correctly and smartly in the end of ends as to go

i NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 5

unflinchingly to death or murder in war, and for
that purpose he has not only to train the muscles
but to break or bend the intelligence. In a great
war where^ every class of educated or uneducated
man is called up it is a Herculean task.

The easiest to train are no doubt the youngest,
those nearest to school-life, those accustomed to
obedience in the family, in the workshop and
factory. It is harder to discipline the developed
working-man who has " rights " and grievances,
who resorts to Trade Unions, and thinks his
sorrows aired in John Bull can bring about a
revolution. Clerks are on the whole a little
more difficult to handle, though they are inclined
to give in sooner than the working-man. Middle-
aged men of any class need a hard battering to
reduce their pride in self, their sense of being
older. Professional men of any age are harder
still, and I suppose musicians, artists, poets are
often hardest of all and belong to a class of
impossibles. A squad of the recruits of any
regiment at any time in the war presented an
extraordinary variety of types, professions, ages.

But if the comment may sometimes arise,
" How unjust and disgusting that a man of
refinement or of letters or of acknowledged
' position ' should be subjected to such verbal
brutality and insult as I have seen," it must be
remembered that it can all be justified on the
higher ground of discipline. All manner of
substantial men, the most able, proud, well-
known, respected in our common life and culture
of England, have been reduced to type for the

6 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i

use of the machine. If they had not been thus
reduced, where would England be to-day ?

The only legitimate objection that can be
raised is that very often the most intelligent were
bludgeoned down to be war-slaves whereas the
most stupid got through to places of authority.
That is true, but it raises another question.

The general assumption is that a large in-
telligence is not necessary in war. A limited
intelligence is more useful. No one may go
far in original warfare except an army chief.
Obedience rules.

The war, of course, caught Britain unawares.
A fighting force had to be provided at once.
But the population had not been sorted out, and
the Government did not know the resources
of quality which it had. It had only time for
quantity. It would be agreed that the army
could not afford to " entertain strangers "' on
the assumption that they might be angels un-
awares. So once you were in the army it has
not mattered what you were in civil life, a green
youth or a father of ten, the man with the muck-
cart or a professor, you were (and are) (if not
now incapacitated) a man, an effective, a bayonet.

As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves are clept
All by the name of dogs : the valued file
Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle
The house-keeper, the hunter, — every one
According to the gift which bounteous nature
Hath in him closed ; whereby he does receive
Particular addition, from the bill
That writes them all alike : and so of men.

i NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 7

The valued file can only come into use again
with Peace. Then the " bayonets " will turn
into poets, ploughmen, philosophers, butlers,
gamekeepers, and the rest.

There must at least be fifty occasions in our
war in which the conduct of the Light Brigade
has been equalled. But the extra glory remains
with the Light Brigade because the army of
those days was less disciplined and more individual
than the army of to-day. The soldier knew
" some one had blundered." But now a charge
of the Light Brigade is all in the day's work, and
it doesn't matter whether some one has blundered
or no.

In this war men have craved wounds to get
release, and have jumped for death because it
was better than life — life under the new discipline.
Rage has accumulated that could never be ex-
pressed except in ferocity against the enemy.
And such habits of patience under suffering have
been formed as could not be exhausted. And
whenever one more rash and intemperate than
the rest has rebelled against a superior officer,
the wiser and more experienced have said to him,
" Don't be a fool, if you go against the army
the army will break you."

Or another has said, " Grouse1 about it. Have
a good grouse and you'll feel better for it."
For grousing harms no one but your own spiritual

1 Grouse, a vulgar word for a vulgar thing — to let oneself be
impotently angry.

8 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i

self. It is damp anger and will never ignite
to action, never flame out in mutiny. It is what
all slaves do— grouse together in the gloaming
and rage impotently against their masters. Grous-
ing is not only: compatible with discipline, but
is an inevitable accompaniment of it, and is
recognised as harmless. Even when a private
talks of shooting his own sergeant or company
officer in the next melee if he has a chance — it is
nonsense, for he will never do it. Instead he
will fight the enemy more bitterly and put all
his humiliation and resentment into his bayonet
and his bullets. Even in extremity, when his.
comrades are perishing all around him and . he
stands in the gap with Mieroical aspect, he will
have a strange satisfaction and peace of heart
in blazing away at the foe, at having his face
to^him and being ^n the action of killing him.
Then the wide circling arm of the machine-gun
sweeps round and he is brought down to earth
— one more victim sacrificed upon the European
altar.

I do not know why the various occasions on
which battalions have fought till there were
merely a few score survivors have not been pro-
perly chronicled, but have been veiled in such
phrases as " magnificent conduct of the Stafford-
shires/' " grim determination of the Cheshires,"
" gallant fighting of the London Scottish." It is
a laconic way of telling you that certain platoons
or companies fought shoulder to shoulder till
the last man dropped and would not give in, or
that they were shelled to nothingness, or getting

i NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 9

over the top they went forward till they all
withered away under machine-gun fire, or that
detail after detail of bombers passed up the com-
munication trench treading on the bodies of
those who had gone before. More V.C.'s have
gone to the dead than to the living, have they
not ? Though indeed it is not a fitting token
for the dead — the dead have the Cross of their
Redemption. But it is perhaps amusing to the
gods " who smile in secret " when, a fortnight
after some exploit, a field-marshal or divisional-
general comes down to a battalion to thank it
/or its gallant conduct and fancies for a moment,
perchance, that he is looking at the men who did
the deed of valour, and not at a large draft that
has just been brought up from England and the
base to fill the gap. He should ask the services
of the chaplain and make his congratulations
in the graveyard, or go to the hospitals and make
them there.

Still, he means well, and there is no military
grievance against him. The war is to be carried
on by the living and the whole, and in congratu-
lating the live battalion he inculcates in a most
powerful way the tradition of the regiment.
After all, if half the men have not yet suffered
they assuredly will soon, and they will deserve
congratulation in due course. Moreover, it be-
comes easier to do your bit when you realise
you are not the first to do it. The more men
die the easier it becomes to die. Death becomes
cheaper and cheaper. It becomes a matter of
the everyday.

io A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i

Still the official class may not soon be forgiven
for withholding the desperate details of scores
of glorious passages of arms. It is not enough
to thank regiments publicly or mention them
unless the public can be made to realise that a
fine restraint prevents us from making solemn
and national every occasion of great devotion
to duty. The common feeling must be that —
add together the heroic occasions of all our
historic wars, Spanish Succession, Seven Years,
Peninsular, Napoleonic, Crimean, and they would
not exceed in number those of this war of 1914-
1918. And in the achievement hundreds of
thousands of anonymous heroes, poor obedient
soldiers, have perished. Dead ere their prime —

Without the meed of some melodious tear.

I do not know whether the story will ever be
told or if it will ever be realised. " A thing of
beauty is a joy for ever, its loveliness can never
pass away." But the deed of beauty ? The
candle which once lit can never be put out ?
Have the candles ever been lit ? Are not an
infinite series of heroic actions and pathetic if
noble human sacrifices swallowed up in the
darkness of Time, still-born in oblivion ? The
night after night of holding the line, the stand-
ing fast against machine-gunnery, against the
methodically destructive fire of the guns, against
the suffocating streams of poison gas, the men
entangled in the wire and killed as in a trap,
the men drowned in the mud, the countless
series of occasions when a few stood together

i NOTES ON DISCIPLINE n

heroically against terrible odds and were mown
down, but not defeated, by the machinery of
destruction.

The frustrate red blaze of artillery over the
pale faces of humanity night after night in the
despicable mud-beds of the trenches ; the bright
eyes of live soldiers, the sodden corpses of dead
soldiers, the stars in the remote heavens, the
deathless thoughts and impulses in heart and
mind. In the living poem of man's life the
sacrifice of our men and their triumph swells
as an eternal chorus — even though we cannot
hear it.

It was decided in 1917 that after the war
a monument would be raised on every battle-field
in France and Flanders, graven with the names
of the dead, and that underneath the names
should be written some fitting motto. It was
regarded as essential that the motto should be
the same on all the monuments, but a suitable
motto had not been found. A committee was
at work deliberating on the details and trying to
decide what the motto should be. And one
evening in the New Year, shortly after I had
come up to London from that " Little Sparta "
where I was trained, I met at a friend's house
other friends and we discussed this fascinating
and (I think) sacred choice. Certain celebrated
men had made suggestions — so one who was
on the committee said — and he gave us a list of
mottoes, such as :

12 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i

They died for Freedom,
and

What I gave I have,

and

My utmost for the Highest,

and Kipling's happy words :

Who stands if Freedom fall ?
Who dies if England live ?

:< Go tell to Sparta " was mentioned, and in put-
ting the choice to the company we were set
thinking about the war and the soldier in a
special way. It touched each man's heart and
made him responsive to the great tragedy in
France. Some of the suggestions might seem
prosaic and ordinary, set down coldly in print,
but with the thoughts of the heart softening and
spiritualising them as they were said, each had
a poetry of its own. The truest note of the even-
ing seemed to me to be in words suggested by
one of the company : " By their sacrifice we
live " or in " They died that we might live" and
I should have liked that to stand. The one
that had most favour was : " My utmost for the
Highest," a celestial motto for the living, but
perhaps too striving for those who now

sleep, sweetly sleep,
Whilst the days and the years roll by3

One thought that seemed to weigh was that
the motto would be equally acceptable to Moham-
medans and to Christians alike, and that " By
their sacrifice we live " was too Christian an idea.
And being fresh from Little Sparta barracks I

i NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 13

thought to myself : If the mystical Christian
idea of sacrifice is not available, why not the
Spartan splendour of discipline, and

Tell to Sparta thou that passest by,
That here obedient to her laws we lie.

Since then a motto has been chosen — the one
found by Kipling in Ecclesiasticus :

Their Name liveth for evermore,

which for us means that their fame liveth for
ever, their good name liveth for ever, and man-
kind will be eternally grateful to those who died
to rid us of tyranny and war. Perhaps what the
soldiers have done is destined to be more recog-
nised as years go on. As it is, in the war we have
thought too lightly of our men in their wounds
and their death. There has been too little
sense of gratitude to the man who has laid down
his life on the altar. Because it was his duty
he was doing, because we knew him disciplined
to go to it unflinching, we have involuntarily
discounted his sacrifice. At -home munition-
workers and civilians of all kinds lived in comfort
and in money and bought War Loan stock and
felt they also were " doing their bit," as if there
were any similarity between their lives and those
of the men at the front. The soldier also was
doing his duty. The idea of duty rather than of
sacrifice has prevailed — something due paid rather
than of something sacred made. And yet every
man who died on these fields was offered up on
the altar for Europe's sins.

i4 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i

If, however, officialdom which has controlled
the Press and other channels of public expression
be reproached later on that not enough was
made of the many marvellous occasions of the
war when our boys stood their ground and
perished, the answer will allow us to imply that
the said boys died in the execution of their duty.
Officialdom in its own carefully locked-up mind
will reflect that the deaths were sad, but that
the men, being under most rigorous discipline,
had no option of facing the enemy or fleeing,
and that consequently somewhat less honour is
due to them. It is not worth while sending for
the poet laureate to give him special details.
He can pick up an idea now and then in the
articles in the Press. Moreover, the actual facts
might cause criticism of military direction and of
the Government. There political discipline sets
in, and that is as binding as the military sort.

There is something quite sound about the
thought. Discipline does discount the merit of
certain actions. When it would be so damnable
to disobey, obedience becomes matter-of-fact.
But there is one thing it does not discount, and
that is the sufferings. Though we may not over-
praise those who were marshalled to die for us,
we ought to remember what they have suffered.

The later armies have fought as well as the
earlier ones. Kitchener's Army was as firm as
the " Peace-time Army," the Conscripts were as
firm as either, and in the later stages when so
many men of poor health and diverse infirmities
were sent to the firing-line, they stood their

i NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 15

ground as well as any others. Some fell sick
more quickly and were sent back as unfit, but
as long as they remained in the line, no matter
how bad they felt, they kept their faces to the
foe and made him pay for any advance. In
the newspaper which circulates most at the front
we read, about the middle of April 1918 : "War
is like the service of the Tenebrae, in which one
by one the lights are extinguished. Class after
class, generation after generation is receiving its
summons to the battle-field and passing that the
light of freedom may still burn strong." This is
truer than a phrase in the same paper a week
later, in which it refers to France as " a tilting-
ground of generous youth." In the fourth year
of the war it is the last and least soldier-like
classes who are coming in, the older, the more
frail, the men well established in commerce or
in industrialism, the men who could not be
spared. It might have been thought that these
levies would make indifferent troops. It has
often been said of the Germans that their later
recruits were of such a miserable class that they
were little good in the fighting-line. Perhaps
our journalists have been misled, and the worst
class of Germans were almost as useful to the
German Army as the best. So also with us. All
other deficiencies can be made up by discipline.
And never in history have such disciplined armies
fought one another. It must have been the
Germans who discovered the new scientific
military discipline, and all Europe has had to
copy her.

1 6 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i

It is not to say that all units of the armies have
exhibited a model behaviour under all circum-
stances, least of all in the German Army, where
often something seems to have gone wrong with
scientific discipline when pushed too far. Our
British Army has been very mixed. There is a
division which is composed of the five most
Spartan regiments of the British Army, and these
have exhibited an iron discipline, one which
Germany herself would have coldly appraised
at its true worth. But, on the other hand, we
have put splendid troops into the field, such as
the first contingent of the Canadians and^'the
Australians, undisciplined and individualistic,
destined at first to be wrecked in the conflict
and to cause trouble until taken in hand. The
latter in course of time came to the level of the
very best the British Army system could produce,
and many of their units could" be compared with
our Spartans for tenacity and obedience. Dis-
cipline had been introduced. And although the
process of being disciplined is hard — hard to
enforce and hard to undergo — it is difficult to
understand why the discipline and training of
our Spartan division (six 1 months instead 'of
three) were not applied to the whole British
Army — since we were fighting ^Germany with
Germany's own weapons, and not turning the
other cheek or doing anything " romantic."
Indeed if all had been trained like the Guards, it
seems probable the German Army would have
been defeated in the field earlier and with greater
military calamity than in November 1918.

i NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 17

It was a platitude of the fighting period that
discipline would win the war, as it is now a
platitude that discipline has won it. Germany
went into battle with Prussian discipline and
plenty of brains but without a cause, and without
the esprit de corps which comes of a cordial
understanding between officer and man. Britain
went in with a splendid cause, not over much
brain, a fair discipline, and a good deal of the
esprit de corps which comes from officers and
men understanding one another. The German
discipline failed. Our splendid cause won.

Our discipline even at its worst or best, let
us say at its harshest, has been upheld by the
sense of a true moral cause, and it has been tem-
pered by something which our officers brought
into the army, something which the German
officers were not allowed to bring, or did not
possess to bring. Their system was based ex-
clusively on fear. The men hated their officers^
but were afraid of them. They dared not disobey
whatever they were asked to do, however
dangerous.

Our men are different in this way. They
admire their officers, and more readily sacrifice
their own lives seeing their leaders sacrifice theirs.

German intensified discipline made it possible
for them to launch attacks led by the men them-
selves whilst the officers remained in comparative
safety behind. In the large attack of March
1918 it supported that fine flower of the system, *
the advance parties of wonderful wire-cutters
absolutely foredoomed to destruction. And in

c

1 8 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i

the grand retreat of the armies in October and
November of the same year it could still provide
those machine-gunners who won the admiration
even of their enemies. In our attacks, however,
the officers have led the men, and though losses
in personnel have been disproportionately great,
the troops thus led have generally behaved better
than the Germans. There has been less sur-
render. Parties have fought stubbornly after
they have been surrounded and when there was
no chance of escape. But the Germans obtained
a name for themselves by shouting out Kamerad,
Kamerad, and wishing to surrender the moment
they were cut off or felt safe from the disciplinary
shots from behind.

In our army undoubtedly men who broke
and ran might expect to be shot down by those
in reserve, and a party trying to arrange a sur-
render might be subjected to machine-gun fire.
We shoot our cowards at dawn, we shoot also
sentries found asleep at their posts, we make
an example and give the death penalty to officers
or men making mistakes which have led to
disaster. The soldier is completely at the mercy
of the army, and even though originally a
volunteer he has no appeal against any punish-
ment. Punishment and fear are his background.

But he contrives to forget that negative side
of his life, though always aware of it in an habitual
sense, and he develops something on the positive
side — a patient sense of sacrifice and an under-
standing that the nation as a whole is fighting.
He forgets all the insults and pettinesses of army

i NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 19

life, and fights, as one who is in duty bound to
fight, for family, home, ideals.

This, I feel, is achieved by the leadership
and kindness of our officers as* a whole. Our
officers are brave men ; from a ranker's point of
view they are not themselves particularly dis-
ciplined. Their discipline is of a different type
from that of the men and refers to higher things.
For leadership personality is required, and that
the system leaves to the officer. He is a " sports-
man," a " good sort," he's " the finest man ever
was in this regiment " — these are common ever-
repeated remarks about officers. Not that the
officers are really near the men : a great gulf
divides them socially, and must do so, but the
men would not follow so well an officer who was
too free with them.

|Then the officer, being presumably rich and
of the class of masters, is seen to suffer as much
and more on the field of battle, and Tommy
realises that we are all in it and have only devised
the rules of discipline for the greatest good of all.

|By the way, it is often said that the N.C.O.'s
run the army, and that the officers might be
dispensed with, or at least more promotions be
made from the one class to the other. But that
is a fallacy. We all know that " the backbone
of the army is the non-commissioned man."
But those who have been through the mill of
the army know that discipline and esprit de corps
and justice depend more on the character of the
officers ;,:than on anything else. The officers
demand discipline, the N.C.O.'s enforce it.

20 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i

N.C.O.'s are much more frequently hated than
are officers. They understand how to bully
and drive and terrify and even batter soldiers
into shape, but they seldom possess the per-
sonality and character through which discipline
can be perfected. There is a point where the
deadliness of sergeants must cease and the fineness
of the calm officer comes in, enabling the men
to go into battle as camarades de guerre ', follow-
ing a brave leader, and not merely as military
slaves.

If we had all understood Christianity as
Tolstoy understood it, Germany would have
won. If we had all been merely brave and gone
out to fight moved by the Spirit we should prob-
ably have lost. These facts we knew, and
although the seeming defeat of the ideal might
have been more glorious and even more service-
able to humanity as a whole than the prolonged
conflict, we chose to fight Germany in Germany's
way. We imitated her machines, including the
greatest of all, namely, the man-machine, whose
principle is discipline. Perhaps in our way we
have improved that machine and shown where
its defects lie. The curious discovery has been
made by both sides that men of all ages, classes,
temperaments, and states of health can be fitted
into it, and the weakest individuals will often
fight the best. Now that the war is over, how-
ever, we must not forget that for many the
greatest ordeal was not the field of battle but the
field of training, where men, infinitely diverse
in character, originality, and expression, were

i NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 21

standardised to become interchangeable parts in
the fighting machine.

What our men of all ages, professions, and
temperaments had to go through to become
soldiers ! And then how stern and choiceless
the road to victory and death !

II

LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS

" To the Asylum and Barracks " says a finger-
post pointing upward to Little Sparta, and you
climb the hill to the place where you must serve
as a novice in soldiering. The lunatic asylum
and the barracks stand side by side, and the
ineffable sergeant-instrtfctor when he has you in
his care is bound to inquire whether by chance
you have climbed over the wall.

As you climb the steep hill you inevitably
wonder what sort of gruelling you will be put
through in the famous soldier factory. It has
a fame which is somewhat thrilling, the severest
training-ground in England, the place where
the most rigorous discipline in Europe is main-
tained. Not even Prussian Guards had a more
terrible time in the making. " If you go to
Little Sparta it's kill or cure." " If you don't
break down during the training you've got a
remarkably fine constitution." " If you get
through your course at Little Sparta you can
get through anything."

There is a poor but large village without
village life, long lines of poor cottages and poky,

22

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 23

mysterious shops ; there are sweet-stuff shops,
tea-shops, cobblers' shops, diminutive drapers,
and crowded little grocers, where the soldiers
buy macaroni boxes to make their packs square ;
there is the Asylum tavern, there is a row of
labourers' cottages with lodgings for men who
live out, and just outside the gates the little
establishment where a man and his wife make
a living by selling the soldiers sausage and mashed.
At night there is ever the characteristic tramp
of guardsmen's feet, the steady beat of army
boots as twos and threes stamp past in the style
learned upon the barrack square.

Civilians have a garishly emaciated look beside
the robust recruits, there is a curious humility
about their ways, a gentleness, a hesitancy. But
even the recruit of a week has a self-assurance
and resoluteness which make one feel that khaki
has the future with it, and that the men in black
belong to an order which is passing away. Fallaci-
ous thought !

Little Sparta is, however, the one first-class
institution of this place. In the midst of a sort
of down-at-heel outer Suburbia it is thorough,
and knows it. A fine sentry is pacing to and
fro at the gate. A picquet, in voluminous great-
coat and freshly ^khakied belt, is standing to
attention with cane in hand waiting to be sent on
a message that may break the tedium of his two-
hour immobility. There stands the gloomy
guard-house, with its cellsjfor misdemeanants.
Beyond that, but just inside the gates, is the abor-
tive-looking church, which looks as if religion

24 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

had with difficulty been squeezed in ; after the
church is the barrack square, where pandemonium
reigns, and all manner of tiny groups of recruits
are marching and counter-marching, and yelling
numbers at the top of their voices ; beyond the
square stand the blocks of the barrack buildings,
fine and stern and gloomy, high and many-
windowed.

" What a lot of queer fellows come in at this
gate," says a Bill Brown to a Taffy as I enter
the barracks in civilian attire on the day of
enlistment. " Yes, they come in queer, but they
all pass out the same in three months," says the
Welshman.

I realise that I have entered the soldier factory
in which you go in at one end civilian and pass
out eventually at the other soldier of the King.
And this was a very special type of factory, with
a very special type of product. The soldiers
made here were supposed to be much more
deadly to the enemy than those made at any
other depot. However, if you were in any way
developed or individualised as a civilian it was
a stiff process, being wrought into shape and
standardised to type.

I suppose the British nation coming to the
barrack-gates did exhibit an extraordinary diver-
sity, a divergency from type that in the long
run must have somewhat disgusted the sergeant-
instructors, and they must have been pretty well
" fed up " with the British people before they
had bsen long at their task. I was such an un-
disciplined person that I felt I owed the army

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 25

some apology for myself. Still, the fact of
enlistment is the surrender of an individual to
the army ; the individual has surrendered and
the army has to make the best of him. He has
offered his body and soul and will and mind as
so much raw material — the responsibility is not
his, however much he may be sworn at in days
to come.

An immense gulf seems to separate the man
who wrote from the man who shoulders the rifle.
It is as if he had died, as if I who write had once
been he and died, and then been born again as
a soldier. When for the first time after many
months I took up the pen again and tried to write,
I felt that even my hands had changed. For at
Little Sparta you never touch the rifle with your
hand in any action of the drill but you strike it.
The squad stands with blood streaming from
fingers and palms, and the instructor yells for
" noise, more noise — ye're afraid of hitting it."
So with rough swollen hands I sit now and try
to think and write as of yore, whilst my mind in
a gloomy mood seems waiting rather for orders.

My last day in civilian life was calm. I
believed that the suppression of my thought
in a material way would cause it to shine forth
more strongly by and by. What I dreaded most
was the taking away of the marks of individuality.
For I knew well that the army hated all dis-
tinguishing marks except its own stripes and
stars and crowns and patches, and that the general

26 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

appearance of the ordinary civilian was always
somewhat more or less of an offence to a good
soldier. I used to think that in the drab, dull
way of the modern tailor every one was really
in uniform even in peace-time — the bowler hat,
the dark clothes, the stick, the newspaper in
hand, this was the livery of the commercial
service, and I rebelled. I wore my distinguishing
marks. However, it soon became clear that the
army was the straiter sect. When I came to
Little Sparta the whole army seemed to glare
at me, as uniformity stares at diversity and
discipline at freedom.

I was a day in civilian attire, and then the
process set in : change of clothes, of boots, hair
off, buttons polished. The " trained sweat " l
who cut my hair said it seemed like murder to
him, but I'd be hanged if the sergeant-major
saw how long it was. I scrubbed floors and
tables, blackleaded the grates, shined the ever-
lasting ration-tins. I went out with the scaveng-
ing cart and picked up leaves and paper ; I was
on cook-house fatigue, sergeants'-mess fatigue,
washed out the floors of the canteens, on sewage
fatigue, I with a scoop ten feet long, a com-
panion, also a new recruit, withffa large muck-
holder. And, " Daddy," said he facetiously,
" what did you do in the Great War ? "

A new squad was in formation, and we were
set all manner of fatigues. In the midst of
these the reality of civilian life seemed to be

1 Trained sweat, slang name for the barrack-room old soldier who
trains raw recruits in " cleanliness."

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 27

slipping back and receding like shifting sands
under the feet. There were twenty or thirty of
us, and we none of us felt sure of ourselves as
soldiers, and I had misgivings that I should never
correspond to type. Worse doubts were to
come when appearing on parade-ground in the
new squad to drill. Mere change of dress does
not change a man. Originality and individual
expression shone through my uniform, and was
at odds with it, so that I looked as if I had just
put on a friend's uniform or exchanged clothes
with him for a joke. Several others in the same
squad were more or less in the same case as I.
But I think that for the first week no one came
to our squad to drill it or inspect it but his eyes
lighted on me particularly, and he asked with
some querulousness, " Who is that man ? "
Temporary lance-corporals seemed to have power
of life and death over us, and thought out ever
more dreadful oaths and vulgar epithets as we
came daily under their notice.

An oldish fellow, who had broken down
under the severe training, and was now held,
against all conscience, as an employed man, a
tailor, instead of being returned to his family
in Perth, warned several of us not to take what
was said to us to heart. " The great process of
bullying and intimidation has set in," said he.
' They try and break you at the beginning and
take all your pride out of you. But it'll be better
later on. Never answer any of them back or
get angry. It's not worth it."

Another man also gave us excellent advice.

28 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

' Never catch the sergeant's eye," said he.
" The sergeants hate being looked at."

The officers had very little to do with us in
the initial stages of training. A very great
personage to us was the brigade sergeant-major,
with the royal arms embroidered on his sleeve.
He was kind to the recruits but a terror to the
non-commissioned officers. His sharp eye often
detected a corporal or sergeant in the act of
striking the men. He seemed to regard it as
one of the worst offences possible, and he never
failed to administer a sharp reprimand to an
offender. The men had no greater grievance
than that of being struck whilst on parade, and
it made the blood boil to be struck oneself or to
see men near forty years of age struck by cor-
porals or sergeants of twenty-three or twenty-
four without the possibility of striking back.
The sergeant-major also tried to stop the more
exuberantly filthy language that was used, but
in that he was much less feared by the instructors.
Even when he was near them, the latter had a
way of standing quite close to you and delivering
a whispered imprecatory address on adultery, the
birth of Jesus, the sins of Sodom, and what not.
The instructors, who had a very free hand whilst
" knocking civvies into shape," said the sort of
things which every man instinctively feels can
only be answered by blows. Descriptive justice
can never be done to this theme, so important
in itself, this particular aspect of the training.

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 29

For although there is a French book in which
such obscenity as is used has been set down as
heard, it is not really possible in English. It
is not even desirable,^ except for one reason —
that reason being the assumption that bad
language, the " hard swearing/' is only a trait
of which we may be indulgently proud, a few
bloodies and damns, and that's all. It is
much more than that, and it is frantically dis-
gusting and terrible. It could not be helped in
the middle of a great war, and no one naturally
would find fault with the old peace-time pro-
fessional army, whatever language it found most
convenient, but it is different when the whole
nation is brought under the military yoke. If
conscription is going to survive, let us remind
all private soldiers who have come through the
obscenity and detested it all the while, lest as
fathers of the rising generation they should
regard it in a more lenient spirit, and think it
harmless for their sons when at eighteen or
nineteen they leave the purer atmosphere of home
or school or factory or office for the training-
ground. Army life has many compensations,
but there are thousands of quiet youths in every
generation who would be corrupted and spoiled
by the sort of treatment received during the
Great War. And among these quiet youths
would be found most of the really gifted and
promising. The army is an institution some-
what like a public school, in that each fresh genera-
tion going into it inherits the undying part of
the language and manners of those who have

3o A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

gone before. /The old controls the new, and it is
impossible to escape traditions ^which, besides
being manifest and glorious, are often secret and
evil as well. It is impossible to make a fresh
start and train the young nation in a completely
wholesome, positive, and ideal atmosphere. It
seems strange, however, that " the red little,
dead little army " should now set the way of life
and expression for the whole nation in arms,
and that we should all have gone through such
a miserable eye of a needle. But at the moment
when practically all have been brought in, it is
possible to look around and see that the whole
system is staffed by the survivors of the pre-ig^
army. They have made the tone. The hope
is that if military service comes in as a national
feature of our life after the war we shall purify
the system and make the army a decent con-
tinuation school, where a young man can grow
nobly to manhood among his fellows.

As a squad we were nominally in charge of
one very young corporal, but as there were many
supernumerary instructors on the parade-ground,
there were many sergeants and corporals who
tried their arts upon us, and we were drilled day
by day not by one but by ten or twelve non-
commissioned officers. For convenience I give
them numbers, though they had no numbers
really, and the numbers have no reference to
their seniority or to any other facts of their
military life.

Sergeant One (" Ginger ") was somewhat of
an old man on the barrack square. He was not

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 31

so supple as he had been : his limbs and form
had set long since — set in a curious regimental,
wooden way. He was senior sergeant and in-
structor, but it was necessary for him, as for other
instructors, to show recruits how the drill ought
to be done. He did the drill in front of us like
a wooden-jointed soldier working on strings — his
body had set to the type of the toy soldier —
wooden, regimental, jerky, correct. He did not,
I believe, turn out such good squads of recruits
as some of the younger instructors. This was
perhaps due to lack of youth and enthusiasm.
When alone he could upon occasion be heard
talking to himself, giving drill orders and making
imaginary ranks of men form fours. Rather
an amusing figure in his way, he ought to
have risen long since to the rank of sergeant-
major, but could never master vulgar fractions,
and his long multiplication sums were generally
wrong. He had a natural malice against educated
men, and was never tired of saying that it did not
take a college education to do this or do that.
He was the most illiterate of the sergeants, had
difficulty in explaining himself in words, and
could often be heard saying in his jaunty voice :
" Nah, I don't want you to do one of them
theres, I want you to do one of them theres."
When an officer came near he would coo at us
like a dove, and be so vulgarly persuasive that
we would grin, so patient and laboriously illus-
trative that he must have been thinking that
he would be put down for promotion at last.
He felt he knew how to manage officers. As

32 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

soon, however, as the officer would be out of
hearing he would blast and damn to make up
for his patience.! He was capable of frantic fits
of anger, whert he would use indescribable
language, and threaten to strike right and left.
He was always going to " bash your silly head
in." When he had us away from the barracks,
on a field expedition where no one of higher
rank was near to hear, he displayed the tempera-
ment of a madman. He certainly gave one the
impression of having a mad streak in him, racing
us far and wide over the mud, cursing and blinding
like some old woman given to drink. We also
formed the impression that he taught some parts
of the drill incorrectly. When other non-com-
missioned officers pointed Tout mistakes that we
were making he would say, " The Captain '11
never fluff," and that was enough for him.

Sergeant No. 2 was a fierce, lean Edinburgh
lad, who had been at the battle of Loos and
been wounded. He had the dour tone of his
regiment developed par excellence. His whole
idea in drilling and training was terror, and he
seemed to get strange pleasure from giving all
manner of people the shock of their lives,
bursting suddenly upon them in military rage.
He would be dressed before reveille, and be
waiting at our door for the first sound of the
bugle, to dash in and pull down half the collap-
sible beds in the room, screeching at us as if the
enemy had arrived. He struck his rifle so
violently in the drill that his hand was always
bleeding, never looked any one fair in the face,

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 33

but growled and snarled in his curious Scottish
tone. He was a good instructor, but off parade
he was known as the bun sergeant, owing to his
proclivity for sharing men's parcels from home.
One day when some one had bought a pot of
jam he came into the room and said to another
recruit, " Here, you, take that up to my bunk,
will you ? " And the jam was gone. He was
reputed to have married a Salvation Army girl,
and he neither drank nor swore, but he made a
meal of conscientious objectors every day, prided
himself on having chased some leader of an anti-
conscription league round and round the drill
square till he dropped in a faint. He would never
take a German prisoner, and in general he was
a thoroughgoing old army type.

He had a natural prejudice in favour of men
hailing north of the Tweed, and if he found
fault with a man in the squad he would ask :

' Where do ye come from ? "

' Inverness," the recruit would perhaps reply.

" Don't tell that to me," he would blurt out
in gutturals, but he would find no more fault
with that recruit. If the luckless wight had
answered " Liverpool " or " Tooting " or " Maid-
stone," the sergeant would tell him he'd got to
' brighten his ideas up " and lead him a dog's
life. He had a tremendous prejudice in favour
of the "Jocks," and was never tired of twitting
our brother regiment of England — the " Bill-
Browns," who, he averred, " left us in the lurch
at Loos." When he found out that I had been
born in his own city he discovered no fault in me,

D

34 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

but took a larger share in any parcels sent me.
One evening he called me to his bunk and said,
' Ye were a writer or something in civil life,
weren't ye ? Ah well, and this life doesn't suit
me either, I can tell ye. I wasn't meant to be a
soldier. Just take my bike and clean it, will ye ? "
Sergeant No. 3 was the humorous sergeant,
a Whitechapel cockney, very fond of beer, and
possessing an endless flow of humorous remarks.
By the smartness of his salutes he often startled
the officers. He did everything in an exagger-
ated way, and exhibited a whole series of idio-
syncrasies and funniosities. Though a most
excellent drill-instructor, a regular " Sergeant
Whatshisname >: who could drill a black man
white, he was illiterate and unskilled and would
not have made a decent living outside the army.
They say that if a cockney gets into a Highland
regiment he makes the best soldier of all. In
Sergeant No. 3 the humour, the self-conceit,
the natural cleverness and whimsicality of the
coster ran riot. He had been turning out squads
of soldiers as fast as they could be trained ever
since August 1914, had not been interfered with
by officers, and had developed a high degree of
crankiness. His forte was " about turn and
double march," and he broke men in by the most
violent exercise. He could make us go faster
and faster by accelerating his left-rights till our
march was a dizzy madness, and he delighted
in giving about turns following directly upon
one another, so that the barrack walls spun past
us. We streamed sweat, our hearts thumped,

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 35

our wind went, we fell out and were rushed in
again, and all the time the sergeant followed
us with imprecations and jokes and commands.
He was one of the most successful sergeants on
the square and, despite his ways, he was very
popular.

Sergeant No. 4 was a dark young fellow with
a bushy black moustache and a most violent
voice. To him we were always ruptured ducks
or ruptured crows. He was a most successful
drill-instructor. He was not so original as the
rest, but felt it necessary to be funny. This he
achieved by scaring the timid recruits. He had
absorbed all the brutality of the soldiers' profes-
sion, and thought that brutality was humour.

Sergeant No. 5 was a genial ex-policeman
given to drink.

Sergeant No. 6 was a quiet, careful sergeant
who used no bad language, and of whom the men
said with real appreciation, " He's a gentleman."
He had the name of turning out very good
squads.

Sergeant No. 7 was a boxer, who was also
kind. He told us he had once been a religious
man but the war had caused him to swear and
to kill without an idea of mercy. He gave us,
as it were, long P.S.A. talks punctuated by
bayonet drill.

Sergeant No. 8, a bayonet-instructor of a
brutal cast of intelligence, seemed by his con-
versation to be sexually mad. He would com-
monly say to massed squads when they had made
a mistake :

36 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

" Wait for it, can't yer ? Yer mother had to
wait for you before you were born."

Most of his observations were of this kind,
and his favourite way of bullying his men was
by making indecent inquiries. It was very
tedious, and made the drudgery of becoming
a soldier rather worse.

Corporal 9 was a bayonet-instructor, a Welsh-
man, who talked a great deal to us on the ethics
of killing Germans. A very good fellow in his
way, clean-mouthed, the right type, and similar
to Sergeant 7.

Corporal 10, who took us a great deal, was
young, stupid, foul, given to striking the men,
a poor instructor, and very unpopular.

There were others, of course, but they had
less to do with us, and the details of these prob-
ably give some notion of our masters.

The men who were coming in to be trained
were those destined to fill the gaps in the army
in the late winter and spring of 1918. They
proved themselves in course of time to be as firm
and brave and as effective as any that had gone
before. It is even probable that the ordeal they
were destined to stand in France and Belgium
was the greatest of the war. In them Little
Sparta was justified even more than in the others.

We were rather the last hundred thousand,
the gleanings of British manhood. Not that
we had come literally to the last hundred thousand
recruits. The forty-to-fifty-years-of-age men

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 37

had yet to be called up. But we were mostly
" hard cases " of one kind or another, and there
were a considerable number who would ordinarily
have been considered unfit for our Spartan
regiment even when recruits were scarce. Some
also in a true and sensible national economy
ought never to have been sent to fight.

My barrack-room neighbour on one side is a
sturdy lead-puddler from Newcastle, nicknamed
Wilkie Bard by Sergeant Three. He is a man
with a mighty arm earning five or six pounds a
week lifting huge weights of molten lead. He
has his own wee house in one of those jaded
Newcastle suburbs, which when walking through
I have thought must be wretched to live in.
But his wife and four children are there, and he
is proud that he has never had a half house but
always a whole house to himself. He enlisted
the same day as I, and he looked so miserable
that I tried to cheer him up. " Eh, man, but I do
feel bad," said he. He has spent many a quarter
of an hour telling me domestic details of his
home in his broad tongue. The one on the other
side is Songster, as some have called him, and he
also is married and has four children ; he nears
forty, and has a daughter of seventeen. He has
been taken from " the gas and brake depart-
ment " of a northern railway — poor old Songster,
the scapegoat of the squad. Further on in the
room is Sandling Junction, a man who came from
east of Kent instead of north of Forth, and
suffered accordingly. He had a neck like a tram
horse, and I remember one day Sergeant No. 8

38 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

got hold of it with both hands and squeezed it
till his eyes dilated. He looked rather obstinate
and dull, though I think he was only a charac-
teristic south of England peasant. He was
pointed out to the jocose Sergeant Three one day.
The two stood facing one another, making a
very comic couple. Then suddenly the sergeant
seemed to brighten up with an idea. ' Oh,
Sandling," said he, " fetch me my entrenching
tool — and some flowers." The sergeant implied
that if he drilled him long a grave and a wreath
would become necessary.

We have also in the room B , a well-known

musical composer, rather an angel, and certainly
of a very charming personality and a tempera-
ment unsuited to army life. The training was
knocking all music out of him, his hands were
like a navvy's, and when he had to go to Queen's
Hall to hear one of his pieces performed, he had
a nightmare with his fingers worse than that of
Lady Macbeth. " The first thing people will
notice when I come forward will be my dreadful
hands," said he. But he worked hard at the
drill. Sergeant Five, who had charge of him,
was very kind. I don't think, however, any one
realised the strain and torture of the mind in a man
whose heart and soul is given to Art, given long
since, and the mind and body suddenly given to the
army. I watched it lay this man prostrate.
Suddenly he was taken to the hospital, and he
lay there in a wretched state for weeks. When
he came out he was excused all drills and military
exercises, but instead was put to do dirty domestic

n LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 39

work. He was most conscientious, and used to sit in
a corner of the barracks with the appalling ration-
tins in a cloud of bath-brick dust, and he would
scour, scour, scour for hours on end. Watching
him one day when he was doing something else,
I suddenly saw that his face no longer expressed
music but reflected ration-tins ; it was ration-
tins all over — a most appalling physical expres-
sion. Even so, however, polishing ration-tins
was better for him than the parade-ground, and
he visibly relaxed and was always making jokes,
sloping and presenting arms with the barrack-
room broom and imitating the drill. In the
army everything is done by numbers. On the
command One you do this, on the command Two

you do that, and B coined the delicious

phrases, " Winning the war by numbers " and
>( How to win the war by numbers." It was
a stock type of jest by him. One morning after
bugle-call he called out from his bed, which was
opposite mine, " Look, how to get up by num-
bers ! On the command One you throw the
blanket half-way down ; on the command Two
you sit up in bed ; on the command Three
you make a half-right turn ; on the command
Four bring the right leg out, on Five the
left."

" Oh," said I. " As you were ! Not half
sharp enough ! Too much of the old man about

it ! >: which was rather cruel, but dear B

got a real " As you were ! " from the army later
on, and for his low nervous state was returned
to his musical avocation. Blessed day when he

40 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

looked last at Little Sparta ! But, as I said,
artists belong to an almost impossible class.

B 's chief friend was commonly called

Bernard, a famous vocalist, whose voice had
ravished the ears of the worshippers in fashionable
London churches many a time and oft. I think
he was by far the cleverest man I met in the ranks,
and at the same time he was extraordinarily kind
to his fellow-soldiers, and was ready to take
endless pains to save them from punishment.
He never got into trouble himself, being very
smart, and having an aptitude for seeing the
quick and effective way of doing things. " Every-
thing in Little Sparta depends on time," he told
me. * You are hustled from the moment you
get up till the end of the day, and unless you learn
the tricks you are bound to get into trouble."
I think he " worked his ticket," as the saying is.
About his ninth week he began to complain of
headaches, and was " decategoried J: by the
medical authorities on the ground of neurasthenia.

I heard a curious story of a violoncellist who
was said to have come to Sparta with long hair
and beautiful white hands, and he would not
cut his hair nor soil his hands, and kept both
inviolate till, in despair, the authorities handed
him over to a regimental band. He was very
rich, and no matter how often he was awarded
punishment he never did an extra drill.

My comrades included also ten American
volunteers, several of whom I got to know pretty
well. There had been a rush of American
volunteers to our colours in the summer. America

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 41

was coming into the war, and these volunteers
were the first-fruits of President Wilson's great
decision. It may seem perhaps rather strange
later on that there should have been Americans
enlisted in the British Army. But this was how
it came about. America always contains a great
number of unassimilated immigrants who, while
taking their stand as " good Americans," are not
actually and legally nationalised, and retain their
original European nationality. Every nation in
Europe, to use the conscriptive term, possessed
large numbers of :< nationals " in America —
Britain perhaps most of all. So when America
decided to take active part in the war she ceased
automatically to afford refuge to those European
young men who did not want to fight for their
respective countries. An Englishman in America
had to choose between being taken for the American
Army or joining the British. A great number
of British thereupon volunteered for immediate
enlistment in the British Army. Evidently, how-
ever, no objection was made to ardent U.S. boys
who, in the incipient war fever, wanted to get
ahead and be in Europe first. Thus large con-
tingents of British immigrants and actual Ameri-
cans came over to England to enlist. They
had a great reception, as some who were in
London at the time may remember, marched
through the streets, were given a welcoming
feast and made much fuss of. Great Britain
was very grateful for these young men, an earnest
as they were of what was coming later from the
United States. Each of these volunteers had

42 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

the choice of what regiment he would join, and
questions of height or chest measurement gener-
ally were waived. If one said he'd' go to the
" Black Watch," to the " Black Watch " he went.
If another fancied the " Goalies," he was for-
warded right away. In this way our regiment
of " Jocks " got ten, which was one-third of the
squad in which I drilled.

There was " Red," a clever and observant
boy — only nineteen years old — from New York,
always getting punished for smiling and for being
a " God-damned Yank." He was thought to
be an orphan, or rather a waif, with no relatives
or friends, for no letters ever came to him, nor
was he interested in the post as others were, nor
did he write letters. I believe he belonged to
an unhappy home and had run away. He had
been brought up and educated in a monastic
institution where, by his account, a most in-
human discipline had prevailed. He had escaped
from it as from hell and gone to New York to
earn a living by any means that came to his
hand. He was quick-witted, and was earning
a living composing pithy paragraphs in adver-
tisement of hotels and country resorts when he
heard the call of the army. He had had no
idea he was entering himself in a new system of
discipline perhaps harder than that of the monks,
and he was impressed with his own ill-luck —
thinking he must be destined to be killed in
France. Then there was ambitious Fitz from
Virginia, a thoroughgoing Southerner, sincerely
sighing for " Alabama, Tennessee, or Caroline,

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 43

anywhere beneath that * Mason-Dixon ' line."
He was only twenty years of age, an engineer in
civil life earning a good living. He was full of
exuberance and music. The British sergeants
and corporals couldn't understand his speech,
but he didn't care, and was for ever humming
coon songs to himself. I knew him very well,
and his favourite song was the nigger mother's
reply to her little girl who wept because she was
not white — " You'd better dry your eyes, my
little coal-black Rose." He joined the British
Army because he thought it likely to be better
than the American one, and he wanted to belong
to something " first-class." He watched the
Black Watch drilling and watched us, and came
to the conclusion we drilled better, so he joined
the "Jocks." He also wanted to get to France
and do heroic deeds, win the war by himself, as
it were, before other Americans could get to it.
His desire was always to be first in everything.
He had a passion for style in drill, and was far
and away the best man in the squad. Then
there was a clever and loquacious actor from St.
Louis, who had played Hamlet in many towns
of America. He was ready to instruct even his
instructors. He could impart to his voice several
tones, and when you thought he had finished
talking and your turn had come, he would sud-
denly flow on in a new key. His gift of the gab
baffled the sergeants, and I remember all one
of the most terrible could say to him was that he
ought to fix a horn to his head and he'd make
a dam good gramophone. He should have

44 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

stayed and got a commission in the American
Army ; his constitution was unsuited to the life
of a private at Little Sparta and in the trenches.
However, he stuck it well and made an excellent

little soldier. Then there was H , a smart

youth, who told me life had been heaven in New
York, dancing every night and sleeping most
of the day, and he never thought he was coming
to such drudgery as Little Sparta life. He had
enlisted and come over to England merely to
" charge with the Guards." He told me " the
Guards never turn back," and he longed for the
front. There was " Gurt," a substantial, bald,
industrious, teetotal butler from New York, a
simple Christian of Y.M.C.A. type. He made
a good soldier, but was killed soon after he got
to the front ; and there was " Will," a conscientious
and rather noble fellow of forty from the Far
West who felt that Germany had to be faced,
and that it had been " up to him " to go — one
of our best shots and most dependable men,
destined, however, to be badly gassed on his
first day in the line and to be killed later on.

There was tall Willie, an excitable Scottish
gamekeeper who suffered from rupture, but was
nevertheless graded as " A." He came to us
pale and broken, but put on health in a remark-
able way and became a very redoubtable bayonet-
fighter. He was, however, terribly nervous, and
was very much baited by N.C.O.'s who loved
to see him getting more and more agitated.
Sometimes every one in the field would be watch-
ing him doing Swedish drill and making frantic

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 45

convolutions through sheer nervousness, but I
have always marked him down as the type that
gets the V.C. at the front. He was, moreover,
the most industrious cleaner of his equipment in
the barracks, and he never once went out at the
gate for a walk whilst he was at Little Sparta,
and could always be found in the evenings sitting
in the barrack-room.

;< Now, what was you in civil life ? " said Ser-
geant Four to him one day. He had been
bullying him verbally for some time.

" Rrr obbit cotcher," said poor William, to
the intense mirth of the sergeant.

" Oh, that explains why you're always bobbing
and grabbing at something with your hand,"
said he.

There was S , the nephew of a peer, and

he slept next me at one time, and found a common
ground in the fact that we both knew certain
famous actors. His speciality, however, was not
the stage ; he was an excellent accountant and
a practical financial expert. He ought not to
have been in the army, and eventually suffered
with shingles and was employed as a clerk. I
think he ought to have been given his freedom.

Joe was another comrade, the hardest and,
some said, the stupidest, some the craftiest man
who had ever come to Little Sparta to be trained.
He had the face and head of a mediaeval an-
choress. He swore frightfully, but from the
look of his face there must have been a capacity
for piety in him. But he never did anything
right on the square, and his punishments were

46 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

terrible. He made such mistakes that one would
have said he must be mad, and he couldn't be
laughed into being any wiser. He was a brewer's
labourer from the Birmingham district. How-
ever, he made good and was sent to the trenches
at last. Some thought he was " working his
ticket " like the man who, whenever he saw a
bit of paper on the ground, ran and picked it up
and gave it to the sergeant, even though a field-
marshal were inspecting the troops at the time.
But I think Joe was honestly silly. When he
got to France he did not put any address on the
top of his letters, and explained that his wife
did not know he had been sent to the front and
he didn't want her to be upset. The motive,
as the journalese-writer would say, " was entirely
to his credit." But the simplicity of it was
characteristic of his ways.

What a lot of punishment Joe saved the other
men by taking the sergeants' ire away from them
to himself ! He was the most talked-of man I
came across in the army, and his name had only
to be mentioned to N.C.O.'s and it banished all
other topics, for he fairly baffled them. I think
one side of the Anglo-Saxon race was revealed
in Joe. He was an absolute type, and through
him much that is difficult in the character of
our public men could be explained.

"Jerry" was another original. His peculi-
arity was loud singing. He sang all day like
massed barrel-organs, or, as Gorky said of
Shakro the tramp, as if he were having his throat
cut. And some of the songs were of the re-

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 47

cherch6 obscene. I have never come across such
bestiality in any language, screeds about niggers
in brothels and incest that might make a devil's
hair erect. He was at the same time a good-
natured mother's darling, confessed to me that
he loved his mother more than any one else
in the world. He came from Liverpool, and
was an ex-policeman. After puzzling over him
for some time, I said, " Were you ever on duty
in music-halls ? " " Yes, often," said he. I
think that probably he picked up those songs
before and after the performances and round
about the dressing-rooms. He thought them
clever and amusing. It was very trying, how-
ever, for us to listen to him.

Then there was a charming broken-down
old sailor, a ne'er-do-well, wrecked with drink,
who had nevertheless a mellow Scottish accent and
a sense of the humorous which would have made
his fortune on the stage. He was killed when
he was sent to France, and the voice which had
amused so many became silent.

There was another Liverpool Scotsman, who
used bad language like a machine-gun. He had
the most filthy imagination as to what our food
might in reality be, and spoilt many a queer-
looking dish by apostrophising it in Liverpoolese.
He was one of our worst characters, and soon got
a job on the military police.

We had a giant from Lerwick, six feet five
inches, and he was nicknamed Figure One. We
had a tall massive farmer from Inverness-shire,
fed not only by the rations but from his own

48 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

farm. His Scotch was very broad and it was
difficult to understand him.

The best men that we had were from the
Western Highlands of Scotland and the Isles.
Some of these spoke English only with difficulty,
and they were bullied a good deal by the drill-
sergeants, but they were of a gentle kind, calm,
strong, and serene. It was always pleasant to
talk with them, for they were without a trace of
the vulgarity which nowadays seems to have
entered the grain of all our working-people.
There were, however, many other quiet Scots
and English, though it is impossible to mention
them here. The tone was given by the noisy
people.

There is one atmosphere of the barrack-
square and another of the barrack-room ; the
one all tension, the other all relaxation. At first
I preferred the latter, but later I prefer the
former. On the parade-ground we are all silent,
we are strung-up and intense. We wait in a
throbbing expectation for the word of command
or the drum-beat that means Eyes front, and wait
so intently that frequently we are nervously
betrayed into " beating " it and fulfilling the
order before the order has been given. We
strive with all our nerves not to make a mistake,
and as we strive we listen to a constant flow of
violent language and threats. In the barrack-
room, however, we seem to care for nobody. We
let ourselves go. At least the others do. I

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 49

obtain my relaxation differently. But in most
of the others it shows itself in an abandonment of
restraint. In cases where self-respect has been
sapped on the parade-ground its weakness is
quickly apparent in talk. Nearly every one
plumps down on to an animal level. Even
religiously minded and apparently delicate men
allow themselves to talk indecently and to swear
and make mean jokes and commit improprieties.
It is only shallow and vociferous small-talk, but
it is all the same unworthy of human beings,
and there is no indication for the naturalist that
we are higher than pigs, yea, dogs, jackasses,
sailors' parrots.

We do not sing well. Our regiment is sup-
posed to shout, and if a man speaks in a sing-
song voice he will be told that he ought to have
joined the Taffies. Tall Willie whistles lugubri-
ously bagpipe airs ; Jerry sings like massed
barrel-organs. But every one is infected with
American airs, and whimper now and then that :

At the table
Next to Mabel,
There's an empty chair.

Many hymns are parodied. " Holy, Holy,
Holy ! >! becomes " Grousing, grousing, grous-
ing ! >: Favourite parodies are :

When this wicked war is over
No more soldiering for me,

to the tune of a favourite Y.M.C.A. hymn,

£

50 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

" What a friend we have in Jesus ! >! And we
frequently hear :

Old soldiers never die, never die,
They rot away.

The last hour before bed-time is the most clamor-
ous. There is shouting and swearing and acro-
batics, whilst all the most assiduous are equipment-
polishing, rifle-oiling, trouser-pressing. In the
midst of all this I am rather like one in a dream,
but I cannot help smiling at a lusty coster near
by who all the while he is cleaning his buttons
keeps bawling in a staccato barrow voice :

" Tuppence a pound plums. Syme pryce
figs."

He had sold them in civil life.

