Chapter 8 HOME ON LEAVE

"I have several times expressed the thought that in our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering; and that, consequently, this feeling should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men."

(Tolstoy.)

A change had come over us all. Instead of long spells of dreary silence interrupted by outbursts of irritability, by grumbling and by violent quarrels over nothing, there was animated conversations and sometimes even gaiety. Our talk was all about one subject-not about peace, for we had abandoned all hope of peace and hardly ever thought of it-but about leave. We had been waiting for seventeen months when, without warning, a leave allotment was assigned to our unit. About half a dozen men were going every day and no one knew whose turn would come next. We were full of intense excitement and glad expectation, but also of anxiety in case something should happen to stop our leave altogether.

I made up my mind to enjoy myself thoroughly. I would see parents and friends and forget all about the army and the war. I would be gay and frivolous and go to theatres, music-halls and cafés. And one day I would spend in the British Museum and lose myself in books-that would be just like old times! Of course, our leave would not last for ever and the return journey would be terrible. No doubt the fortnight would pass very quickly, but I determined to enjoy every single hour with deliberation and understanding, and to squeeze every drop of pleasure out of it. How many hours were there in a fortnight? More than three hundred! Many would be wasted in sleep, but still, there would be many left and by dwelling upon each one, the fortnight would seem an age.

* * *

An afternoon and an evening in a train that travelled all too slowly. A night and half a day at Calais Rest Camp. How terrible was the rankling impatience that gnawed our hearts as the hours dragged on.

But at last we were on the leave boat. There was another long delay, and then, with a feeling of immense relief, we heard the engines throb and the paddle-wheels begin to turn. I looked overboard and saw white foam hissing along the surface of water rapidly widening between us and the quay.

Seventeen months of exile and slavery had come to an end and before us lay a wonderful fortnight of freedom and happiness. And at the end of the fortnight? There was no need to think of that now.

The sea was blue and smooth and a cool breeze was blowing. We saw the cliffs of England grow larger and larger. Soon we were able to distinguish the town of Dover, the houses clustered round the harbour, and the Castle up on the cliff. It was there that I had begun my career as a soldier more than two years before. How much had happened since then! I felt that I had become a different being altogether.

The boat entered the harbour and ran alongside the quay. A train was waiting for us. We poured out of the ship in two streams that spread out fan-wise and flowed into the carriages.

It was good to sit by the window in a comfortable compartment and lean back against soft cushions.

Glad anticipation and barely suppressed excitement were visible on everybody's face.

The train sped through familiar country: meadows, pastures, cornfields, orchards and woodlands. People waved their handkerchiefs at us from cottage windows.

It was growing dark as the first rows of drab suburban houses began to glide past.

So this was London. I stared out of the window and tried to grasp the tremendous, wonderful fact with all the power of my mind. Somehow or other it did not seem real, but I felt I could make it real by an effort of the will.

Streets and houses and moving people soon crowded the whole view. The people filled me with intense curiosity. I longed to talk to them and find out what they felt and thought about the war.

We entered Victoria Station. I opened the door of the compartment with hasty, trembling hands. I did not wait to change my French money, but hurried out into a street and got on to a 'bus.

London, with its subdued lights, lay all around me. It had not changed since I saw it last, and yet I felt it ought to have changed. The reason was that I had changed. And then I began to fear that I had changed beyond the power of recovery. The oppressive sensation that I was in a dream forced itself upon me. I felt that there was only one reality in the whole world-the war. Would I ever escape from the war? It would come to an end some day, and I would leave the army, but would not the war obsess me until the end of my life? Would I ever be myself again?

But this was not the way to enjoy my leave! I began to feel disappointed at not being so happy as I had expected to be. Why was I not full of rapture? Why did not every object fill me with delight? But I ought to have known that habitual discontent and bitterness and revolt are not shaken off in a few hours or a few days, and that they persist even after their immediate cause has been removed.

I looked round at the other people sitting on the 'bus. I had visited foreign countries in former years, but never before had I felt that I was amongst complete strangers. There are moments when a dog, a horse, or a bird fills us with a sense of the uncanny-its mind is an insoluble mystery, with depths so dark and inscrutable that one feels something that approaches fear and horror. And so it was as I sat on the 'bus. The civilians around me seemed like animals of a different species. They were not human at all-or was it I who was not human?

