Before we get to the daily activities of several of our familiar writers, a brief note about a Big Writing Thing of today, a century back. Masterman’s big propaganda meeting has borne fruit, in the form of a letter, printed in the Times of both New York and London, signed by all the writers who had been present at that initial discussion, as well as twenty-five more. (I suppose the meeting was “secret” in a rather limited and amateurish sense–but then again pretty much everyone’s assumption was that it was only the coordination of their efforts that was to be secret. They were all presumed to be willing to devote their pens to the cause.)
The statement is short, bitter, and not particularly illuminating: Britain was forced into war; Germany is insane and the treatment of Belgium barbaric; honor demands taking up arms against Germany, etc. Still, it was no small thing to see Britain’s leading literary lights–with the very notable exception of the free thinking and anti-war George Bernard Shaw–urging action together on a single page. Here is the text of the statement, and here a facsimile of the signatures–Hardy, Conan Doyle, Kipling, J.M. Barrie and the rest–and a good discussion of the document and what it meant.
At dawn on the 18th September we fell in and marched to the train which was to take us to Southampton. Eight hundred of us, every man a Public School boy. Our average height was five feet ten. Without a doubt we were the finest battalion that ever crossed the water. Every man a potential officer. Later when the country needed officers of the right type, the War Office realised the error of using such material as that which composed the first battalion of the Honourable Artillery Company as ordinary soldiers. Hundreds were killed as privates who could have commanded companies from the first day they joined.
This enthusiastic paragraph of Alf Pollard’s is not really designed to stand up to a fact-checking inspection. I’m not sure where he gets his statistics, I’m not sure whether his school–Merchant Taylor’s–is technically a public school, and I’m not sure that even Pollard believed entirely that height, breeding, and general apparent magnificence obviated the need for basic military knowledge. I’m not even sure if there is supposed to be an ironic tinge to his reference to the death of men as “using” “material” or whether he is uncritically adopting bloodless Staff/history jargon (but I suspect the latter).
This is not history, it’s rhetoric; it’s not the inspection-of-troops but the exhortation that follows, on the eve of battle…
I had not seen my people since we left London. There was no time to say good-bye. I scribbled a note in the train and threw it out as we passed through a station, addressed to my mother. It reached its destination.
Neither had I seen the lady of my dreams. She… had no idea of the sentiment with which I surrounded her. I was a knight going on a crusade. She was my ever gentle lady. I carried her favour in the form of a lace handkerchief of hers
(Wait for it…)
which I had stolen.
At Southampton we embarked on the S. S. Westmeath, an old tramp steamer that had been employed in bringing live cattle from Australia. We slept between decks in the cattle stalls. The odour was powerful. What did I care. She might have been a first-class liner. She was carrying me nearer to my ambition. I was en route for France.[1]
Pollard presents a rather tempting target–the ship taking him to his “crusade” literally stank of bullshit!–but it would be well to hold fire, at least for a little while. History-wise, Pollard is useful. At least as far as we can trust his bare facts we can deploy his interpretation of them as a check against the prevailing note of “disenchantment” in the better-known memoirs.
Here is a soldier eager for war and undaunted by its unpleasantness. Given the style of his prose and his frequent flash-forwards, there is no way to “spoil” the fact that he would see a lot of fighting, and love it. And yet, the mere fact that I’m giving up on my usual coyness-about-the-future here indicates that there is a lack of careful retrospect in his memoir. The absence of “binocular vision” is so complete that one wonders how much the telescope ignores: is this really the boy he was, or is the voice we hear throughout that of the experienced, heroic, proven soldier? Perhaps the telescope is even placed over a blind eye.
And as for literature, well: Pollard is a very bad writer and an unreconstructed mid-Victorian pseudo-medieval romantic. No point in beating around the bush. The fact that he foregrounds his Victorian, er, allegiance, shouldn’t necessarily lead us to look past it: if you go to war very much expecting a romantic adventure and/or crusade then you will either experience crushing disillusionment or feel a powerful pressure to conform reality to your (threatened) expectations.
