Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

You remember the little pond at the side of the house, the pond that has at the bottom of it, to our knowledge, a dead Bavarian and an Argyll and Sutherland Highlander? At the edge of it I must have stopped a full five minutes, lying flat upon my stomach and listening to the intermittent sound of the voice. It was clearer now, low but distinct, and at last I knew for a certainty that the words came from a German throat. Occasionally a light laugh broke out which sounded uncannily in the still air. Laughter is not often heard from patrols between the lines, and I was puzzled and interested too.

A minute later I had clambered over the broken-down wall and was in what we used to think must have been the drawing-room of the house. Some time after this war is over I shall return and make straight for this house. I want to see what it looks like in daytime. I want to be able to stand in front of it and look out on the country beyond. I’ve crawled into it a dozen times at night, I’ve propped up its shelled, roofless walls with sand-bags, I’ve made a look-out loophole in the broken-down chimney. I’ve seen dim outlines from its glassless windows of hills and houses, but I am sure, quite sure, that when I see it and the country beyond it in the full glare of a summer sun I shall give a gasp of astonishment at what it is and what I thought it was.

Once inside the house I paused no longer, but, my revolver ready, my finger on the trigger, made straight for the spot from which came the voice.

My revolver was not needed, Dick. In the furthest corner of what we used to think must be the living-room, just near the spot where we found that photograph of the latest baby of the family in its proud mother’s arms and the gramophone record and the broken vase with the artificial flowers still in it—you remember what trophies they were to us—just there was the man. He was seated with his back propped up against the sand-bags where the two walls of the room make a corner, his legs angled out and his arms hanging limply down. It did not take a second glance to see that I had to do with a badly wounded German, but I took a look round first to make sure that there were no others either in the shell of the house or near it. When I had made certain, I returned to him and, putting my revolver within my reach on the floor beside me, knelt down and examined the man. He was plastered with mud, his cap was off his head, his breath was coming in little heavy jerks, and on the blue-grey uniform, just below the armpit on the right side, was a splash of blood mingling with the mud.

What I had done for your dead body I did for his barely living one, opened the tunic and by the aid of my electric torch—it was safe enough in the angle of the walls—examined the wound. It did not need a doctor to see that the man’s spirit was soon going to set out on the same voyage of adventure as yours, but I did what I could. I ripped my field dressing out of the lining of my coat and bound up the wound. Then I took out my flask and poured some brandy into his mouth. He had winced once or twice as I had dressed the wound but had not spoken; I think he was scarcely conscious.

But the spirit revived him and in a minute or so his eyes slowly opened and looked into mine. There was no such thing for him then as enemy or friend. He was simply a dying man and I was someone beside him helping him to die. His head turned over to one side and he murmured some German words. You used to laugh at me, Dick, for my hatred of the German language and my refusal to learn a word of it, but I wished heartily I knew some then. I answered him in English in the futile way one does. ‘That’s all right, old man,’ I said. ‘Feeling a bit easier now, eh?’

He looked at me fixedly for a moment or two and then suddenly summed up the International situation in a phrase.

‘This damned silly war!’ he said.

The remark, made with a strong German accent, was delivered with a little smile, and there was consciousness in his eyes. He finished it with a weary sigh and his hand moved slightly and rested on mine as I bent over him. There was a pool of water beside us in a hole in the hearth and I dipped my not too clean handkerchief in it and wiped some of the mud off his face. If I had felt any enmity against him for killing you, it was gone now. A war of attrition those beautiful war critics term it, and here was the attrition process in miniature. He had killed you and you had killed him, an officer apiece, and the Allies could stand the attrition longer than the Germans. I knew the argument and I have not the slightest doubt it is sound. In the meantime here was a man dying rather rapidly, very weary and only too ready for the last trench of all.

I chatted to him and have no notion what I said. I dare say it is a comfort to have, at the hour of death, a human being by you and a human voice speaking to you. He was quite conscious, the water on his face had refreshed him and had revealed clear-cut, aristocratic features, that had nothing bestial or cruel about them. Just as I had thought about you, so I thought about him. Waste! waste! I felt as though I had met him before, and certainly I knew his type if not the individual. Perhaps too, sitting opposite one another week after week, in trenches two hundred yards apart, the spirits bridge a gap the bodies cannot. I do not know, I do not greatly care.

His voice was feeble, but he seemed to wish to speak to me and his English was that of an educated man, precise and at times idiomatic. He accounted for that almost in his first words.

‘I have been in England on long visits, twice, three times,’ he said. ‘I like England. Germany and England are worth dying for. Also I am Saxon, and Saxony is a great country. Anglo-Saxons, is it not?’

‘Anglo-Saxons,’ I repeated lightly. ‘We have the same blood in us.’

‘Good blood, too,’ he said, glancing down at the little splash of it on his tunic. ‘A pity to spill so much. Will you bathe my face again, it helps me, and I would like to die clean.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ I said. ‘To-morrow morning you will be in our lines—another man.’ He did not answer for a moment, then he said, almost with humour in his voice, ‘That is quite true, to-morrow morning I will surely be in your lines—a dead man.’

