Some of
them were travelling with their wives and children. What struck me as
wholly unreasonable was that these professional soldiers and their
families were the least disturbed people on board. I used to watch
them as one might watch condemned prisoners in their cells. Their
apparent indifference was unintelligible to me. They lived their
daily present, contented and unruffled, just as if it were going to be
their present always. I accused them of being lacking in imagination.
I saw them lying dead on battlefields. I saw them dragging on into old
age, with the spine of life broken, mutilated and mauled. I saw them
in desperately tight corners, fighting in ruined villages with sword
and bayonet. But they joked, laughed, played with their kiddies and
seemed to have no realisation of the horrors to which they were
going. There was a world-famous aviator, who had gone back on his
marriage promise that he would abandon his aerial adventures. He was
hurrying to join the French Flying Corps. He and his young wife used
to play deck-tennis every morning as lightheartedly as if they were
travelling to Europe for a lark. In my many accusations of these men's
indifference I never accused them of courage. Courage, as I had
thought of it up to that time, was a grim affair of teeth set, sad
eyes and clenched hands--the kind of "My head is bloody but unbowed"
determination described in Henley's poem.
When we had arrived safe in port we were held up for some time.
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