In London as I saw the work-a-day, unconscious nobility of the maimed
and wounded, the words, "I have overcome the world," took an added
depth. All these men have an "I-have-overcome-the-world" look in their
faces. It's comparatively easy for a soldier with traditions and
ideals at his back to face death calmly; to be calm in the face of
life, as these chaps are, takes a graver courage.
What has happened to change them? These disabilities, had they
happened before the war, would have crushed and embittered them. They
would have been woes utterly and inconsolably unbearable.
Intrinsically their physical disablements spell the same loss to-day
that they would have in 1912. The attitude of mind in which they are
accepted alone makes them seem less. This attitude of mind or
greatness of soul--whatever you like to call it--was learnt in the
trenches where everything outward is polluted and damnable. Their
experience at the Front has given them what in the Army language is
known as "guts." "Guts" or courage is an attitude of mind towards
calamity--an attitude of mind which makes the honourable accomplishing
of duty more permanently satisfying than the preservation of self. But
how did this vision come to these men? How did they rid themselves of
their civilian flabbiness and acquire it? These questions are best
answered autobiographically. Here briefly, is the story of the growth
of the vision within myself.
In August, 1914, three days after war had been declared, I sailed from
Quebec for England on the first ship that put out from Canada.
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