September 17, 1914

Even now I can't realize it: I went into that nursing home on a beautiful peaceful evening in July with nothing more important to worry about than my silly old appendix, and somehow while I was lying low and not worrying the entire world seems to have changed. I came in thinking that it might be exciting to go to Ireland, because there was a chance of a slight "scrap," and I come out and find the whole world in a death-struggle. It is like some hideous nightmare. I suppose war must have come upon most people as a surprise, a bomb-shell, but for me it has come as all part of another existence. My life is now divided into two parts, before I went into the nursing home, and after.

I was operated on quite successfully, though the doctor took two hours to cut out my appendix and I recovered fairly quickly, though I quite made up my mind that I was at the point of death hourly. My father and mother came down to see me and were awfully good, but Elspeth after a few days took a holiday because she was so "run down." I felt miserable without her, but she was quite right to go. I must have been getting on her nerves badly. The first news I got about the war was on a certain morning when I looked out of my window and saw in the place where I expected to see the summer circus a whole troop of yeomanry and their horses. Then my doctor went away to join up.

I had to lie in bed and hear the most amazing stories. First the banks all closed down and everybody thought that there was going to be no money, then people began to fill their cellars with foodstuffs, then day after day came more horrible news of disasters, of Germany breaking through Mons and overrunning Belgium, of the wonderful defence put up by the handful of English troops; gradually it seemed as if the war was already over, that Paris would fall and England be invaded. Horrible stories of atrocities in Belgium I can't understand. All the Germans I've known were dear old Koenig at Radchester, fat old bald-headed tourists at Lynton, sweating horribly as they climbed the hills behind the coach, and three ripping flappers at Oxford years ago. Somehow I had never imagined such a war as this to be possible. I remember now that night at Radchester three years ago when that War Office man came down and implored us to make the O.T.C. as smart as we could because we should be needed in a few years. I had plenty of time lying on my back for three weeks in that nursing home to think it all out. I had heaps of visitors bringing flowers and fruit and papers, but I was restless and miserable none the less.

As soon as I was able I went up to Bath and took Elspeth to Ilfracombe: there I heard Hemmerde calling for recruits—it was just like Amyas Leigh asking for another generation of Devon lads to help to beat the Spaniards. All the same it's different now. All the glamour and glory of war seem to have gone for ever: this is simply horrible, a massacre by machinery. Perhaps my mind is not attuned to it. I am still very weak, but the whole business seems preposterous.

We went down to Portsmouth to see some friends who had just joined up and we saw the troopships, the searchlights at night, the coast defences, the trains full of cheering soldiers, the streets full of raw recruits. We went on to London and there were posters like advertisements for soap imploring every man to join up and save his country. Girls presented white feathers to any one in mufti, people in trains invariably asked each other fiercely why they weren't in khaki. By far the most violent of these interrogators were peaceful-looking old ladies and young, healthy parsons. I went down to Hampton Court to stay with Tony, who, of course, has gone into the Army. All Radchester was in camp at Aldershot when war broke out and the entire school went en bloc to try to enlist. Those who were refused are crying with anger at the thought that they will have to go back to Radchester next term. There was some talk of the schools all being closed down. All the young masters on the staff at Marlton have gone, and every boy of eighteen and over and many a good deal younger. They needn't complain that the Public Schools aren't doing their part. Every single fit man in them joined at once. I wish I hadn't had my appendix out: then I could have gone. Elspeth says I couldn't, because of my incipient madness. I bet I would, though it would have been Hell to have left her. How I should have gloried in this war before I became engaged. All the Radcastrians are greatly "bucked" about it. At last adventure has come to them with arms full.

November 10, 1914

Just when I ought to keep up my diary more accurately than ever I leave it for weeks. It's no good putting in all the news about the war: that is all seared into my soul. These three months have seen the deaths of all the men who seemed to me to matter when I was at Oxford. All the men of my age were killed off at once: they got out at the beginning. From the other side they tell me it's just an endless line of blood and mud, periods of intense boredom relieved by moments of fearful fright. Every one thought in August that it would be all over by Christmas. Kitchener gives it three years. My God! there'd be no England left after three years. I went up to London to lecture on the teaching of English and found the streets all darkened, which makes the town incredibly beautiful and eerie. I suppose the idea is to bring the war home to us more closely.

This term has been altogether strange. We are chastened and quite different. Young boys are now prefects, heads of Houses, captains of games: the Corps has ousted athletics. It seems wrong to be chasing up and down a "Rugger" field while our brothers and dearest friends are being killed within a few hundred miles. We have done an amazing amount of Corps work this term: everybody is as keen as mustard to make himself really fit. Boys are reading their Stonewall Jackson, and Haking, and John Buchan, and everything that they can lay their hands on to inform themselves of what is going on across the Channel and how they shall best occupy their time here in preparation. By a very quaint irony, for the first time in my life I have noticed that boys are becoming really anxious to learn. Somehow intellectual pursuits seem to be worth striving after: there is a perceptible wish in every boy's mind to explore the garner-house of wisdom.

