WAR BOOKS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 173, 15 March 1932, Page 6

WAR BOOKS

distorted facts OUTSPOKEN PADRE BRINGS SOME REBUTTING EVIDENCE AN EPOGHAL TRAGEDY Scarcely half the present nation is old enough to have heard the newsboys shouting: "Fall of Liege! Fall of Namur!" An intelligent schoolboy, known to me through a friend, connected nothing with the name of Kit1 chener, writes the Rev. P. B. Clayton, foundation padre of Toc H. A generation of grown men and women has arisen to whom the war is ancient and ugly history, untouched by any note of personal sorrow. Their knowledge of it is largely gained from war books, which, alas! too often malign the men who fought. "Has the war real importance?" Is it now worth remembering?" They ask this honestly among themselves. Perhaps it can be answered by throwing the stress where they will not expect it. It is their period, not ours, which has to prove its worth. ' The hundred days preceding Waterloo have their own bibliography. But from 1815 to 1832 is, to all but a few, a dull and empty desert. The desert stretches on, apart from two political eruptions, for another 20 years, illumined only by; a shelf of novels and a few romantic poets. The aftermath of war is a dull, sterile age, noteworthy chiefly for the foolishness of its conceit, the decline of its manmers, and the deeadence of its outlook. When the 20th century is named, as long as men learn anything, the Four Years' War will be in it remembered ; long after those who now seek to f orget it are utterly f orgotten. Students will then survey with solemnity that most epochal tragedy which altered every map and every public circumstance, which forced the growth of flight, which opened new horizons to the doctor as well as to the statesman, which mortgaged Europe to Ameriea, tore down five monarchies, made Holy Russia athiest, China a desolation, and India one dark cauldron. Thus Confusion There is a second criterion whereby the younger men judge this armistice. Their passion is sincerity; and to their view it is irreconcilable that we ask them to commemorate with honour an army steeped in vice! How can we help them best in this confusion between war realists and the real war? Not merely by an a.nnual display of our own memories and revealing to them the stubborn characters we ourselves knew so well. In Athens an unknown God was ignorantly worshipped; but in the Abbey an unknown soldier cannot receive abiding reverence from those who have grown up in ignorance oi his virtues. "Keep your saints," said Mr. Gladstone vigorously to a church dignitary who had inquired the wisesl -P/m* -f-lo o nVmvph nf THn eland

W o Can we say "Keep your saints" to the generation joining us at the war memorials? Have we ourselves upheld them recently? Can the new generation be honestly assured that those whom we commemorate. were men of character? Here is an argued answer from one who knew them well. The flood gates of such memories as mine can never open unreservedly; for there are pools of other men's possession which may not be disturbed. These share the priest's own grave; and thus it comes about that any chaplain turned author has to exercise a stewardship most meticulous. He must divide his mind, rejecting quite deliberately some of the loveliest instances of goodness he has known. He must hold back sometimes the very proof he needs; the Gospel he would pen must be detached, defective, embarrassed by lacunae. Irrefutable Evidence Last year was not a year of grace at all. Thinking to do Peace service we all sat down and read new horrors day by day about the war. So it came to be that a whole host of the less scrupulous got busy writing memoirs, some bad, some worse, until the public appetite for this new forrn of Flanders mud was sated. But were the charges true? Were our great armies filled with vice and cruelty? To prove a universal negative is past the wit of man. This is particularly true of a long line of battle, where (as Thucydides said long ago) , a man can only know what went on round about him. Let me then limit my survey to the facts of Flanders; and in Flanders, to the only town which remained throughout the advanced base of operations. At lease 2,000,000 officers and men frequented Poperinghe during the whole period; all the time also the town was festering with Belgian refugees. What was its moral state? I turn to the irrefutable evidence of the town major's office, where Ser-geant-Major Miller was permanent chief of staff for town administration. Even before the birth of Talbot House in December, 1915, he held this office, and left it only after the armistice. Some Concrete Facts Now, on the basis of these books Poperinghe must have been a plague spot. Every condition requisite was there fulfilled. Most divisions of the British armies were billeted, sooner or later, within reach of it. Its wartime population were mainly refugees. Only the love of *gain could hold them there. They had small pride of birth, and no great patriotic instincts to detain them. It would not be surprising if any town thus circumstanced gave way in public morals. Men from the hell of Ypres, some seven miles distant, might be judged tenderly if they required provision of ill character in the one town which they could reach at intervals. The "a priori" case for Poperinghe as a place of sexual license was very strong indeed. What are the actual facts? They are astonishing. I quote here from the evidence, unpublished hitherto, of Sergeant-Major Miller, Town Major's Chief -of-Staff in Poperinghe. "I was in Poperinghe three and ahalf years, and during the whole of that time I was in the office which was responsible for the military police service, the billeting of all troops in the town, and for the liaison work be-

tween the British militarv and Belgian civil authorities, and. during that period I can vouch for the facts that : — 1. Never was a licensed brothel for the troops open in Poperinghe or anywhere in Belgian territory occupied by British troops. 2. Drunkenness was indeed very rare, and, in fact, more rare than any town in peace time so much frequented.