August 15, 19 1 8 
Land & Water 
23- 
I 
You see he had no vulgar ambition ; no vanity. To die 
for a cause was no part of his dreams, merely to be essentially 
himself, not part of a movement or a mob. Egoism, per- 
haps, or mere folly . . . the folly that shatters the prophecy 
of the professional sceptic, anyway. 
Then the war came, and Arnold fancied that his moment 
had come. August the fifth found him, at seven o'clock in 
the morning, at the recruiting office. To his intense disap- 
j)ointment he was not alone. That he should have seriously 
dreamt that he would be in any way alone, individualise 
himself in any degree, by joining the army on the outbreak 
of a European war showed naivete undoubtedly : but I 
expect many thousands were similarly baulked of their dream. 
Only a few lived to have it irretrievably shattered. That 
was his incomparable misfortune. Disgrace needs no pity, 
and undeserved misfortune wins it from the vulgar, 
who after all are in a majority. But a spirit broken by the 
shattering of a childish illusion, unconfessed, irrelevant to 
the fundamental issues of morality, that is, to my mind, a 
tragedy at which only the ultimately discerning will weep. 
.\nd their tears will hardly wash away' a suicide's blood. 
The battalion had gone up to carry out an attack — in the 
language of soldiers, "to do a stunt." He was one of my 
platoon commanders, and without a doubt one of the bravest ; 
not that the respect of his men satisfied him, or that the 
refusal to yield to the fear which every soldier feels gave him 
any satisfaction. He felt, and for once he was right, that 
he was merely one of a thousand other actors playing the 
same tedious part on the same stage. But I put the fact on 
record. He was, unquestionably, brave . . . And efficient. 
He always turned up at company headquarters at least 
half an hour before going up into the line to say that one of 
Iiis men had got no steel helmet, or that Jiis Lewis gun team 
was one short. So few platoon commanders discover these 
things. On one occasion he even told me he had forgotten 
to indent for some field dressings he wanted. Yes, he was 
unquestionably the most efficient of my subalterns, as well 
as one of the bravest. 
Well ; we did our stimt, and Arnold's platoon did a really 
brilliant piece of work.- That is to say, instead of charging 
a machine gun with reckless heroism, he had the sense to 
get round both flanks at the same time and capture it without 
losing a man: the result was that when we, got into the 
village we had enough men to hold it. That was Arnold 
all over. He never did the obvious, straightforward, dashing 
thing. He always regarded everything as a problem, and 
consequently realised the need for a solution. The realisa- 
tion is the difficulty, of course, the solution is simplicity itself. 
Of course he knew it — he was so infernally well educated 
that he always did know — and I could never persuade him 
that he was a genius. If I could have done so he'd have been 
alive now perhaps, for he'd have more than satisfied his con- 
science, which, after all, as I've said, made no such exorbitant 
demands. 
We had had a rough time of it. The last I saw of him was 
about two o'clock in the morning. It was still, damnably still. 
And that impalpable poesy which- an ironic nature throws 
upon ruins by moonlight had caught me somehow, and I 
was going round my lines under a mere pretence of exercising 
supervision. I remember feeling a pretence of satisfaction 
at my thoroughness at the time, but it was the glamour of 
it all that kept me at my post in reality. Then I came across 
Arnold. As usual he was at work ; just a plain, straight- 
forward piece of wiring, you know. But he would refine. 
Talk about painting the lily, that chap would have touched 
up Giotto's frescoes if he had been given a chance. He'd got 
an idea in his head that wiring was a scientific affair, which 
it took years to learn, and that every strand of wire must 
follow a predestined path. I am afraid I lost my temper 
with him — but that's neither here nor there — anyway, I 
told him his entanglement was good enough for its purpose and 
that he'd better turn in, as we might be attacked to-morrow 
and -he'd want all the reserve of energy he could get. 
"If they attack us I suppose we mustn't give them an 
inch ? " he asked me rather foolishly, for there could only 
be an answer, which was bound to sound insincere before 
the event. 
"No, of course not." I say, rather brusquely, "we can 
hold the line against almost anything ; besides, the artillery 
are the chief thing. If they get their barrage down, all 
we've got to do is to watch the old Hun walk into it and 
perdition at the same time." 
And then he made one of his hopeless, characteristic 
remarks. "Oh, the artillery . . . yes, I suppose we are 
only second fiddle to them in these days. If only one could 
do something without them . . ." 
