12 
LAND fe? WATER 
December 26, 1918 
The Egoist: 
A Story by Douglas Jerrold 
Two weeks of active service- . . .• emd he felt tired. 
It was not at all what he had expected. No 
pleasant trench routine, no newspapers, no tinned 
food from Fortnum and Mason, none of that 
suburban civilisation which his friends who had 
been in France had taught him to associate with war. 
In the two weeks which he had spent he had experienced 
little more than the acute discomfort of an Aldershot field day. 
It is true there was the sun .and the dust to torment him, 
but at the moment it was just that ironic resemblance to an 
old-fasliioned Foxhills field day - which hurt. Those long 
hungrj' mornings came back to liim, and he would think for 
a minute. "Why, my God, I have done all this a hundred 
times over before, and enjoyed it" . . . and then he would 
come up against the awful, the damnable fact which to many 
made the Peninsula a place almost accursed. . . There was 
no rest behind the lines, no place of safety, no relief. One 
covildn't even wash without inviting shells. And this was 
to go on till — till the end. 
T^Ot tUl he gave in . . . for men had given in ... it was 
better to face the fact. It was not merely the old primaeval 
test of danger which he had to bear— a test which finds so 
many to pass through it triumphant, that indifference to 
danger passes readily enough among the ignorant for an 
ingrained habit of man. This was different. It was the 
prospect of endless voyagings through the deserts of the 
soul which, he knew, had already broken the spirit of 
lion-hearted men. A continuous lowering of the vitaUty, 
which gave no respite for forgetfulness. An enveloping fate 
which held their souls in pawn against the cheerful acceptance 
of every conventional sign of human degradation. 
That was what it came to — sheer bestial humanity fighting 
for survival against every plague of nature. The excitement 
of an engagement was the only tonic which keyed up men's 
sinking -hearts. The present danger was the oiily relief from 
the immanent decay. 
Out of the Une, sick men crawled about in holes scratched 
in^the ground ; men couldn't be allowed to spend their reserves 
of strength in assuring their own safety. . . Gallipoli made 
sterner demands than would allow of those common-sense 
precautions. 
Seven weeks of active service . . . and still in Army Corps 
reserve. And he felt less than tired ... his sensibility was 
growing less dehcate. . . GaUipoU was making her inevit- 
able conquests. Civilisation was beginning to look macabre 
from the intolerable distcince. 
* * * »> * * 
Three months of active service. And four hundred and 
fifty men gone sick . . . left, faded away rather, without 
having fired a shot. . . " Everything was quiet on our front" 
. . . that was what the papers said, and it was damnably 
true. Quiet ! He had never known such quiet — some people 
were growing almost disincUned to discuss what they would 
order for dinner if they were sitting in the Grill Room of the 
Hyde Park Hotel. 
And then the dubious solace of an impending attack. 
The news came to him one night as he, lying awake, broken 
with sickness, filled with a bitter hope that the next day . . . 
who knows . . . well, the doctor might take a graver view 
of his case. And he lay there hoping . . . hoping desperately. 
And it was hope which it weis ignominy to endure. . . And 
all over the camp men were hoping the same thing . . . 
suUenly. 
And then this news. Truly a heaven-sent breakwater 
against the tide beating insatiably against the stalwart 
broken spirits of humiliated men. The way of escape was 
illuminated with an irresistible brilliance. 
Not for nothing, he felt now, had he trained that fime 
company of men. The memory of that debonair march to 
the entraining station lost its cruel irony in a moment of 
inspiration. 
He would lead them from that plague-stricken sea-shore, 
on into the green valley beyond. Sari Bair no longer loomed 
over them, an irremediable menace to the aspirations of a 
hundred thousand men. It was the key . . . and within 
his grasp, within the grasp of others too, no doubt. But 
no body of men would equal the achievement of his company 
the day after next. ... no body of men of all that expectant 
army. 
