i6 
LAND & WATER 
December 14, 1916 
and if over tribute ot song might reach the shons of Eng- 
land, ay, or the gates of heaven, I would it were the singing 
in that night of horror. Long before dawn it froze ; 
and by daybreak the song of hfe for many a man was 
ended. Some were crippled, and some were mad, and 
some had died. 
But whenever men speak of England, of the lo\ e and 
the faith and the hope of home, somewhere the echo of 
that singing shall awake again. 
» » * * • 
Blighty ! you hear it mentioned none too often, and 
, then only in a fashion that reminds you of Chevallier 
singing "My old Dutch " ; it took a poet his best moment 
to say why 
there's some corner of a foreign land 
That is for ever England — 
m the heart, too deep for knowing, it is there all the while. 
You might reasonably e.xpcct some sort of demonstration 
from men coming in sight of hon;e again after a year of war 
—I came across with several. But no — the leave-boat 
is a dull affair, and the first glimpse of land in the eerie 
dawn doesn't rouse anybody to excitement. Quietly, 
and without any hurry, you settle down in the leave- 
train, glide past a landscape of the wonderful English green , 
the wonderful English tranquillity. London draws about 
you very gradually ; you recognise old trivial things of no 
"imjiortance — wonder whether the train will jmll up on the 
bridge as it always used to. There is a grinding of brakes 
— the huge girder alongside comes gradually to a stand- 
still — you look across to the fretwork of Westminster, 
grey under the iridescent sky, the Abbey, the Embank- 
ment, the barges lying at anchor, the grey tide swirling 
past the stone piers — there falls one of those moments of 
silence that come over the noon-tide of the great city. 
Mother England 
The train moves on again ; men reach mechanically for 
their baggage— it is like the end of hundreds of other 
journeys — and yet — O Mother of our souls, with what 
infmite dumb tenderness dost Thou fold again Thine arms 
of comfort around us, with what unspeakable beauty, placid 
and constant as of an eternal dream, dost Thou greet 
again Thine errant children — dream deeper and timer 
than any world a man can lose between sleeping and 
waking, born and bound into our lives by love stronger 
than the love of man and woman, deep as the love of 
mother and child ; triumphing a milhon times— even 
with song and laughter — over death ; England ! 
You would not recognise your British soldier if I dragged 
liim into the hyperbole, would you ? Ah, but he is there 
all the same — who else ? He is there by reason of the 
inviolable faith which is in his blood, by reason of his 
being the servant of the entirely spiritual principles that 
are too deep to be articulate. I think there is no soldier 
in the world and few in history, so entirely controlled by 
the forces of the sera! as the Briton. I wrote of him 
many months ago, when I had seen him at work for a 
short time only ; " That the British soldier is the finest — 
or shall I say, the toughest — in the world, is due, not to 
his being cleverer, or better trained, or more heroic than 
another ; all of which matters were disputable ; but to his 
amazing instinct for the idea, the tradition, which makes 
him loyal to the point of dying for a mere whim in which 
some point of honour may be involved, and gives him, 
long after all ordinary human resources are drawn upon, 
a reserve of fortitude which is absolutely inexhaustible, 
for it is super-human." That is why these boy-officers, 
straight from the playing fields of school or college, 
have been such a wonderful success ; and why, to their 
own amazement, the men will follow them where they 
would not follow a warrant officer of twice their age and 
twenty times their experience. They have only to live 
up to a certain standard, normal enough to them, 
to have all the manifold power of England behind them. 
For the power is spiritual and the British soldier is the 
knight-errant of the Unseen. 
It would seem at first paradoxical that there should 
be probably less evidence of religion in the British Army 
than in any other. The church, qua church, is not a 
living thing— there is not the smallest doubt about it. 