Again there was silence between us. He spoke the truth and knew that I knew it. His arm moved: the fingers of his hand pawed aimlessly at the rubble by his side. I half rose and told him that I was going to our breastworks to bring some bearers with a stretcher.

He shook his head and spoke in a voice almost strong. ‘No, please, no! You shall go in half, in a quarter of an hour. I am quite easy here. In no great pain. Death is, sometimes, quite easy. I would like you to stay if you will.’

‘Of course I will stay if you wish.’

‘Yes. Also I would like to speak to you ... I ... I ... killed ... one of your officers ... just now?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I ... saw him fall. As he fell he fired at me too. I am sorry I killed him. Will you tell his ... his ... people so? And tell them, too, that it is just war ... silly, wasteful war. He was a soldier, was he, by profession I mean?’

‘Yes, a soldier.’

‘Then it is his death ... I am only a soldier as all of us are soldiers. In peace I make music, compose you call it. Music is better than war.’

‘Far better,’ I answered grimly enough.

‘If I had lived I would have written great things. I had vowed it. I had in my head ... I have it still ... a ... wonderful ballet. It would have been finer than Petrouchka—as great as _Coq-d’Or_. And the ballet of our enemies, the Russians, would have performed it.... Enemies! how silly it is.’ He smiled.

My heart beat a little faster. This was madness, sheer madness, for us to be discussing music and the Russian ballet on the battlefield and with him dying. But at the words ‘_Coq-d’Or_’ my memory had suddenly stirred, and I carried on the conversation eagerly.

‘_Coq-d’Or_ is wonderful, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Where have you seen it?’

‘Where have I not?’ he answered. ‘In Moscow, Berlin, Paris, in London. It is great, astonishing.’

‘In London?’

‘But a short time ago—just before the war. I ... I ... had a friend. I was staying with him. He, too, was a soldier. I forget in what regiment. I was not interested in armies then.’ He stirred uneasily and partially turned over on his side. I put my arm beneath him, moistened his lips with the water. He sighed and began to wander in his talk, the words German, beyond my comprehension. Yet one kept recurring that told me all, everything. He must not, should not die yet!

Only for a minute or two did his delirium last. Then his senses returned and quite suddenly he pressed my hand, and though his voice was fainter the words were distinct and spoken very slowly as though he wished to be sure I understood.

‘I ... I want you to do something for me.... I am sure you will. We are both gentlemen....’ His hand moved to his breast and he made as if to take something from his tunic.

‘In the pocket of my coat, inside, there is a little leather case. Inside that ... a photograph of a lady, of an English lady too.’ (Oh! little world, O narrow little world!) ‘It has been with me through the war. I dare not and would not have shown it to one of my comrades.... When I die I want you to take it out and send it to the Honourable Richard Belvoir. He was a lord’s son, my friend, and the photograph is of his sister. I ... she did not know it, you understand?... I loved her.’

Did she not? I wonder. My thoughts rushed back again to Drury Lane, to the crowded house, to the little quartette of us, you, I, the young Saxon, and Peggy, standing together in the foyer during the entr’acte. Every one of her twenty years had added something to her beauty, and as you and I strolled away and left the other two together, I remember I wondered if we were making a proper division of the quartette and if it was quite fair to the Saxon to leave him to such an inevitable result. I spoke my thought to you and I recall your laughing comment.

Of course I promised to perform the simple duty the dying man gave me. I was glad he had not recognised me. It made the duty easier. Once I had spoken the promise he thanked me and seemed contented. He had little strength left and the end was very near. His body slipped lower down, he tried to speak no more—his breath came more feebly.

The next day we buried you and him side by side in the little clearing at the back of the road. In your pocket is the little leather case with your sister’s photograph in it. I have given it to you as I was asked to do. The crosses in the clearing daily are added to in number. Some day your sister will come to visit the spot. I am writing to her telling her of your death and of the Saxon’s too. But of how closely they hung upon each other I shall not speak. It is enough that she should think a strange chance brought you together in the same part of the line, that death came to both of you and that you now lie side by side.

Chance! What a word it is. It explains nothing, it evades all. I can imagine you, knowing now so much more than we do, smiling at the idea of such a thing as coincidence. I have said that I am weary beyond words of this war. I am sure you and the Saxon were weary of it too. I am not guessing, for I am in some way absolutely sure that the twin shots which disturbed the silence of the night were mercifully winged; that you and he, who must have had more in common than I knew, were sending each other unwittingly the final gift of good fellowship.

Good-night. I am sitting in the dug-out you and I shared. The sound of the artillery has died down. The divisional guns have fired their final salvos at the enemy’s cross roads and dumps. The Germans for once have not even troubled to reply. Pip and Dennis are out with working parties. The new machine-gun emplacement on the right of Madden’s mound, which you were so anxious to have finished, is done. Whatever you may say, I am still not sure that it is rightly placed. Perhaps you know that it does not matter where it is placed!

Some day, somewhere, we shall meet. Till then good-bye, Dick.

Yours ever

PHILIP.

