One Mans Initiation: 1917 | Page 2

greyness he looks
back on the sharp hatreds and wringing desires of his life. Now a leaf
seems to have been turned and a new white page spread before him,
clean and unwritten on. At last things have come to pass.
And very faintly, like music heard across the water in the evening,
blurred into strange harmonies, his old watchwords echo a little in his
mind. Like the red flame of the sunset setting fire to opal sea and sky,
the old exaltation, the old flame that would consume to ashes all the
lies in the world, the trumpet-blast under which the walls of Jericho
would fall down, stirs and broods in the womb of his grey lassitude.
The bow rises and falls gently in rhythm with the surging sing-song of
the broken water, as the steamer ploughs through the long swell of the
Gulf Stream, eastward.
"See that guy, the feller with the straw hat; he lost five hundred dollars
at craps last night."
"Some stakes."
It is almost dark. Sea and sky are glowing claret colour, darkened to a
cold bluish-green to westward. In a corner of the deck a number of men
are crowded in a circle, while one shakes the dice in his hand with a
strange nervous quiver that ends in a snap of the fingers as the white

dice roll on the deck.
"Seven up." From the smoking-room comes a sound of singing and
glasses banged on tables.
"Oh, we're bound for the Hamburg show,
To see the elephant and the wild kangaroo,
An' we'll all stick together
In fair or foul weather,
For we're going to see the damn show through!"
On the settee a sallow young man is shaking the ice in a
whisky-and-soda into a nervous tinkle as he talks: "There's nothing
they can do against this new gas.... It just corrodes the lungs as if they
were rotten in a dead body. In the hospitals they just stand the poor
devils up against a wall and let them die. They say their skin turns
green and that it takes from five to seven days to die--five to seven days
of slow choking."
"Oh, but I think it's so splendid of you"--she bared all her teeth, white
and regular as those in a dentist's show-case, in a smile as she
spoke--"to come over this way to help France."
"Perhaps it's only curiosity," muttered Martin.
"Oh no.... You're too modest.... What I mean is that it's so splendid to
have understood the issues.... That's how I feel. I just told dad I'd have
to come and do my bit, as the English say."
"What are you going to do?"
"Something in Paris. I don't know just what, but I'll certainly make
myself useful somehow." She beamed at him provocatively. "Oh, if
only I was a man, I'd have shouldered my gun the first day; indeed I
would."

"But the issues were hardly... defined then," ventured Martin.
"They didn't need to be. I hate those brutes. I've always hated the
Germans, their language, their country, everything about them. And
now that they've done such frightful things..."
"I wonder if it's all true..." "True! Oh, of course it's all true; and lots
more that it hasn't been possible to print, that people have been
ashamed to tell."
"They've gone pretty far," said Martin, laughing.
"If there are any left alive after the war they ought to be chloroformed....
And really I don't think it's patriotic or humane to take the atrocities so
lightly.... But really, you must excuse me if you think me rude; I do get
so excited and wrought up when I think of those frightful things.... I get
quite beside myself; I'm sure you do too, in your heart.... Any
red-blooded person would."
"Only I doubt..."
"But you're just playing into their hands if you do that.... Oh, dear, I'm
quite beside myself, just thinking of it." She raised a small gloved hand
to her pink cheek in a gesture of horror, and settled herself comfortably
in her deck chair. "Really, I oughtn't to talk about it. I lose all
self-control when I do. I hate them so it makes me quite ill.... The curs!
The Huns! Let me tell you just one story.... I know it'll make your
blood boil. It's absolutely authentic, too. I heard it before I left New
York from a girl who's really the best friend I have on earth. She got it
from a friend of hers who had got it directly from a little Belgian girl,
poor little thing, who was in the convent at the time.... Oh, I don't see
why they ever take any prisoners; I'd kill them all like mad dogs."
"What's the story?"
"Oh, I can't tell it. It upsets me too