Leaves in the Wind Part 12

You ask me to let the devils have it when I fight. Yes, I always let them have all I can, but really I don't think them devils. I only sc.r.a.p because it is my duty, but I do not think anything bad about the Huns. He is just a good chap with very little guts, trying to do his best. Nothing makes me feel more rotten than to see them go down, but you see it is either them or me, so I must do my best to make it a case of _them_.

And the gay, healthy temper in which he played his part is revealed in another letter, in which he describes a fight that ended in mutual laughter:

We kept on firing until we had used up all our ammunition. There was nothing more to be done after that, so we both burst out laughing. We couldn't help it--it was so ridiculous. We flew side by side laughing at each other for a few seconds, and then we waved adieu to each other and went off. He was a real sport was that Hun.

That is a pleasant picture to carry in the mind, the two high-spirited boys sent out to kill each other, faithfully trying to do their duty, failing, and then riding through the air side by side with merry laughter at their mutual discomfiture and gay adieus at parting.

And at the risk of hurting the feelings of the man in the corner I shall recall a letter which shows that even among the enemy of to-day, even among that worst of all military types, the German officer, there are those whom the miseries and horrors of war touch to something n.o.bler than hate. The letter appeared in the _Cologne Gazette_ early in the war, and was as follows:

Perhaps you will be so good as to a.s.sist by the publication of these lines in freeing our troops from an evil which they feel very strongly.

I have on many occasions, when distributing among the men the postal packets, observed among them postcards on which the defeated French, English and Russians were derided in a tasteless fas.h.i.+on.

The impression made by these postcards on our men is highly noteworthy.

Scarcely anybody is pleased with these postcards; on the contrary, everyone expresses his displeasure.

This is natural when one considers the position. We know how victories are won. We also know by what tremendous sacrifices they are obtained.

We see with our own eyes the unspeakable misery of the battlefield. We rejoice over our victories, but our joy is damped by the recollection of the sad pictures which we observe almost daily.

And our enemies have in an overwhelming majority of cases truly not deserved to be derided in such a way. Had they not fought so bravely we should not have had to register such losses.

Insipid, therefore, as these postcards are in themselves, their effect here, on the battlefields, in the presence of our dead and wounded, is only calculated to cause disgust. Such postcards are as much out of place on the battlefield as a clown is at a funeral. Perhaps these lines may prove instrumental in decreasing the number of such postcards sent to our troops.

I do not suppose they did. I have no doubt the fire-eaters at home went on fire-eating under the impression that that was what the men at the front wanted to keep up their fighting spirit. But it is not.

There is plenty of hate in the trenches, but it is directed, not against the victims of war, but against the inst.i.tution of war. That is the one ray of hope that s.h.i.+nes over the dismal landscape of Europe to-day.

ON TAKING THE CALL

Jane came home from the theatre last night overflowing with an indignation that even the beauty of a ride on the top of a bus in the air of these divine summer nights had not cooled. It was not dissatisfaction with the play or the performance that made her boil with volcanic wrath. It was the vanity of the insufferable actor-manager, who would insist on "taking the call" all the time and every time. There were some quite nice people in the play, it seemed, but the more the audience called for them the more the preposterous "old-clo'" man of the stage came smirking before the curtain, rubbing his fat hands and creasing his fat cheeks. "It was disgusting," said Jane. "The creature had been gibbering in the lime-light all night, and the audience were trying to level things up a bit by giving the interesting people a show, and this greedy cormorant s.n.a.t.c.hed every crumb for himself. I hate him. He is a Hun."

The outburst reminded me of a story I once heard about another actor-manager. At the end of the play he went on the stage and found his company bending down in a circle and gazing intently at something on the floor. "What are you looking at?" he asked. "Oh," they chanted in chorus, "we're looking at a spot we've never seen before. It's the centre of the stage."

There are, of course, people who carry the centre of the stage with them. It does not matter where they go or what they play: they dominate the scene. "Where O'Flaherty sits is the head of the table,"

and where Coquelin stood was the centre of the stage. He needed no placard to remind you that he was someone in particular. You would no more have thought of turning the limelight on to him than you would have thought of turning it on to the moon at midnight or the sun at midday. He just appeared and everyone else became accessory to that commanding presence: he spoke and all other voices seemed like the chirping of sparrows.

And so in other spheres. Take the case of Mr. Asquith, for example, in relation to the House of Commons. It does not matter where he sits.

He may go to the darkest corner under the gallery, but the centre of the stage will go with him. When he had sat down after delivering his first speech in opposition, one of the ablest observers in Parliament turned to me and said: "The Prime Minister has crossed the floor of the House." And that exactly expressed the feeling created by that authoritative manner, that masculine voice, that air of high detachment from the mere squalor and tricks of the Parliamentary game. He never seemed greater to the House than in the moment when he had fallen--never more its intellectual master, its most authentic voice, its wisest and most disinterested counsellor.

