Out To Win | Page 4

his
example. One is an ex-champion sculler of Oxford; even in those days
he was blind as a bat. His subsequent performance is consistent with
his record; we always knew that he had guts. At the start of the war, he
tried to enlist and was turned down on the score of eyesight. He tried
four times with no better result. The fifth time he presented himself he
was fool-proof; he had learnt the eyesight tests by heart. He went out a
year ago as a "one pip artist"--a second lieutenant. Within ten months
he had become a captain and was acting lieutenant-colonel of his
battalion, all the other officers having been killed or wounded. At
Cambrai he did such gallant work that he was personally congratulated
by the general of his division. These American officers had heard such
stories; they regarded England with a kind of worship. As men who
hoped to be brave but were untested, they found something mystic and
well-nigh incredible in such utter courage. The consumptive racing
across the Atlantic that he might do something for England before
death took him, made this spirit real to them.
We travelled to London as a party and there for a time we held together.
The night before several set out for France, we had a farewell gathering.

The consumptive, who had just obtained his commission, was in
particularly high feather; he brought with him a friend, a civilian
official in the Foreign Office. Please picture the group: all men who
had come from distant parts of the world to do one job; men in the
army, navy, and flying service; every one in uniform except the
stranger.
Talk developed along the line of our absolute certainty as to complete
and final victory. The civilian stranger commenced to raise his voice in
dissent. We disputed his statements. He then set to work to run through
the entire argument of pessimism: America was too far away to be
effective; Russia was collapsing; France was exhausted; England had
reached the zenith of her endeavour; Italy was not united in purpose.
On every front he saw a black cloud rising and took a dyspeptic's
delight in describing it as a little blacker than he saw it. There was an
apostolic zeal about the man's dreary earnestness. He spoke with that
air of authority which is not uncommon with civilian Government
officials. The Americans stared rather than listened; this was not the
mystic and utter courage which they had expected to find well-nigh
incredible. Their own passion far out-topped it.
The argument reached a sudden climax. There were wounded officers
present. One of them said, "You wouldn't speak that way if you had the
foggiest conception of the kind of chaps we have in the trenches."
"It makes no difference what kind they are," the pessimist replied
intolerantly. "I'm asking you to face facts. Because you've succeeded in
an attack, you soldiers seem to think that the war is ended. You base
your arguments all the time on your little local knowledge of your own
particular front."
The discussion ceased abruptly. Every one sprang up. Voices strove
together in advising this "facer of facts" to get into khaki and to go to
where he could obtain precisely the same kind of little local
knowledge--perhaps, a few wounds as well. His presence was
dishonourable--contaminating. We filed out and left him sitting
humped in a chair, looking puzzled and pathetic, murmuring, "But I
thought I was among friends."
My last clear-cut recollection is of a chubby young American Naval
Airman standing over him, with clenched fists, passionately instructing
him in the spiritual geography of America. That's one type of fool; the

type who specialises in catastrophe; the type who in eternally facing up
to facts, takes no account of that magic quality, courage, which can
make one man more terrible than an army; the type who is so
profoundly well-informed, about externals, that he ignores the
mightiness of soul that can remould externals to spiritual purposes.
Were I a German, the spectacle of that solitary consumptive leaving the
climate which meant life to him and hastening home to give just six
months of service to his country, would be more menacing than the loss
of an entire corps frontage.
And there's the type who can't forget; he suffers from a fundamental
lack of generosity. The Englishman of this type can't refrain from
quoting such phrases as, "Too proud to fight," whenever opportunity
offers. His American counterpart insists that he is not fighting for Great
Britain, but for the French. He makes himself offensive by silly talk
about sister republics, implying that all other forms of Government are
essentially tyrannic. He never loses an opportunity to mention
Lafayette, assuming that one French man is worth ten Britishers.