Death of a Hero quotes

The casualty lists went on appearing for a long time after the Armistice—last spasms of Europe’s severed arteries. Of course, nobody much bothered to read the lists. Why should they?

The living must protect themselves from the dead, especially the intrusive dead.

But the twentieth century had lost its Spring with a vengeance. So a good deal of forgetting had to be done.

The casualty lists went on appearing for a long time after the Armistice—last spasms of Europe’s severed arteries. Of course, nobody much bothered to read the lists. Why should they? The living must protect themselves from the dead, especially the intrusive dead.

But the twentieth century had lost its Spring with a vengeance.

So a good deal of forgetting had to be done.

Mild, with an affectation of gentility, incompetent, selfishly unselfish (i.e., always patting himself on the back for “renouncing” something he was afraid to do or be or take), he had a genius for messing up other people’s lives.

The amount of irreparable harm which can be done by a really “good” man is astounding.

Ten astute rogues do less. Old Winterbourne messed up his wife’s life by being weak with her; messed up his children’s lives by being weak and sentimentalish with them and by losing his money—the unforgivable sin in a parent;

She was animated less by motives of disinterested patriotism than by exasperation with him for existing at all and for interrupting her love affairs. Old Winterbourne always said with proud sad dignity that his “religious convictions forbade” him to divorce her.

Religious convictions are such an easy excuse for being nasty.

So she found a war job for him in London, and put him into a position where it was impossible for him to refuse.

Perhaps they seemed so grotesque because neither of them could adjust to the tremendous revolution in everything, of which the war was a cause or symptom.

The whole immense drama went on in front of their noses, and they never perceived it.

They only worried about their rations. Old Winterbourne also worried a good deal about “the country,” and wrote letters of advice to the Times (which didn’t publish them) and then rewrote them on Club notepaper to the Prime Minister.

When Isabel was well enough to travel—perhaps a little before—they, who had gone out two, returned home three.

They had acquired the link which divides.

They had become a “family,” the eternal triangle of father, mother, child, which is so much more difficult and disagreeable and hard to deal with, and so much more productive of misery, than the other triangle of husband, wife, lover.

Of course a good deal of adult imagination consists in peoples’ persuading themselves that they can see white lobsters, just as their poetry consists in persuading themselves that the milk pudding did come out of the ostrich’s egg.

The child at least is honest, which is something.

But on the whole the young child-mind is boring.

One, two, a dozen blackbirds and linnets and thrushes were singing; and as the light faded they dwindled to one blackbird tune of exquisite melancholy and purity.

Beauty is in us, not outside us.

We recognize our own beauty in the patterns of the infinite flux. Light, form, movement, glitter, scent, sound, suddenly apprehended as givers of delight, as interpreters of the inner vitality, not as the customary aspect of things.

Beauty is in us, not outside us.

We recognize our own beauty in the patterns of the infinite flux.

Light, form, movement, glitter, scent, sound, suddenly apprehended as givers of delight, as interpreters of the inner vitality, not as the customary aspect of things. A boy, caught for the first time in a kind of ecstasy, brooding on the mystery of beauty.

From the crest of one of the high ridges, it had a kind of silvery-grey, very old quality, with its great bare treeless fields making faint chequer-patterns on the long gentle slopes, with always a fringe of silvery-grey sea in the far distance.

The chalk was ridged in long parallels, like the swell of some gigantic ocean arrested in rock.

The ridges became more abrupt and violent near the coast, and ended in a long irregular wall of silvery-grey chalk, poised like a huge wave of rock-foam forever motionless and forever silent, while forever at its base lapped the petty waves of the mobile and …

Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else—above all a travel bureau—arrange everything beforehand?

It isn’t seeing new and beautiful things which matters, it’s seeing them for yourself.

And if you want the sensation of covering the miles, go on foot. Three hundred miles on foot in three weeks will give you indefinitely more sense of travel, show you infinitely more surprising and beautiful experiences, than thirty thousand miles of mechanical transport.

It sounds absurd to speak of a fifteen-mile walk as “travel.” But you may go thousands of miles by train and boat between one international hotel and another, and not have the sensation of travelling at all.

Travel means the consciousness of adventure and exploration, the sense of covering the miles, the ability to seize indefatigably upon every new or familiar source of delight.

Hence the horror of tourism, which is a conventionalizing, a codification of adventure and exploration—which is absurd. Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before.

Travel means the consciousness of adventure and exploration, the sense of covering the miles, the ability to seize indefatigably upon every new or familiar source of delight. Hence the horror of tourism, which is a conventionalizing, a codification of adventure and exploration—which is absurd.

Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before.

How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else—above all a travel bureau—arrange everything beforehand? It isn’t seeing new and beautiful things which matters, it’s seeing them for yourself.

The tidal river ran turbid and level with its banks, or deep between walls of sinister mud. Little flocks of fleet-winged grey-white birds—called “oxey-birds”—flickered rapidly away in front of you on sickle-moon wings.

A brown-sailed barge, far inland, seemed to be gliding overland through the flat green-brown marsh land.

Behind, far across the flat desolate ex-sea-bottom ran the old coast line, and on a bluff stood the solid ruins of a Roman fort. “Pe-e-e-wit,” said the plunging plovers, “pee-e-ee-wit.” No other sound.

In ever increasing numbers the motor-cars clattered and hammered along the dusty roads; the devils of golf leaped on the acres and made them desolate; sport and journalism and gentility made barren men’s lives.

The gods shrank away, hid shyly in forgotten nooks, lurked unsuspected behind bramble and thorn.

Where were their worshippers? Where were their altars? Rattle of the motors, black smoke of the railways. One—perhaps only one—worshipper was left them. One only saw the fleet limbs glancing through the tree-trunks, saw the bright faun-eyes peering anxiously from behind the bushes.

Bank pass-books and private account-books are revealing documents, strangely neglected by biographers. One of the most useful things to know about any hero is the extent of his income, whether earned or unearned, whether crescendo or diminuendo.

Complicated états d’âme are the luxury of leisured opulence.

Those who have to earn their living must accept Appearances as Reality, and have little time for metaphysical woes and passions. I once thought of beginning this section with an accurate facsimile of George’s private account and pass books. But that would be vérisme.

One of the most useful things to know about any hero is the extent of his income, whether earned or unearned, whether crescendo or diminuendo. Complicated états d’âme are the luxury of leisured opulence.

Those who have to earn their living must accept Appearances as Reality, and have little time for metaphysical woes and passions.

I once thought of beginning this section with an accurate facsimile of George’s private account and pass books. But that would be vérisme. It is enough to say that his unearned income was nil, and his earned income small but crescendo.

Horrors of Gunnersbury. The spleen of the railway line between Turnham Green and Hammersmith, the villainous sordidness of Raynes Park, the ennui which always vibrates with the waiting train at Gloucester Road Station, emerge triumphant when the Lord is at rest and possess the streets.

The rain is one melancholy, and the sun another.

The supreme insult of pealing bells morning and evening. Dearly beloved brethren, miserable sinners, stand up, stand up for Jesus. Who will deliver us, who will deliver us from the Christians? O Lord Jesus, come quickly, and get it over.

They were walking up Church Street, Kensington, that dismal communication trench which links the support line of Kensington High Street with the front line of Notting Hill Gate.

How curious are cities, with their intricate trench systems and perpetual warfare, concealed but as deadly as the open warfare of armies!

We live in trenches, with flat revetments of house-fronts as parapet and parados. The warfare goes on behind the house-fronts—wives with husbands, children with parents, employers with employed, tradesmen with tradesmen, banker with lawyer, and the triumphal doctor rooting out life’s casualties. Desperate warfare—for what?

How curious are cities, with their intricate trench systems and perpetual warfare, concealed but as deadly as the open warfare of armies! We live in trenches, with flat revetments of house-fronts as parapet and parados.

The warfare goes on behind the house-fronts—wives with husbands, children with parents, employers with employed, tradesmen with tradesmen, banker with lawyer, and the triumphal doctor rooting out life’s casualties.

Desperate warfare—for what? Money as the symbol of power; power as the symbol or affirmation of existence. Throbbing warfare of men’s cities! As fierce and implacable and concealed as the desperate warfare of plants and the hidden carnage of animals. We walk up Church Street.

No Euripidean chorus uttered gnomic reflections on the inevitable and irresistible power of Ananke, the Destiny which is above the gods. No bright god warned him, no oracular voice spoke to him. Conflict of free-will and destiny! But is there a conflict?

Whether we move or are still, whether we go to the right or the left, hesitate or rush blindly forward, the thread is inexorably spun.

Ananke. Ananke.

Mr. Shobbe only half-heard, and nodded vaguely. The slight awkwardness of the situation was ended by the appearance of Mrs. Shobbe, who greeted them both; and they passed into the room. George attributed the feeling of strain to his own shyness and aloofness.

He was still naif enough to suppose that people are welcomed for their own sake.

In justice to the distinguished gathering in Mr. Shobbe’s studio (two “social” journalists were present) it must be said that the babble and the excitement were not wholly due to the champagne. Pre-war London was comparatively sober.

Whether the art of scandal-mongering has suffered by this new social activity is hard to say, but as ever it remains the chief diversion of the British intelligentsia.

