There is another story told of a General (during an attack in the Battle of the Somme) who could not learn how far his division had gone. It was a matter of the most intense anxiety to him. He sent out messengers who never returned, the telephone wires were cut as fast as they were laid, and no pigeons came back. He stood beside the pigeon-loft biting his finger nails. Then at last, out of the battle, came a solitary pigeon, and the General cried: “There she is, there she is. Now we shall know.” The pigeon came circling out of the smoke, and came down to the pigeon-loft and went in. The General said, “Go in, man, go in, and get the message!” So the pigeon fancier went into the loft and was gone rather a long time, and the General cried: “Read it out, man, read it out. What do they say?” The man replied, “I’d rather not read it aloud, sir.” The General said: “Bring it here, man.” The General took the message and read it, and the message ran: “I’m not going to carry this bloody poultry any longer.”
I have said something about the dullness and the dirtiness of the life, but there is a kind of dirtiness to which I have not yet alluded. On your way up to the front you are struck by the number of soldiers sitting on the doorsteps of ruined houses studying the tails of their shirts as though they were precious manuscripts. When you are at the front you notice that the men have an uneasy way with their shoulders as though they wished to be scraping along brick walls, and when you have slept one night at the front you realize what the soldier meant when he wrote home to say: “This war isn’t a very bloody war, so far as I’ve seen it, but it does tickle at night.” I would like to ask all those who are sending packets of clothing to their friends at the front always to include the strongest insecticide they can find, because, though no insecticide is really strong enough to kill the creatures, a good strong insecticide will take the edge off them. The condition of needing insecticide is known as being “chatty.” Not long ago an English actress was playing to the soldiers in a base camp. She was playing a play of Barrie’s, in which a lady says of her husband that he was so nice and chatty. She was interrupted by a burst of joy from the troops. She could not understand what she had said to disturb them.
Next as to the danger at the front. In proportion to the numbers engaged, this war is by much the least dangerous war of which we have any record. The great scourges of ancient armies, typhus fever, typhoid, smallpox and measles, have been practically eliminated from this war. The only outbreak of typhus, so far as I know, was the outbreak in Serbia in 1915, and that was due not to the soldiers, but to the filthy conditions in which the Serbian refugees were forced to live. A friend of mine, a Doctor, was in charge of a hospital during that epidemic. The hospital was a big church which was completely filled with misery of every sort; typhus cases, typhoid cases, smallpox cases, maternity cases and children with measles, all jammed up together, and nobody to look after them but my friend and a few Austrian prisoners. The place was very filthy, crawling with vermin, and pretty nearly every known language was spoken there. One day a strange man appeared on the scene of misery. The orderlies asked my friend what they should do with him. My friend looked at the man, and saw that he was pale and shaggy, so he said, “Just wash him and put him into one of the beds.” So they washed him. He protested very vigorously, but they did it, and they put him into one of the beds. He protested very vigorously against that, but they put him in and kept him there. My friend, being very busy, was not able to see him for the rest of the day, and didn’t get round to him until the next morning. Then he found that he wasn’t sick at all, but had come with a message from some neighbouring hospital.
As to the danger from missiles at the front, it is true, that at any minute of the day or night, in any part of the Army Zone, you may become a casualty, and the thing which makes you a casualty may bury you as well, or blow you into such small fragments that nothing of you may ever be seen again, nor anybody know what has become of you. Even if you are away from the front, on some battlefield where there has been no fighting for months, you are still in danger, because the ground is littered with explosives in a more or less dangerous condition. There are bombs which are going off because their safety pins have rusted through, and shells which go off for no apparent cause. You may jump across an open trench and land on a percussion bomb and kill yourself, or you may be riding along, and your horse may kick a percussion bomb and kill you. Or you may meet a souvenir hunter who will be equally deadly. And then some soldiers love to collect shells which have not exploded and then light fires under them for the pleasure of hearing them go Bang! They love to collect bombs and fling them at targets for their amusement. Last summer a General was walking on the old battlefield, when he heard a noise of cheering. There came a Bang, and bits of shrapnel came flying past. Then there came another cheer, and another Bang and some more shrapnel. So, guessing what was the matter, he jumped up onto the trench parapet and looked down. There he saw a burly soldier who had rigged up a target to represent a German and was bowling Mills bombs at it. At each bomb he shouted out: “Every time you hit you get a good cigar!” The General jumped onto this man and said: “Here, what are you doing? Don’t you know that’s against orders?” The man turned up the face of an innocent child and said: “No sir.” “Well,” said the General, “at least you know it’s very dangerous, don’t you?” The man looked at the General and sized him up, and said, “Yes, General. That’s just why I was doing it, sir. You know, sir, I’m a family man, sir. I dare say you are yourself, sir. And I was thinking, in a little while the little children will be coming back to these old battlefields. They won’t know what these cruel bombs are, sir, they’ll go playing with them, poor little things, sir, and they’ll blow off their little arms, sir, and their little legs, sir. Then think of their poor mothers’ feelings. So I just collected these few bombs, sir, really in order to save those little children, sir.” So he was acquitted as a philanthropist.
