February 28, 19 18 
Land & Water 
19 
Foot-Sloggers : By Ford Madox HuefFer 
WHAT is love of one's land ? . . . 
I don't know very well. 
It is something that sleeps. 
For a year — for a day — 
For a month — something that keeps 
Very hidden and quiet and still 
And then takes 
The quiet heart like a wave 
The quiet brain like a spell, 
The quiet will 
Like a tornado ; and that shakes 
The whole of the soul. 
n. 
It is omnipotent like love ; 
It is deep and quiet as the grave 
And it awakes 
Like a flame, like a madness. 
Like the great passion of your life. 
The cold keenness of a tempered knife, 
The great gladness of a wedding day, 
The austerity of monks who wake to pray 
In the dim light, 
Who pra}' 
In the darkling grove. 
AU these and a great belief in what we deem the right 
Creeping upon us like the ovei^whelming sand, 
Dri\-en by a December gale, 
Make up the love of one's land. 
III. 
But I ask you this : 
About the middle of my first Last Leave. 
I stood on a kerb in the pitch of the night 
Waiting for 'buses that didn't come 
To take me home. 
That was in Paddington. 
The soot-black night was over one like velvet : 
And one was very alone — so very alone 
In the velvet cloak of the night. 
Like a lady's skirt 
A dim, diaphonous cone of white, the rays 
Of a shaded street lamp, close at hand, existed. 
And there was nothing but vileness it could show, 
Vile, paUid faces drifted through, chalk white ; 
Vile alcoholic voices in the ear, vile fumes 
From the filthy pavements . . . vileness ! 
And one thought : 
" In three days' time we enter the unknown : 
And this is what we die for ! " 
For, mind you, 
It isn't just a Tube ride, going to France ! 
It sets ironic unaccustomed minds 
At work even in the sentimental . . . 
Still 
All that is in the contract. 
IV. 
Who of us 
But has, deep down in the heart and deep in the brain 
The memory of odd moments : memories 
Of huge assemblies chanting in the night 
At palace gates : of drafts going off in the rain 
To shaken music : or the silken flutter 
On silent, ceremonial parades. 
In the sunlight, when you stand so stiff to attention, 
That you never see but only know they are there — 
The regimental colours — silken, a-flutter 
Azure and gold and vermilion against the sky : 
The sacred finery of banded hearts 
Of generations. . . . 
And memories 
When just for moments, landscapes out in France 
Looked so like English downlands : that the heart 
Checked and stood stiU. . . . 
Or then, the song and dance 
On the trestle staging in the shafts of light 
From smoky lamps : the lines of queer, warped faces 
Of men that now arc dead : faces lit up 
By inarticulate minds at sugary chords 
From the vamping pianist beneath the bunting : 
" Until the boys come home ! " we sing. And fumes 
Of wet humanity, soaked uniforms, 
Wet flooring, smoking lamps, fill cubical 
And woodcn-walled spaces brown, all brown, 
With the light-sucking hue of the Khaki. .... And the rain 
Frets on the pitchpine of the felted roof 
Like women's fingers beating on a door 
Calling " Come Home " . . . " Come Home " 
Down the long trail beneath the silent moon. ... 
Who never shall come. ... 
And we stand up to sing 
" Hen wiad fy nadhau. ..." 
Dearest, never one 
Of your caresses, dearest in the world. 
Shall interpenetrate the flesh of one's flesh, 
The breath of the lungs, sight of the eyes, or the heart, 
Like the sad, harsh anthem in the rained-on huts 
Of our own men. . . . 
That too is in the contract. . . . 
V. 
Well, of course. 
One loves one's men. One takes a mort of trouble 
To get them spick and span upon parades : 
You straf them, slang them, mediate between 
Their wives and loves, and you inspect their toenails 
And wangle leaves for them from the Adjutant 
Until your Company office is your home 
And all your mind. ... 
This is the way.it goes : 
First your platoon and then your Company, 
Then the Battalion, then Brigade, Division, 
And the whole B.E.F. in France . . . and then 
Our Land, with its burden of civilians 
Who take it out of us as little dogs 
Worry Newfoundlands. . . . 
So, in the Flanders mud. 
We bear the State upon our rain-soaked backs, 
Breathe life into the State from our rattling .lungs,' 
Anoint the State with the rivulets of sweat 
From our tin helmets. 
And so, in years to come 
The State shall take the semblance of Britannia, 
Up-borne, deep-bosomed, with anointed limbs. . . . 
Like the back of a penny. , 
VI. 
For I do not think 
We ever took much stock in that Britannia 
On the long French roads, or even on parades, 
Or thought overmuch of Nelson or of Minden, 
Or even the old traditions. . . . 
I don't know, 
In the breatUess rush that it is of parades and drills, 
Of digging at the double and strafes and fatigues 
These figures grow dimmed and lost : 
Doubtless we too, when the years have receded 
May look like the heroes ol Hellas, upon a frieze, 
White limbed and buoyflit and passing the flame of the 
torches 
From hand to hand. . . . But to-day it's mud to the knees 
And Khaki and Khaki and Khaki and Khaki. . . . And the 
love of one's land 
Very quiet and hidden and Still. . . . And again 
I donit know, though I've pondered the matter for years 
Since the war began. . . . But I never had much brain 
And less than ever to-day. . . . 
VII. 
I don't know if you know the i.io train 
From Cardiff : 
Well, fourteen of us together 
Went up from Cardiff in the summer weather 
At the time of the July push. 
It's a very good train ; 
It runs with hardly a jar and never a stop 
After Newport, until you get down 
In London Town. 
It goes with a solemn, smooth rush 
Across the counties and over the shires 
Right over England past farmsteads and byres 
It bubbles with conversation, 
Being the West going to the East : 
The pick of the rich of the West in a bunch. 
Half of the wealth of the Nation, 
With heads together, buzzing of local topics 
Of bankrupts and strikes, divorces and marriages 
And, after Newport you get your lunch. 
In the long, light, gently-swaying carriages 
As the miles flash by 
And fields and flowers 
Flash by 