Never have I felt that the schoolmaster's job was so important as I do now. Many of these boys will, please God, not have to fight, but they will all have to take an active part in the reconstruction of England. Every hour of every day we shall have to keep before them the ideals which we mean to see put into practice by the next generation. Last year we were in danger of getting sloppy: we were too rich, we were chasing after every kind of new pleasure, not a thought was given to the myriad problems of capital and labour, of poverty, of housing, of health, of education. We are all trying our best at last to see which of us can do the most for the sake of England: the name didn't mean much to us so long as she was safe; now that she is in deadly peril we are beginning to realize all that she is to us. Our new activity in the Corps is a beginning: we are drilling, digging, scouting, signalling, lecturing, bombing, bridge-building, range-finding, entrenching—learning up tactics and strategy. So far as actual military skill is concerned we are doing our best, but there is an enormous amount of leeway to be made up in other departments of life. For one thing, I believe the school is far more devout than it was. Suffering has sent us back to the Cross. We have weekly Intercession Services for our old boys. These are voluntary, but very few boys absent themselves. Our preachers seem almost inspired. It must be much easier to preach now than it used to be: we are all only too anxious to know what to do: "Here am I, send me" is the cry of every one in chapel. Our religion is a much more vital thing than it ever used to be. We are all working at top speed all the time. I only hope we don't break down as the newspapers have. Every one of the papers except the Daily Telegraph has lost its head not once nor twice since war broke out. It is almost painful to read the leading articles at present. They blame everybody in authority for failure to cope with the present situation. How the German Press must gloat.

In the place of the young men who have left us we have had to employ very old men, who are for the most part extraordinarily genial and take to the work as a trout to water. Not all of them, alas, have been successful. Boys still "rag" a man who is incompetent, and they have little respect for age, but on the whole these old men have fallen into line far better than any one would have dreamt possible.

December 13, 1914

Our first term of war is nearly over. It has been a strange, unreal sort of life. Every day some fresh disaster befalls us in the shape of casualties. Every week some boys come back, healthy, handsome and extraordinarily grown-up in their officers' uniforms: we at school seem to be settling down to play our part. The officers of the O.T.C. have been told to carry on where they are, that the work they are doing is invaluable: so we content ourselves with that, though it seems very little. We have had a naval victory at the Heligoland Bight, and a defeat and a victory off the coast of South America. The Germans advance no more in France, the whole world seems to be preparing to rise in arms on the slightest provocation. Every week Horatio Bottomley and Belloc explain to us that the end is in sight and the Northcliffe Press tells us that we can never win but shall wage an age-long war. We hope the one and fear the other—and carry on.

It is a strange thing, but the beginning of war which I expected would quash all chance of writing has seen the beginning of my success. Blackwood's, the Contemporary and the National Review have all printed articles of mine, and I am writing as much as I can, spurred on by this undreamt-of piece of luck.

Although it is a time of war and full of horrors the term passed very quickly indeed. Elspeth and I are now absolutely united. Her father has gone out to Egypt with a staff appointment, her mother is still in Bath, both her brothers are out in France. All entertainments at Marlton have suddenly ceased. There are no more dinner-parties, no more House suppers, school matches were all "scratched" this term, and the people in the town no longer play "bridge." We are rapidly becoming a soberer people and our efforts are directed to one object only, the winning of the war. Yet the strange thing is that so many things go on just as usual. People seem to have any amount of money, the shops advertise the same old extravagant useless things; dances, theatres, horse-racing, football matches still continue—there is no lack of these things any more than there was during the Boer War.

Perhaps we are learning to "do without" gradually. It must be different in France and Belgium. I shall never forget my first sight of Belgian refugees and wounded soldiers arriving at Marlton station. Somehow we don't, we can't realize the horror of it in this peaceful valley, but the tragic faces of these tortured, homeless women penetrates at one flash into the very heart. All the gay, irresponsible women who last July spent their days on the polo ground now vie with one another in providing homes for the Belgians and hospitals for the wounded. Girls who were accustomed to do nothing more arduous than hunt or take the spaniels for a walk now nurse through the night, scrub floors, act as kitchenmaids, drive motor-vans and generally carry on the work that is left for them to do. So many of them have husbands or brothers fighting that they would go mad with brooding too much if they were not working every hour of every day. There may be a few who are still untouched by the war, but there are certainly none in Marlton. Boys who left at the end of last term have already come back decorated with the Military Cross. Letters reach me from all parts of the globe from old boys of Radchester who are sailing to fight in some region I never heard of before the war. And all the time we try to preserve the spirit that has made England great here at home in Marlton. It used to seem something of a backwater before the war—how much more is it one now: the milkmen and the farm labourers, the shop assistants, and the railway porters who had never been farther afield than Exeter are now in Egypt, Malta, India, France, all over the globe. What a widening of experience, what books will be written when it is all over. For the last year we have thought of nothing but the wonderful adventures of Captain Scott and his fellow-adventurers in their quest for the South Pole. Commander Evans came to Marlton and lectured to us about the heroic death of Captain Oates: we were all swept off our feet with enthusiasm but no one in the hall ever dreamt that he would be called upon to emulate such a deed, and yet now daily, hourly, that feat is being rivalled. So long as there are any men left in this country there is no need to fear that we shall lack for heroes. Boys, who when they were at school were looked upon as feckless funks, have performed valorous exploits, which any one remembering their school days would have regarded as absolutely beyond the bounds of belief.