I went to another seat in order to listen to a man and woman who were talking together. I felt that if they were to talk about the war, the uncanny spell would be broken, the dream would dissolve and I would be restored to my own fellow creatures. But they spoke about trivial domestic matters and about a flower show. If they had only mentioned the word "war" I would have felt relieved by its familiarity, but they did not mention it once.

And then, in great mental agony, I said to myself: "I will be happy, I will enjoy my leave." But a number of invisible cobwebs hung between myself and the world around me. I tried to brush them away, but they were so impalpable that the movement of my hand did not disturb them at all.

I gave up the attempt. I would wait until I got home. Then I would talk and forget myself-only by forgetting myself would I enjoy the present. Only those who forget themselves are happy. The obsession of self is the most oppressive of all burdens.

I descended from a 'bus and took a train. A girl sitting opposite me stared at my blue chevrons and whispered to her fellow passenger: "He's just come from the front." So I too was regarded as a strange kind of animal. I got out at my home-station. I showed my leave-warrant to the ticket collector. He was a benevolent looking old man. He smiled and wished me good luck. Things began to seem a little less foreign. And then the thought of being home in a few minutes absorbed me entirely.

I hurried down the street. I knocked at the door, and it opened. The long yearned-for meeting took place at last.

I threw my pack, equipment and steel helmet contemptuously into a corner. I took an infantile delight in clean, furnished rooms, in the white table-cloth, the shining silver, the cut flowers, and the oil-paintings on the wall. And we talked until late into the night.

It was good to wake up the next morning and to know that the first day of my leave was still before me. I felt encouraged to face my new surroundings boldly. I would understand them and identify myself with them. If the sensation that I was dreaming came upon me again, I would welcome it and then I would destroy it once and for all. I would enjoy my leave at any cost. It would become my only reality, and when it was over it would be a reality which I would take back to the front. I would hoard it and always think of it out there, so that the war would seem like a dream, the end of which I could await with patience and resignation.

I went out to seek friends and acquaintances. I also hoped to meet some war enthusiasts. I would tell them something about the war. How would their theories be able to stand before my actual experiences!

I was soon disillusioned.

I dined with a wealthy kinsman. The slaughter of millions had brought him prosperity. He had never done any fighting except with his mouth, but it is precisely that kind of fighting that infuriates the spirit, engenders heroic ardour, and causes the nostrils to dilate. He was so bellicose that he even desired to do some real righting, not understanding the difference between the two. He thought of joining an infantry unit-the artillery were not good enough, he did not want to fire at an enemy he could not see, he wanted to use the bayonet and murder his fellow men in hand-to-hand encounters.

I began to understand why many men I had met were glad to come back from leave.

I tried to dissuade him, although I felt it would do him good to see something of the war and he would learn a much-needed lesson. And yet I did not want him killed or horribly mutilated, although I knew that he and those like him were alone responsible for the entire war, both at its origins and its continuance.

But he would not be persuaded. He said he was dying to go out and see the fun.

At the word "fun" I felt a sudden and violent contraction of all my muscles. I had an almost irresistible impulse to stand up and strike him across the face. But I was in a public restaurant and I controlled myself. He did not seem to notice anything.

The conversation drifted away from the war and became commonplace. I tried to relate a few of my experiences, but somehow or other they seemed unsuited to the occasion.

I had set out with the intention of destroying a mouldering, tottering edifice built up of illusions and ignorant prejudices, and I found myself face to face with towering, strong, unshakable walls, strong and unshakable precisely because it was built of illusions, lies, and prejudices.

I felt the burden of war descending upon me with all its crushing, annihilating weight. I fought a losing fight against the conviction that for the rest of my leave I would be able to talk of nothing else and think of nothing else but the war. If only I could talk to someone who would understand, that at least would bring relief!

I longed to see my two friends, although I felt some anxiety lest they might have changed, or rather lest they might not have changed with me.

It was in the evening of my first day that we met. At first the one embarrassed me a little by his apparent cold aloofness. But his caustic observations on the war soon made it clear that he had stood the test. I realized, from the hatred that lay behind them, that he had suffered as much as many a soldier in the trenches.

Then the other said to me:

"This is a thing I have never told anyone yet, but I will tell it to you now. There are times when I almost wish I could see German troops marching victoriously through the streets of London. It is not my reason that is speaking now, but my bitterness, which has become stronger than my reason."

I understood him far too well to make any comment.

And then after a long silence, I said: "I wonder if anybody else thinks like that."

And he answered: "Yes, there are many-more than you would believe."