Serious conversation is, of course, impossible, on account of the paper-pirates who are always hovering about to snatch up an idea.

One definite improvement is that the bon mot, the recherché pun, the intentional witticism, are definitely discouraged.

Serious conversation is, of course, impossible, on account of the paper-pirates who are always hovering about to snatch up an idea. One definite improvement is that the bon mot, the recherché pun, the intentional witticism, are definitely discouraged.

Indeed one of the brightest of the post-war reputations was created by a young man who had the self-restraint to sit through forty-five literary parties without saying a word.

This frightened everybody so much that when this modern lay Trappist departed you heard on all sides: “Brilliant young man.”

The ceaseless babble of petty talk about petty interests irritated and bored him. He felt isolated and hate-obstinate. So this was Upjohn’s “only intelligent group in London!” If this is “intelligence” then let me be a fool for God’s sake.

Better the great octopus ennui outside than these jelly-fish tentacles stinging with conceit, self-interest and malice.

He went over to talk to Comrade-Editor Bobbe. Mr. Bobbe was a sandy-haired, narrow-chested little man with spiteful blue eyes and a malevolent class-hatred.

With what ghastly pertinacity does a disappointed wife “take it out” on her daughter! Not consciously, of course; but the unconscious cruelty and oppression of human beings seem the most dreadful. To escape, she had married Shobbe.

Nothing can be more fatal for a girl than to marry an artist of any kind.

Have affairs with them, my dears, if you like. They can teach you a great deal about life, human nature and sex, because they are directly interested in these matters, whereas other men are cluttered with prejudices, ideals and literary reminiscences.

Of course, not only are there no delicious marriages, there are not even any good ones—Rochefoucauld was such an optimist. And in any case marriage is a primitive institution bound to succumb before the joint attack of contraceptives and the economic independence of women.

Remember, artists are not seeking tranquillity and legitimate posterity, but experience and an income. So look out!

Poor Mrs. Shobbe did not look out, she had never been allowed to do anything so unmaidenly. She became the means whereby Mr. Shobbe avoided the dismal but common fate of working for a living.

George brought the drinks, and sat down in a chair facing the women. They chatted aimlessly. Soon Mrs. Shobbe went away. She saw a lonely old maid in the opposite corner of the room, and felt it “right” to talk to her. Mrs. Lamberton sighed.

“Why does one come to these intellectual agapes? An expense of spirit in a waste of time.”

“Now, Frances!” said Elizabeth, with her hard nervous little laugh, “you know you’d hate it if you weren’t asked.”

Neither answered. Women do not like these questions, especially from young men whose duty it is to be dazzled by charms they cannot analyze.

Of course, the questions were impertinent; but if a young man is not impertinent, what on earth is the use of him?

The women lit cigarettes. George looked at Elizabeth Paston. A slender figure in red silk; black glossy hair drawn back from a high intellectual forehead; large, very intelligent dark eyes;

And then in Paris it’s rather chic to know the latest movements and to defend the rebel artists against the ordinary mass ignorance and hostility. Here they’re still terrified by the fate of Oscar, and it’s chic to be a sporting imbecile.

The English think it’s virile to have no sensibilities.

”

Elizabeth encouraged him. Females know instinctively or by bitter experience that males like to tell them things. It is so very curious that we talk of vanity as if it were almost exclusively feminine, whereas both sexes are equally vain. Perhaps males are vainer.

Women are sometimes plainly revolted by really inane compliments, while there is no flattery too gross for a male.

There simply isn’t. And not one of us is free from it. However much you may be on your guard, however much you may think you dislike it, you will find yourself instinctively angling for female flattery—and getting it.

For man is an ambulatory digestive tube which wants to keep alive, and Death waits for him. Descartes was a fool in these matters, like so many philosophers. “I think, therefore I am.” Idiot!

I am because others loved; I love that others may be.

Hunger and Death are the realities, and between those great chasms flits a little Life.

For man is an ambulatory digestive tube which wants to keep alive, and Death waits for him. Descartes was a fool in these matters, like so many philosophers. “I think, therefore I am.” Idiot! I am because others loved; I love that others may be.

Hunger and Death are the realities, and between those great chasms flits a little Life.

The enemy of Death is not Thought, not Apollo with gold shafts of light, useless against the Foe of gods and men, as you see him in the prologue to “Alkestis.” It is She, the Cyprian, who triumphs, woman-like with her wiles.

Hence the extraordinary defensive puritanism of many English rationalists. But something has been achieved. After all, during many centuries I should have been arrested, tortured and probably murdered for what I have just said to you, and you would have thought me a carbonized monster.

Now any alleged truth or moral proposition or belief which has to be enforced by torture or defended by sophistry stands self-condemned.

