SOLDIER

Reginald Bateman
Reginald Bateman

THE WAR

This address, which aroused much criticism in the press, is compiled from a newspaper report and some notes found among Professor Bateman's papers. It is probably incomplete, but is included because of the interest attaching to it.

The address was delivered before the University Y.M.C.A. on Sunday, 25 October 1914, on the eve of the departure of Professor Bateman's battalion. This was in the early days of the war, before the magnitude of the struggle had been generally realized, and there were those who had tried to persuade Professor Bateman that his higher duty lay at home. His address was prompted in part by this circumstance, and was a vindication of his enlisting. It was also prompted by a colleague's address from the same platform contrasting Samuel, who "hewed Agag in pieces," with Christ, Who commanded Peter to "put up the sword"—a plea for the peaceful settlement of personal and national disputes. Professor Bateman had for several years declined to address the University Y.M.C.A., because he had never before felt that he had a message for them.

So, although there is here much of the young man glorying in his strength and rejoicing to run the race, the address was not penned without thought and consideration.

We hear much, perhaps too much, at the present time of the horrors of war; I wish to-day to speak to you of its blessings. Far be it from me to minimize the dark side of war. Only those who have actually experienced warfare can form an adequate idea of the horrors of campaigns and battlefields. But I wish to impress on you to-day the fact that war has compensations, and that it is by no means an unmitigated evil.

The Power Who manifests Himself to us in the phenomena of this Universe has apparently decreed that war should be the supreme test of both the nation and the individual. Biologically, struggle and self-sacrifice by one generation on behalf of the next are the conditions of the perpetuation of a species. A similar law of competition seems to hold for those aggregates of men which we call nations. History teaches that once a nation ceases to struggle or to be prepared to struggle for its existence, once it loses its military spirit and the willingness to fight to the death, if need be, for its national honour, its greatness invariably declines, and its growth ceases.

Of course, competition among nations may be carried on by other means than by war. Commercial rivalry, diplomatic rivalry, artistic rivalry, are all important means of progress, but war is the one supreme, the only entirely adequate test of a nation's spiritual quality.

Readiness for war is a token of national righteousness. In the sense in which I use the words, readiness for war does not mean a national spirit of militarism and aggressiveness, the spirit which has so often proved the downfall of great military powers. It is a readiness which is the result of a clean and vigorous national life during times of peace; a readiness which springs not so much from direct military training as from a high national idea of physical and mental fitness. The ideal soldier is not he who has been drilled into a military machine in times of peace, but he who is physically and mentally fit to become an efficient soldier, if need be, on short notice in time of war.

Self-sacrifice, self-denial, temperance, hardihood, discipline, obedience, order, method, organizing power, intelligence, purity of public life, chastity, industry, resolution are some only of the national and individual attributes which go towards producing the efficiency of modern armaments.

The broad rule which one deduces from a general survey of the history of human progress—a rule to which, no doubt, some exceptions can be found—is that the failure of nations to meet the test of war has always been the result of the decay of national morality, and that success in war has been an indication of national virtue. Right has not, indeed, always been might, but right has always tended to create might.

Rome conquered Greece because her sons were hardier, stronger, and more imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice; Rome herself, centuries later, fell a victim to the inroads of the Goths because of the corruption of her national virtue and the decay of her military spirit through self-indulgence and immorality. The refined sensuality of the Roman could not withstand the rude virtue of the barbarian. "And generally," to quote Harold Wyatt, "history has repeatedly proved that efficiency in war, or for war, is God's test of a nation's soul. By that test it stands, or by that test it falls. This is the ethical content of competition. This is the determining factor of human history. This is the justification of war."

The terrible punishment provided by war for national depravity has been, perhaps, the chief stimulus in the progress of mankind. Behind the horror and havoc of the field of battle, therefore, is working a Power which makes for righteousness, and which has ordained that the nation which, from the righteousness of its cause and its fitness to defend that cause, best deserves the victory, shall win it.