But the first added: "We must remain neutral-that is our one and only duty. The more malevolent our neutrality the better, but it must be neutrality. Remember that there are Germans whose bitterness prompts them to wish that British troops were marching through the streets of Berlin. I think their wish is juster than yours, but both wishes cannot be fulfilled, and it is therefore desirable that the next best thing should happen, namely, that both the Allies and their enemies should be entirely deprived of victory."

I agreed, but added:

"Yes, fundamentally one must remain neutral, but in relation to present circumstances one cannot remain neutral. It is our business to arraign England, our own country, and not Germany. It is for every nation to discover its own faults. There are many Germans of courage and honesty who will condemn their country for the crimes she has committed. But condemnation from outside is useless and is always discredited. In all probability the Allies and the Central Powers are both equally bad, and to denounce the enemy only is mere yelping with the rest of the savage, vindictive pack."

"That is true, but what is the good of saying it, or thinking it! Ignorance, prejudice, and intellectual dishonesty are far stronger than you are. The depravity of mankind is such that only failure and humiliation will carry conviction. Mere words are only wasted. If any nation is completely defeated in this war, then its people will rise against its rulers, whether they are guilty or not, and they will fix all the responsibility of war upon them and upon themselves. There will be a frenzy of self-accusation-whether just or unjust it doesn't matter-and as for the victors, they will say: 'Our enemies admit their guilt, so what further proof is needed?' Where the real guilt is, that is an irrelevant and trivial question. Success or failure will be the sole ultimate criterion. There is only one hope for the world-that failure will be so evenly distributed that there will be anxious heart-searchings in every country. Failure alone makes ignorant people think. Success is taken for granted. Even after a single battle lost, the Press is full of explanations and excuses, but after a battle won, there is only complacency and self-glorification, and questions as to the why and wherefore are considered out of place or even treasonable."

When we parted I was seized with a feeling of intense loneliness, but nevertheless I realized with satisfaction that I was not entirely alone. I also gave up the idea of enjoying my leave and conceived a deep aversion for all pleasures and amusements.

The next day I wandered into the British Museum. The 600,000 volumes that surrounded me on the shelves of the reading-room had a depressing effect. I took out a few books, but was too distracted for serious study.

I almost smiled with self-contempt when I thought how I had set out the previous morning in order to conquer my old world, and how it was now receding further and further from me. I looked at the other readers. They were mostly old men, engrossed in their studies, just as they had been in peace time. I wondered what they thought about the war. I knew they would not allow it to disturb them much or interfere with their studies and their sleep. And after all, why should they care? It was only youth that was being slaughtered on the battlefields and not old age.

The sleepy dullness of the museum became unbearable and I walked out into the street.

I spent the evening with a member of the National Liberal Club, an intimate family friend, whose intellectual arrogance was one of the evil memories of my childhood, when many eager impulses and aspirations had been turned to bitterness by his lofty depreciation and his imperturbable assumption of superiority based on maturer years and experience. Having at different times received material kindnesses at his hands, I knew I could not tell him what I really thought, and the prospect of meeting him filled me with uneasiness. Moreover, in his presence I felt a kind of pride which I did not usually feel in the presence of others-a pride that forbade me to express any sentiment or to reveal my inner mind. And yet my inner mind was clamouring intolerably for revelation. I realized the advantage he would derive from his simple attitude and from his lack of mental integrity, which enabled him to ignore any considerations that did not conform to his preconceived notions, and I realized the disadvantage of my complex attitude, made up as it was of so many conflicting impulses, at war with each other and with the world around me.

My fears were justified.

At first the conversation was commonplace, and I related various experiences in a desultory fashion. Those that were mildly amusing were most appreciated. But gradually we drifted towards more vital issues and then the long and futile argument began. The weapons of sarcasm and denunciation were denied to me by the laws of politeness and etiquette. I beat in vain against the solid walls of obstinate prejudice and superficiality. His statements were uttered with dogmatic emphasis. They expressed beliefs held with all the self-assurance born of ignorance. They were based on no independent reasoning or observation, but had been assimilated either directly from the daily Press or from a circle of acquaintances whose entire political outlook was the creation of the Press. It was only then that I realized the immense power of newspapers.

For most people "thinking" is just the discovery of convenient phrases or labels, such as "pessimist," or "socialist," or "pacifist" or "Bolshevik." When any puzzling mental attitude comes before their notice, they pin one of their labels to it, and, having labelled it, they think they understand it. The Press supplies them with these labels, and, consciously or unconsciously, they store them up in their minds and always have a few ready for immediate use.

