Jeffery Farnol

“ In the Dark Ages, humanity endured much of sin and shame and suffering, but never such as in this age of Reason and Culture. This same earth has known evils of every kind, has heard the screams of outraged innocence, the groan of tortured flesh, and has reddened beneath the heel of Tyranny; this same sun has seen the smoke and ravishment of cities and been darkened by the hateful mists of war—but never such a war as this of cultured barbarity with all its new devilishness. ”

“ One in blood are we, in speech, and in ideals, and though sundered by generations of misunderstanding and false teaching, to-day we stand, brothers-in-arms, fronting the brute for the freedom of Humanity.
[Pg 5]
Americans will die as Britons have died for this noble cause; Americans will bleed as Britons have bled; American women will mourn as British women have mourned these last terrible years; yet, in these deaths, in this noble blood, in these tears of agony and bereavement, surely the souls of these two great nations will draw near, each to each, and understand at last. ”

“ And as I journeyed, hearkening to the talk of my companions, men much travelled and of many nationalities, my mind was agog for the marvels and wonders I was to see in the workshops of Great Britain. Marvels and wonders I was prepared for, and yet for once how far short of fact were all my fancies!
Britain has done great things in the past; she will, I pray, do even greater in the future; but surely never have mortal eyes looked on an effort so stupendous and determined as she is sustaining, and will sustain, until this most bloody of wars is ended. ”

“ And often I thought if it were only possible to work a miracle, if it were only possible for the mists of jealousy and ill-feeling, or rivalry and misconception to be swept away once and for all—if only these two great nations could be bonded together by a common ideal, heart to heart and hand to hand, for the good of Humanity, what earthly power should ever be able to withstand their united strength. ”

“ And ever as the countless German batteries fell silent, their troops in dense grey waves hurled themselves upon shattered British trench and dugout, and found there wild men in tunics torn and bloody and mud-bespattered, who, shouting in fierce joy, leapt to meet them bayonet to bayonet. With clubbed rifle and darting steel they fought, these men of the Empire, heedless of wounds and death, smiting and cheering, thrusting and shouting, until those long, close-ranked columns broke, wavered and melted away. ”

“ Following the Major’s directing finger, I fixed my gaze some distance above the muzzle of the nearest gun and, marvel of marvels, beheld that dire messenger of death and destruction rush forth, soaring, upon its way, up and up, until it was lost in cloud. Time after time I saw the huge shells leap skywards and vanish on their long journey, and stood thus lost in wonder, and as I watched I could not but remark on the speed and dexterity with which the crews handled these monstrous engines. ”

“ The Major was a big man, with a dreamy eye, a gentle voice and a passion for archæology. In his company I climbed to the top of a high building, whence he pointed out, through a convenient shell hole, where the old walls had stood long ago, where Vauban’s star-shaped bastions were, and the general conformation of what had been present-day Ypres; but I saw only a dusty chaos of shattered arch and tower and walls, with huge, unsightly mounds of rubble and brick—a rubbish dump in very truth. ”

“ For truly Britain has given and is giving much—her men and women, her money, her very self; the soul of Britain and her Empire is in this conflict, a soul that grows but the more steadfast and determined as the struggle waxes more deadly and grim. Faint hearts and fanatics there are, of course, who, regardless of the future, would fain make peace with the foe unbeaten, a foe lost to all shame and honourable dealing, but the heart of the Empire beats true to the old war-cry of “Freedom [Pg 158] or Death.” ”

“ From her Home Counties, from her Empire beyond the Seas, her millions have arisen, brothers in arms henceforth, bonded together by a spirit of noble self-sacrifice—men grimly determined to suffer wounds and hardship and death itself, that for those who come after them, the world may be a better place and humanity may never again be called upon to endure all the agony and heartbreak of this generation. ”

“ The deathless glory of our troops, their blood and agony and scorn of death have been made pegs on which to hang much indifferent writing and more bad verse—there have been letters also, sheaves of them, in many of which effusions one may discover a wondering surprise that our men can actually and really fight, that Britain is still the Britain of Drake and Frobisher and Grenville, of Nelson and Blake and Cochrane, and that the same deathless spirit of heroic determination animates her still. ”

“ Already there is talk of some such League, which, in its might and unity, shall secure humanity against any recurrence of the evils the world now groans under. Here is a noble purpose, and I conceive it the duty of each one of us, for the sake of those who shall come after, that we should do something to further that which was once looked upon as only an Utopian dream—the universal Brotherhood of Man. ”

“ Here and there across these innumerable shell holes, solitary figures moved, men, these, who walked heedfully and with heads down-bent. And presently I moved on, but now, like these distant figures, I kept my gaze upon that awful mud lest again I should trample heedlessly on something that had once lived and loved and laughed. And they lay everywhere, here stark and stiff, with no pitiful earth to hide their awful corruption—here again, half buried in slimy mud; more than once my nailed boot uncovered mouldering tunic or things more awful. ”

“ I have seen villages pounded by gun-fire into hideous mounds of dust and rubble, their very semblance blasted utterly away; but Arras, shell-torn, scarred, disfigured for all time, is a city still—a City of Desolation. Her streets lie empty and silent, her once pleasant squares are a dreary desolation, her noble buildings, monuments of her ancient splendour, are ruined beyond repair. Arras is a dead city, whose mournful silence is broken only by the intermittent thunder of the guns. ”

“ The noble town behind them crumbled into ruin beneath the shrieking avalanche of shells, but they held on. German and British dead lay thick from British parapet to Boche wire, and over this awful litter fresh attacks were launched daily, but still they held on, and would have held and will hold, until the crack of doom if need be—because Britain and the Empire expect it of them. ”