_THE PRAGMATIC PRINCIPLE: AN APPLICATION._

It was said of the historic centipede that he was so embarrassed by his multitude of legs that locomotion became impossible. Similarly perhaps it may be said of Pragmatism that it suffered principally from the numerous formulations of its principles, all of which sought to explain it, but many of which left it obviously unexplained. Perhaps that is the reason why the vogue which it had seven years ago, following upon Professor James’ brilliant ‘popular lectures,’ was scarcely maintained. On the other hand, this was probably foreseen by some of the most loyal pragmatists. As one said of it, ‘If Pragmatism is going to live and give life, it will be by its spirit and not by any magic contained in pragmatic dicta.’ And it will be generally agreed that as a contribution to the thought of the twentieth century, it _has_ lived and has perhaps quickened other established modes of thought and feeling. ‘On the pragmatic side,’ writes Professor James, ‘we have only one edition of the universe, unfinished, growing in all sorts of places, especially in the places _where thinking beings are at work_.’

Meanwhile many people were at work endeavouring to compress the pragmatic point of view into a formula. The most generally accepted definition stated that it represented theory as subordinate to practice. Another popular formula gives it as the doctrine that the truth of an assertion is decided by its consequences. And again—this with the authority of Dr. Schiller—‘the making of truth is necessarily and _ipso facto_ also a making of reality.’ But inasmuch as none of these definitions cover the whole ground, and as we are here concerned with a modern and vital application of the pragmatic issue, it may perhaps be worth our while to retrace the history of the matter in the first place to its source, craving the patience of the reader meanwhile.

In the year 1878, at Balliol, there were three men who were destined to exercise strong influence upon the intellectual life of their generation: Benjamin Jowett, the Master; Nettleship, the tutor; and Thomas Hill Green. ‘I do not forget,’ says Professor Wallace, in speaking of the last-named in the preface to his Hegel, ‘what I and others owe to him,—that example of high-souled devotion to truth, and of earnest and intrepid thinking on the deep things of Eternity.’ In his own day perhaps Green was not greatly understood. He was known as the eccentric College tutor; a lecturer in metaphysics (and dry at that) ‘Obscurum per obscurius,’ said a witty undergraduate, though of course a witty undergraduate will say anything. Moreover an idealist, though a member of the City Council; a man of dreams, but a pioneer of evening schools for working men. Such was Green as Oxford knew him, but it is—briefly—with his position in philosophy that we are at the moment concerned.

Like all English idealists,—like Hegel also and the German School,—he built upon the rough foundations once laid down by the philosophers of Asia Minor. The Greeks had seen one thing plainly; that the spiritual entities of Science, Art, morality, or religion were of intrinsic value _in themselves_ as expressions of the self-conscious spirit; but the one thing that lay hidden in the womb of Christianity they lacked, the conception of human brotherhood. So the philosophy of the later centuries, while still reaping where the ancient world had sown, has included the developed ideals of citizenship as well as the life of co-operation made possible therein. When we find one of Green’s works headed ‘Popular Philosophy in its Relation to Life,’ we realise the gist of his teaching. He was in fact a practical mystic, which, as Lord Rosebery said of Cromwell, is a ‘formidable combination.’ To Green, the most solid and practical things about a man were the ideals which he put into practice. That in his philosophy was the one permanent use of any philosophical idea; _its working power as a basis for human effort_. It will be seen that here we are not very far off from those ‘thinking beings at work’ in the adventurous world of the pragmatist.

The idealism of Green was of a robuster type than some other kindred systems. He never maintained that we as human beings were unnecessary to the working out of the Divine plan. He never denied that by the application of human reason new possibilities may be brought to light, and that out of the treasure-house of the Eternal may be brought forth things at once old and new. And so, consistently, when we consider the personality of this man who was so vivid a directing force in thought and action, we find at the one end a professor of moral philosophy, and at the other the town councillor and worker in the slums.

Thus far Green and his influence in the English schools of 1878. But in that same year, in an American journal, there appeared an article by Charles Sanders Pierce, concerning ‘our ideas and “how to make them clear,”’ and entitled ‘The Principle of Pragmatism.’

The article did not attract very great attention on this side of the water. English scholars are apt to be a little shy of the swift and arresting methods of the American; and perhaps if pragmatism had remained the original contribution of Charles Sanders Pierce, it might have sunk into oblivion. But, as everybody knows, it found its ‘vates sacer’ in after years in the late Professor James of Harvard, who ushered it sixteen years ago, with some pomp and circumstance, into the world of English philosophy. Meanwhile, some apt maker of epigram, considering the works of Professor James and his brilliant brother, summed them up as ‘the philosopher who writes novels, and the novelist who writes psychology.’