So familiar and commonplace were the phrases which my opponent selected from his store in order to reply to my every utterance, that I could almost tell what he was going to say before he said it. Moreover, the fact that he had travelled abroad and had associated with foreigners, instead of widening his view had only narrowed it. Had he never travelled he might have been sufficiently modest to admit that he knew nothing of foreign countries and he might have suspended judgment about them; but the mere fact that he had travelled filled him with a deep conviction that he knew all about the places he had visited, and this conviction, enunciated with pompous emphasis, supplanted the real knowledge and understanding derived from honest observation. Like so many people who do not possess the faculty of experiencing, he continually appealed to his own experience and continually referred to his maturer years, as though old age of itself brought wisdom.

As for the war itself he took no deep interest in it, although he glanced at the war news every day. But to understand it, to analyse its causes, to grasp its significance, to realize its true nature, that he never attempted to do. His labels and his alleged experiences and his years were sufficient to cope with the entire question and answer it satisfactorily for himself. I almost envied him for his self-sufficiency. He would never suffer acutely from any mental strife or agitation due to any but immediate and personal causes. Perhaps such a stable mentality that can without effort reject all inconvenient data is the most desirable of all and the most conducive to happiness. Certain it is that the stability of society and the very existence of civilization itself depend upon the preponderance of that particular type.

I knew that the argument was hopeless. Indeed, it was no argument. It was no exchange of ideas. It was no mutual attempt at discovering truths by an impartial comparison of two different attitudes.

At times there were signs of heat on both sides. My opponent spoke of "our democratic army" (familiar phrase!) and the overbearing manner in which he connected this dictum with a number of false, irrelevant or arbitrary generalizations made me feel a momentary pang of anger and I wished he could experience a term of military service. Nevertheless, there was no actual display of bad temper or emotion and we parted with all the habitual formulae imposed by social decorum.

I knew I had come into contact with the truly representative man. His opinion and the opinions of those like him, they all made up popular opinion. All other opinion was abnormal and negligible. It was with despair that I realized the hopelessness of my own position and that of my friends.

The public did not understand the war and did not want to understand it. It was far away from them and they did not realize the amount of suffering caused by it. It also brought wealth to many who would therefore have regretted its sudden termination. This seems a hard thing to say, but nevertheless it is true. The so-called "working-classes" had developed an appetite for wealth and power that nothing could satisfy. This appetite was being fed continually, but the more it devoured the more voracious it became. Nor did the shameless profiteering of the wealthy tend to allay it in any way. Protests against the war never went beyond the passing of mere resolutions. Those who had sufficient humanity and imagination to hate the war in its entirety and to suffer from it, although not necessarily taking any part in it, were too few and too scattered and isolated to take any effective action.

The extent to which a man can suffer is the precise measure of his merit, and thus it was that our patriots and war-enthusiasts being incapable, by reason of their grossness and vulgarity, of suffering in a spiritual sense, were immune from the misery caused by the war and yet it was they above all others upon whose support the continuance of the war depended.

This was the terrible fatality. The more a man suffered from the war the smaller was his control over it.

Everywhere, those who deserved to suffer did not suffer and those who did not deserve to suffer suffered. And that was why the war went on. Most people were so indifferent that it was impossible to talk to them without anger. I could think of nothing else but the war. I could not escape from its invisible presence. The streets and houses seemed the immaterial creations of some dream, and somewhere behind them the slaughter was going on, and amid the noise of the traffic the throbbing of the bombardment was plainly audible.

Sometimes I felt an impulse to shout from the house-tops like a Hebrew prophet and denounce this most wicked of generations. But the very futility of the idea filled me with mortification.

Our enlightened twentieth century has no use for prophets. Christ Himself would have been arrested as a pacifist or a lunatic if He had spoken His mind in the streets of London. And the clergy would have applauded the imprisonment of a dangerous "pro-German." The scribes and Pharisees were more numerous and more powerful than ever before.

Particularly the scribes.