While I am on the subject of bombs, I may say what happened to a boy of the Gloucester Battalion in Gallipoli. The boy was an agricultural labourer before the war and rather stronger in the arm than in the head. A friend came to his mother and said: “Oh, Mrs. Brown, what news have you of Bert?” Mrs. Brown beamed all over her face and said: “Oh, our Bert, he have had a narrow escape. He was in Gallipoli and there come a Turk and flung one of they bombs, and the bomb fell just at our Bert’s feet, but our Bert he never hesitate, he pick it up, and he flung it right to the other end of the trench, and it burst just as it got there. It killed two of our Bert’s best friends, but if our Bert hadn’t flung it just when he done, it would have killed our Bert.”
During the course of this war some six or seven millions of men have been drawn into the English Army from every rank of society, and have submitted to a pretty rough test. Under that test, thousands of men, who had had no opportunity of showing what was in them in time of peace, have risen to positions of great dignity, trust and authority. And as a result, the Army today is a thoroughly democratic thing. At the beginning of the war it was not so. I know of a case, in which a rich man enlisted with his shepherd. He told the shepherd, when he enlisted, “Of course, I shall pay your wages as my shepherd all the time that we are serving.” When they were in the Battalion the shepherd soon proved himself to be the better man. The shepherd became a Sergeant and his master remained a private. Presently, the master did something wrong and the shepherd had him up and got him ten days’ fatigue. As he left the court, the master leaned over to the shepherd and said: “Your wages are stopped for these ten days.” That was in the early days of the war, when the democratic leaven was not working very well. But it is working very well today. I know of a case of a young man who began life as a stable boy in a racing stable. He didn’t like the life, so he became a carpenter; he was a carpenter when the war began. He enlisted in a cavalry regiment, because he was very fond of horses; and as he knew a great deal about the management of horses he was given a commission straight away. He was always a man of great good temper and charm and tact in d
ealing with other men. He soon rose to a Captain. He went to France with the battalion, served in the trenches, dismounted, and soon rose to be Colonel of the battalion. He handled the battalion with great distinction and was made a Brigadier-General, and he is a Brigadier-General today.
Last summer I was talking with a General about the war, and he said: “Guess what my best staff officer was before the war?” I couldn’t guess. He said he was a barber’s assistant. “Now what do you think my second best staff officer was before the war?” Again I couldn’t guess. He said, “He was a milkman’s assistant and went round with the milk cans in the morning. Now what do you think my third best staff officer was before the war? He’s the bravest man I’ve got.” Again I could not guess. He said, “He was a milliner’s assistant, and sold ribbons over the counter.”
When the war is over and these men are disbanded back into every rank of society, they will carry with them this democratic leaven. I am quite sure that England, after the war, will be as democratic a country as this country or France.
If you turn your back upon the Army Zone and walk into the green and pleasant parts of France, you will notice that every big building in France is flying a Red Cross flag, for every big building now in France is a hospital. The business of the care of the wounded is a bigger business than coal or cotton or steel in time of peace. There are hundreds of thousands of orderlies and nurses and all the picked surgeons of the world looking after the wounded. There are miles of Red Cross trains carrying wounded, and there are more ships carrying wounded than carried passengers between England and America in the time of peace. I should like to tell you of one or two things which have been done to better the lot of the wounded. Firstly, about facial surgery. In this war of high-explosives it often happens that men will be brought in with all their faces blown away, with practically no face left beneath their brows, their noses gone, their cheeks gone, their jaws and their tongues gone. In the old days, if those men had survived at all, they could only have survived as objects of pity and horror and disgust. But today the facial surgeon steps in and remakes their faces. The facial surgeon begins by taking a bone from the man’s leg. Out of that bone they model him a new jaw-bone, which they graft onto the stumps of the old. Then cunning artists model him a new palate and a new set of teeth. Then, bit by bit, they begin to make him new cheeks. They get little bits of skin from the man’s arm, and other little bits from volunteers, and they graft these onto what was left of the man’s cheeks. Though it takes a long time to do, they do at last make complete cheeks. Then they take a part of a sheep’s tongue and graft it onto the roots of the man’s tongue, so that it grows. Then they add artificial lips, an artificial nose, and whiskers, beard and moustaches, if the man chooses. They turn the man out, often handsomer than he ever was before, able to talk, and to earn his own living on equal terms with his fellow-men. In all that work of facial surgery the American surgeons have set a standard for the rest of the world. What they have done is amazing. You can see the men brought in, looking like nothing human, looking like bloody mops on the ends of sticks. Gradually you see them becoming human and at last becoming handsome and at last almost indistinguishable from their fellows. Surgeons not only restore the men fresh from the battlefield, but they remake the faces of those who have been badly patched up in distant parts of this war, such as Mesopotamia, where special treatment has been impossible, and though this re-making takes a very long time, it can still be done.