”

Of course, in these cases it isn’t what is said that matters, but all that remains unsaid. The talk is mere “parade,” a rustling out of the peacock’s tail, a kind of antennæ delicately fumbling.

Lovers are like mirrors—each gazes rapturously at himself reflected in the other.

How delicious the first flashes of recognition!

when they tell you with sparkling eyes that somebody you know has run away with the mistress of Snooks, the painter, or that Pocock, the eminent impresario, has just celebrated the birth of his twenty-fifth illegitimate child. Does it matter, indeed!

Why this fascinated delight in the private lives of the great? They’re just as sordid as everybody else’s.

The artist, anyway, is not nearly so important as he thinks himself. It’s all poppycock and swagger for Baudelaire to say that a man can live three days without food but not a day without poetry. It may have been true of Baudelaire;

But let the journeymen bakers go on strike for a fortnight....

If I were a millionaire it would amuse me to go about giving high-minded artists five hundred pounds a year to shut up.

The suggestion is not copyright.

Anybody who has not felt these pleasing delusions at the age of twenty must, I fear, be ranged in George’s category of abject morons. Youth is so much more valuable than experience; it is also far more intelligent.

Few things are more astounding and touching than the kindly tolerance of the young for their imbecile elders.

For, have no doubts about it, even the greatest minds degenerate annually, and the finest moral character is repulsive at forty.

And they have the monstrous impudence to pretend that you ought to love them. ‘Blood is thicker than water,’ they say sententiously. So it may be, but I don’t want to dabble in thick blood. I hate proverbs, don’t you?

I’ve always noticed that anything absurd or tyrannical or fatuous can always be supported by a proverb—the collective stupidity of the ages.

But, I say, I’m so sorry I interrupted you. I go on talking and talking, and don’t give you a chance to say a word.”

Near the street-lamps the grass behind the railing was a vivid artificial green, as if some one had splashed down a bucket-ful of bright paint.

Like savages in some primitive dance, the ancient trees swayed slowly, irregularly and mysteriously in the strong wind.

A red apocalyptic glow from the lights of Oxford Street stained luridly and uneasily the low rolling clouds before them. The grey monster Ennui of Sunday-in-London had vanished. George took his hat off and let the wind rumple his hair.

Having established this delicious and dangerous contact, they sat silent for a while. The firm cool male hand gently espoused her slim glove-warmed fingers. In them both was the exaltation of the Cyprian, potential desire recognized only as a heightening of vitality.

The first step along the primrose path—how delightful! But whither does it lead?

To what everlasting bonfires of servitude or ashy wastes of indifference? Neither of them thought of the future. Why should they? The young at least have the sense to live only in the present moment.

Oh, well, it’s done. I wish I could kiss her mouth. I must remember to tell her on Thursday about that show at the Leicester Gallery....

He lay awake long that night, unable to sleep for very love of living.

So much to see, so much to experience, so much to achieve, so much to be and do! How wonderful to do things with Elizabeth!

Among them stood tulips—the red, like thin blown bubbles of dark wine; the yellow more cup-like, more sensually open to the soft furry entry of the eager bees; the large parti-coloured gold and red, noble and sombre like the royal banner of Spain.

English spring flowers! What an answer to our ridiculous “cosmic woe,” how salutary, what a soft reproach to bitterness and avarice and despair, what balm to hurt minds!

The lovely bulb-flowers, loveliest of the year, so unpretentious, so cordial, so unconscious, so free from the striving after originality of the gardener’s tamed pets!

And I look at the lovers passing and I say to myself: ‘Allez-y, mes enfants, allez-y, soyez heureux!’”

Dear Lovers! Let us never forget that you are the sweetness of the bitter world.

And Elizabeth and George lingered through the sunny hours;

What is the most banal street, the most tedious place you know?

Think how fascinating if only you knew the real lives of those tedious people!

There are two centres or poles of activity in every adult life—the economic and the sexual. Hunger and Death, the enemies. Your whole adult life depends on how you deal with the two primitive foes, Hunger and Death.

There are two centres or poles of activity in every adult life—the economic and the sexual. Hunger and Death, the enemies.

Your whole adult life depends on how you deal with the two primitive foes, Hunger and Death.

Never mind how much the conditions of collective human life seem to have altered them, they are there; you can never really get away from Hunger and Death, from the need to eat and the will to live again.

It’s a confoundedly dangerous thing for two virgins to take on the job of initiating each other into a complicated art they only know theoretically. Dangerous, in that high hopes may be dashed, rather lovely emotions sadly frustrated and a beautiful relationship spoiled.

There are dangers in meeting the undeniably right person too soon in life.

Two handsome young married people, obviously deeply in love—what a charming spectacle, how delightful.... Wait! You wait! Not very long either....

When Science begins to talk the language of mystic Theology and superstition, I begin to suspect it vehemently. Besides, only the feeble sections of any aristocracy take on vapourish airs and affected ways of talk. Well-bred people haven’t any affectations.

And men with really fine minds haven’t any intellectual vanity.

”

The Southern bank was dark, low and motionless, except for the luminous announcements of the blessings of Lipton’s Tea and the Daily Mail. The Scotchman in coloured moving lights pledged the bonny highlands in countless sparkling glasses of electric whiskey.

Hungerford Railway Bridge seemed filled with the red eyes of immense dragons, whose vast bulk lay coiled somewhere invisibly on either bank.

Occasionally a red eye would wink green, and presently a brightly-lit train would crawl cautiously and heavily over the vibrating bridge. The lighted windows of the Cecil and the Savoy aroused no envy in them.

And they finally agreed that with all its sordidness and hugger-mugger and strange contrast of palaces abutting on slums, the Embankment had a beauty of its own which they would not exchange even for the dream-city of a race of artists.

Midnight boomed with majestic, policeman-like slowness from Big Ben; and as the last deep vibrations faded from the air, the great city seemed to be gliding into sleep and silence.

They lingered a little longer, and then turned to go.

If they were rich enough to live in separate wings of a large house, all well and good; but if not, then they should live no nearer than neighbouring streets.

The essence of freedom is the disposal of one’s own time in one’s own way, and how can two people do that if they are living on top of each other?

Moreover, a daily absence of several hours is quite indispensable to the avoidance of the domestic den atmosphere. It is far better for two lovers to be happy together for three or four hours a day than to be indifferent or miserable for twenty-four.

Moreover, a daily absence of several hours is quite indispensable to the avoidance of the domestic den atmosphere.

It is far better for two lovers to be happy together for three or four hours a day than to be indifferent or miserable for twenty-four.

The joint marriage-bed, Elizabeth used to state impressively, is destructive of all self-respect and sexual charm, and blunts the finer edges of sensibility....

Adult lives were cut sharply into three sections—pre-war, war, and post-war. It is curious—perhaps not so curious—but many people will tell you that whole areas of their pre-war lives have become obliterated from their memories.

Pre-war seems like prehistory.

What did we do, how did we feel, what were we living for in those incredibly distant years? One feels as if the period 1900-14 has to be treated archæologically, painfully recreated by experts from slight vestiges.

And yet 1914 was greeted as a great release, a purgation from the vices supposed to be engendered by peace! My God!

Three days of glory engender more vices and misery than all the alleged corrupters of humanity could achieve in a millennium.

Les jeunes would be amazed if they read the nauseous poppycock which was written in 1914-15 in England, and doubtless in all the belligerent countries, except France where practically nothing was printed at all.

Let us not ask too much. Enjoyment is enough. Yet how fragile even that is! It is as if one tried to carry a small flickering light in a thin glass vessel through a tumultuous hostile crowd.

How earnest is the world to suppress the delight of lovers!

How bitterly wrong all that is!

That had been perfect, complete happiness. “Had been.” Already the current of ordinary life was sweeping them apart again. Oh, not very far really, still within hailing distance. But very far, compared with that wonderful nearness. Such an ecstasy could not last. But why not?

Perhaps one of the many bitter jests of the gods—to show us for an hour what happiness might be if we were gods.

None can possess another, none can be possessed. Is it possible to give, is it possible to take? Does one existence really melt into another for a few minutes, or does it only seem to? What is she thinking now?

But very far, compared with that wonderful nearness. Such an ecstasy could not last. But why not? Perhaps one of the many bitter jests of the gods—to show us for an hour what happiness might be if we were gods.

None can possess another, none can be possessed.

Is it possible to give, is it possible to take? Does one existence really melt into another for a few minutes, or does it only seem to? What is she thinking now?

Do the foreign surroundings bring out the freakishness, or were such people destined to emigration by their very oddity? But there could be no doubt—Fanny and George were on a new footing with each other. There was a new and delicious intimacy between them.

Strange that a few kisses and caresses should make such a difference.

As they were leaving the restaurant, Fanny was hailed by some friends at a table near the door.

She generally shifted her quarters about every six months, and invariably for the better.

How pleasant is efficiency in others, especially when you are rather inefficient yourself!

I wouldn’t exactly say that George was inefficient, but the details of material life rather bored him.

She must have long ago felt subconsciously the attraction between us, and you can see by her attitude that she accepts it. I don’t see the need for all this talk and re-hashing of what’s a private and personal matter between two people.