To do him justice, James said at the outset that pragmatism was no new thing. He took Aristotle indeed to his ancestor, and claimed relationship with the English idealists and even with Hume. He then, by virtue of his vivid and stimulating style, achieved for his subject a certain popularity, and a small following began to arise. When, however, people had learnt to speak of the British pragmatists, they discovered that the other people who spoke of the American pragmatists did not always seem to find their systems identical. And time has emphasised this difference. The pragmatism imported from America by Professor James has remained what it always professed to be—a method,—and, withal, a gentle and peaceable method,—not only of airing its own ideas, but of persuading everybody else that just as M. Jourdain had spoken prose all his life without knowing it, so they, too, had been pragmatists all their lives. The method is, perhaps, at times a little superior, and at times a little irreverent; nor can it clearly claim to have produced a ‘philosophy’ as such. It is, in truth, as its votaries have claimed, a spirit and an attitude towards philosophical problems and towards life. As such it would seem to be a characteristic product of the Anglo-Saxon genius which is essentially practical and values things for their use. ‘In pragmatic principles,’ says James, ‘we cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it.’ And elsewhere, ‘Beliefs are rules for actions.’ And again, ‘An idea is true so long as it is profitable to our lives to believe it.’ In all these cases the act, the consequence, the deed are placed, so to speak, in the predicative position. The whole force of the sentence is concentrated upon the consequence, the deed. ‘The proof of the pudding,’ says our homely proverb, ‘is in the eating.’ And we have been reminded that ‘Honesty is the best policy’ from our copy-book days. Here, however, there is a difference between the established ethic—whether idealistic or religious—and the pragmatic view. Honesty, it seems, would win the ‘pragmatic sanction’ because of its results:—it ‘works’ satisfactorily. Therefore it is ‘true.’ There is a shifting of attention from the intrinsic beauty of honesty as a virtue to its consequences; from its moral value to its face value; from the ideal to the actual and empirical. The impartial observer may come to the conclusion that after all the inquiry comes to the same thing. Honesty has been twice blessed: by the pragmatic sanction of its results, and by the moral sanction for those who identify the virtue with the moral imperative of religion. Nevertheless, this attitude of pragmatism is an exceedingly interesting one, and its application to human life and activities is undeniable. It is, in essence, the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, carried into the field of philosophy. The test of an idea, of an ideal, of a ‘movement’ is its working. If it worked well, it was fitted to survive; it was, at any rate, ‘true’ for the epoch wherein it did survive or flourish. On the other hand, a thing cannot be judged until it _is_ tried. It must be known by its results. There must be evolution, shifting, experiment. ‘The universe is always pursuing its adventures’; and truth is always ‘in the making,’—especially where the ‘thinking beings’ are getting to work. Which brings us to the application aforesaid. For assuredly among all the many ‘movements’ which have stirred the surface of the body politic during the last forty years, the so-called ‘woman’s movement’ may in its deeper aspects lay claim to the ‘pragmatic sanction.’ In it undoubtedly many thinking and adventurous persons have been at work. And there are passages in James’ book speaking of ‘our acts as the actual turning places in the great workshop of being where we catch truth in the making,’ to which the hearts of many of our modern women doctors and nurses will respond. On the other hand, the attitude of the many who at every stage have sought to oppose a professional career for women has never been more aptly summed up than in the words of the pragmatist: ‘They are simply afraid: afraid of more experience, afraid of life.’

A few years ago the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission published a weighty record of the usefulness of women in municipal work, suggesting further outlets for their energies; but the writers certainly did not foresee the astonishing influx of female labour into the many departments of public service consequent upon the exigencies of the present time. On the face of it we must own that some of these occupations seem little suited to the worker’s capacity. One can imagine the chorus of disapproval that would have risen from the ranks of the acutely feminine if such innovations as women postmen, ’bus conductors, and window-cleaners had offered themselves a few years ago. Even now it is probably only the most seasoned philosophers who regard them with perfect equanimity; the rest comfort themselves with the reflection that they are the unnatural products of an abnormal time: a sort of _epiphenomena_ thrown up from an underworld of chaos and destined to disappear again in the natural course of things. There is little doubt that this will be so in the end. Post delivery and window cleaning will scarcely become common occupations for girls any more than it will be usual for them to go into the trenches in the firing line, as some gallant Russian women have been doing in order to succour the starving Poles. All these things are exceptional, and exceptional things are generally the outcome of a strong emotion. As Professor Jebb has observed, ‘The feeling that covers a thousand square miles must, we instantly perceive, be a strong feeling.’ We have had many opportunities for such observation during the present war, but nowhere more emphatically than among women. In adapting themselves to the requirements of social service they have taken to heart that excellent advice of Mr. Wells: they have ‘flung themselves into their job, and have done it with passion.’ But now after eliminating the exceptional, after allowing moreover for a natural ebb in the warm flowing tide of patriotic emotion, there undoubtedly remains a record of efficiency which is destined to have far-reaching results. The women whose former status in the industrial world was so precarious and unsatisfactory have now been swept into that world in increasing thousands because the industries of the country could not be maintained without them. The Government appeal of 1915 offered a curious comment upon the popular axiom that the woman’s ‘sphere is the home.’ In the face of the wholesale slaughter of the bread-winners, and the consequent invitation to all unoccupied women to rise to the country’s need, this unimpeachable motto has a pathetic look like that of a picture turned face to the wall. Pathetic because it was always true, even obviously true; but the relativity of truth makes so many isolated truths look out of focus. Anyhow, the fact remains that, in this universe which just now is ‘pursuing its adventures’ at a remarkably accelerated pace, women have been called out of their homes into very unexpected places; and it is with the result that we are just now especially concerned. Evidence at first hand is not far to seek. It comes from all quarters, from the magnificently organised hospitals of the Scottish women in Serbia, from the railway companies, from the Women’s Service Aircraft Department, from the engineers’ shops in some of the industrial centres, and from the munition factories themselves. As to the hospitals, it is doubtful whether the public entirely realise the extent of the work that has been done.

