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Page 33
Sometimes a rough lot fill the canteen, drawn from the poorest class,
perhaps, of an English seaport. They hustle for their food, shout at the
helpers, and seem to have no notion that such words as "please" and "thank
you" exist. After three or four hours of battling with such an apparently
mannerless crew one of the helpers saw them depart to the platform where
their train was waiting for them, with very natural relief. But they were
no sooner gone, when a guardsman, with the manners, the stature, and the
smartness of his kind, came back to the counter, and asked to speak to
the lady in charge of it. "Those chaps, Miss, what have just gone out," he
said apologetically, "have never been used to ladies, and they don't know
what to say to them. So they asked me just to come in and say for them
they were very much obliged for all the ladies' kindness, but they
couldn't say it themselves." The tired helper was suddenly too choky to
answer. The message, the choice of the messenger, as one sure to do "the
right thing," were both so touching.
But there was a sudden movement in the crowd. The train was up. We all
surged out upon the platform, and I watched the embarkation--the endless
train engulfing its hundreds of men. Just as I had seen the food and
equipment trains going up from the first base laden with everything
necessary to replace the daily waste of the army, so here was the train of
human material, going up to replace the daily waste of _men_. After many
hours of travelling, and perhaps some of rest, these young soldiers--how
young most of them were!--would find themselves face to face with the
sharpest realities of war. I thought of what I had seen in the Red Cross
hospital that afternoon--"what man has made of man"--the wreck of youth
and strength, the hideous pain, the helpless disablement.
But the station rang with laughter and talk. Some one in the canteen began
to play "Keep the Home Fires Burning"--and the men in the train joined in,
though not very heartily, for as one or two took care to tell me,
laughingly--"That and 'Tipperary' are awfully stale now!" A bright-faced
lad discussed with D---- how long the war would last. "And _shan't_ we
miss it when it's done!" he said, with a jesting farewell to us, as he
jumped into the train which had begun to move. Slowly, slowly it passed
out of sight, amid waves of singing and the shouting of good-byes....
It was late that evening, when after much talk with various officers, I
went up to my room to try and write, bewildered by a multitude of
impressions--impressions of human energy, human intelligence, human
suffering. What England is doing in this country will leave, it seems to
me, indelible marks upon the national character. I feel a natural pride,
as I sit thinking over the day, in all this British efficiency and power,
and a quick joy in the consciousness of our fellowship with France, and
hers with us. But the struggle at Verdun is still in its first intensity,
and when I have read all that the evening newspapers contain about it,
there stirs in me a fresh realisation of the meaning of what I have been
seeing. In these great bases, in the marvellous railway organisation, in
the handling of the vast motor transport in all its forms, in the feeding
and equipment of the British Army, we have the scaffolding and preparation
of war, which, both in the French and English Armies, have now reached a
perfection undreamt of when the contest began. But the war itself--the
deadly struggle of that distant line to which it all tends? It is in the
flash and roar of the guns, in the courage and endurance of the fighting
man, that all this travail of brain and muscle speaks at last. At that
courage and endurance, women, after all, can only guess--through whatever
rending of their own hearts.
But I was to come somewhat nearer to it than I thought then. The morrow
brought surprise.
V
Dear H.
Our journey farther north through the deep February snow was scarcely less
striking as an illustration of Great Britain's constantly growing share in
the war than the sight of the great supply bases themselves. The first
part of it, indeed, led over solitary uplands, where the chained wheels of
the motor rocked in the snow, and our military chauffeur dared make no
stop, for fear he should never be able to start again. All that seemed
alive in the white landscape were the partridges--sometimes in great
flocks--which scudded at our approach, or occasional groups of hares in
the middle distance holding winter parley. The road seemed interminably
long and straight, and ours were almost the first tracks in it. The snow
came down incessantly, and once or twice it looked as though we should be
left stranded in the white wilderness.
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