No Man's Land (29 page)

If your mind is of a romantic cast, there is nothing for it, I am afraid. The likelihood that you will get your head blown off cannot weigh with you for a moment. You must not miss a war, if one is going! You cannot afford to miss that experience.

It is commonly remarked that ‘there is no romance in modern war.' That is absurd, I am sorry to have to say.

It has frequently been contended that Agincourt, or even Waterloo with its ‘thin red line' and its Old Guard of Napoleonic veterans, was ‘spectacular': whereas modern war is ‘drab and unromantic'. Alas! that is nonsense. To say that is entirely to misunderstand the nature of romance. It is like saying that love can only be romantic when a figure as socially-eminent and beautiful as Helen of Troy is involved. That, of course, has nothing to do with it whatever! It is most unfortunate: but men are indifferent to physical beauty or obvious physical splendour, where their emotions are romantically stimulated. Yes, romance is the enemy of beauty. That hag, War, carries it every time over Helen of Troy.

The truth is, of course, that it is not what you
see
, at all, that makes an event romantic to you, but what you
feel
. And in war, as you might expect, you feel with considerable intensity.

The misunderstanding goes even deeper than that, however. Knights in armour, with plumes and lances, are not, even in the visual sense, the most
romantic
subject-matter for a romantic painter.

You only have to think a moment: the dark night, with the fearful flashing of a monstrous cannonade – all the things that do not come into the picture, which
are not seen
, in other words, but which are suggested in its darkest shadows – what could be more technically ‘romantic' than that, if it is romance that we must talk about?

But even if the pictorial subject-matter were insignificant, it would still be the same thing.

Romance is partly what you see but it is much more what you feel. I mean that
you
are the romance, far more than the romantic object. By definition, romance is always inside and not outside. It is, as we say, subjective. It is the material of magic. It partakes of the action of a drug.

Place a man upon the highest passes of the Andes, and what he
sees
is always what he feels. But when
on joue sa vie
, it is not so much the grandeur of the spectacle of destruction, or the chivalrous splendour of the appointments, as the agitation in the mental field within, of the organism marked down to be destroyed, that is impressive. It is that that produces ‘the light that never was on land or sea', which we describe as ‘romance'.
Anything
upon which that coloration falls is at once transfigured. And the source of light is within your own belly.

*

Of course it would be impossible to overstate the contribution of the guns to these great romantic effects. Even in such an essentially romantic context as war, they are startlingly ‘romantic' accessories, and help to heighten the effect.

It is they who provide the orchestral accompaniment. It is they who plough up the ground till it looks literally ‘like nothing on earth'. It is they who transform a smart little modern township, inside an hour, into a romantic ruin, worthy of the great Robert himself, or of Claude Lorrain. They are likewise the purveyors of ‘shell-shock', that most dramatic of ailments. And lastly, they give the most romantic and spectacular wounds of all – a bullet-wound, even a dum-dum, is child's-play to a wound inflicted by a shell-splinter.

I have slept soundly through scores of full-dress bombardments. It is very few people who don't, in a war of positions, where bombardments are almost continuous. Through a long artillery preparation for an Attack – a hoped-for ‘breakthrough', with the enemy retaliating at full blast – in the very thick of the hubbub, with things whizzing and roaring all round – I have slept for hours together as peacefully as if I were in a London garden suburb.

Rapidly one ceases to notice this orchestra. But although one forgets about it, one would miss it if it were not there. These are the kettledrums of death that you are hearing. And you would soon know the difference if they stopped.

WYNDHAM LEWIS

POLITICAL EDUCATION UNDER FIRE

from
Blasting and Bombardiering

I
DON'T THINK ARTISTS
are any more important than bricklayers or stockbrokers. But I dislike the ‘hearty' artist (who pretends he isn't one but a stockbroker) more than the little aesthete. I felt less inclined to immolate myself in defence of Mayfair and the ‘stately homes of Old England', the more I pondered over it. I was only concerned at the idea of deserting my companions in misfortune.

When I had first attested, I was talking to Ford Madox Hueffer about Gaudier's death. I'd said it was too bad. Why should Gaudier die, and a ‘Bloomsbury' live? I meant that
fate
ought to have seen to it that that didn't happen.

It was absurd. It was absurd, Ford agreed. But there it was, he seemed to think. He seemed to think
fate
was absurd. I am not sure he did not think Gaudier was absurd.

The ‘Bloomsburies' were all doing war-work of ‘national importance', down in some downy English county, under the wings of powerful pacifist friends; pruning trees, planting gooseberry bushes, and haymaking, doubtless in large sunbonnets. One at least of them, I will not name him, was disgustingly robust. All were of military age. All would have looked well in uniform.

One of course ‘exempted' himself, and made history by his witty handling of the tribunals. That was Lytton Strachey. He went round to the tribunal with an air-cushion, which, upon arrival, he blew up, and sat down on, amid the scandalized silence of the queue of palpitating petitioners. His spidery stature was reared up bravely, but his dank beard drooped, when his name was called; and he made his famous retort. ‘What,' sternly asked one of the judges, ‘would you do Mr. Strachey, if you discovered a German preparing to outrage your sister?' and Strachey without hesitation replied: ‘I – would – place – myself –
between
– them!'