At the Knightsbridge Exhibition in November 1915, one of the most interesting exhibits was that representing the Anglo-Russian hospital which, with its eight surgeons and thirty nurses, and complete unit of bedding and outfit, was sent as a gift to Petrograd; and several delightful articles have been written about the beautiful old Cistercian Abbey in Northern France which was turned into a hospital and staffed entirely by women for the necessities of the war. Of these institutions there has been an ever-increasing number both at home and abroad; one of the Suffrage societies has to its credit the financing and equipment of eight hospital units in France and Serbia. But all this is still the acknowledged sphere of women. As nurses and even doctors they are accepted as a matter of course by a generation which has scarcely heard of the criticisms once thrown at Florence Nightingale. It is in the other departments of social service that they are challenging the public estimates of their capacity, and here the facts must speak for themselves. Some of the factories have published statistics regarding their output of work; and the following comparisons were made in one of the engineers’ shops of the Midland Railway Company.

Average percentage earned by men on Group No. 17 by the week, 42·5.

Average percentage earned by women on Group No. 17 by the week, 49·6.

The two hundred women thus employed had only lately displaced the male workers, and Sir Guy Granet, manager of the Midland Railway, remarked that ‘the efficiency of women in certain directions had been a revelation to him.’ Something must be added for the absence of any organised ‘restrictions of outputs,’ but in fact there has been a reiterated note of surprise in most of the testimonials to the women workers’ capacity, as though we were being faced with a new phenomenon, uncaused and spontaneous, instead of the outcome of underlying forces in the vanished world before the war.

‘I am not sure,’ wrote Mr. A. G. Gardiner in the _Daily News_, ‘that the future will not find in the _arrival_ of women the biggest social and economic result of the war.... Woman has won her place in the ranks beyond challenge.’

In Manchester, last June, one of the great attractions was the ploughing demonstration made by women ‘on the land.’ Lancashire criticism was sparing of words, but here again it was appreciative. ‘Ay, they frame well,’ said the men. The same results are recorded from clerks’ offices, from the tramcars, from motor driving, and, perhaps most unexpectedly, from the factories where women are in charge of delicate and intricate machinery. In all these branches of manual and intellectual labour, the women workers have risen to their opportunities and have made good. The comment by _Punch_ gave to the general view its own characteristic expression.

‘Whenever he sees one of the new citizens or whenever he hears fresh stories of their ability Mr. Punch is proud and delighted. “It is almost worth having a war,” he says, “to prove what stuff our women are made of. Not,” he adds gallantly, “that it wanted proof.”’

On the other hand, it must, we think, be admitted that proof was in fact the one essential thing which the world needed. On November 2, 1915, the Prime Minister, referring in the House of Commons to the death of Nurse Cavell, said:

‘She has taught the bravest men among us a supreme lesson of courage.... In this United Kingdom there are thousands of such women, and a year ago _we did not know it_.’

At first sight the saying was a strange one, for the supreme crises of life are commonly those which call forth the highest response in human nature; but on reflection the words are just: we do not practically ‘know’ what we have not had an opportunity of proving. We had to wait for the experience furnished by a national crisis in opening the gates of industry to over three hundred thousand new recruits, bringing up the total of women workers, according to Mr. Sidney Webb’s calculation, to six million and a half: figures and results which forced the Prime Minister at a later date into the acknowledgment that women’s claim to the privileges of full citizenship was now ‘unanswerable.’

‘They have been put to many kinds of work,’ said Mr. Webb, ‘hitherto supposed to be within the capacity of men only, and they have done it on the whole successfully.’

Now, both these figures and these achievements must surely be recognised as a result of the trend of the last forty or fifty years. Without long preparation it could not have sprung into being. As the ripple is sustained by the weight of ocean, so the self-respecting work of the modern woman in the higher department of service has only been made possible by the education and tradition at her back; while even the factory worker has imbibed a sense of responsibility which is not the mark of the unfree. The new type is therefore, as is usual in the evolutionary process, found to be suited to its age. It was not enough that the women of the country should be, as always, eager to help, willing for sacrifice: it was necessary that they should have had the training in work, in business habits, and in self-control which gives to inherent good-will its market value.

Briefly then, we see in this record of women’s service, which is coming as a surprise to many, an instance wherein the pragmatic philosophy has come to its own. In the early days of the Crimean War the people who were ‘afraid of experience, afraid of life,’ were shocked at the initiative of Florence Nightingale. No really ‘nice’ women, they said, would want to go out to nurse soldiers. The incredible insults heaped upon the first women doctors are remembered by many to-day. The advocates of the ‘movement’ were charged at every new departure with the desire to change the character of woman herself, whereas all that has been changed is her position in the national life; and that change has undoubtedly been rendered more conspicuous since the war.

