Legerdemain

“ What calamity could they call down upon us, so much to be dreaded, as a turbulent and factious spirit, and all the evils of discord and sedition?—that the soldier should refuse to obey his centurion; the centurion his tribune; and that hence the cavalry and the foot soldiers, without order or distinction, should rush into destruction? It is implicit obedience rather than wrangling about orders, that gives to military operations their energy. The army that shows itself in time of peace the most quiet and orderly, is sure to be the most formidable in the day of battle. ”

“ There is no possible need to doubt that they will maintain the old traditions of their regiments and add new records to their colours. Before this war is finished these soldiers of ours, who are singing on their way, in dapper suits of khaki, will be all tattered and torn, with straw tied round their feet, with stubby beards on their chins, with the grime of gunpowder and dust and grease and mud and blood upon their hands and faces. They will have lost the freshness of their youth: but those who remain will have gained—can we doubt it?—the reward of stubborn courage and unfailing valour. ”

“ We were a self-centred army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man’s creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that our earlier ambitions faded in its glare. ”

“ Folk would run together, clamorous, palsied with fear; and among the terror-stricken groups would figure certain aunts. "What hope is left us?" they would ask themselves, "save in the clemency of the General, the mysterious, invincible General, of whom men tell such romantic tales?" And the army would march in, and the guns would rattle and leap along the village street, and, last of all, you—you, the General, the fabled hero—you would enter, on your coal-black charger, your pale set face seamed by an interesting sabre-cut. ”

“ My ambition was the much lesser one of describing as well as I could what a Big Push is like from the point of view of an ordinary average infantry private, of showing how much he sees and knows and suffers in a great battle, of giving a glimpse perhaps of the spirit that animates the New Armies, the endurance that has made them more than a match for the Germans, the acceptance of appalling and impossible horrors as the work-a-day business and routine of battle, the discipline and training that has fused such a mixture of material into tempered fighting metal. ”

“ The life of an officer is not now a life of parade, of coxcombical, or of profligate idleness—but of active service, of continual hardship and danger. All the descriptions which we see in ancient history of a soldier's life—descriptions which, in times of peace, appeared like romance—are now realised; military exploits fill every day's newspapers, every day's conversation. A martial spirit is now essential to the liberty and the existence of our own country. ”

“ Where does even the world look more for consistency and devotion and fearless regard to the will of God? What should we think of an army where the officers counted it enough to see to the drill and discipline of the men, and in the hour of battle confined themselves to mere mechanical duties, and were outstripped in self-denial, in courage, in dash and daring by the commonest of their soldiers? ”

“ In the British Army what we have been watching is an active hierarchy of duty, discipline, loyalty, intelligence—the creation of a whole people, bent on victory for a great cause. Must it, indeed, vanish with the war, like a dream at cock-crow, or shall we yet see its marvellous training, its developments of mind and character, gradually take other shapes and enter into other combinations—for the saving and not the slaying of men? ”

“ Of all the daydreams of my boyhood, the ambition of military glory alone survived; and that lived on amid the dreary solitude of my prison, comforting many a lonely hour by memories of the past. The glittering ranks of the mounted squadrons; the deep-toned thunder of the artillery; the solid masses of the infantry, immovable beneath the rush of cavalry,—were pictures I could dwell on for hours and days, and my dearest wish could point to no higher destiny than to be once more a soldier in the ranks of France. ”

“ Your duty is to join your regiment, now that war is declared, and to fight, yes, to fight for France, like every other Frenchman ... like the first peasant that comes along, who may tremble with all his poor human flesh, it is true, and whose heart sinks within him and whose stomach turns cold, but who believes that his duty lies in being there ... and who goes ahead, come what may! March on, as he does, Philippe! ”

“ If you wish to picture our Army out here now, the landscape in which our men are fighting—and they like to think you want to do so—you must think of them marching along roads sweet-scented with lilac and apple-blossom, and over those golden fields to the white edge of the dead land. They are hot under heavy packs all powdered with dust, so that they wear white masks like a legion of Pierrots, and on their steel helmets the sun shines brazenly. ”

“ He moved amid the disorganised army of his thoughts and emotions, like a great captain who sees and knows the troubled state of his army, and the desperate and broken ground over which it has to advance; who visits every regiment and knows the wants of each; who has entered every tent, who is aware of the fears, doubts, failures, and despairs of every man—but who is determined to lead the army on, because he knows that, far away, there is a safe and quiet resting-place—soft grass and clear streams within a fortified defence—where he can camp them at last, order them, and restore their spirit. ”

“ The regiments he had entrusted to his own relations, creatures, and favourites. He, and he alone, could discharge to the troops the extravagant promises by which they had been lured into his service. His pledged word was the only security on which their bold expectations rested; a blind reliance on his omnipotence, the only tie which linked together in one common life and soul the various impulses of their zeal. There was an end of the good fortune of each individual, if he retired, who alone was the voucher of its fulfilment. ”

“ We did not know that each regiment had its own glorious story of achievement—a story which all raw recruits were eager to live up to—a story of undaunted fighting in the very face of death that won for it its sobriquet. ”

“ We are building directly for the future of a nation, and there can never be anything quite like us again. We do the work of an army, with each division a regiment, and each man a company—and we're barely the strength of a regiment all told, Heaven help us. ”

