Noble in Reason

by Phyllis Bentley

  “No use coming here with specs on,” said the sergeant with affable contempt.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We can’t take you—you’re rejected. Don’t hold the line up now. Go out by this door.”

  “But that’s absurd,” I began.

  “Are we taking any with glasses, sir?” cried the sergeant to the officer.

  “No. Sorry, my lad,” said the captain, smiling at me.

  I stumbled out of the further door, followed by the commiserating glances of the other recruits.

  To return to my father and John immediately after this humiliating experience was quite impossible. I made up my mind to try elsewhere, took a train to Bradford, inquired for the nearest place of enlistment and once again joined a line of young men. This time I placed my glasses—they were pincenez, for spectacles were then considered plebeian wear—in my pocket before I approached and kept them there, though the long wait—the military lunch-hour intervened—was very tedious as a result. At last the work of recruitment was resumed. My age and height were appropriate; my name was written down and I found myself with my coat and shirt off awaiting my turn for a somewhat cursory medical inspection, which however proved not cursory enough for me. While waiting I looked about with some curiosity at the hairy chests and bulging biceps of my fellow recruits, and felt painfully conscious of my own thin arms and rib-revealing torso. As usual, however, I consoled myself for my physical defects by dwelling on my mental powers: probably nobody else in the room knew what the word torso meant, I reflected smugly.

  My satisfaction was short-lived, for almost the first question the M.O. asked me was whether I usually wore glasses. The red marks at the side of my nose, perhaps too something peering and uncertain in my advance, had betrayed my infirmity. I stammered assent.

  “Sergeant! Don’t waste my time sending in unfit men,” he commanded in an angry shout, and I found myself hustled out with some contumely.

  My return to Hudley was very wretched. To be so utterly useless, such a complete failure in everything I attempted, to be doomed always to stand aside from every manly activity, was very bitter. There being no train for Hudley due for some time, I returned by means of connecting trams: a dreary, bumpy, lengthy journey. Indeed as I entered the Hudley tram at the midway hill-top village, I found myself stared at unsympathetically by driver and conductor, who were lounging within the otherwise empty tram and resented my interruption of their few moments’ leisure, I reached the nadir of depression. Would it not be well, for all concerned as well as for my miserable self, to cease my wretched existence? To destroy myself as Henry had done? I began positively to think of methods of suicide, when the conductor chanced to observe to the driver, in a slow exchange of sentences about the war (which was going extremely ill), that somebody called “our Arthur” had been turned down at the barracks on account of his eyes.

  “He wears specs, you see.”

  I leaned towards him and in a thin uncertain voice said: “So have I.”

  The conductor and driver turned upon me their solid Yorkshire faces, which gradually melted into expressions of sympathy as they took this in.

  “It’s a bad do,” said the conductor, meaning the war and all its works.

  “It is that,” agreed the driver.

  Not knowing how else to express their sympathy, the conductor rose and enquiring my destination carefully punched a ticket for me, while the driver, solemnly shaking his head, made his way out to the tram’s front, assuming their duties on my account before their time.

  Their homely kindness saved me. I discovered suddenly that two suicides in a family would be really too much of a good thing; my death would reflect badly on the Jarmaynes, cause grief to my mother, upset Netta. Several passengers now mounted the tram, which shortly started; a fine landscape of hills and mill chimneys debouched before my eyes; it was “not Yorkshire” to kill oneself, I decided, the true bravery lay in acceptance and endurance of life’s trials. Thus the worst of my suffering was over before I reached Hilbert Mills, and by putting a strong control upon myself I was able to walk into the office and announce with some calm that the Army had rejected me on grounds of faulty eyesight.

  “I tried in Bradford as well,” I said with an air of nonchalance, enjoying the effect I made: “But it was the same there.” I added, lying: “I thought that was how it would be.”

  My father and John gazed up at me with looks of affectionate remorse.

  “Never mind, Chris,” said John in a very kind tone: “The war’ll be over by Christmas.”

