No Man's Land Part 33

Out of the evil, good will come: surely it must be so. In the wisdom of the Infinite Power, madness has been let loose on the world. The madness was not of our seeking. It was hurled upon us by a race whose standards are based on bombing or crucifying their prisoners, and eating their own dead; on sinking unarmed liners and murdering an odd woman or two to fill in time; and finally--though perhaps last on the list of witticisms from a material point of view, almost first from that of contempt--of crucifying an emaciated cat and stuffing a cigar in its mouth. A race without an instinct of sport, without an idea of playing the game. Gross and contemptible they bl.u.s.ter first, and then they whine; and the rare exceptions only make the great drab ma.s.s seem even more nauseating. . . .

But the crus.h.i.+ng of that race will have been hard, the sacrifices great. And even so will the results of those sacrifices be great. Of social problems I am, as I have said, not qualified to speak; indeed of any of the great problems of reconstruction it would be presumption on my part to hold forth.

It is not for the soldier to see visions and dream dreams: there are others more fitted, more suited to the task. It is of the individual I have written; it is to the individual I dedicate the result of my labours.

I remember meeting a Padre one day several months ago. He was conjuring at a concert for an Infantry Battalion that evening--between the forefinger and thumb of the right hand you now perceive a baby giraffe sort of business--and I told him I thought it was very good of him to take the immense amount of trouble he always did to amuse the boys.

"Good!" His face expressed genuine amazement. "Good! To these boys!

I tell you, when I think of what the ordinary private soldier is doing for me--aye! and for all of us who are not in the Infantry--I just stand quite still and take off my hat."

And so I have written of the individual. Inadequately it is true, and with a due sense of my short-comings in attempting the task, I have written of the men I have met and lived with across the narrow sea.

Not of armies and army corps, not of divisions and brigades, but of the units--the individual men--who form them. For it is the man we know.

It is the man who has suffered and endured, the man who touches our laughter and our tears. He has given his all, unstintingly, unsparingly; and now, perchance, he lies peaceful and at rest in the land where the seed has been sown; perchance he will come back to the country he has fought for when the final reckoning is over. And whichever it is--the quiet, solitary grave with the cross above it and the wild flowers blooming freshly underneath the crumbling walls of a town that was; or the taking up again of the work so long neglected--the office or the ranch, the railway in Yukon or the rubber in Malay--whichever it is, he has played the great game well. To him the great reward. . . .

And the women? the women who have suffered and endured with their men--more than their men. To some the great reunion, the blessed feeling that it is over. Never again will he go into the great unknown; never again that clutching terror of the telegraph boy. He has come back, and there shall be no more parting. The joy bells will be ringing out: the war will be over--won.

Thus shall it be for some.

And for the others. . . .

It is not for me to comfort: there are things too deep for the written word. Only one thing I say, and I say it with a full sense of its pitiful inadequacy. When the joy bells do ring out, and in the ringing seem to mock so hideously the empty chair, the voice for ever silent, then in that bitter moment, remember one thing. Somewhere or other, in the Soldier's Valhalla, he is waiting for you--waiting with a trusty band of friends, happy, contented, proud. He was glad to pay that final price; he knows now, where all is clear, that it was necessary.

He would have you know it too. . . .

_For except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die. . . ._