But, up there you saw the whole war…. Infinite miles away, over the sullied land that the enemy forces held; into Germany proper. Presumably you could breathe in Germany proper…. Over your right shoulder you could see a stump of a tooth. The Cloth Hall at Ypres, at an angle of 50° below…. Dark lines behind it…. The German trenches before Wytschaete!…
That was before the great mines had blown Wytschaete to hell.
But — every half-minute by his wrist-watch — white puffs of cotton-wool existed on the dark lines — the German trenches before Wytschaete. Our artillery practice…. Good shooting. Jolly good shooting!
Miles and miles away to the left… beneath the haze of light that, on a clouded day, the sea threw off, a shaft of sunlight fell, and was reflected in a grey blur…. It was the glass roofs of a great airplane shelter!
A great plane, the largest he had then seen, was moving over, behind his back, with four little planes as an escort…. Over the vast slag-heaps by Bethune…. High, purplish-blue heaps, like the steam domes of engines or the breasts of women…. Bluish-purple. More blue than purple…. Like all Franco-Belgian Gobelin tapestry…. And all quiet…. Under the vast pall of quiet cloud!…
There were shells dropping in Poperinghe…. Five miles out, under his nose the shells dropped. White vapour rose and ran away in plumes…. What sort of shells?… There were twenty different kinds of shells….
The Huns were shelling Poperinghe! A senseless cruelty. It was five miles behind the line! Prussian brutality… There were two girls who kept a tea-shop in Poperinghe…. High coloured…. General Plumer had liked them… a fine old general. The shells had killed them both… Any man might have slept with either of them with pleasure and profit… Six thousand of H.M. officers must have thought the same about those high-coloured girls. Good girls!… But the Hun shells got them…. What sort of fate was that?… To be desired by six thousand men and smashed into little gobbets of flesh by Hun shells?
It appeared to be mere Prussianism — the senseless cruelty of the Hun! — to shell Poperinghe. An innocent town with a tea-shop five miles behind Ypres…. Little noiseless plumes of smoke rising under the quiet blanketing of the pale maroon skies, with the haze from the aeroplane shelters, and the great aeroplanes over the Bethune slag- heaps…. What a dreadful name — Bethune….
Probably, however, the Germans had heard that we were massing men in Poperinghe. It was reasonable to shell a town where men were being assembled…. Or we might have been shelling one of their towns with an Army H.Q. in it. So they shelled Poperinghe in the silent grey day….
That was according to the rules of the service…. General Campion, accepting with equanimity what German airplanes did to the hospitals, camps, stables, brothels, theatres, boulevards, chocolate stalls, and hotels of his town would have been vastly outraged if Hun planes had dropped bombs on his private lodgings…. The rules of war!… You spare, mutually, each other’s headquarters and blow to pieces girls that are desired by six thousand men apiece…
That had been nineteen months before!… Now, having lost so much emotion, he saw the embattled world as a map…. An embossed map of greenish
He exclaimed to himself: “By heavens! Is this epilepsy?” He prayed: “Blessed saints, get me spared that!” He exclaimed: “No, it isn’t!… I’ve complete control of my mind. My uppermost mind. He said to the general:
“I can’t divorce, sir. I’ve no grounds.”
The general said:
“Don’t lie. You know what Thurston knows. Do you mean that you have been guilty of contributory misconduct…. Whatever it is? And can’t divorce! I don’t believe it.”
Tietjens said to himself:
“
White Ruthenians are miserable peoples to the south of Lithuania. You don’t know whether they incline to the Germans or to the Poles. The Germans don’t even know…. The Germans were beginning to take their people out of the line where we were weak; they were going to give them proper infantry training. That gave him, Tietjens, a chance. They would not come over strong for at least two months. It meant, though, a great offensive in the spring. Those fellows had sense. In the poor, beastly trenches the Tommies knew nothing but how to chuck bombs. Both sides did that. But the Germans were going to cure it! Stood chucking bombs at each other from forty yards. The rifle was obsolete! Ha! ha! Obsolete!… The civilian psychology!
The general said:
“No I don’t believe it. I know you did not keep any girl in any tobacco-shop. I remember every word you said at Rye in 1912. I wasn’t sure then. I am now. You tried to let me think it. You had shut up your house because of your wife’s misbehaviour. You let me believe you had been sold up. You weren’t sold up at all.”
…
“Love of truth!” the general said. “Doesn’t that include a hatred for white lies? No; I suppose it doesn’t, or your servants could not say you were not at home….”
… Pathetic! Tietjens said to himself. Naturally the civilian population wanted soldiers to be made to look like fools, and to be done in. They wanted the war won by men who would at the end be either humiliated or dead. Or both. Except, naturally, their own cousins or fiancees’ relatives. That was what it came to. That was what it meant when important gentlemen said that they had rather the war were lost than that cavalry should gain any distinction in it!… But it was partly the simple, pathetic illusion of the day that great things could only be done by new inventions. You extinguished the Horse, invented something very simple and became God! That is the real pathetic fallacy. You fill a flower-pot with gunpowder and chuck it in the other fellow’s face, and heigh presto! the war is won.
The general was using the words:
“Head master!” It brought Tietjens completely back.
He said collectedly:
“Really, sir, why this strafe of yours is so terribly long is that it embraces the whole of life.”
The general said:
“You’re not going to drag a red herring across the trail…. I say you regarded me as a head master in 1912. Now I am your commanding officer — which is the same thing. You must not peach to me. That’s what you call the Arnold of Rugby touch…. But who was it said:
Tietjens said:
“I don’t remember, sir.”
The general said:
“What was the secret grief your mother had? In 1912? She died of it. She wrote to me just before her death and said she had great troubles. And begged me to look after you, very specially! Why did she do that?” He paused and meditated. He asked: “How do you define Anglican sainthood? The other fellows have canonisations, all shipshape like Sandhurst examinations. But us Anglicans… I’ve heard fifty persons say your mother was a saint. She was. But why?”
Tietjens said:
“It’s the quality of harmony, sir. The quality of being in harmony with your own soul. God having given you your own soul you are then in harmony with Heaven.”
The general said:
“Ah, that’s beyond me…. I suppose you will refuse any money I leave you in my will?”
Tietjens said:
“Why, no, sir.”
The general said:
