LAND AND WATER, 
'August 14,' I9l5* 
IMAGINATION AND WAR. 
By Desmond MacCarthy. 
MEN take war so differently both over here and 
at the front ; and, what is more, tlie same 
man feels one day one way and another 
way the next. He may be absohitely cal- 
lous, then full of sympathy; gntung his 
teeth with bloodthirsty vindictiveness, and agam ready 
to risk his own life to pull a wounded enemy into 
shelter; Imting the Germans, then feehng the poor 
-devils are in the same box, in an odd way, perhaps, 
more akin for the moment than many a stay-at- 
home; bored, bored to the pitch of feehng nothing 
matters, and again more grateiully aware of how 
good it is to be alive, just to see and to move 
one's limbs about, to talk, to be nearer others, than 
he could have believed it possible to be; swearmg 
at the damned hooligan tomfoolery of it all, and tlien 
feeling as though he had never been properly awake and 
alive till now; awfully aware that his life— that means 
everything in a sens^-is at tlie mercy of chance, and 
that the odds are against him ; then feeling like an Atlas 
from whose shoulders a whole world has suddenly 
slipped— the whole world, with its joys, sorrows, 
botherations, loves, friendships, responsibilities, ambi- 
tions, hopes, pleasures, and nonsense— gone at last. 
Ouf, the relief ! 
There is no end to these contrasts. What a 
difference between that mood in which a man umler 
^mbardment realises what is going on, keeps his 
whole will bent on steadying his own nerves, while 
he steadies others with a glance or a touch which says, 
*' Yes, my friend, we must see it out," and that mood of 
death's head humour which is illustrated in so niany of 
our papers, the mood in which a man may pick up an 
arm and say, " Hallo ! he's dropped something." 
Red Laughter. 
Yet the same man may experience both. Our 
Journalists delight in giving examples of that red 
laughter. The Daily ChTonicIe, the other day, 
published a number of examples of that laughter, 
and the anecdolist hinted that there were others 
which the stay-at-homes would be toe squeamish 
to enjoy. Well, the stay-at-homes ought to be 
squeamish ; it is the least they can be. Nobody, 
as the compiler suggests, grudges those in the 
trenches any relief, and such irony is a way of keeping 
the Intolerable at arm's length. But the stay-at-homes 
have no right to it, no need for it, and I do grudge them 
their manly chuckle over what is not really funny and 
.the glow they derive from such reading — " What a 
brave race / belong to! " On first coming back from 
France two things 1 remember jarred on me : The siglit 
here and there on some housetop of the rich of a netting 
to catch bombs (so these people would not even sliare a 
one to a million risk, while their fellow-countrymen were 
risking so much!); and then a gigantic poster, called 
*' The Absent-Minded Beggar," which has now happily 
disappeared from the vStrand. On it a soldier was repre- 
sented gloating over a copy of John Bull while liis 
wounds were being bandaged and shells were bursting 
and men were sticking each other round him. The 
vulgarity of exploiting that kind of humour for commer- 
cial purposes is almost as depressing as the news of a 
defeat. 
Everybody at home nowadays tries to imagine what 
war is like wfien he is not helplessly trying to get his 
mind off it altogether. Descriptions are a help, but it is 
the feelings of those engaged that make up tlie real 
experience, as in everything else that can happen to 
men. Tlie re.ility lies there. To understand better 
one has. then, to look into oneself, for most of us are 
as like each other as peas at bottom. Take as a rough 
geperal description of it, then, tJ)at war is a long bore^. 
d6M, punctuated with riioments 'of excitement and terror, 
20 
and imagine yourself reacting to that. First of all, con- 
sider the boredom. Surely it is the words " It's a long, 
long way to Tipperary," with its trailing, tired tune, 
which have made the fortune of that song. How 
astonished the composer must be to find he has written 
a campaigning song ! Could anything be less martial ? 
But it suits— or, rather, it suited till it got too stale— h 
common mood, and all the better because it did not set 
out to express it directly, when it would have probably 
been depressing. But the boredom is lit from time to 
time by emotions which men do not ordinarily feel 
acutely. The nearness of death and danger, in prospect 
or recollection, gives zest to mere existence r and there 
is the mysterious feeling of fellowship which men rarely 
feel for others under ordinary circumstances. j. 
Happiness and Boredom. 
These are moods : they come and go ; but if they are 
pretty constant — and they may be— a man will be happy. 
If they are infrequent, boredom will have its usual effect 
and make him edgy, miserable, and lonely, and drive 
him more and more into himself. So one cannot tell which 
experience a man will pitch upon as the essence of war. 
One can only be certain that nine out of ten accounts of 
it will strike him as written by a fool, so iari mu.'it they 
seem from what was most real in it to hinl.' To some 
whose job has been of one kind war must be .-^ sardonic 
comedy. Battling with muddles, it is the pettiness of 
human nature at the most vital crises which they have 
come up against, and the prosaicness of life trying to go 
on as usual under absurd conditions, and the contrast of 
the result with people's romantic idea of war may strike 
them most. Such queer bits of humdrum civilis<-ition 
survive. To others the times when Hell was let loose 
and God seemed to have gone mad will be remembered 
as the reality, while to others these may seem in retrospect 
like a dream, and what remains is a feeling, " We stooil 
it; we stood it " ; or, again, the revelation of what men 
will bear together may bring a kind of joy in human 
nature stronger than anything else and never felt before. 
But certainly it is not for those who have not stood the 
test to suppose this to be the essence of the matter. It 
seems to me a sort of impertinence for anyone who has 
not fought to be anything but pacifist in feeling, how- 
ever determined he may be in his opinions as a citizen. 
Delight in War. 
It cannot be said that past wars have inspired metf 
with any reluctance to liave another. They love 
reading about them afterwards ; though while, any par- 
ticular war was on it has always appealed to :them as 
Ijeing a war against war. Contemporaries have always 
lived on the tliought, " When this is over we shall liave 
Peace, Peace on a stable foundation at last." But the 
next generation have enjoyed that very war in imagina- 
tion so much that they have had little reluctance about 
going in for another. Apart from political results, the 
stability of the world's peace, when this war is over, 
will depend upon the impression it leaves behind on 
the imagination, and that this will be a different one 
from those made by earlier wars is probable. The cost 
in life, pain, and prosperity is so much greater than 
ever before, and nations, not armies, are fighting. But, 
apart from this, there is another circumstance which 
makes the contemporary attitude towards war different 
and must influence the legend of it later on. This war is 
so much more constantly and realistically present to us 
through the papers than wars were to our fathers and 
mothers. Those at the front do not disappear info a 
distance in which the imagination has freedom; every 
hour we are reminded of facts. Wars in the past have 
tended to make the Imagination fomantic> /I'his one. is 
more likely to make men realists. - — • 
