Allowing for the numbers engaged and the effectiveness of the instruments employed, it is clear that in recent wars the pain has been much increased, in spite of all our conventions and all our kindness to the wounded. That pain, more even than the deaths of many, is a legacy of warfare such that it is infinitely multiplied among our more sensitive populations. The numberless and subtle terrors which may attend on all—not merely on soldiers —from the air, from bombardment at fantastic distances, from chemical poisons, from skilfully manipulated disease—all this the future holds in store for us, unless perhaps the restricting sentiment which has so ineffectively limped behind our intellectual ability gains some new strength. That only can keep us from the use of nameless deeds: but it is a delicate growth, and can easily become callous to the death and maiming of millions. That sentiment, however, has already done something; and it is difficult to explain why it has not done more.
At the end of Under Fire, a group of soldiers, after being through almost unthinkable horrors, horrors of war, horrors of mud and flood, are discussing war:
Waking, Paradis and I look at each other, and remember. We return to life and daylight as in a nightmare. In front of us the calamitous plain is resurrected, where hummocks vaguely appear from their immersion, the steel-like plain that is rusty in places and shines with lines and pools of water, while bodies are strewn here and there in the vastness like foul rubbish, prone bodies that breathe or rot.
Paradis says to me, “That’s war.”
“Yes, that’s it,” he repeated in a far-away voice, “that’s war. It’s not anything else.”
He means—and I am with him in his meaning—“More than attacks that are like ceremonial reviews, more than visible battles unfurled like banners, more even than the hand-to-hand encounters of shouting strife, War is frightful and unnatural weariness, water up to the belly, mud and dung and infamous filth. It is befouled faces and tattered flesh, it is the corpses that are no longer like corpses even, floating on the ravenous earth. It is that, that endless monotony of misery, broken by poignant tragedies; it is that, and not the bayonet glittering like silver, nor the bugle’s chanticleer call to the sun!”
“It’ll be no good telling about it, eh? They wouldn’t believe you; not out of malice or through liking to pull your leg, but because they couldn’t. When you say to ‘em later, if you live to say it, ‘We were on a night job, and we got shelled, and we were very nearly drowned in mud,’ they’ll say, ‘Ah!’ and p’raps they’ll say, ‘You didn’t have a very spicy time on the job.’ And that’s all. No one can know it. Only us.”
“No, not even us, not even us!” some one cried.
“That’s what I say, too. We shall forget—we’re forgetting already, my boy!”
“We’ve seen too much to remember.”
“And everything we’ve seen was too much. We’re not made to hold it all. It takes its damned hook in all directions. We’re too little to hold it.” . . .
“Ah, if one did remember!” cried some one.
“If we remembered,” said another, “there wouldn’t be any more war.” [Note: E. E. Unwin, “As a Man Thinketh . . .,” 78.]
Have you forgotten yet? . . .
For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked awhile at the crossing of city-ways :
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same—and War’s a bloody game . . .
Have you forgotten yet? . . .
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.
Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz—
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sand-bags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench—
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain? Do you ever stop and ask, “Is it all going to happen again?”
Do you remember that hour of din before the attack—
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads—those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
Have you forgotten yet? . . .
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget. [Note: Siegfried Sassoon, in The Cambridge Magazine, Nov. 8, 1919, p. 80]
In 1813 the Earl of Aberdeen travelled with Metternich from Teplitz to Frankfort. His biographer says “Such a journey in such company, and at such a time, doubtless had its charms, but the impression which was most deeply fixed on Lord Aberdeen’s mind by the scenes around him was that of the calamities which war entails. Only two days after his arrival at Teplitz he wrote to Lady Maria: ‘The near approach of war and its effects are horrible beyond what you can conceive. The whole road from Prague to this place was covered with waggons full of wounded, dead, and dying. The shock and disgust and pity produced by such scenes are beyond what I could have supposed possible at a distance. There are near two hundred thousand men round this town. There is much splendour and much animation in the sight, but the scenes of distress and misery have sunk deeper in my mind I have been quite haunted by them.’ ” [Note: Sir A. Gordon, The Earl of Aberdeen, 30.]