  This view was one very widely held in England at that time. The voluntary principle of enlistment, too, was still considered very superior to the continental mode of furnishing armies by conscription. That John, a married man with three young children—the boy had not survived—should enlist was an idea quite out of the normal range, and nobody blamed him because he did not do so. It was I whose presence in Hudley always had to be explained—“poor Chris has been rejected”— and when it was suggested in the papers that “a little badge” (later an armlet) should be officially issued to be worn by the unaccepted volunteer, I longed for this with all my heart though I forbore to express an opinion on the matter, as being an interested party.

  As the war went on and showed no signs of being victoriously over soon or even ever, the recruiting campaigns intensified, the Derby system was inaugurated, men were asked to “attest” their willingness to fight and were called up in categories as they were wanted, the unmarried men being summoned first. John attested with the rest but appealed on grounds of indispensability, as a great many other young men of every social level were doing around us—the West Riding mills were working day and night to produce the millions of yards of khaki required by the new armies and the idea of the dilution of skilled labour was not as yet in sight. I should have preferred a more romantic attitude in my brother and was secretly sorry when his appeal was successful. But John was now in the grip of another slogan; “let them fetch me if they want me,” he said with cheerful candour, and again said it in company with thousands of other young men. In early 1916, however, the Military Service Act became law; every man between eighteen and thirty-five was enrolled and swept off to some kind of service. John went off cheerfully to the Army and I found myself in a munitions factory in a small township a short train journey from Hudley, named High Holme.

  My father took the removal of John from Hilbert Mills very badly. On the evening when John dropped in to announce that he had received his calling-up papers, my father paced up and down our sitting-room in Ashroyd, angrily demanding of the heavens what he had done to deserve this fate.

  “Henry first, and now John!” he exclaimed. “Is nothing to be left to me? Nothing?”

  This left me out of his calculations so markedly that I was for once moved to protest.

  “I’m sorry I’m such a useless son to you, father,” I said in a stiff high tone.

  “Eh? What?” exclaimed my father. He halted to take this in. “Oh, don’t be silly, Chris,” he said irritably, resuming his stride. “What’s that got to do with it? You’re not in any danger.” He snorted, but all the same seemed rather taken aback, and suddenly sat down abruptly. “Well,” he said in a tone of angry resignation, and shook out his evening newspaper with a jerk.

  Although I was far from comparing the hazards of a munition factory with those of a front-line trench, my job at that time was not altogether of a safe kind, since the filling of shells with the then new explosive TNT was involved, and explosions were not infrequent in the early days when the necessary precautions were not properly understood. But I was immensely happy in my new work. At last I was “in” the war. I rose very early, travelled to High Holme in the dark, put in very long hours of (at first physical) work, ate in the crowded noisy canteen with my fellow-workers (men and women), travelled home again dirty, exhausted and satisfied. In the train I learned to read the newspapers, hitherto unstudied at home because monopolized by my
father. I cast off my uncomfortable pince-nez and substituted ugly but comfortable steel spectacles. I enjoyed the simple tasks I was allotted, the throwing about of unfilled shell cases, the insertion of the acrid yellow powder. I was afraid of the explosive at first but habit wore down my fear, and this small conquest was of great value to me; I felt like a crushed celluloid ball which expands to its rounded shape again under the heat of the fire—the fire in this case being the endurance of danger.

  Then too the homely, hearty, bustling life of the very large and continually expanding factory was a pleasure to me, “took me out of myself,” as the saying goes. Not that I ever really formed part of this life; as always, I stood aloof without intending it; but I used my eyes and saw a vast quantity of human behaviour, and my very aloofness made me the safe recipient of many confidences, amatory and other, from many different kinds of human beings. I was disinterested and impartial, did not intrigue for myself, had no axe to grind, did not tell tales and shared their political views, but had a steady prejudice in favour of work; altogether I was regarded as “soft,” i.e. over-conscientious and scrupulous, but human.

