Be Confident: As to the Result of the War.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 22, 19 March 1915, Page 3 (Supplement)

Be Confident: As to the Result of the War.

/By ARNOLD BENNETT.) This article was contributed by Mr. Bennett to the ''Daily News." It was marked " Copyright," to comply with the American law, but both the paper and the writer were desirous that it should have the fullest publicity throughout the British Empire. An offieer said to me the oilier day : '1 will tell you an incident that will bring the wav home to you." And he told me about an English soldier who was wounded in a cavalry charge and found himself flat with a lance-head or something of the kind embedded in his body. Very seriously wounded, he had the strength to call another soldier and ask him to pull out the lance-head, .lust as he was about to comply, this second soldier was shot dead through the brain. Later arrived a party of Germans, after loot. Without troubling :':■■•,,-e!ve- us to the lance-head they be-an mi un-tiap the wrist-watch from the wri-i ol the wounded man, and ■.Mr proceeding to search him tliore -Jilv when a shell burst among them :ind either killed or severely wounded ■in lot. The wounded Englishman was absolutely untouched by the shell, though the Germans were standing over him, and in the end he was rescued and is now recovering. Well, that incident, horrible, tragic, and marvellous as it was, did not bring the war home to nie. Wounds and death, widows' weeds in the street, and bereaved and impoverished silent families, are only the reverse —the negative side —of war. They are scarcely to be found, for instance, in the despatches of Field-Marshal French. They are social rather than military phenomena. And there is no callousness in tins statement.

War is an activity. It is "waged'' far more than it is endured. It lias t<i do with the living and the whole, not i-ith the dead and the wounded. What brings the war itself home to me is, fot example, the modest deportment of th« unharmed promoted hero on leave as hj« walks down the village street with hi* wife and a perambulator. When I se« him I realise war, and T am thrilled. And I am thrilled when I step into tho mid-Vietorian sitting-room of the chief hotel in a county town, with a temporary telephone wire hanging down from the gas chandelier to prove that it has heen transformed into the headquarters of a general officer in command, and a General and a few staff officers sifting about in the intervals of a nineteen or twenty-hour workingday. That is as near to war as T am ever likely to get—until the East Coast raid comes off. THE REALISATION OF WAR. 1 reckon that I came close to a realisation of war when I made the acquaintance of n certain youth from Australia. He was a subaltern of engineers in a Territorial Field Company, and had reached the age of nineteen. Under his sole charge were some forty men, in the main older than himself. It is true that he possessed a commanding officer, hut that CO. seemed always to lie a long way off, and in reality amounted to nothing hut a signature on 0.H..M.5. telegrams. The subaltern had to conduct sapping operations; and he did conduct them. But tl?s(> purely professional activities were only a trifling part of his work. He had to make arrangements with landowners, buy stores, compose legends for notice-hoards, and order the hoards, get crossed cheques cashed on Sundays, borrow motor-cars, instruct enginedrivers about putting brakes on, and placate angry ladies in the night-time. And he had to keep his men alive, see to their billets, tTieir boots, their muscles, their teeth. He had to parade them in the morning dusk and punish them if they were late. He had to choose among them for recommended promotions. He had to see the parson about the church service. Horses and carts were also under his dominion, besides many tools and unmentionable commodities. He talked incessantly it every meal and throughout every evening about "'my men" and their needs, and if it was not his men it was his sapping operations. He thought aloud, and his thoughts took the form of lectures on military engineering and the physical, moral, and spiritual hygiene ef forty male human beings. His dream was to be pontooning at the front in (lie middle of winter. And when he got the- chance of pontooning on an Fimlish river, his face showed the gates of heaven were opening. He led a very worrying existence, and few things ■ orried him so much as the composition of private letters, because he could not think what to say. He would sit and sigh over an empty sheet of notepaper as over a calamity. But nothing whatever prevented him from sleeping soundly all night and every night. THE HEART OF THE XAVY. And as regards naval warfare nowadays, T began to realise it while waiting on the pier at a certain port for a steam pinnace that was bobbing towards me from a slate-coloured warship in the bay. Forty overcoats would not withstand that wilnd. And when I clambered on board the cruiser, which after the tossing pinnace had the steadiness of an island, the first things I saw were a huge safe, an electric radiator