Another very wonderful treatment is the treatment of the burned men. In this war of high-explosives and flame projectors many men are shockingly burned. You may see men brought in with practically no skin on them above their waist, unable to rest, and suffering torments. They apply the new treatment of Ambrene to these sufferers. Ambrene is said to be a by-product of paraffin mixed with resin and with amber. It is applied in a liquid form with a camel’s hair brush. Directly it touches the burned surface all pain ceases and the man is able to rest. In a fortnight the man has an entirely new skin, with no scar and practically no discolouration, and he is able to go back to the trenches, often much disgusted at being cured so soon.
When you have seen the wounded you have seen the fruits of this business. And when you have seen the wounded you resolve within yourself that at whatever cost this must be the last war of this kind. This war is being fought today in order that it may be the last war of its kind. If we succeed in this, as we shall, all the bloodshed and horror and misery of this war will have been very well worthwhile. But even when we have gotten rid of the causes of this war, there will still remain, in all human societies, many potential causes of war. A great deal of cant is talked about war. In all commercial countries there must be some manufacturers who make things that will be of great demand in war, and it is an unfortunate fact that after long periods of peace men begin to think a great deal about war, to read about it, and to brood upon it, and even to long for it, so that they may have that deep experience for themselves. And to many young men war is exceedingly delightful. It gives them adventure, excitement and comradeship. Only the other day a young English soldier said to me: “Do you think this lovely war will ever come to an end?” I said I hoped it would, someday. And he said, “Well, I don’t know what I shall do when it comes to an end. It will break my heart. I’ve had the time of my life.” That boy was not quite nineteen. He had been a schoolboy six months before. He had been badly wounded three weeks before. He had been at death’s door a fortnight before. He had made an amazing recovery and was panting to get back. There are hundreds of thousands of young men like that, who thoroughly enjoy every minute of it. The older men do not view war with quite such enthusiasm. Their attitude, perhaps, is much like that of the Naval Officer who said the other day: “I do wish to God this war would end, so that I could get the men back to battle practice.”
Even if we were able to be rid of all these potential causes of war we should not get rid of evil in this world, and as long as men can be evil, evil men will strike for power, and the only way to resist evil men, when they do evil things, is to use force to them. It often needs a very great deal of force.
Yet when people ask me if I think that wars will cease to be, I always say that I do, because the evil things in this world do get knocked on the head. The dragons and basilisks and cockatrices have become extinct, and most murderers get hanged, and most lunatics get locked up; and men are coming more and more to see that certain evils that afflict life are not inevitable, and are not the will of God, but are simply the result of obsolete and stupid ways of thinking and of governing. It ought to be possible for the mind of man, which made the steam engine, the submarine and the aeroplane, and conquered the Black Death and yellow fever and typhus fever, to devise some means of living, nation with nation, without this periodical slaughter known as war. It won’t be easy to devise any such means, men being what they are, with the instincts for war deeply rooted in their hearts, or easily put there by their rulers; yet the mind of man can do most things, if he can only get the will to do them.
Even before this war, when most men were either unoccupied or occupied only in the grim and stupid devilry of plotting and preparing war; men tried to limit and prevent war, the Hague Conferences did sit. They didn’t limit or prevent war, because they were not meant to. While they sat, one great power was doubling its army, and a second was doubling its strategic railways, and a third was increasing its navy, and all were afraid, each of the other. How could peace come from men under those conditions?
Then, though they made recommendations, the Hague delegates had no power to enforce them. They knew this when they made them. Their recommendations were therefore not forceful. They seemed to say, that war is inevitable, let us temper its horror. They did not say, war has no business in modern life, henceforth those who make war shall be treated as criminals by an international police.
They could not say that, but the Peace Delegates of the future will have to say it, if there is to be any future. And after this
war men will listen to them if they do say it, for after this war men will passionately want to limit and prevent war. They know now, that the devil of war, which they fed with their arrogance, their envy, their strength and their stupidity, is an overwhelming monster which eats them wholesale.
Not long ago, I was talking to an American about this ending of war by internationalism. He said: “If two great peoples would agree to it, it could be done; and if your country and mine would agree to it, it would be done.” Don’t think me a dreamer, an idealist, a pacifist. I am for the common man and woman, whose tears and blood pay for war. And in that matter of payment, the poor German pays, equally with the poor Belgian. He pays with all he has. On the battlefields of this war I have seen the men who paid. I have seen enemy dead, and Turk dead, and French dead, and English dead, and every dead man meant some woman with a broken heart.
John Masefield’s Great War: Collected Works Page 32