It is there, doing what the men will let it do— wishing it 
could do more ; but though it lies as it were behind the 
heart of the Army, it is little in active evidence. Yet 
the men are. not gddless — far enough from it, as their 
letters sho\V. I think a sub-conscious faith in (jod is as 
much part of their minds as that sub-conscious faith in 
li^ngland ; but they are too rnuch occupied psj'chologic- 
ally with their destiny of being Britons to have room left 
for anything \ery considerable in the shape of creed. 
There is indeed one army creed so generally held that 
you can discuss it quite naturally with anyone ; what 
they call the fatalism of the British. ,Here it is : 
Scene : Halt during an advance that must go forward at 
any cost. Tlio first line, with officers, is lying in a bit of 
dead ground. Just in front the machine-guns arc rattling. 
Impasse. The captain realizes that stopping here any 
longer is simply waiting for shrapnel to finish the affair. 
("a])tain : (getting up and shouting) " Come on, boys. 
If there's one for you, you've got to have it. Come on. 
(E\erybady gets up. They go on. Machine guns are 
gradually silent). 
Now that is so common that nobody disputes it ; 
it strikes you as entirely gratuitous and unwarranted 
the first time you come across it ; but a month or so 
will bring you unconsciously into the same mind. I have 
never heard a padre start from that basis and tell us more 
about it— ^I suppose they think it mere pagan stoicism. 
So should I, if it were held pcssimisticallj'— 
Therefore, O man. beware, and look toward the end of 
things that be,^ 
The last of sights, the last of days ; and no man's life 
account as gain 
Ere the full tale be finished and the darkness find him 
without pain. 
But that is not quite the temper. The odd thing is 
that when there does happen to be '' one for you," nobody 
seems to mind — Queer ? 
Well, I-'ritz has his Deulschland iiher Alles, his Vatcr, 
Ich riijc Dich ; and wc — haven't a single patriotic song in 
the British army ; and as for hymns^ — I remember having 
to sing, with parched throat and sodden shirt, at ten in 
the morning in the middle of the Sinai desert, and a tem- 
perature of 120^ in the tents,'' Eternal Father, strong to 
save," because it was the only hymn we could really count 
upon the regiment knowing. 
And Fritz loves to express himself in every shade and 
way, for it convinces him of his own sincerity. He loves 
being regulated, and when the All-Highest sees fit to kick 
him he realizes what a great nation is the Fatherland. 
Tommy, for the very reason that the roots of his soul 
lie deeper, cannot be regulated beyond a certain point, 
at which intangible things like sheer history and tradition 
take the lead — -yes, and carry it on in whatever othdr 
worlds there be. There is so much in the soul of the 
Enghsh that has got to be lejt alone, which brings me to 
the one didactic thing I want to say. 
One can't help wondering at times what is going to 
happen when the care of these men passes out of the hands 
of the army into the hands of the State, and the motive 
at the back of it passes from our personal love of them 
(I don't mind admitting it) into the larger aims of State- 
craft ; and I see you at home are talking and writing 
about the same question. Well, the attitude of the army 
wh^n at last the colours are furled will be simply this. 
Tommy will sit down on his native soil, and light his pipe, 
and think, metaphorically, " Well, it's up to you now ! " 
Let there be, in the first place, generous and speedy 
treatment of the pensions and disabilities question — 
it is now rather a sore point. On that matter first and 
foremost it is imperative that the politicians should gain 
the immediate trust and confidence of the army. Other 
things, with the colossial difficulties and mtricacies 
which arc involved in the disposition question, might 
then be taken at leisure. 
As to that latter question, I have only one word to 
say. Let us have every possilsle facility for the voluntary 
disposition of skilled labour, and — very especially— far 
more advertisement of such facility than any govern- 
ment scheme has had hitherto. It ought to be dealt with, 
in that respect, on exactly the same lines as was the re- 
cruiting campaign of 1915. But give us the utter minimum 
of coercion. You have got to trust these millions of men 
•sooner or liter ; make a bid for their confidence at the 
start and begin that way. 