Donald Hankey, the “Student in Arms” now serving as a sergeant, wrote to his sister today.
Sergeants Mess, 7th Battalion, Rifle Brigade, Malplaquet Barracks, Aldershot.
Sept. 18, 1914.
Dear Hilda,
I find that a certain number of people are getting Sunday passes, and so I should very much like to come up for Saturday night and Sunday sometime when you are back in London that is, if you don’t mind my being in uniform! At present, however, I think it is rather fashionable than otherwise to be uniformed even if one is only an N.C O. ! I had a very jolly letter from Maurice last week, in which he asked me to make an effort to attend the christening of Michael in uniform ! But I could never get a pass in the middle of the week, as we are short-handed. I have been told that I shall never make a good N.C.O., but should be an excellent officer! Well, I could never be the ordinary sealed pattern N.C.O. but I think I have my uses. I get on well with the junior N.C.O.’s, and I don’t think that my squad is the worst on the parade ground. After all, this is not quite the ordinary sealed pattern army. Of course my worst point is that I have so little first-hand knowledge of musketry and infantry work. This will probably become more and more painfully evident as time goes on, and we get more advanced. On the other hand I am far smarter than I ever was as an officer ! Quite simply, I do find that it is praying that makes the difference. The possibility of overcoming one’s particular disabilities by the partial realization of an outside Power ready to alter the balance has been real to me. My book is not altogether abstract theory; but a good deal founded on experience. Must stop now.
Yours frat[ernally],
Donald Hankey[2]
Friday September 18th
I went to tea with Miss Fry. We talked a good deal about college, & Somerville in particular. She told me about the Fabian Society of Socialists, to which both men & women belong. I found myself telling Miss Fry about Roland Leighton, though I spoke rather of him than of any connection with him, & did not make myself appear as interested in him as I really am.
I heard a rumour two or three days ago that the violinist Kreisler, who was an officer in the Austrian army, has been killed, but have not heard this rumour confirmed. Whether he be an enemy or no, I pray that after all no harm may have come to that brilliant young man. I do not think genii should be allowed in the Army. For one thing there are so few of the really great that their number could make no difference when battles are fought between millions, whereas in their own walks of life they make all the difference in the world. We do not put our kings into the field, but these, the real kings of humanity, are exposed to the multitude of dangers which come with battle. Proud though a nation may be of the genius it has produced, that genius is not a national but a universal possession & should not be made to risk itself in a national quarrel. To me the thought of Kreisler lying dead on an Austrian battlefield, perhaps with those wonderful fingers of his clasped cold & stiff round the hilt of a broken sword, is more terrible than that of five hundred slain men none of whom would have risen above mediocrity.[3]
Well. It’s interesting, given what we know of Vera–she loves music and she loves Roland (even if the relationship has not quite flowered into an official courtship)–to see her turning to the death of Fritz Kreisler (the rumor is true) after dropping Roland’s name. We have heard her express the opinion–rather awfully undemocratic/frankly elitist–before that the especially talented should be spared military service, but then she was thinking of Roland. Vera would have us believe that she is a thoroughly modern young woman. And perhaps she is–it’s more the manner of stating these ideas then the ideas themselves that are outlandish. After all, we are in a period of only a few months, a century back, when the upper classes and the university-educated flocked to the infantry. Later on, and in most subsequent wars fought by big democracies, the educated classes are underrepresented among combat infantry.
Still, it’s pretty bad–a romantic notion of genius and a Victorian notion of Other Ranks doing the suffering and the dying on your behalf. Sharp as she is, this is exactly the sort of innocent and silly notion that will be mowed down by the realities of the war. The pianist’s fingers on the hilt of a sword are a nice romantic image, but Vera Brittain will come to know, before too long, how unrealistic is the image of a broken sword and cold but–surely, imaginatively–whole body.