Such is apparently the law of human progress, and we must accept it as we accept other seemingly unpleasant facts of our present existence; as we accept, for example, the fact of death. It is only by death that life is possible; it is only by struggle and self-sacrifice that national progress is possible.

Do not, therefore, be lulled into a sense of false security by the talk of universal peace, or by assertions that the present war must be the last in human history; but determine that, should you have the opportunity, you will do your part to make the nation to which you belong fit for its supreme test, the test of war. If you do not, you are a traitor to the past generations who won by struggle and self-sacrifice the heritage which you now enjoy, and to the future generations, who demand that you shall pass on that heritage, not diminished, but increased.

But take care that you do not mistake a national spirit of greed and aggressiveness for virtue. Remember Kipling's warning that military force should be used only for the defence or enforcement of just rights or for those which you truly and firmly believe to be just.

The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart;
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust
And, guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!

National greed and aggressiveness must, sooner or later, bring their own punishment.

Now let us look at war from the standpoint of the individual. The sacrifice of individual lives is for many men the most prominent fact of war. They look upon a field of battle, and are filled with dismay at the sight of heaped-up carnage and garments rolled in blood, but fail to find there the radiance of high endeavour and the glow of great achievement. Like Carlyle, in his famous reductio ad absurdum of war in the Sartor, they see only the physical side of war, and neglect its ethical and spiritual content. Of course, this is a piece of perversity on Carlyle's part.

What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net-purport and upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge usually some five hundred souls. From these, by certain "Natural Enemies" of the French, there are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men: Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them: she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red; and shipped away, at the public charges, some two-thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot, in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending: till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition: and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word "Fire!" is given: and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe, there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen-out; and instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot. Alas, so it is in Deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands; still as of old, "what devilry soever Kings do, the Greeks must pay the piper!" In that fiction of the English Smollett, it is true, the final Cessation of War is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth; where the two Natural Enemies, in person, take each a Tobacco-pipe, filled with Brimstone; light the same, and smoke in one another's faces, till the weaker gives in: but from such predicted Peace-Era, what blood-filled trenches, and contentious centuries, may still divide us!

But what if these men of Dumdrudge are not blockheads at all, but high-souled, clear-sighted men? What if they do not go to the war because their rulers tell them to, but because they believe in the justice of their cause, and consider it not only a duty but a privilege to lay down their lives, if necessary, to maintain it?

Tennyson gets a nearer view of the truth in Maud, when he represents war as the purifier which purges the corruption of a too-long-continued peace, and which saves nation and individual alike from sloth and selfishness. Peace under a just and beneficent government is surely a blessing of the first magnitude. But those who enjoy it, and surely this applies to us, must never forget at what price that blessing was bought and at what price it must be maintained. They must not grow petty and self-indulgent, and forget that they possess a heritage won for them by the sacrifice of others. Is it not far better that they should feel a thrill of patriotism at the rude touch of war, and die striking a blow for freedom, than that they should live to a dishonoured old age, seeking beggarly gain? Let us have less talk of the horrors of war and more talk of its blessings.

Most of those who speak of "the horrors of war" fail to recognize that it is those horrors which give war its great, its inestimable value. It would, no doubt, be very pleasant if war could be conducted in a polite and gentlemanly way, if it could be arranged that nobody would get killed, and that wounds and bloodshed would be reduced to a minimum. If that were so, we could all play at the game. But where would be our heroes, our hearts of triple steel? Where would be their victories over death and the fear of death, and their leading of captivity captive? We could then, like Falstaff, fill up our armies with "toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins' heads," and nobody would be a jot the worse. But war robbed of its terror would be war without glory, and one of the greatest and grandest of experiences which Destiny allows to man would no longer be possible. To endure gladly the most severe labour and hardship, to grapple with a mortal foe in deadly strife, a strife without mercy and without remorse, to pass through Hell unterrified, to wrest one's life by main force from the very jaws of death, and to do all this, not for pay, but for one's country, this is, perhaps, the very climax of human endeavour.