It is not these men, the Coquelins and the Asquiths, who come sprinting before the curtain after drenching themselves in the limelight on the stage. They hate the limelight and they are indifferent to the applause. The gentry who cultivate the art of "taking the call" are quite another breed. You know the type, both on the stage and off.

Take that eminent actor, Bluffington Phelps. He shambles about the stage, his words gurgle in his throat, his eyes roll like a bull's under torture; if he is not throwing agonised glances at the man with the limelight he is straining to catch the voice of the prompter at the flies. But when it comes to "taking the call" there is not his superior on the stage. He monopolises the applause as he monopolises the limelight; and by these artifices he has persuaded the public that he is an actor. It is a glorious joke--

Hood an a.s.s in reverend purple, So that you hide his too ambitious ears, And he shall pa.s.s for a cathedral doctor.

It is true, as Lincoln said, that you can fool some of the people all the time. Mr. Bluffington Phelps knows that it is true. He knows that there is a large part of the public, possibly the majority of the public, which is born to be fooled, which will believe anything because it hasn't the faculty of judging anything but the size of the crowd and which will always follow the a.s.s with the longest ears and the loudest bray.

It is the same off the stage. The art of politics is the art of "taking the call." Harley knew the trick perfectly. Where anything was to be got, it was said of him, he always knew how to wriggle himself in; when any misfortune threatened he knew how to wriggle himself out. He took the cheers and pa.s.sed the kicks on to his colleagues. His chivalrous spirit is not dead. It is familiar in every country, but most of all in democratic countries. We all know the type of politician who has the true genius for the limelight. If the newspapers forget him for five minutes he is miserable. "What has happened to the publicity department? Has the fellow in charge of the limelight gone to sleep? Wake him up. Don't let the public forget me.

If there's nothing else to tell 'em, tell 'em that my hat is two sizes larger than it was a year ago. Tell 'em about my famous smile. Tell 'em about my dear old grandmother to whom I owe my inimitable piety.

Tell 'em I'm at my desk at seven o'clock every morning and never leave it until half-past seven the next morning. Tell 'em anything you like--only tell 'em."

If things go right, and there is applause in the house, he skips in front of the curtain to take the call. "Thank you, gentlemen--and ladies. Thank you. Yes, alone I did it. n.o.body else in the company had a hand in it--nor a finger. No, not a finger." If anything goes wrong and the audience hiss, does he s.h.i.+rk the ordeal? Not at all. He comes before the curtain with indignant sorrow. "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I agree with you. Most scandalous failure. It was all Jones's doing, and Smith's, and Robinson's. I went down on my bended knees to them, but they wouldn't listen to me--wouldn't listen. And now you see what's happened. Hear the anguish in my voice. Look at the tears in my broken-hearted eyes. Oh, the pity of it, ladies and gentlemen--the pity of it. And I tried so hard--I really did. But they wouldn't listen--they wouldn't l-l-listen." (Breaks down in sobs.)

I recall a legend that seems apposite. A certain politician of antiquity--let us all call him Eurysthenes--hit on a happy idea for making himself famous. He bought a lot of parrots and taught them to shriek "Great is Eurysthenes!" Then he turned them all out into the woods, and there they sat and squawked "Great is Eurysthenes!" And the Athenians, astonished at such unanimity, took up the refrain and cried, "Great is Eurysthenes." And Eurysthenes, who was waiting in the flies, so to speak, took the call and was famous ever after.

A DITHYRAMB ON A DOG

Chum, roped securely to the cherry tree, is barking at the universe in general and at the cows in the paddock beyond the orchard in particular. Occasionally he pauses to snap at pa.s.sing bees, of which the orchard is full on this bright May morning; but he soon tires of this diversion and resumes his loud-voiced demand to share in the good things that are going. For the sun is high, the cuckoo is shouting over the valley, and the woods are calling him to unknown adventures.

They shall not call in vain. Work shall be suspended and this morning shall be dedicated to his service. For this is the day of deliverance.

The word is spoken and the shadow of the sword is lifted. The battle for his biscuit is won.

He does not know what a narrow shave he has had. He does not know that for weeks past he has been under sentence of death as an enc.u.mbrance, a luxury that this savage world of men could no longer afford; that having taken away his bones we were about to take away his biscuits and leave his cheerful companions.h.i.+p a memory of the dream world we lived in before the Great Killing began. All this he does not know. That is one of the numerous advantages of being a dog. He knows nothing of the infamies of men or of the incert.i.tudes of life. He does not look before and after and pine for what is not. He has no yesterday and no to-morrow--only the happy or the unhappy present. He does not, as Whitman says, "lie awake at night thinking of his soul," or lamenting his past or worrying about his future. His bereavements do not disturb him and he doesn't care twopence about his career. He has no debts and hungers for no honours. He would rather have a bone than a baronetcy.

He does not turn over old alb.u.ms, with their pictured records of forgotten holidays and happy scenes and yearn for the "tender grace of a day that is dead," or wonder whether he will keep his job and what will become of his "poor old family," as Stevenson used to say, if he doesn't, or speculate whether the war will end this year, next year, some time, or never. He doesn't even know there is a war. Think of it! He doesn't know there is a war. O happy dog! Give him a bone, a biscuit, a good word, and a scamper in the woods, and his cup of joy is full. Would that my needs were as few and as easily satisfied.