Well, of course, Arnold hadn't been ouf in 1914 and I 
left him to his confounded rorpancing. But the same fatal 
weakness I saw was there. He was essentially feminine 
Co-operation was the thing he dreaded. He wanted tO' 
"function" as an individual. He was-, au fond, anti-social. 
I suppose. 
He went down to some old cellar he had chosen as his. 
dug-out and told his orderly to wake him at "stand to." 
Then he went to sleep, at least so his orderly informed me. 
I don't suppose he slept for a minute ; as a matter of fact 
he was in one of his restless moods ; besides, I'd upset him a 
good bit by criticising his wiring operations. Like all. 
dreamers, one of his dreams was that he was a man of an 
intense practicality. Well, Arnold was practical, I admit, 
but he was pedantic. He regarded the most trivial problems- 
as self-existent, as abstractions independent of the vulgarity 
of circumstance ; and he probably spent his last night on the- 
earth planning his work for the next day without waiting 
to see whether it was wet or fine. You may be sure- 
he'd made up his mind to do something particularly quixotic 
that next day ; decided in all probability on some pedantic 
gallantry under circumstances which were never likely to- 
arise. But he'd arrived at a decision, you may be certain,, 
and that, after all, was his dream, that he was a man of 
decision. The trouble was that whenever he found any- 
one else had come to the same decision he always denied 
himself any credit (or his own judgment. 
About half-past three I can see him, serenely conficent 
once more, just dozing off to sleep. The harsh objectivity of 
circumstance had dimmed its stern UHCompromising outhne- 
in the mellifluous haze of his dreams, and he was at peace. 
He woke up. He must still have had that taste then of a 
half-remembered satisfaction which cHngs to the palate,, 
if I may say so, before one has fully shaken- off the tran- 
quihty of sleep and become aware of the urgency of the waking 
day. 
Then he saw those two Germans standing over him . . . 
And the man of decision, of the intense practicality of 
temperament lay there for five minutes looking blankly into- 
the dull, heavy, grey faces of his enemies. 
Five minutes ; so his orderly told me. 
To most men even the passing of fifty years allows of the 
preservation of a few illusions. It can happen to few to be 
stripped bare of their imagined quahty, of their insignia of 
immortality, in five minutes : yet that is what happened to 
Arnold, the man of iron decision, of inflexible will, lay- 
there looking into the very eyes of his enemies, helplessly 
enmeshed in his lingering dream, unable to concentrate on 
the needs of the urgent hour. 
Five minutes, and with a face deathly pale — so his orderly- 
told me. 
Then he got up, very slowly, deliberately almost, perhaps 
the last expiring effort to sustain the perished illusion. But 
the illusion was burnt out of his soul. I don't think he cared 
what he did then — whether they killed or captured him.. 
You see he had surrendered the initiative, and he asked no- 
favour from the overmastering circumstance. Of course,, 
events showed it, he wanted them to kill him. But he 
staggered — one cannot, I suppose, shed in five minutes every 
carefully rehearsed gesture, every attitude, every criterion of 
relativity, one cannot, I suppose, surrender one's personality 
to' the ravening maw of reality, and retain one's physical 
equilibrium — at least, he couldn't — and he sfaggered towards 
his revolver. He didn't reach it. The man of inflexible 
will, of the intense practicality of temperament merely caught 
a deprecatory glance in the eyes of his enemies and admitted 
the justice of the deprecatiqn. 
In the supreme hour all that he was heard to say — I saidi 
before that he would have made an admirable civil servant 
— was, "quite . . . quite . . ." 
Then he sat down. And then his orderly brought in 
breakfast, and the platoon sergeant, who had been standing 
respectfully at attention round the corner, came in to know 
if he'd finished examining the prisoners. 
And the man of iron decision said that he . . that he had 
. . . quite . . . quite . . . And then his orderly burst out 
laughing. 
That was the breaking point, I suspect, the culminating 
point of his humiliation, which sent him out on that heroic, 
futile patrol. He always did an early morning reconnaissance 
when there was a mist, but this morning it was brilliantly clear. 
He was still alive when they got him in that night. And 
he'd made out the enemy's dispositions in a wonderful manner. 
Believe me, he had walked at least five miles along their 
front, and brought a map back with him. It was accurate 
too. I compared it with the photographs the Flying Corps 
had taken the afternoon before. 
That patrol was his last, perhaps his finest, gesture . . ; 
But it wasn't the gesture of a soldier. That was the tragedy 
of it. 