We’re so hypnotized by words, that we think nothing exists until we have talked about it.

How can you interpret all these deep feelings and sensations in words? It’s because words don’t suffice that we need touch. Tell Elizabeth by loving her better.”

We’re so hypnotized by words, that we think nothing exists until we have talked about it. How can you interpret all these deep feelings and sensations in words?

It’s because words don’t suffice that we need touch.

Tell Elizabeth by loving her better.”

George duly met Elizabeth at Euston. She was delighted to be back in London, away from the stuffiness of family and the solemn boredom of middle-class existence. She leaned out the window of the taxi and sniffed the air.

“How lovely to smell dirty old London mud again! It means I’m free, free, free again!”

“I’m so glad you’re back.”

Even then George still clung to hopes of peace, bought only the more pacific Radical papers, and believed that Sir Edward Grey would “do something.”

Touching faith of the English in the omnipotence of their rulers!

After all, Sir Edward was not God Almighty, but merely a harassed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in a difficult position, with a divided Cabinet behind him. What on earth could the man have done?

But it isn’t necessary. It can only be necessary when deceit is necessary, when people have to be influenced to act against their right instincts and true interests.

If you want to judge a man, a cause, a nation, ask: Do they Cant?

If the War had been an honest affair for any participant, it would not have needed this preposterous bolstering up of Cant. The only honest people—if they existed—were those who said:

One human brain cannot hold, one memory retain, one pen portray the limitless Cant, Delusion and Delirium let loose on the world during those four years. It surpasses the most fantastic imagination.

It was incredible—and I suppose that was why it was believed.

It was the supreme and tragic climax of Victorian Cant, for after all the Victorians were still in full blast in 1914, and had pretty much the control of everything. Did they appeal to us honestly, and say:

He still clung desperately to Elizabeth and Fanny, of course. He wrote long letters to them trying to explain himself, and they replied sympathetically. They were the only persons he wanted to see when on leave, and they met him sympathetically. But it was useless.

They were gesticulating across an abyss.

The women were still human beings; he was merely a unit, a murder-robot, a wisp of cannon-fodder. And he knew it. They didn’t. But they felt the difference, felt it as a degradation in him, a sort of failure.

An amiable hero. In his zeal for religion he got Winterbourne sent on all the dirtiest and longest Sunday fatigues, until in self-defence he had to put himself down Church of England.

There was, of course, no religious compulsion in the Army; that was why Church Parade was a parade.

Winterbourne smiled as he thought of the ludicrous scene. It had been none the less painful.

Winterbourne smiled again to himself.

The road to glory was undoubtedly devious in our fair island story.

From Reveille at five-thirty until Lights Out they had been driven and harassed and bullied for weeks to the strain of: “Look to yer front there!” “’Old yer ’eads up, can’t yer, all them tanners was picked up on first p’rade.”

Well, all the training and presenting arms and saluting by numbers were over and in the past. They were on Active Service. It was an immense relief. Now, henceforth, he would be facing dread realities, not Regular Army pedants and bullies.

As Winterbourne once remarked, one of the horrors of the war was not fighting the Germans but living under the British.

After picking up more drafts, the train went on, grinding its way heavily through the silent darkness. The men were all asleep. He noticed the carriage was getting stuffy and headachey with foul air.

As they grow up, you’ve got to feed ’em. You need bread. We all live from the land. England, and the rest of the world after it, went crazy with the Industrial Revolution—thought you could eat steel and railways. You can’t.

The world of men is an inverted pyramid based on the bowed shoulders of the ploughman—or the steel-tractor—on the land.

It’s the hunger and death business again. “Increase and multiply.” Damned imbecility of applying to over-populated and huge nations the sexual taboos forced on a little crowd of unhygienic Semitic nomads by sheer force of circumstance. Think of their infantile death rate!

I know all about military grandeur and devotion to duty—I’m a soljer meself, marm. Thanks for all you’ve done for us, marm. If violence and butchery are the natural state of man, then let’s have no more of your humbug.

Violence and butchery beget violence and butchery.

Isn’t that the theme of the great Greek tragedies of blood? Blood will have blood. All right, now we know. It doesn’t matter whether murder is individual or collective, whether committed on behalf of one man or a gang or a state. It’s murder.

If violence and butchery are the natural state of man, then let’s have no more of your humbug. Violence and butchery beget violence and butchery. Isn’t that the theme of the great Greek tragedies of blood? Blood will have blood. All right, now we know.

It doesn’t matter whether murder is individual or collective, whether committed on behalf of one man or a gang or a state. It’s murder.

When you approve of murder you violate the right instincts of every human being. And a million murders egged on, lauded, exulted over, will raise a legion of Eumenides about your ears. The survivors will pay bitterly for it all their lives.