And now his biscuit is safe and I have the rare privilege of rejoicing with Sir Frederick Banbury. I do not know that I should go as far as he seems to go, for in that touching little speech of his at the Cannon Street Hotel he indicated that nothing in the heavens above or in the earth beneath should stand between him and his dogs. "In August, 1914," he said, "my son went to France. The night before he left he said, 'Father, look after my dogs and horses while I am away.' I said, 'Don't you worry about them.' He was killed in December, and I have got the horses and dogs now. As I said to Mr. Bonar Law last year, I should like to see the man who would tell me I have not to look after my son's dogs and horses." Well, I suppose that if the choice were between a German victory and a dog biscuit, the dog biscuit would have to go, Sir Frederick. But I rejoice with you that we have not to make the choice. I rejoice that the sentence of death has pa.s.sed from your dead son's horses and dogs and from that n.o.ble creature under the cherry tree.

Look at him, barking now at the cows, now with eloquent appeal at me, and then, having caught my eye, turning sportively to worry the hated rope. He knows that my intentions this morning are honourable. I think he feels that, in spite of appearances, I am in that humour in which at any radiant moment the magic word "Walk" may leap from my lips. What a word that is! No sleep so sound that it will not penetrate its depths and bring him, pa.s.sionately awake, to his feet.

He would sacrifice the whole dictionary for that one electric syllable.

That and its brother "Bones." Give him these good, sound, sensible words, and all the fancies of the poets and all the rhetoric of the statesmen may whistle down the winds. He has no use for them. "Walk"

and "Bones"--that is the speech a fellow can understand.

Yes, Chum knows very well that I am thinking about him and thinking about him in an uncommonly friendly way. That is the secret of the strange intimacy between us. We may love other animals, and other animals may respond to our affection. But the dog is the only animal who has a reciprocal intelligence. As Coleridge says, he is the only animal that _looks upward_ to man, strains to catch his meanings, hungers for his approval. Stroke a cat or a horse, and it will have a physical pleasure; but pat Chum and call him "Good dog!" and he has a spiritual pleasure. He feels good. He is pleased because you are pleased. His tail, his eyebrows, every part of him, proclaim that "G.o.d's in his heaven, all's right with the world," and that he himself is on the side of the angels.

And just as he has the sense of virtue, so also he has the sense of sin. A cat may be taught not to do certain things, but if it is caught out and flees, it flees not from shame, but from fear. But the shame of a dog touches an abyss of misery as bottomless as any human emotion.

He has fallen out of the state of grace, and nothing but the absolution and remission of his sin will restore him to happiness. By his a.s.sociation with man he seems to have caught something of his capacity for spiritual misery. I had an Airedale once who had moods of despondency as abysmal as my own. He was as sentimental as any minor poet, and at the sound of certain tunes on the piano he would break into paroxysms of grief, whining and moaning as if in one moment of concentrated anguish he recalled every bereavement he had endured, every bone he had lost, every stone heaved at him by his hated enemy, the butcher's boy. Indeed, there are times when the dog approximates so close to our intelligence that he seems to be of us, a sort of humble relation of ourselves, with our elementary feelings but not our gift of expression, our joy but not our laughter, our misery but not our tears, our thoughts but not our speech. To sentence him to death would be almost like homicide, and the day of his reprieve should be celebrated as a festival....

Come, old friend. Let us away to the woods. "Walk" ...

ON HAPPY FACES IN THE STRAND

I was walking along the Strand a few afternoons ago and had a singular impression of a cheerful world. The Strand is to me always the most attractive street I know, especially on bright afternoons when the sun is drooping behind the Admiralty Arch and its light glints and dances in the eyes of the crowd moving westward. Then it is that I seem to see the wayfarers transfigured into a procession hurrying in pursuit of some sunlit adventure of the soul, and am almost persuaded to turn round and catch with them the flash of vision that gleams in their eyes. But the thing that struck me this afternoon was the unusual gaiety of the people. It seemed to me that I had never seen such a procession of laughing, happy faces. Probably it was due to the fact that it was about the time when the afternoon theatres were emptying.

Probably also the impression on my mind was all the sharper because it was a day of depressing tidings--bad news from Russia, from Italy, from everywhere. I did not suppose that these merry people were ignorant of the news or indifferent to it. They were simply obeying the impulse of healthy minds and good digestions to be cheerful--_quand meme_.

And as I pa.s.sed along I wondered whether, in spite of all the tragedy in which our life is cast, our fund of personal happiness is undiminished. Do we come into the world with a certain capacity for pleasure and pain and realise it no matter what our external circ.u.mstances may be? Johnson took that view and expressed it in the familiar lines incorporated in Goldsmith's "Traveller"--the only lines of Johnson's very pedestrian poetry which have won a sort of immortality:

How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which kings or laws can cause or cure.