DID HE DIE IN VAIN?

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2612, 6 November 1915, Page 2

DID HE DIE IN VAIN?

(By W. Holt-WMc, in the London "Express.")

"You know why I'm unhappy. It's not the dying, dc-</ old girl, that worries me, and I lti.ow that you are as ■sure of that as I urn that my number's up. I wouldn't put it so crudely, old ladv, if wo didn't both feel the truth, and if ivo couldn't both so honestly and so humbly, and without hypocrisy say, 'God's "Will be done.] . It was almost a comfort to mo when I confessed to you that I know I must face the 'Valley of tho Shadow' in France, and y-.u told 1110 that you had Ihe iiame premonition What is it, I wonder, sister mine, this Queer, psychic bond of the twin?

"Well, anyway, a3 I said, it's not l-lio dying. I shall be just as jolly, right up to the end, as you will be brave afterwards. Don't tell the Hater anything till then. . Wl.at does worry mo as I squat here in my ' dug-out is whether I shall havo d'.cd >n vain. "If I thought that I weio to die in vain, I woidd, traniily as I have told you, rather livo .vnd do something vseiul with my life. All the time 1 wss 011 leave I was watching and lisrening, and_ watching: bat, witch and Jisren as I did I could not persuade myself that dear old England reallv imderstocci— that she was really in earnest. And tho thought is a nightmare to mo. Up to the moment I die I slriil bo wondering whether my dear, kind generous, forgiving, fat-headed fellow-count.rjisen will go and 'niic* this war. ; "A few success^; —and then peace. An inconclusive pcaco, with nil the bother to como asain af'-tr a few \oirs of anxiety, and ihen—.mr being wiped out the next time war conies alone. If that happens I shall have diet! in vain, and so will all mlio splendid fellows vh.i have died before mo, and v no must die after me.

_ "This, to anyone else, might sound sickeningly weak and morbid, perhaps even cowardly. But it isn't really so, because I'm not the only one with the same dread. It's in the minds of many of us out here. Tliey don't speak of it, but I know. That wretched psychic sense again, I supposo! "I think I would give even my soul to be sure that England understood, and would never give up the struggle till tlio Germans, with all their loathsome doctrines and their filthy methods, were smashed once and for all. If I were certain of that I would dio as clieerhilly as I have lived, and so would thousands more. But I'm NOT certainj and though I hope I don't funk anything that is coming to me, the agony of the doubt is great. Up to the last moment the question will be thrashing about in my mind —SHALL I "Do try and think of some way —as we .agreed you should —to get this question home on England's heart when I am dead; not for my sake —it will be too late for me then—but for the sake of tho rest." Message from the Dead. , The above is an extract from a letter written by a boy—a subaltern—in tho trenches in France to his sister in Gloucestershire. Ho was shot through tho head exactly a week after tho letter was dispatched. .. .The letter, with its brave and yet pitiful plea for others rathor than himself, moved his sister to act at once. She is one of those calmly cheerful, steady-eyed English girls whose "share °f the war" is a perfeot heroism in waiting and an unbroken faith even in loss. She did tho only thing slio could think of—she sent the letter to me, imploring me, if possible, to make it public, in the hope that it might servo to harden the hearts and stiffen the backs '• of allsuch' Englishmen as read it. This was before she even knew that her brother was dead.

Oir reflection, I havo come to the conclusion that the best way to make the tragedy of this lad's doubt,'and ■ tlio poignancy of his appeal, as real to others as they are to me is. briefly, to tcJl the story of the lad himself. His Country's Call. He -was one of the first who heard his "'country's call." He was at Oxford otlien, and passed from tho O.T.C. to a commission. Ho was among tho earlier of those to go out, and ho saw liftrd fighting. Ho had leavo three times— once in October for forty-eight- bours, once in February for three days, and the last t-imo, just before the beginning of June, for five days. ' ° It was 011 this last occasion that he mealed to his sister hie knowledge tliat lie. would die, and his dread that he would die in vain. Apparently they discussed tho matter witli a quiet and unflinching corn-age, and it was decided, cjuito deliberately, that if he died'his death should be used as an appeal to lus fellow-countrymen to fight tho war to a finish. You can imagine tho stoic heroism of the lad's sister whon I say that the suggestion was her's, and thatshe, too, suffered from tie same dread as her brother.

It might be thought that because the Jad used tho word "psychic" ho was sentimental, mystic, morbid, and cvea unhealthy. Ho was nothing of the kind. I-le was a lad such as Kipling has described as having the "juice of good Jiinghsh beef in his cheeks." Ho was a fine, all-round athlete, with a great sense of humour of a somewhat boisterous Ipnd. Ho was, indeed, typically healthily Euglish. It was tho war which' saddened him and developed that psychic sense which most or us laugh at because, though it may bo latent in tho majoritv of us, it is seldom aroused. AVhen ho first discovered it he was rather alarmed and wrote home to his sister that he thought he must be developing "liver" m, on } long sitting in the trenches! -that glimpse of him alono discovers his temperament.

After all, the "psychic" knowledge that ho nmst die is only a trivial factor in the case. It was his dread that he would die in vain which is tho thine that counts.

For tho rest, he was, if not brilliant, at least an efficient young officer. Ho was alwn.ys joking, and never tired. Judging from tho colonel's letter to his people, he never made any mention .of his private fears at tho front. He had just .jumped up—under orders—and shouted, "Come on, you men!" when tho German bullet nailed him through the head. ° Now, did he Die in Vain? As lie, I believe, most truly said, it was not tho dying that worried him, although he was young and "life was colour, warmth, and light!' oil the 6unny morning that lu's sister drove him to tho station for tho last timo. Ho was a country lad and a soldier, and lie might have sung, as poor Julian Grenfell did of tho lighting man:— Tho kestrel hovering by day, And the little owk that call by nightj Bid him be swift and keen as they, As keen of ear, as swift of sight. But lie couldn't sing that "sunny morning. There was something wrong. Tho keenness had gone. Would all the tragedy lie kid seen, would all tho tragedy ho wan to see; be in vain? Wore the deaths, tho wonderful, tho heroic, the rni ieilish, tho self-sacrificing deaths he had 1 seen his men and his comrades die, in vain? If so, what <i mockery the whole slaughter-house of Flanders was I

Wo know that tills overwhelming dread obsessed him to the last. How many others does tho same dread obsess? What a frightful tragedy is our inconclusivoness and intcrnociuo squabbling making for tho men who suffer tortures untold fur US'I A Stiffening. Men suffer j.ladly and die happily, if •thsx- payee, -.will tnwsL,

They suffer miserably and die unhappily, even unwillingly, if the victory of the cause for which they suffer and they, perish is in doubt. To many men at the front, to many men about to go to the front, the full triumph of our causo is still in doubt, lhafc is a hard saying, but it is true. It is an arresting, a sobering, and an awful thought to admit. But it has to be admitted. Mercifully, we arc not a sentimental race, though in moments of emotion our sense of the dramatic is apt to be of the transpontine kind. We need no "Hymns of Hate" to strengthen us, and an English equivalent of "Gott Strafe Eng. land! is beyond thinking], None the less wo do require some stiffening some hardening of our hearts against our own enfeebling generosity of mind towards our enemies, even if it only uo m justice to our dead and to our dead to bo.

Let us not betray, bv any inconclusiva peace, the lad of whom I have written, nor all those who have died even as he died.

Above all, let us not betray those now making ready to die. Listen to the great dumb cry of their hearts:—

"England! Morituri to salutant!" ban we be deaf to those who salute ud ere they die, in honour, faith, and service, for England and for us? Can w9 betray, by any inconclusive peace, the brave, unselfish living, the brave unselfish dead ?

Dear God of all the English! Surely not while England lives!