44 
LAND & WATER 
August 2, 1-917 
to amuse their little circle of good-for-nothings, and to preserve 
-them from dreary dullness.'.' .'. ^ _ ... ,, . 
Tolstoy is, of course, out of touch with the guiding ideils of 
•genuine scholars— the search for truth for its own sake, the' 
conviction that truth is sure to bring its reward in the shape 
of A practical applications, the perception of the immense 
changes which have been wrought by scientific and philoso- 
phical progress in life and thought. But, in spite of the yio-^ 
Icnce and injustice of his invectives, Tolstoy kept hammering 
at one all-important point — at the necessity of justifying; 
all studies of detail by their connection to the central problems : 
why do we live, what is our relation to the universe P-^Hciw 
does our reasoning mind fit in with nature ? Such questions 
^ eannot be solved by scientific methods alone,.- and/paas^fifora 
t"he domain of knowledge into the domain- of .-religion. ^ . 
Asa matter of fact, though Russian society has jqin^ the 
-rlhg "of European nations too late to, join in th^. Refor- 
mation,' it has not escaped the spititual-trial^pXtfe present 
. cfifical period, and it is hardly too riitich to' say that one of 
the tasks set to Russia is to take an active part infthe eyolu- 
, t^n-'of religious thought. The task is as'vital'-.for -the 
■fntellectual leaders as for the mass of the people.-'" It'isi on 
that soil that the elements of 'the nation so loiigv estranged 
from one another, are likely to m-^et. ■ , '" 
^ 
A Farm in Flanders 
By Centurion 
THE air was drowsy with the scent of the flowers of 
the downland — wild thyme, harebell, eyebright, 
yellow bedstraw and creeping cinquefoil. A " Lul- 
work skipper " opened and closed her orange- 
wings upon the golden petals of the ragwort as though 
fanning herself in the swooning heat. Between the chalk 
cliff on which we lay, and the Purbeck limestone of the 
opposing headland, the coast curved inland in a sickle- 
shaped bay whose waters gleamed blue as sapphire in the 
July sun. The surface of the channel was smooth as molten 
glass, save when the propeller of a patrol-boat left 
a furrow of white foam behind her. The complete 
absence of motion combined with the transparency of the 
air to give Nature-something of the, fixity of Art ; we seemed 
to be looking at a water-colour painting. ■ Borlase and I lay 
at full length on the down, smoking our pipes and enjoying 
the view with the proprietary, pride of two West countrymen 
and that • sensation of ; unlimited opulence which seduces 
every officer on leave, a sensation which is wholly subjective 
and has nothing to do withthe state of one's account at Cox's. 
In fact, it often leads to overdrafts. And like the enchanted 
disciple on the Mount we talked of building tabernacles — 
after the war. 
" No building for me ! " I said. " I will buy me a certain 
manor-house, whose walls are as jasper — walls of old 
red brick sun-ripened like a peach, gabled roofs, mullioned 
windows, oak panelling. . . . Damn these flies ! " 
'' And I," said Borlase meditatively, " will buy a farm in 
glanders." 
■ ' ' A farm in Flanders ! . Not you, my son ! Don't I know 
them ! Cold tiled floors, walls of mud and timber, a courtyard 
whose chief decorative feature is a midden-heap, a landscape 
of pollarded willows and slimy dykes with an obscene estami- 
net in the middle distance. And no cubbing either ! " 
" I didn't say 1 should live there," said Borlase slowly. 
" But I shouldn't like to feel it belonged to anyone else." 
" Where is it ? " I asked languidly as I watched a golden- 
brown fritillary fluttering ecstatically. Borlase was gazing 
out to sea beyond the white cliffs of the Needles to the distant 
haze which masked the coast of France. 
" D'you know the bit of country between Richebourg and 
Festubert ? " 
" Do I not? " I said feelingly. " I lost my way there 
once and all but walked straight into the German trenches." 
" Well, it's there. The last time I saw it — and jolly glad 
I was to see the last of it — it was mostly dust and ashes ; a 
Jack Johnson knocked it endways. It was our headquarters 
and was back about 300 yards behind the trenches — very 
unhealthy. The Huns use to ' search ' up and down on 
either side of us with their smaller howitzers, first up one 
side of the road on which our house stood, then down the 
other, as methodically as a gardener with a watering-can. I 
used to watch their black and yellow bursts creeping nearer 
and nearer with a kind of ugly fascination and wonder whether 
.the next would get us. We had no cellar and didn't like to 
bolt to our funk-hole across the yard for fear we should 
give the show away. They got T that way — I 
found his boot afterwards. . . . We moved into that 
sector at the end of 1914, having been in the whole show 
from the beginning at Mons. We'd done our bit too in the 
big sweep of October' when Smith-Dorrien tried to roll up the 
German right resting on ' La Bass6e. We were in those 
eleven days' fighting round the sugar-factory at Lorgies and 
after that were moved up and down the lines in a sort of game 
of " General Post," acting as reserve to the division — one 
battalion to a division ! That was what was meant by 
' reserve ' in those days. We'd trek after a week or ten 
days in the trenches and settle down in billets and get 
the camp-kettles going for a hot tub, and within a few minutes 
along would come the order ' Be prepared to start for ■ 
at ha!f-an-hour's notice.' And we'd start. 
" That went on till we settled down more or less at the 
spot I've spoken of. Wc found fairly good fire-trenches 
when we took over, but that was all. There were no corn-' 
munication-trenches — we relieved by sections over the open 
ground — no support trenches and no reserve trenches. Arid 
lierc, like Caesar, we went into winter-quarters, except that 
Caesar rested and we didn't. No one who has not gone 
through that first winter out there, will ever realise what 
the Old Army endured. We had no wire at first, and 
consequently had to post extra sentries at night. We had 
no flares — till we invented that stunt of sodium in jam-tins. 
We had no trench boards, and no pumps, and when the water 
got into our trenches it rose steadily till our men stood more 
than knee-deep in a compost of icy mud and water, 
which gradually stiffened round their legs like concrete. 
Our company sergeant-major lost both feet that way. 
There were no four-day reliefs in those days ; we were relieved 
about once every ten and even then at least half the battalion, 
and sometimes the whole of it, were kept up in close siipport 
all night in case of a sudden attack. We were always 'on the 
defensive and the Hun knew it. Raids were out of the 
question — we hadn't the men to spare and, as you'll remember, 
raids were never thought of till the November following, 
when the New Army had taken the field. Besides, wc had 
no bombs. 
'■ But we couldn't take all the taunts of the Jager battalion 
opposite us lying down, and it was then that we started ex- 
perimenting with the ' jam-pots ' made by the sappers. We 
used to call our bombers ' Tickler's Artillery,' and if they 
didn't terrify the enemy they certainly succeeded in terrifying 
us. You remember the kind of thing ? — one of Tickler's 
jam-tins with a httle gun-cotton priming in the middle, 
a fuse which one lit with a match like a pipe, and for a charge 
pounded crockery, belt-buckles, shirt-buttons, ten-centime 
pieces ; in fact, anything we could lay our hands on. It 
was the best we could do. . . . Of course, we had none 
of your portable Lewis-guns, only the old heavy machine- 
gun of(gun-metal weighing 58 lb , and only two to the battalion 
at that. As for trench-mortars, no one had ever heard of 
'em except the Hun, until the sappers sent up their improvised 
stove-pipes — five out of six were duds, and the sixth gave the 
show away. 
" And night and day the Hun pounded us with his artillery 
— sprayed us with shrapnel and blew us up with H.E., and 
there were our howitzers behind us eating their heads off for 
want of stuff. When things got a bit too warm we'd tele- 
phone back praying the O.C. of a battery of i8-pounders to 
dust the Huns up a bit, and what constantly happened would 
be something like this— I'd spot some Huns with my field- 
glasses about 600 yards away making a M.G. emplacement 
at their leisure ; I'd ring up the battery, and they'd put in 
four shells, two short, two wide, then a dead stop ; I'd ring 
up again and the answer would come : ' Sorry, we've fired 
the ration— four a day is all we're allowed.' Then the 
Hun, after waiting a bit, would proceed to concrete his 
emplacement at his leisure, and after that there was the 
devil to pay. 
"I tell you it was heartrending— we were like Dervishes 
with spears up against a machine-gun ; our men had nothing 
except their courage and their musketry— but they never once 
got the wind up and they put the fear of God into the Huns. 
It was just as bad for the gunners. I remember old Haig- 
Smith, the O.C. of the Battery, showing me once, almost with 
tears in his eyes, his boxes of ammunition : all the duds 
saved up like talents in a napkin since the South African 
War and marked ' Singapore,' ' Hong-Kong,' ' Perth W.A.,' 
and the Lord knows what else. That battery was put on 