There never was in all the world an infamy as great as the infamy of our war-time Press. A horde of unscrupulous liars and hirelings spat hatred and malice from safe and comfortable positions. They played the hero when no danger threatened. They defied an enemy who could not reach them. They boasted of the deeds they had not done. They gloried in the victories they did not win. They mouthed frantic protestations of injured innocence when they should have felt the burden of guilty shame. They were mawkishly sentimental when they should have felt keen grief and horror. They denounced murder and they urged others to commit murder. They spewed their venomous slime into every spring of healing water. At a time when clear thinking and balanced judgments were needed more desperately than ever before, they squirted into the air thick clouds of lies, and half-truths, and misleading phrases, and judgments distorted by hatred and warped by malice. And as for those who were either lured on to perpetrate the great iniquity by grandiose and seductive falsehoods or were dragged from their homes and families and sent unwilling to the slaughter, these miserable slaves the Press of all countries urged on, one against the other, brutally deaf to their misery, representing them as glad and cheerful when they had reached the extreme of human suffering, magnifying them into heroes of epic proportions (before they donned their dingy garb of war they were "lice" that had to be "combed out"), endowing them with absurdly impossible virtues-when they were just ordinary human beings in misfortune with no ambition except to live in peace and comfort-and at the same time bestowing lofty patronage upon them and calling them "Tommies" and sending them cigarettes, chocolates and advice, as though they were children to be petted, with no will or intelligence of their own.

The Press, the cinema, the atrocity placards, and propagandist leaflets, they all practised the same deliberate and colossal deceit and kindled hatred against the enemy. And so successful was this diabolical conspiracy that hatred became second nature to vast masses of people. To think evil of the enemy was an article of national faith, and to question this faith, or still more to repudiate it, that was heresy of the most heinous kind. Religion died long ago, but the cult of nationalism that replaced it was infinitely more pernicious in its intolerance and cruelty than religion at its very worst.

Individually men are often good, but collectively men are always bad. The national mob had never been so powerful, nor had it ever been so servile, and that was why its passions were those of the coward and not of the brave man; that was why chivalry and generosity and fair-mindedness were execrated, and only hatred and boastfulness and vindictive malice were allowed to live.

The rapidity with which the time passed was terrifying. Although my leave had produced so much disillusionment, I yet dreaded its termination. Just as my life at the front had made me unfit for life at home, so my short spell of life at home had rendered me unfit for further life at the front. Moreover, I knew that my concrete experiences had done a little towards strengthening and confirming the attitude of my few friends, a consideration that gave me some satisfaction. I thought that in time I might get into touch with other people who shared our attitude and then take part in some anti-war movement and fight against the war instead of in it. That would have been the only activity to which I could have devoted myself with energy and enthusiasm. But I would soon have to go back and be muzzled once more by a ruthless discipline and an all-embracing censorship. Moreover, as my leave approached its end I began to regret that I had not striven harder to enjoy the comforts and freedom of civilian life. The dread of the coming return to slavery and dreary routine began to outweigh every other consideration. The prospect of living in a tent crowded with foul-mouthed, noisy soldiers filled me with dismay. I made a feeble attempt at securing an extension of my leave, but failed, and then I resigned myself to my fate.

One afternoon, towards the end of the fortnight, I went to Kew Gardens with my friend.

The softness of the warm September day, the calm trees, and the flowers that were pure untroubled beauty (how I envied them their dispassionate lives, their tranquil growth, their effortless attainment of perfection, and their unconscious dying!)-all these had a strangely harmonizing influence upon my discordant spirit. We spoke little, and of the war not at all. Indeed, the war suddenly seemed curiously remote and I could hardly hear the throbbing of the guns. I knew that this afternoon would never be lost, that I would often think of it when back at the front. It would remain a dream of tranquil beauty that would haunt me at unexpected moments. I felt that for this alone my leave had been worth while.

The last morning came. I made a successful effort to control myself. I said good-bye. It was all over.

* * *

When I got back to camp all the men were out at work. I sat down alone in my tent. I felt slightly dazed, but not as miserable as I had expected to feel. I did not know how to occupy my time. I had brought several books with me, but I felt no inclination to read. Life seemed empty and purposeless. I waited impatiently for the return of the others.

They arrived and the evening passed quickly in talk. My friend, whose place was next to mine, remarked that I was far more cheerful than men returning from leave usually are.

The next day and many days after I was unable to shake off the feeling of mental torpor and a vague regret for what had been and what had gone for ever. My leave seemed like a thing I had dreamt of long ago. Sometimes I asked myself in a puzzled manner: "Have I really been home on leave?"

The end of the war, no one could tell when that would be. But the next leave-it might come in eight or nine months-that was something to look forward to and I began to think of all the things I would do when it actually did come.

* * *