Nicholson’s funeral was taking place as we marched out of Delhi, at daybreak on the morning of the 24th September. It was a matter of regret to me that I was unable to pay a last tribute of respect to my loved and honoured friend and Commander by following his body to the grave, but I could not leave the column. That march through Delhi in the early morning light was a gruesome proceeding. Our way from the Lahore gate by the Chandni Chauk led through a veritable city of the dead; not a sound was to be heard but the falling of our own footsteps; not a living creature was to be seen. Dead bodies were strewn about in all directions, in every attitude that the death-struggle had caused them to assume, and in every stage of decomposition. We marched in silence, or involuntarily spoke in whispers, as though fearing to disturb those ghastly remains of humanity. The sights we encountered were horrible and sickening to the last degree. Here a dog gnawed at an uncovered limb; there a vulture, disturbed by our approach from its loathsome meal, but too completely gorged to fly, fluttered away to a safer distance. In many instances the positions of the bodies were appallingly life-like. Some lay with their arms uplifted as if beckoning, and, indeed, the whole scene was weird and terrible beyond description. Our horses seemed I to feel the horror of it as much as we did, for they shook and snorted in evident terror. The atmosphere was unimaginably disgusting, laden as it was with the most noxious and sickening odours. [Note: Lord Roberts, Forty-one Years in India, 142.]
General Sheridan said to Bismarck: First deal as hard blows at the enemy’s soldiers as possible, and then cause so much suffering to the inhabitants of the country that they will long for peace, and press their Government to make it. Nothing should be left to the people but eyes, to lament the war! [Note: C. Lowe, Prince Bismarck, i. 590.]
The sombre clouds rolled slowly over the low plain
Rutted with level plough lines and lit with pools of rain Till the enormous silence filled only by the humming blast Was rent by a cruel cry, and the wild geese winging fast
Onward and onward through the currents of clouded air
Craned down through the misty chasms to see what thing lay there.
By a ditch of Flanders beside an arrowy road,
Which stretched to the horizon where a fired farmstead glowed
Exhaling a tremulous light and winding a murky tress
Of billowy smoke over the wilderness,
A wounded soldier lay watching the birds overhead. . . .
They vanished and into his eyes came knowledge of death and the dead.
So feeble was he that scarcely he felt the blood ’twixt his lips
Well up and flow down darkly. Upon him had gloamed eclipse
When at his ear he heard a strange and terrible cry
Such as had shaken the marsh birds winging the dreary sky :
“O God, God, God! I am tormented, I sink.
O water, water, I burn. Give me to drink!”
And there was no further sound under all the sky
Nor in the earth save one sharp sweet reply
From the ditch by his feet: a trickle of water was calling,
Swoln by rain it carolled and tinkled in falling.
But he could not move hand or foot and a noise
Of groaning reached him and a dreamy voice
Sing-longed of water while he lay perfectly still
And cracked his sinews with the heat of his will,
Willing himself to arise but he had not the strength
To move hand or foot a foot or hand’s length.
And when he found he could not stir to arise
Two warm tears welled and rolled out of his eyes,
And he began to pray, saying unto God
Brokenly and in stupid words how he lay on the sod
And could not move, and would God look down and give
Just one minute of boyish strength that he might strive
To succour somebody—friend or foe—near him.
But God would not,
And he complained endlessly till the cramp of the shot
In his side tied and untied within like a knot.
And he fainted. And the sombre clouds flocked slowly over the slaughterous plain
Above the glimmering road that divided the slain from the slain;
And the spent neighbour rolling his eyes at the sky far and wide
Gurgled, his mouth floating blood, and cursed God and died.
And the water in the ditch cried happily and increased till it soaked
The thirsty dead’s feet and the sweeping wind stroked
Softly the matted fair hair of the soldier until he lay,
Save for this, stiller than the clotted thick clay That in acres of ruts stretched silently
To the deserted dykes and the desolate sea.
The sombre clouds rolled slowly over the low plain Rutted with level plough lines and lit with pools of rain,
In whose shallow mirrors the majesty of the sky Figuring the funeral of heroes filed slowly by. [Note: R. Nichols, Invocation, 38.]
