§ 4

so it was that joan saw the beginning of the great winnowing of mankind, and peter came home in search of his duty.

within the first month of the war nearly every one of the men in joan’s world had been spun into the vortex; hers was so largely a world of young or unattached people, with no deep roots in business or employment to hold them back. even oswald at last, in spite of many rebuffs, found a use for himself in connection with a corps of african labourers behind the front, and contrived after a steady pressure of many months towards the danger zone, to get himself wounded while he was talking to some of his dear masai at an ammunition dump. a hun raider dropped a bomb, and some flying splinters of wood cut him deeply and extensively. the splinters were vicious splinters; there were complications; and he found himself back at pelham ford before the end of 1916, aged by ten years. the woman’s legion captured joan from the date of its formation, and presently had her driving a car for the new ministry of munitions, which came into existence in the middle of 1915.

her career as a chauffeuse was a brilliant one. she lived, after the free manner of the legion, with miss jepson at hampstead; she went down every morning to her work, she drove her best and her best continually improved, so that she became distinguished among her fellows. the ministry grew aware of her and proud of her. a time arrived when important officials quarrelled to secure her for their journeys. eminent foreign visitors invariably found themselves behind her.

“but she drives like a man,” they would say, a little breathlessly, after some marvellously skidded corner.

“all our girls drive like this,” the ministry of munitions would remark, carelessly, loyally, but untruthfully.

joan’s habitual wear became khaki; she had puttees and stout boots and little brass letterings upon her shoulders and sleeves, and the only distinctive touches she permitted herself were the fur of her overcoat collar and a certain foppery about her gauntlets....

459extraordinary and profound changes of mood and relationship occurred in the british mind during those first two years of the war, and reflected themselves upon the minds of joan and peter. to begin with, and for nearly a year, there was a quality of spectacularity about the war for the british. they felt it to be an immense process and a vitally significant process; they read, they talked, they thought of little else; but it was not yet felt to be an intimate process. the habit of detachment was too deeply ingrained. great britain was an island of onlookers. to begin with the war seemed like something tremendous and arresting going on in an arena. “business as usual,” said the business man, putting up the price of anything the country seemed to need. there was a profound conviction that british life and the british community were eternal things; they might play a part—a considerable part—in these foreign affairs; they might even have to struggle, but it was inconceivable that they should change or end. september and october in 1914 saw an immense wave of volunteer enthusiasm—enthusiasm for the most part thwarted and wasted by the unpreparedness of the authorities for anything of the sort, but it was the enthusiasm of an audience eager to go on the stage; it was not the enthusiasm of performers in the arena and unable to quit the arena, fighting for life or death. to secure any sort of official work was to step out of the undistinguished throng. in uniform one felt dressed up and part of the pageant. young soldiers were self-conscious in those early days, and inclined to pose at the ordinary citizen. the ordinary citizen wanted to pat young soldiers on the back and stand them drinks out of his free largesse. they were “in it,” he felt, and he at most was a patron of the affair.

that spectacularity gave way to a sense of necessary participation only very slowly indeed. the change began as the fresh, bright confidence that the battle of the marne had begotten gave place to a deepening realization of the difficulties on the road to any effective victory. the persuasion spread from mind to mind that if great britain was to fight this war as she had lived through sixty years of peace, the gentleman amateur among the nations, she would lose this 460war. the change of spirit that produced its first marked result in the creation of the ministry of munitions with a new note of quite unofficial hustle, and led on through a series of inevitable steps to the adoption of conscription, marks a real turning about of the british mind, the close of a period of chaotic freedom almost unprecedented in the history of communities. it was the rediscovery of the state as the necessary form into which the individual life must fit.

