CONDUCT IN WAR

Evening Star, Issue 20511, 16 June 1930, Page 7

CONDUCT IN WAR

DEFENCE OF THE SOLDIER WROKG PERSPECTIVE GIVEN A vigorous protest against the impression conveyed iu recent books regarding the conduct of British soldiers iu the Great War is made by Sir Philip Qibbs, war correspondent- on the western front, in an article in the ‘ Sunday times.’ Particular reference is made by Sir Philip to Brigadier-general F. P Crozier’s recently-published’ book ‘A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land.’ Tlirouguout tnc war I never failed to marvel at tne decency, the good nature, the self-discipline, the real nobility of the battalion officers and men from first to last in conditions of life when it was hard to bo decent and undemoralised, says Sir Philip. The outstanding thing is that men who were called upon to abandon the civilised ways in which tney had been brought up for this life in trenches and dugouts should have retained the manners and instincts of their old code, as most of them did. it is not marvellous that some o£ them became degraded and debased and brutalised. It is marvellous that in tho mass they utterly refused to yield to those influences and were untouched by that “blood lust” which General Crozier emphasises as the chief quality of the good soldier. FORGETTING THE UNPLEASANTNESS. Looking at the hazard of death from widen their chance ol escape was a disabling wound, knowing tho nerve strain or holding a forward position under heavy shelling, and the endless fatigue, discomfort, and beastliness of a spell in the trenches in foul weather or time of attack; remembering how these masses of young men were cut off for months together Irom tho kind of life they had known and liked—shops, ligated streets, women foik, home lite, personal liberty —it is not extraordinary that many of them should have gone back to billets behind the lines with a yearning for any kind of drink or dope or counterfeit, ol love which might make them lorget the unpleasant side of war. The extraordinary thing is that cities like Amiens and Bailleul were not crowded with drunken soldiers, and that month after month and year after > ear their streets were as orderly as tho Strand in peace time, with Tommies and Jocks tresh from tho lino staring through the plate-glass windows and officers enjoying a few days’ rest between one battle and another, buying soap and writing paper and small, useless things for tho sake of a few words in bad French with bright-eyed girls behind the counter, and behaving to them with the manners of young gentlemen in Bond street.

1 am not saying that other things did not happen in Amiens and elsewhere, as they happen in London and elsewhere in peace time, i am only insisting what I believe cannot be contradicted, that the miracle of the war as far as the British Army is concerned was tho decent, orderly, goodhumoured, and unbrutalised character of the enormous majority of British soldiers not only in the front line trenches, where discipline was severe, but behind the lines, where the temptations to drink and debauchery lurked in dark alleys and back streets.

DRUNKENNESS NOT RAMPANT. For four years and more 1 went into dug-outs, from lino trenches, observation posts, battalion messes in Xpres, Arras, and all tho area of tho iront from tho coast to St. Quentin, before battle and after battle, and only once did 1 meet an officer worse for drink, a. ueard ol one who was. being court martialled for drunkenness when I Happened to call on him one day, but 1 failed to see him. i never saw a drunken officer iu a divisional or corps or army Headquarters. There is no doubt, I suppose, that some officers wiiose nerve was wearing down under constant shell lire and war strain propped themselves up by as many nips as they could get out of a fair-sized bottle. I do not doubt for a moment that tho situation described in ‘ Journey’s End ’ is strictly true. Again, it would have been miraculous d men had not found this way to give them a mask of "courage when they were nerve-shattered and shell-shocked, Ido not blame them. 1 do not blame any man who fails to perform miracles. But 1 admire and salute those millions of men, those hundreds of thousands ->f officers who kept their nerve without .alcoholic sedatives, who were able to face the most frightful fire by some spiritual valour whicn was in their souls and not in their liasks, and who withstood tho ordeal o ’ the most dreadful war in the history of mankind and remained both kind and sane. “ UTTERLY FALSE IMPRESSION.”

i agree with General Crozier that the “ brass-hat mind,” of which ho is a notable example according to his own admission, established an intense educational training in “ blood, lust ” for the young soldier. Intensive propaganda, however false, encouraged “ Hun hating.” But the strange thiiig is that it largely failed. Some prisoners wore killed, men with their hands up wore bayoneted here and there, men saw red—chiefly through fear. That is war, certainly. But I. was constantly astonished at the lack of hatred against the enemy over the way. He was called “ Poor old Fritz ” and “ Poor old Jerry,” and scores of times 1 saw our men treating their newly taken prisoners as though they wore pet monkeys, or even human beings like ourselves. I do not challenge General Crozier’s facts. I have no doubt that ho has written the exact truth as he saw it. L agree, indeed, wiU bis point of view that war should be described as it really is in all its beastliness and not as a romantic adventure conducted by stained-glass heroes with beautiful planners and spotless morality, uttering noble sentiments before they die gracefully on the field of honour. But where I think so many, of these war books give an utterly false impression of what happened is that in emphasising the ugly aspects of war, with its brutalities and filth, they leave out the other side of the picture—the loyalty of men to their own crowd, their fine qualities of comradeship and devotion to duty, their sense of humour, the amazing average of human courage, the decency and self-respect and good-humoured stoicism of the private soldier, the fine instincts of boys who had been brought up in a good code and were true to it against all odds. JUSTICE NOT DONE. In emphasising tho dirty business of war souk* of these war books drag t.own the spirit of the men themselves into the blth and ;esm roll the m.no.ir of all fioso nines of vouCi who went marc.nig : long tile .on Is o: F.anoc. That is ,-.6 uip.css'on which I hate to see re orded in history, because, honestly, it was not true. Looking back at those four and a-half years in Franco and Flanders, I do not remember an army of drunken and debased men, rotted by disease, with their eyes bleared by blood Just and other kinds of lust. I remember

an endless tide of young soldiers, alert, keen, bright-eyed, splendid to see, upj held by some courage which eemed to me beyond ordinary natural laws. ■ with a sense of humour which seldom failed t.iem except when the ordeal was too damnable lor the human mind, as it was on the way to l , rss''hemh c o and. o. er death . traps, and estrr.o:\..n, r.iy ih tiri, ami ; .cll '.ctit, ami w.r.msicuv, .■ml good-. carted,, and self-disciplined. They had the ordinaiy weaknesses of human nature. Some of them asked for trouble and got >t. They wore not saints. But on the whole and in the mass they were the best and finest crowd our race has bred, or, I think, will ever see again, i Those war books do not give them [ justice.