WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT.

No doubt our military dons believed that after drill we swotted Haking, Needham, Infantry Training, and Stonewall Jackson, not forgetting Notes from the Front, and all the pamphlets on soldiers’ bunions, number nine pills, &c. We certainly did swot—when they were looking or moving around. But a cadet’s day is a strenuous day. From 6 A.M. to 4 P.M. running, drilling, lectures, and physical jerks feed up the best of men, and we were glad to leave shop and gather together round the fire. There we unbared our souls, and made no bones about it. Army life is an open life, a much manlier life than even the public school. There’s no beastly fagging, no ‘bloods,’ but a universal hate of the prig and the prude. War is a wonderful leveller. And at this school there was a regular mix up of breeds and classes.

These men were all tried men. They had fought the Boche. Some had the M.M. or the D.C.M. There were butchers and bakers, jockeys, bookies, honours men, and backwoods adventurers. They were the cream of courage, but—excepting Billy Greens—not the soul of the Church. Fighting-men are really primitive. They have seen life—and tasted it. Women and wine had passed their way. For all that, they were not sickly neurotics, revelling in literary slime. They could tell a yarn, of course, but that was no evidence of decadence or softness. Men who can beat the Boche are not soft-bottomed sultans. They were hard as flint, yet as gentle as babes.

In my own hut there were many characters. Ginger Thomson, for example—the queer beggar who wouldn’t wash. But he had the M.M., as well as the French Military Medal, and a brilliant record at Oxford. He entertained us when he dissected our professors, and it was good to hear him cross swords with Billy Greens, the ex-parson. Greens hadn’t the chest of a hen, but he was the Church militant. He was a plucky little devil, and if any man interfered with his evening devotions, Greens would get up and fight. Nobby Clarke was a howling Radical lawyer, inclined to argue the point; while Tosher Johnson was a Canadian cow-puncher. There were others, not forgetting Beefy Jones, the lustiest beggar who ever carried a gun. So, when gathered round, we were interesting. One night we discussed religion.

‘Men can’t be intellectual and godly, old chap,’ declared Ginger. ‘If you want us all to sing psalms and chant “Holy, Holy,” you’ll have to close the schools and breed us like heifers and hogs. To be a Rationalist, one need not be a morality-wrecker. Many unbelievers are clean—cleaner than those who attend communion on Sunday and break all the Commandments on Monday. Clean up the Church, and I’ll be a parson.’

‘How can we clean it up, when you’re destroying any little good we can do?’ exclaimed Billy Greens. ‘We’re not supermen—we’re human. We can’t perform miracles; and I’ll tell you this, old chap, religion is a bulwark for the poor, the sick, and the blind. Destroy the Church and you’ll destroy the last shreds of public decency and restraint. Your doctrine will plunge us into the moral laxity of the Huns. We’re fighting for God in this war, and that’s why I’m in. I loathe the whole armour, but I won’t throw it off till we rid the world of this canker and curse. This is a holy war.’

‘Well, Billy, I’m giving you a hand, although my views are not your views. Personally, if all the padres were good fellows like you, I would cut out my doubting and inquiring brain, and become a sidesman in your parish church. Religion is all right; it’s the average parson who is all wrong. Some are the fag-ends of humanity; others are ordained Don Juans; many are mercenary adventurers; and only a few are like you—real good men, who believe in what they preach. Hang it all, Billy! half your parsons are not men; they’re women in breeks. You’re about the only man I’ve seen fit to be Archbishop of Canterbury. When I’m Premier, you’ll get the job.’

‘Hear, hear!’ echoed the boys, for Billy Greens was a popular chap.

‘Your flattery’s well meant, Ginger, but I’ve no need of it. I can carry my own bat. You’re not morally bad. Indeed, you’re on a higher plane than many. But, for all that, your intellect makes you dangerous. And it’s up to me to keep you in order. In this hut I’m the Church militant, and if you convert any of these boys to your doubting Rationalist creed, I’ll take it out of your skin.’

‘By Gad, Billy! I do like your pluck. You’re a white man, if you are a parson. I’ll be a real good boy,’ murmured Ginger, who in his heart had a swelling love for the plucky little padre.

‘I’ll vote you in as a bishop too, when I get into Parliament,’ interjected Nobby Clarke.

‘Thanks, Nobby; but you’re a rotten Radical. I’ve no use for your Mumbo-Jumbo trickery and Manchester morality. Your crowd is a mixed bunch of twisters and prudes. You sing the Auld Hundred on Sunday, and pull down the Established Church on Monday.’

‘Good old Billy!’ shouted Ginger.

‘My dear old Pieface, your Church won’t be any good till you get Disestablishment. As long as padres have got security of tenure, they won’t work. They regard a living as an investment. All you can get them to do is to play bowls, read Elinor Glyn, and drink whisky with the squires. They’re the enemies of freedom, Free Trade’——

‘And Free Beer,’ piped Beefy.