January 20, 1915

I get heartily sick of the holidays these days because there is so little to do, and I hate to see all my pals training while I am doing nothing at all. Schoolmastering seems so dull, but there is no doubt where one's duty lies.

April 15, 1915

I have now finished a second term at Marlton under war conditions. I find that the war has brought us closer together, masters and boys alike. We have had lectures from wounded soldiers on the campaign in different parts of the globe. The Corps is more flourishing than ever. Our favourite amusement now is the night-attack, which is nearer the real thing than anything else we do. I went down to a depot the other day to get some "tips" and saw some first-rate signalling, the Lewis gun, and some bombing practice.

Poor Elspeth about half-way through the term complained to me one day that she felt too rotten to keep some engagement that she was due for and I fetched the doctor much against her will, and to my horror he told me that she had appendicitis and must be operated on immediately. We took her over to Lewes and put her into a nursing home, and I left her there late one night after a last passionate embrace and was taken over by Leary the next day in his side-car to hear the result of the operation and was told that she had come through it all right. I shall never forget the agony of waiting to hear the verdict. I made Leary motor me at terrific speed half across Sussex to keep my mind from dwelling too insistently on it. Her heart is weak and she nearly went under, but thank God she pulled through in the end, although she was very weak for a long time after. My life alone during her illness I can't dwell upon: it was altogether too horrible. I roamed about the countryside absolutely disconsolate. I have no use for life at all without her. Every day as soon as work was over I "push-biked" the eight miles into Lewes to see her and talk for a little, then cycled home again to my lonely cottage. I was nearer dementia then than I have ever been. I have got to know more of the boys in the school this last term. They are a wonderfully fine lot, particularly O'Dowd and Raynes, who still write weekly essays for me and discuss literary problems.

I tried to act The Younger Generation in my Debating Society, but the idea was quashed by the Censor. I have altered the old system of reading round a table and substituted a much more effective plan. We now read in Big School from the platform standing up, with action and dresses complete. Instead of each individual member having to buy copies of the play I have now bought numbers of copies and formed a library upon which any member of the school may draw just as he likes.

We have had one or two strange temporary masters. One, an elderly scholar, had an eccentric habit of always searching the bottoms of one's trousers for matches: he had once heard of a man being burnt alive that way and was in a continual fright lest it should happen to some one whom he knew. We have got a new Sixth Form tutor, a fellow of Queen's, Oxford, who has become a firm friend of mine. He is, like most of my colleagues, very well off and has furnished himself with a splendid library which he allows me to use. I have done a good deal of writing and much reading: my books are costing me less because I am doing a good deal of reviewing for the London papers. One of the strangest effects of the war up to now has been its result upon the world of papers and books. Paper is very expensive and there is great difficulty in getting MSS. printed and bound, but people are all buying books in great numbers, particularly poetry and fiction.

Owing to my own smaller successes I have received invitations to meet and to stay with some of the leading writers of the day, which needless to say I have accepted, though if I go I shall have to go without Elspeth, for as soon as it was possible we took her by car from the nursing home in Lewes all the way to her home at Bath, where the doctor says she must stay for some months.

I can't face next term without her: I don't know what I shall do and yet I cannot conscientiously expect her to come back to me until she is quite fit to look after the house again. At present she is recovering very slowly and looks dreadfully weak and thin.

May 4, 1915

When the term was over I did go round to the various houses to which I had been invited and met the queerest people. I was nervous and irritable without Elspeth and never stayed more than a night or two in any one house and kept on rushing back to see how Elspeth was getting on.

These Easter holidays have been rather nightmarish because of Elspeth's illness. I could not settle down to anything, and of course we could not go out much because she could not walk. On the other hand, for some reason I was unable to concentrate my attention on writing. Everything was in a state of blur owing to the shock I sustained at her operation. In some degree last term was like the same term two years ago when I was engaged. I tried to hurl myself into my work: I refereed on and coached the junior games, I devised all sorts of schemes to interest my boys in English, I had boys up to tea to remove some of my loneliness, but I was gradually going out of my mind because I had no Elspeth by me to soothe me. And all the time the war has been weighing very heavily upon me. The waste of the flower of this country is frightful. On April 23 young Rupert Brooke died, and we have lost the premier poet of the age before he had had the chance to transmit a quarter of the splendid things that were burning inside him. Somehow I feel his loss more than that of any one I have known.