“ The officer pictured to us a regiment of soldiers advancing, with the full tide of life running in their veins, laughing and singing as they marched in the smiling sun. Suddenly the road rocks and hell heaves up beneath their feet; bodies are blown into the air and rained back to the earth in tiny fragments of human flesh; while brains are spattered over the ground, and every crevice runs a rivulet of blood. ”

“ Regiments which had lost many of their comrades and had fought in attack and counter-attack through those days and nights went very silently, and no man cheered them. Legions of tall lads, who a few months before marched smart and trim down English lanes, trudged toward the fighting-lines under the burden of their heavy packs, with all their smartness befouled by the business of war, but wonderful and pitiful to see because of the look of courage and the gravity in their eyes as they went up to dreadful places. ”

“ In the general destruction of the bonds of discipline and duty holding together the companies, the battalions, the regiments, the brigades, and divisions of an armed host, this body of men put its pride in preserving some semblance of order and formation. The only stragglers were those who fell out to give up to the frost their exhausted souls. ”

“ Or were the doings and sufferings of one regiment, among the thousands engaged in the war, of such interest as to demand a separate history? These are questions the author doubtless weighed carefully before he began to write; and his answer to them is his book. I agree with him. This nation has a deep, and will have a lasting, interest in the war. We have been making history of unrivalled, perhaps of unequalled, importance to the world during the past four years. We ourselves cannot comprehend the magnitude of the work we have been doing, or, rather, that God has been doing through us. ”

“ Some day, if we live long enough, we shall see the glories of the past and the "sublime instinct of an ancient people" without one complete army corps, pitted against a few unsentimental long-range guns and some efficiently organised troops. ”

“ Momentary admiration for exhibitions of well drilled men and military tactics, which I believe would follow, would create sensation among the sight-lovers who swarm in all thickly populated districts; but that indelible impression, mighty to move the hearts of men to action, but when moved, calls forth imperishable convictions, lasting as time itself, must emanate from something deeper, more reliable, than brute force or the chance life of military campaigning, of soldiers ungarnished by the more essential qualities that make the man the citizen. ”

“ The vast body of human beings moving fearlessly across the swaying structure, the fitful gleams of light reflecting from their muskets, the two great generals sitting there as calmly as though watching a festive procession—the somber depths of the forest on either side, where danger lurked in many shapes—what heart could fail to be impressed by the solemn spectacle?
By the morning of the 18th that vast army had crossed to the west side of the river, but the rebel general had not waited to receive them, but flown, without attempting to give them battle. ”

“ You will feel it like a joy divine, if you have the good fortune to behold the re-entrance to your town of the regiments, weary, ragged, with thinned ranks, yet terrible, with the splendor of victory in their eyes, and their banners torn by bullets, followed by a vast convoy of brave fellows, bearing their bandaged heads and their stumps of arms loftily, amid a wild throng, which covers them with flowers, with blessings, and with kisses. ”

“ Rank by rank, company by company, regiment by regiment, the sun glinting on their field equipment, the sun burning the frames already wearied by the march from garrisons in Germany, the sun waiting to turn the slain bodies of those marching men to sights of which a soldier even fears to dream, years after the war is over. ”

“ First one group and then another of tall, dark people, silent footed as falling leaves, turbaned black faces, eyes of appalling and unearthly gravity, hearts half like a rock and half like a child, alien captive people of another blood, took their place silently, regiment by regiment blocking up the dreadful gaps with their guns, their rifles, and the free gift of their lives. ”

“ They hurried to their mobilization posts, donned uniforms and equipment, and were shipped away in regiments to the front. Most of them did not worry about the possibility of death, but acted like all healthy human beings, ignoring what they could not affect, caught up in the novelty and the requirements of the new life. ”

“ If we were at war and our students were told that two regiments were seeking recruits, one of which would be stationed at Fortress Monroe, well- housed and fed, living in luxury, without risk of death or wounds, while the other would go to the front, be starved and harassed by fatiguing marches under a broiling sun, amid pestilence, with men falling from its ranks killed or suffering mutilation, not a single man would volunteer for the first regiment, but the second would be quickly filled. ”

“ It is with such pictures as these that I would close this chapter, pictures of courage and self-sacrifice unsurpassed in the story of our regiments. Whatever the future may hold, one thing is certain—victory must always greet men inspired by a cause that is at once noble and just. ”

“ What a revolution in the status of officers and men it would come to be, if, instead of a huge sink of idleness, dissipation and uselessness, the army were to become one great industrial school, a national university, an atmosphere of efficiency and work, and the country were delivered once and for ever, from the disgrace of panic, and the no longer imaginary danger of national extinction! ”

“ Shall we withdraw our army from the field because the war is raging in Europe, or shall we send it reinforcements? Shall we practice a more severe economy and straiten our [Pg 177] army's equipment for service; or shall we practice a more glorious self-sacrifice, and make its equipment more efficient? Shall we exalt and glorify our Saviour, or shall we allow Him to be put in the shade? Shall we endure hardness, as good soldiers of Christ, or shall we take to the fields of indulgence, and allow the Church of the Living God to be outshone by the army of the world? ”

“ For myself, it has long been my principle, that a retiring general or army is never safe. Hot only, then, are we to reflect that death with honor is preferable to life with ignominy, but to remember that security and glory are seated in the same place. Even to fall in this extremest verge of earth and of nature cannot be thought an inglorious fate.
34. "If unknown nations or untried troops were drawn up against you, I would exhort you from the example of other armies. ”