Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 678
‘You would say that such things do not happen in war. But they do....And the distracted cavalry officer having left me in charge of his sleeping daughter went on some business that he had at the Embassy. But before he went he pointed to the swinging doors of the hotel giving into the streets and told me that at any moment he expected his wife to rush in and use a revolver.... And I was due at the French Foreign Office for an interview upon which my future in the service and the world might turn.
‘Eventually my publisher came in and I dropped the sleeping Maisie into his lap. He was to have accompanied me to the Ministry but I thought he would be more useful to me there, so I left him.... But I assure you I was much more frightened of the idea of Maisie’s mother whom I pictured as a sort of infuriated Carmen than ever I was of any German shells. It was she, with her revolver, who typified for me real hatred — the woman robbed of her child. Whereas, as for the only man that I actually and consciously shot at and who actually and consciously shot at me, I never felt the ghost of an emotion of hatred. I was aware of imbecilely grinning when he missed me — as if it were any other sport — and of saying to myself: “That’s the sort of dud you are”, when I — and repeatedly — missed him. And I believe I felt regret when some one else killed him. At any rate I am glad that I cannot remember his face —
‘But Maisie’s mother would have been a different affair. She would have been filled with hatred — as I don’t believe that other fellow was — and I should have been paralyzed... Why, even at this moment I can almost feel her revolver bullet entering my stomach. And I should have deserved it. One should not connive at the carrying off of a woman’s child however righteous the case of the husband. It is perhaps a worse crime than crossing the Belgian frontier, “near a place called Gemmenich”.
‘To die thus would be to die in a bad cause. And I daresay that why I don’t believe that any great hatred existed between the actual combatants in the late war — and why I don’t, when I think about it, stigmatize the fellows who lately stood armed over against us as “Huns” — is simply that we thought we had a good cause and that we knew that they also thought that they had a good cause. They thought that we endangered their homes as much as we thought that they endangered ours.
‘So that I simply do not believe in atrocities. The worst fellow that I ever came across on our own side — an enormous Scot whose principal conversation was taken up with the topic of the prisoners he had murdered — I have seen become lachrymosely sentimental over a German prisoner who was in a lamentable state of funk at having to undergo a medical examination. That Scot almost blubbered over that Hun in his efforts to assure him that the doctor would not operate on him against his will —
‘No, I don’t believe in atrocities. Or at the most I half believe in one. It is asserted — the Huns asserted it themselves but I found it difficult to believe — that they filmed the Lusitania whilst she was sinking. That I find atrocious. It is bad enough with premeditation —— and the presence of a film operator would seem to prove premeditation — it is bad enough, then, with premeditation to sink a ship loaded with sleeping women and children. But if we concede that those responsible believed — as they may have done — that the Lusitania carried munitions of war even that may be nearly condoned. But that you should take a cinema machine to represent, for the gloating of others, the ruin and disappearance of a tall ship —— that seems to me the most horrible of crimes. Spurlos is in itself a suspect word, a part of the vocabulary of ruthlessness that lost the Huns - not the fighting men — the war. But the real lives of men are enshrined in their products. To kill a poet is a small thing; to destroy his work is an irremediable offence....And the most beautiful of all the handiwork of men is the tall ship. It is horrible to see houses go down in ruin under artillery fire; it is horrible to see fields mutilated and rendered unfertile or merely humiliated by the heels of alien conquerors. But to see a ship, its heart broken, its bows appealing to the heavens, slowly and mutely disappear. That is horrible. The sea shudders a little where it was. Only a little. But still the sea shudders.
‘Obviously in wars you must sink ships. And I suppose you may make records of the sinking of ships if it be done pitifully. But, in a spirit of gloating, to represent for the purpose of affrighting others or making yet others gloat in turn — to make cold-bloodedly the record of the disappearance of the proudest ship in the world, that seems to me the most horrible of... Schrecklichkeiten — But perhaps they never did it. Perhaps they only said that they did. That would be a queer way to make yourself popular!
