Bernard Adams

“ What right had men who have never seen war at all, who creep up on bicycles to get a glimpse of it through telescopes, who pester wounded men, and then out of their pictorial imagination work up a vivid description—what right have they to insult heroes by saying that “their wonderful spirit makes up for it all,” that “the paramount impression is one of glory”? Are not our people able to bear the truth, that war is utterly hellish, that we do not enjoy it, that we hate it, hate it, hate it all? ”

“ And what is war seen as a whole, or rather seen in the light of my eight months’ experience? For no one man can truly appraise war.
I have seen and felt the adventure of war, its deadly fascination and excitement: it is the greatest game on earth: that is its terrible power: there is such a wild temptation to paint up its interest and glamour: it gives such scope to daring, to physical courage, to high spirits: it makes so many prove themselves heroic, that were it not for the fall of the arrow men would call the drawing of the bow good. ”

“ Even our Company Headquarters, a cellar, was covered with mud and slime. Paradoses and communication trenches had fallen in, and the going was terrible. The sticky mud yoicked one’s boots off nearly, and it felt as if one’s foot would be broken in extricating it. We all wore gum-boots, of blue-black rubber, 33 that come right up to the waist like fishermen’s waders. But the mud is everywhere, and we get our arms all plastered with it as we literally “reel to and fro” along the trench, every now and again steadying ourselves against slimy sand-bags. ”

“ And to these whisperers I answer boldly: “Yes! we are coarse, some of us; we are vindictive; we hate; we do not deny it.” For war in its vileness taints its human instruments too. When Davidson died I cried death upon his murderers. I called them devils, and worse. I am not ashamed.
That is not the point. What I or Tommy may be at a given moment is not the point. The question is, with what motives did we enter this war, agree to take up this vile instrument? We cannot help if it soils our hands. What is our motive in fighting in the arena? What provokes the dumb heroism of our soldiers? ”

“ In the jollity, the humour, the good-fellowship, is nothing but good also. There is good in all these things; for these are qualities of human nature triumphing in spite of war. These things are not war; they are the good in man prostituted to a vile thing.
For I have seen the real face of war: I have seen men killed, mutilated, blown to little pieces; I have seen men crippled for life; I have looked in the face of madness, and I know that many have gone mad under its grip. I have seen fine natures break and crumble under the strain. I have seen men grow brutalised, and coarsened in this war. ”

“ In the morning you will see all the evolutions of company drill carried out in a small meadow behind a strip of woodland; in the next field an old man and woman are unconcernedly hoeing a cabbage-patch; then behind here are a battalion’s transport lines, with rows of horses picketed. Along the road an A.S.C. convoy is passing, each lorry at regulation distance from the next. In the afternoon you will see groups of Tommies doing nothing most religiously, smoking cigarettes, writing letters home. From six to eight the estaminets are open, and everyone flocks to them to get bad beer. ”

“ How are we to save future generations from going down into the arena? We will rearrange the map of Europe: we will secure the independence of small states: we will give the power to the people: there shall be an end of tyrannies. So men speak easily of an international spirit, of a world conference for peace. There is so great a will-power against war, they say, that we will secure the world for the future. Millions of men know the vileness of war ”

“ Davies and Fritz alike are awaiting your answer.
It is hard to trace ultimate causes. It is hard to fix absolute responsibility. There were many seeds sown, scattered, and secretly fostered before they 305 produced this harvest of blood. The seeds of cruelty, selfishness, ambition, avarice, and indifference, are always liable to swell, grow, and bud, and blossom suddenly into the red flower of war. Let every man look into his heart, and if the seeds are there let him make quick to root them out while there is time; unless he wishes to join those glittering eyes that look down upon the arena. ”

“ SNIPING I The snow was coming down in big white flakes, whirling and dancing against a grey sky. I shivered as I looked out from the top of the dug-out steps in Maple Redoubt. It was half-past seven, a good hour since the snipers had reported to me before going to their posts. It was quite dark then, for a sniper must always be up on his post a good hour before dawn to catch the enemy working a few minutes too late. It is so easy to miss those first faint glimmerings of twilight when you are just finishing off an interesting piece of wiring in “No Man’s Land.” ”

“ To-day we marched to Morlancourt and are spending the night in huts. It is very cold, and we have a brazier made out of a biscuit tin, but it smokes abominably. We are busy getting trench-kit ready for the next day. From outside the hut I can see star-lights, and hear machine-guns tapping. It thrills like the turning up of the footlights. ”

“ Life in this war is a series of events so utterly different and disconnected, that the effect xvi upon the actor in the midst of them is like receiving a hand of cards from an invisible dealer. There are four suits in the pack. Spades represent the dullness, mud, weariness, and sordidness. Clubs stand for another side, the humour, the cheerfulness, the jollity, and good-fellowship. In diamonds I see the glitter of excitement and adventure. Hearts are a tragic suit of agony, horror, and death. And to each man the invisible dealer gives a succession of cards ”

“ There is only one way to put an end to the arena. Pledges and treaties have failed; and force will fail. These things may bring peace for a time, but they cannot crush those glittering eyes. There is only one Man whose eyes have never glittered. Look at the palms of your hands, you, who have had a bullet through the middle of it! Did they not give you morphia to ease the pain? And did you not often cry out alone in the darkness in the terrible agony, that you did not care who won the war if only the pain would cease? ”

“ Only slowly it came now, a half-formed image of what my spirit alone understood.
“A certain man drew a bow at a venture,” I thought. What of those shells that I had called down last night at my bidding, standing like a god, intoxicated with power, and crying “Retaliate. More retaliation.” Where did they fall? Were other men lying as Davidson lay to-night? Had I called down death? Had I stricken families? Probably. Nay, more than probably. Certainly. Death. Blind death. That was it. Blind death.
And all the time above me was the white moon. I looked at the shadows of my arms as I held them out. ”

“ If a man speaks loudly in the front trench, you tell him to remember the Boche is a hundred yards away; if he whispers in a hoarse voice that sounds a little nervy, you tell him that the Boche’s ears are not a hundred yards long. ”

“ I agree, if men were Christian there would be no war. I agree that you cannot conquer evil by evil; but it is war that is evil, not our motive in going to war. We are conquering an evil spirit by a good spirit, even if we are using an evil instrument. And if you say that Christ would not fight, I say that none of us would fight if the world had attained the Christian plane towards which we are slowly rising: but we are still on a lower plane, and in it there is a big war raging; and in the arena there are many who have felt Christ by their side. ”

“ A dull thud, and then ‘there goes another,’ shouts someone. It reminds me of Bill the lizard coming out of the chimney-pot in Alice in Wonderland. Everyone gazes and waits for the crash! Toppling through the sky comes a big tin oil-can, followed immediately by another; both fall and explode with a tremendous din, sending up a fifty-foot 123 spurt of black earth and flying débris, while down the wind comes the scud of sand-bag fluff and the smell of powder. ”

“ That is a working-party: interesting as a first experience to an officer; but when multiplied exceedingly, by day, by night, in rain, mud, sleet, and snow, carrying trench boards, filling sand-bags, digging clay, bailing out liquid mud, and returning cold and drenched, without soup—then, working-parties became a monotonous succession of discomforts that wore out the spirit as well as the body. ”

“ Suddenly, up the Old Kent Road I heard a man running. My heart stopped. I hate the sound of running in a trench, and last night they had run for stretcher-bearers when Robertson was hit. I looked at the sergeant-major, who was biting his lip, his ears cocked. Round the corner a man bolted, out of breath, excited. ”

“ These are the seeds of war. And it is because they know that we, too, are not free from them, that certain men have stood out from the arena as a protest against war. These men are real heroes, who for their conscience’s sake are enduring taunts, ignominy, misunderstanding, and worse. Most men and women in the arena are cursing them, and, as they struggle in agony and anguish, they beat their hands at them and cry “You do not care.” ”

“ Why did men flock to the colours, volunteer in millions for the arena? You know. 302 I who have lived with them eight months in France, I also know. It was because a people took up this vile instrument and used it from desire of power. Because they trampled on justice, and challenged us to thwart them. Because they willed war for the sake of wrong; because they said that force was master of the world, and they set out to prove it.
Yet, it is sometimes said, war is unchristian. If men were Christian there would be no war. You cannot conquer evil by evil. ”

“ As we approach through the suburbs, we rattle past motor despatch riders, A.S.C. lorries, Red Cross carts, columns of transport horses being exercised, officers on horse-back, officers in motor-cars, small unarmed fatigue parties, battalions on the march; then there are carts carrying bricks, French postmen on bicycles, French navvies in blue uniforms repairing the road, innumerable peasant traps, coal waggons, women with baskets, and children of course everywhere. ”

“ It is a strange synthesis, this war: it is a synthesis of adventure, dulness, good spirits, and tragedy; but none of these things are new to human experience; nor is human nature altered by war. It is at war as a whole that we must look in order to appreciate its quality. ”

“ Beside me lay two bombers and a box of bombs: we were all peering out into a space that seemed enormous. Suddenly a German starlight rocketed up, and as it burst the great white bowl of the crater jumped into view. Then a few rifle-shots sang across the gulf. There followed a deeper darkness than before. Behind me was a wiring-party not quite finished; also the sound of earth being shovelled by tired men. A strong working-party of “A” Company had been engaged for four hours clearing the trench that had been squeezed up ”

“ Oh! you men and women who did not know before the capabilities of human nature, I thought, please take note of it now; and after the war do not underestimate the quality of mankind. Did it need a war to tell you that a man can be heroic, resolute, courageous, cheerful, and capable of sacrifice? There were those who could have told you that before this war. ”

“ So I moralise. Not so the Tommies, sprawling behind, inside the lorry, and caring not a jot for anything save that they are on a “cushy” or soft job, as the rest of the battalion are doing four hours’ digging under R.E. supervision. A good thing to be a Tommy, to be told to fall in here or there, and not to know whether it is for a bayonet-charge, or a job of carting earth! ”

“ There is no mistaking those eyes. They are the eyes of a man who has used them all his life, and found them grow steadier and surer every year. They are essentially the eyes of a man who can watch, watch, watch all day, and not get tired of watching; and they were the eyes of my best sniper.
For Private Ellis had all the instincts of a cunning hunter. I had no need to tell him to keep his telescope well inside the loophole, lest the sun should catch on the glass; no need to remind him to stuff a bit of sand-bag in the loophole when he left the post unoccupied. ”

“ At ten o’clock that night we were well at work. Just on the one hundred metre contour line there was a small quarry, at the west end of which had been the too conspicuous post where the Boche had spotted us. Every loophole must by its very nature be “spottable”; but when the natural ground is so little disturbed that it looks exactly the same as it did before the post was made, then indeed this “spottability” is so much reduced that it verges on invisibility. So, leaving the old post exactly as before, we were building a new one about twenty yards to the west of it. ”