  How long this favourable attitude would have lasted on the part of my fellow artisans I do not know, but it was not put to a prolonged test, for soon I was withdrawn from physical labour. It was discovered by authority that my writing was neat, my arithmetic accurate, my conscientiousness extreme; I was put to make out lists for the foreman. From then onward my promotion was rapid; I was taken into the general office, the private office, the Chairman’s office, in work which graduated from routine to important to highly confidential. Soon I drew up papers of instructions, composed difficult letters to the relevant department of the Ministry of Munitions, took minutes, filled up complicated government forms, even furnished the statistics necessary for replies to questions in the House of Commons. I had ideas about indexing and records which were accepted by the Ministry and became standard practice in all munition factories; great was my joy when a form of my own devising was actually printed by the Stationery Office—on that drab yellow paper which makes the average man’s heart sink by its association with government demands—and became one of its regular series. Once I even enjoyed the honour of being taken up to London by my Chairman for an interview with a Ministry official who was making absurd demands, quite impossible to fulfil; we won our point and experienced an air raid at night, each of these facts bringing great gratification to me.

  A natural development from my work at this time was that I began to write articles for the newly formed Ministry of Information; articles amateurish and ingenuous enough, urging the importance of munitions to our war effort and describing interesting human incidents in munition factories, but a source of ecstasy to me when they appeared in print. The continually increasing wages I earned were also a very real pleasure to me; for the first time in my life I was financially independent, could take Netta to the cinema or buy my mother a present without having to ask my father’s permission.

  In a word, this was a happy period in my life. I was busy, I was considered useful, I had a place in the world; for daydream I had neither time nor need.

  For at home too things went well. Hilbert Mills ran day and night and my father, who had now the whole affair on his shoulders, was completely rejuvenated in spirit by his responsibilities. Netta was living at home, which made my mother and myself happy, and working a good many hours each week in the Y.M.C.A. canteen. My mother herself, who had begun by rolling bandages, at which she was inaccurate and unsuccessful, presently became a much valued “visitor” to wounded soldiers; her unhurried speech and placid enjoyment of their stories about their families relaxed their nervous tension. Our neighbours the Darrells were similarly caught up in the general effort. Mrs. Darrell had died, I must confess almost unnoticed by me, during the retreat from Mons, thus freeing Beatrice from the sickroom. Medical men were increasingly withdrawn from civilian life as the Forces’ casualties rose, until Dr. Darrell had an immense number of patients under his care; running his house, doing his accounts, keeping track of his appointments, occupied all Beatrice’s time and gave scope to her energies; she looked well and happy.

  The desperate seriousness of the war was by now realized— we had lived through Verdun, the Somme, Jutland, Arras and Passchendaele—and the overpowering necessity of contributing our last ounce of work to the war effort focused the acts, feelings and thoughts of every civilian member of the nation.

  The climax of satisfaction for me during this period came with my award of the newly inaugurated decoration, O.B.E.

  2

  Like all other members of my generation, who have experienced two world wars and have to fear a third, I have lately thought a great deal about the nature and origin of war. Some of my thoughts are not as hopeful as I could wish—not hopeful, I mean, of the prospect of banishing war for ever as a human activity. Apart from its deep roots in the human psyche, there are some more superficial factors which operate, alas, in its favour.

  A deep attachment to one’s native land is inevitable and proper. We are still, even in these days of overseas wheat and meat and the domination of the cannery, products of the actual land on which we live. We still drink its rain, still in the form of milk and bacon and fruit eat its earth transformed; our eyes are trained by its sights, we bear on our skins the imprint of its weather. It is not easy to extend an affection so rooted, to a land which did not bear us; indeed I do not think it can be done. A true internationalism must be founded on pride in the contribution made by one’s land to the welfare of the whole world.

  As regards the society in which we live: human gregariousness forms communities of men like ourselves, which we then defend as an extension of our ego.

  Moreover, though nowadays nobody wants war, many nations want what their opponents would not be willing to yield unless defeated. (Amongst these “wanting” nations is Russia, for example.)