‘But there was a landscape that I wanted to tell you about.
‘A little in front of Kemmel Hill we had some trenches — horrible trenches because of the nature of the ground. You could not dig down three feet because you came to water so the parapets were merely sandbags and the parados nothing at all. They must have been responsible for the loss of more lives than any other position of the whole war. In addition, when it rained, all the flood-water of the uplands poured down into them. Why I have seen them filled with cigarette packets washed down from our always luckless canteen — after the great storm in September’ 16.
‘Well, it was just before then that we had been set to occupy those lines. If they had been retired a hundred and fifty yards they would have been on the slope of the hill and dry and safe. But the staff — or some bellicose individual on the staff — in spite of every representation preferred to lose a third of my battalion, let alone thirds of all the other battalions that occupied them, rather than to lose the little bit of prestige that it would have meant, by a retirement. Of a hundred and fifty yards! Think of that!
‘Anyhow, there we came down in the early hours of a September moonlight — into a world of beautiful, bluish and misty calm. There were those calms in the line when the vengeful activities of seven or so million men had exhausted themselves and their imaginations had just gone to sleep. You would have long periods of quiet. They would be broken by sudden bursts of machine gun fire and flares of Verey lights when some bemused sentry had taken it into his head that half a dozen corpses in No Man’s Land were stealing upon him. One’s nerves did that in quiet, moonlit moments. You would look at a corpse, or some sacking, or some sandbags until you could swear they were creeping upon you. Then in a crisis, “bang” would go your hipe,1 and off would go the machine guns, and up would flare the Verey lights. The guns too might come in and some poor devil or another lose his life. But as a rule silence would settle down again for another long period... I wrote a poem about that, in French. But I never heard of any one having read it.’
1 Rifle (colloquial): ed.
It was at that moment that your Compiler burst in with the words:
‘Oh, it begins with: “I should like to imagine a moonlight in which there will be no machine guns.” I heard my friend Mrs. Carmody recite it only yesterday. Recite, not read it!’
Gringoire grunted slightly.
‘The point was that it was most beautiful moonlight, before a blue, silent mountain with mists dim all up its flanks. And the other point was that we, as you may remember, were a flying division. We were used for reinforcing threatened points or for resting overtired troops. And, facing us, the Germans had similar divisions that they called “Sturmtruppen”. The curious thing was that either their Intelligence was so good or ours was so good that whenever we were moved up or down the line we found the same regiments in front of us so that when we were on the Somme we fought the Second Brandenburgers, and when we moved up to the Salient there we found the Second Brandenburgers in front of us and after we had been in front of Armentières for a little, there sure enough were the famous Second Brandenburgers. The Cockchafers, they were nicknamed. After that they began to desert to us a good deal and they were replaced by the Würtembergers whom we used to consider better fellows, I don’t know why, for we never, in the nature of the case, consorted much with either.
‘On the occasion of that moonlight night the Brandenburgers had got in before us and displayed a natural curiosity to know who we were when we got in. The German — or rather the Hun — method of trying to unmask the identity of opponents was to sing national anthems. I use the word “Hun” here because only a Delbrueck or a Bethmann-Hollweg — a professor or a politician — would have thought of anything so ingeniously imbecile. For naturally we did not fall in with that little idea — The idea, by the bye, was that if we were Scots and they sang Scots Wha Hae or Irish and they sang The Wearin’ of the Green, or for us Hen Wlad Wy Nadhau we should, in a burst of patriotic emotion either cheer or join in the chorus. We didn’t. I remember that once when, no doubt suspecting who we were, they had tried singing Ap Jenkin, which is our quickstep, our men replied by singing the imperial Chorus from the Mikado as if to show that we were Japanese. That irritated them so much that they pounded our trench for an hour and a half with everything they could think of.
‘On this occasion they tried everything from Rule Britannia to Australia, Australia, and elicited no reply. And then they suddenly touched off an immense gramophone that sang, through the still moonlight...the Hymn of Hate. And in English!