Night passes, and the morning-bugles break
out in the darkness and stillness — far away and
doubtfully at first, then close at hand, urgently
and unmistakably. We draw on the warm
pressed trousers on which we've been sleeping,
put on boots and puttees, fold our blankets in
the correct way, scrub the floor under and about
the beds, wash and shave, draw our ration of
bread. There are crowds who are shaving,
trying to glimpse bits of their faces by flickering
gaslight in the tiny looking-glasses. Other
crowds are swilling the stone stairs and passages
with water, and sweeping them clean with heavy
brooms. Other crowds are at the cook-house,
waiting to bring in the breakfast ration-tins.

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 51

There is a plentiful breakfast at seven, and then
general swabbing till eight — the first parade
at eight-thirty. The barrack-square becomes an
inferno of drill orders, and stamping, rushing,
yelling — a tumult which is almost indescribable.
A long-haired Slavonic friend came down one
day to meet me after barracks, and chanced to
come whilst the drill was in progress. It almost
blighted his happiness. He could not see it, he
could only hear it, and as he described the sound,
" 'Twas like hobgoblins striving against one
another in hell." We who were in the midst of
it were appalled and cowed till we got used to it.
Some notion of a first parade with Sergeant
Three may be gleaned from the following :

" Who the is this man ? Where did this

new recruit spring from ? Take him away and
drown him ! Take him round the back and
pull the string. Hold him, hold him. He's
drunk. Do you drink ? That's what's the matter
with half you new recruits, you don't drink
enough. You haven't got balance, and you're
always falling over. Now then, left turn, right
turn, about turn, breaking into quick march,
quick march ; about turn, about turn, left turn,
halt — I say, what were you in civil life ? A
writer ? Bloomin' fine writer, I bet. A writer,
hff. On that scale I'd be king of England. You
don't know right from your left. Quick march !
You're rolling your body about like a tank.
You've got no control of yourself. About turn,
about turn, about turn. You'll fall down in a
minute and I shan't pick you up. Come on, the

52 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

writer ! You see that house over there ? That's
the spud-hole, my bonnie lad, and there you'll
go. No, it's not the Hotel Cecil. Keep yrrr
eyes to the jront^ will yrrrr ! You'll get your
dinner presently. And it won't be fried fish
from a silver plate and a French waiter, but three-
quarters of a pound of meat, including Jat and
bone, and lucky to get it ! The whole lot of
you look like ruptured vultures or a herd of
mad horses. Halt ! Stand at ease ! "

The recruit does not know the Little Sparta
way of standing at ease, which is a movement
and gesture suggestive of defiance and a deter-
mination never to budge from the ground
whereon you stand.

The sergeant in mock solemnity explains.

" Do you understand now ? " he asks.

:< I hope so," the recruit replies.

" You wha-at ? " he screeches.

" I think so," corrects the other, realising
that one must not hope.

' Who are you talking to ? "

" The sergeant."

" Have you got a mother living ? "

" Yes, sergeant."

" What would she say if she could see you
now ? "

" I don't know, sergeant."

" What's the first duty of a soldier ? "

" I don't know, sergeant."

;< Obedience. What is it ? '3

" Obedience, sergeant."

" Well, mind you do. Take that smile off

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 53

your dial. If you laugh I'll run you to the guard-
room. You're in the army now. Not in the
Cork militia. No use you're coming here and
trying your hand on. I'll break yer. I'll break
yer blooming heart, I will. I've seen plenty of
your sort come in at that gate. I'm not afraid
of you, big as you are. Not of twenty like you
rolled into one."

He was not afraid because he had the army
behind him, and it was no use saying a word in
reply. Some weeks later a Canadian backwoods-
man was brought straight from his native haunts
to this barracks and was addressed in the same way.
He flared up, and replied, " You can speak
like that to Britishers if you choose, but you're
not going to pass it off on an American. I
didn't come four thousand miles to be treated
worse nor a dog." And he offered to fight.
But the sergeant's course was quite simple. He
called for an escort, and the recalcitrant recruit
was marched to the guard-room. There the
Canadian tore the buttons off his tunic and
stamped on them, and fought the sergeant of
the guard, and was thrown into a cell. He
deserted later, but was recaptured, and now I
believe the sergeants have him " eating out of
their hands." No, no, when you are in you are
in — very much in.

The recruit smiles sweetly, and the sergeant,
calculating perhaps on rebellion, turns away
with, " Thank God we've got a Navy ! " Break-
ing into slow march, slow march ! " Right turn !
Your military right, not your civil right. Are

54 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

you on our side ? Because if you are, turn with
the rest. You look as if you were coming home
late at night and your wife was waiting for you
with a poker. . . ."

Sometimes the parade resolves itself into what
may be called the sergeant's school. Instead of
doing drill the sergeant tells us facts about the
army, and we repeat them after him, or he asks
us questions and we answer them, sometimes
collectively and sometimes individually.

Sergeant Four has us and is putting us through
it.

Sergeant. What is the second duty of a
soldier ?

AIL Cleanliness.

Sergeant. The third ?

AIL Honesty, sobriety, and self-respect.

Sergeant. How many conduct sheets have you ?

AIL Two.

Sergeant. What is the brigade motto ?

All (vociferously). TRIO JUNCTA IN UNO.

Sergeant. Trio juncta in uno. And what does
it mean ?

All. Three in One.

Sergeant (softly). Three in One and One in
Three. And how many regiments are there in
the brigade ?

All. Five.

Sergeant. Five. Right. And what is the
motto of your own regiment ?

All (vociferously). Nemo me impewn laass-essit.

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 55

Sergeant. Nemo me impewn laass-essit. Right.
And what does it mean ?

AIL Touch me not with impunity.

Sergeant. Touch me not with impunity. And
if any one says anything against your regiment
what do you do ?

All (vociferously). Knock him down.

Sergeant (sojtly, in a Kiplingesque tone). Re-
member that. Remember, too — that the brigade
is the finest in the British Army, and that your
regiment is the finest in the brigade.

On Wednesday and Saturday morning we
march to music. It is called " saluting parade "
or " swank parade." All the squads of the
various regiments go round together, and each
instructor wants his squad to shine.

" Make 'em think y're the best squad going
round," says Sergeant Three. " Put some
blooming swank into it, hpp, hpp. Head up,
swing yer canes level, heads up, hpp, hpp." And
he blows out his cheeks, bunches his lips, and puts
much expression into his knees as he shows us
how.

We march to the hum-drum hubbub of a
band which is playing American popular songs.
One does not wish to respond to the vulgar
incentive, but there is no help for it, the ears
prick up, the pulse responds. You may feel
humiliated to be marching to the tune of
' Snookey - ookums," but you liven your
step. Some of the heavy recruits, such as the

56 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

Inverness - shire farmer, take on a frantic gait
under the influence of the music, but we think
we must be drilling smartly. Sergeant Two
can, however, be heard behind us, as it were,
wringing his hands and mumbling despairingly :
" Ma pair regiment, ma pair regiment."
On a barrack-room door four verses of Conan
Doyle's poem on the Battle of Loos have been
copied out :

Up by the Chalk Pit wood,

Weak from our wounds and our thirst,

Wanting our sleep and our food,
After a day and a night.

God ! shall I ever forget ?
Beaten and broke in the fight,

But sticking it, sticking it yet.

Trying to hold the line,

Fainting and spent and done.
Always the thud and the whine,

Always the yell of the Hun,
Northumberland, Lancaster, York,

Durham and Somerset
Fighting alone, worn to the bone,

But sticking it, sticking it yet.

Never a message of hope,

Never a word of cheer,
Fronting " Hill yo's " shell-swept slope

With the dull, dead plain in our rear.
Always the shriek of the shell,

Always the roar of its burst,
Always the torture of Hell,

As waiting and wincing we cursed
Our luck, the guns, and the Boche.

When our corporal shouted " Stand to ! "
And I hear some one cry, " Clear the front for
the Guards,"

And the Guards came through.

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 57

We realise that we are expected when we get to
the Front, and have hard and splendid work to do,
as, for instance, at Bourlon Wood or L'Epinette,
to behave as we might on parade on the barrack-
square. No matter what sort of man the old
soldier or N.C.O. may be, there is a tremendous,
and even bullying pride in the regiment. " Man,
do ye know what regiment ye belong to ? "
" Remember you are Guards."

The whole foundation of army training is
said to be obedience, and officers are told that
absolute, implicit obedience must be obtained.
It can be enjoined by persuasion or enforced
by punishment. Disobedience in the field is
punishable by death, and the recruit must realise
that his superior officer has a life-and-death hold
on him. When obedience has been obtained,
esprit de corps must be inculcated. The first
problem seems to be how to get that implicit
obedience from men who, it may be, have always
been accustomed to consider and discuss or think
about a thing before doing it ; how to get that
obedience from men who, it may be, have been
accustomed to have others obey them ; and to
obtain obedience that is implicit obedience, not
abject obedience.

The defects in the Little Sparta system are
the humiliation of recruits by words or blows,
the use of glaringly indecent language, the
possibility of squaring punishments, the use by
N.C.O. 's, even by lance-corporals, of recruits

58 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

as batmen. I believe these were recognised as
defects in peace-time, and some of them had
been eradicated, others endured in secret. But
in war-time the problem of breaking in those
who were never intended by Nature to be soldiers
was so difficult that some of these ugly things
became useful. Constant humiliation and the
use of indecent phrases took down the recruit's
pride, and reduced him to a condition when he
was amenable to any command. It is impossible
not to think less of yourself when a sergeant has
bawled before a whole squad, " Well, I think
you're about the ugliest thing ever dropped
from a woman," or, " Are you married ? Fancy
a decent woman having children by a man like
you."

To be struck, to be threatened, to be called
indecent names, to be drilled by yourself in front
of a squad in order to make a fool of you, to be
commanded to do a tiring exercise and continue
doing it whilst the rest of the squad does some-
thing else ; to have your ear spat into, to be
marched across parade-ground under escort, to
be falsely accused before an officer and silenced
when you try to speak in defence — all these
things take down your pride, make you feel
small, and in some ways fit you to accept the
role of cannon-fodder on the battle-ground. A
good deal of it could be defended on grounds of
usefulness. But of course it doesn't make a
Christian army, and it's hell for the poor British
soldier.

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 59

On the other hand, the keeping of ourselves
and the barracks clean has an excellent influence.
Little Sparta was cleaner than any home, and
the only thing against it was the toil it repre-
sented. The Americans wondered why labour-
saving appliances were not in use. * This place
is a hundred years behind," said Red to me.
" They'd never do all this work in the States."
And he would have had tiled floors, enamelled
ration - tins and plates, American cloth on the
tables, no open grates, electric lighting, cloth
or bone buttons instead of brass ones, etc. etc.
But the extra work of Little Sparta was in reality
part of the training. Its fruit was visible in our
personal appearance. And we were the smartest
soldiers you'd ever see on a street, and could be
picked out of a crowd by that alone.

We spend hours every day polishing. The
five ration-tins have to be shined with bath-brick.
We clean our buttons and hat badge with soldiers'
friend four times a day, and bring our boot
leather to a high polish the same number. We
polish the many brasses of our equipment with
" bluebell " or bath-brick ; we polish the table
ends and the metal of our entrenching tools. We
burnish the handles of our bayonets with the
burnisher. We polish our dummy cartridges,
our oil-bottles, and the weights of our pull-
throughs. For kit inspection we polish the backs
of our blacking-brushes, clothes, and hair-brushes
with " nutto " or " sap." We polish the insteps
of the soles of our duplicate pair of boots. The
eight metal wash-basins which we never use

60 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

we bring to a high lustre with " globe polish,"
and the backs of our Bibles which we do not
read we diligently bring to a polish with " nug-
get " or " sap." Our knife, fork, and spoon
are of the sort that rapidly tarnish, so the smart
men never use them, but keep a duplicate set
for use at table, which set they generally keep
dirty. Many of us also use brushes of our own,
and we wear also our own socks and shirts, so
that the army kit may be always ready for
inspection.

Every night we carefully soap the insides
of our trouser-creases, wet the outsides, and we
obtain smartness by laying the damp garments
on our mattresses and sleeping on them. We
carefully fold our tunics in a certain way and
no other, and we strap our overcoats on the pegs
behind our beds, so that they may show not one
slightest crease. We keep rags and dusters and
silk dusters, shining the wood of our rifles with
them till it glimmers, and gently polishing our
hat-bands to a colour matching that of the wood.
We scrub our equipment, and then paste khaki
bianco on it. We wash our kit-boxes and bath-
brick our shelves. Thus it may be understood
that if we turn out smart on parade it is not
without pain on our part. II Jaut soujfrir pour
etre beau.

It does not come at all natural to men recruited
mostly from grubby industrialism. I spent the
summer before entering the army lecturing in
the canteens of our munition works, and it was
a marvellous contrast, the grubbiness of the

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 61

men in the one, the shine and sparkle of the men
in the other. There undressed for medical in-
spection at the same time as I at the dep6t six
candidates for our famous brigade. The body
of one was coaly black and of another brown.
But they soon became relatively white, marched
as they were weekly to compulsory hot baths,
and inspected by officers to see that they were
clean. Nothing is accounted more shameful
than to be found dirty, and for the offence such
humiliating punishment as being washed by
corporals with scrubbing-brushes is meted out.

They come in unshaven and with lank hair,
but woe betide the Spartan who turns out badly
shaved or without the evidence of a weekly hair-
cut. They are introduced to the tooth-brush,
and although it seems taken for granted that
metal polish can be applied to buttons with the
same brush as the powder to the teeth, the men
do certainly apply the latter.

An officer noticed a strange tint in a tooth-
brush one day, learned that it was from metal
polish, and asked the man with what brush he
cleaned his teeth. :< Oh, I borrow one, sir,"
lied the man in alarm. ' You what ? Oh, you
must never do that," said the officer.

The men are lectured on keeping their nails
clean. One day I heard the following : " Most
of you men are married. I'd be ashamed to
sit down to meals with dirty nails. It's such a
bad example to your children." None of the
men made any comment, but it must have been
a new idea to most of them.

62 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

But polish does not end with clothes and
appearance. The men are expected to walk
well. No more slouching and loafing. They
must always remember they are Spartans, and are
setting an example to the rest of the army. This
has to be drilled into them. They have double
as much drilling as the rest of the army, and they
are drilled in a sharper, smarter way. Our
turnings on the march are clean-cut and rapid.
We form fours with the precision of a bolt move-
ment. We never touch the rifle in drill but we
strike it. We stamp our feet in a staccato when
we turn about, and all the time we are cajoled
and encouraged and bullied to put " bags of
swank into it." Above all things we must salute
with style. Twice in lectures officers pointed
the moral of the state of things in Russia as
being due to the initial folly of not saluting.
When at large, and even when in London, we
are supposed to give full and careful salute to
every officer we pass.

One day the King expressed a wish to inspect
us. The squad in which I drilled had by that
time become senior, and we had the honour
of preparing for him and receiving him. As the
ex-sergeant-major said, rejoicing he was himself
out of it, " You'll see wind up in the depot as
never before." So it was ; we had a terrific
orgy of polishing, and if His Majesty could only
have seen us at work the day before he came he
would have felt more impressed than by all the
glittering parades and Royal salutes in the world.
We were inspected at 2 P.M., at 4 P.M., at 6 P.M.

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 63

And finally at 8 P.M. we laid out all our equipment
on our beds, and Sergeant One, who was in charge,
passed it as perfect. Mine was one of the first
he saw, and even he seemed to look at it with
awe. " Now you must wrap it up in one of
your sheets for the night, so as none of the cold
air gets at it before morning," said he. Next
day, what a scene ! The officers all going about
with drawn swords. All the men drawn up in
long ranks, faces tense, bodies breathless, rifles
presented and rigid, with the bright bayonets
bisecting the tips of our noses. The waiting.
The National Anthem, and then the King going
by, looking at his soldiers one by one and seeing
that they were good. Even the sun seemed to
have been getting ready overnight, and to have
saved himself from damp air. And the officers in
attendance on the King had an expression on their
faces which seemed to say : " The Spartans, of
course ; always the same. So it was, so 'twill be."

But I could not help remembering we were,
nevertheless, civilians in khaki, and we came from
home life, most of us from poky homes with no
bathrooms, and we must return there by and by
if we did not fall in battle. How much of all
this amour propre shall we carry back ? Shall
we hold ourselves erect when we get our " civvy "
clothes on ? Shall we at least remember in a
practical way that we have been trained at Little
Sparta ?

" What do you notice about civilians when
you compare their bearing with that of a soldier ? "
asked an officer.

64 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

' Why, an absence of self-respect more or less/'
he replies. " He doesn't care sufficiently to dress
himself properly."

' What is the third duty of a soldier ? " asks
Sergeant Four.

" Honesty, sobriety, and self-respect," we
reply.

'' And what is self-respect ? '
" Keeping your buttons bright."

Our smartness increases with very marked
rapidity, and it should be remarked that after
three months at Little Sparta a standard of
smartness is achieved which is not kept up in its
entirety at other barracks and at the Front.
Squads change from civilians to soldiers before
the eyes. If individual recruits don't improve
they are harried and baited and given pack-drills,
and made to do each parade with a pack on the
back, put on heavy patrol work at night, thrown
into the guard-room on a slight provocation,
sworn at, thumped. Then some one will say
to them, supposing they complain of feeling
unwell, "Why don't you go sick? Go sick and
stay sick." That is why Little Sparta has
been nicknamed " Kill or Cure." If you " make
good " in the squad your treatment will improve
somewhat, but if not, it will get worse and worse.
The best thing a man could do in the latter case
was eventually to go sick, unless he was intent
on being a hero and martyr. The medical
staff was very good, and, I believe, viewed with

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 65

professional disfavour the Spartan process of
breaking in civilians. If occasionally men were
injured physically or dropped dead on the
'parade-ground it was no fault of the medical
authority, the only fault was the original fault
of the requisition that men who were in reality
unfit should be graded A, and then the sending
such men to Little Sparta. Conditions at the
Front itself were less arduous than there.

The story of Songster, our scapegoat, may give
an idea of how intolerant Little Sparta was of
an ungainly man a little over age and a bit
weak.

Songster prefaced many of his remarks with
the explanatory phrase, " Being in the gas and
brake department." He was employed on a
railway, and we all realised that the man who
climbs along the tops of railway carriages with a
mysterious can in his hand is really a funny
type. Songster was the most bullied and the
cheeriest man of us all. And he was not merely
a new recruit, he remained an impossible one,
and permanently took the running fire of abuse
off us all. He got into trouble with every one.
He stood like an awkwardly tied-up bundle,
his puttees were tangled round his legs, his hat
unstraight. He was short, and he had a curled
red nose and wrinkles about his cheery eyes that
made him look like Punch, and he very quickly
showed a weakness in one hip that gave him a
lurching little limp as he marched. So even a
new N.C.O. or strange officer looking at our
squad for the first time, picked him out, and would

66 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

ask with a tone of annoyance, " Who is that
man ? "

An officer and the sergeant-in-waiting came
in one day at dinner and saw gravy being spilt
on the table by one of us. " This gravy," said
the officer. " Upon my word, you live like
pigs. Who is this man ? "

:< Songster, sir," was the reply.

:c Got him, sir," said the sergeant, writing
the name in the book.

And it became a catch question in the barrack-
room. We all used to shout out, and not least
Songster himself —

" Who is this funny fellow ? "

" Songster, sir."

" Got him, sir."

Sergeant Three's favourite expressions for
him were " Fred Mayo," " Dosey," and " Basin
of death warmed up," or just " Death." :< Come
on, Death," he used to shout as Songster in-
evitably took the wrong turning on the march.

After his first day's gruelling of abuse he said
to me with a face puckered by emotion, " By
gum, I never felt so bad in my life." We were
sitting together at a table in the Y.M.C.A. hut,
and were writing letters home whilst hymns and
exhortations raged over our heads, ever and anon
having to stand whilst prayers were made for
our souls' salvation. Finally the " sob-raiser,"
as the Americans called him, made the following
appeal :

" Now I've got a lot of little cards here, and
I want each of you young men to sign them

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 67

before you go out. Just write A.C. on them
and your name, and that will be enough. A.C.
means * accepted Christ/ and if any one has
accepted Christ this day he'll feel so much
happier if he writes it down. Just think what a
comfort it will be to your mothers, if any of you
die, to know that although you were not a
religious sort, you found a Saviour in the army
and booked a seat before going West."

" By gum," said Songster, " give me a card."
I thought Songster was going to suffer a great
deal. But after three or four days of it he began
to cheer up, and became extraordinarily light-
hearted.

The most insulting remarks were made to
him and about him, and the corporal used to
say to us : " This man spoils the squad. If I
were you I'd take him round the houses and
knock hell out of him, so that he never turned
up on parade again." But Songster, though
undoubtedly he felt such things, never showed it,
and the worse his plight the more exuberant
his humorous remarks when he got back to the
barrack-room. He outswore every one in the
room and told more shocking stories. The men
used regularly to look to him for funny stories.
One night he told over and over again by request,
after lights out, when we were all stretched in
our beds, an atrocious story of a woman whose
boy was charged with stealing, and she said to
the judge, * Punish him, sir, he always were
a thief, he were a thief before he were born."
" How's that, my good woman, a thief before

68 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

he was born. . . ." But truly more funny things
were said to him than he himself told.

We were all dressed for our first sentry duty
one evening, and Sergeant Three was inspecting
our buttons and bayonets. He stood behind
Songster and began giving him solemn advice.

" Now, Songster," says he. " If there is an
air-raid don't you get mixed up in it. Don't
you retaliate."

Punishments were heaped heavy on him. He
did an extra pack-drill every night. He was
confined to barracks, forced to turn out in full
marching order at every parade, and had to answer
his name at various hours of the night when the
" angels whisper " called him. On Saturdays
and Sundays he was detailed for the town patrol.

He was not really fit, and the object of the
N.C.O.'s seemed to be to " crock him up " and
get his medical category lowered. It was rather
a dreadful procedure, and I felt sorry for him,
the more so as he was an astonishingly kind
neighbour to us all, and was always on the alert
to save us from trouble. He used to take a look
round at every man's kit every morning and put
anything right that was at odds, and of course
inevitably he " lost his own name " for his own
kit being wrong. He saved me several drills ;
on the other hand, I gave him advice and made
him report sick several times when he thought
of still bearing up. As his hip got worse I con-
soled him with the thought that he would be
able to " work his ticket," as the saying is.
And he kept in touch with his boss on the rail-

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 69

way, for in the event of his category being re-
duced the railway must apply for him, or else
he would remain an odd man about the barracks,
doing dirty jobs.

He was our despised and rejected. When I
told him I would some time write an account
of our life at Little Sparta, he said to me, " I
suppose you'll put me in your book — ' Songster,
sir.' : " Oh, I'm waiting for you to die," I
would reply. " One must have a culminating
point, you know. Then one can begin, ' The
most original fellow in our squad has just dropped
down dead,' and tell all about him." And he
would grin all over his funny red face, so that
it was impossible not to laugh with him.

" You fellows don't grasp Songster," said I.
' Because the sergeants speak to him as if he were
dirt, and every one laughs at him, you think
of him as a negligible quantity. But think of
him at home, a respected husband and father,
to whom a wife and little ones look up for advice.
He has a pretty daughter of seventeen whom
some of you might like to marry. He is a tax-
payer, a householder, he has a vote, his life is
insured, he is a valued servant of the North
Eastern Railway."

' But in the army he is just dirt," said several.

Even so.

He told me a good deal of his story. He
had been in the green-grocery business, and had
also sold coal, had prospered for a while, and
then, through no fault of his own, had failed.
His business stopped, and he had to cast round

70 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

for a job. He was unemployed and owed a lot
for rent. His landlady was sorry for him and
said he need not pay. Then he got a railway
job, and he steadily paid off his arrears of rent,
much to the surprise and pleasure of the landlady,
who seems to have been a kind woman, for she
repeatedly endeavoured to help him. Songster,
however, was independent, and liked to fight on
by himself. Nevertheless the landlady became
his benefactress, and undertook the education
of his daughter Lily. Lily wrote long letters
to her father, which she signed " Black Devil,"
and had just got a post as a clerk on the N.E.R.,
as the father had been taken for the army. She
signed herself " Black Devil " because Songster
had once called her so in a game, and the nick-
name remained. His benefactress now lived at
Brighton, and he wrote to her now and then.
Eventually he felt he'd like to send her a present
as a mark of respect, and he hit on the idea of
sending one of my books. " If I can tell her the
man who sleeps next me in barracks wrote it, it
will be very interesting," said he. It much
amused me, but we sent my latest book inscribed,
and the old lady replied she was pleased to think
of him among such nice companions.

As a result of reporting sick so often he was
excused bayonet-drill, and was then taken off
duties altogether and put in the convalescent
squad, which does merely gentle country walks.
He was forbidden to do pack-drills, and worked
off his punishments in fatigue instead. Although
the N.C.O.'s were more and more brutal, the

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 71

captain noticed his plight and was kind to him.
He refused to punish him any more. Songster
dropped out of our squad and floated into calmer
waters, being attached to another regiment that
wanted a man to make up. At Christmas only
two men were to have leave, and I put him up
to the best way to get it. The ruse succeeded,
and to his great joy his leave paper was signed
and he got clear for eight days.

On the last day but one he received a damping
letter from his wife saying how little food there
was in the house, and how hard it would be to
feed an extra mouth. But by the same post
Black Devil wrote how pleased she'd be to see
her Dad. And on the last day before starting
off there came a windfall in the shape of fifty
shillings arrears of army pay, and our Songster
was chirping for joy all over the barracks, and
he bought regimental crests and brooches for all
his family. Whilst he was away we " passed out "
as a fit and proper squad. Whether Songster
will ever " pass out " I know not. But he will
never be a true Spartan, though we should love
to have him with us just to keep us gay.

" Who is that funny man ? "

" Songster, sir."

" Put him in the book."

:< He's already in, sir."
c Then put him in again."

If Songster has played his cards well he has
got returned to his railway task, though I believe
he had a sort of sneaking inclination to go to the
Front, and prove that it was an Englishman that

72 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

did beget him. If he had been a shirker he could
have arranged matters at Little Sparta and got
back to civil life. But I don't suppose he would
have cared to face his wife and children as an
unfit man. Pride intervenes. He has therefore
in all probability found his way out to the ditches
and the wire and the adventure, and may even
have won the D.C.M. before the 'armistice. It
is a notorious fact that the recruits who are most
difficult to train often do extremely well when
they have to face the real thing.

We had quite a number of " crocks."
:< Crocks " are always more -serviceable than
" duds," be it remembered. There was a bank-
manager with a hammer toe, who had come all
the way from South America to join up. He
trained and passed out and did splendidly at
the Front. We had at least two ruptured men ;
one of them wTore always an extremely awkward
instrument, which he hated to expose at the
many medical inspections : both men got to
France and were as good as any others.

We had a man who suffered off and on with
gastritis, a man who had lost half a thumb, a man
whose feet were such a mass of corns that the
doctor despaired of his ever doing a drill. And
we had men with weak chests, with weak ankles,
with weak brains, and lung trouble and rheuma-
tism and neurasthenia. But they nearly all
seemed to make good in time, and they filled up
the gaps in the heroic line — which illustrates
the point that in this war, out of almost any
material, first-class soldiers could be made.

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 73

I saw a great deal of suffering on the part of
these men and these boys ; and it was patiently
and quietly borne. It was theirs to bear it and
they bore it. Any physical infirmity you might
have was bound to make itself felt at Little Sparta.
You drilled to the breaking-point, and then you
went on drilling. Respite came at night when
we took off puttees and boots from swollen legs
and feet, and lay down on our wooden beds and
slept. What intense sleeping there was in these
barrack-rooms ! Men rejoiced that it was evening
and that the blessed time was coming. I think
for a few minutes after " Lights out ! " the
hidden side of men's personalities suffused their
brains, the tender bonds with the women they
loved asserted themselves, or, if they knew no
women, with that sweet alter ego that abides
in each of us ready to comfort and soothe, and,
like God, wipe away the tears from the eyes.
The image of the wife behind and the faces of
little ones shone in the brain. I suppose few
people ' realise the desperate unhappiness which
parting a man from his wife sometimes involves,
a silent agony, too, of which men do not care to
speak to their comrades.

Most nights it must be said I slept like a dead
man, and yet with a waking ear for the voices of
the barrack-room. Men become more lovable
when they cease swearing and fall like children
into Nature's arms in sleep. Again and again
some one gives a complaining sigh, or is about to
utter a complaining word, but relapses somehow
into silence again, comforted. Some one in

74 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

delirium jumps up in bed and cries " Halt ! "
and another cries out, " Oh, oh, where am I,
where am I ? " The strong man next me from
Newcastle is restless too, and I hear him whisper
to the unknown, " My poor bairn, my poor
bairn, it's awfu'."

A man's first meeting with his wife after being
taken for a soldier is one of strange pathos.
Pleasure and pain and surprise are mingled,
and I think pain is sometimes the most. She
has not seen him in uniform before, and it makes
a great difference in his appearance. She grasps,
even if he does not, that the uniform means that
he does not belong to her as before, that he
belongs to the King. She may admire him in
the conventional way because in uniform he
already looks " a hero," but there is always a
poignant other feeling beneath. She is robbed.
And the man she meets is clearly not the same
man as went away from her. Something of his
personality has been shorn away from him,
something of that which made him lovable
to her.

Thus it is. A picquet comes and tells you a
lady is at the gate. You know she is coming
and are ready to go out. It is perhaps your
first time beyond the portal of the barrack-yard.
A corporal inspects you to see whether your
appearance is worthy of the regiment before he
lets you out, and your wife waits whilst some
sergeant or other talks to her saucily. However,

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 75

out you go hurriedly, silently, and trek from the
prison walls with the woman of your heart. It
is amazingly difficult to speak. Time is your
enemy, for you have only an hour or so before
the nightly roll-call. Your wife is dumfounded
by your appearance, and you, for your part,
walk like a policeman showing some one the way.
Rain blows out of a cloud — chilling and soaking
you both, and incidentally tarnishing your
buttons and brasses. It drives you back from
the wooded hills to those mean booths and
shops which straggle alongside the barrack-walls
and the adjacent grounds of the Lunatic Asylum.
In the darkness somewhere there is a coloured
sign lit up from within — " Hot Suppers. Now
Ready." It is the inevitable sausage shop. And
husband and wife, half-drenched with pelting
rain, sit facing one another at a little table, and
sausage and mashed is put between. Meanwhile
insistent bugle blasts break out from Sparta — the
" angels whisper " and the picquet call, and
what not, and the woman inevitably starts at the
imperious military demand of these brassy calls.
Heavy Guardsmen's feet crash past on the road.
And duty calls. You have never loved your
wife more, and yet you have nothing to say to
her, and somehow you feel distant. You are
harder and firmer than you were a week or so
ago. Your mind is a blank, and you are waiting
for orders, so to speak. The woman, alas, has
two miles to walk through storm and rain to a
friend's house, where she is staying the night.
And you ? You must go. You must say Good-

76 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

bye and have done, and return to the gate.
And it is a case in which :

Alas, I cannot bless thee, my beloved,
May God bless thee!

And it makes you wish to curse the army, and
by the time you reach the barrack-room you
are white with voiceless, passionate anger and
resentment.

Another great pain which is suffered is in
learning to be impure. It is only a strong
character that can resist the infection of impurity.
Inevitably you say or think things which are
obscene and brutal, and many go and do the sort
of things they say and think. With what a pang
do you relinquish the sacredness of your man-
hood. You often hear it said in a jocular way :
" What would the missus think if she could hear
me now ! " But oh, the grief in the secret places
of the heart when you first begin to swear, when
you first say indecent things, when, perchance,
in a moment of confraternity a man says an in-
decent thing about his own wife !

The individual man is better than the army
he is in. There are few recruits whose character
is worse than the army they enter. And, of
course, the reverse is also partly true : no in-
dividual is as brave or as patient as the army.
I think the splendour of the latter fact dims our
eyes to the former. Rightly so, perhaps. But
the individual in the army takes the patience

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 77

and bravery for granted. He feels more deeply
the other. Spiritual suffering and moral defeat
cut much deeper than the ordeal in which the
nobler instincts triumph.

As the school has a lower moral atmosphere
than the homes from which it recruits its children,
so the army is lower than civil life. The army
(and probably not only our own, but every
other army) has a virus of its own. As an in-
stitution it is saturated with a disease which it
communicates in a greater or lesser degree to
all who come into it. How to combat that
disease must be one of the problems of democracy,
how to reform the institution on a cleaner basis.
I know there are many who would say : * Oh,
reform it altogether, get rid of it, be as little
children and live without it." But that ideal is
not likely *to be realised soon, and meanwhile
it is worth while examining conditions which
seem to belong to the past, present, and future
of the army alike.

There are also many who would deny that
the moral atmosphere of the army is lower than
that of civil life, and many who admit the low
state, but conceive it to be better and jollier
and more desirable than the higher.

Be that as it may, none can deny the real
suffering of the conscript when he first begins
to use foul language. The pang is repeated
when he first gives way to drink, and if he suc-
cumbs, as so many inevitably do, to sexual
temptation, and if he falls in with the wrong
sort of girl. A good soldier, however, can keep

78 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

away from drink and lust, though he seldom
can escape from impurity of language and
thought. Of this he feels the pain, and it is
part of the suffering he must endure, but I do
not think he has the responsibility. The army
itself has that. When he begins to use the army's
language without willing it he has ceased to be
an individual soldier, and has become soldiery.

The best part of the training at Little Sparta
was the bayonet-fighting, in which for a moment
one did feel some glamour of the barbaric nobility
of war. To stand on guard, to make our points
and parries and lunges, to charge shouting, to
place a foot on the prostrate foe, withdraw the
blade and rush forward again, watching and
threatening, fearful and yet terrible — all that
was training for real fighting, and made the man
in khaki one with all who have ever fought a
field. Bayonet-fighting is much less brutal than
machine-gunnery, gas, shrapnel, liquid-fire, and
even bomb- thro wing, because it is more personal,
and human responsibility is clear.

It is more appalling to be killed by the bayonet
because of the psychological terror of suddenly
seeing your enemy intent on your death, with
fury in his face. It seems more polite on the
enemy's part to kill you by machine-gun, but in
reality it is only more despicable. A bayonet-
fight is an honest, straightforward fight, and we
ought to feel less squeamishness about it than
about the other.

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 79

I heard of a curious case lately. A machine-
gunner who was a good Christian was for
some reason or other returned to the ordinary
ranks when the M.G. division was formed,
and he began to do bayonet-fighting under
a Guards instructor. In the course of actual
warfare it might easily have happened that
he should never be in a bayonet-fight, but he
must be drilled none the less. And as he
listened to the actualities of the drill he was
much upset —

" At the stomach point ! "

" In, out, on guard,! >:

' Long point and short point following ! r
" At the left nipple and right groin, point !
Cross over ! Jab position ready ! At the throat,
jab 1 "

He began to be greatly troubled by a con-
scientious doubt that had not crossed his mind
in the swaying of the machine-gun. But a
bayonet -fighter of crusader -faith is nearer to
Christ than a machine - gunner, though both
may be far away. The ethics of killing troubled
the mind greatly, but these ethics may perhaps
be more fitly discussed when treating of
religion in the army generally, and in Sparta
in particular.

Matters in which we were like and unlike
Ancient Sparta. — We were hardily trained, and
a man was a fool if he were found out doing
wrong. We sat at public tables (we privates),

8o A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS n

and whatever our civil degree had been we were
equal there. I have read that the inhabitants
of ancient Lacedaemon were allowed to jest
at these tables — without scurrility. In that we
were unlike Spartans, for our jesting was most
scurrilous. But we only possessed our wives by
stealth, and infrequently, and were punished if
we stayed too long. If we felt pain we showed
it not, and we masked our faces whatever our
grief. We did not have the iron money of the
Greeks, but what is the same in effect, we had
little, and could not import luxuries. We did
not read ; we were enough unto ourselves and
despised all others. A Spartan is supposed to
have observed when asked to listen to an imitation
of a nightingale's song, " No, for I have heard
the nightingale itself," which showed that in an
intense way the Spartans were not vulgar. We,
alas, were excessively vulgar. In much, however,
we were like the Spartans, and we were like them
in the final thing of all — in battle, where we did
not yield. But in much also we were unlike.
We did not run in our nakedness, and our eyes
were not pure for women. We had not those
beautiful Greek bodies, but bodies made ugly
with clothes and care. And we had sins, sins,
sins upon our brains. We had not the clear
intelligence and happiness of the Greek — the
innocence of the morning of Europe. The sun
was not rising in our souls, but setting through
storm and fog. All manner of things could be
said about us and against us, but one positive
thing redeems the rest. We were proved later

ii LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 81

on in the battle-line, and it was seen that we
knew how to die, and that it was ever the same
humanity that went down in the evening in
France and Belgium as went down in the morning
at Thermopylae.

Ill

SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN

ONE of the curious pleasures of being stationed
in London is the luxurious leisurely first hour
at home when, duty being done, I hasten across
the Park to the old familiar rooms where so
many pages have been written and so many
bright faces seen. Now I cannot entertain friends
as of yore, and Time, who was always with me,
has become against me. But it is possible to sit
in the old arm-chair and look lovingly at familiar
panels and the pictures with which I have lived.
Still the luxury is not so much in the time of
chair repose as in an inevitable procedure which
has become my grace before freedom — the pro-
cedure of washing off the barracks. Indeed a
taste for living and being which I had not expected
expresses itself in the divesting of puttees and
the putting off of heavy boots, the peaceful shave
in warm water — such a contrast to the hurried
shave in the dark with hard cold water at reveille,
the washing of close-clipped head so full inwardly
of beautiful impressions, yet forced to lie on
pillows where dirty heads innumerable have lain
before, the warm bath, taking away the poison

82

in SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 83

of the barrack-room night that clogs into the
pores, the seven-times washed fingers which have
gone a shabby grey with the dirty work of
washing floors and windows, cleaning equipment
and rifle, the change into fresh white linen, the
dab of eau-de-cologne to cheeks and throat, the
few drops of perfume to take away, if possible,
the barracks smell. All that belongs to the
process of washing away the barracks, putting
it away from me, and making me fit to come into
the presence of friends.

It is deep ingrained, however. The iron of
it has entered the soul. How much there is
that cannot be washed away by these means !
Dirt has come not only to the body but to the
other more precious parts. The language which
I use, my own especial language, has got mixed
with matter in the wrong place, and the rubbishy
phrases and torn and tattered expressions of the
barrack-room seem fatally entangled with mine.
I speak like a soldier, am coarse like one, have,
in fact, a sort of khaki brogue, a dialect as cheap
as the stuff we wear, and then I remain inevitably
peremptory and brusque in reply. I am annoyed
that other people do not come to the point
sharply in the soldier's way, and then annoyed
at being annoyed — for in my heart I love most
of all the leisurely and charming way of talk
and action.

There is a second process of washing away
the barracks, and that is to sit in my arm-chair
gloomy and morose and begin to dream, to dream
and melt a little, and then perhaps put forth lazily

84 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS m

an arm and hand that takes a volume of poems
from the little shelf by the fire. There is nothing
more humanising and sweet to the tired soldier
than poetry ; it woos him back again and com-
forts him, it is the soft hands of the woman he
loves caressing him and making him once more
precious to himself and her.

The1 army has enforced a uniform upon the
soul itself, a prison uniform, on which is written
in cypher : You are nothing and mean nothing,
you are no more than dirt ; only the army is
great, only the army has worth.

And there is a deep hypnotical effect produced
by the great army machine. Moving in its
splendour and terror before the eyes it suggests
the thought to the heart : You have ceased to
be anything or to count for anything in yourself —
only the army counts for anything. It suggests
it to the heart, and the heart in false sleep accepts
it in the army's presence. But when the army is
absent the painful process of fighting the illusion
begins.

To wash, to dream a little, to read a poem,
to be caressed, and then certainly to sleep, to
discharge army from the pores for nights and
days, for a whole draft leave, for a special leave,
for a sick-leave — how long, think you, would it
take to get it out of the system ? How long is
it going to take for us all ? For by now every
one alive has got somewhat of it.

I remember after my first three weeks, when
I was virtually a prisoner within barrack walls,
and I obtained my first week-end leave and

in SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 85

journeyed twenty miles in Surrey to London on
the top of an omnibus, I was mad at the common
sights I saw, and drank them in like wine, loved
every civilian, grudged no other young man
his black attire and precious liberty. I saw the
Surrey hills and woods as for the first time
sparkling like Eden. It was a most intense hour
and a half of joy. Joy and pain also — for the
heart ached.

My second week-end was not nearly so intense.
My third and fourth were progressively duller,
and the 'bus ride was but added boredom, a
prolongation of the curse-sodden bricks of the
drill-yard. I only ached to know myself becom-
ing duller, less sensitive to sights and sounds, more
a possession of the army, more ready to kill and
destroy than to be and to enjoy.

A great spell has been wrought over the earth,
and even I have succumbed to it. Yes, you also.
You and I and all of us. Not only our bodies
but our souls are in uniform and cannot get out
of it. And it will take longer eventually to
demobilise the souls than the bodies. Soldiers
from the Front know the programme of the bath :
the first bath and what it will do, the second,
the third, the tenth ; they know the new odours
they still exude months after getting home, and
the rashes and blotches in the skin — the war
which they have taken in being sweated out of
them. That is the physical process, and a
kindred spiritual one also goes on, the getting
war out of the eyes, out of the spirit. Poetry,
love, and Nature will perhaps do it at the last ;

86 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS in

peace and sleep and the gentle quiet beauty of
the unspoiled universe into which we were born.
But I know that years and years after peace has
been proclaimed we shall be doing what I did
to-night before taking up the pen — we shall
be washing and purging it away.

Wellington Barracks are only twenty minutes'
walk from my home. It might have been my lot
to have been sent to any other regiment and to
have completed my training in any other part of
Britain, but instead I am remarkably and romantic-
ally near. I can and indeed must lead a double
life. Whenever I am free from duty I am free
to walk home, and I am called upon to make
marvellous quick changes and to re-orient myself
spiritually on the shortest notice.

My day's work is coming to an end, the com-
pany has been dismissed from bayonet-drill,
the barrack-rooms are full of soldiers, and there
is a frantic hurly-burly of talk, swearing, singing,
and clamorous working. Jerry with the massed-
barrel-organ's voice is vocal above all. I am
cleaning my boots again, polishing my buttons
and hat-badge, rubbing up the brasses of my
belt with priceless bath-brick, laying down my
bed to be ready for when I shall return, soaping
and damping my duplicate trousers, and laying
them under the mattress for to-morrow's crease,
tidying up. And all the while my ears are
passively receptive of all manner of indecent
talk, swearing, and brutal or meaningless nonsense

in SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 87

bawled from all sides. But at last I emerge,
and with cries of " Good-byee," called after me
or called back to them, I make good my escape,
pass the scrutinising sergeant at the gate — he
will not let you out unless your appearance
keeps up the honour of the regiment — and I am
enfranchised of that different and fresher air
which is the other side of barrack railings, that
good air in which civilians luxuriate. A few
minutes' quick walking, which is done mechanic-
ally, brings me to my own door, and it often
seems as if I had arrived instantaneously after
passing the barrack gate, so lost have I been in
my own set thought. And it is difficult to
realise that such a slight difference in time and
space separates me from the inferno of the
barrack-room.

I have tea. I do my hour of washing off
the barracks, dream a little, read a little, and then,
it may be, prepare to go out to dinner. I may
not wear evening-dress, but there are certain
changes to make. Then I go forth to old friends
and acquaintances for love and interest, or curi-
osity and the need to know certain things, as
the case may be.

But the contrast between being in a friend's
house and being in barracks is even greater than
that of home and barracks. And it is more
difficult to feel at ease. For one thing, civilian
life with its different rhythm comes up against
the steady, hard beating of army time. And as
I listen to the leisurely way of talk of those who
are free, it is inevitable to reflect that they have

88 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS m

all the time in the world, whilst my time is
limited and fleeting, and soon, very soon, I must
return to the gates. I grudge to friends their
sense of time. For indeed the pleasure of their
company is most intense — more intense to me
than mine is to them, because they have a shallower
sense of time. With acquaintances it is easier,
though because of the army they seem somewhat
more distant and accidental. Their life seems
somewhat irrelevant. And they for their part
are continually being startled by my uniform
and its plainness. I warn them before I come.
I am a private in the army and must come in
khaki — you don't mind ? Not in the least —
delighted. Nevertheless I feel strange.

I sat all one evening in the gloomy grandeur
of Carlton House Terrace and was entertained
by a munition manufacturer who, despite his
trade, seemed to nurse ideals and to have been
made melancholy by war. We sat after dinner
in a sort of ballroom, and a Spanish Count and
his wife danced the tango to the strains of a
phonograph, and the other guests applauded,
whilst the manufacturer with tears in his eyes
told me fragments of his soul's tragedy — he was
laden with the responsibility of having killed
thousands, of having made a fortune through
the death of others, and he saw, as all saw at that
time, ideals slipping away from the nations,
and the ideal cause for which we fought swallowed
up in greed, bitter materialism, and hate. And
he could not stop the great machines which he
had set up. The shells grew ever bigger, the

in SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 89

numbers greater. Yet he felt it was time for
peace. He thought that Lloyd George did not
treat sufficiently reverently the possible chances
as they came along.

We sat and talked, sadly and seriously, whilst
the perfect Spaniard made his wife more beautiful
and we never seemed to notice them. My time
of returning like a Cinderella to dirt and poverty
drew nearer, but while aware of the strange
contrast, I felt pleasantly peaceful, for somehow
the shell-maker had also got something of my
sense of time. Before we parted he took me down
to the basement of his house, stood me before
an immense and terrible-looking chest, and bade
me shut my eyes. When I opened them again
he had slowly opened the heavy door of the chest,
and I saw in front of me a shell eight feet high,
and as substantial around as the girth of a tree,
apex upward, grey and sinister. " My tragedy,"
said he. " This is the latest type which I
produce."

It was already late. I said good-b'ye. I fled
away down the Duke of York's steps and across
the mysterious Park, just getting in before the
gates were shut. And I entered the erstwhile
noisy barrack-room, now dark and stertorian,
smelling thickly with an atmosphere that could
be cut, and I stepped over the many beds till
I came to mine. There I stopped and rapidly
undressed, to become one with my comrades
again.

I had several invitations to speak in London,
which I had to refuse, it being against the army

90 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS in

regulations for a private to appear on a platform
in the King's uniform, and also against the regu-
lations that he should appear in civilian attire. I
tested the matter and was expressly forbidden.
Nevertheless I could not deny myself the pleasure
of accepting one invitation, and that was to give
an address every Friday in Lent at Christ Church.
I found I could get past the regulations by wearing
a cassock over my uniform — comprehending the
service of Caesar within the ampler service of
God. It was to R. J. Campbell that I owed this
opportunity and true pleasure. He had read
my Priest of the Ideal^ and would have liked
me to be Hampden in his church. So I spoke
every week on Christian Idealism, and sought
in my new life and experience examples in which
life's barren metal ought to be converted into
gold.

The contrast again was strange. For Friday
is a squalid day in barracks. We use every
spare moment to clean our barrack-room, and
every one has to take a share down on his knees
scrubbing the floor. A huge fire is lit to dry
it quickly, every one is angry, and our faces get
red, our hands most grubby. There are always
shirkers or suspected shirkers. And from an
orgy of scrubbing of this kind I would tear
myself away, sit down ten minutes to think
quietly of my subject, and then, with knees still
damp and face and hands still wet, hasten round
into Victoria Street to put on the gloomy cassock,
walk with clanking steps up the nave, and give
my sermon.

in SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 91

It must be said that the better part of such
a contrast in living made the worse more bear-
able. Moreover, it touched a certain sense
of the humorous and gave some precious salt
of wit.

One night I made one in a joyous party
where my neighbour on the one hand was an
English princess, and next night I was a sentry
at Buckingham Palace. Such a fact might, I
suppose, be cited as evidence of the war making
us more democratic, but it is not so. War makes
us less democratic, and many things which were
comparatively easy for me as a civilian were
distinctly awkward for me as a private in uniform.
Being introduced to officers in a drawing-room
was always difficult, and whilst some treated me
most cordially, others, with official decorum, re-
mained amusingly cold and distant, and even dis-
inclined to shake hands. In the latter period of
the war to be a private soldier was to be of lower
social caste, and if a lip-service of honour was paid
to the common soldier, there was nevertheless the
consciousness that he was without individual power
or voice, and was virtually a slave. I had curious
adventures in treatment outside of barracks.

One night General A asked to see me, and I

went down to Horseguards Avenue in fear and
trepidation, was sent in to him, rigidly saluted,
and stood to attention, but he at once put forth
his hand, and shook hands and smiled, treating
me as an equal. On another occasion I met an
exalted official who knew me quite well as a
writer, and he kept me standing to attention on

92 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS in

his door-mat and treated me so formally that I
felt most chilled. One thing is certain, the
attitude towards the private soldier was a test
for snobs and gentlemen.

One night, after a long discussion on the
religion of the soldier, talked out in the arm-
chair ease of a private club-room, I crossed the

Park with C , a dear, enthusiastic clergyman,

and as we passed the sentry-box at St. James's
Palace at midnight a soft voice whispered,
" Hullo, Graham." I looked round in surprise,
and it was a room-chum on sentry.

:< Don't forget the cake you promised to bring
us," said he with a grin.

The priest was a gentleman in the full sense
of the word. He loved the soldiers, and we
stood talking to the sentry for about five minutes
in the dear, dark dead of night, risking the
patrols.

" Well, God bless you, my boy, God bless
you," said my friend to the sentry as we passed
on. In myself I felt a little abashed, because
my " room-chum " was in barracks of a lewd
and godless conversation, and here was the
padre saying " God bless you." JBut I learnt
afterwards that the padre knew his man, and that
the soldier was in reality quite edified at being
blessed. He liked it and felt blessed.

I don't know why it should appear to us that
with the poor is reality, with the privates in the

in SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 93

army, with the working man in civil life. The
life of the rich, of the cultured, of the officers,
of the employers must be reality also. It is, I
suppose, because everything depends on the
poor, on the worker, on the common soldier —
the others could be dispensed with, they cannot ;
the others are few, they are many. And then
the others think and talk so much about the
life of the soldiers and the workers, and we
feel how much, nevertheless, they are divorced
from it.

I am convinced that this vast life of the poor
on which rich and lettered subsist cannot be
understood except from within. On the other
hand, the poor themselves, the workers, and the
soldiers know nothing, and could not govern
the country or be the nation by themselves.

All that they know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong.

It is necessary to belong to both worlds to
understand and to be able to do anything of
positive value. Therefore I would propose to
the well-wishers of the masses, and especially to
young clergy and literary men, that they give
up the world in which they live, and take a job
and try to work from within. They will find
it appallingly difficult to live what they preach,
and they may fail to affect for good the life of
their neighbours, but they will learn.

" Where the people are gathered together
there it is accustomed to stink," wrote Nietzsche.
Quite so. But the stink proceeds from a

94 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS m

ferment which is always going on, and out of
that ferment are born forces which have power
to change.

I often wondered whether the great ferment
in the ranks meant a revolution after the war.
I myself believe a people embodied under a
King, even were he puny in body and dull of
mind, or merely his father's son, is as excellent
a conception of a nation as a republic. It is as
liberal, it has as many Christian possibilities, and
evolving as it does along the line of limited
personal but unlimited national power, is at
least as democratic. But I need hardly say how
anti-royal our uneducated masses are becoming.
They cannot see the use of a King and
Queen when a Premier and his wife would
serve, think " royalty " very expensive to keep
up, and that it stands in the way of a working-
man's England. Even in the rank and file of the
Guards there seems little enthusiasm in singing
" God save the King," which the soldiers piti-
fully imagine to be a prayer to God to preserve
merely the person, the son of Adam who now
wears the crown. And it seems to them that
" God save the People " would be a better thing
to sing — " Not Kings, oh Lord, but men ! " The
ten Americans in our ranks were openly amused
at the hymns and prayers for " George Guelph,"
as they called him. But then, brought up
without our traditions and with republican tradi-
tions, and not having given much thought to
the matter, such mirth as they had at our expense
was only natural. Subjects of another State

in SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 95

ought not to have been enlisted in our army —
but, of course, necessity and the war broke many
rules. As regards our other revolutionaries, I
try to teach them that " God save the King "
means " God save the People/' but is a nicer
way of saying it — better than saying " God
save our noble selves " ; that the King is a
symbolic personality, a living symbol of nation-
hood, that he is like the colours we salute, not
valuable because of stuff or pattern, but because
of a spiritual significance ; that to have a President
is excellent for a business State, but not so excellent
for a nation with traditions and a complicated
inheritance of feudal nobility, many-peopled
empire, and historic Church ; that a President
and a Republic and first man first is too obvious
an organism, and that a King stands in the midst
of the people, whereas a President goes ahead and
leads ; that the President wears a crown as much
as any King, but that his crown is too often the
crown of personal ambition, whereas the King's
crown is the crown of the dignity of the people
as a whole.

Such ideas, however, I found difficult to
impart. For the world wind was constantly
blowing against thrones. The ruin of Russia
consequent upon the Revolution was the only
object-lesson in current history, but the con-
fusion of Press opinions left men too confused
regarding Russia to be able to say anything of
her. The working man looked forward to an
England with a President.

We held the privilege of guarding the person

96 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS m

of the King, and that is why we, above other
soldiers, should have had a simple but sound
notion of what royalty means. The officers no
doubt understood, being as they are the flower
of Britain and of many noble families. In their
attitude to the King breathes the atmosphere of
Eton. But they are enough unto themselves.
That perfect restraint which marks an officer
with his men comes too naturally and is not
entirely a virtue. If every officer would only
make an effort to teach his men the real things, the
value of our five Spartan regiments could be quin-
tupled— they could be converted into living
power. The fact is, the whole system of training
needs to be overhauled with reference to higher
national values. Already, theoretically, esprit
de corps is accepted as the most valuable quality
to be cultivated. The fact that "those who
guard the King never retire," the glorious
military traditions, are duly enforced. But the
purely military aspect of esprit de corps ought to
be supplemented in many ways.

" I could not think of a greater privilege
than to mount guard over the King. It would
always be something to look back upon, to have
been on guard at Buckingham Palace," said a
friend to me. I agreed. Every one who serves
the King loyally, even in the smallest way,
honours and preserves something more than the
mere person of royalty. To be a Guard should
be to be consecrated not only to the King, but
to the nation through him.

Kings and Queens cannot themselves save

in SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 97

themselves. And if they could they would not
be worth saving. But we can save ours if it
is worth while — and not merely as " a golden
link of Empire," but as the crown of splendid
nationhood.

To be put on Royal guard is the crown of
training. As far as parade is concerned, it is
the soldier's greatest ordeal. No doubt there
are many who would rather be in a bayonet
charge than " mount Buck," and frequently a
man who " bobs on it," as the saying is, gets a
comrade to do it for him for a few shillings.
For an exchange of duties is nearly always
allowed. Old hands, however, who have done
it five or six times, see nothing difficult in it,
for they know exactly what is expected of them.

There are hours to spend washing and drying
equipment, polishing the brasses, squaring the
pack, fitting the braces and cartridge-pouches,
the belt, the water-bottle, the haversack. Our
regiment prided itself on the use of white equip-
ment, which through much washing had become
like alabaster. Each strap had a surface as of
beautifully ironed linen. The brasses, under
the influence of brasso, became like little mirrors,
flashing at all points of the person. The rifle
had to be luminous, the bayonet unimpeachable,
the trousers creased correctly, the tunic without
spot, hat-badge perfectly poised like a star, hat
put on squarely with peak down over the eyes.
One must also know something of the ritual of

H

98 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS m

guard-mounting and the mystery of open order
march. The N.C.O.'s get into a frantic state
of nervous tension. The drill-sergeant who
carries the colours and at the same time as he
marches shouts the drill orders for himself and
the escort — On the lejt, left form : forward ! — had
a perturbed mien which caused my eyes and my
lips to murmur, " Alexander of Macedon was
a great man certainly, but that's no reason for
smashing the furniture." Even our R.S.M., a
perfect Malvolio, seemed troubled. The officers,
however, take things much more calmly, and
even when making mistakes do so with an air
that makes good the deficiency. When I did my
first guard the inspection was made by the
neatest and sharpest officer who ever took charge
of the battalion whilst I was there, and he did it
well — there is no doubt of that. It took a long
time, and all the while the regimental band
played soft music. We were standing like wood,
the lieutenant and the R.S.M. looked from
one to another with beady eyes, and some one
else with the black book was writing down the
reprimands as they occurred. It reminded me
somehow of the moment of Bassanio's choice,
and I fully expected to make "a swan-like end,
fading in music." But I passed muster — only
Malvolio pulled the peak of my hat a little
further down over my eyes as he passed, his
object being to make me lift my head higher, I
think. One of the Americans was next to me,
and he whispered after the inspecting officers had
passed by, ' ' What do you think of it, eh, to

in SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 99

mount guard over the King ? It's the proudest
moment of my life." He understood the matter
emotionally, and did not talk of George Guelph
now.

It is quite right that the Guard mounting
should be taken thus seriously. For the occasion
is one where honour is expressed in care and
smartness. And the honour is national. It struck
me, however, that a great deal of the impression
was lost by the cheap airs rendered by the band.

A crowd of accidental passers-by collects.
The old guard at the Palace marches into position
to be relieved, the new guard, preceded by the
band and the colours of the regiment, marches
out of barracks. Off we go to a jingling music-
hall air, and a sense of mortification steals into
the heart that the pipes have not preceded us.
For the pipes are always national, or at least
in good taste, whereas these wretched ragtime
songs of the brass band put us on the level of
some sort of South American Republic or less.
If the music be wrong the whole ritual is wrong,
and the other impressiveness counts for nought.

However, be that as it may, we present arms,
we approach in a goose-step, poising uplifted
toes, we exchange, and the old guard marches
away, leaving us in possession and at our posts.

We do two hours' sentry-go and have four
hours off. It makes four spells in the twenty-
four hours, and there is nothing difficult about
it. It is quiet duty, affording at least during the
night hours time for thought and reflection.

In the daytime it is merely necessary to keep

ioo A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS m

alert, to present arms to members of the Royal
Family and to the battalion should it march past,
and to salute officers and armed parties. At
night nothing happens : one has the company
of the stars and the glamour of motor-lights
racing through the Park. Fifteen paces to march
up, turn, and fifteen paces to march down, turn,
fifteen paces again, fifteen paces, halt, order arms,
a pace to the rear, stand at ease. . . .

It is very pleasant to say poetry to oneself
whilst marching to and fro. Two lines of Gray's
Elegy will take the sentry up and the other two
lines of the verse will bring him back again.
One verse of Omar will take him up, another will
take him down. And at night, when the moon-
light disguises with theatrical grandeur the shoddy
masonry of the Palace, the noble lines of English
come aptly to the mind and guide the steps.
" Whatever it is your lot to do in this war try to
live nobly, make a heaven of hell, go inward."
So I often whisper to myself — often whisper in
vain.

Whilst off duty and lying in full equipment
in the guard-house, this night of my guard,
the Germans came over and, prom, prom, posh,
the maroons shot forth, and hard upon them
the metallic reports of many air-craft guns.

" Stand to ! "

We all get up and stand ready with our rifles
for any emergency. Every one grumbles. But
the guard-room fire blazes merrily, and the guns
keep up a joyful hubbub. Suddenly some one
says, " No one can persuade Queen Alexandra

in SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 101

to leave her bedroom and go down to the cellars.
She says that if she's meant to die by a bomb
she can't save herself by going to a cellar." All
approve of this fallacious argument, especially
the old soldiers who have used the formula in
the trying circumstances of the trenches. Then
another says he hopes a bomb will come and blast

them all to . ' What good have they ever

done us ? " Then comes much more silly talk
about revolution, plentifully interlarded with
that bad language by which a soldier seeks to
prove his manhood.

Just before the all-clear bugles I march out
with the relief and resume my post once more.
Once more, fifteen up, fifteen down, and the
moonlight streaming across the way. In a
moment of ennui I notice some words vaguely
scratched on a pillar, done by a sentry with his
bayonet on some past night in the dark and
empty hours when there is no one to see what
is done. And these were the words :

Roll on the Duration.

Roll on Peace.

Roll on the Revolution.

And in those lines I felt expressed how exasperat-
ing and boring the Great War had become.

However, ho-ho, ha-ha, the bicyclist buglers
are tearing past, giving the all-clear signal at
last, and searchlights break across the sky and
begin to make mysterious crosses and lettering
in the heavens. The flagrant beam stands a
long while, as if it has become a permanency,
and then suddenly moves, swings round, whilst

102 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS in

another creeps towards it. Certain messages are
being conveyed, but none can say what they
are :

En avant, then ; fifteen up, turn, fifteen
down, turn. . . .

Buckingham Palace is an ugly building. It
is not fit for the King and Queen of England
to live in, and if it were not so large and imposing
it would be pulled down. But a constant means
of grace in our barrack life was the Chapel,
opposite which so often we lined up for drill.
It is beautiful exteriorly, and I wonder why we
cannot keep our building in keeping with it.
Our barracks are decent, though in need of repair.
But in our near vicinity behold Buckingham
Palace, Queen Anne's Mansions, and some sort
of Diamond Jubilee red-brick commercial horror
climbing up to make a background for the
Chapel.

But the Chapel is beautiful. Our religious
life ought to have been good with such a temple
in our barrack yard.

I spent most of my Sundays at home, but on the
three or four occasions when duty held me at
barracks, I went to religious service at the
Chapel. Once I paraded for Church of England
service, but afterwards became officially a Presby-
terian— joined the true religion, as the Jocks
call it. On free Sundays I went civilly to church.

The great contrast in the two types of service
was that in the military chapel you felt you had

m SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 103

England with you in church, even if the service
were dull, but that in the civil church, no matter
how full of life the service might be, you felt
as if somehow the real base of England was
lacking. In the ordinary church in war-time
you had a gathering of stray units who somehow
did not belong organically to England. But in
the military chapel you had, willy-nilly, the
physical driving power of the nation. England
was present even if England did not sing, and
England's knees were in the pews even if England
did not pray.

Nevertheless, I have not the slightest hesitation
in saying that I would infinitely rather go to any
civil church than to any military one, and that for
me the Church parade has been one of the un-
pleasant parts of this enforced military life.

Still, the military has the national chorus.
It has in live flesh and blood what Westminster
Abbey has in live walls and memories. And
our chapel is vocal from its walls also. It is
alive with sacred fresco, and looks more like a
Byzantine cathedral than an English church.
It is all adorned, all colour, all expression. And
all is in memory of the brave who have died.
There is not a tint or a figure that has been added
in the mere spirit of ornament. All that is in it
is consecrated glory. For that reason it would
be good to purge it of the regimental band which
supplies the place of organ, but has no true func-
tion in it, give the chaplain leave to go, and then
try to realise what the beautiful building full of
soldiers could mean.

104 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS in

How many of those who guard the King
have died for England, have carried to the Altar
the complete sacrifice ! How many poor soldiers
in our many wars have died on foreign fields
and been forgotten ! These crimsons on the
walls are their crimsons. If we could sing, their
voices would swell the chorus. Anonymous
England ! The soldiers' Church ! If some one
could teach the soldiers to sing the Te Deum or
even " Holy 1 Holy ! Holy ! " as it should be
sung, meaning it, then all the other ranks would
sing, behind, on the left, on the right, all who
died before we came as well as we who wear the
uniform now, and England would have a voice
again.

But there is ever a fettering influence at work.
There is one great mistake about these beautiful
walls. It is that definite names have been
inscribed on them — the names of a dozen or so
officers of various generations, and the finer thing
has been missed, of leaving it all anonymous- —
for Jesus' sake.

It is sad to see St. George and the Dragon

merely in memory of George M , scholar,

sportsman, friend, and the rest, instead of all the
Georges. Even as I write comes news of a George
who has died in the trenches, and the crimson of
his blood needs a ray in our memory and in the
church. Cannot all these definite names on the
chapel wall be erased, or else all the thousands
who have died in the Guards be put on ?

But we are all in the pews and the regimental
band will not begone, and here comes the large

in SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 105

and jovial and rather popular chaplain, a hearty
old man of the world who evidently hates cant
of any kind, and has no corner in his heart for
conscientious objectors.

A light did shine

In thy rosy rubicund face

Which showed an outward visible sign

Of an inward spiritual grace.

His sermon begins with, " Why halt ye between
two opinions ? '" and ends with, " The service
of Caesar is the service of God."

I think that in the army that is generally
believed, but I had never heard a clergyman say
it before.

On parade in the weekly routine we looked
so well that no one would have thought it shame
to identify us with a service higher than that of
the King. Did not the Christians in civil attire
look very much down at heel compared with us ?
And in patience and suffering the soldier of the
King treads a thornier way than the average
professing Christian. Lord Hugh Cecil remarks
in his study of the army : ' The citizen becomes
a soldier, and as a soldier thinks nothing too much
to do and to suffer, and in all that he gives his
country walks not unworthily in the steps of
Christ. But when he has once become the
State's instrument without independent will or
life of his own, the State uses him, not for Christ's
work. ..."

That is where the cleavage occurs.

106 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS in

There is much beauty in the symbols of the
army — the salute, the presenting of arms, and
the rest — and they are expressive of the service
of the King or of the State. A salute means :
I recognise your authority, and we are all bound
together under the King. Arms presented, in
which, as it were, the rifles are held not as ready
to be fired but as ready to be given to some one
else, means : My arms belong to you, and
though I wield a weapon of offence, I do not
wield it for myself, but for you and for the King.
The colours, crimson as with the blood of those
who have died rather than flee, is the symbol
of the soul of the regiment. They must not
appear without an escort. When the colours
are brought on parade the band plays, or should
play, low music, as it were the music of the
heart ; we salute or present arms, and even
civilians raise their hats. The colours fly not
only for the living, but for all who have died in
the regiment for the King, not only as an augury
of battles to be won, but as a token of every field
of the past. All bugle-calls denote that a soldier's
life is a watch and a vigil. He does not go by the
clock, or claim any time as his own, but gives
obedience instant upon the demand of his superior.
The bugle-call is the voice of the King.

The King is a living, moving symbol, and
means England. He does not stand for himself,
but for all of us. The Queen, being the bride of
the King, is the symbol of the soul and the honour
of England. The nation is bound to the King
in duty, to the Queen in chivalry. Honour is

in SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 107

universally paid to the soldier, because, in putting
off his own clothes and putting on those of the
King, he gives up his own free will to be obedient
to the country's will, and he sacrifices his birth-
right of freedom, taking up voluntarily the yoke
of sacrifice. When a soldier dies, the Union
Jack is laid on his body in token that he died in
the service of the State, and that the State takes
the responsibility for what it ordered him to do
as a soldier. On the other hand, in the Union
Jack may be seen the mingling of crosses, that
is, of sacrifice. The reversed arms at a funeral
are an acknowledgement of the shame of killing.
Death puts the rifle to shame, and the reversal
of the barrel is a fitting sign of reverence. It
provides part of the atmosphere of military
mourning. The shots fired in the air are fired
at imaginary devils, which might get into men's
hearts at such a moment as the burial of a comrade-
in-arms. An old superstition has it that the
doors of men's hearts stand ajar at such times,
and devils may easily get in. The Last Post
is the Nunc Dimittis of the dead soldier. It is
the last bugle-call. As you stand in heavy cloaks
about the new-dug grave in which the dead
comrade is lying, it seems as if in a sepulchral
way he also must hear it — as it were the last voice
of all earthly, persistently, persistently calling.
It is the last, but it gives promise of reveille — of
the great reveille which ultimately the Angel
Gabriel ought to blow.

God Save the King ! — The National Anthem
does not merely mean God save the Monarch,

io8 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS m

but God save the State embodied in him. It is
a beautiful way of asking salvation as a nation.

All these are the symbols of the service of the
King, and rightly understood, show the ideal
side of rendering to Caesar the things which are
Caesar's. They ought to provide the true atmo-
sphere of the army, showing the army at its
highest and best.

Beautiful, however, as they are, they ought
always to give way before the greater symbols
of the Church. Within the church there is no
saluting ; officers and men are equal at the
altar-rail, partaking in communion. Even the
singing of the National Anthem, if over-stressed,
may be out of place in church, and nothing is
more wrong than interrupting a man who is
kneeling before God in order to make him stand
up to sing " God Save the King." For the
same reason the idea that curates and young
priests ought, against their will, to be made to
join the army is mistaken. The symbols of God
are higher than the symbols of the King.

Besides the serious aspect of the soldier's duty
there is a good deal of humour in the daily round,
which begins with " Hey, Johnnie Cope " and
ends with " Donald Blue." Some one in the
army allotted hymns to each act in the soldier's
life. Thus :

1 The pipes blow reveille at Wellington Barracks to the tune of " Hey,
Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin' yet ? " For " Lights out " they play
" Donald Blue," sometimes parodied in the words, " Oh, good Lord, my
rifle's rusty."

Ill

SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN

109

Reveille ....
First Parade .
Breakfast ....
Sergeant- Major's Parade

Swedish Drill (P.T.) .

Route March .

Dinner ....

Rifle Drill . . .
Officer's Lecture
Dismiss ....

Tea . . ...
Free for the Night .

Last Post

Lights Out

Inspection of the Guard .

" Christians, Awake ! "
" Art thou weary, art thou languid."
" Meekly wait and murmur not."
" When he cometh, when he

cometh."

*4 Here we suffer grief and pain."
" Onward ! Christian soldiers."
" COME, YE THANKFUL PEOPLE,

COME."

" Go, labour on."
;< Tell me the old, old story."
" Praise God, from whom all bless-
ings flow."
" What means this eager, anxious

throng ? "
" Oh Lord, how happy should we

be!"

" Safely, safely gathered in."
" Peace, perfect peace."
" Sleep on, beloved."

IV
ESPRIT DE CORPS

I LISTENED one day to the reminiscences of one
who had been regimental sergeant-major. As
far as my memory serves, let me record his most
interesting words :

" I was born of a Scottish family. As most
of you know, I joined the army in the ranks.
As a lad of eighteen I enlisted and went to Little
Sparta. I had the hard time there which all of
you had, and I assure you I did not escape without
being once thrown into the guard-room or having
to fight one of the old soldiers to show what stuff
I was made of. In due course the squad in which
I trained ' passed out/ and I went up to barracks
in London. I did very well there, and was a
pattern of smartness. I very soon got my stripes.
I became that very hard-worked person, a lance-
corporal, and was at every one's beck and call —
the hardest months of my soldiering career.
But I did so well that I was sent back to Little
Sparta as a drill-instructor, and it was my task to
take over squads of raw recruits such as I had
myself but lately been, and teach them and drill
them into being soldiers. I * passed out ' many

no

iv ESPRIT DE CORPS 1 1 1

squads with credit, and then again was ordered
up to London. I had returned as full corporal,
and I was then made lance-sergeant. I was
promoted in course of time to be sergeant, and
ultimately to be regimental sergeant-major. So
Fve been through all the routine. I have a
very large experience of army life and of the
main things in it — discipline and esprit de corps.
" Little Sparta is a place of very hard dis-
cipline, the training is hard and no faults are
overlooked. But I came from a Scottish home
where discipline was hard, and I cannot say I
found the discipline of the barracks harder than
that of home. I was punished, and, as I have said,
did some extra drills, and was put in the guard-
room. I had a fight, but the only thing I really
resented was the humiliating personal remarks
which the corporals and sergeants seemed to
like to indulge in. And I can say without any
reserve that no one should ever address remarks
to a soldier which are humiliating, because it
creates a desire for revenge which is fatal to the
preservation of a true esprit de corps. Injustice
also, of course, is another thing which is in-
tolerable. Instructors ought always to treat their
men as if they were men, not as if they were a
sort of lower species of animal. The chief fault
of those in authority nowadays is that they think
too much of themselves and too little of the
men under them. Now it should be an axiom
that you can never think too much of or do too
much for those who are under you. Training
recruits is not just breaking in horses. It can

ii2 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iv

be the highest possible work for King and
Country.

* When I came up to our London barracks
I must say I was surprised to observe the difference
in discipline. Here, compared with Little Sparta,
everything was slack. On the first evening I
was much struck by seeing a splendid sergeant
of the King's Guard in full dress playing skittles
at the back of the canteen — with a set of privates.
Such intimacy I could never have thought possible.
I saw here much drunkenness and unpunctuality,
squaring of punishments, gambling, and the like.
This was, of course, many, many years ago, and
I do not know what it is like now. Soon I got
my stripes, and I decided to be regimental from
the first. On my first morning I told an orderly
that he had left the slops which ought to be
emptied first thing each morning, and that he
must empty them at once. He said ' All right,'
and went away and did something else, practi-
cally ignoring me. So I had him at once marched
to the guard-room, and he was very severely
punished. After that it was seen that I was not
a person to be trifled with, and my commands
were always obeyed. I never, never played
cards with the privates in the barrack-room ; I
kept rigidly teetotal. If comrades drew me into
the canteen and they had their beer, I had my
ginger-beer, and I kept my temper and smiled,
however much I was chaffed. All sorts of
tricks were played on other N.C.O.'s, and the
slacker they were the more tricks were played
on them — such tricks as whitewashing their

iv ESPRIT DE CORPS 113

tunics or throwing their clothes out of the window.
I don't say that my example improved the state
of things, for it is impossible for one man to make
much difference, but I was that sort of man by
temperament.

" It was a change for me when I was sent back
to Little Sparta as a drill-instructor, to take
charge of squads of new recruits and make them
into soldiers. I think the two years I spent this
way were the happiest years of my life. I
renewed my faith in army life at the fount. I
rejoiced in the glitter and sparkle of the N.C.O.'s
on parade, in the snap and finish in the drill,
in the regularity and sobriety of the men, in the
sports, in the emulation in hardihood and
smartness, in the absence of corruption and of
slackness. Little Sparta suited me, and it was
somewhat of a shock again when promoted to
lance-sergeant I returned to the easy-going
London barracks. Still, I pursued my old way
and was reserved with privates, never gambled
with them, was firm and stood no nonsense, but
always cheery and happy all the same. In due
course I was made drill-sergeant, and was a most
popular N.C.O. all the time.

" All this was in the and Battalion of the
regiment, and at that time we outshone the
premier battalion very considerably both in
discipline and in drill, and there was a desire on
the part of the command to smarten it up a bit.
With that in view, a keen and stern adjutant was
appointed, and I was brought there as regimental
sergeant-major. Then in a way I thought I

n4 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iv

had my chance. There were five years in front
of me as R.S.M., and in that time I would turn
a slack battalion into one that was as smart as
any one could wish. The adjutant was a proper
martinet, and I worked in with him, being as
regimental and strict as I knew how, remaining,
however, always just, though often, I admit,
harsh. I know now that in any case the sergeant-
major has always to take his tone from the
adjutant, and that a hard adjutant must always
mean a hard sergeant-major. And from being a
most popular man I became the most unpopular
person in barracks. But I made a smart regiment.
I had always a very good word of command,
clear, stern, far-reaching, and now I cultivated
the special terrible voice of a regimental sergeant-
major. I brought the men to a high state of
perfection in drill, and could drill them at last
without using a word, merely by opening and
shutting my eyes. But I had seen other sergeant-
majors have as great success on the parade-ground
as I, and that did not content me. I wanted
to have all the other side of their life as smart,
and I took care to arrange matters so that under
my authority it was impossible to square sergeants
for punishment. I knew what every one in the
barracks was doing all the while, and I stopped
the intimacies of privates and N.C.O/s, curtailed
gambling, put an end to the unpunctualities at
the gate, which could formerly have been squared
by a tip to the sergeant of the guard.

" All the while, however, I was thinking
about my job, and was not altogether content

iv ESPRIT DE CORPS 115

with the state of my battalion. I was still very
unpopular ; there was a great deal of ill-feeling.
Some N.C.O.'s had got themselves transferred
from the battalion in order to get out of my
ken. Pressure was brought to bear to get rid
of me, but the authorities approved of me. I
did not, however, altogether approve of myself,
and I felt ill at ease watching my perfect battalion
do everything perfectly whilst hating me all the
time.

' The adjutant left us and a kinder one came
in his place. My five years passed, and I was
due for a change also. But I asked to remain,
and I determined on a change of tactics. Whilst
remaining as hard as ever with the non-com-
missioned officers, I began to treat the men more
kindly. If I saw a man doing a thing he ought
not to be doing whilst off parade, I looked the
other way and * saw nothing,' but I never let
the N.C.O.'s off. But this policy did not
succeed. For then the N.C.O.'s took their
revenge on the men, and learned all manner
of tricks of deception. In short, my policy
begot a great deal of disloyalty to me among
the N.C.O.'s. We were not working together
at all. The upshot of all was that I had to give
up my old point of view entirely — of absolute,
unquestioned obedience and a regiment ruled as
with a rod of iron — and I learned more and more
to interest myself in the personal lives of N.C.O.'s
as well as privates, and to win them to my side
by bonds of interest and affection. I learned
that it is necessary to gain the confidence of a

n6 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iv

battalion, and not only to command them, but
to lead them. I think perhaps in my lifetime
the necessities have all changed. My first way
was the old-fashioned way, and was good enough
a hundred years ago. But something different
is needed by men to-day. They won't stand
the old martinet style of treatment, and quite
right, too. A correct discipline must be obtained,
and you cannot get it without absolute obedience.
But a fine discipline needs a warm glowing esprit
de corps, and to get that you must also win men's
hearts."

The old sergeant-major's experience had a
counterpart in our own. When we for our part
left Little Sparta and came to London we were
glad of the easier ways, and it eased our hearts to
find the corporals and the sergeants reduced to
the level of human beings, sleeping and living
in the same barrack-room. And we realised that
when a non-commissioned officer has been drunk
once or twice in the presence of the privates in
the same room he has not the authority over
them that he is supposed to have, still less when
he plays cards and wins or loses money from
them. It was amusing to hear them cheeked
and flatly disobeyed — in fun. " After you've
done your firing you'll be a tofF, my boy," they
said. " You'll have your midnight pass. You
can go to the halls twice a week and spoon with
yer girl in the Park." We were quite ready to
be toffs. The relaxed discipline was a consider-

iv ESPRIT DE CORPS 117

able relief. I noticed that all the men grew
more confident in themselves, and that the cowed
look seemed to leave their faces. The moving
life of London fused their lives. At the same
time, however, most of the men seemed to fall
off a little in good looks and bodily health.
Excitements and late nights undid what the
peace and dullness of Little Sparta evenings had
achieved. Men slept in the barrack-rooms in
the afternoon — " got down to it," and wakened
up in time for tea and the razzle-dazzle of the
evening. Then we lived in a slacker way.
The rooms and the beds were far from the cleanli-
ness of Little Sparta. We were not marched once
a week to the Trio-juncta-in-uno-bath, nor in-
spected to see if our bodies were clean. And
three in a bath is better than no bath at all. In
London you bathed when and where you liked.
In the barrack-rooms at nights windows supposed
to be kept open were superstitiously kept shut,
and you could taste and smell and handle
the atmosphere produced. There were the
stale leavings of supper on plates, men with
dirty bodies, sometimes men drunk, sometimes
men sick, a huge fire burning, an overcrowded
room.

The standard of smartness seemed reduced,
both in personal appearance and in the way
one kept bed and locker. There was one un-
forgivable sin, and that was having the handle
of one's entrenching tool dirty. The metal
part of this tool had to be like silver ; the wooden
part had to be polished with sandpaper till it was

n8 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS IV

white and smooth as ivory. And after all it was
only a pick to be used eventually in digging
trenches. Punishments were showered thick and
fast, but were taken lightly and done lightly. The
best men fared equally with the worst. If you did
a punishment you felt a bit of a fool realising that
sixpence might have got you off. To do an
extra drill was called " to pay a drill," and it
was not uncommon for the sergeant to say to
you just after the sentence had been pronounced
by the officer : ' Will you pay it now or pay it
at four o'clock ? " and you could discharge the
matter there and then. An old sergeant once
propounded this pleasant theory : " When your
name is in the book for a punishment-drill that
in itself is sufficient punishment. There's no
need for a fellow to go tramping round the
barrack-square for an hour."

When the soldiers' weekly wage was raised
it came in very handy for paying his way, but
there was rather a temptation to N.C.O.'s to
bring you before an officer for a trifling offence,
and so get you down in the book for a drill,
and sometimes when the officer said One you
found it had been entered in the book as two.
One felt annoyed, but then sergeants and men
were on very good swearing terms. We all

rather admired B , the volunteer from the

Far West, who insisted on doing his punishment-
drills when awarded, and said, :< I'll take my
medicine ; I think it will be good for me."

Our training was largely a matter of prepara-
tion for active service, and some of it, such as

iv ESPRIT DE CORPS 119

the bombing course, was excellent in itself and
very interesting ; others, such as the gas-drill,
was not so pleasant. The only things I was
complimented on were bayonet-fighting and
bomb-throwing — which rather tickled me, being
of a Christian temperament and more ready to
be killed than to kill. In drill I remained
" a dizzy devil " the sergeant-major remarked. But
I did not get into trouble whilst doing guards,
though I devised several ingenious tricks for
reading poetry whilst walking up and down
on sentry. Being on sentry at the barracks
from two to four in the morning, or at some
such time, was always rather thrilling to me.
To march up and down and to know the moon-
light glimmered on your bayonet, and that you
and all the circumstances of your post looked
larger and grander than by day, was somewhat
of an enchantment. These things, however,
appealed to different temperaments differently.
I remember my surprise one night when the
sergeant who should have marched us to our
posts was fast asleep. I went to relieve my man,
and he said, " You'll find a newspaper in a bit
of board in the sentry-box, I should get down
to it if I were you ; there's nobody about."
I never found sleep prized so much as in the
army ; there it is a material commodity like
roast beef. You " get down to it " with the
solid pleasure of satisfying an appetite or a lust.
Sleep becomes a bad habit like the overuse of
tobacco or drink.

I found in London that whilst in charge

i2o A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iv

of a foul-mouthed, unsympathetic, and brutal
sergeant-major we were a very wretched company
in our drill and general turn-out, but when this
man was reduced in rank and we were given to
a capable, clean-minded, and sympathetic young
fellow, who knew his work well, we made the
most extraordinary progress. After three weeks,
from being the worst we became almost the
best, and we made a most pleasing show in the
great inter-company drilling competition on the
barrack-square.

Our hours of drill were very light compared
with those of Little Sparta. Our day was gener-
ally over at three, and sometimes at noon. Those
living within a reasonable proximity to barracks
could get sleeping-out passes, which enabled
them to wash and dress and do many things at
home. Those who had no homes had usually
their girls and the Park, or the kitchens or
servants' parlour of some great house to which
they adjourned.

The men's sweethearts, and sometimes one
man would have several, kept them in cigarettes
and sweets, cakes, and often money. So a man
would say, " I must meet her to-night, it's her
pay-day." When the girl was a munition-
worker it can be understood how the tables had
been turned during the war, and she was the
rich one and could afford to treat him. When
men were on duty their girls would come to
the railings and ask to see them, and often the
men would return with pleasing presents, which
greatly contributed to our suppers. Some of

iv ESPRIT DE CORPS 121

the men walked out with servants from the big
houses of the west, especially Park Lane, and I
often heard well-known hostesses mentioned by
the men. It was rather amusing to think that
whilst the quality had been eating dinner up
above, a burly soldier had been waiting in the
kitchen below stairs for his share in the same.
He had his share in due course, and was not
without his glass of champagne upon occasion.
Well, certainly those below stairs are as human
as those above. One day in the wash-house a
man said to me, " Didn't I have the pleasure of

waiting on you one night at Mrs. C 's ? "

And he mentioned one or two other guests.
" Ah, yes," said I. " What a pleasant evening
it was. It's curious how we meet again, isn't
it ? " whereupon we became very good barrack
friends.

Life in barracks during the war exhibited all
the abnormalities of a strange time. More re-
cruits were rushed through the course of training
in a few years than ordinarily passed through
in a quarter of a century ; whereas formerly the
sergeants and drill-sergeants and the rest would
know infallibly every soldier's face in the bat-
talion, now the faces changed so rapidly, what
with new men coming in and men who had been
wounded returning, never more than one in
three could be recognised. The control which
before] the war must have been more personal
was now conventional. No such condition of

122 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iv

excellence as prevailed under the sway of that
ex-sergeant-major who gave his reminiscences
could obtain now. All the weeds of the system
were growing ; all the weeds that ever showed
themselves in the garden. So it was possible
to see what were the problems in front of a
practical idealist should he wish to make us
perfect within as perfect without. We needed
another Hildebrand to shake and purify us like
a mighty wind, though not a Hildebrand with
a mere passion for reform, but a wise and ex-
perienced one, such as that mellowed R.S.M.
who talked so well on what had been and what
might be.

I have no doubt myself that the best virtue
to cultivate in a regiment is esprit de corps. On
that and not on fear and punishment and bluster
should discipline be founded. A higher sense
of esprit de corps would have caused a good deal
of that slackness so comforting to civilians in
khaki to disappear, but at the same time it would
have procured more liberties and better social
conditions, which would have more than made
up for what was lost in the other direction. Of
course by esprit de corps is not meant that narrow
pride in the regiment which at one time caused
the Jocks to fight the Bill-Browns in every
public-house about Victoria Station. It should
acknowledge the splendour of brother regiments.
To act under the influence of esprit de corps
means to act in the spirit of your regiment, and
if you speak of the larger esprit de corps, national
esprit de corps, it means to act in the spirit of the

iv ESPRIT DE CORPS 123

nation to which you belong. It is to use the
common sense of your battalion and your country,
and live according to that.

When a man has put on the King's uniform
he has by that act resigned individual striving
after perfection. His perfection has become
locked up in his relationship to his fellows. He
still wants freedom, but he wants it in a different
way. Perfect freedom does not mean isolation
but perfect organisation — a place in a perfect
system where every one is free and yet every one
is instinctively disciplined, where no one hinders
any one else but every one by his very existence
is helping every one else.

The mushroom army of the war was a place
where for most of the finer issues every man was
hindering every one else. There was only the
beginning of a fine esprit de corps. Fear and
punishment were still in control and seemed to
be the supreme appeal for the establishment of
absolute obedience. The prison wall shed its
baleful shadow on the young soul. The evil of
institutionalism was the evil of the army, and
whole regiments had the blank faces of institute
children, whole regiments were stunted, were
dried up, were in corporal decay solely owing to
no spirit ', or little spirit or a wrong conception
of what discipline should rest upon.

The ideal for a regiment is that every man
should amplify every other man's regimental
personality. The famous deeds of men in the
regiment in days gone by should be known
equally with the famous deeds of the present

124 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iv

war. The story of a bayonet charge, of a
desperate stand, of a patient defence against
terrible odds, of a long and arduous march ; the
victories of the sports field, of the boxing ring,
of football leagues as far as they are known,
enlarge the life of the regiment and improve the
spirit. Poems and rhymes written by officers
and men, songs sung, lectures given — all these
help esprit de corps. But what should help more
than all is a true relationship between officers and
men and a real understanding. Slack officers, sar-
castic, nonchalant, overbearing, snobbish officers
are no use in any regiment, and only take
away from its common life, as do also cowards,
fops, and ladies' men. There is no one so quick
as the common soldier in grasping whether in
reality the officer in charge of him is a gentle-
man. And every ranker wants to have over
him a man who is a gentleman. Ah, how the
army has been pestered and made miserable by
duds of one kind and another ! In the army,
allegiance should spring as much from hero-
worship as from the rules of discipline.

Hero-worship and comradeship, pride in one's
nation and equal pride in one's regiment, ideals
as triumphant as the colours themselves, living
interest and enthusiasm in all ranks — these are
the true substitutes for fear and punishment and
military law.

It goes without saying that regard must be
had to the clearing away of soldiers' injustices.
More care should be given to the cooking and
serving of his food, and a private soldier should

iv ESPRIT DE CORPS 125

not go short whilst all those who handle and
distribute the food surfeit from too much. And
medical officers should be allowed to treat sick
men more as they would civilian clients. The
washing of linen should be done properly. More
care should be taken that a man's pay does actually
reach him in its entirety and does not leak into
the pockets of other ranks. Men sent on leave
should infallibly receive their ration-money. No
brutal advantage should be taken of the fact
that a man once in the army is the army's slave.
Care should rather be taken to give compensatory
privileges when unusual demands are made upon
soldiers. Officers should be on the alert to
learn of anything that the soldier feels to be an
injustice, and if the seemingly unjust thing is
something necessary, though hard, he must
put the soldier into a positive way of regarding
it. This can often be done by kindness and
politeness.

What is the matter with the army as a whole
is that there is not enough life in it. It is more
of a national bondage than a national club. But
it could be the most splendid of our institutions.
In the army the nation should act and feel as
one man. That is why we get into step and
try to march as one body and to feel in our veins
one loyalty. On the outbreak of a war the
national instinct always says, " Close the ranks,
forget all differences and act as one man ! "
There is a cry for that united front which the
army should naturally possess. But the army's
grievances make of it rather a collection of warring

126 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iv

and grumbling individuals than a warm glowing
unity. And the grievances can never be got rid
of by a more severe system of fear and punishment
— they can be got rid of by the rule of a large
national esprit de corps.

V
TO THE FRONT

WE are living in the cage, and it might be jolly
but that Polyphemus comes in every now and
then and feels us and considers us and carries
some away. Our companions are taken from
us one by one and we hear of them afterwards
as being dead, hear of them terribly mauled by the
monster. It is borne in upon the mind that each
and all of us must go in time, you and I as well.
And the question arises in the mind : How shall
we fare in the hands of the terrible man-eater ?

There is a polite euphemism for " Polyphemus
wants you." It is : ' The following are warned
to be in readiness to proceed overseas." Ah,
the very rumour of that notice raises a tremulous
breeze in the whole barracks, a breeze that plays
on the wind-harps of men's affections. It causes
a consternation among us as if at some bygone
period we had sold ourselves to the Devil for
seven years' happiness, and now suddenly we
saw the sinister figure appear claiming the execu-
tion of his bargain.

127

128 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v

Every one whispers to his neighbour, " Are
you for it ? >: " Yes," says the neighbour re-
luctantly, " my name is on the list," or " No,"
says he in a whisper, " my name is not on the
list." " Oh, that means you're not for it." It
is that one-eyed monster who appeared in these
parts about the beginning of August 1914.
He satisfies his appetite on the bodies of young
men. It was said that when he died of repletion
a League of Nations would be formed to prevent
his resurrection. Meanwhile the little victims
of the hour sang in mock-pitiful strains :

Oh my, I don't want to die,
I — want to go home.

Immediately the warning is given blood-red
tabs with the name of the regiment printed in
white are sewn on the shoulders of our tunics.
We are marked, as it were, with blood, and are
like trees with the gash of the hatchet designing
them to be felled, or like rams marked for sacrifice
to the idol. " I see youVe got them up" says
one to the other with the curious hush of awe.
" They say you can pick up no new girl in the
Park when you've got them up," says another.
" They all know what it means." The girls
you know already " take on so " that it's better
to borrow some one else's tunic till the last
moment. Perhaps better still to avoid them and
go somewhere up the Edgware Road and get
drunk.

Some of the marked men are new, some have
been out before and have wound stripes on their

v TO THE FRONT 129

arms. The men who have been wounded seem
to take the matter more philosophically than
the rest. Of the others there are always one or
two who imagine they can escape the hand of
Fate by resorting to various tricks to avoid it
at the last moment, by reporting sick, committing
a crime, trying to square some one, or bolting
home until the draft has gone. The call brings
out the courage in most and the selfishness in
some. For it is selfish to try to escape : if one
man's name is crossed off the list for any reason
another's must be put on. And though it is
selfishness to want to escape, it is a much-qualified
selfishness which can find excuse in the pain of
parting, perhaps finally, with wife and family ;
in the pain which this taking away is going to
cause to a loving woman.

I recall to mind a rather hard type of Scotsman
nearing middle age, patient and taciturn, Private

M . He was warned for overseas. He was

not very popular, and I remember a neighbour
saying to him with a sarcastic grimace, " A sore

blow, eh ? " But M did not answer. He

sent a telegram to his wife, who lived in some
remote place near Banff or Nairn, and she came
down to him, leaving her bairns in a neighbour's
care. He said Good-b'ye to her — with what
suffering ! He got the Good-b'ye over, and
went on grimly and quietly disposing of his spare
kit, making his will, and doing all those final
things that precede the going to the Front.

Next day he was, however, sent for and told
he was not for it.

K,

130 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v

To his astonishment he was suddenly free
again. We watched him in the barrack-room.
Joy curiously suffused and transfigured his usually
inexpressive countenance, and a generous flow
of life-blood rushed through his veins. He
wired to his wife again. The unopened parcel
which she had brought him the day before he
now opened, and distributed among us short-
bread and home-baked scones. He was not
one who gave away things as a rule. But now
a light-heartedness seemed to possess him and
smiles flickered across his face. He said, i:< I
am glad I'm not going to the Front — for my
wife's sake. I've always been quite ready to do
my bit, and would only have wanted to get out
of it because of her." How true that was !
He was a typical man of duty. Next morning,
with pipers and escorting crowds, the draft
went to the station to entrain. And he, with a
sense of duty upon him, got everything ready
to go in case after all he might be wanted. So
he was. One of the men had gone out the
night before and not returned to barracks. The

sergeant-major looked round, saw M all

ready, and in a matter-of-fact way bade him take
the other's place. And he bit his lip and went.
Later he was killed.

Should the warning for the draft synchronise
with pay-day there is likely to be a wild night
following. I vividly recall a night when one
man in a raving state wanted to kill people with
his bayonet — " It's the twenty-second German

v TO THE FRONT 131

I've killed to-night," he kept on saying — and
he had to be constantly disarmed and thrown
with a whop on his bed ; when the men lying
each side of me slept " in marching order,"
i.e. with boots on. One was sick in between
beds, another man hung with his head out of
a window and, having been violently sick, fell
asleep thus. Sergeant Five was one of those
warned for that draft. He had got into trouble
at Little Sparta barracks, and for his sins was
being sent on active service. He came in late
that night in a conversational state, and sat by
the embers of the fire talking to himself for hours
about his wife and little ones : " I believe in
God and all that ; I'm not afraid to die," said he,
:< but the question I ask is, If I die, what are
they going to do ? What will the army do for
them ? Why, nothing, of course. That's just
it. There are too many widows and orphans."

But what a contrast the atmosphere of the
fourth year of the war to that of the first ! When
the original summons came and the " Tipperary
Boys " were called they were happy and excited
beyond measure. German cannon devoured their
hearts, and there followed Kitchener's wonderful
army with their enthusiasm. They knew better
than those who had gone first the hell to which
they were going, but they were eager. Their
ranks were thinned, and the Derby men and
the first conscripts went out. And they were
cheerful, even with their grievances and troubles.
But later came a bitter residue of " indispens-

132 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v

ables," of men near middle-age heavily com-
mitted with wife and children, of B men marked
medically A, and what not. The first fought
for a wage, the second for an ideal, and the rest
because they had to. The curious thing in my
experience was — to carry the record to the later
times in France — that when it came to the point
the last fought as well as the first, and the lachry-
mose became eventually, under active -service
conditions, as cheerful, as ardently patriotic and
proud of the duty they were performing as any
of the rest or of the dead had ever been.

In the summer of 1917 the war might have
been compromised in a peace, but in that summer
we entered into a large alliance with America,
and an enormous accession of military and
financial aid was ensured. Meanwhile, however,
in Russia the program which the Allies had
hoped to realise when sanctioning the March
revolution failed ; Germany succeeded in making
peace there, and in buying or taking a large
quantity of artillery, machine-gunnery, and am-
munitions largely supplied to Russia from the
West. She could also call off a large number of
soldiers hitherto employed in guarding against
the Russian menace. A partially disarmed nation,
even if capricious in her political tendencies, is not
a military danger to a militant neighbour. The
autumn and winter on the Western Front pro-
vided a lull broken only by the " Byng Boys' 3
victory and the German success of Cambrai,

v TO THE FRONT 133

so heroically checked by the Guards at Gouzeau-
court. The sense of a growing German power
crept into the military mind. This was con-
firmed by the extent of the Germano-Austrian
victory over the Italians, where it was claimed
another thousand guns fell into the enemy's
hands and a corresponding quantity of ammuni-
tion. After this no doubt was felt but that
Germany would be found to be holding the
initiative in the spring. She would again be
able to batter herself to bits as she did at Verdun.
Meanwhile her civil population would starve,
and we would hold on till better days, when
American reinforcements would enable us to
take the upper hand. The lull continued
throughout the winter ; leave for the men
continued. Our training continued in a pleasant,
leisurely way. After our gruelling at Little
Sparta we had three months more in London ;
we were just going off for even another month,
a month's field-work in the country, when the
crash came.

On March 21, with the Kaiser himself in
command, the Germans made their most grand
attempt to defeat us, to divide our armies from
those of the French and to secure the mouth of
the Somme. We know now that if the com-
bustion of the Last Day had set in during the war
it would have been described in the Press as
a pitiful attempt at frightfulness with meagre
results. But consternation would have reigned
nevertheless. So it was in this last week in
March. The true significance of the German

i34 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v

advance sounded as a trumpet-blast in all the
training-camps of England, and every man in
khaki knew England had need of him. Was
it not shortly after this that the papers all printed
articles on what the new drafts had done at the
Front? Our hour had come.

All other arrangements were cancelled. We
all fell in, and there wras a great clearance. The
warnings to proceed overseas were soon posted,
and it was found they affected a great number
who did not expect to be sent. At such a moment
of destiny, however, it was not becoming any
man to take one step to get his name erased from
the list, and I think, somehow, all felt in that
way, though not a few were advertised to go
who would have been omitted had there been
time to consider their uses. It was a great
moment of national hush and of suppressed
excitement. The tragic nature of the moment
dispelled the more selfish and sickly ways of
looking on the fight, and it was marvellous what
a good, quiet, patriotic fervour developed in a
few days then. Shirkers became volunteers,
grousers and pacifists became patriots, selfish men
became unselfish and pessimists optimists. What
a change from the atmosphere of the departure
of other drafts I had witnessed in time of dead-
lock, lull, stagnation ! As I overheard an officer
say at the time, " August 1914 is going to
repeat itself/' And so it was.

The time we came up from Little Sparta to

v TO THE FRONT 135

the historic London barracks was the night of
Christmas Eve, but it was not serene. The day
we left for the battle -front was Good Friday.
The fact rilled us all with a tremor which was
perhaps a little superstitious. Destiny, in a sort
of halo of days, seemed to light our brows and
mark us out for sacrifice and service.

" So we are going to set out on the day J. C.
was crucified," said one.

" Oh shut up, for God's sake, do," said
another nervously.

" It's the luckiest day in the year," said
another, with the consciousness of a lucky star.

" I shall never come back," says another.

" If you look at it like that, of course you
never will," his companion replies.

" Are ye glad to go ? " some one asks of an
American.

" You bet I "

There were many rumours and contradictions
and cancellings and re-postings. Notice had
been very short. We were rushed hither and
thither by sergeants and quartermaster-sergeants.
We filed half-naked past the doctor, who passed
us fit with great rapidity. We lined up at the
tailor's den to have the red tabs sewn on the
shoulders of our tunics. We received new metal
helmets, waterproof capes, and draft-kit, field-
dressings, identification discs, pay-books. Our
wills were filed at the orderly room. We paraded
for various inspections, and all the while there

136 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v

were conflicting rumours as to postponement,
acceleration, cancellation, which expressed them-
selves in an oft-reiterated " You're for it. No,
you're not for it."

But all unfolded itself in an apparent fittingness.
We went on Good Friday, and it was at noon,
just when in innumerable churches the Three
Hours' Service was commencing, that we stood
finally in the barrack-square in full field-service
marching order, weighed down by what we
carried.

We were all very tense with emotion, and our
hands shook comrades' hands in Good-b'ye with
a regularity and continuity that only a practised
demagogue leaving the platform could do well.
Tears stood in many eyes. We knew, however,
that it was an ordeal for the nerves of the affec-
tions, and steeled ourselves to think of other
things, as we stood there, and be hard. But
after the Colonel of the regiment had inspected
us there was a greater trial, when the marching
order was given, and our stability upon the
barrack - square gave way to motion toward
France. Then the regimental band in all its
brazenness blared out its melodies :

If the Sergeant drinks your rum,
Never mind !

and the rest. And the civilian population, with
the women we knew, flung itself upon us, scatter-
ing flowers and kisses, shouting and halloing, or
gently sobbing and hurrying to keep step with
us. Beads of perspiration rolled down brows

v TO THE FRONT 137

and cheeks, our close hair on our heads rose with
excitement. Men wreathed their Service hats
with primroses. Girls and wives were inside
the ranks walking arm-in-arm with their soldier-
boys. A mother held out her baby at arm's
length for the soldier-father to kiss, and all the
while the band ahead of us blasted away in quick-
time — and then the band gave way more happily
to the pipes, as all our pipers in gorgeous array
took up the slogan and played us to the train.
The populace was rolled back by the police, our
ranks restored in all their brightness and sparkle,
and every man's rifle seemed to be at the same
angle across his left shoulder. So in a fine strap-
ping style, all together and with one step, we
entered the stern confines of the terminus where
the troop-train was waiting, marched past a large
draft of silent Gordon Highlanders with aprons
over their kilts, and past a draft of Dorsets to
the far end of a long platform.

We were soon in the train, and then the civilians
were allowed to us once more, and then the last
tender farewells and embraces. Then the official
farewell of the C.O. :< Good-b'ye and spare
none ! " and then the cry, " All aboard ! "
and then, " We're off, boys ! "

And die train rolls slowly out.

Fitz opposite me looked frantic with ex-
citement. " I kill every German I see,"
says he.

H , the American boy who wanted to

charge with the Guards, put his head out of the
window and yelled at every station we passed

138 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v

through in order to get a responding yell from
astonished civilians, who nevertheless understood
what it meant — reinforcements going into the
great battle.

:< I'll never come back," says another, silent
and morose.

' Well, whatever happens," says another,
" we've had a splendid send off." And we all
agreed with him.

We found ourselves on Easter morning on
the slope of a heaven-kissing hill, covered with
innumerable tents. The sun shone fair over
France. We were at the Base Camp, and mingled
with a vast concourse of new drafts of every
regiment of Britain. We were there in strength,
but there were also large batches, in some cases
a thousand strong, from the other national
regiments that drilled with us at Little Sparta
and had been brought up in the same ways.
Not a few recognised me. I had had all the
recruits at Little Sparta collected one night in
the Grand Pavilion for a lantern lecture with
pictures of things I had heard and seen in foreign
parts. In London, except at the Bombing
School, the five regiments had been separated,
but now representatives of each of us, Bill-Browns,
Jocks, Micks, Taffies, and Goalies, were present —
English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh — and we be-
longed to one division and would henceforth
be more often together, one being the relief
of the other in the field, or neighbour on the

v TO THE FRONT 139

right or left, or behind in support. We were a
Britain in ourselves.

We heard fantastic rumours, unchecked by
newspaper reports : the first that the Germans
had entered Arras at eight o'clock that morning,
then that our division as a whole had been lost
and that we would have to take its place for the
time being, then that the Germans had broken
through at La Bass^e. A Labour man told a
group of us that the French had surrounded
500,000 Germans.

" With what ? " we asked in amusement.

"With 30,000, eh?"

One thing was certain : the great battle still
raged, and we should be thrown into it to turn
the scale.

We comforted ourselves with a great deal of
naivete in the presence of old soldiers and
listened to almost any tale ; we inspected the
German prisoner camps from a distance and
criticised the largeness of their rations ; we ate
our own bully-beef with relish and confessed it
wasn't " half-bad " ; we also ate the army
biscuits without complaint, and, besides our
bully, at every meal we ate a great number of
Germans. My blood was rather curdled by the
atrocities we committed in advance and in
imagination on fleeing or prostrate enemies when
we got them in our power.

" All that you can do to them they can also
do to you," said I. :< And when you talk of
being merciless when you have the Germans in
your power, remember that just now it is chiefly

140 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v

British soldiers which he has in his power."
But my companions did not go into battle with
the Golden Rule embroidered in their crest.
They went out to be terrible to the enemy, to
be drastic, to put the fear of death into him.

However, with all our bravado and tall talk
we had also the consciousness of going to sacrifice.
We talked of killing, but thought more in our
hearts of the possibility of being killed. The
tragedy of leaving wife or sweetheart, home,
parents, and to perish perhaps within a week was
still the note to which we were attuned.

Then our orders came quickly to the Base
Camp, and even still more laden — for we now
carried ammunition and a blanket as well as
all the rest of the stuff which we had brought from
England — we took the road back to Havre, there
to entrain. It took us a long time to march a
short distance, and every time we halted and sat
down the weight of the stuff on our shoulders
pulled our backs down, so that we lay on it and
sprawled out with our legs. What a relief that ten
minutes in the hour gave us, what a pleasure it
afforded ! It was strange to notice how much
recuperated we were when the order came to
resume our way. So we sludged along French
roads singing any sort of song, glad to have
anything that might make us forget for a moment
the burden of Europe on our shoulders.

At Havre we were put into a train. Not
into the cattle-trucks we had been led to expect,
but into the poky third-class carriages of a ram-
shackle passenger-train. It was a great crush,

v TO THE FRONT 141

and how we squeezed in our equipment as well
as ourselves it would be difficult to say. Plenty
of army food was handed to us, and in a short
while the whole lot of us were pottering to and
fro with mess-tins making tea, and afternoon
passed to evening in great gaiety. It was many
hours before the train crawled out — the train
which was going to the Front cautiously feeling
its way at five miles an hour, and always waiting
for army orders before it halted or proceeded.

The movement in the train stirred something
in ourselves. It was a very slow progress —
nothing to alarm — but it meant : We — are —
getting — nearer. It hushed the noisy thought
ever such a little, and related each one of us for
a moment to home and his loved ones, for the
thread that was between us and home was being
extended. It was tugging a little at heart-
strings.

Night set in and we settled ourselves as best
we could, lying against or half on top of one
another. The boy next to me lay on the floor
under our feet. No one knew the point we
were destined for, not even our officers sitting
in the second-class. " It may be like this," said
a sergeant : " the train will stop in a field and
we'll all have to bundle out without our packs
and go straight into action ; or the train may be
struck by a shell, and we may have to get out
with our entrenching tools and entrench a position
in a wood or on the ridge of a ploughed field.
We might then get surrounded by the enemy
and have to fight our way through."

142 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v

There were many suggestions, which in-
creased, especially when the train passed into the
city of Amiens and we began to hear the com-
motion of the battle. But from Amiens we did
not approach nearer to the fray, but passed away
northward into quieter country, where not a
whisper of a shell was heard, slowly, slowly.

We could not sleep, for we were in a neurotic
and excited state. Mixed with us were many
old campaigners, who told their stories of hair-
breadth escapes and advanced theories of military
behaviour. :< I'm a one-man soldier," a Welsh-
man in front of me kept saying. " I'll do what
I'm ordered to do. I won't do more, but I
won't do less." — " Ah, I'd always look after a
chum, I would," says another soldier.

Then the talk gives way to endless songs.
And as we again near the zone of destruction we
feel that tiredness, pain, death, though more
or less distasteful, can nevertheless be viewed
indifferently. Only one thinks of the loved one
at home and what it may mean to her. But
we are in God's hand and His are our destinies.
We are fighting in a good cause and " can do no
other"' If we die, humanity must do for us all
that we would do for her.

Huddled up in a dark corner of the carriage
a-thinking of many such occasions in life when I
have parted for the unknown, listening to the
soldiers' tales, it recalled the mood of Clarence's
dream when he was pacing on the hatches of the
ship at night with the Duke of Gloucester,
talking of the Wars of the Roses. The garment

v TO THE FRONT 143

of destiny was woven of the substance of the
dream.

There were no lights in the carriage except
that given by a guttering candle which kept
spilling its grease ; toppling over now and then,
and having to be relit. The pale gleams showed
the faces of the soldiers, and they looked more
gentle than by day.

" How long will the war last ? " asked one.
" Five years, perhaps," some one replies. But
it was not the years ahead but the present moment
that was affecting the soldiers' souls. It was an
epic moment for every man who had not gone to
the Front before.

The war had become the condition of our
living. Every one had got to make the war his
life. But it was not really life. Perhaps it was
not so important as we thought. Still, it was a
test of the heart. It was marvellous to feel
ordinary working men brought from the vul-
garity and materialism of modern life to the reality
that is only tenderness. If only distant London
folk could have heard this slow midnight train
creeping toward the war, its songs all turned
tender and real, if they could see the bright eyes !
And at about one in the morning the whole train
seemed to be singing " Home, Sweet Home ! "
though no matter what song they sang, however
vulgar, something in their tones robbed it of
vulgarity.

:< I suppose there must be some of us who
will never return," said one to me.
c Yes, that's inevitable, I suppose."

i44 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v

" But they say that if you're killed your
spirit goes home first."

' Yes, it's possible to return more quickly
than one expects that way."

" But do you believe it ? "

:£ It seems true," I answer. :< It is a poetical
thought, and poetry is always nearer the truth
than prose. A shell blasts the life out of you,
and you go straight to the presence of the one
who is nearest to you."

" Straight to the bosom of your beloved," I
would have said to myself.

The candle went irreparably to waste and
guttered out at last, and we were left in complete
darkness ; for the windows of the carriage had
been taken out and sheets of iron put in the
frames instead of glass. With the darkness came
also silence, long silence, and the train waiting
hours, as it seemed, and then creeping cautiously
on a mile, to wait again. We lay or lounged or
sprawled in uncomfortable positions, and we
thought, each man by himself. Some men
remained pessimists in the darkness, some opti-
mists, some morbid, others serene. And the
serenity of the last emerged like a perfect night
sky out of clouds in space — our faith !

Daybreak was murky, and the dull day
showed us a more desolate country, scarred by
the upturned clay of new breastworks, and in
the grey sky we looked eagerly at rings of
smoke of shrapnel, and of high explosive. The

v TO THE FRONT 145

detonation of the war reached our ears. We
watched many Red Cross trains go past — one
way empty, the other way with their precious
freight of wounded sons of our country.

Only in the late afternoon did we come to
our particular railhead. By that time the clouds
had cleared, and a lively breeze with fresh sun-
shine blew over the grass-covered ridge where
we bivouacked. We were rejoiced to get out
of the filthy, crowded train, and we made our
evening meal with the greatest merriment and
happiness.

Our progress to the line was in stages. In the
first stage we marched with many songs to the

wet camp of B , where we bivouacked on

the long wet grass and listened to the thunder-
storm bombardment and the clangour of German
attempts to break through. Though we had not
come to the battle-centre, we had nevertheless
reached the vicinity of the greatly extended
German advance.

We lay close to one another to keep warm,
slept by fits and starts, and thought and dreamed
of what Fate might have in store. We ate corned-
beef and biscuits in the morning ; we tried to
keep clean despite the rivers of mud ; we were
paraded and sworn at and dismissed, and visited
the village graveyard where so many bodies of
brave soldiers lie — and all the time we thought
about Fate. All about us swarmed French-
Canadians, jabbering in their French patois.
They had lost a chaplain, killed by a shell, and
the body lay in state in the village church. It was

L

146 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v

a moving spectacle to see crowds of soldiers on
their knees on the reversed chairs of this Roman
Catholic chapel, the candles burning beside the
coffin up at the altar, the sentries standing on
each side of it, motionless, with bayonets fixed.

Fitz, the Virginian, and Knock, a sailor boy
who had been wounded at the Battle of Jutland
and discharged from one service and conscripted
into another, came in with me and knelt in the
little chapel. After that we wandered a great
deal about together. One of our quartermaster-
sergeants was killed ; we saw wounded men,
walking wounded come down the line to the
dressing-station. Battle thunders rolled toward
us and called us over the mud to the line.

Then our caps were all taken away from us
and put into old sacks.

" You will get them back when you come out
of action," we were told. :< Now you'll wear
your steel helmets."

At the bottom of the sacks are many shabby,
grubby caps.

" Whose caps are these ? " we ask.

" They are the caps of the dead — of the men
who have not come back to claim them."

We go to the battalion painter. He paints
the regimental crest on every helmet. We shall
be distinguished even in the battle-line.

The next stage is the march to the reserve
lines in darkness and rain, a more or less silent
trudge through the mud. The men are not so
heavily equipped now ; packs have been left
behind, but what remains on the soldiers' back

v TO THE FRONT 147

is heavy enough in all conscience. After a lull
in the bombardment the guns take up the tale
again, and evil gun-flashes rise out of the horizon ;
the war-dragon blinks his envious eyes on the
living. His terrible voice resounds and echoes
over the desolated country. The draft is halted
near a shattered village, halted again at a village
which is flat. Shell-holes are on all sides and
confusion indescribable. What is this strange
field, with its tumbled stones and iron posts ?
It is the cemetery of what was once a large
and thriving French settlement, a place which
is still marked large on the map, but has
ceased to exist. The iron posts are Catholic
crosses : they are the only memorials which
have withstood the effects of shrapnel ; they
point at all angles, and the Christs on them are
more or less riven and broken again. There is
a dull odour — it is that of the dead, even of the
old dead, for the shells were but recently tearing
up the graves again.

Red lights go up, great red flares, lighting
up one half of the night sky, showing the faint
contours of grey clouds and the wannesses and
darknesses of a rainy heaven, reflecting also on
the faces of the men. All of us look a little
strained, a little tired.

Then the wan body of men go on, leaving
the village behind, and plunge unevenly on the
broken, rutty road, by which in all seasons the
rations-carts plod every night to take the food
to the men in the line. No civilisation is in
front, but only endless barbed-wire, shell-holes,

148 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v

debris, dud shells, trenches. Shells come hurtling
through the air, some give a long intense screech,
others, seeming to have plenty of time, come
chattering idly through the sky, but all crash
and grumble in disjection with groan of fast-
travelling fragments of cast-iron. The gas-shells
sneak through the air and go off like wet fire-
works. All ranks are wearing gas-masks at
the alert, and we pass through the sweetish,
sickly odour of spent gas from shells that fell in
the morning ; it is harmless. Nevertheless one
shell does come on the track, and explodes beside
the courageous old fellow from the Far West.
He has no time to adjust his gas-mask on his
head, and he gets the gas and falls out — goes
back, the first casualty among my friends.

There is a further halt, and as the tired re-
inforcements rest, the moon comes out of the
clouds. A party of men passes with rifles slung,
putties torn, trousers and tunic and equipment
smothered in mud, faces pallid, haggard, tired.
They are men who are coming out of the battle-
line. They are going down to rest, and they
have not a word to say. Silently, heavily, steadily
they march down and past — the men of whom all
men talk, England's guardians, the keepers of
the line. They pass, and our fellows go on.
In ten minutes more the new draft is in the mud

and the chalk of the reserve lines at B and

the reinforcements have taken their place.

VI
THE SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION

A CERTAIN literary bent being descried in me, I
was asked by one of our officers, who by his
enthusiasm and care for the men was the life
and soul of his unit, to look through the battalion
records, edit them where necessary, and en-
deavour to supplement them by stories of the
fighting gleaned from the men. This gave me, as
it were, a sort of roving commission among the
ranks, and whilst remaining a private soldier I ob-
tained the rare privilege of being able to approach
any one, from lance-corporal to brigadier, with-
out the soul-freezing formalities of being marched
to this one and marched to that. It gave me a
unique opportunity, by which I profited, though
many of those brilliant young writers who
perished in the war would, no doubt, have
profited more and have written a more stirring
story at the end. I think of Chesterton and
" Saki " and Brooke and Thomas and the rest.

In London we had been with the reserve
battalion. In France we joined a proud fighting
battalion made up of men each of whom had
his own story of the fighting and of war-terror.

149

150 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

There were still a goodly number of 1914 men,
but as many or more of the other years of the
war as well. The battalion was a thorough
mixture of men of all frays and men of all experi-
ences, and it goes without saying it was fier
comme un ecossais, it was justly proud of what
it had done and justly awed because of the number
of its dead.

The battalion belonged originally to the " im-
mortal " Seventh Division, and was brought
from garrison duty in Egypt upon the outbreak
of war. After a short course of special training
in the New Forest, it was taken across the Channel
and thrown into the scale in Flanders. The
transport on which they sailed for Bruges Bay
was not in any way memorable itself, but it was
a sort of Argo by virtue of the flower of manhood
which it had on board. The officers were brave
young men of noble families, who knew in
behaviour and act the meaning of noblesse oblige^
the men whom they designed to lead were the
seasoned veterans of the old " contemptible little
army." They were rushed forward to save
Antwerp, or to save the retreating Belgian Army,
and then rushed back to Ypres to save themselves
and the line, but within three weeks of their
landing on the Continent, nearly all the fighting
officers and three-quarters of the rank and file
were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. At
the First Battle of Ypres the commanding
officer himself surrendered to the enemy, and
the second in command, the hero of all the
soldiers under him, was shot dead. Here the

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 151

war in all its dumbfounding novelty and its
nightmare of chances of death and suffering
disclosed itself. The " professional " soldiers
little knew when, at an immature age, they
signed on for long terms of years of service, that
the future held in it such an ordeal, such a con-
frontment of horror, such a massacre. Else
the callow boy who signed away his freedom for
the glamour of a uniform might have paused.
This was something vastly different from trouble
in Matabeleland or mowing down the Fuzzy-
Wuzzy in his home in the Soudan. It was no
longer the hopeless valour of the Dervish with
his spear versus the hopeless efficiency of the
machine-gun, but with a sort of poetic justice it
was machines versus machines. It might even
fairly be argued that in 1914 the machines
opposing us were better than those we held
ourselves, and that relatively we were now in
the position of the less scientific and educated
tribes of the world, and were up against a race
who had better machinery for killing men than
we had. A devastating thought ! And, despite
the discipline of our Spartan originals in the
battalion, there was a good deal of excusable
stupefaction which might even be called by a
more unkind name by the ruthless military mind.
The First Battle of Ypres was a frantic ordeal.
The glory of the battalion lies in the terror of
these days and nights in which it was destroyed
and in the ever-memorable losses in officers and
men, a new type of glory in the British Army,
one which was born of suffering and losses rather

152 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

than one born of the joy in causing losses to the
enemy.

After the battle the numbers were made up
by fresh drafts of men from England, more old
soldiers, for the volunteers were not trained yet.
These in turn suffered untold privations in the
first rainy winter of the war, in the worst trenches
the army ever saw. There were no capacious
dug-outs and comfortable sand-bagging, but our
" seasoned " veterans, with the sun of Egypt
deep in their flesh, came from the warmth and
drought of Cairo to the frost and penetrating
damp of an improvised system of trenches.
They were not infrequently flooded out, they
had no duck-boards, none of the military civilisa-
tion which was developed in later years. I have
no doubt many a vital string of men's constitu-
tions was snapped that winter, though that sad
event meant much more to the man personally
than it did to his place in the army. Men whose
health was lost had to fight on in patience equally
with those who kept well. The army could not
afford to go sick.

In December 1914 the battalion took part
in an abortive night-operation, in which it
suffered heavily, sowing No Man's Land with
its dead. Something great might have come of
it had all gone well on every hand, but the
" best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft
agley." The attack was well conceived from
the attackers' point of view, but, as became usual
in later stages of the war, our executive imagina-
tion stopped short of the enemy's designs. The

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 153

German lines were reached, die Germans met us
adequately, parties were lost in the dark, parties
perished, parties were left behind, and in the end
the survivors on both sides were back in their
wet holes, conscious of the green bundles, which
once were men, lying unrecovered in the danger-
ous waste between the lines.

The first Christmas came, and with it the un-
official armistice, when British and Germans met
and interchanged courtesies where but lately
they had fought, and our Tommies exchanged
souvenirs with Fritz, and we buried our dead
and ate Christmas pudding and wondered of
home. At that time there was a rumour as if
the armies of both sides might ultimately refuse
to fight, and the politicians be left to settle the
war as best they might without any more shedding
of innocent blood. This possibility never found
much favour, however, in authoritative circles,
and soon orders were sent out to discourage
fraternisation and to encourage a greater spirit
of hate. A year later a StafF officer took up his
unwonted abode in the trenches on Christmas
Eve to see to it that the instructions against
making friends with the enemy were carried out.

Nevertheless, there was probably little chance
of such an ideal consummation of the war as a
peace by mutual consent of rank and file, though
it was thought the war might be over by Easter
1915, or at the latest by Michaelmas ; there was,
as we all know now, a long and bitter stupid
reckoning to make on both sides before the game
was to be thrown up.

154 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

The battalion went into all the bloody adven-
tures of 1915 — Neuve Chapelle and Festubert
and Loos and Hohenzollern Redoubt — and was
reinforced repeatedly from the large and gallant
body of Kitchener's men. Instead of being a
time of ending and of winning, it was a time of
making and consolidating. The British Army
was being hammered into shape. The new
discipline, the only discipline fitting for the new
stress of war, was being introduced. That
Prussianism which had obtained currency in
the continental governments — that " the army
is founded on the death-penalty ; remove the
death-penalty and the fabric of the army falls to
pieces " — was gaining practical hold of the mind
of the new army builders. The year 1915 saw
probably the greatest number of cases of capital
punishment in the war. For offences which
seem slight enough to the civilian intelligence,
and indeed to the intelligence of the civilians in
khaki, many were shot, and appalled regiments
heard so often the terrifying volley at dawn and
knew that another weaker brother had paid the
price of efficiency. A man shot does not help
to fight the foe ; could he not have been sent to
the base to do clerical work or into a labour
battalion to mend the roads ? Would he not at
least have helped a little in these capacities,
though by temperament he be no use as a fighting
man ? The army answer would be : He had
to be shot as an example. If we let him go,
others would play the coward and so save their
skins. But if we shoot him, every man knows

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 155

what is likely to be his fate if he fails at his post.
He knows also that the army has absolute power
over him, and that it is not the least use rebelling
or mutinying or endeavouring in any way to
oppose his puny strength to its complete power.

It is greatly to the credit of our regiment that
in the whole of the war it only lost one man who
was sentenced to death by court-martial and shot.
Nevertheless, I suppose the fate of that one man
showed to what an extent it has been sought to
found the discipline of the army upon fear.
Private X was shot for cowardice. It was after
the battle of Neuve Chapelle, and the sentence
was procured largely upon the evidence of a
certain dour sergeant-major, who himself was
killed not long afterwards by a German shell.
The spirit of the army finds its most practical
expression in the non-commissioned man. He
has no imagination, or if he had it when joining
the army, he generally puts it away and becomes
a subordinate limb of the body-politic of the
army. The brain of the army works through
him. The men hated Sergeant-Major Y for his
doing to death of the private in his company.
The company was mortified beyond words at
the imputation of cowardice to any one in its
ranks, and felt that they in a way were disgraced
by the sentence. They therefore swore a sort
of oath of comradeship to redeem their name at
the next battle. They would fight on, no matter
at what cost, and never surrender themselves, and
take no prisoners. Every man was to win a
virtual V.C. And they did make an extra-

156 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

ordinary fighting display some weeks afterwards
at Festubert — one-half of the company died
fighting, earning for itself the title of the " Im-
mortal Eighty." The papers at home resounded
with their praise, and several poets of the battalion
have written verses concerning the occasion.
The battalion has had many poets, good, bad,
and indifferent. Extraordinary how fighting and
rhyming go together. Most of the poets were
uneducated, and, like Byron, did not care for
grammar at a push, but they were in nowise
deterred.

Bayonets lunge — and gory red return on guard again,

As many a coward, tyrant Hun falls numbered with the slain.

For all that stern and rugged field was drenched with blood

that day
By men who'd rather bleed and die than go the coward's way,

writes one.

They close again, a smile is on each brow,

Ye Gods ! is not this valour sans compeer ?

Death, Glory, Life clasp hands together, now

'Tis over, and they are gone, and foemen murmur, How ?

writes another.

I was much interested in the stories of the
shooting of Private X and the subsequent heroism
of the immortal eighty. Every man who be-
longed to the time had something to tell of his
impressions — all sentimentalised the poor private
soldier and made a hero of him, and equally
sentimentalised the sergeant-major, making of
him the villain of the melodrama. Here is my
impression taken from the men.

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 157

There is a tavern in Laventi where a bygone
Derby winner is supposed to have been born,
and an old race-horse called Calais was still to
be seen when our men were there in 1915. It
had had its day and won its corn. Over the
bar where the beer and vin rouge are served
was a life-size pattern of a horse worked in
the wall in coloured bricks. In this tavern
there would break out characteristic rags
upon occasion, when the officers quartered
upstairs would begin aiming butter at one
another, pouring champagne down one another's
necks, breaking the furniture, and so rousing
the Belgian women who slept in the cellars
below. It was at this tavern that the immortal
eighty used to meet, and here they vowed
never to take any prisoners or to surrender,
no matter to what extremity they might be
reduced in battle. The misanthropic sergeant-
major had his meals at this tavern, and after the
recent court-martial and subsequent execution
of Private X at dawn, he had become a shunned
man. He was felt to be doomed, and it was as
if the brand of Cain had come out on his brow,
and he too seemed to know in some sort of
way that a German shell was waiting for him.
He himself belonged to the same company as
the Immortals, but he was one of the sort who
never miss an opportunity of doing you harm, of
working against you and getting you punished.
He sat apart, and Private A, sitting among the
Immortals, rather a character in his way, would
glance over at him in the midst of the potations

158 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

and whisper impressively to his comrades the
lines of Burns :

Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.

So it was at Festubert. Quite early in the
fray Sergeant-Major Y got a shell to himself, and
he lay on the battle-field in mortal agony, and
no one would give him a drink of water, though
he kept asking for it. Some even spat on him as
they marched past. The immortal eighty, to
whose company, as I have said, both X and Y
belonged, went by, went, indeed, too far and
were surrounded, fought to the very last man,
and their bodies and those of their foes, pinned
by their bayonets, lay in heaps together in No
Man's Land. The army retired, and no one was
able to bring the bodies in and bury them. But
night-parties went out months later to search
among the dead for valuable papers and maps
which had been in possession of one or other
of the sergeants, and they found sodden masses
of decay and skeletons full of flies, which, when
the corpses were disturbed, came flustering out
in clouds, even in the darkness of night.

0 would that I had seen them lying there !
wrote Henderson Bland in the Graphic^

A dauntless few amid the German dead

With twisted bayonets and broken rifles spread,

Let some one mark the place whereon they fell,

And hedge it round, for in the after-time

Their fame will draw the many who would dwell

Upon those deeds that made an hour sublime.

1 hear them shouting there, " Surrender ! Never !
Take the last cartridge here — Scotland for ever ! "

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 159

Y's body was, I believe, found, and buried
with due ceremony, and a " decent " cross, with
name and rank printed thereon, was raised above
it. It is in one of those military cemeteries
behind the lines where each dead man abides in
his rectangle and even ranks are maintained.
But the eighty are become '" lonely soldiers,"
with blank crosses, because nobody knows them,
or can tell one from another, friend from foe.
They are one in death, as they were in life.
Their heroism was a matter of esprit de corps,
and Y, had he lived, would probably have blamed
them for going too far, for he was a believer in a
discipline to which esprit de corps should always
be subservient. A fine esprit de corps and a
discipline founded on fear will, however, often
clash. It was so in the attitude of the men
towards the shooting of Private X.

The court-martial and this execution, which
seemed to bring the curse on Sergeant-Major
Y, and made him finally hated, was occasioned
by a circumstance in the battle of Neuve Chapelle.
It should be explained that in those days shell-
shock was not a recognised type of casualty.
The presumption is that X was suffering from it ;
a shell had burst near him and left his brain in a
dazed condition. For he was one of the bravest
boys in his company, and at the same time one
of the most eager. He was lost sight of in the
battle, did not turn up when the men were re-
arranged in their ranks and marched away, but
straggled in later, and was unable to give an
account of himself. Sergeant-Major Y accused

160 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

him of cowardice in the face of the enemy
and intention to desert, and had him placed under
arrest at once. Y, through army training, had
become the sort of man who presented every
fault in the worst possible light, and he was
capable of pursuing a case with persistent male-
volence. During the time of his authority he
got many men greater punishment than would
normally have been thought due, or than could
have been expected, blackening and accusing
men when brought before their officers. The
case against X was the crown of this course of
action. It had often procured extra pain, fatigue,
and sickness for men in his company, but in this
case it obtained for him a young man's death.

In the light in which Sergeant-Major Y con-
strued X's conduct, and the absence of explanation
on the part of X, the Colonel saw the matter in a
very serious light, and decided it was not one
he could himself settle suitably, and the case was
set down for district court-martial. Afterwards,
when the matter had been discussed considerably
in the battalion, opinion changed somewhat in X's
favour, and Y, on whose evidence the boy's life
depended, was given the hint to soften things
down at the trial. Y, however, was not a relenting
type, and insisted on his personal opinion that X
had displayed cowardice, and that the discipline
of his company would go to bits if such behaviour
were allowed to pass without exemplary punish-
ment. The judges were men of another regi-
ment ; they took the sergeant-major's word as
against Private X's obscurely written, verbose

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 161

defence. X was "found guilty, and sentenced
to be shot. He was the only man before or since
who in this crack regiment in this war has suffered
the extreme penalty.

What the regiment has done in the war cannot
easily be set down in words. It has gone into
the midst of terrible slaughter many times. In
recruits it has consumed six times its original
number. When the roads have been full of a
disorganised rabble they, with a few kindred
regiments, have alone been found facing the
other way, and going to avenge dishonour and
defeat. The regiment was proud of itself. How
it stomached the humiliation of having one of
its members shot may be imagined.

From the moment the sentence was known a
new note prevailed in the battalion. The men
were not in the trenches, but in the shine and
sparkle of a resting-time behind the lines. Stern-
ness increased. N.C.O.'s grew angrier and
harsher. The artificial bawls of the parade-
ground were more intolerable than ever. Drill,
which should be a pleasant thing, was terrible
and straight and merciless, as if each man were
being tried for his life. Nothing flattering was
once said to a platoon or company ; but instead,
frowning displeasure reigned.

X was seen by the chaplain, who found him
quite cast down because of the disgrace, but
angry because it would come to his father and
mother also that he had been shot for cowardice.
The compassionate minister thought to fortify
him to meet death, but that matter did not seem

M

1 62 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

to trouble the prisoner in the*least. They knelt
down and prayed a little together in the quiet of
the informal prison. " Don't be too miserable
about it," said the padre. ' They were hard
on you. Though you've been condemned, it
doesn't necessarily mean that you deserve to die.
You've been made an example of for the good
of the army as a whole. We've got to beat the
Huns ; it's a terrible ordeal, we all know, but
every one must be made to feel that it's impossible
to escape death by running away."

There was a pause ; the minister asked if he
had any doubts in his mind about salvation.

" You don't expect me to forgive my enemies? "
asked the boy.

' Not if they are Prussians," said the chaplain
staunchly.

" Well, I don't forgive Sergeant - Major Y,"
said he. :< And what's more, he won't be long
following me. My case isn't settled yet."

" Ah, I'm afraid there's no appeal, my poor
lad," said the comforting parson, " unless you
mean on the other side, where I've no doubt
if there's anything wrong it'll all be tried over
again."

Sergeant-Major Y, however, was harsher than
ever. But there was a marked coldness towards
him, even among those of his own rank. The
time of execution was fixed for Friday at dawn,
the whole battalion to be on parade to witness
the same.

Reveille was an hour earlier than usual, and
the men dressed in the dark. They were to be

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 163

in full fighting order, with their packs on their
backs. Private X and his guards dressed also,
and he alone was in " walking-out attire." He
had spent a good night, and was calm, even
cheerful. During the preliminaries of ranging
the battalion around three sides of a square and
fixing places for C.O. and adjutant and other
officers, X was comparatively free, and he talked
with several of his old companions, and said
" Good-bye," very happily and calmly.

Volunteers had, I believe, been asked for,
out of the battalion, to shoot him, or the idea of
volunteers had been mooted. For of course if
X had really disgraced the regiment it would
have been easy to find volunteers. But volun-
teers could not be obtained in this case, and so
the battalion snipers were ordered up to make
a firing-party.

:< Don't miss ! Fire right through my heart,"
said X to them. Then he asked for a cigarette,
lit it, and strolled easily and politely across the
green to the tree against which he would be shot.
He did not wish to have his eyes bandaged,
but in that he was overruled. The battalion,
with arms at the slope, stood to attention, the
snipers stood and loaded. The victim, with the
white bandage over his eyes and feet and hands
tied, stood against the tree. Pale dawn light of
mist crept over the scene of punishment, en-
croaching on horizons and making the scene of
punishment the world itself for a moment.

The military police took charge of the whole
ceremony, and then in the tensity a perfectly

1 64 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

dressed sad officer read the sentence, and then
up went the rifles to firing position. " Good
heavens, they are going to shoot him ! " The
idea dawns on those of dull imagination. There
is scarcely a dry eye in the battalion. Captain
C, who is X's company commander, looks to
be in a terrible state of nerves. Popular Jimmy,
the R.S.M., is melancholy beyond words. Vigil-
ant police in the background are keeping strangers
away from the scene. Then zupp, zypp, pp,
crash^ the ten shots are fired all at once, and X
falls 'dead.

Captain C on his horse wheels about and
suddenly takes charge of the whole battalion.
:< Order arms, unfix bayonets, form fours left,
quick march ! " And the men with their officers
march out on a long route-march, leaving the
limp fallen body behind at the foot of the tree.

And not a man has mutinied. Such is the
force of the discipline. The mutiny has only
been in the heart.

Y, however, remains a marked man. And he
sits alone in the tavern of the horse. A special
shell is waiting for him, stacked for the time being
in a German ammunition dump, but coming
into action in the early part of the battle of
Festubert. His company, uncowed by discipline,
gain — " through death immortal fame."

It is a matter of esprit de corps.

After Festubert a bombing company was
formed, and this contained all the worst characters

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 165

in the battalion, the intractable spirits. It was
in charge of a dare-devil young officer, and he
loved these bad characters and proved them one
and all to be heroes. If any sergeant-major
could not manage any one in his company, he
had to send him along to the " Suicide Club,"
where he was at once welcomed. And the
bombing company practised hard with fearful
and wonderful bombs, which caused as much
terror to friends as to foes.

The regiment then marched to Loos, where
every one blundered but the soldier did as he
was told. On the road the battalion spent a
whole day marching in a circle, and one soldier
was heard to exclaim in undying phraseology :
" I don't mind dam-well fighting and I don't
mind dam-well marching, but this being damned
about all the dam time's what damns me." And
we arrived late, late, at Loos, when for twenty-
four hours the Germans could have broken the
line if they'd only known there was nothing in
front of them. The kiltie lads lay asphyxiated
in gas, the supporting division was in indescrib-
able rout and confusion, and then at last a string
of our splendid Spartan battalions was let loose
at the foe, and swept into action with a verve and
a style that are never to be forgotten.

After Loos the bombers had their great show,
when between dawn and breakfast-time something
like 18,000 bombs were flung upon the Germans
in the Hohenzollern Redoubt, and the bad boys
who formed the bombing company were all
killed or wounded, and the teaching of bombing

1 66 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

was proceeding with novices in the trenches
whilst the actual fight was going on. Never
did any one see so many dead at any time in the
whole war as in the foreground of this terrible
redoubt. The shadows of the crowds of the dead
invaded men's consciousness, and left in not a
few a lasting sadness and melancholy which even
victory could not cure.

Death, moreover, had eaten deep into the
battalion by now, and had taken from each man
friends, acquaintances, men he admired, men he
disliked. The colours of the regiment were
kept unfrayed, unsoiled in London, but the
human colours, the body and soul of the regiment,
were torn and ragged, crimson, blood-stained,
scorched with the fire of battle, bleached by the
death-dealing odours.

In the winter of 1915 the battalion was sent
to Calais and to its frosty shores and brutal
pleasures for a rest — one of the hardest times of
all its sufferings, when the men lived in open
tents on a snow-swept, icy shore. And then the
battalion went to guard the ruins and the battle-
lines of Ypres. Because it had defended Ypres
in October 1914 upon first coming out and had
had such a tragic and heroic history there, it
saw the ruins with some emotion. In course
of time the battalion even began to associate
itself specially with the little town, as if it alone
were the protector of it. In how many other
regiments has not a similar sentiment prevailed !
Ypres in its ruins came to be regarded as a sort
of spiritual treasure of the British Army. ;< Oh,

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 167

I think I'd shoot myself if Ypres were taken,"
said a blaspheming old soldier to me, the sort of
man you'd say would do nothing for an ideal.
c Ypres was the most beautiful little town you
could ever wish to see at the end of a day's
march," said another. Again our poets conse-
crated many thoughts and rhymes to Ypres.

From out the ruins I think I hear
The sleeping dead give one great cheer,

wrote our wonderful orderly of the C.O. I
think he wrote a poem on every place and every
fight in the war.

In the grim salient of Ypres we shed much
blood ; wherever the battalion went it bled
plentifully, and must have wasted away but for
the new blood continually coming in. To many
the time at Ypres was the most terrible in the war,
but perhaps to all the most poetical. It was,
nevertheless, despite the poetry, a marvellous
relief when, late in the summer of 1916, the
order came to march south, and our fighting-men
left the grey zone of ruin and destruction and
plunged into the peace and verdure of the France
which was out of range of the shells. The un-
sullied greenery was sanctuary to the eyes.
Virtues were discovered in the quiet French
provincial folk that the men were confident did
not exist in any Belgians. It was a long route-
march, and at the end of it the concentrated
horrors of the prolonged battle of the Somme.
But the men did not look far ahead ; they were
content to live in the present when the present

1 68 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

was good. The battalion were even then a
strange mixture of men who had just come into
the war, and men who had been more or less in
all of it up till then. It marched in the sunshine
and fresh air and followed the gay pipers, and
no one more was killed for a whole month. For
a while its life and its strength were stable,
though each man knew as a matter that had
become usual that here and there in this rank
and in that men were invisibly marked for destruc-
tion later on, many were certain to disappear
even within the very next month when they
fronted the guns once more. What a life !
Happy they who have no imagination and no
ever-articulating growth of thought ! They say
the bad characters had generally a bad time
in the war. But I imagine those who could
think most suffered most, and the bad boys were
generally pretty thoughtless. We had about
that time one of the worst and bravest, the
despair of officers and N.C.O.'s, who neverthe-
less got his worst offences and punishments
forgiven him for his deeds of daring in time of
action. During this progress from Ypres to the
Somme he refused to march, and burnt his army
boots. As a punishment the adjutant had him
made a pair of sandals. He had to wear his gas-
mask, and he was tied to a limber and dragged
along. So he went most of the way to the
Somme with these absurd goggles on his face
and his bare feet in sandals. It did not make
the least impression on his character, I am told.
He was so wild the army had to get rid of him

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 169

at last. It could not tame him, and, tied to the
tail-end of a limber, he was a symbol of the
failure of old-fashioned discipline.

In the current sinister slang of the army, if
the mortality was high at Ypres, the Somme,
nevertheless, was not a health-resort. The autumn
battles which gave us Grandecourt, Les Bceufs,
and the rest were possibly the easier part of the
ordeal. It was the winter in the bad Somme
line of which the most terrible tales are told.
How men stood by one another and endured the
mud, the frost, the incessant bombardment makes
us wonder at human endurance, will always
make men wonder. Curious that in London, in
Britain as a whole, the suffering should have
been taken so much for granted, the heroic and
splendid side always spoken of, the other denied,
the cheerfulness of the men always affirmed as
a sort of proof that conditions after all were not
intolerable. Those soldiers, however, who went
through the Somme campaign saw even in that
enough, and would never desire of themselves
to march another step or fire another shot. It
was one vast chamber of gloom and horror.

As a holiday in '17 when the Germans had
executed their retreat to the Hindenburg Line
the men were taken from the Somme trenches
and given the task of building the Peronne
railway. It was navvies' work, but they took
to it as if it were a task of the heart's
dearest choice, sq greatly was it better than the

170 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

mud and the frost and the shells of the line.
After the railway they were sent to build an
aerodrome, and only when that was accomplished
were they given a genuine rest, something of a
real change and a relief.

On April 1 2, with pipers playing, the battalion
marched from Clery to Peronne and from Peronne
some five miles farther east, to what had once
been the pleasant town of Cartigny, now the
wilderness the Germans had left it when re-
treating to the Hindenburg Line. All that was
left of what had once been a fair town was a mass
of ruins, and when the battalion arrived in the
snow and pitched its tents on the mud, the
prospect was not cheerful. But it proved to be
the prelude to a delightful holiday and a most
unexpected development from the drudgery of
the war.

The King's uniform covers a multitude of
virtues and gifts, and there lurked in our battalion
an unsuspected talent, which was presently to
manifest itself in a surprising way, transforming
the misery of Cartigny as by a fairy wand into
the loveliness in which we left it. The hidden
hand^ I believe, was Armstrong's, for the joy of
his life had been gardening, especially artificial
gardening. In that mysterious state of life to
which it had pleased God to call Armstrong, he
was an artificial gardener on the estates of Lord

B in Scotland, and his handiwork had upon

occasion figured in photographic effect on the
glazed surfaces of Country Life. He was the
genius of Cartigny, and in his quiet, sweet way

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 171

wrought for beauty — one of the strongest men in
the battalion, an expert wrestler, but also one of
the most gentle, one of the few men in our care-
less, violent crowd who did not use bad language.
Of course he found kindred spirits, and the
other gardeners of the battalion shone out through
their camouflage of khaki. " Gardeners camou-
flaged as soldiers," I hear the hard voice of the
R.S.M. a-saying. But before long every man
had become a gardener, and was co-operating
to work the miracle amid the ruins. And since
they worked in mid-April, a month beyond the
equinox, they had one greater than all co-operating
with them, the great god of gardens breathing
radiant life and energy over their bended backs.

The railway to Peronne is not yet absolutely
perfect, and what is called " railway fatigue "
will endure all the while the battalion is at
Cartigny. The men will be employed in shifts,
and there will be no drill or musketry or practice
bombing — only a roll-call in the morning and
the leisure time in the encampment. A bright
idea comes to birth in the battalion — to make
gardens.

All the men were on wood-fatigue to make
bonfires, so as to get dry after the soaking march,
and also, if possible, to dry up the mud on which
our seventy-seven tents were pegged. There is
not a Frenchman on the scene, not a sentry or a
prohibited area, but without let or hindrance
the ruins are at the disposal of the soldiers. It
is not difficult to find wood. There is wood for
the preliminary and trivial matter of fires to get

172 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

dry, but there is also wood to floor every tent,
wood that can be used for all manner of building
purposes, and brick also, and stone and iron.
' The men will have to stir and make this place
generally habitable," an officer is overheard to
say to the sergeant-major ; " if they can build
a railway they can also build houses. What we
require is an orderly-room, headquarters, officers'
messes, a fitting habitation for you, my dear
sergeant-major. . . ."

The news soon went along the lines of the
tents, where the men, dry and warm, lay on the
flooring which they had just put down, and a
hum of joyful anticipation grew on it. They
would not need to be driven towards that kind
of work. It was just what every one instinctively
craved — to make, to build, to create again, the
reaction from the spirit of destruction.

Cartigny is on the river Cologne, which flows
into the Somme at Peronne. The road runs
parallel with the river, and the Germans have
cut the river-bank extensively in order to produce
a permanent flood. In this, however, they have
proved unsuccessful, for the road still holds, and
it is of the ruins at the entry to Cartigny that the
Orderly Room and Right Half Mess are destined
to be made.

In three days the Orderly Room, company
and battalion messes, sergeants' mess, and cook-
houses are all complete, and a really fine piece
of work has been begun on a house of brick,
with every convenience, for the C.O. and the
adjutant. The Orderly Room, roofed with corru-

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 173

gated iron brought in a lorry from Cl^ry, stands
on one side of the Peronne road. On the other
is rising ground, which slopes sharply upward
to where Headquarters Mess is being built. An
army of bright boys from G Company is about
to begin cutting steps in the bank, so that it may
be easier for officers going up and down between
Headquarters and the Orderly Room to do so,
when a happy thought comes to some one : Why
not bring a stairway from one of the ruined
houses and fit it in ? A large staircase is soon
found, and removed intact from the house to
which it belonged — the absence of two walls
and roof had left the staircase nakedly exposed
to view, and it was removed with very little
difficulty. Fitting it into the cliff is more
difficult. The earth has not only to be cut,
but in places where it falls away too abruptly
earth has to be supplied. At length the work
is accomplished, and there is a polite wooden
way from the Orderly Room up to the small
tableland where Headquarters is rising out of
the wreck of a farm-house.

There is a space of a few yards between the
top of the staircase and H.Q., and, being con-
tinually trodden over, the grass begins to look
shabby and wear through to the brown earth.
This begets the second idea of Cartigny. The
sun is now shining and the weather set fair.
Why not a pathway of carefully arranged white
bricks ? That is done, and then Armstrong
devises a few rockeries along the borders, " so
that the place might not seem so bare." And he

174 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

begins to transplant from the gardens of the
abandoned and ruined villas. He finds narcissus,
pheasant-eyed narcissus, and tiger lilies. He
never calls the latter tiger lilies, but always tlgrum
lilium — by that you may know he is a gardener —
and when he wants to tell you how and what
he planted and arranged, he keeps making tiny
circles in faint pencil on the paper before you.
He finds auriculas and pansies and violas, trans-
plants even a rose.

The officers, in all their perfection of glimmer-
ing brown boots, trip along the white bricks
and up and down the wooden way, and as they
see the formal garden grow it strikes them as
fine. " By Jove, that's fine," says one ; " could
we not start the men making gardens all along
their lines and round the messes ? " The C.O.
and the adjutant cast admiring glances at the
work going on, and the former decides to offer
prizes for the best gardens the various companies
can produce, and he names a judging day far
away in the loveliness of May. There ensues
one of the most delightful springs of recent
years, with unbroken sunshine and warm air,
and Cartigny hums with work and happiness.

The plan of the encampment ought to be
realised. There runs the pleasant little river,
where every day the men bathe and where the
pensive anglers sit, some with drawn threads
from kit-bags and bent pins, others, such as the

famous character Paddy K , with veritable

line and hook baited with worms for the*-timid
little dace below, who probably did not realise

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 175

there was a war on till they saw the many khaki
reflections in the water. Parallel with the little
river runs the road going into the flattened town.
There stands the Orderly Room. Opposite it
runs the wooden stairway up the clirF to Head-
quarters Mess. Beyond the mess is the charming
residence of C.O. and adjutant ; at the back are
cook-houses. These buildings are on the right
of the white brick road ; on the left are the
pavilions of the various officers, each with its
garden, and some way beyond them is Captain

C 's wonderful summer-house, brought intact

from some once beautiful French garden. The
young Guards' officers sitting about in deck-chairs
give the idea that one is at some beautiful resort
in the South. And what is pleasant luxury to
them is the joy of life for the men.

Each company has marked out the pattern of
its formal garden, each platoon has its special
care. A platoon of A Company has enclosed
a tent in a heart ; a border of boxwood marks
out the pattern of the heart — the plan is that the
crimson of many blossoms shall blend to give a
suggestion of passion and loyalty and suffering.
Another platoon endeavours to embody in floral
contrast the blended patterns of the regimental
crest — the cap-star. Armstrong produces won-
derful thistles, the green part of which he obtains
by just cutting the pattern in his turf, and the
blue heads by thickly sown lobelia. One thistle
is on each side of his gentle rose. F Company
makes an elaborate and ambitious figure, an
imitation of the floral clock that is to be seen in

176 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh. Each
man has found or improvised trowel and basket,
shovel or hoe. The bayonet is for ever in use,
cutting lumps of chalk to right sizes, making
holes in the earth, cutting and slicing wood.
Petrol-tins with holes in the bottom serve as
watering-cans. How eager the men are seeking
the plants and then in watering and tending
them. Cheerful water-fatigue parties are to be
seen every evening going to and from the river.
Primroses and daffodils and narcissi are soon
blossoming in plenty. Lilies followed, arums
and Solomon's-seal, and then forget-me-nots,
pansies and violas. At the same time the per-
fecting of the designs of stones and glass, bricks
and chalk, goes on. Armstrong's rockeries
become the wonder not only of the battalion
but of our many visitors and guests in this time
of qualified rest. The work also on the railway
still goes on ; the garden is only the expression
of a leisure which might otherwise have been
spent in card-playing and noisy gregariousness.
Each man on the railway knows he has something
like a home to return to — those wonderful tents,
some of these, too, camouflaged with hand-
painted designs, and all of them named — " Auld
Reekie," "The Hermit's Rest," "The Home
from Home," "The Wigwam," "The Hotel
Cecil," "Th* Auld House," and so forth, the
names being sharply printed in white chalks
outside. So on the ruins of Cartigny a new
Cartigny is growing, the collective expression
of soldiers' love of home, but, alas, the day of

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 177

judgement is soon at hand when the prizes will
be given, and then, before the June sun shall look
on the horizon, we must off to the wars again.

" The inexperienced ones do not know which
flowers to cut and which they ought to leave,
ye see," says Armstrong, :< and they haven't
chosen all their flowers to bloom on the right
day. But those who know are more likely to
be successful for that reason." His thistles in
any case are perfect on the judging day, but
indeed all his works are so much apart in their
skill and success that he is ruled out of the com-
petition and has a prize to himself. Those who
made the floral clock get first prize, and our right
flank company with its heart comes second. The
C.O. is sole judge and arbiter, and he says that
he is delighted beyond words at what the men
have done, and he thanks them.

What else happened in Cartigny ? Why,
innumerable little things. Another unit began
building and fitting up a hospital in the neigh-
bourhood. And, oh scandal ! were not some
of the new collapsible spring beds found in the
tents of our intrepid gardeners? Did not the
General make some very scathing remarks about
Scotsmen ? Be that as it may, our men in their
digging came across a good deal of treasure-
trove, things which the careful French had
buried before fleeing in 1914, and they nearly
always respected these finds and closed the earth
over them again. That was not the case when
a party of explorers came upon a cellar of
champagne.

N

178 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

There was one night when the quartermaster
was showing lantern-slides of battalion history,
and Harry, one of the smartest fellows, came up
from the champagne cellar and staggered past
the lantern screen in front of the officers. The
picture being thrown was one of a certain captain,
who had been named the sand-bag king because
of his terrible passion for sand-bagging in the
trenches. Harry pointed to the figure, and
ejaculated in a comic happy voice, " Three . . .
million . . . sandbags," and the whole audience
roared with laughter.

" Shut up, that man ! " said a captain in front.

And he wandered down to a place among the
men looking on.

No officer shared in that champagne. The
men kept it for themselves with pardonable
secrecy. I told the story of this wonderful find
to an officer a year afterwards. " Dear me,"
said he, " how extraordinary ! I don't think
any of us had any notion that the men had found
champagne in the course of their digging."

They had, though. But that was their
secret.

The serene holiday at Cartigny ended with a
Sports Competition, for the greatest encourage-
ment was always given to all men to run and to
jump and to surmount obstacles, to box, to
wrestle, to play football, and the rest. There
were races for the men and races for officers also,
and then officers versus sergeants, and other
amusing items. But the chief events were an
open competition in wrestling and walking, and

vi SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 179

Armstrong undertook to throw any man of any
regiment inside of ten minutes, and our pet
walker out- walked everybody else.

" Is there a war on ? " one soldier asks of
another at such festivals.

" Too true there is," answers his companion
with some grimness.

Soon the battalion returned to Ypres and
fought at Pilkelm Ridge, at Boesinghe, and
other starting-points and halting-points of fatal
memory, till late autumn, when it marched away
to take large share in the winning of the
Byng Boys' victory at Bourlon Wood and to
stop the rot of other units in which indisci-
pline had at last set in in the waste time before
Cambrai.

There was a point when it was " touch and
go >3 with British discipline, when in fact it
had worn very thin. Then it was that in our
regiment and in the brother regiments our
Spartan training told. November Thirtieth,
December the First, that bitter St. Andrew's-
tide of 1917 will always be remembered by the
Guards. It was then they stopped the rot at
Gouzeaucourt. After the ordeal of the Bourlon
Battle they were " out to rest." " They were
sleeping," as one story has it, " when a messenger
came to say that the Germans had broken through.
In less than an hour the whole division was up
again and marching forth through Metz and
Gouzeaucourt. One of the strangest sights of
the war was the mob of panic-stricken infantry
on one side of the road and the stubborn and

i8o A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi

tenacious Guards marching past in the opposite
direction to repair the breach.

Said an A.P.M. as they marched along,
" Get out of the road, you funking throng ;
They'll put to rights what you've done wrong
— The Guards Division ! "

(And they did.]

There was never the slightest wavering among
our boys — indeed they constituted some of the
worst and most relentless enemies of the German
Army in the great attempts at victory in the
winter of 1917—18 and in the spring and summer
of the year of victory.

In the great story of one battalion it may be
seen that the accumulation of battles and of
sufferings from month to month and year to year
begets a spiritual atmosphere. Each new man
posted to the battalion is posted to the historical
and spiritual inheritance of the battalion also.
The regiment has left its memorials in every
place where it has been. There are its crosses
in every military acre of God ; there are its dead,
its lonely soldiers, buried in No Man's Land ;
there are its lost dead too. He comes to new
faces, hard eyes, set lips, patient jaws, faces that
have seen., the faces of those who have killed many
and lust to kill more, the lined faces of those
who have been wounded and are still in the
fighting ranks. The battalion gives him its
style, its stamp and impression, and as he breathes
the regimental air he swears the regimental
oaths. The spirit, however, is born of many
sufferings and endless patience.

VII
WAYS OF THINKING AND TALKING

THERE is a disparity between the splendour of
the army and the manners, life, and ways of the
individual soldiers. Because of the famous deeds
and sacrifice of men the name of the regiment is
whispered with awe. The march past in the
streets thrills the heart with national pride. But
look at a group of men off duty, with their caps
off, so that you can see the narrow foreheads
lined with suffering, the blank eyes, and the look
of dwarfed mind in each ! Off parade the
warriors are not only quite human — they are
our familiar and much-criticised friends, the
working men.

The social tradition of the old little army,
however, prevails over them, and they do not
desire to enter Unions and strike for higher
wages, shorter hours. They think in the army
way, and talk in the army way, and drink in
the army way. The traditional nicknames are
taken and given by them as of old, and the
slang-expressions of the army, mingled with all
the current Americanisms, are adopted. The
volunteer or conscript whose name is Smith

iSi

1 82 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vn

becomes inevitably " Dusty Smith " and then
" good old Dusty " ; the man whose name is
Clark becomes " Nobby Clark," and that also is
infallible ; Wood becomes " Timber Wood " ;
White becomes " Knocker White " ; Wilson
becomes " Tug Wilson " ; Fraser, " Spot
Fraser " ; Weston, " Kidney Weston," and so
on. And the bread is called " rooty/' and the
jam is called u pozzy," and the fat is " jippo,"
and the porridge is " burgu." The guard-room
is the " spud-hole/' and gaol is " clink." If
you are looking smart you're looking £ very
posh." To have nothing to do is to "look spare."
Redundant pieces of kit are " buckshee."

" You talk about doing a Jesus," says the cook.

" Whatever do you mean ? >:

" Why, with all you fresh lot o' fellers," says
he ; and he goes on to explain that feeding the
five thousand is nothing to what he is being
asked to do.

" I beg your pardon, sir. I beg leave to
speak, sir," says the culprit brought before his
officer.

" Shut up," says the sergeant-major.

" What have you got to say ? " asks the officer
nonchalantly.

" I was going to say, sir, as how this wasn't
altogether my fault."

" That will do," says the officer icily. " Two
drills ! "

" Fall in," says the sergeant-major.

If you quarrel with the prize-boxer of the
battalion he'll tell you that he'll " batter yer

vii THINKING AND TALKING 183

gums fer ye." If you tell him playfully that
you'll batter his, he says solemnly, <:< No, you
wouldn't, now. Not in Christ's creation."

Jesus Christ is very commonly brought into
talk for emphasis.

" Jesus Christ couldn't escape punishment in
this battalion."

An officer's servant is speaking : " Mr. A

asked me to bring the polish up on his boots
with heel-ball."

His crony replies : " If a man heel-balls boots
for an officer out here, he wants something to
do, I say. I wouldn't heel-ball a pair of boots
for Jesus Christ."

" Oh, I don't suppose He'd ask you to," says
the servant glumly.

Malapropisms abounded in common talk. The
war was often referred to as a war of " irritation."
One man thinks less of another because " he's
done time for embellishment." When the in-
fluenza plague was at its worst, a young stretcher-
bearer was put in charge of an isolation hospital
into which our cases were led. :< Fancy putting a
young feller like that in charge," said one to me.

" As if he could di-agonise."

A recalcitrant was telling how he defied the
officer. :c I sez to him, ' I'm a private soldier,
yes, but I'm a mother's son, same's you, and I
refuse to submerge myself any more.' :

During the German advance on CMteau-
Thierry and their frustrated efforts near Rheims,
a comrade looked over my shoulder at the map
in a copy of the Paris Daily Mail.

1 84 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vn

" Thank God, they haven't taken Epernay,
that's where the Plinketty Plonk (vin blanc]
comes from. That would have put the lid on
it ! And I see they haven't got Meaux ; that's
where the beer comes from, isn't it ? "

The atmosphere of this war has had a good
deal in common with the atmosphere of the other
old wars on the Continent, and despite all the
new-fangled machinery there was more similarity
in conditions than most people have imagined.
The drinking, the women, the gambling have
been much the same in the old days, and men
who were fairly decent in their home-life became
curiously rakish as soldiers of the King. The
soldiers talked in a different way. The public
shibboleths were different, but the men pro-
nouncing them meant the same thing. A wit
of 1745 records the conversation of Tom the
Grenadier and his friend Jack who lies in gaol :

Who should pass in martial Geer

But swagg'ring Tom the Grenadier : —

" Hollo ! — now Thomas — what's the Crack ? "

Cries Thomas — " Bad enough. Friend Jack :

They say — (damn him !) — the Young Pretender

Bids fair to be our Faith's Defender ;

And that the Rebels have great Hope,

To bring in Charley and the Pope"

Quo' Jack with lengthened rueful Face,

" Good Heav'n forbid : — If that's the case

Our liberty is gone, — and we

Must, Frenchmen-like, bear Slavery."

" Our Liberty ! " cries Tom, " Whafs worse,

A thousand Times a greater curse,

If the Pretender mounts the Throne

Damme — Our dear Religion's gone."

The wit thinks it very ironical that the man in

vii THINKING AND TALKING 185

gaol should prate of freedom, and that a Grena-
dier, of all persons, should be concerned about
religion. Tom the Grenadier of 1745 would
have fitted fairly well into the social life of the
soldier in France in 1918. He would have been
drinking the bad beer and cursing its quality,
and his language would not have been more
lurid than that of a Bill-Brown of to-day. He
would have made as free with French feminine
charm. He would have staked his poor wages
on the cast of the dice as easily as then.

The atmosphere of Wellington's army was
admirably reproduced in those tableaux from
Hardy's Dynasts which we had in London some
years ago. Hardy was proved somehow to have
penetrated in his poetry to the eternal nature of
the army.

That eternal nature was realised again in
France, and possibly nothing was more charac-
teristic than the widespread playing at dice and
the game of Crown and Anchor. The same
game, or versions of it, must have been played in
the wars of Queen Anne and the Georges, and
on the camping-grounds before Waterloo itself.
When we were waiting for the transport, with
men of all manner of other units in the great
covered quay at Southampton, there must have
been a dozen Crown and Anchor boards out,
and eager crowds at each, and when we got to
France nearly every estaminet had its game
going on.

There is a board divided into six sections, each
section marked with a different emblem :

1 86 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vn

The Heart.
The Crown.
The Diamond.
The Spade.
The Anchor.
The Club.

The man who owns the board has dice, which
he rattles in a wooden dice-cup, and on each
facet of the little bone cubes which he shakes is a
representation of one of the emblems.

O

The owner ought to have a certain amount of
money to show as " the bank," from which he
can pay if luck should go in favour of the players.
Each man playing puts what money he wishes
to stake on the emblem of his choice. If, after
being shaken, the dice show his emblem, he wins
back his own stake and as much more again.
On the other hand, if his emblem does not come
up, he forfeits his stake. There is generally a
crowd trying their fortune at the same time, and
most of the emblems are covered with notes. The
experience of a soldier's life in escaping death
and wounds impresses him with the idea of lucky
chance. War breeds gambling as a natural and
inevitable fruit. Many soldiers are devotees of
luck and have their theories of chances, and
believe one night they'll break the bank. They
watch the dice and the board intently, and wait

vii THINKING AND TALKING 187

until some emblem has not come up for seven or
eight times, and then they back it for all they are
worth, believing in a law of chances — some
fantastic notion which reigns in their simple
mind that chances are bound to work out even
in the end. A young fellow who used to be very
hard up and suddenly became affluent, explained
to me that he was now working on an infallible
system. He explained that he would start by
putting a franc on the board ; if he lost, he put
on two francs ; if he lost again, he put on four
francs ; if again, sixteen francs. It was in-
credible that he should not by then have a lucky
turn. But I remarked that even if he won then
he only made a net gain of one franc.

" That's the worst that can happen," said he.

Where there is no theory of chances there is
often a sentimental bias ; young soldiers stake
on the anchor and the heart, ambitious ones on
the crown, dare-devils on the diamond and the
spade.

It should be explained that each of the em-
blems except the heart has its nickname. Thus
the crown is the sergeant-major ; the spade is
referred to as the shovel ; the diamond is called
the curse ; the anchor is the meat-hook. Any
one putting money both on the crown and the
anchor is supporting the name of the game,
though the commonest name of the game is
Bumble and Buck.

The man who holds the board keeps up an
extraordinary stream of patter, to which it is
amusing to listen. Men are evidently spurred

1 88 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vn

on and excited by this chatter, as if it were
evidence of fortunes being made.

" Here we are again. The Sweaty Socks !
Cox & Co., the Army Bankers, badly bent,
but never broke, safe as the Bank of England,
undefeated because they never fought ; the rough
and tough, the old and bold ! Where you lay
we pay. Come and put your money with the
lucky old man. I touch the money, but I
never touch the dice. Any more for the lucky
old heart ? Make it even on the lucky old
heart. Are you all done, gentlemen ? . . . Are
you all done ? . . . The diamond, meat-hook,
and lucky old sergeant-major. (He shakes the
dice again.) Now, then, will any one down on
his luck put a little bit of snow (some silver) on
the curse ? Does any one say a bit of snow on
the old hook ? Has no one thought of the
pioneer's tool ? Are you all done, gentlemen ?
Are you all done ? . . . Cocked dice are no man's
dice. Change your bets or double them ! Now,
then, up she comes again. The mud-rake, the
shamrock, and the lucky old heart. Copper to
copper, silver to silver, and gold to gold. We shall
have to drag the old anchor a bit. (Rattles the
dice.) Now who tries his luck on the name of
the game ? >:

And so on for hours ! Piles of notes and coin
are taken and stuffed rapidly into an old cigar-box.
The crowd round the board never slackens.
Every now and then the owner of the board
sorts out from his winnings twelve of the worst-
looking francs, and orders a bottle of champagne

vii THINKING AND TALKING 189

for his hangers-on and the good of the estaminet
and the company. This sets the winners buying
drinks, and is so profitable to the public-house
that they accept the bad notes for the champagne
without a murmur.

I always felt a curious prejudice against taking
part in the game myself, even for the fun of it.
I felt I could win heaps of money if I gambled,
for I've always been so lucky in life, such a good
Providence has had charge over me.

' Why does Steeven never gamble ? Did ye
never make a gamble, man ? "

' Oh, no. I think it would be unfair. I'm
so fearfully lucky at all that sort of thing."

This very much impressed some of them,
and they used to beg from me to go and gamble
so that my money should give them luck. I
used to save those torn and defaced notes
which the French refused to accept in pay-
ment for their eggs and for what they called
coffee, and give them to a few devotees of the
game.

I noticed, however, that they never won
anything with my money, but sometimes even
were reduced to risk some money they had not
gleaned in this way. The good luck was changed
to bad luck in their hands.

I asked our chaplain one day what he thought
of the Bumble and Buck game. But although
it was in full swing in every village, he had never
seen it, and I had to explain. I thought that
an interesting illustration of the way the chap-
lain's rank of Captain was a hindrance to him.

1 90 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vn

The game was illegal, and therefore no officer
must see it being played.

But certainly there was not much harm in the
gambling. Money was lost, but then money
was a lighter article out there than at home.
There was nothing much to spend it on.

Bumble and Buck, cards, cigarettes, and when
out of the line beer, vin blanc, and flirtation with
French girls made the chief mental relief of the
men. And somehow it seems natural in the army
to be on the level of these pleasures. I opened
boxes of camp library stuff several times and saw
it distributed, but of reading and thinking in a
serious way there was little.

In the fighting battalion there were few men
of any education or of studious nature. The
educated men got broken by the training in
Little Sparta, or in some other way " escaped
drafts," and the working men remained. I do
not know what it was in other regiments, but at
the front ours was absolutely a working men's
regiment as far as the men were concerned. The
officers were aristocracy and the men proletariat.
If my health had broken, I think it would have
been easy for me to have got away — had I so
desired. And, as it was, I could have obtained
a commission had I wished. Generally speaking,
any one of education could get away from our
ranks. But I remained, and all about me were
the British working class in khaki.

These men who were so alike, so indisputably

vii THINKING AND TALKING 191

one as soldiery, had been recruited from every
shape and form of industrialism. They were
taken from the factory and the loom, from the
mines and the docks and the yards, from builders'
ladders and trestles and the artisans' tables and
tools, from the plough and from the fishing-
boats and the nets. Though they were our
cannon-fodder or our ' bayonets," they wrere
also the vital stuff of our vast democracy, the
men who drive the great machine of our civilisa-
tion— perhaps the most significant people of the
time. I was among them and not of them, but
heart and mind never ceased to be occupied with
them and their problems, and with our England
which they make and may remake.

Every one looking from above downward has
said : The men are splendid ! That formula is
the only fitting one for those who have suffered
and done so much, bearing the frightful physical
burdens of war with a cheerfulness which was
never extinguished. But there is something more
to be thought about the condition of the men — if
not said. Even if they make ideal soldiers they
have not had ideal conditions of life in our
civilisation, they have not had the chances of
education which they merited, and many of them
live ordinarily in a state of ignorance and im-
morality which tarnish the real glory of Britain.

Doubtless when a man has died in battle it
does not matter whether he knew who Shakes-
peare was or whether he was a customer of the
woman who lurketh at the corner. He is sped,
and God will forgive him and give him another

1 92 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vn

chance to get the glorious things he missed. The
army point of view would certainly be that
ignorance or immorality or anything of that sort
was no drawback to good soldiering. Many
would incline to the view that these things gener-
ally characterised a better soldier than did their
absence. But besides looking at the matter from
the point of view of war and death we can and
must look from the other point of view — namely
of peace and life.

I made at one time a review of our situation
and endeavoured to provide an answer to the
question, What is the ignorance of the working
man as revealed when he is taken away from his
trade and put into khaki ?

I found that no one knew anything of litera-
ture. Our national glories of the word were
naught to my mates. They were deaf to the
songs which should thrill and inspire. Shakes-
peare was a mere name. Tennyson and Brown-
ing and Keats were unknown. If you quoted
to them from Keats you must explain that a man
called Keats wrote it. If the soldiers opened the
books they could not grasp what the poems were
about. Our prized language when used in a
noble way was like a foreign tongue. If you
spoke to them in normal correct English they did
not quite understand and you had to re-express
yourself in halting working man's English, full of
" you see " and " it's like this " and expletives and
vulgarisms, or the working man would be rather
offended at the way you spoke and imitate you in
a drawl when your back was turned. Dickens

vii THINKING AND TALKING 193

and Scott, again, were little more than names.
Occasionally one found a lover of Dickens who
craved in the trenches for Pickwick Papers but
found it not ; occasionally one met a man who
loved the tales and romances of Sir Walter Scott.

I met one day an old soldier who had read
Gray's Elegy and had visited Stoke Poges Church-
yard to feel again what Gray had felt, and he told
me with pride as if he alone knew it, how General
Wolfe had said he would rather have written the
Elegy than take Quebec.

"Tell me," said he, "there was a feller
th'other day had a dispute with me. How d'ye
pronounce the word p-i-a-n-i-s-t ? "

" Pianist," said I.

" What ? " said he. " Not piannist ! oh, well,
you're wrong, and it doesn't matter. The proper
pronunciation is piannist."

He was quiet for a few moments, deeply
mortified. " Oh, well," said he at last, " I don't
think pronunciation is so important as some make

out.'

" Oh, no," said I. To care for Gray's Elegy
is much more than correct pronunciation. And
we became friends from that day.

One man knowing the Elegy was good. But
who knew Campbell ? The simple beauty and
pathos of Campbell's soldier poems, whispered as
it were to the soldier's heart, were as if they had
not been written. " Our bugles sang truce for
the night cloud had lowered," " Few, few shall
part where many meet."

The most hackneyed quotations known to the

Q

i94 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vn

middle and upper classes were mysteries here, and
having a habit of saying such words in jest I have
often had to explain to a comrade, much to my
own astonishment, what I mean when I say,
" Oh, Cromwell, Cromwell, had I but served my
God with half the zeal I served my King, he would
not in mine old age have left me naked to mine

enemies.'3

Or,

Charge, Chester, charge !
On, Mr. Boffin, on !

quotations which so often rise to the mind as
comments on incidents in army life. It is no use
reproaching your fellow-soldier, " Et tu Brute,"
or exclaiming, ' What, can the devil speak
true ! " for he won't understand what you're
talking about. On expressing my surprise to a
companion on this count one day he replied :

" I'm sorry and all that kind o' muck, old pally,
but ye see I just wasn't taught any o' that stuff
when I was at school."

Not one in a thousand knows the watchwords
of the war, such as the words which Kipling gave :

Who stands if Freedom fall ?
Who dies if England live ?

One finds such a historic monition as " Nelson
expects that every man this day will do his duty J:
is only known by a few, and that in a false way.
But when some General perverts those lines to
" England expects that every tank will do its
damndest," " doing its damndest " rather hits
their humour and "catches on."

And if the working men are deaf to what is

vii THINKING AND TALKING 195

national, they are almost as deaf to the transient
greatness of our times. Not for them did Rupert
Brooke write the most beautiful sonnet of a
decade. I was at pains to find out who had
read Mr. Er'ttling sees it through. Not one
could I find, and though that clever novel was so
astonishingly popular it was not so because the
working man was reading it. It was not provid-
ing the working man with a voice about the war
and life. Hall Caine is read, and I once heard a
superior recruit speak of his writing as good
healthy literature. But even Hall Caine is too
intellectual at times. Our ardent writers such as
Masefield, Chesterton, Conrad, and Bennett find
their readers among what Russian revolutionary
soldiers and workmen call indiscriminately the
bourgeois^ but not among the rank and file.

I canvassed a room one day and found that
only three in it had heard of H. G. Wells, and one
thought he wrote for John Bull and had a " flashy
style." The name of Bernard Shaw was better
known because of the greater number of news-
paper remarks concerning him.

I met one day a man called Shaw and asked
him if he knew anything of his namesake the
dramatist.

" Yes," said he, " I named my little boy
Bernard after him so that when he grew up he
might have some bloomin' luck perhaps."

" Did you ever read any of his plays or see one
acted at a theatre ? "

" No. I saw one of his books once, but I
never read it ... yes, yes, Bernard Shaw the

196 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vn

great author — there's a statue of him somewhere
in the West End."

One day a sergeant came to me and said :
" You used to write for the Times, didn't you ? "

' Yes/' said I.

" I sent two jokes to Answers last week,"
said he.

" Then we are colleagues and fellow-workers,"
said I ; and I always was on speaking terms with
that sergeant.

What the men do read is Florence Warden
and Charles Garvice, and books with such titles as
" The Temptress," " Red Rube's Revenge,"
" The Lost Diamonds " — gaudy adventure stories
which can be torn for cigarette lights later on.
All prefer, however, to look at pictures rather
than read. Some even seem a little troubled
when they receive long letters from their wives
or sweethearts.

They read such papers as London Mail, London
Opinion, and Ideas, and voraciously devour John
Bull, which has the art or the knack to express
grousing in print. Many newspapers are provided
for them free, and I used to find it rather strange in
reading-rooms and libraries at Little Sparta and
in London, that the Express and the Sketch and
the Mirror got dirty and torn each day, whereas
the Times and the Morning Post remained com-
paratively untouched.

Then though we possessed many splendid old
national songs, you'd listen in vain to hear one
sung by the soldiers. Or if the old airs were
sung, they were merely the accompaniment of

vii THINKING AND TALKING 197

modern words or parodies. The imitation of
music-hall humour and music-hall singing was
most widespread. In fact they had the culture
of the music-hall.

They are called to fight for their country in
the latest of a series of historic wars, but they
know next to nothing of our history or even of
its famous names. Who was Henry the Fifth ?
What did Henry the Eighth do beyond having
wives ? Wolsey ? Raleigh and Drake ? Crom-
well ? ' Marlborough ? Pitt ? They know the
Duke of Wellington overcame Napoleon, but I
heard an officer ask a man for the date of the
battle of Waterloo and he could not say. George
the First, the Second, the Third, Fourth and
Fifth — they don't know much about that series.
Edward VII. meant more, and they generally
refer to the present King as Teddie.

* What did Teddie say to you ? " they asked
of me after the King's inspection of us. " Was
Teddie looking at our kit ? " they asked.

Yet each and every one of these men in khaki
had some technical knowledge with reference to
the use of some tool. It might be a very limited
knowledge and a very small tool, but it earned
his living and made him a part of the great
industrial machine of England.

VIII
FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD

THE vast concourse of the new drafts was dis-
tributed along the line. Most went to the
defence of Amiens from the onslaught from the
north ; we to the defence of Arras from encircle-
ment from the south. The position was briefly
this : The Germans, following up their immense
initial success of March 21, were advancing along
the whole line from before Amiens to Albert and
from Albert to Arras. British units were re-
treating before the face of the Germans, following
partly their own inclinations and partly the orders
of the Staff. Our Division, I believe, acted to a
great extent on its own responsibility in going
forward when every other unit was going back.
It marched forward to meet and stop the Germans,
and it found that the real defenders of the line
had quitted the field. There was some difficulty
in locating the enemy, and whilst seeking him
the Division was shelled by its own artillery.
When at last we found the German, he also found
us, and coming forward in mass formation en-
deavoured to stampede our men as he had stam-
peded so many units before us on that and other

198

viii FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 199

parts of the field. By all accounts the enemy was
most enraged to find the Guards in his way. But,
confident in his numbers and in the impetus of
victory, he did not doubt but that he could force
a way over and through. The discipline of the
Division permitted of no retirement, and the
men stood to their guns and fired rapidly at
the great living target of the enemy sweeping
down upon them. All the time the men were
firing they knew that if the enemy's numbers
got the upper hand there would be a terrible
hand-to-hand struggle in the trenches, and that
in the end most of them would be lying killed
or wounded on the battle-ground. But all the
great hostile attacks withered away under the
hand of death, and the line was held. It was
a great service, for if the Germans had broken
through there also, Arras would have fallen and
the whole position might well have proved
irremediable.

Though in our draft only one was wounded
and none was killed, it was a terrible impression
of the reality of war for the new men. " I'm
going to make my peace with God before ever
I go up to the line again," said Fitz when he
came out of it. * Each Minnewerfer coming at
us was like a row of houses rushing through

the air," said another. "Poor old K was

bobbing like a baby," said another. All seemed
surprised by the war and scared, as if they had
never imagined the thing before they saw it.
In each man's eyes there was the sign of shock
and strain. One very dull boy of eighteen, who

200 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vin

had astonished me once by telling a question-
ing C.O. that the South African War was fought
in Egypt, seemed suddenly to have been wakened
though not to have become articulate. He now
laughed like Charley Bates, and said " oo-hoo "
and " not 'arf " when asked what he thought of
the Front and did he find it bad.

However, after this initial flutter all became
quiet. The Germans had taken large measure
of the discipline of the Guards and wanted no
more of it. The success was pronounced and
remarkable : already by the 3oth of March the
French newspapers were very congratulatory.
So we read at that time in Le Journal these
flattering words about our Division :

Ces grands gaillards, tallies en athletes, ne orient
ni s'agitent. Ils courent a la melee avec ce meme
flegme et cette m£me fierte que je notai void trois ans,
un matin d'hiver ou, sur un plateau au sud d'Abbe-
ville, j'allai les voir passer en revue par le due de
Connaught. Ils incarnent la tenacite britannique.
Ce sont les machoires carrees. Oil la garde est
engagee, la frontiere de guerre ne recule jamais.

So remarkable was the discipline of the Divi-
sion that certain battalions were detached from it
and sent to- stiffen and give backbone to other
parts of the army, and they helped to gain the
brilliant victory of Ayette. From Ayette they
were taken and thrown into the scale on the Ypres
Front when the second huge German attack was
launched. The new drafts from Little Sparta
went straight into the battle-line, and many a man
was killed before he was properly registered or

viii FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 201

known in the battalion to which he was posted.
They participated in the most heroic and terrible
exploit of the war, and fought to the last man
near 1'Epinette on the Hazebrouck Road.
Nothing that was written then or that can be
written afterwards can do justice to their tenacity
and brilliance and to their sacrifice in Belgium.
Units on both flanks gave way, and they were
enveloped and outnumbered by an enemy who
had brought field-guns up to the positions of
machine-guns and fired point blank at them.
There it was that the nightmare circle of Germans
enveloped the heroic Captain Price and his men,
and encroached upon them with the visage of
inevitable death or bondage, and he led his men
out and drove them back at the point of the
bayonet, and extended the area of the circle,
which nevertheless again encroached and en-
croached. Three times he charged them and
then died fighting. One wounded corporal
lying in a ditch crawled back at night and told
the tale, the only survivor of a whole company.
The Captain was awarded a V.C., and every
man who perished with him earned a sort of
deathless glory. There never was in any annals
a more marvellous stubbornness or a greater
example of what discipline will do. Among
those who fell were men who had but just set
foot in France — some in fact of the last hundred
thousand. And such a deed, though it could
not save those who performed it, must have
gained an enormous victory over the German
morale and have put also a great inspiration

202 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vm

into all the other troops in Flanders. The
enemy's onset was brought to a standstill, and that
meant the ruin of his vast designs. I was invited
one day to go over and talk to the Colonel and
some of the men who survived, and I saw to what
dimensions this heroic fourth brigade had shrunk,
all that was left of three battalions, in tents in one
field near La Cauchie. I think it proved im-
possible to find recruits to make up the numbers
of these battalions ; they were sent to the coast
to recuperate and wait. In the autumn cam-
paign most of the survivors were drafted to other
battalions in the brigades which remained.

On the Arras-Ayette Front, where most of us
lay, the line became serene and no one ever saw
an enemy. Probably all the troops except patrols
had been withdrawn. Only the artillery methodic-
ally shelled our lines and the roads. There was
current among us a quaint parody of Browning :

God's in His heaven,
The Guard's in the line,

which was whispered from man to man, though
probably no one in the ranks of our battalion
could have quoted the original. However, the
fact was true : the Guard was in the line and all
was right with the world. There ensued on the
Arras Front a halcyon summer which was not to
be interrupted until late August, when the great
advance of the autumn campaign began.

So we were left not so much with the war
as with France, and we both lived with her and
considered her in her aspects of partial destruc-

vni FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 203

tion and love among the ruins. It was in a
region that had suffered greatly during the
early campaigns. The eye ached to look at the
ruins, and was continually preoccupied building
them up again. It was the region of Berles-
au-Bois, where the antique church is a forlorn
ruin beside the debris of the homes of its
parishioners. It was beyond the flat misery of
Monchy and the wreckage of charming Blair-
ville and the sinister gas-stricken woodland of
Adinfer.

From these places the war had receded, but
with the onset of March 21 they were engulfed
again. The peasants and villagers had come
back after their first exile and now were driven
into a second. One of the most pathetic pheno-
mena of the whole region were the new shacks
put up by the American Relief Committee for
the returning homeless ones now wrecked in turn
by shells, these shacks lying wrenched and torn
and yet so obviously new and clean, having been
lived in such a short while.

The peasants, loth as ever to leave their lands,
clung to their farms and their cottages to the last
possible moment, and they were to be seen every-
where, cheerfully working even under fire, the
instinct which rooted them to the soil they knew
being much stronger than any instinct of fear.
The women in the fields greatly won the admira-
tion of our men for the life of toil they led, and
we reflected how few women at home would be
ready to live the hard life of a French peasant
woman. Whether they would have cared to see

204 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vm

their own mothers and sisters thus enslaved to the
earth is not so certain as that they admired it in
the French.

The seeming piety of the French home with
all its sacred pictures and relics was rather puzzling
to the Tommy, but he realised that it did not
make any difference to character, and that the
religiously-minded girl was as accessible to his
love-making as if she had no religion, and that
the piety of the old wife did not cause her to
charge less for her eggs. The conventionality
and conservatism of the people's lives were very
remarkable, and not what one would have ex-
pected in the land of so many revolutions. There
was on every hand a curious simplicity of mind,
and many were " stupid to the point of piety."
The atmosphere, especially on Sunday, when the
people overloaded with clothes crept sluggishly
and obediently to church, was mediaeval.

I was billeted for a while in a farm-house where
the husband was at the war and the wife and
wife's mother had an antediluvian intelligence.
They had had a shell through their roof one day,
but to them everything was funny — the shells, the
rain, the mud, the drilling in the yard. The two
girls of fifteen and thirteen deceived mother and
grandmother all the time, smiled on us always,
and were kissed and squeezed by all the soldiers
who came in.

" I suppose you'll marry an English soldier,"
said I to Marie one day.

" Oh no ; Mamma doesn't think it would be
good to marry while the war is on. Nothing

viii FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 205

arranged in these times is binding. But after-
wards I'll marry a Frenchman."

" But you love So-and-so very much ? Won't
you be sorry when the battalion goes away ? "

" Oh no3 it's nothing."

I said I was shocked.

" C'est la guerre," said she, and waved her
hand and smiled.

" What do you think of these French girls ?
Aren't they astonishingly forward with us ? "
I asked a fellow-soldier.

" They can't help it, it's their blood," said he.

I wondered whether Mamma and Grand-
mamma, who were and looked so phenomenally
stupid, had the same wiles and smiles as Marie
when they were young.

There was a great deal of mixed war life and
village life in the region immediately behind the
lines. The villages swarmed with troops. Every
mother who possessed a pretty girl seemed to use
her as an innocent lure to sell bad coffee or wine
to the soldiers who crowded in to flirt with her
and say things to her they could never have said
to an English girl. I think the French girls who
repeated and threw back at the men all the bad
language they heard had little notion what it all
meant.

What gay scenes there were in those large
square yards in front of the farm-houses : the girls
on the verandah, the men in and out of the
barns where they were billeted ! The roads were
continually possessed by a swirl of motor-lorries
and horse-limber waggons, and now and then a

206 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vm

company of men marching to or from parade-
ground would appear. In the evenings the band
played beside the church — sometimes a first-class
military band from London, containing many
excellent musicians ; more often our pipers or
the pipers of the Micks.

April mudr gave way to May sunshine and
drought. There was a respite and sanctuary
from the war in the development of spring. The
9th of May, Ascension Day, was an especially
lovely one, which I well remember. May must
be twice May to be perfect. 'Twas so this day.
I had been sent to a neighbouring headquarters
with a message, and at noon I sat for a while
beside a high hawthorn on a daisy-covered bank.
The war ceased to exist ; only beauty was
infinitely high and broad above and infinitely
deep within. Birds again sang in the heavens
and in the heart — after a long sad silence, as it
seemed. On the road below me a never-ending
stream of Indians with dusky brows and brown
turbans went riding by, and lorries and limbers
plunged and struggled — the long caravan of war.
Sulphurous splashes of smoke and sharp buffet-
ing concussions broke from a camouflaged battery
in a ravine, and it seemed as if the verdure of
spring threatened to put hands over the cannon's
mouth and stop its male voice, as a wife might
stop her husband saying words she did not wish
to hear. Beyond the ravine was a wood, over
which, flying low like an owl staring for mice,
the aeroplanes crept through the atmosphere,
screening from enemy observance their exit and

viii FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 207

entrance from battle air. In another direction
a deflated khaki -coloured observation -balloon
wallowed in bright dandelion fields. Coming
down the road appeared chains of artillery traction-
engines with negro drivers, and squads of Lewis
gunners with their fatal iron tubes. Yet all the
while in five-acre fields the quiet peasants with
bent backs looked as if they had stolen out of
Millet's pictures. On the right in the distance
was the wonderful spire of the village church of

P , on the left were the staggering ruins of

the tower of B au-B .

In the evening I was in P , and the pipers

were playing at the foot of the beautiful church.
Huge disjected lumps of stone lay about, they
had fallen when the church was last hit by a shell.
It was Ascension Day and the band played well,
but it could not cause the stones to rise up to their
places. The flare and stridency of the pipes
thrilled the blood in the veins and made one feel
that the something in honour of which they
played must be splendid and important, but the
grey stone wall of the church seemed neverthe-
less wrapped in its own silence and remote from
all of us as if existing in another plane. The
spire above seemed to be invested with a power
which was more than our human power of which
we were so proud. However, the pipers and
drummers fulfilled their program, and a hap-
hazard collection of earthy-looking peasants stood
and stared and listened. So the vulgar war went
on, but the fourteenth century still pointed a
sharp forefinger to the sky.

208 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vm

One day whilst stationed at Sombrin the alarm
of a German " break-through " was given, and
the Division was rushed up towards the line to
save the day. It was only a test, but it was
exceedingly well carried out. Each company
cheered when it was told it had to go and stop
the Germans. With us a brigade of the new
American troops was co-operating, and our
fellows saw the ' Yanks " for the first time.
They were a magnificent body of men and
marched with wonderful verve, singing all the
way. " John Brown's body " seemed to be the
most popular air, and the words they sang were
amusing :

All we ever do is sign the pay-roll,
But we never draw a God-damn cent.

They shouted to us, " You can go home now "
and " We've come to win the war," and we
believed them and were glad.

The summer, as I have said, was serene.
Nevertheless the menace of another great attack
hung over all the region of our front like a cloud.
The French were told that we had come, and that
therefore they were absolutely safe from a further
attack. For we never retired. The Americans
were pointed to as another guarantee of safety.
Still, it did not need sharp eyes to see that every
imaginable precaution was being taken in case
Fritz should drive us out. On many wells began
to appear the notice " Prepared for Demolition"
and on bridges, :< Warning : this Bridge is
mined" On the trees alongside the roadways were

viii FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 209

gashes where explosives had been inserted in the
trunks for the purpose of readily blowing them
up and bringing them down across the road —
thus to obstruct the enemy transport in the course
of his advance. Buildings were mined. Long
stretches of the highway ran over sleeping cordite
which but a touch would awake. Traps of all
kinds were prepared for the enemy by our in-
genious engineers. One read on detachable posts
such notices as W ^ D No. 99 Booby Trap.
About the villages for leagues back, tens of miles
back, the Chinamen and Labour men, " camou-
flaged heroes," as we sarcastically named them,
were busy digging breastworks for delaying
actions. All inhabitants were officially warned
that they stayed on at their peril. Meanwhile
our " intelligence " reported large concentrations
of enemy forces at points upon our line, and
we were ready for a destructive retreat on the
lines of the model retirement of the Germans in
March 1917, when they abandoned the battle-
fields of the Somme. It is perhaps doubtful
whether we should have chopped the fruit trees
as they did. But we should have made a desert
for the enemy to dwell in.

How good that it all turned out to be super-
fluous, that victory should favour us instead of
him, and that instead of his overrunning our
lines we should penetrate far into his ! Yet so it
was, and the story destined to begin August
1918 was one of advance and of relief.

None of the precautionary arrangements were
destined to be used, and when the reinforcements

p

210 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vm

and the transport left to follow up our victorious
advance a curious stillness and peace seemed to
be born in the villages. The notices on the
wells, the tickets on the breastworks — B-support,
C-switch, etc. — seemed as unwonted as did the
clay-cut trenches themselves. With relief every
one realised that( the trees would not be blown
up and that a certificate of immunity had been
handed by destiny to all manner of bridges
and roads and homes. The whole atmosphere
changed, a new light was shed on whole country-
sides. Yes, because the cloud had lifted. Into
this new light exiles returned once more to try
and continue the old life as they felt God had
intended it always to be led.

But if peace crept into the land from which we
advanced following the enemy, what madness and
calamity of destruction poured into the land to
which we advanced and from which mile by mile
we drove the Germans ! There, as if to be
revenged for some baulked prey, the spirit of
the war expressed itself with all the rage of its
possession.

Peace settled down upon the stones of Monchy-
au-Bois and the ridges of Ransart ; the menace
of the occasional shell was lifted from the Arras-
Doullens Road. The railway resumed its service
to Arras, and from the heights of Blairville
engines could be seen puffing along a new
stretch of country. Arras itself crept away from
the fires of destruction. The receding tide of
battle foamed backward to Bapaume ; and whilst
Ayette and Achiet gained the sanctuary of peace,

vin FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 211

the intensified rage of the war descended upon
Croisilles, St. Leger, Riencourt, and many another
staying-place of enemy power. Dead men once
more lay unburied in the tumbled villages, for
there was no time to bury so many. Our arms
went on, and still the clouds went on lifting from
France- — not now, however, from half-destroyed
homes and patient peasants, but from totally
destroyed country devoid of home and habita-
tion. The complete absence of civilians gave
the rescued ruins of villages the aspect of ceme-
teries and ancient ruins of cities — as if in the far
past a civilisation had obtained and been destroyed.
That is what we saw when the fire-curtain lifted.

IX

WAR THE BRUTALISER

THERE is more experience in the private soldier's
life than there is in that of the officer. The
reality of the army and the war is more sharply
felt in the ranks. It is not possible to deceive
oneself so much about war or to be deceived by
events and actions themselves. You escape from
the conventional and from a certain artificial
form and style. Indeed, to serve in the ranks is
an unique opportunity to get to know the working
man. Perhaps there are not many people wno
want to know him ; they only want him to do
his job and keep them comfortable. But if any
one desires to know him as he is in his natural
strength and weakness, with his foibles and his
charms and also with all his repellent deficiencies
of grammar and taste, the private's uniform in
the war afforded a short way.

It was a great experience. You learned about
yourself and your neighbour what you never
knew before. You shed many illusions about
both personalities, and through all the bullying
and petting and camaraderie you learned much
of human nature.

212

ix WAR THE BRUTALISER 213

I was undeceived a great deal. I used to
think too lightly of men going to war and of
the sacrifice they make and what they undergo.
I used to think courage and verve and human
idealism made the real driving power of the army
in time of war, and it seemed that in putting on
the King's uniform one put on the ideal. But
we all of us soon learned that the uniform be-
tokened hard duty and bondage, a durance such
as that of slave or prisoner. Though men were
generous in offering themselves to fight for their
country, or even in agreeing to fight when called
upon to do so, there was no atmosphere of
generosity and national gratitude, but rather an
atmosphere of every man expecting his neigh-
bour to shirk what he could. Private soldiers
were all passive. Non-commissioned officers were
active and drove privates to do what was required.
The real driving power lay in brutal thought and
word and act. The open sesame of the army was
the characteristic of brutality, and I noticed that
men who were not in themselves brutal cultivated
brutality to get the army tone.

The characteristic word of command was not
merely enforced by firmness, by peremptoriness,
by loudness. The vital thing in it must be
menace ; it must be an intimidating bawl, and
must not only be heard, but must act on the
nerves. Soldiers must be drilled as a Tartar
drives his horses — by frightening them all the
way.

The regimental sergeant-major is like a big
yard-dog. He rushes forward and barks menac-

2i4 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ix

ingly at any one who appears on his line of
vision. He waits outside billets and pounces
on luckless soldiers, snarling, " What 're you on ? "
Rarely by any chance does he exhibit a kindly
interest in any one. He does not act the part of
a father to the soldiers. His position forbids it.
He is paid to be terrible, and whatever he may
have been whilst unpromoted, he is due to take
up this r61e of being terrible when he gets to be
R.S.M. He then cultivates the voice. And he
soon learns to love his authority. He ought
really to devote his attention more to checking
the ways of N.C.O.'s, and have no appetite
for such small fry as privates. I have seen a
very clumsy and broken-down drill-sergeant
rise to the dizzy height of R.S.M. probably
through sagacious toadying to officers, and such
a man, whilst easy-going as a drill-sergeant,
became at once a Tartar as sergeant-major, and
set out to take down the pride of the really smart
men whose appearance was perchance an offence
to the " funniest man who ever wore a bumble and
buck board on his sleeve." I remember how he
brought up a wonderful C.O.'s orderly for in-
subordination, and the latter was reduced to
defending himself before the C.O.

" It's like this, sir, if it's a choice between
offending you and the sergeant-major of my
battalion, I'd rather offend the sergeant-major."

" Admonished," says the C.O.

" Fall in," says the R.S.M. in rage, and then,
as the defendant orderly is dismissed, he rushes
after him and calls out, " You've got too much

ix WAR THE BRUTALISER 215

to say for yourself, you have. Take his name
for haircut."

So next day the orderly will be brought up
before the adjutant.

However, a sense of humour dilutes any bitter-
ness which such petty tyranny might produce.
I remember listening to the orderly. He was
one of the cleverest natural wits I have come
across in the army.

Says he : " Once there was a fisherman fishing
on the west coast of Scotland, and he brought
up an unclean thing. Who would have thought
that that unclean thing would have survived to
become the sergeant-major of this battalion ? "

Of course this R.S.M. was not the famous
Jimmy nor the immortal Dan. Not he.

Of " Jimmy ' our Colonel once made a
remark which might serve as the epitaph of a
famous R.S.M. : " He was the deadly foe of
humbug : his touch remained long after he was
gone."

I was rather amused to read the C.O.'s mar-
ginal note to a minute which had been prepared
on the subject of sympathy : ' Sympathy does
not consist in listening to yarns. Sympathy
becomes practical when an officer takes a hell of
a lot of trouble to know his men and his work."

Very true. But it is these " deadly foes of
humbug " who are the sympathy-killers.

Well, the regimental sergeant-major is the
big bow-wow. All the lesser N.C.O.'s are the
lesser fry, with the lesser barks and the lesser
snarls.

2i 6 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ix

Even private soldiers, when they think they
can try it on, will bark and growl at one another,
and '" give a steady one " in regimental style.
Snarling provides the atmosphere of the ranks.

" Ain't I a great hand at putting the wind
up, eh ? " said a sergeant to me in pride, fresh
from a bout of cursing and swearing at his
platoon.

I did not show much sympathy with him.
" You'd get better results if you encouraged
them more," said I.

" What's the matter with you, Steeven,"
he replied, " is you're too soft ? You'd never
get on in the army."

I confessed I had been brought up always to
try to put people at ease. If I lived to a hundred
I should never be able to taunt and damn and
terrify in the regimental fashion, and so get
things done.

Nevertheless, the men of our regiment, cursed
and driven into every fatigue or fight, behaved
astonishingly well from a military point of view.
They did better than men in other regiments
where the sergeants did not so constantly " put
the wind up 'em." The method seemed always
justified.

That the driving-power of the army arose
from courage and voluntary sacrifice .was the first
illusion to fall. The second was that of chivalry.
It seems that in former wars one granted to the
enemy a great deal of human dignity. Though

ix WAR THE BRUTALISER 217

he was a foe, he was a fellow-creature, and was
saved by his Redeemer as much as we were.
But the opinion cultivated in the army regarding
the Germans was that they were a sort of vermin
like plague-rats that had to be exterminated.
Although the British soldier had a "sneaking"
admiration for the German as a good fighter,
this admiration was generally eliminated through
the inspiration of officers and N.C.O.'s. The
regimental tone absolutely forbade admiration of
anything in connection with Germans. " Kill-
ing Huns " was our cheerful task, as one of our
leaders once told us. The idea of taking prisoners
had become very unpopular among the men. A
good soldier was one who would not take a
prisoner. If called on to escort prisoners to the
cage, it could always be justifiable to kill them
on the way and say they tried to escape. Did
not So-and-so get a D.C.M. for shooting
prisoners ? ' Thank God, this battalion's always
been blessed with a C.O. who didn't believe
in taking prisoners," says a sergeant. Captain

C , who at Festubert shot two German

officer-prisoners with whom he had an altercation,
was always a hero, and when one man told the
story, "That's the stuff to gi' 'em," said the

delighted listeners. That this preyed on C 's

mind, and that as a sort of expiation he lavished
care and kindness on German prisoners ever
after, till he was killed at Cambrai, was not so
popular a story.

It was curious, however, that in battle itself
there was more squeamishness about brutality

218 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ix

in actuality than there had been in conversa-
tion. The old hands, the men who had the
regimental tone, were equal to their words,
but the younger and newer ones hardly liked
it. I remember a characteristic case in the
first advance. A German machine-gun post
had been holding up the British advance and
inflicting murderous casualties. The machine
was enveloped and rushed, and the Germans
held up their hands and surrendered. An old-
time sergeant goes up to his officer, who, by the
bye, was a poet, and wrote some very charming
lyrics and had a taste in Art, and salutes : " Leave
to shoot the prisoners, sir ? " " What do you
want to shoot them for ? " says the poet. " To
avenge my brother's death," says the sergeant.
I suppose the poet tells him to carry on. He
pinks the Germans one after, one, and some of
our fellows say " Bravo ! " and in others the
blood runs Cold. In the same battle the sergeant
himself perishes, and a sort of poetic justice
seems to have overtaken him. But it is the
stuff of which he was made that makes us terrible
to the enemy. The enemy knows about it,
gets to know infallibly, and having no great
moral cause to help him, does not flame with
noble anger, but is merely afraid and wishes
the war were at an end.

I remember the disgust of one of our American
volunteers at this episode. For a few days it
caused a reaction in him, and made him quite
warm-hearted toward Germans. But when he
had been in one or two more frays he also caught

ix WAR THE BRUTALISER 219

the regimental point of view, and was ready to
" kill Huns ad libitum:9

There was a characteristic way of speaking
to the Tommies :

" The second bayonet man kills the wounded,"
says the bombing-instructor. " You cannot afford
to be encumbered by wounded enemies lying
about your feet. Don't be squeamish. The
army provides you with a good pair of boots ;
you know how to use them."

"... Don't go wandering down deep dug-
outs in search of spoil or enemies, but if you
think there's any Bosche down below, just
send them down a few Mills bombs to keep 'em
quiet."

"... At this point the Germans come out
of the machine-gun nest holding up their hands,
and the man with the Lewis gun forgets to take
his fingers off the trigger."

No one said to the men, " By refusing to take
prisoners, by killing prisoners, ill-treating them,
or killing wounded men, you make it only the
worse for yourselves when it may be your lot
to fall into the enemy's hands. Remember he
holds as many British as we do Germans." The
stories of our brutality inevitably got across to
the Germans, and made it worse for our poor
fellows on the other side. No one said, " It is
good to take prisoners ; take as many as you
possibly can. That tends to end the war. But
by ferocious habits you are only making this
war into a mutual torture and destruction society
for all men between eighteen and forty-five.

220 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ix

Out of cruelty comes cruelty. Out of mercy
comes mercy."

The young ones dimly understood this in
themselves, but it did not obtain currency ;
the older army types, with standardised regi-
mental point of view, kept all new recruits
staunch.

In enforcing and excusing brutality it was
common to recount the known atrocities the
enemy had committed, the regimental stories
of his tricky ways. And it was possible by
enumerating his crimes to seem to justify any
cruelty or barbarity on our part, and to let
us assume that if we thought of him as devil,
that was just what he was. But a fair mind knew
that atrocities and barbarities and cruelties of
all kinds had abounded on both sides, and that
both enemies (ours and theirs) had behaved in
ways unworthy of man.

The mind is curiously ready to think evil.
An incident in the course of the great advance
will illustrate " thinking evil " and " being
brutal."

There were a number of us in B the

morning after it had been captured. We were
sitting by a fire in a farm-house. The sound of
rifle-fire in the village street was noticed, and
suddenly a man bursts in and says that a German
has come out of one of the cellars and has been
sniping civilians. That seemed to account for
the rifle-fire. Three or four men snatched their
rifles from the wall and rushed out at the door,
calling out :

ix WAR THE BRUTALISER 221

" The dirty bastard, we'll teach him to snipe
villagers ! "

The others in the farm did not stir. But
presently the would-be executioners of Fritz
came back and clanked their rifles down again.
It was a " wash-out." The German was dead.
A Taffy had shot him. " Did the German
wound any of the French ? " we asked. No.
He wasn't sniping, but was lying on the floor of
a cellar. The French had discovered him, and
had run out to tell our fellows. A TafFy had
come and peered down the cellar-stairs. There
in the gloom lay the enemy soldier in his greyish-
blue uniform, apparently sleeping. The Welsh-
man fired a shot at him. Then the German
sat up. He fired seven more shots, and then
dragged the body upstairs and threw it on
the dunghill in the yard, searched the pockets
of the uniform, and went away. The incident
was closed.

I went up then with some others to look
at the German soldier. There he was, on a
dunghill in the squared yard of the farm-
house. To my surprise he was still alive, not
yet dead. He had apparently been wounded
the day before, for his right arm was swathed in
linen and had been in a sling. His face was
pink and white, very white and livid pink, and
his little waxy eyes stared at us without expression.
His white breast heaved up and down. So we
looked at him and pitied, and went away. And
he lay on the dunghill and the rain washed down,
and I suppose he died in a few hours.

222 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ix

:< Can he stand on his spindles ? " asked the
kindest man at our Red Cross post. " No ?
Then let him lie where he is. The Taffies ought
to have carried him in ; he's not our case."

Some weeks afterwards I heard the story re-
told. It had grown like the proverbial rolling
snowball. Thus it ran : The German had crept
out of a cellar and killed and wounded half-a-
dozen women and children before one of the
Taffy snipers put a bullet through his neck and
ended him.

" And serve him right, the dirty dog. I hope
he had a lingering death/' said some one.

When the true story was told, some one made
an obscene remark. But that was the way
until the soldiers got to Germany and saw the
Germans for themselves.

X

BRINGING BACK THE BODY
OF MR. B

ON the evening of the first day of the great battle
a party was sent with Captain E to the line.

There had been the first advance, the battle
shadow had lifted off the villages in the rear,
bathing them in the new atmosphere of peace ;
the curtain had risen to disclose the ruins of the
villages in front after the guns had spoken.
For four months we had sat facing one another
in trenches on the ridges, but now at the end
of August our army had left its front line behind ;
it had crossed the smashed and devastated German
line, upon which so methodically our artillery
had played, and then the second German line,
preceded by planes overhead and tanks on the
ground ; it had entered one after another the
vast white stone villages of Artois, tumbled in
ruins from end to end, and it had sought a retiring
and fleeing enemy, who seemed to intend to
retreat for a great distance, though he remained
capable, nevertheless, of holding up for a time,
when he desired, three times his strength.

We had learned earlier in the day from men

223

224 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS x

in dressing-stations that small posts of machine-
gunners were holding up the advance, that

Lieutenant B , a popular officer, who had

been through the East African campaign before
he came to us, was killed, and that several well-
known sergeants had been brought down in the
fighting.

The whole brigade, the whole division, many
divisions were in movement, some progressing
here, others and parts of others held up there.
The designed course of the battle was in process
of being realised point by point, though in places
and for a time the plan broke down. Contact
between the advancing units was generally kept
up, though occasionally contact was lost — as
when our brothers-in-arms in the brigade went
forward unsupported on their left, and were
surrounded and lost. " Intelligence " knew
where every unit was and where it ought to be.
The half-blasted woods, ruined villages, and
indestructible hills and ridges did not hide the
army from its eyes. Nevertheless, the task of
marching over the broken ground and finding
the point which our battalion had reached after
the day's advance was no easy task. " I expect
it to be the devil of a job," some one was heard
to say.

We left at six o'clock, Captain E and a

brother -officer riding in front ; a limber with
some water for the battalion a,nd some whisky
to be left at brigade headquarters went between ;
a sergeant rode one of the limber horses, and
five or six men marched behind.

x THE BODY OF MR. B 225

At the outset we were confronted with a
grand jam of traffic, caused by the slow progress
of a queue of tanks over an awkward ridge of
the road. Groups of officers, including some in
gay uniforms with epaulettes of steel, including
also clericals with their unwontedly white collars
and their delicate hands, still yellow with the clay
which they had been throwing on to corpses all
the afternoon, stood on banks and looked down
on the scene with evident relief and pleasure.
The bare-kneed tank officers rushed hither and
thither in their cotton knickers, and with irritation
written on their sunburnt faces. Troops of all
kinds swarmed about the scene, and we stood
posed as in a Graphic picture.

" Turn the limber about ; we can't wait

here longer," said Captain E , and the fat

sergeant on horseback laboriously obeyed, cursing
his officer the while for pretending to teach him
his business. So we made a detour, all grumbling,
the two officers silently going ahead.

It was evening. Twilight was descending
on a broad moorland which was intersected with
roads and old trenches. Dust on the road was
more than ankle-deep, and we beat it up in
clouds, so that it whitened us all and entered eyes
and nose and mouth, and lay in a crust in the
moustache ; and the same dust hung in curtains
over the moor, it was high in the heavens like
a mist, there were columns of it in the atmosphere,
and the sun set strangely and pallidly because of it.

We passed the extraordinary ruins of a sugar
factory, all tormented and twisted, still eighty

Q

226 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS x

feet high, but terribly dilapidated, as it were
warped, the body of the place disembowelled
and the ruined machinery of the interior exposed,
mingled with congealed liquescence. And at
sinister angle out of all this, at a great height,
the undamaged shoulder of a crane. " A mad-
man's design," thought I. " There is an idea
in it, that is clear, but a maniacal notion of
misshapenness instead of symmetry has found
expression."

We passed the well-dug but battered British
lines, which we had been long convinced as
soldiers no enemy could take, and then in No
Man's Land we saw the spectral figures of giant
tattered aerodromes, long coveted as complete
possessions by both sides, used by us constantly
for night bombing-fliers until the German armies
had flooded over all the country in the spring.
Now we had them again.

We began to be a little unsure of the way.
Still there was with us Mountjoy, who had come
down from the line some hours before, and
though there had been a further advance, he
could still guide us with some surety. Never-
theless, we began to ask questions of passers-by.
At late twilight we came to cross-roads, where
but lately death had claimed his own, and now
there was a traffic of motor-lorries only to be
compared to what is seen at a street artery of a
large city. Every lorry was white with dust,
the horses' hoofs were deep in dust, and the drivers'
faces and backs covered with it. There was an
unwonted absence of talk.

x THE BODY OF MR. B 227

Our road led across the German front line,
which lay in indescribable confusion, without a
soldier, without even a sentry, but with the
odour of yellow-cross gas and of corruption.
The stars came peeping through the dusty sky ;
the great moon gained luminosity, whilst die
eye, which had ranged far and wide over the
battlefield, instinctively searching for dead, was
narrowed in its scope to wayside borderlands.

Wounded men, in twos, helping one another,
straggled past us to the rear. Exhausted men
sat silent and limp on banks at the side of the road.
Submissive, eternally patient German prisoners
passed us, carrying stretchers with wounded on
their shoulders, one armed guard for each squad of
bearers. There was a rare simplicity about them,
and seeing them in sharp silhouette against the
sky, they looked like the sculptured figures of
some marble tomb.

Darkness set in, but the moon above the
battle -ruin illumined all and increased it in
grandeur. Traffic grew less and less. Enemy
bombing-machines droned overhead, and their
bombs glared crimson and resounded in explosion
far away in the darkness. The great guns were
silent, but the aeroplanes, being little opposed,
came down towards us, and swept the roads with
machine-gun fire. So as not to be seen, we halted
till the firing ceased.

We then entered a vast area of demolition,

where the village of H had been razed to the

ground, and, kicking through the dust, went down
its main street, on which once many windows

228 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS x

had looked, but now nought looked. It was as
if God had visited it, and every man had fallen
backward and broken his neck, and every house
and home had fallen flat. No, not a wall stood,
but hideous malefaction had boshed and bashed
even that which was already useless. In contrast
to all this, a small undamaged parlour-chair
stood in a drift of dust at the cross-roads at the
far end of the village — taken, who knows from
where, and placed there in pity for the wounded.
We had been three hours on the road. We
stood some minutes at that memorable crossing,
and questioned various horsemen who arrived
and went. There passed us a regular caravan
of supply-tanks, much larger than the fighting
size, but containing rations of petrol and water
and supplies of ammunition. When we took
the next road we found " Brigade," and two of
our men were detached for duty there. And we
obtained a runner who had the name of being
an infallible guide, and his duty it was to lead us
to where the battalion lay. With him we followed
a column of machine-gun transport, and there
began the most empty period of our march,
empty because we were tired, and were haunted
by the idea that we were going wrong. What
happened to the transport ahead of us it is
impossible to say, but we were indeed going
wrong, and when we at length halted, there were
only a few posts between us and the Germans.
The infallible guide had led us amiss, and we
retraced our steps several slow kilometres. It
was now nearing eleven, and the enemy's guns

x THE BODY OF MR. B 229

and ours opened fire, and the shells overhead
screeched through the air in both directions.
Various ammunition dumps were hit and burned
up in red glares to the sky ; twinkling Very lights
shot up and wavered in miniature constellations,
and silver snake-lights hung a few moments and
went out. Away on our left we heard the de-
liberate repetitions of a German machine-gun.
But we plodded on and cursed and grumbled :

" The horses will be nearly dead before we
get back. . . . What's the use of a hundred tins
of water when the supply-tank can take four

hundred. . . . Old man R must be working

for another bar to his medal sending us up with
water. ... I knew before we started out we'd
get lost with that long devil taking us. And
I've been twenty years in the army, and he
thought he could teach me my business. . . .

We're not on the right track. I'm well

sure we're not on the track. . . ."

But we were going right this time, and in
half an hour came to a huge box-shaped standard
of netted camouflage, two Red Cross waggons,
stacks of petrol-tins, and a confusion of captured
German arms. These marked the entrance
to a vast hollow chamber in the earth, dug
previously by the laborious Germans, and now
used as our battalion headquarters. Twenty or
thirty well-cut clay stairs led down to this great
cavern, and on every step some one was stretched,
asleep, while down below, where but lately
German sabres had clanked, lay our Colonel and
other officers sleeping too.

230 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS x

Captain E went down these many steps,

and we with the limber continued our way
by an exposed road to the point where one of
the centre companies lay. The enemy shelled
the road, and five minutes after we had started
three of our men mechanically threw themselves
flat in the road as a shell came right at us. But
the shell did not explode. Another exploded
to our right, sending a shower of smoking metal
over us, and almost stunning us with the con-
cussion. So we hurriedly dumped the cans at
the side of the road, and the horses galloped back
to headquarters as fast as they could be urged.
There we sat and drank water from gallon petrol-
tins and watched the wounded arriving at the
Red Cross waggons. The full moon poured its
light and its splendid midnight silence over all.

However, whilst we were waiting, an orderly
came out to ask us to take a stretcher and bring
down a dead officer lying where he had fallen.

This was Lieutenant B . We were not very

eager because we were tired, but a guide came
out, and we found a stretcher and followed him —
first along a ravine and then over an exposed ridge
where trenches had been partly dug. We all sat
down and rested in an empty trench, and it was
just midnight. A wounded man limped piteously
up to us and asked the way to the aid post, and it
was an old squad chum. " Hullo," said he,

the light of recognition in his eyes. It was C

again, the boy who thought the South African
War was fought in Egypt. He had got a " blighty
one " from a fragment of shrapnel. We told

x THE BODY OF MR. B 231

him where to go, and then for our part went on,
threading the empty trench till we came to that
part held by our men. Here were several dead,
and we took the coverings off their faces and
looked at each to find out which was that of

Lieutenant B . Last time I had seen the face

it was pleasantly flushed with wine, and there was
a glitter in the eyes ; his pale yellow moustache
veiled rather witty lips. But now it was smeared
with red dry blood, and the moustache was heavy
in death. A fine tall fellow and a great weight
dead.

For a moment our attention was diverted to a
souvenir lying in the dirt, a small anti-tank rifle
with a one-inch bore, and one wanted to put it
on the stretcher with the dead man. But it was
too heavy. So we shouldered the dead body of

Mr. B and began our slow journey to the

limber. We changed hands and positions at
least a dozen times whilst carrying it, and as
German shells burst near us there was danger of
the stretcher capsizing, for one of us was very
nervous and wished to fall flat to earth every time
the menacing buzz of a projectile assailed his
ears. So the heavy, ill-balanced body swayed
and lurched, registering the nervous tension and
fatigue of those who bore it. We perspired and
gasped. At length, at the entrance of the ravine,
we halted and sat down. Since last we passed,
a gas-shell had exploded, and as we sat with
open mouths, panting, our throats burned with
" yellow-cross." Perhaps we ought to have put
on our gas-masks, but with them on we could not

23 2 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS x

have found sure footing among the many holes,
and no one wished to fall whilst holding the dead
body.

At length, however, to the limber. And the
dead body was roughly transferred from the
stretcher to the wet bottom of the cart. The
men had thought to sit themselves in that cart,
but the dead had dispossessed them. There was
no longer any talk of the tiring of the horses.
A second small cart, the rear-half of the limber
and the size of a barrow, was yoked behind the
first, and into it we cramped and crowded our
tired limbs. The officers reappeared and rode
ahead, we followed. And now we must retrace
most of our steps and recross once more the
battlefields and trenches over which we had
come whilst night was young. Happily we
knew a good deal more of the way than we
had done on coming. But we were not troubled ;
we were resting. It was a marvellous summer
night. There was time to appreciate that now —
the moon remained over us in extraordinary
splendour.

We developed a fair pace, and it did not seem
to matter into what pits the limber fell or
how it lurched, we righted ourselves and went
on. The body in front of our eyes lay head
lower than the feet, and the feet were upturned
before us. We looked at the nails and the earth
on the soles of the boots, and the thought flickered
in the brain, " He trod that earth in, he will
never tread on it again ; instead, earth will
press on him." The body lay on its back and

x THE BODY OF MR. B 233

moved ever so little, and yet seemed to be trying
to make itself more comfortable now and then.
And the horseman in front and we in the carts
behind plunged among the gaunt silvery ruins
of the village of H .

" How pathetic it is ! " I thought, " that in
peace time this magical night would express itself
in such a warm comfort of the soul, in the liquid
music of the nightingale in the wood, in the chirp-
ing of crickets in the grass, in happy, peaceful
hamlets. How differently the serene stars would
have spoken to us then ! >: And I thought of
nights in the past, and of nights in the radiant
pages of books.

One house wall standing by itself amid the
ruins took my eyes. It was a large tattered
fragment of wall, and where an upper storey had
adjoined, and once, perchance, a woman's bed-
room had been, was a six-feet round hole, splin-
tered and roughened, as it were, by the knuckles
of the ogre who had struck it. All about us
were ruins, and our passage was as through
Nineveh or Tyre in a perfect Eastern night,
with the barren desert all around ; but the ruins
were so new that one saw, as it were, the malice
of the destroyer written over them. One smelt
the comfort of homes that had been lately blasted
away. What negation ! No, not the hand of
God ! Here was expressed no wrath, but wan-
tonness, ugliness, suicide, mania. To think how
all would have been placidly slumbering at that
hour, but instead, heaps and wildernesses of
stones !

234 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS x

The fat sergeant who had cursed so violently
came and sat on the side of the rear cart with
his legs dangling down, and he looked at the
corpse :

" For two two's I'd take those boots off and
change with him," said he, considering intently
the quality of the boots of the dead officer.

" Why, that's what I've been thinking this
last half-hour myself," said the other sergeant
who accompanied us, " only it's a bit risky."

" Why should he be buried in such good
boots ? An old pair of boots is just as good to

be buried in. It's a waste, and a waste to

the country, too ! ':

' Yes, it's a waste ; a pair of boots like that
would cost five pounds, not less."

" Somehow you can't help feeling sorry for
him," said the second sergeant, who evidently
had some qualms.

" Oh, it's come to him as it's got to come to all.
Just the same as any other man. I'm not sorry
for him," said the other.

So we passed on out of the village into the
moor beyond, and saw in a vale all the long line
of green and yellow tanks carefully disguised,
and waiting for dawn and the resumed attack.
We entered once more the old German lines,
with all their signs of war and desolation.

The man called Mountjoy, sitting crouched
in a corner of the limber, began telling us his
story, how he was a South American, a volunteer
from Buenos Ayres, but consumptive, and re-
peatedly refused by doctors ; how he had gone

x THE BODY OF MR. B 235

on his knees to doctors and officers to get himself
passed as fit, and at last, when standards were
lowered, he managed, by telling the story of
his enthusiasm, to get taken in the army. But
once in France, how bitterly he repented ! How
he knew what a fool he had been ! And his
shadowy eyes burned with regret in his large,
pale face. He described in broken English what
a beautiful life there was at home ; told us his
sorrows about his mother, whom he had grieved,
and how he had wished to send his photograph
to her but the Censor always refused it. He it
was who had come down from the line earlier
in the day and was doing double duty because
he had known the way.

" I ought to have four or five days clear after
this," he lisped hopefully.

" Well, you must look after yourself, for
nobody else will look after you in the army,"
said the sergeant morosely.

1 Yes, that's true."

There was a silence.

' I don't suppose he ever travelled in \ that
posture before," said the sergeant reflectively,
looking at the dead body. It now lay diagonally
across the cart. And he smiled at the contrast,
at the fine style of the living officer and this
poverty-stricken way in which the same officer,
now dead, was travelling.

"... A heavy fellow . . ."

And once more we were in a village where
the hand of the maniac had been at work, and I
thought of the ruins in the hearts of men. Oh

236 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS x

war, the brutaliser ! I thought of a contention
of a very drunken soldier : " The war has
reduced men below the level of the beasts that
perish. To be unconcerned at Death is lower
than the animal. War, I tell you, knocks all
the religion out of a man."

I had held an opposite point of view.

Captain E told us as we lay in the cart

that we must have some food before turning in.
Then he galloped ahead, and we followed labori-
ously and creakingly through the stone-heaps

of B to the flushing, flooding water-point,

where we watered the patient and mute beasts
who had carried us. I shall always feel kinder
toward horses in memory of the many dead beasts
we saw by the way that night, and for the fact
that we were too tired not to ride.

So we brought the body of Mr. B to the

lines at B . Worthy M'K , a barber of

Perth, greeted us as we came in, and though it
was not his task, he had taken charge of the
kitchen for awhile, and had made tea both for
the officers and for us. I put an arm round

M'K as we walked to the kitchen. It was

four in the morning, and the long strange night
ended in gaiety and talking.

The body of our poor lieutenant lay outside.
Next day it was carried further still, and buried
where lay many others of our regiment in the
growing graveyard of Berles au Bois. Curi-
ously enough, Captain E was thrown from

x THE BODY OF MR. B 237

his horse and badly injured ; the other officer
got gassed ; Mountjoy, who pined for South
America, died of pneumonia ; the sergeant who
was so callous toward the dead officer died of
influenza, and the driver and the other sergeant
were suffocated in a cellar — all before Armistice
day.

XI
AS TOUCHING THE DEAD

" WE were fighting in a rose-garden which was
strewn with men who had been dead for some
days. The pink roses and the green corpses

were a strange combination," said L , the

young poet who wrote charming lyrics and had
such a taste in art. He was fresh to the work
and looked on the dead for the first time. The
memory was distasteful, and yet it inevitably
recurred to his mind. He strove to banish it
as an elegant person in civil life would naturally
banish from the mind something evil and repulsive,
such as, for instance, say, some beggar woman's
face that his eyes by chance had seen. I met
the same L a month later ; we were dis-
cussing impressions of the war, and he confessed
that he felt no interest in the dead as such ;
they were just so many old cases of what had
once been men. He had seen so many dead
that already the instinctive horror had gone.

" They say Madame Tussaud offered a reward
to any one who would sleep a night in the
Chamber of Horrors, but I think I could do it,"
said Dusty one night by a camp-fire. " I've

238

xi AS TOUCHING THE DEAD 239

slept in dug-outs with dead men and been too
tired to throw them out, and I've wakened to
feel rats' breath on my cheeks. I think no wax-
works could have terrors for me."

The greatest number of the soldiers had
become indifferent to the horror of death, even
if more intensely alive than before to the horror
of dying themselves. In many an extraordinary
callousness toward dead bodies was bred. They
could kick a dead body, rifle the pockets of the
dead, strip off clothing, make jokes about facial
expressions, see waggon-wheels go over corpses,
and never be haunted by a further thought of
it. Only if the dead were British, or if it were
known to you, the dead body of some one in the
same regiment, there seemed to be a sadness
and a coldness, a sort of presentiment that you
yourself would perish before the end and lie
thus in trench or battle-field, cold and inanimate,
soaked with rain, uncared for, lost to home and
dear ones.

But the German dead had no interest. They
lay about everywhere unburied, for our own
dead had precedence with the burying-parties.
All along the devastated village streets the
Germans lay dead as they had been shot down
in action of flight, the look of running in fear
was still on the brown faces, and the open mouth
and white teeth seemed to betoken calls to their
comrades as they ran. In the debris of the
houses to which men rushed for souvenirs the
dead lay too, with gentle empty faces, and
ever so shabby shoddy tunics, and their little

24o A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xi

round caps beside the subdued and thoughtless
heads. Germans lay in the dusty gutters like
old parcels, and men would turn them over to
see the face that was biting the dust. When we
were in the long ravine of Noreuil and Vaux-
Vraucourt, the ridges and indeed the hollows
of the ravine itself for miles round were strewn
with dead. The air was heavy with putrefaction,
and on either hand extended the battle-field,
covered with wreckage and dug out with huge
shell-holes. Discarded rifles, equipments, ration-
tins, clothes, mouldy loaves of German bread,
tins of corned-beef, drums of ammunition lay
everywhere. Unexploded German bombs lay
about in scores, and likewise packages of ex-
plosives for mining. The roads were scattered
with unexploded cartridges, with hundreds of
thousands of them, and shells of many calibres
lay about in extraordinary promiscuity, and
amidst all these the miserable dead lay where
they fell, British and German, friend and foe.
The long trenches that traversed the green fields
were inhabited by corpses, and it was a pity to
think of them lying long unburied, and of the
souvenir-hunters handling them day by day and
leaving them ever more bare.

I lived at that time for a fortnight in the midst
of this wreckage of war. The dug-out which I
had appropriated had been used by a German
before me, and there was a half-finished sodden
letter in it to a German mother, and there was a
box of revolver ammunition. It was eight feet
in length and a little deeper than a grave, and it

xi AS TOUCHING THE DEAD 241

was dug out of bright yellow clay at the side of
a sunken road. Parties of men went to and fro
all the day along the way, and the way was one
of running mud. The roof was made of planks
thrown across, two German blankets, and a
waterproof-cape detached from a set of equip-
ment lying on the moorland above. There were
five steps in the mud of the bank leading up to
the dug-out, and these were made of German
ammunition boxes full of machine-gun ammuni-
tion. There was a shelf which was an iron sleeper
from the German light railway, a fireplace made
of a provision-tin ; for table a German stool,
and for seat two petrol-tins filled with dirt.
Outside there were hundreds of strands of loose
telegraph-wire which were wandering from their
shattered posts, and on one of these, pegged down
by two " buckshee " bayonets, a soldier's washing
could be hung out to dry. Every morning
there was enough water in the sagging water-
proof-cape on the roof to wash in, and sometimes
for a regimental shave. The sense of being
surrounded on all sides by the dead never left
one, and as I sat and looked out on the scene
I saw displayed on a hillside a hundred yards
distant the red and grey silhouettes of the ruins
of Noreuil looking like some village in Palestine.
From this point I used the privilege of liberty
which I had, and made expeditions to Queant
and the Drocourt switch and to Bourlon Wood
and Bourlon village, pulsating with the life of
the British and French-Canadians who had just
taken it, to Pronville and Moeuvres, and to

R

242 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xi

the trenches known as P and Q and R, where
our battalion lay. The fascination of going
from dead to dead and looking at each, and
of going to every derelict tank, abandoned
gun, and shattered aeroplane was so great that
inevitably one went on further and further from
home, seeking and looking with a strange in-
tensity in the heart. I saw a great number of
the dead, those blue bundles and green bundles
strewn far and wide over the autumn fields.
The story of each man's death was plainly shown
in the circumstances in which he lay. The brave
machine-gunners, with resolute look in shoulders
and face, lay scarcely relaxed beside their oiled
machines, which if you understood you could
still use, and beside piles of littered brass, the
empty cartridge-cases of hundreds of rounds
which they had fired away before being bayon-
etted at their posts. Never to be forgotten was
the sight of the dead defenders of Ecoust lying
there with all their gear about them. On the
other hand, facing those machine-gunners one
saw how our men, rushing forward in extended
formation, each man a good distance from his
neighbour, had fallen, one here, another there,
one directly he had started forward to the attack,
and then others, one, two, three, four, five, all in
a sort of sequence, here, here, here, here, here ;
one poor wretch had got far, but had got tangled
in the wire, had pulled and pulled and at last
been shot to rags ; another had got near enough
to strike the foe and been shot with a revolver.
Down at the bottom of deep trenches many dead

xi AS TOUCHING THE DEAD 243

men lay, flat in the mud, sprawling along the
duck-boards or in the act of creeping cautiously
out of holes in the side. In other parts of the field
one saw the balance of battle and the Germans
evidently attacking, not extended, but in groups,
and now in groups together dead. One saw
Germans taking cover and British taking cover in
shell-holes inadequately deep, and now the men
stiff as they crouched. I remember especially two
of our fellows in a shell-hole, fear was in their
faces, they were crouching unnaturally, and one
had evidently been saying to the other, " Keep
your head down ! " Now in both men's heads
was a dent, the sort of dent that appears in the side
of a rubber ball when not fully expanded by air.
There were those who had thought their cover
inadequate and had run for something better and
been caught by a shell on the way — hideous
butcheries of men ; and there were men whose
pink bodies lay stripped to the waist and some one
had been endeavouring to save them and had
abandoned them in death — men with all their kit
about them, men without kit, men with their
greatcoats on and men without greatcoats.

The nearer one approached to the battle-lines
the less touched the dead appeared. But those
near our encampment at Noreuil all lay with the
whites of their pockets turned out and their tunics
and shirts undone by the souvenir-hunters — which
brings me once more to the general relationship
of the average living soldier to the dead. I
remarked that though those in the battle-line were
very swift in the pursuit of the so-called souvenir,

244 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xi

in other words, in pursuit of the loot, it was those
behind, such as the artillerymen and labour corps,
who were the authentic human crows. I used to
walk a mile or so every evening to the five derelict
tanks which lay on the sky-line on the way
towards Queant and I got to know the dead on
the way, and I watched them daily grow more
and more naked as successive waves of souvenir-
hunters went over them. There was a handsome
German some six feet three, very well clothed,
and the first time I saw him he was as he had
fallen. Then his boots went — he had a good
pair of boots. Then his tunic had been taken
ofF. A few days later he was lying in his pants
with many parts of the dead body exposed.

I came home late one evening and fell in with
a man from one of the sixty-pounder batteries at
Queant. He was grubbily but methodically
examining the corpses of the German machine-
gunners and hoping to pick up a revolver. I
watched him examine one without success and
he gave the dead body a kick. ' The dirty
barsted," said he, as if he were accusing the
corpse, " somebody's bin 'ere before me."

The revolver or automatic pistol was the best
prize of the souvenir-hunter. Money was sought,
and watches and rings. There is something grue-
some in the act of taking a marriage ring or even
an ordinary ring from a dead man's hand and
then wearing it or giving it to be worn in
England. But very few German dead were
left with rings, and the Roman Catholics were
despoiled of their crosses. The legitimate tokens

xi AS TOUCHING THE DEAD 245

to take were the brightly coloured numerals from
the shoulders of tunic or greatcoat, the officers'
helmets (not the saucepans but the Alexander-
the-Greats), field-glasses, pocket-books, etc. But
the hope of each seeker was the pistol.

I was wandering through a shattered and
deserted military camp one morning and a
questing Major burst upon me. I saluted, but he
brushed formality aside. " Hello, hello," says
he, " is it true that your regiment has a special
privilege to look for automatic pistols ? J:

I looked demure in the presence of such
exalted rank and the Major regarded me search-
ingly.

:< I'm out to give fifty francs for every auto-
matic pistol I can pick up," said he. And that
was a plain hint to me that if I could sell he would
buy.

He was Major in a regiment impolitely referred
to by our haughty Spartans as a " grabby mob."

There must have been many men who were
not as lacking in imagination and impressionable-
ness as the majority who ranged o'er the battle-
field seeking for treasures. But I did not myself
meet these. Even the best saw nothing in taking
away any property which might remain with the
dead. Such property was no good to corpses.
It was curious what a great number of letters,
both British and German, lay on the battle-
field. These had been taken out of the pockets
and pocket-books of the dead and since they were
no use had been thrown to the winds — literally to
the winds, for when the wind rose they blew

246 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xi

about like dead leaves. There were photographs,
too, prints of wife or sweetheart, of mother, or
perchance of baby born whilst father was at the
war — the priceless, worthless possessions of those
whose bodies lay on the altar.

It never seemed to me worth while to collect
lurid mementoes such as helmets or bombs, but I
often designed to make a representative collection
of the letters both German and British which were
lying about one's feet. I read many of them ;
though there was something almost intolerably
tragic in the hopes and fears and boasts and
presentiments of those who had written to men
who were in truth destined to be killed. Many,
many of the letters said some one was sorry that
letters had not been written, but promised to write
longer and oftener. Many letters were full of
admonitions to be careful, not to take risks.
Others promised " leave soon," " home for Christ-
mas," " the war over." Some told stories of the
air raids on London ; others were full of domestic
details and never mentioned the war. Some
obviously endeavoured to keep cheery because it
had been said the men needed cheerful letters, but
others refused to be reconciled to the separation
which the soldier's going to the Front had meant.
Perhaps they might have sounded trite and ordi-
nary, but as being written to those who were about
to die, it seemed as if Fate read them also and
smiled in malice.

I had a suspicion that many of the dead who
lay unburied for so long were not reported dead
— but simply as " missing." So in one case

xi AS TOUCHING THE DEAD 247

where several letters lay strewn round a corpse
whose pockets were inside out, I took one
crumpled missive and sent it to the writer of it
with a carefully written note about the young
lad's fate. In answer I received a letter from
the father asking for definite news of his son if
I had any, as he had not been heard of for a
long while. Whatever reply I sent, would I
please send it to his business address, not to his
home, as the mother was so anxious. By that
time, however, the boy's body with seven others
had been put into one hastily dug grave ; the
names, but not the units nor the numbers, had
been printed on the one cross. I then informed
the father of his son's death and of the exact
locality of the grave. In due course of time the
father replied that I must be mistaken, for his
son had been reported as wounded and missing.
I wrote no more, but I formed the opinion,
which was afterwards completely confirmed, that
" missing " very often meant dead and unburied^
and that an unburied British soldier if he
belonged to a unit which had passed on was
almost inevitably reported " missing." Burying
was such a tedious job when it had to be done
as a fatigue by a party not really responsible for
burying, that it was done in the most rough-and-
ready way.

War robs the individual soldier of reverence,
of care except for himself, of tenderness, of the
hush of awe which should silence and restrain.
War and the army have their own atmosphere,
in which some one else being dead, as much as

248 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xi

killing some one else, succeeds in being trivial and
even upon occasion jocular. Two sergeants going
out for a stroll came upon a German corpse with
the steel helmet right down over the eyes. One of
them lifted up the helmet in order to see the face
properly. A saturnine gloom was on the lips and
this had been intensified by the masking of the
eyes. When the sergeant lifted the helmet it
pulled up the flesh with it, and the upper lip rose
from over the ivory teeth with a ghastly grin.
' Take that smile off your face," said the
sergeant, and let the helmet drop back over the
eyes again. And they laughed. In these and in
so many, imagination and sensitiveness were swal-
lowed up by war. But another soldier, new to
war's horrors, came upon a Royal Scot lying dead
on a ridge. Beside the corpse was a packet of
note-paper and envelopes which some souvenir-
hunter searching his kit had forgotten to take.
The soldier was just in need of note-paper and
envelopes to write home, and he took this packet
away from that dead man.

All that night and for many days he seemed
to hear the tiny, tiny voice of the corpse saying
or rather whining in his ear, " YouVe stolen my
note-paper and envelopes," grudging them and de-
manding them back, — as if the dead were misers.

But the soldier did not return the stationery to
the place where he found it, and after a while his
mind seemed to harden and take on a sort of
crust. He had been haunted by the faces of the
dead, and then these faces ceased to haunt him,
and he had obtained the soldier's peace of mind.

xi AS TOUCHING THE DEAD 249

The greatest and perhaps the only consoling
truth which can be learned from the expression
of the dead is that a corpse has very little to do
with a living body. The dead body is sacred, but
it is not the person who died. That person has
mysteriously disappeared. The look of the dead
body, its shrunken individuality as compared
with that of a live man, must have partly caused
the great vogue of spiritualism — that look might
be taken as part of the evidence of immortality.
That was the chief positive impression which I
obtained. - For the rest, the whole matter was
infinitely pathetic. There were one or two of us
who felt there would always, ever after, be a cast
of sadness in us because of what we had seen. I
felt how inhuman we had been to one another.
How could we come at last to Our Father with
all this brothers' blood upon our hands ?

" Europe, Europe ! >: I thought ; " what a
picture might be painted of Europe, the tragic
woman, with bare breasts, anguished eyes, but no
children. — O/i, Europe, where are thy children ? >!

XII
PADRES AND OFFICERS

OUR battalion possessed one Church of England
priest who was serving in the ranks, Sergeant
L , who afterwards became the quartermaster-
sergeant of the Company to which I belonged. He
only came to France in August, and when I saw
him first, whilst I did not know he was a priest
or an educated man, I took him merely to be a
quiet sergeant with rather less personality than
his exuberant confreres. He had a passion for
the game of chess, and used to ask each new
person he met whether he played. When he
discovered that I knew the moves — I was perhaps
the only man in our ranks who did know them —
he felt irresistibly drawn to inventing the means of
playing. There is no greater social enemy of man
than the chess fiend, and I watched him with
apprehension mark out a chequer work of sixty-
four black and white squares on the three-legged

stool in my dug-out at N . But the game of

chess was the means of my knowing much about
his character and history.

We had an original set of pieces. The white
rooks were white buttons from the pull-strings of

250

xii PADRES AND OFFICERS 251

stick bombs ; the knights were part of the
detonators of hand-grenades ; the perfect bishops
came out of the internal structure of German egg
bombs ; the queens were the unscrewed nosecaps
of shells. It seemed natural to refer to the white
queen as the " mobled queen " in the player's
phrase. The kings were anti-tank cartridges ;
the black pawns were the black cordite tablets
used as charges for heavy guns, and the white
pawns were the bright yellow circles of material
sometimes discoverable in unexploded star-shells.
Sometimes revolver ammunition or parts of
German respirators did duty, and the pieces in
general were a motley crew. We took a great
interest in evolving a set of men for both sides,
and changed the personnel so often it was some-
what of a mental feat to keep in mind who was
who upon the board.

So we played chess and he told me his story.
He had been a volunteer at the time of the Boer
War, and when that war was over had remained
in the army for some time. Being of a religious
turn of mind he was always a man apart. He left
the army eventually to study, but he had by that
time had six years of army life and had attained
sergeant's rank. He went to college and had rapid
success in study, but he told me he found the atmo-
sphere of the theological college very much less
pleasant than that of the army. In the army there
was much coarseness and brutality of thought and
conversation, but men were more or less ashamed
of it. But at college the men prided themselves
on their nasty stories and a sort of coarse and

252 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xn

cynical point of view, which nevertheless they did
not quite attain, and they were ashamed of their
respectability. He was more lonely among the
students than he had been in the army. How-
ever, he progressed very well in theology, took a
good degree, and was ordained. He obtained a
living in Surrey and had a full life there. But
when the war with Germany commenced he felt
the call of the army again, and at once gave up
his clerical duties and volunteered for the Front.
Then, as often happened in the army to enthusi-
asts of his kind, he was kept in the training
battalion at home and not sent to France until
the initial enthusiasm had cooled. Though he
had been practically the whole of the war in
khaki it was only August 1918 that saw him in
France.

I soon learned that he was very much pained
at the brutality of the conversation, which was so
much worse at the Front than at home, or than it
had been in the Boer War, and he found difficulty
in accommodating his mind to the flow of brutal
talk which assailed his ears day and night. He
was also much horrified at the way men spent
their Paris leave. Leave was being granted
regularly at that time for men to go to Paris to
enjoy themselves, and such leave was often little
more than a trip to the houses of ill-fame. For
an illiterate soldier there was little other interest
in Paris except low pleasure.

L was known generally by the nickname

of " Creeping Barrage," for he habitually looked
out of the top of his eyeballs through his lowered

xii PADRES AND OFFICERS 253

eyebrows, and had a sort of spectral glide forward
when he walked towards you. It was really a
clerical gaze, and his face had set in it and would
not change.

His adventures with us were interesting in
themselves. Being a man of education he was
not likely to be popular, and being also, as every
one knew, a clergyman in civil life, most thought
he must be a bit of a fool. With the private
soldiers, as he was stern though just, he did not
have much trouble, but his colleagues of the
same rank were more difficult, and set out to
make a fool of him. The officers with whom
he came in contact generally assumed that
because he was a clergyman he must be in-
competent, and gave him a great deal of blame
when anything went wrong. I think he gradu-
ally won them over. When he first appeared,
several thought he was a Baptist minister. When
they found out he was Church of England, it
made such a difference. He was, however, in
himself a fine man in most ways ; very athletic, an
indefatigable marcher, ready to carry any amount
of stuff, his own and other people's, on his back.
He was not afraid of anything, he neither drank
nor smoked, and did not use bad language, and
he lived according to his religious principles.

Those who had known him in England said
that he knelt every night by his barrack-room bed
in prayer before he lay down to sleep.

Though he was laughed at for many things, he
was, in secret and sometimes also openly, greatly
admired because he lived what he had preached.

254 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xii

[< I will say this about the Creeping Barrage,"
said one : " He lives the life."

' The only Christians we ever had in this bat-
talion," said an old soldier, " were Q.M.Sgt. L

and M . As for L— - — , he lives the life of a

Christian, which is what cannot be said of many

who are paid to live it. And M , when he

was ordered to place his own brother under
arrest, refused to do so, preferring rather to lose
his stripes " — another battalion story.

I could not help feeling that L was a great

spiritual gain, and that his life, though he never
preached or " saved souls," or betrayed by any act
that he was a priest, nevertheless made a deep
impression on men's minds.

I do not think that he regarded himself as in
any way a priest whilst he was in khaki. He
was, I believe, somewhat of a sacramentarian
and " High Church." His Christian character was
natural, it was not a priestly matter. But to the
men character was everything in religion. I
remember my astonishment one day when a man
next whom I slept in a tent told me he was not a
Christian — he drank and smoked and used bad
language, he was sorry to say ; he'd often wanted
to get clear of these bad habits, but he confessed
they were too much for him, so he was obliged to
remain " not a Christian."

" But a man can drink and swear and still
remain a Christian," said I.

" Oh no," he insisted ; " it's not going to
church that makes the Christian — it's living
well."

xii PADRES AND OFFICERS 255

And that was the general army point of view.
Christianity was character and it was conduct.

Now our padres did not exhibit character.
They preached, they spoke to the men, they were
saluted and respected. But whilst the men lived
a hard life, and each, as it were, carried a cross,
the padres, being officers, lived at ease ; and
whereas the men had poor food, they ate and
drank in the company of the officers. I could not
help feeling how badly handicapped the padres
were.

We had had one chaplain who had done ex-
cellent work : he had comforted the wounded
and the dying, been often under fire and in
danger, and yet never turned a hair ; a man who
cared little for his rank as such and was concerned
exclusively with God's service. He was by no
means the fighting parson or the sporting padre
that the men are supposed to like, but his
name was never mentioned without affection and

admiration. This was Captain M . There

were others also who won the men's esteem, but
my impression was that in the war chaplains'
work had failed of its object.

They could not preach the Sermon on the
Mount because they thought loving your enemies
contrary to the spirit of the war. They could
not inveigh against lust because the medical
officer was of opinion that Nature's needs must
be satisfied. They could not attack bad language
because it was accepted as manly. They could
not attack drunkenness because it was the men's
relaxation, and a good drinker was considered a

256 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xn

good fighter. What was there for a poor padre
to say to the men ?

But life at the Front exposed men to many
more temptations than did the old life at home.
The men succumbed to them. Sexual inter-
course was regarded as a physical necessity
for the men. Besides being the medical point
of view, it became the official army point of
view as well, and we were often told in lectures
that it was natural, and all we had to do was
to use the safeguards and preventatives which
were at our disposal to save us from disease.
The padre could not go and reason with the
men who upon occasion were to be seen in
queues outside the houses with red blinds. Hun-
dreds of thousands of men who had led compara-
tively pure lives until they saw France learned
and were even encouraged to go with impure
women. As many learned to drink and to get
drunk. I know purity has little to do with
religion, and that the first thing to obtain is a
loving and humble heart, but the British working
man can only apprehend religion from the point
of view of moral behaviour, and in his opinion
" religion is a wash-out."

I met whilst I was in France some ten or twelve
chaplains. They all had pleasant personalities,
and it was a relief to converse with them after the
rough-and-ready wit of the men. I saw them
from a different angle from that in which they were
seen by the officers. What struck me most about
them was the extraordinary way they seemed to
make their minds fit to the official demands made

xii PADRES AND OFFICERS 257

upon opinion. They always rapidly absorbed
the official point of view about the war, and often
the officers' point of view as well.

They based their opinions on the leaders in
The Times, and they thought the Morning Post a
little bit wild and the Daily News bolshevik.
They ate Germans for breakfast, tea, and supper,
and were often* more bloodthirsty than the men.
One or two of them drank whisky with gusto,
and spoke the gaudy language of the army.
" Graham," said one, " if there's one thing more
than another that is important in this war, it is
that the whisky supply should not get low."
One whom I knew well was an extraordinary
believer in discipline, quite a Prussian in his
way, and liked men to stand to attention when
speaking to him, and say " Sir " and the rest.
He told me he had a physical loathing for the
Hun, and was ready to see the whole race, man,
woman and child, exterminated. I protested
that God made the German, that though he was
our foe he was human and was entitled in our
thoughts to human dignity. Thereupon ensued
a conversation made bitter on his side, and I had
to withdraw as gently as I could.

The men, whilst they liked those who talked
to them of home, were cold towards them in
the matter of religion. For the chaplains did
not live the Christian life in any pictorial or
dramatic way. The men no doubt thought that
as servants of God they should be angels of
mercy and light. They expected them to stand
out in extraordinary contrast to the ugliness of

s

258 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xn

war. The man like L in his silent service

and duty did far more to give the battalion a sense
for religion.

That brings me to a conclusion, and it is that
in any future great organisation of our manhood
I think more could be done if it were decided to
abolish the military rank of chaplains. They are
not captains. And such tides as Colonel the
Reverend or Brigadier-General the Reverend
are almost ridiculous. I know there would be a
terrible ordeal to go through, but it seems the
spiritual needs of the army would be better served
if candidates for chaplaincy were trained in the
ranks, and did duty with their brothers, only
being excused and given special privilege when
they were needed in the special function of
priests. Then they might be brought out to
take a service or to bury the dead, and might
be made stretcher-bearers during a fight. It
would perhaps be a test of professing Christianity
too terrible to ask nowadays. And yet I am
convinced that the priest in that position would
find himself nearer to the heart and soul of the
soldier than he can be as an officer.

XIII
THE GREAT ADVANCE

THE final great advance was caused by the defeat
of the Germans in mid-July on their Soissons-
CMteau -Thierry flank, consequent upon the
abortive bid for Paris. In that victory of Mar-
shal Foch, the French General not only won a
battle but a war, and he demonstrated to the
mind of the German Staff that Teutonic re-
sources would not stretch to Paris, and that in
fact there were not enough German soldiers to
hold the greatly extended battle lines which then
obtained. It must suddenly and for the first
time, and yet finally, have become indisputably
clear that the vast German dream of victory
could not be realised. The option constantly
before the German eyes had been World-Power
or Downfall. Now only downfall began to be
left to them.

Not only was the hope of victory lost, but
suddenly the danger of complete defeat con-
fronted the German. His armies were perilously
insecure. His skill in the rapid transfer of troops
from one sector to another became of no avail ;
for when he had brought the Franco-American

259

260 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

advance to a standstill on the River Vesle, his line
immediately gave way in the Montdidier sector.
He therefore made a large decision — to evacuate
his newly-gotten gains and return to the Hinden-
burg system of defences. Such a retreat as
ensued was very trying to the morale, and it gave
birth to the Spartacus movement in the army —
the revolt at last of the military slaves. How-
ever, from a military point of view the decision
to go was creditable to the German mind, and
the skill with which the operation was carried
out won a good deal of praise, though neither the
decision nor the skill with which it was realised
could rob the whole matter of its intense signi-
ficance in change of fortune. For with it the
Allies entered upon their victorious role.

The German retreat began in the southern
sectors of the line and spread northward. The
enemy's guns were moved back and also the main
bodies of the armies. Once the Germans were
well under way with their plans for evacuation
little was done to harass them. Each sector
seemed to wait until the enemy had to all intents
gone, and then our troops made an advance. A
telling attack by our Division could no doubt have
been made weeks earlier, but they were held back
till the main body of the enemy had got away.
Three months' more or less continuous fighting
ensued, and all these three months we fought
delaying parties and isolated machine-gun posts,
or we stormed fortified villages or strongly-held
sections of dominant trench or half-constructed
pill-boxes. As far as our section of the advance

xiii THE GREAT ADVANCE 261

was concerned we were never near obtaining a
general engagement with the enemy or a large
capitulation of his forces. Our progress was a
taking over, after rather bitter encounters with
enemy rearguards, what the Germans had evacu-
ated.

The proceedings opened in late August when
a test raid was carried out under the charge of

Mr. B , who perished afterwards in the early

days of the advance. It was a remarkable noise-
less raid, and was said to have been perfect in its
way. Volunteers had been asked for, and many
fellows were found eager for the affair, though
none could say how much or how little danger
there was in it. My bold Fitz of Virginia volun-
teered— saw himself winning a V.C. or in any
case distinction of some kind. The party was
twenty-two in all. They were to go out armed
mainly with clubs, like savages. These clubs
were made specially for them by our pioneers.
They were made of the iron part of Mills hand-
grenades clamped to entrenching tool handles.
One sharp blow on the head from one of these
and your enemy needed no more. The raiders
carried no rifles. There was no artillery or
machine gunnery helping them from behind.
They wore no helmets or Service caps, but tight
bags of stockingette over their hair ; their faces
were blackened so as not to catch the light of the
stars, their hands also.1 All were practised to
stealthy silent movement, and all thirsted for

1 Also for the purpose of readily recognising an enemy. If you see
a white man you know at once he's not on your side.

262 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

German blood in a particular sort of way, and
felt themselves curiously at home in this ad-
venturous tribe which had been formed.

Shortly after midnight they crossed No Man's
Land together and started on their eerie quest,
all together, all silent, all nursing short clubs and
ready to beat down an enemy at the slightest
alert — over the dark, shell -torn ground, under
the pale stars, silence and stealth. . . .

If they had been detected by the enemy ahead
a German machine-gun might have mown all
down in one revolution. So in the tense minds
of the raiders ranged constantly the possibility of
mischance. But they made no mistakes, they
carried the raid out perfectly, and reached with
great trepidation the German wire. But if occa-
sionally a man got caught on that and stirred
the rusty barbs no sniper brought him down
from the vantage ground beyond. For the
Germans whom we had believed to be there all
the summer were gone. They had stolen away
to the rear leaving behind them only isolated
sentries and runners.

The whole length of the shell-stricken gullcys
seemed empty ; the dug-outs were all dark. It
was impossible to be sure in the night whether
there were not enemies hidden away in the depths
of the dug-outs, and our black men with their
clubs dare not explore such places. But as they
had been charged to bring prisoners in they went
on.

They crept silently over the back of the
German front line and went on till at last they

xni THE GREAT ADVANCE 263

discovered an enemy post. There was a sentry
and his relief waiting silently, but seeing and
suspecting nothing. Six men flew at them and
pounded their heads with the clubs and down
went one Fritz all of a heap. One was killed, the
other bruised and overwhelmed. They stripped
the former of " souvenirs," each of the new men
being eager to get a token to take home by and
by ; the other German they dragged along with
them : he must suffice as prisoner and be interro-
gated for intelligence. Poor fellow, he was too
near dead to go straight, and he whimpered as
they kept prodding him on with their clubs.
They got him entangled on the wire, moreover,
and had difficulty in pulling him off. They
brought him to Headquarters, but he seemed too
exhausted to speak and they carried him to the
medical officer who made some acid remarks, for
Fritz was dead.

However it was considered a highly successful
raid ; there were no casualties on our side, and

Mr. B , who by God's will was not destined

to live another month, was very much praised.
I was told this type of raid was introduced by the
Canadians who had the instinct and the idea of it
from the North American Indians.

The secret was then thoroughly out — that the
Germans had gone and were going back every-
where. Very soon all the transport accompani-
ment of fighting on a large scale began to throng
the roads, and the decision to attack the enemy
had matured. Had the main body of the enemy's
troops confronted us it is unlikely that we should

264 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

have been allowed to advance. But the situation
was guaranteed against accident, and the first
day's progress was more in the nature of a picnic
than a battle. Still the enemy knew also that we
had begun to move forward as he retired. He
also had his " intelligence," and had devised means
for our delay at critical points in the country. It
was said that his rear-guards were composed en-
tirely of volunteers or in any case of picked men.
They certainly comported themselves very well
and saved innumerable lives to Germany. It
seems, however, difficult to believe that they had
volunteered. There was so much indiscipline
and discontent in the German Army that one
could hardly have expected that many would
have been ready to offer themselves for such
heroic service.

These^ rear-guards were met with the utmost
ferocity by our troops who made short work of
them whenever they got near them with the
bayonet. But on the other hand the soldiers of
these rear-guards, skilfully posted as they were,
behaved in a very gallant manner and caused a great
deal of slaughter and delay before they perished
or surrendered. Perhaps with more military
skill our armies could have accounted for them
more speedily and with less suffering. The ex-
ploits of the autumn of 1918, whilst they redound
to the heroism of our soldiers, did not seem to
show great military genius at work behind us.
We had a good cause and our morale was good,
and we had large numbers and many guns, but
did not trust to brain. The organisation of

xiii THE GREAT ADVANCE 265

the transport was obviously weak and the enemy
was never pressed. On the German side there
was a bad cause, a weakening morale, not large
numbers, and comparatively few guns, but a
good organisation of transport and plenty of
brain work. The whole autumn campaign
was Brain versus Cause and the Cause won.
No matter what blunders our leaders made the
common soldier always felt the cause was good.
But the German did not believe in his cause,
was not ready to suffer for it any more and
lapsed into indiscipline. There was a steady
decline in discipline throughout September and
October. Had the Germans been able to resist
with as much individual tenacity on the ist of
November as on the ist of September there had
been no armistice.

The methods of attack employed by our boys
were quite straightforward ; we were first held
up by the machine-gunners in the formidable
Banks Reserve. The Germans ought to have
been surprised by rapid night assault or gassed or
enveloped or raided by tanks, but it was more or
less left to our brave fellows to rush in broad day-
light a fully-prepared enemy. The tanks were
evidently the machine-gunners' worst enemy.
Not that they feared a solitary tank or an isolated
one, for by the concentrated fire of several
machine-guns on one tank the latter could always
be put out of action. But a whole series of tanks
moving forward in a crocodile queue was the
worst menace the machine-gunners knew. But
the distribution and supply of tanks was not

266 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

nearly adequate for a true economy of lives.
There were not enough, or they got lost, or
couldn't be got up in time. There was, there-
fore, no rapid success for us at those prepared
positions. The enemy held on two days and
thus enabled his main army to get beyond the
canals (Du Nord and St. Quentin) and to organise
further delaying action there. There were heavy
losses suffered by the attackers, especially by the
Bill-Browns, whose discipline, courage, and fame
committed them then, as ever, to doing the im-
possible in human heroism and endurance. I
lost a whole series of comrades and friends

wounded or killed. C , who had filled up a

blank file next to me at Little Sparta was killed ;

S , recruited from the S.E. Railway, a jolly,

happy, middle-aged man, who always hailed me
as Steve and had a cheery word, was killed.

H , the American boy who used to dance all

night at New York, was wounded. Six ser-
geants with whom I was more or less acquainted
were killed, and several other old soldiers and new
recruits. The Division went out of action to
obtain reinforcement and reorganise. The 'Bill-
Browns could not make up their numbers and
were therefore partly repleted from the survivors
of the Battle of Hazebrouck Road, the heroic
4th Brigade.

Of those who came through the fight unhurt a

word might be said of B , the American actor

from St. Louis, who played the part of Hamlet.
He came up against the military machine in
France and was continually in the guard-room for

xiii THE GREAT ADVANCE 267

insubordination or the like. It began with the
subject of his wife's death in America. A dour
sergeant said to him one day on parade, " I sup-
pose you know your wife's dead." And in that
way he learned the sad news. He took offence at
this piece of brutality and got the sergeant into
trouble. Then the sergeant became acting ser-
geant-major, and B could do nothing right,

and was punished, punished, punished — never out
of punishment. But he did well whenever the
battalion went into action and distinguished
himself at Banks Reserve. He was extremely
quick-witted and certainly brave. It was his
tongue and his lack of patience that got him into
trouble. But he knew German, and obtained
intelligence in the line, and was very serviceable.

However, the very fact of his knowing German
and talking it volubly caused him to be eyed with
suspicion by the illiterate old soldiers.

Fitz and I were talking together afterwards,
and a knot of others came near us and began
discussing B .

!< All he is, is a dirty spy. What he wants
is the firing-party, and put him up against a
wall."

Fitz jumped up as if shot. " What's that
you say ? He's no spy. Damn it, who said
he was a spy ? "

And he was ready to fight. But the canny
old soldier who said it looked sour and was silent.

No, B was a fine fellow. A bit too fond

of talking, but an interesting boy all the same,
and I was sorry for him.

268 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xin

We rested in the old reserve lines near R ,

now become strangely calm since all our guns
had gone ahead. A week later our progress was
resumed, and we marched back to Banks Reserve,
through St. Leger, north of Ecoust and Noreuil,
to within sight of Bourlon Wood, and the ap-
proximation of two great highways to Cambrai.
It was an easy advance over a conquered wilder-
ness. Here the calamity of war showed its worst.
The villages were flat or pounded to heaps of
brick-dust and mud ; conical rubbish heaps
marked the sites of churches ; by garden flowers
growing wild amid debris you realised that
homes had once been beautiful there. The
land lay uncultivated for leagues, and had de-
generated to moorland. And it was wilder than
any moor, pitted by shells and gnarled with
rusty wire. The atmosphere of France seemed
taken away, and a new atmosphere, as of some
vast waste continent, had been supplied. Thus
possibly France looked in the time of Caesar's
wars or before. But the neat, tended, civilised
land of to-day had disappeared. There was
something strangely depressing about this part
of our advance. Perhaps it was the odour of so
many unburied dead. The Germans lay tumbled
all along the way, some biting the dust with their
sodden faces ; others lying on their backs and
showing gleaming teeth to heaven. Our own
British dead also lay around, and could not be
buried for lack of labour. And possibly more
horses than men lay dead and decayed, and were
eaten by the rats, and shrank in rain and sun

xiii THE GREAT ADVANCE 269

and could not get buried. Noreuil, Lagnicourt,
Moeuvres were all in that state, as were also
Queant and Pronville, and many other war
ruins into which our boys adventured. It seems
surprising now what good health every one
enjoyed despite the general decay.

Meanwhile the Germans retired, and we were
in light engagements near Mceuvres and the
Canal du Nord, and held the line in alternation
with our brother regiments.

We all thought there would be a great battle
for Cambrai, that we should make a vast attack,
something resembling the large German offensive
of the spring and summer. We were harassed
by the German defence, and felt we must at all
costs break through the system — heap confusion
after confusion on our enemies — or else a winter
stagnation would set in. An opinion began to
be current that we should chase the enemy all
the autumn and all the winter too.

We took the Canal du Nord, and it was
observed that the enemy had no intention of
holding Cambrai, and we took the Canal de St.
Quentin. In this latter action " Gurt," the
New York butler, met his death. As I have
said, he was an honest and industrious and simple
Christian, never using bad language and always
ready to help a friend. He did not arrive at
the front till September, yet with so little time to
go before the armistice he perished. His platoon
was moving in single file over dangerous country.

One of his comrades, D , had fallen, and

Gurt, going back to try and bandage him and

270 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

stanch his wound, found his comrade (one of
the same old squad) was past all help, and there-
fore returned. On his way back a sniper's
bullet sped through his brain. So he went past
us with one clear, noble action. I always felt
a soft spot in my heart for Gurt. When I got
to France at Easter, I found written on the inside
of the chin-strap of my steel helmet, " With the
best of wishes for your safe return," signed by
him. When he died I felt somehow that " coming
after me he had been preferred before me." He
was the right sort. We could do with more
" Gurts " in this world.

Whilst we were in the canal some visited the
grey ruins of Mceuvres. I went up to Bourlon
Wood and saw the wonderful village with its
long red chateau like a palace, and the enigmatical
church showing exposed its inwards of lath and
plaster and the decayed vitals of its altar. Terrific
effects had been wrought by the artillery ; whole
frameworks of roofs seemed to have been removed
as by one blast and deposited in the streets — such
streets, one mass of red -brick debris and grey
splinters of wood and iron.

The battalion was accommodated in and
about the Canal du Nord as a place of rest,
though but lately it had been the line of battle.
It was now entirely in our hands, and was a mass
of military debris. Our neighbours among those
red-brick canal walls were the Highland Light
Infantry, a party of whom had but lately at
Mceuvres held this ground so heroically, attract-
ing universal comment and laudation. It was

xiii THE GREAT ADVANCE 271

rather touching to see this canal, which had
never held water, made into a series of barracks
divided by the demolished bridges and locks.
A series of grand iron bridges had once spanned
it and each had subsided, crumpled and torn,
into the canal bed. In the canal walls were
German dug-outs and destroyed machine-gun
nests. Over the " parapet " were many brick-
kilns, where the German industrial company
which had been building this canal previous to
the outbreak of war had been baking their bricks.
One of the Americans got a " Blighty one "
at this time. This wa$ a policeman from Phil-
adelphia, sometimes called Bigsey and sometimes

Mrs. Wiggs. He, Fitz, and H had come

over on the boat to England together, and sworn
to remain inseparables in the war. But Mrs.
Wiggs got worried by the tales of horror, and
volunteered to take a signalling course, so post-
poning his going to the front. By this means
he escaped the Easter drafts. He only joined

us in the reserve lines at R . But he did

not stay long. A new man was knocking in a
tent-peg with an unexploded German bomb.
It went off and wounded three. Mrs. Wiggs
got a fragment in his hip, but it was enough ; it
served, and Mrs. Wiggs was soon back in London
again at the reserve battalion. But it was not
a time of many casualties, and the number of
prisoners coming in suggested the cheaper gains
that we were making through the falling-off of
enemy discipline. German prisoners kept stream-
ing down along the great highway, and these

272 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

were accommodated in the reservoirs of the canal
a thousand at a time. We stood high above the
reservoir near our lines, and looked down upon
a thousand Germans all waiting — as if for a train
to take them out of it all.

On Sunday there was a church-parade for our
fellows and service in the canal itself.

During this period Bulgaria surrendered, and
the overwhelming victories over the Turks were
obtained. Our men had little reliable news, but
rumour was rife. Numerous talks with German
prisoners disclosed a more dispirited state of the
enemy. We heard much of the chances of re-
volution in Germany ; of Turkey and Austria,
both having :< thrown in their mits " as the
current jargon phrased it. And it is true we felt
we were winning. Still, the soldiers were far
from realising or believing in the near chance
of obtaining complete victory. It was left to
the next stage in our advance to kindle a genuine
flame of hope in which to live, instead of the
glimmer of the old will-o'-the-wisps of the war.

When on October 7 we marched forward
once more one of the most romantic moments of
the war was at hand.

Havrincourt, near which we spent the night
of the 7th, was complete desolation ; Ribecourt
was no better, but Marcoing was a trifle less
smashed, and gave the impression of having
been a rather pretty town in peace-time. We
spent the night of the 8th on the ridge between

xin THE GREAT ADVANCE 273

Marcoing and Masnieres. It was very cold,
with a hoar frost on the grass, and the men,
expecting to go into action on the morrow, slept
as best they could in old machine-gun emplace-
ments and ditches. On the gth we heard that
Germany had accepted President Wilson's four-
teen points, and on this day, too, we began to see
new types of landscapes. We had passed through
the zone of destruction, and were emerging
into the comparatively unharmed regions which
had remained in German hands since 1914,
where the fields were ploughed and harvests had
been taken, where the villages had red roofs,
and the spires were on the churches.

The last village to show signs of being badly
battered was Crevecceur — Heartbreak Village —
and there also were many German and British
dead, the latter being chiefly New Zealand men.
All the way to Seranvillers there had been hard
fighting, and the German gunners lay piled on
their machines. On October 10, however, we
swung clear of the old desolation altogether,
coming to Esturmel. We learned that Cambrai
had fallen and that the whole campaign was going
well, and the enemy on his knees seeking for
peace. The battalion did not need to go into
action, for the tentative objective marked out
for them had been abandoned without a shot.
It was billed for the next day instead. The hour
of setting off for the line was fixed for one in the
morning. But, housed in a jolly village, the men
made a most joyous night of it with feasting,
singing, and merriment. Lights shone in all

T

274 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

windows, and from end to end of the village was
music and hilarity. Indeed, out in the middle
of the main street one fellow was sitting at a piano,
and a crowd was round him singing catches. Near
by the pipers were playing. In another billet
there was a whistling chorus. Those who wished
to rest reclined on mattresses on spring beds.
Supper in the cottage with a section of a platoon
round a regular family table, the fire burning
merrily in the stove, the wall-clock ticking and
striking, the faces of French villagers looking out
from faded portraits on the walls, made a strange
impression, but a good one. Next day the
battalion went into action from St. Hilaire.

On Friday October 1 1, at one in the morning,
the battalion marched forth out of Esturmel,
and with the usual impedimenta of " fighting
order " on their shoulders, swung through the
prosperous coal-mining and weaving villages and
townlets of Carnieres, Boussieres, St. Hilaire.
At St. Hilaire they loaded rifles and fixed bayonets
at the centre of the town — at the much-shelled
square. The village of St. Vaast in front of
us on the high road was taken by the Taffies,
who, however, were unable to proceed, owing
to the Division on the right being held up.

The field of our advance lay north-eastward
from St. Hilaire, and was part of an encircling
manoeuvre for the taking of Solesmes. The
district is somewhat heavily populated, with the
villages approximating to one another, and there

xin THE GREAT ADVANCE 275

are some half-dozen lines and branch-lines of
railway radiating from Solesmes. It was there-
fore a neighbourhood which served the German
capitally for delaying purposes. He was able
to make a stubborn resistance, whilst on his
far northern flank he evacuated Ostend, Zee-
brugge, Bruges, and Lille, Roubaix, Turcoing,
and the rest. The retirement marked time ten
days, therefore, in the centre, whilst it quick-
marched in the north.

Our fellows soon came into touch with hostile
power. Two companies were held up on the
Friday by machine-guns posted on the first
strand of the Solesmes railway. At midnight
the other two companies relieved them. The
" fighting " company, to which most of the
Americans belonged, sent out a patrol to re-
connoitre, and I heard afterwards from H ,

who had already recovered from his wound and
hastened back, how, about a mile along the line,
seven of them got cut off and nearly fell into
enemy hands. But they rushed the machine-
gun post that constituted their chief danger,
and got back with the gun and two prisoners.

The enemy, however, slackening as usual to
our impetus, was slowly withdrawing, and with
that knowledge the two companies were able to
cross the railway and " dig in " on the other side.
They held the line all night on the Saturday,
and on Sunday the I3th were relieved and
returned to St. Hilaire.

276 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

The great adventure of this stage, however,
was the entry into the village of St. Python, in
which three platoons participated. Towards mid-
night on Saturday a railway bridgehead was
taken without the enemy knowing it. Another
patrol surprised and captured a machine-gun
post in silence. Various sentries were disposed
of silently, and an entry into the village was
effected.

It was found next morning that the sleeping
and silent settlement which they had wandered
about by night was full of Germans and of
French civilians, and our men therefore marched
into a mele*e of mingled hostility and hospitality.

A cheery old Highlander, called " Fergie "
by us all, one of my original squad, told me how
embarrassed he was by the women trying to
throw their arms round his neck, whilst he, with
fixed bayonet, crept forward, watching every
corner of a wall for the shadow of an enemy.
The villagers were entranced by our appearance
on the scene. It must be said these were the
first civilians we had seen for two months. The
enemy had been evacuating the French popula-
tion with his guns and his ammunition, and now,
because we had come further than he had expected
and had surprised him, we came upon civilians
en masse. Whether these, during their four
years' stay with the enemy, had been ill-treated
or not, it would be difficult to say, but they were
well-fed and cheerful, and at the same time
extremely joyful in greeting us. A captain and
a sergeant-major entered one of the houses and

xiii THE GREAT ADVANCE 277

received a very warm greeting, and sat down to
have coffee, whilst the women asked question
after question about the advance. Wherever our
men went indoors and encountered the French,
they were regaled with coffee and eggs and soup
and what not. But the clearing of the village
proceeded all day under heavy machine-gun
fire, and much sniping by the enemy. The
German commanded nearly all the streets, with
his machine-guns posted in the houses on the
other side of the river.

The position was such, and remained such,
until our relief by the Bill-Browns. We held
the half of the village up to the River Selle. The
enemy held the half which lies beyond. All
bridges were broken, and we were not of sufficient
strength to attempt to bridge across the river
under fire.

Then Ensign K with his platoon en-
deavoured to reconnoitre the river-bank, with
a view to finding some means of crossing. A
corporal who went out with him volunteered
to go along the bank to examine the timber lying
adjacent to a demolished bridge, and see what
could be done with it. He at once came into
heavy machine-gun fire, but threw himself into
the river, and thus saved himself from being
killed. The fire ceased, but whenever he put
his head up above water it commenced again.
Nevertheless, he continued his progress, and
achieved his object and returned. His coolness
and daring were much admired, and he became
the hero of the St. Python incident. His equip-

278 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

mcnt was shot through in several places, and his
escaping all wounds partook of the marvellous.1

The rest of the platoon, sheltering behind a
house, had a very hot time. The machine-gun
bullets threshed the road and the brickwork,
bullets burst right through the house walls, and
there were not a few casualties. Of five who
attempted to get away to a safer cover only
one succeeded without wounds. And as regards
the rest, the very slightest chance given was taken
by the enemy. Thus "Will," the fine fellow
from the Far West, one of my best friends, was
peering round the wall in such a way that it
would have been said no enemy could see him.
But a sniper's bullet passed, nevertheless, through
his left tunic pocket, through his cigarette-case
and books, and through his heart, and he settled
backward with a smile on his lips, but dead.
And the survivors, who knew him well, went
mad with rage for a moment. Fitz of Virginia,
now a corporal, even wanted to lead the rest of
the party out to do or die in a big rush on the
machines. But the cannier spirits reflected that
he was a little bit mad in thinking of such a thing.

A curious feature of the fighting was the way
civilians were walking about the streets, some of
them wounded and bleeding, but all comparatively
unconcerned. One or two of our men were shot
by German soldiers disguised as civilians ; one of
them, denounced by the rest, was shot in turn
by one of our sergeants, for which action the
sergeant was much commended by every one.

1 Afterwards awarded the Victoria Cross.

xin THE GREAT ADVANCE 279

As time wore on the Germans could be seen
quietly and methodically withdrawing from the
other half of the village, and moving over to
their next standing-ground at Solesmes and on
the ridges beyond. When the Bill-Browns took
over from us, they had little difficulty in making
good the rest of the village. The French civilians
were therefore joined once more to France.
Many belonged to Boussi£res, St. Hilaire, and
other villages in the rear, and had been marched
off when the Germans had evacuated these places.
They were now returned under escort to their
homes.

Meanwhile the acting quartermaster and eight
men were gassed in one and the same cellar in
St. Hilaire, and all perished. Amongst the
men were two bandsmen, an old soldier who
played bass and a very gentle-natured young
one who played the tenor-horn. No one put
his gas-mask on, and the captain himself, whilst
mortally gassed, was going about giving orders,
not knowing that every movement he made was
stirring the fatal poison into his vitals. He was
removed to the hospital at Carnieres and died
shortly after daybreak, purple through asphyxia-
tion, and foaming at the lips. The gas-shells
of the time seem to have been more deadly than
usual, though the close atmosphere of the cellar
accounts for the terrible fatality in this case.
The gas was <!< green cross," chiefly phosgene,
but was thought to be a blend hitherto unused
by the enemy. An impressive funeral service
took place at Carnieres in the twilight of a murky

a8o A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

Saturday evening, when ten of our Spartans
were buried side by side in one grave, and the
pipes played, and the services were read in suc-
cession by Anglican, Presbyterian, and Roman
Catholic chaplains. The acting quartermaster
had been one of our more amusing officers till he
died, but the tragic circumstances of his end
changed the opinion of all the men about him.
All became sorry for him, and for most he
became a hero.

So the advance progressed, punctuated by
the death of several brave and gallant fellows.
The battalion rested at St. Hilaire, which the
enemy still shelled fairly steadily, though without
causing us loss. The lesson of the late tragedy
of gas-shells in cellars was fresh in most minds,
and the men were ordered to sleep with their
respirators tied at " the alert/' For the rest
the rumour of peace was in the air ; Germany
had accepted the fourteen points of President
Wilson, and had agreed to evacuate France and
Belgium by military arrangement. Not that
due weight was attached to such news. In-
credible rumours of the kind and of other kinds
were always in the air, and were indulgently
received. Germany had accepted the peace con-
ditions, yes, and also Hindenburg was dead ;
the Kaiser had committed suicide ; sixteen
thousand German soldiers had broken the
neutrality of Holland, and the Dutch had declared
war. The Americans had taken Metz. With

xiii THE GREAT ADVANCE 281

all that was unlikely, the prospect of peace did
not obtain much credence.

The billets of St. Hilaire won every one's
approbation. The homes of the exiled villagers
were unreservedly in the hands of the soldiers,
as were also the strange hoards of potatoes,
carrots, and turnips, which the Germans had
accumulated in every cellar. The cellars had
been dug out marvellously, and contained con-
siderable supplies, which the enemy had been
unable to remove in time. Thus every evening
there were unusually good suppers simmering
on the French stoves, vegetable soups, strength-
ened by bully, and occasionally by the presence
of a rabbit which had been found. On Thursday,
October 1 7, however, the battalion marched back
to Boussieres, which was crowded with other
brother battalions. An atmosphere of festivity
and happiness reigned there also, and though
rooms were more crowded, the comfort was as
unusual as at the former village. And whilst
the men sang and gossipped of the war, the
chiefs were busy with the details of the next
advance. On October 18 a practice moonlight
attack was carried out, and on the igth the
battalion marched forward to its new battle
positions for the next stage of the advance.

The i gth was a Saturday, and that evening,
in a large house on the St. Vaast road, a battalion
dinner was given, and all the officers who were
going into action after midnight sat down to-
gether and dined. The Colonel presided ; Cap-
tain R acted as host, and his cook prepared

282 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

the dinner. It was a characteristic occasion,
when each, even in conviviality, knew that a few
hours hence he or his friend might be dead.
At midnight the battalion marched out in the
pouring rain to the cross-roads at Arbre de la
Femme, and in what was otherwise an almost
bloodless advance the youngest of the subalterns
met his death.

All that was encountered were rather lonely
German posts and slight garrisons in little villages.
Prisoners were sent down in the course of the
night. The advance was generally notable
because of the flaming thermite shells used to
indicate the boundaries of the barrage, and also
to give the signal when every four minutes the
fire-curtain lifted and swept clear of a hundred
yards.

It would probably have been more interesting
for the units concerned if each could have carried
its attack a little further than was planned ; if
each attack, instead of being touch and go, could
have become a sort of hunting-party. But there
were a great many troops available, and when
one division had done its little bit, it could stand
by and watch others successfully carry the good
work further after them. We rested at St.
Vaast. In these days the Germans still sought
peace, and President Wilson had pointed out the
futility of such seeking accompanied by brutal
deeds on land and sea. The inhuman practice
of deporting the civilian populations of the

xni THE GREAT ADVANCE 283

villages in the battle area was denounced. The
humbled enemy, therefore, changed his policy,
and relinquished his grasp upon civilians. The
latest villages taken had villagers in the cellars.
Liberated peasants and peasants' wives began to
appear on the roads, tramping from the German
lines. The plight, however, of these soberly
clad folk of France was often a fearful one —
between two fires — left in ignorance as to whether
they were approaching friend or foe. Captain

R records the sight he witnessed on the

sunken road near Haussy. A queue of poor
people in black struggled slowly along the road
with heavy bundles ; there were children hanging
to the women's skirts ; there were old men
hobbling on sticks, patiently and slowly returning
to the homes whence they had lately been driven.
Suddenly, with a long wail through the air,
came a German shell, and burst on the road,
and following it another and another, menacing
the little band. Some were hit by fragments of
shell, but they did not flee, only the children
clung to their mothers, and the old men tried
to hobble a little faster. Captain R re-
marked the marvellous patience of the French
women, but he was greatly incensed with the
Germans, and like many another at that critical
time he felt less than ever disposed to spare the
Germans the bitter dregs of utter humiliation
and defeat.

Carrying on our offensive, the Second Division
was now in the line, and numbers of blue-clad
Germans streamed back to us along the highway.

284 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

The cages at St. Hilaire filled several times with
Germans, strange, unwashed, ill-shaven, dirty
men in shoddy uniforms, with broken boots
and weather-beaten old hats — all sorts and sizes
of men, Prussians, Westphalians, Bavarians,
Alsatians, different types of faces, all relieved,
all " out of the war," and yet all depressed.
With the failure of Germany's fortunes in the field
the last vestige of dignity seemed to have de-
parted from the faces of the prisoners ; they
were creatures that once were men ; human
beings who had suffered three successive kinds
of degradation — they had been industrialised,
then militarised, and finally captured by an
enemy. Nevertheless, a considerable amount of
curiosity reigned among us regarding them, and
we lined the road in numbers to look at them
come in, and crowded about the barbed-wire
cages to stare at them. After nightfall friendly
Tommies brought cigarettes and handed them
through the wire, and talked with those who
could speak any English. Such conversations
were mostly friendly, but I was highly amused
to listen one evening while a little fellow in the
Royal Scots recapitulated in a loud voice all
the atrocities the Germans had committed, and
especially those with regard to British prisoners.
The captured German kept mildly protesting
that it was not true, but the Scot outvoiced
him firmly and terribly.

Whilst we were billeted at St. Vaast there
was considerable increase in the civilian popula-
tion. From the villages liberated by the Second

xiii THE GREAT ADVANCE 285

and Third Divisions the evacue*s of St. Vaast
and St. Hilaire came slowly, with their bundles,
over the shell-pitted roads, and found their old
homes amongst us. They were a very quiet
and humble folk, and the children much aston-
ished us by lifting their hats to the officers, even
upon occasion to the sergeants — the Prussians
had taught them to. The returned villagers
took over the living-rooms, and the soldiers
went to the barns and the cellars, or they waited
for our next remove to take over their property
then. Certainly those first to return to their
property were luckiest. The Germans during
their occupation had moved chairs, beds, tables,
clocks, from house to house to suit the require-
ments of rank and comfort. Each officer had
made up his apartment, according to his taste,
from the furniture and belongings of neighbour-
ing houses. The consequence was that the re-
turned villagers had to go from house to house
with barrows to make up their belongings.
Thus, whilst having tea, two women would come
in at the door of the billet and look around whilst
we saluted them and addressed gallantries. They
would select one chair perhaps, or throw loving
eyes upon the much-scratched piano. Then
our fellows would give them a hand to shift the
furniture. Whether in every case these returned
villagers had an unbiassed vision of what was
their own and what belonged to less fortunate
neighbours I cannot say, but I imagine some-
lively disputes would eventually arise as to whom
exactly belonged certain armchairs which had

286 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

appeared in an unwonted way in houses that
used to be more bare, and whose was the covetable
wall-clock that now hung on the wall ?

The joy of returning home must have been
not unmixed with grief. Although it was the
custom in our battalions always to clean up billets
and leave them in a brighter and more habitable
condition than that in which we found them,
yet some interiors were in indescribable confusion.

The new villagers, however, set to work to
clear and to clean, and to render barracks and
billets into homes once more. They lived on
potatoes and carrots, augmented with army
rations ; their fires burned, their wash-tubs
outside their houses steamed. For themselves
they had a strange unwonted look to us, these
first civilians. They were decidedly different
from the French we had left behind in the old
Arras and Albert regions ; in their faces were
reflected the German ; they were more humbled
and depressed than the French refugees who
had lived with the French. And they did not
speak the curious talkee-talkee pigeon-English
which our old friends in the background used
to converse with us. When we said to them
" Commang ally plank ? " and " Tout de suite and
the tooter the sweeter," they seemed mildly
surprised. They even brought Germanisms to
us, such as the word kapoot^ unheard by us till
then. These apparitions in black seemed like
ghosts of people who had died in August 1914.
Nevertheless, one felt that Europe was resuming
being herself.

xin THE GREAT ADVANCE 287

Our plans matured for another large onslaught
upon the retreating enemy. The line which
was within ten miles of Mons in the north halted
somewhat at Valenciennes and along the confines
of the great forest of Mormal. It was planned
for our regiments and for another division to
contain the forest, to capture the road-junction
of Bavai, and press on for the prize of the fortress
of Maubeuge.

Of all the attacks since August 21 this was
the largest and the most ambitious. It was
entirely successful. It turned out to be the final
battle of the war. With our victorious Spartans
in the centre and splendid advances on the right
flank and on the left, victory in its completest
form was granted to the Allies.

So the battalion marched through rain and
mud over the old battle-ground of St. Python
to Escarmain. At Escarmain, at the cross-roads,
the French had put up a stuffed cock on a pole —
emblem of victory, and no doubt existed in
French minds as to the issue. We were billeted
for a day under very crowded conditions at
Escarmain.

At dawn on November 4 we set out for the
line, passing out of the village with pipers playing.
The sun rose over the misty valleys and ridges
below, and fresh breezes and clear skies enveloped
the first morning of the fight. We made our first
halt, and rested below our batteries on the
Sepmeries road, most of the men with their
fingers in their ears, whilst the gunners, with
their sixty-pounders and 8-inch howitzers, kept

288 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

giving us the warning to " hold tight." When
the march was resumed we began to see the first
wounded. We passed a dead German lying
with his head in a pool of blood, and then batches
of German prisoners carrying stretchers. The
wounded of our own comrades began to come
down, and told of an easy progress, stopped now
and then by isolated machine-gun posts of the
enemy.

In the afternoon we marched into Villers Pol,
and most men, after sweeping and cleaning the
billets, lay down and rested a few hours before
the march to the line. Hot suppers and rum-
rations were dished out after midnight, and then
at 2 A.M., with all the extra fighting impedimenta
of shovels and bombs and sand-bags, and what
not, the battalion marched cautiously on, scouts
reconnoitring each stretch of country in front,
and reporting all clear before we crossed it. It
was a dark and windy night, and crossing the
scenes of the day's fighting, we remarked here
and there in the dark the vague shapes of the
dead.

The situation on the night of the 4^1-5 th
November was that our ist and 2nd Brigades had
come within 300 yards of their objective, the
" Red line " drawn beyond Preux au Sart. The
task of our brigade was to pass through the ist
and 2nd Brigades, take the " Red line " position,
and press on to Amfroipret near the Belgian
frontier, to Bermeries, Buvignies, and the out-
skirts of Bavai. That done, the ist Brigade would
push on next day following to Maubeuge. Thus,

xiii THE GREAT ADVANCE 289

just before dawn, we reached the position before
Preux au Sart, and went into battle formation
there. The barrage broke out like a tempestuous
drum announcement heralding the dawn, and
our men marched on. The ' ' Red line "' was
passed at twenty to seven, the second objective
at ten minutes past eight. Amfroipret was taken
in the course of the morning, though the attack
was temporarily stayed by machine-gun fire
from the village cemetery. The enemy retire-
ment, however, continued, and at nine o'clock
the battalion, preceded by tanks, was approaching
Bermeries, from which desultory machine-gun
and trench-mortar fire was proceeding.

Some difficulty was found in locating the enemy
in Bermeries, and progress slowed down till after
noon. At 12.30 the village was still held by
Germans. Tanks were, however, exploring the
position, followed by our advance companies. A
further German retirement occurred, and Ber-
meries proved empty of the enemy. An enemy
line was located 400 yards beyond it, in the low
scrub alongside an orchard. At 1.30 a sharp
encounter took place between one of our com-
panies and a number of German machine-
gunners. The enemy was in deep slits, and his
positions cleverly hidden. It took about an
hour altogether to locate him certainly and
dispose of him. Our men made a bayonet
charge, and all the Germans were either killed,
wounded, or taken prisoner. This was all the
active fighting there was for our fellows, though
that is not to say it was all the privations they

u

290 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xm

endured. The men wallowed in mud all night,
and it rained and rained, never ceased raining.
The German artillery was very active, though
firing largely at random. There were a number
of casualties from stray shells. The last men to
fall in the war fell, as it were, by accident ; stroll-
ing back from the line toward Headquarters ;
they were being brought back to Bermeries for
a few hours' rest, and were lighting cigarettes
and chatting in little knots when two heavy
shells came in their midst, tore one man's face
off, ripped up another's stomach, and the like.

The day after this advance we rested, and the
ist and 2nd Brigades " carried on " and took
Maubeuge. In the dead of night the " Bill-
Browns," with rifles slung, filed into the town
of Maubeuge by the only way left (all bridges
being blown up), by stone steps to the moat,
which they crossed with the water half up their
legs, and then they entered by a stone archway
the ancient and formidable fortress. All was
silent but for the sound of their feet. And they
marched along the empty streets to the grey
parade-ground of the Place des Casernes. The
Germans had gone ; the French slept. Only
in the morning did the civilian population realise
that the tyrant had vanished. So Maubeuge came
into our hands. Many men who in 1914 had
retired through the Maubeuge region at the time
of the Retreat from Mons felt a special pride and
pleasure in their making good the land from
which they had been obliged to retire.

Meanwhile at Versailles the anxious delegates

xiii THE GREAT ADVANCE 291

of ruined Germany were fretting over the
armistice terms. We learned that delegates had
passed through the lines when we rested a night
at La Longueville, coming into Maubeuge. On
November loth all of the division were in or
around Maubeuge, and were prepared to go on. It
would doubtless have been our battalion's turn
to push forward, but the Angel of Peace inter-
vened. On the morning of the nth came from
Headquarters the barely credible intelligence
that the Germans had signed the treaty of sur-
render, and that from 1 1 A.M. hostilities would
cease. Thus the impossible intervened, and as
by miracle wrote finis across the four and a quarter
years of bloodshed and strife which we are accus-
tomed to call the Great War.

XIV
THE MARCH TO THE RHINE

WE had dwelt too long in darkness to accustom
ourselves readily to the new light of peace, and
when on the morning of November n, 1918,
the strange announcement of Armistice was made,
we merely felt confused and incredulous. It was
such a common event in the army for the desired
thing to be invented in rumour that the authentic
and official news of complete victory was merely
accepted in the same category as " The Kaiser
has taken poison," and the rest of the optimistic
tales of the hour. I was first to get the news,
for the brigade runner came with the message,
and could not find to whom to deliver it. Guess-
ing what it was, I opened his missive and read
— An armistice has been signed with the Central
Powers a a a. Hostilities will cease as from 1 1
o'clock this morning a a a. Directly he had gone
I took the news to my comrades. Some be-
lieved, some did not. Most asked me what
it meant, but some with imagination caught
my right hand in both theirs, and expressed
themselves as bursting with joy. Half an hour
later most of the battalion was drilling, and the

292

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 293

officers calmly and politely told the men the war
had ended. Then men began to go about like
owls disturbed at mid-day, and kept saying to
one another without any particular excitement,
" What do you think of it, eh ? "

The first thought of those who understood
and believed was, " No more bombs, no more
shells, no more bullets ; we are safe, then, after
all, we shall get back to our homes, to our wives,
to mother and father, and all we love in Blighty."
The immeasurable relief of escape from the
daily menace of death ! The pulse of some, even
of the bravest, beat more freely. They were
spared. Their wives, mothers, children, and
friends were reprieved. For dying was not the
hardest thing ; the hardest thing was plunging
one's home in sorrow.

Two days after the signing of the Armistice
there was a men's concert in one of the many
French steel works. There was a platform on
which were ranged our instrumental band and
pipers. In a vast shadowy hall the troops were
accommodated. Quartermaster - sergeants were
dishing out rum punch, which the officers had
afforded us. A new good humour had come
into men's voices. The verity of victory had
suffused the surface of all minds. The soldiers
sang in chorus to the band, they sang even to the
pipes. Singers had an unprecedented reception,
and when as answer to encore the band struck up
' Take me back to Blighty," the whole vast
audience of Tommies seemed to melt and fuse in
its enthusiasm. The theme of going back home

294 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

touched their hearts as never before. For now
suddenly, after years of hope and hopelessness, it
had become a practical matter.

The day after the concert there was a lecture
by a Divisional Staff officer on Demobilisation,
on that first scheme of slip-men and pivotals and
one-man-business-men which proved so slow and
worked so ill. Said the officer, " I know perhaps
you won't agree, but I'd like to say to you men
that you might do worse than think of going
into the army as a means of living after the war.
Conditions of service will be much improved."
Whereupon there was a roar of laughter through-
out the whole audience, and we felt somehow
that was the best joke of the whole Armistice time.

The Demobilisation scheme dashed the hopes
of some of the forward men who thought of being
home in a few weeks, but it nevertheless contri-
buted to confirm the impression in backward
minds that the war was really over. We re-
mained a week at Maubeuge and ruminated on
the new time. The mysterious silence of no
shells had set in, and when it was broken by the
distant rumble of an exploded German mine or
ammunition-dump the men wondered nervously
if the war had not broken out again. Returning
French prisoners appeared on the road, and also
civilians with their household goods. At night,
even on the night of the nth of November,
motor-cars had come up with great headlights
and windows began to be left unshuttered and
unscreened again. The nights of waiting at
Maubeuge were still and cloudless. And one

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 295

realised the night once more was pure. The
trouble that had obscured her innocency was
gone. There was no longer any sinister doubt
when the moon

Unveiled her peerless light and o'er the dark
Her silver mantle threw

An assurance of peace calmed the heart, and it
was good to walk at night and reflect on what
had been and what would be no more.

Two days before setting out we marched to
the barrack square in Maubeuge to a General
Thanksgiving, and as was very fit, our voices
joined in

O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come.

In the secular mind, however, the question of
the future was uppermost, and a new crop of
rumours arrived, the most widespread being
that we were going to Paris to be reviewed by
Joffre and were then going to London. But the
simple fact was that we were detailed for garrison
duty in Germany, and must first fulfil a long
march — through Belgium and Rhineland to the
banks of the great mother river of Europe, the
Rhine. The battalion commenced to do prac-
tice route-marches. The men had to wash their
equipment and shine up brasses and clean boots
in their old training-barracks style. Discipline
became more severe, and we understood that we
had got to dazzle the Belgians and impress the
Germans by our smartness and by the austerity
of our fulfilment of duty.

The first week after the Armistice therefore

296 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

was one of ardent preparations to shine. New
clothing was brought up and the old discarded.
All kits were revised, and if any man was short
of anything which he could not make up from
the supplies he was warned to pick it up some-
where, and if any one of any other unit left the
desirable thing about, " looking spare," he had
better " see it off."

Whilst the battalion had to " dump " a great
quantity of impedimenta, such as for instance,
its dulcetone piano, boxes of books, and bits of
furniture, it had also to make up deficiencies.
Bicycles were short, and they were needed as an
absolute necessity for the billeting parties who
went ahead each morning to take billets for the
rest of us. We had been originally supplied with
eight bicycles. We now only had three, and the
number had somehow to be made up.

The adjutant was anxious, and I remember his
coming into the orderly room on the night of the
1 6th of November.

" I hope something's being done about these
bicycles," says he.

"It's all right, sir," says a drill-sergeant.
" We've got the four best robbers in the battalion
out to-night, and I shall be surprised if the
numbers are not all right by morning."

" You have ? . . . Right Oh ! " says the
adjutant, and he goes away.

Presently one of the " robbers " comes in with
a bicycle, and is hailed with joy. The bicycle is
placed up against a wall. It belongs to a des-
patch-rider. He has jumped from his seat and

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 297

gone into a house to deliver a message ; directly
he had got inside the house the " robber " had
seized the machine.

However, the owner being a sharp boy sees
the back wheel of the bicycle disappearing at our
door. He runs across the road and comes in
also.

" 'Ere, wot's the gime ? " says he. " Who's
pinched my bike ? >:

The drill-sergeant then pounces upon him.

" Don't you know how to come in to an orderly
room ? " asks he in his harshest regimental style.
" What do you mean by it ? Stand to attention
when you are being spoken to. How should
there be a bicycle of yours in here ? >:

The despatch-rider is cowed, apologises, and
thinks perhaps he has made a mistake.

When he has gone the bicycle is wheeled out
at a back door for safety. But the original owner,
still suspicious, is watching through the window
and therefore sees this operation, goes round to
the back and meets the man with the bicycle in
the yard, claims it, and rides off.

I expect he cursed us, but did not think very
much of the matter. For it's a way they have in
the army.

During the march my name was taken
one day for the deficiency of an entrenching-
tool handle. There were some others in the
same case, and we were marched before a charm-
ing young officer who had only been a few months
with us, but had nevertheless absorbed the army
way.

A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

«

Now look here, you fellows," says he. " It's
a lot of bally rot your not having entrenching-
tools. You know jolly well you dumped them
some time or other. But you've got to have
them, and there's lots of Taffies and Bill-Browns
about. See each of you has one by to-morrow
morning or there'll be trouble."

" I want the battalion to be the very best upon
the road," said the colonel, and every one of us
was intent that it should be so.

It was bright, frosty weather, and the bat-
talion in a new glitter of peace looked very
well on the march. It was not too unpleasant an
ordeal for the men, though some were ready to
criticise when they saw they had still to carry
gas-masks and steel-helmets and a hundred and
twenty rounds of ammunition as well as heavy
packs and well-oiled rifles and equipment with
every brass a-glitter. But most of the sensible
ones understood that it would be best to enter
Germany in full fighting trim, and with all the
reinforcement of moral influence which training
and discipline and style could afford.

The load to be carried was heavy, and so a
medical inspection was ordered, and men likely
to fall out on the march were separated off and
kept behind. Bad characters who might be ex-
pected to run amuck in Germany were also
ordered to be held back, but I do not think our
colonel found any bad enough for that. General
Rawlinson's manifesto was served out to each of
us, and we read that whereas Prussian discipline
was founded on fear ours was founded on mutual

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 299

trust between officers and men, and we wondered
if that was so, but we did not wonder much. A
cartload of new boots was brought up for the
torment of our feet should our soles give way ;
all the last preparations were made for departure,
and on the morning of the i8th November we
set out from Maubeuge.

It was misty and frosty, and it threatened to
snow as we marched out in our long files, keeping
studiously to our right on the way to the last
village of France, Villers Sire Nicolet. The road
was hard after several days' frost. We were all
provided with gloves, which kept our fingers from
being chilled, and the march was pleasant. We
must have afforded a strange contrast, all rosy-
cheeked, well -equipped, well -set- up, marching
with decision and style, we and the returning
British army of prisoners we met on the road, the
haggard-faced soldiers, worn-out and emaciated,
who in fives and sixes came straggling in from
Namur and Charleroi where they had been
liberated in accordance with the Armistice
conditions. They were dressed in parts of old
German uniforms. Some had black trousers with
broad white stripes, some were wearing shabby
Prussian blue, nearly all had German caps deco-
rated with little Union Jacks and French and
Belgian colours. They carried bits of equipment,
such as gas-masks or haversacks ; their boots
were worn out ; on their chests large numbers
were printed, in convict style. And they walked
slowly and lamely, being absolutely worn out,
their arms and legs wasted away, their eyes

300 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

sunken and with flabby folds of flesh hanging
beneath them. No recruiting officer, even at the
hardest time of the war, would have enrolled such
specimens of humanity in an army. Yet they
had all been stalwart fellows when they fell into
German hands. Doubtless their condition and
appearance would be much improved by the
time they got to England — thanks to the care of
French and English in the rear — but for us who
saw them as delivered from captivity the sight is
unforgettable.

The French prisoners seemed to be in much
better case, and they had evidently been treated
with more consideration by the enemy. But
after the returning British soldiers the most piti-
able picture was presented by the returning
civilians who, with improvised barrows but no
horses, oxen, or mules, were wheeling the indis-
.pensables of home from one territory to another.
Many of these civilians came from remote places
and had chalked on the barrow-sides the names of
the towns they had passed through. Large flags
flew from the front corners of the barrows giving
them a very picturesque appearance. Young
men walked in the shafts, old men and women
pushed behind, children lay on confused heaps
of mattresses and furniture above. When ques-
tioned we found these people made such great
distances as fifty or sixty kilometres in a day.
They were pitiable, but were in wonderful spirits,
being free and going home, and they frequently
gave us a hearty greeting, and bade us make an
end of the German.

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 301

Such passers-by formed the main interest of
the day's march, and in the afternoon we came
to our first halting - place, an extensive but
desolate old-fashioned village called Villers Sire
Nicolet, and in the rainy evening we went into
rather dark and cold billets, redeemed here and
there by the bright fires of the hospitable French.

Before dawn on the morning of the igth the
pipers were playing " Hey, Johnny Cope." It
had rained all night, and the morning was dark.
We paraded in the gloom of a wet dawn, and with
our somewhat heavy impedimenta stamped out
toward Belgium along the heavy and broken
roads. Possibly the few miles of borderland were
nobody's care, and so the roads were not in repair.
That was the impression we obtained. And the
people in the infrequent farmhouses seemed all
poverty-stricken. However, we climbed on and
crossed the frontier line near Givry. Here a
queue of poor villagers turned out to stare at us,
the women bundles of cotton, the men in capa-
cious muddy sabots and the baggiest of old
clothes. Not a word from them, not a smile.

At this point, coming as we did from the
suffering regions of the north of France, we did
not expect much excitement on the part of the
villagers, and so we accepted the silence of the
first poor Belgians and were somewhat surprised
at the flags and bunting displayed at the next
point on our road, Estinne au Mont. Now
rather better-looking crowds turned out to see
us and chattered volubly about us. " They'll
be cheering in a minute," somebody exclaimed

302 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

incredulously, and surely enough there broke out
a will-o'-the-wisp of a hurrah and a " Vive les
Anglais ! " from several lips. From there onwards
our reception grew warmer and warmer until our
progress took its foredestined guise of a triumphal
procession. We passed under floral arches and
strings of bunting, and alongside streams of
smiling men and women who greeted us more
and more happily and readily as we approached
the large town of Binche. We realised then we
were inside Belgium and were going to be feted
by the people. So our packs, which had been
heavy enough in the morning in the mud of the
frontier, grew lighter in the warmth and excite-
ment of noon amid a cheering populace.

In the afternoon we were conducted to billets
in the best places in Binche, and every one seemed
pleased to see us. In windows everywhere were
paper posters which had possibly been printed
by some propaganda department of the Allied
Governments, and these conspired with the more
realistic greetings in French to produce many
tongues of welcome. Thus we read :

WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU

and

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HEROES OF
PERONNE AND BAPAUME

and

HONNEUR A NOS LIBERATEURS

and

ENGLAND IS SATISFIED : YOU HAVE DONE
YOUR DUTY.

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 303

The last notice, which was very widespread,
troubled our minds a little. Perhaps it accounted
for one corporal saying to a sergeant who found
fault with him : "' I have completed my contract.
I am not a soldier any longer, but a civilian/' a
remark on which the colonel made many judi-
cious comments with regard to the continuance
of discipline.

However, the cheery faces of the townsfolk
and the breezy welcome of posters and banners,
the brazen trumpetings of the civic band, the
Lord Mayor's show in which our Major-General
marched to the plaudits of the crowd, probably
moved us less than the rumour of beer, of which
commodity we soon found the estaminets to be
full at a not exceptional price — and good beer of
the old pre-war standard. The sight of rows of
shop-windows was gladdening in itself after the
desolation we had passed through, and we went
into these expensive shops of Binche and spent
for the sake of spending. There was a fair
amount for sale. One could buy a Bath bun for
three francs, and a penny bar of chocolate for
one franc seventy-five centimes. Soap, in need
of which we stood at the time, was four francs the
tablet, blacking a franc a tin, bootlaces two francs
a pair. Then the shopkeepers, although their
wares were priced in francs, had only German
currency, and they still reckoned one mark as
one franc twenty-five centimes, though it must
have been doubtful if the mark was worth much
more than half-a-franc. There were some warm
disputes over change, but they generally finished

3o4 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

with our men accepting marks and pfennigs.
Our pockets were soon full of the black war
money of our enemies and the wretched zinc
coinage of Belgium. Not a few astute towns-
men began exchanging money for our men,
telling them their francs were now no good and
it was better to have marks.

At Binche we nibbled at the joys of liberated
Belgium. It was left for next day to taste them
to the full when we reached the neighbourhood
of Charleroi and were welcomed by the hearty
population of Marchiennes au Pont.

On the 20th we marched off at nine in the
morning with the abundant rub-dub-dub of the
drums and the joyful clamour of the pipes and
took the high-road that runs due east for Fontaine
TEveque and Charleroi. We were all in a good
humour, and when the music of the pipes died
down we carried on with whistling choruses and
songs whilst the thickly populated region through
which we passed was decked with signs of wel-
come. We were on good roads, and our hearts
were lighter, realising that the first part of our
march was in any case not so much duty as
festivity. Joyful crowds of liberated people
saluted us, and we shouted back to them as we
passed. About two in the afternoon we reached
Marchiennes.

We put down the heavy packs from our
shoulders and laid aside our rifles, cleaned our
boots after the long march, and still a little lame in

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 305

the feet and racked in our backs, stepped neverthe-
less eagerly forth into the gay Belgian town hung
with bunting and flags and flocking with a joyful
excited populace of civilians. We were in that
mood when the apparition of the first electric
tram gliding into view gladdened the eyes, when
the smell of locomotive smoke and steam across
the grimy railway lines reminded of home, when
the sight of young men in numbers in civilian
attire made the heart beat faster with anticipa-
tive joy at our own coming release. The town
was posted with joyful greetings : " Honneur
a nos liber at eurs ! ' " Honneur aux Heros ! "
" Madame la Guerre est morte" And on blue
paper in many windows was printed " Welcome
Tommy ! We never doubted you would come
again."

The eyes of men and women looked gladly at
us ; there was a tenderness in the gaze which was
a little puzzling after the sternness and desolation
of battlefields. The people were really glad.
The heart had been touched, and in all faces
there was that trembling on the waters as at
dawn, the emotion of human tenderness suddenly
awakened not in one but in all. The women and
the children caught our hands as we passed, and
lisped up at us, " La guerre est finie" or " Apres
quatre annees, apres quatre annees ! J as if to
suggest their relief, their infinite relief, at the
flight of the enemy and the entry of our army of
liberation.

On the Friday the last German battalion
without horses but with men in the shafts of the

306 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

waggons passed through the town. On the
following Wednesday the first British infantry
arrived. The English soldier was a novelty, a
hero and a saviour at the same time. There was
hidden virtue in khaki, and even to touch the
common soldier was good. There was magnetic
contact between us and the crowd. The girls
smiled on us, men shook hands with us promiscu-
ously, and children reached up to be kissed.
Great numbers of little children were in the
street, some with their mothers, some without,
and all were radiantly innocent and welcoming.
It was common to see five or six little ones hang-
ing on to the sleeves of one of our stalwart fellows,
much to his pleasure though also to his astonish-
ment. We had not been treated in this way
before.

At three in the afternoon two of us entered a
smart cafe* where stout Belgians in frock-coats
and silk hats were standing free drinks of cognac
at two marks the petit verre. Other fellows in
another part of the town found a brewery where
beer was free, good beer served out as fast as arms
of buxom maids could serve it. It was one of
the rare occasions in the life of the soldier when
one of his ideals is realised.

* The brewery gates stand open and they are
giving away beer."

" Never ! >:

We spoke with the benign and somewhat
grand Belgians who were treating the Tommies
to cognac and paying for it from sheaves of
spotless German notes. '' Every one in Mar-

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 307

chiennes seems excited," said I. " It's a wonder-
ful welcome."

" But there's more to come," replied they,
fingering the civic medallions on their watch-
chains. " At six o'clock there will be a procession
de flambeaux'"

" Yes, and a band of a hundred and fifty
instruments. There will be a fete. We shall all
dance in the streets."

Six was some time after nightfall, but the town
was lit up from end to end. The crowd of civi-
lians and soldiers thronged the roads. For my
part I stood and waited in the town square for
the emergence of the band and the procession,
and was curious. Several comrades were within
hail. All felt a little tired and stiff after the
march. They did not dream they were going to
dance for hours that night without a sigh of tired-
ness or a twinge of stiffness.

Out came the band at a jaunty stride, and
every bandsman wore a silk hat, out came the
town banners, and then strings of coloured lan-
terns of paper with glimmering lights inside —
and then the murmurs of the crowd and a sway-
ing toward the poles on which the lanterns hung.
Old folk were in the crowd and young, gay girls
and cheerful matrons, and there were our sol-
diers, and, besides all, an inordinate number of
clinging laughing children.

I was suddenly grasped by two middle-aged
Belgians of a prosperous commercial type ; each
took one of my arms, others took their other arms,
and with a palm on each neighbour's back we

308 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

started to dance after the band, shoulders down,
head up, knees and toes kicking out in a pas de
joie. I had not been in an orgy before, but good-
humouredly fell in. We plunged after the band,
singing the " Marseillaise," the " Braban£onne,"
and what not as we went.

I broke, however, with my sedate companions,
got to one side and began to watch the tumult-
uous joy-crowd go past. Here my real adven-
ture commenced. I saw a poor woman beside a
lamp-post trying to comfort a little child that
was crying, and stooping down to give my aid
the youngster grasped my hand. Another stand-
ing by took my other hand, and in less than a
minute I had rejoined the dance with six wee
children. We danced with a will all along the
fringe of the throng between the main body and
the shop-windows, and gradually worked our way
from the back to the front of the procession
and the immediate vicinity of the wonderful
lanterns and the triumphant blare of the quick-
stepping band. Thus we traversed the whole
town twice, and then when the band stopped in
the town square we joined hands in a circle as
did so many other strings of folk, and danced
there. And the children had words for every
song, street words generally, the favourite being
a parody of some song to which the German
soldiers had marched :

Margarita, si tu veux
Faire mon bonheur,
Casse la gueule
A 1'empereur,

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 309

and every time a tune was ended all broke off
and threw up their hands and cheered.

We went to a sweet-shop and bought packets
of peppermints, and then to a pastry-cook's and
bought big slices of gingerbread for all and each.
The pastry-cook gave me a cup of coffee, for
which she said I might pay after peace had been
signed. Then we walked slowly through the
streets munching cake — much to the amazement
of soldiers and civilians alike.

We joined in the dance again, and the children
never seemed tired. They were Madeleine, Marie,
Marie, Rene*, Albert (le roi), Marguerite, and
the eldest was only nine. Their enjoyment of
the fete was pure and complete. It possessed the
whole of their little bodies. Round and round
we went in a circle till we were dizzy, and back
and forth, approaching and retiring, whilst all
about us was the whirl of other circles mostly of
British soldiers and Belgian girls but often of
sedate matrons and the fathers of the community.
We had some collisions but no casualties, for the
children held hands so tightly that they never
got knocked down. At one point little Mar-
guerite, so low down and far from my face,
kissed my fingers as she danced ; at another point
all these little ones were down on their knees
saying their prayers in chorus. Onlookers cried
out in pauses of the dance " A bas les Boches ! J:
and we replied, " A bas les sales Boches ! " or
rubbish of the same kind, without, however, mean-
ing anything sinister. Ours was a dance of pure
joy, an infection of the time. For us the Pied

3io A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

Piper was playing, and we had left the bourgeois
fathers and mothers behind. What a wonderful
happiness was that of the children who followed
the piper, for I believe they always remained
children and danced to the music whilst the rest
of the world sat with scored brows and calculated
and judged.

" I see that in Rome you believe in doing as
Rome does," said a fellow - soldier to me in
barracks afterwards.

' You were well away," said another.

" You were drunk all right last night, my
boy," said a third.

If so, not drunk with the portly Belgians'
cognac or the beer, but drunk with joy, with the
spirit of peace. The vast human emotion that
had sent mad London, Paris, Brussels, New York,
had come to us at last, and we were swimming
amidst its waves.

And the children ? They understood in their
little hearts what was in the air. Marchiennes
was theirs. It was a children's festival.

At last we parted. The mother who some-
how had been struggling after us through the
crowds and keeping us in view claimed little
Madeleine, and then each one kissed me good-
bye and claimed me for that morrow that never
comes, and I marched off, just in time to enter
barracks by tattoo. And I washed and changed
and lay down to sleep and did not feel tired
in any limb. The wonderful refreshment of
happiness !

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 311

The progress into the obscurer parts of Bel-
gium was like rediscovering a lost place, unearth-
ing again a countryside after a great landslide.
We had lost sight of the main part of Belgium in
1914, and we only recovered sight of it in these
last weeks of the armistice year. It was a curious
impression. Belgium* had not gone on after the
German eruption. But her life had paused where
it was and the hours remained where they were
All that the people knew of the bloodshed and
fire of the strife related to the days of August
1914; the battles of the later times did not
have for them the substantial reality they had
for us. We could not talk to them of the Battle
of the Somme or the German spring offensive of
1918, but had perforce to dig up the half-
forgotten facts of the first month of the war and
talk of them.

We marched away into the Ardennes and were
billeted in such obscure places as Bambois in the
commune of St. Gerard, Wierde, Faulx, Tharout,
Bende, Ernonheid, Zhevigny, Petit Thier, vill-
ages or hamlets far from the centres of life, far
even in little Belgium where one would have
thought no place could be far.

" One night as I lay abed I heard a strange
sound," said a Walloon farm-wife in her antique
patois, " as if many horses were neighing in the
fields in the distance. It was so disturbing that
I awakened my husband." He went to find out
what it could be, and he learned from neighbours
that it was the Germans who had arrived. They
came on horseback and not by the road, but

3i2 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

streamed across the fields and through the woods
in an endless array. All the sleepy hollows were
invaded with brand-new warriors.

In some places one met old folk who, besides
their impressions of this war, remembered listen-
ing to the cannonade in the Franco-German strife
of 1870 : they told me how they bent down
to earth, listened and just heard it. And they
listened and heard the bombardment in this
war also. How staggering was August 1914
to these quiet people ! The women wept, the
men were nonplussed, the Prussians swaggered
and bullied. The natives were so dumb-
founded that they evidently amused the German
soldiers, and the latter made sport of them,
tying old folk together, back to back, and
making them dance ; tying priests to the altars
of their churches, ducking old women in wells,
firing barns, shooting almost at random and at
sight. We listened to hundreds of tales of the
behaviour of the enemy coming in and of the
brutal things he did, and then again we listened
to the story of the way he went out of the
country in November 1918, humbled, dejected,
with eyes which could look no one in the face.

Most of the villages had their graves of German
dead — one here, another there, and sometimes one
would discover (where opposition had been met)
large collections of graves and military cemeteries.
There was a large enclosure of stone graves at
St. Gerard — a sad memorial of the grand style of
death and war in the braver days of that tragical
first August.

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 313

There had been resistance at St. Gerard on the
part of the rearguard of the Belgian Army rein-
forced by French. About five hundred friends
and foes had perished, and the Germans, with a
touch of that sense of honour and valour which
distinguished them until the gospel of necessity
ate into their morals, gave to each and all an equal
place in the memorial of their death. Thus at
the head of the graveyard, instead of the suffering
Jesus on the high cross that marks the cemeteries
of the French, they had erected an obelisk of
granite thirty feet high and eight feet in thick-
ness, and on the height of this massive column
was printed in Latin :

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori ;
and under that in German :

ZUM GEDACHTNIS
AN DIE KAMPFE BEI

ST. GERARD
IN DEN ANGEHORIGE
DER DEUTSCHEN GARDE
FRANZ OSISCHE UND
BELGISCHE KRIEGER
AM 23-24 AUGUST 1914
DEN HELDENTOD FUR
IHR VATERLAND STARBEN ;

and under that again was written in French :

A LA M£MOIRE
DES BRAVES SOLDATS
ALLEMANDS BELGES ET FRANQAIS

TOMBES

POUR LEUR PATRIE
DANS LES COMBATS DE

ST. GERARD
LE 23-24 AOUT 1914 ;

3 14 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

and under that again, on the ground, lay three
huge, heavy, withered wreaths.

Facing this obelisk were rectangles "of perfect
lawn, smooth black cinder-paths, and ten massive
slabs of granite placed at intervals along the outer
edges of the lawns for seats from which to look at
the graves. The latter were ranged along four
borders in a perfectly symmetrical design. The
crosses were all of the same grey granite, smaller
than graveyard crosses usually are — as if shorn of
individuality — and all were the same in size and
appearance. French were together, Belgians
together, Germans together. All was perfectly
disciplined, and as the design ran to 500 graves,
whereas there were only 497 dead, three dummy
stones had been put in that there might be no
blank files amid the crosses. The rigid obedience
of Prussia reigned also amid the dead.

I walked from cross to cross and read the
names, lingering longer where instead of names
was written all that could be said of poor, maimed,
indistinguishable bodies :

Un fran£ais.
Un soldat.

Un artilleur fran^ais.
Un tirailleur algerien.
Ein deutscher soldat.
Deutsch Pierre.
Herve Desire.
Petit Maurice.
Pochet Louis d'Arras.

There were many such, which spoke of a battle
that must have been terrible in its way. I

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 315

thought of the fate of the men to die so soon in
the adventure, to be cut off then., such a wan
fate, but better perhaps than to go through it all,
through all the fields of blood, and perish at the
last. There was one grave that broke up the
symmetry and the discipline of this graveyard,
one crooked cross of new unpainted wood in the
midst of the grey stone. On it was written in
German : " Here lies in God, Heinrich Widding,
who died on the nth November 1918."

He died on the day of the Armistice, the day
which marked the failure of the great discipline
of Prussia, and a weak ordinary wooden cross
marked the progress of humanity on this back-
ground of grey stone.

Not far from this scene were miles and miles
of new-set wire before the trenches of Namur
and the line of its mighty stream. And as we
marched we thought how men might have died
again in these fields and how by God's mercy
men were spared. We crossed the majestical
even-flowing Meuse on German pontoons beside
the great heights of Wepion and Dave, and were
ever on the trace of the insubordinate hurrying
and retiring army. By many a German helmet
and abandoned rifle, by many a broken-down,
dismantled lorry or gun, we slogged on in mud
and rain, noticing all the signs, but saying little
to our neighbours as our feet pulsed to the drum-
beat of the march and our hearts lifted to the
strains of our questing and exploring pipers.
Always the peasants said : The Germans passed
through so many days before ; they marched

3i6 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

with their officers under arrest ; they marched
silently, no songs, no more shouting of Nach
Paris as of old. We began to see in nearly every
village, and often along the road, effigies, of the
enemy set up by the inventive Belgians, regular
Guy Fawkes figures, German soldiers' tunics
and breeches stuffed with straw, a bunch of rags
for a head, a casserole on that, and a gas-mask
dangling from where the ears should be. Below
all an ironical inscription : " Nach Paris " or
" Kapoot."

" How did he pass ? Was he humble ? " we
asked often concerning the enemy.

" When he came he was too grand for words,
but when he returned he was petit, petit," said
the Belgians, laughing gleefully.

The same Belgians were not all so happy if one
mentioned the subject of cows to them. " He
drove away all our cows. The procession of his
cows was much longer than the procession of
his men. Whenever they want meat they kill
another cow."

We passed often the pitiful remains of but
lately slaughtered cows — heads of cows with faces
fresh and pleading, entrails of cows in horrible
grey heaps, all along the way. And then all
billets, all fields where the enemy had camped,
were left in indescribable filth. There were the
evidences of a complete breakdown of discipline.

The country people showed us the black debris
of great bonfires where the retreating soldiers
had piled rifles and machine-guns and stores of
all kinds, and set fire to them before crossing the

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 317

frontier to Germany. Over most of these bon-
fires sentries were placed, and the Germans were
sufficiently German to shoot down any Belgian
who attempted to steal from these funeral pyres
of the war.

At Bende a farmer told how a German officer
received the news of the armistice. He was
sitting at the table with a bottle of cognac and a
German novel. A corporal came in with the
communique*, read it out, and handed it to the
officer. The latter, reading it, gave a deep groan,
rose from his chair and threw his helmet with a
crash upon the stone floor. Then he took a
terrible draught at the cognac, omitting to pour
it into a glass, but putting the whole bottle
to his lips. He picked up his helmet and was
quiet for a while, buried in thought. Then
suddenly once more he started up, groaned again,
flung down his hat and ran his fingers through
his hair in an agony of grief.

Later in the evening some of his men came
and turned him out of his bedroom at the farm-
house and said, " Up till now you have slept in a
bed and we in lousy straw. Now it is your turn
to sleep in the straw." And so it was.

Our way was rather uncertain, we had no
fore-ordained plan of progress, but waited each
night for the name of the village of the morrow.
Rumour would have sent us a score of ways : to
Paris to welcome King George at the Arc de
Triomphe, to Brussels to be inspected by King

3i8 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

Albert, to London, to Edinburgh, to Bonn, to
Coblentz ; it sent us by train and it sent us by
lorry ; it told us we should neither go to Germany
nor return home, but be held on " lines of com-
munication." We approached Namur, but did
not enter it ; set off for Li£ge, but were turned
away from it ; were going to enter Germany by
Aix-la-Chapelle and then by Stavelot and then by
Beho. Nearing Huy we turned south-eastward,
and crossing the Ourthe at Hamoir plunged into
the Belgian Ardennes and came near to the
Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

In all these wanderings the pipers were our
companions, leading us and exploring the way.
Two days, indeed, our instrumental band shared
the honours with the pipers and we took our step
to the solemn chanting march of " Sambre et
Meuse," but the General intervened. We must
not march to instrumental music and this band
must cease. So before and after this instrumental
blare of brass it was the slogan alone that we
followed.

The various companies of the battalion took it
in turn to be first in the march, to be second, to
be third, to follow up the rear, and when the
company was in front it heard the music in all its
immediacy and splendour, but when it was behind
it only heard it far away like a child's voice
sobbing or calling now and then. Passing over
the crest of a hill the music rose with the height
and then became silent as the vanguard dipped
into the hollow beyond, rising however again
from the basin of the valley and resounding back

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 319

in increasing volume and happiness. When the
road turned half-right skirting a hill the whole
rearguard was enlivened by the pipes coming as
it were toward them. When the road lay even
over marshes and plains the music was deadened,
but when we entered forests it sprang to life as if
the woodland were full of pipers — a clamorous,
exulting, echoing music, that of the woods !
And in the gorges and ravines Nature responded
also from the rocks.

Wonderful pipes ! The men are inclined to
grumble and fall out, but the pipes make a unity
of them. Invisible tendons and muscles seem
to connect the legs of all files, and all move as
one, mechanically, rhythmically, certainly. The
strong are reduced to the step, the weak are
braced up to it. All bear the strain and share
the strain. So we go on, and the miracle is in
the power of the music.

The first weeks of our journeying were punc-
tuated by long halts, but the last ten days in the
wettest of the weather were continuous marches.
They made the most trying time of our experi-
ence. Boots wore out. Clothes got wet through
and could not be dried. Rations were often
delayed, and from continuous wearing of our
heavy packs our shoulders were galled. But the
curiosity to see Germany, the sense of an adven-
ture, and the music kept our spirits up. At each
new turn of the road the evenly pacing High-
landers in the vanguard of our column felt the
way, explored the new way, playing as they went.

Thus on the morning of the i2th December,

320 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

parading in the wet before dawn, all in our
waterproof capes, we left the last forlorn village
of the Belgian Ardennes and climbed out to the
mysterious line which we all wished to see, that
put friendly land behind and left only enemy
country in front. One asked oneself what Ger-
many would be like. But only an hour was
needed to bring us to the custom-houses and the
sentry-posts. We marched to attention, the rain
streamed off our capes and trickled from our
hats, but the tireless pipers played ahead, and by
some one's inspiration the word went to the pipe-
major, play " Over the Border " ; so with a skirl
that no weather could suppress we came up to the
line to the strains of

March, march, all in good order,

All the blue bonnets are over the Border.

Then the pipers separated from the main body
and took up their stand in a phalanx by the side
of the road beside the familiar figure of our
Brigadier, and they played " Hieland Laddie "
whilst we marched past at the salute. Thus we
entered Germany with no formalities and no
enemy in view. We felt much cheered though
the time was cheerless, and we were full of
curiosity to see the people we still called Huns,
and men still talked of bayoneting and cutting
throats. Presently we began to pass cottages, and
we stared at them, but could see no people. Some
of us shouted, " Come out and show yourselves "
and " Come out of hiding," forgetting that
"Jerry," as we called him, was hardly likely to be
properly awake yet.

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 321

When we began to see Germans they paid
no attention to us whatever, but the woman at
the well went on drawing water and the man
with straw in his arms continued his way to his
barn without vouchsafing a glance. We saw
women talking with their backs to us, and they
did not turn round to look at us as we passed.
The children were as nonchalant towards the gay
figures of our kilties as if they saw pipers every
day of the week. It must be said we were a
little taken aback, a little mortified. But it
rained and rained and the drums became silent,
sodden and soaked with the water, and we
splashed patiently and mechanically on through
the mud and over the broken roads. Our fours
became twos, became long threads of single file
as we picked our way amidst great holes and ruts
and gliding rivers of yellow ooze. When there
would otherwise have been a view of Germany,
trailing mist, liquefying in the wind to bitter
rain, swept hither and thither across our faces.
On the sides of the roads was desolation, and
occasionally still, as in Belgium, the sinister grey
heaps of the entrails of cows which told of the
indisciplined German Army which had retired
before us.

And with every one wet to the bone we
climbed the excruciatingly broken road over
the hill from Amel to Moderscheide. In this
wretched German village we were billeted, and
the men made huge bonfires in the barnyards,
and stood round them to dry themselves. The
Germans seemed to be rather afraid of us, and

Y

322 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

servile, but very poor. Tottering old men in-
sisted on shaking hands with us. The girls of
the place seemed to be carefully kept out of our
way. Billets were wretched, and the men, still
fire-eating, hunted for better ones which, when
they found, they intended to take by storm.
Those who had revolvers expected to have to
use them. But we only discovered that the native
inhabitants slept in worse places than we had,
and that every one was of the mildest disposition.
Our blankets and reserve radons were in the
waggons stuck at the bottom of the Amel hill.
There was only one thing to do — to get dry and
make the best of it.

Next day, with the skies still streaming, we
made the longest continuous march, some thirty-
six kilometres, and by that effort got well into
Germany. The roads improved as we got further
on, but the tramp through the forest of Zitter
was long, marshy, and melancholy. Our com-
pany was first after the pipers, and had the full
benefit of the music all the way. And we
wandered inward, inward, with our seeking and
haunting Gaelic melodies, into the depths of
the hanging silent wood. It was strange how
aloof Nature seemed to these melodies. In
Scotland, or even in France, all the hills and the
woods would have helped the music. But in
this German land all were cold toward us, and
those endless pine-trees seemed to be holding
hands with fingers spread before the eyes to show
their shame and humiliation. There was a curious
sense that the road on which we trod was not

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 323

our road, and that earth and her fruits on either
hand were hostile.

And how tired the men became, with half
of them through the soles of their boots and
with racking damp in their shoulders and backs
from their rain-sodden packs ! But we listened
still, whilst voluminous waves of melody wan-
dered homeless over German wastes and returned
to us :

I heard the pibroch sounding, sounding,
O'er the wide meadows and lands from afar,

or to the stirring strains of the " March of the
Battle of Harlaw," or to the crooning, hoping,
sobbing of " Lord Lovat's Lament," and so went
on from hour to hour through the emptiness of
southern Germany. I thought of the wonderful
theme which this march offered to the musician,
and knew in anticipation that some day the world
would possess some great musical composition on
the March to the Rhine — an "1812" for
Western Europe which some Tchaikovsky would
compose. I thought of its nature. Would it
not begin with the blare of brass obscuring the
tremulous hopes and fears of March 21, 1918 ;
it would be noisy and ambitious and terrifying
and vulgar. But this vulgarity would fail, met
by the will of Britain, France, America, Italy,
Serbia, the will of the rest of humanity. The
fears would gain ground till the point of surrender
arrived. Then would commence the music of
our strange march. No, not one in which
" Deutschland iiber Alles " faded into "Rule
Britannia " and the " Marseillaise," not one of

324 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

exultancy of victor and utter rout of fleeing foe.
But it would be sad, penetrating music, questing
music, haunting music, all subdued and, as it
were, prostrated. The voices of the German
dead would rise into it, not exultantly, nor
menacingly, but in curious sadness, as if they
were unreconciled with their own sacrifice ; the
German land and the German forests would
speak their shame in it, the German gods would
grow small and abase themselves, and all that the
proud Wagner ever conceived would die away
to a piping of birds in one note over wilder-
nesses. The fall of Germany was a greater
event than the victory of those who strove against
her.

The pipes seemed to express the thought, the
Gaelic wailing in the rain and the steady march
through the ancient woods.

Still we swung along the way to the Rhine,
and knew our halt could not be far. However,
when we thought we had just about reached our
camping-ground for the night, we came to a
guide-post which showed it still to be seven
kilometres on. But that was at the top of a long
hill, and the road ran gently down through woods
the whole way. The Colonel sent a message
to play the light-hearted song of the " Men of
Portree." The rain had stopped, and an evening
sky unveiled a more cheerful light. So with
an easy, inconsequent air we cast off care and
tripped away down to the substantial and once
prosperous bit of Rhineland called Hellenthal,
well on our way to Cologne.

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 325

I had serious misgivings before entering Ger-
many. My comrades vowed such vengeance on
the people that I anticipated something worse
than war. In theory, no treatment was going
to be bad enough and cruel enough for the
German. We were out to wreak on him four
years' war- weariness ; we were ready to settle
all the old scores of treachery on the field and
mischance in the fight. What, therefore, was
my surprise to find, after two or three days in
Germany, all our roaring lions converted into
sucking doves.

It was an extraordinary lesson in psychology —
how, without too much prompting from officials,
a whole nation comported itself to a victorious
enemy army, and how that army, without any
prompting whatever, took up an unexpected
attitude of friendliness after vowing intense and
everlasting hatred. Our authorities certainly
expected a different attitude, for commanding
officers had been asked to leave behind any speci-
ally bad characters who might be likely to get
out of hand in enemy country, and we were all
warned to stick to one another and not quarrel
amongst ourselves, as we should need to preserve
a united front in the country of the enemy.
Every man in a billeting party was obliged to
carry a revolver. Some units, I believe, made
their entry into all towns and villages with fixed
bayonets. But public opinion and atmosphere
was different from what had been expected.

No, there was not much craft or cunning
calculation in the German attitude to us. The

326 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

same attitude was to be found in the smallest
and remotest villages as in the large towns. And
in our army the reaction was the same in all
the various units which I met afterwards at
Cologne.

It is true that the German was rather afraid,
though he seldom showed it in any of his actions.
The German is rather reserved and secretive by
nature — a great contrast to the Frenchman, who
is nervous and expressive. After living years
among the talkative and excitable French and
Belgians, Tommy Atkins did not probe beneath
the exterior calm of his German hosts.

Nevertheless fear was not very deep in the
German either. His strongest feeling was one
of relief that the war was over — on any terms.
Our coming in was a secondary evil only. Then
as regards his sensitive national pride, was he not
able to nurse in secret the remembrance that he
had held the world at bay, and had only given in
at last because the odds were too great !

When we entered into the German houses
we saw on many walls and shelves the photo-
graphs of German soldiers, and as we asked of
each we learned the melancholy story — wounded,
dead, dead, wounded. Death had paused at
every German home. The women brought out
their family albums and showed us portraits of
themselves as they were before the war, and
asked us to compare that with what they looked
like now. And they showed us portraits of many
German girls of whom we asked, ' Where are
they now ? " and nearly always received the

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 327

answer, " Todt, grippe " (dead from influenza) ;
so every soldier realised that German families
had at least suffered equally with British families,
and the thought rested in the mind.

We were soon seated at table with young
German men who but a few weeks before had
been enemies in the field. They were cold to us
at first, but our engaging warmth soon cheered
them out of their apathy. Though our fellows
knew no German they set to work to make Fritz
understand their questions by expletives in pigeon
French, and all manner of gestures and mimicry,
punctuated by guffaws of laughter and asides to
one another.

We were all agog to find out where Fritz had
fought against us, where we had faced one
another.

' You at Ypres ? "

" Moi aussi at Ypres."

" Compris Bourlon Wood ? Moi at Bourlon
Wood."

" Bapaume ? Yes, I know that fine, M'sewer.
He's been at Bapaume. Wounded, M'sewer ?
Twice ? Moi three times."

Our fellows would unloose their tunics and
show the scars on their bodies. The German
boys would do the same. Then, being unable
to express themselves, both would grin in a sort
of mutual satisfaction.

At Hellenthal we talked till late at night with
ex-soldiers of the Kaiser. I found a young man
who had fought on the Russian front, and we
compared places we both knew, the German

328 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

diving into his memory for the Russian phrases
he had picked up, such as chat peet (to drink tea) ;
nitchevo (that's all right) ; and Ta ne poni mayu
(I don't understand). At Call, near Schmidtheim
— terrible name for a place — we met a young
man who had actually been opposed to our very
unit in the Cambrai fighting of a year before.
Wherever we went we made our exchanges,
and, if anything, we found the private soldier of
the German Army had had a more adventurous
career than we had, and any man who had served
any length of time had seen Russia and Mace-
donia, as well as both French and British battle-
fronts in Western Europe. This testified to the
mobility of the German Army, and to its restless
energy in the devil's dance of conquering
Europe. At Ermulheim a demobilise^ in answer
to our persuasions, put on his uniform again to
let us see what he looked like as a soldier ; but
the uniform was a new one, and he seemed to
look too smart to be the real thing. We had
never seen German soldiers in the smartness
which no doubt they possessed well back
behind the line, but were familiar only with the
down-at-heel misery of prisoners, the sinister
greyness of the enemy in front of us, or the
shabbiness of the look of the dead.

We no longer referred to them as Huns now
that we were in Germany. Innate goodness of
feeling prevented the use of that name, though
indeed the German was never Bosche nor Hun
to the rank and file, but always "Jacky" or
"Jerry' or " Fritz." We soon learned that

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 329

the Germans greatly disliked the appellation of
" Bosche," which apparently was not absolutely
meaningless but meant " ill-begotten/' or some-
thing of the sort.

Racial affinity certainly greatly contributed
to bring about this reconciliation between the
rank and file and the German people they met.
The cleanliness of German towns and villages
and of the people, the fair complexions of the
women, the first-class state of German civilisation
from an artisan's point of view, all attracted after
France. In the small shops the German women
did not charge us three times the price and hand
us out bad change. In the public-houses beer
was twopence a jug and wine five marks the
bottle : there was not one price for Germans
and a much higher price for British soldiers. In
places where we had to draw water there was
every convenience for that end, and in any case,
if there were pumps, the Germans did not take
off the pump handles and make us walk half a
kilometre for every pail of water. The Germans
never offered us water at twopence a glass.
Certainly the Germans were under watchful eyes
and could not have played many tricks had they
tried, and they were not left to their own devices
and to the free exemplification of their character,
as were the French and Belgians.

* Well, Stephen, "said a dour Scottish corporal
to me at Zulpich, " I have been four and a half
years out here, and have lived in France and in
Belgium and now in Germany, and I can tell
you the people I feel nearest to me are these.

330 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

They are honester and cleaner, and somehow I
feel I understand them better."

He was ordinarily a very reserved fellow, but
I know he had hated the Germans.

I smiled, but I did not offer any comment.
It is very fair to allow men to obtain a natural
opinion and a first impression without the poison
of war talk and propaganda. My corporal would
modify his opinion later without the help of a
reminder of Germany's war crimes.

In another talk to which I listened I heard
also the following notable remark : " We don't
hate them ; we leave that for the politicians and
the people at home." The remark was followed
by a hearty laugh.

In all this, however, our officers took little
part. Attempts were made to stop fraternising,
but it could not be prevented. The army cannot
live in air-tight compartments on the Rhine. It
is bound to live in the houses and shops and beer-
halls and trams and cinemas, and to mix with
Germans.

Some notion of the new atmosphere got to
our padre. The padres had for four years been
preaching, " I came not to bring peace, but a
sword," but now they realised that since Armistice
a larger message was available. Said our padre
to me one day with relish :

" Next Sunday I am going to be very daring
and preach a sermon on loving your enemies."

" Not a bad idea, sir," said I.

" The padre is going to give us a sermon on
4 Love your enemies,' " said I to a knot of fellows.

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 331

They smiled.

" Tell him, ' Before he joined/ ! ' said they.
" Tell him, ' Before he fluffed.' "

Hate is an impurity in the blood. It is in-
tended to be discharged from the system. But
there was never, even at the worst moment, much
of it in the British composition.

It was not part of their blood
It came to them very late,

as Kipling says. Our Christianity does not yet
extend to forgiving our enemies at once. The
British way is to clear off old scores first, and
then forgive, but all in a cheery spirit — not
with bile and malice. Endeavour was made to
cultivate hate in our ranks as a useful aid to
fighting quality, and many stories, as we know,
were circulated about the enemy with the idea
of working up a useful hate. No doubt some
hated. But when the armistice was signed and
we got away into German territory, that hate
passed easily away, leaving behind the good-
humoured Tommy.

So we undoubtedly felt better in ourselves as
we marched on to Cologne. We were more
obstreperous, more noisy and wild in our ways,
but also lighter in our steps, gayer in our hearts.
We marched with a will — an army of optimists on
the way home !

In the whole British Army our division
marches the best. Other units will always turn
out with respect to look at us going by, and it

332 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

is possible that our battalion was as good as any
in the division, at least in the march to Cologne.
We marched the whole way ; we were not given
the doubtful privilege of going part of the way
by train, as some battalions were. Boot leather
was very scarce ; the weather was wet and the
roads broken, but very few men fell out on the
march, perhaps no more than three the whole
way. On the road, at least when the weather
was fine, we were a pleasure to the eye — all
sparkling with polished brasses and bright buttons,
all moving as one man, all platoons squared and
trim.

We were thoroughly proud of ourselves, as
if we ourselves had won the war, and we entered
each German village with that air of conscious
pride and with that tlan which might well
characterise the first British troops to enter. We
believed always that we dazzled the Germans,
and that they were rubbing their eyes and asking
in surprise, " Are these the English whom we
once despised ? We believed they had no soldiers
who could make so handsome a turn-out." And
in this we were confirmed by our Colonel,
who kept regarding us always on the march as
if we were the apple of his eye and greatest
spiritual treasure. How angry he became when
motor-lorries or staff-captains' cars came along-
side us, spattering us with mud and breaking the
long straight line of our external files. It grati-
fied us intensely whenever he stopped a car and
made it wait till we had all passed by.

Our songs broke forth whenever the pipers

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 333

ceased to lead us, and in merry mood we accom-
plished the last stages of our way. From Hellen-
thal we marched to the picturesque village of
Blumenthal, with its castle on the hill, thence to
Call, where the lager-beer was greatly appreci-
ated. From Call we marched to the old town of
Zulpich, with its fine towers. From Zulpich
by Weiler to Erp, where the children watched us
come in, hat in hand ; from Erp to Lechenich,
and through a very sodden wood to the -briquet
factories of Hermulheim. Hermulheim is an
outer suburb of Cologne, and but a few kilo-
metres were needed to bring us to our billets in
the German city. And we entered one morning
in the sunshine — with only the fclat of our own
smartness and our own triumph, having been
over a month on the road since we left Maubeuge.

Some were billeted in schools, some in an old
beer-house and theatre, and some found their
way to the houses and the flats of the Germans,
and made themselves comfortable. At first the
centre of Cologne was out of bounds, and then
it was made obligatory for us always to go about
in twos in case of attack. But these restrictions
quickly fell away, and we had the freedom of
the city.

The streets were packed with our boys at
night, with them and with the well-dressed
Cologne crowd. There was no intercourse in
the streets, no soldiers walking with civilians,
but, on the other hand, no friction. Both
seemed very pleased to see one another. Food
was scarce, but everything else was in plenty and

334 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

not dear to buy, and it was the season of Christ-
mas, and every shop had its soldiers within it,
buying souvenirs and gifts. We were paid our
wages in marks, reckoned as sevenpence each,
and thus most objects exposed for sale seemed
cheaper to our eyes than to the Germans.

" If you see a thing in a shop," said an officer,
" don't enter into long discussions with the shop-
keeper, but fix a price yourselves and buy it."
I believe this worked very well. I never heard
of any trouble in the shops. Nobody in our rank

and file could speak German. B the actor,

who would have been at home with the Teutons,
was in hospital, gassed. When I used the few
words and phrases I had picked up on my
travels, the others looked up to me admiringly,
and often brought me in to interpret their desires.

However, it was in the various homes and
back-parlours where we met the Germans more
freely that our real exchange of thoughts and
sentiments with them began.

Whilst the rank and file of all units rapidly
established themselves on terms of comfort with
the enemy, and were even ready warmly to defend
him in argument, it was possible for one more
cool in judgment to observe some curious facts
concerning the psychology of the German in
defeat.

The German reception, by reason of its
warmth, was very baffling for Tommy Atkins.
" Tell me," said one, " is it true that German

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 335

mothers are bringing up their children to hate
the English ; are they not teaching them that
England is the enemy, and they must fight her
when they grow up ? "

The question was put to a very intelligent
German engineer, who spoke English perfectly,
a man who had supervised his own engineering
contracts all over the world. We were billeted
upon him, and he and his wife certainly treated
us very kindly.

He frowned over the question, paused a
moment, and then answered emphatically :

" No, it is not true. German mothers are
only teaching their children that there must never
be another war."

He began a discussion of the merits of the war.
He said he was glad we had won and so put an
end to the strife. He did not think the private
soldier at all responsible.

' You are commanded to fight," said he,
" and you obey. It is the same with us. We
are commanded, and we obey. I imagine it is
much the same with you as with us : ' You pay,
you obey, but you have no say.' :

' Quite right, mister, quite right," said a
chorus of fellows, whose simple minds saw no
guile in such a thought.

" We lost, and so we must pay," the German
continued with a smile.

At Christmas every German house had its
Christmas tree, even houses where there were
no children. Many hours were spent elaborately
decking them.

336 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

" I suppose you'll have a good spread at
Christmas, anyway," said a Tommy. " In Eng-
land they are going on double rations."

" No," said the German, " we shall only have
a Christmas tree and a few glass balls."

" Oh, I'm d sorry to hear that," said

Tommy.

" Don't be sorry," said Fritz. " You won the
war ; we lost it. Had we won and you lost,
then we should have had double rations, and you
would have had a Christmas tree and a few glass
balls."

At a large house at another part of Cologne,
a questing sergeant of Newfoundland arrived
with a platoon of his men. The owner, a West-
phalian millionaire, addressed the soldiers in this
wise :

" Yes, you may come into my house. All I
ask is that you keep away from the women.
Including my wife and daughters and the servants,
there are twenty -one women here, but every-
thing else is at your disposal. And I am under
no illusion about the war. You won, and I
expect you to behave as men who have won. It
is no small thing to have defeated Germany in
the field. In fact, gentlemen, I congratulate
you on your victory, which has saved Germany.
To show that I am sincere, I have sent to my
cellar for champagne, and with my own hands
I propose to pour for you whilst my wife and
daughters shall wait on you."

Thereupon he suited the action to the word,
and, as the sergeant said touchingly, he would not

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 337

allow a man to drink twice from the same glass,
but always had a clean glass provided.

The adventures of the various units of the
Army of Occupation have been manifold and
curious and rare. A quartermaster-sergeant of
Canadians billeted the whole of his company in
a new hospital, and every soldier had a new bed
and virginal sheets and palliasse, and the nurses
cooked for them and looked after them, and
generally bewildered them with kindness, though
they were in themselves bitterly indignant at the
use to which the hospital was put. Our wild
boys responded to the treatment like doves.

:< How do you account for it ? " I asked the
sergeant. :< If any hated the German more ruth-
lessly than others it was you."

" Well, I don't know," said he. " They just
knocked us off our Gawd-damned feet."

And that was so, I suppose.

If Tommies are seen marching out with Ger-
man girls, both parties are put under arrest.
But in the houses and in other private places the
wromen are exceedingly forward. They do not
display the hate or coldness or bitterness which
one would naturally expect from women towards
those who had killed husbands, brothers, sons,
sweethearts. The young girls are all bringing
their albums, and, generally speaking, hanging
round Tommy's neck, and the elder ones are
fussing about fires and beds and chairs to give him
comforts. For themselves, they have little food
and little hope of any kind, but they are not in
any way depressed. The sense of guilt, of moral

338 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

wrong, is absent. All they know is they have
played a game ; they have lost, and they are
giving up what is forfeit — that is all. And there
is one great compensation — an Allied army is
saving the community from a Spartacist revolu-
tion.

" Honour to the victors and to the liberators
of Germany ! That's all very well," said a
hard-hearted captain one night. ' But I must
have this matter out with mine host."

So he sent for the owner of the house, who
appeared suave and smiling in the mess.

" I'm pleased to see you," said the captain,
" though, of course, you understand me, not
really pleased in any way. But take a seat.
Now, I want to ask you a lot of questions. You've
been treating our army here in Cologne pretty
well, I admit, and there is no complaint. But
how was it that you allowed our prisoners to
return home so unfriended, uncared for, unfed ?
How do you account for the treatment of our
men in the prison-camps and in the places where
they were forced to work ? How do you account
for the atrocities your people have committed ?
Your women are very friendly to us, but will
you explain to me the stories of what you did to
French and Belgian women during your occupa-
tion of their towns ? You are very polite, but
how do you account for the behaviour of your
submarine commanders ? You say you believe
in a League of Nations, but how do you account
for your Government's deliberate encouragement
of Armenian massacres, etc. etc. ? "

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 339

The German shrugged his shoulders, and
grew more and more pale and taciturn. He could
not answer.

" Well," said the captain, " you'll have to
pay for it all now, to the last farthing and the last
brass button on the soldier's coat."

The German seemed slightly relieved.

" How much will it be ? " he asked.

" It is estimated at twenty-four thousand
millions sterling," said the captain.

" Twenty-four thousand millions sterling,"
said the German deliberately, and with that he
stood up, for it was late at night. " Twenty-
four thousand millions — very well. We will pay
it, and the account will be cleared."

With that he waved his hand comprehensively.

" Good-night ! " said he with dignity, and
walked out.

I often asked myself the question in Cologne,
Why has the German a good conscience ? He
had a bad conscience during the war ; he has no
right to a good conscience now. Our soldiers
gaily marching from street to street, our soldiers
singing in beer-houses and billets, had good
consciences. But they, with duty done and a
good cause, had every right to them. The
Germans ought to have been obsessed with the
wrong they had done humanity.

I think possibly the German sang-froid was
due to the manifest way in which British, French,
and Italian Governments in the hour of victory

340 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

were showing themselves false to the great ideals
of the war. The Germans could take to them-
selves the consolation that their enemies were
showing themselves every whit as greedy and
materialistic as they themselves had been. Ger-
many had evolved the great selfishness and in-
justice of the Treaty of Brest- Li to vsk, but at
Paris we were preparing a treaty for which
Brest-Litovsk might well have served as model.
I noticed that whenever we spoke to a German
about the war from an ideal point of view, he
seemed uncomfortable and uneasy. He was most
anxious to deny an ideal point of view as existing
in the Allies. His favourite point of view was
of the European powers as gamblers risking their
fortune in the chance of war and diplomacy.
Germany had lost, and as in " honour bound '
would pay the forfeit. If President Wilson was
favoured in German minds, it was because the
German thought that he would fool the Allies
into a gentler settlement or that he would cause
the Allies to quarrel among themselves.

And whilst we were at Cologne the British
General Election, which practically left the
soldier without a voice in the State, accomplished
itself in all its dishonouring vulgarity, with its cries
of " Make the German pay ! >J and " Hang the
Kaiser ! " Thanks to that election, Great Britain
came to the Conference Table at Paris with no
moral voice, no ideals — only with a notion of
bargaining and of sheltering herself from re-
sponsibility behind either Clemenceau or President
Wilson. Was it not a disgrace to our political

xiv THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 341

and governmental system — to come to Paris
without Christian principle or national dignity,
after all the sufferings, all the deaths for the
cause ?

The army, that is, the rank and file, was more
honourable, and knew better what it wanted.

!< I am a married man," I hear one of our
grizzled veterans saying. " I have four children.
I've been out here three years, and it has been
hell. But if the armistice were called off to-
morrow, I'd gladly go on fighting. Why ? In
order that we might make a clean job of it. All
I care for is that my boys shall not have to go
through what I've gone through. We don't
want to fight it all over again in ten years' time
— we want to make the world safe once for
all. Else what are we fighting for at all ? Ger-
many ought to be shown that force of arms does
not pay. Her army ought first to be crushed
and then completely disarmed. And Krupps'
factories at Essen and elsewhere ought to be
destroyed. . . ."

How often have I listened to such talk. That
is what the soldier -in -arms has thought in his
heart, without prompting.

The greatest indemnity dreamed of would not
add up to the demilitarisation of Europe ; nor
is it decent to talk loudly of the payment of our
expenses when the largest part of such expense
is the men who in millions have been killed in
the war. To arrange a sort of bargain-peace
between the Allies themselves, and with the
Central Powers, the sort of peace which leaves

342 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv

Europe an armed camp, would be the foulest
injustice to those who have fought and to those
who have died in the fight.

Moreover, the Europe we are coming back
to in peace is going to be a miserable place, where
lies and cynicism and greed will be the main
characteristics of public life, if our ideals are
not ratified in the results of the victory. Public
virtue will become a laughing-stock ; democracy
will continue to be stampeded as by war-loan
publicity campaigns and the election rampages
of ambitious demagogues ; there will be more
evil standards in politics, literature, art, morals,
finance.

That does not deeply concern us, however,
at the moment of our arrival in Cologne. The
significance of the moment for us is victory and
the justification not only of our own sacrifices,
but of the sacrifices of all, and of all who lie buried
by the way.

XV
THE FINEST THING IN THE ARMY

FOR most people Cologne is the river Rhine
and the Cathedral. The rather imposing com-
mercial splendour of modern Cologne only testi-
fies to German commercialism. But the Rhine
is a great national river and the cathedral is a
great Catholic temple, a monument, if not of
to-day's religion, at least of religion past. So on
Christmas Eve I looked upon the river, and
acknowledged that, though we came as victors,
we did not come vaingloriously, but rather with
a great thankfulness to God that through us
Germany and Europe could be free. Whilst the
shops blazed with light, and the advertisement toys
revolved in shop-windows of the city, attracting
the gaze of the Christmas crowd, I was, with a few
other lads in khaki, in the quietude and dim light
of the cathedral — expecting somehow that this
year in Europe a Child should be born.

The fifth Christmas had arrived, and with it
the victory of the cause, and a seeming happy
issue out of our afflictions. Some twelve million
English-speaking men had worn the uniform
of the soldier and borne his heavy burden, and

343

344 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xv

it might be said of many a battalion and regiment
that more of its number lay now buried beneath
the white crosses in France than were alive to
regard the mild star of hope and peace. And
of those who survived, who was there who had
not suffered in the war ? On a mountain of
suffering our ark had come to rest. Neverthe-
less, it was not of the suffering but of the victory
that we thought. Christmas was a first Christmas
again. We would not put on mourning on
Christmas Day and go to the graves, but we
should understand that if it was a glorious day
for the living it was a more glorious one still for
the dead, for they were justified in their sacrifice,
and they had not died in vain.

It had seldom worked out so happily in
history before. Endless sacrifice for the ideal
had been made throughout the ages, and the
page of the history-book recorded ever how
wickedness had thriven on virtue, and greediness
had grown after unselfishness. But behold, in
one of the grandest episodes in our human history
that which men had died for and suffered for
in largest number seemed about to come to pass.
This Christmas of victory we forgot for a moment
the sufferings and brutalisms of war, and rejoiced,
not by ourselves, but with all those who had
passed the bounds of our vision, yet who, never-
theless, were with us now as they were with us then.

We felt it should be an altogether-Christmas^
when we should try to realise the spirit and the
presence of all the absent, not only those from
whom for a few weeks and months we might be

xv FINEST THING IN THE ARMY 345

still separated, not only those we knew of whom
Omar wrote so lovingly,

Lo ! some we loved, the loveliest and best
That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to Rest ;

not only these, but those we never knew face
to face, the thousands of " lonely soldiers " of
humanity, who with few friends have fought
with us for one and the same great cause. Let
us be one with them !

In the summer and autumn we marched over
the great zone of the destruction which marks
the old battle-fields, and as the German relaxed
his grasp on ridge after ridge and horizon past
horizon, we saw that which we desired to see —
la belle France liberated. We came to the vir-
ginal, little-touched interior country, where the
red roofs were on the cottages and all around the
spires of parish churches pointed heavenward,
where the fields were not pitted with shells, but
carefully ploughed or harvested. We slogged
along the road, footsore and gay, and one com-
monly heard the remark, " We don't mind how
many miles we go this way." The delight at
seeing the happy valleys of the beyond-country
was intoxicating. I heard one man exclaim on
one occasion with true emotion :

" What price this for the Promised Land ! "

That was an expression of our first impulse

of excitement; but we camped there and got used

to it, and read the papers and hung on President

Wilson's words for many weeks, and perhaps

346 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xv

forgot what it had been to come there from
the heaps of decaying bricks and stone and the
smell of the dead in the old " Somme Country."
But my mind recurred constantly to the groves
of white crosses where our dead lay buried,
and to the thousands of graves where the un-
known lay. What a number of these we passed
on our way ! Wretched broken-down crosses,
with their legends written, or rather scrawled,
in copying-ink pencil: "Here lie 16 British
heroes." " Here lie two officers and twenty
men, British — names unknown." :< Here lies an
unknown British soldier " ; or in German, as was
often the case, " Hier ruht in Gott ein Englander,"
or simply " Ein Englander," or " Englisch
soldat," or " English unbekannt," or as I saw one
grave, German dug, " Anonymous England, 3 —
21.3.1918." What an enormous number of
graves bore that fatal date, March 21 ! Such
crosses, without particulars, are generally called
" Lonely Soldiers," and much love is always
lavished on them by the private soldier bringing
wild flowers to them, making formal gardens
round them of glass and chalk. There is a feeling
that the unknown dead have made a deeper and
a sweeter sacrifice than even those who perished
and were known and were buried " with name
and number." There is a pathos about the dead
who have neither number nor name, and in re-
acting to it the soldier's instinct is true. Theirs
has been that holiest sacrifice, and it is fitting we
should carry the brightest tokens of victory and
put them on the grave of — Anonymous England.

xv FINEST THING IN THE ARMY 347

What the war has done ! At the worst it came
like a curse to humanity. At the best it brought
us closer together, and made us bear suffering in
common. It has made us intimate with many
strangers. In the army the nation was more
"altogether" than it had ever been before — or will
easily be again. And at humanity's board, per-
haps, the nations who were allied found them-
selves nearer to one another in friendship.

The hardest lesson of army discipline is the
suppression of individuality, the unconditional
surrender of the individualistic ego to the will of
the nation. It is true that when that surrender
has been made peace is at hand. But what a
chapter of sufferings, mental and physical, before
the mind and soul are willing to make that sur-
render ! Yes, the uniform of the King, whilst it
enlarges and increases some, making " men " into
"temporary gentlemen," does narrow and straiten
others, making " gentlemen " to be temporarily
"men." It cuts them down, reduces them to
humble equality with those whom in the old
days they had outstripped. And yet, as a whole
is greater than its part, the reduction is only
an illusion. The contrary is really true, and
nationally the uniform makes one larger. But
that one can only know — after peace and self-
renunciation. One has become part of the
chorus of the nation, with the sense of a large
number thinking and doing altogether. There
is a good French word for being individual-
istic ; it is gauche, and gaucherie means a
sort of left-handedness, a being out of step.

348 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xv

The march and the sufferings come easier,
too, when one is in step. The army as a whole,
the nation as a whole, helps to bear your suffer-
ings. For indeed men have suffered things in
this war which no individual " on his own " could
possibly endure. But our men have endured
them because others were suffering with them, all
around them, and there was a common power
of strength sustaining them all.

The hardest thing for the nations also has been
to hear the drum-beat of Christianity, and whether
they have heard it is not certain ; the self-
sacrifice, the long process of learning to fall into
line, and to march in step together. As with
the individual soldier, so with the individual
rebellious nation, unconditional surrender to the
common weal of humanity can alone give lasting
peace.

Some soldiers from the first had a greater
sense of the honour of their regiment and of the
army and of the nation for whom they fought
than others. They were ready to die for the
greater body to which they belonged and for
the greater cause to which all were dedicated.
They had the patience which this sense de-
manded. They had the forbearance not to tread
with too rough foot upon a grave or to touch
with less respect the bodies of the fallen. They
had a spirit of self-sacrifice which prompted them
to outbid their comrades in the doing of dangerous
tasks. Though the brutal aspects of the war and
of Army life are so crying one must not forget
those bright spirits in the ranks or in command.

xv FINEST THING IN THE ARMY 349

For they gave a positive aspect to the whole, a
ground of hope on which a new Army, a new
Nation and a new Humanity could be built.
Their life was sometimes praised as :< Cama-
raderie," the sense of comradeship ; some-
times as ' Devotion to Duty," sometimes as
" Valour." It was most truly Christianity ; for
does not Christianity mean the suffering of the
One that All may have more life, the bread and
wine of the New Testament which makes us all
one Body and one Spirit ? It was most commonly
called nothing at all, and passed unnoticed. But
it is Esprit de Corps, the honour and the spirit
of the whole ; 'Esprit de Corps., which at its
highest and best and widest and profoundest
becomes Saint Esprit,

the one spirit of the mighty whole,
The spirit of the martyrs and the saints.

Those vile camping-grounds, those disgusting
trenches and bloody frays, the bullying, the
foul thoughts and words and deeds of the war —
not much of the Spirit in all these ! No, the
Spirit was often lost in those, and it was crushed
out by the system. But there was a Spirit in
the midst of us all. And whilst we remember
the cruelty and sordidness, the petty tyranny and
the impurity, there will nevertheless come a time
when, recalling the way and the march and the
Spirit in our midst, we shall ask of our old
comrades as did one apostle of another at
Emmaus, " Did not our heart burn within us
while He talked with us by the way ! "

INDEX

A.C. means " accepted Christ," 66-

67

Adinfer, 203
Adjutant : a hard adjutant means a

hard sergeant-major, 114
Advance of August 1918, 223, 259

seq.

Air raids, 100
Alexandra, Queen, 100
" All the blue bonnets are over the
| Border," 320

"All we ever do is sign the pay-
roll," 208

American Relief Committee, 203
Americans, 40 seq., 59, 98, 133, 208 ;

opposed to work, 59
Amour propre, 63
Ancient Sparta, comparison with,

79

Angels whisper, 75
Arbre de la Femme, 282
Ardennes, 311
Armistice Day, 291, 315
Arms presented, 106 j reversed,

107

Armstrong, the gardener and wrest-
ler, 170

Army, conditions, 29, 76-77, 123,
154; like public schools, regular,

Arras, 199
Ascension Day, 206
Atmosphere of barracks, 48
Atrocities committed in advance,

J39> 325

Atrocity stories, 222
Attitude to the dead, 234, 238 seq.
Attitude to the enemy, 216
August 1914 repeating itself, 134

Australians, 16

B 9 the actor of St. Louis, 43,

266-267

B > the musical composer, 38

Banks Reserve, 265

Baths, 61, 85, 117

Battle-fields, 240 seq.

Bavai, 288

Beer, giving it away, 306

Belgians, 167

Belgium, entering, 301 ; joy days
in, 304 seq.

Bernard the vocalist, 40

Bigsey, the policeman from Phila-
delphia, 271

Bill Browns, 24, 33, 122, 138, 265,

Boesinghe, 179

Bombs and bombing, 78, 119, 164-

165

Booby trap, 209
Bourlon Wood, 57, 179, 24I, 268,

327

Boussieres, 274
Brain versus cause, 265
Brass band, vulgarity of, 99, 136
Brooke, 149, 195
Browning, 202

Brutalising effect of war, 212 seq.
Buckingham Palace, 102
Bulgaria, surrender of, 272
Bullying, 27
Bumble and Buck, 186
Burns quoted by men, 158
Byng Boys, 179
By their sacrifice we live," 12

Calais, 166
Campbell, R. J., 90

35i

352 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS

Campbell's poems, 193
Canadians, 16, 53, 145-146, 337
Canal du Nord, 269
Carnieres, funeral at, 279
Cartigny, 170 seq.
Cecil, Lord Hugh, quoted, 105
Cemeteries, 147, 312, 346
Champagne, discovery in cellar,

177
Chaplains, 92, 103, 105, 145-146,

161, 188-189, 250-258, 330
" Charge, Chester, charge !" 194
Chessmen, original pieces made on

battle-field, 251
Chesterton, Cecil, 149
Chivalry, 216
Christians, 254
Christmas at Cologne, 335, 343 ; in

the trenches, 153
Civil Church, compared with

Church parade, 103
Civilians, 23, 63, 82 seq.
Cleavage between Christianity and

military service, 105
Cldry, 170
Cockney, best soldier in a Highland

regiment, 34

Cologne, 331-342 ; cathedral, 343
Colours, the, 106
Common sense and esprit de corps,

123
Conan Doyle's poem on Loos,

5*
Conrad, not read by rank and file,

J95.

Conscience and Duty, 79
Conscience of the Germans, 339
Conscripts, 14
C.O.'s orderly, 214-215
Crevecceur, 273
Crown -and -Anchor, the game of,

185 seq.

Danse de joie, 307

Dead, the, 238 seq.

Death, cheapness of, 9

Death penalty, army founded on,

.. I54
Decategorying a musician, 40

December 18, 1914, raid of, 152
Delivery of the French population,
276-277

Demobilisation, first lecture on, 294

Derby men, 131

Dickens, 193

Dirt, removing, 82-83

Discipline, 1-21, 154 seq., 295

" Doing one's damndest," 194

" Donald Blue," 108

Drafts, 129 seq., 198 seq.

Drill, 25, 48, 51, 62, 113, 161 ;

competition, 120
Drill-sergeants, 4, 214
Drocourt, 241
Dusty Smith, 182
Duty, 13

Easter at Havre, 138-139
Ecoust, 242, 268
Editing battalion records, 149
Effigies, 287, 316
England, 103
Entrenching tools, 117
Escarmain, 287

Esprit de corps, 96, 110-126, 159, 349
Estinne au Mont, 301
Esturmel, 273

Example, making an, 1 54 seq.
Exiles returning to their homes, 283-
286, 300

Fergie, 276

Festubert, battle, of, 154, 156, 217
Fier comme un Ecossais, 1 50
Fighting Germany in Germany's

way, 20
First parade, 51
Fitz of Virginia, 42, 137, 199, 261,

267, 278 f

Fontaine I'EvSque, 304
Forgiving enemies, 162
Fourth Brigade of Guards, 202
Fraternising with Germans, 153,

326-339
French Canadians, 145, 241 j girls,

204 seq. f peasants, 167, 203, 283 ;

women, 203

Frontier of Germany, 320
Funerals, 107, 279

Gambling, 185-187
Gardens of Cartigny, 171 seq.
Garvice, 196
Gas, effects of, 279

INDEX

353

Gaucherie, 347

General A , 9 1

George and the Dragon, 104
German girls, 337
German rear-guards, 264
Germanisms, 286

Germans, 15, 239, 315 seq. ; com-
pared with French and Belgians,

329

" Getting down to it," 117, 119
Girls, 1 20

" Giving a steady one," 216
Glory, new type of, 151
" God's in His heaven, the Guard's

in the line," 202

" Good-b'ye and spare none," 137
Good Friday, 135-136
" Go, tell to Sparta," 12 seq.
Gouzeaucourt, Guards saved day at,

i33> i79 seq.
Grandecourt, 169
Gray's Elegy, 193
Grievances, 125
Guards, 16, 199, 331 j Chapel, 102 ;

Guards never retire, 208

H , who wished to charge with

the Guards, 44, 137, 265, 275

Hackneyed quotations, 193

Hall Caine, 195

Hardy's Dynasts, 185

Harlaw, March of the Battle of, 323

Hate, 331

Haussy, shelling the returning exiles
near, 283

Havrincourt, 272

Hazebrouck Road, battle of, 201

Hellenthal, 324

Hermulheim, 333

'* Her pay-day," 120

" Hey, Johnny Cope," 108

Highlanders, 137, 165, 276

Highland Light Infantry heroes, 270

History of battalion, 149 seq.

History, soldiers' ignorance of, 197

Hohenzollern Redoubt, 154, 165

Humiliation, 57, 58

Hymns, applied to duties, 108-109 ;
parodies of, 50

" I don't mind dam-well fighting
. . ." 165

" I heard the pibroch sounding,

sounding," 323
Ignorance, 191 seq.
" Immortal Eighty," 156
Impressions of war's ruin, 147, 203,

226 seq., 268
Impurity, 76, 80
Indecent language, 57, 76
Indemnities, 341
Inhumanity, man's, to man, 158
" Innocent lures," 205
Inspection, at barrack-gate, 74 5 by

the King, 62
Institutionalism, baleful shadow of,

in Army, 123
Instructors, 28, 30, 67, in

Jerry, who sang like massed barrel-
organs, 46, 47, 49, 86

" Jimmy," the deadly foe of hum-
bug, 215

Jocks, 33, 43, 122

Joe, the stupidest man in Little
Sparta, 45, 46

Justice, 19

K , Ensign, at St. Python, 277

" Kidney," 182

" Killing Huns," 217

'* Kill or cure," 22, 64

King, his inspection of us at Little
Sparta, 62 ; King's Guard, 96,
97 seq., 112 ; loyalty to the King,
94-95 j understanding of, 94, 106,
197

Kitchener's Army, 14, 131, 154

" Knocking civvies into shape," 28

L , nicknamed Creeping Bar-
rage, 250-254

Labour men's credulity, 139
Lagnicourt, 269
Last Post, 107
La vend, 157
Les Bceufs, 169
Letters on the battle-field, 246
Life below stairs, 121
"Little Sparta," 22-81, 111-112
" Lonely soldiers," 346
Loos, 32, 56, 154, 165
" Lord Lo vat's Lament," 323

2 A

354 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS

Loving one's enemies, 255, 330
Luck, 1 86

Machine-gunnery, 78
Machines versus machines, 151
March 21, 1918, 133, 346
Marchiennes au Pont, 304
Marching, 140, 167, 295 seq., 331
Maubeuge, 288, 295
" Men of Portree," 324
Millet, 207
*' Missing," 247
Mceuvres, 241
Monchy-au-bois, 203
Monuments to the dead, 1 1 seq.
Mormal, forest of, 287
" Morning of Europe," 80
Mottoes for soldiers' graves, 1 1
Mr. Brit ling sees it through, 195
Munition manufacturer, sorrows of,
88 seq.

Nails, keeping them clean, 61

Names of the dead, 104

N.C.O.'s, 115, 155, 214

" Nelson's last signal," 194

Neuve Chapelle, 154, 159

" Never catch the sergeant's eye,"
28

New Zealand men, 23

Nicknames, 66, 181 seq., 187

Night, in the barrack-room, 50, 73 ;
over the ruins, 233

Nobby Clark, 182

" No, for I have heard the nightin-
gale itself," 80

Noreuil, 241, 268

Obedience, 57

Occupied area, 273, 281

Officers, 17, 91

Officialdom, 10, 14

" Oh, Cromwell, Cromwell . . .,"
194

" Oh, Europe, where are thy chil-
dren ? " 249

Paris leave, the way it was spent,

252
Peace, by mutual consent of rank

and file, 153 ; rumours of coming,

280 ; treaty, 340-342

Peronne, 169

Pilkelm Ridge, 179

Pipes, 99, 318 seq.

Poets of the battalion, 156, 218, 238

Polish, 59 seq., 97

" Polyphemus wants you," 125

Presbyterianism — the true religion,
102

Presenting arms, 106

President compared with King, 195

Price, Captain, V.C., 201

Pride in the regiment, 122

Prisoners, 3, 33, 139, 217, 219, 272,
284, 299

Private X, court-martial and execu-
tion of, 155 seq.

Pronville, 241

Punishment, 18, 61, 68

Purity, 29, 256

" Putting the wind up the men,"
216

Queant, 241, 244

Queen, the, 106 ; the " mobled,"
251

Rags, 157

Railway, building a, 169

Reading, 196

Red, the American volunteer, 42

Retreat, precautions for, 208

Revolutionary propaganda, 101

Ribecourt, 272

Robbery, 177, 296-297

Roman Catholics, 145-146

Rumour, 139, 280, 292, 317

Russia, 132, 328

St. Gerard, German cemetery at,

312

St. Hilaire, 274
St. Leger, 268
St. Python, 276
St. Vaast, 274, 284-285

S , the financial expert, 45

" Saki," 149

Saluting, 62

Sand-bag king, 178

Savages, imitation of, in raid, 261

School, sergeants', 54

Scott, 193

INDEX

355

Scottish prejudice in favour of Scots,

33

Second Division, 283

Self-respect defined, 64

Sentries, 119

Sepmeries, 287

Sergeant-majors, 28, 98, no seq.,
120, 156, 213-214

Sergeants, 28, 30 seq., 112

Sergeant Three, the humorous in-
structor, 34-35, 51-54

Sermon on the Mount, not available
for chaplains during the war, 255 ;
but available after armistice, 330

" Service of Caesar is service of God,"
105

Seventh Division, 150

Shakespeare quoted, 6

Shaw, G. B., recruit's ignorance of,

J95.

Shooting at dawn, 163-164
Slang, 182 seq.
Sleep, 73

Smartness, 59 seq., 64
Snookey-ookums, 55
Soldiery, 78
Solesmes, 274
Sombrin, 208
Somme, battle of, 167
Songs, 49, 128

Songster, the scapegoat, 37, 65 seq.
Souvenirs, 153, 253-255
Spartacism, 338
Spot Fraser, 182
Squaring, 57, 114, 129
State and Soldier, 105
" Stupid to the point of piety,"

204 _

Stupidity promoted, 6
Surrender, 18
Swank-parade, 55
Swearing, 28, 29, 76, 180
Symbols of the army, 106
Sympathy-killers, 215

Taffies, 3, 24, 49, 138
Taking no prisoners, policy of, 217
Tanks, 265
Taverns, 157

Tchaikovsky's " 1812," 323
" Teddie," present King referred to
as, 197

" Thank God we've got a Navy," 53
Thanksgiving service at Maubeuge,

295
" Their Name liveth for evermore,"

13

" The men are splendid," 191
" There must never be another war,"

335

Thermopylae, 81
Thinking evil, 220
Thomas Edward, 149
" Thou shalt not kill," 3
Timber Wood, 182
Time, 87

Times, not read by rank and file, 196
Tolstoy and War, 20
Tom the Grenadier, 184
Tommy's French, 286, 327
Toothbrush, 61

" Touch me not with impunity," 55
Trade Unions, 181
Train for the Front, 141 seq.
Trenches, the, 1 1
Trio juncta in uno, 54, 117
Tug Wilson, 182

Uniform, 84, 123, 170, 212-213, 346

V.C.'s, 9, 45, 155

Veterans, 152

Victory, emblem of a stuffed cock,

287

ViUers Pol, 288
Violoncellist who would not cut his

hair, 40
Voice, the, 214

Walloons, 311

War's ruins, 147, 203, 226 seq., 268

Washing off the barracks, 82 seq.

Wells, H. G., 195

" What price this for the Promised

Land," 345
Wiggs, Mrs., sometimes called Big-

sey, 271
Wilson's fourteen points accepted,

280

Winning the war by numbers, 39
Wire-cutters, 17
Wives, 74, 80, 129, 131
Wolfe, General, 193
Word of command, 213

356 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS

Working-men in khaki, 5, 37, 60, 69,

1 8 1, 190 seq.
Worst characters put in bombing

company, 165
Wounded, killing the, 3, 219

Y, the ruthless sergeant-major,

155 seq.
r.M.C.A.

66

" You pay, you obey, but you have

no say, * 335
You're for it, or you're not for it,

128
Ypres, 150, 167, 327

Zitter, marching through forest of,

3«
Zulpich, 329

THE END

Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.

BOOKS BY STEPHEN GRAHAM

A TRAMP'S SKETCHES.

WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS TO JERU-
SALEM.

WITH POOR EMIGRANTS TO AMERICA.

THE WAY OF MARTHA AND THE WAY
OF MARY.

PRIEST OF THE IDEAL.
THE QUEST OF THE FACE.

In these six books published by Macmillan & Co. will be found
a sequence of religious expression.

Other Volumes.
UNDISCOVERED RUSSIA . An interpretation of Russia

CHANGING RUSSIA ... An account of the forces

making for change, and
a warning to British
investors in Russian
business.

A VAGABOND IN THE

CAUCASUS A first book.

RUSSIA AND THE WORLD]

AND RUSSIA IN 1916 . Dealing with the War

and Russian Imperial

THROUGH RUSSIAN
CENTRAL ASIA

Politics.

A PRIVATE IN THE

GUARDS The life of the Army.

PRESS OPINIONS
THE QUEST OF THE FACE. By STEPHEN GRAHAM.

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turns of thought . . . splendid word-pictures ... a fine and inspiring book
which it has been an unalloyed pleasure to read."

OXFORD CHRONICLE.— " A book of high thinking, deep spirituality,
penetrating vision."

SUNDAY TELEGRAM.— "Something strangely fascinating in it, sad,
but saturated with Russian mysticism ... a sincere and beautiful piece of
work."

BURY FREE PRESS.—" The author has been absorbed by the insati-
able maw of the Army, but before relinquishing literature he laid upon the
altar of public thought a work sure to evoke much discussion. ... In it the
author brings to bear analytical research in a profoundly interesting manner.
He seeks for the face of his thoughts, his dreams, and suggests that there is
such a face in the backgrounds of the minds of all of us. The incidents and
circumstances which mark his quest possess a realism which is none the less
because of the poetic glamour which surrounds the whole work. The book
will be widely read : it can scarcely fail to make its mark in current
literature."

CHICAGO TRIBUNE. — " A series of devout, often ecstatic, sometimes
mystical essays and sketches. Evidently a Catholic of the most exalted happi-
ness, he offers this strange fruit of his mind with a royal gesture. Thought is
with him a sort of sacrament. His originality in writing of religious matters
saves his work from any sort of banality. He won a certain distinction with
The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary, and the same oddities, vagaries,
and transcendental qualities, the same aspiring ideas and exquisite wistfulness
toward holiness and beauty distinguish this book . . . the writing may be
called super-writing."

R. J. CAMPBELL in CHURCH FAMILY NEWSPAPER.—" A haunt-
ing, challenging book."

DAILY GRAPHIC.—" To the genuine seeker, a treasure."

THE NA TION. — "There is probably something in it. When the war is
over and there is time for another attempt we may find out."

PRESS OPINIONS— Continued.

PRIEST OF THE IDEAL. By STEPHEN GRAHAM.
2nd Impression.

QUEST. — " An unusual book which will puzzle, exasperate, and even
possibly disgust the ordinary reviewer because it eludes his ordinary pigeon-
holes. It is not merely a pilgrimage to the holy places of the British Isles,
but a spiritual quest of the new ideas abroad in England. ... It is difficult
to give an idea of the beauty and fertility of the thought of a book which is
not the exposition of a system but a gospel."

SPECTATOR. — " The dramatic interest of the book lies in the conflict
between the men who believe ultimately in the power of money and the men
who believe ultimately in the power of God. . . . Although the two leading
characters are not so much persons as representatives of two opposed lines of
thought, the lesser figures are skilfully and convincingly drawn. But the
strength of the book lies in its handling of the vital problem — the conduct of
our daily lives ... a high-minded and beautiful book."

MADRAS MAIL.—" This book will be read not only for its idealism
but for its descriptions of England's ' holy places.' Whether exiled or not,
the true Briton has always the vastness of York Minster, the strength of
Durham, the * all loveliness and aspiration ' of Lincoln present to his mind,
and appreciates any opportunity of refreshing his memory with a new word-
picture."

THE WAY OF MARTHA AND THE WAY OF
MARY. By STEPHEN GRAHAM. $th Impression.

WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.— "The deepest thing in Christianity is
personal choice. ... To Mr. Graham, then, there is not one orthodoxy, but
many, and the test of them all is the measure in which they approach to the
universal. . . . That is Mr. Graham's message. How he presents it — in this
rapt, ardent, piercing, and creative description of a strange, wonderful, and
alien people — is the delight and illumination of his book."

EVENING STANDARD.— "Christianity ! you exclaim. Why, the
clever men have assured us it is played out. We look for a new revelation —
or to the reign of reason. Here comes Mr. Graham, however, preaching that
Christianity, so far from being played out, has hardly begun. ' This young
religion of Christianity,' he calls it, and surmises that 6000 years hence it may
have crystallised out from the present chaos of its tenets. ' As yet it is in the
confused grandeur of youth. It has all possibilities.' If this be not optimism,
I do not know what the word can be applied to. Think what it means !
Belief in the youth of the world, in a far-reaching future of belief. Twenty
years ago, a man would have been considered a romantic fool who talked so.
But make no mistake, Mr. Graham and his like are not regarded in that light
by the generation that is coming on. It is not a generation born old. It has
the will to live, to affirm rather than deny. THOMAS LLOYD."

PRESS OPINIONS— Continued.

WITH POOR EMIGRANTS TO AMERICA. By
STEPHEN GRAHAM.

GLASGOW NEWS.—"W\tin. a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the
books on travel in America published in the past twenty-five years by English
authors, the present writer has not a moment's hesitation in declaring that
With Poor Emigrants to America is immeasurably the best among them all.
It is not only an unusually informative book ; it is a work of spiritual genius,
precious by reason of its revelation of as unique and beautiful a character as
surely has dignified the trade of letters since the period of Lamb or Goldsmith.
Stephen Graham is something far more rare than an " interpreter of Russia "
or a philosophical "tramp"; his quiet voice, if he be spared, is likely to
sound even more distinctively and more impressively above the noisy chatter
of his contemporaries. It is perhaps a little unfortunate that his interest
should be so much engaged with Russia, for we grudge to Russia an expositor
who, we think, might be better employed in writing about his own race, but
then we must admit that but for the influence of Russia we might perhaps
have had no Stephen Graham."

THE NATION. — " Mr. Stephen Graham is a real super-tramp, and in
his aspect of the world and his fellows there is always a touch of the pilgrim's
sanctity. He feels an attraction, partly aesthetic, often sentimental, to people
of simple and religious life, and especially to the Russian peasants, whom he
depicts as the simplest and most religious of all mankind. He loves the
beauty of untouched nature, and of man pursuing the primitive and traditional
methods of pasture, plough, or loom. He is always conscious of a spiritual
presence behind phenomena, and is strongly drawn by emotions of pity,
sympathy, and fellow-feeling, as by the qualities of humility and indifference
to material things. ... Of all English writers on America Mr. Graham is
almost the only one who tells us certain things that we really wanted to
know."

WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS TO JERU-
SALEM. By STEPHEN GRAHAM.

THE DAILY MAIL.—" Mr. Stephen Graham is favourably known as
the interpreter of modern Russia and more particularly of the peasant. To
that task he brings every accomplishment. He has sympathy ; he has the
insight of genius and the heart of the poet. He has a rare and precious gift
of style. . . . He seems to have divined by some flash of intuition the
psychology of the Russian. This book will add greatly to his already great
reputation. It is a pleasure to praise such work. Here he has given us an
extraordinarily beautiful and interesting account of an extraordinarily interest-
ing achievement. ... It breaks entirely fresh ground. It makes a deep and
universal appeal."

THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.— " The best book on Russia
written by an Englishman."

A TRAMP'S SKETCHES. By STEPHEN GRAHAM.

ACADEMY.—" To have read A Tramp's Sketches is to have been lifted
into a higher and rarer atmosphere. It is to have been made free, for a few
hours at least, of the company of saints and heroes. This much we owe to
Mr. Graham, who has added to English Literature a book that, if we mistake
not, is destined to endure."

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
4

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY,
BERKELEY

'miration of loan period

FR18H84

rec'd circ. APR 2 0

20m-ll,'20

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

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