to the philosophical historian of the future the efforts of governing and leading people in great britain to get wills together, to explain necessities, to supplement the frightful gaps in the education of every class by hastily improvised organizations, by speeches, press-campaigns, posters, circulars, cinema shows, parades and proclamations; hasty, fitful, ill-conducted and sometimes dishonestly conducted appeals though they were, will be far more interesting than any story of battles and campaigns. they remind one of a hand scrambling in the dark for something long neglected and now found to be vitally important; they are like voices calling in a dark confusion. they were england seeking to comprehend herself and her situation after the slumber of two centuries. but to people like joan and peter, who were not philosophical historians, the process went on, not as a process, but as an apparently quite disconnected succession of events. imperceptibly their thoughts changed and were socialized. joan herself had no suspicion of the difference in orientation between the joan who stood at her bedroom window in august, 1914, the most perfect spectator of life, staring out at the darkness of the garden, dumbly resenting the call that england was making upon the free lives of all her friends, and the joan of 1917, in khaki and a fur-collared coat, who slung a great car with a swift, unerring confidence through the london traffic and out to woolwich or hendon or waltham or aldershot or chelmsford or what not, keen and observant of the work her passengers discussed, a conscious part now of a great and growing understanding and criticism and will, of a rediscovered unity, which was england—awakening.

youth grew wise very fast in those tremendous years. from the simple and spectacular acceptance of every obvious 461appearance, the younger minds passed very rapidly to a critical and intricate examination. in the first blaze of indignation against germany, in the first enthusiasm, there was a disposition to trust and confide in every one in a position of authority and responsibility. the war office was supposed—against every possibility—to be planning wisely and acting rapidly; the wisdom of the admiralty was taken for granted, the politicians now could have no end in view but victory. it was assumed that sir edward carson could become patriotic, lord curzon self-forgetful, mr. asquith energetic, and mr. lloyd george straightforward. it was indeed a phase of extravagant idealism. throughout the opening weeks of the war there was an appearance, there was more than an appearance, of a common purpose and a mutual confidence. the swift response of the irish to the call of the time, the generous loyalty of india, were like intimations of a new age. the whole empire was uplifted; a flush of unwonted splendour suffused british affairs.

then the light faded again. there was no depth of understanding to sustain it; habit is in the long run a more powerful thing than even the supremest need. in a little time all the inglorious characteristics of britain at peace, the double-mindedness, the slackness, were reappearing through the glow of warlike emotion. fifty years of undereducation are not to be atoned for in a week of crisis. the men in power were just the same men. the inefficient were still inefficient; the individualists still self-seeking. the party politicians forgot their good resolutions, and reverted to their familiar intrigues and manœuvres. redmond and ireland learnt a bitter lesson of the value of generosity in the face of such ignorant and implacable antagonists as the carsonites. britain, it became manifest, had neither the greatness of education nor yet the simplicity of will to make war brilliantly or to sustain herself splendidly. at every point devoted and able people found themselves baffled by the dull inertias of the old system. and the clear flame of enthusiasm that blazed out from the youth of the country at the first call of the war was coloured more and more by disillusionment as that general bickering which was british public life revived again, and a gathering tale of waste, failure, 462and needless suffering mocked the reasonable expectation of a swift and glorious victory.

the change in the thought and attitude of the youth of britain is to be found expressed very vividly in the war poetry of the successive years. such glowing young heroes as julian grenfell and rupert brooke shine with a faith undimmed; they fight consciously, confident of the nearness of victory; they sing and die in what they believe to be a splendid cause and for a splendid end. an early death in the great war was not an unmitigated misfortune. three years later the young soldier’s mind found a voice in such poetry as that of young siegfried sassoon, who came home from the war with medals and honours only to denounce the war in verse of the extremest bitterness. his song is no longer of picturesque nobilities and death in a glorious cause; it is a cry of anger at the old men who have led the world to destruction; of anger against the dull, ignorant men who can neither make war nor end war; the men who have lost the freshness and simplicity but none of the greed and egotism of youth. germany is no longer the villain of the piece. youth turns upon age, upon laws and institutions, upon the whole elaborate rottenness of the european system, saying: “what is this to which you have brought us? what have you done with our lives?”