THE GLORIES OF WAR

By A. A. MILNE [The Italian Cabinet,- on Tuesday, decided to institute Military education for children from the age of eight, with a view to " promoting eagerness for the military life by providing frequent contacts with the armed forces, and thereby recalling past glories and warlike traditions."] WE have to face the fact that the war-convention has built up for itself a tradition of sentiment behind which, not only can it repel attack, but fly the flag which makes attack seem almost an outrage. Some will say that this sentimental view of battle may have survived the Boer War, but that it definitely perished in 1914. We all know that war has ceased to be an affair of flashing swords and charging cavalry. We know, yes ; but we seem to be unable to adapt our minds to the knowledge.

We know, for instance, that, of the casualties of the last war, not all were killed on the battlefield ; that hundreds of thousands died painfully of wounds—in bed ; that hundreds of thousands died slowly of gas- poisoning or disease—in bed. Yet the sentimentalist, knowing this, still visualizes death in war as something which comes cleanly and swiftly and mercifully, leaving its victim no more time for awareness than is necessary for a last message to his mother. He can still say, in apology for war, that, since death conies to all, at least it is better to be killed on the battlefield than to die lingeringly in bed.

We know, many of us from personal experience, just what the last war was like. Yet, moved by some head- line from Geneva, the meekest little husband will brush the egg off his moustache, and talk of " the tiger and the ape " in man, and of man's fierce need to express this lighting spirit ; knowing, if he could but assimilate his memories, that the last war would have failed to satisfy the most inexigent tiger, or the simplest-minded ape just up from the country, and that only its abundant opportunities for lice-hunting would have brought content even to the smaller monkeys.

And when the sentimentalist is not thinking of war in terms of " Horatius Keeping the Bridge " or " Wilson's Last Stand " he is thinking of it in terms of his regi- mental tie. War may be hell, but its aftermath is one long and glorious Old Boys Dinner. The -friendships it makes ! The memories it gives ! The wonderful way in which it brings the classes together ! A million women may be anguished, a million children raped, starved or blown to pieces . • . .. but what matter if ex-Captain 'Wilbraham and ex-Corporal Pennycuick A volume by Mr. Milne entitled Peace With Honour, in which this article is included, will shortly be published by Messrs. Methuen. " can greet each other in the Strand ten years later : " Corporal Pennycuick, by all that's holy ! "—" Why, lumme, if it isn't the Captain ! "

Neither in its origins nor in its conduct is war heroic. Splendidly heroic deeds are done in war, but not by those. responsible for its conduct, and not exclusively and inevitably by the dead. Of the ten million men who were killed in the last war, more than nine million had to fight whether they wanted to or not, and of these nine million some eight million did nothing heroic what- ever before they were killed. They are no more " immortal " than a linen-draper who is run over by a lorry ; their deaths were no more " pleasant " and " fitting " than the death of a stockbroker in his bath.

But of course one can't just say to a million mothers : " I want your sons," and then six months later : " Sorry, they're all dead." If war is to be made tolerable, the romantic tradition must be handed on. " Madam, I took away your son, but I give you back the memory of a hero. Each year we will celebrate together his immortal passing. Duke et decorum est pro patria mori."

There was a quiet boy in our reserve battalion, fresh from school ; the younger of two sons. We went out to France together to join the same service battalion of the regiment, and on the way over I got to know him a little more closely than was possible before. His elder brother had been killed a few months earlier, and he, as' the only remaining child, was rather pathetically dear to his father and mother. Indeed (and you may laugh or cry as you will), they had bought for him an under-garment of chain-mail, such as had been worn in the Middle Ages to guard against unfriendly daggers, and was now sold to over-loving mothers as likely to turn a bayonet-thrust or keep off a stray fragment of shell ; as, I suppose, it might have done. He was much embarrassed by this parting gift, 'and though, true to his promise, lie was taking it to France with him, he did not know whether he ought to wear it. I suppose that, being fresh from school, he felt it to be " un- sporting " ; something not quite done ; perhaps, even, a little cowardly. His young mind was torn between his promise to his mother and his hatred of the unusual. He asked my advice : charmingly, ingenuously, patheti- cally. I told him to wear it ; and to tell his mother that he was wearing it ; and to tell her how safe it.made lihri feel, and how certain of coming back to her. I do not know whether he .took my advice. There was other, and perhaps better, counsel available when we got to our new battalion. Anyway it didn't matter ; fiar on the evening when we first came within reach of the battle-zone, just as he was settling down to his tea, a cramp came over and blew him to pieces.. .

Duke et decorum est pro patria mori. • But just why it was a pleasant death and a fitting death I still do not understand. Nor, it may be, did his father and mother ; even though assured by the Colonel that their son had died as gallantly as he had lived, ,an English gentleman.

It is difficult to work passionately for peace if, at the back of your mind, you feel that war is a gallant exercise, worthy to be sung by poets, which carries with it nothing for tears but an heroic death upon the battlefield. Ruskin, whose military experience must have included several drawing-room renderings of The Charge of the Light Brigade, is quoted proudly by an apologist for -war as having said that " all the greatest qualities of man come out in armed conflict." One might be excused for thinking so after listening to that stirring ballad :-

"Forward the Light Brigade ! Was there a man dismayed T Not tho' the soldier knew Someone had blundered : Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die : Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred."

Put like this, even the blundering (which comes out, so monotonously, in armed conflict) seems to earn its place among " the greatest qualities of man," for, if not heroic in itself, it is at least the cause of heroism in others. " Theirs not to reason why "—how finely Homo Sapiens exhibits his quality.

And yet . . .

If in the last four years 10,000 Titanics ' in succession had struck icebergs and gone to the bottom, each with a loss of a thousand lives, would any moderately sane person, in excuse for doing nothing but build more Titanics ' and crash into more icebergs, utter the complacent truth that all the greatest qualities of man come out in shipwreck ?

And has the fact that the greatest qualities of man undoubtedly came out in the Great Plague ever been advanced as an apology for bad sanitation ? • And, looking on the bright side of earthquakes, can we not say that all the greatest qualities of man conic out in earthquakes ?

But most nobly, most gloriously, with a splendour which almost dazzles the sight, the greatest qualities or man have shone forth under religious persecution. Hail, then, rack ! hail, thumbscrew ! Bring torches to the faggots, and let the brave fires of Smithfield burn merrily again. Duke et decorum est pro Christ° ?nori A hundred years ago a clergyman of the Church of England had the surprising courage to write : " The greatest curse which can be entailed upon mankind is a state of war. All the atrocious crimes committed in years of peace—all that is spent in peace by the secret corruptions or by the thoughtless extrava- gances of nations—are mere trifles compared with the gigantic evils which stalk over the world in a state of war. God is forgotten in war—every principle of Christian charity trampled upon."

But that was a hundred years ago ; and the writer, being Sydney Smith, had a considerable reputation as a humorist.