It's easier for Christ to
go to Calvary than for an on-looker to lose a night's sleep in the
garden. When the world went well with us before the war, we were
doubters. Nearly all the fiction of the past fifteen years is a proof
of that--it records our fear of failure, sex, old age and particularly
of a God who refuses to explain Himself. Now, when we have thrust the
world, affections, life itself behind us and gaze hourly into the eyes
of Death, belief comes as simply and clearly as it did when we were
children. Curious and extraordinary! The burden of our fears has
slipped from our shoulders in our attempt to do something for others;
the unbelievable and long coveted miracle has happened--at last to
every soul who has grasped his chance of heroism quick-coming death
has become a fifth-rate calamity.
In saying this I do not mean to glorify war; war can never be anything
but beastly and damnable. It dates back to the jungle. But there are
two kinds of war. There's the kind that a highwayman wages, when he
pounces from the bushes and assaults a defenceless woman; there's the
kind you wage when you go to her rescue. The highwayman can't expect
to come out of the fight with a loftier morality--you can. Our chaps
never wanted to fight. They hate fighting; it's that hatred of the
thing they are compelled to do that makes them so terrible. The last
thought to enter their heads four years ago was that to-day they would
be in khaki. They had never been trained to the use of arms; a good
many of them conceived of themselves as cowards.
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