To all reasonable persons, whether pragmatists or not, the record of experience is worth a great deal of theory. There are many cautious but fair-minded people who have regarded women’s capacity for difficult administrative offices as unproven until now. There are many more who would have hastily judged them unfit for the responsible work which they are doing in the aircraft and munition departments. For all such there is a message in the principle of pragmatism. ‘It preserves,’ says its genial apologist, ‘a cordial relation with facts.... The pragmatist turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action and towards power.... That means the open air and possibilities of nature as against dogma, artificiality and the pretence of finality in truth.’

And Truth, to quote again from a former passage, can just now be vividly observed ‘in the making’ in the great workshop of the world. She can be caught in the grip of the philosopher, and submitted to the most searching inquiry which the mind of man can desire: she can be traced through the past, as Green desired to trace her, to her eternal source in the ‘ideas’ which are a ‘basis for human effort’: she can be brought to the bar of Reality. In this way, it may be added, the method of Pragmatism may exercise a wholesome bracing effect upon one’s thought. It clears away the cobwebs of abstractions; it watches Truth at its daily work in particulars whence only careful generalisations should be drawn. It brings all theory to the test of experiment. And finally recurring to our starting point, it lays stress upon the power of every idea in action, insisting upon the vital correlation of thought and deed. For in the words of the old Greek dramatist,[5] ‘The word and the deed should be present as one thing, to dispatch that end whereto the counselling mind moveth.’

LESLIE KEENE.

FOOTNOTES

[5] Aeschylus.

_THE BRITISH RED CROSS IN ITALY._

BY LEWIS R. FREEMAN.

For the first time in a fortnight there had been a few hours of really good visibility, and, as a consequence, the artillery of both sides were endeavouring to make up for lost time with an increase of activity, just as a pet Pomeranian begins to cut capers the instant it is freed from its restraining leash. For some reason, a goodly share of the Austrian fire appeared to be directed to the vicinity of a certain road along which we had to pick our way in returning from an advanced Italian position we had just visited.

A road under heavy gun fire is not a comfortable place to be at large upon on any of the battle fronts of Europe, and least of all that of the stony Carso, where flying rock fragments increase the casualties three and four-fold over what they would be if the hurtling shells were burying themselves in eight or ten feet of soft earth before accumulating enough resistance to detonate their charges of high explosive. The ‘cave-men’ who held the plateau had all disappeared into their burrows on the ‘lee’ side of the _dolinas_ or sink-holes which pit the repulsive face of the Carsic hills, but here and there along the road there were evidences—mostly pools of blood and scattered kit—that some whom recklessness or duty had kept from cover had met with trouble. Plainly there was going to be work for the Red Cross, and one of the first things I began to wonder about after we had passed on to the comparative shelter of a side-hill, was whether or not they would see fit to risk one of their precious ambulances up there on the shell-torn plateau where, from the rattle and roar, it was evident that, in spite of the failing light, things were going to be considerably worse before they began to be better. Picking up our waiting car in the niche of a protecting cliff, we coasted down across the face of a hillside honeycombed with dug-outs to the bottom of a narrow valley, a point which appeared, for the time being at least, the ‘head of navigation’ for motor traffic. Here we found ourselves stopped by the jam that had piled up on both sides of a hulking ‘210’ that was being warped around a ‘hairpin’ turn. Suddenly I noticed a commotion in the wriggling line of lorries, carts, and pack-mules that wound down from the farther side of the jam, and presently there wallowed into sight a couple of light ambulances, plainly—from the purposeful persistence with which they kept plugging on through the blockade—on urgent business.

Now the very existence of a jam on a road is in itself evidence of the fact that there is an _impasse_ somewhere, and until this is broken the confusion only becomes confounded by any misdirected attempts to push ahead from either direction. But the ambulance is largely a law unto itself, and when it signals for a right-of-way there is always an attempt to make way for it where any other vehicle (save, of course, one carrying reinforcements or munitions at the height of a battle) would have to wait its turn. Mules and carts and lorries crowded closer against each other or edged a few more precarious inches over the side, and by dint of good luck and skilful driving, the two ambulances finally filtered through the blockade and came to a halt alongside our waiting car on the upper end. Then I saw that their cool-headed young drivers were dressed in khaki, and knew, even before I read in English on the side of one of the cars that it was the gift of some Indian province—that they belonged to a unit of the British Red Cross.

‘Plucky chaps those,’ remarked the Italian officer escorting me. ‘Ready to go anywhere and at any time. But it’s hardly possible they’re going to venture up on to the plateau while that bombardment’s going on. That’s work for the night-time, after the guns have quieted down. But there is one of them coming back now; perhaps they’re going to discuss the situation before going on.’

I leaned out to eavesdrop on that momentous debate, and this is what I heard:

‘Jolly awful tobacco this,’ said the one on the ground, after filling his pipe from his companion’s pouch.

‘Poisonous,’ agreed the other, ‘and nothing better in sight for a week. Your engine isn’t missing any more, is it?’

‘Nu-u,’ mumbled the first, continuing to puff at the pipe he was lighting. ‘Goin’—like a—top.’

‘Right-o, then; better be getting on.’

‘Hu-u’; and so the ‘discussion’ ended.