in a lieutenant's cabin, a typewriter itt. another cabin, a marine in gloves standing on guard, and three men engaged in sorting the just-arrived mail, 1 felt that I was really getting at the heart o* the Navy. The splendour of the captain's apart-aents offered another aspect of the affair. I ascended to tho gun-deck and paddled in pools of water among hooded guns, pointing in various directions. Neatly disposed piles of six-inch shells were lying about. 1 picked one up, using most of my strength, and was proud of the feat, though alarmed by the black urease left on my fingers. The touch of the shell brought me still nearer to the heart of tho Navy. The aerial gun had an absurd resemblance to n new-fangled camera ( n a tripod. I twisted it about and, gazing at the sights, wondered at the possibility of hitting even a Zeppelin by means of such a trifle. Across the bay 1 saw two other warships, dark and siill. They were the Blank and the So-and-So—you are familiar with their names. Frozen to the marrow, I went down to the stokehold and the engine-room, where one engine was lazily pumping bilge-water and another was making current industriously for that electric radiator under the white eves of a being black with soot. J climbed up once more, and was in the wardroom, where there was a magnificent coal fire, many fancy cakes, the best China tea, a library of books, and a lieutenant plavmg excerpts from "The Twilight of the Irocls on a piano. But even that was not quite the heart of the Navy, anv more than the gun-deck. The heart of the Navy was probably the mess-deck, where the sailors eat, drink, shave' take baths, write letters, wash linen', sing, shout, quarrel, and doze. The mess-deck was a vast, low hall, sombre and heavdy shadowed, but starred with innumerable electric lamps. It gave me as astoundingly vivid impression of a young human community doing everything at once. The image of an Adonis emerging from his bath, and of another placidly and intently shaving before a great unframed mirror with an electric bulb hung against it—these images remain in the memory. . . There was a somewhat riotous'sort of signal, conveying the important fact that the six 0 clock short-pinnace was alongside. ] flew, for these pinnaces, like express trains, do not wait for stragglers: and in a few minutes the shin which 1 had just visited was one of three dark shapes on the water, the other two being the Blank and the So-and-So. The dramatic surprise came when I reached home and found an Agency telegram stating that a particularly daring naval operation had taken place the day before, and mentioning the very names—H.M.S. Blank and H.M.S. So-and-So! They had returned to harbour from n triumph, and nothing said, nothing suspected! They just lay at moorings in the harbour like other ships, as though naught had happened And not one officer in the Wagnerian ward-room had breathed a word. Perhaps not one officer knew the facts. The Navy is an intense secretive machine. Nevertheless, 1 had come near the heart of it. And I could picture the messdecks of the Blank and the So-an-So. though I had not seen them. War had been brought home to me. THE SPIRIT OF OPTIMISM. And the. more T realise what war ;s, the more -onfident I am of the result "I this v-.n-. But. you say, all Britons are confident of the resuii of this war. 1 do not thin* they are. They may appear to be so when the} are talking superficially; or when they are rending (or writing) headlines in newspapers, or when they are massed in drawing-rooms or niusic-halls. But when one gets individuals alone, serious and sincere, one is apt to find a less absolute confidence than might have been anticipated—especially in London, where among the arts and the "luxurytiades" the careers of so many middleaged men have been completely suspended, and they stand seemingly helpless, like tram cars in an electric breakdown, asking themselves whether they have any right to exist amid the massive events which have rendered them futile. At any rate, I know that in the circles where I am most at home, I have, in spite of myself, acquired the reputation of a determined optimist, and yet if I am an optimist I am not more an optimist than military and naval leaders, who are a thousand times, better able to judge the situation than I. And my experience is that tho higher one penetrates intod the arcana of leadership, the more serenely complete is the confidence therein displayed. It may be urged that the Germans are equally confident. They are not. The Prussians may be, but the Teutonic races, as a whole, are not. Austria is the reverse of confident. If anything i-: certain in the fog of war, it is certain that Austria is in a blue funk. And such optimism a.s exists even in Prussia is vitiated by two enfeebling elements —ignorance and swagger. The German official wireless news is a terrible confession of weakness. We in Britain, perhaps, do not get all tho truth, but we do get the main contours of the situation. How many Prussians are aware that the French Government is back in Paris? It 's amusing, and also enheartening, to observe that, after all its protectations about a united nation utterly sure of victory, the German General Staff simply dare not inform its public that the French Government is back in Paris. As for the Prussian swagger, it is pitiable. We may be a race of hypocrites, but we do not boast. The modesty of our dispatches, and of our demeanour, both military and civil, is notable; and. with the startling patriotism of our recruiting (which has far surpassed the most sanguine prophecies), it constitutes the final proof that the period of our national greatness is not yet closed. THE DANGER HOUR. AVar is an affair of leadership, confidence, men, ships, guns, and money. The Allies have more men, ships, guns. and money than the Germans, and their leadership and confidence are at least equal to those of Germany. (According to Germany's own admission, the German war loan will be exhaust cd before the end of next week!) The result is as inevitable as the result of arithmetical addition and subtraction — even wore the enemy united. And tho ciemy is not united. The curling up of Austria will lie the beginning of the end, and the British fleet will be tho end of the end. It is not only our right, it is our duty, to be confident and to cultivate confidence. For the hour is approaching when confidence will bo needed. That hour will occur between the beginning of the end and the end of the viA. When the Allies are definitely and obviously safe, when some kind of not unsatisfactory peace can lie had, then tremendous influences in America, in Britain, in France, and everywhere else, will be brought to bear in favour of an immediate truce —that is to s;iy in favour of Germany—and against a fight to a finish. All the secret fears which harass us beneath our optimism will leap at the chance of any sort of safety; all our overstrained nerves will cry out for repose. And nothing but absolute confidence, carefully and logically cultivated' in advance, will save the world from » vast futility. The supreme danger will not be in front of Ypres, in front of Warsaw, or in the North Sea —it will' arrive when the danger of any defeat is* past. We had better think very Rtoadliy about this.