  War gives everyone a scapegoat upon which all ills can be blamed; a scapegoat is a useful institution, as primitive societies well knew. There is a kind of hopefulness attached to such a scapegoat, too; when the war is over, we think, all these unpleasantnesses will cease. We are able to endure them because we believe them to be temporary; soon the scapegoat, laden with sins and deficiencies, will be driven over a steep place into the sea, and life will be good again. Part true, part false, the hope is always cheering.

  War, too, gives everyone an aim, a purpose which they think noble, which they feel it is urgent and right for them to serve. It sublimates, in fact, all the personal troubles and maladjustments and worries, to its own use.

  War, though it imprisons many, releases some. For war against another country is an interlude in the eternal war of human relationships. For myself, I found bombs preferable to my father’s anger, and the long hours of hard close work, the poor food, the harassment of continual difficult official demands, were freedom compared with the restrictions of family life. (At a distance, too, family affection reasserts itself, especially when the distant member is in danger.) This feeling of liberation from normal responsibility which the soldier experiences when he marches away from wife, child, parent, home, must be taken into account when attempts are made to inculcate the idea that war is a horror. I have sometimes thought that the bombing of World War II may have forced home this point; no longer does the soldier go off cheerfully, leaving his responsibilities, his worries, behind him; he has to remain among those worries, for the fighting front is on his doorstep—a much less endurable experience, with no compensation of lively male companionship.

  I suppose that games, both physical and mental, between nations are perhaps the best means of sublimating war. As a boy I despised physical games, agreeing entirely with Kipling about the flannelled fools at the wicket and the muddied oafs at the goals. Now, however, I perceive their usefulness. One hates passionately the opposing team and longs with all one’s heart for their defeat—but only for a couple of hours; and next morning everyone wa
kes up, their patriotic passion agreeably spent, having suffered no damage to life or limb.

  The superficial attractions of war are, of course, as everyone now knows, entirely deceptive and illusory. Our family, hitherto somewhat sheltered from the war’s worst impact, was to discover this in its last year.

  3

  In March, 1918, John came home on seven days’ leave. He was by now Captain John Jarmayne, M.C., having recently won this decoration by his leadership during a raid on an enemy trench which furnished more than forty prisoners. My father beamed with innocent pride as he commented on having two sets of “letters” in the family.

  “Both my sons decorated,” said he.

  This took place on Sunday evening at the table in John and Edie’s dining-room where my parents and myself were enjoying a substantial supper—Edie was a wonderful cook and provided solid meals in spite of the severe wartime shortages.

  “Why, what has Chris pulled down for himself?” asked John.

  “The O.B.E.,” replied my father.

  “Well—don’t tell any fighting man, Chris,” said John disagreeably.

  “John! That’s unkind,” said Edie, embarrassed.

  “A boy who died for you and me.

  He died without the O.B.E.

  Thank God without the O.B.E!”

  quoted John. “I forget the first part but it goes something like that.”

  “Nobody is suggesting that a civilian decoration approaches a medal won in the field,” said I in a tone determinedly mild. “Nobody in uniform,” said John.

  “John, give your father some more fish, and don’t talk so much. I don’t know what’s come over you,” Edie reproved him.

  “I daresay not,” said John.

  Indeed he did not look his usual cheerfully sardonic self. He seemed to me thinner and paler than of old; very heavy horizontal lines were scored across his forehead; his eyes were tired and his temper irritable. Even with his children, to whom he was devotedly attached, he was somewhat snappy and sarcastic that evening; fortunately the twins (Muriel and Joyce) and Anne had physiques and dispositions as sturdy as his own and answered him back with cheerful bluntness. I was on reasonably good terms with the three fair solid little girls, to whom I often brought small gifts, but that night they naturally paid little attention to me, climbing all over John in an endearing puppyish fashion which obviously soothed him. Presently Edie took them away upstairs to bed, and my mother accompanied her. When men are left alone together after the withdrawal of women, a feeling of renewed intimacy often arises—no doubt it is the same if the sexes are reversed. I felt this, and blurted out my thought: