DODD. Oh, I don't know. Funny thing; but all through this fortnight I've been absolutely certain that I was not for it.

LANCE-CORPORAL. Beg pardon, sir, we noticed that, sir!

WHISTON. Well, it's practically over now.

DODD. I'm not so sure. I'm not in a funk, you know. It's simply that I don't feel so sure.

WHISTON. Oh, rot, sir! I don't believe in that sort of presentiment.

DODD. What do you think, Corporal?

LANCE-CORPORAL. I think you goes when your time comes, sir. But it won't come to-night, sir. Not after all we been through this spell, and the spell just finished.

DODD. I believe you're right, Corporal. We shall go when our time comes, and not before. I like that idea, you know. It means one hasn't got to worry.

WHISTON. If it means that you go on as you've done the last fortnight, it's a damnable doctrine, sir. You've no business to go taking unnecessary risks simply because you've got bitten by Mohammedanism.

DODD (thoughtfully). You're right, too, Whiston. "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." One shouldn't take unnecessary risks. Mind you, I don't admit that I have. It just enables one to do one's job with a quiet mind, that's all.

TWO DAYS LATER

SCENE. A billet. HANCOCK and SMITH.

HANCOCK. Damn!

SMITH. What's up? Aren't you satisfied? The brigade's bound to go back and re-form now, and that means that we shan't be in the trenches for a couple of months at least. We may even go where there's a pretty girl or two. My word!

HANCOCK. Damnation!

SMITH (genuinely astonished). What the hell's wrong? Any one would think you liked the trenches! Personally, I don't care if I never see them again. England's full of nice young, bright young things crying to get out. Let 'em all come! They can have my job and welcome!

HANCOCK (to himself). God! Why Dodd and Whiston? Why, why, why? Why not me? Why just the fellows we can't afford to lose?

SMITH. Oh, for God's sake stow it! What the hell's the good of going on like that? Of course I'm sorry for them and all that. But I don't see that it's going to help them to make oneself miserable about it.

HANCOCK (fiercely). Sorry for them! It's not them I'm sorry for! They ... they're the lucky ones! God! I suppose that's the answer! They'd earned it!

SMITH (satirically). Have you turned pi? We shall have you saying the prayers that you learnt at your mother's knee next, I suppose! I shall have to tell the Padre, and he'll preach a sermon about it! I should never have thought you would have been frightened into religion!

HANCOCK. Frightened! You little swine! You talk about being frightened after last night! I tell you I'd rather be lying out there with Dodd and Whiston than be sitting here with you. Frightened into religion!

SMITH. Oh, I suppose you're the next candidate for death or glory! Good luck to you! I'm not competing. I'll do my job; but I'm not going to make a fool of myself. Dodd and Whiston deserved all they got. You're right there. You'll get what you deserve some day, I expect! Don't look at me like that. I've said I'm sorry, and all that. But it's the truth I'm speaking, all the same.

HANCOCK. And you'll get what you deserve too, I suppose, which is to live in your own company till the end of your miserable existence. I won't deprive you of your reward more than I can help, I promise you!

(HANCOCK goes out.)



IX

THE WISDOM OF "A STUDENT IN ARMS"

It is no good trying to fathom "things" to the bottom; they have not got one.

Knowledge is always descriptive, and never fundamental. We can describe the appearance and conditions of a process; but not the way of it.

Agnosticism is a fundamental fact. It is the starting-point of the wise man who has discovered that it needs eternity to study infinity.

Agnosticism, however, is no excuse for indolence. Because we cannot know all, we need not therefore be totally ignorant.

The true wisdom is that in which all knowledge is subordinate to practical aims, and blended into a working philosophy of life.

The true wisdom is that it is not what a man does, or has, or says, that matters; but what he is.

This must be the aim of practical philosophy—to make a man be something.

The world judges a man by his station, inherited or acquired. God judges by his character. To be our best we must share God's viewpoint.

To the world death is always a tragedy; to the Christian it is never a tragedy unless a man has been a contemptible character.

Religion is the widening of a man's horizon so as to include God.

It is in the nature of a speculation, but its returns are immediate.

True religion means betting one's life that there is a God.

Its immediate fruits are courage, stability, calm, unselfishness, friendship, generosity, humility, and hope.

Religion is the only possible basis of optimism.

Optimism is the essential condition of progress.

One is what one believes oneself to be. If one believes oneself to be an animal one becomes bestial; if one believes oneself spiritual one becomes Divine.

Faith is an effective force whose measure has never yet been taken.

Man is the creature of heredity and environment. He can only rise superior to circumstances by bringing God into environment of which he is conscious.

The recognition of God's presence upsets the balance of a man's environment, and means a new birth into a new life.

The faculties which perceive God increase with use like any other perceptive faculties.

Belief in God may be an illusion; but it is an illusion that pays.

If belief in God is illusion, happy is he who is deluded! He gains this world and thinks he will gain the next.

The disbeliever loses this world, and risks losing the next.

To be the centre of one's universe is misery. To have one's universe centred in God is the peace that passeth understanding.

Greatness is founded on inward peace.

Energy is only effective when it springs from deep calm.

The pleasure of life lies in contrasts; the fear of contrasts is a chain that binds most men.

In the hour of danger a man is proven. The boaster hides, and the egotist trembles. He whose care is for others forgets to be afraid.

Men live for eating and drinking, passion and wealth. They die for honour.

Blessed is he of whom it has been said that he so loved giving that he even gave his own life.



X

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS

III

SCENE. A trench unpleasantly near the firing line. There has been an hour's intense bombardment by the British, with suitable retaliation by the Boches. The retaliation is just dying down.

CHARACTERS. ALBERT—Round-eyed, rotund, red-cheeked, yellow-haired, and deliberate; in civil life probably a drayman. JIM—Small, lean, sallow, grey-eyed, with a kind of quiet restlessness; in civil life probably a mechanic with leanings towards Socialism. POZZIE—A thick-set, low-browed, impassive, silent country youth, with a face the colour of the soil. JINKS—An old soldier, red, lean, wrinkled, with very blue eyes. His face is rough-hewn, almost grotesque like a gargoyle. In his eyes there is a perpetual glint of humour, and in the poise of his head a certain irrepressible jauntiness.

ALBERT (whose eyes are more staring than ever, his cheeks pendulous and crimson, his general air that of a partly deflated air-cushion). Gawd's truth!

JINKS (wagging his head). Well, my old sprig o' mint, what's wrong wi' you?

ALBERT. It ain't right. (Sententiously) It's agin natur'. Flesh an' blood weren't made for this sort o' think.

JIM. It ain't flesh an' blood that can't stand it. It's Mind. Look at old Pozzie. 'E's flesh an' blood, and don't turn an 'air! For myself I'll go potty one o' these days.

JINKS (slapping POZZIE on the back). You don't take no notice, do you, old lump o' duff?

POZZIE. Oi woulden moind if I got moy rations; but a chap can't keep a good 'eart if 'e's got an empty stummick.

JIM (sarcastically). You keep yer 'eart in yer stomach, don't yer? You ain't got no mind, you ain't. Jinks was born potty, an' the rest of us'll all go potty except you. It's you an' yer Ally Sloper's Cavalry what'll win the war, I don't think!

ALBERT. What I wants ter know is 'ow long the bleedin' war's a-goin' ter last. If it goes on much longer I'll be potty if I ain't a gone 'un.

JIM. There's only one way of ending it as I knows on.

ALBERT. What's that, matey?

JIM. Put all the bleedin' politicians on both sides in the bleedin' trenches. Give 'em a week's bombardment, an' send 'em away for a week to make peace, with a promise of a fortnight's intense at the end of it if they've failed. They'd find a way, sure enough.

ALBERT (admiringly). Ah, that they would an' all. If old "Wait and See" 'ad been 'ere these last four days 'e wouldn't talk about fightin' to the last man!

JINKS. Don't talk stoopid. 'Oo began the bloomin' war? Don't yer know what you're fightin' for? D'you want ter leave the 'Uns in France an' Belgium an' Serbia an' all? It ain't fer us to make peace. It's fer the 'Uns. An' if you are done in, you got to go under some day. I ain't sure as they ain't the lucky ones what's got it over and done with. And arter all, it's not us what's not proper. The 'Uns 'ave 'ad two fer our one.

ALBERT. They got dug-outs as deep as 'ell, it don't touch 'em.

JINKS. (but without conviction). Don't talk silly.

POZZIE. Oi reckon we got to go through with it. But they didn't ought to give a chap short rations. That's what takes the 'eart out of a chap.



XI

LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN[2]

April 17, 1916.

Thank you very much for your letter of a week ago, which I should have tried to answer before if I had had time. I am afraid that your confidence in me as an oracle will be severely shaken when I confess that I was once on the eve of being ordained, and that in the end I funked it because it seemed such an awfully difficult job, and I couldn't see my way to going through with it.

[Footnote 2: This chapter is the actual text of a letter from "A Student in Arms," and like the most of the other chapters appeared originally in the Spectator.]

However, I must try to answer your letter as best I can, and I hope that you will not mind my speaking plainly what I think, and will remember that I do so in no spirit of superiority, but very humbly, as one who has funked the great work that you have had the pluck to take up, and who has even failed in the little bit of work that he himself did try and do. This last means that I have no business to be an officer. It was the biggest mistake in my life, for my position in the ranks did give me a hold on the fellows, the strength of which I have only realized since I left.

Now then to the point. As I understand you, your difficulty is that you feel that you must devote yourself to strengthening a very few men who are already Churchmen, and to whom you can talk in the language of the Church of things which you know they want to hear about, or you must appeal to the crowd of those who are merely good fellows and often sad scamps too, who must be caught with buns and cinemas and who are very difficult to get any farther.

I fancy that you, like me, when you see a fine dashing young fellow, with a touch of honesty and recklessness and wonderful mystery of youth in his eyes, love him as a brother, and long to do something to keep him clean, and to keep him from the sordid things to which you and I know well enough he will descend in the long run if one cannot put the love of clean, wholesome life into his heart. But how to get at him? If you talk to him about his soul you disgust him, and you feel a sort of sneaking sympathy with him too. It does not seem the thing to make a chap self-conscious and a bit of a prig when he is not one to start with. On the other hand, if you just keep to buns and cinemas you never get any farther. Well, it is a big difficulty. The only experience that I have had which counts at all is experience that I gained while trying to run a boys' club in South London, and you must not think me egotistical if I tell you what seems to me to have been the secret of any power that I seem to have had over fellows.

At first I used to have a short service at the close of the club every evening, to which most of the boys used to stay. I also had a service on Sunday afternoon. Something of the same sort might perhaps be possible in the Y.M.C.A. tent if there is one where you are. When I was talking to them at these services I always used to try and make them feel that Christ was the fulfilment of all the best things that they admired, that He was their natural hero. I would tell them some story of heroism and meanness contrasted, of courage and cowardice, of noble forgiveness and vile cruelty, and so get them on the side of the angels. Then I would try and spring it upon them that Christ was the Lord of the heroes and the brave men and the noble men, and that He was fighting against all that was mean and cruel and cowardly, and that it was up to them to take their stand by His side if they wanted to make the world a little better instead of a little worse, and I would try to show them how in little practical ways in their homes and at their work and in the club they could do a bit for Christ.

Well, they listened pretty well, and I think that they agreed in a general sort of way, only 'they knew that I was a richish man in comparison with them, and that I didn't have their difficulties to contend with, and that all tended to undo the effect of what I had said. And then accident gave me a sort of clue to the way to get them to take one seriously. For some idiotic reason—I really couldn't say just what it was—I dressed up as a tramp one day, and spent a night in a casual ward. I didn't do it for any very worthy motive, and I didn't mean any one to know about it; but it got round, and I suddenly found that it had caught the imaginations of some of the fellows, and I realized that if one was to have any power over them one must do symbolic things to show them that one meant what one said about love being really better than money, and all that sort of thing. So in rather a half-hearted way I did try to do things which would show them that I was in earnest. I took a couple of rooms in a little cottage in a funny little bug-ridden court, instead of living at the mission-house. I went out to Australia steerage to see why emigration of London boys was not a success, and when war broke out I enlisted, although I had previously held a commission. And all these little things, though on reasonable grounds often rather indefensible, undoubtedly had the effect of making my South London boys take me more seriously than they did at first. Well, I am quite sure that with Tommies, if ever you get a chance of doing something in the way of sharing their privations and dangers when you aren't obliged to, or of showing in practical ways humility and unselfishness, that will endear you to them, and give you weight with them more than anything else. In my time in the ranks I had that proved over and over again. If once I was able to do even a small kindness for a fellow which involved a bit of unnecessary trouble, he would never forget it, and would repay me a thousand times over. I was a sergeant for about nine months in England, and had one or two chances. Then I reverted to the ranks, and for that the men could not do enough to show me kindness. (It was my not valuing rank and comparative comfort for its own sake that appealed to them.) Continually I have reaped a most gigantic reward of goodwill for actions which cost very little, and which were not always done from the motives imputed.

I am not swanking—at least, I don't mean to—but that is just my experience, that with Tommy it is actions, and specially actions that imply and symbolize humility, courage, unselfishness, etc., that count ten thousand times more than the best sermons in the world. I am afraid that all this is not much good because you are an officer, and your course of action is very clearly marked out for you by authority. But I do say that if ever you have a chance of showing that you are willing to share the often hard and sometimes humiliating lot of the men it is that which above all things will give you power with them; just as it is the Cross of Christ, and the spitting and the mocking and the scourging, and the degradation of His exposure in dying, that gives Him His power far more than even the Sermon on the Mount. After all, it is always what costs most that is best worth having, and if you only see Tommy in his easiest moments, when he is at the Y.M.C.A. or the club, you see him at the time when he is least impressionable in a permanent manner.

Well, I must apologize for writing such an egotistical and intimate sort of letter on so slight a provocation. But this that I have said is all that my experience has taught me about influencing the Tommy.

No doubt there are other ways; but I have not been able to strike them.

Yours very truly, DONALD HANKEY, 2nd Lieut.

P.S.—Of course in becoming a Second Lieutenant I have dished my own influence most effectually. It has often appeared to me that among ordinary working men humility was considered the Christian virtue par excellence. Humility combined with love is so rare, I suppose, and that is why it is marvelled at.



XII

"DON'T WORRY"

This is at present the soldier's favourite chorus at the front—

"What's the use of worrying? It never was worth while! Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag And Smile, Smile, Smile!"

Not a bad chorus, either, for the trenches! You can't stop a shell from bursting in your trench, even if Mr. Rawson can! You can't stop the rain, or prevent a light from going up just as you are half-way over the parapet ... so what on earth is the use of worrying? If you can't alter things, you must accept them, and make the best of them.

Yet some men do worry, and by so doing effectually destroy their peace of mind without doing any one any good. What is worse, it is often the religious man who worries. I have even heard those whose care was for the soldier's soul, deplore the fact that he did not worry! I have heard it said that the soldier is so careless, realizes his position so little, is so hard to touch! And, on the other hand, I have heard the soldier say that he did not want religion, because it would make him worry. Strange, isn't it, if Christianity means worry and anxiety, and if it is only the heathen who is cheerful and free from care? Yet the feeling that this is so undoubtedly exists, and it must have some foundation. Perhaps it is one of the subjects which ought to engage the attention of Churchmen in these days of "repentance and hope."

Of course, worrying is about as un-Christian as anything can be. [Greek: "me merimnate te psyche umon"]—"Don't worry about your life"—is the Master's express command. In fact, the call of Christ is a call to something very like the cheerfulness of the soldier in the trenches. It is a call to a life of external turmoil and internal peace. "I came not to bring peace, but a sword"; "take up your cross and follow Me"; "ye shall be hated"; "he that would save his life shall lose it." It is a call to take risks, to risk poverty, unpopularity, humiliation, death. It is a call to follow the way of the Cross. But the way of the Cross is also the way of peace, the peace of God that passeth understanding. It is a way of freedom from all cares, and anxieties, and fears; but not a way of escape from them.

Yet worrying is often a feature of the actual Churchman. The actual Churchman is often a man whose conscience is an incubus. He can do nothing without weighing motives and calculating results. It makes him introspective to an extent that is positively morbid. He is continually probing himself to discover whether his motives are really pure and disinterested, continually trying to decide whether he is "worthy" or "fit" to undertake this or that responsibility, or to face this or that eventuality. He is full of suspicion of himself, of self-distrust. In the trenches he is always wondering whether he is fit to die, whether he will acquit himself worthily in a crisis, whether he has done anything that he ought not to have done, or left undone anything that he ought to have done. Especially if he is an officer, his responsibility weighs on him terribly, and I have known more than one good fellow and conscientious Churchman worry himself into thinking that he was unfit for his responsibilities as an officer, and ask to be relieved of them.

There must be something wrong about the Christianity of such men. Their over-conscientiousness seems to create a wholly wrong sense of proportion, an exaggerated sense of the significance of their own actions and characters which is as far removed as can be from the childlike humility which Christ taught. The truth seems to be that we lay far too much stress on conscience, self-examination, and personal salvation, and that we trust the Holy Spirit far too little.

If we look to the teaching of Christ, we do not find any recommendation to meticulous self-analysis, but rather we are taught a kind of spiritual recklessness, an unquestioning confidence in what seem to be right impulses, and that quite regardless of results. We are not told to be careful to spend each penny to the best advantage; but we are told that if our money is preventing us from entering the Kingdom, we had better give it all away. We are not told to set a high value on our lives, and to spend them with care for the good of the Kingdom. On the contrary, we are told to risk our lives recklessly if we would preserve them. A sense of anxious responsibility is discouraged. If our limbs cause us to offend, we are advised to cut them off.

The whole teaching of the Gospels is that we have got to find freedom and peace in trusting ourselves implicitly to the care of God. We have got to follow what we think right quite recklessly, and leave the issue to God; and in judging between right and wrong we are only given two rules for our guidance. Everything which shows love for God and love for man is right, and everything which shows personal ambition and anxiety is wrong.

What all this means as far as the trenches are concerned is extraordinarily clear. The Christian is advised not to be too pushing or ambitious. He is advised to "take the lowest room." But if he is told to move up higher, he has got to go. If he is given responsibility, there is no question of refusing it. He has got to do his best and leave the issue to God. If he does well, he will be given more responsibility. But there is no need to worry. The same formula holds good for the new sphere. Let him do his best and leave the issue to God. If he does badly, well, if he did his best, that means that he was not fit for the job, and he must be perfectly willing to take a humbler job, and do his best at that.

As for personal danger, he must not think of it. If he is killed, that is a sign that he is no longer indispensable. Perhaps he is wanted elsewhere. The enemy can only kill the body, and the body is not the important thing about him. Every man who goes to war must, if he is to be happy, give his body, a living sacrifice, to God and his country. It is no longer his. He need not worry about it. The peace of God which passeth all understanding simply comes from not worrying about results because they are God's business and not ours, and in trusting implicitly all impulses that make for love of God and man. Few of us perhaps will ever attain to a full measure of such faith; but at least we can make sure that our "Christianity" brings us nearer to it.



XIII

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS

IV

AU COIFFEUR

SCENE. A barber's shop in a small French town about thirty miles from the front. A SUBALTERN and a stout BOURGEOIS are waiting their turn.

BOURGEOIS. Is it that it is the mud of the trenches on the boots of Monsieur?

SUBALTERN. Ah! but no, Monsieur, for then it would reach to my waist!

BOURGEOIS. Nevertheless, Monsieur is but recently come from the trenches, is it not so?

SUBALTERN. Yes, I am arrived from the trenches yesterday.

BOURGEOIS. Then Monsieur has assisted at the great attack!

SUBALTERN. Oh, yes, I helped a very little bit.

BOURGEOIS. There have been immense losses, is it not so?

SUBALTERN (vaguely). There are always great losses when one attacks.

BOURGEOIS. Ah! but much greater than one expected—I have seen, I, the wounded coming down the river.

SUBALTERN. I—I have always expected great losses.

BOURGEOIS. 'Tis true. There are always great losses when one attacks. But all goes well, Monsieur, is it not so?

SUBALTERN. It is difficult to estimate the success of an attack until after several weeks. But I think that all goes well.

BOURGEOIS. But yes, the French, they have had a great success, and also the English. The English are wonderful. Their equipment! It is that which astonishes me. Everything is complete. They say that the English have saved France; but the French also, they have saved England, is it not so, Monsieur?

SUBALTERN. But we are saving each other!

BOURGEOIS. Good! We are saving each other! Very good! But after the war, Monsieur, England will fight against France, hein?

SUBALTERN. Never!

BOURGEOIS. Never?

SUBALTERN. Never in life!

BOURGEOIS. You think so?

SUBALTERN. We do not love war. We do not seek war. It is only when a nation is so execrable that one is compelled to fight, as have been the Germans, that we make war.

BOURGEOIS. You do not love war, eh? Before the war you had a very small Army, about three hundred thousand, is it not so? And now you have about three million. You do not love war, you others.

SUBALTERN. The Germans thought that they loved war, but I do not believe that they will love it very much longer!

BOURGEOIS. No! The war will give them the stomach-ache. They will love it no longer!

COIFFEUR. But these English, whom did they fight before? The Boers, was it not?

SUBALTERN. Yes, but a great many English think now that it was a betise. There was also great provocation. And nevertheless, who knows if there was not in that affair also a German plot?

BOURGEOIS. It is very likely. Then Monsieur thinks that we are true friends, the English and the French?

SUBALTERN. But yes, Monsieur, because we love, both of us, liberty and peace.



XIV

A PASSING IN JUNE, 1915

PROLOGUE

SCENE. The parlour of an Auberge.

PERSONS. A stoist motherly MADAME, a wrinkled fatherly MONSIEUR, and a plain but pleasant MA'MSELLE. Some English soldiers drinking. CECIL is talking in French to MONSIEUR, and they are all very friendly.

MADAME. Alors, vous n'avez pas encore ete aux tranchees?

CECIL. Mais non, Madame, peut-etre ce soir.

(MONSIEUR and MADAME exchange glances. CECIL rises to go.)

CECIL. A Jeudi, Monsieur, Madame, Ma'mselle.

MONSIEUR, MADAME, AND MA'MSELLE (in chorus). A Jeudi, Monsieur.

MADAME (earnestly). Bon courage, Monsieur!

(Curtain)

ACT I. DAWN

CECIL is discovered lying behind a wall of sandbags. On one side are the sandbags, and on the other an idyllic spring scene, with flowers and orchards seen in the half-light of a spring morning. The dawn breaks gently, and soon bullets begin to ping through the air, flattening themselves against the sandbags, or passing over CECIL's head. He wakes and yawns, and then composes himself with his eyes open.

Enter Allegorical personages: FATHER SUN, MOTHER EARTH, and a chorus of GRASSES, POPPIES, CORNFLOWERS, RAGGED ROBINS, DAISIES, BEETLES, BEES, FLIES, and insects of all kinds.

FATHER SUN.

Wake, children, rub your eyes, Up and dance and sing and play, Not a cloud is in the skies; This is going to be my day. See the tiny dew-drop glisten In my glancing golden ray; See the shadows dancing, listen To the lark so blithe and gay. Up, children, dance and play, This is my own festal day.

FLOWERS, BEETLES, ETC.

Dance and sing In a ring, Naughty clouds are chased away; Oh what fun, Father Sun Is going to shine the whole long day.

MOTHER EARTH. That's right, children. This is the day to grow in; but don't forget to come home to dinner; I've got such a nice dinner for you.

(The children dance away delightedly, while CECIL watches them, fascinated.)

MOTHER EARTH. What's this absurd young man doing, sitting behind that ugly wall? Why don't he sit under a tree if he must sit?

FATHER SUN. Oh, he's a lunatic! Must be.

(RANDOM BULLET jumps over the sandbags into the dug-out, and jibbers impotently at CECIL, who glances up at him with a look of disgust.)

RANDOM BULLET. Ping! Ping. It's me he's afraid of. He daren't stir a yard from this wall, or I'd tear his brains out. Ping! Ping!

MOTHER EARTH. Who are you, Monster?

RANDOM BULLET. I'm Random Bullet. I am a monster, I am! Ping!

MOTHER EARTH. Who sent you, anyway?

RANDOM BULLET. Why, the idiots behind the other wall, over there! Sometimes I jump at them, and sometimes I jump over here. I don't care which way it is; but I like tearing their brains out, I do. I don't care which lot it is.

MOTHER EARTH. What madness!

FATHER SUN (indignantly). On my day too!

RANDOM BULLET. Mad! I should think they were! Never mind, they give me some fun! Ping! So long, I'm off, going to jump at the other fellows, back in a second if you like to wait.

(RANDOM BULLET jumps out of sight, and MOTHER EARTH and FATHER SUN move disgustedly away.)

CECIL (getting up). Mad! By God, we are mad! Curse the war! Curse the fools who started it! Why did I ever come out here? What a way to spend a morning in June!

(Curtain.)

ACT II. MIDDAY

SCENE. The same. CECIL as before, but sweltering in the sun. Enter the SPIRIT OF THIRST.

THIRST. Oh for a drink! Water, anything! I could drink a bath full. What a place to spend a June day in! When one thinks of all the drinks one might be having, it is really infuriating. Gad! The very thought of 'em makes me feel quite poetic! Think of the great barrels of still cider in cool Devonshire cellars! Think of the sour refreshing wine we used to get in Italy! And the iced cocktails of Colombo! And Pimm's No. 1 in the City. Anywhere but here it's a pleasure to be a Thirst; but here! Good Lord, it will send me off my head. How would a bath go now, old chap? By God, don't you wish you were back in your canoe, drawn up among the rushes near Islip, and you just going to plunge into the cool waters of the Char? Or think of that day you bathed in the deep still pool at the foot of the Tamarin Falls, with the water crashing down above you, into the deep shady chasm. Even a dip in the sea at Mount Lavinia wouldn't be bad now,—or, better still, a dive into Como from a rowboat; you remember that hot summer we went to Como? I'll tell you another thing that wouldn't go down badly either. Do you remember a great bowl of strawberries and cream with a huge ice in it, that you had the day before you left school, after that hot bike ride to Leamington? Not bad, was it?

CECIL (fiercely). Shut up, you beast! Oh, curse this idiotic war! Why are we such fools?

(Curtain.)

ACT III. LATE AFTERNOON

SCENE. As before. CECIL is discovered reading a letter from home.

CECIL (to himself). Tom dead. Good Lord! What times we have had together! Where are all the good fellows I used to know? Half of them dead, and the rest condemned to die! No more yachting on the broads! No more convivial evenings at the Troc.! No more long nights spinning yarns in Tom's old rooms in the Temple! Curse this blasted war that robs one of everything worth having, that dulls every sense of decency and kills all feeling for beauty, destroys the joy of life, and mutilates one's dearest friends. Curse it!

(A sound as of an express train is heard, followed by the roar of an explosion, while a dense cloud of smoke and dust rises immediately in view of the trench.)

PORTENTOUS VOICE. Prepare to face eternity!

CECIL (clenching his fists). Beast, loathsome beast! Don't think I am afraid of you.

(The sounds are repeated as a second shell drops, rather nearer. A Shadow appears round the dug-out, and hesitates.)

CECIL (to the Shadow). Who is that? Is that the Shadow of Fear?

A THIN, QUAVERING VOICE. Yes, shall I come in?

CECIL (furiously). Out of my sight, vile, cringing wretch! Not even your shadow will I tolerate in my presence!

(A third shell bursts nearer still.)

PORTENTOUS VOICE (thunderously). Set not your affections on things below.

(CECIL pauses in a listening attitude).

CECIL (more quietly, and with a new look in his eyes). I think I have forgotten something,—something rather important.

(Enter the twin Spirits of HONOUR and DUTY, Spirits of a very noble and courtly mien.)

CECIL (simply and humbly). Gentlemen, to my sorrow and loss I had forgotten you. You are doubly welcome.

THE SPIRIT OF DUTY. Young sir, we thank you. After all, it is but right that in this hour of danger and dismay we should be with you.

THE SPIRIT OF HONOUR. I am so old a friend of you and yours, Cecil, that you may surely trust me. I was your father's friend. Side by side we stood in every crisis of his varied life. Together faced the Dervish rush at Abu Klea, and afterwards in India took our part in many a desperate unnamed frontier tussle. I helped him woo your mother, spoke for him when he put up for Parliament, advised him when he visited the city. In fact, I was his companion all through life, and I stood beside his bed at death.

THE SPIRIT OF DUTY. I too may claim to have been as much your father's friend as was my brother. Indeed, where one is, the other is never far away. We do agree most wonderfully, and since our birth, no quarrel has ever disturbed the harmony of our ways.

CECIL. Gentlemen, you have recalled me to myself. I had forgotten that I was no more a child. I wanted to dance in the sun with the flowers, and sing with the birds, to swim in the pool with yonder newt, and lie down to dry in the long meadow grass among the poppies. Because I might not do this and other things as fond and foolish, I was petulant and peevish, like a spoilt child. I look to you, gentlemen, to help me to be a man, and play a man's part in the world.

HONOUR. We will remain at hand, call us when you need us, we shall not fail you.

(The bombardment increases in intensity. Shrapnel bursts overhead. Shells with increasing rapidity and accuracy explode both short and over the trench. The hail of bullets is continuous. An N.C.O. rushes by shouting "Stand to"; men rush from the dug-outs and seize their rifles; CECIL, like the others, grasps his rifle and sees that it is fully loaded.)

(Curtain.)

ACT IV. SUNSET

SCENE. The same, but the wall of sand-bags bags is broken in many places. The dead lie half-buried beneath them. CECIL lies, badly wounded, against a gap in the wall, his rifle by his side. HONOUR and DUTY kneel beside him tenderly. The last rays of the sun light up his painful smile. THIRST stands gloomily over him, and the wild flowers are peeping at him with sleepy eyes through the gap, while MOTHER EARTH calls to them to go to bed. FATHER SUN leans sadly over the broken parapet.

CECIL (slowly and with difficulty). Honour, Duty, I thank you. You did not fail me.

HONOUR. You played the man, Cecil, as your father did before you.

DUTY. Your example it was that steadied your comrades, and kept craven fear at a distance. You saved the trench.

HONOUR. This is the beauty of manhood, to die for a good cause. There is no fairer thing in all God's world.

CECIL. I thank you. Good-night, Sun; good-night, Mother Earth. Think kindly of me. I don't think I was mad after all.

SUN. Good-night, brave lad. (To MOTHER EARTH) I can hardly bear to look on so sad a sight.

CECIL. Good-night, Ragged Robins; good-night, Poppies. You have played your game, and I mine. Only they are different because we are different.

CHORUS OF FLOWERS. Good-night, dear Cecil. We are so very sorry that you are hurt.

(Enter the MASTER, flowers shyly following him. HONOUR and DUTY raise CECIL gently to a standing position.)

THE MASTER (extending his arms with a loving smile). "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

(CECIL, with a look of wonder and joy, is borne forward.)

(Curtain.)



XV

MY HOME AND SCHOOL[3]

A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I

MY HOME

What is one to say of home? It is difficult to know. I find that biographers are particular about the date of birth, the exact address of the babe, the social position and ancestry of the parent. I suppose that it is all that they can learn. But as an autobiographer I want to do something better; to give a picture of the home where, as I can now see, ideals, tastes, prejudices and habits were formed which have persisted through all the internal revolutions that have since upheaved my being.

[Footnote 3: "A Student" left a great deal of manuscript, among which this fragment of autobiography is not the least interesting.]

I try to form the picture in my mind, and a crowd of detail rushes in which completely destroys its simplicity and harmony. How hard it is to judge, even at this distance, what are the salient features. I must try, but I know that from the point of view of psychological development I may easily miss out the very factors which were really most important.

I remember a big house, in a row of other big houses, in a side street leading from the East Cliff at Brighton right up to the edge of the bare rolling downs. It was exactly like almost every other house in that part of Brighton—stucco fronted, with four stories and a basement, three windows in front on each of the upper stories, and two windows and a door on the ground floor and basement. At the back was a small garden, with flower beds surrounding a square of gravel, and a tricycle house in one corner. There was a back door in this garden, which gave on to a street of cottages. This back door was a point of strategic importance.

But I need not describe the house in detail. It was exactly like thousands of other houses built in the beginning of the nineteenth century. High, respectable, ugly and rather inconvenient, with many stairs, two or three big rooms, a lot of small ones and no bathroom. It was essentially a family house, intended for people of moderate means and large families. Nowadays they build houses which are prettier, and have bathrooms; but they are not meant for large families.

We were a large family, and a fairly noisy one. Moreover, we were singularly self-sufficing. We hadn't many friends, we didn't entertain much, we had dinner in the middle of the day, and supper in the evening.

There was my father who was a recluse, my mother who was essentially our mother, the two girls and four boys. I was an afterthought, being seven years younger than my next brother, who for seven years had been called B. (for baby), and couldn't escape from it even after my appearance.

In addition to these, B. and I both had inseparable friends, who lived within a stone's throw. Ronnie was my alter ego till I was fourteen: so much so that I had no other friend. Even now, though our ways have kept us apart, and our interests and opinions are fundamentally different, we can sit in each other's rooms with perfect content. We know too much of each other for it to be possible to pretend to be what we are not. We sit and are ourselves, naked and unashamed so to speak, and it is very restful.

Pictures float before my mind. Let me select a few. I see a rather fat, stolid little boy in a big airy nursery at the top of the house, sitting in the middle of the floor playing with bricks. Outside it is gusty and wet, and the small boy hopes that he will be allowed to stay in all the afternoon, and play with bricks. But that is not to be. A small thin man, with gentle grey eyes, short curly beard, an old black greatcoat and a black square felt hat, comes in. The child must have some air. The child is resentful, but resigned, is wrapped up well, put in his pram and wheeled up and down the Madeira Road.

"Pa" didn't appear very much except on some such errand; but "Ma" was in and out all the time. "Ma" was everything, the only woman who has ever had my whole love, my whole trust and has made my heart ache with the desire to show my love.

A later picture. The boy is bigger, and not so fat. He no longer has a nurse. He has vacated the nursery, which is now tenanted by his big sisters. He has a little room all his own: a very small room, looking west. The south-west gales beat upon the window in the winter, and not so far away is the roar of the sea. It is good to curl up in a nice warm little bed, and listen to the howling of the wind and the waves.

In the morning come lessons from his eldest sister G. The schoolroom has rings and a trapeze, a bookshelf full of boys' books, and cupboards full of stone bricks, cannon and soldiers. The boy's mind is set on bricks and soldiers. Lessons and walks with "Ma" and his sisters or Ronnie and his nurse down the town are a nuisance. They interfere with the building of cathedrals and the settling of the destinies of nations by the arbitrament of war.

It was a stolid, placid boy, intensely wrapt up in his cathedrals and his generals, intensely devoted to "Ma," and regarding all else as rather a nuisance. Ronnie he liked. He liked going to tea with him, and going walks with him and his nurse; but they didn't have much in common except cricket. Ronnie had big soldiers which could not be knocked down by cannon balls, and which couldn't make history because they were few in number, and nearly all English. Mine were of every European power, and many Asiatic ones. They were diminutive and numerous, could take shelter in a forest of pine cones and were admirably suited to be mown down at the cannon's mouth. The King of England was a person with a fine figure. He had one leg and one arm, and the plume of his dragoon's helmet was shorn off; but his slight, erect figure still looked noble on a stately white palfrey. The French armies were usually commanded by Marshal Petit, a gay fellow with his full complement of limbs, who sat a horse well. He had a younger brother almost equally distinguished. I have no recollection of a King of France. He must have been a poor fellow. The Sultan of Turkey, the Khedive, and Li Hung Chang still live in my memory as persons of distinction; but I have no personal recollection of the Tsar, or the Emperors of Germany or Austria, or of the King of Italy, though I know they existed.

Into this placid existence turmoil would enter three times a year. The elder brothers, Hugh, Tommy and B., would come home for the holidays from Sandhurst and Rugby, and R. would appear, and become almost one of the family. Then would occur troublous times, with a few advantages and many disadvantages.

"Tommy" was a curiously solitary youth as I remember him, who played the 'cello with great perseverance and considerable success. At soldiers he was something of a genius, though his games were of an intricacy which failed to commend itself to me altogether. In his great soldier days he not only made history, but wrote it—a height to which I never attained.

In the holidays, cricket in the back garden became a great feature, and Tommy was a demon bowler. I fancy, too, that the very elaborate but highly satisfactory form of the game must have originated with him. In the back garden we not merely played cricket, but made history—cricket history. Two county sides were written out, and we batted alternately for the various cricketers, doing our best to imitate their styles. We bowled also in a rough imitation of the styles of the county bowlers whom we represented. This arrangement secured us against personal rivalry, kept up a tremendous interest in first-class cricket and enabled matches to continue, if necessary, for weeks at a time. It encouraged, too, a fair, impersonal and unprejudiced view of outside events.

In cricket, war and music we undoubtedly benefited by the holidays, especially in the summer, when we used to go to the country, often occupying a school-house with gym, cricket nets and a fair-sized garden. Ecclesiastical architecture suffered, however....

Hugh was a great and glorious person, a towering beneficent despot when he did appear.... As for me I adored him with whole-hearted hero-worship. He was the "protector of the poor," who kept the rest of us in order. He was a magnificent person who revolutionized the art of war by the introduction of explosives. He was a tremendous walker, and first taught me to love great tramps over the downs, to sniff appreciatively the glorious air and to love their bare, storm-swept outlines. Hugh stood for all that is wholesome, strenuous, out of doors in my life. Without him I should have been a mere sedentary. Among other things he was an enthusiastic boxer and gymnast. For these pursuits I sturdily feigned enthusiasm and suppressed timidity.

A few more pictures. First, Sunday morning. Gertrude goes off to Sunday School. She likes teaching and bossing. Hilda and Hugh, who are greater pals than brother and sister can often be, go off to St. James', where there will be good music and an interesting sermon. Tommy goes to St. Mark's, a good Protestant place, or to the beach, where curious and recondite doctrines are weekly disputed. B. goes to St. George's, protesting. There is plenty of room for his hat, there is a congenially aggressive spirit against Rome and it slightly irritates Ma. Pa is not up yet. Ma and I go to All Souls', because it is the nearest poor church, and Ma finds it easier to worship where there are no pew rents, and the seats are uncushioned, and there are few rich people. I am ever loyal to Ma.

I often wonder whether the reason why my family are all Churchgoers now is not that at that time we could choose our church.

The next picture is Sunday night. "Pa" and I, and perhaps some of the other boys, set out for St. Paul's, at the other end of the town. Then, after the service, follows an immense walk all through the slums of the town. We talk of Australia, where Pa once had a sheep run; of theology, of the past and the future. This weekly walk is something of a privilege, and rather solemn. It makes me feel older.

It is spring. I am at Rugby, and in the "San" with ophthalmia. The South African war is raging. Hugh is there. I am told that Hugh is dead. He has been shot in a glorious but futile charge at Paardeberg. I can't realize it. I am an object of interest, of envy almost, to the whole school. The flag is half-mast because my brother is dead. Every one is kind, touched. I put on an air as of a martyr.

I get a heartbroken letter from my mother. Will I come home? Or hadn't I better go to Uncle Jack's? If I go home we shall make each other worse. It is better for me than for Maurice, who is with the fleet in the Mediterranean with no one to comfort him.

Ma has had a great shock. She feels it desperately. She thinks all the others feel it as much. Except Hilda, we don't. There is a huge piece taken out of Ma's life and Hilda's life, because they were so unselfishly devoted to Hugh. Pa, also, has lost much, but he is a philosopher.

I go to Uncle Jack's and shoot rabbits. The holidays come and go. Tommy is at Oxford; I am at Rugby. Pa is immersed in theological speculation about the next world; B. is in the Mediterranean. Ma sends Gertrude and Hilda away for a long change. They go, and come back. Something about Ma frightens them. She and Pa come near Rugby and stay with Uncle Jack. The holidays come. I learn that for the first time for about twenty years Ma is to go away without Pa. I am to meet her at Hereford, and we are to go to Wales. Ma forgets things. She is more loving than ever, but her memory is going. We go to communion together in the little village church.

A few weeks later. We are back in Brighton. An Australian uncle and family are staying with us. Ma is ill in bed. I get up at 6 A.M., tramp over the downs and in a place I wot of, some five miles away, I gather heather for Ma. I run. I get back by 8.30. I find my uncle and cousins getting into a cab. Some one says, "How lovely! Are these for me?" I grip them in despair. They are for Ma. "Quite right," says someone. A day or two later my heather was placed, still blooming, on Ma's grave.

I was sixteen then. Six years later I return home from abroad. Within a few weeks of my return I am sitting in Pa's room in agony, listening to him fight for breath. The fight at last weakens. I hear him whisper, "Help! help!" I set my teeth. The others come in. There is silence. All is over. I am given my father's ring. It is my most treasured possession.

Henceforth all I have left of home is Hilda, for she alone is unmarried. Ever since my mother's death she has been my confidante. As far as was possible she has taken Ma's place in my life, and I have taken Hugh's place in hers. We are substitutes. For that reason as we get older we get to know each other better, and to know better how much we can give to each other. There is more criticism between us than there would have been between Ma and me, and Hilda and Hugh. But it has its advantages. We live apart, but we correspond weekly, and holiday together. It is all that is left of home, and it is infinitely precious.

Now that I have written these pages I can see as I have never seen before how much the child was father of the man. Since those home days I have had more variety of experience perhaps than falls to the lot of most men, and I would almost say more varied and more epoch-making friendships. Yet in these pages that I have written I seem to see all the essential and salient features of my character already mirrored and formed.

I am still by nature lethargic and placid. I could still occupy myself contentedly With bricks and soldiers, art and history, and trouble no one. But there is still that other element, instilled by Hugh—a love of the open air, of struggle with the elements, in lonely desert places.

I have never lost the craving for true religion, which induced my mother to go to a poor church to worship, and to visit the drunken and helpless in their slums. I have never lost the desire for her singleness of mind, and simple loyalty to Christ and His Church. At the same time I have never lost my father's inquiring spirit, broad view, love of doctrine tempered by reason and founded on history and tested by human experience. When these two beloved ones passed from this world I learnt the meaning of the text, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." My heart has never been wholly in this world.

So, too, I have always been a man of few friends. Ronnie has had many successors; but seldom more than one at a time. I have never cared much for society. My father and mother neither of them attached much importance to conventions, or to the fictitious values which society puts on clothes or money or position. I have always looked rather for some one to admire, some one whose ideals and personality were congenial, whatever their position or occupation. I have also, on the whole, always preferred comfort to show, simple to elaborate living. This I trace to the simple comfort and naturalness of my old home.

II

SCHOOL

I went to a day school kept by Ronnie's father when I was nine. At least, it was a day school for me; but nearly all the boys were boarders. I worked fairly hard, and got prizes. I was fairly good at cricket, and not much good at football. I had only one friend—Ronnie—and about two enemies, both of whom were day boys, and whom I should have liked to have fought if I had dared. My memories of the school are few. I best remember leaving home, and going back, and also playing cricket. Ronnie's father lives as a just and straightforward gentleman, who never caned a boy except for what was mean or dirty, and whom we all loved and respected. But then I have known and loved him and his wife all my life. If our house was a second home to Ronnie, theirs has always been a second home to me.

There was one master whom I liked, and who perhaps did something to develop my character. He was fond of poetry and history, and from him I learnt—an easy lesson for me—to love history; but what is more, he first gave me a glimmering idea, which was to develop long after, that the classics are literature, and not torture.

I left there to go to Rugby.

Never did a boy enter Rugby with better chances. The memory of my three brothers still lived in the house. They had all achieved distinction in games, and been leading prefects (or sixths as they are called at Rugby) in the house. Many masters remembered them for good, particularly Jacky, the housemaster, who had loved them all, especially Hugh.

In addition to this, one of the leading fellows in the house, who was afterwards to be captain of the school fifteen and cricket eleven, lieutenant in the corps, and one of the racquet pair, had been at my private school. I shared a study with another fellow who had been at my private school. Two boys accompanied me from there, one of whom was my next best friend to Ronnie. His parents were in India, and he had spent some of his holidays with Ronnie and me.

But though I loved Rugby and was happy there, I can't say I was a success. I made few friends, who have since, with one exception, drifted out of my life. I was too timid to enjoy Rugger. I never achieved distinction at cricket. I got into the sixth my last term, but hadn't the force of character to enjoy the prefectural powers which that fact conferred upon me. The fact is that I left when I was 16, and it is between 16 and 18 that the full enjoyment of school life comes and boys reap the harvest they have sown. Had I stayed another year I should have belonged to the leading generation, strengthened my friendships and developed what was latent in my character. As it was, I left at an unfortunate age. I was pushed into the sixth a year before my contemporaries. My friendships were only half formed, and I had only just begun to feel strength of body and mind developing in me.

As a junior I was too conscientious, and not light-hearted enough. I hardly had any adventures at Rugby, because I had an incurable instinct for keeping rules. I worked hard at mathematics and French, and my report generally read, "Good ability. Might exert himself more." At classics and chemistry I did as little work as possible, and any report generally read, "Hard-working but not bright."

On the whole I think I was pretty happy at Rugby; but I never look back to my school days as the happiest part of my life. I have had many happier times since. But still, my house was a good one. Jacky, the housemaster, was wonderfully kind and wise. He hardly ever interfered with the affairs of the house, but left it all—in appearance—to the "Sixths." Actually, nothing escaped him. The tone of the house was on the whole extraordinarily clean and wholesome, and the fellows who had dirty minds were a small minority, and easily avoided. At all events, very little of that sort of thing reached me.

At sixteen and a half I went to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, commonly known as "the Shop." There I spent the two most miserable years of my life, and made the second of my great friendships. In these days the Shop was still a pretty rough place, and at the moment it was unusually full. I think there were over 300 fellows there altogether, and there were about 70 in my term. My first experience was unfortunate. I was interviewing the Adjutant, a keen sportsman and a bit of a tartar. He eyed me unfavourably, asked what games I could play, and when I replied that I had no great proficiency in any he commented, "Humph, a good-for-nothing!" and dismissed me.

I am by nature slow, stolid and clumsy. I was bad at being "smart"; I was slow and clumsy at drill; map making and geometrical drawing were physical impossibilities to me; I was incredibly slow and stupid at machinery, mechanism and electricity. The only subject which interested me was military history. In my first term I dropped from about forty-fourth to about seventieth in my class, and I kept near the bottom until my fourth term, when I failed in my electricity exam., and had to stay one term more. In the same term I received a prize for the best essay on the lessons of the South African War.

Oh, the misery of those terms at Woolwich! I hated the work, the drill, the gym and even the riding school. I hated the officers, and above all I hated the spirit of the place. As far as I remember, the one eternal topic of conversation and subject of "wit" was the sexual relation. Of course the boys had never been taught sensibly anything about it. Consequently the place was continually circulated with filthy books, pictures, stories, etc. When I went there I was extraordinarily innocent, and devoid of curiosity. I had been recently the more disposed to purity through the death of my mother. At Woolwich I remained extraordinarily innocent and uncurious, letting the poisonous stream flow continually by me, shrinking from its stench, and finding more and more relief in my own company. I must have been a very unpleasant person at that time.

One friend I had. He was a small, compact, keen, and capable little Rugbian named F——. He was like me in that he had recently lost his parents, and was interested in religion and philosophy in a boyish way. Unlike me he rather enjoyed Woolwich. He had a lot of friends, was keen on riding and on a good deal of the work, and generally speaking plunged into life, taking the rough with the smooth, and both in good part. Although we have drifted far apart in ideals and sympathies, and though misunderstanding has come in and destroyed our friendship, I shall never cease to be grateful for all that F—— did for me in those days. He routed me out when I was in the blues, laughed at me, cheered me up and made me look at life with new eyes. Moreover he did this, as I know, in defiance of the set with whom he was friendly, who despised me for a milksop, and were at no pains to conceal the fact. But for F——, my life at the Shop would have been intolerable.

Besides him, I had a few associates, boys with whom I naturally associated for the simple reason that they, too, were left out of the main current of the life of the place. But they were not particularly congenial. One or two were hard workers. One was a great slacker, and more timid, physically and morally, than even I. He was a boy with a fatal facility for doing useless things moderately well, especially in the musical line. He was even more frightened of gym and horses than I was, and unlike me was not ashamed to show it. If the Shop was purgatory to me, it must have been hell to him.

