A TALISMAN FOR COURAGE

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2837, 31 July 1916, Page 4

A TALISMAN FOR COURAGE

BRITONS IN FLANDERS

(13v One of Them, in the "Daily xVews.")

In days to como there will probably appear in some well-favoured L'eview a series of war reminiscences, written in the purest English and in a delightful style. This alone would earmark it for distinction; but its attitude towards the. war and those who wage it will be its claim to greatness. Ami yet as I writo I seo its future author shovelling luaimre, while a sergeant shouts "Como on, ycr cross-eyed scallywag. Get a morn «n," and Mr. Briggs bends to his unhallowed task and gets n move on.

Hut Mr. Briggs is not a cross-eyed scallywag. . lie is a diffident, anxious little man of quite forty yeaTS, and though ho wears khaki and rides a troop horse, ho is ti don and always will be, ;despito all tlio sergeants in tlio world. If ever man joined.for a sublime motive, it was he. jf ever man tried hard to forgot a pant life of combination rooms, old port, and the mellowing atmosphere of easeful culture, it was, Mr. Driggs, And yet I quite sympathise- with his sergeant who shoufe, "Good J eavens, you Driggs, where 'avc yer been brought up?"

I first remember seeing him at stables, in those restless days when we wcro all training, conspiring, and longing lor nothing else but to "go out there." Though each at the beginning had his own technique for grooming his horse, Mr. Driggs was exceptional even them. De had a. way of putting in dal>3 of cleaning, and then standing back like a painter, to admire the result. When his horse- grew restive, lie always dropped his body brush and went to cajole the animal with honeyed phrases. Grooming was.a 'engthy business with (Mr. Briggs. And then there caiuo the day when some hundreds of us were .hurried out to tho front of fronts, and Mr. Driggs, left behind, passed out of our memories. On the Firing Step. There is a certain portion of the linu where tho dead of last.-summer's fighting still lio in little mournful heaps between the trenches. Here mines go up 03 a matter of almcst daily habit, bury- ; ing some, exhuming others of our gal lant dead, and it was there standing on the fire-step within sixty yards of tho Germans that I next met Mr.'Briggs. j He saw me first and wished mo "Good evening/' It was the courteous snlu, tation of a don to a friendly under • graduate. "Hullo, Briggs." I said, "I didn't know vou were out. Pretty rotten placo .this, isn't it?" "Yes, sir," he answered, and his diffident little stammer came back to him, "I-er-well, sir, I can hardly say-er-I enjoy it." "Oh," I answered, "but, then, no ona does." "No, sir?" He speaks more in gasps than with a.real stammer. I think it comes from his desire always to uso tho apt word. "But some cr-convey tho im prcssion of-er enjoyment." "Pose," said I. "We all hate it—oi bluff, if you like it better." "The-or subaltern 6pirit, porbapsF" ho suggested. "Well, it 6erves its purpose, I Teplied, "Quite, quite, sir, quite,", ho agreed. hurriedly. "I didn't know," and-er, yonsee, I never have understood young fellows. Then this heartiness—this Harry Totciness, if I may call it so, 'tho in. evitablo 'How's your Father' joko is merely er—'" "Swank," I said.

"Shall wo call it a modus vivendi, sir?" ,e said. "It's -wonderful how man docs go on living and searching for talismans to inspirit hiin for further life—in this." Ho glanced over tho parapet, and said, perhaps to tho bodies there, "Of course, »o must live—to carry on. fjomo of us anyhow." Ho turned again to me. and, with his hand, patted a lump that stw* out from the sido of tho trench. "Perhaps, sir, you think ma - morbid." '•No," I answored. ."I never analyse anything now." " " . . ■ _ "No, sir?" Ho patted the lump again, then looted down, and saw it -was the foot of soma man protruding from his grave. "Perhaps—perhaps, ,■ another poor Torick. Who knows?, But 3 shall not play 'Hamlet,' sir. I lost a friend to-day, sir. He understood . . nnrl his 'death breaks, down much of mv religion, sir, whatever, peoplo may saytrite religion, I mean. I Miust evolve something personal. In the uieantimo —" ho shrugged h.i 3 shoulders.

. Horace, "Then what is your modus vivendi, Rriggs?" I asked. "My form of swank, sir, is less exuberant Horace. Did you over read him'.-'' "I suffered more canings, for Horace than for any other man," I replied. "No. sir. please. To me Horace is u wizard. I sit in tho rain, and I read about sunny days in his Sabine valley, and somehow I feel tho sunshine and tho white marble and .the nitidae, puellae, white against the dark cypress. Of ennrse, sir, this is nonsense to yon. But, then, the conversation of some officers is unintelligible to a. layman. You will fiD'give me. sir! I mean, we all havo our methods. A shell bursts near yon, ivnd you say.. 'It is a bombe, pa-pah.' The same thing happens to mo, arid! 1 say, 'Integer vitae scelerisquc- purus. .. .' "We both lull our anxieties by a trick of humour." I laughed and said, "And does Horace tiifif your tea into Cr.ecuban wine foi you?" "No, sir," he replied; "trench tea is uroof against all.alchemy, even Horace's But over this place of--of desolation he casts a—a—mirage. 'And the mirage, I feel, is the reality, and this a mere phase. Sometimes-when they are shelling ns, 6ir, I think of all tlie delicious places and debonnair people of his odes. They seem so real, sir, so living, and I feel'almost young and forget this. Youth, sir, is so invincible Sir Philip Sidney, sir, is eternal, and Horace brings me to the due youthfulness, so that I become almost a soldier. He almost persuades me to ignore death. I became pagan, I fearj sir."

A star-shell swooped up, illuminating all that tragic region, and Mr. Briggs ducked his head. The haggard little fellow, tho lines and angles of his face exaggerated /by the quick light, looked a strange disciple of tlie doctrine he expounded. "I'm afraid, sir, you think me ridiculous," said Mr. Briggs. "My method of— manufacturing courage must seem fantastic to you." "Don't bo an ass, Briggs," I said. "We all havo our methods, only we keep them as trade secrets. I must go. Goodnight." As I rounded the traverse I looked hack and a star shell showed mo a little crumpled face gazing nut over No Man's Land. He was smiling already, seeing not the dead, but the laughing boys and girls of a byeono age. A Maecenas, perhaps, was talking rank pedantry to him' over their goblets of Chian. ' Below, in a flood of lapios lazuli, twinkled the Bay of Buie, nnd the smell of roses came to them on n, lazy wind. Maybe some sijcetly-smiling, sweetly-speaking T.-aiage wa.s waiting for the litterateurs to attend to hor. ... 1 Yet it whs lucky for Mr. Biiggs (hat the Hun over the way was also dreaming. Perhaps he, too-, read Horace. •