But the ‘Bloomsburies' all exempted themselves, in one way or another. Yet they had money and we hadn't; ultimately it was to keep them fat and prosperous – or thin and prosperous, which is even worse – that other people were to risk their skins. Then there were the tales of how a certain famous artist, of military age and militant bearing, would sit in the Café Royal and addressing an admiring group back from the Front, would exclaim: ‘
We
are the civilization for which you are fighting!'

But Ford Madox Hueffer looked at me with his watery-wise old elephant eyes – a little too crystal-gazing and claptrap, but he knew his stuff – and instructed me upon the very temporary nature of this hysteria. I was too credulous! I
believe
that he tipped me the wink. He was imparting to me I believe a counsel of commonsense.

‘When this War's over,' he said, ‘nobody is going to worry, six months afterwards, what you did or didn't do in the course of it. One month after it's ended, it will be forgotten. Everybody will want to forget it – it will be bad form to mention it. Within a year disbanded “heroes” will be selling matches in the gutter. No one likes the ex-soldier – if you've lost a leg, more fool you!'

‘Do you think that?' I said, for he almost made my leg feel sorry for itself.

‘Of course,' he answered. ‘It's always been the same. After all wars that's what's happened.'

This worldly forecast was verified to the letter. There is no better propaganda against war, I think, than to broadcast such information as this (though that was not Ford's intention: he was very keen on the War). The callousness of men and women, once the fit of hysteria is over, has to be seen to be believed – if you are prone to give humanity the benefit of the doubt, and expect some ‘decency' where you won't find it. They regard as positive enemies those whom a war has left broken and penniless. The ‘saviours' and ‘heroes' get short shrift, upon the Peace Front. No prisoners are taken there! Why, in such a ‘patriot' country as France, men have, since the War, been promoted to the highest offices of State, who had been convicted of treason and ‘traffic with the enemy'. Sir Roger Casement would be an O. B. E. if not a Knight of the Garter, had he not been of a romantic and suicidal turn and got himself shot.

It has been my firm intention to talk no politics in this book. I will not refer to what went on in my own mind as a result of these experiences, more than an indication, just here and there. I have spoken nowhere of the men, while I was in France. It is impossible to say anything about that. If one is not to talk politics, one has to keep one's mouth shut. All the fancy-dress nonsense of ‘officers' and ‘men', under the snobbish English system, is a subject distinct from war, and yet very much involved with it.

As an officer it was my unwelcome task to read great numbers of private letters. Naturally the officers would among themselves discuss with smiles the burning endearments, or the secrets of his poor little domestic economy, revealed by his letters, of this man or that. These rough and halting communings, of the most private sort, were passing through our hands every day. Yet most of the censors were, as literary artists, of not a very different clay to those who had to submit to this humiliating censorship.

My own thoughts I kept strictly to myself. I preserved my
anonymity
, in the sense in which I have already explained that principle. When I am dressed up in a military uniform I look like other people, though at other times I very easily depart from the canon, I find. One or two of my mess-mates sniffed at me suspiciously. But on the whole I was a masterpiece of conformity. – I am physically very robust. It is easy for me to go to sleep. And conformity is of course
a sleep
.

I started the war a different man to what I ended it. More than anything, it was a
political
education. I am slow to learn, but quick to understand. As day by day I sidestepped and dodged the missiles that were hurled at me, and watched other people doing so, I became a politician. I was not then the accomplished politician I am to-day. But the seeds were there.

I had no sentimental aversion to war. A violent person, who likes the taste of blood, as another does the taste of wine, likes war. I was indifferent. But this organized breakdown in our civilized manners must have a rationale, in a civilized age. You must supply the civilized man with
a reason
, much as he has to have his cocktail, flytox, and ice-water.

I, along with millions of others, was standing up to be killed. Very well: but
who
in fact was it, who was proposing to kill or maim me? I developed a certain inquisitiveness upon that point. I saw clearly that it was not my German opposite number. He, like myself, was an instrument. That we were all on a fool's errand had become plain to many of us, for, beyond a certain point, victory becomes at the best a Pyrrhic victory, and that point had been reached before Passchendaele started.

The scapegoat-on-the-spot did not appeal to me. So I had not even the consolation of ‘blaming the Staff', after the manner of Mr. Sassoon – of cursing the poor little general-officers.

That was too easy and obvious. It amazes me that so many people should accept that as satisfactory. The incompetent general was clearly such a very secondary thing compared with the incompetent, or unscrupulous, politician, that this conventional ‘grouse' against the imperfect strategy of the military gentleman directing operations in the field seemed not only unintelligent but dangerously misleading. ‘Harry and Jack' were killed, not by the General, but by the people, whoever they were, responsible for the war.

Nor could I obtain much comfort from cursing my mother and father, grandmother and grandfather, as Mr. Aldington or the Sitwells did. For it was not quite certain that we were not just as big fools as our not very farsighted forebears. There was not much sense in blaming the ancestors of the community to which I belonged for the murderous nonsense in which I found myself, up to the neck, it seemed to me.

On the other hand, as it was not war
per se
that I objected to, I was not forgetful of the fact that most wars had been stupid, and had only benefited a handful of people. No one objects to being killed, if the society to which he belongs, and its institutions, are threatened, we can assume. But any intelligent man objects to being killed (or bankrupted) for
nothing
. That is insulting.