‘It was curious and eerie to hear that passionless machine let off those dire words devoted solely to ourselves, for they never evolved anything like it for the French or the Belgians or the Italians or Annamites or Cochin Chinese or Brazilians. Now it screamed and brayed:
Hate of the head and hate of the hand,
Hate of the breed and hate of the land
ENGLAND
Hate of the standing and hate of the lying,
Hate of the living and hate of the dying
ENGLAND... ENGLAND
(‘And as a detail I may add that they had to get an English renegade —— for there was one! — to make that translation.)
‘I am bound to say that it made one shiver a little. There were the moonlight, and the mists, and the lights of poor Wytschaete far away on the ridge. And those words creeping towards us. It is perhaps more disagreeable to think of being prayed to death than of being shelled. One shivered.
‘And when it fell silent one wondered if anything in the war or in the world could surpass it for drama. But one was wrong. You don’t know the Welsh. They are the incomparable singers of four-part music in the open air.
‘I remember, years ago, being on the side of a Welsh mountain on a Saturday evening at sunset and far below a Welsh miners’ beanfeast was going along a thread of a road in char-à-bancs. And as each filled car passed there came up the sounds of four-part songs, incredibly sweet and incredibly mournful in the falling darkness. They are a conquered people, the Welsh, and their music is the music of a conquered people.
‘But on that occasion the Germans had delivered themselves into their hands in the endless struggle between Saxon and Celt. For suddenly a single voice in “B” Company began to sing with extraordinary clearness:
Maxwelton braes are bonnie
When earlie fa’s the dew....
And extraordinarily, before the singer had come to “there that Annie Laurie”, the whole of “B” Company was crooning out the other parts of the song. Beneath the moon. And then the whole Battalion, along a front of a mile. Crooning, you know, rather softly, not shouting...
And for Bonnie Annie Laurie...
‘It was a good answer.
‘They were forbidden of course to sing Welsh songs, or it might have been Land of My Fathers or the Men of Harlech. As it was, it was better.
‘But there was not much hatred about that. And you will observe that even the Huns had had to get a machine to do their hating.’
CHAPTER VI.
Just Country
It is one of the burdens of advancing age - as it is one of the penalties of having been unreasonably prolific — that one is always haunted by a vague dread of repeating one’s self. One’s mind, presumably, progresses, one touches and retouches one’s ideas; hammers at the wording; seeks after a final clarity of expression. It is all one that one may have already printed the matter of the theme; the mind continues to work at the phraseology until one, finally, isn’t certain that one has or hasn’t sought the crystallization of the press. So it happens that I cannot be certain whether I have or haven’t printed already what I am about to write. It can’t, however, in the nature of things, have been more than a shortish article; so that if I have to apologize to any readers, the apology can’t be for any great fault.
I fancy that what I then tried to put on paper was suggested by a letter that our poet wrote, having another moment of leisure, at about the time of his long wait for the General on Mont Vedaigne. I wrote an article, and certainly it was suggested by a passage in one of Gringoire’s letters to a friend, at someone’s request, for the journal called the N — . And that journal called the N — refused to print the article because it was too militarist. I don’t myself see where the militarism can have come into the expression of what was pure speculation of a psychological kind — but censors, whether military or anti-military, are queer people, and I presume that their main job, as it presents itself to their minds, is the suppression of ideas.... The more I think about it now, the more the thought hardens and takes shape; someone - connected with the propa-ganda-ministry - did ask me to write an article for the N — and the N — did refuse to print it. I daresay the journal had quarrelled with the department in between whiles.
Anyhow, the psychological speculation wasn’t very profound, or, as far as I can see, very likely to render conscription a permanent institution in these islands. Stated in its baldest terms, it merely amounted to saying that when you are very busy with a job, you do not much notice what is going on around you. You don’t, of course.
And, in the end, that is the basic idea that underlies these records of four landscapes. Gringoire was simply trying to state — or rather to illustrate - the fact that, during the whole of the period from the 4/8,”14 till the date when the German plenipotentiaries appended, in the Salle des Glaces, their signatures to the peace treaty, he only four times achieved a sufficient aloofness of mind to notice the landscape that surrounded him.
‘I don’t mean to say,’ our poet summed the matter up, ‘that I didn’t have “leaves”, but, for one cause and another, my leaves weren’t ever pensive or leisurely. One was snatched into the civilian frame of mind - but into a civilian frame of mind that was always preoccupied with “The War” - that was, indeed, in odd ways, far more preoccupied with the war than were one’s self and one’s friends. Thus I remember that, on the occasion of my first return from France, being in a Tommy’s tunic, before I had arrived at the barrier of Viltona, I was stopped by an Assistant Provost Marshal and told that if I didn’t immediately procure leather gloves, another sort of hat, a collar, a tie, and get rid of my divisional mark, I should be put under arrest and returned to my battalion. In the booking office, I found a telephone - which cost thruppence, instead of tuppence - and when I remonstrated with a lady who three times gave me a wrong number, I was told to remember that there was a war going on. When, there being no one in my own house, I tried to go by omnibus to my club for lunch, I being in mufti and a little lame, a lady conductor put her hand on my chest, exclaimed: “There’s a war on,” and very neatly threw me back into the road.
‘When I got to my club, a civilian of an eminently moral appearance was lunching at my table. He addressed me condescendingly —— as no doubt one would address a Tommy if one were a civilian at a club. I had the feeling that he was about to offer me a glass of beer — therefore I hurriedly began to talk of peace. I wanted, you see, to consider peace and to avoid at once the offer of a free drink and the remembrance of my comrades who were still in danger of their lives. I admit that my words were inconsiderate, for I simply said: “Won’t there be a high old fortnight’s drunk after that day!”
‘My table companion drew himself up, pursed dry lips, and as it were hissed:
“‘I think we have taken very good steps to prevent that.”
‘He wouldn’t, you see, let me forget my poor comrades who were still in the trenches. I do not remember what I said then; but only his attitude as with his napkin very white and crumpled in his hand, he removed to another table. Straight from that club I went to the house of an Eminent Reformer who told me that he would rather we lost the war than that the Cavalry should have a hand in winning it. He couldn’t know that it wasn’t so very long since I had seen the empty saddles of the Deccan Horse, as, all intermingled with the men of some battalion of Gordons, they returned from an adventure in No Man’s Land, during the 1916 Battle of the Somme. So I went and had tea with a lady who gave me three milk biscuits from a silver tray and said: “This must be a change from your hardships over there!”
‘They wouldn’t, you see, let me forget the poor dear fellows who were still in the trenches. So I passed the night in a Y.M.C.A. hut, discussing Mametz Wood of the 14/7,”16 with an officer of the 38th Division.’
That, of course, was rather a special day, Gringoire said — though it was nothing out of the common. Given his age, former career, and surroundings, he couldn’t be expected to come in for any huge amount of the salutary dissipation or the healing hospitality which did so much to remonter the moral of the troops. Moving mostly amongst the Intelligentsia, he came a good deal in contact with Conscientious Objectors who abused him to his face for militarism or with literary civilians of military age who, after calling at his house, returned to their own and wrote him anonymous but easily recognizable letters, the purport of which was that he had never heard a shot fired and that the only gas he had ever smelled had been emitted by himself. To balance them, he received a number of letters from the German population of London, threatening to murder him on account of his propagandist writings, whilst one of the most frequent preoccupations of his military career arose from the anonymous letters addressed to the War Office, to his various Colonels, and to the officers and other ranks of his regiment by aprofessional man whom he had once employed and who, after he lost that particular job, found that his conscience as a patriot demanded that he should continuously but unsuccessfully denounce our poet as a German spy.