And what of the many who do not win through, but must leave their bodies upon the field of battle? We may not agree with Horace that such a death is "sweet and becoming," but surely it is sweeter and more becoming than the majority of deaths which men are called on to endure. Who would not rather die in the fullness of strength, with the shout of battle upon his lips, than succumb to the attacks of some disease which degrades the body and unhinges the mind, and pass away at last from a fleshly house that is no longer fit for the soul to inhabit, wringing the hearts of the bystanders with incoherent babblings?

The death roll of war, still far from complete, reaches back into the unfathomable past which lies far beyond the ken of man. The immensity of that death roll is dreadful to contemplate. But a past unstained by the blood of human strife would be more dreadful still. No doubt there would be to-day more people living in the world, but those high virtues which are realized to the full in war and war alone—courage and self-sacrifice—would be dead beyond all hope of resurrection. It was war which gave birth to the ideals of chivalry and honour; it is war which keeps those ideals alive in an age of sordid commercialism. It is the possibility of war, however remotely realized, which makes our young men keep their bodies clean and strong, and their souls free from that lowest form of selfishness, the selfishness of Parolles, which puts life before honour, which says:

"Let me live, sir, in a dungeon, in the stocks, or anywhere, so I may live."

When the more dangerous of lower animals have been tamed or exterminated, when locomotion by land, air, and sea has become safe and easy, when—greatest blessing of all—war has ceased to exist, then surely we shall see the return of the Golden Age. Perhaps so, but it will be a Golden Age enjoyed by a spineless and emasculated race of beings, who have forgotten the meaning of the words courage, honour, and self-sacrifice.

An address given in Saskatoon to a number of returned men and colleagues on the first anniversary of the battle of St. Julien. Professor Bateman had been recalled from France to take command of the Saskatchewan Company of the Western Universities' Battalion.

Twelve months ago, on April 22nd, when day broke upon the battlefields of Flanders, the new Canadian army, which had wallowed all winter in the mud of Salisbury, had yet to prove their mettle as fighting men. Ere the sun set that day, they had already won the title, given them throughout the Empire when the story of the fight was known, of "Glorious Canadians." The reputation won at Ypres and St. Julien was fully maintained at the battles of Festubert and Givenchy.

Although we soldiers of the Second Contingent experienced fighting on a smaller scale than our comrades of the First, we had quite enough to enable us to realize, as one who has not been there never can, a great deal of what the first lot went through. I think it is no exaggeration to say that no soldiers of the Second or succeeding contingents think it necessary to look anywhere but to the First Canadians for their highest example of self-sacrifice and devotion to duty.

I have heard people at home complain that they find it hard to get any information from returned soldiers as to their experience, or to get any real idea of what the fighting is like. I think the reason is that we are afraid of giving people a false impression, and that it is impossible to make people grasp the reality of conditions of warfare which have no parallel in history. Everybody at home expects a tale of glory and heroism, but the days of pomp and circumstance of battle are over, and it is only the ideals for which we are fighting that can dignify the mean and ugly reality of present-day war. Besides, when I look back upon the one or two little affairs out of the common in which I have taken part, my impressions are a curious mixture of distinctness and vagueness, as of a dream or nightmare rather than of a real experience, and such impressions are difficult to put into words.

I was in and out of the trenches for six months as an N.C.O., and was in the front line every time but one, so that as far as the ordinary routine of trench life goes, I am qualified to speak. The shortest phrase I know of which attempts to sum up life in the trenches is "Days of unendurable monotony and moments of indescribable fear." That phrase, as far as it goes, is a good description, but it leaves out two important aspects of trench life, the humorous and the picturesque. It is only a sense of humour that can make the monotony of trench life endurable. Any man who went up to the front line expecting to find the heroic defenders grimly defiant and serious over their task would probably be more shocked than amused to find men busy arguing over the division of a pot of jam while Fritz was generously spraying our line with shrapnel; or to discover that some fellow was more elated over having swiped someone else's brazier than if he had bayonetted a dozen Fritzes; or to discover that the breaking of a rum jar was considered a greater calamity by the whole company than if our trench had been blown to pieces.

