Part 10 (1/2)

To give up work seems to me a little like divorcing a husband. There is a feeling of failure about it, and the sense that one is giving up what one has undertaken to do. So, however dull or tiresome husband or work may be, one mustn't give them up.

[Page Heading: THE POWER OF THE BIBLE]

_6 March._--To-day I have been thinking, as I have often thought, that the real power of the Bible is that it is a Universal Human Doc.u.ment.

The world is based upon sentiment--_i.e._, the personality of man and his feelings brought to bear upon facts. It is also the world's dynamic force. Now, the books of the Bible--especially, perhaps, the magical, beautiful Psalms--are the most tender and sentimental (the word has been misused, of course) that were ever written. They express the thoughts and feelings of generations of men who always did express their thoughts and feelings, and thought no shame of it. And so we northern people, with our pa.s.sionate inarticulateness, love to find ourselves expressed in the old pages.

I find in the Gospels one of the few complaints of Christ. ”Have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?” All one has ever felt is said for one in a phrase, all that one finds most isolating in the world is put into one sentence. There is a wan feeling of wonder in it; ”so long,” and yet you think that of me! ”so long,” and yet such absolute inability to read my character! ”so long,” and yet still quite unaware of my message! The humour of it (to us) lies in the little side of it! The dear people who ”thought you would like this or dislike that”--the kind givers of presents even--the little people who shop for one! The friends who invite one to their queer, soulless, thin entertainments, with their garish lights; the people who choose a book for one, who counsel one, even with importunity, to go to some play which they are ”sure we shall like.” ”So long”--they are old friends, and yet they thought we should like that play or that book! ”So long”--and yet they think one capable of certain acts or feelings which do not remotely seem to belong to one! ”So long”--and yet they can't even touch one chord that responds!

We are always quite alone. The communal life is the loneliest of all, because ”yet thou hast not known me.” The world comes next in loneliness, but it is _big_, and with a big soul of its own. The family life is almost nave in its misunderstanding--no one listens, they just wait for pauses....

... The wors.h.i.+p of the ”sane mind” has been a little overdone, I think.

The men who are p.r.o.ne to say of everyone that they ”exaggerate a little,” or ”are morbid,” are like weights in a scale--just, but oh, how heavy!...

... This war is fine, _fine_, FINE! I know it, and yet I don't get near the fineness except in the pages of _Punch_! I see streams of men whose language (Flemish) I don't speak, holding up protecting hands to keep people from jostling a poor wounded limb, and I watch them sleeping heavily, or eating oranges and smoking cigarettes down to the last hot stump, but I don't hear of the heroic stands which I know are made, or catch the volition of it all. Perhaps only in a voluntary army is such a thing possible. Our own boys make one's heart beat, but these poor, dumb, sodden little men, coming in caked with mud--to be patched up and sent into a hole in the ground again, are simply tragic.

[Page Heading: ”THE WOMAN'S TOUCH”]

_7 March._--”The woman's touch.” When a woman has been down on her knees scrubbing for a week, and was.h.i.+ng for another week, a man, returning and finding his house in order, and vaguely conscious of a newer and fresher smell about it, talks quite tenderly of ”a woman's touch.”...

... There are some people who never care to enter a door unless it has ”pa.s.sage interdite” upon it....

... The guns are booming heavily this morning. Nothing seems to correspond. Are men really falling and dying in agonies quite close to us? I believe we ought to see less or more--be nearer the front or further from it. Or is it that nothing really changes us? Only war pictures and war letters remain as a fixed blazing standard. The soldiers in the trenches are quite as keen about sugar in their coffee as we are about tea. No wonder men have decided that one day we must put off flesh. It is far too obstrusive....

... To comfort myself I try to remember that Wellington took his old nurse with him on all his campaigns because she was the only person who washed his stocks properly....

... Surely the expense of the thing will one day put a stop to war. We are spending two million sterling per day, the French certainly as much, the Germans probably more, and Austria and Russia much more, in order to keep men most uncomfortably in unroofed graves, and to send high explosives into the air, most of which don't hit anything. Surely, if fighting was (as it is) impossible in this flooded country in winter, we might have called a truce and gone home for three months, and trained and drilled like Christians on Salisbury Plain!...

... Health--_i.e._, bad health--obtrudes itself tiresomely. I am ill again, and, fortunately, few people notice it, so I am able to keep on.

A festered hand makes me awkward; and as I wind a bandage round it and tie it with my teeth, I once more wish I was a Belgian refugee, as I am sure I would be interesting, and would get things done for me!

A sick Belgian artist, M. Rotsartz{3}, is doing a drawing of me. I go to Lady Bagot's hospital, where he is laid up, and sit to him in the intervals of soup. That little wooden hospital is the best place I have known so far. Lady Bagot is never bustled or fussy, nor even ”busy,” and her staff are excellent men, with the ”Mark of the Lamb” on them.

I gave away a lot of things to-day to a regiment going into the trenches. The soldiers were delighted with them.

_11 March._--There was a lot of firing near La Panne to-day, and a British wars.h.i.+p was repeatedly sh.e.l.led by the Germans from Nieuport. I went into Dunkirk with Mr. Clegg, and got the usual hasty shopping done.

No one can ever wait a minute. If one has time to buy a newspaper one is lucky. The difficulty of communicating with anyone is great--no telephone--no letters--no motor-car. I am stranded.

[Page Heading: FRENCH MARINES]

I generally go in the train to Ad.i.n.kerke with the French Marines, nice little fellows, with labels attached to them stating their ”case”--not knowing where they are going or anything else--just human lives battered about and carted off. I don't even know where they get the little bit of money which they always seem able to spend on loud-smelling oranges and cigarettes. The place is littered with orange-skins--to-day I saw a long piece lying in the form of an ”S” amid the mud; and, like a story of a century old, I thought of ourselves as children throwing orange-skins round our heads and on to the floor to read the initial of our future husband, and I seemed to hear mother say, ”'S' for Sammy--Sammy C----,”

a boy with thick legs whom we secretly despised!

I have found a whole new household of ”eclopes” at Ad.i.n.kerke, who want cigarettes, socks, and shoes all the time. They are a pitiful lot, with earache, toothache, and all the minor complaints which I myself find so trying, and they lie about on straw till they are able to go back to the trenches again.

The pollard willows between here and Ad.i.n.kerke are all being cut down to build trenches. They were big with buds and the promise of spring.