I
THE MEN AT WORK
The ore, the furnace and the hammer are all that is needed for a sword.Native proverb.
This was a cantonment one had never seen before, and the grey-haired military policeman could give no help.
My experience, he spoke detachedly, is that youll find everything everywhere. Is it any particular corps youre looking for?
Not in the least, I said.
Then youre all right. You cant miss getting something. He pointed generally to the North Camp. Its like floods in a town, isnt it?
He had hit the just word. All known marks in the place were submerged by troops. Parade-grounds to their utmost limits were crowded with them; rises and sky-lines were furred with them, and the length of the roads heaved and rippled like bicycle-chains with blocks of men on the move.
The voice of a sergeant in the torment reserved for sergeants at roll-call boomed across a bunker. He was calling over recruits to a specialist corps.
But Ive called you once! he snapped at a man in leggings.
But Im Clarke Two, was the virtuous reply.
Oh, you are, are you? He pencilled the correction with a scornful mouth, out of one corner of which he added, Sloppy Clarke! Youre all Clarkes or Watsons to-day. You dont know your own names. You dont know what corps youre in. (This was bitterly unjust, for they were squinting up at a biplane.) You dont know anything.
Mm! said the military policeman. The more a man has in his head, the harder it is for him to manage his carcassat first. Im glad I never was a sergeant. Listen to the instructors! Like rooks, aint it?
There was a mile of sergeants and instructors, varied by company officers, all at work on the ready material under their hands. They grunted, barked, yapped, expostulated, and, in rare cases, purred, as the lines broke and formed and wheeled over the vast maidan. When companies numbered off one could hear the tone and accent of every walk in life, and maybe half the counties of England, from the deep-throated Woon of the north to the sharp, half-whistled Devonshire Tu. And as the instructors laboured, so did the men, with a passion to learn as passionately as they were taught.
Presently, in the drift of the foot-traffic down the road, there came another grey-haired man, one foot in a bright slipper, which showed he was an old soldier cherishing a sore toe. He drew alongside and considered these zealous myriads.
Good? said I, deferentially.
Yes, he said. Very goodthen, half to himself: Quite different, though. A pivot-man near us had shifted a little, instead of marking time, on the wheel. His face clouded, his lips moved. Obviously he was cursing his own clumsiness.
Thats what I meant, said the veteran. Innocent! Innocent! Mark you, they aint doin it to be done with it and get off. Theyre doin it becausebecause they want to do it.
Wake up! Wake up there, Isherwood! This was a young subalterns reminder flung at a back which straightened itself. That one human name coming up out of all that maze of impersonal manuvring stuck in the memory like wreckage on the ocean.
An it wasnt ardly even necessary to caution Mister Isherwood, my companion commented. Probly hes bitterly ashamed of imself.
I asked a leading question because the old soldier told me that when his toe was sound, he, too, was a military policeman.
Crime? Crime? said he. They dont know what crime isthat lot dontnone of em! He mourned over them like a benevolent old Satan looking into a busy Eden, and his last word was Innocent!
The car worked her way through miles of menmen route-marching, going to dig or build bridges, or wrestle with stores and transportfour or five miles of men, and every man with eager eyes. There was no musicnot even drums and fifes. I heard nothing but a distant skirl of the pipes. Trust a Scot to get his national weapon as long as there is a chief in the North! Admitting that war is a serious business, specially to the man who is being fought for, and that it may be right to carry a long face and contribute to relief funds which should be laid on the National Debt, it surely could do no harm to cheer the men with a few bands. Half the money that has been spent in treating, for example....
THE NORTH IN BLUE
There was a moor among woods with a pond in a hollow, the centre of a world of tents whose population was North-Country. One heard it from far off.
Yo mun trail t pick an t rifle at t same time. Try again, said the instructor.
An isolated company tried again with set seriousness, and yet again. They were used to the pickwon their living by it, in factand so, favoured it more than the rifle; but miners dont carry picks at the trail by instinct, though they can twiddle their rifles as one twiddles walking-sticks.
They were clad in a blue garb that disguised all contours; yet their shoulders, backs, and loins could not altogether be disguised, and these were excellent. Another company, at physical drill in shirt and trousers, showed what superb material had offered itself to be worked upon, and how much poise and directed strength had been added to that material in the past few months. When the New Army gets all its new uniform, it will gaze at itself like a new Narcissus. But the present kit is indescribable. That is why, English fashion, it has been made honourable by its wearers; and our world in the years to come will look back with reverence as well as affection on those blue slops and that epileptic cap. One farseeing commandant who had special facilities has possessed himself of brass buttons, thousands of em, which he has added to his mens outfit for the moral effect of (a) having something to clean, and (b) of keeping it so. It has paid. The smartest regiment in the Service could not do itself justice in such garments, but I managed to get a view of a battalion, coming in from a walk, at a distance which more or less subdued theeruniform, and they moved with the elastic swing and little quick ripple that means so much. A miner is not supposed to be as good a marcher as a townsman, but when he gets set to time and pace and learns due economy of effort, his developed back and shoulder muscles take him along very handsomely. Another battalion fell in for parade while I watched, again at a distance. They came to hand quietly and collectedly enough, and with only that amount of pressing which is caused by fear of being late. A platoonor whatever they call itwas giving the whole of its attention to its signalling instructors, with the air of men resolved on getting the last flicker of the last cinema-film for their money. Crime in the military sense they do not know any more than their fellow-innocents up the road. It is hopeless to pretend to be other than what one is, because ones soul in this life is as exposed as ones body. It is futile to tell civilian liesthere are no civilians to listenand they have not yet learned to tell Service ones without being detected. It is useless to sulk at any external condition of affairs, because the rest of the world with which a man is concerned is facing those identical conditions. There is neither poverty nor riches, nor any possibility of pride, except in so far as one may do ones task a little better than ones mate.