I have often sat in my dug-out, just a little way down the communication trench, and listened to a ration party going up to the front line in the dark with their heavy loads, wading through mud, plunging into holes, falling over broken trench mats, and I have heard with great pleasure the flow of language; it was immense, nothing like it is to be heard from any other troops in the world's history.

And then there was the picturesque side. My recollections of the trenches come back to me chiefly as a series of pictures.

I see the velvety blackness of the night, cut by streaks of light as the flares go up continually along the front, as far as the eye can see, then shed their weird radiance over the mysterious region of No Man's Land, while every moving thing beneath their light lies still as death till darkness comes again to hide them from the searching eyes that never cease to scan the space between the trenches. I see the muffled sentries at their posts on the firing step; I hear the irregular crack, crack of rifle fire along the line as they shoot at a flash from the other trench, or at some moving object dimly seen through the darkness; then comes the sharp crackle of rifle fire or the rat-a-tat-tat of the machine-gun as we open upon one of Fritz's working parties. I see the flash and hear the bang of bursting shrapnel, or the distant woosh and cr-r-rump of the high explosive; or there is the dull pop from Fritz's line, and high in the air a tract of light makes its way towards our trench. We hear the familiar whoo-oo-oo-oosh, and we know that one of the dreaded aerial torpedoes is on its way; we wait with horrible suspense for the sickening thud and roar of the explosion, and wonder whether it has got anyone this time, and whether the next is coming our way; or we are roughly awakened from the deep sleep of exhaustion by someone excitedly pulling at our legs and shouting, "Gas!" We crawl quickly out of the dug-out into the darkness to find our comrades "standing to" all along the trench in their weird gas helmets, and presently discover with relief that a nervous listening post has mistaken the mist, which is rolling up from Fritz's trench, for the dreaded chlorine. Or we turn from our posts as we hear the shuffle of the stretcher-bearers along the trench, and we wish some unlucky (or lucky) comrade a safe passage to Blighty. Then there are nights to look back upon around the battered old brazier in the dug-out, when things were quiet, and we smoked a pipe or sang a song, and thought of what we should do when we got that leave that never seemed to come, or the "rest" which had been promised us every time we came out of the trenches for the last three months. And then there was the tramp back to billets through the shell-torn streets of a deserted Flemish village, and the blessed relief of flinging down the pack and rolling up in our blankets for the first straight sleep of many nights.

But best of all to look back upon are the good comrades we found in the trenches, whom we knew we could trust to the death, if need be. However much we appreciate the comfort of home and the kindness of friends here, the deepest thoughts of every returned soldier are now, and will ever be while this war lasts, with the boys they left behind them, "holding the line."

ON THE DEATH OF A COMRADE

Written in England while impatiently waiting to get back to France. Professor Bateman had been recalled from the trenches, where he was sergeant, to become major of the Western Universities' Battalion, and then was forced to wait in England after this unit was broken up, while in France his former battalion was preparing for Vimy. This letter was written shortly after its capture.

April 29th, 1917.

Dear J. V.,

"Letter received and contents noted."

I can understand how you feel about Maunsell's death. Personally, I have long ago given up theorizing about what may or may not be at the back of phenomena. I confine myself to what I can see and know and reason about, and I find that I have quite as much as I can handle even in that narrow sphere. Once one gets into the region of the supernatural, one man's dream or speculation is just as good or as worthless as another's, for neither has any foundation in experience, and experience gives us our only possible basis for the construction of theories about life.

So, though you may allow your thoughts at times to get out of hand and wander about gropingly in a nebulous unknown, you ought not to allow any baseless theories that result to disturb your peace of mind. If you attach any importance to such propositions about the unknown, you can find plenty of comforting ones evolved by greater brains than yours, which you would do better to accept than allow yourself to be worried and made less effective for the business of life by the pessimistic result of your own thinking.