‘Yes, they are political mandarins who want to keep the Old Country in chains. The Liberal Party will save all you High Brows from revolution and anarchy. Yet you won’t thank us. You gobble the Morning Post, chew the Spectator, and lick the feet of Arthur Balfour. You Tories are a damned lot of nose-wipers and job-seekers. You haven’t the stomach of a fly.’

‘What about Haldane?’ roared Beefy, who got his politics from the Daily Mail.

‘Well, what about him?’

‘The Daily Mail says his soul is in Germany.’

‘If you read the Daily News you would find that it was his Expeditionary Force which landed in France in 1914, and his Territorial Force which warded off invasion. All your Tory Government did when in power was to change the design of Tommy’s shirt-tail and hand out caps made in Germany. You’re great fellows for political swank and eye-wash, but you haven’t the brains of a hen. And even in your Tory Coalition Government you’ve got to get Lloyd George to pull you through.’

‘Nobby!’ cried Ginger.

‘What?’

‘I’m fighting your constituency at the next election. You’re a pest, a peril, and a blighter. And if the Boche doesn’t kill you, I’ll smite you dead on the platform as soon as you whisper Free Trade. Free Trade will ruin the Empire. We’re going to have Protection, even if I’ve got to lay you out on a shutter of the Daily News. And I’ll bribe the hooligans to smash up the printing-machines of the Manchester Guardian. You Radicals have got to be destroyed.’

‘Gentlemen,’ said Nobby, striking an oratorical pose, ‘look at this unwashed pro-consul from Oxford. He’s really afraid of Advanced Liberals passing a Utopian measure that every citizen must be washed. And he, the product of culture, the flower of chivalry, the superman, would bribe the toughs to smash up the Manchester Guardian! Oh Ginger, thy name is Autocracy!’

‘Yours is Democracy, and it’s a pretty rotten creed. You’re rushing us into a Republic, with a President in overalls, and Cabinet Ministers who drop their h’s, and snore when they’re sucking their soup. You won’t be happy till you see field-marshals as bus-conductors and admirals as A.B.’s. You’ll cut off the Colonies and let us fizzle out as the inglorious scrap-heap of a once glorious old Empire. Nobby, you’re a politician and a public fraud.’

‘Is he?’ said Tosher Johnson, the Canadian.

We all looked up with a start. Tosher was a dark horse.

‘Yes,’ Ginger retorted with emphasis.

‘Well, I guess Nobby’s Free Trade is all bosh, but he’s a man of push and go. You’re too durned slow for a funeral over here. Your hoofs are sticking in the feudal mud. An earthquake’s the only thing to stop your browsing on Homer and chewing the rag about “form.” This is the Dollar Age. Make good or go under. You wowsers from Oxford and Cambridge want your blinkers taken off. The classics cut no ice in this age. Homer, Socrates, and Plato won’t sever the ham-strings of the Hun. When you were pottering around on Shakespeare, Tennyson, golf, tennis, and “Rugger,” the Hun was dumping his goods in Canada and every bush town in the Empire. It makes me sick to hear all this gaw-damned talk in your papers. You’re a fine people, but you only crawl. You won’t run. If you don’t get a spark under your old machinery, this old scheme will peter out like Spain and Rome.’

‘Rotten materialism,’ shouted Ginger. ‘Your philosophy is “guessing,” your soul is “calculating,” and you’re clean gone on “results.” You’ve been taught no history. Old things you don’t know or understand. And when you land in the Old Country, you want to bring your commercial morality into the only decent Government in the world. You’re all jolly good fellows. Fine soldiers! Good citizens! But you’re dollar-mad, and have no bottom in your politics or finance. Smuts is a Colonial, but he doesn’t talk like you.’

‘He was at Cambridge. Good old Cambridge!’ shouted Beefy.

‘Yes,’ answered Ginger. ‘Smuts is about the only man you’ve produced at Cambridge. He refused to play the giddy goat, and put his nose down on the classics, logic, history, and law. That’s what you want, Johnson.’

‘Not for me, old chicken. Homer never built the C.P.R., Shakespeare ain’t a bit of use on a Calgary beef-ranch, and Darwin’s theory won’t milk a Holstein or a Jersey. A clear head, a strong back, and a good riding-leg cut ice in these times. Business is business. And dollars keep up men and munitions. You ain’t wise, Ginger.’

‘Well, boys,’ said I, butting in, ‘we’ve discussed everything from bishops to Free Trade and the classics, but we are getting muddled and fogged. This fellow Ginger from Oxford is paralysing our repartee and logic, and old Tosher wants to make the Old Land into a dollar-factory. It seems to me that the main issue raised by this howling Radical, Nobby Clarke, is whether we shall vote for Bolsheviks or Imperialists. I don’t quite agree with high-browed Ginger, nor do I support all the materialism of Tosher. But the future is clearly a titanic contest between Republicanism and Imperialism. I move we put it to the vote.’

‘Certainly,’ shouted Ginger.

Result:

‘Nobby!’ shouted Tosher, after the vote.

‘What?’

‘You’re a gaw-damned Tory, after all.’

‘No—I’m a lawyer.’

Lights out!