Without another word the boy on the ground pulled on his gloves, walked back to his car, cranked up, climbed into his seat, and led the way off up the empty road.

‘They’re not much on “dramatics,” these young Britons,’ said my companion, ‘but they’re always on hand when they’re wanted, and they take danger and emergencies—and there isn’t much else to work on the Carso—just about as much of a matter of course as they do afternoon tea. The actual work they’ve done for us here with their ambulances and hospital has been very considerable; but even more importance attaches to the fact that they have come to stand in the minds of the Italian army as the tangible expression of British sympathy for our country. The good they have done, and will continue to do, on this score is beyond reckoning.’

* * * * *

It has been well said, now that the absolute superiority of the Allies in men, material, and _moral_ has been established beyond a doubt, that the only eventuality that can conceivably intervene to prevent their obtaining a sweeping victory over the Central Powers is one which might arise as a consequence of trouble among themselves. It is for this reason that every effort calculated to promote better feeling between, and a fuller appreciation of each other’s efforts and ideals among, the various peoples of the Entente nations is so highly desirable; and it is on this account that the work of the British Red Cross Mission to Italy has an importance incalculably greater than that which attaches to it merely as a material contribution.

The work of this Mission comes nearer, perhaps, to being a pure labour of love than any other comprehensive piece of international effort called forth by the war. Duty, sympathy, pity—these are the mainsprings of the American Commission for Belgian Relief, and the splendid work is carried on by men to whom Belgium was but little more than a name before the invading Germans began trampling it under foot; and in the American ambulances and flying squadron in France the spirit of adventure vies with affection for France in bringing those devoted workers and fighters across the sea. The Red Cross and other British work for the comfort and welfare of the Italian army is almost entirely under the direction of those who have seized the opportunity to pay back with present effort the accumulated debts of past years of residence or study in a country which occupies only a lesser place in their hearts, and a slighter claim on their services, than their own.

Mr. George M. Trevelyan, essayist and historian and author of the works on the life of Garibaldi, had been with the Relief Committee in Servia prior to Italy’s entry into the war. As soon as that event took place he hastened to England, and was fortunately able to unite the efforts of a number of persons, all equally anxious to demonstrate in a practical form their friendship for Italy. There resulted the formation of a Red Cross ambulance unit for service on the Italian front. With the help of the British Red Cross authorities at home, and Lord Monson, their Commissioner in Italy, this unit came out in September 1915, under Mr. Trevelyan as commandant; forming the original nucleus of the present Mission of the British Red Cross and Order of St. John, which, united under the direction of Lt.-Col. Lord Monson, now consists of three ambulance and two X-ray units and an English-staffed hospital of 110 beds. Two other hospitals of 320 and 150 beds respectively are also being equipped for the Italian Sanitary Service.

From the inception of the movement all of the British residents in Italy threw themselves into it heart and soul; and not only these, but also those then resident in England who, through past acquaintance or study, felt that the land of Michael Angelo and Raphael, of Dante and Tasso, of Garibaldi and Mazzini, was deserving of a fitting testimonial of sympathy. Voluntary contributions of money and service poured in for the Red Cross Mission from all sides, while various auxiliary organisations were formed to help in other ways. Over 20,000 garments and over 12,000 bandages have been made in the Joint War Committee’s ten War Hospital Supply Depots in Italian cities, where 500 ladies are engaged in making comforts for the sick and wounded. The total of garments supplied through the Commissioner’s Stores Department is in excess of 60,000, and that of bandages 113,000. A number of _Posti di Ristoro_, or refreshment depots, are conducted by English ladies at various railway stations near and on the way to the front, while more recently a movement has been inaugurated for starting a system of recreation huts patterned after those conducted with such success by the Y.M.C.A. in France and Flanders.

To return to the Red Cross work. Mr. Trevelyan’s pioneer unit is the largest of the three now in operation. It consists of an 110-bed hospital, working as a regular part of the Italian army corps, and of some thirty ambulances and twelve other cars, which are attached to several army corps in Gorizia and neighbourhood. The hospital is under the charge of Dr. George S. Brock, the medical doctor of the British Embassy in Rome, and Colonel Sir Alexander Ogston, the celebrated Scotch surgeon, and Dr. W. E. Thompson of Edinburgh. The personnel of the hospital consists of about twenty English nurses, the matron, Miss Power, having marched through the snow in the retreat of the Servian army, with which she worked in 1915. There are sixty English drivers and mechanics, one of whom has been severely wounded and another slightly. The King of Italy has made personal presentation of the Silver Medal for Military Valour to the commandant as a testimony to the services of the whole unit under fire during its year and a half of service on the Italian front.

The Second Unit, with a smaller number of cars, under the command of Mr. F. Sargant, has been working in the rough and difficult Carnic Alps for fifteen months. This is the most isolated of all the units, and its work under conditions calling for unusual resource and initiative has resulted in its being commended in a special Order of the Day issued by General Lequio, who at the time commanded the unit to which it is attached. This, the highest honour an Italian General can confer on the troops under his command, reads as follows:

‘H.Q. CARNIA ZONE,
‘_July 23, 1916_.

‘General Orders N. 72.

‘I wish to draw the attention of the troops under my command
to the courageous behaviour, the never-failing cheerfulness,
and the single-hearted devotion of the officers and men of the
British Red Cross Unit serving in the Carnia Zone.

‘This Unit, which arrived at Tolmezzo on October 26, 1915, has
from that date worked with untiring zeal and devotion. Wherever
duty has called its members—in the neighbourhood of the first
lines, frequently under heavy bombardment—they have one and
all devoted themselves to the removal of our wounded who were
exposed to the merciless fire of the enemy’s artillery.

‘It is, therefore, a great pleasure to me to confer on them all
_l’encomio solenne_, adding thereto my sincerest good wishes
and gratitude.

‘(_Signed_) C. LEQUIO,
‘_Lieut.-General Commanding_.’

Mr. Douglas Cooper, of this unit, has received the Bronze Medal for Military Valour for his services under fire.

The ambulances of the Third Unit, which is under the command of Mr. F. Alexander, were a gift of the British Coal Owners’ and Miners’ Committee for service in Italy. This unit has now completed a year of service on the Carso front, especially distinguished for the extremely heavy fighting which has taken place there. No more conclusive proof is required of the high opinion held by the Italian Sanitary Service of the judgment and consideration of the British driver than the fact that over one-third of the wounded carried by the ambulances of this Third Unit have been stretcher cases.

The Fourth Unit is a radiographic one, under the joint command of Countess Helena Gleichen and Mrs. Hollings, who realised early in the war the incalculably valuable work that radiography could fulfil in the immediate vicinity of the front. The apparatus, which combines both power and mobility, is one of the most up-to-date yet devised. For over a year now, without the briefest leave of absence, these ladies have carried on their work close up to the firing line, where their devotion, unselfishness, and disdain of all danger have won for them the Italian Bronze Medal for Military Valour, to say nothing of the undying gratitude, not alone of the wounded who have passed through their hands, but of the whole army corps under whose eyes they have laboured.

The Fifth Unit, recently formed, is also devoted to ‘close-up’ radiography. It is under the command of Mr. Cecil Pisent.

The following grimly amusing, but highly illuminative anecdote is told to illustrate the resourcefulness and energy of the British ambulance driver in an emergency hardly covered by his instructions or previous experience.

One of the voluntary drivers was bringing down, over an especially difficult piece of road, an ambulance full of wounded from a lofty sector of the Alpine front, when he encountered a soldier in a desperate condition from a gaping bullet-wound in the throat. Realising that the man was in imminent danger of bleeding to death, the driver lifted the inert body to his seat, propping it up the best he could next to where he sat behind his steering-wheel. Driving with his right hand, while with a finger of his left he maintained a firm pressure on the severed carotid artery, he steered his ambulance down the slippery, winding mountain road to the clearing station at the foot of the pass. The laconic comment of the astonished but highly pleased Italian doctor on the incident was direct but comprehensive.

‘Well, young man,’ he said, as he took hasty measures further to staunch the gushes of blood, ‘you’ve saved his life, but in five minutes more you would have throttled him.’

It will hardly be necessary to enlarge on the effect upon the Italian wounded of the devoted care they have received while in charge of the British Red Cross Ambulance and Hospital Units; nor yet on the admiration awakened throughout the Italian army by the presence in their midst of these quietly energetic and modestly brave workers of mercy. Reciprocally, too, it has given to hundreds (to be passed on to thousands) of Britons an experience of Italian courage and fortitude which could never have been gained except through the medium of hospital and ambulance work. I do not believe I have heard a finer tribute of one Ally to another than that which a member of the British Red Cross Mission paid to the Italians as he had observed them under the terrible trial of the especially aggravated Austrian gas attack of June 30, 1916.

‘The gas employed on this occasion,’ he said, ‘was the deadliest of which there has been any experience; much deadlier than the Germans employed against us at Ypres. It was, as General Cadorna’s dispatch admitted, very destructive of life, although the valour of the Italian soldier prevented the enemy from reaping any military advantage from the foul sowing. Our cars were summoned early, and we worked all night at Sagrado. The trenches on the Carso were at that time close at hand, and the soldiers who were not overcome at their posts came staggering into the hospitals for many hours after the horror was released. Several hundred of them died that night in the court and garden.

‘It was a scene of heartrending suffering—much the same sort of horror the British went through in Flanders a year before—and the Italians were, very naturally, in a rage with the savagery of the Austrian methods of war. If there ever was a moment when they might have been capable of cruelty or roughness with their prisoners, this was the one when their fury would have carried them away. Their comrades, racked with unspeakable agony, were dying around them by scores. Yet even on that night I observed with admiration that they medicated the Austrian wounded prisoners with exactly the same kindness and attention they showed to their own, passing them on to our waiting cars in due time without injury or insult.’

Under the leadership of Geoffrey Young, Alpine climber and poet, the ambulances of the British Red Cross were the first motor vehicles to enter Gorizia following its capture in August 1916. Perhaps I cannot convey a better idea of the conditions under which the drivers work, and the spirit in which that work is carried out, than by quoting from Mr. Young’s report to Mr. Trevelyan, the commander of his unit, a copy of which has kindly been put at my disposal.