Constant brain work has a tendency to make a man morbid in his speculations. A free, open-air life, practical problems and contact with men who do things rather than theorize about them is a great corrective. No one yet has gone anywhere near solving the riddle of the unknown, and it may fairly be supposed that the human brain is at present incapable of tackling the problem successfully. It may be that the perpetual struggle after a solution may, in ages to come, result in the evolution of a brain which can find an answer to the riddle of life, in the same way as the constant reaching of the giraffe after food resulted in the production of a neck sufficiently long to solve the giraffe's food problem.

Meantime, we must be content to get along with such knowledge as we have, or else accept a supernatural revelation which is bound at the best to be a bit dim and unsatisfactory, because it is communicated to us by means of the same imperfect brain.

Personally, I don't think it matters very much what you believe about the supernatural if you base your actions upon a sane view of what experience has shown to be best. To get and give as much happiness as possible seems to be our plain duty, and if abnormalities on a tremendous scale like this war crop up, it is the duty of every one to get to work and sacrifice, if necessary, his own chance of happiness in order to restore a state of things where happiness is possible for others. (By happiness, I mean contentment, usually temporary, with things as they are.)

Experience has given us ample proof of where happiness is to be found as far as it can be realized in this life, and every one ought to be able to avoid those actions which would seem to bring happiness, but which have been shown by experience to result in the long run in dissatisfaction. Of course, very few are wise enough to accept the experience of others, and most men have to get stung many times over before they learn the lessons which countless billions before them learned in precisely the same way.

Curiously enough, the highest happiness of which humans are capable seems to be found in the sacrifice of self. Maunsell's magnificent devotion to duty and splendid death are of far greater value to us than his continuing to live could have been, and though he could not have fully realized that fact himself, he certainly would not have been happy if he had declined the privilege of giving up his own happiness that general happiness might be secured for the world, thereby paradoxically finding the greatest happiness of all. If he still continues to live, and can look back on earthly experiences, he would probably not desire to change his own fate.

You can see from all this that my desire to get back to the front is, in the main, selfish. I simply cannot be content to stay here handling a job which absorbs scarcely any of my ability or energy, and which could be as well or better done by some one who is not fit to fight. I went away from the front with the full intention of returning there with men whom I had trained to take their part in the scrap. I have been prevented by circumstances from carrying out my scheme, and I shall always regret that I did not consider that those who were actually at the front with me had a greater claim on me than any others. If I had stayed on, I should have got my commission and should have valued it much more than the one I actually did get. I might have been killed, but I was prepared for that, and I think there is no better way a man can die. It is comparatively seldom in the world's history that a man gets the chance to die splendidly. Most deaths are somewhat inglorious endings to not very glorious careers. A war like the present gives a man a chance to cancel at one stroke all the pettiness of his life.

Therefore I think it is up to me to do all I can to get back to France and finish what I began. If I fail to get there, it won't be my fault, and I won't worry about it. If I depended on the powers that be, I should probably be here for the duration of the war, and it is possible that I may be. But I am determined that it is not going to be my fault if I am.

I did not intend, when I sat down, to write you more than a brief note. I think my first sentence shows that. All the rest came of itself, and I hope you won't be bored stiff by reading it.

Best of luck in the "Wall,"[*]

Yours ever,
REG.

If you are ever up against it for cash, or if there is any other way that I can help you, I shall be very sore with you if you don't let me know.

If you want some good light reading to take your mind off Syriac and other ancient noises by which people communicated one with the other, try some of O. Henry's books—The Four Million, Options, Whirligigs (very light reading and amusing), Hodder and Stoughton.

[*] Wall Biblical Scholarship, Dublin University.

LONDON: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND GRIGGS (PRINTERS), LTD.
CHISWICK PRESS, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.