At seven they were marched to the quay, and then marched back. The officer had mistaken the word “eleven” for “seven.” So they had to wait again.

It was their first introduction to the curious fact that much of the War consisted in waiting about and in undoing things which somebody had ordered in error or through mistaken zeal.

The men, sitting on their packs in the empty room, were eagerly and vainly discussing their immediate future—which Base Camp would they go to, which unit would they be drafted to, what part of the line.

In the two hours following dawn in “quiet” sectors there was sometimes a kind of truce after the feverish work and perpetual firing during the night. After morning Stand-down the front-line troops snatched a little sleep. At such a time the silence was eerie.

Twenty thousand men within a mile, and not a sound.

Or so it seemed. But that was by contrast. In fact, there was always some shelling going on—heavies firing on back areas—and generally in the distance the long rumble which meant a general engagement....

If those men were typical, then there was nothing essentially wrong with common humanity, at least so far as the men were concerned. It was the leadership that was wrong—not the war leadership, but the peace leadership.

The nations were governed by bunk and sacrificed to false ideals and stupid ideas.

It was assumed that they had to be governed by bunk—but if they were never given anything else, how could you tell? De-bunk the World. Hopeless, hopeless....

He was surprised and a little alarmed at his own listlessness and despair.

He felt like a sheet of paper, dropping in jerks and waverings through grey air into an abyss.

The dinner bugle call sounded. He turned mechanically and joined the men thronging towards the eating huts. The snow was falling faster, and the men stamped their feet as they waited for the doors to open, cursing the cooks’ delay.

People at a distance thought of the fighting as heroic and exciting, in terms of cheering bayonet charges or little knots of determined men holding out to the last Lewis Gun.

That is rather like counting life by its champagne suppers, and forgetting all the rest.

The qualities needed were determination and endurance, inhuman endurance. It would be much more practical to fight modern wars with mechanical robots than with men.

But then, men are cheaper, although in a long war the initial outlay on the robots might be compensated by the fact that the quality of the men deteriorates, while they cost more in upkeep. But that is a question for the war departments.

From the point of view of efficiency in war, the trouble is that men have feelings; to attain the perfect soldier, we must eliminate feelings.

To the human robots of the last war, time seemed indefinitely and most unpleasantly prolonged. The dimension then measured as a “day” in its apparent duration approached what we now call a “month.”

The dead men’s caps, mouldering and falling to pieces, were hooked on to the tops of the crosses—the grey German round cap, the French blue and red kepi, the English khaki. There were also two large British cemeteries in sight—rectangular plantations of wooden crosses.

It was like living in the graveyard of the world—dead trees, dead houses, dead mines, dead villages, dead men.

Only the long steel guns and the transport wagons seemed alive. There were no civilians, but one of the mines was still worked about a mile and a half further from the line.

To be out of the piercing cold wind in the shelter of walls of earth was an immediate relief.

Overhead shone the beautiful ironic stars.

A field gun behind them started to crash out shells. Winterbourne listened to the long-drawn wail as they sped away and finally crashed faintly in the distance. He followed the man ahead of him blindly. Word kept coming down: “Hole here, look out.” “Wire overhead.”

For two or three minutes there was complete silence. The men in the sap seemed to have knocked off work, and made no sound. Winterbourne listened intently. No sound. It was the most ghostly, desolate, deathly silence he had ever experienced.

He had never imagined that death could be so deathly.

The feeling of annihilation, of the end of existence, of a dead planet of the dead arrested in a dead time and space, penetrated his flesh along with the cold. He shuddered. So frozen, so desolate, so dead a world—everything smashed and lying inertly broken.

The newest troops were nearly always the least affected. They were not braver, they were merely fresher. There were very few—were there any?—who could resist week after week, month after month of the physical and mental strain.

It is absurd to talk about men being brave or cowards.

There were greater or less degrees of sensibility, more or less self-control. The longer the strain on the finer sensibility the greater the self-control needed. But this continual neurosis steadily became worse and required a greater effort of repression.

He had not known how wearisome it could be to drag tired legs and carry burdens through deep sticky chalk mud, where each step was an effort, where each leg stuck deep as the other was laboriously pulled from the sucking mud.

He had not known that one could hate an inert thing so much.

Overhead it might be sunny, with innumerable little fleecy puffs of exploded shrapnel pursuing a darting white airplane high in the misty blue March sky. Underfoot, it was mud.

Winterbourne in his turn feverishly put on his equipment, buckled his pack, and cleaned his rifle. They stood, rifles and bayonets ready, in the low cellar, ready to spring up the broken stairs as soon as they were warned.

In a moment such as this, a kind of paroxysm of humanity, the most difficult thing is to wait.

They dreaded the awful storm thundering above them, but they were irresistibly hallucinated by it, eager to plunge in and be done with it. The German shells thudded continuously all round them, muted by the vaster clamour of the attacking artillery. No orders came.

You couldn’t say there was anything melodramatically startling, no hair going grey in a night, or never smiling again. He looked unaltered; he behaved in exactly the same way. But, in fact, he was a little mad.

We talk of shell-shock, but who wasn’t shell-shocked more or less?

The change in him was psychological, and showed itself in two ways. He was left with an anxiety complex, a sense of fear he had never experienced, the necessity to use great and greater efforts to force himself to face artillery, anything explosive.

“But surely you can see, Sir.

We’re making something, not destroying things. We’re taking down wire, not putting it up; filling in shell-holes, not desecrating the earth.

”

It seemed incredible that only seven months or so had passed since he had left England—more like seven years. He felt, not so much self-contempt, as self-indifference.

He did not despise George Winterbourne, he merely wasn’t interested in him.

Once he had been extremely interested in himself and the things he wanted to do; now, he didn’t care, he didn’t want to do anything in particular.

He spent the night aimlessly wandering about the streets and sitting on Embankment benches. He noticed that there were very few occupants of the benches—the War found work for every one.

Odd, he reflected, that in War-time the country could spend five million pounds sterling a day in trying to kill Germans, and that in peace-time it couldn’t afford five million a year to attack its own destitution.

Policemen spoke to him twice, quite decently, under the impression that he was a leave-man without a bed. He tried to explain. One of them was very fatherly:

Winterbourne walked back to Chelsea. The street lamps were very dim.

For the first time in his life he saw the stars plainly above Piccadilly.

In the King’s Road he heard the warning bugles for an air raid. He got into bed, extinguished the light, and lay there listening, wide awake.

There was very little to do—parading with the Company, inspection, a little drill, Orderly Officer occasionally. There were so many new officers waiting to go overseas that the quarters were uncomfortably crowded, and there seemed to be almost as many officers as men on parade.

He got the impression that Infantry subalterns were cheap as stinking fish.

At last he got his orders to proceed overseas—France again, though he had hoped for Egypt or Salonika. He had two more days of Leave and a quarrel with Elizabeth, who found him writing a loving note to Fanny on the morning he arrived.

He said it carelessly, as if it were a matter of casual importance.

Winterbourne heard them constantly using the phrase “three hundred thousand men,” as if they were cows or pence or radishes.

He walked up and down the large room apart from the others, thinking, no longer listening to their chatter. The phrase “Division smashed to pieces” rang in his brain.

He observed that the cemetery had doubled in size since he had last seen it from the train a few months before. That Ypres offensive must have been very costly.

Such acres of wooden crosses, the old ones already battered and weather-stained, the new ones steadily gaining on the dunes.

And now there was this smashing defeat on the Somme. Haig had issued his back to the wall Order, there was unity of Allied Command under Foch, and America had been frantically petitioned to send reinforcements immediately.

When Winterbourne inspected his company on the first day, his heart sank within him. He felt it was monstrous to send these scared-looking boys into the line without a proper stiffening of more experienced men. It would have been far better to spread them out.

They cleaned their buttons perfectly, drilled very neatly, turned right or left with an imitation Guards stamp, and trembled when an officer spoke to them.

But they were mighty raw stuff for the job ahead of them. Winterbourne thought of his own greenness when he had first gone into the line, and his heart sank lower as he thought of his own utter inexperience as an officer.

They passed many places familiar to Winterbourne—the cemetery (now much enlarged), the ruined village (now still more ruined), the long slag-hill, Southampton Row.

Nothing had changed, except to become a little more desolate and smashed.

He noticed that several large shells had fallen in the cemetery that morning or the night before, digging up the graves violently, scattering bones and torn blankets and broken crosses over the other graves.

He found the Company commander, a Major, democratically sitting in the trench on a double-seated latrine, talking humorously to one of his men.

The British always had separate latrines for officers.

Winterbourne enjoyed this hugely, and liked the Canadians. They at once invited him to whiskey high-balls and bridge. He managed to evade this, and then explained his own situation, asked for the written orders of defence and to see all the positions.

While Winterbourne was at one end of his section of trench, desperately and sweatingly trying to get some sort of order and sense into them, others were committing all sorts of military abominations at the other end.

It was useless to “take their names” for punishment, especially as there aren’t many punishments as bad as being in the line.

One day he did exasperatedly make the Sergeant-Major “Take their names” and by nightfall found he had collected forty-two. Ludicrous. The N.C.O.’s gave the job up in despair and let things drift.