“ I have beheld miles of workshops that stand where grass grew two short years ago, wherein are bright-eyed English girls, Irish colleens and Scots lassies by the ten thousand, whose dexterous fingers flash nimbly to and fro, slender fingers, yet fingers contriving death. I have wandered through a wilderness of whirring driving-belts and humming wheels where men and women, with the same feverish activity, bend above machines whose very hum sang to me of death, while I have watched a cartridge grow from a disc of metal to the hellish contrivance it is. ”

“ In a little while I stood amid the ruins of the great cathedral; its mighty pillars, chipped and scarred, yet rose high in air, but its long aisles were choked with rubble and fallen masonry, while through the gaping rents of its lofty roof the rain fell, wetting the shattered heap of particoloured marble that had been the high altar once. Here and there, half buried in the débris at my feet, I saw fragments of memorial tablets, a battered corona, the twisted remains of a great candelabrum, and over [Pg 112] and through this mournful ruin a cold and rising wind moaned fitfully. ”

“ To-night, as I pen these lines, our armies are locked in desperate battle, our guns are thundering on many fronts, but like an echo to their roar, from mile upon mile of workshops and factories and shipyards is rising the answering roar of machinery, the thunderous crash of titanic hammers, the hellish rattle of riveters, the whining, droning, shrieking of a myriad wheels where another vast army is engaged night and day, as indomitable, as fierce of purpose as the army beyond the narrow seas. ”

“ Surely not, for no clean human mind can compass all the horror, all the brutal, grotesque obscenity of a modern battlefield. Therefore I propose to write plainly, briefly, of that which I saw on my last visit to the British front; for since in blood-sodden France men are dying even as I pen these lines, it seems only just that those of us for whom they are giving their lives should at least know something of the manner of their dying. To this end I visited four great battlefields and I would that all such as cry up war, its necessity, its inevitability, might have gone beside me. ”

“ At second speed we toiled along again behind the lorries who were making as bad weather of it as ever, when all at once I caught my breath, hearkening to the far, faint skirling of Highland bagpipes, and, leaning from the car, saw before us a company of Highlanders, their mud-splashed knees a-swing together, their khaki kilts swaying in rhythm, their long bayonets a-twinkle, while down the wind came the regular tramp of their feet and the wild, frenzied wailing of their pipes. ”

“ So, day after day, week after week, month after month they endured still; swept by rifle and machine-gun fire, blown up by mines, buried alive by mortar bombs, their very trenches smitten flat by high explosives—yet they endured and held on. They died all day and every day, but their places were filled by men just as fiercely determined. ”

“ Shell-shock and insanity, poison gas and slow strangulation, liquid fire and poison shells. Rape, Murder, Robbery, Piracy, Slavery—each and every crime is here—never [Pg 68] has humanity endured all these horrors together until now.
But remembering by whose will these evils have been loosed upon the world, remembering the innocent blood, the bitter tears, the agony of soul and heartbreak, I am persuaded that Retribution must follow as sure as to-morrow’s dawn. The evil that men do lives after them and lives on for ever. ”

“ Beneath the shadow of a mighty bridge I stepped into a very smart launch manned by sailors in overalls somewhat grimy, and, rising and falling to the surge of the broad river, we held away for a destroyer that lay grey and phantom-like, low, rakish, and with speed in every line of her. As we drew near, her narrow deck looked to my untutored eye a confused litter of guns, torpedo tubes, guy ropes, cables and windlasses. ”

“ Surely, surely while English is spoken the story of “Wipers” will live on for ever and, through the coming years, will be an inspiration to those for whom these thousands went, cheering and undismayed, to meet and conquer Death.
Ypres, as all the world knows, forms a sharp salient in the British line, and is, therefore, open to attack on three sides; and on these three sides it has been furiously attacked over and over again, so very often that the mere repetition would grow wearisome. And these attacks were day-long, week- and sometimes month-long battles, but Britain’s army stood firm. ”

“ Now they lie, each poor, shattered body a mass of loathsome corruption. Yet that diviner part, that no bullet may slay, no steel rend or mar, has surely entered into the fuller living, for Death is but the gateway into Life and infinite possibilities. ”

“ It is, I believe, an unwritten law in the Air Service never to desert a comrade until he is seen to be completely “done for”—hence Y. and Z.’s hawk-like swoop from the clouds to draw the fire of the battery from their stricken companion. Down they plunged through the battery smoke, firing their machine guns point-blank as they came; and so, wheeling in long spirals, their guns crackling viciously, they mounted again and soared cloudward together, but, there among the clouds and in comparative safety, Z. developed engine trouble. ”

“ It was, indeed, a place of horror—a [Pg 83] frightful desolation beyond all words. Everywhere about us were signs of dreadful death—they came to one in the very air, in lowering heaven and tortured earth. Far as the eye could reach the ground was pitted with great shell holes, so close that they broke into one another and formed horrid pools full of shapeless things within the slime.
Across this hellish waste I went cautiously by reason of torn and twisted tangles of German barbed wire, of hand grenades and huge shells, of broken and rusty iron and steel that once were deadly machine guns. ”

“ And thus at last I looked at that wide stretch of country across which our men had advanced unshaken and undismayed, through a hell the like of which the world had never known before; and, as I stood there, I could almost see those long, advancing waves of khaki-clad figures, their [Pg 78] ranks swept by the fire of countless rifles and machine guns, pounded by high explosives, blasted by withering shrapnel, lost in the swirling death-mist of poison gas—heroic ranks which, rent asunder, shattered, torn, yet swung steadily on through smoke and flame, unflinching and unafraid. ”

“ Thus then I conclude my list of facts and figures, a record of achievement such as this world has never known before, a record to be proud of, because it is the outward and visible sign of a people strong, virile, abounding in energy, but above all, a people clean of soul to whom Right and Justice are worth fighting for, suffering for, labouring for. ”