* w * * 4 * 
The first faint glimmer of dawn broke over the assembled 
armies, still waiting on the threshold of the last desperatv 
adventure. 
How far it would be the final throw of the campaign he 
could not tell. But of aU these expectant ranks few could 
look forward to getting out yet again from that fatal strip 
of shore to share in another dawn of battle. They were sick 
men and tired, and hungry for the green life of fields and pleas- 
ant shades of imagined woodlands where the only sound to 
break on them should be the silver plashing of innumerable 
fountains; 
It was no fantastic reverie of his, of his and a thousand 
others, which was interrupted by the fateful moment of attack. 
They could go forward past the perilous edge of battle into 
the beyond of their dreams, on to this forbidden inaccessible 
height whence they could look down on Chanak and hold 
the Straits in their keeping. That indeed was an ambitious 
dream, but within the measure of their power, it seemed. 
But to go back ... to let the memory of a few ardent hours 
be all the increment of their happiness and to continue for 
more weary weeks that appaUing hfe of sickness and discom- 
fort, to suffer again that aching inertia of the soul . . . that 
was bitter beyond his merely physical capacity of endurance. 
They must go on . . . that was what he had told his 
company ; and he told them not out of the mere routine 
encouragement which was expected of a company commander, 
but with an intensity of conviction which made itself felt. 
After all, these men were more than his companj' ; nine-tenths 
of them had grown up within the boundaries of his father's 
estate, and he knew that the unspoken traditions of a stub- 
born countryside were being tested beyond the imaginable 
Hmits of endurance. 
If the dawning day should show no triumph, the reaction 
of its effort would snap that stubborn tradition of endurance, 
and a week would see the rest of that still splendid company 
of his fading away like withered leaves in autumn. And the 
return — one by one those once ardent spirits would return 
to the unspoken rituals of their countryside, but the illusion 
would have perished ; and men without Ulusions, though they 
may live sometimes with endurance amid the bustle of cities, 
cannot support the burden of existence each in the secrecy 
of his own wayside hearth. 
And he hadn't needed to teU them . . . that was his 
comfort ; that antique wisdom which Hngers still in the ends 
of the earth and the forgotten byways of busy civiUsations 
had told them enough. He merely reminded them of what 
each knew of himself unaiided. ^ They must go on. 
He himself, adventurer though he was, hardened to most 
of the vicissitudes of a persistent good fortune, could not 
but lead, with every expectation of being followed. And 
when the moment came, he and his company bade farewell 
to the plague-infested shore with something of the exultation 
of a dream fulfilled. . 
The sun, rising over the Straits, shone with a merciful re- 
straint as they advanced resolutely, with the quick determined 
stride of free men set on a great adventure across the shell- 
swept scrub. The fire was heavy, but for the first half-hour 
of the advance their losses were sUght. Now and again he 
would stop, to check the direction of his men, to give an 
unspoken farewell to a dying man, or a glance of encourage- 
ment to a less ardent spirit. 
'^,: For it was only the beginning. The main position, not 
exactly determined, was clearly not yet reached. Only 
shrapnel and long-range rifle fire were taking their toll of the 
advancing infantry. Men were falhng as yet only by ones 
and twos. The battle was but beginning. . . 
« * * * * * 
Now they were reaching the gradual slope of the hill and 
the fire was getting ominously intense. They went on. 
Men were falUng by tens now. The centre of the attack was 
growing thinner . . .and again thinner, and now only 
isolated groups were toihng pitifully up the barren slope. 
Their own path was round the shoulders_of/he hill. They 
went on. 
f He waved the direction to liis company and then their 
pace quickened . . . once round the shoulder of the hill 
they might come in on the flank of the retreating enemy, 
driven from his trenches on the hill itself. That was the 
military situation, present dimly in his mind. He himself 
had seen those scattered bayonets caught by the sun on the 
hillside, and knew that there was no path for them forward 
nor back. But he shut out the vision of those pitiful dis- 