My happiest times were week-ends spent at home. I used to arrive on Saturday evening and leave on Sunday evening. About now I began to get to know my father much better, and to develop my theological bent under his advice. In my disillusionment as to my capacity for military life I began to wish I had chosen the clerical profession. I think my father had the shrewdness to see that failure in one profession was not necessarily the sign of a "call" in another direction. Anyway, he did not discourage me; but spoke of five years in the Army as the best training for a parson.

I remember avowing my intention of becoming a parson to one of my more friendly acquaintances at the Shop, and he replied that I wouldn't set the Thames on fire, because I had such a monotonous voice.

In spite of seeking relief from my uncongenial surroundings in religion and theology, I did not join myself to any one else. There was a so-called "Pi Squad," or Bible class, held weekly, but I only went once, and didn't like it. I was always peculiarly sensitive about priggishness in those who professed themselves to be religious openly, and generally thought I detected priggishness in any "Bible circle" or similar institution that I came across. I think my theology mainly consisted in speculations about the future state—I remember I emphatically declined to believe in hell—and my religion consisted mainly in fairly regular attendance at Matins and Communion.

Another effect of the intensity with which I hated my surroundings was that I read a lot of good novels—George Eliot, the Brontes, Scott, Dickens, Jane Austen, Thackeray, Besant, etc. A book which I read over and over again was Arthur Benson's Hill of Trouble, and other Stories. Those legends, with their imaginative setting, charm of language and beautiful religious ideas were more restful to my unquiet spirit than anything else I read.

The actual conditions of life at the Shop were pretty barbaric. The aim was to make it as much like barracks as possible. Each term was housed in a different side of the square of buildings which form the Academy, and the fourth term were spread among the houses of the other terms as corporals. My first term I shared a room with three other fellows. I think it was the ugliest room I have ever lived in, without exception. It had high whitewashed brick walls. In each corner was a bed which folded up against the wall in the day time, and was concealed by a square of print curtains. There were a deal table, four windsor chairs, a shelf with four basins, and a cupboard with four lockers. All the woodwork was painted khaki. The contrast with the little study at Rugby, with its diamond-paned window, its matchboard panelling surmounted by a paper of one's own choosing, its ledge for photos and ornaments ("bim ledge" so called), its eggshell blue cupboards, baize curtains and window box, was striking.

It used to be the custom to go to and from the bathroom attired in a sponge, in connexion with which an amusing incident once happened.

A cadet in his second year was on the bathroom landing, when he perceived that the mother and sisters of another cadet were coming upstairs. From sounds in the bathroom he realized that they would meet a naked corporal just as they reached the landing. The door of the bathroom opened outwards, and with admirable presence of mind he rushed back, and putting his back against the door and his feet against the wall, imprisoned the corporal. The corporal, in the approved Shop version of Billingsgate, began to blaspheme at the top of his voice, so when the ladies reached the top of the stairs they saw a vision of a cadet with his feet to the wall and his back to a door singing at the top of his voice to drown a Commotion within!

On another occasion in my second year, when I was sharing a room with one other fellow, I had a sister to tea. On arriving in my room I found that my stablemate had been playing hockey, and was at the moment in the bathroom, having thoughtlessly left all his clothes in the room—mostly on the floor.

On the last day of my first term the corporals and officers were all absent at a farewell dinner to the former, and we received information that the third term were going to raid our house, with a view to "toshing" us in a cold bath. We therefore prepared for action. Every receptacle which would hold water was taken to the upper landing, full. Then all the chairs in the house were roped together, and placed on the stairs as an obstacle. The defenders then took up their position at the windows and at the top of the stairs. In due course the enemy's forces arrived, and stormed the stairs, under a heavy fire of water. The obstacle was at length destroyed, and a solid phalanx of wet bodies swarmed up the stairs. We formed a similar phalanx and charged to meet them. I happened to be first, and much to my discomfiture the enemy's phalanx parted in the middle, and I was rapidly passed down the stairs—a prisoner! Fortunately at the bottom I found a relieving party from the next house, making a diversion on the enemy's rear. With great valour we dragged down a foe, and toshed him in the bath that had been made ready for us. "The tosher toshed!"

The next day we surveyed the damage. All the chairs and banisters were broken, the whitewash was rubbed off the bricks by wet shoulders and nearly all the basins were broken. That day was the day of Lord Roberts's half-yearly inspection!

There was not such another battle until my third term, when we were the aggressors. This time the damage was even greater, for the defenders let down tables across the stairs as an obstacle, and we battered our way through with scaffolding poles. There were some casualties that day, owing to an indiscriminate use of mop handles.

On the day of Lord Roberts's inspection we had to change from parade dress to gym dress, and it was during the change that Lord Roberts inspected our quarters. He went into one room and found a fellow just half-way through his change—with nothing at all on! The room was called to attention, and with great presence of mind the boy dashed into the bed curtains and stood to attention there, while Lord Roberts had an animated conversation with him!

There were jolly moments in the life at the Shop. On Saturdays, after dinner, the unfortunates who had not got away for the week-end used to have "stodges" after dinner. Having put away a substantial dinner, we changed into flannels, and used to crowd into some one's room, and eat muffins and smoke cigars. I remember one night there were eighteen of us in one small room.

In order to go away for a week-end one had to obtain (1) an invitation, (2) permission from parent or guardian to accept the invitation. One week my brother, who was working at the Admiralty, offered his flat to myself and F——, as he was going to Brighton himself. Fleming wrote to his guardian—a Scotsman—for permission to stay with Captain Hankey. The guardian wrote back for more information. He saw by the Army List that Captain Hankey existed, but who were the Hankeys? etc., etc. F—— wrote back a furious letter, saying that he expected to have his friends accepted without question, and received the permission. We went. The awkward thing was that Captain Hankey was not there, and we shuddered to think of the rage of F——'s guardian if he should find out. Worse still, the guardian was supposed to be staying at the Oriental Club in Hanover Square, and my brother's flat was in Oxford Street! However, we didn't meet.

F—— and I neither of us knew London, and had the time of our lives. We dined at Frascati's—a palace of splendour in our eyes—and went to His Majesty's to see Beerbohm Tree in Ulysses. When it came to Hades, we held each other's hands! On Sunday we went to St. Peter's, Vere Street, but were so furious at being kept waiting for pew holders long after service had commenced, that we went on to the Audley Street Chapel, a most queer little place. It was full of monuments to the dependents of peers, in which the peers figured very largely and the dependents fared humbly—the epitome of flunkeydom. Among these tablets was one inscribed—

"To John Wilkes, Friend of Liberty."

Truly refreshing!

We finished the day at some old friends of mine, and voted the week-end a huge success.

When I went to Woolwich I was just on the verge of getting keen on games and beginning to feel self-confident, and to enjoy the fellowship of my comrades. Woolwich nipped this in the bud. I left with no self-confidence, having renounced games, and with a sense of solitariness among my comrades. I was a misanthrope, and the unhappiest sort of egotist—the kind that dislikes himself. To say the truth, too, I was then, and always have been, a bit of a funk, physically, which didn't make me happier. On the other hand, I was an omnivorous reader of everything which did not concern my profession, and a dabbler in military history.

I have sometimes thought that I was unconsciously a bit of a hero at Woolwich, standing out for purity and religion in an atmosphere of filth and blasphemy. I have come to the conclusion, however, that there was nothing in this. As to the general atmosphere, there is no doubt that it was singularly pernicious; even the officers and instructors contributed their quota of filthy jokes, and there was no religious instruction or influence at all except the parade service at the garrison church on Sunday, if one happened not to be on leave. But as to my heroism I am reluctantly compelled to be sceptical. I went as far as I felt my inclination, and stopped after a time because instinct was too strong the other way.

As I have said before, I have always had an insurmountable instinct for keeping rules. At school I could never bring myself to transgress, although I knew that transgression was the road to adventure. So at the Shop, however much I may have wished to be in the swim, my instinct for the moral and religious code of home was too strong for me. It required no self-control to prevent myself from slipping into blasphemy and filth. On the contrary, in order to do so I should have had to violate my strongest instincts, and exercised a will to evil much stronger than any will power that I possessed at that time. If, when I left Woolwich, I was comparatively pure, it was because nature did not allow me to be anything else.

To say the truth, I have never felt the sway of passions to anything like the same extent as most men seem to. I have never cared for the society of women for its sexual attraction. Consequently all my women friends have been just the same to me as my men friends—friends whom I could talk to about the things that interested me.

I don't boast of this, I only state the fact. I am not proud of it because I know that some passion is necessary to make heroes and even saints.



SOME NOTES ON THE FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY "HILDA"

I have before me as I write a pencil sketch, limned with considerable care, of a rather disagreeable looking young man, and beneath it is written—

"D.W.A.H., by Himself."

It is a profile. The eye has almost disappeared under the brow, the mouth is tightly closed to a degree that is quite unpleasant and there is a deliberate exaggeration of a slight defect he actually had—a tendency for the lower jaw to protrude a little. This little defect hardly any of his friends seem to have noticed, for most of them execrate it as a libel in the otherwise admittedly beautiful photograph at the beginning of this volume. The expression in the sketch is above all—dubious.

So did Donald see himself.

For the rest of us no doubt the lessons Mr. Haselden has for us in his caricatures, "ourselves as we see ourselves" and "as others see us," are necessary. But not for Donald. The drawing is pasted into an album which contains mainly Oxford College groups, and there is a certain unpleasant resemblance between it and his full face presentment in one of the groups—in which he has "the group expression" rather badly. Assuming it to have been drawn at Oxford, or not very long after he left, I think it must belong very nearly to a time when he was going off abroad on one of his long trips, and I had the sympathy of a dear old lady friend of ours on having to part with him. I remember replying, "Yes, it always seems as if peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety went with him when he goes!" She laughed a good deal, and then said, seriously, repeating over to herself the stately mounting sixteenth century phrases, "But it's quite true, you know!" I hardly think, though, that I should have said it of the young man in the sketch!

I am now going to make a comment or two on my brother's word-pictures as I should if he were by my side. But first I should like his readers to know and realize that both were written before the period of what I may call Donald's "Renaissance," a period that can be roughly marked by the publication of his first book, The Lord of all Good Life.

Up to then he had been struggling in vain for self-expression. How he had worked the amount of MSS. he has left alone proves—for we have it on a friend's testimony that "he tore up much of what he wrote"; and he also had experienced and suffered, violating his natural "timidity" and his in some ways, precarious health, for he had never got over certain weaknesses engendered by his illness in Mauritius—in his struggle to get a true basis for a solution of the meaning of life and of religion. What cost him most was the knowledge that he was frequently doubted and misunderstood by many of those whose approbation would have been very dear to him. This is proved by his constantly expressed gratitude to the one or two who never doubted him for one moment.

With the writing of this book, as we know, all his difficulties began to clear away, and at the same time he began to reap the harvest of love and admiration that he had sown in his toils to produce it. And the result was he opened out like a flower to the sun! No one can doubt this for a moment who has read his book of a year later, The Student in Arms, and rejoiced in the radiant happiness of its inspiration.

He had more than once said to me during the past two years, "You know it makes a tremendous difference to me when people really like me." No longer was it a case of "one friend at a time." The period for that was over and done with. He had come into his own. He was ready for a universal brotherhood, and no hand would ever be held out to him in vain.

It is impossible to believe that he does not now know of and appreciate all the beautiful tributes that have come to him since his "passing"—from the perfect wreath of immortelles weaved by Mr. Strachey to the sweet pansy of thought dropped by a little fellow V.A.D. of mine who said beautifully and courageously—though knowing him solely through his book—"We feel since he gave us his thought that he belongs a tiny bit to us, too," thus voicing the feeling of many.

I believe the paper entitled "My Home" to have been written at Oxford, and "School" not so very long after. In any case, I have definite proof of their both belonging to Donald's pre-"Renaissance" period, for the friendship with F——, that began at "the Shop" and went under a cloud for a time, was renewed with fresh vigour in 1914, and has burned brightly ever since. Only last July was I sent by him a letter of F——'s from the trenches, with the injunction, "Please put this among my treasures," and there is an allusion to a story told in this letter in the article entitled "Romance" of the present volume.

To return to "My Home," I question whether the love and devotion of "Hilda" and "Ma" for Hugh was so entirely unselfish. For my mother I fully believe, as for "Hilda," Hugh was the epitome of all that was fine, splendid and joyous in life. He was the glorious knight, the "preux chevalier" "sans peur et sans reproche," who rode forth at dawn with clean sword and shining armour, and all the world before him, yet keeping his heart for ever in his home. He was the child of her youth as Donald was the child of her maturity. Deep down in her wonderfully varied nature there were certain bottomless springs of courage, daring and enterprise which she herself had little chance of expressing and of which Hugh alone was the personification.

As long as I can remember Hugh had been my ideal and made all the interest and joy of life for me. Whether he were at home or abroad I never had a thought I did not share with him. When he died, the best part of me died too, or was paralysed rather, and Heaven knows what sort of a "substitute" I should have been for "Ma" to Donald, had not the baby Hugh come, just in time, with healing in his wings to restore life to the best part of me!

I am glad to think that Donald's "Autobiography" was written before 1914, for I know that even before that I was becoming more to him than a "substitute." I too have my memories and pictures!

It is May, 1915. I am in the country-house—cleaning is going on at home.

I get a letter to say that the Rifle Brigade may leave for France at any time, and that Donald may get some "leave" on Saturday or Sunday.

I make a dash for town.

There I find a telegram of reckless and unconscionable length, running into two pages. He cannot come up—they may leave at any moment. It seems hardly worth while my bothering to come to Aldershot on the chance—he may be unable to leave barracks.

I write a return telegram—also of reckless and unconscionable length, and reply paid—it is a relief to do so—asking for a place of meeting at Aldershot to be suggested.

I get no answer at all, and on Sunday morning, in despair, I go over to see my aunt and cousin. My aunt is my mother's sister and a sportswoman. She counsels, "Go at all costs." Dorothy will come with me: Dorothy is Donald's best woman pal—she reminds him of his mother. She is all that is wholesome and comportable.

The element of enjoyment comes in, and I go home and pack a nice lunch.

We arrive at Aldershot.

There is no one on the platform to meet us, and we push our way through the turnstile.

There is Donald, on the outskirts of the waiting crowd—a tall, soldierly figure in the uniform of a private—for he has resigned his sergeant's stripes by now.

His face is very boyish—not the face of the photograph at the beginning of this book: that was taken after he had been to France, and had been wounded, and had written "A Passing in June," and "The Honour of the Brigade"—but a much younger face, really boyish.

He glances quickly and anxiously at every face that passes, and each time he is a little more disappointed—but he tries not to show it.

I am not tall and cannot catch his eye. It is like being at a play, watching him! All at once he sees me! Involuntarily a sudden quick spasm of joy passes across his face, absolutely transfiguring it.

He smooths it away quickly, for he is a Briton and does not like to show his feelings—but he has given himself away!

Dorothy and I shall never forget that look. And it was for me—at first he does not see Dorothy. When he does it is an added pleasure.

With two ladies to escort he assumes a lordly air.

He had thought of everything. We would like some tea? Yes, all the big places are shut as it is Sunday, but he has marked down a little place on his way to the station.

It is a lovely day, and we are very happy!

The girl who waits upon us at the little tea place likes us, and so do the other Tommies and their friends who are having tea there.

We sit at little tables, but at very close quarters with each other, and we smile at them and they at us.

I have brought Donald some letters, which pleases him, and Dorothy has brought him some splendid socks, knitted by herself.

After tea we walk across an arid plain to a little wood, and sit down under the trees.

Donald changes to the new socks—those he had on were wringing wet!

He picks us little bunches of violets, hyacinths and wild strawberry flowers—we have them still.

We are very happy the whole of the day, and have my sandwiches and cake and fruit for supper, there under the trees. And here in thought let me leave "The Student in Arms," who was to me part son, best pal, brother, comrade, and counsellor on all subjects—and more than a little bit of grandpapa!

He could be so many different things because, as another friend and cousin said, "he seemed to know everything about everybody."

I like to think of those two fine spirits—Hugh and Donald—each with a hand to the tiny baby nephew, and a word of greeting for me when I go over the top.

THE END